The Latest from TechCrunch |  |
- Software Development And IT Outsourcing Powerhouse Globant Raises $15 Million
- Review: Olympus E-PL2 Micro 4/3s Camera
- Study Shows AT&T iPhone Owners Rely On WiFi More Than Verizon iPhone Users
- How Do You Talk To An Angel? Use Yobongo, They’re All Investing.
- Social Shopping Startup ShopSquad Lands $1.25M In Funding From Heavy Hitters
- Gilt Groupe Acquires Interior Design Community Decorati
- App Distributor Tapjoy Launches Publishing Platform For Game Developers
- Apple Loses Executive Bertrand Serlet After 22 Years Of Working With Jobs
- Intel’s McAfee Acquires Sentrigo To Boost Database Security Offerings
- StatCounter: Firefox 4 Has Already Eclipsed Internet Explorer 9
- HealthTap Raises $2.35 Million To Help People Manage Their Health
- Three Years After Launch, Men’s Custom Clothier J. Hilburn Discovers E-Commerce
- Motorola Acquires IPTV Software Company Dreampark
- In The Cards: Why Amazon *Has* To Make An Android Device Now
- Google Plays To Its Strengths, Succeeds Brilliantly, With Lady Gaga Interview
- Digital Textbook Startup Inkling Nabs ‘Multi-Million Dollar’ Investment From McGraw-Hill And Pearson
- 43 Promising Startups Present At Y Combinator’s Biggest Demo Day Yet
- On Firefox 4 Day, Chrome 11 Hits Beta With The Ability To Talk To Your Computer!
- Netflix Shares Soar, Site Goes Down
- Sprint CEO Dan Hesse Warns Of The Danger Of Duopoly In Cell Phone Land
- Judge Rejects Google Books Settlement: Make It Opt-In
- Some Quick Unpaywalled Thoughts On Writing Behind A Paywall
- MetaLab Launches Flow, A Beautiful Tool For Task Management
- Google Joins The Patent Madness With “Methods For Enticing Users To Access A Web Site”
- Adobe Beats The Street; Revenue Up 20 Percent To $1.03 Billion
| Software Development And IT Outsourcing Powerhouse Globant Raises $15 Million Posted: 23 Mar 2011 08:59 AM PDT
Globant, an Argentinian software development, IT services and maintenance outsourcing giant has landed $15 million in financing from PE firm Riverwood Capital and FTV Capital. The funding is meant to further Globant’s growth and to support its acquisition plan throughout Latin America and the United States. The company builds software products for mass audiences based on a mix of open source and proprietary technologies. Globant recently launched eight separate studios with names like Luminous Gaming, Creative & Social and Sustainable Infostructure to enable deep specialization and domain expertise across its operations. Globant is privately held and boasts offices in Buenos Aires, Tandil, Cordoba, Rosario, Resistencia and La Plata (Argentina), San Jose, Chicago and Boston in the United States, London in the UK, Montevideo (Uruguay) and Bogota (Colombia). The company says it employs a total of more than 2,000 IT professionals. Its customer list includes companies like Disney, Google, EA, Sony, IBM and LinkedIn. Globant has been talking about going public in the United States for years, but hasn’t made a move in that direction yet. The company’s chief exec, Martin Migoya, told the WSJ that they still plan to IPO – “within the next few years”.        
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| Review: Olympus E-PL2 Micro 4/3s Camera Posted: 23 Mar 2011 08:54 AM PDT
Short VersionTo be sure, Olympus’ micro 4/3s cameras, the E-PL1 and the E-PL2, are changing the way we think about removable lens cameras. However, I worry that high price coupled with potentially limiting features will cause some shooters to shy away from this line. While that may be the case, I encourage anyone thinking about a point and shoot or ultrazoom camera to look into these clever and high-quality shooters.        
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| Study Shows AT&T iPhone Owners Rely On WiFi More Than Verizon iPhone Users Posted: 23 Mar 2011 08:23 AM PDT
The top cities with the highest Verizon iPhone usage across the Mobclix exchange include San Francisco, Los Angeles, Seattle, Chicago, New York City and Boston. Of course, it’s well known that AT&T has more reception problems in more densely populated cities (i.e. San Francisco). Mobclix also reports that AT&T iPhone owners use WiFi an average of 53% of the time compared to 38% of the time for Verizon iPhone owners. Why? Because AT&T has poor reception, AT&T owners have to tap into the phone’s WiFi technology more frequently due to poor carrier reception, although carrier to carrier, AT&;T data speeds are faster than Verizon. It’s important to note that AT&T’s WiFi network includes over 24,000 AT&T WiFi Hot Spots through the U.S., and the iPhone supports auto-authentication, making it automatic for customers to connect to Hot Spots or AT&T’s hotzones without it counting toward their monthly smartphone data usage. Another fun fact from the survey—2 in 3 AT&T iPhone owners who switched to the Verizon iPhone paid the $325 early-termination fee. The top 3 reasons for iPhone owners making the switch to Verizon are reception issues, the Personal Hot Spot feature and reputation, says Mobclix. On Mobclix’s exchange, 14% of iPhone 4 users are on the Verizon Network and account for 4% of total iPhone users. As we heard from mobile ad network Millennial Media, the Verizon iPhone only accounted for 4.5 percent of all U.S. iPhone impressions on the network in the first two weeks following the launch.        
