The Latest from TechCrunch |  |
- Going It Alone: How to Make Your Stuff In China
- How-To: Spring Cleaning Time For Your PC
- Why a Bad Economy Is the Best Time to Start a Business
- How To Be Happy At Work…And To Deal With That Jerk Boss
- Twitter Acquires Tweetie
- Music Hack Day Is Coming To San Francisco
- [Actually NSFW] Highlights From South Park’s Facebook/Chatroulette Episode
- Is Steve Jobs Ignoring History, Or Trying To Rewrite It?
- Bebo’s Awkward Email To Media Partners
- Adobe: “Go Screw Yourself Apple”
- Zappos CEO Tony Hsieh Reassures The Troops, Announces, Hints At New Secret Project
- Alfred Lin To Leave Zappos, Join Sequoia Capital
- OneRiot’s Realtime Ad Network RiotWise Goes Self-Service For Advertisers
- Twitter Fills Its First Hole With An Official BlackBerry App
- Nikkei, Japan’s Business Newspaper, Pulls Some 2001 Anti-linking Tricks
- Video: The iPad Can Also Run Windows 95 (Or Maybe Not)
| Going It Alone: How to Make Your Stuff In China Posted: 10 Apr 2010 08:16 AM PDT  Adam Hocherman, 34, is an entrepreneur and founder of the consumer electronics company American Innovative in Boston, MA. Adam founded the company in 2003 with the help of the US Government's SBA loan program and is currently the 100% owner. He holds a BS in Mechanical Engineering and an MBA, both from Cornell University. Adam's writings can be found on his blog at DesignTheatre.net and through his Twitter feed. He welcomes your comments. Read more about sourcing in China here. It's Saturday morning at 6am. I'm about to leave my Boston apartment for the first of three legs from Logan International Airport to Hong Kong via New York and Tokyo. I will arrive at 10:30pm on Sunday. Against insurmountable odds it appears that both my Boston and New York flights are on-time – an anomaly if there ever was one given that we've had a full week of driving rain in Boston and two feet of snow in Westchester County, just 45 minutes north of New York City where my parents told me they've had to sleep at a friend's place because they've been without power for days. Still, never to disappoint, and despite clear sunny skies, my commuter flight from Boston to New York is delayed almost two hours on account of "missing personnel." This conjures up images of airline top brass scrambling around to replace the guy who's responsible for loading the salty snacks on the plane (as if) when the gate agent clarifies that our secondary officer is on his way from another city. Or maybe he overslept. Fortunately, having learned my lesson just months ago when traveling to a trade event in Las Vegas (my luggage was lost, never to be recovered to this day!) I seemingly accurately surmised that the chances of my checked baggage successfully navigating three airplanes and two carriers would be slim-to-none. As such, I had packed light. My fiancee made me pack two pair of pants, which I felt to be overkill, but I have a feeling I'll thank her later.
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| How-To: Spring Cleaning Time For Your PC Posted: 10 Apr 2010 07:46 AM PDT  I was just reminded by a spring cleaning article that it's been quite a while since I checked under the hood of my PC. Enthusiasts know and love the process of getting air-flow-reducing dust bunnies out of their cases, but a lot of people out there (and perhaps some readers) may have never even tried it. It's actually quite easy and you should give it a shot — I put together a video this afternoon just to show the basics.
