Just got first reports in from NY Apple Stores. It seems the MacBook Airs were out for a brief period this morning and then they hauled them back into the back room. Bloops! The 5th ave store jumped the gun on putting out the demo units, they gathered the units on a cart and placed in the back room. … OFFICIAL: The 5th Avenue store does have it in stock but for display only, you can go play with it right now but you can’t buy it. Call if you want to verify! [Thanks, Kojak!] UPDATE – Peter just stopped by the SoHo store and was told that the Airs would be on display sometime this week. Anyone see them at the 5th Avenue store? → Read More
An irate reader writes: 100′s of Comcast Customer Account Executives were fired last year and will be fired this year due to their inability to meet increasingly difficult job requirements. If you call in to get your cable fixed or have a question regarding your bill, the phone rep must resolve your issue and try to sell a core product – internet, phone or digital cable (if you don’t have all 3) all within 330 seconds. Or, the rep could be fired. They have more and more difficult job requirements including less time off the phone to work on issues. And a sales quota that 1/2 the reps are unable to meet. New employees make $11.50 per hour and it appears that Comcast would rather get rid of seasoned employees who know how to do their jobs in favor of cheaper new hires. All employees with customer contact from field techs to internet support are also told to rush through their jobs or be replaced. Because Comcast puts failing employees on coaching plans over a few month period, they also fight the fired employees ability to collect unemployment. Chances are that if you make contact for billing or service issues, you will now get an inexperienced trainee rather than a seasoned rep. This is because the experienced reps have been forced out the door. Sounds like regular good old capitalsm to me, but it sure sucks to lose your job because you can’t beat the highly precise clock. Obsessive metrics do not make good customer service, kids. Image from MidWood.net → Read More
I’ve been using GameFly for the past few months and I can characterize it as, and I quote, “nice.” The company’s just announced that it’s added a third distribution center in Tampa to complement the ones in Pittsburgh and Los Angeles. I live in Boston and haven’t had much trouble getting games relatively quickly (generally takes two days from when GameFly receives the game I sent back) but this might improve times along the east coast and in the south as well. We’re Expanding! Now More Shipping Centers for Faster Delivery! [GameFly.com] → Read More
What’s not to love about free 411 calls? Jingle Networks, which operates 1-800-FREE411, says it has sold out its entire inventory of sponsorship ads for 2008. These are ten-second audio spots that you listen to before you get your free directory assistance from national sponsors like AMC Theaters, Earthlink, Cablevision, McDonald’s, Miller Brewing, and Nationwide. Jingle has actually sold only half of its inventory, though, since there are two ad spots per call—one for national sponsors and one for local/targeted ads. It is the first spot that is sold out. But selling half of your inventory for the year by the end of January is not a bad place to be. (The second ad spot is typically sold out one to two months in advance and more on a cost-per-call basis). 1-800-FREE411 is getting 20 million directory-assistance call a month, which is up 18 percent from last March. The company says that gives it a 6 percent market share of the 3.8 billion total 411 calls placed in the U.S. annually (up from 4 percent about a year ago). 1-800-FREE411 is more of a mobile and pure telephone play. It’s Website, where you can also get free directory numbers and is integrated with Skype, is basically an afterthought. Traffic to the site has declined from a peak of about 850,000 U.S. visitors a month a year ago to less than 100,000 a month, according to comScore. But then, you can get phone numbers on the Web simply by searching Google. Parent company Jingle Networks has raised nearly $75 million in four rounds from First Round Capital, Goldman Sachs, IDG Ventures Boston, and Hearst. CrunchBase Information Jingle Networks Information provided by CrunchBase → Read More
KickApps is implementing a lot of new features and capabilities with its newest release, version 3.0, which debuts today. For a complete list of the improvements, you can check out the company’s official release (see the summary in the second half). The upgrades are largely divided between those that appeal to advanced publishers and those that appeal to novice consumers. The API Developer Kit, which we covered just a little while ago but is still considered as part of this release, certainly appeals to the technically advanced by allowing them to access KickApps’ architecture directly. More sophisticated network activity reporting will also appeal to advanced users who need to track the “performance” of their online communities. In the other camp, we have new tools that help non-technical people build social networks with KickApps. As the press release puts it, “anyone can launch a full-featured social media community in minutes.” This was always true with KickApps, strictly speaking, but until now the company has never made it easy for people lacking HTML and CSS skills to make attractive, non-standard sites. Now the platform provides not only a selection of site themes but also a