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YouTube's 'As Seen On': Watch What We're Linking To | Jason Kincaid | 2,011 | 6 | 10 | Looking to kill some time? Check out the new feature just launched by YouTube, which they’re calling . The gist is simple: YouTube is crawling blogs and other websites to see which YouTube videos linking to, and has compiled all of the linked videos into an easily-browsable list. You can find the TechCrunch version . The result seems to work well — nearly all of the videos we link to from TechCrunch are related to tech (go figure), so you can think of it almost like a curated channel. Obviously this will change depending on which site you’re looking at (the boingboing has all kinds of different content ranging from inkjet print guns to the science behind cute cats). For context, YouTube does some other interesting things with linked videos — for example, if a video on YouTube starts getting extremely popular on the site because it was embedded on a popular blog, YouTube will automatically insert a link to the blog. |
null | Mg Siegler | 2,011 | 6 | 17 | null |
Cafepress IPO Filing Gives A Glimpse At A Crowdsourced Business Model | Leena Rao | 2,011 | 6 | 10 | Another day, another tech company is filing for a public offering. This time it’s , which allows users to design, buy and sell merchandise such as t-shirts, hats, bags, mugs, bumper stickers and more. The company just filed its
today, and aims to raise as much as $80 million in an IPO. Cafepress, which launched in 1999, essentially crowdsources designs from its community and allows users to sell these designs on products. Users can customize and design their own stickers, coffee mugs, and other tchotchkes and Cafepress will they manufacture them for you on a one off basis. In 2010, Cafepress had 2 million customers, 2.7 million orders, with the average order size around $47. The site currently has 325 million unique products offered for sale. In terms of financials, Cafepress posted $128 million in revenue in 2010 and $2.7 million in profits. But if you take a closer look at Cafepress’ financials in the last 5 years, they were almost the same as in 2008, then the company got hit by the economic downturn in 2009. In 2008, revenues were as high as $120 million but dropped to $103 million the next year. The filing says revenues were down in 2009 and 2010 because it was aggressively focused on order and customer growth, which included increasing sales and marketing expenses as well as acquisitions. Sales seem to be climbing back up; the company posted $32 million in revenue in Q1 2011, but it is back in the red with a $831,000 loss. In the filing, Cafepress says: So, the company isn’t operating a booming business, but it’s pretty decent considering that transactions are so small and in such small volumes, considering the customized nature of the products being sold. Right now, CafePress is a $127 million business, and it’s got some growth ahead of it obviously. But is it ever going to be a $1 billion business? |
Foursquare (Finally) Checks In To Its Very Own SOMA Office [Pics] | Alexia Tsotsis | 2,011 | 6 | 10 | As Steve Jobs has proven this week, if you want your employees to feel great about working for you, give them a great office. ‘s San Francisco outpost has amazingly enough shared space with mobile payments Square when it got too big for the Square offices and bumped itself up to another floor in the same building. Well, the company is , this time to startup saturated SOMA, at , between 4th and 5th Street. The startup will be leasing the entire top floor of the 363 Clementina building, using the 5,500 square feet to house an additional 50-60 people (more than doubling its current staff), Foursquare head of Talent tells me. Foursquare SF expects to occupy space for several years. “We believe in going where the talent is,” Missen says. “We had 3-4 employees working remotely from SF for the past year, simply because they were the best ones for the job and they were rooted in SF. When we realized the need to hire engineers faster, it was a no brainer to expand our presence there.” Missen says that the company is in the process of hiring Software Engineers and has snagged a few key hires from Twitter and Google (but won’t tell me who they are just yet). As soon as the company has decorated it’ll be holding the first of many Foursquare sponsored parties/concerts and events. “As you can see from the photos, there’s obviously a lot of work to do,” Missen explains. Foursquare currently has 65 employees (and “a lot of summer interns”) and is thisclose to hitting 10 million users, with users averaging about 3 million check-ins a day. Those of you looking for the new Foursquare SF venue on Foursquare can find . Currently Foursquare VP of Mobile and Partnerships is mayor, but with only two check-ins I’m sure he’ll be swiftly unseated. |
Favorite Moments From Disrupt NYC Day One | Elin Blesener | 2,011 | 6 | 10 | Day One of was packed with all-star speakers and interviews. All of the videos from Disrupt can be found and pictures , but we wanted to do a quick breakdown of videos and pictures of our favorite moments from Day One. When Erick Schonfeld sat down with , we weren’t really ready for what was about to be said. When asked about the Twitter ecosystem and Twitter’s recent moves to discourage app developers from building Twitter clients, Wilson replied by saying, “Don’t be a Google bitch, don’t be a Facebook bitch, and don’t be a Twitter bitch. Be your own bitch.” He went on by saying, “Twitter wasn’t planned. It just happened.” The crowd loved it. http://twitter.com/#!/brooke/status/72657856083656705 Be sure to watch the whole interview between Schonfeld and Wilson below. When Foursquare CEO took the stage, Michael Arrington was prepared to chat with Crowley about acquisitions, partnerships, valuations, and even a potential partnership with Groupon. Was that all discussed? No, not really. Instead, the talk had something to do with makeup, hand-holding, and an infamous Gap ad in which he modeled for, among other things. https://twitter.com/#!/KishinManglani/status/72660468770144256 Check out what was really talked about below. Then, took the stage to chat with Nora Ephron and Jay Rosen. After their discussion, the three of them walked off stage, but not before Arrington stole Huffington away for a little impromptu chat. It was a hilarious and unexpected moment, fueled with questions from a curious Arrington. With Arianna dodging most of the questions, she shot back with her funniest response near the end of the chat. “We’re going to go to dinner,” says Arianna, “I’m going to get you drunk, and then we’ll see what happens.” http://twitter.com/#!/SilverRebecca/status/72676638055350273 Be sure to watch the whole conversation in the video below. and Michael Arrington were the last speakers for the day before the Startup Battlefield sessions began. When Arrington asked Armstrong why he wasn’t granted Arianna Huffington’s spot when he was hired, the crowed laughed and became quiet, eagerly waiting for a response. The whole chat between Arrington and Armstrong was pretty funny, and a little awkward at times. Especially when the two of them started talking about AOL’s official drinking day, which is Thursday, and when Mike asked about the internal AOL emails we are continuously kept away from. Armstrong mentioned something along the lines of, “We honestly don’t really ever think about you guys..” http://twitter.com/#!/IncMagazine/status/72801985157545984 The whole conversation below is a must see. There were many other discussions that took place, all of which can be under the Day One section. As for Startup Battlefield presentations, they were all incredible. You should all know who the winner was by now ( ), and who made it to the finale (all of which can be found ), but one of our favorite presentations from Day One involved a startup that was actually one of the Audience Choice Winners from Startup Alley: Happy Toy Machine. Be sure to catch their whole presentation below and scroll down to check out some of our favorite pictures from Day One. Again, a huge thank you to all of our sponsors, partners, and volunteers who helped us make this all possible. Thanks to who launched Wall Street at Disrupt NYC and placed the first trade on . And to Illustration who captured all of the conference thought-leadership conversations. If you would like to attend Disrupt SF, September 12th – 14th, extra early bird tickets are If you’d like to become a foundational part of the Disrupt experience and learn about sponsorship opportunities, please contact . |
Rumor: Sprint iPhone Being "Actively Tested" | Greg Kumparak | 2,011 | 6 | 10 | Sorry, folks: we’re still too burned out from all the pre-release, back-and-forth rumor mongering that went down with the Verizon iPhone to really weigh in on this one, so we’ll just pass on the details. Could it happen? Sure. Could it all be a bunch of conjecture? Absolutely. But, hey: at this point, Apple has no reason to put it on Sprint. Once that one-carrier exclusivity was broken (as it was when AT&T lost exclusivity with the launch of the VZW iPhone), they might as well throw it on every carrier around — it’s not like any of them are going to get mad and . |
The Bitcoin Trials Continue: Mt. Gox Exchange Collapses Due To Compromised Account | Rip Empson | 2,011 | 6 | 19 | It seems that is experiencing the same fits and starts that any new currency undergoes early in its history. Though , the mainstream press discovered it much more recently, and since then, Bitcoin has experienced some schizophrenic volatility — you can read Jon Evans’ . Yet, absent from Evans’ post is the very latest news out of the virtual currency market: Late this afternoon, Bitcoin suffered from serious setback, as the network’s most popular exchange, , collapsed thanks to a hacked account. The unknown hacker(s) made an enormous sale of bitcoins from the compromised account, causing the price of the currency to fall from $17.5 to just pennies in a matter of minutes. Mt. Gox’s Mark Karpeles early this afternoon saying: One account with a lot of coins was compromised and whoever stole it (using a HK based IP to login) first sold all the coins in there, to buy those again just after, and then tried to withdraw the coins. The $1000/day withdraw limit was active for this account and the hacker could only get out with $1000 worth of coins. While the relatively small value of the hacker’s loot may have at first seemed like a silver lining, it has since come to light that whoever owned the compromised account also had “read-only access” to Mt. Gox’s database, which enabled the hacker(s) to pull information from older Bitcoin accounts, including email addresses and hashed passwords. A found some readers saying that the hackers were able to take Gmail addresses and hashed passwords to brute-force users’ real passwords. Just as Reddit users recommend that anyone using the same passwords for Mt. Gox accounts, email addresses and so on, immediately change all passwords, Karpeles has also advised all Bitcoin users not to download any information (certificate or otherwise) sent from Mt. Gox until further notice. Until the investigation concludes and security is confirmed, Karpeles said, Mt. Gox will remain offline. When it does in fact come back online, users will be put through Bitcoin has been the subject of quite a bit of controversy lately, as the U.S. Senate , and there had been that hackers had begun targeting Bitcoin users’ virtual wallets with Malware and more, in an attempt to steal the virtual currency. However, an important thing to note for the anti-Bitcoiners is that the underlying peer-to-peer transaction clearing process does not seem to have been compromised — at least in this incident. Instead, the Mt. Gox crash appears to be the result of poor security (or using the same password for 8 different accounts) on the part of a single user. Whether or not one believes that Bitcoin marks the future of currency, there appear to be a number of sites and blogs writing openly about the . Quora . That doesn’t bode well for confidence in the virtual currency market, at least in the short term. On the other hand, having its network security dissected by various sites and message boards across the Web, as well as market crashes like the one that happened today, will hopefully be used as fodder for building a better and more secure exchange. And it’s worth mentioning, for how much both have been in the news of late, this does not appear to be a LulzSec Production, nor does Anonymous seem to have anything to do with it. In fact, a new, private security exchange for Bitcoin. In the end, as Evans so astutely said, whether or not Bitcoin itself is a success, its existence is notable (and significant), as it may be the progenitor of future virtual exchanges that will collectively change the very face of currency as we know it. The Internet has a way of doing that. Until then, Bitcoin users should increase the level of security of their own accounts and passwords, and expect these kinds of crashes to happen again. For those looking for an exhaustive explanation of what Bitcoin is and does, check out run-down . Or you can just turn to Tweets like this one: Or this apt description , which includes, |
VillageVines Relaunches As Savored, Expands Discount Dining To 10 Cities | Erick Schonfeld | 2,011 | 6 | 19 | New York City-based dining deals site VillageVines is now . In addition to the name change, it launched a redesigned site, is doubling its cities to ten, and added Buddy Media CEO Michael Lazerow as an investor and board member. The company raised last January. Savored focuses on high-end dining discounts at top-rated Zagat restaurants. But the model is slightly different than your run-of-the-mill daily deals site. Members pay $10 per reservation, and get a flat 30 percent off food and drinks. Unlike Groupon or LivingSocial, merchants get to keep everything after the discount instead of splitting that with Savored. Savored makes money by charging $10 per reservation (so the deals are only appealing at restaurants where it is worth paying $10 to get 30 percent off). Another difference with the bigger daily deal sites is that Savored is a lot more flexible. “We don’t have sky diving, we don’t have spas and salons,” notes co-founder Daniel Leahy. Restaurants can pick the times that their deals are available, as well as limit the size of the party that can take advantage of the deal. Savored makes it easier for them to drive traffic during slow hours. Members make reservations on the site just like they would with OpenTable (pick a time, restaurant, and how many diners) and 30 percent is automatically taken off the bill. In addition to New York City, San Francisco, Chicago,LA< and Washington, D.C., Savored is expanding to Boston, Philadelphia, Atlanta, Miami, and Denver. Leahy expects that Savored will be able to drive $25 million in incremental revenues to restaurants this year. |
Yup, YouTube Counts Video Ads As Regular Views | Erick Schonfeld | 2,011 | 6 | 19 | Movie trailers are among the most popular videos on YouTube. A typical movie trailer gets millions of views, but how many of those views are natural and who many are pushed as paid-for ads? Yes, movie trailers are all ads in a sense. But people seek them out just like any other 2-minute video. That is not what I am talking about. The same movie trailers are also promoted through various means and shown as prerolls before other videos or via paid links and those views can also count towards the total. For instance, for the new movie has been watched nearly 5.5 million times. If you click on the statistics right next to that number, you will see that 4.98 million of those views come from ads (see also below). This is not an isolated incident. The trailer for shows 7 million views, but nearly 5.8 million of those ad views. In this case, the statistics are hidden, but I got my hands on them (see second image below). Same for this : 2 million out of 2.4 million views are ads (although this one is literally a 15-second teaser, not a full two-minute trailer like the other ones I’ve cited). Not all ads count towards a view, but many do: , , homepage ads or search ads that drive traffic to the video page. I find this practice to be surprising, so I asked YouTube for an explanation. A spokesperson wrote me the following in an email: When it comes to paid advertising, view count of a video increases only when it’s clear that a viewer has made a choice to watch a video. For example, a viewer might make that intention known by clicking to watch a Promoted Video, opting-in to watch a TrueView in-stream ad, or playing a YouTube video embedded in a homepage ad. To be clear, with standard in-stream ads where a viewer has no choice in its selection, we do not increase the videos view count. Not every pre-roll ad counts towards a view, but all of those skippable, opt-in TrueView ads do count, and from the looks of things people are watching a lot of those. Some YouTube purists are up in arms about this practice. One commenter asks, “Remember when you could watch a video without having to sit through a commercial?” There is nothing wrong with movie studios using their trailers as ads. After all, they are trailers (i.e., ads for movies). But when people search for videos, they tend to click on the ones with the most views. Apparently, those views can be bought. |
Netflix.com Website And Streaming Services Go Down | Alexia Tsotsis | 2,011 | 6 | 19 | Thinking about catching a movie with your loved ones for Father’s Day, or just because its Sunday? Well it’s not going to be on as it online services including the $7.99 a month streaming feature and the ability to order DVDs are down for some users. Right now users have been unable to access the website or the streaming features for about three hours and are on (of course) Twitter. Netflix has 23.3 million members in the United States and Canada. Reports of inability to access the site have been popping up since 5:23 pm PST according to one user and the website currently displays the above “service down” message (Netflix on and is still working apparently). There’s no word yet on whether this is part of a recent spate of hacks on services like Sony and Sega. I’m currently listening to Netflix’s godawful hold music and will update this post if I hear any more information. Until then, maybe you should check out Hulu? Or actually talking to your family? Update 9:00pm PST: Some users are reporting that it is back online, and it seems like can still be accessed. |
Google Reminds You That Today Is Father's Day (And To Call Dad From Gmail) | Leena Rao | 2,011 | 6 | 19 |
Google really wants you to use Gmail to call your dad to wish him a Happy Father’s Day. On the front page of (which features a Dad-themed Doodle), Google has a message underneath the search box “Dad. Father. Pops. No matter what you call him, call your dad from Gmail.” If you click on the message, you are taken to a that shows you how you can call your Dad for free (in the U.S. and Canada) from Gmail. Google has in your Gmail chat roster, right under the “Call phone” link, to remind users to call their Dad. Google last August as a simple way for email client users to make free calls within their browser. Dialing a phone number works just like a normal phone. Just click “Call phone” at the top of your chat list and dial a number or enter a contact’s name. And the quality is pretty good and thanks to Google extending the offer of free calls in the U.S. and Canada through December. While Google did create a and tribute page for Mother’s Day this year, it did not promote one of Google’s products. |
Good World Games' MyConservationPark Helps You Save Endangered Species | Leena Rao | 2,011 | 6 | 19 | Combining social games with a cause has become a popular way to engage game players on Facebook with raising money for various philanthropic causes. For example, Zynga has raised funds via its games for the earthquake relief efforts in both and over the past few years. Startup is developing Facebook games devoted purely to marrying the power of causes with the viral explosion of social gaming. The startup’s first Facebook game, , allows you to protect an endangered animal from environmental and human threats while enriching the park with fauna and flora to create a sustainable habitat. There are 2 modes of Play in the game: Play and Decorate. In Play mode, new challenges constantly appear that you must overcome in order to save and protect your endangered species (i.e. there’s a fire in your park, hire a firefighter to put it out) In this mode, your eco-system and hero levels are affected by your success in conquering these challenges. In Decorate mode, you can create a haven for your species and add people and creatures, trees, food and water, watchtowers and sheds, and arrange your park as you see fit. You can purchase virtual good such as park rangers, native species such as antelopes, structures such as watchtowers and camps, flora (indigenous trees and bushes), water and insects. All purchases of virtual goods directly benefit Good World Games’ non-profit partners with 15% of in-game purchase revenue donated to select causes. Each park benefits a different partner, which include Dian Fossey Gorilla Fund, Sea Shepherd, Wildaid and Orangutan Outreach. You can see what percent of revenue from your game interactions have been donated as well. Each park contains species native to its location, with different art and challenges. And top scorers in game will, on a periodic basis, receive real world rewards such as an all-expenses paid trip to help (as a volunteer) one of the non-profit partners in the field. Eventually Good World Games plans to roll out similar games that allow Facebook users to play games towards social good. |
The Celebrity Moment | Alexia Tsotsis | 2,011 | 6 | 26 | Earlier this week crossed a milestone. No, it wasn’t hitting a one month after launching, nor was it being to the list of portfolio companies for l (granted it was just a logo refresh from the company’s previous product incarnation, ). In fact, the ultimate sign that the crowdsourced music service had arrived was more subtle than a milestone metric and ran under the radar for anyone who isn’t finely attuned to these things; On Tuesday the artist Sir Mix A Lot (of “Baby’s Got Back” fame) on Turntable replete with a custom hacked avatar that differentiated him from the available cookie cutter options. Paying tribute to celebrity may seem like a superficial and pointless endeavor in the tech realm, where most of the real work happens behind the scenes. But as anyone who’s built a startup knows, the narrative of how web services get and retain users is serious business, and is punctuated and proliferated by “celebrity moments” like Mix A Lot on Turntable, JJ Abrams on Quora or Ashton Kutcher’s race to a million followers with CNN. There are countless examples. Like any other community milestone, these “celebrity moments” define certain web services. This does a pretty good job of outlining some of the more notable ones like Ben Folds playing Chatroulette, Larry Summers asking questions about economics on Quora, Conan O’Brien hopping on Twitter (and only following one person), John Mayer abandoning Twitter for Tumblr, Snoop Dog on Instagram, Barack Obama setting up a LinkedIn profile and on, um, . Any startup founder with half a brain realizes that a celebrity user signifies mainstream acceptance. As silly as they sound, these milestones should be viewed almost as monumentally as anything hitting one million users — after all they both make headlines. The significance of a celebrity moment is thus; It means that your service can be used for self-promotion, or for democratizing communication, or both. And in the most basic sense it’s like having the cool kids show up at your party. And it’s no joke; Celebrity usage was so critical to Twitter’s eventual scale that the company used to about celebrities joining back in the day. Now, in a post- world, it’s news if a celebrity hasn’t joined Twitter. founder , who boasts both Britney Spears and Lady Gaga as users (and Lady Gaga’s manager Troy Carter as an investor), explains, “Celebrities using your product is the ultimate testimonial for your product. It proves that there is demand and need for what you’ve built and that your product is a level higher then other companies in your space.” And yes it shouldn’t be surprising that celebrities, some of whom make careers out of endorsing products, would be first to hop on the bandwagon of innovative products. But the interesting factor in this equation is that they’re doing it for free. So what’s in it for Ashton? Well first of all these tools are definitely vehicles for self-promotion. In an age where so much media coverage originates on Facebook, and Quora and Twitter, it seems like celebs increasingly need to have a strong online presence in order to stay relevant. @-mentions and mutual follows have become a new sort of fame replicator, so basically it’s a symbiotic relationship; The celebrity gets the same publicity as the startup. And the mass distribution aided by technology has redefined the concept of celebrity — Being attractive is no longer enough, and you actually have to be intellectually engaging via text on these platforms. Ashton Kutcher talking about what to kiss Natalie Portman on Quora is exemplary of this. Former Twitter engineer and newly minted Foursquare employee puts it best, “People now expect more from celebrities than just passively reading about them in magazines. Cultivating a direct relationship with your fans over the web is fast becoming way not just to maintain fame but to create it in the first place.” |
RunKeeper Adds New Integration To Its Health Graph In Hopes Of Building 'The Facebook Of Fitness' | Rip Empson | 2,011 | 6 | 26 | You may have heard about the social graph and the interest graph, but what about the health graph? Thanks to , this term may soon become an oft-used part of your vocabulary. RunKeeper, for those unfamiliar, was founded three years ago as a simple iPhone app and a small online fitness community designed to help runners and other fitness enthusiasts employ smartphone technology to better track, measure, and improve their fitness. Since then, RunKeeper has expanded across mobile platforms, growing into a community of 6 million strong. Over the years, the startup has integrated with various gadgets and accessories, like a WiFi body scale tracker, sleep monitoring devices, and heart rate transmitters — all as part of an effort to give people a unified resource to aggregate the various health and fitness services, devices, and apps they use on a daily basis — before blasting this information out to friends, family, and competitors over various social channels. All the while, the startup has quietly been building a “correlation engine”, because simply aggregating fitness and health data from a few devices wasn’t enough — RunKeeper users had been clamoring for a way to make sense of all the data integration from third parties. And so, the “HealthGraph” was born to do just that. But what is this “HealthGraph”, exactly? RunKeeper CEO Jason Jacobs wants you to “imagine a system that can identify correlations between a user’s eating habits, workout schedule, social interactions and more”, that has the sole purpose of delivering an “ecosystem of health and fitness apps, websites, and sensor devices that really work, based on a user’s own historical health and fitness data”. But what’s a good health graph without an open API, am I right? Two weeks ago, RunKeeper announced that it was opening up its health graph to third party developers, so that these outside parties can tap into users’ FitnessFeeds, which are basically akin to Facebook wall feeds, to build cool clients and apps, a la Facebook and Twitter clients. FourSquare, Zeo, Withings, Polar, Wahoo, and BodyMedia were among the early partners looking to take advantage of the new, open RunKeeper health graph, and this week RunKeeper has announced three additional partners: , an advanced monitor that allows swimmers to track performance information, distance data, etc., , which lets users earn points and collect trophies during workouts that can be redeemed for rewards, and , an Android app that enables users to track their running progress and share results with friends. While it may seem counterintuitive for RunKeeper to be partnering with sites like Runstar, which ostensibly offers a competitive service, Jacobs said that the ultimate goal of building a robust and open framework for the fitness community is more important than nominal competition. Though RunKeeper has raised $1.5 million to date, Jacobs that the company hasn’t touched any of that money, focusing squarely on scaling. And scaling they have, as RunKeeper has more than doubled its user base since November. And though the app was originally selling for $10 on the app store, and selling quite well, Jacobs and team have declared that the RunKeeper app will be permanently free. Now, I may not be the fittest guy on the block — I prefer to get my heart rate up by thinking about when the next big IPO is coming and by consuming large quantities of coffee — but that doesn’t mean I can’t appreciate a good fitness idea when I see one. The ambitiousness of RunKeeper’s open Health graph and API, along with a free app, fitness feeds, and the ability to compare metrics in FitnessReports, share achievements with friends — and the fact that any time one uses an integrated device or app, the corresponding data posts both on the third party’s site and RunKeeper’s feeds — all makes for one terrific service. And, what’s more, , RunKeeper has one less Goliath to worry about during its quest to aggregate the world’s health information. Developers that would like to learn more about the HealthGraph API should check out the landing page . |
OMG/JK: The iPhone Empire Strikes Back? | MG Siegler | 2,011 | 6 | 26 | This week’s episode of is a long one — the longest yet, in fact, at 30 minutes. Jason and I apologize for going on and on but we had a lot to talk about. It’s been roughly three weeks since we last recorded an episode and a of stuff has happened. And while we don’t even come close to getting through all of it, we do go pretty in-depth on some of the major things: iPhone vs. Android sales, WWDC, iOS 5, iCloud, Galaxy Tab 10.1, Google Music Beta, Facebook’s Project Spartan, dining in hell with Facebook’s PR team, Facebook’s new Photos app, Twitter/iOS, and Chromebooks. Below find some relevant links to stories we talk about, and enjoy the episode above. A small programming note: since Jason is packing up his things and , this may be the last in-studio episode we do for a while. But hopefully our weekly schedule will continue uninterrupted thanks to the miracle of Skype — assuming that company doesn’t before the Microsoft deal closes.
