VentureBeat |
- Samsung’s transparent display could help retailers draw crowds to windows
- How schools are reacting to Apple’s entry into education
- Peecho’s “License to Print” nets it $750,000 in funding
- PayPal payments coming to a non-virtual store near you
- App-store-for-all Appitalism adds 300K free Android apps (exclusive)
- Netflix CMO Leslie Kilgore leaves after 12 years
- Google killing off Picnik, Urchin, and other services this year
- EA spent ‘only’ $200M to make Star Wars: The Old Republic?
- This post on Google+ statistics is a billion* times better than any other post
- SOPA is essentially dead, and we killed it
- ESA calls for post-SOPA balance of “creative and technology interests”
- iPhone 4S and iPad 2 untethered jailbreaks are finally here
- Heyzap unveils 12 partners for its social discovery network for mobile games
- Kodak hits the skids — not a pretty picture
- Megaupload founder Kim Dotcom: Kingpin, baller, car racer, “God”
- Google+ steps toward web domination with automated signups for new Google accounts
- VC investment rose 10% in 2011, & web companies grabbed the lion’s share
- Epic’s 3D graphics wizard Tim Sweeney says business and technology are “intricately linked” (interview)
- Intel shuffles its executives and puts two on the CEO succession path
- Megaupload lawyer: Swizz Beatz is not CEO of the file-sharing site
| Samsung’s transparent display could help retailers draw crowds to windows Posted: 21 Jan 2012 08:53 AM PST
It may sound crazy to put a display on a window, particularly one that could get smashed. But the transparent display market is expected to grow from $900 million in 2015 to $87 billion by 2025, according to Display Bank. “We look at it as a smart window,” said Bill Beaton, senior manager for LCD marketing at Samsung, in an interview. “You can think of jewelry displays with it or freezer windows at the grocery store that tell you where to find the ice cream. “ The touchscreen could turn what were once boring window displays into interactive experiences and pump new life into the LCD business. It has a contrast ratio of 4,500:1 with high-definition resolution (1,366 x 768 pixels) and a 70 percent color gamut, which means it is as vivid as a lot of TVs in displaying color. The tough thing is that the greater the transparency, the lower the color. The greater the color, the less the transparency. So Samsung had to strike a balance through experimentation, Beaton said. And since the displays use ambient lighting, such as sunshine, as a backlight, they don’t work in the dark. It has a TFT display and is 46 inches. Samsung introduced a 22-inch version last year that is just beginning to make it into stores such as jewelry and luxury vendors. The display is 9 millimeters thick and weighs about 10 pounds. Samsung says it could be used in product showcases, commercial freezer doors in grocery stores, and platform doors of subway stations. It can also be used in other work or home applications including electronic boards, information windows, medical equipment, electronic signs, and, once the displays get smaller, mobile devices. Samsung also showed off a prototype laptop with a transparent display. Pricing isn’t available yet but the products will ship soon. But Beaton said the manufacturing process is not particularly complicated for the transparent displays, as they can be made in the same factories as other LCD displays. It’s not unlike a technology showed off by General Motors for car windows. Here’s a video of the display.