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| How Do You Talk To An Angel? Use Yobongo, They’re All Investing. Posted: 23 Mar 2011 08:10 AM PDT
And that one investor is hardly the only one. The mobile chat service has secured a $1.35 million angel round with many familiar investors taking part. Individuals Mitch Kapor, Dave Morin, Kevin Rose, Gary Vaynerchuk, Karl Jacob, Bill Roux, Shervin Pishevar have all invested. And Freestyle Capital and True Ventures have joined in on the action as well. “The round came together unbelievably quickly – in just a few days. We had to turn away some unbelievably talented people,” Elston says of the round. “We have hand-picked each one of our investors for their particular experience and steadfast belief in Yobongo. We wanted a group who have unique insights into social dynamics and technology and have shepherded companies through all stages of growth,” he notes. We first previewed Yobongo in October of last year when it was still in stealth mode. By January, things were a bit more concrete — but the product wasn’t quite ready to open up just yet. In fact, that didn’t happen until earlier this month when Elston and his team felt Yobongo was far enough along to flip the switch to go live in three cities: San Francisco, New York, and Austin, Texas. The latter was important given the SXSW conference. The service emerged from there as one of the most buzzed-about apps. And now they have to build on that — hence, the money. “This gives us massive horsepower to grow the team and build the best experience for making new connections,” Elston says.         
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| Social Shopping Startup ShopSquad Lands $1.25M In Funding From Heavy Hitters Posted: 23 Mar 2011 08:00 AM PDT
Exclusive - Social commerce startup ShopSquad has secured $1.25 million in early-stage funding, TechCrunch has learned. The seed financing round was led by a consortium of individual investors with a wealth of online commerce expertise, including the members of the fledgling company’s advisory board. Backers include Josh Silverman (former CEO of Skype and Shopping.com), David Sacks (former COO of PayPal, CEO of Yammer), Jeff Fluhr (founder and former CEO of StubHub), Selina Tobaccowala (founder of Evite.com) and Charles Carmel (VP Corporate Development at Cisco). ShopSquad is a free service that connects shoppers with advisors through live video chat and guided browsing sessions for product advice and recommendations. By searching for a product on ShopSquad, shoppers can select an advisor based on factors such as community ratings, product expertise, and language. Anyone with proven product knowledge can become an advisor on ShopSquad and earn commissions when shoppers buy suggested products on ‘hundreds of affiliated stores’. ShopSquad makes money through these affiliate relationships – ecommerce partners include Amazon.com, Diapers.com, Toys R Us, Best Buy, Sears, Kmart, Office Depot, Hotels.com and plenty more. Advisors get a decent 75 percent of affiliate fees generated by ShopSquad. The startup made its debut at the Launch conference last month. Its alpha product focused on the baby products market, but ShopSquad intends to expand to other verticals soon. ShopSquad was founded by chief executive Charles Katz, who previously co-founded Connect Group (acquired by Lodgenet in 1998) and 1stUp.com (acquired by CMGI in 1999). It reminds me a lot of Needle, another venture-backed startup building a 'guided shopping platform' that aims to bring together online shoppers and product experts.         
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| Gilt Groupe Acquires Interior Design Community Decorati Posted: 23 Mar 2011 07:29 AM PDT
Founded by interior designer Shane Reilly, Decorati launched in 2009 as an online platform for both interior decorators and consumers who are looking for professional design advice and guidance. Decorati essentially aims to democratize the interior design community by bringing the trade industry online. For example, the site pools furniture manufacturer data online and made it searchable across type, price, and lead time. The site has furniture listings from over 500 manufacturers who typically show only in design center showrooms. And with Decorati’s platform, consumers can shop for these products without needing a professional license, which was previously a barrier in the industry. Decorati also has a database of over 20,000 designers across the U.S. and allows consumers to search for interior decorators by location and type of design. Consumers can submit a project inquiry to Decorati's Design Advisors program and Decorati will match them with up to five designers that match the consumer’s style and needs. Decorati received funding from a number of well-known investors including Peter Thiel. For Gilt, Decorati will turn its home and furniture sales business into a more interactive platform. Gilt says that it will unveil its new Home offering later this year, which will be a mixture of full-price merchandise, one-of-a-kind items and antiques, daily flash sales, community and social tools, and will include a channel specifically for the designer. Of course, this expansion means that Gilt is going head to head with One Kings Lane, a popular and fast-growing home and interior flash sales site. OneKingsLane is also planning to expand its platform with more design and content features and recently acquired design firm Helicopter. This isn’t the first channel Gilt has invested heavily in. Gilt’s travel channel, Jetsetter, has become one of the leaders in the luxury travel flash sales space and the company has also been actively building out its men’s clothing and accessories vertical.        
