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- The iPad Alternatives — The ‘Where Are They Now’ Edition
- AndroLib Gets A Makeover, Estimates Over 1 Billion Android Apps Downloaded So Far
- Online Gaming Startup We R Interactive Debuts With Star Backers And Founders
- Kodiak Capital Pumps $10 Million Into Online Adult Entertainment Company
- New York City To Keep Track Of Water Use With Wireless Monitors
- TweetUp Teams Up With Business.com, Netvibes And TheFreeDictionary.com
- Naspers Buys 28.7% Of Facebook, Zynga Investor And ICQ Owner DST
- Augmented Reality App Sekai Camera Goes Multi-Platform. Adds API And Social Gaming.
- Khosla Ventures And Founders Fund Invest $15M In Health Appointment Platform ZocDoc
- Remember When We Were All Supposed To Quit Facebook?
- Windows Live And Let Die: Another Russian Spy Caught Tapping Away At Microsoft
- Twitter’s New Name Search Isn’t For Buying Followers — At Least Not Yet
- Opera Mini For Android Drops The Beta Tags, Gets Bumped To Version 5.1
- Squarespace Raises $38.5 Million From Accel, Index Ventures
- Study: U.S. Venture Capital Industry Expected To Shrink While Emerging Markets Grow
- [TechCrunch TV] Andy Kessler: “The future is a Furby with a GameBoy up its ass”
- GE CEO Jeff Immelt And CMO Beth Comstock On The $200 Million Ecomagination Challenge
- Apple SVP Scott Forstall Just Signed Up For Twitter — But Why?
- Old Spice Man Answers Tweets On YouTube—Ropes In Kevin Rose, Alyssa Milano, And Justine Bateman
- Amazon’s MP3 Store On Hiring Spree, May Be Planning Major Relaunch
- CrunchGear Mini-Meetup in Tokyo
- Music Lovers, Take Note: Rdio Debuts Android App (Bonus: 2,000 Invites)
- Ford Charges Up With Compact Power Batteries
- Twitter Starts Name Dropping In Search Results — Huge For User Discovery
- Internet Voting Outfit Scytl Secures $9.2m
| The iPad Alternatives — The ‘Where Are They Now’ Edition Posted: 14 Jul 2010 07:43 AM PDT
It’s sad, really. While the iPad caters to the masses with the Luddite-approved iOS, others crave much more usability and none of the tablets announced that claim to fulfills these needs have been released yet. Click through to see what I mean.      
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| AndroLib Gets A Makeover, Estimates Over 1 Billion Android Apps Downloaded So Far Posted: 14 Jul 2010 07:04 AM PDT
AndroLib, the website that enables you to browse and discover apps for your Android phone far better than the Android Market site does, has gotten a makeover and a bunch of new features today. Sure, it’s still not going to win any web design contests any time soon, but the revamp makes the site a ton more useful as far as I’m concerned. AndroLib has also updated and expanded its statistics page, pegging the number of available Android apps at around 85,000 in total, and estimating that a whopping 1 billion apps have been downloaded to Android handsets around the world to date. Granted, Google is probably the only company that can really put the right number on the number of apps downloaded so far, but AndroLib lead developer Nicolas Sorel tells me his method of calculating the estimated total is based on a lot of data and complex algorithms that are capable of adjusting the number (which is updated in real time on the top of the AndroLib website) in near real-time. Sorel acknowledges that there’s always an error margin with these methods of extrapolation, but says his estimates shouldn’t be too far off – his own Android app was downloaded 3,321,826 to date, while his system estimated approximately 3,270,000 downloads. Anyway, the new version of AndroLib comes with advanced search, enabling you to find Android apps by keywords, category, pricing, minimum rating and estimated number of downloads. Now, when you’re looking at apps on the website, you can see which other apps you might like based on your apparent interests. Also new is a scoreboard, enabling you to filter your search based on these criteria: Most Rated Apps, Most Rated Developers, Top Developer Ratings and Top Developer Downloads. There’s now also a video section on the site. Finally, Android developers will shortly be given the opportunity to customize their application pages and company page, as well as access advanced statistics tailored to their needs.
     
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| Online Gaming Startup We R Interactive Debuts With Star Backers And Founders Posted: 14 Jul 2010 05:36 AM PDT  We R Interactive, a London-based online games publisher, has turned on the lights, and is on a mission to give birth to a "new generation of interactive and social games that allow players an unprecedented level of control, influence and engagement across multiple platforms". The company is headed by former PlayStation and Eidos executive David Rose, ex-ITV Interactive Commissioning Editor Oli Madgett and media analyst Richard Dale. Rounding out the management team are two of the directors of production company Bigballs Films, Tom Thirlwall and Chris Kelly. We R Interactive also launches with the backing of Peter Mead, founder of ad agency Abbott Mead Vickers BBDO,Fru Hazlitt, former Yahoo and Gcap Media boss, and ITV's new commercial and online director and Eric Fellner, co-founder of Working Title.