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| How schools are reacting to Apple’s entry into education Posted: 21 Jan 2012 08:30 AM PST When Apple announced its textbook initiative on Thursday, there was a rush of excitement among educators. Textbooks from major publishers, which can cost $40 to $75 dollars in print, would be available as interactive e-books for $15 or less. The new iBooks Author application could turn anyone into a publisher, with its simple interactive e-book creation tools. But then there was the small print: In order to buy and read these textbooks, each student will have to own an Apple iPad. No computer, off-brand tablet, or even iPhone or iPod touch will work. Books made with the new iBooks Author application are only viewable on iPads in the iBooks 2 app, can only be sold through Apple’s iBookstore (where the company takes its customary 30 percent of the sales cost), and cannot be exported as ePubs, the standard open format for all e-book files. For the schools that can afford iPads, Apple’s new apps and partnerships are brimming with potential. “We looked at each other after the announcement, and said ‘Apple must have been reading our minds. This is exactly what we’ve been talking about,’” said Eric Spross, director of technology at the private Menlo School in Atherton, Calif. Menlo School’s iPad pilot program has been in place for more than a year. All eighth and tenth graders are given an iPad for the school year, and though the school owns the tablets, the kids have full custody and can take them home. “We felt that laptops and desktops focus students too much on the technology and not enough on the content or communication with another human,” said Spross. “We choose iPads because they’re lightweight, portable, have a long battery life, and are self-service. They’re easier to support.” Apple’s education announcement was the missing piece in a puzzle for Menlo School. Even though it already had the iPad program, its devices hadn’t made the leap to being e-readers due to a dearth of e-textbooks. Apple’s new partnerships with publishers Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, McGraw-Hill, and Pearson will fix that. Teachers were streaming some iTunes U content, but not much since publishing was limited to university-level courses. Now iTunes U is open to high schools, and a new iTunes U iOS app makes the content accessible from anywhere. Interestingly, Spross said teachers were also eager for a way to create and share their own lessons and books, which they can do on iBooks Author (as soon as they upgrade to Lion). Tuition for Menlo School is $34,900 year. The school purchased all the iPads at full price from its own technology budget. “We don’t really have a technology budget,” said Maria De La Vega, superintendent of East Palo Alto’s Ravenswood public school district (a 30 minute drive from Apple HQ). “Most of what we’ve been able to acquire has been through donations and leftovers from offices closing down.” HP donated a number of small laptops to the district, so there’s now one computer for every sixth to eigth grade student. Those devices would be unable to read the new digital textbooks or any content created with iBooks Author. The iPad is currently the most expensive consumer tablet on the market, starting at $499. While Apple is bringing down the prices of iPad-only textbooks, the company does not offer any known discounts on its iPad, iPhone, or iPod touch hardware to educational institutions, even for bulk orders. “I’ve heard of the Kindle and the Kindle Fire, and I understand that they’re not as expensive. But I don’t know if they’re compatible,” said De La Vega optimistically. While she thinks e-textbooks are a great idea for saving money, she is realistic about the challenges of making the switch. “We’d have a lot of questions about how they would work, like security and what grade level they’d be most successful with. We’d need to make sure our staff is well trained, to utilize and make the most out of the program.” The nearly 100,000 U.S. public schools face restraints beyond money. They are also bound by state and federal regulations that dictate what books they use and what they can spend money on. Unless the full, approved list of books are made available on the iPad, these schools wouldn’t be able to save money by switching to the Apple tablets. “Teachers in private schools can select their own textbooks. Public schools can’t. That’s a distinction that’s larger than having iPads or if they can afford the technology,” said Spross. He pointed out that it’s not all bleak for public schools: “Some of the most compelling and innovative work has been in public schools, in very scientific, state-sponsored programs.” Apple was an early adopter of cloud storage for consumers. Steve Jobs unveiled the company’s iCloud service in June 2011, which enables you to store music, books, photos, contacts, calendars, and more in the cloud. Tying a file to one piece of hardware (in this case, a textbook to an iPad) is a step back for a company that knows the future is accessing your data from multiple devices. Only when public schools can put these $15 e-textbooks on donated laptops, inexpensive e-ink readers, smartphones, and various devices students may already own, can Apple’s textbook “reinvention” be taken seriously by public schools. Apple should update its iBook Author application export to ePub 3 and rewrite the iBooks Author end user license agreement so that books made with the application can be sold anywhere. (Can you imagine if music made in Garage Band could only be sold in iTunes?) Until then, there are other great projects successfully using technology to bring affordable and free education to kids who wouldn’t normally have access to it. The One Laptop Per Child organization unveiled its sub-$100 X0-3 tablet at CES this month. The Khan Academy has more than 2,700 free online video classes on everything from Michelangelo to microeconomics. In India, the government has created the $35 Aakash tablet which will be used to educate underprivileged kids. And Apple of course offers iTunes U, a huge collection of free lectures and courses from top universities. At Menlo School, Spross is already busy figuring out how to best use the new Apple products. “Without this last piece it was, ‘Wow, great gizmo with a lot of potential, but does it mean anything?’” For most public schools, that missing piece will continue to be an iPad. 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| Peecho’s “License to Print” nets it $750,000 in funding Posted: 21 Jan 2012 07:16 AM PST
