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What Skype Really Paid For GroupMe | Michael Arrington | 2,011 | 8 | 23 | On Sunday we that Skype was acquiring group messaging service GroupMe. What we didn’t know was the price, and neither company disclosed any of the terms of the deal other than that GroupMe would remain a standalone brand for now, and the team would stay in New York. A spread said that Skype paid as much as $85 million for the year-old company. We’ve heard this number is a bit high, and includes an earnout or deferred payments. What’s the real price? Our sources close to the companies say the initial payment for GroupMe is $43 million, and deferred payments (or an earnout) can get the GroupMe shareholders as much as $68 million over four years. The founders will receive another few million dollars as part of their long term employment agreements. Why the difference? No idea. But I have a high degree of confidence that Skype will pay somewhere between $43 million and $68 million for GroupMe. Which is one heck of a win for the founders and investors, who put into the company. As an aside, when we add estimated acquisition prices , we usually put in the higher number instead of a range. I like being optimistic, and we can always edit it downward later if new information becomes available. |
Reddit Acquires Fan-Made Secret Santa Site, RedditGifts | Greg Kumparak | 2,011 | 8 | 23 | After spending too much time with far too little support from their owners at Condé Nast, Reddit is on a bit of a roll lately. They’ve gone on a handful of , moved into a bigger, better office… and now, they’ve made their first acquisition: RedditGifts. For the non-Redditors out there (yeah, yeah, Narwhal bacons at Midnight and all that), RedditGifts is a user-to-user gift exchange service first launched by Redditor for Reddit’s record-breaking back in 2009. In each “Secret Santa” event, Redditors are automatically matched with one other Redditor, and are then tasked with figuring out something awesome to send that person’s way. Some lurk through their recipient’s comments for clues as to what they might like; others just make something neat and hope it works out. There are, of course, horror stories of people scamming the process for free crap and other tomfoolery — but for the most part, everyone plays friendly and it works out well. Following the success of the first Secret Santa round (which pulled around 4,500 participants), RedditGifts followed up with a second in 2010, this time with over 17,000 gift-givers. Looking to keep the fun going outside of December, they also organized the totally secular and aptly named “Arbitrary Day”, which they describe as “a celebration of nothing in particular”. All gift exchanges combined, just shy of 43,000 people have participated, with around $1.5 million (plus a ton of man-hours, as so many of the gifts are handmade) spent on gifts. So, why the acquisition? What’s in it for Reddit? In short, RedditGifts’ two-person team just couldn’t afford to keep maintaining the project while also working their day jobs.. so now RedditGifts their day job. Reddit gets to keep an awesome, well-established, largely-self-driven source of community bonding, and the RedditGifts team gets to do what they were doing before… but for money. Everyone wins! RedditGifts will continue to operate under the same two-person team (Dan “kickme444” McComas and Jessica “5days” Moreno), remain on the same domain, and neither will be involved with the daily operations of Reddit proper. The only things expected to change: RedditGifts will eventually go opensource (Reddit already is), and the whole thing should lead to better integration (namely, easier sign-ups) in the longrun. No word yet if any money (beyond salaries, benefits and the like) actually traded hands for this acquisition, or if this is more of an acquisition-by-hire — either way, it’s not a bad deal for a project initially launched overnight on a whim. |
Failbook Phone: AT&T Already Looking To Ditch The HTC Status, Says Source | Greg Kumparak | 2,011 | 8 | 23 | Surprise! Even a clever little gimmick like a dedicated Facebook button can’t save a bad phone from an early demise. After just 36 days on the shelves, a trusted source close to AT&T tells us the carrier is already prepping to ditch HTC’s so-called “Facebook Phone”, the Status. The reason? The thing just isn’t selling. Since the initial tipster came forward, we’ve confirmed with multiple sources that sales of the Status are considerably lower than anyone expected. AT&T declined to comment. To say we foresaw the Status’ fate would be something of an understatement. The Status originally launched as the back at Mobile World Congress, where I pointed out that (the real-time answer company) likely wouldn’t take too kindly to the name — and sure enough, and filed a lawsuit against HTC within the week. When AT&T to carry the device (now renamed Status), we predicted it wouldn’t succeed due to a lack of interest… and here we are, just over a month post-launch, hearing that the death knell is being prepped for a ringing.
For those who might’ve missed the Status updates: the Status is an Android handset designed in the same vein as a classic BlackBerry (2.8″ touchscreen on top, with a QWERTY keyboard below) — a design which, if we’re honest, probably had a big part in the Status’ weak sales. The Status’ one potential saving grace was its context-sensitive Facebook Button — a small, dedicated key placed near the bottom edge of the handset built strictly for one-click Facebook sharing. Anytime the user was viewing content that could be shared on Facebook (be it a photo, a video, or a website), the button would automatically light up. When pushed, the content would be packaged up and pushed to the user’s Facebook profile. For what it’s worth, even Facebook has never seemed all that interested in HTC’s efforts. Mark Zuckerberg phoned it in with HTC’s original announcement, providing a short, generic video in lieu of an actual appearance. Even with a fair amount of time spent at Facebook HQ, not once have any of us here at TechCrunch seen a Facebook employee carrying a Status. They all seem to use iPhones. AT&T has now agreed to go on record with a comment, saying “The HTC Status is a great product and our plans for it to be part of our portfolio haven’t changed.” |
Rumor: Sprint To Sell iPhone 5 In October | Chris Velazco | 2,011 | 8 | 23 | As we once again enter the iPhone 5 breach, one would do well to keep their grains of salt at the ready, but the reports that Sprint will be among the few carriers to sell the iPhone 5. The news is something of a coup for Sprint, the nation’s third largest wireless service provider. If true, it could provide a stay of execution for a company that would otherwise be facing Verizon and AT&T/T-Mobile without a Cupertino trump card. Sprint’s stock has already jumped due to the news, although at last glance it seems to be returning to pre-announcement levels. Like Verizon, the backbone of Sprint’s network runs on the CDMA standard. Rather than manufacture a different iPhone for each carrier, the possibililty of Sprint selling the iPhone 5 lends a bit of credence to news of the device’s . Sources also report that instead of the hoped-for September release window, the iPhone 5 may instead see the light of day later in October. This story is currently developing, please refresh for updates as they happen. The has gone live, and has fleshed out a few of the more salient details: the iPhone 4 will reportedly be sold alongside the iPhone 5 on Sprint. Additionally, what scant details WSJ has on the iPhone 5’s appearance indicate that the new handset will “be thinner and lighter with an improved digital camera.” |
Twitter Begins Turning On The Secure HTTPS By Default | MG Siegler | 2,011 | 8 | 23 | Back in March, after at least one high profile security incident, . But you could only enable the more secure way of viewing twitter.com by manually selecting it in your profile (or typing “https://” each time you went to Twitter). Starting today, the service is beginning to enable HTTPS by default. At first, this will only be enabled for a small group of users, Twitter . Over time, they’ll roll it out to more. It’s a welcome change that other services like Gmail have added over the years. Google has even with it for google.com, and Facebook has an option to use it as well after years of avoiding it. A lot services avoid using it because it does mean a slight performance hit. Others don’t like it because it scrubs referral data. And it can mean that certain third-party data can act funky. But in the age of Firesheep, HTTPS is becoming necessary. If you’re not in the on-by-default test group and want to learn more about HTTPS, you can do so . Twitter recommends that everyone turns it on while they slowly roll it out to all. |
LaCie Adds Some Polish To Its NAS Units With “NAS OS” | Devin Coldewey | 2,011 | 8 | 23 | Backing up data is getting more and more important, since although much of our critical stuff is in the cloud, we’re all generating so many pictures, videos, documents and so on that it’s wise to keep a local copy. Many people use external drives to back up, which is fine, but if you want any automated stuff, or server capabilities, you have to update to a network-attached storage system, and they aren’t all that user friendly. LaCie has updated their devices with a , which they hope will make backup and serving easier. Let’s just take a quick look. Here’s your little home screen. A bit cluttered, I’d say, could use a few larger buckets for easier operation by non-enthusiasts. But there’s plenty of at-a-glance info there: Capacity, share and service management: The main changes aren’t super major, but worth having. Better RAID support, works on Lion, scheduled up/down time, centralized multi-device backup management, and of course the shiny new interface. Unfortunately only three devices are eligible to upgrade right now, the Network 2 series d2, 2big, and 5big. |
null | Jason Kincaid | 2,011 | 8 | 24 | null |
Facebook’s Massive Kitchen Sink Update: Photo Tag Approvals And So Much More | Jason Kincaid | 2,011 | 8 | 23 | Hell has frozen over, pigs have flown, and it’s now possible to approve photos you’ve been tagged in on Facebook before they show up in your profile. Pause. Take a drink if you need to. If you hear fireworks in the streets this morning, you know why. In what amounts to a kitchen-sink of fixes, tweaks, and new terminology, Facebook is rolling out a new update this week that’s setting out to . In short, today’s release fixes many of the biggest annoyances (and privacy issues) that the site has had for years now. So let’s get to them. First, just to repeat myself because people have wanted it for so long, it’s now possible to approve tags — including photo tags — before they show up in your profile. This is the big one, and it’s a feature people have been asking for ever since Photos first launched. The feature is defaulted to ‘off’ for photos your friends have tagged you in (more on that in a second), but at least it’s there. But why now? Facebook’s stated rationale for why they’re finally implementing this option has everything to do with another new feature: It’s now possible to tag people you aren’t friends with in photos. If you’ve ever uploaded an album from a wedding, party, or other event where you only vaguely knew some of the attendees, then you’ve probably encountered an annoying quirk in Facebook Photos: you can only tag people in photos that you’ve friended on Facebook. Which often leads to friending people you couldn’t care less about. With this update, Facebook is fixing this — anyone can tag anyone else in a photo, but with one caveat: you will always be able to approve these tags before they go live on your profile. Hence the launch of the tagging queue. In fact, there’s actually no way to turn this approval process off for photos that non-friends have tagged you in. And as I mentioned before, by default, photos that your friends have tagged you in will automatically be added to your profile, the way they are now. But you can set those photos to go into your queue as well. The queue itself shows up when you’re looking at your profile just beneath your profile photo, and works just as you’d expect. Hooray! Another tweak to the way tagging works involves the way people photos. Historically, if one of your friends tagged you in an unflattering photo, the only way to remove it from your profile (or ‘tagged in’ album) was to simply de-tag it. But it turns out most people don’t necessarily care about having their names and a hyperlink under these photos — they just don’t want them displayed on their profile. So now the available detagging options reflect this: the most prominent option will be to remove a photo from your profile, while a separate dialog will allow you to detag it completely. This dialog also makes it easy to send a pre-generated message asking a friend to remove a certain photo, or to report the photo to Facebook itself for abuse. Another ostensibly minor tweak: . This one made me laugh cynically, because it’s been blatantly obvious since day one that the word ‘Everyone’ is ambiguous (it could easily mean ‘Everyone on Facebook’ as opposed to ‘The entire Internet’). There’s a lot of backstory to this that involves Facebook’s privacy-related move to date. It was December 2009, and the site prompted all of its users to update their privacy settings. Provided a user hadn’t tweaked their privacy settings before (which was the case for the majority of people), Facebook changed the default sharing setting from friends-of-friends (which meant that relatively few people on the site could see them) to ‘Everyone’ (which meant that all other Facebook users, and any search engines and third-party sites Facebook gave access to, would be able to see them as well). My hunch: Facebook decided that the word ‘Public’ would have been too scary a word to use during this privacy-stripping manuever, so it went with ‘Everyone’. Now that people are used to the idea, they’re going with the word that actually makes sense. There are some other important changes to the way status updates are created and displayed. First, in a move taken directly from Google+’s playbook, every published status update now clearly indicates whether it’s visible to just a user’s friends, the public, or ‘custom’ (if they’ve shared it with only a select group of friends, then the ‘custom’ option will show up, though you can’t see specifically is included in that grouping). It’s also much more apparent as you’re drafting an update who you’ll be sharing that content with (again, this is similar to Google+). Gone is the ambiguous lock icon, which is now replaced by icons indicating Friends, Public, or Custom. Another major change: Facebook is drastically revamping its Places product, which now has much less of an emphasis on Foursquare-like checkins. The issue, Facebook says, is that a lot of people have wanted to tag pieces of content at locations after the fact, or talk about places they’d like to go. Right now the Places product, which is integrated into the Facebook smartphone apps for iPhone and Android, only lets you Check-in if you’re within a few blocks of a given venue, and you can’t readily check-in from the past or the future. Starting this week, you’ll be able to easily associate location with any update, even if you’re nowhere near the location. So now that Places icon will be replaced with one that says ‘Nearby’, which lets you see content that your friends have posted that relevant to the area you’re checking into (this is a little confusing, and Facebook didn’t go into too much detail as far as how exactly the app now behaves). And there is definitely a major change to the way location-based deals will be distributed. Previously, venues could reward deals to users for checking in. Now, users who tag a piece of content near a certain location will have deals from nearby venues to them. Again, I haven’t seen this in action yet, but it’s a major departure from the Places product that only launched last fall. Another location-related change: Facebook now prompts users to include a city-level location tag with all of their updates (for example, if I wrote this from New York City, it would prompt me to include that with a status update). You can disable this if you aren’t interested, but city-level location probably won’t present a huge privacy issue for most people. And, finally, users can adjust their privacy controls much more easily directly from their profile, with settings that are displayed in-line rather than buried in menus. This includes a “View Profile As” option, which is now prominently displayed on your profile (just like it is on Google+). During a briefing with one of this update’s product leads, I asked why they were making all of these changes now — users have been requesting some of these things, like the ability to pre-approve photo tags, for ages. Her response was something along the lines of Facebook always striving to make the site easier to use and offering easier privacy controls, which, of course, has almost nothing to do with timing. Yes, Facebook is sort of scrappy. But offering a pending post queue was obviously something they decided against long ago. So what changed? The obvious answer is Google+. Facebook’s response to my assertion was that Facebook it could have built these features in the time since Google+ launched, but that work on these changes actually began around six months ago. Which is probably half true. Facebook knew Google was going to be launching a social network that would try to underscore all of its flaws — note how many of these features are already live on Google+ — so it preemptively started working to fix the things that annoy people about Facebook. Whatever the case, these are all good changes, and they make Facebook better. Note that while Facebook is announcing these features today, and will be educating users on the way they work through interactive prompts, they won’t start rolling out til Thursday. |
Greplin Releases Must Have iPhone App To Organize Your Life And Avoid Rabid Googlers | Michael Arrington | 2,011 | 8 | 23 | It was only a year ago that I first wrote about , the “ ” for you online life. It’s an incredibly useful search engine that indexes your online email, Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Calendar, Dropbox and other stuff (22 services are currently supported). Greplin is a single search box for all of this, and it’s fast. Until now, though, you had to use the HTML5 site for mobile use, there was no dedicated application. If you’re an iPhone user, that’s now changed. Android and other users have to wait a bit longer. Why the need for a dedicated app? 20 year old CEO says they needed an app to add in their most requested features. The goal is to reduce typing by anticipating what you need – if you open the app on a way to a meeting, Greplin can use your location and the date/time to make an intelligent guess you want an address or phone number relevant to that meeting, and then give it to you. The Greplin iPhone app’s predictive accumen is impressive. When Gross opened the app in my office yesterday “Arrington” was the top suggested search. The app knew he was having a meeting with me per his calendar and emails, and knew a search for me was likely. After clicking my name there were additional refinements to find a phone number, or my location, etc. You could do all that in email or calendar anyway, but Greplin makes it so much easier. Instead of opening email on my phone and searching for the name of the person I’m meeting and then scrolling through an email or two to find a phone number or address (and probably by a rabid Googler for typing while driving), Greplin just seems to know what I want and put it front and center for a click. It then highlights relevant information from emails as well. It’s those two features – suggested searches and highlighting – that make the app so easy to use. It’s rare that a new app can get a coveted “must have” spot on my phone, but Greplin is clearly that. Once it’s on Android, that is. Gross’ original idea for Greplin stemmed from the idea that “people are having more and more information thrown at them and we’re here to make that manageable.” Greplin already does that. Greplin’s iPhone app does it even better. And if it saves the life of even one crazy Googler who jumps in front of your car, it’s worth it. Greplin has raised just under from , and angel investors. |
“Defending Android” | MG Siegler | 2,011 | 8 | 15 | Bravo Google, well played. There’s no denying that Google’s maneuver this morning to Motorola for $12.5 billion in cash is remarkable. is talking about every possible angle of the deal, as they should. The summertime is usually the doldrums when it comes to tech news. Not this year. Google is pulling off an acquisition that is larger than any that Microsoft, Apple, or any of their other main competitors ever have. Larry Page, . Larry Page, maverick. As the resident Apple enthusiast around these parts, many of you want my take on this — and many of you probably want my take on this, but will end up reading it twice as much as those who do. But don’t worry, I’m not going to go all Dan Lyons and immediately . I actually took the entire day to think about this, read over the insane amount of coverage (though I didn’t get through even half of it), and form some thoughts. But my main thought is the same as my : this is either the smartest thing Google has ever done, or the dumbest. There is no in-between. Many people seem to be tripping over themselves trying to explain why this is just about patents. Okay, yes, there are some interesting potential side effects of this deal, such as in the broader consumer electronics space. Motorola help Google turn around the disaster that has been Google TV. Motorola makes a huge percentage of the set top boxes that the cable companies use to push their over-priced content at you. And those cable boxes are . But they’re highly profitable pieces of shit. While Google TV is a nightmare, it’s still a considerable upgrade from almost all set top boxes. The two sides could help each other here. Or it could be a case of two wrongs making a very big wrong. We’ll see. The much more interesting angle is what this means for Google’s control over the Android ecosystem at large. I’ll get to that in a minute. First, let’s not kid ourselves. This deal is clearly about patents. If Motorola didn’t have thousands of patents, there is no way this deal happens. Zero. This is a company that money last quarter, despite revenues of over $3 billion. They have over 19,000 employees. This nearly doubles Google’s workforce (Google has about 25,000 employees). This is a company in the midst of several of their own lawsuits — some of which are by Google adversaries Microsoft and Apple. This all sounds like a big, logistical mindfuck for Google. A company, which remember, is trying to simplify and focus their business. It’s the equivalent of me saying I’m going to clean my house today, then going out and buying a fraternity house just as I’m getting started. And keeping both. But those patents. Those glorious, wonderful patents. In to Apple, Microsoft, RIM, and others, Google lost out on 6,000+ patents. With a battle over the InterDigital patents , there was a pretty decent chance they were going to lose another 8,800+ to their rivals. But with the Motorola buy, Google gains at least 17,000 patents. And if some other applications go through, perhaps as many as 25,000 patents. In one fell-swoop. Crazy. It raises Google’s patent pool from around 2,000 — over 1,000 of which are from a deal they just did with IBM — to around 20,000. That’s around what Microsoft has. And nearly double what Apple has. Deterrent obtained, right? Well, not so fast. , Motorola’s patent pool may not go far enough to cancel out some key patents owned by Google’s main rivals. Remember, both Apple and Microsoft were suing Motorola well before this new deal was born. Those cases remain ongoing, but FOSS’ Florian Mueller believes that Apple and more so, Microsoft, have the upper hand in each. He argues that this was more of strategic buy for Google in order to exert more control over the Android ecosystem. It’s a compelling argument, but I’m not sure I buy it. At least not yet. Even more compelling is his thought that Google may have bought Motorola to stop them from settling with Apple and/or Microsoft on the patent issues. Such a settlement would have been a big blow to the entire Android ecosystem. Perhaps not quite as bad as Samsung agreeing to license patents from Microsoft (joining HTC and others), but bad. Would that even be bad enough for Google to spend $12.5 billion? Again, I’m not convinced. But the fact that Motorola was to attack others over IP itself just a few days ago, does suggest something was brewing. They sounded like an animal backed into a corner. (Or, as it turns out, perhaps one just playing some last-minute hardball with a would-be acquirer.) What we do know is that leading up to Google’s deal, Microsoft was also negotiating to buy at least Motorola’s patent portfolio, . Unsurprisingly, Google’s negotiations kicked up shortly after the Nortel loss. Again, patents, patents, patents. If Microsoft had purchased Motorola’s patents, Android would have been at Defcon 2, if not Defcon 1. Google could not let that happen. And they didn’t. But let’s turn to the broader ramifications here. The antitrust cops are going to scrutinize this deal. But already some are it will go through. Obviously, Google is as well. Motorola? Well, the fact that there’s a — which is absolutely insane — that Google will have to pay Motorola if the DoJ breaks up the deal, doesn’t project too much optimism, to say the least. But for the sake of argument, let’s assume the deal is approved and closes at the end of this year or early next year. Google says they will continue to run Motorola as a separate business. Again, given its size, that’s about all they can do. Google also says that this will not change their commitment to Android being “open” and to their other OEM partners. While that will sound like a load of horse shit to some. I actually believe that Google believes that (or at least that many higher-ups at Google believe that). I just don’t believe it will be possible. And I think that eventually, Google will recognize that it won’t be possible. And I think many of their partners are being disingenuous with their positive statements today. Just look at the issues Google has been having keeping their carrier and OEM partners in line when it comes to Android software updates. The issues have gotten so bad that Google had to get on stage at their I/O conference this year and to ensure timely updates. You’ll notice we haven’t heard a thing about that initiative since it was unveiled. “Over the next few weeks, we’ll figure it all out,” Android head Andy Rubin said at the time. It’s been three months. But with Motorola in their back pocket, Google now has another stick to use when the carrots don’t work. And the carrots rarely do in the Android ecosystem, it seems. Is an OEM not releasing updates quickly enough? Okay, screw you, we’ll release a Motorola Droid update right now. Are you telling me Google isn’t going to do that? I mean, are they going to hire some new, un-fireable people at Motorola in charge of ensuring that bullshit bureaucracy remains in place after the deal? What about Nexus negotiations? Andy Rubin humorously seemed to confirm that bidding occurs over who gets to make the next Nexus devices during the Q&A call . Given the other backchannel deals Google strikes while maintaining the nonsense “open” moniker for marketing purposes, this is not surprising at all. What happens if Google isn’t getting the terms they want on a new Nexus device? Will they also hire someone to thwart Motorola’s Google-backed bid? Ridiculous. There are dozens of other potential situations like this. One way or another, the existence of Motorola as a Google company is going to affect Android. Here’s another, more straight-forward scenario for you. What happens when the iPhone 5 launches and everyone wants it? That includes many people currently using Android phones. After a few months of this, Google grows frustrated that none of their OEMs can release a device that matches the build-quality that Apple puts out there. But wait, they now have their own company they can at the very least use to apply to pressure the other OEMs to force them to do better work! Does Google also not play that card? Are you really telling me that they won’t try to get Motorola to make the best products possible? Why the hell wouldn’t they? This is a business, after all. Maybe the iPhone 5 doesn’t trigger that, but maybe the iPhone 6 does. Or maybe the iPad 3 does. Or maybe a Windows Phone does. At some point down the line, Google is going to run into this scenario. And there’s nothing wrong with that. The tight control over both hardware and software is what allows Apple products to be Apple products. And now with webOS, HP appears to be . In the same way that Google used to not care about design, but now is starting to, I suspect they’ll start to care more about full control over their products — both hardware and software. They’ll see that the overall consumer experience is tied to both — they’re not mutually exclusive. And Motorola gives them the opportunity to fully explore this. Why not use it? All of this is why the are disingenuous today. I mean, just look at them. They all say the same thing! And what they say is really nothing at all, beyond the positive statement that Google can now defend Android better. “We welcome today’s news, which demonstrates Google’s deep commitment to defending Android, its partners, and the ecosystem.” “I welcome Google‘s commitment to defending Android and its partners.” “We welcome the news of today‘s acquisition, which demonstrates that Google is deeply committed to defending Android, its partners, and the entire ecosystem.” “We welcome Google‘s commitment to defending Android and its partners.” “We are positive towards Google’s continued commitment and investment in an open Android for the benefit of all players in the eco-system.” I won’t even bother including who said what because it doesn’t matter. They’re all the same statement. “Defending Android”, “defending Android”, “defending Android”, “defending Android”, “defending Android”. Every. Single. Time. In other words, “patent protection”, “patent protection”, “patent protection”, “patent protection”, “patent protection”. These guys aren’t happy Google is buying a competitor, but what are they going to say about it right now? “Fuck you, Google, we’re ditching Android!”