The Latest from TechCrunch |  |
- The Line For the iPad Starts Behind This Guy
- Review: enTourage eDGe Dualbook
- In Time For The iPad, Dude-Centric Video Network Break Media Boards The HTML5 Train
- The Other Cool Kids Will Be In London For GeeknRolla, April 20
- Groupon Goes Ultra-Chic With Luxury Private Sale Site Groupöupon
- Study: 52 Percent Of Bloggers Consider Themselves Journalists
- Videoconferencing Company Vidyo Raises $25 Million More
- Venture-Backed Exit Activity Is Picking Up Again
- NearVerse Raises $1 Million For Proximity Based Mobile Social Network
- Virtual Desktop Company MokaFive Raises $21M From Khosla Ventures And Others
- Microsoft Determined To Ruin The April Fools Party
- Ex-Bebo CEO Joanna Shields To Lead Facebook’s International Assault
- Topeka? Come On Google, You Can Do Better
- Clickable Gets Social With Facebook Ads
- Hulu’s Internal Training Video (And Its Alien Plot) Revealed
- WolframAlpha Admits That We’re Better At Math
- April Fools Shenanigans: The 2010 Definitive List
- First iPad Reviews Hit The Net
- Introducing The Do-It-Yourself CrunchPad Kit [Video]
- All The Cool Kids are Coming to Disrupt. Are You?
- Gowalla On The iPad. Why? (Screenshots)
- Netvibes Makes It To Profitability By Appealing To Businesses
- Kleiner’s iFund Manager On Cracking The iPad’s Immersive Code
- Exclusive: Google To Go Nuclear
- Google Launches Labs For Ads
| The Line For the iPad Starts Behind This Guy Posted: 01 Apr 2010 09:02 AM PDT
The iPad doesn’t go on sale until Saturday, but the line has already started in front of Apple’s flagship store in New York City. Okay, there’s only one guy in line so far, Greg, but if you want to pick up your pre-ordered iPad you are going to have to get behind him. Unless you go to another store. Or just wait for it to be delivered to your house. Anyway, this guy is determined to sit in front of the Apple store for two days and nights. The video below was sent to us by Zoltan Kaprinay, a Hungarian tourist who came to New York to pick up his own iPad on Saturday. He was scoping out the Apple store and captured the footage below. Nobody expects iPhone-long lines for this launch, but for the Mac faithful there’s always a badge of honor that comes with being first.
     
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| Review: enTourage eDGe Dualbook Posted: 01 Apr 2010 08:54 AM PDT  To say that the enTourage eDGe dualbook is "just an e-reader with a bolted-on netbook" (or vice versa) is to pretty dramatically miss the entire point of this thing. The eDGe exists in a category all by itself, because it does an awful lot more than just an e-reader or just a netbook. As a unique product, there are a couple of unfortunate shortcomings, but on the whole the dualbook represents an exciting glimpse at new ways to access and use technology and content. Devin pooh-poohed the eDGe recently, but I'm pretty excited about it.
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| In Time For The iPad, Dude-Centric Video Network Break Media Boards The HTML5 Train Posted: 01 Apr 2010 08:40 AM PDT
Video content on Break Media's nine branded properties, which include Break.com, MadeMan, Chickipedia, Cage Potato, Holy Taco, Screen Junkies, and All Left Turns, will include the functionality of a Flash-based player but with HTML and JavaScript implementation. And any video ad units running on these sites can be transcoded into H.264 video playback, the standard format for the iPad and other HTML5 devices. Additionally, Break Media advertisers will now also be able to target video advertising specifically to the iPad. Break’s ad network has created customizable ad formats that work with the device. Break Media recently acquired gaming site FileFront and launched a campaign to upload more UGC to its video platform. The media network also launched a new Twitter-focused web show, called Tweet Boxx.      
