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A Juicy Hands-On With The Facebook Omni-Gift Card
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Josh Constine
| 2,013 | 2 | 24 |
“Uh Facebook Gift Card?”, the Jamba Juice cashier said with a twang. “I don’t even know what that is.” But that didn’t stop her from ringing up my purchase with Facebook’s invasion of brick-and-mortar commerce. Facebook the card last month, and today I was one of the first to try it out. Here’s how it felt to swipe Facebook’s hopeful disruptor of the $100 billion US gift card market. With what I’d call a “material hangover” from a Saturday night of stuffy wine bars and loose dance floors, my body awoke with a forceful request for something healthy. Luckily, I’d just received a Facebook Gift Card with a $10 balance for Jamba Juice from the Director of Facebook Gifts, Lee Linden. The co-founder and CEO of mobile gifting app the day of its IPO, Linden wanted me to give the card a shot. The Facebook Gift Card is designed to be a single slice of plastic that holds Friends (who’ve already received the Gift Card slow roll-out) can go to your wall or the ‘Birthdays and Celebrations’ sidebar and select to send you $3 to $100 at one of the initial partners Target, Sephora, Olive Garden, or Jamba Juice. Rather than one big balance to spend at any of the stores, your balances at each business are kept separate. Facebook is looking to earn a revenue share by making brick-and-mortar stores’ products and services easily giftable between friends. You might not think to go to OliveGarden.com and buy someone a gift card, and getting their address would be a pain. Facebook makes discovery and delivery of gifts easier through suggestions of what to buy people. Facebook is where people spend time online, it recommends you buy Gift Card credits for friends on birthdays and other occasions, and collect their addresses for you. A few weeks ago I got a Facebook notification informing me of the present Lee sent me. A tap on my mobile phone opened a virtual greeting card with a personal message from Lee, a glossy photo of a Jamba Juice smoothie, and mailing address entry form for where Facebook should send my card. Soon my sparkly blue, graph diagram-covered pre-paid Discover card arrived in the mail, wrapped within some surprising fine print I’ll get to later. Now back to this morning and my aching desire for nutrition. I went to Facebook.com/fbcard to check my balance and assure the $10 Jamba Juice credit was ready. Google Maps pegged the nearest location at a whopping 0.7 sunny San Francisco miles away, so I figured I’d forgo the Lyft and feel the whiskey seep out of my pores with a short run. Once at the front of the line I asked “Do you accept Facebook Gift Cards?” and produced the sky blue sliver. Neither cashier recognized it, but once they saw the Discover card logo on the back, they realized it was just like any other gift card, swiped it, and that was it. No need to sign or show ID. Stawberries Wild® Smoothie acquired. I got a Facebook notification that my card had been used (good for security), and what my remaining balance was. After swigging the sugar-liquid, I tried throwing the employees a bit of a curveball. I went to pay for $3.50 in snacks with just $2.98 left on my Facebook Gift Card Jamba Juice balance. Rather than decline me, they just asked for the additional $0.52 in cash. Solid. I asked if gift cards were easier or harder to deal with than credit cards or cash. The kindly server said they actually preferred cards because there’s no change or signature to deal with. Nice to know they weren’t secretly pissed at me for paying with my newfangled commerce contraption. Overall, the Facebook Gift Card worked without hassle, but the omni-card structure is certainly a bit foreign. People spend $100 billion a year in the U.S. on Gift Cards, and 60 percent of those are for specific stores. That means when they open their wallets and see a Target gift card, they know they have money to spend at Target. In contrast, nothing about the physical appearance of your Facebook Gift Card tells you where to spend it. You have to look up your balance online to see where you’ve got dollars to dole out. That might lead people to forget to use theirs. From a customer happiness perspective, that’s not great. If I buy someone a Facebook Gift Card, I want them to spend and get enjoyment out it. From Facebook’s perspective, it’s a little gray. It would keep the balance, banking on what’s called “breakage” — gift cards that are bought but never redeemed, though they never expire. If you never spend your card, you probably wouldn’t buy one for anyone else or ask to continue receiving them. The Facebook Gift Card does have a few things going for it, though. A sizable chunk of gift cards aren’t bought online or at the actual retailer. They’re bought at the gift card stands of grocers and convenience stores. There’s not enough rack space for every business, so Facebook offers them a recommendation engine-assisted way to sell their cards. If a friend Likes the Olive Garden, credit there is what Facebook will suggest you buy them for their birthday, you classy cat. Businesses have an incentive to sign up, and Facebook has big plans for partnerships. Buried in the fine-print that came in the mail with my card was legalese priming Facebook Gifts Cards for use at gas stations, hotels, and for car rentals along with retail stores and restaurants. It’s already got around 200 partners signed up to sell through Facebook Gifts. There’s some convenience for customers, too. If enough merchants signed on, a single Facebook Gift Card could replace cards from multiple stores and help you avoid a situation. If you lose your card, you can also have it instantly replaced for free with all your balances intact. I was actually a bit annoyed that you’re currently not allowed to give yourself Facebook Gifts. I might have topped off the Josh of next week with another hangover recovery juice voucher to guilt him out bed. Some kind of added discount would have greased the wheels and is something Facebook might consider. Facebook needs lots of people buying Gifts and Cards frequently to turn e-commerce into a serious money-maker. My hunch right now is that Facebook Gift Cards will be a muted success in the U.S., unless Facebook.com somehow becomes a top-of-mind place to buy gift cards. Getting pre-loaded cards sold at super markets and 7-Elevens could help. There’s also a big opportunity abroad where physically shipping goods gets costly really quickly, but sending cards is cheap and people are familiar with them for buying mobile phone minutes. If Facebook Gifts and its card blow up, it will be because the real magic is the potential to take shopping out of gifting. It might not come off quite as genuine, but it eliminates the need to remember birthdays and special occasions, rack your brain for what a friend wants, browse endless e-commerce sites, and spoil the surprise by asking for their shipping address. Facebook provides the who, what, and how so you can focus on the joy of giving.
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null |
Drew Olanoff
| 2,013 | 2 | 6 | null |
NVIDIA Hates The Benchmark Game, But Lifts The Veil On Tegra 4 Performance Anyway
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Chris Velazco
| 2,013 | 2 | 24 |
Flash back a month or so to CES — NVIDIA CEO Jen-Hsun Huang officially pulled back the curtain on the company’s new , and called it the “world’s fastest mobile processor.” It was a hell of a claim to make, but the company did little to justify it at the time aside from pointing to its array of Cortex A15 CPU cores and its “72 GPU cores.” Fortunately, NVIDIA is much chattier here at MWC, and was eager to show off some rather impressive synthetic benchmarks for its latest and greatest mobile chipset. Well, maybe “eager” isn’t exactly the right word — NVIDIA really hates playing the mobile benchmark game. I don’t blame them. In many ways the sorts of numbers that these tests spit out just don’t accurately reflect the experience that users will actually have. During our early testing for instance, consistently put up some strangely anemic Quadrant scores — which its cousin the Optimus G handily blew past — despite working like a dream. All that said, benchmarks are largely are for the most part inescapable, and the Tegra 4 SoC does a rather nice job on them anyway. Quadrant is one of our go-to mobile benchmarking tools, and the Tegra 4 did not disappoint — it scored in the mid-16,000s, topping out at 16,591. To put that in a little perspective, Samsung/Google’s Nexus 10 (which itself is powered by a relatively new dual-core 1.7 GHz Samsung Exynos chipset) usually scores in the mid-to-high 4,000s. Asus’ Transformer Pad Infinity TF700 (powered by a 1.6GHz quad-core NVIDIA Tegra 3) fared about the same, if not a hair higher. The results were much the same when we looked at AnTuTu scores — while tablets like the Nexus 10 and Asus’ TF700 will yield scores in the mid-8000s to low-9000s, the Tegra 4 demo tablet consistently hit scores above 36,000. Curious about how the Tegra 4 compares in your preferred benchmarking suite? You can see the full gallery of Tegra 4 benchmark results below:
One of NVIDIA’s most prominent competitors these days is Qualcomm, and NVIDIA Product Marketing director Matt Wuebbling was eager to chat about the performance differential when I let slip the Q word. When asked about how much NVIDIA knows about Qualcomm’s updated Snapdragon chipsets, he replied simply enough: “we know a lot.” By his count, the Tegra 4 is about two to three times faster than Qualcomm’s Snapdragon 600 (used in devices like the new HTC One). He went on to say that the top-tier Snapdragon 800 is about 25 to 35 percent faster than the 600, with the implication that the Tegra 4 still comes out on top. Though his response has based on Qualcomm’s published Snapdragon claims, I’d still advise you to take that comparison with a grain of salt. That’s nothing against Wuebbling, but these sorts of simple comparisons don’t always paint the most accurate picture. I couldn’t reach Qualcomm for response at time of writing, but I’ll update if/when they respond to these claims. You would think that this sort of horsepower would suck a battery dry in jiffy, but that doesn’t appear to the be the case. Another Tegra 4 demo had a video running at full resolution on a small 1080p display, an exercise that never drew more 1 watt of electricity at the most. Power consumption typically fell within the 900-950 milliwatt range — devices like the Droid DNA for instance tend to draw around 1.2 watts for similar tasks.
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Fly Or Die: Sunrise Calendar
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Jordan Crook
| 2,013 | 2 | 24 |
A calendar is a tool created many millennia ago, a tool that is vital to our very functionality as intelligent beings. Yet, when technology has ventured far beyond a simple grid of numbers, the Calendar applications we use haven’t seemed to evolve beyond that. , a new application built by , finds a way to turn a traditionally consumptive tool (the calendar) into a to-do list of sorts, not unlike the way Mailbox turns the inbox into a to-do list. In this episode of Fly or Die, John and I both agree that the beautiful yet simple UI is clearly superior to the standard iOS Calendar app. The upper portion of the home display, showing two weeks at a time, easily expands into a full calendar view when pulled down, while a streamed list of events scrolls along below. And our approval isn’t all about surface appearances, either. The app pulls in information from Facebook, Google and LinkedIn to ensure you have directions to any appointments, access to communications with other attendees, and even displays the weather in case you need help choosing an outfit. It takes the calendar, an often isolated application, and loops it in with all of the apps that it would need to be useful on its own, such as social, weather, etc. The one caveat (and it’s a big one) is that Sunrise surprisingly does not integrate with iOS or OS X Calendar directly. Calendar enthusiasts will have to export all their data into Google in order to sync with Sunrise, but in the app’s defense, the team describes Sunrise as a Calendar app for Google Calendar users. If that sounds like you, the should be a nice addition to your homescreen. Otherwise, you may want to wait until Sunrise hooks into Apple’s Calendar offerings.
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The Chromebook Pixel: A Beautiful Premium Laptop For Those Who Live In The Cloud (But Not For Anyone Else)
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Frederic Lardinois
| 2,013 | 2 | 24 |
The is the best Chromebook ever made. As with all Chromebooks, that may mean nothing to you if you don’t like ChromeOS, but there can be little doubt that the Pixel is a beautiful piece of precision engineering that feels like a premium laptop that wouldn’t be out of place in any line-up of $1,000+ laptops. And that’s before you even look at the 12.86″ touchscreen with the unusual, but very useful, 3:2 aspect ratio, which beats Apple’s Retina displays in terms of pixel density. If there is a controversy around the Pixel, it’s not about whether this is a great piece of hardware, because it unquestionably is. The question is whether it is worth the $1,299 Google for the Wi-Fi version and $1,449 for the LTE-enabled version. If the other Chromebooks, which start at more than $1,000 less than the Pixel are semi-disposable machines that you can easily replace when they break and which are making their inroads into classrooms and enterprises because of this, the Pixel is basically the Chromebook for the C-suite and the superintendent. Let’s look at the device itself before jumping to too many conclusions, though. On the outside, it only has a very muted appearance, with its dark aluminum body and silver piano hinge that features an understated Chrome logo. It’s a bit on the heavy side and at 3.35 pounds, it obviously has a bit more heft than a 13 inch MacBook Air, though given its touchscreen, it may actually be fairer to compare the Pixel to something like the Lenovo Yoga 13, which weighs just about the same as the Pixel. The coolest feature on the outside, must be the slim LED bar that lights up in a light blue when the machine is on and displays the full range of the Pixel’s signature colors when you open it and shut it down. There’s nothing useful about this, but it’s a good example for the thoughtful design that makes the Pixel stand out from its competitors. The Pixel actually features many of these small little features that would definitely appear on a slide at an Apple keynote. The power brick has a little groove that you can run your cable through, makes it a bit easier to keep it halfway organized. The backlight on the keyboard dims when you play a video in full-screen mode. Indeed, the chiclet keyboard, too, feels just right and after a few days with the Pixel, I would argue that it’s better than what Apple is currently shipping on its MacBooks. Of course, it also features Google’s standard Chrome keyboard layout, which does away with Caps Lock and other underused keys in favor of a search key (which brings up the apps menu on the Pixel) and a tighter layout. As for the other specs, the Pixel features a dual-core Intel i5 processor, has two USB ports, a mini display port for adding an external display, dual-band Wi-Fi, Bluetooth 3.0 and a built-in SD/MMC card reader. This is a Chromebook, so on-device storage is very limited (32GB for the Wi-Fi model, 64GB for the LTE version). To make up for this, Google offers Pixel users a full terabyte of free Google Drive storage for the next three years. It’s not clear what will happen after this time, which Google says is the expected lifetime of a laptop these days. In the end, the Pixel is all about the screen, though. When it comes to touchscreens, Windows 8 Ultrabooks have the market to themselves right now and I’m not aware of any of those having the kind of pixel density as the Pixel ( 2,560 x 1,700 at 239 PPI). Google pre-installs a version of the trailer (which was originally shot as a 4k video) on every Pixel to show off the quality of the display and that alone makes for a pretty stunning experience. As everybody who has ever used a laptop with a Retina display knows, text also looks great on such a high-DPI screen and going back to a regular screen just feels like a major step back. Just like Apple, Google uses those more than 4 million pixels to simulate a significantly lower resolution than the screen is capable off (I’m guessing it’s about 1280 points wide). This allows it to use font smoothing that goes a few steps further than what hardware developers are capable of with regular displays. of what the desktop looks like in its full 2,560 by 1,700 glory. Google says it chose a display with a 3:2 aspect ratio because most content on the web is not designed for widescreen displays, so going with a 3:2 screen gives you more horizontal screen estate. This, however, also means you can’t really put two browser windows side-by-side. ChromeOS solves this by using a Windows-like snap-to-edge gesture that automatically expands the active window to cover mot of the screen when you drag it to the edge of the display. Do this with two windows on each side of the screen and you can easily switch back and forth between them – or you could just use Ctrl-Tab to switch between browser tabs. Talking about the edge of the screen, it looks like the top and bottom of the glass that surrounds the display is also touch-enabled. Currently, you can only use this to swipe the taskbar into view at the bottom of the screen, but there is an option in the settings that allows you to enable “bezel touch actions.” That setting doesn’t seem to do much right now, but that could change in upcoming versions of ChromeOS. At first, touching the screen feels a bit weird. It’s just not something you’re supposed to do. Unlike the Yoga, you also can’t fold it back 180 degrees and just use it as a tablet, so the keyboard is always between you and the screen (and there is no on-screen keyboard anyway). Still, when you sit back and read, scrolling down the page with your fingers on the left or right hand of the screen actually starts making sense after a while. The same goes for using Google maps or full-screen visual experiences like . My guess is that 95 percent of the time, you will just use the trackpad (which also feels great, by the way). When you’re just kicking back and want to read a 1,500 word review on TechCrunch, using the touchscreen to scroll down the page starts making sense. First, though, you have to get over the taboo of touching the screen. Once I got past that point, I often found myself reaching out to the screen to close a tab instead of using the trackpad or to click a bookmark. I’m not sure if that’s worth the premium, though, and that’s something you obviously have to decide yourself. The big tradeoff of having this high-res screen, though, is that it needs quite a bit of battery power, something Google freely admitted when it revealed the Pixel during a mystery-shrouded press event last week (even the fact that there was a press event didn’t leak out). Google says the battery should last about five hours, and judging from my experience with the Pixel, that sounds about right, especially if you keep the screen brightness somewhere around the middle. Playing high-res videos (the 4k videos on YouTube clearly taxed the CPU and Intel 4000 GPU a bit too much and wouldn’t play without stutter, by the way) and 3D games (there are quite a few of those available in the now) will obviously drain the battery quite a bit faster. Google says the Pixel is meant to be a premium device for those who already live in the cloud. If that’s you – and you have some cash to burn – the Pixel may just be for you. In the end, though, the fact that it has a touchscreen may be irrelevant to most users and given that you can buy a Macbook Air or touch-enabled Windows 8 Ultrabook for significantly less than a Pixel, will make it a hard sell despite its amazing screen. If you are that person who lives in the cloud, the Pixel may just be an option for you (especially once Google lets you edit all your old-school Microsoft Office documents with Quickoffice for Chrome in the coming months). For virtually everybody else, though, this is going to be a hard expense to justify. The hardware is amazing (and did I mention the screen?), but unless you want to use it as a with a very limited hard-drive capacity, ChromeOS will still regularly get in your way of getting things done. It’s hard not to look at the Pixel, which was designed by Google itself, without thinking about the ill-fated Nexus Q media player the company introduced at Google I/O but never brought to market. The Q was Google’s first attempt at making its own hardware, and it, too, was a great, solid piece of hardware, but it was let down by the software that was running on it. In its current state – and at its current price – the Pixel is essentially a Nexus-like reference design for what a high-end Chromebook should look like (though Google definitely isn’t positioning it this way). It’s a beautiful machine that would look good in any laptop manufacturer’s lineup, and it shows that Google hasn’t just found its , but can now also produce great hardware. The only thing holding it back is ChromeOS…
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Backed Or Whacked: Ups And Downs In A Yo-Yo World
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Ross Rubin
| 2,013 | 2 | 24 |
Kickstarter has seen its share of campaigns that spin out of control, but it’s a lot more impressive when spin is in control. Seeing that potential, a trio of tethered toys has recently cropped up on the site, with each appealing to different levels of rotational robustness. Here’s the spin on how they’ve turned out. His name is Ed Davidson, but you may know him better as . And while he may not have put much effort into his line-drawing avatar, he is the creator of custom lathed yo-yos formed into unique shapes and covered with intricate designs. Seeking a broader audience, Davidson sought the narrative aid of an Xtranormal character. The animated Pilgrim makes the case for getting into mass personalization by pressing user-submitted designs into a glass dome adorning the side of a yo-yo. Rewards ranged from $30 plastic implementations to $100 handmade personalized yo-yos using a choice of woods such as rosewood, yellowheart, tulipwood and osage orange. Perhaps because it’s unclear why Davidson, who already has set up shop for custom yo-yos, would need funds up front, this dog has failed to walk. With about 10 days left, the campaign has attracted no backers toward its $3,000 goal. As the web grew, it started to become more obvious that there would eventually be a website for virtually any interest and learning virtually anything. A great example of this is YoTricks.com. Once visited by Eliot Spitzer who quickly realized he mistook the site’s purpose, it is a leading destination for learning advanced yo-yo manipulations of all sorts. And while you can go around the world with any old Duncan or Yomega, the site sought a product optimized for the tricks it taught. The result was the Civility yo-yo. Designed by Colin Leland, whose yo-yo swings wide in the world of yo-yo designers, the Civility is crafted of aluminum. It’s been expressly designed for the most advanced tricks taught at the site at which the toy was conceived. Backers didn’t string the project along, raising nearly $23,000, six times the original $3,500 goal. Those 320 yo-yo aficionados are slated to receive a number of rewards between March and May, including a $50 wood yo-yo inspired by the Civility. The real aluminum deal was available for $75, but over 100 backers opted for the kit, which comes with 10 strings, lube and a stylin’ belt holder for impromptu trick requests at $85. Still, that’s less than the $90 that YoTricks.com expects to sell the physics-defyer to the body civic. Moving further up the exclusivity chain, the Unidentified Flaming Object (UFO) is not your father’s swinging object, that is, unless your father had some flame in his game. Brought to you by an individual with the carnival-themed nickname Sideshow Joe, the UFO is a spinning disk that’s even hotter than a Habanero pizza. As its creator notes, “I build things I can set on fire.” The UFO is described by its creator as “the perfect blend between rope dart, yo-yo, levi wand and Frisbee.” And lest you stinkin’ intellectual property thieves have designs on claiming it as your own, be aware that Sideshow Joe has not sidestepped the U.S. Patent Office in applying for protection. Be also aware that he knows how to throw flaming metal objects with a high degree of precision. The performer has offered a range of flammable rewards to backers, including pairs of fire nunchuks, a fire staff, fire snake wicks and double chain fire snakes up to 16″ long. The UFO itself begins at $175, with much of the funding going to purchase wicks in big spools, as well as chains, clamps and other materials potentially reclaimed from dungeons. However, up to this point, the fire sale has not been going well. With about 10 days left in the campaign, Joe has attracted only about $1,100 of the $6,000 for which he has asked. Despite the rewards being built-in compliance with guidelines from the North American Fire Artists’ Association and Joe’s aiming it at the “large fire-spinning community,” this campaign is on track to flame out.
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HP’s Android-Powered Slate 7 Tablet Is Cheap And It Works, But Is That Really Enough?
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Chris Velazco
| 2,013 | 2 | 24 |
HP surprised more than a few people earlier tonight when it officially revealed the Slate 7, a $169 Android tablet that’s set to ship in the U.S. for $169 in April. It struck me as a safe move for HP, especially after it whiffed so profoundly with its ill-fated TouchPad. After all, people are buying plenty of Nexus 7s, so clearly there must be a market for a cheap, small tablet. I got the chance to muck around with the Slate 7 at Pepcom earlier tonight though, and to be quite honest, I’m not convinced HP has a winner on its hands. One of the first things you’ll notice about the Slate 7 is its elongated 16:9 display, and the thick black bezel that runs around it. It’s actually rather reminiscent of Samsung’s 7-inch Galaxy Tab 2.0, another underwhelming Android tab that banked on its price tag to sell. The screen itself (running at 1024 x 600) was decent enough — it was generally very bright, but the colors displayed seemed dull and lifeless. The Slate 7 seems to have been designed to be as inoffensive as possible. That’s not completely a bad thing — the stainless chassis and the soft-touch plastic that the Slate’s rear is swathed in are rather nice — but there are precious few other design niceties to be found here. Those looking for a little splash of color may be interested to know that a red version will also be available. The Slate 7 is also apparently loaded up with Beats Audio support, a trait it shares with its notebook cousins, but I couldn’t get a feel for it amid all of the noise of Pepcom. As far as performance goes, what else is there to say? It works just about as well as you would expect a $169 tablet to: not that great. Swiping between home screens could be a little jerky (if it worked at all; quick swipes didn’t always get the job done), and there was a bit of delay as I went to fire up new apps — though some non-final software probably has something to do with that. The Slate 7 has a dual-core 1.6GHz processor and 1GB of RAM to work with, which is usually enough to tackle stock, unfettered Android 4.1 without too many hiccups, but I’m willing to chalk all this jerkiness up to a pre-production lack of polish for now. [slideshow include=”764327,764336,764335,764334,764333,764332,764331,764330,764329″] While we’re talking about performance, HP’s booth representatives didn’t have many specifics on the dual-core processor, but a quick look at the settings revealed an option called “Rockchip system updates,” proving nicely that HP sourced the processor from China’s illustrious Fuzhou Rockchips Electronics company. Now I couldn’t care less who the chip came from if it does the job admirably, but the internals here don’t do much to wow. When asked about how HP was able to produce such an inexpensive tablet, HP’s pitchman pointed to economies of scale — order enough parts and the end product shouldn’t cost too much — but opting to go with a SoC from a largely unknown Chinese company probably didn’t hurt either. What almost certainly will hurt HP, though, is the crowded playing field it’s diving into. There’s the Nexus 7 to compete with of course, but don’t forget devices like the Kindle Fire HD and the Nook HD. Each of them brings higher resolution displays into the mix, as well as tight access with each of their respective media environments for only $30 more out of pocket. That’s not to say that HP won’t work to solidify the ties between its new tablet and the rest of the HP ecosystem — the Slate 7 comes with the ability to wireless print to compatible HP printers. For better or worse (my money’s on the latter), HP just doesn’t seem concerned with trying to differentiate the Slate 7 from any other Android tablet out there. To its credit, HP isn’t trying to position the Slate 7 as anything other than what it is: a very cheap mass-market play. I’m not convinced that this thing is going to be able to pull away from the pack just by undercutting the competition on price, but I could be wrong — the Slate 7 may be the right tablet with the right price tag at the right time.
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The Weekly Good: Embrace Wants To Give All Infants An Equal Chance For A Healthy Life
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Drew Olanoff
| 2,013 | 2 | 23 |
Disruption comes in all shapes and sizes, and benefits people of all shapes and sizes. When you think about global entrepreneurs solving hard problems, you might not think about creating hardware products that aim to save the lives of premature babies. A company called , based in India, is doing just that. It sounds lofty, altruistic and extremely difficult. That’s mostly because it is, and Embrace is making a difference in the face of uphill battles that they see as completely solvable and surmountable. , 15 million babies are born premature throughout the world, and 1 million die annually from preterm birth complications. Breaking down the walls of personal healthcare sounds like something that goes on in an MIT lab, but it’s happening in the city of Bangalore. For reference, Embrace has taken this device built by GE, and made it cheaper, mobile and more personal: The result? These items are completely conceived of and designed and manufactured by Embrace: This product requires no in-depth training to use, no electricity and no maintenance. It just works, as field tests have proved before launching its latest version. The most interesting thing that I gleaned from talking to one of its co-founders, Rahul Panicker, is that its number one competitor, in theory, is GE. It happens that GE is a global partner for Embrace when it comes to distributing their product. For the for-profit arm of Embrace, this is a fantastic position to be in, business wise. After two years, from Khosla Impact and Capricorn Investment Group doesn’t hurt either. Embrace started as a team project at Stanford and has evolved into its current iteration in Bangalore, drawing employees and volunteers from all over the world who are focused on creating change and disrupting emerging markets. I spoke to some marketing interns that had come from Palo Alto and Mountain View specifically to work on this problem. As the team walked through some of its design concepts, it felt like this would be the product that Apple would create if it were in the healthcare space…there’s that much attention to detail here. Even though there is no medical device standard in India, the team has adopted the European standards, which is a forward thinking move to make its products available everywhere they are needed. The team sees huge opportunities for Embrace products in Africa, Ghana and Latin America with at least pockets from 30 countries total requesting the product to be launched in their back yard. Until that expansion comes, which it most certainly sounds like it will, Embrace is focused on making a big difference where it is. The feedback that they’ve received and business they’ve gotten, mostly from word of mouth between families, is important lessons and feedback learned as a tiny group of people try to tackle huge markets like healthcare. Since I’m on the trip with , I’ve been bouncing some ideas off of him as far as what stories would be interesting for you, as readers, to read and learn something from. On Embrace, McClure says that their story is a perfect example of “India lifting India up and not relying on anyone else.” That’s pretty powerful. You can to Embrace’s non-profit arm or just sharing their story with friends. This company has made a product for hospitals that cost $250 and products for home that cost $80. I walked away impressed and inspired, and I of course asked McClure if he’s invested in the company yet. His answer was “not yet,” which certainly doesn’t sound like a “not interested.”