Peecho, which just raised $750,000, lets visitors to a website or application transform pixels into print by clicking on its embedded print button. The print button connects to a cloud of print facilities all over to world which can produce any chosen magazine, photo album, poster or book. Founders Martijn Groot and Sander Nagtegaal met at photo book printers AlbumPrinter which ran huge printing facilities churning out 16,000 photo books a day, each one different. “We saw that people were telling their own story in digital media,” says Groot, “but still wanted physical products.” Most online content is not print ready. “PDF doesn’t have a spine,” says Groot. There is a bewildering range of digital publishing file formats. This is the reason that there are plenty of sites that let you print a photo album or maybe order a magazine on demand, but most services only print one type of product via a single print facility. Peecho connects to a cloud print network of specialised printing facilities all over the world and aggregates orders from different customers. Most print facilities currently have excess capacity and Peecho can connect a new facility within 2 weeks, a process that would formerly would have taken months. The company takes a markup of each order on top of the wholesale printing price and also provides a white-label solution. Most of the sites and applications which currently use the print button have never had print products as part of their offerings. Peecho will launch a service in February with digital publishing platfom Issuu, which has 50 million readers and adds 201,000 new titles every month. A visitor will be able to choose to print a magazine, paperback or hardback in color or black and white. Only about 5 percent of Issuu’s content is currently available in print. “A lot of titles are never published in print because the volume isn’t large enough,” says Groot. That makes Peecho the long tail of print publishing, or as Groot calls it, “professional printing for the masses.” Groot claims that while there are competitors in different sectors, for example Fotomoto to print photographs for professional photographers, no other company covers multiple print formats and facilities. Peecho’s new funding comes from Peak Capital and DHG Holding, B.V. and will mainly be spent on expanding the company’s global sales force and scaling up the business. The company is based in Amsterdam, has 4 employees and was founded in 2010. Filed under: cloud, deals, VentureBeat        
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| PayPal payments coming to a non-virtual store near you Posted: 20 Jan 2012 10:30 PM PST
Partnering with The Home Depot, PayPal tested its state-of-the-art Touchstone technology in over 51 store locations. Customers are able to pay by just entering their mobile number and PIN or swiping a PayPal credit card at checkout. "We've reached a critical milestone in PayPal History," said West Stringfellow, PayPal Emerging Opportunities in a press release from eBay. "The Home Depot is our first major stride in bringing the PayPal vision to life." PayPal’s expansion into the offline world could mean competition for Visa and MasterCard. Last year, the company boasted over 350 million users, which surpasses the number of credit card holders for both MasterCard and Visa respectively. PayPal has additional plans to team up with ABJ Software and partner with other "large and mortar retailers" in the months ahead. Photo via laihiu/Flickr Filed under: VentureBeat        
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| App-store-for-all Appitalism adds 300K free Android apps (exclusive) Posted: 20 Jan 2012 05:32 PM PST
The main purpose to use Appitalism versus traditional app stores, argues creator and CEO Simon Buckingham, is that people have all kinds of devices. By using Appitalism, you can search for every possible app, not matter if you own an iPhone, Android phone, iPad tablet, Android tablet, a Mac or a Windows-based computer. "Appitalism is the only store that allows consumers to manage all their Android and iPhone apps centrally from one place,” Buckingham told VentureBeat. “This puts an end to fragmented app stores and segregation by platform types." The addition on the huge number of free apps from the Android Market is purely a play to help the company’s users because it will not make money off it. Buckingham said Apple offers partnership deals with other app stores, so those other stores can get a small referral fee. He said Google does not have a similar affiliate program yet for the Android Market, but he hopes Google will create one soon. New York-based Appitalism’s main site was launched in September 2010 and has localized versions of the site in 51 countries around the world. Buckingham previously created the highly successful Ringtones.com. Filed under: mobile        
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| Netflix CMO Leslie Kilgore leaves after 12 years Posted: 20 Jan 2012 04:35 PM PST Netflix‘s chief marketing officer is stepping down after 12 years that culminated in a cock-up known as Qwikster. Leslie Kilgore, who has been with the company for almost as many years as it has been in operation, will continue to be a “key part of Netflix” according to chief executive officer Reed Hastings. Kilgore, a marketing veteran from Amazon, joined the company in 2000, and is credited by the CEO with helping the company out of its marketing downfall: splitting the company between DVD rentals (Qwikster) and streaming (Netflix). “Leslie has been instrumental in our long-term success and our recent return to solid growth,” said Hastings in a statement.