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| App Distributor Tapjoy Launches Publishing Platform For Game Developers Posted: 23 Mar 2011 06:00 AM PDT
Tapjoy, which used to be Offerpal, allows developers of mobile and social apps to turn on virtual currency, analytics and other monetization tools to their iPhone, Android and Facebook apps. A number of well-known app developers and advertisers use Tapjoy for the monetization and distribution of their games and applications, including GameDuell, Tapulous, glu, Pinger, Playdom, Kayak, Barnes & Noble, MTV, Bing, Fandango, Groupon, Intuit and others. Tapjoy Publishing will fund the growth of early-stage and pre-launch games by allowing developers to leverage the company's distribution and monetization platform and by investing its capital and resources to support the game's development. Selected games will receive dedicated monthly marketing credits for new user acquisition through Tapjoy's network of more than 200 million mobile consumers and 100 million social gamers. Tapjoy will also use its ad targeting technology to provide personalized app recommendations for games. One of the first games that will be leveraging Tapjoy Publishing is 5th Planet Games' Dawn of the Dragons on Facebook. The developer says that by using Tapjoy Publishing, the game has seen a 40% increase in its monthly active users within a month and has grown revenue to record rates. Developers can apply to be accepted into the Tapjoy Publishing program. Tapjoy, which just raised $21 million is profitable and seeing success as a cross-platform distribution mechanism. But it can be expensive to launch apps via TapJay (anywhere from $30,000 to $500,000) and the publishing platform the company is announcing today can help bootstrapped developers create viral hits.        
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| Apple Loses Executive Bertrand Serlet After 22 Years Of Working With Jobs Posted: 23 Mar 2011 05:54 AM PDT
In a press release issued earlier this morning, Apple has announced that Bertrand Serlet, SVP of Mac Software Engineering, will be leaving the company. Craig Federighi, Apple's VP of Mac Software Engineering and Serlet’s long-time protégé, will assume his responsibilities and report directly to chief exec Steve Jobs. Federighi has been managing the Mac OS software engineering group for the past two years. Bertrand Serlet originally joined Apple in 1997 and has played an instrumental role in the development of Mac OS X. Before joining Apple, Serlet spent four years at Xerox PARC, then joined NeXT in 1989. "I've worked with Steve for 22 years and have had an incredible time developing products at both NeXT and Apple, but at this point, I want to focus less on products and more on science," Serlet said in a statement. Craig Federighi also worked at NeXT, followed by Apple, and then spent a decade at Ariba. He returned to Apple in 2009 to lead Mac OS X engineering.        
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| Intel’s McAfee Acquires Sentrigo To Boost Database Security Offerings Posted: 23 Mar 2011 05:16 AM PDT
Sentrigo, which has raised $9.5 million in venture funding from Benchmark Capital, Stata Venture Partners and Juniper Networks,, provides host-based software that protects enterprise databases by monitoring all activity in the database in real-time, providing alerts, audit trail, virtual patching and automatic intrusion prevention capabilities. Sentrigo's solution, called Hedgehog, uses a very small footprint non-intrusive agent that has complete visibility into all database activity, whether it is originated by outsiders or privileged insiders, and does so without impacting database performance. McAfee actually partnered with Sentrigo in 2010, entering into an OEM agreement to support and offer McAfee’s own database security software, including McAfee Vulnerability Manager for Databases, McAfee Database Activity Monitoring, and McAfee Integrity Monitoring for Databases Dave DeWalt, president of McAfee said of the acquisition: McAfee is continuing to broaden its security portfolio to now-secure databases, as well as endpoints, networks, email and web. He added that the company is also announcing a “complete database security platform” which includes products across the McAfee portfolio. McAfee’s Vulnerability Manager for Databases will automatically discover all databases on the network, collect a full inventory of configuration details, and determine if the latest patches have been applied and scans for vulnerabilities. McAfee’s Database Activity Monitoring (DAM), not only tracks database changes, but also protects data from external threats and malicious insiders with real-time alerts and session termination. Intel just closed its $7.68 billion acquisition of McAfee, after the deal was cleared by the EU in January, and approved by the U.S. Federal Trade Commission in late December.        
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| StatCounter: Firefox 4 Has Already Eclipsed Internet Explorer 9 Posted: 23 Mar 2011 04:50 AM PDT
Mozilla has just released Firefox 4, and in less than a day clocked more than twice the downloads Microsoft boasted about after the release of Internet Explorer 9. Now website analytics company StatCounter says Mozilla’s new browser has already taken 1.95 percent of the worldwide Internet browser market. In contrast, StatCounter adds, Internet Explorer 9 has taken only 0.87 percent of the worldwide browser market a week after its debut. And as you can tell from the screenshot above, not only Firefox 4 but also the recently released Opera 11 browser has a steady lead over IE9 at this point. Worth noting: Internet Explorer 9 isn’t compatible with Windows XP, ageing operating system that was released ten years ago but still has an enormous user base around the world. When all versions of each browser are taken into account, IE still leads the global market with 45 percent, followed by Firefox with 30 percent and Chrome with 17 percent, StatCounter says. The web analytics company recently reported that Firefox overtook IE to become the number one browser in Europe for the first time in December 2010. In the US, IE (all versions combined) leads the market with an even bigger margin: 48 percent, followed by Firefox at 26 percent and Chrome at 14 percent. StatCounter says its Global Stats numbers are based on aggregate data collected on a sample exceeding 15 billion page views per month from a network of more than three million websites.        
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| HealthTap Raises $2.35 Million To Help People Manage Their Health Posted: 23 Mar 2011 03:34 AM PDT
HealthTap this morning announced that it has raised $2.35 million in a convertible note seed financing round led by Mohr Davidow Ventures. The VC firm was joined by a number of notable angel investors, including Esther Dyson, Stanford professor and former CEO of Veritas Software Mark Leslie and Aaron Patzer, founder and former CEO of Mint.com, among others. Currently in private beta, HealthTap bills itself as an ‘Expert Health Companion’ operating on the intersection of life science and interactive software. The company’s goal is to bring personalization and interactivity to medicine – for both physicians and their patients – through the power of data and the Internet. Oh, and to create a healthier, happier world. Here’s how Bill Ericson, general partner at Mohr Davidow Ventures, pitches HealthTap:
Founded by Ron Gutman, who previously founded health information portal Wellsphere, HealthTap said it will use the additional capital in part to grow the network of doctors creating tailored information for its community.        
