Friday, July 30, 2010

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CrunchUp Live: Ron Conway And Paul Graham Talk About Investing

Posted: 30 Jul 2010 09:14 AM PDT

Today at our Social Currency CrunchUp in Palo Alto, CA, Michael Arrington sat down with investors Ron Conway and Paul Graham. Obviously, these are two of the biggest names in early-stage investing (with SV Angel and Y Combinator, respectively).

Below find my live note (paraphrased):

MA: Ron Conway is the founder of SV Angel which is a $10 million angel fund.

RC: Over 500 companies I’ve invested in.

MA: Ron has some new data to share today that he hasn’t shared before. It will be great to hear that data. Paul Graham is the co-founder of Y Combinator. You guys have funded 212 companies?

PG: 208 companies. 72 companies a year now. First investment was in 2005.

MA: Yesterday was the Angel Conference. 8-10 super angels were speaking, then me. I presented an argument that perhaps Y Combinator and angel investors were destroying Silicon Valley. Ron wants to rebutt that argument. The “Dipshit” argument.

RC: Well referring to these entrepreneurs as dipshits is bullshit. It’s bullshit in my opinion. It takes a lot of guts and passion to start a company. There’s too many M&A in the $25 to $50 million dollar range. Some of them could have been building the next huge company — but they sell too soon. But that’s the entreprenuers decision to make. But the real fallacy is that it’s hurting Silicon Valley. Because the exits are going up it’s helping.

PG: Around 10% or a little more get series A round from VC funds. Anyone who gets that knows they can’t sell for $25 million.

MA: What about the other 90%?

PG: Well most go to angels, the 10% is just from actual VCs. So everything you said if false.

MA: Let’s talk about Mint. Ron you had a stake. Sold for $175 million to Intuit. There’s an argument they could have not sold and become the next Intuit. Some VCs wanted them to take money off the table instead. Same with Aarvark. Investors were begging them to keep going. Isn’t that a bad thing?

RC: Well they’re good examples, but they didn’t stop hiring after being bought. Their parent companies now have a lot more money. And it’s about scaling the idea — much easier now.

MA: There’s been a trend in deals. Facebook has 5 or 10 in the pipeline right now. A small amount of cash, and no stock — but the employees get stock. Some investors complain this is ridiculous — to fund a hiring process for Facebook.
RC: Well I invest in two of them Parakey and Hot Potato — well, if that happens (laughs). I think FriendFeed can been in this category too. Once again you have to respect the entrepreneurs that did all the work. The investors in these companies should consider this a cost of sales. Some will get sucked up — it’s a great thing for the entrepreneur. Getting your money back is not a bad deal. Money back is a win.
PG: But Ron invested in Facebook too — so it’s kind of a wash, right?

MA: There’s been a trend in deals. Facebook has 5 or 10 in the pipeline right now. A small amount of cash, and no stock — but the employees get stock. Some investors complain this is ridiculous — to fund a hiring process for Facebook.

PG: The way to make money isn’t on these small deals anyway.

MA: But if they get a tenth of percent in options — that’s a big deal.

PG: That sounds wrong.

MA: I”m never wrong.

RC: I have another ulterior motive. Founders of Hot Potato, FriendFeed, and Parakey won’t be at Facebook their whole lives. An entrepreneur is an entrepreneur.

MA: Let’s talk data. Paul you have enough companies now to predict if a startup will be successful. Ron, we talked about your recent audit with investments over 12 years. And you were suprrised. You thought it would be different.

RC: I’ve invested in 500 companies over 12 years — there’s a ton of data. People ask all the time what’s the success rate. 1/3 fail, 1/3 you get money back, 1/3 you get 2x to Googlex — I THOUGHT. That’s not accurate. If you go back to the bubble: 1997-2001 — the failure rate (out of business investors get nothing) was 77%. It was catastrophic. But we got Google, PayPal, etc. We were lucky. Others weren’t. That failure rate has plummeted to closer to 40% now. That’s post-Bubble from 2002 to today.

PG: But the failure rate is going to be much higher overall. This is just your portfolio.

RC: That’s right. Just our portfolio that we picked closely from. Repeat entrepreneurs have a 66% of being successful on startup #2.

MA: Does it matter if they were successful the first time?

RC: Well 70% of those companies had a successful first exit. Funny how that works.

RC: A high percentage had huge flame outs too. A third.

MA: What’s the average age of investment?

RC: I don’t know. It’s 25 and under.

PG: Ours is 26 — yours have to be older.

MA: What’s the ROI been?

RC: I haven’t shared that — probably never will. There’s more money coming in. Two more data points: entrepreneurs who start a company, regardless of the climate — since 2002 to today — we’ve had ups and down. Entrepreneurs have the same chance of success — Anytime is a good time to start a company.

MA: Who is the coolest entrepreneur you’ve ever met?

RC: I’m gonna dodge that bullet and say Shawn Fanning. He’s started 3 companies.

MA: Zuckerberg vs. Fanning in the startup pit. He takes him out at the knees right?

RC: Zuck has grown in maturity at an algorithmic scale. He’s a leader. You are a different person than you were 6 months ago. One other point that I think is interesting. People are saying ‘every 10 years we get a Google.” That’s not true. I invested in AskJeeves, then came Google. 4 years later was Facebook. 2 years later was Twitter. 2 years later was Foursquare, Zynga, etc. Great companies are being created at a much greater rate. Awesome news for entrepreneurs. Giant companies every 2 years.

MA: Paul your data has helped you pick entrepreneurs.

