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Stamped: Forget 1 To 5 Stars, If You Like Something, Just Stamp It | MG Siegler | 2,011 | 9 | 26 | I’ve always hated the notion of ratings based on five stars. It makes no sense. Sure, something that sucks is “1 star” and something awesome is “5 stars”, but what determines a “2 star” rating? What about a “4 stars”? It’s totally arbitrary. Why not just say something is “bad”, “okay”, “good”, or “great”? Or better yet, why not say unless something is great? That’s the basic idea behind , a new startup currently in stealth mode. The startup has deep Google ties — 2 of the 3 co-founders are ex-Google, while 4 of the 7 total team members are — but it’s iPhone-only for now. They’re taking the Instagram-approach to launching in that regard. And they’re taking cues from Instagram in another key regard: simplicity. “It can be hard to figure out what a 3-star rating from 70 strangers means. We want to introduce simplicity back into the system by reducing it all down to one question: does it deserve your friend’s stamp of approval?,” co-founders and CEO Robby Stein says. “Every decision we’ve made has been designed to make the act of stamping as fast and simple as possible,” he continues. about those statements. And Stein goes further: “We’re obsessively focused on building a social platform designed for quality over quantity. There is so much value in discovering great things through your friends and too much noise on current platforms to do it easily. We want to change that.” When it launches, Stamped will be entering an already-crowded space around mobile-based ratings. This reminds me of Instagram launching a year ago just as a plethora of mobile photo startups were launching. . Stamped is hoping it plays out the same way for them. Stein notes that he’s been obsessing over this idea for a few years, but started on it in earnest in April when he left Google (where he worked on Gmail and more recently, Ad Exchange). “I saw that people loved to talk about the things they liked best over coffee, emails, texts, or even massive Google spreadsheets (I swear my friend has one). I noticed this is information people are naturally drawn to sharing, so I started with building a prototype that made this easier and more efficient,” he says. There are a few other unique layers to the app, to avoid what the team calls “data diarrhea”. More on that when the app is ready to launch. The startup, which is entirely New York City-based right now, raised a Series A round of funding from Bain Capital Ventures and Google Ventures earlier this year. The amount is undisclosed. Look for Stamped to launch in the next few weeks. For now, you can sign up to learn more on . |
DC To VC: An Inside Look At The Winners Of Morgenthaler’s Health Tech Startup Showcase | Rip Empson | 2,011 | 9 | 26 | Last week, , the 40-year-old Sand Hill Road VC firm wrapped up its , a nationwide contest geared towards finding the most promising young health tech startups. From nearly 200 applicants, the pool was whittled down to eleven finalists, which presented to an invite-only crowd of VCs, angel investors and entrepreneurs. The companies were then categorized according to whether they were seeking seed funding or looking to raise their series A. The live audience of over 350 health tech enthusiasts, as well as those watching on live stream, put the finishing touch on the months-long competition, selecting the winners (after commentary from a panel of VC and entrepreneurial judges). The winner of the seed round contest was , an affordable, mobile diagnostic tool for our eyes, and (a recent TechCrunch Disrupt finalist) took top prize in the series A flight with its HIPAA-compliant iPad platform for patient communication and education. Of course, while there were two winners, the DC to VC audience chose from a group of strong finalists. For more on those finalists, check out the quick blurbs below as well as the video of presentations at the end. is the world’s first platform that helps patients plan in advance for a hospital or outpatient procedure. powers the mobile wellness movement with a cross-platform ecosystem of fun and dynamic coaching applications. Its latest title, Workout Trainer, ranks Top 10 in the free Healthcare & Fitness category on iPhone/iPad. is a mobile, cloud-based, social-clinical network for surgeons to exchange relevant perioperative, case-centric information. provides patients an instant connection to doctors for a medical consultation using any telephone or computer with complete audio and video conferencing. provides hospitals with cloud-based analytics and business intelligence solutions which enable them to drive enhanced operational, financial and clinical outcomes. develops and delivers online mental health programs to managed care members and enterprise workforces that help reduce payor costs while improving overall health outcomes. moves healthcare organizations towards pay-for-performance, enabling providers to coordinate care and measure clinical quality across disparate settings. online services deliver proven psychotherapy methodologies via an e-learning platform to greatly improve the economics and accessibility of mental and behavioral health solutions. employs bi-directional text, phone and email communications to help hospitals and agencies put “the right healthcare providers, in the right places, right now.” Hailing from MIT Media Labs, is developing an eye diagnostic tool for mobile phones that will allow anyone (with minimal training) to take an eye test, receive a diagnostic measurement, and access eye care, all with the touch of a button. According to EyeNetra Founder David Schafran, of the 4 billion people who need glasses in the world today, over half of them don’t have access to eye care — or glasses. Not to mention, the patient experience at eye doctors is less than fun, and eye diagnostic tools tend to be archaic, expensive, require trained professionals to use, and are big and bulky. So EyeNetra wants to empower patients and those in need of glasses by providing them with a low-cost eye test and options for care accessible from anywhere. At any time. EyeNetra thus offers a smartphone app and a cheap eyepiece that can be attached to a phone with ease to perform a simple alignment test, in minutes allowing the user to receive a refractive assessment for nearsightedness, farsightedness, astigmatism, etc. What’s more, the company is seeking to offer on-demand eye care, through an eye care network at which the company will sit at the center, brokering between patients and eye care providers, vendors, and service providers. According to their presentation, “From ‘store-and-forward your electronic prescription’ to ‘personalized prevention and treatment services’, and ‘access and recruit new patients'”, the startup is looking to create an ecosystem of “value-added services” that will enable “whole new businesses”. EyeNetra is also looking to build a solution that includes a suite of eye care devices; it has already developed a and will soon have retina diagnostics, as it works toward building a “medkit” that people can have at home or community health care workers can have in the field. , the inbox for healthcare, was founded by James Currier, a serial entrepreneur who co-founded WonderHill, a social gaming company, and Tickle, which became the world’s largest self-assessment company, registering 100 million people and was acquired by Monster.com in 2004. Currier currently co-runs Ooga Labs, an investment and incubation company in Palo Alto. You may remember the JiffPad as a TechCrunch Disrupt 2011 winner. It’s just that good. . But what is Jiff? Jiff is an iPad app that gives doctors and physicians the ability to create effective and memorable “teaching moments” right in front of patients, just as they might with a wall poster or anatomical model. Teaching materials, explanations, gestures, and patients’ questions can be preserved and subsequently emailed to patients after consultations. The medical teaching tool brings the wonder of mobile technology into the doctor’s office, giving patients the opportunity to receive more effective and memorable explanations and diagnoses, while doctors have the satisfaction of knowing that their explanations of ailments and treatments are understood in a visual, interactive way. The JiffPad is aimed at helping improve healthcare communication and curing the doctor-patient relationship of misunderstanding and miscommunication. For more on the finalists, . Excerpt image |
Controversy as Spotify requires new users to be on Facebook first | Mike Butcher | 2,011 | 9 | 26 | It seems premium streaming music service just inexorably linked its future to Facebook. Fresh from integrating so deeply with Facebook’s OpenGraph that users’ Ticker stream are teaming with their friends’ listening tastes, it is now requiring users to have a Facebook account first in order to sign-up for the service. Visitors to the sign-up page are now greeted with “You need a Facebook account to register for Spotify. If you have an account, just log in below to register. If you don’t have a Facebook account, get one by clicking the ‘create an account’ link below.” The issue has ignited savage debate on Twitter, with management company saying Spotify has “sold its soul to the Devil”. Meanwhile on the company’s , a Spotify employee has responded with the suggestion that users create a fake Facebook account and “add nothing to it and make it totally private”. This seems to contravene Facebook’s T&Cs. Forcing people to have a Facebook account just to use Spotify seems pretty heavy handed, although it’s clear that Spotify is ‘doing a Zynga’ by linking its growth to to metoric rise of the social network. I for one am glad I signed up with my own separate account long ago. |
Samsung Galaxy Tab 8.9 Pre-Order Goes Live, Galaxy Players 4.0 And 5.0 To Follow | Jordan Crook | 2,011 | 9 | 26 | Though its had some legal and of late, Samsung is still pumping out products. Today, the Galaxy Tab 8.9 has been made available for pre-order, with shipments to begin October 2. And rather than waste paper, Samsung included availability information on its Galaxy Player 5.0 and 4.0 within the release, as well. We’ve heard plenty about the up until now, but with patent wars a ragin’ there was no telling whether or not the 9-inch version would be a pipe dream. But alas, the U.S. has remained unaffected by Apple and Samsung’s cat fight and the Galaxy Tab 8.9 is ready to ship. Like the larger GalTab 10.1, the 8.9 will run Android 3.1 Honeycomb with the TouchWiz UI on top. Samsung has made quite a point over the fact that this, alongside big brother, is the thinnest tablet on the market, at 8.6mm. It comes packed with a dual-core 1GHz processor, 16GB of on-board memory and an 8.9-inch WXGA 1280×800 pixel display. The Galaxy Tab 8.9 also has a 3-megapixel rear camera with autofocus and flash, along with a 2-megapixel front-facing shooter for video chat. You can pre-order the Galaxy Tab 8.9 from . As for the Galaxy Player 4.0 and 5.0… The only real difference between them is their sizes, measuring in at 4 inches and 5 inches respectively. Both little guys run Android 2.3.5 Gingerbread, along with a new “streamlined” interface. WiFi support will be along for the ride in both, as will front- and rear-facing cameras for video chat. Pre-order for the Galaxy Players doesn’t start until tomorrow, September 27, with in-store availability to begin on October 16. |
Video: A Look At The Fastest Chronograph Watch Ever Made | John Biggs | 2,011 | 9 | 26 | The video below shows TAG Heuer’s Mikrotimer Flying 1000 Concept watch in action. This mechanical watch times things to 1/1000th of a second – 300 times faster than a human blink. As the watch spins maniacally, it’s actually meting out 1/1000ths of a second at 500 Hz. That means the small balance wheel inside pops back and forth 3.6 million times an hour – a speed that would shatter many mechanical systems. Still not impressed? The average Rolex measures time at about 28,800 beats per hour and would probably balk at measuring time at speeds higher than 50,000 bph. As the Mikrotimer is an “incredibly powerful caliber.” In short, this watch is a completely mechanical device that runs faster than a sports car engine and comes in a package about as big as a silver dollar. The watch isn’t available – it’s still a concept – but it’s a real beauty and surprisingly unique. [vimeo http://vimeo.com/29563992] |
Chinese Social Network Renren Buys Video Sharing Site 56.com For $80 Million | Leena Rao | 2,011 | 9 | 26 | Chinese social network has purchased China-based video and photo sharing site The deal size is around $80 million, according to a Founded in 2005, 56.com is a Chinese video sharing site where users can upload, view and share videos, similar to YouTube. The majority of the videos on the site are user-generated, consisting of content mix from performing artists, amateur groups, and video enthusiasts. Renren, which is the closest social platform China has to Facebook, has around 30 million active monthly users and around 100 million registered users in total. The social network earlier this year, debuting on the New York Stock Exchange today under the symbol “RENN.” Joseph Chen, Chairman and Chief Executive Officer of Renren, says that 56.com’s photo abd video sharing capabilities is complimentary to RenRen users’ social behavior. “We expect that the synergies and cross marketing opportunities between 56.com and Renren.com communities will further drive growth in user engagement, traffic, and advertising solutions to clients,” he explains in a release. 56.com has raised in funding from Sequoia, Steamboat Ventures, Adobe and others. |
Free Startup Tools: How Does Your Term Sheet Compare To The Standards? | Rip Empson | 2,011 | 9 | 26 | At some point in the game, every entrepreneur and startup founder becomes familiar with the term sheet. But “familiarity” can be a tricky qualifier. Even by one’s third startup, entrepreneurs are not always fully aware of the ins and outs of every term on a term sheet, or how to properly value their company. . What’s more, there’s the legalese and the anxiety that VCs might sneak in some tricky terms — which all work towards making the process a confusing pain in the ass. No one wants to get duped, and entrepreneurs are always looking for better ways to compare term sheets with others in the space to get a sense of how founder-friendly terms are, what language should be agreed to, which should be negotiated, etc. There are some great resources out there for entrepreneurs looking for information on term sheets: from Suster and many other VCs for a quick snapshot. But, today, we’ve found another tool that should be of great use to entrepreneurs, brought to our attention by entrepreneur and former corporate attorney Ehren Brav. Brav, his company Greenline Legal, and Joe Wallin, an IP and startup attorney at the law firm of Davis Wright Tremaine and host of StartupLawBlog (who is also the founder of the ), have teamed up to create a tool that allows founders to compare the provisions of term sheets side-by-side with a number of widely recognized standards. Many VCs and angels use the and term sheets for series A and B rounds as well as , for example. Wallin’s is the company behind the cloud-based software that enables lawyers and business people to compare and summarize disparately formatted legal docs in such a way as to clear out the noise and confusing language and highlights the important differences between documents. The Term Sheet Comparison tool, said Wallin, is the first public launch of the company’s software, and it’s a pretty cool way to start out, as it allows entrepreneurs to quickly (and instantly) see how a term sheet compares to models like that of NCVA and Y Combinator. For those interested in a more technical description, Greenline applies machine learning alogirthms to “identify, extract, and categorize legal language, pulling out and matching up the comparable provisions”, . The software tool then juxtaposes your provisions with those of the models to easily show the differences in language. The team said that they will be adding additional model term sheets in the coming weeks, but the tool as it is currently is already a great way for founders to focus on critical issues in comparison with market norms, better understand the terms in oftentimes complicated deals, and become a better negotiator. The better you understand the terms, the more likely you are to help navigate your company’s way to a favorable term sheet and mind-blowing success. To check it out for yourself, , or see the video below: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kFpAON2nwFU Excerpt image |
Facebook To Form Its Own Political Action Committee | Devin Coldewey | 2,011 | 9 | 26 | Facebook has , a political action committee intended to “give [Facebook’s] employees a way to make their voice heard in the political process,” presumably over and above voting and contributing independently to campaigns and other PACs. The company has spent about a million dollars lobbying over the last three years, according to Senate records and , with the sum spent increasing every year. For comparison, Microsoft spent around $9m per year through at its peak, though that number has gone down to about a third of that now. Establishing a PAC will enable Facebook to make direct contributions to candidates and parties, and if it chooses, spend unlimited sums bankrolling secondary efforts like independent ad campaigns. We can’t be too sure exactly who or what FB PAC will support, but its spending so far has been significantly concentrated in industry-related issues such as internet privacy, foreign regulations on internet access, and of course weighing in on copyright questions, which would directly affect its business. You can read their official spending report (PDF). The theoretical spending cap for PACs is several million dollars ($5000 per candidate per race and some miscellaneous allowances), so there’s plenty of room for them to grow into. Let’s not let partisan politics creep into this too much. Forming a PAC is mainly just another way for Facebook to make its presence felt in American politics, a natural tendency in large organizations. Participating in public politics can be a polarizing choice, though, and it may be that Facebook, being as it is a conglomeration of many differing political groups and philosophies, may have some fancy footwork to do in the future to keep its campaign contributions from riling its user base. So far they have only filed the paperwork and formalized their intentions. FBPAC.us and FBPAC.org are registered but empty as of this writing. |
Traces Of Facebook’s Music App Were Spotted… 20 Months Ago | Jason Kincaid | 2,011 | 9 | 26 | Last week at its f8 developer conference, after months ( ) of rumors and speculation, Facebook finally got its Well, it got a bunch of them: Spotify, Rdio, MOG, and others are now deeply integrated with the social network, and, for better or for , your friends’ song choices are streaming through your Facebook Ticker as we speak. To coincide with these integrations, Facebook also launched a , which is now featured in the left navigation sidebar (it’s automatically installed, just like Events, Photos, and the other default Facebook apps). It’s a nifty feature: click the link, and you’ll see a structured listing of some of the songs your friends have recently listened to, as well as some of the most popular artists and albums trending across all of your friends. There’s another interesting thing about the app: it has a nice little blue music note icon; one that long-time TechCrunch readers may recognize. Bueller? Why, yes — those music notes are the same ones associated with the we spotted way back in February 2010 (the same icon was also showing up in users’ News Feeds: if you shared a song from Spotify or MySpace Music, your link would have the little blue notes next to it). At the time, the mysterious Music application had begun showing up in users’ application dashboards (see the screenshot below). If you clicked on the app, it would point you toward Facebook.com/music, but you’d just get directed back to your News Feed. As far as we could tell everyone could see it, but only temporarily— shortly after we wrote about the app, it disappeared. Facebook’s explanation at the time was that it might have something to do with the media player that’s integrated with some Facebook Pages (which, as I pointed out to them, didn’t make sense — this Music app and the player they were referencing had different application IDs). They also said something about a music promotion Facebook had done around SXSW years before, hence the URL Facebook.com/music. When I again tried to point out that this wasn’t a satisfying explanation (why would this application be pointing to that..?), they said it was a bug and that they didn’t have anything else to say about it. So there. Is the new Music Dashboard the same app from the Facebook of yore? I don’t know for sure — even if it is, the app would have certainly evolved over the last 20 months, and it could just be a case of them reusing artwork. But I’m inclined to believe there’s some relation: both apps had the same icon, and similar URLs (the URL for the new Music Dashboard is facebook.com/?sk=music, the old one was facebook.com/music; both formats are used by Facebook’s default apps). And I think it’s a decent indicator that, despite what it said publicly for ages, Facebook has been experimenting with music for quite a while. |
Google+ Now Lets You “Share” Your Circles With Other Users | Alexia Tsotsis | 2,011 | 9 | 26 | In case you’re still using Google+ (I kid, I kid, the other social network is , apparently), the Google+ team has made it easy to with friends today, by enabling an option to send other users a list of Circle members on your Google+ Circles page. Users who want to “share” the contents of their meticulously curated Circles can now click on the Share button as well as Edit and Delete in the Circles options menu and then select the Google+ user or users they want to share the Circle with. The share function doesn’t reveal the name of the Circle (so the fact that you put your boss into “People I am not friends with” stays with you) and doesn’t reveal any changes you make to the Circle after sharing. Users receiving the Circle can then make their own private edits after the fact, like adding you to “People I am not friends with” even. Says Google Engineer Owen Prater, “One of my favorite parts about circles is how they help me control who I share with, as well as what I read. In fact, many of you have created lots of great circles around topics that interest you (like Photographers) to bring lots of great content to your stream. In these cases, we’ve heard that you actually want to share your circles with others. Both to save your friends some time, and to connect them with interesting people and content.” The update should be rolling out to everyone in the next couple of hours, according to Prater. |
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HTC Vigor Photo Leak Reveals 1.5 GHz Dual-Core Processor, 720p Display, And 4G LTE Support | Jordan Crook | 2,011 | 9 | 26 | Since we first caught wind of the HTC Vigor, things have been blurry. And I don’t just mean leaked photos — we’ve been back and forth on a few different features like , or whether or not it’ll be a . But for a handset with such an air of mystery, our latest leak has really spilled the beans. Courtesy of , we now have some semi-clear pictures, and a full list of hardware specifications for what is indeed the HTC Vigor. According to the “Hardware Information” page displayed within the pictures, the Vigor will run a 1.5GHz dual-core processor with Android 2.3.4 Gingerbread. Sense 3.5, the newest version of HTC’s user interface, will also come packed in the new handset. We’re also seeing confirmation of support for Verizon’s 4G LTE, just as we’d hoped. Past that (and I know you’re wondering about it), the Vigor will have a 4.3-inch 720p HD display. We’ll also see an 8-megapixel rear camera and a 2-megapixel front-facing shooter for video chat. Add to that the possibility of Beats Audio, and the Vigor seems to be a complete package. But awesome specs aside, we’re also getting a good hard look at the exterior of the phone and I have to say I’m not quite impressed. That textured back finish will most certainly get grimy fast. But like it or not, there’s very little chance you’ll leave Verizon paying less than $300. The LTE phone with the closest specs to the Vigor would be the Motorola Droid Bionic, which is priced at $299 on-contract. If interested, go ahead and start saving. Full gallery below.
