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‘War Correspondents’ In Mexico Address Mainstream Media Shortcomings, Use Twitter To Spread Information
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Sara Inés Calderón
| 2,013 | 2 | 22 |
In Mexico’s drug-war-torn cities, a small number of Twitter users affected by narco violence are acting as war correspondents to the masses, providing a public-safety alert system of sorts, according to a recent research from Microsoft, called “The New War Correspondents: The Rise of Civic Media Curation in Urban Warfare.” These “curators,” tweeting with hashtags like #mtyfollow, #reynosafolllow, #saltillo and #verfollow, produce an inordinately high number of tweets compared to other users, informing people about recent violence, clashes and other news in regions where traditional news outlets have engaged in self-imposed blackouts to avoid narco violence. “Twitter in particular and social media in general have become important elements of the information ecosystem. They have not replaced traditional news media, but they have certainly extended it in new ways,” Andrés Monroy-Hernández, one of the report researchers, tells TechCrunch. “Social media is more participatory and democratic than the existing mainstream media, which is one of the reasons why it has emerged as a form of public sphere — like a networked version of the public plazas.” The report noted that of the 34 million people with Internet access in Mexico, 20 percent use Twitter. About 4.2 percent of Mexico’s online population has posted about the drug war on Twitter, according to the report. These users tend to use Twitter on desktop, and occasionally mobile, Monroy-Hernández says. Twitter’s adoption in the cities most affected by violence and studied in the report — Monterrey, Reynosa, Saltillo and Veracruz — paralleled the rise of violence there. And the volume of tweets in these cities continues to mirror violence-related events there, according to the report. Because the use of Twitter in these cities revolves around the drug war, a big chunk of tweets are actually retweets, users notifying their networks about the danger. Hence, the importance of the core group of “curators” who work independently, or with their own sources, to tweet out information to the masses. For example, in Monterrey one Twitter user was responsible for 3 percent of the city’s total tweets, two users responsible for 2 percent and seven users who were each responsible for 1 percent of the city’s tweets. Yet, because of the nature of these tweets, curators are also anonymous, which at times means it is difficult to ascertain the veracity of the information in the tweets. This legitimacy issue is something Monroy-Hernández sees as part of the evolution of social media in Mexico. “I see an emerging trend of civic media technologies playing a central role in public life, especially those technologies that build on everyday social media practices,” he said. “I expect this is going to become a very rich space — not only in Mexico, but across the world.”
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San Quentin Prison Demo Day Gives Entrepreneurs Behind Bars A Second Chance
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Josh Constine
| 2,013 | 2 | 22 |
Barbed wire and armed guards aren’t your typical intro to a startup pitch event. But today, San Quentin Prison hosted demo day featuring presentations by seven inmates. The Last Mile hopes that through entrepreneurship, it can prepare convicts for employment and reduce recidivism. Considering these founders have never used the Internet or an app, their business plans were remarkable. “It makes me feel like I’m already contributing to society” said Crisfino Kenyatta Leal, one of the first inmates to go through The Last Mile who presented at its first demo day in 2012. The program was set up by accelerator , and funded by its founders Chris Redlitz of AdAuction and Beverly Parenti of First Virtual holdings, two succesful 90s tech companies. Investors, entrepreneurs, and authors like First Round Capital’s Josh Kopelman, MC Hammer, and AllTop’s Guy Kawasaki come in to mentor the inmates. Though these captive founders aren’t looking for funding now, many hope to launch their businesses once they earn their freedom. “IDs!” the guard at the first checkpoint yelled. He yelled a lot of things, leading me to assume working at a prison is a great job if you enjoy raising your voice. As I got escorted across San Quentin’s scenic bay-side compound, I was assured the inmates do not have an ocean view. My passport was triple-checked and I got shuffled through the iron gate airlock into the prison itself. An all-prisoner jazz band swung through a few jams in the on-site church before Redlitz gave an opening speech, explaining that Last Mile participants have to show years of dedication to their education before being admitted to the program. After a quick inspirational rap song from two more inmates, the first of the founders took the stage. What was immediately clear was how much these men had practiced. When presented his plan for Fitness Monkey, a startup aimed to help drug abusers replace substances with “a healthy addiction to fitness,” he looked more polished than many Y Combinator companies I’ve seen demo. Schuhmacher cited statistics, framed his market, walked through the app he envisioned, and rattled off one-liners like “Fitness Monkey is the product of my life, and my life sentence.” If delivered elsewhere, you probably wouldn’t have guessed Chris was convicted of second-degree murder. Eddie Griffin, in San Quentin for cocaine possession, pitched an app called “At The Club” that lets jazz music fans stream concerts. Art Felt Productions from second-degree murderer Tommy Winfrey gives prisoners a way to sell their art on sites like eBay and Etsy despite being banned from the Internet. Heracio Harts, serving 10 years for manslaughter, devised a plan to fight urban obesity by turning abandoned homes into urban centers that host farmers markets and exercise spaces. Occasionally, the fact that the inmates could only read about new technologies but not actually use them detracted from their startup plans. Several planned to use QR codes, which seem like a good idea, but no one actually scans. Darnell Hill, who is serving 10 years to life for robbery and kidnapping, laid out a plan for a mobile app to treat victims of post-traumatic stress disorder. He was betting QR code wristbands could drive downloads. Several of the ideas centered around keeping people out of jail. The inmates seemed eager to prevent others from sharing their fate. Schumacher explained that drugs and alcohol play into the crimes of over 80 percent of people incarcerated in the U.S. He hoped to shift addicts onto a “runner’s high” to keep them on the straight and narrow. Larry Histon, serving 29 years to life for first degree murder, proposed a company called TechSage which would turn newly released ex-cons into mobile app developers so they’d have jobs and stay out of prison. Histon granted that “the world has changed in 18 years” since he was sentenced. A former IT professional, Histon tries to stay current by getting his hands on tech magazines like Computer World and Information Week, which inmates are allowed to have. Rather than the impressive quality of the pitches, it was the fact that prisoners are not allowed to use the Internet directly that was most surprising. That the U.S. spends $50,000 a year to incarcerate people, but won’t give them access to a learning tool with infinite potential was downright depressing. The web could give convicts a chance to learn skills that could earn them jobs once they’re out. Last Mile co-founder Beverly Parenti lamented that “20 years in prison cost $1 million, but inmates are released with no training.” That leads many to wind up back in jail. “It’s a really bad investment,” Parenti tells me. Despite the barriers, San Quentin’s inmates do their best to participate in the digital world. They’re allowed to fill out “tweet sheets” which volunteers can then type in to let the prisoners use Twitter. They love to read print-outs or paperback copies of popular ebooks like Brian Solis’ “The End Of Business As Usual”. The Last Mile even set up a program to , which has spawned some of the knowledge base’s most fascinating content. Winfrey’s heartbreaking to “What does it feel like to murder someone?” has received almost 2,500 upvotes. But he’s never surfed the site; he’s required to submit answers on paper that are entered by someone else. If inmates were allowed to use the Internet, they’d obviously need to be monitored, and perhaps barred from direct communication. Still, just the ability to passively browse certain parts of the web could make prisoners feel less isolated, and more ready to eventually rejoin the world. At least one of the convicts who presented today, though, came up with a brilliant business plan without the web. started his presentation by saying “I’m here to tell you even produce deserves a second chance.” Before going to prison for attempted murder, Heredia discovered that tons of fresh produce that is perfectly good to eat is thrown away because it doesn’t look good enough to sit on a grocery shelf. He tells me in his first experiment in the business “I bought $375 of onions that would have been thrown away. I packed them in my truck, went door-to-door selling them to local restaurants, and came back with $1,500.” After 15 years behind bars, he wants to return to #2 produce-selling with a company he calls The Funky Onion. It plans to buy bruised fruits and vegetables for cheap, and sell them to businesses that don’t are about their appearance since they’ll be diced or canned anyways. Heredia’s also got a plan for a mobile app that educates people about the nutritional value and low prices of #2 produce, plus shows them where to buy it. The app even has a great viral hook: It encourages users to share photos of the “funkiest looking produce” they find. As the presentations ended and the jazz band kicked up again, it was beautiful to see the founders getting patted on the back in congratulations by their fellow inmates. There was a distinct vibe of “at least you’re going to make it out of here”. The Last Mile plans to eventually expand to other prisons beyond San Quentin and inspire similar entrepreneurship programs across the country. They have the potential to not only get prisoners back on track to being productive members of the community, but also to inject fresh ideas into technology. “Their ideas haven’t been corrupted by others’ approaches. In here your mind can just roam,” says Tulio Cardozo. After seven years in prison, he joined up with KickLabs upon release to mentor Last Mile participants while building his own program called , which is like a LinkedIn for former inmates. The tech world is supposed to embrace failure as long as it’s followed by hard work. Collaborative Benefit and hope that the we can see past what prisoners have done in the past, and give them a chance to redeem themselves. In his blue prison jumpsuit from the front of the stage, Leal urged, “If you treat a man as he can and should be, he’ll become what he can and should be.”
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Google Ports Quickoffice To Chrome Using Native Client, Will Get Full Editing Features In About 3 Months
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Frederic Lardinois
| 2,013 | 2 | 22 |
At its yesterday, Google didn’t just launch its new premium Chromebook. It also announced that it is porting , the mobile productivity app that brings Microsoft Office to iOS and Android to the web through and Chrome. Google acquired . As Google’s vice president of Chrome Sundar Pichai noted at yesterday’s event, a lot of people love Google’s productivity apps, but having a solution like Quickoffice available for Chrome and on Chromebooks “completes the story for a lot of users.” This is a big step for , Google’s technology for allowing developers to write web apps that get to the power of the CPU. Currently, Native Client is mostly being used by , and there are a number of Chrome Web Store apps that use it, but because it is still limited to Chrome, the number of developers who write applications for it remains small. Google already launched a number of Quickoffice document viewers for Chrome that are only available on the new Pixel Chromebook. In about three months, however, Google told me at the Pixel launch event yesterday, Quickoffice for the browser will also feature the ability to edit documents. The new viewers are also based on Native Client, but for Microsoft Office users on Chrome and ChromeOS, the ability to edit documents and do so in what is essentially a native app is likely a far more interesting solution. Quickoffice for Chrome, of course, won’t just run on the Pixel but should work on the desktop as well, where Native Client has been a built-in feature of Chrome for a long time now. Pricing is also still up in the air. Google continue to charge for the Quickoffice mobile app ($7.99 for Quickoffice Pro HD for the iPad, for example), but paying Google Apps users can get the iPad app for free. When Google acquired Quickoffice, most of us assumed it was doing so to strengthen Google Drive and to ensure that Android would have a viable native Office client as well, but adding it to ChromeOS also makes a lot of sense, especially given ChromeOS’s ambitions in the enterprise.
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With $2M From Zynga Co-founder & More, Sokikom Wants To Use Social, MMO Gaming To Help Kids Learn Math
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Rip Empson
| 2,013 | 2 | 22 |
, a new startup that wants to help K-12 teachers motivate students to learn using games, is announcing today that it has raised $2 million in seed funding, half of which comes in the form of a grant from the (a research branch within the U.S. Department of Education) and the other half comes in the form of angel funding from former Intel Chairman and CEO Dr. Craig Barrett and Zynga co-founder Steve Schoettler, among others. Up until now, the startup has flown under the radar, spending part of that time in beta, and its products have been in the hands of teachers for almost a year now, testing and iterating. But Sokikom is now ready to “officially” pull back the curtain on its online learning tool, which uses game mechanics to help teachers motivate their youngest students to improve their math skills and performance within the Common Core. To do that, Sokikom has created a math program that is built around a “game world,” like those one finds in massively multiplayer online and MMORPG games — contextually, it might help to think of Sokikom like Moshi Monsters and the original version , but for math. Sokikom’s game world is divided into different regions on a map, where each region focuses on a specific math domain. Teachers can give students autonomy or direct students to the particular area they want them to practice. Each domain comes with its own diagnostic assessment, which are a series of questions that start at the most basic level for kindergarten or first graders and progressively become more difficult as the student becomes more proficient. If the system senses that students aren’t understanding a particular topic, it stops the questions and sends students to the appropriate game level to continue practicing. The idea is to personalize the learning process for students, while making it enjoyable, and, of course, more engaging by putting it into a more familiar interface. “You can have content that is personalized at the perfect level for students,” Sokikom co-founder Snehal Patel says, “but if they aren’t motivated, they aren’t going to care and they’re not going to learn.” So, the team designed the game to be adaptive and self-paced, so that questions gradually get more difficult, while using visual math manipualtives to solve problems and, if they get stuck, allowing them to receive hints or view animated instructional videos specific to the area with which they’re struggling. For teachers, Sokikom provides realtime mastery reports that show them data on how students are performing compared to their class and grade level, how much time they’re spending answering questions, if they’re able to get the correct answer after making a mistake and where they’re struggling. The other cool part about Sokikom, which sets it apart from other cool animated, learning games is that it’s a MMO, allowing an entire class of students to play the same math game in realtime, where half of the class on the Red Team, and the other is on the Blue Team, for example. The teams can play a game for three minutes, in which the one with the highest cumulative score wins. Patel says that, beyond being fun for students, it actually has utility in terms of improving the learning experience. MMOs are, by nature, social, so rather than the typical classroom scenario where the more advanced students can actually help other students get up to speed, the idea is to create an experience where students help each other learn math naturally to help lead their teams to victory. In addition, the fact of the matter is that math can be a little dry (sometimes an all out Snooze Fest), and it’s tough to get young students excited about it and motivated to study its core concepts. But Sokikom has found in classroom tests that students care more about how they perform in game settings because they feel that they can be active contributors to the success of the team. That means higher motivation, thanks to serving the bitter Math pill with a more sugary coating. The other piece of Sokikom’s equation, which teachers (and users) can set up separately from its math program (read: Game world) or use in combination, is its classroom management tool. , Sokikom helps teachers try to get rowdy classrooms under control by, simply put, reinforcing positive, in-class behavior. When students aren’t acting a-fool, the service allows them to earn “class cash” that they can spend on virtual rewards in its game world. It’s an interesting approach, and one that Patel says teachers are appreciating because it means they don’t have to buy actual prizes for students — and, rather than just accumulating points with no rewards — it works symbiotically with the game world, enabling them to turn good behavior into level-ups and virtual rewards, like personalizing the avatar for their characters. And if Moshi Monsters has taught us anything, it’s that kids being able to personalize virtual characters and pets — the simple equation that led Moshi Monsters to add 15 million users in four months. Lastly, teachers get access to automatic behavior tracking in reports, which Sokikom serves in context with its learning report data, which Patel believes adds more value (and less pain) for teachers by serving both in one. As to why Sokikom decided to focus on math? Well, it’s worth pointing out that Math is recognized as perhaps the worst-performing subject in the U.S. To quote : International and domestic comparisons show that American students have not been succeeding in the mathematical part of their education at anything like a level expected of an international leader … and … the delivery system in mathematics education — the system that translates mathematical knowledge into value and ability for the next generation — is broken and must be fixed. Houston, we have a Math problem. What’s more Math is a universal language, the rules apply everywhere. And it also helps that Sokikom’s team consists of former math teachers and tutors, so there’s that. But, naturally, the team believes that its models have broad potential applications, so Math is likely just the first step. With any luck, computer science will be next. For more, .
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TechCrunch Giveaway: Free Ticket To Disrupt NY Plus A New GoPro Camera #TCDisrupt
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Elin Blesener
| 2,013 | 2 | 22 |
As you know is right around the corner. This April we will be, as they say, taking over the Big Apple. We have already announced a few of our , including Instagram’s , Sequoia Capital’s , SV Angel’s Ron Conway and David Lee, Thrillist Media Group’s Ben Lerer, Managing Director of Lerer Ventures & co-founder and former Chairman of The Huffington Post’s Ken Lerer, Gilt Groupe’s , and Union Square Ventures’ . Those are just to name a few. We will have more exciting announcements coming up, so be on the lookout for those. A couple of weeks ago, we gave away a free Disrupt ticket and a free Lytro camera to a lucky winner. Have you heard about ? Well my colleague Kim-Mai Cutler wrote an about their new camera. And guess what? We are giving one of those away, too. One lucky winner will receive a free ticket to Disrupt NY, plus the top model of the new GoPro camera — , valued at $399.99. To win both, all you have to do is follow the steps below. The giveaway will start now and end next Friday, March 1st, at 7:30 pm PT. 1) 2) – Retweet this post (making sure to include the #TCDisrupt hashtag)
– Or leave us a comment below telling us what you’re excited to use the camera for Please only tweet the message once or you will be disqualified. We will make sure you follow the steps above and choose our winner next Friday. Anyone in the world is eligible. Please note the ticket is for one person only and does not include airfare or hotel. [youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A3PDXmYoF5U&w=560&h=315]
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Framebench Is A Google Docs For Creative Collaboration
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Sarah Perez
| 2,013 | 2 | 22 |
is a newly launched platform for creative collaboration, specifically aimed at those working in digital agencies and other creative design firms. There are a number of tools already available serving this industry ( , for example), but Framebench’s focus on real-time communication, collaboration and sync gives it an edge. CEO Rohit Agarwal likens the product to something of a Google Docs for the creative design industry. “Before Google Docs came into existence, you would probably email a document, and [a collaborator] would review it and send it back. Then came Google Docs, where in real-time you could communicate with the other person and edit a document together,” Agarwal explains. “The key innovation there was the real-time component using technologies that were very, very new. That’s where the web is moving now,” he says. And that’s where Framebench aims to go, too. Agarwal says that many of the tools for sharing creative designs are still stuck in the asynchronous era. You can mark up files and email them to other people, but multiple people can’t collaborate on those files in realtime, or communicate with each other directly via voice or text. To address that problem, Framebench is combining some of the same tools found in online document creation software programs, with editing functions designed for creatives, as well as communication tools similar to things like Google Talk or Skype. From an online dashboard, users can delve into collections related to their project, and upload files or even the videos that they want to work on. The system supports simple editing tools, annotations, freestyle markup, and more, as well as file versioning. The team is currently working on a tool that will also allow users to quickly compare file versions, too. On the right side of this collaboration screen is the IM-like feature which right now supports text-based chat, but next week will include a WebRTC-based web conferencing solution as well. That way, users won’t have to run a secondary program like Skype or get on the phone – they can voice chat directly in the main interface. Agarwal also acknowledges that getting Framework to take off means incorporating the product into users’ current workflow. That’s why the company is actively integrating with other platforms, including Basecamp and Dropbox, as well as from Prime Focus Technologies. It also recently just closed on a partnership with another early stage startup, the DIY animation platform . Going forward, everyone who creates a video on PowToon will be able to collaborate on that video using Framebench. Based in New Delhi, the team of now seven full-time employees is planning to hire UI experts and a sales team, the latter to help it grow through channel sales and partnerships. These additions will be funded through its own recent seed investment ($150,000) from local VC firm , plus angel investors (SENA Systems founder), , and . Natarajan will be especially helpful to Framebench, given his industry connections as CEO of CG animation shop (“Care Bears” on The Hub; BBC’s “Everything’s Rosie”; and “Winx Club” on Nickelodeon). Having just exited from private beta a week or so ago, Framebench currently has 1,250 users, including three larger advertising companies who are already on the platform. These users are just now reaching the end of their 30-day trials and are being asked to convert to paid plans. A basic free plan will remain, but those who need to store more files and videos can upgrade starting at $19 per month. to start their own trials.
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Facebook Wants To Make Your Voice Plan Obsolete, Adds Free Calling To Its iOS Application
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Sarah Perez
| 2,013 | 2 | 22 |
Following , Facebook has today updated its to offer the same functionality. In the version 5.5 update, which is live now in Apple’s App Store, users in the U.S. and Canada can phone their friends directly from the right-hand sidebar within the application. You can see the voice-calling option by tapping on a friend’s name, then hitting the button at the top-right of the Contact Info screen. If they’re online, the “Free Call” button can be used to dial them directly, no phone number required. Otherwise this button is grayed out. The company commonly uses its standalone apps with their smaller user bases as a testing ground for new features before they make their way into Facebook’s main application. Facebook introduced voice functionality earlier this year in both its iOS and Android Messenger applications, . At that same time, it was also testing an option for open source VoIP calling between Canadian iOS Messenger users that worked over a data plan, before . With voice calling, it’s notable that Facebook has not been building on top of its existing Skype partnership, had powered a voice calling test on Facebook’s desktop site. More importantly, the move is pitting Facebook against the phone’s default calling application, as Josh Constine . Because people’s Facebook networks tend to represent their real-world friendships and connections – meaning those people they’re likely to jump on the phone with – Facebook is in a position to actually have an impact in terms of reducing the number of voice minutes a person needs to have on their calling plan. It would also provide Facebook with another piece of data about its users, by informing the network who a user’s “real” friends are. That can help it refine its relevancy algorithms for everything from the News Feed to ads and even to Facebook’s newly launched Graph Search. The . The feature has not yet arrived on Android, however, but is likely on the way given the earlier testing.
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Judge Sides With Greenlight, Blocks Apple From Holding Shareholder Vote On Proposal Over Preferred Stock
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Darrell Etherington
| 2,013 | 2 | 22 |
The “silly sideshow” around Greenlight Capital and Apple issuing preferred stock, as Apple CEO Tim Cook put it, will go on according to a . Sullivan sided with Greenlight Capital manager David Einhorn, blocking Apple from being able to proceed with a shareholder vote on whether or not the company can issue preferred stock. In the now infamous “Proposal No. 2,” Apple would have taken away its ability to directly issue any preferred stock, instead putting that power in the hands of shareholders via a vote. Einhorn’s lawsuit challenged the proposal on the grounds that it violated SEC rules by packing in the preferred shares issue with two other matters in a single proxy vote issue. Einhorn is angling for Apple to begin issuing preferred stock as a way to spread out more of Apple’s $137 billion stockpile to shareholders, looking for a perpetual 4 percent dividend on select shares. For its part, Apple has been nothing but dismissive of the lawsuit spearheaded by Einhorn. In a , the Apple CEO shared that he found the entire movement against Proposal No. 2 and a shareholder vote on preferred stock bewildering. “[F]rankly I find it bizarre that we would find ourselves being sued for something that’s good for consumers,” Cook said. “I think it’s a … it’s a silly sideshow, honestly.” He went on to say that the entire thing was little more than a buzzing fly around Apple’s head. “We’re not going to do a mailing campaign on it,” he said. He characterized it as “a waste of shareholder money, and it’s a distraction, and it’s not a seminal issue for Apple.” Cook further added that the company would insist on a common vote from shareholders before any issuance of preferred stock, whether or not the proposal went through. Judge Sullivan blocked the proposal from being voted on at the February 27 annual stockholders meeting, issuing a temporary injunction pending further investigation by the cour on the matter. Einhorn argues that Apple is missing out on delivering a lot of additional value to shareholders by blocking the proposal, but other shareholders don’t see the wisdom in the move. “Our concern is that Apple’s proposal is a very pro-shareholder resolution that is being hijacked,” Rich Clayton, research director at CtW Investment Group, a company that advises funds owning some 2 million in Apple stock, in a recent interview. “It’s in no way, shape or form necessary to oppose shareholder Proposal 2 for [Einhorn’s plan] to happen. Greenlight’s tactics don’t make a lot of sense.” Greenlight Capital released the following statement regarding the Judge’s ruling today: This is a significant win for all Apple shareholders and for good corporate governance. We are pleased the Court has recognized that Apple’s proxy is not compliant with the SEC’s rules because it bundles different matters in Proposal 2. We look forward to Apple’s evaluation of our iPref idea and we encourage fellow shareholders to urge Apple to unlock the significant value residing on its balance sheet. As mentioned, Apple clearly sees little value in making a big deal out of this case against it, but Einhorn definitely doesn’t seem as eager to let things lie low. The shareholder meeting on February 27 could be the scene of some major fireworks, depending on how things proceed.
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Quipio, Where Instagram Meets Text Messaging
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Jordan Crook
| 2,013 | 2 | 22 |
There’s a new formula in place, as forged by Instagram. Step A: Choose a popular, yet simple, media (like a photo, a video, a , or a text message).
Step B: Frill up said media, but with the simplest set of tools possible (filters, ).
Step C: Make sharing to any and every social network as easy as one click. This formula has been replicated in various shapes and forms for more than a year, but is bringing the Instagram formula to its basest level. Quipio, in essence, is an Instagram for your words. You start by typing a message. This could be a meme, a private joke, a text-message style note, or a status update. You then highlight important words in the statement. You have the option to choose from dozens of pre-set filters/themes for the text, or you can add a photo (from camera roll or on the spot) as the background. Whether you choose to add a photo background or not, Quipio always emphasizes the highlighted words and adds a cool, fun look to the text. You can then, as expected, blast the Quip out on your various social networks, including Facebook, Twitter, Quipio, Weibo, as well as SMS and email. Of course, users can comment and like Quips right within the app. Unfortunately, the push notifications you get from likes have the worst possible audio alert, and instead of calling it a like, Quipio tells you that “so-and-so saw your quip and went ‘mmm!'” Weird. The Quipio team seems to think of themselves as more of an evolved Twitter, but it’s hard not to recognize the Instagram formula when you see it. All in all, it should be an interesting addition to our media-sharing addictions, if there’s still room in your heart and your home screen for yet another social network? is available now in the App Store. [gallery ids="763622,763623,763624,763625,763626,763627,763628,763629,763630"]
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“Airbnb For Hostels” App WeHostels Launches Hot Trips, Including Ultra-Cheap Housing For SXSW Guests
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Ryan Lawler
| 2,013 | 2 | 22 |
Don’t have a place to stay yet at SXSW this year? No problem. As long as you don’t mind sharing a room with six (or 12) people, social travel startup has you covered. The company, which has a mobile app that allows users to find affordable housing in hostels around the world, is launching a new way to search for places to stay during major events. Its new “Hot Trips” feature will allow users to hunt down housing during next month’s SXSW Interactive conference in Austin, as well as other future events like St Partick’s Fest in Dublin, or Oktoberfest in Munich. For SXSW in particular, WeHostels has partnered with Firehouse Hostel, which is right around the corner from all the action on 6th in Austin. From March 8-12, the hostel will be making beds in its six-person shared dorms available for as little as $68, or $63 for those who wish to stay in a 12-person shared room. The hostel will also have various amenities ready for SXSW Interactive guests, including free Wi-Fi, a coworking area in the lobby, and complimentary breakfast. It also plans to host a party there Friday night. The WeHostels app launched about six months ago to offer users the ability to find low-priced housing in hostels or cheap hotels. It’s been building its inventory of places to stay ever since, and now has recommendations for about 60,000 around the world. Much of that inventory is in Europe, where backpacking and staying in hostels is still an integral part of the experience for many young adults, but it also has places in North and South America, as well as Southeast Asia. The app has more than 100,000 registered users, the majority of which are between 19 and 25. Its biggest markets for users are the U.S., the U.K., Australia, and Germany but it hopes to get more people signed up throughout Europe, according to CEO Diego Saez-Gil. WeHostels users tend to be spontaneous, with about a quarter of all its bookings happen on the same day, and another quarter of stays are booked the day before. The rest of all its bookings usually take place within a week of a user’s stay. That shows a lot of users are entering a city and trying to find a place to stay on the fly. While its SXSW partnership is for shared rooms, the app caters to both private and dorm-style overnight stays. But prices are a significant discount to hotel stays or Airbnb listings in most cities. Average price in a city like San Francisco or New York City can run about $90 per night, but in less-expensive areas, like Southeast Asia, rooms could go for as low as $5 dollars a night. WeHostels had raised $1.2 million in seed funding from of investors such as Ventech, Quotidian Ventures, CAP Ventures, Fabrice Grinda, and Dave Lerner, among others. For SXSW, users will want to book a little ahead of time. Already, its option for female-only shared rooms at the conference are booked.
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Drew Olanoff
| 2,013 | 2 | 14 | null |
Looks Like Google Is Working On A UDP Replacement Called QUIC
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Frederic Lardinois
| 2,013 | 2 | 22 |
had a very good day yesterday. Not only did the video of the Chromebook Pixel he discovered earlier this month turn out to be real, he also that Google started work on a new web protocol in Chrome called QUIC. This protocol, it seems, aims to update the (UDP), a core part of the Internet protocol suite that also includes TCP, for example. UDP is often used for applications that need real-time connectivity (video conferencing, games etc.). It opens up a direct connection between two machines, which makes it perfect for real-time applications and streaming data where low latency is very important. In return, however, it lacks some of the reliability controls of other Internet protocols like the . QUIC also focuses on data streams, it seems, but with the extra benefit of adding a built-in encryption layer and some basic reliability controls. It looks like the project was merged into Chrome , but work on the project seems to have started late last year. And while some people , the project has mostly gone unnoticed. Now, however, it looks like it is becoming of the Chromium project – the open source initiative behind Google’s Chrome browser. We contacted Google for a comment about this, but all we got from a spokesperson was the company’s usual non-denial that “the team is continuously testing new features. At this time, we have nothing new to announce.” With SPDY, of course, Google is currently working on a similar initiative for HTTP, and it looks like a lot of the work on SPDY may flow into the HTTP 2.0 standard. Google probably hopes to achieve something similar for UDP with QUIC. As it aims to make the web faster, more reliable and more secure, the company is clearly not content with just making its applications faster, but it has a vested interest in also pushing forward some of the low-level technologies that make today’s Internet work in the first place.
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Flickr’s iOS App Is Still Playing Catch-Up – Here’s What It Needs
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Sarah Perez
| 2,013 | 2 | 22 |
A about new updates to its iOS application went relatively unnoticed yesterday. The post announced a series of incremental improvements to an app which has so far barely managed to but has yet to really impress. The latest build brings a few now-standard features like the ability to save photos to your Camera Roll, communicate with @ replies, and more. It’s nothing to write home about, so to speak, which is why the majority of the news-hungry tech blogs didn’t prioritize it on a day when Google was announcing new hardware ( , which actually impress). That being said, Flickr is still an important network to watch, especially because it has managed to maintain a foothold and consumer brand, even as Facebook has triumphed as the de facto place where users now go to upload and share photos with family and friends. Flickr, had it not been starved for innovation inside the machinery of a floundering Yahoo, could have even competed with Facebook, given its head start, once highly engaged user base, and . The tech blogosphere is now rooting for new Flickr and new Yahoo, given that we all like new CEO Marissa Mayer just so darned much. But if the company waited a year before , maybe it should have waited a little longer until it really had something radical and new to show us. Don’t get me wrong. Flickr is no longer a terrible, horrible, no good, very bad app, as it was pre-December revamp. The older version was a slow, buggy destroyer of image quality. And worse, it forced you to upload photos one-by-one. Yes, in 2012. Meanwhile, the new Flickr for iOS is an entirely different application. It’s fast, solid and well-built with a smart and attractive user interface, and even some trendier features like filters. Yes, filters are . Ten years from now, I imagine we’ll look back on them and giggle a little about the hipster-fied 2010’s, with our skinny jeans and insta-aged photos. Filters, after all, are a way to evoke nostalgia in an age where everything moves a bit too quickly, and no one has time to pause and reflect. When the coldness of digital photography and the ease and ubiquity of camera phones means we now have 50 pictures of a moment when we used to have one. Filters are a way of saying to ourselves: stop, this moment is important. I’m selecting it specifically. I’m differentiating it from the stream. Filters are solving the problem of too much/too fast, but that’s a problem that will eventually be solved by smarter technology. And Flickr would have done well to launch an app that was, at the very least, heading in that direction when it re-birthed itself over the holidays. As it stands today, the app is instead seemingly working on a list of checkboxes of what a photo-sharing, social mobile application should be about. Does it have filters? CHECK. Can you @ reply to friends? CHECK. Share to the social web? CHECK. Post to Tumblr? CHECK. Save photos locally? CHECK. Multi-upload? CHECK. What it hasn’t done yet is really surprise us. A number of startups have tried, failed and are continuing to try to make sense of our fragmented, vast and exponentially growing photo collections. Facebook, too, is quietly experimenting in this area, following Google+ and Dropbox’s lead by . The feature is always optional, however, as today, users worry about privacy and bandwidth issues. These concerns will reduce in time, especially as micro-networks like Snapchat pop up to provide outlets for private sharing at the same time as bandwidth costs decrease. Flickr not only needs automatic uploads – that’s just another box to check – it needs to really innovate on the next step. That is, what to do with those photos once they’re in the cloud. A basic first move is automatically creating date and time-stamped photo albums (in Flickr’s parlance, “sets”). But there are many steps that would have to come afterwards. For example: This is off the top of head, so I’m sure Yahoo has these things in its sights at least. What’s odd to me is that it didn’t come running out of the gate really nailing at least one of the above, when each item listed is currently in development by a photo-sharing startup somewhere. , for example, is tackling the problem of filtering the bad photos from the good and building object-recognition algorithms. helps you find photo streams that match your interests. Flock, Moment.me, Flayvr, new arrival , and others group photos from you and friends (or strangers) based on time and place. Timehop and let you delve into photos of days past. The technology is out there, it’s just a matter of finding everyone’s price tag. And Flickr should because . Now is the time to out-innovate them or die trying. Because the story we want to hear is not ; we want to hear how Yahoo saved it.
