Lady Gaga blared from the speakers as my 16 year old daughter drove away from the house. I didn’t want to like Lady Gaga, but her duet with Elton John at the Grammys changed everything. She seemed to draw strength with every traded verse, turning his phrasing to her advantage, his blues to her power. This was not a generational shift, but a reach across the eras. Now there was my little girl moving out of sight with her precious cargo, our youngest daughter, on the way to school and beyond. For a second we glanced at each other with a nervous giggle, then drank in a day with new eyes. A day where the world prepares for the coming of the iPad. A day where health care reform was debated and both Democrats and Republicans were coaxed out of hiding. Whatever you think of the merits of the positions, the debate in Washington was good for both parties. Republicans came prepared, with a clever mixture of partisan politics and pragmatic courage to avoid crossing the line from talking points to personal insults and worse. For their part, the Democrats let Obama carry the ball, getting away with it because of his skill and command of the details but finally showing the passion that fuels their cause if it is to prevail. The media was less impressive, with Fox Business News the only cable feed that stayed with most of the live coverage. MSNBC and CNN seem to have switched roles in the year-long debate, moving away to talking heads on the former to blather on repetitively before bailing altogether for the Olympics, while capturing more of the underlying dynamics on the latter. I finally gave up switching to stay with the event and watched the rest on the MacBook Air via CSPAN. Next stop, the iPad. The tech agenda seems similarly polarized, what with Buzz this and Facebook patents that. But I get the strong feeling that no one has yet succeeded in smoking out the real work that needs to be done in the few short weeks before the iPad arrives. There’s a lot of phony outrage about Apple and Google soaking Techmeme, as though big companies with aggressive agendas is something new and more fearsome because of the scale at which net giants operate. But I keep coming back to my daughter driving off to greet the → Read More
It seems that quite a few children were discovered working in the factories where they assemble Apple products and components. Why this would come as a surprise to anyone is beyond me. Did people think Apple had a special brushed-aluminum facility surrounded by parks and fountains, where volunteer workers happily put together iPads just for the chance to be part of something magical? No, Apple is a gargantuan electronics company just like any other. I keep telling you! Hold them to a higher standard than Acer or Samsung and you’re bound to be disappointed. → Read More
When Google Buzz launched three weeks ago, the product wasn’t ready. There were basic privacy issues that still needed to be hammered out (and were quickly addressed by Google), but beyond that Google Buzz simply did not work smoothly enough to force feed it to 175 million Gmail users without any warning. (MG covered some of the usability issues last week).
So why was Google Buzz pushed out the door too soon? I have three interrelated theories: → Read More
This isn’t new, but it’s new for us. A 1986 TV clip of a then thirtyish year old Eric Schmidt that is just amazing. The awkward smiles and huge glasses say a lot about the era as well as the nerd cred of Google’s CEO. Today’s too cool for school hipster engineers living in lofts in San Francisco and spending more time grooming than coding should be ashamed of themselves.
Just two years later, though, Schmidt had his act together, and looked significantly more like an exec than a nerd. That’s too bad – 1986 Eric was cool. → Read More
Here’s some troubling news for my fellow World of Warcraftplayers. It seems that hackers, account thieves, and other miscreants have now embraced man-in-the-middle (MITM) attacks to further their evil ways. Blizzard says it’s not a widespread issue, and it’s rather difficult to pull off, but it’s something y’all should be aware of. → Read More
The guys behind Shanzai.com – a blog covering the very best in China and Indian shanzai products – are taking the world of shanzai online with a new crowdsourcing site called Shanzaistudios.com
Basically, its your standard crowdsourcing model or better yet “Social Production” – the site puts up a product they can manufacture in China and everyone visiting the site gets to help form the final design that gets made and sold.
