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mDialog Enables In-Stream Ads For Roku Content Partners | Jason Kincaid | 2,011 | 1 | 18 | Whenever you’re dealing with premium video content that’s going to be distributed online, the most important question is always about money. Or, rather, how exactly the TV show or film you’re distributing is actually going to make any. Case in point: YouTube Mobile didn’t have any of VEVO’s music videos for months despite the tight relationship between the companies, because YouTube didn’t have a way to present them with ads. Then YouTube for some mobile devices, and now Android users can watch VEVO from their phones. Simple enough, right? But inserting ads into content isn’t always as easy as it seems, especially when you’re dealing with HTTP Live Streaming (HLS), which is typically used on iOS devices and plenty of other players. One company that’s working hard to change this is . The mobile video platform allows content owners to upload their assets, flag when in each video they want an ad to appear, and then distribute that content to users. And today the company is announcing that it’s added support for the media player. So what does that mean for Roku? The Roku box uses HLS to stream video to customers — now the company will be able to give publishers another way to monetize content they push to Roku users. And that in turn means Roku will be able to attract more content partners. Roku just today that it’s getting its first “linear stream” of content through a partnership with WealthTV (which will stream content 24/7 like a cable channel, instead of on demand like Roku’s other content partners). WealthTV is going to charge $2.99 per month, but Roku may be able to attract partners willing to offer free linear streams provided they can insert their ads using platforms like mDialog. One other interesting thing to note about mDialog: CEO Greg Philpott says that the system has been set up so that ads are injected into the HLS stream without any kind of buffering, so it’s a lot more like watching TV than many of the ads that appear on other streaming services. Of course, it’s not all roses: even if you get to skip the buffering, you still have to sit through an ad.
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"Squirrels" And 100 Other Reasons Why Tumblr Is Down | Alexia Tsotsis | 2,011 | 1 | 18 | With recently experiencing a and a reported of service reliability, there are plenty of jokes about the microblogging service’s downtime (most I’ve heard have at least a tenuous WikiLeaks connection). Here’s the most elaborate Tumblr satire piece yet: Go to and hit refresh. Hit refresh again, and again. Created by , the site is a riff on the Tumblr “We’ll Be Back Shortly” page and generates over a hundred hypothetical excuses as to why Tumblr is down so Tumblr doesn’t have to. (Tumblr is currently UP, at the moment.) Some of the best: Oh hell, every single one of these is good. for yourself. Squirrel teaser image: |
HubSpot Heating Up, Sequoia And Google Ventures Looking To Invest | Michael Arrington | 2,011 | 1 | 18 | Digital marketing startup is close to closing a new round of financing, we’ve confirmed, that may put a valuation on the company in the $200 million range. is likely to invest, we’ve heard from multiple sources. And , which has recently shown an increased willingness to invest in later stage funding rounds, is rumored to be interested in the company as well. The company last raised capital – a led by – in late 2009. They’ve raised a total of to date. |
Boo.ly's browser add-on aims to take the friction out of online shopping | Steve O'Hear | 2,011 | 1 | 18 | , which launched in late December last year, is another attempt at making online shopping more efficient. It takes the form of a browser plugin that supercharges searches on the likes of Google, Bing and Amazon (and a host of other online retailers) to offer on-the-fly price comparisons from a database of 10,000 merchants, along with any known available discount coupons. Notably, the two person startup based in Hampshire, UK appears to be targeting the U.S. from the get go, as well as its home territory. The way boo.ly works is as follows: once the browser add-on is installed (Firefox, Chrome, with IE to follow) any product searches on supported sites show up with a boo.ly icon next to the result if a match is found. Clicking on the icon brings up those price comparisons that point to a better deal if there is one and any known discount coupons. There’s a social shopping element too in the sense that results can be shared via boo.ly’s built-in URL shortener – hence the startup’s name – through email and social networks such as Twitter, Facebook etc. Moving forward, boo.ly, whose competitors include and , plans to add product reviews to the mix, which makes a lot of sense. The Angel-funded company is also working on an API so that site owners can more easily monetise their own sites by tapping in to boo.ly’s technology. |
You Still Can't Comment On Path Pictures, But Now You Can Virtually Wink At Them | MG Siegler | 2,011 | 1 | 18 | One thing that intrigues me about is that they’re attempting to do things by thinking outside the box. There are too many services, especially in the mobile photo-sharing space right now, that are basically doing the exact same things. Path isn’t. And this opens them up to some . And today’s latest feature could very well continue that trend. Path has just added emoticons to the service. These allow you to respond to pictures your friends take with a smiley face, a winky face, an “O” face, a frowny face, or a heart. Nope, I’m not kidding. :) This does fulfill something that Path users have been asking for since the service launched: a way to give feedback to their friends on their pics. Previously, Path added the ability to text someone directly from the app if you wanted to say something about the picture they just uploaded. But this is much less intrusive. And it should lead to more social interaction on the site because it’s really some of the first true social interaction you can do beyond viewing. The reality is that the feature is similar in concept to the “Like” button which has been popularized by Facebook and others. But it’s obviously more granular. You don’t have to just “like” something or not “like” it. You can express a bit more about it the way you might in an IM chat. The move follows the addition of short, last month. And the of Facebook Connect before that. Look for the latest version of Path (1.3) in the App Store shortly — . |
Twitter Is Now Available In Korean, Its Seventh Language | Alexia Tsotsis | 2,011 | 1 | 18 | As of today Twitter users in North and South Korea Twitter.com, the mobile site and the iPhone and Android apps in Korean characters. Twitter has partnered with Korean web portal Daum to display Korean tweets on its homepage and Korean telcom service LG+ to make Twitter available on SMS. Twitter co-founder , who is apparently in South Korean capital Seoul at the moment, celebrated the milestone with the above , which translated means Twitter’s announcement also suggests Korean users to follow, in Korean. Translation below: Twitter users in South Korea have grown 10x since only a year ago. There is no mention of North Korea, and its somewhat official Twitter presence, anywhere in the post. Korean is the seventh international language Twitter now supports, joining English, French, German, Italian, Japanese and Spanish. Twitter plans on adding more languages by the end of the year, which makes sense as 70% of its user base is international. You can change your language to Korean by going to “Settings > Language > Korean.” |
Apple's iPad Business Now Bigger Than MacBook Business. Next Up: Entire Mac Business | MG Siegler | 2,011 | 1 | 18 | Apple had a lot of big numbers to share during today. And while the biggest unsurprisingly belonged to the iPhone, the iPad numbers are also very, very impressive. How impressive? The iPad business is already a bigger business than Apple’s portable computer business. That includes MacBooks, MacBook Pros, and MacBook Airs. And it’s within spitting distance of surpassing Apple’s Mac business in terms of revenue. Last quarter, Apple sold 7.33 million iPads. Broken down, they made just over $4.6 billion off of the product for the quarter. That puts it ahead of the $3.69 billion the MacBook business made for Apple during the same time frame. The iPad actually nearly started Macs right out of the gates in terms of actual units (which did happen last quarter). But the higher price points of Macs ensured that they maintained an edge in revenues. But the iPad was able to surge past the MacBooks in that category this past quarter thanks to a huge spike in sales, while the MacBooks sales rose less dramatically. But perhaps even more impressive is that the iPad is already closing in on Apple’s Mac business. The portable plus desktop (iMac, Mac mini, Mac Pro, and Xserver) sales totaled $5.43 billion in revenue last quarter. So the iPad just needs another $800 or so million to surpass it. That will happen at some point this year. Perhaps even next quarter depending on when the iPad 2 is unveiled. In total, Apple has now sold 14.8 million iPads since the device’s launch last April. : |
Apple's Cook On iPad/Mac Relationship: “If This Is Cannibalization, It Feels Pretty Good.” | MG Siegler | 2,011 | 1 | 18 | During the earnings call following Apple’s , a questions was asked about Apple’s Mac business as it relates to the iPad business. The iPad business, after all, is growing much faster (and just the Apple portable computer business in terms of revenue). So is it affecting the Mac business by eating into it? “ ,” Apple COO Tim Cook (who is the acting head of Apple while Steve Jobs is on medical leave) said in response. This echoes the Jobs had last quarter when asked the same basic question. “ ,” Jobs said at the time. But Cook also said that he thought there was a “halo effect” as well. That is, just as is thought to have happened with the iPod and the iPhone, certain Apple products are helping the company sell other products. So Cook believes that while the iPad may be eating into some of the would-be Mac sales, it’s also fueling other new Mac sales. He also noted that it’s likely that the iPad is not only cannibalizing Mac sales, but also sales for the larger PC industry. Cook pointed out that Apple still has a relatively small share of the overall market. “ ,” he noted. He said that internally, Apple doesn’t worry about cannibalization or even think about it. “ ,” he said. “ ,” he quipped. |
Apple Analysts Are Very Well Trained. Not One Asked About Jobs' Health. | Erick Schonfeld | 2,011 | 1 | 18 | Apple just finished its quarterly earnings call a day after announcing that CEO Steve Jobs is taking a of absence. Yet not one Wall Street analyst on the call asked a singel question about Jobs well-being or even when investors might expect to learn more about the situation. It is as if the analysts knew that no such questions would be answered so they didn’t even try. The closest we got was Piper Jaffray’s Gene Munster who asked, “How far out do you guys actually plan?” COO Tim Cook wouldn’t even give him a straight answer to that one. Here is his response, from (bolded parts mine for emphasis): Q: Long-term business planning. How far out do you guys plan? Product roadmap? TC: That’s a part of the magic of Apple. I don’t want anyone to know our magic, so they don’t copy it. We’ve done outstanding in our Mac business — 19 quarters straight of growing faster than the market. But we still have a low share. There’s still huge opportunity there. We have a low share in the handset market too. Huge opportunity there too. And incredible momentum there. iPad just got started — it’s a new category. Almost 15 million sold so far. I don’t know what to predict. We believe it’s a huge market. We’re in some great markets. . The closest he comes to answering the question is that “Apple is doing its best work ever” and he feels “very confident” it can continue to penetrate markets where it still has relatively low share, including PCs and mobile handsets. Any other questions? Just bark into the phone. |
DLD11: Boticca is breaking the back of intercontinental designer jewellery sales (TCTV) | Mike Butcher | 2,011 | 1 | 27 | , which launched out of London , is an ecommerce startup which creates a marketplace for limited edition designer original jewellery and other accessories. Created by former associate and co-founder it’s in a similar space to and , but emphasises design, especially creating an emotional connection between its designers and its customers. I met with with Larizadeh at who explained on TCTV some of the thinking behind the site, which has been designed to be super user friendly and to tell a story behind the designs. She says sales have tacked up since the holidays and about 50% of its transactions are intercontinental and 70% are inter-country, like an Israeli designer selling to a Saudi Princess for instance. Based in London, Boticca is currently bootstrapped as well as funded by angel investors from Europe and the US. It’s also had celebrity traction from . And it looks like they will be funding-raising soon. |
Wi-Fi Flip Camera Hits FCC, Launches In May? | Devin Coldewey | 2,011 | 1 | 27 |
We’ve heard for a while now that Cisco plans to put out a Flip camera with wi-fi built in, but so far the rumors haven’t produced an actual product. The FCC has at a new digital video camera from Cisco that has 802.11a/b/g/n support. The confidentiality request asks that setup photos remain confidential May 1st, so I’m guessing that’s when they’re going official with it. Not much beyond this, but I’d say we’re looking at the real thing here. [via ] |
Excuse Our Dust – We're Migrating To Disqus | Devin Coldewey | 2,011 | 1 | 27 |
We’ve had more or less the same comment system since the early days of CrunchGear, but what with the switching over to Disqus and our own system creaking under the weight of tens of thousands of posts, we’ve decided the time is right to make the switch. If there are some issues with your comments over the next day or so, we apologize, but we’ll try to make sure the transition is as smooth as possible. It’s working through the backlog now:
OH GOD, it’s going to take forever! And incredibly, it converts the most recent comments ! Yeah, that makes a of sense. Don’t worry, your old comments still live, and you can still comment . Email us at Tips@CrunchGear.com. |
That's Two Million Galaxy Tabs Served | Devin Coldewey | 2,011 | 1 | 27 |
Good for Samsung! Although I can’t say I’d advise anyone to buy one of these devices, the probably was the best (if not the most affordable) of the 2010 stopgap generation of tablets. The sales of the iPad dwarf this, of course (nearly 8 million in the same period), but hey, like they say, first is worst, second is best, and third is… HP, I guess. Seriously, though, don’t buy one until you see the sequel, which might be announced . [via ] |
DLD11: Mendeley now indexing 60 million research papers (TCTV) | Mike Butcher | 2,011 | 1 | 27 | , dubbed “the Last.fm of research”, is on a roll right now. The startup offers a secure online database for scientists, academics and researchers to store their research papers in the ‘cloud’, making it easier to share those documents with peers. The system also helps researchers find and connect to like-minded academics in similar fields by looking at and extracting relevant meta-data from the millions of research papers stored in its database. Last year it after customers requested features such as more storage. Victor Henning, Co-Founder and CEO of Mendeley, spoke to us at DLD about their moves to date and where they go from here. They just opened a New York office to do business development wit US business and universities, such as Columbia University.And Mendeley is now indexing 60 million research papers and now has in the region of 700,000 users. |
Five Reasons The PSP2 Won't Succeed | Devin Coldewey | 2,011 | 1 | 27 |
Sony has (temporarily named the “Next Generation Portable”), perhaps the final boss of handheld consoles. It’s far more powerful than its destined competitor, Nintendo’s 3DS, and incorporates social and locational data, 3G, a monster 5″ OLED screen, and a number of other features . It is to be one of the linchpin platforms for the world’s most recognizable entertainment electronics company, a stomping ground for new games, media, and services. And I think it’s going to go down in flames. Why? It’s got its competitor beat on nearly every spec, it’s got the backing of droves of Sony fanboys, and million-selling franchises just waiting to be put on its crisp 960×544 screen. How can it fail? I’d say by not addressing the fundamental needs of a handheld gaming console and ignoring strong trends in the market.
