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Keen On… The Future of the University Might Well be Singularity (TCTV) | Andrew Keen | 2,011 | 10 | 10 | Late last month, I was involved in putting on an Amsterdam based about reinventing university education entitled “Whose Crazy Idea Is This Anyway”? But, as always, the future has already happened without most of us knowing it. And, in terms of the 21st century university, that future might be the Silicon Valley based jointly founded by and . Serial entrepreneur was the founding Executive Director at Singularity and is now the university’s Global Ambassador. So who better to ask about the future of the 21st century university that Ismail? And what he told me about the crisis of the traditional 20th century university will scare many conventional academics, especially those locked in their increasingly irrelevant silos. With its unique programs and access to Silicon Valley brains and money, Singularity University might be singular. Yet there’s little doubt that Ismail is right about the crisis about to envelop the traditional university. As always, though, one man’s crisis is another’s opportunity. And – as everyone from to Ismail himself has told me – the next big thing in Silicon Valley might well be the reinvention of 20th century education. |
Square Processing $2B In Payments Per Year, Has Signed Up 800K Merchants | Leena Rao | 2,011 | 10 | 10 | Disruptive mobile payments company is making a number of announcements today relating to growth and new user features. First, the company is dropping its new user limits. For background, Square offers an iPhone, Android and which allows merchants to process and manage credit card transactions with a handy little credit card swiping device that plugs into the headset/microphone jack. The device and service is the brainchild of Twitter co-founder Jack Dorsey and Jim McKelvey. In May, the company to replace the cash register and loyalty card, and in June, Square raised a which valued the company above $1 billion. Historically, if a new Square user processed more than $1000 in transactions per week, anything above that $1000 will be held for a certain amount of time. This time period ranged from a few hours to as long as a month. How much was help was also a variable amount based on an algorithm that scored merchants. Users had the ability to negotiate and work with Square to raise these limits, but it was on a case by case basis. Today, Square, which launched to the public exactly a year ago today, is abolishing those limits so all new businesses who use card reader will have funds triggered for processing the same day, the proceeds arriving in the merchants bank accounts the next business day. Clearly this ability to provide merchant money as fast as possible despite being a new user is just another way Square is trying to disrupt the payments space for businesses, especially small businesses who may feel the loss of these limits more than a large enterprise. As you may remember, Square also dropped its for businesses a few months ago earlier this year. Square’s also revealed a number of growth statistics for the company, including that the payments service is now processing $2 billion in payments volume per year. To date, Square has been activated by 800,000 merchants which is up from shipped in May. Rabois says that Square’s merchants are now 10% of the reach of the Visa/MasterCard world. Rabois says that the new user limit drop is part of Square’s greater vision of eliminating the need for a merchant account, and giving businesses one simple and easy to use product without the fees, and limitations associated with most payments product. “We’re not going to sleep until we improve the entire experience of buying and selling,” he says. “Every month we’ll have improvements to the product.” In August, Square for a more fast, and seamless payments experience. With more products and improvements set to debut soon, it should be interesting to see how Square continues to innovate and build out its user base. Stay tuned. |
Motorola Hints At October 18 Debut For The Spyder (Or Droid RAZR) | Chris Velazco | 2,011 | 10 | 10 | Samsung and Google got some considerable mileage out of their Nexus teaser video, and Motorola apparently wants to join in on the fun. Their own mysterious video went live earlier today, and hints pretty strongly at some due to be unveiled soon. As with most teaser videos, Motorola’s latest is heavy on imagery but light on detail. In between the images of fast cars and a Douglas Adams reference, Motorola alludes to something faster, thinner, stronger, and smarter ready for a debut on October 18. On top of that, Motorola sent out press invites to that event, and discovered that Motorola’s PR team named the image “spyderlaunchinvite”. I’d say that pretty strongly hints at the existence of the Motorola Spyder, which also made the rounds with the monikers and Droid RAZR. What really gets me here is that there are hints that point to different names, provided you look hard enough. The teaser video quickly flashes a razor blade, which seems like a call-out to the Droid RAZR rumor. It doesn’t help that Motorola (with the help of CSC) has recently picked up a that are about seven years too late to be relevant for the original models. Then again, the invite should theoretically be the most up to date of all the materials that have made the rounds. It seems pretty unlikely that someone tagged it with the wrong filename, unless Motorola has been sitting on the invite image for longer than we thought. In any case, it won’t be long before we find out what Motorola is working on. If I may be so bold as to quote West Side Story, “something’s coming — I don’t know what it is but it is gonna be great.” [youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iFlZ4DWAxdA&w=640&h=360] |
Accel, Redpoint Put $24M Into Online Video Network Infrastructure Startup Qwilt | Leena Rao | 2,011 | 10 | 19 | the provider of network video-infrastructure technology, has raised $24 million in two rounds of funding from Accel Partners, Redpoint Ventures, Crescent Point Group, RealNetworks founder Rob Glaser and other investors. The company, which was founded in 2010 by veterans of Cisco Systems and Juniper Networks, helps Internet-service providers more efficiently and cost-effectively deliver high-quality video to their customers. That means more consumers can see video from sources like Netflix, YouTube and Hulu in the highest possible quality, when they want. Qwilt’s video-technology company solves a pretty big problem related to the recent explosion of video being delivered over the Internet (through Netflix, YouTube, Hulu, etc.), on multiple screens. Video now represents about 40% of all Internet traffic, and is projected to quadruple by 2015, when video is expected to make up more than two-thirds of all online activity. Streaming videos from the Netflix service alone make up 30% of Internet traffic during peak evening hours today. The fact is that there is an enormous strain all this new content is putting on Internet providers. So how does Qwilt solve this? The startup’s technology can be used by carriers to identify, monitor, store and deliver Internet video. As Alon Maor, Qwilt’s CEO and co-founder explains, carrier networks are not architected for widespread online video user. Qwilt’s technology, which has been in stealth for the past two years, allow carriers to create a universal video delivery layer that works transparently, without interruption or changes to content provider or network infrastructures. Qwilt says its technology can be easily integrated into carrier networks as well. Qwilt, which will launch in the first half of 2012,, is now testing its products in the US, Asia and Europe. The new funding will be used to scale the sales and engineering teams. |
Hands-On With The Gingerbread-Powered E Fun Nextbook Premium9 Tablet | Jordan Crook | 2,011 | 10 | 19 | E Fun has launched the third in its line of Nextbook Premium Tablets, a nine-incher to round out its size offerings. Almost identical to the 7- and 8-inch models (save for a lack of camera on the Premium7), the Nextbook Premium9 tablet rocks a 9-inch capacitive display, a silver back panel and an added hint of red around the edge. The trio shares almost all the same specs, perhaps implying that size really does matter in the tablet arena. The Nextbook Premium9 runs with a 1GHz processor under the hood. Other specs include a 2-megapixel front-facing camera, 4GB of on-board memory, a microSD card slot, and (somewhat oddly) a mini USB port. Honeycomb is on the way, which should be a blessing — Honeycomb was designed for tablets and Gingerbread just seemed a bit buggy here. As far as design goes, I thought the Premium9 was pretty easy on the eyes. It felt a bit hefty, but in more of a solid way than a cumbersome one. The Nextbook Premium9 should retail for around $269 in November, and I’d say this one is a fashionable — albeit desperate for a software update — option in the .
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Nearing 1 Million Users, Path Stays The Course | Rip Empson | 2,011 | 10 | 19 | Founded by Dave Morin, the co-inventor of Facebook Connect, Sean Fanning, the co-inventor of Napster, and Dustin Mierau, the co-inventor of Macster, has some serious street cred when it comes to social and sharing. What’s more, there was the impressive list of investors backing the photo-sharing app in November of last year, and the sizable led by Kleiner Perkins in February. At about the same time, , to which Path collectively said “no, thank you”. The Google acquisition offer was likely a play at scooping up an impressive, design-oriented team and a high-profile former Facebooker would have been a nice addition. Yet, though Path may have been showing Zynga-like engagement early on, the question has been whether or not Path could scale and find user adoption before it ran out of money. Those questions have continued to be hurled at Path, but today CEO Dave Morin put some of the speculation to rest, announcing from the stage at The Web 2.0 Summit in San Francisco that the app is nearing 1 million users. For those unfamiliar, Path is designed to help people share moments from their lives in context and in small, tight circles of friends and family. Path focuses (and will only continue to do more so) on one’s “trusted relationships”, which is why users are only able to share with 150 people — at most. It’s a sharing model that many victims of Facebook’s sometimes complicated privacy settings and trend of over-sharing can get very excited about; however, Google+ is really trying to do the same thing and will provide some serious competition for Path going forward, whether the founders want to acknowledge that or not. Over the last 90 days, 3.4 billion photos have been uploaded to Google+, and Vic Gundotra and Sergey Brin both said from the stage today that Google’s social network is designed to be more like interacting socially in real life. You don’t share everything with everyone. Of course, Path is all about the mobile sharing experience. And when Path 2 arrives sometime in the not-so-distant future, you can count on the new version continuing to privilege simplicity, intimacy, and ease of sharing. On stage today, Morin said that mobile users find themselves in many moments, where they want to talk to loved ones or family members about first dates, injuries, etc., and that these kind of moments are not always appropriate for Twitter or Facebook shares. Thus, the startup wants to be the alternative path to mobile sharing. Privacy and intimacy first and foremost. But Path 2 better have some exciting new features, because Google+ will only continue to add integration with Google Apps, work in APIs, spread further across mobile, and at that point, Path may be in trouble. |
More Than A Million People Pay Tribute To Jobs At “Remembering Steve” Page | Alexia Tsotsis | 2,011 | 10 | 19 | Exactly two weeks of Steve Jobs, Apple closed in remembrance of its fearless co-founder and leader. Perhaps more poignantly, Apple has set up a very simple web page, where you can view the tributes sent to in streaming format. According to Apple over a million written homages were collected in the past fourteen days. If that number seems like a lot, consider how many people own and love Apple products … Just a few that crossed my path while I was watching the page, below. “I was strictly a PC guy five short years ago, but because of Steve Jobs’ tireless efforts, innovative vision, and commitment to bringing the best technology to the forefront, he converted me to the Apple ranks. Hoping his legacy lives on and on.” “I am 25 years old. I feel like a person in the 60’s with Marilyn Monroe or John F. Kennedy. They are people you never met felt so close too. Seeing apple produce and revolutionize the technology industry and seeing steve jobs lead it all you almost have a connection with him. For 6 years I have been watching the keynote presentations with steve on stage. It is so sad that inspirers will not seeing him on stage anymore and be apart of apple. He will be truly missed. But what a legacy he leaves behind. What a legacy.?” “Dear Steve, Thank you for all that you brought into this world, you not only changed the way we use our computers, but the way we see life. I will stay hungry and foolish for as long as I live, and someday we’ll meet up there. Thank you for being in our lives. You will always be remembered and loved.” “don’t really notice how much steve has had an effect on all of us until you stop to think about it. until you unlock your iPhone or open your macbook or boot up your iMac. i don’t just use apple products because they work so well or are flawless in design, i use apple products because steve got it.” |
Google Apps Coming To Google+ ‘Within Days’; Company Taking A ‘Cautious Approach’ To APIs | Rip Empson | 2,011 | 10 | 19 | Google+ SVP and Google Co-founder took to the stage today at The Web 2.0 Summit in San Francisco to talk about their new social network and what exactly they’re up to these days. Among other things, Gundotra touched on the success Google+ has seen since its launch, — a statistic which “blew his mind”. Because of this early success, much of which was unexpected, Gundotra said, Google has been focusing on scaling the social network to make sure that it works for all of its users. As a result, Google+ has so far lacked integration with Google Apps, a feature many users have been clamoring to see. According to the Google SVP, the company “thought it would have more time” before it hit a scale and popularity in which these kinds of additions would become necessary. With 40 million users, Google+ is already there. Gundotra said that Google Apps support on Google+ would be arriving “imminently”, which he later clarified by saying “within a few days”. At the same time, developers have also been waiting for Google+ to make its APIs available for use, and many have wondered why the company hasn’t released them as of yet. The SVP said that the Google+ team has been taking a “cautious approach” to APIs and, though it might annoy some, they would not be rushing their APIs to the public’s hands. “When we release an API we want developers to have high confidence that they can depend on Google”, he said. Also of note: A la Twitter, Google+ will (in the next few months) be rolling out support for pseudonyms and other forms of identity, Gundotra said today. Google+ initially only allowed users to sign up using their real names, but it will be adding features in the near future that support other forms of identity, specifically pseudonyms and nicknames. While Google+ had early on resisted the appeal for support for alternative identities, it seems to have changed course, understanding that some people do, in fact, have legitimate reasons to choose not to use their real name. In my case, it’s to avoid revealing my superpower. I’m sure many others feel the same way. For more on Gundotra and Brin’s Q&A with Jon Batelle, check out . |
Is LinkedIn For Old People? “Like The Kind Of People Who Will Give You A Job?” Hoffman Responds | Alexia Tsotsis | 2,011 | 10 | 19 | Greylock VC and LinkedIn co-founder Reid Hoffman talked about his Web 3.0 idea (Big Data quel surprise) here at about the implementation layer on top of this data. When asked by moderator John Battelle what he thought about his own investment (and what some might consider a competitor) Facebook, Hoffman said, “Not everything has to be social,” he said “Facebook has a lot of huge things to do,” saying the interest lies in figuring out how to do that. Hoffman then listed the current prominent “social” platforms, “Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter … and a fourth thing.” He expressed the most hope about the fourth thing, “It’s the creation of he new things that’s stunning and different and interesting.” Hoffman was steadfast in his idea that LinkedIn is a one of the cool kids. When Information Week’s David Carr prefaced asking Hoffman a question by, “LinkedIn is for old people,” Hoffman snapped back wittily, “Like the people that would give you a job?” Carr went on to argue that young people already have established a social identity on Facebook, and have no need to join linkedIn. “We actually do reach a younger demographic,” Hoffman responded, citing statistics he couldn’t reveal. What he could reveal? That the social network is now adding “2 members per second.” “My daughter is on LinkedIn …,” the next person in the Q&A told Hoffman, reinforcing his point. https://twitter.com/#!/kluo/status/126797964374061056 |
Sony’s Playstation-Branded 3D TV Hits November 13th | Devin Coldewey | 2,011 | 10 | 19 | Remember that 3D TV bundle that Sony ? Well, it’s finally arriving. A little later than we’d hoped, but at least it’s out in time for the holidays. According to the Playstation Blog, the 32″ TV . They also answer a busload of questions about the TV, in case you were curious about the inputs, 3D glasses, and so on. It’s too late to get a copy of Resistance 3 with your pre-order, which is too bad because I’ve heard good things about the game. You will get a copy of , however. The display comes with a pair of 3D glasses and an HDMI cable. It seems like a pretty solid TV for a dorm room or small apartment; Sony TVs are generally pretty solid and this one is probably a good performer as well. I’m happy with my six-year-old Dell monitor, but you might like this thing, what with its 240Hz and built-in speakers. Plus, with that shape, you can hold your hands up from a distance and pretend it’s a . |
Moonfruit makes play for shop identity with killer Facebook integration | Mike Butcher | 2,011 | 10 | 19 | Up until now has been known as a nice and easy web site builder. Although a long time player in the game (this company is 12 – count ’em – years old) they’ve done very well at iterating their products onto other platforms, raised , got some serious names involved, some (like 500 Startups) , and seen their user base hit some serious traction of late. But today they enter a new realm which ultimately, in my opinion, makes them a player in the realm of owning what I call the “shop identity”. The headline news is that they are partnering with PayPal to launch ShopBuilder, an “out-of-the-box” e-commerce solution that lets traders sell pretty much anywhere online. Thus, although this deal is with PayPal, it’s Moonfruit which will be the middleman aggregator here and that’s a lot more powerful than just allowing people to build a web or mobile presence. Other providers like Pavement on Facebook, open source software like Magento and Shopify don’t come anywhere near as easy as this. ShopBuilder works across web, mobile and Facebook. Integration to eBay and other marketplaces is planned. I’ve seen it demo’ed and the most powerful aspect is the ability to set up a shop inside a Facebook page very, very easily. And I mean seriously easy. Frankly it’s so easy I am starting to wonder if Moonfruit will really need it’s web site builder platform much longer, and in fact whether that will simply become a feature of the Moonfruit offering as against its Facebook integration. Because unlike existing tools for online traders, there is no need to create a different shop for different platforms. As CEO Wendy Tan-White puts it: “We’re aiming to democratise selling by giving consumer retailers the power to craft and own their online brand identity, to set it free whether on web, mobile or social.” Cameron McLean, General Manager Merchant Services at PayPal UK, says they partnered with Moonfruit because they already have thousands of small businesses on their platform. Dave McClure, 500 Startups Founding Partner and Moonfruit investor says the new launch “couldn’t have come at a better time as Facebook are currently focusing on integrating the Open Graph with e-commerce.” Personally I’m convinced, and I can see the Moonfruit’s Facebook shop builder becoming at least 50% of their business in the future if not more. |
ARM’s A7 To Act As Sidekick Processor To More Powerful A15 And Friends | Devin Coldewey | 2,011 | 10 | 19 | Here’s another entry to add to the alphabet soup of processors, chips, and components being bandied about by device makers. ARM, whose A8 core forms the center of a great number of mobile devices, has announced a little brother to their line of higher clockspeed processors. The A7 will form a sort of low-power sidekick to the more powerful A15 and its ilk. The A7 (no direct relation to Apple’s A4 and A5, though they’re in the same extended family and at some point these naming strategies are going to interact) is built on a 28nm process (compared with the others, made at 40-45nm), meaning it can be both physically smaller and draw less power. It’s intended to be used for things like always-on services, background checks and downloads for instance, while passing off more CPU-intensive stuff like media and gaming to the bigger chip. While running only the smaller A7, the system would draw significantly less power — up to 70%, they say. But it wouldn’t be a processing slouch: the die shrink allows it to fit enough transistors that it would provide the performance of today’s superphones in tomorrow’s budget phones. Naturally, the superphones will have advanced as well, though. It’s certainly not an unprecedented move (NVIDIA has a similar solution using multiple A9s), but ARM is smart to make the processor a modular addition, and of course they’ve designed it to work seamlessly with the faster processors and offload big jobs quickly. They’ve got big players on board to leverage the new “big dog, little dog” architecture, including Broadcom, TI, Freescale, Samsung, and more. Expect plenty of branded chips to have A*-A7 team-up configurations. Don’t expect them any time soon, though: ARM is aiming for 2013 at the earliest for the new chips to be introduced in products. They’d be aiming at smartphones initially, though of course tablets won’t be far behind. , if you’re interested. |
If You Sold Your Apple Stock Today, You’re An Idiot | MG Siegler | 2,011 | 10 | 19 | Before I begin, two points: 1) I do not own any Apple stock. I have absolutely no interest in whether the stock goes up or down. 2) One can make an argument that there may be other reasons to sell Apple’s stock now (namely, uncertainty following the passing of Steve Jobs), I’m simply arguing that the stock’s collapse today due to yesterday’s earnings is laughable. Watching the stock market following yesterday and into today, I’m reminded of a famous Steve Jobs quote. “If you see a stylus, they blew it.” Reworked, the quote today would be: “If you’re investing based on Apple analysts, you blew it.” dropped 23.62 points today — over 5.5 percent. It went from an all-time closing high of $422 a share, to under $400 a share. Why? Again, the earnings announced yesterday. For the first time in something like 9 years, Apple failed to beat Wall Street’s expectations. But here’s the thing: those expectations were ridiculous and flawed and once again show that analysts have no idea what they’re talking about when it comes to Apple. Over the past decade, Apple has routinely made analysts look foolish by destroying their estimates each and every quarter. Apple sets them up for this by giving often comically low guidance, which analysts go up a bit from, then demolishing both sets of numbers. Perhaps because of this history of foolishness, this past quarter, analysts got a bit more bullish than usual. But they didn’t take into account one very key factor. And it came back to bite them in the ass. Actually, it came back to bite Apple’s stock in the ass. That’s the ridiculous thing. The stock is being punished after a record September quarter for the company — their second best quarter — because the analysts were caught snoozing. But because analysts are never held accountable for anything — be it the laughable rumors they create by doing “checks” or the ridiculous thoughts on the company they spread and others pick up simply because they’re labeled “experts” and well paid — Apple takes the blame. Here’s what really happened. Apple sold fewer iPhones in Q4 than analysts were projecting. They were expecting something between 20 and 22 million, and Apple actually sold 17.07 million. Since the iPhone is Apple’s largest source of revenue and profit, this dragged down both of those numbers as well. That’s the entire reason for the “miss” — it really is that simple. Apple selling 20 to 22 million iPhones in Q4 would have been a new all-time record for the company. Analysts were undoubtedly looking for this because Apple was coming off of . Typically, Q3 is a weak quarter for Apple in terms of iPhone sales, but again, this Q3 saw a record. So Q4 was going to be gangbusters, right? Wrong. The problem is that Apple typically refreshes the iPhone in June or July. That’s been the case since the device first launched in 2007. This year, that did not happen. This means that normally weaker Q3 numbers remained strong because there was no new iPhone on the horizon. Inventory and sales remained high. Instead, the iPhone 4S was announced and launched in October. This means that for this year at least, the Q3 down cycle actually occurred in Q4. Further, because previous new iPhones had been launched in June or July, Q4 (Apple’s fiscal quarter, not the calendar one) has traditionally been a very strong quarter for iPhone sales. Again, that was not the case this year — in fact, it was the opposite because of the aforementioned down cycle before the upgraded model hit. Somehow analysts missed badly on this and this alone. On one hand, you want to cut them some slack because it is Apple and it’s hard to know much of anything about when and what they’re going to release. Plus they were sort of tricked by Apple breaking the typical iPhone launch tradition. But come on, this is their jobs! Everyone who follows Apple closely knew months ago that there was no new iPhone hardware coming this summer, and that it would instead launch in the fall. Then again, even those who are actually good at this forecasting screwed the pooch too. Because analysts have been so horrible with Apple throughout the years, it has given rise to amateurs (I mean that in a good way) like . Dediu is normally very, very good when it comes to Apple analysis. But he screwed up badly this quarter as well. Dediu’s reasoning — — is essentially the same thing I laid out above. His main problem was that because he screwed up last quarter, it tricked him into trying to correct for this quarter and led to another huge miss. He should have stuck to the simple notion that this year is a weird one for Apple because of the atypical iPhone release cycle. Okay, so that’s why everyone screwed up. But again, the big issue here is that these screw ups led to Apple’s stock collapsing today for essentially no real reason. Yes, Apple had a weaker quarter than last quarter, but that should have been expected. The fact that it was still their second-best quarter ever and saw record iPad Mac sales is actually pretty amazing. More importantly, this “miss” led to Apple’s executives getting a bit ballsy during their earnings call yesterday and in the Q1 holiday quarter. They’re actually forecasting a $37 billion quarter, which would be the company’s biggest quarter by almost $10 billion. And remember, those estimates are always comically low. It’s certainly possible that Apple could have a quarter next quarter. That was the most important thing revealed yesterday. And that reveal should have led to the stock surging. Instead the opposite happened. And that’s why you’re an idiot if you sold your Apple stock today. |
