The Latest from TechCrunch |  |
- Seeking Alpha Launches An “App Store” For Web-Based Investing Tools
- Windows Phone 7: Solid Platform, Sorry Future
- The Era Of the Uber-Smartphone Is Here
- Microsoft Launches Windows Phone 7 But Does Anyone Care?
- Enfinity Acquires U.S. Solar Developer ClearPeak
- Live from Microsoft’s Windows Phone 7 Launch Event
- Scoreloop Brings Social Gaming SDK To Samsung’s Bada Platform
- Online Publishing Site HubPages Hits 1 Million Hubs; 2,200 Articles Created Per Day
- Apple Will Take A Pass On 4G Networks For The iPhone In 2011— Sorry Verizon and AT&T
- eBay App Goes Metro On Windows Phone 7, Now With To-Do Lists And Saved Searches
- StockTwits Takes Financial Idea Network Mobile With New iPhone App
- Web App Deployment Service AnovaStorm Secures $2 Million In Funding Committments
- Gmail Add-On EmailOracle Just Destroyed Your Inbox Overload Lie
- Tumbl.in Is StumbleUpon For Twitter
- NSFW: Generation Whine – Why I’m Relieved not to be a Millennial
- Being Eric Schmidt (On Facebook)
- OMG/JK: The World Doesn’t Need Another Mobile Carrier Apologist
- FanGo Lets You Avoid Long Concession Stand Lines At Sports Events And Concerts
- The Social Network Wins Another Weekend At The Box Office With $15.5M In Ticket Sales
- Men and Women Entrepreneurs: Not That Different
| Seeking Alpha Launches An “App Store” For Web-Based Investing Tools Posted: 11 Oct 2010 08:18 AM PDT
Stock market news and discussion site Seeking Alpha this morning debuted a suite of investing tools dubbed "Seeking Alpha Investing Applications" in an effort to help its community manage, track & analyze their investments on-site. The new Investing Applications Store counts 27 third-party apps at launch. All of the tools presented by Seeking Alpha are web-based (but not mobile) which, when added to a user's account, become part of his or her personalized experience across the entire site. Seeking Alpha vets thousands of articles from financial bloggers, then edits, tags and organizes those articles and brings the top 25% to its audience via the SA site. With the addition of the investing tools directory, investors can access applications to help them manage their portfolios, discover and research new investing ideas, and get in-depth analysis of stocks and exchange-traded funds. The available applications cover a broad range of investment needs including equity research, stock screeners, portfolio management tools, charting, ETF analysis, asset allocation, alerts, company modeling, news and more. Apps are either free of charge, premium (with an average price of $15 per month) or freemium (premium with a free trial period). Seeking Alpha has also launched an API, enabling third-party developers to get their financial applications in front of SA’s audience relatively quickly (devs get a standard 70% cut of the revenues). Seeking Alpha’s audience is quite sizeable, too – the site welcomes 3.5 million visitors per month, according to the company, and over 560,000 people have signed up to use the site to date. Seeking Alpha was originally launched in early 2004 by founder and CEO David Jackson. The company has raised over $7 million in venture capital from investors like DAG Ventures, Benchmark Capital and Accel Partners.
       
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| Windows Phone 7: Solid Platform, Sorry Future Posted: 11 Oct 2010 08:16 AM PDT
It’s too bad, really. Windows Phone 7 looks great to me. I believe Microsoft really nailed the overall design philosophy behind it. Windows Phone 7 is about communication, not apps. That’s a key difference and one that I, as a Droid X owner, greatly appreciate and understand. This platform is in a way the Google of mobile OSs in that it wants you to get your information as quickly as possible. Awesome, but it’s still a few years too late.        
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| The Era Of the Uber-Smartphone Is Here Posted: 11 Oct 2010 07:30 AM PDT
One thing you’ll notice about this crop of Windows Phone 7 handsets is the power of the processor. Each one – almost ten in all – run 1GHz+ Snapdragon processors. With the average desktop or laptop processor running at about 4GHz, we’re talking about phones that have the power of a half-decade old PC. Yes, you could probably run Crysis on these. What does that mean for you and me? Not much except some amazing UI features. What it means for the OS and for programmers is fairly interesting, however. It means spellcheck. It means in-context highlighting (think of the way the iPhone and now Outlook for WinPho 7 highlight addresses and dates). Think fairly powerful productivity tools that use desktop-style interfaces to control various features. While all of these things seem simple, in reality they are very hard.        
