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| Eric Schmidt’s Commencement Address At Carnegie Mellon (Video) Posted: 18 May 2009 06:08 AM PDT
Schmidt’s talk to the audience, which he refers to as the ‘Facebook and Google generation’, is basically about the past, present and future of technology, how quickly and profoundly cultural habits change and how important it is to ‘live in the future’. Surprisingly, Schmidt seems to mention services like Twitter and Facebook more often than Google products. Key quotes:
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| CrunchContest: The DustBuster is 30 Years Old and You Can Win One Posted: 18 May 2009 05:52 AM PDT  That's right: many of us have been alive as long as the Black & Decker DustBuster vacuum, a cleaner that I remember fondly from my ill-spent youth. Remember the first models? The tan color scheme? The incessant whirring? The sad majesty of the dying DustBuster as its battery slowly drained over a pile of Cheerios or sawdust? Say what you want about Dyson and his ilk: the DustBuster is the Hitachi Magic Wand of home cleaning devices, dedicated to performance, fun, and, most importantly, the improvement of our lives in general.
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| UserVoice Raises Funding, White-Labels User Feedback Facilitator Posted: 18 May 2009 04:52 AM PDT
In addition, the startup had announced that it has raised an extra $800,000 from a well-known group of investors, led by Baseline Ventures and joined by FF Angel (the seed investing vehicle for Founders Fund), Betaworks, David Shen Ventures, The Accelerator Group, Net Discovery and Howard Lindzon. UserVoice is essentially a hosted way for businesses to intelligently process the feedback it gets from employees and customers, acting as a social idea generator of sorts. This has proven to be a great way for software companies and web application developers to incorporate the tool into their product websites, basically extending their existing product feedback channels with a way for users to voice their opinions on new features, roadmap, etc. But UserVoice rightly recognizes that there are a lot of corporations and institutions (think education, healthcare, government bodies, etc.) that can benefit from such a service too, and aims to package its main product somewhat differently in order to cater to those as well. For that reason, it’s today releasing a white-label solution that enables its customers to embed branded widgets and communities into their websites and facilitate the streamlining of the aggregation and moderation of incoming suggestions, voting, and user feedback. These widgets can be fully customized with the ability to change the CSS, templates, language files, and more. Along with this, UserVoice is introducing ZeroLogin, a method for users to sign in to UserVoice with the same username and password as the company website that deployed its solution. To see such an integration in action, check out this feedback page on Animoto’s website, which is entirely powered by UserVoice. Last but not least, UserVoice let us know that it has attracted a very knowledgeable advisor to help the company gain more traction: Bob Pearson, who spearheaded IdeaStorm at Dell as the company’s former vice president of communities and conversations. Expect to hear more from this company in the future. Crunch Network: CrunchGear drool over the sexiest new gadgets and hardware.
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| Posted: 18 May 2009 03:13 AM PDT
Eliot Spitzer was the alpha male Attorney General, attacking the securities industry, Internet fraud and the mortage industry, among others. He was rewarded with the governorship of New York until his spectacular resignation. Which brings us back to the subject of hookers, and South Carolina Attorney General Henry McMaster. Earlier this month McMaster, who is of course eyeing a run for governor, threatened criminal prosecution against Craigslist management if pornography and ads for prostitution were not removed from the site. Craigslist took extraordinary measures to comply. But quiet compliance isn’t what McMaster is looking for. He wants handcuffs and a trial, the kind of stuff that Spitzer got. He issued the following statement on Saturday “As of 5:00 p.m. this afternoon, the craigslist South Carolina site continues to display advertisements for prostitution and graphic pornographic material. This content was not removed as we requested. We have no alternative but to move forward with criminal investigation and potential prosecution.” Craigslist fired back in an uncharacteristically emotional post that noted how tame the current Craigslist site was compared to a number of other listing services in South Carolina, including one run by Microsoft.
