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DIY Instant Camera, But Not The Kind You're Imagining | John Biggs | 2,011 | 7 | 8 | [youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wt5dBrXg8eY&rel=0&hl=en_US&feature=player_embedded&version=3] If you’ve been wildly despondent at the death of the Polaroid, there is still hope. This DIY “instant camera” by uses a simple digital camera and printer to take and print images. Here’s the bad part: the camera has no memory so it prints out the image in front of it line by line for a process that takes three minutes total. That means you have to sit perfectly still for your portrait.
My ‘Electronic Instant Camera’, is a combination of an analog b/w videocamera and a thermal receipt printer. The device is something in between a Polaroid camera and a digital camera. The camera doesn’t store the pictures on film or digital medium, but prints a photo directly on a roll of cheap receipt paper while it is taking it. As this all happens very slow, people have to stay still for about three minutes until a full portrait photo is taken. The full source code is available and you can basically recreate this thing with Niklas’ instructions. Amazing, fun stuff.
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LinkedIn Surpasses Myspace For U.S. Visitors To Become No. 2 Social Network; Twitter Not Far Behind | Leena Rao | 2,011 | 7 | 8 | Professional social network Linkedin surpassed Myspace in terms of traffic to become the No. 2 most visited social networking site in the U.S. in June. LinkedIn, which has seen of traffic after , reached an all-time high of 33.9 million unique visitors in June compared to Myspace, which saw 33.5 million unique visitors (that’s down from 34.9 million in May). Hopefully Myspace’s can recharge the Twitter posted record U.S. traffic, with June as the first month the site saw over 30 million unique visitors. Twitter.com had 30.6 million unique visitors in June, compared to 27 million unique vistors in May. The increase in traffic is actually a big win for Twitter, which splits traffic between its own mobile clients and the many third-party clients that are used to access the network. Facebook also reached an all-time high in terms of U.S. traffic in June, according to newly released comScore data. In June, Facebook saw 160.8 million unique vistors in the U.S., which is up from 157.2 million uniques in May. The company also announced that it mark worldwide in June as well. Tumblr saw 11.8 million unique visitors in June, up from 10.7 million unique visitors in May. In June, we was seeing around 400 million pageviews per day, thanks in part to international growth and faster response times. |
Feast Your Eyes On Recipe Curation Site Gojee | Leena Rao | 2,011 | 7 | 8 | There’s no shortage of food recipe sites on the web for virtually any kind of food. In fact, trying to find a recipe online can be overwhelming with all of the options available. Enter recently launched foodie favorite , which curates recipes from food bloggers around the web in a visually beautiful way. On Gojee, you can search for recipes by ingredient, either via ‘cravings’ or by one ingredient you have in your pantry. You can also input your dislikes or allergies and Gojee will make sure to surface recipes without these ingredients. So say I had leftover snowpeas in my pantry, I can enter that query and Gojee will show me all the recipes that include that ingredient from the many food blogs it curates data from. The site presents a beautiful image of the food along with a list of what else is included in the dish, a short description of the dish, and a link to the full recipe on the food blog. You can also star the recipe to save it to your favorites. Besides the fact that all the recipes look absolutely delicious, one of the things that makes Gojee compelling is the photography and imagery that accompanies each recipe. These photos, which are taken by the food bloggers themselves, make you want to eat and create each dish. The startup has even caught the eye of celebrity chef Gojee is also attempting to make your life easier by allowing you to import your rewards card info from your grocery store of choice, and the site will give you recipes based on the items you have purchased. Unfortunately, the feature is only integrated with New York grocery store chain D’Agostino but the startup hopes to add more stores in the near future. The end goal for Gojee, says founder Michael Lavalle, is to offer a more curated, personalized experience for finding recipes on the web. Currently the site has under 50,000 recipes, but is focused on adding quality recipes vs. quantity. |
Carpooling Startup Zimride Hits 100 Million Miles Served [Infographic] | Rip Empson | 2,011 | 7 | 1 | Though The American Automobile Association (AAA) is only expecting a relatively marginal 2.5 percent decrease in travel compared to last year, gas prices are currently averaging $3.57 across the U.S. — an 82-cent increase from the same time last year. In a timely piece of news for all those weekend riders out there, the social ride-sharing startup announced today that it has passed the 100 million miles-traveled mark. Since the recipient launched three years ago, travelers in the Zimride network have logged over 100 million miles and have saved over $50 million in vehicle operating expenses. Zimride, co-founded by Logan Green and John Zimmer, focuses on college, university and corporate communities, allowing its users to join networks based on these communities in order to facilitate and coordinate carpooling. The startup allows the first 50 users within a network to sign up for free, at which point the community of users then has the option of singing up for a subscription. The company then works with transportation departments and student governments at universities and large companies, charging universities, for example, $9500 a year for the service. While that may sound like a tough sell, so far participating organizations and institutions . To this point, Zimride is also announcing its 100th client network today, which means that Zimride networks now include each of the 10 schools in the University of California system, as well as others including Stanford, Harvard, Cornell, Facebook, and Intuit. As the startup aims to build a nationwide marketplace for drivers looking to make a few extra bucks on those empty car seats during commutes and road trips by selling them to other passengers, the announcements today show the company is making progress in that direction. With gas prices remaining high, there is plenty of interest in carpooling as an effective means of cutting transportation costs. To date, Zimride has raised $1.5 million from FLOODGATE, K9 Ventures, Keith Rabois, and more. For more stats, check out Zimride’s infographic below: |
Paul Adams: Seeing Google+ In Public Is Like Bumping Into An Ex-Girlfriend. | Alexia Tsotsis | 2,011 | 7 | 1 | Ex-Google UX guy s is perhaps most known for his slideshow which highlighted the perils of having one default group for sharing and emphasized that the ideal social networking service would be designed for multiple groups. The slideshow illustrated the flaws in Facebook’s lump sum friend model and called for a social network where users could set sharing levels to correspond to the 4-6 separate relationship groups that people tend to have. Sound familiar? Well, if this reminds you a little of , its because Adams was a User Experience Researcher on Google social/Google+ until he left Google in December 2010. The of his famous “The Real Life Social Network” deck was published in April 2010, at least two months before the project started (with an even published two years ago). While designer have been lauded for the (granted) amazing design, it’s less discussed that Hertzfeld inherited the Circles model from Adams, and simply designed the front-end user experience for it. Poetically enough, Adams, who is now at Facebook, was current Googler Chris Messina on Google+ what he thought about the service. He responded by elaborating on where he likened the experience of the Google+ launch to seeing an ex-girlfriend in public. Adams wrote, “It was like when you first see her you have a moment where you have a niggle of regret and wonder for a split second, but that quickly passes when you remember why you broke up with her.” Adams directed me to Facebook PR when asked for further comment on his opinion and involvement on Social Circles. I’m sure their response will be fascinating. While we wait, you can flip through the slideshow that started it all, below. [slideshare id=3686643&doc=iasummit2010publicpdf-100410201613-phpapp01] |
WikiLeaks Intends To Sue Visa And MasterCard For Blocking Payment | Alexia Tsotsis | 2,011 | 7 | 1 | and its credit card processing partner Datacell have announced their intent to file suit in the EU against credit card companies Visa and Mastercard for blocking donations to the service last year. In early December the two payments companies payments to the relatively quiet as of late organization, with Mastercard citing that its “rules prohibit customers from directly or indirectly engaging in or facilitating any action that is illegal.” The legality of WikiLeaks itself is still a . However, Visa and Mastercard were not alone in withdrawing their support, as both PayPal and Amazon also pulled their services from WikiLeaks, which facilitates anonymous leaks of sensitive information including of diplomatic cables. WikiLeaks does not mention Amazon or PayPal in the suit. WikiLeaks is holding that the PayPal and Visa blocks count as “anti-competitive” and violate Article 101 (1) and 102 of the EU competition laws, seeking to file a complaint in the Danish Maritime and Commercial Court. As of yet, according to the release, that complaint has not been filed. |
Facebook Engineers Build Google+ Inspired Facebook Hack | Alexia Tsotsis | 2,011 | 7 | 1 | With many that Google+ is heavily Facebook influenced, Facebook engineers , , , have flipped the switch and taken inspiration from the novel Google Circles design with , a much simpler tool to build Facebook Friend lists. Right now the only way you can create lists on Facebook is by going to the Friends page, clicking on the Account drop down menu, then clicking on “Edit Friends” and then again on “Create a List” and a bunch of other cumbersome stuff. It’s a mess, but crucial if you want to achieve the same granular sharing features as Google+ on Facebook (which you can do by going to “Privacy Settings,” clicking “Customize,” then under “Make this open to” click oh hell ). While Circlehack doesn’t have all the design features of Google+ e.g. the circles your friends are members of don’t glow upon hover and you can’t automatically set Groups or privacy settings within the app, it’s a start, at least for Facebook. Well played guys, well played. |
Lion Good To Go – Should Ship On July 14th | Devin Coldewey | 2,011 | 7 | 1 | OS X Lion (pictured at right), which was , is in “Gold Master” status and is “shipping” to developers. A curious set of terms for an OS that to cut ties with the old disc-based model for software distribution. also hears that it will be available for you and me come July 14th — coincidentally, the time we expect to see come out, which were supposedly delayed to allow time for… you guessed it, Sherlock, . It all makes sense! But how deep does the rabbit hole go?! |
The US Group Buying Universe [Infographic] | Alexia Tsotsis | 2,011 | 7 | 1 | While the as to whether group buying as whole is a viable business model rages on post-Groupon 1, there’s no doubt that these social deal things keep sprouting up — Yesterday someone introduced themselves to me as the CEO of a Groupon for moms (and yes I thought it was a good idea). We’ve got Groupons for , a Groupon for , what will there be a Groupon for next!? Wait, please don’t answer that. Still it makes sense that people would want a piece of the action, as the size of the market in the US is in 2012 (up from $1.1 billion last year). And to give you a sense of some of the players and their relative size, the folks at have their original infographic to reflect the social buying boom. What can we tell from the above? Well first of all that space is nascent and so are its physics; First movers aren’t necessarily rewarded. which was founded in 2004, currently has over 1.4 million unique monthly visits versus dominant player (which was founded in 2008 and pivoted to the model) 29.1 million. Mercata, which isn’t even on the graph, was in 2001. Current second runner up is around half the size of Groupon, at 14.3 million unique monthly visits, with 301 US cities to Groupon’s 182. Yeah that’s about 5% of the US population visiting the site monthly; Enjoy your teeth whitening guys! |
Why Is Zynga Rushing Towards Its IPO? | Erick Schonfeld | 2,011 | 7 | 1 | The IPO window is now wide open, with everyone from to rushing towards it. Nobody knows how long that window will stay open (rule of thumb is 18 months), so better go public while you can. But today’s IPO filing from Zynga came particularly fast. According to one source, the actual writing of the was one of the fastest documentation processes for an IPO of this size, only taking two to three weeks. CEO Mark Pincus abruptly cancelled a planned appearance at the D9 conference at the beginning of June, adding to speculation that was when Zynga decided internally to go ahead with the IPO. The three-week period referenced above was the time between what is known as the first “org meeting” with bankers and the final document filed today. Zynga’s , so they could really get the IPO process anytime they want. But there is definitely a sense that the urgency level picked up all of a sudden. One theory—and it is only a theory at this point—is that Facebook may be moving up its own internal IPO schedule. It just to its board, and there is speculation that it may have already kicked off its internal process to get ready for an IPO. This would still be very early stages, but it would include getting its financial reporting in order if it hasn’t done so already and starting the board process to get it to sign off on looking for investment bankers. If Zynga caught whiff that Facebook was starting to take actual steps towards an IPO, it might want to get out ahead for several reasons. One is that it has a good chance at becoming the most sought-after new Internet stock. (It’s financials are much cleaner than Groupon’s). But that position will be short-lived and will last only until Facebook itself IPOs. In the interim, Zynga’s stock will suck up a lot of the demand for publicly-traded Internet growth stories. Another reason is that if the Facebook IPO is as well-received as everyone thinks it will be, Zynga could benefit from an expansion of its PE multiple (and stock price) just as a halo effect. All Internet stocks could do well when Facebook goes public, but you have to be public in order to benefit from that. Or maybe Facebook has nothing to do with it, and CEO Mark Pincus just wanted to get the filing out before the 4th of July holiday. What do you think? |
Samsung Offers Trimmed-Down Series 9 To Better Combat MacBook Air | Devin Coldewey | 2,011 | 7 | 1 | If the $1649 is too rich for your blood, but you still want a Windows-based ultraportable (or ultrabook, whatever they’re calling them these days), consider… the Samsung Series 9. The 11-inch X1A version of Samsung’s Air-killer is now out, and it’s lighter by half a pound and a few hundred bucks. So for $1199, you lose the i5 and get an i3, lose 2 gigs of RAM for 2 total, lose 64GB of SSD for 64GB total, but other than that it’s more or less the same machine. I mean, those are significant changes, but you still get the sexy form factor, and all the same ports and such. The battery is a bit smaller, too, but you’ll probably end up with equal or better uptime due to the smaller screen and less intense CPU. But I’d hold off until Apple makes its big — you never know. P.S. I notice that the big one is X3A and the small one is X1A. Where’s the X2A? |
With 17M Registered Users, Tango Is Growing Twice As Fast As Skype Did Its First Year | Erick Schonfeld | 2,011 | 7 | 1 | Back in Skype’s early days, it was adding users so fast that it liked to that it was “the fastest growing, globally available communications tool in history.” Well, by at least one measure (registered users 9 months after launch), mobile video chat service is outpacing Skype. Tango now has 17 million registered users across both and Android devices, only 9 months after it launched. By comparison, Skype celebrated on its first birthday back in 2004. Today, Skype has more than 600 million registered users, so Tango still has a long way to go. But the company wants to reach 100 million users over the next year. (Don’t we all?). If it does that, it will certainly earn the title of fastest growing communications tool. But even getting to 17 million registered users in less than a year is quite an accomplishment. Tango took four months to get to , and another five months to add another 9 million. And all on mobile too. Tango is adding 2.5 million registered users per month. The number of active users is 5.5 million in the last 30 days. Tango’s peer-to-peer service is handling 2.5 million minutes worth of calls every day, and the average call is 4 minutes. Tango came out just as Apple was spending millions of marketing dollars promoting its own mobile video chat feature, . Whereas FaceTime only works between Apple devices, Tango works across platforms on both iOS and Android. That cross-platform compatibility really helped drive growth. Downloads are split 50/50 between the two, and Tango is the No. 6 most popular free social networking app for the iPhone. Tango already has 56 employees, and is building an engineering team in China, where it is also growing among users. The service is still free, but Tango will introduce premium paid features at some point in the future. What is incredible about Tango’s growth is that it doesn’t even offer any desktop or Web software yet. Although, this seems like an obvious direction for new products, going mobile first certainly hasn’t hurt the company. |
CrunchDeals: Battlefield: Bad Company 2 For $5 (Again!) | Devin Coldewey | 2,011 | 7 | 1 |
, BC2 was on Impulse, and my colleagues were earnestly recommending it to me. Now, I’m earnestly recommending it to you. There’s lots of good stuff being sold at the , but . Solid single-player, awesome multiplayer, just a fantastic game. |
Ad software startup Burt closes new funding to expand internationally | Mike Butcher | 2,011 | 7 | 1 | Former TechCrunch 50 company Burt www.burtcorp.com, which creates software for ad agencies, has closed €1.6 million ($3m) in funding. Swedish investor , which took to IPO, lead the round. Burt founders, Gustav and Gustav Martner, along with the investment firm Tornstaden are also throwing in €2.2 million. The funds will be used for international expansion and developing Burt’s ad analysis platform, Rich. In the last 6 months Burt has grown from 5 people to almost 30, and will be adding another 15-20 people in Sweden, UK and US later this year. Billed as an ‘Omniture focused on web ads’ not sites, Rich is a platform aimed at helping brands and ad agencies to measure and analyse online advertising by looking at where ads are displayed and which ads have been seen by users. Burt says they’ve hit 10 billion managed ad impressions across their three products. Von Sydow told us they had aimed for $1.5m but decided to raise more after seeing strong traction for the platform. So far they’ve just released a lightweight agency version of Rich in public, but will release versions for advertisers and publishers after concluding pilots for advertiser and publisher facing versions this Summer. |
null | Jordan Crook | 2,011 | 7 | 8 | null |
Foursquare Finds Its Way To Windows Phone 7 | Greg Kumparak | 2,011 | 7 | 1 | Ah-hah! There we go. Just days ago how strange it was that Foursquare didn’t have a proper Windows Phone 7 application (especially as Microsoft had touted Foursquare around as a partner since the very beginning), and now they’ve gone and made things right. Following Gowalla into the Windows Phone fray by less than a week, Foursquare has just pushed their official WP7 application into Microsoft’s Marketplace. It looks like that extra time in the oven really did it some good. It is, perhaps, the best looking WP7 application we’ve seen on the platform to date. If you’ve got Zune installed or you’re on a WP7 handset, you can find . If you’re neither of those things, you’ll just have to poke your finger at the screenshot up above and pretend. |
Google's Nexus Contraptions Bring A Rube Goldberg Diversion To YouTube | Jason Kincaid | 2,011 | 7 | 1 |
Here’s a good way to spend the last few hours of your work week as we head into the long holiday weekend: Google has just launched a new game called . It’s full of slick graphics, physics, and gadgetry, and while I’m not entirely sure what it has to do with Android, it’s fun. The game is similar to a handful of games you’ll find on Android and iOS (or, for your old-school gamers out there, ). You’re tasked with getting a ball to a special funnel by constructing a Rube Goldberg-esque machine filled with bouncy things, fans, and magnets. The balls are supposed to represent some of the Nexus S’s features, including Maps and Search — as you complete each level, the ball gets pushed into the phone by a giant robotic arm. I haven’t finished the game yet, but I’m sure a stirring conclusion awaits those who do. Or maybe you’ll get to watch a Nexus S ad. Charge forth! |
Weekend Giveaway: Toshiba 47-inch TL515 Series 3D LED TV | John Biggs | 2,011 | 7 | 1 | Choose Life. Choose a job. Choose a career. Choose a family. Choose a with natural, passive 3D display, choose TriVector 2D to 3D Conversion, 3D Resolution+, 3D Cross Talk Cancellers and electrical tin openers. Choose good health, low cholesterol, and Toshiba’s first Natural 3D LED TV as it creates stunning 3D images using affordable polarized glasses. Choose fixed interest mortgage repayments. Choose a starter home. Choose your friends. Choose leisurewear and Wi-Fi and Net TV with Yahoo! Widgets. Choose life. Find out how to win below. UPDATE – Since we were down most of the weekend I’m running thus until Wednesday.
