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More Patent Trouble For Google As BT Alleges Infringement | Devin Coldewey | 2,011 | 12 | 19 | The world of patent litigation seems less and less connected to the real world as the rate of change and development outpaces the rate at which companies can patent new technologies, or even, as BT shows, sort through their existing ones. The amount of infringement lawsuits in play right now is mind-boggling, and while some have some common-sense merit, others simply don’t have a veneer of legitimacy. , alas, seems to fall into the latter category. The games these company play as far as picking and choosing who, how, and where they sue are beyond understanding by onlookers. It seems likely that the normal method of extortion via patent has failed, so BT has gone all-out, and is asking for damages, likely quite a sum, as they allege years of willful infringement. That kind of thing adds up, and the costs will continue to mount as the trial, guaranteed to be long and strange, goes on. , which I won’t duplicate here. The trouble seems to be usual one with patent trolling, which is that the patents cover such elementary aspects of technologies today that it’s hard to imagine a device or service that does not infringe. For instance, two of the patents more or less cover the storage and processing of mapping data centrally, and pushing out only, say, route and traffic data to a mobile device. It’s hard to believe that such a thing could be patented in the first place, as it is the natural method for any internet-enabled device to show a map. Hindsight does leave us with the impression that such things are natural or inevitable, when certainly not all are, but these patents don’t strike one as inventive. Says BT: “It is a well-considered claim and we believe there is a strong case of infringement.” Says Google: “We believe these claims are without merit, and we will defend vigorously against them.” Right now there isn’t much to add; the litigation will probably go on for some time as Google files countersuits and attempts to invalidate the BT patents or prove in some other way that Google is not liable for damages. We won’t bore you with the weekly victories and setbacks (they grew tiring in Samsung v. Apple and would do so here) but will post the more important updates. |
Eventasaurus raises Angel round for one-click events creator | Mike Butcher | 2,011 | 12 | 19 |
, a startup still in private beta, has raised an undisclosed angel round to create a dashboard for event managers. You know all those separate events you have to create on Eventbrite, Meetup, Facebook, Plancast, Lanyrd etc? With Eventasaurus you create and manage the event on one place under one single interface. Launched in private beta earlier this year, it’s winning amongst event managers in London. Attendees can be sync’d and downloaded from across platforms. One of the main features is the ability to engage in realtime across social networks with potential ticket buyers using deep API integrations. Twelve of London’s better known tech angels and entrepreneurs are investing including Julian Ranger, Steve Kennedy, and Desigan Chinniah. They join earlier investors Dylan Collins and Christopher Muenchhoff. Ex-Accel VC Hussein Khanji has also joined the company as an advisor. Eventasaurus will shortly be opening up its beta group to users on the waiting list, and a public beta launch will follow soon. Founders Sam Collins and John Sutherland are spread between London and Edinburgh. Speaking as someone who has to run events I’m looking forward to the full launch. |
Germany's clone kings lose yet another key executive | Mike Butcher | 2,011 | 12 | 19 | Last week we broke the that , the incubator in Berlin best known as the epicenter of Germany’s clone/copycat startup culture had hit the rocks. It recently lost at least 20 of its key staff – including at least two CTOs. The timing is bad for Rocket’s founders, the three Samwer brothers (Oliver, Marc and Alexander) who are understood to be raising at least a billion dollar financing round, possibly from DST, designed to clone every successful US startup. It’s been confirmed that even Rocket’s MD and key founder has left. Now local tech blog has confirmed that long time member of the Samwer’s ‘praetorian guard’ looks likely to leave “within the next three months”. This is a major blow, since Heinemann is widely acknowledged to be not only a key person at Rocket but also someone who acts as a bulwark between staff and the famously irascible Oliver Samwer, a man who is quite happy to . With staff “fed up with the Samwers”, many have already “mentally left” and “the situation is very tense” (say sources) this appears to be a precarious time for the incubator. Then again we are also hearing that Groupon is quite happy with their ability to scale the property globally. So perhaps the Samwers will concentrate on Groupon and leave Rocket to wither? |
Sprint Exults After AT&T Abandons T-Mobile Bid | Devin Coldewey | 2,011 | 12 | 19 | With the AT&T-T-Mobile merger , Sprint is taking a moment to reflect on their own wisdom in opposing it from the beginning. lauds the retraction of the bid as “the right decision,” says that success would have meant “an undeniable duopoly,” and commends the DoJ and FCC for a job well done. Very effusive, as they have every reason to be. After all, what they have have indeed been saying since the beginning — , , and so on — was in all likelihood true. And while it would have been bad for consumers, it might have been fatal to Sprint. Competing against one hundred-million-subscriber carrier is hard enough; competing against two would have made things intolerable. A couple years in such harsh environment might have relegated them to the dungeon occupied by local and specialty carriers. Now, not only do they not have to deal with that duopoly, but AT&T will be shelling out billions and their long-term plans will be interrupted. Sprint, on the other hand, has been positioning itself based on the assumption that the merger would not go through, and they will emerge from this with their reputation as a customer-driven company intact and shinier than ever. |
How RockMelt Will Battle Chrome In 2012: Identity, Apps, Communication | Josh Constine | 2,011 | 12 | 19 | 6 months after its public launch, the social web browser now has 1.4 million registered users and several hundred thousand weekly active users, CEO and co-founder Eric Vishria told me this morning. With Internet Explorer and Firefox on the decline, RockMelt’s 2012 will be defined by competition with Chrome. Google’s browser is moving in the direction of RockMelt, adding and an . To stay unique, Vishria says “I think we should push further ahead”, building radical new features “everyone will ultimately want”. But will RockMelt arrive too early to the browser revolution? Finding the right design to make deep functionality easily accessible is the goal of RockMelt 5 beta, which will be released on Wednesday. The team is aiming for Apple-esque intuitive design. “We haven’t gotten gotten to the ‘iPhone of the browser space’, but that’s where the future lies,” says Vishria Fortunately, RockMelt’s user base is young and highly adaptive, with 60% under age 25. They have the highest retention, use its special features the most, and invite friends to download RockMelt the most. Vishria seemed very excited about this, “If you’re building a browser for the next generation, it’s good to see the next generation using it.” The average RockMelt user has the browser installed on 1.3 machines, and uses it for 7 hours a day. They have 12 apps installed, use them 26 times a day, and have 7 chat conversations a day up, from 3 just six months ago. These engagement stats are nice, but user acquisition and retention is where the service has had trouble. I’ve used all the iterations and haven’t been convinced to stick with it yet. To leapfrog Chrome and accelerate the shift to more personalized, social browser, Vishria says RockMelt is focusing on 3 key areas: RockMelt has also started to monetize its users, though this depends on its competitor Google. When people search through the RockMelt address bar, Google search results are shown generating a few dollars per user a year. Thanks to its , monetization doesn’t have to be a priority right now. Instead, Vishria tells me the agenda is “Product. Distribution. Monetization. The big opportunity is in getting to hundreds of millions of users.” I have reservations about RockMelt reaching this goal, though. Pioneering the future of the browser and attaining a mainstream audience may be fundamentally at odds. Chrome doubled its market share to 25% this year through speed and simplicity, not features. |
Let's not lose Paul Jozefak, one of Europe's best VCs | Mike Butcher | 2,011 | 12 | 19 |
I’m late to this news, but it is worth logging that one of Europe’s better VCs, ( ) last month parted ways with his firm in Hamburg. I’ve known Paul for a few years now, but I’ve always found him to be one of the best European VCs: a straight talker, quick to respond and combative – in a good way. Consider his about the prospects for European venture capital. But I could almost have seen it coming. Neuhaus got to punch above its weight because of Paul, and one often felt he was straining at the leash to try and win deals like SoundCloud, which he’ll quite happily tell you he didn’t get! But now We are going to stay in touch after the “divorce”. I won’t be seeing the kids (our portfolio companies) as much but there will be weekends. I have visitation rights (I am still an investor in the fund) and I do get some alimony (carry). I don’t have anything to announce yet as to where I will land but stay tuned. I am dating! Well, anyone needing some solid investor experience would do well to call Paul. We need guys like him in Europe and I’m hoping he’s considering moving from Hamburg to Berlin to help the scene there really get motoring. If there’s one missing piece of the pie in Berlin it’s more experienced people from the investment community. |
Ad platform Struq is negotiating an $8 million financing round says CEO | Mike Butcher | 2,011 | 12 | 19 | , a retargeting ad platform is currently in negotiations to close an $8 million financing round, according to CEO Sam Barnett as quoted by the Financial Times over the weekend. Competitors include , and have similar platforms, which ‘re-target’ ads based on a user’s behaviour online, but Struq has grown form a bootstrapped base so it looks like this will be a growth funding round rather than a Series A. |
IdeaPlane thinks it has a new take on the enterprise social network | Mike Butcher | 2,011 | 12 | 19 | is a new “enterprise social network” platform set up by , one of the founding team behind MySpace International. But this is no flaky platform for young bands as MySpace was. Aiming at highly regulated industries, it’s launching with two top-ten global investment banks as founding clients, though these remain unnamed, so there’s no way of confirming that. Launching out of the UK, Ideaplane is not an, er, new idea. Social networks for enterprises have been around for some time. Take a look at for instance. What’s potentially different is this focus on highly regulated industries, like finance. It remains to be seen whether it will be make much of an incursion into the space, but we’ll be watching it with interest. |
Stanford Law Review: SOPA Unconstitutional, Would Break The Internet | Devin Coldewey | 2,011 | 12 | 19 | The Stanford Law Review has posted , the bills currently creeping their way towards votes in their respective legislative bodies. They make many of the same objections I brought up in my article , but with fewer words and more authority. The piece was authored by Mark Lemley, David S. Levine, and David G. Post — from Stanford, Elon, and Temple Universities respectively — and touches on a few finer legal matters, such as the acts’ nullification of due process and the questionable constitutionality of the whole thing. It’s brief and worth a read, but here are a couple highlights: The procedures outlined in both bills fail this fundamental constitutional test.
Strong words, but this bill is strong medicine. and both posted some commentary related to lask week’s discussions and some choice excerpts from the bills’ proponents. I like Fox Filmed Entertainment’s Tom Rothman’s chestnut that “Our mistake was allowing this romantic word — piracy — to take hold.” While I agree that sometimes the lexicon can affect social trends, I don’t think that people conflate illegal online activities with adventure on the high seas. As you may know, SOPA was recently in the House Judiciary Committee and delayed on account of dozens of objections and amendments, almost none of which were accepted. But instead of being delayed until January, which would give time for both sides to further entrench themselves, another session was , at which time it is expected to be approved for reading and vote in the House. Once there, it could still fail to pass, and then there is the threat of veto, but Obama has been quiet on the issue. It’s odd, considering the administration was very clear about its position on net neutrality. As in some other debates, all the experts and those with no financial involvement are lining up on one side, and threatened business interests are lining up on the other. It may be too late to affect the vote of your representative, but it can’t hurt to forward articles like the Stanford Law Review one, which could make for powerful ammo in a floor debate. |
Silicon Island: What Cornell’s New York City Tech Campus Will Look Like [Images] | Eric Eldon | 2,011 | 12 | 19 | New York City refers to its tech scene as “Silicon Alley,” but now it’s getting a giant new Cornell tech campus… on an island, between Manhattan and Queens. I’m going to leave the naming issue for the locals and share some images from the new campus — which is going to be quite impressive, judging by the few details available in an October article from architecture web site . Beyond the , the focus will be creating a “sustainable landmark” on the 2 mile by .15 mile landmass on the East River, the article explains. A quarter of the 2 million square foot campus will be green space available to the public, while the sun-oriented layout will include the largest solar panel array in the city. That’s not all on the environmental front. There’ll be four acres of geothermal wells, and a 150,000 square foot main academic building with a net-zero energy footprint. In terms of transportation, the island is also going to be getting some upgrades, with the city already providing $100 million for improvements. Ferries, a tram line, a one-way bridge exit, and a single subway stop are the main ways to get on and off of it now. As explores today, maybe could even be a pedestrian and bicycle bridge to Manhattan? With that, on to the renderings of the new campus by the prestigious architecture firm that Cornell has hired, . And the dreamed-of bike bridge: |
The AT&T/T-Mobile Merger Is Dead | Chris Velazco | 2,011 | 12 | 19 | We heard earlier today that AT&T and T-Mobile that could help make their merger a reality, but now there’s no need to worry about it: AT&T has just announced that the deal is officially dead. In a recent release (reproduced in full below), AT&T lays the blame on the FCC and the U.S. Department of Justice and states that the actions of two governmental bodies “do not change the realities of the U.S. wireless industry.” They go on to say the the merger would have been an interim solution to the spectrum allocation issue that plagues the industry, and that without the merger, “customers will be harmed and needed investment will be stifled.” Harsh words from AT&T, and ones that may not be true if the contents of an are to be believed. Released shortly after AT&T and T-Mobile withdrew their merger application, the staff report called into question the claims that the merger “would serve the public interest, convenience, and necessity.” In their investigation, the FCC determined among other things that approving the merger would drastically reduce competition and investment in the wireless space, contrary to AT&T’s claims of jobs and mobile broadband for all. As far as the FCC is concerned, today’s is a big win for consumers and a big blow to AT&T. And I mean a blow — with the merger in ruins, AT&T must shell out $4 billion to T-Mobile USA parent company Deutsche Telekom in the form of money and spectrum access. What’s more, the death of the merger will also see AT&T and T-Mobile entering into a roaming agreement, the fruits of which we may have already . So, after all those months of legal maneuvering, the case has finally come to a close. While AT&T couldn’t close the deal, other companies are already looking to get cozy with T-Mobile: satellite television provider Dish was eyeing up smaller carrier recently, and company CEO Joseph Clayton mentioned he was open to a . Company Reaffirms Its Commitment to Mobile Broadband Leadership
Dallas, Texas, December 19, 2011 AT&T Inc. (NYSE: T) said today that after a thorough review of options it has agreed with Deutsche Telekom AG to end its bid to acquire T-Mobile USA, which began in March of this year. The actions by the Federal Communications Commission and the Department of Justice to block this transaction do not change the realities of the U.S. wireless industry. It is one of the most fiercely competitive industries in the world, with a mounting need for more spectrum that has not diminished and must be addressed immediately. The AT&T and T-Mobile USA combination would have offered an interim solution to this spectrum shortage. In the absence of such steps, customers will be harmed and needed investment will be stifled. “AT&T will continue to be aggressive in leading the mobile Internet revolution,” said Randall Stephenson, AT&T chairman and CEO. “Over the past four years we have invested more in our networks than any other U.S. company. As a result, today we deliver best-in-class mobile broadband speeds – connecting smartphones, tablets and emerging devices at a record pace – and we are well under way with our nationwide 4G LTE deployment. “To meet the needs of our customers, we will continue to invest,” Stephenson said. “However, adding capacity to meet these needs will require policymakers to do two things. First, in the near term, they should allow the free markets to work so that additional spectrum is available to meet the immediate needs of the U.S. wireless industry, including expeditiously approving our acquisition of unused Qualcomm spectrum currently pending before the FCC. Second, policymakers should enact legislation to meet our nation’s longer-term spectrum needs. “The mobile Internet is a dynamic industry that can be a critical driver in restoring American economic growth and job creation, but only if companies are allowed to react quickly to customer needs and market forces,” Stephenson said. To reflect the break-up considerations due Deutsche Telekom, AT&T will recognize a pretax accounting charge of $4 billion in the 4th quarter of 2011. Additionally, AT&T will enter a mutually beneficial roaming agreement with Deutsche Telekom.
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Dave McClure And Blumberg Capital Drop $1 Million Into mygola For Easy, Personalized Travel Planning | Rip Empson | 2,011 | 12 | 19 | India and U.S.-based is that it has received $1 million in seed funding from of , , and several other angel investors. With social travel startups popping up every other day, , what is it about mygola that’s getting McClure and others excited? For starters, the service’s value proposition starts with the fact that it’s built for users who already have specific trip-planning questions in mind. Essentially, it’s a pay-as-you go travel concierge, so you bring your proposed trip to mygola, with specific targeted questions in mind, and the service handles all the logistics (research and bookings) for you. Mygola is going for the 90 percent tech, 10 percent human curation approach, as the startup is in the process of bringing on thousands of travel enthusiasts to make them travel researchers. The startup combines human curation and customer service with a technology platform that aggregates the “entire travel web”, auto-categorizing that wealth of information into deals, events, hotels, sublets, and tips from locals through Foursquare and other social platforms. The paid “mygola Guides” currently numbers in the hundreds, according to Founder and ex-Googler Anshuman Bapna, who are distributed globally and are increasing at a rate of 80 a week. These guides are there help users plan their trips based on the crowdsourced data aggregated from travel sites all over the Web. The service allows users to ask their first question for free, and if you like the answer that mygola gives you, users can tip accordingly. Users will then pay $30 to ask additional questions or have their entire trip planned for them, or they can pay $100 for a year long subscription. Interested in trying out the service? Mygola is providing the first 100 TechCrunch readers with a 50 percent discount for the $30 and $100 plans, using the code “TCLOVE”. Bapna and team have been referring to their model as the “Robocop for travel”, which gives you a sense of the somewhat quirky approach they’re taking. Relying on real human beings to help you plan your trip, leveraging the best of travel information on the Web, is certainly a refreshing alternative to the many user-generated and crowdsourced travel sites out there, but the startup has an enormous amount of competition, and has a long way to go before it can convince users that paying $30 for their recommendations and bookings is easier and more valuable than doing it themselves. The startup plans to use its new capital to continue hiring its “mygola Guides” and build out its current product. For more, . |
Bonnes Nouvelle! Word Lens Parle Français | Sarah Perez | 2,011 | 12 | 19 | Remember ? That crazy, awesome mobile application that translated words inside of images, like road signs, posters, menus, and the like, from Spanish to English (and vice versa)? Well, now the app has added a third language to its repertoire: French. With the most recent app update, Word Lens can translate from English to French and back again, but not between French and Spanish. A year ago, , after its long-awaited release – the result of two and half years’ worth of work from founders Otavio Good and John DeWeese. The app blew our collective minds. The thing was magic. Using OCR technology to “see” the words in front of the smartphone’s camera, Word Lens takes advantage of augmented reality to superimpose the translated words on top of the foreign text. All background images that aren’t text are removed, too. (See, augmented reality isn’t totally useless!). And even better, the app works offline thanks to its downloadable dictionaries. The app itself is free, but correction: each dictionary is $9.99. (French-English and Spanish-English). Translations in Word Lens aren’t perfect, but then, few digital translators ever are. But it’s usually good enough to get the point across…and maybe save you from ordering the wrong item on the menu or finding your way around town. You can grab the updated Word Lens from iTunes . |
Backed By Collaborative Fund, Quarterly Launches A Subscription Service “For Wonderful Things” | Rip Empson | 2,011 | 12 | 19 | What if you could subscribe to your favorite bloggers, writers, and designers, and they would send you a heartfelt gift every three months? You probably wouldn’t enjoy my packages, because I would just send you those small M&Ms packets. And let’s be honest, there’s nothing fun about fun-sized candy. But, in most cases, it would be appealing. This, coupled with the fact that monetizing content has been a slog for digital content producers over the past few years, is why has chosen an alternative path: “A subscription service for wonderful things”. Quarterly is a young startup from LA, founded by Zach Frechette, the former Editor-in-Chief of . Basically, Frechette is betting that his startup will be able to leverage that part of us that loves to be part of a community — and loves to receive something in the mail — for good. It goes back to when we, as younguns, used to write letters to our favorite baseball players, checking the mail every day for their response, or waiting for parents or loved ones to send us care packages at summer camp. ( .) As Frechette’s background is in design and (editoral) curation, he’s chosen designers and writers to be Quarterly’s initial contributors. The initial list is impressive, including the likes of “Moonwalking with Einstein” author , The Atlantic Senior Editor , President of the Rhode Island School of Design , hilarious tweeter and Mule Design Founder , author of The Happiness Project , to name a few. ( .) Each of these authors and designers have been chosen by the Quarterly team, yet as the site grows, Frechette says, subscribers will be able to suggest contributors. Subscribers will pay $25 every quarter (hence the site’s name) to enter the subscription service, and the price of entry will entitle users to receive a package every quarter that will range from consumer products, be they interesting books chosen by your favorite authors to a tube of earth-shattering toothpaste. Shipping is included. Frechette says, however, that Quarterly is about more than just finding a different pay-for system. It’s not intended to be a one-for-one exchange, it’s about supporting the process of writers and designers, inspiring real connections between package recipients and their creators. We spend an inordinate amount of time connecting with people online, and Quarterly is attempting to find an alternative (and complementary) way for people to connect offline, through curated and unique packages that “while uniquely brilliant in [their] function, will also have a story, and through that story take on new meaning”. In each package, there will be a letter from the contributor, describing the item inside and the thought process that led to them choosing it. To help Quarterly in its mission, the startup is today officially announcing that it has receive a round of seed funding from and , Co-founder and Pinterest investor (who is also a Quarterly contributor), CEO of Sugar Inc , and Co-Head of NY Ryan Jacoby, along with several other entrepreneurs and angel investors. Shapiro said that his interest in Quarterly results from the fact that he sees the potential for a really strong brand, which blends great design with a great user experience, in the same vein as similarly-focused companies, like Kickstarter, Pinterest, Fab.com, and Skillshare. I, personally, am inclined to see Quarterly as a suped-up, design-centric Secret Santa service that builds upon old magazine subscription model. The value proposition extends beyond design, and as Quarterly moves forward, it will be moving beyond design to focus more broadly on other consumer verticals. Quality control could be a bit tricky, but with an impressive list of contributors who are known entities in their own right, and with a staff that will expand thanks to this infusion of capital, scaling the business will hopefully become more manageable. As to how the business is going to make money? For now, Frechette says, Quarterly is operating somewhat like a typical wholesaler, in that they are essentially buying products at a low price and marking them up at sale. Because many designers and authors see this as a unique marketing opportunity and a great way to connect directly with their audience, they are offering their service (and products) for free. And with Quarterly adding a new subscription every 5 minutes, the value certainly seems to be there for contributors — the audience is arriving, and they’re willing to pay. Having only been operating in beta for about three months, the service is still incipient, but it will be interesting to see how it grows as it scales. The more opportunities that Quarterly can provide for consumers and fans to connect with their favorite authors and designers, whether that be through Facebook and Twitter, and learn more about them, the more successful this model will be. For more, . |
CrunchDeal: Jetpack Joyride For iOS Goes Free For A Day | Greg Kumparak | 2,011 | 12 | 19 | While we couldn’t possibly cover every app that does the whole free-for-a-day thing, this one is particularly good. Jetpack Joyride, the stupidly addictive side-scrolling action game from Halfbrick (the folks behind Fruit Ninja), is until the clock strikes midnight tonight. So, what makes this one particularly worthwhile? For one, it’s just a damned good game. Heck, it’s Beyond that, Halfbrick’s tendency to flood their users with constant content updates (as a means of ensuring people come back for more when they’ve got many hundreds of thousands of other options at their finger tips) makes the game worth its normal 99c pricetag — but at free? It’s pretty much stealing. You can in the app store here.