PG: We haven’t had enough exits. We noticed that 4 person teams have done badly. We’re not for sure why, but I have a theory. I think the problem is the kind of a person who starts a company out of 4 people does it wrong. Security in numbers.

Social Currency CrunchUp Live

Posted: 30 Jul 2010 09:06 AM PDT

Good morning from the Social Currency CrunchUp at the Stanford Campus, which today is the epicenter of the entire tech world. Welcome, and please enjoy the Ustream livestream above.

UK Body Clears Google Of Wi-Fi Wrongdoing

Posted: 30 Jul 2010 08:45 AM PDT

Google has been cleared of any wrongdoing relating to Wi-Fi snooping in the UK. Well, partially cleared. The country's Information Commissioner’s Office, whose job is to "uphold information rights in the public interest, promoting openness by public bodies and data privacy for individuals," has said that "it is unlikely that Google will have captured significant amounts of personal data" during its Street View mappings.

Stand Back There’s A Hurricane Coming Through: Google Adds Weather Data To Google Earth

Posted: 30 Jul 2010 07:17 AM PDT

Google has added weather data to its Google Earth application. As of now, the new feature only supports locations in North America and parts of Europe.

Dave McClure Files For $30 Million Venture Fund: 500 Startups

Posted: 30 Jul 2010 06:24 AM PDT

In January, we broke the news that prolific Silicon Valley angel investor Dave McClure was to set up its own venture capital fund.

Yesterday, the man filed for the fund with the SEC, providing us with more details (hat tip to FormDs.com). The name will be 500 Startups – McClure has long called himself the master of 500 hats – and the initial fund will amount to max. $30 million according to the filing.

McClure has turned to 99 Designs to come up with a logo for the fund (my favorite so far).

Here’s part of the brief for the logo design:

500 Startups is a new, edgy, risk taking seed fund which invests in early stage consumer internet companies.

Incubator/seed investment funds are popping up left and right and we’re looking to differentiate ourself through edgier design. Our founder likes to swear. In public. A lot. Think Ari Gold, but for tech companies and without a suit.

We are not — *not* — your typical fund composed of a bunch of stiff white guys sitting around a board table. We’re young. We’re diverse (Women! People of color!). Our investments are blustering balls of sleepless eagerness, And the markets we’re looking to dominate are murky and emergent.

Our values:

- "Fun at All Costs"… authentic, down-to-earth, *real*
- Creative, Smart, Innovative Environment
- Learn & Educate at Same Time
- Move Quickly, Take Risks, Make [Manageable] Mistakes

Sounds like McClure, alright.

For your reference: McClure has been investing in early stage startups for years.

He is a direct angel investor in a half dozen or more startups, including Mint, Simply Hired, Mashery, bit.ly, UserVoice, SlideShare, TeachStreet and others. And he has invested in dozens more through fbFund, a $10 million Facebook investment fund backed by Founders Fund and Accel, and FF Angel, a Founders Fund early stage fund.

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Dave McClure
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Why Apple Should Buy Infineon: To Own Mobile And Screw Intel

Posted: 30 Jul 2010 06:16 AM PDT

Apple's earnings and revenue growth in mobile have been awe-inspiring to witness. From zero presence three years ago, Apple is now the most profitable cell phone maker in the world.

Apple's success in this compressed period has helped it become an enormous buyer of components. In fact iSuppli projects that next year Apple will become the second-largest semiconductor buyer worldwide and may edge out HP in 2012 to become the world's largest.

Though this scale presents Apple with enormous bargaining power, it also begs the question: Should Apple own its own wireless chip development?

This week's rumors that Intel is about to acquire Infineon’s wireless chip business to make a run at the smartphone market bring this question front and center. Infineon is Apple's sole supplier for cellular basebands, the core chipsets used in mobile phones to handle voice and data communications.

Based on Apple's deep relationship with Infineon, and its famed secrecy around M&A, it is a pretty safe bet that Steve Jobs is analyzing the implications of a deal.

Vertical Integration is Back In Vogue:

We are re-entering a period where companies are integrating vertically instead of horizontally. This is happening at an incredible pace at companies like Cisco and Oracle. Even Microsoft recently hinted at creating its own chips, by obtaining an architectural license for ARM processors.

There are even precedents in the mobile phone market—both Nokia and Ericsson successfully managed cellular chip teams up until 2007 before spinning them off in a quest to move up the services stack.

The fact is that despite Apple's success with the A4, it trails nearly all other large hardware companies in chip development, including Cisco, Sony, and IBM.

Synergies Between Infineon and Apple are Significant:

In addition to having supplied every cellular baseband chip that Apple has ever bought, Infineon is one of only four companies with an ARM architectural license (Qualcomm, Marvell, and now Microsoft are the other three). This allows Infineon to extend ARM’s basic capabilities, and is clearly synergistic with the charter of PA Semi and Intrinsity, which were acquired by Apple for their respective ARM expertise.

But below the surface, the rationale for Apple owning wireless technology runs even deeper.

Because Apple primarily sells just one hardware version per year, it's infinitely easier for it to match devices with features. Nokia got rid of its chip business because it was impossible to produce different variants of chips for hundreds of handsets.

In this way, it's Apple's minimalistic approach to hardware that makes it the perfect candidate for vertical integration at the wireless level, as R&D can be narrowly focused. For example, if Apple's not going to release a 4G handset in 2011, they don't need to worry about cramming in pre-release versions of LTE / 3GPP. Or if they are strategically planning around short range wireless micro-payments, they can begin to integrate NFC technology now.

