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Zuckerberg Surprised That People Are Surprised He's On Google+ | Alexia Tsotsis | 2,011 | 7 | 3 | Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg was at a major media event, with everyone from to covering the fact that the founder established a Google+ profile, building Circles that include former Facebooker and current Facebook CTO While many were that the real Zuckerberg would join a competing social service, tech blogger texted Zuckerberg himself to confirm, “Name drop moment. Zuckerberg just texted me back. Says “Why are people so surprised that I’d have a Google account?” In case anyone is still doubting that it is the real Zuck on there, Scoble tells me that Zuckerberg indeed meant Google+ account when he referred to Google account. But the real question is, why people so surprised that Zuckerberg would chose to be on Google+? Perhaps the answer lies in the precedent set by Google founders Larry Page and Sergey Brin, who seem to have shied away from interacting on Facebook as themselves. (According to Steven Levy, Brin on Facebook as a pseudonym. Google Chairman Eric Schmidt is also to be on the service, independently of when Mike ). Page’s and Brin’s behavior aside, plenty of (Myspace Tom ) have shown that it’s perfectly normal to partake and enjoy competitive services, and that it shouldn’t necessarily be considered an act of espionage. I for one just hope Zuckerberg is more prolific on Google+ than he is https://twitter.com/#!/Scobleizer/status/87321128783192064 |
Google’s Six-Front War | Semil Shah | 2,011 | 7 | 3 | While the tech world is buzzing about the launch and of Google’s new social network, , it’s worth noting that Google isn’t just in a war with , it’s at war with multiple companies across multiple industries. In fact, Google is fighting a multi-front war with a host of tech giants for control over some of the most valuable pieces of real estate in technology. Whether it’s social, mobile, browsing, local, enterprise, or even search, Google is being attacked from all angles. And make no mistake about it, they are fighting back and fighting back, hard. Entrepreneur-turned-venture capitalist laid the groundwork for this in his post , saying Larry Page “seems to have determined that Google is moving into war and he clearly intends to be a wartime CEO. This will be a profound change for Google and the entire high-tech industry.” Horowitz is exactly right. Before I investigate each battle front in the war, it’s important to highlight the fact that perhaps no other tech company right now could withstand such a multifaceted attack, let alone be able to retaliate efficiently. Sure, might get pushed around by Facebook, so it Twitter into iOS5, and sure, and Apple have their own over digital media and payments, but at the end of the day, Google is in this unique and potentially highly vulnerable position that will test the company’s mettle and ability to not only reinvent itself, but also to perhaps strengthen its core. Let’s take a quick look into the , which may now resemble more of a military complex, plotting out strategies and tactics for this war. Google must battle on at least six fronts simultaneously. Users have a choice between ( ), ( ), (Apple), and Google’s offering, . The speculation is that Facebook is interested in a browser, too, since Mozilla co-founder is an employee, but that hasn’t happened yet. More recently, the social browser has captured some peoples’ interests, and last week $30M in financing, adding Facebook board members and to its board. Andreessen obviously knows a thing or two about browsers. Though most browsers enable users to power their search by Google as an option, Googe’s Chrome offering isn’t the lead browser by market share, and . Apple’s iOS took the mobile world by storm in 2007 with the first iPhone. Then Google’s operating system roared alongside it, turning into a of downloads, as said, only recently to be by Apple’s release of a phone with Verizon. While Android may have more installs, they don’t have the developer community to build killer apps because the Android marketplace (both for hardware and firmware) is highly , whereas iOS is about symphonic . All the along, there’s been ample speculation about whether Facebook was its own mobile phone device, or as the company has publicly hinted, how it would integrate social layers into different mobile operating systems and platforms. Whether we’re on the desktop/laptop, a tablet, or a phone, Google wants to be powering our search, and this is where they , though Microsoft’s has been able to acquire an impressive number of clicks. While everything is fine today, there are some troubling warning signs. On desktops and laptops, people will continue to use a variety of browsers, though they end up a lot of time on Facebook, which scares Google because of the trend of people moving slowly from search to discovery. This, however, won’t shift overnight. For mobile devices, it’s trickier. Most iOS users navigate the web either through Apple’s own browser, Safari, and can have it search by Google. On Android-powered tablets and phones, Google controls more of the user-experience, including search, navigation, and application integration. While this is going on, users are trying their hand at realtime search on or , looking for content directly within , or using hashtags to better cut through and sort the web. When users search for things on Google and click through, Google gets a little cut of that click. It knows how to drive traffic online and be paid handsomely for it. Driving and directing traffic that originates online into the real world, however, is a different story. As stated, when we search online for places to go and then end up there in real life, the place itself does not have a clear sense of what drove them there. This is why the Daily Deals space is so red-hot and competitive, as it helps to close this major, valuable loop. If you search for a restaurant via and make a reservation, the merchant knows exactly what drove you to the door. That’s why , which only used to provide reviews, offered the to check-in for credit after Foursquare built up a head of steam. The opportunity here is so complex yet fragmented that it drove Google to $6B for just six months ago. In local, Google is competing against Groupon, but also Amazon (which has a in ), and a host of smaller ( ) and forthcoming deals companies will continue to roll out. This is just the beginning. Yes, again, Google is fighting a war with Facebook. That much is obvious. What’s less obvious is how other social networks have been able to capture bits and pieces of our identities, leaving Google without any information of who we are. Users have been pumping personal content into blogs like , networks like , and even asking search-related questions on . Although we may all predominantly search via Google, the company is struggling in the social field. That is why Larry Page stepped in as CEO, why he bonuses to social, and why Google+ is their social sword and shield to fight back and capture user data, despite it being late in the game. Strategically speaking, even if Google+ doesn’t hold or catch fire, it will probably cause its rivals to pause for a moment and consider a range of short- and long-term implications. If you think the browser, mobile, social, local, and search isn’t enough, check out Google’s combatants in enterprise—just some names like Microsoft, , , and , among others. Google’s could go up against , though that doesn’t seem likely. Google competes with IBM and Oracle on enterprise search (such as ) and email and work collaboration tools ( ). Google’s are seen as a potential entry point into enterprise computing, going up against hardware giants like , , and . Furthermore, Google may be trying to push Android into the enterprise, which would apply even more pressure on Research in Motion. There’s VMware, which offers Zimbra, PaaS, and presentation tools, to name a few. And, of course, there’s Microsoft, which competes with Google for a wide range of productivity applications. For all of Google’s consumer-facing brands and applications, its strength in enterprise sometimes is underestimated despite the fact that they currently hold many excellent positions. It’s easy to pile on Google given their size, their wallet, and their global influence and impact. They are the goliath, and have been for many years, and are now facing many challenging tests, all at the same time. And while it’s a fun parlor game to sit around and pontificate about how Google’s reign might be over or how slow GMail loads, the reality is that no other company could compete legitimately on so many different battlefronts against so many different competitors. There’s no way Google can win each battle, and they must know that, but they will win some, and it will be fascinating to see how the company both adapts and stays the course along the way. Google is not going to go down without a fight, and it could take another decade for all of these battles to play out. The company has some of the world’s brightest engineers, a stockpile of cash, and incredible consumer Internet mind share, worldwide. Sit tight. |
Sexual Activity Tracked By Fitbit Shows Up In Google Search Results | Leena Rao | 2,011 | 7 | 3 |
Yikes. Users of fitness and calorie tracker may need to be more careful when creating a profile on the site. The sexual activity of many of the users of the company’s tracker and online platform can be found in Google Search results, meaning that these users’ profiles are public and searchable. You can click to access these results. The Next Web earlier this morning. As you may know, the Fitbit Tracker is an compact wearable device that clips onto clothing or slips into a pocket and captures, through accelerometer technology, information about daily health activities, such as steps taken, distance traveled, calories burned, exercise intensity levels and sleep quality. Users can also log nutrition, weight, additional activities (including sexual activity) and other health information on the site in order to gain a complete picture of their health. So why are Fitbit users’ profiles able to be searchable in Google? It’s not really Fitbit’s fault. When you create a profile, the default privacy setting allows profiles to be found in search results (Google, Bing, etc). If you don’t unclick this setting, it will obviously make your profile public for anyone to find. So these users may be unwittingly sharing their most intimate details (i.e. kissing, hugging and more) when recording their sexual activity to calculate how many calories they have burned in a given period of time. Of course, sex does count as exercise, but you might want to think twice before recording it on Fitbit and making your profile open to the public (TMI, anyone?). And to mitigate this issue, perhaps Fitbit should change its privacy defaults. Thanks to for the tip. |
Stars Versus Great Teams | Erick Schonfeld | 2,011 | 7 | 4 | It is a truism in Silicon Valley that star employees are worth ten to one hundred times as much as ordinary employees. This calculus is especially true for software engineers, but also applies to product managers, sales executives, and other key employees. If you are a star performer, the sky’s the limit in terms of what technology companies will be willing to attract or keep you. We’ve seen this again and again. Facebook bought Friendfeed for just to get its highly talented engineers (co-founder Bret Taylor is now Facebook’s CTO). Last year, Google made a counteroffer to a staff engineer to keep him from going to Facebook. And this year, it paid two top product managers as much as to keep them from going to Twitter. Hire stars, and not only will they work harder than everyone else, but they will also lift the performance of the entire company. I’ve witnessed this happen at both technology and media companies. The stars come in and raise the bar, and everyone else picks up their game as a result (either out of pride or fear, or some combination of the two). But not everyone can be a star. And sometimes stars fade when they are taken out of the environment in which they became stars in the first place. A once looked at star Wall Street analysts and concluded that they did not tend to do as well when they moved jobs. Further suggested that some of the factors for moving stars successfully include how similar the new company is to the old one in terms of culture and resources, and the ability for the star to bring along his or her team. None of these studies look at the dynamics of technology startups. They are focussed more on Wall Street or large corporations, where stars are defined differently. Yet a recent by co-founder Bill Taylor tries to apply the argument to Silicon Valley and says that great people are overrated. Taylor brings up the Boston Bruins and the Dallas Mavericks as counterexamples that great teams can do better than rivals with star individual players. When I retweeted this article a few weeks ago, Square COO Keith Rabois almost immediately , “he is wrong.” Oh yeah, I asked, what about the Bruins? To which Rabois replied: http://twitter.com/#!/rabois/status/83570556460470273 Imagine if you could recruit everyone and offer them virtually limitless upside in stock—that is how hot startups recruit. People like Rabois are selling the dream every time they hire someone. It helps if they’ve delivered on that dream before or can demonstrate so much traction that it makes it hard for the best hires to turn them down. Because who doesn’t want limitless upside? What it comes down to, then, is whether the company doing the recruiting is a star in its own right. Star players want to work for star companies. And there is no limit to how many stars a startup can hire, especially if it is paying mostly in stock. But that doesn’t mean that stars don’t need to be team players. The best stars lead the people around them. They motivate, inspire, and lead by example. They also help their teammates whenever they can because they know they cannot do everything alone. Hiring stars versus hiring a great team is a false choice. You should always try to hire the best people you can find: people who are stars or have the potential to become stars. Especially in tech startups, stars attract other stars because the smartest people want to work with other smart people. Hiring mediocre players is the surest way to create a mediocre company. The best stars are those who can work with other people, and lift the entire organization. A company filled with stars can end up with the stars feeding off each other and forming a great, cohesive team. They hide each other’s weaknesses by picking up the slack between them just like a great basketball team is always passing the ball to whoever is in the strongest postion at any given time. Too many stars in one company can also create rivalries that take the company down. But those people then cease to be stars. Companies are a team sport. You can’t be a star if your team sucks. |
This $650 Board Is For Audiophiles Only | John Biggs | 2,011 | 7 | 4 |
Are you someone special? Are you rich? Do you wildly misunderstand electronics? Then you’re probably an audiophile, that rare breed of human who thinks that goofy add-ons like this ridiculous $650 board will make a piece of electronics (or analog gear) sound better.
These ridiculous boards reduce “noise” as well as electromagnetic interference because, as we all know, wood is like lead. Fools and money, etc. etc. |
Mark Zuckerberg Is The Most Followed User On Google+ | Alexia Tsotsis | 2,011 | 7 | 4 | In what has to be somewhat embarrassing for and , Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg is the most followed user on Google+, according to the counter. The Facebook CEO has 21,213 followers, compared to the Google CEO at 14,798, Google social czar Vic Gundotra at 13,783, Google co-founder Sergey Brin at 11,629, blogger Robert Scoble at 11,389, Google spam avenger Matt Cutts at 9,153, TWIT founder Leo Laporte at 7,566, Google’s Bradley Horowitz at 7,187, TechCrunch’s MG Siegler at 6,579 and blogger Gina Trapani at 5,649. Google+ Statistics creator Boris Veldhuijzen van Zanten explains the CEO’s unlikely popularity thus, “He has the most friends in the world, they made a movie about him, and he is more handsome than the Larry and Sergey.” I think the answer goes more like this; The more someone receives related to Google+, the more followers they get, hence MG Siegler at #9. I’m at . Discuss. |
Realtime Search On Hiatus While Google And Twitter Figure Themselves Out | Alexia Tsotsis | 2,011 | 7 | 4 | Sometime on the morning of July 3rd, Google Realtime Search mysteriously went offline and, assuming it was just another example of things breaking on a holiday weekend, most tech publications ignored it. Well as it turns out the reason behind its disappearance was , on July 2nd Google’s access to Twitter’s expired and it pulled the feature in order to rethink its strategy. Bing, which had a similar deal with Twitter still has access to the firehose. What gives? While no one really has any details as to why the deal fell through, Google that it disabled the project to incorporate Google+ results and Twitter says that it will continue to work with Google on other projects. “Our vision is to have google.com/realtime include Google+ information along with other realtime data from a variety of sources,” a Google spokesperson Search Engine Land. It’s not like Twitter will be pulled entirely from the service, Google can still crawl and organize publicly available tweets (each tweet is its own webpage). Google+, which bizarrely still does not have search, might eventually become a dominant enough service that users will want Realtime search that is free of Twitter noise. Google might have also treated the deal as a learning experience, like when Eric Schmidt and then launched Android. But can Google’s Realtime search succeed without Twitter? I know that I for one will be using it a lot less unless Google’s public tweet crawl is comprehensive enough to supplant a service like , or Twitter’s own meager search. So is Twitter declaring independence from Google or is Google declaring independence from Twitter? I really don’t know — it might simply be a question of the right price. But if I had to guess who had the upper hand in negotiations it would be the latter, with Google now suffering from a huge case of “You don’t know what you’ve got until it’s gone.” [Insert random speculation about Google buying Twitter here.] [youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xWwUJH70ubM&w=630] |
null | Greg Kumparak | 2,011 | 10 | 25 | null |
HP's webOS Boss Encourages Team Through Early Reviews | Jordan Crook | 2,011 | 7 | 4 | We even said that “WebOS and the Palm TouchPad are nearly perfect, an excellent amalgamation of everything that was ever right about Palm.” Granted, perfection in this industry lasts about as long as a battery cycle, and we had plenty to gripe about, but as far as the goes, we have hope. But day-one reviews haven’t been as understanding as we were, which has prompted ’s webOS boss Jon Rubinstein to blast out an internal letter of support to both the TouchPad engineers and the webOS 3.0 development team encouraging them to keep up the work and continue believing in the product. In the email recovered/leaked , Rubinstein even goes so far as to compare the TouchPad to Mac OS X, which heard words like “sluggish” and “lack of apps” during its first round with critics. “The similarities to our situation are obvious,” writes Rubinstein. He goes on to note that the developer teams and engineers should place weight on both the harsh reviews and the glowing ones. He explains that the webOS audience “gets that webOS has the potential for greatness,” while maintaining that the flaws pointed out in reviews were “rightly” reported. He comforts the teams by reminding them that many of the issues barked about by critics are already known to the company, and can be fixed with a few simple OTA updates. The only problem we see with Rubinstein’s plan is that one of the major issues we have with the TouchPad is it’s shoddy performance. Sometimes it’s slick as a whistle, and at other times, it lags like a worn out kid after a day at Disneyworld. An OTA update likely won’t breathe life into that 1.2GHz processor, but luckily, really shines on the TouchPad, and any improvements to this beautiful OS are very welcome. And in the words of Rubinstein, “it’s a marathon, not a sprint.” Here’s Rubinstein’s full email to employees: Team, Today we bring the HP TouchPad and webOS 3.0 to the world. The HP team has achieved something extraordinary – especially when you consider that it’s been just one year since our work on the TouchPad began in earnest. Today also marks the start of a new era for HP as our vision for connected mobility begins to take form – an ecosystem of services, applications and devices connected seamlessly by webOS. If you’ve seen the recent TouchPad reviews you know that the industry understands HP’s vision and sees the same potential in webOS as we do. David Pogue from the New York Times says “there are signs of greatness here.” (I’ve included links to David’s review and others below.) You’ve also seen that reviewers rightly note things we need to improve about the webOS experience. The good news is that most of the issues they cite are already known to us and will be addressed in short order by over-the-air software and app catalog updates. We still have work to do to make webOS the platform we know it can be, but remember…..it’s a marathon, not a sprint. In that spirit, Richard Kerris, head of worldwide developer relations for webOS, reminded me yesterday of the first reviews for a product introduced a little over ten years ago: “…overall the software is sluggish”
“…there are no quality apps to use, so it won’t last”
“…it’s just not making sense….” It’s hard to believe these statements described MacOS X – a platform that would go on to change the landscape of Silicon Valley in ways that no one could have imagined. The similarities to our situation are obvious, but there’s also a big difference. Like David Pogue, our audiences get that webOS has the potential for greatness. And like me, they know that your hard work and passion, and the power of HP’s commitment to webOS, will turn that potential into the real thing. [via ] |
SleepWell Wi-Fi Handler Adds Hours Of Battery Life | John Biggs | 2,011 | 7 | 4 | Wi-Fi is a battery hog. When stuck among a bunch of other Wi-Fi devices, most mobile gear will keep polling the access point for data while the other devices get their share. As Duke Today notes, “this means the battery drainage in downloading a movie in Manhattan is far higher than downloading the same movie in a farmhouse in the Midwest.” New software, called SleepWell, puts the device to sleep while it’s waiting its turn, essentially allowing devices to grab everything they want at once and then hand off the download to the next device. Designed by grad student Justin Manweiler and his advisor, Romit Roy Choudhury, the system can add hours to the average battery. Manweiler described the system by analogy: “Big cities face heavy rush hours as workers come and leave their jobs at similar times. If work schedules were more flexible, different companies could stagger their office hours to reduce the rush. With less of a rush, there would be more free time for all, and yet, the total number of working hours would remain the same.” “The same is true of mobile devices trying to access the Internet at the same time,” Manweiler said. “The SleepWell-enabled WiFi access points can stagger their activity cycles to minimally overlap with others, ultimately resulting in promising energy gains with negligible loss of performance.” The technology is in its early stages right now but some mobile manufacturers, including Nokia, are looking into implementing it. |
South Korea Promises Paperless Schools By 2015 | Jordan Crook | 2,011 | 7 | 4 | The death of print has long been on the minds of journalists, writers, bloggers, etc. For those of us who grew up reading our books on paper, asking for magazine subscriptions, and watching our dads read the paper (on paper) at the breakfast table, it’s hard to imagine a world without a book case, and the handful of novels we never got around to picking up yet. In South Korea, there seems to be much less fear over a paperless world, as the country has promised to replace all the paper in its schools by 2015. The peninsular nation plans on spending over $2 billion developing digital text books, which would then be available on students’ school-supplied tablets. Along with more traditional learning content, students will also get access to paperless materials through a cloud-based system. With the cloud in place, sick students, or those brave enough to pull a Ferris Bueller, will have access to their learning materials from home, such as reading lessons and math tutorials. While I might miss the smell of fine-pressed ink-stained wood sometime soon, I’m sure South Korean students will enjoy their digital text books. And we can all agree that Mother Earth is probably quite happy to hear the announcement. [via ] |
The Way We Eat | Semil Shah | 2,011 | 7 | 4 | “Where should we grab some food?” Perhaps no other question has motivated more consumer technology entrepreneurs. Well, I say that only half-jokingly. After the age of the Yellow Pages, we’ve all used multiple services that guide us to a restaurant seat. We’ve hunted for restaurants on Google, researched options on , and offered reviews on . The trend for how we search for restaurants has shifted from directories (phone books) to guides (ratings) to people influencing our decisions. Today, there’s stiff competition amongst mobile services to drive us to the next restaurant, whether it’s a daily deal, a check-in reward, an recommendation, or simply word-of-mouth, serendipitous suggestions that filter through conversations on various social networks or, heaven forbid, in real life. These services help drive us to eateries and hopefully create incentives between restaurants and customers to foster repeat business and loyalty. But the restaurant business is hyper-competitive. Many don’t make it. Turnover is the norm. And for those that are able to survive, either because of killer food or location, the majority of them offer adequate food, service, and ambiance, yet are able to turn a buck because we keep going back. Instead of competing on quality, most compete on offers and optimize to fill open seats. For the most part, it at least appears the majority of restaurants worry less about word-of-mouth goodwill and are more focused on accumulating badges and stickers to paste underneath their menus as patrons window-shop. Having spent a decent portion of my life working in restaurants, I know markups and margins on tickets are healthy, even excluding those businesses with liquor licenses. People are perfectly willing to fork over two to three times the cost of goods sold, even if those goods are not so tasty. The time saved, the ease of ordering, and the feeling of eating out somehow translates to a juicy premium. All the while, oftentimes the food is suspect, both in terms of quality and nutritional value. Yet we continue to go back, line up, gorge ourselves, and repeat. And as the economy continues to recover (slowly), individuals and especially families are under enormous pressure to stock up at big box retailers and focus on food quantity at the expense of quality. While restaurants and these services continue to compete for our dining dollars, a host of new consumer web startups have mushroomed to fill in some gaps and create interesting new ways for us to chow down. New companies like and create local marketplaces for homecooked meals that are either delivered or available for pickup. Instead of heating up frozen pizza or ordering mediocre takeout, these services help home cooks build up a reputation (and a little extra income). aim is slightly different, to free those who actually make the food (the cooks) and bring them into our homes so that we can have friends over for dinner and turn our apartments and houses into restaurants. While these services focus on meals in the house, others focus on getting us out of the house and to grub with new folks. has a clever model for driving groups of friends or strangers to a new restaurant, offering the proprietor a number of seats under one pre-fixe bill while giving diners the chance to meet people at new or favorite dining establishments. is a service for people to eat homecooked meals with others at the cook’s home, whether in the city you live or while on the road. (Tip: Hunt for the , it counters much of the Silicon Valley groupthink.) We’ve all experienced the monotony of eating with the same people over and over again, or getting caught in tourist-trap restaurants while traveling, longing for that elusive home-cooked meal with local fare. Grubwithus and Housefed help break that monotony, and that’s a very good thing. All of this is happening because of the convergence of a number of trends. Our economy is struggling to regain its footing. We’ve become more educated about the dangers of poor nutrition, the hazards of frozen food, and dietary effects of portion sizes. Diabetes is a legitimate health threat. We have to commute more, from suburb to suburb, as job tenures become shorter. We marry later in life. Then, we divorce. Both parents work, or there’s just one parent. Kids don’t take as much of an interest in cooking their own food, let alone having any curiosity as to where it comes from. And with technology to make us more productive and/or to distract us, we oftentimes get caught in situations where we turn one of humankind’s most social habits into an anti-social event, a means to an end. As , the author of , might say, we’re also “Eating Alone,” at least some of the time, and we’re content with it. Despite the popularity of the Food Network, one of its most attractive personalities, , wasn’t able to take healthy eating and education mainstream—his show, , had six episodes in 2010 and was yanked off the air after two spots in 2011 because of low ratings, replaced by . We are separated from what we eat. We lose that connection as to where the food came from in the first place, where it was planted, harvested, and how it ended up prepared on our plate. That’s what excites me about this particular batch of startups. They may or may not create a Google-like technology giant, but that’s not the point. They’re riding social networks and creating peer-to-peer economies, allowing us to connect with others around food and offering an interesting (and sometimes cheaper and healthier) alternative to frozen dinners and overpriced restaurants. Technology will probably never be able to answer the question “Where should we eat?” That’s OK. What’s important is that how we answer the question could be different in the future, and that’s a good thing. After all, we’re not just what we eat—we’re also where we eat and whom we eat with.