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| Kodiak Capital Pumps $10 Million Into Online Adult Entertainment Company Posted: 14 Jul 2010 05:03 AM PDT
Adult online entertainment and dating services company 7 Star Entertainment has signed an investment agreement with New-York based Kodiak Capital Group for a $10 million equity facility, the funding of which will be contingent upon them achieving certain conditions. The capital injection would be used for bolstering growth of the company’s flagship product AdultMatchClub.com and the build-out of its existing online portfolio, which includes sites like FriendMatchClub and . According to the announcement, the strategy to achieve this growth will be through international online marketing but also the acquisition of similar online properties. Update: as a commenter points out, looks like it concerns the same investment firm that plowed money into shady mobile payments company C$ cMoney. Hmmmm.      
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| New York City To Keep Track Of Water Use With Wireless Monitors Posted: 14 Jul 2010 05:00 AM PDT
     
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| TweetUp Teams Up With Business.com, Netvibes And TheFreeDictionary.com Posted: 14 Jul 2010 04:51 AM PDT
TweetUp will be powering its search results with four new publishers, namely Business.com, Netvibes, Farlex's online reference sites including TheFreeDictionary.com and TheFreeLibrary.com, as well as a number of (unnamed) newspapers. Thanks to these agreements and previous ones, the Idealab-owned startup claims it can now serve over 250 million impressions via TweetUp search results, with a potential total reach of some 100 million unique users on a monthly basis. In April, TweetUp opened registration for its bidded marketplace for real-time search, and in May the company launched its search capabilities on a number of sites at the TechCrunch Disrupt event, including here at TechCrunch, Topix.com, and Businessinsider.com. TweetUp's search algorithms and marketplace aim to address the needs of both users and tweeters in a single search mechanism. In addition to algorithms that combine a variety of factors to determine relevance, tweeters will soon be able to bid on keywords in a marketplace very similar to what now occurs at search engines. It’ll be interesting to see if Gross can make even half the impact he did with GoTo / Overture (acquired by Yahoo 7 years ago almost to the day), which pretty much invented the sponsored search model. Sure enough, these distribution partnerships are an essential part of the TweetUp road map.      
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| Naspers Buys 28.7% Of Facebook, Zynga Investor And ICQ Owner DST Posted: 14 Jul 2010 04:38 AM PDT
A unit of international media group Naspers, namely its subsidiary Myriad International Holdings, is to buy a 28.7% stake in Digital Sky Technologies (DST), the Russian firm behind investments in notable Internet companies like Facebook, Groupon and Zynga. Naspers will be investing $388 million in cash, and contribute its 39.3% stake in Mail.ru into DST. Concurrently, Mail.ru management and other minorities will also convert their shares into the investment firm, and when the transaction closes DST will own 99.9% of Mail.ru, Russia’s largest Internet portal by a margin. Remember when we reported Naspers was actually in the running to buy ICQ on its own back in November 2009? Well, we’re almost full circle now – DST recently became the new owner of the instant messaging pioneer. Three months ago, China's Tencent also made a strategic investment (to the tune of $300 million) in DST. Now guess who owns 35% of Tencent? Yup, Naspers does.      
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| Augmented Reality App Sekai Camera Goes Multi-Platform. Adds API And Social Gaming. Posted: 14 Jul 2010 04:11 AM PDT
Here’s a quick rundown of what happened in the past few months and what more we can expect from Sekai Camera in the future. To recap, Sekai Camera makes it possible to create text messages, photos, and audio recordings (dubbed air tags) and “drop” them on the spot in the form of floating bubbles and icons. Other users in the vicinity who open the app and spin the camera around can then click on and interact with those geo-tagged virtual Post-It notes. Sekai Camera is essentially a flashy-looking, location-based, augmented reality-powered social network. Sekai Camera so farTonchidot’s presentation at TechCrunch 50 in 2008 has since become legend, but at that time, the performance left some people skeptical about the product itself (on stage, Sekai Camera was mainly presented in the form of a video). But Tonchidot CEO Iguchi proved all skeptics wrong by presenting an early version working on an iPhone in February 2009. Sekai Camera eventually became available in the Japanese App Store in September 2009, spreading like wildfire among Japanese iPhone users, before it launched globally in December last year. In the same month, Tonchidot raised a $4 million series A and was nominated as “Best Mobile App” at the Crunchies Awards 2009, to name just a few things that happened last year.
Sekai Camera in 2010 and beyond: API, iPad and Android versions, iPhone update, Sekai AppsTonchidot currently seems to be in overdrive mode. In March this year, Tonchidot introduced OpenAir, a Sekai Camera API that makes it possible for third parties to deliver content within Sekai Camera. Here’s a list that shows the first batch of content providers (these are Japanese companies only, but the API is available worldwide). According to Tonchidot, Sekai Camera now boasts well over one million users worldwide, and the number is poised to grow soon. In May, Sekai Camera for the iPad came out (yes, augmented reality on the camera-less iPad/screenshot below). The iPad-optimized app (obviously) can’t deliver the full experience but allows you to “visit” cities around the world and view and create air tags that other iPad and iPhone users can interact with.
