Saturday, September 4, 2010

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Rise of the Anti-Content Farmers

Posted: 04 Sep 2010 09:00 AM PDT

Editor’s note: The following guest post is by Ashkan Karbasfrooshan, the CEO of WatchMojo, a producer and distributor of premium video content. Read his other posts here, or follow him on Twitter @ashkan

My cohort at Revision 3, CEO Jim Louderback, recently wrote an article called “Screw Viral Videos.” Why? Because according to Louderback, "viral videos deliver little or no value to anyone." Which led me to wonder: what about content farms?

The Definition of Content Farms

While no official description exists yet, a content farm is the term given to a website or media organization that

  • seeks to maximize content production output
  • while minimizing production costs
  • to acquire as much organic search traffic as possible
  • with the main intent of converting that traffic into revenue, generally from advertising.

Over the past few years, anticipation of "content farm” poster boy Demand Media's IPO has fueled both a lot of media cynicism and investor curiosity. No doubt, the fact that most of the content farms are seeking to disrupt traditional media organizations, in general, and journalists, in particular, explains some of the cynicism, but it does little to ask the question of whether the strategy itself is wise.

From One Dumb Idea to Another

Just five years ago, the conventional wisdom suggested that ad-supported media organizations should embrace user-generated content as a way to "scale" content offerings on their site, arguing that marketers will chase eyeballs no matter what. Today, that ranks up there as one of the dumber strategies in the history of publishing and advertising as marketers totally rejected UGC and even the biggest proponents of UGC shifted their business models to address that reality.

Back in April, I asked "Will AOL and Demand Media's Content Farm Strategy Prevail?" and basically concluded that a “machine-gun, carpet-bombing” editorial strategy relying on a freelance model might work with articles but runs the risk of producing wildly inconsistent videos which would scare off advertisers. The important word to consider in all of this is not in fact content, but advertising, since—paywalls and iPad subscription fantasies notwithstanding—content remains largely an ad-supported game.

With Advertising, Value Trumps Cost

As Google's CEO Eric Schmidt once stated: "advertising remains the last bastion of unaccountable spending in corporate America."  Profiting from that disequilibrium are the ad agencies who care less about costs than they do about value—getting the most bang for their advertising buck

In economic terms, what matters most to them is balancing quality with cost to provide value; not minimizing cost and maximizing output. The effort to maximize output is based on the objective of maximizing organic traffic, but as we saw with UGC, more traffic does not mean more revenue, it just means a greater supply of inventory which pummels ad rates.

Who Are Your Clients: Financiers or Marketers?

In other words, if you don't come from a publishing or advertising background—and you're business is supported by venture capitalists or private equity bankers while you try to woo investment bankers—then, indeed, you need to stress that you can produce more content more cheaply than anyone else.  But that kind of downward spiral rhetoric will ring hollow to marketers who underwrite most of the media world.

Marketers Don't Like Cheap Dates

Conversely, if your business aims to serve marketers and other media companies, that is not the right tone to strike: after all, should content producers really be conveying the fact that we're cheap dates?

Being in the content business requires an understanding that you will be perpetually trying to master the art and science of production, distribution and monetization; that is an ongoing process. It is not at all akin to writing code for software that—once built—can create an infinite amount of copies and licenses to sell.

The jury’s out on whether the content farm approach will prove successful, but I am betting that in 2011, you will start to see a regression to the mean, with the very same companies who are rushing to emulate the leading content farm companies revert back towards a more balanced approach to publishing and focus on quality.  Meanwhile, the firms who bet the farm on quality and focus on offering value  in the form of quality content, instead of focusing on costs and output alone, will reap the most come harvest time.

Photo credit: Flickr/ h.koppdelaney

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Ashkan Karbasfrooshan
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Kanye West Loves Twitter, And We Love Twitter For Kanye West’s Tweets

Posted: 04 Sep 2010 08:27 AM PDT

You’ll forgive me for sneaking in some pop culture in the mix because it’s Saturday and all, right? Rapper Kanye West is having a bit of a moment on Twitter the past few hours, apologizing for the Taylor Swift incident from last year when he stormed the stage during the artist’s acceptance speech at the MTV Video Music Awards to complain that Beyonce should have won the Best Female Video award instead.

But not just that. He’s also making it crystal clear, as others have before him admittedly, that Twitter has changed the way celebrities interact with their fans and anyone who’s interested in what they have to say really. And slamming mainstream media in the process.

So reading about four pages of tweets by West, there are some interesting gems to be found in there besides his apologies to Swift and his complaints about the massive backlash he’s received since then, receiving death threats and getting booed off stage and so on.

This blog reposted the long rant (easier to read).

Here’s part of his rant against mainstream media, and his love for Twitter:

Man I love Twitter… I’ve always been at the mercy of the press but no more… The media tried to demonize me

She deserves the apology more than anyone. Thank you Biz Stone and Evan Williams for creating a platform where we can communicate directly

and

These aren’t regular tweets… this is stream of consciousness … I want you guys to know and feel where my head is at…

These tweets have no manager, no publicist , no grammar checking… this is raw

True enough, the rapper could have written a thoughtful blog post (or a letter) on the matter and it would have been picked up by followers and celeb watchers just the same, but the beauty of Twitter is that it enables, encourages even, people to be more concise and direct.

You can consider his tweets insane rambling by a celebrity who is up late and possibly drunk, or as some lame way of getting attention (if it is, I’ll take this over most publicity stunts I’ve seen over the past three decades).

Or you can look at it this way: 5 years ago, how were fans able to get this much insight into their idols’ thoughts and feelings? Answer is they didn’t.

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Tech Industry Managers: Little Men in Big Shoes?

Posted: 04 Sep 2010 07:00 AM PDT

When I was ready to transition from computer programmer to project manager, my employer, Xerox Corporation, sent me to its huge training center in Leesburg, Virginia. Over two weeks, the people there taught me some of the skills I needed in order to succeed in my new role: managing projects, motivating people, complying with employment regulations, and preparing status reports and presentations. The company also encouraged me to complete an MBA, on a part-time basis, at New York University. It gave me lots of time off and paid for the tuition.