While the first product is very interesting to tablet fans (a tablet bag ‘natch) its how deep they plan to go that is exciting. While in Hong Kong, I was able to chat with one of the founders and they were telling me that ultimately this is the way to get a more personalized cellphone or a tablet device, but starting smaller and building it up is their initial goal. → Read More
Reader Dan of the UK sent us this image of the UK iTunes store, where things are a little more Cool Britannia, if you know what I mean. → Read More
The truth is that cats will make themselves comfortable anywhere. On a bed of coals, or atop Mount Doom, or hurtling through space at 99% of the speed of light, a cat will somehow find a way to curl up and doze off. So the idea of including a special place for your cat to sleep underneath a perfectly good cat bed (in this case a glass coffee table) seems redundant. But let’s be honest — are you going to let a little redundancy keep you from buying a cat hammock? → Read More
Which online video companies will get bought in 2010? Venture capitalists are desperately looking for exits while the usual suspects are sitting on more than $80 billion in cash: Microsoft ($20B), Apple ($40B), Google ($15B), Amazon ($3B), and Yahoo! ($3B) just to name the cash positions of a few potential acquirers. Theoretically, it should be a match made in heaven, but the sheer number of venture-backed video startups is staggering so when the music stops, not everyone will find a dancing partner.
Once you assess what drives companies to merge or acquire one another, however, it seems like we’re about to enter a period of mergers between video competitors and see a series of acquisitions by larger companies looking to accelerate their video strategies, with a common theme being increasing both monetization and margins.
With that in mind, let’s look at those 10 potential deals. → Read More
Following the earthquake in Haiti, mobile fundraising via texting exploded; with over $40 million raised via text messaging alone. With the massive success of the Haiti campaign, mobile donations are now being used to raise funds for the victims of the 8.8 magnitude earthquake that shook Chile over the past weekend.
Mobile giving is fairly simple; you text a keyword to a code on your phone and a micro-donation is made to a given charity. The donation is billed via your carrier. Similar to the Haiti campaign, AT&T, Verizon Wireless, Sprint and T-Mobile are waiving text-messaging fees for the donations. According to the Mobile Giving Foundation, Habitat for Humanity, The Salvation Army, The American Red Cross and World Vision are all accepting SMS donations for the Chile earthquake. → Read More
People who use Jimdo to create and publish their own basic website know how versatile yet easy-to-use the tool really is – I know because I used the service myself to set up and manage a site for my wedding last year. And if these users now want to start selling something online through their websites, it wouldn’t involve as much hassle as it would have a week ago.
This is because the German startup behind Jimdo has added a ‘Store’ feature to their website building service, enabling users to add a full-fledged ecommerce element to their sites. → Read More
Editor’s note: Earlier this month, BrightRoll raised a $10 million Series B for its video ad network. In this guest post, CEO Tod Sacerdoti shares some of the lessons he learned trying to raise that money in the current environment.
As Peter Drucker once wrote, “The entrepreneur always searches for change, responds to it and exploits it as an opportunity.” Put more simply, change is good . . . of course, that’s unless you’re trying to raise capital in these trying times.
After my company BrightRoll recently closed its Series B round of financing, we took a step back to digest the lessons we learned from pitching and negotiating with a handful of VCs over our 6-week fundraising effort. → Read More
The coverage of the Winter Olympics on NBC has been painful to watch. In addition to the tape delays which ruined the outcomes for anyone paying attention to any other news, sports or social media outlet other than NBC, there are a lot of other complaints. In between the hard-hitting reports of polar bears in the Canadian North and life among the lumberjacks, NBC did manage to squeeze in some actual Winter games, which were matched in quantity by the constant loop of the same handful of commercials on heavy rotation for McDonald’s, Visa, AT&T, Diet Coke, and NBC’s upcoming shows Parenthood and the Marriage Ref. (Thank goodness for DVRs).
We already know that NBC’s handling of its Olympics coverage sucks, if only because everyone on Twitter says so. Right now, Twitter Sentiment shows that 73 percent of Tweets about “NBC Olympics” are negative. But what are they complaining about exactly, and is it just Twitter? Some new data from Crimson Hexagon, another sentiment analysis service for brands, shows the breakdown of hate: → Read More
A total of 19 Japanese startups were given the chance to show their services at TokyoCamp, a demo event held by TechCrunch Japan (one of the country’s biggest blogs) this Friday. The event, which was co-organized by hosting company KDDI Web Communications, was a blast and attracted over 200 people this time.