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| Three Years After Launch, Men’s Custom Clothier J. Hilburn Discovers E-Commerce Posted: 23 Mar 2011 03:15 AM PDT
Can you see the difference between these two shirts? One is an off-the-shelf Zegna men’s dress shirt that sells at Neiman Marcus for $395. The other is a custom-fitted shirt from men’s clothier startup J. Hilburn made from exactly the same material, but it only costs $99. And it’s made to measure. J. Hilburn, which is based in Dallas, Texas, cuts out the retailer and its mark-up. The startup is a direct-to-consumer manufacturer, just like Dell Computer, but for fancy men’s dress shirts. It was founded in 2007 and started selling shirts a year later. By last year, the company brought in $8 million in revenues, up from $3.25 million in 2009, says CEO Hil Davis, a former Wall Street retail analyst. He projects the company to make $20 million in revenues this year. What’s incredible is that until today, the company didn’t sell its clothes online. Instead, it’s built a direct salesforce of 800 “style advisors” across the country, who make appointments to visit customers in their homes and offices. The advisors measure the customers to ensure a perfect fit, show them swaths of fabric, and help them select a few options. Last year, they sold 60,000 shirts, plus sweaters, trousers, and other items. They keep a commission of between 10 percent to 30 percent of what they sell (the more they sell, the higher the commission) and, like Avon ladies, they get a small percentage of the sales from any style advisors they bring onboard. Up until now, J. Hilburn’s website has just directed customers to the style advisors. But today it is extending its reach with a full e-commerce site, complete with shirt and trouser custom configurators for existing customers and where anyone can buy off-the-shelf items online. Once a customer is measured, now he can shop online, or use its iPhone app. The company is backed by Battery Ventures, which has supplied almost all of the $7.25 million the company has raised since 2008. With its mix of offline and online assets, J. Hilburn is trying to build a unique retailing experience. “There are three things that drive a business,” says Davis: “convenience, value, and customer service. Very few companies have all three.” Even Amazon only has two of those (convenience and value). Davis and his co-founder Veeral Rathod explain their approach in the video below.
       
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| Motorola Acquires IPTV Software Company Dreampark Posted: 23 Mar 2011 02:45 AM PDT
Motorola Mobility has acquired Dreampark, a Swedish IPTV software provider. Terms of the deal were not disclosed. Motorola says it expects the acquisition to close in the second quarter. Dreampark is the company behind Dreamgallery, a software suite for operators aiming at providing services over TV networks. Its middleware platform takes advantage of open standards like HTML and scalable vector graphics, and combines that technology with SDKs to allow operators to obtain control of their TV portals for complete customization and regionalization. The Dreampark portfolio is expected to be integrated into the Motorola Medios service management software suite.        
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| In The Cards: Why Amazon *Has* To Make An Android Device Now Posted: 23 Mar 2011 01:12 AM PDT
Now that Amazon’s Android Appstore is out there in the wild, and I’ve had a chance to play with it, I see the brilliance of the maneuver. In many ways, Amazon just came out of nowhere and beat Google at their own game — on their own devices. At the same time, some of the processes involved in Amazon’s Appstore are laughable. And they point to a very obvious fact: Amazon needs to build their own Android devices. Pronto. There has been a lot of talk today about how and why Amazon could become a big player in the tablet space. And a NYT report from last week points to Amazon specifically looking at expanding their work on Android in the space. (We also heard about an Amazon Android tablet back in September from the same source that knew about their app store.) But there really should be no question about it. After seeing their Android Appstore, it’s clear not only that they need to get into this game, but that they’re going to. Currently, to install Amazon’s Appstore, you need to jump through a bunch of loops. This laborious process has been ripped apart — “8 easy steps” — and rightfully so. This isn’t like installing just any other Android app. You have to alter system settings and send yourself files. If you’re somewhat geeky, it’s not hard. And to be fair, Amazon does the best job they can walking you through the process on their site. But there is no way that an average person is going to do this. And Amazon has to know that. In that regard, this roll out is more of a natural beta test. The key to Amazon’s Appstore is going to be getting it pre-installed on devices. Earlier, my colleague Jason suggested that Amazon should strike up deals with carriers to get their store pre-installed on Android devices. I too have no doubt that those discussions are already well underway. The problem is that at least some of those carriers (and OEMs) are also doing their own app stores — will they really want more competition? Regardless, the better method is for Amazon to take matters into their own hands.