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Today In Wishful Thinking: Dogbnb | Alexia Tsotsis | 2,011 | 12 | 26 | [youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hPsSWWZy2lc&w=630] Like most people, I love dogs. But also like most people I am completely irresponsible — Like, I can’t even keep my iPhone consistently charged let alone take care of another creature (Yeah I know, I’d be a great mother, ). This being said, wouldn’t it be so cool if you could own a dog, but for a limited amount of time? Like you wouldn’t have to commit to it forever or anything — because that is just asking too much — but maybe you could just it. I don’t know where I’m going to be waking up TOMORROW let alone a MONTH FROM NOW, so if only there were like a Dogbnb, where you could temporarily have like, a dog? To pet. Well move over , apparently Airbnb co-founder is already on top of this, and has . Hahahahahahahahahahhahahahaha, smart. I totally asked Chesky if Dogbnb was a joke (or more likely, a place to board pets while people travel), but he hasn’t responded to my email. Whatever. So who wants to let me borrow their puppy? |
Quora Expands Beyond Q&A, Launches ‘Boards’ — A Way To Personally Curate Information | Alexia Tsotsis | 2,011 | 12 | 19 | is taking a step beyond Q&A this morning with its latest product launch, boards. Users can now set up their own personal-themed bookmarking boards, sort of like a Pinterest for text-based information. Writes Quora CEO in a , “As Quora has grown, we’ve learned that people want to read the most interesting content regardless of whether it happens to be in question and answer format or not.” D’Angelo tells me that this shift fits in better with Quora’s new goal, “to connect you with everything you want to know about.” Its old goal was described as “a continuously improving collection of questions and answers.” Board onboarding (heh) is easy. Users who want to create a board will now see a “Create a board” option at the top right of Quora and on their header dashboard. Anything can be posted to a board, whether it be links to web content like news and video, images, stuff on Quora like Questions and answers or text commentary. Users can post content directly from Quora by clicking on the ‘Repost’ option under every question. Board Owners can add Authors and Followers to a board, as well as pay to add Topics. They can also set up the board in a grid or list format. The most interesting feature of boards, from a utility aspect, is that Authors can set up following granularity to public — i.e. everyone who follows the board Author will see content or limited only board followers. Boards will also now show up on Topics pages, as well as on your personal Quora profile page. Relevant boards will now show up in Quora’s search bar, and boards you are following will show up in your top navigation bar. As Quora has been dogfooding the feature, some robust boards have already been set up, including (a feminism related board), (A board for Japan-ophiles), (self-explanatory). I’ve also set up my first board, Boards will, D’Angelo and hope, cut down on Quora newsfeed clutter, and make it easier for people to curate their Quora experience. But it’s not a pivot says D’Angelo, “We see this as expanding what Quora is. People have their favorite answers. There’s also people who write a lot of stuff and a number of masterpieces. This is a way to bookmark the things that people want to reference a bunch of times.” Cheever tells me that the Board way of bookmarking is one of the most often requested Quora features, “[Think of this as} a response to that feature request, but on steroids.” |
Guy Retweets Particularly Entitled Christmas Tweets, Becomes A Phenomenon | Alexia Tsotsis | 2,011 | 12 | 26 | [youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CwwWqRV2RsI&w=630] This is the first Christmas where I didn’t get a single gift. Because I had to take care of a bunch of logistics issues, I decided not to celebrate “the holidays” this year, and you know what? It was awesome. It’s amazing not having any expectations about what you’re going to get, give and whatnot. Also, for some reason I got tons of in lieu of material gifts, and I absolutely adore all the people who reached out to say ‘Merry Christmas,’ adore. There is a darker side of the blatantly consumerist holiday (why are people WHY?), and comedy writer ( ) managed to perfectly capture everything that is wrong with Christmas by searching for tweets that were particularly spoiled, like “I swear, everybody got an iPhone 4S. I asked for one and I didn’t get it. Santa, I hate you” and “My parents are the worst mother Fucking parents in the world fuck you mom and dad for not getting me a Iphone. FUCK YOU. FML,” and then retweeting them. This simple action resonated with the webosphere, so much so that Internet bard turned Hendren’s retweets into a song (above) within a 48 hour turnover. To compile material for his impromptu performance art, Hendren used Twitter search strings like: “not getting,” “iPhone” and “iPod” or “iPad” or “Car” which would return tweets for people unhappy about “not getting.” “You can do the same thing with ‘didn’t get’ or ‘where’s my’ as well,” he says. So what possessed this sort of ad hoc social commentary on people unhappy because of the lack of iProducts under the tree? (Amazing in light of the 1.4 billion people who right?) “I was visiting with my family,” says Hendren on the impetus behind his critique. “They’d all gone to bed somewhat early on Christmas Eve night, and I was lying awake playing with Twitter’s search function on my iPhone (oddly enough). Nobody I was following was tweeting much of anything at that time, so I didn’t feel too bad about flooding my timeline. I think I did about 40 or 50 before people started posting fake tweets, which made it harder to find real ones among the search results, so I cut it off probably around Noon on Christmas morning. There are probably even better real ones among all the fake ones out there by now, but it’s too hard to tell.” Hendren currently writes part-time for as a day job and got laid off three weeks ago from his full time job due to “restructuring.” For the record, I am really really upset that no one bought me a house this Christmas. Okay, not. Well, maybe a little. |
5 Simple (But Hidden!) Tricks All The New iPhone/iPad Owners Should Know | Greg Kumparak | 2,011 | 12 | 26 | Once upon a time, the iPhone was a simple thing. You flipped it on, slid the unlock switch, and what you saw was what you got. Since then, things have gotten a bit more… layered. That’s not to say they’ve gotten any harder to use; iOS just has a ridiculous number of hidden bonus features now that are in no way immediately obvious to the untrained eye. Given that yesterday was Christmas, I’d wager that the number of untrained eyes out there is at an all-time high. If you consider yourself something of an iOS expert, this list isn’t for you. If the terms “jailbreak” and “rooting” have any sort of secondary, technical connotation to you, you can almost certainly skip right over this. This one’s for the curious newbie; the moms, pops, and younger siblings of the world; the Android converts who may be feeling a bit out of place. It’s a collection of things I’m regularly surprised to find that other iOS device owners know. If it’s not for you, you almost certainly know someone who it for. You’re blasting around in Jetpack Joyride when your better half asks you to find a proper eggnog recipe. What’s the quickest way to get to Safari? You head back to the homescreen like a chump — but if you’ve had Safari open recently, there’s a speedier route: Tada! Meet the App Switcher. The first page of the app switcher shows your most recently opened apps. Scrolling to the right will take you back even further in your app history. As one of the most requested features leading up to its introduction in iOS 4, it blows my mind how often I meet long-time iOS owners who have absolutely no idea the App Switcher exists.
Apps break. It happens. Alas, due to the way iOS freezes/unfreezes apps rather than actually closing them (thus allowing quick-switching between running apps), you’ll occasionally find yourself with an app that you just can’t seem to un-break. What should you do? You’ll need to reset your device, right? Naaaah. that shows up next to it. Relaunch the app from the homescreen, and it’ll be just like opening it up on a freshly reset device. ( With very few exceptions (and unlike what you may be used to with your ol’ laptop) you never need to manually close iOS apps to make your device “run better”. Thanks to the aforementioned freezing/unfreezing process, any app that you’re not actively using has very little effect on your device’s performance.) The App Switcher is something of a swiss army knife. It switches! It closes! It slices! It dices! Beyond the aforementioned, the App Switcher has one more neat trick: a sort-of-hidden bonus page with myriad one-click shortcuts. On the iPhone, it’ll let you lock your screen orientation, pause/play/go back/skip tracks in whatever app is currently playing music (or immediately jump right into that application, instead.) On the iPad, it’ll do all of the aforementioned as well as let you adjust the volume and display brightness.
This is another one that Apple doesn’t seem to be explaining well enough, as I’ve met more than my fair share of long-time iPhone owners who go wide-eyed when they first see it used. For anyone coming from Android, the mechanism is pretty much second nature (Apple essentially cloned the feature wholesale.) Beginning with iOS 5, iOS keeps a running list of your recent notifications so that you can easily jump to any app that needs your attention. Waiting there will be all of your recent (unread) texts, any messages that your applications have queued up, and a few configurable widgets (weather, stocks, etc.) You can adjust what shows up in this drawer in Settings > Notifications. We’ve all been there: that once in a lifetime moment is happening right before your eyes, and your only means of capturing it is with your phone’s camera. By the time you get it out of your pocket, unlock it, get to the homescreen, launch the camera app, and wait for the camera to boot up, the moment is gone. Opportunity lost, and now everyone is mad at you. As of iOS 5, you can access the camera right from the lockscreen (you don’t even have to unlock it! Don’t worry, though: you can’t access your older photos this way. Your booty pics are safe.) You’ll see music controls pop up on top, while a camera icon appears directly beside the unlock bar. Tap that, and you’re immediately inside the camera. (Note: this only seems to work on the iPhone and camera-enabled iPod Touches. It’s a no go on iPad.) Got any more easy, kinda-hidden tricks that new iOS device owners should know? Drop it in a comment below. |
GoDaddy Responds To Namecheap Accusations, Removes “Normal” Rate Limiting Block | Alexia Tsotsis | 2,011 | 12 | 26 | You know who got in their PR stocking this year? Domain registrar GoDaddy. Its most recent stumble? The company’s presence on a SOPA supporter list sparked an impromptu user exodus last week, with being transferred in the fall out. Sensing a communications disaster (GoDaddy has gotten really good at this) the new CEO Warren Adelman then official position on SOPA, well kind of. Despite the ambiguous reversal, the ramifications of the continuing PR disaster are huge, and is still slated for the 29th” Perhaps that’s why GoDaddy reps in order to make sure they understand the company’s new, reversed position? If thing’s weren’t bad enough for GoDaddy, competitor NameCheap of blocking domain transfers this morning, “As many customers have recently complained of transfer issues, we suspect that this competitor is thwarting efforts to transfer domains away from them. Specifically, GoDaddy appears to be returning incomplete WHOIS information to Namecheap, delaying the transfer process. This practice is against ICANN rules. ” Namecheap said that its solution to the incomplete WhoIs returns was to manually process the requests, which it was doing. Accusations like these should not be taken lightly, and GoDaddy responded to Namecheap in a statement emailed to TechCrunch, saying that the WhoIs transfer delay time is normal procedure. Namecheap posted their accusations in a blog, but to the best our of knowledge, has yet to contact Go Daddy directly, which would be common practice for situations like this. Normally, the fellow registrar would make a request for us to remove the normal rate limiting block which is a standard practice used by Go Daddy, and many other registrars, to rate limit Whois queries to combat WhoIs abuse. Because some registrars (and other data gathering, analyzing and reporting entities) have legitimate need for heavy port 43 access, we routinely grant requests for expanded access per an SOP we’ve had in place for many years. Should we make contact with Namecheap, and learn they need similar access, we would treat that request similarly. As a side note, we have seen some nefarious activity this weekend which came from non-registrar sources. But, that is not unusual for a holiday weekend, nor would it cause legitimate requests to be rejected. Nevertheless, we have now proactively removed the rate limit for Namecheap, as a courtesy, but it is important to point out, there still may be back-end IP addresses affiliated with Namecheap of which we are unaware. For complete resolution, we should be talking to each other — an effort we are initiating since they have not done so themselves. -Rich Merdinger
Sr. Director of Product Development – Domains
Go Daddy One side says the practice is “against ICANN rules.” The other side says the practice is “standard.” Any DNS experts want to weigh in? According to an industry expert, limiting WhoIs requests is pretty standard to prevent abuse, “My guess is nothing particularly nefarious [is going on] here.” Namecheap that it warned GoDaddy of the delay before it posted its blog. |
The Threat And Opportunity Of Mobile: How Physical Retailers Can Fight Back Against Amazon | Leena Rao | 2,011 | 12 | 26 | As online retail sales continue to soar, brick and mortar stores are seeing margins dissipate. Online holiday sales are expected to grow this season while retail sales in physical stores are only expected to increase by to $469.1 billion. Best Buy recently a in profits because of discounts and sales of top grossing electronics. The fact is that the electronics retailer was probably forced into offering deeply discounted deals in order to compete with e-commerce giant Amazon. And it doesn’t help that Amazon is now to consumers on any product purchased via its price comparison mobile app, another huge blow to physical retailers. Brick and mortar retailers need to figure out a way to compete with Amazon and other e-commerce giants that doesn’t eat into margins. Deals and coupons simply aren’t enought. And as former Apple retail chief Ron Johnson has said, . So how are retail stores going to survive? While mobile may be the technology e-commerce companies are using to jab physical stores, it is also the technology that may save these stores. Personalization and data are the two key factors that could save retail stores; and the vehicle by which these technologies can be utilized is via the mobile phone. 2011 has been as the year of mobile shopping by both technology companies and retailers. Now more than ever consumers are carrying around phones that enable them to access apps, discounts, price comparison information, payments mechanisms and more. comScore recently reported that two-thirds of all smartphone owners performed some sort of shopping activity on their phones, including comparing products and prices, searching for coupons, taking product pictures or locating a retail store. In fact, slightly more than one in three purchasers used their smartphone to make a purchase while in a store. When they enter retail stores, these consumers are carrying their mobile phones and using these devices. E-commerce companies have been quick to capitalize on this trend while brick and mortar retailers have not caught on in quite the same way. As mentioned above, Amazon is customers to use its PriceCheck mobile app. Customers can walk into a brick-and-mortar retailer, use the app to scan the barcodes of a desired product, and access Amazon’s prices for that product. More often than not, Amazon’s prices are lower, and if a customer places the item into the app’s virtual basket, a 5% discount will be applied to the product within 24 hours. Price Check app users can use the discount on up to three products. Simply offering coupons aren’t going to be able to combat Amazon’s tactics, because not only are these deals going to eat into retailer margins but these incentives can’t necessarily bring shopper back to a store repeatedly. Brick and mortar stores need to figure out not only how to drive traffic, but also how to increase the purchase amount and conversion rates, create loyalty and return customers and more. Cyriac Roeding, founder of location-based mobile shopping app believes that the mobile phone is key to the future of commerce for stores. In case you aren’t familiar, Shopkick when someone with the free or iPhone app on their phone walks into a participating store. Once a Shopkick Signal is detected, the app delivers reward points called “kickbucks” to the user for walking into a retail store, trying on clothes, scanning a barcode and other actions. These rewards can be used towards purchases. Rodeing says that the role of the physical store will change in the future. What online stores cannot offer (which brick and mortar outlets need to realize) is the one-on-one personalization and personal treatment that a physical store with employees can. And in-store shopping brings immediate gratification because a customer can take home the item with them as soon as the purchase is complete. And mobile is how you bring personalization back to the in-store purchase experience. The challenge, he explains, is to make this experience worth the consumer’s time and money. eBay is also trying to help physical retailers drive traffic into stores via its Red Laser barcode scanning apps, which now integrate in-store listings, prices and availability from Milo. As eBay’s Jack Abraham (who founded Milo) says, brick and mortar retailers need to be where their customers are, and that decision-making is now happening on phones. “There are clearly companies that are positioning themselves as destroying brick and mortar retailers but we’re positioning ourselves to be an ally for the retailers,” he says. eBay a new campaign, where consumers who spend $100 at Toys “R” Us, Dick’s Sporting Goods and Aeropostale using PayPal, will get a $10 voucher to spend in store. How brick and mortar stores are going to be able to personalize and make the in-store shopping experience unique is through data, in my opinion. It’s no longer about creating a mobile web site or offering coupons; the experience centralizes around making customers feel as if they are being treated like a VIP just by walking into a store. And how brick and mortar stores are going to do that is the same way Amazon was able to create a business out of personalized e-commerce. Some retailers are attempting to to try to see how people shop, what they are buying and more. But this data is limiting because while stores can figure out what is working when it comes to placement, advertising, and marketing of products in-store, retailers still don’t know who is buying and how to get them to return. Personalization really gets interesting with transaction data. Shopkick up with Visa to allow consumers a way to receive rewards points for retailers at the point of sale when they use their Visa credit cards. This is part of The redemption loop starts when a consumer sees an ad or an offer for a merchant, and is completed when the consumer makes a purchase and that purchase can be tracked back to the offer. Thus far startups, tech companies and credit card companies have started to use transaction data as a way to close the redemption loop and drive future purchases but this is relatively new to brick and mortar retailers. With the Shopkick deal, brick and mortar retailers could see what items a consumer purchased and deliver discounts, and special offers based on purchase behavior. And this can be delivered via the mobile phone. Of course, this would all have to be an opt-in experience for shoppers considering the privacy implications. But many consumers use the personalized experience of Amazon when buying books, electronics and others items, so why not replicate this in the physical world? This means more partnerships with credit card companies like Visa, MasterCard and American Express. Online payments giant PayPal also sees this as a huge opportunity for physical stores. PayPal an in-store payments technology both via mobile and point of sale systems that is currently being tested on a ‘friends and family’ basis in a national retailer in two markets. The opt-in offering will include location-based offers, making payments accessible from any device and offering more payments flexibility to customers after they’ve checked out. Users will have the ability to access realtime store inventory, receive in-store offers, and real-time location-based advertising from stores. While exact details are still unclear, it sounds like PayPal will use location and transaction data to help in-store retailers improve the experience for consumers. PayPal is partnering with a at least 20 known top-tier retailers, which will be unveiled in 2012. We hear about the initial retailer as soon as this year. PayPal’s Anuj Nayar tells me candidly that retailers are desperate for this offering. “The fact is that most retailers have no idea about customers until they are leaving the store and that comes down to data.” He says PayPal is working with in-store retailers to create a suite of tools and technologies that help use technologies to level the playing field when it comes to data. One thing that is clear is that retailers need to jump on the mobile, personalization and data bandwagon very soon. Online retailers are only getting more aggressive (i.e. Amazon), and it’s only a matter of time before online retailers start to ramp up their existing personalization offers even more. Roeding says that physical retailers who doesn’t focus on mobile in the next six months are going to face a major problem in the next year. But it goes beyond just created a dedicated site and mobile app. Brick and mortar retailers need to find a way to be in as many mobile applications as possible, such as ShopKick, PayPal, and eBay, where potential customers are deciding what to buy and where. Abraham echoes these thoughts, explaining that retailers need to be part of search results, especially in mobile search results. “If they don’t, they risk getting lost in the age of the post-pc era,” he says. eBay is building out its own predictive data capabilities with the , and we can expect more data-focused features to be rolled out soon. As for which brick and mortar retailer is going to be the first catch on the mobile and data wave when it comes to in-store shopping, my bets are on Wal-mart. The retailer has been particularly aggressive on the technology front, buying , and Wal-mart is already with a number of in-store mobile services, including things like NFC, barcode scanning and in-store geo-fencing. There’s no doubt that 2012 could be a pivotal year for brick and mortar stores. But they need to act fast and start providing a unique experience for customers or risk being left in the dust by Amazon. |
Video: Android 4.0 Hacked Onto The Kindle Fire | Greg Kumparak | 2,011 | 12 | 26 | You wanted an Android tablet for Christmas… and you got one! Alas, it’s a Kindle Fire. While the Fire is technically well within the realm of “Android tablet” (and a mighty fine tablet, for the price), it’s not quite the tried-and-true vanilla Android experience you were looking for. Wait! Don’t go requesting that return label just yet: if a gang of goodhearted hackers have their way, Amazon’s wonderfully wallet-friendly tablet will be running the latest builds of straight-up Android (as in Ice Cream Sandwich) before too long. In fact, they’ve (sort of) already got it working. Check out the video below, as shot by the fine folks at : [youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0EVfKBc5bVc&w=640&h=360] The guys behind this hack ( ) call it “pre-alpha”, and for good reason. While it technically , it’s probably not something you want to dabble with just yet. It’s got all sorts of nasty bugs, with the biggest drawbacks being that audio/video playback are pretty much 100% broken. With that said, few communities can hobble together rock-solid hacks as fast as the Android crowd can. Now that the concept is proven, expect this one to come together quick. |
TechCrunch Moscow – All the on-stage video | Mike Butcher | 2,011 | 12 | 26 |
On December 5th, 2011 TechCrunch Europe came to Moscow . Co-organized by TechCrunch Europe, Digital October and Kite Ventures, the second TechCrunch Moscow showcased several early stage startups and hosted panels on emerging technology trends in Russia and abroad. The event, held in English, proved to be a smashing success, bringing together over 700 participants and attracting several thousand viewers online. Videos of the event can be found below including the amazing interview between Andrew Keen and Anton Nossik (media director of LiveJournal) on a pivotal day for Russian politics following the Russian Duma elections of the previous day. . As in 2010, Mike Butcher of TechCrunch Europe and Edward Shenderovich of Kite Ventures MC-ed the conference. The agenda combined panel discussions and fireside chats with industry leaders in Russia and culminated with the Startup Battle. This time, the lineup of speakers included: Sergey Beloussov (founder of Parallels, partner at Runa Capital); Rob Cassedy (Ebay); Sasha Galitsky (Almaz Capital); Maelle Gavet (Ozon, Russia’s biggest online bookseller); Morten Lund (Everbread); Laurent Le Moal (PayPal Europe); Christian Lahng (CEO, Tradeshift); Denis Sverdlov (Yota, Russia’s Wimax operator); Arkady Volozh (Yandex, Russia’s leading search engine) and many others. Below are links to the videos of each session. Here are the startups that presented. The winners of the competition were and : “ResumUp makes instant visual resumes for social network users and provide effective tools for recruiters. Go Visual – Get Visible. (We aim to set a new standard in career management, online and social recruiting. Globally).” “Minutta.com allows for quick production of short video clips from user content based on cool professional templates. Now every consumer can turn her creative vomit into Hollywood or MTV -type product without any damage to nail polish. No need to download or install anything. Free for consumers, cheap viral for brands.” “SalonPicker” is an integrated SaaS-service for appointment-based businesses. It includes online reservations, CRM helping to handle the client base, internet widgets for the businesses could be embedded into their sites or pages/groups in various social networks and insights to the business owners. Initially the project is focused on beauty salons, later it will be scaled to some other segments: car-washes, car repairs, clinics, fitness clubs, restaurants etc.”
“gipht.me is a Greece-based US startup developing an innovative platform to change the way people communicate on smartphones. The gipht.me platform allows users to exchange interactive enhanced messages on mobile devices.These ‘giphts’ include virtual goods and highly interactive experiences for daily communication such as mementos, coupons, greetings, offers, geo located objects, augmented reality items and jokes available in seasonal and themed categories. gipht.me provides ’giphts’ in a ready-made content format that users can fully personalize before sending.” “Menutka is a dish finder service. The disruption is that people could find the places based not on the common restaurant’s ratings but on the likes of the specific dishes in those restaurants. It is not about restaurants but about the food – about dishes you’ve tried and the opinion you want to share. You can think of it as of FoodSpotting but without any need to create the content but just to rate it and to share it with your friends and public.” “KUZNECH has invented technology to index and compare billions of images online by 150 parameters, including composition. Business strategy is to implement the technology in a number of vertical applications (as well as provide API to third-party developers) with primary focus on in-image advertising, e-commerce and social communications.” “If people buy brands they want to talk about that. They buy brands to let other people to know what they have. TagBrand is a site which allow them to share this info. This could be easily done by making “brand-ins” with their photos – it is like check-ins in places in FourSquare but about brand-ins in brands. With this service you could also ask other people looking for the brands other people are wearing. Or you can easily create polls about the things you are to choose using the TagBrand mobile app.” “Wizee Shopping is a mobile app that enhances the consumer shopping experience by giving direct access to shopping-specific information, indoor mall maps and location-specific services. Wizee enables ultra-localized real-time communication between shoppers, retailers and malls in a revolutionary new way. Wizee currently covers 45 malls in Moscow, St. Petersburg and Novosibirsk, has 35,000 active users, established partnerships with hundred retail brands and is receiving top grades at the iPhone and Android app stores.”
