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Posted: 21 Sep 2011 09:28 AM PDT
 Just ahead of the launch of the touted Facebook music service, Internet radio service Pandora has unveiled a slick new HTML5 website and removed the cap on how much music free users can stream each month.“In late 2010 we started with a clean sheet of paper, challenging ourselves to create a new Internet radio experience that was fast, social and easy while still being familiar to the tens of millions of people that listen to Pandora each month,” Pandora CTO Tom Conrad wrote in a blog post. “The result is ‘New Pandora’.” Streaming music services have been making quite a few headlines as of late with the hyped U.S. launch of Spotify, the aforementioned Facebook service and MOG and Rdio offering free versions of their services. With such a crowded field, Pandora has decided to reinvent its site and the way users experience music in hopes of keeping people coming back. The new HTML5 version of Pandora looks much cleaner and more modern than its old implementation. Look at the above photo and you can see the easy-to-access play controls on top and colorful high-res album art in the center. One click on the left-hand column changes your artist, song or genre-created radio station. Another helpful feature shows lyrics below the song information. There’s also new social features included in the redesign that help with music discovery. Users now have enhanced profiles and access to a music feed that lets you see what your friends and like-minded members are listening to. Stations will also now have their own URLs, which makes the station easier to share on social networks. Along with the redesign, Pandora has thankfully removed the 40-hour streaming cap that used to plague all non-paid users. Still, to get the most out of the service, users have to pay for a premium Pandora One account. A premium account costs $36 a year and removes advertising and lets users listen to higher-quality audio. What do you think of the new Pandora layout and site changes? Filed under: media, VentureBeat         This posting includes an audio/video/photo media file: Download Now |
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Posted: 21 Sep 2011 09:20 AM PDT
 With set-top boxes quickly becoming a preferred way for people to watch TV shows and movies, you’d think there would be better solutions for advertisers.New startup adRise agrees, which is why its launching a new advertising platform today for set-top boxes and other connected devices (Internet-connected TVs, video applications for tablets, etc.). AdRise’s ad platform offers clients both ad targeting and analytics that aim to provide as much value as traditional Neilsen rating, according to the company. The ads on its platform can also be tracked across a number of different connected devices, including Google TV, Boxee, Roku and Samsung connected televisions. “TV advertising is far more effective than online advertising because its more engaging, but it isn’t as measurable and accountable,” said adRise founder and CEO Farhad Massoudi. “What adRise is trying to do is combine the best of both worlds by delivering a TV ad experience on a full screen with all the interactivity and measuring ability of online ads.” AdRise’s clients include Anime TV and Classical TV — both of which have channels on the Roku set-top box. Founded in December 2010, the San Francisco-based startup currently has three total employees. The company has received a single, undisclosed round of angel funding. Filed under: cloud, media, VentureBeat         This posting includes an audio/video/photo media file: Download Now |
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Posted: 21 Sep 2011 09:08 AM PDT
 Hewlett-Packard shares are rising this morning on the possibility that former eBay chief executive Meg Whitman is being considered by HP directors as a possible replacement for current boss Léo Apotheker.AllThingsD and Bloomberg are reporting that a “significant contingent” on the board wants to remove Apotheker after a series of foul-ups. HP shares rose 7.9 percent to $24.24 today, gaining $3 billion in market value, on the report. The move would be a big upheaval for the company, which is a Silicon Valley icon and the world’s largest technology company. Whitman is reportedly considering taking on another big job, after she lost her run for governor of California last year. Since then, she has been consulting part time at venture firm Kleiner Perkins Caufiled & Byers. Whitman has also been active with her family foundation and has reportedly shown interest in taking the HP job. HP declined comment. Whitman took eBay from a small startup to a multibillion-dollar powerhouse, so she is likely to be a candidate for any CEO job at a large tech company. But her expertise is in the consumer market and she has never run a large hardware company with major enterprise clients. The board has been meeting by phone to will talk about the topic in person soon, AllThingsD said. HP has taken some drastic and unpopular moves lately, sending the stock price downward. Apotheker recently laid off 500 employees in the WebOS division, killed the WebOS tablet after just six weeks on the market, bought software firm Autonomy for $10 billion, and announced he would explore spinning of the PC division. Apotheker came in as CEO in October 2010, replacing Mark Hurd, who was fired in August 2010 over allegations related the expense reports and a sexual harassment investigation. Since that time, HP’s stock is down 43 percent. Much of the criticism around the recent announcements are about how Apotheker handled the big changes. He announced that HP was thinking about a spin-off of the PC division, potentially hurting its business in the process, and said a decision and spin-off or sale could take 18 months. Observers said he should have taken an action first, and then announced it. But HP’s board was reportedly concerned about a news leak and that the decision itself was material shareholder news. Apotheker also pulled the plug on WebOS just six weeks after the first tablet launched, effectively scuttling a business that Hurd had paid $1.2 billion for. Filed under: VentureBeat         This posting includes an audio/video/photo media file: Download Now |
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Posted: 21 Sep 2011 09:00 AM PDT
This post is part of a series brought to you by iMeet. As always, VentureBeat is adamant about maintaining editorial objectivity. Since web-based videoconferencing tool iMeet has been a VentureBeat sponsor, we’ve been using our video discussions to test out iMeet’s video technology. Check out the video of our talk below:  Filed under: VentureBeat         This posting includes an audio/video/photo media file: Download Now |
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Posted: 21 Sep 2011 08:15 AM PDT
 Popular video sharing site Vimeo on Wednesday launched a new service called Music Store that makes it simple to find and license music for creating Internet-bound videos. One of the biggest problems with creating videos for the web is obtaining a licensee to use copyrighted content. Many fan-made music videos on YouTube and Vimeo, for example, infringe on the copyright of the musicians and publishers by using music without permission. Vimeo’s music store takes a major step toward solving this problem by letting users obtain a Creative Commons license or buy licenses for non-commercial and commercial use. At start, Vimeo is offering more than 45,000 tracks from many genres. Users can search the library of available tracks by genre or more than 100 categories like mood or tempo. Unfortunately, the first batch of tracks available for licensing aren’t from the most well-known artists. The largest amount of music comes Audiosocket, which controls a catalog of 33,000 songs from upcoming artists, and from FMA, which offers more than 11,000 tracks with a free Creative Commons license. The pricing is as follows: • Creative Commons licenses (free)While the prospect of licensing lesser-known music for your videos isn’t the most exciting, this is a start toward finding a middle ground between musicians trying to protect their intellectual property and video creators. Now we just need to hope Vimeo can also come up with arrangements to license big-name artists too, so you can use your favorite Lady Gaga track on that crazy art video you’ve been working on. Vimeo’s quirky promo video of the new music store can be viewed below: Filed under: media, VentureBeat         This posting includes an audio/video/photo media file: Download Now |
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Posted: 21 Sep 2011 08:00 AM PDT
 Personalized web talk radio company Stitcher on Wednesday announced it has raised $10 million to improve the state non-music streaming content on the Web.Stitcher wants to tap into the $5 billion in annual revenues generated by talk radio advertising with its own web-centric approach. The service lets users build personalized talk radio stations from more than 6,000 different shows that cover news, sports, entertainment, comedy and more. High-profile shows that Stitcher pulls content from include NPR's Fresh Air, Rush Limbaugh, CNN News, Chelsea Lately, Marc Maron and Fox Sports. Mobile apps for the service can be downloaded for iPhone, iPad, Android, BlackBerry and webOS. "Stitcher has created for talk radio what Pandora, Spotify, and others have built for music,” said Ravi Viswanathan, NEA general partner, in a statement. “They've made it personalized, they've made it mobile, and they've made it available when and where people want it.” Stitcher will use the new funding to help build its sales team, grow its offerings and make its product better. New Enterprise Associates led the funding round, with additional participation from Benchmark Capital, New Atlantic Ventures, and investor Ron Conway. The new round brings the company’s total funding to $20 million. The company has already taken promising first steps in terms of growth. In the last year, the company said it has more than doubled registered users to 3.4 million, increased content offerings by half and quadrupled user listening time. Have you given Stitcher a spin? What do you think of the service? Filed under: media, mobile         This posting includes an audio/video/photo media file: Download Now |