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Galaxy Note 8.0 Features Air View-Enhanced Flipboard App, Free Awesome Note For Android, And Other Content Perks
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Ingrid Lunden
| 2,013 | 2 | 23 |
The Galaxy Note 8.0 — the newest device in Samsung’s many-sized range of tablets, unveiled today at Mobile World Congress in Barcelona — has just managed to trump Apple’s iPad Mini in the small tablet category with one-tenth of an inch more of screen space (more on the device in our ). At the same time, Samsung is also introducing a few new services and features — including expanded hovering capabilities and more apps, which it hopes will also help it gain more consumer ground against the world’s biggest tablet maker. The extra features show that Samsung sees improved services and content this as key to improving its market share in the tablet space. Samsung’s S Pen stylus has been upgraded to work both on the touchscreen of the Note 8.0 as well as with the physical navigation buttons, and Samsung is also extending the functionality of the pen in other ways. And the Air View feature, where users can initiate previews by hovering their pen over something without touching the screen, is now getting expanded to third party apps. The first of these is a new version of the Flipboard social newsreading app, where users can select and expand a tile by hovering the pen over a selection. Yes, you can argue that this is more of a gimmick than a useful element at this point: why, exactly, do you need to hover the pen over the over a tile when it’s just as easy to tap and select? And isn’t the point of the touchscreens that you can “touch” them? But I can also see how this could become more useful as the feature develops and gets used elsewhere. For example, one of the annoying issues with touchscreens are accidental clicks, such as those made on ads when you are trying to navigate around an app. Companies like are introducing ways of reducing accidental clicks; others are even playing around with the touchscreen to . But the hovering pen — whose pin of light needs to rest for a brief moment to select an item — could be another way to select what you want to see and do. In addition to the Flipboard app, the hovering already works with file folders, email, gallery views of photos and videos, a spokesperson notes, and it will also work with more apps in the future, as developers upgrade them to recognize and respond to the S Pen’s proximity to the screen. With the Note 8.0, Samsung is also ushering in a couple of new developments on the apps front, in addition to the new version of Flipboard. In keeping with Samsung’s original vision of the Note acting as a kind of organizer and productivity device — more screen than a phone for planning; but smaller than a tablet to make it portable — Samsung has scooped an exclusive on a new Android app launch. Awesome Note, a note-taking that lets you track progress and make lists across different categories, has up to now only been available for iOS devices, where the full edition of the app for . Now developers Bird are releasing an Android version, and while this will also be sold as a paid app in the Google Play store, Samsung will be bundling it as a free app on the Note 8.0 “for at least a year,” according to Michael Lin, marketing manager, Samsung Electronics. Other apps that will be preloaded on the device include the newest version (2.0) of Chat-On, Samsung’s cross-platform, cross-media group and direct messaging service; Reading Mode that modifies the screen brightness for reading; and Smart Remote, Samsung’s universal remote control and electronic program guide, playing into the fact that nowadays a lot of consumers (80% in the U.S., claims Samsung) use a second device like a tablet while watching TV. The camera features, as Chris pointed out, are not brilliant on the Note 8.0 — and so we may not see too many people doing this with them: Nor, it seems, will we see many people in some parts of the world using the Note 8.0 to do this: Although the Galaxy Note 8.0 is incorporating, as Lin says, “all of the capabilities of a smartphone into a tablet,” the phone feature will be disabled on the device when it launches in the U.S., both in the initial WiFi version as well as in the 3G/LTE versions. Whether this is because carriers have asked Samsung to remove this to keep the device from cannibalizing handset sales, or whether it’s because of consumer taste, or for another reason entirely, is not clear. It’s a pity, because while you may not want always to talk on your tablet, it can come in useful as an occasional phone, both for video and voice calls. Our test of the phone found the voice quality decent. The voice calling feature will be included in the device when it launches in other parts of the world, Samsung says. Nortre Dame cathedral photo:
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Samsung’s Galaxy Note 8.0 Will Make Its International Debut In Q2, We Go Hands-On
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Chris Velazco
| 2,013 | 2 | 23 |
That Samsung was tinkering with a slightly smaller Galaxy Note tablet , but consider this the final word if you still weren’t a believer. Samsung has just officially revealed that the Galaxy Note 8.0 is indeed a real product, and that it’s planning on rolling the tab out across the globe starting in Q2 2013. Though the company didn’t have anything firm to share when it came to release dates or pricing, it did have plenty to talk about in terms of hardware. The Note 8.0 tablet runs a TouchWiz’d version of Android 4.1.2 Jelly Bean, and sports a Exynos 4 Quad processor clocked at 1.6GHz, 2GB of RAM, and (you guessed it!) an 8-inch TFT LCD display running at 1280 x 800. Perhaps it’s not the most surprising spec sheet we’ll see here at MWC, but it’s certainly plenty of horsepower for a tablet this size and it shows (more on that later). Sadly, there’s no word yet on what the Note 8.0 will cost, though Samsung representatives were quick to peg the device as being “affordable.” Naturally, though, that will all depend on the configuration you’re looking at — Samsung will be selling Wi-Fi and 3G models with either 16 or 32GB of internal flash storage. The company also confirmed that an LTE-friendly version of the Note 8.0 was in the works, and that it would eventually grace the United States thanks to some crucial carrier (yet unspecified) partnerships. TechCrunch got to take the Note 8.0 for a test drive earlier today, and it’s clear that Samsung has been doing some fine-tuning since the last time it released a Note tablet. In terms of design though, the Note 8.0 doesn’t really bring anything new to the table. As Darrell pointed out when the started making the rounds, it resembles a blown-up Note 2 phablet with its portrait orientation, physical home button and soft-key placement more than it does a Note 10.1 tablet. It’s significantly slimmer than the Samsung pushed onto the market too, which makes holding it with one hand slightly more comfortable even though it has a larger display.
[slideshow include=”764019,764020,764021,764022,764023,764024,764009,764008,763971,763970,763969″] As you might expect, I was able to whip through homescreens, dive in and out of apps, and (most importantly) doodle to my heart’s content with nary a hint of lag. I wasn’t able to run any benchmarks to prove my point conclusively, but the whole package felt snappier and more responsive than the Note 10.1 tablet. Part of that perceived performance boost can probably be attributed to Google’s Project Butter enhancements, but the snappy chipset and the fact that the pre-release software build was largely unfettered by cumbersome widgets and visual cruft didn’t hurt either. Cameras built into tablets very rarely impress, and that’s exactly the case with the Note 8.0’s 5-megapixel rear camera and 1.3-megapixel front-facer. Colors tended to be a little lifeless and washed out overall, and images snapped with the front-facing camera were grainy and unsatisfying. They’ll certainly do in a pinch if you absolutely have to take a photo, but it’s very likely that your phone’s camera would outshine the Note 8.0 any day. Speaking of software, the Note 8.0 is loaded up with the now-standard slew of S Pen-friendly apps and features, albeit . Multi-window multi-tasking (my favorite feature on the Note 10.1) now lets users split screen their phone calls, and the S Note app has been updated with new templates and notably improved handwriting detection and recognition. It’s still not perfect, but the Note 8.0 was generally able to decipher my chicken-scratch with more accuracy than the last Note tablet. With the Note 8.0, Samsung has finally gotten around to cleaning up one of the Note series’ most annoying quirks. Despite being devices that leaned heavily on the S Pen to differentiate them from their competition, owners of the original Note and Note 2 phablets couldn’t actually use the pen to trigger the capacitive touch buttons. Thankfully, that’s no longer the case — better late than never, I guess. Like the Note 10.1 before it, the Note 8.0 also sports an IR blaster and a remote control/channel guide application courtesy of long-time partner Peel. It’s no secret that Samsung (like so many others these days) is looking to solidify itself as a force in the living room, and continuing this little trend is yet another way for Samsung to highlight the value of buying into its hardware ecosystem. And, perhaps most curiously, the 3G-friendly version of the Note 8 allows users to place voice calls. To my utter surprise, it actually worked very well: the Note 8’s microphone was sensitive enough to deliver reasonably crisp, loud audio even in a room full of eager, chatty tablet tinkerers. I can’t imagine many people taking advantage of this little feature (if only because you’ll look more than a little silly if you do), but that won’t be an issue for everyone — Samsung has said that the voice call feature won’t make it to every region where the Note 8.0 will be sold.
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You Don’t Want An iWatch
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John Biggs
| 2,013 | 2 | 23 |
Proposing that entrenched sub-cultures should try something new is dangerous. Going into guitar forums with a new idea is a prospect fraught with peril for anyone who dares move beyond the six-strings-and-a-dream mentality of guitar purists. The same goes for folks who pitch wine in a box at a vintage tasting session and those who might want to add some new technology to a classic car. In short, the if-it-ain’t-broke-don’t-fix-it crowd will tell you to get out of here with your fancy new concoction. Sadly, I’m a member of that dour, nay-saying crowd when it comes to smart watches. As reviews percolate up for the and other smart watches and the rumors swirl about a potential , I’ve been thinking about what a real smart watch will require and why we’re not quite there yet. First, remember that wristwatches are the epitome of micro-engineering. Barring a few duds along the way, clockwork and then quartz wristwatches do one thing amazingly well – tell the time – and we humans are accustomed to using them in that particular configuration. Some watches show elapsed time, the phases of the moon, and the like but, for the most part, your basic Timex Ironman is literally the epitome of the art and the art hasn’t changed much in five centuries. That’s why entrepreneurs like the space: they think they can do better. And they will be able to, but not yet. Why are standard watches so good – or, at least, so well-engineered? They are compact, do a few jobs very well, and last a long time on their own power. They are also dead simple and are easily usable without much investment of time or effort. Current smart watches assume that the brains of the operation rests solely in the phone. This argument, while solid, forgets that the watch isn’t an accessory, it’s a standalone device. At some point the watch will be separated from its brain and the results can be disastrous – the time could change or the watch could run down, becoming useless. A watch that cannot tell the time is not a watch, it’s a bangle. This means that a watch that lasts about a week on one charge is not usable as a daily-wear watch. You can be as careful as you want about maintaining the charge but at some point you will revert back to a quartz/mechanical solution or no watch at all. This, in short, is my primary problem with current smart watches. Consider sports computers, for examples. Devices like the Nike+ watch and various models from Suunto and Polar assume the user will strap on the watch only during a particular activity. Wearing a Suunto GPS watch for any length of time, while fun, isn’t possible. There are watches that you could wear while hiking and the like, but the battery is the main consideration when it comes depending on these devices in a life-or-death situation. I would argue it can’t be done yet. So how are we supposed to trust the Basis watch, for example, a watch designed to stay on the wrist for weeks at a time? You’re going to have to pull it off at some point to charge it and at some point the user will just stop putting it back on. The small, postage-stamp sized screens of most watches is also a detriment. While I could definitely see the value in a heads-up-display like Google Glass constantly flitting in and out of my vision, a buzzing beeping watch that requires Tamogotchi-like attention sounds like a chore and not a user-interface improvement. Smart watches also have very few compelling features. While I don’t (it’s clear the author, Jonathan Greene, likes his watch), I find this telling: You will obviously retort that the platform is still nascent and that Pebble can’t be expected to make compelling apps a few weeks after launch and I would agree, to a degree. A solid platform needs compelling applications. The of the smart watch is fine but, in actuality, it will take a while for this promise to come to fruition. By that time, I suspect, the mass of Pebbles will be lying at the bottom of a dresser drawer. Could Apple beat this malaise with an iOS-powered iWatch? Maybe, but I doubt it. First, it would require more processing power than, say, an iPod Nano (an iPhone’s processor might be overkill) and a battery that would last months. It would need a readout that can show the time at a glance and a low-power wireless connection to the phone that will stay connected without issue for weeks. It would need to be water and shock proof and look good on the wrist. In short, it has to beat a G-Shock or your Dad’s old Hamilton mechanical. When looking at a smart watch I would propose something like the – can this watch retain its value as a timekeeping instrument and item of value even after spending seven years in a place unconducive to a delicate object? If it can, it’s a watch. If it can’t, it’a fad. iPods of a certain vintage, for example, are still usable, as are some computers. My Palm watch, amazing in its day, is a cold hunk of metal and my SPOT watch rests forlornly on a clipped branch of smart watch evolution. Most watchmakers abide by strict standards of usability, ruggedness, and quality. Few smart watches, on the other hand, are rugged, strong, and useful enough to match the utility of an “uncomfortable hunk of metal” on the wrist. I want smart watches to exist. I really do. But right now, with the technology we have available to us, I’m still not convinced we’ve cracked the problem.
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What Games Are: Consoles Are Sinking. Get To The Lifeboats!
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Tadhg Kelly
| 2,013 | 2 | 23 |
“Sony’s PS4 is DOA. Microsoft has won.” So said a friend of mine on Facebook moments after the PS4 event broadcast all around the Internet on Wednesday. Similar sentiments abounded, such as Darrell Etherington’s . More charitable commentary about the presentation spoke of a lack of key details (such as what the machine looked like, or the price) but with always-optimistic caution. Others are just . The event followed that Apple-like script of executive ideals followed by innovations and technology talk, and then various developers coming out to evangelize. Some were predictable, such as David “ ” Cage making the same old grand claim that the technology had evolved to the point where he could deliver real emotion, before showing a decidedly emotionless and robotic demonstration. Others were less so, like the appearance of Jonathan Blow. Then there were the middling bits, like a Killzone trailer or a quirky concept piece from Media Molecule to talk about the Move controller. Sony’s big idea for Ps4 seemed to sort of revolve around connectivity and sharing. There were some moderately interesting ideas like the always-on Share button, or the use of Gaikai’s cloud to allow for faster downloading, or – and this sounds pie-in-the-sky – players actively taking control of others’ games to help them out. Less specific was detail on where this content might be shared, or whether most users would really be that bothered. It seemed like an awful lot of effort for what felt like a novelty. Overall, the message was both disjointed and predictable, and the core reason for why PS4 demanded our attention was not conveyed. Lacking a definite wow factor, the event became like all game console presentations of the last five years, which is to say incrementalist, prevaricating, small-minded and a little bit creepy. It was all features features features, but with no central idea driving the platform forward. Videogamer.com when they overdubbed Mark Cerny saying “We don’t want to get between you and the game. Now here’s some stuff that gets between you and the game.” It also felt oddly like watching Sega self-immolate 15 years ago. When Sega tried to strike back at Sony’s original PlayStation (and the Nintendo 64) with a machine that was meant to connect every player in the world, every player in the world responded with profound apathy. Judging from the presentation that Sony gave on Wednesday, PS4 seems to be the new Dreamcast, from the ugly new joypad to the key sales point of deep connection into a World of Gaming. The case is not made as to why anyone on this green and blue planet should care about any of that. So my friend seems to be right in his assessment that, even before having to open its mouth, Microsoft has indeed won. And yet I think “win” is not quite the correct term. Perhaps a better one would be “best loser.” There is something fundamentally wrong with the modern game console. It’s not that one competitor is better than another, or that one has a better suite of features or platform story than the others. It’s that the game console has gone from being an extremely simple device whose purpose was clear, to a mangled behemoth of a machine trying to impose a grand vision on an audience to retain its position. Lacking another Wii controller-style moment of genius, consoles have diverged in 100 different directions from video to social networking, browsing the Internet or instant messaging, and so have become crufty and expensive hunks of junk. You might think that the Ps4 seems like the SS Sony striking an iceberg, but the state of the console industry is more like a reflection of the entire White Star fleet (the Titanic, Britannic and Olympic) rather than any one ship. The White Star vessels were lumbering expensive ships with too-small rudders, more luxuries than sense and not enough lifeboats. One sank in the North Atlantic, one was torpedoed and only one survived until it became uneconomical to run. Sony’s PS4 may well be the Titanic, but in that sense Nintendo’s Wii U is the Britannic, and that still doesn’t mean Microsoft’s Olympic is poised to take over the world. It’ll probably just run for a decreasing audience for a while until it too becomes uneconomical. Sometimes a whole class of a technology just doesn’t make sense any more. In an age of smartphones, for example, nobody needs a Discman. In an age of tablets and laptops, nobody needs a home hub under their TV for browsing and IM-ing, and arguably not even for Netflix. And when the graphics are physically unable to get any better (nothing that I saw of PS4 looked meaningfully different to anything that the PS3 can already output) and controller innovation seems to have hit the skids, there’s really only two vectors left for console platforms to compete. The first vector is services. All three platform holders have made big plays for services, but at this point they’re out of control. Online play in the guise of Xbox Live, for example, makes perfect sense. Purchasing games digitally also makes perfect sense. But it makes no sense to hide those two sensible features under social media, ESPN and complex retailer relationships that keep digital prices high. Creating vast virtual worlds with the intent of selling people virtual jeans is of marginal appeal. Giant user avatar systems are expensive, and also not that compelling. Voice searching with Bing to find content makes no sense (and I’ve had little luck in ever getting it to work). The hope with trying to sell all of these packaged services is to keep justifying high prices. The entire console business is built on being able to sell games at $50, , but this leads to all manner of over-managed and controlled deadweight. In console land it’s like app stores simply do not exist and developers should, for some reason, continue to work with these burdensome and tired platforms in the hope of maybe getting a seat at the table. Like the expensive Windows laptop, the premium console no longer makes any sense, either for customers or developers. Their purpose has become corrupted by decades of incremental innovation, to the point that no platform holder can articulately express what they are about any more. All they have left is ways to try to insert themselves into an equation between game maker and customer in a way that ensures that they can continue to add value. Yet that value is increasingly marginal. Lacking a compelling case for services, the only vector left to compete on is the one that breaks the console business model once and for all: price. It’s time for the game console to enter its netbook years. “ ” describes an emerging class of game consoles that are low in price, digitally native and focused on delivering games to play under your TV. They are deliberately small-scale, often powered by Android and very developer-friendly up to and including allowing developers to set their own prices and run their own businesses. The OUYA is a microconsole. So too is the Gamestick, and possibly the Nvidia Shield. Valve’s ever-imminent Steamboxes might also be considered microconsoles after a fashion. Microconsoles essentially combine the original idea of the game console circa 1980-1995 (from Atari through to the original PlayStation) with iOS App Store economics and distribution. Like netbooks they promise to be a low-cost offering that focuses on the use cases that players actually want from their machines rather than paying a higher price for unnecessary bells and whistles. And so they are poised to become a very big deal, possibly even upending the game console as we know it forever. The reason microconsoles are so appealing is all down to price and choice. The Ouya, for example, is aiming to be $99. Its games are likely to be $5, or free-to-play, or something equally straightforward. And you’ll play them with a joypad on your television, just like any gaming machine. Even better, the relatively lightweight process of developing and distributing on microconsole virtually guarantees that they will play host to interesting content. Rather than try to act like an indie publisher, as Microsoft has for years and largely destroyed its own advantage with Xbox Live in the process, microconsoles promise to do the thing that developers want, which is to get out of the way. Of course there is much about the emerging microconsoles that is unknown (such as performance, routes to market, retailer partnerships and so on) but those are solvable problems. Furthermore the common use of Android means that many other competitors might get into the market, such as Samsung. Are you seriously telling me that Samsung or Amazon couldn’t jump into this space with a little-Android-box-that-could if they believed that the market were there? Gamers, the people who actually buy machines and games, play with and talk about them, don’t care about all the guff inflating their systems. They only care about the games, about having fun in whatever form they desire. When the natural advantages of the hardware have become all but equivalent, the interfaces have stabilized and the useful services are all more or less settled, the only thing they’re going to care about is where the good games are to be found. With microconsoles providing an infinitely better route for developers to market, at prices that everyone will like, then the next generation of the console will truly be at hand. But for the big cruise liner consoles that we know of today? Icebergs dead ahead!
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Michael Arrington
| 2,013 | 2 | 24 | null |
Help Us Kickstart The Big Apple: Disrupt NY Startup Battlefield Applications Are Due Monday
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Matt Burns
| 2,013 | 2 | 23 |
Startup Battlefield is the heart and soul of Disrupt. It’s one of the best platforms in the world to launch your startup, and we’re looking for the very best startups to feature at Disrupt NY this April. But . They have to be submitted by February 25th at 11:59 PST. You need to get cracking. Apply . We’re already reviewing applications but there is still time. How can you make it into the Battlefield? Make us remember your startup. Wow us. Include as much media as possible in your application. Videos, PowerPoint slides, screenshots — give us as much as you can. Everything submitted is confidential unless you state otherwise on your application and we will give each application multiple chances to win. No business is too small – or too disruptive. Last year, UberConference was the breakout star of the New York Battlefield companies and walked away with $50,000, the coveted Disrupt Cup, and, , a $15 Series B from Andreessen Horowitz and Google Ventures. If you’re not quite ready to launch, you can purchase tickets ; or, if you don’t mind missing sleep, you can get a free ticket by taking part in our pre-event 24-hour Hackathon (tickets for that event aren’t open yet, but it’s equally amazing). In short, we want NYC to show up and kick ass.
To compete in the Startup Battlefield, at time of application submission startups must be live for less than three months. In selecting final contestants, we will give heavy preference to companies that launch for the first time to the public and press at TechCrunch Disrupt. We consider new products from existing companies to be significant. Due to the limited number of competition slots on stage, companies launching new feature sets do not qualify as launch companies. The competition will take place in New York, but companies from around the globe are welcome to submit their startups for consideration. Companies that have presented at other public launch events are not eligible for Startup Battlefield. If you’re choosing between launch platforms and need an early decision, please apply and email us at [email protected] and we’ll priority review your application.
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Gillmor Gang: Gangnam Style
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Steve Gillmor
| 2,013 | 2 | 23 |
The Gillmor Gang — John Taschek, Robert Scoble, John Borthwick, and Steve Gillmor — went bicoastal with @stevegillmor at @borthwick’s Betaworks Studios in New York City. @scobleizer and @jtaschek held down the West Coast as it threatened to float away in Googlemania. With a touch Chromebook and a Google Glasses video surfacing, at least half the Gang is predicting Apple is in trouble. Certainly the Googlers get network while a Tim Cooked Apple gets supply chain, but who’s to say (Scoble) that the fun ride is over for ownership of innovation. I think not, fascinated as I am with the amazing platform being nurtured around the iPad Mini and what it augurs for Apple’s move to the streaming cloud. @stevegillmor, @scobleizer, @borthwick, @jtaschek Produced and directed by Tina Chase Gillmor @tinagillmor
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Here’s What To Expect From Mobile World Congress 2013, Europe’s Biggest Mobile Show
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Chris Velazco
| 2,013 | 2 | 23 |
It’s that time of year again — mobile nerds and enthusiasts of all stripes have begun to descend upon Barcelona for Mobile World Congress, and naturally a TechCrunch contingent has set up camp in Spain to cover it all. Or, we’ll try anyway. MWC is a behemoth of a show, packed to the brim with enough phones, tablets, and apps that it’s enough to make even the more ardent mobile nerd’s heart go a-twitter. To say that we’ve got a busy week planned is quite an understatement, but here’s a brief look at some of the players that are in attendance and what (we think) they’re bringing to the table. First, there are the earlybirds — the companies that wanted to get some of their big news out ahead of the show in order to avoid drowning in a sea of press releases. will be around as it always is for instance, but it’s already made during a pair of simultaneous events in New York and London. Personally, I’m hoping that an is floating around the show floor somewhere so I can finally try and figure out why it exists. And then there’s , who managed over the past few weeks to make some waves with its and . So far the company has done well to avoid raising any eyebrows in advance of its press event on Monday, but that hasn’t stopped the rumor mill from churning — Sony may announce that it’s bringing that Tablet Z to the UK (and hopefully beyond). Those of you expecting a glimpse at a brand new flagship phone from will probably come away disappointed this week — the Korean consumer electronics titan seems to have stopped using MWC as a launchpad for its top-tier smartphones. The big Samsung announcement expected this week is that of the , the S Pen-friendly tablet whose existence has been that even HTC would blush. The latest? obtained this image (above) taken at the Fira Gran Via earlier today, confirming that the GalNote 8.0 would indeed take the stage here in Barcelona. Samsung may not be planning to show off too much in the way of high-end phone hardware, but eternal rival seems more than eager to fill in. Sure, its big ol’ may have already enjoyed its share of the spotlight, but I’m looking forward to some hands-on time with it. Also on deck are LG’s mid-range Optimus F series handsets — the F5 features a 4.3-inch qHD display and a 1.2GHz dual-core processor, while the F7 bumps things up slightly with a 4.7-inch 720p IPS screen and 1.5GHz dual-core processor. Maybe not the most exciting things in the world, but probably a damned sight better than last year’s . Meanwhile, as rumors of a super-svelte continue to make the rounds, is seemingly gearing up to unveil a pair of new Lumias this week. A handful of recent leaks pointed to the existence of the Lumia 520 (left) and 720 (right), and now a set of leaked images from none other than (who, in case you were curious, has a rather solid track record with these sorts of things) have added even more fuel to the fire. Nokia’s wallet-friendly device portfolio has also been pegged to grow this week with multiple . Apparently, it’s all part of a plan to shore up the company’s presence in developing markets, which jibes rather nicely with the previously-stated goal of connecting China’s has been awfully transparent about its plans this year — you can expect to see the company’s hefty (complete with 1.7GHz quad-core Snapdragon S4 Pro and 5.7-inch display), as well as one of the world’s first honest-to-goodness Firefox OS phones. Not exactly a shock considering that Firefox OS is being geared heavily toward making a splash in developing markets, but it’ll be neat to see what sort of hardware ZTE cooked up to match Mozilla’s web-centric OS. There’s even a spec sheet floating around now, thanks to some who managed to get into the MWC venue a little early: Speaking of Chinese OEMs, has been keeping its cards close to its chest so far. It’s pretty obvious that the mid-range and its 720p screen will be making an appearance very shortly, but the question is whether or not it’ll be alone — after all, Huawei did reveal . There’s little doubt in my mind that Huawei knows , but another question to mull over is whether or not this year will be the one that sees Huawei finally fit into the mainstream. Sadly, this year attendees will have to do without the frozen treats and the scores of Android pins that brought to the show last time around. While the company hasn’t officially stated why it downsized its presence on the floor this year, we’ve got . In a slightly related vein, has never really had a big presence at MWC, so odds of a big announcement are pretty much nil — sorry folks, better luck at I/O. [youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NBLA50c79Cc&w=640&h=360] There have been persistent rumors that intends to reveal its third-generation Padfone at MWC, which seem to have been corroborated by a recent (and incredibly corny) teaser video that pointed to a moment when “Pad and Phone come together” to form a “metallic miracle.” It would be a peculiar move given how long the older models have been around. The original Padfone is less than a year old for one, and the Padfone 2 was only released a few months ago. Subsequent teasers point out that whatever Asus plans to show off is Intel-powered too, so that strange is starting to look like a lock. This may seem like a lot, but trust me — this is just a fraction of what Mobile World Congress has to offer. Be sure to keep up on all the latest news out of Barcelona by checking out our full event coverage — the fun kicks off in earnest tomorrow.