Earlier, John Gruber laid out a scenario in which you buy an Android device from Amazon and they ship it to you pre-loaded with your Amazon credentials, like they do with the Kindle. Yep. But taking it one step further, what if Amazon also altered the Android experience to allow you to do true one-click buying and installation of their apps? While the installation process of Appstore itself is humorously long, almost as bad is the process after you buy an app from Amazon’s Appstore. Once the purchase and download are complete, you still have to manually install it by clicking a few buttons. Again, it’s not hard, but it’s ridiculously cumbersome — especially when compared to how ridiculously easy it is to buy an app via the Appstore (more of that in a second). Right now, Amazon’s Appstore is pretty much a diamond surrounded by coal on all sides. It’s a pain to install the store and awkward to install the apps bought in the store. But the store itself is pretty great, and the buying process could not be more seamless. Amazon needs that to unify the entire experience. It’s all about the diamond. Actually, it’s all about the cards. As in, credit cards. The store Amazon has created is brilliant for that reason alone. It directly ties a user into their Amazon account which already has their credit cards on file. This enables true one-click shopping. It matches Apple’s App Store and far, far surpasses the nightmare that has been the Android Market. Google Checkout, who? Carrier billing, what? In fact, Amazon’s app buying process is a bit too easy. When I was up and running, my account had one-click buying enabled and I accidentally hit one of those buttons with my thumb. Whoops, app purchased. Unlike Apple’s App Store where you see a price (or “free”) in the button and you have to click again to actually buy, with Amazon, it really is one-click. (And returns seem to be a bit of a pain, I had to email Amazon — I suspect they’ll be getting many such emails.) But that’s something that’s easy enough to solve (if they even want to). The real key is the buying process itself and how perfect it will be for most consumers. Amazon has built the app store that Android should have had from the beginning. (And the free app a day ploy is genius.) What Google does next will be interesting. Do they embrace what Amazon has done? Or do they shun it in fear? Undoubtedly we’ll heard the PR-friendly blurbs about this proving how great open is. But at the end of the day, this may well be Amazon eating Google’s lunch — off of their own plate.        
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| Google Plays To Its Strengths, Succeeds Brilliantly, With Lady Gaga Interview Posted: 23 Mar 2011 12:55 AM PDT  As the battle for Silicon Valley engineering talent intensifies, it seems as if hot tech companies like Apple, Facebook, Google and Twitter have launched some sort of ridiculous competition as to who could can score the biggest Hollywood talent for an onsite appearance, in order to wow current and future employees. Between Ashton Kutcher and Chamillionaire at Y Combinator Demo days and conferences, Silicon Valley isn’t lacking in star sitings. But if we’re keeping a tally, the most recent celebrity visits making waves were Snoop Dog at Twitter and Katy Perry at Facebook, both of which seemed like a stretch when considering either company’s goals. If the metric is attention, I’m just going to say that Google has won the cultural relevance wars for the moment, bringing in super duper pop star Lady Gaga in to talk to super duper tech star Marissa Mayer for its “Musicians@Google” series. What comes of this is a pretty awesome 73 minute piece of content, with successful famous nerdy chick Marissa Mayer asking successful famous nerdy chick Lady Gaga user questions culled from the week-old Google Moderator page on Gaga’s YouTube channel. And more! Not only did Google prepare a special search-related intro for Gaga, and create a portrait based on the millions of Gaga-related search terms, but the entire interview was shockingly relevant to Google’s core competency, namely YouTube and search. A theme throughout the whole interview is that YouTube is a star maker, and that Google helps you unearth more information about your creative heroes once you know what you like. Mayer at some point plays a video from a YouTube star named Maria, a ten year old girl who achieved much notoriety covering Lady Gaga’s “Born This Way” on the service and eventually ended up performing the song live with Gaga at a concert in Toronto. Mayer makes a big point, in true Google fashion, of emphasizing that Gaga is one of the most searched people in the world, a “search star” at 443 million hits for the term “Lady Gaga” on Google, 630 million views on Gaga’s “Bad Romance” YouTube video, 20 million singles downloaded on iTunes, 54K questions asked on Google Moderator and 250K votes on her YouTube Moderator questions in just 3 1/2 days. The whole spectacle is pretty impressive, in terms of both production and entertainment value. Between Mayer keeping a straight face while pronouncing YouTube usernames like “GagaFame11″ while facing Gaga’s bizarrely sunglassed visage, eventually revealing that she dressed as Gaga for Halloween, moderating an absurd Googler Lady Gaga costume contest and even partaking in an Oprah moment where she rewards the audience with Gaga tickets, “Google Goes Gaga” just might match The Social Network as one of the most watchable pieces of tech-related content ever produced. Over the course of the interview we learn that Gaga was involved in a startup with her dad, is a fan of the “David at the Dentist” YouTube video, has a friend named Mary Hailey who works at Google, and that Googler Andrew Shulty wrote Gaga up for drinking in her room at NYU when he was an RA. But possibly the most bloggable (and poignant) pullquote of the whole thing:
Bet you Google gets at least two new engineers out of this one. Images: Lady Gaga/ Marissa Mayer (as Gaga for Halloween)        
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| Digital Textbook Startup Inkling Nabs ‘Multi-Million Dollar’ Investment From McGraw-Hill And Pearson Posted: 22 Mar 2011 11:56 PM PDT
Inkling's technology delivers interactive textbooks that include the ability to collaborate, add multimedia and communicate within content. The startup adds another layer to online textbooks by adding 3-D objects, video, quizzes, and even social interaction within the content. Inkling's sync technology lets students collaborate in real time by sharing their notes and highlights with one another. And students can see comments from their friends and professors right alongside their own notes. Clearly, an investment from textbook publishers like McGraw-Hill and Pearson is a big endorsement for the fledgling company which only launched last year. Both publishers have also committed to build interactive editions of their top titles for the Inkling platform. Inkling has also struck similar deals with a number of other higher education publishers, including John Wiley & Sons, W. W. Norton and Wolters Kluwer. As we wrote last November, Inkling launched an iPad app to show the power of its platform. The app, which featured a photography textbook, includes over 100 videos, interactive diagrams to help you understand the effect of lighting and equipment settings, workshop videos, high resolution images, and the full text of the original book. Within the book, you can watch videos from the author's lighting and photography workshop and commentary on his photography and how he captures his images. Inkling’s deals with McGraw-Hill and Pearson are comprehensive. Inkling will feature the top 100 undergraduate titles from McGraw-Hill Higher Education as well as medical education and reference content from McGraw-Hill Professional. Pearson will be using Inkling to feature its MBA curriculum, as well as a number of undergraduate arts and sciences titles.        
