Trion Worlds, a lesser known game development company headquartered in Silicon Valley, yesterday gave even further evidence that the “deep end” of online gaming is alive and well, announcing that it has raised an $85 million round of strategic growth equity financing from Ontario Teachers Pension Plan and Bertelsmann Digital Media Investments. The round adds to the $100 million the startup has already raised from investors like Time Warner and Trinity Ventures. → Read More
Microsoft’s quarterly earnings statement didn’t have any big surprises. It was generally good news: record total revenue, growth in many key sectors, big sales in Xbox, 525 million total Windows 7 licenses sold, and they even seem to be losing a little less money in the Online Services area. But all that is a side show. 2011 was a big one for Microsoft in mobile (at least, big in that they took major actions), but for their core businesses it has been a hold-steady year. 2012 will be an adventure.
Windows 8 is Microsoft’s next big thing. And trends suggest that by the time Windows 9 comes around, things in the personal computing industry may look a lot different. The way they handle this next phase will set the stage for the inevitable “post-PC era” changes. → Read More
I’ve spent about a week trying to track down the rumors that Google had expressed interest in a Pinterest acquisition and here’s what I know thus far (here’s where to email if you know more): So Google never gave an official offer to grid bookmarking service Pinterest, but the desire to do was expressed (somehow?) indirectly, with a price in the “hundreds of millions” according to multiple sources.
This makes sense, as Google wanted to buy Path for $200 million before it had any users. Pinterest has a bajillion users. → Read More
“Education is deep in our DNA, and it has been since the very beginning,” said Phil Schiller, Apple’s SVP of Worldwide Marketing. On that thought Apple just announced iBooks 2.
This move is centered around reinvent the textbook. Schiller explained today that Apple sees textbooks as amazing devices, but they’re heavy, not searchable or durable. According to Apple the iPad is the perfect counter. It’s portable, durable, interactive, searchable, current and capable of containing even richer content. → Read More
Code 42 Software, a Minnesota-based online backup company for consumers, businesses and the enterprise, has raised $52.5 million in funding led by Accel Partners with participation from Split Rock Partners. This is the first major investment from Accel’s recently announced Big Data Fund, which is dedicated to funding infrastructure and application companies in “Big Data.” This is the first round of institutional investing for Code 42.
You may not have heard of Code 42, but the enterprise company should be on your radar. Founded by Brian Bispala, Mitch Coopet and Matthew Dornquast, Code 42 launched CrashPlan, a personal data protection and backup software, back in 2007. The intention of CrashPlan was to reinvent backup by developing an easy-to-use technology to protect data whenever and wherever it is created. After introducing CrashPlan to consumers, Code 42 decided to use this knowledge gained to develop and deliver a backup software that was enterprise-grade.
→ Read More
My Dad used to take me to Long’s Bookstore on the Ohio State University campus when I was young – I’d say this was during the 1980s and very early 1990s although in my mind these afternoons spent on campus are tinged with a 1970s wash out of color, as if I were remembering my time in Kansas before Oz. We’d rumble through the stacks, picking out used titles from the basement that were beaten and worn by years of the students’ buy/read/return-for-a-pittance cycle so common at universities. Most of the books there were, obviously, but Long’s stocked quite a bit of ephemera including my favorite Mad Magazine digests and sci-fi.
Long’s is now a Barnes & Noble, its handsome neon sign taken down during a massive restructuring of OSU’s student core. Most of the old book stores are gone. The local head shop, Monkey’s Retreat, turned into a Taoist center. Long’s and its competitor, the University Book Exchange, are gone. Even Larry’s, where I went to poetry readings as a petulant high-schooler is gone. To paraphrase Joni Mitchell, they paved paradise and put up a Quizno’s.
→ Read More
Technology is in the process of bringing change to every piece of the health industry — wellness, fitness, healthcare, medicine — you name it. And as it always seems with introduction of new technologies, it’s awe-inspiring how quickly they can transform entire industries yet, at the same time, make us realize just how far we have to go (or how far behind we really are). The health industry has been touched (and defined) by cutting-edge technology for years, yet its relics, legacy infrastructure, paper-pushing, and archaic procedures are as obvious today as ever before. → Read More
Apple has built a search engine for apps. It’s called iCloud – or more technically, it’s one aspect of the overall iCloud service. Using it, you can search through every app you have installed on your iOS device or have ever purchased in the past. And it’s available on your iPhone, iPad or iPod Touch right now.