“Quote Roller is a software as a service application that helps to create interactive, beautiful sales proposals, invoices, agreements and other types of business documents out of your own branded system.” |
Apps Are Media | Erick Schonfeld | 2,011 | 12 | 26 | Apps have taken over the world. If you doubt that just take a look at this app map by Horace Dediu at which shows the 123 countries in the world where iPhones are available. Of course, anywhere you can get an iPhone, you can get an iPhone app. Like the Web, apps are distributed globally. But when it comes to “media” like books, music, and movies, the distribution is much more limited on digital devices. Again, only looking at Apple, Dediu counts only 51 countries where music is available through the iTunes store, and only 6 countries where TV shows are available (see map below). My first reaction is that Apple really needs to broaden its licensing efforts internationally. But remember, iTunes started going international in 2004, and there are still more countries where you can get only apps (72) than both music and apps. Traditional media industries are more restrictive in their licensing, and this is particularly true for TV shows and movies, which follow all sorts of arcane rules of availability across different distribution channels (theaters, Pay-Per-View, DVDs, cable, internet streaming). When you look at the glacial geographic advance of video and music on iTunes (and the internet, in general), it seems like we still have a long way to go before a global, legal market for digital media establishes itself in a meaningful way. Except there already is a global market for digital media. They are called apps, and they represent the in many ways. Apps are media. Not only are they a form of media in the way that consumer software and games have always been considered media (they compete with TV, books, and music for consumers’ time and attention). But increasingly, they are also subsuming other forms of media. We are seeing the first signs of this “Software Eats Media” (to butcher a ) phenomenon with books. Some of the most interesting books on the iPad aren’t merely iBook or Kindle editions, they are full-fledged apps. The best children’s books on the iPad are full-blown apps, as are other books and magazines which incorporate images and videos into the experience. The , based on the new animated movie, is a perfect example. It incorporates 3-D models that readers can manipulate, immersive 360-degree rooms, and other software-enhanced media. Music and movies are arguably more passive experiences, but they are also increasingly becoming features of other apps. The lines between software and media will become harder to tell apart as apps begin to include more and more traditional media. We are seeing this first on the creation side, with songs, , movies being recorded on iPhones (part of the next Avengers movie was shot on an iPhone). And more apps are including video and music snippets as well. Imagine a game with immersive 3-D rooms you can “walk” through where you can watch different narratives unfold. Would that be a movie or an app? The way we consume media will be very different from the sit-back mode which rules today. Before we get there though, there will be many incremental steps along the way. Just think about how longer-form media already is delivered through apps—whether that’s listening to entire albums streamed on Spotify or watching Netflix movies on your iPad. In these cases, it is not so much the original media which gets transformed (the song or the movie), but the experience surrounding it. Media discovery becomes more social and algorithmic. A song or a TV show will become a hit because it is shared by millions of people on Facebook and Twitter, not because it is getting millions of dollars of promotion on radio or TV. These apps will determine what we watch next through social and algorithmic recommendations—because how else do you find something to watch when traditional programming is dead? The apps that deliver this media will exert a powerful influence over our consumption habits—what we watch, listen to, and read, as well as how we do it. Apps will help us find media through social and other filters, and throw it onto our TVs, iPads, stereos or whatever device is handy. They will bypass the set-top box, the radio, and the book store. Apps are where media consumption will happen. Media companies can continue to ignore or fight that trend at their own peril. |
Microsoft Is Way Overdue In Leaving CES Keynote – More Room For Companies That Ship | Devin Coldewey | 2,011 | 12 | 26 | The topic around the olives and cheese plate last week at an extended family Christmas gathering was, interestingly enough, Microsoft distancing itself from CES. My family, not ordinarily given to tech gossip, was alarmed, thinking that perhaps there was a grand re-ordering of things that they should know about. It’s a remarkably straightforward move, far from the conspiracy theories the last few days have spawned, but when you’re dealing with bruisers like Microsoft and CES, everything is swathed in diplomacy as would be ostensibly amicable divorce proceedings. But Microsoft’s grievances are legitimate and the move is a smart one. “Our product news milestones generally don’t align with the show’s January timing.” How true that is, and as others have pointed out, their product news generally didn’t align with , either. And they’re aware that their news is propagating in a completely different way than it used to. Technologizer had a handy round-up of the keynotes, which generally have highlighted products that never shipped, or didn’t work well on stage. It’s a bit embarrassing to go back and watch some of these, knowing as we do how these products turned out. Why did Microsoft ever participate in this? Part of it was Bill Gates, who was much more of a keynote kind of guy. If you’ve seen him speak, you know that despite his natural nerdiness, he’s an endearing presence on stage and his enthusiasm for the broader mission of technology is infectious. Ballmer is certainly bombastic, but for years we’ve heard over and over the growth stats on Windows, heard from a few partners mumbling carefully-rehearsed platitudes, then seen a few features of the next version or a prototype (last year’s ARM surprise, to be fair, was the best thing they’ve had in years). It’s become rote, and rote is what Microsoft fears most now. The company is desperate for a reinvention of how it presents itself, and these doddering CES keynotes are exhibit A in the Case of the Dull Microsoft PR. Their booth, too, is filled with old devices and people halfheartedly selling services that anyone in the market is already well aware of. Meanwhile, year-round on the internet, , beautiful and powerful demonstrations of advanced technology. And the is the surprise Microsoft hit of the year, with nearly every single post (detailed, revealing, and technical) creating a storm of discussion on the web. The new Explorer interface, for instance, spawned thousands of articles ( ) and others have done nearly as much. The way Microsoft gets word out of its innovations, its products, its business performance, has been changing for years, but they and CES have clung together out of habit. I’m pleased to see Microsoft doing what it does worst: breaking a bad habit. CES is a show for product builders, people who ship devices, where you need to be there in real life to see how it works, how it feels, and most importantly, how it compares to the guys in the next booth. Microsoft simply isn’t a part of that world, and the show hasn’t been about them for years. They’ll still have a booth, and I expect them to stay around for a while. But I wouldn’t be surprised if they stopped using CES as a focal point for announcements, and use it instead (as many other large companies do) to present a snapshot of the company through and through, prototypes, research projects, traditional devices, servers, and all. They’ve made more room on the stage for companies that truly want to show off impressive things and talk about where the tech world is heading. I look forward to attending the keynotes of whoever steps up. |
LG Prepping Ice Cream Sandwich Update For Q2 2012 Release | Chris Velazco | 2,011 | 12 | 26 | Most of the big name Android smartphone vendors have already laid out their Ice Cream Sandwich upgrade plans, but LG has been notably absent from the list of companies offering an update schedule. Well, a brief announcement on the company’s has remedied that — Android 4.0 will be coming to select LG handsets as early as Q2 2012. The first round of updates will roll out to the Prada 3.0, Optimus LTE, Optimus Sol, Optimus 2X, LG Eclipse and strangely, the LG myTouch Q. Meanwhile, owners of other Optimus-branded handsets won’t be left waiting for too long. The Optimus 3D, Optimus Black, Optimus Big, Optimus Q2 and the Optimus EX will be getting their first taste of Ice Cream Sandwich in Q3 2012. But let’s go back to the myTouch Q for a moment. Though it’s a pretty unimpressive device when compared to some of the others getting the update, is the only device on the list that’s actually available here in the States. It’s a puzzling choice, especially when LG makes no mention of devices like the Thrill or the Nitro HD, both of which are U.S. variants of devices that will indeed be getting the update. While I’m sure LG fans are probably heartened by the news (that is, if they have switched to custom ROMs already), the company still has a long (and probably bumpy) road ahead of them. LG’s mobile division, if you recall, has had a pretty awful run over the past six quarters, and 2012 could be a make-it-or-break it year for them. They’ve already devoted around half of their to revitalize their handset business, and here’s hoping they’ve got some blockbuster device launches planned along with these software updates. |
Cooklet Aims To Disrupt The Stodgy Cooking Scene With Gingerbread Carp | John Biggs | 2,011 | 12 | 26 | , a Poland-based cooking site founded by Grzegorz Trubiłowicz, features a lot of what you’d expect – lots of recipes, a few pictures of happy-looking skinny people who you know don’t eat much food, and some international flare. However, the rise of sites like Cooklet point to a change in the way people find recipes and make food. It’s a transition from the standard cookbook-based economy of yesterday’s kitchen to a more plugged-in experience we are now embracing. The site’s main draw are its many well-made tablet apps including versions for , a , and a version for the . The content, as it stands, is a bit of a mixed bag. Many recipes are in Polish but there are a nice selection of recipes for non-Slavs including something that looks like death on a plate, . In this season of holiday feasts, I think it’s time to recognize that there are now many great places where home cooks can find recipes and that cookbooks should watch their backs. My own favorite site, , collates recipes from Gourmet and Bon Appetite in an app that is simple to use and promises a good meal every time. Other sites like AllRecipes do the same and now upstarts like Cooklet aim to further disrupt the scene. [youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iH-geNA79BY ] Where does this leave Rachel Ray and that one lady who likes butter? While I would not call cookbook writers culturally relevant, I think sites like these push their relevance even further into the niche. Why buy for $40 when you can make , , and from recipes gathered online. Sure you don’t get all of Bourdain’s wit and wisdom, but who reads cookbooks for the prologue anyway? This is also not to say that the veneration of great cooks isn’t important. However, I wonder how long it will be before the next great cooking personality rather than the kitchens of WD50. Cooklet needs a lot of work. The UI is quite fresh and other cooking sites could do well to emulate it but the content, because it is user generated, could use an editor and translator to reach an international audience. However, that a young man in Wroclaw can take on Julia Child at her own game is not only impressive, it’s downright scary if my business is dependent on printing cookbooks. [slideshow] |
People Spend Twice As Much Time On Netflix Than On Hulu | Erick Schonfeld | 2,011 | 12 | 26 | Netflix and Hulu are the two leading video streaming services on the Web when it comes to mainstream TV shows and movies. More people , and have since about . In November, 2011, comScore estimates that Netflix.com attracted 26.6 million unique visitors, versus 20.2 million for Hulu But a better metric to compare the two is how much time people actually spend at each site. And there Netflix trounces Hulu by two to one. U.S. visitors spent 1 billion minutes on Netflix.com in November, 2011, versus 480 million minutes on Hulu, according to comScore. (One caveat here is that people also go to Netflix.com to manage their DVD accounts and browse movie titles in addition to streaming videos, but the growth in time spent is most likely coming from streaming). Netflix has an edge over Hulu in that it streams more movies than TV shows, and those tend to be longer. But if that was the only factor, you’d expect to see the same ratio over time. Yet back in November, 2010, the two services were almost neck-and-neck in time spent, with Netflix users logging 750 million total minutes versus Hulu users logging 690 million. A few things happened over the past year which explain this growing gap. One is that Hulu, which started as a free, ad-supported video service, shifted strategies and pushed harder to convert viewers to paying subscribers. As a result, the number of people going to Hulu every month stopped growing (its 20 million unique U.S. visitors in November, 2011 was down from 21 million the year before). Netflix, on the other hand, spent the year promoting its streaming service at the expense of its DVD rental business (its U.S. unique visitors increased by about 8 million people over the same time period). Another difference is that Netflix benefits from the fact that it already has a paying subscription relationship with all of its customers, whereas Hulu still has a mix between free and paying viewers. The biggest jump in time spent on Netflix, however, occurred in September, 2011, when it rose by 26 percent in a single month (from 820 million minutes to 1.03 billion). September was the month when Netflix’s for subscribers who chose to keep both streaming and DVD rentals. For all the subsequent damage to Netflix’s brand and stock, the move did seemingly have the desired effect of boosting viewership of the streaming service. The total time spent on Netflix has been flat the three months since the big change. Now it needs to prove that streaming is indeed a better model than DVDs, and that should be reflected in subscribers spending time on Netflix. Time spent on Hulu should increase also as streaming becomes part of people’s regular viewing habits. The biggest barrier here remains the living room TV. For the vast majority of viewers, it’s still not hooked up to the either service. But once you do connect a big screen to the Internet, Netflix and Hulu become a lot more compelling. In my house, for instance, we are still only occasional viewers. We watch Hulu on a laptop in the kitchen or in my home office where I have a large screen already connected to my computer. My wife and I watched a movie on Netflix last night. We could have watched it on the bigger screen in the living room, but that would have entailed pulling out an HDMI cable and plugging in a laptop. The path of least resistance was the office set-up. My New Year’s resolution will be to hook up the living room TV to the Internet. Once I do that, I am sure we will be watching a lot more Netflix and Hulu. I don’t think we will be alone. |
null | John Biggs | 2,011 | 12 | 19 | null |
Tango Card Aims To Make Gift Card Giving A More Personal Experience | Leena Rao | 2,011 | 12 | 26 | While gift cards are certainly a useful and practical gift, the act of giving a gift certificate to a store can be construed as impersonal. One startup is trying to change this. which offers a gift card program for consumers, is launching a new personalized experience, called ‘What I Got.’ For background, here’s how Tango Card works. A purchaser can buy a Tango Card, and give this to a recipient via email. The recipient can then exchanges the value for the card for one or multiple retailer gift cards (Amazon, iTunes, Target, Starbucks, others) or they can donate any portion of their gift card to one of 9 non-profits (National Park Foundation, World of Children, Habitat for Humanity, etc.). Any unused value can actually be redeemed for cash. Basically, it provides a more flexible gift card option which allows recipients to choose and then stagger the proceeds of a gift card across various retailers or charities. The Tango Card’s value can be used on the startup’s site or directly via its iOS and Android apps. The startup also offers physical Tango Cards for those that prefer a plastic product. With ‘What I Got’ (WIG), recipients can take a photo of what they bought with their gift card, and then share it directly with the person that gave it to them via the Tango Card iOS and Android apps. Tango Card users start WIG on the app, attach or take a picture of what they got, and select how to share the photo, via Facebook, Twitter, or a Picasa or Flickr album. The gift giver is notified by email and can instantly view how the gift card was used. The startup says that this is a more personalized way to close the loop with the gift giver. As founder David Leeds tells me, in November and December, U.S. consumers will receive about $30 billion in gift cards. Tango Card’s WIG offers a way to close the loop with the gift givers, and personalize the experience. |
TechCrunch Moscow — All The On-stage Video | Mike Butcher | 2,011 | 12 | 26 | On December 5th, 2011 TechCrunch Europe came to Moscow . Co-organized by TechCrunch Europe, Digital October and Kite Ventures, the second TechCrunch Moscow showcased several early stage startups and hosted panels on emerging technology trends in Russia and abroad. The event, held in English, proved to be a smashing success, bringing together over 700 participants and attracting several thousand viewers online. Videos of the event can be found below including the amazing interview between Andrew Keen and political commentator Anton Nossik on a pivotal day for Russian politics following the Russian Duma elections of the previous day. . |
55 Inches: LG To Showcase World’s Largest OLED TV AT CES 2012 | Serkan Toto | 2,011 | 12 | 26 | We’ve been waiting for large-sized TVs at least since Sony rolled out the cool (but too small) in 2007. Various and have made the news in the years after that, and now LG says it’s ready to showcase the world’s biggest OLED TV at (which kicks off on January 10). Sized at 55 inches, the panel has a contrast ratio of 100,000:1 and has been developed by using the technology, according to LG. The company has been working on bigger OLED devices for quite a while now, for example a super-thin 31-inch model (which was shown ). So far, so good, but unfortunately LG says they see the device as a step forward in popularizing the concept of large-sized OLED TVs. In other words, the TV is just a prototype at this point with neither a price tag nor a release date, and we might have to wait years before being able to actually buy one. Via |
Citi Survey: 27 Percent Watch Netflix Online Versus 15 Percent For Hulu | Erick Schonfeld | 2,011 | 12 | 21 | Both Netflix’s brand and shares have been battered this year after price hikes last summer and the botched attempt to the DVD rental business. Netflix was roundly criticized for its miscommunication with customers, but what’s been the actual effect? Citi analysts Mark Mahaney surveyed almost 10,000 former and current Netflix customers to find out. While overall satisfaction levels did decline, 57 percent of consumers surveyed are still either “very satisfied” or “extremely satisfied.” That number is down from 83 percent in May, with a big drop in the number of people who are “extremely satisfied” coming down from 50 percent to 18 percent. (The “very satisfied” category actually grew 6 percent). Netflix is essentially holding its own. What’s more, it actually increased its lead over Hulu among respondents. Asked which websites they use to watch movies or TV shows online, 27 percent said Netflix, versus 15 percent for Hulu. Back in May, both sites were neck-and-neck with 20 percent for Netflix, and 19 percent for Hulu). These numbers support Netflix’s own reports that streaming is growing and that Netflix is increasing its lead against Hulu—at least among Netflix customers. (Amazon also gained ground with 9 percent market share, up from 6 percent in May). Also, despite all the sturm und drang surrounding the pricing changes last summer, more than half of Netflix subscribers (54 percent) made no changes to their plans as a result. Another 28 percent cancelled their DVD portion, and kept streaming, which is what Netflix wanted them to do. So nearly a third of customers switched in a fairly short period. Only 8 percent cancelled streaming and stick with DVDs. |
Aol Shareholders Freak Out Over Exec Departures — As They Should | Alexia Tsotsis | 2,011 | 12 | 21 | More than a fair amount of business success hinges on telling stories about the future. The reason Yahoo’s market cap is down to $19.83 billion from a high of $55 billion is because shareholders don’t believe that it has a future. The reason Aol for $850 million (a little over half of Aol’s current market cap!) is that at the time it essentially believed — after processing analysis and reports, of course — that it was worth that much … Last night I read that a small investment firm was pleading with Aol to get its act together; “The current market price of Aol fails to reflect the substantial value of the sum-of-its parts. [sic]” And then Skyped a friend, “And so it begins.* ” *It being the inevitable dissolution of the company that actually pays my salary. SHUDDER. This morning Business Insider a pretty impassioned letter penned by what has to be the most eloquent scribe at Aol investor Starboard Value LP. In the letter, Starboard expressed concern about the estimated $500 million dollar a year losses and unmitigated failure of the company’s Display business and media aspirations. Executive Starboard summary: “This level of losses in a business that already has reasonable scale is extremely troubling. We are not alone with regard to our serious questions and concerns relating to the Company’s investment in its Display business. It is clear that the losses from the Display business are having a negative impact on the overall value of Aol.” What’s most notable about the letter is that it starkly brings up the current Aol talent exodus. On the executive level alone the past couple of months have seen an impressive array of departures, and named in the letter are , , , Douglas Home, , Jeff Levick, . Four of those people are perhaps the most brilliant people to have worked at Aol, not mention (the unmentioned) star biz dev and marketing talents , , and star writers like , , and almost all of . I don’t blame Starboard for being concerned. I’m concerned; From what I hear talent isn’t just leaving, it is “being driven away” for the wrong, and mostly political reasons. Creative people need a space to be creative and actualize their talents, Aol (with maybe the exception of TechCrunch, we’ll see how this post goes over …) doesn’t seem to be that place. Even TechCrunch needed, and still needs, founder Michael Arrington in order to thrive. Perhaps even more so we needed our former CEO Heather Harde. Under Heather we reportedly increased revenue by 50% the tumultuous first year we were under AOL, to $15 million – over 2x what the entire media business is worth according . Tim, you should have done anything and everything to get Heather to stay. I know at least two other people on our team who share my sentiment. Aol investor (among other things) Arrington recently “The body count at Aol is rising, and too many of these people were casualties of Arianna’s ego. Jon Brod was kicked to the curb for disagreeing with her about how to run the Huffington Post business. Brad Garlinghouse fell out of favor at least partially because he was the only one willing to call bullshit on her power grabs. And there are others.” I’m beginning to feel stupid for still being here, especially after reading this tepid response from my bosses’ bosses tonight. Everything is not okay, and someone needs to make that clear to them. If this doesn’t work, maybe we should hire someone who can convince Aol to do something … Paging ? |
null | Mike Butcher | 2,011 | 12 | 26 | null |
Fly Or Die: The Mid-Size Tablet Revolution | John Biggs | 2,011 | 12 | 21 | There’s been a recent interesting trend in the tablet market: devices 8 inches and smaller that are as powerful as their bigger cousins but considerably more portable and convenient. In this episode of Fly Or Die we talk about the mid-size trend and decide whether a smaller tablet makes for a better tablet. The devices we discussed, the Motorola 10-inch and 8-inch, are interesting because they are approximately the same device but in a slightly different form factor. It’s worth noting that I like the 8-inch better than the 10 and would even posit that a smaller, 7-inch would be a hit. Here’s hoping. |
Last-Minute Gift Guide 2011: Things For The Audio Lover In Your Life | Greg Kumparak | 2,011 | 12 | 21 | You’ve got a few hours left before all of the free “Get it before Christmas!” shipping deals come to a close, and you’ve still got people left gift-less. What ever will you do? Give’m the gift that just about everyone would love: the gift of music! We’ve had all sorts of aural accessories come through our office in the last year, so join us for a quick, last-minute recap of some of our favorites. In the age of digital downloads, everyone seems to have . Even for folks with dedicated seedboxes and more storage space than any one man could feasibly utilize, there’s something about music subscription services. Maybe it’s that it’s more convenient; maybe it’s that it’s, you know, legal. While there are countless music subscription services out there, two tend to stand out: Rdio and Spotify. The latter has a bigger catalog and some snazzy social features, but lacks an iPad app and inexplicably makes purchasing gift subscriptions next to impossible (for anyone not in Spotify’s home-turf of Sweden, at least.) Rdio’s music catalog is still pretty dang big, they’ve got an iPad app, and gift subscriptions . Accounts begin at $5 a month ($10 a month gets you smartphone access), so it scales pretty well to just about any budget. (You can also supposedly buy physical Rdio gift cards — but after going on a wild goose chase to every damn Target in my area last week, I’m convinced they don’t actually exist.) In the Office-Chair-jockey circles, Logitech’s all-in-one Z-5500 5.1 system is . It's also discontinued. That's why nabbing a set of these (once $400) speakers nowadays can set you back nearly a grand (seriously, check Amazon.) The Z-5500's spiritual successor, the Z906, lacks a bit of the absurd thump that the original packed (the sub is two inches smaller) — but makes up for it with its prettier styling and improved connectivity. While it’s not the champion that the Z-5500 was, it’s still one of the best all-in-one sets you can get for $400. (Oh, and, for what it’s worth, Logitech’s customer service can’t be beat.)
Few new products make me feel like I’ve traveled in time and have come back with something from the future. Sonos feels like it’s ripped straight out of the Jetsons. Why? Ease of setup. You plug the $50 brain (the “bridge”) into your router. Then you plop one of Sonos’ speakers (either the $299 Play:3 or the bigger, badder $400 Play:5) in another room, hit two buttons, and start up the app on your smartphone/laptop. Bam, wireless music from Rdio, Spotify, Pandora, or your iTunes library. Add a few more speakers, and you’ve got music everywhere in your house — all synced (or not — each can be playing its own track), all controlled from whatever device you’ve got handy. Plus, they sound really, really good. Sonos’ entire array of applications (be it iOS, Android, or the desktop controllers) could use a ton of UI work, but on a hardware front, it’s wonderful. This is the most expensive offering on the list, as a Sonos set for a 3-4 bedroom house can run over a grand. Sick of the constant WUBWUBWUBWUB leaking out of your best friend’s crappy, poorly-sealed (but oh so trendy!) iPhone ear buds? Here’s a range of rock-solid headphones that’ll make sure music stays in ears.
Cans in this range (don’t buy cheaper — you’re just buying trash) all tend to sound about the same (read: meh), with one exception: Sennheiser’s stuff. Sennheiser has an uncanny ability to pack a ridiculous amount of sound into remarkably cheap packages. Check out their CX 215’s (MSRP $60, but can be easily found for sub-$40). They sound great for the price, can take a beating, and come in all sorts of fun colors.
