Saturday, January 15, 2011

The Latest from TechCrunch

The Latest from TechCrunch

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The 4-Hour Body: The Real App You Are Working On Is An App Called Yourself (Review)

Posted: 15 Jan 2011 09:27 AM PST

Tim Ferriss is a 33-year-old Silicon Valley angel investor, consultant, Singularity University advisor, and former entrepreneur who in 2007 published a book called The 4-Hour Workweek; in 2008 won Wired‘s “Greatest Self-Promoter of All Time” prize; and last month published a sort-of-sequel, The 4-Hour Body. His books seem roughly equally divided between really worthwhile, interesting advice and totally ridiculous crap. What’s most interesting about them is their approach. In his own bizarre yet effective way, Ferriss has become the world’s first hacker-guru. And I hate to admit it, but I must confess: I have halfway become a devotee.

The 4-Hour Body attacks self-improvement in the same way Silicon Valley startups strive for success: data-driven decision-making, A/B testing, iterative development, willingness to pivot. (Watch Andrew Keen’s TCTV interview with him). This isn’t new. A sizeable subset of the hacker community has been “hacking their body” for years, and sites like Lifehacker have grown around that approach. Ferriss, though, is the first to promulgate that ethos to the general population – and he has been wildly (and deservedly) successful. 4-Hour Body rocketed straight to the top of the New York Times bestseller list.

It helps that he’s obviously a really charmingly enthusiastic guy, and a good writer to boot. But it’s his commitment to evidence-based decisions that sold me. Ferriss can’t stop citing the science behind his conclusions, had a blood-glucose monitor implanted in his body as part of his three years of research, and writes proudly about the time he spent weighing everything that went into or came out of his gastrointestinal tract. Better he than me. I’ve known for years that I’d eventually have to start paying attention to my diet to maintain my fitness level; so my girlfriend and I decided that this painstakingly researched eating plan – an iteration from the paleolithic, South Beach, and low-glycemic diets of yesteryear – was for us.

Not that it’s just a diet book. There are sections about ultra-endurance running, optimizing the female orgasm, living on less sleep, gaining muscle, and “becoming superhuman.” (See the “ridiculous crap” caveat above.) But it’s his data-driven slow-carb eating plan that struck me most, because, well, it’s wildly effective.

I spent a day in headache-ridden sugar withdrawal at first. Who knew I was a junkie? Since the first week, though, it’s been bizarrely agreeable. Our general mood and feeling of wellbeing has improved. The mid-afternoon downbeat lull no longer hits. Judging from my weightlifting and running, I’m near a lifetime apogee of fitness. Our desire to eat bad food has diminished. I do miss beer, but wine and Laphroaig fill that void. (I have, however, not stopped eating fruit. Sorry, Tim.)

And the weight loss was startling. I wasn’t that interested – I’m not particularly thickset – but when I boarded the 4-Hour train, our fancy-schmancy scale reported that I weighed 197.6 pounds. Ten days later, after morning coffee & protein? 187.0. (For calibration, I’m 6’1″.) I assume most of the difference is water weight, but still, that part actually seems to work as advertised. I expected no less, given the the data that drove it.

I know, I know: “why are you writing about your lunch on TechCrunch?” Because my lunch is a data-driven iteration from the previous state of the art – in other words, a technical innovation. Look beyond the Valley (and its counterparts around the world) and you’ll find that approach can and will pay dividends almost anywhere.

Let’s Compete on Innovation Rather Than Patents

Posted: 15 Jan 2011 07:00 AM PST

The next generations of telecom technologies are called "LTE" or "4G". China's Huawei believes that by 2015, it will hold 15–20% of the worldwide patents in these technologies, and that these will earn it at least 1.5% of the sales price of every device—every cell phone, laptop, and tablet—that uses them.  Huawei is on track to achieve its goals: in 2007, it held just 152 patents; by the end of 2009, it had applied for 42,543 patents, of which 11,339 had been granted in China, 215 in the United States, and 1282 in Europe. Huawei's rival, ZTE, claims to hold 7% of the world's LTE patents and plans to increase this to 10% by 2012.

Emboldened by these successes, the Chinese government has initiated a nationwide program to make China the world leader in patents in every important industry.  The New York Times reported that the government is offering cash bonuses, better housing, and tax breaks to individuals and companies filing the most patent applications. According to the Times, China's goal is to increase the number of its yearly "invention" patent filings from this year's 300,000 to one million by 2015. And it wants another one million "utility-model patents", which typically cover items like engineering features in a product. In comparison, there are 500,000 invention patents granted every year in the U.S. The requirements for "utility-model patents" are so mundane that they are not even recognized in the U.S. as a legitimate criterion for the existence of intellectual property.

The Times quotes David J. Kappos, director of the United States Patent and Trademark Office, as saying that the leadership in China "knows that innovation is its future, the key to higher living standards and long-term growth. They are doing everything they can to drive innovation, and China's patent strategy is part of that broader plan". Kappos seems to believe that, with patents, China is unleashing a golden age of innovation.

Kappos is wrong.

The reality, as I explained in my BusinessWeek column China Could Game the U.S. in Intellectual Property, is that patents will neither make China more innovative nor benefit the global economy. Just as the vast majority of China’s academic papers are plagiarized or irrelevant, so will its government-sponsored patents be tainted. In contrast to the tiny proportion of Chinese academic papers that serve to expand the world’s knowledge base, however, Chinese patents will serve as land mines for foreign businesses. They will allow China to demand license fees from companies that do business there or to shut them out entirely. (And these will hurt China's own startups.)

In the tech world, patents don't foster innovation; they inhibit it. They are like nuclear weapons in an arms race, in that companies use them to hold competitors back or to extort license fees from companies that can't afford the time and cost of litigation. These battles play out every week in Silicon Valley: among the behemoths—Microsoft, Hewlett-Packard, IBM, Oracle, and SAP—and between behemoths, startups, patent trolls, and large corporations. Startup entrepreneurs live in constant fear that behemoths or patent trolls will bankrupt them with frivolous lawsuits.

Most U.S. patents are commercially frivolous and irrelevant. The Chinese patents will be even more so. As The Economist reported, Chinese patent examiners are paid more if they approve more patents, and so routinely approve even the most dubious filings. Chinese academics, companies, and individuals have strong incentives to patent worthless ideas: with more patent grants, professors gain tenure, workers and students gain residence permits to live in a desirable cities, corporate income tax is reduced from 25% to 15%, and companies win lucrative government contracts. The reward doesn’t come from innovation, but from the act of filing a patent application.

So in the years ahead, China will have lots of patents—far more than the U.S. You can't fault China; it is simply taking a page from Silicon Valley's playbook. Its leaders have figured out how the American patent system works and how to master it.

In addition to the huge numbers, what will make it even more difficult for western businesses is that these patents will be in Chinese. These businesses will have to hire Chinese lawyers to search the Chinese State Intellectual Property Office database for patents that cover any of the technologies they want to sell in China. And if someone has already beaten them to the punch and filed an application for a similar invention, they must fight it out in Chinese courts—where judges are likely to side with locals. Intellectual-property lawyer JiNan Glasgow told me of a case in which this happened recently: a supplier used e-mailed design documents and product specifications and filed its own patents in China and then enforced them against the inventing company (its customer).  Rules of evidence made it nearly impossible to prove that the invention and figures originated in the U.S., because e-mail and electronic documents are not considered admissible reliable evidence in China.

