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Olympus E-PL3 Gets Price And September Shipping | Devin Coldewey | 2,011 | 7 | 26 | Olympus first the E-PL3 late in June, but at the time only the E-P3 (which we recently ) had a price and a date. No longer! The E-PL3 is now officially coming to the US in September, though Oly didn’t want to get any more specific than that. At $700, the E-PL3 is $200 cheaper than the E-P3; the two share the same sensor, image processor, and general camera capabilities (including interlaced video, unfortunately), but the E-PL3 lacks the sexy OLED touchscreen. Instead, it has a tilting, 3″, 480×320 LCD. It also lacks a built-in flash, something to think about if you’re looking for an all-in-one device (an external flash is included, though). They all fit the same lenses, of course, and the E-PL3 will be bundled with either a 14-42mm f/3.5-5.6 zoom or 17mm f/2.8 pancake prime. Olympus also announced their VF-3 electronic viewfinder, which is cheaper than its predecessor at $180 — but reportedly loses a lot of resolution to hit that price goal: . The resolution isn’t mentioned in the press release, so I’m guessing it’s not one of the marquee features. Instead they focus on the fact that you can look into it with “your own eye,” and that it can be rotated. Well! If you don’t feel like shelling out for the E-P3, just hang on for a little bit before settling on the E-PL3. We’ve got micro four thirds and mirrorless cameras coming out our ears this year, so something better might just come along soon. |
Japanese Professor Shows Rare Earth-Free Electric Car (Video) | Serkan Toto | 2,011 | 7 | 26 | Prices for have gone through the roof in recent years, with China basically monopolizing the market for these rare substances (the country currently produces a whopping 97 percent of all rare earths used globally). But in the field of electric vehicles, the dependence on rare earths could be a thing of the past soon: Professor Nobukazu Hoshi’s Lab from the has developed an that doesn’t require any kind of rare earths. The current prototype (a re-modeled Mazda Roadster from 1999) is powered by a 400V/9.5kWh hybrid car motor. The lithium-battery consists of five modules that are sized at 215x335x210mm and weigh 20kg each. Professor Hoshi developed a so-called switched reluctance motor that boasts an output of 50kW – no rare earth elements required. In the video embedded below (shot by in Tokyo), the professor explains the technology behind the motor and points out there is room for improvement (specifically, he wants to boost torque and energy efficiency and push down noise and vibration). Still, a pretty impressive accomplishment for a university lab (Toyota is on a rare earths-free engine for electric cars, too). Here’s the video (in English):
[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Cq_9EntG35w&w=560&h=349] |
Blekko Gets An Infographic | Alexia Tsotsis | 2,011 | 7 | 26 | Since I am our resident steward of infographics I figured I might as well highlight the creation of the very first infographic (below), brought to you by our friends over at . Am I a huge dork because I can correctly complete this multiple choice “Identify The Blekko Founders!” quiz? Yes, yes I am. *Skulks off to cry* |
BuddyTV Turns Your iPhone Into A Smarter Viewing Guide And Remote | Erick Schonfeld | 2,011 | 7 | 26 | A couple weeks ago, I went to a hotel suite in Manhattan to get a demo of BuddyTV’s new , which hit the app store a few days ago. In the video above, CTO Bill Baxter takes me through the main features. He shows me on an iPad for easier viewing, but the app is for the iPhone and soon Android. It combines a viewing guide on your iPhone, with social features like chat and being able to broadcast what shows you are watching to Facebook and Twitter. But it also suggests shows for you to watch that are airing now, upcoming, trending, or on your favorites list. The app works with , and eventually will be able to act as a remote with tablets and phones that sport an IR transmitter. (With Google TVs and Dish set-top boxes it will work over WiFi). The problem it is trying to solve, says founder Andy Liu is that “70% of the time people are watching sub-optimal content. People turn on TV and end up at .” The BuddyTV mobile app tries to be smart about suggesting what shows to watch. It doesn’t care if the show is on your cable system, Netflix, DVR (if supported) or somewhere else. It lets you “heart” and rate shows and channels, and then it gives you recommendations base don what it thinks you want to watch. Perhaps the best little feature is teh ability to go through your program guide and heart just your favorite channels and then look at only those—a feature I Verizon TV honcho Eric Bruno to let me do on FIOS TV, or at least on the FIOS iPad app. The app also pulls in previews, recaps, and other TV trivia from the main site. And you can set reminders for shows you want to watch with notifications on your phone. (Because you need to be reminded to watch TV). Here’s a slicker promo video: |
The Good: Chrome Gets OS X Lion Two-Finger Gestures! The Bad: They’re Backwards. | MG Siegler | 2,011 | 7 | 26 | Considering that it hasn’t even yet, it shouldn’t be too surprising that many users and developers are still getting used to OS X Lion. This includes Google, makers of the popular Chrome web browser. that a version specifically tailored for Lion was in the works, Google said that it may take a little while. But an update today already brings two key features. First, Chrome 14, , removes window scrollbars by default. This mimics the look and feel of other OS X Lion apps, include Apple’s own Safari web browser. These bars now only show up when you’re actually scrolling a page. The second change is much more welcomed — but also frustrating. Two-finger gestures. Yes, as many Chrome users noticed this past week, Lion broke the ability to flip back and forth between web pages with your fingers. That’s because this was previously done on Chrome in OS X Snow Leopard with three-fingers. But now three-finger swipes default to moving between desktops/apps in Lion. In Safari, this backward/forward navigation is now done with two-finger left/right gestures. But that wasn’t an option in the current version of Chrome out there. Now, in Chrome 14, it’s the new default way to go backwards and forwards. Great, right? Yes, but there’s one big problem. Google implemented it backwards. Well, to be fair, Google implemented it the same way it has always been, just switching three-finger input to two-finger. But as everyone is learning, Lion also reverses directions of gestures. In other words, swiping right in Safari with two fingers now navigates to the previous page (with a nifty page slide out). But in Chrome, you need to swipe left to do the same thing (without the nifty effect). If you use both browsers, this is extremely annoying. In some ways, you can’t fault Google for doing it this way though. Again, this is the way it was, and swiping left to go back makes sense in the context of the way the back button arrow points. But with the visual pull-the-page-back effect you get in Safari, the new way seems to make more sense. Again, you’re now moving the content, not the browsing window. The way to fix this for now is to use software like to customize Chrome’s touch gestures. Eventually, hopefully everyone will get on the same page. |
Solve Media Is CAPTCHA-ing 620K Type-In Ads A Day | Rip Empson | 2,011 | 7 | 26 | Ads are everywhere: They’re in our content, they’re online and offline, they’re on buses, billboards, and more. I’ve been told just to “get used to it” — that the advertising proliferation is only going to continue — so I’m thinking of selling some space on my forehead. Might as well take advantage. Of course, those who are successful in digital advertising are generally those who can find these non-traditional areas to use as advertising space, especially if they prove more effective than typical display (or banner) advertising. Late last year, a young startup called began taking ads into a new niche digital territory by reformulating … CAPTCHAs. Yep. You heard that right. “Captcha” boxes, for those unfamiliar, are those prompts that require users to input an odd array of letters and numbers so that the ticket vendor from which they’re buying tickets (for example), can be sure that the user is not some kind of evil spam robot. Thus, Solve Media’s unique approach is to use its “TYPE-IN” platform to replace those fuzzy words and numbers often used in puzzle-based CAPTCHA systems with a simple logo, or a brand message in quotes — along with a simple input box. Users type in what brand they see, or answer the given question, for example, and then proceed on their merry way. It’s an interesting approach and has actually tested quite well. For the most part, consumers are far less likely to struggle with Solve Media’s CAPTCHAs than they are with those annoying fuzzy puzzle CAPTCHAs. On the other hand, publishers get to employ a security buffer (when needed), and advertisers get guaranteed views and impressions for their brands. In fact, according to Solve Media CEO Ari Jacoby, consumers who saw a Solve Media type-in ad engaged 29 percent of the time during June of this year — far higher than traditional engagement in other forms of advertising. Compared to banner ads, in particular, which are nearly universally disliked and rarely clicked on, Solve Media’s type-in model is seeing a much higher level of engagement. And, for the consumer, at least interacting with a Solve Media ad gets them somewhere. Of course, the fact that a user is basically forced to interact with Solve’s ads would seem a deterrent, but according to Jacoby, so far there have been few complaints. Because, in short, typical CAPTCHAs really are a pain in the ass, and Solve’s type-ins save the user time in comparison. It’s much faster to type in Pepsi than it is to figure out what kind of devil-speak a traditional CAPTCHA is asking you to regurgitate. Furthermore, in regard to its new approach testing well: Since launching in September of last year, Solve Media has attracted more than 2,000 publishers and more than 75 advertisers. Advertisers, including names like Toyota, Microsoft, Universal Pictures, AOL, and Tribune are now using the platform. Solve Media saw nearly 15 million successful type-ins across its platform in June, which, according to Jacoby, would be the equivalent of serving 15 billion banner ads — assuming the industry average CTR of 0.1 percent. And considering the average for rich media is about 3 percent, that’s still a significant lift. What’s more, Solve is also averaging 620,000 type-ins per day in July (up from just over 500K in June), and is growing 15 percent month-over-month, according to Jacoby. And the network has grown over 460 percent since launch. It seems they may be onto something. In fact, IHG, which owns Holiday Inn, ran an advertising campaign in May and June on Solve’s platform (for its so-called “Vacation Pay”) that delivered a 122 percent lift in brand awareness and 15-times the average CTR, according to comScore. Solve is growing like gangbusters, and the startup really seems to have hit on a valuable niche space that supports advertising and guarantees brand interaction in ways other solutions (and forms of advertising) can’t. For more, check out Solve’s video below, and tell us what you think. [vimeo=http://vimeo.com/15041038 width=”640″ height=”380″] |
Official: Japan To Get The World’s First Windows Phone 7 Mango Handset In September | Greg Kumparak | 2,011 | 7 | 26 | As the sun just starts to set here on the West Coast, we’ve got a bit of news straight from the other side of the globe: Fujitsu and KDDI (Japan’s second largest wireless operator) have just confirmed that they will launch the world’s first phone running Windows Phone 7.5 (Mango) sometime in September. Word of the new handset comes from a Tokyo press gathering which just began moments ago. Exact details surrounding the handset are still developing, but all signs are pointing to it being the ( this is now confirmed) device that Microsoft gave a very brief sneak peak of at their Worldwide Partner Conference just a few weeks back. The handful of images in this post are pulled from a video of that fleeting glimpse; we’ll update with better photos as soon as they’re available. Windows Phone 7.5 (otherwise known as “Mango”, since all the cool kids give their updates fun nicknames now) is the first major update to the platform. I’ve spent a good amount of time with it on a pre-release device, and to sum up my experience: call it what you will, but this is version 1.0. This is the first version of Windows Phone 7 that feels competitive thrown up against the likes of Android and iOS and, while it’s still lacking a trick or two, is the first version that feels . For those of you who don’t gobble up every bit of Mango news, a quick recap of the bigger new stuff: Alas, chances are pretty slim that this thing will ever come stateside. Don’t fret though, Windows Phone fans (hey, they exist!): there should be plenty of Mango to go around by years end, with the likes of Samsung, Acer, and plenty of others throwing their goods into the ring.
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Groupon Pays At Least $10.2 Million For Zappedy | Alexia Tsotsis | 2,011 | 7 | 26 | Groupon has just filed for a $10,288,416 offering of equity in connection with its of Chilean startup . However we don’t know if there was cash involved in addition to equity in the Zappedy acquisition so it’s not clear what the final price of the transaction was — according to the form it looks like it was at least $10.2 million if it was an all stock deal. Groupon board members Peter Barris, Kevin Efrusy, Mellody Hobson, Brad Keywell, Eric Lefkofsky, Ted Leonsis, Howard Schultz and Groupon CEO Andrew Mason were also listed on the form. Zappedy offered for online and offline merchant and spending tracking before it was scooped up by the daily deals giant earlier in the month. |
Facebook Will Bring Credits To Mobile Browsers | MG Siegler | 2,011 | 7 | 26 | Over a month ago, , Facebook’s secret plan to bring applications to the mobile web via HTML5. Facebook is working with teams of third-party developers that and hope to unveil the project later this summer. As we noted, the key to all of this is really Credits. Right now, Facebook has no way to make money on any of the mobile platforms out there. With Credits bought and sold through the web browser, they’ll have a way. It’s that simple. That’s why it’s surprising to see Bloomberg report today that “ “. Um, of course they will. Not only did we report it last month, in a follow-up story, I included . I’ve seen it with my own eyes. It’s real. No anonymous sources needed. Either Bloomberg missed that report (to be fair, it was buried in a couple thousands words — more on that in a second) or they weren’t convinced. Either way, I’ll go ahead and include the shot again. This is also odd since Bloomberg did try to give us some credit for something. Sort of. Half-way down the page we get this throw-away line: “The TechCrunch blog previously reported on Facebook’s HTML5 efforts.” No link, of course. Typically old media jackassery on the web. Moving on, the real story here remains the one we originally reported: Facebook is attempting to come up with their own way to circumvent Apple’s App Store and Google’s Market, to maintain control of the applications within the Facebook ecosystem. There are mixed signals out there right now as to whether or not Apple may actually be helping Facebook with this effort in some regard. Because many applications (and most games) on Facebook’s platform right now require Flash, they do not work on devices like the iPhone and iPad. If Facebook could get these working through HTML5, it would be another huge blow to Adobe’s platform — . There is some talk that Apple may be interested in seeing this happen within Facebook’s own iPhone app, and their . But again, the key for Facebook is Credits. And that’s where things could get very complicated with Apple. If Facebook tries to circumvent the App Store to sell credits, Apple is clearly not going to want that in any native app (unless some sort of deal is struck, which seems unlikely at this point). But Facebook can get around this by going web-only with the functionality. When we initially reported this, Facebook threw a hissy-fit and tried to spin the press in opposition to our story. This led to t where I revealed more about Project Spartan, including the picture of Credits running in a test version of a Spartan app. Interestingly enough, Bloomberg today comes to the same conclusion I did (a conclusion shared by those actually working on Spartan apps, by the way). “Facebook is seeking to build a software community that rivals Apple’s,” Bloomberg notes, pointing out that Facebook would like a piece of the growing mobile app revenue pie that Apple is seeing. Let’s see if Facebook PR throws another hissy fit over what is common sense. Facebook wants and needs to make money. Apple wants and needs to make money. Apple owns a mobile platform to do so. Facebook does not. At some point, this will become an issue. A big one. |
Aircounter: Japan Gets Mini Radiation Detector | Serkan Toto | 2,011 | 7 | 26 | The nuclear crisis in Fukushima has yet to come to an end, and most of the radiation meters out there are expensive and usually sold in special-interest stores only: reason enough for Japan-based chemicals company decided to bring the so-called [JP] to market. The device, developed in partnership with the , is essentially a handheld radiation detector that’s cheaper, looks nicer and is easier to use than most radiation detectors out there. S.T. says they are using their existing distribution channels, i.e. drugstores and similar retailers, to make it easy for potential buyers to get the device (the company’s core business is sales of deodorizers and other products). Starting October 20, the Aircounter will be sold for just $190, which is less than 50% of the price similar counters carry, according to the company. The device is able to detect radiation levels between 0.05 to 9.99 microsieverts per hour at a height of about 1m above the ground (the process takes about 10 minutes to complete). It’s sized at just 82×62×34mm (LCD: 40mm×25mm), weighs 105g and needs two AAA batteries to run (which are enough for about a month when used daily for one hour). S.T. expects to sell 50,000 Aircounters in Japan by the end of the year. |
Amazon Has Opened 15 Fulfillment Centers In 2011, Will Build ‘A Few More’ By End Of The Year | Leena Rao | 2,011 | 7 | 26 | It’s no secret that Amazon is ramping up fulfillment centers across the globe to meet with increasing demand. The e-commerce giant in April that the company had built in 2011 to meet growing demand in sales across the globe. And in May, Amazon in Arizons and Indiana. In today’s Q2 earnings call, Amazon’s CFO Thomas Szkutak that the company has built 15 new fulfillment centers in 2011, already surpassing the 13 centers that were added this year. And the company plans to build ‘a few more’ by the end of this year. Amazon’s fulfillment centers enables the company and third-party merchants to store inventory and fulfill orders. With the 15 added this year, Amazon has roughly 65 fulfillment centers across the globe. Obviously demand is coming both from Amazon’s retail business (sales reached nearly $10 billion this quarter), as well as its fulfillment business for third-party merchants. |
Next MacBook Pros To Feature Air DNA? | Devin Coldewey | 2,011 | 7 | 26 | The Sandy Bridge to the Air line has been enough to make some feel the lightweight laptop is ready for prime time (I’m convinced, personally), but it’s still not enough for some. MacBook Pro users are accustomed to more storage, more screen real estate, and a greater number of ports. If rumors are to be believed, the best of both worlds might be on its way, with Air-style design making its way to the Pro line. The sources are obscure, referred to only obliquely ( “has learned” and is “hearing”), so take this with a grain of salt. But even sans source, it makes sense, while leaving room for plenty of speculation. What will the compromises be? For one thing, the optical drive will almost certainly be eliminated. Luckily for Apple, that particular item is not a priority among their users. iTunes and the Mac App Store are popular, and Apple Stores themselves are increasingly bereft of boxed software. Furthermore, presents an extremely easy way to add a high-speed peripheral. No optical drive? No problem: $100 external drive operating with no loss of speed compared to the wired-in original. Storage is a bit more complicated. As popular as streaming solutions are, local storage is still very important for editing media, something Apple has been pushing on consumers hard with the iLife suite — though pros may be jumping ship after the poor reception of Final Cut X. 256GB of flash storage is nice, but people want terabytes. Yet 2.5″ laptop drives are still too thick to include in an Air-like body. Or are they? Some laptop drives with a terabyte of space are coming in at under 10mm thick. You couldn’t fit that at the sharp end of the Air but there might be room for a 2.5″ right at the top right edge, where the optical drive would go. Apple is happy to to optimize space. Only a spinning HDD would mean a performance hit, though. So I’m guessing they’ll ship with a hybrid SSD-HDD volume, with system, applications, and temp kept on SSD and bulky media kept on HDD. It’s not so hard to segregate data like that, and as Apple likely can’t commit to only one storage type or another, they’ll have to do something interesting with both. Let’s not forget the ports. Apple will want to push Thunderbolt, and while shipping with only that port might be a daydream of theirs, my guess is they’ll go with two Thunderbolt and two USB ports. 2.0 or 3.0? I wouldn’t put it past Apple to limit their USB capabilities in order to make Thunderbolt accessories more enticing. And as other have pointed out, Thunderbolt-connected I/O hubs will handle USB 3.0 speeds with ease, though the ports on the are indeed only 2.0. A holiday release (as suggested by TUAW) would prevent them from adding a next-gen processor (coming in 1Q12), but to complement the Air styling they’ll probably want to market long battery life as well, and switching from the old Core i7s to Sandy Bridge might have been enough for Apple’s purposes. Want the latest hardware? Get a PC (I did). So: no optical drive, hybrid SSD/HDD storage, and 2xTB, 2xUSB ports (and an SD slot and Ethernet, of course). Maybe something more for the 17″, but I don’t think these specs sound at all unlikely. |
Peter Thiel, Ron Conway, Marissa Mayer, Mike McCue, And Vinod Khosla Are Ready To Disrupt | Erick Schonfeld | 2,011 | 7 | 26 | Disruption never stops, especially around here. This year we are holding three Disrupt conferences. We descended upon in May (those are ). Next up is San Francisco in September (and then we are off to in October). Buy . Who will be there? I’m glad you asked. A few of the key speakers joining us will be Peter Thiel, Ron Conway, Marissa Mayer, Mike McCue, and Vinod Khosla. Thiel, of course, was the first investor in Facebook and more recently a proponent of . Conway puts the “super” in super angel. Mayer is Google’s product veteran. McCue is turning publishing on its head with Flipboard. And Khosla is one of the most iconic VCs in the Valley. We are ecstatic to have them join us and share their insights with our audience. , is going to be no-holds barred, starting with our Hackathon on September 10 and 11, and then three days of the main event September 12-14. In the mornings, we will talk with the top founders and investors in tech, followed by our StartUp Battlefield where two dozen startups will vie for the Disrupt Cup, $50,000 and all the glory that comes with it. If you are a startup who would like to be considered for the Startup Battlefield, please submit your applications today . You can be sure that Disrupt SF will be a star-studded event filled with new startups, guest speakers and judges, brilliant hackers, after parties, and much more. As we get closer to the event, we will announce more guest speakers, judges, and many surprises, which are yet to come. It is going to be huge (trust me). If you’d like to become a part of the Disrupt experience and learn about sponsorship opportunities, please contact or for more information.
President and Chairman, Clarium Capital Peter is Clarium Capital’s President and the Chairman of the firm’s investment committee, which oversees the firm’s research, investment, and trading strategies. He is also a managing partner at The Founders Fund. Before starting Clarium, Peter served as Chairman and CEO of PayPal, an Internet company he co-founded in December 1998 and was acquired by eBay for $1.5 billion in October 2002. Prior to founding PayPal, Peter ran Thiel Capital Management , the predecessor to Clarium, which started with $1 million under management in 1996. Peter began his financial career as a derivatives trader at CS Financial Products, after practicing securities law at Sullivan & Cromwell. In addition to managing Clarium, Peter is active in a variety of philanthropic and educational pursuits; he sits on the Board of Directors of the Pacific Research Institute and on the Board of Visitors of Stanford Law School.
Angel Investor, SV Angel Ronald Conway has been an active angel investor for over 15 years. He was the Founder and Managing Partner of the Angel Investors LP funds (1998-2005) whose investments included: Google, Ask Jeeves, Paypal, Good Technology, Opsware, and Brightmail. Ron was recently named #6 in Forbes Magazine Midas list of top “deal-makers” in 2008 and is actively involved in numerous philanthropic endeavors. Ron is Vice Chairman of the UCSF Medical Foundation in SF, Board Member of The Tiger Woods Foundation, and SF Homeless Connect, and on the Benefit Committee of Ronald McDonald House, College Track, and the Blacked Eyed Peas-PeaPod Academy Foundation.