? Given their massive commitments already in place, such a move could force any of these companies into the ground. What will be more telling are the actions taken over the next weeks, months, and years by these guys. Do they warm to Windows Phone as a result? Do they turn elsewhere? Do they force Google to spin off the Motorola hardware division? It’s certainly all on the table right now, I’d imagine. Google’s acquisition of Motorola today either just saved Android or subverted it. It was either brilliant, or really, really stupid. Unfortunately, the truth is that we simply won’t know the answer for a while. But credit where credit is due, Google just did something decidedly un-Googley. On paper, as a math equation, you never do this deal. The upside is potentially high, but there’s way too much downside potential. A $12.5 billion deal , with a $2.5 billion collapse clause? Who are you and what did you do with Google? But as I’ve argued for months, . They needed something to shake them out of a state of malaise. With this Motorola deal, they just got something. , but this is business, not personal. And it is a shit-ton of patents. |
Screw The Rich (Here’s How) | Michael Arrington | 2,011 | 8 | 15 | Tax the rich. Those bastards. I get why people who aren’t rich hate those that are. No one really cares what they have, they only care what they have relative to others. When there is inequality, and there always is, even the hyper intelligent call for a redistribution of wealth. It’s an enduring longing for us as a species, and no evidence to the contrary will convince people it just doesn’t work in any large group. What I really didn’t understand until recently though is why so many rich Americans seem to loathe their richness as much as everyone else does. Many in Silicon Valley want to tax the rich into the middle class and let government spend and spend and spend. The super rich tech elite , joining in the call to screw the rich as loudly as all the rest. Then I figured it out. As I wrote then, the super rich won’t mind at all if we “tax the rich” as it’s currently defined. That’s because people who are super rich don’t really pay taxes. They pay taxes on this year’s income, and capital gains on accumulated wealth. But the only “tax” that can ever touch what they’ve already made is inflation. That’s why a man $47 billion dollars can pay just $6,938,744 in federal income taxes and not be accused of a crime. In fact, he can boast about how little he pays, and ask to be charged even more. That man is Warren Buffett. And his article in today’s NY Times, titled “ ” is a huge pile of manipulative garbage. The super rich love to talk about higher taxes on the rich because it’s a competitive barrier protecting them from competition. If the people making a lot of money today have to pay much higher taxes, they probably won’t ever accumulate enough wealth to be “super rich.” Now if you really want to screw the rich, start talking about a wealth tax. It won’t save the economy but it’ll certainly serve to even everything out. Buffett wants a higher tax rate on himself and anyone making $1 million or more per year. If you doubled the tax rate on these people, someone making $1 million a year would lose another $380,000 to the government. Buffett calls for an increase in all types of taxes – income, dividend and capital gains. That would be a nice triple layer of protection against any newcomers, and still preserve all – 100% – of the $47 billion he’s accumulated until now. Buffett is just fine with big new taxes on the rich because those taxes never touch all the under-taxed wealth he’s accumulated over the decades. He talks about how he’s benefited for decades by being under taxed, but is only willing to pay more in the future. That’s like a steroids-ridden baseball player declaring that steroids are bad and from now on no one gets to take them. But paying for past sins? Shhh. I say if Buffett wants higher taxes, Buffett should get higher taxes. Take 50% of his wealth immediately. And everyone else who’s super rich. Hell, take 100% of everyone’s wealth over $1 million. That’ll even the playing field. We’ll do it again in ten years. Some sneaky people will figure out a way to cheat the system and accumulate more wealth than everyone else, but we’ll knock ’em back down to earth again. Think that’s crazy? In the late 90s a one time 14.25% tax on the net worth of individuals and trusts worth $10 million or more. The goal? To pay down the national debt, and shore up Social Security. , they’re just new here in the U.S. So the next time some super rich person stands up and says they must pay more taxes, ask them how serious they are. And then ask them how they’d feel about a wealth tax every year. Rich people are very good at staying rich. And Warren Buffett is the smartest rich person I know. That’s why he’s able to say feel good bullshit about how he should be paying higher taxes when he has absolutely no intention of letting the government anywhere near his real money. As for me, I think the government should be starved of income and be forced to spend money where it’s supposed to – defending the border, establishing a trusted currency, and protecting property rights. Whenever they muck around with the other stuff everyone gets poorer. We need to let people dream of getting disgustingly rich, and then let them go out there and do it. After that, we celebrate them so that more people get the idea of getting rich, too. . And everyone benefits, even the people who don’t end up rich. ps – If you like the image above, . Although really, they’re charging way too much. They’re probably getting filthy rich selling those tshirts, the bastards. |
BART Shuts Down Cell Service To Thwart Rumored Protests, Gets Actual Protests (And Has To Close Stations) | Alexia Tsotsis | 2,011 | 8 | 15 | Since shutting down cell service on Thursday to try to quell rumored protests which never came to fruition, the Bay Area Transit Authority (BART) has had an interesting weekend and Monday. Aside from getting investigated by as to whether it exceeded its authority in shutting off cellphones, the myBART website has by collective Anonymous on Sunday, with Anonymous claiming that the hack was motivated by the fact that BART’s actions were anti-free speech. The breech exposed identifiable contact information of over 2,000 employees and passengers. While the original protests were planned in response to the shootings of Charles Hill and Oscar Grant by transit police, Anonymous also took their anti-BART campaign to real life by organizing more protests against the cell service disruption, at San Francisco’s Civic Center startion at 5pm. This resulted in a sort of dual protest, both for the cell service issue and the deaths. According to the movement was at its height around 100 people, slogans like “No justice, no peace, disband the BART police.” All in all four subway stations, Civic Center, Powell, Embarcadero and Montgomery were shut down and reopened within an hour’s period. Perhaps having learned its lesson the hard way, BART did not interfere with cell service this time, although . Today’s protests and aside from the in this video none of Anonymous’ many mouthpieces have given inkling on what they plan to do next. As with anything these days you can follow the protests on Twitter at and (a reference to former Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak, who unsuccessfully tried to quash protests). |
Obama Checks In: You Can Now Follow Our President On Foursquare | Alexia Tsotsis | 2,011 | 8 | 15 | First Facebook, then Twitter and now Foursquare; Obama sure gets around (social platforms). As announced today on the White House blog, Obama will be checking in to the location-based service as he hits stops on his economic bus tour in the Midwest. Of course. Users who want to follow Barack can check out the White House Foursquare page , where they can now subscribe to White House Tips as well as check in to the White House when they visit as well as Presidential events. And Barack has already left his first “Tip” linking to a blog post about the tour’s first stop at Lower Hannah’s Bend Park in Cannon Falls, Minnesota. Eh, someone should tell him that’s not exactly how they’re used. One wonders how much of this social media outreach is the doing of newly brought on Obama campaign CTO (and former Threadless CTO) Harper Reed who is , and how useful the location-based service will be in getting the word out to supporters. In any case it seems like you need to follow the President through to actually find him — searching for “Barack Obama” on the mobile app got me a guy in Salt Lake City Utah and a Barack Obama in London. While probably the service’s most famous, Barack isn’t the only politician on Foursquare. Mayor Bloomberg into the Marriage Equalitocalypse earlier this summer and Mitt Romney and Cory Booker are also sharing their checkins with fans. *Insert joke about Obama automatically being the mayor of everything he visits here.* Also: It seems like Foursquare has set up the White House Page to automatically follow people back, otherwise Obama would be fielding A LOT of friend requests. I personally can’t wait until he joins . |
Supply Line Troubles To Delay iPad 3 Launch? | Devin Coldewey | 2,011 | 8 | 15 | Analysts and pundits have been predicting an iPad 3 with a for some time now, but if accounts from suppliers in Asia are to be believed, there just is no way that’s going to happen — if the of the high-DPI screen are correct in the first place (and we think they are). A 9.7″ display sporting 2048×1536 pixels, four times more than the current and three times more than the HD displays on many Android tablets, is quite simply at the very limit of LCD panel manufacturing capability. Apple previously had hoped to have at least five or six million units by the end of the year and placed orders to that effect, but that those orders have disappeared. The chatter around the display industry water cooler is that Sharp is the only company capable of making these panels with any kind of real reliability; Samsung and LG apparently can’t reach a good yield. If these companies wanted to throw away money, they could invest despite poor yields, in order to bring the Xbox 360 to market early, but we all know . Samsung has actually an alternative type of high-resolution display, but it’s unlikely Apple would use it even if it were ready for market. These screens would be among the highest performing in the world, yet must be manufactured by the millions for relatively low cost. Apple doesn’t make its own displays (among other things), so it’s at the mercy of OEMs like Sharp. And if Sharp says “if anybody could do it, we could — but we can’t,” then Apple has no choice but to take that hit and delay the product. Meanwhile, the same sources estimate as many as 30 million iPad 2s will be shipped in 2Q11; with no “rare” parts, they can be made as fast as the millions of hands in vast factory towns can put them together. Of course it has to be said that a product that is not announced can’t, strictly speaking, be delayed. And I’m sure Apple was prepared for this eventuality, likely being informed while collaborating with Sharp that yields might just not hit targets in time. So: a revised launch schedule. January, anyone? |
Photovoltaic Cells In LCDs Could Recycle Wasted And Ambient Light | Devin Coldewey | 2,011 | 8 | 15 | Researchers at UCLA have that would allow displays to reclaim wasted photons from the backlight, or even act as a normal solar cell. Normal LCDs rely on an always-on backlight, but because of , most of that light never escapes. This inherent inefficiency hasn’t stopped us from getting bright displays, but the power necessary to make them so is usually what runs down your battery. Enter UCLA materials science professor Yang Yang and his team of engineers. Among the layers of the LCD are two polarizing sheets that block unwanted backlighting depending on their configuration. The team at UCLA has designed a new type of material for these layers called a polarizing organic photovoltaic film. Instead of simply blocking the light, it would act like a photovoltaic cell and reabsorb some of the light’s energy — whether it’s coming from inside or outside the device. Essentially it would recycle the light from the backlight while simultaneously acting as a solar cell. No guarantees are made regarding things like battery life and power draw, since these depend on many other factors, but Intel’s Youssry Botros commented that it could “potentially harvest 75 percent of the wasted photons from LCD backlight and turn them back into electricity.” Make your own calculations. He later uses the word “synergetic,” by which I think he means synergistic, but to be honest his version sounds better. Yang hopes to work with manufacturers to make this mainstream, and says that the method is “simple.” All the same, don’t expect your phone to charge itself using this method any time soon. The research, published in the journal , was conducted with money from Intel and the Office of Naval Research. [via ] |
YC-Funded MarketBrief Makes Obtuse SEC Documents Human-Friendly | Jason Kincaid | 2,011 | 8 | 15 | If you’ve ever tried to trudge through an SEC filing (or most financial filings, for that matter), you know that it can be a tedious and sometimes confusing process hampered by excessive legalize and unnecessarily small font sizes. Now , a Y Combinator-backed company that’s relaunching today, has a solution: it looks through these SEC filings for you, then culls the key data to automatically generate a plain-English (well, almost plain) version that sounds more like a newspaper article than a legal document. You may already be familiar with the startup if you deal with a lot of SEC documents — the company originally launched as SECWatch back in 2009, when it served a fairly simple function: it would monitor public SEC filings for new updates, and would make those documents easy to access. This new version goes much deeper. It still lets you quickly find any recently-added SEC documents, but instead of simply presenting you with that document in its original form, MarketBrief will automatically generate a more easily-digestible article based on the important data. The reports are generated in a matter of seconds after they’re uploaded to the SEC, though MarketBrief sometimes has a human look them over to ensure accuracy (presumably the need for this will decrease over time). MarketBrief lets users access 10 articles for free, then charges $9 per month. And this isn’t just a service for amateurs either — cofounders Jason Zucchetto, Chris Auer, and Michael Shafrir point out that some have to deal with the same headaches. For now the company supports auto-generating articles for around half of the SEC’s 500 or so filing types, and it’s continuing to ramp up to support the rest. Beyond those, the company hopes to eventually branch out into other filings, like those from the FCC, FDA, and other government agencies. In the longer term, the company also plans to work out a deal with the AP to supply additional content, so that it can eventually compete more directly with sites like the WSJ and CNNMoney. Because the site has been around for a while in a more basic form, it’s already drawing some traffic — it had over 110,000 visitors in August with 20% growth month over month. And it has some strong SEO juice, with auto-generated articles sometimes ranking highly in Google search results for their relevant companies (MarketBrief says that they’ve had a couple companies actually complain about public documents that they didn’t want so easily accessed; they didn’t take them down). |
WhaleShark Media Buys UK’s Top Coupon Site, VoucherCodes | Michael Arrington | 2,011 | 8 | 15 | , which just announced an by Google Ventures, continues to acquire coupon sites around the world. Tomorrow they’ll announce the aquisition of eConversions, Ltd., operator of the web sites in the UK and in Germany. Vouchercodes is the UK’s largest coupon site, says Whaleshark. The size of the acquisition isn’t being disclosed, although we’ve heard it’s around $40 million in cash and stock. VoucherCodes is currently generating around $15 million in revenue, we’ve also heard from sources, although the company wouldn’t confirm that either. Whaleshark has previously six coupon sites, including deals2buy, coupon7, couponshare, cheapstingybargains.com, deals.com and retailmenot. We estimated the company’s revenue prior to this most recent acquisition at around $50 million/year. Whaleshark CEO says they were particularly attracted to eConversions’ email marketing prowess. The company has more than four million subscribers to its weekly email newsletter, and Cunningham wants to use that expertise to leverage its U.S. brands. eConversions was founded by brothers Duncan and Max Jennings in 2004 and had raised no outside funding. |
Michael Arrington’s New Executive Assistant Did It All For The Labradors | Elin Blesener | 2,011 | 8 | 15 | Michael Arrington decided to of what his new Executive Assistant, , can actually do by asking the TechCrunch readers to suggest tasks he should complete for one day. Using , Greg was sent on a day long adventure fulfilling tasks (risking his life and dignity?) offered up by the community and doing it . Luckily, it is all captured in the video below. Viewer discretion is advised. Zaarly #1: Greg almost got stung by hundreds of bees on the top of a roof in SOMA. Zaarly #2: Greg taught a whole company how to Dougie, during a meeting they were having. Zaarly #3: Greg delivered a singing telegram to someone’s boyfriend, singing Britney Spears to him and the Backstreet Boys. Zaarly #4: Greg almost just got arrested for jumping in a fountain outside of a corporate office. Zaarly #5: Greg walked 5 dogs through Lafayette Park. Zaarly #6: Greg professed his love to Mike in the middle of Union Square by singing him a song. |
Digital Chocolate Scoops Up Game Publisher Sandlot Games | Alexia Tsotsis | 2,011 | 8 | 15 | Social gaming contender has just the acquisition of . The Washington-based games publisher is responsible for titles such as and and claims over 300 million downloads of its games since it was founded in 2002. Perhaps best know for its , Digital Chocolate is a publisher of social games for mobile, the Web, Facebook and Xbox LIVE. It claims to have over 100 million game installs across all platforms of its over 100 games. Its flagship brands, , and are obviously more well-known than those of Sandlot According to the press release, the acquisition was a result of Digital Chocolate’s desire to increase its development team. “We can now expand further in Seattle and Eastern Europe,” writes Digital Chocolate CEO Trip Hawkins “We expect to be the leading game company in at least 5 of the 7 cities where we now have development studios.” Post-acquisition, Digital Chocolate now has homebases in Bothell, Washington and St. Petersburg, Russia in addition to San Mateo, Helsinki, Barcelona, Bangalore, and Mexico. |
Twitter Opens Photo Service To Third-Parties — API Hints At Other Media Down The Line | MG Siegler | 2,011 | 8 | 15 | It’s been two and a half months since Twitter first their own photo sharing service, in partnership with Photobucket. Just last week, they finished . Today, they’re taking the next step: opening it up to third-party developers. As they’ve just on the Twitter Developers blog, there’s a new Photo Upload API that’s ready for developers outside the company to play around with. While plenty of third-party Twitter services have had photo uploads for a while, they often use their own method for doing it, or use a bigger player like TwitPic or yFrog. With the new API, they’ll be able to upload, store, and servce the images on Twitter’s servers in conjunction with Photobucket. Notes Twitter: If you’ve used OAuth Echo for image uploads, you’ll find that the new method available at POST statuses/update_with_media is simpler and requires fewer dependencies. One of the first things you’ll notice about this method is the host name: status updates with media can only be executed on upload.twitter.com rather than api.twitter.com. Using this alternative host name for the upload path ensures high availability and flexibility. Beyond the “high availability” good news, you’ll note that “update_with_media” aspect. It would seem that Twitter is leaving the door open to media beyond photos, perhaps video, for example. Twitter says they have nothing to announce in that regard at this time. Again, they’re undoubtedly just leaving it open-ended for the future. In order to use the service, Twitter asks that developers follow their display guidelines, which are pretty straightforward. One thing to note, they ask you use pic.twitter.com/SLUG instead of t.co/SLUG, seemingly to let users know it’s a picture coming their way on click. Also, sadly, animated GIFs are not supported. Actually, thank god. Twitter also notes that the photos services will “soon” be incorporated into the Twitter mobile clients as well. But there’s “ ” yet. Methinks it will be ready sometime before iOS 5 is launched this fall, . |
Steve Jobs Biography To “Launch” In November | John Biggs | 2,011 | 8 | 15 | A bit of non- news comes in the form of a change in the for the Steve Jobs biography ( ). Originally slated for March 2012, the book will be available on November 21, 2011, just in time for Thanksgiving. Written by Walter Isaacson, the book features interviews with Senor Jobs as well as a full reckoning of his personal life. Don’t expect any bombshells. This should be a calm, candid look at a man who single-handedly killed the PC. Based on more than forty interviews with Jobs conducted over two years as well as interviews with more than a hundred family members, friends, adversaries, competitors, and colleagues this book chronicles the rollercoaster life and searingly intense personality of a creative entrepreneur whose passion for perfection and ferocious drive revolutionized six industries: personal computers, animated movies, music, phones, tablet computing, and digital publishing. It is also a book about innovation. At a time when America is seeking ways to sustain its innovative edge, and when societies around the world are trying to build digital-age economies, Jobs stands as the ultimate icon of inventiveness and applied imagination. He knew that the best way to create value in the 21st century was to connect creativity with technology, so he built a company where leaps of the imagination were combined with remarkable feats of engineering. Although Jobs cooperated with this book, he asked for no control over what was written nor even the right to read it before it was published. He put nothing off limits and instead encouraged the people he knew to speak honestly even foes, former girlfriends, and colleagues he had once fired or infuriated. “I’ve done a lot of things I’m not proud of, such as getting my girlfriend pregnant when I was 23 and the way I handled that,” he said. “But I don’t have any skeletons in my closet that can’t be allowed out.” Jobs speaks candidly, sometimes brutally so, about the people he worked with and competed against. Likewise, his friends, foes, and colleagues provide an unvarnished view of the passions, perfectionism, obsessions, artistry, devilry, and compulsion for control that shaped his approach to business and the innovative products that resulted. He was not a model boss or human being, tidily packaged for emulation. Driven by demons, he could drive those around him to fury and despair. But his personality and products were interrelated, just as Apple’s hardware and software tended to be, as if part of an integrated system. His tale is thus both instructive and cautionary, filled with lessons about innovation, character, leadership, and values.