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| Microsoft Launches Windows Phone 7 But Does Anyone Care? Posted: 11 Oct 2010 07:15 AM PDT
Windows Phone 7 uses an entirely new UI based around “hubs,” points of activity on the screen. Some hubs bring up email, others bring up photos and games. You can download TV from UVerse right onto your phone and you have connectivity to your Windows Live and Xbox Live accounts. Generally, the launch is quite exciting. Fans of WinMo will not recognize this new version but I expect they’ll be enthused when they start using it.        
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| Enfinity Acquires U.S. Solar Developer ClearPeak Posted: 11 Oct 2010 07:14 AM PDT
Solar photovoltaic development company Enfinity has moved to acquire U.S. solar developer ClearPeak in a bid to strengthen its coast-to-coast presence in the solar space. Terms of the acquisition were not disclosed. ClearPeak was established in 2009 and provides outsourcing solutions to the clean energy industry. Areas of focus include business strategy, business development, project development, project finance, and policy support. Enfinity has announced that it will retain all ClearPeak executives and adopt the startup’s pipeline of renewable energy customers and projects. ClearPeak President and co-founder Bob Hopper will assume a Senior Vice President role at Enfinity while Brian Lynch, the other co-founder, will move into the role of Senior Vice President for Development, US, at the company. Founded in 2005, Enfinity has risen to become one of the world’s largest and most experienced solar PV development companies, with operations in North America, Europe and Asia-Pacific. To finance these projects, Enfinity works with individual project companies funded by equity investors and banks. The company also owns its own portfolio of renewable energy installations.        
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| Live from Microsoft’s Windows Phone 7 Launch Event Posted: 11 Oct 2010 06:49 AM PDT  Oh, Microsoft. Only you would throw the official launch event for your new mobile operating system on a national holiday and wait to tell the invited folks about it until just 5 days before. Oh well. We're live in NYC, where Microsoft is expected to finally pull back the last wee bit of curtain shrouding Windows Phone 7, while also showing off a bunch of the phones their hardware partners have been cracking on since the platform's announcement back in February. Join us after the jump for the liveblog, won't you?
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| Scoreloop Brings Social Gaming SDK To Samsung’s Bada Platform Posted: 11 Oct 2010 06:46 AM PDT
The native Scoreloop bada SDK will allow developers to integrate with social networks like MySpace and Facebook, include engaging features like online leaderboards, cross promotions and player challenges, and monetize through in-game currency purchases. Scoreloop will also include a games discovery app on Samsung bada devices that will feature games built off of the social gaming platform. Considering that Bada is not nearly as large of a platform for developers as Android and iOS platforms, Scoreloop’s deal probably won’t bring in a flux of new developers and games. But Scoreloop’s CEO Marc Gumpinger tells me the partnership could turn into much more for the startup. Gumpinger says the company is working on moving into the connected television world, and will soon allow developers to create customized apps for web-connected TVs, including Samsung devices. An existing relationship with Samsung, says Gumpinger, will certainly help the company reach this goal. Scoreloop, which has raised $2.8 million in funding, also offers its social gaming platform for Android phones.        
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| Online Publishing Site HubPages Hits 1 Million Hubs; 2,200 Articles Created Per Day Posted: 11 Oct 2010 06:45 AM PDT
Hubbers (HubPages authors) can earn money by publishing their Hubs and then collecting ad revenue (which is split with HubPages). Articles include written content, original images, video, slide-shows and more. The startup actually shares a hefty portion of ad-revenue with authors, giving Hubbers 60 percent of the revenue. In terms of traffic, the site is seeing 39 million unique visits per month; and 2,200 articles are created on the content platform per day. HubPages faces competition from Demand Media (which filed for an IPO a few months ago) and Associated Content (which was acquired by Yahoo earlier this year), but the startup differs from these two competitors because it lets its content creators choose the topic they would like to write about. HubPages also gives authors SEO, content creation and monetization tools. HubPages also faces competition from Squidoo, Mahalo and About.com.        