In this range, it’s hard to recommend anything but the Klipsch S4’s (MSRP $80, easily found for less than $70). They’ve reigned supreme in this price range for 3+ years now, and with good reason: they just sound . These are particularly good for those with eclectic music tastes, as they’re incredibly well balanced. This is the range most audiophiles just start to consider as acceptable, so I’m sure will contest me — but Sennheiser’s metal-crafted CX 980’s (MSRP $350, but easily found for around $190) are truly spectacular. Load up a playlist with a few lossless tracks, plug these things in (make sure you test all the seals for the best fit. Like any upper-end pair of cans, a proper seal is make-or-break here), and experience music you thought you knew in a whole new way. Don’t do it. Anything above $200 (in terms of actual retail price — not MSRP) falls into the “personal purchase” zone. If someone needs headphones like that, they know it — and they know which ones they want. |
Facebook Snubs Zynga’s CityVille As Most Popular Game Despite 5X Users Of #1 Gardens Of Time | Josh Constine | 2,011 | 12 | 21 | Playdom’s Gardens of Time took the #1 spot of Facebook’s . But wait, Zynga’s CityVille was ranked #3 despite peaking at over 100 million monthly active users and 21 million daily active users — far more than Gardens of Time’s peaks of 17 million MAU and 4 million DAU, . That’s because Facebook’s list was mostly based on vaguely described “recommendations”, and hardly on active users. It’s almost as if Facebook used its cloudy methodology to keep Zynga from completely dominating the list, as the Mark Pincus machine currently owns all 5 Facebook games with the most DAU and still ended up with 4 of the top 10 spots on Facebook’s list. [ : Facebook has integrated the feedback from this article and its Top Games post to more clearly explain what it means by ‘Most Popular’. The methodology note now reads: “ As long as it’s transparent, we’re happy to see Facebook finding more ways to feature high quality games, and not just those with the most users.] Here’s an image of the list Facebook published and the note on its methodology:
A Facebook PR representative denied my theory. She told me that in the methodology, “the top recommended apps (from surveys presented to users in the canvas ticker where they can answer yes/no to, ‘would you recommend this to a friend’?”)…were ranked higher over highest monthly active user numbers. Another way to say it is that these apps were the highest rated among users.” But why not just say in the post that this was based on ratings, not on active users? The list should have been labeled “Most satisfying games” or “Most recommended games”, not “Most popular games”. Missing the top spot probably won’t help . Zynga and Facebook have partnered for years to help Zynga . However, that relationship may be strained as the gaming company plans to outside of the Facebook platform. Facebook could have predicted that people would ask why the #3 game peaked at 80 million more monthly users than the #1 game. If had a 20% ‘Yes’ rating average and had an 80% ‘Yes’ average, then fine, the rankings make sense. But if the ratings were even somewhat close, it seems a little fishy that CityVille didn’t take the #1 spot, and Facebook didn’t disclose the actual rating scores or even that they were the core of the methodology. To really win big on the Facebook platform, you need a substantial marketing budget, existing games to cross-promote from, and sophisticated A/B testing technology. and most developers don’t. #1 Playdom and #2 EA (The Sims Social, with peak MAU of 66M MAU and 11M DAU) both do too. Still, Zynga taking the top spot would have really driven home the point that the Facebook gaming business is run by the big boys. That’s a problem, because attracting the long tail of small and medium developers is essential to retaining gamers who are always looking for something new to play. Facebook went out of its way to feature smaller and non-Silicon Valley developers. It included categories such as Top up-and-comers (Battle Pirates by Kixeye) and most popular games with 50,000-100,000 users (Super Slot Machines). It also cited top sports app TopEleven as having a team of just 30 out of Serbia in an email to us, and noted other develpers from Germany, Japan, and Prague. There’s nothing wrong with Facebook promoting developer diversity, but it needs to be up front about how this list was calculated. It’s in Facebook’s interest to avoid making it seem like the platform is winner-take-all or like it depends on Zynga. Through obscured methodology, Facebook didn’t have to highlight this by giving CityVille the top spot. : Facebook has edited its Top Games post to integrate the feedback from this article. The more transparent explanation of the Most Popular list’s methodology now reads: “ |
Actually, Searches For “Google+” Are Petering Out | Erick Schonfeld | 2,011 | 12 | 21 | Just last week, Google was promoting the fact that “Google+” was the of the year in its annual Zeitgest list. And it did have an amazing pop when it hit “ ” a couple weeks after last summer. People wanted to know what this new Google+ thing was all about. And since it didn’t exist the year before, on a percentage basis the growth in the number of searches for the term was astronomical. If you are not paying close attention and hear that “Google+” was the No. 2 search term of the year, you might assume that a lot of people are still searching for it. But you would be wrong. The shows all sorts of stats about that pop in searches for “Google+” back in July. What you won’t find there is the overall trend of searches for the term, and the fact that searches have been declining. In order to find that you have to go to , a terrific tool that lets you plot search volume for any term. You can see the chart for “Google+” above. The trend is not good. There was an initial spike at launch, then a lot of hype around the 10-million-user announcement, and then a smaller spike in September when it opened up to everyone. Then the search volume just kind of peters out. Why is this important? Searches are an indication of pure intent. People search for what they intend to do. Venture capitalists look at search volume data all the time as a gut check to see whether there is any interest in a startup’s product. The same logic applies to products at big companies like Google. If fewer and fewer people are searching for “Google+”, it makes you wonder if anyone is actually using it. Remember, just because Google+ has tens of millions of registered users, that doesn’t mean those people ever came back after Google made them click to register. All you have to do for a reality check on this approach is searches for “Twitter” to “Google+” (see chart below). Interest in Twitter dwarfs Google+. (Don’t even try to it to searches for “Facebook”—that spike turns into a flat line). People search for what they intend to do or want to learn more about. They even search for but not so much for “google+.” The fact that the “Google+” line isn’t as big as the one for “Twitter” or “Facebook” would be fine if it was growing. But it’s not. It’s going in the opposite direction. |
The Other Side Of Open | MG Siegler | 2,011 | 12 | 21 | Open. Open. Open. Open. Open. Open. Open. Open. Open. Every chance they get, someone from Google brings this up as a huge advantage of Android over rivals like iOS. Never mind the fact that a good percentage of the time — why exactly isn’t Google Wallet on Google’s own Galaxy Nexus device? — even when it’s true, there are some very real downsides. The user experience angle has been debated ad nauseam. More interesting is what we’re seeing now. A downside for Google. Amazon’s Kindle Fire runs on Android, but nothing about it is Google’s Android. It doesn’t look like Android and it doesn’t feature Google’s own apps. That has to annoy Google, but something exposed the other day must truly piss them off: the all Android Market requests to Amazon’s Appstore. That includes all attempts to go to market.android.com even when the Fire’s accelerated browsing (routed through Amazon’s servers) . Amazon has commandeered Android and is closing it down for their own purposes. The problem for Google is that those purposes are decidedly anti-Google purposes. Amazon wants to control the Android app ecosystem — the one created and nurtured by Google. Despite what they may have you believe sometimes, Google is not a pro bono company. Their work with Android is an attempt to create another billion dollar-plus business. Apps are a part of this, but the bigger parts are things like payments and content, and of course, search and advertising. Amazon is taking over apps, content, and payments with the Fire. And you have to think that search might be in their sights as well. At the very least, they could cut a lucrative deal with someone like Microsoft to make Bing the default search engine on the Kindle Fire. This would mean that Google would be making essentially nothing off of each Kindle Fire, even though they created the platform on which it runs. And this matters because the Kindle Fire is poised to be the most successful Android tablet — it may very well be already. But that’s just tablets, you might say. Google Android still dominate phones. That’s true, Amazon isn’t in the smartphone game — at least not yet. But what happens if the rumors are true and Facebook releases a phone with an OS built on top of Android? And what if they do the exact same things that Amazon is doing? Say they create their own app store, bake in their own payment and content services, and eventually cut a deal with Microsoft to make Bing the default search engine. Remember, Microsoft has a search deal with Facebook already, and is a minority stakeholder in the social network. And those are just the big guys in the U.S. Companies all around the world are also exploring (or already executing on) using Android as the basis for their own OSes. Some of these help Google, some do not. What if HTC builds they own flavor of Android? What if Samsung does? At least Google knows that Motorola won’t now… With Android’s rise to smartphone market share domination (but not actual and/or ), much has been made of the comparison to what Microsoft did in the 1980s and 1990s to blow past Apple towards PC domination. But one key difference that no one ever seems to bring up is the fact that Windows was anything but open. If you wanted to use it, you had to pay Microsoft. You would never have been able to build your own version of Windows without getting sued into oblivion. Imagine if Microsoft had open sourced Windows back then. Would they still have become the dominant player? Possibly, maybe even likely at first, but eventually it’s feasible that a competitor would have used their work as the basis for a better version of Windows. That’s the real risk Google is now facing. Back in May, ? That was before Amazon’s hardware ambitions were fully revealed. But it seemed obvious this battle was coming. And now it’s here. : With an update, Amazon has unblocked their web browser from accessing the Android Market website, for GigaOm. But it’s more of a PR move. You still cannot install Android Market apps without side-loading them. |
It Had To Happen Eventually: Hasbro Sues Asus Over Transformer Name | Devin Coldewey | 2,011 | 12 | 21 | Call me naive, but I just assumed that when Asus showed off a device called the , they had some sort of deal to license or at least provide some kind of royalty to the Transformers franchise. Apparently not, as Hasbro has just alleging that Asus is infringing on the Transformers trademark. Now, if the device were just called the Transformer, I think I would come down on Asus’ side here. After all, transform is a common word and although it may recall to mind certain memories from the 80s (and, to a lesser extent, the last few years), it is just a word and it also describes the transforming capacity of the device. But then they had to go and call it the . What’s next, Soundwave speakers? A Bumblebee netbook? No doubt Asus will try to excuse themselves by saying that both Transformer and Prime are common words that describe the device in question, which exists in a market totally unrelated to that of Hasbro’s toys and media. I don’t think that anyone will buy that, though. “Transformer Prime” is almost certainly a deliberate riff on Optimus Prime. And while Hasbro doesn’t make computers, do exist for PCs and a judge is likely to agree that the whole thing is pretty blatant anyway. What will happen? Hasbro is asking for damages and an injunction against sales of the product until they work this out. Asus would be wise to cop to the mistake, pay off Hasbro, and license if it can. Although the tablet hasn’t been a big seller, Asus has been pushing the brand pretty hard and will have to weigh saving it against paying what’s due. |
Flickr Updates Its iPhone App, But Where’s Flickr For iPad? | Devin Coldewey | 2,011 | 12 | 21 | Flickr has just pushed out an update to its iPhone app, easing the batch upload process and making some UI tweaks. It will surely be welcomed by the many Flickr users who use iPhones, but Flickr’s continual reticence to develop for new platforms remains a problem. It took them more than a year to produce a , about the same for . We’re coming up on the two-year mark for the iPad — isn’t it about time? Let’s hope so. It’s a big opportunity, and with rumors of a around the corner with the chops to do Photoshops, Flickr should be straining at the bit. The current apps for the iPad aren’t awful or anything: looks nice, and appears more functional than the iPhone app. A new iPad app called launched today that stores your photos locally, though it looks overly simplistic and kind of redundant. Flickr should have owned this space from the beginning, as they must know there’s a good overlap between their users and iOS users. Flickr seems to have missed the boat for social interaction, though there’s definitely an active on-site community. It’s not a fundamentally social service, so compared to something like Instagram it will always be lacking a bit. But many photographers use and like the service, so Flickr should cater to them. More community, more discovery, more functionality for, say, importing shots directly from the camera or card, that sort of thing. If the high-resolution thing turns out to be true, then the new iPad will be very popular among photographers and artists. That would definitely be a time to invest and strike. I’m a Flickr user myself and would happily pay for a “Pro” app that made my iPad into more than a viewing window for my content. |
45 Privacy Changes Facebook Will Make To Comply With Data Protection Law | Josh Constine | 2,011 | 12 | 21 | In 2012, Facebook will be making 45 privacy-related changes to comply with the recommendations of an (DPC) released today. Below I’ve compiled a roadmap of all the changes Facebook will implement based on the the 149 pages of and how the social network says it will address them. First, read my . It explains why these changes won’t seriously interfere with Facebook’s business model or product development. That’s very good news for Facebook. Still, complying with the audit’s recommendations could prevent the company from building a huge stockpile of historical data for some unknown later use. The changes mostly deal with how long Facebook retains data, and how people are educated about Facebook’s usage of that data. Some will require engineering work, such as irrevocably deleting user data within 40 days of an account deletion request. Others will simply see Facebook adding additional links or messaging within the product to improve transparency and user understanding. Facebook avoided having to make some big changes that could have hurt its business, such as needing users to explicitly opt in to ad targeting based on their personal data. It also won’t have to discontinue its facial recognition feature, or requires users to opt into having their content used in . Here are the 45 changes Facebook will implement and their due dates: Additionally, the DPC’s audit made statements, indicating its satisfaction with how Facebook handles these potentially controversial issues: |
HP Sends $19 Refunds To Overcharged TouchPad Sale Partakers | Devin Coldewey | 2,011 | 12 | 21 | If you were one of the lucky few that managed to snag a during HP’s (maybe) final two weeks ago, you might be receiving a little present soon via PayPal. It seems that some people were charged quite a bit extra for shipping. It seems a bit fussy to complain about when you’re getting a device like this for such a ridiculous price, but hey, not everyone can spare ten bucks these days. Not only that, but there was chaos at eBay and PayPal during the promotion; many commenters complained of errors, lag, and lost orders. Fear not: you will be compensated for your troubles. An email is going out to purchasers of the device that reads partially: Due to an error in the calculation of Shipping & Handling fees for the HP TouchPad, you were charged an additional $10 in shipping fees for your order. We have recognized this error and HP’s eBay store will credit $10 to your PayPal account for each HP TouchPad you ordered. eBay and HP are also aware that in some instances, the shopping experience of HP’s eBay store was impacted by the overwhelming response to the HP Touchpad deal. eBay and HP are committed to delivering the best shopping experience possible on eBay and are providing you with an additional $9 credit to your PayPal account for each of your HP Touchpad orders. So basically, they negated everyone’s shipping fees. How nice! I suppose that as long as they were throwing money out the door, a few more handfuls didn’t matter when the satisfaction of their customers was at stake. despite , so seeding a few good memories of the OS can’t hurt. [ ] |
Samsung Teases Android-Controlled Smart TVs For CES 2012 | Matt Burns | 2,011 | 12 | 21 | Smart HDTVs at CES 2012. Nearly every major brand will release major updates to existing lines along with completely new products. However, Samsung has long sold a successful line of smart TVs, but a just-released CES 2012 teaser video shows the upcoming models will be a bit different. They’re going to ditch remotes. These HDTVs look to be controlled by mobile devices. The teaser video only shows a few quick seconds but it’s the logical next step. Smartphone remotes for Google TV are nothing new. Both Google and Logitech released apps shortly after the platform debuted in 2010. Samsung, already a pro at smart TVs and Android, will likely release a bespoke solution crafted just for Samsung devices. The bigger question involves the fate of the current line of Samsung Smart TVs. An Android-powered version seems inevitable but the company has so far seen success with its current, non-Android platform. Last January, 2 million apps were downloaded to Samsung Smart TVs. , Samsung could be completely abandoning its current platform for the new kid in town: Google TV and/or Android. http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=MsMeo_7wBSs |
UP Maker Jawbone Bites Into Another $40 Million | Alexia Tsotsis | 2,011 | 12 | 21 | The future of technology software is contingent upon the capabilities of the hardware that it powers. That’s why , a company that makes pretty and pretty useful hardware like the Jawbone UP, the Jawbone ERA and the Jambox speaker is on my shortlist for startups that will be huge huge huge in 2012 — despite some along the way. What will definitely help Jawbone’s prospects? The fact that it just raised $40 million from , , private investor and J.P. Morgan Asset Management — bringing its total funding to a hefty $162 million. In case you want to meet the man behind the machine, here’s an interview with UP founder from earlier this year, when things with the UP were still on the um, up and up (sorry guys, I’m in a rush). |
Intel Shows Off Smartphone Reference Design, Claims Performance Gains Over ARM | Devin Coldewey | 2,011 | 12 | 21 | We’ve been waiting for Intel’s smartphone effort for a long, long time now. The few desultory pushes by the likes of Acer and niche OEMs has done little to dent the dominance of rival ARM, whose low-power chips have become an indispensable part of smartphone architecture. Just last week, though, Intel gave a private showing of a smartphone prototype that appears to be more or less feature complete and ready to be established as the basis for a platform. The device was running Gingerbread (Android 2.3), but funnily enough actually resembles an ice cream sandwich. The choice of OS is probably just indicative of the test environment; Intel has , and will likely want their debut to involve it. Look at that phone, though, the similarity really is uncanny. like the one above. In addition to showing off the reference design, which is just a starting place or example for manufacturers and may not be representative of future products, Intel showed some stats that indicated the new “Medfield” systems powering the phones was no slouch: These are all Intel’s internal measurements, of course, and as you can see there are no model numbers or actual statistics shown. But we can probably trust the general indication that the Medfield platform is competitive with shipping devices running fairly new ARM and NVIDIA designs. also noted a few interesting features in their hands-on: a burst mode on the camera that shoots 10 full-size shots at 15 FPS (!), hardware acceleration of certain web and app tasks, and wireless casting of HD video to a TV. We know they have also , but none were present at the event. Medfield is a die-shrink and redesign of Moorestown, a redesign of the Atom series, which as you remember was mostly found in netbooks. But although its pedigree might not sound like the best for mobile devices, it seems like Intel has truly focused on making the platform handset- and tablet-friendly. Speaking of tablets, they also showed a reference design for a tablet: No, not the most beautiful device we’ve ever seen, which is why it’s at the end of the article here. They showed it running Windows 8 in the slide deck but presumably it would run Android just as well. Intel expects the first Medfield-based devices to be revealed in the first half of 2012, and hinted that we might see some at CES in January. We’ll be sure to drop by Intel’s booth to bring you pictures and video as soon as we can in that case. |
Swype Learns To Listen Better, Type More Accurately | Greg Kumparak | 2,011 | 12 | 21 | If you haven’t taken the time to play with Swype (the trace-to-type mobile keyboard alternative), you’re missing out — and I’m not just saying that because . As evidenced by the fact that it’s now built right into a ton of Android handsets, it’s pretty damn good. This morning, it’s getting even better. Swype has just launched a new Beta with two fancy new tricks: Dragon-based voice dictation, and an improved ability to analyze the words you’ve already typed to better determine what you’re trying to type next. While Swype has had voice dictation features for a while now by way of the system built into most Android handsets, this new system is powered by technology (as you may recall, back in October) Curiously, it seems the new system supplants the old one entirely — there’s no way to switch back, at least as far as I’ve seen. The timing of the switch is particularly interesting, as the latest version of Android (Ice Cream Sandwich) introduces near-realtime transcription, with words streaming onto the display as the speaker speaks simultaneously — something Dragon definitely do. Still, the company seems sure that Dragon’s offering outshines anything Google has to offer. The Beta’s other new trick is called “advance language modeling” — which, as mentioned above, analyze’s what you’ve typed so far so that it’s got a better understanding of what’s coming next. To snag an example from the demo video below: take the term “Mosh pit”. You drag your finger through “M-O-S-H”, it knows you’re trying to type mosh. But when you drag through “P-I-T”, you’re also hitting “P-O-T”; do you mean Mosh Pit, or Mosh Pot? Probably the first one, as the second one isn’t a thing. If you’d instead typed “Mush” as the first word instead, it’d know you probably meant . If you’re already in Swype’s Beta program (or are looking to get in), you’ll be able to find all of the details … eventually. While the Beta has just launched, it seems their servers are currently having trouble staying up. [youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i2u_InYy-84&w=640&h=360] |
ComScore’s 2011 Social Report: Facebook Leading, Microblogging Growing, World Connecting | Eric Eldon | 2,011 | 12 | 21 | You already know that social networking sites have been getting huge around the world, but an annual report out today from shows what exactly is going at a wonderful new level of detail, with surprises for even long-time industry watchers like me. 1 in every 5 minutes of time online is now being spent on social networking sites, up from a mere 6% in early 2007. The sites, led by Facebook, now reach 82% of the world’s internet-using population — about 1.2 billion people in total. This growth is happening across countries, with 41 of the 43 countries that the web measurement firm tracks showing penetration of 85% or more. Within these big numbers, though, all sorts of differences emerge. People in Latin America spend an especially large portion of their time online on sites like Facebook and Twitter — 28%, or 7.6 hours per month. That’s much less the case in Asia, where it’s 11% and less than 3 hours per month. Those are broad averages, and full of anomalies. The Philippines, for example, is actually the most socially networked country in the world, with 43% of users time going to these services, and above 8.7 hours. Facebook itself is making up the largest portion of all this usage — even as all sorts of rivals and alternatives are surging. The service reached 55% of the worlds’ online population in October, with incredibly high engagement: 3 out of every 4 minutes on these types of sites, and every seventh online minute. For the most part, it has surged into first places across countries that had previously been on rival sites, like Orkut in Brazil. But Facebook is running out of new users in North America and Western Europe simply because it has so much of these markets already (even though it’s not running out of users’ attention). In the meantime, a whole other crop of social sites are booming everywhere, led by Twitter. The microblogging service has grown by 59% in the past year to reach 160 million monthly unique users worldwide. Professional social network LinkedIn has grown by 55% to nearly 100 million. Easy-blogging site Tumblr is up 172% to nearly 40 million; Chinese Twitter-style site Sina Weibo shows almost identical growth (albeit mostly in China). Report co-author Andrew Lipsman says this is one of the trends that was most surprising to him about the report. There’s more and more people who want to share around interests, not just the close social relationships. All in all, many of these market leaders are also showing just how global they are these days, with Twitter and Facebook each now having 80% of their users outside of the US. The report has all sorts of other data gems, too. Here’s a few that jumped out at me: – Google+ now has 65 million users worldwide. That thing has some legs, even if we don’t always see them here at TechCrunch. – Women continue to lead men in engagement across the world — by 2 hours or 30% per month in North America and Europe. This is a long-term trend that comScore has seen across older services like instant messaging. But, men have shown a 10% bump since July of 2010, and they gradually appear to be catching up. A lot of this has to do with age. Usage is about at equilibrium among younger age groups, Lipsman notes. – Mobile is crucial to usage in many markets and growing, but continues to account for a minority of overall usage. Between a quarter and a third of users in Western markets reported accessing social networking sites at least once a month from mobile devices. – Ads are still playing catch-up to spending levels per traffic that you’d expect to see in other areas. – Email usage has been declining in usage among younger age groups, a trend that’s not likely to change. This is by no means all of the interesting data in the report. You can download the full thing on comScore’s site, . I should note that it deserves credit for doing an especially good job providing easy-to-read data visualizations — something that you don’t see often enough amidst all the awful infographics out there. ComScore’s methodology, considered by many to be the best in the measurement business, includes large-scale opt-in user sampling around the world and across desktop and mobile devices. |
No Boys Allowed: Women Innovate Mobile Accelerator Is Just For Women | Sarah Perez | 2,011 | 12 | 21 | Today, a new startup accelerator for women, the , is opening its doors for applications. The program will start off small, offering two to five companies seed funding of $18,000, plus mentoring, support, and free office space in New York during the course of its three-month program. The company was founded by Veronika Sonsev, the co-founder of and the non-profit , Deborah Jackson, founder of , and business strategist Kelly Hoey. “Accelerators are dominated by men and Women Innovate Mobile is the first dedicated to cultivating female founders,” said Kelly Hoey, WIM’s Managing Director. “No one disputes the talent and capabilities of female entrepreneurs, yet they remain severely underrepresented among mentor-driven accelerator programs. That’s why we developed an accelerator program just for women-led mobile ventures.” The program will follow the usual accelerator path of offering guidance and assistance over a few months’ time, culminating in a Demo Day in front of investors. WIM has already attracted a notable group of mentors and instructors, including Gilt Groupe’s Alexandra Wilkis Wilson, Klout’s co-founder Binh Tran and Starvest’s Jeanne Sullivan, plus experts from AppNexus, Forbes, Formula Capital, Bank of America, Sequoia Lab, GoldenSeeds, Tapjoy and Women 2.0. Applications are open now and will close on February 1st. The program is scheduled to launch in March 2012. Interested participants can sign up . : To be clear, boys allowed – the title is a play on the old clubhouse sign, you know. Live a little, folks. WIM criteria: |
Eric Schmidt’s Le Web Keynote Video: “Android is Ahead Of The iPhone” | Erick Schonfeld | 2,011 | 12 | 7 | [youtube=http://youtu.be/t02iJn5Ypio&w=640 &h=400] Google chairman Eric Schmidt spoke yesterday at Le Web in Paris, and now the entire interview is on (thank you, Loic!). Schmidt talks about , and Google’s (one a week). The hour-long interview is punctuated with bon mots like: “It is much easier to start a revolution, but it is harder to finish it.” If you don’t have time to watch the whole thing fast-forward to around the 37-minute mark, which is when Schmidt starts to get feisty. “Android is ahead of the iPhone now,” he says, based on “unit volume, price is lower, more vendors, it’s free.” At about 39 minutes in he makes this startling prediction: “By the summer of 2012, the majority of the televisions you see will have Google TV embedded in it. A similar strategy to what we did with Android. The price is free from Google, so you are only paying for the television.” Schmidt is always a good interview. Watch the whole thing. |
Unstuck Helps Turn Your iPad Into An On-The-Go Life Coach | Leena Rao | 2,011 | 12 | 7 | Innovation and management consultancy is debuting its virtual on-th-go life coach, this evening. Unstuck, which is an iPad app, allows you to get on-demand coaching whenever you need it. First, the app helps you diagnose what’s really going on in your stuck moment. Using a game-like interface, Unstuck tried to tease out what you’re feeling, what you’re thinking, and what you’re actually doing from your statement. The app begins with a series of questions to figure out why
you’re stuck. Your answers then feed an algorithm, which pinpoints your stuck moment. And the Q&A focuses on how you’re feeling, thinking, and acting in a situation. These stuck moments can be big or small, involving just you or others, chronic challenges or things you’ve never faced before. For example, you could query, “Should we rent, build, or renovate?,” or “My siblings and I can’t agree on what to do for our father’s birthday.” Based on the diagnostic, the app helps you identify what type of stuck moment you’re having—maybe you’re waffling, overthinking your choices, or being negative. Basically, the app aims to help you understand that moment and common patterns of behavior associated with it—and then suggests how to move forward. Unstuck will serve up tips and tools as well as give you personalized action plans you can use. Soon users will also be able to share their experiences and help each other move forward to get unstuck. You can also save your unstuck moments and the app will remember these for the future. Unstuck is part life-coach, part psychiatrist with a dash of data analysis. It is interesting to have an instant diagnosis of your thought methodology when trying to solve a problem or issue. Of course with any advice-based application, there is a huge trust structure that needs to be in place. What seems to be missing is a social component with your actual friends (not just random people using the app), because people naturally tend to take advice or bounce ideas and feelings off of close friends. Perhaps there is a Facebook-connect integration in Unstuck’s future? |