Comment once below and only once. Include your or some contant information in the Disqus fields provided. Don’t put your email in the comment. I will pick one winner on Wednesday at Noon Eastern and if that winner doesn’t respond by close of business I will pick another winner. Thanks to Toshiba for the gear and thanks to you for reading. Choose life. UPDATE – Congrats to EricM. |
Google Flirts With Hulu As It Searches For The Key To Video's Heart | Alexia Tsotsis | 2,011 | 7 | 1 | Google is ambitious, trying to fight the war for web audience on . And just as it’s officially begun the , today hold that the search company is trying to court streaming video service Hulu away from Yahoo, presumably for the potential licensing and advertising deals from major brands like Coca Cola and Disney. Microsoft is also reportedly in talks with the site, which is the destination online. Declining TV viewership has left tech behemoths scrambling to be first to capture the mindshare of web audiences. Hulu’s viewership numbers (28 million monthly viewers according to Comscore), licensing deals and the estimated $500 million in revenue that it will bring in this year from ads and Hulu Plus are a tempting proposition to web services like YouTube focused on dominating the video distribution space. And it’d be a much better bargain than already public competitor Netflix, whose market cap is currently $14.17 billion. Hulu also has the lure of premium content deals which Google has struggled with in the past, offering users access to popular shows like “The Daily Show” “Modern Family” and “Glee.” Google’s recent acquisition of Next New Networks and the creation of YouTube Next was in and of itself a premium content play, but for original and not studio-produced highly advertiser friendly fare. Google also continues to make television related acquisitions on the technology side as well, most recently SageTV and WideVine. Hulu would be a good get for its advertising cache alone. Imagine the potential … Through its piecemeal efforts Google has already set up multiple distribution channels for video (Android), web (YouTube) and (less successfully) in the home with Google TV. Success is a matter of getting all these sundry interests, aligned. |
TC Cribs Bloopers – A Side Of Jason Kincaid You Have Never Seen Before (TCTV) | Jon Orlin | 2,011 | 7 | 1 | I need to start with a warning. Depending on your work environment, this may not be safe for work. Especially if you don’t want to hear a lot of four letter words. It may not be safe around small children either. But for everyone else, you might enjoy watching this video over and over again. One of our popular TCTV shows is , where goes behind the scenes of a tech company to see what it’s like to work and play there. Of course, we edit it and don’t use all the material we shoot. Our editor John Murillo decided to edit together some of the outtakes. We posted the video on our internal Yammer and it was quite a hit. Jason says “wow that was painful for me to watch.” Michael Arrington’s favorite part comes around 1:55 and he said this needs to be posted. So, check it out. You might not look at Jason the same way again. For the regular Cribs episodes, check out TC Cribs at |
LinkedIn Cuts Off API Access To BranchOut, Monster's BeKnown And Others For TOS Violations | Leena Rao | 2,011 | 7 | 1 | Professional social network LinkedIn has shut down API access to a number of developers for terms of service violations, according to the company. The six developers whose access to LinkedIn’s API include Facebook-focused professional network BranchOut, Monster’s social recruiting app , brand management app , resume service , professional reputation manager and . The shut down of access for BranchOut and Monster’s similar (and ) app BeKnown are particularly surprising. According to LinkedIn, BranchOut, which has been compared to a LinkedIn for Facebook, violated the network’s API TOS with its for a premium enterprise recruiting search tool. Charging fees for access to LinkedIn’s content, is a no-no, says the network. LinkedIn says that it cut off access to its API for BeKnown because the app was using the LinkedIn APIs to send messages to promote BeKnown (and thus profit from the API). LinkedIn is also concerned that BeKnown will be charging for enterprise services related to the API, similar to BranchOut. Mixtent and Visible.me were also shut down for the same reasons. And CRM-Gadget and Daxtra were both shut down for storing LinkedIn member data. In the case of BranchOut and BeKnown, it’s hard not to think of the whole Twitter-UberMedia debacle, in which Twitter shut down API access to UberMedia , including trademarks, privacy and monetization violations. UberMedia is a direct competitor to Twitter, with it army of third-party clients. Likewise, BranchOut (and now BeKnown) are competitors to LinkedIn in some ways. BranchOut, which is by Accel, Norwest, Floodgate, and Redpoint, allows you to network and find jobs through your friends on Facebook. The company also allows you to import skills, education, and job history from LinkedIn as well. And the company is allowing brands and organizations to post jobs to users. The startup has been growing in a territory that LinkedIn has not yet invaded—Facebook. LinkedIn, which has 20,000 developers using its APIs, has been on fairly good terms with its developers minus a few stumbles. In January, LinkedIn to CubeDuel, a service that mixes the best (or worst) of Hot or Not with the professional social network. Apparently CubeDuel exceeded LinkedIn’s API limits, but it was LinkedIn says it is open to reinstating its APIs to these developers and startups if they comply with the network’s TOS. LinkedIn has partnership deals with some developers where startups pay fees for the API (which they can monetize off of). But LinkedIn could probably learn a thing or two from Twitter’s tenuous situation with its developers, and should definitely navigate these waters very carefully. BranchOut issued this statement in response to LinkedIn’s move: At BranchOut we consider the next generation platform for professional networking to be Facebook. Changes to the LinkedIn API have little impact on the BranchOut experience, as it was only being used by a small fraction of our users. That said, we believe user data should be owned by the user, and that people should be allowed to share their data with the new services and contexts that provide the most utility. We’ve analyzed our statistics, and it has led to a pretty exciting discovery for us—namely that we are causing a groundswell within a much larger audience than that addressed by the prior generation of career services. BranchOut users encompass not only the professional networker, but also the far larger base of 700 million Facebook users worldwide who would like to use their social graph to help them in business, recruiting, sales, and job search. For example, in addition to white collar professionals, our users are college students, workers in retail, manufacturing, hospitality, military, government, and others who have yet to find a professional voice within a social network. We are excited to be the first to give this larger global audience a relevant professional networking solution. And here’s Monster’s response: We are surprised and disappointed by LinkedIn’s decision, which we believe not only goes against the interests of LinkedIn users, but also contradicts what LinkedIn claims to stand for – openness and connectivity. Professional networkers are social in nature and LinkedIn has just limited their ability to connect when and where they want. They’ve taken away users’ rights to control how and when they can share their own profile data and personal contacts. We also note that it was within days of Monster’s launch of BeKnown that LinkedIn decided to block the API when there have been other networking-oriented apps using the API for months.While this move by LinkedIn creates an inconvenience for their users, BeKnown members will continue to build their networks from all the largest online sites including Facebook, Yahoo, Google and Monster. |
Google Responds To Nortel Patent Loss: "The Outcome Is Disappointing" | MG Siegler | 2,011 | 7 | 1 | Late last night, it was revealed that Nortel had . To the surprise of many, that winner was not Google, which had put up the “stalking horse” bid to get the ball rolling. Instead, the winner was a “consortium” of industry players — a consortium that includes Apple, RIM, Microsoft, Sony, and others. In other words, this sounds to us like the absolute worst possible scenario for Google. It’s not just that one of their major rivals won the rights to the over 6,000 patents. It’s that of them did. Unsurprisingly, Google is not happy. “This outcome is disappointing for anyone who believes that open innovation benefits users and promotes creativity and competition. We will keep working to reduce the current flood of patent litigation that hurts both innovators and consumers,” Kent Walker, Google’s Senior Vice President and General Counsel said in a statement that Google sent out to members of the press. Okay, but come on, that’s a bit bland. If I were Google, I’d be more than “disappointed”, I’d be . Again, they’re the ones who got the ball rolling with a $900 million opening bid. Meanwhile, . While the DoJ quickly cleared Google to make a run on the patents, they weren’t so sure about Apple. And then that if Google won the rights to the patents they could nullify the existing agreements Nortel had in place for licensing out those patents (which may or may not have even been true). It like Google was in the drivers seat. But now it sure looks like that while all of this interference was going on, Google’s competitors were getting together behind the scenes to come up with a combined offer — $4.5 billion — that Nortel couldn’t refuse (and Google likely couldn’t in their right mind, match). And the truth is that Google pissed off. How do you we know? Because while they’re releasing muted statements, they’re also trying to have off-the-record conversations to further express their displeasure. And they’re pointing us to pieces like which features wording like: So, Microsoft apparently got together with Apple, EMC, Ericsson, RIM and Sony… and coughed up an insane $4.5 billion. It’s kind of brilliant in a nefarious way. With six companies together, they could each spend less than the $900 million initially pitched by Google… and then just all agree not to sue each other, but leave open the option to sue anyone else. And they’re pointing out what they believe to be similarities between this situation and the one involving Novell patents, which the DoJ looked into and — pointing out that the open source community was not happy. Of course, this has nothing to do with the open source community. But it certainly is possible that the DoJ will not like this consortium bid on the Nortel patents one bit. The courts in both the U.S. and Canada still have to approve the bid for it to clear, and it certainly is possible that changes will be forced once again. We’ve told Google we’re happy to have an conversation about all of this. I’m just not sure what the point of venting off-the-record is at this point. Google is pissed off, and they should be! And they should express that openly! |
Facebook Will Launch In-Browser Video Chat Next Week In Partnership With Skype | Michael Arrington | 2,011 | 7 | 1 | Earlier this week while visiting Seattle, Facebook CEO tipped off Seattle press that the company would be launching an next week that has been built by Facebook’s Seattle team. The press invitations to that event went out today, saying nothing more than “Please join us for an event at Facebook” on July 6. So what is the new product? MG Siegler that it might have a desktop component given all the going on in Seattle. And he’s right. This isn’t the main project that team is working on, but next week, says a source with knowledge of the partnership, Facebook will launch a new video chat product, powered by Skype, that works in browser. Suddenly those chat icons in the invitation have a lot more meaning. The product has been built on Skype and will include a desktop component. It’s not clear to me whether that means it will just work if a user has Skype already installed on the computer, or if additional software will need to be downloaded even if the user already uses Skype. But it’s clear that there’s very deep integration between the products, and from the user’s perspective, the product will be an in browser experience. Facebook and Skype have already been , including of various Facebook features into the Skype service. But this is something else entirely. The partnership could substantially increase Skype usage. Facebook has more than active users. Currently Skype has just 170 million. And it will certainly help Facebook become even stickier for users as they start to have voice and video chat as an option to communicate. And this also brings Facebook even closer to Microsoft, which is a Facebook shareholder and has a pending . The guys in Redmond must be smiling today, something that happens far too infrequently at Microsoft HQ. |
Zuckerberg's Not So Subtle Dig At Google Circles | Erick Schonfeld | 2,011 | 7 | 6 | Even as Facebook revealed some on Wednesday, the was Google’s latest attempt to create a social network, Google+. Mark Zuckerberg tried deflect direct comparisons by saying, “Every app is going to be social.” But he did make one remark, which suggested how he really feels about Google+ and one of its main features, Circles. Zuckerberg didn’t mention Circles specifically but he did state: The definition of groups is . . . everyone inside the group knows who else is in the group This might seem obvious unless you’ve played with Circles. The Circles feature is how Google+ handles groups, but it is and problems can arise It is designed to let members set up different groups of people, or Circles, to share things with. But Circles are one-way, or asymmetric. Everyone sets up their own Circles and nobody knows whose Circle they are in. Secret Circles would be a more apt description. Zuckerberg seems to be suggesting that they are not really groups because instead of everyone in the group knowing who else is in the group, it is the exact opposite: nobody knows which groups they are in. Circles are so confusing that Ross Mayfield created the Slideshare below to explain it all. Facebook has a “symmetric sharing” model where two people mutually confirm that they are friends, and then can start sharing stuf with each other privately or publicly. Twitter has an “asymmetric follow” model where people Tweet out publicly and anyone can follow what they are broadcasting without that person necessarily following back. It’s one-way. Google+, however, has an “asymmetric sharing” model where you can share one-way with people, but they don’t have to share back. It’s kind of like the Circle of Trust in (watch the video clip in the third slide), only not quite as funny. [slideshare id=8505518&doc=googlecircles-pptx-110704150825-phpapp02] |
It's A Pretty Big Ship: HP Isn't After Apple, It's After The Enterprise | John Biggs | 2,011 | 7 | 1 | has an interview with HP’s developer relations guy, Richard Kerris, where he basically says that WebOS is HP’s enterprise strategy, not their consumer play. He says: “We think there’s a better opportunity for us to go after the enterprise space and those consumers that use PCs,” said Kerris. “This market is in it’s infancy and there is plenty of room for both of us to grow.” “We think the world of Apple and have the utmost respect for their products,” said Kerris. “It would be ignorant for us to say that we are going to take it [the market] away from Apple.” Beneath this scraping and bowing is an important consideration: there is no viable tablet for the enterprise and all signs point to Blackberry fumbling things with their absurd . Knowledge workers will need (read “want”) tablets and HP is putting itself in place to give them to them. As flawed as the is, it’s not as bad as people let on. It works, it will have a stronger support base than Android on the aggregate, and HP will put its might behind WebOS, bringing it to various desktops and devices as an alternative to Google and Apple. It will end up on devices like printers and probably office “desktop tablets” and other boring stuff, a market that Cisco, also, is trying to grab with their offerings. It never hurts to be boring in the IT space, and if HP knows anything it’s how to be boring. |
I’m Quitting Email | MG Siegler | 2,011 | 7 | 6 | It started as an idea. Well, , really. What if I just responding to email? Sure, at first it was said in half-jest after a few drinks. It was me channeling my inner — “I’m just gonna stop going” — while I’m sitting here in Washington D.C. completely buried in email after not getting to it all day. But the motivation behind the Tweet and the idea is very real. Email is the absolute . And the only way to not be corrupted is to… run away. So that’s exactly what I’m going to do. For the rest of this month, I’m not going to respond to any emails. None. Yes, this sounds sort of like a pampered problem and perhaps somewhat of a dick move — I should be so lucky to get so many emails, right? But the reality remains: email is an absolute nightmare in my life. I dread it in the morning, I dread it more right before I go to bed. It’s always in the back of my mind, lingering. Following my initial Tweets, Colleen Taylor of GigaOm a link to this that pretty much sums it up: When people at parties ask me what I do I think I am just going to start saying that I’m an “emailer.” It’s both sad and true. And I’m hardly alone. The tweets I sent out on the topic tonight were met with near unanimous agreement (I’ll paste a some of them below). It seems that most everyone I know to quit email. They’re just afraid. The truth is that I’m afraid too. What happens if I just stop responding? To be honest, I’m not really sure. I think it’s one of those things where if I thought of all of the potential ramifications, I wouldn’t do it. So I’m not going to worry about it. I’m just going to do it. If nothing else, it will be an interesting experiment. We all talk about our hatred for email — — but few people actually quit. Some try half-heartedly. Others are sure a solution is always just right around the corner. But I’m done waiting and making excuses. I’m just going to do it. Will I have to cheat? I sure hope not. That would be pretty disappointing. But I really don’t think I’ll have to. My plan is to still check my inbox from time to time just to make sure that there isn’t some emergency. And I’ll forward things along as need be (without typing anything beyond an email address). But for everything else, I’ll simply set up an auto-responder along the lines of “No longer responding to email, if you need me, you’ll figure out a way.” (Kudos to who wanted to test a similar idea earlier this year, but I chickened out.) That’s the key to all of this. It’s not that I really want to blow people off. It’s that email blows. There has to be a better way. And I think there is! If people really need to get ahold of me, they’ll know how. There are many options. And all of them are better than email in its current state ( ). That doesn’t mean I’ll respond to all of these alternative communications either — I suspect they’ll build up quickly too. But at least it will be a nice big barrier to entry that will help to alleviate my inbox overload. And the great thing about some of the other messaging platforms out there is that many of them follow the “stream” idea. That is: when you send a message, maybe there will be a response, maybe there won’t. With email, a huge problem is that people expect a response every time. With tweets, people don’t. I don’t know about you, but I’m excited. I have absolutely no idea what will happen next. I’ll respond to some of the emails I currently have in my inbox, but then it’s lights out for the rest of July. Will the world end? Will TechCrunch implode? I suspect not. I think that the ultimate result of this experiment will be much less shocking: fewer emails will be sent. : https://twitter.com/#!/parislemon/status/88818046021537793 https://twitter.com/#!/parislemon/status/88818507457900544 https://twitter.com/#!/parislemon/status/88818679881547777 https://twitter.com/#!/parislemon/status/88818843115466752 https://twitter.com/#!/GregMinton/status/88819125933178880 https://twitter.com/#!/poojou/status/88818930390540288 https://twitter.com/#!/tombiro/status/88818512407183360 https://twitter.com/#!/thatdrew/status/88818817714757634 https://twitter.com/#!/radiocolin/status/88819344083136512 https://twitter.com/#!/benparr/status/88819765052833793 https://twitter.com/#!/dcurtis/status/88819954824130560 https://twitter.com/#!/dkr/status/88820189877112833 https://twitter.com/#!/jkeller87/status/88820192985096192 https://twitter.com/#!/Devindra/status/88820218998169600 https://twitter.com/#!/sabhasin/status/88820268990087168 https://twitter.com/#!/rorycberger/status/88820554878029825 https://twitter.com/#!/renee_berry/status/88820570086580224 https://twitter.com/#!/AntDeRosa/status/88820649937747968 https://twitter.com/#!/ZacherySchiller/status/88820873519312896 https://twitter.com/#!/mathewi/status/88821045880029184 https://twitter.com/#!/Abbott/status/88821266496233472 https://twitter.com/#!/om/status/88821711784509440 https://twitter.com/#!/sacca/status/88822244117184512 https://twitter.com/#!/jbernard703/status/88822300551561216 https://twitter.com/#!/trebbatleahcim/status/88822376921444352 https://twitter.com/#!/MrTravisB/status/88823806847758336 https://twitter.com/#!/buzz/status/88824063849541633 https://twitter.com/#!/trammell/status/88825231296303104 https://twitter.com/#!/khartline/status/88826272901369856 https://twitter.com/#!/anniemal/status/88826786682646529 https://twitter.com/#!/pagsf/status/88827489572495360 https://twitter.com/#!/dlprager/status/88827841701101571 https://twitter.com/#!/matty8r/status/88828603697070080 https://twitter.com/#!/SepidehN/status/88829976635379712 https://twitter.com/#!/gbussmann/status/88830757304414208 https://twitter.com/#!/ThisBenRoberts/status/88833646869483521 https://twitter.com/#!/mranney/status/88839512905613313 |
Wi-Fi Xoom Drops To $499 | Devin Coldewey | 2,011 | 7 | 6 | Are you still pining for a ? . But really, who am I to judge? Have I not made mistakes of my own? For instance, every time I order a shot of Fireball. But I digress. You were looking for a Xoom, yes? I can’t interest you in the slimmer , or the upcoming ? No? Not an inexpensive , or even a ? No? All right then, if you must. At least now you can get one for under five hundy. The 32GB wi-fi version (you don’t want 3G, come on) is . Is it worth it? Look, that’s for you to decide, I don’t want to hurt your feelings. |
Say What? Thanks To Digital Music, Album Sales Up For The First Time Since 2004 | Rip Empson | 2,011 | 7 | 6 | , Nielsen’s report that tracks point-of-purchase music sales across real and digital sources, was released today, and at long last contains a few rays of hope for the beleaguered music industry. The midyear sales data shows that, among other things, for the first time since 2004, album sales actually increased in the first half of this year. Now, before you fall out of your chair, total album sales are only up 1 percent, so it’s not as if sales are blowing the roof off, but at least they’re no longer plummeting. Yes, according to SoundScan, 155.5 million albums were sold in the U.S. in the first six months of 2011, compared to the 153.9 million albums sold at this time last year, resulting in that slim 1 percent hike. Of course, when one includes single-track downloads (generally speaking, 10 songs are the equivalent of an album) the number of albums sold comes to 221.5 million, resulting in a 3.6 percent rise. I was going to say these numbers aren’t exactly something to “write home about”, but for an industry that acted like a petulant child in the face of the digital revolution, this might very well be something to write home about. Prior to 2004, album sales had decreased every year since 1999. Which, of course, happens to be the same year Napster was founded. Though that to be a coincidence. And, to that point, guess what the catalyst is for the bump in music sales data? Yup, it’s digital music sales. According to Nielsen, “digital album sales are up 19 percent through the first six months over 2010 and are on pace to set a new sales record at the end of the year”. More than 660.8 million digital units were sold in the first half of 2011, an 11 percent increase from the summer of last year. This comes on the heels of a , as well as Google, Apple, and Amazon getting into cloud music hosting and purchasing, with Google Music, iCloud, and Cloud Drive, respectively. Earlier today, we and Cloud Player offerings, throwing in unlimited storage for music. It’s actually a very exciting time for music fans, with these industry-changing cloud music services that will only continue to expand functionality and integration with existing web and mobile wares. Not to mention the fact that sites like , exFm, and umpteen others are making music discovery easier and more exciting, which in turn leads to users going out and buying tracks and albums from iTunes, Amazon, etc. That being said, , the major internet service providers are poised to add some strict new rules intended to discourage digital pirating of both music and video copyrighted content, so we’ll just have to wait and see how much we (and the music industry) have learned our collective lessons. Lastly, not that I want to make any further sweeping statements about the state of the music industry, but I will point out that “E.T.” by Katy Perry tops the chart for the best selling digital song for the first six months of 2011, with 4.1 million downloads. I’ll leave it to you to draw your own conclusions from this fact. Excerpt image via |
Giant VR Helmet Is Very 90s, Yet Way Cooler | Devin Coldewey | 2,011 | 7 | 6 | [youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CW_-bGyiKGs&rel=0&hl=en_US&feature=player_embedded&version=3]
You might remember trying on one of these big-ass VR helmets ten or fifteen years ago, maybe at a big arcade or some sort of tech show. They were pretty cool, but were mainly used for plain orientation of the head in the game; you had joysticks for controls and so on. This “Immersive Digital Entertainment” system from Crescent, shown at a recent VR trade show, takes things a bit further. The helmet is a VR display, of course, but you move around in a motion-capture area, and the helmet, gun, and all the rest are rigged up to be tracked by computers in real time. It’s a bit like the way they animate games and movies like , but in real time. , but you can get the gist from the video above. Pretty cool, though obviously still a bit janky (and impractical for home use). [via ] |
Sony S1 And S2 Go Wild On Video In Italy | Devin Coldewey | 2,011 | 7 | 6 |
