Next Jump CEO Charlie Kim wants you to earn and burn his company’s WOWPoints, a loyalty reward currency that can be used to pay for real merchandise. WOWPoints are redeemable for thousands of offers on Next Jump’s OO.com at a rate of one penny per point. Since it launched WOWPoints two years ago, more than 1.6 billion have been burned. Currently, people are burning WOWPoints at the rate of 100 million a month, which translates to $1 million worth of discounts every month across thousands of products not only on OO.com, but also on corporate rewards sites which Next Jump operates.
Next Jump is making it easer to earn points with a concept called Family Points, which lets families pool their points together to encourage even bigger purchases. That could come in handy for travel discounts. The points can be applied to any offer across the various marketplaces Next Jump operates, including daily deals from LivingSocial. But the points aren’t really about daily deals, they are more about loyalty. → Read More
In 2006, Google was internally testing a project codenamed “Platypus”, an online storage service. When it was accidentally disclosed during an analyst meeting as “GDrive”, it quickly captured the web’s imagination. Google seemed on the verge of transforming their servers into our own personal hard drives in the cloud. Plenty of startups were working on this (and still are), but the presumption was that Google would be able to scale this beyond anyone else and do it for free, or very cheap. Google refused to talk about it, but story after story after story kept coming.
Then something weird happened: GDrive never actually launched.
It wasn’t until earlier this year that we found out what happened, thanks to Steven Levy’s book In The Plex. In 2008, GDrive was about to launch under Bradley Horowitz (now a lead on Google+), but Sundar Pichai (now the SVP of Chrome) convinced Google’s top executives not to launch it. The reason? He felt like the concept of a “file” was outdated (sounds more than a bit Jobsian) in the cloud-based universe that Google was trying to build. After some debate, the powers that be at Google agreed and GDrive was shelved, and the team moved over to the Chrome team.
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In what marks its first expansion abroad, Hulu is now available in Japan. As expected, the video streaming service will offer both TV shows and movies across various devices for a subscription of about $20 a month (1,480 Yen).
Unlike in the U.S., where there are both free and premium versions, in Japan the service will be subscription-only. And it will cost more than twice as much as Hulu Plus does in the U.S (which is only $8 a month). Is Hulu charging so much because it thinks it can get away with a higher subscription fee in Japan or did it have to pay through the nose for international licensing rights and has no other choice?
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Kai-Fu Lee has a fairly unique perspective on the tech industry, having spent years in high roles at Apple, Microsoft, and Google. Lee spent six years as VP of Apple’s Interactive Media Group, before moving on to be chosen as the guy to forge first Microsoft’s and then Google’s inroads into China. Then, in mid-2009, Lee left Google (where the former professor and computer scientist had been involved with Google.cn and beyond for over four years) amidst the growing criticism in Western media of China’s Internet policy, specifically in regards to the Golden Shield, or the Great Firewall of China, as it is fondly known.
Lee bowed out of Google seemingly at just the right time to turn his focus from the behemoths to the little guys, founding Innovation Works, an early-stage incubator for Chinese startups. Since 2009 the incubator has been solely focused on investing in and coaching young entrepreneurs in the Chinese market, and today the incubator announced that it has raised $180 million to create the so-called “Innovation Works Development Fund” (IWDF). The fund is the first dollar-based fund raised by the company to be focused on Chinese Internet startups. → Read More
Olympus is trying to do with their new E-PMT1 PEN Mini camera what other manufacturers already have: bring DSLR power to the masses. It’s their smallest Micro Four Thirds camera to date, and it’s definitely got its proverbial sights set on the mass market — and the fact that it comes in six colors certainly doesn’t hurt. Olympus was kind enough to let me play with an E-PM1 at the U.S. Open of all places, and here are a few of my quick impressions. → Read More
Assistly, the cloud-based customer support platform that’s backed by Bullpen Capital, Index Ventures, Salesforce, as well as several other angels and VCs, launched version 2.0 of its platform back in July, along with rolling out a new pricing model that includes a full-featured version of its service for free.