This edge could conceivably help Apple out-innovate larger competitors like Qualcomm who must produce more generic chips which cater to the needs of the broader market.

Lastly, since Infineon is only the fourth largest 3G baseband provider, there are fewer OEM customer relationships to phase out following the acquisition (LG and Nokia are its next biggest customers and wouldn't be happy buying from Apple, so would turn elsewhere for subsequent designs). But precisely because Infineon is a smaller player, this issue of buying into the supply-chain is entirely manageable.

Apple could also learn better practices in RF design from Infineon, clearly a weak spot per the recent antenna issues.

Financially, It Makes Sense:

Apple can do no wrong right now with Wall Street. That's why 2010 is an ideal time for "risky M&A" in the wireless space. With its stock at an all-time high and with over $40 billion in cash, Apple can afford to strategically spend capital on expanding into wireless chip development.

Infineon's wireless group did $1.2 billion in sales last year, and comparable transactions suggest a premium of about 1.5x sales, or a $2 billion dollar price-tag.

Let's compare this to the ridiculous rumor in April that Apple was going to buy ARM, the maker of semiconductor IP that goes into all of the world's cell phones. At that time I outlined why buying ARM for more than $5 billion made zero sense.  Clearly acquiring Infineon for around $2 billion absolutely does make sense.

And here's the real crux: If Infineon is acquired by Intel or Samsung, Apple won't ever be able to obtain wireless technology at this price again. Every other chip vendor supplying cellular basebands is enormous and diversified across industries (Qualcomm, ST-Ericsson, MediaTek, Broadcom).

Not Owning Wireless Is Dangerous For Apple:

Aside from the synergies and advantages to owning wireless chip development, you can bet Steve Jobs is thinking about the risks of not doing so.

In the future, handset OEMs will buy "package solutions", consisting of application processors (e.g. Apple’s A4, which give mobile phones computing power for handling software and applications), integrated connectivity chipsets (GPS, Wi-Fi, FM, Bluetooth, NFC), and multifunction radios—all from one vendor. Qualcomm is nearly there today, and Intel wants to combine Infineon with its Atom processors to get there.

This poses a threat to Apple, since Qualcomm and Intel will start to integrate portions of digital interface logic into their application processors in proprietary ways in an effort to promote bundled solutions. This will marginalize Apple's ability to marry merchant wireless chipsets with subsequent variations of its A4 application processor.

And it's why vertically integrating "half-way" is a dangerous journey for Apple as mobile innovation accelerates and integration levels skyrocket. The truth is Apple is a different company today than before it entered the mobile world.  Picking up Infineon would give Apple all the necessary pieces listed above to completely control its future as a mobile device company.

And if Apple misses out, it will likely never get another chance to acquire the wireless technology necessary to do so because the entire mobile component value-chain is consolidating and the remaining players are giants.

Which is exactly why Intel is rumored to be salivating so much at the prospect of snapping up Infineon for itself.  Intel has big ambitions in mobile and understands why it can't let this one get away.  The only real question is whether Apple wants to get into a bidding war with Intel.

_________________________

Contributor Steve Cheney is an entrepreneur and formerly an engineer & programmer specializing in web and mobile technologies.

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Apple
Infineon
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China’s Focus Media Sells Internet Division Allyes To Silver Lake For $124 Million

Posted: 30 Jul 2010 05:56 AM PDT

Focus Media, one of China’s leading digital media groups, this morning announced that it is selling a 62% indirect equity ownership of its Internet division, Allyes, to US-based private investment firm Silver Lake.

Under the terms of the agreement, Silver Lake will pay $124 million to Focus Media, in exchange for the equity ownership of Allyes. Focus Media had acquired the internet advertising service company, reportedly the largest in China, back in February 2007.

Certain remaining shareholders of Allyes also agree to sell their equity ownership in Allyes to Silver Lake, so that in time the investment firm will own a controlling stake in Allyes. The transaction is expected to close soon, subject to customary closing conditions.

Established in 1998, Allyes is said to be the largest online media service provider in China, offering a suite of interactive marketing solutions. Allyes markets a proprietary suite called AdForward,which includes online ad-publishing, creative production, tracking, targeting and performance analysis products.

In December 2008, Google was rumored to be eying Allyes as well, after an acquisition deal with Microsoft fell through, but the deal never materialized.

Silver Lake’s investment portfolio includes companies like Skype, Avaya and IPC.

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Allyes
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100,000 Android Applications Submitted To Date, AndroLib Claims

Posted: 30 Jul 2010 05:07 AM PDT

Despite earlier reports to the contrary, Android Market watcher AndroLib says there aren’t 100,000 applications available in the store – yet. There have, however, 100,000 apps been submitted to Android Market since its public debut, the site wagered this morning, up from approximately 5,000 in June 2009.

The Androlib directory covers multiple markets, including international ones, so not all apps and games are available in the United States, necessarily. Not all markets are counted, even, so AndroLib claims it may potentially undercount the number of apps, although it’s safe to say there’s somewhat of an error margin either way as with every data aggregation.

According to AndroLib, an estimated 18,000 apps have been removed or otherwise unpublished from Android Market, so the current number of active apps currently available in Android Market is closer to 83,300 today. That’s more in line with the number Google itself shared in its latest earnings call, about two weeks ago (more than 70,000 in total).

How long before the number of active Android apps hits 100,000?

