The Latest from TechCrunch |  |
- Duckshead Revisited: Apple Approves DuckPhone App After Minor Changes
- Replicators, Innovators, and Bill Gates
- Zynga Cofounder Andrew Trader Out
- Meet The New Foursquare. Same As The Old Foursquare — But Prettier.
- ReBuzzThis Wants To Be The TweetMeme Of Google Buzz
- Shatner Shills MyOuterSpace.com: A Social Network For Sci-Fi Geeks
- Burbn’s Funding Goes Down Smooth. Baseline, Andreessen Back Stealthy Location Startup.
- TwitCasting Lets You Stream Live Video And Tweet Simultaneously From Your iPhone
- Conan Finally Follows Someone On Twitter: A Random Woman Who Likes Peanut Butter.
- Y Combinator’s Browsarity Allows You To Donate Affiliate Fees To Charity
- IE6 Laid To Rest. Pictures, Videos, And Flowers From Microsoft.
- Redpoint Invests $4.4 Million In Fast Growing Posterous
- Mad Lib Competition: The Results Are In…
- The Daily Show Reveals Chatroulette To Be Filled With Creepy Journalists
- Sh*t My Dad Says Engages Google Buzz
- Google Breathes Life Back Into reMail By Open Sourcing The Project
- Google Acquires Docverse To Further Office Arms Race
- Apple Stock Hits All-Time High, Near $200B Market Cap
- What Would You Do For $5?
| Duckshead Revisited: Apple Approves DuckPhone App After Minor Changes Posted: 06 Mar 2010 07:05 AM PST  Remember that guy who made the DuckPhone iPhone app? And how his app was rejected due to "Minimum User Functionality?" Well, Apple just approved his app after he added some news streams and a twitter feed from the stars if Jersey Shore. It just goes to show that one man's dumb garbage app is another man's acceptable piece of useful software. Justice, friends, has been served.
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| Replicators, Innovators, and Bill Gates Posted: 06 Mar 2010 07:00 AM PST My last post triggered some interesting debates in the blogosphere about whether entrepreneurs were a product of nature or could be nurtured. It's not black or white. People are a product of their upbringing and education. Average humans can achieve extraordinary feats when they really try. I'll concede that, like some great athletes, some great entrepreneurs may have something different about them that gives them a special advantage (this is a topic that I am presently researching). But not every entrepreneur needs to reap the same fortune as Bill Gates or Mark Zuckerberg to qualify as a success. You can build a good lifestyle business that pays the bills, or that does good for the world, and be considered a successful entrepreneur. (And you'll probably be happier and gain more respect than most billionaires do.) Entrepreneurship isn't all about the IPO. I hold steadfast to my belief — based on my experience in building two great technology companies and in mentoring around 200 entrepreneurs over some years and on what I've learned from my academic research into the background and motivations of entrepreneurs — that entrepreneurs can be made. People born into entrepreneurial families may have the advantage of knowing the ups and downs of business, and, all else being equal, people from entrepreneurial families are certainly more likely to become entrepreneurs than others are. But the skills required to build, manage, and grow a business can be learned, and this education can level the playing field. VCs who judge entrepreneurs based on age, sex, ethnicity, or family background are doing their limited partners, and society, a great disservice. There was one criticism of my last post that caused me to do serious introspection. The question: was Bill Gates's dad an entrepreneur? I cited Gates Jr. as an example of an entrepreneur who didn't come from an entrepreneurial family. A number of readers, including Jason Calacanis, pointed, out that Gates Sr. was a partner in a law firm, and so an entrepreneur, arguing that my citation was therefore faulty. I've debated and written about this issue before. The broader question is whether anyone who starts a business, whether it is a law practice, a computer consulting firm, or a dry-cleaning store, is an entrepreneur. Management guru Peter Drucker would have answered with a definitive No. He wrote, "Not every new small business is entrepreneurial or represents entrepreneurship… entrepreneurs innovate. Innovation is the specific instrument of entrepreneurship.” Drucker didn't mince words. When I told this to some of my friends, I heard loud protests. Murali Bashyam, who started an immigration-law practice, insisted he was as much an entrepreneur as Bill Gates and his dad. Murali threatened, "if you decide that I'm not an entrepreneur, I might decide that the daily stress of growing and running a business, financial risks involved, and all the other headaches that come with creating something out of nothing is just not worth it. Maybe I'll close up and go work for someone, where I can earn a steady and high salary and go home at 5 pm".