Today, the summer features keep on rolling out for Assistly, which today announced that it would be adding two-way integration with Salesforce. Assistly for Salesforce is an AppExchange app that, according to the Assistly blog, will enable sales and support teams to “share a complete view of the customer” — in other words, customer support teams can now see data, like customer contact info and status while working on cases — direct from Salesforce. → Read More
You may recall that back in May, we spotted something in Google’s “Dear Sophie” commercial: an unreleased +1 Chrome extension. This was pre-Google+, when the +1 button still didn’t do a whole lot, so even I forgot about the extension over the past few months. But very quietly, Google actually launched it yesterday.
There was no blog post, no featured placement in the Chrome Web Store — pretty much no fanfare beyond Google SVP of Chrome, Sundar Pichai, posting a link to it on Google+. But it has the potential to be a bigger deal than it seems on the surface. → Read More
I don’t always post about iPhone cases… but when I do, I prefer retro gaming ones. Sure, you could have a cool metallic case, or go all-leather, or make your phone look like R2-D2 — but when you can have a Dreamcast on the back, those other options seem to lose their luster. → Read More
Hey, what do you know! It’s been just shy of two weeks since Apple’s last Beta release of iOS 5, and just like clockwork, they’re back with another serving.
You guys all know the drill at this point: as usual, this Beta release is for developers (and “developers”) only — but on the upside, that Beta version number probably won’t climb too much higher before this thing gets released to everyone. → Read More
Today won’t be remembered tomorrow. Nothing of consequence happened today. Steve Ballmer didn’t resign, Dell didn’t get out of the PC business and I didn’t stop procrastinating and actually go to the gym. Nope, like any other boring summer day, several products were announced, start-ups announced funding and another wireless carrier jacked up fees. Today is just another day.
But while we’re still here, the last day of August, several tablets from major brands were announced that deserve a bit more conversation. Sony finally revealed the full specs and launch details for the P and S tablets. HTC, likewise, did the same with Puccini tablet, which now sports the rather predictable name of Jetstream. You see, these tablets are just like all the other Honeycomb tabs that were hyped for months and eventually hit with a thud instead of a bang. → Read More
The ever-volatile issue of the costs surrounding globalized manufacturing looks to be looming again as a harshly critical report on Apple’s Chinese suppliers gains visibility. The report, by environmental NGO the Institute of Public and Environmental Affairs (IPE), is the sequel to another they released in January entitled “The Other Side of Apple.” With the ominous title it’s clear what their intention is, and while there is a certain slant to the presentation, the facts highlighted are too salient to ignore.
I have written about our conscious abdication of moral responsibility for our purchases (Our Great Sin), but the IPE report resurrects the question of corporate responsibility in an era of increasing transparency.
Should we, and can we, hold Apple and others like it to account for the transgressions of those with whom it does business? → Read More
On one hand, you have to give Windows chief Steven Sinofsky some credit, he’s being very open, proactive, and engaged leading up to Microsoft’s unveiling of Windows 8. And that’s great. But on the other hand, you have to wonder if he’s in the process of burying himself in a very big hole.
Over the past couple of days, the Internet has let out a collective “gasp” at the sight of the new Windows Explorer. So today, Sinofsky has responded with his own thoughts about the design of Windows 8. The theme he wants his post to have is very clear: “no compromise” — he says it four separate times. Unfortunately, the theme that actually comes across is the exact opposite. → Read More
Mobile TV and video platform MobiTV has filed its S-1 with the SEC this afternoon. In the public offering, MobiTV plans to raise as much as $75 million.