This is a battle we can't win. The Chinese economy will be littered with millions of stumbling blocks for foreign business. These companies will have to offer up their intellectual property in exchange for Chinese intellectual property—in the same way that IBM and Microsoft trade patents. Or they will have to pay license fees to enter the Chinese market. And China may challenge the U.S. globally with its new patents as it plans to do with 4G.

It's best to disarm before it is too late.  That means reforming the patent system. We really don't need software patents, and we really don't need patents in other technologies that evolve rapidly. In these fields, speed and technological obsolescence are the only protections that matter. I'll concede that in some slow-moving fields, patents do have a role. Patents successfully protect the designs of industrial equipment, pharmaceutical formulations, biotechnology products and methods, biomedical devices, consumer products, advanced materials and composites, etc. But we can have different rules for different types of products.

And once we reform our patent system and unleash greater innovation in the U.S., we can teach other countries how to reform their systems. Innovation is a game that the U.S. can easily win at. And when we compete on innovation, it’s win-win rather than lose-lose.

Editor's note: Vivek Wadhwa is an entrepreneur turned academic. He is a Visiting Scholar at UC-Berkeley, Senior Research Associate at Harvard Law School and Director of Research at the Center for Entrepreneurship and Research Commercialization at Duke University. You can follow him on Twitter at @vwadhwa and find his research at www.wadhwa.com.

Union Square’s New $165 Million Fund Is All About Growing With The Network

Posted: 15 Jan 2011 05:27 AM PST

Back in December, we spotted an SEC filing indicating that Union Square Ventures was raising between $135 million and $200 million for a new “Opportunity Fund.” The offering wasn’t complete and the firm could not discuss it, but today partner Fred Wilson explains in a post what the new fund (which ended up being a $165 million fund) is all about.

The fund is not about going after different opportunities than Union Square has been focussed on since the outset. It is that the size of the opportunity Union Square is focussed on—which Wilson describes “Internet services that create large networks”—is larger than ever. And the new fund will provide more dry powder to invest in network startups, whether they need $25,000 or $25 million. Wilson explains:

Since 2004, the opportunity to invest in networks has evolved. In 2004 the entire market capitalization of the social media sector was probably less than $100M. Today a single company in that sector is valued at over $50B. The amount of venture capital focused on the sector has exploded. Networks that did not exist in 2004 now consume a huge chunk of users’ time and attention, making the launch of new networks more challenging. The opportunity to invest in networks has changed, and once again we are changing with it.

Union Square is an investor in Twitter, Zynga, Tumblr, Foursquare, and Disqus—all of which fit under the network thesis. As these companies grow and command higher valuations in private rounds (Union Square sat out Twitter’s latest $200 million round), the Opportunity Fund will allow Union Square to keep participating. It will also be tapped to invest in companies in later rounds (something Union Square has shied away from so far, they like to be first) and other special situations such as spin-offs. Interestingly, Union Square is not committing to invest all the money raised. Maybe they should have called it the Dry Powder Fund instead.

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What Facebook Should Steal From Microsoft’s Playbook

Posted: 15 Jan 2011 04:48 AM PST

Editor’s note: This guest post was written by Raj Lalwani, the co-founder and CEO of Hallmark Social Calendar (formerly Social Calendar), a birthday reminder app on Facebook.

In 2007, when Facebook opened its platform to developers, it seemed Facebook was using Microsoft’s playbook—let developers create apps using their platform and see what apps succeed (just like Microsoft did with Lotus 1-2-3, WordPerfect, and Harvard Graphics). Then acquire or clone the successful ones (Microsoft Excel, Word, PowerPoint) as the cash cows and leave the crumbs (relatively speaking) for others. But something seems to have gone wrong—the third-party app ecosystem is not exactly thriving and Facebook still has no cash cows like Microsoft does (Office and Windows).

Instead, Facebook is increasingly looking like Yahoo!—it does everything from Photos and Chat to Email and Places. It provides just enough features to be functional but leaves much to be desired, and increasingly depends on advertising as the revenue model.

Until recently Microsoft had the largest market cap in technology (it’s Apple now). Here is what Facebook should steal from Microsoft’s playbook.

Facebook Must Make Sure The Third-Party App Ecosystem Is Thriving

This is important for two reasons. One, it keeps the platform alive and vibrant for users—Windows would not have been very interesting or successful if all apps came from Microsoft. Two, successful ideas will come from this ecosystem. If the Facebook platform is not viable for app developers, they will continue to look for alternatives and someone will crack the social graph code sooner or later elsewhere. For instance, Apple’s iPhone is becoming a meaningful platform for app developers.

It seems Facebook has thrown the baby out with the bath water when it comes to communication channels that were being abused by some app developers. I used to play Scrabulous on Facebook. I tried playing Scrabble recently but the other player wasn’t notified that it was her move! Since then I started playing Words with Friends on iPhone and it just works. As soon as my friend makes a move, I get a Push Notification. Facebook should handle notifications the same way as publishing on the Wall—ask users for explicit permission to send a notification to a friend.

News feed stories increase engagement and discovery for apps. But the volume of stories generated has forced Facebook to algorithmically decide what stories to show on the home page. Have you visited FarmVille or Causes lately? They both prominently display friend activity on their home page. Why? The same reason that made Facebook so successful—users can see what their friends are doing—an explosive mix of social discovery, social proof and voyeurism. This is where I see the solution for resolving the battle for news feed stories between Facebook and app developers. Instead of each app trying to implement its own friend activity, Facebook should provide an easy way to display the app-specific news feed inside the app. At the same time, Facebook should continue to bubble up interesting stories on its home page.

That leaves the problem of app discovery—reaching out to new users who are not yet app users. If social discovery is going to be the killer app for Facebook (I will come to that in a moment), app discovery is just a small part of that. Showing apps used by a user on their Profile, as Facebook used to do before, is a good start. But when it comes to discovery, Facebook can borrow from another playbook: Google’s. Some developers will be happy to pay for leads. How about sponsored links just above the organic list of apps used?

Facebook Must Find Its Cash Cow—Fast

To me social games like FarmVille seemed like a cash cow. Facebook should have acquired or cloned Zynga. It seems Facebook has chosen a platform angle instead, namely, advertising and Facebook Credits, which has the potential to be a cash cow for Facebook.

However, I believe, “social discovery” is potentially the killer app for Facebook. If you are like me, you discover new restaurants because a friend recommends or takes you there. I always ask my friends about new movies—I know which friends have similar taste as me,and which ones I can safely ignore. The list extends to TV shows, plumbers, books, music, kitchen appliances, and gadgets. (Facebook’s Photos app has become so popular mainly because of social discovery of new photos uploaded by friends. Tagging is just a mechanism to facilitate discovery.) When I buy a book on Amazon.com, I should be able to publish a story for my friends (but not an automatic story—remember Beacon?). When any of my friends clicks on the action link or completes the transaction, Amazon would pay Facebook. Such sponsored feed items should be clearly marked and shown prominently just like sponsored links on Google.

Facebook should look to Microsoft for its playbook to make its platform more developer-friendly, but also sprinkle in a bit from Google’s sponsored links and apply them to social discovery.

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Instagram For The BlackBerry [Screenshot]

Posted: 14 Jan 2011 07:55 PM PST

Inspired by the epic Angry Birds for BlackBerry, Myspace VP Sean Percival has come up with a mock hypothetical of what the popular photosharing app Instagram would look like on the text-heavy and camera-weak BlackBerry platform. The above image is particularly humorous when coupled with the fact that Instagram, which just hit one million downloads, has not yet launched on Android.