WYSIWYG Site Styler that lays on top of your site and lets you point and click your way to a new look. The Affiliate Center (KickApps’s term for a site’s control panel) has also been redesigned to hold the hands of novice users a bit more. If you haven’t created a video, added a forum, or loaded a profile picture, it will suggest you take these steps to foster your community. A new Flash-based widget studio, announced in beta today but not yet available publicly, will also make the creation of advanced widgets more feasible for regular consumers. KickApps has always differentiated itself from competitor Ning by focusing on content publishers and media companies. While Ning appeals to individuals who want to easily set up social networks for their various interests, KickApps appeals more to organizations who are looking for ways to publish and market their content online through social media. KickApps insists that its new tools are targeted at its own long tail, not Ning’s; that is to say, intended for smaller yet still serious content publishers. However, the more accessible KickApps makes its product – and this release is predominantly about making it more accessible – the more it will overlap with Ning and compete → Read More
So it’s thin and it’s shipping, but is it really that great? AppleInsider has taken a closer look at the trade-offs Apple had to make to get this thing running and found that a few of the important troubleshooting steps — namely Apple Hardware Test and SMC updates — are controlled from key combinations rather than via CD or DVD. They also found that Boot Camp requires a DVD or CD to install any version of Windows, requiring users to pick up a USB drive. Otherwise, the rest of the stuff they found is more nit-picking than serious: overheating in hot environments, slow system migrations over Wi-Fi, and “no warning” when you eject disks on other machines, resulting in a little surprise to anyone sharing an optical disk. I’m going to say no dealbreakers so far. Apple’s MacBook Air support docs reveal one-of-a-kind solutions [AppleInsider] → Read More
This video clip needs very little introduction, as it’s pretty much exactly how it sounds. Might not be safe for work, so proceed at your own risk. Star Trek Orgasms [Double Viking] → Read More
Well how do you like that? Lenovo has cell phones — another reminder that the United States isn’t the only country in the universe (or world, for that matter). Lenovo had cell phones, I should say, as its recently announced that it’ll sell off the mobile phone unit for $100 million in order to concentrate on computers. Good for you, Lenovo. It’s hard enough having a job while you’re in college, for instance. I can’t imaging having your own computer AND phone business. You must be exhausted! Get some sleep or take a little vacation with the money from the sale, eh? Lenovo Sells Phone Unit [New York Times] → Read More
When it comes to peer-to-peer file-sharing, as soon as one site is shut down, another takes its place. The current darling of the P2P world is the Pirate Bay, a search engine for BitTorrent files across the Web. It doesn’t actually host any of the files, but that is not stopping Swedish prosecutors from dragging them into court on behalf of Warner Bros., Colombia Pictures, 20th Century Fox, Sony BMG, Universal and EMI. According to one of those prosecutors, the Pirate Bay makes $4 million a year from advertising on its site. That site is currently tracking one million BitTorrent files, has 2.5 million registered users, and has peaked at more than 10 million simultaneous users downloading files at one time. That comes to $1.60 per registered user per year in terms of what they are worth to advertisers. Not a very high rate. But then, this is a volume business. CrunchBase Information The Pirate Bay Information provided by CrunchBase → Read More
Stalinist North Korea has contracted with the Egyptian company Orascom Telecom to provide mobile phone service in the communist country. North Korea began mobile service in November 2002 but within 18 months banned the service for ordinary citizens and recalled handsets. It is believed the network is still available for government officials. The deal will give Orascom Telecom a 25-year lease throughout the country, with an exclusivity period of four years. “Orascom Telecom intends to invest up to 400 million dollars in network infrastructure and license fee over the first three years in order to rapidly deploy a high quality network and offer voice, data and value-added services at accessible prices to the Korean people,” the company said. North Korea has a population of 23 million. Orascom will cover Pyongyang and most major cities in the first year of operations. The North Korea deal “is in line with our strategy to penetrate countries with high population and low penetration by providing the first mobile telephony services,” said Naguib Sawiris, chairman and CEO. The firm “has consistently proved its ability to successfully roll out mobile services into countries where no other operator has.” → Read More