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YC’s iCracked Is Blowing Up With A New “Uber” For iPhone Repairs Service
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Kim-Mai Cutler
| 2,013 | 2 | 23 |
Yes, you can fix that smashed iPhone on demand now. That means no visits to the Apple store, or intensive DIY efforts. A YC alum called first unveiled its real-time, iPhone or iPad repair service back in March of last year, , and a little over a month ago, it launched officially. Think of it like an “Exec” or an “Uber” for your broken iPhone that you can order straight to your door. With hardly any publicity at all, the service is blowing up: it boosted iCracked’s number of monthly customers by about 250 percent and the company tells me the business is eyeing “eight figures” in revenue for this year. The changes add iCracked to a growing class of startups like Exec, Uber, Zimride’s Lyft, Instacart and Postmates that are all trying to solve the logistical issues of delivering products and services in real-time in urban cities. “We want to be the ‘AAA’ for your device,” explains AJ Forsythe, the company’s CEO. “We’re doing on-demand repair and buyback for just about every major city in the U.S.” He shared some of the maps above and below with us, showing actual completed repairs in the last 30 days. Above is the San Francisco Bay Area, and just for good measure to show that this isn’t a Silicon Valley-only phenomenon, he showed us a map of South Florida (below). “We’re trying to get to a place where we can get someone to them in the shortest amount of time at the click of a button,” he said. He partnered with a 20-year-old from the U.K. named Martin Amps, who had built a dispatch system just months ago. Amps never implemented it because it was so specialized, but Forsythe found him on a Hacker News posting and thought the system could be of use to iCracked. Up until then, iCracked’s three-prong business model worked similarly. But it didn’t operate in real-time. Customers would have to mail-in their devices or schedule appointments with iTechs. iCracked earns revenue in three ways: it does 1) repairs, 2) buybacks and 3) sells do-it-yourself kits (pictured right) for people who want to fix phones themselves. The company has more than 350 “iTechnicians,” who work as contractors and are trained to quickly fix broken iPhones and iPads. They earn decent salaries of between $70,000 and $100,000 a year. Forsythe says he’s selective and he only ends up hiring about 2 to 3 percent of iTech applicants. While these “iTechs” aren’t full employees of the startup, iCracked earns revenue by selling them parts and connecting them with customers. Depending on whether it’s an iPhone or iPad and the kind of problem a customer has — whether that’s a screen or battery replacement or water damage — costs hover around $75 to 99. But an iPad LCD replacement can top $200 with the mail-in service. If you don’t spring for Apple Care, iCracked beats the cost of paying for an entirely new device or spending more than $200 on a replacement phone. The “iTechs” make up about 50 percent of iCracked’s revenues, while 30 percent comes from the DIY kits and the remaining 20 percent comes from buybacks, where the company will pay to take old, unused iPhones or iPods off people. The new real-time dispatch service will also change the buyback program. Before, iPhone owners would have to mail in their devices, get an appraisal seven to 10 days later and then get a check in the mail after that. Eventually, iCracked will be able to send out an iTech immediately, who will estimate the value of the device, and then give the customer a prepaid debit card for that amount on the spot, which can be redeemed at any local ATM. This complex, real-time dispatch system is a far cry from where iCracked started. as an undergrad at Cal Poly-SLO. He gained a reputation on campus as someone who could quickly fix iPhones on the cheap. He then turned it into a business, and started charging people at school $75 per fix. Eventually, he started scaling up iCracked by finding makers of inexpensive screens and then hiring and training other people to repair devices. After that, he joined Y Combinator’s winter class of startups last year. The business has some angel investment, but Forsythe says he’s shied away from doing a full Series A round. They’re starting to look for additional growth capital now, however. “We have this thing called — ‘hardware,'” he joked, poking fun at how venture investors seem to favor software startups.
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Huawei Prepares To Unveil Ascend P2 Smartphone — Smaller Screen Sibling To The Ascend D2 Android Phablet?
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Natasha Lomas
| 2,013 | 2 | 23 |
After unboxing , Chinese mobile maker Huawei looks to be lining up a new flagship smartphone in its Android-based Ascend P line ahead of the Mobile World Congress trade show kicking off in Barcelona Monday. The company, which pushed into for the first time in Q4, has sent out invites to a press conference taking place tomorrow afternoon (CET). It’s not confirmed what device or devices Huawei plans to unveil tomorrow — the invite includes the cryptic tagline “Discover possible” — but ‘s Stephen Shankland has snapped a photo of Huawei’s MWC booth, currently under construction before the crowds arrive on Monday, which includes a sign for an as yet unreleased device called the Ascend P2. Judging by the name, the Ascend P2 is the sequel to the , which launched in Europe last summer. P stands for ‘Platinum’ in Huawei’s marketing speak — one rung down from its top-of-the-line D for Diamond devices, such as the 5-inch , which it outted at CES, along with the 6.1 inch Ascend Mate (its rival). Those quad-core whoppers leave room in Huawei’s portfolio for a powerhouse smartphone with a slightly less palm-stretching screen. So, enter stage left the Ascend P2. Either that or it has a typo in its booth signage. Aside from an LTE variant, the Ascend P1 was a relatively mid-range affair — with a dual-core 1.5Ghz chip, 4.3-inch display and 8 megapixel camera. The Ascend P2 is rumoured to add more beef the second time around, with various leaks hinting at a 1.8GHz quad-core chipset — which would give it more welly than either the Ascend Mate or the D2 — along with a 4.7 inch display, a 13 megapixel camera and Android 4.1. We’ll find out for sure tomorrow. Huawei can’t claim to have the massive brand clout of Samsung and its Galaxy range, but its mobile profile is growing and it has carved out a savvy niche for itself in the Android space by offering relatively impressive specs for the device’s price point — which, in its Ascend G range, has helped to power up the functionality of budget Androids. The company is also taking a similar tack with Windows Phone — showing off an “entry level” Windows 8 device at CES, the , and partnering with Microsoft to launch an “affordable” .
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How To Treat Your Employees
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James Altucher
| 2,013 | 2 | 23 |
Wade had sex with Karen and now I had to fire him. She was our top designer. And he was also starting to make fun of one of my partners behind his back. He’d do that roll-the-eyes thing whenever my partner spoke. Wade had caught the disease. The disease is very contagious and it spreads to the other employees quickly and it contaminates everyone’s work. Like a tumor you have to cut it out as soon as it appears. Wade was fired. The disease spreads in stairwells. The archaelogical digs of startups are found by deciphering the cigarette butts and condoms flung down the stairwells. The employees talk to each other there. They talk about you. And they don’t say very nice things. Put a microphone there. And while you are at it put a microphone in the elevator. It can’t hurt. When I was a kid one of my friends told me he got a blowjob every weekend in the stairwell at Quakerbridge Mall near the movie theater. I had acne, bad hair, cysts, braces, glasses, and bad clothes. Fucking stairwells. — L. was crying when she called me and asked me to meet her at the cafe across the street from work. I said, “what’s wrong?” She said, “just meet me at the cafe.” She was a project manager working at my first company for . The cafe was the Abracadabra cafe and for some reason they served coffee and donuts in a magic store. The best magic store in the city. Where David Blaine supposedly learned his stuff and everyone made fun of him behind his back. Like people do. L. was still crying. She had heard one of my partners call her ugly and stupid when he thought she wasn’t listening. She didn’t know what to do. “I had been so happy at work until this moment,” she said. One word can destroy people. It’s so easy. The magic word. We want to be loved and when it’s not returned by those in authority we just feel horrible. There was nothing I could tell L. other than that I valued what she did. She was in charge of about one-third of our business. I wanted her to be happy. Every word is important. We sat there until she stopped crying. Ten years later, almost to the day, I took my daughter Mollie to the same store. The man behind the counter sold us six different magic tricks. Mollie couldn’t figure any of the tricks out. Like the pencil that pokes a hole in the paper and then you can move the pencil around without creating a rip. We took them back to the Chelsea Hotel where I was staying and all night we practiced them. The next day Mollie went home and I was lonely again. Abracadabra. — In 2001, I was running a $125 million VC fund with three other guys and about five or six employees. We occasionally Yasser Arafat. I had the passwords of all the other partners and would regularly read their emails. Am I past the statute of limitations on this one? They didn’t like me and, to top it off, I was paranoid and sick. One time Mark emailed to Alex, “you better get your partner in line.” Alex took me to dinner that night. Vietnamese. And he told me I had to contribute more to finding deals. It was mid-2001, the Internet had crashed and our firm was going down the drain. I honestly had no clue what to do. And nobody knew it yet but I was broke and was being forced to sell my house. On weekends I would meditate with a group of people. We would sit all day and it was supposed to calm the mind. My legs hurt being in the lotus position for so long. The lotus position is not a relaxing position. It’s not supposed to be relaxing. It cuts off circulation to your legs and then after about a half hour it becomes excruciatingly painful. One time after an hour-long sitting, the bell rang and we all got up to do a walking meditation. My legs were numb and asleep and as soon as I got up I fell over onto the ground and was in agony as the blood slowly came back into my legs. Everyone had to continue their walking meditation while I was frozen on the floor in pain and embarassment. I was losing my job, my money, my house, and I was on the floor numb. Everyone stepped over me silently, their hands clasped in front of them, heads down, doing their walking meditation while their minds continued to settle. — O. wanted to start his own business but still wanted to work for me. So I moved him to half time and gave him the same pay and introduced him to his first clients so he could start his business. But we were getting more and more work and we were opening multiple businesses, so O. was soon doing more work for me than just half time. One time one of my main investors asked me to do a task and I asked O. to do the task. O. replied that it was not important and he would not do it so I ended up doing the task. O had gotten the disease. I asked O. to take a week or two off and then come back with a clear mind. He wrote back, “the secretary makes more than me. You buy dress shirts for one meeting and then throw them behind your desk where they stink up the office. I not only quit the business but I quit YOU.” He then shut off his phone and blocked me on Facebook and wherever else we were connected. I’m proud to say we have patched that up and we are now friends. — Here are my rules for employees: You can learn from every one of them before you have to fire them or before they abandon you. and you are just training them. This doesn’t mean be nice to them all the time. It means train them to start their own businesses. In my first business a bunch of employees broke free, stole some clients, and started their own business. Now they are doing very well. My partners hated them. I love them. It’s good to have many friends who look back and appreciate what you did for them. (all they want is more money and they don’t care about anything else and they start to have an attitude) then instantly fire them. There is no cure for the disease and it’s highly contagious. Everyone has to love the client’s products. No gossip. No jokes. Worst situation: One time we had a proposal to send to the U.S. Post Office. Everyone worked very hard on it and we got it done just in time. The project manager FedExed the proposal to the Post Office. Fed. Ex. He was tired because his wife had just had a baby in the prior month. We had to fire him that very night. Nor did we win the job. I was guilty of this as a VC. I would talk badly ab0ut one of the CEOs we invested in. One of my partners told him everything I said. The CEO eventually went bankrupt anyway but he has since written a novel where I am the evil character. Gossip is a seed that gets twisted into history. . The mother asks, “how was your day at work?” I picture the employee saying, “Mom, it was the best.” I picture the mother crying tears of happiness because the baby that once came out of her is so happy to be working with me. I try to make that happen every day. You certainly exploit them. Not in a bad way. You have to exploit them. You charge more for their services than you pay them and than you pay for all of your fixed expenses. That’s how you get rich so it’s worth it. But ultimately they have to exploit you to feel good about the relationship. When you both die there should be no bad feelings that linger among the maggots you share between your graves. By building a rolodex off of yours. By learning your skill set. By learning how you deal with your failures. By learning not to repeat your mistakes. By eventually stealing some of your clients and employees and breaking off to start a business or take a higher position at a competitor. None of these things are bad things. You want them to do this. If you train them how to do this then it all becomes a good thing for you in the long run even though you might not see that. If you act with abundance in these situations then abundance will come to you. Too many bosses act with fear and scarcity and ultimately scarcity will come to them. Even if they are programmers. Programmers are often introverted and think they can’t sell. I’m a programmer. Because of their introversion, programmers are often seen as more trustworthy by the clients. Bring programmers or introverts to your meetings. They listen the best and they are the best sales people but they don’t know it. Employees are like “reverse clients.” You have to please them just like you please a client. It doesn’t cost much to reward an employee who gets a job done. Gift certificates, dinners, get a masseuse to come in every Friday, write employees personal notes about what you liked about their work, get an office party together and bring a to take some ‘family’ shots for morale and so on. Employees, like clients, are the gift that keep giving. They are all there to make you wealthy so you need to be infinitely grateful to them and, ultimately, help them get wealthy. — I don’t have any employees anymore. I now work with partners on everything I do. I know what things I’m good at and what things I’m bad at. Ultimately I wasn’t very good with employees. I tended to fall in love with a few of them a little too much. And then I would break all my rules and very bad things would happen.
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The Chinese Are Coming! The Chinese Are Coming!
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Jon Evans
| 2,013 | 2 | 23 |
By now you must have heard of Unit 61398 of the People’s Liberation Army: “an overwhelming percentage of the attacks on American corporations, organizations and government agencies originate in and around [their] white tower,” the , who were themselves recently by the of the 61398. And just recently, there were “extremely sophisticated” attacks on , , and ! Why, those evil Chinese! We can’t just stand by while this happens! The US government has to — to — …wait just a minute here. I don’t know how the defines “overwhelming,” but those Apple/Facebook/Twitter hacks? Those apparently , a long, long way away from Shanghai. And Chinese hacking? Old, old news. Why, the on it — courtesy of Wikileaks — back in 2010: For example, in 2008 Chinese intruders based in Shanghai and linked to the People’s Liberation Army used a computer document labeled “salary increase — survey and forecast” as bait as part of the sophisticated intrusion scheme that yielded more than 50 megabytes of e-mails and a complete list of user names and passwords from a United States government agency that was not identified. “Sophisticated.” A word that gets thrown around a lot in reference to these attacks, without much in the way of substantiation. Reports indicate, however, that most of them begin with a so-called ‘spear-phishing’ attack, wherein a hackee is tricked into clicking on a malware-ridden link in an email. “The e-mail, in perfect English,” marvels the , “discussed security weaknesses in critical infrastructure systems, and asked the employee to click a link to a document for more information.” Full points to the Chinese for spear-phishing . That’s irony worthy of a crack team of Brits turned Mission hipsters. It’s true that the Internet would be a lot safer if people’s work machines weren’t typically riddled with bug-ridden bloatware like Flash or (client-side) Java. Believe it or not, software does have to be a frothy Swiss Cheese of security holes, and we should all uninstall that which is. Instead we seem to have collectively descended into a kind of when it comes to malware. (Consider, for instance, , a web site that sells –and yet, despite intense interest from law enforcement, has continued to operate unmolested for now. They don’t have anything like the resources of a government; they just understand security.) Google’s to make the world a safer place. As are security startups like and YC alumnus –the latter co-founded by one Ryan Lackey, whose I’ve . But we still need to be fairly worried. As -and-I-mean- gets networked and automated, hackers grow ever more dangerous. (I wrote a about this eight years ago.) So what’s a poor antediluvian behemoth of a government to do? Not what they did, which was . Sigh. As the EFF put it: “CISPA essentially equates greater cybersecurity with greater surveillance and information sharing. But many of our cybersecurity problems arise from software vulnerabilities and human failings … the types of issues that CISPA doesn’t deal with.” More generally, security solutions that actually work tend to be bottom-up, not top-down; government attempts to increase its control over the Internet have historically led to security. Consider the Chinese hack of Gmail in 2011, when “In order to comply with government search warrants on user data, Google created a backdoor access system into Gmail accounts. This feature is what the Chinese hackers exploited to gain access,” to security guru Bruce Schneier, who of the latest China hacks: Wow, is this a crazy media frenzy. We should know better. These attacks happen all the time, and just because the media is reporting about them with greater frequency doesn’t mean that they’re happening with greater frequency. […] This is not cyberwar. Indeed. So disable , turn off , and don’t click on attachments (especially ) unless you’re sure they were sent in good faith–but don’t lose too much sleep over PLA Unit 61398, and put no faith in heightened government control over the Internet. That would probably only make things easier for all the world’s “highly sophisticated” hackers, whether they hail from China, Eastern Europe or right next door. : Tiananmen Square, by .
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The Trials And Tribulations Of A Global Startup
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Klint Finley
| 2,013 | 2 | 15 |
The Internet makes it easy to collaborate across borders. But despite the rise of remote work and virtual teams, founders still need to travel for business sometimes. For some, travel practically becomes the job. And while data and capital now flow virtually unrestricted across borders, physical border crossing have gotten no easier. That’s causing headaches for global startups. Take co-founder Mayel de Borniol. He calls himself a “glomad,” which means a world traveler with no fixed address. Officially he’s a French citizen, but he prefers not to even think of himself as a citizen of anywhere — not even a “citizen of the world.” That goes a long way to explaining the origins of Babelverse, which aims to be the universal translator of sci-fi lore. But instead of relying on machine translation, it relies on a network of human translators around the world. de Borniol and co-founder Josef Dunne, who is originally from the United Kingdom, came up with the idea while they were both living and working in Greece. Because they faced language barriers while living and traveling abroad, they found themselves calling friends on the phone to translate. That made them realize that they could build a translation app based on people instead of algorithms. Two founders from different countries who speak different languages is exactly the sort of post-geographic collaboration that we’d hope to see happen thanks to the web. But the company’s post-geographic tendencies have caused them some trouble. The two soon found themselves living in Santiago as part of the program. It was a great place to be, Dunne says, because there were so many other entrepreneurs from all over the world for the program. Babelverse, then, had a great focus group for testing the application, but it didn’t eliminate their need to travel. They traveled extensively in Latin American and to the U.S. to work on raising capital. That led to some interesting experiences. Dunne says he was once pulled out of a security line in Canada, where a customs agent lectured him on the importance of smiling. He was also delayed for questioning on a return trip to the U.K. once by officials who didn’t quite understand what the Chilean government was paying him for. But the biggest issue the co-founders faced came after they returned to Europe after the Startup Chile money ran out. They first went to Greece, where they met Zachary Zorbas, a U.S. citizen, graphic designer and fellow glomad. He was traveling in Europe and doing the occasional pro-gratis design gig for startups to keep his portfolio current. He started working on Babelverse and soon became crucial to the team. He ended up following the duo to London, where they stayed at Dunne’s parents’ garage and kept working on the service. Broke but determined to take the company to the next level, the crew signed up for The Next Web conference in Amsterdam. But they didn’t have enough money to fly there, so they ended up renting a car instead. The conference was a breakout event for them — they won the people’s choice award and the best business-to-business award at the event. de Borniol stayed in Amsterdam while Dunne and Zorbas headed back to London. And then things got weird. Dunne says the border officials were immediately suspicious of the two young men driving a fancy car and returning from Amsterdam, which is better known to border officials for its cannabis cafes than its startup conferences. They were pulled out of line and separated for further questioning. Dunne was asked a few questions and released, but Zorbas was denied entry. “They didn’t think I was ever going to leave,” he says. Zorbas wasn’t entirely blameless, at least from a legal point of view. He was working for a European company without a work permit — even though he wasn’t getting paid it was still illegal. He was allowed to go back to his car to get his stuff. Dunne gave him the last of his cash and a credit card with about $100 on it before Zorbas was sent to the police station in France. Fortunately for Zorbas, the French police had no interest in detaining him further. “They didn’t really know what to do with me,” he says. He was just released onto the streets with nowhere to go. Zorbas found his way to Paris and ended up sleeping in the airport for three days and wait for another startup he’d helped to pay for a ticket to get him back to the U.S. Having their designer effectively deported was a setback for Babelverse, but it was one they overcame. Again, the Internet is handy for collaborating across borders. The team landed on its feet, winning the “Audience Choice” title at TechCrunch Disrupt New York and later . The company is now registered as a U.S. company and Zorbas works out of their San Francisco office. Kunal Kalro But this is an example of what global startups have to face. The paperwork can be grueling — especially if you have a passport from the wrong country, as does Kunal Kalro, founder of the travel startup . Although Kalro moved to the U.S. when he was 17 and lived here for several years, his student visa makes it “virtually impossible” for him to work here. So he’s in Santiago as part of Startup Chile. Kalro was born in Dubai, but his parents are from India and he has an Indian passport — even though he’s never lived in India. He says he faces constant hassles when traveling. Border crossing are relatively easy for him, he says, because he has to plan so far ahead to get a visa. But it’s the visa situation that kills him. He says it takes about three weeks to get approval to travel to the U.K. from Chile. When he applied for a visa to travel to Brazil, he had to get a letter from his parents. He’s 25 years old. “Entrepreneurs don’t necessarily have the ability to make plans that far in advance,” he says. “If an investor wants you to come visit, what are you supposed to do?” Kalro suggests the creation of a “universal visa” — one application, one visa that’s good wherever you go. “I have a folder on my computer with like 50 visa applications,” he says. “And everyone is almost exactly the same.” It’s not hard to imagine that most countries will still want to manage their own visa rules, but it makes sense to try to consolidate as much of the effort as possible. “It’s added regulation, but I will pay. I know lots of people that will pay,” he says. de Borniol suggests that with so many countries trying to attract startups, perhaps one country could start offering citizenship to glomads. Such a nation would accept that these citizens would spend much of their time abroad, but would provide its citizens with valid passports and a place to register businesses. The idea reminds me of Adam Greenfield’s . Kalro also suggests “free travel zones” along the same lines as “free trade zones.” But it’s a tall order in a world still worried about terrorism, illegal immigration and national identity. The U.S. may have a free-trade agreement with Mexico, but it’s hard to imagine free travel between the border. It wasn’t long ago that we were (well, series of fences) across the border. Sentiment in countries like Greece is no better. Still, as more companies are founded by people living in different countries, and investment capital continues to travel across borders, something is going to have to give.
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Meet Your Doppelganger On Sodisco. A First Look At Ex-Payvment CEO Christian Taylor’s New Startup
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Josh Constine
| 2,013 | 2 | 15 |
Lonely? Wish you had someone to geek out with about the weird stuff you’re into? wants to find you a play date. It’s the soon-to-launch startup from Christian Taylor, ex-CEO of Facebook e-commerce platform Payvment, which just got bought by Intuit. Taylor called me up to reveal what Sodisco’s all about: analyzing your interests and introducing you to your nearest clones. “There are people three blocks away from me who like the same things as me, but there was no platform out there to connect us,” tells me. Well, there are some others that try to connect you, but Sodisco wants to go all algorithmic on social discovery. Taylor explains, “I moved to San Francisco by myself. I ride a motorcycle and collect vintage lunch boxes.” He wanted people to share his hobbies with, and he thinks it’s a common problem. The solution came to him while still at Payvment, which raised $7.75 million and served 200,000 merchants before selling. The company was analyzing people’s interests to see what e-commerce products it should recommend to them. Essentially, it would say “people with similar interests to you bought this.” Taylor realized, “hey, maybe we should just introduce these folks.” So after priming Payvment for its , and grabbing some vacation while the deal closed under , he began work on Sodisco. It’s named after comedian Eddie Izzard’s complement to people he thinks are cool: “You are so disco!” Now the startup is raising a seed round and . Taylor has already roped in Ping.fm CEO and co-founder of LaunchRock Sean McCullough as CTO. Together they’re building a mobile and web application that “provides localized discussion communities around the interests you’re passionate about and enables you to discover new people in your geographic area who share those same passions and interests.” Users will be able to join groups around interests, post related content and exchange messages with other members. Getting us to actually use the app will be the challenge. In a space cluttered with ways to connect with people, it may take a mini-miracle to convince users to frequent another site. Taylor admits “the world does not need one more friending app.” He doesn’t want his Facebook news feed any more cluttered than it is. Rather than a social network, though, Taylor likens Sodisco to Reddit. But unlike normal online forums, the goal is to transcend the screen and get people to hang out in meatspace. And different from most offline meetups, Sodisco matches you with people you not only share a specific interest with, but that you’re generally compatible with, too. Taylor concludes, “When I bought a motorcycle, I wanted to find people to ride with. I’d go to meet-ups, but just because we both like motorcycles doesn’t mean I’m gonna be friends with some big burly dude or some 20-year-old. It became so apparent to me that this was something I had the tech to solve.”
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The History Behind Facebook’s Graph Search
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Taylor Buley
| 2,013 | 2 | 15 |
On Thursday , Google Maps co-inventor turned Facebook Graph Search , took to Reddit for an “ask me anything” open thread. The Danish native avoided questions about the competitive landscape for Graph Search but spilled a near complete history of its development inside Facebook. The Facebook engineer had a good time doing it, too, judging by the 18 smiley faces he riddled throughout. is Facebook’s foray into the search market. Instead of matching pages to search terms like “San Francisco + sushi restaurant,” Graph Search instead takes natural-language sentences like “my friends who like sushi” and finds results expressed through your social network. Facebook is betting that by using personalized data, they can provide more relevant search results than can mechanisms such as Yelp reviews or Google Page Rank. Rasmussen writes that he was interviewed by Facebook in late 2010, around the same time Google the shutdown of Google Wave, a product launched by Lars and brother Jens. But it wasn’t until a half-year later that he was pulled onto the Graph Search project. “Zuck asked me to work on search in the late spring of 2011,” he writes, recounting the first of three with Mark Zuckerberg. The Facebook founder “had a very strong vision for what he wanted and how compelling a structured search product over the content people have shared on Facebook could be.” In another answer regarding the timing of releases, he explained how his team “showed the original prototype of what we much later named Graph Search in the early summer of 2011.” This prototype only took a few weeks to build, he said, but the project did source code from “previous prototypes of structured search products that were not based on natural language.” Thus we know Facebook had played with the idea of a non-natural-language search product at least some point before the summer of 2011. This lends credence to rumors that in 2010 of a search project built atop the freely indexable Open Graph tags standard it in summer of 2010. What held up Graph Search development between the early prototypes and the January 2013 launch? Too many smart people at Facebook, perhaps. In a question regarding the “best and worst” of working at Facebook, Rasmussen discusses the pitfalls of having a company “chock full of passionate, brilliant, opinionated people.” The problem? “Sometimes it takes longer than I’d like to arrive at an answer. “I think it is fair to say the project took longer to get to the beta stage than I predicted when we started,” the engineer candidly confessed. “Pretty much all projects I have ever worked on have had this property :) Time flies when you are behind schedule!” But perhaps the delay was for the better. A vanilla search engine built atop Open Graph tags would have done little to innovate in the search space. Instead, in January Facebook rolled out a novel breed of search powered by natural-language queries and social data at a scale not available to, or indexable by, any competitor. So what about Graph Search’s competitors? Members of the press have fingered Yelp and Google, among others, as possible competitors against Zuckerberg’s search vision. But when asked which companies Rasmussen and his team view as direct competitors, the engineer held back and merely proffered a smiley face. Facebook Graph Search has yet to roll out to all users, and Rasmussen writes that part of the reason for the partial rollout so far was to allow live A/B testing on real users — a process that circumvents the possibility of endless internal discussions. “Without live usage we’d just be arguing all day,” he writes. The company is apparently now discussing the future of Graph Search. According to Rasmussen, his third and latest walk with Zuckerberg came just last week and its purpose was to discuss the future of the search product.
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TechCrunch Is Literally The Last Office In The World To Make A Harlem Shake Video
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Alexia Tsotsis
| 2,013 | 2 | 15 |
[youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4RJluPcKn6A] In an effort to show the rest of the corporate world how “cool” and “spontaneous” their jobs are, hipster office workers have been making tribute videos this week. Perhaps because we spend the most time online, the startup community is the dryest kindling to make viral video fire: In addition to , , and yes Intel, have succumbed to the meme. Fuck, even beat us to the chase. And, when the Harlem Shake randomly came on in the background of a three-way TechCrunch “performance review” yesterday, I realized that, or not, we had to do one. Writer reprised his the Crunchie Monkey and of course our developers got in on the fun. If you’re wondering where co-editor is, he’s in the conference room behind us having a meeting with Aol. And this, in a nutshell, is why performance review was better than mine. [youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4_cO0Y6jJoA]
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Posterous Will Shut Down On April 30th, Co-Founder Garry Tan Launches Posthaven To Save Your Sites
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Drew Olanoff
| 2,013 | 2 | 15 |
It was just a matter of time before Twitter shut the blogging platform Posterous down, after . The team had already been folded into the flock, but this means that nobody has to worry about pesky service interruptions or keeping the service’s diminishing number of users happy. The site will be shutting down on April 30, but it’s not a completely sad story. Have no fear. Posterous co-founder Garry Tan is coming to the rescue with a new site called , which he promises will never shut down. Here’s what Tan had to say about the launch when we spoke to him: I’m teaming up with another cofounder of Posterous, Brett Gibson, and we are taking a pledge to keeping the URLs online forever. It’s $5 a month and will have all of the ease of use and power of Posterous. It’s just the two of us and we’re coding it in our bedrooms right now. Tan tells us that Posthaven will never accept funding and will be available to its users “forever.” Here’s what the Posterous/Twitter team had to say about the shutdown, along with : Posterous launched in 2008. Our mission was to make it easier to share photos and connect with your social networks. Since joining Twitter almost one year ago, we’ve been able to continue that journey, building features to help you discover and share what’s happening in the world – on an even larger scale. On April 30th, we will turn off posterous.com and our mobile apps in order to focus 100% of our efforts on Twitter. This means that as of April 30, Posterous Spaces will no longer be available either to view or to edit. Right now and over the next couple months until April 30th, you can download all of your Posterous Spaces including your photos, videos, and documents. As , some of the findings learned by Posterous will most definitely come into play. On the other hand, it’s nice to know that there’s an easy way to move your information, with one of Posterous’ co-founders providing the service “from the heart.” is currently taking reservations for its service, so grab your name. It looks like Posthaven is having difficulties managing all of the attention: [tweet https://twitter.com/garrytan/status/302558780447682560] [Photo credit: ]
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Ask A VC: Bain Capital Ventures’ Ajay Agarwal On How Much Capital Startups Should Raise, And More
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Leena Rao
| 2,013 | 2 | 15 |
This week’s Ask A VC show put Bain Capital Ventures’ managing director in the hot seat. Agarwal heads the firm’s We sat down with Agarwal to chat about how the firm is independent from Bain Capital, the asset management and financial services firm co-founded by Mitt Romney. Agarwal explained that Bain Capital Ventures is under the umbrella of Bain Capital, but has separate operations, management and oversight from Bain Capital. One advantage that Bain has with its relationship with the private equity giant is access to the massive network of companies that are part of the firm’s portfolio. Agarwal also answered audience questions on how much capital startups should raise, how to divide equity, and whether founders should take money off the table. Check out the video above for more!