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Posted: 21 Sep 2011 08:00 AM PDT
 The Gold Rush for talented app makers continues. 6waves Lolapps is announcing it has created a $10 million fund to invest in mobile and social game developers. The so-called 6L Fund will help the company find talented developers, fund their games, and publish them for social networks such as Facebook.The fund marks the company intent to be a serious player in social games as well as its first foray into mobile games. San Francisco-based 6waves Lolapps, formed by the merger of 6waves and Lolapps this summer, is already a major publisher of third-party content on Facebook. It has a combined 40 million monthly active users and has published around 14 titles that have hit more than 1 million monthly active users, said Jim Yang, senior vice president of publishing at 6waves Lolapps, in an interview. The money will help attract attention of developers, but the company won’t necessary invest money in exchange for equity stakes. More likely, it will provide the developer with money to get a game done. “We want to find the companies with the big ideas and bring their vision to completion,” Yang said. “Facebook and social games are evolving.” Yang said the timing is good because social gaming is going through changes. Production costs are rising, brands are moving into the market, and competition is getting tougher. So every game maker has to up their quality, and Yang believes the 6L Fund will be a good way to find new talent. Developers who participate and receive funds from 6waves Lolapps could benefit by getting their games cross-promoted. 6waves Lolapps can use its marketing muscle to distribute games to larger audiences. 6waves Lolapps can help game companies acquire new users, manage their products, localize and host games. It can also license the Fliso game engine, a Flash-based game tool. The move into mobile games is a strategic one that reflects the changing of gamers’ tastes. Starting next Tuesday, Sept. 27, developers will be able to apply for funds at the company’s web site. 6waves Lolapps has more than 100 employees. The Lolapps side of the business is developing titles internally at the company, while 6waves publishes titles for independent game developers. Yang said that the company will look at any size project. but he said most companies that work with it have 10 or so employees. But Yang said his firm will reach out to smaller companies still. Overall, 6waves Lolapps has a third of its developers and its users in Europe, a third in North America, and a third in Asia. “The goal is to help developers kick a game out the door,” Yang said. Rival game companies have set up funds as well, but mostly in mobile games. Competitors with their own funds include Tapjoy, Flurry, and TinyCo. . Filed under: games, mobile, social, VentureBeat         This posting includes an audio/video/photo media file: Download Now |
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Posted: 21 Sep 2011 07:40 AM PDT
 Following Google’s recent purchase of Zagat, social review and discovery site Yelp will cooperate with the Federal Trade Commission’s investigation’s antitrust lawsuit against the search giant, the company announced today.Since Google now directly competes against Yelp in terms of reviewing local businesses via its Places product, Yelp agreed to the FTC’s request to discuss its experiences with Google's conduct. “We have responded to these requests and told officials that we believe Google has acted anti-competitively in at least two key ways: by misusing Yelp review content in their competing Places product and by favoring their own competing Places product in search results,” Yelp CEO Jeremy Stoppelman writes in a blog post. “We have been invited to participate in a Senate Judiciary Subcommittee on Antitrust hearing about this issue later today.” The company has placed its written and verbal testimony online, as well as an outline of its relationship with Google. Google was unavailable for immediate comment about Yelp’s testimony. Filed under: social, VentureBeat         This posting includes an audio/video/photo media file: Download Now |
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Posted: 21 Sep 2011 07:25 AM PDT
 Amazon announced today that its long-awaited Kindle library lending feature, which will be available at over 11,000 local libraries across the US, has finally gone live.While Amazon is a bit late to the party, both Barnes and Noble’s Nook and Sony’s Reader already let consumers borrow e-books from libraries, the company appears to have made its library lending feature far easier to use than its competition. To borrow a Kindle book from your library (assuming it’s participating in Kindle lending at this point), you only need to log on to your library’s website, choose “Send to Kindle” from a book’s entry, and login to your Amazon.com account when you’re redirected. The book will be automatically delivered to your Kindle via Amazon’s Whispernet technology via Wi-Fi, or you can transfer over USB. In comparison, borrowing a library e-book with the Nook or Reader requires installing Adobe’s Digital Editions software and manually transferring the e-book over USB. Amazon’s more painless method will likely lead to more consumers taking advantage of library e-books. Additionally, Kindle books borrowed from libraries also keep track of your reading position, notes and highlights, just like a Kindle title that you purchase. Borrowed Kindle titles will also be available on all of your Kindle devices and apps, something that also isn’t possible with other e-book lending methods. Filed under: media, VentureBeat         This posting includes an audio/video/photo media file: Download Now |
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Posted: 21 Sep 2011 07:00 AM PDT
 Iconicfuture believes in the virtual future. The German startup hopes to be a matchmaker that puts together the owners of brands with developers who want to use branded virtual goods in their online games. It is doing so by setting up a digital marketplace where licensors and licensees can cut a deal. The Hamburg-based company is the brain child of Ze’ev Rozov (pictured right), chief executive of Iconicfuture and a 17-year veteran of the media and online games industries. It is a logical outcome for the free-to-play game industry, where users play games for free but pay real money for virtual goods. If developers can get attractive items, such as the Lady Gaga virtual goods in Zynga’s FarmVille game, users will pay real money for the items. As crazy as that sounds to outsiders, virtual goods is already a $1.25 billion industry in the U.S.In the marketplace, a game developer can search for the best branded item that they can use inside a game. The legal permissions are either pre-specified or worked out in negotiations. At the end, developer and licensor can share revenue related to selling the virtual goods in games. One example is Shaun the Sheep, a British stop-motion animated character produced for TV shows. Bigpoint recently used Iconicfuture to license the rights to Shaun the Sheep in its popular Farmerama game. In an interview, Rozov said it normally takes too long to figure out licenses for games, especially online, social network, and mobile games that have much shorter development times than traditional console games. Figuring out the legal issues such as territorial or platform rights is often a hold-up, as are terms for sharing revenue. “We want to streamline that,” Rozov said. “Licensors are often looking for a minimum amount of performance, but you often don’t know which items will sell well. It’s a long negotiation.” But those who can get it right can improve the monetization of both brands and games. One Facebook and web game, Sports City, has steadily been adding rights to premium soccer clubs across Europe. In the city building game, users create cities, manage teams, and build their own stadiums. They get a lot more excited if they can build a stadium based around a license, Rozov said. Created by Spanish company Zed, Sports City will launch this week with items such as the San Siro stadium in Milan, available for 50 Facebook Credits, or 3.50 euros. Other customers include ACM, Aardman Rights, and Zen Studios. For each deal, Iconicfuture gets a cut. Iconicfuture is the sister company of sports marketing firm Triumph Media Group, which incubated the startup. Rozov was vice president of digital at Triumph. “We saw an opportunity to expand in this area and set the company up in February,” he said. The company has nine employees and funding from the backers of its sister company. It is not raising outside money now. Competitors include those game and brand companies that can negotiate directly. Zynga did that recently when it licensed the Indiana Jones character from Lucasfilm for Zynga’s Adventure World game. The video game industry went through its own licensing cycle in the past. Movie-based games were popular for a while, until they became associated with poor quality games. Then they fell out of favor. But Rozov said that casual gamers who play Facebook games may put the emotion around the brand equity ahead of any quality concerns for virtual goods. Filed under: games, social         This posting includes an audio/video/photo media file: Download Now |
