A few days ago I landed in England and, expecting little, slipped an old UK SIM card into my phone. I’d bought it when living in London five years ago, and hadn’t used it in over a year. But to my amazement it was still active — as was the money I’d added to its pay-as-you-go account sixteen months earlier…and then I received a friendly text message informing me that my data costs were… → Read More
The writing’s on the wall. Mobile is the future, and it requires different skill than the web. Entrepreneurship is more fetishized than ever, making standard hiring tough. The result is days like today where Yahoo, Twitter, Salesforce, and Box all bought startups, and Facebook and Microsoft were reported to be in talks for major acquisitions. Big is a scary thing to be right now. → Read More
This is the penultimate episode of “In The Studio.” The show, which features developers and entrepreneurs working on enterprise technology, will be ending. This week’s guest is Varun Singh, CEO and founder of ScaleArc, a young startup which began in India but registered as a US-company with designs to expand to this country once it got off the ground in Mumbai. ScaleArc operates in the space of… → Read More
“im ddeleting the internet [sic]“: A telling re-blog from a teenaged girl on the blogging platform turned social networking site Tumblr, in a chain of re-postings that had her pondering Tumblr’s impact on her life twenty years from now, when her passing, immature thoughts become fodder for a discussion among her boss and colleagues at some imagined future workplace. → Read More
Facebook’s mission is to make the world more open and connected. Indeed, great things can come from this, and for many of its one billion users, Facebook isn’t just on the web — it is the web. It is where images, biographical data, and every speck of a connection to a person, place, or thing lives, both the dream of a doting family spread miles apart and a marketer close by. It is a place… → Read More
Buy it in a store, laser scan it at home, upload it to the web, print it anywhere. 3D printing is poised for the mainstream, but what happens when one person’s finely hand-crafted designs can be pirated and reproduced by anyone? Will 3D printing piracy social networks arise? And how will manufacturers lobby to stop them? → Read More
A new front has opened in the smartphone war, and for the first time in many years, Apple is both outnumbered and outgunned.
I’m not talking about the phones themselves. iOS is still better than Android, although the gap has narrowed. The next iPhone will doubtless be the best phone in the world when it’s released, as ever. It won’t be as customizable – no Swype, no Facebook Home – but those… → Read More
Google Glass is finding its way to developers and others and the reaction has been, well, predictable. So far, there are those who think that Glass will absolutely change the world, that it’s our version of the flying car. Those people are full of shit. On the other side of the coin, there are those who say that Glass will never find a place in the hearts of consumers, that it’s… → Read More
BeTheDancer is Alex Greenburg’s name and handle on Instagram. He’s a good friend and a brilliant photographer, but because Instagram doesn’t require real names, I had a lot trouble using the app’s new tagging feature to point him out in my photos. Right now, Instagram’s 100 million users are discovering that while pseudoanonymity can be fun, it’s not very functional. → Read More
Those who know in the Valley know the name Sam Pullara. Whether it was his time as a repeat entrepreneur and technical founder, or stints as an EIR at some of the Valley’s most premier venture capital firms, or his time as a lead technologist at two of the largest tech companies in the Valley (most recently at Twitter), Pullara has occupied nearly every seat at the table throughout his career. → Read More
People won’t stop talking about Google Glass, and rightfully so. Ever since the epic parachute-hangout demo, the Valley has been buzzing about the future coming of what is arguably one of the biggest potential advancements in computer interfaces since the iPhone. Lately, the buzz has been bubbling as Google employees, early adopters (Scoble just posted his detailed review), tech bloggers, and… → Read More
Credit where it’s definitely due: this post was inspired by a Twitter conversation with Box CEO Aaron Levie.
Don’t look now, but something remarkable is happening.
Instagram had twelve employees when it was purchased for $700 million; all of its actual computing power was outsourced to Amazon Web Services. Mighty ARM has only 2300 employees, but there are more than 35 billion ARM-based chips… → Read More
Amazon is pulling a Netflix today, in the sense that it’s now touting the release of its original programming as the “most watched” TV shows on the Amazon Video service since launch on Friday. Netflix previously issued the same statement about its original show, “House of Cards.” But it’s not exactly an apples-to-apples comparison, here. When Netflix Chief Content Officer Ted Sarandos said that… → Read More
It’s hard to say with any conviction where we are in the process of, shall we say, crowd-sourcing justice. Like most things, it is a process, not something achieved, and while some question its utility, it’s no good to question its existence.