How To Web to bring busloads of tech entrepreneurs to Romania | cloudbrows | 2,011 | 10 | 19 | , the founder of , the eastern European web technology conference, is busy promoting it across Europe. He is presenting at the events in Germany, Bulgaria, Croatia and native Romania, where the conference about web technology and entrepreneurship is to take place on November 9-10, 2011. Over 30 speakers will present at the conference, which aims to help entrepreneurs build better web applications. Among them are successful entrepreneurs such as , the co-founder of , , the founder and CEO of and , the co-founder and CEO of . Speakers from startup accelerators include ‘s and , from , , the co-founder of , of and and Mikko Jarvenpää, the Chief Marketing Geek at . According to Iordache, to help improve the attendance rates, How to Web team has even organized free transportation. Three buses will collect cash-strapped entrepreneurs from Sofia, Belgrade and Timisoara to bring them to Bucharest, Romania. To ensure that the attendees stay for the duration of the conference, startup presentations are scattered throughout its two-day program, culminating in a debate whether there are too many incubators in Europe and, of course, a party. Come to learn more about web entrepreneurship, meet the industry players or showcase your company. But hurry, the deadline to submit applications for the startup challenge is tomorrow, the 20th of October. Qualified startups will have a product aimed at the global market, received no previous venture investment and are present in business less than two years. The conference is in its third year and rumor has it that last year How to Web rocked. |
Most People Have Changed Their Privacy Settings On Facebook, Says Facebook CTO | Alexia Tsotsis | 2,011 | 10 | 19 | Facebook CTO responded to the oft-repeated maxim (“meme” is what he called it) that Facebook privacy settings are needlessly complex by asserting that “the majority of people on Facebook have modified their privacy settings” in a conversation with John Battelle at today. While “most” can mean anything between 51% and 99%, Taylor was adamant that the Facebook privacy settings were intelligible, “ (I heard a “Yeah right” emanate from the audience when he said this.) On the same privacy kick, Taylor brought up a little publicized feature of Facebook’s new Timeline called Activity Log, which can be accessed by toggling the View Activity feature next to Update Info in the upper right of your Timeline. Activity Log reveals all the data that you’ve shared on Facebook over time. The new feature pane, which basically functions as a shortcut to privacy settings, allows you to customize the sharing of statuses. Whether or not it was easy to access the Facebook privacy settings before — And I’m going to go with NOT, as the company itself once revealed that only accessed the settings — there’s no question that it will be to access those settings as Timeline rolls out in the next couple of weeks. “If we can give people granularity on these things … we can be successful,” Taylor said. |
With Social, Sergey Brin And Vic Gundotra Say Google+ Is Playing A Different Game | Erick Schonfeld | 2,011 | 10 | 19 | Google founder Sergey Brin freely admits, “I am not a very social person myself.” Speaking onstage at the Web 2.0 Summit with Google+ exec Vic Gundotra, Brin says that he thought Google+ would be too complicated, with all of its Circles and different ways to share with different groups of people. But he has been pleasantly surprised. “I have been able to reconnect with friends, I was not able to do that with existing services because of the way their sharing models work. The Circles worked very well for me, I debated they were too complicated. Now I use them.” But of course he does. What about regular people? As Sean Parker pointed out , all of your friends are already on Facebook and it will be hard to get all of them to move over to Google+. “Your mom and friends, guess what, they are already on Google,” responds Gundotra. Google will get them to use Google+ overtime. But he does admit that “the point Sean made is right. The incumbent has a huge advantage. If you play the same game it is hard to win. We are going to play a different game.” Hundreds of millions of people use Google every day, and every time they do that is an opportunity to introduce them to Google+. As Google builds social as the backbone across its products (Google Docs will soon be shareable on Google+), the experience should become more seamless and just a part of the way people use Google’s products. “In some ways we have run the company as to let 1,000 flowers bloom, but once they do bloom you want to put together a coherent bouquet,” says Brin. Already you can see the impact in the numbers Google shares—more than 40 million registered users, photos uploaded. But pressed on actual engagement (“Are they actually using it?” asked host John Battelle), Gundotra demurred on providing any more meaningful numbers. Google force 40 million signups, no problem. Or build photo syncing with Google+ into Android and automatically get billions of photos. But the question of how much people are actually using Google+ still hangs over the product. Despite trying to play a different game, Google+ will continue to be compared to Facebook until it can distinguish itself. If anything, Google+ is attempting to be more about curation than an overwhelming stream of information. Asked about Facebook’s changes to its Open Graph and its new Ticker which multiplies the stream of information on Facebook, Gundotra quips: “There is reason why every thought in your head does not come out of your mouth.” Unless, of course you are that Google engineer who shared his critique of Google+ publicly instead of privately that Google . “That hurt,” says Gundotra. But he adds, “it gave the outside world a view of what we do internally. Larry and Sergey have fostered a culture of open debate and open dissent. I think it is one of the things that make Google great. And is why we didn’t fire him.” Brin adds with characteristic understatement: “I would advise those who write memos to share them appropriately.” |
In Time For The Holiday Shopping Season, PayPal’s In-Store Integration Will Debut At A National Retailer In Q4 | Leena Rao | 2,011 | 10 | 19 | We know PayPal has been for in-store merchants to integrate the payments service into the point of sale payments experience. Today, on , eBay CEO John Donahoe said that the launch of the new technology will take place in the fourth quarter. He said that the in-store PayPal technology will be tested on a ‘friends and family’ basis in a national retailer in two markets. The exact details on how this will work is still unclear, but we do know that features of this new offering will include location-based offers, making payments accessible from any device and offering more payments flexibility to customers after they’ve checked out. Users will have the ability to access realtime store inventory, receive in-store offers, and real-time location-based advertising from stores. It should be interesting to see which national retailer will be testing the technology and how the holiday shopping season will help PayPal’s transaction volume. As for when the retailer will be announced, our as per what we’ve heard. Later in the call, Donahoe said that eBay has had a number of offline retailer approach PayPal to bring the technology to the offline experience. PayPal is picking a small number of globally, known top-tier retailers, he says. In the first half of next year, PayPal plans to roll out the technology other national retailers. It doesn’t need NFC, it can work with a card, it can work with a mobile device, he says, making it relatively easy to integrate into retailer point of sale systems. In terms of monetization, Donahoe says that they are exploring that in the next 3-6 months. The specific retailer who will launch the integration will reveal the PayPal partnership, in the fourth quarter. Donohoe called the integration “the next chapter of the PayPal playbook.” The payments technology helped buoy parent company eBay’s earnings for the third quarter, with PayPal bringing in $1.1 billion in revenue. In North America, PayPal is now available on 63 of top 100 Internet retailers, up from 56 last year. New merchants include Target and J.Crew. And PayPal continues to add about 1 million active registered accounts per month. |
Over 3.4 Billion Photos Have Been Shared On Google+ In The Past 100 Days | Alexia Tsotsis | 2,011 | 10 | 19 | “That’s a big number even by Google standards,” said Google social czar while talking with Sergei Brin and John Battelle onstage at . While the number been buried in the Google earnings call last week, Gundotra emphasized onstage that the stat “Blew his mind.” Gundotra seemed genuinely impressed by the number crediting the fact that photos can be automatically uploaded to Google+ from Android phones — So is a user engagement number really a user engagement number if users don’t actually have to be engaged to use the feature? |
Khan Academy Triples Unique Users To 3.5 Million | Rip Empson | 2,011 | 10 | 19 | Today at The Web 2.0 Summit in San Francisco, Founder of , Salman Khan, took the stage to share a few quick stats on the growth of his online video education platform. For those unfamiliar, Khan Academy is, as John Batelle noted this afternoon, one of . It also happens to be one of mine, but I thought you’d probably resonate a bit more with Bill Gates. But Khan Academy is the institution of Salman Khan, who brought the idea of educating young people, self-starters, people who learn at their own pace — online. “Educational”-type YouTube videos have now been around for years, but Khan Academy’s repository is pretty ridiculous. The educational startup now counts over 2,600 videos in its library, with sessions or classes on everything from arithmetic to physics, including 211 practice exercises, to let students watch videos and learn at their own pace. While Khan is a not-for-profit organization, the Academy has received donations from The Gates Foundation and also won Google’s “Project 10^100”. With the $2 million+ from Google and Gates in pocket, Khan told the crowd at Web 2.0 today that the academy is seeing 39 million pageviews and 3.5 million unique users per month. That 3.5 million unique users is up 309 percent year-over-year. It looks like all the publicity and traction Khan Academy has been getting of late is really starting to pay off, which is great to see. |
Buddy Media breaks down the content boundaries of social networks | vaughn597 | 2,011 | 10 | 19 | Social enterprise software has launched an addition to its social marketing suite today: it enables clients to share and manage their content anywhere on the open web. The new product, dubbed ReachBuddy, is meant to break down the boundaries of social networks and to power connections between customer and industry on a new level. The Buddy Media suite has so far consisted of messaging tool ConversationBuddy, content management tool ProfileBuddy and interaction tracking product ConversionBuddy. All those tools were based on content distribution via Facebook and Twitter. With the update, content can now be deployed across the web easily through an embed code, too. Creating, managing and tracking social content across corporate websites, microsites and newsletters for example is possible with a quick click on the tool. It can bring the social graphs of Twitter to YouTube pages or share Facebook polls on Tumblr and WordPress, as well as any landing page, while keeping up a consistent brand experience. This makes for a unified solution for more than 50 social applications, from sweepstakes to contests. Luca Benini, Buddy Media’s Managing Director of Europe, commented on the launch: “The reason we developed ReachBuddy is because clients were asking us what is the next step. We think that in the process of building a brand presence [our clients and us] have to think bigger and not be confined to the boundaries of social networks.” ReachBuddy’s Beta partners at least seemed quite pleased with the product. PepsiCo used it successfully to distribute video on the the co-branded microsite that shows viewers how to use the “Snap it, send it” technology found on PepsiCo packaging, to acquire goodies relating to the X Factor USA. Also launched today was a proprietary index called C-RankTM. This one is a well thought through evaluation tool: it benchmarks clients compared to others in their industry. The idea behind it is less to trigger some healthy competitive spirit, but more to help quickly identify positive or negative trends. C-Rank tracks the user engagement across multiple social platforms and evaluates the content effectiveness on a numerical score of 0-100. I can sense some accelerating incentive on the future low ranks already. |
Ski Lift Ticket Retailer Liftopia Raises $1.3 Million | Sarah Perez | 2,011 | 10 | 19 | San Francisco-based , an online retailer of lift tickets and mountain resort activities, is today announcing it has raised $1.3 million in a round led by First Round Capital. New investors in today’s round also include Dave Morin and Chris Sacca, who participated with existing investors Erik Blachford and Sam Shank. Today’s investment brings Liftopia’s total raise to nearly $3 million. In short, wants to do for ski lifts and other mountain-related activities what OpenTable did for dining reservations, the company says. It’s now working with 150 resorts across North America in an estimated $5 billion market. Europe, whose market is around four times the size, is also on the startup’s future roadmap. For those unfamiliar with the service, Liftopia lets you buy your lift tickets online and in advance. By doing so, consumers can save up to 80% off the walk-up rates for the lifts. Resorts benefit too, by insuring against volatile weather conditions, snow conditions and other events that may keep skiiers away from the slopes. The resorts participate in the system for free, but for each transaction, Liftopia keeps a portion of the revenue. The company says that over the past year, transaction volume and revenue have grown in the triple digits. Currently, participating resorts are located in California, Colorado, Utah, New York, New England, British Columbia and Quebec, such as Park City, Winter Park, Aspen, Deer Valley, Snowbird, Mammoth, Kirkwood, Stowe, Sun Valley, Taos, Snowshoe, Mont Tremblant, Killington, Sunday River, Banff and Whiteface. Investors in today’s round include, as noted above, First Round Capital, Sacca and Morin, as well as Sand Hill Angels, Sam Shank (founder of HotelTonight and TravelPost) and Erik Blachford (early Expedia employee and the former CEO of Expedia, Inc./IAC Travel; investor in Farecast, Zillow, Hipmunk and Room 77). |
Lytro Makes Its Debut: Unique Form Factor, $400 Price Tag | Devin Coldewey | 2,011 | 10 | 19 | The “focus later” camera has created a lot of interesting discussion on the web. With photography still in many ways the same as it was a century ago, this new way of capturing images has certainly struck a nerve. I’ve , but I wouldn’t want to pour cold water on this truly innovative device on its big debut. In case you’ve forgotten, the Lytro allows you to shoot a picture with minimal effort, then adjust the focus to your liking later, among other things. At an event in San Francisco today, CEO and originator of the Lytro’s light-field technology Ren Ng showed off the device, which only resembles traditional cameras in that it has a lens and LCD screen. It’s really more like a kaleidoscope than anything else. The front sports an F/2 lens with an 8x zoom — it was not specified whether that F/2 persists throughout the zoom range, but based on my understanding of the technology, I think it has to (update: yes, the f/2 is constant). Neither was the 35mm equivalent for focal length given. On the other end of the device, which is 4.4″ long and weighs only 8oz, there is a 1.46″ LCD touchscreen on which you can frame the shot and explore previously shot images. There are only two buttons on the device, one for shutter and one for power, plus a slider for zoom. You certainly have to give it to their designers: whether you like the shape or not, it’s unique-looking and practical in a way. The Lytro will come in two versions: $399 buys you an 8GB version (blue or grey) that holds 350 shots; $499 gets you a red 16GB version that holds twice that. This works out to about 22 megabytes per shot, which is comparable to many RAW shots being taken on DSLRs today. The actual “megapixel” value is hard to determine, and Ng described the camera as capturing “11 mega-rays” to an LFP file. I’m thinking that the final images are likely not that large in terms of square dimensions, but of course that square would contain far more data than a square JPEG. The specs say “HD quality,” which of course means very little. Notably, the pictures you take will be able to be hosted on Lytro’s site for free. Let’s hope they can scale that. They’re shipping in early 2012, but some questions remain. How long does the battery last? How does it hand low-light situations (we can’t take the F/2 lens at face value, though it’s certainly bright)? How will the photos be displayed — Flash, some kind of custom container? Will there be apps? And did they spend of that $50 million? |
Driven By PayPal, eBay Q3 Revenue Up 32 Percent To $3 Billion; Net Income Up 18 Percent To $628M | Leena Rao | 2,011 | 10 | 19 | eBay , which were in-line with Wall Street expectations. Revenue for the third quarter increased 32% to $3 billion, compared to the same period of 2010. This was actually a record quarter for revenue, says the company. Net income on a GAAP basis was $490.5 million, or $0.37 per diluted share, and non-GAAP net income came in at $628.2 million, or $0.48 per diluted share, up 18 percent from 2010. Analysts expected $0.48 cents per share, and revenue was expected to hit $2.9 billion. The company’s PayPal business continued to help buoy the company’s earnings. PayPal ended the quarter with 103 million active registered accounts, a 14% increase year over year. PayPal revenue increased 32% year over year driven primarily by increased penetration on eBay as well as continued merchant and consumer adoption. PayPal’s net total payment volume grew 31% to $29.3 billion in the third quarter of 2011 compared to the same period of last year. PayPal had its last quarter but exceeded this, bringing in $1.1 billion in revenue, which is up over 30 percent from 2010. And PayPal expects to generate more than $3.5 billion in mobile TPV in 2011, up from $750 million in 2010. The company’s Marketplaces business also grew, bringing in $1.7 billion in revenue, which is up 17 percent from the previous year. Gross merchandise volume (GMV) excluding vehicles increased by 16% year over year to $14.7 billion. U.S. GMV excluding vehicles increased 14% year over year, and nternational GMV excluding vehicles increased 18% year over year to $9.1 billion, reflecting solid growth in Europe, continued improved performance in Korea, as well as a positive impact from foreign exchange. eBay expects to generate almost $5 billion in mobile GMV in 2011, more than double mobile GMV in 2010. The company’s GSI Commerce business, which was acquired earlier this year, contributed $202.6 million in revenue for the third quarter. GSI generated $608 million in global ecommerce (GeC) merchandise sales during the quarter. The year-over-year increase in third quarter GAAP and non-GAAP earnings per diluted share was driven primarily by strong top-line growth, says eBay, and partially offset by continued investment in strategic initiatives and the impact of acquisitions. eBay Inc. President and CEO John Donahoe, said in a statement, “Our company reported another strong quarter, with eBay, PayPal and GSI each performing well…Mobile commerce continues to accelerate as consumers change the way they shop and pay. We expect eBay mobile commerce to generate almost $5 billion in merchandise volume this year and PayPal mobile to exceed $3.5 billion in payment volume. Mobile is one way online and offline shopping are blending into a single commerce environment. We are focused on enabling commerce, helping consumers shop anytime, anywhere, and being the commerce partner of choice for retailers of all sizes.” In the Fourth quarter, eBay expects revenues in the range of $3.2 to $3.35 billion million with GAAP earnings per diluted share in the range of $1.47 – $1.53 and non-GAAP earnings per diluted share in the range of $0.55 – $0.58. GAAP earnings per diluted share will include the gain from eBay’s sale of its remaining equity interest in Skype. For the full year, eBay expects revenue in the range of $11.5 to $11.6 billion with GAAP earnings per diluted share in the range of $2.42 – $2.48 and non-GAAP earnings per diluted share in the range of $1.98 – $2.01. The company has had a pretty significant few weeks. Last week eBay its brand new developer business tomorrow, X.commerce, which stitched together technologies from eBay, PayPal, Magento and GSI. The company also to integrate the social network’s Open Graph into the Magento and GSI global commerce platforms. PayPal also revealed PayPal Access, a payments identity technology that would allow you to carry your payments identity to various retailers on the web. Facebook Platform Marketing Chief eBay’s board. PayPal is also expected to as well as . Donahoe says that the company is focused on ‘enabling commerce,’ giving users a seamless experience across channels. “Retail must be technology enabled and consumer-led” “We are at an inflection point in global commerce,” Donahoe added. “We believe we’ll see more change in how people shop and pay in next 3 years than in the last decade.” PayPal’s mobile payments are expected to exceed $3.5 billion, five times what it was in 2010. PayPal’s technology will soon be extended to retailer point of sale locations. In Q4 these in-store innovations will be tested on a ‘friends and family’ basis in a national retailer in two markets. eBay mobile MGV will be more than double from last year, to $5 billion. Consumers are making on average 3 purchases per second via the company’s mobile apps. Mobile payments is a fundamentally risky thing, says the company, but PayPal is going to provide a great mobile payments solution that is secure. |