Before I start, I just want to register my admiration of the Sony team in putting together such an impressive piece of hardware. No one can fault that. Sony is firing on all cylinders — but in my humble opinion, in the wrong direction. Here are the reasons why I feel they’re going to be steamrolled by Nintendo (and Apple) over the next three years. Don’t misunderstand me: the PSP has plenty of unique features. Its excellent screen, its weird hot-pants touchpad on the back, dual analog sticks, the 3G connection. But it doesn’t have what some might call a gimmick. The DS’s touchscreen and the Wii’s motion control were called gimmicks when they launched, though perhaps that term was misapplied, since now those devices are the two best selling consoles of their generations. The reason is this: when you have a unique gameplay element like two screens, . With a few exceptions in which the extra functionality is tacked on, DS games are unique among handheld and console games because they have to be fundamentally designed around the gaming hardware, which makes those games both original and closely allied to the system. Nintendo hopes they can pull this trick again with the 3DS. That isn’t the case with the PSP. They’ve made an insanely powerful and compact sandbox in which developers are free to create… exactly the kind of games they create for every other system. On that note: The PSP2 promises “PS3-level” graphics and sound. I find it difficult to understand why you would want a big-screen experience packed onto a small screen. That’s not to say that graphics are worthless, and it’s nice having the capability if you’re a developer, but even on that great 5″ screen, you’re going to have trouble appreciating the grand vistas of Monster Hunter or the atmosphere of Resident Evil. Add into this the fact that most of the big-name properties ( ) will have big-screen counterparts, and your PS3-level graphics and sound start to seem redundant. Wouldn’t you rather have a game truly made for the small screen, designed around portability and accessibility, not a smaller, slightly modified version of a full-fledged console game? The best-selling games on the PSP were indeed console-style games — because that’s what was on offer. Meanwhile, the top DS games outsold the PSP’s best-seller ( Monster Hunder Portable 3rd, 4m – my source was out of date) by an order of magnitude. Pointing a shrink ray at AAA games just isn’t that popular of a proposition. More than ever before, people are seeing big-budget games for what they are: popcorn entertainment, loud and unoriginal, being released by the same production houses, with the same stars, same set pieces, and same gameplay. Not that they’re all bad or anything — we all like to watch movies like Transformers or Avatar now and again, mainly for the purpose of mindless escapism, which is a perfectly good reason. But would you buy a TV that showed popcorn flicks? Some of the most interesting and best-selling games to come out in the last few years have been out-of-nowhere semi-casual games with mass appeal. Angry Birds has sold copies. That’s about twice the total sales of the top PSP games combined. Of course, it costs far less and is on more platforms, so you can say it’s apples and oranges. But that’s the thing: apples are being sold at the same stand as oranges now, and the big tie-in or the best handheld version of isn’t where the gaming market is putting its money. The PSP2 doesn’t need to mimic Apple too much, but let’s be honest, they’ve got a touchscreen and a 3G connection, they’re already halfway there. They’ve got a great thing going with PSN: like XBLA, it’s packed full of smart young developers pushing interesting, unique ideas and bite-sized games for bargain-bin prices. Yet the PSP2 is clearly focused in the other direction, towards satisfying the needs of Rockstar, EA, Infinity Ward, and the like. This maximizes cost per unit and minimizes the audience, since it’s clear that handheld gaming (including iOS and Android, since those really are becoming real competitors) is going towards… it’s not casual, exactly, but it’s certainly different from what the PSP2 was made to do. The key element in any social application is ubiquity. Facebook works because everyone’s on it. iPhone social apps work because there are a ton of iPhones and Android is on its way. Nintendo’s DS-to-DS functionality is good because in Tokyo, you’re never more than seven or eight feet from another DS. But will the PSP2 ever hit the level of ubiquity necessary for its (admittedly slick-looking) social features to work? Or will thousands of gamers check their “radar” and see nothing but empty space? My guess is the latter, though to be fair that guess is based on my opinion that sales will be slow. Plus, with the system so plainly aimed at big, single-player experiences, it seems like the social thing is sort of mismatched. Is this thing for gaming, or socializing? What about the Playstation app, where does that fit in? And the new “Playstation Phone”? It seems to me that their initially fragmented social experience will torpedo it from the start. Sony is going all-in on a pair of jacks. Sure, it’s better than nothing, but they could have folded and picked up a new hand altogether. Bear with me for a second. What if the new PSP had completely eschewed the big game experience, and was focused entirely on PSN downloadables like PixelJunk games and back-catalog stuff? Imagine: the lowered specs (as powerful but more efficient than a PSP) would have enabled a lighter and thinner device that could be sold for peanuts. Can you imagine a brand new PSP with access to all PSN games selling for $150? I can. And with seed money and a little cajoling in the right places, it could have launched with dozens of original and exclusive titles that focused not on aping the PS3, but on setting this unique mobile device apart from the tablets, consoles, and handsets of the world. I would have bought one, and after some initial concerns about the library and some bucking by the “hardcore” that there won’t be enough , millions of others would have, too. The main problem with the PSP2 is simply that it is an inferior version of an existing (though popular) platform: the PS3, or more generally, the home console and media station that the PS3 and 360 are becoming. If Sony could have focused its big-money games on its long-term bet, the PS3, and made the PSP into an original and compelling platform rather than a PS3 Lite. They could have caught a ride on the new-world-of-gaming wave, but instead, they chose to keep on paddling. |
StackMob Is 'Heroku For Mobile'. And Proud Of It. And Potentially Just As Huge. | MG Siegler | 2,011 | 1 | 27 | It was almost exactly two years ago that a company called . At the time, the Y Combinator startup was little more than a good idea: ease the development and deployment process a lot of other startups face by putting it in the cloud. Last month, Salesforce bought them for . It’s no wonder that a new startup, , doesn’t mind being called a “Heroku for mobile”. Truth be told, that is a pretty good way to describe what they’re doing. They’ve created a cloud-based system to ease the development and deployment of mobile applications. Or even more simply put, “ ,” is how co-founder Ty Amell phrases it. They want to be the single integration point for all the backend needs that an app developer may have. And like Heroku, this has the potential to be huge. Mobile app development is exploding right now. But at the same time, there aren’t a ton of experts at it that aren’t already locked up by either larger companies or well-funded startups. That means that a lot of great ideas are either being left on the table, or take way too long to come into being. StackMob’s goal is to condense development time by weeks if not months, by taking care of a huge range of needs that can be streamlined rather than forcing the developer to learn everything and implement it themselves. What kinds of things? It’s all across the backend board really. OAuth, social services (Twitter, Facebook, etc), storage solutions (Joyent now, Amazon coming shortly), advertising (coming soon), messaging (including Push), APIs, analytics, etc. A developer can pick and choose what they want or need to include from StackMob. And in some cases, it’s as easy as filling out a web-based form. “ ,” Amell asks. Currently, they’re focused on the iOS platform, but the grand goal is to work across many of the popular mobile platforms — including, of course, Android. But iOS is a good place to start as StackMob’s tools combine nicely with the SDK tools Apple provides to developers to get them going. Plus, StackMob co-founder Pouyan Salehi is ex-Apple. And while post-Salesforce/Heroku, ideas like this seem ripe for anyone to try to take advantage of, Amell and Salehi actually started StackMob well before the Heroku deal made this so hot. In fact, they already got funding well before that. While they haven’t disclosed it previously, they took a seed round from Harrison Metal, Baseline, Founder Collective, CRV, and some individuals back in May 2010. (Though they’re still not disclosing the amount.) Yes, those are a number of the same guys that funded Heroku. Funny how that works, huh? StackMob launched a very small alpha test in late November/early December. And they’re now comfortable enough to talk about the basic ideas of how the service will work. The plan is to launch a beta version by late February or early March. The model for this is a freemium one. Everything will be free to start out. It’s only if you decided you want to actually deploy your app that they’ll charge you based on how popular your app is, and how much of their backend resources it’s taking up. But not to worry, both Amell and Salehi are adamant about your work and data being your own. If you chose to leave StackMob for whatever reason, you’ll be able to take your work with you. “ ,” Salehi says. “ ,” Amell says. “ ,” he says. “ ,” is how he finally puts it. In other words, Heroku for mobile! StackMob is currently a team of 5 people working in San Francisco. I’m sure we’ll be hearing more about them in the coming months. |
17x17x17 Puzzle Cube Makes Rubik’s Look Like Child’s Play | Devin Coldewey | 2,011 | 1 | 27 |
So, you’re a big Rubik’s cube buff. Can solve any cube in five minutes, think people who can’t are fools? Well, sounds like you need a new challenge. How about this by puzzle designer Oskar van Deventer, and printed using ? Should keep you busy for a few years. Too bad it costs |
ScreenReach raises £500,000 for its Screach app and platform for smartphones | Steve O'Hear | 2,011 | 1 | 27 | , maker of the Screach app and accompanying platform for creating interactive experiences on smartphones, has raised a second round of funding: £500,000 from Hotspur Capital Partners. This follows earlier investment from Tom Maxfield, a founder of , shortly after ScreenReach from the . The new funds announced today will be used to “spearhead global growth”, says the Newcastle, UK-based company. The Screach app – currently iPhone and Android – and ScreanReach platform is designed to make it easy for brands and developers to tie interactive smartphone experiences to other content, whether that be television programs, billboards and other digital signage. It uses its own XML-based development scripting language, known as ScreachXML, which promises a a write-once development process across multiple Screach-supported smartphone OSes. As for the app itself, users enter a unique pin code to unlock those interactive two-way experiences such as games, quizzes etc., along with special offers and coupons. The app also uses the ‘check-in’ analogy along with awarding points and is able to track all of this interaction, therefore providing useful data to customers along the way. One target for the ScreenReach platform is broadcasters who want to offer a so-called third screen experience, something that we’re seeing organically anyway with the rise of Twitter. And in fact, the Screach app has the ability to push updates out to Twitter, Facebook and Foursquare. In terms of competitors, ScreenReach has plenty of cross-over and to varying degrees could be considered as competing with Foursquare itself, along with , and other location and object-based services. Of note, having benefited from The Difference Engine, ScreenReach founder Paul Rawlings is now one of a hundred mentors of the newly launched Cambridge-based . Applicants to have until Sunday, 20th February to apply. |
Sony Wins Restraining Order Against Geohot, Updates PS3 Firmware To 3.56 In Effort To Stop Hacking | Nicholas Deleon | 2,011 | 1 | 27 | owners will be prompted to update their system to today. Why is that? Hmm, could it possibly have something to do with Sony trying to prevent your from ? Yes, obviously. (“This is a minor update that adds a security patch.”) If you update your system say goodbye to being able to hack your PS3 to pieces… for now, at least. And maybe for a good while, too, given that Sony against Geohot. Not only has Sony won a temporary restraining order against Geohot, real name George Hotz, and his crew, but it looks like the case will be able to be held in San Francisco, in front of judges who haven’t been too kind to lone coder types before. The 3.56 update was pushed out within the past few hours, so it’ll be interesting to see if A) it stops jailbreaking for good or B) will merely signify a new game of cat-and-mouse between Sony and the larger jailbreaking community. I seem to remember frequent PSP firmware updates back in the day that were designed to mitigate the effects of custom firmware, but, really, once the system was cracked it was pretty much cracked for good. And even if you were to jailbreak your PS3, please don’t hop online . Nobody likes a bully. |
null | Greg Kumparak | 2,011 | 1 | 18 | null |
Hands-On Gallery: The LG Optimus 2X | Greg Kumparak | 2,011 | 1 | 27 | You hear that thumping? That’s my heart a-pitter-patterin’ over just what got dropped off at MobileCrunch HQ: the world’s first dual-core smartphone, . It’ll be a few days before I’ve had enough time with this device to weigh in with our official review — but in the mean time, enjoy our humble gallery of hands-on stills below. Let me know if you have any questions about this one, won’t you?
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Microsoft Sold 8 Million Kinects In 60 Days | Alexia Tsotsis | 2,011 | 1 | 27 | Microsoft earnings just got 10 minutes before market close, and aside from growing revenues 5% in the 2nd quarter to $19.95 Billion, their slides reveal some interesting numbers on their entertainment and gaming unit, mainly that they sold 8 million Kinects in the two months since launch. Said Peter Klien about the Kinect’s success, |
Razer Releases Special "Black Edition" Of My Favorite Mouse, The Death Adder | Devin Coldewey | 2,011 | 1 | 27 |
When I look back over all the mice I’ve reviewed in my time, one particular thing always comes to mind: “What the hell are you doing with your life?” But then I get over it, dry my tears, and continue thinking about how many mice come and go, but there are a few that still stand out as the best. The Death Adder is one of them; I a couple years back, after it had already been out for some time, and although I love me some and , the Death Adder is still number one with me. So you can be sure I’m happy to see it given some love in the form of a new special edition. is just that: black. On account of its complexion. The funny thing is, it was already black. Yes, I’m looking at mine right now, definitely black. It does have a white scroll wheel, though. So they’ve fixed that. And there’s a new non-slip rubber coating on the side, where the old one had slick plastic. The logo doesn’t light up anymore, either. I’m okay with that. At any rate, it’s still a great mouse, and now you can buy one for the same price they were at three years ago: $60! Yay! |
Egypt Situation Gets Worse, People Reporting Internet And SMS Shutdown | Alexia Tsotsis | 2,011 | 1 | 27 | The world is watching in shock at the moment as continue to flood in of Egyptian protests mounting and the government pre-emptively striking back before tomorrow’s planned demonstrations by cutting off the nation’s Internet connection, along with access to social media services like Facebook, Twitter and Blackberry. Along with and CNN’s Reuters is reporting that users in Cairo are experiencing phone and Internet shutdown. headline. Reuters is also reporting that the Egyptian Prime Minister’s office denied that Facebook and Twitter have been shut down despite countless claims to the contrary. http://twitter.com/#!/gordon_reynolds/status/30779944099389440 The flood of communication blackout reports on Twitter and elsewhere came shortly after a gruesome video of an Egyptian protestor was posted by the AP. One source with relatives in Cairo says he is communicating with them via landline and they are confirming that riot police are setting cars on fire. ” he said. No one either inside or outside of the country quite understands exactly why and how the blackout is happening or how it will end but it is believed that these efforts are an attempt by a 30 year-old regime to protest organization by a social media and tech savvy youth . As TC’s Mike Butcher , the major service providers in Egypt are TEDATA, Egynet DSL and Vodafone. Vodafone has been quiet about the issue since it blocking Twitter on January 25th. Naturally, you can follow the movement on Twitter on and . Angel investor has also conceived of an open mesh router network that could function as a backup in situations where governments try to shut off communications. Pishevar is for volunteers and those interested can tweet at . Image: |
Zynga Close To Acquiring Whereoscope, The App That Lets You Track Your Kids | Jason Kincaid | 2,011 | 1 | 27 | Back in August we a Y Combinator-funded company called that helps parents keep tabs on their kids using a location-aware smartphone application. Now we’re hearing that the startup is about to be acquired by a company that’s in an entirely different space: Zynga. Our understanding is that a term sheet has been signed but the deal has not yet closed, so it’s not a sure thing yet. Both Whereoscope and Zynga declined to comment. If it does close, we believe it will be for sub-$5 million, likely in valuable Zynga equity. Given the fact that Zynga isn’t exactly focused on child location monitoring, this is probably a talent acquisition. But it’s a quick and positive outcome for the founders, especially given that the app launched less than six months ago. Whereoscope’s application provides a straightforward way for parents to keep tabs on their kids using a concept called geofencing. Here’s a description from our launch coverage: During an initial setup process, you designate a handful of key locations, or geofences, that your children often visit — their school, home, a best friend’s house, etc. You can elect to receive a push notification whenever your child leaves or arrives at one of these areas. Your child doesn’t have to actually do anything to check in, so there’s nothing for them to forget. And, if your child were to “accidentally” disable the application, Whereoscope can send you a warning giving you a heads up. It seems obvious that Zynga will eventually want to launch mobile games with location components, which the Whereoscope team would be well-suited for. And it isn’t hard to imagine a game that includes geofencing, where users are rewarded in-game for visiting certain venues in the real world.