And just a few days ago, Tonchidot released Sekai Camera on the Android Market (screenshot below) That version offers a couple of Android-exclusive features and is available in 47 different countries. ISO 1, an Android smartbook made by Sharp for the Japanese market, just went on sale and comes with Sekai Camera pre-installed.
But Sekai Camera version 2.4.1 for iPhone is probably the most relevant for most existing users. The update, which hit the App Store just today, comes with iOS4 support and push notification. But perhaps most importantly, it features the first game that works within the Sekai Camera ecosystem. Tonchidot says that the title, a casual game called “KA-BOOM” (screenshots below), is just the first in a series of “Sekai Apps” that will be launched in the near future. The basic idea is to roll out games that combine mobile, location, augmented reality and social elements within Sekai Camera. Augmented reality-based gaming is something that has the potential to become huge and that no other company has ventured into on this scale. Tonchidot calls this concept “SoLAR” gaming and has already signed on a number of Japanese gaming firms that will deliver more content in the coming weeks.
And Tonchidot is cooking up even more stuff. For example, CEO Iguchi told me that
We’ll keep you posted.      
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| Khosla Ventures And Founders Fund Invest $15M In Health Appointment Platform ZocDoc Posted: 14 Jul 2010 04:02 AM PDT
ZocDoc automates a task that can be incredibly frustrating and time-consuming for consumers. ZocDoc allows users to book their doctor appointments online, even for same-day appointments (around 40% of ZocDoc users schedule same-day appointments). Patients can see real-time availability of doctors in their area, confirm who accepts their insurance plan and read feedback and reviews of doctors from other patients. The service currently offers patients more than 1 million available appointments across 20 specialties. The company has launched regional sites in New York, Washington DC, Chicago, and most recently San Francisco. One of the biggest barriers to expansion is the challenge of signing up and indexing all of the doctors in a given city, says founder and CEO Cyrus Massoumi. But as the site’s notoriety has grown, Massoumi says that doctors are now approaching ZocDoc to be listed. And the new funding will be used to help ZocDoc expand its network of practitioners and accelerate its nationwide growth. ZocDoc plans to expand to a number of cities in the next year, including Dallas, LA, Boston and Houston. Massoumi adds that with the recent passage of healthcare reform, an estimated 30 million new patients will have access to healthcare while the number of doctors will remain the same. ZocDoc can help doctors mitigate this increased traffic by putting doctor's schedules online.      
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| Remember When We Were All Supposed To Quit Facebook? Posted: 14 Jul 2010 02:27 AM PDT
Remember when we were all supposed to quit Facebook? You should. It was a whole two months ago. Surely you didn’t forget how no one would shut up about Facebook and its privacy issues? I mean, it was a massive deal, as we were told over and over again. Some people were practically screaming it. Where are all those people now? I haven’t heard a peep about it in weeks. Weren’t we all supposed to quit Facebook and bitch about it until Mark Zuckerberg was forced to resign? What happened? I’ll tell you what happened: people got bored of hearing about Facebook privacy. More to the point, the hits/pageviews/mentions based on the controversy quit rolling in. So it was on to the next hot controversial topic. But wait. Seriously, all I heard was how this Facebook controversy was different than the others that came before it. That this one was the one that would break the camel’s back. That Facebook was over. And yet, Facebook had record traffic numbers in June. The social network surpassed 140 million monthly unique U.S. visitors for the first time, according to comScore. That’s up from 130 million in May. Remarkably, the jump of 11 million plus visitors was the largest surge forward Facebook has seen in the past year. The service has basically doubled the visitors it had a year ago. So much for that boycott. That can’t be right, can it? comScore’s numbers must be off. Okay, well Facebook’s own numbers suggest that mobile growth is surging. They’re now up to 150 million mobile users. It was only this past February when they hit 100 million. What about the controversial Like button? The end of the web! It’s being served 3 billion times a day. That’s up threefold since April. In other words, usage has been exploding in the midst of this controversy. My point isn’t to downplay the privacy problems Facebook had a couple months ago. Many of them were very real, just as the iPhone 4 issue is. But shouldn’t all those who were acting holier-than-thou at the time have an obligation to stick to their guns? When they go quiet so quickly, it just makes them look like fear-mongers and gives Facebook even more power. And that’s exactly why it’s hard to take any of these problems seriously. Facebook is only evil as long as saying Facebook is evil is driving traffic, is my takeaway from this. And it’s exactly as I thought it would be. It’s a bit depressing, actually. The reality of the situations in these massively-hyped controversies is often quite boring. No one is quitting Facebook over privacy concerns because most people are oblivious or simply don’t give a shit (sometimes for good reason, sometimes not). In fact, Facebook is growing just as fast as before. Maybe faster. And millions of people are going to continue to buy the iPhone 4 because it’s the phone they want. If there’s a problem with the reception, they’ll deal with it by moving their hands a few inches or buying a bumper. But no one wants to read those stories. Hell, I don’t want to write those stories. They’re boring. No service is dying, no users are getting maimed. But often, that’s the way it is.