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Xoom Closes Its First Day On The NASDAQ At $25.49 Per Share, Up 59 Percent From IPO Price
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Colleen Taylor
| 2,013 | 2 | 15 |
A number of Silicon Valley investors are starting the long weekend with a smile. That’s thanks to , the online money transfer technology and services company, which made a very successful debut today on the NASDAQ stock market. The company’s zoomed (sorry, I had to do it) up a full 59 percent from its $16 per share to close out the trading day at $25.49. The IPO price itself, announced , was a boost from Xoom’s share price range of $13 to $15. Xoom collected $101.2 million from the offering, which it says it will use for the standard things — business growth and M&A. It’s a nice turnout for Xoom and its , who include Sequoia Capital, New Enterprise Associates, Agilus Ventures, and DAG Ventures, among others. The company collected $80 million in annual revenue in 2012, according to its . Xoom, which was founded in 2001 and has raised a total of , has never been the “sexiest” of companies and has flown under the radar a bit from a press perspective — perhaps that’s because its product is finance-based and not consumer facing. But it has amassed support from a some of the most prominent names in the tech industry and particularly the online payment space, counting two PayPal alums — Sequoia Capital partner and former Square and Slide exec — . Also on the board is Xoom’s founding CEO , who handed over the reins of the company to current CEO in October 2005 to serve as co-founder and CEO at . It just goes to show once again that for all the buzz in recent years about consumer-facing startups, when it’s all said and done, some of the biggest success stories of the current tech boom may be lower profile companies with an .
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KISSmetrics Makes Its First Acquisition — Open Source Startup SourceNinja
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Anthony Ha
| 2,013 | 2 | 15 |
Analytics company has acquired , a startup offering to help companies manage security flaws in their open source libraries. KISSmetrics co-founder and head of product Hiten Shah made it sound like a pretty standard talent acquisition. Shah’s company won’t be using the Source Ninja technology, but it’s bringing on the startup’s two founders (and only team members) on-board — Brett Hardin will become a senior web application engineer and Matt Stump will become an infrastructure engineer. The SourceNinja team was , and that’s where Shah said he and his co-founder Neil Patel met them. “The SourceNinja team contacted us for a potential partnership and were exciting about utilizing their technology within the KISSmetrics product,” Shah said (via email). “After a few conversations we decided it would make more sense to acquire them instead of just licensing the technology. … That technology can’t directly plugin to KISSmetrics, but, the experience Matt and Brett have gained from building the technology directly helps our use cases.” The financial terms of the deal aren’t being disclosed. Shah said this is the company’s first acquisition.
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Congresswoman Proposes Ban On Armed Drones In U.S., Regulating Surveillance
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Gregory Ferenstein
| 2,013 | 2 | 15 |
With the looming threat of faceless drones buzzing around American cities, congress has proposed banning armed drones and regulating their use for law enforcement surveillance. The Preserving American Privacy Act introduced by U.S. Rep. Zoe Lofgren ( : A) would require warrants for unmanned aircraft systems to collect personally identifiable information and a public notice to collect information in public areas. At least one state, Virginia, a two-year moratorium on drones, while lawmakers can craft sound policy regulating their use (i.e. so they can figure out what to do with this crazy new technology). On the one hand, drones give law enforcement an important life-saving surveillance tool. They were elusive cop killer, Christopher Dorner. “the thermal imaging cameras the drones use may be our only hope of finding him. On the ground, it’s like looking for a needle in a haystack,” said one unnamed police source to . But, Trevor Timm of digital civil liberties watchdog group, The Electronic Freedom Foundation, tells TechCrunch in an email, “Drones provide law enforcement with many of the modern privacy-invasive tools, all in one place. They have high definition cameras that can also be fitted with infrared, heat sensing, or facial recognition technology. They can be equipped with fake cell phone towers that can potentially intercept your text messages, phone calls, and lock onto your GPS. And soon the small police drones will have the ability to stay in the air for hours or days at a time.” Currently, he claims, there are no laws to prevent round-the-clock surveillance. At a dodged questions about the use of drones on U.S. soil, only to say that no American has ever been targeted by one within the U.S. Many of these types of bills die in congressional subcommittees before they even get a fighting chance, so its unknown how likely it is to pass. Click for point-by-point sections of the bill [PDF].
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Google Introduces SyncFileSystem API For Chrome To Let HTML5 Apps Sync Your Offline Data Between Devices
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Frederic Lardinois
| 2,013 | 2 | 15 |
One nifty is that web apps can store data locally on your computer and have it available even when you are offline. Google today a new API for Chrome, the , that offers an app-private sandboxed file storage system, similar to what’s already in the . The interesting new feature here is that this data is also automatically synchronized across clients via a cloud back-up service linked to Google Drive. The API is currently only available in the highly experimental but it will likely find its way into the release channel over the next few months. As Google notes, this shouldn’t be confused with an API that allows developers to access arbitrary documents in the cloud. It is just meant for storing and syncing offline data across multiple machines. In its documentation, Google notes that the standard use case for this API is to “store user-generated data (or any other binary data) locally for offline or caching usage when the app also wants to save/synchronize the data on a cloud storage so that the same data can be available across different clients.” Currently, the API only supports Google Drive as a backend storage service, but in the future, it sounds like the team may give developers the option to target other services as well.
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Thanks For The 15-Minute Break, WordPress
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Drew Olanoff
| 2,013 | 2 | 15 |
As you might have noticed, TechCrunch went down entirely (thanks to WordPress VIP), sporting a fun “502” error. If you’re not sure what that means, here’s the skinny on why you might see a 502 error: The server, while acting as a gateway or proxy, received an invalid response from the upstream server it accessed in the attempt to fulfill the request. If you know exactly what that means, then kudos to you. This is the second issue that WordPress has had in the past week, with this one being called a “performance issue” or “service disruption.” Our site was down, so I’ll call it a service outage. One can imagine that when you’re a technology blog and a site as big as WordPress.com goes down, the first thing that you want to do is write about it. We clearly could not. Other sites like GigaOm and VentureBeat were affected as well, it seems. Here’s what WordPress’ had to say: Here’s the fun error that was shown on WordPress.com itself. Pretty professional, don’t you think? Last week’s outage came with this explanation: As we mentioned earlier this week, WordPress.com experienced a partial outage and service degradation when one of our three data centers was taken completely offline by a fiber cut. I wanted to provide some more information about how this occurred, what the impact was, and what we are doing to prevent this from happening in the future. With all of the other issues that folks who use WordPress VIP are having, which I won’t bore you with right now, one must ask, why aren’t there rules and technology in place as a fail-safe when a platform as large as this just decides to stop working? This is the same feeling that we get when Twitter goes down, but something tells me that the world could live without our 140-character musings for a few hours. The news? Not so much. Good job, good effort WordPress. Try harder. We’ve reached out to them for comment and will let you know what they say. To our readers and writers, we truly apologize. You are now free to move about the blogosphere. Here’s a mass email sent out to WordPress VIP customers (they call it an outage now, and it was longer than 5 minutes): At approximately 21:23 UTC (13:23 PT), WordPress.com had a site-wide outage that lasted about 5 minutes. This outage was related to a code bug and is unrelated to the network situation earlier this week. All sites should be up and available. Please get in touch if you’re still experiencing problems.
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Dreaded Auto-Play Video Ads Could Be Coming To Facebook, VP Confirms
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Josh Constine
| 2,013 | 2 | 15 |
TV commercials that automatically play could soon hit Facebook’s news feed. This week Facebook VP of Business David Fischer admitted auto-play video ads might be distracting, but said “I believe there are ways we could do it.” Fischer said during his Stanford Future Of Media Conference keynote that he admired YouTube’s video ads. But auto-play video spots could be flashy and annoying in the quiet news feed. At Wednesday’s with , Fortune magazine’s senior editor at large Adam Lashinsky opened the conversation about video ads saying Wall Street is clamoring for them. Fischer explained they already exist in one form. Businesses can post videos from their Page and then pay to show them to more people, though those have to be clicked to play. He noted that businesses constantly ask for more attention-grabbing video ad units closer to a home page takeover than a simple news feed story. Lashinsky then pressed Fischer to cite another web company whose video ads he admired. Fischer squirmed a bit, and from my front row seat in the big Stanford auditorium, I could practically see his internal monologue mulling over whether he was going to complement Facebook’s biggest competitor. And then he actually gave props to Google. “You know I think YouTube has moved in the right direction by putting more control in the user’s hands, with the five-second TrueView thing,” Fischer responded. He was referring to the that you have to watch for at least five seconds, but can then skip. They’re auto-play ads, but businesses only get charged if users view the whole commercial. That got me wondering if Facebook could run a similarly aggressive ad unit on the news feed. So when the keynote got to question and answer time I asked “Right now the Facebook home page is pretty static. No auto-play videos, no animated GIFs. Could Facebook run auto-play video ads without overly distracting users from their friends’ content?” Fischer admirably gave a straight answer (which I’ve verified with Facebook) when he easily could have dodged. “I believe there are ways we could do it. There are ways that could be destructive and distracting to the user experience. But there are ways that could potentially balance user experience with advertiser experience. We haven’t put a product out yet because we haven’t had one we’re comfortable with. But if we could, then we would do it.” This basically confirms the gist of a report from December that said Facebook plans to launch a new auto-play video ad format. AdAge detailed that industry sources briefed on Facebook’s plans say the web and mobile ad unit should launch by April 2013, and the social network is pushing for 15-second ads, opposed to standard 30-second spots. Facebook is apparently considering whether audio would auto-play alongside video, which would be more interruptive than if only video played without consent. Facebook is searching for a way to make it easy for advertisers to translate the TV commercials they’re used to shooting into Facebook. Most people wouldn’t willingly click to watch a video ad, but if one automatically starts playing and looks cool, they might watch the whole thing. This meshes well with Facebook’s desire for ads to be more like content that actually helps or entertains people. The only delay is that Facebook wants to create video ads that don’t make users so frustrated they leave the site. A TrueView-style option to skip an ad after a few seconds might help. Considering Fischer’s comments and the fact that the TV ad market is worth somewhere around $70 billion, it seems inevitable that commercials are coming to the web’s top communication tool. Think of it this way. On TV, the average American sits through about 16 minutes of commercials per hour, and the average U.S. user browses Facebook for six and a half hours per month. If Facebook ran as many commercials as TV networks did, it could show over 400 15-second video ads to users per month. People are a lot more impatient on the web, but I bet Facebook could get away with showing at least a tenth of that, or a little more than one video ad per day. That might be the right balance to let Facebook steal TV ad dollars without making users wish they had TiVo for the news feed. Some will surely still complain. But Facebook costs money to operate and most things as useful as it is charge users. Like it or not, advertising is the life-blood that keeps the consumer Internet free. : David Fischer is Facebook’s VP of Business and Marketing Relationships, not the Chief Marketing Officer.
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If A Social Network Falls In A Forest…
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Sarah Perez
| 2,013 | 2 | 15 |
Google+ experienced an this morning, and almost no one noticed. . . Someone posted it to Hacker News. . Google+, reportedly the in history (or fastest-growing “ ” ever), and reportedly , experiences an outage, and nothing hits . Google+, where , goes down, but Twitter users (and ) only have , not frantic questions and concerns. This is the problem with the perception surrounding Google+ in a nutshell; it’s two things: a website on the Internet which is perceived as an “anti-Facebook” and also a deeply integrated piece to Google’s overall platform. Google has rightly moved to implement a social layer across all its properties in its efforts to stave off on the increasing competition from Facebook. It’s taking on Facebook in social, as . To do so, Google needs social-data signals to feed into its massive digital brain. But while the site can like “more than 500 million people upgraded!”, it’s disingenuous in terms of how many visit Google+ the way they would a destination site like Facebook. And that’s the problem. Google+ is not even really a destination site. That’s a part of it, yes, but that’s the part of most questionable merit. It’s FriendFeed redux, with some extra clever features, like multi-person video chats and “Circles.” It mostly seems to be popular among those who like to in its defense if you dare to question its lasting value. But the real Google+ is everywhere. , remember? And some of its better parts aren’t some website on the Internet. After all, “hanging out in Gmail” feels like using Gmail, not heading over to a specific place and posting things you want to share with friends. Seeing friends’ faces appear in Google search results feels like an upgraded version of Google.com, not a Facebook alternative. And yet, because this “alt Facebook” exists, Google opens itself up to ridicule and skepticism. And Google makes it worse because it will never tell you how many visitors Google+, has. I mean, even when you specifically ask Google communications questions like a) define how you determine if a user is “active” or say, b) how many active users visit the Google+ website itself (that is, just the URL plus.google.com)?. The lines suddenly go quiet. That’s why it doesn’t feel like the world is ending when Google+ goes down. Sure, today’s outage was temporary. It’s Friday, too. But the lack of that Facebook sees after five minutes in the dust, explains what position Google’s destination network holds in Internet users’ lives.
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Zynga And EA Settle Legal Battle Over ‘Unmistakable Copy’ Of The Sims And ‘Anti-Competitive’ Practices
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Drew Olanoff
| 2,013 | 2 | 15 |
, Zynga and EA have settled their legal dispute over the former’s alleged copying of EA’s popular game “The Sims.” It was clear to many that once Zynga started teasing “The Ville,” it took some major elements from EA’s classic. A source has told TechCrunch that no money has exchanged hands as part of the settlement. At the time of the lawsuit, companies threw barbs back and forth with EA alleging that Zynga “doesn’t understand copyright.” Details as to what the terms of the settlement are haven’t been made available, but we’ve reached out to both companies, and people familiar with the case, for more information. At one point, , turning this into an online gaming bloodbath of epic proportions. Things quieted down since August, and today it appears that both lawsuits are resolved. EA and Zynga spokespeople have issued the following statements: EA and Zynga have resolved their respective claims and have reached a settlement of their litigation in the Northern District of California. Here is the copy of the proposal to dimiss the case, :
[Photo credit: ]
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Why Mozilla Matters And Won’t Switch To WebKit
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Frederic Lardinois
| 2,013 | 2 | 15 |
Earlier this week, Opera that it would stop working on its own Presto layout engine and switch to WebKit. It’s obvious that the open source WebKit engine currently has a lot of momentum behind it, with Google, Apple and now Opera backing it. As Mozilla’s CTO Brendan Eich however, don’t expect Mozilla to switch engines anytime soon. Mozilla, thanks to its not-for-profit status (something most people are probably not even aware of), has a that’s very different from the other vendors. If Mozilla were a more traditional business, though, Eich admits that “Mozilla would probably have to do what Opera has done. But we’re not just a business, and our desktop share seems to be holding or possibly rising — due in part to the short-term wins we have been able to build on Gecko.” If WebKit’s momentum continues, our browsers will soon be little more than the Chrome around WebKit. This kind of monoculture can’t be good for the Web and is a reason to cheer on Firefox and even Internet Explorer, no matter how you feel about it. One thing Eich also point out, however, is that “there’s not just one WebKit.” With its eight build systems and various forks (V8, Apple’s Nitro, the iOS version of Safari), graphics back-ends and network stacks, “web Developers dealing with Android 2.3 have learned this the hard way,” Eich writes. Technically, using WebKit would also involve significantly larger switching costs for Mozilla than for Opera, Eich argues. Because Opera’s desktop share is relatively low, Eich argues that the switching cost for Opera are also relatively low – but still not “non-trivial.” Mozilla, however, is deeply invested in , it’s own XML-based language for building user interfaces, and losing that in order to switch to WebKit would also involve losing the “the benefits of the rich, broad and deep ecosystem.” Having its own engine also means Firefox can work on projects like Firefox OS and Firefox for Android. Eich is especially bullish about Servo, the next generation of the Gecko engine Firefox currently uses. He argues that , which will better support multicore CPUs and massively parallel GPUs, is a bit ahead of Apple’s and Google’s work on multi-threading their browsers. For web developers, Opera’s switch is probably not a huge deal. Because of its small market share, most of them weren’t optimizing their sites for it anyway. Some may even be happy about this switch and it’ss worth about whether Mozilla is really as innovative as Eich makes it look in his post (or if it is just following Chrome’s lead). In the end, though, having a robust and diverse browser ecosystem can only help push the web forward.
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Ubuntu Mobile Developer Preview Will Grace The Galaxy Nexus And Nexus 4 On February 21
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Chris Velazco
| 2,013 | 2 | 15 |
After and briefly , Canonical’s mobile-friendly version of Ubuntu will soon be available for the truly curious to muck around with. Starting on February 21, developers will be able to load the build onto their Galaxy Nexus or Nexus 4 — on the off-chance that you’re attending MWC like we are, Canonical will be on hand to flash your compatible hardware for you. As you’d expect, the release is intended to familiarize enthusiasts with Ubuntu mobile, but Canonical has also released templates, a preview SDK and an to give us all a better understanding of the development process involved. Curiously, developers looking to make their mark in a relatively new mobile environment may end up working with a slightly different distribution process at first. Canonical confirmed early on that Ubuntu for phones would launch without a centralized app store in tow. As Canonical product manager Richard Collins put it in an interview with , the company is going after a market segment “where users are primarily interested in being able to use a core set of applications” rather than a picking and choosing pre-loaded storefront full of them. It may seem like a crazy omission for a platform that’s being pegged with potential in markets as varying as enterprise and developing economies, and that’s at least partially because of how these Ubuntu apps are meant to work. You see, the sorts of applications that will ultimately run on an Ubuntu-powered phone will also run on Ubuntu PCs, televisions, and tablets in addition to just smartphones The onus on developers then is to craft the sort of all-encompassing experiences that work across these different devices, a task that’s no small feat even for experienced designers and programmers. Naturally, that extra work can yield some big gains in terms of stickiness too — this sort of one-app-fits-all mentality may mean that the apps developers do wind up creating for Ubuntu phones can follow them as users bound from device to device, a compelling argument for adopting the Ubuntu platform as a whole. Sure it’ll take plenty of work to make sure these experiences are actually worth using, but at least Canonical is giving the app development world at large a bit of lead time.
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Congrats Ingrid, On Your One-Year Anniversary At Techmeme
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Jack McKenna
| 2,013 | 2 | 15 |
began in February of 2012, after an extensive career at paidContent.org and regular freelance work for publications such as the Financial Times. Today, she celebrates her one-year anniversary with . Ingrid is passionate about all new technology, but has specific interest in mobile, digital media, advertising. Her dedication to the intersection of these spaces has made her a true star. We expect to see many more years where her stellar 2012 came from. Lunden’s combination of smarts and sharpness have led to such notable headlines as and , and domestic news favorites like . Techmeme’s , Lunden is a Swiss Army knife of experience and in-depth understanding, as analytical as she can be quick. When approached for comment on her first year at , Lunden responded with the following: “It’s been good, busy and intense. Challenging, but fun. I love the people and the subject, and I love the buzz. I love the people I work with and most of the people I write about.” The headline says it all.
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Roelof Botha, David Lee And Ron Conway To Speak At Disrupt NY 2013
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Alexia Tsotsis
| 2,013 | 2 | 15 |
It’s the most wonderful time of year… because is getting closer! We’re now wrapping things up behind the scenes, and the show is shaping up to be our best ever — we know, we know, we always say that. Today we’re honored to be announcing three more luminaries who will take the much-vaunted Disrupt stage in late April. partner SV Angel’s and Valley don are all speaking at Disrupt NYC 2013. They’ll be joining speakers , and Remember, Startup Battlefield applications are due on 2/22. Battlefield is the heart and soul of Disrupt, and a fantastic launch platform for a startup. We know you can be the next Mint, Dropbox, or Yammer but And for those of you who are already Mint, Dropbox and/or Yammer, you can sign on to sponsor the event by mailing .
Roelof Botha is a partner at Sequoia Capital, and works with a broad range of companies. Some democratize technology access (Square, Eventbrite, Unity, Nimbula); some create global user communities (YouTube, Tumblr, Instagram); and others disrupt markets through innovative business models (Evernote, Weebly, Xoom). Roelof also sits on the boards of Aliph, Mahalo, and TokBox. Roelof is a champion of consumer Web plays and considers himself “just another consumer.” Roelof led the initial financing of YouTube on behalf of Sequoia Capital in 2005. Roelof served as the Chief Financial Officer of PayPal, where he led the company through its IPO in 2002, and the acquisition by eBay before joining Sequoia Capital in 2003. Roelof loves to hear a founder recount what inspired them to strike out on their own and to gain an understanding of how the founder is uniquely solving a customer pain point.
David Lee is the Managing Member at SV Angel, where Ron Conway is a Special Partner. SV Angel focuses its investments on early-stage consumer media companies. He focuses on investments within the consumer Internet, mobile, video and other IT industries. Prior to SV Angel, he was at Google, where he led new business development efforts in video, media and content/data partnerships. After Google, he led all business development-related efforts for StumbleUpon. Recently he was a partner at Baseline Ventures and also an attorney at Morrison and Foerster representing high-tech companies in commercial transactions. He is a graduate of Johns Hopkins, NYU (JD) and Stanford (MSEE), where he was a National Science Foundation Graduate fellow. He is an individual investor in Square, WePay, Chomp and EQAL; an adviser at ScanScout, SocialDeck (acq. by Google) and Rupture (acq. by EA); and was on the board of directors of BookFresh (acq. by Sugar Inc.).
Ronald Conway has been an active angel investor for over 15 years. He was the Founder and Managing Partner of the Angel Investors LP funds (1998-2005) whose investments included: Google, Ask Jeeves, PayPal, Good Technology, Opsware, and Brightmail. Ron was previously with National Semiconductor Corporation in marketing positions from 1973-1979, and Altos Computer Systems as a co-founder, President and CEO from 1979-1990. He eventually took Altos public in 1982 and served as CEO of Personal Training Systems (PTS) from 1991-1995. PTS went on to be acquired by SmartForce/SkillSoft. Ron has served/serves on Boards/Advisory Boards including: Twitter, Digg, Brightmail, Ask Jeeves, Rupture (acquired by EA), Associated Content(acquired by Yahoo!), Facebook, RockYou, ScanScout, Zappos, Trulia, StumbleUpon, Plaxo (acquired by Comcast), Photobucket (acquired by Fox), and Anchor Intelligence (co-founder). Ron was recently named #6 in Forbes Magazine Midas list of top “deal-makers” in 2008 and is actively involved in numerous philanthropic endeavors. Ron is Vice Chairman of the UCSF Medical Foundation in SF, Board Member of The Tiger Woods Foundation, and SF Homeless Connect, and on the Benefit Committee of Ronald McDonald House, College Track, and the Black Eyed Peas-PeaPod Academy Foundation. Conway is also featured in Gary Rivlin’s book “The Godfather of Silicon Valley: Ron Conway and the Fall of the Dot-coms”, in which he is described as ‘the man who has placed more bets on Internet start-ups than anyone else in Silicon Valley.’
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Apple Tops Japan’s Handset Market For The First Time, Says Counterpoint Research
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Catherine Shu
| 2,013 | 2 | 12 |
Thanks to its complicated regulatory structure and the continuing popularity of web-enabled feature phones, Japan’s mobile market is difficult for foreign companies to penetrate. But Apple has finally managed to work its way to the top, according to (h/t ). Apple took a 16 percent market share in Q4 2012 and 15 percent for the full year of 2012, taking the top slot for the first time in annual terms and displacing Sharp’s six-year reign as champion. Sharp and Fujitsu each took 14 percent of the market in 2012. The research report notes that Apple had temporarily displaced Sharp in Q4 2011, but that the Japanese company climbed back to the top for the first half of 2012. The Cupertino-based company has been in the No. 1 spot since November, says Counterpoint Research. Other foreign brands, including Samsung and LG, also increased their shares in Q4 2012, and their combined share of the market exceeded 50 percent for the first time in Japan’s history. Apple’s performance is thanks in large part to telecom operators Softbank and KDDI, which both promoted the iPhone 5 as a challenge to DoCoMo, which does not yet carry the device. While DoCoMo tried to ward off competition with new smartphone models, its president has said that the company is to its current lineup if it can reach an agreement with Apple. As for how Apple’s new position at the top of the pack in Japan might change the company’s cloistered mobile industry, Counterpoint Research commented that things might get downright Darwinian as foreign competitors finally begin to duke it out with local brands: Japan was once considered to be like a Galapagos Island, an isolated terrain, in terms of mobile technology. It had its own unique digital cellular technology. It was far more advanced than any market in the world and it seemed nearly impossible for any foreign technology company to penetrate the market. Motorola had failed and Nokia had failed. The wave of smartphones has changed the situation now and it looks like the Japanese market is a market that can be transformed after all for better or worse.
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Sen. Marco Rubio’s Winning Twitter Response To His Awkward #Waterbreak Meme
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Gregory Ferenstein
| 2,013 | 2 | 12 |
[tweet https://twitter.com/BuzzFeedAndrew/status/301541124890320896] Up-and-coming Republican Senator Marco Rubio was facing the onslaught of a full-fledged Twitter meme after he awkwardly took a sip of water during his State of the Union response. During the time-honored opposition rebuttal to the President’s speech, Rubio stepped outside of the camera frame to take a sip from a tiny water bottle. Naturally, Twitter hastags for #waterbreak exploded, eclipsing any substantive discussion of his well-rehearsed . [tweet https://twitter.com/k_shock/status/301545990509457408] Republicans seemed to have learned from the “ ” meme that haunted Mitt Romney after his presidential debate. Since then, my Twitter stream has been full of tweets praising the response. It may not totally eclipse the gaffe, but it certainly stemmed the online tide. Well played, senator. Well played.