Percival’s ultimate message here is intended to go beyond humor however as he’s actually posted the image to Instagram as an experiment, “With so many brands getting into Instagram I was curious how a piece of humor (or viral) content might do within the Instagram ecosystem itself. No doubt those brands will need to bring something more than that perfectly filtered photo of a kitty cat to make an impact.”

Going “Popular” or viral with “Likes” on Instagram has become a bit of a status symbol amongst the tech set as of late, and it will take some pretty creative maneuvering to get people to “Like” a branded photo of a Peets or Starbucks logo, no matter how artful.

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Twitter For Mac’s Spectacular Hidden Little Feature: Tweet Anything From Anywhere

Posted: 14 Jan 2011 07:11 PM PST

I love Twitter for Mac. Love it. It has completely altered my day-to-day workflow. And it has changed the way I use Twitter itself. And that was before I found out about this killer little hidden feature today: Tweet from anywhere.

I don’t know how I missed it before, but apparently installing Twitter for Mac adds a new “Tweet” command to basically a ton of apps running in OS X. MacStories first pointed this out earlier today, and now I can’t get enough.

For example, if you’re browsing the web in Safari or Chrome, highlight a word or passage and right-click. At the bottom of the drop-down, you’ll see the “Tweet” command. Hitting it will populate a tweet for you with the highlighted section. And it works in TextEdit, iChat, Calendar, Mail, etc. If you read it, you can tweet it.

One thing I wish it did in web browser was automatically add a link as well as the text you’re highlights, but baby-steps. I have a feeling that will come.

And yes, plenty of plug-ins have had this ability for a while, but now it’s system-wide. It’s as if Twitter is now baked into OS X.

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Facebook Shares Hit $28.26 Per Share, That’s a $70+ Billion Valuation

Posted: 14 Jan 2011 06:24 PM PST

The SecondMarket Facebook shares auctions are back on after a holiday break, and the valuation is up big time. The last auction prior to this one closed December 15 at $22.75/share. Today it hit $28.26 per share. With 2. 5 billion or so shares outstanding, that’s a $70.65 billionish valuation. A month and a half ago shares were trading on SecondMarket at a $50 billion valuation.

What’s changed? The Goldman Sachs investment announced earlier this month increased the hype even further. No wonder the SEC is starting to pay attention to these trades.

Sounds like Accel Partners may have sold a little before the peak.

The email from SecondMarket is below:

Subject: Privileged and Confidential – SecondMarket's Facebook Auction Update

To Facebook market participants:

Thank you to those who participated in this week's SecondMarket auction for Facebook shares. The auction was successful and fully cleared at a per share price of $28.26. Next week, the floor price will be $26.25 and we will require a minimum sale of 25,000 shares. In observance of the national MLK, Jr. holiday, please find the adjusted auction timeline for next week below.

If you own shares that you are eligible to sell and wish to participate as a seller, please complete the attached Seller Information Form and submit it to SecondMarket at fb@secondmarket.com by Thursday, January 20 at 7:00 PM EST.

Please see below for detailed results on previous auctions and for next week's adjusted auction calendar:

Previous Auction Results:

Total Shares Cleared to Date: 2,721,265 over five auctions

Clearing Price in Most Recent Auctions:
January 12, 2011: $28.26
December 15, 2010: $22.75
December 8, 2010: $21.90
December 1, 2010: $21.01

Next Week's Adjusted Auction Timeline:

• Thursday, January 20 at 7:00 PM EST – Seller Information Forms due

• Thursday, January 20 at 8:00 PM EST – Buyers informed of share quantity available and minimum purchase amount

• Monday, January 24 at 12:00 PM EST – Buyer Information Forms due

• Monday, January 24 at 5:00 PM EST – Participants informed of auction results

• Monday, January 24 at 8:00 PM EST – Transaction documentation distributed to buyers and sellers

• Wednesday, January 26 at 4:00 PM EST – Completed transaction documentation due from buyers and sellers

• Wednesday, January 26 at 7:00 PM EST – Notice sent to Facebook, Inc.

By reading this email, the recipient acknowledges and agrees that all of the information contained herein is confidential and that the recipient will keep this information confidential. The recipient further agrees that it will not copy, reproduce, or distribute this email in whole or in part.

Please contact us at fb@secondmarket.com or 212.668.3919 if you have any questions.

Please note that the information in this email does not constitute an offer to sell to, nor a solicitation of an offer to buy from, nor shall any securities be offered or sold to, any person in any jurisdiction in which such an offer, solicitation or sale would be unlawful.

Regards,

Boyd

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Posterous Cofounder Garry Tan Steps Down, Heads To Y Combinator

Posted: 14 Jan 2011 05:36 PM PST

Garry Tan, one of the cofounders of easy-to-use blogging service Posterous, is moving on from the company. Tan will be leaving to take a position at Y Combinator, where he will serve as a designer in residence. Posterous doesn’t put much weight on titles, but Tan had a hand in the site’s engineering, design, and product development.

Posterous isn’t taking off as quickly as its competitor Tumblr, but it has a solid audience and has recently released a neat Groups feature. Tan didn’t elaborate much on his reasons for leaving, but says that it boils down to wanting to work with smaller teams, which he’ll be able to do at Y Combinator (Posterous is now at around 13 employees). He also added that Posterous is going “gangbusters” and that he expects 2011 to be “really phenomenal”.

Posterous has raised over $5 million, including Y Combinator funding and a Series A round in March 2010.

Here’s Tan’s post announcing the news on his Posterous blog:

Just as Posterous has prospered, grown and changed, so to is it time for me to evolve my role. Effective today, I’m ending my day-to-day development with Posterous and moving into an advisory role. Though my day-to-day may change, my faith in the team and the product is unchanged and unwavering. Posterous is in good hands and on the right track to fulfilling its potential. I am proud of what we’ve built together and look forward to the future with anticipation to see where the team and you, the users, take this very special community.

My greatest passions lie with the early stage of building world-changing consumer products. To that end, I’ve decided to join the team at Y Combinator as a designer-in-residence and help the dozens of top pre-seed startups in the newest Winter 2011 batch reach their potential through excellent user experience.

I am greatly thankful to our team, investors and most of all our users for all the amazing work and adventures. Thanks for all of your support.

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Want To Know What Your Friends Think? Ask Polling Site GoPollGo

Posted: 14 Jan 2011 05:23 PM PST


Former TechCrunch developer Ben Schaechter left TC a couple months ago to launch his own startup and today we finally get to see the fruits of his labor. Sick of the poor analytics, lack of geographical information and little vote analysis on industry leaders like Poll Daddy, Schaechter built GoPollGo to maximize what he felt was the potential of polling services.

Says Schaechter, “The polling space is crying out for disruption and innovation. There is *so* much information that can be dervived from vistors.  When mashed up with users’ opinions, the data gets thoroughly interesting.”

The beautifully designed site is based on a freemium model. It’s simple to make an embeddable poll like this one, this one or this one. Users can then share it with friends via Facebook and Twitter, get comments or discover new polls. Premium subscribers can also access analytics on their polls, segment voting data and as well get reports like the one below.

Schaechter has already had hundreds of users and hundreds of thousands of pageviews since he launched the site two days ago and plans on opening up the premium features to big brands soon, “Think of it as a really simple method of market research.”