As we wrote previously, Craigslist is the hot site right now that triggers an immediate response from the press (it used to be MySpace, then Facebook). There is no public saftey issue in targeting Craigslist. The only issue is politics, and McMaster sees an easy target. I think he made a serious mistake, though, in targeting Craigslist. Not only are the allegations absurd, but he’s failed to realize the huge community of rabid Craigslist supporters. Spitzer always went after deeply unpopular targets. He would never have touched Craigslist. I say to founder Craig Newmark and CEO Jim Buckmaster: Stand firm. Don’t back down. In fact, just turn off the South Carolina site entirely and ban IPs from that state. Forever. And if they press criminal charges, fight it with everything you have. The community will support you, and that’s one hell of a community, with 46 million U.S. unique visitors a month (Comscore, April 2009). Get 5 million of them (less than 1 in 9) to sign a petition calling for McMaster’s resignation (that’s more than the population of South Carolina). It won’t get him to resign, but it may get enough voters to remember how irresponsible he is when the election for governor comes around. And I’m pretty sure that petition will be the top search result for his name for a long, long time. And if you do end up in jail, don’t worry. I promise to visit at least once a month, even though it will be in South Carolina. More on the story at TechMeme. Crunch Network: MobileCrunch Mobile Gadgets and Applications, Delivered Daily.
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| There We Go Again. No, Micropayments Won’t “Save Journalism” Posted: 18 May 2009 03:01 AM PDT
This time, it’s The Guardian’s Frank Fisher taking a stand, and he says not only will micropayments guarantee the newspapers a future, it can also downright “save journalism,” and oh, Google should be the one providing the infrastructure for it, too. Time to debunk “Saving journalism, a farthing at a time”. Fisher correctly points out the dismal state of the economy has driven advertising revenues down, and this puts newspapers in dire need of finding out how it should subsidize its operations in different ways, with the realization that the printing part of the equation is inevitably going to fade away and that there’s too little money to be made from online advertising to make up for the costs of transferring its entire publishing business (as it operates today) to the Web. The rest of his opinion piece comes down to this: wishful thinking and misunderstanding.
Publishers are in a nightmarish situation, and in large part they have themselves to blame for that. Fine with me if they want to escape from that situation by retreating behind paywalls - in fact, I encourage them to do so and die there soon so we can kiss that idea goodbye once and for all. How are paywalls bad news for news addicts? Those addicts have been spoiled to death the past few years, to the point where information overload has taken over and made the consumption of news overly tedious. I know because I’ve been one of them ever since I’ve been able to read, and this was long before I discovered the Internet. Introduce paywalls, ease the choice for news addicts, see what happens. Information is now a commodity, so deal with it. And yes, it should be free to end users. But how will that pay for the food and housing of the people working in the publishing industry, you ask? I say it’s not our problem, and tough luck. In no way does the realization that the model doesn’t work anymore mean that the masses, lawyers, the government or any other institution should be bailing out newspapers for screwing up their chance to figure out this Internet thing in time and adapting to it. Publishers need a profit, like any other business, but that doesn’t mean they all deserve to turn one, and certainly not at the expense of better, more innovative publishing businesses that are waiting around the corner. Go read the column in The Guardian (for free) to find out how micropayments for news would work in detail. Basically, it would involve Google doing the bailing out part I was talking about in the previous paragraph.
Publishers win, yes, to a certain extent. Google? maybe. Journalists? Up for debate. Consumers? Not likely. There are some content providers out there who have figured out how to build a business without the need for people to pay to support them, and their number will only grow in size in the foreseeable future. If anything, Google should (continue to) support them, and not the relics of another age. For more perspective on micropayments, you should read “What Would Micropayments Do for Journalism? A Freakonomics Quorum”, in case you haven’t already. I’m lifting this part from the piece, a quote by Marshall W. Van Alstyne (associate professor in the Information Systems department at Boston University and a research scholar at M.I.T) because I think there’s no better way to conclude this post:
Amen. Crunch Network: CrunchBase the free database of technology companies, people, and investors
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| Blogging Site For Babies Wee Web Now Helps Tots Save For College Posted: 18 May 2009 03:00 AM PDT
Wee Web, a social sharing site for parents of newborns and small children, has merged with the Freshman Fund, a college savings gift registry. The integration of the sites lets parents create a single destination for families to both see updates on children and facilitate donations towards children’s education savings. Created by the founders of online event planner Meetup, Wee Web lets parents create a central social networking site for their babies and children where they can upload photos, videos and Twitter-like updates and then restrict the site to be viewed only by friends and family. The site can be accessed by invitation and family and friends can receive update alerts on additions to the child’s page. Freshman Fund is like a wedding gift registry for college savings. The free service lets friends and family make donations to a child’s college education fund that is transferred directly to a tax-free college savings plan that the recipient chooses. The integration of the two sites is a pretty interesting idea, especially given that college tuition is a hefty expense for most parents. Wee Web estimates that private tuition for a private college can run upwards of $300,000. The ability for parents to solicit donations from the time a child is born until he or she is ready for college could be a very useful tool, especially in light of the current economy. There no shortage of competitor in the baby social network sites space, including BabySpot, KidMondo, and TotSpot which we reviewed here. Crunch Network: MobileCrunch Mobile Gadgets and Applications, Delivered Daily.