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Director Of Product Blake Ross Is Leaving Facebook
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Alexia Tsotsis
| 2,013 | 2 | 22 |
Facebook Director of Product is leaving the company, he announced in a Facebook post yesterday afternoon. For those of you who weren’t reading TechCrunch in 2007, Firefox co-founder Ross and Joe Hewitt came to Facebook through its acquisition of , a web OS that was still in stealth at the time. Parakey was Facebook’s Hewitt, who spearheaded many Facebook Mobile projects including iOS, in 2011. Ross worked on many projects at Facebook in his six years there, starting out as an engineer, founding the growth team with Chamath Palihapitiya and others, and even cycling through Facebook Questions. He started out as an engineer and moved his way up to a Product Manager and then Director of Product role. From Ross’ eloquent (we’ve heard he’s not actually leaving until next month): Hey everyone, I’ve decided to leave Facebook. I’m so grateful that I’ve had the opportunity to learn from and grow with you. I’m leaving because a Forbes writer asked his son’s best friend Todd if Facebook was still cool and the friend said no, and plus none of HIS friends think so either, even Leila who used to love it, and this journalism made me reconsider the long-term viability of the company. Also because, after scaling a website in a dorm room to a platform connecting a billion people in 196 countries through revolutionary high-efficiency auto-cooling datacenters, you guys will probably never figure out how to sell a Quiznos turkey club on a phone. In all seriousness, even after switching to part-time at Facebook, it’s just time for me to try new things. I was 14 when I came to the Bay Area to work at Netscape (socially stunted badge pic below). That’s half my life building software in a 10-mile area of Northern California—a rather long stretch considering I spent the first half of my life learning disciplines as varied as standing up, eating, and getting Bar Mitzvahed. My parting advice: Cherish the launch days. To be surrounded by such bright people, brimming with optimism, forgetting to eat, is a blessing. It’s the kind of manic hopefulness that adulthood is supposed to drain out of you, and I will miss it most. Launch day is also a great day for Legal to find out what you’re launching. Guys, thanks for everything. You’ve all brought a lot of joy to this stone cold heart.” We’ve reached out to both Facebook and Ross for official confirmation, and will update this post when we hear back. There’s also no word on what “new things” Ross will be trying after his stint at the social network. Also, if anyone is wondering why there’s a “Blade” at the bottom of his Facebook badge, it’s .
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Drawbridge’s $14M Round Valued The Cross-Device Ad Targeting Startup At $99M
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Anthony Ha
| 2,013 | 2 | 22 |
, aiming to improve mobile and cross-device ad targeting, has raised $14 million in Series B funding. AdAge actually , but a source with knowledge of the deal told me that the story got one crucial detail wrong — the new funding actually valued Drawbridge at $99 million, more than double the $45 million that AdAge reported. I trust my source more than I trust AdAge’s unidentified “executive familiar with the deal,” but then I would, wouldn’t I? For those of you following along at home, this might seem like a classic he-said she-said situation. I will point out, however, that $45 million seems like a pretty low valuation for a company that has raised a total of $20.5 million in funding. Plus, raising $14 million at that valuation would mean giving away a lot of the company. Since Drawbridge is a young startup that only raised its Series A and , it probably isn’t so cash-strapped that it needs to take money on such unfavorable terms. Drawbridge isn’t commenting on the valuation, but it did note that it’s now working with advertisers, including HotelTonight, Square, Groupon, Kabam, and PocketGems. The company’s approach to ad targeting focuses on trying to identify cases where multiple devices are being used by a single user, so that mobile ads, in particular, can be targeted using the richer data collected from cookies on the desktop web. Drawbridge says that it has now matched 450 million devices. Drawbridge was founded Kamakshi Sivaramakrishnan, formerly a scientist at Google-acquired mobile ad network AdMob. The new round was led by , with participation from previous investors Kleiner and Sequoia. , AdAge’s John McDermott clarified that the valuation in his story is pre-money (i.e., the value of the company before the investment). Therefore the post-money valuation was $60 million. I’ve confirmed that my source’s $99 million valuation was post-money, so I was not making an apples-to-apples comparison. The more relevant comparison would be the $45 million pre-money suggested by McDermott’s source and the approximately $85 million pre-money valuation that my source is (implicitly) claiming. I apologize for not nailing that down before posting (and yeah, an awkward thing to admit when I’m giving someone else crap for supposedly getting something wrong).
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The Console Wars, Begun They Have: Microsoft May Announce New Xbox At April Event
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John Biggs
| 2,013 | 2 | 22 |
A number of , including a new registered to Microsoft, are pointing to an Xbox event in April. While most console reveals happen at E3, as evidenced by Sony’s mystery-filled conference, Microsoft will probably announce specs and some launch titles and leave the money shot for Los Angeles in June. reported the rumor today and corroborated it. Considering the timing of Sony’s announcement, it makes perfect sense for Microsoft to join in the hoopla surrounding next-gen consoles. The , code-named Durango, will require an improved, included Kinect sensor to play and will support game “sections” that allow you to play one portion of the game while the rest loads or downloads. It will support 1080p 3D video and run on 8GB of RAM.
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Instagram’s Kevin Systrom To Join Us For Disrupt NY 2013
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Alexia Tsotsis
| 2,013 | 2 | 22 |
In case you’re not vigorously refreshing our events page like we are, TechCrunch Disrupt is coming up. We’re receiving a record number of and watching the last batch pour in before the deadline on Monday. We’ve also started to announce some amazing special guests and speakers. Tickets for this year’s show can be . From pivot to iconic acquisition, there is perhaps no recent Valley success story more symbolic than that of Instagram and its cofounder Kevin Systrom. His saga, and the fact that he’s a sharp cookie, are why we’re delighted to have this join us on the Disrupt NY stage. Systrom will be headlining along with speakers , , , , , , and . Stay tuned for more updates, and remember, if you want to apply for Startup Battlefield, do so before Monday, February 25th. More info on applying can be . Kevin Systrom is a co-founder of Instagram, a photo sharing application for the iPhone. He also founded Burbn, an HTML5-based location sharing service. Kevin graduated from Stanford University in 2006 with a BS in Management Science & Engineering—he got his first taste of the startup world when he was an intern at Odeo that later became Twitter. He spent two years at Google—the first of which was working on Gmail, Google Reader, and other products and the latter where he worked on the Corporate Development team. Kevin has always had a passion for social products that enable people to communicate more easily, and combined with his passion for photography, Instagram is a natural fit.
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Google I/O Registration Date Leaks, Be Ready To Sign Up On March 13 (Update: It’s Official)
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Jordan Crook
| 2,013 | 2 | 22 |
A tipster has sent in of what appears to be a landing page announcing registration dates for Google’s massive in May. Google’s . Registration opens on March 13th at 7am PDT (10am ET). Google+ accounts and Google Wallets are required to sign up. Historically, the rush for Google I/O tickets is wild. Around 5,000 developers attended the last year’s conference, yet somehow tickets sold out in less than an hour. Demand is so high, in fact, that Google toyed with the idea of turning registrations into a sort of hacking contest, testing devs’ coding skills before giving them a seat at the show. However, it appears that idea was scrapped, as I/O 2012 was simply a free-for-all registration, just like 2011. I/O 2013 is slated for May 15 – May 17 in good old San Francisco, and Google has already hinted that registrations would open up in early 2013. Based on this screen grab, early 2013 is looking a lot like a Wednesday in March. Then again, it’s pretty easy for someone to throw together this image in photo shop. Still, the timing seems to match up well, and with the speed at which these tickets sell out, it never hurts to have the date marked down on your calendar just in case. Google’s I/O conference is growing to be one of the most important tech events of the year, as the search giant often unveils new products and platforms and introduces new tools to help developers make the most out of “open.”
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If America Was A Startup We’d All Quit
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Michael Arrington
| 2,013 | 2 | 22 |
So I was chatting with my dad yesterday. We had a long drive home after the Department of Homeland Security . The mood was somber. We were talking about how awful America has become. We are a nation that has been split into groups that absolutely hate each other. Debt is rising, taxes are rising and freedom is being demolished. Meanwhile our elected officials are doing little more than stoking the drama fire while fiddling with the deck chairs on the Titanic. Whatever your politics, you must see it too. Just pick a at random and read the comments. There is no logic or reason on either side, only hypocrisy and hate. I’m a creature of startups. For example, I government interference in the startup ecosystem. And more importantly, as someone immersed in startup culture, I am a big fan of just walking away from stuff that can’t be fixed. In my post I talk about focusing on what you’re good at and just walking away from unsolvable problems. America is an unsolvable problem, a nation divided and deeply in hate with itself. If it was a startup we’d understand how unfixable the situation is, most of us would leave for a fresh start and the company would fall apart. America is MySpace. But leaving America means renouncing your citizenship, moving out of the country and leaving family and friends behind. You can retain your citizenship if you like, but you’ll still be away from loved ones and still be paying taxes. You lose all the good stuff about America and have to keep all the bad stuff. I love this country but we have a management team that’s both evil and incompetent. And the way “stockholder rights” are implemented there’s absolutely no way to stop or even slow down the rush to misery. I wish people had the choice of voting with their feet. This tends to keep the individual states somewhat honest in their dealings with citizens because they have to compete against 49 other states. But there’s no escaping the fed. It’s like a startup where everyone is miserable but no one is allowed to quit.
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Boston-Based VC Firm And Early Twitter Investor Spark Capital Raises $450M For Fourth Fund
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Leena Rao
| 2,013 | 2 | 25 |
Boston-based VC firm is announcing its fourth fund this evening, raising $450 million for the firm’s biggest investment fund to date. Spark, who raised $360 million for its last fund, now has $1.4 billion under management. Partner Bijan Sabet tells us this fund was oversubscribed. Founded in 2005 by Todd Dagres, Santo Politi and Paul Conway, Spark Capital invests across a broad group of areas in technology, including advertising and monetization, commerce and services, cloud and infrastructure, social, mobile and content. The portfolio includes Twitter, Tumblr, Foursquare, and OMGPOP (sold to Zynga). Most of the firm’s investments are early stage, but the range varies from $250,000 in seed funding or $25,000,000 in late-stage financing. In 2005, Spark raised $260 million initially, and then for its second fund, raised $360 million in 2008. Why the bigger fund this time around? Sabet explains that a larger fund gives the firm more flexibility in not only investing at the early stage but also putting in money at later stages, if necessary. “We like supporting companies throughout their life,” he says. “We want to support our companies properly.” Sabet adds that the firm is spending more time with and investing in more companies in New York and San Francisco, and additional money gives the firm the flexibility for additional investments in new startups. He adds that 75 percent of the firm’s investments are for early-stage rounds. Internally, Spark will be hiring at the associate level. A year ago, the firm as partner. Hyatt was a general manager at Zynga who sold his company Conduit Labs to the social gaming giant. Sabet says that the focus areas for the firm will remain the same for the fourth fund, but additionally Spark will be interested in investments in education, healthcare and financial services where these sectors intersect with social. Already, Spark has backed learning community Skillshare and fitness app Runkeeper. More money for the startup ecosystem, at all levels, is always a good thing. Last year, VC firms for funds since 2008. Already this year, we saw that Battery Ventures just raised and Redpoint recently raised for its fifth fund.
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With Series A Funding From SoftBank Ventures Korea, SmarTots Helps Educational App Developers Localize For China
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Catherine Shu
| 2,013 | 2 | 25 |
China is now the world’s largest smartphone marketplace, with that there will be 246 million smart devices in China by the end of this month. It’s a potentially lucrative market for app developers, but almost impossible to crack without the necessary language or cultural understanding to reach Chinese users. Educational app makers, however, have to help. Founded in December 2010 by Jesper Lodahl, a former Nokia developer, SmarTots localizes apps and markets them on China’s iTunes. While the company’s current focus is iOS, Lodahl says SmarTots will also tackle a “very aggressive Android expansion” this year and already has a shortlist of carriers, hardware providers, and developers it plans to work with. SmarTots announced earlier this month that it has received an undisclosed amount of Series A funding from SoftBank Ventures Korea that will allow it to bring more children’s educational apps from U.S. developers to China. The company previously raised about $1 million in its seed round and its investors include SoftBank’s Pan-Asia Fund, Xu Xiaoping, co-founder of New Oriental Education & Technology Group, AngelVest, ChinaRock Capital Management and SOSVentures. Since its launch, the SmarTots library has grown to 30 apps and the company says it hit one million downloads in January. SmarTots currently works with a roster of 13 developers from around the world, localizing images, graphics, text and audio for Chinese kids and writing descriptions for China’s iTunes store. Most apps are for children aged three to five, though SmarTots’ target age range is as wide as two to seven. Before founding SmarTots with chief product officer Victor Wong, Lodahl spent seven years working for Nokia, where he developed four phones (Lodahl holds two patents for technology that have been implemented in more than 1 billion mobile handsets) before taking a position with Nokia China for two years. This is Lodahl’s second startup in China–his first was a Chinese social network called Club Beautiful. Lodahl decided to found SmarTots with Wong two years ago after noticing how much children loved playing with the then-recently launched iPad. Instead of having the technology isolate individual family members absorbed in their own devices, Lodahl envisioned SmarTots as a way for families to learn together. “The whole idea came to us after we saw the disconnect, kids geting sucked into the iPad while parents were on their BlackBerries checking emails all day with no one really connecting,” says Lodahl. With that goal in mind, SmarTots seeks developers who make educational apps that allows children to create what the company calls “share to mommy” content–in other words, drawing, music and other work that can be sent to the parents’ SmarTots activity feed, which is accessed on the Web or on SmarTots’ app. This allows parents to keep track of their children’s progress on different SmarTots apps and share highlights, like special doodles, with other people such as grandparents. It also has an educational reporting function that tracks which activities each child is most interested in and gives parents recommendations for more apps from the SmarTots library. Lodahl tells me that his company is especially keen on creativity-building apps that help Chinese parents fill a gap in their children’s education. SmarTots’ current bestseller is an app called (images seen above), developed by MyVijan, which allows kids to trace, color or draw on iPad. A new addition is by Creativity Inc., which allows kids to create their own band, with a singer and instrumentalists, and then make it record a track that can then be shared with their parents. “If you look at children’s time during the day, when they are not in class, they don’t really have a lot of free time. We focus on apps that expand kids’ creativity. We have drawing apps, music apps, story-telling apps, coloring apps, anything that extends their creativity,” Lodahl says.
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NYPD And Apple Team Up To Stop iThing Theft In NYC
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Jordan Crook
| 2,013 | 2 | 22 |
The number of gadget-related thefts in major metropolitan areas has only continued to rise, and the number of resolved cases simply can’t keep up. However, it would appear that Apple is now working directly with the NYPD to help return iThings into the hands of their rightful owners. The an official team which will work directly with Apple to track down stolen iThings, mostly iPhones and iPads. Devices are tracked in the same way they always have been: with the help of tracking number (International Mobile Station Equipment Identity). Once the tracking number has been relayed to Apple, Cupertino can locate the device and send police to retrieve it. According to NYPD spokesman Paul Browne, the team hopes to uncover a pattern that will lead police closer to the more organized side of the thefts, involving resale on the black market to unsuspecting buyers. In New York, 74 percent of all stolen Apple products remain within the five boroughs. But some venture quite a ways away — the reports that Apple helped police track down an iPad that had ended up in Santo Domingo, Dominican Republic. According to the , the NYPD reported that over 40 percent of all robberies in the city now involve cell phones. The wireless industry has been working hard to integrate with law enforcement on a number of levels. Along with Apple’s direct work with the NYPD, the wireless industry as a whole has been working to form a database of tracking numbers to help keep theft down, or at the very least, return as many stolen devices as possible. However, that won’t launch until November of 2013. Additionally, carriers are working with officials to developer a next-generation 911 system that includes texting, MMS, as well as calls.
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Network Effect: SingTel-Owned Amobee Expands Mobile Ad Platform To Cover Its Globe, Optus And Telkomsel Holdings
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Ingrid Lunden
| 2,013 | 2 | 25 |
When the pan-Asian mobile carrier paid , the thinking was that the Singapore-based SingTel could use Amobee to serve targeted ads to its 480-million mobile subscriber base across the region. Some eight months after the deal has closed, that network effect is coming into play: today Amobee is announcing that it will take over all mobile ads for SingTel, as well as Globe in the Philippines, Optus in Australia and New Zealand and Telkomsel in Indonesia. The deal is exclusive and will mean that all four carriers will be served ads through Amobee’s PULSE mobile ad platform — which was initially developed by Amobee in California but has since been integrated into SingTel’s servers in the Asia-Pacific region. Initially, this deal will cover 200 million users, Amobee says, but will be extended out to eventually cover all of SingTel’s 480 million subscribers. Overall, SingTel is active in 20 countries. Amobee continues to work with other carriers that are not part of the SingTel group. These include AT&T and Sprint in the U.S., Vodafone and Telefonica, as well as others across Europe and the Middle East. But the Asia-Pacific portion of its business is now growing. Whereas last year it made up 10 percent of Amobee’s revenues, this year that rose to at least one-third. The idea is for SingTel to gain better control over ads across its network of operations, and offer publishers a more attractive, targeted advertising option than going with one of the other established players — such as Google, the king of the mobile advertising hill. “Instead of competing against Google, it’s about doing something different,” noted Mark Strecker, COO for Amobee, in an interview with TechCrunch. “A lot of carriers are looking for alternatives to Google.” That strategy, of course, will take on a new twist for SingTel in the coming years. SingTel is one of the in the development of the Firefox OS for mobile (and the two partner on investments to boost that ecosystem, too, such as this ). One of the promises of the new HTML5-friendly platform is that it will give carriers a bigger say in how mobile services are localized for their respective customer bases. That will include what ads get delivered, and by whom. Those handsets will start to appear in different markets later this year. These developments are not coming straight away, but they are coming. “What I can say about Firefox OS is that carriers are looking for ways for a more integrated experience. Having something on the handset for an integrated experience is more compelling to the user, and enabling advertising for the OS will be something that is a more integrated experience,” said Strecker. “That is definitely a theme. The specifics of how and when that is getting rolled out and in terms of integration from a carrier standpoint have yet to be rolled out.” PULSE is an example of how the “big data” concept is being applied in the world of mobile advertising: sourcing data like user location and browsing history straight from the carriers, it then serves back ads that are more targeted and relevant, sourcing not just from Google but some 80 other ad networks. The promise to publishers is that this potentially gives them much better economies of scale, as well as more relevant audiences for their brands. Advertisers that have worked with Amobee include Google, Skype, eBay, Barnes & Noble and Nokia. Interestingly, although SingTel is clearly subsuming and using its new mobile company to flex its muscle in the region, Amobee itself is run as an independent business. “We’re still run as a separate entity within SingTel. You could say we have continued operating as a startup, just with one investor now instead of several,” Strecker said. (VCs that had backed Amobee prior to acquisition included Accel, Sequoia, Globespan, Vodafone, Cisco, Motorola, Telefonica and Amdocs.) “One of the opportunities for them buying us was about leveraging data and making context more relevant in mobile ads.” Mobile advertising is growing worldwide with the rise of smartphones, mobile broadband networks and a subsequent rise in usage of apps and mobile web — revenues in 2012 from mobile ads reached $2.6 billion in 2012. But its role in regions like Asia-Pacific is especially a focus for the industry because in emerging markets, handsets become the primary device for accessing the Internet, instead of more traditional, larger-screened computers. SingTel buying Amobee was a strategy for the company to gain more control over that growing revenue stream. “The Philippines is one of the fastest growing, mobile-centric markets in the world, where nearly every Filipino owns a mobile device rather than a computer,” Ernest Cu, CEO of Globe, noted in a release announcing the news. “Therefore, it has become crucial that advertisers and brands stay on top of consumers’ minds with relevant mobile ads.”
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After Raising $8.3M, Jibe Mobile Signs MetroPCS To Its Joyn-Approved Voice, Video And Chat Cloud
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Ingrid Lunden
| 2,013 | 2 | 25 |
When it comes to popular mobile apps for messaging and sharing content like Facebook and Twitter, carriers have been on the edges of the picture as data network providers rather than the developers of those services themselves. But a deal signed today between and underscores one example of how they hope to become more central players. Jibe — a provider of a cloud-based platform for voice, video and chat services — has signed up MetroPCS as the latest carrier to use its services. The agreement comes by way of both companies’ involvement with joyn, an initiative backed by the mobile operator association, the GSMA, to help promote cross-platform “rich communication services.” The first fruits of the new deal, covering MetroPCS’s footprint in the U.S., are expected to go live later this year. With 8.9 million subscribers, MetroPCS is the fifth-largest mobile carrier in the U.S., but a potential merger with T-Mobile’s could see the number of users that might access this service increase by 33.2 million: MetroPCS shareholders are expected to vote for or against the deal on . In December 2012, Jibe Mobile led by carrier Vodafone to develop its platform and begin signing up customers. MetroPCS appears the first customer announced since then. In a way, deals like these are about bringing carriers up to speed with how consumers are already communicating. When we use Facebook on our mobile phones, for example, we don’t think about whether our friends are on the same mobile network before sharing a picture or video, or instant messaging them. Joyn gives carriers a chance to offer those services to their customers themselves, and go one better by making them something that can be integrated throughout the device and used anywhere a customer wants. “MetroPCS’ adoption of Jibe Mobile is a major step forward in advancing our commitment to help bridge the worlds of traditional standards-based telecommunications and Silicon Valley-style rapid application development to let carriers and developers connect, and ultimately enhance, the experience of mobile consumer and business subscribers around the world,” said Amir Sarhangi, CEO, Jibe Mobile, in a statement. MetroPCS last year says it became the first carrier to offer RCS 5.0 (rich communication services) on its LTE network with joyn certification. While some of the functionality for Jibe’s service will rest in the cloud, users download a client app to their devices — be it a phone or tablet or PC — for it to work. As with other apps that enable social communications, users then invite other people to download the app to use it too. Then, depending on what the carrier decides to implement, those communications services can then be integrated and offered on other content and apps on the device. “Our goal with joyn by MetroPCS was to give consumers a new intuitive and unified communications experience and we are excited about the potential that now exists, through Jibe, for subscribers outside the MetroPCS network to adopt and experience the full range of features and services made possible by RCS,” said Roger Linquist, CEO and Chairman, MetroPCS, in a statement. “We are committed to working with operators and over-the-top providers to demonstrate the benefits of joyn, ensure that true interoperability from any device and carrier is achieved and ultimately see mass adoption of RCS services on a scale similar to SMS or text services.”
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Splitsecnd Turns Any Car Into A Connected Car, Launches Plug-In Crash Detection Device
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Frederic Lardinois
| 2,013 | 2 | 25 |
Many new cars now feature an automatic crash-detection system that will call 911 for you whenever you are in a crash that is bad enough for your airbags to inflate. Adding this kind of functionality to an older car is typically very costly, but Nashville-based startup just launched an Internet-connected plugin for any car that offers the same kind of functionality and also lets you track your car’s location online. The device costs $199 plus a $14.95 monthly service fee and is now available for purchase on Splitsecnd’s website. It will ship within the next two weeks. The company hopes to start selling it at brick-and-mortar stores later this year. Founded by Vanderbilt University graduates Chris Thompson (CEO) and William Green (CMO) in 2010, Splitsecnd $2.1 million from Tennessee Community Ventures and the team also participated in Nashville’s program. As Thompson and Green told me earlier today, they first wanted to just launch a mobile app that could be used in case of an emergency, but they quickly decided that in order to really provide the safety features they were looking for, they would have to offer a hardware solution. Users simply plug the Splitsecnd device into their car’s cigarette lighter and from then on, it will use its accelerometer to watch for a potential crash. As Thompson and Green stressed, the team put the device through strenuous safety tests, including at the University of Michigan’s crash labs, to ensure that it wouldn’t break in case of a crash (the outside is made of a hard plastic with metal on the inside) and wouldn’t start sending false alerts either. The device will call the company’s New Hampshire-based call center when it detects an accident (or the driver presses the emergency button). The Splitsecnd features its own built-in speaker and microphone, as well as a battery, so it doesn’t rely on the car to work in case it gets thrown out of the plug. The device also features a USB plug, so you can still use your 12V plug to charge your phone. Cell service for the Splitsecnd is offered through RACO Wireless, a company that specializes in machine-to-machine connectivity and that uses AT&T’s and T-Mobile’s networks. The service uses basic 2G technology, which is more than enough given that the device only needs to provide basic voice and data services. In addition to the basic safety feature, the Splitsecnd also includes a GPS chip that powers the company’s “family finder” feature. This, the founders told me, allows a parent to track their kids while they are driving and it keeps a log of the last 10 trips, too. The company offers both an Android and iOS app for this feature.
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Outbox Pours Salt On Snail Mail By Launching Its Digitizing Service In San Francisco
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Anthony Ha
| 2,013 | 2 | 25 |
Mail digitizing startup is launching in San Francisco today, the first step in what co-founder Will Davis says is a broader national rollout. If, like me, you find physical mail to be an annoyance, this is good news. Basically, Outbox swings by your real-world mailbox three times a week, digitizes the content, and makes it accessible on the Web, iPads, and iPhones. That means you’re less likely to dump an important document into the recycling bin (hell, my initial, physical Outbox invite ended up in my laundry hamper, and they had to email me another copy), and your desk/kitchen table/whatever doesn’t get cluttered with piles of junk mail. Of course, there are rare occasions where the digital copy isn’t enough, but Outbox accounts for those. For starters, any packages (like an order from Amazon) will be dropped off on your doorstep. And if there’s any other piece of mail where you want the physical item, you can select it on the website and Outbox will deliver to you. Everything else gets shredded and recycled. Outbox was first developed in Austin, where the team has worked out a lot of the kinks. For example, you can identify whether you’re signing up for a household plan (so all the mail at a given address gets collected) or an individual one (only mail sent to one name gets collected, which is important if you have roommates). And if you need a key to open the mailbox, you can send Outbox a photo and it will make a copy based on that image. There were about 500 testers in Austin, Davis said, and only 3 percent of them actually cancelled: “We have an incredibly sticky service.” [vimeo http://www.vimeo.com/53848218 w=500&h=281] from on . It sounds very appealing, but I did wonder whether everyone’s going to be excited about having strangers opening and scanning their mail. Davis’ co-founder Evan Baehr said that everyone who collects the mail and processes it has to go through a thorough background check. He also argued that since it shreds everything, Outbox is actually a more secure way to dispose of mail than what most people do now. I also wondered about the company’s long-term prospects. If physical mail is becoming less and less important (a development signaled by ), where does that leave Outbox in five or 10 years? Well, Davis pointed out that the postal service delivered , and that even the pessimistic projections suggest that it will be delivering 120 million pieces annually in a few years. He also pointed at Netflix as a company that built a relationship with customers via physical mail, and used those relationships as it transitioned to a new model, streaming video in this case. (Netflix’s transition hasn’t been entirely smooth …) So what does the next version of Outbox look like? Baehr and Davis didn’t get too specific, but they noted that among other things, Outbox can help build a relationship between companies and consumers. It already allows customers to try to stop certain types of mail delivery, but they said the company can also go back to those businesses and help them market themselves in ways that actually engage and interest consumers. Baehr also said that bill pay and check deposits are on the product roadmap. Looking beyond San Francisco, Davis said he’s hoping to launch in cities including New York, Chicago, Boston, Washington D.C., and Los Angeles by the end of the year. “The cool thing is, because we’re a hyperlocal service, we don’t have to build this huge infrastructure,” he said. “We can actually pretty much build it out in a few months’ time.” Back in 2011, led by Floodgate. As it expands, it will be probably be raising more funding, Davis said. After a one-month trial, Outbox costs $4.99 per month. I’ve signed up myself, but the collection hasn’t started yet, so I can’t offer much first-hand experience. I have played around with a demo account, so I can say that I like the interface — it’s visually rich enough that it captures the character of the real object, and it’s easy to sort things into different folders. (It would be nice if there was an easier way to scroll through lots of mail at once.) San Franciscans can .
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If My Phone Falls Down The Seat Crevice Again I’ll Lose It. Please Redesign Meatspace.
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Josh Constine
| 2,013 | 2 | 25 |
The physical world wasn’t built for $500 devices we need every other minute. This is never more obvious than when I strain my back and curse like a sailor because my phone has fallen into the gap beside my car or plane seat. As tech companies obsess over usability, the thoughtlessness that mars the meatspace comes into painfully sharp relief. Excuse my hyperbole and quiet your calls of “first-world problems!” That’s where I live. We’re shifting from stationary matter to mobile 1s and 0s. If we don’t ditch the vestiges of yesteryear, we’re going to end up like awkward platypi. A decade or two ago, that black hole between your car seat and door posed less of a threat. You weren’t fiddling with critical hand-held objects. Worst case scenario, your wallet slipped into that crumb-filled hell and you got it when you parked. Now, getting to your destination might require the sliver of technology now firmly wedged where no human hand can reach. I have almost run off 280 freeway in a fiery Apple Maps logo-esque disaster a number of times trying to extract my phone. When my only source of music, entertainment, and work slipped beneath my seat-cushion personal flotation device on a recent international flight, I tweaked my back contorting to fish it out. Pants aren’t tailored to fit our phones, and outlets to charge them are located across the room from our beds. Yes, these are whiny little examples, but they’re just symbols of the grander incompatibility between yesterday and tomorrow. So let’s start designing with a mobile future in mind. I bet the first car company to advertise “no more seat crevices” would win some lucrative Generation XYZ cred. Clothing brands and home decorators, heed the call. Otherwise, go out and numb someone else’s pain points. Sew phone pockets onto jeans, sell iPhone charger extension cables, or go work for , the original patented solution to driver distraction. No matter what you build, put some thought into how to smooth friction for the cyborgs we’re becoming.
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The $169 Android HP Slate 7 Is Just HP’s Latest Beige Box, Only Flat
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Matt Burns
| 2,013 | 2 | 25 |
HP is late to the tablet game, but definitely not out. At $169, the HP Slate 7 is a sure thing. It’s a guaranteed win for HP even if it doesn’t outsell the competition. HP the Slate 7. There is nothing particularly special about it. It costs $169, has a dual-core 1.6GHz SoC, and a 16×9 display with a rather thick plastic bezel. In short, it’s a cheap tablet. Remove the HP logo on the backside and it’s just a random, generic tablet. And that’s fine. At this point, HP as an established and trusted brand, doesn’t have to innovate; they just have to show up. Despite its recent troubles, HP is still the largest personal computer maker on the planet. The company has held this title since 2006 after trailing Dell for four years. Lenovo might soon steal the title from HP, but that doesn’t diminish HP’s still-valuable brand. For most consumers, HP has, and will continue to be, a safe buy. It’s not really hyperbole to say everyone has had problems with an HP computer. As the top-selling computer maker collectively over the last 15 years, it has had a long time to disenchant consumers. Everyone has an HP horror story. But despite this, the brand still sells more PCs than any other. A lot of people are still buying HP computers. As a known brand, consumers are aware what they’re going to get with an HP product. They know they’re going to get adware, sub-par hardware, but a fair price. What will they get with an Asus tablet? Who is Asus to the average Walmart shopper? An unknown. We all know the story. After years of little executive leadership, in the consumer market. PC sales are down. HP doesn’t have a mobile product. People are buying fewer printers. And, like Aol with dial-up subscriptions, a laughable chunk of HP’s revenue comes from printer ink. Worse yet, HP’s enterprise hardware and services business , too. Still, even with these declines, HP managed to beat Wall Street’s expectations last quarter. In short, the HP machine is slowing down, but even a slowed HP is a serious contender. HP is ubiquitous. HP computers are sold everywhere from Walmart to Best Buy to every office supply store known to man. HP became the largest computer maker not because they made the best computers, but because of logistics. Thanks to this vast distribution network, HP can get a $169 Android tablet in front of a lot of eyes with little effort. Then, once this tablet makes inroads, HP will likely follow its proven laptop strategy and release an upgraded model with a better screen, better specs and a slightly higher price tag. This model, or perhaps family of models, would provide an easy up-sell from the Slate 7. Want a better screen? Spend an extra $30 and get a faster processor, too. The HP Slate 7 is HP playing to its strengths. This is HP moving units, not creating the next big thing. Tablets are quickly becoming a commodity and selling beige boxes is what HP does best. At this point a budget tablet is a budget tablet. Our own Chris Velazco played with HP’s model for a few minutes and . Well, yeah. It’s a $169 tablet. It’s not going to impress, but it doesn’t have to. HP sat on the sidelines and watched Amazon and Google’s expensive race to the bottom, which created this market of cheap tablets. HP has never been a premium product; it knows how to sell boatloads of boring machines loaded with sponsored software to keep the cost down. HP’s first attempt at a consumer tablet failed simply because it attempted to be something special. It wasn’t a beige box. The HP Slate 7 shouldn’t fail.
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Ditch The Spreadsheet. YC-Backed Meldium Controls Your Team’s Shared App Passwords For You
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Colleen Taylor
| 2,013 | 2 | 25 |
If you’ve been part of a small- or medium-sized business or organization recently, you’ve dealt with “the spreadsheet.” It’s that document that’s tacked up on the wall (or shared via email) where all the group’s important login names and passwords are kept — the team’s , , subscription, et cetera. It’s a mess to maintain in itself, of course, but the problems come when people leave the team. Right away, an admin must go one by one through shared apps such as and and disable access to the group version. As for the spreadsheet? Well, here’s hoping nobody copied the information to take with them (and take the official Twitter account for one last joyride.) It’s awful, but it’s the status quo. The good news is that a brand new company has created something much, much better. Meldium user console , a company that’s set to graduate next month from Silicon Valley startup incubator , has created a way for small- to medium-sized businesses and teams to securely share access to all the apps they use. Using it is simple: Once an admin has created a Meldium account for a particular group, all that’s required for team members to use it is the download of a browser extension, available in either Chrome or Firefox. From there, Meldium acts as a layer that signs in users to company apps without individuals ever having to actually type in passwords. Meldium, which was co-founded by , currently enables automatic logins for some 150 independent apps, including Github, Salesforce, Box, MailChimp, Google Apps, and many others. It has a classic freemium . Teams with fewer than five people and 10 apps or less can use it for free; Meldium charges $29/month for up to 20 users and 20 apps, $79/month for 100 users and 50 apps, $199/month for up to 250 users and unlimited apps. There are two key elements that make Meldium work. First is a model the team has developed that essentially finds common ground among the scores of various software-as-a-service applications. This lets Meldium deal with all of them through its one single interface, and the company is confident that it can scale out to virtually any existing app that is used by organizations today. “Figuring out that model is one thing we did early on that has paid a lot of dividends as we’ve grown,” Buda says. The second is a split infrastructure security system, which lets key data such as passwords be entered in by an admin and used for login purposes, but not extracted back out by rank and file users. “With this cryptography, the only thing that can come back out is the logged in account, not the credentials themselves,” Buda says. Seeing the service in action, the real genius of Meldium is not just in how easy it becomes for users to sign into shared apps, but also in how easy it is for an admin to disable access to those shared apps if necessary. Actually, it’s remarkable how easy the whole service is to use, period. You don’t have to be an IT expert to administer a Meldium account for your group — it’s an intuitive, practically fool-proof process that’s accessible for non-technical people. Meldium’s three co-founders tell me that they conceived of, bootstrapped, and built the service together starting last summer in Seattle. Alums of companies such as and with some time at startups as well, they’re on the older side in terms of Y Combinator founders and have more industry experience under their belts. They were inspired to build Meldium when they realized that their experiences at big tech companies with fully secure sign-in solutions were so different from the messy spreadsheet-powered methods used by smaller startups. “We realized there has got to be some solution for people who can’t spend $100 million on an IT organization, but still need more control over their app administration,” Jabes said. Meldium was founded in August 2012, and had already started to get some traction and customers before entering the current YC class. But the founders say that they entered YC in part because with the priceless strategic and product input provided by the program, as well as the industry clout that comes along with being a “YC company,” Meldium has started to really take off in terms of its clientele. The service is now being used at a number of companies and organizations nationwide, one with as many as 250 staffers — and this is all a full month before YC Demo Day is scheduled to take place. In all, I think Meldium is a well-made and thoughtful product that targets a real issue. Most importantly, it fits right in with how groups and small businesses already operate, and allows them to be secure without a big shift in behavior (say, not using third-party apps at all and converting to a strictly Microsoft Office or Google Apps environment.) It’s a very promising product debut from a solid team, and it’ll be exciting to see the company grow. Here are some screenshots of Meldium (click on each to enlarge): Meldium admin overview of app users Meldium admin console Meldium user removal
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Twitter Announces App For Firefox OS
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Catherine Shu
| 2,013 | 2 | 25 |
Twitter that Twitter for Firefox OS will be available in the Firefox Marketplace when devices powered by Mozilla’s new operating system start to ship. According to the company, Twitter for Firefox OS will be similar to its other mobile apps, with the same Home, Connect, Discover, and Me tabs, as well as search and compose Tweet icons. One feature that is unique to the Firefox OS Twitter app is Web Activities, which will let users tweet photos directly out of any app that also supports Web activity, including Firefox OS’ built-in photos app.