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Posted: 21 Sep 2011 06:45 AM PDT
 Apple is gearing up for its iPhone 5 debut at an event on Tuesday, October 4, reports All Things Digital. And alongside the new iPhone, newly crowned CEO Tim Cook is also expected to be the star of the show.Sources “close to the situation” (aren’t they always?) tell the site that Apple has targeted the October date. Other rumors have pointed to Apple announcing the iPhone 5 in late September, but All Things Digital was the first to report a potential October date last month. All Things Digital notes that Apple could still change the timing of the event. Nothing is set until the company actually sends out invites. Apple is also planning to make the iPhone 5 available for purchase within a few weeks of the event, the sources say. It’s clear why the iPhone 5 is a big deal, but the event will also mark the first major product announcement for new Apple CEO Tim Cook. And just like Steve Jobs, Cook is expected to lead the iPhone 5 presentation himself, according to the sources. While Cook’s business savvy has been proven time and again, he will have to prove with his iPhone 5 presentation if he can also fill Steve Jobs’ role as an Apple product evangelist. As All Things Digital points out, it couldn’t be any other way for Cook. Apple followers are used to having a single authoritative voice debut its flagship products. Cook can’t pass the buck to anyone else, because it would undercut his standing as CEO and serve as a glaring reminder that things will never be the same again without Steve Jobs. Filed under: mobile, VentureBeat         This posting includes an audio/video/photo media file: Download Now |
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Posted: 21 Sep 2011 04:30 AM PDT
 Smile, you’re on camera! Wi-Fi video camera company Dropcam raised $5 million in its first round of funding today led by storied venture firm Accel Partners and Google+ vice president of product Bradley Horowitz.Many people opt to install security cameras, nanny cams, or even office live feeds. But many of the current options on the market, such as Logitech‘s Wi-Fi video cameras, are battery-powered, involve software set up, are security focused, and are overly complicated. Dropcam co-founder Greg Duffy wanted to make a Wi-Fi video camera that could act as a security camera, but also be more consumer friendly. “I originally invested in Dropcam because I foresaw what the company and their products could do for consumers and the industry,” said angel investor Mitch Kapor in a statement. Kapor also invested in this round. Dropcam connects to the web wirelessly to instantly give you a 24 hour, 7 days a week stream of wherever you decide to point it. The camera plugs into the wall for power, so it doesn’t offer the same amount of freedom as a battery-operated camera. The camera’s feed is named and encrypted for privacy to ensure that only you have access. Both audio and motion detectors are available on the camera and when activated, will send you push notifications or e-mail you a photo. When it is time to watch your live stream of video, a computer is no longer a necessity. Dropcam offers apps to view the video on an iPhone or Android device, which also pick up on motion detectors. The 24-year-old Duffy started the company after seeing his father struggle to install security cameras around his home. For such a young founder, however, this is not Duffy’s first startup. Indeed, Duffy was an early college entrant at the age of 15 (after receiving a full-time scholarship to UT-Arlington at age of 13). He decided to drop out of college early to create a voice over IP company named NCF Technologies. After spending time with his startup, Duffy left to work for both IBM and Microsoft, became principal software engineer at Xobni, and is finally trying his hand as a startup founder again. Dropcam has a variety of pricing packages to go with the camera. All of the features mentioned above are free when you purchase the camera, but you can pay to record up to 30 days of footage which is stored in a secured data center for retrieval. The Plus plan costs nine dollars a month for 7 days worth of stored footage and the Pro plan offers 30 days of stored footage for $25. The company will use this round of funding to enhance its video cloud product along with hires to its engineering team. Dropcam was founded in 2009 and is headquartered in San Francisco. It has raised $5.8 million in total from Accel Partners, and angels Bradley Horowitz, founder of the Lotus Development Corporation Mitch Kapor, Felicis Ventures founder Aydin Senkut, president of Triple Point Capital Ben Narasin, Bessemer Capital Partners partner David Cowan, and Salil Deshpande, general partner and Bay Partners. Filed under: cloud, deals         This posting includes an audio/video/photo media file: Download Now |
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Posted: 21 Sep 2011 04:30 AM PDT
 Zimride is hoping to change transportation one seat at a time. The San Francisco startup is announcing today it has raised $6 million in funding for its online ride-sharing service.The company lets drivers sell the empty seats in their car to passengers who need a ride along popular routes, such as between San Francisco and Los Angeles. Zimride not only puts cash in your pocket, it connects people with new friends. Mayfield Fund led the round. Zimride is using the money to expand its routes. It already started the San Francisco to Los Angeles route in August and it has seen thousands of rides shared in less than a month. "Since launching, we've made significant strides towards meeting our original vision—to create a low-cost, community-powered transportation system for road trips and regular commutes," says Logan Green, co-founder and chief executive CEO of Zimride. Green started the company in 2007 after he was inspired during a trip to Zimbabwe. He saw a grassroots public transportation system develop there, and proceeded to team up with friend John Zimmer to create a more sustainable form of transportation. Zimride has facilitated more than 26,000 car pools, helped users travel over 100 million miles and created over $50 million in savings in vehicle operating expenses. It’s used in 120 universities and corporate campuses across 30 states. The goal is to hit 300 universities by the end of 2012. The company has partnered with music artists Jack Johnson, Dave Matthews Band, and Sheryl Crow to provide ridesharing to their events. Zimride users connected via Facebook, which adds a layer of trust to the system. Before a rider accepts a seat in a car or a driver accepts a passenger, he or she can view the person’s profile information to ensure that he or she is comfortable with the match. For colleges or corporations, Zimride adds more security by requiring riders or drivers to be from the same school or business in order to participate. Users can read reviews about past trips. Drivers post rides on the site and get new passengers. Riders have 24 hours to accept. Raj Kapoor, managing director of the Mayfield Fund, said that the Zimride team is targeting a multibillion-dollar opportunity by building transportation infrastructure in a country where 75 percent of the seats in cars on highways are empty. Zimride has 350,000 users. Zimride has 16 employees and rivals include GoLoCo, PickupPal, Zebigo, and Avego. In the past, Zimride got $250,000 from a Facebook (fbFund) grant. Filed under: deals, social, VentureBeat         This posting includes an audio/video/photo media file: Download Now |
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Posted: 21 Sep 2011 12:26 AM PDT
 With the large amount of time people spend of Facebook every month, it’s no wonder that publishers are gravitating towards the giant social network with Facebook apps featuring their content.Digital comic book platform Graphicly is keenly aware of this trend, which is why it launched a new Facebook app Tuesday that lets comic book publishers host their content within the social network. The app makes it much easier to expose new and casual fans to a wide selection of comic books, according to Graphicly founder and CEO Micah Baldwin. “Most of our users are actually new comic book readers who have never been exposed to comics before,” said Baldwin in an interview with VentureBeat. He added that because of this, the new Facebook app is the perfect place to grow interest in digital comics and add value to the Graphicly platform.  