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PrimeSense Positioning Itself For Integration With Next-Gen TVs | Devin Coldewey | 2,011 | 8 | 15 | The great smartening of the idiot box continues. It was several years ago that we started seeing the first internet-connected TVs, and since then TV makers have been adding more and more slightly useful features, generally one or two per generation — it wouldn’t do to put them all out at once, of course. And while much functionality is still left to the set-top box, media player, or console, it seems inevitable that these increasingly capable display devices will integrate things we consider cutting-edge today. Take gesture controls, for instance. Microsoft’s hit gaming peripheral, the , has made people aware of the possibilities of motion tracking and depth-sensing cameras, though it’s often hacks that . , who contributed much to the development of Kinect, is hoping to combine this next-gen interface with next-gen display hardware. , PrimeSense’s Amir Hoffnung described plans to supplant traditional controls, and demonstrated the flexibility of the company’s by coding a basic game in under half an hour. He hopes that the open framework will help bring new and intuitive controls to increasingly powerful TVs: “The key products in your living room are evolving. Living rooms now have connected TVs and smart TVs that can run a range of applications beyond TV shows. But all these smart TVs will need a new remote control device, because all these smart TVs need richer and deeper levels of input.” They face stiff competition: Microsoft after much unofficial hackery made it clear they had a potential development gold mine in hand. And Although PrimeSense has worked with Asus to produce , it’s much more expensive and not quite up to snuff. That they’re not Microsoft gives them an advantage, though. OpenNI is open-source, and while of course that doesn’t mean it’s a free for all, it’s more likely that a company like Samsung or LG, for instance, will try playing with it. Microsoft is likely already exploring ways to expand Kinect on its own: no less than talked up the applications in desktop computing. Hoffnung also mentions being brought to TVs. While many are still skeptical of the service, its potential and the technical accomplishments associated are difficult to deny. If you were to combine OnLive tech with some basic casual gaming, controlled by a gesture-sensing webcam, it could simply explode. Play a little match-three or farm sim during commercials, or while waiting for your rented movie to cache? You better believe there are a tens of millions of couch potatoes who would jump at the opportunity. Well, perhaps not jump, but they would at least wave their hands around, and that’s all it takes. This is all fairly distant speculation, though, and it depends very much on what TV makers bring to their devices. HD webcams for video chat integration, and a little more horsepower behind the screen (you need a good amount of cache and a bit of specialized hardware to do hardcore streaming and gesture tech), and PrimeSense’s dream could become an everyday experience. |
Namaste poised to launch user-gen gaming platform, bags Anil Hansjee as advisor | Mike Butcher | 2,011 | 8 | 15 | , a games startup which is poised for launch, is building a platform called StoryBricks to enable casual users to create their own games and share them on social networks. The twist is that it’s not for professional game designers but users who want to create their own games. The company is understood to be be in discussions with several top VCs. Why is Namaste in a sweet spot? Companies like Zynga still need hit games to survive. Their customer churn is very high – a customer used to last four months in a Zynga game and now it’s just 2 months. That means they lose about 100m users in a month. Anything that produces more games is a good thing. With a social storytelling platform, says Namaste’s Rodolfo Rosini, users can become part of the development team. The company is already Angel-backed and last week started fundraising via . In fact, there is a lot of buzz out there, as a Google search of “ ” shows. Namaste has also now bagged a big name in the world of venture and startups. Anil Hansjee, for Google Europe, has joined the company as advisor. The move makes sense as Hansjee was once involved in the funding of one of the most visionary game studios in the UK, Lionhead, and their flagship franchise Fable, headed by games guru Peter Molyneux (later acquired by Microsoft). Hansjee, long time Head of Corporate Development at Google EMEA, is known to be raising a new kind of fund to back early stage startups in Europe, along the 500 Startups model. We confirmed the move with Hansjee who told us, “Yes I have joined as an advisor and it’s public as long as they don’t think this is a substitute for me raising my fund…” |
This Fake Apple Store Is More Stylish Than Most Real Ones | Matt Burns | 2,011 | 8 | 15 | China is infected with fake Apple Stores. Some have been shut down where some have . This gorgeous rip-off is located in Zhongshan China and, , it’s probably the best looking one yet complete with a massive glowing Apple logo and wall of glass windows spanning the two-story outlet. This retailer seems to fall under the second category and doesn’t go by Apple Store per ce. You see, this is a Sinzd Apple Shop and its employees wear blue t-shirts with that logo and name. Still, from the monolithic white tables to the stark-white color scheme to the large product banners, this story is designed to look and feel like the real McCoy. Need more proof? Click through for the video.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UFgLUueeaYQ&feature=player_embedded |
null | Sarah Perez | 2,011 | 8 | 23 | null |
peerTransfer Raises $7.5 Million From Spark, Accel, And Maveron For Simple Payment Solution For Students | Rip Empson | 2,011 | 8 | 15 | , a simple payment solution designed for international students, today announced that it has closed a $7.5 million series A financing round. The investment was led by , with participation from , , and . The new infusion of capital adds to the $1.1 million in seed funding the startup raised back in October of last year, bringing total investment to just north of $8.6 million. The startup plans to use its recent round to increase hiring and development of its infrastructure, as it continues to partner with colleges and universities across the country to simplify international education payments. Founded in 2009, peerTransfer targets international students in attempt to provide them with a simple and secure payment method to quickly and securely make tuition (and other education-related) payments. The startup aims to save international students money by eliminating high transfer fees and by offering discounted exchange rates. The value proposition for educational institutions, on the other hand, is that peerTransfer’s solution captures student ID info at the time of payment so that schools know that the full payment has been received and contains the necessary info to post immediately to student accounts. The startup is currently working with 30 institutions, including Auburn University, Georgia State University, Miami University, Reed College, Wellesley College and Western Kentucky University in an effort to streamline international payment processing, while giving students some peace of mind and an opportunity to save thousands of dollars over the course of their education. The best part is that peerTransfer is free of charge for educational institutions and requires no engineering or coding knowledge to implement the solution for institutions. As international students in the U.S. lose more than $1 billion per year from bad currency exchange rates and banking fees, according to peerTransfer Founder and CEO Iker Marcaide, the startup is looking to bundle transactions to secure higher-volume purchases and to take advantage of more favorable exchange rates. The startup’s workaround involves eliminating intermediary transaction fees in order to save students money and, at the same time, works to reduce administrative overhead by ensuring accurate delivery and posting of funds to student accounts. It’s an innovative, if not slightly risky business model: In that the company doesn’t charge students or schools any money for its service, and instead shares in the savings generated by students thanks to its ability to take advantage of more favorable currency exchange rates. Music to the ears of international students to be sure. For more on peerTransfer, visit them at home . Or check out the video below: [youtube=http://youtu.be/L6XWkAFhMlA] |
HackFwd – The slow-burn European accelerator is speeding up | Mike Butcher | 2,011 | 8 | 15 | Back in June last year Lars Hinrichs, the founder of LinkedIn competitor XING who created a new startup investment vehicle dubbed . At the time it was announced that HackFwd would tale a 27% stake of a company (US-based YCombinator takes around 6%) and a run a year-long programme for selected startups. Funding amounts to up to €191,000 (depending on the size of the team) for the year. Founders keep 70% equity, with 3% going to (this is compulsory) and 27% to HackFwd. However, that said, they then take care of “legal and admin stuff… so you can focus on your product.” It was a very unusual move – usually accelerators are around 3 months long. Since then we’ve not heard much. But recently I was the first journalist to be invited to a HackFwd “Build” event. Four times a year, the teams they have invested in meet usually somewhere sunny like Mallorca, and go over their progress to date. The startups I met were generally highly technical in nature – all consumer plays, but very, very technically oriented. This makes a refreshing change from some accelerators, where startups can often seem less than technical. After all, this is the Internet. Where HackFwd goes now, will be two fold. They are organising – a competition aimed at Your people across Europe. Plus, they will run an open pitch event in Berlin during their next “Build” event. I caught up with Lars a the Mallorca Build event to really find out what makes HackFwd tick. |
Androids Are For Cheap Pessimists, iPhones Are For Worldly Optimists | Erick Schonfeld | 2,011 | 8 | 15 | Ever wonder what’s the real difference between Android and iPhone users? According to , Android users are 10 percent more likely to be men, skew younger, and 20 percent more likely to be politically conservative. As you can see from the infographic below, they have good incomes, but iPhone users tend to have higher household incomes. Android users are also “slightly more likely to be pessimists,” introverts, and are 29 percent more likely to want to save their money. iPhone owners are more likely to be optimists, extroverts, and are self-admittedly “high-maintenance.” They are 26 percent more likely to enjoy spending money on shiny objects. They also are 27 percent more likely to consider themselves leaders than followers and are 50 percent more likely to be early adopters. In contrast, Android users are 31 percent more likely to be later adopters and “57 percent more likely to prefer an ugly device that’s full-featured.” There is also a much higher chance Android users own PCs than Macs. Just sayin’. How does Hunch know all of these correlations? The data is based on 15,818 Hunch users who have answered the question, “What type pf operating system does your cellphone use?” The breakdown among Hunch users is 32 percent Apple and 21 percent Android, which is the flip of more mainstream market stats such as Nielsen’s which puts Android smartphone market share at in the U.S, and iPhone at 28 percent, but the sample size should be big enough to draw some conclusions about Android and iPhone users. (Or at least the ones who answer questions on Hunch). What else does the Hunch data purport to know about Android and iPhone users based on how the same people answered 80 million other questions? Well, Android owners are 12 percent more likely to have pets and 71 percent more likely never to have travelled outside their native countries. Does that make them homebodies? The chances are much greater that iPhone users have traveled abroad and used some frequent flyer miles in the past year. Their breakfast cereal of choice is more likely to be Crispix or Kashi GOLEAN Crunch than Corn Pops. And they are more into sushi than steak. Remember, these characterizations are based on probabilities and won’t be true for every iPhone or Android user. I, for instance, would much rather eat steak than sushi and guess what kind of phone I use most regularly. As we all know, if it’s in an infographic it must be true. |
TechCrunch Europe takes a break for a couple of weeks | Mike Butcher | 2,011 | 8 | 15 | From today we’ll be taking a vacation break for the next two weeks. Posting will be ‘light’. If urgent please send to colleague or tips@techrunch.com. Normal service will be resumed around August 30. Thanks to all our readers and partners so far this year. |
RIM’s BlackBerry Management Center is Free BES-Lite | Chris Velazco | 2,011 | 8 | 15 | BlackBerry’s Enterprise Server has long been a mainstay of the corporate world, but , many small businesses haven’t been able to justify the cost. Enter the , a cloud service meant for exactly those small businesses who want some of the power of BES without the corresponding price tag. Released today, BMC is meant for small businesses with between 3 and 100 BlackBerry-toting employees itching for a good (and free!) way to manage all those devices. It only supports email service hosted by ISPs and the usual complement of webmail services (think Gmail, Yahoo!, and the like) out of the gate, so those firms that shelled out the dough for an Exchange server need not apply. BlackBerry’s “BES-lite” management service gives beleaguered IT staff a full set of BlackBerry superpowers, from the mundane (reset a password, restoring settings and data to different devices) to the mission-critical (remotely locking/wiping devices, scheduling wireless backups). All this can be handled by way of a simple interface that RIM assures us “requires little or no technical skills to use,” which would lower the bar for effective device management and presumably make a small business’s single IT guy less likely to yank their hair out. As a free service, BlackBerry Management Center is likely to pick up a lot of traction among the small businesses RIM is targeting. It’s a win-win, with SMBs getting a a full-featured new tool to add to the IT arsenal, and RIM getting in on the ground floor with businesses that may well grow to the size that they’re used to accommodating. |
Just In Time For The New NFL Season, Taptu Brings Fantasy Football To Mobile Readers | Rip Empson | 2,011 | 8 | 12 | From its founding in 2007, was a startup that specialized in search and touch-based interfaces for mobile, launching a realtime mobile search engine in conjunction with OneRiot back in 2009, for example. In November of last year, however, the startup made the smart decision to bring its mobile search proficiency into the news reader market, Flipboard-like Android and iPhone apps that brought an interesting value proposition to bear on the burgeoning mobile reader market: Users could aggregate more than 5,000 mixed streams — no paltry number, and far more than that offered by the competition. In April, on the iPad with a sleek and clean design that, again, worked to differentiate itself from competitors like Flipboard, Pulse, Flud (and perhaps Editions) by bringing its proprietary mobile search tech to bear on the aggregation of thousands of news sources, rather than relying on those tired RSS feeds. As some readers may know, the National Football League had been in the grips of a contentious lockout that put the 2011 season in jeopardy. The owners and players were , ending the lockout on July 25th, and allowing the pigskin show to go on. Seeing as football is back on, not wanting to miss out on a golden opportunity to expand their feature set, Taptu is today entering into a new athletic domain with the launch of a NFL fantasy football news stream for Taptu users on both smartphones and tablets. The new stream enables fans to receive updates on every critical stat and news item in realtime, allowing fantasy footballers to field a competitive team each and every week. , the sports world has largely been underrepresented on tablets and news readers, because ESPN (the behemoth of sports content) has basically been absent from the space — at least in terms of partnering with other developers or startups to syndicate their content. But last week, Pulse dropped a bomb on the news reader tablet market by announcing that it was the first player in the space to receive an infusion of ESPN content, along with existing content from Bleacher Report, Yahoo Sports, and so on. While this was a big win for Pulse, there is still an even more coveted, niche demographic that remains underrepresented on tablets, which would be none other than fantasy sports. Fantasy sports are currently ; it’s becoming an increasingly popular pastime (and money maker). And for those who are involved, or have friends who play, fantasy sports are by and large a rabid group. Though it depends on the sport, in order to field the best team each week, fantasy sports players have to consume a lot of information about who’s playing well, including what players are injured, or under-performing, etc. Fantasy sports enthusiasts consume a lot of news and statistics, they do their homework, like analysts, or enterprising journalists — obviously a great customer to have if you’re a mobile startup. Over the next 30 days, loads of football fans will be building out their teams on their desktops and mobile devices in preparation for the start of the season. And now, thanks to Taptu, those fans no longer have to visit multiple websites to get the lowdown on a trade or injury. Plus, Taptu’s fantasy feature lets users mix and match from football’s big publications and blogs into one stream, making the information easy to read and glance over. And, in a nose-thumbing at Pulse, Taptu will feature breaking news from ESPN, SB Nation, Fox and CBS Sports, among others. To find the app’s fantasy football stream, users simply go to the “Stream Store” and look for the fantasy football icon, click “+”, and the stream will be added to a user’s news collection. As before, Taptu is available for free on iOS ( ) as well as Android phones and tablets ( ). |
BART’s Interference In Subway Protests, A Step In The Wrong Direction For Digital Freedoms | Rip Empson | 2,011 | 8 | 12 | As many may be aware by now, , also known fondly as BART and San Francisco’s version of a municipal subway system, has been on the receiving end of quite a bit of criticism over the last 24 hours. The criticism stems from BART temporarily interfering with cell service in four of its stations in order to stifle potentially violent protests that centered around an earlier shooting by a BART police officer. The incident, which occurred on July 3rd, involved 45-year-old Charles Blair Hill, who was shot and killed by a BART officer after the (apparently homeless) man pulled a knife and rushed the officer and his partner, . Organizers and activists had organized a protest in select BART stations to speak out against what they deemed to be another rash and unjustified response by authority to violence in its transportation systems. Unfortunately, this is something that BART has been through before, with the much-publicized . After a fight in a BART station, officers attempted to detain Grant, whereupon one officer drew his gun and shot Grant in the back. The whole incident was captured on cellphone cameras, was then later , reaired on national news, and was viewed hundreds of thousands of times. , many people took to Twitter and other forms of social media to receive updated information on the incident and ensuing trial, in which the officer was convicted of involuntary manslaughter. Many disagreed with the verdict, however, and the many protests and violence that followed this case was no doubt prompted by the mass availability of information (including the sensitive footage of the actual killing) on the Web and social media. For good or ill. That is not to say that BART had reason to censor cell phone activity in this most recent situation, but there’s no doubt they were fully aware of the precedent, and it wouldn’t be ridiculous to assume that this (and other situations liked it) may have influenced their reaction. Now, as to the legality of BART’s cell communications jamming, as has been reported , BART did not necessarily employ blocking methods that are explicitly outlawed by the FCC and, instead, according to a statement issued by the transit authority, simply “asked wireless providers to temporarily interrupt service at select BART stations as one of many tactics to ensure the safety of everyone on the platform.” Which is not necessarily out of line. However, as and , it is still difficult to avoid comparisons to Egypt’s dictator , who ordered Egyptian carriers to essentially turn of the Internet to prevent citizens from organizing. Naturally, Twitter has already created its own hashtag for the BART kerfuffle: #MuBARTek. Although the comparison may be a little dramatic, it’s certainly understandable. Even if one takes the stance that BART was acting under the law, and acknowledges that BART will probably regret its actions (if it doesn’t already), the United States of Mubarak for the Egyptian government’s interference in digital communication and, while this certainly isn’t an incident of nearly the same scale, it does make the U.S. look hypocritical, as the U.S. government pushes for macro web freedom and freedoms in all forms of digital communication. If we are to supposedly hold ourselves to high (or higher) standards, then this kind of action is really not acceptable. As , though many have been up in arms over BARTgate being a prime example of a glaring first amendment violation, in the big picture, it’s hard to argue the case. There’s a lot of wiggle room in the courts for scenarios in which a government agency suppresses free speech not because of its content, but in content-neutral terms to protect citizens from violence or danger. Higher courts will often rule against it being some kind of sweeping violation of first amendment rights. As Ammori points out, BART officials believed that protests in its stations “could lead to platform overcrowding and unsafe conditions for BART customers, employees and demonstrators”, which do indeed “sound like content-neutral reasons”. Of course, as Ammori goes on to say, BART did indeed turn off “the phone network at a specific time that it expected a protest, and a protest directed at transit police”. And the transit authority’s reasons for doing so were certainly due to the fact that they expected that the protests could potentially turn violent. Thus, “if BART was trying to suppress speech because of its content or to stop violence”, he says, “it likely can’t meet the constitutional test and has violated the First Amendment”. Whether or not BART is guilty of violating first amendment rights, and is eventually taken to court, many experts are calling for , and there likely will be. And as scrutiny, investigation, and analysis of these types of incidents are slow-moving, especially when they involve a government agency, many hackers have of course already begun , and Anonymous has already released a digital , as first . Whatever the case, many of us can likely agree that this is a step in the wrong direction for freedom of speech in the U.S., especially as it relates to freedom of communication by digital means and cannot allow the silencing or interference of government agencies in protests or demonstrations. How, if not for potentially violent demonstrations, would this country have accomplished any sort of civil, philosophical, or governmental progress forward? Undermining the authority of Internet or cellular discourse, no matter how small the incident, sets the wrong precedent and sends mixed signals to other countries and burgeoning digital communities around the world. It’s just not good policy, and it makes us look stupid. |
Mozilla Brings The Sign In Button To The Browser Level | MG Siegler | 2,011 | 8 | 12 | If you’re on a website that uses accounts, the sign in button can be anywhere. Sure, there are some common best practices, but I can think of dozens of sites that put them all over the place. Mozilla is looking to fix that, by bringing the sign in to the browser level. A new experimental extension that Mozilla has released for Firefox does exactly this. When it’s installed, you’ll see a new “Sign In” button just to the left of the URL box. Clicking this, pops open a window that prompts you for a username and password for the site you’re on. It then shows you when you’re signed into a site, and gives you one-click ability to sign out. Easy. Simple. Nice. Of course, the site you’re on has to support this functionality. But Mozilla has made it easy to do so, as they outline on the subject. And the best part is that this can be used with any type of log in — it can be a broad one like OpenID, or specific ones like a blog or even Facebook, Twitter, etc — again, if those sites were to implement something like this. One important note: It’s worth noting that this feature doesn’t communicate with any server-side components, and doesn’t capture, store or transfer any personal information. The button is semantically the same as clicking “sign in” on a page: it just tells the page you want to sign in (or sign out) right now. Essentially, Mozilla is just creating a common place for the sign in button to reside within the browser chrome itself. Though they also note that it will support cookies if the site turns that functionality on as well. While this is open for any site/service to use, it is also an extension of another Mozilla project: BrowserID. As they here last month, their idea for this new web identification system is similar to something like OpenID, which has never quite caught on (Mozilla also it’s more secure and seamless). Mozilla is trying to re-think identification on the web from a high level. Beyond BrowserID (which is an open technology anyway), Mozilla doesn’t have any real skin in this game. But some of their competitors could. For example, Google is in the process of . This already works with Sync, but Google is working on profiles for Chrome as well. Being signed in on the browser level also allows you to be signed in to Google sites, which is key for something like Chrome OS. Meanwhile, Facebook has been on a Facebook signed-in experience for that browser (which, coincidentally is also based on Chromium). And on a broader level, both Google and Facebook have been thinking about this always-signed-in experience quite a bit. This is especially important in mobile, where it can be more annoying to type in usernames and passwords over and over again. This, along with the focus on being a central identity for the web has led to projects like Facebook’s . So while Mozilla may have mostly noble intentions here, more along these lines from their competitors that aren’t quite as noble. That’s not to say they’re meant to be evil, just done for more selfish reasons. Google already has their browser. I’d bet that Facebook will have one sooner or later. This could help Mozilla, as they could end up as the truly open alternative. [youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UHWXoFD81Gs&w=640&h=449] |
Virgin America Chrome App Helps You Choose Where To Go, What To Pack | Alexia Tsotsis | 2,011 | 8 | 12 | Developed alongside with the partnership, the app is now available in the Chrome app store as promised back in June. While other airlines also have branded Chrome apps and extensions (like the HOT STUFF I KNOW), Virgin has at least tried to be interesting with Traveler. To provide content for the app it’s partnered up with , offering its curated granular travel recommendations for Los Angeles, New York, San Francisco and Chicago and well as packing tips for all destinations. To use the app users input can in their gender and the where, when and kind of trip in order to get suggestions for what to pack and where to go, presented in a visual list form. Users can also select their specific traveling preferences to build Trip Inspiration boards based on criteria like Trip Vibe and Must Do activities. Users can pick from a selection of images or add their own images from Picasa to their boards. The app then recommends destinations that correspond to the “mood” of your Inspiration Board (so far it’s only recommending New York, SFO and Los Angeles for me, maybe it’s broken or maybe I’m just hyper urban). And, because why waste a lead gen opportunity, it directs you towards buying Virgin tickets to these destinations. Of course. And if anything this is one slick piece of airline marketing. Which is what Virgin is all about I guess. You can download the app |
Skimming Jonathan’s Card For Fun And Philanthrophy | Devin Coldewey | 2,011 | 8 | 12 | If you’ve been reading the internet regularly this week, you’re probably familiar with , a “social payment experiment” amounting to a public Starbucks gift card. You might have bought a coffee with it. You might have contributed to it. You might have suspected it of being a Starbucks viral ( ). What you probably haven’t done is set up a script to skim money off the card in order to use it for your own nefarious purposes. And by “nefarious purposes,” I mean feeding starving children in Africa. Here comes the ethics! , who last year and is currently working on launching , whatever that is, has detailed a hack he put together that rather subverts the Jonathan’s card philosophy. Uninspired by the admittedly uninspiring premise of “yuppies buying yuppies coffees,” he set up a that checks the card’s balance and alerts him whenever it hits a given amount. He then transfers the money to his own card. At first I thought this was just an unbelievable jack move by Odio. Odious, if you will. But I too am less than amused with the results of the card (bloggers and entrepreneurs buying bad coffee) than with the idea, which is of course compelling. And of course we run a conference (now coming to Beijing!) called , and a Hackathon where this exact behavior is encouraged. It’s just not always quite so — impertinent. But is impertinence reason to condemn? It’s a social media , after all. Pass a plate around with a dollar on it and you might get the plate back with a hundred — or some else might save you the trouble of counting your money. The idea of a public, unsecured money-transfer device usable all over the country is its own end, and this subversion of the model is just part of the process. Now that I’ve had time to think about it, I think Odio’s response (turn it on its head) is exactly correct, and I’m glad to see the money going to a good cause ( ). Furthermore, the original experiment is ongoing — it wouldn’t be much of an experiment if it didn’t survive its results. But how will the people who donated feel? Likely cheated — but that’s not really rational, is it? They put their money on the plate. They didn’t buy the plate. Will they continue to donate? Will people clone the script and race to the bottom, transferring pennies to their own balances? I’d say this experiment just got a lot more interesting. : Oops, Starbucks almost the moment I posted this. So this experiment just got a lot more over. Well, it have been interesting. |
Spotify's iPhone usage jumps | Mike Butcher | 2,011 | 8 | 12 | No-one really knows what Spotify’s US growth has been a month ago month, but it appears to be making an impact on American iPhone users. , a service which shrinks your data use on the iPhone, can track what data people are using, and has thus produced some . Spotify’s app is very aware of its data usage allowing plenty of control such as the ability to disable the sync of playlists over 3G and offline listening, among other options. Spotify is said to have 1.4 million Americans using it, although it’s been available in a handful of European countries since 2008. Despite this, Onavo also says Spotify’s iPhone app has reached 4% penetration in July – surpassing France, The Netherlands and UK, which are veteran Spotify countries. Onavo says: “Sweden still leads the free music streaming service’s usage, as one in five iPhone users in Sweden is a Spotify listener, followed closely by Norway (16%) and Spain (6%). Americans are no strangers to cloud-based streaming music services, such as Rhapsody and Rdio, but by analyzing mobile data usage for July, it seems US music lovers definitely missed Spotify and were envious of their friends across the pond.” |
Video: Lockheed’s “Samarai” Drone Spins Like A Maple Seed | Devin Coldewey | 2,011 | 8 | 12 | Anyone who lives near a deciduous forest knows the joy of the maple seed, or as we called them when we were kids, helicopters. Their single wing spins the seed, slowing its descent — so why shouldn’t a similarly-designed wing be able to spin faster and actually fly upwards? Lockheed Martin has , not quite a but still simple and light, that does just this. Looking at it, you’d never think the Samarai would fly. But fly it does, and remarkably well at that. Apparently getting it into the air wasn’t the hard part; after all, if you move a wing fast enough, it’ll lift, right? On the other hand, learning to control this single-wing design isn’t exactly intuitive. Traditional aviation ideas don’t apply when your entire craft is spinning. Check out the video: [youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HAXEgfv5fNA&w=640&h=390] The design was developed in Lockheed’s Intelligent Robotics Laboratories in New Jersey, and the idea is to make a UAV platform that could be easily carried by soldiers and deployed just by throwing it. The video shows the Samarai doing vertical take-off and landing as well, so it sounds like throwing isn’t even necessary. The payloads and sizes are flexible, since apparently the design is easy to scale by using 3D printing methods. This isn’t the first maple-seed project: students at the University of Maryland demonstrated a small version, and Lockheed themselves were looking to it as a potential nano air vehicle platform. I guess it took them longer than they expected. [via ] |
Minority Report – Predicting a riot is impossible on social media | Mike Butcher | 2,011 | 8 | 12 | In the wake of the UK-wide riots and the growing evidence that mobile applications like the BlackBerry Messaging system had helped rioters organise and , the UK government is considering a review of social media. Specifically, Home Secretary Theresa May plans to sit down with Twitter, Facebook and RIM, to discuss the issues. That’ll be an interesting chat. She hasn’t minced her words: “Social networking sites like Facebook and Twitter and messaging services like Blackberry Messenger have been used to coordinate criminality, and stay one step ahead of the police… I will convene a meeting with ACPO, the police and representatives from the social media industries to work out how we can improve the technological and related legal capability of the police.” : “Among the issues we will discuss is whether we should disrupt messaging services when trouble is being planned.” Her statements followed Primeminister David Cameron, who yesterday that “instant messaging services” (as he put it) will be reviewed. “We are working with the Police, the intelligence services and industry to look at whether it would be right to stop people communicating via these websites and services when we know they are plotting violence, disorder and criminality,” he said. Now, to my mind there is a lot of confusion going on here. Private services like BBM are being confused with public services like Twitter – the latter of which helped the post-riots clean up enormously, and the chatter on which often prevented people from wandering into dangerous zones. It’s even get his small businesse get back on it’s feet. Some Police forces . The media (and the tech community) has leapt upon the Government’s statements as indicating that they plan to ban a) social platforms b) ban the people who incite riots from social platforms. Of course, the government review will come up with obvious answers. You can’t ban social networks and you can’t ban people from using them – they will find a way. More importantly, what the above statements indicate is that the government would like some kind of early warning system for the Police, to alert it when people are “plotting violence” or when “when trouble is being planned” on social networks. Facebook has already reacted by saying it’s taken several potentially dubious groups off its network. Twitter has said it’s “happy to talk”. RIM is “cooperating”. But as any keen observer of social media will tell you, trying to track sentiment on these platforms is very hard. Indeed, this problem vexes Facebook and Twitter, who have millions in funding, all the time. Do we really think the UK government is going to be able to crack that one? I asked Nick Halstead, CEO of DataSift, what he thinks. Halstead has with MP Louise Mensch in this very issue. He told me: “Just as Hedge funds are already looking to Twitter to build insights into stock movements, it is just as plausible to intelligently describe a certain behaviour and pro-actively look for patterns that may relate to unrest. Twitter themselves already detect trends but these are calculated from a global or country perspective. It is possible to apply the same trend detection techniques within a more highly curated stream. And those streams can be defined by looking at the topic of conversation, the intent of the message and sometimes even the location.”