Mozilla that 18 carriers have committed to its new, HTML5-friendly mobile OS, and the launch of the Firefox Marketplace app store. Many Firefox-powered handsets are being targeted at emerging markets with lower overall smartphone penetration. Twitter’s Firefox OS apps of other Mozilla partners in Firefox Marketplace, including Facebook, Nokia’s HERE, SoundCloud, Cut The Rope, Disney Mobile Games, and EA Games. While signing key partners will help Firefox OS gain users, it still has a long way to go before making a dent in the worldwide smartphone market, which is currently dominated by Android and iPhone. Android , and Firefox OS is expected to .
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Rich Kids Of Google Glass
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Alexia Tsotsis
| 2,013 | 2 | 25 |
You know, I’m sort of . Because I’ve eaten something like three sandwiches in the past three days, and every single time I’ve wondered, as I was eating, where the odd name originated. But didn’t want to take out my grubby phone during the meal to find out. I’ve also wondered whether this is a problem that Google Glass could solve … “If I had Google Glass right now, I would already know that the term originated in a New Orleans restaurant owned by former streetcar workers Benny and Clovis Martin, who served the sandwiches to off duty street car workers (in Louisiana dialect Po’boys) during a 1929 strike against the street car company.” Guess the name stuck. If I had Google Glass (mine would be ) I would know this trivia tidbit without having to rudely take out my phone. In fact, it would be a conversation starter in and of itself that I was using the Glass to search for this bit of arcane information. And this would vie for the most first-world solution to the world’s most first-world problem. Also excited about the potential of Google Glass, Xoogler Hunter Walk the issues surrounding a $1,500 piece of hardware in a post warning of the wearable technology’s inevitable glass class ceiling, “The first year of live Glass videos feeds [will be a] TV station for the 1% containing extreme sports, exotic locations, hipster brunches and electric car POVs.” And : Sergey Brin, a founder of Google, and his wife, Anne Wojcicki, a biologist and entrepreneur, traversed the party wearing pairs of es [sic]. They shot video as they walked around and let other guests try on the prototypes. “We’ve come a number of times, and no one ever wants to talk to us,” Ms. Wojcicki said. “Now we’re very popular.” Adulthood, it’s just like high school except the nerds have finally figured out how to hack it. And are really wealthy. It’s only a matter of time until
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Cleared For California Ride Sharing, UBERx Recruits More SF Drivers To Drop Wait Times And Prices
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Ryan Lawler
| 2,013 | 2 | 25 |
Let the big ride-share wars begin. It’s no big secret that Uber in an effort to compete directly with upstarts like Lyft and SideCar. After , the company announced its plans to allow unlicensed drivers to be part of its driver fleet, at least in San Francisco. Well, it’s launching its first offensive in that front, that it will begin on-boarding drivers to be part of its UBERx service. The move is part of Uber’s efforts to make more low-cost options available to its users, especially in places where it’s seeing competition from existing ride-sharing services. Both Lyft and SideCar launched last year as apps that connect passengers with drivers who have a car and some spare time on their hands. Well, Uber is striking back, as it’s going to start courting regular unlicensed drivers to offer up rides on its platform as well. While new UBERx drivers won’t need to be licensed as taxi or limo drivers under existing CPUC regulations, Uber will be checking to ensure that all those who take part in UBERx will pass the company’s screening tests, including a background check, in-person screening, and other quality-control requirements. But there will be some advantages for new drivers who decide to join UBERx as opposed to one of the company’s competitors. Last month, Uber CEO Travis Kalanick said that Uber ride-sharing drivers will be able to make more money than on competing services because it can connect them with passengers more efficiently than other platforms. As I reported last month, Kalanick thinks that will entice drivers to join its low-cost service: “Obviously, Uber believes its system is far more efficient,” Kalanick told me. That means more rides per hour, and more cash in drivers’ pockets. All in all, he believes drivers will be able to collect 20-30 percent more per hour driving for Uber as opposed to one of the competing services. After gas, tolls, and whatever else, he estimates that could mean 40-60 percent more in take-home cash. In addition to more take-home pay, Uber promises more flexibility and transparency than Lyft or SideCar. In its blog post, Uber said that it will pay its drivers real fares, not “donations” that passengers ultimately determine. It also said that drivers who are approved won’t be subject to schedules — that they can log on and take rides when they’re available, rather than conforming to someone else’s assignments. For Uber passengers, the addition of new drivers should drive down the cost or rides and increase availability of UBERx rides. And for drivers, Uber offers an extensive network of existing users. And for San Francisco residents in general, more competition means more transportation alternatives, which means easier, cheaper ways to get around town.
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Shapes Of Things
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Steve Gillmor
| 2,013 | 2 | 25 |
To absolutely no surprise, the people I know are enamored of Google Glass. The world of sensor-driven big data is sure to come, just as apps have supplanted sites as the metaphor with which we frame our lives. As one who replaced music with computers, I am eager for the next phase. But while Glass forges ahead in mind share, my thoughts slide to the elegant footnote that is increasingly absorbing my interest. The iPad mini, a device I only bought because I couldn’t quite rule out something lurking there, so subtle that I can really only see it in the absence of something. As I’ve lived with this strange step-child, that something is taking shape, becoming visible and tangible. Just as Glass captures our imagination, the mini absorbs our reality. Always present, just big enough to transfer much of the iPhone’s work load, barely big enough to suck the Retina iPad dry, and just waiting to use AirPlay to push toward the big screen for media. Waiting not for the tech but the politics of the death of the broadcast windowing business and the rise of streaming to sort itself out. With so many cycles opting for the mini, our behavior is shifting. This is bigger than big data, because the compressed signal of behavior moves ahead of the raw data in identifying the underlying sentiment. It’s not analysis, it’s the feel in musical terms. It’s that rush we felt the first time, and every time, we heard the Stones’ Last Time. It’s not the riff, although that was plenty for starters. It wasn’t the lyric either. It wasn’t any of the parts but for sure it just felt good. There’s some of that in the Glass video, too – the moments where you can extrapolate what will happen when we can dive into an event and feel it because so many people are running it that we can cut to just the right person at just the right angle both in image and sound. Groups will form like the Beatles in Hamburg where the band got so tight they just simply started making music greater than the sum of its parts. When people start finding the value, the joy, in working together, now that is something big. Right now, we can’t quite see it, but these new tools are like the electric guitar, the Arriflex in movies, Netflix in the changing of the guard. Each of them produced a state of being where magic could happen. Only now, years later, can I hear what the British musicians heard when they heard the blues masters. It was there all the time, I just didn’t listen. Lightweight cameras birthed the French New Wave, freeing Truffaut and Godard to deconstruct the studio system into its essential elements of story and naturalism. We don’t yet see Netflix for what it is, intuiting that ethereal something but getting lost in irrelevant cord cutting and cartel stonewalling. But here it is: Just like the Beatles and their compatriots dismantled the existing music business and took over both the means of production and then distribution, so too will the next wave take over this live-streaming cloud-based network and produce live push notification-driven events owned and created by the artists themselves. You can begin to feel the power of this moment with the mini. It’s small enough to always be there, big enough to get work and research done, Bluetooth-enabled to add a keyboard as I’m doing right now to write this, enough battery to manage notifications, news, Spotify, Chatter, AirPlay, everything. It’s the hub, and Glass will work with it because it needs to. When Jobs said he’d cracked the code, I believed it. It wasn’t bravado; he just ran out of time. And when I finally settled into the mini, I began to see how. The mini is hard to write to. It may be because I’m sick of the tricks, or the usual kerfuffles, or whatever. But the mini reeks of just enough, no fluff. What is annoying and dumbed down on the Retina, like Pages, is plenty good enough with the keyboard. I don’t know what will happen with the Logitech mini keyboard, if MG is to be believed that it may be too small. But if I can make it work, it will be the first non-Apple Smart Cover I’ve bought. Already I can see the Bluetooth rules engine choosing keyboards based on location, priority, and all those intangibles that govern the studio recording process. How far behind is the atomization of the MacBook Air via the Bluetooth console? The mini turns my iPhone into the Pebble, at least until or unless Apple jumps in. With notifications turned on, Twitter and increasingly Facebook are draining the battery and pushing me even more toward the mini. And it’s made FaceTime an increasingly valuable choice where the Retina is too big and way too heavy. Glass may move in here as well as a Bluetooth mini accessory. They’ll need to spend significant search bucks to subsidize Glass or risk being beaten by Apple on price. Meanwhile event television is testing the streaming waters as the Mini melds controller, point of sale terminal, and notification multiplexing. Broadcast and cable politics mandate blocking of Netflix over AirPlay for the moment, but when I can’t watch Episode 4 and whatever of House of Cards through Apple TV, I opt for the mini and out of Showtime or NBC. The one thing I have a finite amount of is viewing time, and the more Netflix wins in that arena, the more pressure is on the hotel to participate via AirPlay and get a cut. Watch for the weaker news channels like MSNBC cracking the code first. I spent the weekend in a hotel in New York hacking into HDMI2 with the mini and a new Apple TV. The more I butted up against the roadblocks, the more I realized how Apple is partnering with companies like Netflix and Spotify rather than fighting. Being on HDMI2 made it difficult to watch shows on the hotel broadcast channels, but I could Slingbox in to California and watch on three hours later or Comcast on demand or buy on iTunes the next day. I could listen to three tracks off Boz Scaggs’ new record on Spotify and then buy it on iTunes for the full album. The network fare suffers greatly when matched against House of Cards or the relentless advance of time-shifting. I’ve stopped recording Glee because I know it will be on Netflix when the season’s over, and besides how can it compete against a steady stream of 13 week-seasons from the streamers. Mad Men, Breaking Bad, House of Cards, Downton Abbey, House of Cards II, these things are stacked up over Gotham in relentless fashion. Just as the Beatles moved the record business from singles to albums and went to yearly production and release patterns, these binge-streaming series are wiping out the weakened networks. Unless they buy in like AT&T did with the iPhone. Sure, there’s a second screen these days. But it’s not the one you might think. The second screen is the TV, where the decaying rules remain in force as network comedies atrophy and the fall season is rife with cancellation. The first screen is the mini, managing the push notification appointment calendar and relationships of the binge viewers as they kibitz, joke, and narrate the stream economy.
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Frederic Lardinois
| 2,013 | 2 | 22 | null |
Nvidia Shows Off The Tegra 4i Reference Smartphone On Video, Delivers Impressive Mobile Gaming Performance
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Darrell Etherington
| 2,013 | 2 | 25 |
[youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6c595HAUYdQ?feature=player_detailpage] Nvidia only recently introduced its Tegra 4i processor, which pairs Tegra 4 power with integrated LTE — an Nvidia first for mobile chips — into a single system-on-a-chip. The company is now on in-house developed reference smartphone hardware called the Phoenix, which is actually present as a working model at MWC in Spain, as you can see in the video above. The Tegra 4i is Nvidia’s attempt to bring the , and the Phoenix, with its 5-inch, 1080p display, 13-megapixel camera and integrated LTE radio is a look at what OEM partners will be able to achieve building with the Nvidia processor as its powerhouse. The phone is also only 8mm thin thanks to the SoC’s tiny design, but it has a 60-core GPU that bests the Tegra 3 by a factor of two, while also improving battery life and web browsing compared to Nvidia’s previous generation architecture. Android game developers and startups looking to make use of enhancements in mobile camera and video tech will probably get the biggest kick out of the Tegra 4i demo, which shows off some of its graphics processing prowess. The camera is now capable of providing instant still HDR that doesn’t have to be turned on and off, as well as HDR video and HDR panorama photos. The demo video shows off photo and video rendering, which really gives a good sense of just how good devs will be able to make media look on devices based on Nvidia’s new mobile platform.
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After CEO Departure, Mobile Video Startup Viddy Cuts Staff By More Than A Third
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Ryan Lawler
| 2,013 | 2 | 25 |
It was less than a year ago that was flying high, quoting massive user growth and raising a massive $30 million round of funding from NEA, Goldman Sachs, Khosla Ventures, and Battery Ventures. Now the company is cutting back, as it seeks to regroup and figure out this mobile video thing. Viddy confirmed that it reduced its workforce, specifically in the areas of marketing and operations. The company has cut 12 positions, which is more than a third of its staff based upon what we’ve heard. Viddy claims that its core engineering team is still in place. The cuts come after the . Last year was a whirlwind for the company. In February, Viddy to take on mobile video competitors like Socialcam. Then in May, bolstered by Facebook’s acquisition of Instagram for about a billion dollars, the startup raised another . But a lot of things have changed since then. Viddy had relied heavily on Facebook’s Open Graph to juice its user numbers ahead of its big funding round early last year. But changes to Facebook’s algorithm mean fewer people discovering the app, which in turn meant stalled user growth. At the same time, many are beginning to question the whole idea behind an “Instagram for video” in the first place. And the absolute value of Viddy also came into question, as its closest comparable — Socialcam — was , which was well below Viddy’s valuation. The result has been a re-org of the company. Earlier this month, O’Brien stepped down from day-to-day operations. Rumors have it that part of the reason was an acquisition offer from Twitter that Viddy declined. But Twitter ended up instead. A representative from Viddy sent the following statement about the cuts: As the board continues to review Viddy’s business, we’ve identified specific ways to streamline costs which include eliminating some positions. These changes will allow the Viddy team to be focused on bringing the most innovative and engaging social mobile video product to market. Viddy has a strong balance sheet and an exciting product roadmap ahead, including an upcoming new product release, and we have the right team in place to execute moving forward.
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Apple Rejecting Apps Using Cookie-Tracking Methods, Signaling Push To Its Own Ad Identifier Technology Is Now Underway
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Sarah Perez
| 2,013 | 2 | 25 |
Mobile app developers using a technology called “cookie tracking” (sometimes called “Safari flip-flop” or “HTML5 first party cookies”) are starting to have their apps rejected by Apple’s App Review team, we’ve heard from a few different industry sources. With this method in place, Safari is opened upon first launch in order to read a cookie that may exist from a user’s past interactions with ads. In terms of the user experience, it’s not ideal, but it is one that some app makers are utilizing – the unique device identifier that back in mid-2011. The UDID, a 40-character string containing letters and numbers, allows developers and ad networks a way of collecting data about users. Though the UDID itself doesn’t contain personally identifiable information about the device’s owner, it can be used in combination with information collected by a third-party, including names, location, preferences, app usage and more, to paint a more complete picture of an individual. Though Apple’s changes to UDID usage , it wasn’t until early last year that the developer community really started to rally behind various alternatives following for apps still accessing the UDID technology. . It’s essentially a technology that’s a holdover from the desktop web era, where cookies have been used for some 15 years. On mobile, the process generally involves HTML5 local storage, because “mobile cookies” aren’t technically the same as those on the desktop. “Within local storage, an app developer can drop a token – an ID, if you will – and then retrieve it later. In this regard, it works like a cookie, so the industry frequently uses it and talks about it like it’s a cookie,” explains Craig Palli, VP of Business Development at mobile app marketing firm , which works with developers on user acquisition efforts. His firm has been hearing of the App Store rejections related to cookie tracking over the past few weeks, noting that it may be too early to say, definitively, whether or not this is something that will become more pervasive in time. Still, he thinks that it could be a case where Apple is signaling to the industry which direction it needs to be headed. And specifically, Apple likely wants developers to start transitioning to its own Ad Identifier technology. The Advertising Identifier, (General –> About –> Advertising –> Limit Ad Tracking), states that In other words, Apple’s intention is that this method should eventually become the standard. “There are definitely indicators of transition with regards to HTML5 tracking,” says Palli of the recent rejections. “It’s reasonable that it’s a transition to [Apple’s] method, and their view of what a proper user experience is…Perhaps they don’t think that a flipping motion is in keeping with that user experience, ” he adds, referring to the way these apps load Safari upon first launch. From a user’s perspective, it’s hard to argue with Apple’s logic. It really is odd to launch an app then see Safari load before being sent back to the app’s user interface. It feels like something fishy is going on, even though the method isn’t really any more invasive than others. It’s just that it’s so about it. Though it’s been a long time since Apple announced the UDID would be deprecated, the company has apparently not yet been very strict on the enforcement of the transition away from or to its new methodologies. Palli says that there are still many apps that use UDID, while others use techniques like the cookie-tracking method, others that use digital fingerprinting and more. In fact, the community hasn’t really organized themselves around yet – usage is still across the board. Palli points out that savvy marketers wouldn’t put all their eggs in one basket, so to speak, when it comes to which method they used. That being said, there are, at present, several large brands that have historically relied on cookie tracking that will be affected by this change. And for those companies, well, says Palli, “they have some work cut out for them.” In the under half-dozen rejections he’s personally aware of, some are big-name consumer brands with over a million downloads. TechCrunch knows that brands like Priceline and Hotels.com, for example, are two of the more well-known apps in this space which currently use this cookie tracking method. Neither appear to be affected at present, and they still showcase this type of behavior if you’re interested in seeing it firsthand. Meanwhile, Oren Kaniel, CEO of mobile app measurement platform was also among the first to spot the recent App Store rejections. He says he has also heard from both “a travel booking app and a large mobile ad agency,” that apps using cookie tracking are now actively being rejected during the review process. Kaniel notes, too, another reason why the behavior may be troublesome for Apple, saying that some analytics and tracking providers have been temporarily disabling the technology for the app review, then re-enabling it after approval. A leader in the cookie-tracking method is , which we’ve reached out to for comment as well, but haven’t yet heard back. (Time-zone differences may be involved, so we’ll update if they respond later on).* Aryeh Altshul of , a company whose Mobile App Tracking product , had not come across rejections, but agrees that it’s a poor user experience. “If companies are still using it, then they probably got into the mobile game early and haven’t adjusted their technology to keep up,” he tells us.
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SideCar Says Three Philadelphia Drivers Caught In ‘Sting,’ But It Plans To Continue Operations
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Anthony Ha
| 2,013 | 2 | 25 |
It sounds like ridesharing startup is facing another regulatory challenge. According to , the Philadelphia Parking Authority cited three SideCar drivers and impounded their cars in an “orchestrated sting operation.” The citation supposedly describes SideCar as an “unauthorized service provider,” which the company says is inaccurate: SideCar is a technology platform that enables peer-to-peer ridesharing. Our smartphone app instantly matches people who need a ride with regular, everyday drivers who are willing to give them one. With SideCar, payment is voluntary and you pay what you want. SideCar is safe. We run more checks on our drivers than taxi or limo services. Plus, all matched rides are recorded and GPS tracked for safety. The company says that it chose Philadelphia as its first East Coast city for “its reputation as a center of innovation and its forward-looking government.” As for how SideCar is responding, the blog post says, “As we sort things out with regulators, SideCar will continue to operate in Philadelphia so its citizens can continue to experience the benefits and joys of rideshare.” Still, you have to imagine this is going to create a pretty big cloud over its Philadelphia operations unless it’s resolved. Ridesharing startups in general have been facing regulatory challenges in a number of markets, and SideCar is one of several services that’s . I’ve reached out to the PPA for comment and will update if I hear back. I just got off the phone with Marty O’Rourke, a spokesperson for the Philadelphia Parking Authority, who argued that it’s a pretty straightforward situation — these drivers aren’t licensed to be operating as taxis. “They’re passing themselves off as taxis and they’re not,” he said. “It’s clearly not about technology. This is about public safety.” This point is what SideCar is addressing above in its quote about being peer-to-peer ridesharing service (i.e., it’s arguing that it’s a taxi service), though it seems that the PPA is not convinced. When I asked O’Rourke if it was fair to describe Saturday’s operation as a “sting,” he said, “It was an operation to impound vehicles because they were operating illegally. If we find them out there again, we’ll impound them again.” I emailed SideCar to confirm that service would resume Friday and it sent this response: Yes that is correct. SideCar is still operational in Philadelphia. During launch mode, SideCar operates on Friday and Saturday nights from 5pm – 3am. We will resume operations this Friday in Philadelphia as usual.
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YC-Backed Semantics3 Is A Massive Consumer Products Database To Rule Them All
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Leena Rao
| 2,013 | 2 | 25 |
As more merchants flock to the web to sell their products, there has been a deluge of data to be indexed by retailers who are looking to see where certain products are being sold and for how much. Parsing and extracting the value from all of this data is a huge challenge. YC-backed has created a database that aims to track every product sold online, and every price it has ever been sold at, providing retailers with an API to this database. The company, which was founded by classmates at a computer engineering college program in Singapore, indexes several dozen of the top e-commerce sites online and provides a self-serve API so developers can tap into its constantly updated database of consumer products. Why would developers want to index this data? Retailers need to do UPC lookups, get detailed data for products (i.e. consumer electronics or clothing) sold on the web, price histories and more. For instance, retailers could identify how much an item cost a month ago and how it has changed so they can optimize their pricing for a similar product. The API also gives retailers access to product data, including name, price, brand, model, color, size, UPC code, images, dimensions (width, height, length), weight, purchase links
Search and filtering on all of the parameters above. Additionally, Semantics3 parses data, such as the condition of a product (i.e. new vs. used), shipping info and availability. The startup takes it a step further with its sales rank, which is a ranking for every product the site calculates as useful for figuring out what products to sell. So you could see products that have a high rank, but that only a small number of retailers carry.
All products are refreshed for current information according to this rank. The top 1 percent of items is refreshed every hour, and the top 20 percent of items are refreshed daily. Currently the database has more than 20 million products listed and is growing by 5 million products per month. On the backend, Semantics3 has built a custom, high-powered data-parsing system that processes close to 500GB a day on 250 nodes, all managed by the startup’s five-person team. There are other services that offer similar data access to consumer products, but Semantics3 hopes to differentiate itself by offering an all-inclusive database of all different types of products. And Semantics3 indexes data points at an in-depth level, such as historical price data. Currently, Semantics3 offers a free plan and a paid offering. The free plan gives developers 1,000 queries per day, and the pro plan, priced at $499 per month, gives developers 100,000 queries per day. Current customers range from Amazon sellers to one of the major international telecommunications companies. In the current e-commerce world, competitive advantage for retailers is coming down to who can use data in compelling ways to both connect to the consumer and make the shopping experience more personalized. Semantics3 is able to give retailers, big and small, access to large amounts of normalized, and extracted data that they would otherwise have to pay massive amounts of money for.
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eBay CEO John Donahoe Is Bullish On Digital Currency, And He’s Keeping Tabs On Bitcoin
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Chris Velazco
| 2,013 | 11 | 3 |
There’s no doubt that Bitcoin is getting plenty of attention these days — we’ve seen folks like the Winklevoss Twins and throw their financial weight behind Bitcoin in a big way — but despite all that it still hasn’t been embraced by the teeming millions just yet Arguably, all it would take is the support of one big name to get the ball rolling, and for months Bitcoin aficionados have wondered if eBay would be willing to take up that mantle. It’s not hard to see why — in a brief interview with the , eBay president and CEO John Donahoe said that the company was keeping its eye on Bitcoin and that in the months and years to come, digital currency is going to be “a very powerful thing”. Granted, Donahoe’s admission that eBay is monitoring Bitcoin is far from a ringing endorsement for the cryptocurrency, but this is hardly the first time he’s tackled the Bitcoin question in this way. He told the this past April that the company was “watching Bitcoin closely” and that there may be ways to fold eventually fold Bitcoin support into PayPal. And PayPal president David Marcus is perhaps just as fascinated with Bitcoin, as he noted on that the notion of embracing Bitcoin isn’t completely out of the question. While some argue that warming consumer sentiments toward Bitcoin could reduce the need for services like eBay’s PayPal altogether, a potential tie-up of eBay and Bitcoin up needn’t be so contentious. Official eBay support of Bitcoin could mean (among other things) an expansion of the markets that eBay and Paypal are able to reach, and naturally one more (admittedly massive) place for Bitcoin hoarders to spend their funds. And eBay’s PayPal — with all its experience and support systems geared toward escrow — could conceivably act as a trusted middleman for Bitcoin transactions, a known quantity that may ease the qualms of Bitcoin newbies and facilitate smoother sales between established players. eBay’s fascination with Bitcoin apparently doesn’t end with its brass either. Back in early September, a post appeared on eBay’s official Deals blog that posed a simple question to readers: “What’s the deal with Bitcoins anyway?” The story itself offered little in the way of answers, but the company apparently thought the subject was weighty enough to warrant embedding a YouTube video featuring what has to be one of the most I’ve ever come seen. That video, which was uploaded by a user named B Sil who doesn’t seem to have ever touched the account again, proclaimed at the end that it was “brought to you by eBay Deals”. Only time (or a chatty exec) will tell if eBay ever does make a grand overture toward the Bitcoin users of the world, or how strongly those users would react if such a thing ever happened. If eBay can’t be bothered to help legitimize Bitcoin and help itself in the process, the task may come down to startups like Circle which recently raised a in a bid to make Bitcoin more accessible to consumers and merchants alike. And as far as virtual currency buffs go, they’ll have to make do with other online shopping outposts and fortunately they have more than a few to choose from. Bitcoin payment processor BitPay recently surged past the (a vast majority of whom are located in the United States), and those looking for a slightly more eBay-esque shopping experience often turn to sites like .
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YouTube Music Awards Were Chaos You’ll Never See On TV
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Josh Constine
| 2,013 | 11 | 3 |
Can YouTube create live content that inspires watercooler zeitgeist moments like television? Google’s giving it a shot with the YouTube Music Awards, a celebration of do-it-yourself Internet culture right now. It’s chaotic, innovative, offensive, silly, and downright weird. But one thing’s for sure. You won’t see this on TV. Creative director Spike Jonze’s goal with the the YouTube Music Awards was to create “live music videos” on stage with artists like The Arcade Fire and Lady Gaga. You can read the on the lead up to the YouTube Music Awards for more context on the production and its intention. Judging by the concurrent viewer number shown on the livestream (hovering around 175,000 with a peak at 220,000 during Lady Gaga’s performance) the show isn’t a runaway hit. But we’ll have to wait and see whether people take advantage of the option to watch the show on YouTube later. We’ll have more analysis after the event ends but for now, here’s our live blog: [youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dG4xaLn2W6s&w=640&h=360] – Rather than awkward red carpet footage, viewers showing up early are being greeted with behind-the-scenes interviews and clips of how the New York City production came together. – With little fanfare, hosts Jason Schwartzman (actor from Rushmore) and Reggie Watts (improv musician and comedian) have kicked off the first YouTube Music Awards. The microphones are bit quiet signaling this won’t be the highest production value affair. – For the first live music video, actress Greta Gerwig is dancing out her breakout woes to a new tune from Arcade Fire. The traditionally very serious band doesn’t quite mesh with the funny faces and spaz-out dance moves Gerwig is tossing around. – The hosts are already fumbling over themselves trying to keep the chaotic program on the rails. They introduce a sprawling medley of YouTube hits sung by tribute musicians and viral video stars like Walk Off The Earth (a whole band who plays covers by simultaneously playing a single guitar) and Tay Zonday of “Chocolate Rain” fame. It’s ridiculous and campy, but the middle-school dance squad doing “What Does The Fox Say” was cute. – The first YouTube Music Award for YouTube Breakthrough goes to Macklemore & Ryan Lewis for their “Thrift Shop” video. Macklemore tells the crowd they shot the video for just $5,000 with a bunch of their friends, highlighting the democratizing nature of YouTube. And in the first moment proving this is not television, after thanking his family and fiance, Macklemore thanks “the guy who used to sell me shrooms.” – Lady Gaga draws the biggest audience of the night with a stripped down performance of her new song “Dope”, taking advantage of the lack of censors to sing “I know I fucked up again because I lost my only friend.” Instead of her typical sensational costumes, she’s keeping it real in a flannel button up and baseball cap. With tears seeming to build behind her eyes, Gaga provides the most compelling moment of the evening when she cries out “I need you more than dope!” – In one of many strange gimmicks, Schwartzman and Watts have to dig the name of the winner of the “Response Of The Year” award out of a set of birthday cakes. It goes to pop violinist Lindsey Stirling & Pentatonix for their cover of Imagine Dragons’ “Radioactive”. Sterling says “I owe everything about my success to YouTube. YouTube let me be true to my passion…true to myself.” – Tyler The Creator of Odd Future (not A$AP Rocky as we originally wrote) and Earl Sweatshirt shoot a live music video by rapping from inside a rowdy moshpit. – The most artistically successful part of the evening saw Lindsey Sterling flying on wires through a lightning-struck city scape. Her music gives the impression of hurdling through space and Jonze captured it vividly. – The discombobulating nature of the event is starting to make it feel grating. When Taylor Swift song “I Knew You Were Trouble” wins the YouTube Phenomenon award for inspiring the most fan videos, Arcade Fire lead singer Win Butler comes out and “steals” the microphone, mimicking Kanye West’s famous interruption of a Taylor Swift award speech year ago. Butler announces that obviously “Harlem Shake” should have won. It all feels a bit canned. – Korean girl group Girls’ Generation wins Video Of The Year. Their “I Got A Boy” video seems pretty boring and has had little domestic notoriety despite racking up 70 million+ views. It seems like an obvious nod to YouTube’s international audience. 7:00 – MIA performs “Come Walk With Me” in psychedelic LED tunnel. Difficulty capturing the lights on camera detracted from what was probably quite dazzling in person. – Eminem inexplicably wins “Artist Of The Year” despite his new album not being released until later this week. He beat out musicians who were actually huge this year like Justin Bieber and PSY, whose “Gangnam Style” now has 1.8 billion views. – Well isn’t that convenient. Eminem is the closing performance for the show…except he’s nowhere to be found. YouTube quickly pipes in a jagged set of “highlight” clips from the show, followed by Reggie Watts freestyling to kill time. When Eminem appears five minutes later, his performance of “Rap God” is a middling attempt at higher brow art shot in black and white in a blank soundstage. – That’s all folks. Schwartzman and Watts seem to have completely run out of things to say as they close the show, with Watts thanking his home state of Montana. The last meaningful thing uttered before the stream cuts off was Spike Jonze saying thanking YouTube “for letting us make this mess.” Accurate. The YouTube Music Awards was fun to watch. The entertainment oscillated between coming from appreciation for great musicians, being impressed by the artistic vision of the whole production, and cringe-worthy scenes when everything seemed ready fall apart. It was anything but boring, which is a huge improvement on the multi-hour Grammys. And it didn’t run gags into the ground like the MTV Video Music Awards. What was noticeably absent was the practically infinite money of Google. Keeping with the homemade style of much of its content, the hosted interludes between segments were rough around the edges. Cursing, drug references, and the breakneck pace kept it feeling young and fresh. Still, the YouTube Music Awards could have been much better. The Eminem show lacked inspiration, and though Tyler The Creator’s performance captured the aggression of his music, it looked like a crappy concert video you’d shoot yourself. Unrehearsed chit-chat and mediocre cinematography made it less than spellbinding. Crystallizing the chaos, at one pointa stagehand (seen below in the middle back) had to come out on stage and tell Schwartzman and Watts they only had 20 more seconds of dead air to fill because Eminem was finally ready to go on. Some in the YouTube creator community the show for focusing on major label musicians rather than the stars who made their names on YouTube itself. Sterling did win an award and perform, and Destorm, another YouTube celeb also took home a play button statue, but it was the radio stars who got the top slots. The biggest problem may be that the show lacked a “must-see/must-tweet” moment. There was no Britney Spears-Madonna kiss, Kanye West controversy, or jaw-dropping dance number. YouTube could have done more to engineer something blogworthy. If you wanted an off-the-cuff, lo-fi awards show, YouTube delivered. It was fun, full of surprises and ambition. If you wanted something to rival television glitz like the MTV Video Music Awards or Grammys, you’re gonna have to give YouTube some time to get its act together. But if YouTube can do this well already, the TV networks have something to . Google doesn’t demand perfection, it demands progress, and the YouTube Music Awards made television look dated.
