Did you know that your USB cable can be used to connect your phone to the Internet and bring over ringtones? I know, right? Amazing! But unless you own pro grade cable, you might as well be carrying your data over in a feces-smeared galvanized bucket scrounged up from a burned-down rendering plant! → Read More
Everyone has an opinion about the iPad, even at Davos. Michael is there this week at the World Economic Forum, grabbing video interviews with the people he is running into (like Michael Dell showing off a yet-to-launch Android device). In the video after the jump, Salesforce CEO Marc Benioff talks about the iPad (what else?). Other people might be wowed by the touchscreen or the 140,000 apps or the iBooks, but not Benioff. He’s impressed by the battery:
“The most important feature is the 10-hour battery life. That he was able to get that kind of capability in such a robust device, I think we have a game-changer.” → Read More
This week, social networking site MyYearbook launched a revamped design, changing some key UI elements to better reflect the way people use the site. One of the more interesting points of the redesign isn’t its appearance though — it’s how it was actually put together. Rather than simply rolling out a new design, MyYearbook actually polled its userbase for suggestions, then drafted some mockups that users voted on. The result? Users favor the new design by a factor of over 3 to 1, without the kind of backlash other sites have seen from their redesigns.
The most obvious change to the site is the logo, which has gone from cartoony to something a little more professional (though it still has a couple of smiley faces). The navigation bar has also been simplified. CEO Geoff Cook says that over time MyYearBook had integrated a bunch of gaming menu options into the main navigation area, without doing much to differentiate the core features that actually make the site a social network. → Read More
[UK] A quick reality check. Despite the rise of social media, mobile messaging is still very much owned by the carriers in the form of the humble text message.
A new report out today from the Mobile Data Association (MDA) shows that throughout 2009, Brits sent an average of 11 million text messages (SMS) an hour or 265 million text messages per day, up 23% on the year before. Picture messaging (MMS) also saw an increase – up 9% or 1.6 million per day.
Overall, says the MDA, text messaging (and the carriers) are holding their own against competing mobile messaging channels, such as Facebook or Twitter’s DM feature. But why?
A quote from Steve Reynolds, MDA Chairman, is telling: “These statistics show that even with new social media forms of messaging such as Twitter and Facebook, people are using SMS as a social messaging tool because of its simplicity and ubiquity.”
Simplicity, maybe.
Ubiquity, certainly. → Read More
Yes, you’ve never probably never heard of the Markit Group. But today it announced a $250m investment by General Atlantic valuing the 6/7 year old company headquartered in London at $3.3 billion. This makes it possibly one of the two or three most successful UK start-ups ever (if you stretch the startup thing to seven years of course, which is an ongoing debate).
I thought it might be worth while highlighing this company, as a contrast to our usual programming. Yes, so it deals with trying to create quality data in the burgeoning credit derivatives market. This is not the realtime web or augmented reality. It’s not that sexy, huh kids. → Read More
Intelius, a site that helps users find information about others, continues to have more bad news around its senior execs. John Arnold, a cofounder and EVP, has been indicted on a charge of lying to a grand jury about having sex with a dancer.
The company has been trying to go public despite hundreds of scam complaints, and the atrocious legal record of CEO Naveen Jain. We covered many of the issues back in 2008. Last year the U.S. Senate began an investigation into the post transaction marketing offers that drive much of Intelius’ revenue.
The new charges are somewhat ironic, since Intelius recently launched an iPhone dating application called datecheck. → Read More
A recent AT&T earnings call consisted of a lot of talk talk talk but one slide stands out: it essentially admits that 3G in San Francisco and New York sucked ween AKA were both far below their official performance objective. Although I can’t figure out what the actual “Performance Objective” truly is based on this slide, those lines do seem to be going up. While anyone can make up a statistic, for AT&T to come out and say “we suck in those areas” is big news. Good on you, lads. → Read More
For all of its stupidity, the music industry should be commended for relaxing its DRM requirements. Every single song on iTunes is DRM-free, as are the songs on Amazon MP3 and electronic music specialist Beatport. The Zune Marketplace works a little differently, but many of the downloadable songs there are DRM-free, too. But PC game publishers? They’re still bat-shit crazy, as evidenced by the DRM requirements of BioShock 2 and presumably every single one of Ubisoft’s upcoming releases. What’s it going to take for PC publishers to step back and realize that DRM does absolutely nothing to prevent piracy? Not only that, but that it encourages piracy because the pirated version of the game ends up being superior to the legitimate copy? → Read More
Remember those guys who made those nifty Google Wave movie mash-up videos? You know, the ones with Pulp Fiction and Good Will Hunting? Well, they’re at it again, with the new hot ticket in town: the iPad.
Whirled Creative has made a mash-up of yesterday’s iPad announcement and President Obama’s first State of the Union Address from last night. Those who were concerned that the Apple announcement was getting more buzz than the President’s speech can now have the best of both worlds. → Read More
TwitBit [iTunes link] is a fantastic Twitter client on the iPhone. With dozens of apps from which to Tweet, competition is stiff. Moreover, once you find a Twitter client you like, it’s even harder to understand why you should switch. TwitBit, a Twitter client from High Order Bit, has finally made me change my ways and delete Tweetie from my iPhone. And though TwitBit definitely lacks some key features of Tweetie, there’s one major reason why I am now using TwitBit instead of Tweetie: Push notifications. → Read More
[UK] Developers start your engines. Hot on the heels of Apple’s iPad announcement, a new fund has been launched by the UK’s Northern Film and Media to help startups in the region to be amongst the first to enter this new market.