So in other words, you could potentially track something. But would it be accurate enough? “I think that’s far too esoteric a concept right now for computers to understand,” he told me. And there’s the rub. One person’s BBM or Tweet saying “It’s all kicking off in the high street” could be interpreted as an incitement to others to join a riot – or as a warning to their friends. And let’s not even go into how an algorithm is going to decipher the language of the street. Plus, the Home Secretary is going to have to do more than visit Facebook, Twitter and RIM to deal with the issues of the spreading of messages about riots. Our research of the application among London’s youth (although BBM is far and away preferred). And let’s not go into Kik, PingChat and the rest of the group messaging startups. And there’s the small matter of Facebook Messenger coming out, and Apple’s iMessage. All of these will be group messaging leviathans. Put simply, the private mass messaging genie is out of the bottle. So the irony of the situation is that in order to get an early wind of a “situation”, the government should be positively encouraging people to join social networks, not come off them or shut them down. Apart from anything else, the more data there is in the system, the more the crowd can deal with people who might be inciting a riot and bring them to the awareness of the authorities. Indeed, the Police should not be looking for ways to shut down the BlackBerry BBM (I’m simply going to assume they will ask GCHQ to snoop on it anyway, and I’d be amazed if it’s not already). Instead, the Police should simply grab the ecosystem with both hands. The Guardian and other media showed how it was child’s-play to simply get a Curve handset, circulate a PIN and then get forwarded BBM Broadcasts about riots and looting by concerned citizens. Hey, how about even some old fashioned Policing, whereby you get an informant to forward the dodgy messages? But the fact that the Twitter account, has made 589 tweets in two years and remains a broadcast-only account with zero interaction with the public, speaks volumes about the Police’s knowledge of how these platforms work. So let’s fix THAT problem before we talking about monitoring. Far better for the Police to set up a special social engagement unit – or something similar – than for us to end up with a Minority Report style society. |
Google Adds Google+ Public Posts To Its Social Search Results, Ho-Hum | Alexia Tsotsis | 2,011 | 8 | 12 | In that was pretty much inevitable in Google’s overall strategy of eventual Google+ integration into most if not all Google products, the search engine has announced that it will now be including publicly shared Google+ posts in its results. Users logged into their Google+ accounts will eventually see a “Blah blah shared this on Google” if they’re searching for a keyword that matches up with something that’s been posted by someone publicly in one of their Google+ circles. As someone who rarely paid attention to my “social search” results before, I’m pretty meh about how useful this is. But, since the “social search” results already included Twitter, Flickr LinkedIn and Quora, this isn’t at all a earth-shattering move. In fact, as Search Engine Land’s Danny Sullivan , the service and what we’re seeing today is just the public announcement of it. Google says they’ll be rolling out the feature over the next couple days. What I’ve really got my fingers crossed for is the return of . Update: After getting confirmation from Google, Danny Sullivan responds, “It’s new. Posts you share on Google+ now appear and rank better. Previously, only posts you shared elsewhere would.” |
Leaked FCC Doc Reveals Details Of AT&T’s Strategy For T-Mobile Deal | Jordan Crook | 2,011 | 8 | 12 | A partially-redacted letter from AT&T lawyers to FCC officials was accidentally posted on the FCC website today, and it reveals quite a bit about ‘s strategy for its proposed acquisition of . Unfortunately, the filing has come and gone on the website, but the folks over at Wireless Week took down some notes for us. Here’s what’s up: AT&T faces heavy competition since its biggest rival, , has been implementing its LTE network at a much faster pace. Verizon has plans to build out its network to the point where it would provide coverage for up to 97 percent of the population, and the expansion is already underway. AT&T’s initial plan (sans T-Mobile) only provided for 80 percent, and the company has yet to get its first set of cities rolling. So not only has Verizon been moving faster, but it’s also been covering more ground. According to , the letter from AT&T lawyers to the FCC gives us our first-ever peek into how much it would cost AT&T to match Verizon’s planned LTE footprint, had the company not chosen to acquire T-Mobile. This is going to blow your mind, so get ready. The price of expanding its LTE coverage to rural areas would have cost AT&T $3.8 billion. But the letter also says that the $3.8 billion price tag and the speed at which AT&T would have to deploy made that impossible. “AT&T senior management concluded that, unless AT&T could find a way to expand its LTE footprint on a significantly more cost-effective basis, an LTE deployment to 80 percent of the U.S. population was the most that could be justified,” AT&T counsel Richard Rosen said in the filing. Yet, AT&T is willing to throw down a staggering $39 billion to swallow up T-Mo and get that 97 percent foot print up and running. Confused? Totally understandable. Let’s parse through this together, shall we? While this isn’t quite as bad as it looks, it’s still not good. Rosen isn’t just straight up lying when he says AT&T needs a cost-effective route to make its LTE plans a reality. These carriers have to spend, well $3.8 billion-ish, to bring coverage to rural areas. The problem is that there are way more towers to build, each of which covers far fewer people than in metropolitan areas. That means the return on investment isn’t nearly what AT&T would like it to be. Wireless Week spoke with ABI Research analyst Phil Solis, who seems to understand where Rosen and AT&T are coming from. “You really do get diminishing returns,” he said. “They’re making the case that if they’re allowed to acquire T-Mobile, they’ll have so many revenue benefits that they’ll be able to afford the extra coverage. It would help.” But that doesn’t really change the fact that we end-users would be left with a duopoly. What’s best for AT&T isn’t what’s best for everyone, and it’s the FCC and DoJ’s job to make sure the public interest is protected at all costs, regardless of AT&T’s preferences and financial situation. What’s interesting is that the letter revealed that AT&T decided not to spend that $3.8 billion in the beginning of January. But according to Bloomberg, Sprint could have potentially been in talks with Deutsche Telekom during the same period, with its own plans to acquire T-Mobile. on March 8 that multiple sources familiar with the matter confirmed that Sprint and Deutsche Telekom were in “off and on” meetings about a possible T-Mo merger. It’s entirely possible that those conversations started in January, or even earlier, and Bloomberg only got wind of it towards the tail-end of the situation. If that’s the case, AT&T may have tried to shell out a $39 billion premium just to keep T-Mo out of Sprint’s reach, citing costs to cover its tracks. I’m no economist, and have no way to figure if AT&T would actually be saving money by paying $39 billion for T-Mo instead of $3.8 billion to build it’s network. But it seems a bit shady, no? AT&T vehemently denies that any new or suspect information was released with the leak. “There is no real news here,” said AT&T spokeswoman Margaret Boles in a statement. “The confidential information in the latest letter is fully consistent with AT&T’s prior filings. It demonstrates the significance of our commitment to build out 4G LTE mobile broadband to 97% of the population following our merger with T-Mobile. Without this merger, AT&T could not make this expanded commitment. This merger will unleash billions of dollars in badly needed investment, creating many thousands of well-paying jobs that are vitally needed given our weakened economy.” There’s really no way to know for sure what we should believe here. The only thing we can do is hope that this leak puts a little extra pressure on the FCC and DoJ to really carefully consider the deal that’s been placed before them. AT&T has responded with an additional statement. “The AT&T / T-Mobile transaction delivers a range of benefits. It is by far the surest, fastest and most efficient solution to the impending wireless spectrum exhaust. That’s because the unique network synergies of the combined network far exceed the sum of its parts, and generate the functional equivalent of new spectrum, which is the best means of addressing the macro-level, system-wide constraints confronting AT&T.” |
Elaborate 404 Page Is So Unfunny It’s Funny | Alexia Tsotsis | 2,011 | 8 | 12 | “When a page on this website goes rogue — and a code 404 arises — we dispatch one of our teams to bring it back. Ideally they are able to salvage the missing page, but sometimes, if the page is truly lost, they have to take it out (resulting in the subsequent code 500 when the page gets taken down).” In Spanish it’s in German it’s called and in Dutch. What it is is second-hand embarrassment, and I just felt it, after being linked to this overly elaborate 404 page from startup . The “humorous” video, which simulates some kind of web hipster recconnaisance mission for a “rogue” web page is one of the most inducing things I’ve ever seen. I am actually laughing at how it is. Sure, I’ll give the Nosh boys props for originality — At least they didn’t … But honestly startup dudes, isn’t your time better spent in the office making sure the Nosh site doesn’t crash instead of out in a field pretending to kill a silly replica web page in order to come up with a “creative” 404 page. And besides, how many people are using Nosh frequently enough that they’d get to the page in the first place!? Okay some of you may think this is , . But seriously Internet, I dare you to name one geniunely LOL-worthy moment in the entire wet noodle of an attempt at humor. Name one. Oh well, at least it’s not [vimeo http://vimeo.com/26858445 width=”640″] |
Microsoft Patents Flat-Slider Phone Form Factor, Multi-Touch Gaming Mice | Devin Coldewey | 2,011 | 8 | 12 | We’ve seen a lot of interesting patents from Apple over the last few days, but Microsoft loves to patent things too — and they’ve just been granted a nice little pack of designs for mobile phones in a special slider format, and some Kinect and mouse tech to boot. They’re not patenting a plain slider, of course. They’re patenting a few by which, once you finish the sliding action, the keyboard and the screen are “positioned in a substantially similar plane.” That is to say, mostly flush. Check it out:
The advantage is, potentially, a more comfortable typing experience. Many complained about having to type around the G1’s “chin,” and other phones with sunken keyboards have similar problems. My issue with a design like this is that the additional hinges and such might end up increasing the weight and decreasing the sturdiness of the phone. The second design does look more interesting, though, lowering the display rather than raising the keyboard. That could actually work. What I’d like to see is some patents on a slider keyboard with keys that are actually fun to type on. Or maybe a slide-out keyboard for a tablet that doesn’t increase the weight the thing by 500%. Microsoft was also granted a patent that clearly relates to the — it’s about and tracking user movement within a sort of cone. I wouldn’t say this is particularly exciting, but if you’re interested in the Kinect and Microsoft’s implementation thereof, it could make for some fun reading this weekend. More up my alley, Microsoft has patented . I’m pretty surprised this patent flew, since games are just a form of software, and there must be hundreds of patents in play regarding the interaction of software and multi-touch surfaces. I mainly liked looking over the patent because they use illustrations that hearken back to the days of yore, when were a novel proposition. [via ] |
YC-Funded MobileWorks Aims To Be A Hands-Off Mechanical Turk | Jason Kincaid | 2,011 | 8 | 12 | If you regularly have to deal with a lot of repetitive data entry or sorting, there’s a good chance you’re familiar with services like Amazon’s Mechanical Turk. The promise is appealing: you can hire workers to complete basic tasks for a relatively small amount of money. And, in theory, everyone wins. You get your tasks completed on the cheap, and your outsourced workforce gets to make some supplementary income from the comfort of their computers. Unfortunately things are a little more complicated than that. Coordinating these jobs requires quite a bit of effort to ensure you’re getting quality results — you need to choose workers, figure out what price to set, and so on — and it isn’t necessarily easy for newcomers to get started. And then there the concern that Mechanical Turk workers aren’t getting paid enough. Now a Y Combinator-funded startup called wants to provide an alternative to Mechanical Turk — one that’s as easy to use as possible, with no hands-on management required once a task is submitted. In fact, MobileWorks is promising a service that’s so hands-off that developers can use it as a sort of API — you make your data request, and a human ‘returns’ the result, with no intermediary steps. And they’re promising that its workers will be paid better than they are on Amazon. Of course, Mechanical Turk and similar services require hands-on attention for a reason: you’re dealing with real people, many of whom are untrained, and aside from their modest pay they don’t have a particularly strong incentive to produce work of the highest quality. MobileWorks knows this, but it thinks there’s a better solution than micromanagement. The company has set out to build a workforce comprised exclusively of workers who output consistently good results, to the point that users don’t have to worry about managing their tasks. MobileWorks first got its start in January, when it set out to launch a service for crowd-sourcing tasks that would be completed exclusively by workers on mobile devices (in other words, people would be entering data from their cell phones). The company began approaching mobile retailers in India, asking them to identify and recruit customers who might serve as good candidates. The retailer’s incentive? Anyone wanting to be a MobileWorks worker would need a mobile data plan. The MobileWorks team says that this worked well to seed its workforce with high quality workers, but that it’s since recognized that there are tasks that are better suited for completion on a computer, so it’s letting workers use computers as well. And it’s also letting its initial workforce organically recruit their friends and family (they say that these workers have an incentive to ensure that the people they recruit are also solid workers). The workforce is now up to around 150, mostly in India and Pakistan. As for wages, MobileWorks says that the majority of its workers were earning less than $2/day before joining the service, and that after working 2-3 hours per day they’re earning $4/day. The other key to ensuring quality, says MobileWorks, is that most of these manual tasks fall in one of twenty or so buckets. So the company is doing everything it can to optimize around these common tasks (which currently include data scraping and form entry), to make it easier to both submit a task and for workers to complete them. And the team says it has algorithms in place to ensure quality. MobileWorks has set the bar very high for itself — if users notice that some of their work is coming back with shoddy results, they’re going to quickly learn to distrust this hands-off approach. And the service’s quality controls won’t be tested until it starts reaching scale (it gets much harder to ensure high quality jobs when you’re employing thousands of workers rather than 150). But there’s certainly room for improvement in this space, and if they nail it, a large potential market. We’ll keep an eye on MobileWorks’s progress going forward. |
TinyChat iPhone App Lets You Video Chat With Up To 12 Facebook Friends | Alexia Tsotsis | 2,011 | 8 | 12 | http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NQAJqjLEs6w Video chat startup has released its first iOS app, TinyChat FB, which allows you to video chat with up to 12 Facebook friends from your smartphone. TinyChat co-founder tells me that what sets TinyChat FB apart from other services like or or even Skype is the fact that end users don’t need to have the service installed in order to participate in a chat. Facebook, which just launched its , still doesn’t have this functionality for mobile. Users can connect to the app with Facebook after download and it will immediately show them a list of their Friends. Clicking on a user will allow you to invite them to chat, sending them a link on Facebook with the message “I’m video chatting on my iPhone, click the link to video chat with me.” Toggling back to your Friends list will allow you to invite others to the chat and you can remove users by pressing long on their name in the Users tab. TinyChat FB works on the iPad 1, iPad 2, iTouch 4, iPhone 3GS and iPhone 4. The web component is Flash-based. My biggest issue with this is that I can’t think of any reason why people would want to Facebook video chat with 12 people. Blake insists that people do, namely teenagers. “Tiny Chat right now doesn’t have a Buddy List and that’s where it needs to be,” he says “Skype is definitely the juggernaut. We’re here to give you more creative ways to use TinyChat over Skype.” He also says that this app isn’t the be all end all for TinyChat mobile, and that a full featured client for the service is on its way. TinyChat does over 30 million minutes of video chat a day according to Blake, bringing on a 100K new users a day. The app in funding from triumvirate of Ashton Kutcher, P.Diddy and Lady Gaga and others, who, come to think of it, would probably make a pretty interesting video chat group. |
Are We Ready For A True Cloud Phone? | MG Siegler | 2,011 | 8 | 12 | As we , all the rumors of the Apple empire descend upon us. And this year may be the craziest yet because for the first time since the iPhone’s inception, Apple did not release new hardware in the summer. And there are still whispers of as well. iOS 5 is coming. iCloud is coming. And then there are the iPods which are traditionally updated in the fall timeframe each year. Things are already getting crazy enough that potential Apple announcement are one minute, and then stories debunking those dates are the next minute. This will only get worse. But there’s a reason people write up these rumors. Because people read these rumors. And the reason they do that is because sometimes those rumors are correct. And more often than that, they’re at least correct. That hope keeps peoples’ imaginations running wild. Now it’s time for me to indulge that. One rumor that caught my eye this week was the talk of Apple looking into releasing an “iCloud Phone” alongside a new iPhone 5 this fall. This actually isn’t a new rumor so much as it’s a repurposed one. If you’ve heard talk about the “iPhone 4S”, this is the same potential device. It’s the “cheap iPhone” that and others have written about in the past. , it would seem that there’s something to this rumor. Even Apple’s executives have at the possibility. But the iCloud angle is a particularly interesting one. That doesn’t mean it’s entirely accurate necessarily, just interesting. , Trevor Sheridan writes: It has come to our attention that Apple is planning to combine iOS 5 and iCloud with a piece of hardware internally referred to as the iCloud iPhone. The iCloud iPhone will rely heavily on Apple’s new cloud based offering, and less on internal storage. He continues: Apple is aiming for a $400 final price for the iCloud iPhone as compared to the typical $600 iPhone price, which the iPhone 5 will cost. The carrier subsidization will bring the cost to consumers down to free with a 2 year contract for the iCloud iPhone with the same $199 iPhone cost for the iPhone 5. He cites three independent sources on the information, and notes that a modified iPhone 4 design is likely to be used for such a device. Reducing the internal storage in the iPhone is certainly one way Apple could reduce the overall cost of the device. Plus, Apple has spent the past year and a half perfecting the manufacturing of the iPhone 4, so you can be sure costs in that regard have come down. On the face of it, this makes some sense. But the larger question remains if the world is ready for a cloud-based smartphone? And there’s a side question: what if this cloud phone is a data-only device? To the first question, with Apple rolling out iCloud this fall, the timing could be right. Apple hasn’t turned on things like music from the cloud yet, but they easily could. They recently did this with an Apple TV update for television shows. If you have an always-connected device, this concept could work. Storage would be needed for apps and perhaps a little for offline usage, but overall, maybe Apple could get away with a device with just a few gigabytes or so of onboard storage. The second question is different. After we reported on Apple’s work on a cheaper iPhone, a few people reached out wondering if the iPod touch could simply morph into this product? In other words, Apple could upgrade the iPod touch with an iPhone 4 body, including the 3G radio. If that’s Apple’s thinking for this product, it may be the perfect opportunity to create a phone that doesn’t offer traditional phone service. As in, it would be data-only. Now, the carriers probably would have a hard time with this concept. if Apple sold it as more of an iPod touch with 3G capabilities, they may bite. The carriers are currently making no money off of the iPod touch, which is a hugely popular product. It remains WiFi-only. If they offered a $29-a-month data plan, or pay-as-you-go, it could be a really compelling new source of revenue. And to consumers, Apple could tout it as more of a “lite” phone. It can do everything the iPhone can, except make phone calls. And really, thanks to apps like Skype, FaceTime, etc, it can do that too — maybe they just don’t play that up as much at first. Without full $60 or $70-a-month plans for cellular minutes and data, the carriers probably wouldn’t subsidize the cost of such a device down to $0. But they might be able to get close if Apple was able to make the device cheaply enough. The low-end iPod touch is currently $229. But then again, contracts are one more headache for consumers, so maybe Apple would be more in favor of selling the device cheaply without a contract, and allowing consumers to pay for 3G service on the go, like they do with the 3G iPads. The concept of a data-only phone has been around for a while. In November of 2009, that Google was looking into possibly offering their own Android devices which would be data-only. This didn’t happen, obviously. Instead, Google not only fully hopped into bed with the carriers for their Nexus devices, for maximum snuggling and . Whether or not Apple takes this path this year, it’s pretty clear that this is the future. Eventually, carriers will exist as data dealers. All information, including voice calls will happen over this pipe. Cellular phone service will just be an optional add-on if you’re in an area with a bad data connection. Apple could kick-start this movement in the coming months. Or they might not. But someone will. |
Review: Audyssey Lower East Side Speakers | Devin Coldewey | 2,011 | 8 | 12 | A solid pair of laptop or desk speakers, unremarkable but warm and powerful, with an understated and attractive design. More attention to detail would help justify their price, though. When it comes to PC speakers, the go-to brands like Harman-Kardon, Klipsch, Logitech and so on provide good, predictable performance. I saw these speakers announced a little while back and felt it’d be good to take a break from the usual suspects. I’m glad I did — Audyssey’s LES speakers aren’t a knockout or anything, but they hit a nice Goldilocks zone of size, power, and fidelity. The design is meant to evoke the Lower East Side of Manhattan. I’m not sure how or why, but whether you see that neighborhood in the speakers or not, you can at least agree that the design is straightforward, handsome, and understated, perhaps to the point of being plain. The speaker enclosure itself, with its red rubberized stripe gripping the one-piece stand, is nicely done and reassuringly speaker-shaped. The stand, while sturdy and partially rubberized, doesn’t seem as considered. On the right speaker you have a red/green power indicator LED, a 3.5mm headphone jack, and the volume knob, which you press to power the speakers on or off. The indicator is tastefully dim and of an olive hue, not the traffic light green often found on devices. I was not impressed with the quality of the volume knob: there’s very little weight to it, and lots of wiggle. And the volume level notch is so shallow as to be nearly imperceptible most of the time. They have 3.5mm and optical audio input on the back, and the speakers connect with standard speaker wire. Might have been nice to see something more substantial as a connection method. As you have no doubt figured out by now, this is a two-speaker setup, not 2.1. Normally two-speaker systems are budget items, given away with cheap laptops or plugged directly into your iPod. The LES speakers are different, more like bookcase speakers on your desk than anything. They’re powered, with decent-sized drivers; Audyssey claims “Small speakers that can’t produce bass, speaker cabinets that make noise, distortion, or even poor sound quality at low volumes are all problems that are solved by Audyssey Smart Speaker technology,” and “We don’t boost the bass and distort the sound, we actually enhance the performance of the driver to give you deeper sounds.” They won’t be blowing your windows out or anything, but it’s safe to say they’re well beyond the capabilities of your average two-speaker set. I actually prefer these over the I recently reviewed, which sound great, except I’m always worrying about whether I’ve got the sub at the right level — and at any rate, separating the low end into a separate channel has always kind of bothered me, though it’s really only a problem when the falloff between the satellites and the sub isn’t well thought out. The LES speakers have a nice level response throughout the spectrum, and while you won’t be getting teeth-rattling bass, that’s not really the intention of compact speakers like these. Some experimentation led me to the discovery that these speakers sound best on a flat EQ, or something close to it. Depending on what you’re listening to, you might want to bump or scoop it a little bit, but for the most part they produced an even, rather warm sound that easily reached up into the highs and descended into lows without distorting or falling off too much. If anything I felt that a certain bit of mid-low spectrum was overemphasized, taking over the rest of the sound during this or that part of a song, though I’m starting to think that’s a resonance issue with my desk. At any rate I don’t have the same issue with other speakers. They get plenty loud, though the sound is fairly directional and you’ll want to stay in the sweet spot if you can. Movies and games sounded good. One quirk I wish Audyssey had thought twice about is the auto-off feature. If you don’t use the speakers for a while, they turn off automatically. No problem, you think, saves a little power. But they don’t turn back on when you come back and hit play again. I know, it’s a small problem to have to hit the button and turn them on, but I wish they’d just implemented an auto- feature as well. I also think that treble and bass adjustment knobs wouldn’t be out of place. I know you can EQ stuff, but it’d be nice to do that on the back of the speaker as well for when they’re in a less customizable audio environment. For apartment living or use in, say, a studio environment, these are a great choice. Or for a dorm room, where space is at a premium and subs just irritate your neighbors. They’re tastefully if not beautifully designed, produce good sound with plenty of power, and provide a simpler and perhaps more faithful audio environment than 2.1 setup. If you’re confident enough to tweak your sound a little so it’s sending the right stuff to these, I’d say they’re a great choice for personal audio. But I hope they’ll consider paying a little more attention to the user experience details in the next version.