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Language Learning Startup BliuBliu Wins The TechChill Baltics Competition
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Natasha Starkell
| 2,013 | 2 | 12 |
New startup conference for the ‘Baltic Rim’ took place again this year in Riga, Latvia. Following in the footsteps of the online infographics tool (from Latvia), the winner of the event this year is . This Lithuanian startup is working on a better way to learn foreign languages, which is an especially big challenge for minor languages such as Lithuanian. Grab an . The startup founder is Claudio Santori, an Italian who moved to Lithuania to be with his girlfriend and faced difficulties learning the local language. According to Santori it is not economically viable to produce a language course for a minor language, and this is where BliuBliu comes in. The startup will assess a user’s level by testing his or her knowledge of the most frequently used words, and offer texts, recordings and videos found on the Internet based on their familiarity with the language. The startup aims to launch minimal viable product in Riga and offer its service in 10 European languages thereafter. The runners up included Latvian startups Spherico, Fastr, FrendApp and Froont. is a mobile app tool for a group of people to create and contribute to a story about an event – so think of it as Path for events. Its co-founder and CEO told me that the startup, backed by one of its co-founders, was created four months ago and has just released its first version into the App Store. The app can be used for friends or family members to contribute to a particular event – like a holiday trip or a birthday party – by sharing comments, photos and videos recorded with the smart phone. The users can invite others by sharing a passcode for the story they would like them to contribute to. See the app in use as the TechChill Baltics participants cover using the app. helps improve reading skills and get through text on the iPad more quickly. According to Fastr co-founder , back in July 2012 there were no speed-reading apps for iPad, so Fastr was created to fill this niche. Unlike some speed-reading methods which teach to skim-read, Fastr uses a principle of showing text in narrow columns, a technique that has been proven to increase one’s reading speed. In addition to copyright-free books, the app works with content from Pocket or Readability. Users can adjust how many words appear on a screen at a time. So far the app, available in the App Store, has been downloaded 36,000 times since the company’s formation. It holds the 4th spot in the US App Store in the section “Educational Apps for iPad” as well as top ten positions in 35 countries. is a mobile app search engine that allows users to find mobile apps or rate and share those they have used and enjoyed. Its co-founder says that the core function of the app is to allow users to share with their friends what apps they use and like. Once they do, Frendapp collects anonymous statistics of apps’ usage and ratings, and will be able to share aggregated data across apps with the general public. Currently, Frendapp is available for Android phones, but eventually the aim is to become a cross-platform app. , whose team spent a few weeks at Finland-based accelerator Startup Sauna, offers an online tool for prototyping responsive websites with real content using drag-and-drop interface. The resulting prototype works on small screens of smart phones or large display and the process requires no technical skills. The founders of Froont, and , previously tested their concept of a simple drag-and-drop interface through their other venture , which proved popular with creative professionals. They have taken it further with Froont.
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CEO Marissa Mayer Says Yahoo-Microsoft Search Deal Is Underperforming
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Catherine Shu
| 2,013 | 2 | 12 |
Yahoo’s search deal with Microsoft is underperforming, CEO Marissa Mayer said at the Goldman Sachs Technology and Internet Conference in San Francisco on Tuesday. The deal has not delivered the market share gains or revenue boost that was expected, Mayer said. Yahoo and Microsoft as part of an effort to challenge Google. But Google retained a 66.7 percent share of the U.S. market as of December, almost the same as its 66.6 percent share two years ago, . Microsoft lagged behind with a 16.3 percent share and Yahoo had 12.2 percent. “We need to see monetization working better because we know that it can and we’ve seen other competitors in the space illustrate how well it can work,” Mayer said of the partnership. She added that, though the alliance hasn’t made a dent in Google’s chunk of the market, Bing.com has taken share away from Yahoo Search. Another is that its search market is primarily based in the U.S., and Mayer hopes to see growth in the U.K. and Germany. Though her company has pondered in the past, Mayer implied that it will hold onto that property for a little while longer because Japan is “just such a rich market in terms of advertising… that it’s important that we play there.” “One of the points of the alliance is that we collectively want to grow share rather than just trading share with each other,” Mayer said of the deal, adding that Yahoo plans to grow impressions by trimming its roster of mobile apps from 60 to about a dozen, and getting consumers to spend more time on Yahoo’s websites to boost its ad revenue.
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“This Year, Apple Will Start Making Macs In America Again” – Obama
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Gregory Ferenstein
| 2,013 | 2 | 12 |
[tweet https://twitter.com/whitehouse/status/301518987005677568] President Obama gave a huge shout-out to Apple during his State of the Union address tonight, using the company as an example of how manufacturers are once again seeing value in making things in America: “This year, Apple will start making Macs in America again.” Obama was referring last year in which Apple CEO Tim Cook declared, “We’ve been working for years on doing more and more in the United States. Next year, we will do one of our existing Mac lines in the United States.” Readers can see a live feed of the State of the Union on YouTube and follow the , which is live-tweeting most of the speech.
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Obama Announces Plan To Make Education More Focused On Tech Skills
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Gregory Ferenstein
| 2,013 | 2 | 12 |
[tweet https://twitter.com/whitehouse/status/301522787158355968] During the State of the Union, President Obama has announced a plan to make the American education system more focused on tech skills. While there weren’t many details in the short declaration, Obama cited New York’s P-Tech high-school as a model. is a public high school that partnered with IBM to offer a 5-year associates degree, focused on vocational skills. Students stay one year longer in high school and get favor in the hiring process with IBM after graduation. Other P-Tech’s can partner with other technology companies. P-Tech’s model has been so successful that at least one other state, , has already agreed to begin their own version of the school. Readers can see a live feed of the State of the Union on YouTube and follow the , which is live-tweeting most of the speech.
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Yet Another Buzz-Generating Report Surfaces About Apple’s Smart Watch
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Catherine Shu
| 2,013 | 2 | 12 |
The third report in a week has surfaced about the Apple smart watch. Bloomberg a story citing two unnamed sources who say that the company has a team of about 100 product designers working on a “wristwatch-like device that may perform some of the computing tasks now handled by the iPhone and iPad.” It comes just a few days after articles, also citing anonymous people from within Apple, were . According to the Bloomberg report, the size of the team has grown in the past year, which indicates that the watch has moved into the development phase, and includes not just software and hardware engineers who previously worked on the iPhone and iPad, but also members of the marketing group–obviously important if Apple wants to start selling the gadget soon. So why are stories about the Apple watch ramping up now? While Apple was once extremely secretive about products in development, its attitude towards media leaks since the days when they sent . Allowing well-timed leaks about major projects is also a strategic boost for Apple. As Philip Elmer-DeWitt noted , these two publications are “Apple’s go-to outlets for leaks from within the company.” The Bloomberg report goes into more detail, including naming two key figures on the team: James Foster, senior director of engineering, and Achim Pantfoerder, another manager. It also divulged that Apple has worked on wearable fitness-tracking devices in the past (similar to products by Nike and FitBit), but did not bring them to market. Elmer-Dewitt offered several theories as to the reasoning behind the timing of the leaks, including to deflect attention from Google Glass, distract from and to boost its stock price, which has fallen more than 30 percent since hitting a high of $705 in September thanks to slowing sales growth as Apple struggles to ward off competition for its mobile devices from Samsung and other companies. Either way, it’s likely that these reports are less a matter of loose lips (the anonymous sources cited by the New York Times, Wall Street Journal and Bloomberg) and more a part of Apple’s efforts to build buzz.
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Al Gore Says The Internet Will End Government Corruption. Great. But What About All Those Ads?
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Colleen Taylor
| 2,013 | 2 | 12 |
On his current visit to San Francisco, today former United States Vice President swung through local PBS radio affiliate KQED for an on the program . It was an interesting and wide-ranging conversation, as Krasny’s interviews often tend to be. But one part in particular was especially interesting from a TechCrunch point of view, when Gore was asked about the environment of corruption, bribery, and lobbying that seems to be as strong as ever in today’s U.S. government. Gore said that this is indeed a growing issue that will need to be addressed on several levels. He then pointed to the Internet as being one of the most important tools that can help reverse this trend (I’ve embedded the entire audio at the bottom of this post, and this particular bit starts at minute 33:55.) He said:
“Over time, the rise of the Internet will inexorably diminish the role of money in politics, which is driven today in significant measure by the need on the part of politicians to amass these huge war chests primarily for buying 30-second television advertisements. And as the Internet becomes more prominent and eventually the central way in which we communicate, it does bring the promise of re-empowering individuals to play their roles as citizens and to revitalize representative democracy.” Now, that sounds great, and this type of outcome would no doubt be good for our nation as a whole. Gore is correct that 30-second television spots politicians today must buy , and take up . That money could certainly go toward better causes than blasting with ads 24/7 for entire months leading up to key national elections. However, Al Gore’s view of the future also seems to imply something else: According to Gore, in the future politicians won’t need to accept bribes or be beholden to lobbyists because . Underlying this is the assumption that either web ads won’t ever be as expensive as TV ads, or that ads won’t be needed because Internet audiences won’t be as susceptible to them as TV audiences are. Maybe it’s a mix of both. Either way, that sounds bad for many people looking to make an ad-supported living on the web. Many folks in the Internet world are counting on the idea that as audiences for TV and other traditional media decline, the ad dollars that went there — whether they’re spent by consumer brands or politicians — will eventually instead be at relatively similar numbers. A common belief is that, sure, some things about ad technology for the web and mobile devices need to be figured out (and hopefully the smart people at a ) but once they are, the big money will follow. It bears mention that ads are what make a significant part of our economy go ’round, especially when it comes to media organizations as well as . Political ads play a big part of that ecosystem today, especially . But Gore’s theory seems based on the thought that advertising, at least on the political level, just won’t ever be as strong on the Internet as it is today on the television. Period. If he turns out to be right, it is yet another reminder that those of us who make a living on the web should be looking to make ends meet with more than just advertising dollars.
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Netflix Original Series House Of Cards Is Its Most Watched Program
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Ryan Lawler
| 2,013 | 2 | 12 |
At the D: Dive Into Media conference, Netflix Chief Content Officer Ted Sarandos said that the company’s political thriller House of Cards has been the most-watched piece of content on the site a few weeks after its release. Not only is that true in the company’s home market of the U.S., but it’s true across all regions that the company operates in, Sarandos said. The Kevin Spacey-David Fincher show was released earlier this month, about a year and a half after the company announced it was committing to license the content from production house Media Rights Capital. Sarandos wouldn’t provide absolute viewer numbers or try to give relative ratings numbers to compare it to other content that is distributed through traditional TV. But he did say that nearly everyone who watched episode 1 of the show watched the next episode. Sarandos said that by releasing the show all at once, the company is “crafting long-form storytelling to be told any way you want to watch it.” That differs from the traditional storytelling model on networks, where shows are released on a weekly basis. “No one has ever watched anything on Netflix that they couldn’t watch all at once,” Sarandos said. There was no interest in changing that model for a new group of originals. But that not only meant changing consumer behavior, it also meant dealing with the realities of today’s social network environment. Sarandos called it a “different style of watercooler etiquette.” Rather than having to deal with the weekly conversation that is produced, viewers need to ask each other which episodes they’re watching and dealing with that. Still, the strategy seems to be paying off, as viewers are continuing to tune in.
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Arrested Development’s Will Arnett: Netflix Allows The Creative Community To Do What It Does Best
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Ryan Lawler
| 2,013 | 2 | 12 |
On a panel discussion at D: Dive Into Media with Netflix Chief Content Officer Ted Sarandos and Arrested Development creator Mitch Hurwitz, comedian Will Arnett praised the freedom that the streaming provider is giving creatives building its new slate of original programming. Netflix is “allowing the creative community to do what they do best,” Arnett said. That freedom is helping to draw creatives who wish to build shows that they wouldn’t be able to develop for network or even cable TV. Hurwitz said that while Arrested Development was being created for the web, the staff was being paid in the same way they would for most network shows, and the show is being made on a similar budget. “We are absolutely making the show we would have made if we were still at Fox,” Hurwitz said. “There are certain things we’re not going to have… We’re not going to have residuals. But the tradeoff is that we’re encouraged to do a more interesting show, as opposed to flattening it out.” Arrested Development returns after a multi-year hiatus on May 4, and will count as the second major series to be released as part of Netflix’s ambitious original programming initiative. A few weeks ago, Netflix debuted its Kevin Spacey and David-Fincher led political thriller House of Cards, releasing the entire first season of 13 episodes all in one batch. The new season of Arrested Development will follow the same distribution model. The show will bring back most of the cast from the original Fox series, with the series picking up several years after Season 3 left off. But all involved believe that the show will do well, thanks to the built-in audience already on Netflix. Netflix has carried the previous seasons of Arrested Development for years, and Sarandos said that the data shows the audience for the series has only grown with time, as opposed to most shows that are cancelled. What’s more, Hurwitz, Arnett, and Sarandos all agreed that the Netflix subscribers fit squarely in the Arrested Development target demographic.
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“Is She Ignoring My Sext?” Ephemeral Messaging Apps Leave You Hanging
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Josh Constine
| 2,013 | 2 | 12 |
There’s nothing more terrifying than thinking you crossed the line by sending a risqué photo. Worrying that the person you sent a goofy Snapchat or Facebook Poke to thinks you’re an idiot is no fun either. Did they even actually see your self-destructing photo? Ephemeral messaging has a feedback problem. The of the whole impermanent communication craze is that, in the real world, the things you say aren’t written in stone for eternity, so everything you say online shouldn’t be either. People are sick of having all their posts lasts forever thanks to Facebook Timeline, Twitter’s indexability and blog archives. Permanence makes things too formal and stodgy. It promotes vanity and success theater, where you only want to share what makes you look good. Ephemeral messaging is supposed to give you the freedom to let your guard down, be silly and shoot from the hip (sometimes literally). That’s how we act offline when we’re with friends and lovers. But communicating in-person also affords us real-time feedback. Be too silly and friends roll their eyes. Get too raunchy and your partner will visibly squirm. That helps you backtrack, apologize and return to your mutual comfort zone. We’re not getting this in or , the top ephemeral messaging apps. That leads to anxiety, awkwardness and broken conversations. Both apps have read receipts, meaning you can see whether someone “opened” the message you sent them. But that doesn’t tell you if they slipped and clicked a message but didn’t actually see it. And it definitely doesn’t tell you if they thought it was funny, sexy, mundane, stupid or offensive. When I send someone a Poke or Snap and don’t know if they dug it, I’m a lot less likely to Poke/Snap them in the future. is all photos and videos. So unless you switch to text messages, the only way to give someone positive feedback on something they sent you is to Snap back a photo of you smiling or giving the thumbs up, or a quick video in which you voice your approval. That’s a fair amount of work. has better solutions. You can send text-only Pokes or a nondescript, old-fashioned “Poke” as well as photos and videos. But I rarely get those in return when I send people Pokes. Both of these apps need a lightweight, one-click way of saying “Hey, that was awesome. Send me more.” My only guess as to why they don’t already is a misguided hope that you’ll go the full nine yards and send a photo or video back that could keep the conversation going. But that’s not working. In most cases, my ephemeral messages get a daunting silence in return. Maybe the answer is a Like button, which people are familiar with. Likes are typically pretty public, though, so that might not be exactly the right term. The fiercely independent Snapchat probably wouldn’t call it a Like button anyway. Perhaps the right move is to let people send a thumbs up, a heart or an emoticon. But something, soon, please. I’m tired of getting the cold shoulder and feeling like I’m caught with my pants down.
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Click Through This List To See If It Mentions You, To Feed Your Ego
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Alexia Tsotsis
| 2,013 | 2 | 12 |
Okay so maybe made “LinkedIn’s Top 1% most viewed profiles for 2012.” But are you on “Forbes 450 under 30”? Or “TIME’s 100 best randomly assorted names of people, with a few from Silicon Valley”? Well, you’re probably also not on this list of either but you might want to check, just in case. I mean, you probably deserve to be on it more than 49ers Coach
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Comcast Posts Solid Q4 2012 Earnings, Will Acquire GE’s Stake In NBCUniversal For $16.7B
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Chris Velazco
| 2,013 | 2 | 12 |
Comcast is already the country’s largest cable television provider, but its entertainment ambitions don’t end there — the company that it will spend $16.7 billion to purchase General Electric’s stake in NBCUniversal. To top it off, Comcast will also shell out an additional $1.4 billion to purchase CNBC’s headquarters in Englewood Cliffs, N.J. and the NBCUniversal facilities at 30 Rockefeller Plaza in New York. This whole process began in late 2009 when in which Comcast would take over its holdings in NBCUniversal, and U.S. regulators eventually gave the transaction their blessing (with certain caveats in place) in early 2011. The news comes right on the heels of Comcast’s The company’s shareholders will likely take a shine to today’s announcements — at the time of this writing, Comcast’s stock is up nearly 8 percent in after-hours trading, and GE’s share price is currently up about 3.5 percent.
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Two Hackers Build A Way To Pay For Your Pizza With Bitcoins
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John Biggs
| 2,013 | 2 | 12 |
While the question remains whether or not you should be eating Domino’s pizza at all, a clever service now allows you to pay for your pie with Bitcoins. The service is far from an official Domino’s app and is instead a gateway or broker between the world of pizza and the world of popular virtual currencies. The site, , asks for your address and then brings up pizza places near you. You place your order and send over your coins – the exchange rate is “APPROXIMATELY $0.50 Cents less then the current Mt.Gox Rate,” their emphasis – and wait for your pizza. Then you eat it. The team behind the site, Matt Burkinshaw and Riley Alexander, built the service as a conduit between bitcoin and the real world, a key tool that will improve the visibility and viability of the platform. The pair are working on adding other pizza places to the service including Papa John’s. so two pizzas and bread bites will cost you $17.75. You can also add things to your order like wings, different crusts, and the like. It’s a fascinating tool and far more valuable to the average user than sites like where bitcoins are used for more illicit purposes. I’m sure an entire subset of users would love a way to use an untraceable currency to pay for everyday things and pizza is a great start.
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Anthony Ha
| 2,013 | 2 | 15 | null |
Trulia Beats Analysts With Record Q4 Revenue, But Posts Bigger-Than-Expected Net Loss
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Anthony Ha
| 2,013 | 2 | 12 |
In its second earnings report as a public company, online real estate site saw both higher revenue and a bigger loss than analysts had estimated. The company saw revenue of $20.6 million and a net loss of $1.59 million for the quarter ending on December 31. That’s a (non-GAAP) loss of 3 cents per share. Revenue is up 75 percent year-over-year, while the company’s net loss has fallen from $2.5 million. In its previous earnings report, and had positive EBITDA (namely, it was profitable before interest, taxes, depreciation and amortization) for the first time. The company continued the pattern of positive EBITDA this quarter. Analysts had Trulia would see $19 million in revenue with a loss of 2 cents per share. “We finished the year on a resounding note, achieving record quarterly revenue, a rapid increase in mobile traffic, and strong subscriber growth,” CEO Pete Flint said in the press release. “We are well positioned to grow in 2013 as the real estate market continues its recovery.” Traffic and subscriptions were also up. The company said it averaged 23.6 million monthly unique users, a 50 percent year-over-year increase, with 5.8 million coming from mobile. The company ended the quarter of 24,443 subscribers (compared to 16,849 last year), and it made an average of $172 in monthly revenue from each subscriber. Users have now contributed 7 million pieces of content to the site, including 810,000 in the past quarter. Competitor Zillow plans to announce earnings tomorrow.
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Fear Not, Surface Fans, More 128GB Surface Pros Should Be On Store Shelves By Saturday
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Chris Velazco
| 2,013 | 2 | 12 |
Microsoft launched its curious Surface Pro hybrid earlier this week, but it turns out that actually trying to buy one was a bit more problematic than people had hoped. Folks looking to get their hands on one of the 128GB models had it especially rough — the $999 device sold out in Microsoft’s online store and some of the company’s retail outlets, not to mention some Best Buy and Staples locations. Well, from Surface GM Panos Panay, the process of snagging a 128GB Surface Pro will be much easier in just a few days — he confirmed that units were on their way to Best Buy and Microsoft retail stores and that they would be ready to sell by Saturday. Naturally, Panay didn’t let that tentative timeframe slip uncajoled — he engaged the masses on Twitter in an hour-long chat earlier today that also saw him tackle questions about the Surface Pro’s stylus and the company’s toe-tapping commercials. It wasn’t until a user named @EvanSturdivant pressed Panay on the generic statement about Surface Pro availability he had previously issued that the truth finally came out. At first glance, all these reports of Surface Pro sell-outs seem to point to a considerable amount of demand for the product — Paul Thurrott noted in some Microsoft stores — but we’ve since learned that the scarcity of the Surface Pro may have had more to do with limited supply than overwhelming demand. Both 64 and 128GB Surface Pros were apparently in short supply when , and had to schlep to a Microsoft Store 50 miles from where he lived because it was the only place he could find a 128GB model. As is usually the case, some people began to cook up some strange conspiracy theories (like one that claimed Microsoft deliberately limited supplies in order to say that it had sold out of Surface Pros), but I seriously doubt that’s the case. Sure, the whole rigmarole was a headache for people itching for a high-end Surface Pro, but the smart money’s on all this being an issue of mismanagement and not malice.
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With MWC Nearing, More Evidence Of A Nokia Tablet Emerges
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Matt Burns
| 2,013 | 2 | 12 |
A tablet is the missing piece of Nokia’s mobile strategy. So far the company about its plans, but more evidence of a Nokia tablet at Pakistan Nokia event. For a brief moment, the stage’s screen showed a tablet, likely a 7-inch, alongside a Nokia 620 and a large desktop screen, possibly demonstrating a Surface Pro-ish device. Nokia is striving for a complete mobile ecosystem centered around Windows. The company has successfully positioned its Lumia line as the premier Windows Phone line, and it’s completely possible that the brand could move into the tablet space as well. For the nostalgic, a Nokia tablet could be the 3390 to Windows Mobile world. Right now Windows tablets are priced to compete. The Surface RT is the same price as the iPad and the Pro costs as much as an Ultrabook or MacBook Air. If Nokia could squeak out a budget Win8/RT tablet at a lower price point, it could help both Microsoft and Nokia. The tablet shown at the Pakistan event looks like a smaller model — probably 7-, to 8-inches. At that size and perhaps with the help of a plastic casing, Nokia could preemptively sweep the small Windows tablet space much like the Kindle Fire did the mini tablet market. As much as Windows tablets needs more compelling hardware, it needs compelling apps as well. And, hopefully like with other platforms, the two will grow simultaneously. Hopefully with more hardware partners jumping on board, more developers will see the opportunity and start coding for Windows 8/RT. Nokia is gearing up for a big showing at MWC. The show is in two weeks and if a tablet is in the works for 2013, it will likely debut at largest mobile conference in the world
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Fitbit’s Updated Android App Packs Wireless Sync Support For Samsung’s Galaxy S III and Note II
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Chris Velazco
| 2,013 | 2 | 12 |
Nike may not be planning to release an Android companion app for its , but rival Fitbit is eager to make sure that health-conscious Droid owners are well taken care of. To that end, the company pushed out a new version of its Fitbit Android app that finally brings Bluetooth 4.0 sync support to Samsung’s Galaxy S III and Galaxy Note II. It’s sure to be welcome news for Android-devoted owners of the Fitbit One or Fitbit Zip (the forthcoming Flex wristband is supported too), but let’s face it — wireless sync support for two smartphones may seem a little underwhelming. Still, it’s certainly a step in the right direction, especially considering just how widely those particular Samsung handsets are. As more than a few people pointed out the other day, Android-powered devices make up a huge chunk of the global smartphone market and basically ignoring all those users like Nike has is a course of action that seems awfully silly.Even so, Fitbit’s slow rollout is rather telling — while the company has said that it will work to bring wireless syncing to more devices in the weeks and months to come, ensuring a smooth and timely sync experience doesn’t really seem to be a one-size-fits-all process. Even Fitbit representatives acknowledge that this most recent version of the app isn’t exactly perfect. Apparently, the development team still thinks of this release as something of a beta since the sync process still takes a little longer than they would like. Sadly, my Fitbit has disappeared into the wilds of my desk drawer, so I couldn’t see how long it took for me personally, but those of you with all the prerequisite hardware may as well give it a shot.
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Facebook Employees Do The “Harlem Shake”
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Alexia Tsotsis
| 2,013 | 2 | 13 |
[youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dXC85PNVms4&w=640&h=360] Multiple Facebook employees just shared of a bunch of Facebookers doing the dance at their HQ. Supposedly some of the Instagram team and COO participated, but I can’t spot them (oh, but please try best to). I wonder if Zuck is the Smiley Face lemon balloon guy…? Of course this made our team jealous. “Just as with ‘Shit Tech Reporters Say,’ ‘Call Me Maybe,’ and ‘Gangnam Style,’ TechCrunch was slow on the draw to produce its own gag-inducing meme-following viral video,” sullenly remarked. “Let’s change that next time, people!” If you don’t know what the Harlem Shake is, you should a) befriend more people with the access and desire to use the Internet and b) read on how to replicate the phenomenon. Here’s the video that started it all, via
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Unlike Netflix Subscribers, HBO Viewers Aren’t Binge Viewers
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Ryan Lawler
| 2,013 | 2 | 12 |
At the D: Dive Into Media conference over the last few days, we’ve heard a lot of executives discuss the big paradigm shift of binge-watching being brought about thanks to Netflix and DVRs. But not everyone loves to watch TV that way. According to HBO President and COO Eric Kessler, binge viewing is an edge case for its viewers. “Only about 6 percent of our viewers binge-watch our shows,” Kessler said. Despite the large amount of content that is available through its various on-demand offerings and its HBO Go streaming service, he said HBO viewers really only binge watch in the lead-up to the launch of new seasons. For instance, the third season of Game of Thrones will premiere next month, and HBO viewers who might not have watched the show will catch up to become part of the conversation when it launches. That’s key, as the company seeks to get more subscribers tuning in for various new series episodes, and talking about them. And, in fact, the social media aspect is one reason why HBO probably won’t follow the Netflix model and start releasing all of its serialized TV episodes all at once. Kessler noted that HBO TV shows typically kill off major characters. Releasing all the episodes at once would not only lead to huge spoiler problems, but it also means that its shows wouldn’t benefit from the typical weekly watercooler conversation that occurs. And that’s especially important, since the vast majority of HBO viewing still happens live. Kessler said that 80 percent of viewing happens on HBO live, with about 16 percent happening through cable VOD. Just 2-3 percent comes through HBO GO viewership. Until that changes, HBO will want to keep its viewers coming back week after week.
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Instagram Seeks To Dismiss Class Action Lawsuit Over Policy Changes
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Catherine Shu
| 2,013 | 2 | 13 |
Instagram a federal court on Wednesday to throw out a class action lawsuit filed by users upset over the photo-sharing app’s changes to its terms of service. The lawsuit was in December by an Instagram user who accused it of breach of contract, among other claims. As many people will recall (because the controversy dragged on for a while), an update in Instagram’s terms of service and privacy policy, which was introduced so it could better collaborate with Facebook after the social networking service purchased it, who worried that their photos would be sold or used in ads without their permission. Instagram founder Kevin Systrom changed , but it kept language indicating “that we may not always identify paid services, sponsored content, or commercial communications as such.” Instagram also kept wording that gives it the ability to place ads related to user content, as well as a new mandatory arbitration clause that means users waive their rights to participate in class action lawsuits under almost all circumstances (the lawsuit came before the new TOS went in effect on January 19). The lawsuit, filed by San Diego law firm Finkelstein & Krinsk, alleged that even if users delete their Instagram account, they forfeit rights to photos they have already uploaded to the service. In its filing on Wednesday, Instagram argued that plaintiff Lucy Funes has no right to bring her claim because she could have deleted her account before the changes in the terms of service went int effect. The changes were announced on December 17, before Systrom changed them a few days later in response to the controversy. Funes filed her lawsuit on December 21, about a month before new terms of service went into effect on January 19, and continued to use her account after that day, according to Instagram’s filing. Instagram also disputed Funes’ claims that the policy changes meant she transferred rights to her photos to the company. Facebook declined to comment. I’ve also reached out to Finkelstein & Krinsk for comment.