Why Kilgore is leaving now, however, is unknown. When asked of Kilgore’s new direction, a company spokesperson declined to comment, pointing us back to Hasting’s statement. Whether or not Netflix has truly “returned to solid growth” will be seen in next week’s quarterly earnings call. According to the spokesperson, “It was just the right time” to release this news so close to the earnings call. Netflix has appointed Jessie Becker as its interim CMO, as well as Jonathan Friedland to its chief communications officer position. Kilgore, who is also a board member of business social network LinkedIn, will remain on Netflix’s board. Photo via Ross Catrow/Flickr, Kilgore photo via Netflix Filed under: VentureBeat        
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| Google killing off Picnik, Urchin, and other services this year Posted: 20 Jan 2012 04:16 PM PST
The news comes about a week after Flickr announced it will be dumping Picnik, which now seems like foreshadowing of the news that was released today. If you use Picnik for your editing needs, you can download your images as a zip file with Picnik Takeout for the time being. You can also move your photos over to your Google+ page until the service shuts down on April 19. You can still use Picnik to edit images for the next few months and Picnik premium is completely free until the site shuts down. Current premium account holders will receive a full refund of their subscription costs. Google will also be laying a few more services to rest as a part of its New Year’s resolutions. Google Message Continuity (GMC), Needlebase, and Urchin will all be retired this year. Google Message Continuity is an email disaster recovery service for enterprise customers that has been slowly replaced with Google Apps since it was acquired by Google. Customers will be able to continue to use GMC until their contracts end, and will be encouraged to make the switch to Google Apps afterwards. Needlebase is a platform for acquiring, analyzing, and publishing data to the Internet. Google will kill off the service at the beginning of June and may integrate its features into other Google products. Urchin, which Google acquired in 2005, will shut down in March 2012. The service helped businesses manage their web traffic and marketing with analytics. Picnic table photo via KTDEE….popping in and out /Flickr Filed under: VentureBeat        
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| EA spent ‘only’ $200M to make Star Wars: The Old Republic? Posted: 20 Jan 2012 03:38 PM PST A debate is breaking out about exactly how much it cost to build Star Wars: The Old Republic, which is easily the most ambitious video game project in recent years. Three days after analyst Doug Creutz of Cowen & Co speculated that the “total all-in investment” in Star Wars: The Old Republic “is probably approaching half a billion dollars”, a story in the LA Times blog Hero Complex put a sticker price of “nearly $200 million” to Electronic Arts’ massively multiplayer online game. However, that number refers to the development cost and doesn’t factor in marketing expenses or royalty payments to Star Wars license holder LucasArts. Considering that the game took about six years to create with “800 people on four continents” working on it, a $200 million budget seems quite modest. If the numbers are divided, it breaks down to about $41,600 annually per developer (however, game team size numbers fluctuate during development and The Old Republic’s staff head count must have been lighter during the first years). An additional 1,000 voice actors were hired to record the voice-overs for over 200,000 dialog lines in three different languages. The ongoing debate over the development cost seems moot because it still keeps climbing. EA has pointed out that the team is staying together to continue working on the game and just released the first major content patch titled “Rise of the Rakghouls”. Emphasizing that subscribers will get their money worth’s of new stuff is most crucial. The Old Republic customers have to pay a monthly $15 subscription fee in order to keep playing the game after the initial month. For example, one million paying subscribers could bring in up to $180M in annual revenue. As Star Wars: The Old Republic launched just one month ago, it has yet to be seen how many of its buyers will stick around. This doesn’t prevent analysts from making speculative guesstimates. Todd Mitchell of Brean Murray Carret & Co based his “creeping concerns” about the game’s performance on “casual observation of early play.” But Evan Wilson of Pacific Crest noted today that he raised his sales estimates to 2.2 million units for the quarter, expecting 800,000 subscribers when EA’s fiscal year ends in late March. Michael Pachter, analyst at Wedbush Securities, said in a research note that Star Wars was tracking in-line with expectations of third fiscal quarter sales of 2 million units. He said Star Wars server data tracked by others can be somewhat misleading. “We strongly disagree with competitors that have suggested Star Wars sell-in and user data are tracking below expectations.” EA is expected to mention some results on the initial sales on its analyst call on Feb. 1. Until then, EA has to sit on the sidelines and observe regulatory rules about its “quiet period.” Filed under: games, VentureBeat        
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| This post on Google+ statistics is a billion* times better than any other post Posted: 20 Jan 2012 03:19 PM PST