Anyone speak Italian? Eh, I think you get the gist from watching. These two videos show the elusive (though decreasingly so) we heard about from Sony back in April. You can see the Playstation Suite with games and movie trailers in one, and the other gives a slightly blurry tour of the hardware itself, which is actually welcome given the lack of comparators we’ve had for these things. Here’s the interface (lots of Italian): [youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=husc2meluSs&w=640&h=390] And here’s the hardware: [youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ufjt5Qv1870&w=640&h=390] They look nice, but we definitely need to get our own before passing judgment. [via and ] |
Breaking: Spotify Announces Impending US launch (really) | Mike Butcher | 2,011 | 7 | 6 | Streaming music service , which is gunning to compete with iTunes, just put up a which will presumably be launched soon. Users are being asked to enter an e-mail address on its U.S. site to get an update. Date, pricing and partners are not yet specified but it looks like they landed the final music label deals they were after to launch the service. Spotify recently the “billion dollar club” after a $100 million round that’s been in the works since at least February, with DST, Kleiner, and Accel participating. This was obviously to back the US launch. Since at least June there has been speculation that Facebook may integrate Spotify (this might even be part of tomorrow’s ‘awesome’ press event). Spotify has often promised a U.S. launch that would include a free version of the product like they have in Europe, designed to stop music piracy. The promises have come and gone. And there were even rumors Google and Spotify were in deep negotiations, before the gossip about a Facebook partnership emerged. However, Americans who have tried the service generally like it as much as Europeans, where it has been something of a hit. As we predicted the successful completion of U.S. music label negotiations meant the the triggering of the $1bn round, which triggers the Facebook deal and then the US launch. tct |
Mark Zuckerberg Explains His Law Of Social Sharing [Video] | Alexia Tsotsis | 2,011 | 7 | 6 | Facebook CEO punctuated his today by revealing that users are now publicly sharing around 4 billion “things” (status updates, images, etc) on Facebook a day. Zuckerberg explained that in accordance with Facebook’s data, social sharing functions exponentially, so that the amount of stuff you shared today is double the amount of stuff you shared a year ago and the stuff that you will share a year from now will be double the amount you’ve shared today. In Mark Zuckerberg’s , Y = C *2^X — Where X is time, Y is what you will be sharing and C is a constant. Holding that most people intuitively misunderstand the profundity of exponential growth, Zuckerberg provided the example of a piece of paper folded upon itself 50 times. “If you took a piece of paper and folded it on itself 50 times, how tall would it be?” He continued, “Most people would say a few feet … Turns out it goes to the moon and back 10 times … I mean it’s 2^50 * the height of the paper. It’s a small base doubling many times.” Whether Zuckerberg’s concise prediction of human sharing behavior is accurate remains to be seen. As Chris Dixon , it seems kind of absurd that people will be sharing 1,048,576 (2^20) times the items of information they are sharing today twenty years from now. But who knows? Maybe automated sharing will hyper-accelerate social sharing beyond what we can share manually? In any case the law is remarkably self-perpetuating. |
Video: Robot Mimics Snail Style For Omnidirectional Movement | Devin Coldewey | 2,011 | 7 | 6 | [youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nbcHptH947w&w=640&h=390]
Biomimetic are nothing new ( , , ), but as there is a great variety of animals to mimic, there’s no shortage of interesting takes on the idea. (how I would love to work at a place with a name like that), uses the movement principle favored by the common snail. They call it “galloping,” but I don’t think that’s accurate, as far as the idiom goes. What they mean when they say galloping is moving the front part of the body up first, establishing traction there, and then using that as an anchor to pull the rest of the body forwards. I suppose that, when you think about it, that’s actually what horses do too. Anyway, this thing moves slowly but very surely, because at every stage in its movement, it has lots of contact with the surface and tons of grip. This high level of stability and ease of movement means variants of this could be used in factories and hospitals, where safety and stability are a priority, and speed is just something the night crew takes to stay awake. Too much? [via and ] |
Amazon Cloud Drive Now To Include Unlimited Music, But It Will Cost $20/Year | Rip Empson | 2,011 | 7 | 6 | Back in March, to the “music locker” punch with their “Cloud Drive” and “Cloud Player”, which offered 5 GB of free storage space and an accompanying music player, respectively. At the time of release, both the Cloud Drive and the Cloud Player were only available on the Web and Android. Today, Amazon is announcing a few nifty enhancements to its cloud-based music locker, including storage plans that offer unlimited space for music, free storage for MP3 purchases, and Cloud Player has finally come to the iPad. While the 25 million-plus iPad owners may be excited to test Amazon Cloud Drive, there will be a price to pay for Amazon’s new enhancements — albeit a small one. The Cloud Drive and Cloud Player will cost, at the very least, $20 a year, which seem to be a very reasonable price for unlimited space for for music storage. To clarify, according to Amazon, this offer is available starting at the lowest price grade, $20/year, which includes 20 GB of file storage and unlimited space for MP3s and AAC music files. As to the terms of these storage grades, they will remain much the same as they were when Cloud Drive launched in March, with customers beginning at 5 GB of free cloud storage, which will allow users to begin uploading their digital music libraries, and presumably get them hooked on the service before opting for more. And, for a limited time, customers who purchase any Cloud Drive plan will receive unlimited storage for no additional cost, so if you want to test out Cloud Drive, the time is now. Amazon has not yet made it clear when it will lift this “limited offer”, but we’ll be sure to update. And though Amazon’s new enhancements are certainly targeted at unlimited music listening, it should be noted that the basic Cloud Drive storage provides support for multiple kinds of digital files, including photos, videos, and documents — a la Dropbox. Amazon also said in its press release that those who qualified for 20 GM of free storage from earlier promotions can upgrade at no cost. For the iPad, Amazon says that the Cloud Player for the Web has been “optimized to offer customers streaming playback of their Cloud Drive music using Safari”. Those interested in checking it out, can . This announcement comes hot on the heels of Apple’s iCloud offering 5 GB of free online storage along with synchronization for music, photos, apps, documents, iBooks, contacts, e-mail and calendars. Dropbox, Google, Microsoft, and Amazon have all now jumped into the cloud storage game, which will you choose? |
ZeroCater: Because Lunch At The Office Doesn't Have To Be A Complete Pain | Jason Kincaid | 2,011 | 7 | 6 | Lunch at the TechCrunch office has always been an interesting affair. We’re fortunate enough to have it paid for by the company several times a week, but the logistics involved — in other words, ordering enough food for everyone while taking their taste preferences into account — cause a real headache. For a long time it was a game of chicken: we wouldn’t eat until one of us had their hunger pangs intensify to the point that they couldn’t take it any longer, and only then would they pick up the phone (I kept a stash of granola bars under my desk so that I could outlast the others). Things are much better now, largely thanks to TC alum , but it’s still a big time sink. If only -backed startup had launched a few years ago. The startup has set out with a simple mission: make your office’s lunch as easy as possible. It handles the tricky parts (like identifying restaurants that’ll deliver and ordering enough food to cover everyone, including vegetarians). Sound good? ZeroCater is now allowing companies in the Bay Area to sign up for the service. Using ZeroCater is pretty straightforward. First, you tell them how many people you’ll be feeding each day (and if any of them have dietary restrictions). ZeroCater has lined up dozens of restaurants — 70 total in the Bay Area — and will rotate between them (you can opt to remove a restaurant from your queue if you don’t like it). ZeroCater will order a standard set of food from each venue, but you can tweak your order if you want to (most companies just go with the default). That’s it. Food with no more headaches. And your employees don’t need to leave the office, which often translate to more work. So why not just do the ordering yourself? The first plus to using the service is the time factor — you don’t have to deal with finding new restaurants or placing orders. And ZeroCater has also negotiated deals with restaurants that wouldn’t typically offer delivery at all, which can translate into higher-end fare (cofounder Arram Sabeti explains that because ZeroCater can guarantee orders in the hundreds of dollars, it’s worth these restaurants’ while, whereas smaller $20 orders wouldn’t be). And restaurants have a bigger incentive to make sure your order is right and on time, since they’ll lose a lot of business if they mess up. You pay ZeroCater for each meal, and they send a check to the restaurant afterward. ZeroCater charges a 7% convenience fee for each order, and it also keeps any savings it negotiates with the restaurants (some venues will give a bulk discount to ZeroCater, but you still pay menu price). Of course, your small company probably has neither the time nor the pull to get bulk discounts at numerous restaurants. I asked Sabeti what hurdles would hamper someone else from building a similar service. He says that the auto-generated orders that take dietary restrictions into account and the billing system are not trivial (cofounder Bill Moorier was previously the VP of Engineering at Justin.tv, so they have some tech chops behind them). The three-person team is currently in the process of raising funding, with plans to launch in New York City next. |
Exec Pleads Guilty To Wire Fraud After Spilling Apple's Secrets | Jordan Crook | 2,011 | 7 | 6 | If I can steal a quote from Mr. Shimoon, has long been “crazy” about keeping new products a secret. Analysts love to throw out , but when we get down to the truth of the matter, none of us knows anything about Apple’s secrets until Jobs himself wants us to. That is, except for component suppliers and their employees, one of which today pleaded guilty to leaking Apple’s trade secrets regarding the and . Walter Shimoon, ex-employee at one of Apple’s component suppliers Flextronics, had access to unannounced information back in 2009 and decided that sharing is caring. He then relayed said secrets to New York-based Kingdom Ridge Capital, a hedge fund. Most of what Shimoon spilled was related to quarterly sales figures, specifically that he leaked the data two and a half weeks before it was released to the public, but he also threw out some juicy tidbits about the iPhone 4 and the (then unannounced) iPad. The FBI bugged Shimoon’s phones, so we’re lucky enough to see just what was said between the devious Shimoon and Kingdom Ridge Capital: Shimoon promised that Apple was “coming out next year” with a new iPhone that’s “gonna have two cameras” […] “It’ll be a neat phone because it’s gonna have a five-megapixel auto-focus camera and it will have a VGA forward-facing videoconferencing camera.” Just eight months after this conversation, Steve Jobs got on stage holding an iPhone 4 and showed us FaceTime with its “VGA forward-facing videoconferencing camera.” “They [Apple] have a code name for something new … It’s … It’s totally … It’s a new category altogether… It doesn’t have a camera, what I figured out. So I speculated that it’s probably a reader. Something like that. Um, let me tell you, it’s a very secretive program. It’s called K, K48. That’s the internal name. So, you can get, at Apple you can get fired for saying K48. That’s how crazy they are about it.” This time, Shimoon cut it a bit closer. “K48” was announced just four months later. We’re not quite sure why Shimoon doesn’t speak in complete sentences, although it could be the excitement of underhandedly profiting $560,000 in October of 2009 for his company. Either way, we’re glad he fessed up to his crimes, including two counts of conspiracy to commit wire fraud and one count of security fraud. Sentencing won’t begin until 2013, so that leaves you plenty of time to read , which was leaked by the Wall Street Journal. [via ] |
Remember When Twitter Was A Joke? No One Is Laughing Anymore. | MG Siegler | 2,011 | 7 | 6 | I recall a time a few years ago when Twitter was scoffed at. It was the . It was the stupid little service that no one in their right mind would ever use. It was for people who wanted to share the mundane bits of their lives — that no one else wanted to read. It was for egomaniacs. Or losers. It would never catch on. And then it did. I was thinking about this today as I stood in the East Room of the White House (#humblebrag). Why was I there? To see Twitter co-founder Jack Dorsey moderate a Q&A session with President Obama. Yes, the President of the United States was answering questions that were coming entirely from Twitter, the formerly stupid service that was a joke, remember? The most fascinating thing about the event today was how well it worked. A week ago, the White House sent out letting people know about the event and asking that questions be submitted via Twitter using the hashtag “#askobama”. Twitter then teamed with , used their own algorithms, and assigned curators with political expertise to select the questions that would be asked. In total, there were some 169,395 tweets with the #askobama hashtag, we’re told. Much like the debates we see during election cycles, neither Dorsey nor the President knew what questions had been selected ahead of time. What ensued was an in-depth and fairly candid conversation about a range of topics that people actually care about. According to the stats compiled by Mass Relevance, 26 percent of the Tweet questions were about jobs, 19 percent were about the budget, 16 percent were about taxes, 10 percent were about education, and 6 percent were about housing. All of the questions were serious in nature. And questions were also coming in during the event as well. A few times, Dorsey would select one as fresh as 10 minutes old to ask the President. Often, these would be about an answer the President gave earlier during the event. The President would then further clarify his stance. . And a few Tweet questions were selected from well-known political entities as well, such as Speaker of the House John Boehner (a Republican) and New York Times columnist Nick Kristof. Some might have a problem with this, since these people can ask questions of the President basically any time — but the transparency of it happening over Twitter was refreshing. When the President addressed Boehner’s on debt and job growth, he was quick to note that his rival’s position is “slightly skewed” in his view, but he still answered it — and then made fun of Boehner’s poor typing skills (which apparently ). https://twitter.com/#!/johnboehner/status/88618213008621568 Of course, townhalls are just about as old as modern politics itself. And technology disrupting politics is nothing new either. Many are still certain that Kennedy won the 1960 election simply because he looked better on TV than Nixon, for example. But somehow Twitter and political discourse just feel right together. I recall having this conversation during the 2008 political primaries. Again, people were largely divided on the issue at the time — as many were still divided on Twitter, a fact not helped by a myriad of downtime issues that year. But with scaling problems far behind them, events like the one today appear to make the Twitter/politics symbiotic relationship more clear than ever. I suspect that during the 2012 election cycle, things are going to get truly insane (hopefully in a good way). When you compare today’s event to the similar townhall-style event that Facebook did with the President (at Facebook’s headquarters) earlier this year, I don’t think there is any question that this one was better. To me, the Facebook event was more akin to an old-school MTV townhall, or even a “Rock the Vote” event. Facebook is today’s equivalent of MTV. It’s where politicians go to get “cred” in front of a massive audience. But the events themselves are often of little substance. Twitter, by comparison, is still a fraction of the size of Facebook. The President doesn’t have to use such an event to push some big agenda or to try too hard to appeal to a certain demographic (though there is still some of that, of course), he can just take and answer serious questions seriously. If you had said four years ago that a Twitter event with the President would come across as dignified, everyone would have laughed. Hell, just using the words “Twitter” and “President” in the same sentence would have brought about uncontrollable laughter. But it worked seamlessly today. Still, some thought today’s event seemed more of a “ ” (of course, the author of that post, Umair Haque, is the same guy who held at SXSW two years ago with — wait for it — then-Twitter CEO Evan Williams). To me, today seemed like the logical evolution of the townhall format. Forget the questions from the audience which often range from mediocre to poor and involve the politicians needlessly pandering to the crowd — “thank you SO much for your question, and I too grew up on a farm”. Get a question — the best one from anywhere — answer it, move on to the next one. When I read a few weeks ago that the President would finally be sending his own Tweets from his account, I too was a bit dubious. Why now? Oh, because there is an re-election campaign kicking off, of course. But to be honest, I was more worried that the President being too accessible via a service like Twitter might in some ways demean the postion — not a popular thing to say, perhaps, but it’s something I suspect many people think. I wouldn’t want a President that Tweets all day. And again, that’s why I think today’s event was the perfect compromise. The President will Tweet from time to time (undoubtedly often to help his campaign), but he should hold back most responses until he can give them in a more dignified setting — like at the White House during a townhall event. Yes, even one that was technically a “Tweetup” (god that word sounds so lame still). And while questions can be brief, answers on important topics often require far more than 140 characters. This format works. Twitter is a channel through which everyone can be heard. Yes, you still have to sign up for an account, but that’s free — the barrier to entry for participating in these Q&A sessions has never been lower. That’s a great thing. That’s truly powerful. And the White House is right to respect it. After today’s event, I went back through some of my old posts about Twitter, trying to recall just how little respect the service got even just a few years ago. : some wondered if Twitter was going to fail because no one knew about it at a random wedding. Right. (And bonus points to me for that part at the end where I wonder what would happen if the iPhone gained a built-in Twitter button…) Today I stood in the East Room of the White House with a President. To his left hung — the White House’s old possession — painted in 1797 (and rescued from the 1814 fire) depicting George Washington. To his right hung the companion portrait of Martha Washington painted in 1878. But front and center was a big screen television showing the Tweets directed at the President. Times change. Twitter, the little service that couldn’t, now has the President’s ear. |
Elder Scrolls: Skyrim To Get Proper PC Version | Devin Coldewey | 2,011 | 7 | 6 |
Some developers have been answering questions in the Elder Scrolls forums, and have confirmed that Skyrim will indeed get , and should be free of the kind of console holdovers that plagued Crysis 2. Not that every game doing it right needs a post here, but after playing what I could of , I’m really glad to see a developer making more than a token effort towards a PC version. The devs said there would be major graphics upgrades available for PC gamers, and we’ll have a proper high-res interface, quicksaves, and other interface tweaks. Perhaps most importantly, they assured fans that mod support was high priority; after all, part of the reason Oblivion and Morrowind have enjoyed such long-lasting popularity is the wealth of improvements, maps, items, and other mod fodder. Compare to Dungeon Siege 3, where they couldn’t be bothered to even add keyboard config and mouse support appeared to be an afterthought. Looks like the PC will be home to the “definitive” version of Skyrim, which is, of course, as it should be. |
null | Jason Kincaid | 2,011 | 7 | 1 | null |
What Do Facebook T-Shirts Look Like In Seattle? | Alexia Tsotsis | 2,011 | 7 | 6 | Why they have the on them of course! Our illustrious model here is none other than , the main (and only full-time) Facebook engineer behind the announced today. While the Facebook Seattle T-shirts have been around for nine months, Facebook has been pushing its Seattle team lately, with Zuckerberg giving the infamous at a Q&A at the Facebook offices. Established in August 2010, the Seattle office houses around 40 people including former Myspace exec Hadi Partovi and is helmed by Ari Steinberg who may or may not have designed the shirts. Because the project itself was video calling, Su told me that he didn’t really have to leave Seattle very much in order to communicate with the Skype team in Palo Alto, and both teams performed the ultimate dogfooding. All in all completion took six months and 20%-30% of the time of three other Seattle engineers Su told me. Yes, Facebook planning on sending a shirt to my boss and fellow Washington resident Michael Arrington. |
Virgin Mobile To Switch Up Plan Prices, Drop $10 Monthly BlackBerry Fee? | Jordan Crook | 2,011 | 7 | 6 | Earlier today we received word from a tipster that will be switching up its plan rates in the near future, likely sometime this month. The new rates add $10 to the price of the 300-minute plan (was $25, will be $35), $5 to the 1200 minute plan (was $40, will be $45), while dropping the price of the unlimited everything plan from $60 to $55. Virgin Mobile offers unlimited text, email, data, and web with all of its plans, and luckily, that won’t change along with the new pricing. While this news may not be welcome by all, there’s a little silver lining in these price hikes: the usual $10 fee for owners is coming to an end. [ ] |
Boost Mobile To Nab The BlackBerry Style 9670 (RIM's Crazy Huge Flip Phone) This Month | Greg Kumparak | 2,011 | 7 | 6 | Have you always wanted to rock RIM’s wonky-lookin’ BlackBerry Style 9670, but weren’t sure enough about the big ol’ clamshell form factor to lock into a contract? Good news: It’s going pre-paid. We’ve just received multiple tips that the Style will be hitting Boost Mobile sometime this month, complete with BlackBerry OS 6.0, a 5 megapixel camera, WiFi, and that oh-so- design. As for how much it’ll cost you, we’re hearing two different things: a Best Buy tipster says it’s in their inventory at $280, while the shot above pins it at $199. Given somewhat antiquated nature of the device, we’re hoping it’s closer to the latter. |
Effectology: Paranormal Spooooky Sounds | John Biggs | 2,011 | 7 | 6 | [youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uhnTaV7w_d8&w=640&h=390] Our buddy Bill Ruppert just shared another with us, this time creating spooky sounds from the haunted house. The effects he creates here are pretty wild including Alien Bells and an X-Files whistle, all built on effects pedals and a standard git-fiddle. He notes that the original X-Files theme came from a E-mu Proteus/2 synthesizer, something that would probably be laughed off a rack today. |
Toyota Joins Linux Foundation | Scott Merrill | 2,011 | 7 | 6 |
The , the nonprofit consortium dedicated to fostering the growth of Linux, announced yesterday that Toyota is its newest Gold-level member. This is a pretty interesting development for both organizations. From the official press release: “Toyota is joining The Linux Foundation as a Gold member to maximize its own investment in Linux while fostering open innovation throughout the automotive ecosystem.” The continued proliferation of Linux into products across all markets means that it’s more and more likely that a mostly off-the-shelf system can be quickly tweaked for your specific industry. By supporting the Linux Foundation financially, Toyota and other members help ensure that development continues on the Linux core, atop of which they can add their own special sauce. SAN FRANCISCO, July 5, 2011 – The Linux Foundation, the nonprofit organization dedicated to accelerating the growth of Linux, today announced that Toyota is its newest member. A major shift is underway in the automotive industry. Carmakers are using new technologies to deliver on consumer expectations for the same connectivity in their cars as they’ve come to expect in their homes and offices. From dashboard computing to In-Vehicle-Infotainment (IVI)jim, automobiles are becoming the latest wireless devices – on wheels. The Linux operating system is providing a common platform that helps connect the world’s network of devices, including cars. As an open source operating system, it provides automakers and their partners the flexibility they require to bring to market the latest technology features quickly. Toyota is joining The Linux Foundation as a Gold member to maximize its own investment in Linux while fostering open innovation throughout the automotive ecosystem. “Linux gives us the flexibility and technology maturity we require to evolve our In-Vehicle-Infotainment and communications systems to address the expectations of our customers,” said Kenichi Murata, Project General Manager, Electronics Development Div. 1, TOYOTA MOTOR CORPORATION. “The Linux Foundation provides us with a neutral forum in which we can collaborate with the world’s leading technology companies on open innovation that accelerates that evolution.” “We are very pleased to welcome Toyota to The Linux Foundation. The company’s leadership and proven innovation will bring important contributions to the advancement of Linux,” said Jim Zemlin, executive director at The Linux Foundation. ‘Toyota’s investment in Linux is a testament to the ubiquity of the operating system and its ability to support the latest market requirements.”