     
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| Windows Live And Let Die: Another Russian Spy Caught Tapping Away At Microsoft Posted: 14 Jul 2010 12:37 AM PDT
Those damn Russian spies are everywhere. Another sleeper agent was discovered yesterday, this time at Microsoft (I knew they were a bunch of Commies). The alleged spy, Alexey Karetnikov, was a software tester in his 20s at Microsoft, according to the Washington Post (Technically he wasn’t coding, just testing code, but don’t blame me if your Windows computer starts sending secret messages back to the Kremlin). The man was arrested and is being deported, and presumably will soon join the other Russian spies already back in Moscow. Karetnikov makes the 12th spy caught in the unlikely Russian spy ring. You may remember, some of the other members of the ring, such as Anna Chapman, the tabloid-freindly “femme fatale” who wanted to start her own Internet real estate business. And then there was the Redfin broker, also from Seattle. With the Microsoft connection, that brings the likelihood that a Russian spy works at a tech company up from 18 percent to 25 percent. By all accounts, these sleeper spies couldn’t shoot straight. But how many more are in in our midst? I hope they find more red spies in Redmond because we have a whole bunch of great unused headlines. Zuneraker In the meantime, let’s go back to that video of Anna Chapman explaining her “business plan.”      
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| Twitter’s New Name Search Isn’t For Buying Followers — At Least Not Yet Posted: 14 Jul 2010 12:34 AM PDT
Marshall Kirkpatrick at ReadWriteWeb wondered that this evening, asking “Is This How Twitter Will Offer Friends For Sale?” The answer is no — not right now, anyway. “This simple feature is meant to make Twitter easier to use. There are no current plans to monetize it,” Twitter’s Communication Director Sean Garrett told us this evening when asked about the topic. Of course, Garrett then teased, “but one should never say never.” I suspect Garrett’s last comment was mostly made in jest. My sense is that this is a feature Twitter has been working on simply to make user discovery a bit easier. But Kirkpatrick’s point on how the feature can be used to make money is an interesting one. For example, if you search on Twitter for “Hollywood gossip,” perhaps a user could bid to buy the rights to be a featured user near that search term — similar to the way Google AdSense works for Google Search keywords. “I think people have assumed that Twitter would monetize search with ads the way Google has – by inserting links to destinations. Twitter is people though – so it makes sense to monetize connection to people and to brands,” Kirkpatrick writes. This all stems from a MediaMemo report earlier this month that Twitter was considering allowing users to pay to be featured in some way to attract more followers. Garrett was coy when asked about that idea as well, basically saying that all options are on the table. One thing for certain is that Twitter has a lot of options in front of it now for ways to potentially make money going forward. Of course, “potentially” is not “actually” — the company still has to execute and choose the methods that strike the right balance of money-making and user happiness. The last thing anyone wants is for Twitter to be overrun by SEO spam.      
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| Opera Mini For Android Drops The Beta Tags, Gets Bumped To Version 5.1 Posted: 14 Jul 2010 12:00 AM PDT
These days, just about everything makes its public debut in Beta form. Google launched Gmail into an immediate state of notability with its Beta strategy, and chose to hang on to the tag for years for good measure. Online games have more players in their Beta period than the games of yesteryear ever had. There’s a joke to be made here about Apple managing to sell a few million iPhone 4s before it was out of Beta, but I’ll leave that flamewar fuel (mostly) untapped for tonight. Sooner or later, all good Betas must come to an end. The latest product shedding its Beta skin? Opera Mini for Android. Read the rest at MobileCrunch >>      
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| Squarespace Raises $38.5 Million From Accel, Index Ventures Posted: 13 Jul 2010 08:59 PM PDT
Fast forward to 2010, Squarespace has just raised $38.5 million— representing its first round of outside capital. The round, which was announced late Tuesday, is led by Index Ventures and Accel Partners. Under the deal, three new members will join Squarespace’s board: CEO of Getty Images, Jonathan Klein, Accel’s Andrew Braccia, and Index Ventures’ Dominique Vidal. The deal likely values the company north of $100 million. "Squarespace has been a profitable business since its first year of operation. This investment will not change that, but it will allow us to be much more aggressive in our quest…" Casalena said in a press release. The service helps individuals and small businesses build and maintain well-designed websites, starting at $8 a month and scaling up to $50 a month. Through Squarespace’s unique platform—the underlying server code was fully written in-house— a user can manage their entire website, including editing, producing content, inserting photo galleries and manipulating widgets for social platform. In the crowded and fragmented space of web publishing, Squarespace will never be the cheapest, even on the enterprise end, but it’s a valuable tool for customers who want a balance of affordability and strong attention to design.