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Color Targets New Facebook-Powered App Exclusively To Harvard Students | Alexia Tsotsis | 2,011 | 9 | 21 | With Sequoia’s Doug Leone at TechCrunch Disrupt, and in-the- already beginning to appear, it seems like many are rapt in anticipation of what the future holds for the storied photo-sharing app. Well, according to one Harvard student tipster, the company has been gearing up for a product launch at f8 by exclusively targeting Harvard students, with Color Product Manager Andre Charoo sending out the following email draft to a number of computer science-related student groups at the elite university — meant for distribution when the new app goes live on Thursday. In case Harvard isn’t exclusive enough for us, a new app launched with Facebook today is available exclusively for only Harvard students to download until Friday at midnight. The app lets Facebook friends see what you see live through your phone. Follow this link from your phone’s browser (for iPhone and Android) — [INSERT LINK]. It’s unclear from the email whether whatever that [INSERT LINK] link point to will be a new version of Color’s current app or a new app entirely built by Color Labs (judging by what we’ve being seeing regarding Blue, I would guess the latter). It is also unclear how exactly the app will limit its usership to Harvard students until Friday. A description of the app also making the rounds on Harvard email lists is equally vague: “As a brief description of the new app — Color lets friends see what you see live through your phone. The Color app lets you post to Facebook, and allow friends to virtually visit you on Facebook or with the app on their phone (available on iPhone and Android). When friends request a visit, you can host them through a live broadcast from your phone. “ I, for one, am finding it hard to conceive of what a “virtual visit” just might be, but if our tipster is correct, it would seem like Color is taking its cues from Mark Zuckerberg’s original Facebook launch strategy — trying to revive its flagging product by using Harvard as a marketing Petri dish. Guess we’ll find out more tomorrow. I’ve confirmed with a second source that this is indeed Color’s marketing strategy for Blue. |
Guest post: Identify and leverage your start-up sustainability | Mike Butcher | 2,011 | 9 | 21 | The majority of today’s start-ups are focused on making an action, a process, purchase or communications easier, cheaper and more efficient. This efficiency can offer great reduction in environmental impact – for your industry and to your consumer. Being aware of your environmental impact – and the value you provide for customers in reducing theirs – from the early stage enables you to understand how you can build this in consciously so it has the lowest cost and largest benefit. And the benefits can be huge: attracting new customers and differentiating your company all while helping the environment. According to Boston Consulting Group [Link to BCG Survey: Capturing the Green Advantage for Consumer Companies, 2009 ] one third of consumer in both North America and Europe when purchasing look for products which and services which are environmentally sustainable. Example one: You read The Economist right? Turn to the back of the magazine and check out the ads from Oracle that run each week. This is from last week’s Euro edition: Large business across the world is embedding environmental requirements into their procurement policies and into KPI’s of modern managers; this means if you can address environmental issues you will not only have the latest solution for the decision maker to sign off on, but make it even easier for them to sell internally. Saving time, money and environment is an even easier sell. If you are competing with big business, they are generally slower to move in a new technical, policy or mentality direction, so this is a way for you to add further differentiation to your business. This is not simply about your servers, although using the least emissions possible for your servers is great thing. and are already doing interesting things in this space, and the jury is . An example is (rebranding as Lookk.com). (Disclosure: Garmz is part of the portfolio, as is my company.) Garmz focuses on generating demand for a product for independent designers before they have a production run. This means that there is less risk for the designer, however also means there is less waste because demand is assured before creations are produced. Establishing feedback mechanisms between demand and supply is a great step in the fashion space, which generally has exceptionally wasteful production and shipping processes. Airbnb. You all know them. This is a great service that had its first bump recently. An obvious benefit of this service is social interaction with someone in the location you are visiting – however this is also a great example of resource reuse. Hotels are seldom at full capacity normally . Moving towards models of greater resource re-use for residential infrastructure now looks like an obvious idea, however has significant environmental benefits. People are leasing properties, a room or a foldout couch that would otherwise go unused. With the explosion of international travel with low cost airlines, more people want an interesting way of travel at reasonable cost without a socially sterile hotel. There is not a great deal more power used in shared space, it does require the building of extensive additional infrastructure (did you know the concrete industry is one of the highest polluting relative to the size of its industry? Around 5% of global emissions. . According to our estimates, on average Airbnb would reduce the emissions from residential stays by a minimum of 65% compared to standard stays. Even if you’re not directly leading to energy or process efficiencies, there could be a role for you in providing information to help your corporate clients or consumers to be more informed and make better decisions. If your service is there to help, then go above and beyond your competitors to explain the environmental impact of a decision you may facilitate. A clear space where this happens in your everyday life is travel. Many online travel agents and travel meta search companies are embedding environmental data in the decision flow for customers. One of our new clients, , is not only providing new information about alternative ways to arrive at a destination (such as ferries or trains in addition to planes), they’re including information about the carbon footprint of the trip to empower their customer to make a more informed decision. Consider whether you can offer a similar value to yours. Be proactive or expect to have to try and catch up with your competitors who will move first. This is a key difference from previous generations of entrepreneurs. This data is now available. This is an opportunity available today that will make your business more competitive while reducing your environmental impact. So if you are an entrepreneur proving how you are more driven and provide more value than your competitors, don’t forget to embed environmental efficiency into your service offering. This is not simply an “add-on” it should be a part of the strategy of any up and coming entrepreneur. Lead the way, or more importantly let your customers lead the way, by helping them to reduce their environmental impact and make better decisions – working together for better services that also address the greatest moral challenge of our time. |
Facebook Employee Reveals Killer Facebook Music Feature In Deleted Tweet | MG Siegler | 2,011 | 9 | 21 | Facebook Music is launching tomorrow. This, everyone knows. But not everyone knows exactly how it will work, since Facebook been tweaking things right up until launch. But tonight one Facebook employee accidentally revealed one killer feature of the service. Ji Lee, the creative director that Facebook in April, sent out the following tweet earlier: The “Listen with your friend” feature in ticker is blowing my mind. Listen to what your friends are listening. LIVE. Within minutes, Lee deleted the tweet, but not before Mitchell Holder . Yes, Lee is describing a key feature of Facebook Music launching tomorrow. Not only will all music you’re listening to in the , there will be a link to “Listen with your friend”, that when clicked, will allow you to listen along to the same song at the same time (thanks to the magic of ). Undoubtedly, this feature is already live on Lee’s Facebook account, and he probably didn’t realize he wasn’t supposed to talk about it yet. Earlier today, Lee used his Facebook account to leave the : Ji Lee is listening to Black & Blue by Mike Snow and feeling happy it’s another beautiful sunny day in California. Yep. Also Facebook Music. One other thing we can confirm: the unified music “remote control” on Facebook has been removed, as . This means that in order to control the music (play/pause/stop/next track/etc) you’ll have to switch windows to the music service itself. We’ll be at f8 tomorrow covering the entire event. |
YouTube Now Converting 2D Videos To 3D, Removes 15 Minute Limit For Verified Users | Greg Kumparak | 2,011 | 9 | 21 | I hate 3D videos. Chances are, you hate 3D videos too. And yet, the electronics makers of the world insist on shoving 3D display technology into everything from TVs to smartphones, regardless of the fact that there’s still next to no worthwhile 3D content out there. Besides Avatar — but seriously, I could barely make it through that movie without nodding off the time. But wherever video trends go, Youtube will follow. YouTube has been playing around with 3D video support for , with the biggest holdback being that only a very, very small chunk of the population owns a camera capable of capturing that extra dimension. Looking to get more 3D content onto their site, YouTube is today rolling out a Beta of a 2D to 3D conversion system. They also removed the 15 minute video limit for all verified users. As opposed to traditional 3D video capturing setups which requires two simultaneously captured videos to be merged with fancy software trickery, Youtube’s new conversion tool measures the motion and color of a single video to simulate depth and hobble together a hacky, 3D-ish video. Youtube admits that it’s not on par with shooting 3D video the proper way — but hey, it’s a Beta. You’ll still need 3D glasses (or at least a glasses-free 3D display) to watch the videos properly. YouTube also made another rather notable announcement, though they more so just mentioned it in passing: they’re removing the 15 minute video length limit for anyone who is in good standing (read: anyone who hasn’t uploaded porn or bootlegs) and has been “verified” (read: anyone willing to cough up their phone number). Finally, the hour-long Director’s Cut of your Chip & Dales Rescue Ranger fan music video can have a home online! They also confirmed their new video editing partnership with Magistro (which ), as well as a partnership with effects/title editing tool . |
RelayRides Names Former Shopping.com Head Andre Haddad As CEO | Jason Kincaid | 2,011 | 9 | 21 | , a marketplace that lets car-owners rent out their cars a few hours at a time, has named former Shopping.com chief as its CEO. The well-funded startup has raised $10 million to date, with investors including Google Ventures, August Capital, and Shasta Ventures. RelayRides allows users to rent out their cars for select times during the week, and says that renters generate an average of $250 a month in revenue, of which they keep 65% (20% goes to insurance, 15% to RelayRides). Users on the other side of the deal benefit, because it’s generally much cheaper to rent a car through RelayRides than though traditional car rental services). And Haddad has plenty of experience with managing marketplaces — prior to joining Shopping.com, Haddad was SVP of Product at eBay and he founded European auction site iBazar. RelayRides doesn’t share many specific numbers, but it says to date “thousands of owners have signed up their cars” for renting, and that the service has doubled revenue between June and August 2011 (obviously we don’t know what the revenue was in June, so it’s not clear how big a jump that is). Alongside the news, the company is announcing that Jim Barnett (founder of Turn, former President of Overture) is joining RelayRide’s board. RelayRides is a direct competitor with , which won TechCrunch Disrupt NYC earlier this year. |
OnStar Amends Its Terms Of Service To Allow For Tracking Without Consent | Devin Coldewey | 2,011 | 9 | 21 | Vehicle assistance service OnStar has always struck me as slightly creepy, but I can appreciate its utility unfamiliar locations and emergency situations. And the notion of a company tracking your location constantly is apparently as reassuring to some as it is disturbing to me. But I doubt even those optimistic souls would find it reassuring to learn that OnStar now reserves the right to record your location, speed, and so on “for any purpose, at any time” to “any third party” provided the information is anonymized. The changes to the TOS ( , and also reported at ) were announced this week and, to be fair to OnStar, sent to their subscribers in full. And the major changes are (PDF). But that’s cold comfort to anyone concerned with their privacy. Sharing anonymized information isn’t anything new for users of online services. Unless you actually opt out, it’s likely that most of the stuff you use online is being tracked, and that data sold in some way or another. Most companies are careful about anonymizing data, but not all data can be anonymized. A GPS record is rather hard to decouple from identity, since an intact record of a day or a week will plainly yield home and workplace locations, among other things. Cross reference that with the data they now sell to “credit card processors and/or third parties we contract with who conduct joint marketing initiatives with OnStar,” and you’ve got a nice little database of easily identifiable individuals going. It should be noted that there’s some tension here regarding what’s private and what’s public information — certainly it can easily be found out from voting, property, and tax records where someone lives and works. And the make and model of your vehicle is easily discernible by anyone nearby. But that’s a misleading way to think about it; customers agree to the TOS with the implicit understanding that their location and speed would be used for the services they pay for, and if necessary shared with law enforcement. Not only now does the TOS essentially say that as long as they take your name off it, they can sell your data to literally anyone who wants it, but they now will also continue to collect that data even if you don’t use OnStar. Again, to give OnStar credit, they say right away that you can totally deactivate their data connection by telling a representative that you want to. Hopefully the opt-out process is as easy as they say. But it’s a little odd that a company with whom you have no connection other than a piece of hardware in your car should want or be able to access that information. If you’re really intent on being invisible to them, search for OnStar and your vehicle make and model to find where the GPS unit is, and simply disconnect it. To be honest, this really isn’t such a big deal, but it’s always discouraging to see companies with sensitive data taking the route of companies like ISPs and carriers, whose data handling practices are highly suspect. Furthermore, the legitimacy of the data sharing relies on the effective anonymization of this GPS data, and they have not convinced me that they are doing this effectively. If you have OnStar, this might be a good time to question whether the utility of the service really outweighs the potential for abuse. : five minutes after posting this, I was contacted by OnStar, who wishes to make clear that “OnStar has and always will give our customers the choice in how we use their data. We’ve also been very open with our customers about changes in services and privacy terms.” I agree with the latter, but clearly the former is not true. Customers appear to have a choice between using the service and not using the service; subsequently what data is collected and how it is used appears to be entirely OnStar’s decision. |
Nvidia Reveals Kal-El’s Secret Fifth Core For Ultra-Low-Power Tasks | Devin Coldewey | 2,011 | 9 | 21 | There has been a lot of whispering about Nvidia’s next-generation Tegra chip, code-named Kal-El (Superman’s Kryptonian name, for the uninitiated), since it was on a roadmap back in Februrary. But it hasn’t shown up quite yet in any actual handsets or tablets, though and will have its debut soon. Nvidia today released some about the SoC that confirms Tegra’s status as the brand to beat in the mobile computing world. Turns out it’s not quad-core, it’s -core. And the “companion core” is designed to take over while all the others go to sleep. As you have probably suspected, load balancing and optimizing processor use is important to the battery life of many devices. The screen is usually a bigger draw, but with demand for CPU- and GPU-intensive content rising, the portion of a battery used for that processing is as well. But when you’re not playing games or watching HD movies on your phone, those high-power cores don’t operate as efficiently as one designed for low-power, low-priority tasks. So Nvidia put another one on the die, a low-power optimized core, that takes over for mundane things like notification monitoring while the phone is inactive, low-bandwidth stuff like e-reading, and so on. Nvidia explains it all in this handy diagram, though be on the watch for self-congratulatory jargon (“console-class gaming” isn’t an industry standard term): It’s a bit like having a city car and a hot rod in your garage. You don’t want to drive your Aston Martin in bumper-to-bumper traffic. That’s why you have a Civic too, or perhaps a . Same here. Why use ten times the CPU power necessary to perform a simple task? (PDF), but take it with a grain of salt, because TI might have some tricks up its sleeve, and even Intel might be creeping up. |
The End Of TechCrunch: The Song | MG Siegler | 2,011 | 9 | 21 | [youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VdWfnWDDpng&w=640&h=365] At the risk of not only beating a dead horse, but cremating it with , this video is too good not to post. , is back with a song about what else: . As we begin this new era, it’s a fitting tribute to the old one. TechCrunch is dead, long live TechCrunch. |
YouTube Integrates Magisto’s “Magical Video Editing” Tool | Greg Kumparak | 2,011 | 9 | 21 | Yeesh — talk about a grand debut. After just going into , cloud-based video editing service Magisto will later today announce a rather huge new partner: Youtube. Magisto’s claim to fame is its ease of use; it is, to some extent, editor-less editing. You pick up to 16 videos, select some music, give the end project a title, click a button, and bam! You’ve got a rather slick, smoothly edited video to pass around to friends and family. Sure, no one will mistake it for something pieced together by the late, great Sally Menke — but it’s more than enough to jazz up that vacation footage before shootin’ it off to Grandma. Beginning this evening, Magisto will be integrated into YouTube as part of their page. Youtube added their own fancy video editing tool to the site (with things like video rotation, stabilization, and brightness/color adjustment) just last week — and while this doesn’t replace that, it’s yet another option to help ensure that some percentage of the inimitable mountain of video uploaded to Youtube each day is that much less likely to be completely unedited garbage. Youtube and Magisto should be announcing the partnership sometime within the next hour. |
BankSimple Shows Its Web-Based Banking Tool On Video | Devin Coldewey | 2,011 | 9 | 21 | Since we first heard of when Twitter’s Alex Payne left to join the venture, there has been a but not much in the way of real product. They’ve remedied that today with a walkthrough video of their web-based banking client. And I have to say, their promised of banking that “doesn’t suck” is looking intact. This is strictly a broad-strokes video, showing the look and feel of the main screens and some of the more immediately-useful features. Considering the state of most online and mobile banking solutions, I don’t think they’re in too much of a hurry, but rather are content to explain at their own rate why their service will be better. Today is just the intro. [vimeo w=640 http://vimeo.com/29339937] I don’t want to summarize the short and informative video, but a few points deserve commentary. The “safe to spend” balance is a great idea, but I’m afraid it might get complicated fast with linked accounts, credit lines, and the other details that tend to complicate banking. If all we ever did was deposit into and debit our accounts, banking might not even need the facelift BankSimple is aiming to provide. That said, it’s a nice at-a-glance figure that both lets you know it’s okay to take the car in today and also reminds you of the goals for which you’ve sequestered money. The searching really does look excellent. Understanding of search terms has evolved so far that it’s really inexcusable to have only simple string-matching queries for something as important as banking or medical records. It’s also helpful in the case of fraud. Having just recently had to clear up some fraudulent charges to my account, I would have loved to have quick access to my transactions with rich, plain-language search tools. Hopefully sending money is as easy as it looks. As a commenter notes, it doesn’t debit immediately, which I would really expect from it. Since BankSimple already takes the liberty of presenting a “balance” that is strictly speaking a subjective interpretation of the data, it seems like that money should have disappeared from the safe-to-spend balance right away. That could very easily be implemented, but there might also be good reason for it. ( : on rewatching the video, I find it’s clear that the moneygram is being “scheduled.” Still, it seems it should subtract from the safe-to-spend amount) How versatile the money-sending and white cards are is also in question, though from their demos it appears they should work more or less identically to your “normal” bank card. But will we still have to deal with weirdo interstate banking laws, with international transaction fees, bank hour differences, holds on our accounts, things like that? Is this improving banking, or just the of banking? The interface is extremely promising, but when it comes to banking we need even more promises. Improving the searching and planning of month-to-month finances is a good thing, but what about all the other things about big banks that bother us so much? I like where they’re going with this (and the investment money says others do as well), but we should all maintain a healthy but hopeful skepticism until we see the whole story. |
Google Says Mobile Optimized Sites Will Factor Into Landing Page Quality And Perform Better In AdWords | Leena Rao | 2,011 | 9 | 21 | Google is announcing today that websites that are optimized for mobile will now factor into ad quality. The company says that last year it began to limit ad serving on smartphone devices if they pointed to landing pages with Flash-heavy content, in order to improve the experience for users. Now the search giant will be considering the mobile optimization of a website as a new factor of mobile ads quality for all AdWords campaigns that are driving mobile traffic. As a result of this change, ads that have mobile optimized landing pages will perform better in AdWords and drive more traffic. The core guidelines for landing page quality apply across devices (on desktop and on mobile) but this consideration will only affect AdWords on mobile devices. For background, Google’s landing page quality for mobile sites factors in site navigability, simple layout, content prioritization, mobile features, touch features, minimal flash, landing page load time. Landing page quality is one of several factors that determine an advertiser’s keywords’ Quality Scores. As Google says, a poor mobile web experience can negatively shape a consumer’s opinion of a brand or company and make it hard for them to engage or make a purchase. In fact, 61% of users are unlikely to return to a website that they had trouble accessing from their phone. Unsurprisingly, Google is through Google Sites, on publishers and site owners who want to create a simple mobile website. Considering the holiday shopping season is getting closer, retailers may want to be sure their sites fit into Google’s landing page guidelines. Certainly, this year more than ever, holiday shoppers will be for search and purchasing. |
Shasta Ventures Closes New $265 Million III Fund | Alexia Tsotsis | 2,011 | 9 | 21 | Menlo Park-based VC firm is announcing the closing of its Shasta Ventures III fund today, topping off at $265 million. With the participation of mostly already existing investors, the fund will be the VC firm’s largest raised to date, following the $250 million Shasta Ventures II fund closed in 2007 and the $210 million Shasta Ventures I fund closed in 2004. Shasta managing director tells me that the fund’s investments will continue to follow Shasta’s general strategy of investing between $250K to $6 million early on in a company’s Series A round and then following on in subsequent rounds — The firm is willing to invest up to $12 million over the course of their relationship with a portfolio company. The Shasta team, which consists of managing directors Francis, , , partner , principal , CFO and associate , is specifically focusing on companies that are early-stage and in one of three core verticals; consumer internet, mobile, and software as a service. “The primary thing we’re looking for is entrepreneurs that have a unique vision and passion in sectors where technology can change the way people do business and can dramatically improve the customer experience,” says Francis. Francis estimates that a fund this size should be good for around 30 investments and the firm completes around 8-10 investments a year. Notable Shasta companies include TechCrunch Disrupt finalist and Intuit acquisition , which Francis describes as a “classic” Shasta investment because Shasta gave its fiduciary vote of confidence before the market was proven and the startup’s technology ended up dramatically changing the industry. Errand marketplace is a more recent example of a Shasta Ventures investment that is on the forefront of change in its space, connecting people who need tasks completed with people who want to complete tasks. In the SaaS space, Francis tells me that social CRM tool and , which helps companies simplify their billing processes, are Shasta companies to watch. |
