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Posted: 06 Oct 2011 08:58 AM PDT
 The latest big name interested in buying Yahoo may be Microsoft, according to a Reuters report from last night.Sources tell Reuters that one camp in Microsoft is excited about the deal because it would give them a strong web portal and destroy AOL as a competitor. But another Microsoft group (lets call them the “realists”) say that the company shouldn’t be spending billions on a property without much growth potential. No matter how much I think about it, I can’t imagine why Microsoft would spend billions (Yahoo has a market value of around $20 billion) on a sinking ship. Another report, from All Things Digital, says that the Reuters rumor is way off. ATD’s sources say that Microsoft has been clear that it isn’t interested in buying Yahoo. Microsoft already has a 10-year deal in place to have its Bing search engine power Yahoo’s search, and to display Microsoft’s self-serve ads alongside Yahoo’s search. As part of the deal, Yahoo gets an 88 percent cut from advertising revenue — but that’s still a decent chunk of change for Microsoft, who also gets added exposure for Bing and its ads. Microsoft also famously tried, and failed, to buy Yahoo in 2008 for $44.6 billion. After that experience, I can’t imagine that Microsoft wants to go through yet another nightmare acquisition process. Reuters notes that Microsoft may also seek out a partner for a potential Yahoo buy, but All Things Digital’s Kara Swisher squashes hopes of that as well, saying that Microsoft has been telling Yahoo bidders it won’t be teaming up with them. Microsoft might consider a token investment, if it means completing the deal, Swisher says. “Certainly, Microsoft has been and is willing to talk to anyone interested, said sources, given their Yahoo business relationship,” Swisher writes. “But this does not make it a bid of any shape or size. They are not even "considering" it, unless that means watching from a distance.” Alibaba’s CEO recently expressed interest in buying Yahoo, but he quickly backed down when faced with the reality of a Chinese company buying a major US business, which involves deep regulatory investigations. Filed under: deals, VentureBeat               This posting includes an audio/video/photo media file: Download Now |
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Posted: 06 Oct 2011 08:31 AM PDT
 Oracle CEO Larry Ellison on Wednesday finally announced that his company would take the plunge into public cloud computing with Oracle Public Cloud while speaking at the OpenWorld conference.Oracle’s emphasis for several years has been on powerful hardware and software solutions for data centers and enterprise customers. Ellison in the past decried true cloud solutions as “water vapor” and “idiocy.” But now the company will soon provide infrastructure as a service (IaaS) to its customers that want to deploy Oracle Fusion apps in a public cloud or to develop Java-based applications. Pricing for the new service was not announced. Oracle customers will now be able to use the Web to access Oracle applications or use apps they have written via the cloud. Ellison said what differentiates Oracle’s public cloud from competing clouds is that Oracle will let customers move data more freely, a somewhat nebulous claim. Ellison fired a serious shot at competitor Salesforce.com by calling it “the roach motel of clouds,” according to the Wall Street Journal. Salesforce.com CEO Marc Benioff has been critical of Oracle for some time, saying the company advocates a “false cloud.” Benioff left Oracle to create Salesforce.com, so the two CEOs clash now and again, with Benioff’s OpenWorld keynote on Wednesday cancelled at the last minute by Oracle. Perhaps this was because Oracle planned to announce the Public Cloud solution or perhaps Ellison was tired of being routinely attacked by Benioff. But if Wednesday’s Public Cloud announcement was any indication, Oracle is tired of not being the cloud game and will do whatever it takes to make sure its customers have at least some cloud access. Filed under: cloud, enterprise            This posting includes an audio/video/photo media file: Download Now |
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Posted: 06 Oct 2011 07:41 AM PDT
 Apple faces a future with monolithic expectations under new chief executive Tim Cook. But even as the reality of the company’s former visionary leader Steve Jobs’ death sets in, markets serve as a sobering reminder of the incredible force he built during his tenure as the chief executive.Trigger-happy investors have historically been prone to trading on Apple whenever news about Jobs as the company’s head honcho arose. But shares of Apple have only risen 1.5 percent as of 7:30 a.m. Thursday, only dropping 0.12 percent at their lowest level from the company’s opening price. Apple, the most valuable technology company in the world, is back to vying with Exxon-Mobil to claim the top spot and fell below the oil megagiant on Tuesday when the company unveiled an incremental upgrade to its iPhone smartphone lineup. Apple is also noticeably absent from the options market, where a move like this would typically send traders into a frenzy of speculation over what direction the company will go in. Only two significant put orders (a bet that the company’s share price will fall) crossed the Chicago Board Options Exchange as of 7 a.m. Thursday — each with for fewer than 700 shares and at a modest strike price. At the same time, a much larger call order has already crossed the wire at a strike price of $385. “This is business as usual for Apple, it would be a mistake to count them out,” Gartner analyst Michael Gartenberg told VentureBeat. “Yes, the tech world has lost a significant icon and a visionary, but Apple is more than just one person — Jobs built something truly special that was much greater than himself.” Jobs was known as a visionary, creating products that he knew people would be fighting tooth and nail to get their hands on. They were products you didn’t even know you needed: the tablet market was basically non-existent before the introduction of the iPad, and the iPhone is now one of the most popular smartphones in the world and is an industry standard. Jobs arguably jump-started the smartphone revolution with the iPhone and its associated App Store. ”It’s a phone, it’s an iPod, and it’s an Internet communicator — are you getting it yet?” he said on stage when he unveiled the iPhone. His track record is undeniable. The Macintosh was the first commercially successful computer to use a graphical user interface and a mouse, a decade after the technologies had debuted at Xerox PARC and SRI. The iPhone threw out the book on how to make a smartphone and reoriented an entire industry around touchscreens and apps, well after touchscreens first appeared in PDAs like the PalmPilot. The iPad succeeded in making a popular tablet computer after Windows-based computer manufacturers had tried to do so for nearly a decade. Under his reign, Jobs created a company that briefly toppled Exxon-Mobil as the most valuable company in the world. Apple regularly smashes expectations for its quarterly performance and its press events are almost hollywood-esque with live reporting and glamour. In Silicon Valley, working for Apple — like Google, Twitter and others — is worn as a badge of honor, like attending an ivy league school. When Jobs left the company earlier this year to go on medical leave, most believed it was only a matter of time before the worst finally came to pass. Still, for many, it comes as a shock to lose someone who served as a face for a company that redefined the way people communicate and interact with technology. But it’s difficult to deny to anyone — traders included — that Jobs has built a company that will live, prosper and continue to innovate well beyond the events that have transpired in the past 24 hours, Gartenberg said. “There are few people who could build something so successful and so magical and do more than (Jobs,)” Reddit co-founder Alexis Ohanian told me. “It’s humbling as an entrepreneur, more than anything else, to see what he’s done.” Filed under: mobile            This posting includes an audio/video/photo media file: Download Now |
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Posted: 06 Oct 2011 07:00 AM PDT
 Who needs Spotify? Rdio intends to one-up its competitors today with the introduction of a free on-demand streaming music service that has no ads.There is a limit to Rdio’s free music, though, and a meter at the top of the site will keep track of how much of it you have left for the month. An Rdio representative explains the free music limit like this: “The amount of free a person will get is dynamic and will be based on their own personal use and displayed in a meter in the corner of their profile. A heavy user will get more, but probably not as much as they will want and a light user will get more than they'd ever want.” The free service requires just an email address or Facebook account to sign up — there’s no credit card required. That’s a wise decision, since it completely removes the barriers users previously had to checking out the service. Rdio has a catalog of over 12 million songs. Free users can upgrade to the $4.99 Web subscription plan, which lets you stream an unlimited amount of music from your web browser. There’s also a $9.99 Unlimited plan that gives you streaming access to music, as well as access to Rdio’s mobile apps, which allow you to download music for offline listening. For families, Rdio introduced an Unlimited Family plan for $17.99 a month (for two accounts) and $22.99 (for three accounts). Rdio hinted at its plans for a free streaming service back in September, after competitor Mog also announced a free version of its service. Both are trying to compete with recently launched Spotify, which gained popularity for its free ad-supported streaming music service. Spotify relies on a desktop client, while both Mog and Rdio are web-based. Filed under: media, VentureBeat            This posting includes an audio/video/photo media file: Download Now |
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Posted: 06 Oct 2011 06:00 AM PDT
