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- The Crunchies Photo Gallery
- The Switch From iPhone To Android, And Why Your First Impression Is Wrong
- Jelli’s User Controlled Radio Gets A Big Win: Live 105 To Use It Daily
- San Francisco Earthquakes Get Their Own Geolocated Twitter Account
- E-Commerce Platform Shopify Buys Up StoreSync To Shore Up Mobile Strategy
- Can the Skiff Save the Magazine Industry?
- When To Take On Facebook, American Idol Or Virgin Mobile In An IP Fight
| Posted: 09 Jan 2010 04:21 PM PST
All photos via the Crunchies 2009 Flickr Stream, except for the top two which are by Scott Beale / Laughing Squid.
Crunch Network: CrunchGear drool over the sexiest new gadgets and hardware.
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| The Switch From iPhone To Android, And Why Your First Impression Is Wrong Posted: 09 Jan 2010 02:13 PM PST
Imagine if you took a longtime Windows user and sat them in front of a Mac for a couple days. They’d probably complain about superficial things like the change in mouse acceleration and the “unintuitive” button placement (the Close button is on the opposite side of the window). It’s not until a week or two after you start using a Mac as your primary computer that you overcome these issues and begin to fully grasp some of the benefits it offers. No, it may not be for you, but there’s really no way you can tell for sure without taking the plunge and using one as your primary computer. It’s the same way with Android. I know, because I had the same experience when I made the leap from the iPhone to Android a few months ago. When I got my Droid, I was initially very pleased with it: the screen is amazing and the device flies. But as the luster wore off, I began to have my doubts. I couldn’t figure out how to access options that should have been readily visible. Menus weren’t where they should have been. All in all, Android made me feel stupid, because much of what I had learned about using the iPhone — habits that had become nearly instinct — no longer applied. A week or so later, it clicked. When I want an option that isn’t already visible, I hit the dedicated ‘Menu’ button just beneath the screen. Need to jump to a previous screen in an app or the web browser? Hit the dedicated ‘Back’ button. In some ways, these are actually better than the soft buttons located in iPhone apps, because they’re always in the same place. It also saves some screen real estate. Using them has become totally second nature to me. But they aren’t the reason why I’ve decided I prefer Android over the iPhone. Which brings me to the things that have turned me into a full-time Android user. Gmail on Android kicks the pants off of the iPhone’s Email client — something that I’m not the only person to notice. As someone who does a lot of Emailing, that makes a huge difference to me. Google Voice integration is fantastic. The ability to run multiple applications at the same time is a breath of fresh air. Those three things were enough to seal the deal. Had I only used an Android device for a few days, these aforementioned pros may have been overshadowed by the fact that the phone felt so unfamiliar. Or I may have been turned off by one of the things Android gets wrong, like that there’s no way to update multiple applications at the same time and the default music player is remarkably ugly. But when it comes to using the phone in real life on a day-to-day basis, those problems aren’t enough to outweigh the productivity benefits Android offers me. And, really, that’s my point. Many of these iPhone users who are testing out Android for the first time tend to get hung up on things that feel unfamiliar, or are griping about issues that will only affect them once in a blue moon. No, Android isn’t as pretty as the iPhone, and there are plenty of things it doesn’t do as well as it could. But until you’ve taken the plunge to see what lies beneath its less-polished exterior, you haven’t really seen what it has to offer. Crunch Network: MobileCrunch Mobile Gadgets and Applications, Delivered Daily.
