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Joe Stump And Graham Blache Launch Sprintly, Project Management Streamlined | Erick Schonfeld | 2,011 | 12 | 3 | It’s been only a month since SimpleGeo co-founder , following its acquisition by Urban Airship, but he’s already launching a new product (and company) today called . The company was actually founded in March by Stump’s co-founder , and Stump tells me he’s “been plotting this product for nearly a decade.” The startup is completely bootstrapped so far. Sprintly is a simple project management tool that is built for both software developers and other people in a company who rely on them. It is designed to remove the frustrations developers have with working in their own silo. Traditionally, programmers use bug tracking tools and the own product-management systems, only to be bugged incessantly by non-engineers about the status of new features or fixes. Sprintly gives the non-programmers a top-level view into what the engineers are doing and how far along they are. For the developers themselves, it gives them a drag-and-drop way for keeping track of projects. The approach reminds my of , a project management service last September at Disrupt SF. The video demo below gives an overview of the service, which $9 per user per month after a one-month free trial. [vimeo http://vimeo.com/33085361] |
null | Devin Coldewey | 2,011 | 6 | 22 | null |
SAP Will Buy SuccessFactors For $3.4 Billion | Alexia Tsotsis | 2,011 | 12 | 3 | In what is perhaps the most boring piece of tech news to come out of this week, German software giant SAP that it will buy the US-based , a company that “helps organizations align strategy with objectives and manage people performance to ensure execution & results,” IN THE CLOUD, OF COURSE. I think this means that it provides enterprise software for human resources, but you can never be too sure with . I am too bored to Google it. In fact, I am literally bored to tears writing this, like I am seriously crying here in and everyone is looking at me weird and I just want to show them so they’ll understand or something. The deal is all cash, at $40 a share (a $3.4 billion valuation) and will most likely close early next year. If you are actually interested in finding out more, or having trouble sleeping and need something to push you over the edge, SAP will be on Monday, December 5th, at 3:00 pm CET / 9:00 am EST where you can learn details about the transaction. |
Surveillance | Jon Evans | 2,011 | 12 | 3 | Your phone . The many cameras you pass every day can . Facebook, despite its , still you to your personal life. “Eye in the sky” drones are already ; next, they’ll . It won’t be long before are omnipresent in the skies over every major city, and then every town. Welcome to the 21st century. Smile! You’re probably on TV. Especially if you live in the kind of repressive state that imprisons its citizens without trial. (You know, like , if the US Senate has its way.) According to both and that well-known bastion of the left wing , such regimes have been buying up Western-made high-tech surveillance systems like business travellers on unlimited expense accounts. To quote the former, “companies are making billions selling sophisticated tracking tools to government buyers, flouting export rules, and turning a blind eye to dictatorial regimes that abuse human rights.” Which kind of puts Facebook privacy violations in perspective, so I’m not going to bash Mark Zuckerberg, for once. The guy probably genuinely believes in the merits of a transparency society where everybody’s life is essentially on display all the time. Or even if he doesn’t, he figures that our ever-doubling tech level means we’re inevitably heading there anyways, so he may as well make a few dozen billion dollars from that sea change while he’s at it. Fair enough. But a transparent society can’t work if it’s built out of one-way glass. The powers that be are thrilled by the prospect of using all this new surveillance tech to keep an eye on the unruly masses, but they seem much less excited about its effect on their privacy. The Occupy movement (which, you may recall, I have ) can cite a of of protestors arrested or shot with rubber bullets for the sin of photographing police, and of the police expelling and restricting media from the evictions in and . http://twitter.com/#!/wilw/status/141804047920410624 Earlier this year the chief minister of India’s Kerala state had . A cheap gimmick, yes, but a powerful symbol. If we’re headed into a world where everything becomes public, so be it–but shouldn’t the first people to surrender their privacy be those in authority? This is partly an economic issue: if Greece hadn’t for many years, the euro wouldn’t be in quite as parlous a state right now. But mostly it’s a moral one. Why aren’t police, border guards, and the TSA required to carry always-on shoulder cameras while on duty, so that the data recorded can be used in court and subjected to Freedom Of Information requests? Why are vague, unsubstantiated “security reasons” always enough to close doors, shut events, squelch protests, fence off areas from the public, and harass photographers and the media, when more surveillance is supposed to make us more secure? The answer, of course, is that security is only rarely the real issue. Two-way surveillance, the much-touted , is about the complex dynamic between the relative merits of privacy and public information–and they do both have their merits. But one-way surveillance is all about raw naked power. It worries me that the powers that be all seem to be touting the former while actually trying to implement the latter. : zigazou76, . |
Gillmor Gang 12.3.11 (TCTV) | Steve Gillmor | 2,011 | 12 | 3 | The Gillmor Gang — Robert Scoble, John Borthwick, John Taschek, Kevin Marks, and Steve Gillmor — gears up for a rough and tumble Social Shakedown. Facebook, Path (?), Gmail filters, News.me, Media Redefined — we’re swimming in signal without a paddle. But some of us (@scobleizer) are happy to see the big get personal and the little get better. Whether you live to serve the social beast, or prefer to stand back and see how big this is going to get, it really doesn’t matter whether this is early innings as @jtaschek and @borthwick suggest or reaching an @mention moment as @stevegillmor expects. The culture of business and the politics of the personal have swapped personalities, and work and play are meeting up in the middle. @stevegillmor, @borthwick, @scoblizer, @kevinmarks, @jtaschek Produced and directed by Tina Chase Gillmor. recorded live Friday, December 2, 2011. |
How Entrepreneurs Can Increase Productivity by 500% | James Altucher | 2,011 | 12 | 3 | When I got separated from my ex-wife in November, 2008 I put an ad on Craigslist pretending to be a psychic and spent the day answering all the emails I got in return. I had various tricks to prove I was a psychic. For instance, if a woman wrote me and asked: you’re a psychic I would write back: when you were younger you had beautiful long hair. Then it was cut and you were horribly sad, all that beautiful hair lost. They would all respond, HOW DID YOU KNOW? Then I had Thanksgiving dinner in the Red Flame diner on 44th Street by myself and had a Turkey sandwich. It was the financial crisis, I was all alone, I spent the nights in cheap hotels, and the world was falling apart. I shut down a business I had been starting. It was a year and a half after I sold stockpickr.com and I felt I was ready to begin the next one. I started a business . My partners were the guys who did Freakonomics. It was going well. Why did I shut the new business down? No reason at all. It’s probably still a good idea. I was just mired in my own negativity. Meanwhile Andrew Mason spent that month, the worst month in financial history since the Great Depression, starting Groupon and became a billionaire. Through the years I missed . I missed I missed, I lost, I suffered, I cried. I could’ve started other businesses instead of the ones I did. I could’ve accepted job offers instead of lying in my hammock crying about failures. We all have stuff to complain about. What a waste! It’s hard not to spend most of the day angry or scared or anxious. Particularly when running a startup. I want to be productive, healthy, and happy. Better to avoid having 80% of my thoughts (or more on some days!) be “not useful”. In my worst days I easily could’ve spent a good chunk of my day wasting it by thinking thoughts that aren’t useful. That’s just as much a waste of time as playing dumb games or watching the Kardashians on reality TV. Pretend your brain is a giant Gmail inbox. You can use filters to immediately label thoughts to get them out of your priority inbox and not have them bog down your productivity (or happiness). As soon as you see one of the below types of thoughts pop up, label it, filter it, and file it (thoughts have a way of racing past us). Many times, this has been the only way I’ve been able to pick myself up and get again. 1) : For instance, judging myself too harshly. Or assuming I’m no good at something so I shouldn’t even try. Or assuming I’m destined to be an unhealthy old man. These are all negative thoughts. If you can’t try something, then you won’t try something. You think Larry Page wanders around his bedroom late at night thinking, “man, I can’t do this!” How do I know I can label them as “negative thoughts”? As opposed to negative reality? Because they have no basis in fact. I don’t know how I will be as an old man. And if I judge someone too harshly before I even know them—what’s the point? It’s one thing if they reach into my pocket and try to take my wallet. Then I can judge them: “This person steals things.” But until then, why judge? And yet I do. What a waste! Or, before thinking that I’m going to do horribly despite the fact that I’ve prepared well and it’s a friendly crowd. All the evidence suggests that my negative thought is not based in reality and yet I’ll still think it. . 2) – My vice thoughts start when I wake up. Who made me angry the day before? Do I look good in the mirror? Or when I look at the above picture of Larry Page (referred to as “human being #1” in my house) I get envious. Or am I constantly thinking of the waffles I’m going to eat at breakfast in the city later? That might be a fun thought (just like constantly thinking about sex) but it’s not necessarily one that will bring me closer to happiness or success. I can enjoy the waffle when I eat it. I don’t have to think of it every second of the day.
3) I want to make more money. I want my kids to love me. I want a big house. I want, I want, I want. We spend our first few years of life being programmed by commercialism into thinking that some things are important: getting a college degree, owning a home, having as many people as possible love you (fame), getting attached to certain things (like the Dr. McCoy doll I have sitting right next to my computer that nobody better mess with), getting a private plane, having sex with as many people as possible. These thoughts of what a perfect life would be like are harmful. What if you don’t get the college degree, or own the home, or get the yacht in the Mediterranean? Perfectionism is a form of bondage. We want things to be “just right” or else we are unhappy. We become ashamed. Why, when I had I had enough to live forever. And yet, some feeling inside of me thought I was imperfect, unloved, not good enough, unless I had that $100mm. And then, of course, I lost it all. And I really did feel shame. For years! Perfectionist thoughts are not only not useful, they are damaging. 4) . – there’s that Sting song, “if you love someone, set them free.” A lot of people love others but don’t want the other to be free. They say, “I love you” but the love is tainted with need, with desire, with jealousy. How do you catch yourself when you feel this less pure form of love. Jealousy is like this also. Why did this friend sell his business for $80 million and I’m still working 29 hours a day. Or why did this other friend cash out when he was just a low-level employee of Facebook? It’s hard. But it’s still a type of thought that will bring you down, force you to live a lesser life than the person you were meant to be. When you think you have the purest motives, take a second to check yourself – what are your ulterior motives. What would happen if you don’t get what you want? You might think that jealousy can be a motivating thought: If can do it, why can’t I? But it’s not. It takes away from the thoughts of creativity, ingenuitiy, innovation, invention. 5) – We just had the Thanksgiving holidays. This gives rise to a lot of pleasurable thoughts. But also painful ones. Often we’re put together with family and friends that bring back memories. We remember the past, we remember the things that were done to us. Everyone shouts hysterically, confusing it with historically. I went to a Thanksgiving once where one sister threw coffee on another sister. What started out as pleasurable thoughts (“MMm, Thanksgiving!”) quickly turned painful. This Thanksgiving I spent the entire day on a plane. It was my best Thanksgiving ever! It’s too much to say: I’m not going to think these painful thoughts. We’re not Jesus. But for me, just being aware that I’m about to go into a situation where painful thoughts might occur, helps me to label them and filter them when they come up. Or even stay away from the situation altogether (hence the plane ride on Thanksgiving). 6) Everything changes. I’m going to get older. I’m going to fail Heck, I have proof of that. Maybe some day my wife Claudia will hate me (I hope not.) Maybe some day my kids will. (One of them yesterday said to me, “I hate you”, and it made me afraid for a second that her words weren’t the senseless provoking of a nine year old but I suddenly pictured her as a twenty-nine year old saying it.) But these fears of the future are just as useless as the painful thoughts of the past. They have nothing to do with how we can be happy and productive right now. Today. So they deserve to be labeled and put in the mental spam box. Some people live life as if today is your last day. Better to do the opposite, live each day as if it’s the first. A fresh start. Time for newness and confidence.
7) . Perhaps the biggest time and life waster. One time I was so obsessed with another woman that I’d go to sleep with my phone right next to me wishing she’d call. I’d wake up disappointed she didn’t call and wondering what she was doing all night. I’d wait until I thought she was awake and then I would call and ask her to breakfast. If she couldn’t, I’d go to her area and wait around until she was available. I’d keep circling the block to see the light was on in her window. My entire day revolved around her. Of course she got sick of me. In which case I became more obsessive. What does this have to do with being an entrepreneur? It has to do with it. That valuable energy I was wasting could’ve been spent developing Groupon or heck, even Lycos. Or sometimes when someone is angry with me, I can’t just give it up. I have to prove myself right. I have to make sure he or she knows how wrong he is. I play the argument over and over again. I can’t understand how they can think I’m wrong. Or what I did to deserve such harsh treatment. I’m RIGHT! So get with the program. 8) . I don’t want to suggest that it’s “bad” to feel sad. If someone close to you dies, you’ll feel sad. But often people stretch out the sadness until it becomes an addiction, an excuse to be pessimistic.” I’m “never going to be happy” because…X, Y, and Z.” Our mind likes to be sad. It likes the barriers to happiness. Happiness is too wide open and scary. Sadness keeps us confined inside our boundaries. Those boundaries become the walls that pessimism lives inside of. It’s easy to be pessimistic because then we fool ourselves into thinking we don’t need to do too much. What if in 2004, some kid at Harvard didn’t say, “I’m going to make a little website that everyone on the planet is going to put of their personal details on.” What if he said, instead, “Ahh, I don’t feel like it. Some girl who looks like the girl with the dragon tattoo just broke up with me and can I really compete against myspace.com anyway? Don’t be an idiot, Mark.” And he just went under his covers and cried. No good! 9) We know exactly when we are thinking of things that are not good for us. Am I going to eat chocolate until 1 in the morning while watching the Real Housewives of Atlanta? Most likely this is not good for me (although “Real Houswives of Beverly Hills” is a completely different issue). The mind is like a giant Gmail box. Emails are constantly coming in. Most of them are junk emails and are instantly filtered into the spam box. But many other emails come in that we don’t know what to do with. In Gmail you can create filters. For instance, when someone sends me a receipt for my latest book I am able to label the email “Bad Behavior” because when my next self-published book comes out (working title, “Bad Behavior”) I can easily filter every email with that label and send it to them. It’s the same in our mind. If we use the above nine labels above, and then filter anything (or most things) with those labels into the “not useful” box as per this post, then here’s what happens: A) Our brain gets quicker at noticing when we are thinking not-useful thoughts. B) Your negativity is like a rock constantly being doused with water. Eventually the rock withers to nothing, although it takes time. It’s persistent practice. C) We have more time for the useful thoughts – the thoughts that lead to productivity, minimalism, happiness, freedom. D) We can identify which labels are occurring the most and develop problem-solving techniques to directly deal with them. Not every “not useful” thought should be treated the same. Don’t believe me. Don’t pay any attention to this advice. Like everybody else, I’ve got 6,000 things to do today. And I know if any of the nine things above drag me down, I won’t get things done. I’m already feeling anxious about it. And I’m not helped by the 12 cups of coffee I’ve already consumed. In fact, I could be slipping into an obsessive panic. Not useful. — Read And |
Twitter Gets Google And Facebook Connect | Alexia Tsotsis | 2,011 | 12 | 3 | Correct me if I’m wrong here but you weren’t always immediately prompted and guided through to finding your Gmail contacts on upon login, just like you weren’t always able to sync your tweets to . Some switch just got turned on after midnight on Friday for me I swear because, yeah now this stuff is possible. It’s crazy. Log into your Twitter account, go to Settings, click on your profile pic and it’s there, I promise. Unless I’m hallucinating or part of some strange private beta. Which is totally possible seeing as though I write for TechCrunch and all. If it is true, this tripartite partnership is super interesting as all three of these companies don’t really, um, . So I’m all like, “Look who decided to play all nice all of a sudden.” Heh. |
Daily Crunch: Sleep It Off | Bryce Durbin | 2,011 | 12 | 3 | Here are some recent stories on TechCrunch Gadgets:
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The Xbox Metro Update Nudges Microsoft’s Console Closer To Set-top Hegemony | John Biggs | 2,011 | 12 | 4 | The upcoming Metro update to Microsoft’s , shipping tonight and arriving on your console some time this week, pushes Microsoft’s gaming product away from the traditional run-and-gun of gaming consoles and into a new realm: that of the home media center. While the Xbox existed as a media center before, allowing you to download video and music content and stream content from your home computers, this new update makes it easier to find disparate pieces of content, whether its from Microsoft’s own video/music store or another source or directly from the Internet through YouTube and various partner services. The update also allows users to control the Xbox remotely, adding items to the queue and looking up content to send to the TV while other content is playing. In short, this update isn’t about the games, it’s about content. On the surface, the Metro update looks much like . Tiles abound, with various UI elements mimicking the new Windows UI almost wholesale. Every new app is Kinect-enabled, allowing you to swipe through tiles with your hands or call up apps with your voice. The most prominent change is the Bing search screen, a service that will bring you web content as well as allow you to search the entire Xbox and Microsoft stores for potential matches. For example, when you search for “X-Men” you don’t get the Wikipedia entry, you get all of the movies, based on availability for download or streaming. The focus in this update is on partners. These include UFC, HBO Go, and a number of other content providers as well as a 25-channel HD line up from Verizon FiOS and another selection of channels from Comcast. Keep in mind that there is no DVR function yet and no real scheduling system, but that’s clearly down the line. Most important in this move is Microsofts tacit admittance that they are gunning for the living room. By adding Comcast and FiOS, for example, the Xbox becomes less a gaming console than a way for junior to watch TV at college or the Xbox to become the bedroom media player. Google and Microsoft are clearly in a cold war for the couch. While many have paid lip service to the effort to “colonize the set-top,” this new Xbox update is a clear effort to change the way people look at the Xbox and could be the first step in a new, more powerful Xbox with better DVR and media browsing experiences built-in. All of the big players have TV devices – Google TV, Apple TV, and now Xbox. Who will win – or whether there is a need for a clear winner – is anyone’s guess. [slideshow] |
Japanese Mobile Social Gaming Startup Gumi Raises $26 Million | Erick Schonfeld | 2,011 | 12 | 4 | Mobile social gaming is big in Japan. . Mobile gaming publisher , which has been growing very rapidly lately, raised $26 million last week in a series F round from Jafco, Shinsei Bank, and DBJ Capital. It previously raised a total of $7 million. I visited Gumi’s offices and spoke with founder Hironao Kunimitsu, who says he expects to use the new capital to roll up other Japanese mobile gaming developers and expand to the Korea, Singapore, and the U.S. (see video). Gumi has 140 employees. Its growth started taking off this year. The company expects to sell more than $50 million worth of virtual in-game coins this year (see slide below), which can be used by players to outfit their characters and level up. Those gross sales fo coins are split with parters such as the phone carriers and the mobile social gaming network GREE, which is also an investor in Gumi from an earlier round and owns a 20 percent stake. The company currently has eight games, including Yakuza Wars, Pirate Wars, and FIFA World Class Soccer (co-developed with EA/Playfish). It has 10 million registered users in Japan, and 1 million active users per month. The average revenue per user in Japan is between $2.50 and $4.00, with some players paying $50 to $100 a month in virtual goods. Kunimitsu explained to me the difference between social games in the U.S. and Japan. In the U.S.on Zynga-type games, people play with their real friends. But Kunimitsu thinks “that makes game not exciting.” In Japan, people play with a looser set of gaming friends—basically anyone who wants to play a game. Gumi matches gamers base don their skill levels. Overall, the market for social games in Japan is expected to surpass the domestic consumer console market in the next couple years as it surges past the $4 billion mark. Gumi wants very much to catch that wave. |
There And Back Again: A Lengthy Weighing Of The Galaxy Nexus And iPhone 4S | Jason Kincaid | 2,011 | 12 | 4 | Before me sit two phones. On the left is the iPhone 4S, which I bought (and signed my soul over to Verizon for) in October. On the right sits a loaner GSM version of the Samsung Galaxy Nexus, sporting Android 4.0. I like the one on the right better. I’ll have to send it back to Google soon, but I’m already certain that through a combination of mysticism and Craigslist I’ll be swapping the iPhone 4S for a Verizon Galaxy Nexus shortly after it launches. The following is a reflection on how I came to that decision, and why I think the aura of superiority that’s surrounded iOS since its introduction is really more of a residual mist at this point — particularly when compared to Ice Cream Sandwich. iOS is better at some things than Android. And it is prettier. But it is no longer superior. As regular readers and OMG/JK fans will recall, I’ve been the ‘Android guy’ around TechCrunch since the original Droid came out in November 2009, and have used a Nexus One as my primary phone for the better part of two years now. Before that I had been a pretty diehard iPhone fan, buying one shortly after it came out in 2007 and upgrading to an iPhone 3G the day that device was released. But I fell from the cult of Apple. This happened for a few reasons. The first is that Apple’s control of the App Store makes me nervous — particularly in light of the fact that they used their control for anticompetitive reasons within the first year of the store’s existence. Point two: Android’s support for Google’s apps and services, which I rely heavily on, is much better. And then there’s the fact that my colleague MG Siegler is, shall we say, enough of an Apple fan for all of us. That said, it’s been a while since Apple did anything overly inflammatory with the App Store, and I try to eschew dogmatism when it comes to technology, so when the iPhone 4S made its debut I decided to cast my trusty Nexus One aside and ran out to buy one for myself. It’d been a while since I’d used an iPhone as my primary device, and Siri sounded . And hey, Verizon had a generous (*scoff*) two-week return policy so I could back out if I really hated the thing. Given how much I’ve seen Apple zealots fawn over the iPhone 4 and 4S, I had pretty high expectations. I’d swipe-and-unlock the doors to a world of buttery smoothness. After a few weeks back on iOS, I’d doubtless look down on Android users with the same smugness and condescension as some of my peers. “They just don’t know any better,” I’d say. After a two-year exile, perhaps I was coming home. But I quickly found that while iOS has been better than Android in many respects for the last couple of years, Android has whittled away at that lead. The first thing that started bugging me on iOS was the new Notifications system. In short, they’re poorly done. I can see why iPhone users might be thrilled with them — they’re a huge step up from the antiquated blue-bubble popup that Apple had relied on since 2007 — but in general I’ve found the new system to be less efficient and messier than Android’s implementation. There’s no way to clear all of the notifications in your tray — you have to clear them on a per-app basis, and it takes two taps per app to do this. Oftentimes I’ll unlock my phone and have notifications from Facebook Messenger, Google Voice, the default phone app, and maybe OKCupid (bah chicka bawa). That’s eight taps, plus some scrolling, just to clear your notifications. It’s maddening. And, for another nitpicky but still-illustrative gripe, the fact that I can only choose between 1, 5, or 10 calendar notifications is a thorn in my side. Three would be my sweet spot — any more than that tends to overwhelm my notifications tray, but displaying just one is pretty useless. Yes, I am well aware that Apple sacrifices options to reduce confusion and complexity. But come on. And then there’s Siri, which is completely underwhelming (also see fellow TC writer Jordan Crook, who already shared her thoughts on Siri’s ). Apple’s marketing strategy behind Siri has been perfect. The commercials are fantastic, with a real “this is the future, and it’s for everyone” vibe. And those humorous Siri witticisms (“where can I hide a dead body?”) coinciding with the phone’s launch were strokes of genius (my hunch, by the way, is that some of the questions posed by bloggers were actually suggested by someone affiliated with Apple). But in practice Siri falls prey to the same issues that plague Google’s Android Voice Actions, which I’ve been using regularly for over a year now. Namely, the fact that you need a speedy network connection for it to work at all, and that accuracy is sub-par. The experience goes something like this: you ask Siri a question, and the three out of five time it nails the answer, and you’re delighted. But maybe 20% of the time it comes back with a result that’s a bit off — a valiant effort, and you can see it was close to getting it, but it wasn’t quite there. You give it an approving nod anyway. And then perhaps 20% of the time it just totally misunderstands what you said or fails to get a connection. You sigh a bit and type in the query manually. After enough of these misses (and their associated sighs), eventually you subconsciously lean away from relying on Siri for mission-critical tasks. You might actively make yourself use it (it was one of the reasons you bought the phone, after all), but you’ll probably conclude that it isn’t really changing the way you interact with your phone. And this all assumes that you the way Siri works in the first place — I’d personally prefer an assistant that sacrifices chattiness for efficiency, though I understand that Siri’s anthropomorphization is one of its selling points. Also: Beta, schmeta. Apple fans have repeatedly pointed out that Siri is being billed as a Beta by Apple, and so it shouldn’t be held to such high standards. In my mind Apple lost the ‘Beta’ fallback the moment it started running commercials promoting the feature — some people are buying an iPhone 4S exclusively because of Siri because it’s been so highly touted. Will it be great eventually? Yeah, probably. But it’s not like Google hasn’t seen this coming since the day Siri was acquired by Apple, if not well before. All of that said, my biggest issue with the iPhone is an old one: the architecture of iOS simply doesn’t let applications play nicely together, and after using Android for so long I feel strangely restricted. It’s as if I’ve spent the last two years in adulthood, doing what I want with whomever I want — and now suddenly I have to ask Apple for permission every time I want to route some of my data into one service or another. The biggest pain-point for me is Dropbox. On Android, I can be browsing just about anything — a photo, a document, a song — and hit the share button to send it straight to my Dropbox account (or Evernote, or Facebook, or whatever). The icons are easily accessible from the top of the screen. It just works. Contrast that with Dropbox on iOS. If you want to upload a photo or video that was taken on your iPhone, you fire up the Dropbox app and upload it from there. Pretty straightforward. But if you want to upload any other type of file, you’d better cross your fingers. Some applications feature Dropbox integration that will let you save straight to your account, but these integrations are all hardwired on a per-app basis. Which means you can’t assume they’ll be there. And it also means that if you’re fond of a service that’s less popular than Dropbox — one that third-party apps probably aren’t going to go to the trouble to integrate themselves — then you’re going to be totally out of luck. But hey, at least you can tweet about it! (see screenshot at right for the iOS sharing choices). All of which goes to say, from a functionality perspective, I just don’t think iOS has any significant advantages over Android. iCloud is nice if you live in Apple’s ecosystem, but the only thing I get out of it is photo syncing, which the Google+ app on Android handles just fine. Which brings us to the other key component that differentiates the two: the user experience. For as long as I’ve used it, Google has sprinkled Android with bits of ugliness and UI quirks that varied between head-scratching and infuriating. The pervasive puke green. Funky glitches. The ‘Droid’ clock font that made the phone look about as friendly to use as a microwave. The Android Market UI that made browsing for apps a chore. And the — why were they always so damn ugly compared to their iOS counterparts? I’ve never been shy about pointing this out. Over the summer Android’s Senior Director of User Experience Matias Duarte — in front of a few hundred people— why Android applications are generally uglier than iOS apps (read that for his answer, it has to do with handsome Sicilians and giving developers better tools). So when I switched from my Nexus One over to the iPhone 4S, it wasn’t really a surprise that iOS’s interface struck a nerve with me. It looks damn good. Granted, it looks largely the same as when I left it in late 2009, but that isn’t a bad thing — unless salivating when you look at a particularly attractive app icon can be considered a bad thing. And the apps, with their pixel-perfect design, are often gorgeous too. But, as in the case with any relationship, looks only go so far. And eventually I began to miss some of the things I love about Android, like the aforementioned flexibility with exchanging files between apps.