 Game maker Trion Worlds, which successfully launched its first major online role-playing fantasy game, Rift, back in March, is now unveiling a game platform to publish games created by other companies. While Trion will continue making massively multiplayer online games such as its upcoming End of Nations and Defiance titles, the platform, called Project Red Door, is a way for the Redwood City, Calif.-based company to make a lot more money than it otherwise would, said Lars Buttler, chief executive of Trion, in an interview. The two-pronged initiative will have a consumer platform on the web and a publishing platform for game makers. If it can start publishing third-party games in the first part of 2012, Trion could become a much bigger player in the lucrative online game market. The new strategy shows that Trion is making one of the biggest bets that a startup has ever made in the video game industry.“We’re doing this because we see this massive shift in entertainment, which is transforming traditional content into connected services,” Buttler said. “The future of interactive entertainment is incredibly connected. Our job is to transform games into living worlds.” Buttler said that the company raised more than $100 million and hired more than 500 employees since 2006 so that it could launch premium quality MMOs. But at the same time, it built a publishing platform that other companies can use. From a business view, the move makes sense because it allows Trion to amortize its technology investments over a much broader base of games. It also reduces Trion’s dependence on its own internally produced games. “Our own games are just the tip of the iceberg,” Buttler said. “The true business significance of our company lies in the Trion platform.” Red Door will roll out in the spring of 2012. Buttler said that Trion is talking with other game developers and publishers so that it can line up games that are “living worlds,” or MMOs that take heavy investment. It’s almost as if Trion is launching its own console, hoping to attract a lot of game companies to support it with their own games. Those who adopt Red Door could save years in development time, Buttler said. For consumers, Trion will deliver a single, trusted destination site for connected games with rich social features. Players will be able to discover and download content and enjoy a suite of flexible account services, Buttler said. Trion has game studios in Redwood City; San Diego; Austin, Texas; and London. On top of that, it has tapped Petroglyph Studios in Las Vegas to make End of Nations, which will be published as a free-to-play title, where users play for free and pay real money for virtual goods.  The company’s investors include Time Warner, Comcast, Bertelsmann, Rustic Canyon Ventures, Trinity Ventures and DCM. Buttler cited recent PricewaterhouseCoopers stats that show online games are growing at 21.3 percent a year, compared to console games that are growing much more slowly. Buttler said Trion can take advantage of the latest trends in providing dynamic services — where a game can be updated on the fly in response to user feedback — as well as modern monetization, analytics, and business intelligence tools. Buttler hopes to make Trion’s site into a hub that consumers can trust as a brand that represents quality. Buttler says he doesn’t think of the Red Door platform as a social network for MMO players. Rather, it’s a destination for “games as a service,” more like Microsoft’s Xbox Live online game platform for the Xbox 360 game console.“This is a huge evolutionary step in the history of our company,” Buttler said. “Our platform is built and we are opening it up.” The risk for Trion is that it could be disrupted as well. While it focuses on the “deep end of gaming,” casual game makers such as Zynga are attracting huge audiences at the “shallow end.” Zynga can give away its games for free and charge for virtual items, undercutting the prices of subscription games such as Trion’s Rift. But Buttler said Trion remains flexible enough to test new business models as well to see what resonates with players. The beauty of subscription revenues, he said, is that the revenue doesn’t dry up after just a few months, in contrast to console games. And, compared to social games, the average revenue per users (ARPU) is far bigger. Buttler said that Rift, Trion’s first game launched earlier this year, has been a great success. The game scored 84 out of 100 on Metacritic, a review aggregator. Trion continues to update the game on a regular basis. The game sold more than 1 million copies in under four months, and the average gamer plays for four hours a day. So far, players have spent 1 trillion minutes in the game and completed 1 billion quests. Players have tweeted more than 1.5 million times from within the game. Within six months, Trion has launched five major updates. “We consider this to be the most successful MMO launch in the West,” Buttler said. “We have grown faster than World of Warcraft (the market leader) did in its early days. Rift has proven the technology and given us a revenue stream we can count on.” Much of that success is due to the Trion platform, the underlying technology that uses a distributed computing architecture. The servers were designed to work in a dynamic fashion. If the game needs more functional tasks, particularly in a certain part of the world, Trion can simply add more servers to handle tasks such as physics or artificial intelligence of player data. That way, the game can support a huge influx of players into one part of the world, as can happen when Trion stages an invasion of the world. When the world changes, Trion simply changes its servers. There is no reason to patch a gamer’s own machine. Anyone who adopts the Trion platform can use those same kinds of features and live services in their own games. Next year, Trion will launch End of Nations, a real-time strategy game, and Defiance, a first-person shooter game co-developed with the SyFy Channel. After that, Trion hasn’t said what else it will do. Trion’s Red Door will be an end-to-end publishing platform that can be customized for each partner. “The only thing you need is a talented game team,” Buttler said. Filed under: games, VentureBeat            This posting includes an audio/video/photo media file: Download Now |
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Posted: 06 Oct 2011 06:00 AM PDT
 Pre-order book sales of the authorized biography of Apple co-founder Steve Jobs have jumped significantly since news of his death was made public yesterday.The book, which will hit shelves November 21, is the first authorized account of Jobs’ life. The book’s author, former Time Magazine managing editor Walter Isaacson, was given special access to Apple and its employees while writing, and the book was already highly anticipated by many of Jobs’ admirers. It features over 40 interviews with Jobs as well as interviews with his family members, friends and competitors. The book is currently sitting at the top of Amazon’s best-sellers list after being in the top hundred for 27 days. It has also risen to Barnes & Noble’s top-10 best sellers. The book’s publisher, Simon & Schuster, hasn’t made any announcements about moving the release date up due to Jobs’ passing. From Amazon’s product description of Steve Jobs: Although Jobs cooperated with this book, he asked for no control over what was written nor even the right to read it before it was published. He put nothing off-limits. He encouraged the people he knew to speak honestly. And Jobs speaks candidly, sometimes brutally so, about the people he worked with and competed against. His friends, foes, and colleagues provide an unvarnished view of the passions, perfectionism, obsessions, artistry, devilry, and compulsion for control that shaped his approach to business and the innovative products that resulted.Let us know in the comments if you pre-order the book. [Via The Hollywood Reporter] Filed under: media, offBeat, VentureBeat            This posting includes an audio/video/photo media file: Download Now |
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Posted: 06 Oct 2011 06:00 AM PDT
 When Facebookers began thinking about the design for Timeline, the name for the new look and feel of Profiles, they reached for books more often than browser tabs.As a result, while the new Facebook Profiles might look a bit like a WordPress or Tumblr theme, they actually have a lot more in common with a physical scrapbook or a box of old photos once you start using them (and most users will be able to activate the new options within a few weeks). "We looked at a lot of print, and we did entire studies on scrapbooks," Facebook product chief Sam Lessin told VentureBeat in an interview in San Francisco. "We’d get out a big box of old pictures, flip through the photos and talk about them. We were watching test users reminisce over these things, and we tried to design with that in mind and create that experience." Reminiscence, memory and nostalgia are concepts that came up over and over in our talk with Lessin. He brought up the fictional Mad Men character Don Draper’s pitch for the Carousel slide projector, a presentation that emphasized memory and emotion. "We must have watched that Carousel video internally fifty times, thinking about nostalgia," said Lessin. And that focus shows. When I activated Timeline on my own profile, I was immediately struck by what Facebook had done. Years-old memories flashed before me — old friends, old places, things I hadn’t thought about in ages. I got sucked back into the past the same way I would have in front of my mother’s old cedar chest, a trunk packed full of childhood tchotckes and pictures that holds our family’s history. This innocuous social web tool had just made a powerful and convincing bid for more than my information or my time. Facebook was grasping at my emotions by way of my memories, and it was doing a damn good job. With Timeline, Facebook is succeeding where so many other web companies have failed: It has created a technology with real emotional power. Under so strong a grip, I think it unlikely that any Facebook user would seriously consider leaving the site. The company would have to do something egregious to make its users abandon such an elegantly organized personal history of memories and relationships. Is that scary? It’s as scary as you want to make it. You can still easily export all your posts and photos if you ever want to leave Facebook or simply back up your data. But Facebook is also giving you a well-designed, interactive, shareable, cloud-based scrapbook that’s more useful and possibly more interesting than the traditional format scrapbook sitting at the bottom of your mother’s cedar chest. How Timeline came to be The first thing I wanted to know from Lessin is where this Timeline idea came from. Facebook is famous for developing features and products with small teams of two or three employees working independently and intrapreneurially. Had Timeline been the work of a couple designer/hackers coding their butts off for a few months? Lessin told me that Timeline was different from most other Facebook features in that respect. "The number of people that touched this to make it happen was enormous. A large part of the design team worked on parts of Timeline. It was uniquely, really collaborative, and it took a village to get it done." The new user interface has been a long time coming; in fact, a lot of people have been wondering why a bold Profile redesign didn’t roll out sooner. "The most recent iteration took at least a year," he said, "but even getting to that point took years." Lessin continued, "We had a thousand iterations for this. If you look at books, a lot of timelines are horizontal, so we had a bunch of iterations based on that. There were a lot of designs that we built and unbuilt with different designers." Also, Lessin confirmed that the Timeline idea "wasn’t something we at Facebook hadn’t thought about before." In other words, Facebook