Some see the events of this week as a turning point, and in a way, they were, but there are dark days ahead for digilantes. → Read More
What the next iPhone really really needs is not an even bigger screen, flatter icons, flexible widgets or live tiles, or even crystal-ball-gazing cards. Or Facebook Home. That list is just garnish compared to the biggie: the iPhone needs a better keyboard. The iOS keyboard remains the most offensive piece of skeuomorphism across Apple’s faux realistic, lavishly textured user interface estate. → Read More
During the summer of 2012, while working in venture capital, one of the early-stage companies I stumbled upon was founded by a trio of guys based in Singapore. We met a few times in the Valley and quickly became friends, and I informally helped them, from time to time, navigate the waters of moving to the Valley and getting situated here. I hadn’t talked to them in a while but we recently… → Read More
No app has ever broken my heart quite like Vine, Twitter’s six-second animation maker. You capture a scene, then pocket your phone while you think of a witty way to describe. But when you open it a few minutes later or the app randomly crashes, it’s gone. That moment, that memory, deleted. I still love Vine, but I’ll never forgive it for the visions it stole from me. → Read More
How’s this for synchronicity: Google Glass started shipping on the same week that CISPA passed the House, 3DRobotics unveiled their new site, and 4chan and Reddit pored over surveillance photos trying to crowdsource the identity of the Boston bombers.
Cameras on phones. Cameras on drones. Cameras on glasses. Cameras atop stores, in ATMs, on the street, on lapels, up high in the sky. Modern cars… → Read More
If terrorism requires an audience, than the recent mainstream adoption of social media has given violent actors a bigger stage than ever before. There are many reasons people lash out at the world, but I don’t think it’s unreasonable to suggest that becoming the center of the attention could be a factor pushing some to commit atrocities. Our retweets could be delivering their messages of fear. → Read More
“In The Studio” this week hosts a special guest who doesn’t typically go on camera that often. As a result, I decided to make this particular episode of the show longer to capture my entire discussion with Greylock’s David Sze. For anyone who follows the ins and outs of venture capital, Sze’s name looms large. By now, most everyone knows of Greylock’s impressive run over the last decade, a firm… → Read More
As we shared yesterday, the process to actually pay for the Glass Explorer Edition was quite simple. The next step in the process is picking up your device at either the Mountain View, Los Angeles or New York City Google Campus. Of course, you can opt to have them shipped to you if you’re not in one of those areas, but what’s the fun in that? I picked up my Google Glass today in… → Read More
There isn’t just a bubble in the Bitcoin economy, there’s a bubble in the number of posts about Bitcoin. I’ll pile on, even after this week’s mini-crash, but with a twist. A few weeks ago, I wrote some brief notes on what I thought about Bitcoin, but the over-arching feeling I had was that I couldn’t put my finger on what could become of this currency in the future. Perhaps that’s part of the… → Read More
If you’re an iPhone user, you might be feeling a little left behind, because Facebook launched an application called Facebook Home, touted by CEO Mark Zuckerberg as the “next version of Facebook.” In fact, you might be feeling this way if you’re an Android user, too. For now, only a handful of select devices can even run Home (officially) — notably missing from the lineup is Google’s Nexus 4, the… → Read More
A few months ago, while visiting a hacker friend’s magnificent new San Francisco loft, he gestured to a little alcove stuffed with server racks and said: “And over there are the Bitcoin mines.” I smiled and nodded, thinking, Oh, right, Bitcoin. Is that still a thing?
Andy, if you’re reading this, I apologize. Is it ever, and how. Over the last few weeks the hype around everyone’s favorite… → Read More
We all know the Foursquare story quite well: The app launched at SXSW four years ago, and a fair amount of people have been using it to check-in ever since. The company is releasing a new version of its flagship iOS app, which will put those 3.5 billion check-ins in the forefront with search and explore functionality. It’s a move that we saw coming ever since they did practically the same… → Read More
Facebook had its big coming-out party for mobile on Wednesday, and its Home launcher will soon start shipping exclusively on an HTC device. This is the social network’s first crack at being the default experience on any device. Until now, using Facebook has been a completely optional and background experience, meaning you’d have to visit its website or download one of its apps. After… → Read More
Everyone wants more transparency. It is part of a deep, fundamental trend. In government. In the workplace. Inside large systems like health care. And, more recently, around early-stage startup metrics and investment data. The crowd wants more transparency. They want to know more about metrics, revenues, and stats, and they want to know more about how investment dollars are allocated. Yet, the… → Read More
This hasn’t been a great year for Foursquare. “Check-ins are no longer what they used to be,” as Ingrid Lunden observed last month. There seems to be a general consensus that “Foursquare keeps resembling Yelp more and more…” but that comparison isn’t necessarily flattering, especially since there’s little doubt that Yelp has much greater public mindshare.
Then former Square COO and current… → Read More
Making you feel comfortable didn’t get Facebook to a billion users. It had to push your limits of “open and connectedness”. That’s why so many of its product launches are initially met with outrage, or uncertainty. But Zuck is convinced the amount we share will double each year. So if you don’t want Home yet, fine. It’s designed to handle how we share in 2016 so no one steals Facebook’s future. → Read More
Apple made a small but important change to the way its mobile apps appear in the iTunes App Store, which will help parents better determine which applications and games are appropriate for their children. The company has relocated the age rating (e.g. 9+, 12+, etc.) by moving it up from its previous position at the bottom of the app’s detail page, so that it now appears directly beneath the app… → Read More
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