Tech companies in the internet era offer their employees some great perks. But do you think that Facebook, Groupon, or Zynga provide budding professionals with any serious management training? Not at all. Given the way tech companies grow and the HR challenges they face, management training and career development are more important than ever. But few have the time—they are too busy surviving.

Professors Robert Fulmer and Byron Hanson of Duke University's Corporate Education group researched the management practices of 23 leading high-tech firms. Corporate executives in an overwhelming majority, 89 percent, believed that leadership development was becoming increasingly important for their companies; 58 percent ranked this as a high corporate priority. Yet less than one-fourth of the managers interviewed had a clear roadmap for how they could develop themselves, and more than half didn't even know who in their organization was responsible for the development of leaders. The conclusion of the researchers wasn't surprising: many high-tech companies are young, so their systems and procedures for grooming leaders aren’t well developed or firmly established.

Maybe this is why so many tech companies suffer from morale problems, missed deadlines, customer-support disasters, and high turnover. And this may be one of the reasons why so many tech startups who succeed in selling their vision and raising millions in financing are just a flash in the pan.

One of the interesting findings in the Fulmer and Hanson research was that more than 70 percent of the tech executives interviewed said that leadership development in technology-driven firms is different than in other industries. The researchers believed, just as I do, that these tech executives were dead wrong. The lessons that leading companies like Proctor and Gamble and General Electric have learned about management development and training apply as much, if not more, to tech companies.

This means that if you're a fresh grad joining a hot new tech startup, you shouldn't expect your managers to train and groom you, or the company to provide you with time off to complete an MBA. You're on your own. If you are working at some of the more established companies, such as IBM and HP—which do have excellent management-development practices—take full advantage of them. You need to learn all you can.

Many people are born with an innate sense of vision; they readily learn new technologies and master them. Some are very good at communicating and inspiring others. But you can't be born with the skills needed to plan projects, adhere to EEOC guidelines, and prepare budgets and manage finances, or to know the intricacies of business and intellectual property law. All this has to be learned. Some skills can be developed on the job, but this is usually through trial and error.

I usually recommend that engineering students who want to become managers and CEOs complete a fifth year of education. There are one-year long engineering management programs which cover such subjects as marketing, finance, intellectual property, business law, and management—similar to the key courses in an MBA program; plus tech-oriented subjects like innovation management, operations management, and entrepreneurship.  One such program (and there are many) is the Duke Masters of Engineering Management program, at which I teach.

For experienced tech workers in Silicon Valley, Berkeley and Stanford both have excellent executive MBA programs. Berkeley Haas School dean, Rich Lyons told me over dinner, last month, of his plans to make his school the premier training ground for Silicon Valley executives. Boston's Babson College is also launching a program in San Francisco.

But not everyone needs to spend two years doing an MBA. Berkeley's college of engineering is creating a much shorter program targeted at Silicon Valley techies with leadership potential. Under the aegis of Fung Institute Chief Scientist and Director of UC Berkeley's Center for Entrepreneurship & Technology, Ikhlaq Sidhu, the school is developing a professional program in Engineering Leadership. This will meet one evening a week for six months and teach subjects like product management, entrepreneurial thinking, leadership and finance. It will also teach team building, business management, and motivation.

The new Berkeley program is highly selective however.  It will only accept 25 candidates in 2011, based on recommendations from senior executives in the valley. Sidhu says that he hopes to address the "symptoms of engineering without leadership"—which include organizational indecision about new products and services; unresolved conflict between product management and engineering; and superficial technology strategies.  Berkeley will likely expand this program significantly over time and add many others. After all there is a great need.

Editor's note: Guest writer Vivek Wadhwa  is an entrepreneur turned academic. He is a Visiting Scholar at the School of Information 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. You can follow him on Twitter at @vwadhwaand find his research at www.wadhwa.com.

Lanyrd – Plancast Meets Upcoming For Conferences

Posted: 04 Sep 2010 02:04 AM PDT

Look out Plancast and Upcoming, here comes Lanyrd. Ok, maybe that's a slight exaggeration, but if it's possible to have a SXSW "tipping point" at an event then Lanyrd just had it at dConstruct, a popular design and developer conference in the UK. So what is it? The guys behind Lanyrd say they are not trying to build a general purpose events site but instead they are just interested in conferences and everything associated with them: speakers, attendees, venues, books, video and audio, twitter conversation, blog coverage - you name it.


The Funded’s Adeo Ressi Arrested After Virgin America Flight Incident

Posted: 03 Sep 2010 11:12 PM PDT

The Funded founder Adeo Ressi was arrested and briefly detained earlier this evening over an altercation with a flight attendant. The airline? Virgin America, which I’ve been holding up as virtually the only airline that doesn’t suck (See Virgin Airlines Fails To Commit Atrocities On Flight VX746 and Delta Flight 1843 From JFK To Hell).

Ressi’s description of the incident is below, and he has sent this to Virgin, he tells me. I’ve reached out to Virgin America for their position.

I can’t help but note the similarities with Jet Blue flight attendant Steven Slater, who has now been rewarded for his behavior with a reality tv show. The worse the flight attendant, the better the chance for fame and glory, I guess.

You posted something nice about Virgin America a little over a week ago. I actually agreed until I was briefly and wrongly arrested as a result of a stressed out flight attendant today.

I am horrified by the incident on VX22 today, after flying over 70,000 miles with the company. Here are the details.

I was on flight VX22 in seat 2B, First Class, under the name Adeodato Gregory Ressi di Cervia. My company, the Founder Institute, is enrolling hundreds of entrepreneurs from eight cities into the incubator, so I was working before taking off. I shut everything down when the cabin door was shut, and started working again when the Internet was turned on at 10,000 feet, reviewing founder applications.

The first class steward, the “ITL,” served some food, but otherwise ignored passengers. There was a young stewardess in the back of the plane that brought me two ginger ails, some nuts, and Pringles. It was strange that the steward ignored passengers, focusing his attention on a baby in the font row, but I didn’t really notice much, since I was busy.