Vice President of Location and Local Services, Google Marissa Mayer is the Vice President of Local & Maps at Google. Previously she was Vice President of Search Product and User Experience. Mayer joined Google in 1999 as Google’s first female engineer, where she led the user interface and web server teams at that time. Her efforts have included designing and developing Google’s search interface, internationalizing the site to more than 100 languages, defining Google News, Gmail, and Orkut, and launching more than 100 features and products on Google.com. Prior to joining Google, Mayer worked at the UBS research lab (Ubilab) in Zurich, Switzerland, and at SRI International in Menlo Park, California. Mayer has been featured in various publications, including Newsweek (“10 Tech Leaders of the Future”), Red Herring (“15 Women to Watch”), Business 2.0 (“Silicon Valley Dream Team”), BusinessWeek, Fortune, and Fast Company.
Founder, Flipboard Longtime Silicon Valley entrepreneur Mike McCue founded Flipboard in early 2010, together with former Apple iPhone engineer Evan Doll. Flipboard is widely recognized as the first social magazine for iPad. Inspired by the beauty and ease of print media, Flipboardʼs mission is to fundamentally improve how people discover, view and share content across their social networks. There are Facebook and Twitter sections that let readers quickly flip through the latest stories, photos and updates from friends and trusted sources. Because Flipboard renders links and images right in the magazine, readers no longer have to scan long lists of posts and click on link after link – instead they instantly see all the stories, comments and images, making it faster and more entertaining to discover, view and share social content.
Founder, Khosla Ventures Vinod Khosla was a co-founder of Daisy Systems and founding Chief Executive Officer of Sun Microsystems, where he pioneered open systems and commercial RISC processors. Sun was funded by longtime friend and board member John Doerr of Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers. In 1986 Vinod switched sides and joined Kleiner Perkins, where he was and continues to be a general partner of KPCB funds through KP X. Through the years there, with other partners, he took on Intel’s monopoly with Nexgen/AMD (the only microprocessor to have significant success against Intel, sold to AMD for 28 percent of AMD), incubated the idea and business plan for Juniper to take on Cisco’s dominance of the router market, formulated the very early advertising-based search strategy for Excite, and transformed the moribund telecommunications business and its archaic SONET implementations with Cerent (sold to Cisco for $7B) |
Video: Motorola Triumph Screens Flicker Black And White, Owners Seeing Red | Jordan Crook | 2,011 | 7 | 26 | The Triumph — a pretty snazzy-lookin’ little beast (especially for a pre-paid device!) if I may say so — seems to have just hit a bit of a hurdle in its first week on the market: a number of new owners are hitting the forums with complaints of a flickering screen. Not-so-proud new owners have reported that the screen starts to flicker after a couple successive taps at the lock button, whereas others have said the screen goes completely white at random. Some of these flicker-victims are calling it a hardware issue, although a number of them have said that even multiple hardware exchanges haven’t solved the problem. One Triumph owner in particular had a more extreme issue than mere screen flickering: their screen actually went completely black, while the four buttons on the bottom locked up and stayed lit. The only fix that worked was the classic “battery-out-and-reboot” move. Hopefully, this isn’t a widespread hardware issue, which is much more difficult to amend. If it’s software-related, it can be fixed as soon as an update is ready to be released. As I said, the Triumph has only been with us for just a week, and barely anything ships without bugs these days. Still, if the issue escalates the same way it did for our black-screened friend up there, both and Motorola are going to have some angry customers on their hands. Especially after shelling out $300. [youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-dugB7Iuk-8&w=480&h=390] |
Verizon LTE Push Hits Laptops, Tablets, And Networks | Devin Coldewey | 2,011 | 7 | 26 | You could be forgiven (and are) for skipping over the LTE news of the last six months: the roll-out of the new 4G standard has been spotty and few consumers actually have any idea what it means, or whether they have it. But Verizon’s next big investment is starting to show up in more than small-run hot spots and high-end smartphones. Today was a big day for LTE — the vanguard of really consumer-oriented devices is hitting, and while it’ll be some time before your free-with-contract phone or bargain-bin netbook is tapping into the fourth G, the news is still significant. Tablets with built-in 3G have been a sort of consumer visibility pilot program for widespread deployment of non-phone devices on mobile networks. Sure, 3G cards and built-in wireless have been options for laptops for a long time, but I’d say that the Kindle, iPad, and Chromebooks have pushed that idea farther in two years than it’s gone in the previous ten. It’s no longer an obscure option but a plain subset of devices. We’ll be seeing lots more, but I think some interplay between smartphone and other-device plans will be necessary before people at large see the light. In the meantime, Verizon is pushing LTE as hard as it can to differentiate it from the competition. Today saw the introduction of an laptop. This ultraportable (lighter than laptops, better than netbooks, the fruit of a big HP push a couple years back) doesn’t have particularly impressive specs, but it’s the first to have built-in LTE. With a 1.6GHz AMD E-series processor, 2GB of RAM, a 320GB HDD, and an 11.6″ display, it’s about standard for its class. You can pick one up July 28 for $600 from Verizon, no contract required, and then pay monthly for LTE access: $50 for 5GB or $80 for 10GB. Not the most enticing plan, I must say, but Verizon has to maintain an elite air until it goes totally downmarket. Next, a pair of tablets. An LTE-capable Verizon variant of the 10.1 was (artist’s rendition, top), which will ship Thursday for $530 (16GB) or $630 (32GB) — that’s with a two-year agreement at a minimum of $30 a month, which gets you a whopping 2GB of data. 2GB at the advertised 12Mbps speeds equals… about 22 minutes of use. Per month. Very generous! It’s worth noting that these initial speeds will increase, since right now they can’t even match those (advertised, anyway) of T-Mobile’s pseudo-4G networks. The , too, finally has an estimated date for its long, long overdue . We were told it would happen three months after shipping. We were told we’d have a functional MicroSD slot, too. Speaking for myself, if I bought a Xoom I’d have returned it by now. But for those less disposed towards such drastic actions, September is the time (according to a memo sent to ) when you’ll have the opportunity to back up all your data and ship your tablet to Motorola for a chip swap. Meanwhile, Verizon continues its nation-wide roll-out of LTE networks. As of a few days ago they are live in 102 markets, and they spent over a billion more dollars in 1H11 than they did in the same period last year, due ( ) to LTE installation costs. This effort and expenditure should put them in around 175 markets by the end of 2011, which puts them well ahead of AT&T, which is only just now beginning its LTE push, and T-Mobile, which rather than lay down 4G networks, has attempted to redefine its HSPA+ networks (by most accounts a bridge technology like EDGE) as 4G. is choked with individual region announcements. Right now we’re still at the early-adopter phase, but the great wheels of Verizon are creaking into motion finally, and over the next year (they hope) LTE will change from foreign acronym to household tech jargon — that is to say like 4G, megapixels, and so on, used but not fully grokked. Meanwhile, consumers should be wary of signing up for ridiculous data plans that will almost certainly be revised a few months from now during the holiday push. |
null | Greg Kumparak | 2,011 | 7 | 19 | null |
YC-Funded Debteye Wants To Be Your (Much Cheaper) Credit Counselor | Jason Kincaid | 2,011 | 7 | 26 | It’s hardly a fun topic to discuss, but it’s the harsh reality that a lot of people out there have significant outstanding debt — many of whom won’t be able to pay back what they owe on time. In fact, there are so many people out there dealing with these issues that it’s given rise to the multi-billion dollar debt consulting industry, which serves as an intermediary between the banks and their customers. Now a Y Combinator-funded startup called is setting out to make that industry largely irrelevant. A tough goal, to be sure, and one that will be difficult given how much trust Debteye will have to gain before people trust it as much as a professional debt consultant. But they’re going for it. Here’s how it works: first, the service prompts you to enter your bank login credentials, so that it can analyze your account information (it uses Yodlee, the same backend that powered Mint, to do this). Once it’s analyzed this data, Debteye begins to make recommendations based on your account balances, how much you owe, and what your monthly income looks like. Some of these suggestions are petty straightforward, with Debteye recommending how much you should be saving each month and which bills you should pay off first (in this case the site is a bit like Mint). One interesting note: not all of the suggestions are as obvious as you’d think. For example, cofounder John Sun says that while many people intuitively think they should pay off the balance with the highest interest rate first, studies have shown that it’s actually better to pay off your smaller debts first regardless of their interest rate (it gives people a better sense of accomplishment). But not everyone is in good enough financial shape to simply keep making regular payments at their current rates. In these cases, Debteye can help facilitate more involved measures. The first of these is bank debt settlement, where you negotiate with a bank in an attempt to lower how much you ultimately have to pay (this will hurt your credit). The second is debt management, where you restructure multiple outstanding debts so that you can pay less per month over a longer period of time (this leaves an annotation on your credit report, but doesn’t hurt your credit). Of course, Debteye can’t exactly renegotiate your debt through a bank’s API. Instead, it helps you fill out pre-generated forms(it’ll also fax them to the bank if you’d like). And it will give you a script to read from when you’re talking to a banker. This part made me skeptical (wouldn’t a professional debt consultant be better at negotiating good terms than your average layman?). But Sun says that large banks have actually established a set of terms that dictate what they’ll offer to customers (in other words, he says there isn’t much room for consultants to negotiate), which is why their standardized script should work. Debteye is currently free, and will eventually charge a monthly fee for its service. This isn’t an industry you see a lot of startups trying to disrupt, but the three Debteye cofounders know it well: they’re all certified credit counselors. That said, I suspect they have a long road ahead of them — debt management is serious business, and Debteye is going to have to work hard to win users’ trust and convince them that they’re as safe and knowledgeable as the professional firms. And the professional firms have a major stake in trying to keep that from happening. Also see , a fellow YC-alum that’s looking to help you get out of debt by tracking your monthly payments and suggesting optimizations and deals you may be missing out on. |
As Shares Top $400, Apple Eyes The Next Tech Prize: HP’s Revenue Crown | MG Siegler | 2,011 | 7 | 26 | In the past few years, Apple has been in berzerker mode. Not even 15 years ago, they were on the verge of collapse when Michael Dell famously said that if he were CEO of Apple he would, “shut it down and give the money back to the shareholders”. Apple now has a market cap well over that of Dell’s. And in the past year or so, Apple has even managed to far surpass their old nemesis, Microsoft, in terms of , , and . Today, Apple’s closed above $400 a share for the first time. This has pushed their market cap up to roughly $375 billion, making my prediction that they to become the most valuable public company in the world this fall, look pretty good (they’re now “just” ). But what’s next? What other mountain can Apple scale? Well, there’s still a pretty big one in the tech sphere. It’s easy to forget that despite all of the financial success Apple has had in recent years, they’ve still been far behind a couple rivals in one key metric: revenue. In the previous full financial years, both IBM and HP have towered over Apple in this category. IBM’s last fiscal year saw them report $99.87 billion in revenue. Meanwhile, HP reported an astounding $126 billion. Apple? They reported roughly $65 billion. Yes, HP was still nearly double Apple in revenue. But that was last fiscal year — which ended almost a year ago for all the companies. Things are changing quickly when you look at the more recent numbers. And they very much point to Apple taking this crown as well. In the last four quarters, in revenue. In the same timeframe, IBM reported $104.6 billion. Given these numbers, it wouldn’t be surprising at all if Apple surpasses IBM in yearly revenue next quarter. But what about HP? In the past four quarters, they’ve reported $127.9 billion in revenue. So they’re still quite a bit ahead of Apple. But not far enough ahead that Apple can’t catch them in the next year or so. HP’s reporting timetable is a bit odd. While many tech companies reported earnings in the past few weeks or will do so this week, HP doesn’t report their Q3 2011 numbers until August 18. So the most recent numbers we have for them are Q2, which . In that quarter, HP reported $31.6 billion in revenue. In Apple’s last quarter just ended, . So Apple is clearly closing the gap — and fast — but there’s still some ground to make up on a quarter-to-quarter basis. That could change next quarter, or it could take until Apple’s next holiday quarter (in two quarters). But it seems almost a foregone conclusion at this point that Apple will surpass HP in revenue on a quarterly basis soon. Is it fair to compare HP and Apple in this regard? Yes. While some complain that comparing Microsoft to Apple is comparing a software company to a hardware company (even though both do both), HP and Apple are much more akin. HP is the largest PC-maker in the world. With the recent launches of devices like the TouchPad and the Pre, they’re clearly going right after Apple. They also now make their own software, webOS, thanks to the Palm acquisition. And while HP won’t admit it, insiders suggest that their strategy the past year or so has been to become more like Apple. , some were up in arms, citing the fact that HP brings in so much more revenue than Apple does. But again, that was then. Things looks very different now. And the trends should be clear to all. Further, while HP still holds the revenue crown, Apple has far surpassed HP in the one metric more important: profit. You know, the money you actually get to keep. In the last four quarters, HP did $11.4 billion in profit. Apple? $23.61 billion. Yes, Apple pulls in more than double the profit despite trailing in revenue. As we enter the “post-PC” world, where iPhone and iPad sales Mac sales for Apple ( illustrates this nicely), HP will have their work cut out for them in order to maintain their revenue crown. Unless the Pre or the TouchPad take off, I’m not sure that HP will be able to hold off Apple for long. I give them a year. |
Amazon Beats The Street; Sales Up 51 Percent To $9.9B, Net Income Down 8 Percent | Leena Rao | 2,011 | 7 | 26 | E-commerce giant Amazon second quarter results, posting sales of $9.9 billion, an increase of 51 percent from the same quarter in 2010. Net income decreased 8% to $191 million in the second quarter, or $0.41 per diluted share, compared with net income of $207 million, or $0.45 per diluted share, in second quarter 2010. Analysts strong sales of $9.37 billion but earnings were expected to drop to $0.35 cents per share for net income. The Kindle 3G with advertising is now the company’s bestselling Kindle, says Amazon. Amazon founder and CEO Jeff Bezos said in a statement: “Low prices, expanding selection, fast delivery and innovation are driving the fastest growth we’ve seen in over a decade…Kindle 3G with Special Offers has quickly become our bestselling Kindle at only $139. Customers love the convenience of a 3G reader — no hunting for or paying for Wi-Fi hotspots. Amazon picks up the tab for the 3G wireless, so you have no monthly payments or annual contracts.” Amazon says that second quarter 2011 net income was actually positively impacted by an equity-method investment activity of $15 million, including a $49 million gain on the sale of an equity position that was offset by $34 million in losses from equity-method investments. Unsurprisingly, Amazon says that sales growth of Kindle devices accelerated in second quarter 2011 compared to first quarter 2011 but declined to give set numbers on how many Kindles were sold in the quarter. Operating income was $201 million in the second quarter, compared with $270 million in second quarter 2010. The favorable impact from year-over-year changes in foreign exchange rates throughout the quarter on operating income was $28 million. Specifically, North America segment sales were $5.41 billion, up 51% from second quarter 2010.
International segment sales, representing the Company’s U.K., German, Japanese, French, Chinese and Italian sites, were $4.51 billion, up 51% from second quarter 2010. Worldwide Electronics and Other General Merchandise sales grew 69% to $5.89 billion. In terms of third quarter guidance, sales are expected to be between $10.3 billion and $11.1 billion, or to grow between 36% and 47% compared with third quarter 2010. Operating income is expected to be between $20 million and $170 million, which is a 93% decline and 37% decline compared with third quarter 2010. We’ll listen to the earnings call and update you with any additional information. |
Nodeable, The Twitter For Machines, Raises $2 Million From True Ventures | Rip Empson | 2,011 | 7 | 26 | , a startup building a cloud-based social platform for systems data, announced today that it has raised $2 million in series A financing, led by . The startup will use this infusion of capital to ramp up hiring efforts and continue building its platform, as it moves into private beta. But what is it about this young startup that has True Ventures excited? Cloud computing and various sources of big data are becoming more and more popular as on-demand resources for businesses, but at the same time, the management of clouds on the back-end is becoming increasingly challenging and messy. And though no one is asking the cloud to disappear, developers, IT staff, and admins are still largely compelled to interact with these systems on a case-per-case basis. Essentially, each problem requires an ad hoc solution, and really the way these cloud and data systems are managed, and interacted with, has not added the modern look, feel, or approach of newer communication media, like social networks, for example. Thus, Nodeable is attempting to apply social mechanics to systems data in such a way as to enable developers, IT staffs, and more to interact with cloud infrastructure and data just as they would on social networks. Put another way, Nodeable is Like a Twitter for machines, in that it aggregates systems data from a broad array of sources — co-founder and CEO Dave Rosenberg cites as an example at the infrastructural level and at the data source level — then processes that data, adds metadata or defined messages, before presenting the data in a UI or via an API. Users, he says, can interact with the platform itself by employing social networking mechanics, like tagging, both in messages sent to systems (like @webserver1 restart, for example) or to other users. Much in the same way communication tools like Yammer or Twitter function. Though this does not mean Nodeable is a “scripted automation tool like or “, he says, instead the approach is meant to provide a simple way for users to communicate with cloud services — to allow IT staffs to make better decisions, faster. , the CEO told me. Nodeable wants to combine big data analytics, systems management and social communications in such a way that a social layer is added to an analytics platform to give users an interface that feels like a social networking site, but still allows businesses to manage the complexities of data management. |
Greplin Wants You To Redesign Wikipedia Search | Alexia Tsotsis | 2,011 | 7 | 26 | Personal search engine is announcing the launch of its today, with the ultimate objective of conceptualizing a better way to search Wikipedia. Greplin founder tells me that Wikipedia search is “broken” in the sense that most people use Google to search Wikipedia, typing in something like “Beatles White Album Wiki” to get to of results. He re-imagines a world were people could use Wikipedia for that functionality and in addition get beautifully visualized layout of links and images, essentially a more visually appealing way to learn from searches. He says, “I don’t think there is something specific about Wikipedia search that is specifically bad, that doesn’t mean it couldn’t be infinitely better. If a good designer sunk deep thought into a search interface specifically for Wikipedia they would be able to build something that would make people shocked.” Entrants can send in static comps as .jpeg .png or .pdf files or actually build out a product, by the deadline of August 18th. While the winning entry won’t necessarily be built out by Wikipedia (which isn’t affiliated with the contest), the winner will receive some pretty amazing prizes including the placement of their Twitter handle — in Helvetica Neue Bold of course — on a billboard in SOMA and a trip along with the runner-up to see a talk by data visualization pioneer Winners will own their own work and can give Wikipedia the option to use it under the Creative Commons licence. What’s most impressive is the coterie of judges Greplin has brought on to moderate the entries, design luminaries like Google lead search designer , Milk design lead , Dribbble founder , Milk founder , former Twitter product manager , Sidebar director of user experience and Khan Academy design lead . “I’m excited to see the myriad of approaches that people might take,” judge Daniel Burka said regarding what exactly he was looking for. “I think a few of the big opportunities in the search might be around more visual browsing of search results, incremental searching, and improved display of related content after a direct search (e.g. I search for Titanic and go to the Titanic page with the ability to navigate sideways through related results).” On a base level, if you’re interested in getting Burka or any of the people above to see your work you should enter this (I would if I were a designer), but the grander idea is that why shouldn’t designers contribute to the design of Wikipedia the way laymen contribute to its over 3.5 million articles? “There’s a ton of unrealized potential,” Gross says. |
Justin Bieber Takes A Picture Of Traffic, Instagram Usage Explodes | MG Siegler | 2,011 | 7 | 21 | A few minutes ago, the Instagram team noticed their servers blowing up. What happened? Were they under attack? DDoS? No. Bieber happened. Yes, Justin Bieber just signed up for Instagram. And he out his to his 11 million+ followers. The result? Boom. After I saw the tweet, I reached out to Instagram co-founder Kevin Systrom, and he confirmed the massive influx as a result of Bieber. He us Bieber is gaining about 50 followers a minute at this point. All thanks to one picture. Of traffic. It has 234 likes already. And that number is also rapidly growing. Systrom says he’s also getting one comment every 10 seconds or so. These numbers are unprecedented for the already popular photo-sharing service. Celebrities on Instagram is nothing new — , for example. But Bieber is known for his cult-like following, especially on Twitter. His usage could really lead to another sign-up surge for Instagram. Instagram is just shy of 7 million users right now. And they were growing fast before Bieber — last month . Most importantly for Instagram, they didn’t reach out to Bieber to get him using the service. This isn’t some publicity stunt. He’s just using it because he heard about it and decided to check it out. That’s the kind of publicity money can buy, but it hasn’t here. https://twitter.com/#!/justinbieber/status/94199094460940288 |
Nearbuy Nabs A Cool Million From Motorola Ventures, Eric Schmidt’s Innovation Endeavors, And More | Rip Empson | 2,011 | 7 | 21 | , the maker of indoor positioning solutions, today that it has raised $1 million in seed funding. The seed round was led by , , and . The funding will be used to bring Nearbuy’s technology to retail stores across the U.S. Just as startups like and are finding different ways to innovate in the in-store loyalty and advertising space, Nearbuy, too is going after the “holy grail” of in-store marketing: In-store consumer location. Because GPS tends not to be able to locate you indoors — and the indoor systems that do exist tend not to be precise — Nearbuy has developed a refined WiFi technology that can locate a customer in the store within 3 feet. With advanced positioning, retailers can offer consumers discounts, coupons, and deals in realtime as they wander through the aisles, making those tricky purchasing decisions. If a consumer is standing in the sporting goods section, the business can use Nearbuy’s technological conduit to serve them with a discount on kayaks, and so on. But, beyond targeted marketing, solutions like Nearbuy’s can offer consumers in-store navigation (which will be great for places like Ikea and Home Depot), a concierge “Help” button, etc. all through a simple opt-in WiFi setup. And, for businesses, Nearbuy’s LocalEyes solution can integrate with existing infrastructures already in place, create enhanced mobile commerce apps, and using its micro-location data, can glean valuable shopping trends and behavior, and optimize time-consuming stuff like warehouse management and store set-ups. While it may be slightly off-putting, the fact is that humans spend 87 percent of their time indoors, and, as mobile technology evolves, the devices in our pockets (along with complementary solutions) are becoming more and more adept at tracking our movements. It makes the security and privacy-conscious a little nervous, which is why it’s great to hear that these technologies are opt-in and come with advanced security mechanisms. That being said, these precise positioning systems have the potential to be a goldmine for retailers and advertisers, and can offer some nifty enhancements to the consumer’s shopping experience. “We just want to make the shopping experience better for everyone”, says Nearbuy Founder and CEO Bryan Wargo. As long as they don’t sell my location data to the highest bidder, I’m buying. For more on Nearbuy Systems, check out the video below: [youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hJ2LHHMhG6Y] |
Vic Gundotra On How Google+ Handled Brands: “It Was Probably A Mistake” | Alexia Tsotsis | 2,011 | 7 | 21 | After warning people about it for weeks, Google began enforcing its ban on all Google business profiles this morning, to much consternation from, well, businesses. Yes Google did warn people at the launch of Google+ that any non-human pages would be killed and that people shouldn’t be surprised that the pages were killed… But of course, like when anything is axed on the Internet, people were up in arms. Search Engine Land’s Danny Sullivan wrote an and, emboldened, my colleague MG Siegler wrote the elegantly titled We were explicitly told not to put up a Google+ Profile for TechCrunch at launch, but other brands like Mashable, Search Engine Land, Ford and Seasame Street didn’t get the memo and had their profile pages suspended this morning. Since then Ford and Mashable have had their Google+ pages reinstated after what I’m assuming was communication directly with Google. Danny Sullivan in contrast will have to file a reconsideration request for Search Engine Land’s page. Because we had Google Social Head and Product Manager in the TCTV studio today, I decided to ask them what they thought about the backlash and inconsistent handling of the Google+ Business Accounts. Vic Gundutra’s solution was to choose a figurehead from the organization to represent the brand and deal with the interim months between now and when the Google+ Business pages launch that way. Gundotra told me that in hindsight the treatment of brands in this way was “probably a mistake.” Of course the whole thing is exceptionally ill thought out. Using the Pete Cashmore switchover as an example, Gundotra says that Cashmore recognized that he made a “mistake,” and that’s why he changed the to Pete Cashmore; But, wait Cashmore when he was allowed to switch the Mashable account (and its over 100K followers) to his personal one. So now Pete Cashmore has two (!) personal accounts. I don’t know about you but that doesn’t sound at all like “complying with the rules” to me. When asked if he would take Google up on its solution Danny Sullivan said, “Honestly at this point it’s not that important to me, to have someone go in there and pretend to be our business off of their personal account.” Indeed, as this kind of pullback and “oh here’s a workaround wink wink” strategy creates mistrust between platform and users. “Putting the business genie back in the bottle is just going to generate a lot of ill will,” Sullivan expained. Related: Meet our newest employee: .