Amazon is betting big on digital media. This morning it announced the $300 million acquisition of Audible (a 7 percent premium to Audible’s $280 million market cap at the time of this writing). Audible is the leading provider of audio books in digital form, with a library of 80,000 titles. As Amazon begins to generate a greater share of its revenues from digital media, owning a digital publisher will help its margins. It should be able to offer audiobooks at a lower cost, which in turn will help grow that segment of its sales. There is no doubt that as media becomes more digital, Amazon sees it as critical for its future. Media accounts for 59 percent of Amazon’s sales, most of that still being physical books , CDs, and DVDs. But towards the end of yesterday’s earnings call, Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos hinted at the growing importance of digital media for Amazon: When media was largely physical, it made sense to buy it in the physical world. But as media becomes digital it does not make so much sense to buy them in the physical world. The bulk of the sales now are in the physical world. So our relative advantage over time should improve. Amazon will be able to sells Audible’s audio books through its MP3 download store, in its regular book section, or directly to its Kindle electronic book reader, which has a headphone jack and can play MP3s. It is not clear how the deal will effect Audible’s relationship with Apple, though, since Audible’s books are sold through the iTunes Store as well. But Amazon just added about $90 million in annual sales to its revenues with this acquisition, and a leadership position in spoken-word digital content. → Read More
Comstar UTS, a Russian land-line operator, announced today that it has started building a mobile broadband network using WiMax technology in Armenia. Comstar will buy base station equipment from Airspan Networks. “We intend to launch the network this year and, therefore, become the first and the largest wireless broadband Internet operator in Armenia,” Comstar’s president, Sergei Pridantsev, said in a statement. The WiMax network is scheduled provide commercial service in the second half of this year. A Comstar spokeswoman said the net work will cover 75% of Armenia’s population. Comstar is part of the Russian conglomerate Sistema. Comstar provides voice, data, Internet, pay-TV and other services. → Read More
When it comes to connecting with new friends safely and privately, Jangl fits the bill. The “Social Communications Widget” lets you make calls, send SMSs, and leave voice mails without exposing anyone’s phone number through a simple widget. In contrast to their competitor, Jaxtr, they’ve been mainly spreading through a series of direct deals with social networking sites (Match.com, Tagged, AdultFriendFinder, and Fubar) and a Facebook/Bebo application (potentially on 80 million profiles). Jaxtr, on the other hand, has been spreading mainly through email links and personal websites (5 million users in under 5 months). Now they’ve forged a deal to be featured on the maverick of dating sites, PlentyOfFish. PlentyOfFish is like every other dating site you’ve heard of, but free. Free has actually paid off pretty well for founder Markus Frind, who runs the site from his Vancouver apartment and takes in over $10 million a year in advertising. Comscore ranked the site the number one dating site in December 2007, with an average of 1.3 billion page views a month (70,000 sessions and 3 million page views an hour). Jangl’s widget will let daters call each other, send SMSs, and leave voice mails all without sharing a real number. The functionality makes it easy to take the next step in a relationship without sacrificing privacy, or just discreet phone sex. Calls will be terminated on Jajah’s servers as part of their existing relationship. Like PlentyOfFish itself, Jangl will be monetizing the service through text advertising; a first for the company. On other sites, the service is either ad-free or paid for as part of membership (match.com). I’ve found social calling widgets (particularly Jaxtr and Jangl) to be the most attractive part of the VOIP market because they’re not competing in a race to the lowest calling rates, but adding real utility to our existing phone lines. Other voice widgets include Ccube, Tringme, and Snapvine. While monetization is still somewhat up in the air, both companies are testing out business models (paid Jaxtr minutes, or Jangl’s revenue sharing). Going forward we’ll see which models do and don’t work. I also expect both companies to continue adopting more advanced features similar to Google’s GrandCentral. CrunchBase Information Jaxtr Jangl Jajah GrandCentral Information provided by CrunchBase → Read More
Today, Web-based IM and chat room provider Meebo is releasing full-fledged APIs for its Meebo Rooms that will allow Websites to embed chat functionality in an automated fashion. Currently, Meebo Rooms can be embedded on sites or blogs manually by pasting in the appropriate code, which has already led to a proliferation of such widgets. There are more than 200,000 Meebo Rooms, attracting millions of visitors a month. (See our previous coverage here and here). Explains Meebo CEO Seth Sternberg: Now, the servers of our partners can say, “I want to create a room.” It automates the creation process on a server-to-server basis. Also, we will be putting advertising into these rooms. In addition to the APIs, the company is also announcing the Meebo Network, which will serve ads inside Meebo Rooms across the Web, splitting the revenues with the Websites hosting the rooms. Since each Meebo Room is formed around a particular interest, ads can be targeted. And to the extent that sites participating in the network have demographic data on their members, that can be used for ad targeting as well. Only Meebo Rooms created through the API will show ads, not the ones created manually. The launch partners joining the Meebo Network