The Latest from TechCrunch |  |
- In The Fight Against Apple’s iAds, Google Plays The Cross-Platform Card
- The Goldmine Of Opportunities In Gov 2.0
- Twitter Employees Get Google’s 20% Time… For The Entire Next Week
- Mark Cuban Enters Daily Deals Space With JungleCents Investment
- Boy, That Escalated Quickly. Chrome 8 Beta Due Shortly, Chromium Hits Version 9
- Talent Bleed At Palm Continues As Dev Leads Leave To Battle Closed Web “Dictatorships”
- Mike Maples: “You Have to Be Willing to Throw it all away” [Video]
- Windows: The Cadillac Of Operating Systems
- 180 Apps Launch At Rails Rumble 2010: Our Five Favorites
- Android Fans Rejoice: The Gingerbread Man Just Landed At Google HQ
- Keen On… Yossi Vardi: Why He Likes To Exploit Child Labor (TCTV)
- CoverPad For The iPad Makes Your Blog Feel Like Flipboard
- Video: The First Ever Foursquare Check-In From Space
- Zynga Goes Hiring Via Its New German Base
- The HP Slate’s Future Lies Within The PDA’s History
- Amazon Will Soon Allow Kindle Users To Lend E-Books
- Is a New Orkut-to-Facebook Export Feature What’s Crashing Facebook?
- Disrupt Winner Qwiki Arrives In Private Alpha (1,000 Invites)
- Most Confusing Press Release Ever
- Bijan Sabet on Why He Has a Hard Time Investing in Africa…and Boston [TCTV]
- Déjà Vu: Facebook Down Again. Like Buttons Vanish Again. Web Panics Again.
- Wall Street Journal Investigation Into MySpace Was Quietly Killed
- Secretary of Energy Chu: We Have Taken Our Technological Leadership For Granted
- PopTech Day One: Better Dead Than TED?
- Stripper Lessons Just $45 On Groupon
| In The Fight Against Apple’s iAds, Google Plays The Cross-Platform Card Posted: 23 Oct 2010 08:26 AM PDT
Of course, it’s not surprising that AdMob is pushing its multi-platform network as its competitive advantage; the openness of Google’s network is its badge of honor. But some well-known advertisers are actually choosing AdMob because of its multi-platform support for many devices, especially with the ability to target both iPhone and Android users (which is a steadily growing population). For example, Seattle’s Best Coffee chose AdMob for its campaign promoting the coffee company’s “Latte In A Can” product. Robson Grieve, the President of Creature, the ad agency responsible for the campaign, said that AdMob was the most logical choice because it was the “best chance to get a cross plaform consolidated campaign.” The campaign included ads ranging from standard banners, animated banners with text links, to full page interactive interstitials on both Android and Apple devices. So far, he says performance has been great. More than 139,000 users were delivered to Seattle's Best Coffee's mobile site from the ads, and the full page expandable units had an interaction rate of 5.7 percent. The Interactive Interstitial formats earned a click-through rate of 5.4 percent, while CPM placements averaged a CTR of 0.9 percent. Another well-known brand, car manufacturer Infiniti recently ran a cross-platform campaign across a range of devices including iPhone, Android and iPad with a series of advertisement formats that promised the interactivity and engagement of Apple’s iAd.
On the other hand, Dictionary.com recently ran a similar ad campaign with Apple’s iAd on iPhone devices, and saw its overall iPhone mobile app eCPM (effective cost-per-thousand impressions) increase by 177 percent. Dictionary.com declined to reveal CTRs but did say that iAds are performing two to three times better than the average mobile display ads. Other brands have also seen positive engagement results with the iAd platform. For example, an ad for Dove products saw a “double-digit” percentage of users who wanted more information about the product that was advertised, with 20 percent of viewers returning to the advertisement. In august, Nissan reported CTRs for its iAd were five times the click-through-rates of same campaign on websites. Of course, it’s tough to make an accurate comparison of AdMob’s data without comparable data from Apple’s iAd platform. We’ve received some statistics from the developer side on how much iAds are earning (which have been a mixed bag). A source with knowledge of the technology tells us that iAd CTRs are 0.5 percent to 0.8 percent generally, sometimes as high as 1 to 1.5 percent. One iAd developer claimed iAd CTRs as high as 11.8 percent (that’s compared to the 0.9 percent for the Seattle’s Best campaign). This seems high and could be an outlier. And this is not an apples to apples comparison (no pun intended) because we’re not sure if the CTRs are for the same type of ad format. This iAd data on CTRs is inline with other reports as well. On this Apple developer forum, a user anecdotally reported that the developer’s app was seeing zero clicks on 700 iAd impressions. In contrast, the developer writes, AdMob reports around 10 clicks per 2000, in his experience. Another developer writes, ” I had 3000 impressions and 23 clicks on AdMob (0.77% CTR), I had 2200 and 14 clicks on iAds (0.61% CTR).” Jason Spero, Google’s director of mobile for the Americas (he previously ran North America for AdMob before it was acquired by Google); says that because mobile is a collection of devices with different size screens, OS platforms, speeds and more, Google is trying to minimize the technology that advertisers need to deal with. There are a few things we know for sure. With a $1 million minimum ad spend, iAd is definitely not going to replace AdMob’s more flexible advertising network. And with continued growth in the number of iPhone users, Apple’s iAd platform will be appealing for those big brands who can afford it. However, mobile advertising is on track to become a $1 billion market next year and there seems to be enough room for everyone to play nicely and make a few bucks.        