Happtique Brings Secure, Branded App Stores To Hospitals And Healthcare | Rip Empson | 2,011 | 12 | 7 | Just as consumers are adopting smartphones (to the tune of ) and tablets at a breakneck pace, an increasing number of clinicians, healthcare administrators and staff are using mobile devices to manage patient care, communicate within the workplace, and carry out their day to day work. Nearly 80 percent of physicians will adopt smartphones by 2012. Consumers interact with and use app stores on a daily basis, and there are a growing number of consumer-facing healthtech services that offer a variety of health services, as people become more interested in using web and mobil services that help them stay in shape and get fit. So, as the centers of healthcare, and arguably with serious demand, why can’t hospitals take advantage? Across the board, hospitals want to offer applications for their doctors and employees to use, but not all of the apps they want to offer are consumer, or even patient, focused. Hospitals and most other care facilities are enterprises, their use case doesn’t fall under healthcare categories of traditional app stores, there is a lot of sensitive and private data within their walls, so they want secure and custom deployment of their apps. This is no easy task. This is where Happtique comes in. is a mobile app store developed by healthcare professionals for hospitals and other healthcare professionals. The startup offers enterprises like hospitals, continuing care facilities, and physician practices, the ability to create individually branded and secure app stores that support apps for both patients and employees. Happtique has previously partnered with , the maker of cloud-based healthtech solutions, to create a custom catalog of mobile health apps, designed to connect patients to their healthcare organizations and physicians through their mobile phones — all via a secure network. (And .) The health app catalog basically offers a suite of mobile apps for patients and providers that will eventually (this is still in the works, but you can see the intended use case) allow patients to remotely monitor their health and continue treatment off-site. The solution will enable patients to upload medical documents requested by physicians into a secure portal (which healthcare organizations and hospitals can customize, i.e. it’s white label), as well as the option to integrate this into their electronic health records. The solution will be platform agnostic, which means that patients will be able to access this via the majority of their mobile devices, as well as giving both healthcare providers the ability to be more proactive in managing care and further bring patients into the center of the treatment process, rather than having treatment and care be a one-and-done process that only happens on-site. HealthSaaS provides the custom apps, while Happtique provides the ability for healthcare providers to manage and control deployment of certain apps to their patients. As part of its beta trial, Happtique has offered a number of East Coast medical institutions their own branded, private mobile app stores, including Mount Sinai Hospital, the Mount Sinai School of Medicine, Beth Israel Medical Center. Across the board, the medical institutions Happtique is working with have either developed their own mobile apps or are in the process of developing their own apps, which is reflection of where hospitals are today, said Cory Ackerman, President of Happtique. Happtique can help with development of apps, or for those hospitals and facilities that have already been creating their own, Healthcare they can then use these new, custom app stores provided by Happtique to offer apps to their patients and employees. While the intent is to be platform agnostic, initial focus has been on Android and iOS, with expansion to other mobile platforms coming in the near future. In the broad picture, there are over 23,000 mobile health apps available for iOS and Android, but for doctors and hospital administrators, there really hasn’t been an easy way to recommend and effectively categorize apps. Happtique’s team of healthcare pros curates their app store, rating and categorizing apps in a way that’s akin to a medical library, rather than the traditional consumer-focused store. So the solution was created to both organize the mobile healthcare app library, and to make that a customizable platform so that hospitals, doctors offices, etc can each have a unified solution across their devices. While doctors may want to use some of the awesome consumer-facing health apps publicly available today, each hospital has its own legacy system and infrastructure it uses internally to push and circulate records, patient data, treatment information, and so on. They want to have all this information on their devices, as they move around the hospital, but they want that info to be private and secure within a hospital’s already existing data silos. Again, this is tough to do, especially for a platform trying to be a one-sized-fits-all solution with white label customization, but that’s where Happtique is going. And boy are we glad they are going there. These represent some big, big problems facing the healthcare industry, and as Happtique rolls out the ability for doctors and hospitals to prescribe apps to patients, let post-transplant patients, say, interact with an app that walks them through post-treatment rehab on their iPad — well, you can see the value. Happtique is currently in the process of raising a round of venture investment. For more, . http://youtu.be/mEhHb88-M78 |
Verizon And RedBox Planning Major Partnership For Early 2012 Launch | Devin Coldewey | 2,011 | 12 | 7 | Yesterday, it was that Verizon was planning a Netflix competitor and in talks with various content producers to provide the streams and downloads. TechCrunch has obtained additional information on this story that makes the concept a bit more realistic and should alleviate some of the concerns noted by critics and consumers yesterday. Our source says that Verizon is in fact planning a major partnership with , whose fast-growing business of $1 ( ) DVD-rental kiosks has made it a major player in the content distribution game. They aim to debut a TV and movie streaming and download service this coming May. The service is called Project Zoetrope internally, and will be a subscription, streaming, and downloading service for TV and movies that will be available on a broad variety of platforms: they plan support for iOS, Android, Google TV, Xbox, Roku and other streaming boxes, and browsers. “Set-top boxes,” by which they mean more traditional digital cable boxes, are not supported; this is an internet service, not a broadcast service. It will stream in SD or HD to all of these devices, and local storage of video will be enabled for mobile devices and tablets. It is still in talks with content providers and will be following their lead on blackouts and release timing; this won’t be a quick-release channel for new movies or live TV, for instance. Launch is planned for May 28th, with a beta starting in late April. Pricing is expected to be monthly and credit-based, e.g. $5.95 per month for 6 credits, which could be used to rent X movies or Y shows. There will be several tiers and some will include physical disc rentals, and of course there will be ways to purchase more shows if necessary. For those who were skeptical of yesterday’s rumors, this should come as some kind of reassurance. Verizon has little to no branding in the on-demand movies and TV world, while RedBox is immediately recognizable and synonymous with simplicity and value. Redbox, however, has little in the way of TV shows, so Verizon is probably doing much of the heavy lifting on that side, and of course on the delivery infrastructure front. |
Instagram not just a photos and filters app insists Systrom at Le Web | Mike Butcher | 2,011 | 12 | 7 |
Interviewed on stage at Le Web by our very own , Kevin Systrom, CEO , said the photo app is hitting a new watermark in adoption “every day”. Now on 14 million users , the app is now generating “60 photos per second” and “We’re only at the tip of where we want to be,” said Systrom. As a former member of the Odeo podcasting team which went on to “pivot” into a little thing called Twitter, Systrom also counselled the audience into thinking not about great products, but “great teams”. “In the last 2 months we’ve doubled staff, and will be about 10 people in a month. Even though Odeo didn’t go anywhere, it was clear that Twitter cam about because we learned ‘Team’ was so important.” He also recalled how another failed project Bourbon failed not because they had a moment of revelation that it wasn’t going to work, but that they didn’t have that moment. “There wasn’t a dark moment with Bourbon. It’s the lack of that dark moment that kills most startups.” Tsotsis pointed out that photo apps and filters existed before Instagram, so how did they get big? Instagram just made it easier to produce beautiful photos, as well as share, said Systrom. But what if Apple of Facebook did an app with filters? Instagram is not about filters, said Systrom. “The defensible asset is the community, nowhere else would you find such passionate users.” In addition, they have Android and a web site to launch, so lots of growth left, he pointed out. “It gives us the potential to grow into a very meaningful company.” Will they put ads into the stream? “The focus right now is growing the network. History shows you need to build out the network or no advertisers will care. Burberry, Audi, these brands are sharing pictures of their products, and that shows what will come with brands and the advertising experience in Instagram will be extremely engaging,” he said. |
Publishing To Facebook Subscribers Shouldn’t Make Us Spam Our Friends | Josh Constine | 2,011 | 12 | 7 | I have one major gripe with Facebook’s Subscribe feature: I have to publish to all my friends to reach my Subscribers. In September, Facebook launched Subscribe, its Twitter-esque option that lets people receive the public updates of other users without being their friends. But I don’t publish my articles to my Subscribers who want to read them because I don’t want to spam my friends who aren’t interested in tech news. This same issue is impacting a lot of journalists, public figures, and other content producers, and I believe it’s preventing wider adoption of the Subscribe feature. I did a feedback session with Facebook about Subscribe soon after it launched, and the company is well aware of the problem. I commend Facebook’s Subscribe team for building an otherwise useful and ambitious product, and for critically thinking about how to solve the issue without opening new spam opportunities. However, today Facebook announced that are on the way, and I think it needs a to decide on a fix first. My suggestion? Facebook should allow users to publish to a “Subscribers” friend list that would cause an update to be public, but not appear in the news feeds of friends (as shown in my fake mockup above). Here’s why: Below are the 3 core categories of content people publish, and who they should be published to: 1. Personal content only fit for friends (“Friends Only” or a smaller Friend List) 2. General interest content that appeals to both friends and Subscribers (“Public”) 3. Specific interest content that appeals to Subscribers, but not necessarily all friends (“Subscribers” and a Friend List of those interested in that topic) Most public figures that permit Subscribers typically publish publicly about a relatively specific topic that isn’t necessarily of interest to their friends. Journalists about their beat, politicians about politics, technologists about technology. Even celebrities might want to share what they ate for breakfast with their subscribers, but not their friends. Unfortunately, . Instead Facebook functions too similarly to a broadcast channel like Twitter. That’s likely because it’s concerned that if it added a “Subscribers” publishing distribution option, it would allow spammers to relentlessly publish to their Subscribers without having to worry about losing friends. I argue that spammers don’t care if they lose friends and right now are just spamming both. Also, I believe the audience should be free to sort this out — if they’re being spammed, by a friend or someone they’re subscribed to, they should be trusted to dump that person. There are two ways Facebook could implement a separation between friends and Subscribers: A. Let the publisher decide exactly who receives a specific update B. Let the audience decide what type of updates they receive from each friend or person they subscribe to I don’t think B will work. Users would have to classify each of their friends as someone they do or don’t receive public updates from — a chore most wouldn’t undertake. Even then, just because an update is public doesn’t mean it’s necessarily content #3. It could be a general interest update that their friend might find interesting but isn’t something that needs to be kept private. The only person who knows who an update should go to is the publisher. That’s why Facebook should permit publishers to choose “Subscribers” in the same way they could previously check boxes to distribute an update to multiple specific friend lists. Other journalists like . (If changing the privacy selector back to check boxes from the single selection allowed today isn’t possible, simply offering a “Subscribers Only” option would suffice.) If “Subscribers” was selected, an update would be public, but only be delivered to the news feeds of their Subscribers. However, publishers could also select additional Friend Lists who would receive that update in their news feeds, or compose a separate update for that Friend List. For example, I could build a Friend List of friends who also happened to be very interested in technology news. Then when I wanted to publish an article I wrote, I could select the “Subscribers” list and the “Tech News Friends” list (or publish to both separately). The update would be publicly visible on my profile, but I wouldn’t have spammed the news feeds of my non-tech news friends with it. If this solution was implemented, I’d publish a lot more content to my Subscribers. It would allow Facebook to overtake Twitter as the best place to follow public figures. Most importantly, it would improve the user experience by allowing us to share what we want with who we want, without spamming anyone else. |
Fly Or Die: Flipboard For The iPhone | Erick Schonfeld | 2,011 | 12 | 7 | Last night, released its long-awaited . The app is a companion to its popular iPad reader which renders feeds and realtime streams into a magazine-like experience. The iPhone app is already so popular that it earlier today. In this episode of , John Biggs and I take the iPhone app through the paces. (You can watch our episode on the from last January). The iPhone app is gorgeous, as you would expect from Flipboard. Biggs thinks it’s more busy than beautiful. It’s certainly not the most efficient way to go through your information streams, but that is not the point. It strips down the iPad app and presents it on the smaller screen. You flip through your stories, headlines, and Tweets instead of horizontally and there is a promising new feature called Cover Stories that attempts to pull together the best stories from all your feeds. Cover Stories, I confirmed after the taping, is based on the relevance-matching technology Flipboard in 2010. (Ellerdale’s founder, , is now Flipboard’s CTO). It is based on reader interactions with stories in Flipboard—these would include likes, retweets, and stories from sources you tend to read—and there may be some manual curation involved as well. This is one of the first steps Flipboard is taking to try to filter the stream. If Flipboard’s iPhone-only Cover Stories can bring you the best stories, photos, videos, and tweets in your social streams, it will become as addictive as the iPad app. But if you don’t like big pictures adorning your tweets, like John and maybe two other people, maybe this app isn’t for you. |
Onlive Now Beaming Console Games From The Cloud To iOS/Android Devices (Hands-on Video) | Matt Burns | 2,011 | 12 | 7 | The claims are magnificent: “The latest, top-tier, high-performance games…on over 500 million mobile devices.” The results are slightly less than spectacular, but still impressive enough to completely shake up the mobile gaming scene. For the first time, you can play real games (as in titles previously only available on full-fledged gaming consoles) on a relatively low power device such as a tablet or smartphone. Thanks to Onlive’s just-launched mobile app, DiRT 3, Assasin’s Creed Revelations, L.A. Noire and many more titles are now playable on most recent Android devices including the Kindle Fire, iPad and soon, the iPhone. Onlive is by nature gaming done different. Instead of relying on local media, games are streamed thanks to today’s generous bandwidth. Available starting today, Onlive is no longer restricted to a TV or computer. The entire system and its ever-growing library of games (currently around 200 titles) are now playable on a select number of mobile devices. I found that it’s true console gaming on the go. Like the traditional Onlive service, it’s not perfect but still pretty neat. Current Onlive gamers should feel right at home. It’s the exact user interface used on the company’s original MicroConsole. All the games playable on the traditional system are also playable through the mobile app. Graphics are dependent on the available bandwidth. I was told that anything above 2-3 Mbps will result in HD graphics (more like HD-ish) but the games are playable even when the throughput is as low as 1 Mbps. WiFi is of course preferred over 3G but Onlive’s relatively low requirements should allow for gaming while on a cell network. The company was careful to note in the press release that the system is also compatible with 4G networks as well. At launch, 25 games including Defense Grid and LA Noire will be playable with just the device’s touchscreen. Those two particular games were optimized for Onlive’s tablet app and include new controls including pinch to zoom. Others yet like DiRT 3, Lego Batman and Darksiders are playable with just a virtual gamepad overlay. All of the games, however, work with the new $49.99 Wireless Controller that’s also compatible with PCs, Macs and Onlive-enabled HDTVs and Blu-ray players through USB. The app itself is free, but users will still need to pay for Onlive games which are available per title or through Onlive’s PlayPack Bundle. It seems most top-tier Android devices are officially supported — but as with most Android apps, other (unsupported) devices will probably get in on the fun as well (see official list below). The app currently works for the iPad with support for the iPhone coming later. As always with Onlive, games are played in the cloud therefore allowing players to pick up where they left off on a different device. Since the app doesn’t cost anything additional, there’s really no reason for Onlive gamers to avoid it since they can now resume games on their phone or tablet. It should be available in both the Android Marketplace and Apple App Store as soon as today. As demonstrated in the video, the Onlive app is a functional but often disappointing affair. The graphics can be choppy and blocky. Games are completely playable, but I always encountered at least some lag even when on a reliable WiFi connection. Games that rely on twitch controls like a FPS shooter are out of sync just enough to frustrate seasoned gamers. Other titles (such as the LEGO games, Bastion and even DiRT 3) that do not rely on precision controls seem to be a better fit for the streaming system. At launch this extension of Onlive should be considered more of a proof of concept than a legitimate gaming experience. Still, it’s an incredible feeling to play a real game like Batman Arkham City on a tablet or smartphone, especially with the Onlive wireless controller. Forget smashing green pigs during bathroom breaks, you have Arkham City to save. · Acer Iconia Tab A500 · ASUS Eee Pad Transformer · HTC Flyer · HTC Jetstream · Motorola Xoom · Samsung Galaxy Tab · Sony Tablet S · Toshiba Thrive
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Transistor Tech Startup Takes On Intel With Powerful New Chip Creation Technique | Devin Coldewey | 2,011 | 12 | 7 | One of the true giants in the tech industry is Intel. Despite the ascendance of their rival, ARM, in the mobile sector, Intel is unmatched in processor and molecular-level computing R&D. They are years ahead of others in the business and likely will be for some time. But that doesn’t mean that an occasional upstart can’t stand up to them in a small but significant way. , a new company based in Los Gatos and only in the public eye for six months, has created an alternative to a certain Intel chip-making technique that could improve the system-on-a-chip production and significantly decrease power consumption. Their partner, Fujitsu, has just in a super-low-voltage SRAM chip, showing that the technique is very far from vaporware. It’s always extraordinary when a small company (SuVolta has around 50 employees) can take on a multi-billion dollar one, even more so when the larger company maintains its dominance by its immense spending on research staff and facilities. But SuVolta is lucky in the respect that their invention does not require such a high level of investment. Or not lucky, rather, but very shrewd. Their tech, in brief, is a new technique for producing transistors called Deeply Depleted Channel, and it’s a different material stacking method that allows for an even lower voltage to be used to reliably power the gate. In Fujistu’s demonstration, a small SRAM cell that would normally take 1V to power successfully ran with just 0.425V. Power savings of over 50% on such a low level are hugely significant. Furthermore, and perhaps most importantly, the DDC method of producing transistors is compatible with existing chip-creation infrastructures and designs. This means that SoC manufacturers won’t have to spend billions refitting their factories to create bigger dies or accommodate smaller transistor sizes; after all, reliably producing structures 25 nanometers across is no easy matter, and the machinery necessary to do it is incredibly expensive. By allowing for this huge improvement in power consumption rates but minimizing the cost of deployment, SuVolta is saving companies billions and nullifying to some extent some of the billions spent by Intel. DDC only goes so far, but it’s an extremely valuable and powerful asset for a young and small company like SuVolta to have. They’ve branded it Powershrink, but there’s no indication of when products built on the technique will hit the market. |
Quick PSA: MacBook Air For $699? Don’t Fall For it | Devin Coldewey | 2,011 | 12 | 7 | Apple has just reduced the price of the lowest tier of refurbished MacBook Air to — I’ve just seen it pop up on a couple news sites. One would think that the option of getting for such a low price what was a year ago an object of envy would make it a no-brainer. But it is the old version of the famously flat laptop, and although it may seem superfluous to point this out, I feel I should warn our readers that to take advantage of this deal is to buy yourself some grief. This version of the MacBook Air debuted in October 2010, and it has a Core2 Duo processor that has roots going back to 2008 and before. It was outdated when it first showed up, and it’s a dog now. For $700 you should be getting a modern computer, and these MBAs ain’t one of those. Only the most recent update makes the laptop worth using for “serious” computing like managing big photo libraries or editing video. If you want to browse the web and watch movies, $700 will buy you a giant screen, modern processor, 4 gigs of RAM, and maybe even a Blu-ray drive. And if you have your mind set on a MacBook Air (and I don’t blame you, I’m using a new one now and they’re solid), avoid the old ones at all costs! The new ones will be all over the place used and for sale prices around the holidays, so don’t fall for fire-sale prices on junk inventory that would have been overpriced a year ago. |
At Le Web, Crowley hints at Foursquare's future in recommendations for everything | Mike Butcher | 2,011 | 12 | 7 | At Co-Founder and CEO Dennis Crowley expanded on the future direction for the company and product, signalling how check-in data is becoming less important than the recommendations it is capable of producing for users. Interviewed on stage by blogger Robert Scoble, Crowley went in to the Explore feature of the product and how the sheer number of check-ins are adding to the recommendations Explore can give and feeding back into the other new feature, Radar. It’s this ability for to “technology to generate serendipity” that is at the core of what Foursquare is about he said. And although “a lot of developers see the headline stuff like check-ins” plenty were “deciding our API is the best for location,” said Crowley, because of the social context behind the location data. “With a keyword and a user-ID you can target services more accurately,” he added. Crowley also signalled that Foursquare would start to “push back”on getting more data out of third party app in return for the location data they are giving out. That could well signal a change in the relationship with developers. One example of this is the Save to Foursquare button recently launched which could be used to ‘check in’ to an article about Munich in the New York Times, and have Foursquare buzz you when you check in to Munich airport as you land. “This idea of bridging the online world with the real world is the big idea here.” He also said new users were using other people’s check-ins and not necessarily checking in themselves, which is changing the behaviour on the platform. Foursquare now has data on over one billions check-ins. “Successful services change user behaviour. Tweeting about going to the gym just wasn’t something people thought about doing a few years ago. Likewise, we’re now seeing users check in just to get the recommendations and not sharing it.” Crowley also said growing the company was a challenge, but it wasn’t about numbers but about “getting the ratio right” between product people, engineers and others. The profitability question also does;t come up much internally, so much as monetisiation. The future for Foursquare will also involved machine learning and big data as the startup Explore and Radar start to produce large amounts of data. “We’re making the app start to recommend the things you should be doing. We’re getting pretty good at it. This time next year, it should be pretty good.” ( by ) |
CompactFlash Announces XQD Medium For High-Performance Cameras | Devin Coldewey | 2,011 | 12 | 7 | In most consumer cameras, an SD card is used for image storage. But it wasn’t so long ago that CompactFlash (CF) cards were the standard for anything better than a point-and-shoot. Many cameras still use the format, despite the higher capacity and lower price of SD, but such models have grown fewer and further between as CF’s lead on speed has narrowed. The CompactFlash Association isn’t going to take it lying down, though: they’ve just produced a new format, called XQD, with a new form factor and interface. It’s thicker than SD but has a smaller footprint than CF, which to me sounds perfect: I’m always afraid SDs are going to snap or be crushed, and CF feels bulky and cheap. The association calls the cards “durable and robust,” though I doubt they’re waterproof or anything like that. XQD uses the PCI Express interface, and the target for real-world write speeds is 125MB/s. The theoretical maximum is 5Gb/s, or around 600MB/s, but that’s not likely to ever be hit. Still, 125MB/s is more than enough for high-speed, high-resolution RAW photography and HD video. The cards should be shown off at CP+ in Yokohama this coming February. No partnerships or cameras were announced, and if anything were forthcoming before February (at CES, for instance), we would have seen a debut then. But it’s an attractive technology and pro shooters may appreciate the reduced write times and improved build quality, so adoption by a few of the majors seems likely. |
Verizon Confirms Widespread 4G Outage, Still Scrambling For A Fix | Chris Velazco | 2,011 | 12 | 7 | Just in time to throw a wrench into people’s wireless shopping plans, Verizon has announced that their much-vaunted 4G LTE network is experiencing a few hiccups. And by hiccups, I mean that their 4G network is currently undergoing a widespread outage that’s affecting customers across the country. According to a recent release, “Verizon Wireless engineers have been working to resolve an issue with 4G LTE service that is affecting some customers’ 4G devices,” and that “3G data and voice devices are unaffected.” However, that doesn’t exactly seem to be the case for everyone affected: reports are floating around on blogs and that some people are without so much as a 3G or 1X connection. Stranger still, some customers are completely fine with everything working as it should. Verizon’s 4G flakiness seemed to begin last night when some 4G devices (like the Droid RAZR in particular) began to exhibit . Those issues apparently continue to plague Verizon certain customers today, and one of my retail sources tells me that some new Verizon 4G devices can’t be activated because of the network outage, which is the last thing Verizon needs going into holiday crunch time. At present, Verizon has no comment on when to expect service to be restored, but we’ll keep you posted as the situation develops. |
Video History Bill Passes House, Struggling Netflix Could Finally Stream On Facebook In US | Eric Eldon | 2,011 | 12 | 7 | Netflix is building an app for Facebook that would let its users see what movies or shows their friends are watching, then click to watch them without having to leave Facebook. But when the two companies announced the app in September, Netflix chief executive Reed Hastings said it because of a law from the 1980s that prohibited video rental history sharing. In an age where people purposefully share their activities with friends, that law has become absurd. Thankfully, the House understands this. A revised bill, which passed the House yesterday, would let providers share video history information after first receiving the user’s consent. Now it just needs to pass the Senate. This could mean Netflix, which has been losing users right and left after , would get access to the 155 million or so Facebook users in the US. Facebook is already driving significant traffic to YouTube and other online video sites, suggesting the app could ultimately result in higher usage and new (or renewed) Netflix subscriptions from Facebook users. The original was passed in 1988 by an angry Congress after a Supreme Court nominee, Robert Bork, had his video rental record . The actual rentals weren’t especially interesting — it was more a jab at Bork’s belief that citizens only had privacy rights provided to them directly by legislation. But Congress’s reaction was to make it illegal for video providers to share what their users watch. A couple cases have since been brought against Blockbuster and Netflix based on the bill, that presumably scared Netflix off from launching the Facebook app. Some more on what the revised bill will allow, from sponsor Bob Goodlatte (R-Virginia). The Goodlatte legislation, H.R. 2471, updates the VPPA to allow video tape service providers to facilitate the sharing on social media networks of the movies watched or recommended by users. Specifically, it is narrowly crafted to preserve the VPPA’s protections for consumers’ privacy while modernizing the law to empower consumers to do more with their video consumption preferences, including sharing names of new or favorite TV shows or movies on social media in a simple way. However, it protects the consumer’s control over his information by requiring consumer consent before any of this can occur. And, it makes clear that a consumer can opt-in to the ongoing sharing of his or her favorite movies or TV shows without having to provide consent each and every time a movie is rented. It also makes clear that written, affirmative consent can be provided through the Internet and can be withdrawn at any time. [Image via .] |