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Pixelstick Takes Your Long Exposure Photography To A Trippy New Level
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Greg Kumparak
| 2,013 | 11 | 3 |
[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M1e0rumn9r4&w=640&h=360] Remember that night when you and your friends discovered how to “draw” with your camera’s long exposure function? You started out simple, piercing the dark with a cheap handheld flashlight as you traced a terrible rendition of your name through the air. You were hardly halfway through the last letter of your name before you were running over to the camera to see if it worked. You, like many a bored digital camera owner before you, had discovered . Pixelstick takes that concept to a pretty ridiculous extreme. As its name implies, Pixelstick is… a stick of pixels. More specifically, the Pixelstick is a 6’ bar containing 198 full color LEDs. At the core of Pixelstick is a simple brain: a handheld controller, an SD card reader, and a bit of lightweight circuitry to parse images pulled from the card. Pixelstick displays those images just one vertical line at a time. To the naked eye, it’s a mess of flashing color. Move it slowly in front of the open aperture of a camera during a long exposure, however, and each pixel becomes a paint stroke. Flash by flash, your ethereal imagery is burned onto your shot. While that in itself would be quite cool, things start to get trippy when you bring in animation. You can load up a bunch of sequential images onto the SD card, then use the handbox to switch between them as you shoot a series of photos. If you havent already, check out the video above for some particularly impressive examples. Oh, and the pixelstick can be unlocked and spun around its handle, allowing for all sorts of crazy experiments in spirography. Pixelstick set out to , a goal which they pretty much immediately destroyed. Just 4 days into the campaign, they’ve already more than doubled that (at the time of publishing, they’d raised just over $245,000.) Alas, the cheapest tier to actually come with a Pixelstick — the $250 “Early Bird” package — has long since sold out; at this point, you’ll need to drop at least $300. (If you pick one of these up, you’ll probably want to drop some more cash for a set of rechargable batteries, while you’re at it. It takes 8 AA batteries at a time, and the team says they can chew through those in a night or two)
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What Games Are: The Power Conversation
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Tadhg Kelly
| 2,013 | 11 | 3 |
Seth Godin told a story a few years ago about how a research team tested whether users really perceived a difference in the quality of Google vs. Yahoo results versus what they believed. The team performed some HTML jiggery pokery so that a user could type a search into “Google” and see Yahoo results, but they still appeared to be Google results, and vice versa. Then a test group of users was asked to try each engine and report which they preferred. The result? “Google.” We’ve heard these sorts of taste-test stories many times before, about how aspects other than function weigh more heavily in the judgment of quality. They teach us something very human about reality versus perception, and how the marketing story of a technology is often its most important feature. It’s why aesthetics matter and also why key numbers and acronyms form the backbone of the conversation. The debate over whose tech is best, who has the most oomph and whose is the future is an important aspect of technology. In the games industry especially so. There are few arguments more likely to get hardcore gamers agitated than who has the best “graphics.” This is not a style argument you understand, but rather an argument about realism, numbers of polygons, gigahertz and RAM. It’s an argument about the virtues of resolutions and screen size and benchmarks. Like watching car enthusiasts wax lyrical about the benefits of one engine over another, the power conversation in games is about groups of teenagers and grown men arguing over the perceived benefits of features about which they actually know very little. I’m pretty sure that if a similar type of Google/Yahoo test were performed with console games using swapped joypads, the research would show the same kind of result. Tell them that they’re playing the PS4 version and hand them a PS4 joypad (yet actually have them control an Xbox One version) and they’d say it was best. Why? Because that’s what they have believed to be true since E3. Players would pick according to tribal loyalties rather than any tangibly noticeable difference. Take, for example, the news that two top shooters ( and ) are showing very slight differences in performance between the two systems. In one case one of the games shows in crispness and some distance details. In the other, one of them is . In raw physical terms it cannot be understated how much this news actually matters. Ultimately when playing either, the vast majority of players will have a perfectly grand time shooting up the world and each other with glorious visuals and sound. Indeed the apparent differences in graphics across platforms became meaningless years ago. Since roughly around the time that the differences have grown smaller as the budgets have escalated. So much so that these days it takes very zoomed-in shots of details to prove to the gamer crowd that yes, games are still getting graphically better. Details that a player will never likely notice while playing. Yet in terms of the marketing stories, this sort of stuff is a big deal. On Reddit and forums like NeoGAF and you’ll find hundreds of pages of wild speculation about what it all means. The quasi-imaginary details that players think they can see feed into their emotional connection with both their games and their platforms, and justify their pre-orders. Nobody wants to be disappointed, everybody wants to make sure that their platform is the best, and a kind of circular logic takes hold between both console kids and PC fans who like to deride from above with a “we were already here years ago” haughtiness. It may sound baffling to the outsider that this aspect of the conversation around games retains so much gravity, but it is what it is. It happens across every platform. The average smart device user doesn’t really know what a Tegra 4 is, nor an A7, but fans like to justify themselves in much the same way. It’s not hard to find arguments over whose retina screens are even-more-retina than others. People who think they know like to connect to their favorite in this way. The important audience here is “those who think they know.” Professional designers and developers have usually worked on the inside of platforms long enough to perceive the gap between reality and ideality. Go ask many an iOS developer what they think of working on Apple’s platform and you’ll probably get a meat-and-potatoes answer about the cost of user acquisition and the pros and cons of Unity or Xcode. It’s all just chips and bits and bugs. The people who get passionate about the power conversation have a populist understanding of the technology, whether in an amateur or professional capacity. They are the best-placed ones to speculate and dream about what their chosen device might do, but also what it means. In this way they sometimes equate the power conversation with the legitimacy of the medium. As games get more real and more cinematic (such as in the footage) this equates to fulfilling the promise of video games. Or maybe, they think, it will one day. Yet for many game makers, that tendency to draw an equivalence is increasingly a problem. Within the indie sector especially, the power conversation looks completely alien, yet overshadows much of what they are trying to do. There are increasing numbers of game makers that want to have a different conversation with players. They want to be able to make playing games a social topic, much as many other kinds of art are, but that’s hard to do when the much wider popular press tends to only hear the power conversation. The games industry is never quite sure about whether it’s an entertainment or a technology industry and it straddles that divide uncertainly. Talking up the virtues of a technology can be a very powerful way for a game to get noticed. Enthusing about motion capture, say, or real-time physics and the virtues of clouds and super smart AIs regularly gains a lot of attention from various media outlets. It’s a conversation that never really dies because it’s the easiest one to have. Yet at the same time it’s limiting. Beyond the Reddit wars and so on, the widely known story about games tends to be much as it has been for decades. It’s the occasional oohs and aahs over some innovations and the odd media furore over salacious content. It’s finger-pointing in the wake of school shooters. It’s game reviews appearing in the technology section of newspapers rather than their culture sections. And largely that’s because the loudest voices tend to talk in tech terms over everything else. The kinds of games that the power conversation represents are the ones that many industry commentators find uncomfortable. It’s hard not to notice how many big games these days display their wares with gory head shot cut scenes and similar displays of ultra violence. Advocate journalists talk about how games have a sexism problem and then segue into lush graphical sequences that show ineptly written story sequences with . There’s a dimension to the power conversation that’s awkward and sometimes even ugly, and it gets in the way. So much so that some more radical designers believe that games as they are need to be destroyed to make room for something else. Perhaps the power conversation will always be with us. Like watching the blockbuster end of Hollywood spend gargantuan amounts of money on special effects for movies that are soon forgotten, many of the games that seek to exploit the power conversation arrive with tons of fury yet signify very little. They are quickly forgotten. While we may wonder if the quest for ever-more-slight detail in graphics will ultimately prove sustainable, other conversations, like the ones that talk about games such as , will continue to find their own way through. I like to think that the rest of the world is slowly starting to notice.
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Cambridge Audio Minx Xi Review: Give All Your Digital Audio A Big Upgrade – For A Price
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Darrell Etherington
| 2,013 | 11 | 3 |
UK-based Cambridge Audio has long made very well-regarded high-end audio equipment, but recently that’s a market that has changed considerably, thanks to the advent of digital audio and online streaming services. The company has changed, too, and one example of that change is the new Minx Xi all-in one streaming device, which adds to Cambridge Audio’s growing family of digital-focused Minx products. Cambridge’s Minx Xi is not dramatically different from what you might expect of any home theatre or hi-fi stereo component device; it’s essentially a black box (or white, if you choose that option) with ample venting on top, a face with knobs and buttons, and a rear with the majority of inputs and outputs. But small design flourishes make this a very attractive, and decidedly modern piece of stereo kit.
The rounded rectangle border that surrounds the face is a nice touch, and frames the tall and wide display nicely. The display itself provides just enough information for easy navigation, without overwhelming or drawing the eye unduly. The low-res, basic LCD readout is a little behind the times in a market flooded with OLED panels, but it’s actually pretty refreshing in its retro appeal, and still gets the job done just as effectively as more advanced screens. The Minx Xi case houses a lot of complicated internals, but it’s still relatively compact, and would look at home either in a stereo cabinet or on its own atop a dresser, bookshelf or cupboard. Paired with Cambridge Audio’s new Aero 2 bookshelf speakers, it makes a good-looking and minimalist setup that’s still capable of putting out impressive enough sound even for watching the occasional Hollywood blockbuster. Movies are now where the Minx Xi shines, however. Instead, it’s at its most impressive when it’s working with streaming audio, an area that’s always a challenge when it comes to sound quality. The Minx Xi connects direct to your network via Wi-Fi or Ethernet, and can stream thousands of Internet radio stations directly, access BBC’s iPlayer feeds, subscribe to podcasts and more – without the need for a computer or mobile device for playback. The Minx Xi does a great job of making even, for example, the 128kbps BBC Radio 4 stream sound excellent, with terrific channel division and a natural rendering of voice and music. If you’ve been listening on computer speakers or even a very capable standalone radio, you’ll probably actually be amazed that what comes through the Minx Xi is the same thing as what you’re used to listening to, the difference is that marked. Subscribing to podcasts on the Minx Xi is as simple as registering your unit via the web and inputting RSS feeds via that dashboard. This provides you direct access to the latest episodes, and again, its ability to really highlight high-quality voice recording comes through. The Bluetooth adapter included is external, but it doesn’t cost any extra, and it works tremendously well. There’s generally a big step down in quality when you’re listening to anything streaming via Bluetooth, even though it’s gotten a lot better over time. With Cambridge’s BT100 and the Minx Xi’s special Bluetooth DAC capabilities, performance of A2DP streams get a big boost. Just to expand on what I already mentioned above, the Bluetooth streaming powers of the Minx Xi make it so that streaming from your mobile device and listening through headphones is in some cases arguably better than listening to the stream on the device itself. It really is that good. That said, it leaves me wishing even more that Cambridge had included AirPlay functionality on the Minx Xi, since Apple’s Wi-Fi audio streaming protocol offers better performance than Bluetooth to begin with. Performance for streamed connections is excellent, as mentioned, with 802.11n support and no drop-outs for streams during my usage. Connected to my Mac as a DAC, and used in tandem with both the Aero 2 speakers and my Sennheiser HD 598 headphones, the Minx Xi really starts to show off its magic abilities in terms of boosting audio that you might not even have realized could be improved to begin with. With both locally resident files, and streaming services like Rdio, the Minx Xi delivers noticeable improvements in quality to attached audio output devices, versus having that same hardware simply plugged directly into the Mac. There’s significant improvement in sound separation and clarity on all files and streams, in my testing experience. The Cambridge Minx Xi isn’t an impulse purchase for most at £600 ($899 MSRP in the U.S.), but it’s a big step up in terms of the audio quality not only for Internet radio and service streams, and also for connected computers and devices. The service library is a little limited for my liking (Pandora and Rhapsody, but no Rdio/Spotify!), and I’d love AirPlay, but Cambridge Audio does say that firmware updates will be pushed out regularly, and support for those kinds of things could follow. That fact that it improves any source dramatically with a built-in DAC that would be expensive on its own, and also operates as a very capable and fairly comprehensive audio streaming box in and of itself, makes this a very desirable piece of kit for anyone looking to take their digital listening habits to the next level.
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Plotting The Way To IPO, Twitter’s Product Roadmap Has Become Too Data Driven
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Matthew Panzarino
| 2,013 | 11 | 3 |
In its rush towards becoming a public company, Twitter is in danger of sacrificing focus on the altar of growth. And it’s doing it with decisions based heavily on data and testing, rather than with an overall vision. This week, Twitter that features in-line image previews, a preponderance of action buttons and new tools for advertisers to caress your eyeballs. Over the past few months, the Twitter product has evolved haltingly, with that have turned attention inwards to the core offering. It isn’t all bad. The speed and performance of Twitter have come a long way recently, both on Android and iOS; some of its experiments have paid off with useful new features. And the recent efforts to are incredibly welcome, and a great way to leverage Twitter’s services. But overall, Twitter’s product strategy is beginning to feel scattered and disjointed, and it lacks a real sense of coherent design oversight. Multiple sources inside and outside the company have expressed to us that Twitter’s engineering and feature teams are frustrated by this approach. Twitter’s over-reliance on user testing in making decisions and a strong focus on ‘optimizing for growth’ over any other consideration is causing friction. User testing, or a/b testing, is all about shipping changes or new features out to groups of people before making a decision about which to support. With apps, the power of this model is greatly expanded. Twitter is able to split off segments of its hundreds of millions of users into buckets that it can use to test engagement or interactions like button taps. The data is reviewed and a decision about a feature or change is made based on the success of one test or another. This is a common practice at tech companies — some consider it absolutely indispensable to product development. But some of Twitter’s recent decisions point to an over-reliance on the results of this kind of testing to make choices. There are dozens of detailed missives on the Internet about why this kind of testing should be interpreted with care, as even small changes in test parameters can sway results one way or another. From what we understand, the design decisions at Twitter are currently being made largely by data — especially if that data shows that a few more ounces of growth can be squeezed out of the apps. To give you an idea of how much Twitter relies on this kind of testing — at one point it was possible to see two versions of the timeline on the same device on different accounts. We saw this in action in the wild, and in the images below, you can see the ‘old’ timeline and a test version of the one that shipped this week: The timeline on the left was tested for a few weeks before the data pushed it towards shipping. You’ll notice the static interaction buttons on the screen. These, it’s fairly clear, were designed to lower the barrier of interaction for users on the platform. If the interaction buttons are right in the feed, more people will likely tap on them. Here’s what the timeline looks like now: Unfortunately, this is a fairly awkward design decision, leading to a cluttered interface and likely just as many accidental taps as intentional ones. It may even have been those accidental taps that led to the data pushing this feature into the shipping version of the app. Frankly, it’s ugly, and one of the main reasons that it made it out of testing was the data showing that it could result in increased engagement. Twitter’s expanded image timeline was also tested this way. This is all exacerbated by the fact that the desktop version of the app is on its own evolutionary track. Modules are swapped and expanded, but it still looks and works much different from the mobile counterparts. Over the past few weeks, several changes have been made to Twitter in the interest of pumping up user growth and ad-friendliness. Among those are the new conversation feature, which links tweets together with a blue line and pre-expanded timeline images. With the conversation feature, Twitter trampled one of its own inviolate rules: Everything on Twitter is in reverse-chronological order. Now, replies to conversations cause the original tweets to bubble up in the timeline, knocking them out of order and contributing to chipping away at the core nature of Twitter. Conversations were implemented in order to to new users, but in the process they’re obscuring one of the things that was so good about the service, and may ironically confuse users more than help them. Chronology has a simple, primal power and it’s always been part of what makes Twitter what it is. Screwing with that is exactly what happens when you follow your nose to growth rather than examine carefully what the impact of a feature is on the product. Pre-expanded images pushes Twitter further toward Facebook’s inscrutable feed, with a stream of out-of-order visuals that can’t be opted out of on the web. And, more importantly, it homogenizes Twitter’s network in a way that makes it feel like every other feed. Both of these features, especially when taken in aggregate, break the fundamental building blocks of Twitter, making it just one more scrollable column that looks like Facebook — just as Facebook is in the middle of efforts to attempt to make itself a place for real-time conversation like Twitter. It’s not the pre-expanded images themselves that’s such a big deal; it’s the execution. On the iPhone, you’re looking at most of the screen swallowed up by one or two images, and on the web, maybe three or four. Yes, you can disable the inline images for now on mobile apps, but I’m not sure how long that will stay that way. It damages the readability of Twitter in a huge way. Yes, every other social network and messaging platform out there is moving to the ‘stream of images’ model, but making Twitter like every other network isn’t going to be good in the long run. The power of Twitter lies in the fact that you’ve curated a stream of information that you want to read. It’s not — though Twitter would like to believe it — in the fact that you’ll soon be able to see every kind of movie clip and news brief and what have you in the feed. It’s the commentary around those events and clips, and not the content itself, that makes Twitter what it is. You can bend and twist the shape of networks in various ways to make room for advertising, engagement tweaks and new kinds of media, but eventually you’re going to break something. And Twitter — with its tighter, more focused stream — is very much in danger of doing that right now. Those choices exemplify how nearly all of Twitter’s recent decisions about features are based on data from user testing. There is no overall design philosophy or endgame at work, and that lack of vision is hurting the look and usability of Twitter’s apps. They’re barreling full-speed down the road, attempting to keep engagement and growth numbers up without looking ahead to where they’re going to be. And don’t even get me started on the Android or tablet apps. Fun fact — that Android tablet app released earlier this month? Built by Samsung, not Twitter (though Twitter has stated it will come to all Android tablets). So why hasn’t Twitter released its own definitive tablet update? What we hear is that Twitter is in the midst of a months’-long slog toward fresh new release for phones and tablets. Some , called ‘Highline,’ internally leaked out a few weeks ago — it may feature TV-related updates and a new swipeable interface. This week’s release wasn’t part of this plan, it was an update specifically to push out those ad-friendly expandable images. The idea behind a swipeable interface is fairly easy to divine, as it could make the app friendly to multiple timelines. If these feeds could be treated as discreet items, Twitter could move beyond its ‘Home,’ ‘Connect’ and ‘Discover’ feeds to offer more specific feeds focused on things like TV. And, judging from how #Music went, that . But Twitter’s development and design culture has contributed to frustrations at various levels during the project. Some components have been rebuilt several times only to get quashed at high levels because the testing numbers weren’t good enough. As far as we understand it, the next release was originally much more ambitious, and set out a distinct vision for all of Twitter’s apps. But its forward edges have been blunted significantly by the process of test, poll and pull back that currently dominates Twitter’s product-development strategy. The current direction of Twitter stands in stark contrast when Yes, Tapbots charges a simple fee and is not a soon-to-be-billion-dollar-company. But its two-man team has managed to produce a cleaner, more focused mobile app in a few months than Twitter has been able to do with all of its resources. And people both inside and outside the company have noticed. There are some situations where Twitter’s reliance on experiments has paid off with interesting stuff. See two recent user engagement initiatives: MagicRecs and EventParrot. Both utilities were launched as Twitter accounts first, that people could choose to follow and get notifications from via DM. , and if EventParrot does well then it probably will, too. But MagicRecs stands apart from other recent changes like the in-stream actions, conversation lines and pre-expanded images in that it’s about personalization, and doesn’t interfere with the main Twitter experience. The freedom given to run experiments and execute features based on those is incredibly important. Look to the way that Gmail resulted from Google’s ’20 percent time’ policy, or the fact that many of Twitter’s features were contributed by a community experimenting with the new service. The rough part of this, for me, is that Twitter is trying very hard to be an independent profitable company, and that’s a good thing. I want Twitter to be around for a long time; I think it . And we hear that there are people inside Twitter who feel strongly about the organization’s need to make design choices rather than simply ones based on the data. And that’s where Twitter will benefit focusing its efforts: on building a service with lasting usability and enjoyment. Short-term user growth and engagement hacking is the path that it has taken on the run-up to IPO in order to justify an asking price and have good numbers to tout in its S-1 and on the roadshow. But currently, the products across the web, Android, iPhone and iPad display a lack of clarity of vision. They’re getting ugly, cluttered and confusing — and for little reason. Twitter itself is one of the clearest and most compelling sells in all of ‘social media.’ It’s a real-time feed of information from sources that you can interact with if you choose, or simply consume at your own pace. Releasing updates that don’t honor those powerful, simple tenets is a recipe for long-term disaster — no matter what the short-term gain. At time of publish, Twitter had not responded to requests for comment. Image Credit: /Flickr CC
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Benchmark Partner Peter Fenton On Investor Luck, Tech IPOs And More
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Leena Rao
| 2,013 | 11 | 3 |
This past week, we were lucky enough to sit down with Benchmark partner and Twitter board member backstage at TechCrunch Europe to talk about his magic touch. Of all the investors in the Valley, Fenton is one of the elite VCs who has the most number of companies that are in the process of going public or will be going public in 2014. This group includes Twitter, Zendesk, Zuora, New Relic and a number of others. We asked Fenton what his secret was in picking the companies that had the legs to be a public company. Fenton admits that luck has an important role in some of his successes and bets. He shared that he falls in love with the companies he invests in, with the passion coming from seeing the dynamic of a mission-based company and how the employees are growing with the startup. He adds that the current dynamic in this climate is to focus on an IPO vs. an exit (M&A was more popular in the previous generation of technology companies, he says). Check out the video above for more.
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App Indexing, Predictive Services, And Unlocking Mobile Distribution
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Semil Shah
| 2,013 | 11 | 3 |
TechCrunch There is a “perfect storm” brewing in consumer mobile: Developers, companies, and investors see the explosive growth of smartphones (with no sign of slowing down), yet consumers only have so much bandwidth to interact with a small set of apps, let alone enough time in the day for another app. Consumer eyeballs are fixated on smartphones, triggering once-in-a-lifetime opportunities for application creators to reinvent products, interactions, and industries, but tragically, limited means of getting their creations discovered, or reengaged with, or paid through them. The result, for the time being, is that driving app installs and engagement is all the rage, as companies frantically Facebook’s pockets to help drive downloads and retention of their mobile apps while a bustling ecosystem of third-party app analytic providers wait to scoop up the remains. Something has to give, right? In the past few weeks, we have begun to see the inklings of what the future of mobile search, navigation, and app discovery may hold. Forget about Siri for now, as it actually took a step backward in iOS 7, if that was even possible. On Android, apps like , which contextually places apps in your lockscreen based on when it knows you’re likely to use those apps, and , which intelligently surfaces information to your phone at the right time, recently launched at a time when iPhone fragmentation is starting to pick up and when Android handsets in the U.S. are getting better and better. Earlier this year, Google brought its mobile engine to the iOS platform, giving iPhone users the chance to see how always-on integrated Google services can work at the application layer, though the battery costs from background processing impose hefty power costs. All of this raises a high-order question: How will consumers interact with their phones in the future? Will it be through today’s “hunting and pecking” of apps in silos with a mix of a suboptimal mobile web interface? Or, will mobile operating systems learn our behaviors so well as to what we will want to do or know next, either by the time of day, the way in which we hold our phones or other signals? Or, will we continue to search for information on our phones as we search for information on the web with Google, by inputting keywords and having the ability to search across our apps (even the ones buried in the back pages or in folders)? This last question became more interesting this week when Android announced in its latest KitKat 4.4 update that it would App Indexing across apps through deep-linking. The interwebs were with the possibilities this would promote app discovery as well as re-engagement, helping to extend Google’s core competency of indexing and ranking information to include applications, which, to date, remain in their own silos. Very soon, on Android (and not iOS), users will be able to search across their devices as well as have Google Now push information to them — it remains to be seen if Apple can or will want to move in this direction at an OS-level, or leave everything federated to the app layer. On iOS, there’s a small, early-stage startup based out of Palo Alto called that is trying to provide an app to let users search their phones, including other apps, on Apple’s mobile platform. And on both coasts, entrepreneurs have not forgotten about the mobile web, with startups like , , and trying to reinvent what can be done with the content in the browser within a mobile context. All of these advancements come down to how we search for information on our phones, how we can and will discover new applications, and how we can and will re-engage with those services through a mix of user-initiated search and machine-anticipated prediction. While voice command interfaces for mobile seem like a pipe dream (though, hey, it could happen eventually), bringing standard search back to our phones and becoming empowered to find information within disparate app silos could theoretically unlock a significant amount of utility and save time. For developers, of course, it could help reduce the pain surrounding two harsh realities — getting new people to discover your app and, once they’ve downloaded it, getting them to engage again (and again) with the software. Will these advancements in Android unlock distribution for mobile developers and be the push they need to leave iOS? Whatever does happen, the mobile platform that can help with app distribution — whether through user intent and search, or through predictive services — will attract developers in droves.
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There Are No More “Tech Issues”
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Gregory Ferenstein
| 2,013 | 11 | 3 |
Secretary of Health and Human Services Kathleen Sebelius is not a tech founder. President Barack Obama does not have a account. The failed launch of the new health insurance e-commerce website, Healthcare.gov, came as a shock to political leaders that were too steeped in government shutdowns and the machinations of two-party infighting to understand how their hired geeks could flub a computer project. Unfortunately, Silicon Valley’s powerful political lobbies were myopically focused on the stereotypical tech issues of and broadband access to see that every single law affects the tech industry as much as the rest of the country. As a result, many Silicon Valley startups were legally shut out of a brand-new, multi-billion dollar market, while America’s new health-care system is in danger of missing crucial enrollment deadlines. Here’s the lesson: there are no more “tech issues.” America and startups got hosed because Silicon Valley was politically absent. Since everything now has crucial technology components, the technology industry cannot sit out any issue. The government, alone, is incapable of solving these problems. Upon entering office, President Obama thought he set a path to change by creating two new positions, the Chief Technology Officer and newly re-tooled Chief Information Officer, specifically designed to make government as innovative as his campaign. New directors hired. Check! Problem solved? Of course! Unfortunately, it didn’t work out that way. The first CIO, Vivek Kundra, practically stormed out of his office after two years, denouncing the entire system. “We almost have an IT cartel within federal IT,” he to Google Chairman Eric Schmidt. The searing criticism fell on the deaf ears of a few wonky trade publications. The next CIO, Steve VanRoekel, gave me his first interview and declared a bold solution to gut the system from the . While we know his ambitious plans didn’t stop the Healthcare.gov failure, we don’t know why, because sometime last spring when Healthcare.gov began serious construction, he was . No one in the executive branch seemed to have the political power to change either the IT system or the Affordable Care Act’s regulations. In the end, the feds did what they normally do: hire a known contractor and keep the status quo. “So what they did instead, and very rationally, is they opted to take a contract that they already had — one with CGI Federal — and amended that contract to add the Healthcare.gov stuff onto it,” former Presidential Innovation Fellow Clay Johnson. Congress, likewise, had no incentive to anger a contractor that gives jobs to constituents. “No contracting officer wants a call from a member of Congress asking why their backyard IT integrator wasn’t selected.” Worse yet, the Affordable Care Act put a new multi-billion-dollar commerce opportunity completely in the hands of the government. “Web-based entities,” or tech startup insurance brokers, who are designing an Orbitz-like experience for shoppers, as second-class citizens. Startups like Fuse Insurance tell me they were given late access to the data and can’t test their product because of Healthcare.gov’s backend glitches. Worse yet, they’re completely overshadowed by a multi-million-dollar, celebrity-fueled ad campaign to drive consumers to the federal website. The regulations, as written, give state exchanges the to allow startups access to the new market. California and New York have delayed these partnerships for around two years. As a result of Silicon Valley’s inattentiveness, everyone got screwed. Fortunately, there are models for Silicon Valley to broaden its reach. Former Newark Mayor, now Senator Cory Booker, realized this fact on a problem that doesn’t seem to fit the typical “tech issue” mold: criminal justice. While civil libertarians were battling New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg over controversial , Booker won accolades from the local American Civil Liberties Union for finding a unique tech solution: open up all the data on police officer street stops. Watchdogs can now work cooperatively with law enforcement to find out exactly which stops are happening. After the Sandy Hook Elementary massacre, noted Facebook investor Ron Conway for startups that could equip police with gun-fire detection technologies; it’s also exploring ways to empower community volunteers with social media sentiment analysis that can find public gang feuds and defuse them with preemptive diplomacy. In foreign policy, helped develop a James Bond-like eraser tool for spying dissidents, they used statistics to indict war criminals, and helping crisis workers more efficiently find victims of national disasters. All of these areas are not only ripe for business but can save lives. Education, health care, immigration, tax reform, infrastructure (self-driving cars), energy, foreign policy, gay rights, voting rights, disaster relief — they’re all tech issues now. Silicon Valley’s citizens and its well-heeled lobbyists better expand their interests. Where I can, I will also try to be better at identifying technology-relevant aspects of all major legislation. Health care was a rational oversight. But we shouldn’t get fooled again.
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Google Launches Helpouts, Paid Video Chats With Experts To Address Whatever Is Bothering You Right Now
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Alex Wilhelm
| 2,013 | 11 | 4 |
, Google’s fusion of Google+ Hangouts, Google Wallet, and its identity tools is now live. A ‘Helpout’ is a Hangout-like video chat, but instead of speaking with a friend, you are connected to a purported expert in whatever it is that you need help with. The tagline that Google has come up with for Helpouts is “real help from real people in real time.” Imagine a video chat session that you are paying for, that lasts for as little as a minute or two. You have an issue, say, what is this lump on my hand, or, how do I pull off a particular makeup trick, and have a quick chat with a person who can what your problem is. That’s the edge that Google thinks Helpouts has over every other content variety and service that helps you solve the situation you find yourself in. Today at its San Francisco offices, Google gave the media a look at the product, and proffered some hands-on time with its interface. The assembled tech press watched someone attempt to correct a drywall hole, apply lipstick in a particular way, and zest a lemon. If you need a deep dive into the mechanics of Helpouts, TechCrunch . In this post, I want to dig into the economics of the offering, and its potential to succeed as a product. Google is fond of calling Helpouts a platform and telling you that its team is separate from the Hangouts group. So, while the services share the core video experience, they should be thought of as distinct. Helpouts uses your Google+ identity, Wallets payment features, and Hangout’s video technology to service its marketplace of providers. To seed Helpouts, Google has assembled a collection of just a little more than a thousand brands, Sephora for instance, and individuals so that people can dig in from day one. Helpouts will need far more providers — diversity of offering here is key, naturally. Google has to demonstrate that its offering is better than what currently exists and that it is worth paying for. It must expand its database of on-demand information providers so that it can take nearly any request – if Helpouts doesn’t manage that, it will be niche, and therefore far too hit-and-miss to be compelling. Google is working on an API for Helpouts, though it remains unclear to what end, and how developers will be able to better integrate the service into the lives of providers. If you are a regular Twitter user, you have probably by now become accustomed to asking your followers questions. It’s a fast, easy way to generate feedback about anything that you can think of. However, your followers are only so deep – unless you are a celebrity, of course – and you can’t pay them for help, so the relationship is quite different. Would you pay $2 per minute to quickly speak with a cooking guru about your under-construction dinner? You can run Helpouts from your phone, of course, or regular computer. So, you would have a device in your kitchen that you could use. If the answer to that is no, Helpouts isn’t likely something that you’ll find too attractive. On its face, having a cadre of brilliant people on demand about is attractive. It’s getting there that is hard. YouTube how-tos. Yahoo Answers. Facebook friends. Real friend over the phone and text. These are free, and constitute Helpout’s competition. Google understands the power of free, and pointed out today that some Helpouts will be provided at no cost. That is, if a specific provider decides as much. Why might you Helpout for free? Perhaps you want to help someone learn Spanish. Or the brand you work for wants a larger digital presence. There are a few options that are simple to imagine. However, the theoretical magic of Helpouts involves money. That’s because the really good people – the best chefs, or what have you – don’t like working for free. So, you’ll get what you pay for Who gets to charge for their advice? A fine question. Google approves every provider. Naturally, that won’t scale. The company either isn’t sure of what it will do next to handle quality of the providers that propagate Helpouts, or it didn’t want to tell the media. It isn’t clear. Google has two needs that are in direct tension: Lots of providers and very good providers. There is always less supply of a superior good, period. Helpouts need a quickly expanding provider base – therapists! bankers! computer help! gardeners! – while keeping its quality up, which won’t be easy. Will these people sit around, waiting for someone to book their time or ask for help in real-time? No. The company instead envisions that people who can Helpout will leave it on in the background of their computer, and have it alert them when they are needed. Providers can also receive SMS messages and the like when they are away from their desks. If you don’t hear back as a user in under five minutes, the session is free. Helpouts is not a small undertaking. Google wants you to be able to Google far outside of the search box. Helpouts as a service is a tacit admission by the company that its prized search algorithms can’t replace humans your problems. The information is different. And you can’t feed the real world completely into a search engine. Or not yet, at least. Video chatting remains a buggy experience. Google Hangouts and Skype are both less-than-excellent solutions. This becomes even harder when on the go, without Wi-Fi, which represents I think a large chunk of the provider and user side of Helpouts. Your car doesn’t break down in your living room, so when you need someone to talk you through your tire repair in the rain, your video bitrate won’t be too impressive. I’m skeptical of Helpouts because it has so many moving parts, between moving people, looking for quick interactions. I don’t want you to tell me in five minutes if I burned the sauce. If I need a real-time answer, it has to work every time or I won’t come back. Google has to find endless brilliant people to be providers, and keep their link strong enough to the service to be constantly available. You can book sessions, of course, at a price discount, but that’s different. A real Helpout is now, instantly, and based on video communication. You are never going to stand on a ladder and wait for someone to take their time to pop onto your phone to explain to you why you can’t roof worth a damn. The Helpouts experiment is something of a question. Has Google perfected the experience to the point in which people will start paying for micro-video sessions? My gut says no. The other side of that is simply that if Helpouts does work, it will be an incredible asset to life. And Google as a company is known for its brilliance, and not ignorance. But even the smartest companies can’t make everything work. Finally, by allowing consumers to purchase less expert time at a time, say just 4 minutes as opposed to an hour-long session, Google could be limiting provider revenue by selling a more efficient system. That’s great for consumers, but could irk providers, if they see their ability to overcharge for a service that they could in the past shrink. Even if Helpouts doesn’t catch on, it is enjoyable to see Google assemble a new product out of its extant service line up. And, as we said, Google is not making small moves. But whatever happens in the end, we can still Google things. And so far that’s worked out pretty well.