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| The Other Cool Kids Will Be In London For GeeknRolla, April 20 Posted: 01 Apr 2010 08:16 AM PDT  This year's GeeknRolla in London on April 20 will, in a word, be awesome. The annual conference from TechCrunch Europe will bring together Europe's technology startups to network with investors and talk about how they create and build themselves. If the cool kids will be at TechCrunch Disrupt in May, you can bet they'll but out in force in London in April. Our speaker programme is below. This year there is a special emphasis on launching startups and connecting them with investors. As you can see we'll be launching around 15 startups in front of a panel of around 18 judges. There will also be a DemoPit for startups not selected to appear on the main stage. It's an amazing line-up including: Tommy Ahlers, ex-ZYB now Vodafone; Morten Lund, Skye investor & serial entrepreneur; Stefan Glaenzer, Angel; Brent Hoberman, MyDeco & PROFounders; Reshma Sohoni, Seedcamp; Mattias Ljungman, Atomico Ventures; Lukas Gadowski, Team Europe; Anil Hansjee, Google; Irena Goldenberg, Highland Capital Partners; Daniel Heaf, 4IP; Ari Wegter, LoveFilm Co-Founder and Alicia Navarro, Co Founder, Skimlinks. I'd strongly advise you get a ticket. Last year we more than sold out. We'll be hearing from of Europe's best entrepreneurs about how they are building their own companies and with it, the European tech ecosystem. I can pretty much guarantee that the speeches will be fast, furious and fulfilling. 
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| Groupon Goes Ultra-Chic With Luxury Private Sale Site Groupöupon Posted: 01 Apr 2010 08:16 AM PDT
Poking fun at their more gilded competitors, group-buying site Groupon announced its launch of Groupöupon. As far as April Fool’s jokes go, the site is pretty convincing. It’s actually not far off from some of the pitches we see for elitist group buying startups. I was almost fooled, until I saw the umlaut (a bit much), and the fact that for each featured item, Groupöupon’s price is actually higher than the crossed-out original price. The luxury private sale site features items such as sleeves made from “ostrich neck, baleen, pressed toucan beak, snakeskin (heated), and mane” ($6,500 for just a pair of sleeves, shirt not included), a Sleke watch that “eliminates the most cumbersome element of traditional watches—the face” ($14,500 for a right-hand model, $18,000 for a left-hand one), crowns ($68,000), and a money collage ($250,000). Before you can join this exclusive buying gröup, you need to place your eye up to a “retinal scanner” on the site so that Groupöupon “can check your identity against our online database of confidential tax records.” Prospective members are also asked to supply documentation showing their net worth, along with any of the following proofs of status:
This one gets an A+. Here’s the definitive list of 2010 April Fools jokes
     
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| Study: 52 Percent Of Bloggers Consider Themselves Journalists Posted: 01 Apr 2010 08:07 AM PDT
According to a new study released by PR Week and PR Newswire, 52% percent of bloggers surveyed consider themselves journalists. This is an increase from 2009's study, when just one in three had the same opinion. However, despite this, only 20% of bloggers obtain the majority of their income from their blogs; which is an 4% increase from 2009. A few other stats caught our attention as well. When it comes to using blogs and social networks, like Twitter or Facebook, for research, 91% of bloggers and 68% of online reporters “always” or “sometimes” use blogs for research. But only 35% of newspaper and 38% of print magazine journalists surveyed use blogs or social networks for research purposes The stats are even more interesting when it comes to using Twitter, which is often a place for breaking news and consumer trends, alone for research. 64% of bloggers and 36% of online reporters said they use Twitter as a research tool for stories. But only 19% of newspaper reporters and 17% of print magazine reporters use the microblogging network as a resource for research. Newspaper and print magazine reporters also source Twitter less frequently than their online counterparts with 19% and 22% saying they have used a Twitter post in a story, respectively. This is in contrast the higher use of sourcing Twitter for stories for bloggers (55%), online magazine/news (42%) and even TV news (48%). Here at TechCrunch, we rely on other blogs for research even more than traditional news outlets. And we use Twitter as a tool not just for breaking news, but also to evaluate the sentiment of consumers about a particular product or service. For example, my colleague MG Siegler used the breaking news of Tiger Woods' car accident to show the inherent value of Twitter when it comes to the speed of reporting news. Photo Credit/Flickr/MikeLicht      
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| Videoconferencing Company Vidyo Raises $25 Million More Posted: 01 Apr 2010 06:33 AM PDT
Vidyo, which specializes in video conferencing technology, has closed a big round of financing. The company raised $25 million in a Series C round led by Four Rivers Group and joined by prior backers Menlo Ventures, Rho Ventures, Sevin Rosen Funds and Star Ventures. This brings the total amount of capital invested in Vidyo to $63 million since its founding in 2005 – its last round totaled $15 million and was closed a little over a year ago. Vidyo says it will use the additional capital to expand its sales and marketing efforts for its desktop and room-based HD multipoint video conferencing systems. More on NewTeeVee.