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Our Newest Employee: Techathew Cruncherin, Google+ Maven | MG Siegler | 2,011 | 7 | 21 | Earlier today, who had signed up for Google+ profiles when they weren’t supposed to. Some were outraged by this, but the truth is that Google has said from the beginning that Google+ was meant for real people only for now, and that brand/company support would be coming. This is why TechCrunch hasn’t set up a Google+ account. Google asked us to wait. So, we waited. Like total schmucks. Turns out, with letting those brands/companies keep the accounts they set up, as long as a person is assigned to the account. . Further, they’re now . In other words, they totally screwed us over. We sat around like idiots twiddling our thumbs while our competitors set up Google+ accounts for their news feeds. And in some cases, they gained tens of thousands — or hundreds of thousands of followers. As I’ve explained before, to sites that . And the service continues to grow, seemingly by the millions, each day. We’d be the first to admit that without Twitter’s SUL (suggested user list), we wouldn’t get nearly the traffic that we do from Twitter. And actually, when we were removed from the SUL (post-Twittergate), our numbers took a hit. Essentially, Google has just left us off their own SUL for Google+ by telling us we couldn’t make an account, while giving our competitors tons of traffic and followers, and then granting them amnesty for breaking the rules. “Frankly, the entire thing is a mess,” Danny Sullivan writes. He goes on to further trash this jackassery and . In my view, it’s actually . So here’s what we’re gonna do. Make an account! As per Google’s very, very clear rules, someone has to run it, so we’ve hired someone! Meet , our newest employee. He’s shy, so you may not see him around much, but he lives here at TechCrunch headquarters. Under a desk. He’s an awesome guy. And he lives for Google+. Loves it. Shares the shit out of our TechCrunch posts. It’s awesome. So, do us (and yourselves) a favor and . He’ll regularly send out our best posts for you to read, comment, and enjoy. : Google just took a bat to the knees of Techathew. |
If Microsoft’s Yearly Revenue Is “Wow!”, Apple’s Is “Holy Sh*t!” | MG Siegler | 2,011 | 7 | 21 | Earlier today, Microsoft reported . They were good — , even. And because it was the end of their fiscal year, Microsoft also stated their yearly numbers. Those were even better. The big number: $69.94 billion in revenue for the year. A new record for the company. Yes, for all the talk of Microsoft being in decline, they made more money than ever before. But if those numbers are a “wow!”, then what do we call rival Apple’s numbers? I think we have to call them “holy shit!” While this quarter just ended was technically Apple’s Q3, that’s only because they handle their accounting calendar differently than Microsoft does. So let’s take a look at Apple’s previous four quarters of revenue. : $20.34 billion : $26.74 billion : $24.67 billion : $28.57 billion Altogether — ready for it? . Yes, Apple is now a $100 billion-a-year company. Yes, they’re over $30 billion ahead of Microsoft — a company which had been beating the pants off of them for decades. Apple now makes more money in three quarters than Microsoft does in an entire year. Okay, but that’s revenue. What about profit? Microsoft touted $23.15 billion in net income for the year. last quarter, the final financial piece to fall. Still, amazingly, Apple holds the yearly edge there too. $23.61 billion. A year ago, Microsoft posted quarterly revenue of $16.04 billion. Meanwhile, Apple quarterly revenue of $15.7 billion — an all-time record for them at the time, including holiday quarters. A year later, Microsoft’s revenue rose by about $1.3 billion. Apple’s almost — again, from what was an all-time record. Apple Microsoft in revenue last October (the end of Apple’s Q4 and Microsoft’s Q1), since then, the gap has grown. The gap was $4 billion at the time. This past quarter it was over $11 billion. Again, Apple Microsoft in profit last quarter. The gap was about $700 million. This past quarter, just one quarter later, it was almost $1.5 billion. The margin doubled. The overall trend is pretty clear. But even more remarkable is that just two of Apple’s businesses — iPhone and iPad — are bigger than of Microsoft’s businesses now, as . The iPhone is 4 years old. The iPad is just over a year old. Combined, they beat all of Microsoft’s massive legacy businesses combined. Meanwhile, one of Microsoft’s pillars, Windows, actually shrank year-over-year in terms of revenue (and profit). But their quickly-growing new business, Entertainment & Devices, more than made up for it. Again, Microsoft had a good quarter, and a great year. Their best ever. And it puts what Apple is doing into context. Holy shit. |
Google Places Stops Stealing Reviews | Erick Schonfeld | 2,011 | 7 | 21 | Google Places looks different. It is cleaner, and there is a much bigger emphasis on user reviews and photos. And not just any reviews from all over the Web, but reviews written by Google users themselves. This should be a welcome change to third-party sources of reviews like Yelp and TripAdviser who have that Google was building Google Places on the while at the same time trying to replace them. Now Google Places no longer shows those reviews on Places pages for a specific venue, nor does it count them in the total number of reviews which it shows for each place. Instead, it links to the reviews from sites like Yelp, Zagat, and Citysearch separately and breaks out total review counts for each site. For instance, the Google Places page for in San Francisco went from 1,110 reviews to 171 reviews after the non-Google reviews were stripped out. So why the big change all of a sudden? Well, after using reviews from other sites as a placeholder until now, Google Places now seems to have enough of its own reviews to stand on its own two feet, especially after . It doesn’t need to borrow (to put it politely) so outside reviews anymore. And now there is a big “Write a review” button at the top of each Places page to encourage more user generated contributions. But there might be another reason as well: the Google is currently under. Google Places product manager Avni Shah decided to include this odd bit of legalese in her today about the changes: Based on careful thought about the future direction of Place pages, and feedback we’ve heard over the past few months, review snippets from other web sources have now been removed from Place pages. Rating and review counts reflect only those that’ve been written by fellow Google users, and as part of our continued commitment to helping you find what you want on the web, we’re continuing to provide links to other review sites so you can get a comprehensive view of locations across the globe. What he doesn’t mention is the back story to all of this. And here’s another tidbit. The change comes a week after Yelp made a presentation to a roomful of state attorneys general at the about regulatory issues in search. On that panel was Vince Sollitto, VP of Government Affairs for Yelp, along with Dana Wagner, a Google lawyer, and well-known antitrust attorney Gary Reback. Yelp’s presentation was titled “Google Places: A Threat To Innovation and Competition.” The basic argument was that Google strong-armed review websites into providing their content for free, and then gave their own Places product preferential treatment in search. Google’s stance before was that as long as Yelp and others were not blocking their sites from general search, which they were free to do, then Google could use the indexed content in Google Places as well. It was a take it or leave it approach. And now Google seems to have changed its tune. |
The Winklevosses Do Not Like Being Called ‘Assholes’ | Alexia Tsotsis | 2,011 | 7 | 21 | When asked yesterday at the conference whether the infamous scene in ‘The Social Network’ where he dismisses the Winklevosses’ claim that Mark Zuckerberg broke the Harvard Code of Conduct is true to life, former Harvard president Larry Summers glibly … “One of the things you learn as a college president is that if an undergraduate is wearing a tie and jacket on Thursday afternoon at three o’clock, there are two possibilities. One is that they’re looking for a job and have an interview; the other is that they are an asshole. This was the latter case.” Today the Winklevosses have snapped back with a letter to current Harvard president Drew Faust condemning Summers’ behavior (embedded below). And now I know what “promulgate” means.
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Android Market Now Supports Multiple APKs (Which Is More Important Than It Sounds) | Jason Kincaid | 2,011 | 7 | 21 | Today Google that it’s pushing a significant update to the developer-facing side of Android Market, and it’s one that consumers will benefit from too: Android Market will now allow developers to distribute multiple APKs (the filetype Android uses for applications) that will all be considered the same app, at least as the marketplace is concerned. Yes, that sounds mundane, but it’s important. Consider this: right now, if you ran a query for “Fruit Ninja” from an Android tablet, you’d have the option to download either the ‘regular’ Fruit Ninja or Fruit Ninja THD, a version that’s been optimized for the Tegra processor found in most Android tablets to date. Obviously you’d want the latter — but then if you went to play the same game on your phone, you’d have to purchase the regular version. This update fixes that: Halfbrick Studios (the company behind Fruit Ninja) can now list the game once in Android Market, and Google will send the optimal version to whatever device you’re downloading it from. Of course, Google has always encouraged developers to make sure a single APK works across all Android devices. Menus are supposed to adapt to various screen sizes, images are supposed to scale nicely, and so on. But there are some instances where this doesn’t make sense — a game might only want to include high-res textures for larger screen sizes, for example. Another use case: if a developer implements features that require the newest version of the Android OS, they can now roll that out, while still letting users on older devices access the old version. And under this system developers will be able to consolidate all of their user reviews under one application as opposed to having them spread across multiple mobile and ‘HD’ versions. Of course, some developers may prefer to ignore the new feature and prompt users to purchase different versions of their apps for different devices. This wouldn’t necessarily be motivated by greed, either — some developers build completely new apps for different form factors, which in some cases warrant separate purchases. Incidentally, as I wrote this I received an email alert that Halfbrick is now selling a of Fruit Ninja (I’m guessing it’s taking advantage of this new feature). |
Leaked Picture Of New Nikon Sensor Suggests Truly Small Mirrorless System | Devin Coldewey | 2,011 | 7 | 21 | That and both have mirrorless cameras solutions in the labs seems like a foregone conclusion. It would be silly for them not to at the very least be looking into it. But this is one of the first glances we’ve had at something other than patent illustrations and spec rumors: a picture that is claimed to be of Nikon’s new compact interchangeable lens camera system. The mount and sensor, specifically &mdsah; no body or anything, though the black finish does suggest it’s more than a lab prototype. Right now it’s known as X810. The dedicated Nikon fans at have done a little extrapolating based on the only element that seems reasonable to estimate: the screws. Assuming they’re ~3mm wide, their calculations put the sensor at about a 2.3-2.6x crop, larger than but smaller than the popular sensor size seen in cameras from (among others) Panasonic and Olympus. It makes sense considering the size and depth of the camera that this is supposed to be from. The mount is new and the optics unknown, but if you’re not “marrying” a sensor to its lens (a la the Fujifilm ), miniaturization tends to be the rule and Nikon seems to be taking that to a fairly extreme degree. I have my doubts that this tiny sensor would produce the quality of image people would expect from a Nikon EVIL camera — which I would guess would probably be priced in the $600-800 range. Whoever shoots first in the Canon/Nikon fight is at a disadvantage, since it’s a long game they’re playing. If Nikon goes for extra small, their arch-enemy will know where to direct its feature set. A sensor like this has various advantages and disadvantages, and while many of the commenters at Nikon Rumors are disappointed, it’s far from over and much depends on the price and lenses. |
Android App Player For BlackBerry PlayBook Leaked Out In Beta Form | Jordan Crook | 2,011 | 7 | 21 | What is ’s greatest obstacle? Honestly, it’s a tough question to answer seeing that the Waterloo-based company — but if I had to pick just one issue, it’d be lack of apps. Not having enough apps on a given platform is akin to sitting down to a perfectly set dinner table and getting no food. Luckily, that Android App player that RIM promised for the BlackBerry PlayBook seems to be nearing launch. , a beta version of the player was spotted on the BlackBerry.com website. The page has been pulled, but it’s undoubtedly found its way to countless mirrors for your downloading pleasure. To the Googles! Those who’ve already installed it on their BlackBerry PlayBooks seem to collectively agree that it runs rather slowly, and is missing a couple of the features RIM had promised (like a back button.) From what we gather, this is likely an old build of the player and it might be worth the wait to just get the real thing. For those of you who haven’t been keeping up with RIM, the Android app player is basically a way of bringing Android apps to the PlayBook. The player is actually an app itself, which loads and “plays back” Android apps. However, not all Android apps are immediately available with the player. Developers must first port their Android apps to the PlayBook. [via ] |
null | Leena Rao | 2,011 | 7 | 26 | null |
Nine Things You Should Do After Installing OS X Lion | Greg Kumparak | 2,011 | 7 | 21 | Lion is here — and as MG , it’s great. No operating system is perfect, though. At least, not for everyone, and especially not right out of the ( ) box. Looking to make your Lion experience , we’ve bundled together a bevy of tips and tricks that you really ought to have ready on your first trip into the new OS. Now, something to keep in mind: these tips aren’t one-size-fits-all. Read through the list and pick out the ones that sound good, and be sure to drop a comment if you’ve got a tip of your own. Here’s why: Lion makes a good number of changes to the way the Spotlight search works. These changes seem to require a reindexing of your hard drive’s contents . The problem? Apple starts this reindexing after Lion boots up for the first time, and it causes systems (even relatively new ones) to run like hot garbage until it’s done. Give Spotlight a few hours after install is complete to work everything out, and you’ll have a much better first impression. Three years ago, I threw my printer in the trash. I got tired of stupid ink, and stupid drivers, and that stupid grey box taking up space on my desk. I haven’t missed it since. Okay, . There’s time I always miss it: whenever I need to print and sign a contract. Thanks to a fancy (but somewhat hidden) new feature in Lion’s Preview app, I’ll never miss my printer again. Open up a PDF in Preview. Click the annotations button ( ), then click the signature button ( ), then hit “Create Signature from Built-in iSight”. Scribe your signature onto a white piece of paper, hold it up to your iSight, and : you’ve got a stampable version of your signature sitting in Preview. Mr. Printer, meet Mr. Trash Can. Some love it. Some hate it. Gruber . I say screw it — do whatever feels best to your brain. I personally think it makes sense on a trackpad, but doesn’t feel right on a mouse — unfortunately, one setting controls the direction of . As I use a mouse more than 90% of the time, I’ve reversed the setting. You can find the checkbox to set the scroll direction to what you’re used to under System Preferences > Trackpad > Scroll and Zoom. Look for the “Scroll Direction: natural” option. This one’s a weird one, as it depends on whether you upgraded to Lion or bought a new system running Lion out of the box. If you upgraded, your running apps will have the glowing dot indicators you’re used to seeing in the dock. If you’re on a new Lion system, they won’t. With Apple trying to move to a persistent state/instant start app design model, these running indicators may eventually be unnecessary. For now, though, with the vast majority of apps still being designed for Snow Leopard and earlier, the lack of dots is just really damned confusing. You can re-enable the dots under System Preferences > Dock > Show indicator lights for open applications Lion is , but there’s still a good chunk of stuff that needs to be updated right out of the gate. You’ll want to update iTunes, iLife, and iWork, for example, to get all the fancy new fullscreen features out of them. Just run the Software Update app found under the Apple logo in the upper left of the screen. Mission Control (Apple’s new all-encompassing view of everything running on your system) is . So much so, in fact, that “Use Mission Control” was going to be one of the tips here, but I pulled it assuming that it’s a core enough feature that everyone will be using it anyway. Learn the gestures, and learn the keyboard hotkeys. There’s one thing that’s a bit weird about Mission Control, though: for one reason or another, it pulls your widget dashboard in as if it’s a separate Desktop/Space, which get’s annoying if you’re using the gestures/hotkeys to quickly switch from view to view. Who uses the dashboard so much that the standard key (F12) isn’t enough? You can keep dashboard from appearing in Mission Control by toggling the option found under System Preferences > Mission Control > Show Dashboard As Space. Apple’s real-time disk encryption tool, Filevault, used to suck. . If one tiny little in your Filevault image got flipped, the entire thing would explode in your face. Bam! Data gone! It was enough for many to swear off Filevault entirely, myself included. Well, it’s time to give Filevault another shot. Apple has rebuilt it — so much so, in fact, that the only thing the new version really shares with its predecessor is its name. The new full-disk-encryption based setup is super fast, super secure, and has essentially no impact on your system performance. Oh, and it won’t randomly eat all your data. Apple teaches you how to two-finger scroll the first time you boot up Lion, but myriad other gestures go unmentioned. Some of the best multi-touch gestures: Oh, Apple. Haven’t you learned anything The optional autocorrect in OS X doesn’t seem to be as sensitive (or hilarious) as its iOS equivalent, but it still misfires from time-to-time. You’re a big boy (or girl) on a big boy (or girl) keyboard. You can type fine. Unless you’re constantly swapping “teh” for “the”, you can turn off autocorrect under System Preferences > Language & Text > Text > Correct spelling automatically. Got any tips you think others should see? Drop’em in the comments. |
Ashton Kutcher And Madonna’s Manager Invest In Tiny Berlin Startup. What Gives? | Mike Butcher | 2,011 | 7 | 21 | Not a lot is known about , a stealth-mode startup out of Berlin. What we do know is that it’s pretty hot and the talk of Berlin. A slect few have been been given access to its Beta and are coming up with statements like “strangely addictive”, at least according to the startups itself. Whatever it is, sources tell us it’s caught the eye of investors in the shape of celebrity tech investor and , who just happens to be Madonna’s manager. This is quite some quota of fame right there, so clearly Amen is onto something that could be pretty mainstream. And the amount? |
Federal Bureau Of Sisyphean Labors | Devin Coldewey | 2,011 | 7 | 21 |
The loosely-organized but unquestionably effective hacking group Anonymous has gotten its hands on what it claims are confidential NATO documents. It’s the latest in a line of seemingly arbitrary attacks, the arbitrariness being the result of their somewhat haphazard and crude methods. I don’t describe it this way to invite their vengeance, but as part of making a point about them. Their crudeness is part of their legitimacy. Unsurprisingly, the response was one of boilerplate outrage, albeit with a truly classic quote from FBI deputy assistant director Steven Chabinsky: “We want to send a message that chaos on the internet is unacceptable.” I’m hoping this one will go down in history with chestnuts like “a series of tubes” and “just don’t hold it that way.” Chabinsky continued in his : …it’s entirely unacceptable to break into websites and commit unlawful acts. The investigative opportunities that present themselves in this area are transnational. The resolution of these cases will involve international cooperation. The Internet has become so important to so many people that we have to ensure that the World Wide Web does not become the Wild Wild West. Leaving aside the curious implication that the web was not always wild, his choice of words is interesting. “Transnational” and “international cooperation” imply a global alignment on internet issues that simply doesn’t exist, though I’m sure the well-established channels of international police cooperation function as advertised. Anonymous of sorts to Chabinsky’s words, in which they are a bit less optimistic. Tracking and collecting hackers of this type is like herding cats that move at the speed of light. The arms race in the detection/evading detection field is lopsided, and hackers are unquestionably at an enormous advantage. They’re savvy enough to avoid the pitfalls set for them by aging heads of security, and even cooperation at the level of internet providers is unlikely to be too effective. Besides, it’s survival of the fittest: script kiddies running LOIC on their mom’s unencrypted open wifi are going to get picked up while the shrewd hacker who pays for a Swedish VPN and codes his own tools won’t even be on the radar. The fun part is that all this hacking really isn’t even very sophisticated. I mean, it’s not something you can just pick up and do on a Sunday afternoon, but these people aren’t sneaking into access tunnels and jacking into corporate mainframes. They freely admit it; part of LulzSec’s mission was to show just how poorly protected much “secure” information is. This NATO hack (like many high-profile hacks recently) was accomplished with a little SQL injection, an embarrassing oversight by a security team that, if anything, should be far more circumspect in its work than the average security-conscious organization or company. I wouldn’t go so far to say that those who are so easily hacked it, exactly, but they deserve the dressing down they get later. The Sony hacks, for instance, almost certainly harmed the consumers and as such are deplorable acts — but Sony is more deplorable for its irresponsibility and tone-deaf response. It’s like leaving your bike unlocked on the street as a kid and coming back to find it gone. It’s not that you deserved to have your bike stolen, but you clearly don’t value it much if you don’t take even elementary precautions. You may not agree with the thief’s motives (probably mercenary), but they don’t have to be paragons of virtue to be the bearers of an important lesson: To come back to Chabinsky’s claim that chaos on the Internet is unacceptable, though. Mr. Chabinsky, I admire your dedication to orderliness, but you may as well try to straighten out a rainbow. Chaos isn’t the problem — chaos is the point. I don’t envy anyone whose stated job is to reverse entropy. |
The Netflix App (Unofficially) Arrives On Honeycomb Tablets, Here’s How To Install It | Matt Burns | 2,011 | 7 | 21 | Bow down to the power of the XDA Developers! It’s now possible to get Netflix streaming on seemingly all Android devices without any hacking, rooting or general nonsense. This is counter to Netflix’s official stance to only allow the app on specific tablets that conform to certain DRM requirements at the hardware level. It’s biggest selling point, one that’s now moot. All that’s required is a specific APK file and you’re off and running. I didn’t have any issue installing or running the app on the Motorola Xoom or Toshiba Thrive and even outputing the video over HDMI. It even runs albeit slowly on the Nook Color says . I’ve yet to find a report of the app not work on a Honeycomb tablet or Android 2.x phone. Click through for the 4 easy steps. The best part of this exploit is that you don’t need to root or jailbreak your Honeycomb tablet. It seems to work on every stock ROMs. Step one.
