The Latest from TechCrunch |  |
- The Global Education Race
- Intel Selling Scratch-Off “Upgrade” Cards To Unlock Processor Power
- Facebook Is Secretly Building A Phone
- Google Voice On The iPhone Comes Full Circle As Apple Accepts GV Mobile+
- Update: Should I Move my Blog to Tumblr? Apparently not.
- Developers On Google Apps Marketplace: The Good, The Bad And The Ugly
- I’m Giving Cable 6 Months, Then I’m Cutting Off Its Head
| Posted: 19 Sep 2010 03:50 AM PDT
At the event, Kauffman Foundation senior fellow Ben Wildavsky discussed key findings from his book, The Great Brain Race. He documented that student mobility is now taking place to a degree never been seen in history. More than three million students travel outside their home countries to study—a 57 percent increase in just the past decade. What’s more, those extraordinary numbers are projected to nearly triple, to 8 million, by 2025. In a competitive global marketplace, student recruiting is fierce. (New Zealand even resorted to a viral video showing two students making out in the corner of a hot tub; the camera pulls back to show a pair of disapproving adults in the other corner followed by the caption “Get further away from your parents”.) Western universities are bringing their offerings to students all over the world. There now have more than 160 branch campuses, mostly in the Middle East and Asia—an increase of 43 percent in just a few years. Perhaps most significant, according to Wildavsky, is the intense desire among nations from China and South Korea to Saudi Arabia to create universities that can compete with the top-rated institutions in the United States and Britain. They know that universities are vital to innovation and economic growth, and they’re no longer content just to send students overseas or to host branch campuses on their soil—they want to create world-class institutions of their own. They are:
The U.S. is still the biggest talent magnet, however, with two-thirds of the world's foreign graduate students at American universities. But what is there for the U.S. to worry about?
Despite the new realities, U.S. leaders have been enacting misguided legislation to close the doors, as I wrote about in this piece. This is hastening the brain drain and scaring away the world's best and brightest who might otherwise come here to study or work. Protectionism in education is actually a global ill. India has, for years, kept out foreign universities, despite a huge hunger for education. Only now is it debating legislation to open up the market, but even this will come with many restrictions—so it is unclear if it will make a dent. Indian protectionism of education has been so bad, and has weakened its education system so much, that a few years ago the president of IIT-Bombay barred students from taking overseas internships in an effort to keep Indian brainpower at home. Malaysia limits the proportion of foreign students in its public universities to 5 percent. In the U.S., the University of Tennessee, until a decade or so ago, limited foreign graduate students to 20 percent of each department. Wildavsky says that knowledge isn’t a finite resource like gold or diamonds—it’s something that can grow; it is a public good. I agree that knowledge can’t be contained within the borders of one country. This means that innovators around the world, including U.S. entrepreneurs, can take advantage of research breakthroughs in places like China or India. So yes, we should do everything we can to boost our own human capital. But rather than fearing the globalization of higher education, which will be counterproductive, we should embrace it. As executives in the tech industry know, the best strategy to compete is to hire all stars from wherever you can find them. Editor's note: Guest writer Vivek Wadhwa        
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| Intel Selling Scratch-Off “Upgrade” Cards To Unlock Processor Power Posted: 19 Sep 2010 01:17 AM PDT
If you bought a janky Compaq at Best Buy recently you may have been offered a $50 “upgrade” card that allows you to download software that will unlock threads and cache on the Pentium G6951 inside your PC. That’s right: they are selling an upgrade that is actually a key to unlock performance that your PC already has. Internet firestorm in 3…2…1… The chip in question has 1MB of cache and is fairly underpowered in the first place. As Engadget notes, the process of locking portions of a chip is fairly common but it usually happens because that area is defective on manufacture. This, however, is something completely different: you are paying an extra half a c-note to use the full power of your processor unhindered by what amounts to DRM.        