The average smartphone user has 64 mobile apps installed on their mobile device. I’m ahead of the curve. I have around 400. It’s pushing nearly 7 GB of storage. Granted, many of these apps were installed for testing purposes only – they aren’t used daily by any means. But my real problem is that I’m not inclined to remove apps I don’t use. They just sit there on the phone, abandoned, languishing on the back screens. I could delete them, but I don’t. You know…just in case.
But the promise of iCloud, as I see it, is that these apps can disappear from the iPhone’s homescreen, but never have to fully disappear from reach. They can be recalled through a simple search. → Read More
The LA-based Science moved into its cozy permanent space above a yoga studio in Santa Monica this week, finally giving its variety of LA-based tech talents a place to call office.
Past the smell of Patchouli and the sign designating Crispin Porter Bogusky in the lobby are the second floor offices of the Science partners — former Myspace CEO Mike Jones, designer Mike Macadaan, Ryan Sit, Tom Dare and Color co-founder Peter Pham — which currently host about seven startups. → Read More
For most of the ten years I’ve been coming to CES, every presentation, every booth, has had one goal: to create an ecosystem in order to encourage consumer lock in. Year after year, presentation after presentation, someone has come out to show how the phone will connect to the fridge which, in turn, will connect to the TV. And year after year, they failed.
Until now.
Samsung, and to some extent the other vendors, have finally cracked it. For most of the past few years they’ve watched as Apple ran circles around them in terms of media sharing and remote control. Obviously Apple’s systems have been limited to iPod/iTunes/iPad/Mac but Samsung, a major player in both the white goods and the mobile markets, can now have it all. → Read More
Apple finally confirmed earlier reports that it bought Israeli semiconductor startup Anobit Technologies. Apple did not confirm the price, which is believed to be between $400 million and $500 million.
Apple bought Anobit for two reasons: its flash memory controllers are a key component of all Apple’s leading products (from iPads and iPhones to MacBook Airs), and in one fell swoop it just added a large team of chip engineers to payroll. Do not underestimate how important those chip engineers are. Apple had at least 1,000 chip engineers. Roughly 160 of Anobit’s 200 employees are also engineers, thus they instantly represent more than 10 percent of the total number of chip engineers at Apple. → Read More
I was asked about a year ago at a talk about energy what I was doing about the other large social problems, namely health care and education. Surprised, I flippantly responded that the best solution was to get rid of doctors and teachers and let your computers do the work, 24/7 and with consistent quality.
Later, I got to cogitating about what I had said and why, and how embarrassingly wrong that might be. But the more I think about it the more I feel my gut reaction was probably right. The beginnings of “Doctor Algorithm” or Dr. A for short, most likely (and that does not mean “certainly” or “maybe”) will be much criticized. We’ll see all sorts of press wisdom decrying “they don’t work” or “look at all the silly things they come up with.” But Dr A. will get better and better and will go from providing “bionic assistance” to second opinions to assisting doctors to providing first opinions and as referral computers (with complete and accurate synopses and all possible hypotheses of the hardest cases) to the best 20% of the human breed doctors. And who knows what will happen beyond that? → Read More
Since the launch of Google+, Google has been putting a lot of muscle behind promoting and integrating the service into its core products. Fire up a new Android 4.0 device, and you’ll be prompted to create a Google+ account if you haven’t already. They’ve given it TV ads, not to mention a priceless promotion on its homepage.
And today, Google is launching an update to its core search engine at Google.com that continues this trend — and then some. They’re calling it ‘Search plus Your World’.
The short version is that Google search results are going to be automatically personalized (to a greater degree than they were already) for each user, with signals drawn from your Google+ Circles being used to highlight things your friends — or you, yourself — have shared. → Read More
From Vannevar Bush to PageRank, the World Wide Web was built on hypertext, the notion that any morsel of information can link to any other. But that was always only a dream, and a rapidly-dissipating one of late.