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The Case for Silver Lake Not Being Evil Incarnate | Sarah Lacy | 2,011 | 6 | 26 | When an employee cries foul against a big tech company or its greed-driven investors, it’s easy to take the side of the employee, especially when an employee comes forward on the record to state his or her case. A wronged employee is inherently more sympathetic than a big, greedy private equity firm or a faceless corporation, and it’s rare that an employee will actually publicly take a stand. In the cozy, relationship-driven world of Silicon Valley no one wants to make a public stink about a perceived or even real injustice. The temptation is to just suck it up and move on. But as this Skype story has continued to dominate another weekend of headlines many bloggers and tweeters are missing important facts in our zeal to defend wronged employees and demand that private equity firms– especially ones profiting off of an $8 billion deal– just do the right thing. Behind the real story lies an important lesson about the dramatic ways compensation is changing in the Valley. Employees should never assume each employment contract is the same as the one they had before. That’s especially true now, as companies take longer to go public and new forms of liquidity like secondary markets emerge, compensation models are changing dramatically in the Valley. The importance of actually reading whatever it is you are signing is paramount, especially when you are joining a company that doesn’t fit the traditional venture-backed mold, which Skype most definitely did not. Here’s the background on the Skype thing, as explained to me last night by a member of the investing syndicate. When the new CEO Tony Bates was hired, naturally there were staffing changes he wanted to make. The decision was made to terminate several executives and Bates started the proper process to do so. Investors had zero involvement with that decision, in fact there was never even a discussion of it at the board level. The timing coincided with the awkward period between announcing Skype’s acquisition by Microsoft and the deal actually closing. It’s unfortunate timing for the executives in question, because they won’t get the full amount of the payout they would have gotten, had they not been fired. But Skype has argued it has to continue to run the company as if there isn’t a deal on the table, and Bates deemed that included firing these executives. Oh, and lost in the initial hysteria was the fact that they’re getting 75% of the payout anyway, so the amount of money Skype investor Silver Lake Partners was supposedly going to these lengths to screw them out of was pretty niggling. This weekend, the allegations got worse. Former employee Kuo-Yee Lee has saying he’s leaving and unlike those earlier executives, he isn’t retaining 75% of his payout. Indeed, his already vested shares are being taken away from him. The outrage is understandable. As , this runs a foul of how 99.9% of venture-funded startups’ employment contracts are structured in the Valley. Many people being quoted in the press have never seen a deal like this before, and any startup journeyman executive wouldn’t have known to expect it. But there are two big distinctions that are getting missed in all the outrage. The first is that Silver Lake — Skype’s investor in question who structured the contract and is being called evil– isn’t a venture capital firm. It’s a private equity firm. And there is a difference between how option contracts are drawn up in the venture world and the private equity world. As standard as getting to keep vested options if you quit before an investment is closed is in the venture capital world, it’s equally as common that you have to stay through the close of acquisition to keep them in the private equity world. Indeed, our source says the Skype contract is a boilerplate agreement for all the companies Silver Lake invests in. And all of this was in the paperwork the employee signed. He just didn’t read it carefully, at his own admission, because he assumed it was like other option contracts of . That’s not really Silver Lake’s fault. A big reason private equity firms have this clause– from what I’m told– is they think it’s mercenary and disloyal for employees to join a firm that’s on a clear path towards a buyout, wait until a year and then leave with a quarter of their shares vested for another company before that deal is done. Typically private equity firms are buying turn-around properties, not growing a new business from scratch. When you’re building a business from nothing, the company changes dramatically in short periods of time. It’s culturally acceptable that certain people are good at the early stages and those roles need to change as the company grows. That’s not the case with more mature targets of PE firms. It’s simply a different mentality and a different culture. Mike’s analogy of “What if Facebook did this?” is irrelevant, because a company like Facebook, as a classic venture-backed startup, would never do this. Comparing someone joining Skype in the past year to joining Facebook when it had three employees is about as similar as comparing me joining TechCrunch a few years ago to me joining the New York Times. Both Skype and Facebook are Internet companies the same way TechCrunch and the New York Times are both media companies. But that’s pretty much where the similarity ends. This cultural disconnect is a big reason you can count PE deals in high-growth tech companies on two hands. The two worlds historically don’t understand one another. The other huge distinction is that Lee wasn’t fired like the executives we wrote about earlier, he voluntarily quit. It says that in his letter we reprinted earlier, but many reports are still lumping him together with the terminated employees, furthering the insinuation that the board fired him and yanked away options. As far as I can tell, that insinuation is still as incorrect as it was a week ago. More to the point: Lee chose to quit just months before the acquisition would close, at which point he would have kept the full value of the shares. The terminated employees did not have that choice. “Private equity firms view a buyout as a journey from a purchase to a sale and when employees leave along that journey there are good leavers who get fired and bad leavers who quit during the middle of it,” our source said. The “good leavers” or the people who got fired are getting paid out 75% of the total they would have made had they stayed through “the journey,” because they didn’t leave voluntarily. If you chose to quit in the middle of that journey, it’s another story. “The call option isn’t something you would see in a normal VC deal, but that’s what he signed. By signing a contract you are verifying that you understand it,” our source said. This clearly sucks for Lee. Obviously, he didn’t understand the agreement, otherwise he probably would have waited a few months to quit. I’ll admit I didn’t have a lawyer look at my TechCrunch option paperwork when I signed it, and I had no idea what the terms were from reading it myself. If something like this happened, I’d be furious. But I also wouldn’t have held TechCrunch accountable if it said something different than I assumed. It’s a bit like those 34-page terms of service agreements you have to opt into to buy something from the Apple store. I doubt anyone has actually read the whole thing. But that doesn’t mean I can sue Apple if they try to enforce it. Mike’s argues that an attorney could argue “fraud” because the contract was so rare for a venture-backed startup and it was natural that someone was confused. Possibly. But again, Silver Lake isn’t a VC firm and if this is their standard contract as our source says, that’s a lot harder to prove. Originally the amount lost by the fired executives “wasn’t even worth the phone call.” This new amount lost by employees who quit is even smaller according to our source: The total in dispute is between $750,000 and $1 million, . The idea that Silver Lake is spending time concocting Machiavellian schemes to save $1 million of an $8 billion deal makes people who say 9/11 was a hoax look rational. If the amount is so small, why not just give him the vested shares? Because this is their standard contract, Silver Lake can’t without opening themselves up to lawsuits from all the other buyout deals where employees have to live by the same agreed-upon contract, engendering a full-on LP revolt. Meanwhile, Skype is balking at the coverage, because this was a guy they hired, promoted, gave raises to, and would have given a decent payout, had he stayed a few months for the deal to be completed, our source says. “The company feels they treated him really well,” the source said. Regardless of how this plays out for Lee, this should be a wake-up call to employees, because compensation among startups and tech companies is changing dramatically. Increasingly, there’s not going to be any case that happens 99.9% of the time. While private equity deals may continue to be rare among tech companies, the switch away from standard option packages is becoming more pronounced, typically in lieu of larger cash compensation or restricted stock units. Most of this has occurred at large companies, and it was sparked by Microsoft in the wake of the 2000-era bust when so man employee stock options were deeply underwater and never coming back to the late 1990s heady highs. Suddenly what had been a great tool to engage employees in the growth of a business became a depressing daily reminder that the company wasn’t going anywhere. This weighed heavily on corporate cultures in a way it hadn’t in the pre-option era. At one point Yahoo’s stock price was even displayed on the digital readouts of printers in the headquarters. Try looking at that one every day. Not very inspiring. There was– and still is in some quarters– a “show-me-the-money-style” backlash against options. While Google has turned toward huge cash awards to compete, Microsoft and others have turned to RSUs. With RSUs you get the full value of the shares when they mature, not the value of the share minus the common share price when you were granted the options. In other words, RSUs don’t go underwater no matter how poorly a company’s stock performs; you just make less, but you still make something. Private companies have started issuing them too– mostly because they don’t count against the 500-shareholder rule. But there are downsides to RSUs too. One is employees are frequently getting fewer of them, and culturally some people think they make a company culture less aggressive, because employees aren’t incentivized to push the company’s share price higher. No doubt there are other unintended consequences of this shift that will come out later– just like they did with options after the year 2000 crash. Remember the shock of employees being held hostage by the alternative minimum tax on the spread of their options, regardless of whether the shares had now lost all their value? Scandals like these abounded in the early 2000s where employees argued the same thing that Mike argues in the case of Lee: That people didn’t understand the full implications of what they were signing. Well, now you’ve been warned. Get a lawyer to look at your contract or beware. Because no company– evil or not– is going to do it for you. |
Foursquare and seven years ago | Steve Gillmor | 2,011 | 6 | 26 | Sitting in the gallery of the House of Representatives the other day, we saw the Speaker accept the report of the resignation of the gentleman from New York, as Boehner called Weiner. Yet another knee-drop to the power of Twitter in a city that produces laws like the Valley does startups. Security forbids cameras and therefore phones, and with them our ability to check in and out the comings and goings of what has been called Hollywood for ugly people. In a hamburger joint six blocks and 20 Lincolns away, the House proceedings are displayed on one of several flat paneled HDTVs on the wall. The cameras in both the House and the Senate are placed to constrain the image to just enough information but not too much to reveal the yawning empty seats. In the Senate chambers we watched a court reporter with a laptop-like device around her neck stand next to a backbencher as he awaited his turn. On TV she was cut out of the frame. The two houses of Congress straddle the central rotunda, where JFK lay in state before making the trip across the Potomac to Arlington. From his gravesite and the Eternal Flame, you turn around and notice how the site lines up perfectly with the Washington Monument and the Lincoln Memorial. Just as the White House and the Capitol dome are bisected by the Monument. The symmetry defines the power relationships. At the Lincoln Memorial he sits like some grand couch potato watching Netflix, ringed by his words on flanking walls. The Gettysburg Address feels somehow modern in its 140 character-like brevity. The reflecting pool was empty, as a Martin Luther King memorial rises in the dusk. For the people, by the people, retweeted throughout the land. Back in the Capitol we climbed the low-ceilinged stairs beneath the Rotunda, pausing as our guides pointed out a round white tile in the center of a room known as the Crypt. The spot represented the location where George Washington was to buried, had he not refused to go along with the plan in his last will. He was said to have been unwilling to lead a war of liberation from a monarchy only to be installed as a new king. He remains buried in Mount Vernon despite a Congressional attempt backed by his wife Martha to move him to the Crypt in 1832. Upstairs in the Rotunda pools of people clustered around a spot in the left center of the room while a tour guide turned his back and bent down across the way. Eerily, his voice materialized as though amplified by a microphone in the middle of our group. Turns out a legislator would lie with his head down on his desk while eavesdropping on the opposition from the other side of the aisle. An early form of IM and direct messages, the technology came full circle when the gentleman from New York forgot the “d” years later. Riding back to the Senate office building where our tour began, the underground tram echoed with the ghosts of Senators and spies and lobbyists and generals and staffers. You could hear the humor of the irreverent in the halls as we wound through the various security perimeters, the request to be quiet so as to not discourage the congressmen and women from showing up. A family listening while a father replayed Boehner’s comment that the House now numbered 432. The security guard adding iPads to the pile of devices to be impounded along with phones, earphones, and even car keys with remote controls. It felt odd to surrender our newfound social freedom at the door to the center of democracy. Even so, the security was comforting in this age of insecurity, but it won’t be long before we’ll be voting for free WiFi in the people’s house. Not long before we confirm the Secretary of Social Media by direct message. Not long before we’ll virtualtour the Capitol and share our experiences in realtime with family, friends, and followers. Foursquare and seven years ago… |
Revolutions On The Road | Jon Evans | 2,011 | 6 | 26 | I almost miss the bad old days. When I first started wandering around some of the more obscure of this planet, lo these many years ago, Internet connections were rare and wonderful discoveries; now I just get annoyed when I can’t get online. The last decade-and-a-half of innovation has completely transformed the experience of travel. Right now I’m in the middle of a four-continents-in-six-weeks jaunt, from Canada to to Europe to India, and thanks to all my tech gear, life on the road is almost unrecognizably different from that of fifteen years ago. The biggest change this trip has been my ebook reader. I have a . There is much about my Kobo that I really don’t like: its interface is clumsy and confusing; anything other than straight front-to-back reading is intensely frustrating; it can only use completely open wireless connections, so any wi-fi network with a login or click-to-agree-terms button is completely useless to me; and when I do connect, attempts to download new books fail approximately 50% of the time. But they do succeed the other 50%, meaning I’ve read nine books in the last month—and was able to buy and download books via ambient wi-fi in Kenya and Djibouti, which did feel like living in the future. There are also subtler and more negative repercussions. I saw my own for sale in a supermarket in Mombasa, and instead of the slight thrill of pride I usually get, my instinctive response was: “In How ” More worryingly, my e-book reader means the serendipity of finding and reading random books by new authors, because there’s nothing else to read while on the road, is dead. It’s like in miniature. But on the whole that’s a tradeoff I’m willing to make. I still have some complaints. For instance, it’s still virtually impossible to add a stopover to an air itinerary without going to a travel agent. You can manage it directly with the and web sites, but not with any of the aggregators. I’m very fond of , but if you have a complex many-city itinerary, their price optimization fails completely—it often works out cheaper to book all of the legs as individual one-way tickets—so I might soon defect to . And it irritates me that all of the various hotel-booking sites are apparently different skins on the same engine. Of them all, I prefer , but I would like some actual competition. And then there’s the guidebook problem. I used to be loyal to (in fact, they play a major and laudable role in my ) but then the BBC bought them out and watered them down. They do have a pretty good city-guide app selection, and they let you buy and download individual subsections of books, but their content isn’t as good as it used to be. I think the future of travel guides is crowdsourced data on smartphone apps. In fact, I’ve taken a step in that direction myself: my app lets you download guides and maps to your Android or iOS device, and refer to them even while offline, to avoid roaming charges. Its 10,000-and-counting active users seem to like it, and it has come in awfully handy this trip: at one point I was hopelessly lost in Addis Ababa, until I realized I had the (surprisingly good) OpenStreetMap of the city on my phone, and my app saved the day. But while Wikitravel’s coverage of is better than I expected, it still isn’t near as thorough and detailed as its guidance for, say, . It will improve over time, of course, but I still found myself flipping through my quaint paper copy of LP’s again and again. It’s worth noting that half the tech I’m carrying is verging on obsolete, and yet I have no real desire to upgrade. I’m writing this on a three-year-old Linux netbook; my phone is a two-year-old HTC Magic running Android 2.1; my music lives on a second generation iPod touch; and the Kobo, as mentioned, isn’t exactly cutting edge. The last three devices can all charge from the three USB slots on the netbook, which means I only need one plug converter. Alas, I also have two cameras. One’s a Canon S90, which is a joy; the other is an Olympus E-PL1 , which is mostly a royal pain, but does take great pictures. This means I also have to drag along their proprietary battery cradles. Dear camera manufacturers of the world; please enable USB charging, ideally as of yesterday. This time next week I’ll be in India, which is something of an acid test for travel: India is like boot camp for patience. — John Perry Barlow (@JPBarlow) …so we’ll see how everything holds up there. It’ll be interesting to see how Delhi and Mumbai have transformed in the eleven and seven years, respectively, since I last saw them. I expect the answer is “a lot”; but I also suspect that, almost invisibly, iteration by iteration, the changes wrought by technology on the experience of travel have been scarcely less profound. |
null | Erick Schonfeld | 2,011 | 6 | 10 | null |
Skype's Worthless Employee Stock Option Plan: Here's Why They Did It | Michael Arrington | 2,011 | 6 | 26 | Skype is being immediately prior to the closing of the Microsoft acquisition, and people are assuming they’re doing this to keep the value of those employees stock options. Skype’s response boils down to saying that the employees were fired because they weren’t good employees, and that the value of the stock is negligible and didn’t affect the decision making process. Ok. But it gets worse. Employees to keep the vested portion of their stock options. The vast majority of stock options granted to startups have a vesting period, typically four years, with chunks of those options becoming vested during that four year (or whatever) period. If options are vested you can exercise them, pay for the stock and own that stock. At least that’s the way things have been done over the decades. Skype did things differently. With Skype stock options the company has the right to not only terminate unvested options, but also vested ones. And any vested options that you’ve exercised (meaning you paid cash for them) that were turned into actual shares could simply be bought back by the company at the price you paid, regardless of their current value. Here’s the relevant language in the stock option grant agreement. It refers to a Management Partnership agreement which isn’t public and it’s unclear if employees ever get to see it (my guess is not): If, in connection with the termination of a Participant’s Employment, the Ordinary Shares issued to such Participant pursuant to the exercise of the Option or issuable to such Participant pursuant to any portion of the Option that is then vested are to be repurchased, the Participant shall be required to exercise his or her vested Option and any Ordinary Shares issued in connection with such exercise shall be subject to the repurchase and other provisions in the Management Partnership agreement. And here’s the letter the when he was terminated: calls the language “intentionally incomprehensible.” agrees, adding that Skype is “evil.” This isn’t the first time I’ve seen a stock option plan like this. I actually worked for a company once that used the same mechanism. I dug up the clause from that agreement, which I kept because it was so audacious. Here’s the relevant clause – it says much the same as the Skype documents but in slightly more understandable language: Where, in the case of an Employee Participant, Executive Participant or a Consultant Participant, an Optionee’s employment, term of office or consultant agreement is terminated for any reason, such Optionee shall immediately offer to sell to the Company all of the Common Shares owned by the Optionee which have been or may be issued to the Optionee upon the exercise of Options at a price equal to the Exercise Price of such Common Shares. Such offer will be irrevocable until the day that is 120 days from the Termination Date. The Company shall have the option (but not the obligation) to purchase such Common Shares. If the offer to sell Common Shares is accepted by the Company, the Company shall purchase such Common Shares for cash consideration. Until now that company I worked for long ago was the only example of this type of clawback provision that I’d ever heard of. The reason that company added that clause is that they didn’t want any outside shareholders, including ex-employees. If there was a liquidity event, fine, employees got the stock upside. But if they left or were fired before a liquidity event, they got nothing. There are only two real reasons for doing this. The first is that the company anticipates a long period of being privately held and doesn’t want to deal with outside shareholders. The second is that they don’t want to give away too much equity in stock options. Since they can take back the options of anyone who leaves, they can give equity more freely to employees coming on board. There’s a tradeoff, of course. If employees understand what they’re signing they will want a lot more compensation to work there – either a higher cash salary or a ton more options. Because they know the likelihood of payout is so small. If, for example, Facebook’s option plan was structured this way. all the early guys that left and founded companies like Quora and Asana would not have made any money at all (billions of dollars in value would have flowed back to Facebook). Multi-billionaire , who was president of Facebook for a time, wouldn’t be a multi-billionaire. Or any other kind of billionaire. The fact that Skype adopted this plan in the first place isn’t in itself “evil.” But they’ve done two things wrong from what I can tell. First it appears that employees had no idea what they were signing and they probably expected it would be a normal stock option type deal that everyone in Silicon Valley has done for decades. If Skype wasn’t crystal clear with them, and explained it in normal human language that they understood, then these employees were intentionally misled. Skype had an incentive to make things unclear, because employees would demand far more compensation if they had understood. The fact that employees are so surprised that this is happening suggests that they didn’t understand the agreement. This is what lawyers call fraud. The second thing Skype did wrong was not to waive this clause with the looming acquisition. The company can deny all day long that they fired these employees for cause, not to save a few dollars on stock options. But the appearance is the exact opposite. These employees should simply hire a lawyer to sue Skype. There’s a valid fraud claim based on what I’m seeing, and the “atmospherics” (how lawyers describe the legally irrelevant facts surrounding the story that can nonetheless influence a judge and jury) are terrible for Skype. Also, Skype has to wrap up this deal. My guess is they’d just settle immediately and pay out on the vested part of the stock options. I bet that dozens of lawyers, venture capitalists and CEOs, now that they’re aware of this, are thinking “Hmmm, not a bad idea. We should do that.” And as long as they are crystal clear in their communications with new employees that these stock options, which are already a long shot, are likely to be extra-worthless, they’re probably in the clear legally. Then it’s up to the employees to take a stand. Or not. |
Watch Conan O'Brien Do The Lark Dance | Alexia Tsotsis | 2,011 | 6 | 21 | [youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5r4jOVyr0vE&w=630]
, the vibrating wristband alarm clock that at TechCrunch Disrupt San Francisco last September, has had quite a year: From being given by Homeland Security because it was an “unidentifiable product,” to being in the Apple Retail store in May and even recently making the show. And now, aside from a coveted Father’s Day from Aol’s one and only , the folks behind Lark have the above show clip to brag about. Says host Conan O’Brien on the innovative wakeup device, “Experts estimate that every man who bought one is using it wrong.” Use your imagination. |