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| Apple Will Take A Pass On 4G Networks For The iPhone In 2011— Sorry Verizon and AT&T Posted: 11 Oct 2010 06:41 AM PDT
Back in August I broke the news that Apple was lining up a component purchase of several million chipsets from Qualcomm for a CDMA-powered Verizon iPhone due in January. Last week, over two months later, the Wall Street Journal confirmed this story. Now that folks are finally celebrating the iPhone’s imminent arrival to Verizon, speculation has shifted to whether the January model will take advantage of Verizon's "4G" network. 4G (not to be confused with iPhone 4) refers to the fourth generation of cellular standards, and both Verizon and AT&T have publicly released launch plans for 4G networks based on LTE in 2011. This impending shift from 3G to 4G presents a major inflection point in the reign of the iPhone franchise. Does Apple move to 4G right away, or do they wait for the network to mature? Recall that Apple waited to support 3G for one entire cycle, opting to release the original iPhone on AT&T's mature 2.5G EDGE network, despite wide availability of 3G by early 2007. That situation mirrors what is happening now with LTE in 2011, and as these questions become front and center, I have some very interesting news to share about Apple's plans. First things first — the iPhone CDMA model due in January won't support LTE. But here's where it gets really interesting: sources tell me that the iPhone refresh in mid-2011 won't support LTE either. Instead, Apple will produce a dual mode iPhone containing 3G flavors of GSM and CDMA, which operates on all carriers worldwide. If this holds true, Apple won't support the LTE standard until some time in 2012. A lot of you aren't going to be very happy with this news, since 4G-enabled Android phones already exist on Sprint's WiMAX network, and dual-mode LTE-enabled Android phones will start to emerge for use on Verizon's new network in the first half of next year. But as we cut through the hype on LTE, I believe Apple's decision to wait may be the right one. While the carriers are promising LTE as an upgrade path that will drive new applications and higher speeds, the reality is that 4G deployments will take much longer than the carriers are letting on. Apple doesn't want to mess with the first generation of LTE chipsets, since they will be bulky and power hungry. Instead, Apple will make a unified model that works across 3G networks on all carriers, and innovate with incredible new features like NFC which mirror what they accomplished with FaceTime on iPhone 4. Apple simply doesn't want to be the guinea pig on new LTE networks that aren't ready for primetime, and Steve Jobs knows not to trust the hype that's spewed by the carriers on 4G. The truth is that 3G networks have many more years of life, and the transition to LTE will be much slower than the carriers want you to believe (LTE doesn't even have its voice standard fleshed out yet). This is why AT&T is upgrading modem cards in its basestations to support the newest flavor of 3G called HSPA+, and it’s why Verizon is rumored to be working hard on Voice over Revision A, which will allow simultaneous data and voice. These upgrades greatly extend the life of 3G networks, and hedge against the transition to LTE. And Apple is pushing the carriers to extend 3G. So if you’re waiting for an iPhone that works on 4G carrier networks, it’s probably going to be a while. I'm sure we’ll be hearing a lot more about this story as the months unfold, especially as next summer’s iPhone approaches the “engineering verification test” stage. But based on my knowledge of both the supply chain and networking infrastructure, I feel pretty confident this is the way it’s going to play out. _________________________ Contributor Steve Cheney is an entrepreneur and formerly an engineer & programmer specializing in web and mobile technologies.
       
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| eBay App Goes Metro On Windows Phone 7, Now With To-Do Lists And Saved Searches Posted: 11 Oct 2010 06:38 AM PDT
Not surprisingly, you’ll be able to search, bid and “buy now” goods in the auction marketplace and opt for push notifications to help you keep track of your bids. What’s different in the new app? For the first time, eBay will let users save searches and create to-do lists to help manage transactions and payments. The app will also prioritize the list for you to keep the most time-sensitive actions at the top. While those features will be a plus for die-hard eBay fanatics, for the average user, the real difference is in the design. According to Steve Yankovich, eBay's VP of mobile and platform business solutions, the company was eager to explore the Windows Phone 7 design framework and draw inspiration from Metro (the name of the platform’s design system). The influences here are obvious, a relatively clean user interface, colored blocks, a default black or dark background that is complemented by text in white or bright colors. If you’ve looked at some earlier shots of Windows Phone 7, there’s a clear, intentional continuity between this app and its OS environment.
Furthermore, unlike the iPhone or Android version, you’ll also have the option to set unique background themes and color accents. I’m not sure how that augments the bidding experience, but Yankovich says that was a feature many mobile users were requesting. Admittedly, I’m not a heavy eBay mobile app user. I’ve never felt compelled to bid for an item on the go, nor have I yearned to customize my eBay app wallpaper— but mobile is a booming business for eBay, so I don’t blame them for paying close attention to the consumer and test driving features on new platforms (Yankovich says, depending on feedback, some Microsoft-only features like saved searches may find their way to other platforms soon). According to eBay, mobile transaction occurs at least every second and the mobile division’s gross merchandise value (the total value of the transactions, not eBay’s profits) is on track to hit $1.5 billion this year. That’s still a far cry from eBay’s main web portal, which racks up roughly $60 B in GMV per year, but given the explosive growth in smartphone and tablet adoption, eBay doesn’t have the luxury to phone this one in (even if it is on Windows Phone 7…).