Several weeks later, when I started playing around with Android 4.0 on the Galaxy Nexus, I realized that this ‘looks’ advantage was starting to fade as well. No, Ice Cream Sandwich is not as pretty as iOS 5. It doesn’t have as many nice animations, and there are fewer instances where you say to yourself, ‘Oh, that was a nice touch”. But it’s still good-looking. It’s not a 10, the way iOS is, but I’d give it a 7.5 — maybe an 8 after a few drinks. More important, the of Android is steadily improving too. The removal of the dedicated Menu button is a huge win for users. The multitasking app switcher button is also handy — and more intuitive than iOS’s double-button tap system, I’d argue. You can find more of my thoughts on ICS’s specific features . From a looks and polish department, Android will probably always be trailing iOS to some degree. Apple is just too good at what it does — and the fact that developers can optimize for just a handful of screen resolutions means they can put together pixel-perfect designs, whereas Android apps have to be far more flexible with their layouts, which lends itself to blah-ness. But with Ice Cream Sandwich, Android has reached a sort of tipping point. Android has always been a mixed bag. Powerful, yes. But not as easy to use as the iPhone, a little bit ugly, and with a perpetual feeling that some screws had been left too loose in the rush to get the software out the door. At times, it’s felt like someone dropped an overpowered V8 engine into a janky sedan chassis. With ICS, those screws feel like they’ve been tightened. It doesn’t yet have the same polish as iOS, but I no longer feel like I’m having to sacrifice a pleasant experience for the sake of using solid Google apps and Android’s flexibility. In fact, overall, Ice Cream Sandwich has been a joy to use. Though it has yet to make me salivate. : Per commenter request, a word on the weights of each device. According to Wikipedia the iPhone 4S is five grams heavier than the GSM version of the Galaxy Nexus, clocking in at 140 grams to the Nexus’s 135 grams — so they should feel about the same in your hand. But The Nexus actually feels a bit lighter than the numbers would suggest, because it’s significantly larger and the weight is distributed over a larger area. |
Cyber Monday Kicks Off Record $6B Online Holiday Shopping Week Thanks To Free Shipping Offers | Leena Rao | 2,011 | 12 | 4 | Consumers continue to set records with online shopping sales this holiday season. After spending a whopping (and record) on Cyber Monday, online shoppers , with two other days in the past week eclipsing the $1 billion mark in e-commerce sales, bringing the total week’s value to $6 billion. comScore reports that Tuesday, November 29 reached $1.12 billion, while Wednesday, November 30 reached $1.03 billion. These three billion dollar spending days currently rank as three of the four heaviest online spending days in history (with Cyber Monday 2010 being the other). To date, $18.7 billion has been spent online this holiday season, a 15 percent increase from the same period last year. So what is the reason why more consumers are spending online? comScore says that free shipping is one major factor many shoppers are considering when paying for presents this holiday season. This incentive, says the data research company, is being used at record levels over the first few weeks of the holiday season. In fact, more than half of all transactions have included free shipping with rates increasing later into the season. The week of Thanksgiving (week ending Nov. 27) saw free shipping occur on 64.4 percent of transactions, while Cyber Week has maintained a similar level at 63.2 percent. In each case, these rates were approximately 10 percentage points higher than last year, showing that more consumers are using these incentives. comScore chairman Gian Fulgoni says that most consumers actually expect free shipping deals during holiday promotion periods, and retailers are realizing that including this incentive is necessary to lock-in shoppers. More than three-quarters of consumers say that free shipping is important to them when making an online purchase, and nearly half say they will abandon their shopping cart at checkout if they find free shipping is not being offered, he explains. Interestingly, free shipping also it tends to generate higher average order values, which helps retailers to at least partially offset lower margins. In fact, on Cyber Monday, IBM reported that the average order amount was up 2.6 percent this year from $193.24 to $198.26. As retailers continue to offer free shipping in the next few weeks, we’re left to wonder if ‘Free Shipping Day’ and the last few weeks of the holiday season will bring even higher sales. For background, Free Shipping Day is a marketing event that generally takes place Friday, December 16, one of the last days when merchants offer free shipping with delivery by Christmas Eve. comScore says that in past years Free Shipping Day has helped boost online spending activity later into the season. Last year’s Free Shipping Day, for example, was the third heaviest online spending day of the year at $942 million, a 61 percent increase from 2009. With , Cyber Monday, and now the remaining holiday shopping period continuing to break online sales records, clearly more and more consumers are flocking online to get better deals. And brick and mortar stores may be in trouble if this trend continues in future holiday seasons. With the massive amounts being spent this season, it does make you wonder if there will be a day when all of our holiday shopping will be done online. |
Friend Count Up, Sharing Down: Path Only Works If You Reject Those Friend Requests | Josh Constine | 2,011 | 12 | 4 | You’re going to be tempted, but don’t do it. Don’t add all your friends on Path. Don’t come anywhere near the 150-friend limit. And make the tough decision to reject the friend requests of people you care about. Because the , and you won’t do that if you’re sharing to people that aren’t your best friends. Path’s power comes from the intimacy of your connections, not the quantity. This is difficult to adjust to because we’ve been conditioned by most social applications to connect with everyone we know. Path is different because it’s a micronetwork, not an interest network or general social network. It can but isn’t designed for sharing content that’s relevant to a wide audience, like the articles you publicly tweet, or the major life events you share with hundreds of Facebook friends. lets you share things that only people who really care about you want to know, like when you wake up and go to sleep, or when you travel more than a few miles. If you are friends on Path with anyone you might feel embarrassed by sharing that content with, or that you think wouldn’t find that stuff interesting, you’re much less likely to share. The maximum sharing volume likely comes with a friend count of between 3 and 5. As you hit 15, 40, or 100, you’ll censor yourself more, and find less reason to use Path in addition to other services. That means you have to undertake the socially awkward experience of rejecting requests from your co-workers, acquaintances, and fellow early adopters, and make sure not to put them in the same position. You may have already let some loose acquaintances into your inner circle or have outstanding requests from Path 1, and will need to go in and remove them. I’ve received a dozen Path friend requests from people I’m hardly comfortable sharing my Facebook posts with, let alone my sleeping habits. This indicates a widespread lack of understanding of Path that the company will need to address. The fact that you’re not trying to maximize your audience creates a fundamental distribution problem for Path and any other micronetwork that pops up. How will the mainstream ever find out about Path or think it’s work their time if they’re not bombarded with invites? This may unfortunately be why micronetworks won’t succeed as standalone products, and may need to live within your general social network service of choice. Really, Path is about granularity — the ability to share with a subset of your friends. For now, this binary “Share just to Path friends, or share to all your friends” may be adequate. Eventually as devices like the give us more personal data, I think we’ll want even more sharing granularity. Depending on the content, we’ll want to the option to share to just our very best friends, our close friends, our nearby friends, all of our acquaintances, or the public. We might not be ready for it now though, judging by Facebook’s failed attempts to get everyone creating lots of Friend Lists. Path has a chance to own the micronetwork space until we’re ready for more granularity. However, to retain its value, Path must somehow keep users from reducing its distinction from existing social networks. Its on-boarding process may need to help by suggesting you only add your closest friends based on those you wall post or @reply with. It will hurt its growth, and finding the proper language will be tricky, but it is crucial that Path make it clear to users that they shouldn’t add just anyone. |
Dear Federal Trade Commission, Thank You For Not Saving Us From Facebook’s Privacy Changes | Eric Eldon | 2,011 | 12 | 4 | The Federal Trade Commission from doing things like making private user information public… back in 2009. Besides being years too late to impact key product decisions, the proposed settlement doesn’t go far in controlling what Facebook can do in the future. Which is a good thing. The company has willfully changed its product countless times over the years, ignoring its users, the developers on its platform, its advertisers, privacy advocates, politicians, etc. Facebook protest pages (um), scathing articles, and petitions to quit have pressured Facebook revert back from whatever it was trying to do. But they’ve all been forgotten, except for stragglers like the FTC case. What remains for most people is a vague sense that Facebook has “privacy issues.” But no one can agree on what they exactly are, and no on really seems to mind, anyway. Anyway, the site has 800 million users worldwide now, half of whom log in every day. It has gotten most of these users in the past few years precisely because it has gotten more open. Would the FTC have prevented Facebook from being such an important part of so many people’s lives if it had intervened sooner? It actually could have, when you look at Facebook’s evolution and its results. One of the single biggest issues that the FTC had, for example, was that Facebook had forced friend lists to become public in December of 2009. But those friend lists have made it much easier for all of us to do things like see what our friends are reading when we visit news sites. The way Facebook has succeeded with users is that it has changed the product based on how it has seen people using it, or how it thinks they’d want to use it. By convincing a closed community of college users to share all of their intimate details, then slowly making key parts of its site more public, it has been able to get all of its users sharing their identities online over the years. The problem with that plan was that Facebook didn’t always know what it could be or how it could get there. Friend lists, for example, started out private because Facebook didn’t imagine itself becoming the social layer of the internet. So, until November 2009, Facebook that “You choose what information you put in your profile, including contact and personal information, pictures, interests and groups you join. And you control the users with whom you share that information through the privacy settings on the Privacy page.” Along with an interface that allowed users to keep any piece of information about yourself private, that term led those who cared to understandably assume that Facebook would not force them to make some information they shared public. But then it changed the terms that November, and in December required everyone to make their profile name, profile picture, list of friends, current city, gender, networks, and fan pages public. It offered some ways to partially obscure this information, like making it so that your profile didn’t appear in searches, but the main result was still lots of private information becoming public. Facebook fundamentally deceived users in this case, even if it did so for what believed were the right reasons. A massive outcry followed, focusing on all the horrors that might come (but never really materialized). That triggered what became a key issue in the FTC investigation and, eventually, a main change in the settlement this week. Facebook now agrees to make all privacy changes to existing products opt-in. “Giving consumers clear and prominent notice and obtaining consumers’ express consent before their information is shared beyond the privacy settings they have established,” in the of the FTC. While it can still make new products and make privacy settings opt-out for those products, Facebook and the FTC clarified to us earlier this week, it’s hard to think of anything the company might do that would be very scary for most users. In the meantime — the past two years between the product change and the settlement — Facebook has pushed all sorts of new features that take direct advantage of all this public information. The change around friend lists and that data, in particular, has allowed it to launch the graph API, and the Like buttons and other social plugins that populate the web today. By letting your friends share the fact that they’re friends with you when they join other services, Facebook can make it easier for them to share what they do with you. The Like button requires just a click to let you share something with friends. It’s hard to know exactly how things would have gone differently if Facebook hadn’t made the changes when it did. Maybe people who keep friend lists private wouldn’t be able to receive shared items from friends? Or maybe everyone who wants to share anything would have to go through some sort of extra sharing approval window? More broadly, the types of changes the FTC has been pushing could have blocked broader background uses that we take for granted. For example, Facebook now takes the place of a phone book. You can look up anyone you’ve ever met in the world, and you’ll be able to see enough information about them to figure if you’d like to be friends. If Facebook hadn’t experimented, or if it had listened to criticism and pulled back, or if it had been prevented from making any changes by the FTC or other government bodies, every Facebook user might be a little less informed and more bored today. The FTC has fair points. Yes, Facebook shouldn’t have misled users about its intentions at some points in the past. No, it shouldn’t have made security errors that at times have let some private data out. Yes, it should try to provide more clarity to users when new changes happen. No, Facebook still shouldn’t have let deleted content be accessible. (Yes, its efforts to explains its changes over the years make for ). But Facebook was right to try to change its product to become somewhat more public. The world has been slowly getting more comfortable with coming online over the last couple decades. Like online payments before it, social data sharing has turned out to be something that people are fundamentally okay doing. If Facebook was going to become a social layer that made every product it touched more valuable, it needed to make some of that social sharing public as well. Doing something new and different is inherently full of mistakes. There will always be critics. But great results make everything else fade into the background. So thank you, Federal Trade Commission, thank you for taking nearly two years to tell Facebook how to handle privacy issues that were already over and done with. And thank you for not getting in the way of whatever Facebook is planning to launch next. [Facebook Privacy visualization by .] |
LG Nitro HD Review: You Win Some, You Lose Some | Jordan Crook | 2,011 | 12 | 4 | I find myself looking at the with mixed feelings. In some ways, it’s exactly what I’ve been asking for from LG, and in others it simply brings about disappointment. The software, in particular, failed to impress me. Hopefully a much more clogged (compared to the like, seven people that are using it now) will still find a way to outweigh the lag on what should be a high-end Android handset. To start, I want to say that this isn’t an awful phone and I want to applaud the fact that I think LG is moving in the right direction in terms of design. However, the LG Nitro HD simply isn’t the fastest, nor is it the most visually appealing phone on the market. LG made about as many good design choices as it did poor ones, in my opinion, and the software just doesn’t do anything to help it out. The real shining star here is AT&T’s 4G LTE network, and unfortunately . That said, it seems to be rock solid showing download speeds between 17 and 20 megabits per second. Then again, there are only so many people playing on that network right now so it’s hard to make judgements. The Nitro HD hardware shines in a few select spaces: the screen, the shape, and the textured back panel. Obviously the 4.5-inch 720p display can be considered the left cheek of this phone’s moneymaker (LTE being the right), and it does a good job at living up to the hype. We’re seeing great real-life color reproduction, and little to no differentiation between pixels. The shape of the phone feels great in the hand, and this coming from someone who prefers boxier builds like the Droid RAZR. It has rounded corners and a flat face and back, which makes such a large phone a tad easier to grip. The top edge the phone has squared edges, and then curves off around the sides and on the bottom. It’s 10.4mm thick, which is the exact midway point between the HTC Rezound and the Droid RAZR. Not thick, but not anorexic by any means. Then there’s the back panel. LG seems insistent on building plastic phones, which tend to feel a bit cheaper and less sturdy than phones made of metal. That said, the textured finish along the backside of the Nitro HD definitely makes the phone feel more solid and high-end than it actually is. Unfortunately, the majority of the phone, including that back panel, doesn’t take prints well at all. But for all the good, there’s plenty of bad. The micro-USB port along the top has a plastic covering which will no doubt break off at some point. Plus, I’m not all that fond of placing a micro-USB port square in the middle of the top or bottom of a phone, as it makes it hard to do anything in landscape when the phone’s plugged in. I’m also not all that thrilled with this strip of grey plastic connecting the black bezel to the rest of the phone. It simply works against all the work that textured back panel did to make this phone feel more high-end. In terms of sturdiness, I’m not all that convinced that the Nitro HD has the most solid build quality either. It creaks quite a bit when stressed, and if you put any pressure on the back panel you can feel it move around a bit, like it’s not securely latched on. : When speaking on software I must first do some back-peddling when it comes to . I , in fact, have some complaints when it comes to software performance on the Nitro HD. I didn’t notice when doing preliminary tasks just how much Android lags and stutters when switching between home screens and scrolling. Web surfing wasn’t any better, with the entire screen freezing up and then jumping into position during any form of pinch-to-zoom. LG’s Optimus overlay isn’t all that bad, to my surprise. The weather and social networking integration baked right into the UI are actually quite pleasant and seem to function quite well. The UI itself isn’t terribly obtrusive, but I fear that it may be contributing to the annoying lag I’m steadily growing impatient with. You’ll find a handful of AT&T bloatware-style apps, along with Amazon Kindle, Qik Lite, MOG Music and Zynga Poker HD pre-loaded. I’m actually pretty enthusiastic about the Nitro’s 8-megapixel camera. While it is a test in patience getting from home screen to snapped picture, the end product is exactly what you hoped it’d be. We saw really clear color reproduction, though the pictures do stray into greenish/greyish territory when using flash in low-light situations. The video capture capabilities performed well, too. It normally takes a second for a mobile camcorder to adjust from a sunny scene to indoors, but the Nitro HD’s camera did it quite quickly. To start I have to say that the speaker (lower-right portion of the back panel) on this phone is pretty underwhelming. Watching YouTube videos and talking on speakerphone was a struggle. Even with the volume all the way up, it makes you wonder what the point of a 4.5-inch HD screen is when you’re constantly holding the phone up to your ear. When you can hear it, watching video on the screen is a joy, as is playing games. The same lag that plagues the OS in general — from multi-tasking to opening/closing apps — doesn’t seem to be present during gaming or video playback. A nice change of pace. I’m also impressed with the battery life on the Nitro HD. I got a solid eight hours out of it (around five hours of setup, browsing, talking on the phone, gaming, taking pictures and watching video; the rest was standby). This may not sound like , but the truth is that most 4G LTE-capable phones suck wind in the battery department and eight hours is saying a lot. It’s also worth noting that I had the screen brightness turned all the way up. The Nitro HD is like a box of chocolates, you don’t know what you’re going to get. While watching video and playing games was a great experience, doing simple things like browsing the web or scrolling through the phone book was tedious. Some design choices (like that micro-USB mess) we could’ve done without, while others (like that back panel) are a great step in the right direction for LG. At $249 on a two-year contract, I’d say a lot is riding on whether or not you live in one of AT&T’s LTE markets and just how well AT&T’s LTE network performs. So far, things are looking pretty good on that front so I’d suggest doing a little research on whether you’re covered and perhaps picking up a Nitro HD (or a ) and seeing how you feel about AT&T’s new network.