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Facebook Shares Dip 7% In Most Recent SecondMarket Auction | Michael Arrington | 2,011 | 1 | 27 | Facebook shares were being traded at $28.26 per share, a $70 billion valuation. In this week’s auction at SecondMarket the per share price declined just over 7%, to $26.25, a $65.5 billion valuation with around 2.5 billion shares outstanding. That’s a $5 billion decline in valuation. 670,000 shares were sold for a total of around $17.5 million. Did it peak? I have no idea. We still have to update our showing a high valuation of $50 billion. Maybe things are just cooling down for a while. We’ll know more after next week’s super confidential Facebook share auction. Here’s the email. To Facebook market participants: Thank you to those who participated in this week’s SecondMarket auction for Facebook shares. The auction was successful and partially cleared (94.6%) at a per share price of $26.25. Next week, the floor price will be $24.96 and we will require a minimum sale of 25,000 shares. If you own shares that you are eligible to sell and wish to participate as a seller, please complete the attached Seller Information Form and submit it to SecondMarket at fb@SecondMarket.com by Monday, January 31 at 7:00 PM EST. To verify receipt of your sell order, you must receive a confirmation email from fb@SecondMarket.com. If you do not receive a confirmation email, your sell order has not been received by SecondMarket and may be excluded from the auction. Please see below for detailed results on previous auctions and for next week’s auction timeline. Previous Auction Results: Total Shares Cleared to Date: 3,391,265 over six auctions Clearing Price in Most Recent Auctions:
January 24, 2011: $26.25
January 12, 2011: $28.26
December 15, 2010: $22.75
December 8, 2010: $21.90 Next Week’s Adjusted Auction Timeline: – Monday, January 31 at 7:00 PM EST – Seller Information Forms due
– Monday, January 31 at 8:00 PM EST – Buyers informed of share quantity available and minimum purchase amount
– Wednesday, February 2 at 12:00 PM EST – Buyer Information Forms due
– Wednesday, February 2 at 5:00 PM EST – Participants informed of auction results
– Wednesday, February 2 at 8:00 PM EST – Transaction documentation distributed to buyers and sellers
– Friday, February 4 at 4:00 PM EST – Completed transaction documentation due from buyers and sellers
– Friday, February 4 at 7:00 PM EST – Notice sent to Facebook, Inc. By reading this email, the recipient acknowledges and agrees that all of the information contained herein is confidential and that the recipient will keep this information confidential. The recipient further agrees that it will not copy, reproduce, or distribute this email in whole or in part. Please contact us at fb@SecondMarket.com or 212.668.3919 if you have any questions. Please note that the information in this email does not constitute an offer to sell to, nor a solicitation of an offer to buy from, nor shall any securities be offered or sold to, any person in any jurisdiction in which such an offer, solicitation or sale would be unlawful. |
Why Bullpen Capital Thinks We Need Another Venture Fund (TCTV) | Sarah Lacy | 2,011 | 1 | 11 | The decade-long glut of funding in the venture business is finally getting unwound as LPs get choosier and choosier about which venture funds to keep backing. Meanwhile, venture capitalists slogging it out with the new breed of super angels, striving to get in the hottest deals at remotely reasonable prices would probably argue there’s little room in the market for a new firm either. So it’s not exactly the easiest time to raise a new fund. Enter : A new firm that the super angel elite are welcoming with open arms. Why? It aims fill the hole in the market between angels and VCs. Of course, some people believe there is no hole. Indeed some VCs are creating seed-programs to compete with angels even more directly. But Bullpen’s founders Paul Martino, Duncan Davidson and Richard Melmon argue too many startups are having to do what we wrote about Klout doing . If they want to raise more capital they have to pick between aiming for a quick flip or aiming for a homerun, with few options in between. Bullpen’s founders argue a lot of startups just aren’t ready after one $1 million-or-so round. Maybe they’ve run through their $1 million seed round only to find they need to pivot ( ) or maybe it’ll just take another $1 million to know what they’ve really got. Right now, few firms want to fill that follow-on seed round role. That’s why Martino, Davidson and Melmon call themselves “Bullpen” Capital– in a Valley where everyone is trying to be a starter or a closer, these guys see a big opportunity in pitching relief. The initial fund will be $50 million, to be closed in two stages. The first stage is closed now, and each of the three partners put in their own money. We trucked down to Bullpen’s offices on Sand Hill Road to hear more about the new firm. In future segments, we talk to partners about sectors they’ll invest in, and how the Valley’s culture hasn’t changed as much as you’d think over the last thirty or so years. Video below.
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Formspring Closes $11.5 Million Round, Launches 'Respond' Button | Jason Kincaid | 2,011 | 1 | 11 | One of the biggest phenomena of last year was , a social site that lets you invite your friends to “Ask you anything”. The site launched in November 2009 and rose from obscurity to some 40 million monthly uniques at its peak (it’s currently at around 22.2 million monthly uniques according to ). Today, the company is announcing a $11.5 million funding round led by Redpoint Ventures (Geoff Yang) with participation from Baseline Ventures (Steve Anderson). This confirms a report from November when GigaOm that the site had raised $10 million (obviously they added a bit more to the round since then). In addition to today’s funding, Formspring is also announcing a new feature: the ‘Respond Button’.
The feature lets publishers integrate some Q&A functionality into their own sites. Hit one of these ‘Respond’ buttons, which generally appear next to Twitter and Facebook ‘Like’ widgets on publisher sites, and a window will pop up prompting you to answer a question related to the article (the question could be vague like “What do you think”, or it can be more specific). Once the user submits the form, their answer appears on their Formspring profile along with a link to the publisher site. This doesn’t seem to have the same viral potential as, say, a tweet, though you can tweet out your response automatically. One thing I don’t really like: there’s apparently no way to see all of the responses that other users have submitted using the Respond button (i.e. you can’t see everyone’s reaction to a given article). I’m also not sure why users wouldn’t rather leave their comment on the article and also syndicate that to their Formspring profile, as opposed to putting it on their Formspring profile alone. Formspring’s traffic has dipped since last spring, but it seems to have stabilized at around 22 million uniques per month, which still puts it as the 157th biggest site in the US according to Quantcast. The site is also about to hit a big milestone: users have submitted 2 billion responses (and the site sees 10 million per day). |
Silicon Valley Migrates! Accel Partners Opens Up A New York Office | Alexia Tsotsis | 2,011 | 1 | 11 | In what is the first but certainly not the last time we’ll hear of Silicon Valley venture capitalists opening up an office in New York, storied venture firm and Facebook/Groupon backer has opened a New York outpost at 11th and Broadway. This will be the second US location for Accel, which has offices in Bangalore, Beijing, London, New Delhi and Shanghai. East Coast . West Coast has been a universal theme ever since Biggie and Tupac and now it’s itself to the world of startups and venture capital. Accel Partners is justifying the move by saying that it’s made over 15 investments in the New York Area in the past three years and that it does not plan on stopping its aggressive NYC investment pace. Indeed, its (offical) New York investment roster includes: · – parent company for and · – DIY craft marketplace · – Website and blog publishing platform · – The leading independent personal finance website for women · – Online interactive consumer magazine · – Hip-hop social media site · – Curated jewelry site · – Beauty product samples · – Rent a desk service · – Sales platform · – Men’s clothing company · – Ad platform · – Mobile payments startup · .In – Gilt for Indian decorations New York does seem to be part of some and the latest expansion also comes at an amazing time for Accel, as portfolio company Diapers.com has exited for about $540 Million. Partner explains the motivations behing the move, While none are permanent, Accel plans on rotating the partners heading up the New York office on a per initiative basis, this week it will be partner (who owns an apartment in downtown NY) and Ranzetta, the next week it will be Sameer Gandhi, with the basic idea that sector experts will fly in from Palo Alto as needed. Perhaps the most exciting part of the move for aspiring entreprenuers? Accel plans on holding startup networking events as well as bringing in EIRs from Silicon Valley and beyond. Interested parties can email to get on the mailing list. Partner attributes the move instigating critical mass to the ease of setting up a startup, And Wong is acutely aware of the first mover principle, Exactly. Image:
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More on that Void Between Super Angels and VCs (TCTV) | Sarah Lacy | 2,011 | 1 | 11 | Earlier we did a post about a called that seeks to fill the void between super angels, who invest up to $1 million, and VCs who want to invest $5 million or more. Since the firm’s deal flow will come mostly from super angels, it’ll likely be investing in categories where lean startup rules apply. But that’s more than just consumer Internet and iPhone apps. In this segment of our interview with the Bullpen Capital partners, Paul Martino, Duncan Davidson, and Richard Melmon, talk about the sectors in which they’re the most interested. Video below. |
Revox M100 Modular HiFi Lets You Configure Parts Before You Buy | Devin Coldewey | 2,011 | 1 | 11 |
This system isn’t itself new, but I think they only actually started selling them recently. Either way, what really matters is that you can make your stereo look like the French Flag, or the Enterprise. Go ahead, (or ). Cost? Probably about a gazillion dollars. [via ] |
Pygmy Motorcyles Made From Lighter Parts | Devin Coldewey | 2,011 | 1 | 11 |
I love these twee little things! And apparently, all you need is two lighters you can get for a buck each at your local corner store/bodega. They’re not drivable, though, unless you’re Tom Thumb. I dub them . I suppose you could figure out how to make these with a little trial and error (and glue), but I don’t think I could. I can’t deal with little fiddly things like that, they make me angry. I don’t have big fingers or anything, but I just can’t manipulate those tiny gears and such without aggravation. , though none really show the process. [via ] |
OMG/JK: The Verizon iPhone And The End Of An Era | Jason Kincaid | 2,011 | 1 | 11 | We’re approaching an end of an era. A time when MG Siegler, my cohost on , will no longer be forced to on a daily basis. Soon, he will be equipped with a phone that will actually be able to make phone calls. And will be able to breathe a little easier. Because soon, MG — and millions of other people — will have the Verizon iPhone. In case you missed this morning’s press blitz, today Verizon and Apple teamed to announce the impending launch of the iPhone on the US’s largest wireless network. Finally, after years of waiting (and countless press reports), it’s official. It’s big, so we did a special edition of OMG/JK to mark the occasion. Here are a few posts related to today’s announcement: |
Is Naming Your Startup "Hipster" Genius Or Terrible? | Alexia Tsotsis | 2,011 | 1 | 11 |
Is it just me or is everyone and their skinny jeans wearing, MGMT-listening mothers a nowadays? Nowhere is this more than in tech (thanks ). And behold, the latest sign of the tech hipster-ocalypse, a startup actually called The company is in “stealth” mode and asking people not to say what they do publicly. But they’re themselves hard on Hacker News, offering if you invite 3 friends. Of course. Already the YCombinator thread some hard-hitting questions, Well not exactly. Just look at hipster emporium , you can never mock their weird products because you can’t tell if it’s all a big ironic joke or not. To . THEY HAVE TO KNOW, RIGHT? So is naming your startup “Hipster” genius or terrible? Well, it’s a precarious dance, if there’s a dash of irony then genius, but if it’s in the long run viewed as an attempt to be cool (a.l.a late MySpace) than you have failed. Says founder Doug Ludlow on the choice of name: So an extremely unfortunate name may be an ultimate win. Aol’s owns the domain if anyone out there is looking for worse. Thanks: |
Spotify who? We7 to launch first in Ireland next week | Steve O'Hear | 2,011 | 1 | 11 | , the UK music streaming service, is launching in Ireland next Monday, MusicWeek and we can now confirm. This is interesting not only because it’s the first time We7 has ventured beyond its native shores but also because , which until very recently was seen as a direct rival, has yet to launch in said country. The much hyped and well funded company is currently available in Sweden, Norway, Finland, the UK, France, Spain and the Netherlands but, as noted, not Ireland. (Or the U.S. .) In terms of what We7 will offer: despite to emphasise its more economical ‘Internet Radio Plus’ model – more akin to Pandora in the U.S. – over its on-demand Spotify-esque offering, the UK startup will still give Irish customers the latter option, along with the ability to upgrade to a Premium (ad-free) version for €4.99 a month or the Premium+ version (with iPhone and ) for €9.99 a month. Interestingly, MusicWeek also notes at least one local competitor: Irish ISP Eircom’s MusicHub service, which launched at the end of last year. |
GameCrush's Crush-O-Matic Blends Chatroulette With Online Gaming | Leena Rao | 2,011 | 1 | 11 | is launching its own take on the Chatroulette-like experience today with Crush-O-Matic. The new service is a random game generator where users simply click “Go!” and automatically get matched up with another user in a two-way cam-enabled game session. As we we in our initial review of GameCrush, the startup aims to help the millions of male gamers out on the web hook up online with a gaming buddy of the opposite sex for a fee. On GameCrush, gamers can browse the profiles of “PlayDates”, which is the term used to refer to the women on the site. Each profile includes the woman’s interests and commonly played games, and of course a gallery of photos are featured front-and-center. Users can message the PlayDate and see if she’s interested in playing a game with him. Crush-O-Matic allows users select which games they want to play and the gender of their opponent (though users can opt to make these selections random as well). Then members can click to be matched with a random gamer who they can see and talk to while playing online games. Once the game is ended, users can rate their opponent, and users with higher ratings get rewarded with priority matching. Of course, one challenge for GameCrush, which has raised funding from a number of is attracting the smut that appeared on Chatroulette. But co-founder Eric Strasser says that the site’s registration requirement, user profiles and a user rating system help prevent this type of clientele from interacting with the site. He says that users block or rate other users based on their experience, and low ratings/blocks (i.e. people who are acting inappropriately) are weeded out. He adds that the startup already has an active user base familiar with webcam-enabled gaming which helps in the dynamics of the site. |
M9 Defense Raises $1.4 Million For Advanced Hydroforming Technology | Lora Kolodny | 2,011 | 1 | 11 | A Seattle-area materials science company, , raised $1.4 million in a series A round, a new SEC filing revealed. According to the company’s website: its core product, Boroclave presses, use hydroforming technology to mass-produce ballistic and non-ballistic composites. The company claims the composites it uses have the highest strength to weight ratios available in today’s market, and can be formed into products at speeds comparable to that of sheet metal processing. Hydroforming typically involves filling tubes (made of composites like aluminum) with fluid, and increasing fluid pressure to expand the tube-material to match a mold, even a complicated one, in one or two manufacturing steps. Automotovie companies from BMW to Hyunda-Kia motor group have used hydroforming to make more fuel efficient vehicle parts. M9 Defense sells to defense, transportation, and energy industry players that are seeking to use lighter, stronger materials — and less of them — to build cars, aircraft, vehicles, body armor, blades for wind turbines, telephone poles and satellites. |
Is That A Call Of Duty: Black Ops Jeep? | Nicholas Deleon | 2,011 | 1 | 11 | And here’s another non-iPhone story to sorta cleanse the pallet. (We recognize that not necessarily goes nuts over , but today is just one of those days.) Recognize ? You will if you’ve played , the Big Mac of the gaming world. It’s on display at the North American International Auto Show in Detroit. Simple and clean, much like . |
null | Mike Butcher | 2,011 | 1 | 27 | null |
So Google, You'll Be Dropping Support For Flash Next, Right? | MG Siegler | 2,011 | 1 | 11 | Do you smell that? Just wait a second. You will. Though H.264 plays an important role in video, , support for the codec will be removed and our resources directed towards completely open codec technologies. The bolding is mine, but that’s as to why they’re dropping support for the H.264 video codec from the Chromium open source browser (from which Chrome is built). the main story earlier today, but in my opinion, he didn’t go far enough in calling bullshit on this maneuver. Namely, how on Earth can Google get away with dropping support for one popular codec under the guise of “open” when baked into their browser is Flash, the decidedly un-open plug-in? I’ve talked to Google a number of times about the Chrome/Flash issue over the past year. Namely because the only time Chrome ever fails or has performance issues is due to Flash. And because they bake it in, you have no choice but to live with it or manually disable it (which most users have no idea how to do, obviously). Anyway, Google’s stance is essentially that they bake it in for security and performance purposes. Flash is a huge security risk in web browsers because flaws are not only found often but the patches take a lot time to matriculate to users — if they ever do. That’s because users are forced to install updates. Of course, that’s one big problem with being a plug-in in the first place rather than a standard part of the browser itself. So Google thought they could solve this problem just auto-updating Flash within Chrome. And that’s all well and good. I don’t like getting Flash installed by default because of the performance issues, but I agree that this helps the vulnerability issues. The problem is that Google’s stated stance is now that they’re all about enabling “open innovation” by removing non-open technologies like H.264. That’s fine too. But you can’t be hypocritical, Google. Remove Flash too if that’s your real stance. Of course, it’s much more complicated than that. One of the big backers of H.264 is Google’s ever-growing rival, Apple. More specifically, the technology is front and center to much of what iOS has to offer. iOS, which is the main rival to Google’s Android platform. Meanwhile, WebM, the new codec Google is backing is one they themselves created. Yes, they did make it an open technology, but they clearly have a vested interest in getting it to succeed. And that’s also fine. Open is great — when it works. The problem is that these types of things often tend to sound better as strategies on paper. As John Gruber , one thing WebM lacks versus H.264 is hardware decoders. They’re supposedly , but slowly. Who knows how long it will take and who will adopt. Plus, video encoders wouldn’t just have to stop using H.264, they’d have to start doing all their videos in this new codec. In other words, it’s likely to prop up Flash, not WebM. Again, Flash, the non-open, non-standard tech. The one that’s built-in to Chrome despite Google’s new stance against such tech. And it goes deeper still: But how can Google justify dropping support for H.264, but not Flash (which also uses H.264 for video)? Simple, Adobe is also one of the WebM partners and will support WebM technologies inside Flash. Yup, Flash is siding with Google on this one. Unsurprisingly, another WebM partner, Mozilla, is also the move as a great step forward. Yes, it’s a great hypocritical step forward that is just as likely to backfire. H.264 has gained huge support in the past couple of years. In fact, , it made up some 66 percent of web videos. The issue people have with it is that while it’s free to use right now, the patents behind it may eventually make it no longer free. This past summer, MPEG LA, which owns the patents in question, that they would offer the codec royalty-free forever — but would only commit to non-commercial usage. So yes, it’s murky. But as a number of people around the web have been pointing out, WebM may be as well. Its IP (which Google ) hasn’t been litigated yet. That’s at least just as murky. But that’s a whole different debate that’s already being had in other places. The key point is that it’s fine if Google wants to take this stand for open. But to do so, they need to do it across the board. And that includes dropping Flash from Chrome just like they’re dropping H.264. Quite frankly, I’m sick of Google taking stands for “ ” and “ what’s right” it’s in their to do so. It’s fine to be a company with interests. . Don’t feed us bullshit and call it filet mignon. We can smell it. And taste it. And spit it back at you. |