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Lady Gaga Splits From Manager And Rising Tech Investor Troy Carter
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Josh Constine
| 2,013 | 11 | 4 |
has been making a name for himself in tech thanks to investments in Uber, Spotify, and Dropbox, but his biggest tie to the music industry has just been severed. Lady Gaga has split from Carter, who has managed her since 2007, according to multiple sources of . The separation could shake his status as he raises a new $75 million investment fund. Carter is credited with masterminding some of Gaga’s success, including her massive social media audience. She has 60 million Facebook fans and is amongst the top figures on Twitter with 40 million followers. The gig gave Carter the clout and earnings to get into tech investing, and get invited to with me at TechCrunch Disrupt NY 2013. In this sense, no longer managing the artist is a serious hit to his profile. On the other hand, splitting from Gaga could also free up more of Carter’s time to add value to his portfolio companies. The Hollywood Reporter says the split was chalked up to “creative differences”. A representative of Carter didn’t respond to requests for comment. However, one source close to the two music moguls tells me Carter may have become too busy for Lady Gaga in recent years. On top of angel investing and funding startups through his venture capital fund , Carter runs the talent management agency that represents John Legend, rapper K’Naan, and violinist Lindsey Sterling who . That’s a lot on one plate. Regarding the split, The Hollywood Reporter…reports that “while sad, [Carter] feels ‘liberated’ to be relieved from duty.” With Lady Gaga’s new album ARTPOP coming out this month and her propensity for high-production tours, Carter’s duty would have been heavy this year. Though Carter played coy when I pressed him about being a celebrity investor when , his footprint in tech has grown significantly in the last few years. Between his reputation as a marketing virtuoso and his extensive rolodex, he’s become quite a prolific VC. Most recently, Carter set out to raise $75 million to $100 million for with a focus on brilliant founders. Some of include music playlist app , celebrity fundraising platform , and viral marketing service . Now he may be able to better concentrate on providing his startups with product vision, business mentorship, and industry connections.
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Dropbox Snatches Up Sold, The Service That Simplifies Selling Online, To Help It Build A New Mystery Commerce Product
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Rip Empson
| 2,013 | 11 | 4 |
launched early this year with a plan to help remove some of the frustration from selling online. before moving , Sold aimed to help busy people avoid the hassle of eBay and Craigslist and simplify e-commerce by taking the whole process out of their hands. Today, just seven months removed from launch, the Sold team that it has been acquired by Dropbox and will be closing its service as a result. Backed by $1.2 million from investors like Google Ventures, Greylock Partners, Matrix Partners and the team at Boston Seed, it’s a somewhat abrupt exit for a startup that appeared to be on the way up. In September, the team told TechCrunch that it had listed more than 2,000 unique products in its marketplace and was seeing 50 percent growth, month-over-month. In turn, beyond the fact that Sold sought to add value by reducing the work inherent to selling online by pricing items, finding a buyer and arranging packaging, shipping and transactions for you, the startup also created pricing technology to help you get more for your items. Thanks to its algorithms that crawl top e-commerce marketplaces to build more accurate pricing rates and to allow customers to compare “going rates,” Sold said at the time that its prices were (on average) 43 percent higher, on average, than that of Gazelle. As a result, after just four months, the startup was projecting $1 million in annual revenue and claimed to be growing fast. Nonetheless, the opportunity to join Dropbox ultimately proved to have more appeal for the founders than what they thought could be accomplished as an independent company. The deal, which Sold co-founder Tony DeVincenzi says came together in under four weeks, will see the startup’s nine full-time employees join Dropbox to form a new team within the company that will lead the design and development of “a new Dropbox product.” Although the co-founders declined to elaborate on the plans for the new product, they did say via a post on their site that Dropbox’s “roadmap includes exciting new experiences which align perfectly with our ethos of creating products that positively affect people.” While that doesn’t say much, it is clear that the opportunity to reach Dropbox’s user base of 200 million played a hand in determining the outcome. That opportunity, they said, “was too good to pass up.” Sold will be officially shutting down its product beginning today, and as of now, is no longer accepting new items. DeVincenzi says that the team is putting together a plan to help users finalize transactions and those who currently have items in the system have been contacted and will be dealt with on a case-by-case basis. Considering that the launch of its Android app in September had allowed Sold to significantly speed up its streamlined e-commerce process — allowing users to move from first post to payment in four days — the abrupt end to its service will no doubt have some of its newest customers up in arms. But, depending on what the Sold team helps Dropbox produce in the coming months, maybe they won’t be without a mobile commerce platform for long. Stay tuned for more. Full announcement copied below:
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Hands On With The Afinia H-Series 3D Printer, A Rugged Printing Rig For Home And School
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John Biggs
| 2,013 | 11 | 4 |
In the kennel of 3D printers, I’d equate the oddly-shaped and homegrown printers to lovable mutts. The is a golden retriever, ready to please. And the $1,599 Afinia H-Series is a solid, scrappy Jack Russell terrier, willing to get dirty and able to take on all comers. The H-Series looks like it was built by the same industrial design team that built the original metal-clad Apple IIs. The device is almost entirely self-contained and there are none of the familiar cables running up and down the various arms and cams. The print head is connected via a large wire ribbon to the control board and shielded by a 3D-printed plastic screen that keeps the .15mm print head protected. The spool sits on a fairly solid hook on the side of the machine and the plastic runs through a guide into the extruder. In short, there are very few visible moving parts, which is a good thing and a bad thing. The H-Series is a great beginners’ printer and the rugged case makes it an excellent contender for a true classroom 3D printer. It looks and feels as solid as, say, an industrial educational microscope or similar lab gear and, given a choice, I’d far prefer it over a similarly outfitted but more exposed system like the many hardware. That said, the home hobbyist may be put off by the lack of visible access to the extruder and motors, two points of failure that often require maintenance. This doesn’t mean you won’t be able to get into the extruder and pull out broken filament, for example, but it’s definitely a bit of a hindrance. As for print quality, it was a mixed bag but erred on the side of excellent. On very simple prints everything worked swimmingly. The .15mm size produces a smooth, solid print in objects that fit within the fairly limited 5-inch square print envelope. However, bigger objects are problematic as you have to slice them a bit to get them to fit and, unlike the Makerbot, you don’t have much room to print multiple objects on one plate. In terms of torture testing the printer I came away sufficiently impressed, but if you’re printing very complex objects this is probably not for you. This is my . It’s 100 layers tall and consists of a number of very fiddly little shapes that throw off most printers. The Makerbot can barely complete this without artifacts. How did the Afinia do? The results, while not perfect, were more than acceptable given the price and the materials available. No amount of fine-tuning could force the printer to create a better version of this print.
[gallery ids="909791,909792,909793,909794,909796,909797"] The model, on the other hand, printed just fine. In general the printer can produce some very solid output but it is stymied by the limitations imposed by additive printing and the problems associated with ABS filament. Given that the H-Series is facing a number of competitors in the 3D printing space, it’s important to understand how this model stacks up. It has a very small build envelope, which could be problematic, but because we’re not talking about an industrial printer here this can be forgiven. It’s half the price of similarly outfitted 3D printers but you are limited to ABS printing and it only includes one extruder. However, because it’s quite small it’s far easier to store than other models and can sit unobtrusively on a desk where others systems hulk menacingly. I ran into a few problems with the software, however, which should give Mac users pause. The OS X versions of the software worked intermittently and the app didn’t work at all on Windows 8. It works best on Windows 7, which I ended up running in a virtual machine on my Mac just to get anything to print.
Compared to other software packages I’ve used the phrase “Better than nothing” comes to mind when I look at Afinia’s solution. There is no interactive scaling – to scale an object you select a size multiplier (.8, 1.2, etc) and press scale. The same unintuitive system is used to move and rotate objects on the bed. However, when all you want to do is print something small it works just fine. The 3D printer software is often an afterthought and, while I wasn’t impressed by its utility, I was able to use it and print with it without much trouble. Is this the 3D printer for you? If you’re an educator or home hobbyist, I think this is $1,500 well spent. Serious hobbyists may want to consider a printer that does PLA and ABS, however, and the build envelope is very small on this machine, thereby limiting what you can print in one piece. However it is very quiet, sturdy, and usable and I was very impressed with the build quality and utility. It’s not the best 3D printer out there, but in many respects it comes very close. Click to enlarge
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Hired.com Looks To Destroy Recruiting Invoices With New Subscription-Like Billing
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Kim-Mai Cutler
| 2,013 | 11 | 4 |
Hired.com, , is looking to challenge the way that traditional recruiting agencies charge their startup clients. Technical recruiting in the Valley is often done by boutique agencies or headhunters with long rolodexes, histories and networks among local developers. Often, if they’re successful in getting a candidate, they’ll hand over a lump sum bill worth about 20 percent of a hire’s first-year salary. But Hired.com, which started out as Developer Auction, is looking to change that. They’re introducing a payments model that resembles more of a subscription. Instead of charging for new hires up-front, they’ll be charging 1 percent of a developer’s salary for the first 24 months of their employment. If the hire stops working for the startup, Hired.com will stop charging. If they stay longer than two years at their new employer, Hired.com will also stop charging after the 24th month. It looks like a way for Hired.com to lock in their clientele over the long-run. Clients that are already paying Hired.com one or two thousand dollars a month might be more inclined to keep using the service if don’t get sticker shock. “A company that’s adding 10 employees could be facing several hundred thousand dollars in recruiting fees,” said Matt Mickiewicz, who founded the company after starting crowd-sourced graphic design community 99Designs. It will also help them expand their market reach out to companies that haven’t historically relied on recruiting agencies. Hired runs weekly auctions with 50 to 60 developers each that are hand-selected by an in-house team for their technical skills and work histories. They started out last year to become a “transparent marketplace for recruitment,” where engineers could attract offers of interest from multiple startups instead of having to seek out each one by one. With the imbalance of supply and demand for good engineers in markets like San Francisco and New York, the auctions took off. The company is profitable and now has 25 of its own employees, up more than threefold from six months ago. They place “dozens” of candidates every quarter and in one day, they even placed five hires. They $2.7 million from NEA, Sierra Ventures, Crosslink Capital, Google Ventures, Sherpa Ventures, Jeff Clavier’s SoftTech VC, and John Suliman’s Step Partners in March. They’ve signed up hundreds of clients including Airbnb, Twitter and OpenTable and recently launched in New York, Boston, Los Angeles and Seattle. They’ve also worked on the sticky issue of preventing current employers from knowing that their engineers are on the hunt for new work. They’ve filtered out current employers from seeing their own people on the site. Candidates are also on the site for only one week at a time, reducing the risk they’ll be seen by their current employer. “It maintains privacy and integrity,” Mickiewicz said.
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Apple Expands ‘Made In USA’ Efforts With Sapphire Glass Plant, Manufacturing Deal In Arizona
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Matthew Panzarino
| 2,013 | 11 | 4 |
Apple has plans to build a manufacturing plant in Arizona that will extend its ‘Made in The USA’ efforts beyond the Mac Pro and other silicon facilities it maintains in Texas. The news came via a release from both the and the company , which will produce sapphire material. The multi-year agreement, which was reported by , includes a $580 million prepayment that will get paid back to Apple over five years starting in 2015, and requires that GT maintains a minimum level of manufacturing capacity. The GT release alludes to the fact that Apple got a stellar deal on the glass, noting that ‘gross margins from this new materials business are expected to be substantially lower than GT’s historical equipment margins’, but says that the strategic nature of the agreement and the fact that it’s a recurring deal offset the margins. Basically, Apple came knocking and GT couldn’t say no. Apple is to repurpose it as a glass manufacturing center. In a , Apple said that “We are proud to expand our domestic manufacturing initiative with a new facility in Arizona, creating more than 2,000 jobs in engineering, manufacturing and construction,” further noting that “this new plant will make components for Apple products and it will run on 100% renewable energy from day one, as a result of the work we are doing with SRP to create green energy sources to power the facility.” Apple’s nods to renewable energy apparently helped the deal, which will create 700 permanent jobs and 1,300 construction jobs. “Apple is indisputably one of the world’s most innovative companies and I’m thrilled to welcome them to Arizona,” said Arizona Governor Jan Brewer. “Apple will have an incredibly positive economic impact for Arizona and its decision to locate here speaks volumes about the friendly, pro-business climate we have been creating these past four years. Their investment in renewable energy will also be greening our power grid, and creating significant new solar and geothermal power sources for the state. As Governor, I’ve worked hard to demonstrate that Arizona is open for business. Today’s news is proof that’s paying off.” Apple uses sapphire glass for the protective covers of its camera units, as well as the home button on its latest iPhone. Earlier this year Apple announced that it would in a plant in Texas. Apple currently that involve hefty pre-payments for both production and machinery costs. This deal appears to mark an extension of this kind of work to the US, where GT will manufacture the glass inside an Apple-owned facility. Though the deal notes that GT will work off the pre-payments, there is no mention about who will retain ownership of the facility, though it appears to be Apple. Currently the sapphire glass is only used in a couple of components, but GT says that new furnace technologies will let it lower its cost and raise its capacity. It states this should let it expand its LED and specialty sapphire businesses, but doesn’t clarify whether that means Apple might switch to the harder glass from its current mystery supplier parts.
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John Biggs
| 2,013 | 2 | 25 | null |
Eric Schmidt Joins The New Advisory Board At Cloud Rendering Company OTOY
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Anthony Ha
| 2,013 | 11 | 4 |
, a company for running games and other applications in the browser, is announcing , including Google executive chairman and former CEO Eric Schmidt. “Six years ago, , I predicted that 90 percent of computing would eventually reside in the web based cloud,” Schmidt said in an emailed statement. “OTOY has created a remarkable technology which moves that last 10 percent – high-end graphics processing – entirely to the cloud. This is a disruptive and important achievement. In my view, it marks the tipping point where the web replaces the PC as the dominant computing platform of the future.” OTOY co-founder and President Alissa Grainger said the board is being formed now to “guide us as we grow OTOY and enter the commercial phase of our business.” Some of its members were already involved in OTOY as investors — namely famed Hollywood agent Ari Emanuel and writer/investor George Gilder. The advisory board also includes Schmidt, former IBM CEO Sam Palmisano, Mozilla CTO Brendan Eich ( ), and longtime IBM executive Irving Wladawsky-Berger. As far as I can tell, way back in 2008, so it’s been a long road to commercial deployment. But then, Otoy has a pretty big vision (as indicated by Schmidt’s comment) — using its Octane Render technology to make it possible to run almost any application on any device. And just to be clear, this news doesn’t affect OTOY’s governance structure at all. Grainger said the board of directors (i.e. the board has formal decision-making power) still consists solely of co-founder and CEO Jules Urbach.
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Twitter Could Price IPO Well Above New $23-$25 Range, After Strong Private Market Interest
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Matthew Panzarino
| 2,013 | 11 | 4 |
Twitter could price its IPO well it set earlier today, according to CEO Tim Sullivan. The pricing range was . Though he’s providing no guarantees, Sullivan says that there has been strong interest in the private market for Twitter shares over the past few months, which indicates that Twitter could price as high as $25-28 when it finalizes its S-1 this week. A recent report from is also quoting ‘sources’ which say that the pricing will be above the increased range. The report indicates that pricing will happen on Nov. 6th, which has previously been bandied about. If the pricing went through at $25, that would mean a $1.75B raise for Twitter, at a value of over $13.5B. The new range is based on interest that Sullivan says MicroVentures has been tracking in Twitter’s private market sharing. The crowd funding platform has been offering shares of the extremely limited and high-interest stock for a while now. the pricing in the private market has been running up hard over the last year. Sullivan notes that it was priced at around $15 last summer, $17 in December, $20 in March and $30 in September. Bids were entered at around $35 recently but could not be filled because the demand was so high. “We’ve been seeing 300x demand on whatever [shares] we had,” Sullivan told us. Not a lot of people own Twitter and there wasn’t a lot of access to the shares, making the demand very high. Twitter’s initial price range was seen as very aggressive, leading to nearly immediate . That indicated to many that it could afford to bump up its range, which it did this morning. Though private-market pricing is not used by banks to set a public price range — that’s more about fair market value and ongoing interest after the roadshow period — it’s often a strong indicator of what kind of performance we can see out of the stock after offering. Most of the liquidity events that Sullivan has been a part of have ended up trading at or above the private market values, especially lately. He points out LinkedIn as an example of a particularly high-interest post IPO. Interestingly, Sullivan also calls out Twitter as having an ‘extremely professional’ cap table with a hard-core vetting process. He contrasts this with Facebook’s IPO, which has been noted as an example of a poorly handled offering by many.
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Microsoft Azure Now Lets You Import/Export Data By Shipping Hard Drives
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Frederic Lardinois
| 2,013 | 11 | 4 |
Microsoft today a large update to its Azure cloud computing platform that introduces features like WebSocket support, segmented customer push notifications, support and a new billing alert service. The one feature that will likely get the most attention, however, is that developers can now sign up for a preview version of the Azure Import/Export service. With this, developers can import and export their data from Windows Azure . For massive amounts of data, shipping hard drives remains the fastest and often most cost-effective way of getting data into the cloud (or back out of it). Microsoft isn’t the first to offer this kind of service. Its largest competitors, (for a flat fee of $80) and (for $80 plus additional transfer costs), have been running a similar service for a while now. Microsoft’s implementation, it turns out, is to that of its competitors . : Microsoft’s pricing is and it’s a $40 flat fee without transfer or shipping charger. Using the Windows Azure Management Portal or a , developers can import their data or export it from Azure’s Blob storage onto drives they previously shipped to a Windows Azure data center. By default, drives have to be encrypted using Microsoft BitLocker Drive Encryption software. Developers can only use 3.5 inch SATA II drives, however, and they must be formatted with Microsoft’s standard NT file system (NTFS). A single export job can contain up to 10 hard drives. While this import/export preview is the flashiest Azure addition, this version also introduces a virtual machine gallery that makes it a bit easier to launch new VMs in the cloud. It includes an improved search feature, as well as the ability to filter VMs based on whether they are part of Azure’s MSDN subscriber benefits or if they include pre-release software and aren’t fully supported by Microsoft or its partners. Microsoft is also partnering with New Relic to make its analytics and performance-monitoring solution easily available to Azure users. With this update, integrated New Relic just takes a few clicks and then you’re monitoring your site using New Relic’s web app. Typically, this involves installing a bit of code on your server and going through a bit of an install process. Other features include support for , so developers can integrate more real-time communications features into their web-based apps, remote debugging support using Visual Studio 2013 and improved push notifications. Users of Team Foundation Services, Microsoft’s cloud-based version control system, can now enable continuous delivery support with both Team Foundation Services and the open-source Git format. In case all of these features push you to use Azure more and run up your bills, Microsoft has added a Billing Alert Service (currently in preview) that makes sure you know when your bill is about to go above a certain threshold. For a more in-depth look at all of these features, check out Scott Guthrie’s blog post .
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Cloud Printing & Shipping Service Lob Raises $2.4 Million Seed Round
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Sarah Perez
| 2,013 | 11 | 4 |
This summer, the Y Combinator-backed startup a new developer API which lets companies easily integrate printing and shipping services into their applications. Today, the company is announcing $2.4 million in seed funding from various YC partners and angel investors. Participating in the round were Kevin Hale, Dalton Caldwell, Sam Altman, Joshua Schachter, Alexis Ohanian, Paul Buchheit, Garry Tan, Polaris Partners, and other undisclosed investors. With Lob, whose early adopters include CrowdTilt, ZenPayroll, LendUp, LocalOn, and others, developers can automate or print a variety of products on demand, including postcards, photos, flyers, posters, bills, checks, invoices, and more. The company says it now has over 1,000 paying customers, and just hit $40,000 in revenue at the end of last month. It has also printed a million dollars worth of checks. On the horizon, there’s the potential for Lob to grow even larger, with now two Fortune 500 companies testing the service on a smaller scale. If those trials come to fruition, they could be multi-million dollar deals, the founders tell us. A graduate of Y Combinator’s summer 2013 program, Lob was started earlier this year by University of Michigan grads and . Zhang had been inspired to create the service after previously working as a product manager at Microsoft, where he saw the difficulties involved with customer mailings – the company had interns stuffing envelopes in a mailroom for weeks, at times. Today, Lob’s use cases go beyond your typical printed materials, like postcards, invoices or promotional mailings, for example. The company already offers tools like address verification, and “Smart Packaging” (where it picks the best packaging type automatically), and now it’s also working to enable printing of other products, too, including photo albums/photo books, and even t-shirts and mugs. Longer term, the team is considering moving into physical books as well, given customer demand. “When we think of printed products, it’s anything that ink can touch,” explains Zhang. He wants Lob to be a one-stop shop where companies can manage all their printings. And although it’s still early days, the solution is growing in popularity. Customers generally come in with a single request, but then realize how they can use Lob in other areas, too. Today, almost every customer is using two products at the minimum, even though over half had arrived seeking just a single solution. The team was also surprised to see international sign-ups, given its U.S. focus, with customers arriving from South America, Europe, Asia and Australia, then opting to have Lob print and ship items overseas. “A lot of international companies don’t have local ways to do this, so they’re willing to pay a little more,” Avidar says. In terms of its pricing, Lob has been competitive, but maybe not the cheapest option, though that’s changing as it begins to scale. In a few months’ time, Lob’s pricing will drop by an average of 10% across the board, we’re told. (Some products might not change, while others may drop by as high as 20%-30%, to give you an idea). But Lob’s advantage hasn’t necessarily been one based just on price – it’s about the model. Competitors have traditionally required businesses to pay large amounts upfront, or even pre-pay for their entire order, but Lob lets its customers pay as you go. “The fact that it’s a variable expense and you can do everything on a minimum quantity of one – that’s really the differentiator,” says Avidar. “You can’t really go anywhere and say: ‘I want to print one postcard’,” he adds. With the additional funding, Lob is working to add new product categories and hire engineers to help build out its API. The company wants to double (or more) its four-person team over the next few months, and support for photo albums and t-shirts is arriving soon.
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Local Delivery Startup Postmates Introduces Uber-Like Blitz Pricing During High Demand
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Ryan Lawler
| 2,013 | 11 | 4 |
Local delivery startup has been growing fast, which is a good problem to have. That is, unless demand is completely outstripping supply. With that in mind, the company is taking a big step toward regulating demand with the implementation of a new Uber-like Surge Pricing program called “Blitz.” Postmates is now in three cities: San Francisco, Seattle, and New York. But in each case, the biggest problem that it currently faces is having enough couriers to actually make deliveries, according to CEO Bastian Lehmann. While it’s been aggressively on-boarding new Postmates, frequent customers might have noticed that sometimes it might not even be possible to get someone to make a delivery. As a result, it’s decided to make a change that some other startups have made when faced with more demand than supply — it’s instituting Uber-like dynamic pricing that will scale up the cost of delivery when it sees higher demand. While Uber calls this “Surge Pricing,” Postmates calls its dynamic pricing “Blitz Pricing,”* but it kind of works in the same way. The new Blitz pricing model is designed to help the platform to regulate demand for what is a finite resource — that is, the number of couriers that the company has available. Customers who try to order during those times will see a bigass notification (see above) letting them know Blitz pricing is underway, and will be able to accept the pricing. Or not. In times of high demand, that means increasing the price by a certain percentage and allowing customers to decide if they really need whatever it is they’re ordering right away, or if they can wait until there are fewer orders in the system and more Postmates actually available. Notifications during peak demand is just one way that Postmates is trying to be more transparent about its delivery pricing. While the company more than a year ago, changing from its previous flat-fee structure for all deliveries, it hadn’t done a great job of letting people know how much they would be charged. Previously, its pricing model took into account a number of different factors: distance from restaurant, time of day, how quickly the restaurant processed the order, all kinds of junk. Now the pricing during non-peak hours is based solely on the distance from restaurant to dropoff. Lazy and want someone to bring you food from the restaurant next door? That’ll be $5. Ordering from all the way across town? Deliveries cap out at $12 a piece. Either way, Postmates lets you know exactly what you’ll pay for that delivery. That change is meant to create greater order density in specific neighborhoods, which keeps turnaround times faster and improves efficiency. Because being mo’ closer means mo’ orders delivered. Blitz pricing should help regulate demand, as the company continues to onboard more Postmates. Lehmann says it recently streamlined that process, which should eventually help it to meet demand as the company grows. In the meantime, you might have to pay a few more cents when ordering your Jamba Juice every day, . ==
* Presumably because Postmates co-founder and CEO Bastian Lehmann is German.
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MediaSpike Raises $5.2M To Bring More Product Placement To Mobile And Social Games
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Anthony Ha
| 2,013 | 11 | 4 |
, which runs a marketplace for in-game product placement, is announcing that it has raised $5.2 million in Series A funding. The round was led by CMEA Capital, with the participation of existing investors 500 Startups, Google Ventures, and Raptor Capital. New backers include Andreessen Horowitz, Inspovation Ventures, and angel investors such as Jonathan Abrams, Othman Laraki, Rick Marini and Naval Ravikant. MediaSpike’s goal is to make it easier to run product placements in mobile and social games. Developers creating listings for standardized placements in their games and advertisers bid for those placements. A couple of weeks ago, , a 20x increase in fewer than five months. Founder and CEO Blake Commagere said that even with the additional money, MediaSpike’s “core mission” remains the same — indeed, he argued that he never doubted that there would be interest in the idea, because in-game product placement “is something that already works, let’s just remove friction.” The funding allows the company to pursue that vision more aggressively, for example by opening an office in New York City. Given Commagere’s background as a developer of Facebook games, I also asked him about how the shift to mobile is affecting the company. “From the beginning, we designed things with the assumption that the platforms of today may not be the platforms of tomorrow,” he replied. So not only does MediaSpike offer integration with iOS and Android games, but he said that most of the technology works on the server side, not on the device/client, so “we’re able to quickly adapt to that landscape.” One last thing on the funding: The company says that it also has the backing of the seven members of what it calls the “Plaxo Mafia.” I haven’t heard that term before, but hey, I don’t mind that they’re . Commagere was apparently “an early member” of the Plaxo development team, COO John McCrea was VP of Marketing, and MediaSpike has apparently been backed by seven former Plaxo team members.
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Ubertesters Makes Beta Testing Mobile Apps Easier, Will Offer Crowdsourced On-Demand Testers Soon
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Frederic Lardinois
| 2,013 | 11 | 4 |
When it comes to testing mobile apps, most developers today rely on or to get their betas in the hands of testers. , a relatively new player in this business, challenges these incumbents with a more comprehensive testing solution that offers a wider range of tools for distributing new builds and reporting bugs. It also includes a crowdsourced component that gives developers access to a team of mobile app testers that is ready to take their apps through their paces on demand. For now, the crowdsourced component is still in testing, though the company plans to launch this feature soon. Until then, it will offer access to professional testers employed by Ubertesters . Once the full crowdsourced solution launches, the company’s co-founder and CEO Ran Rachlin told me, users will be able to rate their testers to ensure developers get access to a high-quality pool of testers. Ubertesters itself will also play an active role in managing the group of testers on the service. According to Rachlin, developers are missing two features when it comes to mobile testing: a lack of tools and resources (that is, high-quality testers). Ubertesters believes its solutions address both of these problems. Ubertesters, the company argues, improves on the analytics that more conventional crash-reporting services like Crashlytics offer developers. Instead of just having users poke the app and look for issues, Ubertesters provides developers with a comprehensive bug-reporting tool (including the ability to mark up screenshots) on iOS, Android and Windows Phone. Developers also get a comprehensive build-management tool, as well as a web-based tool for device and team management. Using these tools, mobile developers (or their project managers) can take charge of both their internal and external testers. New builds are sent to testers over the air, and pushing out a new build is as complicated as dragging and dropping the new file onto the right group of testers in the web interface. The basic Ubertesters service with over-the-air build distribution, crash logging and team and build management is available for free. Extra features, including full session tracking, user stories support and email support, are available for an extra fee, starting at $10 per month.
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Viddy Rebrands As Supernova, Launches New Slo-Mo Video And Anonymous Group Messaging Apps
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Ryan Lawler
| 2,013 | 11 | 4 |
It’s been a tough year for Viddy. After seeing huge growth on the back of Facebook Open Graph, it — only to reverse course over the following months when the social traffic it was receiving started to sputter out. What followed was a series of , , and as the company tried to re-focus on doing what it did best: building products. But the remaining team hopes that what didn’t kill it will ultimately make it stronger. The company, which has been newly re-branded , will continue to support the Viddy app. But it also has a lot more in store, including a pair of new apps it hopes will tap into the photo- and video-sharing zeitgeist. Supernova is made up of the core engineering team that had been behind Viddy — about a dozen in all. It’s led by technical co-founder and new CEO JJ Aguhob along with chairman Jason Rapp, and is using the infrastructure it built to support the Viddy video-sharing app in order to explore other types of social media sharing. Aguhob says the name was chosen as an analogy for all that Viddy has been through. A supernova is a that collapses on itself but gives rise to new stars. That’s an apt description for what’s taken place at the company, and how it sees itself going forward. While it’s seen its share of turmoil, not everything has been bad. Due to a number of tweaks to the Viddy app, it has actually seen a fair amount of growth over the last few months. Despite the rise of competitive apps like Vine and the introduction of Instagram video, Aguhob says that Viddy has actually been able to retain most of its creative community — which includes professional content creators as well as brands — who continue to make interesting videos for its community. A new onboarding process, as well as the ability to upload multiple videos from the camera roll and assemble them as some sort of vignette, has Viddy seeing higher engagement and retention rates over the last few months. September monthly active users were higher than in August, and October’s were about three times larger than they were six months earlier. While Viddy will remain a part of Supernova’s focus, the company is looking to spawn other interesting applications, building on the highly scalable infrastructure they’ve already built out, as well as their technical expertise. Given the team’s background in social media sharing, it’s probably not a huge surprise that the first two new products will share a lot of the same elements. One is a slow motion video-sharing app called Epic, and the other is a group ephemeral messaging app called Clique. The first of the two apps, Epic, is probably closer in scope to what the company has already built in Viddy — and indeed, there’s some question of whether slow-motion video capture is an app unto itself, or if it should be a feature on the company’s existing app. Either way, Supernova decided to break it out, in part because of the interest in slow-motion video being driven by updates in iOS 7. With Epic, even users who don’t have the latest iPhone or operating system will be able to record and share moments that are slowed down and hopefully made more epic in doing so. The app supports any iOS device newer than the iPhone 4 on iOS 6 or above, letting everyone participate in slow-motion capture. For the newest iPhones, the app will capture two seconds of video at 120 frames per second, and stretch that out to eight seconds of video at 30 frames per second. For older phones, it’ll do four seconds at 60 frames per second, slowing video down by about half. In either case, those slow-motion videos are added to a full-screen feed of similar looping moments. “Our mission has always been to extract really great content out of people,” Aguhob told me. While it’s a standalone app, the company is hoping to create interest by drawing on the same types of social sharing and network effects that it leveraged with Viddy. Users will be able to share to Facebook and Twitter, of course, as well as in their feeds on Viddy. The other app, called Clique, is a little different. It is designed to appeal to a whole new group of users who have signed on to the craze of ephemeral or anonymous messages — what we like to call the “ .” Clique allows users to participate in image-based messaging with their friends. Going a step beyond Snapchat, which primarily focuses on one-to-one or one-to-many messaging, the new app from Supernova enables collaborative messaging, with users able to share images with one another. Others in the group can then build on those messages by adding stickers, scribbles, or text to them. Interestingly enough, the whole thing is anonymous. So you might know all the members of the group, but you won’t know who’s posted which message. This leads to some guessing about who posted what, and you know, hilarity usually ensues. Clique was created after a good deal of user testing and feedback, as the company tried to decide how it could go after a new opportunity for messaging among young people — teenagers and those in college. “They hate Facebook, because it’s too public. They like Snapchat, but it’s too restrictive. They’re all on Instagram, but all their accounts are locked,” Aguhob said. Clique is therefore meant to provide all the benefits of anonymous messaging, while also allowing users to communicate with their network in a new way. For Supernova, a company that was built on the idea of providing a new way of communicating with users, that’s nothing new. Even if its particular take on anonymous messaging might be. Image Source:
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Apple’s Tim Cook Is Right, Anti-Gay Policies Hurt The Economy
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Gregory Ferenstein
| 2,013 | 11 | 4 |
The elusive CEO of the richest company in the world, Apple’s Tim Cook, has taken a rare step into the spotlight to urge Congress to ban sexual orientation discrimination in the workplace. In a , Cook argues that passing the is not only a moral imperative, but sound economic policy: “Those who have suffered discrimination have paid the greatest price for this lack of legal protection. But ultimately we all pay a price. If our coworkers cannot be themselves in the workplace, they certainly cannot be their best selves. When that happens, we undermine people’s potential and deny ourselves and our society the full benefits of those individuals’ talents.” I’m no fan of bigotry, but is Cook, to be gay himself, right that discrimination hurts the economy? In short, yes, but it’s hard to determine the impact. A UCLA Law review of research finds that anti-discrimination policies make for healthier, more cooperative, and committed workers [ ]. IBM-sponsored ethnographic research finds that gay workers who feel accepted in the workplace are also more willing to share creative ideas [ ]. “If I’m not out at work, I spend more time trying to conceal my home life and therefore not concentrating on my job.” explained one respondent. To some extent, we’re lucky to live in a country where our economy isn’t held hostage to Congress’s inability to promote equality. Nearly every major company in America supports gay workers and knows they’d face crippling public backlash on top of missing out on top-notch talent by discriminating. The companies most in charge of innovation won’t be impacted by legislation. Still, every sick, disparaged, and fearful worker hurts the economy. Innovation comes from unexpected places: every and bullied teenager makes it that much less likely innovative Americans will ever reach their potential. One of the , Alan Turing, died shortly after the British government forced him into chemical castration for being gay. Turing’s revolutionary mathematical theorems proved how computers could be more than simple calculators. He died at the young age of 41 directly from discriminatory legislation. Who knows what he could have contributed to computing in the later years of his life? [ ]
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The Three Reasons Twitter Didn’t Sell To Facebook
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Matthew Panzarino
| 2,013 | 11 | 4 |
Facebook’s Mark Zuckerberg tried to acquire Twitter not once but twice, through official channels and via co-founder Jack Dorsey. The details of the efforts are revealed in Nick Bilton’s new book . I’ll have a full review of the book soon, but I found one passage in particular worth noting. It was late October of 2008, shortly after Dorsey had been ousted as CEO and , with no voting stock or operational control. Fellow Twitter co-founders Ev Williams and Biz Stone had been invited to visit Facebook for a sit-down with CEO Mark Zuckerberg. The purpose? An acquisition of Twitter. Zuckerberg, Bilton explains, had been working Dorsey for months to try to arrange a buyout. But his plans were thrown into disarray when Dorsey was yanked from the CEO slot. An email at one point to Jack had given a point-by-point reasoning on why Facebook+Twitter made sense. Among those reasons was the customary threat that Facebook could choose to ‘build products that moved further in [Twitter’s] direction’, a tactic that we’ve personally heard many accounts of Zuckerberg employing. The implicit threat: sell to us or we’ll clone your product. During the meeting, Williams and Stone threw out a valuation: $500 million. Zuckerberg was not shocked, as Dorsey had already informed him that this was the range that would be sought. But the sale didn’t happen, and the reasoning behind the rejection was outlined in an email by Williams to the board, which is partially quoted in Bilton’s book. It seems to me, there are three reasons to sell a company, Ev wrote in an e-mail to the board outlining why they should decline Facebook’s offer. 1. The price is good enough of or a value that the company will be in the future. (“We’ve often said that ,” Ev wrote.) 2. There’s an imminent and very real threat from a competitor. (Nothing is going to “ .” 3. You have a choice to go and work for someone great. (“I don’t use [Facebook]. And I have .”) There are a few interesting points in this passage, which we’ve emphasized. First among those is that the board saw Twitter as a billion-dollar company in 2008, and Williams saw it as many times that. In 2008, Twitter had fewer than 11 million users, and had yet to see the exponential gains that would come in early 2009 as a result of publicity like Ashton Kutcher’s public race against CNN to be the first million-follower account. Twitter’s current IPO filing places a roughly $11.9 billion value on the company. Even with a crappy infrastructure still wobbling under the weight of the users it did have, Twitter’s leadership had faith. That faith extended to the fact that there was no competitor, including Facebook, who could pose a ‘credible threat of taking Twitter to zero’. The concept of Twitter, and its execution, was so unique that even a company with Facebook’s resources was ill-equipped to mimic its behavior and success. This is reinforced by another anecdote in the book about a possible $12 million Yahoo acquisition, which was politely declined very early on in Twitter’s life. The number, even with only 250k active users of what was still an Odeo side project, seemed so low to Biz, Williams and Dorsey that it became a running joke. And lastly, Williams was also uncomfortable about a culture mis-match. The book as a whole drills down deeply into some very flawed, very human characters. But a strain that runs throughout is that the core creators of Twitter were all looking for ways to democratize human connections. That started with Odeo and continued through to the Twitter experiment. Williams felt that Twitter could be negatively impacted by intermingling with Facebook’s company culture, and was willing to bet hundreds of millions of dollars that it would be better without that influence. We seem to talk more and more about the mercenary nature of Silicon Valley — and the popularity of ‘acquisition as business plan’ — daily. But, it turns out, there are still people making decisions based on something other than the seven deadly sins. And one can’t discount the impact that lightly veiled threats have on negotiations. They can often lead to a sour taste, and we’ve heard about more than one negotiation with Facebook that has been spoiled by this kind of hint-dropping. Facebook took roughly three years to clone Twitter’s core ‘follow’ feature, launching Subscribe in 2011. It was later re-named ‘Follow’. Dorsey, for his part, was ambivalent about a Facebook acquisition, saying that “If the numbers are right, there’s a success story in either path.” At the time, he was fresh off of his removal as CEO, with little hope of getting any real power in the company back. That turned out to be wrong, thanks to friendly investor Peter Fenton, but it’s not too surprising that he saw the money as a fair trade. But the board agreed with Williams’ reasoning and declined the offer. Zuckerberg would then go on to court Dorsey heavily, but refuse to give him a head of product position. Dorsey never went to Facebook, and when Twitter IPOs, he’ll get his voting shares back. An interesting note: , and the three reasons, but never disclosed that it was Facebook. An interesting quote from the piece: At the time, the offer we had on the table for Twitter—though a heck of a lot of money and a huge win for investors and anyone else involved—didn’t seem like it captured the upside. Even though we weren’t huge, and there were still a lot of doubters, I believed our potential was unbounded. … In the Twitter case, we had no desire to sell. I had actually just become CEO and was raring to go—as was the team. Additionally, the company we were having the discussion with didn’t seem like one in which we’d fit particularly well or the team would be stoked about. The passage presents us with an intriguing alternate reality where Facebook acquired Twitter, establishing an essential monopoly on the world’s largest and most recognizable social networks. And an example of how it’s still possible to mesh the concepts of business acumen and moral code.