RIM’s Stock Price Tumbles To A New Five Year Low | Chris Velazco | 2,011 | 9 | 21 | RIM’s stock took a bit of a tumble after the release of their underwhelming Q2 earnings report last week, and it looks as though it won’t stop dropping anytime soon. Before the market closed for the day, RIM share prices continued to inch downward until it reached (at time of writing) $21.52: RIM’s lowest in . Before this, the RIM’s previous low occurred this past August, when their stock price dipped to $21.60/share. It’s clear that consumer and shareholder confidence in RIM is slipping, thanks in large part to their company’s disappointing financials. Their recent quarterly earnings report indicated unit sales were down across the board: they sold nearly 3 million fewer BlackBerrys in this quarter than the last, and PlayBook sales dropped from 500,000 in Q1 to a comparatively scant 200,000. While the company was bullish on their recent launch of 7 new BlackBerrys, their seem to have done nothing to buoy RIM’s stock performance. RIM is reportedly going to cut PlayBook prices in order to staunch the bleeding, but it’s looking more and more like their hopes are pinned on QNX to pull them through. RIM is placing a lot of faith in the new OS, but some are already saying it’s too little too late. By the time the first QNX BlackBerrys hit the streets, a new iPhone will have already been launched, not to mention a and who-knows-how-many handsets to go with it. QNX could indeed provide a fresh take on the BlackBerry paradigm (and the ability to play well with Android apps couldn’t hurt), but what if the BlackBerry paradigm is itself the problem? BlackBerrys have a reputation as being the workhorse of the smartphone world, thanks to their corporate pedigree. It took a phone like the BlackBerry Pearl (which, coincidentally, launched almost exactly five years ago) to take RIM out of the boardroom and into the backpack. Even then, a few years and over a dozen BlackBerry models later, nothing seems to have changed. Let me qualify that a bit: the hardware has certainly gotten better, and RIM has made efforts to expand the idea of what your BlackBerry can do ( comes to mind), but for better or worse, the BlackBerry’s communications-friendly DNA remains untouched. You can take a BlackBerry out of a business, but it never feels like you can take the business out of a BlackBerry. That’s not necessarily a bad thing, but in a landscape where we lean on our smartphones to inform, entertain, and connect us, the BlackBerry seems almost quaint. That said, I don’t think anyone should count RIM out quite yet. While I don’t think QNX will be the be-all-end-all that RIM was hoping for, it could give the platform just enough fresh air to hang in there until something truly drastic takes place. |
Stoppelman: 75% Of Yelp’s Traffic Comes From Google | Jason Kincaid | 2,011 | 9 | 21 | This afternoon the Senate Judiciary Committee held a series of hearings investigating whether Google may be violating Antitrust law. During the first panel of the day, Google Chairman (and former longtime CEO) Eric Schmidt took the hot seat to answer questions focusing largely on the fairness of Google search results, and whether they unfairly favor Google products (you can find our full post on that hearing ). During the second hearing, which just ended, a handful of Google critics and competitors made their cases as to how Google has been anticompetitive. One of these critics was Yelp CEO , who released a statement last night (embedded below) outlining why he believes Google has abused its market dominance in search. And he provided additional details about Yelp’s relationship with Google during a series of questions from the participating Senators. One of the themes throughout Stoppelman’s testimony was Google’s mandate that if Yelp wanted its review snippets removed from Google’s Place pages, then Google would remove it entirely from its search results as well. This, Stoppelman says, is a false choice, because nobody can afford not to appear in Google search. Asked how much of an impact being removed from Google would have on Yelp, Stoppelman replied, “about 75% of Yelp’s traffic, overall, is sourced through Google one way or another. About 50% is traffic coming from people who start their search on Google and eventually find their way to Yelp; the other 25% is people qualifying ‘Yelp’ as one of the keywords in their search… If we were not in Google it would be completely devastating.” Stoppelman also pointed out the timing of Google’s integration of Yelp reviews into its Place pages, which he says were added immediately after Google’s reported offer to acquire Yelp fell through — and that they were only removed once government inquiries were looming. Susan A. Creighton, an attorney at Wilson Sonsini Goodrich & Rosati who was defending Google, briefly challenged Stoppelman’s assertions while responding to a question regarding whether Google scrapes data from other sites. Creighton described search text snippets, explaining that consumers like having a line or two of text associated with search results. She says that Stoppelman is complaining about these, and that he’s “talking about micro-managing whether or not Google shows those results”. Also included on this panel were Nextag CEO Jeff Katz and Thomas O. Barnett (partner at Covington & Burling, and Assistant Attorney General for Antitrust). It’s worth nothing that Creighton was formerly the Competition Director of the FTC. We’ll post video of both panels shortly. [scribd id=65727557 key=key-9h538hrxbf8b93stt8q mode=list] |
Video: Developer Uses Lego Robot To Test Out iPad 2 Camera App | Jordan Crook | 2,011 | 9 | 21 | So what happens when you’ve just built this awesome camera app but your client wants you to manually test it out like… 10,000 times? You have two options: you can spend the rest of your earthly days pressing shutter, save, and repeating the process you can just build yourself a robot finger out of Legos. Simple enough, yes? It sure seemed to be for the guys over at Pheromone Labs. After their client asked for between 10,000 to 15,000 manual load tests of the application they built, the team figured a little ingenuity would save loads of time and energy, reports . Ingredients: a Lego Mindstorm kit and a few capacitive styluses. Easy as that. While the end-product (video below) is more exciting than you’d assume, none seem more pleased with it than Jon Masse, a member of the developer team and the one who . Arriving at work this morning there were many more people circling my desk than usual. They were all curious to see what kind of insanity the team had cooked up this time. And there it was sitting on my desk chugging along snapping pics not phased by the attention it was getting. A perfect example of creative automation. Granted, Pheromone Labs’ robotic finger is much less intense than this seemingly useless , but then again the automatic picture taker actually has purpose. And is thus human*. *JK [vimeo http://www.vimeo.com/28363975 w=640&h=360] from on . |
Salesforce Buys Customer Service SaaS Assistly For $50M To Reach Small Businesses | Leena Rao | 2,011 | 9 | 21 | Salesforce has social customer service SaaS startup . The purchase price is $50 million, and the deal is all-cash. Assistly helps companies collect and organize all of their customer conversations into a prioritized actionable list and equips support staff with the tools to respond to customers. The application allows businesses to filter conversations, access customer histories, automate processes and even tap into social media conversations on Facebook, Twitter and other sites. And Assistly provides users with key metrics and analytics, such as case volume, interaction volume by channel, response time, service levels, agent performance and more. : TechCrunch founder Michael Arrington is that the acquisition price is $50 million, plus an additional $30 million in deferred payments over two years for a total of $80 million. Assistly and Salesforce already had a previous relationship. Salesforce made a strategic investment in Assistly. And the startup recently on the AppExchange that allows sales and support teams see data, like customer contact info and status while working on cases direct from Salesforce. Assistly, which only last September, offers companies an option of paying for total usage instead of seats, so people can jump in occasionally and only be billed for time spent on the platform. This is especially ideas for small to medium sized businesses. The company is backed by Bullpen Capital, Index Ventures, Kenny Van Zant, True Ventures and Social Leverage and is used Instagram, Klout, One Kings Lane, Spotify and Square. The startup was founded by , , , and , each of whom previously worked together in building customer service-based companies back in the 90’s. The first, called eShare, was acquired in 1999; the second, called eAssist Global Solutions, was eventually acquired in 2004 after stumbling through the dot com bubble burst. Following the eAssist acquisition three of the team members left the space to start Goowy, a Flash widget maker. The team reunited to develop Assistly in the customer service space. Salesforce’s CEO and founder Marc Benioff said of the acquisition: Salesforce already offers the Service Cloud to companies, which helps businesses connect with customers across both traditional and social channels. But Assistly extends this offering to the small business community, and helps Salesforce reach this audience. Salesforce social media monitoring company Radian6 for over $300 million. |
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Schmidt: “Senator, I Can Assure You We Have Not Cooked Anything” | Erick Schonfeld | 2,011 | 9 | 21 | The Senate Judiciary Committee is holding Antitrust hearings on Google today and Google chairman Eric Schmidt is in the hot seat taking questions under oath. The hearing is under way right now (you can ). The main question the Senate hearing is trying to answer, says committee chairman Senator Patrick Leahy (D-Vermont), is whether “Google is in a position to determine who will succeed and fail on the Internet.” Google’s dominance in search and search advertising (with estimated market shares of 65% to 70% in search, 75% in search advertising, and 95% in mobile search) puts it in the antitrust crosshairs. Schmidt opened his remarks by assuring the Senators, “We get it.” He cautioned them not to confuse Google for its historical predecessor, Microsoft. “Not all companies are cut from the same cloth,” he said. Nevertheless, the hearing set out to determine whether Google is using its dominance in search to favor its other products (such as Google Places, Shopping, Maps, Android) over those of its competitors. During the hearing, some of the most gotcha questioning came from Senator Michael Lee (R-Utah). He put up a chart from a study comparing Google Product Search result rankings to those from product-comparison sites including and . While the results from the competing sites were all over the map, Google Product Search results consistently came up as the No. 3 result in all cases. “You’ve cooked it so you are always third,” Lee accused Schmidt. “Senator, I can assure you we have not cooked anything,” Schmidt responded. Schmidt tried to explain that Google Product search is different than a product comparison search in that it brings up results which link directly to those products rather than to page comparing that product to others. The bigger point Schmidt was trying to get across is that Google is different now than it was ten years ago when all it was trying to do was send people away from Google by providing the best ten links to other sites. For instance, Google puts up universal search results at the top of the page for a variety of searches where it thinks consumers want a particular answer such as a stock price, a map, or place information. The best answer “ten years ago might have been the ten links,” says Schmidt. “But today it might be to algorithmically compute an answer. Speed matters. If we can calculate an answer more quickly, that might be better for the consumer.” But is Google discriminating against other sites when it points people to its own products instead of elsewhere on the Net? Schmidt says that it is not. However, he was not as convincing as he could have been. After listening to his answers, Senator Al Franken (D-Minnesota) stated, “I am skeptical of big companies that control both information and distribution to that information. Your incentives shift and people have reason to worry that you won’t play fair.” Noting a slight hesitation from Schmidt before answering a previous question about whether all of Google’s results reflect an unbiased algorithm, Franken railed against him, “We are trying to have hearing here about whether you favor your own stuff, and you admittedly don’t know the answer.” |
CrowdStar And Others Bet On HTML5 Mobile Gaming Platform Spaceport | Leena Rao | 2,011 | 9 | 21 | Multi-device social gaming platform is announcing that a number of Facebook game developers have selected their platform to go mobile. BitRhymes, IKIGames, LuckyLabs, Fortune Planet, DeezGames and CrowdStar are now using Spaceport to build their games for user across iOS, Android and other platforms. Sibblingz to simultaneously create games on Facebook as well as iOS and Android devices, allowing players to continue the same social game as they switch between devices. The platform also offers the developers the ability to monetize free-to-play games with virtual goods. The company’s cloud-based game creation platform, , allows game developers to build a game once, using Javascript, and have it play across all smartphone operating systems, with a native app-like experience and fast performance. The web-based games run as a hybrid HTML5 – native app, and the code for the game is written once, in a simple scripting language, so that they can then run on any device. And developer can also create native iOS apps as well using Spaceport. The developers are basically turning their Facebook games into HTML5-based mobile web games as well as native games for the iOS App Store and Android. As my colleague MG Siegler earlier this summer, Facebook has a secret plan, called , to bring applications to the mobile web via HTML5. We know and Sibblingz says that Spaceport allows developers to create HTML5 games that are compatible with Project Spartan through an HTML5 canvas-rendering engine available for iOS and Android. Sibblingz founder Ben Savage has told us that the startup is working with multiple Facebook game developers who are preparing for Project Spartan. It’s a huge, Zynga-sized opportunity and clearly many developers are throwing their hats in the ring. |
Stealthy Startup Dashlane Raises $5 Million In Series A | Sarah Perez | 2,011 | 9 | 21 | Stealthy consumer Internet startup is announcing today that it has closed $5 million in Series A funding led by New York City-based firms and . Also participating in the round is Dashlane co-founder Bernard Liautaud. Dashlane won’t say much about its product offering just yet, only that it’s designed to eliminate the hassles involved with filling in personal information online, both on the desktop and on mobile. How exactly Dashlane is different from current solutions is still unclear. There are several companies out there that help manage form-filling and automated password creation, for example. Web browsers have their own autofill capabilities, too. But Dashlane’s promise is that it will “do more” than what’s available now, and has features designed to work specifically with e-commerce and m-commerce sites. It will not actually store your credit card information on its own servers, CEO Emmanuel Schalit tells us. We do know that it has filed four patents related to its IP, but product details, including what type of data is stores and how that’s stored, are sparse. was founded 18 months ago by Bernard Liautaud, the co-founder and former CEO of Business Objects, which was in 2007. CEO Schalit came on around 9 months ago and will help manage the company’s New York offices. Going forward, the company’s original engineering team will remain in its Paris-based offices, while its New York offices are staffed up. Over the next 12 months, Dashlane will double its roster of a dozen team members with new hires in areas that include support, community management, marketing, business development, and, as Schalit puts it, “engineers, engineers, engineers.” New York was chosen as Dashlane’s U.S. home because of the time zone differences between it and Paris as well as the commute time between the two cities. But Schalit says that the company also believes New York City is a place that’s “starting to catch up with Silicon Valley,” and is becoming an attractive place to set up an Internet business. He notes, too, that there isn’t as much competition for talent as there is out West. In addition to hiring, the new funds will be used to advance product development, and in particular, mobile development – a key piece to Dashlane’s overall solution. The desktop service will launch in a few weeks time, with the mobile component to follow. The site’s homepage is hosting for interested users now. As part of today’s announcement, Habib Kairouz, managing partner at Rho Ventures, and Rick Heitzmann, managing director of FirstMark Capital, will join Bernard Liautaud and Dashlane CEO Emmanuel Schalit on the board, bringing the total board to four members. |
Apple Donates Refurbed Original iPads To Teach For America Teachers | Jordan Crook | 2,011 | 9 | 21 | It’s always nice to see mega-brand corporations give a little something back. For the most valuable company in the world, Apple, it’s only fitting that what they give back would be one of the more valued devices on the market: the first generation iPad. Last spring after the iPad 2 was announced, first-gen iPad owners were told they could return their old tablet to an Apple retail location and it would be donated to low-income teachers working with the organization . If you aren’t already familiar with it, Teach For America is a program that takes some of the brightest college grads in the country, gives them a quick five-week training course, and then sends them into the more impoverished districts across the country to be teachers. This is meant to help them better understand the achievement gap in the U.S. So why Teach For America? Well, besides the fact that it’s a smart organization that has the potential to make a difference, Steve Jobs’ wife, Laurene Powell sits on the TFA board of directors, reports . We’re not sure just how many first-gen iPads Apple actually collected during the initiative, but it was enough to make sure every one of the 8,000+ TFA corps members got their very own. Though it’s a great start, one iPad per classroom seems a bit ineffective. However, one teacher from St. Louis found that her kids would get work done more efficiently if they knew that they could play with the iPad when they finished. A pretty smart implementation of the device with just one per classroom, but hopefully they’ll be adding the iPad 2 to their collections once the rumored iPad 3 makes its debut. |
FastCustomer Raises $750K So You Don’t Have To Wait On Hold | Alexia Tsotsis | 2,011 | 9 | 7 | Call hold deferral app is announcing that it has raised $750K worth of seed funding from , , , , , , and Henry Parry-Okeden. Attempting to finally alleviate long hold times for people who have better things to do than wait on hold (um, all of us), FastCustomer lets you register your phone number via an app and then allows you select from one of 2500 companies you’d like to call, offering to call you back when there’s a human available to talk to. The app is in the same space as and but differentiates itself by streamlining the process into one click. Fast Customer CEO tells me that since February the service has saved users over 500K minutes on hold and now has 50K users across both its iPhone and Android apps. FastCustomer currently monetizes through sponsorships, call back modules and plans on eventually charging companies for data garnered through end of call surveys. FastCustomer will be using the new financing to expand its team, increase user acquisition and expand to other platforms. Dragushan hopes that one day customers will be able to use the service by text. “People hate waiting on hold. It’s a waste of our time honestly,” says Dragushan. “Companies have millions of computers that wait on hold, so why can’t the computers just hold hands, and when the humans are ready, put us in touch?” Yeah. [youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PXDUZJFXgZk&w=630] |
After Nine Months Of Revisions, The Verizon Droid Bionic Is Finally Available | Greg Kumparak | 2,011 | 9 | 7 | January 5th. That’s when Motorola and Verizon first announced the DROID Bionic. 9 months grueling months later, it’s here. It’s seen after , and revisions to both its internal specs and its outward appearance have made the Droid Bionic we see launching today about as different from what was originally announced as any other Android handset hitting the shelves this month, but still: it’s rocking the Droid Bionic name, built by Motorola for Verizon, and it’s finally, finally here. Given its launch window and positioning at the top of Verizon’s marketing masthead, the Bionic will be amongst but a handful of handsets that’ll be regularly held up against whatever Apple might launch as the next iPhone in the coming weeks. As such, you can be damn sure we’re going to give this thing a thorough examining before we publish our full review. Look for that early next week — but in the mean time, you can find our here. For those who might be needing a refresher on The DROID Bionic is available for $299 on a new 2-year contract, or $599 at full retail. |
Facebook Imitation Not Sincerest Form Of Flattery, Says Twitter Mobile Designer | Alexia Tsotsis | 2,011 | 9 | 7 | Because this reminds me of that time when Facebook unveiled that the Facebook Places logo was, no joke, a , I’m just going to copy the intro sentence to that post: On the right is the status and photo update interface for Facebook’s iOS app, yesterday. On the left is the iOS interface for the current leader in the status update space . Notice anything interesting? Sure you say, a standard mobile status update box isn’t exactly a UI opus. But it’s the little things, like how the people tagging icons are in exactly the same place on both apps, that matter. Also, this is what the Facebook iPhone status update interface looked like before the 3.5 version. Heh. Apparently I’m not the only one who sees the resemblance between the two, as Twitter mobile designer has comparative screencaps of both, with the comments, “Seriously Facebook?” and “Okay Facebook, enough with the flattery.” Interestingly enough, Haggerty on the mobile team at LinkedIn, which, coincidently, was at some point itself on the receiving end of that it had interface. What goes around comes around. |
Daily fantasy sports FanDuel closes $4 million Series B investment | Mike Butcher | 2,011 | 9 | 7 | With a new NFL season starting tomorrow, it’s good timing for daily fantasy sports operator to close a $4 million Series B investment round led by venture capital firm Piton Capital. Existing investors Pentech Ventures and the Scottish Investment Bank. The company will use the majority of the funds on product development and hiring. FanDuel’s growth is reflected in its payouts going up from $1.5 million last season to over $10 million in league winnings.The company has also just opened an office in New York, complementing existing offices in Edinburgh and San Francisco. FanDuel, which focuses solely on US sports, offers on the traditional fantasy sports game model. Instead of games lasting the whole season, players play and win in as little as a day – think of it as “one-night stand” fantasy sports. The leagues last one day (or the weekend in the case of football) and prizes are paid out immediately by the site as soon as games finish. In traditional fantasy sports leagues, league winners are only declared after the entire season ends and players often drop out as the season progresses. The site is exempt from online betting laws in the US thanks to the fantasy sports carve out in the 2006 Unlawful Internet Gaming Enforcement Act; as stated, the only difference is that FanDuel-powered fantasy sports games only last a day (for baseball) or a week (for football). The upshot is that FanDuel and its partners can generate revenue from taking a commission. A white-labeled version of the fantasy sports site is being used by the Philadelphia Inquirer’s to bring social gaming to the newspaper. |
HP Releases The Updated DM1 Ultraportable Laptop | Jordan Crook | 2,011 | 9 | 7 | HP’s PC business may be , but that doesn’t mean we won’t see any more HP notebooks. The company today announced the updated DM1 ultraportable laptop with a new, fresher look. Starting at $399, the DM1 comes with either an Intel second-gen Core processor or an AMD E-series processor. AMD models will also include AMD Radeon HD discrete graphics. The laptop sports an 11.6-inch LED display, measures in at a little less than an inch thick, and weighs about 3.5 lbs. The DM1 is finished with a special type of soft-touch rubber that is more durable thanks to a unique rubber printing method. The soft touch finish is one of the most noticeable enhancements to the product, and is a huge step up from that of its predecessor. A couple other design improvements have to do with the shape of the notebook as a whole. The back hinge has been adjusted so that the screen lies flush with the body when the notebook is closed, rather than having that battery bulging out like it does on the original model. The bottom also curves up into the notebook’s wedge shape in a much more pronounced way than the original. The keyboard, touchpad, and palm rests have all gone to either black, or ash grey, instead of the usual HP silver. The DM1 is meant for someone who’s light on their feet. If you travel, or are a college student, this may just be what you’re looking for. Another cool feature that will definitely come in handy for those on-the-go users is HP’s ProtectSmart. It’s a built-in accelerometer that detects when the computer is bumped or dropped and immediately stops the hard drive, likely saving many precious files.