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| 43 Promising Startups Present At Y Combinator’s Biggest Demo Day Yet Posted: 22 Mar 2011 09:17 PM PDT
Of course, Demo Day is a bit different from what it was a year or two ago. The spectre of a $0 bank account is further off, as Y Combinator companies are now being offered $150,000 in convertible debt by Start Fund, the fund created by Yuri Milner and Ron Conway’s SV Angel. And there are now more companies than ever — 43 companies presented during Demo Day this afternoon, which means they’re each given a bit less time. But the spirit is still the same. It’s a whirlwind introduction to some of the most promising tech startups around, and investors are so eager to attend that Y Combinator has had to start offering two Demo Days per session. The investors at today’s session (which is generally more desirable than day two) had something special in common: YC cofounder Paul Graham announced that all investors in attendance had previously invested in a Y Combinator company. We’ve already covered many of the companies that presented today (and most of the others were off the record). Here’s a handy list of links to our past coverage.
       
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| On Firefox 4 Day, Chrome 11 Hits Beta With The Ability To Talk To Your Computer! Posted: 22 Mar 2011 08:20 PM PDT
This afternoon, Google pushed Chrome 11 into beta. On the surface, users might see this as little more than the version which brings the new Chrome icon. But underneath, there are a couple awesome new things going on as well. One of the new features is added support for the HTML5 speech input API. This means that you’ll be able to talk to your computer and Chrome can interpret it. Those who have become accustomed to doing this on Android and other mobile devices will love this. More importantly, it’s an HTML5 spec that any developer will be able to take advantage of, not just Google. If you’re running Chrome 11, you can try it out here. It works very well. You speak, and the browser is able to transcribe what you say. No Flash, no plug-in. Yep. Awesome. The Chrome 11 beta also bring an initial take on GPU-accelerated 3D CSS, Google notes. This means that developers will also be able to create websites with 3D effects using CSS shortly. Again, very cool. As the version numbers have been rapidly increasing, Google says it doesn’t like touting new version bumps. But this one is pretty nifty. And it should go stable fairly soon as well.        
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| Netflix Shares Soar, Site Goes Down Posted: 22 Mar 2011 07:41 PM PDT
On top of this, and much to the chagrin of the video-on-demand watching public, Netflix went down for what seemed like a century. I subscribe to Netflix Instant, and as you can see from the message above, I was not allowed to watch my “programs” this evening when I wanted to. Not cool, Netflix. Not cool. Those trying to access Netflix mobile were also shut out from using the service. Some iPad users received an error message that read, “The requested URL /WiHome was not found on this server”. Ironically, this outage occurred a few hours after Netflix stock was upgraded to “outperform” thanks to some audacious Credit Suisse analyst, “who lifted the stock price target to $280″. Very audacious indeed. CNBC crazy man Jim Cramer agrees, saying today that he thinks Netflix is worth twice its current price. Netflix stock price hit an all-time high of $247.55 last month, and today rose 4.2 percent, to $221.88 in late trading. What’s more, the service now boasts over 20 million subscribers and a Sandvine study showed that the service has become the largest source of U.S. Internet traffic during peak Web-surfing hours. Yes, it seems that Netflix could break the Internet — that is, of course, if the Internet doesn’t break Netflix first. Naturally, the Web has been a-flutter with Netflix related chatter, with many of its subscribers taking to Twitter to express their frustration, like this Tweet from one Paula Simone:
Of course, one Twitter user sees a silver lining for the video hub, “Netflix’s current outage and the complaints about [it] in Twitter show how integral it’s become to entertainment for the tech generation”. Subscribers even created a Yahoo Answers thread, so you know it’s bad. Netflix publicly recognized the outage in its own Twitter post around 4p.m. PST, but has yet to explain the cause of the outage or project a timeline for when the service might be available again. Netflix spokesman Steven Swasey said he did not yet have any details on what caused the problem. Amazon, which has been trying to compete with Netflix in on-demand-video (and launched its instant video streaming service last month but has been forced to watch the big red video service deliver 61 percent of the Web’s total digital video. Amazon currently only offers about 5,000 titles, compared to Netflix’s 20,000+, so the eCommerce giant is likely very pleased with what transpired today, and may very well be massaging its hands and whispering “eexcellent” a la Mr. Burns. The outage today presumably just goes to show that Netflix will have to invest more in its data centers and servers to make sure the streaming option remains available, because users likely won’t stand for these kind of interruptions much longer. Pitchforks and torches are on the horizon. In the past, Netflix has offered credit to its subscribers following large-scale outages. It remains to be seen whether it remained down for long enough to call for such compensation, but from what I saw on Twitter, many were suffering serious abandonment issues. Some were even forced to exercise instead of watching on-demand video. I know. God help us all. Update: As of 7:30pm, my Netflix is back up, but no official word from the company as of yet. Update 2: We experienced some WordPress issues earlier today and, as a result, an early iteration of this post was published. Updates have been made and problems fixed. Specifically in regard to Netflix’s current stock price, which is $221.88, not $172.69. Also, according to my calculations, it is no longer Q3 2010, it is Q6 2015. Thank you for your comments. Update 3 & 4: Our sister site Engadget (via Crain’s) brought to my attention the sad fact that Showtime will not be renewing its license with Netflix this summer and, as a result, will not renew “streaming access to older seasons of currently airing shows like Dexter and Californication”. Damn shame. @NetflixHelps posted to Twitter at 9:30pm PST, saying that streaming is officially back online. Mobile device outages are still a work in progress, and no explanation as to the cause of the problem yet. I, personally, blame Hollywood.        