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Europe Launching Gigapixel Probe To Map Milky Way | Devin Coldewey | 2,011 | 7 | 6 |
We’ve come to love the fantastic and sublime images of space taken from such satellites as the Hubble, but the truth is that the technology that created those images is incredibly out of date. And while you can’t argue with the results, it has gotten to the point where the sensitivity, angle of view, and data collection rate just need to be moved up to 21st-century standards. The European Space Agency (ESA) is happy to bring space into the gigapixel era, and they’re packing a monster camera array onto their Gaia astrometry platform. The mission of Gaia is accurate mapping of the entire Milky Way galaxy, and they plan to chart the positions of a billion stars about seventy times each over the next five years. The result will be (they hope) a more accurate and precise three-dimensional map of the galaxy. They’ll also pick up innumerable minor bodies (i.e. asteroid, planets, and so on) and will collect a ton of other useful miscellaneous space data. The camera itself is actually over a hundred individual sensors put into an array — which makes sense, as a single gigapixel sensor would likely be far too small and pixel-dense to be of any use in this situation. The 102 sensors are 4.7×6.0cm each, and arranged in a large 1.0×0.5m field, and four more are used for quality checks. The precision of the camera is pretty insane. It can resolve items of magnitude 15, which is 4000 times dimmer than what can be seen with the naked eye, down to 24 microarcseconds. To give you an idea of how powerful that is, if the Gaia array was on Earth, it could measure the thumbnails of a person standing on the moon. It will produce a huge amount of data, but its transmitter will be able to maintain a multi-megabit connection to its base station here on the ground even at a distance of 1.5 million kilometers. There’s a ton (or tonne, I suppose) more information , and some other links at . |
Sony Cybershot TX55 Shoots HD Video And 12-Megapixel Stills, At The Same Time | John Biggs | 2,011 | 7 | 24 | Although I’ve never been a huge fan of the Cybershot line, it’s interesting to see how much tech Sony has been dumping into these things of late. For example, this $350 camera shoots full 1080i video 12-megapixel stills at exactly the same time with no interruption. It has 5X optical zoom and some sort of 16-megapixel 10X digital zoom and can also shoot in 3D. Panoramas are easy and massive at 42 megapixels. It will be available in September. I’d love to see the final quality that comes out of this slim shooter and, while I’m sure it’s technically impressive, I’d worry wee bit about overkill. |
Airbnb Bags $112 Million In Series B From Andreessen, DST And General Catalyst | Alexia Tsotsis | 2,011 | 7 | 24 | The scrappy apartment sharing startup Airbnb has just raised $112 million at a one billion plus valuation led by Andreessen Horowitz. We’re hearing that the split is around $60 million from Andreessen, $40 million from DST and $5 million from General Catalyst — the rest coming from previous investors and newcomer Jeff Bezos. We that the startup was raising $100 million at a $1 billion valuation. This Series B will raise the Airbnb’s total funding to $119.8 million, having last raised a $7.8 million Series A from notable investors Greylock, Sequoia Capital, SV Angel, Ashton Kutcher and Youniversity Ventures. We’re hearing that the total valuation for the round is $1.3 billion. In addition to the collaborative startup’s name becoming a popular part of industry lexicon ( ) the startup has had to face intense competition from AIRBNB RAISES $112 MILLION IN SERIES B FINANCING TO FUEL
INTERNATIONAL GROWTH
Andreessen Horowitz Leads Investment Round SAN FRANCISCO, Calif. — July 25, 2011 — Airbnb, the leading community marketplace that lets anyone discover and book unique spaces from people around the world, today announced that it has received $112 million in Series B financing from Andreessen Horowitz, DST Global, and General Catalyst, bringing the company’s total funding to $119.8 million. The capital will be used to fuel growth, accelerate the hiring of a world-class team and strengthen the Airbnb community at the local level. “Over the past three years, we’ve built a community marketplace for unique properties and brought it into the mainstream and into almost every country on the planet,” said Brian Chesky, co-founder and CEO of Airbnb. “Today is a watershed moment – both for Airbnb as a company and for our community – that will enable us to touch new markets and expand our vision to make the world’s most interesting and inspiring places accessible to our users.” Airbnb has experienced explosive growth over the past year, doubling the benchmark of 1 million nights booked in just four months. The company now has over 2 million nights booked, receives over 30 million page views per month and has seen the number of Airbnb Social Connections triple to 54 million since launching the feature in May. As the company poises itself to meet the growing demand in international markets like Germany, the United Kingdom, France and Brazil, this investment will help position Airbnb as the leader in the broader vacation rental market in 2012. “The Airbnb movement has changed the way people experience the world,” said Joe Gebbia, co-founder and CPO of Airbnb. “This investment will help us respond to increasing international demand by accelerating hiring, and the opening of offices around the world, in order to support our growing community on more local levels.” “We’re thrilled to have led this investment round in Airbnb. The company is defining a completely new category in e-commerce – a marketplace for all kinds of spaces, from homes and apartments to tree houses and yachts,” said Jeff Jordan, general partner, Andreessen Horowitz. “Airbnb’s explosive growth and passionate community of users reinforce the uniqueness of what they’re doing, and in the same way eBay redefined online shopping, Airbnb is redefining the way the world thinks about accommodations.” Airbnb joins the ranks of culturally impactful companies in the Andreessen Horowitz and DST Global portfolio, including Facebook, Twitter, Zynga, and Groupon, along with innovative brands such as Kayak and Brightcove, which are backed by General Catalyst. “Airbnb, with its strong management team and engaged worldwide community is on a path to become a transformational company,” said Yuri Milner founder of DST Global. Editors:
For additional commentary on Andreessen Horowitz’s investment in Airbnb, visit Jeff Jordan’s blog post: http://bhorowitz.com/2011/07/24/meet-our-newest-portfolio-company-airbnb
For images and videos of the Airbnb community, please visit: http://www.airbnb.com/press
For more information on the Airbnb App for iPhone please visit: http://www.airbnb.com/iphone
Learn more about Airbnb Social Connections please visit http://www.airbnb.com/social About Airbnb:
Founded in August 2008 and based in San Francisco, California, Airbnb is a trusted community marketplace for people to list, discover, and book unique spaces around the world online or from an iPhone device. Airbnb is the easiest way for people to showcase their distinctive spaces to an audience of millions whether the available space is a castle for a night, a sailboat for a week, or an apartment for a month. Airbnb makes the process of listing or booking a space effortless and efficient. With listings in more than 16,000 cities and 186 countries, Airbnb offers the widest variety of unique spaces for everyone, at any price point around the globe. About Andreessen Horowitz:
Andreessen Horowitz is a stage-agnostic venture capital firm that provides seed, venture and growth-stage funding to the best new technology companies. Founded by Marc Andreessen and Ben Horowitz, Andreessen Horowitz helps entrepreneurs become successful CEOs and build important and enduring companies. Its general partners are Marc Andreessen, Ben Horowitz, John O’Farrell, Scott Weiss, Jeff Jordan and Peter Levine, all widely recognized experts in the creation, scaling and operation of high growth technology companies. The firm has $1.2 billion under management across two funds. Among its 60 investments are Facebook, Foursquare, Groupon, Skype, Twitter and Zynga. The firm was established in June 2009 and is located in Menlo Park, California. www.a16z.com About DST Global:
Founded in 2009 by Yuri Milner, DST Global is one of the leading investment groups globally to exclusively focus on Internet related companies. DST Global portfolio contains some of the world’s leading and most valuable Internet assets. http://dst-global.com/ About General Catalyst:
General Catalyst Partners is a venture capital firm that invests in exceptional entrepreneurs who are building the technology-based companies that will lead innovation and transform industries. Founded in 2000, General Catalyst Partners leverages its principals’ extensive operational, business development and technological expertise to provide portfolio companies with a catalyst for success through business-building and partnership development assistance. For more information, please visit: http://www.generalcatalyst.com. |
Kleiner Perkins Leads $37 Million Round In Realtime Traffic Data Company Inrix | Leena Rao | 2,011 | 7 | 24 | Realtime car traffic data company has raised $37 million in series D funding led by Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers’ Green Growth Fund and August Capital. This brings Inrix’s funding to nearly . Post-funding, Inrix’s valuation is just shy of $500 million. Inrix aggregates and crowdsources real-time traffic information from more than 10 million spurces including cars, taxis, delivery vehicles, trucks and other channels, Inrix’s data software aggregates and enhances traffic-related information from hundreds of public and private sources and then sells this data to mobile app developers and websites. Currently the company offers data for 22 countries across North America and Europe and reaches more than 100 million users. Inrix’s partners include Audi AG, ADAC, ALK, ANWB, Coyote, the Ford Motor Company, I-95 Coalition, MapQuest, Microsoft, NAVIGON, Tele Atlas, Telmap, TeleNav, Texas Transportation Institute and Toyota. For example, Audi and Toyota are using Inrix traffic services in their vehicles starting with the new Audi A6 in Europe and Toyota Entune-equipped Prius V and Camry in North America. Inrix currently powers Ford SYNC traffic and navigation services. Inrix also offers traffic apps for the iPhone and Android platforms, which have seen 1.5 million downloads. The company also white labels traffic apps for Ford, Navigon, and Pioneer. And Inrix partners with U.S. and European regional transportation agencies to help manage their road networks and provide travel information to the public, and more. With all these partnerships and licensing agreements, Inrix, which is profitable, is growing revenue by nearly a 100 percent year over year. The company’s CEO Bryan Mistele tell us that his goal is to “be the Google of traffic info.” Mistele says that the company didn’t necessarily need to raise money but decided that a cash influx would help scale Inrix to the next level. The new investment will be used to fuel acquisition efforts, continued global expansion and research and development. |
Facebook Moves Into Its New Campus [Photos] | Alexia Tsotsis | 2,011 | 7 | 24 |
Just like it told us it would , Facebook has started to move its into Building 10 of its new Menlo Park campus in the old Sun Building on the Bayfront Expressway. How do we know this? Well Facebook Product Architect has and the elaborate decorative elements involved in a Facebook album called “Building 10 at Night,” which we’ve included above. A phone booth (!), purple glazed windows, chalkboard paint, a tons of Unistrut benches and the re-incorporation of the Sun’s logo-etched glass doors for its conference rooms. |
Eying An IPO In The Next Year, LegalZoom Raises $66M From Kleiner Perkins And IVP | Leena Rao | 2,011 | 7 | 24 | You may have heard of which is basically an online service that helps people create their own legal documents. The site makes its relatively easy to do simple legal functions such as writing a last will, incorporating a business, trademark a name or creating a real estate lease. The fact is that paying a lawyer to draw up these documents can be expensive and LegalZoom wants to democratize legal document creation. Investors are betting big on the service as well. A few months ago, LegalZoom that it had raised funding from Kleiner Perkins and Institutional Venture Partners. At the time, the company declined to reveal how much it has raised. And now the company is willing to talk numbers—Kleiner and IVP put a whopping $66 million into LegalZoom. That brings the company’s total funding to over $100 million. LegalZoom, which is the brainchild of serial entrepreneur (he also with Kim Kardashian), , and Brian Liu, is also profitable and is seeing north of a $100 million in revenue. The company has helped nearly 2 million customers create legal documents. John Suh, CEO of LegalZoom tells us that an IPO is definitely on the horizon but is in no rush to go public. “Just because you can go public doesn’t mean you should go public,” he explains. Suh says that in the end a public offering is simply a financing event and while the company could have gone public this year, LegalZoom isn’t in need of new funding. Suh’s assertion is fair, but there are certainly other benefits to taking a company public, including the marketing and public to new investors. But LegalZoom has been actively marketing its product in expensive advertising channels, including television. You can see one of the company’s commercials |
Facebook Glitch Revealed Thumbnails & Descriptions Of Friends’ Private Videos | Jason Kincaid | 2,011 | 7 | 24 | Facebook’s labyrinthine privacy controls have sprung another leak. This time it’s their Videos feature, which lets users share brief clips with their friends and family (Videos launched back in 2007 and Facebook now serves of views each month). Of course, videos are often sensitive — even more so than photos — but Facebook’s privacy controls let you restrict who has access to each clip that you’ve uploaded. Unfortunately, those controls haven’t been working as they should: for the last week it’s been possible to see a full listing of your friends’ Facebook videos, including the name, thumbnail, description, and people tagged in each clip — regardless of whether or not you were supposed to have access to the videos. Clicking on the thumbnail to a video that was supposed to be private would yield a “This video either has been removed from Facebook or is not visible due to privacy settings” message, so you couldn’t watch it. But in some cases an incriminating thumbnail or lewd title could be enough to get someone into a trouble. And even if a video description didn’t show anything incriminating, it could lead to some awkward questions: “So, why can’t I see your video…?” A Facebook spokesperson has confirmed that the site has now fixed the glitch, and that it was live for just over a week. And to be clear, this only affected videos shared by your Facebook friends — you couldn’t view descriptions of videos shared by people you don’t know. Here’s an example of what a video thumbnail looks like:
This is only the latest in a of Facebook , which have run the gamut from sending messages to the to vulnerability to on partner sites. Facebook is obviously very complex and engineers are constantly pushing changes to its code, but given how much personal information users upload to the site (and that’s only going to ), it’s imperative that they lock down these holes. Google+ may be making a lot of headlines, but Facebook’s biggest threat right now is negative perception around privacy and trust, and these bugs don’t help. |
New iPad 2 Ad Highlights Versatility, Tries To Break Through To Doubters | Alexia Tsotsis | 2,011 | 7 | 24 | [youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v_gQHtXsLtU&w=630] “We’ll never stop sharing our memories. Or getting lost in a good book. We’ll always cook dinner and cheer for our favorite team. We’ll still go to meetings, make home movies, and learn new things. But how we do all this will never be the same.” Unveiled today, “We Will Always,” the third iPad 2 commercial by TBWA takes the 2 ads — which emphasized device functionality over hardware specs — one step further. Appealing directly to a mainstream vs. early adopter audience, the new ad emphasizes the iPad 2’s ability to perform functions we’d normally complete analog (or on a PC) like the creation of photo albums, reading a book, following recipes, watching sports, going to meetings, making home movings or teaching our kids handwriting (note the to OS X Lion). Apple isn’t preaching to here. In its attempt to push basic human behaviors forward by emphasizing a digital tool that will make them easier, “We Will Always” sort of reminds me of AT&T’s extremely prescient “You Will” ads from the 1990s, except that the device is actually available now. Watch them both and see for yourself. Uncanny, no? [youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5MnQ8EkwXJ0&w=630] |
Google Plus Has A Problem. Fear Not: I Have A Solution | Jon Evans | 2,011 | 7 | 24 | Google Plus is . I don’t think it will ever be more than the Pepsi to Facebook’s Coke, alas, but it’s much slicker and better designed. It’s too bad that the service has sacrificed a pile of goodwill over the last week by repeatedly publicly shooting themselves in the foot. First there was the . Now it’s gotten much worse: it seems they’re because they suspect that Plus users may be using handles other than their legal names. On the Internet! The horror! Worse yet, the blandly passive-aggressive language to explain/defend this is redolent of the usual brain-dead corporate-speak you see elsewhere: . Oh, Google. We all thought you were better than this. Please see the light and prove us right? Dear , I love you, but your + policies suck so much you will be on my shitlist until you fix them appropriately. — Susana Machado (@azrhey) What’s the problem? The problem is that a whole lot of people have very good reason to want to be pseudonymous online. (Please note: , not ; the latter is a separate issue.) Whistleblowers. Dissidents (eg ). Stalker victims. People who . And , including, of course, our very own late lamented . It’s . But Google Plus’s names policy seems to have been scribbled on a napkin at the last minute, rushed into production while still half-baked, and confused even further by their haphazard, scattershot approach. Famous-in-the-tech-world hardware hacker had her Plus account deleted for a name violation; this deletion was quickly revoked, presumably because Fried is famous in the tech world, but – Turning Internet activists with contacts at Google into your pro bono abuse team is not a scalable appeals process. — Eva (@evacide) OK, granted, it’s a new service, growing faster than anyone expected, and a lot of iteration and making-it-up-as-you-go and stumbles were inevitable, and this is just one of them, and presumably cooler heads will eventually prevail. I would be happy to accept that—if the solution to the problem weren’t staring them in the face while shouting “ ” The of Google Plus, the “ ” according to the NYT’s hyperbolic David Pogue, is that it allows you to organize the people you know into Circles and control which information goes to which group. That’s what it was built for, from the ground up. Meanwhile, when I go to “Edit Profile” page on Google, what do I see? A little field called . Here’s a crazy notion: suppose Google limited how often nicknames could be changed, and then let Plus users define which (if any) of their Circles see their real names, while others can only see their nicknames? Voila. Accountable identities and pseudonymity, all in one package: problem solved. You can thank me later, Google. After you reinstate all those accounts. LatinSuD (no real name given), |
The revolution will not be televised | Steve Gillmor | 2,011 | 7 | 24 | Seems like the Good Old Days are here again as Google+ invites continue to pile up in email. Email is that Y2K technology that jumped the shark in the middle of the decade, back when Twitter introduced realtime direct messages. How little has changed since then is why the blogs are still choked with Google+ analysis or as it can be called: the Scoble Delta. That’s the time between when Robert declares his complete absorption in a social media platform and or when he changes his mind. Robert has a real problem with Google+. It’s early days so he can ignore the vast wasteland of discussion other than about the platform itself. Sure, there are lotsa pictures and maybe some videos and citations of interesting articles (actually not really on the citation front). But mostly the nonPlus conversation is tire kicking, pretending that there’s a real social graph on which to layer a matrix of valuable information. Robert’s problem is that he’s bought into the idea of Circles without being totally sure that they’re something more than Twitter Lists. Already there are calls for ways of pulling Lists over from Twitter. I’ve never thought Lists were useful, certainly not given the time required to assemble them. Circles are easier to manage, at least so far, but I’ve made them as painless as possible by only using two of them, Family which I’ve filled up, and Friends which are everybody else. That’s on the outgoing side. On the incoming side, Circles have been an annoyance more than anything. I can appreciate them as an organizing principle for others, putting people into bins where the signal to noise is tuned somewhat. But my experience of them ranges from PR broadcasting to so-called limited conversations that I can only guess at the participants. One of those came from a colleague at Salesforce where I could ascertain the first twenty or so names followed by a mysterious 109 others. Perhaps this is a result of using the iPad Safari and not the standard browser UI, but I still approach such an interchange with confusion. In effect, the Circle, whose name I cannot see, is a group invitation to discuss a topic without understanding the purpose or rationale of its members. There is work just to get to that level of confusion. I have to rely on the judgement of my colleague (I do) but have no insight into some of whom else I’m presumably talking with. I am comfortable with a clear understanding of who I’m communicating with, which is why I write here, in private to my colleagues on Chatter, and more constrained in groups both open and private. Open Chatter groups still let me know who’s joined, so there’s a sense of why people are there based on interest, job responsibility, and serendipity. But you can’t join a Circle, only create it or add people in the outgoing direction. At least I think so, which is about the same as being so. The net result is the lack of an understanding of the group’s dynamic, except at the level of those who overtly participate. Much is made of engagement in these media, but the role of the lurker is not clear in Plus. None of this precludes the new platform from being successful; there are lots of people who look for these kinds of streams to do the work of synthesizing what’s going on at any one moment or day. In fact, there have and will be successes in the world of publishing for just that reason, as we’ve seen with Howard Stern on Sirius and cross-selling recommendations on Amazon. Transmitting social signals, brands develop. Receiving them, different story. Without a clear feedback loop, what are the consequences of communicating? The Public setting has no such imbalance: I know that anybody can read it once they’re on the network. What I say lives in the context of that knowledge of the environment. Some think of this as limiting, diluting what is said to avoid mistakes in protocol or behavior. I think it’s freeing, navigating me toward communicating to a broad range of listeners with a multifaceted approach that splits the differences as effectively as possible. It’s an art not a science, and I certainly fail all too much of the time. But I’d rather fail at this goal than succeed at others. I’m not alone in this equation. My Friends Circle is the latest, freshest update of the Art of Lurking. Not the stream, which continues to be a shadow of Twitter’s citation engine with few tools to push prioritized messages forward. I’m sure things will improve, but for now the main value is an up to date organic combination of my usual suspects and those who’ve signaled me. Since I’ve published almost nothing to this point, I attribute most of the Circlings to a cascading outward of mining the circles of those who expect something of value from me and my citations. This social graph has unique characteristics, even though right now I can only contribute to building it, not using it. What I’m really closing in on here is not signal to noise but a third vector, the special context that comes from the missing feedback loop in Plus. To illustrate it, I’ll bring up a seeming wild card, Spotify, which I fell in love with over the weekend after receiving a complementary invite. I might have played with it in the freemium edition, but getting a chance to experience it full bore was a gift I much appreciate. In a few minutes I was diving into the past, like the swooping cable car of the last Harry Potter as I tumbled through my favorite haunts, in realtime, streaming, on demand, live. I sampled records I only knew about, like the remixed stripped down version of John and Yoko’s Double Fantasy. It’s not that I could listen for free, or for a subscription price, but that I could choose to jump and return, compare and contrast, all without the notion of owning the material. Rather, experiencing it, exploring it. Like a time machine, jumping from early to late, from Steely Dan’s golden age to Donald Fagen’s solo trilogy. Sampling the third one, released 5 years ago and now in retrospect fitting in with the group’s comeback records and even the live one they produced while still “retired.” This might not resonate for you, but to have this world that once meant so much suddenly returned for the price of a Netflix subscription is stunning in its implications. Not just because it offers the student and the scholar the opportunity to live inside these grooves, but because it implies the possibility to escape the confines of the atrophied and squandered music “business” of the last decades. The opportunity to inspire the material that lives in this new home, replete with Hangouts and conversation and turntable.fm and Track 9 and 3/4. That’s what’s so important about Plus and Circles: the idea that this thing will live and expand, or whatever it does, not in a winner take all game but in a back and forth that will produce the best of us, the thing we call innovation, the thing we know when we see it or even when it just comes close. I can tell you what the landmarks will be, too. When Spotify gets AirPlay support or at least an explanation of how it could work reliably, or when iCloud does it itself. When G+ gets Track so we can assemble our own filtered Circles, which means Twitter will. Robert’s problem is the one he loves to solve, where a group forms that can uniquely navigate in this powerful world of the cloud. That group, by the way, is us. When we delight ourselves, things have changed for the better. Plus in its early form seems on the cusp of greatness, as all networks appear when they find their voice. What will be more interesting is what it triggers around it as it grows, as we learn what it’s like once again to touch the sky. Don’t let the fear mongers get you, that it’s not worth giving up your identity for a bunch of shiny objects. As the services absorb all our data, they make it all the more important to create the subtle signals that define who we are together. How thousands of birds fly in formation, swerving and diving and reversing direction. It can be hard to ignore such a suggestion of the existence of forces larger than we are, of the power of intuition, the structure of the expression encapsulated in a moment of an eyebrow, the economy of the laugh that makes you cry in relief. Stop thrilling us, we say but don’t mean. Waking up, the news of Amy Winehouse chimed from Twitter and tormented the G+ newbies. Last night on the iPhone, I couldn’t figure out how to keep Spotify playing when I switched apps. But unlike G+ which is blocked on the iPad, I could run the iPhone version of Spotify and lo and behold it worked. I surfed the sad news and the glib commentary as she sang in the background. I’d never listened much before, but now that she was gone the tracks shimmered in the luck we have left of her talent. It’s times like these I feel lucky to be born in this age of discovery. In the rush to codify the battles of the day, we miss the triumph of ingenuity of the lurker, the loser, the strip mining of the user if those notions are to be believed. Even in the most secure of streams, there is no post, comment, like, @mention, or citation that doesn’t represent a gift rather than a proffer to the customer. We learn by watching the river flow, missing the boat, daydreaming, shutting down for the night, slapping cold water on the needy. The revolution will not be televised. No, no, no. Photo credit: |