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How This Year's Tech IPOs Are Doing, And Who's Next | Leena Rao | 2,011 | 7 | 4 | Bubble or not, 2011 may go down as the year of the tech IPO. Not since the last bubble have we seen so many technology companies clamoring to go public. And halfway through the year, we still have many more companies who will be listing in the next six months. Here’s a roundup of the tech companies that have gone public, where they are trading now, and who we can expect to see ringing the bell next. (NYSE:LNKD) Professional social network LinkedIn probably had the biggest IPO in terms of hype this year because it was one of the first big social media companies to go public. After at $45 per share on the New York Stock Exchange, LinkedIn per share on May 19, giving the company a $7.8 billion market cap. In the first day of trading, shares popped up to as high as $122.70, soaring past a $10 billion valuation. But these high stock prices didn’t sustain and LinkedIn’s value per share dropped significantly over the next month, dropping as low as $63.71 per share. However, the company’s stock rebounded last week, with shares as high as $95.50 on Friday, eventually closing at $94.54. That’s a 110 percent increase from its initial pricing. (NYSE:P) Similar to LinkedIn, music streaming service Pandora also drew to its IPO, which debuted on the New York Stock Exchange under the desirable, single character symbol ‘ The company priced its IPO at (valuing the company at $2.6 billion), but per share on June 15 (up 25 percent), valuing the company at $3.2 billion. In the two weeks following the IPO, Pandora’s stock took a bit of a dive, reaching as low as $12.16 per share. But like LinkedIn, Pandora’s shares saw an uptick over the past week, closing at $20.04 on Friday, which is up 25 percent from the company’s initial pricing in June. (NASDAQ:YNDX) Russian search engine Yandex, which began trading on the NASDAQ on May 24, priced at but opened at $35, giving Yandex a market cap of roughly That’s a bigger market cap than both LinkedIn and Pandora. Yandex has experienced highs and lows in the past month with the value of its stock, but the fluctuations have not been nearly as extreme as some of its contemporaries in the tech IPO market. Yandex’s stock dipped to a low of $29.73 in mid-June but rebounded quickly and closed on Friday at $35.69, which is a 40 percent increase from its initial pricing. (NYSE:FIO) Fusion-io, the developer of flash- memory technology for companies, debuted on the New York Stock Exchange on June 9. The company priced its IPO at , valuing Fusion-io at $1.5 billion, but opened at giving the company a nearly $2 billion market cap. Fusion-io’s stock has performed fairly well over the past month, reaching a high of $36.32 last week. The company’s shares closed at $31.19 on Friday, up 64 percent from its initial pricing. (NASDAQ:AWAY) Vacation home rental service HomeAway debuted its IPO last week, pricing at HomeAway, which listed on the NASDAQ, saw its shares pop over in initial trading last Wednesday, giving the rental service as valuation of $3 billion. HomeAway’s shares have maintained its value, relatively speaking, in its first week of trading, reaching a low of $34.92 and a high of $42.30. On Friday, HomeAway’s shares closed at $38.42, a 42 percent increase from the stock’s pricing. (NYSE:RENN) Chinese social network Renren actually went public before LinkedIn, pricing its IPO in early May , with a total offering size of $743.4 million. The company was pitching itself as a “Facebook” like site for the Chinese market, which resulted in an increase in the share price range from the initial $9-$11 to $12-$14. That increase resulted in a boost in the deal size to $743.4 million from the original price of $584 million. RenRen opened at $18 per share, but the stock has since plummeted to as low as $6.23 per share. On Friday, RenRen closed at $9.25 per share, which is a 34 percent drop in value from the initial pricing. (NYSE:RATE) Bankrate provides free rate information to consumers on more than 300 financial products, including mortgages, credit cards, new and used automobile loans, and more. The company priced its IPO at , valuing the company at $1.5 billion. The company’s shares, which began trading in mid-June, have remained fairly steady at this price, reaching a high of $17.89. Bankrate closed at $17.13 per share on Friday, up 13 percent. Real estate listings giant Zillow filed its S-1 so we could be seeing the company hit the public markets in the next two months. Zillow wants to raise $51.75 million in the offering, and while revenue has grown for the company year over year, Zillow has taked a loss for the past three years. Zillow on the NASDAQ under the symbol “Z.” Travel search engine Kayak filed its S-1 last November, aiming to raise No word on when the search engine is planning to IPO, but Kayak did reveal in the past year, however net income is down. The company will trade on the NASDAQ under the symbol “KYAK.” Daily deals giant Groupon just filed its S-1 in June, aiming to raise in the public offering. Though the company has an impressive revenue run rate of for 2011, but has drawn for a lack of profits and the fact that the founders have taken a significant amount of money off the table. The company is in the Fall. Zynga just filed for its this past Friday, revealing Revenues grew 392 percent in 2010, up from $121.5 million in 2009. In the first quarter of 2011 alone, the company’s revenues reached $235 million (or a $940 million revenue run-rate), which is up 134 percent from the first quarter of 2010. Both Zynga and Groupon may be ahead of Facebook, which is expected to file in the coming year. We know an IPO is , it’s just a matter of when. The company has been with bankers to discuss IPO size and time frame for an offering. And the company just added (and an IPO veteran) Reed Hastings to its board. It’s been thought that the social network will go public by but it could happen before this date. We’ve heard Glam Media, one of the largest publishing and advertising networks on the Web, is for an IPO as early as this Fall. The company has hit in annual revenue, reaches 90 million people a month in the U.S., and is in the process of hiring bankers to lead its offering. Online reviews and Yelp has on an IPO, but the timeline is unclear. Yelp is now at 5 , mostly in the U.S., and has raised in funding. Disclosure: My is an employee of Groupon. |
U.S. Vice President Joe Biden (@VP) Joins Twitter | Leena Rao | 2,011 | 7 | 4 | Following President Barack Obama’s announcement that he will actually start Tweeting from @BarackObama, U.S. Vice President Joe Biden has also under the account This seems to be the Vice President’s first official active Twitter account. The White House Blog reports that Biden’s staff will be providing updates on the latest news and announcements coming out of the Office of the Vice President, “as well as a behind the scenes look at Veep-life.” In the first Tweet from VP Biden’s account, his staff wrote “VP & Dr. B hope you take time to think about our troops & military families this Independence Day, Happy 4th from OVP! @JoiningForces.” The White House and the 2012 Obama campaign is on a Twitter rampage. As we reported a few weeks ago, as the 2012 campaign heats up, Twitter has become a centralized platform for communications between candidates and the general public. President’s 2012 campaign managing Obama’s Twitter ( ) and Facebook accounts (which were previously managed by the DNC). And Obama himself will begin posting updates on both Facebook and Twitter. And last week, the White House announced its first ever town hall on Twitter, which will take place this Wednesday. Citizens will be able to participate by Tweeting questions with the hashtag #AskObama, and can follow for updates. Via a you can also watch President Obama respond live via webcast, with Twitter co-founder Jack Dorsey moderating the meeting. It’s unclear if VP Biden will be participating in this forum but it definitely makes sense for the VP to have his own formal Twitter account ahead of the campaign. |
Livescribe Shuts Down App Developer Program | Jordan Crook | 2,011 | 7 | 4 | We were excited back in 2009 to hear that . I remember, we were particularly impressed with the fact that a device so small, like the Pulse smartpen, could ignite such a thriving developer community. Unfortunately, has chosen a new path, shutting down its developer program to focus on “cloud access, storage and services.” While this shut down won’t immediately affect Livescribe’s app store immediately, certain applications may lose compatibility as future software updates roll out. Here’s Livescribe’s explanation: Our recent introduction of Livescribe Connect, which enables customers to easily send notes and audio, as a pencast PDFT, to people or destinations of their choice like Google Docs, Evernote, email, and Facebook, is an important step in this direction. Applications in our online store will remain available for download and purchase pending compatibility with future Livescribe software updates,” signed, the Livescribe developer programs team. We thought with a couple solid years under its belt, Livescribe’s app store was in prime shape to power through 2011. And our disappointment is only a faint echo of the discontent among Livescribe developers, and those with pens like the Pulse and Echo whose main selling point is the app store itself. Officially, the Livescribe app store SDK and developer site will be pulled on July 22, and no more application submissions will be accepted after that time. On July 8, in just a few short days, the developer forums will be shut down. [via ] |
Lenovo And NEC Launch PC Joint Venture In Japan | Serkan Toto | 2,011 | 7 | 4 |
The joint venture and is now reality: the companies today they have finally set up “NEC Lenovo Japan”, which Lenovo holds a 51% stake in (NEC holds the rest of the shares). The joint venture is limited to the Japanese PC market at this point, but NEC Lenovo instantly gained the bragging rights to call itself the country’s biggest PC maker (about 25% market share). What’s interesting is that NEC and Lenovo hint at broadening the partnership at some point in the future, both with regard to products and target markets. NEC president Takasu says the two companies “will continue to discuss and assess new opportunities with this global partnership”, while Lenovo CEO Yuanqing is “determined to expand this strategic alliance beyond the PC business”. Lenovo has reportedly paid NEC $175 million in company shares to get a foothold in Japan, the third biggest market for computer hardware in the world. |
GammaRebels aims to be the Ycombinator for Central Europe | Mike Butcher | 2,011 | 7 | 4 | As we’ve said before, there is a of private tech accelerator springing up all . The latest to join the wave is , a new program based in Warsaw, but aiming to attract international startups, with the focus on CEE (Central and Eastern Europe). What makes this worthy of note is that the have been stalwart startups for the last few years. Most notably is , who was previously a cofounder with Codility, consults with UbikBC.pl, knows all the Seeedcamp guys and is a referrer at HackFwd.com. In addition there is Piotr Sienkiewicz, who was the the cofounder of the first commercial software distributor in Poland, and Kamila Sidor, the lead organizer of first Startup Weekend in Poland. The official language for the programme will be English, not Polish etc. Here’s the gen on the programme: The accelerator offers a predefined equity investment of up to €5,000 (PLN20,000) in exchange for 10% equity, mentoring support and office space during the program. This is a low stake and a high percentage compared to Springboard in the UK and Seedcamp, but then the costs (staff, offices, living) in Poland are much, much lower. Seedcamp puts in around £50,000 per team and takes a variable stake of around 8%-10% of its startups, while a brand new one, in the UK, puts in £100k per team and takes a set 8%. The three month programme kicks off on 1st August and wraps at the end of October with a Demo Day in Warsaw, although some organised pitch sessions may take place in parallel with local events like to EPS in Cologne or E-nnovation in Poznań). Mentors are being drawn from C-level execs, often from country managers of the likes of Intel in Poland – there is a lot of exec and CEO talent in these countries that often doesn’t drift towards Western Europe much. Something to take note of. People called “liason mentors”, who run accelerator programs in various countries will also be involved, including David Bizer from HackFWD, Germany; Jon Bradford of Springboard in the UK; Alex Farcet of Startup Bootcamp; and Paul Bragiel – v/o Ventures, in the USA. “We believe that cooperation among accelerator programs makes startups ecosystem more effective and is very much beneficial for the startups in the program” Kowalczyk tells me. Smart move. Why Warsaw? Well, there’s a large pool of technical talent, graphic designers and marketing specialists are a lot cheaper than in London, and the cost of living is also cheaper than London – although it’s on par with Berlin… |
Declaration of Insurance Independence (Part II): Unleash The Health IT Startups | Mark Suster | 2,011 | 7 | 4 | , I outlined the drivers of the including the following: Consider the following convergence of factors to comprehend the scale of the need for innovation in healthcare: The only hope to address this convergence of factors is to reshape how care is delivered and paid for. Among other things, it’s imperative that there’s greater efficiency — an area where technology has demonstrated it can play a role time and again. Whereas technology has brought incremental efficiency in healthcare, organizations such as Qliance and OneMedical have utilized technology for radical transformation. It’s no coincidence that they are backed by the founders of Amazon, aQuantive, Dell, Expedia, and venture firms such as Benchmark — all organizations that dramatically altered their sectors using technology to disrupt their industries. The graphic below shows how Qliance has earned a Net Promoter score higher than Google or Apple in a sector that has the lowest average Net Promoter Score of any industry. You can also see Yelp reviews for e and to get further anecdotes. Interestingly, in the described earlier, doctors consistently tell me that half to two-thirds of their patient interaction time doesn’t need to be face-to-face (the legacy insurance reimbursement model requires face-to-face appointments for the doctor to get paid). They can deliver high quality medicine without being in the same room as them. By spending less time on insurance bureaucracy, they are able to spend 2 to 8 times more time with patients and still make a reasonable living. These longer appointments aren’t simply a luxury. They’ve demonstrated they can save money and improve outcomes. In the legacy model, a typical 7-minute appointment only allows the doctor enough time to address one symptom with limited time to address the underlying issue. One doctor operating in a non-insurance primary care model gave me the example of a female patient describing symptoms of terrible headaches. He said that in the old model, he would have ordered an expensive CT scan to understand if there was something going on. Instead, over the course of a longer discussion, he found that the lady’s mother-in-law had recently moved into her house. Instead, he “prescribed” setting boundaries, going for walks and other stress-relieving measures. Of course, the reshaping of healthcare isn’t limited to the DIY Health Reform movement. McKinsey just released a study of employer reaction to the new health law as reported in an article entitled, “Is Employer Sponsored Health Care the Next Jurassic Park?” If employers have been looking for an exit to employer-sponsored health benefits, they may have found one in the new health reform law. According to the just released employer survey by , upwards of 30% of the 1,300 employers surveyed “definitely or probably” will drop health coverage altogether and instead pay the $2,000 per employee government mandated fine. The flee rate gets even higher when focused on those employers with a high awareness of the new law – more than half (50%+) employers indicating plans to exit health benefits. Putting aside the political issues, the implication is that even more people will become healthcare consumers where they’d previously had that decision handled for them. While I’d expect that the impact of the DIY Health Reformers will be more immediate, the opportunity only increases with government-driven health reform. The CTO of the U.S. recently laid out just how big the opportunity is in the video below. Due to the scorched earth in Health IT for startups, it’s understandable why mainstream venture investors have been reluctant to invest. Despite my own heavy background in Health IT, I intentionally stayed away as I’ve stated to many people “health IT is where startups go to die” as the pace of decision making and go-to-market challenges have been epic. Many people’s reaction to healthcare in the U.S. is similar to MidEast Peace. That is, they know it’s a severe issue but it seems almost hopeless. Let me leave you with a final thought of how this country solved another seemingly intractable problem starting about 100 years ago. At the start of the twentieth century, another indispensable but unmanageably costly sector was strangling the country: agriculture. In 1900, more than forty per cent of a family’s income went to paying for food. At the same time, farming was hugely labor-intensive, tying up almost half the American workforce. We were, partly as a result, still a poor nation. As Atul Gawande’s goes on to describe, the U.S. addressed that massive issue to the point where we now spend 8% on food and only 2% of the workforce. TechCrunch contributor and venture capitalist has repeatedly stated that entrepreneurs should be solving the truly big challenges in our society — health, education and energy — instead of creating yet another social tool, location-based service or trivial application. As economist so eloquently put it, “We do not have a debt problem in the US economy, we have a healthcare problem.” Sticking with the legacy fee-for-service insurance model for day-to-day healthcare threatens individual, business, and government budgets. The lowest hanging fruit is removing the 40% “insurance bureaucrat tax” which is why the Declaration of Insurance Independence will unleash the wave of innovative new care and payment models that will be powered by innovation of the technology industry. Get busy! [youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=33gs0kDfle0&w=560&h=349] |
Japan Last Country To Resume All PlayStation Network Services On Wednesday | Serkan Toto | 2,011 | 7 | 4 | It took them a while, but today [JP] that they will fully restore all Network services plus streaming media-on-demand service Qriocity in Japan this Wednesday. Sony’s home market is the in which the company is done picking up the pieces after that from last April. The hacking attacks affected more than 100 million PlayStation customers worldwide, with Sony expecting the (financial) damages to amount to $170 million this financial year. The company started restoring services affected in other parts of the world (including the US) . |
Samsung Drops One Of Its Many Law Suits Against Apple | Jordan Crook | 2,011 | 7 | 4 | It’s looking like and got a bit carried away there for a while. Apparently the web of litigation surrounding the mobile giants has become too complicated for Samsung, who has chosen to drop one of its counter-suits against Apple. Specifically, the South Korea-based company will dismiss its counter-suit against Apple’s alleging that the line of phones and tablets mimic the and . Nam Ki Yung, a spokesman for Samsung, today explained to Bloomberg that the company dropped the suit “to streamline legal proceedings.” However, this one suit won’t slim down Samsung or Apple’s legal files any time soon. The companies are wrapped up in litigation in five different countries, including Germany, , the U.K., Japan, and of course, here in the States. “Samsung will continue to actively defend and protect our intellectual property,” said Mr. Nam. This is just the latest in a string of patent suits and counter-suits between the two tech giants. , Samsung revised its patent violation allegations against Apple, and added sarcastically that what Apple is perceiving as “copyist,” is merely competition, despite “Apple’s efforts to avoid such competition.” Hopefully Samsung’s streamlined vision will end this copycat drama once and for all. [via ] |
Touchnote appoints new CEO to drive mobile photo-to-postcard startup | Mike Butcher | 2,011 | 7 | 5 | Been a while since we’ve heard from , the mobile app startup which allows you to snap a picture and send it to someone as a physical postcard. Last year they signed a deal with Sony Ericsson to get to the app pre-instaled on handsets. Now they’ve appointed former Microsoft exec, Oded Ran, as new CEO. Oded was previously head of consumer marketing for Windows Phone in the UK. Co-founder and current CEO Raam Thakrar is stepping into a business development role. They’ve also announced 150,000 downloads on Android. Figure are not available for the iPhone app. But Touchnote has apps for Symbian, Windows Phone 7 and HP WebOS, alongside its website. Touchnote lets you send a physical postcard of an image to anywhere in the world for $1.49, Euro 1.49 or £1.50. Competitors to Touchnote are mostly on the iPhone such as Postcard, PostThis and a couple are on Blackberry and Android. Backed by private investors, Touchnote’s twelve-person team is wholly based in London, with print facilities in London and New Jersey. |
Amazon Acquires UK-Based Online Book Retailer The Book Depository For International Expansion | Leena Rao | 2,011 | 7 | 4 | Amazon is acquiring one of its competitors today, that the e-commerce giant has bought The Book Depository is a UK-based online bookseller offering over six million books for delivery worldwide. Financial terms of the deal are not disclosed. So why buy this company? The Book Depository, is one of the fastest growing booksellers in Europe. The retailer has over a million customers and also comes with a Dodo Press imprint and a fulfillment centre in Gloucester, UK. The company ships its books free of charge, worldwide, to over 100 countries. Amazon currently offers international sites in Germany, Japan, Austria, Canada, China, France, the UK and also has a Spanish-site for Spanish-speaking countries. But the company no doubt wants to expand beyond these countries and The Book Depository expands its reach with an established customer base in Europe and a fulfillment center. It’s unclear from the release if The Book Depository will become an Amazon-owned but independent site or if will be folded into the Amazon platform. I wouldn’t be surprised if we see Amazon making similar moves in other countries. We know that the company is looking to expand to India, and an , the current Amazon of India, would make sense. |
Blippy's New Direction? Daily Deals For Artisanal Goods At Heartsy.me | Alexia Tsotsis | 2,011 | 7 | 5 | Earlier this summer we wrote a post on purchase sharing site decline, titled While Blippy CEO didn’t want to reveal what the team’s next step was at the time, we’ve now got a few more details to share as to what the company’s new venture will be — , a daily deals site for handmade goods and other products. Heartsy.me has been around in incognito mode since February 2011 and has gotten considerable media pick up as a “Groupon for Etsy” mainly because of its novel twist on the concept of a social deals platform, letting users vote on what deals they want to see. Even without knowing anything about the team behind it. Basically Heartsy.me allows artisan sellers to offer group discounts like “$18 for $38 store credit at A Pocket of Posies Jewelry” or “$15 for $31 at Soapin’ It Up Soaps.” Buyers are redirected through the site to the seller’s Etsy listing and can use their Heartsy.me voucher there. After they buy a deal, users are given a unique link that they can share with friends to receive an additional $5 off their next Heartsy purchase. The Heartsy.me community curates the featured sellers, using a novel feature to gage user interest, where users are given five credits at $1 each in order to give potential deal feedback. Once a seller in waiting reaches 60 “Yes” votes, the deals get passed on to the Heartsy.me community editors who complete the final step of curation. The site monetizes through its VIP program, where for $8 monthly VIPs can get around a $10 credit at most of the featured stores, in addition to the Heartsy discount. VIPs also get early access and collection perks. The model seems to be taking off, since February the site has seen more than $564K in sales, with 47k vouchers sold from 646 sellers. Kumar wouldn’t give me much more detail (ultimate plans for the site are still in flux he says) but did confirm that Heartsy evolved from the learnings at Blippy and that Blippy will continue to run independently, ” As a team we haven’t made any decisions about Blippy, we’re primarily focused on this,” he said. |
This Wood Bike Looks Like It Came Out Of Minecraft – In A Good Way | Devin Coldewey | 2,011 | 7 | 5 |
The last wooden bike we saw, , was considerably more… well, elegant than this one. Yet I think if I had to have one as my everyday ride, I’d go with this one from Chicago-based Lagomorph Design. It’s got a simple, blocky beauty, and I’m guessing that black walnut exterior covers up a more traditional metal frame. The sculpting on that brake system is also eye-catching. This thing would probably get stolen in about five seconds, but hey. There’s not a lot of information beyond , so just feast your eyes and maybe hope you hear about it again. [via ] |
null | John Biggs | 2,011 | 7 | 4 | null |
Leaked Roadmap Outs 4G Touchpad For August, Pre 3 And "Opal" In Fall | Devin Coldewey | 2,011 | 7 | 5 |
The is here ( ), but it’s far from done. There are more varieties of the webOS tablet to hit, to begin with, and we’ve heard that a is on its way as well. Then, there’s the Pre 3, which was supposedly . These vague visions of the future have all been cast in perfect clarity by this allegedly leaked roadmap document. Obviously you can see the information right there at the top of the article, so this text is redundant, but hey. , we’ll be seeing both AT&T 4G and 64-gig flavors of the original TouchPad later this summer, in August to be precise (though it’s not clear whether that’s shipping or announcement timing). Then come autumn, we’ll have the mysterious “Opal” device, speculated with good reason to be that 7-inch device. I’m really interested in that, personally; webOS was designed with screen real estate efficiency in mind, so it’s a nice match — better than the Android 2.2 on those 7″ Galaxy Tabs at any rate. The Pre 3 is supposed to hit in the fall as well. I’m definitely most excited about that mini-TouchPad. I think we all know the Pre series is a dead end at this point, which isn’t a pleasant thing to admit, but it’s true. The Pre 3 should have |
On The Eve Of One Facebook Event, The Spartans Prepare For Another | MG Siegler | 2,011 | 7 | 5 | Tomorrow morning at their headquarters in Palo Alto, Facebook is holding an event to show off an “ ” new product. Our sources tell us that product with be the long-rumored for full-on video chat goodness — just a week after arch nemesis Google unveiled Hangouts as . Given that news has already leaked out, it’s certainly possible that Facebook could surprise with talk of or as well. But one thing . You’ll recall that is the HTML5-driven mobile application platform that Facebook has been quietly building for months with the help of a group of third-party app developers. While some of those very developers believe Facebook’s intentions here is to break up the control Apple (and Google) have over the mobile app space, Facebook started freaking out when we reported that. . And it has continued, even with the group of third-party developers working on the project — they’re affectionately known as “Spartans”. We previously reported that after our initial story, Facebook began reaching out to the Spartans, reminding them that the information of the project was confidential (while telling the press this stuff was really “nothing new”). Since then, Facebook has stepped up their game as well. We now hear that there’s been a lot of stern talks with the Spartans, telling them that the project is not about going after Apple. But it’s not really working. “I look at these apps and how content rich they are and how they have nothing to do with Apple and everything to do with Facebook and assume that they think we are retarded,” is how one put it. One developer says that the quality of the apps on the platform is really surprising — in a good way, naturally. Apparently, there are going to be a ton of games that will be a part of the Spartan launch. This shouldn’t be too surprising, HTML5 gaming has been something Facebook has been pushing. And Zynga is believed to be heavily involved in the project. So when will Spartan launch? Facebook is pushing to have everyone ready by July 15. One source expects a formal unveiling to be sometime between then and August 1. While we’ve been hesitant to provide many screenshots of what the project looks like since it could give away sources, we have secured the one below which has been slightly altered. You’ll note that it looks like a modified version of the current Facebook mobile site. Of course, two things you won’t find on the current mobile site are right there staring you in the face: Games and Apps — with notifications too! The blue bar along the top is referred to as “chrome” (yes, it shares a name with a Google product). Developers say it’s the glue that binds all the different mobile sites together. That’s one key — these HTML5 apps are said to reside elsewhere, not on Facebook’s own servers (at least right now). So instead they have to make external calls to pull in the Facebook “chrome” to make the apps look like proper Facebook apps. For a better idea of how this may work, check out set up by Matt Kelly, a Facebook engineer who works with developers. Undoubtedly, this site will be pulled, but it essentially shows how HTML-based navigation is set up on a third-party site. It looks good, and is fast. And it contains talk about things such as to use remote calls to send action alerts inside of a mobile web app — “This can be used for re-engagement, like telling a friend it’s their turn in a board game.” Also worth noting is a separate tip we got pointing to . Apparently, the Facebook Javascript SDK underwent some big changes in the past week, including a lot of references to FB.Native, iOS, and Android. One developer notes that the native code mentions seem largely related to orientation, and wonders if that’s tied in to the iPad app. There is also a bunch of code for “mweb” (mobile web), which apparently is a new parameter that allows apps to auto-login when coming from Facebook’s Platform (yes, Spartan apps). Previously, we speculated that Project Spartan and the iPad app release could be related. In fact, we had heard that Facebook and Apple were even working together on some things, at least loosely. While the ultimate goal of Spartan is clearly for HTML5 prevail, it is possible that Apple simply doesn’t believe it will anytime soon and is happy to help Facebook try their hand, while also helping the web in general move beyond Flash (think of the position Flash would be in without all those games requiring it). Notes one developer: Facebook wants a cut of the Apple’s mobile app market, that’s been clear this entire time. Perhaps it’s not war against Apple — maybe Apple is just going to ‘gift’ Facebook the share of their market (the HTML5 share) in exchange an alliance being formed whereby Apple get’s some exclusive access to Facebook’s 600 million-plus users and thereby cutting out Google (exclusive to some degree, Facebook is too open for it to be fully exclusive). In this theory, it’s not Facebook Spartans vs. Apple, it’s Facebook/Apple Spartans Vs Google. The Spartans have been told to code specifically for the iOS flavors of Safari — both iPhone and iPad. The truth is that it’s hard to know Facebook’s exact intentions at this point — too much seems in flux right now and Facebook is holding their cards pretty close to their chest after a series of leaks. Certainly, the HTML5 angle will be played up as “open” rather than being against either Apple or Google. But the larger reality remains: Facebook wants this HTML5 app platform to succeed so the mobile world is not fully controlled by those two companies. And they want their own Credits platform to dominate mobile. Facebook has to play nice and say the right things for now since they do not have their own phone — . Speaking of that, there’s not much here, but we have heard that the work on Facebook phone project continues. One whisper has them working closely with Samsung. Another has them working with Pivotal Labs as well. Facebook will disavow all knowledge of this of course. But it takes nothing more than a quick rational thought to realize that for the future Facebook needs to be in control of two things to maintain power: and . The thought that they be working on both is what’s really crazy. And none of this speaks to the other big projects Facebook has going on, like their music launch. Which will probably be at their next f8 which the last we heard will be at the end of August. And yes, . This summer is shaping up to be a very exciting one for Facebook. It begins tomorrow. |