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Labor Board: Fired-For-Facebooking Employees Must Be Rehired | Devin Coldewey | 2,011 | 9 | 7 | It’s no secret that an employer can, and probably should, do a little check-up on your internet presence before hiring you, and possibly afterwards. But as several unhappy people have found out, sometimes they look pretty hard, and have access to information you thought private. It can result in foot-in-mouth moments and occasionally punitive action. That was certainly the case when five workers were fired for their conduct on Facebook. The post in question was a complaint about someone complaint, and other employees joined in, including the person being complained about. A few days later, they were sacked; their employer said that the posts constituted harassment. The workers felt their rights had been violated, and took it to the National Labor Relations Board. And incredibly, . I say “incredibly” becuase judicial comprehension of tech issues is a serious problem. Judge Arthur J. Amchan seems to have a head on his shoulders, though. He stated that the employees had not forfeited the protection of the law in their speech, which was well within the bounds of normal discussion of workplace conditions for which one can’t easily be fired. The size of the precedent being set isn’t clear. It’s certainly a victory, but to blow it out of proportion would be a mistake. This was a one-time offense with some coffee-break jabbering — a fairly easy thing for the judge to see. But questions abound. What if it was systemic? What if it was in private messages? What if it had been going on for weeks? Months? What if the person being harassed has left the company? It’s entirely possible that a company could institute a contract policy in which employees essentially do forfeit their right to private communication. And the line past which behavior becomes not just undesirable but a fireable offense isn’t clear at all. Like many other areas where communication is moving to new platforms, the boundaries have to be tested, and this ruling extends the safe zone by a little bit. |
The Bombshell That Wasn’t: FOSS Patents’ Android Scoop Misses The Mark | Jason Kincaid | 2,011 | 9 | 7 | As the legal challenges against Android have mounted, a few voices have risen more quickly than the rest. One of these is patent analyst Florian Mueller’s, whose site has chronicled cases like (over the Galaxy Tab’s likeness to the iPad) and (which goes after Android itself for patent and copyright infringement). His posts often get wide circulation, and, oftentimes, he concludes that Google is in rough shape. Today, Mueller has written called “Shocker for Android OEMs: Google document proposes giving Motorola time-to-market advantage to build Android ‘lead devices'”. The article has gotten quite a bit of press coverage and is now one of the top stories on , as it’s allegedly uncovered some of Android’s dark secrets. Unfortunately, these revelations are neither new, nor were they particularly shocking in the first place. In the post, Mueller points to Document 397 of the case, which includes the following passages (written by Google employees): Mueller goes on to say this is “definitive confirmation of what was previously suspected: the Android source code tree has “private branches” and some OEMs were always more equal than others.” He also questions how, given the fact that it has shown certain OEMs favoritism in the past, anyone could believe that Google bestow unfair favoritism toward Motorola Mobility after it acquires the company. In his post, Mueller acknowledges that point number one is nothing new. Android’s closed development already has been . It is not a secret that Google only releases the latest version when it’s nearly ready for the public. Yes, it does irk some developers and manufacturers that they can’t access the code as gets checked in (cue Apple fans running around with scare-quotes shouting, “Open!”). But while Android isn’t as open as, say, Mozilla’s Firefox, it still does open-source each release. Well, except for . But, again, this is all well-worn territory. Onto part two: the lead devices, with which Google grants early access to the latest version of Android. Mueller asserts: But the document I showed above removes whatever little doubt anyone had left that Google certainly plays favorites with certain Android OEMs, and if the MMI deal goes through, it will play favorites with only one: its own subsidiary, of course. Thing is, there wasn’t doubt that Google “plays favorites” with certain Android OEMs. It has done this with the Motorola Droid, the Nexus One (made by HTC), the Nexus S (made by Samsung), and the Motorola Xoom. Android chief Andy Rubin has openly spoken about the lead device program in , and the Android team describes it in a video about the creation of the , in which they discuss how they “develop a lead device with a manufacturer”. Even the blog announcing the Nexus S talks about this: “Nexus S is the lead device for the Gingerbread/Android 2.3 release; it’s the first Android device to ship with the new version of the Android platform. We co-developed this product with Samsung—ensuring tight integration of hardware and software to highlight the latest advancements of the Android platform.” Google uses these lead devices as a way to keep the Android ecosystem moving forward (other OEMs quickly integrate the latest features, otherwise they fall behind). And Google can use the lead devices as a carrot — should an OEM do something Google deems hurtful to the Android ecosystem, they probably won’t be getting a lead device any time soon. But Mueller’s conclusion — that this is proof that Google will show favoritism to Motorola Mobility — doesn’t hold water. As I’ve written before, , and Google has every reason to keep as many OEMs pumping out as many Android devices as possible; it isn’t about to infuriate them all by turning Motorola into its blessed favorite. During the announcing Google’s plan to acquire Motorola, Andy Rubin said that the lead device program would continue, and that Motorola would take part in the bidding process as it has in the past. If anything, my hunch is that Motorola will actually get fewer lead devices than it would have otherwise, so as to keep the other OEMs happy. Finally, in a published today regarding Mueller makes a pretty strange claim: The choice of Andy Rubin and Google’s General Counsel Kent Walker is very questionable. While Google can’t be penalized for the fact that it doesn’t give anyone the title of “President”, those two executives are clearly not at a level with [President of Oracle Corporation] Safra Catz. As far as I can tell, Catz reports to Oracle CEO Larry Ellison. Andy Rubin, whose title is Senior Vice President, Mobile, reports to Google CEO Larry Page. Granted, Google has more SVPs than Oracle has Presidents, but those two seem pretty level to me. And Rubin is easily one of the most important people at Google. : Mueller is correct in noting that Rubin isn’t listed on Google’s page, so he has a point, but I’d still contend that Rubin is very important at the company. |
Turntable.fm Is About To Rock An iPhone App; We Have Screenshots | MG Siegler | 2,011 | 9 | 7 | For the past few months, few things on the web than . The got so hot, , that a “ ” was inevitable — and we’ve probably been seeing that the past couple of weeks. But something is coming very shortly that should supercharge the service once again: an iPhone app. Yes, it was both and that Turntable.fm would go mobile. But we’ve managed to obtain some details — and most importantly, screenshots. We’re told that the company is hoping to release the app next week. It has been in testing with a few dozen people for the past few weeks, and is solid on WiFi connections, but less so over 3G, we’re told. That’s probably the last issue they have to address given the screenshots below — it looks very polished. We’re told it was built by . As you can see, they’ve done a great job moving the look and feel of the app over to mobile. People who have used the app say it’s “awesome”. Like the site, the app has deep Facebook integration, and we assume you still need to know a Facebook friend with access in order to use it yourself. No word on an Android app at this point. Speaking of Facebook and Turntable.fm, there are also whispers that the music service will be a part of the social network’s upcoming music announcement, likely taking place at f8 in a few weeks. Hopefully Turntable.fm’s and will have more to share at Disrupt next week — .
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Disrupt SF 2011: The Full Agenda | Erick Schonfeld | 2,011 | 9 | 7 | In addition to going on at TechCrunch this week, we are also gearing up for , which starts this weekend with the followed by the main three-day event Sept 12-14. And it’s going to be a doozy. Right now we expect more than 2,000 attendees (there are still a few left). We’ll be launching 30 new startups onstage in the Startup Battlefield, and another 200 from as far away as India, Poland, Germany, and Korea will be in our Startup Alley. We’ve been doing rehearsals all week with the Battlefield finalists. The caliber of these startups just keeps improving with every Disrupt. While I can’t tell you much about them until they launch next week, they range from web and mobile to local, entertainment, and enterprise. A few are even trying to disrupt traditional markets like healthcare and farming. And then there are the speakers. All I can say is, “Wow.” Some we’ve already announced, like Vinod Khosla, Mike McCue, Ron Conway, and Peter Thiel. And Paul Graham from Y Combinator will be conducting onstage. But the agenda is filled with many more great speakers, including John Doerr, Reid Hoffman, Ashton Kutcher, Kevin Rose, and Jeremy Stoppleman. The full is below. 9:00am – 9:10am
TechCrunch opening remarks 9:10am – 9:40am
Fireside chat with , Greylock Partners and LinkedIn 9:40am – 10:00am
Fireside chat with , Flipboard 10:00am – 10:20am
Founder Stories with , Rovio and , Pandora 10:20am -10:30am
Special product announcement 10:31am – 10:50am
BREAK and BROWSE STARTUP ALLEY 10:51am – 11:00am
Special product announcement 11:00am – 11:30am
Fireside chat with , Sequoia Capital 11:30am – 12:10pm
Office Hours with , Y Combinator 12:10pm – 12:30pm
Fireside chat with , Founders Fund 12:30pm – 2:00pm
LUNCH and BROWSE STARTUP ALLEY 2:00pm – 2:15pm
Founder Stories with , Asana Startup Battlefield 2:15pm – 3:15pm
Session 1
Expert Judges: (About.me), (AOL), (Cross Commerce Media) 3:15pm – 3:30pm
BREAK and BROWSE STARTUP ALLEY
STARTUP ALLEY AUDIENCE CHOICE VOTING CLOSES @ 3:30 pm 3:30pm – 4:30pm
Session 2
Expert Judges: (Kleiner, Perkins, Caufield & Byers), (Asana), (MPi Capital), (Jig) 4:30pm – 4:45pm
BREAK 4:45pm – 5:45pm
Session 3
Expert Judges: (Freestyle Capital), (Twitter), (CBS Interactive), (CODE Advisors) 5:45-7:30pm
BROWSE STARTUP ALLEY End of sessions at entrance to Concourse: : Sponsored by 9:00pm-Midnight
After Party hosted by
1015 Folsom St
Conference badge required for admission 9:00am -9:10am
TechCrunch opening remarks 9:10am -9:20am
Welcome from , City of San Francisco 9:20am -9:40am
Fireside chat with , Khosla Ventures 9:40am – 10:00am
Founder Stories with and , Turntable.fm 10:00am-10:30am
@Venture: , (Austin Ventures), (Google Ventures),
(Greylock Partners), Rich Wong (Accel Partners), (Charles River
Ventures) 10:30am – 10:40am
Special product announcement 10:40am- 11:00am
BREAK and BROWSE STARTUP ALLEY 11:00am -11:30am
Fireside chat with , Katalyst Films and angel investor 11:30am-11:45am
Power play with , CBS Interactive 11:45am-12:15pm
Introducing The Lean Startup, by with case studies, Intuit’s and
Instagram’s 12:15pm -12:30pm
Fireside chat with , Milk 12:30pm – 2:00pm
LUNCH and BROWSE STARTUP ALLEY 2:00pm -2:15pm
Power play with , Yelp Startup Battlefield 2:15pm – 3:15pm
Session 4
Expert Judges: (Ustream), (Bit.ly), (Milk), (Charles River Ventures) 3:15pm – 3:30pm
BREAK and BROWSE STARTUP ALLEY
STARTUP ALLEY AUDIENCE CHOICE VOTING CLOSES @ 3:30 pm 3:30pm – 4:30pm
Session 5
Expert Judges: (Mightybell), (Kleiner, Perkins, Caufield & Byers), (Message Bus & The Start Project), (Perkins Cole) 4:30pm – 4:45pm
BREAK 4:45pm-5:45pm
Session 6
Expert Judges: (Google Ventures), (Quora), (Launchpad LA), (Angel Investor) 5:45pm – 7:30pm
Lean Startup Book Launch and Celebratory Cocktails with End of sessions at entrance to Concourse: : Sponsored by 9:00pm-Midnight
After Party hosted by
651 Howard Street
Conference badge required for admission 9:00am – 9:10am
TechCrunch opening remarks 9:10am – 9:30am
The Rise of (Profitable) Open Source Hardware: John Biggs moderates with (Applied Platonics), (Microsoft Research),
(iFixIt.com) and (Instructables) 9:30am -10:10am
Imagine K12’s class of startup launch presentations, hosted by education incubator
co-founder 10:10am – 10:30am
Fireside chat with , Kleiner, Perkins, Caufield & Byers 10:30 am- 10:45am
Power play with , Facebook Ads 10:45am-11:00am
BREAK and BROWSE STARTUP ALLEY 11:00am – 11:20am
Fireside chat with , Facebook 11:20am -11:35am
Founder Stories with , FindTheBest 11:35am -11:45am
Special Product Announcement 11:45am -12:30pm
@Angels: (SV Angel), (Softech VC), (Freestyle
Capital), (500 Startups), (Menlo Ventures), (Felicis Ventures) 12:30pm – 2:00pm
LUNCH and BROWSE STARTUP ALLEY 2:00pm – 2:15pm
Power play with , Benchmark Capital 2:15pm – 2:30pm
Power play with , founder and investor 2:30pm – 2:40pm
Hackathon Highlights 2:40pm – 2:55pm
News from our Startup Battlefield Alumni: , , , and
2:55pm -3:15pm
Fireside chat with , Google 3:15pm – 3:30pm
BREAK and BROWSE STARTUP ALLEY 3:30pm – 5:30pm
Startup Battlefield Semifinals Expert Judges: (Sequoia Capital), (Benchmark Capital), (SV Angel), (Google), (founder and investor) 5:30pm – 7:00pm
Cocktail reception in Startup Alley, hosted by 7:00pm – 7:30pm
Fireside chat with , Tesla Motors and Spacex
Passing of the Disrupt Cup by 9:00pm-Midnight
After Party Hosted by
118 Utah Street
Conference badge required for admission |
Review: Deus Ex – Human Revolution | Devin Coldewey | 2,011 | 9 | 7 | : Absolutely worth a play, but there are a number of flaws that cause to fall short of greatness. The bosses, the “domestic” environments, and certain about the level design. It’s far from perfect, but the core gameplay, second by second, is fun and exciting. The world of is a softly-glowing, amber world with lots of set dressing. You won’t recognize Detroit, but I’m not sure if anyone does these days. There are lots of little details here and there that have nothing to do with the game really, but still add flavor. Many of the locations actually feel like the real thing: Sarif feels like a real office area; the FEMA complex seems right, and a few others hit the mark quite well. You’re rewarded for doing pretty much everything except for truly screwing up. I played the game as a semi-pacifist, not killing anyone that didn’t really need it. I got points for being “merciful,” and then when I had to cap a guy for real, I got “marksman” credit for a headshot. That said, it does reward you more for doing things on the down-low. I aimed for the Ghost and Smooth Operator bonuses on every mission, meaning I couldn’t ever be fully seen by guards or cameras. That’s not to say I was above mowing some fools down when it was crunch time. Augmenting yourself feels great. For the most part, you really see the benefits. “Damn, if only I had upgraded my arms, I could move that thing out of the way and get in that vent.” Or “Yeees, with two more seconds of stealth or an extra battery, I could just walk right past that camera.” The gameplay itself is mostly stealth action, and it generally plays out quite well. You also feel obligated to try things differently, or do them better, so multiple playthroughs are an option. There’s an achievement for not killing anyone in the game (apart from the bosses, who die whether you like it or not) that’ll take some work. Especially when… well, you’ll see. The story is a mixed bag, but it’s ambitious in some ways and fairly well written. Ironically it relies on the “deus ex machina” trope and as usual, there’s a big revelation at the end that you see coming a mile off. At least it’s not aliens. While in the zone, rolling between bits of cover, taking out baddies on the sly, and actually doing your job, you feel great. The areas you walk around seemed very little to me like living streets and much more like budget game levels. Apartment buildings are little more than bare corridors, often having floors without doors at all, fake or not. Most rooms, even plot-centric ones, are cut-and-paste. The NPCs peopling the world are barely window dressing, having little or nothing to do or say. You can steal stuff right from under their noses or read their email. The character models, too, seem like holdovers from the last generation. The main characters and things like guards generally look great and are animated well, but . Not to mention every woman in the game seemingly shares the same anatomically-offensive model, with breasts bigger than their heads and waspish waists. Really, guys, you couldn’t task an intern with making a few variants? And after playing LA Noire, the poor models, poor voice acting, and poor lip syncing are doubly disappointing. Much has been said about the bosses, so I’ll just note that I agree with the general opinion, which is that . They were, in fact, developed by a separate company, and it shows. Fortunately, they only make up a small fraction of the gameplay, so your best bet is to eat some painkillers, waste a bunch of ammo, and get it over with. . Why is it that an enemy can pinpoint a single footstep, but the frazzle of an automatic unlocking device doesn’t set off alarms? Why is opening a locker enemy-audible, but the hiss of reloading my combat rifle “silent”? Why can mines see me when I’m invisible? Why is cover sometimes laughably effective, sometimes the opposite? The setup of the world and your means to get through it seem very arbitrary. It doesn’t always detract from the fun, but it was very clear to me that I was taking one of, say, three paths the developers put into the game. The incredible proliferation of unlocked air ducts leading straight to critical areas where enemies always look the other way You can still tackle things in your own way a lot of the time, but unlike effectively sneaking around in, say, , you don’t feel it’s because of any merit on your part. Lastly, , even on a brand new PC like mine. If you’re a perfectionist like me, expect to spend many, idle minutes staring at pointless game tips, even if you’re loading from a save only a few seconds earlier. I got a lot of Words With Friends done during the 30-second or longer loading times. : A good game. Think of it like an orange: sure, it’s got some bitter parts and seeds, but for the most part it’s pretty delicious. When you’re in it, you’re in it, and there are plenty of great parts and little things to explore. It’s a bit like Metal Gear without all the usual Kojima trappings. : A sandbox game. How you progress room by room is up to you, but the world offers little to no freedom. There are a few side quests but for the most part it’s a pretty linear operation. Not as linear as , but it’s no , either. is not without its flaws and busywork, but overall it’s a worthy successor to the Deus Ex name and the parts that really matter work well. Minimizing your contact with the sadly-realized peripheral world will help keep your opinion of this game high. That and something to read while it loads.