As for reading comic books on the app itself, the experience is pretty enjoyable. Facebook users first choose a particular comic they’d like to read and select it, which is then displayed in the app window within the publisher’s Facebook page. The size of the comic is smaller, but users can choose to view it in full screen mode without degrading the quality of the images. Two pages appear on the screen at a time — just like you’d see when opening a physical, paper version of the comic — and you can navigate back and forth using arrow buttons in the menu bar (see screenshot). The Facebook app also features Graphicly’s panel-by-panel view setting that’s available on other Graphicly platforms (web, desktop, iPhone, iPad, etc.).The one thing you won’t find on Graphicly’s Facebook app for publishers is its own branding. The only reference that’s made to the service is within a word-less icon that pops up when users mouse over a comic that’s being read through the app. When clicked, the icon sends the user to Graphicly’s website to view that particular comic, which they can then purchase, rate, or discuss. The company has lots of integration with Facebook for its commenting and sharing. Eventually, users will also be able to purchase comics using Facebook Credits, according to Baldwin. The process for comic book publishers is also very easy, as it requires minimal technical skill. Publishers, such as Top Cow which is featured in the screenshot, need only add a few lines of code to their Facebook page to include a sample of their products via Graphicly’s app. Right now, Graphicly boasts a large number of major comic book publishers, including Marvel, Archie Comics, IDW, Boom Studios and more. However, both smaller publishers and creator-owned works are getting added to the service each week and will also have the ability to feature their comic books through the Graphicly Facebook App. “I think we’re gravitating to a model that lets anyone use the Facebook app to showcase their work, but for now its only available for publishers (featured on the Graphicly platform),” Baldwin said. Currently, Graphicly is the only digital comic book platform that offers publishers a way to put their content on Facebook. It’s one of several features that sets the company apart from competitors in the same market, such as industry leader comiXology, which is more focused on providing an inventory of content available to users via cloud storage. The Boulder, Colorado-based startup closed a $3 million funding round in January 2011 led by DFJ Mercury, with participation from 500 Startups (the "super angel" fund from well-known investor Dave McClure), Dundee VC, Ludlow Ventures, and individual angel investors. The company was incubated by TechStars and previously raised $1.2 million from DFJ Mercury and others. It has 20 employees and has raised a total $4.2 million to date. Filed under: media, offBeat, social, VentureBeat         This posting includes an audio/video/photo media file: Download Now |
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Posted: 21 Sep 2011 12:01 AM PDT
 Yoics, a cloud networking firm, is revealing today its remote desktop connectivity service for users who want to get their data from afar.Yoics has found a way to balance simplicity and the need to access data from anywhere with the need for corporate computer security. Now the company has added a second-generation cloud service to better serve its clients. Palo Alto, Calif.-based Yoics operates a portal at yoics.com that gives users the ability to log into an account using a Microsoft-based remote desktop protocol. The users can access their data in a simple and secure way from any Java-based browser. The company provides an alternative to older methods for connecting to remote data, which are no longer adequate. Port forwarding leaves networks vulnerable to malicious port-scanning attacks. And Virtual Private Networks (VPNs) are too complex to set up for mass market users. “Yoics changes all that by providing a secure, private way of connectivity that can be set up in minutes,” said Ryo Koyama, chief executive of Yoics. Yoics 2.0 is now available for beta testing. Free users can connect to their desktops remotely for 30 minutes and can share it with up to two friends. Yoics charges subscribers to its Pro users $24.95 per year for connecting for up to two hours and sharing with up to 10 friends. (For the beta, subscribers to Pro can receive two years for the price of one by entering the coupon code NO MORTO at checkout.) Setup is simple. Users download the free Yoics Desktop software, set up an account, enable RDP (remote desktop protocol) on their machine using Windows, then they enable remote desktop sharing in the Yoics desktop. The process takes around five minutes and users don’t have to configure a router. The secure connection is established via the Yoics portal. Consumers can use the Yoics desktop to make files, services or any network resource available securely across the internet. Yoics powers secure cloud networking on devices such as Cisco’s Smart Storage Area Network devices. Products that use Yoics can be found in mass retail outlets and it has been adopted by brands such as Astak, Lorex, and Stem Innovation. When a connection is requested, the user is authenticated as having permission to connect to the computer, than a secure key is sent down to both ends. This session key then is used to establish a peer-to-peer connection. The session key is used only for that connection. All traffic is encrypted and no ports are open on the network. All logins occur via Secure Socket Layer (SSL) technology. The company was founded in 2007 and it has five employees. Koyama said that Yoics is talking with an unnamed vendor to put the remote capability into routers as well. The angel funded company got started when the founders — Koama, Mike Johnson (chief technology officer) and Doug Olkein (vice president of software) — were installing network cameras in their homes and realized that the way to do it properly was terrible. Rivals include vertical solutions, as well as gotomyPC, WebEx, and VPNs. Koyama said security is a big problem. “If you monitored the outside of your router everyday, you’d be scared,” he said. “Port scanners are looking for holes every day. Mobile devices have made remote access a must have, but legacy technologies just don’t solve the problem.” Filed under: VentureBeat         This posting includes an audio/video/photo media file: Download Now |
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Posted: 21 Sep 2011 12:01 AM PDT
 Database solutions startup Neo Technology on Wednesday announced it has raised $10.6 million with a goal of helping enterprise companies manage and interpret increasingly complicated data sets using NOSQL.“People have been using SQL databases for many years, but we’re shifting into a new era where data is getting more complex to process.” Neo Technology CEO Emil Eifrem told VentureBeat. “Companies need real-time data processing abilities with a flexible data model and scalability, and we can help provide that.” Menlo Park, Calif.-based Neo Technology uses Neo4j, the NOSQL open-source database, to solve next-generation data problems facing enterprise app developers. It currently helps big-name customers like Cisco, Adobe, Box.net and StudiVZ with storing and interpreting critical data from many kinds of databases and sources. The funding round was led by Fidelity Growth Partners Europe, with participation by original investors Sunstone Capital and Conor Venture Partners. Rod Johnson, the founder and CEO of SpringSource, also participated in the funding and will become Neo Technology’s Chairman. “Rod is one of the most successful open-source entrepreneurs,” Eifrem said. “We’re privileged to tap into his experience and strategic insight.” Eifrem said Neo will be investing a chunk of its new funding into building out its roster of engineers and sales and marketing associates. The 25-employee company will try to hire a dozen more employees by the end of year and double the size of the company by the end of 2012. “Customer demand used to be our biggest barrier to growth but now customer demand is through the roof,” Eifrem said. “Now the biggest barrier is talent acquisition, and we’re only limited by our ability to meet customer demand. Hopefully that will be less of a problem as we continue to grow.” Filed under: cloud, VentureBeat         This posting includes an audio/video/photo media file: Download Now |
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Posted: 20 Sep 2011 11:00 PM PDT
 How many times have you gone looking for that list of the top 10 best X, Y and Z’s? For most of us, the answer is “constantly.” Top10 received $3.5 million in its first round of funding led by Accel Partners today to create “best of” lists using social data.Finding a good list of the best this or that can be a hard task. This is because they are often hard to make. In order to round up a great list of products, the reviewer must first test each product, find and test competitors, categorize the products and finally write the review. There’s time cost, locating and acquiring the product cost and cost to pay someone to write the review. That all adds up. Top10 uses the cheaper favorite, crowdsourcing, to develop these lists almost instantly. For Top10 to do this, users must first create their own top ten lists. The company then curates a list based on users’ predefined preferences found on their personal, topic-specific lists. For instance, a list of “Top 10 Pixar Movies” was aggregated from 67 different users who all created their own best of pixar lists. Top10 was founded in 2011, to much concern that the product wouldn’t be able to hold up next to competitors. Dave McClure of 500 Startups showed his hesitance at the Launch Conference where Top10 was unveiled by saying that top 10 lists aren’t new and in order to succeed a company like Top10 will need great game mechanics. Sonali De Rycker, a partner at Accel Partners, however, describes Top10 as solving a major pain point for consumers. The company plans to use the funding to expand on its product, along with marketing and new hires. Top10 company is headquartered in London. Other investors involved in this round include Founder Collective, Idealab, Forward Venture Partners and Shakil Khan. Filed under: deals, social         This posting includes an audio/video/photo media file: Download Now |
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Posted: 20 Sep 2011 10:08 PM PDT