       
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| StockTwits Takes Financial Idea Network Mobile With New iPhone App Posted: 11 Oct 2010 05:08 AM PDT
The app includes much of the same functionality as StockTwits’ web site. You can access all of the stock-focused Twitter streams on the app, as well as the stock watch lists. Users can update their own streams of Tweets about stock from the app and follow and view other user profiles on the site. The app also features Chart.ly, a stock-chart service that was designed specifically for StockTwits (and subsequently acquired by the startup). Within the app, you can access charts and screencasts from traders. StockTwits has built in a realtime financial news feed from financial news site Abnormal News (which the company acquired early this year), and its online video channel. The app is essentially about taking the convenience of StockTwits’ financial idea and information network on the go. StockTwits has a fast growing community, and with the time-sensitive nature of the financial information that the site provides, the mobile app is sure to be popular amongst users.        
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| Web App Deployment Service AnovaStorm Secures $2 Million In Funding Committments Posted: 11 Oct 2010 02:59 AM PDT
Depending on the size of the company, the frequency of deployments, server environments and the nature of the applications, the launch of web apps can be a complicated, intensive task. That may sound like banal business but it’s an increasingly lucrative area in enterprise technology. Austin-based AnovaStorm, which is trying to solve this pain point, has just picked up $2 million in funding from CAG Investments. AnovaStorm, which is still in the product development stage, will get $300,000 up front and have $1.7 million in commitments from CAG. This is the company’s first seed round. The startup’s main offering is a web deployment service, called AnovaDeploy, which manages and partially automates the deployment of web apps for enterprise clients. It’s not the first web deployment service available (for example, Marc Andreessen-backed Makara offers a similar platform), but the startup has a decent pedigree— many of the top executives are from BuildForge, another application development service that had raised $8 million before being acquired by IBM. To understand how AnovaDeploy works and adds value to the chain it’s helpful to understand the typical deployment process. For example, a financial firm who wants to replace a consumer-facing application with a new version will likely have to consider how to launch the new app on its servers, how to handle security and compliance issues, and how to take down the existing app without a major service outage (any error could lead to severe service disruptions). The deployment can be further complicated by the dynamics of the server environment, especially as more firms transition to virtualized systems. Simply stated, AnovaDeploy’s web-based platform tries to streamline this process by managing all these moving parts. According to CEO and co-founder Derek Hutson, a business will download AnovaDeploy’s client on their system and from there, will be able to securely access the product’s web-based service. Once you’re connected, AnovaStorm can store information on your company’s deployments and the server environment. When you’re ready to actually run a deployment, you select the option from the main screen and AnovaDeploy offers a wizard to walk you through the process. The wizard will help you get information on your servers, understand what has to happen for deployment and see the differences between the new application and the one currently running. Throughout the deployment, AnovaDeploy also captures data (i.e. the steps taken, scripts that were run, and the server settings) which is added to an archive about past processes, a useful tool for financial firms that need extra documentation for compliance. Accordingly, Hutson sees a major market in the financial services sector, in addition to retail and manufacturing— or any business where a large volume of transactions is run on web-based architecture. The management team says AnovaDeploy is on track to be available by the first quarter of next year. According to Hutson, the pricing structure will likely involve a fee for a perpetual license and then an annual maintenance fee.
       
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| Gmail Add-On EmailOracle Just Destroyed Your Inbox Overload Lie Posted: 11 Oct 2010 01:32 AM PDT
I have fond memories of the old days of dial-up AOL (and no, not just because they’ve acquired us now). I remember thinking how stalkerishly awesome it was that I could see if another AOL user had read the email I had sent them, if they hadn’t replied yet. Then the Internet had to come along and ruin everything. But wait, a nifty startup just popped onto my radar which brings that functionality to Gmail. EmailOracle is going to seem like a nightmare to some people at first glance. But it’s actually really cool — and smart. The service, which is a browser plug-in, augments Gmail to make it easy to track any message you send, get analytics on it, and send yourself reminders about the email if you don’t hear back in a set number of days. How does this work? It’s simple really. EmailOracle inserts an image into each email you send. When that email is opened by the recipient, a call is made to EmailOracle’s servers to get that image. And this lets them know the email has been opened. They then send that information to you by way of a dashboard that is built into Gmail thanks to the plug-in (or on their site). It’s a nice little trick that MailChimp and other mail-tracking services use as well. But MailChimp and the rest are mainly geared towards email marketing. EmailOracle is going right after individual users. The service includes a base, free layer which allows you to track up to 20 emails a month. People who wish to track more can sign up for the Basic, Deluxe, or Pro accounts which cost $9.95, $19.95, and $99.95 a month, respectively. Each tier gives you access to a higher number of tracks per month (Pro goes all the way to 10,000), but Deluxe and Pro services also allow you to have customized signatures. This means you could do a 1 by 1 pixel image for the tracking — meaning it would be basically invisible to recipients.