null | Andrew Keen | 2,011 | 7 | 6 | null |
Chatroulette + Google Hangouts= PlusRoulette | Leena Rao | 2,011 | 7 | 24 | Part of Google’s new social platform Google+ includes a group video chat feature called which is and sharing. As my colleague MG Siegler wrote in of Google+, Google Hangouts attempts to solve the social problem of video chat by making it easy for you to let others know that you’re interested in chatting. You can share a piece of content, like a YouTube clip, and everyone in the Hangout can watch it together while talking about it. The feature is designed to create group chats (of up to ten people) within Circles on Google+. Of course it was only a matter of time before someone tried to add a Chatroulette-type of random functionality to the video chat service. has launched as a way to create a public Google+ hangout that anyone can join. You simply create a hangout, and list the URL on PlusRoulette. If you are looking for an already public hangout, PlusRoulette will list available hangouts. also provides a similar function by all the public Google+ Hangouts, but you have create hangout on Google+ separately, then add the URL of the hangout to GPHangouts. With PlusRoulette, you can actually create a Google+ hangout through the site’s interface. Because your name is attached to your Google+ account, the is hopefully avoided. Let the random video chats on Hangouts begin! |
With A New Sense Of Purpose, Google’s Market Cap Closes In On $200 Billion | Leena Rao | 2,011 | 7 | 24 | Google’s stock is reaching its highest value over the past six months, trading as high as $619.50 share On Friday, putting search giant just shy of a $200 billion market cap. In fact, Google’s stock closed at $618.23 on Friday, giving the company a $199.23 market cap. The last time Google traded above $600 was in the first week of March. Of course, at that time the company had a different CEO (now chairman Eric Schmidt), and no meaningful social products on the market. While Google’s stock was skyrocketing earlier this year, in April the company, under the new regime of Larry Page, reported slightly and the company’s stock price fell to $519 per share. As we know, Page took over, and shook up operations at the company. He Google’s core business, the search group, the “knowledge group.” And at the time, Page would be tied to the success of the company’s soon to be launched social product. Google’s stock continued to slide downwards into May and June and dropped significantly end of June, when it was that the FTC was preparing a major antitrust investigation into Google’s “core search advertising business.” On June 24, the day the news broke, Google’s stock value fell to a six month low of $474.88. Of course, days later Google , the company’s most ambitious social product yet. In the week following the launch of Google+, investors to Google’s market cap. That combined with the general strength of the market and health of Google as a company propelled the stock upwards into July. Last week, Google , earning a record $9.03 billion in the quarter. And Page that Google+ has upwards of ten million members (in three weeks) sharing and receiving a billion items per day, which were impressive milestones for the fledgling social network. Page was on the call, explaining that the new management structure he implemented is “working together fabulously,” and helping complete Google’s goal of making “sharing on web like sharing in real life.” And the Street responded. The following day after Google reported earnings, Google’s share price shot up to $597.62 from $528.94 the previous evening. Since then Google’s stock has been climbing upwards. As Google+ hit analysts are now optimistic for Google’s social plans. As the reported last week, Barclays Capital equity researchers are telling investors that “given positive initial traction from users we believe Google is now better positioned to compete and integrate social cues across its products than before, which could drive increased relevancy in search going forward.” As I mentioned above, there are other factors contributing to Google’s rise in stock value, including the general health of Google as a company as well as the current strength of the markets. But it is interesting to take a look into how the significant growth of Google+ has helped contribute to the dollar value of the company, especially after the stock hit a low point in June. As my colleague Erick Schonfeld wrote previously, |
Closing The Redemption Loop In Local Commerce | Erick Schonfeld | 2,011 | 7 | 24 | When it comes to local commerce, the ultimate prize everyone is going after right now is how to close the redemption loop. The redemption loop starts when a consumer sees an ad or an offer for a local merchant, and is completed when the consumer makes a purchase and that purchase can be tracked back to the offer. If you know who is actually redeeming offers and how much they are spending, you can be much smarter about tweaking and targeting those offers. Groupon, LivingSocial, and other daily deal sites have created enormous value by pushing the redemption loop the furthest. When someone buys a daily deal, for instance, that translates into cash for the merchant. But for the vast majority of their deals Groupon and LivingSocial do not track whether or not they are ever redeemed, much less the amount each consumer actually spends at the store or restaurant once they show up. In order to complete the circle and track offers all the way through redemptions, it is necessary to either tap into the payment system or create an alternative way to track redemptions. Different companies are tackling this problem in different ways, but they almost all rely on a shift from emailed coupons to offers delivered through mobile apps. Next Jump CEO Charlie Kim, who recently to power daily deals across his commerce network, sees a shift in targeting from broadcasting deals to narrowcasting them. “Blasting out a deal to everyone in New York is not targeting,” he says. “When you broadcast too much in any category, it is just a lot of noise. Email response rates have plummeted for everyone across the industry. What used to be 10% response rates even a year ago, now you are talking the 1% to 2% level.” The constant barrage of emails from Groupon, LivingSocial, and every daily deal copycat is creating user fatigue that is visible in declining response rates. And that is why mobile is so appealing. If you can send deal notifications to people’s phones based on their exact location and nearby deals, you have the beginnings of narrowcasting. Later on, companies will figure out how to layer on ways to target by income, gender, and other factors as well. Mobile and local commerce go hand in hand. In a few cities, Groupon is testing out and LivingSocial is offering . In both cases, the deals appear on mobile apps and can be redeemed instantly, rather than having to wait a day for the deal to go live, as is the case with their regular daily deals. The downside of these deals is that Groupon and LivingSocial cannot take advantage of their existing deal inventory and they have to actually provision participating merchants with iPhones and iPads so that they can accept the deals and Groupon/LivingSocial can track them. where you have to show a redemption code to the merchant from your phone. and are taking a different approach through their separate partnerships with American Express. Since AmEx is the payment system, it records deal redemptions along with the actual payments. Merchants and consumers don’t have to do anything different from what they normally do. Pay with a credit card and your deal is redeemed. Except it only works if you have an AmEx card and the discount is credited to your account later. Google is trying to link Google Offers to its , which requires an NFC chip in your phone and an NFC reader at the merchant’s checkout. It has the advantage of working with MasterCard, Citi, and other large payment processors. But it also depends on a brand new technology that will take a long time to become widely available. The key to closing the redemption loop is definitely payments. Investor Chris Sacca recently told Kevin Rose in a the best reason why Twitter should buy Square is because Twitter has the broadest reach to distribute offers and deals, and Square has a built-in way to track redemption. This was just an off the cuff remark in a friendly chat (Twitter isn’t even in this business yet), but it makes sense. We are moving from a world of online ads that produce impressions and clicks to online and mobile offers that produce real sales. If the deal companies can figure out a way to actually measure those sales, it could open up local commerce in a massive way that makes what they’ve done so far look like child’s play. |
The Winklevosses Vs. Silicon Valley | Alexia Tsotsis | 2,011 | 7 | 23 | The Winklevoss twins had against Facebook dismissed yesterday, causing tech media to write another slew of “The Winklevosses’ Case Against Facebook Is Over But Wait Actually It Isn’t” headlines. The seven-year battle is indeed not over, as the Winklevosses intend to file a motion , which alleges that the Facebook withheld evidence during the first trial and hopes for a resettlement. The value of the Winklevoss Facebook shares is currently around $200 million (which is about $200 million more than I or probably any of you have). This news comes shortly after former Harvard president Larry Summers called the twins at the Fortune Brainstorm tech conference in Aspen, in response to a question about the veracity of a scene in “The Social Network.” “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,” The twins to Summers’ comments by writing an official-looking letter to the current president of Harvard, condemning Summers’ actions, which only reinforced the “asshole” characterization for many. Because wading through piles of legalese isn’t something that I (or you) can spend most of my time doing, for better or for worse, I don’t understand the ins and outs of the case. But, thanks to “The Social Network” and the simplification engine that is popular culture, the story of the Winklevoss twins versus Mark Zuckerberg is not about the fight over the minutiae of a breach of contract in most people’s minds; It’s about the battle of two archetypes, and the two parties have come to symbolize the two sides of the “execution” (Zuckerberg) versus “ideas” (the Winklevosses) debate. Any entrepreneur worth their ramen will tell you that ideas are a dime a dozen; “Startup ideas are not million dollar ideas,” Y Combinator founder “and here’s an experiment you can try to prove it: just try to sell one.” Larry Summers’ comment about the Winklevosses being assholes because they wore suits to a meeting appeals directly to the Silicon Valley myth of a bunch of dudes wearing hoodies and TEVAs drinking Mountain Dew in a house in Palo Alto while they casually build the next billion dollar company. I’m betting that’s no accident; Summers has slowly made inroads into Silicon Valley, is on the board of Square and is an advisor at . Moreover Summers actually Marc Andreessen (who is on the board of Facebook) through his protegé, Facebook COO Sheryl Sandberg. Sorkin’s masterful “If you guys were the inventors of Facebook, you’d have invented Facebook,” line pretty much sums up the collective ethos of an industry that’s seen Friendster replaced by Myspace replaced by Facebook and lived through to only see more . Welcome to Northern California, we don’t like old money and we don’t like patent trolls. “Hustle over entitlement” should be our state motto. Indeed, when I why Silicon Valley had such vehement feelings about what the twins symbolize on Twitter and yes Facebook, I was overwhelmed with similar responses, “The valley is filled with people who were misfits in school in a world filled with Winklevosses,” said VC said on Twitter. “The Valley knows that the idea was not ground breaking or new. Execution is everything. + some luck,” he said. “It really feels like two jock assholes tried to take money from the little nerdy guy,” said valley veteran , “The right thing for them to do would have been to start-up a competitor to Facebook and not call sour grapes the whole time.” partner gave a longer explanation “If the Winklevii had spent all their time and energy competing with Facebook in the arena of the marketplace rather than in the confines of the courtroom, we here in Silicon Valley would have had more sympathy and respect regardless of whether they had failed or succeeded. If you want our respect, gear up and enter the arena of entrepreneurship and be willing to die and battle for your idea to win the hearts and minds of those in the stands. The users who vote with their time, money and passion count here- nothing else. No court order or settlement can give you the legitimacy and honor that hundreds of millions of users can. Merit matters more. Always.” Summers’ character in also sums it up, “Harvard undergraduates believe that inventing a job is better than finding a job. So I suggest again that the two of you come up with a new project … The two of you being here is wrong! It’s not worthy of Harvard, it’s not what Harvard saw in you. You don’t get special treatment.” I’m sure hundreds if not thousands of entrepreneurs silently cheered at that part. Movies are really good at caricatures, but, as the show, reality has many facets — the Winklevosses are Olympians (which is an accomplishment is it not?) and I’ve met plenty of assholes wearing hoodies. And as we brace ourselves for the second round of Winklevosses’ versus Facebook there’s one thing that’s clear, whatever the fight is about it goes way beyond money, especially for all of us on the sidelines. |
Shocked By News Corp Phone Hacking Revelations? Please. [TCTV] | Scott Merrill | 2,011 | 7 | 23 | “How can you close me up? On what grounds?”
“I’m shocked – shocked! – to find that gambling is going on in here!”
“Your winnings, sir.”
“Oh, thank you very much.” One has to mourn such a collective loss of innocence. The of the British parliament tearfully quizzing News Corp executives over that phone hacking was used in the pursuit of tabloid scoops. The innocence of those same executives who were “ ” at the means used by their staff to keep delivering front page gold. The innocence of on learning that underpaid colleagues routinely sold information to tabloid reporters. And most of all the innocence of the Great British Public — the same public who made books like Evelyn Waugh’s novel ‘ ‘ into a 1938 best-seller, and did the same to Piers Morgan’s two generations later. How shocked — shocked! — they all are to learn that tabloid journalists are, at heart, scumbags. America too is by the revelations — and with only slightly more justification. US journalists have trended towards higher moral ground than their Fleet Street counterparts, but only in recent years — as Paul Collins explains in for Slate. Really, anyone who has ever picked up a Murdoch newspaper, read a book about Fleet Street or laughed at any of the myriad movie characters based on News Corp executives (Elliot Carver in is a perfect, and representative example) has to ask themselves whether they’re really shocked, or even surprised, by the revelations of wrong-doing at the company or whether this is all just a very convenient opportunity to bring about the downfall of a man that almost everyone in the public eye has a reason to hate. In this year’s episode of we ask exactly that question; with Paul offering a spirit defense of the most hated man in media, and Sarah wondering whether such a blasé attitude to corruption and criminality means he’s on the Murdoch payroll too. At one point in the show (which was taped yesterday), Paul suggests that it’s only a matter of time before non-Murdoch newspapers are accused of phone hacking — and worse. And what’s this in today’s Independent? “ ” Shocked! Video below… |
Microsoft’s Online Business For The Year: Over $2.5 Billion …Lost | MG Siegler | 2,011 | 7 | 23 | Microsoft had one hell of a year. Their best ever, in fact, . , but hey, who is? Nearly $70 billion in revenue for what is primarily a software company is amazing. But the great numbers continue to mask one thing: the gaping, blood-soaked wound that is the Online Services Division. Reading Microsoft’s on their earnings, you’d think everything is fantastic in the division. “Online Services Division revenue grew 17% for the fourth quarter and 15% for the full year, primarily driven by increases in search revenue.” Big growth! Awesome! Wait a minute… What Microsoft once again conveniently left out is any talk of how profitable the division is. That’s because it’s profitable. Oh boy is it ever not profitable. The division lost $728 million for quarter. Remarkably, that’s the second-worst loss they’ve ever reported — only $4 million shy of the record $732 million loss in . After , apologists were quick to jump on the “they just need more time” argument. Well, unbelievably, they continue moving the wrong way. Last quarter’s loss was an astounding $726 million. They somehow lost $2 million this past quarter. Even crazier, this is the 22nd consecutive quarter that Microsoft has reported an overall loss in the Online Services Division. There hasn’t been a profit reported since 2005. Think about that for a second. . Revenues are increasing, but the losses are increasing faster. They’re spending well over two dollars for every dollar they earn. And then there is the biggest number of all. For the year, the Online Services Division lost . Yes, Microsoft can afford these losses thanks to their other wildly profitable businesses. But at what point do they start to reconsider their online strategy? Spending more than they’re earning has worked for them in the past with the Entertainment and Devices division, which is now increasingly profitable. But again, Online Services has been losing money for almost 6 straight years now. And this was the worst year yet. Things are getting worse, not better. Windows, Business (Office), and Servers are essentially subsidizing Online Services (Entertainment still doesn’t come close to covering the loses Online Services is seeing). And while Business and Servers had strong years with good growth, the Windows business actually from last year. What happens if the other businesses start to shrink too? Will Microsoft be able to continue to justify the Online loses? For their part, Microsoft mainly blames the loses on the Yahoo deal: OSD operating loss increased due to higher operating expenses, offset in part by increased revenue. Cost of revenue grew $641 million driven by costs associated with the Yahoo! search agreement and increased traffic acquisition costs. General and administrative expenses decreased $157 million or 60% due mainly to transition expenses in the prior year associated with the inception of the Yahoo! Commercial Agreement. Research and development increased $117 million or 11% due to increased headcount-related costs. Don’t overlook another crazy stat: Microsoft was able to decrease general and administrative expenses by for the year, and still lost more than ever. The next few quarters will be interesting to watch. — another online business with a history of losing money. It’s Microsoft’s . And while the deal in the U.S., it still has to be approved in Europe, which may take until October. Also interesting, Skype will actually be a part of OSD, and will instead . Still, as an online-based division, everyone will be watching it alongside OSD. Will the finally be able to turn things around in the coming year? Or will they continue to bathe in blood? The charts below by really drive the point home. |
Gillmor Gang 7.23.11 (TCTV) | Steve Gillmor | 2,011 | 7 | 23 | The Gillmor Gang — Robert Scoble, Andrew Keen, Kevin Marks, and Steve Gillmor — convened for yet another G+ conversation. This one, however, was noted for its evenhandedness as @ajkeen and @scobleizer traded social blows over the new Google service. As someone in the Friendfeed chat on the livecast noted, @stevegillmor seems surprisingly positive about the new service. As Keen observed, that’s because I think the new service is Friendfeed revisited. Of course, it is. But it’s also Twitter without the 140 character limit, Facebook without the unseen authority algorithm, and the Gillmor Gang without a human director (Hangouts). @kevinmarks says it a little differently, seeing G+ growth gaining on Club Penguin. And that’s the fundamental reason Google has a winner, by underlining the best parts of each of these services and floating all boats on a rising tide. |
Daily Crunch: High Chair | Bryce Durbin | 2,011 | 7 | 23 | Here are some recent stories from TechCrunch Gadgets:
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OMG/JK: Lion’s Inverted Roar | Jason Kincaid | 2,011 | 7 | 23 | In this episode we take a look at Mac OS X Lion, the latest release of Apple’s operating system that introduces some key new features: Mission Control, Launchpad, and . Tune in to hear how often MG attempts to touch the screen of his Macbook because he’s so used to the iPad. Yup. Next, we turn to Spotify, the all-you-can-eat music streaming startup that finally launched in the United States after scoring record deals with the major US labels (there had been rumors about an impending US launch for well over a year). Was it worth the wait? We also revisit Google+, Google’s promising social network that keeps making headlines (both good and bad). Here are some recent stories relevant to this week’s topics:
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Applifier Hits 100 Million Installs, Brings Social Game Discovery Bar To Mobile | Rip Empson | 2,011 | 7 | 15 | , the cross-promotional network of social game publishers, announced today that it has delivered over 100 million game installs for free on Facebook. Launched in 2010, Applifier set out on a mission to help game publishers find new users and get their games discovered on the social network, and has since grown like a weed. Now connecting over 800 games, Applifier gives publishers the tools to promote their games across their network of over 150 million monthly active users, via bookmarks and retargeting, and “featured spots”. Of course, the best part about Applifier is that developers don’t pay anything to use the service, they can take advantage of the startup’s paid user acquisition campaigns simply by adding 5 lines of HTML to their Facebook pages or browser game. Just as it is on the Web, the mobile game space is becoming crowded with games, and gamers are always looking for new games to whet their appetite, so today Applifier launched a cross-promotion solution for iOS. Android is set drop later this summer. Like its web version, Applifier Mobile is free. The mobile version will display recommended games on its bar, where users can click to get more information on the game or scroll to view other games. It’s a great way for gamers to find new games and for publishers to have a way for their games to be discovered in the crowded sea of social games. It’s a similar model to the App Store’s “Featured Apps”, which is really one of the few options app developers have in the attempt to get their apps discovered on iOS, besides spending tons of cash on marketing and publicity. Smaller game makers don’t have access to those kinds of funds, and so Applifier’s free-to-use platform offers a great alternative. As Apple recently banned the pay-per-install incentivized apps from the App Store, the fact that Applifier doesn’t pay its users to try out a new game is another leg up. While that may be disappointing for some gamers, it keeps things honest. After all, the company just wants gamers to have another way to find new games that they would enjoy playing. And help the people who make those games find them. “Our value proposition for the players is simple: Hey, you like games. How about some more?” said Applifier CEO Jussi Laakkonen. Back in January, for its cross-promotional platform, which it has used to help launch its new mobile outfit and help independent game makers compete against Zynga and its cross-promotional tools. It’s been an uphill battle, but with over 150 million monthly active users, 100 million installs, and 800 games, it seems to be working. For more, check out Dean Takahashi’s . |
Google+ Ad On Facebook Is Banned | Erick Schonfeld | 2,011 | 7 | 15 | What happens on Google+, stays on Google+. At least that’s the way Facebook would like to see things. Web developer Michael Lee Johnson found that out the hard way. He was trolling for Google+ friends on Facebook by running a Facebook ad asking people to add him to their Circles on Google+. Facebook, apparently, did not like him using its site to build his own social network somewhere else. So it pulled his ads. He writes on : I recently ran a Google+ advertisement on Facebook that got all of my campaigns suspended. – Great. Yeah, Facebook frowns on people promoting competing products with Facebook ads. It’s even in its Terms of Service. But seriously, where else is he going to find friends for Google+? |