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AetherPal, Software That Lets Mobile Carriers Remotely Support Your Smartphone, Grabs $6M Series A
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Sarah Perez
| 2,013 | 11 | 4 |
In a world where consumers are just now beginning to understand how little privacy they have online and on their various connected devices, a company like , whose pre-loaded software allows mobile carriers remote access to your smartphone may initially give you pause. But for AetherPal, its purposes are not surveillance or data collection, but rather remote support. And it has now scored a $6 million Series A round of funding to continue to grow its business. The round is led by New Venture Partners and Boston-based Point Judith Capital, and comes at a time when the company has also just announced a new CEO, . Previously, Deeney led investments at New Venture Partners, and has served on the board of number of companies in the wireless and I.T. sectors, including Blinq Networks, Vasona Networks, Airclic, Neohapsis, and VPI Systems, according to his profile on NVP’s website. Deeney explains to us that he became interested in AetherPal for an investment, but after spending time speaking with its founder Ron Parmar, he realized that there was a different opportunity for him to actually lead the company, not just invest. “I told my partners I love venture capital and it’s really fun – I’ve been doing it for 13 years, but this is a company that I really think has a successful future here, and I want to jump in and do this as CEO,” Deeney says. Of course, he still gave NVP first crack at investment in the Series A, and they decided to proceed, putting up half of the $6 million. Parmar, meanwhile, is stepping back to serve as chairman, while co-founder and engineering head Deepak Gonsalves remains. AetherPal may not be a household name, but its footprint involves preloads on over 20 million mobile devices, including those sold by two large wireless carriers in the U.S. The company is not permitted to disclose these carriers by name due to NDA’s, but we know from previous reports that one is . The idea, from the consumer’s side, is simple enough to understand: if your phone is acting up, instead of having to drive to a store or call support and being frustratingly walked through various menus on your phone, a customer service representative could instead just take control of your handset – after you granted permission, of course – and fix the problem for you. Remote access and support technologies were made popular in the PC era, typically in I.T.-led support scenarios, where you would phone a helpdesk, then allow a rep to take over your computer to better see what’s going wrong. But on mobile phones, the idea of remote assistance is still fairly new, and far from commonplace. AetherPal’s only real competitors in this space include LogMeIn, which has been repurposing its PC-based technology for mobile, and an Israeli startup called CommuniTake. Plus, in September, Amazon introduced its Kindle HD tablets which include a new kind of remote assistance, . Here, the support rep appears in a small window and can also see, annotate and even tap on user’s screens to help them solve tech support problems. Like MayDay and some others, AetherPal’s software comes pre-installed on select mobile devices from various handset makers, giving reps similar levels of access (though without MayDay’s clever video chat window.) Consumers can’t tell if the app is installed on their phones and can’t remove it if it is, but they don’t have to run the software if they don’t want to, says Deeney. However, if prompted by a customer service rep, they can choose to allow the rep to securely connect to their device to help them solve a problem. The software also includes a variety of security features, letting consumers block passwords at all times (even when reps are in control), pause or terminate sessions at will, and it supports access controls for more sensitive areas on the device, like messages, browser history and emails. On the rep’s end, the cloud-based technology lets them see and control the end user’s screen using a web browser, and run diagnostic reports. (Unfortunately for power users on Android, , it seems, which has been cause for concern.) The company also provides service reps with the info they need for supporting the device/operating system combination the consumer uses, which is something of feat, especially given the size and scope of the Android ecosystem, in particular, today. The company says it’s now managing 20,000 remote connections per week. The product works on multiple mobile operating systems, including Android, BlackBerry, Windows Mobile, and Symbian. It’s also currently working with Apple to get its iOS app approved, which would involve some reduced functionality – for instance, it may not the customer’s screen, but rather show a mock-up. (Apple’s iOS is more tightly controlled and more locked down than other operating systems). Deeney says AetherPal is also working to expand its product offerings to include virtual device support in the cloud, self-care apps, and predictive care. And it’s working on tools that could automate the resolution to common problems users have today. For its carrier customers, who typically buy the product on a SaaS-like basis along with an optional managed services bundle for 24/7 support bundled in, the goal with AetherPal is to reduce device returns – Deeney notes they’re targeting a 50% reduction here which would have a significant impact on ROIs. Carriers also want to improve customer satisfaction by increasing first call resolutions and reducing average call handling times, as well as reduce churn. “We’re at a point now where we have two large Tier 1 customers in the U.S., another one in Europe, another in South Africa, and a couple of smaller ones,” says Deeney. “Now we can expand into other geographies.” He says they’re expanding into North America, Latin America, parts of Europe and in the Asia-Pacific region. AetherPal is working with channel partners in the customer experience management space who already have big systems installed at the carriers, but can’t yet disclose these partners by name. The New Jersey-based company, which was a spinoff from founder Parmar’s earlier mobile device testing service in 2009, launched its commercial product just last year. The $6 million in new funding will also be put to use to grow AetherPals’ 50-person team with hires in sales, product and exec roles.
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Jeff Bezos’ Wife And Co-Workers Call Out Brad Stone’s Amazon Book As Inaccurate…On Amazon
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Matthew Panzarino
| 2,013 | 11 | 4 |
Amazon was one of the first retail websites to allow negative reviews of the products that they sold to appear right in the listing. This revolutionary practice which has been mimicked earth-wide at this point was one item focused on in Brad Stone’s recent book . The book, which I found very , was released last month and is available on Amazon’s site for purchase. In what can only be seen as a moment of delicious cyclical irony, a new has been posted by none other than Amazon CEO and founder Jeff Bezos’ wife, MacKenzie Bezos. We’ve confirmed the identity of the reviewer, the only peson to leave a one-star reaction so far. MacKenzie’s review is an intriguing read, and features the incredible qualifying disclosure “Jeff and I have been married for 20 years.” In her review, she calls out what she feels are ‘numerous factual inaccuracies’ in the book, including one right off the bat: In the first chapter, the book sets the stage for Bezos’s decision to leave his job and build an Internet bookstore. “At the time Bezos was thinking about what to do next, he had recently finished the novel Remains of the Day, by Kazuo Ishiguro, about a butler who wistfully recalls his personal and professional choices during a career in service in wartime Great Britain. So looking back on life’s important junctures was on Bezos’s mind when he came up with what he calls ‘the regret-minimization framework’ to decide the next step to take at this juncture in his career.” It’s a good beginning, and it weaves in nicely with what’s to come. But it’s not true. Jeff didn’t read Remains of the Day until a year after he started Amazon. MacKenzie also takes an exception with the fact that the book, in its effort to delve into the motivations of Bezos, strays from fact and into the realm of ‘characterization’ too often: “Bezos felt…” “Bezos believed….” “Bezos wanted….” “Bezos fixated…” “Bezos worried….” “Bezos was frustrated…” “Bezos was consumed…” “In the circuitry of Bezos’s brain, something flipped…” When reading phrases like these, which are used in the book routinely, readers should remember that Jeff was never interviewed for this book, and should also take note of how seldom these guesses about his feelings and motives are marked with a footnote indicating there is any other source to substantiate them. Notably, Stone’s book starts off with an account of a meeting with Bezos at the beginning of the project. Stone went to him to get Bezos’ blessing to approach friends and family and other acquaintances for interviews. This theoretically improved Stone’s chances of getting those people to talk without fear of Bezos’ displeasure. When MacKenzie notes that her husband ‘was not interviewed’, this may indicate that followup questions about those collected accounts were either not asked or not answered by Bezos. The tension between laying out a business narrative and a ‘ripping yarn’ is also addressed by MacKenzie’s review. I found myself thinking about this several times while reading, though without the advantage of her first-hand knowledge of events. It was also at the forefront of my mind when reading , as it too delved into the minds and motivations of its subjects to create an emotional portrait of some situations: But when an author plans to market a book as non-fiction, he is obliged to find a suspenseful story arc that doesn’t rely on mischaracterizing or avoiding important parts of the truth. I am grateful this is the era of the Internet, when characters in non-fiction can step out of books, as Jonathan Leblang and Rick Dalzell have done, and speak for themselves. Ideally, authors are careful to ensure people know whether what they are reading is history or an entertaining fictionalization. Hollywood often uses a more honest label: “a story based on true events.” If authors won’t admit they’ve crossed this important line, their characters can do it for them. The two other reviews that she references are those of Jonathan Leblang, a current Director of Kindle at Amazon’s Lab126 facility and Rick Dalzell, a former SVP at Amazon. Leblang’s review to Stones’ revelations about Bezos’ biological father (from whom he has been estranged for years). as well, including a passage about Bezos’ laugh which has been bandied about quite a bit: While I found it rather interesting, lots of stories are missing or just inaccurate. Brad painted a one-dimensional picture of Jeff as a ruthless capitalist. He completely missed his warmth, his humor, and his empathy — all qualities abundantly present in the man. One of my favorite things about Jeff is his laugh. But Brad’s quote from me implies exactly the opposite: “You can’t misunderstand it,” says Rick Dalzell, Amazon’s former chief information officer, who says Bezos often wields his laugh when others fail to meet his lofty standards. “It’s disarming and punishing. He’s punishing you.” Nothing could be farther from the truth. In actuality, Jeff’s laugh is spontaneous, sincere, warm and endearing. It diffuses stressful situations. Clearly, Brad misunderstood me. Obviously, without first-hand knowledge of the events I can’t speak to the 100% accuracy of the text, but I can say that the book is probably worth reading, despite the notes on accuracy. Leblang, for one, also says the book is worth reading, in spite of that. The response by MacKenzie Bezos is a valuable resource for those who have or plan to read the book, helping to offer some perspective from the other side of the coin. I found it interesting that one of Bezos’ first questions to Stone as noted in the book is how he plans to handle the ‘narrative fallacy’. “The narrative fallacy, Bezos explained, was a term coined by Nassim Taleb in his 2007 book to describe how humans are biologically inclined to turn complex realities into soothing but oversimplified stories.” Taleb’s solution in the book is to side-step the desire to tell stories or rely on memory, instead being as precise and clinical as possible — relying on data to support the narrative. Obviously, MacKenzie Bezos believes that Stone’s book didn’t do quite enough of that, and has taken to one of Amazon’s first nods to data over narrative — the customer review — to voice her displeasure. We’ve reached out to Stone for any comment on the reviews. : Craig Berman, Amazon VP of Global Communications, reached out to us with an additional note on Stone’s research for the book: Over the course of the author’s reporting, Amazon facilitated meetings for him with more than half a dozen senior Amazon executives, during which he had every opportunity to inquire about or fact-check claims made by former employees. He chose not to. I met in person with him on at least three occasions and exchanged dozens of emails where he only checked a few specific quotes. He had every opportunity to thoroughly fact check and bring a more balanced viewpoint to his narrative, but he was very secretive about the book and simply chose not to. H/T
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Hasty Rebrands As Zesty, Launches In San Francisco To Convert Your Local Chinese Joint Into A Healthy Delivery Option
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Ryan Lawler
| 2,013 | 11 | 4 |
Back in June, we to , a new player in the burgeoning on-demand food-delivery market. What set it apart from startups like Postmates, as well as major incumbents like Seamless and Grubhub, is a commitment to serving up only healthy options for its hungry customers. But back then the mobile-first healthy food service was only in beta. Now, the company is willing to take the wraps off its service, with a brand-new version of its app, as well as a new name. So here comes , which is officially launching to bring healthy meals to San Franciscans. So first, what makes Zesty different? It works with a curated group of restaurants from around San Francisco — about 35 today — that make deliveries already to customers. That’s not so different from Seamless and Grubhub, which mostly provide a new funnel of customers to restaurants that had already done their own takeout and delivery. But where Zesty differentiates is not only by being ultra-selective about the restaurants that are available on the app — making sure, for instance, that they have Yelp ratings of 3.5 stars or more and are able to deliver in less than an hour — but working with them to create a curated group of healthy menu options. The startup has a nutritionist on staff that meets with restaurants, checks out their menu, and then finds ways to ensure that the food they make for Zesty customers follows a number of requirements. There’s no MSG or added sugar or salt for items that are ordered from the app. Sauces and dressings are delivered on the side. In addition, menu items are broken out to fit certain dietary restrictions, such as paleo, gluten-free, or vegan. In that way, Zesty is able to convert your local Chinese joint into a haven for healthy food options. For users, that means having the ability to order essentially anything on the app, knowing that it’s not going to kill them or make them fat, and filter out options that might not fit their particular diet profile. The app includes detailed dietary info on all of the menu items available, including calorie count listed along with a photo of all dishes so customers know exactly what they’re ordering. There are also ratings and reviews for users to evaluate different dishes, as well as to help Zesty figure out which dishes and restaurants are best, so it can continue to improve its menu. Zesty was founded by David Langer and Chris Hollindale, a couple of Oxford grads now in San Francisco. Langer had previously founded GroupSpaces, a UK-based membership software company backed by Index Ventures. Advisors include Tim Van Damme and Heyzap’s Jude Gomila. The app is available now for healthy eaters in San Francisco.
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Watch Google’s Eric Schmidt Call NSA Spying “Outrageous” and “Perhaps Illegal”
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Gregory Ferenstein
| 2,013 | 11 | 4 |
Google’s Eric Schmidt didn’t pull any punches in a about the National Security Agency, which supposedly . “It’s really outrageous that the National Security Agency was looking between the Google data centers, if that’s true. The steps that the organization was willing to do without good judgment to pursue its mission and potentially violate people’s privacy, it’s not okay.” He also didn’t see the logic in spying on all Americans to get scoops on just 300 potential threats. “The NSA allegedly collected the phone records of 320 million people in order to identify roughly 300 people who might be a risk. It’s just bad public policy…and perhaps illegal.” See the full interview with the ‘s Deborah Kan above.
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With An Eye For International Growth, Twitter Sharpens Its Focus In India
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Ingrid Lunden
| 2,013 | 11 | 5 |
One of the persistent themes in pre-IPO Twitter’s filings is that the company has more users outside of the U.S., but when it comes to making money, that shifts drastically — an issue problematic enough that Twitter spells it out in the prospectus as a warning about its business. Today, however, the company — a sign of how Twitter hopes to address that disparity in one market in particular — perhaps hoping that this huge market, where English is often the common denominator, could be an engine for Twitter’s international growth. To be clear, Twitter is not opening its first official Twitter account or presence in the country. It’s actually been tweeting there since (first tweet: “What’s up?” in Hindi), first as and then . But it’s been, at best, not a full-throttle effort, with only 700 tweets over the last 3 years and 9 months, almost all in English, and many simply spreading information about updates at the wider company. It looks like Rishi Jaitly, Twitter’s country director for India, joined in November 2012, although the company made of it. The company has also rolled out several of its paid promoted products (prices , current from January 2013). The launch of the India blog could be the company’s way of showing that it’s looking to ramp up its efforts in the country with more localized, public attention. As Jaiatly notes in the post announcing the new India blog, the effort is kicking off with a promotional campaign, #ThankYouSachin, tweeted to India’s cricket board, , to get a signed picture of sporting legend Sachin Tendulkar as he enters retirement (that picture is illustrated here). In other words, initially Twitter India is using a tried and tested Twitter forumula: the combination of sports, a recognised celebrity/icon, and hashtagging for a little viral buzz. The upcoming elections in the country could prove to be a strong turning point, too, with Twitter focusing on closer relations with media organizations and political parties to leverage the platform. It will be interesting to see whether this additional focus — presumably with more campaigns, and a redoubled effort to promote them — can translate into additional users, engagement, and advertising rupees. Twitter’s S-1 paints a clear challenge ahead for the company. “If we fail to expand effectively in international markets, our revenue and our business will be harmed,” Twitter notes in the S-1. But as we have pointed out , there are some definite positive signs for revenue growth internationally. The company’s international revenue was $53 million in 2012, but for the nine months ending September 30, 2013, that went up to $106.7 million, working out respectively to 17% and then growing to 25% of total revenue for those periods. However, for now, there is little in the way of standout performers internationally for Twitter. “No individual country from the international markets contributed in excess of 10% of the total revenue for the years ended December 31, 2010, 2011 and 2012 and the nine months ended September 30, 2012,” Twitter writes. The UK was the first to make the cut in 2013, with $43 million of revenue, or 10% of the total, in the nine months that ended September 30, 2013. Yes, the UK is an English language market and therefore perhaps more inclined as a result to follow U.S. patterns. But at the same time, it’s also a market where Twitter has directed a lot of effort in terms of staffing and focusing on localised content. This is something that Twitter has been building on, deploying to run different aspects of its international businesses. More specifically, Twitter’s UK growth is an instructive strategy when you think about India — one of the biggest countries in Asia, with a huge English-speaking population, and relatively free from competitive threats and politically motivated service blocks that Twitter faces in other markets like China. Today, India doesn’t even get a call-out among fast-growing international markets for Twitter. “In the future we expect our user growth rate in certain international markets, such as Argentina, France, Japan, Russia, Saudi Arabia and South Africa, to continue to be higher than our user growth rate in the United States,” the company writes. Part of the reason is down to the fact that, like many other markets, India is shaping up to be mobile-first when it comes to data connectivity. But although India is ramping up fast in smartphone usage (see: iPhone sales) it’s still a country largely dominated by less-expensive feature phones, and that has impeded just how much Twitter can do there. While India doesn’t get a name-check for fast-growing markets, it does here: “In certain emerging markets, such as India, many users access our products and services through feature phones with limited functionality, rather than through smartphones, our website or desktop applications,” Twitter writes. “This limits our ability to deliver certain features to those users and may limit the ability of advertisers to deliver compelling advertisements to users in these markets which may result in reduced ad engagements which would adversely affect our business and operating results.” Twitter makes clear that it will be spending more money in the future to change this. “We intend to invest in our international operations in order to expand our user base and advertiser base and increase user engagement and monetization internationally,” the company writes. This is, perhaps, long overdue. As of September 30, 2013, Twitter already had more than three times the number of monthly active users outside of the U.S. — 179 million — than it has in the U.S., at 52.7 million. In contrast, revenues are the opposite: in the three months ended September 30, Twitter made $2.58 per user in the U.S., versus just $0.36 per user abroad. It’s a disparity that other social networks like Facebook have also found a challenge. Interestingly, we’ve heard that Twitter has been looking to establish a sales support back office in Hyderabad, folloowing the route Facebook has taken. Still, it looks like whatever Twitter may have planned for India for now may still be baby steps: Twitter specifically notes four countries where it will be hiring more sales and marketing people — Australia, Brazil, Ireland and the Netherlands. Not India. Whether Twitter looks to invest in another way — with acquisitions that can help it better tackle users on different devices, as Facebook did with acquisitions like Snaptu — remains to be seen.
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Microsoft’s Hardware Team Went Through Nearly 200 Controller Designs For Its New Xbox One Console
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Alex Wilhelm
| 2,013 | 11 | 5 |
Microsoft’s forthcoming Xbox One console is the company’s vision for living room entertainment for the next half decade. Today at GigaOm’s Roadmap conference in San Francisco, Carl Ledbetter, who led the industrial design of the console, discussed how it came to fruition. The design of the new console, according to Ledbetter, employs a resin molding technique that makes its appearance more similar to high-end televisions. This is a small point, but one that matters: Microsoft has taken hits from Sony that its console is less game focused than the PlayStation. Perhaps that’s fair. Recall that the Xbox 360 suffered from manufacturing defects at launch that led to the infamous Red Ring of Death. Presumably, we aren’t going to see a repeat of that, but it underscores how badly launches can go. And as Microsoft increasingly points its console at the broader media market, it also breaks out of the young male-dominated gaming segment. Put another way, according to Ledbetter, 40 percent of Xbox’s users are women. That led to the changes in the Xbox One design. The controller was a simple pain point: It needed to accept more hand sizes. Ledbetter claims that they built nearly 200 models before they settled on one. The final component Ledbetter hit on was voice. (I presume you are familiar with Xbox Music and don’t need me to walk you down that specific alley.) It’s easy to forget that Microsoft is, through the Xbox One and , bringing the first quality voice-control to Windows. The Xbox One, as you know, leans on the shared Windows core as part of its three operating systems. Microsoft is betting half its new business model on selling hardware. If it can’t build strong devices, the company is about 50 cents short of a buck. The feel of the talk was that Microsoft is confident in its hardware package. In 17 days, we’ll start filling out its report card.
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Ahead Of Its Public Debut Wednesday, Wix Prices IPO At $16.50 Per Share, With Valuation Near $800M
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Rip Empson
| 2,013 | 11 | 5 |
IPO season is in full swing, with , , , and representing just a few of the names to file or begin trading in recent weeks. Of course, the main attraction this season is Twitter and its long-awaited public offering, which finally rolls into town November 6th. Twitter isn’t the only company slated to join the list of public companies tomorrow, however. Israeli-American website creation platform, , will also be vying for its share of media attention tomorrow, as the this afternoon that it will be setting its opening price at $16.50 per share — the high end of its expected $14.50 to $16.50 price range. Trading on NASDAQ under the ticker symbol “WIX,” the website creator says that it will offer 7.7 million ordinary shares as part of its public offering, with selling stockholders offering 1.9 million of those 7.7 million shares. After , Wix revealed that it planned to raise $119 million by offering 7.7 million shares at a price between $14.50 and $16.50. However, the company’s final filing before tomorrow’s debut shows that it was able to raise slightly more than the expected $119 million figure, with the final total coming in at $127 million. With Wix pricing its IPO on the higher end of its expected price per share range and raising slightly more than its initial target, the company will likely see its valuation boost as a result. Considering the valuation was pegged at $720 million prior to today’s announcement, it wouldn’t be unreasonable to see that figure fall somewhere in the $750 to $800 million range. All in all, it’s a great finish to the pre-IPO process for the company, especially amidst all the hoopla surrounding its fellow IPO candidate, Twitter. Founded in 2006, Wix set out to do for website creation what WordPress, Blogger (and later Tumblr) did for blogging and content creation beginning in the early 2000s. Riding the growing demand for “DIY”-style web design and publishing tools, and capitalizing on the maturation of web-based technologies, Wix has since become one of the largest website creation platforms on the Web. Having raised $60 million from a laundry list of investors, , Wix employs over 400 people around the globe and is now available in over 190 countries. Today, the company boasts over 37 million registered users and continues to see strong growth in its user base, with its latest filing revealing a growth rate of 34,000 new registered users/day. According to that same filing, Wix reported a net loss of $12 million in 2012 on revenues of $44 million, with losses and revenue growing to $18 million and $56 million, respectively, over the first nine months of 2013. On the bright side, Wix that it had “achieved 14 consecutive quarters of sequential growth in the accumulated number of premium subscriptions … and 14 consecutive quarters of growth in revenues in collections.” Breaking that down, this means that Wix generated $9.9 million in revenue in 2010, which increased to $24.6 million in 2011 and $43.7 million in 2012, while collections started at $13.8 million and grew to $29.6 million in 2011 and $52.5 million in 2012, respectively. In turn, Wix generated $34.1 million in revenue during the six months ended June 3rd, 2013, with its revenue increasing to $56 million during the following three months. While the media attention and scale of Wix’s IPO tomorrow will pale in comparison to that of Twitter, Wix represents the latest in a growing list of successful exits and outcomes for Israeli-borne technology companies. , Wix will be the “largest U.S. IPO by an Israeli company since SodaStream International’s debut in 2010” and follows Google’s blockbuster . Israel’s startup ecosystem has continued to grow in stature thanks to the recent flurry of activity, which hasn’t been lost on the growing number of investors in the U.S. that are now pouring money into Israeli-borne startups. Wix, to that point, will only add more fuel to the fire, and its public offering tomorrow stands to make its investors — which include Bessemer Venture Partners, Mangrove Capital Partners, Benchmark, Insight Venture Partners and DAG Ventures — more than a few pennies. For that reason, Twitter or no Twitter, there will still be more than a few eyeballs on the website creator’s public debut tomorrow morning. If the IPO goes well, Wix could open the door for a growing roster of Israeli companies looking to hit the public markets in the U.S. For more, .
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Twitter Book Offers Singular, But Fascinating Narrative Of Invention
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Matthew Panzarino
| 2,013 | 11 | 5 |
The distillation of one human life into a few hundred pages is a task herculean enough to trip up even seasoned biographers. Expanding that to include four co-founders and a company with as explosive a history as Twitter’s is begging for disaster. A new book called , from New York Times reporter Nick Bilton attempts to do just that. It’s around 300 pages and packs in the nearly seven-year history of Twitter as a company and a bit more. The introduction rips along, introducing us to the four people most responsible for Twitter: Noah Glass, Evan Williams, Biz Stone and Jack Dorsey. A quick portrait of each of them is painted, albeit in fairly broad strokes. All talented, all intelligent, all searching for human connections and a way to enhance those connections using the Internet. Bilton is also careful to note in his introduction that when he attributes emotional states or thoughts to the subjects within, they’re based on things told to him directly by those subjects. This is an interesting inclusion, in light of the recent controversy over Brad Stone’s approach in his book The Everything Store, on Amazon. Stone was which he was not privy to. Stone notes in his book that he was denied a direct interview for the book by Bezos. The Twitter story would be a lot less rich without the scene setting and insight that this close third-person narrative brings. The efforts taken to nail down details like clothing brands, decorations of offices and locations all add to the enjoyable picture that’s painted. One of the most interesting aspects of Bilton’s book is how he used social media to piece together the goings-on of the founders and other employees of Twitter. The triangulation of these various bits of public record isn’t exactly new, as it’s a technique that journalists and writers (hi) use quite a bit now. But it takes on an especial poignancy when the subjects themselves posted corroborating details to a network that they helped construct. “I found it fascinating that I could piece together the interviews with dates of tweets and blog posts and then Flickr and Facebook pics, and in some instances YouTube videos,” Bilton told me. “It was as if the people in the book helped write it, too.” The book contains plenty of fodder for those interested in corporate machinations. Williams is positioned as a sympathetic, but driven serial entrepreneur that continues to learn hard lessons about the control you give up when outside investment is taken. After forcing Dorsey out of the CEO slot and into a silent Chairman role, Williams is himself deposed for a CEO more equipped to take the company to IPO. From what I’ve heard from early Twitter employees, the credit given Williams in the book is well deserved, if not light. At every turn he treated employees and investors with respect and was the first to see Dorsey as something more than a quiet engineer. Bilton continuously points out his willingness to help out friends and co-workers financially as well, with no desire for return. Glass, as much a part of the early genesis of Twitter as any other of the four, finally gets a fair share of the limelight. He’s credited with naming the company and product, and with helping to define some of its core concepts. Biz Stone is the Jiminy Cricket of this particular production, acting as a conscience for both the company and its investors. He’s positioned as an early advocate for user protection and data privacy, as well as a fierce protector of his friend Williams. Dorsey, of all of the original founders, gets the roughest treatment in the text. His part in the removal of Noah Glass from the company, and his willingness for Williams to take the blame is used to set the stage for a series of apparent machinations designed to position himself as the sole inventor of Twitter, and to place him back in control of the company. There is too much evidence here to discount the way that Dorsey has been portrayed altogether. Indeed, the trail of public appearances and documents that make up Dorsey’s ’ clearly indicate that he made no efforts to disabuse people of the notion that he, alone, was responsible for Twitter. His transformation from a quiet scruffy hacker to a carefully coiffed ‘auteur’ founder is treated as nothing more than artifice. Everything from his choice of shirt to lack of furniture to his fixation on Steve Jobs as role model is interpreted less as a personal transformation and more as an effort to build on this creation myth. In a culture like Silicon Valley, where so much value is placed on re-invention and the importance of design, why is it so outlandish for a man to re-design himself? The facts of the situation are well documented, and Bilton’s book refrains from passing judgement for the most part. Still, there is plenty of room for other facets of this story and I’d love to see those explored. But the book handles almost every aspect of Twitter’s founding with what appears to be a fairly even-handed approach. There will doubtless be many small inaccuracies (which may be interpreted to hold varying levels of importance by those actually involved) in the book, but the evidence and perspective set forth for all of the major events speaks of an intense amount of research, and solid insights throughout. Thankfully, Bilton handles one of the most important questions very well: who actually created Twitter? Despite what Dorsey was implicitly pushing all of those months, there was no sole creator of Twitter. Dorsey’s core status concept was far from the way that Twitter ended up, and it owed a debt to many earlier experiments like the ad-hoc text- created by , and the ‘ Stone had worked on at Google. And without Williams’ insistence that it was about broadcasting ‘what was happening’, not ‘what people were doing’, the focus would have remained insular. Stone offered a moral core that set the tone for future legal positions on giving up user data. And without Glass, the company may never have existed or moved beyond a hack day project at all. And, in the end, without Costolo — pictured as a no-nonsense and very well-liked leader — Twitter would likely not yet be going public, if ever. The truth behind Twitter, as it is with any human life — or human endeavor — is massively complex. Bilton’s book is a fantastic, well written and well-researched narrative of the invention of Twitter, but it’s only one narrative. There are other stories out there, other truths about Twitter. Each of the founders no doubt has their own, and some have told it in one fashion or another over the years, and will likely do so again. And really, who are we to disagree? We’re all inventing ourselves, writing our own stories. Twitter’s story gets an intense examination here, and it’s interpreted through dramatic set pieces of boardroom drama, motivational signs, clothing-as-personality-trait and infighting. Though it’s only one version of the truth, It’s a fantastic read, and worth absorbing for yourself.