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| The Real Truth Behind The 104-Year-Old Who Joined Twitter Posted: 18 May 2009 02:52 AM PDT
On May 15 two UK newspapers ran the story about 104 year old woman “Ivy Bean” / @ivybean104 joining Twitter. We correctly called it out as a ruse, but we got the wrong target. What none of those original stories told you, was that poor old Ivy had not joined Twitter just because it was suddenly the talk of the senior citizens home. No. She joined because home PC maintenance company Geek Squad signed her up, propped her up for a photo opportunity - even using her own account to Twitpic the event - and press-released the hell out of it. And the media fell for it. Crunch Network: MobileCrunch Mobile Gadgets and Applications, Delivered Daily.
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| Get Ready For Real Time Digg, Whatever That Means Posted: 17 May 2009 07:47 PM PDT
In an interview last month Digg founder Kevin Rose told me that the company was working on an overhaul of the Digg service, calling it a “completely new direction” and referring to the new Digg search as an indication of what direction they’re going in. He didn’t (and still won’t) give many details, except to say that Digg needs to to “a living and breathing site” and “a little bit more real-time in nature” (”real-time” is secret code for Twitter, and has been used so much lately that people are mocking it). Earlier in the interview Rose talked about wanting more user participation on the site, with top stories getting 50,000 or more votes (most top stories get a few thousand now). The new product is designed to encourage more user engagement. We’ve taken the relevant clips from the original interview below. Whatever it is, it’s coming sometime soon. Clip Transcript: Rose: What we're working on now is what I would consider to be the biggest overhaul to how everything works behind the scenes, and that's no joke. Like we… Arrington: Front end and back end rewrite? Rose: Completely new directions for us that you will look at and I guarantee you would be like that's a ballsy move. Like it's really, we're evolving and we've got some really exciting things that we believe are going to take us to that turn. Arrington: What’s the timing? Is that this year? Rose: I mean, I'm not going to give out hard dates, but it's some time in the next six months. Arrington: What might that look like? Like, what are we talking about? Rose: Well, we're talking about a revamp of the site. Arrington: Like a logo change? Rose: Yeah, a logo change is going to get us there. We're talking about some lens flares on the logo… Arrington: Well, what are you going to do so that somebody's going to, like, "Hey, here's the stories." And they're saying, "Digg it!" I mean that's kind of it. Right? It's like a one trick pony with bells and whistles attached. I mean, I agree that most of your changes are bells and whistles. So, what is it that you're going to do that doesn’t kill your core idea that's a whole new thing? Rose: I can't go into that stuff right now. [later in interview...] Rose: I will say this. I don't want to get into specific details about the product, but I believe that it's time for Digg to get a little bit more real-time in nature. And we need to be a living and breathing site. And you know, that's an exciting direction for us. I think that's part of the reason why we rolled out a pretty awesome search. It was kind of us experimenting with some of that. Crunch Network: CrunchBase the free database of technology companies, people, and investors
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| If The Watchdogs Are Saved: Ethical Repercussions Of A Newspaper Bailout Posted: 17 May 2009 06:59 PM PDT
The somewhat depressing and controversial possibility of a newspaper bailout turned into a stone-cold reality in the past few months as politicians, including Sen. John Kerry, Sen. Ben Cardin and President Obama, have hinted at giving the newspaper industry a life vest to save a sinking industry. Kerry, in his dire remarks at the Senate hearing on "Future of Journalism" a few weeks ago, made a call to action to save newspapers and prevent future harm to democracy. Regardless of where direction of this policy is headed, the idea of a government bailout of the news industry, which is supposed to be the “watchdog” of the government, raises a few ethical flags. President Obama echoed Kerry’s concerns at last weekend’s White House Correspondents Dinner, addressing the current state of the industry:
Obama was perhaps posturing to a room full of journalists, but the message comes across clear: newspapers need help and their existence is a fundamental requirement for democracy to successfully survive. And any time democracy is threatened, the government will come to the rescue, right? Sen. Ben Cardin actually has a concrete plan, The Newspaper Revitalization Act, to aid newspapers in their time of need. His plan allows newspapers to operate as nonprofits for educational purposes under the U.S. tax code, and thus receive the same tax-benefits as a non-profit organization. Revenue from advertising and subscription would be tax exempt, and contributions to support news coverage or operations could be tax deductible. Cardin’s proposal became a reality on the state-level with this week’s news that Washington’s governor approved a tax cut for the state’s newspaper industry. The law gives newspaper publishers a 40 percent cut in Washington’s main business tax. The catch for Cardin’s proposal is that though newspapers would still be able to report on all issues, namely politics and political campaigns, the government would prohibit the newspapers from making political endorsements. This raises two ethical questions. The first is whether newspapers supported with government funding should be barred from making political endorsements. Political endorsements by newspapers and media organizations are a very essence of freedom of speech. Readers often find value in seeing a newspaper’s evaluation of the candidates given that the paper has in-depth coverage of political candidates throughout the course of a campaign. Putting a muzzle on journalists in this capacity is a step in the wrong direction. There are existing models for publicly-funded or assisted media that are not limited to endorsing political positions. The clearest example of this is PBS networks. PBS is a non-profit media organization that is partially funded by federal and state money (less than 50% of PBS’s revenue comes from government sources). PBS stations are not prohibited from taking a stance on political issues, in accordance with the Public Broadcasting Act of 1967, but PBS and the government has been embroiled in several sticky situations involving political bias and politicians feeling that they can somehow control PBS’ coverage. Most recently, Kenneth Tomlinson, the former Republican chairman of the Center for Public Broadcasting, the non-profit in charge of distributing federal funds to public television and radio stations, openly criticized PBS for a liberal bias. Tomlinson even hired an outside investigator to evaluate whether PBS’s political news coverage was slanting towards the left. In fact, it was revealed that most viewers didn’t think PBS’s news favored liberals; however, Tomlinson and other Republicans engaged in a heated debate questioning the bias of the well-respected news organization. Like PBS, the BBC, UK’s largest media organization which is partially funded by taxpayer money, has found itself embroiled in its fair share of accusations of political bias. Some would argue that PBS represents a segment of the media in the U.S. whereas a newspaper bailout would effect thousands of news organizations. I fear that if most mainstream newspapers and organizations took on a similar model to PBS, many politicians would feel that they had the free reign to not only question, but investigate, the bias of any unfavorable news coverage if it didn’t lend support to their political leanings. The second ethical question is whether journalists will be able to deliver unbiased reporting of the very people and institutions that are helping to subsidize their jobs. I think journalists at PBS have done an effective job of objectively reporting the news, despite the political pressure the organization faces from politicians. However, newspapers and thus journalists who are “saved” by government intervention are in a slightly different situation. From its inception, PBS was meant to be a non-profit news organization which drew funding from a variety of sources, including the government. In the case of a newspaper bailout, the government could don the image of a “knight in shining armor” to journalists who, without the bailout, would be unemployed. Will all journalists and media execs buy into this? I’m not sure of the answer but the adoption of this perception surely could effect objective news reporting. Yet having an appreciation for a policy, and letting that appreciation impact professional integrity are two different things. Would the politicians who supported the bailout receive favorable coverage? Most journalists would respond with a resounding no, as they should. Journalists are all beholden to an unwritten code of ethics when it comes to reporting the truth. And even in one of the most disastrous modern-day cases of a politician’s efforts to control the media, journalists have still proven that they fight to report the truth. Italy’s prime minster, Silvio Berlusconi, has been accused of limiting the press’ freedom of expression by controlling negative coverage of his government on state-run media networks and papers as well as the institutions he controls financially. Many Italian journalists have retaliated, quitting their jobs, forming protest groups, and advocating fiercely for greater freedom of speech. These reporters have chosen dissent and unemployment over submission and employment within a state-biased media. But the dilemma becomes significantly more cloudy when the people throwing a life vest to the drowning industry are the same people who need to be evaluated through an objective lens. And the question remains in the case of a bailout, if there will forever be the government’s shadow hanging over the media organizations who survive thanks to these benefits. (Photo credit: Flickr/VaxXzine) Crunch Network: CrunchBase the free database of technology companies, people, and investors
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| Posted: 15 May 2009 08:22 PM PDT