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| Jelli’s User Controlled Radio Gets A Big Win: Live 105 To Use It Daily Posted: 09 Jan 2010 01:36 PM PST
Today they’re announcing an important business development deal – an actual radio station, Live 105 in San Francisco, will be using Jelli to set their playlists every weekday. Starting this Monday, every weekday from 8 pm to midnight, Jelli takes over. Users don’t just vote songs up and down. They also get a limited number of Rockets and Bombs to move music more definitively up and down the list. And the chat area gets lively. Bad news for those radio DJs. Crunch Network: CrunchBase the free database of technology companies, people, and investors
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| San Francisco Earthquakes Get Their Own Geolocated Twitter Account Posted: 09 Jan 2010 01:31 PM PST
David Shamma has created the @sfusgs account to automatically tweet with USGS data when a new earthquake hits in the Bay Area. More interestingly, the tweets take advantage of Twitter’s new geolocation API, so if you’re using a third-party app that supports location, you can see the quakes on a map. Each tweet also includes the time of the quake, the depth at which it took place, how far it was from San Francisco, and a link back to the USGS site with more info. As you’re probably aware, the San Francisco Bay Area is a pretty active place for earthquakes, so an account like this is useful. For example, the latest tweet was from just this morning, when a minor 2.5 magnitude quake hit the area following a larger one a couple days ago. Any quake over this 2.5 magnitude threshold gets tweeted out, according to Shamma. There have been other accounts set up to do similar things in the past, for example, @sfquake, but that account has been dormant for over 2 years. Plus, that included none of the geolocation tweet data, which is useful. And while the @sfusgs account may be taking data from the USGS and putting it in its own Twitter stream, the USGS itself is actually going the other way. The service noted yesterday that it would begin leveraging Twitter data to help with its reports. From their release:
Twitter and earthquakes; the love affair continues. Crunch Network: CrunchGear drool over the sexiest new gadgets and hardware.
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| E-Commerce Platform Shopify Buys Up StoreSync To Shore Up Mobile Strategy Posted: 09 Jan 2010 10:40 AM PST
E-commerce has become a vast ecosystem that pumps billions upon billions of dollars through the web and easily connects consumers what their objects of desire at a single click. On the backend of e-commerce sites, there is plenty of opportunity for tech giants and startups to help power retailers’ online storefronts. Google, IBM, Microsoft and many others offer various technologies to help online retailers seamlessly sell their products on the web. One notable startup in the space, Shopify, which provides a turnkey e-commerce technology that lets anyone create a storefront online, has acquired MNDCreative, the developers of StoreSync, a mobile e-commerce management platform. The financial terms of the deal were not disclosed. Unsurprisingly, Shopify’s acquisition of StoreSync aims to help expand its existing offerings onto mobile devices. StoreSync will be available exclusively to Shopfiy customers, and will be integrated tightly with its web platform. StoreSync mobile application lets users tap into online store sales statistics, order processing, shipment status and product and customer information from an iPhone. Shopify’s web-based platform allows anyone to set up a store in moments, add items to sell, upload images, add tags and group items, and integrate PayPal or other credit card processor for payments. Storefronts and shopping carts can be customized and the platform assures security for all transactions. The startup has a staggered price range for various offerings starting at $24 per month. The acquisition makes sense for Shopify; retailers will need to have mobile access to their e-commerce information and StoreSync provides this technology in a simple and efficient way. However, it will be interesting if the company will soon roll out functionality for the Android. Crunch Network: CrunchBase the free database of technology companies, people, and investors
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| Can the Skiff Save the Magazine Industry? Posted: 09 Jan 2010 09:53 AM PST  There has been quite a bit of talk about Hearst's Skiff ereader and we got a hands-on last night before the show closed. The device is about as big as a Kindle DX (11.5-inch display and a very thin bezel) but quite thin (.25-inches). They use a metal board spun-coated with e-ink instead of a glass sheet for the screen, which will definitely prevent the heartbreak of shattered ereaders for the next generation of readers. It uses Sprint's 3G network. However, I doubt seriously you or I will ever add a Skiff device to our arsenals this year or any year. Here's why.