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Bloomberg: No Facebook IPO Before 2012, Probably

Posted: 30 Jul 2010 03:49 AM PDT

Bloomberg reports that Facebook is to – probably – put off an eventual IPO until at least 2012, according to multiple people familiar with the matter.

Waiting at least another year (and a half, approximately, to be clear) would reportedly give CEO Mark Zuckerberg more time to follow through on his vision without too much public scrutiny and the implications thereof, attract more users and developers, book more sales and work out other issues, such as the user privacy kerfuffle and legal matters.

All this talk about Facebook going public at some time reminds me of similar chatter that has surrounded professional social networking company LinkedIn for years. In both cases, founders and management have repeatedly stated they’ll only IPO when the time is right, and repeatedly expressed that gaining more users and ramping up revenues are the current focus.

And in both cases, media outlets continue to speculate about when they’ll go public anyway.

Don’t get me wrong, both are bound to IPO at some point, and they’ll be high-profile and plenty impactful events. But my assumption is that for both Facebook and LinkedIn, the people who are to make said decision really do want to wait for when the time is right, and they most probably have clear milestones in mind to determine when that is.

It’s hard to predict the future, so it’s near impossible to determine when exactly those milestones will be met and everything falls into place, provided one would even know what the ideal situation in the minds of the decision makers is. Investors and other equity holders, e.g. employees, obviously want to cash in at some point, and secondary markets aren’t going to keep appeasing them in the long run. So yes, there’s going to be pressure, and increasingly so.

But who knows what will happen between now and, say, the next three years? Even if Bloomberg’s sources are extremely familiar with Zuckerberg’s thinking and plans, they too don’t know how quickly Facebook will grow, or what other events might on the other hand make Facebook want to delay an eventual IPO until 2013 or later, even.

It’s fun to speculate, but these reports need to taken at face value as such.

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Apple Quietly Settles Patent Lawsuit, Promptly Gets Hit With Another One

Posted: 30 Jul 2010 03:05 AM PDT

Ah, the good ol’ patent minefield.

According to Law360, a paywall-shielded newswire for lawyers, Apple yesterday settled a patent infringement lawsuit with patent troll Minerva Industries, whose website is apparently currently, ahem, ‘temporarily closed under repair’.

This morning, Apple was hit with another patent infringement suit, brought on by Israeli technology holding Emblaze, which alleges the Cupertino company has refused to license its media streaming technology at issue.

Here’s a quick rundown for both cases:

Minerva Industries

Minerva Industries accused Apple of infringing its patent for mobile media technology, filing suit against the iPhone maker back in January 2008, mere hours after being granted U.S. Patent Number 7,321,783.

The patent covers "a mobile entertainment and communication device in a palm-held size, housing has a cellular or satellite telephone capable of wireless communication with the Internet and one or more replaceable memory card sockets for … recording data directly from the Internet and, in particular, musical performances that then can be selectively reproduced by the device for the enjoyment of the user," according to the patent's abstract.

It also describes a camera and microphone that can be used to record images and sound onto a phone.

Last Tuesday, Apple and Minerva filed a joint motion to dismiss all claims and counterclaims, stipulating that each party would bear its own costs and attorneys’ fees. On Wednesday, Magistrate Judge Charles Everingham of the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Texas promptly dismissed the infringement lawsuit with prejudice after receiving the alert.

Minerva Industries had earlier settled lawsuits with HP, Research In Motion, Sony Ericsson, Motorola, Nokia, Alltel, Boost Mobile, Qwest Wireless, Sprint Nextel and Verizon Communications. As I said earlier, there’s a patent troll at work here.

Emblaze Group

Ra’anana, Israel-based Emblaze announced on Thursday that it was suing Apple, alleging that the company had ripped off its media streaming patent and repeatedly refused to license the technology it claims to have invented and pioneered in the late nineties.

Emblaze says it warned Apple in December 2009 that the iPhone maker’s recently announced HTTP live streaming application, used on the iPhone, the iPod touch, Mac OS X and the iPad, would infringe the plaintiff’s patent for streaming technology.

The patent-in-suit, U.S. Patent Number 6,389,473 titled “Network media streaming,” covers “a method for real-time broadcasting from a transmitting computer to one or more client computers over a network”.

Emblaze’s streaming technology makes it possible to send live or prerecorded audio and video to other devices without the use of servers dedicated to streaming, the company said. The technology minimizes data traffic and provides “reliable” streaming through firewalls, it added.

The company in February also issued a warning to Microsoft, asserting that its IIS Smooth Streaming system unlawfully incorporates Emblaze's patented technology.

(Image via Flickr user opensourceway – original)

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It’s Hard To Tell If Voyurl Or Their Ads Are Creepier

Posted: 30 Jul 2010 01:06 AM PDT

A few weeks ago, we were alerted to a new site currently in stealth mode called Voyurl. As the name implies, the idea behind it is to make it so you can see what other people are looking at on the web (and to make your clickstream seen). It sounds creepy as hell. It’s like Blippy but with more potential porn. I love it.

But when I tried to sign up for the service, they sent me a note back that it wasn’t quite ready yet and that they were cranking on the beta. Fine, that happens from time to time. I can be patient. But I’m not sure I can quietly wait any longer when the site starts running ads like this.

As freshly unemployed angel investor Joshua Schachter pointed out this evening, Voyurl has one hell of a way to get potential investors’ attention: buy Google ads targeted at them. “Well, that’s one way to get a potential investor’s attention. I’m either impressed or creeped out,” Schachter notes.