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| Sprint CEO Dan Hesse Warns Of The Danger Of Duopoly In Cell Phone Land Posted: 22 Mar 2011 07:29 PM PDT
AT&T’s $39 billion bid for T-Mobile this weekend wasn’t just a surprise to the general public. Sprint CEO Dan Hesse was also “shocked” to find out about it. “That one was not on the radar screen,” he tells CNBC’s Jim Cramer in an interview today (transcript). He didn’t think it would be possible because of antitrust issues, and he is definitely playing up those issues now. Hesse doesn’t like the deal one bit because it will make Sprint a distant third after AT&T and Verizon in the U.S. mobile market. (A combined AT&T-T-Mobile will have more than 100 million subscribers, as does Verizon already, while Sprint is half that size with 50 million). He’s already threatening to complain to Congress, and he’s practicing his arguments on TV. He warns Cramer of a duopoly situation:
AT&T thinks that the DOJ will look at share in local markets where it is not as concentrated, and also argues that the merger will be good for the country because the combined entity will spend billions of dollars to spread mobile broadband across the country. The numbers Hesse cites are in terms of mobile contracts. But even if you look at revenues, Hesse figures Verizon and a post-merger AT&T-T-Mobile, “if it’s approved by the DOJ and the SEC, you’re talking 74 percent of the market of all the wireless revenues in the US market being controlled by two companies.” And that is dangerous, he continues, because they are not just wireless carriers, they are “vertically integrated companies” with landlines and backhaul networks that other telecom companies like Sprint rely on. He worries that giving them more market power will just embolden them to squeeze Sprint even more on backhaul fees:
Is that a concession he’s fishing for in the form of a break on Sprint’s backhaul fees? Well played, sir.        
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| Judge Rejects Google Books Settlement: Make It Opt-In Posted: 22 Mar 2011 07:10 PM PDT
His fear of overstepping his judicial bounds is to be commended, but is he setting back the industry as well?        
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| Some Quick Unpaywalled Thoughts On Writing Behind A Paywall Posted: 22 Mar 2011 06:45 PM PDT
Starting March 28th, American visitors to NYTimes.com will only be able to access 20 stories a month, unless they’re willing to plunk down between $15-$35 every four weeks for unlimited access. Gallons of digital ink, mixed with no small number of tears, have been spilled over the news: whether it will result in greater or lesser profits for the Times, whether other publications are likely to follow suit, and whether any of that matters when paywalls are so easy to circumvent. I, on the other hand, have found it hard to care. Another grand publishing experiment: it’ll work, it won’t work – it’s really too early tell. And then came an email from the Times. Suddenly I cared. Now, I should clarify here that it wasn’t the New York Times that emailed me, but rather the Sunday Times (of London). But in this case the distinction is almost without a difference: like its colonial namesake, the Times (London) recently decided to hide its content behind a paywall. One difference though: forget 20 free articles a month, subscribers to the online edition of Britain’s paper of record get precisely nothing unless they’re willing to stump up least a pound ($1.70ish) for 24 hours access. Rupert Murdoch really hates the Internet. Still, the prospect of writing the piece - about the horrors of dating without drinking – for a paywalled publication shouldn’t have bothered me. My words would also appear in the print edition of the Sunday Times‘ Style supplement (circulation 1.3m) and I’d be paid a perfectly respectable fee for my work. As a professional writer, isn’t that all that matters? Well, kinda. In fact it wasn’t until the piece was published, this past Sunday, that the significance of the paywall really hit me. For the first time in my career, a piece I’d written for a major newspaper was unavailable to the majority of Internet users. I couldn’t easily link to it from my blog and was forced instead to come up with a kludgy solution which involved making a screen grab of the first two paragraphs, pasting it on my blog and then linking to what would – for most visitors – be a dead end. All of this, of course, is still way better than pre-Internet writers had it. Before the web, columnists’ opinions were about as permanent and shareable as fish wrapping. Unless a writer was high profile enough to have their words collected into a book, the only way for future readers to discover columns was to visit a library and pore over microfilm. And yet… today’s columnists – me included – have come to expect that every time they write a column it’ll be forever available to anyone with a web browser; permanently adding to the long tail of their (urk) “personal brand”. For that reason, as Arianna will testify – has testified – many writers have grown less interested in fat per-word fees, and more concerned about the reach and prestige of the publication for which they are writing. By erecting paywalls, the psychological economics change. If I write a column for the unpaywalled TechCrunch – or the Guardian – I know I’ll be paid a certain fee and my words will be available to certain millions of people. By contrast, if I write for the paywalled Times – either the London or New York strain – the fee isn’t that much better or worse, but the potential reach will be restricted. That gap in audience and visibility has to be filled by something else. And that ‘something’ is likely to be prestige. Does the inherent prestige of saying I write for either of the Timeses make up for what I lose by not writing the same thing for almost anywhere else? Frankly, yes: just being able to list the Times in my portfolio of work is a feather in my cap. A feather which, to screw the metaphor, can open doors to other lucrative commissions, talking head gigs and even book deals. For other publications, though, the answer isn’t so clear. If the San Francisco Chronicle or – I dunno – TechCrunch – went behind a paywall tomorrow, would they still be able to attract a high caliber of contributors, without hiking their fees? Would even a hack like me be as happy writing for them? I’d guess probably not. And in any case, fee hiking is not really something most publications can afford to do. The point is this: the establishment of a paywall at both the London and New York Times might be a dismal and embarrassing failure. But even if it’s a huge success, we should probably view that success less as a ghost of media yet to come, and more as one of the unique benefits of being a paper of record.        