As we started to descend, the captain came on and asked everyone to shut down computers and electronic devices. The ITL walked down the isle immediately following the captain’s announcement and tapped my computer to indicate that I should shut off my computer. I looked up, nodded and indicated that I needed a second to finish an email, and he walked past me into coach.

By the time he returned, approximately 60 to 90 seconds later, I had finished the email at exactly 5:33 PM EST (according to email records), and I was closing the laptop lid. He stood above me, and the ITL said in a loud voice, “I told you to close the computer. You need to listen to me. You need to obey my orders. I am in charge. I told you to close the computer. You need to listen. I am in charge. Not you.” This went on for a while. It was awkward, uncalled for and embarrassing.

Meanwhile, I was holding the closed computer up off the tray table for everyone to see, as it was being shut down even before he walked over. He then said, “I can contact the authorities and have you arrested.” I responded, “I have done nothing wrong. Go ahead, if you like, I have done nothing wrong.”

Now, a few minutes after the original announcement by the captain, the ITL walks up to the bulkhead phone, and I presume he calls the captain. The captain then makes an announcement that everyone should have their devices off or “the authorities will be contacted and meet us upon landing.” My device was already off for a few minutes at this point, and I ask for the ITL’s name, who now completely ignores me.

As we continue to descend, I had a bag on the floor in First Class, which I know is not allowed on Virgin America First Class because I have flown over 70,000 miles on the airline. So, I ask the ITL to put the bag up, and he responds, “get up, and put it away yourself.”

I get up, and then the ITL starts yelling at me again for standing up when the plane is below 10,000 feet. I toss the bag into the overhead, leaving it open, sit down quickly and he calls the captain again using the bulkhead phone. He then comes over to shut the overhead compartment. At this point, we did not speak again during the flight.

We land at 5:49 PM, 16 minutes after I closed my computer down. We taxi to the gate, and there was a 15 minute delay while the authorities were called. Two NYC police men escorted me off the plane. Passengers are delayed even further as the police interrogated me in front of the exit door. Once I start moving up the platform, escorted by two police men, and the passengers are finally let out. Three First Class and Main Cabin Select passengers agree to be witnesses on my behalf to the police, taking more of their valuable time to say that I did nothing wrong.

Meanwhile, I was detained for an hour at the gate by police, who eventually let me go, jokingly referring to this as an “argument over a cell phone” to the TSA. Meanwhile, the Virgin America captain lectured me twice on the importance of turning your computer off, without even listening to my side of the story. The ITL told the police a story that I had been disruptive at other points in the flight, and the police said that the Virgin America flight team were now defending each other. The police also clearly indicated that they thought the ITL was not telling the truth. The police and the TSA had no charges.

You can get the police report for the names of two supportive First Class customers.

I am extremely disturbed by this incident in First Class on Virgin America. I request that Virgin America (1) terminate the ITL in question and (2) refund my money for the whole trip, allowing me to purchase alternative travel home. I do not want to wind up with this ITL on my flight again, as I have recognized him from my 70,000+ miles of flight with the airline.

I a law abiding citizen that has never gotten more than a mild speeding ticket, and I fly over 250,000 miles per year. I never raised my voice. I never cursed. I followed the captain’s instructions. Yet, I was removed from a Virgin America by police for doing absolutely nothing wrong.

Thank you.

Adeo Ressi

Hate The iTunes 10 Icon? Think You Can Do Better?

Posted: 03 Sep 2010 10:46 PM PDT

Apple CEO Steve Jobs’ obsessive focus on design detail is at least partially responsible for why the tech sphere and the design sphere are so intertwined at the moment. Which makes the ire that Jobs has received for the current iTunes 10 logo (not to mention the foibles of Ping) particularly poignant. The universal hatred for this thing has spawned an @BPGlobalPR-esque Twitter account, some pretty impressive suggestions of alternate logos over on design collaboration site Dribbble, and an email to Jobs himself.

ValuLeads designer Joshua Kopac:

Enjoyed the presentation today. But … this new iTunes logo really sucks. You're taking 10+ years of instant product recognition and replacing it with an unknown. Let's both cross our fingers on this….

Steve Jobs to designer Joshua Kopac:

We disagree.

Sent from my iPhone

Attention Joshua Kopac, Steve Jobs has been reinventing the design landscape since before you were using Mac Paint. HE TOOK A FONT CLASS AT REED FOR CHRISSAKES.

But yeah, people love to backseat graphic design among other things, so I’ll tell you what, anyone who thinks that they can do a better job at logo design than Jobs, Jony Ive and team is welcome to have at it. Just send your submissions to tips@techcrunch, with subject line: “I am better than Steve Jobs” or something more clever and I’ll link to and post the best ones here.

Because I for one find the more “Metal” iTunes 10 logo kind of cool and I’m sure our readers, nerds that they are, could do way better.

Side note: How much do you think sending that “Sent from my iPhone” notification pleases Steve Jobs? I’m willing to bet a heckuva a lot. I’m almost surprised Jobs doesn’t include a * after the “my” as in, *”I designed it, bitch.”

Image: Rich Hemsley

Update: We’ve got our first post-worthy alternate by Chris Carlozzi. Not sure what the heart on the right is supposed to symbolize, but the rest of it is top notch.

And here’s our second by Felipe Hauser.


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Craigslist Censored: Adult Section Comes Down

Posted: 03 Sep 2010 09:54 PM PDT

Bad news for Craigslist users who like to peruse the Erotic Services Adult Services section of their site. It’s gone, replaced by a large black and white “censored” logo.

I’ve reached out to Craigslist for comment and await their reply. But the choice of words is significant – the section wasn’t simply removed, the censored word was used.

The site has been embattled as old press and state attorneys general use any excuse to blame sex crimes on the site. From South Carolina Attorney General Henry McMaster’s failed crusade against them to a variety of press stories about sex and other crimes. If it’s just a sex crime it isn’t a story. But if a listing on Craigslist was involved, it’s a big story.

Craigslist has fought back using little more than their blog and logic. And they’re right. Having prostitution up front and regulated, as Craigslist does, means less crime is associated with it. It’s not like prostitution, sometimes called the world’s oldest profession, was invented on the site.