I’m not impressed by the numbers, and I’m not impressed by what Page was trying to do with them. Counting registered users instead of daily active users tells us nothing about the popularity of the service. Think of the millions of people who’ve registered for Google+ but never use it. Second, given the huge popularity of Google search, Gmail, and YouTube, it’s actually surprising that so few people who have registered for Google+ are using those more popular services on a daily basis — only 60 percent. After all, remember that a lot of Google+ users accidentally became Google+ users only because they were already attached to another Google service. But what concerns me most is that Google is touting these meaningless statistics in the hopes that journalists will misunderstand them and report that Google+ is seeing rapid growth. The bottom line is, those 60 percents, 80 percents and 90 million registered users are just there to mask the fact that Google doesn’t want to tell us how many people are actually using Google+. It’s intellectually dishonest. And as a public company, it raises questions of Google’s intent — the market is watching Google’s moves in social and needs to see traction. I expect better from Google. This isn’t the first time Google has tried to mislead with statistics about Google+. In July, Page claimed that the service had 10 million users who shared 1 billion items a day. That sounds incredibly impressive. But let's do the math. That would mean that the average user was sharing 100 items a day. Robert Scoble was flooding my feed before I blocked him, but I don't think even he was sharing 100 items a day. (I have since unblocked him.) So how did we get to that number? Well, it turns out Google was counting every potential recipient of that message. A single message from Scoble today would count 240,000 times toward that number. That’s preposterous. Google is by no means alone in how it plays with numbers. This deception happens nearly every day and is especially rampant in Silicon Valley where new business models are created and standard metrics aren’t always available. It also reflects the optimistic nature of the Valley. We want to see exponential growth. We see hockey sticks everywhere. Even worse, these statistics get thrown around in the echo chamber and presented as fact. And as they get reblogged and retweeted, they lose the disclaimers that made them technically true in the first place. Every time I see a statistic, I try to figure out how much it was tortured. I want to know what it really means as opposed to what the person who is telling me the stat wants me to think it means. I recently had a conversation with a PR person about a chart his company had put out and my coverage of it. He pointed out that I called them on the correct interpretation of the chart. His defense was that if you read the precise definition that they gave with the chart, it was accurate. They didn’t lie. It wasn’t their fault that most journalists interpreted it wrong. He’s partly right — journalists need to do a better job of understanding statistics. But the chart was clearly designed to generate the kind of coverage it generated. Here are other common ways people deceive us with statistics: Percentage growth. Triple and quadruple digit growth rates are also something companies like to tout. It amazes me that investors never seem to learn the lesson that you can’t have 4,000% growth forever. At the extreme high end, you’re bound by the population of the Earth. If, however, your startup has discovered life on Mars, I’m very interested in talking to you. “Registered” users. Yes, let’s count the 14 million people who tried your product and decided they don’t ever want to see it again. Percentages go both ways. A press release or analysis will often include the most favorable impression of a percentage. In a debate on Groupon, a “Pro” is that “20 percent of deal users became repeat buyers.” Is the glass 20 percent full or 80 percent empty? I think the fact that it’s 80 percent empty is more important. Context matters. Big numbers are often reported without context. Foursquare announced that Starwood Hotels has awarded 10 million Starpoints through its check-in promotion. But is that a big deal? I have more than 400,000 points in my account. (I travel more than most people, but even that is small compared to last year’s top earner, who earned 19.7 million points in just the year.) In Q4, Apple reported that iPad sales for the quarter came in at $6.9 billion. Google’s revenues for the quarter were $10.6 billion. With just one product, launched less than 2 years ago, Apple did 2/3 the revenue of all of Google. That’s a BFD! Infographics are often dressed up lies. There’s a reason for the current infographic craze: unlike text, it’s not easy for journalists to break them apart and reformat them. You either include them or you don’t. The numbers in this infographic from Crowd Seats all seemed off to me. They seemed way too high for a company I’ve barely heard of. Turns out they were: despite the Crowd Seats logo plastered all over the infographic, the deals they cite were Groupons. (See my comment on that post for other issues with the numbers.) An industry that regularly complains about poor math education in this country should do better when it comes to the statistics it uses. Using deceiving numbers leads to a race to the bottom where companies use crappier and crappier numbers to look more and more impressive. Companies that want to be forthright can’t — otherwise they look weak and unsuccessful. That’s bad for the startup ecosystem. It also keeps companies focused on vanity metrics to impress the press. That’s largely irrelevant. Startups should spend their time building great products that people want to use, not just sign up for. * Not intended to be a factual statement.