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YouTube Opens A Production Space In Tokyo To Help Creators Make Better Videos
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Ryan Lawler
| 2,013 | 2 | 13 |
Over the past few years, YouTube has been dramatically increasing the resources that it provides to the creative community that uploads videos on its platform. Starting with the acquisition of Next New Networks back in TK, the company has been investing in providing tools, equipment, funding, and guidance to its legion of creators, in an effort to help them improve the quality of their content. Recently, that’s included the opening of production facilities in London ahead of the 2012 Olympics, and in Los Angeles last fall. Those spaces were meant to attract creators in Europe and North America. Now Asia, specifically Japan, is getting its own creator space, with the launch of a production facility in the Roppongi Hills complex in Tokyo. Like the other YouTube Spaces, the Tokyo facility will be open to select who will be able to use it free of charge to launch ambitious new projects, get their hands on advanced equipment, or just hone their skills while collaborating with other creators. Typically, creators gain access to the spaces by applying at . YouTube will begin taking applications on April 1, and will make its choices for those who will participate later in the spring. Those who are accepted get three months to use the production facilities, including access to sound stages, as well as the use high-quality cameras, lights, production and editing equipment. The Space has three production studios, equipment rooms, screening rooms, and post-production facilities, including edit bays and a foley room. In addition to providing support for on-demand content uploaded by YouTube creators, the space will host screenings of their content, and will also have live events. That includes live-streamed music sessions and Google Hangouts, including a concert by Japanese singer Juju later this week on February 15. While YouTube continues to offer guidance and funding to independent creators through the launch of production spaces in places like L.A. and Tokyo, as well as other initiatives, it’s not alone. A number of multichannel networks like Machinima, Maker Studios, and others have emerged to provide marketing and production support to creators looking to increase their audiences.
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Apple Will Release Fix For iOS 6.1 Microsoft Exchange Bug
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Catherine Shu
| 2,013 | 2 | 13 |
Apple for a bug that causes excess activity on Microsoft Exchange accounts after users accept an exception to a recurring calendar event, and will make it available in an upcoming software update. The bug is troublesome enough that some corporate IT departments have blocked their own devices from their Exchange servers, . Of course this isn’t the first fix Apple has had to issue for its latest iOS update. At the beginning of this week, the company released iOS 6.1.1, a bux-fixing update aimed at the iPhone 4S that targeted cellular issues on 3G connections for some European carriers. As Darrell Etherington , the update had been in beta for just five days, a much shorter cycle than Apple usually goes through for each new iOS update. This may have been because two European mobile operators-Vodafone UK and 3 Austria-sent subscribers text messages warning them not to update their iPhone 4S to iOS 6.1 because it prompted 3G connection issues. The lack of urgency shown by Apple with this particular bug fix is annoying enterprise users, who have been finding their since Apple won’t let them move back to iOS 6.0. iOS users who experience the Microsoft Exchange-related bug “may notice increased network activity or reduced battery life in the iOS device. This extra network activity will be shown in the logs on Exchange Server and it may lead to the server blocking the iOS device,” according to Apple’s statement. Apps affected include Microsoft Exchange 2010 SP1 or later and Microsoft Exchange Online (Office365) running on iOS 6.1. Apple said that before it releases its next software update, users can avoid the bug by not responding to an exception to a recurring event on their iOS devices. If they do, here’s the workaround Apple suggests: Go to Select the Exchange account from your Accounts list. Turn the switch for Calendars to OFF. Wait ten seconds. Turn the switch for Calendars back to ON.
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Singapore Media Outlet e27 Gets $615K To Expand Into Southeast Asia
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Victoria Ho
| 2,013 | 2 | 13 |
Singaporean media outfit, , has raised about US$615,000 (S$760,000) through a funding round with investors in the region, and plans to expand into Southeast Asia. The round was raised with B Dash Ventures from Japan, Pinehurst Advisors in Taiwan, Ardent Capital in Thailand and Dan Neary in Singapore. e27 has been around since 2006 and runs a news site on tech startups in Asia, and organizes conferences. Mohan Belani, e27’s CEO and co-founder, said that he is looking to hire editorial staff in Thailand, Indonesia and the Philippines. The company’s focus, however, will remain on its annual flagship event called , he added. Last year, about 3,000 people attended Echelon, which also drew 50 startups and 150 investors. Echelon 2013 will be held on June 4 and 5 in Singapore this year. After this funding round, B Dash Ventures CEO, Hiroyuki Watanabe, will join e27’s board. Current members are Nic Lim (8capita) and founders, Belani and Thaddeus Koh. Belani said that the company has been bootstrapped so far, except for a small angel round raised in early 2012 by 8capita.
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Bislr Launches Tools To Build Marketing-Optimized Websites, Raises $3.5M From Tim Draper And Others
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Anthony Ha
| 2,013 | 2 | 13 |
, a startup that’s officially launching today, was built to solve one of the problems that CEO Michael Sharkey said that he himself faced in his past startups — the need to quickly build a website that integrates the different applications that marketers use. So Bislr integrates with existing marketing automation (MA) and customer relationship management (CRM) tools, layering on a drag-and-drop website builder and additional analytics. The idea is to allow marketers to launch new campaign websites without having to consult a developer, and those sites collect relevant customer data and be easily edited based on that data. The company is also announcing that it has raised $3.5 million in Series A funding led by , with participation by Tim Draper and Terry and Katrina Garnett. Sharkey gave me a quick demo covering a number of the major features. The basic building blocks of a Bislr websites include the company’s “social apps”, which allow marketers to easily embed content from your social networking accounts onto the company website — so if they come up with a brilliant promotional video, they’re not driving traffic to YouTube, but to their own site. And the websites are automatically optimized for mobile and other Behind the scenes, Bislr also creates a profile of each visitor and “everything they’re doing when they’re touching the site,” Sharkey said. When possible, it also pulls social data from around the web about each visitor — so businesses can see in real-time tweets and Facebook updates from people visiting their site. And the service makes it easy to act on that data, too. For example, if a business wants to test out different wording or different designs, Bislr can run A/B tests on a small group of users, then automatically select the version that’s better. Sharkey founded the company with his two brothers. They’ve been testing out the system with a few small businesses, he said, but now they’ve opened up and are ready to serve larger customers.
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So Yeah, There’s Gonna Be A Vince Vaughn And Owen Wilson Movie About Life As A Google Intern
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Colleen Taylor
| 2,013 | 2 | 13 |
[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a8DjuGlVknQ]
Geographically Hollywood is away from Silicon Valley, but it seems like the two are getting closer and closer in metaphorical ways. The latest example of this is , the new buddy movie starring Vince Vaughn and Owen Wilson that’s set to premiere this upcoming summer. In it, Vaughn and Wilson play middle-aged laid off salesmen who somehow nab internships at Google. Bespectacled genius 20-somethings are their bosses, they don’t exactly fit in, and of course hilarity ensues. It’s no surprise that the somewhat wacky world of today’s tech industry is attractive story fodder to showbiz types: showed just how can be on the big screen. And what it’s like to work at companies such as Facebook and Google have held special allure to the mainstream for years now (as I say in my , my spouse works at Google — and every holiday season he fields questions about widely-reported job perks like free food from even our most unplugged family members.) But what a bit surprising is the degree to which it seems Google participated in the making of . The cast is to Google’s Mountain View headquarters as they were preparing to make the movie, and Google itself has put out an that says: “We’re excited that Vince Vaughn and Owen Wilson chose the Google campus as a backdrop for their first film together since Wedding Crashers.” Yesterday, Google’s (a famously that typically only adds occasional links to its own new products or big charity causes) even included a to a that was apparently part of the movie’s promotional push. It’s a far cry from, say, Facebook’s response to , which was punctuated by a few . They are two very different types of movies, of course, but it is interesting to see a company play along so much here. Anyway. The trailer just hit the web today, and it’s embedded above.
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U.S. District Court Dismisses Suit In Facebook IPO, Says Company Disclosed Risks
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Kim-Mai Cutler
| 2,013 | 2 | 13 |
A U.S. District Court in New York dismissed a shareholder lawsuit that claimed Facebook executives including Mark Zuckerberg and COO Sheryl Sandberg didn’t disclose enough about risks to the company’s advertising business as consumers shifted to mobile devices. In a separate Facebook-related case against NASDAQ, the same judge denied a motion to move the case to a different court. It’s a win for Facebook, as the company wades through a mess of litigation following its rocky IPO. “We are pleased with the court’s ruling,” the company said in a statement. The company’s shares have never recovered to the initial $38 price that the company sold stock at on its May 18 debut. The IPO, which raised about $16 billion for the company and early shareholders, was the most anticipated one since Google in 2004. Because Facebook’s shares have fallen more than 25 percent since the IPO, some investors have inevitably been disappointed. In this case, they said that Facebook executives sold billions of dollars of stock in the IPO even as internal projections suggested that the company’s revenues would fall short of earlier estimates. But the judge Robert W. Sweet said that the plaintiffs William Cole, Hal Hubuschman and Linda Levy bought their shares on the day of the IPO, well after Facebook had made several amendments to its IPO filing. Those amendments including warnings about the unproven ability of the company to make money on mobile platforms. The plaintiffs also cited several reports in the media that Facebook had lowered guidance to analysts, who then selectively disclosed that information to investors. In his ruling, Sweet said that even if Facebook disclosed internal projections that might have been material to the IPO, the plaintiffs hadn’t proven that it would have “significantly altered the total mix of information in the marketplace.” He also said that the timing of Zuckerberg’s decision to sell stock during the IPO wasn’t suspicious either because many executives routinely sell stock during public offerings. Lawyers for Facebook’s executives also argued that the case didn’t belong in that court or in California court, but instead in Delaware where Facebook is incorporated. In a separate class-action lawsuit against NASDAQ for allegedly botching orders on the day of the IPO, Sweet denied a motion to remand, or move the case to another court. The plaintiff in that case, Michael Zack, wanted the case to be heard in New York’s State Supreme Court. He had filed a case on behalf of all Facebook investors, charging NASDAQ with negligence in the design of their trading systems. As Facebook’s opening trade was delayed, trades and order cancellations weren’t being handled normally as the auction software couldn’t keep up with last-minute order changes. Slightly after trading had started, Zack said he issued a “cancel order” around 11:30 a.m., but it wasn’t processed until an hour and a half later. In the court’s ruling, Sweet argued that issues with NASDAQ’s trading system fall under federal, not state, jurisdiction since the system is designed in accordance with the SEC. This suit is one of 11 class action filings against NASDAQ for the Facebook IPO. At least with the rulings that came out today, Facebook appears to be getting through all the lingering litigation following its controversial IPO. by
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Opera Sings The Final Song With Its Rendering Engine, Decides To Shift To WebKit
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Drew Olanoff
| 2,013 | 2 | 13 |
Opera is that company that everyone knows about but never really stopped to understand why it is so important. The Norway-based company has always been an , and calling out the big guys for injustices put upon web developers and Internet surfers. It’s not a sexy position to be in, but Opera has always stood its ground. Today, Opera has in lieu of WebKit, the core development platform used by Chrome and Safari. In a way, today is a sad day. The company might have fallen on its own sword for the greater good, one final time. By never having the pole position in the “browser war,” Opera had the freedom to try new things and make noise about the issues that really matter, including being able to choose your default browser on the desktop. There was a time when Microsoft PC users had no option of which browser to use; Internet Explorer came bundled with the operating system. It was an anti-trust situation — a monopoly if you will. Opera stood up and fought. How hard has it fought? Here’s a quote from then-CEO of Opera, Jon von Tetzchner, from a which announced Opera’s EU anti-trust complaint against Microsoft: We are filing this complaint on behalf of all consumers who are tired of having a monopolist make choices for them. In addition to promoting the free choice of individual consumers, we are a champion of open Web standards and cross-platform innovation. We cannot rest until we’ve brought fair and equitable options to consumers worldwide. This quote is what Opera stands for, and with today’s announcement, a little bit of Opera died. Von Tetzchner and the company became decreasingly aggressive in the years after. When von Tetzchner left, he sent a very strong-worded and poignant email describing how things had fallen apart: It has become clear that The Board, Management and I do not share the same values and we do not have the same opinions on how to keep evolving Opera. From its own blog post, you can tell how hard this decision was to make, as it was something that was better for users and developers, both of whom Opera cares deeply about: On the same day as announcing that Opera has 300 million users, we’re also announcing that for all new products Opera will use WebKit as its rendering engine and V8 as its JavaScript engine. It’s built using the open-source Chromium browser as one of its components. Of course, a browser is much more than just a renderer and a JS engine, so this is primarily an “under the hood” change. Consumers will initially notice better site compatibilty, especially with mobile-facing sites – many of which have only been tested in WebKit browsers. The first product will be for Smartphones, which we’ll demonstrate at Mobile World Congress in Barcelona at the end of the month. Opera Desktop and other products will transition later. Opera has always pushed so hard to make its browser fast, as if to make the web sing for people all over the world, no matter what type of device they’re on. The company has also made tabbed browsing something we’re all used to, by making it faster than everyone else did at the time. By choosing to develop its product on top of WebKit, it is, in essence, giving up. It’s not a stretch to say that Google was able to pass Microsoft with its Chrome browser because all of the work that Opera has put into the space, tirelessly fighting for more cross-platform friendliness and putting an end to a No. 1-by-default situation. A sentiment of sadness is being shared by developers and former Opera employees: [tweet https://twitter.com/annevk/status/301605909619150848] However, not everyone is crying about the move, considering the fact that if Opera can bring its tenacity to developing for WebKit, everyone wins. Sr. Director of User Interface Engineering at PayPal, Bill Scott, shared these thoughts with us: I am a big fan of webkit because I am focused on the user’s experience more than I am with being a standards purist. I know that some of my colleagues feel like that we as web developer’s failed because we did not ensure all of our experiences worked on Opera. But what they forget is that this is a marketplace. Companies can only reasonably test on just a few platforms. At the end of the day our users shouldn’t have to pay for our fractured platforms. In no other software area do we have to deal with this many “standards”. Moving closer to a single platform means we can spend more time building experiences rather than showing off our encyclopedic knowledge of browser variants to one another. Netflix took the approach in late 2009 to settle on webkit as their SDK for all TV experiences which folded nicely into mobile & tablet strategy (by and large this is webkit). I know that the web team there had some browser envy since the TV team could just code for webkit. But being able to settle on webkit really made development move a lot faster. If we can take the talent of the Opera team and apply it to webkit this will be a big win. And if we could just get IE to switch then we will have arrived at near-nirvana. The tide has turned today, but we know that without Opera’s work on keeping browsers speedy and open, yet standarized, there wouldn’t be a Firefox or a Chrome or any other alternative browser. The “nirvana” that Scott mentions is a place where developers know exactly what they’re coding for, without worry that they’ll have to refactor everything for a completely different platform. If Microsoft were to shift to WebKit, you can thank Opera. Again. [Photo credit: ]
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Scout Can Wirelessly Protect Your Groovy, Wood-Panelled Bachelor Pad
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John Biggs
| 2,013 | 2 | 13 |
is a wireless security system that starts at $120 and is completely removable. The handsomely-designed units can protect windows and doors in your home and you can program reactions to various events including and up to calling the police. I’ve seen a come and go over the years and this one, at least, has that quality that we all know and love. The units come in three different finishes – white, black, and the afore-mentioned wood trim – and each installation is customizable online. Service over Wi-Fi is free and the system will send alerts and even dial the police for you on your connected phone. However, the units also contain a 3G radio that can be activated for $10 a month and which will connect to a monitoring service that, in turn, will call the police, you, or a loved one. A team at created Scout after playing with open source hardware. “Home security is such an outdated industry,” said Lindsay Cohen, a VP at Sandbox. “We chose home security because existing systems are extremely expensive, use outdated equipment and are inflexible for consumers,” she said. “You can’t move systems from house to house, existing companies lock you into 3 year contracts and setup often involves landlines and technicians. Overall, home security is just a giant headache.” The system came about when the team at Sandbox began playing with sensing technology. “Over the summer of 2012, we were working extensively with motion tracking technology (Kinect, PIR, Sonar), capacitive touch sensing, biometrics and other open source sensors. We realized that what we could create, for the price we could create it for, was far and beyond what was being offered by current security companies. We felt that this was a huge opportunity to bring home security into today’s high tech world.” “We’re excited to get Scout into production as a first foray into hardware startups. In addition to continuing to pursue our software ventures, we see hardware as a potentially promising arena for Sandbox,” she said. The units won’t be available until August and campaign right now that will expire this month. It’s a clever and handsome way to protect your home from potential miscreants, to be sure, and the groovy design and bulbous motion-sensors will match your 60s-era Dalek decor. [youtube=https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ir1lXII0VdM&feature=player_embedded]
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Google Countersues UK Telco BT Over Patent Infringement In Its Conferencing and IP Quality Of Service Products
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Ingrid Lunden
| 2,013 | 2 | 13 |
today stepped up its battle to protect its patents, with the latest target a countersuit against , the UK incumbent telecoms carrier, along with , which resells some of BT’s services. The suit relates to four patents that Google says are being infringed by enterprise services that BT runs over its IP network, specifically relating to its conferencing services and quality of service assurance products. Google today filed a suit in the U.S. District Court for the Central District of California, which we have embedded below. TechCrunch understands that BT will be served with papers tomorrow (Thursday) in the UK, at which point that suit will become available as well. The lawsuit in the U.S. was first noticed by earlier today. The patents in question are U.S. Patent numbers 5,581,703; 5,701,465; 6,807,166; and 7,460,558. And specifically, Google is suing BT Conferencing, BT Americas, BT INS and Ipanema Technologies. Google’s suit filed today is in response to BT’s original patent claims against the search giant, which it made in . Those were not related to the same services that Google is claiming against BT. Rather, BT is suing Google over patent infringement related to its Android mobile operating system. BT owns some 5,000 patents including many in the areas of Internet and wireless technology, as well as telephony. We have reached out to BT regarding today’s suit and are awaiting a reply. We’ll update this post as we learn more. For now, a Google spokesperson tells us that litigation is a “last resort” for the company: “We have always seen litigation as a last resort, and we work hard to avoid lawsuits. But BT has brought several meritless patent claims against Google and our customers–and they’ve also been arming patent trolls. When faced with these kind of actions, we will defend ourselves.” It also sounds like negotiations have grown acrimonious between the two companies in the 13 months since BT first filed its patent claims against Google: TechCrunch also understands that BT is engaging in a practice called “patent privateering,” in which it sells its patents on to a third party for that third party to then file suits against Google or another defendant. BT subsequently gets a cut of any of the proceeds of any patent suits or licensees signed related to those patents. This is a pretty common practice in the world of patents; Ericsson reached a similar arrangement for proceeds from patents in its recent . Google says it has already been sued by one such company related to BT patents, Suffolk Technologies. This week is shaping up to be a legal blitz for Google in Europe. Earlier today, we wrote about another suit that Google filed, in Russia, on February 11, which was an as part of the country’s new firewall. : BT has come back to us with a comment on the cases: “BT’s policy is not to comment on pending litigation.” [scribd id=125386454 key=key-jrex1yqiz2qhs13axx7 mode=scroll] Image:
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Zillow Q4 Beats Analysts With $34.3M Revenue, Mobile Visits Topped 50% Of Dec. Total
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Anthony Ha
| 2,013 | 2 | 13 |
Real estate site came in ahead of analyst estimates in its just-released , with $34.3 million in revenue and net income of $0.5 million. The revenue number is a record for the company, and it’s also up 73 percent year-over-year. Of the total, $26.8 million came from the marketplace and $7.5 million came from display advertising. Zillow also reported earnings per share of 2 cents. Analysts had revenue of $31.47 million and earnings of 0 cents per share. This continues . The numbers involved here aren’t exactly overwhelming, so the growth in the company’s mobile traffic may be more interesting than the earnings win. In December, more than 50 percent of Zillow visits came from mobile. The company says that on weekends, mobile accounts for 60 percent of traffic. Overall, Zillow averaged 34.5 million unique monthly visitors for the quarter. “The quarter capped off a pivotal year of tremendous growth and we’re looking forward to 2013 as we focus on three core priorities: attracting more users with great products and services; growing our Premier Agent business with unmatched value and tools; and accelerating our emerging mortgage, rental and home improvement marketplaces,” said CEO Spencer Rascoff in the earnings release. In that vein, the release also notes that Zillow , a Pinterest-style home improvement site, and that in the fourth quarter, it completed the acquisitions of , and . Total revenue for 2012 was $116.9 million (up 77 percent) and total net income was $5.9 million (compared to $1.1 million in 2011). Yesterday, newly public competitor that also beat estimates. As of 5:46pm Eastern, Zillow is up 7.8 percent in after-hours trading.
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Google Now For Android Integrates Rotten Tomatoes Reviews, Fandango Tickets And Zillow Real Estate Listings
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Frederic Lardinois
| 2,013 | 2 | 13 |
Google just a few more features to on Android 4.1+. Starting today, Android users will be able to see information from even more third-party services on Google Now, including movie ratings from , tickets you have purchased on and, if Google realizes you are looking for real estate, listings from . Google has been expanding its list of Google Now features at a steady pace since the service launched last summer. This is the fourth major update to the service and, as Google notes, Now will “continue to get better at delivering you more of the information you need, before you even ask.” The Rotten Tomatoes listings will appear in the regular movie card that Now already displays, and the Fandango integration is similar to what Google is already doing with other reservations from its partners you may have for restaurants, flights hotels and events. The new Zillow card will show you nearby real estate listings when Google sees that you regularly look for real estate sites. It’s not clear how smart this card is (does Google know how much house you can afford?), but it will surely drive new traffic to Zillow and could turn out to be useful for those looking for a new home. Until now, all of this information only lived in the dedicated Google Now screen on Android, but the team also just launched a widget in connection with the Google Search app that brings this information front and center on your home screen. [youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SpaLZOjqMew?feature=player_embedded]
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John Biggs
| 2,013 | 2 | 12 | null |
YC-Backed Pixelapse Brings GitHub-Style Sharing & Version Control To Your Design Projects
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Chris Velazco
| 2,013 | 2 | 13 |
Sharing and keeping tabs on code is relatively simple for coders thanks to GitHub and the like, but developers aren’t the only folks who could benefit from services like that. Designers could also use a smarter way to manage their projects, and that’s exactly the sort of niche that San Francisco-based is aiming to fill. The problem first really came to light when co-founder Min Ming Lo spent time working as UX design intern at Google — as it turns out, the process of keeping tabs on designs and mockups there wasn’t pretty. “They didn’t really have a process to version-control their work,” co-founder/CEO Shravan Reddy said. “Everyone dumped their files in a single giant folder. It was hard to tell whose assets were whose. Giving feedback was a pain— it was kind of a mess.” Reddy went through some similar design headaches at his own job, and it wasn’t long until Pixelapse went from idle thought to Demo Days at at Stanford and Y Combinator. Reddy said that the team refers to Pixelapse internally as being like GitHub for designers, but after playing with it for a little while it’s hard not to include Dropbox in that comparison. Once the Pixelapse companion app has been installed, it creates a Pixelapse folder where users are meant to save their works in progress (in the event the user already has a folder for that sort of thing, they can point the app to monitor that instead). After that, Pixelapse quietly sits in the background and waits until the artist in question decides to get down to business. Whenever it detects that changes to a file in the pre-set folder have been made, it backs it up to the Pixelapse user’s allotted server space. This all sounds sort of mundane so far (though Reddy noted that “syncing was a tremendous problem” to get right), but the real magic happens once those files are saved to and viewed from Pixelapse servers. From there, users can log in and view a visual timeline of all the revisions made to their stored files, as well as download any of those revisions as needed. This, in short, is awesome. It gives those designers instant access to versions of their files that may not exist anymore for one, but it also serves to highlight the thinking that went into those projects. The ability to keep a running record of a person’s works in progress is neat enough, but Reddy’s vision for Pixelapse extends beyond just catering to individual designers looking for a way to track projects. The team is aiming to make Pixelapse a must-have tool for groups of co-workers, design firms, and internal design departments so they’ve also baked in the ability for invited collaborators to leave comments on the work in progress as well as visually annotate the images. Sharing with colleagues is one thing, but Reddy and the rest of the team also want to make the Pixelapse platform for learning instead of just meeting client demands. To that end, they’ve also built in a that encourages people to share their art (and the revisions that led up to it) with a community of like-minded designers. “When shared to the public, those revisions show the growth of a piece,” Reddy said. Meanwhile, the team is kicking around a bunch of ideas for the public site, like forking off existing designs and merging them back into the main project. It seems like Pixelapse is maybe trying too many things at once, but early traction paints a very positive portrait of its efforts. To date, over half a million image revisions have been hosted on Pixelapse, and while Reddy wouldn’t give me a firm number of users, he did note that Pixelapse’s user base has grown into the thousands since it first kicked off its private beta. A vast majority of those people don’t actually pay for the service though. Instead, they’re making do with the 1GB of free space that comes with the free account. In fairness, Pixelapse has only just rolled out its new tiered pricing plans, but the big question now is whether or not those non-paying users will convert to being actual customers. Still, it’s early days for Pixelapse, and I imagine more than a few designers will find reason to stick with the service.
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And That’s A Wrap! Last Night’s NYC TC Disrupt Pitch-Off Was A Blast
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Jordan Crook
| 2,013 | 2 | 13 |
Last night was the official in NYC, where three lucky startups won tickets to the Disrupt NY conference in April, one of which will get a spot on the Startup Alley floor. Over 20 companies competed, and over 800 attendees showed up to partake in the night of beer, pizza, and tech talk. Each pitch-off company was given 60 seconds to pitch their startup without the help of a demo, and then votes from the panel were tabulated alongside an audience choice vote. In the end, took home the first prize for their 3D printing file marketplace, while and were runner ups. We’re planning on doing more of these in the future, so stay tuned to see if we’ll be heading to your city for the next TC Pitch-Off. In the meantime, enjoy the video up above (and this for a taste of the action. [gallery columns="4" ids="757662,757663,757665,757666,757667,757668,757669,757670"] Again, a huge thanks to our awesome sponsors, , , and , without whom none of this would have been possible. Also, we must thank for his excellent photography skills.
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Brad Feld Is Looking For Founders To Live And Work Rent-Free In His New Kansas City ‘Fiberhouse’
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Colleen Taylor
| 2,013 | 2 | 13 |
, the Boulder, Colorado-based entrepreneur and early stage investor, is well known for new tech and entrepreneurial ecosystems in areas outside of the well-trodden Silicon Valley region. The most recent place on which he’s set his sights? Kansas City. The Kansas City metropolitan area (which spans both ) is of course home to the first , an Internet service provider project which is purportedly thanks to a 1-gigabit fiber optic cable installation. Google began rolling out Fiber in Kansas City , and this obviously has given Kansas City to be an ideal home for startups. To help kickstart the Kansas City entrepreneurial scene, Feld that he just closed on a new three-bedroom home in the first Google “Fiberhood,” Kansas City, Kansas’ Hanover Heights neighborhood. But he doesn’t plan to use it himself. Instead, he will open the space — which is being called the “ ” — to up to five startup founders to live and work in the house rent-free for one year. Applications to live in the Feld KC Fiberhouse are open . Up to five winners will be chosen based on the “innovative potential of their startups” by a panel of five judges — Feld, of Startup America Partnership, of TechStars, and of the Kauffman Foundation — who will finish their evaluation period on April 5th. Applicants must be 18 or over to be considered. This will be the second startup-focused home in the Hamilton Heights neighborhood. This past October, British ex-pat and startup enthusiast Ben Barreth as part of his new . In his blog post today, Feld said that his KC home purchase with Barreth. It’ll be really interesting to see who Feld and company select to join the KC Startup House, and what they end up building there (talk about a great potential visit!) To learn more about the Feld KC Startup House Competition, you can and apply .
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HP Reportedly Working On Android Smartphones And Tablets, Despite webOS Failures
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Darrell Etherington
| 2,013 | 2 | 13 |
HP is looking into getting back into the mobile hardware game, according to a new report from which the is being confirmed from their own sources. HP famously bought webOS and then brought a tablet to market based on that Palm-developed platform, the TouchPad, which ended up being a dismal failure that the company shut down very quickly. HP had also launched a smartphone, the Veer 4G based on webOS, but that also proved ineffective at capturing the attention of consumers. The company is apparently still looking to get back into the hardware game after a hiatus spanning a couple of years, however, with a new tablet featuring an NVIDIA Tegra 4 processor, which ReadWrite pegs for an imminent announcement, and is also considering Android-based smartphone for future development. Verge reports that the timeline sounds good, but scheduling could change for a tablet launch. After HP CEO Meg Whitman took over, she announced that the company would ultimately offer a smartphone to keep up with the fact that for many in the developing world, such a device is now their first and maybe only computer. That launch . But back in late 2011, Whitman did make statements to the effect that . While these reports suggest webOS is likely off the table, HP could stick to Whitman’s target plan of fielding a tablet device based on a mobile OS this year, but one based on Android instead of its own product, which it has since open-sourced. It shouldn’t come as a surprise that HP would dip its toes back in the mobile hardware pool even after suffering such a reversal the first time around. The fact is that mobile is where the computing industry is going, and the sagging fortunes of traditional mobile PC form factors like notebooks. And HP missed earnings expectations in Q4 2012, thanks in part to a continuing “decline in hardware.” A tablet isn’t a panacea for HP, however. The Android tablet market still has yet to find a champion that can compare to the iPad’s popularity, and there is plenty of competition out there for buyer attention. Fielding a device that impresses above and beyond what’s already out there, at a price point that turns heads is a basic requirement for Android tablet success at this point, from HP or from anyone else.