 Adobe is finally enabling 3D games inside its Flash media player and its Adobe Air software with the next release of its technology coming in October. If it works right and becomes popular among game developers, then it could help developers create eye-popping 3D graphics for consumers on smartphone, tablets, and online game platforms. The goal is to get 3D to a billion online players.Andrew Trice, evangelist at Adobe, said the technology is easy to integrate with social features on Facebook and it can lead to the creation of console-quality games on platforms where it just isn’t possible to make the coolest graphics today. The new Adobe Flash Player 11 and Adobe Air 3 will also enable better media and data-driven applications. The hope is that Adobe can live up to its vision as “the game console for the web,” mainly by creating a platform that allows developers to lift the quality of Facebook and mobile games. The technology from San Jose, Calif.-based is expected to enable cool apps across platforms including Android, Apple iOS (via Air), BlackBerry Tablet OS, Mac OS, Windows, connected TVs, and other platforms. Media companies can use it to deliver protected feature-length cinema-quality high-definition video through the web, in mobile apps, and even with surround sound for connected TVs. Flash and Air create a single entertainment platform that stretches across devices, Adobe said. The new features in Flash and Air enable a wide variety of special effects. Those include hardware acceleration. In the past, Flash relied on the central processing unit, not the graphics chip built into most machines. So it ran slow and couldn’t run 3D animations fast. Now it will be able to render 2D and 3D graphics 1,000 times faster than Flash Player 10 and Air 2. Developers will be able to animate millions of objects in a 3D scene with smooth 60 frames per second animations. A production release is expected in the new future. Examples of 3D games are listed here. "With this milestone release Adobe pushes the envelope of what is possible on the web with a typical PC and opens up a new world of immersive, high-performance gaming experiences," said Danny Winokur, vice president and general manager of Platform, Adobe. Air will have native extensions, which will allow developers to more easily create apps that tap into the full power of hardware on smartphones and tablets, such as light sensors, vibration control, dual screens and other features. With the Captive Runtime feature, developers can automatically package Air 3 with their apps to simplify installation on Android, Windows, Mac OS and Apple iOS. Users won’t have to separately download Air. Premium content can now be protected using Adobe Flash Access 3 across all supported platforms. The HD quality will be good and Flash will have support for rental and subscription transactions. Various executives in the game industry said they were excited about the technology. Developers would rather create their games once and have them run on a large number of platforms, rather than repurpose them for each device. Mark Vange, chief technology officer at EA Interactive, said that the ubiquity of Flash helps EA bring games to the wides number of platforms and devices. Cadir Lee, chief technology officer at Zynga, said that Zynga is committed to building mainstream entertainment across all platforms, devices and applications on either Flash or HTML5, the main competitor to Flash. The question is whether it will truly be fast enough to handle the rendering, but the hardware acceleration should solve that problem. By year end, Adobe expects more than 200 million smartphones and tablets to support Flash-based apps via Adobe Air. By the end of 2015, the number of devices supported by Air will likely exceed 1 billion, the company said. Pictured at the top is Machinarium, a Flash game built by Amanita Design.  Filed under: VentureBeat         This posting includes an audio/video/photo media file: Download Now |
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Posted: 20 Sep 2011 06:02 PM PDT
 NewsMix launched its Facebook app today, which will allow people to follow posts from their fan pages in one, consolidated digital magazine.You know the saying “fall through the cracks?” Well, Facebook’s news feed is a content chasm. Interesting posts from your liked pages can fall to the bottom and are often ignored, even though the content might be good. NewsMix takes your liked pages, whether they are news-oriented or not, and forms them into your own curated magazine within Facebook. “I really think Facebook should fix the problem of … the news feed,” Francois Bochatay, chief executive of NewsMix’s parent company Sobees, told VentureBeat. “What we tried to fix is getting the news in one place. There should be another place for the friends.” Bochatay showed us his Facebook NewsMix page, which included everything from VentureBeat news articles to posts from AirFrance. When asked why the “personally curated magazine” shows posts from non-news pages, he explained even these companies have interesting things to say. For instance, you wouldn’t want to miss a half-off-on-all-AirFrance-flights post. The magazine allows you to be the editor, as it does in the web and iPad app editions of NewsMix. These aggregate news from chosen sites, Twitter feeds and Facebook and assemble the information into a Flipboard-like interface. Unlike the iPad and web apps, however, NewsMix’s Facebook magazine lets you view friends’ NewsMixes and like pages you’re interested in directly from their Facebook app. Bochatay says that NewMix is cross-platform and thus can appeal to more people than Flipboard. The company is helping users deal with the issue of too much data and how to organize it on networks like Facebook. There may be a new competitor in the waters, however. According to Bochatay, Facebook is also trying its hand at news organization, though we do not yet know what form this will take. NewsMix’s parent company Sobees was founded in 2007 and is headquartered in Switzerland. Filed under: social         This posting includes an audio/video/photo media file: Download Now |
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Posted: 20 Sep 2011 04:43 PM PDT
 U.S. virtual goods revenue on Facebook is expected to grow 32 percent in 2012 to $1.65 billion, according to a new report by Inside Network.That growth rate is lower than the 40 percent growth for 2011, as the market analyst firm predicts that revenue this year is growing from $800 million in to 2010 to $1.25 billion by the end of 2011. While that is rapid growth, it shows that the fast-growing virtual goods and social gaming industries that use it are maturing and slowing down. Justin Smith, founder of Inside Network, said in an interview that the numbers reflect a slowdown in the torrid growth for virtual goods, which next to ads are a major source of business on social networks such as Facebook. On Facebook, most apps are free-to-play, where users play for free and pay real money for virtual goods such as custom decorations. The report is jointly authored by Smith and Charles Hudson, an active social gaming executive and CEO of Bionic Panda Games. Virtual goods generate revenue for the social game makers, who then have to pay Facebook a 30 percent cut for the use of its Facebook Credits virtual currency. The growth rate for virtual goods slowed a year ago after Facebook cut back on viral game distribution tactics — such as flooding someone’s news feed wit game invites — in the name of reducing spam on its network. Facebook has taken steps to restore viral growth, but game developers have become accustomed to life with slower growth rates. But, Smith said, “We think an important part of this growth is continued better monetization of current users by developers. They can now systematically merchandise virtual goods and increase the lifetime value of users,” or the amount of money generated by a users over the life of an app or game. App makers are also better at making more money by cross-promoting one game to a user who is a fan of a related game. Smith said the vast majority of U.S. virtual goods revenue is coming from Facebook. But he noted that mobile virtual goods revenues are growing fast and are counted separately as a different market for now. The picture is not entirely bright for developers, since Facebook takes a 30 percent cut from a market that is growing at a rate of 30 percent next year. “Not all of the growth is going into developers’ pockets,” Smith said. “The hope is that as Facebook Credits matures, it will help grow the market.” Hudson said that based on the research, Facebook could make $500 million from Facebook Credits in 2012. In 2012, mobile social games will likely generate a considerable amount of money. Next year’s estimate includes revenue from the Google+ social network, but Inside Network hasn’t broken that figure out yet. He noted that on a worldwide basis, Asia is still a much larger market for virtual goods than the U.S. While Zynga generates a considerable amount of the revenue from virtual goods on Facebook, Smith noted that the social game market is more competitive now with good growth for companies such as Electronic Arts, whose Sims Social game is a big hit. While social games are growing, they aren’t taking over yet. Revenue from console games is still about 10 times bigger than social game revenue. Filed under: games, social, VentureBeat         This posting includes an audio/video/photo media file: Download Now |
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Posted: 20 Sep 2011 04:05 PM PDT