The fact that eBay and others do exactly the same thing, but without human review and moderation, doesn’t seem to matter. Craigslist Sex is what scares the general population, and it’s what the press and the politicians will continue to use to get their hits and votes.

So the Craigslist Adult Section was removed. Is the world now a safer place?

Update: This only appears to affect U.S. sites, so if you’re looking for a happy ending in Saskatoon or the West Bank, have at it.

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Fast Trains to Connect US Cities, Alleviate Highway Congestion

Posted: 03 Sep 2010 07:30 PM PDT

The Obama administration back in January promised $8 billion in funding for cities and states to build high-speed, intercity rail projects.

This week, the Department of Transporation issued its specifications for the manufacture of new fast trains, namely double-decker coach, dining, baggage, and business class passenger rail cars that can travel between 79 MPH and up to 220 MPH.

Bi-level rail cars not typical in the US today, would accommodate more passengers, and hopefully alleviate congested roads and some resulting air pollution.

According to the American Association of State Highway & Transportation Officials (AASHTO) 95 percent of passenger travel in America is made by car, motorcycle and truck on our highways now.

Expanding highway capacity and overhauling busted roads with more durable and sustainable materials can prevent some traffic jams. But even highway professionals advocate building efficient, intercity, high speed trains and upgrading our freight rail systems.

Wireless companies like Groundlink and D-Link could win business rigging new high speed trains with internet service and related equipment.

Cities that recently won government funding for their high speed passenger rail projects include: Cleveland, Columbus and Cincinnati, Ohio, and Battle Creek, Michigan among others along the Detroit to Chicago route.

Feds promised the biggest piece of the budget in their national high speed rail transit program earlier this year to large-scale efforts in Florida and California that would connect Tampa and Orlando with 168 MPH trains, and Los Angeles and San Francisco with trains running up to 200 MPH.

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Why This New Apple TV Makes Sense — For Now

Posted: 03 Sep 2010 07:24 PM PDT

As a longtime Apple TV owner, I’ll admit a dirty little secret: I really like the device. Sure, it has been one of the rare flops for Apple in recent years. And it could be so much more with say, a Blu-ray player or a web browser. But it is really good at its core functionality: bringing iTunes content into your living room. And that’s why this new version of the Apple TV makes sense — at least for now.

When I first bought the Apple TV, there were two varieties: a 40 gigabyte version and a 160 gigabyte version. I was torn between which one to get, but I ultimately went with the 160 GB one thinking I could put most of my movies on it. Big mistake. I basically never use the hard drive on my Apple TV, so it’s a 160 GB hard drive sitting there doing nothing. Instead, I stream everything to the Apple TV.

In fact, the only time I do use the hard drive on my current Apple TV is when I rent a movie on it. Currently, even when renting, you download a movie to your hard drive where it sits for up to 30 days (or 24 hours after you start playing it). But with the new iTunes rentals (both TV and movies) everything is streamed — no hard drive is required (besides a small one for buffering purposes). Thanks to that, and undoubtedly the knowledge that most owners were using it for streaming, Apple removed the hard drive from the device, and cut it down in size and price.

Now, at one-forth the size and less than half the price, it’s an even more attractive way to get your iTunes content into your living room. And it has a few very nice bonuses. The mixture of the new Netflix functionality with Apple’s new release rental movies makes this an excellent in-home movie machine for the masses. For those who pay $9 a month to Netflix, you get access to tens of thousands of older movies. For those interested in newer movies, they’re $4.99 a pop from Apple.

Yes, Apple removed the option to buy movies on the Apple TV itself. But you can still do this through iTunes on your computer — or on your iPad/iPhone/iPod touch. And guess what? With the forthcoming AirPlay feature, you’ll be able to stream any of those purchased movies right from any of those devices to the Apple TV. In a way, it sort of does make the Apple TV a $99 iPad accessory.

Further, the removal of the option to buy (as well as the removal of the SD options) make Apple TV much less complicated for general consumers. Now there is no question about whether you should rent or buy. There is also no question about whether you should do rent or buy in HD or SD. I suspect most people were renting in HD on the device, which is why Apple made the move it did to eliminate the other unnecessary options. They’re keeping it simple, stupid.

Apple also removed the option to buy TV shows — which never really made much sense to me. There are some shows that people would like to own, but most are definitely watch-once programs. Previously, there was no rental option, you had to buy. Worse, even if you did want to own a lot, the old Apple TV didn’t have nearly enough storage to handle them all — some HD TV show seasons take up 30 GB of space or more. The model just didn’t make a lot of sense.

Granted, Apple’s current $0.99 TV show rental option is pretty weak. They only have shows from ABC and Fox — and only some shows from Fox. But obviously, just as happened with iTunes music and movies, Apple is hoping all the studios eventually get on board.  And if they do relatively soon, the Apple TV will be a very interesting device to consumers as both a movie box and as a potential cable replacement. Sure, most people aren’t going to feel comfortable totally killing cable just yet — but at $99, this will be a very interesting experiment for a lot of people.

All that said, let’s be clear: this Apple TV is not the killer device in the living room. This will be more popular than the current Apple TV, but it will not be iPod/iPhone/iPad-big. And Apple seems to know that, which is why they’re still talking cautiously about it.

The problem Apple faces is the same problem that everyone faces: content agreements. Hollywood is proving much harder to convince than the music labels were. In a few years, if DVD sales keep falling and cable revenues start decreasing, they’ll be more receptive to new options.

The killer Apple TV would have TV network subscription packages. It would offer live events. It would have every movie ever made available on-demand.

And on-demand is the big key to all of this. All of this content is going to move to the cloud. It has too for storage purposes and given how many devices we all have. Rentals just completely made the jump, but eventually purchases will too. At first, you’ll have the option to download certain movies you’ve bought to take on the go, but when you’re at your home, even movies you “own” will be streamed — they’ll simply be streamed for free. And then one day, all of this stuff will be in the cloud entirely as mobile devices will always be connected by high-speed wireless.