Click over to and download the APK. You might want to drop a note of thanks, too. Step two.
Get the APK onto your device. You’re most likely going to have to connect the tab to your computer with a USB cable and drop the file in a folder. Remember the location. Step three.
Go to Settings > Applications > Check the box next Unknown Sources to allow installation of non-Market apps. Step four.
Using a file manager app (many available in the Market), navigate to the folder you dropped the APK and click (or hold+click) to install. That’s it. The file should install and be running within a few seconds. Of course since this is from unofficial channels, it might not work as advertised. But it probably will. |
Teardown Of New 13″ MacBook Air Finds Almost No Differences From Old Model | Devin Coldewey | 2,011 | 7 | 21 | The traditional “splaying of the device” has been performed successfully on the by the teardown experts and hand models at iFixit. The most user-relevant finding appears to be that the SSD module is user-replaceable — i.e. Apple hasn’t seen fit to physically bond it to the motherboard. Yet. Apart from that and some minor layout changes to accommodate the larger processor die and Thunderbolt controller (and of course the LED lighting for the keyboard), there isn’t much to write home about. The new Air is a lot like the old Air — just faster. The big design tricks took place a long time ago, when they were first making the design choices that made this form factor possible. |
Etsy Shakeup: CTO Chad Dickerson Takes Over CEO Role From Founder Kalin As Visitor Growth Stalls | Rip Empson | 2,011 | 7 | 21 | Today marked a bit of leadership shuffling at Etsy, the online marketplace to buy your local hipster a handmade good, as CTO Chad Dickerson takes over the reins as CEO from Rob Kalin. Etsy is Kalin’s brainchild, and the founder . Dickerson explained the change today on Etsy’s blog, saying that his focus as the new CEO will be to impel Etsy to move faster “and more purposefully”, and re-prioritize risk-taking and “learning by doing” and “iterating”. Etsy has been growing fairly steadily over the last few years, and , a private equity firm, estimated that the startup’s revenue will grow from $72 million to $201 million by 2016. However, while growth potential is high, the firm said that “storefront concerns were reaching a crescendo”, with customers expressing concern over the amount of effort it takes to maintain an active Etsy storefront. In Green Capital’s survey of “over two dozen prolific Etsy sellers”, more than 80 percent of sellers “had concerns about their Etsy experience”. These concerns also included financial considerations, competition, privacy concerns, and “Etsy’s lack of technological capabilities”. Well, maybe the CTO being made the new top dog will help to allay some of the latter concern. Another obstacle for Etsy, according to the report, is that the handicraft market “represents less than 1 percent” of retail sales in the U.S. and is “highly fragmented, comprised primarily of thousands of small, independent retailers”. That being said, the firm predicts that the online craft sales will grow at 9.5 percent per year over the next five years, which would mean that there is market growth potential ahead. However, that number is “well ahead of offline sales”, but short of their expectations of “aggregate U.S. ecommerce market growth at 12 percent”. comScore also had Etsy hovering at around 7.4 million monthly unique visitors worldwide in May, a number that has remained largely flat going back to December 2010. Based on Green Capital’s report and comScore’s statistics, it would seem that Etsy’s leadership shakeup comes at just the right time. Union Square Ventures Partner Fred Wilson weighed in on the leadership change , saying: Transitions are never easy on the people involved and the company that goes through them. But they are inevitable in any company’s evolution. Some of them work out well and others not as much. But the role of the management and Board is to constantly try to have the right people in the right roles at the right time. And I think we’ve got that at Etsy now and I’m excited to see Chad step up to the top job and lead the company forward. For more of Dickerson’s post addressed to the Etsy community, check it out . |
Microsoft Hits $17.37B In Revenue In Q4, $69.94B For The Year | Alexia Tsotsis | 2,011 | 7 | 21 | Microsoft record fourth quarter and fiscal year 2011 earnings today with yearly revenues at $69,94 billion, representing an increase of 12% from 2010. Operating income for the year was at $27.16 billion and net income was at $23.15 billion, 13% and 23% increases. Earnings per share for the year were at $2.69. The company’s fourth quarter revenues were at $17.37 billion, an 8% increase year over year. Operating income was at $6.17 billion and net income was at $5.87 billion, a 4% and 30% increase respectively. Earnings per share were 69 cents. The Microsoft Business Division which oversees Microsoft Office saw a 7% increase in the quarter, at $5.7 billion in revenue ($3.6 billion in operating income) and a 16% increase for the year at $22.1 billion ($14 billion in revenue). Microsoft Office Online services, which includes Bing, lost $2.6 billion last fiscal year. This quarter the Online Services sector lost $728 million on $662 million in revenue. The company beat analyst expectations of $0.59 cents a share and $17.2 billion in revenue and $69.7 billion in yearly revenue. Unsurprisingly, MSFT is up over 2% in after-hours trading. [scribd id=60578778 key=key-1t4bvrhoycff5ldjsd81 mode=list] |
Although Many Investors Are Spinning, Turntable.fm Has Not Yet Picked A DJ | Erick Schonfeld | 2,011 | 7 | 7 | Although many investors are spinning for the chance to invest in , the hot music startup has not yet picked a DJ, despite reports to the contrary. that Turntable has raised $7.5 million at a $37.5 million valuation and “that term sheets were indeed signed yesterday.” But reached a few hours ago as he was boarding a plane, co-founder and chairman Seth Goldstein told me, “We have not closed any new financing.” There is certainly a in Turntable from VCs who want to fund its next round. The buzz among venture investors is that there is intense competition for the deal, particularly between Union Square’s Fred Wilson, Accel, and Kleiner Perkins. Wilson is the clear favorite (Turntable is based in New York City), but he is being outbid by Accel and Kleiner. The rumor is that Wilson offered Turntable a $25 million pre-money valuation, while Accel and Kleiner offered double. That could have easily been pushed up to $30 million pre-money, in which case the $37.5 million figure would pencil out as a post-money valuation. (Just remember, VCs send signed term sheets all the time. It doesn’t mean the company has to accept the terms). Not only are top-tier VCs excited about Turntable, there’s even some potential acquirers sniffing around, including AOL, Facebook, and Sony. As far as I can tell, no formal offers were ever made because co-founders Goldstein and Billy Chasen just got this started and don’t want to sell. Plus, they obviously aren’t having any problems raising money. Why is everyone going gaga over a startup that launched with a completely different product, , that ? Turntable is a social music site where you enter different listening rooms in which players can become DJs and spin music while chatting with each other’s avatars. Chris Sacca likes to a lot (he is a previous investor, along with First Round and Polaris). It’s been gaining some , even though you still need to know someone to get in. It is social music discovery at its best. You can listen to hours of full-length songs selected by other players in a variety of different themed music rooms. The better the DJ, the more points everyone else rewards him with. And if you like a song you can add it to your playlist, or buy it through Amazon or iTunes. But the business is not a slam dunk. Turntable pays per-stream fees just like Pandora or other “Internet radio” services. The music labels on Turntable and try to extract higher fees. But Turntable’s early growth and engagement numbers are too high to ignore. People spend hours in these rooms. Maybe this time, the labels won’t kill it before trying to work out a deal. Even then, though, Turntable will have to find other ways to make money—perhaps through digital goods or better avatars, sponsored rooms, or some people might be willing to pay to be a featured DJ. |
Homemade Combination-Secured Flash Drive Is Steampunk Done Right | Devin Coldewey | 2,011 | 7 | 7 |
Once again, an example of how Steampunk can actually be pulled off. This one-off flash drive was created by a Russian guy, who modeled it in 3D, had the components cast or printed, and then assembled it himself ( ). The wheels spin and lock or unlock the drive, which slides out a la one of the rugged drives I reviewed a while back. Very cool. This man needs an Etsy store! Wait, is this thing old? Whatever. [via and ] |
Marathon Now Available For iPad | Devin Coldewey | 2,011 | 7 | 7 | Just a quick heads-up: that (Bungie’s classic Mac FPS) is And it’s free! Free, I tell you! If you haven’t ever played the game, I’d actually recommend playing it the way it’s meant to be played first (there are ports available and the game is free), but if you don’t mind the tablet controls, this should be a real treat. This is just 1 – I’d expect 2 and Infinity a little later. [via ] |
null | Mg Siegler | 2,011 | 7 | 21 | null |
Project Mimicry Lets You Play Virtually In A Real Sandbox | Devin Coldewey | 2,011 | 7 | 7 | [vimeo http://www.vimeo.com/25666910 w=620&h=465]
This is just too cool. is a game/project in which a real-life sandbox is monitored for depth information, and the resulting virtual landscape is able to be played on, raced in, and explored in a separate game environment. Watch the video, it’s easier to see it that way. But this just looks like a ton of fun. You could put together sweet racing courses and jumps, make little towns and such — the only problem is that it seems to see from the top down, so you can’t make caves or overhangs. Still, totally awesome. It’s “in development” right now according to Monobanda, but I’m not sure whether they’re actually planning on making a commercial release (which would be difficult) or just let it stand on its own as a sort of proof of concept art game. I’m happy either way. [via ] |
Look, Some Transparent-Display Patents From Apple | Devin Coldewey | 2,011 | 7 | 7 |
Apple is always patenting things, and only a few ever are actually made, but here are a few interesting ones dug up by . They relate to putting information on a transparent display, more specifically a hybrid display that can overlay info on the transparent bit, but also has a layer that can be made opaque, on which to put normal text and images. They envision a sort of sightseeing situation, where the device has GPS and wi-fi data informing it of its location and streaming data, while the camera and transparent screen work together to, say, label buildings or parts of a piece of art. It would also be possible to provide real-time updates and an AR overlay of the location of other people or waypoints. Handy. As for the opaque/transparent thing, imagine an e-paper-like screen sandwiched in there that can be switched between clear and opaque. There are already OLED panels that do this – kind of. Sounds solid to me. Now they just have to actually this make-believe stuff. Here’s the (Synchronized, Interactive AR Displays for Multifunction Devices) and the (Transparent Electronic Device). |
With Google+ (And A Tweak For Analytics), The Social Sharing War Is Fully On | MG Siegler | 2,011 | 7 | 7 | Google and Facebook are at war. This is old news. They both want to be the center of the Internet — but there can be only one center. For a while, it looked like shifting after years of dominance by Google. Then Google+ — already the most compelling social experience Google has ever offered. While it’s still far from clear what the actual impact of G+ will be on the Internet at large, it’s pretty clear already that it’s something Facebook is going to have to take seriously. And they are. Despite Mark Zuckerberg , Facebook did just launch a video chat feature a week after Google did in G+. And last summer, Facebook rushed to get the new Groups done in time to beat Circles to the same punch. But where things are going to be really interesting is on the social sharing front. Facebook has long been in the lead here — . But after just a week, Google+ is seeing some impressive numbers as well (with only a fraction of Google users using it). And a small change Google quietly made yesterday shows just how seriously they’re taking this. As we a couple days ago, it is possible to track the referrals coming in to your site from G+, but it’s not straightforward. Yesterday, Google made it much more straightforward. When you click on a link now in G+, it redirects it through the plus.google.com domain. Why? Because Google+ uses HTTPS to be more secure, but that strips referrer information that would normally be passed to sites like TechCrunch. So they have to redirect to another non-HTTPS domain to pass that data. Previously, it was simply through a google.com/url domain (which we were tracking). Now it’s a plus.google.com domain — much easier to track for a casual analytics user. And sure enough, as of yesterday, plus.google.com is showing up as a referrer to TechCrunch — and yes, a big one despite us not actively using it to send out articles just yet (and again, the limited number of users). Facebook does a similar redirect to ensure that the pageviews they’re sending others’ way are correctly counted. Others, like Twitter, do not generally do this, which likely makes their sharing stats appear lower than they actually are. I suspect we’ll begin seeing all three of these Internet giants begin to more actively monitor and showcase this data. Others, like StumbleUpon and LinkedIn are in the mix as well. Remarkably, that StumbleUpon now sends more traffic to sites than Facebook in the U.S. Meanwhile, LinkedIn is showing massive growth in terms of referrals ( ) — though, to be fair, their popular LinkedIn Today feature is powered by Twitter data (which again, Twitter doesn’t get the referral credit for at all). Nearly two years ago, that the social sharing war was tipping heavily in Twitter’s favor due to the fact that it was far too slow to share content on Facebook. The quick rise of the Tweetmeme button (since replaced by Twitter’s own Tweet button) all over the web showcased this. But things have changed in the past two years. Notably, Facebook has gotten much better at facilitating sharing — hello Like button. And when you do that with 750 million users, sharing will happen. Meanwhile, show Google already has a team working on a strategy for how brands and companies (like TechCrunch) can best facilitate sharing on Google+. They expect to begin testing this shortly — believe us, they’re to get this done ASAP. The Google assault in this social sharing war is now well underway. They’ve failed in the past with Buzz, but Google+ is . And while the +1 Button on the web , when they further tie it into G+, the sharing situation will get really interesting. With another party actively engaged, the question will turn to which of those sharing buttons will you choose to click on? Some people do all of them now. But that won’t last forever. The social sharing war is on. |
At Last You Can Fabricate Your Minecraft Creations | Devin Coldewey | 2,011 | 7 | 7 |
I’m not one of these guys who creates functioning computers or scale models of the Vatican in , but occasionally I’ll put together a sweet little tower and house that could just possibly be worth saving. Unfortunately, I can’t take these little structures into the real world! At least, I couldn’t before now. Some students at MIT’s Media Lab have that lets you directly output an area of your Minecraft world to a 3D printer. They tested it on (what else) the seen above, but you could just as easily print out your main base, landscape and all. It’s really just a tool that makes the Minecraft 3D data into a standard printable format, but I like that it uses in-game tools (blocks) to mark off the territory to be printed, and hey, Minecraft + 3D printing = post. [via ] |
Loic Needs To Get His Head Out Of His Silicon Valley | Mike Butcher | 2,011 | 7 | 7 | I have the hugest respect for . Years before anyone was organising a major tech conference in Europe (outside of the dull corporate IT ones) Loic was charging ahead with first Les Blogs, which became the juggernaut of Le Web. It’s the biggest tech event in Europe (although, now not the only one, which I will touch upon later). When he moved to the Valley a few years ago, he continued with Le Web and brought the A-listers of the Valley back with him to Paris, France. We are all grateful to him for shining that light. That said, with the greatest respect, I’m going to have to call him out following yesterday. It’s not the he’s Europe, though his arguments are clearly thought out. His characterisation of Europe as a market entirely stuffed with clone startups is, well, obtuse, to put it mildly. I’ve even helped develop the startup rally at Le Web at couple of years ago and I simply don’t recall any blatant clones even getting through to the competition. This would be hard if all we had was clones. What I think has happened – and it’s not really his fault – is that Loic has simply been unable to track what has been happen day to day. Interestingly, there is someone who tracks day to day what is happening with startups and VCs in Europe and he even happens to be on the TechCrunch staff. So maybe one day you may even see my mug opine about the scene in glorious technicolour video. We shall see. Suffice it to say, asking around amongst European VCs and startups about Loic’s opinion produces a visceral response. Olaf Jacobi as Venture Capital Investor in Munich chimes in: “Some copy-cats don’t make a pattern. In most cases technology counts. We don’t have a single copy-cat in our portfolio.” Ciaran o’Leary, of Early Bird Venture Capital in Berlin concurs. “20 out of 23 of our portfolio companies have no US peer (or are older than US peer) and a international user / revenue base.” Entrepreneur Iqbal Gandham in the UK: “I just can’t see why people have to go on about Europe and america, and who is best, who really cares. Loic Le Meur should add up all the money thrown by VC’s in the USA and see how much was wasted ($41mn for Color)”. Of course there are drawbacks. Less VC, and fragmented markets. As London-based but US-born entrepreneur Geoffrey McCaleb says “I can’t tell you how many times I’ve spoken with VC backed companies that had no plans to hit the US market, mainly because they were “satisfied” with penetrating all of Europe…. Funding is also (once again) an issue… But just to keep things balanced, the US has a lot to learn from us in terms of internationalization and mobile. There is a lot of exciting and vibrant things going on in mobile just here in London, let alone the rest of Europe.” So sure, there are still a few VCs out there who don’t think big. Sure, we don’t have one big fat homogenized market like the US. That doesn’t mean we can’t THINK globally or about hitting the US FROM Europe. And it doesn’t mean the entrepreneurs who DO want to think big don’t find the VCs they like. More to the point: Jan Horna, a technology entrepreneur and founder of believes “Loic can hardly keep up with the EU startup ecosystem if he moved to the Valley. He describes the situation that was 5yrs ago.” And that, my friends is the problem. When did Loic move to the Valley? About five years ago. So to be portrayed as being intimately acquainted with the European tech scene is, frankly, a stretch. It is clear there is a market for clones, just as there is a market in the US (remember Plurk’s copying of Twitter?). Facebook clone StudiVZ in Germany was mentioned by Loic. But does anyone seriously write about them any more? Maybe the odd local German blog. But the tech scene in Germany, and especially in Berlin where I have been spending time, has moved on and grown up and the wider, NEW European scene is entirely unlike the clone scene of old. In fact all over Europe I see young entrepreneurs in their 20s taking their innovation cues from the Valley mindset and creating brand new things. There has been an explosion in accelerators, co-working spaces, and increasing numbers of ventures investors looking at 500 Startups and similar investment models and doubling down on many different investments. of these people – and I have observed it close hand – are ever out to lunch for hours on end. Across Europe, entrepreneurs are burning the night oil to create startups which DO go global from day one, and DO aim at both international US markets. I’ve seen it with my own eyes. And the clones? Well, certainly we at TechCrunch Europe just don’t bother with them – and – outside of Groupon knock offs – they are getting thinner on the ground anyway . One of the problems with the “clone” charge is that it is really far more specifically aimed at two startup factories in Berlin. The Samwer Brother’s Rocket Internet has done astoundingly well at producing clones of US companies. Look at My City Deal (sold to Groupon) and Wimdu – an AirBnB clone. Is that their fault? If the US equivalents had launched in Germany properly, they’d never have to worry. But the Samwers have it down to a fine art. To a lesser extent, Team Europe Ventures has also produced clones, but not quite as blatantly. But across the rest of Europe, these clone factories are much harder to find – and what you will find, if you take the trouble, is real innovation. Angry Birds? Helsinki. Moshi Monsters, valued at $200m recently? London. Soundcloud, the recent Ashton Kutcher investment? Berlin. Spotify? Stockholm. Jolicloud? Paris, Loic’s stomping ground., Withings? Paris. Fon? (The biggest largest wifi network in the world with 4.2M hotspots). Madrid Tuenti? (Exited for $100m to Telefonica). Madrid. European startups – and for this I would lump in Londoners and Berliners who are very much rocking this – are also really doubling down on a typically European theme: music, culture, art, fashion, games. Check out , , , , , , . You want science? How about . Disruptive financial tech? Try . Advertising and media? , , . Camera apps? You gotta have camera apps! Because Instagram and Camera+ and Hipstamatic are not clones are they? They are ! Of course! So here’s some more: and (London and Berlin as it happens). Big, quality tech conferences? Let’s see now I’m sure I put them here somewhere. Ah yes, (1,000 people), , , , , , , … And finally…. Seesmic? Oh, did we forget? I’m so sorry! Guys, Seesmic is built in Romania. Biz dev is in the Valley, I gather. Not sure who heads it up… Let’s just check… Was it Seesmic which was sold to Twitter for about $40m recently? No, it was Tweetdeck, run out of London. Last I checked that was somewhere in Europe. And not a clone. In fact, I seem to recall a product called Seesmic adopting a very similar ‘columns’ format after Tweetdeck’s appearance. All healthy competition though. Not cloning ! So, are Europeans learning from the US? Sure they are.. Lean startups. Minimum Viable Product. You name it. We read English, guys. Do you read Turkish? Or maybe Arda Kutsal, the guy they call the Arrington of Turkey and contributor to TechCrunch Europe? Because he reads you… Can you call a guy in Moscow and find out what’s hot? I can. Do you know one of the biggest Facebook games comes out of Belgrade in Serbia? Yeah, that. And can US startups learn anything from Europe? How about scaling internationally and working across dev teams between places like Kiev, Paris, London and Estonia? Have you tried that? Or building something in an old culture where failure is looked down on? The new European entrepreneurs – the ones that grew up while Loic was in the Valley – deal with that every day. And you know what? They don’t care. But in truth – and I am sorry to have to break this to you – Europe is not a country. It’s a region. And there are lots of variations…. Indeed, parts of Europe – right now the UK in the main – have realised the benefits of fair use copyright law and are putting it into action. But let’s not talk about France, where three strikes and you’re out is considered even too lenient – Ironic given Paris held the recent eG8 Forum. French entrepreneurs either deal with that or ignore it and build globally. Job done. Is it harder to startup here? Get real. One thing the European Union has been good for is that it has meant you can put a Limited Company into the UK or Ireland, you get a dev team where they are good and affordable (like Seesmic) and you put biz-dev in the Valley and hire Americans. Pretty soon people won’t even know you were from Europe. And, like, who cares anyway? The old way of dominating one country first is the kind of thing young entrepreneurs today literally laugh out loud at. And they simply ignore the European Union – it’s edicts on cookie laws or whatever go largely unnoticed. They just build. But yeah, let’s go on TechCrunch TV and trash European startups. And BTW, hey everybody, you too can go to Le Web. Grab your ticket . Enjoy! I daresay I won’t get invited now… ;-) |
Did Twitter and Facebook just kill a newspaper? | Mike Butcher | 2,011 | 7 | 7 | Discuss. |
Facebook Now Lets App Developers See Their Spam Scores | Jason Kincaid | 2,011 | 7 | 7 |
Two weeks ago a number of Facebook developers logged into the site to horrible news: their applications had without warning. The culprit was Facebook’s spam-fighting bot, which automatically tracks the amount of negative feedback an application receives from users and blocks apps that are faring especially poorly (since they’re probably spammy). But the bot was acting more aggressive than it should have been, and developers didn’t have a way to tell how frequently users were blocking their app updates in the first place. Today, Facebook is rolling out some new features to address this. In a blog post the news, Facebook engineer Mike Vernal writes that developers will now have access to a ‘News Feed’ tab as part of Facebook Insights (their analytics product). Developers will now be able to track how frequently the posts their applications generate are hidden or marked as spam by users (the more they have, the worse standing they’re in). And Facebook is also taking a more gentle approach to app banning. Previously when an app crossed the spamminess threshold it would simply be deleted. Now Facebook will only cut off the notification channel that’s producing the spam. And if an application is deemed to be spammy across multiple notification channels, Facebook is also introducing a new ‘disabled’ mode that will still give developers access to their applications, even though users won’t be able to use it. Perhaps the biggest news, though, comes at the bottom of the post: In the coming months, we will be moving from per-channel enforcements to a more sophisticated ranking model where the amount of distribution that content gets will be a direct function of its quality. Good content will be seen by more people, poor content will be seen by fewer people (and potentially no one). We think this is the right long-term model, as it rewards apps that focus on great social experiences while minimizing negative experiences. Facebook already does this to some extent with its News Feed (high quality content is seen by more people). But it sounds like this will also be seen in other channels, like Chat and the notifications tab.