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| SOPA is essentially dead, and we killed it Posted: 20 Jan 2012 03:13 PM PST
Smith is the author of the House version of PIPA, the Stop Online Piracy Act. Last week, he announced that a vote on SOPA would be delayed until February, but the delay could actually end up being much longer — like forever. Smith’s new statement implicitly acknowledges the mounting tide of anti-SOPA sentiment that culminated Wednesday with many websites going offline or “blacking out” their homepages, anti-SOPA protests in several cities, and millions of people signing petitions against the proposed legislation. “I have heard from the critics and I take seriously their concerns regarding proposed legislation to address the problem of online piracy,” Smith said today. “It is clear that we need to revisit the approach on how best to address the problem of foreign thieves that steal and sell American inventions and products.” PIPA and SOPA give the U.S. government and copyright holders the authority to seek court orders against foreign websites associated with infringing, pirating and/or counterfeiting intellectual property. It could drastically change the way the Internet operates if either bill is voted into law. For instance, if a website is accused of containing copyright-infringing content (like a song, picture, video clip etc.), the site could be blocked by ISPs (like Comcast), de-indexed from search engines, and even prevented from doing business online with services like PayPal. Based on Smith’s statements, it seems unlikely that SOPA will get sent to the House floor for a vote before the country holds elections for the 113th Congress — meaning that SOPA is essentially dead. “The House Judiciary Committee will postpone consideration of the legislation until there is wider agreement on a solution,” Smith said. Much of the initial push behind SOPA and PIPA came from large media companies (Hollywood) that claim they take millions of dollars in financial losses due to piracy from organizations outside of the U.S. However, the methods SOPA and PIPA want to use for thwarting piracy have raised lots of opposition from the technology industry as well as millions of U.S. citizens. So, reaching a legislative solution for curbing piracy that both tech business leaders and Hollywood can agree on probably won’t happen anytime soon. However, both sides do seem willing to start talking about the issue of stopping piracy. The pro-SOPA Motion Picture Association of America’s president and former senator Chris Dodd has recently even suggested that the two sides start meeting. We’ve pasted the House Judiciary Committee’s full statement below:
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| ESA calls for post-SOPA balance of “creative and technology interests” Posted: 20 Jan 2012 03:07 PM PST
The video game industry trade group, the Entertainment Software Association, (headed by Mike Gallagher, pictured) issued a statement today that said, ”From the beginning, ESA has been committed to the passage of balanced legislation to address the illegal theft of intellectual property found on foreign rogue sites. Although the need to address this pervasive threat to our industry’s creative investment remains, concerns have been expressed about unintended consequences stemming from the current legislative proposals.” “Accordingly, we call upon Congress, the Obama Administration, and stakeholders to refocus their energies on producing a solution that effectively balances both creative and technology interests. As an industry of innovators and creators, we understand the importance of both technological innovation and content protection and are committed to working with all parties to encourage a balanced solution.” Earlier, the ESA said that it was in favor of SOPA, which drew huge protests because of provisions in the bill that seemed tantamount to censorship of internet sites in favor of Hollywood congolmerates. The SOPA vote has been delayed, due in large part to huge protests that arose on the internet. The ESA’s previous stance didn’t seem particularly friendly toward consumers, and some groups took it to task. The bill drew opposition from the Entertainment Consumers Association, and it prompted Mark Kern, CEO of Red 5 Studios, to form a rival game organization called the League For Gamers. In a statement, the League for Gamers said, “While we applaud the ESA’s decision, we wished it had come before the death of these bills, rather than afterwards. Perhaps most significantly, it means that gamers have become an incredibly important voice in the gaming industry, and that the LFG has won it’s first battle with the aid of all of your support.” The LFG added, “The fact that the ESA was a huge financial backer of this legislation, means the LFG must remain an ever vigilant proponent for gamers and like-minded developers against future misguided legislation. Meanwhile, the Consumer Electronics Association chief executive Gary Shapiro declared victory in “What we did right and Hollywood did wrong” in a post. Shapiro said that the “content lobby” spent a lot of money in favor of the bill, “but we won a big one this week as a public avalanche of input persuaded politicians that they should actually read the legislation they co-sponsor and support.” The CEA warned legislators of the “bad legislation,” Shapiro said. At the Consumer Electronics Association, Shapiro called on an “army of geeks” to defeat the legislation. Filed under: games        
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| iPhone 4S and iPad 2 untethered jailbreaks are finally here Posted: 20 Jan 2012 01:58 PM PST