This is the future. It’s Apple’s future along with everyone else’s. This Apple TV is one small step in that direction, and at $99 it makes sense for now — at $229, it never did. This is a stepping stone to the cloud age. Right now it’s a mixture of the internal cloud (streaming from within your house) with the external cloud (streaming rentals from the cloud). Soon it will all be external.

If this half-step isn’t your thing, if you want more functionality, buy a Mac mini. There’s a reason Apple just added a HDMI output to it. But that device is too complicated and way too expensive for most consumers to use as a set-top box. The Apple TV is simple.

Oh, and one more thing: the true killer Apple TV device will have apps. I’m still absolutely convinced (as many people are) that it’s only a question of when they make the jump to the living room. The fact that this new Apple TV is running iOS seems to be all the proof one should need that this will come eventually.

When that happens, the Apple TV will become a hell of a lot more than a hobby.

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Google Streamlines Its Privacy Policy. Should Facebook Be Next?

Posted: 03 Sep 2010 07:13 PM PDT


Location-based service Echo Echo recently posted the above image to their blog in a (successful) attempt to garner some media attention as the debate around online privacy continues to rage.

As extreme as their“If Mark Zuckerberg Cared About Privacy” example is, it does call attention to the needless complexity of various web service privacy agreements, settings and policies.

In the wake of a $8.5 million lawsuit settlement today, search giant Google made a gesture of good faith in the “caring about privacy” department, assuring users that it was taking steps in order to make the minutae of online privacy easier to understand.

“For example, we're deleting a sentence that reads, ‘The affiliated sites through which our services are offered may have different privacy practices and we encourage you to read their privacy policies,’ since it seems obvious that sites not owned by Google might have their own privacy policies.”

Perhaps this concerted movement towards being more transparent and simple with regards to privacy would also work well for Facebook which, like Google, is currently involved in various privacy scuffles.

Vidyo Bets On The iPad And iPhone For The Future Of Video Conferencing

Posted: 03 Sep 2010 07:10 PM PDT

Vidyo, a company that specializes in high-quality video conferencing technology for the enterprise, is betting big on bringing video conferencing to mobile devices, including tablets and smartphones. Similar to Skype, Vidyo offers a technology that allows people to connect with each other over the web via video conferencing. However, the company says that Vidyo system is focused more on the enterprise, providing a reliable system, allowing conferencing for many parties at once, and offering high quality video. And Vidyo has built a big business licensing its technology to large electronics companies, such as HP, Intel and Hitachi. Vidyo's technology is also used by Google to power video for Google Chat.


Want To Use Gmail Priority Inbox With IMAP? Tough Luck

Posted: 03 Sep 2010 05:49 PM PDT

Curious what Google’s Gmail Priority Inbox means for those of us that use an IMAP or POP client like Mac Mail or the Mail function on an iPhone? Well as of yet the feature is not fully enabled on either IMAP or POP-compatible third party or mobile clients, leaving a large percentage of people who hate viewing email a standard web browser out in the cold.

If you try to use the service in Mac Mail right now the emails determined by the Priority Inbox algorithm to be “Important” are sent to an “Important” folder under Gmail. In order to reach them in Mail for the iPhone you also have to search for the “Important” folder under your Gmail account folder.

Priority Inbox is like a pet, you have to train it in order for it to function properly, and this training is partly accomplished using the up-voting and down-voting arrows currently only available in your browser. The algorithm also tracks archiving behaviors like starring , which are also limited when using IMAP/POP. And while Google plans on adding the training feature to both Gmail mobile browsers like Google for the iPhone and to Android, third party IMAP clients like Mac Mail will most likely be left out of the loop, at least for the time being.

The majority of complaints I’ve heard from Priority Inbox users (“It’s still showing me junk mail!”) are from people who basically don’t grasp the key fact that the algorithm needs to be trained to get good, which is hard to do if you’re primarily viewing email over the phone or through Mac Mail.

When the IMAP issues were pointed out, a Google spokesperson responded, unsurprisingly, “Priority Inbox is best when viewed in Gmail's web UI.”

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Coinstar Not Necessarily Not Partnering With Apple On Something Or Nothing

Posted: 03 Sep 2010 05:30 PM PDT

Can someone please explain this Bloomberg Businessweek story to me? I’ve read it a few times and am still having a hard time understanding what is or what isn’t being implied, or not implied, about a partnership between Coinstar and Apple.

First of all, the title is awful because most people likely don’t know that Coinstar owns Redbox (they acquired them last year), the DVD rental kiosk company. Instead, most people know Coinstar as those machines in supermarkets where you turn in your loose change for cash or silly things, like Facebook Credits. So why on Earth would they be partnering with Apple on some online venture?

Well, again, it’s about Redbox, as they sort of note in the first paragraph. But what are they going to do with Apple?

“I would not conclude we are or are not doing a streaming deal with them,” Coinstar CEO Paul Davis told Bloomberg. Well that clears things right up.

A streaming deal? While Davis notes Coinstar’s “longstanding relationship” with Apple, that’s for iTunes gift cards right now, which is an option at some of their kiosks. A streaming deal is another matter entirely, obviously.

Clearly, Coinstar (again, Redbox) wants to get into that market to be able to compete with their main rival now: Netflix. The problem with partnering with Apple is that Netflix beat them to it. Just this week, Apple unveiled their new Apple TV which has Netflix streaming built-in. Now, Netflix focuses mainly on catalog (read: older) titles, while Redbox focuses on newer titles, but that’s because Redbox is doing DVDs right now (the business Netflix is slowly moving away from). If Redbox gets into streaming, it would likely have to move more towards catalog titles as well.

Further, Apple already offers new movie releases on their own. And they actually get the majority of them before Redbox does because Redbox was forced to cave to ridiculous Hollywood studio demands that they wait 28 days before getting new release DVDs. As Apple CEO Steve Jobs pointed out a few times on stage this week, Apple gets those movies day-and-date (they day they are released for sale on DVD).

So it’s not clear to me how this possibly maybe non-partnership partnership would actually be beneficial to Apple. iTunes kiosks? Perhaps. But the article doesn’t mention that at all. It just non-talks about a streaming non-deal that may or may not be real. And may or may not make any sense. Or something.