NFM are putting aside £40k to invest in iPad app ideas, with submissions open until February 24th. Each idea can receive between £1k and £10k of investment, though funding must be matched by either the company’s own time and resources or a private investor.
The new fund is thought to be the first of its kind – not surprising as the iPad was only announced yesterday and won’t go on sale in the UK until March – and certainly suggests that NFM has its eye on the ball.
Tom Harvey, Chief Executive of Northern Film and Media, says of the new fund: “We want the North East to have a place in the rapidly evolving global content market. We will do whatever it takes to ensure that North East companies have every opportunity to get their products developed, made, distributed and bought on whatever new platforms come along.”
Here’s the full criteria for those wishing to apply. → Read More
Next weekend Peyton Manning will lead the Colts to a victory over the New Orleans Saints in Super Bowl XLIV. Hot new commercials will run and there will be remembrances a-plenty about Katrina. Retailers are hoping that you witness all this on a brand new HDTV. And you might want to think about it, too. After all, right now is the best time of year to buy a high definition TV — as long as you follow these six rules. → Read More
Microsoft has just posted the results of its fiscal 2010 second-quarter, which ended December 31. The company reported $19.02 billion in revenue and diluted earnings of $0.74 per share, beating analyst expectations of revenues of $17.8 billion and $0.59 per share. Operating income was $8.51 billion, and net income was $6.66 billion.
Microsoft says that it sold over 60 million licenses of Windows 7 through the second quarter. Sales were driven by growth in the consumer PC market, which is up over 20% year over year.
The Online services Division reported a 5% year over year decline. Online advertising revenue is down 2%. Microsoft notes that Bing’s marketshare has been up for 7 consecutive months, and that while there is growth in search revenue, display revenue has been hurt by declines in international rates. → Read More
The holidays were good to Amazon, which just announced fourth quarter 2009 earnings. Sales were up 42 percent to $9.5 billion in the quarter, and net income shot up 71 percent to $384 million (or 85 cents a share, well above the analyst consensus of 72 cents). Free cash flow was up 113 percent to $2.9 billion. For the full year, sales were $24.5 billion, and net income was $902 million.
Amazon highlighted the success of its Kindle in its earning release, which is not surprising given all the comparison to the iPad which Apple announced yesterday. The one quote from CEO Jeff Bezos in the release is about the Kindle: “Millions of people now own Kindles. And Kindle owners read, a lot. When we have both editions, we sell 6 Kindle books for every 10 physical books. This is year-to-date and includes only paid books — free Kindle books would make the number even higher. It’s been an exciting 27 months.”
Beyond being vague about how many “millions” of people own a Kindle (is it two million or 20 million?), Amazon also mentions that there are now 410,000 books available on the Kindle. The depth and breadth of that catalog is the Kindle’s greatest strength. → Read More
Oh man, I must be dreaming. Please don’t wake up! Please don’t wake up! Please don’t wake up! A mouse pad with a built-in 10-key number pad AND a three-port USB hub? All for $25?! Yum. → Read More
Kids! Who needs school? Why sit in class learning about nothing important when you could be at home trying to pitch a perfect game in MLB 2K10? If your parents get all bent out of shape about you dropping out of school to play video games, kindly refer them to this post and direct their attention to the following statement: The first person to pitch a perfect game in MLB 2K10 gets a million dollars. → Read More
Two years ago, former Googlers Jason Liebman, Daniel Blackman and Sanjay Raman launched Howcast, a site filled with originally-produced how-to videos on everything from “How to Ice Skate” to “How To Deal With a Mean Boss.” Today, Howcast is streaming 25 million videos a month across its network, which includes its own site, popular channels on YouTube and Hulu, and an iPhone app (iTunes link) which has been downloaded more than one million times. A year ago, the startup was streaming about 10 million videos a month.
To put this in perspective, YouTube streams more than 12 billion videos a month and the next nine video properties on the Web all stream north of 200 million videos a month. But Howcast’s growth is still very respectable for a niche video site. The niche Howcast is going after, however is a very broad one. Informational videos can be applied to practically any topic, are always in demand, and are search-engine friendly. Its YouTube channel alone is in the top 100 channels, with close to 100 million cumulative views so far and 111,000 subscribers. → Read More
Mårten Gustaf Mickos, former CEO of MySQL, has joined Index Ventures as Entrepreneur In Residence (EIR).
The news comes four months after the man joined another VC firm, Silicon Valley-based Benchmark Capital, also as EIR.
In a statement, Index Ventures says Mickos will focus on seeking out new investment opportunities within the European technology market, helping to identify and evaluate companies on behalf of the VC firm.
That’s absolutely splendid news for European entrepreneurs and promising startups. → Read More
One of the arguments “in favor” of illegal UFC streaming just became a little bit harder to defend. The company signed a deal with China’s sohu.com to broadcast events online there. The first event to be streamed will be UFC 109: Relentless, headlined by Randy Couture v. Mark Coleman. No prices were announced. → Read More
Here’s a fun activity to pass the time at work. Well, maybe “fun” is stretching it a little bit but it’s an activity nonetheless. As you’re perusing your favorite tech websites today, hit CTRL-F to bring up your browser’s search function and type in “iPad.” Now try to find which site has gone the most gaga over iPad news by the total number of times “iPad” appears on the front page.
A few front runners, as of around noon Eastern: → Read More