 Glam Media, a content and media company focused on women but with increasing ambition, has acquired Ning, a web service that lets people build their own social networks. The purchase price was undisclosed, but the deal is well below Ning’s $750 million valuation when it was at the peak of its hype a few years ago.Most significantly, the addition of Ning gives Glam a reach of a reported 240 million unique viewers, which makes it second only to Facebook's over 750 million uniques. Glam reaches people with its content, produced by authors using its platform, as well as the ads it serves on pages in its network. Many of of those pages are not directly owned by Glam, but in the parlance of the advertising industry, "reach" is everything. Being able to boast that it is the second largest in overall reach gives it significant clout in being able to purchase ads. And it can now say it is the third largest "social profile" company, after Facebook and LinkedIn. Ning was founded in 2005 by then-CEO Gina Bianchini, with backing from Marc Andreessen and others. It now has about 100,000 social networking sites, and makes money from those sites because the owners pay Ning a subscription fee to keep those networks running. Glam is interested in Ning, because it gives Glam an established "social profile" property. Glam is seeking to build out its social profile component, but realized it was going to be difficult to build organically, because the field is moving so quickly. We've confirmed from a source close to the companies that the acquisition price is nowhere near the stratospheric level of $750 million, which is what Ning was valued at in 2010 when it raised its last round, and is significantly less than even $500 million, where it was valued in 2008. Ning has raised over $100 million in funding during the course of its life. "Ning is the clear leader for creating custom social websites and communities,” said Samir Arora, Chairman and CEO of Glam Media, in a statement. “Acquiring Ning adds a natural extension to our social media platform, new distribution channels and a talented Silicon Valley team, all of which support our aim to connect brands with engaged, passionate audiences. "With the addition of Ning, Glam Media will truly become the first next generation media company in the post-social world," Arora added. Ning will operate as a new business unit within Glam Media, the two companies said in an announcement. Jason Rosenthal, Ning's CEO, will join Glam as EVP Social Media & General Manager of Ning, and will be a member of the Glam Media executive team. Additionally, Marc Andreessen will join Glam Media's board of directors, joining Accel's Thereisa Ranzetta and DFJ's Tim Draper as well as Glam co-founder Fernando Ruarte, CEO Arora and Marcel Reichart of Hubert Burda Media. [Update: Andreessen has blogged about the merger here.] Glam now boasts it is now the sixth largest U.S. property in display advertising by volume. Ning has about 60 million uniques a month, and 100 million registered social media profiles. Filed under: deals, social, VentureBeat         This posting includes an audio/video/photo media file: Download Now |
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Posted: 20 Sep 2011 03:50 PM PDT
 Google released a slew of updates for its social network Google+ today. With these new updates, Google+ is turning into the social network of choice for web and mobile collaboration.Reid Hoffman, founder of LinkedIn, described Facebook as the backyard barbecue of social networks, and LinkedIn as the office. To extend the metaphor, Twitter must be the hyperactive, attention-deficit-disordered child of the two, while Google+ is the live/work space. It’s not the free-for-all that is Facebook, nor as buttoned up as LinkedIn. It’s the cool office with beanbag chairs. It’s the network for that hoodie-wearing entrepreneur in us all. Google+ first came out in June and has since been updated with 107 new features. This last round, however, may be the most robust. Hangouts in particular have gained features that put them in competition with mobile collaboration tools such as Citrix’s GoToMeeting and Cisco’s WebEx. Let’s run down the advantages of Google+ Hangouts for work-related collaboration. Multiplatform support. Video Hangouts (not just the text-based Huddles, which are now folded into a feature called Messenger) are now available on Android smartphones, with iPhone support coming soon. You can also, as before, access Hangouts via a web browser on your PC. Simultanous users. Google+ Hangouts supports up to 9 people at one time, which can lend itself to a quick brainstorm or touch base. This is especially beneficial for those who have co-workers or project participants in various states. It might also work out for a company with multiple people at different events needing to sync up. Screen sharing. On web-based Hangouts, you can now share a view of your computer’s screen so others can follow along in demos and the like. Other services, such as WebEx and GoToMeeting, have similar features but for a fee. For example, WebEx’s service costs $19 a month or more for 8 participants and goes up from there. Google+ is free.  Document and Sketchpad sharing. Hangouts now support video chat with simultaneous Google docs editing in addition to Sketchpad access for drawing out your ideas. The Sketchpad also enables multitasking and can be accessed while others are using it, not to mention its great for visual learners. Public conferences. One issue with Hangouts is that they are relatively public, showing those outside your circles to join your chats. And while we all love alliteration, “proprietary” and “public” don’t go together. Thus, if you’re using Hangouts for work-related discussions, you may need to police your hangouts to ensure no outsiders are watching your screen shares and listening in on your conversations. This is a serious limitation for getting work done on Hangouts. On the other hand, if publicity is your goal, Google+ Hangouts might be quite useful. For example, Google+ now allows you to name your Hangouts to make them easier to find. There’s also a new feature called Hangouts On Air. When you’re on air, you can group chat with up to nine people as per usual, but your Hangout can also be recorded and broadcast live to anyone on Google+ who would like to listen. This helps you reach not just your own team, but the whole of your Google+ audience, so you can use it for product announcements, introductions to new hires and more. Unlike LinkedIn, Google+ is not oriented toward networking or finding new job prospects. Unlike Facebook, Google+ is not photo centric or geared toward vanity and sharing personal accomplishments. On the other hand, Hangouts can just as easily be used for personal reasons as for work. You can use Hangouts to hold a concert, meet up with old friends, let long-distance family meet a new baby, or play charades. In other words, Google+ is like a loft-bed with a desk underneath, a tuxedo t-shirt, or a mullet. There’s some party in there mixed with the business. [First photo courtesy of Cubrazol, second picture courtesy of Google] Filed under: social         This posting includes an audio/video/photo media file: Download Now |
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Posted: 20 Sep 2011 03:37 PM PDT
 Social network Hi5 has cut 28 jobs after completing a migration from open source servers to ones based on Microsoft’s .Net software. The move was part of a larger plan to shift the social network toward social gaming and commerce.Alex St. John, president of San Francisco-based Hi5, confirmed a report that the company had cut the jobs after it moved its site off of what he called a “tremendously burdensome” Linux/Postgres base to a Microsoft-based Windows Server OS infrastructure. The company made the move in order to lower costs and improve flexibility for the social network, which as been refocused on social games since St. John joined in late 2009. The affected employees were mainly people who maintained the old site while operations team migrated to the new servers. “The technical problem was that Hi5.com had seen a lot of engineering over the years and the site had gotten entangled such that updating our servers and databases to newer theoretically more secure versions had become a big deal because nobody knew how the site depended on bugs in older builds of Linux and Postgres,” St. John said. “Untangling the site from dependence on specific OS and database versions was a necessary chore to achieve better stability and security.” With that task out of the way, not as many people are needed. Meanwhile, St. John said Hi5′s engineering team will now focus on building a new site focused on a social gaming platform, using the .Net framework and moving away from open source and Java technology. St. John said the transition went remarkably smoothly. The hard part was consolidating data centers and databases (a 12 to 1 reduction) while running a live site. Now the new site needs different kinds of people to maintain it. St. John, a former Microsoft evangelist and a Microsoft customer while at his prior startup WildTangent, said the move toward Windows was needed because of the new focus on a commerce-centric business. But unraveling the dependencies between the old and the new was the hard part. After the migration, the site was more stable and faster. “If there were any interesting insights to be gained in the Open vs Closed religious debate,” he said. “It's that it is clearly more resource intensive (expensive) for a commercial company to use open source platforms because they have to have their own internal teams evaluating the security of everything they use and the internal ability to fix critical bugs or review patches from the community.” The tough part is that the competent employees essentially engineered themselves out of a job. St. John said he appreciated their efforts. Hi5 raised $14 million in funding last year. Filed under: games, VentureBeat         This posting includes an audio/video/photo media file: Download Now |
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Posted: 20 Sep 2011 03:21 PM PDT