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Video Impressions Of Google TV On Logitech Revue Hardware

Posted: 03 Sep 2010 05:27 PM PDT

It seems that one of the beta testers for Google TV couldn’t keep all that goodness to himself, and has posted several pictures and some video of the near-finished interface and hardware. It’s a brief and not particularly shocking video, but seeing it running on a home TV and hearing a regular guy expressing legitimate (if subdued) excitement make it a lot more real.

Continue reading…

Is Digital Eavesdropping Evil? Depends Which Country Is Doing It (TCTV)

Posted: 03 Sep 2010 02:57 PM PDT

First we had the Google vs China debacle, then came Saudi Arabia’s tussle with RIM. And now it’s India’s turn: threatening to block RIM, Google and Skype unless the companies agree to set up localised servers, all the better for state monitoring of communications.

Curiously, compared to the outrage levelled at the Saudi and Chinese governments, American reaction to India’s move has been pretty muted. Could it be that India is somehow perceived as “less evil” than the Muslim/Communist nations? Also: to what extent is India simply doing what every government – including the US government – tries to do: demanding the ability to monitor digital chatter in the hope of foiling criminal and terrorist plots? After all, if Big Brother can’t read your BBMs, haven’t the terrorists already won?

In this week’s episode of Why Is This News, we talk to Harvard Law professor Jon Zittrain, who explains the differences between governments who obey the rule of law, and those who don’t – and why Sarah’s right to criticize the government by email is totally protected, unless she should happen to email it to Paul.

Video below.

A Closer Look At Apple’s Latest Patents

Posted: 03 Sep 2010 02:45 PM PDT


Apple has been granted nine new patents, and I thought I’d take a look at the claims therein and see whether they match up to the descriptions, and whether they seem (to this humble blogger) like realistic items for which to gain exclusive rights. I’ve included links to all the patents, but the USPTO office is behaving strangely, and often returned an error when I tried to pull up documents. Those guys ought to claim a method to buy some new servers, whereby I don’t have to submit the patent number five times before it comes up.

I’m not going to get in the habit of analyzing in detail every patent that comes our way, but in light of recent lawsuits and all the noise being made about software patents specifically, it seems worthwhile to take a closer peek now and then.

Continue reading…

Tweetmeme’s Button Impressions Collapsed 20% After Twitter’s Button Launched

Posted: 03 Sep 2010 02:38 PM PDT

It was only a year ago that Tweetmeme declared their intention to be the king of retweets. And for most of the past year, that was the case. Their retweet button was everywhere. Of course, that was before Twitter launched its own button last month. The result of that introduction? An immediate 20 percent drop off in button impressions per day, Tweetmeme found Nick Halstead noted today.

Luckily for Halstead, Twitter let him know their button-killer was coming and gave Tweetmeme a chance to get out of the way. Twitter even agreed to license some of Tweetmeme’s technology and enter into a business agreement with them about the button. The phrase, “killing me softly” comes to mind.

Halstead shared a bit more about the experience in a FriendFeed (yes, it’s still around) conversation during The Gillmor Gang taping today. “Yes we lost 20% at first – but we have continued to grow. Twitter [is] growing even faster, the whole point was to make the ‘whole’ ecosystem grow faster,” Halstead noted. He says that despite the huge plunge in button impressions, they didn’t lose a lot of sites sending them data in the grand scheme of things. “We’re still at 220,000 sites,” Halstead said. He then reiterated that they were still growing, and revealed that part of the agreement was “not to suddenly switch everyone from one button to another.“

“We never made a penny from buttons, but we made Twitter grow,” Halstead noted. “More links = more links for us to filter + sell the data for,” he continued. And data is the key behind Tweetmeme’s new post-button strategy with Datasift, the new product they’re working on.

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DoubleClick Ad Planner’s Bestiality Bug (Screenshot)

Posted: 03 Sep 2010 02:27 PM PDT

Is Google serving up ads targeted at sites which categorize themselves as “extreme porn,” bestiality,” and “child porn”? Rest assured, it is not. But if you are a website publisher using DoubleClick’s Ad Planner to select categories to match your site to advertiser’s interests, you might think so. The screenshot at right and below shows what one publisher found when choosing self-descriptive categories. Under “Adult” and “Porn” are those three categories. The issue was first brought to Google’s attention in this help forum, and subsequently by TechCrunch.

It turns out this is a software bug, but what a doozy. DoubleClick, which is part of Google, maintains a blacklist of categories and keywords it will not serve ads against. Those include “extreme porn,” “bestiality,” and “child porn.” Somehow categories from the blacklist started appearing as regular options within Ad Planner. Google is removing those now and says no ads were actually served against those categories even if somebody selected them.

A Google spokesperson provided us with the following statement:

“This was a mistake that we are fixing. This screenshot is from the Ad Planner Publisher Center, where we allow publishers to claim their sites and self-identify the categories of content that their sites showcase. We maintain an internal list of categories of policy-violating content to prevent that content from entering the network, and due to an error some items from that list were recently surfaced in the Publisher Center UI. We are working to correct this error immediately, and we can confirm that it was strictly an error in the publisher interface. No advertiser has ever had or will ever have the ability to target ads to categories like child pornography or bestiality.”

That’s reassuring. But how does a mistake like that happen in the first place?

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Offerpal Gets Its Third CEO In A Year, Garrick Named Executive Chairman

Posted: 03 Sep 2010 02:20 PM PDT

Offerpal Media has just announced that Mihir Shah has been named president and CEO, while chairman and former CEO George Garrick has been named executive chairman. This is Offerpal’s third CEO in a year; Anu Shukla left the company last November following the Scamville drama and was replaced with former Mochi Media CEO George Garrick.

Shah was the company’s chief revenue officer and joined Offerpal in December of 2009. Prior to Offerpal, Shah was VP of ad networks for RockYou. And he previously served as VP and general manager of direct selling services at QuinStreet.

The company has been through a significant amount of change over the past few months. Facebook recently transitioned games and applications from Offerpal’s currencies to Facebook Credits and partnered with rival Trialpay, and the company was forced to lay off people who worked on its Facebook monetization initiatives.