No one thought Starbucks would work in China, but it did. Sequoia Capital, however, is not Starbucks. There are a few ways to set up venture activity in China. One is to become a limited partner for a local firm. Another is to relocate an existing partner to build an office. The most common is to hire well-known, connected investors already in China, and Intel Capital, which has been investing in China longer than almost anyone, is one of a few farm systems for that. Typically this is known as the "franchise model." The hired China partners operate under the Kleiner Perkins or Sequoia brand name and typically share the same limited partners, but the funds themselves are separate. In exchange for that name and fund raising advantage, the Valley firms take a healthy chunk of the carry. It seemed like the best of all strategies a few years ago. These firms want experts but don't necessarily want to slow down or meddle in their deal making. But the cachet of the top Valley brands only goes so far over here. In 2008 Kleiner Perkins' China partnership exploded, with two of its four partners quitting in a dispute that was far more contentious than a lot of Valley media reported at the time. In a week of touring China's start-up scene, I've barely heard the KPCB brand mentioned at all. Now, it seems it’s Sequoia's turn in the spotlight. It's no secret Mike Mortiz has been traveling back-and-forth to China a great deal, and he's fond of telling reporters that's because of all the opportunity. I asked him at Kenshoo's recent US launch party about the unique challenges of investing in China versus the US, Europe or Israel. He said he wasn't trying to stonewall on the answer, but that all venture investing was just hard, no one place more than another. Really? Several sources in China and Silicon Valley have confirmed Moritz has been in China this week addressing Sequoia's so-called "China Problem." In February, one of Sequoia China's founding partners, Zhang Fan, resigned due to "personal reasons." People are fond of pointing out that Zhang's biggest hit was Asia Media Company, which later had to de-list from the Tokyo Stock Exchange under a scandal. Whether it’s true or not, the situation certainly didn’t do Sequoia’s brand any favors here. That left the other founding managing director at the helm, the highly respected Neil Shen, who founded Ctrip.com, the so-called “Expedia of China,” and Home Inns & Hotels Management. I've talked to several VCs and entrepreneurs in China who say Shen is a prickly guy but his deal judgment is unparalleled in the country. Indeed sequoia has had two other IPOs (Renhe and VanceInfo) and a stake in the hot social networking name 51.com. Another investment, Peak Performance, has filed for its IPO. Shen is even a bit of a hero to some entrepreneurs. But unfortunately, Shen too is in hot water. U.S. firm Carlyle Group is suing Shen for more than $200 million in damages for allegedly blocking a Carlyle deal in a Chinese medical research firm. Even the widespread speculation could be a big blow for Sequoia, which at one point seemed to be one of the better-adapted Valley names here. It still employs two other managing directors and several more vice presidents and associates in China, but for many Chinese entrepreneurs Shen represents the brand as much as Moritz does in the U.S. There are few China investors with solid operating experience, particularly in the Internet. And it can’t be good news for Sequoia’s limited partners who haven't taken too kindly to Sequoia's pressure to make them invest in not only China, but in other unproven Sequoia funds aimed at India and later stage U.S. companies, according to very wide-spread reports and my own reporting. Player hating is part of human nature, so it’s no surprise that other Valley investors have whispered with glee that the once-dominant Sequoia seems distracted by all this. The competition’s biggest fear: Moritz solves the problems and Sequoia starts to focus on what it does well again. (Sequoia did not respond to a detailed request for comment or clairification of this story and has a long-standing policy of not commenting on the firm’s internal matters.) Update: I’ve updated this story based on conversations with additional sources. Crunch Network: MobileCrunch Mobile Gadgets and Applications, Delivered Daily.
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Here’s Google CEO 
Santa Cruz, CA-based 
South Carolina Attorney General 
If you’ve been following the headlines on Techmeme over the weekend, you’ve likely seen 
Dear reader, TechCrunch owes you an apology. We thought the “104-Year-Old joins Twitter” story last week was 
BEIJING, CHINA– Starbucks is a franchise in China that worked. The company opened locations at the bottom of all the major tourist hotels and downtown areas where returning Chinese, expats and business people traveling to China would pop in for some familiarity and to hold meetings, much like they do in the U.S. For people hoping to mix with that crowd, Starbucks became something of an aspirational brand in China. Tea was what your parents drank; a latte was something exotic and western.| You are subscribed to email updates from TechCrunch To stop receiving these emails, you may unsubscribe now. | Email delivery powered by Google |
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