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Sony Will Buy Out Ericsson’s Stake In Sony-Ericsson Mobile For $1.47 Billion | Alexia Tsotsis | 2,011 | 10 | 26 | Sony Corp. has that it will pay $1.47 billion (or $1.05 billion Euros) for 50% stake in the joint Sony-Ericsson mobile handset venture. Based in Tokyo and Stockholm respectively, Sony bought out the Swedish company’s ownership of “five essential patent families” in an intellectual property agreement between the two companies. According to the press release announcing the deal, the acquisition will allow Sony to incorporate its mobile products into its other electronics offering like PCs, TVs and tablets and laptops. The two companies have been working together on the mobile front since 2001. Said Ericsson President Hans Vestberg in a release, “Ten years ago when we formed the joint venture, thereby combining Sony’s consumer products knowledge with Ericsson’s telecommunication technology expertise, it was a perfect match to drive the development of feature phones. Today we take an equally logical step as Sony acquires our stake in Sony Ericsson and makes it a part of its broad range of consumer devices. We will now enhance our focus on enabling connectivity for all devices, using our R&D and industry leading patent portfolio to realize a truly connected world.” The buyout had for about a couple of weeks, as Sony Ericsson continued to lose hold on its cell phone market share. By putting an end to the Sony-Ericsson brand — presently the world’s sixth largest cellphone manufacturer — Sony wanted to according to the Whether this bold move will help remains to be seen. The mobile sphere has increasing become a hotly contested battleground, with Google’s emphasizing how important the cell phone space is for the future of electronics devices and Internet access. STOCKHOLM, SWEDEN–(Marketwire – Oct 27, 2011) – — Sony Ericsson to become a wholly owned subsidiary of Sony and integrated into Sony’s broad platform of network-connected consumer electronics products — The transaction also provides Sony with a broad IP cross-licensing agreement and ownership of five essential patent families — Ericsson to receive EUR 1.05 billion cash payment — Sony and Ericsson to create wireless connectivity initiative to drive connectivity across multiple platforms Ericsson (NASDAQ: ) and Sony Corporation (“Sony”) today announced that Sony will acquire Ericsson’s 50 percent stake in Sony Ericsson Mobile Communications AB (“Sony Ericsson”), making the mobile handset business a wholly owned subsidiary of Sony. The transaction gives Sony an opportunity to rapidly integrate smartphones into its broad array of network-connected consumer electronics devices – including tablets, televisions and personal computers – for the benefit of consumers and the growth of its business. The transaction also provides Sony with a broad intellectual property (IP) cross-licensing agreement covering all products and services of Sony as well as ownership of five essential patent families relating to wireless handset technology. As part of the transaction, Ericsson will receive a cash consideration of EUR 1.05 billion. During the past ten years the mobile market has shifted focus from simple mobile phones to rich smartphones that include access to internet services and content. The transaction is a logical strategic step that takes into account the nature of this evolution and its impact on the marketplace. This means that the synergies for Ericsson in having both a world leading technology and telecoms services portfolio and a handset operation are decreasing. Today Ericsson’s focus is on the global wireless market as a whole; how wireless connectivity can benefit people, business and society beyond just phones. Consistent with that mission, by setting up a wireless connectivity initiative, Ericsson and Sony will work to drive and develop the market’s adoption of connectivity across multiple platforms. “This acquisition makes sense for Sony and Ericsson, and it will make the difference for consumers, who want to connect with content wherever they are, whenever they want. With a vibrant smartphone business and by gaining access to important strategic IP, notably a broad cross-license agreement, our four- screen strategy is in place. We can more rapidly and more widely offer consumers smartphones, laptops, tablets and televisions that seamlessly connect with one another and open up new worlds of online entertainment. This includes Sony’s own acclaimed network services, like the PlayStation Network and Sony Entertainment Network,” said Sir Howard Stringer, Sony’s Chairman, Chief Executive Officer and President. Mr Stringer also noted that the acquisition will afford Sony operational efficiencies in engineering, network development and marketing, among other areas. “We can help people enjoy all our content – from movies to music and games – through our many devices, in a way no one else can.” “Ten years ago when we formed the joint venture, thereby combining Sony’s consumer products knowledge with Ericsson’s telecommunication technology expertise, it was a perfect match to drive the development of feature phones. Today we take an equally logical step as Sony acquires our stake in Sony Ericsson and makes it a part of its broad range of consumer devices. We will now enhance our focus on enabling connectivity for all devices, using our R&D and industry leading patent portfolio to realize a truly connected world” said Hans Vestberg, President and CEO of Ericsson. When Sony Ericsson started its operations on October 1, 2001, it combined the unprofitable handset operations from Ericsson and Sony. Following a successful turnaround the company has become a market leader in the development of feature phones by integrating Sony’s strong consumer products knowledge and Ericsson’s telecommunications technology leadership. The Walkman™ phone and Cyber- shot™ phone are well known examples. With the successful introduction of the P1 in 2007, Sony Ericsson early on established itself in the smartphone segment. More recently, the company has successfully made the transition from feature phones to Android-based Xperia™ smartphones. By the end of the third quarter of 2011, Sony Ericsson held a market share of 11 percent (by value) in the Android phone market, representing 80 percent of the company’s third quarter sales. During its ten years in operation Sony Ericsson has generated approximately EUR 1.5 billion of profit and paid dividends totalling approximately EUR 1.9 billion to its parent companies. Prominent models include “Xperia™ arc” and “Xperia™ mini” which received 2011 EISA Awards, while recent notable additions to the lineup include “Xperia™ PLAY” and “Xperia™ arc S”. The transaction, which has been approved by appropriate decision-making bodies of both companies, is expected to close in January 2012, subject to customary closing conditions, including regulatory approvals. Ericsson has accounted for its 50 percent share in Sony Ericsson according to the equity method. Following completion of the transaction, Ericsson will have no outstanding guarantees relating to Sony Ericsson and will no longer account for Sony Ericsson as an investment on balance sheet. The transaction will result in a positive capital gain for Ericsson which will be defined after closing of the transaction. SEB Enskilda is acting as Ericsson’s sole financial advisor in the transaction. Facts about Sony Ericsson EUR 6,294 million EUR 90 million 7,500 (December 2010) London Beijing, Lund, Silicon Valley and Tokyo 11% in Android (FY2011/3Q) 80 % of sales are smartphones (Android) There’s a couple of reasons why Sony wants the buyout. One, Sony Ericsson is losing market share for quite sometime now and it will continue to drop as the demands for high-end phones are declining. The popularity of Experia smartphones remains low. The direction of both companies seems to be going different paths – Sony is focussing more on the consumer products like tablet, PC, game consoles, TV, cameras and some other businesses while Ericsson on the other hand is more on the telecommunication-network equipment and is more focussed on the business-to-business market. Ericsson is the world’s leading provider of technology and services to telecom operators. Ericsson is the leader in 2G, 3G and 4G mobile technologies, and provides support for networks with over 2 billion subscribers and has the leading position in managed services. The company’s portfolio comprises mobile and fixed network infrastructure, telecom services, software, broadband and multimedia solutions for operators, enterprises and the media industry. The Sony Ericsson and ST-Ericsson joint ventures provide consumers with feature-rich personal mobile devices. Ericsson is advancing its vision of being the “prime driver in an all- communicating world” through innovation, technology, and sustainable business solutions. Working in 180 countries, more than 90,000 employees generated revenue of SEK 203.3 billion (USD 28.2 billion) in 2010. Founded in 1876 with the headquarters in Stockholm, Sweden, Ericsson is listed on NASDAQ OMX, Stockholm and NASDAQ New York. |
Report Puts Google’s Zagat Purchase At $151 Million | Devin Coldewey | 2,011 | 10 | 26 | The purchase price of Google’s of restaurant review and guide source Zagat has been pinpointed at $151 million in cash, according to an by the company itself and reported by . Our original estimate, based on the fact that an FTC antitrust review had not been triggered by the deal, was , and the Wall Street Journal later cited the inevitable “person familiar with the matter” with a figure. As it turns out, we both lowballed it by quite a bit. The $151m figure is less than Zagat was hoping for a few years ago, but that valuation was perhaps self-evidently a bit high, as no one took the bait then. But it’s more money than Google has paid for 90% of the companies it has bought: Zagat will be in the top ten (albeit near the bottom) most expensive purchases they’ve made. Google’s plans for the company haven’t been clearly delineated yet, but it’s fairly easy to see how the vast store of reviews and local data fits in with Google’s local business strategy. Until the company and its holdings have been sufficiently internalized, however, a process that will likely take months yet, the effect on Google’s services should be minimal. The rest of the regulatory finding filed by Google presents a picture of a brisk takeover strategy: 54 deals have been closed up to September of 2011, totaling $502m. In 2010 they paid $676m for 37 companies, not including the nearly $1b it shelled out for On2, Slide, and AdMob. |
Passing 1 Million Downloads, Discovr Raises $1.1 Million; Launches On Mac App Store | Rip Empson | 2,011 | 10 | 26 | Today, , the awesome tool that allows users to discover new apps for iOS (by way of interactive graphs) is announcing that it has passed the one million downloads milestone and has closed a $1.1M seed round led by Australia’s leading VC firm Yuuwa Capital. Of course, there’s no better way to celebrate these achievements than launch a new version of your app for Apple desktops, right? Today, the startup is also announcing the release of its , which is available for $5 now on those Mac App Stores near you. Discovr Music, put simply, makes it easy to discover new music from the comfort of your laptops and desktops. To give a sense of context, in January of this year, Discovr launched a nifty iPad app that essentially provided users with an interactive map of the music world, displaying (among other things) connections between bands and artists in a graphical web. With a few quick taps, users could see musicians’ videos on YouTube, band info and other extras, all while experiencing a fairly unique visual interface that provides an easy way to weave through connections between bands to discover new music and cool apps. The app attracted 150K downloads in three days, and by June, Discovr had taken its music discovery and visualization model for iOS to the apps world at large. Discovr Apps enabled users to search for their favorite apps, choose from Discovr’s curated, featured apps, at which point the tool will show your choice in an interconnected network of related apps that are linked together based on their similarities. How does Discovr determine these similarities? Thank you for asking. Like many other recommendation services, Discovr serves the user with its web of similarities based on a synthesis of machine algorithms and human curation. Those networks of similar apps can be expanded as the user surfs, and ostensibly, if the page were large enough, , one could probably “create a massive, mind-melting map of all the apps on the App Store”. Not that you will, but you could, were you so inclined. And speaking of larger screens, as mentioned above, Discovr is now back into the music game with its new launch of Discovr Music for the Mac App Store. While Discovr’s iPad functionality is terrific, the visual layout is almost better suited to the larger screens of your desktop and laptops. The user experience is the same as Discovr’s first app, in that it uses data visualization and music recommendations to provide a visual map of the world of music. Users can navigate through the musical ecosystem and discover new music based on what their individual tastes. What’s more, the app is built from the ground up to make the most of OSX Lion, but also supports backwards compatibility to Snow Leopard. It’s dual-cat compatible. To accompany the release of Discovr Music on the Mac App Store, Filter Squad (the company behind the Discovr apps) is announcing that it has raised $1.1 million in seed funding, led by Australian VC firm Yuuwa Capital. The raise follows Filter Squad’s recent victory at the Australian startup competition , where it was awarded $25,000 as the Aussie startup with “the most potential”. I suppose it’s easy to say that Filter Squad has potential when, in just 9 months, it has attracted over 1 million downloads across iOS devices. And now we’ll see what kind of adoption Discovr is able to find on Apple desktops. One more thing: Android fans, never fear, Filter Squad is currently building Android versions of its Discovr apps, which are on the way and will hopefully arrive by the end of the year. For more on Discovr Music for the Mac, check out the video below: http://youtu.be/6zS_c57LLUU |
Nobody Gives A Damn About Your Klout Score | Alexia Tsotsis | 2,011 | 10 | 26 | Remember that time that astrologers decided that they had and everyone was so bewildered because all of a sudden you were NO LONGER AN ARIES BUT A PISCES and it seemed like everything you had believed for so long was untrue. Well the social media equivalent happened today for startup and its “scores,” which purportedly give you and others an idea of your social media influence on various topics. Apparently a Klout which had people go all “the sky is falling” in the comments section of the blog post announcing the adjustment, “My score went from 73 down to 53. 20 point drop. I’ve been working for months to increase my Klout score. Please fix this,” said Klout user Timothy Whalin. The backlash was so bad that an movement got off the ground. But let’s back up; Why have users like Whalin been working for months to increase their scores? What have they been doing exactly? , host of Shmittatistic! Social Media Tips , attempts to offer some insight into the wacky world of +K. Her number one tip to increase your Klout is “Don’t stay completely focused on just the score.” Okay. Tip number two is to create great content. Am. so. there. [youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fKXk1VhAuvE&&w=630] Don’t get me wrong, I’m a big fan of products that are dumb but smart and Klout CEO might just prove to be the of our time, roping in a social media sucker every minute to the tune of . People obviously care about reputation, and Klout’s (sadly) the most prevalent way to specifically measure personal online reputation currently. You have to respect Klout for being a first mover in an industry sector that will inevitably create much value. It’s a formidable vote of confidence that tier one VCs like have invested over $10 million in the company — namely because Klout has the potential to dominate the hooking up of all these collaborative consumption startups (like , etc) with a reputation system that is independent from Facebook. Win. But it’s got some hard-to-ignore issues. “Make sure you’re engaging with people who have a relatively good to a higher Klout score,” says Klout expert Schmittauer in her video below, “When you engage with people who have like no Klout or a really low score it’s reflects poorly on you. Even spam bots have a score of 25 or something, it’s crazy.” Klout’s pervasive problem is that the deeper among us are never going to judge anyone based solely on some arbitrary decimal score. Especially when that decimal number ranks teenbot Justin Beiber at 100, but precludes me from claiming a Windows Phone 7 “Klout Perk” and tickets to a concert because I don’t have enough technology Klout. We all have an inherent sense of who is influential and when that doesn’t stack up against some dumb number we lose faith. Case in point; I think all of you understand that there’s something wrong with a service that assigns me the same “influence” score as I’m willing to bet Like most people who gave Klout a try for the first time today, I really have no idea how it works. But that’s okay, because I’m pretty sure my Klout score doesn’t matter at all, to anyone. [youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GhnAMYtA-Gc&feature=related&=630] |
With Funding In Tow, RAVN Beta Launches Its Search And Booking Engine For Local Activities | Rip Empson | 2,011 | 10 | 26 | , i/o Ventures-backed launched a platform that was essentially the Airbnb for experiences, as it allowed those who are in the position to offer cool experiences like a culinary tour, beer tasting, or personalized yoga to hook up with those who want to try them. Skyara was the platform that would connect the providers with the fun-seekers. Since then, founders Jonathan Wu, Dennis Liu and Steven Ou have been working quietly on the platform, adding, iterating, and tweaking. As is often the case, the development process led to an early pivot, and the team is officially transitioning Skyara into a new product, called — which launches in private beta today. (Invites below.) Unfortunately for early Skyara users, the team will be either shutting down or redirecting Skyara in the near future. But this transition has not come without the help of outside investment. The team behind RAVN raised a round of seed funding, led by HillsVen Capital, allowing it to work on its new product in stealth mode over the last few months. Besides being “so raven” (sorry, I had to), what is it that RAVN brings to the table? Put simply, RAVN is a search and booking engine for things to do. In other words, if you’re interested in activities, tours, events, classes, or leisure services, RAVN aims to make it easy to find those experiences and book them online. RAVN currently has a marketplace of over 13,000 activities, with a presence in the Bay Area, New York, Los Angeles, and Chicago, and the team is in the process of expanding to Hawaii, Washington DC, and Las Vegas in the next few months. If, for example, you’re interested in planning a wine tour in Napa, users can compare prices for different wine tastings, or plan a trip to one of Napa’s 22 free vineyards. Or, maybe you’re looking for a yoga class on a Thursday evening, so users can navigate over to RAVN to discover the top rated and most conveniently located studio based on your ability. Users can then book them in advance to save a spot in the class. As those savvy readers may be gathering, RAVN is the natural evolution of the process that began with Skyara: The founders want to create a new experience market similar to what Etsy did for craft fans. The intended audience is anyone who wants an answer to “What is there to do this weekend?” For those looking for a creative idea for a date, and want to quickly browse for ideas and get the ball rolling without having to pick up the phone, RAVN will be a valuable destination. Of course, RAVN will be (in some cases loosely) competing with other local discovery websites like Loku, Sosh, Gogobot, et al, but RAVN is hoping to build a platform that enables the closing of the loop for all local activities. Said another way: RAVN will allow users to discover activities, plan, connect, and schedule with friends, book direct — all in an effort to step away from the location-based daily deal vertical. To this end, RAVN will allow local businesses to create a business page on its platform to accept online bookings without any prior programming knowledge. RAVN pages are free to sign up and test, and once a customer books an activity through a business’ page, the startup will forward the customer’s information so that all businesses need to do is complete the service when the customer arrives at the scheduled time. That’s it. The startup is also distributing 200 beta invites to TechCrunch readers. To start testing out the platform, simply and enter the code “TECHCRUNCH”. Then come on back and let us know what you think. |
Voting in The Europas Awards for European tech startups goes live | Mike Butcher | 2,011 | 10 | 26 | Voting in has gone live. Held annually, The Europas are the main European Awards for early stage Internet and Mobile technology startups. The are selected by a combination of an expert (which changes every year) and voting by the industry itself. The whole thing comes together on a special awards night in London, on November 17. Of course, out of the sheer need to filter the thousands of people in tech startups across Europe, the Awards can’t cover every single startup and entrepreneur. But what you see below are the ones this year’s Board – chaired by myself – picked out as representing the best new early stage startups in Europe, and the people making it all happen. Everyone here is a winner already. Not a single company or person here is not amazing at what they do already. But in the end, there is always a filter. So this is your chance to feed in your choices for the best in Europe. From this will come the finalists for in London. Voting ends on November 1st. You can vote only once in each category. So get voting! (See also the Europas on and ) In addition, pan-European VC is to offer a £50,000 convertible loan to the Grand Prix winner of The Europas Tech Startup Awards. The loan (often called a convertible note) will convert into equity at the startup’s next funding round on the same terms as the new investor (i.e. no discount) and will not be interest bearing. The loan will be ‘plain vanilla’ in all other respects (i.e. no additional rights). The winner will have a week to decide whether to take the loan or not. It’s just another sign the European tech scene has never looked better. See you on the night in London, November 17! <a href="http://www.theeuropas.com/"><img src="http://theeuropas.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/09/125.jpg" alt="Vote For Us" /></a> <a href="http://www.theeuropas.com/"><img src="http://theeuropas.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/09/468.jpg" alt="Vote For Us" /></a>
(The best of the best, as chosen by The Europas) |
Possible Signs Of Google Music Store Found In Android Market | Alexia Tsotsis | 2,011 | 10 | 26 | To add a little more screencap credence that Google will be launching its own Music Download Store within the next couple of weeks, people who attempt to access music.google.com from their Android phones are presented with following screen on the left, advertising the Google Music Beta Android app, among other things. What’s interesting about this page is that it seems like Google is currently working on it; earlier this evening the “Learn more” link did not work, and now it is referring to . The “Shop millions of songs in Android Market” link still doesn’t work, though it is set in the page’s source code to redirect to . The “Get Android App” link redirects to the , which currently is in a limited free trial, and does not let you purchase music from within the Android Market. Music Beta was apparently supposed to have this functionality at launch, but could not offer it because of stalling talks with the major music labels. If that the service’s imminent launch are true, then at least a few of those negotiations must have gone well for Google. Perhaps we’ll see later this week, or when that second link starts working. |
Zingaya secures $1.15m to take on Russian click-to-call market | Mike Butcher | 2,011 | 10 | 26 | , a Russian VOIP startup HQ-in London has raised $1.15 million in a Series A funding. Investors include Esther Dyson and Russian private investors. I one “Untitled Venture Capital Company”. I kid not. Zingaya, founded in 2009 by the three young Russian geeks who previously developed flaphone, a web-based VOIP app, is effectively a click-to-call service aimed at support calls for e-commerce sites. They are by no means the only player in this market but are getting traction with customer at a reasonable click with over 100 paying customers including the largest Russian payment system – , and major Russian airline . Alexey Aylarov, CEO of Zingaya says part if the attraction is Zingaya’s planned integration with Google Analytics and Yandex, the leading Russian search engine. Dyson, of EDventure Holdings, says “single-minded focus on a common pain point.. Russia has many innovative, energetic technology startups, and Zingaya is a real standout.” Zingaya pricing starts at $25/month for up to 500 minutes, unlimited lines, voicemail and more. A free trial version is available. Zingaya offers a software development kit (SDK) for mobile platforms iOS and Android to facilitate embedded click-to-call functionality into new or existing applications. Zingaya is available in 14 countries including the US. |
Seriously international: IDCEE in Kiev brings together speakers, 140 investors and startups | cloudbrows | 2,011 | 10 | 26 | English turned out to be an official language at , which took place over the past two days in Kiev, Ukraine. The conference organizers proved to have what it takes to challenge Startup Week Vienna and How to Web to become the leading eastern European startup conference. Familiar faces seen at Startup Week Vienna were pitching at IDCEE competition. Four finalists made it to the final, and the jury was asked to rate the finalists. Here is the result. Number four: from Russia is a personal place management tool. It allows putting pins on the map to help store, share and give directions to a particular place of interest, especially if it has no particular address. Its pins on the map are like a hashtag on Twitter. Number three: is Siri for Android developed by a Russian team. The company has 230 000 users, with number of downloads exploded with the announcement of Siri. As the company knows what application its clients are using, it gets paid for contextual ads. The main competence of the team is natural language processing engine. Number two: from Belarus offers a cloud-based proposal development and presentation tool for SMEs. Luring clients with a sleek online proposals templates (this keyword is entered in Google two million times per month), the company offers other services such as invoicing and document management. An online invoicing tool has raised $17 million investment this week. And the winner is from Hungary. Mixgar helps bar visitors influence music using a mobile app. The bars pay Mixgar for the service, or let sponsors support them. The team from Mixgar Kristof Bardos and Gerzson Huszar deserves a special round of applause. Not only because Glaenzer has commended the idea during the smooth pitch by Gerzson Huszar but also for the persistency. Huszar has polished his presentation at Credo Week Budapest, HackFwd Build 07, Startup Week Vienna, Mini Seedcamp Prague and now IDCEE. All that within the past two months. Seedcamp has reserved a place for one startup which will be selected amongst top three finalists of IDCEE. The speakers of , of , of , of and many more investors shared the stage with successful entrepreneurs (founder of sold to ebay for Euro 150 million), (ex , , Stealth Games), ( ) to mention but a few. Many startups were showcasing their ideas in a dedicated mini-exhibition area. I spoke to some. brings feed from and to various social networks to one place (it is still in a closed beta). offers cloud-based workflow of the movie making (there is in the US). Curiously named makes dating more anonymous by selling numbered ID cards that helps finding person on its site. has put together this of the IDCEE exhibition in 30 minutes, a more impressive result than panoramas by Polish which won a ticket to the accelerator recently (admittedly, City Eye used a wide-lense camera). is of fashion plus rich media. The conference, organised by ( ) and (stealth mode startup) was a solid event, despite time management issues and a shocking quality of the wifi connection. So there is still a room for improvement for the event, which, no doubt, will take place again next year. |