But Offerpal has moved on and recently launched SocialKast, which aims to relieve any game developer that was hurt by Facebook’s recent decision to seriously cut down on the many ways they could distribute notifications via the social networking site in order to get new users to sign up. SocialKast aims to enable game developers to connect with audiences across social networks and media platforms such as Yahoo and Google, opening the doors to massive distribution of game-related notifications to roughly 1 billion users in over 150 countries.

Clearly as the company moves in a new direction, it may need new leadership as well. But it looks like Garrick has helped move the company on this new path beyond Facebook and will continue to act as a key part of the company’s executive board.

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Yahoo Search Assist Gets More Local, But Google Gets It Right

Posted: 03 Sep 2010 01:21 PM PDT

As you type into a search box on Yahoo or Google, a list of suggested keywords pops down below to help you complete your search faster. Today, Yahoo turned on a local component to its keyword autocomplete feature. The search assist now serves up different keywords based on your location.

So if you type in “Santa” in northern California, “santa clara county” might be the first suggestion, but if you type it in southern California, “santa barbara” might be first.

Location is often a very relevant way to filter search, so this makes Yahoo’s search assist smarter. But, as with many things Yahoo, it is lagging behind Google with this feature. Google’s search assist also factors in your location. And, from what I can tell, it does it better.

I’ve been trying a few sample local searches, and in every case, it takes Google fewer characters to come up with the right answer. For example, I am in New York, and all I need to do is type the first four letters of Grand Central Station (“gran”) to get that as the top suggestion. With Yahoo, I need to type seven letters, “grand ce,” and complete the first word to get it to be the top suggestion. If I type “gran,” grand central doesn’t even appear as an option. Instead, the top options are “grand ole opry” and “grand canyon,” both thousands of miles away from me. (Not that those are horrible suggestions, they are just not good local suggestions).

I tried the same test with various other keywords. Google beat Yahoo every time. My experience, of course, is merely anecdotal. How does it work for you.

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Hey Palm: Take A Deep Breath. Leaks Happen. Be Proud. [Updated]

Posted: 03 Sep 2010 01:18 PM PDT

Just days ago, Palm revealed a bunch of details surrounding webOS 2.0, which, as the name implies, is an upcoming major update to their webOS platform. Shortly thereafter, they released a big chunk of webOS 2.0 to a small section of their development community as part of a Beta program.

Almost immediately, one of these developers unearthed one little bit that Palm didn’t intend anyone to find: a lingering mention of a virtual keyboard — something which webOS doesn’t have, and that Palm has yet to confirm as a feature.

So, what do you think Palm did? Did they pull the stone-face routine, and say they don’t comment on rumors and speculation? Did they send out an e-mail saying “Hey guys, we gotta be more careful!” and move on? Nope. They freaked the hell out.

Plancast Schedules A New iPhone App, Eventbrite Integration, And Local Events

Posted: 03 Sep 2010 01:02 PM PDT

Back in March, on the eve of SXSW, Plancast got an iPhone app out just in time. Now, with more time to work, they’ve perfected it with the launch of version 2. And that’s not all they’ve been working on.

Over the past couple of weeks, Plancast has rolled out a new site design, a new plan social invitation system, and Eventbrite integration. On top of that, they’re also testing out two other new features: local plans and a recent activity feed. Each of these features make a great service even better.

First off, as I alluded to, the iPhone app is now much improved. Included in this refresh (also made by Leah Culver, who made the first one) is a completely reworked design that cleans up and simplifies the user experience. Also now baked-in is Twitter and Facebook integration to make sharing (and/or signing up) easy. The app is also now iOS 4-ready with Retina display and fast app switching support.

The second new aspect of Plancast is the revamped website. Quietly rolled out at the end of last month, sharing plans from the site is now easier than ever thanks to a more Ajax approach. Co-founder Mark Hendrickson (also a TechCrunch alum) notes that the new share plan prompt was inspired by Quora in that it doubles as both a search box and an input box. The hope is that this will cut down on the amount of duplicate plan entries in the system — arguably Plancast’s biggest weak-spot.

Plancast has also added Eventbrite integration — a very nice addition for the users of that event registration service. Just as with their Facebook Event integration, Plancast will now automatically pull-in any Eventbrite plans you have and populate them on your Plancast profile. Hendrickson notes that we should probably expect Meetup integration next.

A new feature that’s sort of tucked away but may be the slickest one on the site is the cross-site invitations. Now, when you’re setting up a new plan (or inviting people to an existing one) if you simply start typing in the Invite box it will bring up a list of your contacts from not only Plancast, but Twitter and Facebook as well (assuming you’ve hooked up those accounts to your Plancast account). This way, if a friend of yours isn’t using Plancast yet, you can invite them to your event by way of one of those other networks. If you choose their Twitter account, Plancast will tweet at them for you. Or if you choose their Facebook account, Plancast will post on their Wall.

“I haven’t seen anyone do anything like this before, probably because it requires quite a bit of overhead,” Hendrickson says. What he means by this is that Plancast has to continually cache your friend lists from those service and index them so that they can show results as quickly as they do.

Finally, two new features that Plancast is only testing out for now is a new Local tab, and a recent activity feed. The activity feed should be self-explanatory — it will show activity on the site beyond friends simply adding plans. So if a friend comments on a plan or subscribes to a new person, this will show up.

The bigger new feature are the local plans. As I said, this is a new tab on the website that allows you to see the events happening around you. This is a great addition for event discovery as it puts public events out there that people in your social graph may not be attending, but still may be of interest to you. “We’ll be evolving this functionality considerably by letting users filter by popularity and other factors,” Hendrickson says.

You can find the new Plancast iPhone app here. It’s a free download.

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Ping: ping ping ping-ping ping?

Posted: 03 Sep 2010 12:22 PM PDT

Ping – ping ping ping ping – ping ping, ping? Ping! Ping, ping ping ping ping; ping-ping ping! Ping.

Ping ping ping, *ping* ping ping #ping ping. Ping, ping:

“Ping ping ping ping ping — ping ping ping (ping ping ping)”.

Ping ping ping ping. Ping. And yet and yet…

Ping?

Ping.