After agonizing over this for weeks, I went to my friends at the Kauffman Foundation, and they referred me to their book titled "Good Capitalism, Bad Capitalism". Carl Schramm and Bob Litan wrote that all who take the risk are entrepreneurs, but that there are two types of entrepreneurs: "Replicative entrepreneurs", who constitute the vast majority of small businesses (such as restaurants and dry cleaners), and "innovative entrepreneurs" — the rare few who bring new products/services to market or who pioneer new production methods (such as Walmart, eBay, and Dell). Under the Kauffman definition, Sue would qualify as an "innovative entrepreneur", because she is developing new services and pioneering new methods. In contrast, Murali would be a "replicative entrepreneur", because he delivers a standardized service in a field that charges primarily by the hour for its time. Murali could well end up running a huge law firm and be worth many millions, but that doesn’t make him particularly innovative in his business model. So Bill Gates Sr. was a "replicative entrepreneur", and Gates Jr. was an "innovative entrepreneur" — whom Silicon Valley calls an "entrepreneur". TechCrunch founder, Mike Arrington, who used to be a lawyer for Wilson Sonsini Goodrich & Rosati, would qualify as an "innovative entrepreneur", because he created a new product (a blogging site) and was a pioneer in the new-media world.
What's the moral of the story? Don't listen to the naysayers who are simply defending their informed views and biases by telling you that it's nature or some special DNA that makes entrepreneurs or leads to entrepreneurial success. Don't even be discouraged if you're in a mundane, replicative industry. You can learn the skills needed to become a successful entrepreneur, and you can innovate. 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. Follow him on Twitter at @vwadhwa.      
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| Zynga Cofounder Andrew Trader Out Posted: 06 Mar 2010 12:46 AM PST
As of a month ago Trader’s title had been downgraded to VP of Partnerships and Studio Services, although no top sales or business development replacement executive has yet been named. Why is he gone? No one is saying. CEO Mark Pincus says only “AT [Andrew Trader] and zynga have parted ways. He made an awesome contribution. We need to continue scaling the company.” Trader hasn’t yet returned a phone call asking for his comment. Zynga’s revenue growth has been nothing short of astronomical over the last 18 months, so it would be hard to blame him for not bringing in the dollars. Perhaps he took the fall for the Scamville saga although that has largely blown over now. Trader was with Zynga nearly three years, so he’s vested on a lot of his stock. Given how much money is at stake, the whole story about why the first cofounder of Zynga has left the building may never come out. Zynga raised $180 million in December 2009, at a rumored valuation of above $2 billion. And no, I have no idea why he’s holding a banana in the picture.      
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| Meet The New Foursquare. Same As The Old Foursquare — But Prettier. Posted: 05 Mar 2010 09:52 PM PST
Earlier today, the latest version of Foursquare, 1.6, went live in the App Store for a brief period of time. I’ve been using the build for a couple of days, and while the functionality isn’t all that different from the previous versions, the look-and-feel has been completely revamped. This is notable because the vast majority of Foursquare users are still using the iPhone (67%). So this update will be a welcome change for many, especially as Foursquare and Gowalla continue to compete. Gowalla, while smaller than Foursquare, is generally considered to be the prettier of the two. Certainly, with its new website revamp, Gowalla still holds that title on the web, but the new Foursquare app looks pretty nice compared to the Gowalla iPhone app now. So what’s different? The entire color palette is now a mixture of silver, blue, white, and bright green. Some may not like the bright green elements, but it’s effective to let people know where to click when you want to check-in. Also new is the fact that the “Shout” button is emphasized on the upper left part of the main screen. “Shouting” is basically the equivalent of tweeting out a message, it allows you to send a message to your followers without having to check-in at a place. It’s a bit odd that this is now a main button on the left side while the “Check-in” button is on the right side (considering most people read left to right). Another new element is the idea of categories. As we wrote about a couple of days ago, Foursquare is starting to categorize venues into certain categories. While there isn’t much you can do with these yet on the new iPhone app, you are able to see icons that represent how a venue is categorized. Something else new that is nice is that you can click on individual venues in your friend stream to load that venue’s main screen (which now shows who is there, right away). Previously, you had to click on your friend, then click over to see the venue — so this saves time. While using the app, I wondered if Apple would approve it given that it uses the text, email, and phone icons used by the iPhone itself within the app (see screenshot below), but apparently if they accidentally put it in the store today, they’re going to be okay with those icons. These icons are shown on the new profile pages, which also show how many mayorships a member as, as well as how many badges they’ve earned. Interestingly, the point-based element of the app has been depreciated a bit, as that’s how a harder-to-get-to area of the app. As a bonus to this advanced iPhone preview that some users got today, Foursquare also launched a new version of its Android app tonight. I’ve been playing with that for a few minutes, and that seems very solid as well. Look for the new version of Foursquare iPhone app at some point late next week when SXSW starts.