Trimit Summarizes Emails, Blog Posts, And More With A Shake Of Your iPhone | Rip Empson | 2,011 | 7 | 15 | Attention spans are short these days, and some might even say the Web isn’t helping this phenomenon. Regardless, time is money, and people are ever-looking for more useful ways to maximize what time they have. Many have little tolerance (or time) for long-form digital content, and we’re seeing the proliferation of the “tl;dr” (too long; didn’t read) mentality as it sweeps the Internet nation. And, for those addicted to Twitter, content that comes in 140 character chunks is the norm, if not the preferred way, to express something shorthand. (Other than emoticons, of course.) Enter the Trimit time-saver. is a that allows you to condense content into 1,000, 500, or 140-character summaries. Essentially, Trimit is a text auto summarizer designed to fit all those things you’re reading on a mobile device into concise synopses and share those over SMS, email, Facebook, Twitter in .txt form — all with a few clicks. And this is pretty nifty feature: Trimit can summarize your text just by shaking your device — like the opposite of mobile Boggle. No longer will your friends have to scan through your wordy Facebook status updates about your cats; just shake your phone to condense all those emotions into 140 characters. Apparently Apple likes the idea, too, as it just featured Trimit in the app store and mentioned it . Today, Trimit gave TechCrunch a little piece of exclusive news, announcing a bookmarklet for the Web, (which is currently in beta and will be available for download within the week) so that you can get all the benefits of the app on your browser, too. For both web and mobile, text can be directly imported from any URL right from within the app using Trimit’s HTML parsing secret sauce. The bookmarklet has many of the same sharing features as mobile, including Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, as well as URL sharing with a shorter summary to Delicious, Digg, Stumbleupon, Reddit, and more. You can print and save as a .txt file, sync with your computer, and import files from other devices to get at that summarizin’. Trimit Founder Nick D’Aloisio, a 15-year-old Australian transplanted to London, said that he, like me, can sometimes be a bit of a waffler, which is where the inspiration for Trimit comes from. And now, through his team’s app and bookmarklet, he’s bringing pithiness to articles and blogs, to email, text, and Tweet composition, and to the transferral of desktop documents to mobile. (Trimit would have been a huge help for those poor souls who had to read my thesis in college.) In the spirit of text summarizing, I should cut it off here. But readers may be curious as to how the auto summary works, and to that end, whether it works well or not. D’Aloisio was willing to share some of the juice behind the app, so here’s a peek. If you’re a words dork like myself, you may just like this. The algorithm uses a process of “extraction” to create a summary of the text to one of the three specified lengths. Without completely revealing the secret sauce, the algorithm scans the text using a precise keyword search to find prominent topics within its content. It disregards general words and fillers, like articles and linking words (“but”, “and”, “when”) and gives words and phrases that are signals of importance, like time and/or place adverbials (the where’s and when’s, like “in California”, for example) greater weight. Trimit also uses what is called “verb stemming”, which allow particular verbs in different conjugations to still be counted by the algorithm, like “speak” versus “spoke”, for example. This makes sure that past conjugations stay that way and don’t somehow pop into the future tense. The algorithm counts the occurrence of key phrases as well, taking into account the position of those phrases in the passage, so that they remain in order when summarizing. And though linking words are often dismissed, contradictory conjunctions like “however” are given more weight because they often are included in overviews, just as facts, figures and quotes are valued higher as well. As you may have guessed, it all works on a points-based ranking system, and the words and phrases that are ranked highest, show up in the summary. I’ll leave it at that, but you can learn more about Trimit in the video below. The Trimit team is currently in the process of raising a seed round. [vimeo=http://vimeo.com/25680334 width=”640″ height=”380″] Oh, and just for good measure, for those who are curious, here is Trimit’s autosummary of this post: Not too shabby. |
… On Twitter | Alexia Tsotsis | 2,011 | 7 | 15 | Philosophically there is no more arbitrary milestone than the passage of time, each year we celebrate the passing of another year, see what I mean? That’s why Twitter’s second five-year anniversary milestone of 350 billion tweets delivered and 600K users signing up daily falls a little flat (Twitter celebrated its “first” five year anniversary — commemorating when the first tweets were sent — back in March). The torrent of tech announcement posts about INSERT COMPANY HERE hitting 100K users or downloads or “shares” or tiddlywinks or badges is perpetual enough that all tech news sort of blends into a river of user numbers and APPLE VS. GOOGLE VS. TWITTER. Sigh. It is amazing to think that Twitter launched publicly five years ago today. When Mike Arrington first wrote, in 2006 he had no idea that one day the TechCrunch Twitter account would be nearing a 2 million-follower distribution channel and that he himself would reach 82K. Very few would have predicted that the SMS notifications system with no vowel in its name would turn into a seven billion dollar company employing 500 people. “If this was a new startup, a one or two person shop, I’d give it a thumbs up for innovation and good execution on a simple but viral idea,” Mike wrote at the time. Mike’s Twttr launch post is striking in its simplicity, at 327 words it’s sort of like the blogger version of the calm before the storm. The social network (?) microblogging platform(?) new form of mass media (?) has been the subject of incessant free press throughout its upward trajectory. There was a period of time after its breakout at SXSW 2007 where everywhere you’d look you’d see an “… On Twitter” headline: “Man Proposes To Wife … On Twitter.” “Woman Gives Birth… On Twitter.” “Shaquille O’Neal … On Twitter” “Man Tweets From Space … On Twitter.” “Bronx Zoo Cobra … On Twitter.” At this point it’s news if something doesn’t happen “… On Twitter.” So why can’t we shut up about it? In a sense Twitter is a mirror for life and human connection. There is a unique feeling one gets watching the flood of tweets from strangers pour in for the #iranelection, #WorldCup, #WWDC or any microhashtag on Twitter. A crucial part of my morning ritual is catching up with news on Twitter watching the quips made by friends pour in on equal footing with commentary made by media luminaries. Thus I’ve been asking people all morning (on Twitter) about what Twitter, a service built essentially to communicate spurts of human activity, means to them. I’ve gotten back so much information it is tough and kind of meta to process, kind of like Twitter itself. A sampling of important Twitter moments I’ve heard so far, in more or less chronological order: When Apple released iTunes podcasting (because it forced Odeo to pivot), March 2006: the first tweet, July 2006: we cover Twttr, Twttr becomes Twitter, March 2007: it’s the breakout hit of SXSW, the fail whale supplants the fail cat, the #hashtag is invented, a plane is Twitpic’d landing in the Hudson river, CNN and Ashton’s race to a million followers, Oprah joins, the co-founders play musical chairs, Twitter buying mobile client Atebits (signaling the end of friendly developer ecosystem relations), #new Twitter, more downtime, the Iran riots, the time Twitter was hacked and so on and so forth. The most striking thing is that most Twitter users have their own unique list of moments that cemented Twitter’s importance (for those that can tolerate slideshows Business Insider has a really good one ). If you suspend disbelief on what percentage are spambots, Twitter has 200 million users whose #1 Twitter milestone is or the day they set up and account. The company hopes by the end of 2013 to have 1 billion users (more than Facebook) in addition to $1.5 billion in revenue and an over 5,000 person staff. Just typing out that sort of ambition is sort of painful when the service still shows me that I’m following people who I’m not and is all over the place with regards to a steady revenue stream. For what it’s worth I’d pay Twitter $10 bucks a month just to archive and thread my DMs. In fact, I think there’s many that would do the same and today we’re all wishing Silicon Valley’s charismatic but sort of flakey friend a very happy second fifth birthday; Because honestly we’re all rooting for them. |
Guest post: European venture capital and a theory of evolution | Mike Butcher | 2,011 | 7 | 15 | All you ever hear about these days with European venture capital is either that it is miles behind the US or that it can contribute greatly to economic growth and should be subsidised by governments. While I mostly agree with both these statements I think they are missing the central point. By investing in early stage European technology companies you can make a lot of money if you get it right. I don’t understand why people shy away from this. Perhaps people feel unable to make this case and quietly step around it. Or, in these austere times, maybe us Europeans feel uncomfortable being outspoken capitalists. Yet I feel strongly that the evolution of virtually any successful market anywhere in the world was fuelled by the opportunity to make money, and I don’t believe European VC is any different. The European early stage investment market as a whole has under-performed over the last decade. I’d put this down to an over-supply of cash, spurred on by the success seen across the pond, combined with an immature start-up ecosystem, all leading to too much indiscriminate investing. At the same time, I don’t believe that the European market is performing as badly as reports suggest. It’s too early to measure the performance of funds from around 2005 onwards and the data available for the industry in Europe is poor and unrepresentative due to less regulation and disclosure – estimates put the number of funds that are included in industry reports at less than 5% of the total market. As a result of this real and perceived underperformance, combined with the worst recession for decades, there has been a Darwinian like culling of the European VC industry. According to the EVCA, the number of funds dropped from 1,600 in 1999 to 596 in 2009 and, out of those remaining funds, only 30% are considered active. Despite this, European innovation is continuing at a fast pace. INSEAD’s latest report, ‘The Global Innovations Rankings and Report 2008 – 2009’ ( ) may rank the US as the innovation leader, but three European countries – Germany, Sweden and the UK – are close behind, each ranking miles above the global average. Europe generates around 30 exits per year of more than $100M – this is still some way behind the US but, when you look at things proportionately, between funding available and the size of the exit market, Europe looks like a more attractive place to invest. The early stage investment market is now 6x larger in the US and yet the subsequent exit market is only around 3x larger and I believe there are many exciting European exits in the pipeline that will close this gap even further. This all means, I would argue, that there is now a clear imbalance between supply and demand in the European market that creates great opportunities for investors. This argument becomes more compelling when you learn that European start-ups on average have lower entry valuations and require less capital to build. From living in New York it is clear that the US market is overheated; all you hear about is too much money trying to get into every deal leading to both over-inflated valuations and rushed decision making that will most likely bring down performance levels. And the knock-on effect of this is rising costs for talent, office space and just about anything else an early stage company needs. Another important point to make here is that the world’s top ten tech companies, all US based, have unprecedented levels of cash reserves currently standing at around $300B. A decent percentage of this cash is held in Europe and it is not tax efficient to bring it back to the US. Assume that this percentage is say 20% and that leaves $60B of cash sitting in Europe with little to do other than buy or invest in European based companies – certainly a factor in the Microsoft acquisition of Skype. What can European funds do to take advantage of this opportunity? First, they need to raise a fund, which is easier said than done in difficult economic times and where investors tend to focus on past performance rather than future opportunity. Second, European funds should have proven entrepreneurs on the team with real experience of the markets they are planning to invest in. Lastly, I believe European funds need to adopt a US style focus on out-size returns and get themselves and their portfolio companies thinking ‘big’ to take full advantage of the market opportunity. I think, all too often, there is an overly defensive attitude in Europe and a lack of belief in the global potential of the business – and this needs to change if Europe wants to become more and more relevant as a technology centre. The European market has evolved and will continue to evolve – and the main driver for this will always be money. Current vintages could very well cause a few surprises and deliver a level of performance that surpasses anything we have seen before and at the same time close the gap with our friends in the US. |
The Great European VC Debate – Timid, risk averse, bad? Or just misunderstood? | Mike Butcher | 2,011 | 7 | 15 | Nic Halstead threw a rabid cat amongst the pigeons this week when he spoke to about his disappointment in those European VCs who, he says, remain risk averse compared to thir US colleagues (Datasift just raised $6m from two US VCs). Towards the end of our video interview Nick said: “We’re still doing something quite high risk at Datasift. We’re trying to disrupt the data business. There’s no other company doing this so it’s hard to prove. The European scene is still very set on the attitude of what are you revenues, what have you proved to date. With Tweetmeme we made probably a million dollars last year, but that’s not Datasift, which is unproven. So the reality was we had to go to the US [to fund raise]. People ‘got it’ in Europe but the valuation difference with the US was not even close. It comes down to price. In the US you will get a higher valuation. It is changing here – but VCs are still risk averse at the Series A level. But it’s a self fulfilling prophecy if they [don’t take risks]. My investors expect a billion dollar company, with over a 10+ exit. In Europe, VCs go for models that are proven. US VCs will pick up something hot much earlier. I’d like to see European VCs moving forward on risk.”
Nick followed this up with an interview in the , pretty much repeating this. So I decided to canvas the views of VCs, Angle investors and entrepreneurs in Europe to ask what they thought of the situation and Nick’s comments. We’ve had a guest post on the matter from Jos White of Notion Capital, . But many would only comment off record: ANON VC: “He’s a prat. I tried getting in touch with him and to meet with him — I chased him endlessly and he replied once every 10 times and was super flaky and then would just go quiet for months at a time. We actually *tried* to woo him and he was totally unreliable/nonresponsive. His comments [about European VC] really ticked me off.”
(Nick says this may have been a case where he didn’t think the size of the fund was big enough, hence the non-replies.) ANON VC: “We cold called to him some time back and was told he was not looking for money, then or later. We are pretty high performing VC by now ([high profile startups named here]), so if he keeps people like us of his list of firms he spent time pitching to it is a bit rich to complain after.”
KIMA Ventures, Israel/Europe: “I pass on this investment (Datasift) because the valuation was just crazy for a company with almost no revenue, no traction, no customer, an unfinished product and a closed beta. The vision is very interesting ok…but we all know that big exits are very rare. It’s sure that European exits are a lot less impressive and important that the US ones. European investors needs to take that in account and not invest in European startups at US valuations. I’m seeing a lot of US companies also fighting to raise money with US VC’s. It’s not easy at all. What is true is that you have a lot less european VC’s than in the US for ten of thousands of startups funded each year in Europe. VC’s prefer to invest is less risky project.”
Richard Titus, UK/US Angel “Nothing surprising here.. I agree with him.”
ANON VC : “We cold called to him some time back and was told he was not looking for money, then or later. We are pretty high performing VC by now so if he keeps people like us of his list of firms he spent time pitching to it is a bit rich to complain after.”
ANON Investor: No doubt here that this business is too high risk for most European VCs. And those VCs aren’t as stupid as one might think. In terms of
– have you tried asking Datasift their product pricing? It’s a mess, or a VC-value-add opportunity ;-)
– twitter dependence? hello?
– hedge funds as a key buying opportunity. Or at least Datasift think they are. But have you spoken to the hedge funds who they might target? I have – they won’t pay for this as it is structured now. But of course:
– Nick Halstead is insanely great. We need more of him
– it’s a punt, but it may well make a good return – despite the issues above. Cf tweetdeck (“a business without a business model built on a business without a business model” – Ian Dodsworth, founder)
– the next pivot could be brilliant I think this just shows that the cost of US capital is lower (i.e. the bar to raising US capital is lower) than European capital. Which is for a variety of reasons including the greater upside that the successes in the US deliver.
Chipper Boulas, Angle Investor, Paris “Disagree that EU investors are not entrepreneur friendly – they are in the business of backing entrepreneurs and hoping for success – however, agree they are risk averse and see themselves more as spotting current winners and providing growth capital rather than intuitively spotting future winners and taking the risk to help them create the success. They therefore spend too much time on current and future financials, and not enough time on user engagement and market potential. There are of course exceptions, but not enough. Most EU investors do not operate on the model that if you create something useful/fun/engaging that a lot a people want, you will find a way to monetize. Most of the time, revenue models change, so they are difficult to predict with precision in advance. In addition, some of the biggest internet plays are network models with increasing returns that require a critical mass before turning profitable. Google took several years before figuring out their revenue model (and it was Overture, not Google, that showed the way). Things are getting better, but too slowly. A few of us in Europe, including myself, are working on raising funds and creating a better funding model with smart capital that incorporates risk taking and mentoring at scale. Stay tuned!”
ANON VC: “I like Nick and wish him the best. I know he’s frustrated but painting all vc’s with the same brush doesn’t make sense. I know our term sheets are the exact same as US vc termsheets. We have done three investments in the US. One we drove, one was led by another UK fund, and a third was led by a US fund. The terms were nearly identical. We looked briefly at Datasift, but were upfront that we could never lead a $6m round. So, we politely passed. It doesn’t make sense for anyone to publicly debate Nick. We wish him the best, but the industry is more open and transparent than it has ever been. Finally, I don’t buy the theory that European VCs don’t take risk! How can that be true? Most have lost money. They are definitely taking risk. It just might not be the kind of risk that some entrepreneurs agree with.”
Ondrej Bartos, Partner, Credo Ventures: “I think there is certainly a valid point in what Nick is saying. Similarly, us VCs could argue that entrepreneurs in Europe don’t understand risk, cannot plan their businesses and over value their ideas. The European entrepreneurial as well as venture capital ecosystem is just still far from the U.S., not even mentioning Silicon Valley. I am a strong believer in European startups and entrepreneurs, we are just in a different environment, and no wonder majority mindset on both sides of the barricade is different from the U.S.
Julian Ranger, Angel Investor: “Whilst Nick can be over-agressive in what he says sometimes, in this case he is correct – European VCs are more risk averse than US VCs. Now I don’t agree with all that happens in the US (too high valuations for some deals and for startups too, and too much on reputation at times), but there is no doubt we need to emulate them in some areas: a) If you’re going to change an area with new technology then it is likely you’re going to need a series A before you have revenue or any significant revenue. Now you must have a revenue plan in my mind – build it and they will come is not an option except for very few; however, European VCs are all about traction – without you get nothing. b) Not everything has to be trendy/of the moment – the best disruptions come from something new after all. European VCs need to look beyond the numbers to what an idea really is and try and get beyond just the headlines. c) Before everything else a good team far outweighs a mediocre one – bet on our good teams; they will do well. US VCs tend to operate on the 1 in 10 model that Angels use – not sure that European VCs do or even a 1 in 5 model; VCs are risk capital not bank capital – take risks, but educated ones – which means working harder to identify the real winners and taking risks.
ANON serial Entrepreneur: “It’s not just valuations but the contempt many investors show Founders. The ‘let’s build it together’ is rhetoric before the deal and while the sun shines but any bumps in the road and the fluffy world of start-up entrepreneurship is forgotten and their true attitude is revealed. They only care about the numbers and don’t give a shit about your ‘vision’. That is some times warranted, but more often it is fatal to innovation. VC’s hold such a pivotal role in the start-up industry – which is ironic when the vast majority of European VC’s have Founded entirely nothing in their lives. Worse, many have never worked in tech previously, even worse some have never even run a team. How does that qualify them to judge the value of a founder to a business, or understand the effort which goes into creating something from nothing? The startup world is not banking. Dog eat dog within a startup team, of which the VC is a member, does not build highly accelerated, efficient, game-changing creativity or ultimately, profit. Many VC’s are both ignorant AND arrogant – an unpleasant combination and not constructive when trying to incubate the next Google.”
ANON VC: “There is a huge bubble in US valuations right now so while European VC’s are really too risk averse they are also not insane :-)”
Bill Lao, Ireland-based Angel: “SOSventures is a US based global VC firm that now has a serious European practice and as European venture partner I do feel that there are better value investments here in Europe now.”
Joakim Jardenberg VD/CEO, Mindpark AB, Entrepreneur “I think the problem is twofold. On seed/angel level there are not enough good objects to invest in. I see really slow flow of teams WORTH investing in. Seed money is not a democratic right just because you can juggle Powerpoint and draw a hockeystick in Excel. Then the problem turns the other way around once the company has matured slightly, and I agree fully with the comments from Nick. The larger European VC:s are, with to few exceptions, chickens. To make matters worse they are slow, cumbersome and not really worth the effort. I can agree on the point of view. Larger VCs are rather put the money into the back with 3% p.a. instead of into a high risk startup. In general I would describe the available capital in Europe more then growth capital then (high risk) venture capital. Many of the VC’s fuel the, controversial discussed, copy-cat culture. In startup pitches they usually ask you for your “american roll-model” or “who has proofed the model already?”. This makes it basically almost impossible for true innovators to get started BIG. On the other hand they want to see (immediate) profitability / revenue generation by the business model. This is, indeed, “almost like a bank loan” (as stated in the WSJ interview). This is why, especially in the early stage phase, some bigger angel investors are able to secure such big stakes in early startup companies: they’re the only once willing to invest. And on top: VC’s in Europe look very strongly into the existing shareholder structure – so if you have one or two of the known angels on board and you do a copy-cat – you get funded. I think the “under-value” issue brings European VC’s under pressure: US investors move more and more into Europe and hence the higher valuations. If European VC’s want to play the game, they have to get into that game.
ANON VC: “We do what we can to walk the walk and align ourselves with the team. I hear the comments and I am sure it was true in some cases historically and some even today. But i find that it is hard to fight prejudice and ingrained opinions against Europe (I realise this especially listening to the valley based VCs and entrepreneurs – its not pretty). The best thing we can do is prove them wrong by executing – this goes for both VCs and entrepreneurs. Be more aggressive, take more risk, have higher ambition levels and build a valley work ethic / culture into the teams, even as they grow. We are in the same boat fighting the same fight and wanting the same things (the companies to do as well as they humanely can). The sooner we get on the same side of the table, the sooner we can be stronger in making an impact. Globally.”
Ben Tompkins, Eden Ventures, UK “There was about 10x more vc money raised in the US last year than in europe. Valuations over there are at bubble proportions. We are seeing valuations of usd 8m pre money for slideware. This is crazy. Deals are better value in europe. We have some great companies and prices are not as crazy. We welcome the competition from us vcs as it will increase the opportunity. The only thing that will change this is more decent exits in europe which will drive confidence. some usd billion ipos would be helpful here in Europe.”
Haakon Overli, Dawn Capital, UK/Europe “We would like to congratulate Datasift for getting funded; it is a great achievement for any business. There are more US than European funds which means more strategies are followed in the US. What is not clear is that all US strategies are superior to the ones followed in Europe, so the picture is perhaps more nuanced than Nick sets out. In Europe, there now are a new class of VCs – such as Dawn – investing earlier than the incumbents who are delivering great performance for their investors. In Europe, we feel we are in this together to make entrepreneurs do well and we really hope that Datasift does very well”.
ANON Serial Entrepreneur: “Lot to investigate – specifically the mismatch of the public statements from VCs and their private actions.”
Alex Hoye, Angel “My view is, to paraphrase William Gibson, that the future of constructive, non zero-sum game deal-driven investors is emerging in Europe, but it is not evenly distributed. In fact, it is still lightly-distributed, but it is certainly coming. On the flip side, it is up to the startups to get closer to a world-beating speed of execution and either show the real ability to sell for 10s of millions quickly or have real break-out opportunities on limited investment. This too I am seeing in some of the companies I am working with like Skimlinks and BraveNewTalent which are UK companies, but taking the game to the US and beyond, playing at an international level.”
Anon entrepreneur: “Interestingly, I do think there is starting to be more aggression on the early stages by institutions from what I am seeing – they take a decent chunk, but a limited number of VCs are back in the ‘we’ll back this team and concept’ game rather than ‘that’s really interesting, come back when you have a ?500K+ revenue run rate and we’ll think about it. That’s an important change.”
Hampus Jakobsson, Strategic Alliances EMEA at Research In Motion “I agree. I feel that few have the guts and are as visionary as US VCs. I think it is due to the fact that most EU VCs are not entrepreneurs but pure “corporate finance bred boys” or “wine and dine talkers” so they don’t understand risk and how to work with entrepreneurs. European VCs should recruit seasoned entrepreneurs. There are some exceptions, but lord there’s too few.”
Robin Klein, TAG: In general I would agree with Nick. Euro VCs tend to be far more wary of early stage companies. At the same time there is a really good trend we see emerging – that of US VCs investing in UK companies. But without being too defensive, I should point out that TAG and Index Seed have certainly done their bit. Index have made more than 20 seed investments in the last 12 months and are active backers of Seedcamp. TAG has backed – from Seed – and continues to support companies such as: MindCandy, Moo, Zoopla, Wonga, Songkick, FreeAgent, Graze, Skimlinks, MyBuilder and Fizzback.