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| Why a Bad Economy Is the Best Time to Start a Business Posted: 10 Apr 2010 07:43 AM PDT
While researching my latest book, Viral Loop, an in-depth look at how companies like Facebook, Twitter, Flickr, Skype and others grew so big so fast, it occurred to me that each of them was founded when the economy was flat, bad, or worse, in recession. I suppose that describes virtually any company founded since the dot com bust, but what’s interesting is that it also characterizes some of the most successful companies in history, some that trace their roots back more than a century. Since 1851, the US economy has been in periods of contraction roughly one-third of the time, yet sixteen of the blue-chip companies that comprise the Dow 30 were founded during recessions and almost 60% of Fortune 500 companies began business in a bear market, according to a June 2009 report from the Ewing Marion Kauffman Foundation. Proctor & Gamble survived the panic of 1837, then the worst recession in our young nation’s history, while General Electric came out of the economic chaos of 1872 and Hewlett Packard was born in the Great Depression. McDonald’s fried its first french fry just before the onset of World War II. Charles Schwab sprouted out of the early 1970s as rampant inflation threatened to get out of control. Of course, there are many more. Home Depot, Microsoft and Apple emerged from the depressive Carter Administration when stagflation choked the American economy. Verizon (originally Bell Atlantic), Adobe, Compaq, Lotus, Silicon Graphics to Sun, withstood the recession of 1982. And as I noted above the dot com bust of 2000-2001 didn’t prevent MySpace, Facebook, Twitter, and a host of other social media companies to achieve billion-dollar valuations in the span of a few years. Why, though? After all, venture capital investment dips dramatically when the economy hits rough patches, which means there’s much less money available for startups. In 2000, the high point, investors anteed up more than $100 billion into startups. By 2008, that number had dropped by almost three-fourths to $27 billion, and in 2009 it plummeted to less than $20 billion, about the same level as 1998. Nevertheless it appears that money is spent more wisely. Dot com excesses—startups with scant business plans and which spent millions on forgettable Super Bowl ads —were borne of cheap money (insert usual snide reference to pets.com). When the economy is tight, however, investors gravitate to companies with well-articulated revenue plans. This hasn’t been lost on some entrepreneurs. When Amit Chatterjee approached venture capital firm Kleiner Perkins in late 2007, the economy was limping along with a growth rate of 0.6 percent, capping its worst year in half a decade. But Chatterjee, who was trying to get his green startup off the ground, wasn’t fazed. In fact, he was encouraged. Because he knew that when the economy is at its worst is often the best time to start a company. Chatterjee says he even trumpeted this in his pitch to Kleiner. What’s more, he told the VCs it could very well work to their benefit. “We were built to survive a recession while guys funded during the up market weren’t,” Chatterjee says, “Venture capitalists gave us extra due diligence and we had to be singularly focused on providing value to customers.” His company, Hara, based in Redwood City, CA, provides environmental and energy management software and support for businesses intent on lowering their carbon footprint and energy consumption. In business for a little more than a year, Chaterjee counts Coca-Cola, News Corp., Aerojet, Intuit and the City of Palo Alto as customers. Businesses like Hara are able to parry the economic forces arrayed against them and turn them into advantages. It’s not one big thing. It’s a lot of little things that add up. Higher unemployment means it’s cheaper to attract and retain top talent. Office rents are lower, which lessens overhead, and suppliers can be squeezed. Management is freed from a steady parade of analysis calls and reporter interviews to focus singularly on their customers, core products and revenue generation. Investment money is used more efficiently; there’s much more of emphasis on operating lean and mean. And there are other benefits. Job creation in startups founded during shaky economic periods is “less volatile and sensitive to downturns than job creation in the entire economy,” the Kaufman report states. While it’s true that many of the approximately half a million new startups founded between 2008 and 2009 will ultimately fail, it’s equally true that another generation of great high-growth companies will not only emerge from the recent economic meltdown, but perhaps, in some part, because of it. But you’d better get started. The economy may be recovering. Adam L. Penenberg is author of Viral Loop: From Facebook to Twitter, How Today’s Smartest Businesses Grow Themselves and a journalism professor at the Arthur L. Carter Journalism Institute at New York University.      
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| How To Be Happy At Work…And To Deal With That Jerk Boss Posted: 10 Apr 2010 07:00 AM PDT
When workers achieve arbejdsglæd, the business benefits from higher productivity, because happy people achieve better results; higher quality, because happy employees care about quality; lower absenteeism, because people actually want to go to work; and less stress and burnout, because happy people are less susceptible to stress. Not surprisingly, all of this leads to higher sales, better customer satisfaction, more creativity, and higher profits for the business. Sounds like some kind of Nirvana or Disneyland, doesn't it? After all, who doesn't want to be happy? And how can one be happy at work when the boss is a jerk, the company doesn't care for its employees, and the job simply sucks? One of my old friends, Professor Srikumar Rao—who is the best marketing person I know—just wrote a book on this. He has some very interesting remedies.
Did you smile as you considered this? Good. That is important, because in that smile is the seed of compassion. That is the start of seeing him as a human being, caught in his own predicament, and not solely as an impediment to your well-being. And when you learn to deal with him on that level rather than relating to him in his role as "boss", the dynamics of the relationship change. It sounds simple, but it is very powerful. Srikumar says that when people start thinking like this, they lift the once totally toxic interactions to the "I can survive this" level and even to the "He's not bad at all" level. It is easy to look at all the things that are wrong with your job. But instead of being despondent at work and focusing on the two or three things that you think are wrong with your job, try thinking about the twenty or so things that are good about it. Try making a list of all that's good about your job, including the fact that you have one. Don't think it; FEEL the gratitude. Let it well up and surround you and overflow. It takes some practice, but you can get there. Now from this space tackle the problems you are facing. They no longer seem so formidable, and the odds are great that you can tackle them more effectively.