are Piczo, Revision3, RockYou, Social Project, and Tagged. Revision3, for instance, will create a Meebo room on its site where fans can watch a synchronized loop of Web TV shows while chatting. Access to the full APIs and the ad network is by invitation only at this point. Social networks could use the new APIs to automatically add chat rooms to every group page. Rock bands or movie sites could add Meebo Rooms to their sites for visiting fans. Comparisons can be made here to Userplane, a white-label chat service which was bought by AOL in 2006 and powers many of the chat rooms on MySpace. But there are subtle differences. Most notable is the fact that Meebo Rooms can spread anywhere on the Web. Anyone can grab the embed code and put it on their blog or MySpace page as I’ve done below. Notes Sternberg: A user cannot take a room off of MySpace and throw it somewhere else. We have all our rooms networked. A user can take the CBS Jericho room, and throw it on their WordPress blog. Our chat rooms are networked versus islands within Websites. It is very hard to → Read More
These guys should make the Dragon Ball Z movie Domino’s pursues type-A, control freak demographic Free Alan Moore Swamp Thing PDF: One more thing to allow Razer/THX Mako Advanced 2.1 desktop speaker unboxing Breaking: Garmin goes feet-first into cellphone business with flagship Nuviphone → Read More
Comments are the greasy oil that keeps the blog machine running. Here are three great (and 100% unedited) comments recently posted by your fellow readers. Super Smash Bros.: Umm… OK? Jon You’re acting like you’ve never seen a fox fighting a lizard before? → Read More
When Jeff Taylor launched old-people social network Eons in August 2006, he couldn’t use the site. That’s because the minimum age was 50, and he was just 45. That was the first warning sign that this thing was headed to the deadpool. Our initial review of the site was a thumbs down. Not only is it ridiculous that the founder and visionary for the service couldn’t actually use it, we found it to be poorly organized. It included depressing features like an obituary section (that must be fun to read every day when you log in). In short, we said it embraced all of the hype of social networking, but none of the spirit. It took about a year for the company to start laying off staff. No surprise there – Comscore has measured the slow decline of the company from mediocrity to downright desolation. They went from a high of 1.2 million worldwide visitors in May 2007 to just 400,000 last month. Incredibly, they’ve raised $32 million in capital from first tier VCs to get those 400k visitors. Minimum Age To Join Eons Is Now 50 13 From today on, however, Taylor can start to use his site. They’ve lowered the minimum age requirement from 50 to…13. They’re still focusing on the older generation in their content, you just don’t have to actually be old to join. The key is your state of mind. Taylor says “It’s the attitude and energy of our generation that defines us — our collective BOOM!” The change is reminiscent of Facebook’s move to allow non-students to join the network in late 2006. Except that it isn’t going to work. Facebook dominated the student market, and people were clamoring to get in and hang out with those young trendsetters. Eons doesn’t dominate its core market, and that core market certainly doesn’t include any trendsetters. Eons as a business plan probably looked great on paper. Lots and lots of baby boomers are nearing retirement age. They’re online and they have a lot of free time, but they don’t want to hang out at MySpace and Facebook. So Eons builds them a social network they can call their own. Investors threw money at it. The problem is that these people have better things to do than make countless numbers of anonymous online friends, and then poke them and flirt with them. And if they are going → Read More
Venture capitalist Josh Kopelman has stated that he likes startups that shrink markets – “We love investing in technologies and business models that are able to shrink existing markets. If your company can take $5 of revenue from a competitor for every $1 you earn – let’s talk!” And while he isn’t an investor in Seattle-based real estate startup Redfin, I’m pretty sure he likes their business model. The company is doing its best to completely remove real estate agents and brokers (and their absurd fees) from at least half of a home sale. If you use them when you buy a home, they reimburse 2/3 of the broker fee to you, keeping 1/3 for themselves. 60 Minutes covered the company last May, which led to a surge in business. CEO Glenn Kelman told me today that, since launching in February 2006, they’ve been involved in 1,500 transactions and have reimbursed $12 million to customers. The average refund is $10,000. The company had 2007 revenues of $5 million, he says. They’ve just launched a new version of the website that includes more frequent MLS updates and the ability to group home sales by neighborhood and download the data. They are also providing deeper data on homes currently on the market as well as historical sales (they compete with a number of other startups in search, including Zillow, Trulia and Roost). If you want to use Redfin, check first to make sure they cover your geographic area, which include the San Francisco/Bay Area, San Diego, Orange County, LA, Seattle, Washington DC/Baltimore, and Boston. Chicago is coming soon. CrunchBase Information Redfin Zillow Trulia Roost Information provided by CrunchBase → Read More