     
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| ReBuzzThis Wants To Be The TweetMeme Of Google Buzz Posted: 05 Mar 2010 03:41 PM PST You know how TweetMeme started out trying to be the Techmeme of Twitter before it ventured off plastering its ReTweet buttons on every blog on the Web? Well now there’s a site that just launched today that wants to be the TweetMeme of Google Buzz called ReBuzzThis. It is not much to look at right now—five lame links as of this writing. But the site wants to encourage blogs and other sites to add its ReBuzz buttons to posts and articles. The posts that get ReBuzzed the most shoot up the homepage just like on TweetMeme with ReTweets. Except that TweetMeme tries to count all retweets, not just those done through its buttons. ReBuzzThis seems to only count Rebuzzes done through its site and buttons, so it is not really capturing the most Buzzed about articles and posts. But it may be onto something. One of the top feature requests on Google Buzz is a Rebuzz button. So we may see an official version of ReBuzzThis come out on Google Buzz itself.      
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| Shatner Shills MyOuterSpace.com: A Social Network For Sci-Fi Geeks Posted: 05 Mar 2010 02:27 PM PST William Shatner will shill almost anything, and we love him for it. Now he is putting his promotional talents to work for Myouterspace.com, a social network for sci-fi geeks, gamers, animators, writers, and actors. In other words, people who couldn’t get into MySpace. Actually, the site seems less like a social network than a way to crowdsource sci-fi movie and game projects. Depending on your specialty (animation, acting, writing, music) you register on one of six “planets.” Projects are designated as different “starships,” which recruit talent from the different planets. Shatner promises to monitor the progress of each crew, although it is not clear what that means or how they will be rewarded. If you are not groaning already at the stretched metaphors, Shatner explains how the whole thing works in this video which I nominate for the sorriest special effects anywhere. Watching the video, in which Shatner is trapped in a dorky spaceship on a barren moon, I can’t help but think that inside he is screaming, “Khaaaaan!!”
     
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| Burbn’s Funding Goes Down Smooth. Baseline, Andreessen Back Stealthy Location Startup. Posted: 05 Mar 2010 02:05 PM PST
Burbn has just closed a $500,000 seed round, we’re hearing. According to sources, both Baseline Ventures and Andreessen Horowitz participated in the round. From what we can tell, right now, Burbn is just a one-man shop: Kevin Systrom, a former Googler. With the funding, you can probably expect that to change soon. So aside from potentially being the location space, what is Burbn? Well, the current splash page where you can sign up to get for information, tells us a little bit more: “Burbn is a new way to communicate + share in the real world.” While that may sound like Google Buzz or a handful of other services, the key to that is “in the real world,” again, this reeks of location. We’ve also heard that the site currently being tested is a mobile web app that uses HTML5 to work in both iPhone and Android browsers. Monitor their Twitter feed for more.      