Schaechter’s future plans include building out the feature base and community for the bootstrapped GoPollGo as well as raising funding to potentially hire more people. “[We're] focusing on building the best social polling website on the Internet,” he says.

You can take the “Apple vs. Google” poll here, or just have it out in the comments.



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Ask a VC: Satish Dharmaraj on India, the Beauty of Fragmentation and Farmers Markets (TCTV)

Posted: 14 Jan 2011 05:22 PM PST

I have a dilemma with Ask a VC. Generally, I’m trying to do shows that are under 10 minutes, so they’re more consumable. But in the case of Ask a VC, I want to get to as many reader questions as possible and would rather not cut someone off when they are giving you business advice. So starting this week we’re going to post the whole show as usual below, and give you links to each question and answer.

That way if you don’t have 15 minutes to watch it all, you can still find out the answer to your question or a question that you are grappling with. I usually find that its easier to consume long-form videos in podcast form than during my daily blog reading, so as a reminder, you can also download the episodes of any of our TCTV shows from iTunes.

This week, Redpoint Ventures’ Satish Dharmaraj was our first return guest and we got to a good number of questions including:

Cubeduel Goes Viral Too Quickly, Stumbles Over LinkedIn API Limits

Posted: 14 Jan 2011 04:53 PM PST


Yesterday we ran a post about Cubeduel, a service that mixes the best (or worst) of Hot or Not with LinkedIn. Fire up the site and it will show you photos of two coworkers — pick the one you’d prefer to work with, and Cubeduel will present you with another pair of photos. It’s addictive, a bit evil, and has skyrocketed in usage over the last few days since it launched. Unfortunately, it took off a bit too quickly.

The service went down earlier today for reasons that were initially unclear — did LinkedIn block the site because it ranks coworkers in a way that isn’t exactly flattering to everyone, or did the site just get too popular, too fast? Turns out it’s the latter — Cubeduel has exceeded LinkedIn’s API limits (which is what one of the site’s creators, Tony Wright, initially guessed). Here’s an explanation from LinkedIn Director of Communications Hani Durzy:

We did not shut Cubeduel down. The application was using our open LinkedIn Developer Platform, which has a daily access limit that is publicly documented. Our developer platform limits are designed to protect our members, and have been in place since the platform program was introduced a year ago. We are in communication with the people behind Cubedeal to discuss how they can move forward. We are always interested in seeing our platform used in creative, innovative new ways by developers.

I followed up by asking if the site might be allowed to exceed the standard API limits, or if Cubeduel would have to find a way to restructure the site to fit within the normal constraints. The answer to that isn’t clear — Durzy says they’re still talking to each other.

Wright says that before the API limit was hit Cubeduel was far exceeding his expectations — he told me yesterday the site would get “hundreds of thousands” of ranked users by the end of the week. Now he says they were “well on our way to millions” before the API limit kicked in.

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Andreessen Horowitz Hires a New Partner…from Sales?

Posted: 14 Jan 2011 03:59 PM PST

When Marc Andreessen and Ben Horowitz launched their venture firm, they talked a good game about things being different; about having a smorgasbord of partners skilled in different areas that could tag in-and-out of portfolio companies as appropriate. And a lot of that sounded like the usual “value-add” venture capital spiel.

But two funds into the firm’s life, that vision is starting to take shape. Witness today’s announcement that Mark Cranney will be joining the firm as a partner. Cranney isn’t some techy whiz-kid, visionary founder or even a financial wizard. He’s a sales and operations guy and his job will be to help teach Andreessen Horowitz’s predominately engineer-centric founders and CEOs to be a little bit more like those things many of them decry: a sales guy, an MBA, a grown-up manager. Look at him! He even looks like a sales guy!

In addition to coaching founders and helping them find the right management talent to hire, Cranney will be building essentially a pre-sales organization within the firm that will constantly scout purchase-level managers at Fortune 500 companies, to pave direct lines to them and know in advance what kinds of products they want to buy, leading to a shorter, almost pre-qualified sales cycle for Andreessen Horowitz’s companies. “The weakness at a lot of venture capital firms is that we know the CEOs or CIOs, but we don’t know the managers making the purchase decisions,” says Horowitz.

I asked how big this group would be and Cranney declined to answer saying that was “proprietary” (See! He talks like a grown up manager too!) but he scoffed when I called it a “gargantuan task,” pointing out he’d built huge sales teams from scratch several times in his career. “That’s the easy part,” he said. Not for the typical geeky founder, of course, and that’s the point.

Like a lot of the firm’s team, Cranney worked at Opsware with Horowitz and Andreessen, where he was the executive vice president of worldwide field operations. He grew the headcount from 10 people to 350, grew revenue from $18 million to $150 million, and had four years of 100%+ growth in new bookings. That’s just not a skill set you see at most VC firms.

If this team works as advertised, it’ll be a huge, huge advantage for the firm. I wouldn’t be surprised to see this become a trend among the well-heeled venture funds, especially if this renaissance in business software blooms. As Cranney says: “If you want to sell to companies you gotta put boots on the ground. That’s not changing.”

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Speaking of… Cindy Morgan, from Original TRON [TCTV]

Posted: 14 Jan 2011 03:15 PM PST

My special guest on this week’s Speaking Of is actress Cindy Morgan. Cindy is known in the film world for two iconic roles: as Lacey Underall in Caddyshack and as Lora/Yori in the original TRON.

I didn’t mention this in my original overview of TRON Legacy, because I didn’t want to spoil much of the movie for everyone, but I was very saddened by the fact that two of my favorite characters (Bit and Yori) from the original TRON didn’t make an appearance in the sequel, when so many other main actors did, including Bruce Boxleitner (shown holding Yori in the original TRON poster).

When I asked about this, Cindy admitted that she’d only seen the sequel two days prior to our interview, and that it was like going to the prom without a date. She made a small cameo in Sam Flynn’s room on his poster and that was about it. Cindy is incredibly gracious though, understanding that movie producers have to make difficult decisions. She hopes she’ll appear in the next sequel – and I’d love to see that happen too.

Prior to acting, Cindy was on a path to become a mechanical engineer when she ended up working in a newsroom, editing film reels and operating sound boards. She made the jump into Hollywood shortly after and had her face on a billboard in less than a year.

In the video below, Cindy shares her favorite gadgets and applications,  and talks about her latest project – a book called, “From Catholic School to Caddyshack” that’s set to be published this spring. The book will contain unseen behind the scenes footage and previously untold stories about the making of Caddyshack.

Cindy closes the interview with some very wise advice for TechCrunch readers; advice I think you will all enjoy. Finally she turns the interview around on me, to my surprise, asking me a few questions about being a woman involved in technology.

I don’t know about you, but I think Cindy needs her own consumer tech show. She’s amazing – I really hope you enjoy our interview as much as I did:

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Smart Energy Consultancy, Gridpoint, Raises Another $23.6 Million

Posted: 14 Jan 2011 03:02 PM PST

A new SEC filing revealed today that Gridpoint — a smart energy consultancy based in Arlington, Virginia — raised another $23.6 million to design, build and install energy tracking and management systems for companies or government agencies seeking to cut costs and reduce consumption.

Founded in 2003, Gridpoint appointed a new chief executive, John B. Spiritos, last quarter (October 2010). In the spring last year, the company won a $28 million contract with the United States Postal Service (USPS) to install energy management systems in selected post office locations across the U.S. It also made a number of acquisitions in the smart-grid space.