 Initial invitations to join the beta testing program for Blizzard Entertainment’s Diablo 3 game are finally making the rounds to Battle.net account holders.The start of a beta for an online game usually indicates that the game will come out relatively soon. Diablo 3, one of the holiday gaming season’s most anticipated titles, was originally slated for release later this year. But the company is still not committing to a 2011 release date for the game, said Blizzard Entertainment chief executive Mike Morhaime in the company’s most recent conference call discussing its second quarter earnings. The Diablo 3 beta includes the first “act” of the game, one of several large chunks of the game, that consists of part of the game’s main storyline. All five classes are playable in the beta. The beta of the game is around 3 gigabytes in size, which is considerably smaller than Blizzard Entertainment’s other online game, World of Warcraft. That game is around 26.6 gigabytes, including all recent patches and content. The last Diablo game came out in 2000 and still boasts a large player base. It's nothing compared to Blizzard Entertainment's most popular online role-playing game, World of Warcraft, which has around 11.4 million subscribers. But Diablo’s hack-and-slash and loot-seeking formula proved to be popular for more than a decade. It even inspired a number of dungeon crawler copycats like Torchlight. The Diablo games allow anywhere from two to eight players to jump into discrete games in randomly generated dungeons. The goal is to prevent the forces of hell from taking over the world by defeating Diablo, the lord of terror, and his cohorts. Players chase after powerful items and weapons to use against other enemies and players or for trade. Filed under: games         This posting includes an audio/video/photo media file: Download Now |
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Posted: 20 Sep 2011 02:36 PM PDT
 Greenstart, a new clean technology startup incubator based in San Francisco, officially opened its doors today when San Francisco Mayor Ed Lee cut the ribbon for the office space.Greenstart’s new office space has a slick, green feel to it — compared to the semi-industrial feel that other startup incubator offices like AngelPad have. The whole space came together in the span of about eight weeks with “a startup’s budget,” Greenstart founding parter Mitch Lowe told VentureBeat. The office space is a critical part of the incubator experience because it gives the startups a professional environment with nearby mentors and peers who they can feed off while they work on their business. “We were basically holding our breaths, saying, ‘please be good, please be good,’” Sylvatex co-founder Virginia Klausmeier, one of the incubator’s companies this class, told VentureBeat. “And it ended up being awesome, we are so excited.” Greenstart hosts clean technology startups that fulfill three goals: they’re “fast,” in the sense that they can generate real revenues in less than a year, and they either reduce reliance on fossil fuels or improve existing clean technology. Most of the companies that enroll in the class have to demonstrate some kind of potential business plan, though the incubator isn’t against hiring companies that are in the “idea phase” like other incubators, such as Y Combinator, usually bring on board, Lowe said. “Most companies will enter at the point where they are starting to think about commercialization,” Lowe said. “We have companies in this class that are mostly ready to start working on business models even though those will change over time.” Sylvatex, for example, is a biofuel company based on technology that the co-founder’s father developed over the span of 12 years. The company mixes vegetable oils with diesel fuel to make cleaner fuel that will cost less than typical diesel fuel. But rather than create a separate manufacturing plant to produce the fuel, the company simply wants to license out its technology to larger fuel producers — shortening the amount of development time and reducing the company’s upfront capital costs significantly. “We’re not trying to recreate the wheel and make our own blending plant, we learned from the guys that failed at doing that,” Klausmeier said. The new incubator hosts three classes of companies each year and invests between $25,000 and $100,000 into each company. It purchases common stock in the companies rather than a convertible note, which most incubators like Y Combinator and AngelPad use. This class featured four clean technology companies, but the next class starting in December will probably have between six and eight startups, Lowe said. Greenstart wants to incubate 500 startups by the end of the decade, he said. “I love the term accelerator, because we don’t have time to wait, we need this technology now,” Lee said. “We need it not only to maintain our status as a world center for clean technology, but when you start here, those jobs turn into hundreds as your business matures.” [Photo credit: Matthew Lynley] Filed under: green         This posting includes an audio/video/photo media file: Download Now |
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Posted: 20 Sep 2011 02:14 PM PDT
 When it comes to thinking big, MedAfrica takes the cake. The founders are aiming to revolutionize how people in developing areas, particularly on the African continent, access and use health information. The startup presented at the Demo Fall 2011 conference last week, and we got a chance to catch up with some of the company’s founders, including CEO Steve Mutinda and business development guy Mbugua Niijhia. In this video, we discuss how the MedAfrica platform will work and how the company is also planning to be a sustainable business rather than a “social good” charity. Briefly, the company will focus on bringing basic information about health and medicine to phones — not just smartphones — and enabling people to use that information on their own. In countries such as Kenya, where on average 14 physicians must serve around 100,000 people, this kind of accessible, self-serve information could be vital in improving national health and wellness. MedAfrica is set for an official launch October 1, 2011. You can sign up now for the company’s newsletter and notifications. Filed under: mobile, video         This posting includes an audio/video/photo media file: Download Now |
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Posted: 20 Sep 2011 02:03 PM PDT
 Every couple years, we womenfolk get a pink or purple gadget made especially for us; this time around, it’s HTC’s new Rhyme.Announced today by HTC execs, the phone will retail for $199 with a Verizon contract and sport a 3.7-inch screen, a 1GHz processor, and a 5-megapixel rear camera. In other words, it would be a perfectly standard Android handset, except for the fact that it’s purple, features a stable of feminine wallpaper options, and comes with a light-up charm. According to recent research, between 73 and 63 percent of Android owners are men. In one survey, men showed a preference for Android devices while women in the same study showed a strong preference for the iPhone — something that we attribute entirely to marketing. So Verizon and HTC apparently thought a female-targeted phone and marketing campaign would help bring new consumers into the Android fold. The Rhyme will not support Verizon’s 4G LTE service, but it will come in a bundle with the aforementioned charm (also purple, it is designed to clip to your purse and comes with an LED that flashes when you have a notification), a speaker dock and matching purple earbuds. While we do understand that Android device manufacturers want to tap into the female demographic to extend their reach, we’re not sure a purple, light-up phone with mid-range specs and girlie wallpaper is the right way to do that. In fact, it might take an even greater commitment: several years of gender-neutral marketing that emphasizes features everyone can use and enjoy rather than Verizon’s current Android marketing, much of which positions the device at the center of a dystopian machine shop. The HTC Rhyme will be available for pre-order starting September 22. Filed under: mobile         This posting includes an audio/video/photo media file: Download Now |
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Posted: 20 Sep 2011 01:16 PM PDT
 Due in large part to the growth of Facebook Credits, the social network’s internal payment system for virtual goods, Facebook’s revenue is on target to hit $4.27 billion this year.According to forecasts from market research firm eMarketer, this number is composed of around $3.8 billion in ad revenue and $470 million in Facebook Credits. The combined sum has risen drastically from a reported $2 billion in revenue in 2010 and around $800 million in 2009. Although Credits accounts for just 11 percent of the company’s total revenue right now, it is the virtual currency’s growth that’s impressive. Since last year, the amount of money Facebook collects from Credits has more than tripled, growing from just $140 million in 2010 and $39 million in 2009. And in terms of percentage of overall revenue, Credits made up around 7 percent of Facebook’s bottom line in 2010 and rose five percentage points this year. In 2009, Credits made up just 5 percent of Facebook’s overall revenue. “We believe that Credits can and will fund a variety of monetary interactions on Facebook beyond social games,” eMarketer analyst Debra Aho Williamson told VentureBeat. “Ecommerce is one example, as is buying access to media such as TV shows or movies” Overall, virtual goods make up a $1.6 billion (and growing) market in the U.S. alone, and the vast majority of that sum lies solidly in social gaming, the stronghold of Facebook Credits. “On July 1, Facebook began requiring social game developers to use credits as their form of payment on Facebook, and Facebook takes a 30% cut of all Credits purchases,” Williamson noted. “Given the strong participation in social games among Facebook users, and their strong interest in making virtual goods purchases in those games, we believe that Credits is gaining real traction at Facebook.” Credits make up an interesting part of Facebook’s overall strategy, and one that we’ll continue to watch. Still, the lion’s share of the company’s revenue continues to come from advertising. Ad revenue in 2010 came to $1.86 billion; in 2009, advertising accounted for $738 million of Facebook’s revenue. eMarketer is estimating $5.78 billion worldwide in ad revenue for 2012. In relation to other online properties, Facebook is indisputably leading the pack with $2.06 billion in U.S. ad revenues and 16.3 percent of the overall share of U.S. online display ad revenue. For contrast, Yahoo comes in second with 13.1 percent of the display ad market for 2011, and Google is trailing with a projected 9.3 percent. eMarketer estimates that Facebook will control nearly 20 percent of all online display ad revenue by 2012 — that includes money companies spend on banner ads, sponsored content, rich media and video. Filed under: social         This posting includes an audio/video/photo media file: Download Now |