Raise Cache NYC Teams With Turntable.fm: Crowley, Wilson & Weissman In The House | Jason Kincaid | 2,011 | 10 | 26 | Silicon Valley is still king when it comes to startup hubs, but there’s at least one area where NYC has it beat: having a good time for a good cause. In this case, the event is , and it’s looking to raise $100,000 for , an organization started by Columbia and NYU faculty that looks to spur innovation in NYC. Today they’re announcing that Raise Cache is teaming with hot startup to bring the social DJ site to life at a party/fashion show in NYC’s State Armory, with the help of some notable figures from the New York tech scene. The event will take place on November 17, and tickets are on sale now at for $70 for general admission, and $30 for students. All of the proceeds will go to HackNY, which you can learn more about in the video below. Turntable.fm’s founder Billy Chasen will be spinning some mixes (of course), and other guest DJs will include Foursquare founder Dennis Crowley, Union Square Venture’s Fred Wilson and Andy Weissman, TFLN/Bnter founder Lauren Leto, and Stylecaster founder David Goldberg. And because it’s powered by Turntable, the party’s guests will be able to vote on the selections from their phones. The event will also include a fashion show starring various tech personalities strutting their stuff on the catwalk. Alas, for reasons I cannot discern, I have not been asked to strut. Another fun twist: if you remember from TC Disrupt NYC (an educational app that teaches kids how to draw), the company’s illustrator Alexis Moniello is drawing giant, nifty depictions of each of the guest DJs (you can see some of them below). [youtube=’http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-9Aan-_cUb4′] |
Google Declines To Remove Police Brutality Videos, Still Complies With 63% Of Gov’t Takedown Requests | Devin Coldewey | 2,011 | 10 | 26 | What happens when you’re the de facto distribution platform for something like Occupy Wall St and other events that run afoul of the police? Well, you end up getting an email through semi-official channels saying “Would you please remove the video of Officer Pounder allegedly overstepping his authority” — and there’s not much of a choice. As much as Google would like to avoid antagonizing local police forces, the backlash that would occur if they forcibly took down, say, Officer Bologna (Tony Bologna no less) pepper spraying those girls, would be lethal to the YouTube brand. Up it stays. On the other hand, there are plenty of legitimate takedown requests that come from governments when a video or other Google-hosted item is in fact illegal, so down they must come, whether they like it or not. It’s a fine line to walk, and Google has hoped to make their position clear with their . The report corresponding to the first half of 2011 has an interesting little extra tidbit: “We received a request from a local law enforcement agency to remove YouTube videos of police brutality, which we did not remove.” Why so specific? The statement continues, saying that other videos of police were requested to be taken down for defamation reasons, and were also not removed. I think that in this time of turmoil, Google is saying very quietly what it wouldn’t really be tactful to say loudly: “Put your sensitive and controversial video data here.” Certainly a site like LiveLeak is also an option, but YouTube finds itself the center of attention more frequently, and being more of a popular culture community, it wants to emphasize its legitimacy in matters like this. The transparency report is a way for them to encourage users to trust them, and perhaps, governments to respect them. The official or district that requested the brutality video be taken down is not specified (and at the level of disclosure Google seems to prefer, I doubt it ever will be), but it’s worth noting that it’s a “local” law enforcement agency. That is to say, Google did not receive a letter from a federal judge and decide to contest it. Hopefully this little display of gusto won’t be overpowered if the stakes get raised and that does happen. In the meantime, , our responsibilities as documentarians of everything around us are increasing, and knowing YouTube is an asset we can trust is a good thing. On a related note, the trends of takedowns aren’t really notable this year; though points out that there was a 70% increase in takedown requests versus the previous six-month period (92 vs. 54), they neglect to note that the six-month period before (i.e. January-June 2010) had a whopping 128. Google has started classifying takedown requests by reason, however (defamation, privacy, hate speech, etc), which will be an interesting set of data to track. jumped, however: 5950 versus 4287 during the same period in 2010, asking for information on 11,057 users. 93% of these were complied with, “fully or partially.” So while they’re making something of a stand on removing data, they don’t seem to have any trouble giving it out. |
Downsizing Its Video Team, Mahalo Refocuses On Education Apps; Plans To Release ‘An App A Week’ | Rip Empson | 2,011 | 10 | 26 | It’s been a rough year for . The startup, which was founded by Jason Calacanis in 2007, began its life as a human powered search engine that offered curated links in what was intended to be a mix between the traditional search layout and Wikipedia. Over time, Mahalo became a knowledge directory, launched a Q&A service a la Yahoo! Answers, and began producing educational and games-related video content. However, in late February, Google made a change to how it determines rankings for the websites it aggregates and serves in search results as part of an effort to lower the rank of content farms and reward sites producing higher quality content. Though Mahalo had spent millions producing expert-driven video content as well as accompanying articles, Calacanis wrote to employees in March that Google’s revisions had led to a “significant dip” in their “traffic and revenue”. In the same email, the CEO shared the news that the startup had cut 10 percent of its staff, reduced non-essential services, and touched on the long-term goal of Mahalo, which is to become a resource for high-quality educational video and written content. Earlier this month, Mahalo initiated another round of layoffs, reducing its team of 67 to 49, approximately 27 percent of its staff. (It had a staff of more than 100 employees as recently as February.) Mahalo President Jason Rapp tells me that most of these layoffs were part of the platform’s video game team. The site’s gamers had been producing walk-throughs and reviews of video games, which had built some good traffic (about 15+ million views per month, he said), but the content is not easily convertible into apps. And this is where Mahalo sees its future. While the startup will continue with its educational video production, Rapp said that they will dial back the volume of video content as it shifts more energy to focus on developing educational apps. Part of the reason for this is, again, while Mahalo’s educational and gaming video content was seeing a collective 30 million views per month, many of those views were occurring on YouTube and not Mahalo itself. Revenue from video advertising both on its site and on YouTube have not been significant enough to warrant the dedication of further resources toward those verticals. Instead, Mahalo believes that there’s money to be had in educational apps, specifically for the iPad. Over the last two months, the startup has released four apps, three of which are paid apps: Learn guitar at $4.99, Learn Pilates at $9.99, and How to Draw at $9.99. Thus far, the company has seen 65,000 installs across its iPad apps, which may well be early confirmation that paid iPad apps will be a more valuable source of revenue that video advertising. Rapp also said that the team plans to release a free gaming walkthrough app very soon, which will monetize through in-app purchases. This is evidence of what’s to come, as Mahalo will ramp up app development, with Rapp saying that the company is targeting a release cycle of one app per week through the remainder of 2011. While Mahalo has downsized by more than 50 percent since February, it’s a well-funded operation, having raised over $21 million in outside investment from some big names that include Sequoia Capital, Mark Cuban, CBS, News Corp., and Elon Musk. The startup also counts Roelof Botha and Matt Coffin as board members. Certainly, Mahalo has seen better times, and it’s become clear that the team was over-producing for the video game market. The reduction in staff does seem to reveal that Mahalo may have spread itself too thin and was trying to do too much — or at the very least had dedicated too many resources to a less value vertical. But, startups often don’t find the best direction without making a few mistakes, and pivots are often a must. It’s just a matter of making them before financing and investor faith dries up. For Mahalo, Rapp said that he thinks the company will be able to better serve its audience and focus on its new app-centric direction with a smaller staff. Of course, that doesn’t make it any easier to be one of the now unemployed (and former) staffers at Mahalo. Perhaps getting back to the lean startup mentality will help steer the company in a more profitable direction. We’ll see. For more on Mahalo, . |
null | Erick Schonfeld | 2,011 | 10 | 19 | null |
Telephony in the English cloud: Twilio launches in the UK | vaughn597 | 2,011 | 10 | 26 |
Telecommunications has moved to the cloud, inevitably. We have a tele-cloud in East London now, where has opened its first office outside the U.S. today. The reason I’m excited about this is that telephony infrastructure in the cloud is as technically simple as economically cheap. Sounds good, doesn’t it? Twilio, as you might know, is a simple API for developers that allows them to integrate phone calls, text messages and IP voice communications into their phone applications. Through that it has become something of an enabling layer on top of telecommunications, allowing for innovation in the field. One of the key things about Twilio is its simplicity. Developers with no background in telecom whatsoever can build sophisticated applications using their existing skills faster than you can say API. Well, pretty fast anyway – built their Voice Connect service on top of Twilio in 48 hours. Now that they’ve settled in the UK, where the service has been in beta for the past few months, developers can buy phone numbers in the region from Twilio’s API or its website and use them for easier communication in the area. The service was also launched in beta today in Poland, France, Portugal, Austria and Denmark. If you think that sounds like a massive expansion, note that they’re rolling out 11 more in the next couple of months, from Italy to Finland. It’s obvious that CEO Jeff Lawson is “really excited about bringing [Twilio] to Europe”. According to him, spending “3 years focusing on building a killer product in the U.S.” will help the service reach a wide developer audience in Europe. Twilio’s launchpartner announced the launch of cloud-based call centre today. The company started out as an e-mail support service and last month “branched out into the world of call centers”, so Lawson explained at the launch event in central London today. Zendesk Voice lets users set up cloud-based call centres for minimal costs compared to traditional set-ups. It simply converts messages and calls into a digital format. “[Zendesk is] not a telecom company, it’s a software company that now expanded with Twilio into the world of phone calls,” he said, underlining the technical simplicity of the service. Immensely reducing the time it takes to build communication apps means that the structures built can grow and be re-designed in reaction to the users’ immediate needs. It’s in the power of the cloud that scaling up and back down is easy, depending on the communication service you need at different times. That’s why making Twilio a pay-as-you-go service was a smart choice. Geographic telephone numbers cost $1 a month through Twilio and freephone numbers cost $2 a month. Twilio serves about 60,000 developers globally up to today, including eBay, Sony and LinkedIn. Their London office is growing and hiring. |
Geekli.st Gets $600K To Give Geeks A Place To Brag | Alexia Tsotsis | 2,011 | 10 | 26 | Developer communication network has raised $600K from angel investors , , , , Brian Tu, , , and . Relying heavily on Twitter OAuth, Geekli.st lets developers create profiles to house for programming-related achievements and micro-achievements like “I helped build Google Reader from the ground up,””Helped grow Skype from zero to first few hundred million users,””Redesigning parts of the SimpleGeo site to scale for more products,” etc. Users can view a stream of other user’s cards by clicking on the Geekli.st logo at the top of the site. CEO tells me that sites like LinkedIn or other recruiting sites are technically Geekli.st’s competition, but not really as Geekli.st focuses on nurturing the developer community, “What we do differently is provide a safe zone for developers to brag. Instead of their audience being recruiters or hiring focused resumes, we give them Achievement-based communication between peers from their own community.” The site has gone from 0 to 10K users in five weeks and already boasts notable geek profiles like and . Reuben’s future plans include hiring more developers with the financing and eventually building data analytics along with recruiting tools into the current product. “There’s a much bigger utility for this tool,” says Reuben, saying that he’d eventually like to expand to other verticals, “If that’s what the market demands … Right now we’re totally focused on people who build things.” “As a developer it’s extremely tough to go through the process of finding a job, equally as hard is hiring managers needing to hire developers. Today, although it feels there are a lot less developers available, through geeklist we’re proving that there’s a huge community of developers behind it” said co-founder . The first thousand people who build things interested can sign up with the password 4Alexia. |
TCTV: TechCrunch Gadgets Webcast Presents A Little Nokia, A Lot Of Striiv | John Biggs | 2,011 | 10 | 26 | Your fine friends at TC Gadgets have gotten back together to discuss , , and the project Matt is building in his basement. As we’ve often noted, we thrive on your feedback: do you want an MP3 of this show? A podcast? Longer, shorter? Fewer people? More kittens? We are at your service. We’ll be running the next show from China, so that should be a total hoot. |
Canon Officially Unveils The Pixma Pro-1 Photo Printer | Jordan Crook | 2,011 | 10 | 26 | At a media even in the Big Apple, Canon today announced its latest flagship photo printer, the Pixma Pro-1. According to Canon, the Pixma Pro-1 is the world’s first A3+ printer to boast 12 separate inks. Along with Photo and Matte black inks, there are three grey inks — dark grey, grey, and light grey — and six color inks, including Cyan, Photo Cyan, Magenta, Photo Magenta, Yellow and Red. The printer also comes with a Chroma Optimizer, which is meant to add richness to blacks and add uniformity to glossiness. Compared to older Pixma models, the Pixma Pro-1 sports 2.5x larger ink tanks to allow for less ink cartridge replacements. The printer features front-opening panels for easy access, and a rear paper tray which takes up to 20 sheets of photo paper. The manual feed slot can handle heavier artsy papers up to 14-inches wide. Canon has also doubled its input resolution compared to previous models, with 1200 DPI. The printer will feature Canon’s Easy-PhotoPrint Pro software, which can work as its own tool or as a Photoshop plug-in. The Pixma Pro-1 photo printer will go for $999. |
Class Action Lawsuits Alleging Extortion Over Yelp’s Review System Dismissed | Leena Rao | 2,011 | 10 | 26 | Last year, emerged that accused Yelp of in exchange for positive reviews. Yelp has that a judge granted Yelp’s request to dismiss these suits. For background, the lawsuits that after declining a request to purchase advertising on Yelp, a number of positive reviews from businesses’ listings on the reviews site mysteriously disappeared, downgrading the company’s rating on the site. In February of 2010, two law firms, from Miami and in San Diego, a in Los Angeles federal court alleging unfair business practices by Yelp. And in 2009, the East Bay Express ran a story basically accusing Yelp of being in the , which covered similar ground. Shortly after reporter Kathleen Richards published the article, Yelp vehemently and called her piece . A number of similar copy cat suits As CEO and founder Jeremy Stoppelman writes Last year, Yelp to its review process. For example, Yelp removed a feature that allowed businesses that advertised with Yelp to place their favorite review above others. It also let users see reviews that have been removed by its (automated) “review filter,” which is designed to help prevent business owners from posting all too positive reviews of their own company or malicious reviews of competitors. Yelp also established a Small Business Advisory Council’ whose members have provided the company’s management with “guidance and perspective regarding the concerns of small business owners”. Stoppelman admits that there are flaws to the system, writing, The dismissal of the lawsuits means that the plaintiffs can’t sue Yelp again. It’s surely a relief to have these allegations dismissed. Now Yelp can go back to focusing on its |
Will The Future’s Pixels Be Micro-Mirrors? | Devin Coldewey | 2,011 | 10 | 26 | I unintentionally set off a nice little flame war last week when I criticized Samsung’s decision to , a display technology that doesn’t have an illustrious past and, while it may prove itself in this generation, still made me lose confidence in the phone. Sub-pixel layouts are something few people consider, but ( ) all those pretty colors you see on your displays are almost always made up of a few tiny monochromatic dots. E-ink screens use one dot per pixel, but they are of course monochrome, and the Mirasol and Pixel Qi displays we’ve seen also use an RGB matrix. But research being done in Taiwan may combine the best of both worlds. Wallen Mphepö, a researcher at National Chiao Tung University, has created a new kind of pixel that operates completely differently from existing technologies. The details are a bit scarce, as his research has not yet been published except as a summary in (the image accompanying this article is just an illustration). The way the new screens work is that each pixel, normally created by a set of sub-pixels, is instead a single mechanism: a 30-micron piece of zirconium oxide (you probably know it best as cubic zirconia) with a 1.23-micron layer of silver on top. But while you’d think the silver would act as the reflective layer, it in fact acts as the transmissive layer, allowing light to pass through and strike the ZrO . By tilting the whole pixel mechanism using a micro-electromechanical system, the wavelengths of light allowed to pass through in and out are changed. And Mr. Mphepö claims that each single pixel can produce a full optical palette, or close to it. This means that using this new style of pixel would instantaneously triple pixel density, or conversely, reduce the transistors and mechanisms necessary to create a given resolution by two-thirds. The new screens have not been demonstrated; indeed, it is not clear whether Mr. Mphepö has even been able to stick more than one of these micro-mirror pixels together. And as usual, research like this take ages to arrive in consumer hands. But if it does what it claims to do, there are many companies that would buy it in a heartbeat and fast-track it to market to compete with E-ink (which dominates passive displays) and provide a full-color, low-power alternative to LCD-based tablets. |
RIM Faces Class Action Lawsuit Thanks To BlackBerry Outage | Chris Velazco | 2,011 | 10 | 26 | Sorry RIM, but it looks like the promise of weren’t enough to assuage the masses. According to the , RIM is preparing to deal with a class action lawsuit filed on behalf of Canadian users affected by the company’s widespread service outage. Filed in Quebec Superior Court by the Consumer Law Group, the complaint seeks compensation for all of RIM’s customers that “were unable to access their email, BlackBerry Messenger service (BBM), and/or Internet for the period of October 11 to 14, 2011.” RIM hasn’t received the complaint yet, but representatives have said that the company will “formally respond” to the matter soon. The lawsuit’s lead complainant was an avid user who used his BlackBerry to communicate with his friends across the western hemisphere. According to the formula laid out in the complaint, he will only be able to collect $1.25 in damages from RIM — not much, but the payouts could quickly add up if the lawsuit picks up steam. The amount of damages owed is calculated on a person by person basis, and accounts for how long a customer was left without service, so some users will net more than others. It’s tough to put a finger on how much RIM may have to shell out here, as the company has avoided offering estimates of how many customers were affected. Still, co-CEO Jim Balsillie called the outage in a recent conference call, so RIM could be looking at a sizable number customers itching for some restitution. Then again, of all the places struck by the outage, North America seemed to be affected the least. RIM may be able to pay off a few thousand customers and move on, but considering their luck, I doubt things will go that smoothly. Fans of legalese can find the full complaint reproduced below. [scribd id=70433815 key=key-pk5208uvgz2qq9ee4dt mode=list] |
Google Expands Real Time Analytics Beta, Spills Hundreds Of E-mail Addresses In The Process | Greg Kumparak | 2,011 | 10 | 26 | If you’re waiting in the queue for , we’ve got good news… and we’ve got bad news. The good news: Google has just let in another big round of participants, so odds aren’t too shabby that you’re in. The bad news: they mixed up their “To:” field and their “BCC:” field on the welcome e-mail. We’re not going to post the list of addresses for obvious reasons — but all in all, I’m counting just shy of 500 addresses spilled. If you’re worried you’re in there somewhere, check your inbox for an e-mail titled “Welcome to the beta trial for Real-Time Analytics!”, then check the To: field for about 495 too many people. It’s unclear if this is the list of folks finding their way into the Analytics Beta today, or if the e-mails were sent out in batches of around ~500 recipients each. If it’s the latter, hopefully this is the only one with the BCC slip-up. Fortunately, the implications of mistakes like this usually aren’t nasty. Everyone will get a few dozen e-mails as people jokingly reply-all with pictures of animals, a few tweets will go out, but everyone generally moves on pretty quickly. If you’ve applied to the beta and you’ve got an e-mail address you prefer to keep 100% private, though, you might consider switching it up. You know, it’s been a while since we’ve seen a good ol’ fashion BCC fail. The last one I recall, actually, was . As Mike put it at the time, “we can never make fun of anyone doing this again without pointing back to ” We’ve reached out to Google to try and pin down how many e-mail addresses could have found their way out. We’ll update this post if we hear back. Google has apologized quickly. Good on them: Hi, We recently sent out an email welcoming you to real time analytics. Inadvertently, we put the email addresses in the To: field instead of the BCC: field. We want to sincerely apologize for this mistake and will make sure that this does not happen again. Thank you for your understanding. On Behalf of the Google Real-Time Analytics Team. Hah! The recipients of the e-mail have already formed a Facebook group they’ve dubbed “ ” Google’s official comment on the matter: “While sharing the news that we’re opening up the Real-Time beta to more users, our team unintentionally exposed the email addresses of these users to the others who were being added. We’ve apologized to those users. Protecting the privacy of our users is hugely important to us, and we’re taking precautions to ensure that this doesn’t happen again.” |
Mary Meeker On #OccupyWallStreet: “People Deserve To Be A Little Angry.” | Alexia Tsotsis | 2,011 | 10 | 21 | [youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0g9vmtG7r7c#t=23m23s&w=640] Former Wall Street securities analyst and current partner gave her at this week, towards the end highlighting the uncertain state of the overall economy versus the more hopeful aspects of the tech sector. Meeker, who spent more than two decades on Wall Street, left right for Kleiner before the current #OccupyWallStreet movement came to a head. When asked by moderator e about her opinions on the subject, Meeker responded, “People are angry, everybody’s angry. People deserve to be a little angry. I think that we’ve a had a lot of finger-pointing over the past couple of years, If we go back over the past forty years, our government has been pretty loose with spending and was pretty loose in keeping interest rates at a low-level.” But does the blame for the US’s current and other economic woes rest solely on Wall Street? “If was to trying to point blame I’d say 1/3 government, 1/3 consumer and 1/3 financial services industry,” Meeker stated. “We have a problem and we don’t have a cushion right now. Our expenses as a country are higher than then they ever have been relative to revenue .” But Meeker, betraying her Silicon Valley roots was optimistic, “The way out is we all have to say ‘We have a problem and we all have to sacrifice.’ We have to give up a little here and give a little there. We need really good focused leadership from our Congress and the Whitehouse to really make those changes. And the consumer has to say, ‘I get that we all have a problem and we all have to sacrifice.'” I think VC , who to protest-central Zuccotti Park when curious about what exactly #OccupyWallStreet stood for, is a good example of someone taking Meeker’s first step, likening the movement to a Foo Camp, “I don’t fit squarely into the camps of either the 99%er or the 1%ers. But I am off the fence. I do see a world I’m angry to inherit from the prior generation and embarrassed to hand over to my kids. Sure #ows is small. Sure it’s messy. Sure it’s easy to dismiss. But anything truly disruptive is.” |