Bitterness, Anger And Betrayal At MySpace | Michael Arrington | 2,011 | 1 | 11 | An email from a reader claiming to be a MySpace employee about the that left half of the company out of work. These things are part of life, but the bitterness, anger and feeling of betrayal are striking. As recently as Nov 18th, Mike Jones, the now CEO of Myspace, sat in front of the entire company, thanking them for their extraordinary efforts to help launch the \”new Myspace\” (known internally as Futura), inspiring them by telling them they had done something that had never been done in the history of the Internet – that is, relaunch a company with the size and history of Myspace. He and his executive team had just somehow driven hundreds of people to work hard for months, giving 20 hour days, even 48 hour sleepless stints, for a company that everyone else in the world said was dead. All along, motivating the team with statements like \”do you believe in this company or not?\”, \”either you\’re in or not\”, and \”look at what we can do when we do it together\”. When asked in that all hands meeting about the ominous words of the News Corp CFO only days earlier that Myspace was \”unsustainable\”, Jones reassured those loyal, hard working employees that News corp was \”on board\” with the plan to relaunch Myspace as \”social entertainment\”, and he had been promised they would have patience and give the new site time to be successful before making changes. As it turns out, Mr. Jones and his lieutenants knowingly *used* their employees, working them hard, making them give up time with their friends and families, knowing all along that no matter how hard they worked, and how successful their efforts, many of them would be rewarded with layoffs. At the same time, the Myspace execs that were in charge as the company continued the rapid, downward spiral – which led to the company being \”unsustainable\” and forced to lay off 47% of their staff – were all being rewarded with new deals (including Jones becoming CEO), including raises and promotions. Further, instead of working as hard as they, themselves, possibly could to save the company and save the jobs of the people they claimed to appreciate so much, the executive team was busy plotting secret back-room deals to prevent a sale of Myspace by News Corp and to instead spin out Myspace into their control (likely taking most of the equity and giving themselves more personal gain), and at the same time were busy not doing their jobs, but instead occupying valuable company resources building stealth projects (such as project Burn) they hope will be the \”future\” of Myspace world in their delusional world where almost everyone is gone and they have taken over the company. After the dust settles, the people who were in charge and responsible for the continued failure will still be in charge, with new titles and raises, clearly intent on taking as much personal value as they can from the company before it dies completely at their hands. And the hard working, loyal employees that worked their butts off, took time away from their families to *actually* try to turn the company around by building and launching the new Myspace, will be looking for jobs. Some will say this is life in a big company, but size has nothing to do with it. This is life in a failed company, in the hands of leadership lacking competence and ethics, and motivated primarily by personal gain. This is nothing short of negligence, unfortunately short of criminal – for which News Corp needs to be held responsible, and hold responsible the very executives they are rewarding for being in charge of this travesty. |
Museum Files $2 Million Suit Against Guy For Taking Pictures There | Devin Coldewey | 2,011 | 1 | 11 | Well well, I think we can safely file this one under frivolous. Photographer Thomas Hawk visited the World Erotic Art Museum in Miami, with his camera of course, and took a few photos during his stay. A guard asked him whether he was making a book, and Hawk said no. He later put the pictures up on . Not long after, the museum informed Mr. Hawk that they were In the suit, the museum states that it has posted a sign at the entrance (Hawk says he didn’t see it, but that’s immaterial if it’s posted) prohibiting “any professional photography or flash photography.” Since Hawk did not use a flash, and is only using these photos for personal purposes, he is not in violation of that prohibition. And in addition to the great sin of showing pictures taken at a museum he visited, Hawk is under fire for using the museum’s name in connection with said pictures. “Plaintiff has not authorized any one to use the tradename and trademark [World Erotic Art Museum] in connection with the Infringing Photographs, either in the title of the unauthorized Infringing Photographs or in the promotional material for the Infringing Photographs.” Methinks the museum’s lawyer might want to brush up on his intellectual property, copyright, and trademark law. They can’t seriously expect any results from this ridiculous suit, and it’s probably going to cost them a bundle. With luck, Mr. Hawk can find a lawyer who will work this pro bono and have his costs reimbursed by the court when the suit is found to be frivolous. Looking for prohibited photos in general? Check out . |
Viridity Energy Raises $14 Million To Turn Power Consumers Into Producers | Lora Kolodny | 2,011 | 1 | 11 | A Pennsylvania startup Viridity Energy drew a series B investment of $14 million from Braemar Energy Ventures and Intel Capital, the company reported today. Founded in 2008, offers “distributed demand management software, systems and services,” that can turn very energy-consuming businesses into producers and sellers of power back to the grid. Viridity’s technology can also help companies get paid to control and reduce their energy consumption. The company’s customers to-date have been retailers, hospitals, universities and various military and government agencies. In Philadelphia, Viridity set up (SEPTA) that capture energy released by braking, electric subway trains, and store it in rail-side battery arrays, routing the power back through the third rail to reuse it for trains’ acceleration. Yep, electricity can be recycled. reported that the project cut expenditures directly. It also allowed SEPTA to get credits and incentives from the regional power authority for decreasing energy use during peak hours, and in general. The company plans to bring similar systems to other cities and transit systems in the U.S. this year. Viridity Energy’s chief executive and president Audrey Zibelman said on Tuesday:
“We’re moving from an [energy] industry dominated by large-scale generation where customers are passive to one where customers are active in what they consume, and what they produce. First, there were personal computers. Now we’re going to personal energy.” Her company plans to work as a “technology agnostic, market enabler,” she said. Its focus near term is to develop more, “micro-grids” in the northeastern U.S., California and Texas — all regions with aggressive goals to switch from hydrocarbon to renewable energy sources, or to curb greenhouse gas emissions. Its new-found capital will go towards hiring technical and sales talent to get new projects going, Zibelman said. Her company will also continue to build partnerships with other smart-grid and distributed energy players, such as the manufacturers of control systems, or banks and energy programs that finance solar, storage and power generation assets. |
Last Week, IE Was The Top Browser On TechCrunch. Wait, What? | MG Siegler | 2,011 | 1 | 11 | In late November of last year, we noted a changing of the guard: amongst TechCrunch readers, ending the of Firefox in the pole position. And since then, Chrome has actually widened its lead. In the past 30 days, it’s a full 2 percentage points ahead of Firefox now. And that lead continues to grow. But something really odd happened last week. Chrome wasn’t number one. And neither was Firefox. Instead, it was Internet Explorer. Yes, IE took the crown last week. You might not think that’s a big deal considering that IE is still by a fairly large margin the most-used browser overall. But as long as we’ve been keeping track of stats for TechCrunch, it has been the top browser here. In fact, it has been for quite some time. And it’s normally about five percentage points behind number three: Safari. So for it to surge to number one is a real oddity. So what happened? One word: AOL. ; being on AOL’s homepage can lead to a massive surge in traffic depending on where you’re featured. And if we’ve learned one thing from our new parent, it’s that its users love IE. I mean, love IE. Digging further into the data, almost all of them were using IE (with nearly none using Chrome). Read into that what you will. The aging giant, etc. But clearly much of the rest of the web is going the other way. Certainly, part of this AOL/IE love affair has to do with the fact that AOL has some deals with vendors to make their page the default homepage of the browser built-in to Windows: IE. We saw that time and time again during that week, as some strange HP redirect URLs sent traffic our way. Who knows, maybe with IE9 coming out later this year, AOL user’s love for IE will end up showing them as ahead of the curve. But after the past decade of IE, that’s a big . Something tells me Chrome is going to retain the overall crown for some time. |
Verizon Gets The iPad Too | Devin Coldewey | 2,011 | 1 | 11 |
More trouble for AT&T as Apple’s best-selling tablet leaves their roost. The , which has only ever been able to connect directly to AT&T, will soon do so with Verizon. You could buy an add-on before now that would let this happen, but who wants that? Businessweek that there would be a strictly Verizon version of the iPad before long, though he declined to give any dates. I’d be interested in seeing which gives the better data plan; that would probably make the difference for me. We’ll let you know as soon as we hear anything more. |
The Future Version Of Android Isn't Called Ice Cream. It's Ice Cream SANDWICH. | Jason Kincaid | 2,011 | 1 | 11 |
It’s tough being a tech journalist. Countless phone calls, mountains of email, endless warring with legions of trolls. Really, you’ve got to be pretty hardcore to do this job. It’s a wonder we ever get any posts up. Which is my half-hearted explanation as to why it’s taken me this long to reveal the truth about something that I’m sure all of you find extremely important. So, without any further ado, here it is: the version of Android that comes after Honeycomb (in other words, the one after next), is not going to be called Ice Cream, which seems to be the general consensus among tech bloggers. It’s going to be called Ice Cream . Android chief Andy Rubin told me so. Really, he did. It was mentioned in passing as he spoke with Michael Arrington and me about the Nexus S, which was last month. Granted, it was only said in passing, but Rubin doesn’t seem the sort to just rejigger the names of his OS releases on the fly. And besides, it makes perfect sense. Android devotees already know that each operating system update is given the name of a dessert, and that these names have gone in alphabetical order (Donut, Eclair, etc.). They also know that with each release, Google places a giant sculpture of the appropriate dessert in front of Android HQ. At right, we see the sculpture that was created for Froyo (short for frozen yogurt), which was Android 2.2. Looking at this photo, it doesn’t take long to identify the biggest problem with naming a future version of Android ‘Ice Cream’. Namely, there’s really no way to differentiate between soft-serve ice cream and frozen yogurt. Yes, Google engineers could waste countless man-hours attempting to adjust the consistency of the sculpture to reflect the difference in milk-fat. But apparently Google doesn’t think that’s a good use of their time. And so they’re going with Ice Cream Sandwich. Now let us cherish what may be the biggest scoop of my career (get it, scoop?)
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Zuckerberg On SNL: "I Invented Poking" [Video] | Alexia Tsotsis | 2,011 | 1 | 29 |
star Jesse Eisenberg hosted “Saturday Night Live” tonight and opened the show talking about the movie’s impressive Oscar nominations. The monologue then switched to video of actual Facebook CEO watching his two “Berg” doppelgangers backstage, “ Watch the whole “Awkberg” skit, above. Via /
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OMG/JK: Massive Google Fragments (And An iPod Nano Watch!) | MG Siegler | 2,011 | 1 | 29 | This week’s episode of , the show I do on alongside Jason Kincaid, is all Google all the time. So just to even things out a bit, we kick things off by showing off my awesome new TikTok iPod nano wristwatch. For those who don’t remember, this is the result of the most Kickstarter project . We then dive into the Google stuff including Eric Schmidt being replaced by Larry Page as CEO, Google’s index changes, Google Voice number porting, and the upcoming Android Honeycomb event. Watch it above. Here are the links to some of the things we talk about:
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90% of Y Combinator Startups Have Already Accepted The $150k Start Fund Offer | Michael Arrington | 2,011 | 1 | 29 | the 43 startups in the most recent Y Combinator class got quite a surprise. , a new fund created by DST’s as an individual and , offered each of the companies a $150,000 investment in the form of a convertible note with no cap and no discount. Most of these companies are still in stealth mode, and Start Fund hasn’t seen them. They made the offer based on the Y Combinator stamp of approval. The startups are jumping on board. 36 of the 43 startups in the class had signed the paperwork to take the loan before the event was even over last night, says , a managing partner at SV Angel who’s also managing the Start Fund. Lee also says this isn’t a gift, it’s an investment. He says He added – “ The funds will be wired to startups in the next few days, says Lee. |
The Googlers Behind Pubsubhubbub Are Back At It With Camlistore. Open Sync, Store, Share | MG Siegler | 2,011 | 1 | 29 | You may recall that back in the summer of 2009, there was a lot of hubbub over a Google 20 percent project with a near impossible name: . Creators and actually it at our Realtime Stream CrunchUp back then. And it garnered a lot of buzz for a good reason: it aimed to speed up traditionally slow feeds of information to realtime. Well, now the two are back at it again (with a few other contributors) with a new project: . First of all, aside from the fact that I keep typing “Camilstore”, this name is a significant improvement over the last project. It’s an acronym for “Content-Addressable Multi-Layer Indexed Storage”. But more importantly, the project once again looks to be a very interesting one. Though the team is quick to note on its homepage that it’s “not ready for users”, the site has quite a bit of information about the general hopes for the project and how they imagine it working. So what is Camlistore? As the team’s first bullet point notes, it’s “a way to store, sync, share, model and back up content”. Farther down, they also call it your “home directory for the web”. Naturally (from these guys), it’s also entirely open source. So it sounds like it could be a potential competitor for a few things, namely, Dropbox (and the like), Amazon S3, and MySQL. The group addresses the latter two right on the homepage. They note that it’s “not necessarily” a replacement for S3, and that it’s “not yet” a MySQL alternative. They also say it’s both “cloud” and “local”, which again sounds a bit like Dropbox, though they don’t bring up that service or any of its direct competitors. As for the competition angle, they want to make it very clear that this is not an official Google project — as they say, it’s “not Google-centric nor endorsed by Google (other than them letting us open source our side project)”. Humorously, they also note that it’s “pro-paranoia and privacy”. Long story short, it appears we’re going to have to wait a bit to see what it evolves into. But it certainly sounds ambitious at this point. And it’s definitely worth following given that Fitzpatrick is not only behind Pubsubhubbub, but also Memcached (which he first developed for his startup LiveJournal), and the . The full team behind Camlistore is Brad Fitzpatrick, Brett Slatkin, Dan Erat, Evan Martin, Adam Langley, and Andrew Gerrand. And they’re encouraging others to help them out. |
Kevin Rose Invests In Facebook On SecondMarket | Leena Rao | 2,011 | 1 | 29 | and have made a co-investment in Facebook on the secondary market. In this posted this week, Rose announces that he and Ferris recently invested in Facebook “before the craziness.” We’ve embedded the video below; Rose talks about the investment just after the 34 minute mark. We confirmed with Rose that he and Ferriss actually bought shares on secondary market at a $45 billion valuation. We’re told the deal was in the seven figures. The ‘craziness’ Rose is referring to is Facebook’s recent from Goldman Sachs and DST at a $50 billion valuation, and the for the network by April 2012. In terms of why he invested in Facebook at this stage of the game, Rose said this of the investment: Rose has been a prolific angel investor in a number of startups and high-profile companies, including Twitter, Zynga, Foursquare, Gowalla, DailyBooth, and Square. Ferriss is also an angel investor, and has made investments in Twitter, SimpleGeo, Posterous, Foodzie and a number of other startups. While Rose and Ferriss’ investment isn’t monumental news it does show that experienced investors are betting that value of Facebook’s shares will definitely grow significantly, especially if the social network does IPO next year. And Facebook is on SecondMarket. Ferriss actually early this year on investing in Facebook, saying, “I think it’ll be hard to lose on Facebook — assuming there’s not a repeat macroeconomic double dip. If things are fairly stable, I think Facebook is a very strong bet.” [vimeo http://www.vimeo.com/19295905 w=400&h=225] from on . Hat tip to . |
Explaining The Internet In 1994 | John Biggs | 2,011 | 1 | 29 | [youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9nTPX4JW_Ts&hl=en_US&feature=player_embedded&version=3] Here we see Bryant Gumbel and Katie Couric trying to explain the Internet in 1994. Did we ever really dress like that? |
Gillmor Gang 1.29.11 (TCTV) | Steve Gillmor | 2,011 | 1 | 29 | What started as what we were having for lunch has emerged as a worldwide message bus, whether by tweet or friend to friend, search, or gesture. And as the media tries to capture the speed of realtime, the incredible scope and power of the global network has never seemed more fragile and yet sturdy in its robust elastcity. The cloud has found its moment to change and augment history. |
Silhouetter Improves Your iPhone Photos By Removing The Ugly Detail | John Biggs | 2,011 | 1 | 29 |