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LinkedIn CEO Jeff Weiner Pulls An Oprah, Gives Every Employee An iPad Mini
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Drew Olanoff
| 2,013 | 2 | 13 |
Technology is a wonderful thing, especially when your employer hooks you up with gadgets for free. Today, we’ve learned that LinkedIn has decided to give all of its employees an iPad mini. This reminds us of Oprah Winfrey giving things to her audience and exclaiming “You get an iPad, you get an iPad!” A spokesperson from LinkedIn confirmed this for us, as it’s not something that you’d want to report if it weren’t true. Employees could have gotten sad. We wanted to acknowledge the hard work and accomplishments of all of our employees in 2012. During today’s bi-weekly All Hands meeting, we surprised our employees with iPad Minis as a small gesture of the company’s gratitude for their contributions. Here’s a look at CEO Jeff Weiner standing with a whole bunch of them: [tweet https://twitter.com/duncanbrandon/status/301768431504601089] The gifts were given out because the company had such a great 2012, . The company currently has 3,500 employees, so if each costs $329, that’s $1,151,500.00. Someone at Apple is smiling. I wonder if they got a discount? In direct response, or not, we’re told by a source that every Intel R&D engineer just got a fully specced out at $1,500 a pop. I’ll take the iPad, thank you.
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TV Maker Loewe Shares Jump 45 Percent After Apple Buyout Rumors
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Romain Dillet
| 2,013 | 2 | 13 |
German luxury brand experienced a roller coaster day. A trader “Apple supposedly wants to bid 4 euros a share for Loewe,” which sent up as much as 44.5 percent to 3.93 compared to yesterday’s closing price of 2.72. The German stock exchange closed today with Loewe shares trading at 3.35, representing a one-day increase of 23.16 percent. In May 2012, rumors surfaced on that the company was interested in the German TV manufacturer. Even though Loewe denied the rumor and Apple declined to comment, a buyout wouldn’t be a big risk for Apple. Loewe’s market capitalization is around $58.6 million (€43.58 million). Yet, Apple would have to convince major shareholders. Sharp now owns 28.8 percent of shares, Loewe’s executives 14 percent and hard-drive manufacturer LaCie 11.2 percent. The German company reported $39 million (€29 million) in losses in 2012. Selling the company to Apple or anyone else would be a way to exit the tedious luxury TV market. The company is currently trying to cut 1,000 jobs, as well, in order to reduce costs. TV sets remain Loewe’s core product, but the company now manufactures Blu-ray players, DVD recorders, hard-disk recorders, multiroom systems, speakers and racks. For Apple, Loewe could represent another small strategic acquisition. Yesterday, Tim Cook said that the company closes a deal . But analysts and traders may be reading too far into the rumors, which were alone responsible for Loewe’s share increase today. It remains to be seen whether those analysts are too excited by Apple’s rumored TV plans or whether they are actually hearing talks between the two companies.
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Meteor Crash Reportedly Injured Over 100 People In Russia
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Gregory Ferenstein
| 2,013 | 2 | 14 |
Fragments of a meteor reportedly crash landed in Russia, causing an explosion that injured over 100 people. Amateur video of the meteor streaking across the sky (below) have gone viral and the Interior minister has confirmed that 102 people had called for medical assistance, “mostly for treatment of injuries from glass broken by the explosions,” to the AP. [youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=90Omh7_I8vI&w=560&h=315] The hit the town of Satka, in the Chelyabinsk region, which is about 830 miles east of Moscow. Well, this is officially the craziest thing I’ve heard all month. We’ll update readers as more information comes in.
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Heroku Admits To Performance Degradation Over The Past 3 Years After Criticism From Rap Genius
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Frederic Lardinois
| 2,013 | 2 | 14 |
, the popular cloud application platform, may not be quite as fast today as it was three years ago. Yesterday, ‘ James Somers , posted a , arguing that Heroku had quietly changed the way it distributes tasks from Ruby on Rails apps across the Amazon EC2 machines it makes available to its users at some point in the last few years without alerting developers of this change. Instead of intelligently routing requests to the next available server, as Heroku did in its early days, Somers argued that it now distributes requests randomly, resulting in increased queuing times. Today, Heroku’s general manager Oren Teich that this is indeed the case. “We failed to explain how our product works,” Teich wrote this evening. “We failed to help our customers scale. We failed our community at large. I want to personally apologize, and commit to resolving this issue.” According to him, Heroku users have indeed “experienced a degradation in performance over the past 3 years as we have scaled.” Heroku’s goal, he wrote, is to be the best platform for all developers. “In this case, we did not succeed. But we will make it right.” Tomorrow, Teich promises, the company will post an in-depth technical review and the company will also soon provide developers with a clearer picture of what their apps’ queue of web requests really looks like. He also promises that Heroku will update its documentation and give developers tools to understand how to improve the performance of their apps. The degraded performance is especially visible for sites like Rap Genius, which use a large amount of so-called Heroku “dynos,” which are essentially customized on-demand Amazon EC2 instances (there are web and worker dynos, but the problem here only seems to affect the web dynos). In its current , Heroku implies that it uses “ ” to route web requests to the next available machine. As Somers discovered, however, the distribution is actually random, which means that many requests can end up in a queue even though there are dynos available that are currently idle. Heroku charges for each of these and the quickly growing Rap Genius currently pays about $20,000 per month to run most of its critical its infrastructure on the platform. For a very in-depth look at how Rap Genius uses Heroku and how Somers figured out that Heroku, take some time out of your busy schedule and read his post .
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After Revealing Shift To WebKit, Opera Will Buy Mobile Video Optimization Provider Skyfire Labs For $155 Million
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Catherine Shu
| 2,013 | 2 | 14 |
Opera Software is buying mobile video optimization and cloud solutions provider Skyfire Labs for about $155 million in cash and stock, the Oslo-based company announced today. The news comes a few days after Opera revealed that it plans to transition its Web browsers to WebKit to increase competitiveness on Android and iOS. Skyfire will remain open as a wholly-owned subsidiary of Opera and will continue to develop and support the Skyfire browser. The press release by Opera said that the two companies “envision a powerful new set of joint products to be released over the coming year,” with a particular focus on Opera’s WebPass, which gives consumers the option of buying data plans such as an unlimited “day pass” for popular apps and Web sites at prices made affordable by video and data optimization. Opera believes that the product “can enable new business models for operators, such as toll free data, ad-supported data, and more.” “The market opportunity for video/media optimization solutions geared towards operators and consumers is significant. After a thorough evaluation of this market, we strongly believe Skyfire is the clear leader for the future in this space”, said Erik Harrell, CFO/CSO of Opera, in the statement. Skyfire is known as the maker of Rocket Optimizer software, which allows mobile operators to leverage cloud computing and optimize video and multimedia on cell towers, including 3G and 4G LTE networks. The company says that Rocket Optimizer on average gives mobile networks a 60 percent boost in capacity by reducing the size of video and other multimedia to fit available bandwith, and detecting when specific users have connections that need assistance. “Skyfire adds capabilities to our portfolio around video, app optimization, smartphones and tablets, and strength in North America. With video expected to consume over two-thirds of global mobile bandwidth by 2015, and as time spent on Android and iOS apps explodes, we are excited to extend Opera’s solutions for operators,” said Opera CEO Lars Boilesen in the release. The deal is expected to close on March 15. Afterward, Jeffrey Glueck, CEO of Skyfire, will assume the role of EVP of the Operator Business for Opera, as well as CEO of Skyfire.
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The Fall TV Lineup May Include Apple Dominating Gaming
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MG Siegler
| 2,013 | 2 | 14 |
What I’m about to say is undoubtedly going to piss some of you off. And that’s fine. Because in a few years, I’ll be right and you’ll look silly. While everyone is focused on the next generation video game consoles from Nintendo, Sony, and Microsoft — the latter two of which should be coming later this year — Apple is going to dominate them all. And it won’t even be that difficult. Now, it’s not like this is a completely insane notion. Anyone who has been following the smartphone space for the past few years knows that Apple has sort of backed into video game dominance by way of their iOS devices. Apple has sold over 500 million of them. These devices have yielded over 40 billion downloads of the over 800,000 apps. And a large portion of those apps are games. To put that in perspective, Microsoft has sold roughly 75 million Xbox 360s worldwide — and that product launched over seven years ago. The iPhone — the first iOS device — launched five and a half years ago. And there were no third-party games until a year after that. Sony’s sales for the PS3 are nearly identical to the Microsoft numbers (it ). Nintendo has sold roughly 100 million Wiis since it went on sale just over six years ago. They have also sold about 150 million handheld DSes since 2004 (if you add all the varieties together). Even if you lump together the Xbox 360, the Playstation 3, the Wii, and the Nintendo DS, Apple has still sold about 100 million more iOS devices than all of those systems . And again, in a much shorter span. Perhaps because the iOS devices are multi-purpose devices, you don’t see a lot of comparisons between something like the iPad and the Xbox/Playstation/Wii. Those are video game consoles, you see. Totally different, they say. Not for long, I say. A couple days ago, Nat Brown, one of the founders of the Xbox team within Microsoft, to absolutely destroy the current state of that product. His entire critique is worth the read, but one thing in particular stuck out to me: Apple, if it chooses to do so, will simply kill Playstation, Wii-U and xBox by introducing an open 30%-cut app/game ecosystem for Apple-TV. I already make a lot of money on iOS – I will be the first to write apps for Apple-TV when I can, and I know I’ll make money. Yes, a creator of the Xbox is basically begging Apple to give us an Apple TV SDK so that he can write games for it. And that’s exactly what they’re going to do. The that Apple would unveil some sort of Apple TV SDK at an event next month (as most things analysts say about Apple prove to be). But that doesn’t mean it’s not coming. In fact, I’d bet on it sooner rather than later. I haven’t heard anything specific about the SDK, but the chatter about Apple’s has been picking up. And if that chatter is to believed, is happening this fall — likely late fall. As always with Apple, those plans are subject to change (and, in fact, changed a few times in the past — ). As you might imagine, content deals remain a bitch, yet remain vital to such a project. But multiple sources suggest everything is lining up for this fall. But. It’s not entirely clear if this means an television itself or some other sort of newfangled Apple TV device. But it actually doesn’t matter. Apps are the key. So if you believe that Apple’s living room plans are going to come into focus this fall, you should probably also be ready for some sort of developer announcement in the months leading up to the fall. Maybe that comes at WWDC. Maybe later. Sure, it is possible that Apple could launch some sort of new TV-centric hardware with only a few apps built closely with a handful of selected partners. But that would be a bit of a letdown — that’s essentially the Apple TV right now. People wants apps. Developers want to make apps. And apps are what will make or break Apple’s foray into the space. We all know the current Apple TV is already running iOS (even if Apple dances around directly stating it). And we know that the Apple TV is running on the same type of hardware stack that iPhones/iPads/iPod touches run on. The thing is ready to go. All Apple has to do is flip a switch. Okay, it’s not that simple, but you get the point. Right now, out in the wild, there are over 10 million Apple TVs — the majority of which are already capable of running iOS apps. Sure, they may look less than ideal scaled up to television screen sizes, but they’d work. You can already get a preview to some extent using AirPlay. If I’m right that Apple will want to seed the app ecosystem before their big launch in the fall, I suspect they’ll have developers use the current Apple TVs to test such apps. Perhaps this has something to do with the recent upgrade. And it’s entirely possible that Apple will take a larger two-pronged approach. That is, keeping a $99 Apple TV (which would be enabled to run apps) alongside any more robust television product. This is all speculation, of course. But while everyone is busy focusing on the hardware, they’re looking past the obvious software advantage of anything Apple does in the living room. The 800,000 apps won’t translate directly, but in two categories in particular: video and video games, Apple is going to dominate where their rivals cannot simply because of the support of small, third-party app developers. That’s why Nat Brown is so dead-on above. Microsoft and the rest had the opportunity to be first-movers here and they blew it. They focused on traditional game makers and traditional content providers. They focused on extending the traditional PC hardware paradigm. It’s going to be death by 100,000 apps. (By the way, just to be clear, I’m not ruling out or another Android-based system coming into the space to shake it up as well. But I believe controlling the hardware and software experience will be important, just as it is in the other hot devices right now.) When , people I’m saying that games like Call of Duty are going away. Of course they’re not. These types of hardcore games clearly have their audience and will continue to do very well. I simply believe two things: 1) That the Apple TV is already nearly powerful enough to run such games. Perhaps not the highest of the high end, but give it a year or two. That’s the thing: Apple will likely push yearly hardware (and software) updates for anything they do. Microsoft has not updated the Xbox in over . Huge mistake. 2) That the audience for non-hardcore games when Apple opens up an Apple TV SDK will be much larger than the audience for the hardcore games. Apple will not win this space by playing the game that Microsoft, Sony, and to some extent, Nintendo, are playing. They will win by changing the rules of the game. And that game is all about developers, developers, developers, developers. Which is perhaps one could ever imagine.
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While Tesla Dukes It Out With The Times, SpaceX Gets The Go-Ahead For Next ISS Supply Mission
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Chris Velazco
| 2,013 | 2 | 14 |
Tesla Motors has been getting plenty of attention lately because of its with writer John Broder, but that only helped to drown out news concerning founder Elon Musk’s transport-related venture. earlier today that SpaceX’s Dragon capsule would be sent into low Earth orbit for a second supply run to the International Space Station on March 1. Things have been moving at a steady clip for SpaceX after it got over some very public growing pains early on (think a string of failed rocket tests), but a spate of recent successes have helped to change public perception of the starry-eyed venture. When the Dragon capsule (atop a Falcon 9 rocket) takes off from Cape Canaveral early next month, it’ll do so with over one ton of experiments and crew supplies in tow — I’m sure those astronauts will be glad to have something new to do. Granted, NASA’s announcement isn’t terribly groundbreaking — you can look back at the Dragon capsule’s and its for more of a sense of historical achievement — but it paints a very positive portrait of SpaceX and its potential impact on space transport and exploration. After all, SpaceX’s ambitions aren’t just limited to shuttling cargo back and forth. The company aims to eventually ferry astronauts to and from the ISS, and has pointed to 2015 as a likely launch window for its first manned flight. Other, more seasoned players like Boeing are shooting to get manned flights of their own privately operated crew capsules going in a similar timeframe, but at this stage it seems entirely possible that the upstarts at SpaceX may be able to hit that milestone sooner — it’s planning an in-flight abort test (crucial for any flight involving human lives) for no later than April 2014, while Boeing doesn’t expect its CST-100 to venture into orbit . And that’s to say nothing of founder Musk’s wild-eyed vision of packed to the air scrubbers with settlers from our world. As a child, the name “NASA” was enough to elicit gasps of delight and excitement — after all, these were the steely-eyed missile men who landed 12 people on the surface of the Moon and helped turn our eyes to the deepest corners of the heavens. Of course, the NASA of today isn’t quite the same for a number of reasons (consistent budget cuts being prime among them) and crazy private ventures like SpaceX seem best equipped to make these sorts of ambitious strides. Well, for now anyway — we’ll see if President Obama’s proclamation to to a level “not seen since the start of the space race” manages to change the situation a little. Oh, and on a side note, NASA is also inviting 50 social media users to come and experience the launch proceedings up close — you can apply , but know that I’ll forever jealous if you happen to make it down to the Cape.
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Cyber Attacks Against Journalists Are On The Rise, Says Advocacy Group
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Catherine Shu
| 2,013 | 2 | 14 |
More journalists are now the target of cyber attacks, . CPJ deputy director Robert Mahoney said cyber attacks on individuals and news organizations have increased notably over the past few years and that the practice serves as easy and inexpensive censorship. In a press conference with reporters, Mahoney cited the recent attacks on by Chinese hackers, but said other news organizations and journalists in Africa, the Middle East, , and other regions had also been subjected to cyberattacks. Attacks by hackers have ramped up so much that in , the CPJ said that it’s now “open season on online journalists,” with nation-states using customized software to exploit security flaws on personal computers and consumer Internet services in order to spy on users. Countries suspected in spying include the U.S., Israel and China. Journalists working in the latter country reported receiving regular warnings on their Gmail that their account had been targeted by what Google said was a “state-sponsored attack.” Other countries include Myanmar, where several journalists who cover the country said earlier this week that they that their email accounts might have been hacked by “state-sponsored attackers.” This wasn’t the only case of hat country, where these incidents are calling into question the integrity of media reforms by the government. The lesson of all of this activity is that many governments see these attacks as an effective, unregulated, and deniable way to target groups that would otherwise be too politically sensitive or independent to publically challenge or co-opt. That puts reporters, bloggers, and media companies high on the hit list. Just as cyber attacks against journalists are increasing, so are physical assaults. CPJ also reported a stark rise in the number of journalists killed and imprisoned around the world in 2012, due to repressive government regimes intolerant of dissent and brazen impunity for killers. Seventy journalists were killed on the job in 2012, a 43 percent increase from the year earlier, and more than 35 journalists had disappeared. CPJ said that in 2012 it identified 232 journalists who had been imprisoned, 53 more than a year earlier and the highest number since its survey began in 1990. The CPJ’s Mahoney said “the right to receive and impart information transcends borders, and international and regional bodies have a key role to play in upholding these principles, which are under attack.”
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Court Throws Out Shareholder Lawsuit Accusing Netflix Of Issuing Misleading Guidance
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Catherine Shu
| 2,013 | 2 | 14 |
Netflix succeeded in getting a shareholder lawsuit dismissed that had accused the company of inflating its share price by concealing rising costs, even as insiders like CEO Reed Hastings were selling millions of dollars in stock, . The lawsuit was filed in January 2012 by shareholders led by the Arkansas Teacher Retirement System and State-Boston Retirement System, which claimed Netflix deceived them about its prospects. They also said Netflix misled shareholders by launching a stock buyback program, a sign that shares might be undervalued, even as Hastings and other insiders were selling off close to $85 million of their own shares. Hastings was also deemed not to have materially misled investors on a conference call on Dec. 8, 2012, when he said Netflix would benefit from a “virtuous cycle where it could add subscribers and streaming content while lessening the costs of its DVD-by-mail rental service. U.S. District Judge Samuel Conti in San Francisco said that the plaintiffs did not prove their claims and said that the company’s business model “worked exactly as Netflix said it would” until Netflix began to lose subscribers after announcing price increases and its DVD-business spinoff.” Plaintiffs now have 30 days to amend their complains. Netflix shares fell 76% between early July and late October 2011, to $74.25 from $304.79, due in large part to its decision to suspend a pricing plan that let subscribers stream movies online and receive DVDs for $9.99 a month. Instead, the Los Gatos-based company now offers separate streaming- and DVD-only plans for $7.99 a month each. That plan-which meant a 60% price hike for both services-drove away 800,000 U.S. subscribers in 3Q 2011. Shares have have been recovering since August however, boosted in part by the company’s surprise profit in Q4 2012, when it added nearly 4 million streaming customers around the world. Shares of Netflix closed Thursday at $187.40 on the Nasdaq.
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Obama’s Quotable Google+ Hangout: Zuckerberg, Drones And Being ‘Chill’
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Gregory Ferenstein
| 2,013 | 2 | 14 |
President Obama just concluded a group interview with a handful of bloggers on Google+. The 40-minute follow-up to the State of the Union covered a broad range of new issues: drones, Mark Zuckerberg, patent trolls, immigrant gay rights, gun control, the distribution of wealth, and even why the president is so “chill.” More than any interview I’ve seen in recent memory, the Google+ hangout gave a deeper insight into his own philosophy and process, even if it was when he deliberately dodged questions. The very quotable interview is likely to vindicate a lot of political interest groups. Below, we’ve collected the best of the interview. The president got his “No Drama Obama” from his unwaveringly steady attitude. For the first time, he addressed this personality trait after being asked how growing up in multi-ethnic Hawaii shaped him. Obama addressed his contentious belief in the even distribution of wealth after fielding a question about his : He then said, that minimum wage In response to a question about why he has , he said, When asked whether Obama would support making computer science a language requirement for the education system, he continues, noting that high school should be relevant to even those who don’t pursue a higher degree. Referencing a dinner with Mark Zuckerberg, Obama says teaching vocational technology skills is important, Obama mentioned the last major overhaul of patents, the , but noted, Obama draws inspiration from “the writings of Lincoln,” Martin Luther King’s and the Bible. Summarizing what he believes is Lincoln’s core philosophy, When asked about why the United States doesn’t ditch the penny to save the federal government millions of dollars, the president admitted, Continuing, When it came to a testy exchange on drone strikes against Americans and gay rights for immigrants, Obama completely dodged the questions. When pressed for more about the contentious drone policy, he didn’t offer any specifics. The same was true in regards to a question about ensuring gay rights for immigrants in the upcoming comprehensive immigration reform bill. Instead of answer whether he would press for rights, he said he would Noticeable pauses and ambiguity during civil liberties questions reveals a president struggling to cope with one of the biggest issues with his own base. Some dodging aside, the Google+ hangout was one of the most authentic exchanges I’ve ever seen with the president. Kudos to the president’s digital team and Google for proving that new media can live up to one of the biggest challenges a journalist can face.
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You Think You Know What You Want Out Of Twitter Search, But It’s Not What You Really Need
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Drew Olanoff
| 2,013 | 2 | 14 |
Twitter and search sound like two peas in a pod, but it’s actually not the marriage made in heaven that you’d think it is. When you think of search, you think of a search engine, like Google, where the world’s information is seemingly at your fingertips. You feel confident that when you Google something, you won’t miss the important information. The secret is that it’s Google’s algorithm that makes search work, not the fact that it indexes everything in the world. In fact, most people don’t get past the second page of search results, so we’re not even utilizing all of the data that Google collects. When I speak to people about Twitter search, they seem to want the same thing: “access to every tweet ever tweeted.” That sounds fine on paper, but in actuality, you really don’t want access to every tweet — just the really good ones. That’s the issue that Twitter is tackling these days, figuring out which tweets to serve up when you search for a word, phrase topic or hashtag. If you were to search for “#grammys” on Twitter, you’d find a whole lot of junk and spam and your experience wouldn’t be a very good one. Sure, we all want to know what our buddies said five years ago when they were drunk, but that’s not how Twitter search works right now. Last week, the company announced that it would be , with not much more information than that. Here’s what the team said at the time: Previously, Twitter search results displayed Tweets going back about a week. We’ve developed a way to include older Tweets, so you can see content that goes beyond the more recent Tweets. Pretty vague, I’d say. But the crux of that statement is that Twitter is definitely looking backwards as far as the content that its accumulated since launching in 2006. There’s a lot of great information to be had from tweets that happened during events like the uprising in Egypt, political elections, the day that Michael Jackson died and just about every natural disaster that’s happened since Twitter launched. I sat down with Sam Luckenbill, an engineer on the Twitter search team, to discuss what the company has in mind for its search experience. Luckenbill joined Twitter after having been a Ruby on Rails consultant. When he joined the company full time after grad school, there were only 20-30 employees. In 2008, Twitter , leading many to believe that Twitter would turn into the next Google but just with tweets. That wasn’t the case, as a simple search and result experience isn’t engaging in a real-time environment: Twitter is mostly real-time and mostly will be, people overestimate how valuable older stuff is going to be to them. I think in general, for a search product to be great, you have to cover the long tail. What does a Twitter long tail look like if it’s so real-time? That’s what the company has to grapple with as far as what the search experience will morph into over time. I imagine an experience that takes me back to a moment in time, much like Facebook’s Timeline, where I can search for something like “Egypt” and then am able to relive a very serious event from the most popular tweets sent at that time. Twitter is a long way away from that, but with the introduction of older tweets, it’s a natural progression. The queries that Twitter gets are very different from what Google and Bing see as well. “In particular, the queries change very quickly, and it obviously matches what’s going on in the world,” Luckenbill tells me. “That’s part of the reason why realtime is hard – the corpus is constantly changing.” Google relies on its own News product to fill up its search results with “real-time” information, whereas everything that gets tweeted, in essence, could be huge news. Twitter is learning from its users about how they search, what they interact with once they get results and then tinkering with its approach on the fly, much like a real-time company would do. When you have as much information as Twitter has, you can’t just dump out an entire database of ramblings on your users in a search result. You have to pass it through a few filters to make sure that you’re serving up the best, most interesting and relevant content. So will Twitter change the way search looks in the future? Luckenbill only said “The UI isn’t in its final state.” That would be a huge yes. As the flock has grown, the search team has grown, and people are starting to carve out specialties for themselves. Search is going to be a speciality for sure, but how will it end up looking? What content will we want to see? Do we really want to see every tweet that’s ever been published? No, of course not, but when things aren’t trivial, all we can do is attempt to trivialize them. In an attempt to feed our appetites for “all the tweets,” last year, and I think it’s a safe bet that people searched once or twice and then stopped. We think we wanted it, but did we really need it? This problem is in Twitter’s court, so we’ll have to wait and see. Figuring out what we need over what we think we want is . Since there’s never been a service quite like Twitter, we don’t have anything to compare it to as far as relevancy and search experience. So it’s something that we’re just going to have to trust with the little birdies down on Market Street. It’s not so much about “search.” It’s about “discovery.” [Photo credit: ]
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Squarespace Adds Commerce System For A High-Class Blogging/Sales Experience
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John Biggs
| 2,013 | 2 | 14 |
knows from fancy. They make dead-simple websites for people who require a high level of design and elegance and, unlike, say, our website, a lot of Squarespace sites are surprisingly beautiful. Now those same designers who use the site for their private blogs can sell their wares right from their sites. The service, called Squarespace Commerce, connects to and allows you to embed products into blog posts and wrap content around them. The commerce portion works with every Squarespace template. You can sign up for Commerce for $24 a month on a yearly basis. The service also supports mailing-list sign up, CSV order exports and unlimited SKUs. I had a little bit of time to sit down with the platform and came away impressed. There is definitely a value in having a simple digital or physical storefront, and with the rise of home DIY and makers, it’s a great way to get product wrapped up in some solid content. I’ve always loved Squarespace’s spare style, and the latest version is definitely a step in the right direction for the service. Commerce, I suppose, is the fancy cream icing on the cake.