US Virtual Goods Market To Hit $2.9 Billion In 2012, With Facebook Games Maturing, Mobile Booming | Eric Eldon | 2,011 | 12 | 7 | The business of selling virtual goods in games has been around for a decade, but it only came into its own in this country when developers started building social games on Facebook’s developer platform in 2007. Since then, it has been one of the fastest-growing types of businesses online. But it may be maturing, according to a new report out today — at least on Facebook. In the meantime, mobile virtual goods are taking off. The overall market for virtual goods in the US is headed towards $2.9 billion for 2012, according to the report. That’s up from $2.2 billion this year, and $1.6 billion in 2010. Virtual goods on Facebook are continuing to comprise more than half of that, going from $835 million in 2010 to $1.2 billion this year to $1.6 billion next year. The gains each year are around $400 million, which means growth is going from 50% down to around 35%. While the report doesn’t break out company-specific numbers publicly, Zynga’s pre-IPO filings indicate it made last quarter. Assuming that number stays around the same, look for Zynga to continue to its historical dominance with about 75% of the Facebook virtual goods market. Speaking of Facebook, you can also use this data to estimate its virtual goods revenue going forward, because it began taking a 30% cut of all virtual goods sales on its platform beginning this past July. When the company’s filings come out at some point next year, expect to see it registering somewhere towards $500 million in revenue from its developers. Overall, social developers have gotten savvier about how to make money from virtual goods, even as traffic to many games has flattened or fallen. In particular, a significant portion of revenue is now coming from games that target hardcore gamers. Typified by early successes like Kabam’s , these games don’t have that many users relative to hits like Zynga’s , but they make a lot more money per user. But because these games are attracting players who might otherwise buy virtual goods in web-based or downloadable MMOs, it’s unclear if this growth means more money coming into virtual goods overall. Mobile has also been coming into its own in the last 18 months, report co-author Charles Hudson tells me. The report estimates that mobile virtual goods (for games only, not including other digital media like iTunes songs) made $350 million this year, and will grow to $500 million next year. The key factors haven’t just been the introduction of in-app purchases and the proliferation of devices for iOS and Android. Many social game developers have shifted more resources to building for mobile. One reason is that Facebook’s viral channels aren’t as viral any more, so developers needing to spend more on advertising to get growth and retention. Another is that mobile platforms don’t have a single overbearing competitor like Zynga. But mobile has its own limitations. Facebook provides a single venue for developers to build, grow and monetize their games, while the dueling mobile platforms have weaker social features and additional development costs; iOS also has the 30% tax on virtual goods sales, same as Facebook. The report is based on quantitative analysis of publicly available traffic data, as well as dozens of interviews with developers and service providers. The authors have been deep in the social gaming industry since its early days. I know because I’ve worked with them. One, Justin Smith, was my cofounder at Inside Network, which he built up after leading Facebook app product development at Watercooler (now Kabam). The other is Hudson, a serial entrepreneur who sold Serious Business to Zynga in 2010. He’s now an investor with SoftTech VC as well as cofounder of Android game developer Bionic Panda. |
Forget An IPO For Now, LivingSocial Raises Another $176 Million. Total Could Reach $400 Million. | Erick Schonfeld | 2,011 | 12 | 7 | In a sign that it may be pushing off an IPO after Groupon’s lackluster performance, rival LivingSocial has raised $176 million in a new round of funding, according to a new . Reports of the new funding first surfaced in the a few weeks ago. reports that the new round values the company at $6 billion. While the SEC document does not name the investors, we’ve been able to independently confirm the round was led by JP Morgan, with existing investors Lightspeed Ventures and also participating. We’ve also heard that no existing shareholders or executives took money off the table (*cough* Groupon *cough*) According to the SEC filing, Code Advisors (Quincy Smith’s boutique firm) and JP Morgan were both advisors and received $5.3 million in “finders fees.” Who needs IPO fees when there is plenty of private capital to go around? (Did JP Morgan just pay themselves? Funny how that works). This funding brings the total capital LivingSocial has raised to . Groupon shares are trading at about $21, which is down from their , but back up from the lows of last week when they hit $15. The IPO window is still open, but seems like it could crash shut at any moment. This fundraising will allow LivingSocial to keep expanding organically and through acquisitions without tapping the public markets. And this may be but the first tranche of a larger $400 million funding, which is the total offering amount (meaning LivingSocial can raise up to that amount in future tranches as part of this round). |
Design-Focused Flash Sales Site Fab.com Raises $40M From Andreessen Horowitz, Ashton Kutcher | Leena Rao | 2,011 | 12 | 7 | Design focused flash sales site Fab.com has raised $40 million in series B funding led by Andreessen Horowitz with existing investors Menlo Ventures, First Round Capital, Baroda Ventures, SoftTech VC, and Ashton Kutcher’s A-Grade Investments participating. We originally ago that Fab was in the process of raising a major round of funding. As part of the announcement, Andreessen Horowitz General Partner Jeff Jordan will join Fab’s board of directors. The Wall Street Journal reports that the company was valued at . This brings Fab’s total funding to Fab.com, which was founded by Jason Goldberg, offers daily sales of categories ranging from home products to jewelry to artwork at up to 70% off retail. The startup has drawn over a 1 million users in just a matter of months. That’s impressive growth for a startup that centered around online flash sales of design items from scratch in June. Fab is now averaging $1.4 million in sales a week and saw 100,000 orders in November. The startup is operating profitable and expects to bring in $20 million in revenue in 2011. In October, Fab mobile apps for iOS and Android, and made a including Former Etsy VP Beth Ferreira As COO Fab will use the new funding for further growth and expansion. |
Twilio raises $17 million Series C funding to boost ambitious Europe expansion | vaughn597 | 2,011 | 12 | 7 | really is on a roll this year. The cloud communications platform today announced it has raised a $17 million Series C round of funding from and . The funding will mainly be used to boost the company’s expansion plans. To sum it up, Twilio allows web developers to quickly integrate phone calls, IP voice communications and text messages into web, mobile and phone applications. When opening their London office , Twilio announced their ambitious plans to expand to 20 other European countries within the following months. Since then they have launched in France in beta and grown their customer base by 400% to about 75,000 developers. The majority of the Twilio team is based in their San Francisco headquarters. Head of Corporate Communications Danielle Morrill told me the next post-funding step would be the formal opening of a Twilio office in New York, from where the team will work closely with the London office to realise their European expansion plans. If they go through with it, we can expect Twilio to come to Poland, Portugal, Austria, Denmark, Italy, Romania, Greece, Belgium, Czech Republic, Hungary, Sweden, Switzerland, Bulgaria, Slovakia and Finland next. Quite the list, indeed. |
Facebook For Android Gets An Overhaul, Now Looks Just As Good As Its iPhone App | Jason Kincaid | 2,011 | 12 | 7 | Back in October — after many months of speculation and rumors — Facebook launched its long-anticipated . The app was notable for two reasons: first, it was the first time the social network offered an official app for Apple’s tablet, and second, because it included an overhauled UI for Facebook’s immensely popular iPhone app as well. Improvements include persistent messages and notifications on the top of the screen, and a nav bar that’s accessible from nearly anywhere within the app (you don’t have to keep jumping back to the ‘Home’ screen to access your Messages, Events, and so on, as you used to). Now Facebook appears to have brought the to its Android application, with an update that will soon be rolling out. The update isn’t showing up for me on Android Market yet, so I haven’t been able to try it out, but based on screenshots in Facebook’s announcement it strongly resembles the iOS applications. When it does go live on Market, you’ll be able to download it . Facebook’s blog post also says that photos are up to twice as fast in the new version of the Android app. One other thing to look for: yesterday Engadget leaked screenshots of (what appears to be) this update. The Engadget photos also show a standalone Facebook ‘Nearby’ app, which Facebook’s blog post today does not mention — it’s unclear if this is a different app that hasn’t been released, or if it will be offered alongside today’s update. |
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Apple Made A Deal With The Devil (No, Worse: A Patent Troll) | Jason Kincaid | 2,011 | 12 | 9 | Over the last two years, Apple has been engaged in vicious legal battles over smartphone patents, many of which are aimed at squelching (or squeezing money out of) manufacturers of devices running Android. And now, for some reason, it has given valuable patents to a patent troll — which is using them to sue many of the top technology companies in the world. Meet Digitude Innovations, a firm based in Virginia that recently suit with the International Trade Commission alleging patent infringement by technology companies including RIM, HTC, LG, Motorola, Samsung, Sony, Amazon, and Nokia (note that Apple is not on this list). The ITC is a favorite for companies litigating over mobile phone patent disputes, as it can block the import of products long before a case has actually concluded. Digitude was founded in 2010 and raised $50 million from Altitude Capital Partners, with “acquire, aggregate, and license key technology areas within the consumer electronics and related technology fields in a patent consortium” — in other words, it buys up patents and then sues other companies until they settle and agree to pay licensing fees, because it’s generally less expensive than actually going to court. From a Forbes this past June: Digitude is a new kind of patent investment vehicle because it seeks to team up with strategic players that can invest in Digitude not with money, but by contributing patents. The contributing entity would then get a license for all of Digitude’s patents, [Digitude Chairman Robert] Kramer says. In April, Digitude the “completion of its first such strategic partnership with one of the world’s leading consumer electronics companies” — which it didn’t name. The company later that additional (unnamed) parties have jumped on board as well, who will receive a portion of Digitude’s proceeds based on the value of the IP each party contributed. Apple appears to be one of these participants, and may be the unnamed leading consumer electronics company that Digitude boasted about this past spring. Of the four patents that Digitude included in its claim this week, two were owned by Apple earlier this year, before they were transferred to Digitude. The patents in question: USPTO # — USPTO # — In both cases, Apple transferred ownership of the patent to a company called Cliff Island LLC, which in turn transferred it to Digitude Innovations. In fact, Apple has transferred patents to Cliff Island LLC this year (though only two of these were named in this ITC suit). You probably haven’t heard of Cliff Island LLC, because it appears to exist in name only. There is a next to no information about the company available online — though the patent filing does include an address: 485 Madison Avenue, Suite 2300 in New York City. I was unable to find a phone number for the company, so I attempted to pay a visit to their office, only to find that it doesn’t appear to exist. But there are other tenants on the twenty-third floor of 485 Madison. One of which is Altitude Capital, the same IP-focused private equity firm that happened to lead Digitude’s $50 million funding round. Put another way, Apple appears to have transferred its patents to the patent troll Digitude, though it first routed them through a shell company that shares the same office as Digitude’s lead investor and Chairman. Further evidence of the relationship between Apple and Digitude can be found on the ITC’s own website, where a list of files relevant to the lawsuit can be found. Many of these files are marked confidential, but it appears someone mistakenly left the file intact. One of which is “Digitude-Apple License Agreement” (see screenshot below). So what is going on? There are a pair of scenarios that seem plausible — though both of them are strange. The first is that Apple is using Digitude as a hired gun of sorts in its patent offensive, giving the company valuable patents to wield against its opponents (while avoiding the waves of press that are spurred by each new lawsuit). But Apple hasn’t exactly been quiet about suing its rivals over smartphone patents, so it’s not clear what they’d gain from this. The alternative is that Apple has given some of its patents to Digitude because the patent troll came after it first. The dozen patents Apple has handed over may have been part of a settlement with the firm, along with the license agreement (which would presumably give Apple the rights to its patents, and additional Digitude patents). This seems more likely. But even if Digitude shot first, so to speak, it’s still hard to see Apple in a positive light here. This is we’re talking about. The idea that the company didn’t have any options other than handing over valuable patents to a patent troll — knowing full well that it would then use those patents to sue other tech companies — seems ludicrous. I spoke with Julie Samuels, Staff Attorney at the Electronic Frontier Foundation who focuses on patents, who points out that in some cases certain companies will sell their patents to other parties when they’re under financial stress. But Apple clearly doesn’t fall into that bucket. If Apple were deliberately aiding Digitude, Samuels says “it would be horrifying — the patent troll problem is completely out of control. Apple has every legal right to sue over its patents, but it should be the one to do it”. And if Apple was indeed threatened first by Digitude, and only handed over its patents as part of a settlement, she says she “cannot imagine any reasonable scenario where Apple didn’t have any other options”. Both Apple and Digitude declined to comment. Also, oddly, Digitude Innovations had a website as recently as December 4, but it apparently took it down in the last few days.
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GAIN Fitness Raises $650K From Keith Rabois, YouTube & Google Angels For Personal Training 2.0 | Rip Empson | 2,011 | 12 | 9 | , a startup that creates personalized workouts based on certified trainers’ expertise, that it has raised $650K in seed funding from , Slide COO and angel investor , Former Director of Platform at Facebook and Director of Partnerships, Content and Platforms at YouTube, , , early founding YouTube team member , and others. This comes on top of GAIN’s launch of its iPhone app , which allowed fitness enthusiasts to begin accessing their personalized routines via mobile. Founded by former Googlers, GAIN is all about allowing those looking to get in shape access to quality training regimens without having to pay for expensive personal trainers or go through the process of researching workouts by creating a symbiotic marketplace for both personal trainers and fitness consumers. GAIN’s iOS and web apps currently deliver these personalized workout experiences that can be experienced on the go, but the startup (backed by its new infusion of capital), aims to launch v3.0 of its iOS in January, which will supe up the platform, allowing its professional trainers to design and sell fitness multimedia “packs” that target specific fitness goals, usage scenarios — like at the gym, on the road, or at home, as well as different fitness levels. This update will be a big lunge forward for GAIN as a GAIN, as it will give users of all stripes, body types, fitness levels — in any scenario — the opportunity to design personalized workout routines, or maintain their plans, from any location, regardless of schedule. Those with demanding jobs, schedules, and full travel schedules are all too aware of the cost these things can have on staying in shape. The key for success for a young startup (aside from funding, etc.) is listening to feedback from your users, even if taking their feedback to heart means “pivoting” or adapting your service to meet their needs. In the case of GAIN, Founder and CEO Nick Gammell said that, initially, the teams’ focus was solely on the Web. From the beginning, they’ve wanted to become an “anytime, anywhere” fitness resource, but the Web continues to be the venue of choice for more complex schedule, discovery, and social tools. But the startup’s 600K+ users wanted to be able to access their fitness routines on the go, and so GAIN, which had building an iOS app on the side, launched a paid app. But users weren’t happy about the pay grade, so they relaunched the app for free. Since then, he says, users have been using GAIN’s workout building and tracking tools 4 to 5 times more, per user, compared to its web app. Now, Gammell said, the service is at a place where 40 percent of sessions are happening via mobile device, a bulk of which has come since the free app launched in October. In case you needed another example of how free beats the paywall, it seems GAIN is it. GAIN also happens to look great, which is easy when you have the original designer of Google-acquired Picasa and NASA app developers on your team. With more than 700-plus exercises (strength, plyometric, callisthenic, yoga), as well as custom-tailored workouts, the startup is attempting to democratize the fitness experience, and so far it seems to be working. It will have to considering the plethora of gamified fitness startups out there, like Fitocracy, or any number of other cool startups, like Fitango, CrossFit, Fitbit, RunKeeper, WellnessFX — not to mention wellness devices. It’s wonderful to see, because we, as a country need to stay in better shape. The startup plans to announce its trainer partners, along with its new iOS marketplace in January 2012, and Gammell says that an Android app is on its way. |
Sean Parker: "There's something wrong with our music distribution system" | vaughn597 | 2,011 | 12 | 9 | What’s the music industry’s biggest problem? Big questions for today, interviewed by TechCrunch’s Alexia Tsotsis onstage at . His appearance attracted the biggest crowd of all sessions at the three day conference. As usual, he was asked where the social web was going and approached by a member of the audience . But mostly he talked about music. Since Napster shut down in 2001, Parker invested in Spotify as a way of “redemption” and to pursue his passion for music, he says. “Napster hired all the wrong people because I was too young and naïve to distinguish between confident executives and someone who just had more experience than me and had the eloquence to impress me.” It “motivates [Sparker] internally to want to fix the industry of music so that great art is finding an audience”. So what is wrong with the industry? In Parker’s view, the overall size of the record industry has decreased to the point where it is too difficult to make money as a record label. “The record business has collapsed over the last 10 years and went from a $45 billion to a $12 billion worldwide industry. That’s the biggest problem.” In this environment, labels shy away from taking risks and turn down potentially great artists for those whose sound seems familiar enough to guarantee success. Spotify could become what the terrestrial radio was 60 years ago: a music discovery system, enabling listeners to check out new bands for free before purchasing their work. Soon came the inevitable question about the . What made Parker assume that we all want to share every single song we listen to with our friends? Well, they “wanted to force the product to go social”. “I’m not sure everyone will want recommendations from their friends, but if I listen to a track Spotify should tell me if any of my friends have listened to it too.” This “consumption pattern” of music discovery had not existed before the Facebook – Spotify partnership, he claimed. |
Back To Its Roots, Facebook Tests .edu-Exclusive Groups | Josh Constine | 2,011 | 12 | 9 | Long ago, signing up for Facebook required a university email address and many users shared openly with everyone in their school’s network. In an effort to revive the feeling of safe sharing within an exclusive community, Facebook has begun testing a new “Groups At [University]” feature. It allows users to create Groups that are only visible to those with an authenticated .edu email address for their school. Users are encouraged to create Groups for their dorms, classes, clubs, parties and more. Groups at Universities and its restricted visibility is likely designed to get students sharing and discussing a wider range of content — things they might be using private email for. Currently, there’s only Groups at Brown and Groups at Vanderbilt, but if successful Facebook might roll out the feature to more schools As Facebook opened its service to the public and adults eventually started joining, students may have begun sharing less content related to their academic lives. A status update about a study session or frat party may have reached a more relevant audience in 2006. By 2011, though, too many family members or employers might have seen it without careful privacy control usage, leading students to self-censor or discuss these topics via email. Facebook wants people sharing everything on its site, and Groups at University could help it reclaim a core use case. Students that have registered with Facebook their .edu email address of a school in the test bed will see be alerted to the feature. Once they’ve authenticated their email address, they’ll be able to create Groups with the same open, closed, or secret settings as the Facebook launched last year, but no one outside their school will be able to see them. Within their Groups at [University] home page they can invite schoolmates to the feature, and view suggestions of Groups to join and a feed of recent open Group activity. Brown and Vanderbilt were chosen because they use different email addresses for students vs alumni. Only those with current student addresses can gain access, which keeps sketchy recent grads from crashing the party. Facebook is grappling with the impact of its own ubiquity. Its enormous 800 million user count might make each user more reluctant to share niche content. Features like Groups at Universities could help Facebook fend off student-only social networks and vying to own targeted sharing. |
Tablet Zero | Devin Coldewey | 2,011 | 12 | 9 | The global slapfight between Apple and Samsung shows no sign of abating – a victory here, an injunction there, a ruling here, a reversal there – like Aesop’s goats, neither will give way and chances are they’re both going to end up the worse for it, though not likely at the bottom of a ravine. It doesn’t mean that the conflict doesn’t furnish some interesting topics for discussion, however. Just recently, Apple submitted written testimony by an expert who shares their perspective on Samsung’s design decisions, and very kindly helped to compile a list of things Samsung might have done to differentiate its product. For example, Samsung could have opted not to make their tablet rectangular, or done away with the front bezel, or given it a “cluttered appearance.” Excellent suggestions! Not surprisingly, there has been some discussion of Apple’s rather ridiculous list of design elements it claims as its own. It’s a good time to examine the creative decisions around the iPad from a different direction. It seems to me that Apple laid a trap for the entire consumer electronics industry, and they fell for it hard. And it’s really a triumph of positioning and branding. They essentially branded the tablet’s Platonic form. What set me thinking about this was about creating a tablet “from scratch.” It’s good, but unfortunately doesn’t achieve the end its author intended, which is to rebut Apple’s accusations. The article certainly shows that, working from first principles like the limits of vision and grip and so on, and make only the absolutely necessary additions given the limitations of technology at the moment, you end up with something that’s a lot like an iPad. The author suggests that this exonerates Samsung. But alas, it does the opposite: it merely glorifies Apple. No, it’s not fair. But it is . Why? It’s interesting to think about objects that can actually be reduced to ideal forms. It’s difficult for a chair, for instance. Does the ideal chair have armrests or not? Does it have a square back or a rounded one? Flat, sculpted, or cushioned seat? You simply can’t settle it. Yet if this Platonic chair existed, and someone made it, they would be able to point at every other chair in the world and say “look how they’ve ripped me off.” Yet that’s what Apple has done with the iPad. I certainly don’t mean that the iPad is the be-all and end-all of tablets — there’s a difference between ideal in and ideal in . The first means it conforms to a fundamental concept of the object, the second means it’s the best it can possibly be. The iPad is ideal in the first sense: it’s no more advanced in its design than a ball or a cube. It’s a , not a design. Which is not to say that is isn’t well-done or that they didn’t put a huge amount of work into it. A true ideal tablet would be nothing but a magic window into content. Apple made a device as close as possible to this magic window and paired it, somewhat hurriedly and crudely, with a powerful and popular platform they already controlled. Its initial success owes itself largely to the momentum of the iPhone. But once they put it out there and sold more than a dozen of them, their triumph was complete. See, by making the design completely generic, and don’t kid yourself, that’s what they intended and got, they ensured that no one could look at another tablet without thinking of theirs. You can look at a Asus Transformer without thinking of a Xoom, or a Nook without thinking of a Galaxy Tab, but you can’t look at any of those without thinking of the iPad. But not just because they’ve sold more units. Because you can’t make a Xoom without making an iPad first, just like you can’t make a die without making a cube first. This was Apple’s stroke of evil genius. I say evil because while it’s admirable, among the highest art in fact, to create objects as close to their type as possible, it’s another thing to claim parentage over everything further out from the source. Consider the Bic. Now, I don’t mean to say that this pen is exactly analogous the iPad or Apple’s position. But consider it for a second anyway. This little device is the pen defined – essentially it’s the bare minimum for a pen, designed well and simply for human hands to grip and write with. It has no extraneous elements yet is still functional and easily recognizable as an individual branded object. It’s durable, cheap, and reliable – qualities which emerge from its archetypical design. And while it does fit so closely with our ideas of what a pen should be (roughly cylindrical, of a certain length and width, with a writing tip and perhaps a cap that fits on and doubles as a clip), no would say it’s the best or only pen in the world, or that other pens, which share 90% of the Bic’s most important characteristics, are copies or descendants. This Bic pen enjoys widespread popularity and huge sales, has for ages. It sells because it’s a type. The iPad sells for more complicated reasons, but its is about as original as the Bic’s. Functional, yes; beautiful, yes; but original? How can something so clearly designed to be the opposite of original be considered so? The iPad was made a dozen times before it was made, just like the Bic. It will enjoy long-lasting popularity and be an iconic product for a long time, like the Bic. And like the Bic, it has no claim to its shape. Its shape, like the pen, the chair, the cup, was determined by necessity, and Apple made sure that apart from a few very small features, its shape was determined by necessity. That’s not an easy thing to do, and the result (like all good design) speaks for itself. Apple is reaping the rewards, but they must acknowledge that they don’t own the shape which larger forces than themselves imprinted on their work. Apple’s allegations regarding UI poaching are more realistic. For a touch-based interface, we don’t yet have a type, a Platonic form, as evidenced by all the experimentation and evolution we see every month in apps, OSes, concepts, and so on. Imitation is obvious when the slate (so to speak) is so substantially blank. And I am not oblivious that there are certain little design flourishes that set the iPad apart from a totally undesigned device. These were intentionally kept subtle and few in number. It’s these that other companies should feel ashamed of being caught copying. What can companies like Samsung and HTC do when every tablet they build has the same foundation as Apple’s? They can make real design decisions. If they inherit the design (with minor alterations) from a competitor, and someone else makes the OS, what exactly are they contributing? The placement of the power button? That’s not to say they can’t make a perfectly nice tablet, but if they want to be held apart as a truly different device, they need to take a risk. Apple was first on the field and very pointedly took no risks in design — the risk they took was in offering the device at all. Why not take Apple up on its suggestions? No bezel, not thin, non-rectangular shape? Accept the challenge and make Apple eat their words. It’s what they would probably do if the situations were reversed. It’s all impossible until someone does it. It’s a period of imitation whether you’re ally or enemy to Apple, because they built the mother of all tablets, or as close as they could manage, and everyone else’s devices look like its children whether they are or not. It will take time for the family tree to grow and differentiate. Apple is in the enviable position of being able to claim they invented the wheel (and patented it), and will take everyone to task for their circles until someone makes something truly new. |
It Begins: Coby Preparing Five Ice Cream Sandwich Tablets For CES | Chris Velazco | 2,011 | 12 | 9 | are already coming out of the woodwork, and it looks like at least a few of them will be ready for CES 2012. The folks over at Coby Electronics have just revealed five, count ’em Android 4.0 tablets that will soon be making their Las Vegas debut. As you can probably imagine, Galaxy Tabs these things ain’t. What Coby has done here is take the same set of internals (a 1GHz Cortex A8 processor, 1GB of RAM, HDMI out, and a microSD card reader) and attached them to five different displays. To their credit, Coby’s selection really runs the gamut: we’re looking 7-inch, 8-inch, 9-inch, 9.7-inch, and 10-inch variants. And hey, if you’re looking to mix things up a bit, the 8 and 9.7-inch models sport 4:3 aspect ratio screens. Are these going to be the best Ice Cream Sandwich tablets at CES? Probably not — the Las Vegas Convention Center is pretty huge, after all — but they may be the ones to turn to when your wallet’s feeling a little light. Coby promises some “incredible prices” for these things, and the company aims to push them out the door before Q1 2012 is over. |
Apple’s Jam-Packed Grand Central Store (Video) | Erick Schonfeld | 2,011 | 12 | 9 | Apple finally opened up its biggest store yet in today. Since I was passing through, I decided to take a quick walkthrough with my iPhone. The results are the two videos and other images below. The store covers two balconies which wrap around a corner of Grand Central, with different products laid down on tables and taking up space in grottos towards the back of the balconies. There are a couple interior rooms you can go through as well, and you see the terminal’s huge chandeliers hanging out the window. It was jam-packed on opening day, filled mostly with gawkers. But I have a feeling this will become one of Apple’s highest-grossing stores just because of how many people go through Grand Central every day. You can get a feeling for the space by watching my jerky-cam videos below.