Can’t stand superficial detail? Overwhelmed by samsara? Why not strip out false detail and turn your world into the wall of Plato’s cave, flickering shadows portraying the world as it really is: a tale told by an idiot, full of sound and fury, signifying nothing. Silhouetter is a 99 cent app that flattens and silhouettes any picture on your , creating a piece of art that comments upon the endless failure of man’s ability to mesh with a meaningful existence. Plus it probably looks great when you send it as an Instagram. |
When The Drones Come Marching In | Jon Evans | 2,011 | 1 | 29 | Way back in the 1970s, hardware-hacker hobbyists built kit computers like the — and in doing so paved the way for the computer revolution that would reshape every facet of modern life. Today the same breed of people are and kit flight controllers for unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs). Just sayin’. Drones are far from new: the US military has been them for over a decade. (What else did the US military pioneer, back in the 1970s? Oh, right. .) UAV tech has long since metastasized around the world. India’s private sector for both military and scientific purposes; Lebanon’s de facto government Hezbollah has used for years; earlier this month, QinetiQ’s set a world record by flying for 2 weeks nonstop; and, of course, the French-built, iPhone-controlled has brought UAVs to the masses. All awesome, and all innovating fast. At this rate this may well become the Decade of Drones. Which makes me more than a little uneasy. Because when I put on my criminal hat—which —I immediately start thinking of kit-built UAVs packed with and targeted via GPS. Voila, poor man’s cruise missiles, available to any hardware hacker with a grudge; all s/he needs is their target’s address. Fortunately, the powers that be have not fostered entire generations of experienced explosives experts with angry political grievances, right? . . Well, at least it’s not like engineers seem disproportionately likely to become terrorists… , . Then there’s the smuggling problem. Colombian and Mexican drug cartels already use and build . You can bet they’ll be jumping on the drone train sooner rather than later. UAVs and USVs (unmanned submersible vehicles) are the ultimate mules; they’ll go anywhere, they’re reusable, and if and when they’re caught, you know they won’t cut a deal. How can you track a drone built from off-the-shelf parts, flown in from parts unknown, back to its sender? Easy: you can’t. What makes drones dangerous is that, unlike most technologies, they can and will decouple criminals from their crimes. That makes them big trouble waiting to happen. The first extra-military drone assassination—and I’ll go on record now and predict one within the next five years—will doubtless trigger a cacophonous symphony of handwringing, tooth-gnashing, and the passing of lots of stupid and restrictive laws, but it will already be much too late. The twin genies of aeronautical engineering and microcontroller design are long out of their respective bottles. will make today’s look like the Wright Brothers’ biplanes, and the only way to track and fight them will be with yet more drones. Hello, . Goodbye, privacy. Granted, I’m verging on science fiction here, but it’s science fiction that doesn’t seem all that evitable. The drone economy will soon be even bigger business than it already is … but I can’t shake the sense that it will ultimately be bad news for us all. Ponder that the next time you take your Parrot for a spin. |
null | Greg Kumparak | 2,011 | 1 | 11 | null |
Meetup feels the wrath of the crowd after radical changes | Mike Butcher | 2,011 | 1 | 29 | , a long time go-to place to create local online groups, has undergone a major re-launch in the past day. However, it may have missed a trick: not consulting the meetup organizers who pay through the nose for the service. There now appears to be something of a revolt going on amongst some organisers, who are vociferously protesting about the changes. The reaction of annoyed organisers and members has turned into two, count-em, Twitter hashtags: and . Alternatives to Meetup like are being touted, as is – a startup which last year from the likes of Index Ventures and Angels like Dave McClure and Chris Sacca. It is is already gunning for “FormerMeetupOrganizers” with its and . Meetup users are also a little annoyed about the site discussing the changes and a Facebook page titled “Mark Zuckerberg, help! Please create Meetup event functionality on FB” . Now some organizers are now and it’s significant that an arts and craft meetup organiser, typical of the average Meetup groups, is . The complaints appear to be about the new layout, the design (“truly tacky and cheap looking” says one organiser), the downgrading of photos, and the fact that anymeetup member of a group can now organise an event. Normally that would be fine, right? Except it rather removes the point of an lead organiser the monthly subscription fee. A one : “I did everything I was supposed to. I built a successful group that is of benefit to many people, to the community, and represents the Meetup idea well. And, still, it’s been damaged and diminished by forces outside my control.” Meetup appears to have made more of its ‘sponsors’, which offer 10% off local coupons (a la Foursquare or Groupon), but complainers say these bear little relation to the groups themselves. So far Meetup says to revert back to the old version of Meetup. Now, of course, it’s often the case that long-time users of a site might complain – remember when Facebook created news feeds? Meetup appears to be radically shifting towards a more Web 2.0-ish approach where there is no one single meetup leader, any member can suggest a meetup, and things are just supposed to bubble up from the crowd. Borrowing from , Meetup is now using “Count me in” instead of RSVP. But the fact that maps are replacing photos is also concerning members, since these might reveal some people’s home addresses. As , organisers “don’t want their Meetup turned into a Twitter feed or a Facebook page.” Let us know what you think of the Meetup changes in the comments. |
Awards In Hand, The Social Network Filmmakers Heap Praise On Zuckerberg | MG Siegler | 2,011 | 1 | 16 | One of the standout scenes at in happens in the first five minutes of the movie. Erica Albright (Rooney Mara) is sitting in a bar with boyfriend Mark Zuckerberg (Jesse Eisenberg) when she says the following to him: You are probably going to be a very successful computer person. But you’re going to go through life thinking that girls don’t like you because you’re a nerd. And I want you to know, from the bottom of my heart, that that won’t be true. It’ll be because you’re an asshole. It basically sets the tone for the entire film. And it’s also undoubtedly one of the many scenes that made Facebook (the actual company) uneasy over the film. Well tonight, at The Golden Globes, writer Aaron Sorkin took a moment in his best screenplay acceptance speech to acknowledge the real Mark Zuckerberg and that very scene. “ ,” Sorkin said on stage. Later, while accepting the award for Best Picture of the year, producer Scott Rudin, had the following to say: “ .” This is, of course, at odds with the reports of the company’s decided unwillingness to see this movie made. Sorkin also used a part of his speech to address to the charges that the film is . “ ” he said. It seems like ages ago that we first heard that Hollywood would be making a movie based on the founding of Facebook. At the time, the entire thing seemed like a bit of a joke. Then to write it. Then David Fincher signed on to direct it. Then to score it. The end result? Best Screenplay, Best Director, Best Score, and Best Picture at the Golden Globes. And Oscar gold is likely to follow next. It was perhaps Reznor who nailed what the ultimate reaction to the film would be. “ ,” he wrote in July of last year. Indeed. Of course, he’s . |
'The Social Network' Wins Golden Globe Awards For Best Picture, Screenplay, Director, Score | Leena Rao | 2,011 | 1 | 16 | After being for a number of awards at this year’s Golden Globe awards ceremony, ‘The Social Network’ nabbed Best Picture (in the drama category), Screenplay (Aaron Sorkin), Score (Trent Reznor), and Director (David Fincher). Those are all significant categories for the awards ceremony, with the movie garnering more awards from the Hollywood Foreign Press than most of the films nominated this year. Interestingly, Sorkin and the film’s producer Scott Rudin both thanked Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg in their acceptance speeches. The movie had a fairly good and received overwhelmingly from critics. The Golden Globes are known as an accurate reflection of what could come at the Oscars, so this is a big win for the movie, which was released by Sony Pictures. We’ll learn on if the movie will grab any Academy Award nominations You can read our review of the movie : Photo Credit/ |
Daily Crunch: Snow Day Edition | Bryce Durbin | 2,011 | 1 | 29 | |
Blog Fight Rules Of Engagement | Michael Arrington | 2,011 | 1 | 16 | Blog fights happen. Sometimes for attention, but most of the time because someone is really pissed off about something. And don’t count out big media, they too when they feel it. No one’s ever written down any rules for blog fights that I know of. But there are some unspoken rules and guidelines. Here are a few core strategies: That’s not it though. There are also unspoken rules of engagement. An ethical guide to a clean blog fight, if you will. Last week I at , our sister site at AOL. They’ve been on our ass for a couple of years now. They have a major attribution problem, for example, and tend to just steal stories. They also get extremely petty, as evidenced by how they covered the CrunchPad story. More recently Engadget editor in chief tried to kill our acquisition by AOL. And for some strange reason Engadget writers and editors tend to troll our comments pointlessly. All of these things are facts. It’s a big pile of petty. I was going to let this all go, but now the NY Times says they’re going to write a story about the fight and want my comments. After our I tried to bury the hatchet with them. I put on my big boy pants and I went out of my way to link to them, retweet them and generally say the past is the past. I suggested we work together on an internal call. We even invited them to participate in the Crunchies. Dead silence on their end, and the trolling continued. So I took my shot. And then they fired back. Not directly, though. They spoke off record to another blog. They denied ever doing anything to poke at us. They released parts of private emails out of context. Worst of all they brought “civilians” (non bloggers) into the fight. Etc. In other words, Engadget is really good at being passive aggressive, but they really suck at a good clean blog fight. So here are some suggestions for the next time they find themselves in the middle of some mess they started. Basically this comes down to fighting your own battles, not using human shields, and generally making sure to play by some basic ethical rules so that when the fight is over, you can move on. To sum up this section – if someone starts a knife fight with you, then walk away or pull out a knife and fight. Don’t just hire someone else to show up with a gun and call it a win. Truth matters. How you fight matters. Whether you win or lose is far less important. That’s all I’m going to say about this particular fight for now. Hope this helped people understand how we approach these things, and what kind of behavior we expect from the other side. |
A Twitter Snapshot Of The Tunisian Revolution: Over 196K Mentions Of Tunisia, Reaching Over 26M Users | Alexia Tsotsis | 2,011 | 1 | 16 | After four weeks of civil unrest, the fall of the Tunisian president Ben Ali played out for all the world on Twitter this Friday, dubbing it a “Twitter Revolution” like the election protests in Iran and Moldovia. Increasingly, collective events from TV shows to the World Cup to to the fall of dictatorships cause spikes in related conversation on the microblogging network which, with its broad media influencer adoption, has become the world’s eminent news amplifier. Christopher Golda of (which does Twitter analysis) provided us with snapshot of Tunisa mentions on Friday January 14th. Not surprisingly the hashtag peaked at 28 tweets per second at 21:27:56 Tunisian time (20:27:56 GMT, 12:27:56 PT), a couple hours after the reports that Tunisan president had left the country at around 9:30 PT. At the end of the cycle, total tweets mentioning Tunisia (including those using the #Tunisia hastag) were over 196K. Total tweets for (the province where the protests started) were over 103K. All in all tweets mentioning Tunisia showed up in Twitter streams as many as 329 million times, 26 million Twitter users. The total number of people mentioning Tunisia in tweets was over 50K, which was less than the 81K by the recent #Lessambitious movies Twitter trend. Golda says this is probably because the latter was According to Backtype, the top ten Tunisian related tweets were: http://twitter.com/#!/Voiceoftunisia/status/25988944399179777
http://twitter.com/#!/monaeltahawy/status/25623049533394944
http://twitter.com/#!/alfarhan/status/26015918190501888
http://twitter.com/#!/twitter/status/25671074020589568
http://twitter.com/#!/BBCBreaking/status/25973534916349952
http://twitter.com/#!/SultanAlQassemi/status/25967356278743040
http://twitter.com/#!/Dima_Khatib/status/26046045251182592
http://twitter.com/#!/BreakingNews/status/25968756333219840
http://twitter.com/#!/BBCBreaking/status/25939933885632512
http://twitter.com/#!/cnnbrk/status/25937076226629632 It’s interesting to note that only three of the top tweets are from a mainstream media source (only one from the US), four (including @alfarhan’s) are breaking the news of Ben Ali’s departure and two are breaking the news of the dissolution of Parliament. The most retweeted account, with its 496 followers, was retweeted over 400 times. The top sites being shared on Twitter relating to Tunisia were: 1. facebook.com
2. bbc.co.uk
3. guardian.co.uk
4. youtube.com
5. english.aljazeera.net
6. liveword.ca
7. nytimes.com
8. cnn.com
9. twitpic.com
10. news.yahoo.com The fact that Facebook, like Twitter, sees an increase of activity around times of political change and communication between activists this time around explains its appearance at the top of the leaderboard here. More active international media like the Guardian, the BBC and Al Jazeera round out the top five. The first US-based traditional media source, comes after the Liveword.ca blog at number seven. Since we spend so much time on the sites ourselves, there is a tendency for bloggers and reporters to be myopic when it comes to the use of Twitter in mediating significant events. Because news about Tunisia saturated our Twitter streams, it can seem like Twitter played a crucial role in instigating the news itself. And while the jury is still out on just how much tweets can influence something as monumental as the fall of a government, it is worth noting that the critical mass of Tunisia related activity on Twitter happened Ben Ali fled. Word cloud: |
Yahoo Hasn't Updated Their Oscars Site Since March 2010 | Michael Arrington | 2,011 | 1 | 16 | There seem to be a lot of Yahoo properties that no one pays any attention to at all. We that Yahoo kept their Halloween content up past that holiday, for example. There was the where a blog post saying the site wasn’t going offline was offline because the site had been taken down. Now, we’ve noticed, site hasn’t been updated since March 2010. This is despite the fact that Yahoo had a earlier this year: “Yahoo is doubling down on its awards show content this year,” says the article. It’s not just that the content has been pushed to Yahoo’s OMG site. There’s little on this year’s Academy Awards there, either. Not a big deal. Not the end of the world. But this is a sign that there are Yahoo properties that have no staff assigned to them. Or worse, there are staff but they just don’t care at all about their jobs. And Chrysler, Yahoo’s exclusive advertising partner for the season’s awards show, must be wondering what’s going on. The good news is that after this post Yahoo will quickly update their Oscars site. Well, tomorrow, after the weekend’s over. I mean Tuesday, after the holiday. Certainly sometime before next year. |
Fujifilm X100 Gets Priced, But Not Dated | Devin Coldewey | 2,011 | 1 | 16 |
My pick for just , and although the price is certainly high ($1199), it must be acknowledged that the is a unique camera, and very possibly an excellent one. Fujifilm is known for powerful sensors, the whole device was engineered as a whole, the lens is fast, the viewfinder magical, and so on. Yeah, you could buy a great DSLR or M4/3 for less, and you should if those fit your needs better. But it might be that the X100 is worth every dollar. We’ll find out when we review it. [via ] |
Asmyco: Each iOS Device Has Downloaded More Than 60 Apps | Leena Rao | 2,011 | 1 | 16 |
the Helsinki-based app developer / industry analysis advisory firm founded and led by a longtime Nokia manager, has just a new report on its blog with notewrthy data on the increase in iOS downloads by device. The company reports that more than 60 apps have been downloaded for every iOS device sold. That’s up from 10 apps downloaded for every iPhone/iPod touch in 2008, says Asmyco. So how did the firm get to that number? As the Apple App Store approaches App downloads are increasing at a faster rate that iTunes music downloads (of course, not all iTunes users are getting their music from iTunes). Asmyco then determined that around 30 million Apps are currently being downloaded per day. The firm then divided the cumulative apps downloaded by the cumulative number of iOS devices sold, which includes iPhones, iPads, and iPod touches. Asmyco says that from that equation, each iOS device sold has downloaded more than 60 apps. Of course, much of this information is subjective, considering Apple doesn’t publicly update its total number of iPhones, iPads and iPod touches very often. And as more devices are sold, more Apps will be downloaded. But the Asymco does raise an interesting trend-App downloads are growing at an alarmingly fast rate, overtaking digital music along the way. Last fall, Asmyco iOS App download were set to pass the total number of music downloads by the end of 2010. The firm says that this happened yet, but it’s coming close. And Apps will reach 10 billion downloads in less than half the time it took songs (31 vs 67 months for Apps, says Asmyco.) |
True Ventures' Entrepreneur Force Pays It Forward To Budding Tech Leaders | Leena Rao | 2,011 | 1 | 16 | In the midst of the implosion of the financial markets in 2008, raised its second fund. Founder and partner tells us that shortly after this raise in early 2009 (which he calls the “dark days in the financial world”), the fund’s partners were sitting at a meeting looking for innovative ways they could help jump start the tech economy. Inspired by President Obama’s 2009 inaugural address, True Ventures decided to launch their own program to encourage college students to work at early-stage startups, and to help inspire and educate the “entrepreneurs of tomorrow.” Called the (TEC), the program places 12 undergraduate students in the fund’s early-stage portfolio companies. The internships take place during the summer in the San Francisco area and range in terms of focus, from technical coding to finance to marketing to business development. And TEC offers students a $3000 stipend for the summer. In addition to the experience at the startups, the students also go through a weekly core curriculum from True Ventures that involves the financial components of founding and running a startup as well as guest lectures from seasoned entrepreneurs. Last summer, the intern class heard from SGN’s , Kwedit’s , and others. Students were asked to read and discuss , , and other relevant publications, to name a few. After speaking to a few TEC alums, it’s easy to determine that these internships aren’t the average fetching coffee, making copies type of internships that most college students experience. Ali Shah, an engineering student at NYU, worked at video publishing site for summer and actually developed the company’s iPhone app. Shah says that after his experience at VodPod he either wants to work at an early-stage startup or start his own company following school. Harvard student Amelia Lin worked at payments startup mainly focusing on sales and marketing efforts at the company. Lin actually developed marketing cartoon videos explaining how PayNearMe’s technology works for consumers (you can see here). SHe also helped develop the startup’s social media strategy. Like Shah, she’s inspired to work at a startup following graduation or start her own company. What sets TEC apart is that the model is unique for venture firms, who generally offer in-house internship programs but don’t necessarily fund and coordinate internships and educational opportunities within portfolio companies. For True Ventures, TEC, which is now accepting applications for its third summer program; is a way to pay it forward for both its portfolio startups and potential entrepreneurs and tech leaders. The benefits of the program is two fold. First, TEC offers college students a way to do substantial work at early stage startups while still being able to earn a few bucks over a summer. And True Ventures’ portfolio companies start building relationships with potential talent. Many of these startups would not be able to afford to recruit at colleges and/or compete with large companies like Google, Microsoft or even Facebook for talent. As Black tells us, “we have a powerful platform and want to effect the startup ecosystem in a positive way.” |