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Iridium’s New AxcessPoint Hotspot Provides WiFi In The Rainforest | Chris Velazco | 2,011 | 9 | 7 | Perhaps best known for their line of rugged, work-anywhere satellite phones, has revealed today that they’re looking to try something new. Alongside news of a new handset dubbed the Iridium Extreme, Iridium has also unveiled their new AxcessPoint hotspot, which allows users to get online and get their email fix just about anywhere on the planet. There are, of course, a few caveats. First and foremost, don’t expect to hop between your favorite social media sites with anything resembling speed. Due to the constraints of such a a wide-reaching network, data speeds top out at roughly 2.3 to 2.4 KB/s — slow enough to make the old 56k modem collecting dust in the closet look like a NASCAR engine. With the correct AxcessPoint software in place, though, Iridium claims that effective data speeds can creep as high as “up to 5x, and email transmission up to 15x.” There is also the issue of cost. While the AxcessPoint itself will only cost about $200, it has to be connected to either an Iridium 9555 or an Iridium Extreme to work. No word on cost for the Extreme yet, but the older 9555 retails for The data connection itself costs around $1.35 per minute, so it’s in your wallet’s best interest not to get sidetracked on Wikipedia. Of course, if you’re the type to start pulling hair at the first sign of a slow connection and high prices, the AxcessPoint (and Iridium service, naturally) aren’t for you. Iridium’s service has been historically geared toward people and situations where a connection to civilization, however limited, could mean the difference between life and death. However, if Iridium has their way, that may soon change. The AxcessPoint is part of a larger initiative called that’s meant to make mobile satellite communications more relevant to modern needs. In addition making the AxcessPoint compatible with Android, iOS, and BlackBerry OS, Iridium also hopes that it can make its satellite technology easier to integrate into other products. While it’ll likely be some time before a “Powered by Iridium” logo appears on the back of your new phone, it’s sure to come in handy for whenever you wander into the wilderness unprepared. |
Is Nike Planning To Release Back To The Future’s Auto-Lacing Air Mags? UPDATE | John Biggs | 2,011 | 9 | 7 | Marty McFly’s crazy kicks in have long been a geek’s dream. Ostensibly made by Nike in the film, they would tighten themselves around your feet automatically and, more important, they’ve been the paragon of ultimate geekiness for a certain subset of shoe fanatics. Well, now it looks like you, too, can go back… to the future. Nike just sent out invitations to an event in LA tomorrow hinting at the actual existence of the . The invitation included a pair of Doc’s aluminum shades and a bunch of BTTF merch, so clearly something is afoot. The company patented the Mags’ so it’s clear that the final product is ready to at least unveil to a legion of panting shoe-heads. There are folks on already willing to camp out in line for these things, so you’d best act fast. Unless you’re chicken. |
If you're feeling S.A.D. try a Valkee – Special offer for TC readers | Mike Butcher | 2,011 | 9 | 7 | Back in January we noticed a clever little device which to ease seasonal depression – sometimes known as Seasonal Affected Disorder or SAD. The Finnish is Sci-Fi style device which literally shines light into your ear canals. Your wear it like a set of headphones on a music player. Since then however, they’ve now been backed up by scientific research by the University of Oulu, Finland, that suggests the brain may be photosensitive [ ]. The University’s suggests the brain gets more stimulation from light delivered through our ears (remember this is bright light via this device, not normal daylight) than light delivered through our eyes. Sounds pretty odd but there you go. Valkee says that by wearing the device for 8-12 minutes, users can stop being SAD and get happy. Because use of the device can also affect circadian rhythms, you could also use it to keep jet lag at bay – useful for those long flights to the Valley perhaps. So this initial Valkee product (the brain stimulation headset) is almost designed for the tech market – for those who’d prefer to ‘get their wings’ using a gadget rather than a pill or drink. Like an electronic caffeine drink, even. Valkee has raised €400,000 in Angel funding from Esther Dyson, former Nokia cheif Anssi Vanjoki, Jaiki/Ditto founder Jyri Engestrom and Lifeline Ventures. TechCrunch readers can get a Valkee (it doesn’t ship to the US yet, alas but Euopeans are fine) by using a special code “VLKTC” for TechCrunch Readers, which gets you 20% off. The price is normally €185. Happy days. |
Adfonic snubs VCs to raise £4.7m from Super Angels | Mike Butcher | 2,011 | 9 | 7 | , the European-based global mobile advertising marketplace, has raised £4.7 million to expand globally. The startup says revenue has grown ten-fold in the last 12 months. The plan is to increase headcount from 40 today to over 100 in 12 months time and open offices across Europe, North America and Asia-Pacific by year end. It’s an unusual round because its from existing investor , the successful telecoms and environmental entrepreneur and investor, and a handful of other angels. You might say Super Angels. We understand the company spoke at length to VCs but didn’t go with any. That’s quite a comment on the European VC scene, which . CEO Victor Malachard told me: “US VCs wanted us to move to the US but this was the wrong decision for the business when we’re dominant in Europe. We can retain a greater level of control – and we’ve enjoyed a successful and productive relationship with our existing investors.” Competitors to Adfonic incldue Millenial (US), InMobi, BuzzCity (Singapore), Google/Admob. But Adfonic is the only company of its type with an HQ in Europe. Adfonic enables advertisers to bid for display advertising space on mobile sites and applications and publishers to monetise mobile traffic. It has a network of 8,000 or so publisher sites and apps and drives over 15 billion monthly ad requests across the network. It serves ads in 192 countries. According to Gartner worldwide mobile advertising revenue is forecast to reach $3.3 billion in 2011, more than double the $1.6 billion generated in 2010, according to Gartner, Inc. Worldwide revenue will reach $20.6 billion by 2015.* The funding round follows a and an undisclosed second round funding from a private investor. |
Palringo Dives Into Location-Based Chat And Brings Their 11 Million Users Along For The Ride | Greg Kumparak | 2,011 | 9 | 7 | Location-based group chat. It’s just one of those ideas that everyone seems to be convinced is a good one, but that no one has really pulled off well just yet. Tossing their chips into the local chat game today is Palringo, which began its life back in 2007 as the iPhone’s first multi-network IM client. Their kicker? They’ve already got an established userbase of around 11 million users. For the sake of full disclosure: Palringo will be in the StartupAlley at next week’s TechCrunch Disrupt. Given that I wasn’t aware of this until well after I started writing this post, however, I can quite confidently say this didn’t affect my decision to cover the update. With localized chat, there seems to be two different approaches: pinning clusters of users together automagically behind the scenes (a la ), or letting uses create/join geotagged rooms on their own. Palringo has gone with the latter.
After you’ve logged into Palringo, you’re shown the standard IM screen with its support for AIM, ICQ, Google Talk, Yahoo Messenger, Windows Live, Facebook, Palringo’s own chat network, and myriad other services. Once you’ve grown bored of the friends you’ve already got, however, a Groups tab down at the bottom leads to a land of new folks — albeit one seemingly filled mostly with kids being kids, people asking each other if they’re over 18, trolls, people complaining about trolls, and trolls trolling people complaining about trolls. Turns out, not much has changed since the “ “-filled chat rooms of the mid 90’s. Hopefully the new geotagging features can help fix that. Each new group can be geotagged with a location around which it centers, connecting you with people nearby — which, at least in theory, improves the quality of conversation and connections made. All groups can be viewed on a map, letting you tap around until you find one that fits your interests. Within about 40 miles east of my area, for example, there are currently three: one for people who live in Fremont, one up in Walnut Creek for people who want to talk about Blizzard games, and one way out in Antioch that, as far as I can tell, primarily discusses where to buy weed. From what I’ve seen so far, I’m not too convinced Palringo will come out on top of the location chat game. Hell, after seeing a number of launches in this space with none that I’m aware of managing to maintain any sort of regular user base, I’m still not even entirely convinced such a game truly . |
Evri Launches SportStream Apps To Bring Realtime, Social Sports News To Your Mobile Devices | Rip Empson | 2,011 | 9 | 7 | , the realtime content discovery engine, , incorporating the startup’s semantic indexing technology into its products. The move laid the groundwork for Evri’s shift into the mobile space, as it has since used its realtime semantic matching algorithms to begin delivering news in targeted categories and the Twine team to expand into mobile. to allow readers to create and add their own channels on any tech topics, as well as those from predefined topics. ( in the mobile content space.) Today, Evri is expanding its mobile functionality, launching a suite of sports applications for iOS and Android devices, called SportStream, that will be powered by its eponymous platform. With the NFL season looming, Evri is kicking off its suite of sports apps with , an app that looks to provide readers with realtime push notifications and in-game commentary through social channels — to make your Sunday viewing experience more interactive and a little more Web 2.0. With SportStream Football, Evri is looking to provide an immersive experience for fans that allows them access to realtime news content from thousands of sources, integrating personalized and up-to-date information from fans’ social feeds, enabling readers to live tweet highlights from games as they happen. Viewers can see in-game score updates and play-by-play summaries, with personalization options for specific teams, like key injury and trade news, for example. , Evri is looking to have its targeted and personalized content stream become a great resource not only for fans but for fantasy football players as well. The objective here, says Evri CEO Will Hunsinger, is not to “out-ESPN ESPN”, but to take advantage of where ESPN’s realtime sports coverage lacks. Not only by scouring the web for information from bloggers and other sports content outside of ESPN’s realm, but by allowing fans of, say, Georgetown sports, to create targeted news feeds for their alma mater’s teams. While ESPN is obviously a robust content source (really, the death star of sports content), there’s plenty of room here for startups to improve on the sports content reading and viewing experience. With Evri’s well-honed semantic indexing data, the SportStream apps are a great resource for personalized sports info. Evri is smart to go after these enthusiastic, underserved niches. Or, even if sports content isn’t exactly sparse, to give sports fans an easier and less “noisy” reading experience, with realtime functionality, adds weight to the startup’s value proposition. Yes, , and Taptu is offering a great tablet app, but there’s plenty of room in the market, and Evri’s approach to fan engagement via the social graph and realtime tweeting, is a good start. We’ll be looking forward to the startup’s next moves. |
Google Docs Stumbles, Goes Down | Jason Kincaid | 2,011 | 9 | 7 | Yep, Google Docs is down, and has been for at least the last thirty minutes. I’ve been trying to access the site in Chrome and am met with a white screen and an endless ‘waiting’ message in the status bar (a refresh just got me a 404 page, which I suppose is an improvement). Google’s site indicates that a “Service disruption” is affecting Google Docs List, Google Docs, and Google Drawing. As I wrote this post Docs started working again for me, but according to Twitter plenty of other users are still suffering issues. This first time Docs has gone down, but it’s generally reliable. But “generally reliable” isn’t good enough when Google is trying to get everyone, particularly businesses, to move away from their native document editors and transition to Google Docs. Issues are particularly bad for Chromebook users, who are relying exclusively on web apps to complete their work and don’t have local copies of their documents. Google Docs is now back up. A Google spokesperson had this statement: Earlier today we experienced an issue involving Google Docs and resolved it as quickly as possible. More details can be found on the . We apologize for this inconvenience. |
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Lock Down Your .XXX Domain Before The Land Rush Begins | Devin Coldewey | 2,011 | 9 | 7 | The .xxx top-level domain is about to open up to all comers, but before the main event, a little prep work is required. ICM Registry, the company administrating the launch, can’t just let every joker with a GoDaddy account register domains willy-nilly. Not yet, anyway. So today marks the beginning of the “sunrise” period of the TLD launch, when interested or wary parties can begin pre-registering or restricting their brands and names. If you’re interested in the new TLD, whether for protective or prospective purposes, the process starts now. It’s not quite as simple as filling out a few fields, though. Right now it’s only open to people who intend to actually register a .xxx domain. I don’t believe there are any restrictions placed on what it means to intend to register and develop, so if you just want to own mysite.xxx and have it redirect to mysite.com, that’s likely an acceptable use, as long as you bring the money. If you have a registered trademark and don’t intend to own or develop a .xxx domain, you can also request that a related domain (exact character matches only, it looks like) be blocked from registration. This is probably the option Disney is taking. There’s a fee, naturally, but nothing extortionate. In a month comes the “land rush” part of the roll-out. This is when the aforementioned jokers with GoDaddy accounts would normally start buying up domains to squat on. Unfortunately for them, ICM is a number of “dictionary words and / or phrases” as “premium names” to be . Presumably they’re using a slang dictionary — I don’t see consanguinity.xxx taking off, for instance, but if you use your imagination you will likely hit upon a few candidates for premium status. Finally, on December 6th, the squatters will have their day in the sun. I don’t think it’ll be very exciting, though; the porn companies have likely already registered practically every imaginable permutation of sex-related nouns and verbs under existing TLDs, so they’ll have transferred over any good ones during the sunrise period. That’s all. Just a PSA for our readers, many of whom I imagine have at least one site or trademark worth protecting. Check with your existing registrar (or this ) to see if they’re supporting .xxx registry. |
Daily Fantasy Sports Site FanDuel Closes $4 Million Series B Investment | Mike Butcher | 2,011 | 9 | 7 | With a new NFL season starting tomorrow, it’s good timing for daily fantasy sports operator to close a $4 million Series B investment round led by venture capital firm Piton Capital. Existing investors Pentech Ventures and the Scottish Investment Bank. The company will use the majority of the funds on product development and hiring. FanDuel’s growth is reflected in its payouts going up from $1.5 million last season to over $10 million in league winnings.The company has also just opened an office in New York, complementing existing offices in Edinburgh and San Francisco. |
After Ice Cream Sandwich Comes… Jelly Bean | Devin Coldewey | 2,011 | 9 | 9 | In case you’ve lain awake nights wondering what tasty treat will follow Ice Cream Sandwich in Google’s sweet parade of Android versions, allow me to set your mind at ease. According to a “trusted source” speaking to This is my next, . More importantly, this source says that some of the “game-changing stuff” that was going to hit with ICS is being pushed out to Jelly Bean. That isn’t exactly welcome news — not that we actually knew exactly what was coming. On the other hand, they have to ship sometime, and Schmidt has just that October-November is the window they’re aiming for. Excising a few of the peskier features is probably how they managed to nail the date down so semi-exactly, but I’m guessing the ( the tablet and mobile branches of the Android family tree) will be mostly intact. Depending on what they’re shipping with, this push to release could be either good timing or extremely poor timing. If it’s a compelling release, they might see a nice bump in sales for the holidays. On the other hand, everyone seems pretty sure that the iPad 3 is on its way come January or February. If the cool features from ICS are delayed past that, the opportunity will have come and gone. We’ll know more when Google releases more information about ICS next month. Perhaps they’ll even answer questions straight out about what wasn’t included. If we get a chance, we’ll ask. |
Rumored Specs For Nikon’s Mirrorless Cameras | Devin Coldewey | 2,011 | 9 | 9 | All the cool kids are going mirrorless these days. Micro 4/3 cameras like the and luxury compacts like the are starting to capture market share as the format matures and people see the benefits. But Canon and Nikon, the great warring giants of photography, have yet to announce any plans. After all, their mirror-rich DSLR lines sell a ton. They don’t want to make their move too early. But Nikon may be getting ready to go first. Nikon Rumors has gotten its hands on what it thinks are . According to their tips, the first two cameras will be called the V1 and J1. The V1 will be the higher-end model, with a high-resolution EVF and a multi-accessory port. The J1 will have a built-in flash instead of the port. Both will be 10.1 megapixels with 3-inch LCD screens, and will be compatible with a new line of lenses, the CX system. We saw a , and the 2.7x crop factor mentioned seems to work with that, though indeed that shot may be where they got that information. There have also been some interesting patents over the last year or so. Early on there was a mirrorless system , then we saw a patent on a . Supposedly the V1 and J1 will have a feature or two not shared by their competitors, and that zoom may be one of them. Will people buy into a first-generation Nikon system when M4/3 systems are entering their third generation, and systems like the Sony’s NEX are becoming more and more compelling? The cameras will have to speak for themselves. No word on date just yet. |
Car Rental Marketplace Getaround Gets Around $3.4 Million | Alexia Tsotsis | 2,011 | 9 | 9 | Car rental community is announcing a $3.4 million seed round today, with participation from Netflix founder , Powerset founder , WordPress’ , , , ‘s Crunchfund and others. Co-founder tells me that investor momentum for Getaround, which is in the same peer to peer carsharing space as , picked up “like gangbusters” after at TechCrunch Disrupt New York. The seed round ended up being massively exaggerated, raising almost 3x over initial intent. Zaid tells me that since its , the service has brought on “tens of thousands” of users and that car owner signups have exceeded 5,000 nationwide. According to Zaid, top Getaround car owners are now grossing between $6,000 to $10,000 a year, and some covering their car payments through renting out their cars. The average revenue per car in the Bay Area is $340 a month. The company also recently streamlined their iPhone app, which notably allows renters to both reserve and access their Getaround cars. Getaround is currently available in the South Bay, East Bay and San Francisco, and Zaid tells me he is eyeing Seattle and Portland as contenders for possible expansion. The free service monetizes by taking a 40% transaction fee, which includes roadside assistance, insurance and support. Zaid says that the primary advantage of launching Getaround at TechCrunch Disrupt New York was that the conference validated both the startup and the market, “It’s really brought a lot of credibility to both Getaround and the peer to peer car sharing market as a whole. Because it’s a very new market, that’s of tremendous value.” |
Tempting f8 | MG Siegler | 2,011 | 9 | 9 | We’re now less than from Facebook’s f8 conference. While it’s later than usual this year, Facebook uses the event to lay out their vision for the upcoming year and beyond. Typically, the event is big for developers, but this year may feature a few user-facing surprises as well. Here’s what we’ve heard so far. As has been , Facebook’s music service is expected to be unveiled. Facebook is partnering with several prominent players in the streaming music space. Spotify, MOG, Rdio, etc — , don’t be surprised if Turntable.fm and maybe even Amazon are involved as well. The idea for the initial version of the product is all based around listening, but the roadmap is said to be larger. One other key thing that could be a part of this is Music for Credits. a few months ago when detailing what they knew at the time about the Music Dashboard. It’s not believe that anything Facebook does in music will be an “iTunes killer”, but this is the closest possibility. The latest talk is that the iPad app should make its debut at the event as well. It has been ready for some time (as indicated by of the app) but Facebook has been sitting on it. The talk here is that this may be for political reasons with Apple more than anything else. In the latest build (3.5) of Facebook’s iOS app, they removed the iPad version. And there were a few other irregularities, such as the continued inclusion of Places, despite Facebook stating they were . I suspect that f8 could see a 4.0 release of the app that includes both the iPhone and iPad versions largely re-worked. There are also some whispers out there that Facebook could launch their stand-alone Photos app at f8. We haven’t been able to confirm this, but we know the app is real because well, (though that was an early build). Work continues on this app, including increased , following Instagram’s rise to fame. Speaking of photos, we’ve heard that Blue, , will also be a part of f8. The new app, which will be available for both iOS and Android, ties in deeply with Facebook’s own Photos service. When you like a photo in Blue, you like it in Facebook. When you comment on a photo on Facebook, it transfers over to that photo in Blue. The app has a few other tricks up its sleeve as well, we’ve heard. Deep integration with mobile apps will be a big theme of the conference itself, we’re hearing. Many developers have been briefed, but under NDA. Still, the little we’ve heard says that Facebook is trying to work with third party mobile apps to make them less like second-class citizens in the ecosystem and more like integral parts. Facebook’s thought process here is believed to be that since (their attempts to fork Android to make haven’t gone as well as it has , for example) they need better hooks to get outside mobile app data into Facebook on both iOS and Android. Part of this is believed to be a mobile version of the Like Button for each platform. But the bigger picture remains . No, it’s not going to be called that when it’s launched at f8, but it is ready to go. And the latest we’ve heard is that the scope has expanded a bit. While at first, developers were asked to focus on mobile Safari, they’re now focused on desktop, iOS (including iPad), and Android. Facebook continues their moves to go all-in on HTML5 (well, aside from the mobile apps which they likely view as a necessary evil for now — and still use a lot of HTML5). And obviously, games remain a big part of this. One other thing we’ve heard is that developers were asked to make sure their Spartan apps work in UIWebView — likely because Facebook wants them to work within the Facebook iPad app itself as well. That may also be related to why the app has been delayed. of Spartan as well (at least they were in the version we saw). We’ll see how Apple reacts to this if it’s a part of the apps — again, perhaps this is related to the iPad app delay. Maybe Facebook will keep it in the browser version only. Meanwhile, we’ve heard that while the secretive in mobile, it is unrelated to Project Spartan right now. One reason is that six weeks ago, Spartan expanded beyond mobile Safari, but BoltJS is still tied to it. Facebook may or may not talk about BoltJS at f8. |