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| When To Take On Facebook, American Idol Or Virgin Mobile In An IP Fight Posted: 09 Jan 2010 09:00 AM PST
I'm going to explain all this through three examples. But first, I'll cover the basics about patents. A patent gives the holder the legal right to exclude others from making, using, or selling their invention. So the idea becomes like a piece of land, and patenting the idea before someone else does is like buying that land. Patents can be valuable when done right, but most are not. The vast majority of the patents out there are worth less than the paper they are printed on because they are obscure inventions with little real world relevance or they are filed in a way that they do not provide any protection. I've written about this for BusinessWeek and you can read some more tips on patenting here. The problem is that even when you have a good patent, it can be very costly to enforce. Take the case of Amit Jaipuria, founder of GizaPage, which is based in Bangalore, India. Amit believes he owns the second patent in the world in the social networking space (the first being the "six degrees" Weinreich patent which was bought by LinkedIn in 2002-03). In early 2000 (well before Friendster, Myspace, Facebook and Twitter came into existence), he had an idea for creating an online social network for professional networking. He filed a provisional patent in India and then started the process for filing in the U.S on July 11, 2001. Five years and three "non-final rejections" by the US Patent Office (USPTO) later, Amit was granted Patent 7047202 in May 2006 titled “Method and apparatus for optimizing networking potential using a secured system for an online community”. By this time, the social networking space had evolved and Amit was convinced he was sitting on a goldmine. So, Amit headed to Silicon Valley with the patent and a PowerPoint presentation to raise funding for a play in the social networking space. His hope was to raise venture capital based on the intellectual property (IP) he owned. However, since the patent had not been licensed by anyone, the VCs didn't bite. And he couldn't get any law firm to take his case on full contingency (they wanted him to share part of their costs – and he couldn't afford this). He decided to auction the patent through OceanTomo (which specializes in selling IP). Unfortunately, he put in a reserve for $3 million for it and the bidding stopped at around $2.5 million. Since the patent did not reach the reserve, it did not sell that day. However immediately after that, Amit was contacted by all the major social networks. One of them even offered a hybrid arrangement with a cash and stock sale. During these negotiations, someone anonymously challenged the patent with a claim of prior art. This claim asserted that evidence existed showing a similar patent or IP pre-dated Amit’s patent. The challenge muddied the waters and all the social networks walked away from the deal. After subsequent reexaminations Amit got a final decision on his patent in early 2009. The USPTO narrowed Amit’s claims due to the evidence of prior art cited in the appeal. But other claims related to key social networking features were granted as part of the narrowed patent. Amit feels these features are unique to the industry and can cover key potential areas for feature expansion. The patent is valid until 2020 and Amit is happy he has his patent. With limited resources and a focus on building his new venture, Amit hopes that he will be able to monetize his patent sometime in the future. The moral of Amit’s story is simple. Even if you have a patent, you probably will have trouble defending it because large entities can outgun you in court and risk-averse lawyers are generally unwilling to take dicey cases for small clients on a contingency basis. In other words, a patent is really nice on your wall but it may not give you magical powers to negotiate deals with tech titans.
So Kent emailed me to ask for advice on how he can defend his IP. I am answering him here. Simply, you can’t defend that kind of IP and you need to run like hell to stay ahead of Simon Fuller and his crew if you hope to make your business work. Getting a patent on a piece of technology is hard enough but convincing a court of law that a television show concept is some form of IP is nearly impossible. Why? Because prior art of some sort is everywhere. Somewhere, someone probably discussed or nearly launched a similar concept. Which leads me to the second part of my advice. Namely, a small company that wants to go toe-to-toe with a Goliath and win should rely on its speed and nimbleness. For Simon Fuller to get his program launched and running, it will likely take months of work and meeting after meeting after meeting. Kent can launch his program as fast as he wants to. Major networks are impossible to crack for new shows even for experienced producers, let alone those with no major national television credits. But perhaps Kent can garner a large enough Web audience that can turn his program into a viable business in its own right or even into a program that the major national content producers find appealing. So run, Kent, run and don’t look back at any IP violations, real or perceived.