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Princeton Beats Out 13 Schools to Win Facebook’s College Hackathon | Josh Constine | 2,011 | 12 | 4 | Overcoming stiff competition from MIT and Waterloo, Princeton won this year’s finals. Over the past few months, Facebook conducted run-off competitions at fourteen colleges across the United States and Canada, and this Friday held the finals at Facebook headquarters in Palo Alto. The Princeton team was the only one comprised mainly of women, and their winning project Color Me Bold allowed users to submit a photo of an outfit and receive instant, algorithmic fashion suggestions for how to improve its color scheme. Watch as we interview some of the top teams, play around on Facebook’s famous Ripstick skateboards, and talk with the winners about whether they’ll be turning their project into a startup. My personal favorite was MIT’s 2toBrowse, a Chrome extension that allowed two people on separate computers to both control active cursors and collaboratively browse the web. One users installs the extension, receives a special URL, and another can click it to instantly begin browsing together without having to download anything. The extension could help people teach their parents how to use a specific website, allow customer service departments to walk customers through solutions to problems, or provide entertainment. Other high quality projects included Georgia Tech’s Skoole, an on-campus peer-to-peer SMS-based textbook exchange, and a cloud-hosted security system from the University of Illinois team that lets users access their personal browser settings and files from public computers using the proximity of their mobile phone as the key. Waterloo produced the most technical project, a JavaScript MapReduce distributed computing library. The College Hackathon, also known as the Camp Hackathon, serves as a powerful recruiting tool for Facebook. By finding top young engineers and bringing them to the headquarters, Facebook increases the chance they’ll want to work for the company once they graduate — or drop-out like Facebook’s founders. Though I must say, the $500 per team member grand prize seems a bit small considering the company is preparing for a . At least last year’s winners got a summer internship at Facebook. |
LiveLead Lets You Share And Watch YouTube Videos With Your Facebook Friends In Real-Time | Leena Rao | 2,011 | 12 | 4 | Watching videos on YouTube or browsing through photos on Facebook is inherently a social action that you may do with friends while in front of a computer or TV. Startup , which is in private beta, allows you to remotely watch and chat about YouTube videos or photos remotely with your friends in real-time. Anyone in the group can search for new content, click ‘lead’ and it will automatically load on everyone’s computer. We have 500 invites for readers to try out the service Here’s how LiveLead works. You can create a room to share and watch YouTube videos in. You actually log-in with Facebook, and you’ll see a list of your friends that you can invite into a room. You simply click the ‘+’ symbol next to their name to send them a link that invites them to your active LiveLead group. If they are online, it will send them a link via Facebook chat, and if they are offline, you can send the invite link via a customizable Facebook message. You can then search for any YouTube video or your images on Facebook, and share this media with others and chat about what you are sharing via Facebook chat within the group. In terms of individual features, LiveLead allows you to sync videos so that everyone is watching at the same point in a video or slideshow. You can also find a specific instance of the video that you want to share with your friends, and fast forward to that part of the video. Everyone’s computer will instantly start playing the video at the desire point. Leaders in a group can also create a playlist of videos to continue to play, and save videos to your profile for later. Leaders can also preview a YouTube video on the right hand side of the application without disturbing the rest of the group before you share it with the group. LiveLead co-founder Christian Bendixen tells me that the startup wanted to recreate the action of sending links to YouTube videos and sharing new content in a more social and engaging setting. He adds that LiveLead is also working on ways to forms groups with friends and browse the web together as a group, similar to screen sharing but with individual abilities to control what each person is watching. There are other platforms that allow for group-viewing experiences, such as Google Hangouts, but Bendixen says that LiveLead provides a more social experience based on your Facebook friends. |
TechCrunch Tokyo Japan 2011: The Cambrian Explosion In Startups [Video] | Eric Eldon | 2,011 | 12 | 4 | A massive number of species appeared and began evolving some 580 million years ago, forming the basis of modern life. Now we’re in the middle of another “ ,” Erick Schonfeld explains in the video above, where the internet is primed for new startups like was for rapid evolution. Lower costs for getting started and the prevalence of internet-connected devices make it more possible for new companies to create big changes in seemingly slow-growing industries like health care, education and transportation. But that’s not great for everyone. Like the fossils show, many of the species didn’t find a way to survive in the ever-changing world. The video is of a talk Erick gave at ‘s conference this past week. You can read his original article on the topic . |
The White Album | Steve Gillmor | 2,011 | 12 | 4 | On the border, the hazy chirping of birds of a lazy Sunday morning, I lay here trying not to wake up too fast. And in that delicious world of memories old and newly created, I was back in Cambridge in my friend’s back yard listening to him talk to his friend James Taylor. I knew James’ sister from school, but only knew of him. Now, in that tween world, I realize he was on his way or just back from the White Album. In 1968 the Beatles returned from India to a brand new world of possibilities, including for the first time the seeds of their breakup. Their manager was dead, the inmates building the asylum called Apple, and the flow of new songs sending the group into simultaneous sessions that overwhelmed Abbey Road and spilled out into other studios around London. In those heady days, the Beatles had block booked so much studio time that they couldn’t use. Taylor, newly signed to the Apple label by his producer and manager (and head of the record label) Peter Asher, was the beneficiary of the already paid for session time, which they used to record his first record. The explosion of White Album material even carried over to the Beatles’ final record, as George Harrison borrowed the first line, Something in the way she moves, for his own song. For some time now I’ve been trying to put my finger on what’s going on in today’s social world that’s so impossibly possible. In the dream world of Sunday morning it hits me, or I it. A series of parallel universes, sweet dreams and flying machines in pieces on the ground. The magic of the intersection of technology and human aspiration. The sad beauty of reaching for the unattainable and in the process finding something perhaps unexpected but perfect all the same. We complain about information glut, about not wanting to know what we had for breakfast, about the need for filters to staunch the flow of too-short factoids and too-long tirades. But step back and let the dream back in, and you see this possible world of tunnels across time and space, the bits dancing across the wireless landscape like some Harry Potter ride down secret passageways of our own construction. A GarageBand for our work, for forgetting the filters and algorithms and finding the people of our graphs instead. Think about it, not too hard so as to dispel the illusion, but just enough to let it flower. We can: Create networks that span the Globe over free wifi
Stream music and pages up to the big screen as we exercise
Send live video around the world or privately for a small group
Drag and drop documents, songs, images, ideas, links, alerts, and conversation
Cuddle with our children across the oceans
Rally around an idea or elect a president or build a hospital or nurture our friends
Live some part of our dreams or invent new ones There’s plenty of room for pessimism, misuse, lost opportunity, stupid legislation, gossip, and just about every kind of useless time wasting except for All My Children. This isn’t some hippy daydream on the road to Altamont though. Just watch as Amazon relentlessly rolls over the bricks and mortars, how Black Friday has become Black EveryDay, why Superman can’t find a phone booth to change in. No, you see the strong survive, the passionate find what only they first saw as the obvious, like Dennis Crowley staring down Facebook with an insouciant confidence in the small and validated by Google throwing away Dodgeball. Like Twitter stubbornly becoming the very thing they said was never going to happen: the worldwide news bus. So much going on that it’s impossible to muzzle, except at the last second when you literally have to cut off the stream itself and signal capitulation. You see it in the children, who use video chat to maintain friendships across the chasm of middle school and job changes and time zones. Imagine what impact this has on their lives, to be able to retain the village it takes to nurture our hopes and possibilities. Our teenaged daughter has already prepared us for our new e-nester life, texting us from her bedroom downstairs to say goodnight. Today, downstairs; tomorrow, from New York. I can’t talk about the miraculous film Hugo without giving it away, but the way it enters the field of dreams and lives there resonates with the world of the White Album. To call it a film is of course ironic, given it was created in digital 3D. An homage to the earliest days of Melies and the birth of cinema, it quickly becomes something more where the 3D effects illustrate how the technology is only there to escape the boundaries of the frame. At once old fashioned and deeply futuristic, Mother Superior jumps the gun. Finally, the dream state yields to the urgency of breakfast, of playing with puppies, of getting a jump start on the work week. Time to complain of no time, tethered to our time machines in pieces on the ground. Someone complained in an @mention about something missing in this week’s Gillmor Gang. How it used to be better. He might be right, so I followed him. Now he’s beginning to show up in News.Me and Flipboard. Now it’s up to him to help fix it. Take these broken wings and learn to fly. |
Mint Founder’s New Project, Swift, Studies Personal Maglev Vehicles | Erick Schonfeld | 2,011 | 12 | 4 | Aaron Patzer, the founder of Mint, has a new project that he is spending half his time on (he continues to spend the other half as VP of Product Innovation at Intuit, which acquired Mint two years ago for ). His new project is called , and it is his vehicle (if you will) to exlore the feasibility of building a personal maglev vehicle transit system. “The goal is to see if I can develop a new transportation system to displace cars in most urban and suburban settings,” he told me recently, “with the goal being 5x the speed, and bringing the cost of maglev from today’s costs of $50m / mile down to $4-5m / mile, which would be the same as adding one lane of asphalt/concrete road. Not sure if it will pan out, as I’m deep in the science and simulation phase.” After a lot of analysis and setting up some simulations, he figures that he can built a system with two-person “pods” hanging underneath maglev rails which will operate at the equivalent of 800 miles-per-gallon, at 3 to 4 times the speed of regular cars. But even that will not be enough to displace cars. He’s concluded that the numbers don’t pan out. And he just shared his findings in an . It has all sorts of details on his concept and how it would work, but here is the conclusion: While a 3-4x velocity improvement, 800+mpg energy efficiency, and 3-4x reduction in cost over light-rail systems, it’s not enough to displace cars. The future of transportation is still the concrete and asphalt road, for the simple reason that at $17 per tonne of asphalt versus $900 per tonne of steel or $10,000 per tonne of copper, roads are the only thing cheap enough to be ubiquitous in lower density areas. Not even the ultra lightweight track of Swift looks cheap enough to displace roads outside of dense urban areas where, because it uses a much smaller rolling stock (number of vehicles) and can have higher throughput, mass transit is likely a better approach. If roads are the future, then so is the self-driving car, functioning like an on-demand taxi system, connected into a centralized traffic database to avoid congestion and minimize time, and driven by computers in a platoon formation of 5-10 cars to minimize aerodynamic drag by up to 35%. It is quite possible the same system-level traffic engineering algorithms developed at Swift can be used in such a self-driving system. That said, Swift PRT as a maglev concept will be abandoned. No track-based system (not maglev, not light-rail or metro systems) can compete with the cost and ubiquity of roads for population densities below 5000 people / km2. It looks like those Google is developing might not be such a crazy idea after all. I hope Patzer figures it out. These are exactly the kinds of big, world-changing ideas startup founders should be tackling. |
Exploring The “Labs” Trend in Consumer Startups | Semil Shah | 2,011 | 12 | 4 | For those of us who studied (or suffered through) chemistry at some point in life, images from the chem lab inspire nostalgia (or dread). White lab coats. Protective goggles and gloves. Glass beakers and measuring cups. It was a place of experimentation. Students were given strict lab instructions, such as “Don’t mix baking soda and vinegar” or “be careful when mixing Mentos with soda,” which many of course ignored. Whether one liked chemistry or not, there was usually an undeniable sense of excitement at conducting experiments that had the potential to cause chemical reactions, the kind that would trigger loud sounds, big messes, and new things. In the world of technology companies, the “labs” concept and nomenclature found a friendly home. Microsoft Research has , there’s , and , and let’s not forget the once-mighty Google Labs ( ), among many others. Digging into the history of big tech “labs” would be the subject worthy of a book, of course, but in the context of this narrow post, it’s worth briefly noting that for those that make things and are builders, every big company needed to have something like this for branding, recruiting, and to keep the innovation engine humming as their corporate parents grew larger and more bureaucratic. Perhaps each one wasn’t referred to as a “lab” explicitly in name, as Amazon has and Google now has . No matter the name, there’s something powerful in the word that reminds us of the old chem lab and that spirit of experimentation. Big tech companies have hearty budgets to set up “labs” for their best and brightest to cook up new ideas within. In the world of tech startups, by contrast, the original image “labs” conjures up is of a few people “sitting in their garage” hacking new ideas. In this world, it’s a powerful metaphor and how founders of seminal companies like and etched their legend. Of course, HP was started in a in Palo Alto. In these and many other startup garage stories, there’s something primal, something irreverent about the type of experimentation that takes place in the garage versus the big tech lab company. Fast forward to the eve of 2012, where it’s significantly cheaper to develop web and mobile applications now that software costs have plummeted and large distribution networks exist for startups to harness, though it still remains very to get discovered. The “labs” nomenclature is back in vogue in the consumer web and mobile spaces, and the gritty garage has been replaced with urban loft studios filled with hipster gear and Blue Bottle Coffee. There are a few high-profile “labs” companies, such as and , as well as many others, such as (AdmOb founder Omar Hamoui’s new mobile company), (Bebo founder Michael Birch’s entrepreneurial vehicle), (makers of “ ,” a site I really like), (building the reputation graph), (which reinvented the home thermostat), and of course, . There’s everything from the (interdisciplinary projects in media) and , an incubator funded by Polaris Ventures, with “labs” in NYC, SF, Cambridge, Mass. and Dublin, Ireland. (There are many more companies with “labs” in the name, search for more.) Why all the “labs” startup companies all of a sudden? There are a host of reasons. It sounds cool. The language is both inspirational and aspirational. There is a history of carving out these experimental activities within established technology companies, so folks in the community understand the connection and recall their own experiences, either in big tech companies or dating back to school chemistry class. And, it may be easier to find domain names and corresponding social media accounts and username handles with the extra “lab” letters at the end. These are just surface-level reasons, of course. The deeper trend, especially as it pertains to the consumer web and mobile arenas, is that these shops are being set up similarly to fashion or game design studios. In a game studio, designing just one game can be risky. Instead, these studios work on different concepts on the assumption that they’ll learn in the process and (hopefully) increase the likelihood of developing a hit among different projects. Not everyone welcomes this trend. Some people in the startup community that the “labs” concept comes at the expense of company focus and clarity of mission, or that a series of “smaller experiments” could adversely affect employee morale, consumer loyalty, recruitment, and equity considerations. While some of these “labs” may not resemble how companies like Apple or HP started with grander visions, the spirit of experimentation is still there, just in very different forms. Regardless of whether or not a startup has the word “lab” on its doorfront or legal documents, all new companies are sort of lab experiments in and of themselves and carry similar risks irrespective of semantics. At the current moment, and perhaps for the next few years, a good chunk of mobile tech and design talent is concentrated in these little pockets that morph into labs companies. Investors are keen to be involved here. It’s a different kind of gamble, but in the mobile app world, the skills are very specific and in short supply. And with all the competition in the various app stores, it’s nearly impossible to predict if a new product launch will like Color’s first release did or hopefully explode (in a good way) like . Furthermore, many of these founders and employees at “labs” companies could be very to more mature startups or larger tech companies, so by creating their own shops, they have amplified this scarcity and created extra leverage in future M&A considerations. In this vein, I believe the first release from Milk, an app called , will be something we’ll look back on as a case study. Milk has a small team of seven. The founder is experienced and influential (Kevin Rose). Its angel investors are stars, yet it raised a modest sum. Its overarching mission is to develop mobile applications, and it’s first release, Oink, which was shipped in six months and is beautifully designed (though quite a bit of work), is meant to encourage users to rate things inside places. Given these factors, it had everything an app shop could dream of. As a result, Oink has been downloaded, used, and talked about often in tech circles, though we will just have to wait and see how usage fares as the Milk team tries to get broader adoption or ultimately moves on to the next project. At the end of the day, however, simply labeling a company a “lab” just boils down to semantics. It really doesn’t matter. What does matter is how these smaller companies are forming around talent that the rest of the community can’t seem to recruit because there are stronger incentives for them to go down the “labs” path. This is rational, and I’d argue, a good thing for the time being. Until more and more people amass and perfect these engineering and design skills for application development, we need the current crop of those who do to start building the next generation of products and services on their own, free of the trappings of operating within a larger company. Just how this process unfolds, however, will remain a mystery. Startup “labs” could define a goal right upfront that is well-scoped, or they could just collect the best talent and wing it. There’s really no way for us to know what the best way forward is. While we knew better than to mix dangerous chemicals in the school laboratory, creating a breakthrough product today requires real experimentation and a certain level of disrespect for the rules and conventions, the type of experimentation outside of the traditional “lab” environment that encourages entrepreneurs do totally random things–like mint-flavored Mentos with Diet Coke, as in the picture above–hopefully with dramatic results. Flickr / |
The Lean Finance Model Of Venture Capital | Erick Schonfeld | 2,011 | 12 | 4 | The venture capital industry is going through a ton of disruptions lately. One of the better explanations I’ve heard recently of what is going on comes from Duncan Davidson, a managing partner at who gave a great talk on the subject at TechCrunch Tokyo last week. I interviewed him backstage on video, where he summarized his views. Just as there are now legions of “lean startups” which require less capital to build a product, Davidson argues that a “lean finance model” is also needed. “We are in the era of cheap. The whole concept is keep the company as lean as possible until the company validates its market, then you shovel the money in.” Tech startups don’t need $5 million A rounds when $2 million to $3 million will do. So A rounds now get bypassed until a company proves itself and then you see these huge later-stage rounds. Or sometimes the startup gets sold for $30 million to $50 million, which is okay, since it didn’t have to grow into a huge valuation to begin with. In this view, we are not really seeing a (where the growing number of seed-funded companies are failing to find series A money). Rather, they are getting smaller amounts to see them through until acquisition or a later mega-round where the big VCs throw their weight around. “I call it a shovel-in round,” he says. “We go under the A.” He notes that now half of all of the first institutional money going into startups is now “coming from a new breed of super angels.” This is a dramatic change from just two years ago,when less than 10 percent of the money was coming from super angels (see slide below). The big-name VCs will still do okay. In the first half of this year, of all the money going to venture capital. It’s the middle tier firms that are scrambling for survival. |
With 415 Graduates, Founder Institute Claims To Be Largest Startup Incubator | Rip Empson | 2,011 | 12 | 5 | Last week, Erick wrote about the dramatic increase in startups and early-stage businesses we’ve been seeing over the last few years, . In these fertile times for startups, naturally, there’s plenty of funding to be had: In the last year, , there were more than 1,100 seed/angel funding rounds, up from 855 in 2008. There are fewer barriers to startup creation now than ever before, and as businesses pop up left and right, so have the incubators and accelerators that provide these companies with the early fuel they need to build their products. Y Combinator, one of the more well-known startup incubators in the world, is , for example, and recently expanded the size of its classes to keep pace with demand. Each of the prominent incubators, Y Combinator, TechStars, 500 Startups, and Founder Institute, among them, have been expanding their programs and networks, both at home and overseas. TechStars has added hubs in a number of cities, and both 500 Startups and Y Combinator recently launched their “largest batches yet”. It seems that with each passing “semester”, enrollment continues to grow. But which of these incubators is the largest? It depends on how you define “largest” — each of these incubators rock and each has its own case. But one in particular thinks it has the “biggest” case: , today announced that it has become the largest incubator in the world — at least in terms of the number of alumni, mentors, and locations. Founder Adeo Ressi told us that the incubator has now helped launch 415 startups worldwide, with a total of 483 graduated entrepreneurs. Founder Institute has done so in less than 2.5 years, and Ressi says that, when the ten operating sessions graduate in the next two months, the Institute will exceed 500 companies launched and is on pace to launch an average of two tech companies per day in 2012. The Founder attributes the incubator’s growth to, among other things, focusing not on bringing startups to Silicon Valley, but on building startup ecosystems in national and international markets, allowing entrepreneurs to create their businesses at home. The Institute is directly operating in 20 different locations and counts over 700 mentors among its flock. Of course, while Founder Institute may be the largest in terms of scale and alumni (Y Combinator has graduated , TechStars 114, 500 Startups 174, and Plug and Play 300+), it does not hold claim to being the largest in terms of the number of exits that generated cash returns or the amount of money raised. The top 21 companies incubated by Y Combinator, for example, have a combined value of $4.7 billion, . Comparatively, 41 percent of Founder Institute graduates have received funding, for a total of more than $30 million. Founder Institute companies have averaged about $2.5 million for their series A raises, the largest of which was $5 million. While the Institute has produced entrepreneurs that have gone on to found companies like Cake Health, I-DISP, Identifii, Kaliki, Rentcycle, and Udemy, Founder Institute has yet to produce high-valuation companies like Dropbox and Airbnb — both of which are Y Combinator graduates and have raised over $100 million. While more than 100 of Founder Institute’s graduates are based internationally, 20 percent have female founders, 40 percent have been funded, and the Institute plans to add another 75 international locations, the incubator has to be careful that it isn’t just becoming a startup mill. Entrepreneurs want to be sure that they receive fair ROI, and the total amount of funding raised by graduates, the number of successful exits, and high valuations can be a good marker for determining this. Founder Institute accepts an average of 30 percent of the startups that apply to its program (compared to 3 percent for Y Combinator), so startups know that they have a better chance of getting in. Yet, unlike other incubators, Founder Institute doesn’t invest in its startups, though it does take 3.5 percent of the graduating companies and puts it into a pool for the founders, mentors and people who operate local chapters. The key for Founder Institute is its international footprint. Seed Camp, in contrast, has a significant (and growing) international presence, but it doesn’t have the same connection to Silicon Valley that Ressi has forged over the last 2.5 years. There is a growing push to invest in up-and-coming international tech hubs, and with the Institute planning 75 new locations (in London, Buenos Aires, Seoul, Bangalore, Abu Dhabi, Istanbul, and Cape Town, to name a few), the incubator may have a leg up on incubators focused solely in the U.S. It’s also important, as part of this expansion, to get support of local governments and ecosystems. Singapore’s government has been backing 100 percent of Founder Institute grads with investment grants, market access and other services — so even without investing significant capital in startups themselves, it’s partnerships like these that will make Founder Institute continue to fly — without being seen as a startup mill. Applications for Founder Institute’s Winter 2011 program are being accepted through tomorrow, so readers interested can take FI’s and . |
PayPal Restores Zivity’s Account After Saying It Was Obscene, But Now It’s Not | Jon Orlin | 2,011 | 12 | 5 | restored sexy social network account tonight after a weeklong battle over whether the website violates its policy. bills itself as “Hotness. In Person” where “76,102 people just like you rub elbows with models, photographers, and video artists.” But early Thanksgiving morning, PayPal decided it didn’t want to rub elbows with Zivity anymore after four years of doing business together. According to Zivity CEO and Editor-in-Chief , Zivity asked PayPal if the content of the website would be an issue before they signed up with the payment processor. After a review by PayPal, Banister says she was told there were “no issues”. PayPal became the engine behind a majority of Zivity’s subscription payments. Then over the holiday, Zivity got an email from PayPal saying “after a recent review of your account activity, it has been determined that you are in violation of PayPal’s Acceptable Use Policy” and the account has been “permanently limited.” That meant PayPal could hold the funds in the account up to 180 days. Zivity was ordered to remove all references to PayPal from their website. According to PayPal’s cited in the email, PayPal may not be used to send or receive payments for certain sexually oriented materials or services or for items that could be considered obscene. So, what was acceptable for four years suddenly became a violation. What those “certain” materials are or what could be considered obscene is unclear. Since Zivity’s photos are non-exclusive, some of the same images on Zivity appear on and , both of which use PayPal to process payments. Banister says she called and emailed PayPal for a week to appeal the decision. She even had a potential inside connection. Zivity’s Co-founder and Chairman, and Cyan’s husband, is . He is named as a co-inventor on the original PayPal patent for its email payment system as well as being an early PayPal board member and investor. But Cyan and Scott’s connections had long left PayPal, and they got nowhere. After getting the original email, she removed PayPal from her site. Earlier today, a story about Zivity’s blocked account ran on the TV station. PayPal told NBC: “We cannot comment on specifics of Zivity.com’s account due to our privacy policy. However, we can confirm that PayPal does not allow our services to be used for the sale of adult-oriented digital materials. This is clearly stated in PayPal’s Acceptable Use Policy.” Soon after the NBC segment appeared (coincidence or not?), Zivity got an email saying their account had been restored. PayPal did a further review and determined “the account is currently not in violation of our Acceptable Use Policy.” No explanation was given for what, if anything, had changed. PayPal apologized for any inconvenience and pointed to the same vague Acceptable Use Policy for any further questions. So for now, Zivity can come back to PayPal. I asked Cyan if she was considering a switch to a new payment provider. She says she will look at alternatives, but “my members love, use, and want PayPal” and she doesn’t want to take the service away from them. TechCrunch contacted PayPal for comment tonight, but has not received a reply. is a contributing writer to TechCrunch and hosts the show Speaking Of.. on TechCrunch TV. |
DNSCrypt Encrypts Your DNS Traffic Because There’s Always Someone Out To Get You | John Biggs | 2,011 | 12 | 5 | We’ve talked about quite a bit over the years, noting that these guys know what geeks like: free, fast DNS lookups that smooth out the Internet’s rough edges and shave seconds off of many web tasks. Now OpenDNS is offering DNSCrypt, a service that completely encrypts your DNS sessions, ensuring that evil ha><0rZ can't see where you're headed on the web. The service also prevents man-in-the-middle DNS attacks. The service also automatically enables OpenDNS on your machine, thereby killing multiple birds with one multi-megabyte OS extension. What does it do? Basically DNSCrypt wraps your DNS conversation in an SSL wrapper. Considering most DNS sessions are plaintext, this a huge deal. They've even made the source code available for so that independent security experts can test their claims. From the website: In the same way the SSL turns HTTP web traffic into HTTPS encrypted Web traffic, DNSCrypt turns regular DNS traffic into encrypted DNS traffic that is secure from eavesdropping and man-in-the-middle attacks. It doesn’t require any changes to domain names or how they work, it simply provides a method for securely encrypting communication between our customers and our DNS servers in our data centers. We know that claims alone don’t work in the security world, however, so we’ve opened up the source to our DNSCrypt code base and it’s available on GitHub (ed: not yet posted). DNSCrypt has the potential to be the most impactful advancement in Internet security since SSL, significantly improving every single Internet user’s online security and privacy. The system has automatic failover to an unsecured state and can prevent folks from snooping on your DNS calls in a coffee shop or unsecured cyber cafe. Sadly, it’s not a full proxy so it won’t hide your browsing habits from local censors. It’s available now for the Mac, and Linux/Windows versions are forthcoming. |
Watch The Dance Of The Flying Builderbots | John Biggs | 2,011 | 12 | 5 | [youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JnkMyfQ5YfY] When I first wrote about the dancing quadcopters last week, I . Well, now there’s video. The has a great collection of photos and a fresh video from the exhibit showing how the robots work in concert to build a fun little tower. It’s a wild project and a wild technology and, more important, these monsters can scale to build bigger buildings. Could robots one day build our houses or, more in keeping with the theme of future robotic uprisings, . |
The Nerdy Address Of Facebook’s New Headquarters? 1 Hacker Way | Josh Constine | 2,011 | 12 | 5 | Apple has 1 Infinite Loop, Genentech has 1 DNA Way, and now Facebook has its own vanity headquarters address: 1 Hacker Way, Menlo Park, 94025. Seen here on a brand new business card of a Facebook employee, the address epitomizes the company’s internal motto “Move Fast and Break Things”. 1 Hacker Way should help Facebook project the image that it is an engineering company where coders can experiment and find autonomy rather than bureaucracy. Facebook is slowly transitioning from its existing buildings in Palo Alto to the new Menlo Park headquarters which . Back in February, Facebook its plans to move into the former Sun Microsystems campus at 1 Network Drive, which can house up to 3600 employees. The relatively remote location was derided with the name “Sun Quentin” because employees are effectively imprisoned there due to the lack of nearby restaurants and businesses. Hopefully the playful address will make it seem more fun to commute to. 1 Hacker Way is the central address for the campus, though specific buildings have their own addresses. For example, . An employee tells us that the campus was originally slated to be addressed 1 Social Circle, but Google+ and its Circles friend lists led that named to be scrapped. We’ve compiled a list of some technology companies with vanity addresses, but hit us up in the comments with any we missed. Thankfully Facebook chose a less boring and narcissistic one than Dell, though the American Physical Society gets my vote as it even made the street name (or odonym) something nerdy. |
TechHub announces expansion with new office in Prague | vaughn597 | 2,011 | 12 | 5 |
Startup workspace T today announced its expansion to Prague. The new space will be much like the original TechHub London site, featuring a drop-in working space for annual members, permanent desks for resident startups and most of all a networking platform for the local startup scene. The space will open in the first quarter of 2012. In charge at the office will be serial entrepreneur and former Skype engineer , who currently runs the accelerator program. Obviously excited about the project, Lukas commented on the announcement saying the “rapid development of the startup scene in Prague and the lack of necessary communities make it the perfect time to open a Prague location”. Pearson, Google and Telefonica’s BlueVia are confirmed sponsors of TechHub Prague. Like TechHub London the project will draw its funding from membership fees and corporate sponsors. TechHub has plans to open a number of other offices throughout 2012 to continue its global expansion. “We’ve seen the tech scene continue its global expansion impressively this year and, while the TechHub London has been enthusiastically welcomed by the community here and abroad, we want to ensure that this community spirit and support is accessible to technology startups all over the world,” co-founder said. TechHub was founded in 2010 as a co-working space for the tech community. Its London office is located in Old Street, hosting workspace facilities, meeting rooms and occassional events. |