has been thinking about chronological design and restructuring Profiles for quite some time – years, in fact. So while the thesis was easy and the end was a lot of work, Lessin said, "The really tough part was the middle. It’s hard to know when to go into build mode." Ultimately, one point stood out for the team: Facebook users kept going back in time. That is, people were constantly looking through deeper, older information on their Walls and friends’ Walls. And that desire to quickly, easily navigate through time, skimming over the detritus but not overlooking the gems, was a large part of what motivated the team to structure the new Profiles as a timeline wherein memories are distilled and important events are highlighted. In the end, Facebook made Profiles an algorithmically derived scrapbook that can contain and beautifully display the most important things about you. "Time is not a new concept," said Lessin. "People have been making timelines since the Romans and before. So we had a lot of source material to draw from." Lessin also said that, as modern citizens, the designers looked to a wide variety of industries, time periods and places for inspiration. They even got into infographics and information design, which led them to two new hires with deep roots in information design. "The way the project ended up running, we had certain people who spent 24/7 working on this, living and breathing it," said Lessin. "Nick Felton was one of them, from the time he joined Facebook to the product launch." Felton was an information designer with whom Facebook had worked in the past, primarily on collateral for the company’s 2010 f8 developer conference. Felton is known for being a master of weaving time and information into stunning and clear graphical interfaces. His annual reports are visually fantastic, data-rich representations of personal interactions throughout the year. In short, his work represented exactly the kind of thinking Facebook needed behind Timeline. Ryan Case was another person Facebook brought on specifically to design the new Profiles. Case was Felton’s co-founder at Daytum, a name the duo established to work on personal data visualization projects. So with a pair of infographic gurus at the helm, Facebook was ready to start building what became Timeline. How and why Timeline works As a result, said Lessin, “The design is obviously interesting. There’s a lot that may be familiar, but there’s a lot that’s new.”With a Timeline-enabled Profile, the above-the-fold area of the screen (the information you see first without any serious scrolling) acts like a table of contents for your life and personality. You can read straight through or skip to the good parts, like what music someone likes or highlight posts from the year you met him or her. The first thing each Timeline page displays is a large header image that Lessin called a “cover photo.” Because of the dimensions of the image space, this isn’t really an appropriate place to plaster up yet another headshot; rather, it’s a space to show people what you’re about. Facebook is channeling its users from narcissism toward genuine self-expression. “There are a lot of reasons for your profile picture to be a picture of you,” said Lessin, “but people have been hacking that for self-expression. Watching people choose their cover photos, people are really using them to express themselves. It’s a rich storytelling opportunity.” As you scroll down past the header and initial string of app-related information, the Timeline acts much like a prettier version of the Facebook Wall you already have, but the scrolling never stops. Better yet, it never gets boring. As you continue backwards in time down the page, you see less detail and more of the bigger picture. You’ll get the highlights of months and years past. You’ll get highly visual content that triggers memories; you’ll be reminded of when you first made important friendships. If you see an event, image, or update that strikes you as particularly important, you can star it; the item will become a full-page-width pictorial display. “The first few minutes of using the product is zipping through and looking at their memories, things that have always been there but weren’t easy to surface,” said Lessin. For those who want to dig deeper, the Timeline theme (chronologically organized information that has more detail for recent events and big highlights for later events) carries throughout the applications listed on your Profile. Want to see all your Spotify information? It’s right there in a consistent, easy-to-browse timeline. Even the geographically organized map view, which sorts all your posts and photos by location, has a timeline on the side. Ultimately, Facebook has managed to make something that is completely and visually personal without resorting to the kind of customization options that made a designer’s nightmare out of MySpace. “We really wanted to make this feel like it’s yours,” Lessin told us. “It’s designed very differently from News Feed. I don’t know how the rest of the site is going to evolve over time, but the central concept is that if something is yours, it should feel different from other people’s pages and other Timelines on Facebook.” While the design focus was intense and highly specialized and the engineering behind Timeline involved “a lot of heavy lifting,” Lessin said the most important part of building Timeline was an understanding of how people engage with one another and with information online. “We had to figure out the interactions that people wanted to have, the social construction … We like to think we have a competency in that,” he said. Finally, I was left wondering how Facebook users would react to the changes. Historically, Facebook makes incremental tweaks to the interface, and users revolt in agony and frustration. They don’t leave the site, but much to-do is made over the smallest adjustments. Molehills become mountains. So how are users going to handle an actual mountain? “I think Facebook users prepare each other,” said Lessin. “One of the things we did with our last Profile redesign was we had an opt-in period. Facebook users who got in early taught one another and helped one another. This time, we also have an opt-in period.” This opt-in period will give users ample time to explore and answer important questions about the new interface. “One aspect is, can you use your own Timeline? How shocking is this to you? Who is seeing what? So this window lets people hide posts and adjust their new Profile before turning it on,” said Lessin. “It’s a big product, and there are a lot of different features. But learning it really comes when your mom asks you or when you teach a friend. Getting the product early to people who can help with that is how we navigate these things.” Filed under: dev, social            This posting includes an audio/video/photo media file: Download Now |
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Posted: 06 Oct 2011 05:00 AM PDT
 Cloud-based social media data backup service Backupify has released a new report on data loss via Google Apps services.Backupify's service creates a backup archive of all the information from a person's various social media and web application accounts. The archive of information includes data from Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Google Apps accounts and others. Users can also download local copies of their data in addition to having it stored. Backupify’s report, titled "Causes and Solutions for Google Apps Data Loss," is intended to help advise IT professionals about data loss concerns when transitioning to the cloud, according to the company. The report is derived from over a hundred data loss incidents reported on the Google Apps help forums. It shows that 63 percent of data loss incidents occurred due to user error (accidentally deleting something), eight percent were attributed to hacking and three percent were due to a third-party app that corrupted the data. Of all the incidents studied, all of them were beyond Google’s control. Check out the infographic displaying some of the data from the report embedded below.  Filed under: cloud, enterprise, VentureBeat            This posting includes an audio/video/photo media file: Download Now |
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Posted: 06 Oct 2011 02:30 AM PDT
Former Apple CEO Steve Jobs passed away Wednesday at the age of 56, but during his time at Apple’s helm, he brought world an incredible array of visionary products that he helped design and create.
Jobs liked to call some of his products “magical.” While that might be a bit of an exaggeration, there’s no doubt he and the people he oversaw at Apple changed the way people interact with computers. One of Jobs’ biggest notions was the idea of building a device focused on the needs of a user and not just building technology for the sake of it. He oversaw the creation of the world’s single most popular portable music player and smartphone. Here are 10 important products Steve Jobs brought to the world while at Apple: Apple II Launched in June 1977, the Apple II was the first successful mass-market PC. Jobs and Apple cofounder Steve Wozniak designed the Apple II, and it changed computing around the world. The first Apple II had specs you would laugh at now, but they were quite good for the time: a 1-MHz processor, 4KB of RAM and an audio cassette interface for programs and data storage. The machine had an external 5.25-inch floppy disk drive as well. The Apple II and its successors would later pave the way for business and consumer PCs. Lisa While Apple’s 1983 Lisa computer was a failure of sorts because of its $10,000 price tag, it did introduce many computing features that continue to drive computing innovation. The Lisa was one of the first computers to offer multitasking, a document-based graphical user interface, an optional hard drive and bundled office software. The Lisa is arguably the least important item on this list, and if that’s the case, you can see just how notable Jobs’ contribution to technology products are to today’s society. Macintosh The original Macintosh computer was advertised during the Super Bowl in 1984 and famously decried the status quo of personal computing with imagery related to the film 1984. The Macintosh redefined PCs and was the first commercially successful personal computer to feature a graphical user interface and a mouse. The Macintosh line faltered in the early 90s but began to regain steam again with the iMac. iMac A year after Jobs returned to the helm at Apple in 1997, the company launched the distinctive (and divisive) first-generation iMac. The design was a radical departure from the Macs of old and helped Apple regain its footing with high-minded consumers. Designer Jonathan Ive, with oversight from Jobs, led the design team in the creation of the iMac, and he later helped design most of the products you see below. iPod The iPod MP3 player looked a little wacky when it first hit the scene in 2001. Outside of the Walkman, there really wasn’t a single portable music device that changed music so drastically. The first iPod