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| The Goldmine Of Opportunities In Gov 2.0 Posted: 23 Oct 2010 06:00 AM PDT
But the brothers were wrong. Labor Department officials first said that they didn't have these data; and when challenged, they offered to provide millions of pages of printed reports—at a cost of five cents a page. The entire data set would have cost a fortune, filled 1400 boxes, and been impossible to use. Undeterred, Mike and Ryan started a lobbying campaign. With the help of several Senators, they caused the government to relent and give them electronic copies of the reports they needed. This was before Federal CIO, Vivek Kundra, and CTO, Aneesh Chopra, joined the White House, and before President Obama vowed to provide the American people with the data they owned and the ability to use it—so that entrepreneurs like the Alfreds wouldn't have to go begging. Eighteen months ago, data.gov was born, with the release of 47 government data sets of information. Today, there are more than 250,000 data sets and hundreds of applications that use them. New data sets are being made available every week, and localities like San Francisco, New York City, the State of California, and the Commonwealth of Massachusetts have launched web sites. Countries such as Canada, Australia, and the U.K are also releasing their data. Tim Berners-Lee, inventor of the world worldwide web, is behind the U.K. effort. And legendary publisher Tim O'Reilly is championing a new movement, called Gov 2.0, to maintain the momentum of change. With the data they obtained, Mike and Ryan were able to create a web site that allows consumers to learn how their retirement plans compare with others. Some retirement plans charge more than 4% a year in fees. How is anyone going to get to retirement paying 4% a year in fees? The BrightScope tools allow consumers—and employers—to easily learn when they are getting ripped off and quickly determine that a change needs to be made. The company is growing rapidly: last year it booked $100K in revenue; this year it expects to net $3 million and achieve profitability; next year it expects to hit the $10 million mark. The opportunities aren't just in mining financial data. Sonpreet Bhatia launched My City Way—a mobile applications platform, available in 30 cities around the world, that provides information on things like public restrooms, transit, traffic, tourist attractions, and restaurants. This is based on data provided by the local governments. So when you're traveling to San Francisco and need to know what BART train to catch or the latest restaurant-inspection results, you can look up San Francisco Way App on your iPhone. If you hate the NYC traffic situation, check out live traffic cameras or find a good parking spot using NYC Way App. Other city-based applications provide everything from volunteer opportunities to lookup of information on traffic-ticket and bill payment. My City Way has had more than a million downloads in its first year and expects to hit the 15 million download mark next year. The list of available data sets is endless:
What is happening with the opening up of government data is nothing less than a silent revolution. There are literally thousands of new opportunities to improve government and to improve society—and to make a fortune while doing it. Unlike the Web 2.0 space, which is overcrowded, Gov 2.0 is uncharted territory: a new frontier to explore, grow things on, and settle on. It’s fresh soil for unlikely seedling ideas that, if they take root, could lead to very successful ventures. So I encourage entrepreneurs to stake their claims as soon as they can. 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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| Twitter Employees Get Google’s 20% Time… For The Entire Next Week Posted: 22 Oct 2010 07:26 PM PDT
A post on their engineering blog outlines this. “We'll all be building things that are separate from our normal work and not part of our day-to-day jobs,” the post notes. This sounds a lot like Google’s “20 percent time” — Google employees are encouraged to spend up to 20 percent of their time working on interesting side projects not directly related to their actual work. In the past, as they dealt with scaling problems, Twitter hasn’t had such a luxury. But with New Twitter out the door (and its new backend), they apparently feel comfortable enough to screw around on some crazy stuff. That could be good news for us, the users. Some of the coolest stuff Google has come up with has been from 20 percent projects. Here’s the key blurb:
“Of course, we'll keep an eye out for whales,” the post humorously notes as well. Twitter has a Twitter account for the week as well where they’re asking for ideas. Update: One interesting other tidbit is that this type of thing is exactly how Twitter itself was born. A few years ago, Evan Williams podcasting company, Odeo, wasn’t doing so well in the face of tough competition from big players like Apple, so a bunch of employees broke into teams to come up with new crazy ideas. A young engineer named Jack Dorsey came up with Twitter…
       
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| Mark Cuban Enters Daily Deals Space With JungleCents Investment Posted: 22 Oct 2010 07:18 PM PDT
While JungleCents would not disclose the amount of funding received, this looks like it was at most a $1.5 million seed round. The concept behind JungleCents is a lead generation model similar to how airlines and travel companies such as Orbitz pay affiliate sites like Kayak between $10 to $30 for bringing in new customers. JungleCents, taking a cue from sites like Commission Junction, aims to reroute customer acquisition costs into their giftcard model, accepting giftcards from companies in lieu of cash and then running those giftcards as daily deals off the JungleCents site in order to hook in users. Negotiating deals with companies like Whole Foods, Beyond the Rack and Amazon, JungleCents offers their $20-$50 discount gift cards in limited quantity for a limited time. Founder Sameer Mehta describes the site, “sort of like a Gilt meets Groupon, but with higher margins and a stronger value proposition.” Unlike Groupon, JungleCents offers giftcards instead of coupons and its deals are national instead of local, “It’s clear to us that JungleCents has a different niche- focusing on online merchants, big national brands, and offering consumers cash value that they can apply to their selection, vs. a discount on a specific item, ” says Mehta. Mehta plans on using the extra funding to hire more people and extend out JungleCents marketing efforts but insists that having Mark Cuban as an investor is less about the money and more about the knowledge he brings to the table, “We get more value added from Mark’s investor contacts, and his knowledge is what it will take to push this deal to the next level.” Cuban most recently invested in tracking startup BlueCava.