In previous interviews with Gridpoint engineers, TechCrunch learned that the company has developed a bit of a specialty in sourcing and using solar and other clean tech equipment from domestic companies. Solar panels and other technology made of raw materials from, and manufactured in the U.S., qualify for a number of federal and state subsidies, rebates or grants.

TechCrunch has reached out for further details on how and where Gridpoint plans to put its new-found capital to work, and which investors were involved in this round. Executives at Gridpoint were not available to comment, immediately. The funding appears to be an extension of an earlier series E round.

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Chairman Of Build Your Dreams, A Major Clean Tech Manufacturer, Wins “China’s Peace Prize”

Posted: 14 Jan 2011 01:45 PM PST

The chairman of Build Your Dreams (BYD) one of the world’s largest clean tech and electric vehicle manufacturers, Chuanfu Wang, won China’s Canton Provincial Award for Individual Contribution the company announced today.

The Canton Government awarded the CPAIC, a.k.a. “China's Peace Prize,” to Wang for leading a business that has consistently developed and commercialized solar power, battery, LED and electrified transportation technologies. Use of BYD products in Canton, the government there claims, significantly reduced air pollution in the province.

Also known as Guanghzhou, the Canton region drew scrutiny over air quality issues leading up to the Asian Games which it hosted in November 2010. The local government put restrictions on cars, factories and power plants leading up to the event, and even shut them down during the games to appease air pollution related health concerns. According to Xinhua News Agency, nitrogen dioxide pollution remains a serious air quality concern in the area.

BYD’s chairman was also lauded for assisting poverty-stricken areas of China with donations of equipment and money from his company. Under his direction, BYD custom-designed for, then manufactured and gave one thousand solar energy storage-and-lighting systems to the nomadic people of Tibet. In September 2010, Wang established the BYD Charity Foundation to encourage his company’s 130,000 employees (and others) to donate to the needy.

China’s Peace Prize (CPAIC) is given out every two years to two individuals or teams. The prize carries a purse of about 30 Million RMB or $4.55M USD, and recognizes those who elevate the social and economic welfare of China, but accomplish the feat without harm to the environment.

Giving the award to a clean tech industry leader symbolized Canton’s support of the nation’s stated goals, including to reduce carbon intensity 40% from 2005 levels by the year 2020.

BYD’s financiers include Warren Buffett (Berkshire Hathaway) and MidAmerican Energy Holdings. Competing with A123 Systems, BYD is a battery supplier to Daimler AG in Asia, and is the world’s largest supplier of mobile phone batteries. Competing with everyone from Nissan to Tesla, BYD plans to sell the BYD e6, an all-electric vehicle massively throughout the U.S. in early 2012, according to a Reuters report from this week’s Detroit auto show.

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So Much For Standards, Google Says WebM Plugins Coming Soon For Safari And IE9

Posted: 14 Jan 2011 01:32 PM PST

We’ve already done a full breakdown of Google’s clarification of their H.264 pullout today. But buried in their post is another interesting nugget worth highlighting by itself: WebM plugins are coming shortly for Safari and IE9.

Yes, plugins.

This is both humorous and terrifying on a few levels. First and formost, the point of all of this H.264/WebM stuff is so that the web can shift to an HTML5 video standard going forward. Of course, since neither IE nor Safari will support Google’s, Mozilla’s, and Opera’s preferred codec for that standard, we’re right back to plugin land! Why don’t we just call WebM, Flash 2.0?

Here’s Google on the matter:

Bottom line, we are at an impasse in the evolution of HTML video. Having no baseline codec in the HTML specification is far from ideal. This is why we joining others in the community to invest in WebM and encouraging every browser vendor to adopt it for the emerging HTML video platform (the WebM Project team will soon release plugins that enable WebM support in Safari and IE9).

In other words, they’re going to try to get Safari and IE users hooked on WebM by working around Apple and Microsoft. It’s an attempt to create a standard by way of plugin. Again, ugh.

And while somewhat interesting, it’s unlikely to work. And it’s a dangerous move away from working together on standards and instead is likely to piss off Apple and Microsoft.

Generally, plugins suck because they’re not standards. Even ubiquitous ones like Flash aren’t everywhere. And that creates headaches for web developers and surfers alike. There will never be a truly unified web with plugins. Even plugins backed by Google.

Update: Google has this to say in response:

The HTML <video> tag specification actually provides a capability known as canPlayType. Web developers use this capability to see which codecs are supported by the particular browser and it is completely transparent to them whether the codec was shipped natively in the browser or later installed by an end user. Safari and IE9 provide a way for users to install support for additional codecs via this capability. So basically web page developers still write their site based on the standards and all this “plug-in” does is add a capability to the browser in the context of what is permitted by the standard.

That’s a bit obtuse, but as I read it, that sounds as if Google is trying to say that the WebM plugin more of a “half plugin”. When I asked if that was a fair way to think about it:

Haha, yeah, a ‘half-plugin’ is one way to think about it. There are plug-ins that add non-standard capabilities to a browser that web developers can make use of but then their code is non-standard and reliant on that particular plug-in. This is not the case here. The HTML standard <video> tag specification provides a way for a web sites to check which codecs a particular browser supports and then serve that. It’s totally transparent to web site how those codecs got there and they are writing HTML standard code. That’s what we’re talking about here. IE9 and Safari allow users to install support for additional codecs and the WebM Project Team is using this capability to bring support for WebM to those browsers in a standards based way.

So it’s a standard-compliant plugin. But still a plugin. Also, does this mean Apple will make a H.264 Chrome extension next? I’m only half-kidding.

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Google Clarifies Their H.264 Stance, Hands Keys Of Web Video’s Future Back To Flash

Posted: 14 Jan 2011 01:04 PM PST

Earlier this week, Google wrote a very short post on their relatively small Chromium blog to announce a big change: they were dropping support for the H.264 codec in Chrome. While they may have tried to whisper it, the post resulted in a shitstorm that reached high into the heavens. It seems as if just about everyone weighed in on the decision (including us, twice).

As a result of the fallout, Google decided to follow-up on their three-paragraph post with a ten-paragraph one today more clearly outlining why they’re making the move. It certainly is more clear, and that’s perhaps what makes it even more frustrating.

As Google notes, this is all about the HTML <video> tag. The search giant cites an impasse in figuring out one codec to use for the future of HTML5-based web video. Safari and IE are backing H.264, but Mozilla and Opera refuse to, and had been backing Ogg Theora. So Google dreamed up WebM and got Mozilla and Opera to sign on board. Unfortunately, we’re still at an impasse, because it does not appear that Safari and IE will be doing the same any time soon.

And that’s really the heart of the problem here. Google does a much better job laying out their vision in this post, but it doesn’t change anything. The stark reality is that by pulling out of H.264, Google is ensuring that Flash, and not HTML5, will continue to be the de-facto video standard for years to come.

Why is that? Well let’s take part of Google’s argument:

Remember, Firefox and Opera have never supported H.264 due to its licensing requirements, they both support WebM and Ogg Theora. Therefore, unless publishers and developers using the HTML <video> tag don't plan to support the large portion of the desktop and mobile web that use these browsers, they will have to support a format other than H.264 anyway.