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TV Discovery Startup i.TV Acquires GetGlue In Second-Screen App Mashup
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Ryan Lawler
| 2,013 | 11 | 5 |
Provo, Utah-based video discovery startup has acquired , we’ve learned, as consolidation in the market for second-screen or companion TV apps continues. The acquisition, which is expected to be announced soon, marks a bit of an inglorious exit for GetGlue, which had raised $24 million since being founded and had an earlier deal worth $70 million fall through earlier this year. GetGlue, of course, was one of the early social TV pioneers, promising to help drive mobile and tablet users to tune in to more TV shows and get them more engaged with the content through its app. The idea was that people were already on their phones while they watched TV, so why not try to hook them on a new, TV-based social network? Leveraging Foursquare-like check-ins to TV shows, the app helped users share what they were watching, hopefully driving others to watch that same thing as well. Later, as the hype around TV check-ins began to wane, GetGlue pivoted to be more of a . Last year, GetGlue had agree to be , a company . But that deal hinged on Viggle being able to , and when that funding failed to materialize, the . Since then, GetGlue has apparently continued shopping itself around. It’s also shuffled management while looking for a buyer — over the summer it . And sometime between then and now founder and CEO Alex Iskold stepped down. He still remains chairman of the company, but sources say he’s not involved in day-to-day operations. You probably know less about i.TV, a company which has also been around for about five years and was also founded with the hope of connecting mobile and tablet users with TV and streaming content they might find interesting. After launching in 2008 to give video viewers with a mobile platform for , i.TV has been relatively quiet over the last several years. It had launched a few versions of an app that provided ways to browse and get more info about streaming video options, as well as a to power navigating traditional TV offerings. But behind the scenes, it seems to be working with various content providers — including Entertainment Weekly, as well as AOL-owned properties like Huffington Post TV and AOL TV — to power navigation and discovery of videos on their apps. A little more than a year ago, it got its biggest deal yet, as it (a device I don’t think anyone actually bought). The company also has quietly raised some capital. In August, i.TV closed a $9.2 million round of funding, . But that funding isn’t going toward the purchase of GetGlue, as we’ve heard that the acquisition was an all-stock deal. It’s not clear how the newly funded i.TV will use the GetGlue assets, or who will end up joining the company — if anyone. But this isn’t the first bit of consolidation among social TV, second-screen, or TV check-in apps. In January, Dijit Media, the company behind the NextGuide TV discovery app, .
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In Legal Dispute With People+, CrunchBase Admits It May Need To Learn More About Creative Commons
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Anthony Ha
| 2,013 | 11 | 5 |
Our colleagues at CrunchBase found themselves in the spotlight this morning when about their legal dispute with a startup called Pro Populi over its app . Now the CrunchBase team has responded , making the case for why it was going after People+ and also acknowledging that it may have more to learn about how it can and can’t control CrunchBase content. (This situation is obviously fraught with conflicts of interest for TechCrunch, since we’re part of the same team at AOL, but my aim is to cover this as best as I can like any other news story.) The problem, it seems, is that People+ (described as “ “) was using CrunchBase to build its own crowdsourced database of information about people and companies. Apparently CrunchBase President Matt Kaufman asked Pro Populi to stop using CrunchBase data, and the AOL legal team sent a letter making the same point more forcefully. However, suggests that AOL and CrunchBase may be legally in the wrong. Basically, the EFF argues that CrunchBase does have the right to control the use of its API, but it doesn’t have the right to ask Pro Populi to delete the data already in its app, because that data was released under a Creative Commons Attributions License: Contrary to the assertions in your letters, People+ has not infringed on any right of CrunchBase/AOL’s. People+ does not dispute CrunchBase’s right to determine who may use the CrunchBase API, and People+ has ceased to use the API. However, People+ has the right to continue using the material that People+ has gathered to date. I tried to get in touch with the EFF, but a spokesperson said that since the organization is representing People+, it can’t comment on the case. I also emailed People+ but haven’t heard back. Judging from the CrunchBase post, it does sound like the team is trying to resolve the situation and isn’t denying that it may have overreached: We have a great deal of respect for the EFF, and we are meeting with Mr. Stoltz to discuss EFF’s arguments on behalf of People+. We would like to bring this issue to a quick and fair resolution, and we expect to learn a few things along the way about Creative Commons’ best practices and crowd-sourced data platforms. When I asked Kaufman if CrunchBase’s position on who can use its data has changed, he denied it: “I think we’ve always believed — perhaps incorrectly, per the EFF — that we have the right to ask people not to use our data. Our licensing has always been very liberal.” He noted that there are a number of third-party apps that are basically mobile repackaging of CrunchBase data, such as and . The difference here, he said, is that People+ isn’t just trying to provide a window onto data, but also collecting crowdsourced data of its own. In other words, it’s not trying to extend CrunchBase or use the data in interesting ways, but instead to build a direct competitor. Is People+ really just a CrunchBase copycat? I haven’t used the app enough to say for certain, but I will note that when I first opened it, the intro pages pointed me to the profiles for startup HotelTonight and its CEO Sam Shank. As far as I could tell, the data on those pages (you can see the main page of the HotelTonight profile above) all came from CrunchBase, though you have to swipe left on individual items to see attribution — which makes it, um, interesting that CrunchBase was never mentioned . Beyond the legal questions, there’s also the issue of whether CrunchBase and TechCrunch really want to get into legal disputes with startups. When I suggested that this is pretty awkward, Kaufman replied, “Perhaps that’s how other people view the situation.” He argued, however, that CrunchBase’s value lies in the fact that it’s “definitive,” so it’s also harmful for users if “we were to support or encourage a lot of CrunchBase replicas.”
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Inside Jobs: How Pinterest’s Top Engineering Exec Really Works
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Colleen Taylor
| 2,013 | 11 | 5 |
We in the tech press are great at covering what it’s like to be a startup founder. But the world does not live by entrepreneurs alone. One big reason that companies are so keen to tout is because new money enables them to hire more staff — the people who build stuff, who make things happen, who really make the tech industry tick. Ideally, that flashy funding can help companies attract a few of the industry’s kick-ass backend engineers, product managers, UX designers, or marketers. The top-tier tech people who are on the receiving end of the whole “hiring craze” everyone seems to be talking about. What do people actually do? Who are they? It’s something that TechCrunch doesn’t often talk about. But we should. And that’s why I’m happy to introduce , a new TechCrunch TV series that covers the work lives of the people who make this whole crazy world go ’round. For our premiere episode of Inside Jobs, we’re so happy to have , who is the Director of Engineering at a little web property you might have heard of called . Despite its massive reach (and ), Pinterest is still in many ways a startup at heart, with an engineering team that clearly punches above its weight when compared to other big web names that have engineering teams many times its size. Jenkins was one of those hiring coups that was covered by many tech reporters — — so it was a big pleasure to have him give us a glimpse into what exactly he does every day, and the challenges and perks that come with his gig.
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Apple Employs ‘Warrant Canary’ To Warn Users Of Future Compliance With Patriot Act Info Requests
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Matthew Panzarino
| 2,013 | 11 | 5 |
Section 215 of the USA PATRIOT Act is one of the of US law. Section 215 of the act allows for court orders, which can be made secret, to allow the government to collect data that relevant to a government investigation. The big exception most take to the section is that it than a ‘probable cause’ warrant. Under Section 215, the government could force companies like Apple, Google, Yahoo, Dropbox or any other to disclose personal data about Internet usage, browsing habits or other items that it considers ‘tangible things’. And, because of the security requirements, it could force companies not to disclose that they had ever received such requests. Obviously, this falls under the wider scope of government information requests with regards to user data that , and that other companies like Dropbox have also filed Amicus briefs with the Foreign Intelligence Service Act court about. But another aspect of Apple’s report today stands out as a bold and clever move. Senior Counsel & Free Expression Director at Center for Democracy & Technology Kevin Bankston, formerly an EFF Attorney, in the document. Specifically, Apple stated specifically that it had received a PATRIOT 215 order. The very last line of Apple’s report today states “Apple has never received an order under Section 215 of the USA Patriot Act. We would expect to challenge such an order if served on us.” The cleverness of this becomes evident when you realize that if it received such an order, it disclose it under current rules surrounding national security orders for user data. This tactic of announcing ‘nothing’ with regards to a government subpoena for data is known as a kind of . Basically, Apple says that at this point it has not received any such order. But, if that phrase stops appearing in future transparency reports, this acts as a ‘ ‘ that indicates to users that it may been forced to comply with such an order and disclose it in the future. Civil Liberties attorney Matt Cagle notes that stated they’ve never received a national security order for user data. This tactic was used by offsite backup in what is believed to be the first commercial company application. While Apple’s specific application differs from that of an ISP or pure data provider, it shares the ‘silent alarm’ characteristics.
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PCH International’s Highway 1 Is Looking For A Few Good Hardware Startups
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John Biggs
| 2,013 | 11 | 5 |
, an incubator/accelerator run by Brady Forrest and underwritten by electronics powerhouse PCH International, is beginning its Spring Applications process and will close applications after TC’s Hardware Battlefield in Las Vegas. “Our goal remains the same: to teach startups how to be hardware companies,” said Forrest. The incubator helps build businesses by supplying funds, introductions, and an education in design, prototyping, and mentorship. The group is looking for international teams. “Our Fall class is comprised of 11 teams with members from China, Portugal, Ireland, South Africa, US, & Canada. We want this expansion to come internationally. To that end we’ll be doing a tour US, European and Asian cities this year. I am personally going to be visiting visiting maker spaces in Hong Kong, Shenzhen, Tokyo, Seoul, Beijng, Shanghai, Paris, London, Los Angeles and Seattle.” This session they are looking for 15 companies. Each company receives seed Funding of $20,000 in return for 3-6% equity. “I am looking for more companies that are going to use hardware as a platform. We’re also doubling down on wearables and health tech. We’re looking for non-profits this time as well.” You can apply .
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Founder Stories: MongoDB’s Dwight Merriman On His Own Style Of Serial Entrepreneurship
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Contributor
| 2,013 | 11 | 5 |
There are founders, and then there are founders. is a rare breed of founder. A serial entrepreneur who has helped co-found and lead companies such as , , , and . And, as if that weren’t enough, his latest endeavor could be just as big, if not bigger, than the ones before it. Merriman is one of the main brains behind and is a CEO of the company (formerly known as 10gen), focused on creating a new generation of database technology using NoSQL. The goal is to reinvent online databases, and the insights were derived from the technical challenges he faces while building and scaling a previous company. At DoubleClick, the site could never be down, and that was during a time when computers were slower, it was harder to find load balance, and there were daily challenges with processing, storing, and scaling data, so much so they had to write their own software to handle their specific problems. It was in these trenches that Merriman had the insight for MongoDB. He asked, simply: “What did I wish I had while at DoubleClick?” A simple question, a simple answer, and a big, big company. The goal with 10gen at inception was to harness the power of the cloud for more efficiency, to scale horizontally, and to make operations easier for scale at development. We talk about all of this, plus how to hire sales teams vs building engineering teams, and what Merriman believes the true essence of entrepreneurship is. If you’re a technical leader with ambition, there aren’t many people like Merriman to look up to — he’s well worth the time to listen closely to.
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Apple Files With U.S. Government For More Information Request Transparency As It Releases First Report
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Matthew Panzarino
| 2,013 | 11 | 5 |
Today, Apple has released its first , detailing exact numbers of account information and data requests internationally. The report highlights how restrictive the rules are for Apple in the US, as only ranges of 1,000 are represented there. In conjunction with this report, Apple has joined other companies like Dropbox, LinkedIn and Yahoo in filing an Amicus brief requesting more transparency be allowed in disclosing requests in the U.S.. That brief can be viewed (via ). In the brief, Apple specifically calls out major newspapers that had ‘erroneously’ reported that Apple and other companies were participating in an NSA program called PRISM. Apple also specifies the exact FBI letters and requests that it had to comply with. In the report, Apple goes into detail about what it would like to see changed about the process. “This report provides statistics on requests related to customer accounts as well as those related to specific devices. We have reported all the information we are legally allowed to share, and Apple will continue to advocate for greater transparency about the requests we receive,” the report states. “At the time of this report, the U.S. government does not allow Apple to disclose, except in broad ranges, the number of national security orders, the number of accounts affected by the orders, or whether content, such as emails, was disclosed.” Apple has disclosed that it has had 719 total requests worldwide, and between 1,000 and 2,000 in the U.S. Those requests encompassed 769 different accounts worldwide, and between 2,000 and 3,000 in the U.S. Apple complied with 225 total account requests worldwide, and between 0 and 1,000 in the U.S. Apple says that later this year it will file a second Amicus brief at the Ninth Circuit in support of a case “seeking greater
transparency with respect to National Security Letters.” Apple says that the government should lift the gag orders preventing it from revealing exact numbers of requests in the US. The report then takes a direct swipe at Google and other companies that mine customer data for advertising. “Unlike many other companies dealing with requests for customer data from government agencies, Apple’s main business is not about collecting information,” it notes. “As a result, the vast majority of the requests we receive from law enforcement seek information about lost or stolen devices, and are logged as device requests.” “We have no interest in amassing personal information about our customers,” Apple continues. “We protect personal conversations by providing end-to-end encryption over iMessage and FaceTime. We do not store location data, Maps searches, or Siri requests in any identifiable form.” Those device requests are reported separately from requests for personal information related to iTunes, iCloud, or Game Center accounts. Apple classifies these as account-based requests, which “generally involve account holders’ personal data and their use of an online service in which they have an expectation of privacy, such as government requests for customer identifying information, email, stored photographs, or other user content stored online.” Apple got 12,442 law enforcement requests related to 36,464 devices and provided ‘some’ data on 9,250 of those devices. If you’re just catching up here, the public disclosure of information requests has been a hot topic ever since extensive NSA data gathering programs which may have or have not inadvertently included US citizens (and definitely included many people in other countries) came to light. The programs were largely exposed by Guardian and Washington Post reporters working on information provided by IT analyst Edward Snowden, who appropriated reports and slide decks on these internal NSA programs while in its employ. The stark difference between the exact reporting that we see in the other countries (Apple says it discloses every one it has received here) and the ‘1,000-range bands’ we see in the US goes a long way to demonstrate the opacity of domestic policies.
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Digg Gives Videos Prime Placement With New Digg Video Site
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Sarah Perez
| 2,013 | 11 | 5 |
, a service devoted to helping users find and share the most interesting content around the web, has now more formally expanded into video, the company announced today. With the launch of , Digg will break out the most popular video content found online, giving it its own high-level section on Digg.com. On the new site, you can browse trending videos, share videos to Facebook or Twitter, and, of course, Digg them. The page, like most of Digg.com, is fairly minimal. The hottest video at the moment is given a prominent position by itself. (“ ” is there now, for example). That could really drive major views for the video that lands in that spot if all goes well. As you scroll down the page, other featured videos appear from a variety of categories. Although Digg Video at launch doesn’t offer any top-level navigation to filter videos by type, each video has a small tag indicating its category (e.g. politics, music, movies, animals, etc.). When clicked, this takes you to that tag’s page on Digg.com where you can find other videos to watch and non-video stories to read. In announcing the new service, the company that, since relaunching Digg two years ago, the “Video” tag has seen more traffic than any other tag on the Digg.com site, necessitating a move to better support the medium. The site’s launch is also being sponsored by Squarespace, the Digg blog post notes. Like Sponsored posts on Digg.com’s homepage, Squarespace gets a top spot for its sponsorship, with a native video ad called “How To Make A Beautiful Website Without Knowing Sh*t.” The placement is not the highest on the site, but just underneath, and clearly labeled as an ad. Digg Video will make its way to the Digg mobile applications soon, the company also says, and will share news about the site on both and . In the meantime, you can check out the new Digg Video domain itself, at . The Video link has also been added between “Home,” and “Reader” (Digg’s Google Reader replacement) on the company homepage.
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Corporate Venture Investors Starting To Look A Lot More Like Private VCs
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Mark Lennon
| 2,013 | 11 | 5 |
Corporate venture capital has always been dubiously titled ‘dumb money’, supposedly less interested in and only willing to make bets on strategically aligned startups. CVC investing, however, has grown significantly over the past few years and many leading tech companies are diversifying their investments by operating autonomous VC funds that look more and more like traditional private VCs. In 2013, both the number and size of CVC investments has continued to rise. In October 2013, 48 venture funding rounds valued at over $719M included CVC investor participation. This represented a 14% participation rate, the highest month in the CrunchBase dataset. Past increases in CVC investing tend to correlate strongly to the business cycle, the overall strength of corporate balance sheets and the general VC climate. Thus, it should be no surprise that CVC investing has risen in 2013. The two most active CVC investors, and , have led the pack since 2011. In 2013, the two combined for 360 funding rounds, or 25% of all CVC investments. Compared to the CVC landscape prior to 2011, that is a huge departure from the biotech boom during which , , , , and each participated in funding rounds that totalled at least $100M. The 71 biotech deals with CVC participation in 2009 was a record high, while mobile and software CVC deals have risen consistently in each subsequent year. This is the main factor behind why the recent surge of CVC money might be changing the game. The trend towards more tech-oriented CVC investing now aligns more closely with the private VC landscape. In recent years, many large tech companies have followed in the path of Google and Intel. , and have launched funds in 2013 that aim to focus on returns over strategic investments. Other corporate venture arms like , and have also recently participated in high-profile rounds for promising startups like , and . While private VCs may be to an influx of corporate cash, successful companies can typically set up funds much faster and forego the normal SEC paperwork and outside fundraising, as evidenced by recent launch of a $650M fund. Perhaps we will see more tech companies like try to emulate the success of Google Ventures and take advantage of a hot VC market. Regardless, it seems for the first time that corporate venturing is no longer an insurance policy for industry disruption or an . To compare the relative success of CVC investors, according to CrunchBase a full third of venture-backed companies that have received funding from at least one CVC investor have been acquired, compared to just 10% of startups only receiving funding from private VC’s. However, this speaks more to the tendency of CVC investors to prefer later-stage investments in proven startups than it is a true measure of their investing prowess. CVC investors still prefer Series C funding rounds or later, but not quite as much as the past. Since 2011, 39% of all CVC deals were concentrated in later funding rounds, representing 65% of the total CVC funding dollars in that period. Not surprisingly, over half of total non-corporate VC dollars were spread among Angel, Series A and Series B rounds. What has changed is the number of CVC Series A deals rising from 27 to over 100 in 2013 so far. As a ratio, Series A deals are at their highest level this year. CVC deals overall have also grown relative to private VC. The $17.4M average CVC deal size in Q2 2013 was more than double that of all other deals last quarter. So what can we learn from these recent trends in CVC investing? It’s important to keep in mind that the growth of corporate venturing is always subject to the strength of the balance sheet. As seen below, funding totals of CVC rounds has closely tracked the S&P 500 since 2005. It’s also worth noting that according to a in the Harvard Business Review Magazine, the median life span of CVC programs is only about one year. It may be easier for companies to set up VC funds, but it’s also much easier to pull the plug. Finally, there is an in the corporate venture data* and recognition of what constitutes a corporate venture investment versus a direct corporate investment. Despite these factors, there is enough evidence to suggest that CVC dollars are no longer just ‘dumb money’. Startups seeking follow-on funding should be relieved that corporate investors seem to be stepping in and filling the Series A void. Private VC’s should also get used to the idea of investing alongside corporate funds and learn to . See for yourself what VC’s and startups are up to by checking out the latest CrunchBase October . *The CrunchBase dataset includes all the top known VC entities set up by a corporate parent, in addition to venture investments by corporations without a specific VC fund like Amazon or Cisco that have participated in at least one funding round in CrunchBase. [Image: ]
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New App Lets You Unlock Your Mac By Knocking On Your iPhone
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Sarah Perez
| 2,013 | 11 | 5 |
Can your mobile phone become a replacement for manually typing in a password? That’s the promise of a new application called , launching today, which uses an iPhone paired with a Mac desktop or laptop computer to log you in to your locked machine. The system takes advantage of the newer low-energy Bluetooth technology to enable the connection between the two devices, allowing you to just knock (you know, , like on a door) on your iPhone to login. But the company has ambitions to expand beyond unlocking computers, and envisions bringing Knock to browsers to log into websites, and eventually letting you “knock” to open anything, including even your home’s front door, perhaps. The company was founded by William Henderson, who previously worked on the Wallet team at Square, and Jon Schlossberg, who led user experience at Bonobos. The two teamed up earlier this year after being introduced by a mutual friend. They soon had their first Knock prototype built after just a few weeks. Henderson says that working at Square inspired him to think about how the user experience can be applied to other areas where it’s been systematically neglected, such as security, similar to how Square proved you could have a great user experience around a financial product. He had also worked with Bluetooth LE while at Square, which gave him the idea to apply the technology to passwords and logins. “When I met Jon, we were talking about this problem with passwords, and it was obvious to me that Bluetooth LE could help with that,” says Henderson. The original prototype they built worked using proximity, but the team found that users didn’t like that their Mac unlocked just because they were near it. They wanted to signal in some way that they meant for the unlock to happen. “It was cool,” Henderson says of this first idea. “But people got freaked out by it. They didn’t know it was going to happen, and they weren’t expressing their intention in any way.” He equated the problem to the way people still hit the “lock” button on their car keys even though their car will automatically lock for them – they still need to feel like they’re taking an action. Now in its 1.0 release, Knock users signal their intention by gently knocking on their phone’s screen. This works even when the phone is in your pocket, which seems almost too easy. Getting started with the product is also simple. You first download the free Mac app and the $3.99 iPhone app. Because Knock uses Bluetooth LE, it will only work on iPhone 4S and up, as well as on newer Mac computers (2011 MacBook Air or newer, 2012 MacBook Pro or new, 2012 iMac or newer, 2011 Mac mini or newer, and the 2013 Mac Pro). You then launch the app on the Mac and iPhone, and you’re prompted to turn Bluetooth on if it’s not already. Then Knock instructs you to lock your phone. Unlike with Bluetooth, that’s the extent of your involvement with the pairing process – the app sets itself up on its own. After the setup is complete, you’re asked to knock twice on your phone to confirm the pairing, and you enter in your Mac’s password in the box provided. And then you’re done. From that point forward, when you get back to your computer, a ring around your avatar will signal that Knock is running and you can knock on your phone to login. Your password is encrypted using standard RSA encryption and stored on the phone, while the key that’s being used to decrypt it is stored on your Mac. The company has been running a small beta with around 100 users for over half a year in order to get the experience right, and have pulled out some features ahead of today’s launch. One of the things they already have in the works is a way to use Knock on the web. “We chose unlocking the Mac because it’s a small thing we knew we could do in a 1.0 product, and we knew people would pay for it,” Henderson explains. “But if things go well, we have much larger ambitions. None of us like passwords, and we want to get rid of them.” Using Knock on the web would require more work, and attention to security, he says, but it’s likely the step for Knock, along with an API launch. That feature would probably also come before addressing the needs of Android users. That’s not because they’re an iOS-focused company, however, but because Android software today offers more limited support for Bluetooth LE than iOS does – only the latest version supports the technology at all, and there are some differences in how it’s implemented currently which allows iOS to use less energy. Longer term, Henderson imagines a future where Knock could unlock anything. “I’d love to be able to unlock my house and my bike with Knock,” he says. “The phone, whether you like it or not, is becoming this universal authentication device, and it’s a little scary because of the level of access.” But he and Schlossberg want to address that problem by focusing on how they can take advantage of sensor data from the phone itself to know when it might be lost or stolen…maybe even before you do. It could then send you a notification on your devices, asking you to confirm your identity following whatever odd behavior it saw – another idea inspired by time spent at Square, where detecting potential fraud is ongoing a concern. Knock is a bootstrapped team of just the two co-founders, which is why Henderson is based in Portland – the labor market is cheaper there, he says. That will allow them to stretch for longer without raising funding, or last longer if they do. In testing, the app works as promised and easily, too. But getting users to adopt new behaviors can be challenging – just look at Bump, for example. Its technology let you exchange data by knocking devices together, but never became a runaway success, eventually forcing the company to . Knock could face similar challenges, though at least it has a revenue mode built in, and unlike Bump, it doesn’t require multiple users for the thing to work. Just you, your iPhone, and your Mac will do. You can download Knock . [youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CyX8FfSKg04&w=640&h=360]
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Don’t Compare The Brazilian Spying Case To The NSA’s Mass Surveillance Efforts
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Alex Wilhelm
| 2,013 | 11 | 5 |
Earlier today a Brazilian newspaper that ABIN, the top intelligence agency in that country, has employed low-tech spying techniques on foreign diplomats. This is sticky for the country as it has been intensely critical of the NSA and its practices of mass surveillance the world around. If the NSA is spying, and ABIN is spying, do we come to a wash, all walking away simply saying that everyone spies, so calm down? Not in the least. Let’s review a few facts. Governments spy. They even about how they all do it. This is the normal state of affairs, as it has always been the state of affairs. Here’s discussing Brazil’s efforts to spy on people, as originally reported by : The statement followed a report in the newspaper Folha de São Paulo describing how the Brazilian Intelligence Agency, commonly known as Abin, had followed some diplomats from Russia and Iran on foot and by car, photographing their movements, while also monitoring a commercial property leased by the United States Embassy in Brasília, the capital. So, we’re talking about activities so basic that they aren’t uncommon among ex-partners who are a bit hung up on the end of a relationship. And if the United States didn’t expect that its embassies on foreign soil might be target for local surveillance, I’ll shave my head. Now for context, here’s a partial roll of the NSA’s activities that have been recently revealed: That’s just a taste and doesn’t include the domestic efforts of the agency and even most of its foreign work. If governments are going to spy, why am I unhappy with the NSA and its efforts? Because there is a difference between walking behind a visiting diplomat to see where she goes than ending digital privacy for all global citizens. If you can’t feel the difference between the two, I doubt that we are going to be able to come to comity on this issue. I find it frustrating that people are comparing two things of utter disparate scale as if they are commensurate. They are not. And no, I would not be either offended or surprised if the United States government dispatches gumshoe hacks to walk 15 feet behind certain diplomats. Sure. Go for it. But the fact that governments do that has nothing to do with the NSA’s offenses to privacy, and therefore democracy. Don’t trivialize the destruction of the fundamental core tenet of democracy. I know this is terribly radical, but 1) the privacy rights of Americans matter, and 2) the privacy rights of non-Americans do, too. — Glenn Greenwald (@ggreenwald)
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FoxNews.com Seemingly Hacked (Or Someone Just Screwed Up Big Time)
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Greg Kumparak
| 2,013 | 11 | 5 |
Whoops! Looks like someone found their way into FoxNews.com’s CMS (or an intern pushed an old test page live.) While it’s still not 100% clear what happened here, our tips inbox just went ablaze as people rushed to point out that something… strange was going on over at FoxNews.com. “Weeeeeeeee,” pronounced the headline on the front page’s top story. “STUFF YO”, it detailed. Meanwhile, breaking news alerts at the top of the page spoke of “the living dead” and Apple having announced “Sea Lion” at WWDC 2013, bumpin’ the ol’ WTF meter up a few more notches. Humorously, these were/are both Fox News stories — they were just weeks old, and sans context (“World Zombie Day” being an annual zombie fan outing, “Sea Lion” being a passing gag made during an Apple announcement) were particularly nonsensical. Despite lookin’ and smellin’ a whole lot like a hack, Fox’s twitter account chalks it up to “internal production issues”. Looks like they got it fixed. As you may have seen, is having issues. It's an internal production problem and will be fixed soon. — Fox News (@FoxNews) A from Fox News strengthens the intern-screwup theory: “During routine website maintenance, a home page prototype was accidently moved to the actual site. As with any mistake in testing, engineers noticed the error and quickly brought the site back to its normal function.” Aaaand that’s why you use .
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Sarah Perez
| 2,013 | 11 | 4 | null |
Google+ Adds Restricted Communities In An Effort To Court Business Users
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Frederic Lardinois
| 2,013 | 11 | 5 |
Many businesses have now adopted tools like Yammer or Podio, but Google+ also wants a piece of this social enterprise action. While Google’s social network started courting enterprise users by adding and a number of other business features, it’s going by launching restricted communities. This adds an extra layer of security on top of the usual enterprise tools and ensures that only users within a given company can join this group and see the updates in it. This removes the chance that an employee accidentally shares notes about a new product or other confidential information on Google+ by accident. Everything that’s posted in a community stays there, after all. Given that most businesses aren’t likely to use Google+ for their internal communication as long as there is a risk of information leaking out by accident, this is a major step for Google+ in getting more business users on board. Users can choose whether a community is open to everyone at the company or private, as well as whether it is joinable or invite-only. Administrators can set restricted communities to be the default for an organization, but users can always choose another setting, too. In today’s announcement, Google stresses that businesses can use these communities to share files, videos, events and photos – something that most of the other social business tools also offer.
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Google Analytics Adds Speed Suggestions Report
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Frederic Lardinois
| 2,013 | 11 | 5 |
Google loves fast websites, and for a long time now, its tool has been an easy way to surface potential speed bumps in a site’s design and setup. This tool, however, always lived in a relatively obscure area of Google’s Developer site, so to give it a bit more exposure, Google has now . There, Analytics users can now find a new Speed Suggestions report in the Content tab on the sidebar. Given that Google Analytics already tracked the load time of all the pages on a site, the combination of PageSpeed Insights and Analytics adds a new dimension to the original reports. Instead of just seeing the PageSpeed score, you can now see exactly how this score influences loading times on your site, too. Sadly, the integration is not as deep as running the PageSpeed report right in Analytics, however. While Google Analytics shows you the PageSpeed score for each one of your site’s pages and the number of suggestions for improving it, you still need to run the report on the original Insights page to get the actual results and suggestions. The suggestions are obviously the most important part of this project. For most sites, Google will likely recommend using the browser cache more aggressively, eliminating render-blocking JavaScript and optimizing or compressing images.
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Competitive Ruling Will Bring New Generation Of Swiss-Made Smartwatches
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John Biggs
| 2,013 | 11 | 2 |
The Swatch Group has long been the primary movement supplier to the majority of Swiss (and non-Swiss) watch manufacturers. These movements — essentially the guts of the watch — have powered 60 percent of the world’s watches in the past decade. That’s about to end. , the Swiss competition commission, has required Swatch to supply these movements in order to ensure that watch prices wouldn’t rise stratospherically when manufacturers began making their own movements. Swatch, for example, owns the , manufacturer of hundreds of thousands of movements per year. This new ruling will allow Swatch to reduce its manufacturing efforts and increase its R&D expenditure. Why is this important? Well it means that Samsung, Sony, and the like are about to get a competitor. Because Swatch, one of the most popular watch brands, has an international foothold, it could, in theory, create smartwatches for the masses. While Swatch has traditionally had trouble making popular smartwatches and, in fact, has had trouble , Swatch could partner with technology providers to produce an interesting amalgam of old and new tech. Obviously the Swiss watch industry is, shall we say, a bit old-fashioned and is facing quite a few tough competitors. However, given a bit of marketing savvy and some R&D investment the shackles holding the company to its many customers could soon be broken.
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The TechCrunch Boston Pitch-Off Is A Week Away
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John Biggs
| 2,013 | 11 | 5 |
It’s been a long time coming but the TechCrunch Boston Pitch-Off is almost here. We’ve picked 20 start-ups to compete on stage and the judges are ready to rock. Now all we need is you. Tickets cost $5 and that includes some booze and lots of time to network and speak to TechCrunch editors. It’s important to hunt us down – we’re there for you, so find us on the floor if you want to pitch. For best results have a one-page description of your startup ready to hand out. Also look for our super-cool judges, , , and . The event will be held from 6 to 9 at on November 13th. Until next week we encourage you to pick up a ticket and . We’re looking forward to returning to Boston after being too long away.
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Chippy Is A Fish & Chip Shop Simulator For iOS That Puts The Fun Into Deep-Fat Frying
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Natasha Lomas
| 2,013 | 11 | 2 |
Simulation video games are often purposefully, gloriously mundane. But they can also make the quotidian highly entertaining. And that’s certainly true of this U.K.-made example of the genre. Meet: , a fish & chip shop simulator game for iOS that’s plenty of fun to play — partly because its subject matter is so spectacularly mundane (frying fish and chips), but also because it turns that mundane task into an addictive game of time management. Firstly, for non-British TC readers, “chippy” is slang for a fish & chip shop — aka a staple of the British small-town high street, selling battered fish and fat-soaked chips. Traditionally, this comfort food would be served straight from the deep fat frier, wrapped up in yesterday’s newspaper, and drenched in salt and vinegar. It’s about as quintessentially British as a cup of tea. Now to Chippy the game: The game-play involves memorising orders, and remembering the correct sequence in which to swipe items around the screen to make up each order. If you lose track and leave the chips/fish in the frier too long, they’ll start to blacken and burn, eventually giving off a plume of dense black smoke and being good for nothing but throwing in the trash. Burnt food also attracts flies, which has a knock on effect on your hygiene rating. You can dispatch flies by throwing stuff at them individually or by activating a UV fly zapper on the wall of your shop to net the whole swarm. But pressing on that until all the flies are pulled to fiery death means you can’t be making up orders so risk falling behind and having angry customers storm out of the shop. Chippy scores are reputational, based on customer satisfaction, factoring in things like speed/efficiency of order fulfilment, quality of the food (burnt or uncooked fish and chips won’t win you many points), and whether you got all the aspects of the order right or not. The game eases you in with simple orders, and steadily introduces new elements to ramp up the complexity — so you move from making up a single portion of chips, to making multiple fish & chips portions, with or without salt & vinegar, at the same time and so on. There are also challenges going alongside the basic pipeline of orders. These appear on the newspaper you use to wrap the food, prompting you to ‘cook up three of everything before you open the shop’ or ‘knockout a fly by throwing something at it’. For the rest of the time, the newspaper headlines are pure entertainment, plus a dash of humour — such as ‘Hipsters alarmed by choice in craft beers’. For a game focused on a single screen environment, there’s a lot of detail to enjoy. [gallery ids="908988,908989,908990,908991,908992,908993,908994,908995,908996,908997,908998,908999"] The developer behind Chippy was also involved in making the iOS pirate game — a paid title that was downloaded more than 500,000 times. Chippy is not being made by Plunderland’s studio (Johnny Two Shoes) but is the first game from a spin-off sister company, called . Co-founder and game designer Maxwell Scott-Slade says Glitche.rs will be focused on “making more targeted apps with smaller development cycles and a slightly different team”. The studio (and Chippy) is being self-funded. “We don’t have any investors, our mantra is keep development cycles small and cheap — get the minimal viable product out there and add to it in response to fan feedback,” Scott-Slade tells TechCrunch. Chippy is a paid app ($2.99/£1.99) that deliberately eschews in-app purchases — in part to ensure it can appeal to kids and their parents (who can be wary of gaming costs racking up expectedly). But Scott-Slade also reckons there’s plenty of life left in paid games, especially as he argues that gamers are getting tired of virtual currencies and would prefer a simpler, up-front approach. “I think [an app being paid] shows an intention to the player. We did experiment with in-app purchases, but never with virtual currency, only to unlock the entire game,” he says. “It’s absolutely nuts to suggest that paid apps are dead. Knowing what you’re getting for a fixed price is important for a lot of players. Listen on the ground and see the general frustration from players being constantly sold virtual currencies — they don’t like it! “But we also don’t like it as gamers ourselves, the choice to go ‘premium’ was partly due to age range reach but also to support the idea that charging up front for something is still a viable option. I want to prove that,” he adds. “Another important thing to note is Chippy is potentially quite a niche game, with free you need millions of players before you really start to make any money.” Being niche, Chippy is also going to have to work to pull the punters in. Scott-Slade says Glitche.rs will need around 20,000 downloads of the paid app to break even and they have “zero dollars for marketing budget.” To help spread the word they have built a gameplay recording feature into the app that lets players share short clips to social networks. “Part of the reason we included Kamcord (the CCTV gameplay recording feature) was actually directly a result of Chippy being a single-scene game. There’s not much you can do for a gameplay trailer and it’s really the hands-on experience that makes you most excited. Sharing little segments of gameplay to Facebook, Twitter and YouTube are our best options for piquing interest that doesn’t cost us a thing!” he says. The studio has also been frugal in its development approach — building a “minimum viable product” and being strict about paring back their list of game-play ideas to keep costs and time down. Lots of ideas they had, didn’t make it in — or not yet anyway. “Chippy will grow as more people download it — the idea was to build it with the fans after launch,” he says, confirming that new features will be added if Chippy fans clamour hard enough for them, whether it’s curry sauce, pickled eggs or deep-fried Mars bars. “We had a strict 12 week development cycle with just three people plus our sound designer,” he adds. “Keeping development costs down was also key to us being able to make a potentially niche game.” How niche the appeal of playing at making virtual fish & chips turns out to be will be fun to watch. “We realised that potentially, not every market would get Chippy. But we’re glad to see that most players seem to really love it — even in Japan!”