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Sprint: Yeah, About That 4G BlackBerry Playbook We Announced? It’s not happening. | Greg Kumparak | 2,011 | 8 | 12 | back at CES in January, Sprint and RIM announced that they were cooking up a version of the BlackBerry Playbook that played friendly with Sprint’s 4G network. And then… nothing. Months went by, with nary a mention from either of the companies involved. Alas, it looks like the Sprint 4G Playbook will be buried before it’s even born. Blaming a “lack of demand from business customers” (read: everybody who wants a tablet right now probably already has an iPad or a Xoom), Sprint has killed off plans to launch the device. It’s unclear whether or not RIM will go on to sell a Sprint-friendly version of the tablet themselves, though it seems rather unlikely. Selling CDMA phones without the carrier’s support is tough enough — but an ultra niche object like a half-baked enterprise-focused tablet? Blyeck. As the points out, this.. isn’t good news for RIM. Sprint was the major carrier who was willing to back the Playbook — neither AT&T or Verizon wanted to have anything to do with it. While Sprint still offers the WiFi only version of the tablet, it doesn’t seem like they’re planning to stick by the Playbook for much longer. Nail, meet coffin. |
null | Devin Coldewey | 2,011 | 8 | 15 | null |
Canon Lens Shot Glasses, For Drinkin’ And Shootin’ | Devin Coldewey | 2,011 | 8 | 12 | Lens-related ephemera seems to be a soft spot of mine. , , , — the fun never stops. Or, alternatively, it never starts, if you’re a Pentax user. All get is great cameras and an amazing lens selection. For the photographer who likes a tipple now and then, or just loves things that look like lenses, consider these twee 24-105mm zoom shot glasses. I can’t vouch for the image stabilization, but you can’t fault them for their size. Their capacity is 1.5oz (i.e. a normal shot glass), they’re made of sturdy glazed ceramic, . [via ] |
Mystery Android Vulnerability Not Detailed By Prudent Hackers | Devin Coldewey | 2,011 | 8 | 12 | Riley Hassell and Shane Macaulay were all set to go on stage at Black Hat and describe a few methods of hacking Android devices. But they never appeared: at the last minute, they decided not to reveal the vulnerabilities they had discovered. Why? How very hat! Yes indeed, Hassell and Macaulay were concerned that going public with these vulnerabilities might have resulted not in a scholarly discussion and plugging of the security hole, but a feast of hackery as millions of handsets succumbed to unpatched exploits. They also learned just before going on stage that their discovery may have replicated some earlier findings, and they wanted to make sure they were making the proper acknowledgements. So they no-showed. So what’s the vulnerability? They aren’t saying just yet. And according to Google, “The identified bugs are not present in Android.” Very illuminating! We’ll see about that, I’m sure. So many undiscriminating hackers and hacks are in the news these days that I felt it only right to call attention to a couple guys doing things right. With luck this security hole (which doesn’t exist) will be patched and we’ll all be a little safer next week. |
EZOfficeInventory Lets SMBs Easily Track And Manage Company Assets (In The Cloud) | Rip Empson | 2,011 | 8 | 13 | Office inventory management systems: Not exactly the world’s sexiest software to be sure. Yet, without inventory and asset management systems, many enterprises would likely work at a similar pace to the DMV. Currently, SMBs have no shortage of tools to choose from when selecting a software system for tracking office assets and inventory; however, most of these options involve working tirelessly with Excel or using some kind of desktop product, like , , or , to name a few. If a company has more than a few dozen employees, though, Excel and desktop solutions can be a pain in the ass. Syed Ali, a former Sun Microsystems employee (before the company was acquired by Oracle) and his team of IT and software geeks, said that they had grown tired of having to deal with repeated occurrences of outdated and incorrect office inventory in today’s tracking solutions. Syed said that he and his team have collectively worked with many different companies that, for example, do in fact keep lists of office assets, but specific information related to who has what (like tracking records of check outs) is often completely missing or worse outdated — not to mention the fact that misplaced assets are often assigned the wrong employee who may not even work at the company anymore. The problems, as one can imagine, are numerous. To help resolve these issues, Syed and his team are today launching , a SaaS-based solution that approaches asset management untraditionally through a delegation model, in which the responsibility of inventory tracking is shared by employees, reducing the workload on the administrators. The solution enables pooled office assets to be tracked with ease through a checkout and checkin mechanism for employees as well as an activity newsfeed for administrators, allowing them to review and take charge only when needed. Employees can also identify available assets that they need to get their jobs done and can get access to manuals and drivers instantaneously. Since EZOfficeInventory resides in the cloud, the solution employs QRCodes as asset tags so that, with an asset’s unique URL embedded in the QRCode, employees can quickly reference asset details and identify the rightful owner in the event something gets lost. And employees can do this with a quick scan from an iPhone or Android device installed with a QRCode reader and web access. The solution also works to minimize the effort involved in audits, as administrators can request pictures of the asset or other custom workflows from employees with a few clicks. EZOffice also lets administrators view reports on usage, track checkouts and checkins, the total cost of ownership, and even service history on their company’s assets. Companies can also change the security settings in their solution so that it is compatible with existing workflows and add further privacy features when necessary. Some readers may find the following newsfeed image to be reminiscent of (the well known product released by 37Signals, the same company that is home to David Heinemeier Hansson, the guy who created Ruby on Rails). EZOfficeInventory is also implemented in Ruby on Rails, as Syed says that he is “an avid fan” of the web development framework. EZOfficeInventory offers a free two-month trial of its cloud app, with packages for more than two users beginning at $29 per month. The asset management system is still in the very early stages (and the startup is bootstrapped at this point) at this point, and there’s work to be done on the website’s design and UI (and on the name as well), but the software itself is attacking an important pain point for many small and medium sized businesses. While putting the responsibility of asset management into the hands of employees (along with, of course, a system of checks and balances) may well prove to enhance efficiency and trust among those employees, it is risky. But Syed says that this is “part of the fun of merging enterprise with web development” and the very process of using web tech to target enterprise level problems. It’s a shot at the status quo, and the CEO believes it’s a shot worth taking in spite of the risk. For more on EZOfficeInventory, click . |
OMG/JK: With Google+, It’s All A Big Game | MG Siegler | 2,011 | 8 | 13 | Even though it’s the end of summer and tech news has started to slow to a crawl, there was actually quite a bit to talk about on OMG/JK this week. In this episode, Jason and I focus on three key things: Amazon’s Kindle web reader, Facebook Messenger, and games on Google+. Is Amazon screwing with Apple? Is Facebook screwing with SMS? Is Google screwing with Facebook? Those are the main points of discussion. We also sort of veer off into a discussion about whether or not Google+ is all one big game in the more metaphorical sense. And as a bonus, you’ll get to see our awkward transitions between stories. Here are some of the key stories we talk about this week:
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Hello World: Israel is Out-Classing You in Civil Disobedience | Roi Carthy | 2,011 | 8 | 13 | In the four weeks since the social protests have begun in Israel, hundreds have been killed, dozens of women have reportedly been raped, a number of children tortured, and countless districts have been looted. The authorities have imposed a complete lock-down on all cellular networks. All access to Facebook and Twitter has been blocked. Little information is going in, or out. Except the absolute, complete opposite. The social protests in Israel began 4 weeks ago with a national outcry over the rising price of basics such as cottage cheese. They then snowballed into a full-blown national movement by way of a simple act by a then unknown young woman. The act? Striking a tent in Tel-Aviv’s Rothschild Boulevard in protest of high apartment rental costs. A single tent became the heart and soul of the movement whose main gripe is that the middle-class is bearing the brunt of an imbalanced budgetary spend. “The People Demand Social Justice” is the key chant. The protests are local, scattered all across Israel, drawing hundreds to hundreds of thousands. Big name musicians volunteer to headline these protests. Barricades and PA systems, all donated. People talk about the movement at every cafe, over every lunch, at every business meeting, at every family dinner. There have been a few skirmishes with the law. Small stuff though… For example, small groups of protesters were arrested by the police for blocking roads and were released without charges within a day. Small potatoes aside, it’s been four weeks and zero acts of the barbaric, non-discriminatory violence we’ve seen across the middle east, and even in the UK. No shots fired. No stores looted. No form of communication has been shut down. In fact, not only have the Israeli police and army not taken any role other than safeguarding the protests themselves, they have even been applauded, literally, by hundreds of thousands for their efforts. While in neighboring countries regimes are slaughtering the opposition, in Israel we have complete free speech to criticize our politicians and leaders. As I’m typing this, on the TV is Israel’s version of SNL doing a parody skit of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s mishandling of the situation (they have him wearing a red t-shirt with Che Guevara on it). YouTube mashups featuring the PM’s soundbites? Posted below for your scrolling convenience. Professional-level videos advertising the protests? Also, posted below. Sorry , no need for your curation and retweeting on this one, the Israeli people are doing A-OK. Really, look: The backbone of the movement has unquestionably been Facebook, via , and , and of course Twitter, via the hashtag. A revolution needs a site, right? . At this point there’s no guessing which people will next rise-up and demand political and social change. The world is not what it used to be before Tahrir. I wonder though how many of these future civil disobedience movements will be modeled upon Israel, where technology and love trumped violence. [youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xzK9ScQ0LlI&w=620&h=480&hl=en_US&fs=1&] [youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H-7jT0eqAqI&w=620&h=480&hl=en_US&fs=1&] [youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Yj-Uo5mpAD0&w=620&h=480&hl=en_US&fs=1&] Photo Credits: |
Glorious Images Of Apple’s New Spaceship Headquarters | MG Siegler | 2,011 | 8 | 13 | , Apple is building what is sure to be the coolest office building ever in Cuptertino, CA. The building is so important to the company that no less than Steve Jobs went to a Cupertino City Council meeting a couple months ago to seal the deal. They were eating out of his hand. All the rest is really a formality at this point. “There is no chance that we’re saying no,” Cupertino Mayor Gilbert Wong . Today, Cupertino more detailed plans about the project on the city’s website. Known as “Apple Campus 2” to the city, the project will be built on a 175 acre area near the 280 highway. The total building will be approximately 2.8 million square feet, will feature a 1,000 seat auditorium (perfect for all but Apple’s biggest events), a fitness center, 300,000 square feet of research facilities, a power plant, and underground parking. But all of that sounds boring, what you really need to see is what it like: a giant, flying saucer-like loop. Luckily Cupertino included Apple’s proposal documents which include many new renderings of the project. Cupertino says they still have to review the environmental impact of the project and have a few more public hearings before it’s actually approved. But yeah, again, there’s no way this isn’t getting done. Apple’s plan is to break ground next year and have the new headquarters done in 2015. It will house over 12,000 employees in one massive building. Below find some new renderings and the full proposal embedded below that . [scribd id=62206956 key=key-1ehl4hk6qz6d0eaky0m7 mode=list] [scribd id=62206731 key=key-1hqr780bydqer1g7ulo0 mode=list] [scribd id=62205913 key=key-27lhqo369jlal8wfw49t mode=list] [scribd id=62207079 key=key-2n3ui13z9ke7s2n0dhka mode=list] |
2005 Zuckerberg Didn’t Want To Take Over The World | Alexia Tsotsis | 2,011 | 8 | 13 | The Huffington Post has of Mark Zuckerberg at Facebook’s Palo Alto office in June 2005. The clip is apparently part of a longer 40-minute-interview from a documentary about millennials shot by Ray Hafner and Derek Franzese. That interview has never been shown in full, and if I were Hafner and Franzese I’d be figuring out a way to do that stat, especially post- . Zuckerberg’s initial vision, “an online directory for colleges” seems remarkably short-sighted in light of the fact that Facebook users comprise now 11% of the world’s population and 35% of the world’s online population. In retrospect Zuckerberg may have wanted to put the fratty red beer cup down (Fun fact: He had turned 21, also that’s co-founder doing a keg stand). But at the time the site, which Zuckerberg modestly described as an online directory for colleges, had only schools.The fact that Zuckerberg seems impressed by seeing people using TheFacebook at college parties and by reports of people logging in internationally leads one to wonder just how strategic the social network’s meteoric rise was. His goal at the time was to expand to all 2,000 US colleges, and when asked what was next the Facebook founder said, “There doesn’t necessarily have to be more. A lot of people are focused on taking over the world or doing the biggest thing and getting the most users … There’s a level of service that we can provide when we’re a college network that we wouldn’t be able to provide if we went to other types of things.” This is a far far cry from Facebook’s current motto, “Making the world open and connected.” But sure, hindsight is 20/20. I mean how else do you explain Zuckerberg, and Reed Hastings, making this CNN in 2006. Hilarious copy, below. In entrepreneurship, timing is everything. So we’ll give Zuckerberg credit for launching his online social directory for college students just as the social-networking craze was getting underway. He also built it right, quickly making Facebook one of the most popular social-networking sites on the Net. But there’s also something to be said for knowing when to take the money and run. Last spring, Facebook reportedly turned down a $750 million buyout offer, holding out instead for as much as $2 billion. Bad move. After selling itself to Rupert Murdoch’s Fox for $580 million last year, MySpace is now the Web’s second most popular website. Facebook is growing too – but given that MySpace has quickly grown into the industry’s 80-million-user gorilla, it’s hard to imagine who would pay billions for an also-ran. Five years, eternity in Internet time. |
Nerf’s New Vortex Blasters Shoot Discs! And They’re Awesome! | Jordan Crook | 2,011 | 8 | 13 | When I was growing up, one of my all-time favorite toys was my Nerf dart blaster. Every summer, the other neighborhood kids and I would take off on our bikes, blasters strapped to our backs, and have a full-on foam war. It’s been a solid decade since I’ve raised my not-so-dangerous weapon, but the other night something magical happened. I got to go to Nerf’s unveiling of its Vortex line of blasters, and realized that these things aren’t just for kids. There are four new models in the Vortex line, and while they look pretty similar to older Nerf blasters, these sexy beasts have something totally new up their magazine sleeve: discs. Yep, little green discs fly out of these bad boys, and if you saw it happen, you totally wouldn’t believe that it doesn’t hurt to get hit. This is the bad mamma-jamma of the Vortex family. It’s the first fully automatic, clip-fed disc blaster in the Vortex line. It’s removable clip can hold up to 20 discs at a time, and comes with an extra clip that attaches to the back of the gun for quick reloading. The Nitron shoots up to 50 feet, and is capable of rapid-fire shooting, although that really equals out to about a disc per second. Still impressive, but don’t get the idea that this is some sort of Nerf machine gun. It requires six C batteries which are not included, and will retail for $39.99. The Praxis is designed for long-range shooting, and should come in handy for anyone training to be a sniper. It comes with a removable shoulder stock, just in case your arms are a bit too short. Unlike the Nitron, the Praxis requires a good pump before each shot, and comes with a clip that carries up to ten discs at a time. The Praxis will go for $24.99. The Vigilon is Nerf’s mid-sized blaster, and is just right for smaller kids. It holds up to five discs at a time, and comes with a rapid-reload built-in disc clip. When you press a little button on the sides the drop-down clip is released and with the discs, it’s really easy to just grab five at a time and shove them in there. Pop it back into place and you’re ready to go. The Vigilon will cost $15.99. Meet Nerf’s baby blaster: the Proton. This little devil shoots one disc at a time and comes with three discs. It’s super easy to reload, and is light enough for a little kid to run around with it all day without feeling weighed down. The Proton will go for the relatively low price of $9.99. All four of the new Vortex models will be available in retail stores throughout the nation on September, 10, as well as HasbroToyShop.com. Check out our hands-on gallery just past the break.
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Americans Elect Shoots The Moon (And Misses) | Jon Evans | 2,011 | 8 | 13 | I want to talk about American politics. No, wait, don’t go! Don’t worry; it’s OK; I’m Canadian. Your nation’s psychotic death spiral of irrational blood vendettas, vampire-squid kleptocrats, and cargo-cult magical thinking means nothing to me. (Other than its undeniable entertainment value.) Yes, I mean both of your political parties. It’s so bizarre that you only have two that matter. We have . How do you southerners get by with so few? I’ve long argued that America needs a third party— third party. For a while I thought the Tea Party might be it, but instead they did something much cannier. Don’t get me wrong, I think their policies are delusional, but I do grudgingly admire the way they hold the Republicans in thrall by exploiting the GOP’s vulnerable primaries system. It’s the political equivalent of gaining root access by hacking an unpatched bootloader. Now a well-funded startup intends to birth a third party via the mighty power of the Internet. No, really. is on its way to accreditation and ballot placement in every American state. At the same time, it’s aggregating “delegates” who sign up at its into multiple like-minded groups who will suggest or support presidential candidates. A first round of voting will reduce the candidates to a primary group of six candidates, all of whom have to choose a running mate outside of their own party; then, in April of next year, an online convention will determine which of those six will be Americans Elect’s presidential candidate. It’s a nifty idea, and a lot of people, eg , are pretty enthusiastic about it. But alas, my feelings about AE are much like my opinion of Friedman: mixed but mostly negative. It’s getting a amount of for its secrecy about who exactly is funding it, the considerable veto powers reserved by its board, and the lack of diversity among its first cohort of delegates. But my main complaint is that I just can’t see it working. Shooting for the White House out of the gate is too much too soon. America needs a third party, yes; but that third party needs to govern a state or two before it aims for the presidency. You can tell that this startup was born in the Beltway rather than the Valley. The latter would create a , a city- or maybe state-level political movement, and iterate from there, learning from its mistakes. Instead Americans Elect is staking an on a single elaborate throw of the dice. It’s too bad, because we’re just entering the era when you create and sustain a whole new political movement online; but Americans Elect’s overambitious failure will probably tarnish that approach for years to come. A bizarre (ie nonzero) number of people are suggesting in comments that America’s first-past-the-post system makes a viable third party impossible. Let me just remind y’all who may be unfamiliar with how the rest of the world works that both Canada and the UK also have first-past-the-post voting; that Canada has had three or more parties for all of living memory, and its historical ‘third party’ recently surpassed the one that governed the nation for most of the 20th century; and, similarly, the UK’s historical ‘third party’ is currently part of the UK government. |
Gillmor Gang 8.13.11 (TCTV) | Steve Gillmor | 2,011 | 8 | 13 | The Gillmor Gang — John Borthwick, Robert Scoble, Kevin Marks, and Steve Gillmor — waxed and waned about the latest in social media buildout. Most notable was Twitter’s new Activities and @mention views, which rolled up not only your @mentions but follow and favoriting signals in a realtime notification stream. Activity view did the same thing for those you follow, with an aggregate stream of their attention. Yes, it’s the Attention and Gestures meme finally coming home to roost, and with it a fascinating series of political pebbles being skipped across the realtime stream. @borthwick remains juried out on the PlusPlex, while @scobleizer and @kevinmarks debate not if, but when, + will resolve its lack of search, filtering, and realnamification. @jtaschek is heard but not seen as he returns for a brief cameo before Comcast pulls the plug, but at least he’s back in the clubhouse. |
Dropbox Chooses Investor Group, Valuation Set at $5+ Billion | Michael Arrington | 2,011 | 8 | 13 | We’ve been tracking the twists and turns of the mega funding round feeding frenzy for over a month now. In July Sarah Lacy that they’d be raising $200 million to $300 million at a $5 billion or higher valuation. A week ago MG Siegler that the auction process was over and Dropbox was considering bids as high as $10 billion. The company has now chosen which investors will lead and participate in the round, we’ve heard from one of our sources. The final valuation will be less than $6 billion, and we’ve heard that the original estimates of a $200 million – $300 million round are still accurate. We do not yet know who’s leading the round or otherwise participating, but that information will probably become available soon. In the end Dropbox didn’t choose the investor with the highest valuation bid, we’ve heard. Look for the round to close and be announced in the coming weeks. |
Fake Apple Store Is Now The “Smart” Store | John Biggs | 2,011 | 8 | 13 | has some action shots of the Kunming “Apple” store that raised so much Internet ire and mirth . Although the insides are the same, you’ll notice one big difference: the apple is still there but the text has been replaced by a nail-salonesque sign dubbing the shop the “Smart Store.” They still sell Apple products, but now they’re smarter. As we’ll recall, the owner of the Kunming store used to be an authorized dealer until he began to react to the vagaries of the market and sell things at a bit of a premium. He’s now selling a grey market gadgetry since his license was pulled. That said, the store is still open for business and able to supply all of Kunming’s Apple needs. I wonder if he’s been using the same creative methods his competitors are using. shipment by jetpack, perhaps? |
Daily Crunch: Mainframe | Bryce Durbin | 2,011 | 8 | 13 | Here are a selection of yesterday’s Gadgets stories:
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Review: The Audi A7, A Transformer In Disguise | Matt Burns | 2,011 | 8 | 13 | The Audi A7 is different. The executive five-door fastback sits nearly atop Audi’s lineup, starting out at $59k with my tester wearing $80k on its window sticker. Excluding limited run sports models, a fully decked-out A7 is the third most expensive car Audi sells, placing only lower than the massive A8 sedan and R8 supercar. Still, even looking like a modern and practical station wagon, the A7 is a niche car but perhaps one with a broad appeal. The 310HP 3.0 TFSI supercharged V6 screams within the engine compartment yet the A7’s full-size stature prevents it from achieving true sports sedan status. The 2+2 seating configuration doesn’t make for the best people mover. Even the rear fifth door seems to suggest that the A7 has plenty of room for cargo, but it doesn’t; the trunk’s effective storage space is actually rather small. This identity crisis is further supported by the sheer number of creature comforts and available technology packages. The A7’s big brother, the stately A8, is Audi’s flagship and the A7 is not going to challenge that title. Yet the A7, despite the strange downsides, might actually become the most memorable Audi from this current generation and define the brand for years to come.
It’s clear from the moment you sit in the driver’s seat that the A7 is all about technology. Audi threw nearly everything in the sedan. It’s loaded with the best the company has to offer through an accessible and functional interface. This system, centered around a rotating knob, is a staple in the current Audi lineup. A power user-retractable center mounted 7-inch screen handles most tasks, with another screen embedded in the dash cluster providing the driver with additional controls and functions. Neither of the screens are touchscreen, yet four soft buttons surrounding the rotating knob allow additional controls as dictated by the selected screen. A small touchpad does provide for some fun tricks, though. When in radio mode, six numbers glow indicating favorite stations while navigation destinations can be inputted by writing them out with a finger. It’s clever. Audi’s MMI is among the top infotainment systems currently on the market. The system is clean, organized and best of all, lacking in drama. For example, Ford’s MyFord Touch system has a huge “Wow” factor but almost an equally huge learning curve. That’s not the case with Audi’s MMI. You sit down, put your hands on the controls, and go, “This is nice.”
The best part of the A7’s infotainment system is, strangely, not the main screen but rather the LCD in between the speedo and tach. This sort of screen has been a staple throughout VW’s brands for years; what makes the screen found in the A6, A7, and A8 different is the size. It’s not a small squarish screen but rather a large LCD that curves around both gauges in an attractive and natural way. This screen is exactly like the one found in the A6 and A8, and can control most media, telephone and navigation functions. There’s also an enhanced trip computer, fuel efficiency gauge, and compass. A steering wheel mounted scroll wheel and two-way navigation button makes flipping through the tabs and menus a non-issue. This simple control scheme sets it apart from competitors.
The A7 boosts several other tricks not normally associated with OEM infotainment systems. An Nvidia GPU provides unparalleled smoothness to the UI. Audi uses Google Earth for the navigation and it’s not a gimmick. Zooming in and out is a breeze, done with just a twist of that central knob, while the touchpad interface handles the destination input. A constant data connection through an embedded cellular modem provides the data stream and updated info. (There’s a SIM card slot right in the dash) That same data connection can be turned into a hotspot within the vehicle, permanently removing road trips as a way to escape Facebook. T-Mobile is the data source of choice and Audi dealers supply and install the SIM card upon vehicle delivery. It’s up to the car’s owner to pay the bill but they’re not tied down to T-Mobile — any SIM card tied to a data plan will work. This connection allows for more than just Google Earth. Through the my.audiusa.com portal, owners can send destinations to the vehicle’s nav system and update address books. The data connection also feeds weather, gas price info and weather info right to the car. My tester was fitted with the $5,900 Bang & Olufsen option. Turn the car on and twin tweeters proudly rise out of the dash. Owners can pop in a CD and the system impresses with crisp highs and solid lows throughout a full soundstage — just don’t turn on SiriusXM and brag about how much the system cost. The expensive audio system actually disappoints when the source material is anything but the best. SiriusXM is weak and flat while HD Radio has a sort of crackle — and forget about FM. Car manufacturers have lately turned to bespoke audio companies for their expertise and branding. The B&O system in this Audi is more about the latter. Listen to a lot of Eagles CDs? Opt for it. Everyone else should save their cash. Not all the technology is about fun and games. The A7 has an optional night vision mode that turns the secondary display within the dash cluster into an infrared scope. The view is rather limited, and I found, at least during the warm week in August I had the A7, it didn’t pick up animals or even humans. This makes the function teeters on the edge of being a novelty but could potentially be helpful when the air outside is cooler. The A7 also packs a standard assortment of next-gen collision detection tools and safety features: multifunction heads-up display, blind spot monitoring, adaptive cruise control, front and rear radar sensors, back-up cam, and a rather annoying blinking light that flashes on the dash and HUD when you tailgate someone even at low speeds. The top of the line Prestige model, which I had as a tester, even features adaptive headlights that pivot 15 degrees when turning. Most of the safety features are found within the A7’s $5,800 Innovative Package; I can’t imagine the car without any of these. In fact, I daresay that these functions are the second part of the A7’s draw but not the primary. Audi vehicles sell because they are awesome driving machines. The A7 wears the Audi badge with honor, and does it credit. It’s a fantastic experience, but one marred ever-so-slightly because of its aforementioned confusion. The 3.0 TFSI provides more than enough juice for the A7 to sprint to 60 MPH in a spirited 5.4 seconds. The 8-speed Triptronic is smooth and efficient as the A7 is rated at 18 mpg in the city and 28 on the highway. I bested the EPA’s numbers and saw 29 mpg during a 350 mile trip to Lake Michigan. The A7 is a blast to drive and should provide enough thrills for most. It’s a proper sports sedan masquerading as a fastback. The Quattro all-wheel drive system helps the A7 hug the road while a self-deploying rear spoiler rises out of the fifth door for some additional helpful downforce at speeds over 80 mph. The A7 shares a wheelbase length with the A6 and is just 1.1-inch longer overall. In fact the less-expensive A6 measures up almost better than the A7 with slightly more rear seat head and leg room. Plus it has a rear center seat. The A7 is, in a sense, an executive long wheelbase sports hatchback. (get that?)