Yeah, That Flickr iPhone Data Is Way Off — It's Far More Dominating Than It Seems | MG Siegler | 2,011 | 6 | 21 | Earlier today, that according to Flickr’s , the iPhone 4 is now the most popular camera across the site. Yes, it has overtaken all those professional cameras, all the point-and-shoots, etc. That’s huge. But the news came with a caveat. And it’s actually a big one. As TUAW notes at the bottom of their post, the caveat is Flickr admitting that they’re only able to detect the camera used to take photos “about 2/3rds of the time”. But the key part is the next sentence: “That is not usually possible with cameraphones, therefore they are under-represented.” “Not usually possible”. In other words, the iPhone 4 has likely been the number one camera for a time. We noted this caveat when . It’s likely that the iPhone 4 was already the top camera then, and probably for some time before then too. Looking over my own Flickr pictures, I see that any photos I’ve sent to Flickr via Instagram over the past several months are stripped of the iPhone 4 identifier. In other words, basically all of the pictures that myself and every other person I know have put on Flickr in recent months have not counted towards this iPhone 4 ascension to the top. Other apps also strip out this info. Circumstantially, I believe Flickr’s data for the iPhone 4 is . Less circumstantially, Instagram co-founder Kevin Systrom confirms that they cannot pass the iPhone 4 metadata to Flickr due to an iOS limitation. And yes, it affects other iOS apps. Therefore, the counts are really, really low. He told me to go to the recently-uploaded Flickr page and refresh a few times to see how often a new Instagram photo shows up. There are so many — yeah, these numbers are off. And if they’re low for the iPhone 4, they’re low for the other iPhone models as well. This means that the second most popular iPhone model on Flickr, the iPhone 3G, is also likely in Flickr’s top 5 cameras. The fifth camera they list is the Canon EOS REBEL T1i, which had 3,794 users yesterday. The iPhone 3G had 3,168 users yesterday — but again, the data is off. Hell, I’m not sure that with the correct data, the iPhone 3G wouldn’t be on the list. The same issue likely applies to Android phones as well. Though for whatever reason, those numbers are really low on Flickr. According to Flickr, the most popular Android phone for taking pictures is the EVO 4G. But it had just 590 users yesterday (again, likely low). The iPod touch had 507 users yesterday (again, low). The EVO 4G has an 8 megapixel camera. The iPod touch has a 0.7 megapixel camera. One is clearly meant to be used as a still camera. One is not. That’s sad. Yes, I know that the individual iPhone numbers benefit from their being fewer models to choose from. But looking over the other popular Android models, it’s pretty clear that all of them together doesn’t hold a candle to the numbers the iPhones are putting up on Flickr. The under-reported numbers. Meanwhile, take your time on that , Flickr. It’s not like you have the numbers to justify its existence. |
Suppliers Claim Amazon Tablet Coming In Late Summer | Devin Coldewey | 2,011 | 6 | 21 | Not a lot of information here to go on, but it jives with and over the last year that Amazon would be putting out a full-on tablet of their own. that the tablet is poised for an August or September launch, and millions of units are expected to be sold by the end of the year. A TI processor and standard OEM touchscreens and LCDs suggest a fairly normal tablet, probably with an emphasis on and special access to Amazon’s streaming media services, rather than an e-reader tablet like the B&N |
Distimo: China Now The Second Largest iPhone App Market After The U.S. | Leena Rao | 2,011 | 6 | 21 |
After reporting the Android Market’s in April’s research, app store analytics company is releasing a new study that focuses on Apple’s App Store development in Asia. The company at iOS app data in China, Hong Kong, India, Indonesia, Japan, Malaysia, Pakistan, Philippines, Singapore, South Korea, Sri Lanka, Taiwan, Thailand and Vietnam. One of the key findings from the report is that while some Western countries witnesses a decrease in download volume (France and Germany), iPhone app download volume in Asian countries has grown significantly in the past six months in the Apple App Store. In fact, Distimo says that China recently became the second largest market after the United States. That’s pretty fast growth considering Apple a tailored App Store for China last Fall. Compared to the relatively small size of the population, South Korea is seeing increased traction in iPhone app download volume. In fact, download volume is higher than in Germany and France. Interestingly, the Games category is absent in the Apple App Store for iPhone in South Korea, so all downloads are allocated to non-Games. In other countries, the Games category is without exception, the largest. However, the proportion of paid downloads and the overall revenue still lag behind that of the United States and Europe. Distimo reports that customers in Asian markets are more inclined to download a free version of an app vs. pay for an ad-free version. The average download volume of the 300 most popular applications (free and paid) in all Asian countries combined is about equal to the average volume in the United States. But for paid applications only, this ratio drops to one-third, showing that iPhone users in the United States are more eager to pay for applications. Excluding Japan, this figure even drops to one-sixth. Distimo says that Japan actually generates the majority of the revenue in Asia regarding iPhone apps. The total revenue in Asia is about two-thirds of the revenue in the United States. This figure is higher than one-third due to the higher average selling prices of the 300 most popular applications in Asia ($2.62) compared to the United States ($1.48). Moreover, in-app purchases have not yet taken off in Asia. For example, in China only 34% of the revenue from the 200 top grossing applications originates from applications that feature in-app purchase. But that doesn’t mean that in-app purchases could quickly scale in Asian markets in the coming year. In the U.S., in-app payments nearly doubled in a year. Distimo says in June 2010, revenue from applications that feature in-app purchase in the United States was only 39%, however by May 2011 it increased to 68%. Distimo reports that the majority of the most popular iPhone applications in Asia are only popular in Asia, but in some Asian countries worldwide popular applications prevail. Popular regional only content are KungFu Food-Panda, and Birzzle. It also appears that these localized apps are more popular in Asia. In Asian countries, an average of 34% of the most popular applications are only popular within the region. In the United States and Europe, only 20% of the applications are aimed specifically at North America and Europe, respectively. And in Asia, localization is also segmented by country. iPhone users in China, Hong Kong, Japan, South Korea and Taiwan have a preference for applications aimed at the region. In China for example, 65% of the 300 most popular free applications are regionally popular only. In South Korea, 87% of free and 78% of paid applications are regionally aimed, respectively. But, Distimo says in general, localization appears to be key to becoming popular especially when considering countries like China, South Korea, and Japan. In countries like India and Indonesia, localization appears to be less popular. |
That Apple Television Is Coming This August Alongside The iPhone Nano (And Santa) | MG Siegler | 2,011 | 6 | 21 | I wanted to do the headline without the Santa bit, but I didn’t want to be that much of an ass. Regardless, let’s see how many people report this as fact just from the headline. In other words, let’s catch who doesn’t bother reading beyond the headline — or even the entire headline. In other words, let’s see who is an idiot that should be fired or stripped of their right to blog. But wait, my headline does have a point beyond being a (weak) trap. My point is that if you believe an Apple Television is coming later this year, I have a nice iPhone nano to sell you. Catch my drift yet? Earlier today, that Apple would enter the television business later this year. No, they do not mean the business Apple is already in with the Apple TV, they mean the television business. As in, there will be a full Apple television set. DailyTech cites a source which they say is a “former Apple executive” who wanted “anonymity” but apparently didn’t mind being cited as a “former Apple executive” even though there aren’t many — and even fewer who would have any clue about this type of recent high level project. But I digress… The key information from their source is that an Apple television is due this fall, it is meant to “blow Netflix and those other guys away”, there will be an OEM partner who actually makes the device (DailyTech predicts Samsung), and then Apple will re-brand it as their own and sell it in their stores. Where to begin? Admittedly, I don’t have much on this information beyond common sense. But that doesn’t mean I have knowledge either. With that in mind, I don’t have any problem going out on a limb and saying this isn’t happening. The Apple-made television set debate is one that has been going on for ages. There are plenty of people on both sides of why it would or would not make sense for Apple to get into this business. I’m actually on the side that believes that . I think that for two simple reasons: 1) the potential (meaning mainly the living room) is huge 2) the industry (meaning mainly the television hardware business — including cable boxes) is ripe for disruption. And even though extremely low margins dominate right now, I think Apple could figure out a way to sell their own televisions at their standard high margins. Still, I just can’t see anyway that this happens this fall. Hell, I’d bet it would be unlikely for fall too. Why? Because I’ve heard Apple has been pleasantly surprised by the moderate success of the newer $99 Apple TV which was released last year. It remains a hobby, but it’s becoming a more interesting hobby for them. And I think they intend to see what they can do with this product that has a relatively low barrier to entry and constitutes little risk for them. We’re going to see some interesting things later this year when iOS 5 allows iOS apps to be mirrored to the Apple TV wirelessly. Step two is getting the apps running on the Apple TV itself. Remember, the new Apple TV also runs on iOS — there’s a reason for that. There will eventually be apps on the device. I believe that happens before Apple tries their hand at making an actual television set. This will also buy Apple some time as component prices for the large screens needed for modern television sets continue to come down. Right now, the largest screen devices Apple makes are the 27-inch iMacs and Cinema Displays. They’re huge and beautiful — they’re bigger than my TV in college. But they’re not big enough to replace today’s living room TV sets. Apple needs to get to those sizes, and I think they will eventually, but it will take time. The biggest problem I have with the DailyTech report is the notion that Apple would partner with an OEM to make the television sets. I have no doubt that some OEMs would to get Apple branding on their products. But Apple would never go for that. Apple’s entire essence is about . From concept to design to production to software to finished product, they control it all. Apple has ventured a bit outside of this strict creed a bit before. And we got the — a piece of crap. If Apple does a television set, they’re going to make it. From concept to manufacturing to shipped product, it will be an Apple television. The one interesting aspect of the DailyTech report is the notion that Apple is building this television to blow away Netflix. From what I’ve heard, Netflix is something that definitely intrigues Apple. As in, they may view it as perhaps the one online video model that works long-term. Obviously, the two sides have a deal to put Netflix on the Apple TV. And Netflix makes iOS apps. But I wouldn’t be surprised if Apple is thinking about their own solution in this space for future devices down the road. While we’re on the topic of Apple rumors, why not briefly address a few others that have popped up today? Earlier, that the iPhone 5 may hit in August. From what I’ve heard, this is unlikely. Apple has stated that iOS 5 is due this fall, August is not the fall, and there is no way Apple releases the iPhone 5 without iOS 5. September is looking more likely for each, previously . A report later this evening also reiterates September and goes over much of what has already been rumored about the next generation iPhone for some time: better processor, better camera, resembles iPhone 4, etc. The more interesting tidbit in this report is that Apple is testing a new iPad with a higher-resolution screen. that Apple was lining up for a fall “surprise” and had heard that a new version of the iPad was set to be that surprise. We haven’t heard any new information since then, but it’s still certainly a possibility. Of course, at the time, it wasn’t yet clear that the iPhone 5/iOS 5 would be pushed to the fall. As always, things are fluid. But if I were a betting man, I’d say a new iPad this fall is a better bet than an actual Apple television. |
Firmware Fixes On The Way For Fujifilm X100 | Devin Coldewey | 2,011 | 6 | 21 | I’d like to say I’ve had my problems with the , but since inventory is so tight, they haven’t had a chance to get us one to review yet. But from everything I’ve heard, it’s a great camera with some really half-baked firmware. Fujifilm is hoping to address this with an update that makes some functions harder to accidentally set or reset and improves performance a bit. The original updated features were tweeted out individually on the account, but DPReview has kindly . |
InfluAds launches its crowd-sourced ad network to try and de-clutter the web | Mike Butcher | 2,011 | 6 | 21 | We’ve had crowd-sourced book reviews (Amazon), crowd-source location (Foursquare, Waze), so why not a crowd-sourced advertising network? Sounds crazy? Well the fact is display banner ads have been just a tiny bit dissappointing and basically create clutter on the real estate of the web. At the same time companies try to monetize what they do to fund free apps with these things. The answers are tricky. So relevancy is the key – and this remains very hard. But still the banner ads come, plastering web and mobile. Google AdWords has helped but the problem is that the long tail of small businesses still finds it hard to buy banners, where campaigns can run beyond the budgets of smaller companies. Seed backed by the France/Israel based , , a crowd-sourced ad network which doubles-down on ad placement, launches today. Its aim is to eliminate unsold and remnant inventory and removing ‘bad’ ads with good ones. The 16 months old Copenhagen-based startup has a team in spread across Denmark and Portugal and now has 200+ publishers signed up including Venturehacks, StartupQuote and others. The idea is that publishers (blogs, news sites, anything) work together to develop curated ad networks around their niche. The idea is to drive premium revenue per ad unit and matching multiple ad units per page. Worth kicking the tyres on this one. |
Source: This Hulu/Yahoo Story Is BS | Michael Arrington | 2,011 | 6 | 21 | Interesting breaking that Yahoo put an unsolicited bid in to acquire Hulu. For all I know it’s completely true. But I’ve just received an unsolicited message from a source close to Yahoo that says it’s completely untrue (probably because of all my digging the last week on ). Yahoo hasn’t had any meaningful conversations with Hulu about a buyout, says this source. The source added that Hulu is actively looking for a buyer and has hired Morgan Stanley to represent them. Like I said, this is all I’ve got right now. The WSJ and the LA Times say they have sources confirming that Yahoo made an offer. With big acquisitions the press is a huge pawn in negotiating strategy. The one thing I’d like to know is who’s the source for the LA Times article. If that source is close to Hulu or Morgan Stanley, I’d be wary. Of course, my source has her own agenda, too. |
Lytro Launches to Transform Photography with $50M in Venture Funds (TCTV) | Sarah Lacy | 2,011 | 6 | 21 | Love photos but utterly bored by of iPhone photo sharing apps? is the company for you. This is also the company for anyone who thinks Silicon Valley has fallen into a rut of innovation-less posing. And it’s the company for anyone who complains that the Valley is more about media and marketing than brass-knuckles, hardcore technology. This is the company that jaded, cranky, rap-lyric quoting investor Ben Horowitz says, “blew my brains to bits.” In short, Lytro is developing a new type of camera that dramatically changes photography for the first time since the 1800s. Rather than just capturing one plane of light, it captures the entire light field around a picture, all in one shot taken on a single device. A light field includes every beam of light in every direction at every point in time. Experimentation in this field started in the mid-1990s at Stanford with 100 cameras in one room. Lytro’s innovation is making it small enough to fit in your pocket. Really. As a result you can refocus photos after the fact, wiggle around the orientation, and even show the photos in 3D. , because it’s not too far away from those 3D moving photographs in the Harry Potter movies. The company has raised $50 million so far from , , and . Check it out in this photo below by Richard Koci Hernandez. Click around to see Elvis come into focus in the foreground: Here’s some of what Horowitz wrote about the company: “People often refer to taking a picture as capturing the moment, but conventional photography does not really capture the moment. It captures one angle, one set of light, and one focus of the moment. If you are a professional photographer, you might capture the best parts of the moment. If you are someone like me, you most certainly will not. With Ren’s light field camera, you actually capture the moment or at least all of the light that visually represents the moment. Once you have captured the moment, you can go back at any time and get the picture that you want. Essentially, you can take the picture you wish you would have taken after the fact. If you are used to the old paradigm, it’s like travelling backwards through time.” Of course there are big risks with any business this jaw-droppingly innovative. Will they be able to get the price point low enough that people will buy the camera? Right now, the closest Ng will commit on price is somewhere between north of $1 and less than $10,000. That’s a pretty broad ballpark. We won’t be able to see the devices until the also vague “sometime this year.” An equally important question is whether the user experience be as simple as the company claims. We invited the CEO and founder Ren Ng into the TechCrunchTV studio to answer some of these questions, give us a demo and tell us more about this undeniably cool company. Video below. |
I Could Definitely Use This Fold-Out Field Kitchen | Devin Coldewey | 2,011 | 6 | 21 |
While I feel there is a little danger of singing the wood in this Field Kitchen contraption, I love the idea. It’s the perfect size for a Colman stove, and they even sell two different kinds with it. Plus there’s room for silverware, plates, salt and pepper, the works. The legs are optional, and the whole thing is made of aluminum and birch plywood. Unfortunately it’s rather expensive: “vacant,” it’s $595, and with legs, side tables, extra drawers and so on, it can run you a thousand bucks and more. I’m guessing you’re paying for good materials and construction (and a bit of design), and of course when it comes to things that must bear heat and wind and so on, it’s probably better not to skimp. Still, I bet you could find (or construct) something similar if you’re into it but short on funds. [via ] |
WordPress.org Forces Password Resets Due To Compromised Plugins | Alexia Tsotsis | 2,011 | 6 | 21 | WordPress.org has just posted the following on : “Earlier today the WordPress team noticed suspicious commits to several popular plugins (AddThis, WPtouch, and W3 Total Cache) containing cleverly disguised backdoors. We determined the commits were not from the authors, rolled them back, pushed updates to the plugins, and shut down access to the plugin repository while we looked for anything else unsavory.” According to founder , WordPress .org has decided to reset all WordPress.org, bbPress.org and BuddyPress.org passwords, because of suspicious activity surrounding popular plugins AddThis, WPTouch and W3 Total Cache. WordPress.org users who try to log in to WordPress.org forums, use trac, or who try to commit to a plugin or theme will receive the following message, “On June 21, 2011, we reset all passwords, so you’ll need to request a new one if you haven’t already.” Mullenweg tells me that the password change will affect the couple of million people who login into WordPress.org. Mullenweg tells me that WordPress.org itself was not hacked, but that some plugins author accounts were and that the hacks have the potential to affect anyone who downloads these plugins from WordPress.org. “There are 15k plugins so happens sometimes,” Mullenweg said. “We haven’t pissed off LulzSec yet. :)” |
"Magi-Cam" Uses Mirrors As Camouflage To Spy On Vigilant Animals | Devin Coldewey | 2,011 | 6 | 21 | [youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UfGVJMSJQDQ&w=640&h=390]
One of the hardest things to do when filming a nature documentary is convince the animals you’re not there. Sometimes it means constructing an elaborate blind and waiting for hours, days, or even months. Sometimes you have to send a remote-controlled proxy out there, if you’re filming, say, polar bears. But these little robots are loud and difficult to effectively disguise. Who knew that making one out of mirrors was the solution? This prism-looking thing is called the Magi-Cam, and it’s pretty much what it looks like: a remote control camera platform inside a set of two-way mirrors. Apparently this is incredibly effective, since these bears don’t seem to care about that really obvious buzzing noise. I don’t think it works in every situation, but as you can see, it sure as hell works in the forest. I saw one where they had a camera disguised as a log, but the baby tigers they were filming came and played with it. This is probably better. [via ] |
Daily Deal Aggregator Yipit Raises $6 Million Series B | Erick Schonfeld | 2,011 | 6 | 21 | Daily deals are growing like crazy, and it’s not just Groupon and LivingSocial. Daily deal aggregator just raised $6 million in a series B led by Highland Capital Partners. RRE, DFJ Gotham and IA Ventures also participated. I caught up with co-founders Vin Vacanti and Jim Moran (pictured) today in New York City. Saved from Wall Street jobs a few years ago, they now work out of General Assembly with 7 people total, but are looking to ramp up to 30 (mostly engineers, Web designers, product managers, and mobile developers). They’ll have to move out of General Assembly and are already looking for their own space. Yipit tracks 335 active deal services in 32 cities in North America. In New York City alone it lists 161 active deals. People are starting to suffer from daily deal overload. There are only so many daily deal emails that even the most die-hard deal seeker can look at every day. There’s Groupon and LivingSocial, but also Gilt City, Yelp, and newspapers like the New York Times are getting in on the deal-a-thons. And then there’s Yipit, which brings all of the deals together in one place, lets you search and filter them, and sends you one email with deals from all the sites operating in your area. “Instead of getting 70 emails in New York,” explains Vacanti, “you can tell us your preferences—only restaurants or skydiving—also zip codes or addresses. The idea being going forward you get one email.” With no marketing, 250,000 people have signed up for Yipit emails, and it is adding 1,000 sign-ups a day. A year ago it had 25,000 names. “Every day we send 20,000 people a day to third party sites,” says Moran. “We estimate between 5% and 10% purchase a deal.” Vacanti and Moran compare Yipit to a Kayak for daily deals. It is daily deal search. You can filter out all the deals you don’t care about (no more spa deals, please) and not have to go to each individual deal site. Then those daily deal search results are sent to you all together in one regular email. Yipit normalizes data for every deal and puts it into its own database. Every deal has an address and lat-long coordinates attached to the venue, which could come in handy for a future deal-finding mobile app. Yipit also has a lot of great data on the daily deals industry, which it sells to hedge funds and daily deals sites for competitive intelligence. The reports are currently half its revenues, which is at a run-rate of hundreds of thousands of dollars a year and growing quickly. The company was already close to break-even and had 15 months of cash left when they decided to raise the new money, which will be invested primarily in hiring and growth to new cities. |
Day 1: My Week In The Nissan Leaf | Matt Burns | 2,011 | 6 | 21 |
A brand new Nissan Leaf rolled out off a car carrier and into my life earlier today. I plan on spending a good deal of time with this red devil over the coming week. You see, here at CrunchGear, there’s been a raging format war of sorts. Devin, a hipster of a moderate degree, is very fond of the . He’s proclaimed on numerous occasions that an EV is perfect car for him and he’s going to replace his ’91 Plymouth Voyager with one whenever they drop in price. I hail from the other side, Team . I very much respect the expensive but versatile series hybrid powertrain found in the GM product. We both however agree that the future will not be made up by just one alternative power source and both the Leaf and the Volt are aimed at slightly different markets. As much as I like the Volt, the Leaf is a very important step in the right direction. Never before has a consumer-level EV been mass produced and sold like the Nissan Leaf. Several different trim levels are available through ten countries. It’s a tad pricey, but first gen products almost always are. The one parked in my driveway (and connected to my power) has a window sticker price of $35,440, which includes the $940 SL package that includes fog lights, rear-view cam, and a solar panel spoiler. That’s not cheap. Thankfully, the Leaf doesn’t feel cheap either.