Jailbreaking your iPhone opens the door to loading unapproved applications and using the phone on other carriers. Not surprisingly, Apple hates its devices being jailbroken and used in unintended ways, so the company regularly issues operating system updates that make it harder to jailbreak. The iPhone 4S, in particular, has taken months to find a full jailbreak. The new jailbreak for the iPhone 4S and iPad 2 is called “Absinthe A5″ and it can be downloaded direct here. Unfortunately, the Absinthe jailbreak is only available now for Mac users right now, but versions for Windows and Linux are planned to be released soon. What makes this release such a big deal is that this is an “untethered” jailbreak versus a “tethered” jailbreak. A tethered jailbreak means your phone can only be rebooted when it is plugged into the computer, while an untethered jailbreak means your phone can be rebooted anytime. As someone who’s had a tethered jailbreak on his iPhone 3GS before, I can tell you life is much easier with an untethered jailbreak. The iPhone 4S running iOS 5.0 and 5.0.1 should be able to be jailbroken and all models of the iPad 2 running 5.0.1 should be able to run the software. The Chronic Dev Team writes that the hardest part of the hack was getting past complications with Apple’s A5 processor:
Have you given the new jailbreak a spin? Let us know how it goes in the comments. Filed under: mobile, VentureBeat        
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| Heyzap unveils 12 partners for its social discovery network for mobile games Posted: 20 Jan 2012 01:00 PM PST Heyzap, operator of a social mobile gaming network, has unveiled a list of 12 mobile gaming leaders that are partnering with it to promote mobile games. The partners include Spacetime Studios, Nubee, PocketGems, Bionic Panda Games, Magma Mobile, GameDuell, Digital Chocolate, Animoca, Fluik, Get Set Games, the BBC, and Vostu. All of the companies have integrated Heyzap's free software development kit (SDK) into their games so that users can share their own gaming activity and achievements with their friends by “checking in” to games. About 3.6 million users have downloaded Heyzap’s mobile game check-in app on smartphones, said Jude Gomila, co-founder of Heyzap. The companies hope to boost the number of users who install their games. It works like this. A user checks into a game. One of that user’s friends sees that happen via a notification on his or her smartphone. The friend can then click on the game icon and check it out or install it. It’s a social discovery tool that can make a game more viral. “Heyzap was easy to integrate and a good way to boost installs,” says Andy Smith, Production manager at Get Set Games. PocketGems also said the integration was simple and it worked well within minutes. Digital Chocolate praised Heyzap's flexible user interface and high traffic volume for driving new users to Millionaire City. "Heyzap provides the best UI in the space and was able to generate noticeable lift," said Jason Loia, Digital Chocolate's chief operating officer. These developers are 1 percent of Heyzap’s total developer base, which includes 800 more game makers. Nubee uses Heyzap's social analytics dashboard so the company can track statistics like check-ins and Facebook shares for each game. Users can download the Heyzap app for iOS or Android. Developers can also take full advantage of the Heyzap app, which increases user engagement and retention with social features like live chat, tips, and badges. Heyzap is based in San Francisco and has raised $3.6 million from Union Square Ventures, Chris Dixon, and Naval Ravikant. Filed under: games, mobile        
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| Kodak hits the skids — not a pretty picture Posted: 20 Jan 2012 11:52 AM PST
Of course, hindsight is always 20/20. Over the past decade, most of Kodak's markets changed drastically. But Kodak followed the path of many tech companies before it like Xerox, Digital Equipment, Sun, etc. It had many great scientists and engineers that invented many things (think Xerox PARC) but never got out of the mode of protecting its current business (film). It never saw the train coming or how fast it was moving until late in the game. And its digital camera offerings were never leading edge, but focused on consumers (an area it could never compete in given the competition from Samsung, LG, and other far east suppliers). Kodak never really differentiated itself in the new markets it entered, such as printers. Once its mainline businesses fell off the cliff, it had not established itself in a new age business that could take up the slack. Over the years, Kodak did play with entering peripheral markets in which it had expertise — battery making, optical disk creation, and magnetic media for floppy drives — but it never made more than a half-hearted attempt to be a major player, exiting these businesses after a short run. So while its primary old line business (film) was declining, its attempts at new business (not surprisingly) never took off. That said, it now faces a daunting challenge. Kodak is still a highly recognized worldwide brand. But how does it leverage this in consumers’ minds when credible companies like Canon, Nikon, Samsung, Olympus, and Epson are already winning hearts and minds of consumers worldwide? Kodak now says it wants to be a force in printers and digital cameras. If it tries to compete in commodity markets, it likely will lose. If it competes at the high end, what products can it bring to market that will outshine its competition? It's going to be a tough recovery for Kodak, if it's even possible. And if it sells off its patents, as some have suggested in order to raise funds, what does it have to work with? If it survives, Kodak will likely be a smaller, nimbler company, but a shadow of its former self. This is a major lesson for companies, perhaps including yours. When times are good and products are selling well at high margins, that's the time to start investing in new product areas and betting on new markets. Not all will be successful investments. But you can pretty much rest assured that the current products your company is working on will be outdated in the next few years by the rapid and relentless march of technological discovery. Companies that don't reinvent themselves every decade or so will not long survive. Companies that do — IBM and Microsoft, for example — will be around for the long haul. Which kind of company are you working for?