Another important lesson: You always get to pick the way you see the world. In the early stages of a start-up, an entrepreneur was irritated by employees who bothered him with "trivial" issues. He reacted with sarcasm and brusqueness and even by blowing up. His view was that his time was "important" and they should be able to take care of such issues themselves. After several of his key people departed, he woke up and changed his ways. He consciously trained himself to view each such interaction as an opportunity to forge a relationship with the employee and to reinforce his idea of company culture with emphasis on independence and innovation. Not only did turnover drop; some of those who left came back. Srikumar's advice strikes a chord with me. When I was preoccupied with the many problems that beset any growing company, I was sometimes far from ebullient, and this brought down the morale of the entire company. My own experience has taught me that those who choose to view life as a learning opportunity to take responsibility for their own actions are also the most confident and the happiest. They are the ones who build enduring companies. 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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| Posted: 09 Apr 2010 06:38 PM PDT
It’s a move that manages to be both jarring and unsurprising at the same time. Unsurprising, because Twitter investor Fred Wilson recently wrote that Twitter developers needed to stop “filling holes” in Twitter’s product and instead build entirely separate businesses. And just this morning, Twitter launched an official Twitter for BlackBerry application, so another mobile application shouldn’t come as much of a shock. And yet, the iPhone is a platform where Twitter has a very strong third party presence, and Twitter has no doubt been benefiting from the contributions of these developers. Tweetie is extremely polished and is arguably the best, but there are plenty of other quality applications that are getting hung out to dry. Still, a move like this seemed inevitable. In a blog post announcing the news, Twitter CEO Evan Williams explains the logic: people are going to iTunes, searching for a Twitter application, and not finding one so they give up (this sounds like a problem with iTunes search, but perhaps people really just want to see ‘Twitter’ in the application’s title):
This all comes less than a week before Twitter’s developer conference, Chirp, where I suspect the company will try to steer developers down a path that they won’t be paving over any time soon. Of note: Twitter’s post does not mention anything about the Tweetie desktop application, which is available exclusively for the Mac. Don’t be surprised if this becomes ‘Twitter For Mac’ eventually.      
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| Music Hack Day Is Coming To San Francisco Posted: 09 Apr 2010 04:30 PM PDT
The main goal Music Hack Day, according to its homepage, is “to explore and build the next generation of music applications”. Aside from that, anything goes — it just has to do with music. Space is limited, so you’ll want to register here (it’s based on a first-come first-served basis, and the organizers will also be looking to ensure the people attending are planning to actually help make something). Music Hack Day is run by an interesting group of guys with experience in both music and tech: Dave Haynes (of SoundCloud), Paul Lamere (of Echonest) and Daniel Raffel (Senior Product Manager at Yahoo!, used to run some record labels). Also attending the event will be representatives from music companies like SongKick, Pandora, SonicLiving, Songbird, and Last.fm. The timing is also good for developers: Muisc Hack Day is taking place the weekend before Google I/O and the SF MusicTech summit, so developers from out of the town can hit up multiple events on the same trip. So rock on. And try not to think too hard about the pain some earlier music startups have suffered through — things are finally looking up for a few of them.      
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| [Actually NSFW] Highlights From South Park’s Facebook/Chatroulette Episode Posted: 09 Apr 2010 04:01 PM PDT
This week, South Park finally got around to parodying Facebook and Chatroulette, and with them the entire spectrum of creepy online oversharing. Here are a couple of highlights (ripped from the original source so our international readers don’t bitch about geographical restrictions) including the moment where Stan tries a little too hard to delete his Facebook profile; and when Cartman introduces Kyle to Chatroulette. See if you can guess which clip is which from the quotes. (Oh, yeah, these are probably not safe for work. Unless you work for Chatroulette.) “Dude jacking off, dude jacking off…” “I’m afraid I can’t let you do that, Stan Marsh…” More? For US viewers, the whole episode is here, or Gawker.tv has put together a (I grudgingly accept) slightly more comprehensive collection of highlights here.      