The Thin Wedge Of Quora | Semil Shah | 2,011 | 1 | 16 | In 2010, a handful of mobile photo-sharing applications unleashed armies of handset users to snap pictures and instantly share them across multiple platforms and networks: growth exploded to become a Twitter for pictures; received generous funding, emerged from stealth mode, enabled 360-degree panoramic experiences, encouraged users to capture food images, positioned itself to focus on the front-facing camera, and translated signs from English language to Spanish. Photo-sharing features were also embedded into existing sharing services, such as and . (This entire arc was captured in a discussion on Quora, “ ”) The act of taking and sharing pictures prompted many to label this a “key wedge” activity which companies could leverage in order to build out new social networks and new products or services, either around location, food, smaller circles of friends and family, and so forth. The wedge being used, in this case, is pictures as the first entry point into building something bigger. Hunch co-founder Chris Dixon laid out the theory and practice in . Wedge activity isn’t just confined to social picture-sharing. What if, in the case of , their “thin edge of the wedge” was interaction around Q&A activity? What markets can that wedge help open up? On the surface, the Q&A activity at the heart of Quora appears designed to engage users around interesting people, topics, and questions with strong incentives to contribute content, as well as to participate in voting, messaging, commenting, and sharing. As it turns out, Quora’s “thin wedge” is not so thin and has triggered a new class of content creators and is well on its way to successfully tackle the Q&A problem that has been attempted by nearly 30 different companies in the past. But I believe this initial activity is just Quora’s thin edge of the wedge. The first arena the site has been successful in altering slightly is the concept of network blogging, all of which has been by —many times over. As the product matures and as contributors, consumers, and search engines crawl across the site looking for structured content, Quora could be slightly reorganized and positioned in a variety of new ways to challenge existing Internet products and services, many of which today are themselves large, multi-million dollar businesses. In no particular order, here is a list of markets where Quora could offer an alternative, leading all the way to the other edge—the thick edge—search. All of these scenarios are theoretical, and surely there are more opportunities I’ve missed. (Please add your own thoughts in comments, or chime in ). It could take many years for Quora to test these markets, if it ever does, and that will require the long-term commitment of Quora users to contribute content to the site in exchange for the opportunity to socially interact with others based on interests, to build reputations, and to collect endorsements. Over time, the content contributed to Quora will constantly be improved, refined, aggregated, and structured. Like a stone in a tumbler, the edges will get smoother. One effect of the tumbling and fine-tuning is that the site will become better optimized for search. And, this is where the other edge of the wedge, the thick edge— will come into play. Search has undergone tremendous change and will continue to do so. The opportunities in new search methods are numerous and the future is exciting, but it’s also hazy with low visibility. We simply just don’t know how we’ll search differently, a theme which is at the root of many of the fascinating heavyweight fights going on in Silicon Valley. There may be room for more winners, and those winners will likely have figured out how to effectively segment their users according to a variety of factors and then, according to those segments, to create the proper blend of incentives to encourage the behaviors it needs to survive. For Quora, that formula may look something like this: Small segments of curious users who feed the system good questions; slightly bigger segments who contribute knowledge to the system in response; and hopefully an enormous segment that searches the Internet in a variety of ways and somehow end up on Quora for their answer. |
How'd Sequoia Let Yuri Milner Grab this Sweetheart Y Combinator Deal? | Sarah Lacy | 2,011 | 1 | 28 | Earlier tonight, Mike posted a that must have made super angels shudder. Not content with the grenade he threw into the late-stage investing world with aggressive investments in Facebook, Groupon and Zynga, tonight Yuri Milner announced a new partnership with Ron Conway that offers similar you’d-be-crazy-not-to-take-this-deal terms for Y Combinator company. But you know who might be even more bummed by the news than the super angels? Sequoia Capital. The top Valley firm , less than one year ago. At $8.5 million, this was a big step up for Y Combinator, dramatically allowing it to expand how many startups it could let into its incubator. And it should have been a big advantage for Sequoia too: A way to see a crop of new deals early in an increasingly competitive investing landscape, where most VCs are being shut out of early rounds by super angels. It seems Milner stole the opportunity right out from under Sequoia. We haven’t talked to Sequoia, and it’s possible the partners don’t agree that Milner and Conway’s deal is a no-brainer. So far, most Y Combinator exits have been modest, and Sequoia isn’t known for giving sweetheart terms to entrepreneurs. I can’t think of many venture firms who would give a blanket investing offer before even seeing companies. Almost more than any other firm on Sand Hill Road, being a Sequoia Capital company has historically stood for something. Then again, a few years ago, no Valley firms would invest in late stage Internet companies with the kinds of terms Milner was offering either– that is until Milner started doing it and locking in high paper valuation gains. The deal with Y Combinator isn’t classic venture capital any more than those late stage deals were. But a $6 million flier across 40 vetted companies sounds like a pretty safe way to hedge in a business where the rules have dramatically changed, barriers to entry have dramatically been lowered and money is an easily found commodity. Maybe Sequoia wouldn’t have done the same deal, but if the firm believed in Y Combinator enough to invest a year ago, it can’t be happy about this new arrangement. Every VC will tell you that good deal flow is the biggest competitive advantage an early stage investor has. Milner may have just bought his way into this game for the low price of $6 million.
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Start Fund: Yuri Milner, SV Angel Offer EVERY New Y Combinator Startup $150k | Michael Arrington | 2,011 | 1 | 28 | Everything just changed in the angel investing world. Two years ago , through his investment firm , disrupted the traditional Silicon Valley venture capital model when he began investing in the hottest startups – companies like Facebook, Zynga and Groupon – at very high valuations and extremely easy deal terms. He looks brilliant in hindsight, with all of his U.S. investments at significantly higher valuations since he invested. Most top VC firms have begun emulating DST’s deal structure. Now he’s partnering (as an individual, not as part of DST) with angel fund, . And they’re making a bold investment move. This evening they’ve just made a blanket investment offer to every startup in the most recent batch. They’re going to invest in all of them. Every single one. And this is the biggest Y Combinator class to date – some 40 new startups. The new fund is called . SV Angel’s is managing the fund. They haven’t even seen most of the startups yet. This is a bet on the quality of Y Combinator startups in general. All of the new Y Combinator entrepreneurs gathered at Y Combinator headquarters in Mountain View California on Friday evening to hear about the offer, They weren’t told why they were supposed to be there, just that something important was happening. The SV Angel team was there in person. Milner joined from Europe by video conference. The terms? $150,000 in convertible debt. With no cap and no discount. If you’re an investor you know exactly what that means and you just shuddered a little. Those aren’t terms that most angels can match. If you’re not an investor, here’s what it means. Yuri and SV Angel just offered to loan each company $150,000. That loan will convert if/when the company raises a proper angel or venture capital round at the same valuation that’s set in that round. Most convertible debt has a valuation ceiling and also gets a discount on conversion. This debt doesn’t. It’s the most entrepreneur friendly investment that I can think of, short of just handing people money as a gift. Each startup can choose to take the investment or not. If all 40 of the startups accept the loan then a total of $6 million will have been invested. And Milner/SV Angel say they intend to offer this for each Y Combinator startup in the future, too. That means Y Combinator entrepreneurs will not only get the $15k – $20k from Y Combinator during the first few months of their project, but they can look forward to another $150,000 a few months later. That’s usually enough to complete development and launch a product. This is a huge win for Y Combinator, and cofounder seemed very pleased when we spoke by telephone this morning. He also says it’s a smart investment strategy. If only a couple of the startups have a large liquidity event it’s likely to be a good investment for Milner and SV Angel, he noted. “This is a hits driven business,” he said. This also spreads incredible goodwill throughout the young entrepreneur community. This also puts Y Combinator further ahead of competing early stage incubators/investors. Entrepreneurs now know they’ll be offered easy terms on $150,000 in capital just for being part of Y Combinator. That’s an incredible marketing advantage. This is not such a big win for other angel investors, who are with business models and rising valuations. They tend to mob Y Combinator startups generally. And now they’ve got to deal with startups that don’t need cash as desperately, and who already have Milner and SV Angel as investors. That’s two more steps behind than they were before. SV Angel says that this is a separate process from their normal investing. They’ll invest additional sums in some of the Y Combinator startups just as they always have. They’ve already invested in two from this batch so far, says David Lee, and it’s extremely early in the process. |
Verizon iPhone Release Gets Dated Down To The Hour | Devin Coldewey | 2,011 | 1 | 28 |
Nothing much to see here folks. Just a bunch of people drooling at the mouth over, to them, the most anticipated phone (ever) moving to a similar, but different network, . With tensions so tight, someone had to let people know down to the hour just when they should keep hitting their browser’s refresh button. 3AM. 3AM. Eastern time zone Thursday February 3rd, that is. That is when everyone and their mother will crash Verizon’s website. iPhone will go for $199 and $299 for the 16GB and 32GB respectively. Plans at big red start at $70 for 450 minutes and unlimited data. To tether, they want $20! Highway robbery, Verizon. SMS charges are the same at 250 for $5 and unlimited for $20. What, you thought it’d be better cheaper? |
Blekko Takes Curated Search Mobile With iPhone And Android Apps | Alexia Tsotsis | 2,011 | 1 | 28 | , the search engine that is fighting the against web spam with human editors, is joining biggies Google and Bing in the mobile search arena today with an Android and iPhone application double whammy. Says Blekko CEO , The app has a simple interface which allows you to view search results whether or not you are logged in with your Blekko account. With the exception of Facebook integration, the app pretty much provides the gamut of features found on Blekko itself, most notably the ability to search by or curated topic. Results are sorted by most relevant and by date. The app also offers suggested slashtags for each search at the top when you scroll down on a search. For Blekko power users, an interface with the buried treasure features of “Mark as Spam,””View SEO info,””Add to Slashtags” and “Open in Safari” can be accessed by clicking on the arrow next to each individual result in your search and then clicking on the box/arrow icon in the bottom right corner to reveal further options (see the image on the right, above). Blekko, which boasts more than 100,000 slashtags created after its launch in November, has raised $24 million from VC superstars like Ron Conway, Mike Maples, Jeff Clavier and Marc Andreessen and most recently actual like Ashton Kutcher. As of today the app is free in the App Store and Android Market. |
Audi-Designed Carbon Skis: Want So Bad | Devin Coldewey | 2,011 | 1 | 28 |
Looking good while skiing isn’t easy, and occasionally ends up in a yard sale on the slope. Function comes first when you’re hurtling down a double diamond with 15 feet of visibility. That said, these Audi-designed skis are so sexy they may cause skiers to forget where they’re going. They’re a creation of Audi’s Concept Design Munich studio, who collaborated with Head to make them a limited production item. The ski has a wood core, with layers of aluminum and titanium, topped off with carbon. The lightweight construction gives it the impressively low 960 grams per ski. The ski “may become available” at the end of 2011. No price, but I’m guessing they’ll be quite expensive. |
Enspert 7″ Android 2.2 Tablet Soon To Be Available | Devin Coldewey | 2,011 | 1 | 28 |
The heat may be surrounding the Android 3.0 coming in the next few months, but if you’re too impatient to wait for those, or just need a few budget tablets for around the office, the could be the iPad-lookalike Froyo unit for you. It’s not the most exciting of tablets, but it does have access to the real Android Market, and should run pretty much all the apps out there no problem, unlike some of the Android tablets out there. It’s got a 1GHz Cortex A8 processor and a PowerVR SGX 450 GPU, putting it slightly below the Galaxy Tab in terms of specs, and its screen is significantly lower-resolution at 800×480, but other than that it stacks up nicely. SD slot, USB and HDMI ports, dual cameras, 802.11n wi-fi and Bluetooth, the works. The price is 349 of your American dollars, and it’ll be available next week. Personally I’d be waiting for 3.0, but hey. |
Android 3.0 Running (Poorly) On Nook Color | Devin Coldewey | 2,011 | 1 | 28 |
Android 3.0 (Honeycomb) just recently got its first , and it looks like the enterprising hackers in the Android community have already to the Nook Color hardware. Well, partially. It’s a “zombie” made by mixing the SDK with the Nook’s kernel, and it runs like a dog. Getting hardware acceleration (a major part of the UI snappiness in Honeycomb) working is the next step, and hacker dhoshman over at XDA says he’ll be working on that over the weekend. We’ll keep you updated. |
'Angry Turds' Is Like 'Angry Birds' Except With, Yes, Turds | Alexia Tsotsis | 2,011 | 1 | 28 | Ever wish had more poop in it? Well look no further than the , as has launched Angry Turds. As a monkey in Angry Turds, you get to battle evil island explorers who have stolen your monkey babies with various projectile weapons. The concept is similar to Angry Birds as your objective is to throw stuff but the stuff here goes beyond rocks to coconuts, turds, banana bombs and grand poop-bas (I am so glad I never spent any money getting a journalism degree). Angry Birds will be happy to discover that the touch action of throwing objects is exactly the same as in Angry Birds except there’s no slingshot. The weapons themselves each have varying properties in terms of force and levels of destruction per throw. What’s even more amazing than the fact that someone made this is that the App Store thinks that the word “turds” needs censorship (as in but the word “poop” is as clean as the Pope himself. For : On why he chose this specific name and concept, Apps Genius CEO told us Angry Turds is available in both free and $0.99 paid versions, with 10 levels and 30 levels respectively, in case you need to step your turd game up. You can download the
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I Don't Think This Is A Real Verizon iPhone Pre-Order Email | John Biggs | 2,011 | 1 | 28 | null |
Video: Experiment Shows Cord-Cutting Simply Too Difficult For Average Families To Grasp | Nicholas Deleon | 2,011 | 1 | 28 | Here’s more evidence that regular people have for things like , , and , if only because they’re too complicated for their own good. Hill Holiday, a “caffeine-fueled ad agency,” . For one week each family was asked to forgo traditional cable TV in favor of one of the following devices: , Google TV, Boxee Box, , and Roku. These devices, of course, are the premier devices for people looking to break free of their cable company while still being able to enjoy television. And how did it turn out for these five families? They were , and for all the reasons . And by “we” I mean Matt; cord-cutting is his bête noire. If you’re someone who merely watches TV to unwind before going to bed, the absolute best device you can buy right now is a traditional cable TV box. Call the cable company, have them set it up, and you’ve got access to literally more programming than you could ever consume. Live sports, news, game shows, comedies, drama, reality TV as far as the eye can see—the works. There’s no buffering and there’s no hoping that your Wi-Fi network won’t crash. Peace of mind is a wonderful thing. The families also complained that using these devices transformed TV-watching into an experience. No! They used to call TV the idiot box for a reason: you sit back and let it all come to you. “Oh, look, Seinfeld is on, let’s watch that.” Or, “Wow, Ferris Bueller’s Day Off is on, let’s watch that for the hundredth time.” There’s a difference between A) channel surfing, having something catch your eye, then you committing an hour to watching it, and B) sifting through page after page of listings, nestled 400 menu screens deep, only to find that the movie you finally decided upon—an exhausting endeavor—isn’t even available in HD. Gee, thanks. The question becomes, exactly is that better than watching regular TV? Isn’t technology supposed to make our lives easier, and not more frazzled? Of course, none of this is to say that cord-cutting doesn’t work for some people, because clearly it does, but it does show that not everyone is as keen on the concept as some of its proponents online would have you believe. |
iPhone 4 vs LG Optimus 2X: Video Recording Quality Comparison | Greg Kumparak | 2,011 | 1 | 28 | Yesterday afternoon, an LG Optimus 2X finished the last leg of its rigorous journey from a South Korean factory to my front porch in California. As the first Android smartphone (and the first smartphone of platform, really) to make it into the wild with a dual-core Tegra 2 processor, it is — for the time being at least — the most powerful Android phone in the world. We’ll have our full review up in just a few days, but in the mean time I figured you guys might enjoy this footage I shot earlier this morning comparing the 1080p video recording of the LG Optimus 2X to that of the iPhone 4. Check it out after the jump.