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| Facebook Is Secretly Building A Phone Posted: 19 Sep 2010 12:09 AM PDT
It was a little less than a year ago that we broke the news that Google was working on a phone of its own – which was eventually revealed as the Nexus One. It was about that time, says out source, that Facebook first became concerned about the increasing power of the iPhone and Android platforms. And that awesome Facebook apps for those phones may not be enough to counter a long term competitive threat. Specifically, Facebook wants to integrate deeply into the contacts list and other core functions of the phone. It can only do that if it controls the operating system. Two high level Facebook employees – Joe Hewitt and Matthew Papakipos – are said to be secretly working on the project, which is unknown even to most Facebook staff. Both have deep operating system experience. Hewitt helped create the Firefox browser and was working on Parakey before it was acquired by Facebook in 2007. Parakey, which never launched, was described as a “Web-based operating system.” Hewitt also created all of Facebook’s iPhone web apps and then native apps, but finally quit building for the iPhone in disgust late last year. But he knows operating systems and he knows mobile. Papakipos also has a perfect background for this project. He was leading the Google Chrome OS project until June. He then quit and went to Facebook. Papakipos is considered a rockstar developer, and there are any number of jobs he’d be able to do at Facebook. But that doesn’t answer the question of why he’d leave the Chrome OS project before it was finished. It would have taken something really interesting to lure him away. Something like a Facebook Phone, for example. So what might this phone look and feel like? We don’t know yet. When will it be announced? Don’t know. But I’d speculate that it would be a lower end phone, something very affordable, that lets people fully integrate into their Facebook world. You call your friend’s name, not some ancient seven digit code, for example. I’d imagine Facebook wanting these things to get into as many hands as possible, so I’d expect a model at a less than $50 price. Pay your bill with Facebook Credits. Etc. As for timing, the holiday season is always a good time to launch new products. But that may be too soon. Or who knows, the whole project might get killed before it sees light. All we know for sure is that Hewitt and Papakipos are working on something very stealthy together. And we have a source that tells us that stealthy thing is a Facebook phone. We’re also not discounting possible partnerships around this. Spotify was said to be working on a phone with INQ last year based on a shared investor, Li Ka-Shing. It turns out Li Ka-Shing is also a sizeable investor in Facebook. So an INQ/Facebook partnership on a phone certainly wouldn’t be a surprise.        
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| Google Voice On The iPhone Comes Full Circle As Apple Accepts GV Mobile+ Posted: 18 Sep 2010 09:11 PM PDT
Of course, Kovacs and Riverturn hadn’t done anything wrong — they’d simply gotten caught in the crossfire of the growing rivalry between Apple and Google. Fast forward to today: nearly fourteen months after it was unceremoniously removed from the App Store, Apple has finally reinstated one of the applications that started it all. You can download the new version of GV Mobile+ right here. The application has been available in Canada most of the day, but only hit the US store minutes ago. The news is not unexpected. Earlier this month, Apple totally revamped its App Store policies: it finally released a list of guidelines to tell developers what isn’t allowed, and it began permitting developers to use whatever tools they’d like to build applications (reversing a restriction that was added earlier this year). After reading through the new guidelines, Kovacs reached out to Apple about possibility resubmitting his Google Voice application, and their response seemed to indicate that he had a good chance at getting GV Mobile back on the App Store.