Laser Research Company TeraDiode Starting Humble, But Hopes To Make Ray Guns Soon | Devin Coldewey | 2,011 | 7 | 5 |
The ongoing search for cartoon-style is likely to continue for a while, given the by even large, ship-mounted lasers. But that shouldn’t stop researchers from looking into it and making handheld lasers, even if they’re super weak. You have to start somewhere, right? Early guns were just tiny cannons, and inaccurate past 50 feet. You were better off with bows and arrows. Same story here. is a new company made up of MIT types who plan on putting together a new type of laser. Not new to the world, really, but new to weaponization. It’s a diode laser, which is different from a solid state (i.e. traditional) laser in that… well, in ways I can’t really figure out. Anyway, they’ve got a new method of combining and directing the laser that they think could lead to multi-kilowatt lasers that could be carried in your hands rather than mounted on a destroyer. The one shown in the picture above is obviously an industrial cutting laser, but it demonstrates the power they can get from the technology. There’s a sweet video on their , and a brief explanation of their “defense” strategy . [via and ] |
Aussie Retailer May Shame Rivals By Offering Free HDMI Cables | Devin Coldewey | 2,011 | 7 | 5 |
The cable controversy continues, and people will continue buying $50 3-foot HDMI cables, but anyone with sense isn’t paying more than . One Australian retailer is fed up with their fellow electronics stores’ habit of trying to sell expensive cables with new TVs and computers, and has decided they’re going to show them by just giving the cables away. The chain, Kogan, notes that the cheapest cables will perform the same as others, and that the other stores are pretty much deliberately ripping you off with their talk about specs and so on. They might expand it to PCs as well, though of course I think our readers are pretty savvy, so they won’t get conned on something like cables, but the average window shopper or out-of-touch TV buyer might easily get upsold to a hundred dollar purchase they don’t need. It’s good to see a retailer fighting the good fight here. |
WordPress 3.2 Released Into The Wild; Downloaded More Than 330K Times In 24 Hours | Rip Empson | 2,011 | 7 | 5 | in less than 5 months. But time marches on, and so does the music. Yesterday, , also known as “Gershwin”, was released to the public, and in just 24 hours, the latest iteration of the website and blogging platform has been downloaded over 330,000 times. They grow up pretty quickly these days. Why are so many people downloading the latest iteration? , the goal for was “lighter and faster”, meaning that Gershwin makes a play at removing extra code, rewriting certain queries for speed optimization, etc. User interface has also seen a little bit of tweaking in the new version, as you can see from the comparison between versions 3.1 (left) and 3.2 below: Another cool feature of v3.2 is what WordPress is calling “Distraction Free Writing” (DFW), which replaces “Full Screen” mode, with a new mode that has the dashboard fade into the background while the user writes to offer a less cluttered viewing experience. The team has also been referring to this as “zen mode”, and apparently users are feeling the power of the zen: According to Mullenweg, beyond an attempt to make the entire WordPress experience faster and adding a few tweaks to admin design, the team has also updated the default theme to be compatible with micro-blogging, HTML5 and to work on any screen size. All much needed enhancements. (For full disclosure, TechCrunch runs on WordPress.) This is WordPress’s 15th major release, and the website platform now boasts over 15,000 plugins. What’s more, WordPress 3.2 will not be compatible with Internet Explorer 6, something that Microsoft . Contributors to WordPress will also now be given credit in a “Credits Screen”, so that finallycredit may be given where credit is due, especially for all those that have participated in the open source development of the 15 WordPress iterations and counting. For a full rundown of all the new updates to Gershwin, . |
Dutch Ad Creatives Land A Job With Clever Twitter Hack | Alexia Tsotsis | 2,011 | 7 | 5 | [vimeo 25812909 w=620] Dutch Bas van de Poel and Daan van Dam have creatively come up with a way to use Twitter to get the attention of people in a position to give out jobs, by taking advantage of a core and more importantly manipulable Twitter design element, the “Followers” box. Looking for a summer job at an ad agency, the two created five Twitter accounts and uploaded pics that spelled out the words “H””IR””E””U””S.” They then followed a series of creative directors in succession, trying the trick out on , , , , , and others. Boondoggle Amsterdam’s eventually hired them. People looking for the Twitter version of Alec Brownstein’s “Googling yourself is a lot of fun. Hiring me is fun too” , look no further. Vous êtes arrivés! |
Sony's Tablet-Related Rube Goldberg Weirdness Continues | Devin Coldewey | 2,011 | 7 | 5 | [youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fcO95XPIHpg&w=640&h=390]
The new are coming at things from a rather different direction, in both design and promotion. The dual-screen and wedge-shaped form factors, as well as the Playstation branding, set them apart from the other guys… and these super-weird but intriguing ads are quite unique as well. The Rube Goldberg ad has a long and illustrious history ( being the one most impressed on my memory), and these are pretty ingenious, as they often are. I’m not sure I’m “getting” them (there’s some Engrish lurking in there), but perhaps it will become clear in the next three installments? There’s plenty of time, since they don’t come out until . [via ] |
The startup called Huddle parries a lunge from the Google+ Huddle | Mike Butcher | 2,011 | 7 | 5 | As we noted , a fairly substantial startup called (with $14.2m in VC) has been legally pondering the part of the new Google+ service . Essentially, Huddle.com is about group messaging and collaboration in an enterprise sense. Google+’s Huddle is a group texting app available to consumer Android users. Today Huddle.com post outlining its feelings on the matter. They also told us their lawyers have sent a letter to Google, but had not yet had a response. They went on to say: “The Huddle team has worked hard to build its brand visibility worldwide and maintaining this is extremely important. We have contacted Google about this matter, and our hope and preference, of course, is that this issue reaches a timely and amicable resolution.” Essentially their argument boils down to being around since May 2007, having half of their users in the US, launching at DEMO in the US, being one of the first six apps on LinkedIn’s platform, partnering with InterCall in Chicago, and HP in Palo Alto, and other US partners. Huddle is also in the US, with offices in San Francisco and a London home base. They don’t say it explicitly, but the meaning is clear: Huddle is well known as company in its own right, both in the US and globally, so back off our name guys. However, it doesn’t look like Google is going to play ball. Their Huddle app is essentially consumer-focused, whereas Huddle.com is aimed at business. It may be that Google feels it has strong enough grounds to stick with the name. However, we understand Huddle may have trademarks associated with the word. And, at the end of the day, shouldn’t Google remember what it was like to be a startup once, battling a bigger player? |
Nestio Raises $750,000 To Make Apartment Searches Suck Less | Rip Empson | 2,011 | 7 | 5 | , a startup that aims to calm and organize the frantic process of searching for an apartment, announced today that it has closed a $750,000 seed funding round. The round was led by , with contributions from a number of angel investors, including , , , and . The startup plans to use its recent funding to build out its development team and is currently working on adding a number of features that will provide deeper context and transparency to apartment listings. While the service currently only offers web and mobile support to New York City, the startup also plans to use its new capital to begin rolling out support for additional cities in the next few months. The New York-based grad is building a service that allows users to save apartment listings from across a variety of sites all in one place, using Nestio’s platform. The startup hopes to put an end to long email chains, messy spreadsheets, and multiple tabs in one’s browser. Nestio enables users to edit listing information, add comments, and to collaborate with roommates in realtime during apartment searches by sharing listings, photos and notes. Nestio also recently released the first version of its iPhone app to let users to keep track of the places they view on the go, so that apartment searchers can upload photos and notes right after a walk-through of a new apartment, for example. With comparable services like Apartments.com, Padmapper.com and Hotpads.com, to name a few, already in the space, Nestio certainly has its work cut out. However, optimized mobile functionality is a huge leg up for Nestio, as the majority of mobile apartment search services out there leave quite a bit to be desired in terms of mobile functionality. Plus, with Nestio intending to provide a supplement to the value of listing services like Zillow and Trulia, there’s something to be said for a startup that aims to tame the apartment search process and doesn’t compete with these well-established, highly inventoried services, and instead acts as a logical extension. For those looking to learn more, check out our original writeup of Nestio . |
Educated Buy? Providence Equity Partners To Acquire Blackboard For $1.64 Billion In Cash | Rip Empson | 2,011 | 7 | 5 | , the maker of learning and education software for enterprises and schools, that it is being acquired by a group of investors led by , a private equity firm that specializes in media, entertainment, communications and information investments. Providence has also invested in several for-profit educational companies, like Education Management Corporation and Archipelago Learning. The acquisition is an all-cash deal valued at $1.64 billion, with Providence assuming approximately $130 million in Blackboard debt. The educational software giant, which went public on NASDAQ back in 2004, will be dishing out $45.00 in cash for each share of common stock owned by its shareholders as a result of the acquisition. According to Blackboard’s press release, the company has been “evaluating strategic alternatives” to its current trajectory in an effort to provide its stockholders with better value (than presumably what they’ve been getting up to this point). Since rumors over a potential acquisition began percolating back in March, and the company more broadly announced that it was seeking prospective buyers on April 18 of this year, Blackboard’s stock has largely hovered above $40.00 per share. (Compared to its being priced at $37.16 a share on April 18, and averaging over $35 the last few years, $45.00 a share at acquisition does indeed seem to be relatively positive return on investment for its sharedholders.) According to Blackboard’s press release, the transaction must be approved by a majority of stockholders, and is subject to other closing conditions and regulatory approvals, but the deal is expected to close in the fourth quarter of 2011. Once the transaction is finalized, Blackboard will return to being a privately held company. Blackboard said that it will remain headquartered in Washington and will continue to be led by its senior management team; however, when a company is purchased by a private equity group, and goes back to being a private company, changes are presumably ahead. Although the announcement made no specific mention of cost or personnel cuts, these tend to be an inherent part of this kind of acquisition, so Blackboard may be on its way to a bit of a shakeup — or at least some streamlining and trimming — in the coming year. While Blackboard’s products are certainly widely-used, with over 5,000 education institutions using the company’s software, Blackboard has not always had the , especially in terms of user experience. In fact, my college opted for its own customizable educational software for this very reason. Yet, both because Blackboard got a head start on the market and has become fully entrenched in universities and across secondary education systems and because its user experience has left room for improvement, many education startups have popped up with their own models aimed at snatching up some of Blackboard’s market share, like , , , to name a few. Blackboard acquired for $53 million back in January of this year, and in March of 2010. For more, check out Blackboard’s announcement . |
Card-Case Speaker Is A Speaker Like A Card Case | Devin Coldewey | 2,011 | 7 | 5 |
I wouldn’t expect much in the way of warm and well-regulated sound from , but I sure do like the way it looks. Flat, portable, and extremely simple. Probably difficult to find outside Japan, though, and $65 is about three times what I’d pay for it. [via ] |
Google Hires Microsoft Product Veteran Sanaz Ahari | Michael Arrington | 2,011 | 7 | 5 | , who at 23 was the lead product manager in Microsoft history, has left Microsoft after seven and a half years. Her last job was the Principal Group Program Manager for Bing, and she was part of core leadership team. She’s 29 now. She gone now, she confirms, and has taken a job at Google. She’s part of (last seen collecting to stay at Google) team and will lead display advertising products in Seattle and the Pacific Northwest. Ahari was one of the handful of senior people responsible for search quality and relevance and was also part of the senior product team during the Bing development and launch period. |
With "Beyond Check-In" Notifications, Foursquare Goes Android-First | MG Siegler | 2,011 | 7 | 5 | Over their history, Foursquare has been an iPhone-first company. The app initially launched on the iPhone back in 2009, and new features have typically rolled out to iPhone first. But with a new feature today, Foursquare has shaken things up, going Android (and web) first. The new feature is a nice one: . Unlike the push notifications for check-ins you’re used to seeing on the Foursquare mobile apps, these new Notifications focus on other activities on Foursquare “beyond the check-in”. That means things like comments on check-ins and photos, alerts when friends sign up, alerts about tips, alerts when you’re ousted as mayor, swarming alerts, etc. But again, just as interesting is the new Android-first approach. As Foursquare notes: People in the Android-iverse, you’re first to play with this; download today’s update to get started. For the rest of you, head over to foursquare.com to see what it’s all about (just click on ‘notifications’). At the bottom of the post, Foursquare reiterates that this feature is Android and web-only for now, but promises that iPhone and BlackBerry users will get the new feature “as quick as possible”. Foursquare has hardly been the only major app to focus on iPhone-first over the years. In fact, many of the major ones still do. This perplexes some people since Android has a larger overall market share. Might this be a sign of things to come for other companies? Or was it simply easier to complete and push out this particular feature for Android this time? : I asked co-founder Dennis Crowley about the new Android-first approach, and he said, “Android needs some early-access love!” “We worked hard as a company to make it so different products are paced differently on different clients — so it’s not always iPhone, Android, then BlackBerry,” he continued. “Plus, it gives us a smaller subset to test on,” Crowley also said noting that the team is at a point where they’re “CRANKING”. He also hinted that we should expect more pushes regularly. |
DocStoc Turns A Page As It Looks To Be A One-Stop Shop For Small Business Knowledge | Jason Kincaid | 2,011 | 7 | 5 | We’ve been Los Angeles-based startup for years now, from the company’s roots as a fairly broad document sharing site that competed directly with to, more recently, a hub that caters more exclusively toward businesses, complete with of premium professional documents available for purchase. And today, the company is taking another step in that direction, with a rebranding of the site that positions it with the tagline, “We Make Every Small Business Better”. So what exactly does that entail? CEO Jason Nazar explains that for the last year the company has been building out a repository of professional documents — they have 20 million that were uploaded by users, and plan to have another 10,000 written in-house (or outsourced to contracted professionals) by the end of the year. The goal of this DocStoc-produced content, Nazar says, is to provide businesses with a set of documents — including hiring forms, schedules, and legal papers — that they can trust to be high quality, so they don’t have to wade through multiple variations of similar docs. This content is available through a premium , which runs $20 a month (if you buy multiple months at a time, the price goes down). In addition to creating its own documents, DocStoc is also increasingly producing articles and videos related to starting and running a business. And that’s just the start, Nazar says. Later in the year the company will be rolling out additional products to help streamline business management (as far as documents are concerned), including a wizard that will help complete forms quickly. DocStoc has been offering some of these features for several months now, and Nazar says that the startup already has “tens of thousands” of companies signed up for subscriptions. My gripe with the service: DocStoc includes disclaimers saying that it isn’t providing legal advice, so it isn’t responsible if you use a document the wrong way, or aren’t using the right documents, or whatever. Nazar says that the majority of the site’s professional documents aren’t related to legal issues, and for those that are, the site will also be helping users connect with consulting services, so you can speak to someone (for a price) if you want to be sure you’re setting your business up the right way. And if you already know what you’re doing, then DocStoc could be exactly what you’re looking for. The company last raised $4 million in 2008 — it’s now profitable, with 35 full-time employees. Nazar says that revenue has been doubling each year for the last three years. |
The Sandpit emerges as startup sales accelerator, puts £500k into SoDash | Mike Butcher | 2,011 | 7 | 5 | , a new London-based “sales accelerator” for new technologies, says it is taking a 25% stake for “up to £500,000” over the next two years in , a web-based tool that helps organisations to manage their activity on social media sites such as Twitter and Facebook. The Sandpit has an option to purchase a further chunk and also has the exclusive commercial rights to the product, enabling the tech team to focus on development. SoDash is a spin-out from Artificial Intelligence specialists . But who are these Sandpit guys? Coming out of London, The Sandpit is a new kind of tech startup investment vehicle formed by serial entrepreneur , formerly CEO of Viapost. He bills it as a form of early stage VC/incubator. It takes 10-30% of a company, wraps sales and marketing around it, and takes it to market – so this is quite a bit different from a normal Seed or VC deal. But let’s take a look at the issue this ‘sales accelerator’ is addressing. You are familiar with the story. An amazing hacker engineer creates a great product… which then fails miserably to get any traction because they don’t have the commercial skills to market it or perhaps even sell the product into other companies that might buy the service and create a revenue stream. Ad to that the process of trying to raise venture backing, which is extremely time consuming, and you have a recipe for disaster. In an ideal world they find co-founders who can do all that stuff. But this often doesn’t happen, and the product misses out on its day in the sun. What Campbell has done has created, if you like, a sales and marketing accelerator for tech companies allowing the tech founders to focus on the product, cover some costs and put marketing around the product to generate real revenues – instead of trying to go fundraising immediately. Having an income – and let’s not forget that even Saul Klein of Index Ventures once said “customers are your best form of financing” – means the startup can either grow without needing investment or get a much higher valuation when it does. SoDash’s early development was supported by the Scottish Enterprise’s SMART:Scotland programme, and by the University of Edinburgh’s EPIS programme. The technical team is staffed by former AI researchers from the University of Edinburgh. |
Fujifilm Plans To Make Big Camera Push, Release EVIL Model | Devin Coldewey | 2,011 | 7 | 5 |
Fujifilm’s popular and beautiful has been making a lot of waves lately, so you might not guess that Fuji isn’t exactly the hottest camera maker on the block. Sure, they’re in fifth place as far as volume goes, but they’ve decided that’s not good enough, and plan to move all the way up to third. Hey, if they can duplicate the success of the X100, it doesn’t sound so crazy at all. The head of Fujifilm’s camera division, Takeshi Higuchi, : We can do all the important development in-house, so we can use that to cut costs, but we don’t have a very high-profile brand. We have debated why that is and the upshot was we should put out luxury models and spend more on publicity to build up the brand. An admirable bit of straight talk, from someone who might be expected to say some boilerplate PR nonsense praising their products as revolutionary. It’s true what he says: they’re a big company and don’t have to rely on external parts or R&D, they just need to get their name out there and develop a brand. It’s no good for them to go straight up against Canon and Nikon with a DSLR (lenses and brand loyalty would kill them) or Sony and Samsung with more point and shoots (they’re already in that zone and not really excelling). So could their breakout product be an EVIL (electronic viewfinder, interchangeable lens) camera? Why not? The X100 has a ton of new and interesting technology in it, and it could fairly easily be stripped down, given a new mount with a few lenses sourced out to the lens-makers, and sold as a serious competitor to the likes of Olympus and Panasonic’s M4/3 cameras. It’s still early in this process, but I think in the next two years we’ll see more of a high-end push from Fujifilm: a successor to the X100 and a EVIL-type device with some X100 DNA. I’m looking forward to it. [via ] |
Sequoia And Others Put $10 Million In Cloud-Based Demo SaaS CloudShare | Leena Rao | 2,011 | 7 | 5 | a service that allows companies to demo software in the cloud, has raised $10 million in new funding led by Globespan Capital Partners with existing investors Sequoia capital, Charles River Ventures and Gemini Israel Funds participating. This brings CloudShare’s total funding to . CloudShare is essentially a collaborative tool for IT environments, allowing users to share, interact and collaborate in enterprise IT environments, for any length of time. Organizations can instantly deploy multiple, independent copies of their existing demos or training environments from CloudShare’s platform. CloudShare Pro’s environments are pre-configured to include servers, networking, storage and pre-installed operating systems and application licenses, including those for software vendors like SAP, Oracle, and Microsoft. And the company for small businesses. The company now has more than 50,000 users worldwide using its SaaS offerings. The startup plans to use the funding for sales expansion and product development. |
Google's "Pi" In The Face | MG Siegler | 2,011 | 7 | 2 | As we’re all well aware by now, the rights to the 6,000+ Nortel wireless and mobile patents. Instead, a consortium featuring many of their main rivals did. . But as more details emerge about the auction itself, it sure looks as if Google wasn’t taking the entire thing too seriously. And that’s too bad. Because Android may be royally screwed without those patents. Specifically, today that following their initial “ ” bid to get the ball rolling, Google put forth bids of $1,902,160,540, $2,614,972,128 — and $3.14159 billion. If those numbers look familiar, it’s because you’re a nerd. Brun’s constant, Meissel-Mertens constant, and yes, Pi. That’s how Google was bidding on perhaps the most important auction they’ve ever been involved in. Not surprisingly, those on the other end of the auction had no clue what Google was doing. And found their behavior erratic and odd. “Google was bidding with numbers that were not even numbers,” sources told Reuters. “Either they were supremely confident or they were bored,” the same source said. This led Reuters to report: It was not clear what strategy Google was employing, whether it wanted to confuse rival bidders, intimidate them, or simply express the irreverence that is part and parcel of its corporate persona. Whatever its reasons, Google’s shenanigans did not work. No, they did not. And now the company looks like huge asses in retrospect. It would have been one thing if Google had done this during the Spectrum auction in 2008 — which they never intended to win. They simply wanted to to ensure that the government would enforce the open rules on the sold spectrum (which ). But with the Nortel patents, Google absolutely did want to win. And many within the company expected to. Perhaps that led to this over-confidence and jackassery. Sure, in hindsight you could say that Google wasn’t going to win anyway — Reuters also reports that Google was only willing to go as high as $4 billion and the winning bid ended up being $4.5 billion. But again, they did not know that at the time. They thought they were going to win and apparently thought they could have some fun in the process. Meanwhile, according to Reuters’ sources, they found this behavior aloof and off-putting. It certainly did not help Google’s case. Nortel was undoubtedly happy to declare the consortium featuring Apple, Microsoft, RIM, and others as the winner — even though they had to know this result will come under much more scrutiny (and as such, take much more time to close) than if Google had won. Sadly, this behavior seems to follow the recent M.O. of Google. They walk into situations with extreme confidence when they shouldn’t, then they seem surprised when things unravel. Where are those music deals promised over a year ago? How about the television content deals for Google TV? The list goes on. , Google appears to be living in a dream world — and they’re edging dangerously close to limbo. You can’t overstate how important these patents would have been to Google. In the patent space, Google is a very weak player. This has allowed others like Microsoft and Oracle to go after them and/or their partners (for Android). While no one expected Google to go after other companies with these patents, they would have served as a huge deterrent. As in, don’t sue me for this, because I can sue you for that. Instead, their enemies have more pointed at them now. Well, presumably. Google’s next course of action is undoubtedly going to be to lobby the governments in both the U.S. and Canada to reject this deal. Or at the very least, they’ll want a lot of restrictions in place. In other words, Google is going to have to get serious. You know, like how they should have been acting during the auction itself. |