Today, the user base currently includes “tens of thousands” of paying customers, Casalena says, including a few noteworthy clients like designer Marc Ecko, Bob Woodruff and ABC News Radio. Although “tens of thousands” of users sounds like a small pool, Casalena says they have been very profitable since year one, thanks to low overhead costs. In fact, for the first three years, Casalena was essentially the only full-time employee. He only decided to turn Spacesquare into a full-fledged business in 2007, once it surpassed one million in revenues. Since that turning point, Squarespace has steadily grown. And according to Accel’s Braccia, users and revenues have doubled every year, for the last few years. Meanwhile, there are now 30 employees at its headquarters in NY. Casalena says Squarespace is now moving into a new phase, which will be defined by how it improves the platform and tackles the fundamental problem of simplifying web publishing. Staying true to that theme, Squarespace is working on major product improvements for the next iteration, version 6, which will likely roll out in 9 months. Although he did not delve into many specifics, Casalena says the next version will create a richer, cleaner and more fluid experience for the designer, especially the layout system which will evolve into a more free form and flexible format.      
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| Study: U.S. Venture Capital Industry Expected To Shrink While Emerging Markets Grow Posted: 13 Jul 2010 08:57 PM PDT
Deloitte and the National Venture Capital Association have released a report today indicating that U.S. venture capitalists expect their market to contract but anticipate growth in emerging markets, including China, India and Brazil, over the next five years. The 2010 global venture report surveyed over 500 VCs worldwide. According to the survey results, more than 90 percent of U.S. survey respondents, as well as VCs in Europe and Canada, expect the number of venture firms to decrease between now and 2015, while a majority of venture capitalists in China, India and Brazil anticipate adding more venture firms in their respective countries during the same time frame. U.S. VCs have a depressed view of the industry thanks to a weak IPO market and unfavorable tax and regulatory policies. More than half the U.S. respondents also believe that limited partners will be less inclined to invest in U.S. venture capital funds in the next five years. On the other hand, 99 percent of respondents in China expect the number of venture capital firms to increase in their country, followed by Brazil (97 percent) and India (85 percent). In terms of VC fundraising, 56 percent of U.S. respondents believe that limited partners will be less inclined to invest in U.S. venture capital. However, venture capitalists in Brazil (92 percent), China (91 percent) and India (76 percent) all believe limited partners will be more inclined to invest in their respective countries. Despite the confidence of respondents in VC markets in emerging markets, only 34 percent of all respondents expect to increase their investment activity outside their own country. The countries with the most interest in cross border investing include: France (56 percent), Israel (50 percent) and the United Kingdom (49 percent). Countries indicating the least interest in outside investing were Brazil (19 percent), India (15 percent) and China (11 percent). In the United States, venture capital respondents are of split opinion regarding valuations over the next five years with 32 percent expecting increases, 34 percent expecting decreases and 34 percent expecting valuations to hold steady. Valuation expectations are the most optimistic in India and China where 68 and 62 percent of the venture capitalists in those countries believe valuations will increase over the next five years. Only 10 percent of venture capitalist respondents in Israel and 6 percent of respondents in France see valuations increasing in their respective countries. Despite concerns over contracting industries in the U.S. and Europe, 57 percent of all respondents believe the quantity of deal flow will increase over the next five years and 56 percent expect the quality to improve as well. In terms of types of investments, 72 percent of U.S. respondents said that they could invest in the clean tech industry with 58 percent saying that would invest in new media/social networking startups. In fact, most respondents from all the countries surveyed said that they would invest in the clean tech industry. The attitude of the respondents is clearly negative when it comes to U.S. markets. While VC fundraising is up this year after last year’s recession, returns have continued to decline over the past ten years. And clearly growth and opportunity are overseas. This year, the venture industry's biggest close came from Sequoia Capital's Sequoia China Foreign Currency Fund III fund which secured $1 billion its early-stage fund during the first half of the year. While these recent findings are somewhat depressing, the hope is that long term returns will eventually increase in the next five years.      