I just took it for a quick 45 mile cruise and came home satisfied. I was expecting a soulless vehicle. I thought it was going to be something that was more of a tool rather than a car. But it’s not. Of course I’m basing this on one drive so my sample size is rather small. The plan is to park my Dodge Magnum for a week and replace it completely with the Leaf. If the Leaf, with it’s limited range, can’t reach a location, then I guess I’m not going. Living in suburbia just outside of Flint, MI, this might mean some skipped trips. I understand this isn’t exactly the Leaf’s intended use. It’s marketed as a limited range vehicle, but I want to fully explore how range anxiety affects mundane errands and everyday tasks. I mapped out my first drive on Google Maps to make sure I wasn’t exceeding the Leaf’s range. I expect to do that several more times during my time with this Leaf. Expect much more Leaf coverage over the next week. There’s actually a lot to show in the vehicle. Feel free to drop questions in the comments below.
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Yahoo's 360 Degree Turnaround | Michael Arrington | 2,011 | 6 | 21 | Oof, Yahoo. The , just the most recent Yahoo trainwreck, is still a fresh wound for shareholders. And things are getting worse. Yahoo CEO Carol Bartz has long promised a turnaround at the lagging company. But we’ve been digging for new information about the state of Yahoo in advance of the annual later this week, and everything we’re hearing isn’t good. One investor we spoke with said “It’s a turnaround alright, but it’s a 360° turnaround. Basically, they’re spinning in circles.” Things we’ve learned from multiple sources: – Yahoo is quietly looking at replacement CEO candidates. Fox Digital Chief has had “early and unofficial” discussions with the Yahoo board of directors about taking over as CEO. It’s thought that Yahoo board member , who’s long wanted the job, is also a current candidate. Other names have been whispered. Bartz may know that there’s an active if unofficial search going on, but only if she’s hearing it indirectly, says one source. – , previously head of Yahoo Research, was promoted to Chief Strategy Officer. He is “responsible for developing the long-term corporate strategy and technical vision for Yahoo.” His lack of business experience has alarmed some investors, who see it as a poor judgement call by Bartz. – Worst of all, Yahoo’s financial results are said to be significantly below what the street expects, even after expectations were lowered in May. We expect significant revisions to the guidance Yahoo will be giving analysts going forward based on what we’ve heard, particularly for the last half of the year. Even so, the stock price may not drop much. “Investors have already priced the main Yahoo business to zero,” said one investor. – Chairman seems to be the main target of upset shareholders right now. It would be too disruptive to remove Bartz from the board of directors, our sources say, but sending a clear message that they don’t support Bostock would be appropriate. There’s little chance of him actually getting less than a 50% vote, and Yahoo can override a shareholder vote anyway. But if 25% or more of the votes are withheld, it’s likely he’ll be forced to step down. Of course, we’ve before and Bostock has survived. One person we spoke with was willing to go on record. Eric Jackson, who’s been of Yahoo for years, said he hopes for a at the meeting on June 23. As for Bartz, Jackson threw this zinger: “Personally I’d like to see [Softbank CEO] or [Alibaba founder] become CEO of Yahoo.” These are really just the raw notes from our discussions. We have a couple of other major stories developing around Yahoo as well. But for now we just have to wait and see how things play out at the shareholder meeting, and whether the Yahoo board can avoid a massive no confidence vote. |
Apple Releases iTunes Festival App For iPad And iPhone | Jordan Crook | 2,011 | 6 | 21 | Since 2007, has hosted the Festival in London. And why wouldn’t it? For most, iTunes is the go-to one-stop shop for all the music we could ever want, so an annual music festival in its honor is only fitting. If you’re interested in checking out the show, or simply just want to keep up with the festival, Apple has just released its for free on the Apple App Store. The festival will be held at The Roundhouse in North London and see the likes of big name artists such as Paul Simon, Linkin Park, Coldplay, Foo Fighters, Jimmy Eat World, plus quite a few others. In total, the festival will feature 62 artists over the course of the month of July. The iTunes Festival app will offer live streaming video of the festival, as well as on-demand versions of the performances that are available for a limited time. Until July 1, the app can keep you in the loop on the festival’s calendar and the performance lineup. The app is available for both the iPhone and the iPad, and is compatible with AirPlay. So if you have an Apple TV, feel free to sit back and relax while you watch Linkin Park rock out on the big screen. |
To 4G Or Not To 4G? Consumers Don't Give A Hoot. | Rip Empson | 2,011 | 6 | 21 | There’s been a lot of hype around 4G of late, with talk about how the new network standard provides increased speeds, better device functionality, and all that jazz. But is 4G a term that actually has real world meaning, or is it just some place-holding buzzword used by marketers to stoke consumer excitement over buying a new phone? Today, 4G really seems to have become synonymous with speed, and carriers are spreading the message of “network upgrades” from 3G to 4G as being just that — a step up in speed and functionality. And certainly, while enhanced network capabilities do seem to be a part of the new 4G network standard, carriers are getting away with not telling the whole story. Now, in the big picture, while 4G is indeed meant to refer to the fourth generation of cellular wireless standards (as the successor to 3G which arrived in the early 2000s, which succeeded 2G in the ’90s, etc.), clearly the definition and implications of 4G have become somewhat equivocal. There’s the technical definition and the non-technical definition. Just as Timothy Butler , Sprint and Verizon generally get closest to meeting the actual technical criteria for 4G with WiMAX and LTE, respectively. But, T-Mobile and AT&T, meanwhile, seem to be stretching the definition to include their upgraded 3G networks, he says, on the (arguably shady, I’d say) basis that the speeds are faster than traditional 3G networks. But the question then becomes: Even with all this hype, this equivocation, are we, as consumers, buying this (literally and figuratively)? Are we champing at the bit to buy a new 4G device anyway, or have we been burned too many times and ? , a market research and consulting company, released designed to provide a bit of insight into these questions, hoping to discover whether or not the improvements of 4G networks over their predecessors play a significant factor in the purchase decision for a new phone or plan and just what the current perception of the 4G brand in today’s marketplace. As one may expect, the number one factor for consumers in deciding whether or not to buy a new phone or device was price. Many people are still feeling the sting of the recession and just aren’t willing to upgrade to 4G if it means paying a lot. However, while price was selected as the number one factor for consumers when selecting their current cell phones (61 percent of all those polled), the second most significant factor in device purchase was network capabilities. 58 percent of consumers reported network capabilities as contributing to their decision, versus other phone features like touch screen capabilities, screen size, and brand name. Again, when asked as to the most important factor when selecting a provider, terms of contract excluded, 29 percent of consumers cited the data plan prices as the top influencer. Somewhat surprisingly, network speeds were the most important factor to only 5 percent of respondents, especially given the attention that many providers have given to that feature in ad campaigns. ( ) But perhaps the most interesting piece of data? While consumers across the board recognize that it means to have extensive network capabilities, only 18 percent with smart phones currently have 4G capabilities. Now, as to the current perceptions of 4G, Morpace found that, while over 50 percent of consumers with smart phones “identified increased downloading and Internet browsing speeds as significant features” of the new standard (and these numbers are strong for a new technology), 48 percent of respondents were still unable “to identify the main benefits of 4G networks”, the report said. Not only that, but only 40 percent of those polled said they would be willing to pay a premium to have 4G. Some other interesting data points: Only 33 percent of consumers are likely to upgrade to 4G before their current contract expires, though this number does increase to 37 Percent among people aged 18 to 54. Also, a somewhat interesting and perhaps counterintuitive stat — smart phone users who make under $50K are significantly more likely to upgrade to 4G even if it means paying more. Probably because most of those people fall into the younger age group. All in all, these are somewhat surprising stats for 4G advocates. It seems that two-in-three consumers are not willing to upgrade their contracts for 4G, with 60 percent of consumers unwilling to pay more to upgrade — period. One-third of those consumers do not even perceive 4G as necessary. That being said, the irony here is that, of those polled who actually have 4G networks, 83 percent were satisfied with their service. Now, this could just be smugness on the part of geeks, but I don’t think so. Clearly, carriers and service providers could do a much, much more comprehensive job of explaining to consumers what 4G is and what the benefits are, beyond “OMG-super-fast-sexy speed!” Image attribution: (From what I can glean) |
TechCrunch is heading to MLOVE, the TED for Mobile | Mike Butcher | 2,011 | 6 | 21 | I’ve been to just about every tech conference in Europe now (bar the dull corporate IT ones, which I avoid) but one I haven’t hit yet is (June 29th to July 1st). This is held just outside in Berlin, at 19th century castle in the former Eastern Germany. This year there is more incentive for TechCrunch to cover it, since there wil be a startup competition on the main stage in front of 200 mobile industry luminaries. Something of a ‘TED for Mobile’ , MLOVE is billed as a “conference meets festival” and attracts 200 mobile sector gurus (an I mean gurus since ticket prices run at around €1,500). The startup jury will be chaired by Andrew Scott, a veteran of mobile start-ups and co-founder of . Joining him will be Jean Schmitt of Sofinnova Partners and Daniel Graf, Director of Google Apps Lab, and myself. Other attendees and speakers will include Thorsten Dirks, CEO of E-PLUS, Russell Buckley, Kei Shimada, CEO Infinita, Peter Vesterbacka CMO Angry Birds, Thomas Goetz Executive Editor, Wired US, and many more. Looking forward to it. |
Samsung's LCD Fridge With Apps Is A Fridge That Has An LCD And Apps | Jordan Crook | 2,011 | 6 | 21 | Food aside, what’s missing from your fridge? As long as it keeps food cold, and hooks you up with some cold water or crushed ice from time to time, there’s really nothing more we can ask from our fridges. At least, that’s how I felt before I went to ’s appliance line unveiling and met my new favorite home appliance: the app fridge. The app fridge comes in two different models: one with two vertical doors, and one with two vertical doors up top and two drawers down below. What’s different about this fridge is that just above the ice/water dispenser, there is an 8-inch Wi-Fi supported LCD screen that features a total of eight apps: Memos, Photos, Epicurious, Calendar, WeatherBug, , , and . Some of the apps are built by Samsung and specifically designed for the app fridge, while others are apps we’ve come to know and love. I got to play around with one today at the unveiling and from what I’ve seen, this is going to make a lot of moms happy. Instead of pinning a zillion photos, memos, grocery lists, etc. up on the fridge with magnets and ending up with a mess, the app fridge lets you store photos, memos and saved dates all on the fridge itself, organized neatly within that nice little 8-inch screen. Some of the apps are more useful and relevant than others, but overall they each fit well on the app fridge and I can understand why Samsung chose the apps it did. To start, the Photos app lets you upload pictures straight from a Wi-Fi camera or other Wi-Fi connected devices and then run the photos as a slide show on the LCD when it’s not in use. I actually got to watch a live demo of photos being uploaded from a camera to the fridge using Samsung’s AllShare software and it took no more than 15 or 20 seconds from the time the picture was taken, sans wires. The Calendar and Memos apps are pretty self-explanatory, so I won’t spend too much time on them. I will, however, say that there was one cool feature in the Memos app that I thought would really come in handy on a fridge. Within the Memos app you can post a memo right on the homescreen, just in case you want to remind your sweetie to pick up some milk. A touchscreen keyboard appears for text input in both the Calendar and Memos apps, and you also have the option to input text with your finger or a stylus in Memos, if you’re looking for a more personal feel. The most useful app for the fridge, by far, is the Epicurious app. It lets you search recipes by keyword and by ingredient, which comes in handy when all you have in the fridge are random odds and ends. Plus, you can browse through the app and look at all of Epicurious’ recipes. WeatherBug, of course, keeps you up-to-date on the weather outside, which doesn’t seem super relevant to the fridge itself. On the other hand, the fridge is kind of the information station for a family, where they can meet and figure out the day. In cases like that, WeatherBug suits the app fridge perfectly. The same basically holds true for the AP app, in that news surfing isn’t necessarily a fridge-related activity. Still, it’s nice to browse through breaking news during your afternoon snack. Overall I’d say the AP app is just as relevant as WeatherBug, albeit less useful than some of the other apps. The final two apps, Twitter and Pandora, I have mixed feelings about. Pandora can definitely come in handy during a dinner party, or even when you’re home alone washing dishes or chopping veggies. The only problem I have is that Pandora on the app fridge doesn’t let you create custom stations from the fridge. You have to go back to your computer or mobile app and add the station to your account before it’ll show up on the Pandora app on the fridge. This obviously isn’t a huge set back, but in my opinion, the more functionality the better. Twitter works the same way. Once you’re logged in, you can read your timeline just like you would on Twitter’s desktop client. You can’t, however, tweet something yourself, or reply, or send a private message. Just like Pandora is “listen only”, Twitter on the app fridge is a “read only” experience. I guess I can understand why Samsung chose to leave out the ability to tweet. Who wants to type tweets onto a fridge LCD when a smartphone is just a pocket dive away? Still, if something goes down in my kitchen that I am totally compelled to tweet, I’ll be sad to look over at an utterly useless (at least in that moment) Twitter icon on my fridge. The Samsung LCD Refrigerator with apps is available for $3,499 (four door model) or $2,699 (two door model) at national retailers including Best Buy and Lowe’s.
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Review: Klipsch S5i Rugged In-Ear Headphones | Devin Coldewey | 2,011 | 6 | 21 |
: A solid pair of headphones with some token efforts towards ruggedness. Aside from an increased resistance to water, they’re not remarkably tough, but the sound is good and the remote is nice and chunky.
: : : : Klipsch’s in-ears have a long, illustrious history, so I won’t bother you with it. I’ve enjoyed their headphones before, but the S5i is their first rugged set to my knowledge, though with headphones and in-ears in particular, rugged is really more a style than a serious change in hardware. These headphones will no more than any other survive complete submersion in water (or lava), but they built with activity in mind, and they won’t be bothered by a little rain. Sound is good. Klipsch knows what they’re doing. There’s plenty of power in them, if you’re wearing them correctly, and room for clarity if you want to push it, but the focus seems to be on the mid and low end. I pushed them pretty hard from my PC’s headphone output (which generally runs a little high) and got no clipping or distortion, though at high levels the highs were a little hissy. The bass and mids stay solid, and at that point they’re pretty good for isolating yourself on a train or street. Klipsch claims they’re noise-isolating, and they are, but that’s just a natural consequence of filling your ear canal. The S5is don’t do it any better than any other in-ears, as far as I can tell. The cords are of a matte rubber of above the average thickness, which is reassuring strength-wise, and also really does prevent serious tangles, even uncoils itself. The disadvantage seems to be an increased amount of cord noise in the headphones, a problem that affects all in-ears, but these in particular. The controls are really big. I know some people prefer these to be small or even on the headphones, but if you’re skiing or biking and don’t have the time or manual dexterity (wearing gloves, for instance) to feel for the orientation and correct tiny circular button, you’ll appreciate these jumbo buttons, shaped in +, -, and triangle shapes. They worked fine with my iPad, though of course they’re not compatible with anything other than iDevices (on Android phones it launches the speech search, for what it’s worth). It could really have used a clip, though, for attaching it to your shirt or jacket. It tends to swing about. I’ve always enjoyed the fit of in-ears, but I can’t say I would trust them to stay in my ears during any kind of truly strenuous activity, especially if there’s a good amount of sweat involved. I know, it’s gross, but bear with me, since it’s a serious consideration for the likes of joggers and cyclists. If you’ve got sweat trickling down your head, there’s a good chance it could cause these things to slip out of your ears. Again, this is an issue with any silicone-tipped in-ear headphones, but since Klipsch is presenting these as an athletic option, it seems worthwhile to point out that there are no precautions taken against it. Some headphones I’ve reviewed have the option to run the cable around the back and over the top of your ear, which would have been welcome here — but the single orientation of the S5i headphones doesn’t permit it. As for being waterproof, well, I wore them out in the rain several times and in the shower once to really push them. I never had any trouble with leakage, and as I was using a Motorola Defy to play music, I had no worries on my device’s part either. : The S5is come with a sweet hard case with plenty of room inside, and an actual LED flashlight on the outside. It’s not very strong, but it works and could be helpful on a camping trip or what have you. : While some things seem to have been done to make these headphones sporty, I’m not convinced just yet. The lack of a clip for the remote (which is itself nice) is troublesome to anyone doing anything active with these, and there’s nothing about the headphones’ fit that make them more likely to stay in than the next pair. At the same time, it’s the same solid Klipsch quality as the rest of their in-ear line. But are these mostly cosmetic changes worth the extra $30 from the S4i, the extra $50 from the S4? I can’t say they are, but if Klipsch made a few more changes to the hardware to make them activity-friendly, I’d have nothing to say against them.