Image: JD Lasica        
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| Boy, That Escalated Quickly. Chrome 8 Beta Due Shortly, Chromium Hits Version 9 Posted: 22 Oct 2010 07:11 PM PDT
A posting in their Chromium Google Group notes they’d like Chrome 8 to hit the beta stage sometime in the next several days. That’s pretty crazy considering that it was only 3 days ago that Google officially released Chrome 7. ”I’m working to shorten the beta cycle for this release as much as possible,” a developer wrote a couple days ago noting that meant they had to focus on blocker bugs (the bugs stopping a version from hitting beta). The developer also notes that this is a part of making sure Google’s ultra-fast six week release cycle remains feasible. Chrome 8 hit the dev channel a couple weeks ago, and seems pretty solid already, so they’re likely to hit their target. Notably, this version brings the option to have Google Instant baked into the Omnibox. And with version 8 about to go beta, perhaps it shouldn’t be a surprise the Chromium (the open source browser on which Chrome is based) already hit version 9 today. It’s certainly possible that we’ll see Chrome 9 released before the official build of Internet Explorer 9 (currently in public beta). Even if the numbers don’t mean much, I’m sort of wondering what happens in the next year — are we really going to see Chrome 14, 15, 16, etc? Chrome OS, meanwhile, continues to progress towards the version 1.0 launch. They’re currently on build 0.9.93.0, which uses Chrome version 8.0.552.9.        
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| Talent Bleed At Palm Continues As Dev Leads Leave To Battle Closed Web “Dictatorships” Posted: 22 Oct 2010 04:37 PM PDT
As both have confirmed on their personal blogs today, as well as the HP/Palm Dev Center blog, they’re leaving the company as well. This is a big blow to the Palm platform as the two lead the important developer relations team for the company. It was their jobs to get people excited and developing for webOS. Now that task falls to HP. The two lasted barely a year at Palm. When they were hired last September, it was considered a big coup, as the two are hugely respected in the web development community thanks to their work with Mozilla, and well-known thanks to their involvement with the blog Ajaxian. And the company wasted little time getting them out there on the talking circuit to ramp up interest in webOS. So why are they leaving? Almaer compares working for a big company to a wedding, and a small company as a first date. As he writes today, “I am not looking to dance down the aisle just yet, no matter how pretty the bride is ;)“. As such, he and Galbraith are starting their own new company. They aren’t sharing too much just yet beyond the fact that they’re interested in mobile, HTML5, JavaScript, and the idea of “open”. Here’s a key blurb from Almaer’s post:
So who is left of the key Palm team? Pretty much none of the execs beyond CEO Jon Rubinstein. And a bunch of other key people have trickled out over the past few months as well. Almaer and Galbraith will be consulting for HP as the works continues on webOS. But it’s pretty much a child being raised in a foster home at this point. Sometimes that works out, sometimes it doesn’t. Let’s hope it’s the former in this case.        
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| Mike Maples: “You Have to Be Willing to Throw it all away” [Video] Posted: 22 Oct 2010 04:35 PM PDT
If you are a entrepreneur– especially a first time entrepreneur or an entrepreneur outside of Silicon Valley– you need to stop what you are doing and watch this video. Yes, it is 45 minutes long. But it’s worth it. Last night at a Founder Institute event, super angel Mike Maples gave a talk about what he calls “pivots” and “thunder lizards.” Thunder lizards are startups born from atomic eggs that “emerge with attitude” want to disrupt and chew up their competition– both new world and old. They are big, chaotic, relentless and when successful, become huge companies. What helps make a thunder lizard successful is something Maples calls the “pivot.” This isn’t about product iteration– the pivot has to do with business model. Business model shouldn’t be confused with “business plan,” Maples says. A business plan is a static thing, a business model charts money flowing out to create a product and money flowing back in from that product. A startup’s entire reason to exist is to have more arrows going back in than arrows going out, and it’s always changing. To some corners of the business world that may seem obvious, but in today’s build-a-product-throw-it-out-there-and-flip-it startup culture it is actually contrarian. A big reason? Pivots are really hard and painful to do. In the talk below, Maples walks you through three examples he invested in: ngmoco, which did a pricing pivot; Chegg, which did a product pivot; and Odeo/Twitter, which did an entire company pivot. Maples doesn’t do that thing that startup PR departments love. He doesn’t sugar coat how horrifying and uncertain these moves were at the time. He doesn’t make the startups or investors sound like they’d seen the future through some magical product/market oracle. He shows that each of these pivots were made out of semi-desperation, and he talks about how risky each move was. In each case the entrepreneurs had something, but not enough to make a big business and they had to throw that thing they’d already slaved over away in order to get to the larger business. Watch the video for the details. I keep hearing from other super angels out raising funds that LPs are ga-ga over Maples and until this talk I wasn’t sure why. Now, I get it. In one talk, he details severals ways his investing model is distinct from the broader super angel movement: He still believes this business is about homeruns. He still believes you have to have a business model. He believes product fit isn’t just lots of people using your product, it’s about being able to make money delivering it, otherwise, it’s “wasted innovation.” He still believes that huge upside usually requires huge, gut-wrenching risk. Maples isn’t new school, he’s old school working in a very new funding reality where costs have collapsed, funding rounds are smaller and, as he says in the Q&A, entrepreneurs have all the power. “If you can’t get into thunder lizards can you really make a return?” he says. “If you don’t have a competitive advantage to get in the top 15 deals of the year, you don’t have a business. That’s been true the last 15 years and that will be true the next 15 years.” We saw a great example that the homerun nature of venture capital is still in tact yesterday when Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers announced its sFund at Facebook. Coming out of the late 1990s there were two top funds: Sequoia Capital and Kleiner Perkins. Sequoia kept believing in and investing in the Web– even during the post-crash aftermath. After the Friendster flame out, Kleiner Perkins did its own pivot to cleantech, with some partners even going so far as to say Web 2.0 wasn’t as big an opportunity. Clearly, the firm is zagging back. The reason they have credibility? Part of it is the firm’s history, but a lot of it is Zynga, and to a lesser degree ngmoco. Did Kleiner lose a step? Probably. They certainly missed a few of the Web 2.0 homeruns. But in the long run it may not matter that Kleiner didn’t believe in the movement when others were funding Facebook, LinkedIn and Twitter, because they got one of the top five companies in the wave and that’s what this business is about. And, while we always like traffic-driving fights at TechCrunch, I give Maples class points for not taking pot shots at competitors, saying “I try really hard not to comment on how other people do their job.” He just puts up results. And the stories of the three companies he talks about show not only how those entrepreneurs can pivot, but how he as an investors pivots with them.