But that can totally be turned around. Again, IE and Safari don’t support WebM. And IE and Safari are much, much bigger on the desktop and mobile web, respectively than the two browsers Google cites above. So Google is essentially siding with the little guys here instead of the big guys.

And that’s fine, but again, I’m just not clear why they think this move will change anything? It seems as if it’s yet another example of Google setting high goals, but being a bit too sure of their ability to pull it off. This mentality, of course, keeps back-firing. And I would bet it will here too once again.

The downside is that Flash will continue to reign supreme in web video. Google more or less lays out why in the post itself:

H.264 plays an important role in video and the vast majority of the H.264 videos on the web today are viewed in plug-ins such as Flash and Silverlight. These plug-ins are and will continue to be supported in Chrome. Our announcement was only related to the <video> tag, which is part of the emerging HTML platform. While the HTML video platform offers great promise, few sites use it today and therefore few users will be immediately impacted by this change.

I’m afraid we might have to change “immediately” with “ever” in that sentence.

Love it or hate it, Apple’s devices, and particularly their mobile devices, are way too popular to ignore. And if Apple isn’t going to support WebM, we’re either going to have a world were everyone is doing double the work (H.264 and WebM encoding, not to mention hardware support) or where they just do the H.264 support and let Flash be used to play those files on Google devices/Firefox/Opera.

I just don’t see how WebM could ever win this stand-off. And without Google, H.264 can’t either. And so HTML5 video goes nowhere. And we’re stuck with Flash.

Further, the underlying issue with all of this is the H.264 licensing agreements. But Google still has not given a clear answer as to how they know the WebM codec, which came as part of an acquisition, doesn’t infringe on existing patents as well. The closest they’ve come previously is to say they don’t believe it does. That’s not good enough. If WebM did get big enough, a thousand vultures would be out there to sue them. And we may have to find out the hard way.

Google’s argument that while the licensing fees of H.264 would likely be meaningless to their bottom-line, it may harm the next round of video startups, is a good one. But it’s not clear just how true that is. There are just too many unknowns at this point.

But all of that is really besides the point right now, because the larger issue is that by pulling H.264 support, Google is handing the keys of web video’s future right back to Flash. The only way around it that I can see is if they start requiring WebM use for YouTube. If they do that and pull down all the H.264 YouTube content they made in their initial agreement with Apple for the iPhone, Apple might have to yield and support WebM in mobile Safari. But it’s Apple, they’re stubborn, and they may not do it even then. Plus, that would be a fairly non-don’t be evil thing for Google to do.

Originally, Google laid out this move as part of their goal “to enable open innovation”. Today, all they’ve done is clarified that when they say “open innovation” they don’t mean across the board. For example, they’re apparently cool with things like Flash being both ubiquitous and proprietary. And they apparently don’t even mean “open innovation” within HTML, because they haven’t pulled support for MP3 or AAC. So they just mean “open innovation” in HTML5 video. So it’s about being “open” in a close-minded way.

Long story short: Ugh.

More: So Much For Standards, Google Says WebM Plugins Coming Soon For Safari And IE9

[photo: flickr/Bohman]

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Boingo Wireless Files For $75 Million IPO

Posted: 14 Jan 2011 12:55 PM PST

Boingo Wireless, a nationwide WiFi provider, has just announced that it has filed an S-1 registration statement with the SEC for a proposed initial public offering. While the company’s statement says that number of shares to be offered and the offering price range are still to be determined, the filing indicates that the IPO is prices at $75 million for now. It’s important to note that this is the amount, Boingo is trying to raise but is not the set amount for the IPO.

Boingo “believes” that it is is the world's largest commercial Wi-Fi network, with 211,000 Wi-Fi locations in over 100 countries. The company installs, manages and operates wireless networks in locations like airports and restaurant chains, which Boing says had more than 800 million visitors in 2009.

According to the filing, Boingo had 1.3 million consumers who have purchased its mobile Internet services in the past year. The company’s primary source of revenue is from consumers who purchase month-to-month subscription plans or hotspot specific, single-use access to its network. Boingo also receives money from business partners that pay to allow their consumers to access the network. Other revenue channels include telecom operators and advertisers.

And revenue seems to be growing for the WiFi provider. Boingo increased revenue from $56.7 million in 2008 to $65.7 million in 2009. The company also made $59.0 million in 2010 revenue as of September of 2010. Unfortunately, net income for the wireless provider for the nine months ending in September 2010 only came in at $5.7 million. Boingo actually took a loss for the same period in 2009.

In the future, the company plans to expand its network to more airports as well as to shopping malls and sports/concert arenas. And Boingo says it will enter new roaming agreements with other network and hotspot operators. Additionally, Boingo will be looking to expand its presence internationally.

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TechCrunch Giveaway: Tickets To The 2010 Crunchies #Crunchies

Posted: 14 Jan 2011 12:41 PM PST

The 2010 Crunchies Awards are coming up fast and tickets are sold out. But we are giving away two more pairs of tickets. Yesterday, we also announced that a very special musical guest will be joining us. He shocked us at DisruptNY and now, thanks to MailChimp, ELEW will be performing at this year’s Crunchies! His Rockjazz renditions of hits by artists such as Coldplay, The Killers, and Nirvana will serenade us throughout the award ceremony, as well as at the after party.

The awards are being held at the Palace of Fine Arts Theater in San Francisco on January 21, 2011 at 7:30pm PST, with the after party following right after at the Exploratorium until 11:30pm PST. We will have music, food, drinks, games, and many other fun surprises!

We will choose 2 winners tomorrow, January 15th at 5:30pm PST.

If you want to join TechCrunch, GigaOm, and VentureBeat for the 2010 Crunchies Awards, all you have to do is the following. Just fan the TechCrunch Facebook page and then do one of these two things:

- Retweet this post (making sure to include the #Crunchies hashtag)
- Or leave a comment below telling us why you think these tickets should be yours.

Please only tweet the message once or you will be disqualified. We will go through the comments and tweets, make sure you have become a fan of our Facebook page, and contact you this weekend with details if you are chosen. Anyone in the world can enter, but please note this is a giveaway for tickets only, and does not include airfare.

You really don’t want to miss this exciting chance to come to this year’s Crunchies Awards. Good luck everyone!

The #Tunisian Revolution Wasn’t Televized, But You Could Follow It On Twitter

Posted: 14 Jan 2011 12:21 PM PST

Alex Pareene@pareene
Alex Pareene
I am relying on someone live-tweeting al-Jazeera to keep up with Tunisia news. MSNBC reports that Martha Stewart's dog split her lip open.

about 23 hours ago via TweetDeckRetweetReply

For those of you not following the hashtags #sidibouzid (the Tunisian province where this month’s protests started) #Tunisia, #Tunisian, or #Tunise here’s the executive summary:

Tunisian dictator Zine El Abidine Ben Ali fled the country today after weeks of unrest sparked by the suicide of produce vendor Mohamed Bouazizi. Bouazizi, who reportedly killed himself after police seized his fruit stand, became a galvanizing symbol for unemployment and corruption in Tunisia.

How do I know all this? Twitter. And where did you first hear about the Tunisian revolution? If the answer’s not Twitter, it’s probably Facebook. If the answer’s not Facebook, then it’s probably a blog, or some other sundry social feed.