My conclusion? The iPhone 4 wins hands down. The Optimus 2X’s footage is quite acceptable — but contrasted against identical footage shot on an iPhone, it falls short in both color and clarity. ( ) [youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jSOoubjP9U4?rel=0&hd=1&w=630&h=384] |
War Maneuvers: Android Event Will Battle iPad Event For Press Love On February 2 | MG Siegler | 2,011 | 1 | 28 | I love asking companies if the timing of events is on purpose or purely coincidental. Not only do they almost always say that it’s purely coincidental, but they often try to claim that didn’t even realize a rival was also doing something when they made their plans. Sure. Next week will feature another such situation. Earlier this week, for an event to unveil the new iPad-only app, The Daily. And then this evening, we’ve just to a Google event to show off the latest version of Android, Honeycomb. The one meant for tablets. And guess what? They’re on the same day. Sure, the events are on different sides of the country (though word is that News Corp./Apple had originally wanted to host their’s in the Bay Area too). And as such, the iPad event will be slightly earlier than the Android event (8 AM PT versus 10 AM PT). That doesn’t matter. The key is that controlling the news that day will be paramount for both sides. And Android just press-blocked the iPad. The events are timed and situated in such a way that it would be absolutely impossible for a journalist with invites to each event to go to both. And while Google is being nice enough to host a live stream on YouTube (something which News Corp./Apple will almost for sure not do), it will still be a pain to extensively cover both. You’ll basically have to choose. Normally, it would be all iPad next Wednesday. Now it’s likely to be more Android-controlled. And don’t think there’s nothing to the fact that Google is showing off a “taste” of Android shortly before the iPad 2 is expected to be unveiled. War. |
AnyLeaf Aggregates And Delivers Personalized Grocery Store Deals | Leena Rao | 2,011 | 1 | 28 | For decades, my mother and grandmother have both religiously scanned the weekly coupon books and circulars that arrive in the weekend newspaper. While clipping coupons can be tedious, grocery stores’ weekly deals can often take out a significant chunk of change of the weekly food bill. Of course, as print couponing becomes obsolete, many consumers are looking to the web for deals at their local grocery stores. Today, -backed is launching its intelligent grocery deal aggregator to the public. AnyLeaf scours local grocery store sites in the San Francisco Bay area and aggregates all the deals from these stores, including CVS, Lucky, Nob Hill, Raley’s, Safeway, Target, and Walgreens. You simply enter your zipcode and email address, and AnyLeaf will send you a weekly email with deals from the local grocery stores near you. And what sets AnyLeaf apart from other grocery store deal aggregators is that it applies an intelligent algorithm to sourcing deals for users. You can specify that you don’t want to see deals on specific food items and products, and after your start interacting with AnyLeaf’s site, the service will start recommending similar items to those you have chosen to see deals for. And AnyLeaf collects historical prices for food items and will also show you how steep a discount is compared to past discounts from grocery stores. For now AnyLeaf is limited to the Bay area but plans to expand to other cities in the near future. For any Trader Joe’s fans out there, AnyLeaf doesn’t aggregate deals from the popular grocery store chain because the company doesn’t post sales publicly on the Trader Joe’s site. Personally, I would pay more attention to grocery deals at the stores where I shop if I received comprehensive lists of weekly deals via email. I’m keeping my fingers crossed that Chicago is AnyLeaf’s next expansion! |
Meetup Feels The Wrath Of The Crowd After Radical Changes | Mike Butcher | 2,011 | 1 | 28 | , a long time go-to place to create local online groups, has undergone a major re-launch in the past day. However, it may have missed a trick: not consulting the meetup organizers who pay through the nose for the service. There now appears to be something of a revolt going on amongst some organisers, who are vociferously protesting about the changes. The reaction of annoyed organisers and members has turned into two, count-em, Twitter hashtags: and . Alternatives to Meetup like are being touted, as is – a startup which last year from the likes of Index Ventures and Angels like Dave McClure and Chris Sacca. It is is already gunning for “FormerMeetupOrganizers” with its and . |
Ask a VC: John O’Farrell Gives Tips on Deal Making, Advice to Would-Be VCs (TCTV) | Sarah Lacy | 2,011 | 1 | 28 | This week’s Ask a VC has a different twist, since we had a different kind of VC on the show, John O’Farrell Andressen Horowitz’s guru on business development and deal-making. The questions you asked O’Farrell are below. As usual, feel free to watch the whole show or use the links to skip ahead to your question. Would this be a situation in which you guys would make a deal?” |
Groupon gets into Glittering Glitzini | Mike Butcher | 2,011 | 1 | 28 | Over here in Europe we’re really glad that US-based , which has rolled up a lot of local clones in the last year, is entering in to our sexually enlightened culture. The latest example of this is the sending out of offers like “ ‘Glitzini’ Decoration.” Yes folks, you too can “bring the sparkle back to your Nether lands with today’s Groupon: for £25 instead of £63, jazz up your bikini line with a Brazilian wax and choice of glittering decoration at Victoria Colonnade Beauty Rooms.” Just in case you are unaware of what this is all about, here’s . And they say Groupon is a flash in the pan. Ha! |
Waviimania Continues As Investors Flock To Parade | Michael Arrington | 2,011 | 1 | 17 | This is how to milk a stealth startup for all it’s worth. We first covered Seattle startup back in July. The company has raised somewhere around $2 million in angel funding from thirty or so angel investors – only a are publicly known. It continues to get a lot of behind the scenes buzz as the stealth startup to watch. And watch, and watch. They’ve been in private beta for some time. But there are only 100 or so hand picked people using the product, and apparently none of them are social tech types who will talk about the product. They’ve kept everyone waiting. Expectations are sky high. So what is it? I’ve actually had a chance to use the service, briefly. It’s an extremely ambitious project. You can think of it as a personalized news site. Which is also one of the things that Facebook and Twitter do quite well. But it’s more than that. Wavii is taking unstructured news and structuring it. Think of the difference between a post on TechCrunch about a startup and then the associated data about that startup on CrunchBase. Except humans aren’t involved. Wavii is structuring it automatically, and it’s doing an impressive job based on what I’ve briefly seen. It’s also pairing that structured content with a taste graph, something that Facebook, Hunch, Gravity and others are doing in different ways. Another way to think about it is a news feed, like you’d see on Facebook or Twitter. But appropriate words are linked and structured, like the people/entities involved, what they’re doing, etc. The service is even trying to determine the difference between rumors and confirmed news, and adding relevant contextual data as well. Like I said, it’s ambitious. Whether Wavii succeeds or fails, it certainly isn’t a startup focusing on clearing a low hurdle. If you’ve noticed a lot of Silicon Valley venture capitalists recently making trips to Seattle, there’s a good chance they’re there to woo Wavii. Most of them probably haven’t seen the product, but they can sense a parade forming and they want to jump in front of it. Our understanding is the company has received a variety of term sheets, some of them valuing the company at tens of millions of dollars. That’s pre-launch, by the way. Our guess is they take one of those offers. Probably even before they launch. No need to take unnecessary risk, after all. |
Stoke Scores $17 Million To Improve Mobile Broadband Networks | Alexia Tsotsis | 2,011 | 1 | 17 | Mobile broadband network developer has snagged $17 million in Series E funding led by new investor and previous investors , , , , ., , and . Stoke a $15 million Series Dround back in April 2009 and its total funding to date is a hefty $92 million. It makes sense. The smartphone industry continues to develop a stronghold over our computing lives (the Stoke press release says that the number of connected devices will reach 50 billion within five years) and companies that alleviate some of the burden for carriers will increasingly be in demand. Providing 3G and LTE infrastructure solutions while helping network operators transition into 4G, Stoke wants to eliminate the information overload experienced by beleaguered networks. Stoke plans on using the new funding to double its size in 2011, a modest goal for a company that closed 2010 with revenues four times greater than those of 2009 and expecting triple digit growth again in the the next year. Says Kleiner Perkins’ Matt Murphy: Proof in six words: iPhone 5 on Verizon AT&T. |
Perfect Market Raises $9 Million More To Boost Content Visibility, Publishers' Revenue | Lora Kolodny | 2,011 | 1 | 17 | Perfect Market Inc. has raised another $9 million — bringing its total funding to $28 million — for technology and services to help publishers generate web traffic, and make more money off their content. led the round, joined by the company’s existing investors: , , and . Chief executive and president of Perfect Market, , explained on Monday: “There’s a way you look at content, and a way you look at context. Our system goes through millions and millions of articles — we’re over 17 million now — to come up with a list of possible searches that will get someone to the right story, and will make sure they don’t get an ad that’s just wrong in the context of that page. One thing we see again and again, is that certain kinds of content has high monetization. Health and business, for example. As a publisher, you face lots more competition in certain categories from spammers. We try to at least give automated approaches that can teach publications how to set up their sites so that their content won’t be penalized. We’ve had five quarters of…growth in revenue, page views [for our clients’ content] and customer acquisitions. We’re hitting an inflection point where we need to increase our footprint quickly. Part of our cash will go towards sales and operations, and to supporting more customers. The other half will go toward further developing our platform.”
So far, Perfect Market’s customers have included: Los Angeles Times, San Francisco Chronicle, Chicago Tribune and Orlando Sentinel. Its content optimization technology addresses text content primarily, today. This year, Perfect Market aims to grow its video content optimization business, and to develop tools or acquire technologies (or startups) that can help media capitalize on location-based and mobile trends, Schoenfeld confirmed. Currently, Perfect Market-optimized content attracts about 30 million monthly page views. That’s about 1 million monthly page views per full-time, Perfect Market employee. Investors were not available to comment on the deal ahead of publication. |
Facebook's Peculiar Foreign Language Options May Offend | Alexia Tsotsis | 2,011 | 1 | 17 | TechCrunch reader Lane Woolf has brought to our attention a possibly offensive Languages option on Facebook Profiles (Edit profile > Languages > Type in the first three letters). While the first reports on Twitter about being able to set your profile language to “Nigga Slang” come from , complaints have come to today, on the holiday. This is not intentional on Facebook’s part. A source familiar with Facebook tells us that the language choices on profiles are probably user-generated, and it seems like the Languages field lists all languages that more than a certain number of users have entered. What might be going on here is that people got together and set their language to “Nigga Slang” in order to cause it to appear as a choice, possibly coinciding with the holiday. The word “nigga” is often embraced by as a sign of empowerment by African American youth and hip hop culture. But many still can’t shake the fact that it has evolved out of and is gradations away from the offensive racial slur “nigger” and still carries some of same connotations. The over appropriate usage and context continues to this day (see below). As this is a thorny issue and users are , one solution here for Facebook is either to ban certain words or assert more control over which choices become auto-generated options, keeping innocuous ones like “Minnesota Viking” and getting rid of dubious ones like or “This is America, I speak American.” I’ve let Facebook know that this is happening, and will update this post when I hear back. Update: Facebook says that a bug was causing the problem and gave us the below statement. |
Facebook Estimated To Collect Almost 5 Percent Of U.S. Online Ad Revenue | Erick Schonfeld | 2,011 | 1 | 17 | Facebook may be responsible for nearly a shown in the U.S., but it only collects about 5 percent of U.S. online ad revenues. An article in reports on new estimates from eMarketer which peg Facebook’s 2010 advertising revenues at $1.86 billion, with $1.21 billion of that coming from the U.S. That would give Facebook a 4.7 percent share of the estimated $25.8 billion total spent in the U.S. on online advertising last year. Despite its already impressive financial might, Facebook could be doing a lot better. The gap between its share of display ad impressions and ad dollars shows how poorly Facebook is monetizing those ads, and suggests there is still a lot of room for improvement. Indeed, by 2012, eMarketer estimates Facebook’s U.S. ad revenues will more than double to $2.89 billion and it will account for nearly 9 percent of the U.S. online advertising pie. Meanwhile, Facebook’s worldwide advertising revenues are expected to reach $5.74 billion by 2012. As a (sad) point of comparison, eMarketer estimates that MySpace’s worldwide ad revenues will decline from a high of $470 million in 2009 to $156 million in 2012. Below is a table from AdAge showing the estimates for Facebook’s U.S. advertising revenues compared to total U.S. online ad spending: |
I Can Has Funding: Cheezburger Raises $30M For LOLcats, FAIL Blog And Other Memes | Leena Rao | 2,011 | 1 | 17 | , the internet publisher responsible for , , and other memes, has raised a whopping $30 million in new funding led by the with , , and participating in the round. of Foundry Group, of Madrona Venture Group, and of Avalon Ventures will be joining Cheezburger’s board of directors. This latest investment brings the startup’s total funding to $32.5 million Founded in 2007 by former journalist , Cheezburger has grown from a small site to a network of fifty sites that have brought internet memes and tech culture mainstream. Cheezburger’s network of sites has a total user base of 16.5 million people who upload more than 500,000 pictures and videos as well as view 375 million pages and 110 million videos each month. Humor aside, Cheezburger success can be partly attributed to the fact that Huh is a savvy business man. Huh I Can Has Cheezburger? and the FAIL Blog, and steadily built out its network. The company has been profitable since its inception with revenue from three sources—advertising, traditional media publishing including books, and merchandising. And Huh, who famously from Conde Nast last year, built this humor empire in only three years. So what does Cheezburger plan to do with all that money? He tells is that the funding will be used to “hire, hire, hire,” hoping to expand the company’s existing staff of 50 employees. Another area Huh is eyeing is international expansion, which Japanese-based Softbank Capital was particularly interested in given its investment. In terms of actual site expansion, Huh says that he has a hard time imagining that Cheezburger will have hundreds of site but he does think the network will probably expand within the year to just under one hundred sites. In the end, Huh explains, it’s not about the quantity of humor-based sites and memes but about providing a quality experience for visitors on a per site basis. Of course, the funding will also be put towards infrastructure and technology to mitigate Cheezburger’s millions of users and visitors. Huh plans to launch official iPhone and Android apps, and will be rolling out an improved tools to caption photos. When asked what his goals are for the future, Huh’s response was simple. “I want Cheezburger to be the ultimate leader and influencer in internet culture,” he explained. “We’ve only reached the tip of the iceberg in terms of what we can do.” Photo credit/ |
iPhone User? 90% Chance You're On The Latest OS. Android User? 0.4% Chance | MG Siegler | 2,011 | 1 | 17 | As a member of the media, I was lucky enough to get my hands on a Nexus S running Android 2.3 “Gingerbread” a few weeks ago. , easily the best version of Android yet. I hope one day soon you all get to try it out. But the likelihood of that is pathetically small. In fact, don’t be surprised if Android 3.0 “Honeycomb” is out before most of you even get a chance to use Gingerbread — maybe even for phones as well as tablets. With the iPhone, it’s a much different story. The likelihood that you are already running the latest version of the iOS software is much, much higher. In fact, it’s something around 90 percent, if some numbers shared by the CEO of Bump are to be believed. David Lieb shared his numbers last week on a Quora thread entitled: ? “ ,” Lieb writes. He then gives the following stats: Binned by major rev:
4.X: 89.73 %
3.X: 10.25 %