       
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| Windows: The Cadillac Of Operating Systems Posted: 22 Oct 2010 04:21 PM PDT
Bear with me here. The pace of advancement in technology is such that ideas are often outpaced in just a few years. Formats, applications, and services pass by the wayside, having grown, bloomed, and withered at a speed which some years ago would be considered ludicrous. It’s a bit like the fins, wings, grilles, and other flourishes that increasingly decorated cars in the 50s. They sold, they were outdone, they were forgotten as the next version came along. And critically, at the time, the competition was between flourishes, not between cars. Yet at some point, that whole type of car would no longer be relevant. Are you picking up what I’m putting down?        
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| 180 Apps Launch At Rails Rumble 2010: Our Five Favorites Posted: 22 Oct 2010 04:03 PM PDT
Astute readers may have noticed a common thread between some of the apps that have been appearing on TechCrunch this past week – namely, that they were built in 48 hours. It’s not just a coincidence: those apps were just two out of nearly 200 that were built in 48 hours this past weekend during the fourth edition of the Rails Rumble coding competition. Each team of up to four people was given a server from Linode and a private GitHub repository. From there, it entirely up to them what to create. There were 180 teams that made it through to the end of the coding session. From there, an expert panel of judges pared it down to 24 finalists who are currently being put through their paces by anyone who wants to head over and check them out. You can vote on your favorites and help determine who will win the grand prize – the Rails Rumble Championship Belt. No, really, it’s a belt. The winners also get a Chuck Norris autographed photo – though they might prefer a Ron Conway autographed term sheet instead. It might not be that far off – 38 of the projects from last year are still up and running, and some have even become pretty polished applications with revenue streams. I’ve picked out five of my favorites below, but it was extremely hard to choose just five. Go check all of them out and vote for the winner before tomorrow at midnight. WarSquare: This app reminds me of what FourSquare used to be like – an all out war for mayorships – but taken one giant step further. Instead of turning the city into your playground, WarSquare turns it into your Risk board. You’re given tanks, infantry, and other armaments that you can use to do battle and “capture” venues, and then reinforce them against defenders. For instance, I just took over Twitter HQ (looks like Dick Costolo’s reign turned out to be short-lived):
Beer Checkin: Keep track of what you’ve been drinking. Pulling data and images in from FreeBase, this app keeps your beer “collection” in a central location and lets you share it with other beer connoisseurs. It’s currently in the lead as well – wonder what the team will do to celebrate if they win?
GitWrite: Pitched as “blogging for nerds,” GitWrite delivers a simple, clean interface for managing an entire blog from within a git repository (if you don’t know what ‘git’ is, you’re not the target audience). This app managed to split the vote between people who think it’s amazing and people who are asking why anyone would want to blog like this. I’m definitely in the former camp – this thing is awesome. Who cares if there are lots of other ways to do something already. It’s okay to build something just because it’s cool. When I set this up for myself, it was immediately obvious what to do – the timestamps serve as evidence to that point. Plus they have robots as mascots.
Go vs Go: Fans of the addictive board game Go will want to check this one out – it’s a really easy way to play online against either a computer or your friends. It’s remarkably polished and responsive for something that was put together in 48 hours – kudos to the team for what must have been some well-disciplined hacking.
Commendable Kids: Geared towards parents and teachers, Commendable Kids brings the gold star into the digital age. Kids earn badges for just about anything that they might need motivation for – babysitting, cleaning their room, doing well on a test, etc. Another app that really has some nice graphic design:
       
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| Android Fans Rejoice: The Gingerbread Man Just Landed At Google HQ Posted: 22 Oct 2010 03:33 PM PDT
Yes, the rumors were true: the newest version of Android, codenamed Gingerbread, is imminent. How do we know? Because there’s a new, massive treat that just arrived at Google headquarters: the Gingerbread Man. Google hasn’t said anything about the release of the new version of the OS, but they’ve posted a video to the Android developer YouTube channel that shows the arrival of this much-anticipated treat. He joins a variety of other gigantic sweets, including an eclair, a cupcake, and a bowl of frozen yogurt. Each of these desserts represents one of the code names of Android OS, and they’ve historically been positioned in front of the Android building on Google’s campus a few weeks before the company releases the source of the latest version of Android. In other words, expect some big Android news soon. Little is known about the upcoming release, other than that the Android team has paid a lot of attention to improving the user experience. Aside from a few blurry screenshots, little has been seen of the new version, but we don’t have to wait much longer.        