You see, upon first inspection, the A7 fits the old adage of jack of all trades, master of none. It seems like its sports car ambitions are limited by the fastback sedan design. It looks much longer than the A7 feels. It’s also not a proper sedan as it only seats four; the rear middle seat is a plastic console. The luggage compartment is technically large as the rear plastic decks attached to the fifth door are removable. But when they’re attracted allowing for use of he rear window, the space is a just a deep, but short compartment. But none of those traits are potential deal-breakers. They combine to give the A7 a honestly unique feel. The A7, especially when considering its high-tech cabin, is a car built for a new type of buyer that wants something radically different, which the A7 achieves in the most subtle, but effective ways. It’s easy on fuel, a blast to drive, and loaded with accessible technology. I was, in the end, pleased. [slideshow] |
Buddy Media Raises $54M For Brand-Focused Social Media Management Platform | Leena Rao | 2,011 | 8 | 14 | a company that provides Facebook Page and social media management tools to brands, has raised $54 million in Series D funding led by GGV Capital with Institutional Venture Partners, Bay Partners and Insight Venture Partners. This brings Buddy Media’s total funding to just under $90 million. GGV partner Jeff Richards has joined the Buddy Media Board of Directors. One of Facebook’s first ad sales execs, Kevin Colleran, has also joined the company’s board of advisors. Buddy Media is best known for its social media management system to help create, manage and track social campaigns on Facebook. With regard to Facebook, the platform lets brand managers agencies create, manage and track Facebook pages in a to drive and increase user and brand engagement. Users don’t need to have any prior FBML knowledge to create pages on Facebook and can create sleek and interactive pages fairly easily. But Facebook isn’t the only social media platform that brands need to engage; Twitter has also emerged has a powerful communications tool. And Buddy Media also offers a as well. As CEO and founder Michael Lazerow tells us, it’s no longer just about Facebook, and as brands engage across a variety of channels, Buddy Media will provide them with a SaaS to manage this. He added that as Google+ scales and eventually adds a brand and company feature, the company will look to provide integration with the social platform. Earlier this year, Buddy Media social analytics tool Spinback, which develops a social commerce widget allows consumers to share products and purchases via Facebook, Twitter and email. This product is in the process of being integrated with Buddy Media’s SaaS Of course, as more brands look to social media for engagement with consumers, Buddy Media is reaping the benefits. The company’s revenue has more than doubled since the end of 2010. Last year, Lazerow told us that Buddy Media was to make $20 million in sales, so revenue could be at least $40 million. Buddy Media has added close to 200 new customers in 2011, including brands, retailers and media companies such as Ford Motor Company, Hanes, ESPN, Hearst Corporation (read more about that partnership ), and Virgin Mobile USA. Buddy Media’s employee headcount has grown from 40 employees in 2009 to almost 200, and the company opened a London office this year as well. Recent hired include a CFO, Dennis Morgan, who led corporate finance and acquisition efforts for Yahoo. Lazerow says the company is constantly evaluating a few things: how do brands better target content on a Facebook wall or on twitter; how do they get the right content to the right person, and how do you leverage the social graph to make all os this happen. He explains that for large brands and companies, social media monitoring is complicated by provisioning, auditing and scaling across various countries. Buddy Media makes this process simple, says Lazerow. And Lazerow says that has the company continues to grow, this capital will help scale development, global expansion, hiring, sales, acquisitions and more. One of the challenges, he says, will be hiring the right people, but he plans to double the company’s headcount in the next year. |
Hello Dali | Steve Gillmor | 2,011 | 8 | 14 | Twitter has dabbled for years with providing visibility into the realtime stream of attention and gestures. Its Track functionality allowed users to set up a communications interface around certain keywords, most notably the @username. Born of a user gesture first called the @reply, the feature survived the removal of Track in various forms, most recently as a separate view dubbed the @mention. This week, Twitter expanded that view. Of course, I had to read MG Siegler or watch Scoble on the to experience the two new streams, which apparently roll up not only my and my followers’ @mentions but Favorites, retweets, follows by others, and notifications of domain name cancellations. No, that last part’s not true, it’s sponsored domain cancellations. No, there’s something else but I can’t find it because it’s not available on my iPad or any other client but the Web client, which requires a non-iOS browser. So much for open. Perhaps I’ll have to wait for iOS 5 to see the new streams. The new update features enhanced cooperation between Apple and Twitter, along with the single most important feature of all, the notification bus modeled after Android’s top-of-screen alerts. By making notifications non-interruptive, iOS effectively supports a mobile version of XMPP notifications on the desktop. This was the vehicle through which Track made its way into Google Talk’s IM windows as a realtime notification stream. It was also the first thing turned off as FailWhales brought Twitter to its knees. Without Google+ I wouldn’t be so optimistic about @mention stream access via API. But with + citations now being injected into Google Social Search, we have an alternate route for this kind of Track-like functionality. Not because of its current stream, which seems devoid of any actionable information. I did a quick check of Facebook’s stream this weekend and found it much more useful. But now that + threads are promoted in Social Search, that should prove an incentive for people to populate their streams with references to news and posts both external and internal. Once the stream is seeded with fresh trout, Google can turn to surfacing these objects in its iOS clients. As we get closer to iOS 5, this will put pressure on Twitter to do the right thing with API support, or in the case of its own clients, surfacing the new views in an alert format. But none of the political games would be necessary if Twitter recognizes an opportunity to popularize the @mention stream as the best way of keeping up with realtime. Let’s reverse engineer this new Twitter release to get at the heart of the problem. Before the change, there were two ways to navigate the stream. A last in, first out stream of those you follow and their retweets of those you might not. And second, the @mention stream of posts containing a reference to your @username. The @mention stream is by definition high value, but it relies on your personal cloud of influentials to keep you up to date with important citations. The aggregate result is sampling the verbose main stream and being alerted by the more sparse one. Push notification of a group @mention editorial strategy is one way to expand the alerting mechanism and reduce the drive by sampling. The new @mention view extends Twitter’s recent email notification of @mentions and Favorites (follows have always had email notifications), but the second Activities view surfaces the signals of those we follow. Certainly the immediate goal is to amplify the street cred of these messages, generating metadata that can be injected back into the flow in ways more consumable than a realtime LIFO view. Among the valuable network effects produced by these streams is an aggregated sense of our social graph and its weight in the Activities graph. By comparing the value of these external streams, Twitter can give us access to a socially tuned stream that mirrors our collective interests. In turn, that stream is more likely to produce a push notification stream that will not overwhelm us. Such a notification stream will produce the long-sought business model Jack and Dick are after. No amount of Google+ maneuvering or Facebook stream rewrites can reduce this opportunity for Twitter. The steps are obvious: incentivize the creation of the data by making it visible, incentivize the partner community by releasing the API, and then lock down its native clients when iOS 5 appears. Or as Walt Disney once said: Hello Dali. |
Lean Startup Thinker Eric Ries: “Don’t Be In A Rush To Get Big, Be In A Rush To Have A Great Product” | Erick Schonfeld | 2,011 | 8 | 14 | Every tech founder thinks he or she runs a lean startup. But what exactly does that mean? In the video interview above , who came up with the term and is the author of an upcoming of the same name, explains his theory, which boils down to learning from a small number of early customers to improve and perfect your product before exposing it to a wider audience. “Don’t be in a rush to get big,” he sums up at the end of our interview, “be in a rush to have a great product.” Ries argues that an entrepreneur’s greatest advantage is their obscurity. If your first product sucks, at least not too many people will know about it. But that is the best time to make mistakes, as long as you learn from them to make the product better. “It is inevitable that the first product is going to be bad in some ways,” he says. The Lean Startup methodology is a way to systematically test a company’s product ideas. Fail early and fail often. “Our goal is to learn as quickly as possible,” he says. He also argues that startups should launch their products quietly until they figure out what customers really want. We discuss how Color could have used that advice. Ries also gives me a crash course in some of the increasingly popular Lean Startup terminology, such as “minimal viable product,” “product/market fit,” or “build-measure-learn feedback loops.” But can you build a lean startup in a bubble (if we are still in one)? “It is even more important,” he says, to go lean when everyone is throwing money at “success theater” and showing off . “Vanity metrics are the numbers you want to publish on TechCrunch to make your competitors feel bad,” he says. Don’t believe your own propaganda, or run your company on those metrics. ACtionable metrics that actually allow you to understand what drives your growth are much more important. Ries writes about lean startups at , and will be speaking at . |
Habit Labs Gets $250K To Turn Leading A Healthier Life Into A Game | Alexia Tsotsis | 2,011 | 8 | 14 | The Y Combinator funded and have merged this week to form one big health data focused startup called . Contagion Health’s product, Imoveyou.com has shut down in the merger and instead founders and will be focusing on their Health Month site and building out the still in stealth Habit AI. Aside from the early seed funding tagging along from Contagion Health, the new startup Habit Labs has received $250K in angel funding from , , Rick Webb from and . Habit Labs is in the same space as and . Benson is best known for his involvement with a social life goal site which eventually ended up selling to Amazon. Thus there is a lot of 43Things influence in Health Month, where users can sign up, choose three health rules they want to follow (like “Eat more greens”), then self-report whether they are following them or not by responding to a Daily Nudge email. Health Month uses gamification elements to instill actual behavioral change: Participants start out the game with 10 life points and lose points if they break one of their rules. But, because the site’s premise rests on social proof, users can beg for points and receive points from other users, with the eventual goal being ending the month with their 10 original points. There’s also the option of competing in teams, which might be fun for startups. McCabe tells me that the Health Month site currently has 45K users and that between 7% – 12% of them choose to upgrade to the premium version which allows for more than three rules, at $5 for the month and $50 for the year. McCabe expects the Habit Labs AI (what she calls “Health Month on steroids”) product to roll out slowly within the next six months. The company plans on using the money to grow their team and focus on their mobile product, starting with a HTML5 version of Health Month first. |
null | Sarah Perez | 2,011 | 8 | 12 | null |
Google’s U.S. Mobile Head Talks Local Intent, M-Commerce, Geo-Targeting And More | Leena Rao | 2,011 | 8 | 14 | Mobile advertising is a booming business, and Google, armed with its of AdMob, clearly wants a piece of that pie. One angle Google has been pushing late is the combination of local and mobile, whether that be through Places, Offers, Sites, and soon, . , Google’s head of mobile for the Americas sat down with us to give us a little more insight to how the search giant is looking to capitalize on advertising, local and mobile. One of the major factors Google is looking at when it comes to developing its own mobile offerings and products is consumer behavior, says Spero. He says one in three interactions on a mobile phone has local intent, and because of this, Google is incorporating this behavior into its own mobile products for businesses. “Part of this strategy is giving users the build a mobile property that works on a phone or tablet,” explains Spero. Included in this strategy is the which the company just launched as a way for small businesses to create a simple mobile landing page for free. Via these lightweight mobile sites, users post information and even include click-to-call features. After a week of availability, over 3,500 mobile landing pages had been created by small businesses. One interesting feature that Mobile Sites offers is the ability to actually sell products via the landing page with Google Checkout as a payments platform. Spero says that’s a reflection of the Google belief that m-commerce is going to be critical on phones. But it’s not has simple has just clicking the buy button. It’s also integrating comparison shopping on the phone, click-to-call functionality, and online search for stores. “Ultimately, the experience that a user wants on their phone is delivering all those pieces to the puzzle,” he adds. Another way Google is investing in m-commerce, says Spero, is though its Google Wallet initiative, which will allow consumers to pay for items via an NFC chip in a phone and an NFC reader at the merchant’s checkout. In terms of local advertising, Spero says that Google is exploring ways of using ad formats to move customers in the physical world, or via a transaction. Click-to-call ads are a particular focus for Google, and Spero says that these ads perform well on phones because the natural path for a consumer is to want to engage the phone and get more info from a merchant or service. The key in these advertisements on mobile phones is a ‘call to action’ element, which can work for a retailer, florist, insurance company and many other smaller businesses. So far, he says that over 500,000 Google customers are running click-to-call campaigns on a mobile phone. In terms of other forms of mobile advertising, Spero says that because of traffic to the web on mobile phones is exploding, display environment growth is ‘astounding.’ Of course geo-targeting is also a key component of mobile advertising, and integrating the location of a user could to improve targeting and perhaps CTRs. Spero says the demand for geo-targeted ads from advertisers on the local, regional and national level is huge, and that basically businesses in all these categories are competing. Today, Google can target advertising by state, and digital metro area, but soon the search giant wants to be able to target by city of zipcode (Google is only using a visitor’s local information if the user gives permission). It’s clear from talking to Spero that Google wants to be a one-stop shop for businesses, both large and small, to engage with mobile. Whether that be through offers (which Spero doesn’t consider advertising), payments, mobile ads, mobile sites, mobile analytics and more, Google wants to be the go-to destination. The vision, as he explains, is for Google to be able to help these businesses manage everything, through the killer combination of local, mobile, commerce and advertising. But quantity of products doesn’t necessarily come hand in hand with quality, and Google will have to make sure that these offering across segments not only work together, but also provide value for businesses (and consumers). |
uTest doubles down on security features, partners with Veracode | Mike Butcher | 2,011 | 8 | 14 | In the wake of news recently that software and computers are being and rogue states left right and centre (not to mention the recent attacks on Citibank and Sony) it’s clearly going to make sense that your systems are well checked out, whether you’re a large corporate or a startup. So it’s timely that software testing marketplace is today expanding to offer security and localization testing services. That means it will have an end-to-end suite of testing services for web, desktop or mobile apps, adding to its existing services like functional, usability and load testing. uTest CEO, Doron Reuveni says the startup is aiming to become a ‘one stop shop’ for real-world testing. Additionally, it has a new partnership with , a cloud-based application risk management platform. Veracode has automated app security tools, which, combined with uTest’s security testing performed by human testers, means the two will be able to offer a pretty handy service. uTest handpicks testing teams to match clients based upon locations, languages, OS, browsers, mobile devices and/or carriers. Testers are paid depending on the number and type of bugs they find, and the marketprice for bug finds fluctuates depending on the number of bugs left to find, the demand for testers, and other criteria. Effectively, this outsources QA testing to ‘the cloud.’ uTest has a community of 43,000+ professional testers from more than 178 countries around the world. It has about 1,000 social, gaming, retail and software clients. Back in September last year uTest led by Scale Venture Partners with participation from the startup’s existing investors, including Longworth Venture Partners and Egan-Managed Capital. That brought the company’s total funding up to $20 million. |
uTest Doubles Down On Security Features, Partners With Veracode | Mike Butcher | 2,011 | 8 | 14 | In the wake of news recently that software and computers are being and rogue states left right and centre (not to mention the recent attacks on Citibank and Sony) it’s clearly going to make sense that your systems are well checked out, whether you’re a large corporate or a startup. So it’s timely that software testing marketplace is today expanding to offer security and localization testing services. That means it will have an end-to-end suite of testing services for web, desktop or mobile apps, adding to its existing services like functional, usability and load testing. uTest CEO, Doron Reuveni says the startup is aiming to become a ‘one stop shop’ for real-world testing. |
Delay On Hulu Availability More Than Doubles Piracy Of Fox Shows | Devin Coldewey | 2,011 | 8 | 22 | A week ago, Fox changed its licensing rules so that non-paying users of Hulu would be unable to watch new episodes of their shows until . Put on your analyst hat and think about what effect this might have on, say, piracy of those shows. Did you determine that it would increase piracy? Congratulations, you are a better judge of consequences than Fox. Because piracy of Fox shows went up by a huge amount during this last week. Actually, it’s likely that Fox anticipated this increase in piracy and simply considered it worth the trade-off. With worse options for free users, more will watch the live broadcast, they suppose, and ad prices go up with these increased projections. Query: if these people could watch it on live TV, why would they be watching it on Hulu in the first place? For busy and budget-conscious TV-watchers, expensive cable and a DVR aren’t an option. Hulu is. Hulu gets shows out there, allows for targeted, relatively unskippable advertising, and with a reasonable one-day delay, doesn’t add much inconvenience to the bargain for the user. This eight-day delay is punishing, and while “getting something for nothing” is a rather new entitlement we all seem to have, it does feel like a bait-and-switch for millions of viewers. So what do they do? They google “download ______”, and halfway down the first page is a public, well-seeded torrent that downloads the whole episode — with no ads — in minutes, and allows them to use their favorite media player or take it with them anywhere. Wow! What a great way to watch your favorite shows! downloads went up by 114%, and went up a massive 189%. That number will only go up as more people discover the limitation. Will Fox backpedal? Not likely. But Hulu is a work in progress, and the cards change hands rapidly in this business. What seems like a good deal to Fox now, improving their broadcast relationships, might turn out to be a ball and chain a year from now as the practicality of cord-cutting grows. Sometimes companies have to do things that their customers don’t like. Raise rates, for instance. Ugly but inevitable. But making decisions plainly detrimental to your customer experience for mysterious reasons will have repercussions. In this case, they just lost thousands upon thousands of loyal viewers who enjoyed their products, many of whom consider themselves abused and will never return. |
Erply Takes On Square And Intuit With NFC Enabled-Mobile Credit Card Reader For iOS | Leena Rao | 2,011 | 8 | 22 | a company that develops retail inventory management software, is taking on Square, Intuit and VeriFone today with a new mobile credit card reader for iOS devices. Erply’s credit card device connects to an iPad or iPhone and will transmit a customer’s encrypted credit card data to its own point of sale and inventory management software suite to process payments. With the Erply’s reader, a retailer attaches the device to an iPad or iPhone’s charging port and this communicates with the company’s POS software to process the transaction and record the sale in inventory. The credit card information is actually encrypted inside the device, ensuring that the transaction is safe and secure. The benefit for the reader to connection with inventory management is that it offers a comprehensive solution for retailers instead of having to user different software. And this works especially well in retail environments, where there are large amounts of inventory. Plus, founder Kristian Hiiemaa says that the reader is NFC enabled for mobile transactions. Erply’s credit card reader is priced at $50 with a 1.9% transaction fee slightly less than Square, VeriFone and Intuit’s fees. Square , and charges merchants a flat 2.75 percent fee. Intuit . But Square’s reader and software is free, whereas Erply’s software ranges anywhere from $70 to $1000 per month. Erply can also leverage its existing user base of 20,000 retailers who use the company’s software for inventory management. Of course, it’s important to note that Intuit’s GoPayment reader integrates with popular accounting software Quickbooks, and Square has also developed a more comprehensive point of sale system with its latest iPad app. And Square is growing particularly fast amongst small businesses. Erply actually is a and has raised raised in funding from Redpoint and Index Ventures, Marten Mickos, Zack Urlocker (both formerly of MySQL), Kenny van Zant (SolarWinds), Aydin Senkut, David McClure and the Accelerator Group. Erply’s mobile credit card reader is available now for the iPad and will be available within three months for the iPhone. |
Desktop Virtualization Company Wanova Raises $10M From Greylock And Others | Leena Rao | 2,011 | 8 | 22 | , a turnkey desktop management cloud provider, has raised $10 million in series B funding from Greylock Partners, Carmel Ventures and Opus Capital. This brings the company’s total funding to Wanova provides Distributed Desktop Virtualization solutions that centralize control of the desktop infrastructure while optimizing the user experience and providing full support for offline use. Wanova’s flagship product Mirage, combines centralized PC image management with the ability to run images natively on a PC, allowing enterprise to reduce desktop Total Cost of Ownership (TCO) and improve IT operations. With Mirage, PC images including personalization settings run locally on a PC allowing users to take advantage of PC native performance, including the ability to run multimedia applications and work while disconnected from the network. Wanova actually just in the IP world, announcing its first U.S. patent for its centralization technology that provides layered, single image management of PCs in the network, local execution of the image on the PC, and optimized synchronization between local and centralized images. The new funding will be used towards building global sales and support teams and product development. |
Codecademy Surges To 200,000 Users, 2.1 Million Lessons Completed In 72 Hours | Jason Kincaid | 2,011 | 8 | 22 | Three days ago about — a slick, fun way to teach yourself how to program. The app has done an excellent job minimizing the frustration often associated with writing your first lines of code, and it sports a good-looking and intuitive interface. Another plus: the initial signup flow doesn’t show up til you’ve completed your first few lessons, so you’re writing code within a few seconds of landing at Codecademy.com. I’m not the only one who liked it: cofounder Zach Sims tells us that in the three days since the application launched, it has drawn unique users. That’s users who have actually interacted with the app — and not people who hit the webpage and bounced away a second later. Perhaps even more impressive: users have completed a total number of exercises. Sims also says that the company is actually a part of the latest Y Combinator batch (something they hadn’t previously disclosed). Given that the team only started working on the project around two weeks ago, it sounds like they changed their idea late in the program (they’re not the first to see success with a last-minute switch — Greplin founder Daniel Gross came up with that company a day before Demo Day, and later $4 million from Sequoia). Sims says that growth has remained strong, largely driven not by press, but by the badges users are sharing to Twitter and Facebook (you are awarded badges as you complete lessons). For more about the site, see our initial launch coverage . |
Refurbished 16GB iPad 1 Drops To $299 | Devin Coldewey | 2,011 | 8 | 22 | While $300 for a tablet might seem insanely high after this weekend’s , it’s still a decent buy. I still find it hard to recommend existing budget Honeycomb tablets over the iPad when I’m talking to people who aren’t into tech, and this makes its case even stronger. iPad or netbook? For some people the choice is obvious, for others not so much. But at $300 neither both are good deals. Still not sure? Let’s take a look at the other options. The new is only $20 more, and beats the iPad on specs, but the 7″, 16:9 screen might not be enough for people. Lenovo’s K1 doesn’t strike me as a quality tablet, and their (while it looks great) isn’t in the same price league. The will be interesting, but not for a while. The only real competition, I’d say, is a . I never had much good to say about these things, but at $180 they’re a good deal, come with support and a community of hackers anyone could be proud of. As an e-reader, I’m not a fan of LCD stuff, but as a budget tablet, this thing ain’t half bad. And sure, you can get a “tablet” for under a hundred bucks, but you’d be better off buying RIM stock. Yeah, you could do Craigslist, but you don’t know what they did to that thing. [via ] |
Android (Finally) Taking Steps Towards WebKit And Chromium | MG Siegler | 2,011 | 8 | 22 | ? It’s a question as old as time itself. Or at least a few years old. But given that the same company, Google, makes both products, it never made much sense. Now they’re finally taking steps to resolve this. A bit. Maybe. As a group of Googlers have on the WebKit-Dev group today ( by Google’s Peter Beverloo), the Android team is now committed to working more closely with the WebKit community. Yes, it’s a bit odd that a product so devoted to “open” wasn’t really working with the open source community before — but hey, better late than never. Writes Andrei Popescu: We would like to give an update about WebKit on Android. A while ago, we started the effort to upstream the Android port of WebKit. For a variety of reasons, this work took longer than anticipated and was never finished. We realize that the incomplete Android port that exists today in WebKit ToT has caused quite a bit of confusion and inconvenience to the project as a whole and we are very sorry for that. The full story is a bit more than it appears on the surface. While Android has its own separate browser which isn’t branded as “Chrome”, the two do share some code. But they’re not the same, and two separate teams work on each. For whatever reason, Google chose not to brand the Android browser as Chrome, and doing so now may cause some confusion since there’s Chrome OS — another operating system built by Google that’s unrelated to Android. So here’s what happening now: Google’s Android team is going to start making available another, slightly modified build of the Android browser, which will be fully open source. Think of it as Chromium to Google’s Chrome. Android-specific code will be removed and presumably, anyone will be able to use this code to build a new mobile WebKit-based browser. Here’s all of that in tech-speak: We plan to start by setting up a webkit.org build bot that will compile Chromium’s DRT for Android using the Android NDK, SDK and toolchain. We anticipate a reasonably small set of changes to the Chromium port to achieve this. We’re fully committed to maintaining this new flavor of the Chromium port of WebKit and having a build bot up and running as soon as possible will make this an easier task. At the same time, we will be removing the existing incomplete Android port. This includes the Android-specific code in WebCore/platform/android, as well as any code guarded by the PLATFORM(ANDROID) macro. What makes the especially hard to follow is that it sure sounds like the Google plans to call this open source version of the Android browser Chromium as well. It will just be a new flavor. Perhaps that’s not so bad since there are already Windows, OS X, and Linux flavors (and the Android one will be really close to the Linux one given the underlying OS technology they share) — but the finished product for all of those operating systems is called Chrome, on Android it still won’t be (presumably, anyway). Follow all of that? Yes, it’s still confusing, but regardless, this is a welcomed step in the right direction. |
Android Devs Can Now Start Optimizing Their Apps For Google TV | Jason Kincaid | 2,011 | 8 | 22 | Last fall, Google made its first attempt to take over your living room with the launch of Google TV — a platform that merged the web with television content to create an experience promising to usher in a new era of convenience and interactivity. Unfortunately it’s been mostly a dud thus far. The platform’s overly-complex user interface and content issues (some major channels specifically block access to their websites from Google TV devices) has led to weak adoption. Google is reportedly working to give the platform a major revamp, and there’s at least one more bright light in its future: soon, Google TV will support Android applications. Now, Google’s been promising that the platform would be receiving Android support ever since it was , but up until now there hasn’t been a strong indication as to when that’d actually happen (the most specific Google’s gotten has been “summer”). Today, we’re one big step closer to seeing that promise come fruition: Google has just a preview version of a Google TV plug-in for the Android SDK. This doesn’t mean that you can install Android apps yet. Rather, it means developers can start to tweak their existing Android apps for the so-called ’10 foot experience’, so that their apps will be ready once the Google TV update does ship to users. From the Android blog: These are still early days for Google TV, and this release is another step in providing developer tools for the big screen. While the number of apps available on TV will initially be small, we expect that through this early release of the add-on you’ll be able to bring optimized TV apps into the ecosystem more quickly. To start doing this, download the Google TV add-on today. Also, please continue to reach out to us on the Google TV Android Developer Community forum. We look forward to your contributions! |