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| [TechCrunch TV] Andy Kessler: “The future is a Furby with a GameBoy up its ass” Posted: 13 Jul 2010 08:05 PM PDT
But what about a successful ex Morgan Stanley semiconductor analyst and president of a $1 billion hedge fund with five years of experience as a chip designer and programmer at AT&T Bell Labs who is also the author of four well received non-fiction books, a recently published science fiction novel about robotic intelligence and a regular Wall Street Journal and New York Times columnist? Is this itself science fiction or can a mere mortal really cram as much achievement into a fifty two year life – and still have a wife and four sons? Even for Silicon Valley, Andy Kessler is a sickeningly accomplished guy. Moving out to San Francisco in 1993, Kessler co-founded Velocity Capital where, between 1996 and 2001, he transformed $100 million into $1 billion. Not satisfied with being filthy rich, Kessler then went onto becoming famous – publishing four non-fiction books between 2003 ad 2006, including his highly entertaining short history of digital technology, the personal computer and the Internet: How We Got Here: A Silicon Valley and Wall Street Primer. And now Kessler has just come out with his first published fiction, an irreverent novel about artificial intelligence called Grumby which Michael Lewis called "deliciously naughty". So who better to talk about productivity, technology and investment than Kessler, a guy who knows better than most how we got to where we are in Silicon Valley, Wall Street and Main Street. In coming into our Techcrunch studios, Andy Kessler not only proved that he existed, but also confirmed that he has a highly controversial take on technological innovation, smart investment, job destruction and how entrepreneurs really create of wealth. Part One: Kessler on How We Got Here Part Two: Kessler on The World Economy Part Three: Kessler on Productivity Part Four: Kessler on The Next Big Thing Part Five: Kessler on Where To Invest Watch previous episode of Keen On here.      
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| GE CEO Jeff Immelt And CMO Beth Comstock On The $200 Million Ecomagination Challenge Posted: 13 Jul 2010 07:49 PM PDT Earlier today in San Francisco, General Electric announced the launch of its Ecomagination Challenge — a $200 million investment created in partnership with VC funds Emerald Technology Ventures, Foundation Capital, Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers, and RockPort Capital. The money will be used to invest in green grid technologies (applicants are invited to submit ideas over the next ten weeks). Today’s TechCrunch NOW episode focuses on the fund, featuring an interview between our own Evelyn Rusli and GE SVP and CMO Beth Comstock. I also had the chance to sit down with GE CEO and Chairman Jeff Immelt, who shared some more details on the ecomagination challenge, as well as his overall outlook at green tech. Immelt says that the Challenge will definitely pave the way for M&A opportunities (he noted that GE already has equity stakes in plenty of companies as well). Immelt also says that green tech has proven to be one of the most resilient areas of the market during the economic downturn. However, Immelt says he has one major regret that should resonate with many people (particularly those outside of the San Francisco area): the term “green tech” has gotten some elitist connotations, which stands in contrast to GE’s blue-collar nature. Immelt says this is one thing he would go back and change if he could, and that in the future he believes that terms like “digital energy” will become more common. So what’s going to drive the adoption of greener technologies like the smart grid? Immelt says that GE is already seeing adoption from many power companies, like the Bay Area’s PG&E. And he thinks that in some cases if the power companies aren’t willing to adapt, consumer demand for these advances will be driving them forward. In fact, he believes that we may eventually see the utilities themselves becoming suppliers of next-gen green appliances.      
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| Apple SVP Scott Forstall Just Signed Up For Twitter — But Why? Posted: 13 Jul 2010 07:28 PM PDT
Forstall hasn’t tweeted yet, and who knows if he actually will. But what I do know is that his account has been verified by Twitter — meaning it is actually him. And I also know that there’s no way Twitter would have verified the account unless he (or someone at Apple on his behalf) asked Twitter to. Something is up. But what? It’s certainly possible that Forstall wants to save his vanity Twitter handle (@forstall) just in case someone else tries to use it to impersonate him — or if he thinks he may want to use the service in the future (like when he no longer works at Apple). But the more interesting scenario will be if he intends to actually use the account sometime soon. Certainly, Apple knows that they’re taking hits left and right on the various social networks about issues such as the iPhone 4 antenna problems. So far, they’ve shown no interest in managing such things, but might they be coming around? It doesn’t seem likely the Forstall would be doing that, but remember that fellow SVP Phil Schiller is the one who personally took charge of the App Store issues when they were spiraling out of control. That effort seemed to work well. Then of course there is Apple CEO Steve Jobs who likes to personally respond to emails from customers. But let’s remember that Forstall is the Vice President of iPhone software. Perhaps he’s exploring Twitter because Apple is thinking about some sort of partnership or deeper integration of the service with the iPhone going forward. After all, Twitter’s iPhone app (formerly known as Tweetie) is undoubtedly one of the most popular apps on the device. And don’t forget the rumors that Apple was thinking about Facebook integration for the iPhone. Nothing came of that with iOS 4, but integration of Facebook and Flickr in software such as iPhoto, suggests that Apple isn’t opposed to such partnerships. For the iPhone, Twitter could be a perfect one. But that’s all pure speculation, of course. Plenty of other big time executives from Eric Schmidt to Marc Benioff to Bill Gates use Twitter quite regularly. Hell, even Mark Zuckerberg has an account. But again, this is Apple. That’s not to say Apple doesn’t use Twitter at all — but all the accounts they have are purely for marketing purposes: iTunesTrailers, iTunesMovies, iTunesMusic, etc. And obviously, there are a number of fake Steve Jobs accounts on Twitter — and even one for Fake Steve Jobs. But none of those are legitimate. And again, the more interesting thing here is that Twitter verified Forstall’s. When asked for comment, a Twitter representative said they didn’t know anything about it. I’ve reached out to Apple as well — but don’t expect to hear back. So who knows what’s going on here. Maybe Forstall just decided to see what all the fuss was about. (But again, why bother verifying it?) Of course, with zero tweets and zero people he’s following, it could be a bit boring. Or maybe Apple is about to get a lot more interesting. Can you imagine if Jobs was regularly tweeting? Given his brief email style, it actually seems like the perfect medium for him. Update: Twitter has confirmed that they verified the account for him, but won’t say more than that. Update 2: And Forstall just followed someone. Conan. He’s clearly poking around. Incidentally, Conan’s most recent tweet is, “I found a huge design flaw in my new iPhone. People get angry when I talk on it during a funeral.“ Conan, by the way, is still only following the peanut butter random woman out of his 1.1 million followers.