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Virtual Storage Company Virsto Raises $12M, Buys VMware Virtualization Startup EvoStor | Leena Rao | 2,011 | 6 | 7 | , a virtual machines storage company, has raised $12 million in Series B venture capital funding led by InterWest Partners with August Capital and Canaan Partners also participating in the round. This investment brings Virsto’s total funding to Virsto develops an hypervisor-based storage solution that can anticipate the evolving demands, barriers and opportunities native to server virtualization. Virsto One is architected to be storage- and hypervisor-agnostic and allows users to virtualize storage-intensive workloads, maximize consolidation of server and storage hardware, reduce storage management complexity and eventually reduce overall storage costs. Virsto says that its software helps enterprise, private and public cloud customers reap the benefits of server and desktop virtualization, increasing performance while lowering storage costs. In addition, Virsto is also announcing its acquisition of , a company that specializes in storage virtualization technology for VMware environments. Financial terms of the deal were not disclosed. The funding will be used to drive new growth, product development and expand partnerships. |
CrunchGear Is Streaming Live From Showstoppers @ E3 | John Biggs | 2,011 | 6 | 7 | [ustream cid=177851 w=640 h=370]
Watch us interview people while drinking! Here we go again: talking to the exhibitor’s at this year’s Showstoppers at E3 where we can sit down and get up close and personal with a few fascinating tech companies. We’ll be streaming for about an hour and then we’ll start up again at 10am Pacific when the show floor opens again. Expect live hands-ons of the Vita and the Wii U as well as lots of great talk with lots of publishers. Thanks for watching so far and enjoy! |
Actually, Sony Won E3 With The Vita | Devin Coldewey | 2,011 | 6 | 7 |
Matt may that the is the E3 champion, but I’m not convinced. It looks like a fun and versatile device, but I’m not sure it’s as accessible as the Wii, which focused on motion and a few primary buttons to make gaming as simple as possible. The Wii U is clearly powerful in some ways but not nearly the breakthrough device the Wii was. , on the other hand, isn’t even trying to be a breakthrough device. It’s simply an extremely powerful and versatile portable gaming system. While I have my about the system, Sony convinced me today that it’s going to at least fulfill its own mission. And the price? Mwah, I kiss my fingers. Perfection. Sony has been under fire these last two months, and they’ve learned from both the PS3’s launch and the PSP Go. People are tired of paying Sony prices, even for good devices. I bet the $250 price was only finalized in the last month, when someone with sense in their head said that if this handheld is priced over $300, it’s going to be strike three for Sony. So even though this thing probably costs around $300 just to put together and package (big OLED touchscreen, mega-compact construction, custom processor and GPU), they’re doing the right thing by sucking it up and taking a hit with every sale. That’s the price of expanding your market when you have aggressive and powerful opponents. Sony has finally shown that they can actually learn from their misfortunes and their customers’ criticisms. Sometimes. The screen is gorgeous, the games look insane, and now Sony fanboys have a legitimate reason to Sony fanboys. It isn’t my style of gaming, but I have no problem saying they did this one right. the battery lasts more than an hour. |
This Is Where The Magic Happens | Jon Evans | 2,011 | 6 | 7 | Seventeen years ago published Neal Stephenson’s magisterial epic “ ”, about the web of undersea fibre-optic cables being built to connect all of humanity. Well – all. Africa, again, was left behind. Until 2009, all of East Africa could only connect to the Internet over slow and hugely expensive satellite links. Finally, two years ago, laid a cable along the East African coast to Mumbai; then tributaries were run thousands of kilometers inland, as far as Uganda and even Rwanda; and later this year, a direct connection to Europe will be lit up. This has chopped the cost of bandwidth from US $5,000 per megabit/s per month to approximately $100, hugely increased capacity to 1.28 terabits/second, and given more than 100 million people (and counting) access to broadband Internet for the very first time. Today I visited their cable landing site in Mombasa, Kenya. It doesn’t look like a high-tech hub. The site stands in the shadow of Fort Jesus, an ancient castle constructed by the Portuguese in 1593, and to better blend in with its UNESCO World Heritage surroundings, its outer walls are built to look like a keep: But within are prefab buildings constructed in New Jersey (of all places) and shipped halfway around the world. The open trapdoor leads to the cable… …which runs seven kilometres out to the branching station, and then 3,000 kilometers northeast to Mumbia, 2,000 km northwest to Egypt, and another 3,000 south to South Africa: An observant eye can see the path the cable takes, beneath the shore below Fort Jesus: Landing the cables is the hard part. It took three months to dig, lay, and cover those seven kilometres, using local barges and professional divers. By contrast, the cable that runs to Djibouti along the 1500 kilometres of Somalia’s wild coast was laid in less than a month … not counting the 55 days that the ship had to rest in port because of the danger of pirates. That Djibouti branch isn’t even lit up yet. The cable is laid, and ready – but three kilometers of it that pass through Egyptian soil remain a sticking point. “Each country moves at its own pace,” sighs Mahmoud Noor, manager of the Kenyan landing station (which also double’s as the system’s backup Network Operations Center.) He won’t go into details, but I get the impression that the problem is more political than technical. When Egypt comes online, hopefully later this year, SEACOM capacity will leap upwards again, and lag times will halve. Until then, all their external traffic has to go to Mumbai, then be routed elsewhere by leased lines. The undersea cable consists of the fibres themselves, as thin as human hairs, wrapped in a copper sheath that carries up to 10,000 DC volts to power the repeaters every 100km that keep the signals comprehensible. In depths less than kilometre, this is all sheathed in thick additional armour. Here Peter Ouko, a SEACOM engineer, displays a cutaway example of the cable: …and here’s where it enters the New-Jersey-built prefabs after its monumental journey along the continent. The interior is cavernous, antiseptic, and honeycombed with cables: An outgoing sheaf of fibre connects to the next building, where customer equipment goes, and where SEACOM is installing added-value options: an exchange to route connections within Kenya, Uganda, Rwanda (and Ethiopia, when they finally connect) directly without having to wastefully forward that data to Mumbai or London first, and an IP service so that customers can connect directly to routers without having to step down from themselves. It’s a triumph of engineering, and a profoundly important one. In Kenya today, a SIM card costs less than a beer, and a minute of 2G Internet access costs only 2.5 cents. That’s still too much, but far less than in the bad old days. Once South Africa was the continent’s tech powerhouse, but now they grumble about how good the Kenyans have it – SA, Africa's "superpower", shamed PRT: the internet in Kenya is outstanding: they have skipped landlines and use cheap wireless — Verashni Pillay (@verashni) – and this building is why. It and the others like it are the bedrock on which Africa’s nascent Internet revolution is built; they are, quite literally, where the future is being forged. |
Founders Den: First Class — 11 Startups Emerge From The Non-Incubator Incubator | MG Siegler | 2,011 | 6 | 7 | This past January, , a new shared office space based in the SoMa district of San Francisco. The idea was to create a private clubhouse where invited entrepreneurs ( ) could come to hang out and small, referred startups could rent space. Today, the don’t-call-it-an-incubator incubator had its first demo day. Overall, the quality of the 12 startups that gave presentations seem very solid. A number of them already have funding in place. And some even come by way of other incubators, like Y Combinator. We’ve covered a few of them already, but here’s a rundown of all 12 startups that gave presentations today. Well, actually 11 of them. 1 is still in stealth mode and made me double pinky swear that I wouldn’t reveal what I saw. — The idea behind this startup is more or less to be the Mint for health insurance, when we first covered them last month. They aim to be the best free way to manage your health care expenses — something which I think everyone will agree is a huge pain right now. Cake Health provides a simple way for you to input your current healthcare information and gives you easy-to-understand data to show you where your money is going and more importantly, where you can save money. One of the co-founders is an ex-TechCrunch developer. — This is one of the Y Combinator alums focusing on the business intelligence space — which they call “massively broken”. Essentially, they’re Google Analytics for databases. And they already have some big time clients such as Airbnb and Aviary. From the get go, they give you fully customized database information access that can be mixed and matched in a ton of different ways. We’ve also covered them previous . — This another Y Combinator alum that a couple months ago from Benchmark and others. They aim to solve the choice and management problem that developers have today given how many tools are now at their disposal. Developers go to DotCloud, pick the tools they wish to use to build their applications, and in 30 seconds they can be up and running thanks to the DotCloud infrastructure which sets up and manages everything on their end. This is for consumer apps, web apps, enterprise apps, etc. — Each year, 1.5 billion mail-in rebates don’t get redeemed. That’s $20 billion consumers are missing out on. That’s the market for EpicRebates. Just as Netflix arose out of late fees, these guys are springing up to cap this waste of money. The aim is to dramatically improve the mail-in rebate experience by making it a fully digital one. Consumers will be able to track rebates with their apps, as well as see which ones are actually worth it. — Another company , Formative Labs is using social experiences to get consumers to lower their energy consumption habits. In the next few weeks, they will launch a new platform called Double Impact (like the Van Damme ) which aims match brands (who are already spending billions of dollars each year on charity) with consumers who want to help the environment but need motivation. The platform will use Facebook to motivate through social means and to promote brands that want to be associated with good causes. — These guys aim to be a sort of Yammer for creative product teams. In other words, they’re a communication tool to help creative people and teams more easily get stuff done. So why not just use Yammer? Because often creative professionals need outside collaboration. And they need ways to talk to clients from the organizational tools they use. The main thought is to be able to bounce ideas off of your own braintrust at will, rather than just in creative meetings once a week. — This team has built an HTML5 app store. Essentially, they want to be what Apple’s App Store is, but for the open web. Why? Because a major pain point for developers right now is having to code apps for multiple platforms. And that problem will not go away unless someone creates a centralized store for HTML5 mobile applications that works. OpenAppMkt believe their solution does because they practice what they preach: their own app is an HTML5 one. It looks similar to Apple’s App Store, but it’s much easier to get into and just as easy to use. — They put WiFi “to work” by transforming WiFi hotspots into marketing hubs. If you’ve ever been to Union Square in San Francisco and hoped on the WiFi, these guys handle the marketing served up to you there. They offer customers the benefit of having zero installation because they work with existing networks. And they work with networks of any size. Maybe you want to serve an ad over the WiFi in a stadium, or maybe you just want to push a survey over the WiFi in an office. They can do both. And they get a lot of data from these partnerships. And as WiFi continues to expand everywhere, they’ll get even more. — They are a white label social reading platform focusing right now on the Christian market. Very targeted, but also very big — with no competition. While it’s considered to be the “wild west” right now in digital publishing, it’s even crazier in the Christian market because it’s behind in the digital revolution. RethinkBooks gives the Christian publisher the tools they need to make their books social and put them out there on today’s latest devices. It’s a $2.3 billion market. last November. — The aim here is to completely disrupt the point of sale idea for restaurants and retail. Originally, they set out to create an iPhone app to help with the out-of-date POS services being used by most retailers today, but when they saw the iPad, they knew that was the future. Now they provide everything a retailer needs — the software, the iPad, even the cash drawer — to run their own POS system. They key selling point is price — Revel Systems model is much cheaper than traditional ones. But also data and ease of use. Of course, there is now here, but it’s a massive potential market. — We now have social apps and games for just about everything. But one thing that has remained relatively untouched are relationships. Not new ones, but existing relationships — romantic ones. 60 percent of Facebook users in the U.S. are supposedly in a realtionship currently, and while there are services that help you find love, what about ones that help you keep it? That’s what TheIceBreak does via three key things: communication, affection, excitement. The private network allows you to do questions and answers with your significant other to get your true feelings out there. And this data is shared with other couples (after it is anonymized completely). They also track key moments in your relationship and give you statistics to see things like: if we argue, do we have better sex after? Yep, that’s something they track. |
Nox Audio Walks Us Through Their Updated Admiral Headset, And It Looks Great | Devin Coldewey | 2,011 | 6 | 7 |
Nox’s Admiral headset has been around since CES, in a way — it’s still not quite final, and by “not quite final” I mean “not final at all.” But it’s still awesome, and once you get over how… shall we say, not lightweight it is, you can kind of see just how great it could be. They’ve changed a bit since CES so we dropped by to get a tour. Watch the video to get the business straight from Julie, Nox’s President, but the gist is this: You’ve got yourself a wireless headset that goes on regular, Bluetooth, or Nox proprietary protocols. The left headphone is a tiny touchscreen that will at launch be sporting Android 2.3. Yes, 2.3! My high-end phone doesn’t have 2.3 but they’re going to put it in this headset. On the headset there’s room for apps, a Micro SD slot so you can load up your music, and of course the configuration stuff. You can even load up Skype and call people, all on the headset. Yeah, it sounds pretty nuts. They’re aiming for the end of the year – but no pricing yet, and the product may change up a little as they finish the industrial design. We’ll check back in with them then. |
Nyko Zoom Makes Your Kinect Work In Small Rooms | John Biggs | 2,011 | 6 | 7 | The Nyko Zoom is a great idea. It’s basically a lens set that sits over your Kinect that reduces the space the Kinect needs to sense you in three dimensions. That way you can feasibly stand just a few feet from the Kinect and do all your running and jumping without fear of falling into furniture. Specifically, the device reduces the necessary space needed to play Kinect by 40%. We tested it, above, and it worked quite well, sensing us in positions that would normally be impossible in a regular room. It costs $29 – a bit pricey for a piece of plastic – but if you live in a small, cramped apartment it may be a great solution for increased Kinect play. |
E3: Super Mario 3DS Trailer | Matt Burns | 2,011 | 6 | 7 | [youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SYTcm5oH20M&w=640&h=390] It’s Mario! In 3D! |
appMobi Acquires Hosting Platform; Launches Tech To Speed Up HTML5 In Mobile Gaming | Rip Empson | 2,011 | 6 | 7 | appMobi likes HTML5-based mobile games, and it wants you to like them, too, which is why is focused on giving developers the tools required to make HTML5 and JavaScript mobile applications that run smoothly across platforms and browsers. Of course, many loudly pronounced HTML5 the new heir to the throne, as it would finally bring the native app experience to every mobile device, and take some of the iterative work in app creation out of the hands of developers. The problem is that this pronouncement jumped the gun by more than a few paces: HTML5, while an important step forward, is still a work in progress. But, today, appMobi announced a new technology, called DirectCanvas, that it claims speeds up the often slow graphic rendering of HTML5 in mobile games by 500 percent. DirectCanvas was designed to accelerate the HTML5 canvas element, allowing graphics and animation in mobile games to be more fluid, in other words, to appear with greater speed and fewer glitches. appMobi hopes that its technology will allow game studios to build a more diverse range of mobile games, which many have resisted because of the questions over whether or not devices can support complex HTML5-based games. appMobi also announced today at E3 that it acquired , a game hosting platform with community features that enables users to integrate games with player accounts, server-side data storage, leader boards, badges, Facebook, and more through a simple JavaScript API. appMobi said that acquiring TapJS will beef up its mobile development feature set by adding the startup’s engagement features, like player challenges and leader boards and allow developers to integrate social elements to their games using the platform. For more on the comparison between appMobi’s new speedy updates to HTML5 in gaming, check out the video below. The technology looks impressive, but it will take DirectCanvas getting out into the wild in the hands of developers before we’ll know whether or not this can have a significant effect on HTML5 game development across the board. [youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zT_JLsx4NgE] |
Boxee Adds BBC iPlayer And Previews The Upcoming Blink Box App | Matt Burns | 2,011 | 6 | 7 | Boxee owners in the UK are feeling the live right about now. The company an updated that added an updated BBC iPlayer to the little streamer. The company also pre-announced that Blink Box, the UK’s largest online and movies TV website, is hitting the Boxee Box sometime by the end of the year. The Blink Box app will serve up both free and pay-per-view movies and TV shows and should add a good deal of content but moreover, value to the Boxee Box. |
Razer's Old Republic Mouse, Headset, And Keyboard Are Sithy (With Hands-On) | Devin Coldewey | 2,011 | 6 | 7 |
The Old Republic is, potentially, every Star Wars-loving gamer’s dream. Own your own ship, travel the galaxy, pick a side in an epic conflict… if they pull it off. Razer’s taking the chance they won’t, though, and have put out a few peripherals customized for the Old Republic experience. First you’ve got , which has a built-in touchscreen with 10 LCD buttons over it – they can be mapped or macro’d however you want and the graphics for each button will change depending on how you assign them. Will this be useful for other games? Only if they work with Razer. It does look pretty sweet, though. Next, the mouse, which is a Jedi-themed mutation of their Naga MMO mouse. 12 buttons on the side for your macro pleasure. And then there’s the headset, looking to me like a rebuilt Carcharias or Piranha. It’s got a nice big hexagon for a shape, so everyone will know you love shapes like that. All three come with alternative decorative plates, so you can be Sith or Jedi. In this world, though, there are also two factions: people who know the symbols for Sith and Jedi, and people who don’t. It’s a war. More info is being slowly trickled out . OR watch our hands-on video here! |
The Gresso iPhone Case Has Six Stupid Little Watches Embedded Into It | John Biggs | 2,011 | 6 | 7 | Oh, Gresso, you and your ridonkulous iPhone accessories and attempts to bejewel our phones. This $6,000 case features six goofy little watches embedded into its face, allowing you to tell the time at a glance. Or you could just start up your iPhone clock and go at it that way. It adds 1mm to the phone, which is why I suspect the watches are actually quartz and not mechanical. Pretty dumb stuff. |
null | Jason Kincaid | 2,011 | 6 | 21 | null |
The Nintendo Wii U Won E3 2011 | Matt Burns | 2,011 | 6 | 7 |
Alright, everyone. You can go home. E3 2011 is a mainly bust besides Nintendo’s amazing Wii U. Microsoft added Bing to the 360 and Sony announced the name of the NGP, the Vita. Sure, there are several clever games like Battlefield 3, Modern Warfare 3, and several new Zelda games. But there really isn’t anything new per se here. It’s a bunch of rehashing of the same, I’m sorry, tired story lines. Of course E3 is still fun. Hell, it’s probably one of the most fun trade shows of the year. It’s wall-to-wall video games. Stick around if you must, but once you see the Wii U, you may as well head home because that’s the best as it gets here this year.
The Wii U really is a big step down video game’s evolutionary path. There’s still a traditional console that sits under your TV. That isn’t gone yet. It’s the Wii U controller, with its 6-inch touchscreen and accelerometers, that pushes the system into the future. The Wii U is a next gen WIi in every way. The graphics are HD, the motion controls seem improved and the color touchscreen acts as a secondary screen with seamless endless uses. Nintendo demoed a dozen and a half use cases today during its presser. It can be scope for a shooting gallery, a tee for golfing, a video chat screen, inventory screen in Zelda (or other games). Clearly it’s going to open up a whole new world for developers and gamers alike.
What interests me the most, however, is that this controller can replace a TV screen altogether. It’s not a portable; the controller still needs to be in range of the base unit. Say you’re playing Mario and the wife wants to watch Army Wives. No worries, the Wii U will simply move the action to the controller’s screen, seemingly without any hassle or lag. Nintendo plans on releasing the Wii U in 2012, which leaves plenty of time for further refinement. A full demo wasn’t available here at E3, but rather tech demos like they had last year for the 3DS. These demos still use the novel controller, but they are nothing more than proof of concepts. In fact a few feel like they’re probably used to sell developers on the system, too. No matter, they’re visual proof that Nintendo Wii U is real and as awesome as it sounds. The Wii opened up gaming to non-gamers. I don’t feel like the Wii U has the same sort of magical ability. The Wii U seems like for Wii gamers, not non-gamers in general. However, thanks to the backwards compatibility with current Wii controllers the system shouldn’t have the same sort of learning curve and there easy for those familiar with the Wii to pick up and enjoy right away. Nintendo will likely slowly releases more tidbits of Wii U info until its 2012 release; they’re not going to let you forget about the console. No one here at E3 has forgot about it. It’s easily the best thing at E3 this year. Best of show? Yep. Quick note: The name is dumb. Wii U? Dumb. [youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4e3qaPg_keg&w=640&h=390] |
Makerbot's Bre Pettis Will Be On Colbert Report | John Biggs | 2,011 | 6 | 7 | One of our own, Bre Pettis, will appear on the Colbert Report tomorrow night to talk about 3D printing, his handsome glasses, and new . This is some seriously exciting news in that it proves that the geeks will inherit the earth.