Voyurl’s ad reads: Hi Joshua. We’re VOYURL. We Love Delicious. And We’d Love to Talk!

Well, it definitely worked. He saw the ad — though it’s not clear if he wants to talk after seeing it.

I, for one, am even more intrigued now. The service is giving me some spiel about how it’s all about open data. That’s nice, but what I find really interesting is the concept of people showing off every website they’re browsing at all times — in realtime. From their landing page:

A little creeped out? That's cool. But don't worry, it's ok to look. Besides, you can turn off voyurl at any time, for those, ahem, unmentionable sites. Plus, you can set your own filters. See, it's not that scary.

Again, Blippy for web browsing.

Ads targeted at angel investors aside, they’re actually trying to raise money through Kickstarter. While would-be Facebook rival Diaspora raised some $200,000 that way, Voyurl only has about $1,300 so far. But they still have 75 days to go to reach their $10,000 goal — so help them out if this idea interests you.

Voyurl co-founder Adam Leibsohn managed to get profiled a couple years ago in the New York Times. Here’s what they wrote:

Adam Leibsohn, a 27-year-old communications strategist who makes roughly $60,000 a year and pays $1,650 a month for his own apartment in the East Village, says the trick to squeaking by in the city is to swear off impulse purchases and credit cards. He cooks for himself, pirates wireless Internet access and buys electronics from Craigslist or eBay. If he wants new clothes, he unloads old ones first at the Salvation Army, keeping the receipt for his taxes. "It's kind of a spartan lifestyle," he says. "I eat a lot of street meat for lunch."

Again, I keep getting more intrigued. Is Voyurl going to be the next big thing, or a haven for online predators? I can’t wait to find out.

As a sidenote, this is the second time Schachter has found oddly targeted ads around his name. The last time, it was Yahoo (the company he quit in 2008 after selling Delicious to them) who was trying to find new employees on Google off of searches for his name. Classy.

Schachter apparently loves Googling himself. As we all do. Soon, we’ll be able to prove it on Voyurl.

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The New Kindle, And Ebooks Generally: My Questions Answered [Video]

Posted: 29 Jul 2010 10:57 PM PDT

All this talk about the new Kindle reminded me that I still have some questions about Amazon’s e-reader specifically, and ebooks generally. Why do people persist in comparing the Kindle to the iPad (something I first asked months ago); what is the relationship between hardback book sales and ebook sales (ditto); if e-readers keep getting more accessible, is the end of the paper book nigh? Questions like that.

In the hope of finally getting some answers, I hopped on to Skype with CrunchGear‘s Devin Coldewey and interviewed him until he begged for mercy. Video below.

It’s As If The iPhone 4 Was Created For DailyBooth; Their App Will Prove It

Posted: 29 Jul 2010 09:25 PM PDT

Even if not everyone will admit it, everyone likes taking pictures of themselves. I suspect it’s the not-so-secret reason why users are addicted to DailyBooth — the service which asks you to take pictures of yourself (or something you care about) to document your life. With that in mind, it’s almost as if the iPhone 4, with its front-facing camera, was built for such a service. And now the two can consummate that match made in heaven.

DailyBooth’s first iPhone app has just been approved by Apple and is now in the App Store. It’s pretty basic — but that’s all it needs to be. You load it up and take a picture of yourself. And the app is smart enough to load the front-facing camera by default (assuming you have the iPhone 4 — but it can work with any iPhone running iOS 4). Yeah, this is going to be huge for DailyBooth.

As you might expect, the app also offers you a stream of the pictures from all the people you follow on the service. From here you can picture comment or text comment with one click. You can also see all your replies.

The one caveat about the app is that you have to already have a DailyBooth account to use it. That’s not a huge deal, but it’s something they hope to fix soon with a future release. For now, simply head to DailyBooth’s website to sign up for an account, then sign-in with the app.

And do it soon, because everyone you know with an iPhone is probably going to be using this app shortly, I imagine. As we noted when we first covered the company a year ago, the DailyBooth community is very impressive. The picture I just published just a few minutes ago already has about 20 comments — and most of these users don’t actually follow me. It’s fun — and I think it’s exactly the type of app Apple had in mind for the iPhone 4′s front-facing camera.

You can find the DailyBooth app, called appropriately, DailyBoothApp, here in the App Store. It’s a free download.

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iPhone 4
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Groupon And The Problem With The Daily Deal Religion [Video]

Posted: 29 Jul 2010 05:51 PM PDT


With the debut of Groupon personalization, I have little doubt that the daily deal site will double the number of deals (and double its revenue run rate) in just a few months.

According to CEO Andrew Mason, the service is churning out 75,000 transactions per day. Through personalization, Groupon will be able to offer 20, 30 or more deals per city per day. Assuming the current growth rate in subscribers — in the last four months the site has more than doubled to 12 million registered users— 2x is likely a prudish estimate.

It’s hard to fault a company that is making money hand over fist; however, as a user, I do have one piece of advice: loosen that death grip on the daily deal mantra.

According to Mason, the personalization system will give a user one deal a day based on their preferences, their purchase history and their profile. Although there will be several, simultaneous deals in any given area, a user will only be able to access one main deal from his/her account. However, if the user finds a link to a different deal from a friend, a blog, or a daily deal aggregator, that link can be used by anyone. (In the early stage of the personalization program, Mason says, Groupon users may see multiple deals but eventually Groupon will turn that off.)