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Scientists Create Microscopic, Lens-less Camera | Devin Coldewey | 2,011 | 7 | 7 |
And I thought this was small. Cornell researchers have created an even tinier imaging device that does away with the last holdout features of traditional digital cameras. (PFCA) doesn’t have photosensors, as we think of them. Instead, it’s just a single piece of silicon that’s sensitive to light, and by (I think), an image can actually be created, at the moment with a resolution of about 20×20 pixels. That’s not enough for, say, a tiny security camera, but the thing is so small that it could be used as an “eyespot” for a robot or device, for use in orienting itself or tracking various objects. The camera, if you can call it that, is described in more detail in a paper published in the latest issue of . I know you already have a copy, so get reading! [via ] |
Nokia Pledges To Support MeeGo For Years | Jordan Crook | 2,011 | 7 | 7 | , once a highly anticipated OS intended to go head to head with and , now finds itself on just one phone, and although it hasn’t been said outright, it seems unlikely there will be many more — if any at all. Still, those of you rocking MeeGo’s only host, the Nokia N9, are “not to worry.” OS updates and hardware support are still on the table. Klas Strom, Nokia’s head of portfolio management in marketing, today tweeted, “We will support #NokiaN9 for years AND release several SW updates… #nottoworry :).” [ via ] |
Guy: Every Time You Fly With Your Camera, You're Damaging The Sensor | Devin Coldewey | 2,011 | 7 | 7 | [youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=98FZ8C6HneE?rel=0&hd=1&showinfo=0&start=479&w=620&h=383]
Rob Hummel, a film industry vet speaking at this year’s Cine Gear Expo, reveals what seems to be a shocking fact about digital cameras: taking your camera on planes kills pixels! The rationale behind this is that the gamma radiation at altitude is much greater, and this causes a voltage change in sensors that can “fry out” pixels. Calamity! But wait, let’s just check some stuff here. As forum posters and commenters around the net are , this whole thing simply doesn’t seem to be true. His anecdote of the Genesis cameras being flown out and having dead pixel rows is full of holes; after all, a million things could have caused a few dead pixels, not least of which a bumpy flight and improper packing. Cameras are flown all over the place every day, and you’d think at this point someone would have noticed all the dead pixels. Though the cameras in space people are mentioning are without a doubt radiation-hardened. Hummel is probably speaking from a grain of truth: gamma rays probably do excite photo sensors, but the increase at cruising altitude isn’t really that much greater, and a commenter links to a paper showing that either way, it’s nowhere near the levels necessary to damage a sensor. It’s probable that some sensors are more likely to suffer from this problem than others — but any systematic problem would have been detected and corrected by now. [via and ] |
Tickets To Our 6th Annual Summer Party At August Capital Are On Sale Now | Elin Blesener | 2,011 | 7 | 7 | Tickets are now sold out. Be sure to check back next week for our next set of tickets. We only have a couple more weeks left until our 6th annual summer party at August Capital. Our first two batches of 100 tickets sold out in under an hour. Today we are releasing 100 more. The party will follow our on July 29th and will be held in Menlo Park from 5:30 – 10:00pm. There will be a mix of startup demos, drinks, giveaways, networking and fun on one of the prettiest roads in Silicon Valley. The tickets tend to sell out very fast, so be sure to act quickly if you would like to come. If you’re not able to get a ticket today, stay tuned for a ticket giveaway this weekend. We will also release our next set of tickets next week. Tickets are now . Tickets to our Mobile First CrunchUp are unfortunately sold out. We still have a limited number of press passes available though. Contact to request press pass consideration. Here are the for our summer party.
July 29, 5:30 – 10:00 pm
2480 Sand Hill Road, Menlo Park CA 94025,
@ Eventbrite: $40 based on availability. Tickets to be released weekly in batches. Stay tuned to TechCrunch for releases as they sell out quickly. #tcaugustcapital
The combined CrunchUp – Summer Party also gives us a great sponsorship platform for startups and brands to reach both conference and networking attendees. Please contact or to learn more about sponsorship packages and custom opportunities. |
Motorola (Re)Posts Droid 3 Tutorial Videos | Jordan Crook | 2,011 | 7 | 7 | [youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4qIiUkZUcU4&w=640&h=390] Where have we seen this video before? It was released today, but is still… oddly familiar. Oh, that’s right, it was about a month ago, and then abruptly pulled by . The star of the show, Motorola’s , made its way onto the market this morning, officially going live on ’s site for $199.99 on a two-year agreement. Motorola then graciously re-posted the tutorial video, along with a truck load of other helpful videos to help you get acquainted with Motorola’s third-gen Droid. We’ve pulled together a few of the videos we found most interesting (including one detailing the new media gallery with social media integration ), but click through to the channel below to check out a treasure chest of Droid 3 footage. Topics include texting, using the media gallery, video recording, browsing the web, and more. [youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gUweR7dq2iY&w=640&h=390]
[youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0zAvQ8JuhmQ&w=640&h=390]
[youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cd5cHo4io88&w=640&h=390] [ via ] |
T-Mobile Employee Perk: Gingerbread G2Xs That Don’t Have Narcolepsy | Jordan Crook | 2,011 | 7 | 21 | Remember that one time that you bought the and it randomly restarted? And you were like, “Whoa, that’s weird,” and then it ! And again. And again. For three months. Yeah, we’re done with that. You should soon have a phone that reboot for no reason whatsoever, as employees are now sporting on their G2x models in a pilot test. The update should bring with it a solid fix for the “unexpected restart” issue, which probably should have been handled a couple weeks after the phone’s launch. But we won’t live in the past, especially since it’s looking like the update is almost here. Other enhancements that will come along with that Gingerbread awesomeness include improved battery life, improved front-facing camera with Record and Share, and easier disabling of car home. Obviously, there’s still a bit of a wait to endure, but the fact that Gingerbread is getting seeded to employees means it’s in the very final stages of testing. It’s only a matter of time, folks. Hang in there. [via ] |
Government doubles matched-funding to £2m for early stage Silicon Roundabout startups | Mike Butcher | 2,011 | 7 | 7 | Back It was an unusual move. Startups anywhere in the UK are always interested in sources of funding – but here was one source actually geographically targeted at one area of London, and one where there has been existing organic growth of the tech community for the last few years. In other words, the TSB had managed to convince their overlords that the government should ‘double-down’ on the existing tech cluster there. This is highly unusual, and frankly to be welcomed. Often government initiatives are targeted in totally the wrong places. Applicants can get up to £100,000 in , with the other half coming from a private inestor(s). So, get the private investment first, and then double it with government cash, if selected. Win. ( ). , enabling the project to provide £100,000 grants to twice as many companies, or 20 instead of the original 10. Why? The TSB says it’s because of “the excellent calibre of investment-worthy proposals submitted following the initial announcement of the Tech City Launchpad in April.” Cool. Admittedly £100,000 does not go that far with some startups, but it could well prove that extra lifeline for many, especially super-lean ones. They had 200 ideas and 20 detailed proposals submitted. The TSB Board says it will help approved projects gain the remaining 50% funding (up to £100,000) through a workshop involving potential investors (angels, VCs etc). The funding workshop is planned for 11 August, no venue as yet. Universities and Science Minister David Willetts announced the additional funding. of the companies so far. Looking down I can see it’s a varied list – but what is encouraging is that this is happening very much at the Seed end of the cycle. And who couldn’t use an extra £100k?
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Kobo eReader Touch Edition Gets Updated With Font Customization | Jordan Crook | 2,011 | 7 | 7 | We had when it came to . Specifically, we felt that the device was “not really a reading experience than other devices (though not a worse).” However, that sentiment might change since the Kobo eReader Touch Edition is getting an update, which should bring with it some cool new customization features. Basically the update will give users the ability to add their own fonts, and create new fonts on their laptop which can then be synced over to the Kobo eReader. The Kobo eReader Touch Edition is a pretty simplistic device, so chances are a lot of Kobo owners aren’t necessarily what we’d call tech savvy. If you happen to be one of them and the idea of side-loading fonts seems scary, no worries. You’ll still be able to customize your Kobo’s font by choosing from the five fonts that will be included in the update: Amasis, Delima, Felbridge, Gil Sans, and Rockwell. That brings Kobo’s on-board font offerings to a total of seven fonts, across 25 different sizes. The update will also bring line-spacing, margin, and justification control to the Kobo eReader Touch Edition, along with the ability to turn off Kobo styling altogether. It’s worth noting that Kobo’s greatest competitors, the and the , don’t offer the ability to add fonts. The whole point of an eReader is to find a convenient, space-saving way to enjoy books, and customizable fonts sounds like a great way to improve the experience. Maybe the Kobo could be a “ ” reading experience after all. |
CivWorld For Facebook Beta Goes Live… If You Can Get It To Load (Update) | Jordan Crook | 2,011 | 7 | 7 | Back in May, that Sid Meier’s Civilization game would be migrating over to under a new name, Civilization World. Today, the Facebook game went live in its , and we’re more than excited to get civilized. While maintaining the same basic game structure, CivWorld will bring a social element into the game, giving users the option to join teams and rule the world as a group. And who doesn’t love a good oligarchy? Plus, CivWorld is free on Facebook, as opposed to the $40-ish price tag slapped onto Civilization V. In my opinion, the most exciting thing about CivWorld is that we’ll be able to dominate the world real-life friends. There’s just one problem: the game won’t load. As of now, the error reads: “There was no response from the Game Server. You may refresh your browser to try again.” Hopefully, the folks over at 2K Games will get this situation squared away so we can check out the next in Sid Meier’s genre-defining Civilization series. Seems to be working now, albeit slowly. |
How Apple Led The High-Stakes Patent Poker Win Against Google, Sealing Ballmer's Promise | MG Siegler | 2,011 | 7 | 9 | “It’s not like Android’s free. Android has a patent fee. You do have to license patents.” Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer in an interview last year with . At the time, Microsoft was on the verge of releasing their first Windows Phone 7 devices, and knew their best hope in the market would be to go after Android — the same OS which quickly ran Windows Mobile into extinction. In the months that have followed, right or wrong, it looks like Microsoft is slowly but surely forcing Google’s OEM partners for Android to agree with this stance. The reality is that for an increasing number of these partners now, Android is not free. It doesn’t require the licensing fees that Windows Phone does, but it does require a patent fee. A fee paid to Microsoft, not Google, mind you. If Microsoft is able to convince (or force) Samsung to pay this fee as well, it’s likely lights out for Android as a free OS, . And with Microsoft and now HP offering their own rival mobile OSes backed by a vast array of patent protection, some of these OEM partners may begin to think twice about their firm Android commitments. At least, that’s undoubtedly Microsoft’s hope. Android as a free mobile OS that rivals iOS in terms of functionality is an unbelievable value proposition. But Android as an OS that requires you to pay Microsoft for each unit shipped is less so. Google’s last great chance to save Android in this regard may have been the Nortel patent purse — 6,000+ patents spanning mobile and wireless innovation. Unfortunately, the search giant the rights to those patents in a bidding war with their rivals. As a result — pending government inquiries implications of all of this — Android remains very vulnerable. Perhaps more so than ever. But the story of just how Google failed to secure these patents — which many had assumed they’d win — may be even more fascinating. This Canadian court document ( ), made public on Wednesday and linked to by Krazit in his piece, details exactly how Google lost the Nortel patents. The entire document is extremely long, but most of the good parts are in the earlier parts — aside from the documents later on in which Google’s name as the winner of the bidding is crossed off in favor of “Rockstar Bidco”, the name of the consortium made up of Google’s rivals that won. As everyone knows, Google kicked things off by the “stalking horse” bid on April 4. This bid of $900 million ensured that the auction would take place, and put Google in the driver’s seat for it. This bid led many to believe that Google would eventually prevail as the winner of the Nortel patents. In fact, many inside of Google believed they would win as well, we’re told. The company even did a blog post outlining why they were bidding. As Kent Walker, a Google Senior Vice President and General Counsel, wrote in a post entitled “ “: Today, Nortel selected our bid as the “stalking-horse bid,” which is the starting point against which others will bid prior to the auction. If successful, we hope this portfolio will not only create a disincentive for others to sue Google, but also help us, our partners and the open source community—which is integrally involved in projects like Android and Chrome—continue to innovate. Google chose to use the name “Ranger” for their bidding. Meanwhile, others interested in the patents began to organize themselves for the auction which would take place at the end of June. At the same time, the U.S. government began looking into the bidding to determine how the outcomes might affect the mobile and patent ecosystem. The DoJ quickly determined that a Google win would be okay, , apparently. At the same time, that the auction could result in a termination of the existing licensing agreements they had on the Nortel patents. And while they never specifically mentioned Google, it was pretty clear that they did not want Google winning — such a victory would eliminate at least some of Microsoft’s patent leverage over Android. But this complaining was odd since we had heard that the existing licensing agreement on the Nortel patents have to be honored by any winning bidder. So what was Microsoft complaining about? At least some believe Microsoft was just playing mind games at this point — mind games which would later come into play. Ultimately, four different parties were chosen by Nortel to be allowed to make bids on the patents, in addition to Ranger (Google), the stalking horse winner: Apple, Rockstar Bidco (a consortium — more on that in a bit), Intel, and Norpax (an affiliate of RPX Corporation). The auction commenced on June 27 at 9:15 AM in New York. Intel made the starting bid — it’s not clear what that bid was, except that it was over the $900 million initial Google bid. After Intel, everyone was told that the minimum bid increments would be $5 million. All of the remaining bidders made bids. The Nortel group looked them over and determined to raise the threshold for the bid increments to $50 million from $5 million — thus beginning round two of the auction. This time, only three bids were received. Norpax did not bid. A new leading bid was declared (unknown) and Nortel decided to up the increments to $100 million. Because Norpax had not bid, they were removed from the auction and the number of participants fell to four: Ranger (Google), Apple, Intel, and Rockstar Bidco. It was around this time that Google , based around mathematical constants. The Nortel group was apparently confused by the seemingly random numbers Google was bidding. have stated that they weren’t sure if Google was “extremely confident or bored”. Others believed Google was trying to confuse their rival bidders. Still, while Nortel may have not known what to think, Google remained in the race. By the fifth round of bidding, it was Rockstar Bidco that decided not to submit a bid. This brought the group of bidders down to three: Google, Apple, and Intel. Then something really interesting happened. Following Rockstar’s seeming exit, Apple asked Nortel for permission to talk to the group about a possible partnership. This request was granted. Following these discussions, Apple decided they wanted to partner with Rockstar and adopt their name and transaction structure. Essentially, Apple decided to stake the Rockstar group in this high-stakes poker game. If you’ve seen (the , not the original campy version), you’ll recall the scene where James Bond loses all his money attempting to call what he believes to be a Le Chiffre bluff. He is forced to exit the game, but then Felix Leiter, the CIA operative also in the game, tells Bond he’ll stake him since he’s clearly the stronger player. Again, that’s more or less what Apple did with this maneuver to Google’s Le Chiffre. After the sixth round of bidding, Intel indicated it too was withdrawing. At this point, the two remaning groups were allowed to discuss partnership opportunities with all of those who had withdrawn. By the end of the eight round, Ranger (Google) partnered with Intel. It was now down to Ranger (Google + Intel) versus Apple (staking Rockstar). For the next 10 rounds, the two sides traded bids in $100 million increments. By the 19th round, Apple (Rockstar) presented a $4.5 billion bid. Ranger (Google) asked for permission to take some time to think about making another bid, this was granted. They ultimately decided not to continue. Apple (in partnership with Rockstar) was declared the winner. While much of the press after the auction focused on the Rockstar group’s win, the court documents make it very clear that it was actually Apple that won in partnership with Rockstar. Apple was the only group that had not dropped out. Again, they staked the Rockstar group to ensure a victory for the stronger player. Why was Rockstar the stronger player? Because of the other companies involved. RIM, EMC, Ericsson, Sony, and yes, Microsoft. All of those groups together had the cash and clout to break Google’s will. And with Microsoft, there was clearly the desire. But why on Earth was Microsoft doing bidding on patents they already had licensing rights to? That’s not yet clear. But one has to assume that they simply did not want Google winning them — at all. Even if Microsoft maintained licensing rights to the patents, a Google win would ensure that it would be a lot harder to sue Android and its OEM partners for other patent infringements. So it sure looks like Microsoft teamed up with longtime enemy Apple to ensure victory. And if the U.S. and/or Canadian governments don’t now either block this result (which seems unlikely given that they approved the bidders beforehand) or force fairly drastic changes (such as ) — which — Android seems to be in some very serious trouble. Things didn’t ultimately end well for Le Chiffre, remember. |
Despite Google+ Competition, Disco, Google's Hushed Messaging App, Continues To Improve | MG Siegler | 2,011 | 7 | 9 | It has been over three months since we first the news on the existence of , within Google. Google still refuses to talk about it. But work continues nonetheless. Today brings version 3 of the app — and the app is starting to get really good. Just a little over a month after Disco was with Push Notifications, today’s update brings a range of key new features. The biggest one is photo sharing, a feature which is now a must-have for all group messaging apps. Also new is 1-to-1 chat capabilities. But the most important additions may be the things Slide/Google is trying to do to help differentiate Disco from the rest of the pack. Namely, they’ve baked in Twitter and Yelp integration. Yes, it may seem a bit weird for an app built within Google to rely on two rivals, but the features are interesting. Using the new “Star” commands, you can choose to follow any Twitter feed within a Disco group and see all the updates from that account within the app. You can also call up Yelp recommendations and reviews right from within the app with the new feature. Finally, you can also create a poll for everyone in the group using the Star options. Disco also comes with a nice little bonus. If friends are not yet using Disco, you can still interact with them via SMS within the app. And the app will allow you to do this with up to five friends absolutely free of charge (though I assume they can still get charged for receiving the text). While Google still won’t talk about Disco, perhaps it is ideal to just let that team do their own thing. Clearly, they are iterating fast minus all the oversight they might normally get as a regular group within Google. In just a few months, the Slide team has brought Disco from yet another group messaging client, into a really good one. At the same time, the team is also working on other apps, like Pool Party, . I’ve been playing around with that for the past week, and it’s also pretty solid. If the slide team combined the two, it could be really interesting. Of course, I’m also still interested to see how these Slide apps do in the face of Google+, which offers much of the same basic functionality. Google+ for Android has been out for over a week now, and it includes the Huddle group-messaging app. The G+ iPhone app remains in review, but should be out shortly — my guess would be next week. You can find Disco in the App Store or in the Android Market . |