Five Years Later, Twitter Rolls Out Image Galleries | Rip Empson | 2,011 | 8 | 22 | Over the last few months, Twitter has been rolling out some key new enhancements to their user experience, adding improved and the ability to upload images right from a user’s Twitter stream. The photo upgrade came thanks to Photobucket hosting and appeared as a pic.twitter link and image for a user’s followers, as and again , when the feature was officially available to a full 100 percent of Twitter users. Today, Twitter keeps the photo updates rolling, by adding image galleries to the everyday Twitter user experience. Huzzah! , these user image galleries will collect the 100 most recent images a user has uploaded into his or her Tweet stream over the course of their recent Twittering careers, organizing them all on a single page, and displaying them in chronological order. “The images included in user galleries can come from Twitter, yFrog, TwitPic, Instagram and other image sharing services supported in Twitter’s details pane”, Twitter said via its Help Center. Twitterers are likely going to appreciate this feature, as it means that users no longer have to click over to a third party photo sharing app to browse through a friend’s Twit pics. This new feature also serves Twitter well in its pursuit of a stickier user experience. Keeping users on the site for all of their photo sharing needs will no doubt be great for Twitter’s stats, and a welcome addition for users. As to the technical limitations of the image galleries, display (as mentioned before) will include a user’s 100 most recent images, and, unfortunately, video thumbnails will not be included, nor will Tweets with video links. What’s more, Tweets with images that were sent before January 1, 2010 will not be included in image galleries. For those looking for the new user galleries, they can be found on your profile page. According to Twitter’s Help Center, clicking “view all” will open the user gallery in the current window. Two different viewing options are included, being grid view and detail view, with the former being self explanatory and the latter showing the user the most recent image, “complete with the body of the Tweet displayed below it and thumbnails for other images above it”, Twitter said. Personally, it’s hard for me to believe that Twitter is just rolling out this feature in August 2011, but that being said, I’m glad it’s here. It’ll be nice to have the same photo viewing option above “similar to you” that we have on Facebook above our wall feeds. For those not seeing the new photo option in your user profile yet, have patience, the image galleries should be popping up within the next 24 hours, if they haven’t already. I’m not seeing galleries yet on the web client or on Twitter’s desktop app for Mac, but I’m sure they’ll be surfacing soon. After all, we’ve waited a few years for this, what’s a few more hours? Images courtesy of the Twitter’s . |
From Mobile Games to Connected Cars: Sneak Peek at Gazelle Lab’s First 6 Startups | Sarah Perez | 2,011 | 8 | 22 | Earlier today, new TechStars Network member, the Tampa Bay-based , . This 3-month, mentor-driven program based on the TechStars model is one of the first of its kind to emerge in the Tampa Bay region – a region that’s been pushing to become a new home to technological and entrepreneurial innovation. This first group includes some unique companies, like a location-based mobile platform for sharing digital media, an app that connects to your car to diagnose those baffling “check engine” messages and an online ordering system for restaurants that puts big company technology into the hands of SMBs, just to name a few. We got a sneak peak at all 6 of the new companies today, and are now eagerly awaiting their launches later this fall. While a group of 6 is small compared with other accelerator programs’ outputs, for Tampa Bay, it’s a notable number. This under-the-radar geographic region, which was previously home to Wikipedia before its 2007 relocation to California as well as the website builder Wufoo, isn’t really on the map of notable “tech hotspots.” But Gazelle Lab is hoping to change that with its new program for early stage startups. Below are today’s Gazelle Labs’ first participants, all of which are in various stages of development. The startups will launch this fall, when they present to potential investors at Gazelle Labs’ Demo Day event. is a combination gadget and HTML5-based mobile application that listens to your car in order to save you money. The company sells an off-the-shelf diagnostic gadget that connects to the onboard diagnostic (OBD) port of your vehicle. There are several different payment options for the service’s users. For $50, you receive the gadget and a year of service. You can also choose to buy your own gadget from a third-party and pay just $3/month for the service, or you can choose to pay $5/month for both the gadget and the service on a subscription basis. The OBD port is a standard port, accessible on all modern vehicles without having to get your hands dirty poking around under the hood. The gadget, which the company calls the “translator,” listens to the car’s computer and then “translates” those mysterious error messages into understandable language. Messages can come to you through push notifications, text messages, emails or via the AutoIQ online service. How bad is that “check engine” message, for example? Do you really need an air filter, as your mechanic says? In addition, AutoIQ not only makes it easier to understand what your car is trying to tell you, it will also help you find the best prices for servicing your vehicle in town. Repair shops will eventually be able to tap into the data AutoIQ generates and target offers to groups of customers. Pricing for that aspect of the service is still being worked out, however. The service will launch first in Tampa Bay and will then roll out to Southern California, followed by the rest of the U.S. is a new (in-development) mobile application that transforms normal metropolitan landscapes into adventure-filled mini-games that “promote local commerce and vanquish boredom.” While operating in the same general space as Foursquare and Gowalla, the app doesn’t see itself as competing directly with those “check in” based networks. Its goals are slightly different – promote local discovery, encourage users to “get out of the house” and explore their city, visit popular landmarks, discover new businesses and patronize those which are their favorites. Instead of checkins, the game will utilize “quests” – simple and fun tasks that enable users to earn badges and points and acquire gold. But unlike other apps that employ gamification techniques, CityQuest doesn’t want the rewards users earn to be meaningless. That’s why players can choose to donate gold they earn to local charities, community groups or schools in the form of actual cash. And regular users who acquire “experience points” will actually be able to help shape the game’s future development, suggesting businesses that should be included in future quests, for example. Of course, there may be a “deals” angle, too, where gold could lead to discounts at local stores, but that’s further down the road. The app will initially launch on one mobile platform this fall, and will then be ported to more platforms in the future. CityQuest also tied for first place at Tampa Bay’s Startup Weekend last month. , another mobile app that emerged from Tampa Bay’s first Startup Weekend, allows you to “drop” text messages and media in a geographical area for others to receive when they get there. That media can be music, video, photos, games, or any other digital file. The best way to understand Dropost.it is to think of it as sort of “location-based graffiti.” It’s not designed to be a niche experience, but rather a location-based platform for sharing media. There are several possible uses for this sort of technology, ranging from geo-fenced location-based reminders to in-store promotions where the app’s users receive discounts at local businesses. But the most intriguing thing about this app is how it attaches a real-world location to the online, virtual world. Using Dropost.it, you could see a video of an interesting event that happened at particular spot. Or maybe you discover a simple game to play while waiting in the long line at the bank. Or you arrive at the grocery store, and get a message from your roommate to pick up some milk. Messages posted to Dropost.it can be set to public or private, as desired. It will also integrate with social networks, like Twitter, Facebook and Google+, to enable friend discovery. Dropost.it will be available on iOS, Android and Windows Phone when it launches later this fall. , LLC is an online lead aggregator and cost-per-lead provider for multiple service-based verticals. That description is being kept fairly high-level because the company’s founders are still at their day jobs. This company is taking a different approach from the other startups in Gazelle Lab in that it isn’t disruptive in terms of the core service being offered, but in the way that the service works. Lead generation is a business that’s been around for some time, and has a sound business model, the founders explain, but the company plans on making some changes to address specific needs in each vertical they target. The company will initially target property management and real estate, where it will provide advertisers with more control over budgets, a better understaning of where ad dollars are being spent and itemized billing – all things its competitors currently lack. In short, Leads Directo will offer a Google AdWords-like toolset for acquiring leads. plans to integrate restaurant listings and menu ordering systems into streaming video services. While it can’t discuss specifics, the company says it’s in talks with a well-known streaming video brand. And it’s currently reaching out to others in the same market. To give you an idea of the clients RedHawk has in mind, streaming video services like Netflix, Hulu, or Boxee are the types of targets the company is interested in talking with. RedHawk would provide a way for these service to display links to restaurants via the screen that loads before you start the movie. For example, under the movie’s description, would be a simple option that read something like “Order Food.” Clicking the link would take you to a list of participating restaurants with online ordering systems. The way this interface would look and operate is up to the streaming video provider, as this would be a white label product only. However, RedHawk’s goal is not to function as an ad platform. That means local restaurants are not buying the links, or paying for a higher position. Instead RedHawk pulls from menu providers’ lists, and filters those by zip code in order to suggest the available restaurants to end users, along with delivery times and delivery areas. The customer would then be walked through a simplified online ordering system. RedHawk isn’t the final product name for the service, which has been in development since April. (Japanese for “table”) provides a web-based and mobile platform for restaurants to easily manage their online and mobile ordering services. For small to medium-sized restaurants, it’s still a challenge to get the information from the ordering system to the kitchen, says Teburu. Typical third-party systems often forgo expensive point-of-sale (POS) integration and instead phone the restaurant, fax in orders or send orders via email. Teburu makes POS integration a more affordable option, or restaurants can opt for the company’s specially designed HTML5 tablet application which runs on locked-down mobile hardware and software, like a customized version of Android, for example. The app will alert order takers to incoming orders via flashes or beeps. Then staff simply inputs the order in their own system. The overall goal is to provide SMBs with the same level of control over their menus and online ordering presence as larger companies have. The product will be white-labeled so restaurants can control own branding. A mobile app framework is also in development which would allow restaurants to take orders via a branded mobile application. Teburu already has a large chain testing the service right now, but will open up to others later this year. |
SimpleGeo Cofounder Matt Galligan Steps Down; Will Focus On Helping TechStars And A Non-Profit | MG Siegler | 2,011 | 8 | 22 | , location startup brought in former Digg CEO to replace co-founder as CEO. At the time, Galligan slid into the role of Chief Strategy Officer and became more of a public face for the company. Now he’s leaving the company entirely. You can read the news on SimpleGeo’s blog , as well as Galligan’s own thoughts . But essentially this is something that has been in the works ever since Adelson took over those many months ago, Galligan tells us. With the company now transitioning into their next phase, Galligan felt the time was right to fully step aside. He’ll continue to serve as an advisor, but Adelson and SimpleGeo co-founder Joe Stump will continue to steer the ship. While Galligan figures out what he wants to do next, he’s going to take an extended period of time off. SimpleGeo (then known as Crash Corp.) after leaving AOL in May 2009. He sold his first startup, Socialthing, . But Galligan isn’t fully taking a step back from the startup scene during his time off. He’ll be helping out , giving the incubator a much-needed voice and presence on the west coast. Galligan has long had ties to the TechStars community, as Socialthing was in the inaugural class in 2007. Additionally, he’ll soon be launching a non-profit foundation with , a longtime entrepreneur and now a managing director at Menlo Ventures. Called “ “, the foundation will ask founders to commit a one percent stake in their company to be given to charity in the case of a liquidity event. Galligan did this himself, giving one percent of the sale of Socialthing to Community Foundation in Boulder, Colorado. SimpleGeo has raised around . As they enter this next phase, whispers have them out there raising more. |
Thrive Capital Raises New $40 Million “Scalable” Fund | Michael Arrington | 2,011 | 8 | 22 | first venture fund was just $10 million, but the fund made 27 investments and more than a couple look like home runs. That fund, closed in 2009, holds stock in GroupeMe (acquired by Skype), Greplin, Art.sy, Warby Parker, Zaarly, Fab, Bank Simple, HotPotato (acquired by Facebook), KickStarter and OnSwipe, among others. Not bad for the sole partner, 26 year old , who’s also a cofounder of embattled but hugely successful Vostu. Now Kushner has a second, $40 million venture fund. But unlike most other funds, Thrive also has a co-investment structure with some of their limited partners that enables the fund to write much larger checks. The effective size of the fund is much larger, possibly up to $100 million. Thrive Capital is based in New York. The fund is not responding to press inquiries. |
A Woman, A Cupcake, A Bank And A Square: Why Credit Card Companies Are Scared Of Change | Jay Donovan | 2,011 | 8 | 22 | In the sleepy Columbus, Ohio suburb of there is a shop that makes cupcakes. These are not ordinary cupcakes; these are fantastic cupcakes. In fact the name of this establishment— —is no boast and can readily back up the hype (trust me, I ate one and it was killer). A relatively new business owned and operated by Leah Dotson, Fantasy Cupcake chose as its processor when it came time to set up a transaction mechanism for accepting credit cards. And then a funny thing happened. Coincidentally or not, several banks and processors approached Leah about setting up merchant services with them instead of relying on Square. Most of the visiting merchant services reps looked at the Square rate plan Leah had worked out and admitted she had a good deal and that indeed, Square would be her best bet. But there were two that didn’t go so smoothly. A rep came in with an offer and a flyer—“We’ll give you 300 bucks if we can’t beat your current merchant rate plus give you $100 to switch to our service.” Leah told the rep her Square rate (2.75% + no additional fees) and she said the Key bank rep “kind of panicked”, and laughably left as soon as she could (leaving a flyer behind but keeping the 300 smackeroos). Hilarious. The Rep? Well, here’s where it gets weird. That representative (actually rep-ing for ) gave her a bunch of information (or mis-information, actually) about Square, and suggested that she switch over to the First Data/Huntington services for her own protection. While Leah characterized her as professional, she admitted that the barrage of negative info about Square did freak her out little. Actually, it freaked her out a lot…enough to call her brother-in-law who helped her get set up with Square in the first place (and who also happens to be a payments expert). That’s how I got wind of it. So what was this mis-information? The First Data rep indicated to Leah that: This First Data Rep then tried to sell their merchant services program to her even though it was not quite as friendly for small purchases, which is the majority of Leah’s business. The breakdown compared something like this: In the end, a First Data merchant agreement would have amounted to almost $800 per year in additional fees for Leah vs. Square’s simple 2.75% rate structure and no additional fees. Forget the POS hardware purchases and statement fees and just think about that $.15 transaction fee. That’s 1.2% plus $.15 on every single transaction vs. Square’s flat rate of 2.7%. When you think about the fact that the majority of Leah’s sales are under $3.00, it really adds up. That’s roughly $.21 in fees for that $3.00 order vs. $.08 using Square. So what about all the encryption and PCI compliance claims about Square. If that were true, it would be enough to make anyone have second thoughts. I reached out to First Data for comment, but they would not comment about Square nor whether their representative indicated this to Leah. So I reached out to Square. Their spokesperson didn’t give me much detail, but indicated that no card numbers, magnetic stripe data nor security code data is ever stored on any devices authorized to use Square’s service. She also said that Square’s service is 100% PCI compliant and that all data passing thru is encrypted, surpassing requirements. She then sent me a . But what about the actual reader—the Square, so to speak. Is it encrypted? Well, it technically isn’t. I heard as much from App Ninja’s CEO . I confirmed this with George Peabody, Director, Emerging Technologies Advisory Service at . George told me that the Square reader actually makes a pretty effective card skimmer and there are rogue apps out there that can use it in that way. To be fair, card skimmers are readily available if you go looking for one though and there are even more complex and stealthy methods to retrieve card information than a mis-used Square (remember )? So Square is, in fact, an encrypted software solution that meets rules for PCI compliance and it doesn’t store any data on the devices that use it. It’s a safe solution for accepting Credit Cards, and therefore the First Data/Huntington rep that spoke to Leah Dotson is wrong. However, depending on how one defines encryption, the claim that Square does not use hardware encryption is actually true for now. In practical terms though, it would be difficult to intercept that card data swiped on a Square reader before that data reached Square’s software. The more likely way to facilitate this kind of skim, would be for a shifty merchant to use a rogue app on their jail-broken or otherwise unauthorized mobile device in place of Square’s software to collect card data. But a person that would hijack a Square reader to skim cards could easily rig another solution to do the same thing. So the real question a consumer should ask isn’t , but rather But back to our little drama. It’s certainly not shocking that one company would try to use mis-information to compete for business — that is par for the course in the contemporary business world. What is a little shocking to me is what this action could represent. Whether corporately sanctioned or not, do actions like this signal that big banks/processors are just a little bit afraid of Square? Perhaps Square, which seemed fringe to the big banks a year ago, actually represents a bit more of a threat than previously thought? Maybe the threat of losing that $800 a year in fees alone, is enough to make some processors and banks actually sweat a little? It sounds like your classic David vs. Goliath story, right? The “big guy” processors like First Data and even regional players like banks are starting to freak a little and this institutional fear is spreading to all areas of their merchant services sales initiatives—a logical conclusion right? Well…probably not. First of all, let’s keep the volume in perspective. Square is doing . It sounds like a lot but remember that processors like Chase Paymentech (one of First Data’s biggest international competitors) did something like . That’s about $1.5 billion a day and easily dwarfs Square’s volume. First Data’s volume is likely similar. A difference in volume like that means that, institutionally, Square is likely not on First Data’s radar at all. They are a gnat flying around one of First Data’s many Hydra heads. No, this story is likely less David vs. Goliath than it is David vs. David. Huh? You probably know that the payments space is incredibly complex. At least in the U.S.A. there are so many players and so many relationships with regard to merchant accounts, that the macro view of it is daunting, to say the least. However, what you may or may not know is that major processors like First Data and Paymentech typically do not set up merchant accounts for smaller, Mom-and-Pop type stores even though those transactions ride on their rails. It’s possible to do business directly with one of these big players, but it is expensive, so you pretty much have to be a big business yourself to engage with them. For small retailers, merchant accounts are typically set up by Independent Sales Organizations (ISOs) that are affiliated with the major processors and that specialize in selling and setting up payments and merchant accounts for smaller players. These could be banks, but they could also be small specialized businesses. The view of this ISO infrastructure is vast and I don’t pretend to be an expert on it. To quickly sum how these ISOs relate to the large payments processors, I reached out to George Peabody again for an explanation. “It’s really a sales channel…a sales channel for the massive processing capacity that the First Datas and the Paymentechs of the world possess…you’ve got to have feet on the street to sell it. There’re something like 8 million traditionally defined merchants in the US, and the vast majority of them want to be able to take credit cards because taking cards has a big impact on how much money they make. So it’s a chain of resold processing capacity. Some of the [ISO] resellers are banks. There are big ISOs and little ISOs and there are even independent sales people working for ISOs and actually selling to Mom and Pop shops” So here is my theory to explain why this First Data representative (likely working as or with an ISO) would be falsely telling Leah Dotson that if she uses Square to process her card transactions she could get sued. Square is competing, not with the big players in the payments processing realm, but instead with these smaller ISOs and independent reps that are looking for their $800 a year in additional transaction-related fees. Square is disrupting this sales model and is causing the ISOs to take notice and become much more competitive. I bounced this idea off George Peabody and he concurred. “This is classic internet disintermediation” and indeed both the small and larger ISOs are likely starting to feel the heat and at least take notice of Square and their disruptive service. So Square is the winner here right? They hold the high ground by operating services with much lower overhead and no “on-the-ground” sales force? Maybe, but one thing is for sure, they are still going to have to do a heck of a lot more volume than a mere $4 Million dollars a day to get any kind of foothold. Credit margins are thin and it is definitely a volume game. The standard infrastructure for payments is still embedded. I also think they will ultimately have to address the “hardware encryption” question. Whew. I’ve worked up quite an appetite, pondering all this drama. A cupcake could definitely ease my pain. Maybe I should make the drive to Canal Winchester for a safe snack. I’ll make sure to bring my credit card. |
YC-Funded Proxino: Automated Error Reporting For Your Client-Side JavaScript | Jason Kincaid | 2,011 | 8 | 22 | Here’s a new -backed startup that’s sure to catch they eye of plenty of web developers: , a new service that promises to let developers detect errors on all of their client-side JavaScript, without having to manually wrap their code with repetitive error handling commands. First, a little high-level background. Unlike languages like Python, which are executed on the servers of the websites you access, JavaScript code is typically executed locally in your web browser. This allows for speedy response times and nifty effects, but there’s a downside: developers have a much harder time figuring out if their sites are raising issues for some users. Each browser executes code differently — and if something goes wrong, developers won’t automatically receive a bug report. There are some ways to deal with this. Developers can build their own test suites, which automatically check numerous test-cases for various browsers. And they can also wrap each of the functions in their code with exception handlers. But Proxino’s founders say that test suites aren’t perfect (the worst bugs are the ones that slip through these tests), and that many developers don’t want to manually add error handling. That’s where Proxino comes in. Developers pass their JavaScript application’s through Proxino’s proxy server, which automatically wraps each part of the application with code that generates exception reports, so they get pinged any time a user’s browser has an issue. The proxy can also minify the code to reduce the download time, and caches JavaScript apps to further speed things up. And they’ll automatically convert other languages, like CoffeeScript, into instrumented, exception-catching, JavaScript. Of course, proxy servers have a potential downside: if the server goes down, your app could go down, and you’re not in direct control of getting it working again. To remedy this, Proxino uses a fallback technique — if Proxino goes down, you’ll simply start serving your JavaScript app from your own server as your normally would. Proxino acknowledges that there are already some tools out there that help optimize JavaScript, like Google’s closure compiler. But they say that there aren’t many tools that do a good job letting developers detect errors in browsers — and they say their competitors behave inconsistently across different browsers like Webkit and Opera. Proxino charges based on the amount of traffic your website draws. There’s a free version for low-traffic sites with less than 1,000 page views per month; the first paid tier is $30/month for up to 10,000 page views (you can see their full price list ). In the longer term, Proxino has some pretty ambitious goals: they say they want to “serve the world’s Javascript”. |
HP Pre 3 Will Never Come To US, But It’s Crazy Cheap In Europe | Chris Velazco | 2,011 | 8 | 22 | On the heels of the HP’s first and likely last , word has come from across the pond thatthey’re also deeply discounting the cost of the in most European markets. While it was originally available for the princely sum of £299 in the U.K. and €349 in France (both around $500), HP’s price evisceration brings the cost down to a remarkably reasonable $75 contract. Germany won’t be benefiting from price cuts because all the units have already been sold, believe it or not. Phenomenal deal though it may be, it comes with a bit of bad news for domestic webOS fans. HP had hopes for controlling the webOS ecosystem from end to end, and without the TouchPad, it would seem they don’t see the need to launch the Pre 3 in the United States. It’s a shame, really: the Pre3 was HP’s last chance at relevance in the smartphone market, and more than a few webOS diehards were waiting more or less patiently for it. If you’ve got money in your pocket and a yearning for webOS in your heart, feel free to import it when it goes on sale “shortly.” Be warned though, in spite of the Pre 3’s above-average specs, expect some spottiness when it comes to coverage. T-Mobile users will be relegated to EDGE speed, and AT&T will have partial 3G coverage at best. [via ] |
Microsoft Demos Xbox/Windows Phone Link With Giant Cats | Chris Velazco | 2,011 | 8 | 22 | Microsoft’s been touting Windows Phone 7’s Xbox Live functionality since day one, but it’s always felt just a little lacking. You can look at your cute little avatar and play games that bump up your gamerscore, but where’s the connectivity with the Xbox experience we saw in demos ? It would appear the folks in Redmond aren’t quite there yet, but a demo at their GamesFest in Seattle on Monday morning shows us that the idea hasn’t fallen by the wayside yet. Microsoft and the Kinectimals team showed off a novel method of moving a furry friend from within the Kinectimals Xbox game onto a Windows Phone. Players who have grown fond of the pets on their Xbox can have the game generate a QR code that can be scanned by the Kinectimals mobile app. While on the phone, players can take photos with the camera and strategically their pets in them for kicks. When players grow tired of carrying their little digital tiger around, the app generates a similar QR code that gets scanned by the Kinect camera and the pet gets reimported into the game. has the whole demo on video, for those having trouble imagining it: [youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fZuqi8IzTYY&w=640&h=345] The Kinectimals connection is part of Microsoft’s plans to strengthen the ties between their immensely popular Xbox Live platform and Windows Phone 7. Frankly, it’s about time: it’s one thing for Microsoft to use the Xbox Live brand to garner their mobile OS some gamer cred, but it’s nigh-useless if that experience doesn’t deliver. As points out, the only other game before Kinectimals that featured any sort of integration with its home counterpart was Full House Poker, which allowed gamers to transfer their winnings between play sessions. Between today’s demo and the concepts they’ve , Microsoft is looking at potentially owning a large part of the mobile gaming space if they can just get their A-game on. |