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| TwitCasting Lets You Stream Live Video And Tweet Simultaneously From Your iPhone Posted: 05 Mar 2010 01:45 PM PST Late last year, Ustream and qik launched iPhone applications that let you stream videos from the iPhone to the web and allow others to watch them as they’re being recorded. And now there is an iPhone app called TwitCasting Live (iTunes link), which offers the same basic functionality, but is – as the name suggests – much more deeply integrated into Twitter. The free app is essentially a live streaming app and Twitter client rolled into one. TwitCasting Live splits the iPhone screen in half, allowing you to view your Twitter timeline, update your status, access the web etc. on the bottom half, while recording (broadcasting) video on the top. Read the rest on MobileCrunch >>      
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| Conan Finally Follows Someone On Twitter: A Random Woman Who Likes Peanut Butter. Posted: 05 Mar 2010 01:11 PM PST
As Conan has just tweeted out, he has decided to follow someone finally. A random person. As he notes, “I’ve decided to follow someone at random. She likes peanut butter and gummy dinosaurs. Sarah Killen, your life is about to change.“ Killen, from Michigan, has exactly 1,300 followers as of the writing of this post (just a few minutes after Conan’s tweet). You can expect that to skyrocket very quickly. As Killen notes, “Having a lame ass day, Russell Bigos is an idiot. And Conan O’Brien is THE SHIT.” Update: In just a few minutes, Killen has doubled her Twitter followers to now exactly 2,600.
     
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| Y Combinator’s Browsarity Allows You To Donate Affiliate Fees To Charity Posted: 05 Mar 2010 12:57 PM PST
Affiliate fees are all over the web and often we don’t even know that we are clicking on affiliate links when we click through to make purchases at our favorite online retailers. On average, affiliate fees can range from 3 to 10 percent of the price of a product. Browsarity is hoping to put money collected from affiliate programs to philanthropic use, and keep a portion for itself in the process. The Y Combinator-incubated company has launched a Firefox plug-in that will rewrite any unclaimed links to a participating online retailer with an affiliate link, and donate any fees collected towards the charity of your choice. Once downloaded, Browsarity will automatically scan any links to determine if there is an affiliate program and link associated with the retailer and will underline the link in red. So if you search to buy an iPhone on Google or read a blog post with a link to a book on Amazon, Browsarity will underline the affiliate links for retailers which could result in fees that go to charity. If you purchase the item through the affiliate link, the fees will be deposited into a PayPal account operated by Browsarity. Most of the fees in that account will be donated to a charity of your choice. Browsarity will take a 10 percent cut of each affiliate fee, so 90 percent is donated to the charity. Currently Browsarity offers nine different charities to choose from, including The Red Cross, Doctors Without Borders, and the Black Eyed Peas’ charity PeaPod. The startup says it has partnerships with at least ten “big-name” e-retailers to collect affiliate fees for charity. There is also a viral component to the service. You can send your friends and family links to install copies of Browsarity pre-set for a certain charity, and the system will keep track of how much money has been generated for that charity as a result of your efforts. In an effort to preserve users’ privacy, Browsarity doesn’t track individual purchases. While only available for Firefox at the moment, Browsarity will be launching plug-ins and extensions for Safari, Chrome and Internet Explorer in the coming weeks. The startup faces competition from Browse For A Cause, which has a similar model.      