When Google Circles Collide | TechCrunch | 2,011 | 7 | 2 | I like to create. You can find content I’ve created on , , Facebook, , , , , , , , , , , , and now . I create more content than the vast majority of Internet users. I actively think about how to create content and the right audiences for it. When I’m hiking, I take pictures of trailheads, forks and other things that are visually uninteresting. I also carry a with me so I can precisely . I do it because it’s valuable to an EveryTrail user in determining how to hike the trail. When I upload the pictures from the hike to Facebook, those waypoint pictures aren’t included. Yes, . Given the level of control that Google+ is offering, I should be thrilled with this great new tool. But I’m not. It solves the wrong problem, particularly with , the Google+ feature that lets you share different things with different groups of people. And it doesn’t do anything to solve the biggest problem with social networks today: increasing the signal to noise ratio. Google is absolutely right when it says that there are multiple circles in people’s lives. There are certainly many in mine. The way I’ve solved it to date is to just use different social networks for different social circles. I’m careful about who I accept into different groups. For example: This separation also makes it much easier for me to ensure that content doesn’t get shared to inappropriate audiences. I don’t have to worry about flubbing a privacy setting. I also don’t have to worry about flooding my friends with irrelevant content. Most of the content from the for example, hasn’t been posted to my Facebook because my non-Internet friends couldn’t care less about it. I know if I post on Twitter, it is going to be shared with the world. I could segment the content within Google+. For each post, I could say include circles “Business”, “Internet famous” and exclude “Personal friends”. But that requires a lot more thinking than just going to Twitter for business stuff or Facebook for personal stuff. When people compare Circles with Facebook, they often think of lists. (Which almost no one uses.) But they forget about networks, which cover the most important use cases for segmenting people. School and work are two of the biggest buckets. If I want to share things with just the Northwestern network on Facebook, that’s a piece of cake. As a bonus, I didn’t have to put those people into buckets. For people who care about the segmentation that Google+ offers, they are already doing it using different networks. Specialized networks like EveryTrail provide interesting tools for visualizing data. I love this . Google+ doesn’t eliminate the need for vertical tools like this. Platforms like Quora, Namesake and the disqus blog network enable me to reach wider audiences. Google+ doesn’t aggregate audiences for me around topics. As a content creator, my reward is the interactions I have with people who consume my content. I’ve written more about Google+ on Twitter and in this post than on Google+ because people are reading it on these platforms. Until I have an audience on Google+, there’s no reason for me to post there. (Especially because people who are there already follow me on other channels and would then see duplicate content.) But if I don’t post there, I probably won’t build an audience. The physical world has different environments. We hang out with our friends at bars and restaurants. We hear Important People speak in lecture halls and auditoriums. To a large extent, these kinds of distinctions remain in the online world. Facebook is the neighborhood bar and restaurant. It’s built on reciprocal relationships. Twitter is the lecture hall. It’s primarily focused on asymmetric relationships. Twitter has even acknowledged that it’s OK to view it as a publication medium instead of a communication medium. That’s why it’s discombobulating to see these come together in Google+. I’ll see a message about my friend Wanita’s travel plans next to pictures from Larry Page’s Alaskan kiteboarding adventure. If I comment on Nita’s travel plans, I’m confident I’ll get a response. That’s not nearly as likely if I comment on Larry’s trip. (For those that don’t know, Larry and I were in the same high school class — we used to debate Amiga vs. Mac and talk about googol.) I can’t think of many real world equivalents where you have such disparities in relationships next to each other. It’s jarring going back and forth between these worlds. Anybody knows, you gotta keep your worlds apart. — Google has taught us to be lazy. Before search became prevalent, I manually maintained a list of bookmarks. These were categorized and I spent a lot of time on it. With the rise of Google, I hardly use bookmarks. The top query terms on any search engine are inevitably terms like “ebay,” “amazon,” and “facebook” as people have relied on search to do all the work. You don’t even have to know how to spell. I blame Google for my inability to spell Albuqerque, despite several recent trips there. Before Gmail, I would diligently categorize my email. It was the only way I had any shot at finding something when I needed it. Now if I’m looking for the receipt for my camera, I just type “Amazon Nikon” into Gmail search. The same applies for contacts. My phone number and other contact information is on the bottom of most emails I send. If someone wants to reach out, all they have to do is search for a recent message. Gmail’s slogan was “search, not sort.” Now Google is telling us that in order to make the most of its new product, we have to manually sort our friends into buckets from the beginning. The algorithmic magic that Google is known for doesn’t apply here. (I’m sure this is in part the result of Google’s Buzz and StreetView privacy fiascos.) There are ways to automatically bucket people without the privacy concerns. If someone has already gone through the trouble of categorizing contacts in Gmail (as this dork has), those should be applied as circles when a contact is added to Google+. If Google is making suggestions based on connected profiles (such as Twitter or Quora), those source names should also be applied as circles. The biggest unsolved problem in social networking remains unsolved with Google+: separating signal from noise. Twitter, it seems, doesn’t even want to try. The timeline is as dumb as it has been since the beginning, a reverse chron firehose of information. Facebook’s feed has improved over the years, but a friend in New Jersey trying to get rid of a bookshelf is just not relevant. The lack of quality tools for generating signal out of these feeds is inhibiting the creation of content. People are multidimensional and manual segmentation at the person level isn’t enough. I create content about a lot of things, including social networking, mobile, daily deals, my travel, my reading and more. But as I was , I shared less than I would have because I didn’t want to flood people’s streams. If I annoy people, they have a blunt tool to fix it: unsubscribe entirely. So I mitigate my posting. actually tags most of his posts. I’m interested in his content on tech, business and aviation. But I couldn’t care less about his Chicago tweets. So far, I haven’t seen a tool that would learn that and automatically skip them. Separating signal from noise and ranking disparate pieces of content is a problem that is squarely in Google’s wheelhouse. The only company I’ve seen that has done a good job at amplifying signal is Quora. My first rule of product design is that people are lazy, vain and selfish. Google+ clearly fails the first test. Google+ is an ambitious, competent product. If it had launched 3 or 4 years ago, I would have been a big fan. There are aspects that I really like, such as the photo viewer and hangouts. But those aren’t enough. Google is in the same position in the social networking game as others are in the search space. There are brand and network effects at play. In order to gain traction, it can’t be marginally better. It has to be massively better. A friend asked me what problem Google+ solved. The only answer I could come up with was the problem that Google didn’t buy Twitter 3 years ago. |
The Phoenix And The Dragon | Jon Evans | 2,011 | 7 | 2 | I’m in India. It’s a glorious mess. The streets of Delhi remain a seething, endless vortex of chaos, as they were when I last visited eleven years ago, but nowadays, gleaming new highways, shopping malls, and five-star hotels rise above them. The sleek and efficient new metro system carries millions of people a day, but in the monsoon rains. The suburb of Gurgaon looks completely First World, equal parts office towers, shopping centres, luxury gated residental enclaves, and golf courses, but as the New York Times , it does not have “a functioning citywide sewer or drainage system; reliable electricity or water; and public sidewalks, adequate parking, decent roads or any citywide system of public transportation.” Meanwhile, the government is reeling with corruption scandals, including last year’s Commonwealth Games and a whopping worth of 2G spectrum. The central question of our time is whether this will be China’s century or India’s. (Assuming that the notion of nation-states survives, which seems likely, there aren’t really any other contenders; China and India contain nearly half of humanity, and both are well on their way to economic superpower.) I admit that right now it might not seem much of a contest. China is more populous, already a decade ahead of India in terms of economic development, growing faster, and—measured by —far more innovative. In China, achievements are accomplished at the behest of the government; in India, things somehow manage to get done the government. But I think that’s an advantage. I don’t believe patent applications measure real innovation. I think India is more innovative, and that it will ultimately win the economic race, not just the Indian authorities’ habit of incompetent self-destruction, but of it. There’s an essay by Eric Raymond, called , which is famous in the software world. It compares and contrasts two models of software development; the top-down “cathedral” model of eg GCC, and the chaotic—sometimes verging on anarchic—bottom-down “bazaar” model of eg Linux. I think there are parallels between software development and economic development, and that China is a cathedral (or maybe even a closed-source Microsoft) whereas India is a bazaar. And in the software world, eventually, the bazaar won. Consider corruption. It’s the scourge of both nations. I’ve already cited a few of India’s greatest hits. China too is plagued by almost weekly ; recently, after it emerged that its was on the take, it in the name of safety; and the accounting of internationally listed Chinese firms has recently been . The response in both nations has been a variation of “yes, government corruption is a real problem, but don’t worry, we in the government are going to root it out!” Unsurprisingly many are less than convinced. But India has an anti-corruption weapon that China doesn’t—indeed, one that would probably be banned if it were to gain traction in China. I give you , an open, crowdsourced service. I’ve been calling for just such a thing for . Corruption is the enemy of development; transparency is the enemy of corruption; and China isn’t just opaque, it’s opaque by design. Advantage India; and it’s only one such of many. The Chinese dragon has a huge head start over the Indian phoenix, but it says here that in the end the latter will win, because as the software world already knows, the cathedral is inherently inferior to the bazaar. |
Review: HP ProBook 5330m | Jordan Crook | 2,011 | 7 | 2 |
Does this thing look familiar to you? Granted, there are plenty of little differences, but at a first glance, what does this remind you of? If you said MacBook Pro, congratulations, we’re on the same wave length. The brushed metal finish, the keyboard, the black bezel around the screen… it all screams . That’s all I’ll say on the matter, but I maintain that it had to be said. Starting at $799 configurations, how will it stack up against competition from , , and others? Let’s see. I spent a week with the 13.3-inch ProBook 5330m and found that overall, it’s a very well-made little beast. Under the hood, you’ll find a 2.5 GHz Core i5 processor, 4GB of RAM, integrated Intel HD 3000 graphics, a 500GB 7,200-rpm drive, and Windows 7 Professional.
The look and feel conjure up images of some hybrid between HP’s EliteBook business notebooks and its wallet-friendly ProBook S line of systems. The boxy industrial look works for me, and its two-tone grey keyboard deck is easy on the eyes. The brushed aluminum chassis and keyboard deck are virtually fingerprint-proof, too. It’s magnesium underside has a nice rubbery finish, and we’re glad to see that HP didn’t go for the cheaper, and obviously less sturdy, plastic bottom. The HP ProBook weighs in at 4 pounds, and measures in at 12.9in x 8.9in x 1in. Even though competitors like Toshiba and Lenovo have lighter models in their stables, I had no problem toting around the device, even gripped with just one hand.
The keyboard, keyboard deck, and the touchpad all look beautiful. The backlit black keys and the smooth palm rests are pretty to look at, and pretty comfortable too. At least, at first. After I spent a couple days typing on the HP ProBook 5330m, I found myself missing my MacBook Pro. It’s hard to put my finger on it (pun intended), but I got the feeling that I was pressing too hard, like I was breaking the keys. And it’s only fair to note that I’m not one of those machine-gun typists that tap out words like I’m relaying Morse code. I’m actually pretty gentle with technology, especially review units, and I still felt like the keys were just too stiff. Plus, there were about seven different instances where patience was completely lost due to a shoddy space bar. Again, the aesthetics of the keyboard are wonderful. The key spacing is just right, and the backlit keys add a nice touch, but if it’s uncomfortable to type on then what’s the point?
The touchpad is an entirely different situation. I come from the land of Mac, so I’m a bit spoiled when it comes to multitouch gestures, smooth scrolling, etc. Still, this touchpad was a complete let-down. Two-finger scrolling was a total pain. When it did work, it lagged. Like a lot. As in, I’d scroll and nothing would happen for 30 seconds, and then suddenly I’d be at the bottom of the page. Most of the time, though, it didn’t work at all, and I had to resort to using the scroll bar on the side of the page. I’ve read other reviews that promise this touchpad is totally smooth, so maybe it’s just my unit that is having some issues. In the case that it’s not just my unit, it’s only fair that you’re warned. The two physical buttons gave back strong feedback, and I didn’t find any problems with them.
I have no beef whatsoever with the 13.3-inch 1366 x 768 matte display. It offers sharp imagery, bright, true colors, and can be viewed at awkward side angles without any glare. The partnership of the HP ProBook’s Intel HD Graphics 3000 GPU and the 2.5GHz Core i5 processor provided an excellent video playback experience, whether it be in 720p or 1080p HD. Beats Audio technology, which is emblazoned all over the notebook (perhaps too much), definitely didn’t hurt. It really highlights those low bass notes, although Dolby’s technology on the Lenovo ThinkPad X1 definitely rivals, if not beats (pun again intended) the HP ProBook 5330m sound quality.
Ports on the ProBook were as standard as can be, with two USB 2.0 ports, a headphone jack and an Ethernet jack along the right side. We were sad to see no USB 3.0 port, though, as it’s high-speed transfers would have been a nice addition. On the left you’ll find a USB/eSATA port, an SD card reader, HDMI out, VGA out, and a Kensington lock slot. Oddly enough, there’s no optical drive on the ProBook. The webcam on the ProBook shoots in 720p, and I found it got the job done. No more, no less. It’s completely adequate over a video-chat, as in the details of my face were still there, albiet a bit pixelated.
As I said, the ProBook’s 2.5GHz Core i5 processor with that 7,200-rpm hard drive definitely allows for some intensive HD video playback and standard business tasks, but if you consider yourself a gamer, steer clear. In terms of processor and memory performance, the ProBook 5330m scored a solid 5438 on GeekBench 2.1, compared to the competitions’ scores of 5255 (Toshiba Portege R835-P55X) and 5192 (Lenovo ThinkPad X1). The downside is, battery life is kind of a joke on this thing. HP promises 5 hours 30 minutes of juice, but I could only squeeze about 4 hours out of the ProBook, and my tests weren’t that intensive. I basically just played a little solitaire, watched a couple YouTube videos, and went about work as usual. The good news is that HP hooked up the ProBook with a removable battery, which will be much needed.
Extras on our $899 configuration include a built-in 3G modem, which offers the option to sign a contract with any of the big four carriers. HP also offers its DataPass, which gives prepaid access to Sprint’s network at prices between $5 (75MB) to $30 (1GB).
The ProBook definitely has its pros (another pun) and cons. As I said before, the aesthetics of this device really do impress me, even if it does look strikingly similar to that which I promised to not mention. I loved how light it was, and watching videos (along with other, less interactive tasks) was quite a pleasure. However, I would definitely NOT buy this laptop based solely on the performance of the keyboard and touchpad. I truly hope that my unit is a bit wonkier than usual, or else HP really will have some trouble on its hands. Configurations start at $799. |
Gillmor Gang 7.2.11 (TCTV) | Steve Gillmor | 2,011 | 7 | 2 | The Gillmor Gang — Robert Scoble, John Borthwick, Kevin Marks, and Steve Gillmor — joined the Circle Game as channelled by Joni Mitchell and Tom Rush. Google + seems to be a hit, which means it is soon to reach the critical mass where all social software must graduate from high school to beyond. For now, the service appears like a broader reimplementation of Friendfeed, which some of us felt was truncated not by the users but by the Facebook acquisition. In other words, for some that reinvention is a good thing. For @borthwick, the project is a substantial undertaking for a company we’ve been trivializing in recent months along with its stock price. For @scobleizer, it means the battle between reach and rich, this time in social circles as Google defines graphs. For @kevinmarks, plenty of work ahead but a strong effort. For @stevegillmor, well, you’ll have to watch the show. But a hint: +1s to Twitter, FaceTime, and whoever makes new mistakes fast. |
Vostu Goes On The Offensive Against Zynga. This Will Get Uglier. | Michael Arrington | 2,011 | 7 | 20 | Zynga hit Brazilian gaming startup Vostu with a last month, alleging that the company was copying Zynga’s games so closely that they even inadvertently included the bugs. Today, Vostu responded with a 368 paragraph document of their own (embedded below). It’s a longer version of Vostu’s press statement immediately after the lawsuit was filed, “I Know You Are But What Am I.” Vostu’s defense also includes numerous illustrations of how Zynga has copied other games repeatedly over the years. One example – Zynga showed how closely Vostu copied Cityville (see ). Vostu includes an image in their response showing how similar Cityville looks to three previous games not published by Zynga: Vostu also suggests the real reason Zynga sued is a failed partnership negotiation and Zynga’s competitive efforts in Brazil: Zynga’s deceptive allegations are at their foundation a vicious effort to malign Vostu for competing with Zynga. Zynga has watched Vostu closely as a potential competitor for years, and it even discussed a strategic relationship with Vostu beginning in August 2010. The triggers for Zynga’s lawsuit at this point against Vostu are threefold: (1) Zynga’s entry into Brazil, where it intends to displace Vostu as the leading gaming company on social networks; (2) Vostu’s arrival on Facebook, which Zynga claims as its exclusive turf; and (3) Zynga’s initial public offering, where Zynga must face probing and legitimate questions about barriers to entry in Zynga’s market by demonstrating its intent to demolish any potential competitor it may face. Zynga, which is in the middle of its public stock offering, won’t be able to respond much or at all to Vostu. That’s because it’s in what’s called a quiet period, and any PR missteps could result in a delay of the IPO. I’d say this was perfect timing by Vostu, but Zynga chose the timing of the lawsuit, not Vostu. The full documents are below. Also of note – co-counsel to Vostu is Andrew Bridges at Winston & Strawn, who represents TechCrunch on a number of legal issues. He’s extremely good, and that’s a great sign for Vostu. I think he’s on the wrong side of this fight, though. Zynga has done a lot of questionable things in the past with regard to respecting the intellectual property of competitors, but in this case, Vostu went way over the line in my opinion. [scribd id=60498594 key=key-11206mhn9hdrk0d8jeu7 mode=list]
[scribd id=60498604 key=key-171uod4nez42hmqe5xw2 mode=list] |
Jack Dorsey Cleaning House At Twitter: 4 Key Product Guys Are Out | MG Siegler | 2,011 | 7 | 20 | Breaking news out of Twitter this afternoon, four key product managers have just been let go, we’ve learned. The move was led by and will see key product guys , , and two others we’ve yet to confirm, leave the company. Twitter refuses to comment on any specific names and would only say that “some people have left the company and we appreciate their contributions”. But we’ve independently confirmed that both Cheng and Elman are two of those no longer with the company. Both of these guys have been vital to the Twitter product over the past couple of years. Cheng, for example, was key on the “New Twitter” project. Elman was previously with Facebook. This move is said to be led by Dorsey as a final measure to remove those still closely affiliated with the old Evan Williams, Biz Stone, and Jason Goldman regime. Those three, of course, all left Twitter in recent months and just where Twitter was originally born. Reached, Cheng and Elman both declined to comment. We’ve now confirmed that Anamitra Banerji ( ), who Twitter’s ad platform, and Jean-Paul Cozzatti ( will round out the foursome of PMs who are leaving. |
Is Groupon Bad For Small Businesses? | guest series | 2,011 | 7 | 2 | If you watch the nightly news, you would assume there’s a murder on every block, and if TechCrunch recently, you would assume Groupon is murdering a small business in every city. Given the hundreds of thousands of merchants who have run daily deals in the past year, it is inevitable that a few will have had bad experiences. However, to assume that a handful of these anecdotes fully represent merchants’ experiences with daily deals is insufficient and irresponsible. A by Rocky Agrawal criticize daily deals, advising small businesses to stay away based on examples of where the deals fail to turn a profit for the businesses. While Rocky’s posts are surely well-intentioned, his evidence is largely based on a few anecdotes and a basic misunderstanding of daily deal economics. As we detail in Yipit’s based on more than 100,000 past deals, 43% of offers in May involved merchants running a deal for at least their second time. Can so many merchants be delusional? Clearly have figured it out. While I understand and applaud Rocky’s motivation to protect small businesses, can those businesses really afford to ignore a marketing channel that can deliver hundreds, if not thousands of new customers in a cost per acquisition model? Not only are most small businesses struggling, their standard marketing channels of yellow pages and newspapers are becoming less and less effective. Instead of telling small businesses to avoid daily deals, how about trying to understand why some small businesses are having success? With that understanding, we could then educate other small businesses on how they might be able to replicate that success themselves. Like most marketing options, daily deals comes down to the numbers. The good news is that most of the key variables that affect the success of a daily deal experience can be optimized by small businesses via daily deal structure and execution. My co-founder, , wrote a post on including a calculator. While this calculator bakes in a lot of assumptions, it’s the start of a handy tool for small businesses. The two most important variables that small businesses can optimize are: : This metric represents how much more revenue the customer generates for the business than the value of the coupon. The larger the overage, the better for the small business. There are many things small businesses can do to increase overage including: : This metric represents what percentage of customers come back as a regular customer after using a daily deal. Improving this metric has the potential to deliver the most value for small businesses as indicated by the calculator referenced above. In a , often cited as a reason daily deals are challenging, small businesses reported that 20% of customers came back. That’s actually huge! If a company runs a deal that sells 1,000 vouchers, 200 customers will come back. As the calculator above implies, that’s a high enough return rate to make the deals very successful for most small businesses. To improve return rates even further, small businesses can: Other factors that improve the economics of a daily deal: If small businesses focus on creating the right structure for their daily deal to increase overage and execute on the daily deal experience to increase return rates, daily deals can become a very attractive marketing option. That being said, daily deals in their current form are not right for every business. The vast majority of deals are for spas, salons, restaurants, events, activities and other services. These merchants all have a large fixed cost base, perishable inventory and considerably lower variable costs. Accordingly, their marginal cost on an additional customer is low enough allowing them to discount aggressively. That’s why businesses have been offering discounts for hundreds of years. On the other hand, traditional retail categories appear the least frequently across the Yipit database, representing less than 10% of all offers. Daily deals represent a powerful, scalable new cost-per-acquisition marketing channel that small businesses can optimize via strategic pricing and good execution. If we really want to help small businesses, we should stop telling them to avoid daily deals. Instead, let’s focus our energy on educating small businesses on how they might be able to effectively take advantage of this new marketing channel. Or, I guess we can just keep directing them to yellow pages advertising. |
And The Most Popular ‘Damn You Auto Correct’ Text Of All Time Is … | Alexia Tsotsis | 2,011 | 7 | 20 | We’ve about before, namely because it managed to eloquently capture the modern zeitgeist of text-based communication failures. I mean this stuff sucks! Just this morning I sent a dm to the wrong person because of Seesmic autofill text and just two hours later had to delete and resend a tweet because of a typo GAH. Fact is the more we type the more chances we have to typo (have you read my posts ever?) and the collective anxiety surrounding these moments of embarrassment has contributed to the popularity of the blog Just how popular is Damn You Auto Correct? Well since its launch last October the site has cumulatively received almost 300 million page views and, in celebration, has posted a list of the Damn You Auto Correct submissions of all time. At #1 is the fine specimen to the left, edging out my personal favorite at # 6. Pophangover CEO Jillian Madison tells me that has received over 2,622,164 page views since its posting on April 17th. When asked how many of the top 15 submissions were fake (some of them really too good to be true, and then there’s ) Madison replied, “I honestly don’t think most of them are fake. Sure, a few people know about these lame , but I don’t think the average DYAC reader/submitter has a clue they exist.” Okay, then. Madison says that she reads through over 500 Auto Correct fail submissions a day and insists that she can tell a fake when she sees one, “You can tell the fakes because the font is slightly different, the Verizon is blurry, and the green in the bubbles is more vivid.” HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA okay hey, it’s a living. |
Socialize Launches Social SDK To Let Developers Unleash Communities Hiding in Mobile Apps | Rip Empson | 2,011 | 7 | 20 | In 2008, Daniel R. Odio, Sean Shadmand, and Isaac Mosquera founded a mobile app development startup called PointAbout. The team had their first big success with , a service that makes it easy to generate your own custom, native iPhone apps. The company started building custom apps for brands like Disney, The Washington Post, Newsweek, and Politico, bootstrapping until from Mitch Kapor (founder of Lotus), Bill Lee, Rich Chen, Charles River Ventures, and others. In May, the professional services — or consulting branch — of PointAbout. Since then, the startup has rebranded as , grown to a team of sixteen, and has been using the infusion of capital to build a new product to expand the use case and value proposition of AppMakr. Today, the startup is announcing the public launch of a software development kit (SDK) that will allow mobile app developers to add an in-app social networking layer to both new and existing mobile apps. The do-it-yourself SDK is open source and can be implemented in a number of different ways, according to the needs of the developer. For app users, this means that all Socialize-layered apps will enable social discovery and connection, and all in-app content can be easily shared via Facebook, Twitter, and email — connecting the in-app experience to a user’s social graph. On the flip side, Socialize’s SDK offers developers turnkey mobile social networking features that allow app developers to track a user’s “likes”, shares, and comments and authenticate over Facebook and Twitter. But the real selling point is Socialize’s “activity pane”, which prioritizes user-generated content, listing what other users of the app have shared, liked, and commented on. The SDK also allows users to create profiles, a space intended to let an app’s user share personal information and make them feel more connected with the experience of the app and its other users. Socialize is currently using AppMakr as its sandbox to test the functionality within apps that have already been buit on the platform. So far, 1 million active users are using the 7,811 apps that have been created on iOS, Android, and Windows Phones using AppMakr, 1,461 of which are already running Socialize’s features. And, in case it hasn’t come across yet, while Socialize is offering a lot of low-hanging social features to app developers and users, the real goal here is to tackle the much-talked about “Interest Graph” — on mobile. While the average iPhone user has 40 apps on their phone and the average Android user has 25, the biggest obstacle for app developers today is engagement. An app may see 1,000 downloads in the first day it’s live, but often those downloads only produce a small number of active users. It’s a problem of engagement, so Socialize intends to give developers the tools to bring users back to the app by “unleashing the community of users that have been hiding in the app”, says Socialize Co-founder and CEO Daniel R. Odio. Sure, it’s great to have social functionality, and when you download an app, 90 percent of those who download the app may be on Facebook, but how many of them are your friends? Everyone is connecting via social graph, but the process is still largely anonymous — it’s all about connecting users with shared passions and similar interests. Hence, the appeal of the interest graph. “If a million people download your mobile app, they will never all be friends on Facebook”, Odio said . “But they all care about your brand, because they downloaded the app. How do they talk to each other today?” The CEO said that, in most cases, they can’t, and this is a huge missed opportunity for brands. That’s why Socialize built a cloud-based API service — to connect users with shared interests. When a user is in a mobile app, they should be able to share their opinions about the content of that app with everyone else who has also downloaded the app. This can happen through comments, sharing and likes, with every other user who has that app getting the ability to read and respond to that comment, “regardless of their Facebook status”, he said. The long term goal? If the startup can get enough users running Socialize-powered apps on their phones, it can form a robust profile of a user’s interests, what co-founder and president Sean Shadmand equates to a person’s “mobile DNA”. Obviously, with this level of personal information at hand, Socialize has to provide a thorough security and opt-in functionality, which the team says that it’s made a top priority. It’s a valuable concept, and it will be interesting to see where Socialize goes from here in terms of in-app engagement — discoverability and recommendations are next up no doubt. To download Socialize SDK for iOS, check ’em out at Github and for Android click . And for more on how Socialize works, check out the video below: [vimeo=http://vimeo.com/20807924 width=”640″ height=”380″] |
null | Jordan Crook | 2,011 | 7 | 5 | null |
Google Hires JustSpotted/Scoopler Team To Work On Google+ | MG Siegler | 2,011 | 7 | 20 | For the past two years, we’ve been tracking the team behind . Originally a Y Combinator company that was one of the first startups , they eventually pivoted last year to become a called JustSpotted — yes, really. Today, they’re shutting down both services, as they . But they don’t say why. Well, we know why. The team has been hired by Google to work on Google+. To be clear, Google did not acquire either JustSpotted or Scoopler, instead the acqui-hired the team consisting of AJ Asver, Dilan Jayawardane and Benjamin Tauber, the founders of Scoopler, Inc. “We’re looking forward to AJ, Ben, and Dilan joining Google and we think they’ll be a great addition to our team,” a Google spokesperson tells us. Scoopler/JustSpotted had Y Combinator, Ron Conway, Michael Birch, Avalon Ventures, and a few others. No word on what was a part of the deal, but one has to assume those guys got paid back the nearly $1 million they put into the startup. |
Kantox launches beta for peer to peer FX hedge transactions | marinando | 2,011 | 7 | 20 |
Imagine you’re a company operating out of France, getting paid for a US-based contract in dollars. Your payment isn’t due in months. By the time you get paid, the exchange rate may well take a bite out of the money you’ll actually pocket. It’s a very common problem. , who launch their beta today, aims to fix through their peer to peer FX hedge transactions platform. Why not put together companies with similar needs on different sides of the equation? Essentially, Kantox is a long-term FX B2B marketplace, wherein two companies can connect via Kantox and through a digitally signed contract agree to exchange their currencies at a fixed rate established at the time of the contract. The transaction is delayed to a specific date, but the exchange rate is fixed, taking the risk out of rate fluctuations for long-term payments. It’s an innovative idea from two ex-Deloitte consultants, Philippe Gelis and Antonio Rami. The copmany has already been selected as a winner or runner up in numerous local Spanish startup competitions, including , , among others. To date, between startup competition prizes, personal founder money and small seed investments, they’ve raised a total of 110.000 €.