Thus, all the local deals are theoretically open to every subscriber but Groupon is playing air traffic controller in order to maximize the number of deals they can offer (aka cha-ching) and to ensure a nice distribution of users for their advertisers.  It’s easy understand Mason’s rationale here, at just one deal a day their hands were somewhat tied, unable to fully absorb the number of interested advertisers. In turn, Groupon’s limited inventory has directly benefited the “army of clones,” who have swooped in and picked up impatient retailers.

“We believe in the deal a day model, but we were running into a problem where the demand for merchants to be featured has been absolutely overwhelming,” Mason says. “We have something like 35,000 businesses lined up that want to be featured, 97% of the businesses that we feature want to be featured again, so the problem is only getting worse. And what it means is for every business we’re featuring, we have to turn away 7.” (See video above.)

Understandably, Groupon is trying to optimize the bottom line and enhance the consumer experience with personalized deals, but this structure also potentially creates a frustrating user experience. Under this system, a user knows that there could be 20, 30 deals floating around but s/he can only automatically access one. Thus, if a user doesn’t want their preselected deal of the day, she will have to scour the web and ping friends in a cyber goose chase. Of course, this search will be eased by the plethora of daily deal aggregators— but that doesn’t seem like an ideal solution for Groupon either. Why encourage users to jump off your website and spend more time on independent aggregators, where their wallets will be exposed to competitors’ deals.

From the launch of Groupon, Mason has adamantly defended the model of one deal a day, a structure that has obviously served his company well (and its army of clones) and catapulted Groupon to a billion-dollar-plus valuation. However, I believe the massive demand in the market indicates that there’s some flexibility in the business model. The data suggests that consumers can stomach several deals a day— maybe not hundreds— but certainly more than one.  From the vantage point of a user, I would like to see Groupon send just one personalized deal a day to my inbox because I think there is real value in that spotlight. However, on Groupon’s website, I also want the option to log-in and access all (or at least several) of my local deals in one simple repository, perhaps ranked according to my tastes and profile.

Groupon, consider this my 700-word comment card. However, regardless of how you tackle the challenge of personalization, I get the feeling you’ll probably do just fine.

Mason dropped by TechCrunch TV on Wednesday and we got a chance to discuss the new personalization campaign (above) and Groupon’s early days. In the second video (below), he discusses the key moment when Groupon kicked into second gear.

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Kindle iPhone/iPad App Now Smarter With A Dictionary, Wikipedia, And Google

Posted: 29 Jul 2010 05:40 PM PDT

Despite their clear commitment to the hardware version of the Kindle, Amazon continues to make the Kindle apps that run on the iPad and iPhone better. Today, version 2.2 of the app brings a full dictionary with it. This matches the functionality of Apple’s own iBooks app, but the Kindle implementation is even a little better.

Now in the Kindle app when you highlight a word, a definition will automatically appears at the bottom of the screen. And that’s not all — there you’ll also find links to further investigate the word on Google or Wikipedia. Though this dumps you out of the app and into the iPhone/iPad web browser, it’s a pretty nice feature.

The feature also includes a link for the “Full Definition” of the word. Clicking on this will take you to the new Oxford American Dictionary that is automatically downloaded with this 2.2 version of the app. This dictionary contains some 250,000 entries, Amazon says.

As I said, this dictionary functionality matches that of Apple’s own iBooks app. But those definitions are an extra click away (you highlight a word then select “Dictionary” which bring up the definition in a pop-up).

The latest iPad version of the Kindle app also allows you to search inside a book for the first time. This too matches iBooks functionality. (The in-book search for the iPhone has also been improved with 2.2.)

Other small improvements include better line spacing on the iPad version, and fast-app switching for iOS 4 devices.

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Google Confirms: We’re Not Currently Blocked In China

Posted: 29 Jul 2010 05:01 PM PDT

We’ve just received official word from Google confirming that they are not currently blocked in China and that a server issue was most likely the cause of their dashboard misread. One month ago, Google put up their watered-down engine to avoid being shut down completely in Mainland China. Because the Chinese government did not like the auto redirect to Google Hong Kong previously in place, the new degraded version at the center of all today’s confusion simply links to Google Hong Kong.

From Google, in an email today:

Because of the way we measure accessibility in China, it’s possible that our machines could overestimate the level of blockage. That seems to be what happened last night when there was a relatively small blockage. It appears now that users in China are accessing our properties normally.

Please also note that the dashboard is not a real time tool.

The email also suggests that an error in measuring what turned out to be a small amount of blockage was responsible for the false alarm. The fact that the dashboard does not update in realtime is probably what lead to today’s mixed reports as to whether or not the service was working. When asked what specific issue caused the blockage, Google responded that they had nothing more to add.

Image: Bramus!

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Google Opens Places API With Initial Focus On Check-In Apps

Posted: 29 Jul 2010 04:52 PM PDT

At Google I/O in May, the search giant indicated that they were about to take their commitment to location to the next level. Sure, Latitude had been around for a while, but everyone knew that Google could do more in the space. The announcement of some new location APIs seemed to a big part of the solution. And now comes the fun part.

Today on their Geo blog, Google is announcing that they’re beginning to open the Places API for business. The first developers getting access? Those working on check-in services.

Here’s what Google has to say:

We are going to focus initially on check-in applications. These are the applications that we feel the API currently caters to well, and we are excited to work with developers building these applications to understand their requirements, and ensure that we are offering them the best possible experience.

So does this mean the end of Foursquare, Gowalla, Loopt, and all the rest? Well, no. All this means is that it should be a lot easier for startups to build the next versions of those types of services. Of course, if you listen to Foursquare talk about it, they’ll say they’re already moving on to bigger and better things beyond simply the check-in.