LEGO And Minecraft: Made For Each Other | Devin Coldewey | 2,011 | 12 | 5 | While this can’t be the first time LEGO and have been mentioned in the same breath, I think it’s the first time they’ve really been mixed to this degree. Mojang, the developer of the multi-million-selling mining and adventuring game has put up a project on LEGO’s site, which allows people to submit LEGO projects and get royalties from them if they’re selected for production. As a player of Minecraft, I can actually see some utility in this, in addition to the fact that it’s just plain cool and a good fit. Minecraft’s blocks are a regular size and these blocks could actually be used to plan out the fabulous palaces and apparati we all have planned for our little worlds. I’d also love a Creeper minifig. In order for this to be reviewed by LEGO, the design needs 10,000 votes. Right now there are actually two projects, and . The former has about 4000 votes and the latter has almost 6000, so they could both use your support if you’re interested in this at all. You can sign in with Facebook or get an account at the site, which is actually quite neat. Perhaps this was the project Minecraft lead dev Notch was ? |
Historic UK Tube Station Bans DSLRs But Not Other Cameras | Devin Coldewey | 2,011 | 12 | 5 | Here’s an odd little quirk of the modern age you’re not likely to see again soon. South of Holborn in London (many nice bookstores in the area), there’s a tube station that has been out of use for decades. has been preserved as an historical landmark and used in a number of films and shows. Just recently it was opened up to the public for tours: £20 for entry, doubtless an interesting spectacle popular among both tourists and locals. “Due to their combination of high-quality sensor and high resolution, digital SLR cameras are unfortunately not permitted inside the station.” How delightfully absurd! Now, naturally there must be some restrictions on recording equipment. You mustn’t use flash photography on the Mona Lisa, and professional videographers and photographers apply for licenses for off-hours shoots and so on. So it’s not like you can bring your tripod, flash umbrella, models and stylists to do an impromptu shoot wherever you like. But really, now. A wholesale ban on an extremely popular device very likely to be possessed by the people coming to this location? And of course the DSLR format is by no means a guarantee of quality pictures, if preventing quality is the aim of this policy. A mobile phone will take better pictures than DSLRs from a few years back if used properly. And compact high-quality cameras are gaining ground as well: would the security guards confiscate an or camera? In the case of a museum or tour, in which the property is in fact private and you are paying for admission, you must agree to their silly rules, though I expect such rules will soon be dropped as they are recognized as pointless and ineffective. But this kind of ignorant restriction is of a piece with the more disturbing ones we see placed on public photography, in which entire buildings are supposedly immune to picture-taking from the street. The rules are imaginary, of course, or at best arbitrary, as shown here. It’s not even worth arguing about how you might circumvent it. This sign is something you can just shake your head at and buy a postcard to make up for a lack of photos, but the mindset behind it — aggressive ignorance — is dangerous. [via and ] |
Asus: Netbooks Outsold Tablets Nearly 3 To 1 In 2011, Big Things In Store For 2012 | Matt Burns | 2,011 | 12 | 5 | Netbooks are still big business for Asustek. So much so that the hotness from 2009 outsold Asus tablets in 2011. Per numbers released at the company’s global sales meeting (and ), Asustek expects to ship 4.8 netbooks by the end of 2011 but only 1.8 million tablets. But that’s expected to change in 2012. The roles will be reversed and Asus sees big things for next year. Once upon a time, the Eee PC was the netbook to own. It was loved by moms and modders alike. It was (and still is) cheap, well-equipped, and widely available at a number of retailers. In 2010 the Eee PC owned 20% of the netbook market and it’s estimated that Asus shipped 6-8 million units that year alone. But netbooks were always a stopgap product of sorts and never expected to be with us forever. With shipments predictable down in 2011, the company is likely looking to tablets to pick up the slack. Asus offered basically one tablet model in 2011: the hot Eee Pad Transformer. This tablet was where it instantly won over geeks with impressive specs but an even more tasty $399 MSRP. Even though it didn’t hit the retail market until May, it apparently sold pretty well for an Android device. It must have made up the bulk of Asus’ tablet sales. Besides the Transformer, there’s the Eee Pad Slider and the brand new Transformer Prime. But those three tablets stood tall against the company’s established but shrinking Eee PC product line. Asus is predicting a total shipment amount of 1.8 million tablets this year. That number is expected to rise to 3 million next year, picking up the slack of the dying netbook, but also, per Asus, surpassing Samsung’s tablets. Yep, Asus expects to beat the Samsung Galaxy Tab army. That would be, in case you can’t keep up, the Samsung Galaxy Note, the GalTab 7.0, the 7.7, the 8.9, the 10.1 and all the different variations between them — those are just the models announced this year. If Asus follows its own recent path, it expects to best Samsung with a much more simple offering. Netbooks shot Asus into the primetime and established the company as a consumer brand. But netbooks are quickly getting killed off by tablets. If Asus stays its course and things go as they hope, the journey between netbooks and tablets should be relatively painless. |
How Badoo Got 130 Million People Meeting Each Other and $100M In Revenue (TCTV) | Josh Constine | 2,011 | 12 | 5 | Badoo, the online network for meeting new people recently reached 130 million registered users and now brings in $100 million a year. Based out of London’s Silicon Roundabout, would be the 4th biggest social network if it was just a social network. But Badoo adapts to the local needs of its international user base. In the UK it’s used for casual dating, in the Czech Republic it’s a marriage site, and in Indonesia burqa-clad women find self-expression on the site. To give us insight into how Badoo reached its stellar revenues, built its user base, and succeeded in Europe, we brought Chief Marketing Officer Jessica Powell in to talk to us on TechCrunch TV. Watch as she tells us how 50% of the conversations on Badoo now lead to an offline meetup. Badoo has attained massive success without requiring a presence in Silicon Valley. Powell cites London and Berlin and upcoming innovation centers where European startups should consider moving if they’re serious about finding funding and great talent. Back in 2006, Badoo saw Facebook’s explosive growth and instead of trying to compete, it differentiated by focusing something Facebook wasn’t — helping strangers connect. Startups shouldn’t think about what’s fun or interesting, but should identify a widespread problem that isn’t already being addressed by another company. For example, helping people capture the beauty from their every day lives sounds fun, but Instagram has that mostly covered, and there’s not much more of a problem to solve in photo sharing. While it can be tempting to gate some crucial features behind a pay wall, Badoo decided to make all of its core functionality free. Powell tells me this has contributed to its 60% year over year user growth, because all users feel like they’re getting the full experience. While it was growing to a scale where it could support itself, Badoo took . Now it doesn’t need to take additional funding rounds. To reach its $100 million in yearly revenues, though, Badoo lets users pay to be more visible and learn who they should try to start a conversation with. It employs a combination of micropayments that allow users to improve their search ranking, and subscriptions to special features like the ability to see who has viewed their profile. It’s only starting to allow outside advertisers to buy space on the site, meaning there’s plenty of potential for its revenues to grow. Badoo has laid a sensible path to monetization that others startups can learn from. Give away the core functionality, take serious funding so you don’t have to monetize too aggressively too early, get users hooked on a quality experience, and then upsell them on perks that help them more efficiently attain their desired outcomes. |
EyeEm app picks up the pace as European startups fight for the photo crown | Mike Butcher | 2,011 | 12 | 5 | Pretender to the throne, , a camera and photo discovery app startup, has launched a big update across its Android and iOS apps and the supporting web platform. It’s now even even more about visual, location-based search and has also introduced more social features. For the last couple of years one of the main battles around smartphone apps has been around photo apps. One of the main ones to beat in this reach has been Instagram which recently reached around 14 million users, but there’s a battle going on in Europe for users which is perhaps less known but equally as fierce. One of the earlier players in Europe is out of Amsterdam which did the same as Instagram in sending images across other social networks. They’ve now hit 1.2m users (both via android, iPhone and simple twitter integration). Two other pretenders to the thrown are , which is doubling down on Android and has had almost 5000,000 . Bringing up the rear but innovating fast is EyeEm out of Berlin. The new version has a new album feed that automatically shows photos of current nearby events, places and trending topics. It’s also pulling in numbers: 134 countries, 35,000 unique locations and 15,000 user events, according to co-founder, Florian Meissner. The web platform now has new user profiles with personal avatars and status bubbles. Next up will be an API for 3rd party developers EyeEm has an undisclosed amount of seed funding from Passion Capital and Pan-European Venture Capital fund Wellington Partners. |
Shopper Tracker’s Kinect Hack Is Like Google Analytics For Retail Store Shelves | Josh Constine | 2,011 | 12 | 5 | Brick and mortar store owners can now get access to the same kind of analytics available to website admins. is a new product from Argentinian developer built off of Microsoft Kinect. It analyzes customer movements to provide traffic flow analysis and heat maps indicating which shelves are attracting shoppers and which products they touch or take. This can be tied to conversion data by product SKU to help merchants optimize where products are placed within their stores. To attain similar market research, merchants typically have to pay observers or use equipment and surveys that are expensive, inaccurate, and influence the behavior of the people they’re studying. With Shopper Tracker, multiple shoppers can be simultaneously tracked around the clock. As it doesn’t cost much more to conduct longer studies, merchants can get more confident results and do A/B testing. , a company that debuted at our TechCrunch Disrupt conference, tries to pull similar traffic flow data from a store’s existing surveillance cameras. While Shopper Tracker requires an initial set up cost of buying several Kinect sensors, it provides much more specific activity about customer behavior. You can watch a demo video of Shopper Tracker in action . Also, check out our for more exciting hacks and a look at Microsoft’s beautiful new ad for the Kinect APIs. |
Secure.me Launches Social Privacy Monitoring Tool For The World After Gaining A Foothold In Germany | Eric Eldon | 2,011 | 12 | 5 | More and more of us are getting comfortable sharing our real-world identities online, but the tools for helping us maintain our online privacy and security are still catching up to our behavior. Witness the attack that caused many users to accidentally share and see nasty images in their news feeds. German company has a solution, that it has recently launched to the world: an online service that analyzes your Facebook profile for any data that’s putting your privacy at risk. It’s not the only service out there. include , and (the latter two being designed primarily for parents watching their kids). But Secure.me is interesting for a couple reasons. One is the ease of use, and the other is the dual individual and parent focus. First, the interface does a nice job of mimicking high-end virus protection software — you can see scores and analysis happening in front of you in a reassuring dashboard format. You start out simply by connecting with Facebook. The site will then automatically begin scanning your Facebook profile to identify any potential risks. Sections on the site’s left-hand navigation bar include a summary of all risks, analyses of your photos and activities, as well as sections on your profile, network and overall privacy. The last three sections each include their own scores. Your privacy analysis is scored based on how much information you share in your information section, and it’s pretty aggressive. For instance, including your sexual orientation or political beliefs will result in a lower score than if you don’t (you never know how people might use that information against you). Your profile analysis shows a score for the mood of posts from friends and apps that you’re mentioned in, presumably based on keyword sentiment analysis. The point is apparently to help show if conversations you’re in are getting out of control. There’s also a tag cloud of trending topics to help you get a sense for what others are talking about. The network analysis shows posts from friends and people in your network, and featuring anything that includes potentially offensive words, from “sex” and “idiot” to more serious swear words. The company will also warn you if there’s a particularly dangerous link being shared by your friends, like for the porn and graphic violence that hit Facebook several weeks ago. This section also has a mood bar to show how your friends seem to be feeling. Some extra features help the service stand out, including a tool that analyzes photos from your friends and network to identify any photos of you that you aren’t already tagged in. The parent feature works similarly to SocialShield and other competitors. You, the parent, email your child an invite link, and they sign in with Facebook and let you see what they’re sharing. In my experience testing Secure.me, I didn’t find anything shockingly revealing. I was aware of every potential security risk that the service found for me. It didn’t find any crazy untagged photos of me, either. Maybe the boring results are simply because I’m pretty aware of how I use Facebook already? Or because I’m not that actively sharing and discussing content with people? Secure.me got its start in Germany back in 2007, building an all-purpose tool called Ruflotse, which lets users to track themselves across the web and in social networks. Whether because Facebook has gotten big in Germany or because Germans are especially sensitive around privacy, the Facebook analysis became an especially popular feature. The original company has its headquarters and 50,000 paying users in Europe. The international focus, which includes the “Secure.me” name, and the Facebook focus, also includes an office expansion — it’s just set up shop in San Francisco as well. Going forward, the plan is to start charging users for access to premium features, cofounder and CTO Christian Sigl tells me. These features include automatic analysis of your profile every day, the photo matching tech, extended data storage (7 days for free, 90 for paid), and multi-person access intended for parents. The site is available as a free trial now but look for the subscription request to come at the beginning of the year. |
New Nissan Leaf Models Will Feature Wireless Charging And Other Electrical Advances | Devin Coldewey | 2,011 | 12 | 5 | We like the . It’s not a good choice for everyone, but it’s a great second car or city car, set back the most perhaps by the trouble one has to take in charging it. At home you are advised to spring for a high-capacity outlet, and abroad you must plan your trips to coincide with existing charge points. Anything that can make adding power to these cars easier will increase their marketability. To that end, Nissan has announced that the next generation of Leafs (Leaves?) that, they say, will charge as fast as a normal wall outlet. That’s still 8 hours for the fast charger, of course, but it’s something an average consumer will enjoy: park the car and it’s already charging. More importantly, it means that Nissan, a major force in the electric car market right now, has chosen a style and vendor for wireless charging, and others may follow suit. You’ll notice that cars all have the same size fuel intake, so you can fill up at any gas station. Why should it be any different for wireless electrical charging going forward? We’ve seen before, even some that seemed outlandish (a charging ), but Nissan hasn’t dropped any names, nor, on the other hand, implied that the technology is internal. But whatever it is, it will have a competitive advantage in being one of the first to hit the consumer market. Unfortunately it will not be able to be installed on old models. Early adopters take note. Another improvement for the new Leaf is a mode where it stores energy at night, when the rates are cheaper, and uses it to power your home during the day. It will be too expensive for most to install at first (probably around $7500-$8000) but it’s an interesting idea. The range should be increased as well, and lower costs for batteries and components should bring the price down a grand or two. The changes are expected to be rolled out in the 2013 model. We’ll be seeing many other full-electric vehicles debut before then, including Tesla’s affordable Model S and lots of entries from Nissan’s other branches and other vehicle makers as well. Whether inductive charging and home power plant capability will become standard is a question to revisit in a few years’ time. Here’s a vehicle explaining things in a little more detail: [youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=dvCkTGdZJx8 w=”640″] |
$99 Chinese Tablet Is MIPS-Based, Runs Android 4.0 | Devin Coldewey | 2,011 | 12 | 5 | You could be forgiven for overlooking the , a 7-inch Chinese Android tablet, as likely just another me-too device to be sold in electronics districts next to fake iPhones and bulk cables. And in a way, that’s what it is: at $100, it can’t possibly be as well-built as the iPad or newer Galaxy Tabs, and the size and design aren’t going to impress anyone. But it’s got two things going for it: Ice Cream Sandwich and MIPS. Naturally to many people neither of those terms signify much of anything. Most people only care whether it runs Netflix and Angry Birds. But both these features point at an interesting breakage between the China and US markets, one that will only widen with time. First, there is , with which our readers are probably already familiar. With a number of new features, performance improvements, and so on, it’s the next generation of Android and the hope is that it will help to unify the disparate platforms stuck at this or that previous version. It’s making its debut on the Galaxy Nexus, which is as I write this. Yet it in China on a clone device last week, and now it’s on another, perhaps more interesting one. There will be a flood of ICS devices soon, sure, but it’s really indicative of how totally disconnected the Chinese and US markets are, to say nothing of the European, Australian, Indian, Korean, and so on. It’s humorous that while the immense machinery of the US marketing machine is warming up, preparing to ship, and running prime-time ads, there are devices available for purchase outright for a few bills on the street in China. And these aren’t pirate devices: the Novo7 is the real thing, with access to Google services, though Market access is restricted in China. Andy Rubin even praised the device as a “big win.” Part of why Rubin called out the device was its architecture. Without getting too technical, suffice it to say that MIPS is an alternative to x86 (which we find on our computers) and ARM (which we find in our phones and tablets) architectures. Why should that matter? Because China wants it to matter. Back in March we heard about China’s , which is totally homegrown in an effort to avoid reliance on western-owned technologies. The Loongsons use a MIPS architecture as well, and it’s likely that China’s government is heavily subsidizing this research and companies that produce MIPS chips in order to further cut the cords that tie China to the west. Indeed, Ingenic, the manufacturer of the chip inside the Novo7, is Chinese (not a big surprise) and specializes in MIPS architecture. These China-specific devices are going to be more difficult to internationalize, but cheaper to produce and sell locally. It’s sort of protectionism via R&D. This is only the beginning, though, as MIPS architecture is still a ways behind ARM and Intel in efficiency and speed. But seeing a tablet like this really does drive home the differences between our countries which may shape the consumer electronics trade for decades to come. [via ] |
Sprint: No LTE-Friendly Hardware Until Second Half Of 2012 | Jordan Crook | 2,011 | 12 | 5 | Today Sprint CFO Joseph Euteneuer said that the company plans on launching 15 LTE-capable devices next year, though they may be coming a little later than expected — the latter half of 2012, to be exact. The company had originally hoped for mid-summer launches with its first LTE-capable hardware, though either date is much later than the competition. Verizon is clearly in the 4G LTE department, and AT&T is . Then, there’s Sprint. The number three carrier is currently banking on its 4G WiMax network (courtesy of Clearwire). And by a slippery — including Clearwire’s and Sprint’s flat-rate bailout of said interest payment ( ) — Sprint will probably get to hold on to its unlimited data plans for a little while longer. In fact, reports that Euteneuer suggested Sprint would be doing more with unlimited data down the line, though unfortunately that won’t extend to LTE. While Sprint has to help provide support for Clearwire’s LTE rollout, the terms of last week’s agreement state that Sprint will be making usage-based payments for Clearwire’s LTE services. In other words, so will we. According to Sprint’s Network Vision strategy, Sprint plans to cover 120 million people by the end of next year, and 250 million people by the end of 2013. Headway has already been made, too, deploying the first multi-mode base (that runs both 3G CDMA and 4G LTE). Holding on to unlimited data, even if its WiMax data, will be important for Sprint moving forward. But the carrier’s push into LTE territory is what really counts, so hopefully we’ll see some top-notch devices supported by a solid LTE network in time for Christmas. Next year, of course. |
Nextpeer’s Public Launch Brings Live Multi-Player Tournaments To Any Game | Sarah Perez | 2,011 | 12 | 5 | Today, the new multi-player gaming service is exiting and is now available for all iOS developers to try. With the company’s software development kit (SDK), game developers can easily turn their single player games into social, real-time, multi-player tournaments where users compete against each other for top scores, achievements and virtual gold. For those unfamiliar with Nextpeer, the service for mobile developers to upgrade their single player games to multi-player, just by dropping in the SDK . A Nextpeer-enabled game’s users can face off against in each other by competing for the best score during a timed tournament. During the tournament, gamers aren’t playing alongside each other in the sense that their characters are sharing screen time – they simply play the game as usual. Meanwhile, they’re also receiving updates as to their status versus the others in the tournament. (e.g. ) This gives what had previously been a standalone game a sense of real-time action and excitement, and that can make the game more engaging and addictive. Since its private beta in August, Nextpeer has signed up 250 developers and is now in the process of integrating its SDK into around 40 games. There are currently over half a dozen games available in the iTunes App Store featuring Nextpeer, including , , , , , , and , to name a few. The company says it’s on track to continue launching around 1 to 2 games per week going forward. To date, Nextpeer users have played over 25,000 tournaments, says CEO Shai Magzimof. But what’s even better is the retention rate – 30% of the users go back to play again after 3 + days. And 10% of Nextpeer users take advantage of the in-game feature that allows them to discover and download additional games which offer Nextpeer tournaments. Users tend to average around 5 tournaments each, says Magzimof. For now, there is no cost to integrate the Nextpeer SDK into a game, but Nextpeer does participate in revenue-sharing with those who allow users to place “bets” on games using the virtual gold. This split can vary depending on the game, but is around 50/50. Buying more coins via in-app purchases is not yet available, but is arriving soon. For now, there are other ways to earn currency (beyond the initial amount all players get), like daily bonuses, and, of course, winning. Also on the way is support for push notifications, which will allow users to invite friends to play with them in real-time. The Facebook integration will improved, too, so gamers can invite their Facebook friends to join them. Below is a video showing the process of integrating Nextpeer into an app. From start to finish, it takes just 15 minutes: [vimeo http://www.vimeo.com/30427252 w=400&h=250] Those interested in integrating Nextpeer into their own apps can . |
iRobot, Makers Of The Roomba, Launch An iOS Game? | Jordan Crook | 2,011 | 12 | 5 | Every once in a while, a pitch hits our collective TechCrunch inbox that is equally ridiculous and intriguing. In a situation like that — one full of hilarity and intrigue — how can we not post it? That said, I really don’t know what’s going on over at iRobot, as the , have decided to branch way, out there and create an iOS app called Roomba Revenge. A few things worth noting before I continue: The app has absolutely nothing to do with the functionality of your Roomba. The app is a game, which has absolutely nothing to do with iRobot. And… The app is a game about cleaning. Well, vacuuming up dust bunnies if we’re getting really specific. Obviously the ridiculous part of this pitch has made itself clear. But why is this intriguing you may ask? Well, I can’t seem to stop myself from wondering why iRobot would do this? Why, iRobot? Why?! The pitch may have a few answers: “No, iRobot isn’t becoming a gaming company,” writes media rep Jennifer Kohanim. “They did this just because having fun and making cool stuff is part of their DNA. In fact, the idea for a game featuring the world-famous robot was born via a casual text-message conversation between two iRobot employees.” Here’s how the app works: You’re in a dirty room. You control the Roomba and your goal is to clean up the floor. If the floor isn’t clean before the time runs out on the clock, you lose. Yeah, it’s pretty simple. Roomba Revenage is available now for the iPad, iPhone and iPod touch in the . |
Gowalla Versus Foursquare: Why Pretty Doesn’t Always Win | Erick Schonfeld | 2,011 | 12 | 5 | , the geo-social app, will soon be no more. The founders will be and shutting down the product a couple months after trying to reposition the app as a . It was clear long ago that its rival won the check-in wars, passing recently and more than 10 million users. But why did it turn out this way? Both Foursquare and Gowalla launched at the 2009 SXSW conference, and many people thought Gowalla was actually better designed. At least it looked better, with more whimsical badges, for instance. But pretty doesn’t always win. “Startups and businesses are like making wine,” says Gowalla investor (and vinophile) Gary Vaynerchuk, “it is a blend. It is not about one element. Design is one element.” Another Gowalla investor explains the difference in one word: “Austin.” Gowalla was headquartered in Austin and Foursquare is based in New York. For a mobile social app that depended on urban density to gain early critical mass, New York gave Foursquare a hometown advantage over Gowalla. Foursquare was able to build better network effects early on, and those just kept compounding. You don’t use Foursquare because it is a pretty app. You use it because all your friends use it, and because it is the geo-location platform across many apps. It is more useful because it touches more people and more apps that people care about. The other thing about Foursquare is that it didn’t try to overcomplicate things early on. It did one thing very well: check-ins and rewards. Over time it added and even pushed into , but it remains mostly about the check-in. That’s what keeps people coming back to the app day-in and day-out. Foursquare also has Dennis Crowley as a founder. Crowley has been obsessed with the idea of mobile social geo-location apps for a decade (he tried this once before and failed with Dodgeball). Gowalla founder Josh Williams is also very talented. “He’s the kind of guy who I would back over and over,” says Vaynerchuk, even now. But again, that founder’s talent is just one element. It’s not just the founder who counts. “I think Tristan is a massively underrated character in the whole story,” says Vaynerchuk, referring to Foursquare’s business development executive Tristan Walker. “His early biz dev deals gave them a lot of clout, with major brands like Starbucks lending their brand equity to Foursquare.” Everyone has their own opinion on why Foursquare succeeded and Gowalla didn’t. I asked why on TWitter and got a ton of feedback, Here are a few of the responses below. Add your own theories in comments: https://twitter.com/#!/erickd/status/143758051076345856 https://twitter.com/#!/mtulls/status/143757507968503809 https://twitter.com/#!/Percival/status/143757231400300544 https://twitter.com/#!/benpopper/status/143756329012576257 |
Don’t Blame The IQ, Blame The Carrier | Devin Coldewey | 2,011 | 12 | 2 | You couldn’t swing a cat this week without hitting a story about , which (if you have somehow avoided this information) is a bit of software installed on millions of phones that has access to a huge amount of user data. As developers hinted for months and eventually , the software is aware of SMS content, secure web traffic, contacts, key presses, and more. Naturally there has been an outcry. Who are these people? What phones is the software on? What can’t it do? The surprising thing is that the ire has been directed at Carrier IQ themselves. Why? If someone runs you over in their car, you don’t write a stern letter to Ford. Carrier IQ made and sold an invasive piece of software, certainly. But they didn’t install it on your phone. did. No doubt that part of the problem is simply yet to be addressed, but I have to say I genuinely sympathize with Carrier IQ, a company that sells a legitimate and potentially useful product, and is now facing the rage of the entire internet, and what’s worse, Al Franken. Who wrote the contracts the users signed? The carriers. Who handled the phones? The carriers. Who added bloatware and special services and skins and branding to the OS? The carriers, the carriers, the carriers. And who called Carrier IQ in the first place and said “Hi, we’d like a surreptitious method of peeking at certain user habits”? That’s right, the carriers. Who should have informed their customers of this tracking software and its capabilities, regardless of what information they to collect, or what was turned on or off by default? The carriers. Who would own the information scraped from the millions of phones being monitored? The carriers. And who should be the object of the internet’s rage right now? You’re damn right it’s the carriers. What makes the whole thing even worse is that it wasn’t just some marketing deal Sprint had where they would collect stats from, say, Samsung phones running Android. T-Mobile and AT&T have used the software as well, and it’s not much of a leap of faith to suggest that Verizon and smaller carriers have something similar in place. Hell, had a (mostly harmless) version of it, though understandably RIM was careful to note it avoided the software entirely. If it was a misguided scheme by an isolated individual company, that would make it stupid. But it’s not — it’s an industry-wide collaboration that shows how incredibly little the carriers value their customers’ needs and privacy. If it was as integral to maintaining quality service as they seem to think it is, you’d think at least one of them might have mentioned it sometime in the last couple years. Do you remember anything like that? There’s not a lot we can do, but if Senator Franken and the FTC and others can roll this ball of deceit uphill (as they indeed are attempting), they might be able to force carriers into having some basic standards for privacy and disclosure. It’ll take time, but the fact is that the damage is already done and these jokers have been caught in the act. Carrier IQ isn’t blameless, of course, and their handling of the situation has been bad, but they’re just the dealer. Sprint and the rest are the ones behind the wheel. Are you mad? You should be. Go tell them so. |
Doo.net Gets $6.8M To Reinvent Office Paperwork — Oh Yes. | Mike Butcher | 2,011 | 12 | 2 | For the last few months there’s been a a lot of chatter about a big play coming to aim at the world of collaboration and documents. What on earth could someone do that is new in this space, I hear you ask? Well, that’s a fair point, but for whatever reason they’ve just secured a substantial $6.8 million first round investment to do it and we’ve just been tipped off that their beta version beta has gone live. has secured this first round from from DuMont Venture and Angel investors Dr. Hermann Simon and Lars Hinrichs. Doo is aimed at consumers and small businesses. It lets you send, receive, share, process, organize, securely archive and access digital documents from any device. The idea is to have good looking apps for OS X, iOS, Android, Windows and Windows Phone as well as for the Web. So what’s different compared to similar platforms like Salesforce? Well, it’s aiming to fetch and process data from most major players like telcos, banks, public utilities, be integrated with major storage players like dropbox; and offer workflows like signing, paying, and so on. And they want to make it look . CEO Frank Thelen created Doo he says because “I was fighting with receipts, contracts, invoices.” Backer Dr Hermann Simon, is a founder and chairman Simon-Kucher & Partners and author of several best- sellers such as “Hidden Champions”. Hinrichs is found of LinkedIN competitor Xing.com which he’s since exited. Meanwhile, Jörg Binnenbrücker of DuMont Venture is backing the startup because “We rarely see disruptive software innovation in Europe with the potential to become a major global player.” Big words, we shall see… |
Follow galleries and art events with the ArtSpotter iPhone app | Mike Butcher | 2,011 | 12 | 2 | ‘s new iPhone app has just gone and if you like art you should check it out. It’s an interactive art map that lets you discover art around you and add to the map. This is version one, but the next one will allow sharing on Facebook and Twitter. Think Foursquare meets Timeout for art. Venues can get data on what people are doing via the app. It covers galleries, public art, street art, fairs, popup shops, studios, student shows and everything in between. London is the best populated map so far but anyone can add anything anywhere on the planet. It’s a little like (for bands and venues ) in that you can follow galleries and the exhibitions they put on.