The End Of Books: Ikea Is Changing Shelves To Reflect Changing Demand | John Biggs | 2,011 | 9 | 9 | If you needed any more proof that the age of dead-tree books is over take a look at these alarming style changes at Ikea: the furniture manufacturer’s iconic BILLY bookcase – the bookcase that everyone put together when they got their first apartment and, inevitably, pounded the nails wrong into – is becoming deeper and more of a curio cabinet. Why? Because Ikea is noticing that customers no longer buy them for books. This isn’t quite the canary in the coal mine – think of it as a slight tickle in the mine foreman’s throat – but all signs are pointing to the end of the physical book. There are plenty of analogs to this situation. When’s the last time you saw a casette tape rack sold outside of Odd Lots? What about the formal “stereo cabinet” with plenty of room for records? What about Virgin Megastores? As much as it pains me to say this and as horrible as it sounds, the book is leaving us. Next month IKEA will introduce a new, deeper version of its ubiquitous “BILLY” bookcase. The flat-pack furniture giant is already promoting glass doors for its bookshelves. The firm reckons customers will increasingly use them for ornaments, tchotchkes and the odd coffee-table tome—anything, that is, except books that are actually read. Will bookstores disappear? I think so. With the rise of popular fiction appearing on ereaders, I think the paperback will be the first to go and all that will be left is the “curio” hardback. Then I look forward to a half decade of the publishing industry scrambling to stem piracy and flail wildly at consumers, then hardware manufacturers, then finally settle into the long-fall doldrums the music industry is now facing. I’m a writer. I love books. I love/hate the publishing industry. But when Ikea is against your product, it might be time to curtail the long agent lunches before it’s too late. [Image: Sergej Razvodovskij/ ] |
Rumor: Sprint Blacks Out Vacation Days In October To Prep For iPhone 5 | Greg Kumparak | 2,011 | 9 | 9 | Oh, what’s this? Sprint is reportedly blacking out vacation days between September 30th and October 15th? For a “major phone launch”? Major phone launch. Early October (right when the iPhone 5 is likely to be launched.) Yeah, the rumor mill just caught on fire. Word of the blackout comes from , who received the memo above from a source they’re confident enough in to refer to as a “beloved Super Spy”. Last time Sprint did this, it was for the launch of the Pre. That launch obviously wasn’t as big as they’d hoped, but it goes to show that it’s not something they do all that often. Of course, a memo like the one above isn’t exactly hard to fake — but for what it’s worth, the fonts, icons, and layout all look strikingly similar to the stuff I’ve seen on Sprint retail machines. If it fake, it’s at least faked by someone who has spent some time working at a Sprint store. As for the possibility of it being a major phone launch in early October: maybe if Sprint doesn’t want that phone to, you know, sell. Otherwise, the of the just fit together way, . |
Chrome Web Store Passes 30 Million Users, But How Bright Is The Future? | Rip Empson | 2,011 | 9 | 9 | On September 1st, Google’s popular browser, Chrome, . In a relatively short span of time, Chrome has gobbled up 22 percent market share among browsers, compared to Firefox at 28 percent and IE at 42 percent. The browser continues to iterate, now working in rapid-fire six-week release cycles, and its ecosystem at large has taken some big strides forward over the last year. For me, personally, I use multiple browsers daily, but Chrome has really become my go-to. In December, , followed by . But, as Jason pointed out in last week’s post, , the Chrome Web Store had seemingly gotten off to a slow start, perhaps not attracting as much traffic (and, more importantly, sales) as expected prior to launch. Some bolder members of the blogosphere even said, following CWS’ launch, “hey wait a second, isn’t this just a lame series of bookmarks?” However, Chris Sorensen, Founder of , an independent website that monitors CWS app performance data, shared some stats with us today that give us a look at the Web Store’s growth since it launched, and the numbers are not quite at a “trickle”, as they were early on. For a bit of context, on January 13 (after about a month of being open for business), the Chrome Web Store had debuted 2,195 apps, and had attracted 4.5 million aggregate users, according to Sorensen’s numbers. By September 1st, CWS had grown to over 6,000 apps with nearly 28 million aggregate users. On September 9th, CWS has passed 30 million, according to the numbers we’ve seen. As for downloads: The Chrome Web Store only started keeping track of downloads on May 15th, but the latest data from Sorensen indicates that CWS is attracting over 2.5 million weekly downloads. As seen in the graph below, Google’s Web Store experienced a significant uptick in the number of apps and (more significantly) the number of aggregate users beginning in about June. The likelihood is that the increase the store is seeing to date is a result of early presale of Google’s Chromebooks, which don’t allow users to download native applications. But what about sales? In January of this year, 2.8 percent of the app store’s total users were using paid apps. By September 1st, 2.1 percent of the 30 million users are using apps with a pricing “other than free”, Sorensen said. As per total apps, in June, 9.1 percent of CWS’ apps had pricing other than free, while on September 1st, that number was down to 5.7 percent. This shows that paid app usage on CWS have been, overall, decreasing since its launch — as has the number of paid apps (at least since June) — while usage and number of free apps has increased more significantly. Especially those bookmark apps and free extensions, which have gone like hotcakes. While CWS’ numbers are looking more auspicious than they did 6 months ago, the problem for the web store is that it is still hampered by the fact that developer activity just isn’t growing at the same rate as it is on the Android Marketplace or Apple’s app store. Google has some great incentive for developers to offer paid apps, offering 70 percent revenue share to developers for paid app pricing, and . That’s plenty of incentive for developers to create paid apps, but users just don’t seem to be buying. Compared to Apple, which will be generating $2.86 billion in app revenue and Android stores which will be pulling in $1.5 billion by 2016, (though total revenue generated by the web store is not known), it seems pretty clear that CWS has a ways to go. Not to mention, there’s the threat of , the social network’s secret coup to break up the Google/Apple lovefest reigning supreme over the native mobile apps world. For those unfamiliar, Project Spartan is the HTML5-driven mobile application platform Facebook is supposedly building with a group of third-party app developers — and its initial target is Safari, not Chrome. If Chromebook sales really take off (and as the hardware stands right now, that’s far from a given), the web app store’s progress may well benefit as a result, as Sorensen tells me he predicts a serious rise in the demand for deep, full-featured enterprise desktop apps — but that remains to be seen. Google may also have plans to merge Android and Chrome, but there are a lot of unanswered questions in terms of how the company envisions the future of its web and mobile platforms. For now, Google will have to take solace in its uptick of free users, regardless of the correlation, but danger certainly looms. |
British Rapper Buys First Pair Of Nike Air Mags For $37.5K | Chris Velazco | 2,011 | 9 | 9 | Just… wow. It was sort of a given that Nike’s limited edition, would be fetching , but reports British rap act Tinie Tempah spent more than he thought he would on the first pair up for grabs. The cost of his impulse decision: a cool $37,500. Mr. Tempah, a reputed Back To The Future nut and sneaker geek, received the sneakers and a nifty “plutonium” carrying case for his trouble. Meanwhile, prices for the long-awaited sneakers on eBay run quite the gamut: the cheapest pair to be found at time of writing is size 7, and is . At the top end of things is an especially popular pair of size 12s, with an . All auctions will be open for another 6 or so hours, so these prices will probably climb ever higher, but you need not worry if your size disappears. Nike is listing 150 pairs a day for 9 more days, so you still have a few chances to buy the kicks of your dreams. All proceeds will benefit the Michael J. Fox Foundation, so rest assured that any purchases made will serve a dual purpose: not only will they (temporarily) assuage the shoe-lust felt by sneaker aficionados with too much money, they’ll also be helping a good cause. |
TokBox Rolls Out Video Recording API, Primes Its Monetization Pump | Jason Kincaid | 2,011 | 9 | 9 | , a Sequoia-backed startup that offers tools for quickly integrating video functionality into apps and websites, is launching a new feature today for its OpenTok suite of video APIs: video recording and archiving. You may remember TokBox as the service that let users quickly jump into live video chats with each other, sort of like a web-based Skype video. But that changed this past February, when TokBox its struggling consumer-facing products and decided to focus exclusively on a set of video-focused APIs, storage, and streaming features collectively called the OpenTok platform. Obviously giving users the ability to record, save, and share video clips isn’t a new idea — people do it every day on sites like YouTube and Facebook — but the new video archiving API makes it relatively easy for other sites to integrate their own custom solutions. You can see a live implementation on Causes , where the site is using the OpenTok platform to let users add video introductions to their Wishes (screenshot above). TokBox is also launching TokBooth, which is a plug-and-play version of this video record/archive functionality, for sites that don’t need the same level of customization afforded by the API. This is the second major set of features to launch on the OpenTok platform; the first is a live video chat API, which lets sites integrate their own video conferencing services. Video archiving will also be TokBox’s first paid feature — it’s free for now (and likely through the end of the year), but will later cost $20/month and up, depending on your bandwidth and storage usage. |
Gillmor Gang – Live recording | Steve Gillmor | 2,011 | 9 | 9 | The Gillmor Gang — Robert Scoble, Danny Sullivan, Kevin Marks, John Taschek, and Steve Gillmor — are recording live as we wait for editorial guidance from above. Or sideways.
: The show ended at 2pm PT. |
Nvidia: We’re No Longer In The Processor Business Because Intel “Preferred That We Weren’t” | Devin Coldewey | 2,011 | 9 | 9 | If the meek capitulation in the headline sounds uncharacteristic of infamously outspoken CEO, Jen-Hsun Huang, it’s probably because he’s bitter. Though the GPU-focused company way back in 2008 that it was going to “open a can of whoop-ass” on Intel, very little has happened, at least on the consumer side. Intel and Nvidia have had some major differences, and remain fierce competitors, but it’s been made clear that Intel won’t tolerate anyone making a grab at its x86 treasure hoard. But Nvidia isn’t going quietly. Or rather, they’re going quietly just so they can sneak around the back. While Intel is cracking its whip at anyone who wants a piece of x86, Nvidia and ARM, among others, are . Intel itself has expressed contrition regarding its mobile and tablet efforts. When you’re shipping a couple hundred million processors every year, things like the iPad get lost in the shuffle, apparently. But the power level of tablets and mobiles is growing, and Intel has not provided that growth. They , but at this point they’re playing catch-up. Only an tiny fraction of tablets and phones sold use Intel hardware — mainly the Windows-running ones. Meanwhile Nvidia is getting lean and focusing on blowing up their graphics and mobile divisions. The next couple years might see some interesting partnerships, however. The ARM-Nvidia alliance might go up against something like an Intel-Microsoft-Nokia conglomerate, while team Apple watches from the sidelines. It’ll be a hell of a battle, but the winner will really be the consumer, whom every company will be going out of their way to please. Faster, smaller, and cheaper chips and phones. Sounds like a good deal to me. |
Lowe’s Invests In 42,000 iPhones To Improve Your Shopping Experience | Chris Velazco | 2,011 | 9 | 9 | Take it from a former retail drone: trying to give customers a good shopping experience can be tough when you have to jostle with other employees for open computers. In-store networks are slow, and more often than not, the computers are even slower. It’s enough of a process that a once free-flowing conversation can dry up into an awkward silence while the computer struggles to find the widget in question. Thankfully, hardware retailer Lowe’s has decided to do something about that lackluster experience: they have (among other things) to make their employees walking, talking sources of home improvement information. The purchase is partially in response to a similar move made by their orange rival Home Depot. Last year, Home Depot spent $60 million on a fleet of Motorola mobile devices that were meant to keep employees with customers and out of the computer line. Lowe’s has similar hopes for their iPhones: they will allow employees to perform on-the-go product lookups, check stock, and pull up instructional videos for customers. Each Lowe’s location is slated to receive 25 iPhones, but the rollout schedule has yet to be announced. Lowe’s wants to expand the capabilities of their in-store iPhones, assuming this first rollout goes well. The iPhones presumably lock out certain features to reduce the amount of employee shirking that’s possible, so mundane features on the short list include mobile calling and email. Lowe’s also hopes to add the ability to ring up purchases directly from the phone . According to Lowe’s CIO Mike Brown, the plan is to “[play] catch-up with the customer psyche,” which shines a bit of light on the company’s choice of mobile device. The iPhone is, for better or worse, a status device — the “cool” alternative to Home Depot’s own Motorola handhelds. The company’s recent move to replace CRT displays with flat panels and installing WiFi in stores also point to a new strategy for them. It looks like Lowe’s is trying to fight a war of positioning: they want to assume the role of the modern, forward-thinking hardware store. Whether or not it’ll pan out has yet to be seen, but they at least deserve some credit for trying to keep the retail run-down to a minimum. |
AOL And Yahoo Merger? Two Dogs Don’t Make A Right | Erick Schonfeld | 2,011 | 9 | 9 | Reports are coming out that AOL is about merging the two companies in the wake of Yahoo CEO . We have an independent source who confirms discussions are happening, but it is not clear how serious they are. If a deal does go through, the likeliest scenario would be Yahoo acquiring AOL, with Tim Armstrong becoming the new CEO. (Disclosure: AOL owns TechCrunch). While a combination of AOL and Yahoo is always an , with the main advantage being that it solves Yahoo’s leadership search problem if Armstrong becomes the CEO, it is not a particularly good option. Two dogs don’t make a right (at least in the eyes of Wall Street). It is also not a new option. Every couple of years, bankers raise the . The main argument for a merger is that it would give the combined company even more scale in terms of online advertising inventory. But as I wrote last time this trial balloon was raised: Buying scale makes sense to some extent. And Yahoo buying AOL, rather than the other way around, would make even more sense and be a lot cleaner. . . . But there are downsides as well. While Yahoo and AOL are distracted with firing people and integrating business units and backend technologies for two years, the Internet will continue to move ahead without them. Big mergers rarely work out well. While it might look convincing enough on paper, what . . . two aging portal players proposing to prop each other up . . . really have to ask themselves is this: Do they want to merge with the past, or invent the future? Merging doesn’t help them with social. It doesn’t help them with search. It doesn’t help them with mobile, and it barely helps them with local. It only helps them with one thing: scale. And that may no longer be enough. In other words, the risks of a messy integration are too high. And it is not clear how such a merger positions either company for a brighter future. |
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Follow Products And Reviewers In Your Facebook Feed With PowerReviews | Rip Empson | 2,011 | 9 | 9 | When it comes to selling products on the Web, the more consumer reviews a product attracts, the more conversions and sales it sees as a result. This is why has built a social commerce network of more than 23 million reviews across 5,500 sites, including Staples.com, Gap.com, and ToysRUs.com. Today, PowerReviews is announcing the launch of two Facebook products that allow brands and retailers to leverage the social network as a platform for driving sales by making the process of online shopping and product discovery more social. PowerReviews’ first new product, “Facebook Discovery”, enables consumers to engage in conversations around particular products, categories, and reviews and have them pushed directly into their newsfeed, hopefully creating the opportunity for viral marketing — and not wall spam. Users of Facebook Discovery can also follow particular reviewers of interest, so that all of their future reviews are published to their wall, or they can opt in to receive news of trending products in a daily product review, or ask friends friends what products they should choose via a question or poll. The startup’s second product launching today, “Facebook Community”, gives brands and retailers the opportunity to foster community among their customers — both on the product as well as their Facebook fan pages. In terms of brand marketing, Facebook Community allows brands to reward their ambassadors, while at the same time sharing feedback and advice among the community. The product also gives brands the ability to view the top 100 reviewers in order to identify their most active ambassadors and supporters. What’s more, consumers can connect their Facebook profiles to their reviews to create a suped up, uber profile designed to give identity — and added credibility — to their reviews for their friends and other shoppers. their Facebook profile to their reviews creating a rich onsite profile. This increases the credibility of their reviews for other shoppers. , social sharing is a big assist for businesses, as each share is worth $15.72 in incremental sales. PowerReviews has raised just over $37 million in outside investment to date, from a variety of VCs and angels, including Menlo Ventures, Lehman Brothers, and Draper Richards. |
Google Explains Its Google Docs Outage | Sarah Perez | 2,011 | 9 | 9 | Google Docs this week, which raised concerns, , about the reliability involved with storing mission-critical documents in the cloud. Personally, I’d rather trust Google’s redundant server infrastructure than my own hard drive. However, for enterprise users, the problem with cloud outages is that local I.T. staff can’t do anything about the problem, unless they use a third-party backup service, for example. Today, Google is sharing details on what happened to its Docs service, and what it’s doing to correct the problem in the future. According to a post on the , the outage was caused by a change designed to improve real time collaboration within the document list, says Google. This change exposed a memory management bug which was only evident under heavy usage. Writes Alan Warren, Engineering Director: The entire outage lasted around 30 minutes, with 24 minutes dedicated to rolling back the changes, and 5 more minutes for the normal functioning of the service to fully resume. According to Warren, analysis of the issue has enabled Google to reduce the chances of future events, decrease resolution times if such an event was to occur again, and limit the scope which any single problem can affect. Again, for most casual users of Google Docs, the outage probably went by unnoticed. It’s the affected Google Apps business users who are most concerned by cloud outages such as this. Transitioning to the cloud is not without its faults, but let’s remember: no system is perfect, not even the one your I.T. guy used to run for you. |
Adobe Gives Up On Apple, Works Around iOS’ Flash Video Limitations | Chris Velazco | 2,011 | 9 | 9 | Ardent iOS supporters have been clamoring for true Flash support for years, and with the announcement of their new version of , Adobe completely fails to deliver. Instead, they’ve managed to update their media server with a way to get streaming Flash video running on Apple’s myriad iOS devices. Alas, while you can’t start working through your backlog of artsy Flash games, Flash Media Server 4.5 allows content producers to easily to get their Flash content onto iOS devices without any additional headache. While older versions of the media server served up video streams in the F4F format, the update has added support for the HTTP Live Streaming format, which iPads and the like can handle just fine. The media server system, according to , detects the device’s level of Flash-capability and will switch over to using the HLS format when it sees an iOS device. It’s actually pretty ironic: in order to make Flash video streaming work, the new version of Media Server actually has to un-Flash the content and wrap it in another, more iOS-friendly container. While it isn’t the Holy Grail of iOS Flash support, it’s a solution that works, and will make life easier for those in the unenviable position of managing live video streams. Hopefully Adobe has a team sequestered in a bunker working getting actual Flash support working now that they’ve managed to cross “streaming video” off the list. |
TechCrunch Giveaway: 4 Free Tickets To Disrupt SF #TCDisrupt | Elin Blesener | 2,011 | 9 | 9 | is literally right around the corner. We are kicking things off this weekend with the incredibly popular , where we have more contests and prizes than ever before. Disrupt starts on Monday, September 12th, with , , and kicking things off. This is one event you do not want to miss. Be sure to check out the . Ticket sales are closed, but we are giving you one last chance. Today, we are giving away 4 free tickets to Disrupt. Anyone in the world can enter, but remember these tickets do not include airfare or hotel. We have partnered with Oyster.com to provide several discounted hotel options surrounding the area. Getaround and Zimride also have some awesome transportation deals going on. Be sure to read more about hotel options and transportation options . If you want a chance at winning one of these four tickets, just follow the steps below. 1) 2) – Retweet this post (making sure to include the #TCDisrupt hashtag)