     
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| Venture-Backed Exit Activity Is Picking Up Again Posted: 01 Apr 2010 06:11 AM PDT
We take a look at the most important findings for both the Exit Poll report by Thomson Reuters and the National Venture Capital Association, and Dow Jones VentureSource’s assessment of IPO and M&A activity in the U.S. during the first three months of this year. Dow Jones VentureSourceTitle: U.S. Venture-Backed Company IPOs in First Quarter Match 2009 Total; M&A Deal Activity Flat as Median Paid Picks Up Subtitle: M&As and IPOs of VC-Backed Companies Net $4.7B in Q1; Time to Reach M&A Still Low as Investors Sell Companies Earlier Q1 2010 according to Dow Jones VentureSource: - Eight U.S. venture-backed companies raised $711 million by going public on U.S. stock exchanges, matching the number of IPOs that occurred throughout 2009. - Corporations bought 77 companies for $4 billion through mergers and acquisitions (M&As), on par with the 77 deals that raised $3.4 billion during the same period last year and a far cry from the 109 deals completed during the first quarter of 2008. Thomson Reuters / NVCATitle: Venture-Backed Exit Activity Shows Improved Signs of Life in Q1 2010 Subtitle: All-time Record for Venture-backed M&A Exits; Nearly All Venture-backed IPOs Trading Above Offer Price Q1 2010 according to Thomson Reuters / NVCA: - The quarter ended with nine venture-backed IPOs and 111 M&A transactions. - There were nine venture-backed IPOs valued at $936.2 million in the first quarter of 2010 quarter of 2009, more than double the amount raised during the fourth quarter of 2009. - 111 venture-backed M&A deals were reported for the first quarter, 31 of which had an aggregate deal value of $5.6 billion.
And here’s a bonus report: JEGI’s Q1 2010 M&A Results – Deal Activity and Transaction Value Up (PDF)      
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| NearVerse Raises $1 Million For Proximity Based Mobile Social Network Posted: 01 Apr 2010 05:54 AM PDT
Launched at SXSW few weeks ago, LoKast, which is actually short for "local-casting," allows you to set up a profile that will list all of your photos, selected contacts, videos, web links and music on your mobile phone. You can select which content you'd like to include to the public and which content you'd like to keep private. When a LoKast user is in proximity (300 feet) of other LoKast users, the app will automatically discover other users nearby and allow the user to view and download their content. For example, you can see the iTunes library of any user who is in close proximity to you. You can choose to download a 30-second clip of any song to your own profile and can also follow the link to the iTunes store to purchase the music (LoKast collects an affiliate fee for this, of course). Similarly, you can download photos, videos and even contacts from other users into your profile. You'll also soon be able to share apps on your phone with other users. The beauty of Lokast is that it has its own internal network; eliminating the need for 3G connectivity to run the app, as LoKast works in subways, underground and heavily congested areas such as stadiums, where 3G connectivity is unreliable. The startup's app is effectively all network based and currently has five patents for its proprietary technology. LoKast is also partnering with bands to help market their content to users. LoKast has struck deals with music distribution companies including The Orchard, IODA and Monalis 360 to provide users with exclusive content within the LoKast app. And production companies, such as Mark Cuban's Magnolia Pictures, are also using the service to promote their new films. And LoKast will soon be launching an Android app, and plans to launch integration with Facebook Connect. The app itself is incredibly simple to use and seems like it has potential to be a great way to share content on your mobile phone. Of course, some people may not feel comfortable sharing their personal content to complete strangers, so that may be a barrier for certain users.      