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Facebook Blocks Perverts From Graph Searching For Kids
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Josh Constine
| 2,013 | 2 | 14 |
Facebook has coded some special rules into to make sure shady adults can’t stalk minors. Today that searches that could identify kids under 18 by age or location won’t return any results for strange adults. Facebook mentioned at the launch that there were special protections for minors, but in advance of a wider rollout of Graph Search, it posted some details today on how it keeps kids safe. The Graph Search restrictions are extensions of existing barriers Facebook has placed between adults and children, and its ban on public posts by minors. “On Facebook, many things teens are likely to do – such as adding information to their timelines or sharing status updates – can only be shared with a maximum of Friends of Friends. In addition, for certain searches that could help to identify a young person by age or by their location, results will only show to that person’s Friends, or Friends of Friends who are also between the age of 13-17.” Facebook also laid out some Graph Search safety tips. People should check their Activity Log and About sections to make sure they’re sharing the right info with the right people. And if they spot something sketchy on the social network, they should report it. We haven’t heard much public outcry about Graph Search, but that’s because it’s only rolled out to a small percentage of users (you can for early access). Facebook’s smart enough to not freak out the whole world at once with an instant rollout, which also prevents backlash from snowballing. But once the rollout ramps up, expect to see some backlash, overblown privacy violation rumors, and people claiming they’re leaving Facebook for good. Most people won’t, even if they say they will. Facebook is a central communication utility for a lot of people now. The question is whether Graph Search will have a more subtle chilling effect on sharing, or at least on sharing publicly. Some people will be happy to share, and might even do so more frequently now that their posts could help friends find local businesses, vacations, or take a walk down memory lane. As I wrote, in some ways and sharing generous. But others might get creeped out by strangers browsing their content, even stuff as innocuous as which dentist they prefer. They’d rather lock down their content or not post at all rather than worry about who might see it. Graph Search has lots of practical uses, from photo browsing to business discovery to finding friends to hang out with on vacation. But if Facebook doesn’t convince the world it’s not creepy, it could shoot Graph Search in the foot before it’s even up and running.
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Big Plans For CrunchBase
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Eric Eldon
| 2,013 | 2 | 14 |
CrunchBase has grown like a tree in a quiet corner of the yard and left to do its thing. Six years in, our free and editable industry database gets 1.5 million unique visitors a month and has had 90,000 users create 105,000 companies and 140,000 individual profiles. It’s proven to be one of the most successful products that TechCrunch has launched over the years. Now it’s time to think about the future. We are committing a significant amount of money to expanding the product and the team behind it. You’ll be hearing a lot more in the coming months, but here’s what we can share now. The team of long-time staffers and experienced additions — , , , , and — now has a . And on that blog, they’ve begun showcasing top developers from among the thousands using the CrunchBase API. Big data analytics startup has kicked things off today with a post about how it’s pulled in data to . Investors and entrepreneurs using the product can learn important market information like the average time between startup funding rounds year over year. The CB team is going to be regularly featuring guest posts from any developer who has done something smart and useful with the data, provided that: As an added bonus, TechCrunch writers who are interested in analyzing data to break stories are going to be taking a hard look at these tools and potentially incorporating them into how we work. We’ll also be interested in writing about them. You can apply for the by sending them an . The team itself is growing, too. If you join, you’ll get to work in our historic SOMA office alongside our editorial, product and business teams, right down the street from Caltrain, The Creamery, Giants Stadium, and thousands of tech companies large and small. You will be on the pulse of the Valley, developing a beloved product that plays a key role in keeping our industry up to date. Check out the hiring details .
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Blackjet, The Uber For Private Jet Travel, Appoints Shervin Pishevar As Its Chairman
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Colleen Taylor
| 2,013 | 2 | 14 |
As we reported , , the startup that aims to be the “ ” by letting people book relatively lower priced private jet travel through web and mobile apps, today extended its service to two new cities: . But TechCrunch has learned that today also brought big news for Blackjet on a more behind-the-scenes level. has been named Blackjet’s board chairman. Pishevar is, of course, the longtime venture capitalist who recently shifted his role as partner at from partner to venture advisor to start up his own stealthy . Shervin Pishevar It bears mention that Pishevar played a big part in assembling Blackjet’s , which includes Camp, , , , , , , , , and Jay-Z’s , among . Today Blackjet threw a big launch event in San Francisco’s Union Square to celebrate its new expansion and offer some free memberships and giveaways. TechCrunch TV was on hand to check it all out, and if you thought private jet travel was just a niche thing, seeing the long line of attendees at today’s event might make you think again — although, to be fair, some of those people might have just been queueing up to get a closer look at the . We pulled aside both Blackjet CEO and aviation industry vet and Pishevar for interviews while there. Watch the video embedded below to hear Rotchin discuss the perks of private jet travel, the technology that makes this system work, and who is in Blackjet’s target demographic. Later in the video you can also hear Pishevar talk about how his personal work with Blackjet is similar to what the new Sherpa venture will be focusing on, how Blackjet is bringing much-needed efficiency to the world of private jet travel, how many people can really afford to be a Blackjet customer, and what’s next for the company now that he’s steering its board.
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Everest, An Epic App For Achieving Your Dreams
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Josh Constine
| 2,013 | 2 | 14 |
What if there were an app that could make you healthier, smarter and happier? That could turn your dreams into reality by breaking them into manageable steps and reminding you to take them? wants to be that app. Backed by visionary investor Peter Thiel, Everest helps you tackle goals by combining inspiration, organization and social support. Still a little shaky, it’s now emerging from stealth. “My personal goal is to look like Daniel Craig in a bathing suit,” admits Everest’s 23-year-old co-founder and CEO Francis Pedraza. But Everest spawned from more serious circumstances. Pedraza grew up in an immigrant household, his mom’s side of the family having come to the U.S. from Iran after the revolution. They started a small business and tried to live out the American dream. Pedraza tells me “I always got the sense that this was the land of freedom and opportunity where you can do anything. You have such potential. The question is what you are going to do with your life, and that’s the same question in Everest. How are you going to get there?” That quest for fulfillment is actually a relatively new one in our society, born out of the abundance that’s allowed the developed world to conquer more basic problems. Humans first must learn to survive and then to socialize. But with those accomplished, Pedraza sees a macro trend leading people to “spend more time focused on self-actualization, and Everest will be the platform.” The startup believes “the biggest untapped resource in the world is human potential.” The startup’s hero is Leonardo da Vinci, who in a single lifetime drafted countless inventions, was a painter, cartographer, chef, and a consultant to kings. When developing Everest, Pedraza asks “How can we turn everyone into a da Vinci? The amount of value that would create is so immense.” Everest is still rapidly evolving, and it certainly needs some user interface tweaks, but here’s how the that launched in December hopes to help you accomplish your goals. To ease you in, the on-boarding flow gives examples of dreams you might want to achieve, such as “Learn to cook 10 healthy meals,” “Run a half marathon” or “Be an amazing Dad.” A feed of public challenges that other users are tackling can provide more inspiration. You can adopt a dream from someone else to jumpstart your journey or compose one from scratch. Next comes the toughest part of climbing Everest: You have to fill in the steps to your goal. This can be quite mentally taxing. You need to figure out the right path to success, determine how ambitious to make your steps (should I run 2 miles or 3.5 miles a day?), set a schedule and reminders, then manually tap-type them in. When you finish you’re left with a daunting list of tasks that can leave you exhausted before you even start completing them. You’ll then receive push notifications to nudge you to complete your scheduled steps. When you open Everest you’ll see a list of your current dreams. Open one and you’ll see your progress, though your next steps are buried in a yellow lightning-bolt tab. Open that, and all the steps are folded up in their own calendar entries so you can’t see them, which is face-palm-worth bad design. Swipe right on a step to physically cross it off, and reveal a chance to share your efforts to Facebook or Twitter. To distinguish itself from leaner task-management , Everest prods you to “capture moments” aka photos as you chase your dreams. You might shoot and share one of sunset on a run or playing catch with your kid to scrapbook your journey and inspire others to keep up with theirs. The idea of accountability through social encouragement and companionship is central to Everest. If friends are watching, the startup believes you’re more likely to keep striving toward success. That’s why you can follow friends, comment on their activity and send them push-notification nudges to stay on track. Overall, the app is pretty, in part thanks to the crack iOS developers, including some poached from Jawbone. But the usability could give you blisters like trekking up the real Everest. It’s beset by bugs that prevent dream cover images from saving and cause frequent crashes to name a few. I showed several people the app and they all thought it should be much quicker and easier to see the goals you’ve set for today and say you’ve accomplished them. Setting up recurring tasks and alerts is confusing, and the homepage on each dream gives me almost no info about what I should be working on. Until those things are fixed, Everest will have retention problems. At least Pedraza says the team is well aware of the problems and says patches and UI changes are on the way. Everest wants to help you, but it’s no charity. In November 2011, Pedraza and his small team had put together some mock-ups, but needed money to keep the project going. Luckily, a friend of Peter Thiel’s caught a glimpse of the app designs over Pedraza’s shoulder in an airport, and offered to get him a meeting with Peter Thiel. Pedraza was able to sell Thiel on the idea that if Facebook defines you by who you know, Everest would define people by what they want to do. Thiel gave Everest $300,000 to chase that concept. By Summer 2012, Everest had burned the angel round and needed a serious business plan to raise more. So it drew up a model where Everest would put brands in touch with people willing to spend money to achieve their dreams. If you say you’re going to visit three national parks, you probably need camping gear, and Nike or The North Face would probably love to be there. It’s not a traditional advertising play, it’s an ecommerce play. Currently, Everest’s business model takes the form of branded challenges for 20 businesses. For example, Codecademy sponsors a challenge to “Build your first website.” Step one is “Go to codecamdemy.com.” Step 2 is to complete coding courses there, so you can see how they feed directly into a business. Some other examples include: Over time it hopes to find more monetization streams by — determining which paths to a goal actually work. The business plan was enough to fill out a $1.2 million round with from Behance CEO Scott Belsky, IDEO director of technology Dave Blakely, Milwaukee Brewers owner Mark Attanasio, and hedge fund manager and sports team owner Jim Palotta. Additionally its advisors include X Prize and Singularity University founder Peter Diamandis, TED talk stars Simon Sinek and Jane McGonigal, Jawbone CCO Yves Behar, Stanford Technology Ventures Program executive director Tina Seelig. After cleaning up its UI, Everest wants to figure out how to automatically suggest steps for common dreams which could smooth the on-boarding process and eventually build out an API so quantified self, learning and fitness apps can instantly feed in your activity. I think Everest’s big challenge will be making the app seem more like a gratifying game than a chore. It will also have to marry its depth with simplicity, or it risks getting undercut by slimmer task-management apps. Pedraza doesn’t see or Lift from the Twitter founders’ Obvious Corporation as too much of a threat, though. He boasts “Lift will help you floss, Everest will help you live your dreams. Everest can do everything Lift can do.” Instead, he believes “if Everest fails it will be my fault because I’m relatively inexperienced. I’m only 23.” To succeed, Everest is relying on pure, maniacal ambition — the same that pushes climbers to ignore oxygen deprivation and hypothermia as they strive for the summit. Pedraza beams “A lot of entrepreneurs start a company because they have an idea. We started this company because we had a vision.” But making users see their own, and actually come back to take steps towards it each day, is going to take a lot of work.
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Fandrop Debuts A Digg-Like Service For Viral Media, Hacks Its Way To Over 1 Million Pageviews Monthly
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Sarah Perez
| 2,013 | 2 | 14 |
, a new content sharing site started by a group of growth hackers, is debuting today to help you find out what’s trending across the web. The site surfaces things like tweets and Facebook posts, YouTube videos, images from sites like imgur, articles, web pages, and more. In some ways, it’s similar to other social networks and social sharing sites, in that you can friend and follow other users, create profiles, build collections of content, and post things you find to the Fandrop platform. But according to co-founder and CEO , the big differentiating factor here is Fandrop’s technology and focus on finding the content that’s trending around the web. Wang says his interest in social content began with his second startup, a social news network called Buzzreport, but he’s always been curious about how virality works on the web. He’s known in the San Francisco Bay area as one of the organizers of December’s conference, which taught the art of growth hacking to various startup founders, developers and marketers. For those unfamiliar with this latest buzzword, “growth hacking” is about increasing a service’s reach through so-called hacks – which are really just learnable skills that can speed things up at rates that are faster than traditional marketing techniques. (For more on this, ). With Fandrop’s launch, the company is joining a new breed of startups that’s hoping virality can be created on demand, measured or sold to advertisers. Incidentally, for a similar concept. Reverse engineering virality is clearly the new hotness. But while Virool is taking the ad network approach, Fandrop is going after the same market as a consumer play. All the content on Fandrop’s site is user-submitted, either through an online form, bookmarklet, or through the import of feeds from Facebook, Twitter, for example. When you go to the homepage today, it’s a mix of clickable distractions – funny videos, gifs, photos, posts, music videos and more. You can explore different categories such as “celebs,” “tech,” “sports,” or “aww,” the latter which features a lot of cute animal photos and videos. You can also create an account in order to build and share your own collections. When you find something on the site you like, you can vote it up Digg-style, or share it to social networks. “People are just realizing the power of virality, how far it can go,” says Wang. “Business model-wise, there could be partnerships through customized marketing campaigns on our platform. We could also detect viral signals and leverage these signals to marketing firms.” (By “leverage,” he means “sell.”) Other possibilities include usage tiers or , by the way. Fandrop’s core IP has to do with algorithms that can predict when a piece of content is about to go viral. “Once we detect such viral signals, we can them promote virality of certain content to increase the reach to target audiences,” Wang explains. These algorithms look at things like user engagement, relevancy to users, traffic and velocity, both on the website and across the wider web. The company has also applied for a patent on its clip-and-share technology, which lets you cut out and highlight content from across the web. (It sounds a lot like , actually). The site soft-launched October 2012 and attracted its initial group of users via – you guessed it – growth hacking techniques. To do so, Fandrop put out a lot of landing pages which prompted users to vote for their favorite artist or band, among other things. The methods worked, in terms of hard metrics. “The first month we launched, we got a million pageviews, which is sort of surprising,” says Wang. “We knew there was something going on here.” But the company wanted to do a better job with user engagement, so it did a redesign, and soft-launched a second time at year-end. “We then noticed the engagement went up because we implemented social features, like importing from Facebook and Twitter,” he says. has now topped 10,000 sign-up requests, and today has even more registered users, despite still being in a semi-closed beta. (Wang asked to keep the user numbers off the record). Fandrop sees around 1.5 million pageviews monthly, he says, 80% from North America and 55% user growth month to month. There are currently half a million items of content shared on the site, and the typical user is 20 to 33 years old. 60% of the user base is male. Fandrop is also starting to attract a few celebs and other notable figures, including Chuck D, Taylor Madonna, YouTube star JustKiddingFilms, and Carrotmob. Public Enemy and Chuck D will also be launching a viral marketing campaign on Fandrop’s platform alongside their induction into the in April 2013. is not open to the public yet, but 1,000 TechCrunch readers can get in by using this link: . The company has a small (under $1M) amount of angel funding, and is currently in the process of raising its seed round. At the end of the day, Fandrop seems like a grand experiment in whether or not growth hacking can actually get a social sharing site off the ground. The real passion here is around the techniques the company is using to grow. It’s hard to say if that same enthusiasm is there for the type of community it wants to build, though… That being said, I did just waste half an hour while writing this post watching stupid videos, so who knows? [youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_REaOwNNgFA?feature=player_detailpage]
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Jordan Crook
| 2,013 | 2 | 13 | null |
Tamagotchi Comes To Android, But After All These Years I’m No Better At Caring For Virtual Pets
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Darrell Etherington
| 2,013 | 2 | 14 |
[youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hsB9ZYYFgi4?feature=player_embedded] Namco Bandai has released a new . The acronym standards for “love is fun everywhere,” which is arguable depending on which stage of love you’re in, and which probably accounts for its February 14 release date. But is Tamagotchi L.i.f.e. itself fun everywhere? I’ve been playing it today to find out. And by playing I mostly mean ignoring. The Android Tamagotchi is very similar to the one that used to live in its own dedicated hardware keychain, and there’s even an emulator mode you start off in what looks exactly like the toy itself with its familiar egg-ish appearance. Part of the appeal of the game is that you can unlock new egg cases to house your Tamaotchi in this mode, controlling it with three virtual buttons and viewing you virtual pet as the single color blob of pixels that may inspire some nostalgia.
Doing it this way provokes ample frustration, however, as soon as you realize that you’re using a space-aged device with full touch capabilities and a gorgeous display. But Namco Bandai knows this, so they’ve provided a zoomed in mode that brings you up close and personal with your Tamagotchi, rendered in two colors instead of one, with touch interaction and the ability to tap on icons directly to feed it, bathe it, medicate it or scold it. You can also now play Rock, Paper, Scissors with your Tamagotchi! But to do that well you have to lose, since your virtual pet only gets satisfaction out of the game if it wins or ties. I actually found losing to be pretty difficult, which means I think that my Tamagotchi isn’t very fond of me. And it probably doesn’t help that every time I open the app it’s rolling or sliding or however it moves in an agitated little circle next to at least three poops. This despite the fact that I don’t feed it. Tamagotchi L.i.f.e. is free, but that’s a curse as much as it is a benefit, since that comes with an extremely tacky-looking and hard to miss add plastered on the bottom of the screen all the time. I wanted to like this game because I remember when Tamagotchis were a thing, but this app just made me feel inadequate as a caretaker, and I’ve got enough of that going on in my real life. My advice? Stay tuned, there are much more .
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Digital Content Organizer Clipix Goes Beyond Bookmarks, Adds New Features To Save And Organize Email
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Frederic Lardinois
| 2,013 | 2 | 14 |
, a bookmarking service that lets you organize links, documents, photos and videos, just announced that it is adding email to its repertoire of supported formats. Users can now forward their emails to a private Clipix address to save and organize their messages. This, the company says, will help its users “instantly bookmark and organize emails they would like to revisit, making important emails accessible from any device and location.” The service, which in the middle of last year, puts an emphasis on privacy. Clipix CEO and founder Oded Berkowitz tells us that many of his users have “requested the ability to clip emails just as simply as they can clip links, videos, documents and photos. The new feature solves a problem most individuals face each day, and saving emails in a safe location is as easy as forwarding it to a private Clipix folder.” Once a user has forwarded an email, it will automatically be stored in a designated “Clipboard.” Sadly, though, once the email is in the service, you can’t really answer it from there anymore because Clipix converts them into a PDF file. At first glance then, one could easily discount this feature given that getting to your email isn’t generally an issue and most email clients already make it very easy to organize your messages. The advantage here, the company argues, is that Clipix gives you a spot to save emails with important attachments like receipts and other documents you want to save. Sadly, though, it currently takes two separate actions to save both an email and its attachments. The next version of Clipix, however, will allow you to save both with just one click.
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Watch President Obama’s Google+ Hangout Starting At 4:50pm ET
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Gregory Ferenstein
| 2,013 | 2 | 14 |
President Obama will be holding a townhall follow-up to his State of the Union speech on Google+ at 4:50pm ET today. We’ll be covering the speech in separate posts. Readers are invited to watch the “Hangout” live in the YouTube video below: [youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-gAWHQqobvs&w=640&h=360]
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How Bubble Motion Is Winning Feature Phones As “Twitter For Voice” Hits 25 Million Users
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Victoria Ho
| 2,013 | 2 | 14 |
It’s been a long journey for Bubble Motion, one of Singapore’s oldest startups. The company has been around since 2005 and made its name as a voice messenger app, allowing people to send voice clips to each other within text messages. Unlike with an MMS, the service requires no data. A user dials *7*, follows the phone commands and speaks. The recipient gets a text and “retrieves” the message by dialing another code to listen to the message. It’s a circuit switched call, so it works on feature phones. According to Bubble Motion’s CEO, Thomas Clayton, this was instrumental in the service taking off in emerging markets in Asia, where smartphones didn’t (and don’t) hold the lion’s share of the mobiles. This allowed it to accumulate 100 million unique users in these markets. But about two years ago, the company decided to move from the voice messaging model to a service called Bubbly, functioning more as a Twitter for voice, blasting voice messages to subscribers at once. “It has zero attention from us now,” said Clayton, of the old service. Bubbly, on the other hand, has added a million new users each month to hit 25 million right now. But Bubble Motion didn’t abandon its old phone-based platform. Bubbly works with feature phones in the same method, where users can record their voice by dialing a code and speaking, and subscribers get a text with a link that will dial Bubble Motion’s servers to have the message play back. The company for Android and iOS devices, but it isn’t swayed by the world’s infatuation with smartphone apps yet, said Clayton. With about 5 percent of its user base on the smartphone app, the rest are busy subscribing to celebrities and broadcasting to friends via their feature phones, he said. “It’s nowhere near plateauing in the sign-ups we’re getting from feature phones, either. Of course I’d like everyone to go to the app because it is easier to engage users, but feature phones remain a huge base for Asia.” And unlike with smartphones, where users have become accustomed to ads in exchange for using it for free, Bubbly is a paid service to subscribe to celebrities. Feature phone users are charged a fee per celebrity, per month. Smartphone users get it free for the first month, before it becomes an all-you-can-eat plan for $0.99 for six months. The company also sells upgradeable packs for its . Bubble Motion also reaches out to users via operator partnerships—necessary because it needs to colocate hardware with the telcos for all the calls, unlike with smartphone apps. The operator partners help to push Bubbly in their markets. The company has tie-ups with most of the big operators in the region, and has focused on India, Indonesia, the Philippines, and Saudi Arabia in the Middle East. It plans to launch with all the telcos in Thailand and Vietnam soon, as well as in . When I point out that today’s messengers have ironically employed the one-to-one voice texting that Bubble Motion helped pioneer seven years ago, Clayton shrugged it off, saying the decision to move to a broadcast system was made four years ago. “None of the WeChats and KakaoTalks existed then,” he said. Still, the company’s plans to rope direct messaging into its functions in the near future point to them trying not to exit this scene fully, while the market warms up to voice clips. Bubble Motion will also add a “visual component” to the service in an upcoming version of its smartphone app, he said. Last year, the firm raised from JAFCO Asia and from SingTel Innov8, Infocomm Investments, Sequoia Capital, Palomar Ventures, and NFC. Other investors include Comcast, Northgate Capital and Infocomm Investments. The company is headquartered in Singapore with operations in Silicon Valley, India, Japan, Indonesia, Thailand, and the Philippines.
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Weendy, An Extreme Sports App That Merges Crowdsourced And Actual Weather Data, Gets $240K Led By Archimedes
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Ingrid Lunden
| 2,013 | 2 | 14 |
It’s a little ironic that adrenalin-fuelled, sometimes dangerous extreme sports like windsurfing, kiteboarding and skiing also have a very pedestrian angle to them: it’s hard to do them when the weather isn’t quite right. There have been apps developed to try to meet that challenge by tapping into weather data providers, but sometimes these don’t actually give a personal feel of how the wind or water in a particular place can be, so two extreme sport enthusiasts, Katerina Stroponiati and Yiannis Varelas, who also happen to be techie-minded, decided to take matters into their own hands. The result is : an extreme sports weather app that mixes weather observations from more traditional sources — such as weather stations — with crowdsourced observations generated by Weendy users. Launched first to cover watersports like windsurfing and kiteboarding (since this is what the two Greek founders love to do most themselves), the founders have picked up an angel round of , and they are now in the process of raising another round, both of which they plan to use to continue to expand the app to cover more sports and more parts of the world, with ever more ways of depicting how good (or bad) conditions may be. One of the unique elements in Weendy is how it turns extreme sports — already a clubbable pursuit — into something of a social network in itself. Those who sign up to the app, which is free to download, can use Facebook to sign in and then find and follow their friends on the app, or they can use Weendy itself to find and follow people based on sports or current location. These all become weather data points. “Kiteboarders have to search in several websites, Facebook pages, and more in order to find the info they are looking for,” says Stroponiati. “In Weendy they are connected with people like them who can actually help them.” People use the app to write updates on particular locations, and post photos and videos as corroborating evidence. That makes it something that people are likely to do anyway, as they would with Facebook or any other social network that compels people to share their experiences. Then, triangulated with traditional weather data — which the pair say can be up to 50% inaccurate because of microclimates and the lack of scale of weather stations — Stroponiati (a user experience designer, who previously had trained as an architect) and Varelas (an engineer, who has worked on projects as diverse as voice recognition services prior to this) believe that this gives the most accurate and most relevant kind of weather assessment for people just like them. And, as befitting a pair who are from Greece but both spent time in Silicon Valley, the idea is for Weendy to be a global community — another point that sets them apart from many of the other extreme sports weather apps, which often focus on specific locations. There is another trend that Weendy underscores. With app stores like Apple’s and Google Play pushing 1 million apps in total each, we have long passed a point at which it is very hard for most general interest apps — for example, weather apps — to make it big, let alone pick up much traction at all. In that regard, turning to specific, niche interests, like extreme sports, makes sense. This makes sense in another way, too: Varelas believes that crowdsourcing weather only really works when you have a targeted group contributing. “Others who who are trying to create crowdsourced weather services are not delivering, and the main reason is because they are not targeting who is getting the information, and who is providing it.” In other words, my view of the rain is not necessarily going to be the same as yours, if I’m going out hoping for a tan and you were hoping to get out of watering your flowers. Since launching Weendy at the end of last year, Stroponiati says that user numbers have seen 20% growth week to week. Their aim is to have 1 million users by the end of this year. The pair plan to launch an update to the app during the snowkite surfing-meets-tech-entrepreneurs-event — so expect there to be snow-specific tweaks worked into the product. “We then intend to replicate the strategy to other verticals,” she says. As for how the app will monetize, it looks like it will go the way of sports themselves: sponsorship. There are equipment makers and sports drinks companies already in discussion with Milkybay (the name of Stroponiati and Varelas’ company), in which they will either sponsor sports on the app, or be promoted in other ways. And the pair are also talking to famous pros to act as “ambassadors” for the app and interact on it as well.
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Vimessa Deadpooled, Founders Launch User Retention Service, Userfox, With $700K From Y Combinator, 500 Startups & More
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Rip Empson
| 2,013 | 2 | 22 |
Y Combinator-backed launched in late 2011 that allowed users to send high-def video messages to any cell number or email address. The idea was to make video messaging work on any mobile device or desktop. But, despite the early buzz around the product, rules are rules: 90 percent of startups fail. The nature of its one-to-one viral mechanic meant that it was difficult for Vimessa to build a significant user base and it never found the adoption or revenue companies now need to survive the series A crunch. Because Vimessa — and really every startup ever launched — struggle with the issue of user retention (at some point), co-founders Peter Clark and Cesar Alaniz are today officially announcing — a service that aims to help startups integrate drip, inactivity and trigger emails. Essentially, Userfox is, in software-speak, “user retention-as-a-service” for startups. Marketers want ownership over email and because editing messages in Git is no walk in the park, Clark says, Userfox aims to help developers and technical teams focus on the product. Typically, startups use Mailchimp, Sendgrid and just build email solutions themselves, so the goal is to bring those elements together in one place. Userfox offers newsletter management — like the ability to send newsletters to a particular segment of your audience — along with Sendgrid-style transactional emails, which enable teams to edit and manage templates from a user interface rather than the code base and retention and behavioral email campaigns. To start using the service, companies add a Javascript snippet to the footer of their pages, at which point they can start creating email messages through Userfox’s dashboard and set up their message triggers, and choose one of the startup’s email themes, or use their own. Userfox will send out welcome emails, inactivity emails and allows marketers to sign in and define rules, like “seven days after a user signs up, send them this,” for example. “We want to be a more affordable, more design-centric, easier-to-set-up version of Marketo,” Clark tells us. The co-founders want to provide teams with a better (and better looking) alternative to solutions like Marketo, Responsys and Constant Contact — to name a few — by bringing these email types together to give them more control. These retention-driven emails can “increase engagement by 33 percent, Clark says — plus, it means no more using old email templates or sending emails to users that have unsubscribed, and that’s a positive in and of itself. After all, it’s the little frustrations (and errant emails) that, when taken in aggregate, push users away and add up to higher attrition. Up until now, Userfox has been in quiet beta, during which it has been sending two million emails per month from “hundreds of customers,” and is tracking “tens of millions of events,” the co-founders tell us. In order to pull back the curtain and accelerate its own early adoption, Userfox has raised $700K in seed funding from a handful of investors, including Y Combinator, Andrew Chen, Point Nine Capital, Yee Lee and 500 Startups, to name a few. After a free 30-day trial, Userfox’s solution starts at $49/month for 5K messages, a welcome campaign and two custom HTML email themes, and scales up from there at $119/month for “Premium” and so on. Next up, Userfox wants to add A/B testing and API access to propagate data as part of its advanced plans. [ .]
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