Bill Gross On How He Will Avoid Stepping On The Giants’ Toes | Erick Schonfeld | 2,011 | 10 | 21 | Earlier this week, Bill Gross a new mobile app and website called at the Web 2.0 Summit. I dragged Gross in front of our cameras in teh hallway, where he gave me a and sat down for an interview. “The goal of Chime.in is to make an interest network,” he tells me in the video above. The whole point of Chime.in is to help filter all the noise in social networks. It does this by letting you follow not only people, but also interests, and sort your stream by topic. Reading everything in reverse chronology has its limitations. “The problem with time-descending,” says Gross, “is that it won’t always bring the most relevant things to the top.” In the video below, I argue it is inevitable that other social networks such as Facebook and Twitter will have to add an interest layer at some point as well. How will he avoid stepping on their toes? Gross has experience dancing with Twitter, which has s to his company, UberMedia, and ended up . As you will see in the video, Gross is not too worried. |
Nintendo 3DS Gets Camera Update, Charming Mario Editions | Devin Coldewey | 2,011 | 10 | 21 | Nintendo has just wrapped a press conference going over some developments for the . The platform has seen strong but lower than expected sales, though the in August has spurred adoption. This update seems like a sort of holdover while the big games are still unreleased, but any improvements to the platform are always welcome. First, a system update brings new options to the camera. You can now record 3D movies of up to 10 minutes in length, and it will also capture time lapse or multiple shots per second or stop motion. They also enabled the ability to shift data to a new 3DS, which some are taking as an indication of a “3DS Lite” or the like (perhaps one with ) arriving down the road. 3D makeovers of a few classic games were also announced. and will be gaining an extra dimension the same way and have. Not the biggest news of all time, but Kid Icarus is one of my favorite NES games and I think this is simply wonderful. Hopefully and aren’t far behind. Lastly, they are initiating a sort of raffle this holiday season in which if you buy two Nintendo games, you’re entered in a drawing to win one of the cute Mario-themed 3DSes pictured above. That mushroom one is calling my name. Unfortunately it seems unlikely that the contest will actually be offered here in the US, but we can always hope. |
Ruby on Royals – The Digital Duke and the #TechBritannia startups | Mike Butcher | 2,011 | 10 | 21 | Last night London’s technology startup community – entrepreneurs and startups were invited to Buckingham Palace, the official home of Queen Elizabeth The Second. To say this was an unusual event wold be a significant understatement. But it is better understood in the context of the incredible outreach the UK government has made to technology entrepreneurs and venture capitalists in the last 18 months. There is more context to this in terms of Europe: at EG8 recently, I happen to know that the French Government had to scramble to find French startups to attend. They simply didn’t know who they were – despite a thriving scene covered by my colleagues at TechCrunch France. By contrast, Her Majesty’s government managed to come up with a guest list which pretty much mapped to the startup ecosystem in London. No small achievement. So it’s no small statement to say that this not dissimilar a moment to that famous dinner hosted by President Obama with Steve Jobs and other tech giants. And although we didn’t get the Queen, we did get Prince Andrew, the Duke of York. Here is a guy who could have done a lot of other things. He’s the outgoing trade envoy for the British government. But I see a role for him now as the The Digital Duke. He was well briefed, gave a decent speech and met and greeted the startups. His travails are well documented. Whatever. He did a good job that night and asked to hear from anyone in the room who needed help. His personal assistant liberally distributed business cards, and at one point I happen to know he even told staff not to worry abou the non-suited geeks in the stunning reception hall, which is more used to seeing suits and ties. The atmosphere in the room was pretty amazing. To outsiders it might have looked like a bunch of terrible “humble brag” tweets and Foursquare check-ins were coming out the Palace. And why not, right? You don’t get invited that often to a place like that. But in VC terms, this was the boardroom at Index, Balderton or Accel – a place not everyone gets to sit in. But that’s the nature of the ecosystem – there will always be a filter. Furthermore, there will always be a need for market markers. The agora and the diplomat. The marketplaces and the people who grease the wheels, to put it in a baser sense. In the medieval period kings and queens would make marriages to placate hostile nations, unite kingdoms and often shore up diplomatic relations. In the modern world Kings, Queens, Princes and Princesses are employed in precisely the same role, whether ceremonial, political or to affect the economy. And thus it was that we were invited the Palace. A long time ago everyone knew how this worked. So I am surprised thinks technology startups being invited to Buckingham Palace should be somehow frowned upon. Surely it’s a case of use it to your advantage? Make hay while the sun shines, no? In 12 months the Olympics will be over. Who knows what will happen the to Tech City project after that? We can be cynical. We can be boosterish. Frankly, who cares either way. Just work it. I also want to educate you, dear reader, about something pertaining to British culture. In Britain there is a particular creative tension – a penchant, a frisson even – between the rebel on one side and the infrastructures of pomp and power. It’s long been this way in Britain, where the mob would play tag with the Lord. But frankly speaking, the Sex Pistols and their like – to take one example – would not have existed were it not for Queen Elizabeth’s image play off. They needed something to rebel against. That’s not a reason for justifying the whole grand royal pageant I guess. But it’s worth giving a little wink to each other that – it turns out – this is a useful and creative relationship. So it is with startups and disruption. Tommy Ahlers – a guy who sold Zyb (a social phone contact list) to Vodafone for €31m before Facebook was really anything – said to me once about how startups make their way in the world: “Be a crazy entrepreneur and never look like you want to go on a date with an acquirer. But still show some leg…” Exactly. Work it. The Duke clearly wants to work, and let’s not forget that as a former RAF helicopter pilot in the Falklands War he is not incapable of technical thought, no? One might event say he has an engineer’s mind. So let’s work it. He’s pretty well briefed. He knows what he’s doing. Let’s put the Digital Duke to work for British startups. Because in the final analysis, this is a watershed. This was the moment that disruptive entrepreneurs were finally recognised at the highest levels for their potential to drive economic growth in the UK and help the UK become a 21st century economy. For once it wasn’t captains of big industry and massive global corporates supping wine in the Palace, it was scrappy tech entrepreneurs and a leather-jacketed journalist from TechCrunch. It’s not something to be po-faced about. |
Back To School: Hulu Serves More Than One Billion Video Ads In September | Rip Empson | 2,011 | 10 | 21 | comScore’s , and in today’s non-news, Google Sites again ranks as the number one source of online video views. Google Sites, which derives most of its traffic from YouTube, served 18.6 billion videos in September, which made up 47 percent of the 39.8 billion videos viewed on the Web last month. Even for the cynical newsmen among us, that is pretty impressive. What’s more, Microsoft Sites and Viacom Digital both leap-frogged Facebook in the rankings, to take third and fourth place respectively, while Facebook dropped to fifth. ( and Erick’s coverage of Facebook assuming .) On the advertising side of online video, comScore reports that, of the 6.8 billion video ads viewed by Americans in September, more than 1 billion of those ad impressions were served by Hulu. According to comScore, “video ads” are defined solely by streaming-video advertising and “do not include other types of video monetization, such as overlays, branded players, matching banner ads, homepage ads, etc.” In September, Hulu served 1.02 billion video ads, with duration of these ads totaling 414 million minutes. The site resumed its 1 billion+ rate after dipping below the billion-benchmark over the summer, likely picking back up because our nation’s younguns are headed back to school. After all, let’s be honest, college kids returning to their dorm rooms no longer have the benefit of mom and dad’s cable package, so it’s back to watching their favorite TV shows on Hulu. And, as video ads reached 50 percent of the U.S. population an average of 45.3 times during September, Hulu was the property that delivered the highest frequency of video ads to its viewers with an average of 38.2 per viewer. Anyone who watches Hulu knows that you can’t get through a broadcast without sitting through about 17 ads. Hulu seems to be receiving a disproportionate share of video ad dollars because the platform is viewed as brand-safe, as advertisers know that they can run their ads on Hulu’s content without having to be red-faced when that ad shows up on some random user-generated video posted by someone’s uncle. And, as we wrote last month, Hulu has never done social particularly well, but on September 22nd, Hulu went live on Facebook, meaning that video site’s users now get to watch their content directly within Facebook without having to leave the social network. This also means that the ads played by advertisers on Hulu get the added benefit of Facebook users’ eyeballs. Ads galore. |
Mini Seedcamp Prague cherry-picks new candidates | cloudbrows | 2,011 | 10 | 21 | If the mountain will not come to Mohammed then Mohammed will come to the mountain. The team of the London-based accelerator is on the go, visiting various locations in Europe to select best tech startups for investment and mentorship. If there is one thing other European accelerators – HackFWD, LeCamping, Springboard, you name it – could learn from this operation it’s this: Get out there! Startups aren;t happening under your desk, right? So get on a plane. Today Mini Seedcamp continues in Prague, Czech Republic. Ever since Seedcamp has invested in Slovenian Zemanta in 2007, the trickle of eastern European startups have turned into a stream. In 2008 it was Romanian and in 2009 three more companies from eastern Europe, (Poland), (Romania) and (Estonia) were funded. In 2011 Seedcamp invested in 8 eastern European startups, and today it meets with the participants of its Prague-based event, which saw applications go up three times compared to the last year. This time 8 out of 20 come from the eastern European region, loosely defined as post-socialist countries (an academic definition may vary). Many of them have already been knocking on doors of other accelerators, such as Finnish Startup Sauna or German HackFwd, with a good degree of success (Qminder, AppScale, WhoAPI – well, almost). This does not stop the teams from applying for more contests, seeking money, publicity and mentorship from the European accelerator. According to , the partner at , Prague-based venture fund which sponsored the event, the level of companies was really high today and he was, to use his own words “flattered that two Czech companies have been selected”. Trying to get an insider view on what was happening at today’s Mini Seedcamp I asked him to name his favourite pitches. Bartos mentioned Czech and Dutch (and then tweeted his insider view out before I could hit the “publish” button). BrandEmbassy helps companies talk to their customers on the internet by utilizing its cloud-based software and a network of selected brand ambassadors. Milk.ly allows its users seek and offer help with micro-tasks locally in real time. The winners of the mini-Seedcamp will not be announced until later next week, when the investors will decide which companies they will invest in. Until then, keep in mind that the upcoming mini Seedcamp events will take place in Barcelona on the 16th of November and in Paris on the 6th of December. If you are reading this and you are an investor, , the Polish accelerator will demo its companies on the 26th of October. |
Murdoch On Myspace: “I Made A Huge Mistake.” | Devin Coldewey | 2,011 | 10 | 21 | Rupert Murdoch withstood intense grilling at News Corp’s annual shareholder meeting today, which focused largely on the phone-hacking scandal that is causing such an upset in the company’s financials and leadership. But among other things, Murdoch owned up to the debacle that has been Myspace. he said. “We then proceeded to mismanage it in every possible way. All of the people concerned with it are no longer with the company.” Except for himself, of course. The fact that it was a mistake and a mismanaged one at that is not news to the rest of the world, but the unmixed apology for the billion-dollar boondoggle reflects how low recent events have brought the once-proud news giant. As you no doubt remember, the flatlining social network was to Specific Media for $35 million, representing a loss of around 94% of the site’s value as bought, and a microscopic portion of the never-realistic at which Murdoch once valued the property. Despite his self-deprecating words, Murdoch was described as looking “a little feisty” by the , perhaps because he is confident that the company has already shed the requisite amount of blood and profits over its practices and investments. has collected a number of opinions from analysts and experts, and the consensus seems to be that no immediate actions would be taken, but that clearly the company is in dire need of redirection, and the solution may take some time to formulate. [image: Justin Sullivan/Getty] |
Sony Ericsson Forces A Fan Site Into Submission | Greg Kumparak | 2,011 | 10 | 21 | Yikes, what a disheartening story. Proving that they don’t know a damned thing about fan communities, Sony Ericsson has filed a formal complaint against the fan-operated blog/forum , claiming that the owners were using it in “bad faith”. Fearing the costs of a legal battle, the site says they will be shutting down operations immediately. If there were a class on “How to handle potentially sticky trademark issues”, this would be lesson one. Here’s the thing about the users in a community like this (I used to run a few, long before my time here at TechCrunch): they the product. They really, love it. In most cases, it’s almost an obsession. Think about it: they love it enough to search for people who love the product, and who want to sit around and talk about nothing the product. Treat them right, and they’ll be some of the best marketers you’ll ever find. For free. Instead, Sony Ericsson has just gone and turned them all into enemies. A large group of people, all obviously quite vocal about the products they use, . Whoops. We do not have the resources to fight Sony Ericsson on this and therefore this is the last you will hear from us. Sony Ericsson has made great strides in its Xperia portfolio, especially in listening to the community. This makes it all the more confusing as to why Sony Ericsson would want to shut us down. We genuinely believe that 2012 could be a bumper year for the company, we just wish we could have been there along for the ride. Admittedly, using a trademarked term wasn’t the best move on their part (at least from a legal standpoint) — but it pretty much standard. Imagine if Sprint went after , Google after , or Facebook after ? Was it Sony Ericsson’s job to protect their trademark? Absolutely — but there are better ways to do it. At the very least: reach out, express the company’s concerns, and offer to help them find a new, less trademark-infringing home. When someone’s doing you a service, you don’t hold a gun to their head because they’re not doing it the way you’d like. |
Dropbox’s API Gets A Security Boost (And Is Now Web-Friendly) | Jason Kincaid | 2,011 | 10 | 21 | Red-hot startup — you know, the file syncing service that just at a $4 billion valuation — has announced something this week that’s getting slightly less attention than its massive funding round, but is exciting all the same: the company has an improved version of its APIs, making the service better both in native apps (on mobile devices) and web apps alike. Dropbox first its API in May 2010, and it’s been implemented in loads of mobile app since then. But it’s had a few issues that have been remedied with the new version of the API. For one, it’s now adding support for ‘app folders’. Prior to this update, if you wanted to let a third-party app hook into your Dropbox account, you’d be giving it access to your account — which didn’t necessarily make sense for, say, a camera app. Now apps will be able to associate themselves with a single folder (which the user can move and rename as they’d like), without having to hand over the keys to the kingdom. Likewise, security has now been beefed up using an authentication system that doesn’t require you to enter your credentials within a third party app itself. Instead, when you go to authenticate with an app, you’ll be swapped over to either the mobile web version of Dropbox or your native Dropbox app (Facebook and some other services use a similar mechanism). The API also gives third party applications access to the versioning/revision system that Dropbox uses, which’ll let users jump back to previous versions of files and undelete them. Finally, while the original version of the API was made primarily for native mobile apps, this new version works for web apps (including those on the desktop) as well. : A previous version of this post said the security updates and other features applied to only mobile eapps, but they’re actually relevant to any app built using the Dropbox API (including web apps). |
The One Slide Andrew Mason Wants Groupon Investors To Focus On | Erick Schonfeld | 2,011 | 10 | 21 | It’s been a for Groupon CEO Andrew Mason, but as his IPO nears in the next couple weeks the company is making a final push to sell their shares to the public with an (which you can ). Mason & Co. do a good job of putting forward the best possible story to potential investors: Groupon is addressing trillion-dollar markets, it is the largest local commerce platform with scale effects, it is building on its daily deal dominance to move into adjacent products and markets (events, goods, travel), and it is building a local commerce Triforce centered around daily deals, instant mobile offers, and . But out of all the roadshow slides, Mason wants investors to focus on the one above because it answers his critics that Groupon is spending its way into oblivion. It shows the return on Groupon’s marketing investments. One of the biggest red flags in Groupon’s SEC filings has been the enormous amount it spends on marketing ($466.5 million the first nine months of this year to “on subscribers acquisition,” according to the latest S-1 filing). In the third quarter, Groupon was able to get its to the point where it wet from a $101 million operating loss in the second quarter to almost breakeven (with a $239,000 operating loss in the third quarter). The slide shows that in the first quarter of 2010, Groupon spent $18 million in marketing, which resulted in the company adding 3.7 million new customers. Groupon then tracked the spending of that cohort of customers over time. “We pay a fixed amount up front, and we recover our marketing costs in two quarters,” explains Mason. Those customers ended up making enough repeat Groupon purchases that they contributed $100 million to Groupon’s revenues and $43 million to its “contribution profits.” The question I would pose if I was an investor in the roadshow is whether or not that analysis holds true for later cohorts of customers as well. If it does, then Groupon’s unconventionally high marketing budget will result in equally high returns. I wouldn’t be surprised if the returns diminished with later cohorts, but it was also a market share land grab strategy which Groupon is toning down now that it has 142 million “subscribers,” only 16 million of which are repeat customers. Groupon is already focussed on getting more of those one-time buyers to come back. |
Gillmor Gang Live 10.21.11 (TCTV) | Steve Gillmor | 2,011 | 10 | 21 | Recording of Gillmor Gang Live has concluded. |
Groupon’s Quarterly Growth Slows To 9 Percent, But Operating Losses Cut To Almost Zero | Rip Empson | 2,011 | 10 | 21 | Groupon has taken a lot of heat over the last six months, some of it deserved, some of it perhaps a bit excessive. There are definitely legitimate concerns about Groupon’s , but lofty valuations aside, we have to remember that Groupon is still a young company, and the future remains unwritten. The daily deal giant’s IPO roadshow is scheduled to kick off next week, and ahead of that, Groupon , in which it announced that it plans to sell 30 million shares at $16 to $18 a pop, which means that it has to raise between $480 million and $540 million — all resulting in a valuation potentially as high as $11.4 billion. Now, while Andrew Mason wearing a suit and a tie while pitching to potential investors is enough to make anyone nervous, the daily deals behemoth has taken some positive steps of late, namely its closing of the redemption loop with Groupon Rewards. . That being said, is it all sunshine and moonbeams for Groupon at present? It’s enormous valuation might lead one to see it as such, but the company shared its Q3 stats today, which were buried in its updated SEC filing. As one can see from the graphs herein, compared to Q2, revenues are up 9.4 percent in Q3 2011 (to $430 million), which is certainly a good sign. However, going further back, this represents a slowdown from 32.7 percent Q2 over Q1 growth and 72 percent growth Q1 over Q4. On the other hand, gross billings actually grew 24.5 percent Q2 over Q1, resulting in $1.15 billion for the quarter. And “Cumulative Customers” hit 29.5 million this quarter, up from 23 million in Q2, all in the face of a decreasing marketing spend and income (loss) from operations dropping from $101 million in Q2 to $239,000 in Q3. Below, we see that Groupon’s income losses from operations had been growing from Q2 2010 through Q1 2011, and remained high in the second quarter of this year. The third quarter of this year, Groupon’s most recent stats show, represent a significant cut in operating losses, and while Groupon remains in the red in this category, the trend is certainly positive. One thing worth noting, however, while far from being dishonest, is certainly conspicuous (and slightly annoying): You will notice in the ninth slide (from Mason’s presentation to investors) gives a jumbled look at the map of significant competition Groupon is facing in the daily deals space. BUT. But, where is LivingSocial, I ask you? Yes, , Groupon continues to hold the lion’s share of the market at 54 percent, but LivingSocial isn’t exactly just a piddling little lemonade stand on the corner. LivingSocial owns at least 22 percent of the daily deal market, which you would think would give it a more prominent position on Groupon’s “map of competitors”. At this point, The New York Times has a bigger title than LivingSocial, which is pretty ridiculous. Hopefully, that’s just another example of Groupon’s “awesome” sense of humor. |
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Google Tests One-Click “Add To Circles” Button In Search Results | Greg Kumparak | 2,011 | 10 | 21 | Slowly but surely, Google is finding more and more ways to integrate Google+ into all of their other products. The latest tweak: a one-click button, smack dab in the middle of your search results, for adding the author of the relative content to a Google+ circle. Google has been fiddling with the integration of Google+ into search results for weeks. It began with the integration of public Google+ postings into search results, and later grew to include blogger/author headshots (complete with links to their Plus profiles) next to relevant items. This latest tweak is really just the evolution of the aforementioned addition of author bios. By removing that one step (having to click into the author’s profile to add them), adding someone on Google+ becomes less of a deliberate decision and more of an impulse move. It’s just further proof that, in the Battle of Facebook vs. Google+, Google is Most of Google’s tweaks regarding Plus in results seem to focus on drawing attention to bloggers/writers/online personalities — which, while I’m obviously a bit subjective here, is a rather keen move. While we’re but a drop in the hat in the grand scheme of things, writers have a notable degree of influence (whether they intentionally utilize that influence or not) over the public’s perception of a product. Funneling followers to writers could easily give them the perception that a product is more lively than it actually is, which may in turn spin their writings on the product in a more positive way. Clever, Google. Not seeing the changes? Don’t worry: like most things Google does, it appears that they’re testing this one on a small handful of users first. [Thanks !] |
Fantastical Update Adds In-Line Editing, Deleting | John Biggs | 2,011 | 10 | 21 | My favorite app (until my next favorite app comes along), , is finally out of beta and the update is now available for download. The new version supports editing and deleting of calendar items right from the app – reducing your reliance on iCal – and full iCloud report. Edit and delete events!