retailed for $400 with 5GB of storage, but now there’s a host of iPod devices ranging from the tiny iPod shuffle to the feature-filled iPod touch, each with its own purpose. The iPod line has had the best-selling music players in the world for several years, and you can count on it staying that way for some time. iTunes It wasn’t enough that Jobs revolutionized the MP3 player; he also needed to give people the software to manage the content. iTunes started as an interface for playing your music files, but now it is one of the largest music stores on the planet. iTunes accounts for more than a fourth of music sales happening today, and the trend will likely continue in its favor as the iPod continues its reign as the most popular music player. Apple also recently introduced iCloud, which will interact with iTunes and Apple products so users can store music in the cloud rather than solely on their devices. MacBook Pro The MacBook Pro’s launch in January 2006 showed that Apple was once again getting serious about innovating in the laptop space with high-end parts and aluminum bodies. The Pro’s design largely took cues from PowerBook G4 but included Intel Core Duo processors rather than PowerPC chips, a move that opened up a lot more potential for Apple’s machine and showed the “Wintel” alliance wasn’t going to last. The MacBook Pro paved the way for the MacBook Air a few years later, and the Pro still retails today as one of the classiest laptops around. iPhone While some observers may have been disappointed by Tuesday’s launch of the iPhone 4S instead of a much-anticipated iPhone 5, there is no doubt that the first iPhone changed the smartphone landscape as we know it when it landed in June 2007. Steve Jobs’ dedication to a strong user interface showed with his focus on a simple mobile operating system paired with a 3.5-inch touch screen. The iPhone now has more than 500,000 apps available for it, and the phone is the best-selling smartphone in the world. MacBook Air The first MacBook Air didn’t seem as important as it is now, but that just shows how Jobs was thinking ahead yet again. When Apple launched the MacBook Air in January 2008, it seemed like a stripped-down laptop that ditched the CD-ROM a little too soon. But now that we’re in the age of cloud computing and streaming media, the need for physical media is essentially gone. The MacBook Air and Intel’s “Ultrabook” followers will continue to change how we look at laptops and personal computing. iPad The January 2010 launch of the iPad tablet showed that Jobs yet again was ahead of the curve by bringing back tablet computing. Tablets were first shown off by Microsoft in 2001, but tablet PCs didn’t take off with consumers until Jobs paired a tablet with the simple iOS mobile operating system and a variety of compelling apps. The iPad is by far the best-selling tablet in the world and many analysts believe it will stay that way, even with competitors like Amazon Kindle Fire and Samsung Galaxy Tab 10.1 and 8.9. What Steve Jobs product has had the biggest impact on you? Filed under: VentureBeat            This posting includes an audio/video/photo media file: Download Now |
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Posted: 05 Oct 2011 09:01 PM PDT
 Real estate listings site Zillow on Thursday launched a new version of its iPhone app that incorporates its Mortgage Marketplace and new financial tools to help people manage and finance home purchases.Zillow has caught the attention of tech watchers and investors because it is one of the few tech IPOs from this year that still has a higher stock price than it had when it opened. When Zillow debuted on the NASDAQ in mid-July, the price greatly fluctuated, but ended up settling above its $20 opening price. As of Wednesday, Zillow was trading around $25 a share. Zillow’s push to polish its popular iPhone application stems from incredibly wide usage. The company said that people shopping for homes view more than 2.5 million homes each day on Zillow from smartphones and tablets. Zillow also has apps for iPad, Android, BlackBerry and Windows Phone 7. “Real estate is inherently mobile, and our goal is to provide people with information about homes – and home financing – whenever and wherever they need it," said Zillow CEO Spencer Rascoff in a statement. Zillow already offered a separate iPhone application for its Mortgage Marketplace — a place for borrowers to connect with lenders to find loans — and the tools associated with the Marketplace. But now Zillow has incorporated all of those tools inside the primary Zillow app for easy access (and probably so people actually know about them). The company also updated the app with faster map performance and made it easier to save searches and favorites. Zillow lists the following tools as new additions to the primary app: • The Payment Calculator helps consumers estimate what their monthly payment will look like for a particular home that interests them.Are you a Zillow user? Do you think the company can continue to find an audience in a stagnant housing market? Filed under: mobile            This posting includes an audio/video/photo media file: Download Now |
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Posted: 05 Oct 2011 07:54 PM PDT
 Hours after news broke about the passing of former Apple CEO and founder Steve Jobs, microblogging social network Twitter is consumed with reactions from fans and people who appreciated what Jobs did for the world.The column of trending topics is dominated with Jobs-related subjects. Hashtags like #iSad, #RIPstevejobs and #ThankyouSteve are all actively being attached to messages. Tons of pictures continue to pop up from Apple stores, where fans are holding candle vigils, paying their respects to Jobs. Also, several people are passing around video links of old Steve Job commencement speeches, past Apple keynotes and early TV interviews. The most frequently tweeted Jobs quote I’ve seen in scanning these reactions is based on his personal philosophy on life and work: “Your work is going to fill a large part of your life, and the only way to be truly satisfied is to love what you do.” We’ve collected some of the tweets and media people are sharing below…        Frequently shared images…   Filed under: offBeat, social, VentureBeat            This posting includes an audio/video/photo media file: Download Now |
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Posted: 05 Oct 2011 07:42 PM PDT
 Admirers of Steve Jobs are gathering at Apple stores around the Bay Area and around the country tonight to pay their respects to an icon in our industry. Steve Jobs passed away today; he was 56. These mourners are developers, web designers and fans of Apple’s beautifully designed products. We took some time this evening to speak to those who gathered at the Apple store in downtown San Francisco and to ask them a simple question: How did Steve Jobs change your life? In some cases, Jobs’ work touched many aspects of their lives. From the iPods they listen to on the way to work to the computers they use to create websites, Apple permeates the culture and labor of web work. VentureBeat thanks Steve Streza, Cory Moll and Stanley Jones for sharing their thoughts with us tonight. Filed under: VentureBeat            This posting includes an audio/video/photo media file: Download Now |
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Posted: 05 Oct 2011 07:15 PM PDT
 Apple co-founder and former chief executive Steve Jobs passed away today, and in the wake of the confirmation, obituaries have been appearing on news sites around the world. Here are links to some of the pieces that we think capture the spirit of the man who, in his own words, “put a dent in the universe.”“A visionary inventor and entrepreneur, it would be impossible to overstate Steve Jobs' impact on technology and how we use it. Apple's mercurial, mysterious leader did more than reshape his entire industry: he completely changed how we interact with technology.” Wired “During his more than three decade-long career, Mr. Jobs transformed Silicon Valley as he helped turn the once sleepy expanse of fruit orchards into the technology industry’s innovation center. In addition to laying the groundwork for the high-tech industry … Mr. Jobs proved the appeal of well-designed products over the sheer power of technology itself and shifted the way consumers interact with technology in an increasingly digital world.” Wall Street Journal “By then, having mastered digital technology and capitalized on his intuitive marketing sense, Mr. Jobs had largely come to define the personal computer industry and an array of digital consumer and entertainment businesses centered on the Internet.” New York Times “Jobs was considered by many to be the greatest corporate leader of the last half century, and indeed his numerous successes rank him alongside Ford, Disney and Edison as a giant of American business.” San Francisco Chronicle “The iPod, iPhone and iPad were all relatively late to market, were expensive, and, in their initial versions, lacked important features. But Apple’s products not only came to dominate their rivals, they redefined large areas of three whole industries: music, mobile telephony and personal computing.” Guardian “He did what a CEO should: hired and inspired great people; managed for the long term, not the quarter or the short-term stock price; made big bets and took big risks. He insisted on the highest product quality and on building things to delight and empower actual users, not intermediaries like corporate IT directors or wireless carriers. And he could sell. Man, he could sell.” Walt Mossberg, AllThingsD “Ironically, it’s the unique combination of Jobs’ showmanship, eye for detail and instinct for business strategy that may make it hard to identify his rightful place in business history.” LA Times “I just feel lucky I had the chance to tell a kind man that I was sorry for being an asshole before it was too late.” Brian Lam, Wirecutter Boing Boing posted a different kind of tribute, changing its homepage design to honor Jobs’ legacy (pictured at the top of this post). Filed under: VentureBeat            This posting includes an audio/video/photo media file: Download Now |
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Posted: 05 Oct 2011 06:09 PM PDT
 Steve Jobs, the co-founder and former chief executive of Apple, has died. He was 56.Jobs was a visionary leader who, more than any other single person, reshaped the face of consumer technology. He was often quoted as saying, “We’re here to put a dent in the universe.” He did exactly that. From his earliest computers, co-developed with Apple cofounder Steve Wozniak, to the smartphones and tablets that his company developed, Jobs showed a singleminded dedication to building products that were easier to use, better-looking and more intuitively useful than what had gone before. He liked to say that Apple's products were "magical.” If they were, he was the marketing and technology magician behind the curtain. And if they weren’t exactly magic, Apple’s products were certainly a sufficiently advanced technology.