Google is pointing those who wish to get access to this API to fill out this application form found here. Again, the focus at first will be on check-in apps, but they promise to expand the API to other uses once they feel it is up to speed.

They are also accepting check-in apps for this API built in conjunction with the Buzz API as well.

Just prior to I/O, Latitude manager Steve Lee hinted that some sort of check-in functionality was likely in the future for the service. At I/O, the Latitude API made it possible for others to build such functionality. But this new Places API will allow for location services built on top of Google’s data but independent of Latitude.

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Panasonic Buying Out Solar Tech and Rechargeable Battery Makers

Posted: 29 Jul 2010 04:49 PM PDT

Panasonic announced today that it will buy out two of its subsidiaries, Sanyo and Panasonic Electric Works, for $9.4 billion.

Sanyo is the largest lithium-ion rechargeable battery producer and 11th-largest solar cell producer in the world with a quickly-growing solar panel manufacturing arm according to company statements.

Panasonic Electric Works makes a wide range of electrical products including temperature, lighting and motion sensors and controls.

Last year, Panasonic acquired a 50.27% stake in Sanyo for $4.4 billion.

The pair of acquisitions should help the company best known for its Panasonic plasma TV, camera and other consumer electronics expand into energy technology.

Panasonic aims to become the “No. 1 green innovation company in the electronics industry” by 2018.

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$41,000 For The Chevy Volt? Sounds Right To Me.

Posted: 29 Jul 2010 04:48 PM PDT

I honestly laid in bed last night thinking about the Chevy Volt’s $41k price tag. Seriously. When I got the press release shortly before it crossed the wire yesterday, the price seemed about right for a first-gen Voltec vehicle. The $350 lease program looked even better. I was already totally sold on the Volt after driving an early mule over a year ago and the price tag didn’t even bother me one bit. It’s not like I planned on buying one, but I could see where GM was coming from.

Then my post went up at 12:00 pm yesterday and quickly filled with commentors railing against the $41,000 price tag. That was followed by nearly every national news program claiming the Volt’s price invokes a bit of sticker shock. I thought, “Did these people really think the Volt was going to be the same price as a Malibu?” Apparently.

But then Rush Limbaugh opened-up on the Volt today and two things became clear. One, many people including Rush (and previously Letterman) do not fundamentally understand the Volt’s capabilities. I believe most consumers expected the Volt to be a mass-market vehicle and an instant hit in a sort of iPhone way. Yeah, that’s just not how the auto industry works.

Users Say Google Is Not Blocked In China, Google Says Otherwise

Posted: 29 Jul 2010 04:17 PM PDT

According to Google’s Mainland China service availability page it looks like Google Web Search, Google Images and Google News are down in China, again. In fact, if you parse the chart it looks like just about the only thing still up is Gmail.

However reports on Twitter say otherwise, as many users claim that the service is working just fine. We also tested Google.com.cn on Webpulse and received a big thumbs up in terms of availability.

Google search was similarly blocked in China last January, when the search giant pulled out of the country reportedly over its censorship policy. The service was reinstated earlier his month and it appeared that the relationship between the two behemoths had been mended.

According to Reuters, a Google spokesperson had no information as to whether the Chinese government or a third party was responsible for the block, perhaps because there actually is isn’t one ?

Chad Catacchio over at The Next Web writes that a server crash might actually responsible for the false alarm. Twitter user @nuibi backs up this theory.

We have contacted Google for official comment and will keep you posted if we have updates.

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Google CEO Announces Zynga Partnership

Posted: 29 Jul 2010 03:28 PM PDT

When asked about Google’s partnership with Zynga, Mr. Schmidt said “we haven’t announced it” but “you can expect a partnership with Zynga” in the future. Google’s partnership with Zynga was reported earlier by the blog TechCrunch.

That sure sounds like an announcement to me, buried 13 paragraphs deep in an article summarizing an interview with Google CEO Eric Schmidt with the Wall Street Journal. Or an announcement of an announcement. Or perhaps an announcement of an expectation of an announcement.

We broke the news about Google’s investment in Zynga and negotiations around a Zynga partnership with a new Google Games property earlier this month. Neither company has confirmed the news before now. In fact, neither company will discuss it with us at all, even to not comment.

The story was accurate, we’re sure of that. But this is the first official on the record confirmation from either company.

Anyway, expect Google Games to be announced sometime this year. And Zynga will be one of the main game engines populating it. And eventually one of these companies will admit that Google invested in Zynga, too.

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Peixe Urbano Founder: “Perhaps Groupon Thought It Was Fine to Arrive in Brazil With Fake Deals” [Video]

Posted: 29 Jul 2010 03:26 PM PDT

Peixe Urbano means, in Portuguese, “Urban Fish”. That’s a fun fact.

Here are a few more: Peixe Urbano is a Rio-based Groupon clone that’s doing very nicely indeed by tailoring its service precisely to a Brazilian audience. The site offers 30 deals a week, across multiple cities. According to the company’s own numbers, they’re averaging a little over 1000 purchases per deal: 30,000 sales a week. Peixe Urbano takes 50% commission on every sale. The site’s popularity is growing fast amongst traders too: 300 companies a day apply to have their deals sold through Peixe Urbano.

Brazil is one of the more interesting emerging markets: the number of venture capital firms there is growing, as is the number of interesting tech startups emerging. It was for those reasons (and more) that Sarah chose to visit the country as part of the research for her forthcoming book on entrepreneurship in emerging markets. And it was for those reasons that we were keen to invite Peixe Urbano founder Julio Vasconcellos to be this week’s guest on Too Long; Didn’t Watch.