Add and edit notes for your events!
iCloud calendar support
Multiple all-day events are now grouped by calendar and sorted by event name
Double-clicking an event now starts editing (Option-double-clicking an event opens it in the default calendar app)
New events now automatically set the start date to the selected date on the calendar Plus: Time zone fix for Chile
All that for $20. As an added bonus, Flexibits would like to offer 10 free copies for the first ten readers who comment below. I’ll contact you via Facebook or however you log in to get you the download codes. |
Facebook And Google Spent Record Amounts On D.C. Lobbying In Q3 2011 | Leena Rao | 2,011 | 10 | 21 | Each quarter, Facebook and Google continue to spend more and more on lobbying efforts in Washington D.C. As evidenced by the most recent disclosure reports filed in the U.S. Senate’s lobbying database, both of the companies hit all time highs in terms of lobbying dollars. Google’s lobbying spend hit an all-time high again this quarter, with spending coming in at $2.38 million, nearly doubling its spend from the same period a year ago. Last quarter, Google on lawmakers. The search giant spent a total of $5.2 million in lobbying last year, and with this quarter’s tally has already passed last year’s spend with $5.8 million in the first three quarters of 2011. This past quarter, Google’s lobbying strategy focused on patent reform, data privacy, The American Jobs Act, freedom of expression and intellectual property in international trade agreements, online advertising regulation, intellectual property and trademark issues, cyber security and online privacy, renewable energy, freedom of expression and censorship, “openness and competition in the online services market,” cloud computing, tax reform, free trade, and broadband access. Former CEO and current Google Executive Chairman Eric Schmidt has been in the Beltway, helping with government relations, and with the Schmidt actually testified before Congress in Patents are another major issued for Google, and over the past year for the company. And Google must surely be lobbying for the approval of its acquisition of Motorola. According to , Google issued this statement about its increased lobbying spend: “We want to help policy makers understand our business and the work we do to keep the Internet open, to encourage innovation and to create economic opportunity. Lobbying is part of that process.” Facebook, whose spend in the Beltway is small compared to Google, still shelled out $360,000 in lobbying efforts this past quarter, which is more than what the social network spend on lobbying in the entire year of 2010. In fact, Facebook tripled lobbying spend from the same quarter in 2010. And Facebook will spend well over $1 million in 2011. Policy areas of focus for Facebook this year include global regulation of software companies and restrictions on internet access by foreign governments; patent reform, online safety measures, internet privacy regulations, freedom of expression on the Internet; discussion of location-based services, cyber security, discussing House, Senate, and Government rules to allow more Government and Congressional offices to access social media to engage with citizens, and lobbying for Oregon power and water needs to support high-tech growth and investment in Oregon. Facebook a new, energy-efficient data center in Oregon in April. It’s no secret that Facebook is with D.C., and even on policy issues. In September, Facebook has also filed , which will allow the company make direct contributions to candidates and parties, and spend unlimited sums bankrolling secondary efforts like independent ad campaigns. Considering how both Facebook and Google’s lobbying spend has steadily grown from last year, it’s clear that both companies have a lot at stake in the hands of regulators, whether that be patent reform, privacy regulation, online safety or even antitrust issues. Photo Credit/Flickr/ |
Squarespace 6: Rebuilt From The Ground Up To Take On WordPress, Tumblr And Everyone Else | Jason Kincaid | 2,011 | 10 | 21 | So you want to build a webpage. Maybe it’s a blog. Maybe it’s a site for your small business. Maybe it’s a portfolio for your artwork. In any case, you have options. A lot of them, including WordPress, Movable Type, Tumblr, Virb, Weebly, and a variety of niche sites that cater to specific use-cases and communities. And , the premium hosted blogging platform that raised a whopping in summer 2010, is about to take all of them on. Today the company is unveiling Squarespace 6 — a totally reworked version of its platform that has big enough ambitions to justify its ample funding. The new version of the service is in a strict friends-and-family private beta for now, but it’s giving users a first glimpse at what they can expect as it opens up more broadly in the weeks ahead. And it’s looking good. [vimeo http://vimeo.com/30922118 w=630&h=400] As startups go, Squarespace is relatively ancient. The company got its start back April 2003, when founder and CEO Anthony Casalena began programming the first version of his website builder (it launched the following spring). Several years later he finally hired a few more hands and wound up with a team of around six people total — and a multimillion dollar run rate thanks to the service’s premium subscriptions. Then, in July 2010, the company decided to do something drastically different: it raised a funding round led by Accel and Index Ventures. This was the company’s first outside investment, aside from $30,000 Casalena’s father invested when Squarespace was first getting started. “We decided we wanted to go for it,” Casalena explains. Today’s launch represents the first fruits of that funding round. After raising the money the company began hiring lots of additional talent — it now has 63 employees, and is growing quickly. Casalena says that shortly after this hiring spree began, a group of Squarespace designers held a meeting to figure out what their ideal website would look like, independent of the tools available. Then, they tried to figure out it was possible to build those sites using Squarespace’s existing consumer-facing platform. Their conclusion? It wasn’t. Which brings us to today. Over the last year the company has rebuilt its technology from the ground up in a way that it hopes makes it both extremely flexible and easy to use, with the goal of allowing those designers (and consumers) to build whatever they want. To be clear, I haven’t gotten to use it yet. But Casalena did walk me though an extended demo, and it certainly looks very promising. And, like the current version, Squarespace will still be a premium-only service, with plans running between $12-$40 a month, but he says that a more straightforward pricing plan will be revealed soon. At its heart, Squarespace is built around templates, each of which is constructed using a variety of building block widgets: text, images, and other common webpage elements. A blog template presents the text and image blocks in reverse chronological order; an image portfolio template puts your images front-and-center, and so on. If this system sounds pretty basic, it’s because that’s sort of the point. For starters the site is only going to be offering templates that focus on portfolios. Users will be able to tweak the layout of these standard portfolios using intuitive controllers for font, color, and the size of each column, so even the same template won’t look too similar between each site. And Squarespace will quickly be ramping up the template types available — it’s not hard to imagine templates for small businesses, personal and professional blogs, or even restaurants (Squarespace already offers many templates for these use-cases on version 5 of the platform). Developers will also be able to construct their own templates from scratch, which they can sell on a one-off basis to their clients. Casalena wouldn’t confirm that a web store that would let developers sell their templates to other users is in the works (Tumblr has had success with this), but it seems like an obvious step down the line. In some ways, it seems that Squarespace is taking an Apple-esque approach to its tools. It isn’t just WYSIWYG — it’s an editor that’s actually pleasant to use. The interface is very clean, pretty at times, even, and it’s got a lot of subtle niceties. For example, the portfolio templates will serve up images at sizes that best suit the viewer’s browser size — if they have it full screen, they’ll get a high-res version; if it’s smaller, they’ll get a downscaled version (which will load faster). And if you resize the browser, Squarespace will serve up the appropriate image version on the fly. You probably wouldn’t notice if you weren’t looking for it, but it’s well done. Another very nifty new feature is a dynamic grid-based layout system. It’s a bit hard to describe, but the embedded video above does a great job showing it off. In short, you can drag and drop any piece of content — be it a block of text, a photo, a map, etc. — wherever you’d like on the page, and everything else will resize and shift around to accommodate it. Better yet, eventually you’ll be able to tweak these designs on a per-post basis, which means it’s easier to mix up the layout of your posts than it is with designs seen on Tumblr and WordPress. Ultimately this is still very early days for the new platform, and it’ll be hard to tell if this promised flexibility and ease-of-use really make a difference in practice. But I’m liking where it’s headed, and have every intention of trying it out on my personal blog as soon as I have access.
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TechCrunch Giveaway: Toshiba Thrive 10-Inch Tablet #ChannelCaster | Elin Blesener | 2,011 | 10 | 21 | Thanks to , we have a to give away! This tablet is 8GB and valued at around $379.99. Not only will the winner of this giveaway win the tablet, but the will also be included in it. It’s an app that makes it simple to create custom content Channels based on any person, topic, or trend by mashing together multiple content sources in real-time from thousands of places like TechCrunch, YouTube, Flickr, news sites, blogs, etc. Want it? Just make sure you follow the steps below. 1) 2) – Retweet this post (making sure to include the #ChannelCaster hashtag)
– Or leave us a comment below telling us what you would call your own news show The contest starts and ends October 23rd at 7:30pm PT. Please only tweet the message once or you will be disqualified. We will choose at random and contact the winner this weekend. Anyone in the world is eligible. [youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1_tTF1Hzw0U] Update: The giveaway is now over. We will update this post once we have our winner. Update: Congrats to Curtis Samuels! |
Acer: The Losses Will Continue, But Things Are Getting Better | Devin Coldewey | 2,011 | 10 | 21 | Acer announced that they’d be , following , and warned they were unlikely to get back into the black by the end of the year. The good news? They only lost around $36m. Things are coming up roses! In truth, it really is a big improvement, and the losses are smaller than expected. Acer announced earlier this year that not only were they going to take a hit while doing inventory reduction (units they’d have to sell for less than expected), but that essentially . Although Acer’s sales actually saw ~15% growth over last quarter, they’re still 30% below what they were a year ago. But Acer’s humility and acknowledgement of the problem (they cite the iPad and Fire as major competitors in the low-end notebook space, a fact they were once unwilling to acknowledge) are reassuring. It’s a hell of a big company and they’re not doing well — they admit that — but they’re getting better and hopefully will come out the other end of this stronger. As for this year, hopes are pinned on the Aspire S3 ultrabook, a slim and powerful machine with a reasonable price that they’re hoping will attract buyers away from MacBook Airs and perhaps inspire budget buyers to take their laptop up a notch. , but it too will face fierce competition from the Air and other ultrabooks. |
CrowdStar Launches First Hardcore, Strategy-Focused Social Game Wasteland Empires | Leena Rao | 2,011 | 10 | 21 | After for mobile, social and global expansion, announcing the beta launch of its first hardcore social game on Facebook, Wasteland Empires. Wasteland Empires targets hardcore and strategy social gamers on the social network. Wasteland Empire takes place in a post-apocalyptic world, lets the player control bands of nomads. The gamer will direct these nomads as they fight for survival by building up villages and battling opponents. CrowdStar says that its graphics and rendering are high-quality, and character interactions are more in-depth. Wasteland Empires also uses realtime animation to give players a more dynamic gameplay experience. CrowdStar, which targeted female gamers with the launches of its previous titles It Girl and Top Girl, is clearly trying to appeal to a broader audience. The company also plans to expand the Wasteland franchise to other platforms beside Facebook. It’s not surprising that CrowdStar is looking to appeal to a broader audience with its games. Zynga also made a move towards hardcore, combat games on Facebook with . |
TechCrunch Giveaway: Two Free Tickets To Disrupt Beijing #TCDisrupt | Elin Blesener | 2,011 | 10 | 7 | is almost here. With speakers like , , and , it’s going to be an amazing conference. This October 31st to November 1st, our very own Jason Kincaid, Alexia Tsotsis, Leena Rao, Greg Kumparak, John Biggs and many more will be flying to China to shake things up. Of course, our own Sarah Lacy will be hosting, along with special guest . Peter Goodman knows a thing or two about disruption and China. He has more than a decade of reporting on the economy, business and technology for The New York Times and The Washington Post, with 5 of those years being spent in China. He currently is the executive business editor at The Huffington Post. Of course, like any Disrupt conference, there will also be cocktail parties, influential meetups, chats with some of the best in the business, and more. We know not everyone may have the chance to purchase a ticket to Disrupt Beijing, so we wanted to give two free tickets away to two lucky readers. If you want to come with us to Beijing for our next Disrupt conference, just follow the steps below. 1) 2) – Retweet this post (making sure to include the #TCDisrupt hashtag)
– Or leave us a comment below telling us why you want to come The contest starts and ends October 9th at 7:30pm PT. Please only tweet the message once or you will be disqualified. We will choose at random and contact the two winners this Sunday night. Also, please note this giveaway is for tickets only and does not include airfare or hotel. Update: The giveaway is over. We will update this post once we have our winner. |
#IswabbedforAmit Offers Up 20K To Find A Bone Marrow Donor For Startup Founder Amit Gupta | Alexia Tsotsis | 2,011 | 10 | 7 | I’ve never met and Jelly co-founder , but for the past two days or so my Twitter stream has been on his story. Diagnosed with acute Leukemia two weeks ago, Gupta has had trouble finding a bone marrow match, primarily because of the lack of donors from the South Asian (Indian, Pakistani, Bangladeshi, Nepalese, Bhutani, Maldivian and Sri Lankan) community. The contains 9.5 million records, yet the possibility of someone from South Asian descent like Amit will find a match is only 1 in 20,000. So Amit did whatever any startup founder or techie would do when faced with such impossible odds, he drew upon our community. Low and behold, two weeks later, his colleague and his friend have offered a combined $20K and respective blog coverage for the person who turns out to be a match for Amit. Prospective candidates can find out more information about how send in their cotton swab . And in case the “needle in the back” pain factor of a bone marrow transplant is turning you off, the procedure can also be done in a relatively less intrusive way via a blood-transfusion-like machine, and is totally painless. While the #IswabbedforAmit submission roster will be applied to the entire roster of recipients, people who are lured in by #IswabbedforAmit have the opportunity to register on behalf of Amit. San Francisco organizer and founder tells me, “The number one thing we need to do is keep him [Amit] super positive, and then keep registry filled with people. I’m trying to gather as many resources as we can.” Olson says that what’s impressed her the most about #IswabbedforAmit is the realization that the entrepreneurial community isn’t limited to Silicon Valley, but extends to all over the world (right now bone marrow drives for Amit are in the works in Delhi and Mumbai). “Everyone is like ‘This can’t happen to Amit, because he’s put so much good into the world that shouldn’t get taken away … We’re a community of doers, and it’s amazing how fast things have happened.” See , , and for more info or fill out if you think you can help. Let’s try to save the ones we can guys. |
Off The Couch: Explorence Wants To Turn Your Outdoor Activities Into Interactive Video Games (Invites) | Rip Empson | 2,011 | 10 | 7 | Some startups and apps ( and to name a few) are turning your iPhones into customizable game controllers, while Wii and Kinect have turned you into the controller with their motion-sensing consoles. You’ve heard it hundreds of times, but smartphone technology is advancing at an astonishing rate. Five years ago, video recording was still a novelty. . Mobile gaming has evolved rapidly over the last few years as well, but most serious gaming is still done via the browser or home console etc., and all gamers could stand to take their gaming out of doors. Riding the crest of smartphone innovation, and conceived as a way to get gamers off their couches, a new startup is opening its private beta today called , which is developing outdoor mobile games for Android — and soon for iOS. What does that mean? Simply put, through its mobile apps, Explorence plans to transform your outdoor recreational activities into interactive video games. The startup wants to turn your jogs into “The Amazing Race” and your bike rides into Mario Kart. Users create their own courses and experiences to compete against friends asynchronously. Explorence augments these outdoor activities with music, check points, leaderboards, rewards, as well as “fail conditions” to create an immersive gaming experience for your outdoor recreatin’. For example, DASH!, the startup’s first title created using its technology, enables users to create, participate, and wager in races of any kind (asynchronously). First, a user creates a race via GPS by walking the course with smartphone or selecting start and finish areas. Users can then select how much virtual currency they want to wager on the race — at which point anyone who selects that race on the app gets to compete in that race, at the time or in the future. Once you’re ready to go, the app will begin a countdown to start, a gun goes off, and you run your race (phone in pocket is probably a good idea). There’s musical accompaniment and sound effects udring your race, and once you cross the finish line you’ve created, the phone stops the clock and automatically enters your time onto its virtual leaderboard so you can see how you did compared to your friends. The racers earn coins for participating (and more for victory), which will later be redeemable for game enhancements and real world goods. DASH! works with any racing discipline: driving, cycling, running, snowboarding, etc. For the past 2 months, the Explorence team have been testing these time-shifted races, and its small set of users are already averaging 3.9 sessions (races or races created) per day. For gamers who love the outdoors, it seems to have the potential to become pretty addicting. The key to Explorence’s technology and user experience lies in how the team has been able to use GPS, smartphone sensors, etc. to tweak geofencing around a particular point. For example, Explorence has two more titles in the pipeline, one of which will bring its technology to extreme sports — so that snowboarders for example will be able to put their phones in their pockets and go into the park to hit jumps and tricks. The apps will then measure distance, the amount of rotations, etc., giving them points and a soundtrack all the while. There are already some augmented reality first person shooter (FPS) games out there, which essentially turn your smartphone into gun and let you blast away at your friends. The technology is still developing, to be sure, but we’re clearly at a point now where the functionality is ready to go mainstream. Whether users are ready to adopt — that’s another story. The Explorence team, which consists of Mike Suprovici, Bill Gleim, and Mark Thompson, are graduates of the San Diego Founder Institute. Today, DASH! is available in private beta on Android (and will be launching on both iOS and Android later this year), and Explorence is offering 500 invites for its beta, which readers can take advantage of and entering “TechCrunch” into the “Access Code” field. Check it out and let us know what you think. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q-YLgfN-OuA |
Here’s To The Crazy One | MG Siegler | 2,011 | 10 | 7 | When I wrote my piece entitled “ ” in August following the news that was formally stepping down as CEO of Apple, I knew that sooner or later there would have to be a follow up. Unfortunately, it ended up being sooner. While the reaction following Jobs’ resignation was powerful, the reaction to has been nothing short of amazing. Former — even the President of the United States paid tribute. But once again, the most fascinating group of people showing their support are the ones who did not know Steve Jobs. It’s the everyday people that simply used and loved his products. The Tweets, Facebook messages, blog posts, etc, flowing in from all over the world have been a unifying force. I happen to be in London right now, and in one Tube ride the day after he passed, I overheard several emotional conversations about Jobs. I also met a complete stranger yesterday and when I told him I was American, it was the first thing he brought up. Even my mother messaged me about it. This type of global unity tends to happen when a major celebrity passes away — think: Michael Jackson — because nearly everyone on the planet knows who they are. People always look for common bonds, and those are easy ones to establish. That’s because pop culture shoves them in our faces for years if not decades. And the type of fame they achieve goes hand-in-hand with celebrity. But Steve Jobs was not a celebrity — at least not in the traditional sense. Sure, he was famous, but he did not seek fame. Nor did he need it. The main goal of his career was not to sell his image. He was the head of a company. When you think about it that way, I think the reaction we’re seeing to his passing points to something different. One element, as I wrote about following his resignation, is the emotional tie that people have to Apple products. Because so much thought and care is put into them, those who purchase and use them tend to cherish them. And as iPods, iPhones, and iPads have come around, the Apple user base has grown exponentially. Steve Jobs was the personification of Apple’s products — hence, a strong connection. But it goes even deeper. People have been writing about their profound sadness over the loss even though they’ve never met Jobs. And many of them have noted that they didn’t expect to feel this way. Thinking about it, I believe this is related to two things. First, Jobs died young. Even though his illness ravaged his body and made him appear far older than he actually was, Jobs was only 56 years old at the time of his passing. The average male life expectancy in the U.S. is just about 76. For the world overall, it’s 67. To be fair, those ages are calculated at birth, but Jobs was also a billionaire with access to any doctor in the world that he could have wanted. He was simply dealt a bad hand with cancer. And it robbed him of at least 20 years on this planet. But it didn’t just rob Jobs. It robbed us too. That’s why people who haven’t met the man care so deeply. Not only is his early death a sad story, it takes away a man who will go down as one of the greatest innovators of not only our time, but of time. And while you could certainly argue that someone like Michael Jackson contributed great art to the world — he did — he hadn’t done anything significant in nearly 20 years at the time of this death. Steve Jobs was in his when it came to his trade, when he passed away. It’s both sad and frustrating to think about what we’re going to miss in terms of innovation over the next 20 years because Jobs won’t be here. Even if you aren’t a fan of Apple, you cannot argue that Jobs hasn’t transformed industries and made them significantly better. He was a true iconoclast. And we’re now in an age where technology is becoming increasingly important to everyones’ lives on a daily basis. The fact that we have to push forward without the best mind in the field is quite frankly, a little frightening. Others will step up. But there will never be another Steve Jobs. The world aches knowing that. Many artists and geniuses aren’t appreciated in their day. It’s only after they’ve died that their legend is established. But Jobs was appreciated and given proper respect well before his death. This also plays into the outpouring of emotion we’re seeing. Most people that the world has just lost a genius. And now we have a plethora of tools to talk about it in real time when it happens. When Disney died, when Einstein died, people had to read about it in the paper the next day and then talk about it with maybe a dozen other people that they happened to run into in the subsequent days. It’s hard to establish broader global context that way. Before that, it was hard to know the significance of a great person dying at all. Michelangelo was considered the greatest living artist of his time. But even if people in say, China, had learned of his death, would they have any idea who he was? Probably not. I might argue that Jobs is the first truly transformative figure to die in an age of transformative technology. He’s someone who will be talked about a thousand years from now. And the fact that he was transformative technology just compounds the reactions to his death right now. In many ways, it’s perfect that the video below surfaced again just after Jobs’ passing. It’s the original Apple “Think Different” commercial. In it, images of transformative people throughout the 20th century are shown as a narrator toasts to them for changing the world. In the versions that aired on TV, the narrator is Richard Dreyfuss. But in the version below, the narrator is Steve Jobs. The toast reads as follows: Here’s to the crazy ones. The misfits. The rebels. The troublemakers. The round pegs in the square holes. The ones who see things differently. They’re not fond of rules. And they have no respect for the status quo. You can quote them, disagree with them, glorify or vilify them. About the only thing you can’t do is ignore them. Because they change things. They push the human race forward. And while some may see them as the crazy ones, we see genius. Because the people who are crazy enough to think they can change the world, are the ones who do. Perhaps he didn’t know it in 1997 when he recorded this, but that is absolutely Steve Jobs describing himself. He was crazy enough to think he could change the world. And he did. [youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8rwsuXHA7RA&w=640&h=365] |