Further coverage of Steve Jobs from VentureBeat:
Many of the innovations that Apple would become famous for — the mouse, the desktop metaphor, icons, touchscreens — didn’t originate with Apple. But Jobs clearly had a knack for identifying ideas that weren’t reaching their full potential elsewhere, then integrating them into compelling products that struck a chord with consumers.The Macintosh was the first commercially successful computer to use a graphical user interface and a mouse, a decade after the technologies had debuted at Xerox PARC and SRI. The iPhone threw out the book on how to make a smartphone and reoriented an entire industry around touchscreens and apps, well after touchscreens first appeared in PDAs like the PalmPilot. The iPad succeeded in making a popular tablet computer after Windows-based computer manufacturers had tried to do so for nearly a decade. Jobs was also a tough and uncompromising manager who inspired fear as well as admiration. He developed a reputation for not suffering fools, reportedly ending job interviews within minutes if he sensed the candidate wasn’t up to snuff. He was an awe-inspiring negotiator who won favorable deals for Apple from a string of companies, from record labels and Hollywood studios to AT&T, Verizon and telecommunications carriers around the world. He was also adamant in resisting features that weren't necessary. He'd say no to keyboards, because touch technology was enough — even though the vast majority of smartphones had keyboards and people would have thought it was crazy to drop them. He'd say no to multiple buttons on the front of the iPhone — it needed only one. Before that, he'd said no to floppy disks, optical drives, multiple-button mice and more. Under Jobs' leadership, Apple built a "vertical" empire, where everything in its line of products was dictated by the relentless focus on quality, and Apple controlled every slice of the value chain, from components and computer hardware to the operating system, software, online services and even digital media like songs and movies. That strategy went counter to and eventually won out over the "horizontal" empire that Microsoft and Intel had constructed. Jobs was pushed out of Apple back in 1985, when his first spurt of creativity and leadership came to an end and Apple was losing market share. Jobs lost a board fight, and John Sculley was appointed to replace him as CEO. However, Jobs' banishment is credited by some for the source of the genius of his reign since 1996. By departing the computer industry, Jobs was forced to get new perspective, and this undoubtedly played a role in letting him cut Apple’s ties to the past. He injected new life into Pixar, turning it from a tiny boutique animation shop into a dominant force in Hollywood movies and, eventually, the creative savior of Disney. After his company NeXT was bought by Apple, and Jobs returned, he brought with him a new philosophy favoring recognizable products and simple design. His experience at Pixar, as chairman, also gave him an understanding of the entertainment industry. Indeed, it all became the recipe for Jobs' incredible second act. He helped Apple launch the iPod music player in 2001. Then, after building out its iTunes business model, Apple built a phone product on top of that, with the release of the popular iPhone in 2007. The mobile app revolution was sparked, and Apple left everyone in the dust. As a result, Apple's stock has climbed steadily over the past several years. It first became the most valuable company in the world briefly in August, when it surpassed Exxon for the first time. Apple surpassed Google three years ago, a testament to how the market perceives Apple's business to be on firmer ground than Google's. Google's forays into software and into mobile phones look very much like Microsoft's — horizontal plays that remain open to design weaknesses. Apple's iPhones are pretty, and Google's Android phones, while offering lots of cool features, remain universally criticized for their lack of attention to detail, and for compromising on key things like performance and battery life. And then there's Apple's iPad, which first debuted in 2010. Apple was never supposed to be an "enterprise" company, or one that sold products to large companies. It was a consumer company. But surprisingly, by early this year, some 80 percent of Fortune 100 companies had already adopted the iPad in some form, according to Apple. It's this last product that has helped pushed Apple to its global leadership position, and which helped lead HP — once the Silicon Valley icon of quality — to so stunningly kill off its own tablet operations. The iPad was quite a final act. Jobs reportedly called it "the most important thing I've ever done." However, Jobs' own words to graduating Stanford students at a 2005 commencement ceremony perhaps best sum up his philosophies and life's work: "Remembering that I'll be dead soon is the most important tool I've ever encountered to help me make the big choices in life. Because almost everything — all external expectations, all pride, all fear of embarrassment or failure — these things just fall away in the face of death, leaving only what is truly important. "Remembering that you are going to die is the best way I know to avoid the trap of thinking you have something to lose. You are already naked. There is no reason not to follow your heart." Matt Marshall also contributed to this story. Filed under: VentureBeat            This posting includes an audio/video/photo media file: Download Now |
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Posted: 05 Oct 2011 06:07 PM PDT
 Tonight, a crowd of onlookers and press has gathered at Apple‘s headquarters to mark the passing earlier today of Steve Jobs. The flags are lowered to half mast. Employees are filtering out slowly. It’s a very sad scene as a small crowd looks at a bouquet of flowers in front of the building. Briefly, there was a rainbow near the campus.I was just here yesterday to watch Tim Cook, chief executive of Apple and the successor to Jobs, introduce Apple’s next iPhone. The mood was celebratory then. Robert Scoble, tech blogger at Scobleizer, is here talking about his memories of Jobs and Apple.  “I grew up a few miles from here and used to steal apricots from the trees here,” Scoble (pictured right) said. “My whole life has been intertwined with this company and Jobs.”But most of the Apple employees were walking by the press. They were not making eye contact. Many milled about in front of the building, where flowers were left in front of the address sign. Apple employees were also dropping off flowers and other tributes to Jobs at a bench on the side of the front building, near a big lawn. And, of course, they were all snapping photos of it with their iPhones. After Richard Charet heard about Jobs’ death, he came to Apple’s headquarters in Cupertino, Calif. Charet (pictured at top), a self-professed Apple fan, showed up in Scottish kilt with a bagpipe. He walked up and down the sidewalk, playing “Amazing Grace.” He said he was a Canadian himself but felt like paying a tribute to Jobs. Of course, Steve Jobs has to be remembered with music. More than a decade ago, Jobs and Apple turned the music world upside down with the iPod. Now it is fitting he received the bagpipe tribute. It seemed appropriate for the day. Here’s a video of Charet, surrounded by the media. We also have a video of him talking with the media and a video tribute by Robert Scoble.     Filed under: VentureBeat            This posting includes an audio/video/photo media file: Download Now |
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Posted: 05 Oct 2011 05:40 PM PDT
 Apple co-founder Steve Jobs died today at the age of 56, and reactions, statements and tributes from admirers, friends, co-workers, the media, and even the president have started pouring in. We will update this post as more reactions come in throughout the night.The flags have been lowered to half-mast at Apple’s Cupertino headquarters (right). Steve Jobs’ family has released this statement: Steve died peacefully today surrounded by his family.Tim Cook‘s memo to Apple staff: Team,Official statement from President Obama: Michelle and I are saddened to learn of the passing of Steve Jobs. Steve was among the greatest of American innovators – brave enough to think differently, bold enough to believe he could change the world, and talented enough to do it.Bill Gates sent the following email to AllThingsD: I'm truly saddened to learn of Steve Jobs' death. Melinda and I extend our sincere condolences to his family and friends, and to everyone Steve has touched through his work.“From the earliest days of Google, whenever Larry and I sought inspiration for vision and leadership, we needed to look no farther than Cupertino. Steve, your passion for excellence is felt by anyone who has ever touched an Apple product (including the macbook I am writing this on right now). And I have witnessed it in person the few times we have met. On behalf of all of us at Google and more broadly in technology, you will be missed very much. My condolences to family, friends, and colleagues at Apple.” — Sergey Brin, Google “Steve, thank you for being a mentor and a friend. Thanks for showing that what you build can change the world. I will miss you.” — Mark Zuckerberg, Facebook “I am very, very sad to hear the news about Steve. He was a great man with incredible achievements and amazing brilliance. He always seemed to be able to say in very few words what you actually should have been thinking before you thought it. His focus on the user experience above all else has always been an inspiration to me. He was very kind to reach out to me as I became CEO of Google and spend time offering his advice and knowledge even though he was not at all well. My thoughts and Google’s are with his family and the whole Apple family.” — Larry Page, Google "I want to express my deepest condolences at the passing of Steve Jobs, one of the founders of our industry and a true visionary. My heart goes out to his family, everyone at Apple and everyone who has been touched by his work." — Steve Ballmer, Microsoft CEO "True genius is measured by the ability to touch every person on the planet. Steve did that, not just once, but many, many times over his amazing life. We at Intel were privileged to have known him and worked with him as he brought his creations to life. Our hearts go out to his family and to his many friends and co-creators throughout the world.” — Paul Otellini, CEO of Intel “Steve Jobs was an extraordinary visionary, our very dear friend and the guiding light of the Pixar family. He saw the potential of what Pixar could be before the rest of us, and beyond what anyone ever imagined. Steve took a chance on us and believed in our crazy dream of making computer animated films; the one thing he always said was to simply ‘make it great.’ He is why Pixar turned out the way we did and his strength, integrity and love of life has made us all better people. He will forever be a part of Pixar's DNA. Our hearts go out to his wife Laurene and their children during this incredibly difficult time.” — John Lasseter, Chief Creative Officer & Ed Catmull, President, Walt Disney and Pixar Animation Studios “Steve Jobs was a great California innovator who demonstrated what a totally independent and creative mind can accomplish. Few people have made such a powerful and elegant imprint on our lives. Anne and I wish to express our deepest sympathy to Steve's wife, Laurene, and their entire family.” – Jerry Brown, Governor of California “May Steve rest in peace. My deepest sympathy to his loved ones. No CEO has done more for his customers, employees, and shareholders than Steve. He changed the world–my world, your world, the entire world. His words to live by: “There must be a better way.” You changed our lives, Steve, and you showed us that there is a better way…we will miss you.” — Guy Kawasaki, CEO of Alltop: “There aren't enough words to describe what Steve has done, he defines a generation. I hope that everyone will respect his privacy and will respect his family's privacy. For apple this will be business as usual. For all intents and purposes, we knew Steve was sick, but we had no idea he was this sick. This is a tremendous loss of an icon for the tech community, but it's not the time to dismiss Apple." – Michael Gartenberg, analyst at Gartner “Even when I worked for 15 years for Bill Gates at Microsoft, I had a huge admiration for Steve and what Apple had produced. But in the end, when I think about leadership, passion and attention to detail, I think back to the call I received from Steve Jobs on a Sunday morning in January. It was a lesson I’ll never forget. CEOs should care about details. Even shades of yellow. On a Sunday. To one of the greatest leaders I’ve ever met, my prayers and hopes are with you Steve.” — Vic Gundotra, senior vice president of Social at Google, on Google+ “Steve was one of a kind. For many of us working in technology and entertainment, Steve was a new kind of hero that lead with big, bold moves and would not settle for less than perfection. He is the best role model for a leader that aspires to be great." – John Riccitiello, CEO of EA “His death is a huge loss for the creative community. If you think about how many creative things that were made using Apple products… Steve Jobs is probably the biggest influencer there is.” — Joe Fernandez, Klout CEO "As an immigrant, Steve Jobs personified everything that was great about America," Vivek Ranadivé, a friend of Jobs and CEO of Tibco “I’m shocked, and saddened. He’s obviously one of the century’s most important innovators and set the agenda for the tech industry for 30 years. I had mixed feelings about him as a man, as a manager. He was cool … his influence has been staggering.” — Leander Kahney, author of “Inside Steve’s Brain” and publisher of CultofMac.com “There were few people who understood what people wanted and build something beautiful better than him. I tried to emulate him where I could, his Stanford graduation speech still rings with me to this day.” — Alexis Ohanian “I feel crushed right now.” — Jason Calacanis via Twitter  Steve's passion for innovation and creativity will carry on for decades to come. His legacy is enormous, touching millions of people around the world. Our entire industry and economy is better for his presence and incredible contributions. On behalf of Broadcom, we send our deepest condolences to Steve's family and to Apple employees" — Scott McGregor, Broadcom CEO“Steve was one of a kind. For many of us working in technology and entertainment, Steve was a new kind of hero that lead with big, bold moves and would not settle for less than perfection. He is the best role model for a leader that aspires to be great." – John Riccitiello, CEO of Electronic Arts. Dmitry Dragilev, marketing lead of design firm Zurb, said Jobs had a great influence over the company. “Holy Crap. Such a shock. We have a Steve Jobs doll we pass around every morning at scrum [meetings]. Folks here are truly sad … He had a relentless pursuit of excellence: ‘My job is to not be easy on people. My job is to make them better.’” Boingboing.com has touchingly, awesomely changed the design of its homepage in honor of Steve Jobs (right). Google.com has a direct link to Apple’s Steve Jobs page. Filed under: VentureBeat            This posting includes an audio/video/photo media file: Download Now |
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Posted: 05 Oct 2011 04:46 PM PDT
 Apple co-founder and former CEO Steve Jobs has died. He was 56.Apple posted the following brief announcement on the company website: Apple has lost a creative and visionary genius, and the world has lost an amazing human being. Those of us who have been fortunate enough to know and work with Steve have lost a dear friend and an inspiring mentor. Steve leaves behind a company that only he could have built, and his spirit will forever be the foundation of Apple.Jobs’ family released the following statement: Steve died peacefully today surrounded by his family.For some time, Jobs had struggled with health issues. He underwent surgery for pancreatic cancer in 2004. At the beginning of 2009, Jobs wrote an internal Apple memo stating, “My health-related issues are more complex than I originally thought.” With that, he took a six-month leave of absence, during which time he underwent a liver transplant. Jobs returned to Apple, but on January 17, 2011, was again forced to take a medical leave of absence. Several months later, he announced he was permanently resigning as Apple’s CEO. When Jobs stepped down from his full-time position at Apple, we gathered a collection of tributes from executives in technology. "The world owes an enormous debt to Steve," said Steve Perlman, the creator of Apple's original QuickTime player and the current CEO of OnLive, at the time of the resignation. "He has spearheaded so many of the tech and design paradigms that today we take for granted. Steve is one of the most influential and inspirational people of our era, and his direct leadership of Apple will be missed." Last month, Intuit chair Bill Campbell told VentureBeat of Jobs, "He's a magnificent man. He's a good leader, he's a good husband, he's a good father. He's run that company tremendously well." However, Jobs’ own words to graduating Stanford students at a 2005 commencement ceremony perhaps best sum up his philosophies and life’s work: “Remembering that I’ll be dead soon is the most important tool I’ve ever encountered to help me make the big choices in life. Because almost everything — all external expectations, all pride, all fear of embarrassment or failure — these things just fall away in the face of death, leaving only what is truly important. “Remembering that you are going to die is the best way I know to avoid the trap of thinking you have something to lose. You are already naked. There is no reason not to follow your heart.”  Condolences and remembrances should be addressed to rememberingsteve@apple.com. Filed under: VentureBeat            This posting includes an audio/video/photo media file: Download Now |
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Posted: 05 Oct 2011 03:39 PM PDT
 It's time to scrap the dysfunctional, binary approach of "sales and marketing," and look for a new system that harnesses the strengths of both groups to drive a company’s revenue. In order to do that, we must move past traditional sales cycles (and the supporting role marketing plays) and start attacking the entire revenue process with something called revenue performance management (RPM).Death of a sales cycleMost companies are very familiar with the concept of a sales cycle (the sales process and tunnel/funnel). Companies track prospective customers as leads through distinct stages and predict revenue based on potential sales as things currently stand. Up until recently, that was the best way for businesses to model revenue.However, a sales cycle model on its own presents distinct problems and shortcomings when trying to drive sustained revenue growth in today's increasingly social world for a couple of major reasons (and goes the heart of why corporations are literally leaving trillions of dollars on the revenue table).
Birth of a revenue cycleContrary to the old sales cycle, the modern revenue cycle includes the parts of the business that feed and foster sales: marketing, branding, PR and social media. This bigger-picture process makes it possible to take this part of the business that has long been a cost center, and transform it into a true revenue driver.Take marketing, for example. Incorporating marketing into a holistic revenue cycle means not just shooting in the dark and proving ROI later, but instead standardizing and tracking information with sales for the common goal of accelerated revenue generation. This new process, called revenue performance management (RPM), is a modern way of looking at marketing and sales together. The technologies that power RPM are rapidly gaining adoption among companies of all sizes and across every industry precisely because they deliver proven results. In some respects, RPM is a no-brainer that’s time has finally come. In others, properly implementing RPM requires dedication and a degree of sophistication to get the best possible results. Still, it can't be denied that there have been some major shifts between that make it both critically necessary and technically possible for companies of all shapes and sizes to take control of their revenue cycles by bringing marketing and sales together. Today's buyer demands RPMBefore the Internet, sales organizations actually had a chance to influence customers' buying decisions. Now, buyers have a wealth of information at their fingertips and form their purchasing preferences well before they ever connect with a sales rep. We've gone from a limited number of powerful communication channels to a vast and fragmented Web-marketing world, bringing with it both opportunities and challenges.Technological advances in cloud software — including marketing automation, business analytics, cloud-based CRM, sales intelligence and social media monitoring tools — have all been crucial to supporting the capture and flow of information from marketing to sales. They are equally as important to determining revenue impact. For example, only recently has it been possible (or necessary) for a company to compare ROI across hundreds different marketing programs to base future marketing investment on the quality of resulting sales leads. Smart companies are now taking advantage of quickly proliferating marketing channels to reach, influence and track the interest of their prospective customers early in the revenue cycle. But with nearly infinite marketing options available, they must measure what works and what doesn't to consistently accelerate their revenue engine. By optimizing interactions across every touch point, and aligning sales and marketing to operate at high velocity, RPM gives businesses the ideal roadmap to help leaders capitalize on the changes taking place in today's social, mobile and web-driven marketplace to accelerate yearly growth by 40 percent. Get going on your new revenue cycleHow can you take advantage of this shift in your organization today? Here are a few actions I suggest:
What to Expect with RPMA good revenue performance management process should result in high revenue growth out the gate. In our case, Marketo grew revenue by 315 percent in 2010 and we're well on our way to making 2011 another record-breaking year — growing revenue 140 percent last quarter alone.The numbers speak for themselves. Now it's your turn. Seize the day and incite a revenue revolution at your company!  Phil is a 30-year Silicon Valley veteran and has the scars (and a couple of successful IPOs) to prove it. Prior to Marketo, he was President and COO of Epiphany, a public enterprise software company known for its visionary marketing products. Before that, Phil was COO and SVP of Products and Services at Red Brick Systems, a pioneering data warehouse vendor. Earlier, Phil held leadership positions at Metaphor Computer Systems, Stanford University Medical Center, and Masstor Systems. Phil holds a BA from Stanford University.[Top image via Kirill Kurashov/Shutterstock] Filed under: Entrepreneur Corner, VentureBeat            This posting includes an audio/video/photo media file: Download Now |
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Posted: 05 Oct 2011 02:25 PM PDT
 Video social network Keek has secured a new $5.5 million funding round, the company announced today.Keek is essentially a Twitter for video updates. Users can update their friends on what they’re up to with 36-second video clips captured with a web cam or Keek’s mobile apps for iOS and Android. Users can then share those short videos (called Keeks) on Keek’s network, as well as on popular social networks such as Facebook and Twitter. Plenty of startups have tried to go the micro-video blogging route with little success. But unlike similar services such as TwitVid, 12seconds, Twitvid.io and Twiddeo, Keek isn’t focused on being an extension for a single social network like Twitter. The startup plans to use the new funding to strengthen its team of employees, develop new features and speed up expansion into international markets, according to Keek. The funding round was led by AlphaNorth Asset Management and Plazacorp Ventures, with participation from PowerOne Capital Markets Limited. Founded in 2011, the Toronto, Canada-based Keek has 30 employees, and faces competition from Tout and a handful of other companies. Filed under: mobile, social, VentureBeat            This posting includes an audio/video/photo media file: Download Now |
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Posted: 05 Oct 2011 12:50 PM PDT
 AT&T has been maligned for years because of the poor quality and reliability of its network, but the wireless carrier was thrown a major bone by Apple on Monday with its new iPhone 4S. The iPhone 4S chipset supports the fastest 4G-like data speeds on AT&T, but only works on slower 3G networks on Verizon and Sprint. The exact same iPhone 4S models will be sold on AT&T, Verizon and Sprint starting on Oct. 14. Each of those carriers will use marketing to help differentiate why a customer should pick their network. While each of the three networks has good points, AT&T might have the most convincing argument for technology enthusiasts: pure speed. Since the iPhone 4S does not offer true 4G like LTE or WiMAX, it was thought by many to be underwhelming. Apple likely didn’t include LTE or WiMAX because they are major battery killers, but the company did increase data speeds to match other HSPDA AT&T phones such as the HTC Inspire 4G and LG Thrill 4G. The new iPhone 4S supports what is called 14.4 HSDPA data. This means the phone can have download speeds up to 14.4 Mbps and upload speeds up to 5.8 Mbps on supported networks. AT&T offers 14.4 HSDPA in many of its markets already, and a spokesperson told me the company “expects” two-thirds of the company’s 3G network to offer 14.4 or greater HSDPA peak speeds by the end of the year. If you want to watch streaming movies, listen to streaming music or download large apps, AT&T will unquestionably be the fastest network. Verizon and Sprint are another story. The 3G speeds on both networks typically fluctuate between 600 kbps and 1.4 Mbps for downloads, and between 500 and 800 kbps for uploads. Customers will likely see peaks speeds up to 2.5 Mbps (I’ve seen this speed on both networks), but it is not consistent. Watching Netflix movies or streaming songs from Rdio will be a lot less enjoyable using Verizon and Sprint’s 3G data networks. When it comes to finding ways to compensate for slower data speeds, Verizon and Sprint do have some big advantages. First, Verizon has the strongest and most reliable voice network, so if you call people all the time, Verizon might be a more suitable choice. Second, Sprint is the only carrier of the three to offer an unlimited data package, and it has as well as the least expensive monthly pricing. AT&T is typically the least reliable of the three above networks at establishing voice and data connections. But the network has gotten better over the years, as it has added enhanced backhaul for faster speeds and added more coverage to better compete with Verizon’s expansive 3G network. As someone who will likely purchase an iPhone 4S, I’ve had to take all of these factors into consideration. As a denizen of New York City, all three networks have done their best at providing high-quality 3G coverage. In real testing, Verizon’s voice network is the best while AT&T provides the fastest data speeds. Sprint has been reliable in voice and data, but it hasn’t dramatically stood out. I’ll have to continue weighing all the pros and cons, but if I’m being honest, speed matters most and AT&T will be the best choice for that. Filed under: mobile            This posting includes an audio/video/photo media file: Download Now |
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Posted: 05 Oct 2011 12:00 PM PDT
 EDITOR'S NOTE: Each week, I'm writing a column on business and technology called Dylan's Desk, while Dean Takahashi is writing a column on video games called The DeanBeat. They are available to newsletter subscribers a whole day before they appear on the VentureBeat website.— Software is eating the world, storied venture capitalist Marc Andreessen recently wrote — and from his perspective, it certainly looks like it. But that’s only part of the picture. It’s true that the fastest-growing companies in a variety of markets are driven by their deep understanding of software. Andreessen cites Amazon, Netflix, Skype, Pandora and Zynga as examples. And like Andreessen, Salesforce CEO Marc Benioff lauded HP for getting out of the PC business to focus on software-based “cloud” products and services. It’s true that if you’re an investor looking for a good multiple, software startups offer an unparalleled opportunity to create value with relatively small investments. And yet, if you’re concerned about the long-term shape of technology, software is only one dimension of many. Arguably, hardware makers and service providers exert far more control over the future direction of technology. When I look at the companies that will make a difference to my future (and my children’s), I’m more concerned about the latter. Apple’s iPad, Amazon’s Kindle Fire, Nike’s Nike+ system, sensors built into cities and computer chips printed on paper: These are the kinds of things that will change the world over time. The data-usage and app policies of wireless and wireline carriers: These are the kinds of things that can enable revolutionary change, or kill it in its cradle. And the truth is, all of this software couldn’t exist without hardware to drive it. A massive infrastructure had to be built before software could “eat the world,” including hundreds of thousands of miles of fiber-optic cable, millions of servers and billions of handsets. For every 600 smartphones sold, a carrier has to deploy one server, according to sources at Intel. You think that’s not a business opportunity? Talk to AT&T, which has struggled — or perhaps dragged its heels — to install enough back-end hardware and cell towers to support all the iPhones it sold, and to Verizon, whose infrastructure let it capitalize on AT&T’s weakness. Even Google owes an often-overlooked debt to the genius of its hardware engineers, which let the company make the most of its clever search and ad-sales algorithms. If you think that all the companies that built that infrastructure are just going to step aside while software startups extract value from it, you’re mistaken. Just look at the carriers’ enormous resistance to net neutrality, which they pay lip service to but panic whenever it threatens to become legislation. Google’s decision to purchase Motorola so it would have some leverage against the whims of every other handset manufacturer. Apple’s tenacious defense of the hardware, software and services complex it has created around iTunes, iOS and apps. Even Netflix’s failure to renew its contract with Starz, an old-school cable TV company, shows that, at the end of the day, software is at the mercy of hardware. Starz is a cable TV content provider, but it’s dependent on customers paying monthly fees for access to the wires installed and provisioned by the likes of Comcast and Time Warner. Netflix was desperate enough for that content that it was willing to pay $300 million for it. $300 MILLION. And Starz turned it down, because it knew Netflix was a threat to its basic business and that of every other cable company. The fact that Netflix is a threat gives me some hope, because a business model based on fear won’t last long. Sooner or later, Netflix — or some other company — is going to find a way to distribute video without going through the cable companies’ current subscription model, where you have to subscribe to the premium package before you can get the movies you want. But guess what? Even when that happens, you’ll still be paying the cable companies for access to the Internet. You’ll still be paying Apple, Dell or the former PC division of HP for your computer. You’ll pay Apple, RIM or Nokia for your phone. You’ll still be paying Intel for the chips, and Intel will still be paying Applied Materials for the million-dollar machines that make those chips. Software is not eating the world. It’s merely riding on the back of an infrastructure leviathan, like a monkey on an elephant. Photo: An early Google server rack. Photo by Steve Parker/Flickr. Here are a few other recent stories from VentureBeat that I think you’ll enjoy.