We asked Julio about the startup climate in Brazil and demanded that he respond to those who say the country is little more than an incubator for scammers and copycats.Video below.

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Jeff Bezos Discusses The Future Of The Kindle With Charlie Rose (Videos)

Posted: 29 Jul 2010 03:14 PM PDT


Last night, Amazon unveiled the latest edition of the Kindle, which sports a better screen, slimmer profile, and — most important — a relatively affordable $139 pricetag for a Wifi only version (the 3G version still goes for $189). To mark the occasion, Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos made an appearance on the Charlie Rose show, where he discussed the future of the E-book, and why there’s plenty of room for the Kindle in a world where tablet PCs like the iPad are on the rise. You can watch the full episode right here, and the show has graciously provided us with the clips and transcripts below.

The overarching theme of the conversation is that Bezos wants the Kindle to remain a device that’s dedicated to reading, especially long-form reading. Bezos explains that with the Kindle, Amazon isn’t looking to “create an experience” —  they want the author to create the experience. This, he believes, makes the Kindle a differentiated device from the iPad and slew of tablets that will be hitting the market by the end of the year. Because unlike other devices, he says, the Kindle’s lack of glare and other design choices help it disappear from the reader’s mind as they get wrapped up in a new book:

“I would say something though like we're trying to get out of the way.  We're not trying to create an experience.  We want the author to create the experience.  You know, if you're going to read Nabokov or Hemmingway or we want us creating the experience for.  That's not our job.  Our job is to provide the convenience.  That you can get books in 60 seconds, that you can carry your whole library with you so that you don't get hand strain, so the device doesn't get hot in your hands, so that it doesn't cause eye strain, so that the battery life lasts a month, so you never get battery anxiety..

…

Now people say why don't you add a touch screen?  Well, the reason we don't want a touch screen is if we're going down that decision path, we say, okay, a touch screen and the current technology for touch screens — it's called capacitive touch — it's a layer that goes on top of that display.
 It adds glare.  The first thing that you do when you add a touch display is that you add a little extra layer of glass or plastic and a little bit of glare.  So it's very easy from an engineering point of view to add a touch screen but it's not the right thing if you're making no compromises and that's our point of view on this.  We want a device that's for uncompromised reading and guess what?  Our approach is working.”

Bezos claims that Amazon is excited about the iPad and other tablet computers, because they have robust web browsers and lead people to shop on Amazon.com more (Google’s Eric Schmidt has given similar responses when asked about Apple’s products).  Bezos also gives some insight as to why Amazon is so secretive about how many Kindle devices it’s sold, explaining that it would help competitors:

I'll tell you why we are.  We are secretive about the number because we think it's competitively useful.  There are other people who, if they're going to start planning their manufacturing lines and their supply chains, it's a helpful data point for them to know how many of these we're selling.  When we just say millions, that's not a good data point for them.

At one point in the interview, shown in the clip below, Rose asks Bezos to describe his reaction to the iPhone 4′s so-called Antennagate. Bezos initially attempts to swerve around the question, but Rose finally gets him to admit that he “found it a little surprising…. I think it could have been found in testing.” Bezos goes on to say that he doesn’t  believe it will harm Apple in the long term.

So is Bezos just spouting spin, or is the Kindle really going to be able to hold its own against the iPad and other tablets?  My hunch — and I know this will rub some technophiles the wrong way — is that Bezos is spot on. In my experience, reading on the Kindle beats the iPad hands down. This isn’t to say that reading on the iPad is unenjoyable (I do it on the bus all the time) but I find it harder to really get lost in a book for a few hours at a time when I’m using my iPad. I’ve previously written about the new types of interactive, hybrid media the iPad and its ilk are poised to deliver.  But there’s still plenty of room for good, old-fashioned novels, which the Kindle excels at (though I still prefer the real thing).

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Vlado Herman Steps Up As New Yelp CFO

Posted: 29 Jul 2010 02:39 PM PDT

Former Yelp VP of Finance/Administration Vlado Herman takes a step up the ladder and becomes, as of today, Yelp’s Chief Financial Officer.  The Yelp Blog introduces his promotion with an adorable poem:

Faster than BP's falling share price.
More powerful than a bull market on steroids.
Able to leap across the Atlantic in a single bound.

Look! Up in the sky!

It’s a bird. It’s a plane. It’s our new CFO!


Founded by former PayPal employees Jeremy Stoppelman and Russel Simmons in 2004, Yelp has recently tried to cash in on the GroupOn craze by offering local deals, while Google is attempting to take the wind out of Yelp’s sails with its new Places application.

Photo: Yelp Blog

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Copia Plans Low-Cost 7″ And 10″ Tablets As Well As E-Ink Devices

Posted: 29 Jul 2010 02:31 PM PDT


Just a couple hours ago, news broke of the $99 Copia Wave5 e-reader, or tablet, or whatever you want to call a 5″ LCD-based device focused on reading. That isn’t the extent of the lineup, however: Copia has two more LCD-based tablets coming out soon, as well as two E-ink-based readers with Kindle-esque designs.

As they’ve said since their CES debut, the draw is supposed to be their unique social platform, which allows a community of readers to exchange reviews, recommendations, and so on — and although it will start as an exclusive to Copia-branded devices, they’re trying to go OEM and make the Copia service the premier social layer for e-books.

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