SXSW 2012 is sneaking up on us; believe it or not, it’s just around the corner. As you may know, Austin’s music/film/tech conference attracts big names, tons of press, and notable companies each year — geeks flock to the event just as they do for CES. On the tech or “Interactive” side, there’s a lot of hoopla and way too much media coverage, but some interesting startups do still manage to emerge (or at least solidify their reputations) at the festi-conference each year. Foursquare and Twitter, to name two, both owe tips of the cap to SXSW. → Read More
I’ve been contributing to TechCrunch for a while now, and, it’s been a blast and a privilege. As 2011 ended, I reached out Erick and Jon Orlin (who runs TechCrunch TV) and shared some ideas I had for a TV show around technology and entrepreneurship. After many email debates, we settled on something we’re excited about and is dead-simple, which we’ll simply call “In the Studio.”
Once a month, we’ll spend half a day videotaping 1:1 interviews with guests in the studio at TechCrunch Headquarters in San Francisco. Each conversation will be anywhere from 8-13 minutes. I plan to sit down with all sorts of dynamic people in the startup world, everything from founders, developers, designers, marketers, recruiters, bloggers, investors, and more. Our goals are to (1) invite truly compelling guests to the studio and (2) offer them a platform to share perspectives on their work with all of us in an informal, conversational manner. → Read More
It may seem strange to think of productivity app Evernote as a platform, but with 20 million users and 9,000 apps built on the client, the three and a half-year old startup is a veritable apps ecosystem. Beyond this developer ecosystem, the company released five of its own simple and unique Evernote-based apps in the past year: Hello, an app that helps you remember people, Food, and app that helps you remember important meals, Skitch, an app that lets you communicate visually, Peek, an app that utilizes the iPad cover for a novel take on tutoring, and Clearly, an app that makes content easier to read within Evernote.
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The guys from NimbleBit (developers of Tiny Tower, the game handpicked by Apple as iOS Game Of The Year) are on a bit of a tweeting spree tonight, blasting out two big ol’ gems of knowledge in as many hours.
First: Zynga just launched a new iOS game, and it looks a lot like Tiny Tower. Second (and this one makes that first bit all the more interesting): Zynga allegedly tried to buy NimbleBit at some point in the past, but NimbleBit turned them down. → Read More
In his State of the Union address tonight, President Obama laid out a blueprint for economic recovery, with numerous references to the technology sector. “An economy built to last is one where we encourage the talent and ingenuity of every person in this country,” the President said, with Steve Jobs’ wife (and Instagram’s Mike Krieger) in attendance, That means women should earn equal pay for equal work. It means we should support everyone who’s willing to work; and every risk-taker and entrepreneur who aspires to become the next Steve Jobs.” → Read More
The Megaupload saga continues. Kim Dotcom, Megaupload’s mega founder, was just denied bail by a New Zealand court citing he’s a flight risk. He will remain in New Zealand’s custody until February 22, when the courts will hear the US Justice Department’s application for Schmitz.
Dotcom insists he’s innocent of the various charges involving racketeering and piracy. His lawyers insist that Dotcom’s company was simply offering an online storage locker and diligent responded to complaints about pirated material.– a dubious statement for anyone familiar with the company. It’s all in the hands in the court now. → Read More
Data is ammunition in the war for information relevancy. And Larry Page, the prototypical war-time CEO, has just told everyone to empty their ammo packs so Google can build one big bomb with the words “Facebook” and “Twitter” and “Apple” chalked on the side.
The privacy policy change announced today rolls more than 70 separate policies into a single one, and will let the company combine any piece of data it has about you into a single profile. The point is, in the company’s own words, to help it tailor any of its service to who you are, what you do — and to any friends you have. → Read More
If you’re watching President Obama’s State of the Union tonight, SnappyTV has a cool way for you to share your favorite clips with your friends — and we’re including it in this post.
We’ve already written about the clip-sharing service, which launched last year. To coincide with the State of the Union, SnappyTV is opening up its Pro Editor, which allows content owners and online news organizations to an easy way to create a timeline of clips using live footage, which they either own or is in the public domain. (The latter is true for tonight’s speech.) → Read More
There’s been a lot of talk about the divide between Silicon Valley and Hollywood, but at least one upstart animation studio seems to have one foot comfortably in both worlds — Moonbot Studios, which was just nominated for an Oscar for Best Animated Short.
The film in question, “The Fantastic Flying Books of Mr. Morris Lessmore,” was also released as an iPad app, and will be published a traditional book, too. Co-founder William Joyce is an established children’s author, and he first conceived the project as a book, but when he teamed up with Brandon Oldenburg to start Moonbot in 2009, they decided to work on a short film as well. And in the middle of all that, Apple announced the first iPad, so Joyce decided that the story would make a great app, too. → Read More
There’s a nice little insider quarrel going on over Google’s just-announced privacy policy changes. A number of sites and commentators have let their fingers jump up mechanically in accusatory fashion. Google, caught red-handed being evil!