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| MetaLab Launches Flow, A Beautiful Tool For Task Management Posted: 22 Mar 2011 06:26 PM PDT
The first thing you'll notice is that the app is beautiful (and I don't throw that word around lightly). This isn't a huge surprise given MetaLab's background, but the web app looks and feels a lot like something you'd expect from a polished native iPad application (in addition to the web app, there’s also a native iPhone app available right here). MetaLab founder and CEO Andrew Wilkinson says that Flow tries to address a common problem: there are plenty of services that offer task management and to-do lists, but people often have their tasks scattered across multiple services. You might have your work projects stored in one place, like Basecamp, and then your personal tasks ("buy groceries") or freelance work stored somewhere else. Unfortunately when you’re juggling multiple systems, things often fall through the cracks. Flow tries to solve this problem by making it easy to manage both personal and work-related tasks from one place, and by offering a streamlined interface that's relatively easy to use. After signing up (which takes about 30 seconds), the app will walk you through most of its core features. To create a task, you enter a name, a due date, any contacts you'd like to delegate the task to, and relevant tags (most of these fields are optional). Tasks can be grouped into projects, and team members can append attachments and comments to each task (in a nice touch, all comments are posted in real-time, so you don't have to refresh the page). The app also supports email — shoot a quick note to tasks@getflow.com, and you can add a task and delegate it to your colleagues. And you can check the current status on delegated tasks from a single dashboard. Above all, the app feels slick. It isn’t overly complex so it’s pretty easy to get started — though if you’re used to other robust task management tools, you might find some more advanced features are missing. If you’re looking for an alternative to GTD lists, Outlook, or Basecamp, it’s certainly worth checking out. The service will also be competing with Asana, the site founded by Facebook cofounder Dustin Moskovitz, which is currently in private beta. Flow offers a 14 day free trial, and then runs $10 a month or $99 a year. This isn’t MetaLab’s first product — they also did the invoice service Ballpark.         
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| Google Joins The Patent Madness With “Methods For Enticing Users To Access A Web Site” Posted: 22 Mar 2011 06:25 PM PDT
Yes, that’s right: among other things, they are claiming the method of creating a special logo and then providing special results if you click that logo. In their defense, the patent was filed for in 2001. Of course, that’s not much of a defense.        
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| Adobe Beats The Street; Revenue Up 20 Percent To $1.03 Billion Posted: 22 Mar 2011 05:56 PM PDT
Adobe's non-GAAP operating income was $400.1 million in the first quarter of fiscal 2011, compared to $289.3 million in the first quarter of fiscal 2010 and $384.0 million in the fourth quarter of fiscal 2010. Non-GAAP net income was $298.1 million for the first quarter of fiscal 2011, compared to $211.7 million from same quarter in the previous year and $285.7 million in the fourth quarter of fiscal 2010. Adobe CEO Shantanu Narayen said in a statement: Our record results in Q1 represent our sixth consecutive quarter of sequential revenue growth…Adobe's vision for transforming how the world is creating, measuring and delivering digital experiences is resonating with our customers, and our solutions are enabling us to target large addressable markets that are fueling our growth. In terms of financial targets, Adobe remained cautious due to the recent earthquake and tsunami in Japan. Says CFO Mark Garrett: Our hearts go out to everyone in Japan. Although Adobe has a very diversified business, Japan is our second largest country from a revenue perspective and March is typically our biggest revenue month of the year there due to fiscal year-end spending. Given the uncertain business environment in Japan, we are being prudent and have reduced our revenue expectation for our second quarter by $50 million — or roughly one-third of our original Q2 revenue expectation for Japan. Adobe is targeting revenue of $970 million to $1 billion for the second quarter of 2011.        
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“We spoke to investors in October but many people doubted that Yobongo would work. So we went and kept working on the product,” 
Flash sales giant 
App monetization and distribution platform 
Intel-owned 
When I first heard that Amazon was going to be making an app store for Android (
Twice a year, 
As you’re aware by now, earlier today Mozilla officially unveiled Firefox 4 to the world. At first glance, it’s a great update 
Federal Judge Denny Chin 
Unless you’ve been living behind a paywall for the past few weeks, you’ll know that there are big changes afoot at the online edition of the New York Times.
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