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| Keen On… Yossi Vardi: Why He Likes To Exploit Child Labor (TCTV) Posted: 22 Oct 2010 03:24 PM PDT
That's Yossi. Whereas most investors are a lot less intelligent than they appear, so Vardi is much smarter than he seems. Behind all the self-deprecating jokes about his wife, his robust physique and his sartorial inelegance (he was just voted one of the five worst dressed people in Israel, a badge he wears – to excuse the pun – with great honor), Vardi is one of the very few wise men of tech. And that wisdom is derived from his refusal to take himself or his manifold achievements too seriously. Beyond his wisdom and humor, what strikes me most about Vardi is his generosity of spirit. Here's a guy who makes bets on people rather than businesses. So if he likes you, he'll invest in you. That's Yossi – an unselfish man in a selfish world.        
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| CoverPad For The iPad Makes Your Blog Feel Like Flipboard Posted: 22 Oct 2010 03:17 PM PDT
PadPressed, the WordPress plugin that makes your blog feel like an iPad app when accessed from a native browser, today launches its CoverPad, which takes the “browser to iPad app” concept one iteration further and recreates the paginated feel of Flipboard in the iPad browser with HTML5/CSS3. Says founder Jason Baptiste on the motivation behind launching the app, “We thought, what’s the craziest thing we could do to push the browser? And this was it.” Baptiste hasn’t actually spoken with anyone at Flipboard about this. CoverPad features include the Flipboard-esque 3-D page flipping, accelerometer resizing based on landscape or portrait mode, HTML5 caching for faster loading and the ability to add the your blog’s app as a native to the homescreen. All PadPressed integrations now have a full loading screen, removing the browser bar so you virtually can’t tell the difference between your blog’s web page and a native app. Baptiste tells me that PadPressed is currently profitable, with over 150 customers (including GE and Dictionary.com) using the plugin to make blogs look like iPad apps on the iPad browser. He also tells me that since it first came out three months ago, the New York Times began charging $50,000 up front to license their tablet CMS-viewing technology, versus $50 for the PadPressed plugin which includes both the original app and CoverPad. CoverPad is PadPressed’s last WordPress-only play, as Baptise wants to transform its core business into a hosted service focusing on easy tablet publishing for all CMS and ebook publishers i.e. if someone accesses your Posterous blog from an iPad it automatically switches to PadPressed. You know tablets are here to stay when people start offering tablet-specific publishing as a service.
       
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| Video: The First Ever Foursquare Check-In From Space Posted: 22 Oct 2010 03:14 PM PDT
Earlier today, we wrote about the first ever ‘check-in’ from space, when NASA astronaut Doug Wheelock used Foursquare from the International Space Station. And now we’ve got video footage. Remember, he’s 220 miles away from Earth, and he’s floating in zero gravity. He’s also effectively the Mayor of Space. Not too shabby. Upon checking in, astronaut Wheelock unlocked a special NASA Explorer Foursquare badge, and received the following message:
The nifty video was created by JESS3, which also helped make the Foursquare/NASA partnership a reality.        
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| Zynga Goes Hiring Via Its New German Base Posted: 22 Oct 2010 02:33 PM PDT
We’ve discovered new job postings for Germany which indicates it’s pretty serious about the German asset it recently acquired in the form of Dextrose AG in Frankfurt.        
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| The HP Slate’s Future Lies Within The PDA’s History Posted: 22 Oct 2010 01:37 PM PDT
PDAs were the hot gadget item before smartphones. They instantly earned the owner geek credibility points and models were coming from nearly every manufacturer between 2000 and 2004. HP had the Jornada, and later the iPAQ after buying Compaq. There was the Dell Axim, the Linux-powered Sharp Zaurus, and of course the top-dog Palm Pilots. Sony picked up on the trend and outed the Clie line that went toe-to-toe with Palm. These PDAs started out pretty much as premium Palm alternatives. They were more solid, came with a rich multimedia suite built into the Palm OS, but of course commanded a higher price. Over time Sony evolved the form factor while sticking with the Palm OS, although they hid the core OS with their own skin developed to better match the natural hardware controls.        
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| Amazon Will Soon Allow Kindle Users To Lend E-Books Posted: 22 Oct 2010 01:18 PM PDT
The lender will not be able read the book during the loan period. And not all e-books in the Kindle Store will be lendable; this will be decided by the publisher or the rights holder to the work. Interestingly, Barnes and Noble’s e-reader, the Nook, has been allowing lending for some time now. Like Amazon’s upcoming lending feature, LendMe also allows users to lend books for a 14 day period. The details of how the Kindle’s new lending feature will work are still unclear. B&N’s LendMe allows users to send books to a friend’s Nook, computer, or Nook app. Also included in today’s post is news that Amazon will be making Kindle newspapers and magazines readable on its Kindle apps. the feature will be rolled out first on iOS apps, and then on Android and other apps soon. As the statement says, Amazon ‘s “vision is Buy Once, Read Everywhere,” and this will allow users to access their magazines and newspapers on all of their devices. This could be a big deal for Amazon, because it will allow iPad owners who use the Kindle App to read the newspapers and magazine they’ve subscribed to on the application, as opposed to using other apps or even the mobile web on the tablet device.        