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| IE6 Laid To Rest. Pictures, Videos, And Flowers From Microsoft. Posted: 05 Mar 2010 12:48 PM PST
The blog Nonprofits and Web 2.0 was on hand and has posted several videos (a few of which I’ll embed below). There’s also a huge set of pictures in this Flickr album. As we noted originally, despite the funeral, IE6 is likely to live on for a few years as many sites are likely to still support it for the foreseeable future (though YouTube turns off support next week). And don’t forget all those pour souls in corporate jobs who are forced to use the browser because their IT departments won’t allow them to upgrade. Microsoft itself is trying to get users to upgrade from IE6 (to their updated IE8), and the flowers that they sent to the funeral speak to that. The card sent with the flowers read: “Thanks for the good times, IE6. See you all @ MIX, where we’ll show a little piece of IE heaven. The Internet Explorer Team @ Microsoft“
[photos: flickr/atendesigngroup]      
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| Redpoint Invests $4.4 Million In Fast Growing Posterous Posted: 05 Mar 2010 12:31 PM PST
Posterous, founded in 2008 by Sachin Agarwal, Garry Tan and Brett Gibson, is a Y Combinator company that began as a way for users to very easily post pictures online. Its appeal lies in its simplicity – users can just email a photo to post@posterous.com and an account is immediately created for them. But today people are using Posterous for videos and text blogs as well. Users can change the CSS and even use their own domain names – see Guy Kawasaki’s HolKaw blog, for example, which is run by Posterous. The company does have revenue, such as this early deal with Coca Cola for a branded site, but has stood firm in keeping the “nickel and dime” consumer fees out of the product. There are no restrictions on usage, storage, CSS customization or using your own domain, says the company. Later this year Posterous will launch a pro version of the service for bigger brands, and allow things like Javascript and site monetization for a fee, they say. All that simplicity and freeness has resulted in a lot of growth for the company. They have 12 million unique monthly visitors, they say, and 25 million page views. And they grew 30% per month in 2009, all with just 4 employees (they are up to 6 now). Posterous regularly releases new products, such as Post.ly a month ago. Post.ly lets users easily share media on their Twitter account. CEO Sachin Agarwal says that they want to continue to add new products that make it dead simple to post and share content online: “Our goal is to become synonymous with “posting” just like Google is synonymous with “search”. Doesn’t matter if it’s for twitter or a blog, private or public, group or individual. if you need it online, you go to Posterous.”      
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| Mad Lib Competition: The Results Are In… Posted: 05 Mar 2010 12:04 PM PST
Perhaps unsurprisingly, given the quality of the prizes on offer, the competition was flooded with entries. Over 30 of them in fact, almost all of which were from people who had actually understood the entry requirements. Some had even got within a mile of being funny. Well done, them. And so to the winners, in reverse order of funniness… For effort alone, third prize goes to Tommy Vallier for this suggestion for LinkedIn:
Second prize, largely thanks to the dig at Yahoo!, goes to ‘Laura’ for her Flickr sign-up suggestion…
And last, but the exact opposite of least, the winner. An entry that understood the spirit of the competition, right down to the use of punctuation as comedy timing. For that, and for masterful use of tautology, take a bow Matt Shaw. You win first prize for your proposed sign-up text for DeviantArt…
Kudos Matt, Laura and Tommy. Assuming the email addresses you used when you commented are genuine, you’ll be genning an email from me in the next day or two to make prize arrangements.      
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| The Daily Show Reveals Chatroulette To Be Filled With Creepy Journalists Posted: 05 Mar 2010 11:53 AM PST If you’ve read about random video chat site Chatroulette lately, you’ll know that it is filled with naked people and journalists. And that’s exactly what The Daily Show’s Jon Stewart found in his exposé of the Web service. In between the random pervs, he actually found more journalists looking for pervs, or something. The clip has cameos from Katie Couric, Keith Olbermann, and NBC News anchor Brian Williams, who insisted he wasn’t cruising or anything. The parody is great linkbait (at least for tech blogs) and pretty funny to boot. But you will only find it on the Daily Show’s own site (where it can be grabbed and embedded). It’s clips like these that make Hulu wish Comedy Central didn’t pull its videos and go it alone.      