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| Virtual Desktop Company MokaFive Raises $21M From Khosla Ventures And Others Posted: 01 Apr 2010 05:32 AM PDT
MokaFive this morning announced that it has raised a $21 million Series C round led by NGEN Partners, with existing investors Khosla Ventures and Highland Capital Partners participating. This round totals more than the two previous rounds combined – the total of capital raised by the company is now $41 million. The company’s flagship product, MokaFive Suite, allows IT departments to exercise management control over the deliverance of secure virtual computing environments, to any hardware platform (be it Mac or PC). Unlike server hosted virtual desktop solutions, such as VDI, MokaFive executes locally on computing end points. MokaFive is led by President and CEO Dale Fuller, a high-profile executive and angel investor who has previously served as interim President and CEO of McAfee, President and CEO of Borland Software Corporation, and GM/VP of the Powerbook Division of Apple Computer and of the NEC Portable Computer Division of Motorola. The company also boasts quite an impressive list of board members, including people like Sun Microsystems co-founder Vinod Khosla, Stanford University professor in Computer Science Monica Lam and former Executive Vice President and Chief Technology Officer of AOL Time Warner Bill Raduchel.
     
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| Microsoft Determined To Ruin The April Fools Party Posted: 01 Apr 2010 03:15 AM PDT
You’re like the guy who walks around at a party and suddenly blurts out: “Careful, people. The long term effects of alcohol range from possible health benefits for low levels of alcohol consumption to severe detrimental effects in cases of chronic alcohol abuse!” All that guy is going to get is heaps of blank stares and probably some offensive name-calling as soon as he turns his back. This is the digital equivalent of said behavior:
Blank. Stare.      
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| Ex-Bebo CEO Joanna Shields To Lead Facebook’s International Assault Posted: 01 Apr 2010 02:30 AM PDT  Facebook has been famously thin in terms of its international organisation. Visiting their London offices recently impressed upon me how few people they actually have in Europe. A few sales staff, a PR, receptionist etc. As far as I could tell, only the affable Christian Hernandez was doing anything in wider Europe, as Facebook's international biz dev guy. So it's not before time that it's expanding its global sales organisation. Joanna Shields has re-emerged after recently exiting from her role at AOL, as Faceboook's new VP of Sales and Business Development for EMEA. Joanna was previously CEO of Bebo and President of People Platforms at AOL. Joanna was also the person who got advertising agencies to buy into Bebo, thus triggering its sale to AOL. We are talking one persuasive person here.
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| Topeka? Come On Google, You Can Do Better Posted: 01 Apr 2010 01:02 AM PDT
And Google takes April Fools very seriously. They launched Gmail on April 1, 2004, which is totally meta. And there are so many good Google jokes from April Fools past: Google Paper, Google TiSP, and Google Romance were all winners. One Google joke even erupted into a minor Wikipedia war over time travel. Google Topeka? Not so funny. They’ve changed their logo on the Google homepage to Topeka and give this link as an explanation. They’ve changed their corporate name, they say, to Topeka for the day. The problem is the whole joke is really just a way to promote Google’s experimental fiber network. 1,100 cities are begging to be part of the program and doing crazy things, like renaming their city name to Google, to get picked.
Anyway, if you’re promoting your own stuff on April Fools you need to be extra funny. This isn’t extra funny. And what happened to Google Jail? As far as I can tell it remains unannounced. Maybe they got mad that Fast Company scooped them on their own joke. Or maybe someone at Google decided it was a bad idea to mock the horrific prison situation here in the U.S. We’re grading this one an “D-” on our list of 2010 April Fools jokes. I need Google to go back to basics and get April Fools right again. This is too important not to do it right.      