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Welcome To The Unicorn Club: Learning From Billion-Dollar Startups
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Aileen Lee
| 2,013 | 11 | 2 |
the venture investors who back them, seek to build billion-dollar companies. Why do investors seem to care about “billion dollar exits”? Historically, top venture funds have driven returns from their ownership in just a few companies in a given fund of many companies. Plus, traditional venture funds have grown in size, requiring larger “exits” to deliver acceptable returns. For example – to return just the initial capital of a $400 million venture fund, that might mean needing to own 20 percent of two different $1 billion companies, or 20 percent of a $2 billion company when the company is acquired or goes public. So, we wondered, as we’re a year into our new fund (which doesn’t need to back billion-dollar companies to succeed, but hey, we like to learn): how likely is it for a startup to achieve a billion-dollar valuation? Is there anything we can learn from the mega hits of the past decade, like , and ? To answer these questions, the team built a dataset of U.S.-based tech companies started since January 2003 and most recently valued at $1 billion by private or public markets. We call it our “Learning Project,” and it’s ongoing. With big caveats that 1) our data is based on publicly available sources, such as CrunchBase, LinkedIn, and Wikipedia, and 2) it is based on a snapshot in time, which has definite limitations, here is a summary of what we’ve learned, with more explanation following this list*: We found (by our definition, U.S.-based software companies started since 2003 and valued at over $1 billion by public or private market investors). That’s On average, in the past decade, with being the breakout (worth >$100 billion). In each recent decade, 1-3 super unicorns have been born. and created more value in aggregate, even excluding Facebook. But , and raised much less private capital, delivering a . Companies fall somewhat evenly into : consumer e-commerce, consumer audience, software-as-a-service, and enterprise software. It has taken for companies, not including the . It’s a long journey beyond vesting periods. Inexperienced, . Companies with have built the most successes The after starting with a different initial product . (not the Valley) as the . There is in the Unicorn Club. Some deeper explanation and additional findings: Figuring out the denominator to unicorn probability is hard. The says over 16,000 internet-related companies were funded since 2003; says 12,291 in the past 2 years; and the says 10-15,000 software companies are seeded each year. So let’s say 60,000 software and internet companies were funded in the past decade. That would mean . . Takeaway: it’s really hard, and highly unlikely, to build or invest in a billion dollar company. The tech news may make it seem like there’s a winner being born every minute — but the reality is, . of the companies on our list. (As such, we excluded them from analysis related to valuations or capital raised) The 1990s gave birth to Google, currently worth nearly 3x Facebook; and Amazon, worth ~ $160 billion. The 1980’s: Cisco. The 1970s: Apple (currently the most valuable company in the world), Oracle, and Microsoft; and Intel was founded in the 1960s. What do super-unicorns have in common? The 1960s marked the era of the semiconductor; the 1970s, the birth of the personal computer; the 1980s, a new networked world; the 1990s, the dawn of the modern Internet; and in the 2000s, new social networks were built. — companies that could change your life to work at or invest in, if you’re not lucky/genius enough to be a co-founder. This leads to more questions. What is the fundamental technology change of the next decade (mobile?); and will a new super-unicorn or two be born as a result? The on our list outside of Facebook are worth about . This might feel like a letdown after reading about super-unicorns, but remember, startups generally start as ideas that most people think are crazy, dumb, or not that important (remember when people ridiculed Twitter as the place to share that you were eating a ham sandwich?). Only after many years and extraordinary good fortune, a few grow into unicorns, which is extremely rare and pretty awesome. in the past decade. The best year was 2007 (8 of 36); the fewest were born in 2003, 2005 and 2008 (as far as we know today; there are none yet founded in 2011 to today). From this snapshot in time, it’s not clear whether the number of unicorns per year is changing over time. It would be interesting to plot the trajectory of unicorns over time — which become more valuable and which fall off the list — and to understand the list of potential unicorns-in-waiting, currently valued at <$1 billion. Hopefully for a future post. Venture investing into early-stage consumer tech companies has cooled significantly in the past year. But it’s worth realizing that: Three consumer companies — Facebook, Google and Amazon — have been the super-unicorns of the past two decades. There are , and they have generated more than 60 percent of the aggregate value on our list outside of Facebook. Of the 14 still-private companies on our list, 85 percent are consumer-oriented (e.g. , , ). They should see a significant step up in value if/when a liquidity event occurs, increasing the aggregate value of the consumer unicorns. One reason why enterprise ventures seem so attractive right now: the average enterprise-oriented unicorn on our list raised on average $138 million in the private markets – and raised to date. The companies that seriously improved this metric are , and , who all raised <$50 million in private markets and are worth $3.8 billion today on average. Plus Workday, and who are currently worth >60x the private capital raised. Wow. Contrary to conventional VC wisdom about enterprise companies requiring more early-stage capital, we raised by enterprise versus consumer unicorns. The , ~2.5x more private capital than enterprise unicorns; and they are worth about 11x the private capital raised. Companies who raised lots of private money relative to their most recent valuation are , , , and . It may just take more capital to build a super successful consumer tech company in a “get big fast” world; and/or, founders and investors are guilty of over-capitalizing consumer Internet companies at too-high valuations in the past decade, driving lower returns for consumer tech investors. We categorized companies into , which share fairly equally in driving value in aggregate: 1) : the consumer pays for goods or services (11 companies); 2) free for consumers, monetization through ads or leads (11 companies); 3) Users pay (often via a “freemium” model) for cloud-based software (7 companies); and 4) : Companies pay for larger scale software (10 companies). None of the e-commerce companies on our list hold physical inventory as a key part of their business models. Despite that, e-commerce companies raised the most private dollars on average — delivering the lowest valuations vs capital raised, and likely driving the recent cool down in e-commerce investing. Only four of the 38 companies are mobile-first. Not surprising, the iPhone was only launched in 2007 and the first Android device in 2008. Another characteristic almost half of the companies on our list share: . Network effects in the social age can help companies scale users dramatically, seriously reducing capital requirements (YouTube and Instagram) and/or increasing valuations quickly (Facebook). It took for 24 companies on our list to go public or be acquired, excluding extreme outliers YouTube and Instagram, both of which were acquired for over $1 billion in about two years since founding. 14 of the companies on our list are still private, which will increase the average time to liquidity to . Not surprisingly, enterprise companies tend to take about a year longer to see a liquidity event than consumer companies Of the nine companies that have been acquired, the average valuation was $1.3 billion; likely a valuation sweet spot for acquirers to take them off the market before they become less affordable The companies on our list were generally not founded by inexperienced, first-time entrepreneurs. The on our list of founders . Yes, the founders of Facebook were on average 20 when it was founded; but the founders of LinkedIn, the second-most valuable company on our list, were 36 on average; and the founders of Workday, the third-most valuable, were 52 years old on average. Audience-driven companies like Facebook, Twitter and have the youngest founders, with an average age at founding of 30 (seemingly imminent unicorn Snapchat will lower this average). SaaS and e-commerce founders averaged aged 35 and 36; enterprise software founders were 38 on average at founding. A supermajority (35) of the unicorns on our list have chosen to blaze trails with more than one founder — with . The role of co-founders varies from Co-CEOs (Workday) to technical co-founders who live in a different country (Fab.com). Looking at co-founder equity stakes at liquidity might be another interesting way to look at founder status, which we have not done. comprise people who have years of history together, either from ; 60 percent have co-founders who worked together; and 46 percent who went to school together. Teams that worked together have driven more value per company than those who went to school together. Only four teams of co-founders didn’t have common work or school experience, but all had a common thread. Two were known and introduced by the investors at founding/funding; one team was friends in the local tech scene; and one team met while working on similar ideas. That said, the four unicorns with sole founders (ServiceNow, FireEye, , Tumblr — half enterprise, half consumer) have all had liquidity events and are worth more on average than companies with co-founders. An impressive , and 69 percent are still CEO of their company, many as public company CEOs. This says a lot about these founders in terms of their long-term vision, commitment and their capability to scale from almost nothing in terms of money, product, and people, to their current unicorn company status. That said, 31 percent of companies did make a CEO change along the way; and those companies are worth more on average. One reason: about (versus 25 percent of consumer companies). And all CEO changes prior to a liquidity event were at enterprise companies that added seasoned, “brand-name” leaders to their helms prior to being bought or going public. Only half of the companies on our list show all original founders still working in the company. On average, 2 of 3 co-founders remain. Nearly of some sort. Some founders showed their as early as junior high. The list of prior startups co-founded spans failure and success; and from tutoring and bagel delivery companies, to PayPal and Twitter. and only three of 38 did not have a technical co-founder on board (HomeAway and RetailMeNot, founded as industry rollups; and Box, founded in college). The majority of founding CEOs, and from college. The (e.g. Cornell, Northwestern, University of Illinois). And more than two-thirds of our list has at least one co-founder who graduated from a “top 10 school.” Stanford leads the roster with an impressive one-third of the companies having at least one Stanford grad as a co-founder. Former Harvard students are co-founders in eight of 38 unicorns; Berkeley in five; and MIT grads in four of the 38 companies. Conversely, eight companies had a college dropout as a co-founder. And companies (Facebook, Twitter and ServiceNow) on our list were or are , although dropouts with tech-company experience, with the exception of Facebook. Few companies are the result of a successful pivot. Nearly . The four “pivots” after a different initial product were all in consumer companies (Groupon, Instagram, Pinterest and Fab). Probably not a surprise, but . What might be a surprise is how much the center of gravity has moved to San Francisco from the Valley: 15 unicorns are headquartered in San Francisco; 11 are on the Peninsula; and one is in the East Bay. New York City has emerged as the No. 2 city for unicorns, home to three. Seattle (2) and Austin (2) are the next most-concentrated cities for unicorns. Only two companies have female co-founders: Gilt Groupe and Fab, both consumer e-commerce. And . While there is some ethnic diversity on founding teams, the diversity of founders in the unicorn club is far from the diversity of college grads with relevant technical degrees. Feels like some important records to break. For those aspiring to found, work at, or invest in future unicorns, it still means anything is possible. All these companies are technically outliers: they are the top .07 percent. As such, we don’t think this provides a unicorn-hunting investor checklist, i.e. 34-year-old male ex-PayPal-ers with Stanford degrees, one who founded a software startup in junior high, where should we sign? That said, it surprised us how much the unicorn club has in common. In some cases, 90 percent in common, such as enterprise founder/CEOs with technical degrees; companies with 2+ co-founders who worked or went to school together; companies whose founders had prior tech startup experience; and whose founders were in their 30s or older. It is also good to be reminded that most successful startups take a lot of time and commitment to break out. While vesting periods are usually four years, the most valuable startups will take at least eight years before a “liquidity event,” and most founders and CEOs will stay in their companies beyond such an event. Unicorns also tend to raise a lot of capital over time — way beyond the Series A. So these founding teams had the ability to share a compelling company vision over many years and rounds of fundraising, plus scale themselves and recruit teams, despite economic ups and downs. We tip our hats to these 39 companies that have delighted millions of customers with fantastic products and generated so much value in just 10 years despite a crowded startup environment. They are the lucky/genius few of the Unicorn Club – and we look forward to learning about (and meeting) those who will break into this elite group next. ————-
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Delta And JetBlue Now Let You Use Your Gadgets During Taxi, Takeoff And Landing
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Frederic Lardinois
| 2,013 | 11 | 2 |
It’s been a long time since flying was fun (unless you are reading this on the of a 747, of course). This week, however, things got a bit more bearable thanks to the that airlines can now allow their passengers to keep their gadgets on – in airplane mode – during taxi, takeoff and landing. The first two airlines to actually put this into practice are and . Both say that they have worked closely with the FAA to evaluate the impact of gate-to-gate personal electronics use and have completed testing to ensure that the use of personal electronic devices during all phases of flights is safe on its planes. Other airlines will surely follow soon, but the fact that every airline has to go through testing and get FAA approval will lead to quite a bit of confusion. We’ll hear about irate passengers on United, American or Southwest who refuse to power down their electronics after the boarding door has closed. It’s also worth noting that for Delta, this new rule only applies to mainline flights. Passengers on Delta Connections flights, which are operated , will still have to follow the old rules until at least the end of the year. http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=omRRpEywZzs Under the FAA’s guidance, virtually all small, lightweight gadgets are classified as “personal electronic devices.” Laptops and anything larger than a tablet, however, still need to be stowed during taxi, takeoff and landing just like before. The same goes for gadgets that were previously banned from in-flight use, including e-cigarettes, televisions, and remote-control toys. All of this doesn’t mean that in-flight Wi-Fi will now be available until the flight passes 10,000 feet, however. Gogo, which powers the vast majority of in-flight Wi-Fi in the U.S., is the possibility of allowing connections from gate-to-gate, but in its current form, the service simply doesn’t work under 10,000 feet. The Air Line Pilots Association, by the way, says it the FAA’s decision and was involved in the FAA’s rulemaking process. The organization, however, notes that it believes that electronics should be stowed for takeoff and landing and that “relying on passengers to selectively turn off their devices in areas of extremely poor weather is not a practical solution.” Under the new FAA guidance, passengers will still have to turn their electronics off when low visibility requires the use of some landing systems. In case you are confused about when and where exactly you can now play Dots on the plane, here is a chart from our friends at Delta:
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Gillmor Gang: Dynamic Clusters
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Steve Gillmor
| 2,013 | 11 | 2 |
The Gillmor Gang — John Borthwick, Keith Teare, Kevin Marks, John Taschek, and Steve Gillmor — move further and further toward the Golden Age of Push Notification. What some see as a fragmented sea of apps, others see as a ripe opportunity to unify notifications as the successor to email, social streaming to the core. As Windows gets sucked into the tidal wave of mobility, it’s up to individual apps to intermediate themselves into the relentless flow. Out of the soup of retweets, @mentions, and other graph-aware signals, a new hierarchy is presenting itself as an alternative to the conventional email aristocracy. The enterprise is not convinced of the viability of a meritocracy-driven individual contributorship, but luckily nothing else has yet surfaced to rule it out. Meanwhile, the slow iterative thinning of the tablet is fashioning a new template for navigating the new world, swimming against the tide in ecstatic leaps up the stream. @stevegillmor, @borthwick, @kteare, @kevinmarks, @jtaschek Produced and directed by Tina CHase Gillmor @tinagillmor
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Dear Google, What’s Wrong With You?
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Jon Evans
| 2,013 | 11 | 2 |
Dear Google: What’s wrong? I ask because last weekend, while in San Francisco, I asked Google Maps for “hot chocolate mission” — and was promptly directed to an ARCO station in Fremont, 40 miles away. Similarly, last month I searched for “coffee” while in the Embarcadero Center, one of the denser coffee hotspots in America, and was sent to a Starbucks more than two miles away. And it hasn’t escaped my notice that you keep highlighting faraway places with Zagat listings over much closer places without. Now, sure, if you’re thinking “hey, you’re just abusing your position as a highfalutin tech columnist to make anecdotal complaints here!” — well, you’re not entirely wrong. Perk of the position. What can I say? But Google Docs won’t save documents, the new Gmail interface still feels like a big step backwards, Gmail Offline keeps crashing on me, Google Hangouts hangs whenever we try to combine text chat and video…and for what it’s worth, it’s not just me who’s wondering what’s gone wrong: Pop quiz: name a Google product that existed at this time last year that has improved in the last 12 months. — Laurie Voss (@seldo) Don’t misunderstand. I’ve been of your . Sure, I complained: “ ” a few years ago, but you’ve managed to turned your mighty aircraft carrier around quite nicely since. Stock at , etc., etc., etc. I don’t think you’re in decline now. Quite the opposite: I think in certain domains you’ve become so dominant that you’ve grown complacent. In fields where you’ve got real competition — e.g. , — you’re as incisive and innovative as ever. Google+ isn’t exactly setting the world on fire, but it’s probably become an asset rather than a hindrance. And the ambition of Google Glass and your crazy moon-shot stuff like balloon-powered global Internet and self-driving cars (oh, yeah, and ) remains awesome. The problem is that in certain fields you hardly need to compete any more. I mean, who competes with Google Maps? Oh, there are plenty of competitors, but who actually ? Even mighty Apple is perceived as dramatically inferior (although Apple Maps has improved by leaps and bounds since its balky launch.) As for Bing Maps, and Nokia’s Here, and OpenStreetMaps et al. — forget about it. So if you want to highlight all things Zagat since you , and downplay all others, who’s going to stop you, right? I mean, you sent me to a gas station 40 miles away for hot chocolate, and I just shook my head and took it in stride. It would be too much work to install and familiarize myself with an entirely different map app, when you’re usually mostly good enough. (Also, to be fair, after I complained about you on Twitter, a friend who’s a Google employee directed me to Cafe St. Jorge, so I can’t rule out the possibility that you were just playing the long and subtle game.) Same with your bread-and-butter search. Even if Bing better — and I don’t for a moment believe that it is — who’s actually going to the trouble to find that out? I’d have to compare a multitude of different searches to figure out whether I should switch, and that’s too much work in this modern world. As long as you’re perceived as good enough, you don’t actually need to get any better. Maybe you will anyways, out of the goodness of your heart, or, more accurately, your aesthetic hunger for purity and perfection — but you won’t be there. So of course you slow down and get sloppy. It’s not really your fault, Google; it’s the fault of your would-be competitors. So, what the heck, since they can’t seem to get their collective act together, why go instead of polishing products? I bet it’s a lot more fun. But Google, be careful. IBM grew dominant and became complacent. Microsoft grew dominant, and became complacent. And look what happened to them. Okay, fine, so they’re still immensely profitable megacorporations, but they lost the initiative, they no longer dictate the conversation, they’re not the ones who build the future any more; they just come and mop up after it’s built. That is not the Google way. But you’re these days, arguably bloated, and middle-aged for a tech company — and while your numbers are great, . I’m not saying all is lost. Far from it. I’m just saying that, where everyone else seems to see a dominant unstoppable machine, I think I see some distant early warning signs. I hope you see them, too. Rajesh Patel, .
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Women 2.0, A Media Company Built Around Female Entrepreneurship, Gears Up For Las Vegas
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Anthony Ha
| 2,013 | 11 | 2 |
Over the past few years, has become one of the most reliable places to find stories from female entrepreneurs, successful and otherwise. It has also, according to co-founder and CEO Shaherose Charania, become a profitable business. That’s particularly surprising since the Women 2.0 site doesn’t run any advertising. Not that Charania said she’s completely opposed to the idea (“Maybe we will [run ads] eventually, but it will be thoughtful”). However, she sounded more excited about the company’s conferences, and about that it’s experimenting with, where readers pay a monthly or annual fee (currently the lower-priced plan costs $20 a month) for access to a combination of online and offline features, such as conference discounts and virtual happy hours. To explain the broader vision, Charania compared Women 2.0 to Vogue. In the same way that Vogue is read by women who are never going to be models or wear all the expensive clothes featured in the magazine, she said many Women 2.0 readers may never start a company, but her goal is to turn entrepreneurship into “something aspirational.” How successful is Women 2.0 at the goal? Well, that’s tough to quantify, but Charania did share the results of a recent survey of the site’s readers, which suggests that it is reaching a global audience (though it doesn’t reveal the size of that audience) — San Francisco and Silicon Valley account for only a combined 30 percent of its readership. And 60 percent of the readers self-identify as entrepreneurs. One important aspect to the site’s model, Charania said, is the fact that it lets female entrepreneurs tell their own stories — more than 400 female founders and investors have contributed. At the same time, the Women 2.0 team has grown to seven people, as well. As for the conferences, Charania said the company has settled into a pattern of two bigger events a year, one in San Francisco (which apparently attracts more than 1,500 attendees) and another that travels. The next traveling event, the “ ” of Women 2.0, is coming up on November 14, with Zappos CEO (and Las Vegas tech proponent) . With her nutrition startup , Wendy Nguyen was a finalist in the pitch competition at this year’s San Francisco conference, but she said she was an attendee of Women 2.0 events long before that — for example, she met her eventual investor Dave McClure at last year. And hey, after being onstage at Women 2.0, Nguyen raised $1.2 million in funding. “Anyone who tells you that they got funded because they were in a pitch competition, that’s just silliness — we all know that,” Nguyen said. At the same time, she credited the event for helping her with making important connections, and she described it as “a culmination of doing the right things.” . The difference between the two events, Nguyen said, is that “there’s more of a community aspect at Women 2.0 … They do a great job of promoting female founders.” Oh, and if you’re curious about the finalists at the upcoming conferences, here they are (with descriptions provided by Women 2.0). — DailyDollar is a Cloud-based receipting and personalized offer solution. — CollegeAppz is a “TurboTax for College Admissions,” a college readiness platform built to maximize user data for better school matches for students and improved leads for universities and commercial companies. — Admitted.ly is an online college advisory platform that targets high school students early enough to help improve their chances of admission at their ideal universities, and offers tools to make parents’ lives and guidance counselors’ jobs easier. — Traveling Spoon is an online marketplace that connects travelers with vetted, local and authentic food experiences — from homemade meals to cooking classes — in people’s homes around the world. — weeSpring helps parents collect advice from their friends about what they need for their family, from strollers and sippy cups to apps and — ultimately — appliances. — AbbeyPost is Etsy for Plus Size…with a proprietary tech twist, connecting the underserved Plus Size shopper directly with indie designers, boutiques and brands. — CareBooker is the “OpenTable” for booking family care services, such as babysitting, pet care, tutoring & lessons, and more. — CareLuLu is the easiest way for parents to find a daycare or preschool that fits their family’s needs through an online marketplace that offers a personalized search, verified parent reviews, photos, and even tuition rates. — Infinite PDF is the latest flagship product of the Infinite Canvas Suite, published by ReOrient Media. Infinite PDF allows you to expand your existing presentations to add dimensionality, transitions and interactivity. — Totspot is a mobile marketplace for savvy moms to discover, buy and sell new and like-new kids items such as toys, clothes, baby gear and books.
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Snowden Is Not Going To Work At VKontakte
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Alexia Tsotsis
| 2,013 | 11 | 2 |
Despite having a very public job offer handed to him , Edward Snowden will not be joining Russian social networking website (VK), its founder Pavel Durov has confirmed to TechCrunch. Contrary to that Snowden’s lawyer announced Snowden’s employment at VK yesterday, Durov writes that and rumors are untrue. In fact, he told at TechCrunch Disrupt Europe in Berlin last week that Snowden, whom he views as a personal hero for exposing the NSA’s international surveillance, had not reached out about the August offer. Earlier this week, a Russian news agency that the whistleblower had secured post-asylum employment with a “major” Russian website, which could mean odnoklassniki.ru, mail.ru, liveinternet.ru and Yandex, which is the top website in Russia, that it had not given Snowden a job. Guess we’ll find out which site it actually is soon enough.
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Meet Mobile Incubator Tandem’s New Class Of Startups — Or Rather, Two Thirds Of It
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Anthony Ha
| 2,013 | 11 | 20 |
Mobile startup accelerator is unveiling its fall 2013 class of three startups, who will each receive mentorship, office space, and $200,000 in funding. Co-founder Doug Renert (pictured) told me that Tandem will start accepting larger class sizes next year, following the raising of its third fund (which, according to an SEC filing, was ). The goal is eight startups, though there may be a “ramping up” period where it’s somewhere in between. Not only has and made plans to back more startups — it’s expanding its physical footprint too. The accelerator initially turned a single house in the Silicon Valley city of Burlingame into a live-work space for its companies, and Renert said it now occupies the two adjacent homes, turning the street into a “mini campus” of sorts. Here are the three startups occupying that mini campus for the next six months. The third is still in stealth mode, so Renert would only talk about it in a semi-vague way. Bitcovery — An app for people to discover for digital media and goods based on social recommendations. Oh, if you’re interested in applying for the next class, .
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11 Or 12 Things I Learned About Life From Day Trading Millions Of Dollars
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James Altucher
| 2,013 | 11 | 2 |
I was a day trader for many years, and it almost killed me. I made money by making profits on my own money and also taking a percentage of the profits for the people I traded for. I traded up to $40 million or $50 million a day at my peak. I did this from 2001 to 2004. I learned about day trading but I also learned a lot about myself and what I was good at, what I was horrible at, and what I was psychotic at. Things that had nothing to do with day trading. Day trading is the best job in the world on the days you make money. You make a trade, then maybe 20 minutes later you are out of the trade with a profit, and for the rest of the day you think about how much money you made. It’s the worst job in the world on a bad day. I would make a trade, it would go against me, and then I wanted my heart to stop so my blood would stop thumping so loudly. I did it for years, though, because I was unemployable in every other way. Here’s what I learned. All of these lessons I will certainly use today, many years after I stopped day trading. This applies not just to trading but everything. You could be married for 10 years and the next thing you know you are divorced and you would not have predicted that. You could be healthy all your life and drink your vegetables and exercise and reduce stress, and a year later you could be dead from cancer. You’d have much less stress if you let go of trying to predict the future. You can always seek to increase the odds in your favor. if I don’t jump off bridges, for instance, it’s more likely I’ll be alive a year from now. But certainly a path to unhappiness is thinking the future can be predicted and controlled. If you get to the point where you “hope” you don’t get ruined, then you did something wrong beforehand. For instance, if you plan a wedding outside and you don’t have a backup plan in case it rains, then you probably mis-planned your wedding, unless you are getting married in a desert. “Hoping” is not a bad thing. I hope that every day my life goes perfectly. But if hoping is the only thing I’m relying on, then it means I didn’t really look at all the possible outcomes of something that was important to me. A hundred percent of opportunities in life are created because people are uncertain about almost everything in their lives. We are constantly trying to close the enormous gap between the things we are certain about and the things we are uncertain about, and almost every invention, product, Internet service, book, whatever has been created to help us close that gap. Sometimes this is hard. If your husband betrays and leaves you, you often feel like crawling on the floor and burning all the self-help books. They all lied. It’s hard to feel “in the now” or to “positive think” when life feels like it’s over. I’ve tried. For me it’s too hard. But at the very least you can say…”help me.” You can say it to your close friends. You can say it something inside of yourself. “Help me” is the most powerful, and most forgotten, prayer. Some people take too many risks and they go bankrupt. This happened to me. And sometimes people are too cautious and don’t take enough risks. When I first started day trading, I was so afraid of risk that if I had a small profit, I’d end the trade. But then I would take big losses and that would wipe out all my profits. The key is that you can take larger and larger risks if you work on better and better ways to deal with those risks. For instance, I might be able to risk marrying someone if I know she is not a hard-core drug addict who regularly betrays the people she is close to. I can risk driving without a license if I always stay below the speed limit (I know this is a stupid risk, but still). Once you have a method of reducing risks, it’s easier to make trades or decisions about anything. Often I get emails, “I really want ONE job but they don’t seem to want me and now I’m miserable. How can I get that job?” Well…you can’t. And you’re going to be unhappy. You can’t wish yourself a job. When I was raising money to day trade, I probably contacted over 1,000 people. When I was starting an Internet business I started over a dozen Internet businesses and watched all of them fail but one. When I was trying to sell my Internet business I contacted over a dozen companies (although Google broke my heart – damn you Google!). When I wanted to get married, I went on lots of dates. Claudia’s approach was even smarter – she wouldn’t waste time with dinners. She would only go to tea with guys. Within the first 20 seconds you know if you are attracted. So keep it to a tea. In day trading, if something is not working out, even if your heart wants it to work out, you have to say “No” and cut your losses. If a business relationship is not working out, don’t put more energy and time into it. There is a cognitive bias called “committment bias.” We think because we’ve already put time and energy (or money) into something that we have to stick with it. But this is just a mental bias. Say no to it. You have to decide every moment if this is the situation you want to be in. Just because you were in the situation a moment ago, or yesterday, or for 10 years, doesn’t mean the situation is right for you anymore. Day trading pulls everything out of you. It sucks the soul out of your body, blends it up, and then explodes. It doesn’t turn into a nice smoothie. It explodes. So you have to take care of yourself. If you don’t sleep enough, if you don’t eat well, exercise, be around positive people, be grateful for what you have, blah blah blah, you will lose all of your money and go bankrupt. And obviously, this applies to everything else in life. Every day, what small thing can you do to become a slightly better you? The reason we get so attracted to “safe” cubicle jobs is that the pain is more subtle and sneaks up on us. It’s not the blender-drama of day trading so the need for health on a daily basis doesn’t seem as important. But it is. The only way to survive is to laugh. There’s that saying: “Man makes plans but God laughs.” Well, you might as well be on the same side as God. I’ve seen it a million times. Guy makes a trade. The market goes against him. He says “this is crazy” and puts more money into the trade. And then he loses all his money and goes crazy. I’ve had to talk people off the ledge or tell them to put the gun down. The market is never crazy. The world is never crazy. And I will go so far as to say that your girlfriend who just lied to you about where she spent the night is not crazy. I only care about you. And you’re effin’ crazy if you thought the world was going to line up any other way than the way it lined up. Tough on you. I know when I feel like, “ugh, this situation is insane” that the first place I need to look is at me. I am insane. Good and bad days happen. But life is about a billion little moments that add up to all the things around you. If you let one of those moments have too much control then you are bound to be mostly miserable. I was mostly miserable during the period I was day trading. I let that aspect of my life take control. So I stopped focusing on being a good husband, a good father, a good friend, a good anything. All of my other constituencies went to hell. I would have nightmares. I would lose sleep. I would wake up many mornings and go to the church across the street so I could be by myself and pray. What would I pray? “Jesus, please make the markets go in my direction today.” I’m Jewish. Nobody answered my prayers. Every day I get emails like, “Can you show me how to day trade?” “NO!” I know a thousand day traders and only two that won’t go bankrupt. So what makes anyone think they will have an edge? How many people listen to me? Zero. How come? Because people are sick of their lives, their relationships, their jobs, and all the lies that have been told to them ever since they learned how to walk. They want freedom from the BS. I get it. Day trading is the dream. You can make enough money to not care. To do it from anywhere. To be happy. It won’t work. But people don’t want to believe it. Most people think they have that one special something that will make it work for them. And it’s true – they do have that one special something. But you can’t get there by day trading first. You can skip right to the being happy part. You can skip right to being free. But we never learned that. We were taught we had to something first to earn freedom. We were taught that suffering was the currency to buy happiness. Okay, go do it. Then cry about it. Then get scared. Then curse the craziness. Then cry more. None of that will make you happy. Then read this blog post again. Not because it will make you happy. But because I like when people read my posts. And laugh.
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Umeng, The “Flurry of China”, Confirms Its Acquisition By Alibaba
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Kim-Mai Cutler
| 2,013 | 11 | 20 |
Umeng, the analytics provider that has collected data from 180,000 apps and 590 million active devices throughout China, confirmed that it was acquired by Alibaba. The company is now a wholly-owned subsidiary of the Chinese e-commerce giant, which is reportedly on its way toward Linda Jiang, who heads business development for the startup, didn’t disclose the value of the deal. It was rumored back in the spring . The company picked up $10 million in funding from Matrix Partners’ China arm after being incubated out of Kai-Fu Lee’s Innovation Works. Culturally, the Umeng deal makes sense as Alibaba is a very data-centric company and Umeng has troves of it. After the deal, Umeng will operate as an independent subsidiary. They plan to build out their existing suite of services for developers including services like push notification management and a social SDK for handling identity. The deal comes during a wave of China-related mobile acquisitions, with Companies like Baidu and Alibaba are trying to prove their mettle and that they can ride the transition from web to mobile platforms effectively. In many cases, they’ve decided to buy and not build. Earlier this year, Alibaba took a stake in Sina Weibo, the Twitter-like microblogging platform that They also invested $294 million into China’s The company’s Alipay product, which is China’s biggest third-party payment platform, has been an invaluable asset in powering peer-to-peer transactions and purchases of digital goods in mobile apps. But Alibaba has also had less than successful mobile efforts. To fend off the rising power of China’s social networking giant Tencent and its dominant messaging app Weixin, Alibaba recently released its own contender, Laiwang. They’ve also tried to build their own Linux-based smartphone OS called Aliyun, but it’s been hard to see if the platform has seen much progress since last year. Below is one of Umeng’s quarterly reports, which shows off the kind of data the startup has access to: [slideshare id=26025494&style=border:1px solid #CCC;border-width:1px 1px 0;margin-bottom:5px&sc=no]
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