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| Is Steve Jobs Ignoring History, Or Trying To Rewrite It? Posted: 09 Apr 2010 02:52 PM PDT Very few people get the chance to make history. Even fewer get the chance to make it twice. Perhaps that is why it is so fascinating to watch Steve Jobs as he tries to usher in the era of mobile touch computing today, just as he ushered in the era of the personal computer three decades ago. But I wonder whether he is repeating the very same mistakes which relegated Macs to a niche market. Or did he learn from those mistakes so that Apple comes out on top this time? Jobs is once again pitting Apple’s complete product design mastery against the rest of the industry, except this time he thinks he will prevail. Whether it is his repeated moves to keep Adobe’s Flash off the iPhone or his growing rift with Google over Android, Jobs is making the iPhone and iPad a relatively closed system that Apple can control. All apps need to be approved by Apple, the ads shown on the apps will also start to go through Apple, and no matter how hard Adobe tries to open up the iPhone to its Flash developers Apple will keep blocking all its efforts. Developers and pundits can cry foul all they want about Apple’s lack of openness. But remember, companies are only open when it is convenient for them. The fight with Adobe has always been about making developers play by Apple’s rules. And right now they can make those rules because they have all the customers. In the desktop era, Windows had the most apps, which translated directly into sales. Today on mobile, the iPhone has the most apps and Jobs wants to keep it that way. Allowing Adobe or Microsoft to port apps developed for other devices to the iPhone devalues the iPhone, which is why Apple is cracking down so hard on Adobe. It is not about Flash, it is about developers. As John Gruber writes:
But how long will that license last? The iPhone faces a growing threat from Google’s Android phones, which are the PCs of the mobile world. Only Apple makes the iPhone, but many phone manufacturers make Android phones just like many PC makers produce Windows PCs. Slowly but surely, those Android phones are getting better. And already Android sales are collectively catching up to iPhone sales. Of all people, surely he sees what is coming. Is he ignoring his own history, or does he know it so well that this time he is going to try to rewrite it by changing the outcome? As long as the iPhone remains the leading smartphone, he can try to lock out Google’s ads and lock in developers with their apps (and, by extension, customers who want those apps). Still, it seems like history could repeat itself, with the rest of the industry closing the innovation gap with Apple fast. With Google subsidizing the mobile OS, other phone manufacturers have an economic advantage as well. Jobs is trying everything he can to hold back the Android advance, including suing HTC, the largest manufacturer of Android phones. He is fighting Google with everything he’s got—undercutting Google’s pending acquisition of AdMob by entering the mobile advertising market and creating fear among Android partners with his patent lawsuit. In the end, it is the victors who write history. Right now, Jobs is winning. Can he keep winning or is history against him?      
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| Bebo’s Awkward Email To Media Partners Posted: 09 Apr 2010 02:04 PM PDT
How do you handle that awkwardness? Send out a mass email to all open media partners to explain the situation: ———- Forwarded message ———- Dear Open Media Partners, First, I'd like to thank you for your support of Bebo. The end of last year brought with it many changes to our business, both difficult and exciting, including the successful spin-out of our parent company AOL and a new strategic direction. Set out in May 2009 this strategy leverages AOL's core strengths and scale in quality content, premium advertising and consumer applications, positioning it for the next phase of growth of the Internet. We also made a commitment to keep the lines of communication open as we worked to arrive at a strategic resolution for Bebo and today I'm reaching out to let you know that in an annual filing for Bebo made this week, AOL indicated that it is currently evaluating strategic alternatives with respect to the Bebo business, which could include a sale or shutdown of Bebo in 2010. Social networking remains a space with heavy competition, where scale defines success, and unfortunately AOL is not in a position to further fund and support Bebo in pursuing a turnaround in social networking. The decision to move forward at this point on Bebo was not made lightly and AOL is committed to working quickly to determine if there are any interested parties for Bebo. The company's current expectation is to complete our strategic evaluation by the end of May 2010 and we hope that by sharing what we can, when we can, it helps to relieve any uncertainty about what's ahead. In the interim I wanted to assure you of our continued commitment to your organization and we will come back to you as soon as we are able to move forward.      
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| Adobe: “Go Screw Yourself Apple” Posted: 09 Apr 2010 01:42 PM PDT The claws are out. Adobe’s Platform Evangelist, Lee Brimelow retaliated today against Apple blocking Flash developers on the iPhone with a post on his Flash Blog. Brimelow holds little back, lambasting the company for trying to exert a “tyrannical control over developers…more importantly, wanting to use developers as pawns in their crusade against Adobe.” He says any real developer could not support Apple’s moves in “good conscience.”