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Posted: 20 Sep 2011 12:30 PM PDT
 Facebook today unveiled three new features aimed at making it easier to keep up with your friends’ most important and most recent updates. The first feature is an adjustment to the site’s news feed (the list of updates from your circle of friends). In the past, this list was displayed in strictly reverse chronological order, with an option to switch between “Top News” and “Most Recent” options. Now, Facebook is merging the two views, so the top of the news feed always shows the updates that you will find most interesting, according to Facebook’s estimates. Facebook will adjust this list depending on how long it’s been since you last visited Facebook. If you were on the site a few hours or a day ago, it will show a wider sampling of recent updates. But if you haven’t checked in for a week or more, Facebook will prioritize the display to show the updates most likely to interest you. Below the selected top news items, you’ll be able to view the full, reverse-chronological feed of all updates (what used to be called the Most Recent view). “What this is about is making sure you can accomplish two goals,” Mike Schroepfer, Facebook’s vice president of engineering told VentureBeat. “One is making sure you don’t miss anything critical. And then when you want to see more, you have an easy way to do that.” I asked Schroepfer how Facebook decides what I’ll find interesting. “We look at hundreds or thousands of different signals,” Schroepfer said. For example, the company’s algorithms look at who has published an update, how much engagement it’s generating, how many comments, and other signals. In addition, you can easily click on an update to tell Facebook that it’s not relevant to you, or to flag an update from the chronological feed that you’d like to see in the top news section. “We’re continuously changing and tuning the ranking,” Schroepfer said. Like Google with its PageRank algorithm, however, Facebook wasn’t about to give me more specific details. Second, Facebook is increasing the default size of images shown in the news feed, making them twice as large by default. The underlying images are bigger, thanks to recent changes making them 960 pixels wide, so Facebook has more pixels to work with. It’s a relatively small design change but really makes the feed “pop,” Schroepfer said.  The third feature is called Ticker, which displays short versions of your friends’ updates in real time. For people who live on Facebook (and you know who you are), this display gives you more immediate notifications about what your buddies are up to, whether that’s a post, a shared photo, a check-in or a comment.You can click on anything in the ticker to see the full update and add your comment, then go back to whatever you were doing in Facebook. The Ticker appears on the right side of your screen, above the chat pane. You can click and drag on a horizontal divider to give more space to the ticker or more space to the chat window, depending on your preferences. Filed under: social         This posting includes an audio/video/photo media file: Download Now |
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Posted: 20 Sep 2011 12:29 PM PDT
 [This piece was contributed to VentureBeat by Mihir Shah, CEO of mobile app company Tapjoy.]We have reached a major tipping point in mobile marketing. And I'm not referring to reach, as massive as it already is in these early days. I'm referring to an advertising model – what I call the Mobile Value Exchange – that relegates traditional cost-per-impression models and display advertising to remnant fill. Display advertising, especially on mobile platforms, doesn't work for users. Period. Hear me out. Last year, there were almost 5 trillion display ad impressions. Less than one-tenth of a percent of these impressions led to a click through, let alone a conversion or a transaction. And that's with all the investments in tracking and targeting technology. In one recent study, 84% of user respondents said either, "It's creepy to have advertisements based on sites I've visited," or, "Wouldn't even notice the advertisements, just ignore them." Wow. For those of us who are close to the data and intellectually honest with our conclusions, user behavior has already begun to swing away from display advertising and towards the Mobile Value Exchange as the premium ad model. Every day, millions of global users engage with advertisers in exchange for value – currently in the form of premium content. The concept of a value exchange is nothing new; search advertising is arguably the most successful interactive advertising model ever created (thank you, Google) and by definition, a clean value exchange. Consumers raise their hands and receive content that's relevant to the moment, a question, or their lives, and in exchange they reward advertisers that deliver. And unlike display, where advertisers make huge buys and hope it works, we know search advertising works. Of the expected $35 billion in 2011 US interactive marketing spend, about 60% will be spent on search marketing, according to Forrester Research. Search marketing consistently backs into ROI-positive conversions and transactions. Interestingly, the average click through rate of a sponsored ad is 95% of that of an organic result, according to a Yahoo Research and Cornell University’s report. The Mobile Value Exchange ad model evolves this transaction to address the most personal device in the world – our phones. The model offers consumers premium content in exchange for ad engagement. As with search, these consumers raised their hands and requested the ad. And similar to the early days of search, the reach is massive, with 250 million mobile users already engaging. Why is consumer sentiment and utility so different between display advertising and search marketing? And how is this relevant to the Mobile Value Exchange? I like to think about the user affinity to a value exchange in three main buckets – Intent, Self-Selection and Sponsorship. In that order. Unlike traditional display advertising (even when targeted), search marketing and the Mobile Value Exchange interact with a user at the point of intent. A search user requests results for a keyword term. A mobile user selects an ad to unlock premium content. It should be no surprise that these interactions drive the highest user satisfaction, engagement and overall utility. And then there's self-selection. With both search and the Mobile Value Exchange, a user literally chooses the advertiser they'd like to engage with from a relevant list. Imagine if TV viewers could select what ads they watched in exchange for content? How might that impact recall, purchase intent and, most importantly, ROI? Finally, there's the concept of sponsorship. It's time we give consumers credit for being smart enough to understand that an advertiser is paying to be a sponsored link in Google or an advertiser in Tapjoy. And they appreciate it — they know these sponsorships help them get access to content they want. Here's an interesting example from the traditional TV world that applies to this model: In 2010, Nielsen data showed that World Cup sponsors – those brands that actually sponsored the event, in addition to solely running advertisements – generated 55% higher Net Likeability compared to commercials from non-sponsors. In fact, these sponsors saw a 16% higher Brand Recall than similar campaigns without sponsorship. Extending this concept to the Mobile Value Exchange, it's easy to see how brands sponsoring premium mobile content can increase their brand recall, awareness and overall ROI. Intent, self-selection and sponsorship are even more important on mobile, because mobile devices are so personal. They are not only our phones—they are a full expression of who we are. They are our contact list, our family photos, our favorite media. They are personal in a way that the PC could only aspire to be. Would you rather lose your phone or your wallet?Tapjoy's Mobile Value Exchange puts increasing power into the hands of the consumer with striking results. Literally millions of mobile users raise their hands every day requesting advertisements to help them unlock content. Intent, self-selection, and sponsorship represent the trifecta of long-term value between users and advertisers in the new mobile economy. I'll fully own that I'm biased. But I'll say it anyway: the Mobile Value Exchange is the future of advertising for the billions of smartphone users globally. And the good news is, it's simply the evolution of a proven model that respects a consumer's ability to choose. At the risk of tweaking Clayton Christensen's words a bit too much, you can hate the theory of evolution, but evolution doesn't care.  Filed under: mobile, VentureBeat         This posting includes an audio/video/photo media file: Download Now |
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