     
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| Old Spice Man Answers Tweets On YouTube—Ropes In Kevin Rose, Alyssa Milano, And Justine Bateman Posted: 13 Jul 2010 06:32 PM PDT
What if commercials really did talk to you? What if a familiar spokesperson addressed you by name and responded to your thoughts and feelings. In what is definitely one of the more creative social media ad campaigns in a while, Old Spice is doing just that. Its shirtless, muscled spokesman, the Old Spice Man, is shooting YouTube videos in response to people’s Tweets. Many oft these are well-known people with tons of followers like Kevin Rose and actress Alyssa Milano, who retweet the videos and spread them virally. For instance, Digg founder Kevin Rose Tweeted out that he was sick, and in response the Old Spice Man created the video embedded above, in which he tells Rose that he has never had a fever himself because his body is “98 percent muscle.” He even talks to Rose in binary code so that Rose can understand, to which Rose responded on Twitter:
And:
The Old Spice Man also made multiple videos for actress Alyssa Milano, as well as ones for Olympic skater Apolo Ohno, actress Justine Bateman (who Tweeted, “Can the Old Spice guy do ads for ALL the world’s products?”), and Gizmodo. But he also responds to less famous people on Twitter like “Gabe” (see below). The responses are often hilarious. (“My concern is that if I did ads for all the world’s products, it would cause global prosperity”). And they are certainly highly targeted. And it also just redefined the model for Promoted Trends. Old Spice is a promoted Trend, which takes you to the Old Spice Twitter account highlighting these videos as individual responses addressing each Twitter user who gets their own Old Spice commercial. The irony is that if Old Spice hadn’t paid to be a promoted Trend, it probably would have made it as a Trending Topic organically. But apparently you can’t appear twice as a Trend. There are already more than 100 customized Old Spice responses on YouTube. We just wonder how long the Old Spice Man can keep it up. Below is a sample, along with the original TV commercial.
     
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| Amazon’s MP3 Store On Hiring Spree, May Be Planning Major Relaunch Posted: 13 Jul 2010 05:30 PM PDT
We’re hearing from one source that Amazon is aiming for a major Q1 relaunch of the MP3 Store’s APIs and web services. They’re asking partners that are building out or planning to launch Amazon MP3 integrations to hold off until this new release is baked, we’ve heard. Another piece of evidence: Amazon is actively hiring for the MP3 Store team. The MP3 Store’s Twitter account has just tweeted a page with over a dozen job openings for both business and engineering positions, including spots for a Web Applications Manager, Client Application Developer, and engineers dedicated to mobile apps for both Android and other partners (some of these openings were listed in the last five months, while others are apparently brand new). Amazon’s MP3 store has been available in a public beta since September 2007, and made waves in 2008 by becoming the first online music vendor to sell songs without DRM (iTunes eventually followed). It comes pre-installed on Android phones as a native application (which works quite well), but its desktop website has a pretty poor user experience compared to iTunes. Look for Amazon to try to get its store integrated in as many places as possible later this year and early next year — given its past association with Android, it’s even possible that Amazon may be involved with the Google iTunes Competitor that was previewed at Google I/O.