Brimelow may not be explicitly calling for a boycott (although he is requesting a change in leadership— is he looking at you Jobs?). But he is issuing a call to arms to developers. The lines are clear: you either stand with us or against us and if you’re against us (and complicit in Apple’s policies) then you’re not a real developer. And if his sentiment wasn’t clear throughout the post, he caps it all off with: “Go Screw Yourself Apple.” I don’t expect Apple to respond directly to Brimelow’s rant— it’s not Adobe’s official statement (however, Adobe has clearly seen the post and filtered it: the second paragraph notes “[Sentence regarding Apple's intentions redacted at request from Adobe]“). Nevertheless, they are fighting words. The company must be furious that Apple is potentially locking it out of its products. The problem is there’s very little that Adobe can do besides stomp its feet. At the end of the day, Apple is not obligated to support Adobe’s developers. The software developer, for its part, is coming to terms with what this all could mean for their bottom line. In a 10-Q filing (released today) Adobe says:
UPDATE: They downplayed that “harm” in Adobe CTO Kevin Lynch’s formal response. Lynch says CS5 will thrive with or without Apple’s support. Loosely translated: guess what Apple, you don’t own innovation, watch your back.
Full Text of Brimelow’s blog: Apple Slaps Developers In The Face By now you have surely heard about the new iPhone 4.0 SDK language that appears to make creating applications in any non-Apple-approved languages a violation of terms. Obviously Adobe is looking into this wording carefully so I will not comment any further until there is an official conclusion. [Sentence regarding Apple's intentions redacted at request from Adobe]. This has nothing to do whatsoever with bringing the Flash player to Apple's devices. That is a separate discussion entirely. What they are saying is that they won't allow applications onto their marketplace solely because of what language was originally used to create them. This is a frightening move that has no rational defense other than wanting tyrannical control over developers and more importantly, wanting to use developers as pawns in their crusade against Adobe. This does not just affect Adobe but also other technologies like Unity3D. I am positive that there are a large number of Apple employees that strongly disagree with this latest move. Any real developer would not in good conscience be able to support this. The trouble is that we will never hear their discontent because Apple employees are forbidden from blogging, posting to social networks, or other things that we at companies with an open culture take for granted. Adobe and Apple has had a long relationship and each has helped the other get where they are today. The fact that Apple would make such a hostile and despicable move like this clearly shows the difference between our two companies. All we want is to provide creative professionals an avenue to deploy their work to as many devices as possible. We are not looking to kill anything or anyone. This would be like us putting something in our SDK to make it impossible for 3rd-party editors like FDT to work with our platform. I can tell you that we wouldn't even think or consider something like that. Many of Adobe's supporters have mentioned that we should discontinue the Creative Suite products on OS X as a form of retaliation. Again, this is something that Adobe would never consider in a million years. We are not looking to abuse our loyal users and make them pawns for the sake of trying to hurt another company. What is clear is that Apple most definitely would do that sort of thing as is evidenced by their recent behavior. Personally I will not be giving Apple another cent of my money until there is a leadership change over there. I've already moved most of my book, music, and video purchases to Amazon and I will continue to look elsewhere. Now, I want to be clear that I am not suggesting you do the same and I'm also not trying to organize some kind of boycott. Me deciding not to give money to Apple is not going to do anything to their bottom line. But this is equivalent to me walking into Macy's to buy a new wallet and the salesperson spits in my face. Chances are I won't be buying my wallets at Macy's anymore, no matter how much I like them. Now let me put aside my role as an official representative of Adobe for a moment as I would look to make it clear what is going through my mind at the moment. Go screw yourself Apple.
Comments disabled as I'm not interested in hearing from the Cupertino Comment SPAM bots.      