That last bit may be a little unnerving to some. After all, I think we all lie from time to time about not having read an email when we actually have. But EmailOracle does allow for opting-out of this tracking if you click on the image in the email you receive. But again, if that’s a 1 by 1 pixel image, you’re probably not going to see it. In terms of installing the plugin and giving EmailOracle access to your Gmail account, the company has this to say:
Aside from the tracking ability, the reminder notifications are very useful too. Overall, this seems like a very useful add-on for Gmail. And maybe the best one ever depending on how creepy you are. The EmailOracle team was nice enough to offer 500 TechCrunch readers 200 additional tracks a month for free if you sign up with the code TECHCRUNCH1010. Your “I didn’t open your email yet” excuse just went extinct.
       
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| Tumbl.in Is StumbleUpon For Twitter Posted: 10 Oct 2010 09:13 PM PDT
Created by UCSC student Suchit Agarwal and Blippy engineer Rahul Thathoo, what’s awesome about Tumbl.in is the same thing that drives StumbleUpon, the delight in finding something random in through a link you wouldn’t have clicked on otherwise (see what I found second image below). What sets it apart is the Twitter social graph curation and the ability to toggle through lists. In the same space as Friendshuffle and Tweetbeat, pages you Tumbl are served up by frequency (the amount of times someone in your stream has tweeted a link) and recency. And, in case you don’t like random, you can also browse things you’ve favorited on Twitter, turning the service into a Twitter specific Instapaper.
Says Agarwal, “The idea is to get completely out of the way of a user and create a non-intrusive browsing experience while providing the user enough context (show them the tweet, for example).” Tumblin will soon (tonight even) be releasing a functionality to Tumbl links according to user interests, by crawling through the curated links shared by “Suggested Users on various topics, therefore aggregating Twitter by vertical expertise. Agarwal and Thathoo are working on other forms of Tumb.lin personalization as well as different visualizations for different media (videos for example). An iPad app is in the pipeline, which I’m thinking might along the same concept lines as Flipboard or Pulse but specifically for Twitter. Also: It’s probably not a bad idea for someone like StumbleUpon, Digg or even Twitter itself to buy this.
       
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| NSFW: Generation Whine – Why I’m Relieved not to be a Millennial Posted: 10 Oct 2010 06:55 PM PDT
- Veruca Salt On Friday, the New York times published an astonishing story, which was itself based on an astonishing survey: apparently "Millennials" would rather give up coffee for a week than surrender seven days of wifi. My astonishment (squared) came not from the results of the survey, you understand, but rather from two other realisations. Firstly, that someone at the New York Times thinks that Millennials preferring wifi to coffee is an interesting story. I mean, who of reproductive age would answer the question "wifi or coffee?" with "oh, I'll take coffee thanks"? Given that wifi is basically a synonym for Internet, you might as well phrase the question "which would you prefer: having to choose an alternative beverage, or being locked a dark room for a week?" Or as Eddie Izzard might put it, "cake, or death?" My second astonished realisation was that, according to the Wakefield Research study, a Millennial is anyone born between 1980 and 1993. As someone born in December of 1979, the narrowness of my escape terrifies me. After all, based on all the available evidence, Millennials are the most obnoxious, self-entitled, lazy and willfully ignorant generation ever to pollute the surface of the earth. I'm not kidding. Just spend a few minutes Googling the thousands of published articles about the rise of Millennials. I challenge you to find a single quote that leaves a positive impression of the generation, particularly when it concerns their attitude to work. Take, for example, this twenty-something who told CBS's 60 Minutes: "We have options… [W]e can keep hopping jobs. No longer is it bad to have four jobs on your resume in a year…. that’s the new reality for us. And we’re going to keep adapting and switching and trying new things until we figure out what it is.” And it gets worse (also from 60 Minutes)…