But what about VoiceCentral, the other Google Voice application that got the axe last year? Riverturn, the development house behind the application, has shifted focus to an HTML5, browser-based Google Voice client called Black Swan (it’s quite nice). Riverturn President Kevin Duerr says that the HTML5 app has actually performed better than the iPhone application did, and he notes that Riverturn can keep iterating and improving on the web app because it doesn’t have to go through Apple’s approval process. That said, he says that Riverturn will likely wind up revisiting and resubmitting its native iPhone application simply because it’s such a big market. And what of the official Google Voice application — the one that sparked an FCC Inquiry? We’ve reached out to Google multiple times, and were given this statement:
       
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| Update: Should I Move my Blog to Tumblr? Apparently not. Posted: 18 Sep 2010 05:56 PM PDT
Yesterday I asked TechCrunch readers for some advice. Having quit Twitter, I'm looking for a new blogging platform that will allow me to continue writing longer-form blog posts (as I do now on WordPress), but with the benefit of social sharing that Twitter used to give me. WordPress is great as a writer's tool, but it's lousy for maintaining a conversation. Twitter is great for sharing, but it was distracting me from updating my blog, which is a problem when it's one of my primary ways to keep notes for future books. One compromise, it had been suggested, was Tumblr, and so that's how I framed my question: Should I Move my Blog to Tumblr?. Many of you responded in the comments with some great advice, and details of your own experiences with Tumblr and similar services. I also received a ton of email, IMs and face-to-face advice from friends. And it all lead me to one inescapable conclusion… No. I shouldn't use Tumblr as a platform for my blog. And perhaps you shouldn't either. Here's why… Actually, before I get into what I learned about Tumblr, here's another thing I learned: a lot of you really like Posterous. Even our very own Mike Arrington has a Posterous, which he uses mainly to post photos of his life, his dogs, and the TechCrunch jet. There's certainly a them-vs-us rivalry between the two services – with many praising Posterous's ease of use when it comes to writing long blogs (which the services encourages you to submit via email) while others criticized its comparative lack of 'community': certainly Tumblr is better designed for sharing and reblogging. If I were looking for a brand new blogging platform to replace just the writing aspects of WordPress, I'd certainly give Posterous a try. But I'm not – and that's good news for Tumblr: the more advice I read, the more I realised that replacing WordPress is not what Tumblr's supposed to do. In fact, the service actively discourages users from porting their old blogs over, offering no import tools whatsoever for users of WordPress, Blogger and the rest. As Tumblr's Mark Coatney replied to my original post…
A nice analogy came from Edelman PR's Brittany Dow who wrote…
Indeed. The point is that Tumblr isn't WordPress in the same way that Facebook status updates are not Twitter. Now, of course, I'm stubborn and being told I can't do something just makes me even more certain that I want to do it. So just to make a point I trawled around Google and found Tumblrize, a WordPress plugin that allows you to cross-post individual WordPress posts to Tumblr. It also works with old posts, automatically cross-posting them to Tumblr (with the correct date stamp) whenever they're updated. All I had to do was install the plugin on my WordPress server, open every single one of my old posts and re-save them, thus cross-posting them to my new Tumblr account. It took a while. But it was worth it: as I browsed through my new Tumblr, full of old cross-posts from my WordPress blog, I realised that Mark and Brittany were right. They are completely different platforms, and my old long-form WordPress posts just looked weird on Tumblr. WordPress is still by far the best way to write long-form text-heavy posts, while Tumblr provides a great way to share those posts with a wider community. Point taken, I deleted all my old WordPress posts from my new Tumblr. It took a while. Having figured out the point of Tumblr, I was still keen to give it a try. Even if not a blog replacement, it seemed like it might still be a great, low-impact, way to share TechCrunch posts, newspaper columns, book extracts and the rest with interested readers, while also consuming and re-sharing things that others have shared. All that I need to do is start following my friend's Tumblrs and – hopefully – encourage them to start following mine – very soon I'd have an awesome two-way, annotatable RSS feed that would still allow me to dedicate most of my unpaid attention to my blog. Hurrah! No, not Hurrah! That other thing. Boo! You see, it turns out Tumblr makes it really, really difficult and time consuming to find and follow your friends. I've registered with dozens (hundreds?) of social services over the years and I can only remember one other (Last.fm) that didn't offer an easy way to search, say, my Gmail contacts for other friends using the service. I've looked and I've looked and I've Googled and I've asked around and, no, it seems the only way to find friends to follow on Tumblr is to manually enter either their email address or username into a serach box. There's no bulk way to do it. If Mark is right, and Tumblr is all about sharing and community then that's an unforgivable – and frankly unfathomable – oversight. Is it a user privacy thing? No – otherwise you wouldn't be able to manually search by email. A question of priorities? Surely not – Tumblr has been around since 2007 and it's not like it's a difficult feature to implement. Posterous has it. Unless I'm missing a really good reason (or the feature is just really, really well hidden), the lack of a bulk friend-finder feature seems to be the single most idiotic omission on a service with ambitions to be the thinking man's Twitter. So, yes, I'd love to hear from someone at Tumblr what on earth their logic is for making it so difficult to follow friends. If I do, I'll update this post with the answer, and perhaps reconsider Tumblr as my social sharing tool of choice. Until then, however, I guess I'm sticking with my WordPress blog and its trusty old RSS feed.        