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Tagged Acquires Topicmarks To Improve Friend Suggestions With Natural Language Processing | Josh Constine | 2,011 | 12 | 9 | Tagged’s mission is to help strangers meet each other online, so it has to offer friend suggestions of people you’ll like and who’ll like you back. That’s why it , a natural language processing and machine learning company. will allow Tagged to analyze the profiles of its 100 million registered users and match them with others with similar interests and vocabulary. Topicmarks’ technology, CEO, CTO, and 3 senior engineers will join Tagged in exchange for cash and stock. Its existing service will remain active for the foreseeable future. Tagged’s CEO Greg Tseng tells me the acquisition price was “somewhere in the middle” between covering Topicmarks’ $150K in seed funding and significantly impacting his online gaming and meeting network’s bottom line. Apparently it wasn’t just a graceful, low-payout exit for Topicmarks as many suspect was. has been profitable for four consecutive years thanks to its 10 to 20 million monthly active users. It grew from 50 to 150 employees this year, including 17 from acquisitions of Topicmarks, , and . One Topicmarks employee won’t be joining the Tagged. scans text and returns short content summaries. It process news article links, RSS readers, desktop files, cloud storage services like Dropbox and Box.net, and more. Now its technology will be applied to reading the profiles, messagees, comments, and statuses of Tagged users. It will look for what topics users talk about, their punctuation and emoticon usage, and whether they write in a more urban or rural fashion. It will then produce “bi-directional recommendations” of users who will both be interested in each other. Internally, Tagged has been calling this a “Pandora for people”. Though really it’s more complicated. As Tseng explains, “When Pandora recommends music, the music doesn’t need to like you back.” More accurate friend suggestions could increase engagement, time on site, and interconnections between users that make Tagged sticky. They could also help Tagged fend off competitors such as 3-D avatar-based which won TechCrunch Disrupt 2011, and and $100 million a year in revenue. |
Justice Department Wants To Postpone AT&T/T-Mobile Antitrust Case | Chris Velazco | 2,011 | 12 | 9 | When AT&T and T-Mobile decided to regroup and withdraw their merger application a few weeks back, I’m not sure they expected it to backfire the way it just has. According to the , the Department of Justice is looking to postpone (or possibly withdraw) its antitrust case because the was summarily yanked off the FCC’s table. So what does that mean for the deal? Nothing good. Ever since the U.S. Department of Justice , AT&T and T-Mobile have vocally maintained that a speedy trial would have to be the way to go — any legal foot-dragging would supposedly lessen the value of the merger. Judge Ellen Huvelle decided months ago that the antitrust trial would begin in February 2012, which neither party had qualms with, but the new request could mean that AT&T and T-Mobile will be locked up in these legal proceedings for even longer than they had hoped. It’s also worth mentioning that Judge Huvelle isn’t terribly thrilled with AT&T and T-Mobile’s application withdrawal. She’s now reconsidering the speed of the trial, and is also frustrated by the possibility that the two companies could work up a new deal for the FCC’s approval. Let’s hope that isn’t what’s going on, since it would have made the last few months a huge waste of time. The longer this whole process takes, the greater the chance that something else goes wrong. And let’s not forget the small (but non-zero) chance that T-Mobile’s parent company Deutsche Telekom could pull the kill-switch and bail out entirely if the merger’s prospects look grim enough. AT&T is also preparing for the worst: they’ve set aside just in case they need to fulfill their compensatory obligations if the deal falls apart. If the request is approved, the two companies have a choice to make — press on in hopes that the FCC is a this time around, or call it quits and go home. It’s a tough call, but we’ll just have to see what AT&T and T-Mobile come up with. |
Indonesian Government Threatens BlackBerry Services Over “Security Reasons” | Devin Coldewey | 2,011 | 12 | 9 | Indonesia’s telecoms regulatory agency, the BTRI, has that they may have to shut down RIM’s BlackBerry Messenger and Internet services after the company declined to establish BBM servers within the country. RIM opted to put its servers in neighboring Singapore, for reasons not described in the article. BTRI says it must do this because “the data exchanged is not safe.” Anyone can see through this transparent excuse for bullying RIM — they’re not the first to try it. and recently made similar threats, though they were more forthcoming about their reasons. They wanted the power to monitor the transmissions, and chances are Indonesia does too. The trouble is simply that the BBM data is all handled in Canada in RIM’s datacenters, and without a local node on Indonesian, Saudi Arabian, Indian, or other soil, those governments have almost no authority over the information. Naturally it’s in a government’s interest to be able to monitor its citizens, though of course the citizens (including private companies with international dealings) would prefer privacy, and RIM’s duty is to its customers. That isn’t to say it hasn’t caved before. It has provided some private information to governments when they have requested it, though they maintain they have no way of monitoring or prying into private messages. Indeed, a server in Indonesia would only place encrypted data in the government’s possession, and they would still have to obtain the key from the account’s owner by normal means. It’s one more problem for RIM , and an increasingly popular one globally. Whether Indonesia will actually sabotage its own populace, among which (as it points out itself in its complaint to RIM) there are far more BlackBerry users than in Singapore and other nearby countries, is not clear. This kind of petty brinksmanship tends to drag on publicly and yield to compromises. But situations like this are becoming common as global communication becomes more and more relevant to national security and economic well-being. Sooner or later there will have to be some kind of international accord, or every country in the world is going to make similar demands. |
Is December 15 Verizon’s New Galaxy Nexus Launch Date? | Jordan Crook | 2,011 | 12 | 9 | The Galaxy Nexus, while something we’ve been super excited about, is turning out to be a real pain. Why? Because we can’t seem to figure out when the bleep this thing is supposed to launch. We heard it was supposed to be around today, and then we heard it wasn’t, and then we heard so many different dates it started to get stupid. Now, however, is claiming to have found the needle in this incredibly annoying haystack. Apparently a “dozen” different sources have said that Verizon is finally letting its employees in on the launch date: December 15. Now, Verizon does enjoy a nice Thursday launch, if we’re to learn anything from history. Still, this is the Galaxy Nexus we’re talking about, so you can never really be sure about when you’ll see it until we get some sort of official word. Even then, things are looking . |
After YC And Square, Paul McKellar Becomes Founder In Residence At SV Angel | Eric Eldon | 2,011 | 12 | 9 | As the new founder in residence at SV Angel, is part of the next layer of web and mobile entrepreneurs in Silicon Valley. People who have come here and been through a couple startups over the last several years – in his case, his own company, then Square — and are now moving into financial and advising roles. That is, at least before they go found more companies. I talked with McKellar by phone yesterday to hear a little more about what he’ll be doing in his new job. Backed by Ron Conway and headed up by David Lee, SV Angel is one of the more connected and prolific angel investors. It has had one other founder in residence that I know of, BookFresh and FreshGuide founder Ryan Donahue. McKellar has been in the middle of the action here for the last several years, having been on the founding team of Square since 2009, where he worked on the API and web interface for the payments service provider. He arrived here via Y Combinator in early 2007, developing an anonymous conversations site called Socialmoth that he’d created while a research engineer at Georgia Tech. He turned the site into a Facebook app when the social network launched its platform that May, which he eventually sold. In my interview with him, below, he discusses the early days of Square, how entrepreneurs should think about approaching investors, and what he’ll be doing with SV Angel. Paul McKellar: I had been working on credit cards online around the same time Jack [Dorsey] was starting Square, or as it was called at that point Squirrel. We had met already because I’d been in the Twitter offices when it was eight people in South Park. We met for coffee, I saw and raved about the product, and within 15 minutes he offered me a job. I actually said no because I enjoy doing my own thing, but changed my mind about two weeks later which turned out to be a good decision. Paul McKellar: It was an unusually fast-growing company. We grew from 25 to 75 in 2010, and managed to do a surprising number of things right early on. The Square interface on the iPhone, for example, had the same alignment of form, and same organization since the very beginning. The way the price is displayed, the credit card sale, the description — it all encourages the right order for convenient transactions, and it hasn’t really changed from the beginning. I remember Jack and Robert Anderson agonizing for this detail for hours in Jack’s apartment. It took a lot of work to get it right and because of that, it hasn’t changed. Paul McKellar: I’d been meeting the team over the years at tech events, and had always gotten along with them. Kevin had reached out when they started doing the founder-in-residence program. Paul McKellar: It’s basically like an entrepreneur-in-residence. Go to the Monday meetings, listen to conversations about which companies are under consideration. Being there will help me get more of a perspective on bigger trends, and meet people who are working on other things outside of the entrepreneurs and developers I know. The team is also small and informal, and focused on very early-stage deals, which are all things I can appreciate. I’ve been looking a lot at mobile. I’d say mobile-social but that tends to make people think of Instagram or GroupMe and I’m more interested in social utilities. Paul McKellar: iPhone. Paul McKellar: All apps should be launched on both. It’s a false dichotomy. Android devices are going to be ubiquitous. You might not have an Android phone, but you might have an Android fridge or an Android stereo or an Android TV. Apple is never going to let iOS be installed in a car, that is never going to happen. But Android will. You are going to see Android everywhere. Paul McKellar: I’m looking to start a company with a friend or someone who I know I work with really well. Because of that, it is unlikely that I will join any company I notice because of SVAngel. Paul McKellar: Make the decision to invest in your company very very easy. Make it easy for someone to understand what your company is, who your market is, why you’re the people to solve the problem. Good investors look at a lot of different deals and have to make fast decisions with little information. The easier you make it, the more competitive you are. |
Watch Out Zynga, Japanese Gaming Company GREE Is Aggressively Hiring In Silicon Valley | Leena Rao | 2,011 | 12 | 9 | It’s no secret that Japanese mobile social gaming company GREE is aggressively pursuing the U.S. markets, especially with the of mobile gaming platform OpenFeint earlier this year. Now with sights set on establishing a large engineering and development presence in Silicon Valley, the company has added a new billboard on I-80 northbound to advertise for job openings in the company’s California office. This is the third billboard GREE has put up to attract talent (the others are positioned on highway 101). Of course the Japanese company faces stiff competition from talent from Zynga, EA, CrowdStar, and the many other gaming companies in the U.S. But GREE is hoping that game developers and designers will flock to the company (perhaps some of those that are discontent in the area) to work on its mobile social gaming network for the global market. GREE, which is on track to generate in annual revenues, says it plans to double its U.S. headcount with 100 new hires over the course of 2012. Check out my colleague Erick Schonfeld’s interview with GREE founder and CEO Yoshikazu Tanaka |
HP’s Whitman: We’ll Make WebOS-Powered Tablets In 2013 | Leena Rao | 2,011 | 12 | 9 | Hewlett Packard CEO Meg Whitman finally announced the fate of operating system WebOS this morning, after the company previously announced that it was of all smartphones and tablets running Palm’s webOS platform. The actual software’s fate was HP today that it will be We sat down with Whitman and HP board member Marc Andreessen to speak about this news and what it means for the company. “We are so excited about webOS and realized that the very best thing to do is to open source the technology, contribute to it and invest in it,” she explains to TechCrunch. “We will harness the power of the community to make this a better alternative to to other operating systems.” HP said today that developers, partners, HP engineers and other hardware manufacturers can deliver ongoing enhancements and new versions of WebOS into the marketplace. HP also will contribute ENYO, the application framework for WebOS, to the community in the near future along with a plan for the remaining components of the user space. You can see Whitman’s full memo to HP employees So what about tablets and WebOS? Andreessen says that because of the open source model, we’ll have a future with webOS-powered tablets and says HP will be one of those companies that will develop webOS tablets. Whitman says this may not happen in 2012, but will probably take place in 2013. She alluded to this a few weeks ago but it is certainly interesting that HP is going to be developing future hardware products on the WebOS operating system. HP wanted to clarify that Whitman said HP could make WebOS-powered tablets in 2013. While we know that HP is of WebOS in phones, it’s interesting that the company is continuing to bet on the OS in tablets. In 2012, Whitman is planning for a Windows 8 tablet. “We’ll continue to invest in the existing tablet ecosystem” and in the near term “will bet heavily with Windows.” As my colleague Matt Burns HP is looking better under Whitman’s leadership after having a rough patch. After , Whitman to keep the Personal Systems Group within HP. The company in the fourth quarter. With respect to whether HP can be a consumer and an enterprise company, Whitman believes that the company can continue to do both and says that the company’s current strength is that it is able to be successful in both product areas. “If you ask any guy on the street about what HP is known for, it would be computers,” she says. |
Adzerk Launches AdOS, An App Store For Ad Tech | Sarah Perez | 2,011 | 12 | 9 | , the ad-serving technology startup which this July, is launching its next phase, called . The new platform is intended as an evolution of its current product, and is offering improved ad-serving code plus a marketplace where publishers can find third-party apps to install. Yep – it’s an app store for ad tech. For publishers under 100 million impressions per month, Adzerk’s ad-serving technology is free, which is one way Adzerk aims to attract new interest. Currently, , , and are using Adzerk, as are a number of ad networks. In many cases, however, Adzerk’s technology is being white-labeled, so the company can’t disclose the names of those users. Adzerk started out as an internal, proprietary technology used in two niche ad networks run by founder – The Lounge and Ruby Row. Avery then spun out Adzerk to sell his software. With , ad-serving technology is a part of the platform, but the big deal here is the new marketplace. When it launches publicly (it’s in private beta now), AdOS will feature around 100 “apps,” which includes things like targeting tools, other ad networks, features AdZerk itself offers (like the ability to manage an ad network), custom creatives and more. By February or March, the company plans to release an SDK which will allow developers to create new custom creatives and sell them in the AdOS store. For example, Avery tells us of a creative in development that pulls in live Twitter data within the ad. The core idea with AdOS is to solve the challenge for publishers where there are too many ad serving tools available for use, leading to confusion. AdOS, and its “app store” concept will help publishers find the tools they want, while also knowing that all those on the AdOS platform will work together. Want to use Google AdSense? You just click the little green “install” button and fill in the form. Want to install an ad network you’ve never used? You click the green “apply” button to sign up. It’s a one-stop shop. AdOS is today launching into private beta, and will allow select publishers early access to the new platform for testing purposes. The public platform launch is planned for early next year. Adzerk arrived this spring, after a beta period in 2010. As noted above, it has already $650K in seed funding, but will be looking to raise a Series A starting in Q1 2012. The plan is to use the new funding to double the size of its now nine-person team. Since its launch, Adzerk has gained “hundreds” of customers, says Avery, but the company won’t disclose the exact number. Publishers interested in AdOS can sign up . |
Keen On… Gina Rudan: How To Find Your G-Spot (TCTV) | Andrew Keen | 2,011 | 12 | 9 | Did you know that you were a genius? Yes, we are all geniuses, every one of us – at least according to the author of . As Rudan told me when she came into our San Francisco studio, she is democratizing genius so that we can all embrace our emotional intelligence and realize our talents. Real genius, what Rudan calls our “G-Spot” lies between our hearts and our minds and requires us fully leverage both our hard strategic assets and soft assets such as our creative ability, passion and values. “Don’t be humble” is Rudan’s message to those of us still searching for our genius. This message is particularly directed at Hispanic women who, she told me, display too much humility and thus aren’t able to succeed in highly competitive environments like Silicon Valley. “Some cultures are too polite,” she explained, before advising us all, particularly women, to “relentlessly” strive for “visibility”. Not everyone will, of course, like Rudan’s democratization of genius. It does away with the idea that many are called but few are chosen and suggests that we can all, if we leverage our innate assets, become Steve Jobs or Sheryl Sandberg. But is Rudan simply telling us what we want to hear? Or are we really capable of the kind of practical genius that, Rudan promises, lies in all of us. |
null | Leena Rao | 2,011 | 12 | 7 | null |
In An Internal HP Email, Meg Whitman Assures webOS’ Best Days Are Still Ahead | Matt Burns | 2,011 | 12 | 9 | HP just took to the wire and announced to the tech world that as an open source project. Shortly thereafter, Meg Whitman informed HP employees about the decision. The internal email I obtained, which is included in its entirely after the jump, gives a bit more insight than HP’s public press release including Meg’s feeling that webOS will continue to grow and this is a postive move for HP and webOS alike. Whitman’s email indicates that the HP leadership team saw webOS could be “a platform that is both open and has a single integrated stack.” By making webOS open source, HP’s short-lived OS neatly fulfills this desire. However, like the company already stated, talk of new hardware is nearly absent from the email besides stating “hardware manufacturers” (read: HP is done) will be able to continue to “contribute” webOS. The TouchPad was likely the last of the HP-branded hardware — unless of course the open source community turns webOS into a magnificent creation worthy of new hardware. From: CEO – Meg Whitman
Sent: Friday, December 09, 2011 2:03 PM
Subject: webOS to be contributed to the open source community Meg Whitman
CEO TO/ All Employees SUBJECT/ webOS to be contributed to the open source community Today, we announced that HP will contribute our webOS software to the open source community and support its development going forward. We believe that this is the best way to ensure the benefits of webOS are accessible to the largest possible ecosystem. Since we announced the discontinuation of our webOS devices last August, the executive team has been working to determine the best path forward for this highly respected software. We looked at all the options in the market today and we see a clear need for a platform that is both open and has a single integrated stack. webOS is the only platform designed from the ground up to be mobile, cloud-connected, and scalable. By providing webOS to the open source community and other hardware vendors we have the potential to fundamentally change the landscape. HP engineers, partners, other developers and hardware manufacturers will be able to contribute to the development of webOS. Together, we have an opportunity to make it the foundation of a new generation of devices, applications and services to address the rapidly evolving demands of both consumers and enterprises. I would like to thank the webOS team for continuing your efforts under very difficult circumstances during these last couple of months. Your dedication is very much appreciated. This is a very positive move for the development of our people, our software and HP overall. We strongly believe that the best days for webOS are still ahead. Best, Meg |
YouTube Acquires RightsFlow To Help Artists License Music And Make Money | Leena Rao | 2,011 | 12 | 9 | YouTube has just a startup that manages music licensing and payment services. Launched in 2007, RightsFlow helps online music services, record companies, distributors and artists license music and lyrics while also managing royalty payments for the rights-holders. The company’s proprietary licensing technology and 30-plus million song database allows RightsFlow to license content, render accounting, and pay royalties on behalf of clients. As CEO Patrick Sullivan in his announcement: YouTube says that RightsFlow has been at the “forefront of solving the complex issues of licensing and royalty payment management.” The startup’s technology will be integrated into the video platform to allow musicians to efficiently license music on YouTube. Clearly helping musicians get compensated for the use of their work make YouTube even more appealing a a platform to showcase music and talent. |
Facebook’s Mobile App Has A Big Holiday Week On iPhones, Bigger On Android | Eric Eldon | 2,011 | 12 | 31 | Millions of new iPhones and Androids during and after Christmas this year — and what have people done with their new devices? They’ve downloaded Facebook’s mobile apps, of course. I’ve been watching this trend for a few years, and the past week has been the biggest yet, based on the numbers visible in the app tracking service. grew by 4.1 million monthly active users and 1.7 million daily actives, which was beat out by its Android app, which gained 5.2 million MAU and 2.2 million DAU. Previous years have shown gains in the hundreds of thousands or lower millions. The difference between the two platforms’ download numbers follows the ongoing , even as both operating systems have surged in recent years. |
Facebook Speeds Development With “HipHop Virtual Machine”, A 60% Faster PHP Executor | Josh Constine | 2,011 | 12 | 9 | “Consider that many Facebook engineers spend their days developing PHP code in an endless edit-reload-debug cycle. The difference between 8-second and 5-second reloads due to switching from HipHop interpreter to the HipHop Virtual Machine makes a big difference to productivity.” That’s how Facebook explains the significance of its new PHP executor, HipHop Virtual Machine, . It’s 60 percent faster than the HipHop interpreter Facebook currently uses. HHVM will improve the performance of Facebook’s code and speed up the development process without forcing Facebook to switch off of PHP, which its engineers are trained in. Facebook originally to convert PHP into C++. This allows it to save CPU cycles on its web servers. However, it made it difficult to optimize code and required a HipHop interpreteter that took “a lot of effort to maintain”. So over the last year it developed HHVM to replace that interpreter. Now, “as compared to HipHop interpreter, the HHVM bytecode interpreter is approximately 1.6X faster for a set of real-world Facebook-specific benchmarks.” However, we’ve received reports that Facebook’s old HipHop interpreter was relatively slow to begin with, compared to a native PHP interpreter. For more technical details, check out the about HipHop Virtual Machine. Eventually, Facebook may run all its PHP through HHVM. First, it is working the kinks out of the HipHop translator. As HHVM is deeply integrated into the source code of , Facebook hopes “that the PHP community will find hhvm useful as it matures and engage with us to broaden its usefulness through technical discussions, bug reports, and code contributions.” : Due to an error on the part of The OutCast Agency, Facebook’s PR agency, this article originally stated incorrectly that HHVM provided a “90 percent reduction in memory cost” over Facebook’s existing HipHop interpreter. The agency sent us this incorrect information based on an early unpublished draft of Facebook’s post on HHVM that was later corrected by Facebook’s engineers. |
Watch Livestream’s Commercial-Free Broadcast Of NYE In Times Square | Rip Empson | 2,011 | 12 | 31 | At home and want to watch the classic New Years Eve celebration in Time Square commercial free? Well, . has partnered with the organizers of the Times Square New Year’s Eve Celebration to bring you just that: A six-and-a-half hour commercial free webcast of the evening’s festivities. The livecast will include a bunch of musical guest, like the Biebs, Lady Gaga, Cee Lo, the Ball Drop, a midnight celebration, etc. You can check out the . Livestream, The Times Square Alliance, and Countdown Entertainment are also offering free widgets of varying sizes for bloggers, webmasters, and digital media outlets, . Enjoy. And Happy New Years from TechCrunch. Here’s to a healthy and happy 2012. Be safe, and don’t have too much fun. Excerpt image |