– Or leave us a comment below telling us why you want to come to Disrupt The contest starts and ends September 10th at 7:30pm PT. Please only tweet the message once or you will be disqualified. We will choose at random and contact the four winners on Saturday. Good luck! Congratulations to Peter Reis, Mick Darling, Jack Hernandez, and Yossi Shushterman! |
In One Year, Tumblr Goes From 1 Billion Posts To 10 Billion | MG Siegler | 2,011 | 9 | 9 | This morning, I logged into (where I run ) and saw confetti flying everywhere on the screen. Was Tumblr hacked? Were they converting the platform to be Geocities-powered complete with animated GIFs? No, they were celebrating. They just hit 10 billion posts across the network. The numbers are staggering. It was only . Since then, they’ve 10x’d that number. The traffic numbers are just as impressive. , Tumblr was seeing 1.5 billion pageviews a month — that number now stands at 13 billion. Yes, they almost managed to 10x that number as well. And unlike numbers from Compete or Alexa which tend to be , Tumblr uses Quantcast data which is fairly solid (though still not perfect) because it’s . The service also now says it has just under 28.5 million blogs. And those blogs are doing around 36 million posts a day (that’s up from 4.5 million last July). Amid this insane growth, Tumblr has run headfirst into some major scaling issues. That remains a priority for the team right now. Well, that and the they’re about to close that should value them near $1 billion. |
Buying Yahoo Is A No-Brainer For Alibaba | Alexia Tsotsis | 2,011 | 9 | 30 | Today at the China 2.0 conference at Stanford, Alibaba Groups’s about buying Yahoo with, “We are very interested in Yahoo. Our Alibaba group is important to Yahoo and Yahoo is important to us … All the serious buyers interested in Yahoo have talked to us.” Those “serious buyers” most likely include Alibaba Group investor Silver Lake Partners, Microsoft, Hellman & Friedman and Andreesen Horowitz, reached out to Yahoo’s board. Is Ma’s interest enough to spark consumer and shareholder interest in Yahoo? “Any and all interest [is] welcome,” one shareholder told me, “but Ma has real smarts.” On the surface Ma is certainly the type of CEO that Yahoo needs post-Bartz, diplomatic, cunning, and a man of (relatively) few words. But would the deal make sense financially? Alibaba Group’s recent funding from Silver Lake at $32 billion, while Yahoo is at a 16 billion market cap. With Yahoo’s 40% stake in Alibaba Group valued at $12.8 billion, it seems like 80% of the company’s value is based on its Asian assets. Ma has that he would like to buy back Yahoo’s stake in his own company, and now he can for a bargain basement $3 billion premium –with hundreds of millions of US users thrown in for good measure. Is the rest of Yahoo worth $3 billion? Probably. Plus Ma has an additional incentive to buy Yahoo because getting all those shares back frees him from his largest albatross shareholder. It’s a no brainer for Alibaba. Would the Yahoo board take an offer from Ma? That remains to be seen, as the relationship between the two companies has been notoriously strained, most recently suffering because of accusations of unfair play on the part of Yahoo when Ma transferred ownership of Alipay to a separate company. The sentiment among the former Yahoo employees I spoke to seems to be that Yahoo is so dysfunctional that they can’t see anything like this happening. And then there’s stigma; the general idea is to sell to someone you’re proud of like Google and Microsoft, not someone you used to own. The cultural fit between the Chinese and American companies is also quite awkward, as Sarah Lacy has Despite this, many shareholders are just hoping for a decent price to exit their long-held positions, and Ma might be the company’s only hope for survival intact, as he is . This is surprising: Yahoo is the type of company that Richard Gere in Pretty Woman would buy, and then break up — the individual pieces are more valuable than the sum of the parts. : Looking up that ticker on Yahoo Finance is just depressing. |
Chris Sacca And Others Invest $1 Million In A Startup That Wants Everyone To Hold A World Record | Alexia Tsotsis | 2,011 | 9 | 30 | URDB — Universal Records Database — is announcing a name change and $1 million in Series A funding, from investors , and . Initially conceived of at yes, Burning Man, URDB is now and a million dollars more flush. The premise behind RecordSetter is that “everyone on earth can be the world’s best at something.” The startup wants to to become the preeminent platform for people to both submit their own unique records and compete against other people’s unique records through the uploading of quirky videos like “Most Kisses In 10 Seconds,””Longest ‘Shhhhh'” and “Most Graphic Designers Dancing To ‘Thriller'”. You get the picture. Says founder Dan Rollman on what sets the company apart from Guinness World Records, “As long as rules are followed and sufficient evidence is provided, any record is welcome. That includes everything from traditional (Fastest 100-Meter Dash) to outlandish (Most Times Smiling While Listening to “Beat It”.) Creativity is highly encouraged. We’re the Wikipedia to their Encyclopedia Britannica. ” In three years of existence the site has seen over 10,000 submissions from over 50 countries, Rollman tells me, and now hosts the largest collection of world record videos on the Internet. Eventually Rollman hopes that the site will compete with YouTube and Break.com. Future plans for RecordSetter also include the adding of editorial content (like the addition of tips on how to set records), pursuing media deals and partnerships with brands like Toyota and Livestrong and focusing on its community moderation beta so niche groups like skaters and jugglers can be more involved in the records curating process. Rollman says that company is also in talks with production companies regarding a TV show based around the niche records found on the RecordSetter platform. Which doesn’t sound like such a bad idea, actually. [vimeo vimeo.com/26685379] |
More Details On MIT’s “Artificial Leaf” (And Video) | Devin Coldewey | 2,011 | 9 | 30 | Back in March, we heard about a breakthrough from MIT: that produces pure oxygen and hydrogen gas, powered entirely by sunlight. The technology was in yesterday’s edition of , and the team has released a video showing one of the devices in action. I say device, but it’s really more of a material. There are no moving parts and it has no set shape or size. The leaf is semiconducting silicon, coated on one side with a special cobalt catalyst, discovered by the project’s Daniel Nocera in 2008, and on the other with a nickel-molybdenum-zinc alloy. Sunlight creates a current within the silicon, and the catalyst causes water molecules to split into gaseous H and O , which rise off in bubbles from opposite sides of the leaf. Take a look at the video. It’s not particular exciting, but it gives you an idea of what kind of conversion rate we’re talking about: [youtube w=640 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LEEhxk-CiOQ] The gases could be isolated and stored in a fuel cell, which could provide power later and produce pure water as its exhaust. Nocera and several other researchers formed a company, , to independently research, apply, and market the artificial leaves, and last year raised $9.5 million from Tata and other investors. The leaf-like form factor is easy to demonstrate on a human scale, but there’s no reason why the “leaves” couldn’t be microscopic or enormous. The different use cases require much research and testing, however, which is likely what Sun Catalytix is working on at present. That and figuring out to do with the extra protons the process generates. They envision banks of these things powering houses and communities and storing the excess in tanks for sale or emergencies. Also worth noting is the fact that the idea of these devices isn’t new in itself, but Nocera’s work seems to have produced a cheap, durable, and mass-producible one. The efficiency of solar energy conversion still needs to be greatly improved, though. There’s more information at , and, if you’re scientifically minded (and subscribe to the journals), the various papers listed on Sun Catalytix’s . [image credit: Dominick Reuter] |
Mocavo Raises $1 Million To Build Its Ancestry-Centric Search Engine | Jason Kincaid | 2,011 | 9 | 30 | Looking to fill in the blanks on your family tree? A startup called might be just what you’re looking for. The service is setting out to become a search engine that’s highly optimized for ancestry-related purposes — type in the name of a relative, and it’ll do its best to surface content from the web’s troves of genealogy data, some of which has been difficult to search through before now. The startup, which was part of the TechStars Boulder program this past summer, has just raised a $1 million round from David Cohen (through Bullet Time Ventures), Dave McClure (500 Startups), David Bonderman, Walt Winshall, David Calone, Dave Carlson, Troy Henikoff, and other angels. Founder Cliff Shaw says that Mocavo is setting out to make genealogy “open, social, and automated”. He explains that while there are existing services that use proprietary data sources, few take advantage of the abundance of information that’s freely available on the web — information that Google often passes over, because genealogical information is neither fresh nor popular (he says Google only indexes less than 5% of this content). Mocavo has created a whitelist of these genealogy sites, and it’s constantly scanning them for new data (you can sign up to receive an update for certain names, if you’d like). So far the site has around 5.8 billion names in its index. The service launched in March, and is currently seeing more than 1 million page views per month, and 100,000 unique visitors. It also has very high engagement stats, with 17 minutes spent on the site, on average. While the site is currently focused exclusively on search, down the line it will integrate social features, like a family tree builder. Shaw has a long history with ancestry-related companies — he founded his first genealogy site, Genforum, when he was 18. He sold it when he was 19, when it had some 60 million monthly pageviews. His other companies include Pearl Street Software and BackupMyTree, both of which were acquired as well. Oh, and one caveat: my initial instinct was to try a vanity search on Mocavo, which didn’t have great results. Shaw says that because this is a genealogy search engine, you’ll have much better luck searching for people who are deceased.
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TC Cribs: Sliding Through YouTube’s Double Rainbow (Gnomes!) | Jason Kincaid | 2,011 | 9 | 30 | We’re back with a new episode of , and it’s featuring one of the most tricked-out offices yet: YouTube. Yes, the world’s biggest archive of cute cat videos (among other things) invited us to take a stroll through their halls, which are brimming with nifty artifacts, viral video memorabilia, and gnomes. A lot of gnomes. There’s also a big surprise that comes around two-thirds through the episode that had me hurting for a couple of days. Don’t miss it! Here are some of our past episodes (oh, and don’t worry — we’ll feature some much smaller companies very soon!): |
AT&T Wants Their Competitors’ Antitrust Suits Dismissed | Chris Velazco | 2,011 | 9 | 30 | By now, we all know that the US Department of Justice filed an antitrust suit to block the AT&T/T-Mobile merger. Sprint and C Spire Wireless (formerly known as the Cellular South) have filed suits to that same effect, but AT&T has asked the court The reason? AT&T believes that Sprint and C Spire are fighting for their own sakes, and not for the public’s best interests. Because Sprint is a major competitor and not a consumer, AT&T doesn’t believe Sprint has a legal leg to stand on. Ouch. Sprint is preparing to respond to AT&T’s claim next week, but only after saying the argument had no merit. The folks in Overland Park have one thing to smile about though: 7 state Attorneys General have already come out against the merger, and they are now joined by the . Meanwhile, AT&T alleged that C Spire Wireless fears “competition, not lack of competition.” In their filing to have the C Spire suit dismissed, AT&T’s lawyers included a memo from C Spire CEO Hu Meena asking AT&T for a network sharing agreement in certain parts of the southeastern United States. C Spire claims that AT&T mischaracterized their proposal, and fired back by alleging that AT&T asked for then-Cellular South’s support for the deal when it was announced. With billions of dollars on the line, the situation just seems to be getting dirtier and dirtier. U.S. District Judge Ellen Huvelle has scheduled the merger trial for February 12 of next year, but who knows what crazy developments may arise between now and then. |
Hitwise: Singaporeans Spend The Most Time On Facebook Per Session | Leena Rao | 2,011 | 9 | 30 | Hitwise just examining how much time people living in different countries spend on Facebook. Singaporeans actually spend the longest on the social network, with an average of 38 minutes and 46 seconds per session, while people living in Brazil spend less than half that with an average of 18 minutes and 19 seconds per Facebook session for August 2011. Singapore is followed by New Zealand (30 mins 31 sec); Australia (26 mins 27 sec); the UK (25 mins 33 sec); and the US (20 mins 46 sec). Brazil actually has the highest percentage of Internet visits going to social sites (18.9% of Internet usage) with 43% of all social networking visits in Brazil going to Google-owned Orkut. In contrast, the UK has the lowest market share of visits going to social networks with 12.2% of visits. Facebook was the most visited Social Networking site in the US in August 2011 receiving 91% of visits among the sites followed by Twitter with 1.92% of visits. Tagged.com ranked 3rd for the first time, passing MySpace.com with 1.04% of US Internet visits. The fastest growing country in terms of visits is India, which saw an an increase in market share of 88% in August 2011 compared to August 2010. The US also experienced a market share increase from Facebook of 5% year on year. It’s no surprise that Facebook is seeing major growth internationally and in the U.S. Marc Zuckerberg just revealed that as many as have used used Facebook in a given day, which is a milestone for the network. And the social network saw a record number of |
Loopt In Process Of Receiving Broad Patent Covering Location-Based Ads | Jason Kincaid | 2,011 | 9 | 30 | Location-based service has been allowed its first patent, and it could be a big one. The patent, as described, seems relevant to numerous existing products, including Google’s Latitude. In layman’s terms, it describes using your location to display relevant ads and offers on top of a map, as an interstitial, or as a text ad — another claim also discusses displaying where your friends are on the same map. The patent was first filed in 2007, with Loopt founder Sam Altman listed as the primary inventor (Loopt got its start long before the likes of Foursquare and Google Latitude). The patent, which is listed as Application Number 11/931,113 by the US Patent and Trademark Office, still hasn’t technically been granted. But it has been “allowed,” which is a precursor to being granted. At this point, it could still be a few months before the patent is granted, assuming that Loopt pays all the proper fees and files the proper paperwork. Here’s one relevant claim: “17. A method comprising: providing, by a server, an advertising campaign including a plurality of advertising messages for transmitting to users of mobile devices at different times or locations; receiving, by the server, the geographic location of a mobile communication device operated by a user within an area; and transmitting to the mobile communication device for display, at least one of the plurality of advertising messages, wherein the advertising message includes content relevant to a characteristic of the user or activity performed by the user and is in the form of a text advertising message, coupon and/or graphic element that is superimposed over a map representation of the area around the mobile communication device displayed on a graphical user interface of the mobile communication device of the user, displayed in an interstitial display page of the graphic user interface, or displayed as a text-based message, and wherein the ad message is transmitted in response to the location of the user.” It’s unclear what this means for Loopt (the company isn’t commenting). Loopt has to the , which states that they won’t offensively use their patents against any company with fewer than 25 people. Of course, most of the location-based companies you’ve heard of have more than that. Even if they never use it offensively (which would be nice), this may be a good defensive patent for Loopt going forward. Part of me feels like the notion of putting a layer of ads on top of a map, alongside where your friends are, is an obvious use-case for smartphones. This was filed in 2007, so the assumption may be that it was less obvious back then. [scribd id=66979533 key=key-urz23ugcmq8z49jonpq mode=list]
[scribd id=66985903 key=key-23qkabw9b6hslp9nqycc mode=list] |
Facebookers Are Not In Hawaii | Alexia Tsotsis | 2,011 | 9 | 30 | Aloha! You know where I wish I were right now? That’s right, Maui! You know who else is in Maui? Note: I am really jealous of anyone who is a Googler in Maui right now, because it sure beats being someone who has to write about being a Googler in Maui right now. According to unpaid blogger , I’m not alone in my jealousy, as some other people who worked on Google+ apparently weren’t included in the Google Maui trip, and “wish they were.” Makes sense. Meanwhile, Facebook PR just invited me to a meeting next Wednesday to discuss the recently introduced features. According to our sources, Facebook also plans early next week. And, as far as I can tell from trolling Instagram, there are not 450+ Facebookers hanging out by the beach right now (I’ve emailed Facebook PR for confirmation of this.) Facebookers? “We never really had a formal term, I think that’s a reasonable portmanteau,” said a person familiar with the matter. “I think “Yahoo!” made it uncool.” Click through Googler ‘s Hawaii pics, below.
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Microsoft “Accidentally” Tags Chrome As Malware | Devin Coldewey | 2,011 | 9 | 30 | Oh, Microsoft! You are so cunning. With IE market share plummeting and many users opting for “alternative” web browsers like Firefox and Chrome, your base of power is crumbling. We thought you would succumb to melancholy and accept your fate. But you had a plan all along. Clever girl. Yes, Microsoft has found a way to stanch the hemorrhaging of its users to other browsers: label them as malware in the built-in Security Essentials suite! Okay, I kid. : “On September 30th, 2011, an incorrect detection for PWS:Win32/Zbot was identified. On September 30th, 2011, Microsoft released an update that addresses the issue.” The incorrect detection led to Chrome being removed and reinstall prohibited. It actually brings up an interesting point, though. Seamless updates like Chrome’s are growing more popular, especially since many apps are essentially web services, and changes (mostly innocent) happen behind the curtain all the time. When it’s a local app, though, the process for authentication becomes more complicated. Google shouldn’t have to wait for Microsoft to approve all its updates. But Microsoft needs to be vigilant and watch for unauthorized changes that may negatively affect the user. And while malicious programs are important to watch for, poorly secured ones can be just as dangerous. Security was never simple, but it’s getting more complicated by the day and users have more choices and more exposure. Luckily, snafus like this one are pretty harmless and Microsoft, though I give them a hard time, is actually very responsive on this front. : Google has some more information on their . |
TechCrunch Giveaway: One DROID Bionic #TechCrunch | Elin Blesener | 2,011 | 9 | 30 | Last week we ran a giveaway for one whole week, giving away a . A huge congratulations to Scott Leither for winning last week’s DROID Bionic! Since the giveaway was so popular, we wanted to give all of you another shot. Thanks again to Verizon, we are giving one more DROID Bionic away to one lucky reader. Just like before, the giveaway will run for one full week and we will choose the winner next Friday. To enter, all you have to do is follow the steps below: 1) 2) – Retweet this post (making sure to include the #TechCrunch hashtag)
– Leave us a comment below telling us why you want it The giveaway starts now and ends next Friday, October 7th, at 1pm PDT. We will pick one lucky reader at random and contact them via email next week. Anyone in the U.S. is eligible. Good luck everyone! Update: Congrats to Marc Freedman! |
PSA: The AT&T Galaxy S II Has A Pretty Terrible Security Flaw [Update: Confirmed By Samsung!] | Greg Kumparak | 2,011 | 9 | 30 | The AT&T Galaxy S II is a lot of things. It’s fast. It’s thin. It’s pretty damn nice to look at. But secure? Yeah, not really. In what seems to be an almost inexcusable oversight, it appears that the pattern lock (the thing that keeps prying eyes from prying) on AT&T’s version of the Samsung Galaxy S II is… pretty much useless. The guys over at noticed the loophole, and caught it on video below. How it works is almost absurd: you turn on the device’s display, and the unlock pattern screen should show up (assuming that you have a pattern set, of course.) The trick? Do The screen will fade to black after a moment. Turn the display back on — and bam: you’re in, no pattern-based unlock required. The small catch is that someone will have had to unlock the device the proper way since power up. This flaw does not seem to affect Sprint’s Galaxy S II variant, the Epic Touch 4G. On the upside, these things don’t actually ship to the general populace until October 2nd. While there’s some chance that Samsung noticed this issue and fixed it between shipping the review units and shipping the retail hardware (Samsung’s only response is that they’re “investigating”), such last minute patches rarely, if ever, occur. If the retail units exhibit this same behavior, expect it to be a few days to a few weeks before a patch is made available. : A few e-mails and at least one commenter below raged on me and claimed that this couldn’t be real (gotta love that a device that has devout fanboys) — but Samsung and AT&T themselves have just confirmed that there is a flaw and that they are “investigating a permanent solution”. See their comment and their suggested temporary fix below: Samsung and AT&T are aware of the user interface issue on the Galaxy S II with AT&T. Currently, when using a security screen lock on the device, the default setting is for a screen timeout. If a user presses the power button on the device after the timeout period it will always require a password. If a user presses the power button on the phone before the timeout period, the device requests a password – but the password is not actually necessary to unlock it. Samsung and AT&T are investigating a permanent solution. In the meantime, owners of the Galaxy S II can remedy the situation by re-setting their time-out screen to the “immediately” setting. This is done by going to the Settings->Location and Security->Screen unlock settings->Timeout->Immediately.