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| Sh*t My Dad Says Engages Google Buzz Posted: 05 Mar 2010 11:45 AM PST
Now, before you get too excited, you’ll note that all this account is doing is importing the Shit My Dad Says tweets into Buzz. In fact, because the account doesn’t tweet all that regularly (I suppose creator Justin Halpern is busy trying to write dialogue for William Shatner, who will star in the show), there are only five total tweet imported so far since February 10, when the account was started. Still, there’s a lot of activity on those five tweets, with dozens of Buzz users liking and commenting on the blurbs. There’s no way of knowing if this account is an official one since anyone can import any public Twitter account into their Buzz steam, but even if fake, the creator did a nice job recreating Justin’s father. For example, his profile says that the one thing he can’t find on Google is “my pants.” And his hometown is shown on a Google Map as somewhere just outside Columbus, Ohio. The About Me section reads the same as the Twitter bio, “I’m 29. I live with my 74-year-old dad. He is awesome. I just write down shit that he says.” The most interesting thing about this account may be its level of engagement. If I were on the Buzz team, I might point out that even though this account is doing nothing beyond importing tweets, there’s clearly a huge demand to have conversations about these tweets — something which is much easier to do on Buzz then on Twitter. Of course, some brands are already understanding this. Also note that the account name is technically “sh1tmydadsays,” because Google won’t allow swear word in Gmail addresses. [thanks Louis]      
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| Google Breathes Life Back Into reMail By Open Sourcing The Project Posted: 05 Mar 2010 11:23 AM PST
Founder Gabor Cselle outlines what the product’s code can be helpful for:
There’s a good chance that we’ll soon see reworkings of the app for the iPhone: the project’s documentation specifically details how to get it up and running on the popular platform. The Google Code site also includes some ideas on how to improve the application, based on some of reMail’s most common feature requests (suggestions include implementation of a landscape mode, more compatible email account types, and improved autocomplete). Google did something similar to EtherPad late last year, after it acquired the application’s developer AppJet. At first, EtherPad was simply going to shut down as the team moved to Australia to work on Google Wave. But after significant backlash, Google and AppJet quickly made moves to open source the project.      
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| Google Acquires Docverse To Further Office Arms Race Posted: 05 Mar 2010 11:03 AM PST
Docverse lets users collaborate directly on Microsoft Office documents. The company was founded by Microsoft veterans Shan Sinha and Alex DeNeui. Shia drove product strategy for SharePoint and SQL Server, $1.6B and $3.0B products, respectiveley. DeNui ran Microsoft SQL Server's web strategy. With DocVerse Google will have a direct software connection to Microsoft Office, allowing users to collaborate real time on documents. Microsoft is also moving in this direction with Office 10. In effect, Microsoft is countering Google Docs with the new Office. And Google is countering that move with the acquisition of DocVerse. For more on this fight, see Imitation Isn't Always Flattery: Microsoft Previews Google Apps Killer To Beta Testers. Docverse raised just $1.3 million, in 2008, from Baseline Ventures, Harrison Metal Capital and Naval Ravikant. Update: Google blog post here.      
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| Apple Stock Hits All-Time High, Near $200B Market Cap Posted: 05 Mar 2010 10:35 AM PST
Apple had originally said that the iPad was going to be shipping in “late March”, so it’s missing its target by a few days, but after multiple rumors of substantial delays, investors are probably breathing a sigh of relief. Still, while the launch date has been set, there’s a chance that production issues could make it hard to actually find a device. Apple’s market cap is now very close to $200B, currently standing at $199.17B. That’s above Google’s market cap of $179.73B — the two companies, which are increasingly at odds with each other, have swapped places multiple times over the last few years.
     
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| Posted: 05 Mar 2010 09:19 AM PST
Gigs range from installing WordPress on a server to reading Tarot cards to writing a romantic sonnet. Tasks are divided into categories, including Funny and Bizarre, Social Marketing, Graphics, Writing,Technology, Business, Silly Stuff and Programming. The idea is kind of brilliant and also entertaining. While you don’t necessarily have assurance that your task will be completed to your standards, you are only shelling out $5 for the task, so it’s not a total loss if the gig falls through or isn’t done well. Fiverr will also post buyer feedback on people who perform tasks. Task performers will be given a positive feedback score, which can be seen by users who are considering hiring them for gigs.      
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Similarly, Sue Drakeford, who was Miss Nebraska 2001, had started a 
You can bring innovation to "replicative" fields as Arrington did. Take the example of 
Another great example I've seen of an entrepreneur who has innovated in a replicative industry is 
One of the cofounders of 
It’s hardly a secret that 
For the past several weeks, there have been quite a few whispers around the web about a new service called 
Following his exit from NBC’s The Tonight Show, Conan O’Brien was bored. So bored, that he decided to 
A few weeks ago, we noted that the Denver, CO-based design company 
San Francisco based 
Last month, Google acquired 
Hot off the 
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