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“LivingSocial Plus”: A Monthly Subscription Model That Could Improve Deal Site Retention | Josh Constine | 2,011 | 12 | 2 | In an effort to get customers buying pre-paid deals more regularly, has launched a new subscription service called “LivingSocial Plus”. For $20 a month, members get $25 in “Deal Bucks” credits that are automatically applied to their next purchase as well as access to closed deals. LivingSocial is cleverly pitching buyers on Plus with a checkout graphic that shows the price of the currently viewed deal instantly reduced by the $5 in bonus Deal Bucks. Subscription services like this could solve a fundamental problem of deal providers where users only stop by to purchase especially lucrative or relevant deals. If these program gain traction, providers could establish a consistent revenue stream, get users buying more frequently, and score free cash if credits are never redeemed. Expect rampant copying if competitors see the subscription model working. LivingSocial Plus is only in beta now, so its redirects to the general site if you’re not in the test base. A confirms its existence. though. The pre-paid deal provider started offering membership to deal buyers around Black Friday. Previously the only way to earn Deal Bucks was to invite friends to the service. The deal provider has been aggressively innovating in search of new models that could save it from the decline impacting Groupon. It just last month that lets people get discounted food delivered on demand. While the $20 that buyers actually paid for with Plus are good for 5 years, the $5 in bonus bucks expire at the end of each monthly billing period. This create a sense of urgency where members rush to buy deals just to get that extra $5 off. The whole daily deals model is built on this notion of perceived value exceeding what users have to pay, even if they’re paying for things they don’t need. Meanwhile, it’s really the deal providers that could win since most purchases net them far more than $5. In this way, the subscription model fits perfectly with LivingSocial and any other deal provider’s business. By clustering lower quality, higher margin deals at the end of the billing period when users are desperate to spend their fleeting bonus credits, providers could coerce members into buying deals that make them more money. Access to closed deals is a great addition to the subscription package, since buyers may be willing to pay for it but it doesn’t cost providers anything. LivingSocial may have figured out the next big thing in daily deals. Now it just has to watch out for copy cats offering even bigger bonuses. |
Airbnb To Partner With Vayable To Upsell Travel Experiences To Renters | Greg Kumparak | 2,011 | 12 | 2 | Back when we first wrote about Vayable (the site that lets just about anyone offer to host paid tours/activities for travelers) Alexia said Airbnb would agree, it seems. We’ve learned tonight that Airbnb is prepping to launch a partnership to upsell travelers with Vayable’s tour experiences. The partnership will be limited to e-mail at first (a “Oh, you’re going here? Check out these Vayable tours!” type thing), though the partnership may find deeper roots if it proves successful. It will initially be limited to e-mails sent to Airbnb customers headed for New York. We were initially clued in on the partnership by an anonymous tipster, and have since backed up the report with an independent source. This will be Airbnb’s first partnership of the sort, though it’s probably safe to assume that it won’t be the last. The world is quickly filling up with , so Airbnb might as well find a way to tap into them. |
With New Funding And Microsoft Partnership, AboutOne Looks To Help Moms Stay Organized | Rip Empson | 2,011 | 12 | 2 | We first covered as part of a round-up of some of the more interesting startups . The startup is building eManagement system that makes it easy for busy families to organize their lives and households. And today AboutOne has announced that it has closed $1.6 million in series A financing, led by , a network of early-stage investing angels who focus on companies founded and led by women. The Philadelpha-based startup was founded by CEO Joanne Lang, who is a former exec, cloud computing specialist, and mother of four children. The idea for AboutOne came out of an experience she had when one of her young sons had a medical emergency: Away from home, she was unable to provide a current list of his medications to paramedics. Leveraging the evolution of cloud platforms to bring efficiency and organization to enterprises, businesses, and the consumer Web, she set out to develop a technology that could help in emergencies like the one she experienced, and simplify the lives of moms (and parents) trying to organize their households. AboutOne was created from my direct experiences as a mother of four children,” said Lang. A former SAP Labs executive specializing in cloud technology, Lang developed AboutOne after one of her sons had a medical emergency. She was away from home, with only her keys and phone, and unable to provide a list of his medications to the paramedics. She’d seen how cloud computing helps businesses gain new levels of efficiency and wanted to use her technical training and personal experiences to develop technology that simplifies a mom’s life. The ambitious goal for AboutOne, according to the founder is to become the standard for family management systems, and tap into the sizable 82.8 million-strong mom market. To help achieve its goal, AboutOne has forged partnerships with Microsoft and Suze Orman of IDSafe, launching an updated version of the platform based on feedback it’s received from its current customers as well as its partners. The startup will use its latest round of funding to increasing its marketing efforts in conjunction with expanding its engineering staff to help push out product updates scheduled for the next six months. One of these, which has been designed based on feedback from customers and partners, will be the rewards program launching in January. This new feature will be a great enhancement for the platform, as it will provide points-based, financial incentive to parents who complete their organization goals and checkpoints. The upgrades will add to AboutOne’s patent-pending technology platform, which as it currently stands, offers moms the ability to store digitized photos, video, and text, create photo albums, store insurance contracts, keep track of anniversaries, birthday, etc. in calendars, keep contact lists, and post instructions to baby sitters, for example. Information is backed up hourly. The platform looks to make data entry smooth whether it’s from a smartphone, scanner, or any other web-enabled device. And once families have it set up, it can enable automation of these processes, including creation of hard copy memory books, family newsletters, online health summaries, greeting cards, etc. — all of which can mail themselves to intended recipients. It’s a pretty robust system for $30/year. For more check out the video below: http://youtu.be/jedBJ3HI8ng |
Facebook Has Acquired Gowalla | Jason Kincaid | 2,011 | 12 | 2 | Facebook has acquired location-based startup , according to a report this evening by Laurie Segall on . The terms of the deal haven’t been reported, and Gowalla declined to comment. Facebook says it doesn’t comment on rumor and speculation. We’ve heard from an independent source that Facebook is indeed acquiring Gowalla. According to CNN’s report, the Gowalla team will be working on Facebook Timeline, with most of the team moving to Facebook’s Palo Alto headquarters and some remaining in Gowalla’s hometown of Austin, where Facebook has an office as well. Gowalla, which has raised to date, first launched at SXSW 2009 — going head-to-head against Foursquare, with a stronger emphasis on virtual goods (and nicer icons) than their competitor. But Foursquare overtook Gowalla in popularity by a large margin, prompting the startup earlier this year. The new product moves away from displaying a time-based feed of your friends’ recent check-ins, and focuses instead on creating Stories around the places you and your friends have visited, clustering together photos that show off your adventures (there is also a Guides section that lays out where you should visit in a given city). In other words, it’s not too dissimilar to Facebook’s Timeline feature, which is also designed to group clusters of activity into more cohesive stories, as opposed to just a reverse-chronological feed. And it would make perfect sense for Facebook to start featuring location checkins and photos tagged with GPS coordinates into Timeline stories. According to CNN, the fate of Gowalla’s existing app is as of yet undecided. It’s also unclear whether this is an ‘acqui-hire’, or if Facebook is also interested in any of Gowalla’s technology. My hunch is that it’s the former. |
Western Digital Fires Up First Flooded Factory In Thailand As Recovery Continues | Devin Coldewey | 2,011 | 12 | 2 | The recent floods in Thailand have wreaked devastation on the factories in the area; some were under a dozen feet or more of water, and all manner of companies were affected by the damage. Nikon and Samsung delayed cameras and a shortage of hard drives has caused . The recovery effort is progressing apace, and the affected areas are being pumped or drained clear of water. Power was restored in the last week in some areas and Western Digital has at one of its factories there. It’s not as simply as just sweeping out the seaweed and waiting for the conveyor belts to dry, though. The production of hard drives is an incredibly high-precision business, and the slightest amount of warping or the slightest contamination of an instrument could do a huge amount of damage. Western Digital expects to resume production of the mechanisms made there in March, though previous estimates suggested that it will still be many months more before they reach pre-flood levels of production. The loss of these factories for such a long time guarantees a huge deficit in the number of drives on the market — the early effects of which we’ve already seen in higher prices. The market will likely settle down a bit once inventories are confirmed and long-term plans made, but Western Digital alone says they’ll be short at least 50 million units this year. If you like, . |
The Kindle Fire Is On Fire; Amazon Expected To Ship 3.9 Million This Quarter | Erick Schonfeld | 2,011 | 12 | 2 | The Kindle Fire looks like a bona fide hit right out of the gate. New have Amazon shipping 3.9 million Kindle Fires this quarter, which would make it the No. 2 tablet after the iPad 2 (with an estimated 18.6 million shipments). The Kindle Fire will become the No. 1 Android tablet by a wide margin (the Samsung Galaxy Tab is the next biggest, with an estimated 1.4 million shipments). To put this 3.9 million number in context, just remember that the very first quarter Apple sold the iPad back in the September quarter of 2010, it sold . So the Kindle Fire sold more in its first quarter than the iPad did in its first quarter on the market. Of course, Apple sold the second quarter it was on the market, which was the 2010 holiday quarter. However you slice it, this is a good start for the Kindle Fire. It looks like Jeff Bezos was on the money when he at the launch event Amazon would sell “millions” of Kindle Fires. I can see why people are flocking to the Kindle Fire. Personally, I am a . It’s a great stocking stuffer that will actually fit in a stocking. It’s smaller size is an advantage for certain applications such as ebooks. I just took it with me on a trip to Japan instead of my iPad precisely because of its smaller footprint. The price is right too, at $200. Will the Kindle Fire ever outsell the iPad? Nobody is predicting that just yet, but it is certainly in the realm of possibility. |
Science Exchange’s Marketplace For Research Facilities Gets A $1.5 Million Boost | Jason Kincaid | 2,011 | 12 | 2 | , a Y Combinator-backed company that’s helping to streamline the way scientific research is conducted, has raised $1.5 million from an elite group of investors. The round was led by Andreessen Horowitz, with participation from Yuri Milner, Crosslink Capital, Morado Venture Partners (Ash Patel), Lerer Ventures, Webb Investment Network (Maynard Webb), Start Fund, SV Angel, Sam Altman, XG Ventures, Jack Jia and Joe Eandi. I really like Science Exchange, largely because it could actually speed up the pace of scientific research. It in August, offering scientists a centralized platform for accessing experimental service providers worldwide (or, if you’re more comfortable trafficking in Silicon Valley cliches, it’s an Airbnb for prohibitively expensive scientific equipment). Here’s the gist. Many universities across the country have what are called Core Facilities, where expensive equipment necessary for research experiments is housed. Instead of trying to juggling access to these machines between dozens or hundreds of researchers, the Core Facilities have a more efficient system: researchers submit their experiments, where they are carried out by the facility’s dedicated Resource Scientists, who in turn give the researchers the results once they’re ready. Thing is, the system has some major inefficiencies. If a researcher wants to run an experiment on a machine that isn’t at their Core Facility, then they have to find a way to get access to another facility. But there’s no central database listing which schools have which equipment, nor is there a straightforward way to coordinate payment for the services. And, on the other side of the market, there are plenty of machines that sit unused for extended periods of time. That’s where Science Exchange comes in. It gives researchers a way to find and outsource their experiments to experimental facilities around the world (and beyond — more on that in a moment). And it also handles payments, so the entire process is much easier on both the researchers and the experimental facilities they’re working with. Cofounder Dan Knox says that when the service first launched, the team expected most of the experiments would be standard and common jobs, like DNA sequencing, bioinformatics, and microarray analysis. And they turned out to be right. But there are also some facilities that have signed on that are more unique — he likens them to the castles and private islands you’ll find listed on Airbnb. So what sort of novel facilities are popping up on Science Exchange? For one, it’s possible to conduct microgravity research experiments on the International Space Station (really), which is handled by a company called . Science Exchange isn’t the only academia-related startup that’s raised funding recently. , a platform for big-data competitions, recently , and just raised . |
RIM To Miss Earnings Goals After Half A Billion In PlayBook And Outage Charges | Devin Coldewey | 2,011 | 12 | 2 | RIM has announced that it will be taking over half a billion dollars in charges related to two major failures this fiscal year. First is the immense overproduction of the tablet, the writedown of which inventory amounted to $485M on its own, or $360M after tax. The second charge is related to the in early October, though it’s unclear whether that money is directly related or being reserved for dealing with ongoing costs like . Sales of handsets and services were as forecasted, but a lack of growth must be inferred by their waning market share, and at any rate the sales weren’t enough to put RIM at their expected revenue of $5.3 billion for the upcoming quarter. Quarterly earnings are at a level with (low) predictions of around $1.20 per share, but yearly earnings will miss the expected $5.25 per share, and analysts are calling for as little as $3.50. That enormous PlayBook charge really indicates how serious a misstep the device was. While there are plenty of happy PlayBook owners out there (especially after recent markdowns), the numbers are nowhere near what RIM must have expected, and sales have been less than half what they shipped. A bit of napkin math has the hundreds of thousands of unsold devices adding up to hundreds of millions in lost revenue, and then of course there are the many thousands of devices that sold at less than the expected price by hundreds of dollars each. Acer recently faced a glut of inventory and admitted its entire strategy needed to be revised. RIM has not shown much contrition despite serious reservations by shareholders analysts. RIM co-CEO Mike Lazaridis demonstrated this lack of forthrightness in the earnings report: RIM is committed to the BlackBerry PlayBook and believes the tablet market is still in its infancy… Early results from recent PlayBook promotions indicate a significant increase in demand across most channels. October’s outage also affected RIM’s credibility. While even the best services can’t guarantee 100% uptime, the length and seriousness of the outage eroded RIM’s reputation as a reliable business solution. The PlayBook’s lack of enterprise chops and familiar BlackBerry services further contributed to a loss of faith. RIM has had a bad year, and that’s putting it lightly. But they’re still nearly in line with their predicted earnings and they are, in fact, on the verge up a major product refresh with the new line of and a major A company that stumbles isn’t necessarily a company that falls, but RIM is . , and some extra commentary by investors and analysts has been collected by . |
Helioid’s Search Engine Provides Category Sorting To Aid Research, Targets Students And Professionals | Eric Eldon | 2,011 | 12 | 2 | The floor of Silicon Valley is littered with the carcasses of failed search startups. Without billions of dollars in resources like Microsoft or a tight vertical focus like travel site Kayak to help attract users, would-be competitors haven’t been able to pull people away from Google. is a small startup out of New York that’s trying to change that, by delivering results tied to categories of information. It’s aiming at students, professionals and others who are trying to do exploratory research across a topic, and aren’t just looking for a specific answer to a question. Its search results page shows a color-coded section on the left-hand side for the categories that it determines are most related to the search term. Each result has a dot next to it matching one of these categories, and a label showing the relative size of that category, with the most relevant ones at the top of the section. If you click on any of the categories, you’ll add the category term as keywords to the search and generate a new, more focused set of results and related categories. You can keep doing this to generate increasingly focused results. The overall advantage to the interface is that the categories reveal related areas to explore, that you might not easily identify on your own within the keyword-driven paradigm seen on the main pages of Google and Bing. For example, let’s say I want to study up on popular types of fishing. A search for “fishing” shows me a set of relevant categories including “fly,” “salmon,” “saltwater,” etc. I click on “saltwater” and “deep is a top result. Adding that term then shows me a range of about deep sea fishing. Founder and chief executive Kenny Hamilton intends for Helioid to be a complement to general search engines, by helping specific types of professionals — journalists and bloggers (some of whom have about it already), financial analysts, lawyers, etc. — get up to speed quickly on new topics. The business model is aimed in this direction, too. Beyond targeted search ads, he tells me that the company is looking at premium services for professionals, including private indexing for data that a particular user or organization is trying to analyze. Helioid’s challenge in providing a general search tool is both to avoid making its product so complex that it cuts out potential users, and at the same time differentiate itself from Google in a way that users care about. Existing startups that are aiming to provide a better layer of organization to searches, like , face the same sorts of problems. Googles’ “Related searches” page is stiff competition. But, while I’m not sure how well Helioid will be able to penetrate its target market, the interface is intuitive, and I found it useful for topic exploration in testing. Hamilton and his cofounder, , met while getting undergraduate degrees at Stanford (physics and symbolic systems, respectively). Hamilton has been building Helioid for the last few years, while Lubell-Doughtie has been working on it part-time while he finished a graduate degree in artificial intelligence at the University of Amsterdam. They haven’t taken funding. |
The 4S And Thanksgiving Help Instagram Add Two Million Users In A Month | Alexia Tsotsis | 2,011 | 12 | 2 | Instagram co-founder is on stage right now, talking about innovative mobile design at the Warm Gun conference in San Francisco. If anybody has some thing to say about mobile design it’s the founders of the popular – startup which has had a great year, adding twelve million users in twelve months according to Krieger, and another two million in November (when we checked in at the beginning of November , and Krieger just confirmed to me that it is now at 14 million). “I often think about mobile experience as filling in the gaps while you wait. And no one wants to wait while they wait,” Krieger said, emphasizing that design should be a speed feature. Krieger held that there were three factors that have to go into consideration when making an app that users love: speed, beauty and communication. With regards to the speed aspect of the equation, Krieger encouraged developers to … Perform actions optimistically adaptively pre-load content move bits when no one’s watching speed beauty and communication Krieger said that the iPhone 4S launch had a lot to do with the impressive downloads stats, in addition to the Thanksgiving holiday, where the app was seeing engagement levels of 50 photos a second. “My friend was telling me that he got to experience all of his family’s various Thanksgivings through Instagram, Krieger said enthusiastically. What makes this rapid scale even more impressive is that Instagram currently has a staff of six, with only three focused on engineering. Krieger has written a blog post about the infrastructure issues involved in scaling You can download Instagram in the App Store An Android version is currently in the works. |
$50 Million MergerTech Capital Fund Established For Healthcare IT Investment | Devin Coldewey | 2,011 | 12 | 2 | The healthcare industry is in the middle of a number of crises, not the least of which is the modernization of its internal infrastructure. Having worked in the industry myself, I can attest that the amount of faxing, carbon copies, and redundancy are mind blowing, especially at overworked, underfunded hospitals. We’ve seen a lot of over the last two years, though naturally many of the ones we’ve covered are more user-facing, like Disrupt finalist . But the backend is just as important, and has just been established by MergerTech specifically for investment in that sector. MergerTech Capital, as it is called, focuses on “IT infrastructure associated with healthcare, including cloud services, data security, consumer Internet, mobile applications, and managed IT.” Sounds like that includes some of the we’ve seen connecting users to their healthcare data, but it’s also about establishing the services that provide that data and presumably the people and hardware that will make them possible. The fund will be led by new General Partner Maneesh Goyal, formerly of Miramar Ventures. There he led the fund’s healthcare IT investments for 5 years will lead the fund to startups helping doctors and hospitals provide more efficient care. MergerTech Advisors senior executives Nitin Khanna and Karan Khanna will also be managing the fund. The two sold their government agency management software system Saber to IT portfolio EDS for $420 million in May 2007 before moving to MergerTech. . Goyal confirmed that no initial investments have been announced, and as their charter covers quite a bit of ground, any guesses would be fairly wild speculation. There’s plenty of room for failure, and many startups are assuming they don’t have to develop a business model. MergerTech Capital will need to be discerning in where it spreads its $50 million. But with more capital than ever in the space, now’s the time for developers to take risks and try to build something that saves people’s lives. Thanks to Aldo for the tip. [Josh Constine contributed to this story] |
Metamarkets Debuts Analytics For Mobile Platforms And Publishers | Leena Rao | 2,011 | 12 | 2 | Realtime data startup is announcing the launch of its analytics offering for mobile platforms and publishers. Metamarkets provides price data and predictive analytics to publishers and web companies. Launched in late 2009, the company aims to solve the problem of ad price discovery on web platforms for media companies. Metamarkets aggregates billions of electronic media transactions to deliver dynamic price data, proprietary price and volume aggregations, and analytic media market views. The startup serves ad server data, order insertion data, targeting data, audience data, conversion data, and more, enabling media companies and publishers to shift strategy in realtime based on how web and mobile formats are monetizing. All of this helps publishers determine hot to price ad inventory. Metamarkets Mobile Analytics basically applies this technology to mobile platforms and sites. The product includes real-time operational analytics and large-scale historical reporting for mobile publishers, application developers, and others. The new service can process, store, and analyze daily volumes of billions of mobile events such as auctions and in-game actions. For example, Metamarkets Mobile Analytics helps optimize the Marketplace, a real-time bidding platform for mobile advertising aimed at publishers. The company also plans to use its technology to monetize event streams in video RTB, in-game event sets, and social networks. Founded by David Soloff, the former lead architect at ad startup Rapt (which was acquired by Microsoft in 2008), and Michael Driscoll, the startup has raised $8.5 million from IA Ventures, Village Ventures, True Ventures Founder Collective, AOL Ventures, Dennis Crowley, FLOODGATE and others. |
Now In 70 U.S. & Canadian Markets, Dealfind Goes Mobile | Sarah Perez | 2,011 | 12 | 2 | Toronto-based deal provider , which recently became one of the first half-dozen or so partners to be , is now available as its own standalone mobile application. The new app works on both and , allowing deal hunters to locate, purchase and store offers on their mobile phone. There’s nothing all that remarkable about the app itself – you pick your city, find a deal you like and tap “Buy.” The app will also keep a record of your vouchers, whether new, used, pending or “gifted” (that is, given to someone else). My one quibble with the app’s user interface is that, upon first launch, it didn’t show all the supported cities in the main list until you selected your country – it defaulted to Canada. But instead of walking you through the sign-up process by asking for access to your location or having you type your city’s name in a form, you had to hit the “country” button to access the U.S. list. It’s a minor complaint, but there you go. Dealfind was founded in 2009, and is now operating in 70 markets across the U.S. and Canada. In the past, the company has been referred to as the “Canadian Groupon,” or “Canada’s Groupon,” but that label no longer seems accurate. In November, Dealfind to its lineup, bringing the total to 41 U.S. cities versus the 28 it had in Canada. Seems more like a “North American” Groupon now, eh? Perhaps. But not all the supported markets have the same quality of deals. For example, in the far-off-land known as Tampa, Florida, today’s deal was on a toy shark from an online toy store. . Your mileage may vary, of course. The company says that it has sold 1.6 million vouchers totaling $390 million since launch and sees website traffic between 12 and 16 million visitors per month. Which just goes to show, if you call it a deal, some people will buy almost anything. Even a toy shark. In general, however, the service is focused on local deals, like restaurants, spas and salons. Dealfind says it will add travel, national, everyday deals and other verticals to the service by the end of the year. |
The Gillmor Gang Live 12.2.11 (TCTV) | Steve Gillmor | 2,011 | 12 | 2 | The Gillmor Gang – Robert Scoble, Kevin Marks, John Taschek, John Borthwick, and Steve Gillmor – are recording live today at 1pm PT. Recording is over. |
EA Adds Social Game Studio For Hardcore Players With KlickNation Acquisition | Eric Eldon | 2,011 | 12 | 2 | Electronic Arts has social game developer , and is turning it into a studio within BioWare, its role-playing developer division. The move is a relatively inexpensive way for EA to build up Facebook versions of its hits like Mass Effect and titles for hardcore gamers using its extensive IP line. The acquisition price wasn’t announced, but it cost $35 million, a source tells . KlickNation was one of the earlier companies to specialize in social RPGs. These types of games haven’t gotten the big usage numbers that simulations like FarmVille have, but their users tend to spend heavily on virtual goods. The developer’s traffic never got too big, however, and all of its titles have been in decline for months. Today it has nearly 400,000 monthly active users and 50,000 daily active users, according to , falling from one-time highs of 1.3 million and 150,000 respectively. It’s top titles today are and . It took a couple years, but EA is getting results from having bought its way into social gaming. It has specifically started to hit its original goal of building successful social versions of existing IP, with The Sims Social being the biggest success to date. It bought Playfish in November of 2009 in a deal worth up to $400 million, then added a range of other companies including Chillingo, Firemint and PopCap — its biggest acquisition to date, at the price of $750 million. The result is higher and higher revenues from its digital goods category, projecting it to $1 billion a year as of its most recent earnings. KlickNation’s role will be helping trying to get Sims Social levels of success out of more EA IP. “We share the same creative values. The new BioWare Social unit will bring BioWare and EA franchises to the growing audience of core gamers who are looking for high quality, rich gameplay experiences on social platforms,” Dr. Ray Muzyka, Senior Vice President and General Manager of EA’s BioWare label, says in the on the sale. KlickNation will form a new Sacramento studio, be formed into a new business unit together with BioWare San Francisco that will be called BioWare Social. KlickNation chief executive Mark Otero will be the general manager of the combined entities. |