[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V9tXDLyeoBE&w=640&h=360] |
Gillmor Gang Live 1pm PT (TCTV) | Steve Gillmor | 2,011 | 9 | 30 | The Gillmor Gang – Robert Scoble, John Taschek, Kevin Marks, Danny Sullivan and Steve Gillmor – are recording live at 1pm PST. Recording over at 2:25PM PST. |
null | Leena Rao | 2,011 | 9 | 9 | null |
Video: AlphaDog Is A Bigger, Faster, Quieter BigDog | Devin Coldewey | 2,011 | 9 | 30 | I’m sure all of you remember , the utterly terrifying biomimetic platform that dances over rough terrain on weird legs and makes a sound like it’s full of angry bees. You didn’t think they were going to give up on it, did you? No, it’s been a rousing success apparently, so much so that they decided to build one that outdoes the original in every way. The AlphaDog, as they’re calling it, was created to be basically the practical version of BigDog, which, while compelling and scary, was too loud and couldn’t carry enough stuff. AlphaDog, on the other hand, will carry 400 pounds of gear for 20 miles in a day, without needing to be refueled. [youtube w=640 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SSbZrQp-HOk] Be sure to watch the video to the end. The now-traditional “shoving of the quadrupedal robot platform” is great, and then you get to see a creepy behavior as it rights itself in an unreal way from a lying position. Right now it’s powered externally and running on rails, but it’s not so hard to think of this thing in the field. With a GPS unit and some rudimentary depth-sensing cameras, it could confidently navigate most terrain or follow its “masters” along a trail. Though I doubt that feature will make it into first production AlphaDogs, scheduled for 2012. doesn’t have too much extra info, so keep an eye on their YouTube account for news. |
Untappd Takes Their Social Beer Service To iOS, Android | Chris Velazco | 2,011 | 9 | 30 | The beer fanatics at are at it again. Their web app has been letting users share their brews of choice since 2010, but the company has just announced that they have released a pair of native apps for iOS and Android in time for the weekend. According to , they’re big fans of the mobile web, but “there does come a time when you reach the limitations of the mobile web and have to move to a native platform.” Understandable. Though functional, the web app only lets you work with certain parts of the Untappd service, like checking in your brew and searching for similar beers. The new apps add some much-needed mobile functionality into the mix. Users can now upload their bar photos on the fly, and all of your friends’ smarmy beer judgments will route to the new notification center. One of the biggest improvements as far as the user experience goes is the bump in speed — navigating within the app seems much faster because you’re not left sitting there waiting for a mobile webpage to reload. It’s bound to come in handy when you end up in a dive bar where your cell service is as iffy as the local boozehound’s liver. The apps are free, and ready to download in Apple’s and the . Just be sure to check-in responsibly, alright? |
Wi-Fi Hotspot App Connectify Gets New Funding From IQT – The Firm That Finds New Tech For CIA | Sarah Perez | 2,011 | 9 | 30 | Remember ? The downloadable software in just a few minutes? It looks like the company now has a new investor: (IQT), which just so happens to be the strategic investment firm that seeks out new technologies for the U.S. Intelligence Community, including the CIA. The will help Connectify move beyond simple Wi-Fi hotspot creation, a decidedly consumer-facing service, in order to focus on VPNs (virtual private networks). Using similar easy-to-install software, Connectify will soon enable users to spontaneously create self-forming VPNs without dialing into a central location. The VPNs will also leverage the combined throughput and reliability of all the available Internet connections, the company says. The additional security and feature set will be integrated into both Connectify’s current product line-up as well as into its upcoming and yet-to-announced products. Connectify informs us that it can’t disclose the amount of funding IQT provided due to the organization’s sensitive mission involving bringing technology to the U.S. intelligence community. Still, it’s easy to envision potential use cases for the technology, especially in situations where authoritarian government regimes watch over their citizens’ Internet communications far too closely. But the enhanced security will benefit stateside consumers too, by offering a safer way to share your Internet access with those around you. And here we were thinking Windows PC software was boring…consider our interest piqued. |
Sequoia-Backed Stripe Wants To Disrupt The Online Payments Space | Leena Rao | 2,011 | 9 | 30 | In March, we about , a new payments startup cofounded by brothers and . The stealthy company was tackling online business to business and business to consumer payments, and had already received $2 million in backing from a number of all-star investors including PayPal founders and , as well as , and This week, Stripe actually launched to the public and we now have more details on how the startup plans to disrupt a space dominated by PayPal and others. Stripe, which has been in private beta, is a more developer friendly, easy to use payments platform. The platform supports Ruby, PHP, Python, you don’t need a merchant account or gateway and Stripe will handle everything, including with storing cards, subscriptions, and direct payouts to a bank account. As the company states on its site, Stripe says that its platform can be set up in minutes. Moreover, Stripe’s APIs allow developers build their own payment forms, brand the experience and allows sites owners to stay on the site for the checkout experience, This last point is huge, because many merchants don’t want users to have to visit an outside site to checkout and perhaps drop the transaction in the process. Having control over the payment’s UI and experience is a win for any merchant, as is the ability to cut out any redirection. In terms of security, credit cards go directly to Stripe’s secure environment, and never hits developer servers. Stripe’s processing costs are 2.9% plus $0.30 cents per successful charge, which is in line with PayPal. But this fee is for all charges (whether that be a $2 charge or a $10,000 charge) and only successful payments are charged the fees. There are no setup fees, no monthly fees, no card storage fees, and no hidden costs, says the company. Earnings are transferred to bank accounts on a 7 day rolling basis. The design of the payments is also another aspect of the platform that the startup prides itself on. The design is brainchild of a Ludwig Pettersson, who is both a talented developer and a designer. Stripe also works with international payments, and customers can use pretty much any currency to pay. The amount will be converted to USD at prevailing exchange rates. At the moment, developers have to be based in the US to receive payments, but the startup will be expanding internationally soon. Collison and his brother have a history of successful startups and have assembled a talented team of developers and designer from Lala, Mockingbird, Auctomatic, Cappuccino, Encyclopedia, and Observer. The Collison brothers actually sold their startup for $5 million. Back in March, we couldn’t couldn’t confirm the financing took place. But Patrick Collison says today that it did take place. We had also heard that Stripe was valued at around $20 million in the round. And Sequoia partner is reportedly personally involved in Stripe as well. He’s not known to on startups he doesn’t think will have huge exits. The payments industry is no doubt going through major disruption right now with Square, PayPal, Google, and even credit card companies looking to be a part of this innovation. It should be interesting to see if Stripe can match the same success that Square, which launched a few years ago, has been able to see over the past year. Collison tells me that the company will be coming out with more details on the platform soon, so stay tuned. |
T-Mobile Poster Reveals Nokia Drive For Windows Phone, Confirms Sabre? | Chris Velazco | 2,011 | 9 | 30 | Oops. A new promotional poster made an appearance in a store at T-Mobile’s German headquarters, where it confirmed the existence of a Nokia Windows Phone with a 3.7-inch display and Nokia’s Drive navigation service. The poster was up only briefly, but a quick-thinking tipster snapped a few shots and fired them off to . After running it through a quick and dirty Google translation, the poster’s copy mentions that Nokia Drive for WP includes a 3D navigation display like its MeeGo cousin, and support for voice control. Thrilling, no? Of course, that’s not all the poster had in store for us. Further down in the description, it makes mention of a device packing a 3.7-inch curved AMOLED display. Nokia’s reportedly bears quite a resemblance to the company’s N9, but whether or not it shares the device’s 3.9-inch display is still in the air. If it does though, then these marketing materials may refer to another Nokia device that was accidentally outed earlier this week. If the terms and conditions of a are to be believed, then Nokia has at least one more Windows Phone in the pipeline. Rumors of a handset called the Sabre can be laid to rest, as the contest’s fine print seems to back up the device’s existence. Details are pretty much non-existent at this stage, but ruminated that the Sabre would have a 3.7-inch display when they first caught wind of it last month. The matching screen sizes could be a complete coincidence, but it’s also possible that Nokia’s Sabre is farther along then we thought. The fact that Microsoft has since pulled the offending wording from the only makes the Sabre look more official. With Nokia’s Windows Phones poised to launch before the year is out, they’ll hopefully come forward with details sooner rather than later. |
Best Buy To Cut The HTC Flyer Tablet To $299 On October 1st | Matt Burns | 2,011 | 9 | 30 | Watch out for falling tablet prices! No, seriously, don’t get burned by price cuts. The HTC Flyer is the latest tablet to see a major price reduction. Starting tomorrow, October 1st, Best Buy will lower the price of the 7-inch Android 2.3 tablet from $499 to $299. This follows the , , and most notable, the . The Flyer is nearing its 6 month birthday and hasn’t fared very well in the marketplace. This is mainly because it attempted to compete directly with the iPad while offering a smaller screen and dated OS. However, had it launched at $299, the Flyer might have won over more fans because it is a capable tablet with several fun tricks including an active digitizer stylus. Best Buy that the price cut will go into effect on October 1st and apply to purchases made from Best Buy stores and the website. Hopefully these price cuts show that manufacturers are finally waking up. Consumers are seemingly only interested in the iPad at the $500 price point. If other tabs are to be sold, they have to be priced low enough to compensate for their shortcomings and smaller feature set. The TouchPad was a massive hit at $99, but that price is not sustainable. Amazon got the Fire’s price right and the HTC Flyer might even make more friends at $299. |
Facebook Begins Auto-Grouping Friends Into Smart Lists | Greg Kumparak | 2,011 | 9 | 8 | You’ve got 500-something friends, all of about 50 you really interact with. You went to school with Lucy and Henry, you’ve worked with Mike for years, and Joe lives just down the block. Facebook knows all of this — it just doesn’t really go out of its way to that it knows all of this. Until now. Sometime recently, Facebook began rolling out “Smart Lists” to select users — which, as the name implies, intelligently groups certain obvious groups of friends into pre-packaged lists. Take that, Google Plus! So far, it looks like Facebook is automatically grouping friends into three different bunches: If nothing else, that last one should be pretty handy for finding a few bar buddies on the quick without bugging your whole friends list (or, if we’re going for more practical stuff here, blasting out the cliche “Oh my God! Earthquake! Did anyone else feel that!” updates without sending it out to people who are on the other side of the world and obviously didn’t feel that.) Following the launch of Google Plus and its absurdly easy-to-use grouping system, Facebook has taken a good amount of flack for their rather archaic list creation tools. Might this be the first of many improvements? The three pre-generated lists are nice, but when will I be able to be able to make my smart lists, a la iTunes Smart Playlists? Yeah yeah, school friends, cool — when will I be able to auto-generate a list of all my friends who happen to share my love for John Leguizamo flicks? ! [Thanks to for shooting the screenshot above our way] |
Twitter Closing Its $400M Secondary Offering Tomorrow | Alexia Tsotsis | 2,011 | 9 | 8 | Twitter CEO confirmed its first $400 million tranche of this morning, the company has just closed “more money than I’ve ever seen before” and therefore was in no hurry to IPO. The entire series G, which involved Yuri Milner’s DST, institutional clients, T Rowe Price’s group of funds, and others, was split into two parts, the first $400 million going directly to Twitter for preferred shares and the second $400 million used to buy out employees and existing shareholders. The financing values the company at ~$8 billion and ~$16 a share. Fortune’s Dan Primack that the second tranche of that funding is currently closing, and I’ve confirmed with multiple sources that the tender offer for Twitter employees ends tomorrow at 4 pm PST. No further documents will by accepted by the buyers after this time. Twitter employees can currently only sell 20% of their shares before a liquidity event, and from what I am hearing many are not choosing to sell the full amount they are allowed to sell in this deal. Primack is reporting that existing investors and took this opportunity to sell existing shares but that later stage investors and have thus far held on to theirs. Funds will go out to those tendering shares on September 20th. |
Ex-Googlers Launch Mobile Travel Guide To Kill Lonely Planet; Raise Funding From Chris Sacca & More | Rip Empson | 2,011 | 9 | 8 | In the days of yore, travel guides were written by intrepid travelers who spent months scribbling in diaries and field journals, or by teams of adventurous souls exhaustively scrap booking their travel experiences into the of the world. Over the last decade, however, the Web has produced an untold number of personal travel blogs, digital photo albums, community-built travel guides like and , and cool travel . Today, Jon Tirsen and Douwe Osinga, two ex-Googlers, are officially unveiling their new mobile travel guide , which doesn’t want to just throw out the old model, it wants to do what Google did for the world’s information: Aggregate that sucka and make it easily searchable. Simply put, Triposo is based on the simple idea that travel guides can be designed in the same way that Google based its aggregation and search on some kick ass algorithms. And a little bit of indexing and semantic icing to boot. To that end, travel guides like Triposo are possible today, because the content is there. Sites like Wikipedia, Wikitravel, and Openstreetmap have swaths of travel-related content, and Triposo wants to be the site that ranks that content so well you’ll never have to use another preachy, paper-based travel book. The environment will thank you. Thus, the Triposo algorithm takes travel information from seven of the biggest open source aggregators (and several closed resources as well) and serves its users with content that’s relevant for them. Without any human interference, Triposo COO Richard Osinga tells me, the startup produces travel guides, with information on sightseeing, nightlife and restaurants, all ordered by Triposo’s algorithm — and complete with an easy-to-use (and offline-enabled) map. That very offline functionality in and of itself makes Triposo’s free mobile apps worth downloading. Along with its web app, Triposo also offers 30 free destination guides for iOS using the same approach. The startup plans to release an iOS world guide, in which users can download a complete travel guide for any destination in the world, next month. Android users, on the other hand, . Triposo has been polishing its travel content algorithms for over a year now, and launched a swath of city guides for iOS and Android to test the algorithmic waters and user response. So far, people are using the guides on average of 20 minutes per session — so far, so good. But the end goal for Triposo is really to hone its all-in-one world travel guides, so that users can pick a destination anywhere across the globe and easily find the best cities and destinations to visit. But how does Triposo choose these recommended destinations? “One of the things we also use intensively for our ranking algorithms are photographs”, said Co-founder Douwe Osinga. “We have a collection of a few million travel photos geotagged — with time stamps. How many pictures are taken at a place, at what time, on what day: That all helps us decide how important a location is”. Of course, an algorithm-based company is only as good as its, well, algorithm. At the end of the day, travelers may prefer to receive personalized recommendations on destinations from their friends, or people they trust. (Or self-curated as one commenter pointed out.) And from this perspective, Triposo’s human-less recommendation platform may not suit everyone; but at the same time, it’s nice to have a free mobile app that works the same for everyone regardless. It may miss the mark for some, but the iPad app looks great, and so far, the algorithm hasn’t let me down. Amsterdam, here I come. Along with platform unveiling, Triposo also told TechCrunch that it has raised $525,000 in seed financing from angel investors, including , , Google Wave Co-founder and Google Maps Lead Engineer , and . The founders said that they will use this new infusion of capital to continue optimizing its algorithm, working towards the goal of becoming the best possible web and mobile destination to answer: Where should I go next? The question, however, for Triposo, is what their revenue model will be when the money runs out. Premium features? Paid apps? More to come. For more on the interactive travel guides startup, . Let us know what you think. Travel content algorithms: Yay or nay? |
Vodafone Launches Their First Silicon Valley R&D/Investment Center | Greg Kumparak | 2,011 | 9 | 8 | Vodafone. It’s a brand that most folks here in the states would, at first pass, almost certainly chalk up as “that one European company that puts their name on a bunch of soccer jerseys” — that is, if they recognized it at all. And yet, Vodafone is essentially the biggest wireless carrier in the world. They’re the top carrier by revenues, and second to only China Mobile by subscribers. Oh, and they own of Verizon. In other words, they’re kind of a big deal — and now they’re lookin’ to get in on some of that Silicon Valley action. This evening, Vodafone is opening the doors to the (the sign store ran out of Z’s, so they just rolled with it.) Xone is a brand new research and development center in Redwood City which will serve as, amongst other things, a means of assessing potential investments for their Vodafone Ventures group. But wait, there’s more! Vodafone’s new shop will also: It’ll probably be a few weeks before Vodafone really settles in and starts diggin’ around for startups to usher in, but folks interested on getting their foot in the door early Do note, though, that (at least from my early conversations with them) it sounds like Vodafone is primarily interested in investing in companies with a product they’re ready to expand globally, rather than Angel/Early-seed stage startups. |
Facebook Hires HTML5 App Store Builder | Leena Rao | 2,011 | 9 | 8 | Over the past few months, my colleague MG Siegler has been the around , which is the social network’s secret plan to bring applications to the mobile web via HTML5. Today, we’ve learned that Facebook has made a key hire in the HTML5 space. We’ve confirmed that the social network has hired , who was the founder and CEO of , an app store for HTML5 mobile web apps. Facebook didn’t actually acquire OpenAppMkt, but just hired Chia away. OpenAppMkt has been handed over to a new team and Chia’s no longer involved. For background, OpenAppMkt, which was , launched as a centralized store for HTML5 mobile applications. Before OpenAppMkt, Chia created and operated a number of Facebook apps with over 20 million users cumulatively. He also founded Gabbly, an instant chat/collaboration tool used by over 4 million users, and was an engineer at Oracle. As MG has reported in the past, Project Spartan is the HTML5-driven mobile application platform that Facebook has been quietly building for months with the help of a group of third-party app developers. The thought by many is that Facebook is trying to break up the control Apple and Google have over the mobile app space, and Facebook is betting in HTML5. And we learned a UI framework that’s being built by Facebook for the purpose “helping developers build fantastic mobile web applications in HTML5 and Javascript.” Clearly Chia brings significant expertise to Facebook in terms of possibly creating an app store for Facebook’s HTML5 platform. Of course, we can’t confirm that Chia is working on Project Spartan but it seems likely considering his background. |
Video: Vortex-Powered Wall-Climbing Robot Parachutes To Safety | Devin Coldewey | 2,011 | 9 | 8 | The huge variety of is a thing to marvel at. Just a few years ago, the best they could do was roll around or walk stiffly on poorly-hinged limbs. Now we have robots that , , and . This mode of transportation is totally new to me, though. The climbs up walls by generating a suction, then gets itself safely down by jumping off and deploying a little parachute. Why not, right? Check out the video. The action happens about halfway in. [youtube w=640 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ovxv7FPk9WY] Paraswift is a collaboration between Disney Research and the Swiss Federal Research Institute. This demonstration took place during the , held at the University Pierre and Marie Curie in Paris. It generates the suction by creating a vortex “like a mini tornado” in a central tube; the vortex has a low-pressure center, and this pressure gradient, through a process known as , causes the robot to stick to the wall. Only the wheels need to be in contact with the climbing surface, which makes it much more useful for climbing surfaces like stone and concrete, which can be difficult to form a vacuum seal around. Once it’s had enough climbing, the little wings deploy, spreading the glider/parachute, and it jumps to relative safety. I say relative because it looks like there’s a bit of a bump at the end there. They’ll work that out in version 2. Unfortunately, the first use I can think of for these things is setting them to climb up apartment buildings and assassinate the fleshy humans within. So this one gets filed under . |
Unlimited Music Service MOG Launches A Desktop App For The Mac | Jason Kincaid | 2,011 | 9 | 8 | , the all-you-can-eat streaming music service that competes with the likes of Spotify and Rdio, has some good news for Mac users: it’s just launched a native application for OS X, which is now available on the Mac App Store. You can download it (the service is free for 14 days, then costs $10/month, which includes access to the web and mobile applications as well). The native Mac application will look familiar to anyone who has used the service’s HTML5 web app , because it’s based on the same code. It isn’t loaded with native Mac widgets, but it works well — everything feels snappy, and in my testing songs began playing in less than a second. And there is one nifty feature that the web app doesn’t have: AirPlay support, which means you can stream your MOG music to an Apple TV or any speakers hooked up to an Airport Express (MOG says this is the first of the streaming music apps to offer this feature). The app also supports those media keys on your keyboard, as well as Apple Remotes. Existing MOG users will be pleased with the app, but this release is particularly important for users debating between Spotify, Rdio, MOG, and Rhapsody. Each of these services offers large music libraries — so they tend to compete on offering better app support and user experiences. Spotify and Rdio already offer native apps; now MOG can check that box as well. Spotify does has one advantage over MOG and Rdio for the time being: it has a limited free version, though it’s invitation-only in the US.
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Notifo Slips Into The Deadpool | Greg Kumparak | 2,011 | 9 | 8 | Notifo, a YC-backed company we as a “simple mobile notifications platform for anything”, is shuttering the windows and heading for the deadpool. The idea was simple enough: Notifo would pipe real-time notifications from just about anywhere — be it Twitter, or Hacker News, or Github, or Facebook, or any Growl-compatible app on your computer — to your mobile device, long before most of these services had apps that could handle that duty themselves. Later down the road, Notifo doubled down their server’s functionality by tossing in free . Alas, the product just never managed to find a userbase. In a world where just about every service has come to have an app of their very own, a service like Notifo has unfortunately become a bit redundant. Meanwhile, competing alternatives like (on the app side) and (on the publisher/server side) have filled in any lingering gaps. Notifo founder says he’s already moved on to another job (Update: according to his personal blog, he’s now at Twilio. Congrats, Chad!), while co-founder moved onto PicPlum ( ) a while ago. Notifo will stay functional until the server money runs dry — but from this point on, there will be no further development effort. |
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