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Don't like the TechCrunch re-design? Then try one of these. | Mike Butcher | 2,011 | 7 | 15 | Don’t like the new TechCrunch.com re-design? Some enterprsing person has created “ “, a site which parses TechCrunch content through one of four diferent design. You can choose TechCrunch laid out at the New York Times, Hacker News, A Google+ account, or the Classic Design of old. It just goes to show, beauty is in the eye of the beholder – and so, it would appear, is the beauty of blog design. |
Google+: One Hell Of A Trojan Horse | Devin Coldewey | 2,011 | 7 | 15 | There’s no shortage of in the air these days. Overeager pundits and soothsayers are hoping to be among the most visible voices on the net saying which service or company it’s going to topple, why it’s going to fail or succeed, and why it should or shouldn’t be more like this or that. It all seems awfully premature, considering Google+ is just getting started, and I don’t mean in user numbers. We’re all familiar enough with Google products to know that practically everything they’ve ever done was launched early and incomplete, whether it went on to succeed (Gmail, Android) or not (Orkut, Wave). Most if not all of the big talk surrounding the network right now will have to be adjusted in a month, six months, and a year from now. It’s fun to speculate, but Google is always playing the long game. Google+ isn’t just half-baked; they haven’t even put it in the oven yet. Let’s not judge the cookie by the dough. Is it an alternative to Facebook? Yes. To Twitter? Yes. To Yammer, to productivity suites, to Skype, to Office, to Microsoft, to Apple? If it isn’t now, you better believe it will be. Google is like a kind of Troll-Borg. You think they put out something that stands on its own, a “Facebook killer” or an “iPhone killer” — but it’s only later that you realize that the separation from the mothership was just an illusion, and the entire bulk of Google was right there the whole time. But it’s too late — you’ve been assimilated. Problem? I a long time ago about how all these little projects of theirs would be connected and unified, the way the Romans unified their empire by joining all the little roads to their big roads. I thought it was going to happen with Chrome OS, but a tumultuous mobile market meant a late start there; Google+ is more of a clear step in that direction now. The thing is, as I wrote then, you can’t take the measure of Rome by looking at just of their roads. And you can’t take the measure of Google+ right now, because it’s just the first mile. The best way to debut the connecting tissue of their web empire wasn’t to make an OS — the market wasn’t ready for that. So after an OS, what is the most popular and accessible platform? Mobile ( ) then Facebook, around which there’s growing enmity, distrust, and boredom. Iron: hot. Pile all the Google services into that big wooden horse and say “here’s a nice, secure alternative for sharing things with your friends.” Don’t mention the fact that lurking inside it (waiting for a reveal a few months down the line) are a hundred ways of sucking users away from their existing services — in ways that neither Facebook, Microsoft, nor Apple can. Is it about social? Yeah, because that was the face Google needed to wear this week. Beware of geeks bearing gifts. I suppose I’ve done what I cautioned everyone else not to do: speculate on a product that’s barely even there. 10 million users is great, but the meteoric rise and fall of countless web services can bear witness to the fact that the first month is probably the important in a service’s lifetime. Around Thanksgiving we might be talking about how silly we all sounded talking up the ghost town that is Google+. Or maybe some of us will be calling an emergency meeting in the board room because Google just ate our business model alive. Whatever the case, I feel confident in saying that Google’s long haul plan for + is subtle, sinister, and far-reaching. Not , exactly, but cunning and ruthless. Sure, right now it seems like it’s aimed at Facebook and to a lesser extent Twitter, but when the stakes are this high, you better believe they’ve got guns pointed at in the room. Comparing features with its immediate competitors misses the point, and at any rate the landscape shifts so frequently that such comparisons are fleeting to begin with. Think big, and think sneaky. Eric Schmidt seems like a nice guy, but I sure would rather have Zuckerberg or Ballmer for an enemy. I guess we can continue to talk about it, but personally, I’m getting some popcorn first. |
Viadeo challenges LinkedIn in China as CEO moves from the Valley to Beijing | Monty Munford | 2,011 | 7 | 15 | These are supposedly heady days for professional social networks. (At time of writing, 12/07) shares are now trading at $100, more than double its IPO price of $45 and valuing the company at more than $10 billion. But there are significant headwinds ahead for LinkedIn in its post-IPO form. Its reliance on third party platforms and the recent closure of its APIs to platforms such as as well as a refusal to even open them with Salesforce leave it vulnerable. Moreover LinkedIn may find itself under considerable pressure from Google later this year when that company launches Google+ for Business. Consequently the company needs to look for other markets to raise revenues and as ever, that market is China… but LinkedIn may have left it too late. The biggest professional social network in China is , which has seven million members and is now garnering more than 350,000 new users per month, a figure that is up 300% over the past quarter. Interestingly, Tianji is 100% owned by , the Paris-based professional social network that has more than 35 million members worldwide and is increasingly challenging the hegemony of LinkedIn. Last year the company’s CEO Dan Sefarty left Paris with his wife and three teenage daughters to set up an office in San Francisco less than 40 miles from LinkedIn’s base. Twelve months later he is on the move again and this time he is heading to China, and Beijing. “We had three reasons for setting up an office in San Francisco. We wanted great PR, we wanted to work with Silicon Valley developers and we wanted to add another cultural layer to what was initially a non-English speaking company. All three have been incredibly successful; a huge achievement,” says Sefarty. Viadeo has been looking at China for some time. In 2008 it invested in Tianji until buying the company in 2009. Sefarty will be working closely with Tianji CEO Derek Ling, previously of Apple and Motorola, who emphasises, not surprisingly, that the Chinese market is different from that in the West. “Social networks in China have to be more engaged communities; utterly engaged. There have to be more social elements such as events, discussions and forums that are used as ice-breakers for our members. First they connect on our network, and then they go and meet each other.” But all that twinkles in China is not necessarily diamonds. Two weeks before LinkedIn went to IPO on May 19th this year, they were not the first professional social network to do so. Two weeks earlier, Renren, the so-called Facebook of China, went to the New York Stock Exchange and raised around $743 million. Consequently Renren’s share price has subsequently slipped 45% as any number of clones has sprung up trying to emulate Renren’s model. Back to Sefarty: “In six months’ time there will be 300 clones of our business in China, but we have a head-start on them and we have to build on it… now. My move to Beijing is operational. It’s about getting one million new members every month over the next year and then monetising the market in China, proving that we can make money in emerging markets. “This is also a strong internal message that we are bringing more brain (sic) to the Chinese market and dedicating financial resources there. This is a strategic move that shows how China is very important to our business,” he says. Sefarty plans to spend a year in Beijing, to build a sales team and double Tianji’s staff to 100 people before bringing his family back to San Francisco, a move that will apparently delight his teenage daughters. Twelve months is a long time in professional social networks and while Viadeo is often referred to as the ‘French LinkedIn’, perhaps in 2012 that may change. It’s one thing to be known as the ‘Chinese LinkedIn’, quite another for LinkedIn to become the ‘American Viadeo’, but it’s not out of the question. |
The Endless Bubble Debate: Kedrosky Vs. Wadhwa | Erick Schonfeld | 2,011 | 7 | 15 | [youtube=”http://youtu.be/DMRM1RwvTmA”] With valuations for tech companies going through the roof from Facebook on down to , the endless sees . and recently got into it on . Professor Wadhwa thinks it will all end badly with Grandma losing her piggy bank. Kedrosky points out that bubbles usually occur at the tail end of a market run-up, and he predicts we have at least a good 4 to 5 years left for this one. He compares Wadhwa to a central banker trying to take the punch away at a party before the party even begins. Wadhwa sticks to his guns and that “when this little bubble around social media bursts” it will take down all tech valuations. It’s a spirited debate. Watch the video and tell us who you think is right in comments. |
Fighting Ticketmaster, The Edge Invests In Ticketing Startup | Rip Empson | 2,011 | 7 | 15 | Ticket Text, the makers of , a white label mobile ticketing solution, announced today that they have raised $350,000 in seed funding from , a.k.a. David Evans, or the guy who plays guitar for U2. Several other Dublin and London-based angels participated in the round, with Ticket Text’s total investment now at just over $1 million. The Irish startup will use this infusion of capital to expanding its service in Europe and eventually to the U.S. has long been a source of grief for consumers, with its high fees and charges, especially considering the ticket company has long had a nearly monopolistic grip on music ticketing. Today, venues, promoters, and artists are looking to bring their ticketing solutions back in-house — out of the reach of the ticket agencies that control pricing, customer data, etc. But existing choices really just consist of outsourcing to an agency or using a licensed ticketing solution. Ticket Text wants to change all that by providing a low cost white label ticketing and venue management solution that attempts to put the control over ticketing back in the hands of the little guy. For starters, there are no upfront, annual or customization costs, and all the data is owned by the client. The solution also offers an automated refund process, and Ticket ABC users can reissue their tickets, both pain points for a number of ticket solutions. Ticket ABC also offers an integrated wireless solution that enables clients to scan mobile and eTickets at multiple places within a venue. Founder and CEO of Ticket Text Mark McLaughlin said that the team has made a point to architect mobile into the core of the Ticket ABC solution, because they believe that ticketing will become commoditized, so the key for venues and ticketing companies in the future will be to know where their customers are at the venue when they scan their ticket, so that they can communicate with them there and up-sell. Ticket ABC has also been optimized for mobile so that consumers can purchase tickets from mobile browsers and apps. Other great features include the ability to create seat maps, set zone prices, seat statuses, and seat rankings — and for the consumer the ability to choose seats when buying tickets — all baked into the solution’s UI. And because Ticket ABC recently added support for another payment service provider, if there are outages or problems, the solution has the ability to switch providers. Always good to have a “Plan B”. Lastly, Ticket ABC comes with social features that allow its clients to promote their events on Twitter and Facebook, so that users can share what events they’re attending and when they plan to purchase their tickets. The solution also adds a “Buy Tickets” button to a venue or business’ Facebook page, which is a nifty little feature. And because venues may not want to create a whole new separate site for ticketing, the solution provides an embeddable widgets to that ticket providers can add the solution to their own site. As to the cost of the solution, there is a flat fee of 5 percent, plus a 99-cents per transaction, which includes payment service provider costs, credit card and hosting fees. Ticket Tex hopes that by charging transactional fees rather than charging upfront, annual or customization fees, the pricing will allow client revenue to be generated proportionally to the costs of using the solution. Ticket ABC’s current clients include , , and . For an example of a Ticket ABC solution, check one out . |
Whoops! Sears.com Accidentally Lists iPad 2 For $69 | Jordan Crook | 2,011 | 7 | 15 | Anyone looking for a $69 16GB ? Apparently, some IT guy over at one of third-party resellers, GSM On Sale, had a bit of a face-palm moment: the site temporarily listed the iPad for $69. Oddly enough, the listing claims that you’ll save a whopping $30 by taking advantage of this deal, posting an original price of $99.99. Honestly we’d snatch up an iPad at either of those price points, if at any time, in any world, it was possible to do so. Sadly, it is not. The item has been de-listed, even though the page still remains if you have the . Right now lists the 16GB iPad 2 for $499.99, so you’d actually see savings of almost 85 percent had this deal been for real. We’re not sure if purchases made before the de-listing were honored, so if you’re one of the lucky few who stumbled upon the page early, let us know if they held up their end of the accidental bargain. We’ll be sure to keep your name confidential so the millions of people who paid $499 and up don’t come after you in your sleep. |
Just When You Thought It Was Safe: Skype Vulnerabilities Emerge | Jay Donovan | 2,011 | 7 | 15 | Silly hackers are always trying to ruin the Internet and they have found yet another target in the form of popular VOIP software Skype. According to , linked from : “Skype suffers from a persistent Cross-Site Scripting vulnerability due to a lack
of input validation and output sanitization of the ‘mobile phone’ profile entry.
Other input fields may also be affected.” I love that—output sanitization. Basically what this means is that an attacker can embed JavaScript in the mobile phone field of his or her profile description. Skype doesn’t filter this field which means this JavaScript can be executed when a contact of the attacker logs in. From there, all kinds of bad things can happen like account access or even system level access. According to Levent Kayan, the current version of Skype is affected (ver. 5.3.0.120 ) and Skype is aware of the issue and should have a patch available next week. Skype is downplaying the issue a bit noting that “the attacker must appear in the victim’s list of frequent contacts” in order to take advantage of the security issue. What is the moral of the story? Until next week, remember that your mother-in-law overseas (with whom you Skype on a regular basis) can now compromise your system and bring you down! Beware! [via ] |
Rugged Pocket Cam Round-Up: Toshiba BW10, Samsung W200, Kodak Easyshare Sport And Playsport | Devin Coldewey | 2,011 | 7 | 15 | Summer is here, and there’s a good chance some of you are thinking of picking up something to document your vacations with. iPhones and point-and-shoots are all well and good, but if you want to take it to the pool or the beach, it’s nice to feel sure that an errant splash isn’t going to disable your camera permanently. We’ve got a few water-hardened Flip-esque pocket cams here for you to choose from, but which deserves your hard-earned cash? I’m not including image samples because to be honest, all these cameras have tiny sensors and small, weak lenses, which combine to produce noisy images with poor sharpness and so on. But they’re cheap and vacation-proof (i.e. immune to trips in shallow water, sand and dirt, and short drops). You can’t have everything. Here they are, in no particular order: : : I liked the old Playsport, and the new one seems to be an incremental improvement. It’s more compact, and has an ostensibly ergonomic layout — for right-handers, at least. There’s less of a plastic-y feel than the other devices and personally I think it looks the best. It’s much heavier than Samsung’s similarly sized BW10, but the shape is better. There are several extra video options: in addition to 1080p/30, there’s 720p at 30 and 60 fps, and a WVGA (640×360) mode for more manageable file sizes and SD playback. Navigating the menu is an exercise in patience, however; the d-pad is stiff and moving between selections is slow. The LCD, while small, is easily the sharpest of the cameras. I found it was a bit too easy to open up the areas where the device’s ports are. A simple slip of the hand (or a could pop open your SD door and The other cameras have significantly more security in this area. : : The W200 is easily the biggest of these devices. It’s still fairly small, of course, but it feels more bulky. It also feels nice and solid, and that feeling extends to its port doors, which are too easily opened on the Playsport and too fiddly on the BW10. The W200’s doors are spring-loaded and open only with effort — but the good kind of effort. They open when you want them to. The screen is the biggest of the lineup here, not by much, but it’s worth mentioning. The extra space is used to display info in black bands above and below the picture. The menus are attractive and quick to navigate. The d-pad feels stiff but actually responds very well. Unfortunately the middle button is very deep, as it is used in photo mode to set focus, and you have to press it in quite a ways to make a selection. Not a truly substantial issue, but it bothered me. There’s a flip-out USB plug at the bottom, which is handy if it works for your setup, and a pain if you’d just rather have a port to plug a cable into. There are only two video modes, 1080p/30 and 720p/30, which is too bad. It has the admirable ability to “pause” the recording without creating a new file, which will be welcomed by many who don’t feel like editing after the fact. It felt better taking still pictures than the others, the camera-shaped Easyshare Sport included. Also it just about gave me a heart attack suddenly making a droplet noise for its auto-off procedure. You can turn that off. : : The BW10 is the simplest to operate of these devices, all of which are pretty simple to operate. But the BW10 is ready to take a picture or video at any moment, and you can take pictures while you’re taking video. The LCD has two modes, one showing just what you record and one showing the whole picture with guidelines showing what the camera will actually record. Wait, what? Yes, apparently Toshiba felt that instead of recording everything it can see through the wide-angle lens, the BW10 should cut off the edges and only record the middle. Anything outside the boundary of the box won’t be recorded – even though it’s there. What the hell? I’m pretty sure I’m not mistaken about this, and it’s just a really dumb limitation. The BW10 also takes a long time to recover from lighting changes. Going from outdoors to indoors, the shot will be dark for several seconds while the camera ratches open the aperture. It takes a long time and actually also affects the cast of the image, going from warm to cool as the aperture opens. The port doors are very secure — too secure, I might say, since the tiny switch you need to hit can’t be done easily with a finger. Not a big deal really, but it’s annoying that opening the door should be a precision action. : : The Easyshare Sport is more of a budget point and shoot that happens to be waterproof, but it seems to fit in with these guys more than other point and shoots. The trouble is it’s just not very good. There’s a big grip in which fit the AA batteries that power it, but the shutter button isn’t on top of it, where you’d expect it to be. The control layout is a bit arbitrary overall. Why aren’t the zoom buttons mapped to the D-pad, for instance? Why is the D-pad so small, and the center button so hard to hit, that I end up hitting every direction at once when I try to select a menu option? Why isn’t video next to “auto” in the mode select? The whole thing gives an impression of being thrown together with no design at all. The quality isn’t impressive, either. It looks like it has a real lens but it’s more or less a pinhole, like the rest of these cameras (which also go to some length to make it look like they have real, round lenses), and its slowness shows in the choppiness of the image on the LCD. Even in a well-lit room the image was dim and jumpy. There is only one video mode (two if you count underwater, but I don’t) and I don’t trust it. To get at the USB port you have to open the bottom panel where the batteries and SD card go, and it’s a pain in the first place. No grip and having to press in two directions at once means if your hands are wet, forget about it. Not really user-friendly. The Toshiba makes too many compromises, and I wouldn’t pay a dollar for the Easyshare Sport. So it’s between the W200 and the Playsport. Here’s how it breaks down in my opinion: I can’t tell you which is the best choice for you. If I absolutely had to choose, I’d go with the W200 simply because the end product is better — none of these cameras produces good images, but the Playsport was significantly less sharp in images and video. They have the same MSRP, so think hard about what part of the camera is important to you and make a choice based on that.
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Apple Leaks Thunderbolt LED Cinema Displays, Kills The Dream For A Redesigned Mac Pro | Matt Burns | 2,011 | 7 | 15 | Apple is gearing up for a big back-to-school push as stated by several product codes that leaked the other day. As it turned out, one of the SKUs were not for a computer to a computer, but rather according to a random image on Apple’s website, a Thunderbolt-equipped LED Cinema Display. Such a monitor shouldn’t be that big of a surprise. Apple is seemingly equipping everything the company can with Thunderbolt interconnects; it’s their baby. Besides the additional interface port, the leaked images do not show any physical or cosmetic changes. In fact of the monitor hooked up to various Apple computers and despite what the previous rumors stated, these computers look the same as the current generation meaning any updates would only be internal. Unfortunately only images have surfaced. No one has found any prices, release dates or even specs for these new monitors. Bummer. |
Apple Releases iOS 4.3.4, Patches Up The PDF Exploit / JailbreakMe Method | Greg Kumparak | 2,011 | 7 | 15 | A shiny new iOS update has just been released! iOS 4.3.4 is now available on iTunes. As far as I can tell, there’s only one change here: Apple has fixed the PDF exploit that theoretically could be used to do all sorts of malicious things to you iOS device — unfortunately, that also means that they’ve fixed the PDF exploit that more-than-theoretically allows you to jailbreak your iOS device through the ultra quick . (Of course, you could always just jailbreak your device, install the “PDF Patcher 2” fix released on to Cydia weeks ago by Comex (the same guy that built JailbreakMe in the first place), and wait ’til Apple releases an update with a worthwhile feature or two.) For those on Verizon, look for a version number of 4.2.9 instead. |
CrowdStar And YouWeb Launch $10M StarFund For Mobile Social Game Development | Leena Rao | 2,011 | 7 | 15 | Social gaming company is teaming up with the incubator which it was spawned from, , to launch a $10 million venture fund, called the StarFund. The fund will make investments in promising mobile game developers. Game developers can apply to receive up to $250,000 in initial funding to develop their mobile games, if they are selected as part of StarFund. CrowdStar, which just raised in new funding, will also offer marketing, international distribution, and analytics resources to teams those games show promise. Interestingly, CrowdStar CEO Peter Relan (who also launched YouWeb) tells us that the fund is also meant to be a way of acquiring talent. Relan explains that while Zynga makes outright acquisitions for talent, CrowdStar is taking a slightly different approach to attracting game development talent by funding fledgling game developers. Relan also said that the investments may not necessarily be equity-based, and will be distributed and structured based on the needs of the developer. The fund is focused on mobile, because this has been a particularly important for CrowdStar. The company is looking to expand to additional markets through mobile games and recently launched its Other YouWeb incubated companies have implemented a similar model and seen success. Mobile social gaming platform OpenFeint (which was incubated within YouWeb, spun off and then ) partnered with Chinese gaming company to fund game developers building off of the OpenFeint Android platform. Since that launch in March, the partnership has produced and helped fund the development of 50 games in 30 app stores. And other gaming companies are launching independent funds as well. Mobile gaming company TinyCo just launched a new $5 million investment fund, to help support mobile game developers. |
Verizon: No, Our 4G LTE Phones Won’t Work With AT&T’s LTE Network | Greg Kumparak | 2,011 | 7 | 15 | Verizon has a 4G LTE network. AT&T is building a 4G LTE network. They both use SIM cards. Surely, after all these years of running on vastly different network technologies (Verizon’s CDMA vs AT&T’s GSM) thus requiring silly things like two separate models of the iPhone, the two would have figured out way to make their new, strikingly-similar networks play friendly together, right? Nope. In a statement to , a Verizon spokeswomen confirmed that their 4G/LTE phones will work on AT&T’s 4G/LTE network, as “the phones will be on different frequencies.” And she’s right: Verizon’s LTE network operates in the upper half of the 700 Mhz range (746-787 Mhz), while AT&T’s operates on the lower half (704-746). Here’s the thing, Verizon: the phones support the frequencies that they’re to support. When we’re dealing with a shared technology like LTE on two networks both operating within the same 100mhz range, whether or not a handset runs on both is much less a matter of technical limitations/challenges and much more a matter of business politics. This separation makes some sense right now, all boiling down to phone calls. Verizon uses LTE for data, falling back to CDMA for voice. AT&T uses LTE for data as well, but falls back to GSM for voice instead. In the not-too-distant future, however, it’s almost certain that voice calls will be transitioned to the LTE network — and at that point, there’s no reason the line in the sand shouldn’t be washed away. Figure it out, Verizon and AT&T. Don’t make the handset manufacturers research, develop, and build two separate phones. Don’t sneakily force customers to stay in your corner. At the very least, don’t blame it on the frequencies. |
Keen On… A Super Sad True Love Story (TCTV) | Andrew Keen | 2,011 | 7 | 15 | America’s most talented writers are discovering the electronic network. In Gary Shteyngart’s best selling trip into the digital future, invents a darkly disturbing world in which we all wear electronic pendants around our necks called “apparats” which reveal everything about us to everybody. In the future, he tells us, privacy will be dead and our blazingly public lives will be broadcast by transparent ranking networks (think Klout and Peer Index on steroids). But, as Shteyngart told me when I caught up with him yesterday, the real challenge for today’s writer is that the future has already arrived. “You can’t make this stuff up”, he told me, while explaining that the present no long exists and that his most fantastic literary inventions such as entirely transparent onion-skin jeans (which reveal all our most intimate jewels) are more than simply figments of his sparkling imagination. This is a two part interview. Tomorrow Shteyngart explains why we shouldn’t steal books.