2.X: 0.02 % In other words, just about 90 percent of Bump users are using the latest major update to iOS. He gives some more detailed numbers, indicating individual revision breakdowns, but the above ones are probably best to compare with Android revisions because .X updates in iOS tend to be pretty minor (bug fixes), while .X in Android are usually pretty major (new features). Further, Ian Peters-Campbell, an engineer at Loopt, confirmed that they’re seeing the same basic breakdown, with perhaps even more iOS 4.X users. (Oh, and those other 10 percent of iPhone users not on iOS 4? They could certainly upgrade if they wanted to — they’ve probably just cracked and/or jailbroken their phones.) So, iOS 4 has 90 percent share amongst iOS device owners. What about Android 2.3? 0.4 percent, as of a couple weeks ago. Yes, that’s percent. Okay, I realize it’s a little unfair to compare iOS 4 to Android 2.3 since the latter was just released and is only available on one phone (again, the Nexus S). Still, the fact that it’s still only available on one phone weeks after being made public says a lot. But for the sake of this being slightly more fair, let’s compare iOS 4 to Android 2.2 — an OS which . The adoption rate there? 51.8 percent. That’s still pretty pathetic. Obviously, this isn’t the Android users’ faults. The problem is that the OEMs and carriers are holding these updates up for a wide variety of reasons, 99 percent of which are undoubtedly bullshit. . Supposedly, the Android 2.2 update is all ready to go for Samsung Android phones on T-Mobile, but Samsung doesn’t want to push it out so that they can entice people to buy the newly announced Vibrant 4G+ instead. Lovely. Instead, many Samsung T-mobile Android users are struck with Android 2.1. An OS that while perhaps only a year old, is now two full revisions old in Android land. A dinosaur, in other words. And they’re hardly alone. Some 35.2 percent of Android users are stuck on this same version of the OS. Imagine if 35 percent of all iOS users were stuck on iOS 2 (which is so old that it wasn’t even called ‘iOS” at the time), while a few of us had iOS 4 and the majority of us had iOS 3? Yeah… Even more humorous is the fact that over 12 percent of Android users are still stuck on Android 1.5 and 1.6. I mean, Android 1.5 is nearly two years old now. And again, more importantly, it’s major revisions ago. iOS hasn’t even gone through four major revisions yet. So it’s sort of like if a few iPhone users had iOS 4, the majority had iOS 3, a good number had iOS 2, some had iOS 1, and then nearly 5 percent were stuck using . Google, meanwhile, that this sad trend is going to improve. They’re sure that the carriers are eventually going to see the light and get in line any day now. Those 99.6 percent of Android users who’ve seen Android 2.3 — but can’t use it — are waiting awfully patiently. Meanwhile, the iPhone will launch on its second U.S. carrier in less than a month. And it will launch with either or iOS 4.3. The same OS that every single other iOS user will have access to. |
Populis, the “European Associated Content”, acquires blog network Blogo for €6m | Steve O'Hear | 2,011 | 1 | 17 | (formerly GoAdv), which we’ve previously described as , has just announced that it’s acquiring Blogo, a blog network that operates in Europe and South America owned by Dada, the Italian web publisher part owned by RCS MediaGroup. The acquisition price is pegged at €6 million. The “thematic blog network” consists of over 250 bloggers who cover 70 niches spanning subjects such as automotive, sport, finance and the arts. It targets the UK, France, Spain, Italy and Brazil, boasting around 100 million page views a month, says Populis, citing Nielsen stats as of November 2010. Blogs in the network include in Brazil, in Spain, in France, in the UK and in Italy. To that end, Populis is talking up the acquisition as a giving the company access to “high quality multilingual content in 5 key countries” upping its content production to a total of 35,000 items per month and giving it a reach of 24.8 million unique monthly users, this time citing Comscore’s November 2010 stats. In particular it gives Populis an opening into the South American market, while the company will retain Blogo’s office in Milan along with its international team. |
iPad 2 Rumor Roundup | Devin Coldewey | 2,011 | 1 | 17 | The next version of the is, if timing and supply line rumors are to be believed, just around the corner. Although unexpected delays may follow in the wake of Jobs’ medical leave, the design must be finalized, and the factories in China are at this moment preparing to pump out five or six million of these things over the next few months. There have been a few purported leaks, but Apple security has been competent this time around and the actual feature set of the new iPad is still somewhat of a mystery. That said, there are a number of rumors that have gained traction (or failed to), and here we attempt to bring them all together for your convenience, along with arguments for and against. : : : A thinner, perhaps more easily gripped form factor is almost guaranteed. Apple doesn’t the old cases to fit. : : : Extremely unlikely. Apple will keep their product simple and familiar while the rest of the industry experiments with relatively unproven sizes and form factors. : : : I personally have a lot of trouble believing Apple would do something so calculated to disrupt their device ecosystem, but Engadget says so maybe old dog Apple learn new tricks. : : : Almost guaranteed. : : : Very likely. : : : Likely. I think they’re going to go for it. The objections are easily surmountable and if Apple is pushing media and photography, a high-quality screen like this will be a key advantage. : : : Very unlikely; I just don’t see this “evolutionary” step happening. Either Apple will stay with 1024×768 or they’ll quadruple the pixel count, but anything in between would be seen as a pointless compromise. : : : No chance. Superfluous design elements are anathema to Apple. : : : Almost certain. That tinny speaker is one of the iPad’s most easily-mockable weak points. : : : Good chance. Apple’s bringing of iOS to OS X is likely a two-way street, but the original iPad just didn’t have the guts for full-featured movie and photo editing, or at the very least it wasn’t up to Apple’s standards. That could be about to change. : : : Not likely. It’d be gilding the lily this year. Maybe next time around. The final tally seems to give an iPad with two cameras, a vastly improved screen and graphics processor, a thinner form factor at the same aspect ratio, better speakers, and possibly an SD card slot. My own guess would be that the original iPad will stick around at $399, and the new iPad (iPad Pro?) will start at $599. Timing seems to be creeping away from the January announcement/March shipment guesses, though. Perhaps the delay is similar to that holding back the Daily, and Apple is getting the software infrastructure in place to support the new subscription models and media capabilities (involving the SD card and possibly iLife cloud syncing). I’d guess an early-February launch, pre-orders in the 1.5-2 million range, and shipment in late March or early April (once they’ve pressed enough new iPads to support a simultaneous shipping and retail debut). New rumors will doubtless be swirling around the net right up until the day of the announcement, and we’ll cover those separately. Did we miss any, or do you find our reasoning defective? Let us know in the comments. |
This Nerf Gun Remix Looks Dangerous | John Biggs | 2,011 | 1 | 17 |
The original Nerf AR-15 is a Nerf revolver with attitude. The update, created by , reduces the size of the original and improves on the garish color scheme, resulting in something that looks more like the gun from than a child’s toy.
The pistol is made from 32mm ID PVC pipe, some aluminium extrusion and aluminium pipe, wood for the grip and various pieces of metal and plastic. The main spring is one I got from Bunnings warehouse. This gun should be able to take a cut down AR-15 spring as used in the Boltsniper weapons but these aren’t that easy to come by in New Zealand. I believe I am legally allowed to buy one but by the time I found that out I already had the Bunnings spring. I may still get one to play with. The idea of a toy gun using a part from a real one appeals to me for some odd reason…
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null | Mg Siegler | 2,011 | 1 | 28 | null |
Weeks After Going Viral, Threewords.me Is Up For Sale | Jason Kincaid | 2,011 | 1 | 17 | That was fast. A few weeks ago you may have come across a site called with a very simple premise: invite your friends and online followers to describe you with three words. It’s about as simple as they come, but the site managed to get quite a bit of early traction by feeding off retweets and Facebook shares (which were in turn driven by our collective narcissism). You can see our initial coverage on the site . Now the site’s 18 year old creator, , is looking to sell the project. His reason? According to a he left on Hacker News, Threewords was just a side project and he intends to dedicate more time to his startup , among other things. The site is sporting some solid stats, including 253,000 users, 1.42 million total entries, 4.9 million unique visitors and 17.2 million page views — not bad given that it’s been around for less than a month. But caveat emptor to anyone thinking this site is guaranteed to stay popular for the long haul — it could well have been a flash in the pan (after all, Bao would have probably kept working on it if it was in fact the Next Big Thing). I haven’t seen a Threewords link in my Twitter stream for days, and they were all over the place a couple weeks ago. Still, it’s clear that people really like getting feedback about themselves (which isn’t surprising given the popularity of ). You just need to find a way to keep them coming back. The site is being sold via private auction, so it isn’t clear what kind of price Bao is expecting to get for this.
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FourEyesUp's geeky guide to London finds its way to iPhone | Steve O'Hear | 2,011 | 1 | 17 | Described as a Swiss Army knife for techie travellers, has launched its for iPhone. The app boasts, amongst other things, a geek shopping guide covering “London’s best technology, photography, comic book and home entertainment stores”, along with listing high-tech hotels and London-based technology events and attractions. These cover categories such as science museums and computer sightseeing, tagged to highlight the work of science and technology icons, such as Charles Darwin, Michael Faraday, Guglielmo Marconi, Alan Turing or John Logie Baird. There’s a more practical element to what I’d describe as a sort of Lonely Planet guide for nerds. The app also provides info and advice for travellers wanting to buy a mobile phone, 3G dongle or need access to free WiFi — and, for those that don’t want a holiday from Twitter and the like, FourEyesUp’s London Guide highlights (some of) London’s “best” bloggers and Tweeters. TechCrunch Europe editor Mike Butcher is listed but it appears that I ( ) am not. An oversight, perhaps! And as you’d expect, the iPhone app employs GPS to make the London Guide location-aware to enable users to pinpoint sites of interest. It’s available for an introductory price of £0.59/€0.79/$0.99 from the iTunes App Store. |
Metroid On 3DS? TV Presenter May Have Spilled Beans | Devin Coldewey | 2,011 | 1 | 17 | I don’t think any of us is surprised to hear that Metroid will be making its way to , but it’s good to know that it . Wednesday will be a big reveal for the system, showing off a number of games and so on. And when someone tweeted that they they were hoping for Metroid to make a showing, the show’s host, Jonathan Ross, responded “I think you’re going to be pleased then…” That sounds like confirmation to me. Unfortunately, that’s all she wrote. We’ll know more soon. |
How A Startup Named Hipster Got 10K Signups In Two Days, Without Revealing What It Does | Alexia Tsotsis | 2,011 | 1 | 17 | By now you might be familiar with the startup with the funny name, as its very existence made news outlets as diverse as the , and . And while CEO still refuses on the record to say what the site is about, at this point we’ve heard the words Yelp, Quora and location-based Q&A site being tossed around by reporters, savvy and one ambitious tipster who sent us an in-depth analysis of its Javascript. But just like the hipster tribe themselves, what Hipster does is besides the point (at least at the moment). What’s more interesting is the fact that a total of 14K people have already signed up with little information about the site’s purpose, the first 10K in two days after marketing launch. How did Ludlow do it? Drawing directly from ‘s viral page, he posted the following link on Hacker News, Just like in the Fork.ly , he offered interested parties earlier beta access in exchange for inviting three friends and gave them a unique user ID, share link as well as upfront Facebook and Twitter buttons. Aol’s (ID #63) fell for it and tweeted out his invite link with a the hilarious, That in turn caught my eye, I wrote a circumspect whether it was “genius or terrible” for TechCrunch and the rest is pageview history. After the initial TechCrunch bump (we posted in the evening of the 11th) pageviews slowed down but Ludlow says that signups didn’t. He holds that 2/3 of all user referrals are now from user referrals, not press, But Ludlow says that the story of Hipster is much more than “Startup That Gets Written Up On TechCrunch Gets Exposure” and that the appeal goes beyond the wacky name or the strategically viral “Coming Soon” page. In an email to TechCrunch, he holds that the service has tapped into into some sort of startup zeitgeist, Or maybe a lot of people (nay hipsters) are just bored and looking for the latest distraction, Okay Hipster, now’s your turn to delight.
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One Kings Lane Buys Publishing Design Firm Helicopter To Boost Editorial Content | Leena Rao | 2,011 | 1 | 17 | Flash sales site has made its first acquisition today, purchasing publishing design firm Terms of the deal were not disclosed. We’re big fans of the Kleiner Perkins backed startup by and Susan Feldman. The site offers deep, limited discounts on home décor, furnishings, accessories, and gifts. Helicopter is a design consultancy that has worked for a number of well-known publishers including Condé Nast, Time, Hachette, Hearst and The Wall Street Journal. Helicopter is best known for launching Domino magazine, redesigning Jane magazine and WSJ magazine. Helicopter’s expertise will be used to bring “design and content capabilities” to the online retailers. According to a release issued, Helicopter will help develop and curate original content around home decorating, interior decorators, gift-giving, entertaining and more. With new and a new acquisition, One Kings Lane’s business appears to be . Last fall, the company told us that revenue grew 500% since 2009, and grew another 60% within a three month period. And more than 50% of customers make repeat purchases. Ensuring a retail site focused on home decorating has proper design elements isn’t surprising. But what’s interesting is that the startup is going to be incorporating more editorial content into the flash sales site, which should add an interesting element to the competition, which includes flash sales giant Gilt Groupe. If done right, this could be a win for One Kings Lane. |
OpenGamma secures $6 million Series B to power open source for financial markets | Mike Butcher | 2,011 | 1 | 17 | One of the biggest misconceptions about the European tech scene is that it should operate like the Silicon Valley tech scene. This is just plain dunderheaded. The truth – far too too seldom stated – is that as well as operating in a ‘Valley’ manner, equally European startups can come out of a sector-specific business context. Thus, music startups like Last.FM, Songkick and others have continued to emerge from London and Berlin where the music and creative scene in Europe is hugely strong. London is also becoming a center for fashion startups like . In that same vein, London is a big financial centre. To that end today is a new kind of financial startup, based in London, which has an analytics and risk management platform for the financial services industry. Today it’s completed a of equity financing led by FirstMark Capital, a New York-based VC. Accel Partners joins the round as a return investor. OpenGamma previously had a Series A round of $6m from Accel Partners. OpenGamma will use the extra funding to power up sales, marketing and commercial operations, open up global markets, reach out to the open-source community and build out the platform. It will also open an office in New York City to access the 500,000 financial services professionals in New York. Lawrence D. Lenihan, founder and managing director at FirstMark Capital, who will also join the board, says the global economic crisis was in part a result of the financial system’s inability to manage real-time risk across disparate but connected asset classes and geographic regions – so having an open source platform like OpenGamma is the next phase of linking these up. OpenGamma has an open architecture to allow financial services firms to develop analytics applications aimed at traders and risk managers. This open source approach is designed to disrupt the proprietary software platforms. To me this reminds me of the kind of things Everbread and Tradeshift are doing in travel and invoicing respectively. Expect to see many more open source platforms and third party apps develop in this space. There is a great deal of money in this sector and London tech companies, increasingly connected to the City, are well aware of this. |
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