Karl Sharro@KarlreMarks
Karl Sharro
Someone in the BBC must have checked Twitter and realised what's happening in #Tunisia.

about 22 hours ago via Twitter for BlackBerry®RetweetReply

For bloggers, crying “Twitter revolution!” has become fashionable when analyzing international events, natural disasters and political uprisings through the lens of social media. You’re reading TechCrunch so you’re in the elite of the elite when it comes to technology access; Most of us wake up, check our computers and our smart phones and are quickly dragged in to what ever collective events bubble up, today that just happened to be #Tunisia.

My jarring entry point into today’s news was Salon columnist Alex Pareene’s tweet that “I am relying on someone live-tweeting al-Jazeera to keep up with Tunisia news. MSNBC reports that Martha Stewart’s dog split her lip open.”

By the time similar glib retweets hit my Twitter stream I was suddenly familiar with @sultanalqassemi, Al-bab, the WikiLeaks connection, Nawaat, the Anonymous connection, the censorship angle and all the bits of Internet ephemera that make a news story told online amazing, like the fact that blogger Slim Amamou used GPS to break the news of his arrest (!).

Angus Johnston@studentactivism
Angus Johnston
With Tunisia exploding, MSNBC is covering a guy who was arrested for drunk-driving a donkey in Texas. #sidibouzid

January 14, 2011 9:20 am via webRetweetReply

Still, the most jarring thing about today’s revolution was the constant commentary about how the amount of Twitter and Facebook buzz didn’t seem to translate over to mainstream Anglophone media. After 4 weeks of protests, Paid Content founder Rafat Ali tells us he had not seen any “traditional” Tunisia coverage until yesterday and then “only [a] bit in NYT.” When asked to clarify his humorous tweet, Pareene said, “MSNBC has just mentioned Tunisia briefly a couple times, no video that I’ve seen.”

Analyst Evgeny Morozov thinks that unlike the Twitter revolutions in Moldova and Iran which got mainstream coverage, the novelty of “Social Media Changes Everything” stories has worn off just in time for Tunisia.

“What strikes me about events in Tunisia is that social media seems to have failed in what many of us thought would be its greatest contribution (outside of social mobilization) – that is in helping to generate and shape the coverage of events in the mainstream media.

On the contrary, despite all the buzz on Twitter it took four weeks to get the events in Tunisia on the front pages of major newspapers, at least here in the US (the situation in Europe was somewhat better – and it was way better in the Middle East – for all the obvious reasons).“

Many, most notably Malcolm Gladwell, have been quick to dismiss the effects of Twitter revolutions as shallow, and already there is the customary speculation over how integral reports on Facebook and Twitter were to the fall of the Tunisian government. Says Ali to a one skeptical tweeter, “Credit goes to Facebook, which has heavy youth usage in Tunisia. Twitter [had a] more amplification role.” The case of this article, in point.

When contacted for an official statement on the part Twitter played in today’s events, Twitter representative Sean Garrett told us,

“We might be able to provide thoughtful analysis after all the events of Tunisia unfold. But, right now, along with the rest of the world, we sit back and watch in awe at how people are using Twitter and other platforms to provide on-the-ground-perspective at what might become a truly historic moment. (and, as some might say, it’s still very much of a Developing Situation).”

Facebook has not yet returned my request for comment.

Teaser image: Sultan Al Qassemi

omer m@misnomre
omer m
RT @Ukweeli: US media FAIL. A government falls on Twitter while #CNN interviewed the Jeopardy host about a robot contestant. #SidiBouzid

about 23 hours ago via webRetweetReply

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Why American Mothers are Superior

Posted: 14 Jan 2011 11:52 AM PST

Editor’s note: The Wall Street Journal lit up the blogosphere last weekend with an article titled, Why Chinese Mothers Are Superior. This played right into the stereotypes about Asian parents being obsessed with their children's education and myths about Chinese and Indian education being superior to U.S. education.

The Journal article was over the top—way over. In fact, TechCrunch contributor Vivek Wadhwa called it "bizarre" in a response that he wrote in his BusinessWeek column. Chinese and Indian parents really do care about their children, just as American parents do, as do others all over the world. Some Chinese and Indian parents are really strict and push their children extremely hard. But he doesn’t know any who would call their children "garbage" either in private or in public as the Journal described. And he doesn’t know any middle-class Indian or Chinese children, in this day and age, who allow themselves to be subjected to the type of abuse the article details.

You can read his views. But here is the perspective of one of his Twitter followers, Dr. AnnMaria De Mars, President of The Julia Group.  She said that she felt compelled to write this after reading his piece.

I really did not have time to write this today, but two articles I read made me drop what I was doing. First was the Wall Street Journal article by a Yale law professor who says Chinese mothers are superior because they produce more mathematical and musical prodigies.

The reason, she says, is because none of them accept a grade less than an "A", all insist their child be number one in the class, they don't let their children be in school plays, play any instrument other than piano or violin, etc.

She says that this whole thing about people being individuals is a lot of crap (I'm paraphrasing a bit) and gives an example of how she spent hours getting her seven-year-old to play a very difficult piece on the piano. She uses the fact that the older daughter could do the same piece at that age as proof this was reasonable.

There are a few areas I would take exception with her article. First is her grasp of mathematics and logic. It is clearly impossible that every child in China is number one in the class, unless every classroom in the country has a thirty-way tie for first. Second, as my daughter asked, "There are 1.3 billion people in China. None of them ever got a B?" Third is the issue of claiming your parenting is such a great success when your children are not yet out of high school.

I don't teach at Yale, but I do have a Ph.D., have published several articles in academic journals, founded two companies, and won a gold medal in the world judo championships. I raised three kids to adulthood. As for the companies, they paid enough to support the kids in what they wanted to do. That individualism crap?

Well, the first one went to NYU at age 17, graduated at 20 and if you google Maria Burns Ortiz you'll find everything from her acceptance speech as Emerging Journalist of the Year to her stories on Major League Baseball investments in Venezuela for ESPN to Fox News Latino. Plus, she has a good husband and she is a wonderful mother.

She never took piano lessons but she is an amazing writer.

The second daughter, the Perfect Jennifer, received her Masters and teaching credential from USC at 24, after taking a couple years off after her B.A. in History. She teaches at an inner city school in Los Angeles. This isn't her fall back plan in a bad economy. This was her first choice profession and her first choice school. They are lucky to have her and she's happy to have them.

My third daughter was in the last two Olympics, won a bronze medal in Beijing and has now gone professional as a fighter in Mixed Martial Arts. Ironically, she was the one that played bassoon and attended a science magnet. She volunteers at a school in Watts where her older sister did her student teaching.

And STILL, I would not venture to lecture other people on how superior my parenting skills are because a) there have been times when I could cheerfully have smacked each one of them with a two by four and only my maturity, Catholic faith and felony assault laws of the state of California stayed my hand and b) as Erma Bombeck said, no mother is arrogant because she knows that, regardless of her other accomplishments in life, at any moment she may get a call from the school principal saying that her child rode a motorcycle through the auditorium.

If I got a call like that, I wouldn't even be surprised. I would just reach for my credit card to give the principal the number over the phone and go searching the house for my two by four.

The second article I read was by Vivek Wadhwa, in Business Week, who said that Chinese and Indian engineering programs graduate several times MORE students than the U.S. but the quality of these students is generally much poorer than American students.

When I was in graduate school, I used to think arguments such as Wadhwa's were just sour grapes from American students who couldn't cut it, and their teachers who let them slack.

Then, I graduated, became a professor for many years and an employer. I see exactly the differences Vivek describes between American and many international students.