     
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| CrunchGear Mini-Meetup in Tokyo Posted: 13 Jul 2010 04:00 PM PDT
     
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| Music Lovers, Take Note: Rdio Debuts Android App (Bonus: 2,000 Invites) Posted: 13 Jul 2010 03:09 PM PDT
It’s only been a couple of weeks since Rdio launched in the US and I started using it, and I’m already pretty sure I’ll be hooked for a long, long time – and I’ve tested a bunch of online music buying, sharing and streaming services in the past few years so that’s saying something. Check out Erick’s review if you’re interested in learning more about the service. Anyway, if you’re a music fan and a proud owner of an Android-powered smartphone, today’s a good day. The startup, which was founded and financially backed by Skype, Kazaa and Joost founders Niklas Zennström and Janus Friis, has just announced that its oft-requested Android application is now available, albeit in beta form. If you have an iPhone or iPod touch, you’re all set already. If you carry around an Android-powered handset, all you need is an invite for Rdio to get cracking. Were you too slow to take advantage when we offered you 1,000 trial accounts? We hear you: another 2,000 TechCrunch readers can sign up for an invite to Rdio right here. The free Android app lets you do much of the same as its counterpart for the iPhone; it lets you browse and listen to the collection and playlists you’ve stored in the cloud using Rdio. You can also search for (and play) a couple millions of songs, and sync music – meaning full songs, full albums and playlists – to listen to when you're offline. Yet, as mentioned, the app is in beta, which Rdio warns about in its blog post:
I’ve run into a bug or two with the iPhone app and Web service as well, so I indeed wouldn’t recommend to use Rdio as a 100% replacement for iTunes or whatever you currently use for buying and listening to music on your computer. I do think, however, that services like Rdio (and Spotify, Pandora, MOG, We7 and many others) will be shaping the future of digital music purchasing and listening in the next few years, so make sure to give it a whirl if you consider yourself an early adopter. To download, just go to the Rdio website or click this link from your Android smartphone. The app should work fine on devices running Android 1.6 or higher, but the startup promises it will support phones running Android 1.5 soon, too.      
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| Ford Charges Up With Compact Power Batteries Posted: 13 Jul 2010 03:03 PM PDT
The Focus Electric will be a full battery electric passenger car made at Ford’s Michigan Assembly Plant, which used to mainly produce large SUVs. The Focus Electric is expected to travel up to 100 miles with zero tailpipe emissions. Ford said it plans to have five electric car models on the roads by 2012. Compact Power also makes batteries for General Motors‘ Chevrolet Volt plug-in hybrid, due out later this year.      
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| Twitter Starts Name Dropping In Search Results — Huge For User Discovery Posted: 13 Jul 2010 02:49 PM PDT
Admit it, 99% of your Twitter searches are for vanity purposes. You do it, I do it, we all do it. And such a search revealed a potentially very useful and powerful new feature today. Twitter is now injecting name results into searches on twitter.com when you do a regular search for a name. To be clear, Twitter has had a name search option for some time, but this is the first time they’ve put it front and center in the main tweet stream when you do a search. As you can see, name results now appear just above regular realtime tweet results for name searches. These names are displayed horizontally rather than vertically (as regular tweets are). This feature adds another user discovery layer to Twitter. And this is potentially the biggest one yet. For example, when I search for “LeBron James” now I can see his actual account on top of the results and follow it with one click (thanks to the hovercard). That’s very powerful. Twitter recently updated its docs to reflex this new people discovery feature. A year ago, they tweaked their title tags to help with user discovery for SEO. The feature also uncovers a number of false or fake accounts — so verified accounts are likely to be more important than ever. Twitter smartly added the little blue checkbox next to name in these results to show the verified one (and presumably puts those ones first). Expect celebrities on Twitter to get a lot more followers with with new feature.
     
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| Internet Voting Outfit Scytl Secures $9.2m Posted: 13 Jul 2010 02:48 PM PDT  Scytl, the Internet voting company, has closed a $9.2 million round of funding led by European VC firm Balderton Capital, and supported by Nauta Capital, a previous investor. The new funds will enable Scytl to "consolidate its leading position in the electronic voting market and support its international expansion", says the company, with a primary focus on the U.S. Scytl's secure technology, which enables the traditional voting process during elections to happen online, has been used by 13 out of 16 of the countries worldwide who have introduced electronic voting in their public elections, says the company. The advantages offered by Internet voting are said to be "cost, efficiency, speed and security", although it's not yet proven that electronic voting necessarily increases participation.
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The 
New York City residents will now be able to track their water use in real time. The city has installed wireless meters in The Bronx (the program will expand in the future), and residents will be able to see how much water they're using at any given moment. The idea is to encourage people to cut down on their water consumption. "Wow, I used X-Number of gallons of water during that shower, let's see if I can make that X-Minus-One next time." And so on.
Fresh off the heels of announcing the acquisition of Android Twitter client 
These past few days, I’ve sat here and watched as the 
Earlier today, we first spotted 
When founder 
It's a rare "All Star" hedge fund manager and technology analyst who can also design both computer chips and write software programs. 
Everyone knows that Apple is an extremely secretive company. Some would say to a fault. But it seems to have served them well over the years. That’s why it’s not surprising at all to see that none of Apple’s key executives use public social networking services. And that’s why it’s a bit interesting that Apple Senior Vice President of iPhone Software, 
When it comes to buying music online, there’s iTunes, which is ahead by a mile, and then there’s everyone else. According to a recent report published by 
Greetings from Japan. I’m here looking at some gadgets and would love to see some of our Tokyo readers. We’ve planned a very small meet-up tonight at 7pm JST at 
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