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| Developers On Google Apps Marketplace: The Good, The Bad And The Ugly Posted: 18 Sep 2010 03:08 PM PDT
Since March, Google has been steadily adding additional apps to the store, including Bantam Live and Bill.com, and now counts more than 200 installable apps available in the Marketplace. Google says that there are 4 million Google Apps users (out of over 25 million users) with Marketplace apps installed on their domain. The Marketplace itself is a big venture for Google; not only is it a way to provide more functionality for Apps (and draw more users) but it’s also a monetization channel (Google takes a 20 percent cut of each sale). Google has been actively trying to get more developers to add their apps to the platform, even posting glowing testimonials from developers who offer apps on the marketplace. To see how representative these testimonials are, we decided to speak with a number of developers to see how their apps are actually performing on the Marketplace.
Yong pointed out that via the App Marketplace, the startup was able to sign a big deal with a hotel chain to use Socialwok as a separate application across its business (not just within Google Apps). Apparently, the company saw Socialwok on the App Marketplace and became interested in using the full platform. But one drawback, says Ming, is the vast amount of noise on the Marketplace and that it can be difficult for users to separate the wheat from the chafe. “There are some developers who just want to have a little Google dust on their brands and have zero-integration with Google’s actual product,” he explains. “There seems to be a more the merrier attitude when it comes to accepting apps in the Marketplace; Google needs to do a better job with regard to discriminating which apps are integrated.” Currently, Google lists the top five rated apps, the top five downloaded apps, suggestions of popular and notable apps, and a few featured apps on the front page of the Marketplace. You can also search for apps generally by functionality (i.e. accounting, workflow) or by name.
Productivity suite Zoho (which actually competes against Google on a number of products) launched two apps, CRM (which is the fifth top installed app on the marketplace) and Projects, in March and added two other apps, Invoice and Helpdesk, a few months later. Zoho evangelist Raju Vegesna tells me that shortly following the launch of the Marketplace, Zoho saw a few hundred downloads a day, but growth leveled off within a month, and now the company sees less than 500 installs total of its apps per week. One feature that is missing from the Marketplace, says Vegesna, is the ability to test out apps before installing them (Vegesna didn’t know the exact uninstall rate but we heard from one developer who preferred to remain anonymous that the uninstall rate of Apps on the Marketplace is around 20 percent). Vegesna agreed with Yong that there is a lot of noise on the marketplace but said that it’s not nearly as tough to differentiate as it is on Apple’s App Store. Aviary, which offers a suite of design tools within an App on the Marketplace, also launched as a pilot partner in March and has risen to the second most installed app on the platform. Aviary founder Avi Muchnick declined to give us specific numbers but said right after launch there was a huge insurgence of traffic, but downloads have since dropped to a steady pace. Aviary is not seeing a large amount of web referrals to its site from the marketplace. But one of the major benefits of being on the App marketplace, rather than downloads, he says, is brand awareness of being associated with Google. Echoing Yong and Vesegna’s criticisms, Muchnik adds that the app marketplace is not ideal for users to discover applications It’s important to note that Aviary, Socialwok and Zoho all debuted their apps at the launch of the Marketplace, when buzz and downloads were high. I bet that apps that launched a few months after March aren’t seeing nearly as much traffic as these apps did in March. Bantam Live’s CEO John Rourke, who launched his CRM app in the Marketplace in June, said he’s pleased with the performance of his app (he declined to give us numbers). Google says that CRM is a top search term for the Marketplace, so it seems that those types of apps are seeing success on the Marketplace (Bantam Live is currently a featured app). Even looking from the testimonials Google has published, as a whole developers seem to be pleased with the traffic post launch. For example, productivity and task management app Manymoon claims that it is adding 1,000 new sign-ups per week. And it is the top installed app on the marketplace so that should probably give developers