Eric Schmidt: You Don’t Know It’s A Bubble Until The Bubble Ends | Alexia Tsotsis | 2,011 | 7 | 9 | Earlier this week, Google Executive Chairman gave an over 70 minute long talk to press at the Sun Valley conference here in Idaho. Towards the end of the talk, a reporter asked the former Google CEO whether he, like many in the media world, thinks we are presently in a tech bubble and what Google’s $1.67 billion 2004 IPO at a $23 billion valuation (Google’s current valuation is 171.43 billion) means in light of today’s IPO valuations. “Oh we were underpriced,” Schmidt joked, before remarking that he didn’t actually know whether or not we are presently in a bubble. “On the general question of bubble, in the first place you don’t know it’s a bubble until the bubble ends, by definition. The rule I set for myself 10 years ago was that if the press calls it a bubble then I’d pay attention, and let me report that the New York Times, the Wall Street Journal and the Economist have all written articles saying that it’s a bubble. So you have a couple choices A) The revenue growth possibility on these platforms is so large that you could get the kind of revenue acceleration that justifies the valuations. B) You have a liquidity squeeze where you don’t have enough shares, and they’re artificially high.” When a journalist pointed out that it sounded like Schmidt was “unconvinced either way,” he said that it’s difficult to know whether the valuations are fair until a significant amount of shares hit the market, usually when employee lockups expire, typically after six months, “You won’t really know the answers until 2012,” he said. The only clear thing at the moment, Schmidt said, was that real estate values will go up. “Young people who need houses will go into areas of scarce housing resources and there will be competition for houses and housing prices will go up. So for them it’s not a bubble it’s actually a house.” On what effect if any the seven years of market experience have had on his perspective on Google’s IPO, Schmidt said, “Google went public at a very different time, at what people thought was an unbelievably high valuation, and let me point out that we’ve never traded below our opening price.” When pressed again by a reporter for a yes or no answer, Schmidt gave the following humble reply, ” I don’t think it’s my job to call the market. It’s a mistake for me to say what the market should think … I’m not a brilliant investor. If I were a brilliant investor then maybe I’d have some status. I’m a computer scientist.” … A computer scientist with net worth. |
The Twitter Endgame: IPO, Chess, or Roulette? | Semil Shah | 2,011 | 7 | 9 | Reports are swirling that is in talks to $400 million, valuing the company close to $8 billion. It seems as if it was only that Twitter raised $200m from . At the time of Kleiner’s investment, some pundits chuckled beneath their breath, claiming the old venture firm was paying up on price in order to claim a bit of equity in social networks, which they had been perceived to have missed. Despite that laughter, it may be , his partners, other Twitter , and their employees that share in the last laugh. In addition to the success of their funds, Doerr knew exactly the bet he was making when he down this deal last December. In buying a piece of Twitter, one could connect the dots for the possibility that Doerr, with his deep knowledge of , knows something about a Twitter endgame that got his investment juices flowing. There have been blog posts trying to show that Google should buy Twitter. At the same time, other technology giants left hanging without any social data could perceive Twitter as an attractive acquisition target also, giving them a large network and helping circumnavigate many walled-garden sites filled with social, user-generated content. Can the company’s major shareholders help create competition for a Twitter deal in a very small market? The roll call of Twitter’s investors is impressive, littered with the names of blue chip venture firms and consumer web celebrities, many of whom built their reputations largely through this one investment—and rightly so. With around 400 employees, half of whom are focused on engineering and product, Twitter doesn’t necessarily need almost half a billion dollars of additional financing to keep going. To date, it has been able to book some revenue based largely on the promoted tweet ad unit. However, it has also been acquiring companies to help eliminate blind spots in its technology and product offering, to date spending more than $50M on purchases like , , and most recently, . One could make the case that as the company continues to get the product back on track that a mix of housekeeping plus new acquisitions make sense to get the product to a point of stability. This seems to be what is happening especially under the product guidance of c0-founder , who came back but is CEO of , and former Google AdSense guru . That is, because right now, the Twitter product struggles just to be stable. For those that use Twitter’s native web site in the browser, it’s been considerably slower, possibly because the system is processing over per day. Sure, that’s a lot, but in those 200m items are a lot of loud, spammy, and inaudible (or inauthentic) accounts. For those trying to get a handle on direct messages (“DMs”), random old threads keep popping up when they finally load, which means they may be moving all DMs to a new server. @Replies are still not distinguishable from @Mentions, users haven’t been educated to make lists, and it’s very hard to search through favorites or old tweets. There are also more add-on options available per tweet via mobile than there is on the web, perhaps due to the fact that for those that use Twitter heavily, there are so many different clients from which to access the stream. And therein lies the huge challenge but also Twitter’s massive opportunity. There has been much about Twitter’s handling of its own developer community. For some, the lack of a clear roadmap has spooked people from in the space with time, money, and developer resources. For others, talk is cheap, and the reality that Twitter will have to eventually own every piece of the stack is obvious, so those that enter the fray must do so willingly. Most recently, these tensions were brought to light when Twitter was seen to Uber Media and then acquired TweetDeck, or when Twitter to launch it’s own photo-sharing service in with (and thereby bypassing services like and ), or when it to get into the URL-shortening game, going so far as to re-shorten URLs that were already shortened by other services like . As powerful and disruptive as Twitter can be in the real world, make no mistake that in its own ecosystem, similar forces are at work. There has now been a good year of “bubble” saber-rattling in the technology world, and combined with today’s red-hot IPO market, Twitter needs to keep advancing its chess pieces forward. While the public demand for shares in Twitter may be huge, the reality is that the five-year old company not only doesn’t have the revenue acceleration needed to make this a viable option, but it’s product isn’t entirely set either. This latest $400m fundraising round may be an attempt to help fuel more product-enhancing acquisitions and, overall, to begin a consolidation of fragmented clients and services that currently survive solely on an oxygen supply from Twitter’s API. With each round raised and as its valuation goes up and up, the possible exit outcomes dwindle and the stakes get higher. The Twitter endgame transforms from chess into a dangerous game of roulette. From my own personal viewpoint as a Twitter user, my sincere hope is that Twitter remains an independent, standalone company that eventually is publicly-traded. I will line up to buy shares. I view the Web through Twitter and spend more time on the service than any other, by a mile. And while I hope it will IPO, I have this sinking feeling that’s not realistic. This is not to suggest that Twitter is failing at finding and tuning all the best possible business models. They are doing an incredible job with only 400 people. It’s astonishing, really. Rather, it’s that the scope of all the potential opportunities is so massive, wide, and deep—from Internet, to television, to back-end analytics, search, location—that it may take a real partnership to transform these models into real revenue engines. Who would be interested in Twitter should they continue to remain private and closely-held? Some make the case for companies like , especially after its of Twitter into its iOS5 software. A company like Twitter could give cash-rich Apple a huge network to its iAd advertisements on multiple devices, perhaps eventually even on television. Earlier this year, there was some that Facebook may be interested, but they don’t (yet) have enough cash on hand to do this (though Facebook stock could do the trick). There’s always , which certainly has cash on hand and an appetite to buy social communication services, recently demonstrated by its $8 billion of . This leaves one company, located in Mountain View, that many believe could be the perfect acquirer for Twitter, despite the fact it just launched its social network, , which is poised to launch brand pages, too. A possible Google-Twitter acquisition has been analyzed to death, so I won’t do that here, other than to say on paper, it makes a ton of sense. Because of all the bountiful seeds Twitter has planted around the world, the company best positioned to harvest those seeds (and turn a healthy buck while doing so) is Google, bar none. But, as Twitter raises more money at higher valuations, and if an IPO is not likely in the near future, the number of possible outcomes dwindles. While an acquisition by one of the four companies listed above could be huge, both in terms of dollars and media attention, the real game would be to create enough competition among at least two of the four possible bidders to drive up the price and maximize shareholder returns. If Twitter uses the new funding to continue to fortify the product and also continue on a hunt for the best business models, it may give the potential acquirers information that leads them to think they may not be likely to extract profits from Twitter either. By raising a whopping round, Twitter buys itself time but also elevates the stakes. Does Twitter putter along for the next few years and stumble upon a business model, enabling it to IPO? Does a giant like Apple, Microsoft, Facebook, or Google snatch up the company, or better yet, engage in a chess match with each other for the right to buy it for close to $10b or more, minting money for the company shareholders? Or, does Twitter start to slowly fade away, unable to reel in enough cash to keep the humming? With the first option being a longshot, we’re down to two numbers on the roulette wheel. My money and my hope is on black: an acquisition. |
Gillmor Gang 7.09.11 (TCTV) | Steve Gillmor | 2,011 | 7 | 9 | The Gillmor Gang — Michael Arrington, Dan Farber, Robert Scoble, and Steve Gillmor — enjoyed @scobleizer’s FaceTime tour of Florida’s abandoned Kennedy Space Center in the aftermath of the last shuttle launch. The countdown clock sat frozen amid a sea of media trailers and the huge Twitter Live Assembly building. No, wait; that was where FriendFeed stood until Google + was launched last week. Google + should buy Twitter, suggested @arrington from his retirement center in the Pacific NorthWest. Having immediately shut down its live stream to Google the day after Plus went public, it seems unlikely Jack and Dick (and Ev and Alice for that matter) are any closer to selling. As the ghost of Walter Cronkite peered down from the “permanent” CBS News bunker, CBSNewsOnline editor in chief @dbfarber schooled @arrington on the news of the day. We all got a little older. And that’s the way it was. |
Vroom: How Skywalker Sound Made The Cars 2 Sound Effects | John Biggs | 2,011 | 7 | 9 | [youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nWPdowDt_0Q&w=640&h=390] Although, arguably, the second was sub-par, it’s nice to see how Skywalker Sound designed the sounds for the vrooming, racing Maters, Lightnings, and British spy cars in the movie. |
The social network that elected Obama comes to Europe | Monty Munford | 2,011 | 7 | 9 | Some people have all the luck. Alex Lofton is 26 years old, bright, handsome, has moved to London from the US and isn’t struggling to make a living in Zone 3 or 4 on the outskirts of the Tube network, he is living in a flat in Mayfair. Oh, and he also works for a public social network that helped to elect a President and is building up and hiring a team from the Hub in King’s Cross as his company hopes to replicate in the UK its success in the US. Lofton works for , a public social network formed by Aharon Wasserman, Justin Lewis and the UK’s very own Edward Saatchi, scion of Maurice Saatchi, the legendary ad man. The company was founded in the light of Barrack Obama’s campaign to be President, but let Lofton tell the story. “In 2007 I was working in the field in Savannah, Georgia when the phone rang and it was an English guy (Saatchi) asking if he could help in the campaign. I asked him if he could drive, he said no and I put the phone down on him, no time to waste. The next day, however, he knocked on our door and we put him to work straight away.” As the campaign gathered momentum and more people, like Saatchi, rushed to join, competition between the various fields became more convoluted so NationalField was set up to help to ease communication between them, and it was the non-driving Saatchi who kickstarted it. Political campaigns in the US are fiercely competitive and with an interface very similar to that of Facebook, NationalField’s network managed to channel this competition and deal with huge amounts of data so that resources were pushed towards the apposite fields. The resulting election of Obama may or may not have been down to NationalField, but the company’s public social network is expected to be used by the Democrat party for the Presidential re-election campaign for 2012 where it expects to connect 250,000 paid and unpaid volunteers. The Republican Party has much to do if it is has a chance of competing; at present it has no similar platform. Since the 2008 Democratic campaign, NationalField has moved on to become a social network that can be used by large organisations to similarly control its data. It uses patent-pending technology that allows information to ‘be intelligently filtered vertically and laterally to the right people within companies’ and has a roster of clients including Big Pharma. As for making deals, it didn’t hurt that many decision-makers at these companies were involved in the Obama campaign and, by default, were fanboy and fangirls for the company’s product. It’s almost as if these people were seeded into companies, like a network of benign spies. Edward Saatchi, company co-founder and now CEO, uses a gaming analogy to explain how NationalField works.“There was a shift 10-15 years ago from turn-based games such as Civilization 2 to real-time games such as Starcraft 2. In the old turn-based strategy games the players took a turn, gave orders, waited patiently for other players to take theirs. “Nowadays in real-time strategy, players are making decisions, seeing results and adjusting in realtime. Everyone is competing on instant global social leaderboards. The technology got faster, could present more data more intuitively and people found the old turn-based way of doing things encumbering and unexciting. That’s how we do things. On the Obama campaign and in the organisations that use us now – we’ve unlocked that innate human instinct to compete – to be on the leaderboard, to win, every day.” Saatchi, like our man in Lofton, is also only 26, while his co-founders Wasserman is 24 and Lewis 25. The company has completed Series A funding and currently raising Series B to help with expansion, but more importantly what’s with the flat in Mayfair? “I’ve given the flat to Alex while he’s in the UK and it’s not owned by my dad, much to his chagrin, it’s actually my own,” says Saatchi. As I said, some people have all the luck, they might not be a bad company to work for. |
Eric Schmidt Comments On Google+'s Success, Claims "Millions" Of Users | Alexia Tsotsis | 2,011 | 7 | 9 | Speaking at a press event on Thursday at the Allen & Co conference in Sun Valley, Idaho, former Google CEO and now Executive Chairman gave a 70 minute talk to the relatively few reporters that are here about various topical Google issues, including the most topical of Google issues, the . When asked by a reporter how he would gauge the success of Google+ Schmidt replied, validly, “Well it’s been out for a week!” before going on to say that the biggest marker of its success was the fact that “An infinite amount of people are unhappy because they don’t have their invitation.” He later went on to say that the amount of people who had invitations but weren’t let in because of high demand was the greatest problem the service was facing. “We’re reviewing it on Monday,” he said. Schmidt also seemed pleased that people seemed to understand that Google+ was different than Facebook. “Circles is particularly well suited to the contact list you have in your phone, we have a somewhat different view of privacy. We tried to build a system that you could use for the relationships over time. The people who built the Internet did not get a stable version of identity; You need identity, in the sense that you are a person, this is who you are these are your friends and so on … The issue on the Internet is not the lack of Facebook, the issue on the Internet is the lack of identity. “ When asked by reporters whether Google planned eventually to fill out Google+ with other products, Schmidt answered, “Yeah, and there’s a lot coming,” saying that business accounts and ads are expected, assuming Google+ continues to grow. “We test stuff and when it works we put a lot more emphasis on it,” he said. When pressed to reveal how many people were part of the Google+ beta currently Schmidt replied, “I don’t know but it’s millions, it’s a lot.” |
Daily Crunch: Ride The Lion Edition | Bryce Durbin | 2,011 | 7 | 9 | |
BigCommerce Raises $15 Million To Help Retailers Manage E-Commerce | Leena Rao | 2,011 | 7 | 31 | , a company that provides e-commerce software to online retailers and merchants, has raised $15 Million in Series A funding from General Catalyst Partners. Launched in 2009, BigCommerce provides a comprehensive SaaS for retailers and merchants to manage e-commerce online. BigCommerce helps small businesses power anything and everything related to an online storefront from search to inventory to online payments to marketing and SEO. And the price for the software is affordable for small businesses, with basic plans starting at $25 per month. Features include multi-channel retailing, automated email marketing, inventory control, an online storefront, and more. The company, which has 20,000 clients and is profitable, also for merchants to list inventory on Facebook. The company has $200 million in total transactions via its SaaS and is adding 1,000 clients per month. The new funding would be used to expand the company’s headcount in Sydney and Austin, Texas operations, sales and marketing initiatives and more. |
Get Your Disrupt Startup Battlefield Applications In Now | Elin Blesener | 2,011 | 7 | 31 | It’s time to bring TechCrunch Disrupt back home to . We are accepting applications for startups to launch at the Disrupt Startup Battlefield until midnight tonight. Applications for the Startup Battlefield can be Does your startup have what it takes to be the next , , or —and make it through the judges gauntlet to claim the top prize of $50,000, the “Disrupt Cup” and accolades of the crowd? If you think so, make sure you . Disrupt is the premiere startup launch competition where the most promising founders and entrepreneurs vie to launch their companies on technology’s biggest stage in front of all-star judges. We will have some of the most influential innovators, angels, and VCs judging in front of an audience of 2,000 investors, technologists, and press. Applications have been reviewed on a rolling basis, so please get yours in now. A video will be required as part of the application process. We will not accept any videos longer than 5 minutes and they should not exceed 50MB. In the video be sure to show us the product, its key features, and what makes it different. If selected, we may use segments of submitted videos during the Startup Battlefield competition at Disrupt SF. Applicants are also expected to attach a file with up to 5 power point slides summarizing and reinforcing the application. Don’t worry—all submissions are confidential. In order to compete in the Startup Battlefield, preference will be given to stealth startups that will be launching for the first time to the public and press at Disrupt SF. All startups must be live for fewer than three months at the time of application submission. The competition will be taking place in San Francisco, but companies from all around the world are welcome to enter and we highly encourage them to do so. Companies that have already presented at other public launch events are not eligible. Be sure to read through all of the . will be on September 12th – 14th, preceded by our hugely popular on September 10th – 11th. A huge thank you to all of our sponsors who made possible: : a New York City based angel investment group with a twist, providing development services and mentoring to web and mobile startups in exchange for equity.
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null | Alexia Tsotsis | 2,011 | 7 | 7 | null |
YouTube’s Creator Playbook: Your Guide To Achieving Internet Fame* | Jason Kincaid | 2,011 | 7 | 31 | Looking to turn yourself (or your show) into a YouTube star but don’t know where to begin? YouTube’s looking to help — the video portal has launched a comprehensive guide outlining how content producers should be approaching the platform and which features they can take advantage of. The 70 page guide has a fitting title: The . The new document was today at the VidCon conference in Los Angeles, and is part of YouTube’s broader goal to help creators produce high quality content (YouTube’s Next New Networks is the driving force behind this mission). Of course, YouTube is quick to clarify that while this should be a useful guide, there isn’t anything that’s guaranteed. It’s really just a well thought-out set of best practices — if your content isn’t any good, optimizing the first five seconds of your video isn’t going to be much help. From the first page: The Creator Playbook is not a collection of rules or guaranteed ‘tricks’ to get more views. Instead, it presents best practices, optimization tips, and suggested strategies for building audience and engagement on YouTube.” The document is a hefty 70 pages long but isn’t as daunting as you’d think. YouTube has broken each of its miniguides into three sections: Programming & Producing, Publishing & Optimization, Community & Social Media. And each tip within a section gives an at-a-glance overview of how long it will take to implement (the easy ones are five minutes, the harder ones a day or more), which metrics the tip will impact, and how much of an effect content creators should expect. Some of the topics will be obvious to TechCrunch readers (use Facebook and Twitter a lot!) but it’s unlikely that you’ll already know everything in there. The sections outlining how video metadata can impact your search result rankings is particularly useful — and there’s a checklist at the end you can run through each time you upload a video. Note that while there’s an entire section dedicated to thumbnail optimization, there’s nothing in there about using a woman’s cleavage as your thumbnail photo, which seems to be a curiously popular strategy on the site.