Nearly 20 Million People Read Google’s Blog In 2011; @Google Now Has 4 Million Twitter Followers | Leena Rao | 2,011 | 12 | 31 | In terms of regularly posting news, Google has been one of the more frequent bloggers out of most of the major technology giants, often forgoing releasing press releases in favor of posting on the company’s blog. And Google’s blog is probably one of the most visited company blogs in general. So it’s interesting to see data on how many visitors Google’s blog sees and which posts drew the most traffic. In fact, looking back on 2011, Google has been more prolific on its blog than any previous year. The search giant a number of stats today on how many posts were published via the company blog, number of visits, most popular posts, and most popular posts on Google+. In 2011, Google published 471 posts, which is 17 more than 2010. The company’s main blog saw 19,905,679 unique visitors between January 1 and December 31, 2011. The post that saw the most traffic was one that recognized the with 1,731,280 unique pageviews. And this post was linked to from Google’s search portal, which helped draw increased traffic. The next most popular post was the piece announcing in June (909,537 unique pageviews); followed by (538,764 unique pageviews) and Google’s acquisition of Motorola Mobility in August. (431,366 unique pageviews). Other highly trafficked and read posts including the new homepage and Gmail design (352,254 unique pageviews); an announcement of bringing games to Google+ (265,995 unique pageviews); the disintegration of Google Labs (310,912 unique pageviews); 2-step verification for Google accounts (281,385 unique pageviews); the debut of Google+ pages for brands and businesses; (237,467 unique pageviews); the change in Google’s ranking algorithm to improve search result quality (258,974 unique pageviews); Larry Page’s takeover as CEO; patents and Android, and the debut of Google Wallet. Google also reveals that it is now operating 22 pages for Google products and teams on Google+; and nearly 100,000 users have the company’s main page +Google, in their circles. The company’s most popular posts on Google+ include photos of Google’s LA office, the year-end Zeitgeist, Google Photography Prize and Sebastian Thrun on self-driving cars. In contrast, on Twitter, now has 4 million followers, with the most popular Tweets in 2011 including those on patents and Android, the Motorola acquisition, Larry and Sergey remembering Steve Jobs, Google Wallet, Google+ and Wael Ghonim. |
Want To Know How (Not) To Pitch Your Startup? Look No Further. | Rip Empson | 2,011 | 12 | 31 | In order to get startups and entrepreneurs thinking about the most effective ways to pitch their businesses, of Founder Institute has been encouraging his founders to boil their mission statements down to one sentence, . of Charles River Ventures asked Ressi to come up with a format for startup pitches, because he has been hearing so many different people pitching in umpteen different ways. Tech bloggers, investors, partners, founders, and many in between are intimately familiar with this: The seemingly infinite permutations entrepreneurs have devised for their pitches. Some work, and many don’t. , and he even encouraged entrepreneurs to send us their one sentence pitches. And that they have. (More to come on that.) Now, I happen to agree with both Adeo and Robin: Whittling pitches down to a bite-sized chunks can be a great exercise for founders. Entrepreneurs, whether first-timers or not, can always stand to improve the ways in which they describe their company. Time is money, and the more quickly and effectively you can pitch your business, the better your chances of grabbing the attention of investors, bloggers, partners, etc. Of course, one sentence pitches should be an exercise to get you articulating what your business really does well — better than everyone else — but not the end game. One sentence descriptions can result in vagueness, hyperbole, and buzzword orgies. Encouraging more effective expression in mission statements is a good thing, but spewing forth a string of meaningless signifiers and buzzwords? Nope. That will just cause us to go on screensaver, or call security. There’s a fine line. Grooveshark for hugs? Stop it. So, here we have the flip side of the coin, the devil’s advocate — some terrific examples of what can happen when the one-sentence pitch goes too far. Stay away from these, and you’re off on the right foot. For starters, there’s , developed by to assist founders in eliminating the “low hanging fruit” during the ideating process. Does your pitch sound eerily similar? Then it might be time to consider a pivot. Now That’s What I Call Startups joins other startup generators, like , which highlights the annoyingly familiar habit (of which we’re all guilty) of drawing crappy ad hoc analogies when describing startups. It’s the problem. The analogy can work, but only sparingly, and it better be extremely accurate. For good measure, there’s also , and Smore’s awesome Y Combinator parody, , which generates landing pages for startups that are obviously immune from the deadpool. Or, perhaps you’re a coder who happens to be short on ideas, in which case you should check out hilarious created using the . So, put on a pot of tea, and get coding. Refining your pitch until it sings is an essential process, and some of these sites will no doubt help to get your juices flowing. But for the love of all that’s holy, be careful. You don’t want to . (We’re looking at you, product people.) Courtesy of FI, here are some actual . |
Making Jony Ive a Knight sends UK Gov signal: 2012 is the year of tech | Mike Butcher | 2,011 | 12 | 31 | Honours and medals from Queens and Kings may be an alien concept in Silicon Valley, but they are a delightfully steam-punk tradition, still continued in a Britain which long ago said goodbye to its Empire, yet still has Knights and ‘Commander’ orders to hand out. Thus, Apple’s chief designer, Jonathan Ive, has been knighted in the Queen’s New Year’s honours list, principally for his work in industrial design and championing British talent abroad. Ive was already made a Commander of the British Empire (CBE) in 2006. Being a Knight means he is now Sir Jonathan Ive – a moniker which should, at the very least, bump him to the front of the average restaurant queue when he’s in London. The British Consul General in San Francisco, Priya Guha, said that Mr Ive “epitomises the strengths of British design and innovation”. In response Ive said: “I am keenly aware that I benefit from a wonderful tradition in the UK of designing and making. To be recognized with this honour is absolutely thrilling and I am both humbled and sincerely grateful.” The former north-east Londoner is known as the mastermind behind Apple’s hardware, from the iPod the iPhone to the Macbook Air. A graduate of design at Newcastle Polytechnic he moved to California to join Apple in 1992 and led Apple’s design team since 1996. He holds 596 design and utility patents, more than Steve Jobs did, who reached 317. But New Year’s honours are often political in nature. The Queen is not the one who draws up the initial list but the “Nominations of the Honours and Appointments Secretariat” – basically a mix on Number 10 and Buckingham Palace officials. The list is then heavily gone over, mainly by Number 10, the office of the Prime Minister. New Year’s Honours are frequently used to make political points. Steve Jobs was once rumoured to be in line for a knighthood under Prime Minister Gordon Brown, but the story goes that he was refused because he wouldn’t turn up to make a speech in the UK. This sounds like Steve Jobs. But it’s clear that 2011 was a year which the UK government trumpeted the rise of tech startups and entrepreneurs in its official “ ” policy and its economic stance, particular it’s recent Autumn economic statement which is poised to kick-start the Angel investment market in the UK. So what better signal to send than to laud one of the architects of Apple’s success as a global tech powerhouse? It’s worth noting that Tom Harvey, who is an investor who has funded early stage tech in England’s North East has been made a CBE (Commander of the British Empire). |
Gillmor Gang 12.31.11 (TCTV) | Steve Gillmor | 2,011 | 12 | 31 | The Gillmor Gang — John Borthwick, Robert Scoble, John Taschek, Kevin Marks, and Steve Gillmor — wound up the Old Year and previewed the next one. In fact, we are already well into Social Spring, what with SOPA, Go Daddy, the media scramble, Louis C.K. and the $5 download, Spotify and the independents, Apple AlmostTV, Microsoft irrelevancy, and the end of email. We’ve had fun, and while we’re at it, please consider helping my daughter’s Creative Arts Charter School in San Francisco recover from a . Thanks to everyone who showed up this year, and especially those who didn’t. @stevegillmor, @borthwick, @scobleizer, @jtaschek, @kevinmarks
Produced and directed by Tina Chase Gillmor @tinagillmor |
My Last Death Threat In 2011 | James Altucher | 2,011 | 12 | 31 | I got this email the other day:
It was signed and he was referring to a recent TV appearance I made where I was bullish on the economy in 2012. I don’t know a kosoverh@bellsouth.net so it was effectively anonymous. This is why the Internet is great. I am particularly ugly when you see me on TV. Everyone is very beautiful on TV. They always try to put makeup on me or make me brush my hair or tuck my shirt in. Ugh. Are you my mommy? I also had particularly big headsets on. Like Keith Partridge in the Partridge Family. “I Think I Love You”. You know the song. So its perfectly reasonable that an anonymous person from Washington DC (I tracked his IP address) would send me that note. He just saw an ugly person on TV. Kill him! It’s a natural survival instinct for the species. And now, with the Internet, he can act on this natural genetic instinct and send an anonymous email message. I’m in favor of that. I tried to think what else could upset him. Well a lot of people get upset that I’m very bullish for 2012. A lot of people want America, capitalism, the Internet, Facebook, the economy, all of our established insitutions, to go down in flames. I don’t know why they want this. They think it will be fun. Like we’ll party like it’s 1999. That sort of thing. And I’m very bullish. You can stop reading here if this makes you irrationally angry for some reason. ….. ….. I’m giving you one more chance to go to a different page. If you go to the top of this page and search on “AJAX” you will find many fun stories. …. Housing prices still stink. , in my opinion. Prices are down 2.8% from a year ago. But there’s very good news. Inventories are at the lowest levels since 1963. And at current demand, months of inventory on the market are at six months, the lowest since 2006. In fact, home sales have been up considerably the past few months. Guess what happens in any market when supply goes down and demand goes up: prices go up. This is for three reasons. All the companies fired people two years ago. Demand is coming back (see below), and the Internet is actually allowing companies to do things for free that they used to use expensive people for. What happens when corporate profits are at an all time high? Non-banks in the S&P 500 have two trillion cash in the bank, the highest levels ever. This cash is sitting around doing nothing. Do you know what happens when cash is sitting around doing nothing? Since 1990 you know who the biggest buyers of stocks are? It’s not mutual funds or retail investors. It’s other companies by a factor of 4:1. Through buybacks and mergers. Announced buybacks for 2012 has hit over $1.1 trillion, the first time this number has breached a trillion. Oh, and guess what, the number of shares outstanding has now gone down for three years in a row, for the first time since 1990. You know what happens in any market when demand goes up (the stock buyback announcements) and supply goes down? See above. How can this be? Isn’t unemployment still at 8.6%. Yes. But: A) unemployment is 1.2% lower than it was a year ago. And B) many of the unemployed were in lower paying jobs. I’m just the messenger here but it’s the truth. Personal incomes are actually UP 4% over the past year. Not only that but temp jobs are up and the average hourly work week is up. Which means full time employment is going to continue to grow, as it has been all year. But, you can ask: isn’t this the same problem we had before? People spend, spend, spend, and then owe, owe, owe? No. (consumer spending at an all time high) Mortgages, rents, car loans/leases and other debt services added together divided by income after taxes is the lowest since 1993. I know this blog might have European readers. In fact, we might even have readers from Greece. Hello out there! But do you really think a beach resort in the Mediterranean is going to have an effect on the US economy? Greece’s economy to the Eurozone is equivalent to Rhode Island to the US economy. I live 40 minutes from Rhode Island and I don’t think I’ve ever even set foot in that state. Well, what about Italy and, god forbid, France! Voulez Vouz Coucher!? The top 8 US banks were 260% exposed (through leverage it goes higher than 100%) to South America in 1981. All of South America . Nobody in Europe has defaulted. We had to do massive bailouts combined with down on our knees old-fashioned prayer and still we had a 20 year stock market boom. Meanwhile, the top 5 US banks (mergers) are 8% exposed to Europe and there’s been So why are we so worried? I bring this up on TV and the response is always: you might be right, James, but what about “investor psychology” of these events. No problem! TURN OFF THE TV. These are not the droids you are looking for. Recession news gets a lot more press (and money) than good news. We have this biological instinct to protect the places where we pee regularly. So if there’s going to be news that’s going to upset these sacred peeing grounds then that news drives ratings. I make it a habit to avoid news. Except anything supported by AOL of course. The Federal Reserve printed up $1.6 trillion in cash for “ . Guess what. Bank reserves increased by $1.6 trilion in cash. They haven’t spent the money. They will. It typically takes 6-18 months for quantitative easing to have an effect on the economy. Nobody tells you that in the news. Guess when the last dollar of QE2 was printed? Six months ago. The only issue with all this is that the accelerator is going to hit . The S&P 500 trades for just 13 times 2011 earnings versus the historical average of 15 times. Given that earnings will probably continue to improve, the market could move back to the historical average. If you throw in that interest rates are at the lowest levels since 1960 (important since you compare the relative safety of investments by looking at interest rates), the market is at its lowest level since 1960. Going back to historical averages when you take into account interest rates could cause the Dow to more than double (Source: Brian Wesbury at First Trust Portfolios.) If rates go up, as expected, we can still see a 40-50% quick move up from here. AAPL is at less than 10 times next year’s earnings compared to a historical average of around 20. Should AAPL, which grew it’s earnings 100% this past year, be valued like an electric utility company? I can give more examples (CSCO, MSFT, INTC, all growing, all equally cheap) but AAPL is good enough. (See, “ “) . Two years ago I never even heard of an iPad. I had nothing stored in the cloud. I had a dumb phone instead of a smart phone. Fracking was a pipe dream and is going to shortly make the US the largest producer of energy in the world, beating the Middle East. Biotech and genetic diagnostics continue to make astounding improvements. Facebook has 800 million users. The fastest growing company in history (in revenues), Groupon, started in just 2008. And the more ideas we have, the more ideas mate with each other and create new generations of ideas. Those grow and provide jobs, and lead to venture capital, and IPOs, etc. Remember 2000 when everyone said, “man, I wish I knew a boom was coming in 1996.” Well, here we are again. By the way, in the title I mentioned this was the last death threat I got in 2011. Here is the first death threat I got: “ You have to love the Internet. I love how I can make friends like Taylor Northcutt (the author of the above) without having to meet face to face. What was his problem? He didn’t like my post: “ ”? We all have opinions. We all want to argue. My main goal for 2012: reduce the things I get anxious about, increase the things I feel contentment about. And guess what – you might hate me for that. Even want to kill me! I hope not, though, because 2012 can also be great for you if you take advantage of the opportunities. There’s a few hours left in 2011 Good riddance! Time to Occupy 2012. |
Late-Stage Web Companies Took In The Largest Tech Investments Of 2011 | Eric Eldon | 2,011 | 12 | 31 | One of the defining trends of modern web companies is that the top ones have been choosing to raise giant, private late-stage funding rounds instead of going public. In 2011, some of these rounds got so big that they passed the other types of companies that typically raise the biggest fundings each year — manufacturing and infrastructure technology companies that need to heavily invest in real-world goods to scale their businesses. Look at the ten companies that raised the most money this year in . Facebook is at the top of the list this year with its $1.5 billion round in January led by Goldman Sachs and Digital Sky Technologies. Groupon is close behind, with a $950 million round led by DST, with Morgan Stanley and a long line of venture and private equity firms in the mix. The rest of the list is dominated by web companies, too — Zynga, Twitter and LivingSocial are next. In the previous four years, most of the ten largest investments have been in cleantech, biotech, electronics, networking and other industries of the less virtual sort. In 2011, the only two companies squarely in hardware-oriented businesses are wireless networking company LightsSquared and white-label healthcare device manufacturer Kaz. While it’s true that big web companies have been putting hundreds of millions of dollars into physical goods like data centers and servers, they’ve also been using large portions of these fundings for something that to buy shares back from early investors and employees. Up until recently, the main way stockholders made money was by selling their stakes on the public market. The other side of this trend is that public investors aren’t able to get their money into companies when they’re still at peak growth phases. The private equity and venture firms getting into the later stage deals are instead the ones benefiting from the differences in valuations (that is, unless the late-stage valuations are so high that they exceed the eventual public offering prices, and leave the investors underwater). So, why are web companies waiting to go public? One main rationale is that they don’t want to be subject to the quarter-by-quarter profit growth demands of public investors. Instead, they want to focus on building long-term businesses free of outside interference. They may also not like the often-ugly IPO markets — for good reason, judging by the mixed public performances of Groupon and Zynga. Or the increasingly heavy regulatory costs. Anyway… the late-stage web funding trend is still playing out. Facebook is widely expected to go public early next year, and Twitter and LivingSocial likely will too, later on at some point. Meanwhile, a new crop of web-oriented companies are also at , including AirBnB, Dropbox, Spotify and Gilt Groupe. Each of these is in an earlier stage of life than the companies in the top ten, and may be raising big amounts now for other reasons, like easy terms offered by lots of eager investors. Earlier-stage companies appear to be some of the few bright spots in a world that is offering mostly poor investor returns. |
Freight Train Kept A-Rollin’ | Jon Evans | 2,011 | 12 | 31 | 2011 was the year of Android. A little over a year ago Andy Rubin that 300,000 Android devices were being activated each day. In January we that Android had surpassed iOS in terms of US smartphone market share. In June Android’s activations-per-day 500,000; this month they 700,000. That’s the rate at which it was spreading when it overtook iOS. By comparison, UBS in December that Apple would sell 30 million iPhones in 4Q 2011. Sounds like a lot, until you realize that Android devices — almost all of which are phones, as Rubin’s numbers Kindle Fires or Nooks — are being activated at a rate of , or 65 million in a quarter. In other words, Android phone sales were probably close to Apple’s during the quarter in which Apple’s flagship iPhone 4S was released. I expect Apple at Christmas, given that they boasted this year’s , but Android will make up that difference in a few short weeks. How did this happen? Certainly not because Android is better. Almost no one disputes that Apple’s user experience is superior. Thanks to Android’s , the Android version that developers write apps for – 2.2, which was released in – is distinctly inferior to iOS 5. The iPhone 4S is a fantastic high-end phone, the 4 a terrific mid-level one, and the 3GS still a respectable player in the free-with-contract market. So why has everyone gone Android? Partly because America is not the world. The iPhone 4S was a huge hit in the USA and the UK, but in the rest of Europe. It’s probably not a coincidence that prepaid (ie no-contract) mobile service is more popular in Europe than America (though that may be ) and more popular, verging on ubiquitous, in the developing world. Right now Android pretty much owns the entire prepaid smartphone market. But it’s not just the low end of the market, and it’s not just the availability of many different handsets. Samsung alone has sold , including mine. I went Android because I disapprove of Apple’s hegemonic, hermetically-sealed approach to technology, even though I think the iPhone 4S is a somewhat better phone, but that’s just me. It seems that many many millions of people genuinely prefer Android’s anarchic, fragmented, and often clumsy UX and ecosystem to Apple’s seamless sleekness. That may seem strange to some, but it has become inarguable. And it’s just the beginning. I said , “Android explode … in the developing world.” Now that’s finally happening. When I was in Kenya earlier this year a new US$100 Huawei Android had just become for . Android has in Brazil — an economy that’s now Place your bets, ladies and gents: how long before Android activations hit a every single day? All of which is great news for Google. They may or may not make a pile of money off Android. What’s more important to them is that it’s an increasingly impassable . Bill Gurley of Benchmark Capital presciently called Android a nine months ago. How right he was. Can Apple ? Can anyone? I doubt it, unless it somehow derails, and I just can’t see that happening. It has too much momentum on its side. Trans-Siberian freight train, by . |
Keeping Up With The Normals | Alexia Tsotsis | 2,011 | 12 | 31 | The holidays for most people who read this site involve answering a cornucopia of tech support questions for their relatives. Honestly, I’ve watched friends field the most frustrating 45 minute IT department-level questions during holiday time with the family, which inevitably devolves into more of those types of conversations in between, “Pass the gravy.” These conversations will only increase in frequency as the average consumer wakes up to smartphones and the app economy. According to , nearly a quarter of a billion app downloads this year occurred on December 24th and again this Christmas Day, more than 2x any other day thus far, ever. If you’re building an app or another kind of tech service you better pay attention, as increasingly many of your users will be what investor and others Or what I like to call, dumb people. JUST KIDDING. So who are these “Normals”? Well the Normals are a group of people who don’t check into Foursquare, use Square or upload photos to Instagram, until they . The Normals are more likely to know what Pinterest is than Quora. The Normals had no idea that ‘Angry Birds’ was a phenomenon when they downloaded it because it was a featured app in the App Store (true story). To Normals the name rings absolutely no bell. Sometimes you almost even envy them. https://twitter.com/#!/pkafka/status/152962990587650050 And sometimes they’re as annoying as all hell. Arguing for the 20th time with your Dad about the superiority of an iPhone versus a Blackberry is not fun — Neither is getting into an email race at the Thanksgiving dinner table, and winning like you knew you would. Okay, maybe that is fun. So what are you supposed to do if you’re a techie faced with trying to understand how a Normal would view a product? Well, first of all pay attention: Normals above all care more about problem solving than acquiring the newest, fanciest thing. And if you’re designing products for them, you should be painfully aware of that. As a public service announcement I , a product that is still fumbling around in the Normals department, how product designers gather insight into handling a Normal user’s needs versus a techie’s. Techies are “driven by writing their blog post and voicing their opinions or by staying ahead of the curve,” Quora product designer “Normal people don’t have those artificial needs which fuel a drive to discover something new for the purpose of discovering something new. They have actual problems to solve.” Cox reveals the flaws in the ways that techies adapt their products for Normals with two different examples, one of a sample thought process that leads a techie into thinking they know what a Normal person wants and then, what a Normal actually wants (versus what a techie thinks they want) at : “There’s so much work involved in managing all my Twitter accounts, there should be a tool to manage that and Facebook and YouTube and my RSS feeds all in one place.” “My home theater isn’t great, but I’m not sure what I need to make it better. Tom has Blu-ray and is happy with it. Can your site help me with that?” In the first case , the early adopter is extrapolating that a normal person would have the same problem that they do but at a lower frequency, based on the (wrong) assumption that normal people just have less complex versions of the problems held by techies (lots of RSS feeds). In fact normal people just don’t have unmanageable quantities of social accounts and most likely don’t even know what RSS is. All they care about is that their home theatre is up to snuff . “I would advise that you orient your UI around the job to be done — around the problem — and not the person,” says product manager Ryan Singer . The issue with this argument is that many problems have much narrower use cases than a given product designer could aim for, for example, Cox’s above. And hitting the widest use case possible is a sweet spot that is essentially the holy grail of technology — as it basically means traction. https://twitter.com/#!/gaberivera/status/151758702712602624 YouTube product manager holds that the differences between scaling big and scaling small are subtle yet super important especially considering the nuances of user interface design. He uses his experience with Google as an example … “The notion of using certain keywords such as adding ‘weather’ to a location query in order to display a forecast on the results page (eg New York City weather) was something us geeks did early on and many normals learned to do over time. On the other hand, search operators (such as using an * as a wildcard) are totally geeky and will never cross over to normals who don’t need a command line language for Google. Instead operators are aimed at power users who when they are especially satisfied with a service are more likely to generally recommend it to normals.” It’s sort of tricky. In order to figure out how to entice Normals to use their products, many technology entrepreneurs have to serve as Normal adoption can mean the difference between success or failure, 10 million downloads versus 100k. Startups like Wolfram Alpha and Friendfeed have learned the hard way that you can’t ignore Normals just because you’re really smart. You can be a tech industry darling like Foursquare, Quora or even Google+ and be completely blindsided by something like Pinterest — which got way more press coverage in mainstream (and female-focused) media before it ever really resonated with the tech press. Pinterest has an approachable personality and is easy to use. Learn from it guys. Techies can’t see the forest for the trees, and Normals can only see the forest. The solution may lie in applying that metaphor to “We’re all in the forest, but some of us are reaching for the trees.” Or maybe remembering that you once were (and in some ways are still) a Normal, even if you’re now a techie. |
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