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| Clickable Gets Social With Facebook Ads Posted: 31 Mar 2010 11:25 PM PDT
It will soon be possible to compare the performance of search and social ad campaigns side by side. Clickable, the ad management platform that lets search marketers measure and track the performance of their online marketing campaigns across different search engines and advertising networks, will be adding Facebook Ads as an option on April 12. What that means is that an advertiser buying pay-per-click ads on Google can test the performance of those search ads against pay-per-click ads on Facebook targeted to particular social demographics. Search ads versus social ads, all in one dashboard. According to this sign-up page on Clickable:
Clickable is a Facebook partner which has integrated its service with the Facebook Ads API, which will allow Clickable customers to create, upload, and manage Facebook Ads directly from Clickable. The integration will work with pay-per-click text or image ads, but not yet with regular display ads. Facebook ads are bringing in real revenues now for the social network. But how will they compare to search ads?      
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| Hulu’s Internal Training Video (And Its Alien Plot) Revealed Posted: 31 Mar 2010 11:11 PM PDT
The video is a ten minute documentary detailing the long-running conspiracy behind Hulu’s alien plot to turn our brains into goo. It begins with footage of television pioneer Philo Farnsworth (an alien-sounding name, indeed), winds through the 20th century, and concludes with Hulu, which finally helped TV’s brain-melting content expand its reach well beyond the living room. The documentary includes interviews with UCLA Professor Fabian Wagmister and journalist/comedian Dan Lyons (AKA Fake Steve Jobs). Lyons sums up Hulu’s impact on our future best: “Our children are going to grow up to be total, mushbrained zombies. There’s no hope for them.”      
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| WolframAlpha Admits That We’re Better At Math Posted: 31 Mar 2010 10:28 PM PDT
The service has slashed — and I do mean slashed — the price of the app from $49.99 all the way down to $1.99. Yes, they’ve discounted it $48. That’s a 96% price reduction. And not just that — they’re offering a refund to anyone who did pay the ridiculous price for the app. Yes, a full refund — and Apple is keeping their 30%, so WolframAlpha is losing money by doing this. Between the $49.99 version and the $19.99 discounted version that was on sale during the holidays, 10,000 copies of the app were sold, we’re told. That’s not awful, but it’s nowhere near the number WolframAlpha needs to be ubiquitous. And that’s exactly what WolframAlpha has decided it wants to be. The $1.99 price will certainly help towards that goal, but so will the reinstatement of the mobile-optimized version of the site. You may recall that WolframAlpha took that version away in December, erroneously thinking people would buy the $50 app without it. Now, it’s back too. More changes to make WolframAlpha appeal to all sorts of people will be coming too, we’re told. For now, check out the handsomely-priced $1.99 app.      
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| April Fools Shenanigans: The 2010 Definitive List Posted: 31 Mar 2010 09:06 PM PDT
Time to live blog April Fools 2010! Some of us got a jump start on the time-honored tradition (not to name any names here), but we still have about 24 hours of shenanigans left. As the new hire, I have the dubious honor of managing the TechCrunch April Fool’s Scorecard. If you spot a good one please leave it in the comments. I can’t promise you a TechCrunch T-shirt, but I may get to keep my job. Here’s the definitive list of 2010 April Fools jokes. We’ll update it regularly over the next 24 hours.      
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| First iPad Reviews Hit The Net Posted: 31 Mar 2010 06:38 PM PDT
Pogue says it’s no laptop replacement, but as a giant iPod touch, it’s a huge success. Mossberg says he enjoys doing most tasks on it much more than on his laptop, and considers it 80% a laptop replacement. Pogue hates the keyboard, Mossberg likes it. Both found the battery life to be exceptional — over the quoted 10 hours in both cases, which surprises me hugely. We talked about the iPad’s potential and competitors in today’s podcast, and the consensus was that, as both reviews stress, the flagship apps are the real indicator of the device class’s potential.      
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| Introducing The Do-It-Yourself CrunchPad Kit [Video] Posted: 31 Mar 2010 04:30 PM PDT
Those you you who’ve been following the CrunchPad project since we first announced it in the summer of 2008 weren’t too happy to hear about the recent…hiccups…that we continue to fight through.