Design Competition Yields Bikes Of The Future | Devin Coldewey | 2,011 | 10 | 7 | , a nonprofit located in Portland, has been running a competition over the last few months in which students and pro teams work to create a next-generation city bike. This isn’t about speed (like the ) or concept design (like the ), but rather about creating a bike that provides the maximum amount of utility for someone looking to ditch their automobile. These innovation-from-competition events are really blowing up; there have been lots lately aimed at creating everything from to . This one had 34 entrants who mostly had some variation of a cargo bike with electric assist, but they all varied in execution. I have to agree with the people’s choice, though, a collaboration between IDEO and Rock Lobster (pictured). (I like the campus bike and the two-seater), but the , as the IDEO-Rock Lobster bike is called, really just hit me right in my future bone. Minus some of the slightly retro trappings, I can picture thousands of these crowding the streets. The design is just that well thought-out. The front wheel has a hub motor powered by that battery underneath the seat there. The battery can be quick-charged at an outlet and are actually the same kind found in the Chevy Volt. The porteur-style front rack has been brought into the 21st century with a removable flat-rack that attaches or detaches in seconds by means of spring-loaded bolts, and the fronts of the support tubes conceal a pair of LED headlights. The rack is mounted on the frame, not the fork, which improves stability. I’ve always been a fan of paniers but this works nicely as well. Reminds me of . has a nice design diary for the project, and has a page for it as well. It does have some design issues to work out: it’s rather tall, the seat-handlebar relationship is off, and it needs a more potent braking system. But there’s still a weird sort of elegance to the design. A bike like this for a decent price would go a long way toward replacing cars for many people in the city. Human-powered, compact, and simple, yet able to go long distances and carry groceries. It’ll be a while before they’re really affordable, but the promise of the electric-assist bike, already taking effect elsewhere in the world, seems destined to come to our shores as long as there are people creating things like the Faraday and the other entries to the contest. [second image source: ] |
Tired Of Too Many Google+ Notifications? Now You Control Who Can Send Them To You | Alexia Tsotsis | 2,011 | 10 | 7 | There is a certain strange person that used to mention me on Google+ and whenever I’d click on the mention (I couldn’t resist I MEAN IT’S RIGHT THERE) I’d get slightly depressed. And I’d think, “Why Google? Why can’t I do the Google+ equivalent of “blocking” this strange person?” Apparently I wasn’t alone on this, as Google to control who has the power to up the count on the red blinky notification thingy in the right hand corner of your Plus bar. Hoorah! Users can now adjust when notifications go off for individual sharing, mentions, hangout invites, play invites, messages sent and when users select the “notify about this post” function. But before you go get all drunk with this nascent power, you’ll still get notified if someone comments on your posts or adds you to a new circle, inexplicably. Baby steps … Of course I don’t have the feature yet, because Google is rolling it out “slowly.” Fear my . |
Zurb’s Axe: A Tablet-Friendly Way To Mark Up (And Scribble On) Your Web Design | Jason Kincaid | 2,011 | 10 | 7 | Interaction design firm has just launched a new tool that makes it easy to use your iPad to mark up and add comments about a website’s design. It’s called (the domain is ), and no, it has nothing to do with men’s body spray. Note that you can’t use it from your computer, so you’ll have to pull out an iPad to check it out. The app is pretty straightforward: once you access it from your tablet, you’ll be prompted to enter the URL of the site you’d like to mark up (so, say, beta.techcrunch.com). The app will then grab an image of the site, which you can immediately start scribbling on (to get rid of the stuff you don’t like) and circling (to highlight the things you do). You can also append text boxes to explain what exactly your scribbles mean. And if you get a little overzealous with your scribbling, you can shake the iPad to erase it. Zurb marketing lead Dmitry Dragilev says that the service is optimized for the iPad but that it should work on Android tablets as well (albeit more slowly). And it’s free. There is one thing I’d like to see it add, though: at this point Axe is targeted mainly at people who design (or own) websites and are exchanging ideas; I’d like to see an option to let sites embed a consumer-facing button that lets users submit suggestions as well. In fact, this is only the latest in a suite of free tools that Zurb has released over the years — we’ve previously written about apps like (which lets you get instant feedback on presentations), and , which lets you give users a sort of memory test on what they remember after viewing your site. Another one of their free tools is , which is similar to Axe, but is optimized for your PC browser as opposed to the tablet. Dragilev explains that Zurb sees these tools as a way to raise awareness for their consulting services. They also have a handful of premium tools, like Zurb . [youtube=’http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1qae1AOXSTY’] |
Swype CEO Mike McSherry Explains His $100 Million Deal With Nuance | Erick Schonfeld | 2,011 | 10 | 7 | Last night, Michael that alum was by speech technology company Nuance. The exact number was and, I’ve learned, it was all cash (split between $77.5 million up front and another $25 million in 18 months—call that a retention bonus for the Swype team). So what does , which is known primarily for its speech recognition software engine, want with a gesture-based text entry technology like Swype? (Instead of tapping in letters on a touch keyboard, you swipe between them without lifting your finger). Earlier today, I spoke with Swype CEO , who explained the thinking behind the deal. “The broadest vision,” says McSherry, “is we want to be the input for every single stream. You talk to your refrigerator and in-car navigation, you want your language models to follow you around.” When he puts it that way, Swype seems like a much more strategic acquisition for NUance than one which simply fills a hole. Nuance owns key pieces of technology for entering information onto mobile phones via both voice and touch (including the T9 text prediction algorithm used on most feature phones). In fact, Swype co-founder and CTO Cliff Kushler was also the inventor of T9. The t( offices are five blocks away from Swype’s in Seattle. The two code-bases will be merged, but the Swype brand will grow larger in importance. Nuance is thinking beyond the input technologies people interact with on their mobile devices to tying them together in the cloud. So it doesn’t matter whether you use voice or Swype, Nuance will “share language models on the backend” and personalize each experience to an individual’s frequency of use and language patterns. So if your mobile phone learns how you spell your friend Sergey’s name and later you use voice recognition to send Sergey a text message, it will have a better chance of knowing that you mean Sergey and not Sergei. Yes, the new in Apple’s upcoming iPhone 4S with its voice recognition technology. So does that mean that Swype could be coming to the iPHone as well? “I’d love to be able to see that,” says McSherry, adding, “There are certainly lots of requests to see Swype on the iPhone.” Maybe Nuance can help with the negotiations. As of now, Swype is on 19 million phones overall, including 9 of the top 11 phone manufacturers. It is especially big on Android. Bringing it to the iPhone would be a very popular move all around. Here’s a demo video from a comparing Swype (on a Windows phone) to tapping on an iPhone keyboard. [youtube=”http://youtu.be/pTooBnKAdSw”] |
Turning The iPhone Into A 350x Medical Microscope For Under $50 | Devin Coldewey | 2,011 | 10 | 7 | Using the iPhone (or any mobile smartphone or tablet device, really) for medical purposes isn’t a new thing, but it’s nice to see the applications people cook up. Just recently at Disrupt we saw , and apps like are decentralizing some simple self-monitoring tasks like melanoma detection. We’ve also seen lots of physical additions to the iPhone camera. You can get wide-angle lenses, telephotos, and even a . But a team of researchers at UC Davis has one-upped the competition by making the iPhone into a 350x microscope for very little money. Now you’ll be able to send people Instagrams of your blood cells. It should be said right off the bat that this isn’t something that the iPhone can do. But it’s the go-to device for proof of concept stuff like this for obvious reasons. The technique can be generalized to other devices later. The project is actually quite a simple little hack. They use a 1mm ball lens and attach it to the outside of the iPhone lens array with a rubber sheet and some tape. The little lens technically only offers 5x magnification, but the way it focuses creates a tiny in-focus area that can resolve details down to about 1.5 microns. The field of view is very small and there’s distortion to deal with, but by combining the in-focus areas of several pictures you can get a clear enough image to identify cell types, make counts, or even take spectroscopic readings. Take a look at these images: the ones on the top were taken with a full-on commercial medical microscope, the ones on the bottom are from the iPhone setup: There’s obviously a major difference in quality, but the difference in price is even greater, and high-quality microscopes aren’t very mobile. Essentially it’s one more step towards a tricorder. With a general-purpose CPU, modular inputs, and a versatile imaging unit, the smartphone is useful for far more than calling friends and playing Angry Birds. It may not be a mobile clinic, but in areas where money and electricity are hard to come by, an iPhone could be a valuable diagnostic tool. Extending the “senses” of our devices via cheap components and elbow grease could seriously empower decentralized medical care. . Funding for the study was provided by the National Science Foundation. |
YouTube launches movie rentals for the UK | Mike Butcher | 2,011 | 10 | 7 |
YouTube has rolled out its movie rental service in the UK. now features over a thousand feature films including The Dark Knight and Reservoir Dogs alongside British classics like Monty Python’s The Meaning of Life and Lock, Stock and Two Smoking Barrels. The UK is the third country to get the service, following the US and Canada. Prices for the films range from £2.49 to £3.49. Users have 30 days to watch the movies rented and then have 48 hours to finish the movie. YouTube is now in direct competition with Amazon’s , which has 1.6 million customers in the UK and Europe. LoveFilm’s new releases also cost between £2.49 and £3.49 a film. YouTube signed UK deals with Sony Pictures, Warner Bros, Universal and Lionsgate among others. Broadcasters, including Channel 4 and Channel 5, already make their programmes available on the site. |
Minecraft Pocket Edition Plays Nice With More Android Phones | Chris Velazco | 2,011 | 10 | 7 | Welp, I suppose it’s about time to kiss my weekend goodbye. It was a bumpy ride there for a while, but has finally gone live in the with support for (nearly) all devices. That’s right, you no longer need to have an to partake in a rousing session of world-building. Any Android device running 2.1 or later is welcome to join the fun, but only after you shell out the requisite $6.99 True Minecraft addicts have already whipped out their wallets, but keep this in mind before you buy. This is Minecraft Pocket Edition — it plays more like the creative Classic mode rather than the fan-favorite Survival mode. That means no zombies, no creepers, and no harvesting blocks. Instead, you’ve got an infinite amount of materials to bring to life whatever crazy, horrifying things are bouncing around in your heads right now. If you’re new to Minecraft, and want to see , there’s also a to mess around with. Fair warning: it’s pretty addictive, so I hope you’re not in desperate need of $7. On a very personal sidenote, I’d like to thank the game’s developers for having the foresight to release it on a Friday afternoon. Any earlier than that, and who knows what would’ve happened to people’s productivity? |
Dell Bows Out Of Windows Phone Market (For Now, At Least) | Chris Velazco | 2,011 | 10 | 7 | Dell was never a major player when it came to their Windows Phones selection (which, if memory serves, consisted of one device), but now it seems like they may not be a player at all. Sources have that Dell has decided to sit out of the Windows Phone race for at least the next year. The news of Dell’s hiatus doesn’t come as a huge shock, as the company has been keeping suspiciously quiet on the Windows Phone front for months now. Their saving grace could have been the mysterious “Wrigley” handset, a rumored successor to their ill-fated Venue Pro. Alas, poor Wrigley would never see the light of day, and it looks like Dell’s Mango ambitions may have died with it. Frankly, it’s a bit of a shame. I’ve always been a sucker for a portrait slider, and the Venue Pro was nothing if not that. In fairness, it was a brick of a phone, and it suffered from more than its fair share of issues. Still, less competition is almost always a bad thing — now there’s one less company to keep the big guys on their toes. Dell hasn’t said that they would ditch Windows Phone completely, so there’s still hope for an WP8/Apollo device, but that’s an awfully long time for Dell devotees to hold their collective breaths. |
AnyMeeting, The Free Webinar Service, Launches Redesign, Six-Way Video Conferencing | Rip Empson | 2,011 | 10 | 7 | , the free web conferencing service all your online meeting and conference needs, is today launching a redesign of its user interface, which brings the service an upgraded interface that makes it even easier to meet with your colleagues without actually having to see them in person. If that doesn’t get you excited, I don’t know what will. The company has also added a simultaneous video chat and broadcasting feature — a la Google+ Hangouts — that allows up to six participants to talk to each other and collaborate in realtime as they plan their takeover of the world. The updates also include faster screen sharing and a cleaner in-meeting experience with improved screen management and web conferencing functions all offered in an easily-accessible menu bar. The SaaS meeting and conference service, which was launched in late 2009, allows users to host meetings of up to 200 attendees with no time limits, screen sharing, app sharing, recording, and social media integration. The company is really targeting small businesses and independent professionals looking to offer how-to videos, demonstrations, or host panels and seminars. ( ) The company has raised seed capital from investors that include Tech Coast Angels, Pasadena Angels, and Maverick Angels. In August, the AnyMeeting added PayPal integration to allow anyone with a verified PayPal Merchant account to sell tickets to both live and recorded webinars. The feature is integrated into the startup’s webinar system in hopes of making monetization simple for its users — all they have to do is set their ticket price (or offer discount codes) and viewers can pay using their credit card or PayPal account. The funds go directly to the AnyMeeting users that scheduled the seminar, at which point the service deducts a small fee for each ticket purchased. A small service charge, along with some non-intrusive advertising and strategic partnerships, are how the startup plans to make money. I had a chance to take the video-conferencing tool for a spin, and it worked smoothly, all from within my browser. It’s a great little tool for startups, so check it out. For more on AnyMeeting, . |
RadioShack’s Trade-In Program May Just Get You A Free iPhone 4S | Jordan Crook | 2,011 | 10 | 7 | RadioShack has a for used gadgets that (circumstances permitting) may just save you quite a bit on an iPhone 4S. Even better, if you trade in a undamaged 32GB iPhone 4 (scratch free, no battery issues, etc.), you’ll get enough store credit back from RadioShack to purchase a 16GB iPhone 4S and still have money to burn. Well, not burn so much as spend on accessories or other RadioShack goodies, but you get the point. Here’s how it works: Take your functional smartphone (which doesn’t have to be an iPhone by the way) into a RadioShack and have a store rep appraise it. They’ll tell you just how much it’s worth, which you can use as credit on your next purchase. Since I assume many of you are looking into getting the iPhone 4S, timing really couldn’t be any better. The Trade-In and Save deal only lasts through October 31, reports . As far as Apple products go, the savings are pretty amazing. Check it out: RadioShack isn’t allowing for iPhone 4S pre-order online — you’ll have to visit a store to do so. However, you’re going to have to visit a store to get your old device appraised anyway, so you might as well take care of that pre-order and see if someone will hint at the trade-in value of your old phone for you. Then when you head back to RadioShack to pick it up, you can trade in your old device and possibly get a really sweet deal on a . If your old device is unfortunately too banged up to get you any store credit, RadioShack will recycle it for you for free. You won’t be walking away with any extra dough, but at least you’ll be saving the planet. No RadioShack nearby? and have similar programs in place. |
null | Alexia Tsotsis | 2,011 | 10 | 21 | null |
Confirmed: Pinterest Raises $27 Million Round Led By Andreessen Horowitz | Jason Kincaid | 2,011 | 10 | 7 | Hot online pinboard site has closed a $27 million round of funding led by Andreessen Horowitz, we’ve confirmed. As part of the financing, general partner will be joining Pinterest’s Board of Directors. AllThingsD first that Andreessen Horowitz was leading a round of over $25 million that values the young startup at up to $200 million (the firm declined to confirm the valuation). This new funding round comes just a few months after a $10 million round the company this past spring, led by Bessemer. Pinterest is still invite-only, but it has garnered plenty of attention around Silicon Valley. And, notably, the site is getting a lot of traction of the tech bubble. The site’s popularity stems in part from its simplicity – at its core, it’s all about ‘pinning’ things you find interesting across the web, and saving them in whatever ‘Board’ you’d like (so, for example, you could make a ‘board’ of things you’d like to learn how to cook, showcasing tantalizing photos of steaks and ribs). The site is very visually oriented, with photos everywhere — which is what makes it fun to browse through the pinboards of other users. When you spot something you like on someone else’s board, you can re-pin it onto yours (sort of like a Tumblr reblog). And it’s open-ended, so people wind up using their pinboards to showcase a variety of different things. In an interview, Jordan said that Andreessen Horowitz is excited about Pinterest for three main reasons: first, the site is showing very strong growth metrics, despite the fact that it’s still in a semi-private beta. Second, the service has very strong user engagement — Jordan says the users who are registered often wind up using it “fairly voraciously”. And finally, the site has a clear path to revenue — a lot of the use-cases Pinterest users are coming up with have potential commercial intent (say, a list of things they want for their wedding). And there will certainly be business models that can be built around them. Pinterest cofounder Ben Silbermann says that the company is setting out to “connect people all over the world through common interest”, and notes that people often use their pinboards to show off things that interest them offline (in other words, it’s sort of like an online bridge between the web and the real world). Pinterest currently has a team of eight people, including Silbermann and fellow cofounders Evan Sharp and Paul Sciarra. They intend to use the funding to grow the team (by a lot, presumably).
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The Ultimate Fanboy Mashup: Apple’s Siri Meets Portal’s GLaDOS | Greg Kumparak | 2,011 | 10 | 7 | Oh, be still my beating heart. Boiling down two fanboy-filled worlds into an amalgamation of concentrated glory, a evil genius named has mashed up the demo video of Apple’s new virtual assistant Siri with the voice of Portal’s malevolent machine mistress, GLaDOS. Comments about the meaningless of one’s activities? Check. Weight insults? Check. The only thing missing is the false promise of cake and a controversial crack about (Oh, and for those unfamiliar with the Portal world: yes, she’s this mean to .) Sadly, such a mashup lives on only in cleverly edited videos (and that special place my consciousness goes to after I’ve drifted off to sleep) for now. While customizable voices are undoubtedly on every iPhone 4S buyer’s Nerdgasm trigger list, it’d be markedly un-Apple-like for Apple to implement any time soon (not to mention incredibly formidable to implement at all, given the complexity of Siri’s speech engine.) Some day! [youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aTg00wIijNY&w=640&h=360] |
Print Your Own Padlock | John Biggs | 2,011 | 10 | 7 | This project on is just about amazing. It’s a complete lock and key set made entirely using open source plans and a printed on a . It can only be opened using the right key (or, given it’s made of plastic, a lighter) but it’s the engineering that clearly counts here. Again, all items are printable except for the springs which I removed from ball-point click pens (thankfully my wife is still putting up with disassembled pens around the house). This one is a little more complicated but it still works and makes a good desk oddity. If you were to glue the “Top”, “Retainer”, and “Lid” in place, the only way to get this lock open without the key would be to break it. But, what is the fun if you can’t take it apart?