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Social Broadcast Network | Steve Gillmor | 2,011 | 7 | 31 | Every day I try and do the media rounds to see what’s happening. The Journal, the Times, the Techcrunch, and the Twitter. Twitter is consumed via a number of aggregators that I rotate, mostly settling for News.Me and the Media something newsletter that the guy from MySpace produces. Techmeme gets my votes about once a day, in the following order: upper right hand corner for the latest breaking, lower right hand corner to see what’s falling off the edge, then straight to the middle clump where two or three stories reside if anything’s really jumping. I’ve usually read the top in the other venues by then. Google+ is not on this list, yet. Mostly because I haven’t got a handle on its core value as a news trigger. If you’re Scoble, the value is obvious as he is now demonstrating by turning it into his blog. But sooner or later the service will have to decide what it wants to be when it grows up — a conversation hub with no tools for rapid synthesis of knowledge, a social graph to challenge Twitter (it’s getting there fast), or some other thing perhaps more substantial than currently appreciated, like a stalking horse for YouTube live streaming aka the social broadcast network. SBN we’ll call it has all the earmarks of a Gmail beta operation. Launching it on top of Hangouts with their limited reach even if daisy chained will not scare the networks until google flips the bits around and couples live streams with API access to embedded comment streams like the ones we use on Gillmor Gang sessions from the Friendfeed API. 10 Hangouters is more than enough in the context of a live chat of hundreds, and the API can be broadened to allow concentric groups to nominate or be given the microphone from a joint console. This will put pressure on Google to provide a way in for the Tweet stream, since aggregators like Seesmic and others will have the same API access and an incentive to merge the multiple social networks. Facebook will be in the odd role of having little to offer here, what with YouTube’s huge clout in video marketshare. The Skype deal is a longer term strategy for climbing into a classic 3 or 4 network clump, with Apple/Twitter bargaining access to AirPlay all the more important. G+ project manager Bradley Horowitz buttonholed me at the TechCrunch August Capital party to say he enjoyed live cast earlier that afternoon. The team’s proactive approach to interacting with field test users is good politics, but it also underlines the need to respond to criticisms such as Scoble’s laments about a buggy and crash prone iPhone client. If SBN is a not so hidden priority for Google (especially in the wake of Google TV’s Wave/Buzz like performance) then the kinds of viral crowds live streaming will invite will make fixing the Scoble-sized instability on iOS mandatory. The last thing G+ needs is to go directly against Twitter (and Apple) in an Android/iOS shootout. For one, it blows a huge hole in the G+ social graph while it is still forming. For another, given Facebook’s Microsoft-induced stupidity about an iPad client, what part of 90% share of the tablet market do you want to lose. The only thing G+ HTML 5 on the iPad has going for it is that it sucks less that HTML 5 on the iPhone. SBN makes iPad native more likely. The last few weeks in Washington make it clear that both parties have decided on waging the political campaign in realtime via social. Live casting blends just as well today with party fundraising if not more so than when Obama ran the table starting early with the Iowa caucuses. The Republicans have clearly understood the need to frame their agenda in a way that promotes realtime tracking of what is now a Twitter news cycle. The cable networks may offer round the clock coverage, but even political junkies like myself tune in once Twitter alerts hit the push notification bus. CNN jumped out ahead last week with the ability to broadcast live to the iPad if users already subscribed to Comcast or several other cable or satellite services. Once iOS 5 hits with its notification hub, we should be able to move from a push notification directly into the cooperating video stream. SBN can take advantage of the same opportunity in September, but they need to convince Horowitz and Gundotra to put some engineering cycles into pulling Twitter alerts not only from iOS but from the other platforms. Scoble doesn’t like the idea of a Friendfeed-like aggregation of the Twitter stream, but that speaks more to the lack of filtering tools in G+ than anything more fundamental. And the firestorm over businesses not having first class citizenship would be significantly neutralized while we wait if we could push brand stories into our G+ streams to seed the live cast model. Frankly, this is going to happen sooner than later, and I vote for sooner so that the resulting feedback loop will prompt Twitter to accelerate its live streaming and Tracking to feed the push notification network. I’ll call that PNN. |
Another Airbnb Victim Tells His Story: “There Were Meth Pipes Everywhere” | Michael Arrington | 2,011 | 7 | 31 | This last week we’ve all watched in horror as the story unfolded about an Airbnb user who had her a month ago. Other than the of us getting dragged into the story, it seemed to be winding down yesterday. The company appears to be bending over backwards to compensate the victim and avoid another of her blog posts where she writes about how scared she is, still homeless and shaken after the ordeal. Now another victim has come forward. Troy Dayton first wrote about how his Oakland home was rented by a meth addict with a stolen identity in a comment to one of our posts about the company. I contacted Troy and we spoke by phone today about what happened. His situation is very similar to EJ’s. Here’s Troy’s original comment: Something very similar happened to me about 2 months ago. In addition to valuables stolen, the thieves/addicts did thousands of dollars of bizarre damage to my rented home and left it littered with meth pipes. They were identity thieves, too and all my personal information was strewn about. Further investigation of my own led me to evidence that the people were not just thieves but were also dangerous. I too, feared for my own safety and would not stay at my house for some time. I had a similar problem with haphazard communication from people at AirBnB. I gave them multiple opportunities to make me a happy customer to which they did but then retracted their offer after their was miscommunication among the team. Sometimes days went by without hearing from anyone, while I was fear-stricken, totally disoriented, and angry. It was almost the most absurd customer service crisis one could ever imagine. But I am one squeaky wheel, and we eventually found an agreeable solution that I was generally pleased with. I have since both rented my place out and stayed in others’ homes from airbnb. Here’s what I learned: if you rent out your home, there is a limit to how much AIrbnb can do to protect you. It’s not their fault, but it is their fault that they up-play how much they protect you and downplay what people should do to protect themselves. At the end of the day you are renting to a stranger. You should check there ID’s and phone numbers to make sure they match. I would ask for a link to a social networking site like linkedin, FB, or couchsurfing if there are not credible testimonials on AirBnb. I would chat with them on the phone prior to agreeing to rent to them. Had I done these things, the people that ruined my house would have never made it in. Also, go with your gut. My gut said something wasn’t right about the people that rented my place, but I didn’t know how to handle that gut feeling and wasn’t sure how airbnb would have treated me or them had I told them I didn’t want them to stay even after they booked it. Here’s a way Airb’nb can turn this into another revenue stream: Most rental insurance won’t cover this because you are essentially subletting. If major theft and damage is as rare as Air bnb says it is, which I believe is true, then they should be able to get a great insurance policy tailored just for their customers that they can sell for an additional fee to the renters. Also, as short-term renting like a hotel becomes more common and other websites move in on Airbnb they are going to need more value to justify their very high fees, perhaps insurance and background checks would be a great addition. Of course, if I was the insurance company, I’d require the owners of the property being rented to double check the ID’s of the people checking in to be sure that the background checks are actually for the people checking in. At the end of the day, I think AirBnb is well-intentioned but I think they are struggling with such fast growth and the management and communication systems have not scaled as fast as their business. Some PR and customer service nightmares are to be expected. My understanding is that they are hiring as fast as they can…but having been a part of teams of 20 somethings that multiply by orders of magnitude in a few months I can attest to the mayhem that surrounds this process. I hope they make dealing with catastrophic problems like the ones EJ and I experienced a top priority. By phone today Troy told me about how the woman brought in friends to his home. They went through everything he owned, he said. “There were meth pipes everywhere,” he says, and damage to the bathroom and closet doors caused by, he guesses, a human foot or head, and probably an axe. They stole a computer from him as well as small amounts of cash that he left in the apartment. Any electronic device with a light they took apart (he guesses they were paranoid about being monitored). They unscrewed everything in his refrigerator and mixed things together. They stole his clothes, or shredded them. He found a sweater in the freezer. They also stole his birth certificate, and left evidence behind that they were running a identity theft operation. When they finally left the apartment, they left more than meth pipes behind. “They also left a cat” says Troy. He eventually got the cat back to the original owner I then traded the cat for the return of my keys. The owner of the cat was a friend of the girl who rented the place’s boyfriend and had no idea about anything or how his cat wound up in a trashed apartment in Oakland. A knife was left behind with a man’s name written on it in whiteout. The police said he was a known person, and dangerous. Troy didn’t feel safe returning to his home. He contacted Airbnb as soon as he discovered what happened. There was one surreal moment, he said. He finally tracked down an emergency email address – urgent@airbnb.com, but when he emailed it autoresponded with a message to email the email address he just emailed. From: Airbnb Community Support
Date: Fri, Apr 22, 2011 at 11:43 PM
Subject: Request received: Emergency Situation: tenants ruined my apartment and stole things
To: Troy Dayton — Please respond above this line. —
Thanks for contacting Airbnb community support! Your request (#124683) has been received, and is being reviewed by our support staff. Please note that, due to an overwhelming number of inquiries, our responses may be delayed. Thank you for your patience. If this is an absolute emergency, please e-mail urgent@airbnb.com and we’ll get back to you as quickly as possible. The Airbnb Team
www.airbnb.com/iphone
@JointheAirTeam
please call me asap [phone number redacted] He says “This freaked me out when I was frazzled. Hundreds of millions in venture financing, millions of dollars in fees, and no 24-hour help desk for emergencies? What am I paying them the exorbitant fees for?” He did finally talk to someone at Airbnb. At first he asked for $1,000 and new birth certificates, which were stolen. They never responded to that: “In the end, $1000 dollars and the return of my birth certificate would make me whole in this situation. Anything you can do to help that be the outcome would be greatly appreciated.” Interestingly no one from AIrBnb ever addressed that request. He then asked for a month of free nights at Airbnb. They eventually said yes, as long as he kept it to studios and one bedroom places. But they gave him no instructions. He started booking places, but they then told him he could only book places at the same cost as his apartment. They eventually reimbursed him for the places he already stayed at but cancelled future bookings. In the end they allowed him 21 days, and up to $125/night. They also said they’d cancel future bookings at Troy’s home, but failed to actually do that, he said, causing more confusion. Remarkably, Troy was happy with that. He doesn’t think the company owed him money for damages because he thinks it’s his own fault for letting the woman in. Troy also still uses Airbnb. He insists on seeing identification, though, and doesn’t rent to people with new profiles without pictures. He thinks Airbnb should post more suggestions on its site about how to avoid bad renters, and they shouldn’t promise so much. In the last few days Airbnb has suggested that nothing like EJ’s situation has happened before. A : With a single booking, one person’s malicious actions victimized our host and undermined what had been – for 2 million nights – a case study demonstrating that people are fundamentally good. Most of us read that as saying that this is the first time something like this has happened. As I read it again, though I see how it doesn’t say that. It’s carefully worded to suggest these things never happen, but it doesn’t outright say it. What’s really hurting Airbnb is all this massaging of statements to victims and the press. With both EJ and Troy the company seemed to express lots of empathy, but negotiated hard and delayed on any actual compensation. I haven’t contacted Airbnb about this new story since they for the last story. If they have anything to say, I’m happy to post it. Just send it to me in writing, please. Here are pictures Troy sent me of some of the damage. I don’t know why, but what I really want to see is the sweater in the freezer, and the cat. The first pic is the holes made to the closet doors. Second pic is the axe slash that split a major portion of the bathroom door third pic is the kitchen they trashed which show that they had started
packing up all my food, presumably to take with them. It also shows my
personal files strewn about. 4th pic is of a meth pipe
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(Founder Stories) Ben Lerer: Thrillist Will Do “$40 Million In Revenue This Year” | Erick Schonfeld | 2,011 | 7 | 31 | In this episode of , Chris Dixon sits down with Co-founder and CEO, Ben Lerer (who is also a partner with his father Ken Lerer in Lerer Ventures). Targeted towards young men, Thrillist is a “platform for guys” that offers “both local and national content and commerce smooshed into one place” says Lerer. Inspired by Bob Pitman’s Daily Candy (Pitman is an early investor in Thrillist), Lerer founded Thrillist a couple years out of college. Before he figured out that he wanted to create a city guide for guys, he and his co-founder went through a lot of “get rich quick schemes” with the common thread that they knew nothing about any of them. The only thing they really knew about was “frivolous fun and buying stupid shit.” And thus Thrillist was born. A guide for guys with the voice of a national men’s magazine but a local focus. Today, the site has a loyal following of between 3 and 4 million male subscribers, who are highly attractive to brand advertisers but also very hard to reach. Lerer built the advertising and content business to a respectable 8-figure in annual revenues, but then he looked around at social commerce companies like Groupon and Gilt and thought he could grab a piece of that by setting up parallel commerce businesses and cross-selling to his demographic. So last year he , a group buying site for men’s threads. In January, he layered on a . Revenues shot through the roof. Lerer projects Thrillist will reach “about $40 million in revenue this year, almost tripling from last year.” He now employs 115 people, up from 45 last year. Not bad for a business based on frivolous shit. Watch previous episodes of . |
Square Now Processing $4 Million In Mobile Payments Per Day | Leena Rao | 2,011 | 7 | 31 | Flush with in new funding, Square is continuing to grow like a weed in the mobile payments space. After passing the mark at the end of May, is now processing $4 million in mobile payments daily, and is on track to reach over $100 million in transactions in July. And COO tells us that he expects the company to double this volume by October. In late June, Square raised a massive round of funding, which valued the company above $1 billion. At the time of the announcement, it was revealed that Square was processing in payments per day, but the company has surpassed that mark a month later. Rabois tells us international expansion is part of the next phase of growth. He expects to initial launch payments capabilities outside of the U.S. in 2012. And iPad usage of Square is on the rise, especially after the company launched a disruptive new and loyalty cards. The breakdown in terms of usage are iPad (21%), iPhone (45%), iPod (3%) and Android (31%). In the past year, Square has shipped more than , is processing more than a million transactions per month. And Square devices are now . Basically, if you didn’t take Square seriously, perhaps you should reconsider. [youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pwW4NLSde70&w=560&h=349] |
OMG/JK: The Man In The Yellow Jacket | Jason Kincaid | 2,011 | 7 | 31 | We’re back for a new episode of — featuring both of your hosts reunited in the TCHQ studio (I was back in SF for our ). Oh, and this episode also includes a cameo by a man in a large yellow jacket. I won’t spoil it. We kick off this week’s episode by diving into Twitter’s new ad format, which allows brands to place Promoted Tweets at the top of their followers’ streams. Twitter has long been toying with various ad formats — will this one please users, or just annoy them? Next up we have Facebook’s secret iPad application, which leaked out as part of an official update to its application. MG got his hands on the app and tested it before Facebook cut off access, and his first impressions are good — tune in to get the details. Finally we discuss Airbnb’s recent fiasco, where a host had their home destroyed by guests,and how the startup has responded to the issue. Note that this episode was shot a few days ago, so we don’t discuss our most about the situation. Here are some posts relevant to this week’s episode:
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Buying An Electric Car | Michael Arrington | 2,011 | 7 | 31 | After 3.5 years, I’ve finally re-joined the community of car owners. Between February 2008 and last week, I was . I borrowed and rented cars, took taxis and Zip cars, and occasionally biked. I also bummed a lot of rides (thank you very much – you know who you are). It had started when the warranty on my fancy German gas guzzler expired; I sold the thing, and never really found the time to shop around for a replacement – ? I felt a lot more excited about the prospect of driving an electric sedan, which should be greener, potentially faster, simpler to operate, and cheaper to fuel. Most importantly, I’d never have to kill ten minutes stopping for gas – Who Has Time For This? So I put my name down on the lists for a Tesla Model S, Fisker Karma, Nissan Leaf and Chevy Volt, deciding to wait for one to be built. Three years later, I got calls from Fisker, Nissan and Chevy, and it was time to decide. After examining the options and driving the cars, it was a pretty easy decision to buy the Leaf for these eight reasons: 1. Compared to the others, the Leaf gets twice the range from a battery charge: 100 miles, or 85 miles with the AC cranking. (Plugging the car in and out adds about 15 seconds a day to your daily routine, or 5 minutes a month – about half the time we spend at gas pumps.) 2. With a pure electric motor (not a hybrid gasoline engine) the Leaf is nimbler, less fragile, and legal to drive in California’s carpool lanes so I can bypass the Highway 101 traffic jams – WHTFT? 3. Driving in electric mode (without the help of a hybrid gasoline engine) is wonderfully quiet and smooth (no transmission). Even at 80 miles per hour the acceleration is immediate and impressive. 4. The Leaf steers as smoothly as a Lexus, and the small wheels turn on a dime. 5. Only the Leaf has open, comfortable seats with ample head room in front and leg room in back (a must if you have kids) 6. Only the Leaf carries 5 passengers (a must if you have THREE kids!) 7. The Leaf has the largest trunk, and the back seats fold down for more cargo space. 8. The Leaf costs 3/4 as much as the Volt, and 1/3 as much as the Karma. You get at least $7500 in tax credits, offset by the $2,000 expense of a home 220 volt charging station. [youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ebCpKjw3fIQ&w=640&h=390] These reasons explain why the Nissan Leaf now the the pack. I can think of only three good reasons why you might wish to buy one of the other cars: 1. The Leaf’s pure electric motor is not a problem for two car families – on that rare day once a month when you drive more than 100 miles, you can always take the gas guzzler instead (Honda Odysseys are awesome). But without that fallback, one-car households will find the Volt more practical (albeit expensive and cramped). 2. If you love driving enormous, heavy sports cars that sit low to the ground and you’ve got $100k to burn (like ), then you might prefer the gorgeous design of the Karma. It has the look and feel of a luxury muscle car with a growling engine, bucket seats, and beautiful wood/leather interiors. (The Leaf is all plastic.) Having said that, the Karma performs like a sports car at lower speeds but on the highway I found it downright sluggish compared to the Leaf. The Karma handled highway acceleration nearly as well as the Leaf only when in Stealth Mode which means that the gasoline engine is off. (You may be as disappointed as I was to learn that people can still see you in Stealth Mode.) 3. Stephen Colbert will for driving a Leaf. All three cars come chock full of gizmos we all love (rear view camera, navigation, keyless entry, XM radio, Bluetooth, heated seats…) so there’s no reason to stick with gasoline. The Leaf even comes with a cool iPhone app for remote operation of the charger and climate control. So I’ve been zipping around in my Leaf for a week now and absolutely loving it. Even after three years, it was worth the wait. |
A Look Back On Our Mobile First CrunchUp And 6th Annual Summer Party At August Capital | Elin Blesener | 2,011 | 7 | 30 | We had a blast yesterday at our l. At our CrunchUp, we had some amazing speakers and special guests. Even Chamillionaire managed to make a and started a debate on why Android doesn’t have a decent phone. Later in the day, the drinks were flowing at August Capital and even Ron Conway was spotted enjoying a margarita or two. Our summer party was a huge success and we want to thank everyone who came. We hope you had as much fun as we did.
http://twitter.com/#!/MJ_Isaac/status/97081805756317696
http://twitter.com/#!/Shirls/status/97075779871051776
http://twitter.com/#!/harrymccracken/status/97076924756672512
http://twitter.com/#!/orenjacob/status/97080135118893056
Here’s a deeper look into the CrunchUp: A huge who made this all possible. We couldn’t have done it without you. For more pictures, please check out our . |
Daily Crunch: Orbs | Bryce Durbin | 2,011 | 7 | 30 | Here are some of yesterday’s stories on TechCrunch Gadgets:
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Gillmor Gang 7.30.11 (TCTV) | Steve Gillmor | 2,011 | 7 | 30 | The Gillmor Gang — Danny Sullivan, Robert Scoble, Kevin Marks, and Steve Gillmor — covered the gamut between and well, Google+. The new social platform continues to delight and confound the early adopters in record numbers. @scobleizer remains optimistic that the search giant will roll out filtering features to cut down on the noise of squids, kittens, and well, Scoble comment farms. @dannysullivan would prefer Google unleash the hounds of celebrity and brands, surprised as he and we are that the Plus team was caught flatfooted by the viral adoption of the field trial, or whatever Danny calls it. When we (Danny and I) started complaining about the lack of iPad support and Robert about the perils of high speed Scoble flow via the iPhone, @kevinmarks pointed out the ANdroid support sucked for tablets in general. All in all, much to look forward to and little or no competition from Facebook for Google to worry about. |
Technology + Politics = Facepalm | Jon Evans | 2,011 | 7 | 30 | Oh, how . Earlier this week, Elizabeth May, the leader of Canada’s Green Party, took to her Twitter account and . To think I very nearly voted for these clowns in our recent election. Lesson for my American friends: just because you find all the major parties unpalatable doesn’t mean that the fringe parties aren’t even worse. Meanwhile, can someone get an environmental movement going that isn’t anti-science and anti-technology? Give her credit: she did manage, with rare ability, to hit not just one but all of the “idiot politician talking about science/technology” notes: . Moral panic: “It is very disturbing how quickly WiFi has moved into schools as it is children who are the most vulnerable.” . Deluded citation of : “It is one prevailing theory re disappearance of pollinating insects.” . Misleading deception that comes close to outright lying: “The World Health Org lists EMF as a possible human carcinogen.” Wait, what, the WHO called Wi-Fi possibly carcinogenic? Other so-called environmentalists . But no: it turns out that what they is: “The WHO/International Agency for Research on Cancer (IARC) has classified radiofrequency electromagnetic fields as possibly carcinogenic to humans (Group 2B), based on an increased risk for glioma, a malignant type of brain cancer1, associated with wireless phone use.” The WHO was worried about , folks. Not Wi-Fi. And that was in May. Recently, a concluded: But instead of backing away from her claims, Ms. May went ahead and . Hey, why let irrelevant things like and get in the way of important stuff, like and ? http://twitter.com/#!/rezendi/status/96594620124893184 See also: “ “; “ “; and the recent trend of Twitter protests, such as #fuckyouwashington and #OpPayPal. To be fair, Jeff Jarvis, who the former, has a thoughtful, nuanced, and to my mind accurate on the subject. But at the same time, it strikes me as exactly the kind of meaningless and inconsequential thing that Malcolm Gladwell was talking about when he the role of social media in political change. Now, I ultimately with Gladwell, but protests only matter if they grow into . Movements might use hashtags, but a hashtag is not a movement. Did any of the #fuckyouwashington or #OpPayPal tweeters start following each other? Was there any coordination? Or was it just a random and meaningless eruption, telling no one anything they didn’t know already? (“What? Many Americans are angry at Washington? “) Anonymous that #OpPayPal resulted in the closing of 35,000 PayPal accounts. Even assuming that’s true, and that those were all active accounts (which seems unlikely) then their big protest has brought down less than 0.035 of 1% of PayPal’s . Big whoop. That equation above cuts both ways, I’m afraid: politicians tend to be idiots about technology, and most techies aren’t very bright about politics. Which is really too bad—because each is thoroughly disrupting and transforming the other, whether they like it or not. Image credit: Joe Mott, . |
Our Executive Assistant Greg Gets A Surprise In-Office Haircut | Alexia Tsotsis | 2,011 | 7 | 8 | Who says working for isn’t just about the best job ever, ever? Case in point: Bummed after losing to in “Startup Haircut Contest” this week, our newly minted executive assistant was just going about his Friday business today, planning meetings and filing files, etc when he was surprised by Zaarly’s Shirley Hornstein with the haircut prize he thought he had lost. Watch his priceless response here. “I love surprises … I thought I was going to win and when I lost I thought, ‘Now I need to find a place to go get a haircut.’” The startup responsible for wacky contest, Zaarly, recently in funding from Ashton Kutcher, Paul Bucheit, our own Michael Arrington and others. |
How The Hell Is This My Fault? | Michael Arrington | 2,011 | 7 | 30 | You’ve doubtless heard about the Airbnb fiasco – being dubbed #ransackgate by some – that’s been exploding the last couple of days. If you’re not familiar with the story, we first covered it , and there’s some terrific source material from the woman who’s home was ransacked and robbed and . Today Y Combinator founder (and Airbnb investor) wrote : I’ve just learned more about this situation, and it turns out Airbnb has been offering to fix it, from the very beginning. From the beginning they offered to pay to get her a new place and new stuff, and do whatever else she wanted. The story Arrington wrote yesterday about Airbnb not offering to help was bullshit. He asked a company spokesman what Airbnb was doing to help her. The spokesman, who’d been told by their lawyers that he couldn’t go into detail about that because of the precedent said “I can’t comment on that.” So Arrington, in typical Arrington fashion said “Well, unless you tell me I’m going to write that you’re not willing to do anything for her.” And he did. Really not cool.