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Toshiba Tablet Gets Formal Introduction, And A Name | Jordan Crook | 2,011 | 6 | 7 | Today the highly anticipated Tablet got a formal introduction into the market, and finally, a name: the Thrive. Rather than trying to put out the “thinnest” or “lightest” tablet on the market, Toshiba’s Thrive is all about usability, according to the manufacturer. Sporting a 10.1-inch display, the Thrive will ship with standard . In terms of specs, that 10-inch LED backlit display boasts a resolution of 1280×800 pixels, and comes with Toshiba’s Adaptive Display and Resolution+ video enhancement technologies, which make standard definition video playback a much more enjoyable and crisp experience. Under the hood, the Toshiba Thrive touts an Tegra 2 dual-core 1GHz processor, with 1 GB of RAM. As far as hardware is concerned, this tablet definitely differentiates itself from an ever-growing pack of other fledgling Android slates. This is the first tablet I’ve seen that has a removable back cover, so you can carry around a secondary battery for long stays away from an outlet. The back cover is also customizable, in that it comes in a number of different colors such as pink, lavender, green, navy, and standard silver and black. Another differentiator for the Thrive is its host of various ports, including a full-size USB 2.0, HDMI and a full-sized SD card slot, so users with the 8GB model can boost storage with a 32 GB SD card. The USB, HDMI, and mini-USB ports are all hidden beneath a rubber cover. The Thrive sports a 5-megapixel rear camera and a 2-megapixel front-facing camera for video chat. Along with Toshiba’s video enhancement technology, the Toshiba Thrive also ships with audio enhancement technology. I played around with the settings a bit during my hands-on and definitely noticed a BIG difference between the standard sound coming from the device’s dual stereo speakers and the audio playback with Toshiba’s audio enhancement technology. Along with the standard Android pre-loaded apps, the Toshiba Thrive will ship with Toshiba File Manager (great for moving files around between devices), PrinterShare, and Need For Speed: Shift. Plus, Toshiba decided to throw its own Media Player into the mix, but don’t worry, the Gallery app is still present and accounted for. Unfortunately, the Toshiba Thrive is a Wi-Fi only tablet, at the moment, but Toshiba certainly didn’t cringe at the thought of getting carriers involved in the future. As far as availability goes, the Toshiba Thrive, and a number of different Thrive accessories, will be available for pre-order on June 13, with full retail availability beginning in “mid-June.” Participating retailers include Amazon.com, Best Buy, Office Depot, OfficeMax, RadioShack and hhgregg.
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Jawbone Makes A Promo Music Video That Isn't Horribly Embarrassing, Hides A (Ridiculous) New Product Within | Greg Kumparak | 2,011 | 6 | 7 | I like Jawbone. They’re one of the few companies out there that consistently surprises me which each step they take. Finding a sustainable business model in selling a series of expensive Bluetooth headsets with marginal, almost-entirely-intangible improvements between iterations? Surprise! Launching a somewhat niche product like the , then finding success in it by marketing to hipsters and urban kids (markets which largely ignored their previous products)? Surprise! Making a music video promoting their products that not only isn’t horribly embarrassing or lame, but is actually pretty cool? Surprise! Oh, and the unannounced product they tucked into the video? It’s probably the most surprising bit yet. [youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_voojg6RKzs&w=560&h=349] You see, we see a bunch of these parody/music-video type things pass through our tips inbox. With a few of the better ones having achieved some level of success in going “viral” (Blyeck. Hate that term), marketing groups around the world simultaneously decided it was the best idea , and hit the pavement with the karaoke version of a pop song and a Flip cam in tow. The problem? Most of them are really, terrible. Jawbone did a pretty good job here, though, doing right what so many have done wrong. The video quality is nice and professional, whereas most can’t even rival the stuff cut out of a leaked sex tape . The lyrics are slick and the song is performed well — they don’t just cram in too many syllables for the beat and hope no one notices. They don’t make it about themselves — in fact, with references to Groupon and Foursquare and appearances from things like the Dodocase at 1:07, their own product (the Jambox) almost sort of blends in. Perhaps most importantly, the performers in the video aren’t obviously trying way, too hard. Speaking of the performers, you might recognize a few of them — most of’em have are famous-on-YouTube types in one way or another. The dude in the Taco Truck at 1:30, for example, is the same dude (Ashkon) from that that got all huge when the Giants were in the playoffs. Not coincidentally, that produced that video also made this one. As I mentioned early, the video actually has a little sneak appearance from an unannounced product packed in. Jawbone played it pretty coy when they mentioned it, saying just that “the clip also includes a new product from Jawbone that will launch this week” without any further detail. Of course, we pored over it frame-by-frame, looking for any toys hiding in the background that might be Bluetooth-powered. Then we realized that two things were staring us right in the face. First, this ridiculous Jambox bike mount: Figuring this was it, I started bugging Jawbone for details. No luck — that wasn’t the product, they said. That’s too bad, really; if it was, it’d probably be the most ridiculous thing I’ve seen any high-end-gadgetry company launch ever. That’s what I thought, at least, until I realized what the new product is: Meet the Jawbone Jambox JamChain. Yep. A company that made their name slingin’ pricey Bluetooth headsets to business folks is now going to start making plastic chains that turn their Bluetooth-speaker-thing into a ghetto blaster from space. Dubious? So was I. Very much so. I reached out to Jawbone again, and they confirmed the name and that yes, that’s the thing they’ll be launching later this week — and no, they weren’t screwing with me. I made them promise that last one. Turns out, they’re not going to actually the JamChain. They’re giving it away. New buyers of the Jambox can just plug in a promo code (“JAMCHAIN”) during checkout, and current owners of the Jambox can order one through their MyTALK dashboard. See you guys later — I’m going to go see how many friends I can make by blasting from a Bluetooth speaker chillin’ around my neck. |
CleverSense's Seymour Takes A Different Approach To Local Recommendations | Jason Kincaid | 2,011 | 6 | 7 | Between Yelp, Foursquare, Facebook, Google and countless startups, there’s no shortage of services looking to offer you restaurant and activity recommendations while you’re on the go. But there’s a reason there’s so much competition: as smartphones become increasingly common, this market is going to be absolutely massive. Which means there’s plenty of room for more than one winner. Which brings us to a new company called that is about to join the fray. Led by CEO Babak Pahlavan, the company has spent the last two years working on an algorithm that Pahlavan says is better at making recommendations than many of the existing services. And he has a strong pedigree to back that claim up — his advisors include Prof. Jeff Ullman of Stanford, who was Ph.D. advisor for Google cofounder Sergey Brin. CleverSense is currently putting the finishing touches on an iPhone application called Seymour, which it says will serve as a “Pandora for the real world”. The app isn’t out just yet, but I got a walkthrough of an early version, and it has potential. Seymour’s main mission (he’s a robot) is to give you suggestions for places to eat and things to do, requiring the user to enter a query. Fire up the app, tap a button to point Seymour in the right direction (be it a restaurant, activity, cafe, bar, etc.) and the app will immediately give you a list of suggestions tailored to your tastes. The app does this by attempting to learn what you like. The first time you boot Seymour up you’ll be asked to complete a brief learning process (you enter a restaurant you like, the app will present some suggestions, and you tell it which ones it got correct). And then as you use the app it will use your interactions to further improve the algorithm. My time with the application was limited to only a few minutes, but its initial recommendations were good (then again, my tastes aren’t exactly eclectic). One other nifty thing: CleverSense has crawled the web to build a list of attributes associated with each venue; it will tell you which of these attributes it thinks are relevant to you (see the screenshot below). So how exactly is this different from the recommendations given by other applications? Pahlavan says it’s a matter of algorithms — many services use something called collaborative filtering, which uses data from other users similar to you to make recommendations. Seymor is combing that with a different technique called model-based learning, which tries to build a set of recommendations for each individual user. This is how Pahlavan describes the distinction. Model-based learning facilitates deep personalization around the individual user and really focuses on entities that match YOUR specific tastes, not just the aggregated recommendations of others. Model-based learning can act like the friend that knows you well and knows what you like when and where.” For model-based learning to work properly you’d need a rich interest graph that describes each entity thoroughly. We mine the Web to build our interest graph and to jump start our learning engine. With our rich interest graph, we can provide high quality recommendations on day one, with zero users! We’ll have more on the app when it launches. CleverSense has raised $1.6 million so far, and has a team of eleven (eight in the US, three abroad).
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Twitter Now Automatically Shortens Links | Alexia Tsotsis | 2,011 | 6 | 7 | In another step towards filling all its holes, Twitter has just announced which starts rolling out today. The Twitter link shortening service will pass through t.co and shorten links to 19 characters, still allowing users to see what site the links are pointing towards (see above). From Twitter support, on the new shortener. Start typing or paste a long URL into the Tweet box. After you’ve entered the first 13 characters of a URL, a message will appear at the bottom of the Tweet box, letting you know that the link will appear shortened. (Fig. 1) Notice that even if you’ve reached the character limit, you can continue to add text to the URL with no consequence. Once the Tweet is posted, it will be assigned a t.co link ID, but the link will appear as a shortened version of the original URL, so people who see your Tweet will know the site they are going to (Fig. 2, above). Yep! It’s now that easy. In an afterthought, Twitter users are still referred to third party apps like if they want analytics surrounding their links. [Insert well-trodden assertion that Twitter is breaking the hearts of its developer ecosystem here.] |
Square Raising New Round, Joining Billion Dollar Valuation Club | Michael Arrington | 2,011 | 6 | 7 | There are a bevy of startups in the process of raising big rounds of capital at billion dollar or higher valuations – something that was a rare occurrence even a few months ago. We’re tracking most of these deals (and have written about ). Now, we’ve confirmed via multiple sources, is payment startup turn. The company is raising $50 million or more, says sources, at a valuation that will likely be north of $1 billion. It’s still fairly early in the process, though, and the company is rumored to be meeting with additional venture and private equity firms to either fill out the round or encourage a higher valuation. But at least one term sheet has been received by the company, says one source. COO was in a particularly chipper mood when he two weeks ago at TechCrunch Disrupt to talk about how Square is doing. Which isn’t surprising. The company is on a roll. They’re processing more than in mobile payments, and that was announced prior to their new which can replace the entire cash register system at retail merchants. To date Square has raised more than (the size of a recent investment by Visa hasn’t been disclosed). , closed in January, valued the company at a rumored $240 million valuation. |
Jobs To Cupertino: We Want A Spaceship-Shaped, 12K Capacity Building As Our New Apple Campus | Alexia Tsotsis | 2,011 | 6 | 7 | [youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gtuz5OmOh_M&feature=player_embedded#at=92&w=630] After having a banner start yesterday, Apple founder and CEO Steve Jobs humbly his idea for a new Apple campus at the today. Jobs wants to build one building that will hold 12,000 Apple employees on a former Hewlett-Packard property in the Tantau North Wolfe, Homestead and the 280 freeway.”It’s a little like a spaceship landed,” Jobs says. No kidding. Jobs began the presentation referring to the fact that Apple is growing “like a weed,” and that its current campus at D’Anza and the 280 isn’t enough — fitting only about 2,800 people. Apple currently rents buildings to house its other 6,700 employees in the area. The new building will augment the current campus. Paving the way for these plans, Apple purchased about 100 acres from Hewlett Packard in 2010 and added them to the 50 it owns adjacent. Jobs says he has corralled “some great architects … some of the best in the world” to come up with a design that will house 12,000 people in one four story high building on the property. The area is now mainly apricot orchards. With the futuristic design Apple apparently is relying heavily on its experience building retail stores, and it will be creating one massive piece of curved glass if the proposal goes through. “There’s not a single straight piece of glass in this building,” Jobs says. The parking will be underground. Jobs also wants the building to function as its own power source, with an “energy center” as its primary source of power (“with natural gas and other ways that are cleaner and cheaper”), using the grid as a backup. The campus will include amenities like its own auditorium similar to Apple’s current Town Hall (“We’ve got an auditorium, cause we put on presentations, much like we did yesterday but we have to go to San Francisco to do them.”) and a cafeteria that will feed 3,000 people at one sitting. “We do have a shot at building the best office building in the world,” Jobs told the Council members, “Architecture students will come here to see this.” Ideally Apple wants to move into the campus in 2015. The individual members of the Cupertino City Council seemed like they were in awe the entire time the infamously charismatic Apple CEO spoke (which isn’t surprising), asking Jobs for free Wifi and iPads for constituents as well as for an Apple store that’s actually in Cupertino and not in the Valley or Los Gatos. Jobs shyly responded to the requests, “I think we bring a lot more than free Wifi.” Cupertino Mayor Gilbert Wong says they’re going to say no to this thing. Mission accomplished.
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Apple Just Handed Twitter The Keys To The iOS Kingdom — Here's Twitter's Take | MG Siegler | 2,011 | 6 | 9 | When that iOS 5 would come with Twitter integration, I wasn’t thinking big enough. Based on the fairly vague (but credible) information I had, I figured it was mainly based around the Twitter Photos product which Twitter was rushing to get out in time. Turns out it goes much, much . Apple has essentially baked a “Twitter Connect” into iOS 5. It’s something that iOS apps will be able to easily use. And they should. And they likely will. It’s a massive win for Twitter. And a smart move by Apple. Social is not at their core, and they know it (*cough* Ping *cough*). So they partnered with a company that gets it. But what does it mean for the Twitter ecosystem? After days of dodging my questions, I finally got a chance to talk with Twitter’s head of platform, , about it this afternoon. Apple gave a presentation at WWDC earlier today (which I wasn’t at — they don’t like my kind at such things) where they spelled out their vision for the Twitter integration with iOS. And this evening, Twitter is also holding an event at their headquarters in San Francisco to dive even deeper. Sarver expects it to be one of the largest events they’ve ever hosted. “Overall the big thing for us is the combination of two big platforms,” Sarver told me. “And we’re complementary to each other. Twitter from day one has been a mobile-friendly company — that was a part of Jack’s [Dorsey] original vision. So to pair up with Apple on this is a great opportunity,” he continued, also pointing to the nice alignment of 200 million iOS devices with the 200 million Twitter accounts. For developers, the value of this partnership breaks into two key things in Sarver’s mind. First, instant personalization. Any iOS app now has access to the Twitter connected identity and all its trappings and features. Second, there’s the distribution and user acquisition piece. Using the built-in Tweet Sheet feature in iOS 5 (essentially, a Tweet box that overlays on top of any app), any app can leverage Twitter’s network effects. Sarver cited a recent stat the team behind Quora gave which said that every tweet going out from their service results in an average of 30 clicks back to Quora. Again, that’s on for all links sent across the entire spectrum of Quora and Twitter users “It’s an amazing amount of traffic,” Sarver noted, clearly suggesting that all iOS apps could potentially see the same type of thing. But much of this was technically possible before. The difference now is that because it’s fully integrated into iOS 5, it will be more accessible to both developers and users. Sarver noted the simple hooks in place in the OS to add something like the Tweet Sheet. And for users, once they log in to the Twitter area in Settings in iOS, they’re basically all set for any app that uses the system. Once you install an app with Twitter integration in iOS 5, you’ll see a single dialog box pop-up asking you if you’d like to connect the app to Twitter. This will look a lot like the pop-up that asks if you’d like an app to be able to use your location, Sarver said. Click, “OK” and you’re good to go. You’ll never be asked to enter a login/password or anything else. Nor will you see the pop-up box in that app ever again. Imagine this in use for something like . Because that app is built entirely around Twitter and iOS, this new integration is perfect for them. In the future, you’ll install the app, hit “OK” to enable Twitter integration, and you’re set. If developers wish to go deeper, they can as well. iOS 5 has access to the entire Twitter API, Sarver noted. They essentially have a wrapper in place in the OS to allow developers to make calls to anything they want to use. And since it’s a wrapper (as opposed to iOS mirroring the API), whenever Twitter makes API additions or changes, iOS developers will be good to go as well. So, now for the big question: where does this leave third-party client developers? After all, since the early days of the iPhone, they’ve been vital to the Twitter ecosystem. There was recently when Twitter revealed that they were moving developers from xAuth to OAuth usage in apps. The main driver behind this is that Twitter wants to have over the direct message feature of their service. This annoyed some developers because instead of a simple login/password sign-on, OAuth requires a user to go to Twitter’s site to authenticate an app. But this is only for apps trying to access DMs. In other words, this mainly affects full clients. And the iOS/Twitter integration will be no different. While Sarver declined to dive into xAuth/OAuth specifics in the iOS integration, he did say that there are multiple permission models. The one Apple is using for Twitter single sign-on in iOS 5 grants read/write access to Tweets and the ability to send DMs. But if an app wants to be able to read DMs, they will still need to authenticate on Twitter’s site with OAuth. So yes, full Twitter clients made by third-parties are getting shafted a bit. Tweetbot, Seesmic, UberTwitter, Twitterrific, Echofon, etc. But Sarver says this is not about screwing over those apps. “It honestly has nothing to do with making it harder for them,” he said. Instead, this authentication change is about protecting users. Sarver noted that very few apps should need access to DMs. And users probably don’t want apps like Angry Birds being able to read them when they don’t need to. And of the 900,000 or so API tokens out there, and the 170,000 unique apps tweeting across the system, only hundreds of them are full clients that would want full DM support. “We want to work with them. But we need to think about protecting our users too,” Sarver said. He did say that they’re thinking about a more elegant solution to the DM OAuth issue (which goes into effect at the end of this month). And if they can come up with something, they’d certainly be open to asking Apple to include it in a future version of iOS as well, Sarver said. “We wanted to give guidance for the client-makers. We still allow them. They can still build clients. It’s not an area we’re turning off,” Sarver continued. At the same time, “if I were building a client, I would do it without DM access. But that’s just me,” he said. At least that’s honest. And it reiterates on Twitter’s increasingly complex (and conflicted) relationship with third-party client makers. To lighten the mood, I asked about Twitter’s reliability. What if Twitter goes down, will iOS pop up a little Fail Whale notification, I wondered? Sarver laughed. “As always, developers need to code defensively,” he said. But he noted that a bigger problem may be the loss of cellular connectivity. And he said that Twitter’s reliability has been very stable lately, especially the API (which is true). In terms of working more closely with other mobile players, Sarver said that Twitter brings a great and important social layer to mobile and they’d love to see it more places. But for now, this core iOS integration is going to be the huge emphasis for them. And it goes both ways. “I think this integration has the potential to be the second biggest referral for app growth behind the App Store,” Sarver said. “I think the main point in my mind is that if you’re making an app for iOS and you’re not thinking about Twitter, you’re really missing an opportunity.” There is no question in my mind that this integration is going to be huge for all parties involved. Well, except other iOS Twitter clients who, if not hurt by the DM issue, will be hurt by the fact that Twitter’s own app is promoted in the Twitter settings area of iOS. More specifically, it seems impossible to overstate just how big of a win this is for Twitter. This is a deal that Facebook seemed destined for and would have further cemented their hold on social identity. Now their solution looks very weak, by comparison. Twitter must be laughing at it, backed by 200 million devices, each with access to 400,000+ apps — many of which should soon feature Twitter fabric woven deep. Here, at least, light blue beats dark blue. |
Interview: Martin Rae, President Of The Academy Of Interactive Arts And Sciences | Devin Coldewey | 2,011 | 6 | 9 |
At , we had the opportunity to talk with Martin Rae, who is the President of the , an industry group akin to the more well-known that puts on the Oscars. The idea is the same, but the industry is younger, and although their conventions and yearly awards are less well-known, they are gaining popularity and are part of the growing movement towards integrating games with more mainstream media. I was curious to see how Rae and the Academy think the industry is changing, since we’ve gone from a time of far more straightforward gaming (i.e. the well-crafted ride of Half-Life) to things like Foursquare and Farmville, which blend with real life. I also wanted to hear what he thought of the success of indie hits like Minecraft and Limbo. When games with teams numbering in the single digits can outsell $40 million titles, what does that say? And of course we had to hear what he’d been playing lately. Check out the whole interview above. |
Mubi signs deal with Sony Bravia to be inside its connected TVs | Mike Butcher | 2,011 | 6 | 9 | has signed a deal with Sony Bravia to be inside its connected TVs. The announcement was made by Efe Cakarel, Founder & CEO, Mubi, at the annual European-focused near London. This is significant as Sony alone expects to sell 24m connected TVs this year and they are not even the market leader, Samsung is. Mubi bills itself an “an online cinema, anytime, anywhere” and effectively socialises the experience so you can “find a girl in Tokyo who loves Kubrick” as they put it. Mubi has $3.15m in venture backing from the likes of Georges Harik, Aydin Senkut, Joel Peterson, Metin Anter and Eduardo Costantini. Founded in 2007 by Efe Cakarel, Mubi is backed by Celluloid Dreams, The Criterion Collection and Costa Films, supported by the MEDIA Programme of the European Union, and is the exclusive partner of The World Cinema Foundation and SONY Electronics. MUBI is based in Palo Alto, London, Paris, and New York. |
Coder Recruiting Platform CodeEval Now Out Of Beta | Alexia Tsotsis | 2,011 | 6 | 9 |