a benchmark of how the most popular app in the marketplace is faring. Of course, Manymoon is also free, which probably makes it more appealing than some of its paid competitors. In fact, all the top five installed apps are completely free for users except for Zoho, which is free for only three users. One well-known technology company (which asked to be anonymous), which launched its app on in conjunction with the roll out of the marketplace in March, said that while the number of apps being downloaded is lower than they initially expected. But the app has been able to draw a wide variety of customers, including educational institutions and local and state governments. The complaint this particular company had was around the marketing of the service to the millions of Google Apps domain administrators. According to the startup, Google seems to be marketing the platform mainly to new companies that join Google Apps. Another way the service could improve, says this company, is to provide a way for Apps administrators to notify users that a new App has been deployed. As a company spokesperson says, “We understand that Google wants to be sure to protect businesses from having their employees heavily marketed to, and that's the dilemma of a marketplace like this – it's massive, but you have to exercise restraint in how you market to it. There's no easy answer, but anything that helps apps raise awareness among end users in a tactful, responsible way, would be very helpful.” Another issue that I heard from a number of developers was how Google will integrate its other marketplaces (Android, Chrome) into the App Store. Many of the developers who offer apps in the Marketplace also have Chrome plug-ins and Android apps. Socialwok’s Yong pointed out that it would be helpful to be able to cross-promote apps from each Marketplace. One developer I spoke to was concerned over the upcoming change in the payment structure for App developers. Currently, users who download apps pay the developers directly. He says that by the end of the year Google plans to take over the payments process and will collect all the payments from users and will distribute payments to developers accordingly. He says that not only will this new payments integration will involve an adjustment of his product but he hopes that Google will offer a payment system that can be integrated in the same way for the Chrome web store and the Android Marketplace (he thinks that each integration will have to be separate and won’t be unified). As you can see from these anecdotes, developers and startups seem generally happy with their app’s performance on the Marketplace. But clearly Google has some improvements to make, particularly in the area of filtering out apps, marketing and app discovery. Another observation—if all of the most popular apps are free, I am left wondering how many of the 4 million users who use apps are actually paying for their apps. It seems more likely that for now, the Google Apps Marketplace is good exposure for business apps, as Muchnick says. It can only help to be associated with Google Apps, a product that Google has very high hopes for as a viable cloud-based alternative to Microsoft Office. Photo credit/IMDB        
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| I’m Giving Cable 6 Months, Then I’m Cutting Off Its Head Posted: 18 Sep 2010 01:07 PM PDT
I’ve been a Comcast customer a few different times at various points of my life. Each time I’ve had an awful experience. My favorite was two years ago when I was continually getting billed for services I didn’t have (nor had I ever had, actually). Each month I was told it was resolved, and each month it was right back on my bill. It took me bitching up a storm on Twitter to get it actually resolved by the higher-ups at the company. And I know my situation wasn’t unique — and sadly, many people have an even bigger nightmare resolving things. After that incident, I cancelled my cable television service from Comcast. Unfortunately, I couldn’t completely sever the tie, because they were the only high-speed Internet provider in my area. Still, it was kind of wonderful, I used a combination of iTunes, Hulu, and Xbox Live to get all my content over Comcast’s dumb pipe. But something was still missing. When I moved last year, I was in an area where Comcast didn’t reign supreme, so I decided to get cable television again. I just wanted to see if I really had missed it. It turns out I sort of had — mainly because of sports. So now I have a difficult choice. I’ve just moved again and sadly, once again, only Comcast is available in my area. I have to get Internet from them, so I’ve decided to sign up for one of their special packages that is discounted for 6 