Meanwhile, over at PSFK.com ("Your go-to source for new ideas"), we're treated to an explanation of how to communicate with Millennials: "Experiences designed for them should be intuitive and easily understood at first exposure (and sight). They do not want to read instructions." Anyone who has ever ventured into the murky, illiterate world of Twitter Trending Topics might venture to go further. It's not that Millennials don't like to read and write, it's that many of them simply can't. Moving on. When it comes to Maslow’s self-actualisation needs, PSFK tells us that Millennials "want to be appreciated and understood." In fact, being understood is the last thing Millennials want: appreciation and understanding suggest accomplishment that deserves to be acknowledged. What Millennials really want is to be celebrated. Conan O'Brien summed up their attitude when he talked about kids boasting to him that they're going to be famous, without explaining what they will actually be famous for. Academics have studied this stuff. Research by Paul Harvey, assistant professor of management at the University of New Hampshire, found that Millennials as a whole “have unrealistic expectations and a strong resistance toward accepting negative feedback… managers are finding that younger employees are often very resistant to anything that doesn't involve praise and rewards." There was a time when society would react with horror at the prospect of an entire generation of such whiny, spoilt little brats. For some unfathomable reason, though, instead of condemning this army of latter-day Veruca Salts, we've decided to pander to them. A couple of weeks ago, my friend Andrew McLoughlin – CEO of Huddle – wrote a guest post for Forbes explaining how companies need to adapt in order to appeal to Millennials: "the thought of being chained to a desk day in and day out fails to appeal to them," he writes. Well, boo fucking hoo, I respond. Meanwhile, over at clothing retailer Zappos they've gone so far as to build nap rooms to keep their poor pampered employees happy. Seriously: nap rooms. Who are they employing? The Muppet Babies? "Hello, Mr Salt? I've read your daughter Veruca’s 60-page resume: you did an excellent job typing it for her. Now, we'd like to invite you to drive her in for an interview. What's that? She doesn't do interviews? Ok, well then we'll just go ahead and offer her the job anyway. What are her salary demands? Pink macaroons and a million balloons? That's no problem. We'll throw in some performing baboons too. Anything else? Nap rooms? Oh come now, Mr Salt, we have to draw the line somewhere…" Inevitably, this culture of entitlement has seeped through to product development. Last month at Disrupt, I had an on-stage argument with the creators of "Gripe", an app which allowed (as I put it) "self entitled new media douchebags" to bully front-line employees of stores, bars, hotels and restaurants into acceding to their every entitled whim. If the employee refuses to comply with whatever demands the customer makes, the app allows them to be shamed – by name – across Twitter, Facebook and every other social network. The ultimate Millennial app. Even Presidential politics has tapped into the essence of how Millennials think. The secret to Barack Obama’s success, we're told, was securing the support of Millennials. His campaign slogan? "Yes we can". The ultimate Millennial dog whistle. Which brings me neatly to The Social Network. When I watched the Facebook biopic for the first time a week or so ago, I thought it was a decently written flick, but I couldn't understand why so many reviewers felt that screenwriter Aaron Sorkin had captured the Millennial zeitgeist. For all his fictional faults, Fictional Mark Zuckerberg is hard worker – eschewing partying for work, and sticking with his project even when others doubted him. Hardly the behaviour of a Millennial. The second key character – Fictional Sean Parker – is a bit more Millennial (flaming out of businesses, spending money he doesn't have…) but as a child of the very late 70s (he's four days older than me) he's too old to qualify. If anything, the movie was the antithesis of the Millennial narrative: the Millennial as hard working company man and the non-Millennial as flaky attention-whore. On Friday, though, I saw the movie for a second time and about halfway through I realised that I'd been paying attention to the wrong characters. It's not Zuckerberg and Parker who sum up the Millennial generation: it's everyone else. Consider the Winkelvoss twins – both born in the 80s (Millennials: check!) – who abandon more noble principles (“we are gentleman of Harvard, we don’t sue and we don’t plant stories”) and spend the majority of the movie demanding compensation over a site that they didn't build. And consider the third of the three main characters: Eduardo Saverin. He too spends much of the movie demanding compensation and – what's the phrase? – "understanding and acknowledgment" over a business that he felt cheated out of. Moreover the real Saverin, nursing a years-old grudge, was reportedly one of Ben Mezrich's key sources for The Accidental Billionaires, the book on which the movie is based. The message is clear: I didn't get my way so rather than rolling with the punches and moving on ("have another idea" as Fictional Harvard Dean, Fictional Larry Summers advises the Fictional Winkelvosses in the movie), I'm going to whinge and whine and sue and slander until I get the payday that is my birthright. What could be more Millennial than that?        