from on . The company aims for the SME segment, to replace hefty bank transactions, claiming that they can generate up to 60% in savings. Kantox charges companies an annual fee of 295 € (currently waived till the end of the year) and a .68% per transaction. So this would make most sense if you are a repeat customer. Apart from banks, Kantox is based on a model much like peer to peer currency exchange companies, such as , and . However, the key difference is that unlike the latter, Kantox allows for long-term hedge transactions at a fixed exchange rate, where as others don’t. To avoid security and fraud barriers, Kantox runs a number of checks and balances. Not all companies are accepted. They filter companies viability by evaluating their history, size, revenues, payment and credit history. This eliminates 80% of potential fraud they say. Companies also receive two rating scores, the first coming from an external credit history provider and the second based on a client’s prior transactions within the platform. If a company breaks their side of the deal, not only are they dropped from the system, but Kantox refunds the other party both their funds and the commission for the transaction. More importantly however, the transactions are managed through a segregated account, meaning money is not exchanged directly between customers, but are first deposited into a a third account, managed by Kantox. |
Unity Technologies Takes $12 Million For 3D Gaming Development, Looks To China For Big Growth | Michael Arrington | 2,011 | 7 | 20 | Game development startup , founded in Copenhagen and currently headquartered in Silicon Valley, has raised a second round of financing – $12 million from Asian firms in China and in Singapore. Sequoia Capital has also participated in the round, and from WestSummit has joined the company’s board of directors. We continue to hear nothing but great things about Unity. Game developers love it – there are some 500,000 registered seats on Unity, and 150,000 of them are active monthly. Hit games like Bigpoint’s and Gazillion’s were built on Unity. And EA inked a with Unity last year to get Unity tools in front of EA developers. Today, 12,000 of the companies active developers are in China. But in 18 months, says CEO , China-based developers should be 40% of Unity’s business. That’s why Unity went with Asian investors over U.S. based venture funds in this round, he says. The company isn’t commenting on valuation, but a couple of sources told us that this round values Unity at over $100 million. It looks to be a big win for Sequoia, who got in early. |
LogMeIn acquires 'Internet of Things' Startup Pachube for $15m In Cash | Mike Butcher | 2,011 | 7 | 20 | , which lets you remotely control computers and mobiles, has acquired , a UK startup which is building software for sensor-enabled devices or the legendary “Internet of Things”. The $15 million purchase is all cash. We understand the team is staying on. Pachube networks appliances, environmental sensors, cars and personal health monitors – you name it, this is a market set to explode over the next few years. Michael Simon, CEO of LogMeIn said the purchase will extend its Gravity platform into smart embedded devices. Pachube’s realtime monitoring platform means users send more than seven million datapoints to the service each day. Founder, Usman Haque said “we are in a strong position to bring our shared vision for the Internet of Things to fruition.” It’s also another “win” for a company based in the ‘Silicon Rounadabout’ area of London which the UK government is trying to re-brand internationally as “TechCity”. |
Hitwise Estimates Google+ Got 1.8 Million Visits Last Week And Grew 283 Percent | Erick Schonfeld | 2,011 | 7 | 20 | We know that Google+ is growing like a weed, with more than registered users (some say now). takes a stab at estimating the early growth of Google+. For the week that ended July 16, the Google+ domain (plus.google.com) was still tiny with 1.8 million total estimated visits. However, that number was up 283 percent from the previous week, and up 821 percent from the week before. On a daily basis, estimated visits peaked last Thursday on July 14 with 317,000 estimated daily visits. That number settled down to 226,000 by July 18th, the last day of the data set. Before you jump to any conclusions about Google+ slowing down, note that this data ends the day before Google introduced the new , which is currently the top downloaded free app in iTunes. I know that at least for me the mobile app drove me to use Google+ much more than before, even on the Web. (Hitwise’s data doesn’t take into account mobile apps or the mobile Web anyway). Also, a lot of the usage comes from Google’s top nav bar across its sites, AKA the Sandbar, which Hitwise doesn’t count. Still, what can we learn from the Hitwise numbers? They suggest that despite the millions of registered users, only a small percentage are actually using the site. The 1.8 million is visits, not unique visitors, so you’d have to divide it t get to an estimate of actual users, which Hitwise does not provide. But it’s pretty safe to assume that it is less than 1 million. A few hundred thousand active users in a few weeks still isn’t bad, but it’s nowhere near the 10 million to 20 million registered user number. Anyone can register for a service. It doesn’t mean they will come back to use it. Hitwise says Google+ is the No. 42 social networking site in the U.S., and No. 638 overall. The week before it was ranked No. 2,404 among all sites in the U.S., so it is moving up quickly. The majority of traffic to Google+ (56 percent) is coming from other Google properties, with Google search accounting for a full third (34 percent). Another 21 percent comes from email (those email notifications seem to be working). Hitwise also sheds some light on the gender breakdown of Google+ users, with 57 percent of them being male for the four weeks ended July 16th. Users are also getting older, with 38 percent being between 25 and 34 years old for the last week, edging out the 18 to 24 year olds who made up the largest user group the week before. The top cities for Google+ users are, in order, LA (MySpace refugees?), New York, and San Francisco. |
Google’s Getting Harry Potter, But The Kindle Will Too | Jason Kincaid | 2,011 | 7 | 20 | This morning Google made an of magical significance: the Harry Potter eBooks, which are being released for the first time this October, will be available via its Google Books platform. That sounds like it should be a given, but in the case of Potter it isn’t — author J.K. Rowling is selling the books exclusively through , a site that she launched with much fanfare last month. Some took this to mean that Potter wouldn’t be making his way to the Kindle (or that end-users would have to deal with clunky workarounds to get the book off of Google Books and onto Amazon’s popular device). Fortunately, that isn’t the case: we’ve received word from an Amazon spokesperson that the company is “working closely with Pottermore to make sure Kindle customers will be able to buy and read J.K. Rowling’s Harry Potter books.” That’s important, because even before today’s Google announcement people have questioned if Potter would come to the Kindle. Pottermore is reportedly distributing the books in a DRM-free format, and . : Amazon says that they actually sell lots of Kindle books without DRM, and that the decision is up to the publisher. It’s unclear exactly what Amazon is going to do here, but obviously they’re working something out (and they have a strong incentive to, given that the series has sold 450 million copies in print). One thing to note: Amazon’s statement makes it clear that Potter is coming to the Kindle, but it’s still feasible that there could be different release windows in play. As for the purchase process itself, it sounds like users will buy the books from Pottermore, then choose which eBook platform they’d like them delivered to. And while it doesn’t have exclusive rights to the books, Google does have a leg up on Amazon in at least one respect: they’ve been chosen as “the preferred third party payment platform for all purchases made on Pottermore.com” — you’ll be able to pay with either Google Checkout, or your credit card. Given how many people will flock to the site, this could well introduce Google Checkout to a lot of people for the first time. Finally, Google hints that there will be more coming from its partnership: “Stay tuned for more Pottermore and Google wizardry on the web this summer, leading up to when Pottermore opens.” |
Lion’s Internet Recovery Feature: The Past Meets The Future | Devin Coldewey | 2,011 | 7 | 20 | Although you won’t find any Apple users who will admit it, Macs do occasionally crash and fail, sometimes in spectacular ways. In my experience, while they have far fewer visible errors, the ones that users end up seeing are more serious than the scattered Windows annoyances and driver issues. But by and large, recovery and error management haven’t needed to be among Apple’s marquee features. Graceful failure is a merit, but not something you want listed next to Mission Control and AirDrop. So it’s no surprise that an interesting little feature built into is receiving next to no promotion — . The improved recovery console is a nice feature, but it’s the Internet Recovery thing I’m more interested in. Here’s Apple’s succinct user-facing explanation of the feature: If your Mac problem is a little less common — your hard drive has failed or you’ve installed a hard drive without OS X, for example — Internet Recovery takes over automatically. It downloads and starts Lion Recovery directly from Apple servers over a broadband Internet connection. And your Mac has access to the same Lion Recovery features online. Perhaps it’s not being trumpeted because it’s not really a new feature. Macs have been able to boot from a networked drive for quite some time — over a decade, in fact. The fact that it was limited to locally-administrated networks with locally-hosted disk images isn’t a limitation of NetBoot itself, but was simply a pragmatic measure considering remotely downloading even a couple hundred megs on a circa-1999 connection would be impractical. So the capability is nothing new, but making it a standard recovery feature is. Apple is making itself the net admin and switching from a local protocol to a remote one, that’s all. Like so many cloud services, it is a possibility now because of improvements in bandwidth and storage capacity, not because of any magical new powers possessed by MacBook Airs. An interesting bit is that this recovery mode works even if your drive is blank — as in zeroed. The normal Recovery HD stuff occupies a (quite hefty) partition of your boot drive, so Internet Recovery can’t live there if it’s to work with a fresh or scrambled drive. It must live in the onboard EFI firmware, which is reassuring but a little creepy. Even if you crack open your Mac and swap out the drive, it’s still going to wake up thinking From there on it’s business as usual. It loads a Recovery HD disk image from Apple’s servers and you’re off to the races. The little recovery partition is likely nothing more than the most basic graphical and executable items necessary to interface with the wifi (WPA only), store, decode the disk image, and so on. This shouldering by Apple of bandwidth and administrative duties for non-power users is certainly indicative of their upcoming iCloud and iTunes strategies. They’ve got motive and opportunity (not to mention the cash and the hardware) to shift pretty much all your content server-side, including (though by baby steps at first) the OS itself. And the statement they want to make to the consumer and user is this: “We’ve got it.” They’re taking responsibility away from the user in other ways as well (to be discussed later), and obscuring the inside of the machine has been a priority for Apple for a decade; this is just another, slightly less visible, portion of their moving everything but the very facade of their devices away from the grasp of the user, for good or ill. Lion will come on a USB drive next month for the rather curious price of $70, but you can save money by . The “installESD.dmg” file is lurking inside your Lion installer, and making it bootable is… a job for Google. You paid for it, so do what you want with it. I’ll be damned if I’m paying $40 extra for their USB drive, so I’ll be doing this as soon as I upgrade. [some info via this thread] |
Google’s ’20 Percent Time’ Will Survive The Death of Google Labs | Alexia Tsotsis | 2,011 | 7 | 20 | Google that it will be shutting down Google Labs, a platform that allowed users to interact and give feedback on experimental products produced by Googlers in their . While many were left wondering, Google tells me that the company has no changes to announce with regards to the 20 Percent Time program; killing Labs doesn’t mean the discontinuation of the one day a week Googlers get to spend on “projects that aren’t necessarily in [their] job descriptions.” “We’ll continue to devote a subset of our time to newer and experiment projects,” Google representative Jason Friedenfelds tells me. Google has yet to respond to my inquiry about where all the 2o Percent Time projects will go after Labs’ shutdown ( perhaps?), but I’m guessing that some of those efforts will be refined and funneled into Google+. Instead of a bunch of random and unrelated ideas we’ll start seeing bigger Google bets like Gmail+ or Aardvark integration in addition to completely independent projects like Photovine, Disco and Pool Party. While the Labs shutdown does signify yet another step towards a more focused, streamlined Google ( ), we mustn’t forget that a good number of successful and beloved Google products started out in Google Labs, including Google News, Google Reader, Google Trends and Google Maps. Many people hold the service to be endemic to Google’s culture of encouraging experimental ideas and innovation. Google+ commenter Dustin Earley, “I’ve always thought of Google as this adventurous company leading the way in innovations, not afraid to put some chips into a risky project. Killing off Labs makes me feel like a little piece of that died with it.” Does putting the kibosh on Google Labs in fact make Google less “Googley”? I’m going to go with probably not, especially since the company is apparently still holding fast on the 20 Percent time program and encouraging the “field testing” of obviously beta products like Google+ Sparks. “I don’t think they are going to slow down innovation,” says Google+ commenter , “They are just streamlining the process from inception to product. Less public focus on their cakes in the oven will allow them to not have to focus lots of resources on bad products simply because they are public and lots of alpha users have latched on to them.” Basically, less Waves and more Circles. |
Heyzap Brings Location Awareness And Netflix-Style Recommendations To Mobile Games | Rip Empson | 2,011 | 7 | 20 | , the social discovery platform for mobile and online games, has been hard at work adding pieces to its mobile experience. The startup recently brought check-ins to its mobile platform, allowing users to check-in to their favorite games to share scores and achievements on Facebook and Twitter. This also included, a la Foursquare, a badge rewards system, in which gamers can become the “boss” of a game by checking in with gusto. And, like Foursquare, Heyzap has been collecting data on those check-ins, and is today offering free, personalized game recommendations and locations on game check-ins for Android. (The iOS update will be available at the end of the week.) This update continues to add functionality to Heyzap as a mobile platform: With the ridiculous amount of games out there in the mobile market, game discovery — especially personalized discovery — is essential. Heyzap Founders Jude Gomila and Immad Akhund think that collaborative filtering and serving users recommendations based on the number of times they’ve checked-in to a certain game is a more effective method than, say, purchase history. Instead, Heyzap’s collaborative filtering algorithm takes a user’s play history account, so if you’ve been checking-in aggressively to Angry Birds, Heyzap will take this info (and how many times you play the game, for example) to recommend games to you based on people with similar gaming preferences. It’s not unlike Netflix’s recommendation system for movies, but in this case, Heyzap is employing your social gaming graph. Another interesting addition to Heyzap’s Android app is location data. If a user is willing to give permission to their friends, they will be able to see not only that their friends are checking into certain games but where. Unless you have friends that will be checking-in from the moon, this may not seem particularly mind-blowing at first, but Heyzap plans on bringing this data to its APIs, which will allow developers to create location-based tournaments and multiplayer sessions. says Heyzap CTO James Smith. Pretty cool. Location is also another important element in the data library Heyzap is building based on user check-in history — the more users check-in, the better its recommendations become — and the more data it collects, the better Heyzap is able to identify trends and “what’s hot” among gamers. Something that benefits everyone. The Y Combinator alum has raised $3.6 million in capital from Union Square Ventures and other angel investors since its launch in 2008. A quick note for those interested in taking advantage of Heyzap’s recommendation feature: Users have to download the update in the Android Marketplace, whereupon a third “recommendations tab” will show up in the Heyzap app. You can find it . |
Ask Your Question To The Googlers Behind The Google+ Project | Jon Orlin | 2,011 | 7 | 20 | Now is your chance to get your question asked directly to the two Googlers who run the project. Product VP and Senior VP of Social will be in our TCTV studios for an interview tomorrow on Andrew Keen’s show “ “. Add your questions in the comments below or on Google+. We’ll pick the best ones and use them in the interview. The Google Social team has been busy lately. Yesterday, they the Google+ iPhone App and later a bug-fixing update. Two weeks after the Google+ , it had already passed . Here’s a look at some of our posts about Google+. |
eBay Beats The Street; Revenue Up 25 Percent To $2.8B; PayPal Posts First $1B Quarter | Leena Rao | 2,011 | 7 | 20 | eBay just second quarter earnings, reporting that revenue for quarter ended June 30, 2011, increased 25 percent to $2.8 billion, compared to the same period of 2010. Non-GAAP net income came in at $630.9 million, or $0.48 per diluted share. GAAP Net-income actually decreased in the quarter ($283.4 million, or $0.22 per diluted share), a 31 percent drop from the same quarter in 2010. This is related to the charges from the of GSI Commerce, which Analysts $0.46 cents per share on $2.6 billion in revenue. PayPal, helped buoy eBay’s business. PayPal’s net total payment volume (TPV) grew 34% to $28.7 billion in the second quarter of 2011 compared to the same period of last year. PayPal, which hit 100 million users in the quarter, delivered its first-ever billion dollar revenue quarter, thanks to strength in the Merchant Services business as well as increased penetration on eBay. PayPal expects more than $3 billion in mobile TPV this year, compared to $750 million in 2010. As expected by analysts, eBay marketplace business also saw a resurgence in growth, with gross merchandise volume excluding vehicles (GMV) increasing by 17% year over year to $14.7 billion. GMV in the U.S. increased 14% year over year and international GMV increased 19% year over year, resulting from growth in Europe and improved performance in Korea. The company remains on track to double eBay’s mobile GMV including vehicles to over $4 billion in 2011. PayPal is actually closing in on eBay marketplaces segment in terms of revenue. Marketplaces posted $1.6 billion in revenue, whereas PayPal posted $1.07 billion in revenue for the quarter. GSI brought in $23.8 million to revenue from the period of June 17 to June 30. eBay CEO and President John Donahoe said in the release: eBay has been acquiring companies left and right and in the past few months has picked up , , and For the third quarter, eBay expects net revenues in the range of $2.85 to $2.95 billion with GAAP earnings per diluted share in the range of $0.37 to $0.38 and non-GAAP earnings per diluted share in the range of $0.46 to $0.47. eBay expects net revenues in the range of $11.3 to $11.6 billion with GAAP earnings per diluted share in the range of $2.41 to $2.44 and non-GAAP earnings per diluted share in the range of $1.97 to $2.00. From the earnings call: |
T-Mobile Revamps Unlimited Smartphone Plans | Jordan Crook | 2,011 | 7 | 20 | today announced that its unlimited smartphone plans are due for yet another makeover, which should offer cheaper options for post-paid smartphone customers. Unfortunately, the release was missing a few key details like pricing, but we do know that they will be called Value plans and provide both single-line and multi-line options. We also know that the new plans will take effect July 24. Despite the fact that T-Mo neglected to mention pricing, CNET has some of the prices for the new Value plans. Although as we mentioned before this has yet to be verified by T-Mobile, so bring your salt shaker along for the ride. It seems you can get unlimited talk and text with 2GB of data for $59.99, and unlimited talk and text with 5GB of data for $74.99. Those are rather significant price cuts from the original unlimited smartphone plans, which offer 2GB and 5GB of data for $79.99 and $89.99 respectively. If you happen to have just purchased a new phone, no worries: T-Mobile will switch your current phone over to a new plan. In the meantime, the Even More plans are getting swept into the Classic plan brand name. T-Mo is also throwing in a new payment method for devices, whereby you pay an up-front down payment for this or that smartphone, and then pay the remainder of the cost in monthly interest-free installments. Seems rare that this would be a useful payment option, but it’s nice that they’re making it available. [via ] |
Socialance launches free competitor to the Elance brigade – Get an invite here | Mike Butcher | 2,011 | 7 | 20 | New startup is joining the cavalcade of sites that ‘connect freelancers and employers’ alongside , , or . But the difference, says 23 year old founder Guillermo Vigil, is that this is is more like a hybrid of Elance and LinkedIn, in that it hooks into social networks, therefore resolving the ‘trust’ issue. It’s also free. We have 500 invites to give away to TechCrunch readers to kick the types, . Socialance tries to look after its members by dividing projects into milestones which have to be funded (one at a time) and the money is kept in escrow, so they (with any luck) get paid if they deliver what the employer asked – although admittedly most other competitors offer this service. A “news feed”-like experience has that familiar social network feel to it. Another difference with its competitors is that the site is completely free and will take no % of each project. For a one-man band startup it’s not a bad effort, and the attraction of free may well help it get some traction. |
CNN Claims 10 Million Mobile App Downloads Across All Devices | Erick Schonfeld | 2,011 | 7 | 20 | CNN offers a lot of mobile apps on a lot of devices. There is CNN for the iPhone, the iPad, Android, and even Nokia phones. There are even different apps for international news. All in all, CNN’s mobile apps have been downloaded 10 million times, according to the company. The most popular app is CNN for iPhone, which has been out the longest—since September, 2009. And on Apple devices alone, CNN apps are the No.1 and No. 3 news apps on the iPhone, as well as the No. 1 news app on the iPad. CNN would not provide a breakdown between iOS, Android, and Nokia downloads. In addition, CNN’s mobile websites drew 201 million combined pageviews in June. CNN is making a big push into mobile, as well it should. It recently launched two new on the Web for cable subscribers, and those are also available through its mobile apps. |
The 5 Honeycomb Features Currently Missing In Action | Matt Burns | 2,011 | 7 | 20 | I’m currently wrapping up a review of the latest Honeycomb tablet, the Toshiba Thrive. Quick spoiler, it’s one of my favorite Android tablets yet, but I still wouldn’t buy it nor recommend it to anyone outside the dedicated Android fanbase. Just like the rest of the Honeycomb tablets, it lacks any compelling feature over the iPad. Don’t mistake what I’m saying here. I like the Thrive. It’s well built, has a low price, and more I/O ports than other tabs. I also like Android as a whole — I love my Droid X — but outside of several Google services which are available on the iPad, Honeycomb tabs still don’t have a legitimate advantage over the similarly priced iPad. That said, not all is lost. Google is committed to the platform, as are the dozens of CE brands with Android tablets. The addition of just the following five features would help move Honeycomb tablets closer to mainstream. It should be pretty much accepted that Android 3.x tablet buyers own Android 2.x phones. That’s the target demographic and so there should be some inter-platform love. RIM does it with the PlayBook and even the Touchpad talks to webOS phones. Why not Android tablets then? Receive a call on your phone? How about a pop-up on the tablet. A SMS message? That should be readable on the tab. It just needs to be simple things. Even tethering isn’t a necessity although it would likely make the cut, seeing as how it would allow carriers to more easily sell data plans. The best part, from Google’s and OEM’s perspective at least, is that this feature set is highly marketable. These functions show consumers how a tablet would fit into their life differently from a laptop. To be fair, it’s likely that this kind of integration is forthcoming in Android 4.0, but that’s not much comfort to people thinking of buying a tablet today. A few features in this area would make the whole Android lineup stronger. The Xoom takes a lot of flack for featuring a non-functional microSD card slot. But it’s not Motorola’s fault. It’s Google’s and an issue that needs to be rectified immediately. The US-market Xoom is a Google Experience Device, which means Google controls system updates and features. External storage support is not built into Honeycomb. Other manufacturers use their own Android modifications to include working USB hosts and flash memory card readers. Motorola does the same thing with Xoom sold in other markets. The lack of external storage support is still one of the iPad’s most talked about downsides. Most Honeycomb tab buyers at this early stage want an anti-iPad and that means the ability to use the tablet how they see fit. Tablet makers have found a way to work around Google’s ignorance. That’s silly. Google needs to bake the support directly into the OS and include a competent file manager. Buying a tablet for media playback is surprisingly hard right now. Your best bet, if playing back media is your primary goal, is to stray from the mainstream and look at Archos’s offerings. You see, each tablet supports different media formats, but tabs from smaller companies tend to support the most. Several Marketplace media apps solve the lack of support by including a 3rd party software decoder, but I’ve found most of those apps to lack basic functionality and tend to randomly freeze the tablet. There isn’t a silver bullet here as it’s not all up to the OS; media format support often depends on the tablet’s hardware platform. But something needs to be done. Once again, Honeycomb tablets need to be a sort of anti-iPad and feature capabilities not found on its biggest competitor. Google did a decent job on Honeycomb’s standard apps. I really like 3.1’s beta browser navigation and the mail app. What Google needs is a killer, must-have app, even if it’s from a 3rd party. Skype comes to mind. Skype’s Android app is fine. It works well even on Honeycomb tablets, but the company has been slow updating the app to support video calling. It’s limited to just a few phones now. Skype alone would make a new use case for Android tablets as millions of users would be able to video chat with people on computers, iPads, iPhones and Android phones. There’s no need for Google to build a Facetime clone when Skype can do it for them. Of course Google might not want anything to do with Skype now that Google + is all the rage. For better or worse, Google wants people to video chat in Hangouts. Skype’s massive user base still makes it a better killer app for Honeycomb. Lenovo sort of solved this issue by adding Netflix in the just-announced IdeaPad. It’s the first Honeycomb tablet that’s Netflix-certified for media streaming. Chances are, thanks to the required hardware-level DRM, the app won’t find its way onto other previously-released tabs — at least not officially. Still, at least one killer app is here. As much as Honeycomb tabs need that one special app, the platform just need some more damn apps to begin with. Android 3.0 was released six months ago and there are still just a handful of Honeycomb apps. Most are ports of existing apps and even less have a user interface that takes advantage of the larger screen. Part of this is because the Honeycomb marketshare is just so small right now. Why spend R&D money on a platform that only a few hundred thousand people use when you could develop for iOS and reach millions? Google needs to do something, though. Without apps, a tablet is just a slate device with a web interface. That’s a hard sale to even dedicated Android fans. The is the first Android tablet I’ve been excited about since the Xoom. It seems to pack most of what I want out of a tablet sans the Android phone integration. It’s priced right at under $500, has an affordable digitizer pen, and is loaded with quality apps. (besides Netflix, that’s in the IdeaPad) Android 3.x tablets are better than Android 2.x tablets. Likewise future Android tablets will outclass the current crop in every way. It’s just sad, at least to me as an Android fan, to watch Honeycomb tablet after Honeycomb tablet fail to live up to its potential. It seems that manufacturers wasted their budget on design and marketing rather than innovative or compelling functions. |
Accel Furthers Online Payments Expertise With New EIR From iPay | Leena Rao | 2,011 | 7 | 20 | has been making major investments in a number of online payments companies, including e-payments company , and most recently, online payments company . In fact, payments is one of the main investment themes that Accel is targeting in its funding strategy. So it’s not surprising that the venture firm is staffing up on experienced talent to help find the next big thing in payments. Today, payments executive Bill Ready is joining Accel as an Executive in Residence. Ready joins Accel from electronic bill pay provider , where he served as President, and helped manage the company’s for $300 million last year. Previously, Ready served as iPay’s Chief Financial Officer and worked as a consultant at McKinsey & Co. where he focused specifically on advising companies in the payments and financial technology sector. At Accel, Ready will work closely with existing portfolio companies within payments and financial products and will also be working to identify new investment opportunities in the field where he can serve in a senior leadership role. Accel Partner Todd MacLean believes that online payments is sector where the firm’s experience and expertise will provide them with the tools to be able to place bets on the right companies. “We think it’s a massive end market, where there’s a lot of disruption and innovation taking place,” he explains. As a side note, MacLean actually funded iPay while managing Bain’s venture capital arm. Ready tells us that there are a few areas that he feels are ripe for innovation in the payments space, including providing payments services to businesses that previously didn’t have specialized payments products (i.e. extending niche payments capabilities to small businesses). Ready also is bullish on payments companies that are targeting certain consumer segments, like those unbanked consumers. Similar to Ready’s outlook, Accel’s investment strategy centralizes around the fact that as the financial services ecosystem undergoes a massive transformation, the companies that leverage technology to help underserved market segments will succeed. Considering the disruption and innovation taking place at the large-scale level with PayPal and Google, as well as with startups like Square, online payments technology is going to continue to grow over next few years. And clearly Accel wants to have a significant stake in the race. |
Updated: The Sun and News International sites hacked, Lulzsec claims responsibility | Mike Butcher | 2,011 | 7 | 18 | : The web site of The Sun newspaper, part of News International which has been embroiled in the phone hacking scandal in the UK, has been hacked, apparently by hacker group Lulzsec, which tweeted “@LulzSec: We have owned Sun/News of the World – that story is simply phase 1 – expect the lulz to flow”. (See updates below) The hack is a redirect to “http://www.new-times.co.uk/sun/” and contains a (clearly false) story about Rupert Murdoch being found dead. Ironically the domain ‘new-times.co.uk’ is registered to one News International Newspapers Limited. The ‘story’ begins: Rupert Murdoch, the controversial media mogul, has reportedly been found dead in his garden, police announce. Murdoch, aged 80, has said to have ingested a large quantity of palladium before stumbling into his famous topiary garden late last night, passing out in the early hours of the morning.”