HTML5 Smart Board Attempts To Out-Surface The Surface | John Biggs | 2,011 | 12 | 2 | [youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aaRm4hiXbCg] is showing off their proof-of-concept HTML5-based multi-touch smartboard in an effort to prove a) that HTML5 is pretty rocking and b) that someday we may all have smart tabletops in our home. To see the big screen in action you can fast forward . It’s obviously a little wonky in terms of applicability in the real world, but these guys aim to add multi-touch interfaces to the entire web, at least in some form. It will definitely be fascinating when web apps can do what native apps can do, especially when it comes to pinching, zooming, et al. ntroducing the Web as a multi-touch application hosting option opens the door to instant availability and universal access, giving retailers, advertisers and the like a powerful new medium for communicating with their prospects and customers. Web designers and their clients will be able to create immersive Web experiences without requiring plug-in downloads or excessive cross-browser scripting to ensure compatibility. Interactive mobile phone experiences could be ported to the Web, establishing a consistent look-and-feel, and then expanded to take advantage of additional screen real estate. Ambitious retailers, hospitality vendors and the like could take things a step further and carry over the phone and Web experience to their stores, lobbies and gathering places through interactive tablets, kiosks, tables and touchscreen walls. |
Video: iPhone Games In Real Life | Greg Kumparak | 2,011 | 12 | 2 | It’s not rare for me to post videos on Fridays, but I generally preface them with some big explanation as to why I’ve posted it on TechCrunch. This week’s explanation is simple: because it’s friggin’ . It’s got Angry Birds! It’s got Fruit Ninja! It’s got Flight Control (plus super cute Flight Control girl!) It’s got stupidly catchy indie music! Seriously, what more could you want? A puppy? Because it has that too. [youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YrsoluSjuKc&w=560&h=315] Good job, guys. I still don’t have any idea what the iPhone games have to do with the song, but your creativity/problem solving (not to mention the number of pretty people you found to help with this) impressed the hell out of us. [ ] |
null | Leena Rao | 2,011 | 12 | 5 | null |
1 Million Articles Auto-Shared Daily, So Yahoo! Expands Facebook Integration To 26 More Sites | Josh Constine | 2,011 | 12 | 20 | Facebook’s integration has been a huge win for . After just 2 months, 1 million articles are being shared to Facebook daily leading to 500,000 daily referrals. To build on this, Yahoo! . These include many international sites such as Yahoo! News Philippines and France, as well as vertical sites like OMG, Music, Movies, and Games. has also just launched a notifications system across its US sites. It will will alert users when someone replies to one of their comments, a big change in a stock they track on Yahoo! Finance, when their fantasy sports team wins, and more. Yahoo!’s head of social and personalization Mike Kerns tells me tonight’s changes could “increase engagement and traffic. If we can scale [the Facebook success of Yahoo! News US] globally, it will have a a big impact on our media inventory.” 13 million users, predominantly under age 35, have opted into the Yahoo! News US Facebook sharing integration since its launch at f8. This has increased referral traffic from Facebook by 3x. Kerns says the data shows that Yahoo! and . Along with sharing articles to Facebook, the integration powers on-site reading recommendations based on the activity of friends. I asked Kerns his thoughts on the debate about whether . Some say the integration Yahoo! is expanding to more sites causes a chilling effect where users don’t click because they’re embarrassed to share their reading activity. Kerns disagrees, telling me, “The younger demographic is totally comfortable with a persistent state of sharing. People should be comfortable as themselves.” Auto-sharing is clearly helping news sites, so don’t expect them to shy away from it. There’s no incentive for sites to miss out on page views in the name of protecting the Facebook user experience from what some see as spam. The notifications feature could keep users bouncing between Yahoo! properties, much the way Facebook’s notifications boost internal referral traffic. US users will now see a bell icon on the top right of Yahoo! properties that will display counters of new notifications. When hovered over or clicked, users can view their alerts and click through to investigate them. Kerns describes the notifications feature as “low hanging fruit that we should have had for years.” After Q3 2011 saw , a boost in both external and internal referral traffic would come as some welcomed good news. |
Amazon Finally Releases OTA Kindle Fire Update To Address Performance And Touchscreen Issues | Matt Burns | 2,011 | 12 | 20 | Great news, owners. Amazon just announced the long overdue Kindle Fire update that’s said to resolve many of the issues with the budget tablet. Most of the common complaints are addressed: owners can now select and remove items from the carousel, the WiFi system is more robust and supports passwords, but most importantly, update 6.2.1 reportledly improves overall performance and the touchscreen response. This update has been needed from the moment the Fire hit the scene. The first round of reviews praised the Fire for its overall value but pointed to sluggish performance as the device’s major downfall. Amazon maintained a system update would resolve many of the problems. Hopefully this is the update Fire owners have been waiting for. Update 6.2.1 should start hitting Kindle Fires soon but owners can force an update using the files and instructions here. As with any system update, make sure the Kindle has ample battery life. You’ll also need a USB cable if you’re going to update the tablet manually. The bad news is that the update breaks current . Whether done OTA or manually, the update should make Fires burn bright with a renewed vigor. The Kindle Fire isn’t going to die out anytime soon. |
How To Found, Grow, and Sell A Social Good Startup (TCTV) | Josh Constine | 2,011 | 12 | 20 | Most entrepreneurs found companies to solve a problem. Adam Archer founded to save the world. During a backpacking trip across the world he was inspired with the idea for the company. He then left Apple in 2008 to work on a farm before founding , which builds social games where users earn money for charity by playing thanks to sponsorships from major brands. It raised a little over $1 million dollars before Facebook Page management platform earlier this year. Watch as we talk to Archer about the challenges and advantages of starting a social good company, and how one can make a difference in the world and still turn a profit. Here’s Archer’s top 8 tips for entrepreneurs. Some are common sense or often cited, but it’s always good to remind yourself: |
TechStars Seattle Grad GoChime Raises $630K To Help Brands Monetize Social Media | Rip Empson | 2,011 | 12 | 20 | , a graduate of the 2011 TechStars Seattle program, is today announcing that it has raised $630,000 from a host of entrepreneurs and angel investors that include , who has invested in companies like Hootsuite and Cheezburger, Walter Winshall, an investor in Harmonix (Guitar Hero), Co-founder of Feedburner and former Googler, Matt Shobe, Dave Carlson (investor in Socialthing, Daily Burn), and Founder and CEO of Bigdoor Keith Smith — to name a few. What is GoChime? Simply put, the startup is delivering relevant offers to people based on real needs they’ve expressed across their social media profiles. In other words, it’s direct marketing for social, something which GoChime Co-founders Matt Walters, Josh Emert, and Austin Evarts are convinced has not yet been done successfully. Seeing that millions of people express the desire for products and services on social media every day, whether that be for a Android phone, a vacation, or help studying for the GMAT. They experess these desires to their friends, followers, and really, the public domain. GoChime wants to eliminate the need for every day users to have to search Google for products or solutions by making use of the reams of commercial intent data available on social networks, in turn providing customers with value by saving them time and money. Thus, GoChime wants to enable brainds to effectively come to the rescue of these potential customers by offering promotions and offers that are contextually relevant to the needs these people have already expressed — delivered to them by their existing customers and fans. GoChime matches each desire expressed with products or solutions provided by the corresponding brands when and if that expression is contextually relevant. GoChime matches relevant brand promotions in its database and passes it off to brand loyalists, who then decide if the expression is relevant to the matched promotion. Those that aren’t relevant are skipped, and those that fit the bill are then used by the brand evangelists to start a conversation with the person, with the incentive of a discount, coupon, etc. being dangled in front of that potential customer. Chimers are graded by a “reputation score”, based on “professionalism, information sufficiency, and relevancy”, according to the GoChime Co-founders. Giving its users the chance to interact on behalf of the brand, the service then allows those with the best scores to stand out as the top social media brand influencers, presumably going on to well-paying jobs in marketing at their favorite brands. The startup wants to provide and environment in which those people with an “innate skill for engaging with other people on social media” facilitate the connection between companies and their potential customers. By delivering the right promotion at the right time (presumably to the right person), GoChime thinks that it can play a part in defining the new economy that is emerging on social. The Co-founders say that, so far, they’ve seen CTRs and conversion rates that far exceed traditional advertising options, and are convinced that they’re onto something. The startup is still working out its business model, but you can get a sense of where this is going. If GoChime can connect brands with top social media influencers and acquire new customers, then the startup gets paid and, in turn, provides a social service while doing so. Obviously, this model is all about effectively finding the best influencers. It remains to be seen whether its “influence score” is enough of a litmus for brands to seek out those influencers, but it’s yet another social-centric direct marketing alternative to display advertising. Chime in and let us know what you think. |
Sharing Scheduler App Buffer Raises $400,000, Gets Kicked Out Of US | Eric Eldon | 2,011 | 12 | 20 | First, the bad news for . The startup of European expats in San Francisco is of the country due to our stupid, self-destructive immigration laws. They’re temporarily relocating to Hong Kong while they try to figure things out. And the good news? The company, which offers a tool for letting you schedule social content sharing over the course of the day and the week, is announcing that it has raised $400,000 in angel funding. Not bad for some guys who showed up in Silicon Valley, as they’ll tell you, with no money or connections. But let’s back up and look at what Buffer does. Let’s say you’re like a lot of other people, and you read most of your news for 15 minutes in the morning, and another 15 at lunch. And let’s say you find ten stories on a given morning that you really think your friends on Facebook or your followers on Twitter are going to want to know about. Instead of blasting everything out to everyone in real-time, Buffer lets you set each article to publish at a different point throughout the day. This will help the content you share get maximum exposure without feeling as spammy to the people reading it. Who needs to be this thoughtful about sharing? Anyone trying to build up their thought leadership by being a quality filter for information. It’s an especially good fit for marketers. The results so far: 80,000 users a day, including 1,400 paying users who provide a revenue run-rate of around $200,000. Those stats are all up around 10% from a month ago when I talked to the company about its . The Buffer interface includes a variety of options for setting the service to share to, the time you want the content shared, which stories are pending, and more. The company also recently added a where you can Buffer any articles you’re reading, or any tweet you see on Twitter.com, while browsing. It also has a widget for web sites, that a number of have integrated. Like other share buttons, it lets you share — back to Buffer, automatically scheduled for sharing. So why is the company raising money? Cofounder Leonhard Widrich tells me that it’s to hire faster (the common story these days for growing startups) as well as to bring in the network of who are providing the funding. Overall, the product fits a need that a growing number of people have. (Although I admittedly don’t because I’m either spamming you all with my content in real-time, or I’m scheduling it to post WordPress.). The company has put together a little more about each of their new investors, and how they met. Here’s an excerpt about one of them. |
Google: AdMob Saw 8 Billion Tablet Ad Requests In November, Up 700 Percent From Last Year | Leena Rao | 2,011 | 12 | 20 | Tablet use has skyrocketed over the past year, so it makes sense that advertisers are flocking to these devices and platforms to reach consumers. Google tells us that in November 2011, AdMob saw 8 billion ad requests coming from tablets, an increase from 1 billion in December of 2010, and a 700 percent increase in the past year. To put that number in perspective, AdMob sees a day globally. In May, Google introduced new formats for tablet ads, allowing advertisers and publishers to serve full-screen interstitial ads built with HTML5 on smartphones and tablets. A few weeks ago, Google of new tablet ad formats, including ways to interact with a specific product, feature a collection of products or promote foot traffic to a specific store location. In its for 2011, Google revealed that AdMob saw a 440% growth in traffic from tablets in November 2011 compared to December 2010. |
Harvard Study: Social Networks Do Little To Influence Taste And Interests | Devin Coldewey | 2,011 | 12 | 20 | Here’s a bit of science that’s contrary to what a heavy utilizer of social networks might expect. tracked the Facebook activity of hundreds of college students for four years, and came away with the rather unexpected result that the interests of friends don’t, in fact, tend to influence one another. That’s not to say it doesn’t happen at all, of course, but it’s clear that propagation and virality are subtler and more complex than some people (marketers and, I suspect, researchers) tend to think they are. But the study is also clearly flawed in ways that those versed in social graphs are likely to easily perceive. Pulling useful data from social networks is like catching lightning in a bottle, and I wonder whether the findings may in fact be, as the study attempts to avoid, “a spurious consequence of alternative social processes.” The central source of data for the study, in fact, doesn’t strike me as solid. Tracking the interests of college kids is a sketchy endeavor in and of itself, but tracking it via their Facebook favorites (i.e. what shows on your profile, not what you post about or share) seems unreliable. After all, not only does everyone use the network in their own way, but the network itself has changed. Putting Wilco in your favorites is a different act from liking Wilco’s Facebook page, their official band site, or posting their latest video. Gauging someone’s interest in a movie or band by the favorites factor alone is inadequate. Their findings are essentially that taste doesn’t diffuse the way you might expect. But while the data support this, nothing supports the data. Flattening huge sets of data and removing potentially conflative or distracting connections (“disentangling,” to use the researchers’ well-chosen word) is the bane of social research, and with a limited window on a huge field of data, like that these researchers had, it’s especially hard. Who among these people was a supernode? What were their Twitter counts? What was the most common unit of interest? How many total posts, how many total favorite changes, how many total friends? The process of disentanglement only gets harder and harder, and the amount of indispensable data grows. The researchers have used advanced statistical techniques, but the data they were interpreting doesn’t seem to be at all complete. The study does establish something that I think we perhaps understand is true already: you befriend people because of your overlaps in taste, but it’s rare that your existing friends change the tastes you already have. This is as much true out in the “real” world as it is online. It seems to me that taste doesn’t propagate because taste is rarely propagated to begin with. And on Facebook, the focus is not on the laying up of collections (increasingly all anyone even sees is news, not favorites), the collaborative appreciation of any item or media in particular (for the most part, your “likes” disappear into a vast ocean of other likes), or the influencing of others (there are supernodes and influencers, but Facebook isn’t the proper tool for the job). What propagates is individual items, events, songs, virals, and so on. To even collect, categorize, and weigh these collected items would not be to guarantee a meaningful result, since, as has been observed of the river, you never step into the same social stream twice. The status updates and comments of years past don’t strike me as a window into the soul of the user today. I have no doubt that some clever data divers and social archaeologists will find a way to make this data useful and powerful, but I don’t envy their task. The Harvard study does indicate another thing, which is that social networks are, for now, “light” social interaction. Breaking into a new genre of music, discovering a new favorite director, getting book recommendations, these things don’t occur nearly as much on social networks as their proponents and heavy users would like to think. That’s changing, but Facebook doesn’t appear to be in a hurry to make the change to “serious” social interaction: the kind of trusted exchanges you have with friends in conversation or in repeated encounters over years that slowly convert you into a fan of David Lynch, or Scarlatti, or David Foster Wallace. Those are still the province of real life, it seems, even among the Facebook generation. But for how long? |
Mozilla And Google Extend Default-Search Agreement For Another Three Years | Devin Coldewey | 2,011 | 12 | 20 | The browser wars continue to simmer, and Firefox, once the tech world’s champion against the insipid tyranny of Internet Explorer 6, has been losing ground to Chrome. In fact, just a few weeks ago, for the first time, with both taking up about 25% of the market but within a point of each other. Mozilla that they expected their agreement with Google, by which Google is the default search engine in Firefox, would be renewed — but the internet was all a-whisper with the idea that Google might take this tipping-point timing to alter the agreement. That’s still a possibility, but at any rate an agreement been reached, for no less than three years of continuing partnership. , but their next financial statement will likely prove very informative on that front. It makes sense, of course: Google isn’t one to antagonize an organization that has been in most respects a friendly one, and which of course commands quite a bit of an audience. Originally, the agreement was supposed to be renewed in November, which suggests (but in now way proves) that the last month has been full of negotiation. Obviously the balance of power has changed somewhat and Firefox is no longer the up-and-comer but the incumbent. As for the merits of the browsers, that’s for another article, and the features and strengths of Firefox and Chrome (and more niche browsers like ) will continue to shift. The next few years will be key for Mozilla, and the Google partnership (which makes up the vast majority of their income) will provide fuel for the fire while they attempt to diversify and innovate themselves out what amounts to serfdom. To speculate about what might occur after the threes years are up would be silly, but I would guess that Mozilla isn’t going to count on having Google’s help after that. |
Partech get to the €100M first close of its new venture fund | Mike Butcher | 2,011 | 12 | 20 | Paris-based VC Partech has announced the announces the €100M first close of its new venture fund, Partech International VI. The fund will be primarily dedicated to investments in internet / IT in Europe and Silicon Valley. Partech had a eight exits in 2011, including one IPO (InvenSense), and seven trade sales (notably Brands4Friends to eBay, Dailymotion to Orange, Inquira to Oracle, Digitick to Vivendi and JobPartners to Taleo). Investors include institutions such as CDC Entreprises (which invests on behalf of FSI), CNP (Caisse Nationale de Prévoyance), CM-CIC, Idinvest, as well as the EIF (European Investment Fund), AG2R La Mondiale, Malakoff Médéric and family offices. Edenred, which provides prepaid corporate services, joined as an LP. “A €120-140M fund will be the ideal size in order to implement our focused international strategy,” said Philippe Collombel, Partner at Partech. Good news for long time associate Andreas Schlenker who now becomes Partner, thereby joining Philippe Collombel (Paris), Nicolas El Baze (Silicon Valley) and Jean-Marc Patouillaud (Paris). |
Amazon Considered Acquiring RIM Over The Summer | Chris Velazco | 2,011 | 12 | 20 | To say that RIM has had it rough these past few months is a understatement, but according to a new report from , it may not have had to go through these trials alone. In a surprising twist, Amazon was reportedly considering a RIM acquisition as recently as this past summer. According to Reuters, Amazon had tasked an investment bank with exploring the possibility of a RIM buyout, although their sources don’t mention how far both parties were from finalizing a deal. The talks seemed to be largely informal in nature so it may have been nothing more than an open-ended meeting of the minds, but man — what a deal that would’ve been. The real head-scratcher here is why Amazon would want with RIM in the first place. Analysts from Citigroup predicted last month that an Amazon-branded phone could see the light of day , and acquiring RIM would certainly give them a platform to work off of. Then again, Amazon made their interest in Android apparent in March when they officially launched their own , not to mention the fact that they were probably already working on the Android-powered . Patents then? RIM holds their fair share of wireless patents many of which could come in handy if Amazon ever chose to pursue a stronger presence in the mobile space. It’s a definite possibility, but with both parties keeping quiet on the subject, we may never know for sure. Amazon apparently wasn’t the only one floating the notion of a RIM acquisition: Reuters mentions that bankers have tried to convince HTC and Samsung to make a move, although they made the obvious choice to ignore their ailing competitor. Now it appears that RIM is looking to brave the market alone once again, as the company’s board has told co-CEOs Jim Balsillie and Mike Lazaridis to forget the idea of selling parts of the business. The company also seems to have begun a campaign of bright-eyed optimism in an attempt to convince people that the best is yet to come. Their most recent were filled with such bright-eyed gems as “we are more determined than ever to capitalize on our strengths,” and the company’s pair of CEOs announced shortly afterward that they would reduce their salaries to . Whether or not these maneuvers are enough to ease shareholder concerns is still up in the air, though a quick look at their stock performance shows that it so far. With share prices plummeting and the release of their next-gen BlackBerry 10 devices being pushed later into 2012, I can’t help but wonder if RIM regrets rebuffing Amazon’s advances. |
Kickstarter: spnKiX Are Motorized Shoes – Yes, Motorized Shoes | Devin Coldewey | 2,011 | 12 | 20 | Some projects you want to succeed just because they’re something the world should have. Even if they’d be expensive, dangerous, and probably not as cool as you want them to be. Case in point: , a pair of battery-powered skates that scoot you around at up to 10MPH, and look as futuristic as they sound. They do indeed look like something from the future, though after a few hours of racing through trash and dust, they’ll look like a little more 21st century. I’m not a fan of the stylized name, but maybe in the future vowels are precious and the letter C has been eliminated. So I’ll let it fly. They’ve already gone through some design versions and the Kickstarter campaign is to pay for the initial production costs. The full retail cost will be $650, though you can get a pair if you pledge $500 now. I’d wait for the reviews, personally, but hey, how many people pre-ordered Segways? Enough, apparently. The wheeled shoes contain a motor and battery, last for about two or three miles, and are controlled (to my slight disappointment) by a little wireless handheld remote. I guess a lean-based system wasn’t really practical. But I don’t think I’ll be buying rocket shoes or wheelies until there’s something a little more elegant. But in the meantime it will be a comfort to my inner child that these things at least exist. |
FixYa Upgrades Its Q&A Service For Product Issues With Gamification And Some Realtime Data-Sharing | Rip Empson | 2,011 | 12 | 20 | We first covered , the Q&A site for products, , after the startup demoed at the TechCrunch40 DemoPit. Over the course of the next year, FixYa went on to raise $8 million in two rounds from Mayfield Fund and Pitango Venture Capital, with Chamath Palihapitiya joining the board of directors. It’s been a few years since we’ve tapped into the startup’s progress, but Founder & CEO Yaniv Bensadon told us that the company is now seeing 20 million unique visitors a month, with 650K users having answered questions from the 10 million product problems and solutions currently live on the site. And, since 2009, the company has been cash-flow positive. As the focus for FixYa has been on growth, on creating genuine, user-generated content that isn’t mashed, collected, or aggregated, on leveraging first users and building a network effect. Bensadon says that SEO was a significant driver for early traffic, as users with specific product problems looking for quick answers to lens issues on their Asus v90 would pop over to Google search to test the Web for answers, and FixYas results would often appear towards the top. But, over the last six months, FixYa has turned its focus from scaling and growth to providing a user experience that is more appealing, that allows users to take advantage of the wealth of data the startups has collected over the last few years on products. Like many other consumer web startups, FixYa has turned to widgets and game-ification to make this happen, and is today officially announcing v3.0 of their product. The new FixYa offers a more integrated backend gamified experience for experts who answer product questions, as well as a product engagement barometer, which allows end users to gauge the popularity of specific questions and discussion topics. Gamification for gamification’s sake is one thing, but FixYa’s integration of badges, levels and rewards to their experts’ dashboards is intended to make experts feel more engaged with the community, as well as to their peers. To this end, the startup has introduced an escalated question flow, based on three levels of expertise they’ve created for their experts. Their three levels of expertise, the CEO says, have been previously based on that legacy call center approach to customer service. For example, say you call AT&T and can’t get an answer from the first customer service rep you speak to, so you ask to speak to a supervisor. If you can’t get an answer from the supervisor, then you ask to speak to the manager — and so on. This has worked fairly well for FixYa so far, but as the startup’s mission is to get your consumer electronics questions answered within 24-hours, they’ve added new incentives, and a new workflow. To divvy up the work, FixYa is now posing basic product questions to their newest experts. Those questions that cannot be answered by the newest members are then passed on (after three hours) to the next level of more seasoned experts. If that question goes unanswered yet again, the question passes to the highest rung of the ladder, those esteemed super experts. If none of them can answer your question, you need to consult an oracle. (Just kidding.) FixYa is hoping that this new question flow will enhance the promptness and accurateness of the site’s answers and give experts incentive to continue coming back and providing spot-on customer support. The more correct answers they give, the more badges and rewards they receive, and the higher they go. In the meantime, the consumers benefit. (Or at least that’s the hope.) The site is also officially introducing the Fix-O-Meter, which has been live for about a week now, that is intended to leverage FixYa’s dataset to provide a realtime gauge of product issues, how many people have viewed the product, asked questions, and how many found “helpful solutions” to their problems. Going forward, every product page will get a meter detailing these data points, and Bensadon says that he hopes this barometer will become the equivalent of a consumer report snapshot. On top of that, FixYa will also be rolling out mobile apps over the coming months to let users get access to solutions for over 2 million products while they’re on the go. Q&A sites can be really hit-or-miss, but with gamification and a new barometer for consumer product issues, the FixYa experience stands to get a lot better. Customer service for consumer electronics has not been “fixed”, by any means, but the site seems to be finding its legs aggregating all of the questions and solutions for popular products out there, and it’s new face could go along way towards making the customer experience enjoyable. and let us know what you think. |