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| Being Eric Schmidt (On Facebook) Posted: 10 Oct 2010 06:37 PM PDT
I’d like to apologize to Google CEO Eric Schmidt for impersonating him on Facebook today. It’s actually pretty easy, too easy, to do this. A reader emailed earlier today letting us know that someone had been impersonating them on Facebook based on a real, but unused, email account. I tested this by creating a fake Facebook account for Eric Schmidt based on his real email address. I tried to do this with a few Facebook execs first but it didn’t work because the emails I have for them are already associated with their real accounts. The email address I have for Schmidt, however, isn’t associated with any Facebook account. It worked. Of course I could have created a fake Eric Schmidt account without using his real email. But by using that email address Facebook immediately started suggesting friends to me – presumably people who have uploaded their contacts, including that email address, to Facebook in the past. I created a profile and quickly started adding friends. YouTube founder Chad Hurley accepted, as did Facebook Vice President Elliot Schrage. The profile isn’t particularly believable, but after a few high profile people became friends and were linked on the profile, the invites started pouring in. You Don’t Have To Verify Email Addresses To Use Them With FacebookAs soon as the account was created I was asked to verify the email address. I ignored that and instead just turned off all email notifications. But I can still use the account to add friends, accept friend requests, like status posts, and send and receive messages. Messages occasionally pop up saying “Before you can interact with other people on Facebook, you need to confirm your email address.” But most activity isn’t restricted at all. I’m fairly certain that the account will be disabled shortly. But what if I had faked a less high profile individual, and didn’t write on TechCrunch about it? The person being impersonated may see the Facebook confirmation email. But since they didn’t just create an account the obvious thing to do is to ignore that email, not to click on the link. But by ignoring it they are letting me continue to pretend to be them. The fix for this is easy – Facebook shouldn’t let people do anything at all with an account until they’ve verified their email address. But that creates extra friction with account creation, which is probably why they let people do so much before they verify. And lots of services do the same. But with Facebook, I immediately have access to a pretty robust social graph. All those suggested friends are people that have Eric’s email address, and as I showed it’s pretty easy to fool people into thinking I really was Eric. One person even sent a fairly private message to me. If Facebook doesn’t change this there’s one easy way to protect yourself. Just add every email address you use to your Facebook account. If there are old emails you don’t have control over any more you can’t add and verify them, so there’s still some exposure though. We’ve emailed Facebook for comment. I actually almost just messaged Elliot Schrage via the fake Schmidt account for comment, but that seems like poor form. ps – Max Hoat, the CEO of Livestream, just sent an email in to tips@techcrunch saying how funny it is that Schmidt only has six friends. He asks us to credit him if we post, so we are. This shows how believable this is. Here’s his email:
       
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| OMG/JK: The World Doesn’t Need Another Mobile Carrier Apologist Posted: 10 Oct 2010 02:48 PM PDT We’re back with the latest episode of OMG/JK, where fellow TechCrunch writer MG Siegler and I recap some of the week’s biggest tech stories. This week, we take a look at Facebook’s big Groups launch, the increasing rumors of an Apple subscription music service, and Google’s buddy-buddy relationship with the mobile carriers. We also talk about why Google TV may be a dud at launch (but could pull off an Android-like surge later on). Here’s a list of posts relevant to the topics we discuss this week:
       
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| FanGo Lets You Avoid Long Concession Stand Lines At Sports Events And Concerts Posted: 10 Oct 2010 12:47 PM PDT
The startup partners directly with the companies that run the concession stands at sports stadiums and teams and concert venues to offer consumers a free branded mobile app that lets you order food dirctly to your seat. The app’s interface is simple-the user can simply click to purchase food and drinks within the app, indicate their seat number, and pay for the items within the app as well. On the concession side, food providers at the stadium receive the orders through their systems and deliver the food to the consumer. Currently, FanGo is partnering with three facilities in the Kentucky area, including University of Kentucky, Louisville Slugger Field and KFC Yum Arena. FanGo’s co-founder Collin Wallace says that the amount of food ordered has gone up as much as 50 percent for these facilities since incorporating FanGo’s system. And partners can also serve advertising on the consumer iPhone app to generate additional revenue. Wallace says that the use case for FanGo extends beyond just sports and entertainment facilities. For example, FanGo is in talks with a major hotel chain to allow guests to use a branded iPhone app to order room service and other amenities. Another deal involves the ability for a traveler to order food from the app while at the airport, allowing travelers to avoid waiting in lines for food. While FanGo isn’t the first startup to try to do this (Mangia also provides a similar service for stadiums and venues), this could be a market with room for a number of competitors.        