No doubt this is in reference to the tragic news tonight that a pivotal informer in the phone hacking scandal, Sean Hoare, was tonight found dead in his apartment, though Police are the circumstances as ‘not suspicious’. The redirect site clearly couldn’t take the load and the hack is now redirecting to Lulzsec’s Twitter page where they are tweeting things like “TheSun.co.uk now redirects to our twitter feed. Hello, everyone that wanted to visit The Sun! How is your day? Good? Good!” Lulzsec has now hacked the site, redirecting a statement on The Sun to their Twitter feed, again. Groups and individuals associated with the hack are now spreading, via Twitter, usernames and passwords to internal News International emails including – we’ve seen – Rebekah Brooks. We’re not linking, we’re not that stupid, but here’s a taster: : It would appear that either thetimes.co.uk and TheSundayTimes.co.uk have now been taken out by the hackers, or the sites have been taken down internally to avoid being hacked at all. Hard to tell right now. At any rate, with Parliament on the warpath I rather think News International has bigger problems to deal with right now… |
AmEx Links Up Facebook With Coupon-less Deals, And Lets Merchants Go Social | Erick Schonfeld | 2,011 | 7 | 18 | American Express is going all in on the daily deals business, striking a deal with Facebook that is similar to the one it already . Through a new Facebook app called “ ,” AmEx cardholders can link their cards to their Facebook accounts just like they can already link their cards to their Foursquare accounts. Once they do so they will get a dashboard of deals from brands such as Whole Foods, Dunkin’ Donuts, Virgin America, and Sports Authority. (These offers are different than , which Facebook sources itself) Unlike Groupon or LivingSocial, these AmEx deals don’t require anyone to pre-purchase anything or present any coupons to merchants. One of the biggest challenges for the daily deals industry is how to measure how many offers are actually redeemed at thousands of different participating businesses. But AmEx has an advantage here in that it is already a payment network that is set up and accepted in businesses large and small around the world. All people have to do is buy the deal item with their AmEx card and they will be credited the deal amount. The Facebook twist is that the deals you see are influenced by what you and your friends “like” on the Web using the Facebook like button. Although many of the deals at launch are with national brands, AmEx is also leveraging its relationships with smaller local merchants. It is a launching a program aimed at them called which allows merchants to manage deals across both Facebook and Foursquare, with other social networks to be added in the future. Business owners will be able to create their own coupon-less deals in a self-serve manner that are triggered whenever someone with a linked account buys a deal item. Self-serve has been a challenge so far with local merchants, but AmEx can market to them through its existing channels. Go Social will also allow merchants to put their locations on social networks like Facebook and Foursquare, and track their deal campaigns across those networks. Since AmEx has all the payment information, it can track deal redemption fairly easily. Closing the offer to redemption loop is the singel biggest challenge in the daily deals space. Even Groupon Now, Groupon’s mobile app with instant deals, requires participating merchants to have iPhones and train staff on how to redeem the offers. AmEx doesn’t try to change the behavior of the consumer or the merchant, other than give them an incentive to pay with AmEx versus cash or a credit card. While it all sounds good on paper, the proof will be in the quality and density of deals that AmEx can procure. This will be a battle between local sales forces. But it looks like Groupon and LivingSocial finally have some serious competition. |
Asking Twitter To Commit Suicide With A Google+ Dagger | MG Siegler | 2,011 | 7 | 18 | Sometimes, it’s easy for power users to get drunk on that power. I’m as guilty of this as anyone. When I constantly bitch that my Gmail account is SO DAMN SLOW, I forget that I also have a full 20 GB of email — something which Google PR always kindly reminds me is not normal. (And I came up with my own solution — .) is perhaps the consummate power user. Every time a new service launches, he quickly friends or follows as many people as he can, testing the limits. Then he inevitably bitches when limits are hit, or the service doesn’t work well with that many connections. Because, you know, most people don’t have 30,000 friends. (Nor does Scoble — but that’s another matter.) Anyway, Scoble is the king of power using a product to its breaking point and then complaining about it. One recent example: Scoble that Quora isn’t really any good as a blogging platform — , no less. This weekend, he was back at it. And the victim of his rage this time was a : Twitter. In a post entitled, “ “, Scoble goes on a long-ish rant about what features Twitter needs to add immediately to compete with the just-launched Google+. Missing in this rant is one very critical thing: introspection. Scoble fails to recognize that he is a power user to the Nth degree. Put more bluntly: if Twitter is batshit crazy enough to implement even half of the things that Scoble lays out, they will effectively kill their own product. Of course, we can rest-assured knowing that Twitter is very likely this foolish. After being in business for , they must know by now that their strength is not to mimic every just-launched and hot-right-now new social network (in this case, Google+). Their strength is to remain true to what got them to where they are now: simplicity. That’s not to say Twitter should not add new functionality or improve upon their service. Of course they should. But if they added some of the things Scoble suggests like adding information (really?), removing the pushing of links from other services, and re-creating Google+ Circles for Twitter, a product that many people already don’t use after signing up would become completely unusable for most people. Twitter is not Google+. Nor does it need to be. If they tried to make it into Google+ on the fly, the millions of current users would rightfully throw a shit-fit. I have a feeling that Scoble would too. , Tom Anderson (more affectionately known as “MySpace Tom”) made the key point that many people often overlook — most services aren’t killed by competitors, they kill themselves. Facebook didn’t kill MySpace, MySpace killed itself (through mismanagement). MySpace didn’t kill Friendster, Friendster killed itself (through scaling issues). The truth is that Twitter kill itself a few years ago also due to scaling issues. But for whatever reason, none of their competitors were able to capitalize and Twitter emerged, stronger. But Twitter trying to become Google+ would lead to their death. It would be them killing themselves. And while you could argue that them doing nothing in the face of Google+ could also lead to them killing themselves, I think that’s way too early to call. And it assumes Twitter is not doing anything to improve their product — which is ridiculous. Let’s look at Scoble’s ideas, step by step. Scoble says that when a user first looks at Google+ versus Twitter, Twitter seems boring. That might be true for some, but the opposite is true for others. I’ve talked to many people who take one look at Google+ and think it looks like a nightmare of content. He’s right in that Twitter needs to do something more to get users engaged when they first sign up. But they know this. It’s probably their biggest problem (well, perhaps beyond monetization). The solution is not to fundamentally change your product though. Implementing Twylah would be way too confusing for most users and unnecessary. Revamping Twitter Lists would also not work for most users (more on that in a bit). Getting rid of spam is constantly a problem, there’s no arguing there. Scoble suggests they filter results by Klout score, I suspect Twitter will eventually do something like this (though I think they have their own internal scores of that nature). Um, Twitter did just launch a major entry in the photos space. If it’s deemed important enough, I’m sure the same will be true of videos. Scoble seems upset that images and videos aren’t shown inline in your Tweet stream (instead, they’re one click away in the right column on twitter.com). Again, I suspect that there are at least as many people who would hate that feature, as would like it. Twitter’s current scan-ability (the ability to quickly scan over content) is great because it’s streamlined. Google+, by comparison, is horrible. This was effectively a few weeks ago. This is a preference. And maybe Twitter will offer this option eventually. But by default, this would make a lot of current users want to vomit. Like me, for example. What Scoble wants here is the equivalent of Google+ Circles. He wants to be able to message just a few Twitter users at a time, and groups of them. But this is not what Twitter is about. Twitter (for the most part) is a public broadcast system. This has served them well — while others, like Facebook, have moved more in this direction. Google+ is taking a different approach with Circles (though it still has a Public channel which basically everyone I know seems to be using). Scoble wants Twitter to revamp the little-used Lists product to be more like Circles. But I’d argue that would not work. that the Circles concept will work the way Google hopes it does long term. Right now, people are enjoying the ease of setting up these groups, but maintaining them will be hard. Further, as Twitter’s own (and well before Scoble’s post), it’s not clear that organizing your friends in a digital way will ever fully work. Social groups often have too much of a gray line (which Cheng calls a “soft line”). , saying that beyond family and co-workers, which are well-defined groups, all groups change over time, and without automation far beyond what we see now, grouping largely will not work. Google may have solved the “ ” problem, but it very much remains to be seen if they’ve solved the larger fundamental issue. I’m skeptical. And while I love Twitter lists (for populating Flipboard, in particular), I know that most users simply do not take the time to make them. Nor am I sure they ever would/should, even if the right interface is there. This. Is. A. Pure. Power. User. Problem. — At least for Twitter. Scoble is 32,297 people on Twitter. That’s 31,600 more people than me, and I’m also a power user. When he complains that “I look at Twitter and a lot of it has turned into a boring RSS feed,” why doesn’t he, you know, unfollow a few hundred of those accounts that are just pumping in RSS content — like the TechCrunch account, for example? Because that would be an easy solution, and he doesn’t think he should have to change his completely outrageous use-cases. The fact is that many people use Twitter for just this purpose. I increasingly use Twitter to replace my RSS reader, for example. If I don’t want to see content pushed in, I unfollow that account. Simple. Further, the thought that if Google+ continues to gain popularity, the same users won’t happen is laughable. Several of our competitors are already blanketing G+ with auto-pushed links. We haven’t been doing that yet just because Google keeps saying they’d prefer we wait until they have their proper business accounts set up (any day now, Google). This is going to happen. A lot. Welcome to the world of distribution tools. Okay, I don’t even know where to start here, so I’ll keep it short and sweet. This is mainly about ego, but it’s also another power user feature that would just piss off a bunch of regular users. Scoble, you use a Mac, download Twitter for Mac. Boom. Done. Seriously though, Twitter used to have this as a feature back in the day. They turned it off as scaling became an issue. They certainly could turn it on again, but they’ve deliberately made the call not to. Certainly, they have a reason for this. They also just bought TweetDeck, which also does this. So maybe they view it (like TweetDeck itself) as, surprise, surprise, a power user feature. Also, while Google+ does auto-flow, I find the functionality to be extremely buggy right now. Sometimes my stream auto-updates, sometimes it does not. Often, I have to refresh to see the latest comments, +1s, etc. This actually pisses me off more than I find it useful. I’m sure Google will figure it out — FriendFeed had this nailed back in the day. Let me just wrap this up by stating the obvious: Twitter is not Google+. If it tried to be, it would be the suicide of a massively popular product — — . In my opinion, Twitter’s rise can be directly attributable to something which is the opposite of everything Scoble is asking for: simplicity. Twitter’s core concept is the extension of simple, short messages throughout the past many decades. The postcard begat the SMS message begat the IM status message . Sometimes the simplest ideas resonate because of the very fact that they are simple. Twitter has had a few moments in their history where they had to add a feature that would make the service more complicated — — and they were able to pull it off, but it was a rough-going transition for a bit. Imagine if they tried to tack-on some of these other things Scoble is suggesting? Actually, don’t bother. Because Twitter is not going to commit suicide any time soon. |
The Roundabout Tapes – GroupSpaces is poised to go global (TCTV) | Mike Butcher | 2,011 | 7 | 18 | UK-startup , which last year a $1.3m Seed round from a star-studded roster of investors including Index Ventures, Dave McClure, Chris Sacca and Simon Levene, has become a ‘Silicon Roundabout’ stalwart. Cofounders David Langer and Andy Young met at Oxford university and quickly realised they could build a better way for University groups to interact, so post-graduation they packed their belongings into a van and headed to London to join the Moo Studios crew on “The Roundabout” a couple of years ago. They are now on well over 1.6 million group memberships with their simple online management and administration tool for real-world groups. Simpler than Yahoo! groups for mailing lists or member records in Excel, the site has a collection system built in and is free for groups with less than 250 members. Revenues come from a combination of premium accounts, targeted advertising and transaction commission from payments made through the site. As part of our series on Silicon Roundabout startups, ( ) we spoke to David and Andy about their journey from university to fundraising to scaling GroupSpaces into a startup which now dominates the UK university market and which is aiming to take over the world internationally. In the video they make some interesting points about building a startup outside Silicon Valley, being part of the London startup scene and their high points to date. |
Inbox Overload Begone: Taskforce Exits Beta, Goes Pro With Paid Version | Rip Empson | 2,011 | 7 | 18 | Email is an essential part of our daily communication, but it can also be a real pain in the ass. Or, going one step further, , “email is the absolute devil”. This fact even prompted him to channel and quit email altogether. I, personally, applaud this bold move but, instead of taking a vow of abstinence, am turning to other tools to help find a way to funnel the fire hose. Of course, this problem is not new, and many startups and products have tried to climb Mount Email, many with little success. While it will take a near-divine intervention for me to declare a winner in this fight, , a member of the Y Combinator Winter Class of 2011, is taking a better shot than most other tools I’ve used. (You can check out our February profile of ) Taskforce offers an extension that integrates with Gmail to convert your emails into task lists and makes it simple to create reminders. Appearing out of your inbox like a tall Google toolbar, Taskforce, perhaps more importantly comes with collaboration and calendar tools, enabling you to add collaborators, set due dates, and comment on and hide tasks that don’t need to be completed immediately. When you add a collaborator to a task, Taskforce alerts them to the shared task and if you make updates to the collaborated tasks, it sends further alerts — and your collaborators don’t have to be using Taskforce. (These collaborative functions are what sets it apart from GTasks.) And even though it adds buttons to your emails allowing you to convert them to tasks, Taskforce doesn’t actually access your inbox. Everything happens through the extension. Since going into beta in February, Taskforce Founders Niccolo Pantucci and Courtland Allen have been poring over feedback from users and are today officially stepping out of beta to launch publicly. They’ve added a few more features to flesh out the extension’s usability. Taskforce has introduced a mobile app and are now unveiling a paid version of the service, called Taskforce Pro, which includes a number of additions, including collaborative lists that enable light-weight project management to be carried out in teams, GTasks sync to enable tasks to be pushed from Taskforce into GTasks as well as GCal. Pro will also allow users to reprioritize tasks that they can choose the order in which they work on their to-do lists, take advantage of keyboard shortcuts, as well as (and importantly) the ability to maximize and minimize the size and presentation of the Taskforce in-email app — a much requested feature according to Pantucci, including by yours truly. Pantucci also told me that Taskforce has seen great early user adoption, with numbers in the “tens of thousands” of signups, including some by “some very well known tech companies”. Although the founders declined to share specific notable users this early in the game, we were able to find out that a particular company that just recently launched its music service in the U.S. has become an active Taskforce user. In terms of funding, as part of YC’s class of 2011, Taskforce was included in Yuri Milner’s no-strings-attached convertible debt investment offer of $150K, which the startup accepted. And thanks to Taskforce’s incubation at Y Combinator, the founders were advised by Paul Buchheit, who is a Partner at YC and also happens to be the creator of Gmail. Taskforce Pro provides the startup with a great opportunity to begin monetizing, and Pantucci said that, when the founders bounced the idea off of early adopters, many said that they would welcome a paid option. Pro will initially be priced at $5 a month, and all Taskforce users will have access to Pro’s features for the first 30 days of using the service, whereafter users will be asked to pay. Those who continue with the free version still have access to Taskforce’s core features — on Chrome, Firefox, and Safari. Next stop: Taking Taskforce beyond task management, pushing integration with other tools, like Dropbox, for example. Document management is a possibility as well. To learn more, visit Taskforce at home . |
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This Fall, Apple Has A Shot At Becoming The Most Valuable Company In The World | MG Siegler | 2,011 | 7 | 18 | In January, we noted that , making them by far the most valuable tech company in the world. In fact, the valuation made them the second most valuable company in the world . But at the same time, we noted that it would likely be pretty hard for them to catch number one: Exxon. At the time, Exxon was roughly $75 billion ahead of Apple. And in the following months, while Apple’s stock began to stagnate a bit, kept rising, pushing their value way past $400 billion. But in recent months, Exxon’s stock has also begun to stagnate. Meanwhile, in the past few weeks, Apple’s stock is like a rocket once again. Today, the stock closed a new all-time high, just under $375 a share, . And it’s trading even higher in the after-hours market, as anticipation builds for Apple’s latest quarterly earnings tomorrow. Apple’s market cap is now just under $350 billion. Meanwhile, Exxon’s cap is just under $410 billion. With momentum once again, Apple is gaining ground. And if, as expected, Apple’s beats the Street again tomorrow, the stock should go even higher — after last week, Google’s stock added about $20 billion in value. This all points to Apple having a very real shot at becoming the most valuable public company in the world in the fall. Obviously, there are a lot of variables at play here. For one thing, who knows what will happen in the oil industry. The summer driving season will be winding down, but any number of things can cause gas prices to still fluctuate either way, and that will obviously have an impact on Exxon’s stock price. But let’s assume for the sake of this argument that Exxon’s stock remains roughly flat, as it has been the past several months. And their market cap remains around $400 billion. If Apple does indeed announce good numbers tomorrow, their market cap will almost for sure go shooting right past $350 billion. (Though, any small miss or weak guidance could easily send the numbers the other way as well.) Regardless, tomorrow isn’t actually that important. More important is the coming weeks and months. First and foremost, Apple will release their next operating system, OS X Lion, shortly. Promised before the end of July, rumors have it appearing this week. Alongside that, rumors also have new MacBook Airs appearing. Considering that the majority of Macs that Apple now sells are notebooks, this should mean big business for them in the coming quarter. More importantly, Apple is also widely believed to be preparing a new iPhone, for release this fall alongside iOS 5. There’s still some arguments as to whether this will be , but regardless, it’s going to sell a massive amount of units. It will be the first time that Apple releases a new device on both AT&T’s and Verizon’s networks at the same time. And there are whispers that at least one of the other major U.S. carriers — Sprint or T-Mobile — could be added as well (assuming, of course, that AT&T and T-Mobile don’t merge before then). There’s also that would be sold around the world . This pre-paid iPhone would mean less in the U.S. where carrier subsidization rules, but worldwide, where pre-paid is huge, this could mean more big business. Then there’s the talk of Apple partnering with China Mobile for the iPhone, . As the largest carrier in China, China Mobile offers up, oh, potential new customers. For Apple’s bottom line, such access could be a real game-changer. But again, the Chinese market is different. And the iPhone will be a very expensive buy for many (it has been sold through China’s number two carrier, China Unicom, for a couple years). Then there are the wildcards. We had heard several months ago that Apple was lining things up for a “ “. We were later told that would be a new version of the iPad. More details have trickled out since then, including a lot of talk of it being an iPad with a “Retina” display. We haven’t heard too much recently, but the latest word was that supply constraints may have delayed the device for a couple of months. Still, we believe Apple is looking to release this device before the end of the year. And considering how far ahead Apple is in the tablet space right now, a new iPad with a Retina display should really excite investors. Apple is also undoubtedly going to hold their annual music event this fall, which should see the release of a new iPod touch (unless the cheap, pre-paid iPhone the new iPod touch). We should hear more about iTunes in the cloud as well. And perhaps an updated Apple TV, and other new iPods (the last hurrah?). And, of course, Apple always has the ability to surprise with . All of these things should excite investors and keep the stock chugging along. And if that happens, it should only be a matter of months before Apple passes Exxon as the most valuable company in the world (again, assuming for the sake of argument, that Exxon remains stagnant). When in value in March 2010, many people were up in arms, thinking it wouldn’t happen. . Meanwhile, the rhetoric started that market cap really means nothing, and Microsoft still had more revenues and was far more profitable than Apple. . . Apple’s market cap is now a full $120 billion higher than Microsoft’s. To look at it another way, Intel’s is $118 billion. Or, another way, Apple is now worth more than — with about $17 billion left over. Point being, while market cap doesn’t mean everything about a company, these numbers and trends are a pretty good indicator of performance. If and when Apple becomes the most valuable company in the world, there will be a very good reason for that. And this fall is for that. : . |
Borders May Be Dead, But e-Reader Kobo Is Still Alive And Kicking | Alexia Tsotsis | 2,011 | 7 | 18 | I am old enough to remember when going into a chain store like Borders and picking out books physically was something one did to save time. Plus, as any bookworm will tell you, rifling through bookstore shelves for buried treasure and asking knowledgable employees about their reading recommendations was an oddly exciting feeling, even at a franchise. Sometimes (in my unemployed writer days) I used to go to the nearest Borders and sit on the floor and open a book, and just read all day until I finished, like it was a library. Sometimes I’d even buy something. Apparently that “buying something” thing isn’t happening often enough for Borders to be a business anymore; As of today the WSJ is that Borders will be closing its 399 stores and laying off 11,000 employees. Last time I wrote a Borders post it was titled juxtaposing the chain’s troubles with the fact that a newspaper couldn’t a news story in time. But maybe it wasn’t the Internet exactly but the way Borders management handled the Internet that caused its downfall. As Harry McCracken in a thoughtful post about the company’s demise, “The last time I was in a Borders, which was last week, the first thing I encountered when I entered was a great big table of But it was clearly far too little, far too late.” Borders its partnership with Kobo in 2009, lagging far behind competitor Barnes and Noble’s Nook. Kobo, which independence from Borders when Borders filed for bankruptcy protection in February, today writes us with the following reinforcement of that independence in light of the shut down news: “As one of the early investors in Kobo, Borders has a minority stake in our company and serves as part of our distribution in the U.S. along with Walmart, Best Buy, Sears and other retailers. As a member of the broader book publishing and retailing community, we are watching Borders’ story with interest and send our best wishes to all the people of Borders. Kobo owners will continue to use their eReader devices as usual and browse and shop for new titles in the Kobo Store with no interruption in service. Kobo continues to grow in the U.S. and around the world and we’re very pleased with progress of the launch of the new Kobo eReader Touch Edition and European office with Kobo Germany.” So there you have it, Borders customers with Borders e-Reader accounts now basically have Kobo accounts. I still haven’t received word from Kobo on whether Borders’ shares in Kobo will go to liquidator Hilco Consumer Capital and Gordon Brothers, but I’m guessing they will be transferred with the other Borders assets (will update this post when I find out). You can read Devin Coldewey’s comprehensive and more technical review of the Kobo device What makes the Borders story particularly poignant is the detail that Louis Borders was the founder of failed 90s startup Webvan, which was a vanguard of online grocery delivery and then went bankrupt in 2001. As the SF Business Times brings up, it’s pretty poetic that Borders’ brick and mortar stores resulted in two of the most-emblematic Internet-related bankruptcies of our time. Borders rise in the mid-nineties and fall in the 2000s is also sort of the reversal of investor Marc Andresseen’s that all the startups that failed then would succeed now. The company rode a short slice of history where heading to a big impersonal book superstore was actually the most convenient option for consumers and then failed to hop on the next wave. RIP Borders. Long live the Kobo (at least, in theory). |