Allmyapps hits 2.5 million Windows apps users, now plans for Android | Mike Butcher | 2,011 | 12 | 20 | has grown a lot since we covered them. They had 100,000 users back in April, but recently hit 2.5 million. But with the news that Miscrosoft will develop its own Windows Apps store, they will have to “pivot”, as they say. Thus they are repositioning as a “Personal App Manager” to go beyond the Windows world. What does that mean? Well, there are many app stores and and no centralised way to backup, install and sync. Allmyapps now plans to automatically detect and saves all the apps you use, be they desktop, web or mobile, to provide you with a central hub to manage software across all your devices. You can already do this with its 15,000 Windows PC applications but now they plan to building synchronicity between PCs and your Android apps and devices, in the same way that Dropbox allows users to share, synchronize and save files on multiple devices. Thibauld Favre, co-founder estimates that by 2015 over 300 million people will own at least three different devices, each installing more than 200 apps a year. That seems highly probable. This is a startup to watch in 2012. |
null | Jon Orlin | 2,011 | 12 | 2 | null |
Kindle Fire Display Doesn’t Stand Up To Nook, iPad 2 In Tests | Devin Coldewey | 2,011 | 12 | 20 | You probably know that not all LCDs are created equal: at a given size, you can have different resolutions, lighting methods, and display-driving technologies. Apple has led the way in this regard, generally shelling out in its products for the best options available, while cheaper brands tend to take a bit off the price tag by going with a cheaper or smaller display. That’s certainly the case with the and , both of which are aimed at a lower price point and must make sacrifices to reach it. But indicates that Amazon might have cut corners just a little too much, or perhaps rushed the Fire to market without too much thought about image quality. It’s nothing truly problematic, it should be said right away, and DisplayMate notes that it’s still a good display, but it has a couple serious problems that, objectively speaking, put it on a lower tier than the competition. The “anti-reflective treatment” on the Fire appears to have backfired, as the display had the highest reflectance of any tablet they’d tested. Reflected ambient light (as in a bright room) and directed light (as from overhead lights) was significantly higher than the , and more than twice as high as the Nooks, which by the by had extremely low reflectance, making it good for reading in diverse lighting situations. The reflectance also caused a reduction in effective contrast, which is bad news for reading print. The Fire also uses an outdated gallery app that doesn’t use the full 24 bits of color depth of which the display is capable, resulting in banding and apparently a washed-out look that really has no place on a premium device. The second problem may be fixed in a software update (it’s a bit like the problem Nexus Ones had ), but the poor coating or material that’s resulting in the high reflectance likely isn’t going anywhere (unless this was an early batch problem). In many ways the Fire is the equal of the Nook and the iPad 2 displays, but all other things being equal, it’s just not as good. If possible, do a visual comparison in person to see if the difference is significant to you, and of course if you find the display is not up to your standards, you should feel perfectly justified in returning it. But if it looks good to you, it looks good, and there’s no point getting caught up in a few percentage points of difference here and there. : the article referenced is a review of the tablets themselves, only of the performance of their displays. And the iPad, Kindle, and Nook displays are certainly comparable, being the same class of relatively high quality IPS LCD, with similar costs and similar requirements: low power, capacitive touch component, thin and lightweight. Except where there is a software component to the display performance (as with the Fire), the DisplayMate comparison is limited to an observation of how these tablets’ displays perform. |
Tutorspree Raises $1 Million Round Led By Sequoia Capital | Jason Kincaid | 2,011 | 12 | 20 | , a startup that’s looking to pull the time-honored practice of tutoring into the 21st century, has landed a $1 million funding round from some top investors, including Sequoia Capital. The full list: Sequoia Capital, Founder Collective, Lerer Ventures, SV Angel, Thrive Capital, Paul Buchheit, Geoff Ralston, Tim Brady, Alexis Ohanian, Adam d’Angelo, Reinmkr Capital, and Bubba Muraka. The company was previously part of Y Combinator. Tutorspree is looking to disrupt the major tutoring companies, like Sylvan, by giving people a way to find highly qualified, private tutors online — without having to deal with messy (and untrustworthy) Craigslist listings. To do this, Tutorspree screens all of their tutors prior to listing them on the site — the company says that all of them have four-year degrees (or higher), or are in the process of earning them. The site also gives tutors a profile to describe themselves and list their credentials, and it lets users rate their experiences with each tutor, which is key. CEO Aaron Harris says that the platform now has three thousand tutors, with a waiting list of over six thousand hoping to get added. About half of those three thousand tutors have been contacted thus far by users. He also points out an interesting trend around who is hiring the tutors: there are plenty of students, but many of the site’s users are people who have finished school. At this point Tutorspree’s tutoring sessions are all the old-fashioned sort: one-on-one, in-person meetings. But Harris says that over the coming months that company will incorporate more technology into its service: tutors will eventually be able to conduct lessons via online video, and there will be online material as well. The company is also working on building out a repository of material that its tutors can draw from. Tutorspree isn’t the only company offering a tutoring marketplace online — competitors include and (which focuses on group classes, as opposed to private sessions). |
Don’t Hold Your Breath For That Nexus S ICS Update — It’s Been Paused | Greg Kumparak | 2,011 | 12 | 20 | Still anxiously sitting by your Nexus S, awaiting that Android 4.0 (Ice Cream Sandwich) update that started ? You might want to take a break. Go outside, go dancing, maybe go rewatch the Lord Of The Rings trilogy (it is the 10th anniversary of , afterall); for the time being, it appears that the Nexus S’ big update has been delayed. According by Google Community Manager Paul Wilcox, the company has paused the update in a number of regions while they “monitor feedback”. “Monitor feedback” in this case is likely a nice way of saying “a bunch of people are reporting issues, and we’re trying to figure out why.” Issues with the update seem to be a bit of a mixed bag. For many, it seems to work just fine; for others, the OS seems to be spinning its gears and inexplicably gobbling up a huge chunk of the battery at a faster rate. For others yet, wireless signal seems to have tanked. Curiously, a number of users are still seeing the update alert come through, even after it was purportedly “paused”… only to have it cancel itself out at the last second. In other words: If you see that lovely little alert box pop up in the next few hours, don’t get too excited until you’re sure everything is in working order. We’ve reached out to Google for clarification, insight on where exactly it’s been paused, and when we might expect to see the update resume. We’ll let you know if we hear back. |
Hands-On With The 4Moms Origami Stroller | John Biggs | 2,011 | 12 | 20 | When I first saw the stroller, I knew it would be a hit. It’s a robotic stroller that unfolds like the Autobots getting ready to roll out and has one of the nicest interfaces I’ve ever seen on a stroller (which is saying a lot). Why did it make me so excited? Well, first this stroller will beat the pants off any of those feature-rich Stokkes or Buzzes out there. Pull this thing out on the playground and you are the true Ninja Parent. Bugaboo? Whatever. My kid is riding Optimus Prime. I’m pleased to report that the buggy is as cool as it looks on video. The one-handed operation is seamless and incredibly satisfying and the fun LCD readout – complete with trip meter, battery level, and external temperature sensor – is just icing on the cake. 4moms is a small company based in Pittsburgh that is making a go of entering the entrenched baby market where Maclaren and Bugaboo are able to make money hand over fist while simply swapping out the seat colors. I’m glad to see some investment in stroller technology and it’s a fascinating product on many levels. I can’t review this completely right now as my wife will give birth to our newest test subject in March but from our initial tests we found the seat was a bit small for kids 3 years and older (the little girl in the video wasn’t quite comfortable). In terms of handling the buggy corners and takes bumps like a champ and an optional car seat adapter makes it good for the littlest ones. Also, to be clear, there is no way your child will get smashed inside this thing. A sensor disables the closing motor when there is any weight at all in the seat. There are a few problems, however. First, the Origami is heavy. 4moms has assuaged this a bit by adding a small central wheel on the main front hub that allows you to drag this around like a suitcase. However, lifting it is a chore, even if you have both hands free. There is clearly a lot of gearing in the front to make this work, so I can excuse it to a degree, but don’t plan on toting it around for very long. This buggy is designed to assist moms and dads who need to hold a crying baby and fold up their buggy at the same time. To that end it performs admirably, if not magically. However, I wouldn’t recommend this for a long sprint down an airport hallway nor would I suggest it get mixed in with the luggage on a flight. Then there’s the price. At $850 it’s on par with some of the fancier strollers out there but it’s still wildly expensive when compared to an umbrella stroller or the like. My recommendation would be to hit up the rich grandparents. In the end, these strollers are very cool, have a fairly strong resale value in the Baby Supply Gray Market every parent knows about, and the technology is impressive. Would I recommend it to a general buggy buyer? If you drive a lot and need to get in and out of the car as easily is possible, this thing would be a godsend. If you’re in a walking neighborhood, however, I feel that this might be a bit of overkill, especially at the price. However, if you just want to smoke other parents in the endless stroller arms race, you really can’t go wrong. |
fPrivacy Lets You Control Facebook App Permissions | Alexia Tsotsis | 2,011 | 12 | 18 | is a Chrome plugin that lets you granularly opt out of stalker-esque Facebook app permissions like “Post to my wall” or “Access profile info” whenever the app authorization dialog appears. Woohoo! Creator made the extension because Facebook apps have been too grabby for far too long — taking an all or nothing approach to permissions. fPrivacy sets those gladhandling apps straight by allowing you to specify which permissions you want to allow versus which you’d like to block. And the best thing about fPrivacy is that I helped come up with the logo/name — Come on, think about it … Said Selph somewhere in the process, “Someone from github suggested Defangbook which I also like, because then the logo could have fangs. I kind of feel like it might be too cutesy or clever or something though. I’m about 82% convinced on fPrivacy.” I’m 100% convinced, Chad. f for President. fPrivacy, for when you don’t want some shadyass Facebook app posting to your wall, but you still want to read your or whatever. This post is epic, I know. Please leave your thoughtful feedback in the comments. |
BleuFlamme Lets You Make Your Own Custom Shirt In 3D | John Biggs | 2,011 | 12 | 18 | [youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z–HM99kEC8] If there’s one thing the world needs it’s a service that lets you build a shirt using 3D rendering technology. Sure we could use cars that run on water and world peace, but let’s get the little things out of the way, right? Thankfully, there’s , a website created by a gaggle of eight engineers who have dedicated their lives to the sale of custom shirts. Building a shirt is fairly simple: you pick a style, a collar, some fabric, stick it all together, and they have it made in Hong Kong and shipped to you. They start at $99 each – a bit steep, but it sure beats a trip to Cameron Road. We’ve covered a number of these custom shirt sites, most recently and all of them seem to be improving upon the age old custom tailoring model. The question, then, is whether this model needs disruption? There are plenty of folks out there who want custom clothing. I’m no clothes-horse but a nice custom shirt looks good. $99 good? Hey, if you’ve got the IPO cash, why not flaunt it? BleuFlamme isn’t sitting still and will be improving their service over the next year. Quoth founder Jin Takahito: This coming Q1 we will release a rotatable 3D shirt model so you can preview your shirt design from all angles – implemented in pure HTML5 – something from a technical standpoint, is very hard to accomplish but in return provides better user experience from across any browsers any device. I will also introduce Community Gallery of shirt designs contributed by our users where you can get some initial inspirations when designing your own dream shirt. He also notes that “We are pushing human civilization forward as we speak,” which is a pretty noble goal, although a bit shortsighted. We’re going to need custom shirts when we leave to civilize species on other planets, Jin. Will you be there for us? [slideshow]
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App-ocalypse | Sarah Perez | 2,011 | 12 | 18 | There are over for the iPhone and iPad, and thousands more on other platforms. The average user has 65 apps installed on their phone . Many of us have more. Entire businesses have been built to solve the problem of “app discovery” – that is, a way to supplement the limited app search mechanisms built into the vendors’ own application stores. This is primarily to benefit mobile app developers, who can’t get their apps found. The end results of these products are pitched to consumers as tools to “find new, cool apps,” “find apps your friends like,” or “find the best apps that do X.” While these efforts are appreciated by app developers and end users alike, they don’t solve what is increasingly becoming a real problem: finding the apps you on your phone. Before sourcing factual data from mobile analytics firm as to the average number of apps users have installed on their devices, I did some informal polling on Facebook and Twitter. I asked my friends and followers how many apps they currently have on their phones. The answers were surprising. Although there were a few outliers – the person who only had 10, for example, and a couple of others who have upwards of 300, most people fell within the 40-100 app range. More often than not, they had closer to 50 or 60. Again, this is anecdotal data, but speaks to trends within the tech community. It’s interesting that this non-scientific polling shows that early adopters have roughly the same number of apps, on average, as all smartphone users worldwide – around 65. But how many apps do people actually use? According to Flurry, . That means that the majority of the apps installed on the phone are for occasional use. The games you play while killing time, the tip calculator or bill splitter you only pull out when dining with friends, the calorie counter for that diet you began in January (and again June), the garage sale finder, the photo-uploader, and that game that you kid totally loves…you know, the one with the bunnies? What was that called again? And herein lies the problem. Unless your app is appropriately titled and optimized for search, on-device app search is severely lacking, at least on the two major platforms, iPhone and Android, which I’ll address in this post. For example, in tests on my iPhone, you can’t pull up or by typing in “deals” into the iPhone’s Spotlight Search box. It doesn’t work on Android, either – you have to type the app’s name. But, oddly, this isn’t always the case. Type in “recipes” on iPhone and appears. But not on Android. Type in “deals” on iPhone, and there comes . Type “Shopping” on iPhone, and there’s and , but not or . And, in similar tests on Android, apps have to be searched for by name, not function. Why is this happening? It appears that some app makers are better than others at maximizing the on-device search capabilities provided by iOS. That is, they’re stuffing their app’s name with keywords. (Epicurious is actually called “Epicurious Recipes & Shopping List,” for example). This is a problem because search is the quickest way to find apps on your phone. After all, (stock) Android is designed so that you’ll hide most of your apps, only pinning favorites to your homescreen. Meanwhile, iOS addresses the app overload situation with folders…ugly and inelegant folders. These solutions, built out of necessity, pale in comparison with an efficient search mechanism. But even as useful as keyword-based searching is today, given that it ranks results alphabetically, it won’t continue to be as useful in the future. I mean, really – – imagine if that’s how Google ranked the web! Of course, the app store ecosystem is hardly as large as the web. Due to the barrier of entry – the technical requirements, the vendors’ curation process, etc. – app stores won’t grow to the web’s size. In time, our app addiction will likely also give way to “app-ified” mobile experiences designed for the small screen, and built with HTML5. (Or so I hope). But the app ecosystem insanely huge and still growing. In the meantime, users will begin to hit a stopping point with apps – a psychological barrier – not only due to the limited storage space on their phones, but also because they simply don’t have the mental capacity to deal with a phone that has some 500 or 1,000 apps installed. That’s actually kind of a shame. Although it’s a rare day that I feel compelled to check on the sustainability information regarding the fish I’m about order, it’s nice to know that is there. And the next time I get into a debate about global warming, I want to quickly launch . If only I could remember their names! So here’s a crazy idea: give our devices a search engine – one that’s as powerful as the app store’s engine, if not better. Apps should be keyword-optimized, ranked and rated by dozens of signals. The on-device app search engine should know what apps you have installed, how often you use them, how long you’ve had them, when you bought them, their ratings, your ratings, which of your friends use them, and everything the apps can and can’t do. For starters. On iPhone, Siri could one day be that engine – the way that we “re-discover” the apps we have installed will be through developer integrations with Siri’s engine. You’ll ask a question and Siri will launch the appropriate app. But Siri utopia is a long way out – it is very much an alpha product. In the meantime, instead of downloading every app we like, we should be able to quickly access those apps we’ve deemed our favorites, whether or not they’re on the device we have now. iCloud is a good first step to this – your favorite apps could be stored in the cloud and surfaced through Spotlight Search. And Google, a company that built the world’s best web search engine, could surely do a better job of building an engine for searching the apps on our phones. Unfortunately, we’re getting to a point where, if this situation doesn’t change, then it’s only a matter of time before all of us start to feel the side effects. . Without on-device app search improvements, no one will try your new app because they have enough apps already, thank you very much. How sad. |
Green Monday And Free Shipping Day Help Boost Online Holiday Sales By 15 Percent To $31B | Leena Rao | 2,011 | 12 | 18 | As we get closer to the Christmas holidays, online retail spending continues to soar, data and web analytics company comScore. A total of $6.3 billion was spent online in the past week, bringing the total spending for the holiday season to $30.9 billion. That’s a 15 percent increase versus the same period last year. In the past week, four individual days surpassed $1 billion in spending, led by Green Monday (Monday, Dec. 12) with $1.13 billion and Free Shipping Day (Friday, Dec. 16) with $1.07 billion. The term “Green Monday” was coined by eBay in 2007 to describe the Monday occurring around the second week of December, which has tended to be the heaviest online spending days of the year, as it is one of the last days of the week where consumers can purchase and still receive shipping by the holidays. Over the past six holiday shopping seasons, “Green Monday” has consistently ranked among the top spending days of the season. Free Shipping Day is a marketing event that takes place Friday, December 16, and is also one of the last days when merchants offer free shipping with delivery by Christmas Eve. While these days didn’t bring in as much as Cyber Monday ( ), this has been the heaviest spending week to date. And comScore says this will most probably be the peak spending period for online shoppers, as spending usually tapers off this week as Christmas approaches and more consumers flock to brick and mortar stores for last-minute gifts. One trend comScore highlights in the report is that deals such as discounts and free shipping were ‘frontloaded’ at the earlier part of the holiday shopping season this year compared to last year. The highest growth rates in purchasing in the time period between Thanksgiving and this past Friday took place during the days nearer to Thanksgiving. Growth rates for earlier dates remained in the mid-20s, with more modest growth rates in the teens in the middle part of December. For example, Black Friday and Cyber Monday saw a 25 and 27 percent increase in sales, respectively, from the previous year. Monday Dec. 12, and Friday, Dec. 16 saw a 19 and 14 percent increase in sales, respectively. And there’s no doubt that free shipping has been a huge incentive for online retailers this holiday shopping season. Each week of the online holiday season-to-date has seen free shipping occur on at least half of all transactions. During the week of Thanksgiving and Cyber Week, at least 3 in 5 transactions used free shipping. For this past week, the percentage of transactions with free shipping reached 56 percent, nearly 4 percentage points higher than the same period last year. And retailers like Amazon have been free shipping deadlines well past “free shipping day,” which should help increase the number of purchases using the offer. While we’ll probably see growth rates in spending and total sales spent online drop in the next few weeks, we could witness a surge in spending, weather permitting, post-Christmas. Last year, a blizzard in the Northeast U.S. region for the pre-New Year’s period to record levels. |
Remembering Email | Steve Gillmor | 2,011 | 12 | 18 | Somehow we keep thinking email will survive the social wave. It is the ultimate social tool, we reason. It’s an open standard, whatever that really means. It’s ubiquitous, you know, like Flash. Makes my head hurt to think about it going away. Nope, email is bigger than the Beatles. Yet the signs are everywhere. George Colony sees social running out of time per day and people, but something will give. Email or phone? Email. People use social to determine whether you will answer the phone. People use email to communicate in the absence of more social metadata. It comes down to this: will social absorb email or the other way around? I spend roughly 75% of my computing time on the iPad/iPhone. The covert Blackberry under the desk in meetings has been replaced by the glance at push notifications as they light up the iPad or scroll in from the top if I’m reading or browsing. Email is still there, a strong tie or second by a nose in attention and even overt interruption. But what email doesn’t have more than outweighs its position in my time hierarchy. Email is about a defined relationship, or a management tool for broadcast information. Newsletters and media pings take up the majority of the Gmail flow, where I aggregate everything except Salesforce corporate email and calendar. Both are meshed into iOS mail, with the Exchange mail configured to generate push notifications on delivery and Gmail batched thereafter. In aggregate I’m more or less at the mercy of the agenda of the external, the unanticipated, the insistent, the invite, the reminder. At some point, the need to further reprioritize this stream overwhelms the reluctance to write a filter or more usefully add a label. But “doing my email” becomes an exercise in deflection rather than sensing the flow of the external as compared to my internal sense of what’s going on. CCs add some level of group awareness along with a dose of political jousting, but mostly the signal is either noisy or extremely tactical. Strategically, social has many more attributes that heighten the value of individual objects. These include comments, Likes, retweets, @mentions, and direct messages. Given their integration of citation and identity, these signals move beyond CCs and BCCs to build a sense of social traction that carries with it a history and context for new messages. Given two movies to choose from, I’ll go with the one that best rolls up the opinions of those I respect, and often, don’t respect. Those “that’s the last time I listen to you”s are among the most valuable to harvest, and are only useful because people keep tweeting. There’s a social history in email, but it’s based on a structure of authority, presumed or otherwise. It’s an FYI not FOI as in Our. @mentions are a blend of both, alerting both the mentioned and those interested or following. Direct messages are the most email-like, but even there they provide shared social history as a back channel commentary on group business. And groups go beyond email in avoiding forking and pruning without a consensus. As tools such as Flipboard blur the distinction between the social channels, they make it harder and harder to carve out time for a personal channel opaque to search engines and realtime advertising. Streaming services disintermediate email by establishing a social relationship that avoids physical purchases in favor of app-triggered notifications. Businesses can now compare the accumulated value of social versus email, and are investing in the former not just in technology but people. Robert Scoble is better known by his Twitter handle than his email address. Today email serves as a notification service for social. I get social notifications both via push on mobile and email as an archive. The more efficient push gets, the more email becomes a redundant service. On iOS devices, I am now using push alerts to get to email more frequently than opening the mail client itself. I see the alerts flow through on the tablet or phone without having to log in, and use my security code only on items I have particular interest in. Swiping a missed phone call notification saves even more time, automatically calling the number back. These more efficient, actionable gestures are the new normal. Our kids already understand that email is fading. They model the world on Facebook, tracking invites in their message stream or as event invites. At a glance they see who’s coming, who’s not, and why not. A calendar invite carries none of that context unless you go to a web page, which for those too young to remember is an early form of social media. Foursquare tells you you’re late or on time based on who you know showing up or not. GPS is people. Our kids have the advantage of not having to deconstruct email and calendar. They don’t have to move their friends into the new paradigm; they’re already there with them. They don’t have to create authority, influence, and attention; they already have a rich shared history. We, however, have some work ahead of us. We need to identify and convert a rich subset of people from using email with us to sharing a social space with us. @mentions are the most valuable tool we have for this task. You can establish the desire for a connection with a series of such references, not just to a single target but to a group you identify and alert communally. Many of these @mentions already have bidirectional follows, making direct messages possible. New tools such as Chatter with its external group technology let you expand direct messages into secure conversations. Email takes more clicks, lacks social metadata, and has no stable collaborative history. I have no dog in the hunt for whether social will prevail or email will survive. Radio still survives in the Age of Video, and Web will not be crushed by App. But once we get absorbed person by person into social, one channel at a time, there’s no percentage in going back. Once I figure out the simplest path across the stream, social signals begin to popularize that method. Perhaps it will gain momentum, or be absorbed by something slightly better. Email will remain as an important early step, like SIP as the first stage of setting up a call. Once the channel is established, no need to go back to email. Once you get redirected from Web to App, the next time you go direct into the app. Change is ratified by the difficulty in rolling back. What was once hard to imagine let alone accept can become so obvious as to be ignored. In a world dominated by mobile, the invisible triumphs in the cloud, is passed along as entertainment, and then ratified by economy of scale in time saved. The reason email will disappear is because it is the single most effective tool for moving to social. |