This was the third TokyoCamp (see here and here for my previous reports), and here are short profiles of all the startups that presented there. (Please note not all of the services offer English homepages.) → Read More
Time was, companies knew how to keep track of their important customers.
First, they set up loyalty programs: computerised systems that tracked the monetary value of everyone who shopped in their stores or flew on their planes or ate at their restaurant. When a high spender made a booking, the company was alerted to their status and they were treated accordingly. Frequent fliers got upgrades and champagne, frequent diners got a visit from the chef at their table – that kind of thing. Anything to ensure that the money kept flowing.
And then there was the other way of measuring worth: celebrity. It was understood that if you were (in order of importance) in movies, or on television or a journalist with a significant audience then you would get special treatment too, often for free. Brad Pit doesn’t have to mingle with the plebs in the American Airlines lounge, Courtney Cox doesn’t wait in line at the bank, and the New York Times restaurant critic never has to wait a month for a table at Le Bernardin. If you’re a business, all of this makes perfect sense: high paying customers are the ones who keep you in business, and celebrities are the ones who guarantee positive mentions in the press. No one messes with Oprah.
And for decades the system worked. → Read More
I have much love for Wordle. I’ve used the text cloud generator dozens of time for use in presentations, TechCrunch posts and random stuff ever since I discovered the tool.
But as of yesterday, the application is no longer available, and the website only displays the message copied above. In a notice and a blog post, Wordle developer Jonathan Feinberg says he’s been forced to take the service offline due to a trademark claim against his use of the word “wordle” and states that he’s looking for pro bono legal advice from IP lawyers to fend off the infringement claim. → Read More
I was out of the country for much of 2009, so it wasn’t until I spent two months back in San Francisco that I noticed a big change in the Web community. Babies. I’m not talking about whiny Millennials coming out of college and demanding venture capital for their iPhone app. I’m talking about actual babies. The ones that crawl around the house wearing diapers.
In 2006, I co-wrote a BusinessWeek cover story on the then-burgeoning Web 2.0 movement, and one the hallmarks of the scene was a sense of having been burned by the dot com boom and bust. That was when many of the leaders, investors, and foot soldiers of the Web 2.0 movement had moved to Silicon Valley and had their first taste of startup life. As a result many of them, like Max Levchin of PayPal and Slide or Evan Williams of Blogger and Twitter, had lived a rollercoaster of wild life experiences when it came to business—takeovers, ousters, commanding millions in venture capital, but not much in the way of traditional “life experiences.” You know marriage, kids, and the like. Despite having net worths in the millions of dollars, many of them didn’t even own a house. Many didn’t think they had time.
My, how that has changed. The 30-something Valley generation that moved to the Valley fresh after college, stuck out the crash and got in early on the Web 2.0 movement are now married and having babies. Lots of them. → Read More
Short version: The Aurora ALX is quite possibly the fastest computer I’ve ever used. It is in a word, amazing. The water cooling, thermally reactive venting system, and lighting combine to make a system that runs great, looks amazing, and has some innovative features that make you go “duh. why didn’t I think of that?” Of course performance has its price, and you will have to pay a premium price for this system. → Read More
Porn has been around forever. Sometimes celebrated, sometimes persecuted, porn has gone through various levels of social acceptance throughout history. A cyclical porn journey, as adult content becomes too pervasive and socially acceptable, there is always an effort by government and social groups to squash it. In recent news, Apple’s purge of the app store caused widespread disappointment when even the tamest sexy apps were removed. In similar news, Wal-Mart bought out video on demand company VUDU and made the decision to completely block the sale of anything pornographic – even if you’ve already bought the video, soon it will not be viewable. With adult content purveyors targeting technology like smartphone applications and video on demand as part of the constant struggle to monetize porno, could this mass effort to purge the world of porn seriously put a damper on porn industry profits? → Read More
Twitter appears to be on the verge of some big changes to its website if a tweet that Twitter engineer Alex Payne sent today is any indication. In fact, the new features may be so good that they could make some people re-examine their use of desktop Twitter clients, apparently. As Payne writes:
If you had some of the nifty site features that we Twitter employees have, you might not want to use a desktop client. (You will soon.)
Not surprisingly, that tweet had a few third-party Twitter developers worried. → Read More