Here, I think, is a time when the word “bias” is actually warranted. Everyone wants so badly for Google to do something truly evil (instead of just questionable or inconvenient) that their perceptions of Google actions are actually being affected. Casting events systematically in a non-objective light is the exhibition of bias, and the continual presentation of policies one disagrees with as evidence of “evil” seems to fall under that category.
Google going evil has become the Godwin’s Law of tech commentary. → Read More
Simply looking over the numbers, it might be hard to wrap your head around what Apple just announced for their Q1 2012 results. A company this big is not supposed to be able to nearly double revenue year-to-year. Nor are they supposed to more than double profit. But Apple did both. The numbers are so big that they almost seem like they should be typos — especially coming after a quarter that was a “miss” (though we can now clearly see what a joke that “miss” was). So perhaps it’s best to point out some bigger numbers and to frame some of them in ways to make them easier to understand. That’s what all of Twitter seemed to be doing anyway during the earnings call this afternoon.
Apple’s profit of $13.1 billion was equal to their revenue in Q4 2010, as Jordan Golson notes. To be clear, that was just a year and a quarter ago. That’s how quickly Apple is growing.
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Apple ended last quarter and the year with almost $100 billion in cash ($97.6 billion, to be exact—much of that is held overseas for tax purposes).
What should Apple do with all of that money? They could buy Facebook, which is supposed to IPO at around a $100 billion valuation. But “it is not in Apple’s nature to do big acquisitions,” points out BGC analyst Colin Gillis at the tail-end of this video interview. “In fact, a big acquisition would probably be disastrous for Apple.” He thinks Apple should give some of that money back to shareholders instead through share buybacks or dividends. Watch the rest of the video, as e discuss Apple’s biggest quarter ever. → Read More
Tonight, President Obama will give his 2012 State of the Union address before a joint session of Congress. The annual address, which will take place Tuesday night at 9pm EST/6pm PST (watch it online at Whitehouse.gov here), is expected to include Obama’s mission going forward and his central focus as president, which he’s said is “rebuilding an economy where hard work pays off and responsibility is rewarded.” Coming off the start of the Republican primaries, the heated battle over SOPA/PIPA, and a rough 2011, many will no doubt be tuning in to get a taste of what the President’s future plans are to ensure a “sound economic recovery.” → Read More
I’m not a huge fan of schlepping around needlessly when I can do most of my shopping from the comfort of my chair, but Apple fans don’t seem to have much trouble going to their local Apple store when the urge strikes. According to their recent earnings call, 110 million people went to an Apple store in Q1, which breaks down to roughly 22,000 customers per Apple store per week. → Read More
A new poll of over 11,000 workers worldwide by Ipsos and Reuters shows that telecommuting is an increasingly popular choice, especially in non-Western countries. This will come as no surprise to many, but the numbers are higher than some might have guessed. Over 30 percent of workers in India, Mexico, and Indonesia claimed to telecommute regularly, and one in ten overall work from home every day.
But it’s not just bloggers and knowledge workers, and the business infrastructure will soon have to stretch to accommodate a class of workers that has gone from exception to rule. → Read More
One of the big questions hanging over Apple this quarter was whether or not iPad sales would continue its rapid growth. Last quarter Amazon introduced the Kindle Fire at $200 (well below the iPAd’s entry-level $500 price) and there was concern that even Apple diehard fans might delay their purchase of a tablet until the iPad 3 comes out—rumored for later this year. But iPad sales came in well above expectations at 15.4 million units.
During the conference call today, Tim Cook predicted: “I think there will come a day that the tablet market is larger than the PC market.”
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Apple TV is still a hobby. The word comes from Apple’s Chief, Tim Cook who nevertheless championed the company’s current offering. He stated that Apple sold more than 2.8 million Apple TV units last fiscal year with 1.4 million moved within Q1 2012 (a new record for the device).
“Our Apple TV product is doing quite well… but in the scheme of things, we still classify Apple TV as a hobby. We continue to add things to it. If you’re using the latest one — I don’t know about you, but I can’t live without it. Other than that, no comment.” said Cook. → Read More
Apple launched its iCloud service a little over three months ago. Well, since then, over 85 million users are syncing their devices through their personal cloud. This comes from Peter Oppenheimer, Apple’s Senior Vice President and Chief Financial Office, on today’s Q1 2012 financial earning calls. → Read More
Apple blew away expectations in its December quarter, which it just announced this afternoon after markets closed. After trading down 1.6 percent ($7) during the day, shares are up more than 7.8 percent ($30) in after-hours trading to $453. → Read More
Yahoo’s fourth quarter results are as underwhelming as most people expected: earnings at $0.24 a shares from $1.17 billion in revenue. The brightest spot, beyond new chief executive Scott Thompson now taking the helm to try to turn things around, is the engagement numbers.
Take a look at the slide below, from the company’s earnings deck. Worldwide unique visits to both Yahoo-branded sites and to Yahoo properties were up by 12%. Since this data is from comScore, I pulled the measurement firms’ latest numbers to provide a little more detail. Yahoo staged a minor visitor recovery over the last three months of the year in the US, ending with nearly 176 million monthly uniques. Worldwide, it did so through November, but then dropped slightly last month to end at nearly 692 million uniques. → Read More