The CrunchPad team has been working around the clock here at our Palo Alto headquarters to get the kit ready for full production in time for the delivery of the iPad on April 3. We know you want an iPad, but you aren’t as excited about that $499+ price tag. With the CrunchPad Kit, you can turn any laptop screen into a device that’s just as good, for a fraction of the price. Introducing The CrunchPad Kit
There’s real technology here, particularly in the touch module, that we’ve developed with our new partner. A number of patents have been filed around this new research, which we’re calling the F.U.J.J. With the F.U.J.J. you can convert any laptop screen of any size, up to 17 inches, into a CrunchPad. There’s more information in the video above, including a complete walk through of the five minute installation process. Order your CrunchPad Kit now, we expect to be completely sold out within 48 hours. Here’s one last picture of the Asian team we hired to help us build this product working on the F.U.J.J. from our office in Palo Alto after we sponsored their immigration visas to get them over here.
     
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| All The Cool Kids are Coming to Disrupt. Are You? Posted: 31 Mar 2010 04:30 PM PDT
Get your ticket now, because extra early-bird pricing expires at midnight. Before then, you can save $500. Disrupt speakers are the gutsy people unafraid to offer an opinion and take disruptive steps in media and technology. We’re thrilled that Steve Case, Philip Kaplan and Fred Davis will also grace our stage. We’ll be announcing new speakers periodicially on the Disrupt blog, too. We’re also running a competition for –you guessed it– disruptive startups. As those of you who follow TechCrunch events know, attending is a chance to see tomorrow’s big names. At Disrupt, successful and active investors like Ben Horowitz, as well as technology insiders like Om Malik, will judge and coach startups during a three-day process resembling March Madness blended with “The Apprentice.” We’re now poring over hundreds of applications. They contain fresh ideas in real-time search and sentiment; finding, sharing and enjoying digital content; disintermediating markets in ingenious ways; cool new hardware, and more. Hope to see you at Disrupt. (Want to do more than just buy a ticket? Go here to see our exhibitor packages.)
     
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| Gowalla On The iPad. Why? (Screenshots) Posted: 31 Mar 2010 03:18 PM PDT
There is obviously a lot of excitement around the iPad. Kleiner Perkins is doubling its iFund to launch more companies around the new device. And everyone from existing iPhone app developers and media companies is rushing to create iPad versions of their apps. As the screenshots leaked to us below show, you can add Gowalla to that list. I’ve confirmed the screenshots are real with CEO Josh Williams. But why would you want geo-location check-in app on a huge iPad. It’s bad enough to have to pull out your iPhone every time you enter a restaurant or some other public gathering place. Pulling out the iPad will be much more conspicuous. The bigger screen, however, does open up new possibilities for seeing calling up full menus at a ballgame, for instance, or photos that other people uploaded to Gowalla from that very same spot. A bigger screen is just better no matter what the app. Will Foursquare launch on the iPad as well?
     
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| Netvibes Makes It To Profitability By Appealing To Businesses Posted: 31 Mar 2010 02:37 PM PDT
Netvibes CEO Freddy Mini announced today that the startup founded five years ago has finally made it to profitability. The site has seen a lot of changes since then. It began as one of the original Web 2.0 personalized homepages, became a distributed widget platform, changed CEOs (when founder Tariq Krim stepped down in 2008 to start Jolicloud), then started appealing to enterprises, brands, and advertisers with intranet offerings and social media dashboards. I chatted with Mini today, who says that the company is profitable on a net income basis. He won’t go into details on revenues, but the company has 40 employees and two offices. Just to cover salaries, it’s got to be pulling in a few million dollars a year. Mini did break down the revenues by product line, however: Netvibes for Enterprise: 50% The enterprise version, which accounts for half of the company’s revenues, lets employees customize their intranet homepage with a mixture of company and personal widgets. Think iGoogle for businesses. The dashboards are more for advertising and PR agencies, who can use them to push media on an opt-in basis to interested consumers. Netvibes also recently launched a Dashboarding Guide, which is a “dashboard of dashboards,” says Mini. It pulls together different monitoring and analytics tools (such as Google Trends, Compete, Yelp, Hootsuite, and Trendrr) all into one dashboard. The consumer-oriented homepage now has 3.5 million visitors a month, and Netvibes continues to improve that experience with its new realtime stream reader Wasabi, but that the paying customers are businesses.      