Three years back I wrote about Kivin Varghese, founder of BrandPort, in a BusinessWeek article on the perils of partnering. Kivin had a brilliant idea. He would pay people to watch advertisements on their handsets or on their television. His unique twist on the pay-to-view model got the attention of big name TV advertisers like Procter & Gamble, Coca-Cola, and L’Oréal. Kivin also managed to get in the door to talk to Virgin Mobile USA, a huge potential partner. The bigwigs at Virgin told Kivin they loved his idea and asked to see his technology and model in detail. They wanted to partner together to build a service that would give their mobile users free minutes for watching ads through the BrandPort process. His negotiations were going well until he woke up one day to read in the New York Times that Virgin Mobile had launched a new product called Sugar Mama – which was exactly like his product. When Kivin protested, they essentially told him to "buzz off". That morning, Kivin called me to ask for advice. He explained “I had a good non-disclosure agreement, we marked things confidential, had pending patents. I did everything right. A startup that relies on deals with partners as a core part of their business model (like mine) has no choice but to reveal everything about the innovation in order to convince them it’ll be a big revenue boost for them. If I held anything back, I probably wouldn’t have gotten the deal." My advice was to fight for what was right and show no mercy. And that is what he did. Reluctantly. After over a year of litigation and probably spending millions of dollars, Virgin settled the dispute. Kivin won his case and got them to license his technology so there were limits on what they could do with it. But my guess is that Kivin failed to reap any significant income. The settlement likely covered his attorneys fees but not much more. (Kivin is under non-disclosure and won't comment. This is what I have inferred from our discussions before he signed the agreement and settled the case). Kivin would talk about his experience, however. What does he regret? He was too soft early on, and it wasn't until the last bit of the case that he was able to bring on a strong litigation team. His thoughts on what he learned: If you are going to fight back, fight back hard and right from the start. If you want to fight back, get an attack dog attorney with big IP litigation chops, don't go cheap. Be prepared to pay them big bucks for your case because good lawyers are expensive but worth it. And be prepared to risk everything. And I'll add one more – competitors know that he is no pushover and will think twice before doing this again. So, to summarize, you need to be cautious in your dealings with the world. Don't mindlessly "bare all". You should file patents, but these patents provide less protection than you might think. Even if you have a great patent, you will need to fight hard to defend it and will need a good lawyer. In some spaces, you simply can't get patents even for great, original ideas. Your only recourse is to be faster and better than newer, bigger competitors. Finally, if you do feel you've been ripped off, then pull no punches and go for blood. Editor's note: Guest writer Vivek Wadhwa is an entrepreneur turned academic. He is a Visiting Scholar at UC-Berkeley, Senior Research Associate at Harvard Law School and Director of Research at the Center for Entrepreneurship and Research Commercialization at Duke University. Follow him on Twitter at @vwadhwa. Crunch Network: MobileCrunch Mobile Gadgets and Applications, Delivered Daily.
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The third annual Crunchies Awards last night were a 
Earlier this week we saw the launch of the Google 
Earthquakes and Twitter go way back. One of the first true 
In my recent post on how 
There are many other cases where an entrepreneur thinks they are first with a great idea but don’t really have anything a patent can defend. Such is the case with 
In the rare instance when an entrepreneur has a very clear case and has a decent amount of resources to start a legal battle against a Goliath, the message to all the entrepreneurial David’s in the world is this. Forget about standard hand-to-hand combat or even hopes of niceties and use that slingshot right from the get go. If you are going to sue a big company, make sure they know it and you can bring it in a way that causes them real pain. Line up a crackerjack attorney. Make it clear you are in this game for the duration, even if it means selling your pet hamster and mortgaging your house. Big companies like picking on easy targets but once a corporate lawyer gets a whiff of a real fight in a case where they are likely to lose, the big corporate lawyer as often as not does the math and realizes settling on your terms might not be such a bad thing.| 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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