New Research Weaves Omnidirectional Antennas Into Clothing | Devin Coldewey | 2,011 | 8 | 22 | Antennas are a bit like like underwear. Everybody needs them, but you generally want to conceal them, and when you have troubles with them, it . Ever since we lost the pull-out and nub antennas of yesteryear on our phones and radios, the antenna has been more and more integrated with the designs of devices, but sometimes it isn’t practical to do so. Take our clothing, for instance. Generally, getting antennas to play nice with bending and reshaping has led to poor performance (and then there are these things). But might have taken the next big step towards creating a sweater transmitter. They used a thin, flexible plastic substrate and etched brass onto it, forming a sort of lightweight antenna thread. They then wove this thread into four areas of a vest: front, back, and both shoulders. A controller about the size of a deck of cards was mounted on a belt. This device monitors the signal of each antenna and switches between them on the fly in order to keep those bars up. In tests, it performed far better than existing whip-style antennas. Most importantly, it allowed reliable communication regardless of the direction the person was facing. It’s not quite ready for deployment to Banana Republic just yet, but there are plenty of applications. ChiChih Chen, one of the researchers, says: “Our primary goal is to improve communications reliability and the mobility of the soldiers, but the same technology could work for police officers, fire fighters, astronauts – anybody who needs to keep their hands free for important work.” Good signal can mean the difference between a good copy and a bad copy when a building is coming down, and a smaller device footprint means one more magazine or one more tool a soldier or firefighter can carry. I’m thinking this could be useful for espionage and police work, though. No more sticking wires to the undercover guy’s chest. It isn’t cheap: right now the tech costs around $200 per person to implement, which is probably out of NASA’s budget. The researchers believe they can bring the price down, and eventually integrate the antennas with normal clothes for safety purposes. |
Streaming Flash Games Startup iSwifter Says Revenue Will Pass $10M This Year | Leena Rao | 2,011 | 8 | 22 | , an iPad app that allows developers to stream flash games to the tablet device, is announcing that revenue for 2011 will past $10 million. That’s impressive considering the company is only a year old. As we’ve iSwifter allows users to browse, play and rate Flash games from gaming portals ( ) on the web, with each game optimized for iPad. The startup actually spun out of incubator last year. With iSwifter, Flash does not run on the device at all but it is streamed to the tablet just like a Netflix movie or a YouTube video. The company makes money off of a subscription-model for monthly gaming, in which users pay $4.99 for unlimited access to Flash social games on Facebook and MMOs. And the company that 500,000 people are playing nearly 2,000 Facebook games using iSwifter. In fact, iSwifter has found that many users (20 percent) are willing to pay for otherwise free games if they can be played on the iPad. Hundreds of thousands of iSwifter users have spent millions of minutes on Facebook with nearly half making In-App Purchases. iSwifter is also staffing up on engineering talent. Ajit Mayya, former Sr. Director of Engineering at VMware; Lucian Masalar, an architect from eBay, and Pankaj Kumar, previously at Microsoft; are all joining the firm’s development team. |
Miramax Launches Facebook App For Streaming Movies | Jordan Crook | 2,011 | 8 | 22 | Following , Paramount, and Universal, Miramax has jumped on the app bandwagon offering movie rentals in exchange for Facebook credits. Along with watching movie clips and playing games, users will get access to full-length feature films from the Miramax library, including , , , and . As of right now, the app is still in beta, reports . It was built in “just eight short weeks,” so you should expect a few bugs and hiccups in the beginning. US Facebook users will have a choice between 20 movies, each of which cost 30 Facebook credits to rent — that’s the equivalent of $3. The service was also made available in the UK and Turkey this morning, with France and Germany on deck, according to the . Once you rent, you’ll have a full 30 days of access to the movie. But once the movie is started, you only have 48 hours to finish it before it expires. The iPad and Google TV also work with the app. The full list of movies available right now (all 20 of them) can be found . |
Channeling Turntable.fm, ShortForm Shows Off Live VJ Video Parties (With A Custom TechCrunch Social) | Rip Empson | 2,011 | 8 | 25 | is so hot right now. In fact, when it comes to tweets, the synchronous social music platform . With the rise in popularity of Turntable, it’s only natural that video curation platforms would be eager to take a cue from the music dance party site and bring that disco to videos. of , which in concept is almost a direct analogue of Turntable.fm for videos, except that in the case of Chill, there are “Lounges” as opposed to the DJ rooms of Turntable. A stretch, I know. Of course, when it comes to social video experiences, there’s Socialcam and Google+, which both let you watch videos with your friends online, but there’s so much more potential here for interactivity, as shown by Turntable. , the year-and-half-old startup that launched to help video fanatics create personalized channels of web video content, also recently took to the synchronous, social video experience, as it recently launched its integration, which allows video jockeys to broadcast video content to a live audience. , the startup had just crossed the million visitors milestone, and the adoption continues, as ShortForm CEO Nader Ghaffari told me that, in July alone, the startup attracted 1 million unique visitors. This is a key leg up for ShortForm as it enters a hot space, as its new video party feature was built on top of thousands of already-curated video channels, from sources like YouTube, Vimeo, and pretty much every other video platform out there. As ShortForm has already launched to make it easy for their VJs to mix videos from these platforms into their own personalized channels, broadcast in back-to-back format like the TV viewing experience. Thus, ShortForm’s VJs can play their own curated video channels for their audience or pick from thousands of other VJ channels from the startup’s channel guide. Of course, up until now, the startup’s VJs were viewing video content asynchronously, but with the launch of Video Parties, ShortFormers can now view curated video content simultaneously with hundreds of other friends, and chat with these other viewers while they watch — just like Turntable. The neat thing about ShortForm’s approach is that it spotlights profile pictures of all the viewers in a live video party to bring in that extra level of social interactivity between viewers and VJs. Of course, when it comes to what videos are played, the host VJ controls the party and what’s shown. However, the host can, at any point, pass the “remote”, so to speak, to any other viewer, turning that viewer into the new VJ. If the original host doesn’t like what they’re seeing, they can always snatch the remote back from the offending VJ and restore their control over what cat videos are being played. “The big vision I see here”, Ghaffari said, “is that the first wave of stars in online video were the content creators. Now, with so much content produced daily, there is an opportunity to create a new breed of stars. Those stars are VJs who can curate that content into channels that tell amazing stories and share those channels with friends and viewers worldwide. Live Video Parties give those VJs a social and interactive way to tell their stories”. Live Video Parties really do have the opportunity to be addictive and engaging experiences, especially through chat, as viewers can discuss in realtime what they’re watching, or take off and start their own party. The fact that users can pass the baton around, too, and give the VJing power to other users, goes a long way to building a true interactive video platform. To give TC readers a taste of the Video Party experience, ShortForm has created a custom party focused on a TechCrunch-branded experience, in this case specifically Chris Dixon’s “Founder Stories”. Viewers can join each other, as well as the ShortForm staff, to watch a simultaneous stream of Dixon’s interviews. Of course, usually the host can pass the remote to other viewers, but in this case, it’s all Founder Stories, all the time. It’s a great example of how VJs, brands, and more will be able to customize their pages and their video experience to grab eyes, views, and maybe even dollars. . |
“Cyberloafing” Study: Slacking Off At Work Is “Salubrious” | Devin Coldewey | 2,011 | 8 | 22 | A study performed at the National University of Singapore has confirmed what many of us seem to know intuitively: taking a little time off of coding or writing to check your favorite blogs or webcomics is actually a productive behavior. Just as taking a short break to get a snack or a coffee can reinvigorate you, taking a very short break to do something other than type or mouse around improves the quality of your work thereafter. , started out with participants doing a repetitive task: highlighting every “e” in a 3500-word document. They then were told to do one of three things: one group was told to stack sticks in a certain way, another was told to do anything but go on the web, and another was told to go on the web and check out a few standard blogs and sites. Lastly, they were asked to repeat their first task with a different document. Not surprisingly, the web people were the least mentally exhausted (according to the infallible questionnaire) and most productive. Interestingly, checking email did not tend to restore people, as it was viewed as a kind of work to read and respond. Methodologically, it’s not bulletproof. People doing “anything but web” in their own environment, rather than a lab, would likely be as refreshed as the web people. And tasks that require more focus and skill (creative tasks rather than repetitive) might not be as forgiving of interruption. But the point was made that web browsing didn’t have any deleterious effect on the participants’ ability to function. It didn’t act as an opiate. Naturally, this only applies to a certain extent (no WoW raids), and real-life work conditions must be reasonable as well (web access may not improve sweatshop morale). But attempting to limit or control workers’ ability to go to certain sites or take short breaks like this (I just took one in the middle of the last paragraph) is certainly counter-productive. It reduces trust and makes people unhappy. And saying that checking Reddit or 1UP is stealing from the company only alienates the people who know better. Plus, they’ll keep on “stealing” without a second thought. So next time your boss walks up to your cube while you’re taking five to hit up a few blogs, tell him about this study and suggest they make it policy. People love policy. |
Bloody Thursday: Google Deadpools All Slide Products Except One | MG Siegler | 2,011 | 8 | 25 | Because we needed more big tech news this week. Yes, it’s true that Google has just brought the hammer down on Slide, earlier this evening. Yes, it’s also true that is leaving. Now we also know the fate of all of the Slide products. And it’s not pretty. of them are being discontinued — except one, we’ve learned. This means both the Slide products before , and the newer ones that the Slide team has been building within Google for the past year. Yes, it includes the newer products like , , , and the . They’re all dead. The lone exception is Prizes.org ( ), we’ve heard. The reason is that this was developed by the Slide team in China for Google, and they’ll keep pursuing it, apparently. It was only last August that Google bought Slide for around $200 million after employee bonuses. The idea was to get more serious about social games, as well as to get proven entrepreneur Levchin on board. But a lot has changed in the past year — for one thing Eric Schmidt is no longer CEO. For another, Google now has Google+. Slide had been running as a completely autonomous unit broken down into smaller teams within Google. For a while, that seemed like a good strategy that may keep Google nimble. Now it just looks kind of silly. Slide was so autonomous that many were working on products that competed with features that were a part of Google+. And many of the apps created were iOS-first, and didn’t work at all on Google’s Android platform. For their part, Google only has the following to say: Max has decided to leave Slide and Google to pursue other opportunities, and we wish him the best. Most of the team from Slide will remain at Google to work on other opportunities. It’s also true that the Slide teams did not learn about this bloodbath until this afternoon. You can’t help but feel bad for these teams — especially the Photovine team which really did just launch their slick photo-sharing app a week ago. Unlike other Slide projects, Google even gave them so PR resources to get the word out about the app. Eight days later, dead. Larry Page is apparently not messing around in his efforts to streamline Google as much as possible and trim any fat. While Google says that most Slide team members will stay at Google, I would not be surprised to see an exodus pretty quickly. : Slide has just put up the following to let customers know about the product terminations: We wanted to give you all advance notice that in the coming months, a number of Slide’s products and applications will be retired. This includes Slide’s products such as Slideshow and SuperPoke! Pets, as well as more recent products such as Photovine, Video Inbox and Pool Party. We created products with the goal of providing a fun way for people to connect, communicate and share. While we are incredibly grateful to our users and for all of the wonderful feedback over the years, many of these products are no longer as active or haven’t caught on as we originally hoped. Most importantly, we wanted to take this opportunity to reassure you that we’re committed to helping our users preserve their data as easily as possible. We recognize that many of you have stored valuable content with us and want to assure you that, wherever possible, you will have ample time to download that information or transfer it to another service. For example, on Slide.com, we will enable users to either download their photos or export them to a Picasa account. We are working to release this export feature over the coming weeks and, once added, users will have several months to take advantage of transferring their photos. |
Photographer Spends Hundreds Of Thousands To Create 8×10 Digital Sensor | Devin Coldewey | 2,011 | 8 | 25 | is a photographer who specializes in taking beautiful photographs of very expensive things. Cars, luxury goods, wristwatches, that sort of thing. He shoots on 8×10 film, which is expensive enough that you generally want to get it right the first time. So he shoots test shots on instant 8×10 Polaroid film to make sure the exposure and focus are right. At $15 a pop, 7 or 8 test shots per photo, and dwindling supplies of the Polaroid film itself (though the Impossible Project is ), it became evident to Feinberg that he couldn’t continue doing things that way. So what did he do? No, he didn’t buy a Leaf or Hasselblad. He decided he’d . After some haggling and assurances that yes, he was serious, a prototype was put together in Februrary of 2010 and the production unit delivered in early 2011. He calls it the Maxback. It’s fully 8×10″; for comparison, Hasselblad’s best digital back, the , is 36.7×49.1mm. Feinberg says the largest available backs are about 4.5x6cm. Here’s a comparison to show you how that compares with the Maxback: Yes, quite a difference. The interesting bit, though, is that the Maxback isn’t designed to produce many pixels. In fact, this whole enormous sensor only puts out a 16-bit 10-megapixel image. It’s a 10-megapixel image of the highest quality, of course, because of the quality of the lens and the size of the pixel wells, but still not big enough for high-fidelity printing on posters, magazines, and so on. He takes a few shots with the digital back (which he had engineered to fit his large format setup exactly), then simply switches it out for the 8×10 film when he’s satisfied. The cost was… well, I’ll let Feinberg explain: “The development and production of two backs (I wanted to have a spare) was equal to the cost of a good size house – before the housing crash.” So we’re probably talking half a million dollars. The thing is, he was spending $50,000 on Polaroids every year. He hopes it’ll pay for itself, and now that the design and testing is done, the cost for making more should be “in the low six figures.” So he might be able to fast track breaking even by selling a couple to other large-format photographers with money to throw around. An interesting, if expensive, solution to the problem, and the result is impressive to say the least. If you have a minute, — you might recognize a few, but there were some beauties in there I hadn’t seen, especially in the Esquire wristwatch spread. I love that floor, too. [via ] |
Tweaking The Algorithm: Google Gives A Small Peek Behind The Curtains | Jason Kincaid | 2,011 | 8 | 25 | One of the most common complaints critics (and competitors) have against Google is that the company — despite its numerous open products and initiatives — is very secretive about the countless algorithms that power its crown jewels, Google Search. In other words, search is a black box. Google’s argument has generally been that it to be this way — if it told everyone exactly how the algorithm worked, then it would be much easier to game, and search results would suffer. In any case there’s plenty of mystery around Search, which is why the video today to the Google blog is so interesting: Google has given a quick video walk-through detailing how its engineers gradually adjust the algorithm, which — according to the video — gets tweaked more than 500 times per year. The video is only four minutes long and is worth watching in its entirely, but here’s a quick rundown on how a change to search goes live: The video also goes into a quick anecdote about what Google calls ‘Full Page Replacement’. This refers to the times Google looks at your query, decides you’ve misspelled it, and then presents the results for the spelling, rather than just suggesting the proper spelling and displaying the results for the results. To test this, Google looked at how many times users explicitly clicked on the link for the results for their original query (which Google believed was misspelled) — Google decided that so long as this ‘escape hatch’ was only clicked 1 in 50 times, it was a good change. And it passed the test. [youtube=’http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J5RZOU6vK4Q’] |
DoughMain Raises $5 Million For Gamified Financial Education Platform For Kids | Rip Empson | 2,011 | 8 | 25 | , a startup that combines family coordination and financial education into a simple, realtime, and gamified platform, has announced that it has raised $5 million in seed funding from a series of private angel investors. The round of financing has been used to support the launch and rollout of , as well as to contribute to the development of DoughMain’s mobile applications. But what exactly is DoughMain all about? DoughMain President and CEO Kenneth Damato said that the startup’s goal is simple: It wants to give families across the country a simple solution that allows them to coordinate household activities and, in doing so, expose their children to important financial management skills. DoughMain is attacking household management by offering its users services like an integrated family calendar, a chore tracker, and an allowance (or rewards) tool — as well as three initial age-relevant gaming sites to make American households run like clockwork and give kids a fun and useful tool to help them learn (in an age-appropriate way) how to save, use, and manage money. The startup’s so-called “family coordination platform” allows parents to customize the DoughMain platform in such a way that it acts as a secure, personalized micro-network for their family. Within that network, family members can view each of their own responsibilities, what chores still need to be accomplished, for example, as well as that of the entire family. (Presumably so that they can bug their younger siblings until they complete their chores and learn how to balance their checkbooks.) Parents can control the amount of information their children can access, be it the ability to create calendar entries or to show that a specific chore has been completed. Because the platform updates in realtime, parents can reward their obedient children for their accomplishments with “DoughPoints”, the startup’s virtual currency, or through boosting their allowances, via hard, American currency. designate that a chore has been completed. Since information is updated in real-time, parents can On top of its family coordination platform, the startup offers financial education options that are neatly integrated with chores and the other financial experiences their children move through as part of interacting with the platform. The platform offers teacher-developed content through safe gaming platforms like TheFunVault.com, a Flash game that teaches basic money management lessons for kids ages 5 to 9, or through SandDollarCity.com, a multiplayer virtual world where kids ages 8 to 12 manage a family candy stop, or, finally, IRuleMoney.com, a site that features financial content and contests for teenagers. The mobile version of DoughMain is scheduled to be released in September, which will allow families to stay connected and coordinate on-the-go. For more, . |
Microsoft Patenting Multi-Screen, Multi-Touch Gestures | Jordan Crook | 2,011 | 8 | 25 | ( : The patents listed have not been granted, just recently made public.) Back in February of 2010, applied for a number of patents related to touchscreen gestures on a tablet. Many of them concern a dual-screen device, conjuring images of the . The others focus mainly on bezel gestures. Those patents have gone public now, though they have not in fact been granted yet. With IP wars raging across the globe, it’s certainly worth taking a look at the technology that Microsoft is attempting to lay claim to. So off we go: This one’s pretty interesting. It basically brings the bezel into the equation as far as gestures go. The patent provides for single-touch gestures, multi-finger same-hand gestures, and multi-finger different-hand gestures, all of which can operate along the bezel moving from the inside-out, or the outside-in. Now all Microsoft needs is to multi-toe different-foot gestures and the bezel is theirs. There’s also mention of bezel gestures inciting a drop-down menu. We’ve seen something similar to this on the . To wake the device up you slide your finger from the bottom bezel up into the screen. Multi-tasking requires the same gesture but from the sides of the slate into the screen. So here we have another bezel-related patent, this time concerned with Radial menus. It basically describes a way to access, navigate, and use a radial menu on the screen through use of bezel gestures. We haven’t seen a whole lot of radial/pie menus except on the Microsoft Surface and a little taste of one in Honeycomb’s browser. The Honeycomb pie menu works by placing half a finger on the screen, half on the bezel, although the screen is the only part of the device receiving the input. Yet another bezel patent. But the last of the bunch, I promise. This one is indeed very similar to the first up there, but covers exactly what the name implies: multi-finger gestures. This one also covers the use of multi-finger gestures associated with one or many exposable (and apparently customizable) drawers. It also extends the gestures to use on a device with multiple screens. And with that we can head on over to the other batch of patents, all focused on multi-screen gestures. This next patent focuses mostly on the classic double-tap and how it’s used on dual- (or multi-) screen devices. From what I gather, it looks like this treats the double-tap as a way of going into full-screen mode, and what Microsoft is calling “pocketing” the tapped object. That is when the device is using a cross-screen combination display. However, if the device is in split-screen mode, the double-tap displays the tapped image in full-screen on one display, and “condensed” on the other. Another classic touchscreen gesture, but with the added awesomeness of a multi-screen system: pinch-to-zoom. Unlike the double-tap patent, this one doesn’t seem to have any mention of funky pinch-to-zoom split-screen commands. There’s really nothing super new about it except the introduction of multiple screens. This is pretty interesting. This particular patent describes a way to bookmark a certain “journal page” on the device by holding the corner of the “journal page” on the first screen, and performing a sliding motion on the second screen to indicate that it should be bookmarked. We assume that the use of the term “journal page” refers to all types of content. The bookmark is then a selectable link on the first screen, and is identifiable by a portion of the journal page displaying as the bookmark’s icon. The Hold and Page Flip patent has to do with split-screen viewing. By holding one finger on the screen whose content you’d like to continue viewing, and performing some type of unspecified “input motion” on the other screen, the content on the first screen will “hold,” while the content on the other screen will change, or “flip.” Last, but certainly not least, we have the hold and tap patent. This one is geared toward communication between the two screens. In one instance, holding a displayed object on the first screen and tapping the second will move said object from the first screen to the second screen, right where you tapped. In another example, the hold and tap gesture can be used to copy a held object onto the second screen. If the displayed object on the first screen happens to be a function, holding that function and tapping the second screen will apply that function to a displayed object on the second screen. Who knows when, if ever, these patents will come to fruition? But with Microsoft attempting to control the technology, other tablet designers should take note of these patents. Especially if multi-screen devices are in the works . [via ] |
It’s Official: The Internet is the Greatest Deregulatory Success Story of All Time | Andrew Keen | 2,011 | 8 | 25 | Earlier this summer, at the e-G8 Conference in Paris, Jeff Jarvis French President Nicholas Sarkozy to “do no harm” to the Internet. But Jarvis isn’t alone in wanting government to stay out of Internet affairs. Take, for example, the Federal Communications Commission’s (FCC) Commissioner who believes that the “Internet is the greatest deregulatory success story of all time” and thus, like Jarvis, uses the directive of “doing no harm” in determining government legislation. I interviewed McDowell earlier this week at the where he appeared in with fellow FCC Commissioner Mignon Clyburn. In addition to spectrum policy, innovation and privacy, we addressed that thorny question of whether the FCC should be shut down – a scenario that didn’t seem to bother the apparently imperturbable Commissioner. Is it just me, or does McDowell really look like George Clooney? |
The Life And Career Of Steve Jobs, In Crazy Taiwanese Animation Form | Greg Kumparak | 2,011 | 8 | 25 | The arguably crazy (and inarguably crazy fast) animators at Taiwan’s Next Media Animation are at it again. After blasting out over-the-top animated summaries for everything from the story to , they’ve done what they do best with a tale that’s on just about : the life and career of Steve Jobs. But don’t worry: while it’s just as absurd as most of their animations tend to be, they keep things mostly respectful. The lowest it goes is when they’re showing the birth of the Mac, and things get a bit… literal. After that, it’s death-defiance and lightsaber-wielding all the way down. [youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LJSFFpDuGZU&w=640&h=390] Once you’re done with the video, be sure to rinse off the kitsch by own John Biggs. |
“Nanopower” Shoes Could Generate 20W Of Electricity During Walking | Devin Coldewey | 2,011 | 8 | 25 | This is different from those other electric shoes that were making the rounds yesterday. Piezoelectrics are interesting, but simply don’t produce a lot of power for their size. Enough to make a low-power transmitter squirt a few bytes, or light an LED. They’re great for collecting ambient forces like sound and vibration, if you know the direction and type of force you want to harvest, there are better ways to go about it. In the case of harvesting energy from footsteps, you have a pretty good idea of how the forces will work. And some researchers from the University of Wisconsin Madison are working on a system that might be able to pull as much as 20W from your strut. Why are you strutting, anyway? You think you’re so cool. Yes, theoretically, you could charge your iPad or power a whole low-power computer of some kind just by walking around. Of course, you could never stop walking, which might end up being a good thing. The researchers, who have privatized to research and sell the technology , say that somewhere around 300W of power dissipates as heat alone, and they think they can siphon off a bit without messing with your gait. What they’ve done is introduce a fluid made up of tiny metal microdroplets into a special substrate. When your foot presses down on it, the droplets are forced through the substrate, which generates electricity by a means known as reverse electrowetting (that’s probably patent pending, but you can ). Once the energy has been grabbed, it can be held for drawing off later or used immediately to power a device. They suggest a sort of relay that would do a mobile phone’s high-power transmitting for it, while using a lower-power signal to send stuff to the phone, saving battery life. Kind of an over-specific application, but you get the idea. They address several potential issues (squishiness, leaks, cost, etc) but don’t mention weight. I’m concerned that the battery and liquid metal would increase the weight of the sure significantly. I like light shoes myself, and I’m not sure I’d want to add another four or five ounces to each foot for a questionably accessible power source. [via and ] |
Create A Twisted Dreamscape Of Screaming Skulls With These DIY Animatronics | John Biggs | 2,011 | 8 | 25 | Are you the kind of person who would love to have an animatronic Gary Coleman on your shelf, his pudgy face cursing like a sailor at your guests while you roller skate around your basement wearing a skin-tight rubber suit and sing reggae-infused Coldplay covers? If you said “Absolutely!” then read on. This DIY shows you how to make googley eyes that move, a real, working mouth, and eyebrows. A microcontroller handles the servo controls and ensures that your creation reacts more like a robot and less like something out of the Hall of Presidents. You can see the plans on so you, too, can make a strangely staring POTUS out of motors, cardboard, and wire. The includes sections on all of the pertinent parts. Here are two examples of working faces below. [youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TG-h_KAZ6XY] [youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YmK1c3W1axw] |
As Quora Thinks More About Mobile, They Drop A Pin On Location | MG Siegler | 2,011 | 8 | 25 | Some of the most interesting and relevant content on are related to places. But up until now, Quora hasn’t done much to focus that data using location. Today, they’re starting to. A new feature going live shortly will allow users to set location information for topics. For example, if there’s a topic about the Golden Gate Bridge in San Francisco, you can now drop a pin to indicate where that is on a map. This location will then show up to everyone browsing that topic. And the map can be set to show the satellite or terrain view as well (they’re using Google Maps). Specific addresses can also be entered. This may not sound like a big deal, but it likely points to where Quora is thinking about heading with regard to location itself. The company notes that as more people use the service from their mobile phones, location-based questions and answers are increasingly important. This is something that other startups, like , have been . Location also more generally allows Quora to tie topics together in a new way. For example, if you’re planning a trip somewhere, you could look up interesting information around the area you’re headed that might not otherwise be surfaced by a general query. It looks like Facebook aren’t the only ones . |
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