I’ve talked to the Airbnb guys and they are already doing everything they could be doing to help this woman. Even if you don’t believe they are nice guys (which they are, among the nicest of all the people we’ve funded), do you really think they are so dumb that they don’t realize it’s not worth the bad PR to save money and effort in this situation? A few thoughts: 1. What the hell? 2. Airbnb’s Christopher Lukezic told me on Wednesday that the company was not responsible for EJ’s losses, that they would be paying anything for her losses, that they are just a service to match people and that they were helping the police find the people who did this. This was on the record, and it was a call we emailed about first. I didn’t take him by surprise. And I read this back to him before I posted. 3. Paul Graham says instead That’s a lie. What he said is what I wrote in no. 2 above, and what was in the original post. 4. Following publication of that Post, Airbnb Brian Chesky called me and I updated that post with his comments, mentioning that there was some miscommunication. I retweeted that there was an important update, and added a bold header at the mentioning the update. 5. I then added another update, an email from Lukezic. And another update pointing to a on the issue. It is absurd to think that I made up the statements that Lukezic made to me in our first interview. It wasn’t even really relevant to the story. 6. Chesky repeatedly thanked me for the updates by email and on the phone. If Lukezic wants to publicly call me a liar, he should do so directly. 7. with the Scamville stuff a couple of years ago. The real problem here isn’t some mixup in communication with me. The real problem is that the victim wrote that yesterday calling Airbnb out and making new allegations of an attempted cover up. It kind of feels to me that what Airbnb really wants to do is call the victim, EJ, a liar. But they’re certainly not going to do that (although if they have evidence that she’s lying, they should be talking about that). Instead, they focus on us, call me dishonest and suggesting that the whole story is “bullshit.” One thing I love about our readers is that they’re independent thinkers. Often they don’t agree with my opinions, and say so loudly. But this goes too far. I’m not the person who grossly mishandled a PR crisis. I’m not the person who made factually inaccurate statements on the record. I’m not the person who tried to convince a woman who’s life has been shattered to remove a blog post. At least have the decency to stand up and say you’re wrong, Airbnb, and apologize for the lies. Because hiding behind investors, and attacking the press, is both dishonorable and stupid. That’s no way to gain customer trust. – If you review our of Airbnb, it’s hard to say there’s anything but a pattern of cheerleading the company on since it launched in 2008. And we’ve been massive, unquestioning supporters of Y Combinator over the years as well. I don’t know what Paul Graham means by “typical Arrington fashion,” but I do know this. It’s not my job to fix it when companies do stupid things. |
Lucasfilm Shuts Down Local Star Wars Marathon Over Copyright | Devin Coldewey | 2,011 | 7 | 8 | A group of Star Wars fans in New York were organizing a marathon of all six movies at their local bar, but have canceled the event . The letter apparently declared the marathon in violation of copyright, and said they’d forbidden public screenings. I don’t know about you, but I don’t think I’ll be giving Lucasfilm any of my money for a while. Think about it, Lucasfilm. Everything you have is because of people like these guys, who were just trying to put together a love-fest for your golden-egg-laying goose. This kind of thing doesn’t go over well. [via ] |
Dell Peju Windows 7 Tablet Design Documents Leaked | Devin Coldewey | 2,011 | 7 | 8 |
I can’t say the market for Windows is blowing up right now, what with the iPad-Android war heating up and the enticing on the horizon, but there is a market and Dell would want a part of it. Their Peju tablet was leaked before but in very little detail, so this new info is welcome. All your Peju-related news can be found at Dell Peju Insider, a rather finely-pointed website, but useful nevertheless. The specs are all there in the latest (and only) post, and haven’t been confirmed, though they don’t seem so far out. A Core i5, 4GB of RAM, a nice variety of ports, digitizer pen support, and a fat battery, coming in at just under two pounds. The spec that gets me going is the screen: 10.1 inches of Gorilla Glass at 1920×1080. That would be nice! Windows tablets right now are aimed at enterprise for the most part, but this would be a sweet home media tablet, especially with the little dock station there. They (whoever “they” are) peg the release at October-ish, and it’ll ship with Windows 7 but be Windows 8 compatible (naturally). Hopefully we’ll hear some more soon that corroborates this. [via ] |
Smart Design: Fanless Heatsink Spins Itself | Devin Coldewey | 2,011 | 7 | 8 |
This is a nice little twist on the traditional heatsink design you find on CPUs around the world. While normally you’d have a thermally conductive surface, some heat pipes, and a fan driving air over stationary heatsink plates, switches things up. No fan at all — or if you like, the heatsink the fan. Basically the heatsink is a vortex-like shape that scoops up air into the gaps between the blades and creates a downward flow of cool air towards the center of the heatsink. It’s an elegant solution, though of course not without its downfalls. The footprint is necessarily large because of the principles involved; most CPU coolers move heat out perpendicular to the heated element (i.e. directly away from the CPU) and as such are orientated vertically, if you will. This needs much more horizontal space (though it’s much smaller overall), something that’s at a premium on ATX boards, what with all the extra PCI stuff, six or more RAM slots, and voltage connectors wherever there’s a spare bit of PCB. And the microscopic distance between the blades and the surface might be hard to maintain (or keep clean). That said, it’s an interesting design and could be a great solution for compact electronics like laptop boards and embedded systems. They’re looking into lots of different applications, but don’t expect one in your desktop any time soon. Patent pending! [via ] |
Don’t Be Fooled By Vanity Metrics | Erick Schonfeld | 2,011 | 7 | 30 | Startups love to point to big growth numbers, and the press loves to publish them. We are as guilty as anyone else in this regard: downloads, registered users, tweets per day. These growth metrics can often be signs of traction (which is why we report them), but just as often they are not. It is important to distinguish between real metrics and what Lean Startup guru Eric Ries calls Vanity metrics are things like registered users, downloads, and raw pageviews. They are easily manipulated, and do not necessarily correlate to the numbers that really matter: active users, engagement, the cost of getting new customers, and ultimately revenues and profits. The latter are more As First Round Capital’s Josh Kopelman recently advised on , “The real data is retention and repeat usage.” Startups that focus on the real metrics can make their products better, attract more customers, and make them happier. It is important for startups to properly instrument the data they track so that they can get a handle on the true health of their business. If they track only the vanity metrics, they can get a false sense of success. Just because a startup can produce a chart that is up and to the right does not mean it has a great business. A mobile apps could have millions of downloads but only a few hundred thousand active users, or a freemium website might see exploding traffic growth but barely any conversions to paying users. Many startups, of course, track one set of numbers internally and selectively share another set of vanity numbers externally with the press. The worst is when startups try to pitch us with raw growth numbers (we are up 400%), but without any context (400% from what, 1,000 users or 100,000?). We always ask for more meaningful numbers, but those are not always forthcoming. The vanity metrics aren’t completely useless, just don’t be fooled by them. There are ways to back into real numbers from the vanity metrics. VC Fred Wilson blogged today about his : 30 percent of downloads or registered users are active once a month, 10 percent are active once a day, and 10 percent of the daily users will be the maximum number of concurrent users. These are the patterns he is seeing in his portfolio companies and the startups pitching him. Startups would be better off, however, reporting real metrics from the start. Vanity metrics can catch up to them, especially if those numbers do not correspond to the real numbers. Facebook is a great example of a company that focuses on the right numbers. Even in its college-only days, it would always talk about daily active users (the users who come back every day) and how fast it took them to take over a particular campus. If more startups would measure and share the right metrics from the start, the rest of us would focus on them too. Photo credit: |
Epic Gif: The Facebook Google+ Slapfest | Erick Schonfeld | 2,011 | 7 | 8 | Oh, I could just watch this all day. We’ve been about the growing between Facebook and Google, with its new Google+ social network. But here you have it in gif form, with the Facebook and Google+ favicons superimposed on the dwarf from (Google+) the child-king (Facebook) over and over again. I am not sure why Google+ is a dwarf, but it doesn’t detract from the enjoyment of watching. It kind if sums up visually the whole fight between the two companies. Don’t you think? And where did I find this? On Google+ of course. It was created by graphic designer . Well played, sir. A meme is born. |
Don't Call It A PivotPlz: PicPlz Spun Off As Mixed Media Labs Prepares Their Next Product | MG Siegler | 2,011 | 7 | 8 | When round last November, it raised quite a few eyebrows. After all, the money came from Andreessen Horowitz, the VC firm which had backed . To be fair, they backed Instagram when it was still known as Burbn — what is now a massively popular mobile photo-sharing app. Still, there’s no question that Mixed Media Labs’ PicPlz product was a direct competitor. And Andreessen Horowitz sided with them, while Instagram . , Andreessen’s bet wasn’t so much against Instagram, as it was a bet on Mixed Media Lab founder . Caldwell, who had previously founded imeem, was said to have a broad vision for a company beyond photo-sharing. PicPlz was just the first product to leverage what they were creating. And while it has achieved moderate success, it has not seen the . And now Mixed Media Labs has moved on to their next product, we’ve learned. Specifically, PicPlz has been spun off as a separate company that will be run by , a former executive at Napster, imeem, and yes, Mixed Media Labs. We had been hearing for weeks that PicPlz was being shopped around for potential cash deals as Mixed Media Labs sought to focus on what’s next. But ultimately, they decided to simply spin off PicPlz as a separate company while maintaining some ownership. Reached for comment, Caldwell confirmed the PicPlz spin-off, but declined to discuss the deal further beyond expressing his excitement about what his team is working on next. So what is Mixed Media Labs working on next? All we know for sure is that it’s inline with the initial goal of a broad idea in the app space. Specifically, we’ve also heard that there will be a strong focus on a business model from day one, unlike PicPlz. Meanwhile, PicPlz will live on as a service, but Caldwell and the rest of the Mixed Media Labs team will not be involved any more. The move away from PicPlz comes at an interesting time in the mobile photo sharing space. While Instagram continues to gain users rapidly, other players like and have been preparing other products as well. Path recently launched — hipster/Dr. Dre lingo for “side project” — . Color Labs, meanwhile, is said to be preparing an entirely new app after in the way they had hoped. |
Now You Can Use LinkedIn To Stay Up To Date On Who's Getting Hired (And Fired) | Rip Empson | 2,011 | 7 | 8 | Today, to become the second largest social network in the U.S. LinkedIn has seen a surge in traffic since and reached an all-time high of 33.9 million unique visitors in June. Taking advantage of the professional social network’s continuing growth, , the co-founder of , has built a cool little service called, aptly, . As you may have already guessed, Lee’s service enables you to track and receive notifications when one of your LinkedIn contacts changes jobs. As such, the service allows users to keep tabs on “persons of interest”, be they startup founders, executives, to find out when they resign, get poached, or are acqui-hired. The service will also likely be useful to business-to-business startups and companies that sell their products to other businesses, as it allows them to discover when their allies are promoted or move into decision-making roles, for example. It’s also an easy way to stay up to date on your professional network and congratulate your friends and contacts for snatching up that job that you had your eyes on. Lee used LinkedIn’s API to build the site, but is not affiliated with LinkedIn in any way, though he says that he has been contacted by LinkedIn employees, who have expressed interest in the site. Of course, not everyone updates their LinkedIn profiles immediately following a job change, especially for those who have been let go, and there’s generally some lag time between a job change and its corresponding update on LinkedIn, but it’s still the fastest way to find out about your contacts’ career moves. Using the site is easy, and set up is quick: Users simply enter their email addresses to receive alerts, choose which LinkedIn connections they want to track, and bada bing, bada boom, you’re ready to track. Though Job Change Notifier only launched a few days ago, the site is already tracking over 300,000 profiles and continues to add swaths of profiles every day. Though Lee wasn’t able to give me a good breakdown of usage analytics quite yet, he did say that the site has already become popular among startups, sales and biz dev executives, recruiters, and, unsurprisingly, LinkedIn employees. Lee said that he’s already been asked by LinkedIn if he would be interested in going to work for them, but he has no intention of leaving PaperG. ( .) So far, notifications are only available via email, but depending on early user feedback and demand, Lee may add further notification channels as traffic increases. It’s a great tool, and it gives TechCrunch writers another way to keep tabs on all you upwardly mobile professionals out there, so get back to work. Because we’ll be watching. It seems a similar service that is like Job Change Notifier, but for recruiters. The company is called (as is the software they make), and the feature is called Radar, which . Interesting. Worth a look as well. |
Concrete Speakers Look Good, Yet I Question Their Fidelity | Devin Coldewey | 2,011 | 7 | 8 |
are a grad school project by Israeli designer Shmuel Linski. His rationale for the unusual material choice is that… well, okay, there is no rationale, he just thought it’d be cool. And certainly more love goes into creating them than your average robot-assembled standing set: On the project’s page, he notes: In my work I tried to give, in addition to great aesthetics, practical reasons for using concrete as a main material in a product. When concrete meets sound, it might distort the sound, because the concrete is very stiff (usually speakers are made of wood or MDF). The speakers might therefore sound strange. He doesn’t seem to resume that thought, probably because there’s nowhere to go but down. Let’s be frank: these speakers probably sound awful. Concrete doesn’t resonate and its total opacity to sound would result in a hollow, echoing effect through the bass tube. Still, they’re cool-looking things and probably bombproof. Get a couple for your fallout shelter — audiophiles will have bigger things to worry about in nuclear winter. [via and ] |
CrunchGear Is Headed To TechCrunch/Gadgets | John Biggs | 2,011 | 7 | 8 |
By now you’ve probably seen about the redesign coming next week and I wanted to talk a bit about where things are headed. CrunchGear, in short, is being subsumed into TechCrunch/Gadgets, a plan that has been long percolating at the HQ and something we, in a way, welcome. I started CrunchGear on August 10, 2006. Mike Arrington called me after I left Gizmodo and asked me to start a gadget blog. I did. It’s been nearly and in that time we’ve posted 47,243 stories, run through dozens of writers, and amused a few million of you guys on a daily basis. So things will change slightly, but the same CrunchGear wit, wisdom, and opinion will be in full effect over at our new home.
I’ll miss the beautiful orange and white color scheme and being able to say we’re a separate entity from the mothership, but I won’t miss the server problems (we always got hand-me-downs) and the rigamarole associated with cross-posting to TC when we figured those guys deserved to see something we wrote. Sticking this all into one big site, with separate channels, makes perfect sense and has nothing to do with the AOL Way. I like to think it’s an evolution of the content and a chance to catch our breath and start writing longer, more detailed posts for TC proper while still maintaining the same quick-hit gadget coverage for TC/G. We’ll keep the CG Twitter account for the time being and probably move to (note the missing ) as well. The domain itself will forward and all should be right with the world come Monday or Tuesday. I know I say this a lot, but you guys are a great audience and you – and you alone – are the main reason we keep waking up morning after morning to write about gadgets. We’ll still be there for you and I hope you’ll be there for us. Good night and good luck. |
Esther Dyson On The Future Of Space Travel: We Are Only At "The End Of The Beginning" | Erick Schonfeld | 2,011 | 7 | 8 | Today might have marked the last Space Shuttle launch, but it is not the end of people going into space. In fact, technologist, angel investor, and space privatization advocate says it’s only “the end of the beginning” and that private companies like Elon Musk’s , Jeff Bezos’ , and will fill in the gap. I spoke with Dyson yesterday at our TCTV studios in New York City (when it was still unclear if a weather delay would prevent a launch). You can watch the video above. Dyson has a lifelong love for space. Her father, the physicist , led a project at Los Alamos in the late-1950s to design a nuclear-powered spacecraft called the . Today, she is an investor in Xcor and , as well as the more earthly and . She recently completed six months cosmonaut training in Star City, Russia and is ready to go to space if she can catch a ride. Of course we’ve seen before. But Dyson points out that this generation of startup entrepreneurs like Bezos, Musk, and Richard Branson are a lot richer, a lot more patient, and that now there is actually a need for them. “This time it’s different because these guys are credible,” she argues, “and they started out with billions, not millions.” On Musk’s SpaceX rocket, she predicts, “it will be human-rated in a few years.” Until then, it’s Russian rockets that will take people to the Space Station. (Who was it who won the space race again?) |
Here, Look At This $40,000 Wooden Ditch Digger | John Biggs | 2,011 | 7 | 8 | Woodworkers want you to have this wooden ditch digger. It costs $40,000 on . I think it’s worth it. Constructed of cherry and walnut, this award-winning piece has over 4000 individual handcrafted parts and requiredover 3000 man-hours to complete, roughly a year and a half’s time. Our version of the 5230B is what we call a working model. The track moves, the cylinders extend, the jaws open and close and the entire model pivots on the trackframe. There is also a hidden storage box on board, someplace to keep the keys! Do not, however, take this into the sandbox. |
Android 2.3 Gingerbread Headed To The HTC Droid Incredible 2 | Jordan Crook | 2,011 | 7 | 8 | If you’re a proud owner of the Droid Incredible 2, get ready: your weekend just got a bit sweeter. is on its way by means of an OTA update, and should bring with it all the goodies of Gingerbread, and then some. The file is 116MB, and according to , the process should take about 20-30 minutes of your time. Update enhancements include bug fixes to the Mobile IM and Hotmail sync, a brand-spanking new Download Manager app and Desktop Dock app, improved power management information, enhanced copy function and word selection, and overall improved stability. Most importantly, the update should provide better device connectivity when roaming. Also, if your hip enough to charge your phone sans wires, there will also be a new user interface while charging wirelessly. We’re not sure when exactly the update will begin to roll out, but since Verizon’s offered up instructions and update benefits, we’re thinking Gingerbread could get here any minute now. [via ] |
Motorola Continues Locked Bootloader Policy On Droid 3 (For Now) | Jordan Crook | 2,011 | 7 | 8 | Listen up, hackers. This one’s for you. in all of its tech spec glory, but one thing’s missing: an unlocked bootloader. That’s right, Motorola’s gone and done it again, locking Droid 3 owners in an cage, just like Atrix owners, Droid 2 owners, and the list goes on. Luckily, an unlocked bootloader is on its way. “As we’ve communicated, we plan to enable the unlockable/relockable bootloader in future software releases, starting in late 2011, where channel and operator partners will allow it,” said a Motorola spokesperson to . Motorola has basically made it clear that your warranty ends once you unlock the bootloader, as many “noobs” have this pesky habit of and bricking their phones. “If you brick your phone messing with it, we don’t want to have to fix it under warranty,” wrote a Motorola representative in a blog post. Clearly, Motorola is walking a very tight rope with this bootloader policy. Competitors like have begun to nurture relationships with their respective modding community, offering tutorial videos on how to unlock the phone. Meanwhile, Motorola is adding things like , to phones like the Droid X. In short, customers have about had it. One, in particular, started a , asking fellow devs to sign a petition. As of right now, over 10,000 people have signed. While many just leave a name in protest, some Moto customers have actually taken the time to write out their plea. These are a few we found particularly poignant:
“Please Motorola, we love the phone, but let us use this new technology to it’s fullest potential. We are your beta testers right now in this new world of smart-phones! But we pay a premium price for something that is experimental, and open to development, and we create things with the tools you give us today for a better set of tools for you to sell again tomorrow. And perhaps encrypting the bootloader by default is a good idea for your mass market, but I think you should give us the option of decryption, because well, being open is what Android is all about. That’s why I bought my first Android (the Atrix), and I must say that at this point I wish I researched this common complaint first, as I would have bought something else that was truly an “Android.” So, in all fairness I think you should either give us the option to use and develop our devices as we need to, or at least give us a refund and in the future, use a disclaimer in your advertising.”
-Brian
“My money means that this is MY phone. Supposedly, the locked bootloader is intended to protect the enduser from breaking the phone; however, the general public that they are claiming to protect will likely be unaffected by Motorola’s decision. Give the people that want to take time to modify their phones that opportunity. If I wanted to be stuck in a walled garden, then I wouldn’t have bought a supposedly “open” OS with Android.”
-Steven Banaban |
YC-Funded Quartzy Reduces Entropy In Science Lab Supply Cabinets | Jason Kincaid | 2,011 | 7 | 8 | When we think of scientists, we often picture distinguished researchers in white coats, methodically conducting experiments in labs that run like well-oiled machines. Unfortunately things are usually less glamorous. Science labs have a lot going on, and while they’re generally very focused on making sure safety protocols are followed and contamination is minimized, there are some things that are a little less organized. Like ordering supplies — oftentimes reagents are either ordered in excess (resulting in waste) or forgotten about until they’re needed (resulting in delays). , a startup that’s part of the most recent batch, is setting out to fix that problem. The company launched around 18 months ago and has 4,500 scientists worldwide using the service — and there are plenty more who could use help keeping their supplies in check, many of whom are spending thousands of dollars on supplies every year. At first glance, the service seems a bit like a science social network. You sign in and create a profile, then link up with your coworkers and other colleagues. But founder Adam Regelmann explains that the site isn’t really about connecting with your colleagues in a social sense — rather, it’s about keeping track of which supplies your lab has in stock, and what needs to be ordered . He adds that it’s a problem he’s faced himself as a MD and PhD from Columbia, which is when he had the idea for the company. Anyone in your lab can log in to see the current inventory status, which helps make sure that they don’t place order requests for things that they don’t need. The site also lists expiration dates, which is important for reagents that only last for a relatively brief amount of time (like some enzymes). Inputting the inventory information into the system is something each lab will need to do themselves — there’s currently no direct integration with vendors, so your inventory won’t automatically be updated each time you order more supplies. Regelmann says this is partially because the industry is very fragmented, so labs are oftentimes ordering their supplies from many different vendors (some of which use arcane technology) which makes integrations difficult. : Regelmann adds that while the service doesn’t tie in directly with these vendors, Quartzy does allow labs to upload their existing inventory Excel spreadsheets to quickly get their labs up and running on the service. And Quartzy also includes online versions of each supplier catalog, so you can quickly add supplies to your database by keying in vendor names and catalog numbers — the system will automatically populate the rest of the information. Quartzy does more than keep track of your lab supplies. It’s also building out a review database for supplies commonly used in laboratories (you can rate how effective a given enzyme was, for example). At this point the database is fairly small, with around 1,000 reviews, but it’s an idea that has potential. Also very cool: Quartzy has a feature that’s the scientist equivalent of asking your neighbor for a cup of sugar. It’s quite common in scientific communities for researchers to ask friends and colleagues in other, nearby laboratories for a certain reagent that they only need a small amount of (Regelmann says he’d get five or so such requests per week during his research days). Quartzy helps with this by letting users run a proximity-based query that lets them see if anyone in their city happens to have what they need. And it’s smart about doing this — any results you see will be anonymized. You can send a message to the anonymous researcher and ask if they can spare a dash of whatever you need (they’ll be able to see who you are), and if they’re interested they’ll respond. So how does Quartzy make money? So far Regelmann says that the company is focused entirely on growth. Down the line it will let science supply vendors purchase advertising on the site, giving a very targeted channel directed toward a group of people who are typically hard to reach (he explains that many vendors often have time informing scientists about new products). And scientists will get exposed to new products they might not have otherwise known about, so it stands to be a win-win situation. Quartzy’s team currently includes three programmers in addition to founders Regelmann and Jayant Kulkarni. |
Google To Buy Mobile Loyalty Card Startup Punchd | Alexia Tsotsis | 2,011 | 7 | 8 | We’ve just gotten word that that Google plans on acquiring digital loyalty card service The team, which consists of developers Reed Morse, Xander Pollock and Niket Desai (and formerly Grantland Chew), will most likely still be working on Punchd within Google according to our source. While our original source pegged the deal at a low seven figures, a second source pegged the acquisition price at more than $10 million. Punchd, which is basically the digital equivalent of the “Buy 10 Get One Free Card” offered by coffee shops and supermarkets, is part of first brood. The acquisition makes complete sense for Google considering how much the NFC and deals space is heating up and the recent announcement. It’s been a great week for 500 Startups, which has now sold a company to Twitter ( ), LinkedIn ( ) and Google. Punchd itself actually made our list of back in April (Guess Google agreed). Fun fact: The company were accepted to the 500 Startups brood of “little monsters” after they “Iced” McClure. Punchd denies that acquired. https://twitter.com/#!/alexia/status/89490110260850688 |
Verbling Links Up Language Learners With Native Speakers Through Live Video Chat | Leena Rao | 2,011 | 7 | 8 | It’s a well known fact that people improve foreign language skills when interacting and communicating with other people who speak the same foreign language. -backed is launching today as a easy to use online conversation exchange for language learners, leveraging in-browser video chat. The site allows you to sign up and choose the language you want to learn. Since the site doesn’t have a massive userbase just yet, Verbling hosts sessions as specific times daily (12 pm PT and 7 pm PT) where people can show up and chat with each other. Once you join the site during a session time, you are automatically paired with a language speaker who is fluent in the language you wish to learn. The site encourages users to talk to a number of different speakers within each session. So if you speak French and want to learn English, you’ll be paired up with a native English speaker who wants to learn French. You start in one language and halfway through the video session, a timer tells you when to switch to the other. Speakers are also matched by their language levels, and to aid in the conversation, Verbling will suggest topics according to the ability of the participants, such as “What chores are you responsible for in your home” or “what kind of music do you listen to?” The chats are conducted via video chat, but the startup doesn’t seem to be too worried about any Chatroulette-like issues because everyone has to register with their name and other personal info to use the service. Currently, Verbling is using Flash for the video streaming itself, but the startup has built significant infrastructure around the player to ensure that the audio video quality is as good as possible, even when faced with varying internet connection quality. The site soft launched this past week and already has 1,500 signups. So far, native Spanish speakers who are looking to learn English have dominated the sign-ups. There are a number of startups competing in the online language learning space including and But crowdsourcing and matching people up based on their skill level and interest makes sense in terms of adding another layer to language education. |
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