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| The Social Network Wins Another Weekend At The Box Office With $15.5M In Ticket Sales Posted: 10 Oct 2010 10:10 AM PDT
So why is this important? While there’s been a drop in sales since last week’s ticket sales, clearly the movie, which was produced by Sony Pictures, still has the stamina and buzz to top the box office for a second week in a row. More importantly, the movie has gained Oscar buzz, overwhelmingly positive reviews from critics, and considerable attention from the media. This weekend, New York Times columnist Frank Rich called the movie “brilliant” in a piece about the intersection between Facebook, Twitter and politics. It looks like Sony is coming close to breaking even in terms of the the movie's budget, which was was rumored to be in range of $45 million to $52 million. But the movie studio is expecting The Social Network to bring in a total of $100 million, and it’s still unclear if the movie has the wherewithal to bring in that number. However, with continued marketing campaigns, media attention, and chatter about potential Oscar nominations, The Social Network could be a blockbuster hit. Photo Credit/Flickr/Evelyn Giggles        
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| Men and Women Entrepreneurs: Not That Different Posted: 10 Oct 2010 09:55 AM PDT
Take the issue of whether the desire to have kids or just run lifestyle businesses makes women averse to running startups. This is an accurate description of some women: they just aren't cut out for the rough-and-tumble world of entrepreneurship—which requires extremely hard work and in which most startups fail. But it's the same with men: men too avoid entrepreneurship because they fear risk and aren't ready to put in the long hours. There is no black or white: many women with children have succeeded with startups, while other successful women entrepreneurs have chosen not to have children. My research team systematically analyzed the backgrounds of 652 startup founders in the tech industry. We looked not just at the narrow slice of tech companies that gets featured most often on TechCrunch, but at the broader universe—those that economists, professors, and the general public would call high-technology companies. And then we studied the backgrounds of a sample of 549 company founders of companies in 12 industries that grow as fast as those in technology, and are equally important to the U.S. economy. Our research focused on "successful" startups—those that had made it out of the garage, had employees, and were actually generating revenue. We learned that the average age of a successful tech-company founder isn't 21 as is commonly believed in Silicon Valley, but 39; or, in the broader universe of high-growth companies, 40. Founders of high-growth companies are likely to be married and to have two or more kids. They typically have six to ten years of work experience and real-world ideas. They start companies because they get tired of working for others and want to build wealth before they retire. What stops most people from embarking on the path to entrepreneurship is fear of failure and of the amount of time and effort required. The question that was posed to me by a number of women's groups was: what is the difference between men and women founders? This is something that I hadn't given much thought to, but that I thought was worthy of analysis because it would reveal major differences. I expected that women had very different backgrounds and motivations from those of men.
But there is certainly an imbalance between the sexes entering high-tech fields, and that imbalance is increasing over time. The proportion of women studying computer science decreased from 37 percent in 1985 to 19 percent today, according to the National Science Foundation. The imbalance stems from the lack of encouragement that girls receive from their parents to study mathematics and science, and escalates when they join the workforce and receive discouragement. Only one percent of high-tech startups have a woman CEO; there are almost no women in the ranks of chief technology officers. I recently attended the Grace Hopper Celebration of Women in Computing, which had 2150 mostly young women in attendance. This was the largest gathering ever of women in computing in industry, academia, and government. The women discussed topics such as open-source development, computer-language design, and data visualization. And they got a chance to make friends. Many of the women I talked to said this was the first time they had met others like themselves, and they felt really encouraged to continue in computing and to make a difference. At an executive forum at the conference, I had a chance to discuss, with companies such as Microsoft, Google, and Symantec, the challenges they face in the recruitment, retention, and advancement of women technologists. Their common conclusion was that their company’s success depends on hiring the best talent. They knew, though, that the best talent sometimes was passed over because of unintentional discrimination caused the stereotype that women do not make good techies. The remedy we discussed was to require that their hiring executives interview at least one woman for every open position. The idea isn't to hire any candidate less qualified than the best, but to make sure that recruiting efforts include a diverse slate of candidates. In the experience of the company executives, when hiring managers had the chance to meet qualified female candidates, they were more likely to hire women. And to further level the playing field, companies should have at least one woman on the hiring team. People tend to hire those who are similar to them—therefore, the current demographics of the hiring team and company can influence the outcome of hiring. These are pretty simple remedies. I am not advocating that companies institute any kind of affirmative-action programs or stack the deck against men. But we need to recognize that negative stereotypes such as the ones highlighted in TechCrunch can be harmful and lead to discrimination. Let's not blame anyone, but let's act proactively to fix a problem that we all know exists. Editor's note: Guest writer Vivek Wadhwa is an entrepreneur turned academic. He is a Visiting Scholar at UC-Berkeley, Senior Research Associate at Harvard Law School and Director of Research at the Center for Entrepreneurship and Research Commercialization at Duke University. You can follow him on Twitter at @vwadhwa and find his research at www.wadhwa.com.        
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OpenFeint rival-
With this week’s release of 
Every day thousands of companies deploy web applications, take existing ones down and cross their fingers that everything goes according to plan.
“I want a party with roomfuls of laughter / Ten thousand tons of ice cream / And if I don’t get the things I am after / I’m going to scream”
Visiting concession stands at sports venues and concerts can be a frustrating experience. Not only do you often have to face long lines but you miss parts of the event you are watching. And the task of carrying back the foods to your seat can also be challenging in a crowded venue. Startup 
In any debate, it is easy to revert to anecdote and highlight examples that exemplify one point of view. Recent TechCrunch posts about women in tech have done just that. The latest of these claimed that 
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