New Facebook For iPhone 4.1 Includes Timeline Access and Faster Photos | Josh Constine | 2,011 | 12 | 18 | Facebook has just pushed out . The update includes the ability to view the new profile Timeline, Subscribers, Subscriptions, pop-over notifications, and add people to friend lists. The app feels more responsive, and photos seem to load significantly faster. Facebook launched Timeline globally a few days ago, but initially it . The update will give plenty of exposure to Timeline, as Facebook for iPhone has 99.5 million monthly active users and 57.6 million daily active users, . Facebook for iPhone 4.1 may have been planned to launch alongside the Android update, but could have been delayed by necessary bug fixes. Its release shows that Facebook isn’t favoring Android mobile development just yet, though its . You may only see Timeline through the app if you’ve already via the web. Though Facebook for iPhone 4.1 runs on iPad, Facebook says Timeline access for its dedicated iPad app is coming soon. In 4.1, notifications, messages, and requests now load in partial-screen popovers rather than separate full screens. These make it easier and faster to return to the previously viewed screen. The reduced load time for photos will make viewing them a less interruptive part of the news feed browsing experience. Facebook has also fixed one of the app’s most annoying bugs, where tapping a photo would accidentally load a different photo from the same album. By clicking on the Friends button beneath someone’s Timeline cover, you can now add them to friend lists (thanks for the tip, ). This is especially useful if you accept a new friend request from mobile and want to immediately restrict their access to your content by putting them in a privacy controlled friend list. There’s still no way to edit a friend list directly, though. A Subscribed button on the Timeline also lets you select the types and volume of someone’s posts that you see in the news feed — great for quieting noisy friends. The Android app and mobile site added these features on Thursday. One change I don’t think helps: to filter the news feed to show only stories from a specific friend list, you now have to choose it from the general menu. Previously, a button above the news feed itself offered speedier access to friend list news feed filters. Also, there’s no access to the Timeline Activity Log yet from the iPhone app or other mobile interfaces, which is important for . |
NYPD Busts 141 Merchants For Selling Stolen Apple Goods | Jordan Crook | 2,011 | 12 | 18 | New York City is possibly the most dangerous place to take your new iPhone or iPad. Grand larcenies have increased this year in the Big Apple, which NYPD spokesman Paul Browne attributes to criminal’s obsession with stealing handheld devices. But after a sting operation that went down between Tuesday and yesterday, things might be a bit safer in the city that never sleeps. Undercover officers attempted to sell iPhones and iPads at discounted prices (between $50 and $200) to over 600 stores throughout all five boroughs — including bodegas, supermarkets, gadget stores, etc. — clearly stating that all the hardware had been stolen. Of the 600 stores solicited by the undercover policemen, 141 merchants were busted for trying to purchase the “stolen” hardware. Over the past year, the New York City subway has been prime real estate for thieves looking to jack smartphones and tablets. With more expensive gadgetry on the market, thieves are making bank selling their stolen goods to small shops. “That’s our intention, to reduce the places where people who steal these things can go and sell them,” said NYPD Commissioner Ray Kelly to the . “If someone is offering you an iPad for way below market value, you have to realize that it’s most likely stolen.” An unnamed source from Fort Greene’s 88th precinct mentioned that over half the robberies in the precinct involve iPhones during certain months. Interestingly enough, an ABC News story from last week uncovered that some thieves don’t want anything the iPhone, asking for cash instead of an Android phone. What we should learn: Don’t wave your phone around, iPhone or not. Don’t steal people’s phones. Don’t try to sell stolen phones. Don’t try to buy stolen phones. [Photo Credit: ] |
This Magnetic Art Project: How Does It Work? | John Biggs | 2,011 | 12 | 18 | While I find that I like my ferrite-based art projects to be a bit more automatic, the Ferrite Interactive Liquid Sculpture is still pretty cool. It’s a tube containing a Ferrofluid – a suspension of ferrite particles – that is shock-resistant enough to survive a few tumbles. You can use a magnet to create odd shapes, experience the magic fo magnetics, and you can put it on your desk and toy with it as you wait for 5 o’clock to roll around. $100 gets you a mini tube while $125 gets you the larger model. Both include powerful magnets for controlling your ferrite experience and all are made by one , an industrial design student from Georgia. While the project isn’t very high tech, what it lacks in gizmos it makes up for in creativity. Besides, who, I ask you, who doesn’t like magnets? Who? |
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Street By 50 Headphones Review: Loud Enough For Everyone (Literally) | Jordan Crook | 2,011 | 12 | 18 | The get the job done when it comes to sound quality and volume, but there are a few quirks that didn’t sit well with me. When all is said and done, a decision to buy these headphones all comes down to how serious you are about music and how often you use a pair of cans. If appearances matter, then 50 Cent certainly knows what he’s doing. I love the look of Street by 50 headphones, and think they actually have an aesthetic advantage against the new Beats by Dre cans. They’re equally as comfortable, too. Some over-the-ear headphones become too heavy, while others are either too lose or too snug to deal with. I find the Street By 50 cans to be just right in terms of fit, likely due to their ultra-flexible polymer construction. And ultra-flexible is no understatement. These things can really bend when stressed, and shouldn’t break unless broken headphones is the intended goal. Along the inside, there are faux leather-lined memory foam cushions for the ears and the headband. Overall, they fit very comfortably but I would like it to be just a tad tighter around my ears. I notice that when I press even slightly on the ear cups the sound is way better, and way louder. My colleague Matt Burns (reviewing Sync by 50 wireless) would disagree with me, as these are apparently one of the first pairs to not feel too tight for him. So clearly, to each his own. I played around with both the blue and black models of Street by 50 at my a few weeks ago, but wound up with a Shadow Black pair for the review. I’d say the black versions look much better with the bright blue removable cord that comes with them, though blue-on-blue may work for some people. The mic feels just a tad too high on the cord, but the play/pause button still has a nice tactile feedback despite the fact that it lies nearly flush with design. Sound quality on these things was pretty great. Even tracks that are poor quality on my computer sounded much better through Street by 50. And when I put them to the ultimate test — Benny Benassi’s , of course — I was left feeling like there was a club in my head. But there are some issues. For one, these aren’t “noise cancelling” headphones in the traditional sense. They do, however, feature “passive noise cancellation.” Straight from the owner’s manual: “Our unique shape and earcup design do provide passive sound isolation with lower background noise.” To a degree, this is true. I heard much less background noise wearing Street by 50 than I did with my Apple earbuds. However, if you’re really serious about blocking out the world you may run into some trouble on a plane or in a super noisy environment. But perhaps my biggest beef comes from the outside in. While some are obsessed with blocking out outside noises, others are more concerned with how much others can hear their music. Anyone with a music library as embarrassing as mine knows what I mean. With Street by 50 headphones at even 75 percent volume, passersby can hear every note and every word of the song your listening to. No problem. I also noticed that using the mic to talk on the phone isn’t all that pleasant. I’m not sure why, but many people had trouble hearing me and and everything sounded much more garbled on my end. It’s clear that Street by 50 headphones aren’t for the casual listener. It’s difficult for anyone who isn’t serious about music to justify the price tag, especially since casual activities like listening to music on the train and talking on the phone are tedious and annoying. But if music is your passion and comfort is important, these may be what you’ve been looking for.
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Amazon, Apple Soar In Customer Satisfaction In 2011; Netflix Plummets | Leena Rao | 2,011 | 12 | 27 | According to customer experience analytics company , e-commerce giant Amazon once again topped consumer satisfaction in online retail . However, Netflix, which had a dismal year, plummeted in customer satisfaction. For the past seven years, Netflix and Amazon have been competing for first place in Foresee’s Index, but this is the first year where one of the e-retailers saw a massive dip in sentiment. Amazon climbed two points to score 88 on the study’s 100-point scale, which is the highest score from any retailer in 14 consecutive studies. Netflix’s well-publicized blunders, including price hikes last summer and the unsuccessful attempt to spin off the DVD rental business, caused its customer satisfaction to plummet by seven points and 8% to 79. Netflix saw scores drop in every single element of the website that ForeSee measures, including site content, site functionality, merchandise, and prices. Next to Netflix, both Gap (down 6% to 73) and Overstock.com (down 5% to 72) saw the largest declines in satisfaction, leaving them with scores at the bottom of the Index. Besides Amazon, the largest gains in satisfaction go to TigerDirect.com (up 8% to 79) and JC Penney (up 6% to 83), which nabbed Ron Johnson, former head of Apple’s retail operations, as CEO this year. Top-performing e-retailers include Amazon, Avon, JC Penney, QVC, and Apple. The report also found that American consumers were less price sensitive during the 2011 holiday shopping season than they were last year, as price had a smaller impact on satisfaction than last year. Instead, for many e-retailers, improving merchandise and content would have a greater return on investment than price, says survey respondents. Another key finding from the report related to repeat buying. Highly satisfied shoppers say they are 64% more likely to consider the company next time they are purchasing a similar product, 68% more likely to purchase from the retailer online, 48% more likely to purchase from the retailer offline, and 67% more likely to recommend the retailer to others. And analysis of top e-retailers in the United States has shown that, on average, a one-point change in website satisfaction was found to predict as much as a 14% change in revenue generated on the web. |
Find Your Stolen Camera or Protect It First With GadgetTrak’s CameraTrace | Josh Constine | 2,011 | 12 | 27 | If you got a digital camera for the holidays, or already own one, take a moment and write down the serial number. That way service can help you recover it if it’s ever stolen. , for a one-time fee of $10 CameraTrace lets you register your camera’s serial number. If you later report it lost or stolen, you’ll be notified by email if anyone else tries to upload photos from it. You can also search CameraTrace’s serial number database of 5 billion photos for free. Both tools could help you track down unauthorized uploaders and get your gear back. Camera thieves beware, there’s a new sheriff in town. The way it works is that almost all digital cameras imprint their serial number on the photos they shoot, which CameraTrace can detect when they’re posted online. Law enforcement can then be alerted to investigate. The official launch of CameraTrace comes after several years of beta testing. Back in August, we wrote about how with over $9,000 worth of property. The company also offers a that detects when they connect to the Internet. For the launch, CameraTrace upped its crawling capabilities. Its database now includes 11 million cameras of 300 different models, and every photo uploaded to Flickr since 2006. CameraTrace stays up to date by scanning newly uploaded pics each day with grid computing technology. ‘s CEO and founder Ken Westin tells me its database of photos is an order of magnitude larger than that of competitors like Stolen Camera Finder. This makes CameraTrace the best place to go if you ever get jacked. The premium service includes a physical lost and found tag that can be applied to your camera. It features instructions so anyone who finds it can notify you through CameraTrace, and it also serves as a theft deterrent. Another advantage of the CamerTrace: it can help photographers locate where their copyrighted photos are displayed without permission. But remember, all of CameraTrace’s services only work if you have have a copy of your serial number. It can typically be found on a camera’s base plate, inside the battery case, or in the box. Westin’s final tip? A huge number of cameras are stolen through auto break-ins, so lock your gear in the trunk. |
Another Report Shows Google+ With 60M+ Users And Growing… But Active User Count Still Unknown | Eric Eldon | 2,011 | 12 | 27 | Google+ now has more than 62 million users, according to , Ancestry.com founder and unofficial traffic analyst for Google’s social network. That’s not 62 million active users, though — a point that everyone covering these numbers . It’s just the number of total users. And specifically, it’s the number of new surnames that Allen’s team has tracked being created on the service. Because Google has aggressively integrated G+ into many other properties, including its top navigation bar and the OneBox, one would expect a certain baseline amount of sign-ups from among the hundreds of millions of people using other Google products. The real question is how many people are returning after creating their accounts, which Allen doesn’t try to answer. But there’s support out there for Allen’s latest numbers, from someone trying to answer the usage question. Last week, that G+ had grown to 67 million in November, up 2 million from October. That’s significantly more than the 50 million that Allen reported at the end of the month. The reason could be that the web measurement firm’s methodology includes sampling browsing habits from people who have monitoring software installed on their computers. It has been measuring traffic to plus.google.com, meaning it counts anyone who clicks through within a given month, but not G+ related traffic elsewhere. Thus, while it does show active usage, it is not measuring , just . What can we take away from Allen’s new data, given the remaining question? Growth could be accelerating: more people are signing up now than in previous months, with nearly a quarter of the total user base in December alone, and around 625,000 new users per day at this point. One assumes that at least some of that acceleration is due to engagement (people using the service and inviting new friends to join, who then also start using it regularly. Coupled with comScore’s numbers and you can guess that the site is growing both in total size and engagement. Allen’s big conclusion, based on the most recent growth increases, is that the service could reach 400 million users by the end of 2012. If that turns out to be the case, I’m sure active usage will also be increasing. But the question remains the same: how many G+ users stay active? Next up in the G+ traffic saga: product head Bradley Horowitz has promised new numbers that are . Let’s hope they includes monthly active user counts and not raw sign-up totals like the Google previously released in September. [Graph via .] |
YouTube Slam: Google’s “Hot Or Not” For Videos | Sarah Perez | 2,011 | 12 | 27 | Bored? Yeah, me too. Which is why I just killed nearly 30 minutes doing mindless web surfing on Facebook, Reddit and Amazon. But it looks like YouTube would like a little of my holiday downtime clicks – and yours, too. The company , a game that involves pairing up two videos and voting for your favorites. I guess you could call YouTube Slam a “Hot or Not” for videos. Except in this case, you’re not picking the hottest/sexiest face, you’re picking the funniest clip (Comedy Slam), the best dancer (Dance Slam), the cutest kitten (Cute Slam), best music (Music Slam) or weirdest video (Bizarre Slam). Here’s how it works: Click on the category of videos you want to watch. View them both and vote for your favorites. Wow, that was hard. The top-rated videos are then featured on the “slam leaderboard,” which is great, but nothing like getting onto the YouTube homepage, of course. The site was cooked up by YouTube with folks from , and has actually been around , when Google Research used it as the output destination of a machine ranking project. The project analyzed “singing at home” videos and attempted to surface those that belonged to truly talented musicians. The results were then spit out to YouTube Slam to help crowdsource the discovery of the “hidden gems.” So there you go: mindless web surfing. For science! . |
For Google+, User Count Is A Journey Not A Race | Josh Constine | 2,011 | 12 | 27 | That’s a good thing because Google+ missed the starting gun. And its “invite only” launch strategy saw all its disconnect users . But in the long run that might not matter much, because Google+ doesn’t need a critical mass or tons of engagement. It needs signups so it can get its identity layer under users of its other products. That way it can turn everyone’s searches, mapping, email, and more into fuel for its ad targeting engine. While the 62 million count might not sound like much, it’s a start, and the projected 293 million count by the end of 2012 is important. Our writer , not active ones. That’s worse, but the good news for Google is that the sign up rate is increasing. Its variety of in-roads to the service including the top navigation bar across Google products are work. With enough cajoling, users are registering even if their social network needs are already being met by Facebook and Twitter. Google may never beat those services in terms of engagement with a content stream. That’s even while taking a of letting you efficiently manage Circles of any type of relationship from best friends, to loose acquaintances, to followed celebrities. But that’s fine because Google isn’t a dedicated social company out to make the world more open and connected. At its core, Google is an online advertising company that offers a range of features to draw your time and data. It cares a lot about making great products, but they don’t drive the business directly. In that vein, Google+ doesn’t need to have the best news feed, it just needs users to sign up once and stay signed in. If it takes Google 4 years to start catching up to Facebook in terms of user count, so be it. The company has plenty of money to burn so it can take this long-term approach. What matters isn’t when, but if if it can eventually grow its registration base large enough for Google+ to produce ROI. As Larry Page said on the , by “baking identity into all of our products… you’ll have better, more relevant search results and ads.” When Google’s average user can be served high CPC ads for lawyers while they search for nearby restaurants because yesterday they searched for lawyers, then the journey is complete. |
Asana Launches iPhone Version Of Its Group Task Manager | Eric Eldon | 2,011 | 12 | 27 | Group task manager startup launched its first native mobile app last week. It’s mostly a straight port of its existing mobile web app, so the main benefit at present is that switching back and forth with other apps is much faster than dealing with Safari. The company it’s planning to invest in native apps more over time, but the version available is already useful for me since I’ve been dumping all of my story ideas into Asana since I started at TechCrunch in November… because I’m on my phone all the time, and checking Asana to see what I need to do next while I’m also trying to do three or four other things. If you’re not familiar, the stand-out feature of Asana’s mobile experience is that the projects, task lists and individual task windows from the web app now appear as layers within the home screen. The left-hand projects bar forms the bottom layer. If you press on one of your projects, its task items slides in from the right to appear as the next layer. If you touch any task, its pane then comes in to form the third layer. To navigate back from lists or individual items, click on mostly submerged window on the left. The overall feeling is so natural that after a few days of using it I had to stop myself from pressing on my computer monitor to simulate the same experience. The main downside to the mobile experience, at least for now, is that you can’t create or reassign tasks to others. Instead, any task you create just defaults to yourself and you’ll need to change it on the web site later. Expect everything to improve rather quickly, though. The company iterates fast, recently adding a repeat-event feature to tasks that others and myself had , for example. (Although it still hasn’t added time of day, which would be helpful for those of us who need to manage a lot of tight deadlines). Overall, yes, there are of other task manager type apps out there, and I know because I’ve tried using many of them over the years. Asana is approaching this consumery-enterprise space the right way, by not trying to add in too many features or forcibly define how people can to use it. I’m including Basecamp in the “other” category, as I’ve always found it to be overwrought (or as designer put it, “Basecamp is to Asana as Android is to iPhone”). Instead, Asana focuses on nailing a few features right then adds on the right extras on top, as my friend Dan Kaplan explored in . It also does what many competitors don’t, which is provide a seamless user experience across web and (supported) mobile devices. You can download the iPhone app . [Screenshots via Asana, because I don’t want to show everyone what I’m working on next] |
The iPhone 4S Is Finally Cleared For Launch In Mainland China | Jordan Crook | 2,011 | 12 | 27 | Here in the States we’ve been chatting it up with Siri on the iPhone 4S for months, but the folks over in mainland China — the biggest mobile market in the world, mind you — have yet to hear that . The 4S launched in Hong Kong just last month, and since then we’ve heard that it would show up on the mainland in December. is now reporting that a phone with the model number A1431 has passed the final hurdle in its Chinese certification. That’s the same model number that Apple used to get a network entry permit for the 4S from the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology on December 6, so all signs point to iPhone. Considering the timeline, that means the iPhone 4S will likely launch in China before the Chinese New Year on January 23, which is the equivalent of our Black Friday. Seeing that the iPhone is basically a smash hit in China — over (even though it isn’t an official iPhone carrier) — Apple will likely be with the iPhone 4S come 2012. Especially if the lead to something a bit more official. |
GoDaddy Officially Removed From The House’s List Of SOPA Supporters | Greg Kumparak | 2,011 | 12 | 27 | When GoDaddy their support of last week, many were quick to point out that such an act didn’t really much. As far as the Judiciary Committee overseeing SOPA was concerned, GoDaddy was still a supporter. That’s been changed, it seems. In the latest version of the US House Of Representatives’ (heads up: it’s a PDF), GoDaddy’s name is nowhere to be found. Does this mean that everyone should immediately resume throwing money at GoDaddy? Of course not; if you’re genuinely interested in only handing your greenbacks over to companies that are either neutral towards or against SOPA, it’s important to keep an eye on the company’s actions in the coming weeks (once the scalding hot and blindingly bright spotlight has moved on.) Plus, it’s not as if there aren’t just begging for your business. What’s more important, however, are the the names still on the list. ESPN? Scholastic, Inc.? Visa? Even if you can’t find a way to stop supporting most of the SOPA-friendly companies with your wallet (GoDaddy was quite easy in this sense, which is presumably a big part of why the Internet’s rallying against them moved so quickly), it’s important information to keep in the back of your mind. |
Half A Million Downloads Later, Social Discovery App Banjo Hits The Web | Sarah Perez | 2,011 | 12 | 27 | , the (I mean social discovery service) that shows you who’s nearby based on their Facebook and Foursquare check-ins, geotagged tweets, TwitPic and Instagram uploads, is now a web app, too. In case you haven’t yet download the iOS or Android application to your mobile device (or are ), you can check out the service via the recently updated Banjo website instead. To use the online version, you just type in any city or zip code to explore what people are saying and doing there in real-time. And if you’re using a modern browser that supports geolocation, you can also use the online service to see those who are near your current location. The website is designed replicate the native mobile experience as closely as possible – and sure enough, it looks like a big ol’ iPhone app right there on the screen. According to Banjo Co-founder Damien Patton, the app’s adoption has surpassed the team’s expectations. They were aiming to reach 400,000 downloads by year-end, but ended up achieving the 500,000 downloads milestone before the year was out, six months post-launch. (Note: that’s iOS/Android combined downloads). Patton adds that the company has also seen over 1 million friend alerts in its first month as well, referring to if friends you’re connected to on social networks are nearby. Banjo is live in over 175 countries, which is why the company is now focusing on adding support for additional languages. It recently added Spanish, and has just added Turkish and Italian to the Android app, too, with the iPhone to follow in January. There has been this year, many of which leverage existing social networks in an effort to connect you with those around you. In Banjo’s case, its closest competitors are apps like , and , which are more focused on introductions and networking than Banjo is. You can check out the newly web-ified version of Banjo . |
6.8 Million Android And iOS Devices Were Activated on Xmas Day, 242 Million Apps Downloaded | Erick Schonfeld | 2,011 | 12 | 27 | It was a very Android and iOS Christmas. Mobile apps research form estimates on how many Android and iOS devices were activated on Christmas day, as well as how many apps were downloaded. On a combined basis, 6.8 million devices were activated, up 353 percent from the 1.5 million average activations a day over the first 20 days of December. And that number from 2.8 million combined activations on Christmas, 2010, the previous record. Flurry doesn’t break out the split between iOS and Android. But you can triangulate the numbers with other publicly available stats. Android chief Andy Rubin recently noted just before Christmas that Android activations surpassed . So that leaves between 700,000 and 800,000 a day for iOS devices (iPhones iPads, and iPod Touches), roughly speaking. The big unanswered question is whether that 50/50 split continued on Christmas Day, or whether one OS or the other prevailed as the choice Christmas gadget gift. My guess is that Android was beating iOS in total daily activations up until Christmas, but the pull of Apple’s marketing might have evened things out on Christmas Day. In terms of apps, a record 242 million total apps were downloaded across both platforms, a 125 percent jump from the daily average earlier in December. Last Christmas, the number of combined downloads was 150 million. Flurry expects a billon apps to be downloaded between Christmas and New Year’s Day. |
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