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| Is a New Orkut-to-Facebook Export Feature What’s Crashing Facebook? Posted: 22 Oct 2010 12:42 PM PDT
This is important for two reasons: Brazil and India. Orkut is still by far the dominant social network in Brazil for the simple reason that that’s where everyone’s friends still are. And while Facebook has surpassed Orkut in India, Orkut is still a strong number two. While, most people have identities on multiple social networks, most of us rely on one core service to organize our social lives more than the others. And because of the hassle of filling out a new profile, adding all new friends and importing photos all over again, changing social networks is hard. This is a big reason Friendster kept its lock on Southeast Asia as long as it did– although in places like Indonesia that too has been eroded by Facebook in the last year or so. But for whatever reason, Orkut has been stickier, despite Google not putting a lot of work behind keeping it competitive. Not anymore. I wouldn’t be surprised if Brazil and India are rivaling Indonesia as Facebook’s second largest audience in a few weeks. From what I can tell, the swarm caught Facebook by surprise and I imagine it caught Google by even more surprise. For a company so intent on going social– did they just bungle two of the huge markets where they had an edge? We’ve called both companies for comments and will post more when they get back to us.        
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| Disrupt Winner Qwiki Arrives In Private Alpha (1,000 Invites) Posted: 22 Oct 2010 12:31 PM PDT
When Qwiki won the top $50,000 prize at TechCrunch Disrupt a few weeks ago, after much celebrating, co-founders Louis Monier and Doug Imbruce promised the service would start to open up privately in October. Today, they are making good on that promise and launching in private alpha, gradually letting in the 50,000 people who have already signed up for access. But if you are reading this post and are one of the first 1,000 people to sign up at this special link, you can get in now and start trying it out. Qwiki is somewhere in between a visual search engine and a highly interactive and entertaining Wikipedia. It assembles information on the fly for millions of topics, bringing together images and text in a truly magical way. I’ve been playing around with it and learning all about Jellyfish, Kanye West, black holes, Thomas Keller’s Per Se restaurant, Google exec Marissa Mayer (who was one of the finalist judges), great white sharks,, and even my hometown. The service scours many information sites on the Web, mostly Wikipedia, but also LinkedIn, Google Maps, Fotopedia, and CrunchBase, and creates a Qwiki that you can watch about that topic. A Qwiki looks like a narrated video, with matching images popping up as a female speech-to-text voice tells you about the topic you’ve chosen. All of this is done algorithmically. It is not reading any one given entry in Wikipedia or anywhere else, but rather summarizing that information first and then presenting it in a brief and very visual way. This would be awesome on an iPad, which they are also working on. After each Qwiki is completed, you are presented with a selection of related Qwikis so that you can keep on exploring. Of course, there is also the search box. Currently, there are Qwikis for about 3 million topics and growing. This is still a private alpha though, and if you do sign up, you will be asked to provide feedback after each Qwiki so they can improve them before opening up the service to the public in a few months. Below is Qwiki’s demo again from the final round at Disrupt:
       
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| Most Confusing Press Release Ever Posted: 22 Oct 2010 12:24 PM PDT
Dear PR industry, This is why reporters are oftentimes derisive when they refer to you. Not one of these 400 or so words refers to the fact that Mobile, Alabama isn’t the first thing you think of when, as a tech blogger looking for news, you see the word “mobile” in a press release headline. A human would have made a joke about it. Best, Alexia
       
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| Bijan Sabet on Why He Has a Hard Time Investing in Africa…and Boston [TCTV] Posted: 22 Oct 2010 12:00 PM PDT
I asked Sabet about how fundraising went for Spark Capital, which just raised its third fund, and how much that early investment in Twitter helped the process. We also talk about a running theme on this show– how startups outside the US can get US VC attention, and the limited investments that Spark has done overseas. We talk about basic ways in which Spark– and Sabet in particular– like to be pitched, the slide that will turn him off immediately and whether he ever funds one-man startups. We have an interesting chat about the travel space and the degree to which the big opportunity is in smaller, fragmented offerings. (Part three hundred in my series on why existing travel incumbents do not work for anything other than flights and car rentals.) We even talk about the roles that non-travel sites like Foursquare or Hunch could play in solving these greater problems. And we close with a really interesting discussion about the state of Web investing in Boston, where most of the Spark partners live but where they do very few deals. In an age when you can start a Web business anywhere, why can’t this former hub of venture capital– still flush with universities, talent and cash– get its mojo going? Sabet tells us what he’s trying to do about it.        
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| Déjà Vu: Facebook Down Again. Like Buttons Vanish Again. Web Panics Again. Posted: 22 Oct 2010 11:55 AM PDT
Some of our writers have seen it intermittently up over the past 20 minutes or so. While others say it has been totally down the whole time. The Internet confirms such reports. Update: Quite a few commenters are suggesting this may have to do with a new Facebook feature that allows users to link their profiles with their Orkut profiles. Something tells me Google won’t like that tool too much.