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| Zappos CEO Tony Hsieh Reassures The Troops, Announces, Hints At New Secret Project Posted: 09 Apr 2010 01:09 PM PDT
The full email is below. Also check out the interview Sarah Lacy did with Hsieh at our conference last year. —–Original Message—– While we’ll be sad to see Alfred go, I want to lay to rest some rumors that I’ve been hearing through the grapevine about the possibility of Fred and/or me leaving Zappos. As Fred likes to say, we’re just scratching the surface as to what Zappos can become, and the next several years are going to be very exciting as continue to grow Zappos, 6pm, our clothing business, and our other product lines. My book is set to launch June 7 and we’ve got some pretty cool stuff planned to take our culture to the next level, which I’ll be talking more about in future emails. Our business is growing at about 40% year over year, and our TV campaign is just getting started. We’ve got more momentum than we’ve ever had in the history of the company. It’s a super exciting time, and Fred and I wouldn’t miss it for the world! PS: Fred and I are also working on a secret long-term project together which, if everything works out, will be really really cool and amazing for Zappos. We’re still in the exploratory stages right now but we’re getting more excited about it as each day passes.      
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| Alfred Lin To Leave Zappos, Join Sequoia Capital Posted: 09 Apr 2010 12:48 PM PDT
Lin isn’t leaving Zappos until the beginning of 2011. Here’s the email Lin sent to all employees at Zappos earlier today: Date: Wed, 24 Mar 2010 15:13:50 -0700 First, I’m sorry for letting you know all this information in an email. If it was doable, I would have preferred to speak to each of you personally, but that is sadly not really possible. The idea of thinking through whom I should tell first and in what order was also very agonizing. Being true to our core values, it is just a lot easier to be open and honest and let everyone know sooner rather than later. Although this still feels a little weird as I write this, we don’t shy away from weirdness at Zappos, so here it is… First, Rebecca (my wife and my true boss) and I are getting into the baby business. :) Rebecca’s now 9 weeks along and so far so good. I’ve learned more about the baby business than I would have even expected, like why, in general, you might not want to tell too many people until after the first 12 weeks. Or why, when a woman reaches a certain age, her pregnancy gets classified as a high-risk pregnancy. ;) (I am probably going to get hit over the head for that.) In any case, keep your fingers crossed and we are really delighted to share this happy news with all of you. Over the past 2 months, Rebecca and I have talked a lot more about what is important to us and what we should do as a family. It is the general stuff you talk about, but you may only talk about superficially until it hits you that you are actually going to be a parent. As agonizing as it is for us to come to this conclusion, we really believe that the right place for us as a family is to move back to the SF Bay Area and be closer to some of our extended family. To complicate the life discussions, if you had asked me 5 or 10 years ago what I am passionate about and what my higher purpose would be, I would have said that my calling is to help interpret the visions and dreams of entrepreneurs about how the world should be and help build businesses around those visions and dreams. So to that end, I wanted to be a venture capitalist and join Sequoia Capital. They’ve financed and helped built some really special and enormously successful companies, including Google, Yahoo, Paypal, YouTube, Cisco, Oracle, Apple, and also Zappos. I had explored joining them twice, but things never really worked out before. Recently, I went out to beers and then dinner with a few of their partners to catch up on life and in their inebriated state, they made the silly mistake of extending me a position on their team roster (although the envelope was actually marked “For Rebecca”). You might be shocked to read that I have decided to leave Zappos. It has been a hard decision, and I am still in a bit of a daze myself, but I am also very excited. I have learned so much from all of you along our journey and I am excited to put that knowledge to work to help finance and help build companies in the special ways we have built Zappos. So the silver lining is that hopefully Zappos will give birth to other very special and enormously successful companies. Tony, Fred and I have had a few conversations with some folks at Amazon and they are committed to helping us find the right person to fill my sample-size shoes (9D). As always with any Zappos employee, that person will, first and foremost, have to live and breathe the Zappos culture, and help continue the good work to build the Zappos brand, business, and culture, independent of Amazon. Now that the news is out, I also want to assure you that I am not going anywhere anytime soon. I’m committed to Tony, Fred, Amazon, and each and every one of you to making this a very smooth transition. To that end, I plan to stay at Zappos through January 3, 2011. Of course, this timeline may change, since our business continues to grow fast and each and every one of you do such an amazing job that I am sure the transition can and may be completed sooner. In any case, while parting is such sweet sorrow, it is not time to say our goodbyes yet. We have some work to do and always will…like taking first place in the Corporate Challenge relay tonight. Hope to see you there. Update: Zappos CEO Tony Hsieh emails employees.      