Just in time for the impending Silicon Valley , a platform that uses coding challenges to help recruiters find and filter the best programming candidates for the job, is launching today to the public. CodeEval takes some of the guesswork that happens when a technical recruiter is not actually technical, pushing only candidates who get the challenges correct to its customers (and on to the next screening phase). “Think of it as a really efficient job board where all the candidates get prescreened,” says founder Jimmy John. In the same space as CoderLoop, what CodeEval does differently than its competitors is that it allows employers to create their own programming challenges as well as providing extensive language support (10 different Open Source languages). Right now companies and recruiters can use CodeEval with a the freemium model, with basic features being available for free and more extensive ones (like unlimited applications) now available to everyone in $199 a month and $399 a month packages. CodeEval is San Francisco-based and part of the incubator. John tells me that his future plans for the startup include further language and challenge automation support as well as one day expanding the platform to designer screening. |
Facebook Buys Sofa, A Software Design Team That Will Help Make Facebook More Beautiful | MG Siegler | 2,011 | 6 | 9 | The talent acquisitions continue for Facebook. The social network has just bought the software design company , we’ve learned. The Amsterdam-based company was founded in 2006 and is known for its Mac applications and e-commerce products on the web. Notably they do all their own designs including art, icons, and interfaces for other (Mozilla, Tom Tom, etc). Not surprisingly, the team will be joining Facebook’s design team. Below, the statement from Facebook’s Director of Design Kate Aronowitz: We were just blown away by the Sofa team’s work, from their Mac and web software to the interfaces and brand identities they created for clients. The more we got to know them, the more we realized that their passion for working in small teams and iterating to find solutions to hard problems matched our own culture. We can’t wait for them to join the team. on their own blog: We expected to keep working at Sofa forever. But after Facebook first made contact, we were quickly convinced to join forces. Facebook is full of talent and has a great culture. We feel challenged and at home at the same time, and can really get things done there. But equally important, we believe that at Facebook, we will be making a real difference to a lot of people’s lives. The Sofa team will be moving from Amsterdam to Palo Alto in the coming weeks – and we’ll make sure to infuse some of our particular flavor of Dutch culture at Facebook. Notably, two of Sofa’s key products, Kaleidoscope and Versions (both Mac applications), were not a part of this acquisition. Both apps will continue to live on, but Sofa now has to find a new home for them, they say. Two other products, Checkout and Enstore, will also live on thanks to the joint partnerships they were created under. Sofa is working on their transition out of those products now as well. Terms of the deal are not being disclosed. But again, this is a pure talent acquisition for Facebook. And we’ve heard the main emphasis behind it is to continue to boost their product design talent. Aronowitz herself is a part of that. Before joining Facebook, she was the Director of Design for LinkedIn. Add to that , , and Nicholas Felton (who came over ), and you have a very impressive team of recently acquired design talent. |
Google Instant Mix Just Got Better, But Is It A Genius? | Rip Empson | 2,011 | 6 | 9 | Google announced its new beta music service, , at I/O 2011 last month. The service, as it stands right now, is basically just cloud storage for all your music files that users can access through the web app. Users can stream their cloud-based music libraries to any device via a web browser. It even technically works on iOS, though the experience (especially on Safari) is pretty clunky. It’s also still missing discovery and purchasing power, though there’s no doubt that these features are on the way. After all, this is Google, and iTunes is heading to the iCloud. In the meantime, Google is quietly unveiling the features to its music service, building a full-scale iTunes competitor piece-by-piece (or maybe hastily, it depends who you ask). And yesterday, Google Research for making some drastic improvements to “Instant Mix” — the playlist generator that is getting closer to being Google’s equivalent of iTunes Genius. In essence, Instant Mix is a playlist generator that uses to extract attributes from audio which can be used to answer pointed questions about songs, like, “Is this a song I can blog to?” or “Does it have blues guitar?” Not unlike Pandora’s , Instant Mix analyzes particular attributes of a song, using its algorithms to compare audio data to information pulled from the Web. Google has done some serious research in the emerging field of machine hearing, which endeavors to teach computers to better process information from audio sources, and it’s beginning to show. With the combination of this audio analysis and web-crawled artist data, Instant Mix is able to compare songs that are similar in nature and work well together in a playlist. If you pick a quiet song while you’re working, the service will create a quiet playlist for you from your music library. For those not yet tapped into Music Beta, you can go to Google Research’s blog to check out a few . At I/O, that Instant Mix is meant to be one of the new music service’s “killer features”. But, is it? Google Music and Instant Mix a few weeks ago and found the service to be pretty hit-or-miss. After Google Music’s launch, into the comparisons between Instant Mix, iTunes Genius, and Echo Nest and found Instant Mix to be way behind the other two in terms of serving too many “WTFs” — songs that are glaringly dissimilar from the song you choose as the jumping off point for your playlist. Google has since made several upgrades to the service, and it now works far better than it did at launch. It’s great to see how quickly Google was able to iron out the kinks. And, last I checked (iTunes disabled my account because someone hacked it), Genius takes awhile to incorporate newly downloaded songs into playlists, and whether or not Google Instant Mix intends to or not, it has been previously offering more of a “surprise” factor. For some people, this will actually be a pleasure. If you have a large collection of music, it’s nice to be reminded of a song you may not have played in awhile. Of course, it would be nice for Google to be a little more open about whether this is something they intend, or whether it just shows that the feature has been relatively half-baked. I’d like to see both iTunes and Google Music offering some user options in terms of how your playlist is created. One option could be more random, incorporating more surprise, while another might only create playlists of similar songs based on mood, and so on. What’s more, how about an evolving playlist mechanism that allows contextual updating, so that a playlist adjusts slightly to each new song, maybe pulling in different songs as it goes? Now that would be genius. Mensa level even. It will be very interesting to see which combination of algorithms wins out. Does Google’s collaborative filtering mixed with acoustic similarity data offer a better alternative to iTunes’ collaborative filtering algorithm driven from purchase data acquired via the iTunes music store? Granted, these services are both essentially black box, so I’m glossing over a bit in terms of what I’m sure is more complicated, double secret mechanics on both ends, but it’s always interesting to see what combination of algorithms and data end up serving the best playlists — and recommendations, for that matter. We can always use more transparency from algorithmic recommendation systems, so it’s good to see Google peeling back the curtain a bit on Instant Mix. Once discovery and purchasing hit Google Music, we may have one great service on our hands. Until then, I’d say Instant Mix is close, but not quite there. |
Team Europe's early-stage fund becomes Point Nine Capital, Christoph Janz joins | Steve O'Hear | 2,011 | 6 | 9 | , the of German incubator Team Europe, is being rebranded as (PNC). Additionally, serial entrepreneur and angel investor is joining its leadership team. To date, the fund, which focuses on early-stage companies in the Internet and mobile space, has invested in over 10 startups, including inFakt, Lieferheld, Madvertise, MisterSpex, myGengo and SponsorPay. The newly named Point Nine Capital will be led by Pawel Chudzinski and Janz as Managing Directors, while Team Europeʼs Partners Lukasz Gadowski (founder of Spreadshirt, co-founder of StudiVZ) and Kolja Hebenstreit (early employee at Spreadshirt, seed investor in StudiVZ) will continue their involvement in PNC’s activities as Venture Partners. As well as being an angel investor, including working with Team Europe Ventures on a number of investments, Janz has co-founded several startups, such as comparison shopping engine DealPilot.com (funded by Bertelsmann, acquired by Shopping.com) and personalized startpage Pageflakes (funded by Balderton Capital, acquired by LiveUniverse). His investments include Zendesk, FreeAgent Central, Clio, and Propertybase. |
Looking For Some Eco-Friendly Lighting? There's A Lamp For That | Jordan Crook | 2,011 | 6 | 9 | To most of us, broken tree branches are a pretty useless find. Unless, of course, you’ve made a habit out of hunting for your own firewood. But to designer , they are the most important component of her snazzy-looking eco-friendly lamps. Since 2004, Finkel has gone out after big storms searching for broken tree branches near beaches and rivers. After stripping the bark and sanding the wood, she slaps on a layer of oil-based paint for a little flare. Finkel then tops it off with a lightbulb and lampshade, and voila: a branch lamp is born. These are a really great way to bring a touch of the outdoors into your home, and of course, keep it lit. Finkel’s designs are available online, and for those of us lucky enough to live in the Big Apple, at the TOUCH Concept Store in Rivington Design House at 129 Rivington Street, as well. [via ] |
Watch Some Dude Jump Off A Mountain With A Casio Strapped To His Wrist | John Biggs | 2,011 | 6 | 9 | [vimeo 24794264 w=640 h=360] from on . To celebrate the launch of the Casio GDF-100, some dude jumped off a mountain with the tri-compax watch strapped to his wrist. What does this have to do with watches? Well, presumably a) this watch can survive falls and b) you probably shouldn’t try this stuff at home. |
Good News: The Vita Is Region-Free | Devin Coldewey | 2,011 | 6 | 9 |
Although region locking doesn’t affect the majority of gamers, among the hardcore it tends to be a sticking point. Some games have better or earlier releases in other countries, and the ability to import and play them is an important one for, say, JRPG fans or expats. Fortunately, , meaning you won’t have to worry whether your device or game is Japanese, American, European, or whatever. You loads your discs, you plays your games. Maybe they had to cut out the region lockout feature in order to hit ? |
AlterGeo, the Foursquare-of-Russia, raises $10m from Intel Capital and others | Steve O'Hear | 2,011 | 6 | 9 | Russian geolocation service has raised $10m from and – a 25% share increase – and values the company at around $20-25m. Serial investor , who has a track record in Russia, having previously invested in Russian search engine Yandex (a ‘s), is also said to have participated. The company plans to use the new financing to expand its user base and develop new services. AlterGeo, a Foursquare-like location-based service with more than 700,000 users, currently has Windows and Mac OSX desktop applications, along with apps for all of the major smartphone platforms. Its features include the ability to “check-in” along with reviews and user ratings based on activity. Additionally, AlterGeo provides augmented reality functionality that shows both places and users, visually displaying the distance between them. Beyond its consumer offering, AlterGeo licenses its location technology to third parties. This includes the ability to aggregate GSM Cell-ID, Wi-Fi and WiMax data to retrieve a user’s location. |
Embedly Raises Another $450K, Launches One API To Rule All Embeds | Jason Kincaid | 2,011 | 6 | 9 | Big news today for , the service that makes it easy to embed content from nearly any site on the web. Today the company is announcing that it’s raised another $450,000 in a round that includes Howard Lindzon, Social Leverage, Venture 51, Adam Schwartz and follow-on investments from Betaworks and Chris Sacca, who in Embedly’s $250,000 round last August. Schwartz will be joining the company’s board. But funding isn’t all Embedly has up its sleeves: it’s also announcing some changes to the way its APIs work. Namely, it’s combining its existing services into a single API to help reduce developer confusion. Embedly has offered both a free standard API — which can be used to embed content from sites like YouTube, Rdio, and Twitter — and then a second, that can glean content from site and generate nice-looking embeds (it’s like the story creator used by Facebook, but anyone can integrate it). Before now these have been two separate APIs, and now they’re be combined into one (you can sign up for the API ). Finally, Embedly is sharing some new stats. The service is now used by 1,200 sites and services, including Hunch, Bit.ly, StockTwits, and Yammer (they note that Lindzon and Schwartz both actually use Embedly for their own apps). Across all of these sites, Embedly serves 2 billion impressions per month for its embeds. To put that in perspective, they were serving around 4 million URLs per month in July 2010. |
Dell Confirms Streak 10 Pro To Launch In China First | Jordan Crook | 2,011 | 6 | 9 | If the Streak 7 didn’t quite provide enough real estate, I have good news: Dell has a larger tablet model in the works that should bring all the awesomeness of the Streak 7 to a bigger screen. Dell today confirmed the that Dell Streak 10 Pro is on its way, and also confirmed the existence of another mysterious tablet headed for the enterprise later this year. There’s also some bad news: the 10-inch tablet will launch in China before we see it on U.S. shelves. This move by Dell has to do with the company’s increased presence in developing countries, as opposed to more mature markets. Plus, if Dell ships to developing markets first, it can get away with not including the entire experience (Google apps, Android Market, etc.) because it’s not as big of a deal i those countries. That means Dell can customize software and hardware on the tablet to its heart’s content. [via ] |
Google vs Apple: The Cool Factor [Video] | Jason Kincaid | 2,011 | 6 | 9 | Earlier today I was invited to do a quick guest spot on CNBC’s Power Lunch, where we discussed a question that’s fundamentally important to the future of Silicon Valley: Who is cooler, Google or Apple? Okay, so the topic was a bit goofy. But that doesn’t mean there’s nothing to it: after all, public perception can play a role in how quickly products from each company get picked up by new users, which in turn can impact their bottom lines. Tune in to hear my thoughts. Because if there’s a guy who knows cool, it’s me. Oh, and there’s an interview with the folks who made the awesome Les Paul Google Doodle gracing the search engine’s home page today. You can watch that one here: |
Google Acquires AdMeld For $400 Million | Michael Arrington | 2,011 | 6 | 9 | , an advertising optimization platform for publishers, has been acquired by Google for around $400 million according to multiple sources. The company, which launched in 2007, has raised just in venture capital from , , and . This is a sweet comeback for CEO . As I noted in our about AdMeld in 2009, Barrett was fired from in 2008 when the division that owned MySpace to meet a $1 billion revenue target. Most sources we spoke with at the time said he was the fall guy for an unrealistic revenue target to begin with, set by News Corp.’s in a previous earnings call. |
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Airbnb Freaks Out Over Samwer Clones | Alexia Tsotsis | 2,011 | 6 | 9 | You know what they say about imitation being the most sincere form of flattery? Well sometimes, like in the case of Groupon and its many imitators , this type of flattery is also a huge business risk. The latest victim to get bombarded by an “attack of the clones”? Billion dollar Obviously feeling threatened by its recent crop of competitors, the company sent out an email yesterday to its over 100K hosts, warning them about “impostor websites” like , and . The email, titled “Airbnb Community News,” starts out with the usual PR milestones (in 181 countries and 13,000 cities!) and then it gets down to business: A new type of scam has been brought to our attention: Airbnb clones posing as competition. We’ve discovered that these scam artists have a history of copying a website, aggressively poaching from their community, then attempting to sell the company back to the original. After receiving emails from many of you who are upset with these tactics, it’s time to address this issue as a community. Hosts are reporting these issues about the clone sites so far: Help us protect our community by joining other hosts in alerting us whenever you see questionable activity from users. While the fact that the co-founders point the hosts to a “detectives@airbnb.com” email address is cute, don’t let that distract you from the grave point here. The biggest competitive threat to Airbnb currently is the Samwer-backed (and its Chinese sister ), clones that use the “Concept featured on CNN and the New York Times” on their splash pages. Why is Wimdu and its Chinese subsidiary such a threat? Well Wimdu and Airizu were created by the German brothers, prior Facebook investors whose modus operandi is of popular American Internet services. The Samwers most profitably sold their eBay clone to eBay in 1999 and their Groupon clone CityDeal to . The Airbnb email does everything but call out the Samwer brothers by name for their questionable tactics, “these scam artists have a history of copying a website, aggressively poaching from their community, then attempting to sell the company back to the original” and “they claim that they are part of Ebay and/or Groupon.” The site runner at the bottom of Wimdu brags, “Will be featured soon on Groupon.” Heh. While I haven’t heard anything about a Groupon/Wimdu partnership, the two services still have a connection post-CityDeal acquisition. Because they got in so early, the Samwers currently own around and have a cushy international “consulting arrangement” with the daily deals site (and, we’re hearing, a mixed track record.) Airbnb has even more reason to be threatened: It acquired German clone Acceleo (with its recent $100 million windfall perhaps?) signaling its first serious move towards international expansion. It’s no surprise that Airbnb acquired a clone, and then one week later sent out a mass email warning its community about other clones. With a big funding round ready to close and valuation, Airbnb is following Groupon’s lead and investing for growth oversees. Hopefully it’ll have a better time of it than Groupon, who lost $170.6 million internationally last year (versus $10.4 million in the US) — Proving that the clone wars have more significant casualties then . Airbnb representative Christopher Lukezic responds, in an email … “At Airbnb, we take our community’s safety and privacy extremely seriously – it is and always will be our first priority. We feel it is our responsibility to alert our community of these types of practices, especially after being contacted by numerous Airbnb hosts who expressed distress after employees of these clones booked reservations under false pretenses and made them extremely uncomfortable. We’ve had 572 reported cases of these competitors’ employees soliciting Airbnb hosts in their homes and, in many cases, going so far as to scrape host’s personal profiles and listing their homes to populate their site without the hosts’ knowledge or consent. We embrace competition in the marketplace, and will – as always – use our creative approach to problem solving and innovation as our competitive advantages.” |
Square's remarkably similar Chinese competitor appears | Mike Butcher | 2,011 | 6 | 9 |
While Square is $50 million or more, say sources, at a valuation of $1 billion plus, and processing more than $3 million per day in mobile payments, others are noticing their traction. In China. To that end is advertising its development of a “free mobile payment platform”, although it doesn’t appear to be on sale yet. The makers say it offers (according to Google translate) an: “Open, convenient payment experience. Your answers will help us to improve the application of the box to solve your problems. Here is the content of our questionnaire, about the time you spend 5 minutes, 5 minutes is not long, but is particularly valuable (the survey are non-anonymous survey, do not worry about personal information disclosure).” So that’s alright then. The rest of the site goes on to survey users about mobile payments. The company appears to be in Shenzhen, China. |
MovieClips Raises $7M To Curate And Mashup Scenes From Movies | Leena Rao | 2,011 | 6 | 9 | Online movie clips site has raised $6 million out of a $7 million round, according to a recent . The startup has We’ve confirmed the new funding with the company. UPDATE: MovieClips has submitted a new SEC filing indicating the company has raised a total of $6.9 million in the round. Movieclips.com, which in 2009, offers a clip engine with over 14,000 different clips from 1,400 titles from the libraries of 20th Century Fox, MGM, Paramount, Sony Pictures, Universal Pictures and Warner Bros. Pictures. Last year, the startup also , called Movieclips Mashups, at TechCrunch Disrupt in New York, which allows anyone to make montages of two minutes clips. Along with the studio partnerships (which is half the battle for licensing movie content), the company has also developed proprietary technology that assigns up to 1,000 points of data to every scene, making it super easy to find scenes by actor, film title, dialogue snippet, mood, director, genre, etc. The site also launched a and developers can use to integrate Movieclips on other sites; AOL’s Moviefone actually uses the technology on its platform. [youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gRtR9yYQ-zU&hl=en_US&fs=1&] |
Apple Switches Up In-App Purchase Policy For Publishers | Jordan Crook | 2,011 | 6 | 9 | has been busy this week revising its App Store guidelines, first with the , and now switching up the guidelines for in-app purchases. Section 11.13 of Apple’s App Store guidelines has been angering quite a few publishers as of late, forcing them to offer subscriptions through in-app purchases. In other words, Apple gets a 30 percent cut for each edition sold of any given magazine, newspaper, or book. The section also included audio, music, and video publishers. The dreaded Section 11.13 has now been revised to allow publishers to sell their content outside the App Store. But there’s one stipulation: publishers can’t include a link or button in their apps that send the user to a website where they can conduct a transaction. 11.13 Apps can read or play approved content (magazines, newspapers, books, audio, music, video) that is sold outside of the app, for which Apple will not receive any portion of the revenues, provided that the same content is also offered in the app using IAP at the same price or less than it is offered outside the app. This applies to both purchased content and subscriptions. 11.14 Apps can read or play approved content (specifically magazines, newspapers, books, audio, music, and video) that is subscribed to or purchased outside of the app, as long as there is no button or external link in the app to purchase the approved content. Apple will not receive any portion of the revenues for approved content that is subscribed to or purchased outside of the app. [via ] |
Buddy Media CEO Michael Lazerow Joins SavingStar Board of Directors | Rip Empson | 2,011 | 6 | 30 | , the national paperless grocery coupon service, announced today that , the founder and CEO of Buddy Media, has joined the company’s board of directors. Launched in April 2011, SavingStar provides digital coupons to more than 24,000 stores and over 100 supermarket and drugstore chains across the U.S. SavingStar’s eCoupons are available on the web and through the company’s iPhone and Android apps, and are linked to users’ registered loyalty cards. Rather than applying coupons at the register when checking out, the coupon’s savings are automatically deposited into users’ SavingStar accounts, where they can choose from several different payout options: Payout from a deposit into a bank account or PayPal account, an Amazon gift card, or a donation to charity. Nearly 500,000 users have signed up for SavingStar in the two months since the service went live. In 2007, Lazerow co-founded Buddy Media, a management system that allows global advertisers and brands to manage their Facebook pages. With scalable architecture and nifty administrative tools, Buddy Media’s solution gives brands an all-in-one social media management system that enables them to launch, maintain and measure their Facebook presence in any country and in any language. As Leena , one of Buddy Media’s biggest selling points i that “users don’t need to have any prior FBML knowledge to create pages on Facebook and can create sleek and interactive pages” with ease. Prior to Buddy Media, Lazerow founded , which was . Before Golf.com, Lazerow founded University Wire, a network of more than 700 student-run newspapers, which he sold to Student Advantage, helping it grow into a service that is now powered by student journalists at more than 800 colleges and universities across the U.S. Last week, the board of directors of , formerly known as Village Vines, which offers high-end dining discounts at top-rated Zagat restaurants. The startup raised $3 million back in January. Lazerow joins SavingStar’s current outside board members, which include Jeff Bussgang of Flybridge Capital Partners, Josh Kopelman of First Round Capital, and David Coppins of Upromise. The company announced a $7 Million Series B funding in April, bringing total investment to $10.7 million. |