       
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| Wall Street Journal Investigation Into MySpace Was Quietly Killed Posted: 22 Oct 2010 11:40 AM PDT
We also noted that the Wall Street Journal’s sister company, MySpace, wasn’t mentioned in the article – either as a disclosure of a conflict of interest or a discussion of whether MySpace was doing the same thing. The WSJ was actually investigating MySpace, says a source close to the company, and were planning on publishing the information the investigation uncovered. MySpace has had three different CEOs in the last two years, as well as a period where they were led by co-presidents. If you count Jon Miller, who runs the whole show, they’ve had four CEOs. Based on MySpace’s overall level of disorganization and constant leadership changes, we’re not surprised that the WSJ investigation landed on their doorstep, and discovered questionable privacy practices. But the story was shelved. Why? One source says that MySpace management blew a fuse over the story, which would have been published just days before the big relaunch of the MySpace site. Press is being briefed now on the new MySpace, and having a big privacy blowup during the relaunch was exactly not what MySpace management wanted to happen. If the WSJ killed the MySpace article because of pressure from their sister company then they have shown that their editorial agenda is under the control of their parent company, News Corp. If they killed it for another reason, then what is it? The Facebook story was enough for a front page article plus a series of supporting articles. MySpace’s transgressions appear to go much deeper, so why weren’t they included? Update: Oh look, just a few hours after this post. The WSJ says our “claim is ridiculous in every sense.” Except that this article was supposed to be published earlier this week, and wasn’t. And never would have been if not for our article. What’s fascinating to me is not only the timing, but also the fact that we clearly were correct in knowing that a MySpace article was written. The WSJ says we’re ridiculous, but the fact that our sources were undeniably right about half the story suggest to me they were right about the other half, too.        
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| Secretary of Energy Chu: We Have Taken Our Technological Leadership For Granted Posted: 22 Oct 2010 11:21 AM PDT
Speaking to Urs Hölzle, Google’s SVP of Operations, Chu told a room full of Googlers that although he was largely optimistic about America’s green future, he was frustrated by how much the US had fallen behind and how “we have taken our technological leadership for granted.” Several times throughout the session, Chu brought up the example of China, a country that has been uber aggressive in funding green initiatives. He rattled off numerous examples of their unbridled ambition, including China’s plan to erect 25 nuclear power plants and the installation of “the highest voltage lines in the world to port renewable energy — they can now port electricity 1900 kilometers, at a 6% loss.” By comparison, Chu says, America invented many of the world’s green technologies, but has dramatically stumbled behind, as rival countries have caught up, and in some instances, surpassed our efforts. He brought up the case of nuclear reactors, power electronics and solar cells (which were initially invented by Bell Labs, but the US now only has a 6% market share). Despite the current bleakness, Chu says he has seen a few rays of hope. In the abstract form, he is comforted by the entrepreneurial spirit in green tech. Speaking more specifically, he’s encouraged by the glimmers of progress he sees in the troubled auto industry. Chu says the industry didn’t “just” have a near death experience, “it was a death experience,” but recently Ford passed Toyota’s rating in initial owner defects and (citing a recent NY times article) has also impressed consumers by apparently building a better product. “In order to compete you don’t go to Congress and ask for better shelter, you make better stuff,” he said. Towards the end of his Q&A, Hölzle also asked Chu if he thought Google was doing enough in the arena of green tech. Chu essentially said yes, applauding Google for its energy initiatives and approaching it with a pragmatic, capitalistic mindset. Although he doesn’t disparage altruism, he says real, sustainable transformation will come from solutions that are also appealing for selfish reasons. “I keep on telling my folks, or anyone that will listen… that saving energy is something you shouldn’t do because it’s a good and right thing…You save energy because you’re going to save money…You can get all the population [with], ‘do this because its good for you.’” After the fireside chat, Chu was swiftly whisked away to meet with the primary energy leads at Google (in operations, investments, engineering, etc.) for a few closed-door meetings.        
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| PopTech Day One: Better Dead Than TED? Posted: 22 Oct 2010 11:12 AM PDT
"Oh, you're heading to Camden? It's lovely this time of year." "Welcome to Camden! You've come at the right time of year!" Another thing that everyone here is keen to point out is that PopTech, the conference that has dragged me 21 hours out of my comfort zone to the jewel of the Maine coast, is not TED. I mean, yes, like TED, it claims to be filled with “world-changing people, projects and ideas“; yes, like TED, it costs a small fortune to get here and, yes, like TED, the attendees and organizers seem somewhat unhealthily obsessed with TED. But despite all of that, it isn't – and everybody involved wants to be quite clear on this – TED. As if to underscore that message still further, the theme of this year’s event is ‘Brilliant Accidents, Necessary Failures and Improbably Breakthroughs’ which, for the first few hours of day one, translated as ‘why things you might have seen at TED are bullshit.’ Kevin Starr of the Mulago Foundation spoke about evaluating whether fashionable ‘world-changing’ inventions have any real value. A "big ass straw" that promises to filter water in real time as you drink it? Bullshit. It takes three minutes to filter a glass of water and costs well over a week's income for people in the poorest regions of the world to buy. One Laptop Per Child? Starr dismisses it out of hand: “what’s the point?”