Nowadays even Web links are likely to terminate at warnings, paywalls or registration screens. Anil Dash rages that “Facebook is gaslighting the Web” with its treatment of content outside Facebook. Jon Mitchell and Jamie Zawinski complain that Google Plus will “mess up the Internet” for its treatment of content outside Google+ff (and Zawinski adds “they just ripped off this model from Tumblr.”) Google’s Tim Bray, in turn, is irate about single-page JavaScript sites breaking the web.
Meanwhile, six months ago, according to Flurry, time spent using mobile apps surpassed web consumption. You can link out of apps easily enough — clicking on a phone number to open a dialer, or a hyperlink to open a Web page — but it’s very difficult to reliably link in to an app. → Read More
Rather than do a CES pre-round-up of exciting products I’d like to address this interesting slant on the whole “massive electronics trade show in the middle of the desert” concept that has kept the Gadgets crew here up for the past few weeks. MG said Apple won CES. He was being snide, but, in a way, honest because, in the end, nobody wins CES.
The Consumer Electronics Show is, as its name implies, a show for consumer electronics. These include, but are not limited to, TVs, DVD players, Blu-Ray players (if they still make those), and accessories. TV stands! TV brackets! Speakers! Remotes! In fact, there’s an entire hall dedicated to the Asian purveyors of the components that make up those consumer electronics, a sort of Fishmongers Row to the CE industry where the smell is at least far more tolerable. → Read More
Are you ready for CES? I know I am. The PR emails are flowing in and I’m going to respond to every single one of them. I can’t wait to hear about Samsung’s social media stuff. And Vizio’s new thingy. I can’t wait to get my hands on that one thing made by those guys who did that other thing last year that no one bought. It’s gonna be fantastic. So pumped.
…
No, I’m not going to CES. I’ve never been to CES. I doubt I’ll ever go to CES. Why would I? → Read More
Yammer, the Facebook/Twitter for companies, has been coming into its own, even as big competitors like Salesforce try to compete with rival enterprise social networking products. Having generated somewhere between $5 million and $10 million in revenues over 2010, Yammer more than doubled that in 2011, reaching towards $25 million according to sources close to the company.
Now, it’s working on a big new funding round, we’re hearing — in the $40 million range if not more. → Read More
Commenting on blogs is broken. But what we need is a solution, not an abandonment of the concept. The question comes up every few months, but new social commenting technology means there are better answers now than ever before. Over the last day MG Siegler, MacStories, and mobile developer Mike Gemell have all written about choosing the nuclear option and turning off comments entirely on their sites. Their key reasons for doing so seem to be:
1. Comment reels are full of trolls, bile, and spam links
2. There’s no way for popular sites to keep up with comments on old posts
3. Comment reels give random people too much visibility and distract from primary content
Here are my proposed solutions to these problems. → Read More
“Hey, can I see your phone real quick?”
Oh, crap. What tabs did you leave open in Safari? Did you delete those photos (you know, those photos. The ones you promised her you’d delete?) That My Little Pony app that you totally-installed-just-to-test-your-download-speed-seriously-shut-up… is it still there?
Quick, hand it over before you pique their curiosity! Or say “no” and be the weirdo who wouldn’t hand their phone over to a friend for a second. If only there were some sort of on-the-fly middle ground — a “Guest Mode”, if you will. → Read More
Most investments fail but the few successful ones more than make all the money back — or so startup investors hope. But what sort of returns do these profitable exits bring in? According to a new analysis of all the exits listed in CrunchBase, the average successful company has raised $25.3 million, and sold for $196.8 million, for investor profits of 676% (if you assume the investors own 100% of the company, which they normally don’t).
Meanwhile, IPO-bound companies generated lower percentage returns, but made a lot more money per exit. The average one raised $580.3 million while private, then went public with a market cap of $2.3 billion on its first day of public trading for 303% profit on investment. Mouse over the dots below for more details.
→ Read More
San Francisco, CA