Filed under: VentureBeat            This posting includes an audio/video/photo media file: Download Now |
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Posted: 05 Oct 2011 11:46 AM PDT
 Technical founders have already become prerequisites in the world of tech startups. Now get ready for the designer founder. The combination of this new duo is going to change the world of tech forever. To quote Daniel Pink in his book A Whole New Mind, The last few decades have belonged to a certain kind of person with a certain kind of mind—computer programmers who could crank code, lawyers who could craft contracts, MBAs who could crunch numbers. But the keys to the kingdom are changing hands. The future belongs to a very different kind of person with a very different kind of mind—creators and empathizers, pattern recognizers, and meaning makers. These people—artists, inventors, designers, storytellers, caregivers, consolers, big picture thinkers—will now reap society's richest rewards and share its greatest joys.Although we agree with Daniel Pink's quote and premise, we are by no means diminishing the role of the technical founder. We're huge advocates of engineers/hackers (aka technical founders) and believe their "in-house" talents are crucial in this new tech renaissance. Our position here is to highlight the importance and opportunity of the emerging technical and design founder duo. We strongly believe that both are equally important! High-concept, high-touch mentalities in tech startups are a winning proposition. When founders seek out talent these days, most of them (at least in our experience) are looking for designers as much as for engineers. This is mainly because, more often than not, it is the technical founders who are starting companies, and they realize that creating an exceptional user experience is a competitive advantage. Adding “Design Founders” to the mix is a potential “black swan:” hard to predict, highly improbable, and will change the world— potentially redefining the high tech landscape. There is, however, a shortage of good startup designers, at least when it comes to people who have both interaction and product design experience and skill sets. Designers today are being asked to do more than simply build visuals and hand them off to engineers. They are evolving into experts in user research (customer development), information architecture (IA), interaction design (IxD), visual design, and storytelling (copy writing and messaging). They also possess back-end skills and have a thorough understanding of the technology stack that the product is being built on. Just as importantly, they get the big picture and realize that user experiences are built around business models as well, including marketing, distribution, customer support, sales, business development and operations. Bringing user-centered design to the agile process is producing a new generation of startups. Design is no longer considered tactical; instead, it is recognized as a strategic component of the startup process by the tech mainstream. While it's really always been strategic, it's only recently that the perception has caught up with the reality (consider Apple, IDEO, Target, Design Within Reach & Coca Cola). This new breed is whole-minded, leveraging the right brain to create experiences and the left to analyze the experiential data in order to iterate and improve. This breed of founder is focused on weaving their new sensibilities into the strategic fabric of the startup, forging the path to the customer through user metrics, customer metrics, product flows, and conversion funnels. Last, but not least, they are sociable. They seek to understand user behavior and empathize with users, rather than constantly defending their creative output. Design founders are creating an “unfair advantage” by opening up new markets and reconfiguring existing ones. The new world of design is displacing incumbents all over the IT landscape. User experience-driven innovation will most likely bring large-scale change (and financial success) to the evolving startup landscape. With lower startup costs and a vastly expanded global market for online and mobile services (almost 2B people on the Web and billions using smart phones) combined with cheaper online distribution, building better user experiences will become the way of the future. Bottom line: As we move out of the age of information and into the conceptual age, we are faced with the demand to create product experiences that are no less than exceptional. Venture51 is high-centered on design/user experience-driven startups. Part of our core strategy is to align with the best design founders globally and expose their expertise to this unique opportunity in the high-tech startup ecosystem. It’s not a matter of if or even when these changes will take off; it’s here now, and for the foreseeable future we are betting big on this design-driven thesis. This new frontier creates a competitive edge we like to refer to as the Unfair Design Advantage. Filed under: VentureBeat            This posting includes an audio/video/photo media file: Download Now |
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Posted: 05 Oct 2011 11:16 AM PDT
 As VentureBeat previously confirmed, Microsoft has reached a deal with Verizon that will bring live TV content to the Xbox 360, the companies announced Wednesday.Microsoft has long since aspired to turn its Xbox 360 gaming console into a complete media center experience, which it has arguably been unable to achieve without a better selection of television content. The new partnership gives Xbox Live Gold subscribers access to live TV channels offered by Verizon’s FiOS service — essentially allowing Verizon FiOS customers to use their console as a set-top cable box. Not all Verizon FiOS channels will be available via Xbox Live, and it’s unknown if FiOS customers will be charged additional fees for the Xbox integration. (By comparison, competitors like AT&T’s Uverse requires its customers to purchase a $99 Xbox installation kit.) Microsoft also announced partnerships with a number of other TV service providers and content producers. Xbox Live gold subscribers will also have access to Comcast’s Xfinity On Demand streaming video service and HBO Go. And while neither of those partners are offering live TV, the same might not be true for individual channels like Bravo and Syfy. Microsoft’s strategy to transform the Xbox 360 into a direct competitor with popular set-top boxes (like Roku, Boxee, Apple TV and various Google TV enabled devices) is very smart. Not only does the console itself compare in price to other options ($149- $199 for an Xbox verses $60-$199 for others), but it also brings the company's other services into clear view in a way that wasn't possible before. The new TV content integration is expected to launch in December 2011 along with a new Xbox Live unified dashboard for improved navigation.  Filed under: games, media, VentureBeat            This posting includes an audio/video/photo media file: Download Now |
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Posted: 05 Oct 2011 10:59 AM PDT
 Today Marc Benioff, chief executive of Salesforce.com, warned everybody in the tech industry to embrace social networking and cloud computing or face obsolescence.In a talk that was originally supposed to be a keynote at Oracle OpenWorld 2011, Benioff said, “Social tech is shaking our industry at the core. It’s our job to transform our own businesses with social power.”  Salesforce.com has made a big push to add social elements to its cloud-based customer relationship management services. That’s because it thinks enterprises have to embrace the same technology that consumers are adopting with the rise of Facebook and Twitter.“We see a dramatic shift to smartphones, mobile devices and tablets, and PCs are dying off,” Benioff said. “This is the social revolution. You can be Mubarak and say it doesn’t exist,” a reference to the Arab Spring protests that took down Egypt’s president. The event drew some attention because of a small behind-the-scenes drama. Benioff was originally scheduled to talk about cloud computing at the Oracle OpenWorld 2011 conference, but just a day before Benioff’s keynote, Oracle canceled the speech. Benioff, in classic fiery fashion, decided to hold his keynote speech anyway, inside a nearby restaurant, Ame. The venue could hold maybe 75 people, so it was a small gathering. But Benioff was loud, and he didn’t really need a microphone. Benioff said today that the speed with which his team moved to find a new keynote venue showed how flexible cloud-based companies could be. His team planned the event on the company’s Chatter internal social network and Benioff spread the word about the new event on Twitter. AllThingsD reported Oracle spokeswoman Deborah Hellinger said the move was a change in schedule, due to the heavy attendance at the conference. The Salesforce.com "executive solution session" was moved to Thursday at 8 am in the Novellus Theater. Benioff used to work for Ellison at Oracle but he broke off to create Salesforce.com, the customer relationship management service provider that touts cloud computing, or services based on web-connected data centers rather than client-based software. Benioff has been critical of Oracle in the past, saying that it advocates a "false cloud." He said “We are not selling a proprietary mainframe (a reference to Oracle). We are creating a new way of doing business.” In the talk, Benioff said Salesforce.com’s revenue run rate is at $2.1 billion and the company has more than 100,000 customers. Each quarter, Salesforce.com processes more than 36 billion transactions. “All of this architecture is built on the cloud,” he said. “It is open, it is not proprietary. That is not the message of the show. It is not democratic. That is the false cloud.” “That was after the show was over,” Benioff said. Benioff said that in the past year, Chatter has become deeply integrated into the operations of enterprises. In Chatter, you can follow the activities of people in your company. You can follow customer accounts and big deals. The software presents you with a Facebook-like news feed for you to follow. You can embed videos and work together socially. “Why do I know more about friends on Twitter or Facebook than employees?” Benioff asked, referring to typical CEOs of big companies. He said, “Bank of America’s newest branch is on Twitter. We know because we built it.” KLM has also opened a new ticket sales information channel on Twitter, using Salesforce.com’s help. With that Twitter account, KLM answers questions from anyone within an hour. Filed under: cloud, VentureBeat            This posting includes an audio/video/photo media file: Download Now |
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Posted: 05 Oct 2011 10:31 AM PDT
 Phone manufacturer HTC’s Android phones contain a major security flaw, the company has confirmed. It says it is working on a patch to fix the issue.HTC says no customers have been affected by the issue, which affects its Sense software on Android phones. Sense contains a logging application that collects data about your phone but mistakenly leaves it open to third-party apps. “In our ongoing investigation into this recent claim, we have concluded that while this HTC software itself does no harm to customers’ data, there is a vulnerability that could potentially be exploited by a malicious third-party application,” the company said in a statement today. “A third-party malware app exploiting this or any other vulnerability would potentially be acting in violation of civil and criminal laws.” The flaw was first reported by AndroidPolice.com, who discovered that the Sense software opened up access to information about your phone to any Android app that gets access to the Internet. The vulnerable data includes the phone’s IP address, CPU information, and running processes. Such a security snafu not only makes HTC look bad, it reflects negatively on all Android devices. The fact that phone manufacturers can dramatically customize Android has been contentious among consumers, since these customizations tend to slow down phones and hog memory. Yet phone makers, for some reason, seem to love putting their own stamp on the platform. If custom Android interfaces can so easily create security problems, users will rightfully begin to mistrust them. HTC says it’s working “very diligently” on an update that will fix the issue, which will first be tested with its carrier partners before its released over-the-air. For now, the company says users should be extra cautious about obtaining apps from untrusted sources. Filed under: mobile, VentureBeat            This posting includes an audio/video/photo media file: Download Now |
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