CarabinerKey Is Part Carabiner, Part Key (Naturally) | Devin Coldewey | 2,011 | 7 | 18 | You might remember the , a clever twist on the keyring by designer Scott Amron that let you hang your keys on another key. The split-ring design, however, made it a chore to add and remove keys. Solution? Put a hinge on that sucker and ta-da: the . Seems like a handy addition to your keychain — might even simplify things a bit. The site says you can order them, but I’m guessing they’re not quite to the level of retail availability. Price isn’t set, but the old keys were $8, so I’d guess these would be a bit more due to the multi-part manufacturing. $10 maybe? Whenever they’re ready to ship out, you’ll find them at or . |
Clever Sense Launches Alfred: Personalized Local Recommendations With A Single Tap | Jason Kincaid | 2,011 | 7 | 18 | Back in June I , a startup that’s looking to take a different approach to restaurant and other local recommendations. Led by CEO Babak Pahlavan, the service has a strong emphasis on algorithms that are used to customize its suggestions for each user (the company is led by Stanford PH.D. grads, and is advised by Professor Jeff Ullman, who was the Ph.D. advisor for Sergey Brin way back when). Their application, called Seymour, was supposed to launch tomorrow morning in conjunction with Fortune’s Brainstorm conference, but it hit a somewhat fortuitous snag: CleverSense decided to release it early on the App Store under a different name (Alfred) as a sort of trial run. And then the app managed to acquire 20,000 users in the last two weeks — so Clever Sense decided to ditch Seymour and stick the the app they’ve already released. You can grab it on the App Store . The promise behind Seymour.. err, Alfred, is that it can learn the restaurants and venues you like to frequent and make high-quality suggestions based on your preferences. The whole app is built around recommendations and speed — the goal is that once you’ve set up your taste profile, it should only take one tap to get a recommendation, with a minimal amount of filter futzing required. First, you’ll run through a set of questions designed to establish your preferences (what’s your favorite place to eat breakfast, your favorite place for drinks, and so on). Then, the next time you launch the app, it’ll give you a grid of options depending on the time of day. If it’s around 1PM, you’ll see an option for Lunch and one for Coffee. Tap one of those, and the app will immediately give you some good (probably) suggestions. You can flick through multiple suggestions if the first one doesn’t suit you, and Alfred will also include a caption explaining it thinks you’ll like something. I’ve seen the app in action a few times now and it’s worked well — some of the suggestions are pretty obvious, but I’d imagine it would come in handy when I’m in a part of town I don’t know very well. And so far it seems iPhone users are having a lot of luck as well — it’s racked up a 4-star rating and has plenty of very positive reviews. For more on the technology behind Alfred, see our report from . [youtube=http://youtu.be/skBxK9HIE-k]
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T-Mobile myTouch 4G Slide Confirmed For July 27 Launch, July 19 Pre-Order | Jordan Crook | 2,011 | 7 | 18 | After some confusion, has taken to to give us an exact arrival date for the myTouch 4G Slide. the slider for a July 27 launch, and as luck (and leaks) would have it, we were right. update also confirmed that July 19 will kick off the pre-order period (web only). We’ve been following this phone , and we’re excited to see it finally make its way onto the market. Specs include a 1.2GHz processor running with on top. The slider also sports a 3.7-inch WVGA SuperLCD display with 800×480 pixels of resolution and To be honest, the actual camera hardware on the myTouch 4G Slide is your standard 8-megapixel rear shooter. The “most advanced” part comes into play via software, as the camera app features a number of different features to keep things snappy, crisp, and creative. Here’s a video of the myTouch 4G Slide’s camera in action: [youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EgvDVTFJ3fM&w=640&h=390] [via ] |
Map Trends Show Mobile And App Growth Outpacing Browsers | Devin Coldewey | 2,011 | 7 | 18 | Location-based services and increasing smartphone sales are leaving their mark on the mapping world: mobile-based map access is up significantly, while access from “stationary” points (i.e. desktop and laptop PCs) actually dipped slightly. It’s not particularly surprising, but the rate of growth is remarkable. Mobile use increased by 39% year-over-year , but access via apps doubled. This suggests a nice halo effect from local-knowledge apps like Foursquare and Urban Spoon. Mobile browser use also increased, but I suspect that the gap will only widen, or the two will become difficult to separate; do web apps count as web or app? At this point I think it’s a relatively safe assumption, given the still-primitive state of many mobile web browsers, that this mobile-browser map use is actually web-based, for example accessing the web interface via an embedded map on a restaurant’s website after Googling (or Binging) them. As this behavior is damaging to the standard “division of labor” on smartphones, it will likely only decrease due to more forceful redirection of web maps to the native mapping app (if compatible, which is another issue altogether). Mustn’t sent a browser to do an app’s job, or vice versa. Comscore’s data also shows that nearly 90% of map users selected “driving” as their mode when requesting directions. This measurement is probably useless, considering that driving directions are selected by default in many cases, and at any rate are often identical to walking directions. I’d be interested in seeing how public transit is being looked up, however; the bus and metro apps I’ve seen are quite good, but the public sector might want to move in on them before they hit critical mass. One methodological problem that is sure to present itself in the next year is how to quantify passive map use. An increase in active tracking (though the user is not actively requesting, hence passive) while a device is idle is sure to show this coming year, and it may throw traditional measuring methods off. Apple and Google are not likely to miss out on the possibilities of passive location tracking (indeed, Apple seems to have already ), and there are already plenty of apps (for instance, fitness and pedometer apps) forming the vanguard of this wave. The dip in PC mapping is more difficult to analyze, however; PCs have more or less saturated the US market, but the standard of entry to “advanced” categories of browser and PC use (the computer illiteracy of the market can’t be underestimated) is ever dropping and I would personally have expected continuing slow growth in web map use given steady sales and access numbers. The continuing rollout of decent broadband would tend to increase these usage numbers as well. But it seems that this period of rapid smartphone growth has pulled more people from the PC pool than enter on average. It’s a pity this data isn’t richer — knowing the app breakdown, success rate, exit rate, and so on would be interesting data for number crunchers. |
LulzSec Hacks Murdoch-Owned ‘The Sun,’ Redirects Homepage To @LulzSec Twitter Account | Alexia Tsotsis | 2,011 | 7 | 18 | Looks like hacker group LulzSec is back in action, this time the of the Murdoch-owned ( ) to a fake story about Murdoch’s death from a drug overdose located on the Murdoch-owned URL used to broadcast the redesign . After the amount of requests caused a 404 failure on the site, the group then redirected homepage to the Twitter account. (The original page is archived at ) From what I can see the fake story was meant to mirror an actual story about the latest development in the messy Murdoch/New Corp/ , After about 10 minutes of being up (and I swear the real Sun homepage was redirecting) the fake story was pulled from the UK site. I’m including the full text of the story below: Murdoch, aged 80, has said to have ingested a large quantity of palladium before stumbling into his famous topiary garden late last night, passing out in the early hours of the morning. “We found the chemicals sitting beside a kitchen table, recently cooked,” one officer states. “From what we can gather, Murdoch melted and consumed large quantities of it before exiting into his garden.” Authorities would not comment on whether this was a planned suicide, though the general consensus among locals and unnamed sources is that this is the case. One detective elaborates. “Officers on the scene report a broken glass, a box of vintage wine, and what seems to be a family album strewn across the floor, containing images from days gone by; some containing handpainted portraits of Murdoch in his early days, donning a top hat and monocle.” Another officer reveals that Murdoch was found slumped over a particularly large garden hedge fashioned into a galloping horse. “His favourite”, a butler, Davidson, reports. Butler Davidson has since been taken into custody for additional questioning. LulzSec confirmed its responsibility for the hack with a couple of tweets promising more attacks, “We have owned Sun/News of the World – that story is simply phase 1 – expect the lulz to flow in coming days,,””The Sun’s homepage now redirects to the Murdoch death story on the recently-owned New Times website. Can you spell success, gentlemen?” and “TheSun.co.uk now redirects to our twitter feed. Hello, everyone that wanted to visit The Sun! How is your day? Good? Good!” The group also threatened that hacking went further than surface level, and tweeted out the emails and passwords of what are presumably Sun employees from the account, writing “We are showing you a very small surface; the real damage is currently giving the admins heart attacks. ;).” Gizmodo is that one of the employee passwords tweeted out by the Twitter account “Anonymousabu” belongs to the recently-arrested News International chief Rebekah Brooks. TechCrunch Europe is also that LulzSec also circumvented a attempt to post a statement about attack. That site isn’t loading at all for me. Just when you though this News Corp story couldn’t get any worse, it did (Just add LulzSec!). But still, punishing the unscrupulous of a murdered girl’s phone (among other things) with more hacking might not be the most coherent way to get your message across. The group is now to have taken down News International’s DNS servers, bringing all 1,024 News International sites down. |
Nasty Lawsuit Between Radar Networks And A Very Upset Investor | Michael Arrington | 2,011 | 7 | 18 | There’s a nasty, and very personal, lawsuit in progress between and a jilted investor, Kate Paley (daughter of CBS icon ). The defendants include founder , the company that eventually acquired Radar Networks ( ) as well as investors Steve Hall, Ross Levinsohn and . The company, known by most through it’s product Twine, was once from an outsider’s perspective, but the reality, according to the lawsuit, is that the company was scrambling for ways to stay in business by 2008. The way that the company raised new money, and the details around its eventual sale to Evri, are a warning to any startup – sometimes it’s better to just shut down a failed company and move on. The amended lawsuit is below. Plaintiff Kate Paley invested $5 million into Radar Networks in 2007 and 2008. Importantly, the second chunk, $3 million in 2008 – was convertible debt that would turn into equity only when the company raised a new round of financing of at least $4 million. The company did eventually raise more money, from existing investors, and converted that debt into equity. Apparently, though, only a small amount was raised and the company claimed the right to convert Paley’s debt because the total amount, including Paley’s $3 million, met the $4 million target. Paley asserts that the new equity had to equal $4 million without counting her $3 million. The new equity, from inside investors, was raised just days before Paley would have been able to call in her note. What’s worse, after the financing and the conversion of Paley’s debt, the company raised new debt, including funds from Spivack, and that debt was paid off in the . Shareholders received nothing. Evri and Radar shared a common shareholder, , which raised additional issues of insider dealings. There are lots of other allegations of broken promises and breached contracts in the lawsuit. The lawsuit alleges that Spivack painted a rosy picture of Radar Network’s prospects when raising money from Paley. But at the same time he was telling at least one existing investor that the company only had a month’s worth of cash left, and “we have to get a term sheet this month or the board will force a shutdown on us.” Lots of companies spin tales to raise more cash and keep the dream alive for just a little bit longer. But it’s important not to say one thing to prospective investors and a different thing to existing investors. At least in writing – because it all comes out in the lawsuit. . [scribd id=60274036 key=key-1k0gm8e5kgcihjj6u1ir mode=list] |
With NFL/NBA Lockouts Continuing, Fanvibe Goes On Permanent Strike | MG Siegler | 2,011 | 7 | 18 | It wasn’t even a month ago when that would be acquiring former Y Combinator startup . At the time, Fanvibe’s , set to become the new CEO of beRecruited with the deal, said that Fanvibe would continue to operate with its roughly 100,000 users. What a difference a few weeks make. Effective immediately, Fanvibe will cease operations, Prabhakara confirms. Why the sudden change of heart? The ongoing NFL and NBA lockouts have effectively destroyed the point of the service, Prabhakara says. While the NFL lockout has been rumored to be ending for weeks now, it still continues on (once again, a deal is rumored to happen later this week — don’t hold your breath). Meanwhile, the NBA lockout shows no signs of ending, and it definitely could wipe out at least a part of the upcoming season. The threat of no games in the upcoming months was simply too much for beRecruited, so they made the call to pull the plug. When I noted the constant rumors of the NFL lockout ending, Prabhakara says it has already taken too big of a toll. Apparently, a number of the NFL’s digital staffers were laid off or have left during the lockout. “They are now way behind on the digital stuff,” Prabhakara says, also noting that their main contact left to become the head of sports and entertainment marketing at JP Morgan Chase. This turn of events serves as an interesting reminder that outside variables can quickly destroy a startup. Of course, Fanvibe was fortunate to sell itself in time (perhaps not coincidentally — but Prabhakara assures me this “wasn’t our plan”). “We’re going to put our focus on the growth of beRecruited for the the near future, while leveraging some of the backend stuff we built for Fanvibe,” Prabakara says. : Says the NFL: We are not laying off people. In fact, NFL.com is hiring and getting prepared for the 2011 NFL season. Prabhakara’s comments about us that were from his contact that is no longer at the NFL. |
I Don’t Think We’ll Be Seeing These Galaxy Tab Smart Covers Stateside | Devin Coldewey | 2,011 | 7 | 18 | While I’m not quite ready to lay charges of criminal nepotism at Samsung’s feet (as and do gleefully, and not unreasonably), I do have to say that it seems a bit unwise, during high-stakes patent litigation, to lend their brand to such an blatant knock-off. Apparently this for the is being sold in Samsung stores throughout Korea, where, perhaps, US patent law cannot reach. But would Apple have neglected to file for a patent in such a large market? At all events it’s shameless (the cases may have been approved because of some personal connections within Samsung) and I don’t think this will be Samsung-approved for long. Knock-offs are a normal part of the tech world these days, but dignifying them with shelf space doesn’t have to be. |
IBM Posts Q2 Revenue Of $26.7B With Net Income Up 8 Percent To $3.7B, Ups Outlook | Leena Rao | 2,011 | 7 | 18 | IBM just its second quarter earnings today. Big Blue reported $26.7 billion in revenue for the quarter which is up 15 percent (or up 5 percent adjusting for currency). Diluted earnings came in at $3.00 per share, compared with diluted earnings of $2.62 per share in the first quarter of 2010, an increase of 18 percent. Analysts
on revenue of $25.4 billion. Second-quarter net income came in at $3.7 billion compared with $3.4 billion in the second quarter of 2010, an increase of 8 percent. Operating (non-GAAP) net income was $3.8 billion compared with $3.4 billion in the second quarter of 2010, an increase of 11 percent. Samuel J. Palmisano, IBM chairman, president and chief executive officer said in a release, Palmisano also said that is raising its full-year GAAP diluted earnings per share to at least $12.87 from $12.73, and raising operating earnings per share expectations to $13.25. per share. Revenues from the Software segment were $6.2 billion, an increase of 17 percent (10 percent, adjusting for currency). Revenues from IBM’s key middleware products, which include WebSphere, Information Management, Tivoli, Lotus and Rational products, were $3.9 billion, an increase of 21 percent (14 percent, adjusting for currency) versus the second quarter of 2010. Revenues from the WebSphere family of software products increased 55 percent year over year. Information Management software revenues increased 18 percent. Revenues from Tivoli software increased 9 percent. Revenues from Lotus software increased 12 percent, and Rational software increased 4 percent. IBM’s hardware revenues totaled $4.7 billion for the quarter, up 17 percent (12 percent, adjusting for currency) from the second quarter of 2010. IBM ended the second-quarter 2011 with $11.8 billion of cash on hand and generated free cash flow of $3.4 billion, up approximately $350 million year over year. |
Google Buys G.Co To Create An Official URL Shortcut For Google Products | Alexia Tsotsis | 2,011 | 7 | 18 | Google joins Internet biggies Twitter ( ) , Overstock ( ) and Amazon ( , and ) today in taking over the domain name, buying the TLD in order to build the official URL shortcut for Google products like GMail, Documents and Photos. While representatives from the .Co registry wouldn’t comment on the specific pricing of the deal, .Co-founder Juan Diego Calle recently Reuters that in general single letter domains costs more than $1.5 million. Google says it will use the domain in order to create a shortcut for all its products and services using the format and that the domain will be live sometime later in the afternoon today. “You can visit a G.CO shortcut confident you will always end up at a page for a Google product or service,” said Google VP of consumer marketing Gary Briggs in a release. Run out of Colombia (and with the support of the Colombian government), the .Co domain is hard core targeting itself towards tech companies big and small. Also announced today is the ‘ .Co rebranding; the incubator will be from 500Startups.com to 500.co this fall. While not as mainstream, the 500 Startups move is probably just as monumental as the Google news, as it give the domain street cred and solidifies that idea that the “Co” in .Co means companies. Emphasizing this point, 500 Startups co-founder said that he recommends the .Co domain to all his now 150 startups, ” “With .Co, startups can launch businesses and brands on a short, cool, credible domain name — without having to shell out a million bucks to do it.” “CO is quickly becoming the hot new geek TLD in Silicon Valley,” he said. The .Co domain registry is two days away from the first anniversary of its public launch and most recently domains after ten months of existence. Its marketing and advertising push has been aimed at tech companies who have thus far had to settle for a lame mainstream .com domains — i.e. no vowels, weird spelling, etc — or have had to shell out tons of VC cash for the domains that they want. The new enough .Co offers a viable alternative. “We want to be inspiring people with big dreams and big ideas to do it on a .Co.,” .Co Director Lori Anne Wardi told me about the registry’s aspirations on the phone earlier, “We want to be a platform for the world’s next great businesses.” |
Ticketmaster For BlackBerry Beta v2.0 Available Now For Beta Zone Members | Jordan Crook | 2,011 | 7 | 18 | If you’re a member of Beta Zone, you should be happy to hear that has just released the Ticketmaster for BlackBerry app in beta version 2.0. This means you can select the event of your choosing straight from your phone, buy tickets, and be on your way, all from the comfort of that QWERTY keyboard. The app has been revamped from the floor up and now sports a nice, clean looking UI. But the real goodies lie in the updated Search feature, which gives you a few different ways to find the right event. For one, you can do a basic search by artist, teams, or venues. GPS steps in and makes sure your search is filtered to present only events happening nearby, so you don’t get all excited about some Black Eyed Peas concert that’s happening 200 miles away. Searches can also be further filtered based on the date of the event. You can choose between “this weekend,” “the next 90 days,” or build your own custom date filter. Another cool enhancement is Calendar integration. With Ticketmaster for BlackBerry Beta 2.0, users who have purchased tickets from their phone can now sync the date with their BlackBerry calendar to stay organized. Overall, this is a nice future addition to the BlackBerry App World, and we hope it makes its way out to the masses sooner rather than later. [via ] |
Will Asus’s Kinect Clone End Up Like Its Wii Clone? | Devin Coldewey | 2,011 | 7 | 18 | Asus has been working with Kinect co-creator to put together a PC-based version of Microsoft’s hit depth-detecting game controller. The thought, I presume, was that PC gamers and hackers would like a native device and an open platform for gesture-based game and OS controls. Their creation has been around for a bit, but we haven’t heard much regarding it, perhaps because it isn’t really an exact copy of the Kinect at all, but an inferior product. Asus is launching a new version ( ), but one can’t help being reminded of their ill-fated another game-controller clone that never took off. The Eee Stick was a knockoff of the Wii, cheapened by the lack of the Wii’s all-important IR bar. Accelerometers in teardrop-shaped controllers and a few tech demos masquerading as games. They had a hundred people on the development team at one point, so it wasn’t just a concept. Is the Xtion any different? I think they’ve got the right idea in pushing a unique angle like gesture controls for a PC, but mimicking the competition so closely was a mistake. The Kinect is a gaming device, meant for living rooms with plenty of space where it can perch conspicuously on top of the TV or cabinet. It was never designed to be a PC peripheral (though to be sure, Microsoft is working on a version like that) so basing one off that design is the wrong move from the start. The new version is more powerful than the old one, but still doesn’t match all the features of the Kinect — and yet it costs a hundred dollars more. Asus, a company with occasional (but by no means frequent) flashes of brilliance in notebook and PC design, should be focusing on miniaturizing the technology and embedding it, or implementing PrimeSense’s OpenNI ideas using existing technology. If people want a Kinect, they’ll buy a Kinect. Asus is barking up the wrong tree here. [via ] |
Kinect-Powered, Dueling “JediBot” Created By Stanford Robotics Students | Devin Coldewey | 2,011 | 7 | 18 | [youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VuSCErmoYpY&w=640&h=390]
It’s been a while since we’ve posted any interesting hacks. They were coming fast and furious for a while, but this is the first I’ve seen in a while that really makes me happy. Robotics students at Stanford put this “JediBot” together from an articulating arm and a Kinect (and of course a little robotics know-how). The Kinect tracks the location of both “lightsabers” and has the robot make an attack or defending move based on their positions. Right now it doesn’t go too fast, but considering what these robot arms are capable of, I’m not sure I’d want it going at full speed. , then move on to the tag to see why |
DeNA And ngmoco Launch Mobile Social Gaming Platform Mobage Worldwide | Serkan Toto | 2,011 | 7 | 27 | Is the world ready for the mobile social gaming revolution? Tokyo-based , the company that a year just by offering mobile games to Japanese cell phone users and in December, seems to think so. DeNA/ngmoco released an English (and Chinese) version of Mobage, its super-successful Japanese mobile social gaming platform on yesterday. Think of Mobage as Facebook and Zynga rolled into one, but – available exclusively on cell phones (no PC version)
– with both first and third-party games (DeNA/ngmoco itself is making games, too)
– and a virtual social graph instead of a real one (most of your friends will probably be strangers, like in the Japanese version) The platform is an entirely new, stand-alone social network with a focus on mobile gaming and with its own virtual currency MobaCoin – and now ngmoco aims at replicating the success DeNA saw in Japan (where the company boasts 30 million users) on a global level. Mobage in English (“Mobage Global”) is initially targeted at Android users in the US, Canada, UK, Ireland, Australia and New Zealand. A separate Chinese version (“Mobage China”) has been launched through a local DeNA subsidiary, and just like “Mobage Japan”, it won’t be connected with the global platform. On Mobage in English, players can choose between 23 different titles from the get-go (i.e. Pocket God, We Rule, Zoo Land, Paper Toss etc. – see the full list ), with more than 100 additional games being in development currently. Much like Zynga, the business model is to offer most games for free and monetize via sales of virtual items. As hinted at above, this model has worked very well for DeNA in Japan where the company is currently listed with a $7.6 billion market cap (you read that right). Future plans by DeNA/ngmoco include the release of more titles, a Mobage iOS version and expanding Mobage Global to more markets. Competitor (another Tokyo-based mobile social gaming powerhouse that recently for $104 million) is expected to make a push into the US market soon, too (that company opened an office in California in January this year). |