. This despite the fact that not so long ago Nicholas Negroponte previously presented the device – to rapturous response – at, well, PopTech. Next came Water For People‘s Ned Breslin, taking to task companies who build wells in the developing world but don’t bother to check back a year or so later to see if they’re still working. His solution was an app – Flow – which encourages charity workers to report which wells are still operational and which aren’t. (It seems neat, but I couldn’t help but wonder – as he had urged us to do with the wells – whether anyone will be using it in five years time.) By the afternoon of the first day, though, the failure theme had started to run out of steam. Which I suppose is appropriate. Instead we enjoyed a guy who plays drums using a special glove and a Wii-mote, we heard David de Rothschild talk about making a boat out of recycled materials and sailing it across the Pacific, and we listened to Siddhartha Mukherjee discussing the history of cancer (every attendee receives a free copy of his book, The Emperor of All Maladies: A Biography of Cancer.) And with that, the anti-TED conference had morphed into a kind of mini-TED. The speakers were fascinating and talented and inspiring and all the things good speakers should be, but PopTech’s unique selling point remained hazy at best. It was only when I grabbed drinks later with some of the attendees that I started to understand what makes PopTech different and why some had even stopped attending TED and chosen to come to Maine instead. “TED is all talk and no action now” said one. “At TED it’s almost impossible to get to meet the speakers; here everyone just mingles together” said another. While not mentioning TED directly, board member (and PDF founder) Andrew Rasiej emphasised that PopTech is less about lectures and more about starting conversations (metaphorically and literally) between attendees that will last throughout the rest of the year. And despite the $3,000 ticket price, it’s that pseudo-egalitarianism where PopTech beats TED hands down. TED has become such a celeb-filled mutual handjob that, rather than being a means to an end, attending the conference is the end. People attend, they talk a good talk, they give a standing ovation and then they leave. Like making friends on MySpace, the act of showing up comprises the entirety of the relationship. I mean, does anyone really think that Bill Gates needs to come to TED to meet Bill Clinton? Or that the average TED attendee is going to get a meeting with either? At PopTech you’ll find fewer celebrities (cf OK Go) and much less backslapping. Instead you’ll meet 600 extraordinary, ordinary people (to steal Condoleezza Rice’s book title) stranded together in Maine who have no alternative but to talk to each other and make connections. A guy who is using a quirky feature of SMS to help HIV education in Africa connects with – someone using mobile phones to assist medics in emerging markets connects with – a guy keeping track of functioning wells in Africa connects with – a dude who overcame personal challenges helps lions connects with – and on and on, ad infinitum, ad meliora. Those people have come to PopTech not (just) because it’s cool, but because they want to meet other interesting people with whom they might be able to continue working after the conference ends. I’ve met at least half a dozen people who had made contacts at PopTech that resulted in actual, real-world partnerships either in the form of mentorship, investment, technology or distribution. And if these relationships bear fruit and the people, projects and ideas born become world famous… well, then maybe in a year or two you’ll see them at TED. PopTech continues through to the end of Saturday; you can watch the live stream here – videos of previous speakers are here.        
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| Stripper Lessons Just $45 On Groupon Posted: 22 Oct 2010 10:26 AM PDT
While a little (mostly NSFW) Googling does confirm that pole dancing is in fact a form of “exercise,” the spate of stripper dance inspired deals on deals sites like Groupon and Living Social have finally alarmed someone other than us. Brought to our attention via Twitter this morning, today’s Groupon Chicago deal for “Pole-Dance Classes at Sheila Kelley S Factor” is raising some eyebrows, judging from the comments:
Hmm … Should Groupon set up a “no pole dancing” filter? While Rebecca K. likens today’s offering to a deal for a gun range or abortion clinic, not everyone is a hater … “It’s fun, and a safe place to let your inhibitions go without judgement [sic]. –donna m.” ([sic], ominous) And more from the comments… “What's the cover charge if I just want to go and watch?” Unrelated: DancingErick.com |
While there are many players in the mobile advertising market, there’s no doubt that there’s a little bit of a rivalry between Google’s ad network AdMob and Apple’s new foray into mobile ads, iAd. Some say iAd is 
Of course, Google’s AdMob also helps companies target Android devices as well. Restaurant reservation platform OpenTable also chose AdMob to promote its Android app. The company ran CPC text ads on mobile websites and more than 16,000 Android apps on the network. During the campaign, daily downloads of the app increased by 125 percent and installs took place over 75 different Android devices. OpenTable also ran and iOS app promotion campaign with AdMob as well, and saw positive results.
Seeing a need to help 60 million Americans manage their $4 trillion dollars in retirement accounts, 
Well this is sort of interesting. Apparently, Twitter has just kicked off something they’re calling their “Hack Week”. But instead of it being a time when various third-party developers get together to hack on things off of Twitter’s APIs, Twitter employees themselves are going to see what crazy cool things they can come up with.
Gift card affiliate startup 
Whenever I ask Google about the versions of Chrome and Chromium, they’re quick to point out that the numbers don’t mean much these days. That said, they still show how quickly the search giant is able to get features implemented that they want to see in their browser. And they’re apparently not happy with the already fast speed at which things are progressing. They want things to go faster. So they’re working to speed things up even more.
Back in August, while we were in the middle of confirming 
Earlier this month, I had the great pleasure of spending some time at the 
In between trying to 
Remember the Sony Clie PDA line? Yeah, the big flip-style ones. These were the 
According to 
It was almost exactly one month ago that 
A few days ago the Wall Street Journal published a series of articles about a supposed Facebook privacy breach. We and others noted that the 
If there's one thing I know for certain it's that Camden, Maine is lovely this time of year. I know this because since I arrived here, a little more than 24 hours ago, every man, woman and cab driver I've encountered has been sure to tell me.
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