months. I don’t particularly want to do this, but it’s also football season, and I really don’t feel like having to go to a bar every time I want to see a game. More importantly, the new Apple TV and Google TV are on the verge of launching. And there are even more potentially interesting things on the horizon. The assault is underway. I think we’re getting closer and closer to the point where completely cutting the cord is not just viable, but a savvy move. And while some of my counterparts like Nick Bilton have been able to cut the cord already, others, like Dan Frommer, reattached it. We’re not there just yet. But in 6 months… As everyone is well aware, Apple TV hasn’t been a success up to now. I like mine, but the content model on it is flawed. The move to TV show rentals is definitely a welcome one. But with only content from ABC and some content from Fox, the selection isn’t good enough. My hope is that this model proves to be a success and the other networks/stations get on board quickly. (Though it doesn’t look too promising right now.) More interesting about the new Apple TV is the AirPlay functionality that is going to allow you to push almost any video content from any iOS device right to your Apple TV (and soon other devices that have this built-in). Yes, that includes Netflix and the MLB app. Sports remain an issue in general, but some are supposedly coming to Xbox Live compliments of ESPN shortly. And there is ESPN 3, the online component of the network that allows you to watch games live online — if your provider has a deal with them to carry it (Comcast does). Meanwhile, Google TV is set to launch as soon as next month. It’s a little bit different because it seems to be a layer that will exist on top of current television offerings. But it will also be pushing online video as well. That could definitely help change the stigma that is still associated with online video versus television.
All of this stuff is chipping away at the cable television stronghold. There isn’t going to be one “killer”, but all of these combined are slowly doing the job. And they’ll continue to get better at it. I fully understand that the vast majority of people are not going to cut the cable anytime soon. This smorgasbord of services is way too complicated for the average consumers to deal with. But I think it’s foolish if these companies believe that people never will (especially if cable keeps offering a user experience that is utter garbage). Eventually, everything, including all video content, is going to be served over one pipe — the Internet. And, as is always the case, young people are going to lead this revolution. The excuse that, “my parents are never going to cancel their cable” isn’t a valid one. This is about the future. So, I’m giving Comcast 6 months to live, then I’m likely cutting off its head and going Internet-only. The timing seems right. Humorously, Comcast isn’t making this particularly easy. I was on the web yesterday looking at my options, and I found one I think I liked. But I couldn’t find a way to add all the options I wanted (like a DVR), so I called customer support. After about six steps where I basically had to prove I wasn’t already a customer (I mean, seriously?), I got through to an actual human being. Naturally, he tried to get me to sign up for a significantly more expensive package (more than double the price) and tried to get me to agree to a 2-year contract. When I told him that was silly because the lease on my apartment is only for one year — what if I move again? He said I could easily transfer my plan. Okay, but what if I move to a place that doesn’t offer Comcast as an option, like my last apartment? Silence. Moving on, I told him I knew the package I wanted. Guess what? He said he couldn’t help me get it because it was online-only. “Are you serious?” “Yes. How about we sign you up for the package I told you about so you can try it out?” This is going to be a fun 6 months. I’m already sharpening my sword. [images: Warner Brothers]        
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Earlier this week, I 
Facebook is building a mobile phone, says a source who has knowledge of the project. Or rather, they’re building the software for the phone and working with a third party to actually build the hardware. Which is exactly what Apple and everyone else does, too.
The results are in, and as befits any good crowd-sourcer, I wanted to share them.
Six months ago, Google 
Among companies I loathe, Comcast is right up there. Alongside 
And then there’s that | You are subscribed to email updates from TechCrunch To stop receiving these emails, you may unsubscribe now. | Email delivery powered by Google |
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