Behold: Path Comes To Android In Public Beta | Rip Empson | 2,011 | 6 | 30 | Well, well, well. It looks like everybody’s favorite limited social networking and photo-sharing app has finally come to Android. That’s right, has announced that, beginning today, its app will be available in the Android Market. . But, while the app is officially on Android, this is apparently not a finished product. Path considers Version 1.0 of its Android app to be a public beta, and will be using it to test the Android waters to learn what works and doesn’t work as it ports to a new mobile OS. This maiden voyage for Android has quite a few features that Path users have become familiar with, but according to Path Co-founder , there’s definitely more to come down the road. But, ‘will Path Android users hang around to find out just what those are?’ that’s the question. For those unfamiliar with Path, the startup was founded in 2010 by Dave Morin and Dustin Mierau as an alternative approach to the idea of broadly sharable social information, as Path targets sharing among a smaller group of close friends and family. With a 50 friend limit, Path chose to offer no outside sharing features, Facebook, or Twitter integration. The team later amended this a bit by photo sharing called and has added a host of features, like , etc. Since its inception, the startup has grown in fits and starts, but has been on a kick this year, turning down a and raising an $8.5 million round from Kleiner and Index, and more. Though the app got its start on iOS and has grown its feature set on Apple’s platform (and has taken its sweet time in expanding beyond iOS), today confirms that there’s not actually any OS bias over at Path. And to be fair, it seems par for the course today for app developers to start with Apple before moving to Android. As is such, Path’s Android v1.0 won’t be offering the full suite of features available on iOS, but it’s a good start. With Android, users can capture and share photos with the same 50-friend limit, tag moments with people, places, and things, view friends’ moments, and make use to let friends and family know how you feel about their pictures and moments. Users can also take advantage of chat, see when friends have viewed their moments, and publish a few moments to Facebook. And apparently there’s more to come. As Path’s blog entry indicates, the startup will “continue to iterate and release updates with more features frequently”, and users can expect things to improve “rapidly” as Path continues through beta. A few quick additional notes: Some users have pointed out that currently the only way to authenticate or sign up for the Android app is through Facebook Connect, and that the Facebook permissions are pretty invasive. While this could scare some users away, Morin told me that, for now, Facebook Connect with remain the primary form of authentication, just as it is on iOS and the web, but the team will be adding email signup to Android in the near future. Version 1.0 also does not include the ability to delete posts, which is a bummer if you share some of those inappropriate private pics, but Morin said that this feature, too, will be arriving shortly. Good things come to those who wait, right? Path is currently available for users of Eclair . |
IBM Takes Another Step Towards Reliable Phase-Change Memory | Devin Coldewey | 2,011 | 6 | 30 | Although the world is currently enamored of flash memory, today’s standard for solid-state storage, companies like IBM need to think a few years ahead. One of the technologies they’re looking at is called phase-change memory, in which a memory cell changes from a crystalline to amorphous phase, changing its resistance. Put a bunch of those together, and you’ve got yourself a binary storage system. The trouble was that they couldn’t store more than one bit per cell, which means the tech couldn’t really scale. They’ve just figured that out, though: they assigned four discrete resistance levels (i.e. phase states) to represent “00,” “01,” “10,” and “11.” A clever and elegant solution that circumvents the problem completely. They also came up with a way of controlling for the fact that the resistance level tends to drift over time. Interested? You’re not going to be seeing this type of memory for a while, though; IBM puts “wide adoption” in 2016. We’ll update you then. |
Turn Google+ Into Facebook | Alexia Tsotsis | 2,011 | 6 | 30 |
The social networking wars have dialed it , with Google unleashing its highly anticipated (and highly leaked) Google+ social initiative upon the world on Tuesday — to not a bad response, to be honest. So it’s not that surprising that today Facebook countered the + hubbub with its own unveiling planned for next week. You crazy kids! The resemblance between the two social networks is — my Tweet-length opinion is that Google+ is like Facebook with a more usable, streamlined Photos and Groups interface (and that might be enough to win). Only time will tell. In the meantime, for those of you who have the decidedly middle class problem of social network fatigue, there is a solution. Thanks to the unlimited creativity of humans, you can now actually make your Google+ look like Facebook, with the extension or this . I love this. |
A startup called Huddle legally ponders the Google+ Huddle feature | Mike Butcher | 2,011 | 6 | 30 | As part of the new Google+ service , a group texting app available to Android users. This makes mobile group collaboration easier, says Google. So far so good. Except… There’s already a five-year-old group collaboration startup , which has to date raised $14.2m in venture capital and has office in San Francisco and London. We’re reaching out to Google for comment on this, but Huddle itself has declined to comment at this point. However, sources close to the company told me that they are looking into the use of the word “Huddle” by Google with their attorneys. TechCrunch understands that Huddle may have trademarks associated with use of the word where it is used to describe a business application around collaboration. There’s an irony that Google picked this word for its group messaging app – which will probably also concern startup – in that ‘Huddle the company’ has been providing collaboration and group messaging services to businesses and SMEs for some time. Clearly it’s a popular word. Huddle also only recently secured Huddle.com after being Huddle.net for several years. |
Bing Gordon: Every Startup CEO Should Understand Gamification | Alexia Tsotsis | 2,011 | 6 | 30 | [scribd id=59090152 key=key-29whnbnfh22l3hvr4dhc mode=slideshow] Former EA executive, sFund lead and all around inspiring person led a talk today at the sFund Gamification Summit. In his talk Gordon broke down platitudes like “gamification is important” into key actionable takeaways on how succeed with gamification, takeaways that could be reformatted and applied to any company. When asked why he went through the trouble of putting his guide to how to successfully gamify together for entrepreneurs, Bing told me, “Every startup CEO should understand gamification, because the gaming is the new normal,” referring to the fact that every one who had a Nintendo at 16 also has a brain that works in a way that’s more receptive to game elements. “We are overdeveloping the visual cortex of our customers,” he said. Gamification is as important as social and mobile Gordon told me, which makes sense, as elements like rewarding people for behavior are pure human psychology. His talk was separated into a three-pronged approach, Acquire, Engage and Retain, “All your experiences are three part experiences,” he said. The best way to acquire customers was to eliminate bounce, by creating a pleasant experience at first entry way, being said. “If you create cognitive dissonance in the first 5 seconds they bounce,” he said. Designers should aim for creating a “touchable box” or something that people want to touch. He then referred to the game’s interface as being an engine, saying that a great UX/UI guy could save a company from having to throw out thousands of lines of code and could replace five engineers. Baked in virality was also emphasized as a huge part of customer acquisition, and Gordon said that addition of Facebook profiles were responsible for 15 million versus 1 million monthly active users on Zynga Poker. Adding a friend bar meant 70 million MAUs versus two million on Farmville according to Gordon. “People come back more often when they have a date,” he said. In terms of user engagement, Gordon advised CEOs that first impressions matter, “Your job is to create a “Wow” within the first session … The value of gamification is the mechanics second and the mind of gamers first.” Things like virtual goods, showing numbers and giving badges are ways to positively reinforce users for playing your game. Letting them own part of the game by generating and submitting their own content was another way to solidify this emotional bond between creator and user. Bing also emphasized the value of avatars in games, “Any kind of avatar that people buy into can dramatically change engagement.” It makes sense, people love things that give them a sense of identity. If a game, service or anything really can give them that, then they’re hooked. Constraints, pre-announcements, and engendering social obligations to play a game were other things Gordon touched on that can contribute to customer retention. He said that the number one question on a game designer’s mind regarding a user should be “Will she come back?” and then “When?” “We’re in an era where we can have billion dollar audiences,” he closed out the talk saying. There’s no harm in using a few tried and true devices to keep people coming back. |
Want To See Which Ads Perform Best? YC-Backed MixRank Is A Spy Tool For AdSense | Rip Empson | 2,011 | 6 | 30 | Online advertising is growing, and much of that growth . While search ads still make up 46 percent of the total over display’s 38 percent, display grew twice as fast as search in 2010. Many online businesses rely on advertising as a supplemental revenue stream in support of their business model — if not the sole source — especially from . As such, companies and startups spend a lot of time testing out different ad iterations, looks, and copy in an effort to find the most clickable ad content and the most lucrative campaigns. And, interestingly, relatively tiny tweaks to wording and content in ads can have a fairly dramatic effect on clickthrough rates, increasing them as much as tenfold. A lot of businesses end up losing valuable time and money trying out different wordings and approaches, which is why , a startup out of the latest class of companies, is today launching a competitive intelligence service that clues businesses into how successful the AdSense display and contextual advertising of other companies (read: their competitors) has been. If, for example, your business is advertising a similar product to another company in the space, MixRank allows users to skip past the some 80 percent of ads that lose money, and view the methods of attack that are working for their competitors. Users can also view the sites that are directing the most traffic to their competitors. To make this possible, MixRank has effectively created a search engine for AdSense that crawls pages running Google ads, and since Google sorts these ads by effectiveness, MixRank indexes this data and estimates ad performance. After crawling these pages, MixRank takes into account Google’s sorting of the ads by effectiveness, then uses this data to serve essential performance analytics. As you can get a sense from the image above, MixRank’s service yields a ton of interesting data for advertisers. Using MixRank’s dashboard, users can see that, of the different wordings for their Google ads, the top phrasing has been far more successful than the other pilots. As advertisers employ different calls to action in their advertising, these businesses can now get a better sense of whether using immediacy, scarcity, or time limits, etc will be more effective in selling their products. Users can quickly test these different calls and easily see what’s working. As one can see in this example of , the most successful ads don’t target sites that have the same theme as the product they’re hawking, but instead using common cases, problems, and questions to address their potential customers. The top Gillette ad for deodorant is “Interview with confidence”, for example. Mixrank Co-founder Ilya Lichtenstein, whose background is in affiliate marketing, told us that many of the seemingly pervasive daily deals sites out there all essentially play “follow the leader” when it comes to advertising (as they seem to do with business models and more). Many of the smaller sites can’t compete with the leaders like Groupon and LivingSocial, because they don’t have the resources to build a large team of salespeople, researchers, and copywriters, so they find the easiest ways to mimic the leaders. So, because it’s true that, in any highly competitive market with thin margins, there are usually only a few ads or traffic sources that resonate with customers and get big CTRs, MixRank levels the playing field. It allows smaller businesses access to the same copy, content, testing and comparative analysis that the big boys utilize; smaller operations can see where their competitors are buying ad real estate and view what type of ad copy is working best. Thanks to Cofounder Scott Milliken, who built most of MixRank’s architecture, the service currently indexes 93,000 sites using Google AdSense, and that number continues to grow every day. One might, of course, assume that a caveat to MixRank’s business might be intrinsic to scaling and adoption, but even as more and more businesses sign up to use the service, it seems that ads will only become more efficient at a faster rate, as each team learns from another’s experiments. And, in the end, that could be better for consumers, too. MixRank is completely free at this point, as it tests the market to see what kind of adoption it will see, but Lichtenstein told me he has plans to eventually implement a subscription model (an affordable monthly one) to monetize. And big picture plans include building a model of the whole display market, which may eventually include machine learning to work towards building a prediction engine that can tell users which particular version of a campaign might be the most successful. It’s a deceptively simple concept, but a very interesting one, so , and let us know what you think. |
Sanyo's XX Eneloop Rechargeable AAs Are Clearly XXtreme | Devin Coldewey | 2,011 | 6 | 30 | Rechargeable batteries aren’t exactly headline news these days, but Sanyo seems so excited about that it would be cruel of me to post them. The XX series stores 2500mAh per battery and maintains a , stable voltage all the way down to the end of the charge. They’ll cost $25 for four. |
Samsung's Galaxy Tab 8.9 Hits The FCC | Devin Coldewey | 2,011 | 6 | 30 | We caught a brief glimpse of the about a month ago, but it’s just now for all its tests, readings, and diagnostics. The new Tab is much the same as the old Tab (i.e. the 10.1) but packed into a smaller package. I’m excited for better pixel density, though Samsung is also working on a . The 8.9 has a 3G radio communicating on AT&T’s frequencies, and since there don’t appear to be GSM or wi-fi variants being tested by the FCC at this time, it seems safe to say that’s the version we’ll see first. [via and ] |
Tictacti secures funding to take on Heyzap in game aggregation | Mike Butcher | 2,011 | 6 | 30 | A lot of companies would like to get on the flash games bandwagon but have no core competency to do it. Out of Israel is a new white label solution called . The startup has also now raised a $500,000 round led by Kima Ventures and other undisclosed investors. To date the startup has pulled in $1.6m in funding so far. Tictacti plans to compete with existing players and , with a platform which enables games developers to monetize their games on Mobile, Web or IPTV with one API/SDK or, in the case of Flash based games. BUt the crucial aspect here is that they can do it without needing to use the the API. Ultimately the idea is to be a large game publisher aggregator across the web, social networks, mobile, Game Consoles and IPTV and a one stop shop solution for developers. So far Nike, Starbucks, Proctor & Gamble, and others are using TicTacTi by loading up their rich media content and garnering ad revenue as a result. |
What's Facebook Releasing Next Week? Not Project Spartan. | MG Siegler | 2,011 | 6 | 30 | Apparently, Facebook is gearing up to show off something “awesome” next week. At least, that’s what CEO Mark Zuckerberg told reporters while he was visting the Seattle Facebook offices yesterday. that whatever it is, it has been developed by the 40-person team based in Seattle. And they think it might be in the mobile or tablet space. All we know for sure is that it won’t be , the HTML5-based app platform that Facebook has been working on with a small group of outside developers in secret for months. Spartan will not be ready to go before the middle of July at the earliest, we’re told — nor is it based in Seattle. What is based in Seattle are teams with deep ties to mobile. , the team up there put a lot of work into merging the m.facebook.com and touch.facebook.com sites together. Given that part of what we’ve seen in the closely resembles a part of the new photo experience on m.facebook.com, it’s possible Facebook will unveil their new mobile photos offering from Seattle. All we’ve heard recently is that the pictures we leaked were somewhat old (but very real). We also believe that there will not be a stand-alone app when it’s released, but rather, it will be a part of the current Facebook app experience. We also know that the Facebook team in Seattle has been trying to . But the hiring is ongoing for that, so don’t expect any news out of that department for quite some time. The wildcard is the iPad app. , and have spoken with multiple people who have seen it now. It’s not clear if the Seattle team built it or not, but it’s certainly possible. : One source says it “highly unlikely” that Facebook’s announcement next week is the iPad app. |
Student-Designed Micromechanical Dragonfly Is One Millimeter Wide | Devin Coldewey | 2,011 | 6 | 30 | The winners of the the yearly MEMS (Microelectromechanical system) design competition held by Sandia National Labs were announced a short time ago, and they’re pretty impressive. : the Texas Tech team built a set of millimeter-wide dragonfly wings, and CMU made an electrostatically-activated microvalve. These things are small. The dragonfly wing design was chosen by Texas due to the simplicity of the beating pattern; this simplifies the mechanics of the device. The wings, each of which is about half a millimeter long, beat by a thermal reaction triggered by a current. CMU had a slightly more practical entry, a tiny valve that can be opened or closed with a change of just picojoules in energy. This could be extremely useful in experiments where incredibly small amounts of material need to be introduced to a fragile environment — for instance, changing the pH level inside a single cell, or adding adhesive material in a microconstruction scenario. Congratulations to the winners. These tiny devices are truly cool. [via ] |
How Secure Is Your Laptop Lock? This HP One Can Be Cracked In Seconds | Devin Coldewey | 2,011 | 6 | 30 | [youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TPDgX9P8xLQ&w=640&h=390]
You guys might remember a few years back when someone demonstrated that many tubular locks, like those use on many Kryptonite bike locks, could be opened with a common Bic pen. That someone was Marc Weber Tobias, and he’s back now to warn you again that your laptop lock might not be as secure as you think. Case in point: this HP lock, which his associate opens on camera in just a few seconds by whacking it with a screwdriver. Sure, there are better locks out there, but you might just take a second to test the security of your own or checking around on the net for evidence of poor quality. Even expensive locks sometimes have simple and devastating flaws, so if you’re carrying critical information on your laptop and trust the lock on it to keep it safe, make sure you’re not setting yourself up for tragedy. |
Pool Party: Google Has Their Own Secret Photo-Sharing App Too — Built By Slide | MG Siegler | 2,011 | 6 | 30 | Back in March, we , a that the Slide team within Google had built. And that’s not all they’ve been working on. Say hello to , another secret project by the same team within Google. We don’t know much about Pool Party other than it’s a photo-sharing app that the Slide team has built. The emphasis is said to be on creating group albums (“pools”) that show new photos in real time. The app is currently in invite-only beta testing. And Google was able to secure the poolpartyapp.com domain for it — not quite as sexy as disco.com, but it will do. What’s perhaps most interesting about this is that Slide is building these new apps within Google while other teams at Google work on similar projects. For example, both a group messaging component (Huddle) and a mobile photo sharing component (Instant Upload). When I asked the Google+ leads, Vic Gundotra and Bradley Horowitz, why they weren’t just using Disco inside of Google+, they both said they had no idea what I was talking about — while smiling. It’s believed that Slide is allowed to work autonomously on their own projects within Google, and both of these apps appear to be very much proof of that. The question is if and when Google will use its own clout to promote these things. Disco is already with no Google promotion yet. Sadly, unlike , we were only able to secure two photos of Pool Party. Enjoy. : A Brodie Duncan on Twitter, — with 0 installs! It’s not clear if you’ll be able to use Pool Party this way since it’s in private beta, but get downloading! : And look at that, ! We previously believed it would be Android-only, but clearly that’s not the case. |
null | Greg Kumparak | 2,011 | 6 | 9 | null |
Steam Summer Camp Sale Now Underway! | Devin Coldewey | 2,011 | 6 | 30 |
Steam’s big starts today! Not that you can buy anything right now, since the store is buckling under the weight of the traffic. Reddit user Remmib has put together a nice little listing of most of the deals , but you might want to wait an hour or two before trying to get in there. Some standouts: Valve Complete Pack (Portal 2 included) for $50, Borderlands for $5, a great id pack for $30, and the Rockstar Collection for $40. Ah, Summer! |
How to hack Google+ to send your friends invites (maybe) | Mike Butcher | 2,011 | 6 | 30 | Here in Europe we woke up to find Google had to Google +. So after a bit of testing I’ve found out the following how to bring your friends in to it while Google has a lock-down on the service. If you have an invite to join Google+, right click on the invite link you were sent on email and save the URL. Paste that URL to Twitter or Facebook or email it to some friends. With any luck some of them will get in via that link. I tried this by Tweeting my own invite link, and magically a few people managed to get an invite of their own. Most did not however, so this is not a full proof work-around. It seems to work if people waited a couple of minutes or refreshed the page after a minute. The better, more guaranteed hack is one or both of the following. An existing user on Google+ creates a new Circle, called (for example) Invites. They then add the emails of the people they want to invite to that circle. An additional work-around – which also appears to work on its own – is simply creating a status update (it’s called a ‘Share’ on Google+), e.g. “inviting people” and then pasting the Gmail addresses of friends you want to invite into the “add people” box (Next to +1 and Comment links). They should then get a copy of your status update in their email and link saying “Learn more about Google+”. They can then click on that and will get taken to your post, with a Join Google+ button. Let us know how you get on in the comments below (ironically, Facebook powered). It would appear the last suggestion here is the simplest and most fool-proof. |
How Making Can Help Our Economy, Improve Education, And Make Us Happy | John Biggs | 2,011 | 6 | 30 | [youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dvWv48nhUR0&w=640&h=390] PBS NewsHour sent their tech reporter Miles O’Brien to Maker Faire where he found the weird, wonderful, and wild arrayed before him. In an excellent few minutes O’Brien experiences the wonder of making and posits that DIY could help us out of a number of doldrums.
Bonus video: Adam Savage talks about the magic of making and “dangerous” science. MythBusters is the one “adult” i.e. hour long aimed at an older audience show my kids watch and they love it. It shows them that science isn’t all equations and boredom but involves, occasionally, blowing things up. [youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gCXvTPQJD0s&w=640&h=390] |
Video: An Extremely Short Hands-On With Sony's S2 Folding Tablet | Devin Coldewey | 2,011 | 6 | 30 | The unique form factors and Playstation branding of Sony’s have us fairly excited to test them out, but Sony hasn’t been very obliging on that front. Luckily, German tech site Golem had a bit more luck. Sadly, the hands-on is only 18 seconds long, and it’s not exactly action-packed. But you get a feel for the size of the thing, and exactly how annoying that big black bar in the middle of your viewing area is going to be. They also took this really nice shot of the S1: It looks slimmer than I expected. Hopefully we’ll have a similar hands-on event here in the states soon, and get you a hands-on of our own. [via ] |
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