When I ask the latter questions such as, "If you were going to redesign programming language X, what would you do?"

They will tell me what X does in great detail but not answer the question.

American students are more likely to jump in with ideas about how to change X, replete with statements like "X sucks because…"

My twenty-five years of experience, agrees with Wadhwa's research findings in that the international students I have met are far less likely to question results. Of course this isn't true of all of them. It's silly to generalize to every member of a nation of a billion or half-billion people.

American students remind me of the nursery rhyme:

There was a little girl
Who had a little curl
Right in the middle of her forehead
And when she was good
She was very, very good
And when she was bad
She was horrid

My husband is brilliant. This is why I married him. He went to UCLA on a National Merit Scholarship, double majored in math and physics and then went on to graduate work in physics. He taught himself Calculus in elementary school and then taught himself as much physics as he could before going to college. His parents pretty much let him do what he wanted to do, which was read physics books.

My older brother has a degree in Computer Science from Washington University in St. Louis. Like most of his friends, he majored in computer science because he was really interested in math and computers. When we were in college, around 1975, I saw my first "personal computer". One of my brother's friends had built it from parts.

I'm a statistician because I really love statistics and fortunately for me, it pays money.

In America, people in math, computer science and other sciences generally chose those fields because that is what they want to do. They have a genuine interest, to the point of passion, and will often spend crazy hours working in their labs.

Chinese and other international students often spend crazy hours, too, but not as often for the same reasons. A lot of times it's because of a language barrier – and they have my respect. I spent a year as a student in Japan. As a professor, I once taught a Directed Studies in Psychological Research course in Spanish. Functioning in a second language is damn hard.

The international scholars I know, far more often than American ones, chose their field for practical reasons. They could get a job. The salaries were good. Their parents really wanted them to become a doctor/ engineer.

Sometimes these Chinese (and other) students change while in America. Not always. Lots of middle managers like people to do exactly what they're told. Not always the best thing for business but perhaps best for the comfort and convenience of that manager.

Schools really like people to do what they are told, and universities just love having graduate students who will pay high out-of-state tuition, teach for low wages, or even work in the lab for free. Hey, don't blame us if 30% of the students we admit are from other countries, they did the best on the tests AND had a 4.0 GPA. You should have studied more, you lazy slackers!

Someone ought to ask WHY we are measuring what we measure. These tests we give, and the other admissions criteria were not handed down by God. (I know because I did my dissertation on intelligence testing. Most of these tests come from The Psychological Corporation, Pearson Education and the Educational Testing Service. God doesn't work at any of those places. If you don't believe me, call their switchboard and ask for God's extension.)

Why does it matter if your child is a musical prodigy? What the hell difference does it make if your child can play some complicated piece on the piano at age seven?

My youngest daughter, the world's most spoiled twelve-year-old, plays drums. She practices about an hour a week. She likes the drums. I want my daughter to play an instrument, if she is interested, because it might be something that brings her joy as an adult.

She is on the student council and, this last report card, she brought home her first B+ in a year. We kind of grumbled about it, but that's all. High achievement is important in life, but it is not all of life.

WHY does it matter so much if you have a 4.0 GPA? I did not have the best behavior or GPA as either a high school student or undergraduate. Looking back, I wonder whatever possessed the admissions staff at Washington University in St. Louis to look at my SAT scores and overlook everything else, but I will be forever grateful that they did. I doubt many universities would admit a student like me today, particularly not at age 16.

What I did have was an intense desire to learn about the world.

As an undergraduate, I took a graduate course in economics because it sounded really interesting and asked the professor's permission to enroll.
He happened to have been chair of the Council of Economic Advisers (under Richard Nixon, but he was still a great professor nonetheless). I also took courses on Urban and Regional Economics where I got to see real-life applications of matrix algebra.

My point (and by now you may have despaired of my ever having one) is that my undergraduate education gave me the gift of professors willing to respond to my interests, enough time not to interfere with my relationship with the library, and classmates I argued with for the pure intellectual exercise.

When my youngest child is ready for college, I will look for a school that will give that to her. If it is an Ivy League school, that's fine.

Dr. Chua is raising her children to fit into the Ivy League mold.

Me, I'm raising my children to be themselves and to mold the world to fit.

How is that working out ….

There isn't a day goes by that I don't think several times, "I love my life."

So, it works well for me, and for my family, all the way down to the two-year-old granddaughter whose latest favorite saying is,

"I a lucky kid!"
(Well, right after, "Grandma, buy me an iPad for Chrissmas!" )

Dr. Chua's definition of success is to have children who are musical and mathematical prodigies.

Mine is to have children who learn well, live well and love well.

She's a success by her standards as I am by mine.

(But I still won't be surprised if I get that call from the principal.)

Zoho Preparing Online Accounting Service Zoho Books (Screenshots)

Posted: 14 Jan 2011 10:28 AM PST

It appears that Zoho is expanding its productivity suite empire once again with the launch of Zoho Books, an online accounting software. We were alerted to the new product by a reader, who managed to find the company’s 26th product (though it appears that Zoho has taken the site down). We’ve posted screenshots below.

Similar to Quickbooks, Zoho Books is an online accounting software that gives business as snapshot of money flowing into and out of accounts. According to the site, the software allows you to send invoices for payments, receive online payments, record bills and expenses, monitor bank and credit card transactions, deal in a variety of currencies, manage contacts, and share data.

Zoho recently added Zoho Support, a web-based help desk software, to its productivity suite empire. The company has an impressive collection of applications considering that it competes with Microsoft ad Google and has never raised any outside funding.

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Ask a VC: Welcome Back to the Hot Seat, Satish Dharmaraj

Posted: 14 Jan 2011 10:19 AM PST

We had a last minute cancellation on Ask a VC this week, so filling in is Satish Dharmaraj who was our second ever guest on the show. For those who don’t remember, Dharmaraj is a relatively new partner at Redpoint Venture Partners, after selling Zimbra to Yahoo for $350 million and Onebox, which he sold for $850 million. Not bad.

Dharmaraj focuses on a lot of Redpoint’s consumer Web portfolio, but he has a history with enterprise too. I’ll be interested to hear which he’s most excited about in 2011. Because he’s a last minute fill-in, we have a quick turn around so get your questions in now to AskaVC(at)techcrunch(dot)com.

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Mike Jones’ Kiss-Off Letter To Laid Off MySpacers: “We Can’t Continue On This Journey Together”

Posted: 14 Jan 2011 09:49 AM PST

Whenever a company lays off 500 people, as MySpace did earlier this week when it gave half its employees walking papers, it generates quite a bit of anger and bitterness. The latest tip in our inbox from a dispirited former employee goes into a details about do-nothing managers who still have their jobs while all their underlings are now unemployed.

I won’t repeat the character assassinations here, but the former MySpacer did include something else I will share: The kiss-off letter from CEO Mike Jones. “He didn’t even take the time to personally sign the letters. It’s just a xerox copy,” laments the former employee. You can read the termination letter below. It is pretty standard, thanking those being laid off for their “dedication and commitment to MySpace” especially through its recent relaunch.

This is the part, though that must really rankle:

Although we can’t continue on this journey together—I hope you will all stay connected with MySpace and know that your contribution to the business was a unique moment in time and that you participated in something that few have been part of in our industry.

And what exactly was that? Dressing up MySpace for a sale, and then getting rid of half the employees to make its declining financials look a little more appetizing? Yeah, special times.

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