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| OneRiot’s Realtime Ad Network RiotWise Goes Self-Service For Advertisers Posted: 09 Apr 2010 12:42 PM PDT
OneRiot's RiotWise system automatically matches an advertiser's relevant content to trending topics on web. The platform is powered by OneRiot's proprietary Trending Topics Forecast Algorithm (TTFA), which attempts to predict what topics will trend before they blow up on Twitter or Facebook or Google Trends. Given the "realtime relevance" of ads seen by users, OneRiot says the the click through rate is typically 3 to 4 times industry norms. To create a campaign, advertisers can now use OneRiot's self-service portal and the advertiser does not need to bid for keywords or create marketing copy for ads to appear across OneRiot's network. OneRiot indexes content as it is published by an advertiser, in realtime, on their website, blog or social media feed. OneRiot then extracts key words from that content and constructs relevant ads on-the-fly, matching to trending topics, linking directly to the relevant pages on the advertiser's site. Meanwhile, OneRiot's PulseRank algorithm constantly optimizes ad placement to ensure the most relevant ad appears to end user. Currently OneRiot's trending ads, which are serving 400 million impressions per month, are being used on Twitter apps (ÜberTwitter), desktop clients (Digsby) search engines, and other realtime web applications.. OneRiot shares revenue with the application developer. As we’ve written in the past, OneRiot runs the risk of surfacing irrelevant or spammy content with realtime ads, especially is the ads are refreshing constantly to match trending topics. But as a realtime search engine, OneRiot has invested heavily in spam prevention and is constantly sorting through millions of pieces of content to determine what is relevant and what isn't. For both advertiser and developers, seems like a viable tool.      
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| Twitter Fills Its First Hole With An Official BlackBerry App Posted: 09 Apr 2010 11:39 AM PDT
Now, we’ve known that this application was coming for a long time — we gave out beta keys and reviewed it in Feburary. But looking back, all of the language around this was that it was RIM’s application — RIM was the one pitching us on the news, and there wasn’t any mention that this was endorsed by Twitter. That’s no longer the case. In its blog post, Twitter says that it has been “working closely with RIM to deliver the official Twitter app…”. This is important, because Twitter has long thrived on its developer community. Third party applications like Tweetie, Seesmic, TweetDeck, Twitterific, and many, many others have brought the service to the desktop and mobile platforms. And myriad Twitter-oriented image and link shortening services have taken off as well. If Twitter is going to start endorsing offical versions of these applications, you can expect some signficant backlash. Other BlackBerry Twitter apps included UberTwitter and Seesmic. We’ve reached out to Twitter to ask if they have plans to endorse applications on other platforms.      
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| Nikkei, Japan’s Business Newspaper, Pulls Some 2001 Anti-linking Tricks Posted: 09 Apr 2010 09:32 AM PDT  Remember back during the days of Netscape when folks tried to use Javascript to prevent you from copying their images? You'd get a little window that says "YOU ARE A THIEF! HOME HOTLINKING IS KILLING THE MUSIC INDUSTRY!" and then you'd view source, grab the image tag, and be on your way? Well Nikkei just pulled out its Learn HTML 1.0 in 48 Hours book and is now preventing links to its articles and severely limiting right clicking on its exciting home page. According to the NYT, Nikkei not only stops right clicking but now requires a written application to link to its news, citing issues with the free vs. paid model that has essentially destroyed American news-gathering as well as concerns that its precious news will end up in pump and dump scams. 
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| Video: The iPad Can Also Run Windows 95 (Or Maybe Not) Posted: 09 Apr 2010 09:19 AM PDT I am not sure why you would want to ruin a perfectly good iPad by running Windows 95 on it, but the video above from Pavel Egorkin, a Russian social gaming developer, appears to show just such a hack. Impressive since the iPad jailbreak has yet to be released. Or maybe fake. You be the judge. Windows 95 definitely does not look touch-friendly from the looks of this video. Why not go for the Windows XP Tablet Edition?      
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A guest post by Adam L. Penenberg
In my 
For example, what do you do about the jerk boss? Srikumar says that by allowing him to leave you a "quivering mess of indignation, resentment and frustration" you're handing the keys to your happiness over to him. Remember that he may have control over what you do at work. But he has no control over your emotional well-being unless you let him have it. Just look at your boss and see the mess of emotions that slosh through him: anger, insecurity, fear, and jealousy. Now consider this: You only have to deal with him a few hours a week. He has to live with himself for his whole life.
Twitter has just 
Yeah, yeah – I’m a little late to this, but it’s simply too good not to be on TechCrunch.
AOL needs to 
Zappos CEO 
Last year, 
That didn’t take long. Two days ago, well known VC (and early Twitter investor) 
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