For background, MobiTV was founded in 1999 and was one of the pioneers in bringing live and on-demand TV to mobile devices. The company boasts partnerships with a number of carriers and content providers such as NBC, ESPN, Disney, CBS, Warner Music and more. And MobiTV has raised approximately $115 million from a wide range of investors, including Menlo Ventures, Redpoint Ventures, Adobe Ventures and Hearst Ventures. → Read More
We first covered Game Closure this spring when it opened its private beta to the world to test out its new cross-platform HTML5 game engine and SDK. The startup has since gone on to work with multiple private and public partners to bring cross-platform, multiplayer HTML5 games to the App Store, Android Marketplace, Facebook, and beyond. According to Game Closure Co-founder and CEO Michael Carter, the startup has also attracted interest in its technology from game studios involved in the Project Spartan launch and expects activity to ramp up after project details are (expected to be) announced at F8 next month. → Read More
It’s iconic. That soft, pulsating light emanating from the button that controls life and death. Press it when it’s glowing and creativity flows. Turn it off and a little bit of your inner child dies. The iNecklace allows the wearer to capture that sense of control and wear it around the neck as a status of power. There’s nothing else like it. (this is where you, the commenter will jump to the comments and link to something identical) → Read More
In June, we covered the launch of Impermium, a young startup aimed at zapping the Internet’s social spam wherever it hides. Not only is the startup bringing the heat to user generated spam like spammy comments, hacked accounts, and fraudulent registrations, but the startup also happens to be founded by Mark Risher, Yahoo’s former “Spam Czar”, as well as former Yahoos Vish Ramarao and Naveen Jamal. These guys have significant experience fighting spam, part of the reason they’ve already signed on investors like Accel Partners, AOL Ventures, Charles River Ventures, Freestyle Capital, Greylock Discovery Fund and Morado Ventures.
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Y Combinator is about to wield its rapidly-growing influence in the tech community to help startups everywhere. And it’s taking on one of the hottest (and most fear-inspiring) issues around: patents.
Today YC cofounder Paul Graham has written a note called The Patent Pledge in which he proposes that tech companies should commit to a straightforward promise: “No first use of software patents against companies with less than 25 people.”
That’s the entire pledge. There’s no legalese or confusing conditions around it. But it could shake things up for tech companies in a big way. More important: unlike government intervention, which would likely take years, YC’s Patent Pledge could be widely adopted in a much shorter timeframe. YC has set up a site at ThePatentPledge.org that lists a roster of the companies that have agreed to the pledge, which already includes fourteen well-known YC alumni like Airbnb, Disqus, Hipmunk, and Weebly.
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Since HTC’s purchase of a majority stake in Beats Electronics, the big question was which of their snazzy new handsets would be the first to benefit from an audio overhaul. Rumor had it that the Vigor may be the first to get a taste of the Dr. Dre treatment, but according to a leaked spec sheet, it may be a refreshed version of HTC’s Sensation that nabs the distinction. → Read More
Update: The Gang is scheduled to start around 1:30pm.
From the inside out, salesforce.com is a rapidly growing cloud computing company at the head of the enterprise social wave. From the outside in, the company’s annual Dreamforce conference has landed in downtown San Francisco on the Moscone Center campus. Each year the conference grows in size, with more than 45,000 attendees streaming in this year.
I’ve been employed at Salesforce for more than a year and a half, and in that time I’ve seen a steady march toward the goals that attracted me to the company. Many of these advances will be revealed over the course of the conference, freeing me at last to discuss and place them in the context of the Social Enterprise. With the coming release of iOS 5 and the continued advance of Android in the mobile space, the opportunity for using the social stream to improve our personal and business lives has never been more tangible.
Gillmor Gang is Live from Dreamforce, at 1:30pm PT today. Steve’s guests include Adam Bosworth, Robert Scoble, Kevin Marks, Dan Farber, and John Taschek. Click inside the post to watch. → Read More
Good news, HTC Thunderbolt/Droid Incredible owners! You’re gettin’ some Gingerbread!
It’s a bit late in the game (Gingerbread has been around for nearly 10 months, after all) but HTC has just announced that both the Incredible and the Thunderbolt should be updated to Android 2.3 sometime in September. As usual, there’s no mention of a specific date — but hey, at least it’s officially on the way! → Read More