A Look At The Size, Shape And Growing Threat Of Malware Networks [Infographic] | Rip Empson | 2,011 | 7 | 27 | , the provider of web security and speed optimization solutions, earlier this month, which, among other things, examined the current state of malware ecosystems, and detailed the growing size and reach of malware delivery networks. Malware and malicious software have been around for years, but malware networks are becoming increasingly dynamic and continue to wreak havoc on search engines, email, and everything in between. No, my computer has not been infected by visiting this site, and, no, I will not download your antivirus software, Malware bot. Larger malware networks have begun swallowing smaller malware entities, and they’re now serving up their web landmines at astonishing rates. Apple even seems to have reached the tipping point, with enough market share that malware networks have OSes. It’s not quite the “explosion of malware on Macs” many forecasted, but it’s still a much larger problem than it was a year ago. And it’s not just desktops and laptops that are affected, malware has gone mobile, too. , as security firm, Kaspersky Lab, identified 70 different malware on Google’s mobile OS in March. Hide yo wife, hide yo kids, etc. Building on top of Blue Coat’s midyear report by Chris Larsen, a senior malware researcher, the team put together a nifty little infographic detailing the shape and heft of the malware ecosystem and what areas in particular pose the biggest threats. Larsen told me that, as one might expect, if you’re a malware provider, you want to be where the crowds are, setting your traps in the most highly trafficked areas of the Web. He also said that the most common form of malware is the invitation to download fake antivirus software, but there’s also the age-old “Take this survey!” malware, and or the one that comes disguised as a PDF or office document file. And users can be infected by malware or spam without even downloading a file, Larsen says, as a form of drive-by downloading makes it possible to ply your browser for vulnerabilities and dive in when they see the opportunity. According to Larsen and team’s research, search engines have become breeding grounds for malware. And though Google does a good job of identifying poisonous text links, image search is currently “the most dangerous activity” one can engage in on the Web. Part of the problem is that the design of Google’s image search is such that you may be clicking on an image cached by Google that is coming from one of a malware network’s many phony websites. You’ve already clicked through to the image before you know you’re cooked. Malware networks don’t traditionally come with names, as one might expect, but Larsen said that the security industry has now been tracking the biggest malware offenders for long enough that they’ve been able to identify trends. Traditionally, he said, malware has been identified by particular attacks (and named accordingly), but the reality, he said, is that some networks have grown so large that they have their hands in many different scams at once. They might be gaming you on Twitter, offering you fake antivirus software in a Google image search, and trying to sneak into Apple OS X through the backdoor all at the same time. Blue Coat has begun employing a naming system for the top malware networks, using plays on mythical tricksters to give these malicious networks an identifier. And they need names, because these networks are fast, and they’re slippery. The average number of unique host names per day for the top 10 malware delivery networks is 4,107, and an average of over 40,000 users make unwitting requests to malware networks each day. With the highly covered attacks Lulzsec and Anonymous have made in recent months using DDoS attacks and simple SQL injections, the vulnerability not only of the average web user to malware, Trojans, and viruses, but high profile networks and websites has been pushed to the fore as well. It should be noted that we need to be careful of taking an alarmist stance (just when you thought it was safe to back in the water!); we don’t exactly need one more thing to worry about in our daily web activities, but it is important to be aware of the areas of the Web that malware networks are targeting as entry points. Many of us have had our own Facebook or Twitter accounts hijacked by link-disseminating malware — or at least know someone who has. Shoppybag anyone? What’s more, released its own intelligence that this new form of rapidly changing malware is leading to a rise in sophisticated, socially-engineered attacks. In terms of spam, the report found that the global ratio of spam in email traffic rose to 77.8 percent, an increase of 4.9 percentage from last month. Symantec also found that an average of 6,797 Web sites each day harbor malware and other malicious programs, an increase of 25 percent from last month. For more, check out the infographic below: Excerpt image courtesy of . |
Socialbakers launches list of Twitter’s most popular users, brands to be added soon | Ivan Beres | 2,011 | 7 | 27 | , a social media analytics website focused primarily on Facebook, launched their own Twitter statistics today. In essence, its a , including @ladygaga, @justinbieber, @barackobama and @britneyspears, sorted by their number of followers. Socialbakers, previously known as Facebakers, is a product of the Czech company Candytech, and is well known in the social media space for providing data on the popularity of Facebook fan pages. The fan pages are sorted by country, a feature that Facebook doesn’t offer which lets companies compare their Facebook presences to competitors. While Facebook Ads do offer data on some fan pages, Socialbakers’ move into Twitter statistics is even more important for companies that tweet. Twitter doesn’t offer any public data on the popularity of its users or company accounts, making it hard for both journalists and professionals to get a grasp of how popular Twitter is in any specific country. Socialbakers is planning to release a list of the most popular brand and media Twitter profiles next week and is are still planning to focus on Facebook. This may be true for the time being, but becoming a good overview of the business side of Twitter might change their mind in the future. |
Lexus Gets eDestination Fucntionality For Easy Location Management | Devin Coldewey | 2,011 | 7 | 27 | The merging of our smartphone and car interfaces is progressing, but at a rather slow pace. Various crossover apps and accessories have come out but few are really capturing the imaginations of drivers, and slow updates mean the systems are outdated a year after they launch. Well, I expect that will also be the case with Lexus’s latest system, but at least it’s an improvement. By using the (warning: autoplaying video), Lexus owners with Enform-equipped infotainment systems (the LX 570 we just has it, of course) can store up to 200 locations on their phone or in the web app, and send them to the car’s system for easy access. Of course, you could just as easily keep the info on your phone and get turn-by-turn from Google Navigation or what have you, but I guess there’s something to be said for making use of that big dash LCD. I’m pretty sure the days of these patchwork solutions are coming to a close — a little touch of basic web standards and some smart platform work by the automakers and you’ve got tools that can be accessed from car, phone, or desktop. Of course, that won’t stop foolish tourists from . [via ] |
wireWAX wires up a $500k investment from Passion Capital | Mike Butcher | 2,011 | 7 | 27 | , a startup which lets users add clickable tags to faces and objects web videos (the tags also move with the object), has secured investment from , the early-stage investment fund managed by leafing european angel investors, Stefan Glaenzer, Eileen Burbidge and Robert Dighero. No figure was released but our sources say it was in the $500,000 realm. ex-COO of Last.fm and CEO of ArtFinder Spencer Hyman joins as a strategic advisor and earlier investor. wireWAX’s technology is a cross-platform SaaS tool but its not limited to Flash web sites. It’s also available in a native touchable video version for use on the iPad or other Flash-restricted devices. Developed by co-founders Steve Callanan and Dan Garraway based on the former’s 10 years of experience at his TV production company. I’ve used wireWAX and the experience is extremely good – it’s very easy to click on what you want more information about as the clickable tags move around with the object they are tracking. As a result, clients have come on board giving the startup significant early tracking. Last year EMI has created a ‘video listening post’ through which viewers could click on relevant objects from a music album in order to hear a track. wireWAX now 1500+ other subscribers including FremantleMedia FMX. Fashion retailer Oki-ni is using it to create ‘shoppable- videos’ where click-through rates have reached 58% with a 1% conversion on an average product value of $254 – quite a lift. It’s also interesting to note that Passion Capital spotted the startup at in London this year. This is the third Passion Capital investment since announcing a £37.5 million early-stage fund this year. |
Sophomore Slump? One Month In, Google+ Sees A Traffic Minus | MG Siegler | 2,011 | 7 | 27 | Tomorrow, it will be exactly a month since . In that short amount of time, they’ve managed to sign up , which is amazing. Of course, the easiest path to tens of million of users is to start with hundreds of millions of users. Just ask Buzz or Wave. Still, kudos to Google — phase one of G+ was clearly a success. Now comes the hard part. Keeping those users around and engaged. Some numbers today released by suggest that Google+ has already started to experience the sophomore slump. For the week ended July 23 (last week), their data says that traffic decreased 3 percent versus the previous week. It’s important to note that this data is U.S.-only, and that Google+ is still technically in limited beta (though it’s easy to get an invite now). Still, the trend is the important thing: traffic is down week to week. While it’s totally circumstantial, my own observations and usage seem to support this data as well. After initially checking it several times a day, I now load Google+ about twice a day, mainly to see if I’m missing anything. I rarely find that I am. I +1 a few things here and there, maybe leave a comment. But overall, the content feels fairly stale. Almost everything shared remains about Google (or worse, Google+ itself). And even though I have nearly 370 people in my circles, very few seem to be sharing anything in any sort of limited fashion with me. As a “power user”, I know that I’m a bit of a weird use case when it comes to sharing. But others I’ve talked to in the past couple weeks have had similar observations. Google+ started off with a bang — a big one. Part of it was the new car smell, but a bigger part was that expectations were so low for what Google would come up with in the social space (their own doing). When Google exceeded those expectations, people were genuinely surprised. And that also spurred usage. There was a sense of excitement: Could this really be the next big social network? But now things are calming down. The new car smell is wearing off. And it’s time for reality. Google gave users a compelling reason to sign up, now they need to provide a compelling reason for coming back. That’s a lot easier said than done. Just ask Twitter. User retention is a bitch. Google has their secret weapon: the (ugly) black toolbar that resides across all of their properties. If it weren’t for that thing, my usage of Google+ would be once a day instead of twice a day. But even that won’t matter in the long run if Google doesn’t have the network and the content to back up G+. In addition to an overall traffic dip, average time spent on the site was down 10 percent, Hitwise says. That’s not good. From what I’ve seen, Hangouts are the major strong point of Google+ retention right now. While Sparks seem to be a major weak point. Circles, while initially praised for their simplicity and design, are now also facing . The fact of the matter is that they’re a pain in the ass to maintain — just like every other type of list. And aside from “Friends”, “Family”, and maybe “Co-Workers”, it’s still not clear , or if usage will continue. Well, aside from . That is useful. Meanwhile, after an , traffic referred from Google+ is dropping. And fast. Obviously, I can only speak to the TechCrunch data here. But again, the trend is clear. Each of the past three weeks, we’ve been seeing less and less traffic referred. And that’s with the overall network supposedly growing. Part of that may be Google’s own fault. They really screwed up the brand situation. who just wanted to share content. It would be hard to overstate just how important this second phase of Google+ is for Google. While they’re not a small startup limited by resources and money, they still only get one chance to make a first impression. In the first two weeks, that impression was very good. In the last two, not as good. I’m sure this post will get a hundred comments on Google+ about why I’m wrong, an idiot, something about Apple, and why Google+ is the bomb. I’d argue that — . But that’s beside the point. It doesn’t matter what anyone . All that matters is what Google does with Google+. |
Quora Testing User Credits For “Ask To Answer” Questions | Alexia Tsotsis | 2,011 | 7 | 27 | has just launched a bundle of interesting initiatives over the past day or so, all signs that the Q&A site is trying to figure itself out. First of all, the company has begun testing something called “Ask to Answer Suggestions” where users start out with a budget of 500 Quora credits (Quoins?) and can offer to pay other users in credits to answer questions. The price for questions will eventually increase or decrease based on answerer’s zeal for answering questions and level of topic expertise. From an email sent out to beta testers (because I’m a TechCruncher I’m not in the beta, nor can I see the Quora FAQ, which I’ve included below). “Since experts only have so much time to answer questions, we are also introducing credits as a bookkeeping mechanism so that incoming requests to a user stay at a manageable level. When you use Ask to Answer, you’ll now see other beta testers suggested based on how likely they are to give you a good answer. With your credits, you can ask these users to answer questions. Note, however, that if you and another user are following each other, you can ask each other for free. The number of credits required to ask someone reflects how responsive she is to Ask to Answer requests; to give responsive users who are willing to provide answers more requests, their prices come down while their ranking in suggestions improves.” Note, these credits aren’t something that can be exchanged for cash only for answers to questions. Basically as it scales the company is experimenting with incorporating game mechanics into its processes in order to get people to give more answers. The more and more mainstream/non-tech people join, the more likely it is that questions will go un-answered because the incentive that makes techies answer questions (esteem within our close-knit community) just isn’t there for a wider audience. Nothing is more depressing than an unanswered question. If Quora power user Semil Shah is currently on Zaarly to answer his Quora question about , in-service credits are worth a shot. In addition and more formally, the Q&A site has also added the option to include location and employment information in , letting users broadcast social and business information like where they live, go to school and work. The new profiles also allow for Facebook-style status updates, presumably because people were already using the question functionality to post non-questions. Quora designer Rebecca Cox the profile changes in a followup post to the one written yesterday, interestingly enough chalking up the profile changes to scaling issues, “Quora is growing and the previous profile wasn’t scaling with that growth. We have a lot of systems in place to provide a good environment for everyone to learn and share, but those same systems can be difficult for people new to the site to understand. If you’re new and are reading an answer or receiving a notification that someone edited your question: You want to trust the answer that is given and knowing something about the person who gave it helps inform that; You want to know why an edit happened and you want to know about the person making that change.” The startup exploded last December and has been rushing to catch up with its success ever since. With these recent steps we’re seeing the beginning of a more quantified user economy emerge, on based on reputation and expertise in providing information. Quora needs some kind of way to identify experts, and is figuring it out through iterating as it goes along. The Quora Credits FAQ, below (btw, if anyone wants to send me a screencap of their credits budget, my email is really easy to figure out. And while you’re ). And we’ve got a screencap. To help users get great answers faster, we’re launching Ask to Answer Suggestions, which help you find the people who are most likely to be able to answer your questions. Now instead of only being able to ask people you know or those whose answers you’ve seen, Suggestions identify people who have related expertise to help you. But since experts only have so much time to answer questions, we are also introducing credits as a bookkeeping mechanism so that incoming requests to a user stay at a manageable level. Everyone starts out with a budget of credits, which can be used to ask other people to answer questions. (For now, only people who are in the private beta will be part of this system). To start, it will cost the same number of credits to ask anyone a question, but prices will change over time to keep the number of requests to a user manageable. Users who are responsive and signal that they enjoy answering questions will see their prices fall, making them affordable to more users, resulting in more requests. Prices increase for users who aren’t answering requests and might prefer fewer requests. You can earn more credits in a few ways. Answering Ask to Answer requests: You’ll receive credits for answering ask-to-answer requests (an amount equal to your price). Getting upvotes on answers you’ve written: You’ll get credits for any new upvotes (not just from beta users) on any answer or post you’ve written on Quora. An answer you have solicited (via Ask to Answer request) receives upvotes. Credits given to you by other users: Users can give credits to each other whenever they want. Occasional system refreshes: We’ll provide credit refreshes if you go for a while without enough credits to ask the average priced user. Credits are a bookkeeping mechanism for Ask to Answer Suggestions to ensure that frequently suggested users don’t get inundated with requests. The prices that are set for each user reflect how responsive a user has been to prior requests and have nothing to do with the quality of potential answers. Users who are responsive to requests signal that they are willing to provide answers when asked. As a result, their prices come down while their ranking in suggestions improve to make them affordable to more users, resulting in more requests. On the other hand, prices increase for users who aren’t answering requests and might prefer fewer of them. If you receive numerous requests to answer and do not respond by writing answers, the system increases your price and ranks you lower in suggestions; in essence, it infers that you are too busy to answer or not interested in answering, both of which mean, on average, that we should send fewer requests your way. Two users with the same price may have different levels of expertise, because their prices reflect similar rates of responding to requests. Conversely, two users with similar levels of expertise may have different prices, based on different response rates. If a user who is asked to answer responds with an answer within a week, he or she receives the price paid by the asker. If the user has not answered after a week has elapsed, or clicks to ignore the request during the week, 75% of the price is refunded to the asker; the remaining 25% is still paid to the potential answerer for having received and considered the request. If you and another user in the beta are both following each other, you can ask each other questions without having to pay in credits. This is because we assume you are likely to know each other and did not discover each other through Ask to Answer Suggestions. You can request answers from users who aren’t in the beta by typing their name into the Ask to Answer box. These requests will neither require payment nor show up in your credits pages. Similarly, people who are not in the beta test may still ask you to answer questions, too. These will work as they did before except they will not trigger notifications and you will not receive credits for answering these unpaid requests. They will not expire and will appear on at the bottom of your Ask to Answer page with old requests you received prior to the beta. You can give credits you have earned at any time to anyone else in the beta. The only restriction is that the amount you have available for gifting is your current balance minus 500 credits. This is to prevent users from creating many accounts and accumulating a huge amount of credits by transferring them to a single account. If you do not have enough credits to ask someone to answer, you will not be able to do so. Periodically, users who have fewer than 100 credits will receive a refresh to top them up to 100. For example, if you had 0 credits left before the refresh, you would have 100 after the refresh. If you had 60 left before the refresh, you would also have 100 after the refresh. As this is a beta, you can expect the features to evolve and change just like the rest of the site, potentially faster as we get your feedback. If we decide to roll out Ask to Answer Suggestions more broadly, we will cancel the beta credits and issue entirely new credits to all Quora users. We will issue the new credits to beta testers in proportion to the number of beta credits you have at the end of the beta period. Please email feedback@quora.com with “BETA” in the subject and describe what happened in details so we can help investigate. Our goal is to help make each question page on Quora a valuable, reusable resource. One part of getting more great answers is helping users find experts who can contribute to each page. We decided to focus now on Ask to Answer suggestions because it is an opportunity to discover great contributors who otherwise might be unknown to you, and also to find out where your expertise is sought. We’ve found that people generally like helping each other, and new Ask to Answer Suggestions are designed to make that easier. In making suggestions prominent in the Quora interface, we have to be considerate of how available users are for answering questions on Quora. Credits allow us to calibrate how many requests a user might get, so that nobody is overwhelmed. Automatically setting the price of asking a user based on that user’s past responsiveness keeps the system flexible and dynamic while removing a complex decision. In developing credits, we’ve thought carefully about the economics — both at the level of each user, and of the system as a whole. Price movements and rewards are designed to help the system quickly reach a sustainable equilibrium, and to make using credits intuitive and fun. As with all theory, we need to see how our ideas work in the wild, and that’s where this beta comes in. We welcome your questions as you use the features, and your feedback about how things can be improved. We have numerous ideas for how we might iterate on the product and look forward to continuing to improve Quora with you. |
Possible Atrix 4G Successor Caught On Camera With 8MP 1080p Shooter In Tow | Jordan Crook | 2,011 | 7 | 27 | Here’s a mystery for you: Images of a Android handset have surfaced on Chinese blogs, and it looks incredibly similar to the Atrix 4G. In fact, it looks identical save for a few miniscule changes. The pictures come courtesy of and were published by , which seems to think that the display will have a contoured design. For one, the Atrix’s 5-megapixel 720p camera was swapped out for an 8-megapixel 1080p rear shooter, which will apparently have its own dedicated camera button along the side of the phone. The MotoBlur logo is no where to be found, although it’s clear in the photos that this unnamed handset isn’t running stock . We assume that this particular handset has some sort of custom skin on it, but it’s totally possible that we’re looking at a new version of Blur and we just don’t know it yet. The logo also relocated to the top of the phone, above the display, and the Motorola logo took up residence on the back where AT&T’s stamp used to be. The earpiece has also undergone a makeover, and seems to be a bit bigger and slightly further up the phone than it is on the Atrix. Despite all the extras we’re seeing on this anonymous phone, one key Atrix feature is missing in action: a fingerprint scanner. The Atrix is one of the only phones to sport a fingerprint reader and it really set the phone apart in terms of design. Even though it probably doesn’t see a whole lot of action (what with all the different software-related security options offered by Android), I’ll still be sad to see such a cool feature get the ax. There’s really no telling what’s going on under the hood of this bad boy, but I’d assume that the hardware changes we’re seeing in these photos only scratch the surface of what’s new underneath. Check out more photos after the jump.
[via ] |
Vodafone Blue 555: The Facebook Phone That Came Too Late | Chris Velazco | 2,011 | 7 | 27 | Here’s a classic case of a missed opportunity if there ever was one: the is, if you’ll pardon the term, a dumbphone with a Facebook button. It’s simple (no fancypants OS here), has a decent-looking keyboard, and it’s got just enough connectivity to keep your average FB junkie from getting the shakes. But is such a phone practical in today’s market? Alas, the 555 Blue is overshadowed by such handhelds as the HTC Status/ChaCha and Salsa, honest-to-goodness Android smartphones that take the same concept and flesh it out with better hardware. The 555, with its 2.4-inch display and 200 MHz processor, looks downright flimsy in comparison. Why purchase a phone like this when it requires a data plan, and even the cheapest smartphones out there have access to Facebook apps? Think back a bit though — judging by the hardware, the phone seems about two years old. Think of the impact, dumbphone or not, it would’ve been back then. Even then it wouldn’t match up to a smartphone, but considering it wouldn’t have nearly as many value smartphones to compete, it suddenly begins to look a bit better in comparison. A bit more novel. Maybe even, dare I say, cool? Probably not. But given that it’s completely outclassed by all of its rivals, the 555 Blue is almost certainly too little too late. |
Crowdtap Raises $7 Million To Help Brands Connect With Their Influential Customers | Rip Empson | 2,011 | 7 | 27 | , a service that allows marketers to easily collaborate with and mobilize targeted crowds of influential consumers, announced today that it has raised $7 million in series A funding. The round was led by , with participation from and social media agency . Mr. Youth invested $3 million of seed funding in Crowdtap back in 2009 (and served as an incubator for the company during its early stages), which brings the startup’s total current investment to $10 million. Crowdtap said that it will use its infusion of capital to ramp up hiring in both its sales and engineering teams. With an ever-widening gulf between consumers and brands, Crowdtap is attempting to retool marketing to make it a more collaborative and participatory process. It’s certainly an ambitious goal, which the startup hopes to catalyze by allowing brands and marketing agencies to access its growing member base of 150,000 Crowdtappers. The startup wants to become a network “for Brand Influencer Communities”, or, in other words, a resource that aggregates groups of influential consumers that can be tapped for realtime research, collaboration, or word-of-mouth marketing. Leveraging existing customer bases, along with locating potential new customers, is no easy feat for brands. Crowdtap hopes to enable brands to identify, centralize, and activate key consumers by more easily tapping into their Facebook, Twitter, and CRM channels. Crowdtap offers brands the ability to poll their top customers, view profiles of these customers, and receive breakdowns and analysis of the polls, which can then be retargeted based on answers provided. Brands can also form panels of consumer to quickly start discussions, posing questions to which consumers can then respond, comment on, and vote. For its community of Crowdtappers, the startup attempts to increase brand engagement by offering a game-ified experience, allowing these members to level-up, gaining status among their favorite brands, earn perks, get access to the latest products, and make donations to charities of their choice. Since launching its beta platform in August of 2010, Crowdtappers have completed 4.6 million brand actions, which include polling, online panels, social sampling, etc., and the startup’s communities are now averaging nearly 400,000 actions per week. Crowdtap launched officially at SxSW in March and has since added another 100,000 members in the U.S. Brands currently working with Crowdtap include Old Navy, AMEX, Pinkberry, MSN, Diageo and Bing, and the startup has also forged partnerships with PR, creative, and digital agencies like Weber Shandwick, GolinHarris, Kirshenbaum Bond Senecal, and Mullen. For more on Crowdtap, check out the video below: [youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xDDQ6Rj1ztQ] |
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