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| Kleiner’s iFund Manager On Cracking The iPad’s Immersive Code Posted: 31 Mar 2010 02:29 PM PDT
While much of the focus has been on what the iPad will do as a consumer device, Murphy makes the case for how well it should work as a revenue-generating machine for the companies developing for it. He noted that of the 14 companies that are currently a part of the iFund (3 of which are in stealth mode), four of them are already profitable just two years after the fund’s launch. He attributes this to three main things: the freemium model, Apple’s payment structure, and micro-payments. One of those profitable companies is Shazam, the mobile music discovery service. The service noted today that it has seen over 15 million downloads on the iPhone (and iPod touch). Most of those are downloads of the free version of the app, but that free version has served as a gateway drug of sorts to get users hooked and eventually buying the premium version with more features. At $4.99, that paid version, Shazam Encore, is cheap enough that many users feel it is well worth the price. Perhaps more importantly, it’s so easy to download thanks to the App Store’s built-in payment structure. It’s one click, and the app is yours. And Murphy thinks we’re on the verge of an explosion in in-app payments thanks to that structure. One company, Booyah, which makes the popular location-based game MyTown (which we’ve covered quite a bit), is making good use of these in-app payments, Murphy notes. While the app is completely free, it allows users to buy upgrades within the game for small fees (ranging from $0.99 to $9.99). This is starting to take off, according to Murphy. He notes that while free apps on the Facebook platform convert users to paying customers at a 3% to 5% conversion rate, the iPhone is seeing that conversation in the 12% to 15% range. That’s a massive difference. And Murphy attributes it to the way payment ideas are presented in apps in combination with Apple’s easy payment structure that happens behind the scenes (the App Store tied to your credit card). When you see a new cheap feature in an app, “for $0.99 i’ll try that out,” Murphy notes. Those purchases are an afterthought. And the iPad will simply be an extension of all this, with the added potential benefit of even more in-app immersion. That’s what he sees as the iPad’s big benefit over the iPhone. ”We want someone who cracks the code on a more immersive experience,” Murphy says. And it’s important to note that this new iFund isn’t iPad-only. Before the end of this year, Murphy says there will be some 100 million devices running the iPhone OS (currently, there are around 75 million), Kleiner will continue to look at all types of companies doing both iPhone and iPad apps to invest this money into. So what is he particularly excited about with regard to the iPad? Murphy reiterated John Doerr’s excitement about potential healthcare uses for the iPad and notes that they’re looking at one company in particular now that could come into fruition relatively soon (he wouldn’t say what it was). He also says that education is a potentially huge market for this new device. When I asked about the buzz surrounding old school media companies coming to the iPad, Murphy said that he was reluctant about some of the companies being hired to work on these solutions because it’s not long-term defensible. That said, there is at least one pure content play in stealth mode that Kleiner has backed with the fund. It involves a well-known entrepreneur, but Murphy wouldn’t say anymore. I asked why, given the success of the first iFund, Kleiner was “only” going with another $100 million for the fund? Why not go higher? Murphy noted that it’s likely just a starting point. For example, the original $100 million funded companies have seen some $330 million more pumped into them from outside the fund (yes, this is a bit skewed by Zynga, which just raised a massive $180 million new round). Murphy notes that this second iFund could be gone in as little as 12 months. It all depends on the quality of the companies sprouting up around the iPad (and continuing to sprout around the iPhone). Finally, I asked Murphy about an area both him and I are excited about: location. Murphy notes that three of the 14 iFund companies, Pelago (the makers of Whrrl), Booyah, and Shopkick (makers of CauseWorld), are location-based at their core. He went on to note that all the companies in this space are doing exciting things with check-ins because it’s ultimately important data. “Foot-streams are more valuable than click-streams,” Murphy notes, taking a line from Whrrl’s playbook. But Murphy notes that each of these companies is still searching for the Holy Grail: highly targeted location-based advertising. Once you understand that someone goes to Starbucks at a certain time everyday, you start to understand their behavior, and then ads become really interesting, he notes. In terms of the iPad, Murphy wonders what uses people will come up with with regard to location. After all, it’s not a phone that you have in your pocket, and you probably won’t be taking it to dinner (unless you’re really rude). Again, he thinks a company like Booyah, with its heavy game element that will drive the immersion idea could come up with some cool things. But he feels there will be new types of apps that give you a different reason for why you check-in with the iPad. In general, even within Kleiner Perkins, the iPad seems to be the undiscovered country. And that’s breeding a lot of excitement. Among the partners, there is no doubt that it won’t be long before there’s the first huge app for it. But it’s hard to base that off of pitches without the device itself out there. “You won’t know it until you see it,” Murphy says.      