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Felicis Ventures’ Aydin Senkut: The Next Great Mobile Company Is Not Here Yet

Posted: 03 Sep 2010 11:58 AM PDT

Aydin Senkut, founder of Felicis Ventures, has an enviable track record. Founded in late 2005, Felicis has made roughly 60 investments, with 16 successful exits, including Mint, Tapulous and Aardvark. As anyone in the investment community will tell you, that’s not a shabby hit rate.

Senkut, a former senior manager at Google, is getting ready to deploy even more capital, with the recent birth of Felicis’ first institutional fund. The $40 million war chest was 33% oversubscribed and includes institutional investors like Flag Capital and Weathergage Capital and other notable names, like Peter Thiel and Joshua Schachter. So what is Senkut buying? The super angel investor recently dropped by TechCrunch TV to share his playbook. Video above.

Broadly speaking, Felicis is still looking for seed and early stage consumer internet and mobile companies, but within that category there are a handful of theories driving Senkut’s investment strategy.

“Right now we are thinking in terms of three different groups, the first group is horizontally, we’re trying to make more investments in mobile, e-commerce and enterprise areas, we do think that these areas are kind of having an interesting comeback and are likely to produce great companies. We are also investing in internet and mobile companies in four verticals that are huge markets, education, health care, personalized medicine and energy conservation, again we’re not looking for capital intensive companies in these sectors but we’re looking for internet and mobile applications that target particularly these huge markets where we fell really large companies can be built. We also think of data as an important play. So there was an interesting quote this year in the Economist that said businesses are no longer about capital labor, its about capital labor and data. We’re seeing a new generation of companies that turn data into intelligence and make that actionable.”

Senkut is hungry to hunt down the next great mobile company, which, he claims, does not exist yet: “What we do think though is that the large mobile company of the future is not created yet, we think it’s more likely that they will be using a subscription revenue model. It also will be in an area that people might not expect today but we think will be really interesting tomorrow.” That area may be personal health care. During our off and on camera interviews, Senkut seemed particularly fascinated by the idea of a mobile consumer health portal that will help users track their well being, diet and exercise habits on the go— a sort of one-stop customized shop to manage personal health.

Beyond health care, Senkut says he’s also looking hard at startups at the intersection of mobile and education (hence their recent investment in Inkling, a company that creates interactive textbooks for the tablets).

In part two of our interview, we discuss the potential of one of his other investments, Groupon, and the classic founder’s conundrum: when it’s appropriate to sell. His advice is based on his theory of the “three hills.” See video below.


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Six Apart and Vox—How Promise Gets Squandered

Posted: 03 Sep 2010 11:09 AM PDT

Six Apart is shutting down its free blogging service, Vox, and as Mike points out this announcement is really about cleaning up for an upcoming merger with VideoEgg. With 250 million uniques worldwide spread across thousands of blogs and a growing ad business, Six Apart isn’t a failure. But, like Slide and like Digg, it hasn’t lived up to its promise either. And products like Vox are a big reason why: As blogging was getting more open and commenters more mean spirited, Vox was intended as a clean, well-lit place in the blogosphere. It had a great UI and some nice features like a “Question of the Day” to get reluctant new bloggers up-and-writing. But then it just sort of withered.

My takeaway from the shuttering wasn’t so much “Six Apart is cleaning up for a sale” (which they are and Six Apart Japan is next) but “Good God, Six Apart! What took you so long?”

Back in 2007 when Six Apart sold off LiveJournal and named Chris Alden CEO, the mantra was the company was finally going to focus. There’s a fine line between healthy diversification and doing too much to do anything well. Six Apart has always had an Intuit problem—they had several valuable properties but they didn’t necessarily add up to one big consumer Internet brand in the golden age of huge consumer Internet brands. They were essentially a software-as-a-service company for media with MovableType, a Web publishing tool with TypePad and a consumer Web 2.0 play for teens with LiveJournal and for adults with Vox. Six Apart had essentially made itself a company no one could acquire outright because it was doing so many different things.

Here’s a hint: If no one wants to buy you as is, maybe you shouldn’t have so many disparate, under-developed products as a stand alone company. Every senior manager at Six Apart I’ve talked to for the last three years has said this was the company’s biggest problem. And yet, we’re only now seeing a move to shut down flailing properties. It’s hard to say from the outside who is to blame, but Six Apart has clearly suffered from a lack of leadership and decisiveness.

I like Alden. He knows media, he’s a nice guy and he came into that job with a lot of goodwill and fanfare. But perhaps that’s too much of the problem—he focused more on publishers than readers and was too nice to make hard decisions faster. From what I hear things are turning ugly inside the company, with Alden blaming some of his senior team and much of that team turning on Alden. When (and I should say “if,” but it’s likely “when”) this deal with Video Egg is announced, they’ll be all smiles, there will be a great narrative about why the two make sense together and maybe they do. But none of that is what I hear is going on at Six Apart HQ right now.

It didn’t have to be this way. Six Apart was one of the earliest blogging tools and one of the first to have the cojones to charge for simplicity and ease of use. A lot of the look and feel of blogs was shaped by Six Apart founders Ben and Mena Trott. And Six Apart had one of the more powerful and intriguing boards with the uber angel Reid Hoffman, superstar and Creative Commons founder Joi Ito and August Capital's scrappy David Hornik. Some of the smartest people around the Web clearly saw something great in Six Apart. And it had plenty of money—it raised more than $20 million from investors and millions more when it unloaded LiveJournal.

Welcome to the sadly wistful phase of Web 2.0. The big winners – Facebook, Twitter, Zynga and LinkedIn—have already been separated from the obvious losers—Friendster, Plurk, Friendfeed and a host of names we’ve already forgotten. Only now are we starting to get judgments on the companies in the middle. Ventures that succeeded in building real companies with sizable reach and significant revenues and outlasted a raft of competitors, but that nevertheless didn't live up to their promise. The best will go the way of Slide, a nice exit that no one loses money on, and some make money on. Then there’s the situation Six Apart is in now– poised on an uncomfortable merger with another private company that’s not an “exit” for anybody and just means another four years of slogging to build something big.

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