You can even build a unique key for every lock but filing down the internal pins. Why would you want to build one of these? Because you can. |
A Peek At Postmates — The Uber For The Courier Industry | Rip Empson | 2,011 | 10 | 7 | , the so-called Uber for the courier industry, debuted at TechCrunch Disrupt in San Francisco this September. The service aims to transform this niche industry by offering an on-demand delivery service that connects local couriers and bike messengers to anyone who needs a package sent (anything from a toaster to a stuffed elephant) within the confines of their city. Postmates is speedy, and it’s cheap. ( .) The service also offers a same-day shipping API for brick-and-mortar retailers, so that for less than $20, retailers will enable local customers to order goods online and have them shipped the same day. And not only the same day, but Postmates Founder Bastian Lehmann tells me that the average delivery time is 37 minutes. (The startup has already facilitated 600+ deliveries.) And couriers and bike messengers are going to love this because, according to Lehmann, they spend the majority of their day in down-time, waiting for the next call. Couriers are, by and large, independent contractors — unlike most cabbies — so Postmates gives them the ability to deliver far more packages than they would under normal circumstances. That means more income, happier couriers, faster delivery times, and thus happier customers. I sat down with Postmates Co-founders Bastian Lehmann and Sean Plaice to ask them a few questions about Postmates, how it works for messengers and end users, and whether or not they’re disgruntled former FedEx employees. Postmates is up and running with 50+ merchants in San Francisco, and the team plans to begin rolling out in other cities over the next year. Check out the demo and let us know what you think. Mom, if you’re reading this, I’m sorry I was slouching. |
Cybook Odyssey E-Reader Shows Arrives With Touchscreen, Web Navigation | Devin Coldewey | 2,011 | 10 | 7 | This probably won’t affect the wars over here in the states much, but I can’t say no to a handsome device like this. And when they put Homer on the screen as well, that’s just icing on the cake. , from French e-reader maker Bookeen, has a trick or two up its sleeve that I hope our US devices will learn one day. The Odyssey sports what Bookeen calls the high speed ink system, or HSIS. They describe it vaguely in a comment: Bookeen has long worked to improve the performance of E-Ink screens as part of the hardware (processors …) than “on the software (firmware optimization).” So I’m guessing they’ve basically overclocked a Pearl screen from E-Ink and made it much more quick to refresh. That’s really handy for showing moving images — you can animate page turning and buttons, that sort of thing. It also makes for a more useful web browsing experience. and you don’t have to wait for the sluggish e-ink refresh rate to catch up. It’s not perfect, but it could be handy. There are lots of books you can get via the web on Project Gutenberg and Google Books that would be accessible this way. The dragging thing isn’t entirely new, of course. You can see me dragging around a PDF on the latest Kobo e-reader (about 3:30 into the video). The Odyssey’s version looks a bit smoother, and of course it works on the web, not just books. Anyhow, it’s a nice-looking little device. No pricing yet, but it will be Europe-only. [via ] |
Sam Lessin Pitches The Facebook Timeline | Alexia Tsotsis | 2,011 | 10 | 9 | Because Facebook Timeline in the coming weeks, Facebook brought in press last week to do a “deep dive” on this new visual way of organizing our online social lives. Because I (surprisingly) fit the “press” designation I sat down with the person primarily responsible for the Facebook Timeline, Facebook Product Manager and Drop.io co-founder , as well as Facebook’s last week. We went through every possible question I had about Timeline, except for maybe, “Why doesn’t Facebook think people will be hesitant to express negative events, like the death of a family member, on Facebook Timeline?.” (I honestly didn’t think about it at the time, but I think the answer would probably be that eventually we’ll get used to expressing all milestones, whether negative or positive, through social media.) Because I find this kind of stuff fascinating, here is the entire interview above. And, because we posted earlier, I felt that it was only fair to give Lessin the same level of coverage or at least headline marquee space. |
Less Than A Month After Winning Disrupt, Shaker Raises $15 Million | Erick Schonfeld | 2,011 | 10 | 9 | , the Israeli startup that less than a month ago, is raising a series A. The round is being led by Menlo Ventures, with good-karma VC Shervin Pishevar doing the deal. Michael Arrington’s CrunchFund is also an investor, along with Eric Schmidt’s Innovation Endeavors, Lady Gaga’s manager Troy Carter, and Pitango Venture Capital. (The picture at right is one of the Shaker founders crashing with the $50,000 Disrupt winner’s check, which wasn’t part of the round, I just love the picture). The company previously raised $3 million ($1 million in July, 2010 from Israeli angel investor Zaki Rakib, who s also the father of one of the founders) and $2 million in March, 2011 from Pitango. A few more strategic investors from the music and entertainment industry might still join this round. Shaker creates for you to hang out in with your Facebook friends and meet new people through those friends. When Shaker first pitched me for Disrupt, it was through chat and then directly by launching the app in Facebook (it was already live in stealth mode with Israeli users). It was the middle of the night in Israel, but the room was packed. You can walk up to people and chat, check out their Facebook profiles, and really socialize. Shaker is a virtual world, but with real identities. Trolling people’s profiles isn’t a great way to meet people, unless you happen to bump into them at a party later on. But that was exactly the original appeal of Facebook. Shaker wants to bring that dynamic online. It won Disrupt, and now it’s got plenty of cash to shake its stuff. |
Amen finally hits the iPhone app store | Mike Butcher | 2,011 | 10 | 9 | , the app launched at TechCrunch Disrupt designed to find out the best of everything on the planet, has been in closed private beta with over 3,500 users, but it has officially. Here’s how it works. You fire up the app on the iPhone or web browser and say a person, place or thing is “the best” or “the worst” ever, like like, the Best Dubstep track ever. Or perhaps, as actress (a beta user) , “After Sex is the Best State For Amening Ever.” Hubbie Ashton Kutcher – an investor – “Led Zeppelin is the best rock band ever.” You can agree with this statement with an “Amen”. But with a “Hell no” you have to suggest an alternative answer. It’s a rigid structure, but you can post whatever you want. Amen is all about continually getting more finessed data since each statement is a structured data point. Amen has raised a Seed funding from Index Ventures and Ashton Kutcher and has a team made up of ex Nokia, Twitter and MIT people. Here’s our . |
American Express To Release An API For Digital Wallet Platform Serve; Focuses On Data And Personalization | Leena Rao | 2,011 | 10 | 9 | Over the past year, American Express has been making several key payments partnerships with technology companies and launched its take on the digital wallet, Serve integrates a variety of payment options into a single account that can be funded from a bank account, debit, credit or charge card. The company has also landed a number of for Serve. Separate from Serve, American Express’ in the payments space include , and for personalized deals. We sat down recently with Harshul Sanghi, American Express’ new VP of Enterprise Growth Group to chat about Serve, the digital wallet and how the company plans to dominate the payments space. Sanghi, who was formerly the Managing Director of North American venture activities for Motorola, His focus is on further developing the Serve brand and forming these partnerships that help expand the card member base into new segments. Sanghi explains that while every payments company (including even Google) and credit card company is releasing their own version of the digital wallet, it’s whats in the wallet that’s truly important. “The wallet that has the most brand partnerships is what customers are going to gravitate too,” he says. And this wallet needs to tie in seamlessly with loyalty programs, and virtual currencies, which is why AmEx a few weeks ago. And the wallet needs to store offers and deals as well so that consumers don’t have to carry around coupons or discounts to a store. While commercial partnerships are definitely key to the broad appeal of Serve, part of Sanghi’s master plan in furthering Serve’s presence is a connection with developers. “It is difficult for mobile payments startups to scale without partnerships with some of the major financial partners,” he explains. “There are a lot of regulation in terms of moving money, and fraud management and we want to be the partner mobile payments startups think of in this space.” Sanghi says that in first half of next year, American Express will open up the Serve platform to developer community. Another area where American Express is focusing its efforts when it comes to Serve is on data. “Data is going to be a differentiating factor in the payments space,” Sanghi explains. A personalized experience is going to be key in providing the digital wallet that consumers flock to, he says. And it’s not just purchasing data that American Express is looking to mine. Intent data, structured data and unstructured data will all play a part of delivering a personalized payments experience. That means analyzing things such as Tweets, Twitter sentiment, your social graph, Facebook updates and more to deliver targeted offers. “The magic is going to be in marrying structured data and unstructured data for results in real-time,” Sanghi says. With 100 million card members, American Express’ data opportunities are massive. But privacy is a key concern in this data mining, says Sanghi, and the company has to be sure they aren’t abusing these issues, especially as it relates to financial information. For example, the company’s Facebook partnership, in which AmEx cardholders can link their cards to their Facebook accounts to receive deals, is an opt-in experience. Across the board, American Express is going to be announcing many more commercial partnerships including those with gaming and telecommunications companies. Serve will also soon enter new geographies, says Sanghi, which will also be a key part of the platform’s growth in the next year. Of course, American Express has competition in the digital wallets space, and companies like and even Google are also looking to compete. And fellow credit card companies such as to dominate the digital wallet. Regardless, all of these companies need to fine-tune their offerings so that the benefit to consumers is clear. The battle to become the de facto digital wallet is just starting, and which payments provider that will create the technology that keeps consumers engaged has yet to be determined. |
KickSat: Send Tiny DIY Satellites Into Space | John Biggs | 2,011 | 10 | 9 | Ground Control to Major You: for a mere $300 you, too, can send a satellite into space. How? Well, a young man from Ithaca, New York (it’s gorges) is planning on sending a box of tiny, self-contained, solar-powered radio transmitters into space – about 300 in all – and watch them as they transmit from near orbit. Like a murder of tiny space crows, the Sprite satellites will peep out their location and – for $300, your initials – as they circle the planet. From the project page: Sprites are the size of a couple of postage stamps but have solar cells, a radio transceiver, and a microcontroller (tiny computer) with memory and sensors – many of the capabilities a bigger spacecraft would have, just scaled down. This first version can’t do much more than transmit its name and a few bits of data – think of it as a shrunken down Sputnik – but future versions could include any type of sensor that will fit, from thermometers to cameras. Once the satellites are in orbit amateur radio operators will track them using the . These little guys only have basic functionality right now but the creator wants to add thermometers and other sensors in the next generation. The will fund at $30,000 and there’s still a way to go. However, it may be worth it if you want to fly your very own Sputnik. |
Apple Has 1,000 Engineers Working On Chips For The Post-PC Era | Erick Schonfeld | 2,011 | 10 | 9 | As we ponder what will happen to Apple , I keep coming back to a conversation I had a few weeks ago with a veteran Silicon Valley CEO who knew Jobs. This was just after Jobs had of Apple. We got to talking about why Apple is so well-positioned in the post-PC era, and this executive zeroed in on something you don’t hear too often. “Steve Jobs told me he has 1,000 engineers working on chips,” he said. “Getting low power and smaller is the key to everything.” The number was startling when I first heard it. I knew that Apple its own chip design team in 2009, but figured it had to be a few hundred people at most, not 5 percent of Apple’s non-retail workforce. (Apple employs more than 50,000 people worldwide, 30,000 of them in its retail stores). Apple started designing its own chips because Intel and AMD were still stuck in the PC era. Apple needs chips that are powerful enough, but also very low power. Battery life is one of the most important features of a mobile device. Apple’s latest A5 processor, which first , will now as well. Not only is the A5 twice as fast as the A4 in the current iPhone 4, but it the battery life with 8 hours of talk time (versus 7 hours). Not only are Apple’s processors extremely power efficient, but Apple is also removing the hard drives from its products and replacing them with flash memory chips. It’s not just iPhones and iPads, the MacBook Air’s storage is also flash. All of Apple’s products are moving in this direction. When you combine these two fundamental changes at the silicon level, “form factor no longer becomes an issue,” explained the Silicon Valley CEO. You can put a computer into anything. Mobile phones and tablets, certainly. TVs, perhaps. But what else? It is only limited by the imagination of Apple’s engineers and what makes sense from a product point of view. When Jobs retired, TechCrunch writer MG Siegler cautioned against focusing too much on the next iPhone. Jobs left Apple knowing that a string of post-PC products will be introduced in the years ahead. MG : It’s the longer roadmap that should really be the grand finale in the Jobs’ fireworks show. Talking to sources in recent months, there has been one common refrain: that the things Apple is working on right now are the best things the company has ever done. These are things that will “blow your mind”, I’ve been told. Jobs himself said when he resigned, “I believe Apple’s brightest and most innovative days are ahead of it.” Now we get to see what he meant by that. Jobs rebuilt Apple from the silicon up. It is the company itself which is his greatest product. And like all of his products, everything fits together: the chips, the hardware, the software, the industrial design, the developer platform, the tightly controlled manufacturing, the marketing, the retail stores. This machine is proving adept at making and selling mobile computers—phones and tablets. But remember also that we are just at the beginning of the post-PC era. The iPhone launched 4 years ago, the iPad only a year and a half ago. It is becoming practical to put a computer into anything. Of course, just because you can, doesn’t mean you should. And if anything, Apple is very disciplined about choosing what to do (another ). But if you believe that post-PC devices will include more than just phones and tablets, it is not such a crazy idea that one day Apple will be churning them out as well. |
Fritz Demopoulos On How The East Can Be Won | Jason Kincaid | 2,011 | 10 | 31 | The latest session at TechCrunch Disrupt was a fireside chat between Sarah Lacy and accomplished entrepreneur Fritz Demopoulos — an expat who arrived in China in the late 90s while he was working at News Corp and went on to start (and sell) two very successful companies. The conversation, which you’ll find a recording of above, focused largely on the issues facing Western companies as they try to make their way into China. The issue, Demopoulos says, is that companies can’t simply look at China as an important market. CEOs and other executives have to be looking at China as a commitment, both from an organizational and financial perspective. Many companies, he says, scoff at the idea of putting several years or more into building a sustainable presence in China (in part, in some cases, because they’re public). But they need to be willing to do this. Asked about the lack of acquisitions in China, Demopoulos said he’s hearing that more bankers and lawyers are actually working on M&A style transactions, so it looks like they’re picking up. He added that the shortage of M&A historically may step from a Romance of the Three Kingdoms , where “everyone hates each other”. Finally, the talk turned to what it takes to start a successful company in China. There’s a widely held perception that you need to ‘know someone’ with connections to the Chinese government to make it there, which Demopoulos addressed. To succeed, he says, you need to do one of four things: As for the government connections? Demopoulos didn’t dismiss that entirely (there are some times when they can help), but he said that when you think about it, there are probably tens of thousands of people with various connections. In some ways, it’s sort of a buyer’s market for those who need them. |
Why China Is Ready For ECommerce | John Biggs | 2,011 | 10 | 31 | Ecommerce in China is ready to take off and, more important, it’s ready to reach great heights on its own terms. Lu Dong of , Haifeng Ye of , and Fangfang Wu of Greenbox are three ecommerce pioneers who are, as we speak, redefining online sales in China. “China is ready for ecommerce,” said Lu Dong. “People are moving to buying almost anything online.” Haifeng Ye agreed. “We have a greater opportunity here in the Chinese market to make something new. In america the ecommerce market is quite established,” he said. “We can use ecommerce to build a new retail format.” He calls online sales a huge opportunity. The three agreed that the biggest fish in the China ecommerce sea was and the importance of Taobao as a sales platform in China cannot be ignored. The company helps with settlement, logistics, and service and all three agreed that Taobao is “great.” These entrepreneurs see things improving over the next few years and noted that ad rates have risen 30-50% while outside investment is down slightly but not enough to make these panelists worry. Lu Dong said it best: “It’s important to raise money but it’s more important to make money.” |
How Groupon Is Losing China | Greg Kumparak | 2,011 | 10 | 31 | At this point, it’s no secret: Gaopeng (Groupon’s nascent effort in China) is a train wreck. By September of this year, the seven-month old endeavor had already accumulated $46.4 million in net losses with just $2.1 million in revenue. Meanwhile, a number of competitors in the region are predicting profitability within months. In today’s “Attack Of The Clones” panel at Disrupt Beijing, a few of Groupon’s fiercest Chinese competitors took the opportunity to, well, attack. While obviously a bit subjective, their words do provide some insight on how a company so massive in the US could tank so dramatically on the other side of the world. Panel guests Yinan Du (CEO of 24Quan) and Xing Wang (CEO of Meituan) agreed on at least two points: Groupon rushed their entry into China, and failed to embrace the culture (or hire people who could). According to Yinan Du, “Groupon didn’t have a chance from the beginning”. “For any startup to be successful, there has to be a magic team behind it. They hired magic, but no one who understands both worlds. You have to be bi-cultural, you have to have someone who really understands how things work in America and how it differs in China.” Amongst the noted differences: margins. While Groupon happily pulls somewhere around 40% margins on deals in the US, no competitor in China is seeing anything above 14%. Both panelists also harped on Groupon for , calling it shortsighted and clearly not properly thought out. “They were focusing on PR rather than the business itself.”
Alas, Groupon was unable to send a representative as they’ve recently entered their quiet period in preparation for their impending IPO. Had they been on stage, however, there may not have been much they could have said to dampen the onslaught. [slideshow] |
Disrupt Beijing Finalists: So Good We Had to Pick Six | Sarah Lacy | 2,011 | 10 | 31 | Memo to Chinese startups: You made for a late night of deliberations. We typically pick five finalists. There were a few companies that were clear picks, captivating everyone– from the judges to the staff to people we talked to in the hallways. Then there was another group that each had passionate advocates on staff, making for some tough decisions. Ultimately, the staff got down to six we liked and couldn’t agree on which one to eliminate. So in the spirit of rule breaking, we decided to pick six finalists. Here they are in alphabetical order:
Anquanbao’s
8 Securities’
Moglue’s
OrderWithMe’s
TouchPal’s
UnitedStyles’ These companies will duke it out in front of our finalist judges just before lunch. You won’t want to miss the drama! |
Xiaomi’s Lei Jun Shares How His Company Will Take On Apple | Jason Kincaid | 2,011 | 10 | 31 | Most recently, Jun is the founder of Xiaomi Tech, a startup with a very ambitious goal: it wants to take on the likes of Apple in the mobile phone industry, by producing a high quality phone that’s sold at prices significantly below the competition. You’ll find a video of the interview above, and here are some of the highlights: Asked about the fact that his new company includes many former employees of tech giants, Jun recounted a joke — he said that if he could merge Microsoft, Google, and Motorola, he’d be able to take on Apple. So he went after employees from each of them as he builds a new mobile phone company. Lacy then asked about the difficulty involved with launching a new phone, which isn’t something many (if any) startups in the US would attempt. Jun pointed out that the Chinese mobile phone market is more open that the US market — unlike the United States, where the phone you use is largely dictated by the carriers, in the Chinese market the phone manufacturer doesn’t need to maintain good relationships with carriers, as consumers can buy and use what they want. Jun also discussed the long-term strategy for Xiaomi: they’re going to sell their hardware at around cost, then make money through the software, which gets updated every week. The phone sells for 1999 RMB, which is not cheap, but is less expensive than competitors — it’s around $240 in the US. The company has faced unforseen challenges in managing the supply chain (recent floods impacted some suppliers), but Jun says he’s confident they’ll push through them. Asked whether Jun thought Chinese consumers would favor his phone over, say, Apple, Jun said that he thinks that there will be some sway, but that it won’t be a crucial factor. He points out that half of the OS’s users are international. Asked about his success as an investor, Jun outlined his strategy. Five years ago, he identified three key areas to invest in: mobile internet, ecommerce, and community/social networks. Those twenty or so investments have proven to do quite well: Jun says that the companies now have over $1 billion cash combined. Finally, to conclude the interview, Lacy asked Jun about his key advice to entrepreneurs. His answer? “Do what you want to do. Do what you like to do.” |
null | John Biggs | 2,011 | 10 | 7 | null |
TechCrunch Disrupt Beijing – Watch Day 2 Streaming Live from China | Jon Orlin | 2,011 | 10 | 31 | null |
TechCrunch Disrupt Beijing: What’s In Store For Day Two | Alexia Tsotsis | 2,011 | 10 | 31 | In case you haven’t read through the 50 or so China posts on the site right now, the last day of our first will be starting at 9 am Beijing time/6 pm PST today. If you need even more reason to watch, catch Sarah and I above, talking about who we’re most excited about in And for some reason you can’t make it to China this morning/afternoon, you can find the livestream |
Instagram Now Has 12 Million Users, 100K Weekly Downloads In China Alone | Alexia Tsotsis | 2,011 | 10 | 31 | co-founder took the stage today at to talk about the photosharing startup’s international efforts and how it plans to deal with the onslaught of clones, including over ten Chinese copycats. During the talk Systrom revealed that the startup has now hit the 12 million user milestone, with 100K weekly downloads coming just from China, impressively. The app sees around one download per second worldwide, with that rate increasing on the weekends. “The amount of interest people have [in Asia] is huge,” Systrom said, “Japan is our second largest market.” It seems like the international appeal of Instagram wasn’t that unexpected; The app was translated into 10 different languages four weeks after its launch, with two of those languages being simplified versions of Chinese. Systrom also confirmed that the company was in contact with Chinese companies like Weibo, in order to better tailor the social app to the uniqueness of a market that has little access to Twitter and Facebook. , these user engagement numbers are made even more poignant by the fact that Instagram , with a promised Android version still in the works. |
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