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Sobees Debuts A More Social, Browser-Based Version Of News Aggregator NewsMix | Leena Rao | 2,011 | 7 | 12 | Earlier this year, social media client Sobees , an iPad app which presents news and content shared by your social circle in a magazine format on the device. It’s similar in functionality to Flipboard, Summify or Pulse. Today the company is launching a browser-based, more social news aggregator. The which is designed with HTML5, allows you to create and mix a digital magazine composed of content shared in your Twitter, Facebook and RSS feeds (Google
Reader and feed search). The app will categorize content in a magazine or show news in a separate timeline format for Facebook and Twitter. And you can view photos and videos in separate sections. The new version of NewsMix not only displays your Twitter updates but it also lets you subscribe to newspapers and blogs and to Twitter users to read their Tweets, Twitter Favorites and personal mix of news. So you can subscribe to the personalized magazines shared by your friends as well as blogs and newspapers. Sobees also offers a bookmarklet that allows you to add content from your browser into NewsMix. Similar to the iPad app, NewsMix features Sobees’ proprietary curation technology, which will will automatically prioritize and curate Twitter and Facebook posts based on your interactions with the app. For now, the web application is free, but sobees plans on implementing a premium version of the web app in the foreseeable future (the iPad app costs $2.99). |
Unfriendly: Google Blocking Ex-Employee’s "Social Circles" Book (Oh Yeah, He Now Works At Facebook) | MG Siegler | 2,011 | 7 | 12 | We’ve written about a few times now. As a refresher, he’s the guy who used to on user experience and made a popular presentation that how Google could Facebook in the social space — namely, friend groups. That, of course, ended up happening with Google+. But before that project was complete, Adams . After the recent launch of G+, he stated that seeing it was a bit like “ “. Yes, that guy. Anyway, there’s been a lot of interest recently in Adams given his history and he took some time today to write to clear some things up. Why he left Google, what he does at Facebook — it’s good stuff. But the real meat is one little nugget of information he drops: Google is him from releasing a book he wrote about his social research called, what else, . And Adams is not happy about this at all. Specifically, Adams says he received permission in June 2010 from Google to publish Social Circles. As he notes the content, title, and cover (circles!) all existed before the (Google+). But after word of the project started leaking out that summer, Google rescinded their permission and asked Adams to wait to publish until Google+ launched. Adams understood, and was perfectly fine with that. But now that G+ is out there, he says Google is blocking him from publishing the book, and he doesn’t know why. To make matters worse, Google won’t even respond to his emails on the topic. “The book contains no proprietary information, it is based almost entirely on research from 3rd parties (mostly universities) and any Google research referenced is already in the public domain,” he writes. Then he takes his shot: “The industry needed this book. You might say I’m trying to organize some of the worlds information and make it universally accessible :) The irony that Google is blocking this endeavor is not lost on me.” Google and Facebook have long been in the midst of a war of words (and data) over open access to information. Now Google is apparently blocking a Facebook employee from publishing a book he wrote. Interesting. But rather than wait for Google’s permission, Adams is hard at work on a new book, called , which will be out in a few months, he says. As for working at Google and Facebook, Adams uses the post to vent his frustrations with Google’s bureaucracy and politics when he left. He declines to go into more detail, but points to also by a former Googler who worked on Emerald Sea. Adams goes on to say: “Google is an engineering company, and as a researcher or designer, it’s very difficult to have your voice heard at a strategic level. Ultimately I felt that although my research formed a cornerstone of the Google social strategy, and I had correctly predicted how other products in the market would play out, I wasn’t being listened to when it came to executing that strategy. My peers listened intently, but persuading the leadership was a losing battle. Google values technology, not social science.” Ouch. So going to Facebook was the ultimate revenge, right? Well maybe, but Adams actually does not work on the Groups or Friend Lists teams there. He joined as a researcher, but is now a product manager working on Facebook’s advertising products. ” I love my new job, love Facebook, and have absolutely no regrets about moving. It has been the best career decision I’ve made,” he says. |
T-Mobile Amps Their "4G" Network To 42Mbps in 56 New Regions, Still Has No 42Mbps-Compatible Phones | Greg Kumparak | 2,011 | 7 | 12 | Oh man! I just realized: we’ve had this for a whole day now, and we have yet to do one of our kind-of-but-not-really-trademark posts. You know what that means? . T-Mobile is doubling the speeds of their high-speed data network in 56 new regions, bumping things from a theoretical max of 21 Megabits per second to a theoretical max of 42 Megabits per second. . All in all, this upgrade brings the number of regions running on T-Mobile’s HSPA+42 network up to 152. They, uh, don’t actually have any phones compatible with this new, snappier network yet. While T-Mobile plans to launch a HSPA+42 compatible phone by the end of this year, all of the “4G” phones they’ve sold to date can only run on the 21 megabit pipe. They have a 42Mbps-friendly USB laptop dongle called the Rocket, but hey — this isn’t TechCrunch.com/LaptopDongles. |
Badgeville Raises $12 Million, Celebrates With An Infographic | Michael Arrington | 2,011 | 7 | 12 | founder and CEO is one of those people that is so ridiculously upbeat and positive all the time that sometimes you just want to strangle him. No one has a right to be that happy. He was smiling and happy when I met him at the Fortune Brainstorm conference a year ago and he showed me Badgeville for the first time. He was happy at TechCrunch Disrupt in San Francsico last September while and taking the audience choice award. And now he’s a whole new level of happy because he just closed a second round of financing – from and , with participation from previous investors and . from Norwest and from El Dorado joined the company’s board of directors. When Duggan isn’t overdosing on dopamine (or perhaps while he is), he’s growing one heck of a company. Badgeville provides game mechanics to websites, giving incentives to users to interact more with those sites. They have 75 announced paying customers, “seven figure” quarterly revenue and are growing that revenue at 40% quarter over quarter. Customers pay a yearly fee for the service. Customers include Discovery Communications, NBC, Bluefly.com, Interscope Records, Major League Gaming, LiveMocha, The Active Network, and Deloitte Digital. Chang from Norwest is a particularly good fit for the company. He’s invested in both ngmoco and Playdom, and understand game mechanics well. He’s also invested in , that startup that you keep seeing in your email inbox as people add you to their network. Here’s that infographic I mentioned in the title. |
Photonics Breakthrough Is Less Disruptive To Light Than Empty Space | Devin Coldewey | 2,011 | 7 | 12 | Research at Columbia Engineering School has yielded a material that is literally unlike any other known. Everything in the universe (that we can see) affects light one way or another. Slows it down, speeds it up, spreads it out, diffuses it in a certain way, whatever. Even man-made materials with “negative refractive indexes,” themselves unlike anything else in the universe, something to the light. Not this stuff. By combining two materials, one with a positive refractive index, and one with a negative, they’ve produced something with an interesting effect: light passes through it as if that material wasn’t even there. It has as zero refractive index. The photons come out the other end of the “nanofabricated superlattice” in the exact phase, angle, etc as they went in. Sounds kind of cool, you say, but why should you care? Well, being able to control the phase of light in this way means that it can be used in completely new ways of using and propagating photons. Fiber optic communications may be revolutionized, and if the phase control could be expanded to spectra other than visible light, wireless communications could be as well. As always, expect a good five or ten year delay before you hear about real-world applications. , and . [via ] |
GOTO Metrics Raises $3 Million, Relaunches As Zettaset, To Help Companies Manage Big Data | Rip Empson | 2,011 | 7 | 12 | Mountain View-based announced today that it has closed a $3 million series A funding round. The round was led by and . DFJ Managing Director Andreas Stavropoulos and Nick Efstratis, managing director of EPIC Ventures, will both be joining Zettaset’s board of directors as part of the new round. The infusion of capital will be used to grow the team and expand the startup’s existing feature set. The company is also announcing today a rebranding and name-change, in which the company will now be known as “Zettaset”. The name change was made, according to the team, to better reflect the company’s modus operandi, as Zettaset provides data analytics tools for enterprises and those looking to better understand those huge swaths of data. A “zettabyte”, for those unfamiliar, consists of more than a million petabytes — in other words, a whole lot of data. Zettaset’s database management solution is essentially a mine-able enterprise-level software platform, which aims to give small and medium-sized businesses the reins to control (and analyze) the massive amounts of data that are becoming increasingly prevalent in today’s wide, webby world. The patent-pending technology behind Zettaset’s solution is built on opensource technology that operates via , Hive, Pig, and Zookeeper. And, what’s more, it’s fully-automated, so users don’t have to spend time worrying over nuts and bolts. Said another way, this means that users can aggregate, organize, and analyze those huge sets of data collected in a business’ day-to-day activity, including petabyte-level analysis. Zettaset also offers its users a simple licensing model that facilitates scaling and provision, without having to build and maintain the type of on-site infrastructure that would allow big-data analysis. Zettaset’s strong point is its affordability (pricing depends on the size of the business) and the fact that it doesn’t put a limitation on the number of users that have access to the solution, enabling businesses to focus on how to utilize the data and analytics, rather than how to manage it. The solution has also been tailored to provide a level of redundancy that allows its systems to continue working in the event of hardware or software kerfuffles. Businesses can also add a number of servers to increase storage without hampering daily operation and supports a number of programming languages, from C++, Jave, and Python to Smalltalk and OCaml, all available through Zettaset’s API. For more on the data management solution, check out its website and to sign up for a demo, click right. . |
Guest Post: Why we chose HTML5 over Native apps | Mike Butcher | 2,011 | 7 | 12 | Everyone has the same headache of deciding how to build their apps. Native or HTML5? Everyone is thinking about HTML5 Apps and talking about it if they should invest in it for their own app development, but there isn’t much practical help on how to do this. There are so many questions to answer. What device am I going to target? What’s the product function, does it rely on the handset features heavily? What framework to use? Are they well supported? Whats the performance going to be like? Will it affect the user experience? We chose HTML5 ahead of native. The iPhone and Android apps were built with PhoneGap and Sencha Touch, and uses Flurry for analytics, via a PhoneGap plugin we developed. The performance of the Diary Mobile App, with swiping, scrolling creating and moving around in the app was the biggest challenge. Here’s Kenneth Lee, Diary.com, CTO: “When I was first building this app I was always looking for affirmation of what to build it with, without rejection worries. The app proves a combination of a Javascript Framework with PhoneGap works well. I have to say it wasn’t easy, performance was a huge issue at times it took days to figure out, and simple things like too much logging and poorly constructed ‘for’ loops actually made our app unusable during our journey. The app uses a lot of Ajax calls and stores everything in HTML5 Local Storage. Sencha Touch is quite a beast and we’ve had to patch quite a lot of it to make it more performant and apply bugfixes. We built two Phonegap plugins; a Flurry API PhoneGap plugin for iOS (to be released open source in the future, and another to use the Local Notifications on iOS (also open source plans) We built an entirely REST API for which the app communicates with to make it as efficient and fast as possible.”
We also released our Android App in June using Phonegap and Sencha Touch, we had some serious issues with the performance of Sencha Touch on some of the input fields that we had to provide fixes for. Again we had to do a lot of modifications to issues that weren’t very well supported. We’ve found that Diary Mobile compliments Diary.com and makes it easy to add and edit plans, birthdays, tasks, and journal posts wherever you are. Mobile syncs with instantly, providing an irreplaceable backup to your mobile diary. After a lot of testing we realised that Diary.com has over 24 use cases and with its app. The Diary Mobile HTML5 App for mobile devices is available at via iTunes and Android via the . In summary once you have gone through your checklist; • Target handset(s)?
• App feature set?
• Handset capabilities needed?
• Resources available (remember building multiple native apps for different OSs is expensive)?
• User experience needed? Then you can decide if you should invest time into HTML5. There is no right or wrong way deciding with native vs HTML5. Native is not going to disappear, native/HTML5 hybrids may even become voguish in the future. |
"Your Logo Looks Like Tetris!" No, Our Logo IS Tetris | MG Siegler | 2,011 | 7 | 12 | So, what do you think of so far? Wait, don’t answer that. You already have — thousands of times. The most common refrain seems to be, “love the new site, hate the logo”. But my favorite offshoot of that is the notion that our new logo looks like Tetris. I assume this is meant to be an insult, but I mean, who doesn’t love Tetris? Anyway, one driven reader decided to take things to the next logical conclusion: he created a version of Tetris using the TechCrunch “T” and the TechCrunch “C”. . It’s pure gold. Great work (and ), you’ve all but ensured that we’ll get no more posts out today as we attempt to make the T fit into the C over and over again. TCTetris is hard. |
Dropbox Raising Massive Round at a $5B-Plus Valuation | Sarah Lacy | 2,011 | 7 | 12 | We’ve heard from multiple sources that is raising its next venture round and it’s a whopper. They’ve had preliminary conversations with several investors, several solid offers they’ve passed on earlier this year and are meeting with investment banks to handle the offering now. Allen & Co. is said to be in the mix, but we’ve also heard nothing has been finalized. The real news are the numbers we’re hearing from multiple sources close to the company. Dropbox is looking to raise between $200 million and $300 million according to these sources. In terms of valuation, the company has already had multiple offers at a valuation north of $2 billion range, and recently more informal discussions in the $8 billion-valuation range. Our sources expect the valuation to end up in the $5 billion to $10 billion range. That’s quite a step up from its previous funding rounds which have totalled a tiny $7.2 million. There will no doubt be a secondary component to the round, but our sources say it’ll be less than 50% of the total amount raised. We’ll update as soon as we know more. |
Play For iPhone Coming Tomorrow, AOL Pitches Me Over Instagram | MG Siegler | 2,011 | 7 | 12 | Back in March, we noted that the mobile-first group inside of AOL was pushing forward with a pretty nice . The timing was good, they released it just as SXSW was kicking off. Unfortunately, it was Android-only — meaning myself and millions of others were unlikely to use it and instead would favor something like rival . Well, tomorrow Play is finally coming for iPhone. As far as I can tell, Play for iPhone looks great. But “looks is the keyword. I haven’t actually used the app myself. Instead, I’ve only seen it because AOL decided to pitch it to me over . Yes, knowing , AOL smartly found me on another network I’m always on and highly engaged with. Well played — and smart. AOL has been pitching their app as a sort of “Instagram for music”. And that seems to be so far. AOL’s senior director of mobile projects, , prepared and sent me (publicly, of course) the following set of Instagram images to show off and explain the new app. Again, the app looks great. Can’t wait to try it out. : And behold, Play for iPhone is ! |
Quick Hands-On With AT&T's 4G TouchPad | Devin Coldewey | 2,011 | 7 | 12 | We may have already the TouchPad’s most elementary form, but last week we saw a leaked roadmap that has the 4G version coming out in August. AT&T had an event today where we got a quick hands-on, but other than a speed test and a little extra info, there’s not much to say. Obviously an inside event (though relatively high up), packed with spectrum-hogging bloggers, isn’t the best place to test this sort of thing out, but it’s not like AT&T was going to let us go for a walk with their precious. We saw speeds of just 3 Mb/s down and 0.84 Mb/s up. I’d take those numbers with a grain of salt, and of course they’ll be different where you are (if 4G is even offered). Let’s say you do have a sweet 30-meg connection, though. You’re going to burn through your data allowance pretty quickly. So the 4G TouchPad will come with an app to help monitor your data consumption and control wireless connectivity. Thoughtful! I would have guessed they’d let people go over by a few thousand dollars’ worth and give out the app. |
Ruby Creator "Matz" Matsumoto Joins Heroku As Chief Architect | Alexia Tsotsis | 2,011 | 7 | 12 | In what must be an amazing day for the Heroku founders, the creator of Ruby, Yukihiro “Matz” Matsumoto has that he will be joining the former Y Combinator startup as Chief Architect of Ruby. “As a member of our platform development team, Matsumoto-san will continue his work on the Ruby language in close collaboration with the Ruby community, keeping the language open and advancing the technology in exciting new ways,” Heroku General Manager Byron Sebastian said in a release. Matsumo created Ruby in 1993, hoping to build a programming language that increased “developer experience, happiness, and productivity.” Heroku, founded in 2007, originally focused solely for Ruby development but added other languages over time. Early this January, the startup was bought for $200 million in cash by Salesforce. As Heroku Chief Architect, Matsumo will be keeping his other positions as a fellow at Rakuten Institute of Technology and researcher at the Network Applied Communications Laboratory. He says he joined the startup because of its commitment to the Ruby language. Is Heroku for Ruby what Engine Yard is for Rails (by some of the core team)? In any case, it must be pretty humbling to build a PaaS for a language and then have the guy who created that language join your company. |
Zaarly Launches On Android | Rip Empson | 2,011 | 7 | 12 | Android users, say hello to . For those not yet familiar with the peer-to-peer mobile startup, they’ve had a whirlwind year thus far. Built at hackathons and startup weekends over the first few months of this year, Zaarly took first prize at LA Startup Weekend in March, and soon thereafter raised a $1 million seed round from — , , , and TechCrunch founder (see below), among them. In May, Zaarly launched nationwide and, in less than a month, . Occupying a similar space as and , the web and mobile service seeks to connect buyers and sellers in a localized market place, reverse Craigslist-style, by allowing users to post what they’re looking for (beer, a massage, or an iPad), how much they’re willing to pay for said good or service, and how soon they need it. The startup then posts the request in the local community forum and allows users to share the request via Twitter and Facebook. Sellers can then bid for the tasks users post, and buyers can then choose their preferred merchant or seller, with Zaarly facilitating the connection by way of an anonymous Twilio phone number. The service offers an integrated credit card payment system, which users can take advantage of — or pay cash. The biggest selling point for Zaarly as a service has been the fact that it’s mobile-centric, offering a terrific mobile experience through free iOS and Facebook apps. A few weeks ago, in fact, Zaarly rolled out a few new features and was featured by Apple on iTunes. For the last few months, the startup has been developing an Android app to further expand its mobile experience, and, today, the app has gone live in the Android Marketplace. . Zaarly for Android offers a similar experience to that which its iOS users will be familiar with: Wedding singers will build custom tree houses, houses cleaned, websites designed, and the opportunities to ride in beautiful sports cars will present themselves. The new, free Zaarly Android app will include signup from inside the app, an “Activity Tab” that tracks past, pending, and completed offers, and all Web and Android activity is synced so that users can switch between the web app and the Android app without losing any content or info. The new app also allows users to message each other anonymously within the app, or via SMS if the app happens to be closed — and it archives all your conversations, too, which is a nice bonus. Users can browse local listings with a “Compass button”, and just as Zaarly users can do on the web app, listings can be posted for up to a week. (And a note for Android users, Zaarly’s app incorporates standard Android buttons, for example, the “back arrow button” can help users quit or go back and the “options button” allows users to view their activity, post a Zaarly, etc.) The Android app release follows an announcement from Zaarly and CEO Bo Fishback yesterday that Zaarly is planning to crowdsource the location of its next office. Zaarly has launched in cities like, NYC, Chicago, San Francisco, LA, Omaha, and Des Moines, but the startup is now going to follow each city on its website, and the city that has the “most robust Zaarly community over the next few months” will become the site of Zaarly’s regional headquarters. Currently, over $1.6 million in dolla dolla billz has been posted on Zaarly, and one of the reasons that app has been able to attract so much activity so early on in the game, Fishback says, is that the service has resisted just becoming something where “people run errands for you”. The CEO says that the team has been seeing all kinds of surprising posts, although, perhaps unsurprisingly, he surmised that about 7 percent of Zaarlies involve an apple product of some kind. But, that being said, couches, bikes, and cars have all been put up for grabs as well, so the product offerings remains diverse. And sometimes weird. Check out Zaarly on Android . |
Nintendo Video Hits The 3DS Tomorrow (In Japan Only, Alas) | Devin Coldewey | 2,011 | 7 | 12 | Nintendo is working hard at making its 3DS less of a “put in a cartridge, play a game” console, and more of an all-purpose gaming/media/social gadget. They’re awful slow at it, though, since their entire system from the eighties on has been the cartridge thing, more or less. Perhaps they looked at Apple and said not “oh no, they’re going to get us” but “man, how come we haven’t tried alternative methods of capitalizing on this huge, loyal user base?” This was years ago, mind you, and they still haven’t really branched out (Wii Speak?), but we’re beginning to see the new, rich experience roll out, however slowly. Their curated video channel of 3D content is , for instance. Finally! The service offers selected videos — a fashion show, a 3D tour of Kyoto — but no access to popular web video services. It’ll be coming to the US later this summer, presumably with content a little more relevant than the latest trends hitting the teen streets of Shinjuku. Netflix will be joining it, and you’ll be able to download an app to watch any streaming content you have access to on your 3DS. Hey, that could be pretty handy. [via ] |
null | Elin Blesener | 2,011 | 7 | 15 | null |
Android Market Gets An Overhaul: Videos, Books, And More Discovery Options | Jason Kincaid | 2,011 | 7 | 12 | Good news for Android users: starting today, Google is rolling out a new version of Android Market to all handsets running Android 2.2 or higher (which makes up the vast majority of Android users). It’s bringing with it a new UI, performance improvements, and a variety of features designed to help with app discovery, including new lists like ‘Top Grossing’ and recently trending applications (Google at Google I/O, but hasn’t rolled them out to the mobile client until now). Oh, and everyone in the US is going to get their hands on the long-awaited Videos application, which was showcased at Google I/O but has only been available on a handful of devices until now. This new Market also merges the sale of Books, Video, and Apps into a single marketplace (before now you’d buy books using the dedicated Books app). I haven’t gotten to try the new app yet, so I’m basing my impressions on the video you see here. The design looks like it’s taking a lot of cues from the Honeycomb version of Android Market — which I strongly dislike. But there are some nice touches, like the ability to swipe horizontally to jump between screens. I’ll reserve my judgement until I get some time with the app. The new version of Market will be rolling out over a fairly long window — it may take as long as a month to arrive on your handset, though it sounds like US users may see it sooner. [youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5Pbo-d62ivY&w=560&h=349]
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HP Touchpad Already Discounted At Best Buy, Amazon | Matt Burns | 2,011 | 7 | 12 | Such is the life of a device. If you can’t beat ’em, undercut them. That’s just what’s happening at Amazon and Best Buy who both are now selling the under it’s MSRP by a fair margin. The 16GB model is cut by $10 at both retailers, making the price $489.99. The 32GB model is 5% under list making it $572.65 while just took a clean $20 off resulting in a $579.99 price. Good news for those still on fence, but not so much for those that jumped on the webOS tablet right away. It seems the retailers are setting these prices and not HP as these are the only two right now with the lower price. The Palmpad is fine device, but it needs something to set it apart from the iPad — like a lower price. [via ] |
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