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| Exclusive: Google To Go Nuclear Posted: 31 Mar 2010 01:24 PM PDT
Enriched uranium is a necessary ingredient in the creation of nuclear energy, and one source we’ve spoken with at Google says that this is part of the Google Green Initiative. The company will use the new technology to enable it to design and possibly build small, mobile and highly efficient nuclear power generators. “Google has already begun building an enrichment plant,” says a high ranking IAEA source. As GreenBeat points out, “Google finally decided to launch a dedicated unit of the company for designing and building its own solar panels, wind turbines, energy efficiency devices, etc. So far, its green efforts have been pursued by separate projects within the company. Nuclear is an obvious next step for the company.” GreenBeat first broke the story (first titled Google Has A Big Alternate Energy Announcement Forthcoming) after seeing multiple tweets about the impending announcement. But other sources we’ve spoken with say Google has no real intention of pursuing nuclear energy, despite the fact that the company has promoted the use of alternate energy sources for years. Of particular concern is the fact that the company Google acquired is based outside of the U.S., and little is known about the new enrichment technology they’ve developed.
Enriched uranium can also be used for nuclear weapons production, which is why the industry is so highly regulated. Says one source: “The story Google is putting out there is that the new technology will be built for clean energy production. But all of the research and development they’re doing in this area is being conducted outside of the U.S., and the enrichment facility is also outside of the U.S.” And more chillingly: “It would be trivial for anyone with this technology to build a nuclear weapon.” Google, which has been shaken by its inability to counter Chinese censorship and hacking efforts, may be engaging in enrichment research as part of a new effort to simply protect itself from outside threats. One source pointed out that if Google were its own country, its revenues would place it at 74th on the list of countries sorted by gross domestic product. “The U.S. government clearly won’t protect Google from China, so Google is taking the logical step of protecting itself with a physical deterrent.” To be clear, most of this is speculation. All we’ve confirmed is that Google has acquired a company with a new enrichment process and that they have begun researching small, nuclear portable generators. But there is real evidence here that Google may be working on something much more sinister to counter the China threat. More as this develops.      
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| Posted: 31 Mar 2010 11:02 AM PDT
When Google wants to try out a new consumer-facing product, it usually puts it in Google Labs. That is where experimental products can be found. There are separate Labs for Gmail, Calendar, Maps, Search, and YouTube (although sometimes they are called “experiments” or “TestTube”). Now Google Ads has its own Labs, which it is calling Ad Innovations. It is a central place where advertisers can “explore new marketing technologies.” Some of the highlighted technologies include Google’s new remarketing option, which shows ads to people who have visited the advertiser’s Website as they visit other sites that serve up Google ads. Another feature highlighted on the Ad Innovations page is Google’s new Search Funnels analytics tool, which shows advertisers the history of interactions with their ads leading up to a click. The online advertising industry is trying to prove to advertisers that even ads that don’t get clicked on can lead to conversions. Search Funnels is Google’s way of making that argument. The page also highlights product listing ads, special YouTube ads, and mobile click-to-call ads. It’s about time Google’s advertising products got their own Labs. But hopefully ad products that don’t work won’t be allowed to linger around as long as some of the consumer stuff in Google Labs proper. We’re talking about products designed to make money here, after all.      
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Google has acquired a company that has created a new process for highly efficient isotope separation, we’ve confirmed from multiple sources. The primary use of this technology, say experts we’ve spoken with, is uranium enrichment.
Nuclear power generation is a highly regulated industry. And enriched uranium is a particularly sensitive topic and creation and distribution of the substance is highly controlled. 
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