[Top image credit: Philip Lange/Shutterstock] Filed under: media        
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| Megaupload founder Kim Dotcom: Kingpin, baller, car racer, “God” Posted: 20 Jan 2012 11:49 AM PST For entertainment studios around the world, Kim Dotcom probably looks a lot like King Henry VIII. To them he is rich, rotund, and chopping their businesses off at the head. Two of those attributes, at least, are factually true. The third is in legal dispute. Kim Dotcom, the founder of recently indicted file sharing company Megaupload, was born Kim Schmitz. A German native who legally changed his surname to Dotcom ten years ago, he has a speckled past. This includes accusations of credit card fraud and criminal hacking, as well as a confession of embezzlement. Now Kim lives in a New Zealand mansion allegedly worth $30 million and owns high-end vehicles like a Rolls-Royce, a Maserati, and a Lamborghini. It’s all legitimately-acquired wealth, according to Megaupload spokesperson Bonnie Lam.
“He has matured, learned from his past mistakes and is a successful businessman,” Lam told Cnet. “Kim is one of many shareholders at Mega and not involved in most day-to-day business decisions.” He is, nevertheless, a colorful character. Dotcom co-produced and appears in a popular promotional video for Megaupload that came out in December, 2011 (that’s him in the screen shot above). The video, which included such popular music stars as Macy Gray, Will.i.am, Kanye West, Kim Kardashian, Serena Williams, Snoop Dogg and a host of others, was targeted by Universal Music Group for unspecified reasons, briefly removed from YouTube, and then reinstated to the popular video-sharing site shortly afterward. Megaupload filed its own suit against Universal immediately after the incident. The video has now been seen almost 12 million times. Dotcom, who is married and a father of three, was charged this week with five counts of copyright infringement, along with money laundering. He was arrested at his own birthday party on Thursday, along with other employees of Megaupload and its various properties, including Megaporn, Megavideo, Megaclick, and Megarotic. When the police came calling, he barricaded himself inside the mansion’s safe room with what appeared to be a sawed-off shotgun. Megaupload is the company’s flagship site, founded in 2005. It lets people upload, store and transfer files around the globe, a service that can be used for legitimate purposes (transferring a large data file to a business associate, for instance) but which, the FBI alleges, is also used for distributing copyrighted video and audio. The company’s headquarters are said to be in Hong Kong, though its servers exist in other countries as well. The US FBI took action after discovering servers in Virgina holding unlicensed copyrighted material. Indeed, the US calling this a “Mega Conspiracy.” The indictment served yesterday listed assets owned by Dotcom and his fellow employees, which tallied to around $175,000,000. Expensive vehicles, artwork, electronics, and a laundry list of bank accounts were named. On Friday, police in New Zealand raided Dotcom’s home and seized many of these assets, including a Rolls Royce, numerous Mercedes-Benz cars, cash and allegedly guns. Dotcom is known for enjoying his fast cars and attending the Gumball 3000, an automobile “rally” that has drawn celebrities such as Snoop Dogg, Johnny Knoxville and others. In response, the loose hacker collective known as Anonymous retaliated by taking down the Department of Justice and FBI websites with a denial-of-service attack.
According to New Zealand-based website 3 News, New Zealand’s government initially denied Dotcom’s application residency when he failed a “good character” test. However, he then donated to the Christchurch Earthquake Fund and invested $10 million in government bonds, and his application was subsequently approved. Now Dotcom is facing even more financial charges. He and his alleged co-conspirators are accused of paying third parties to upload copyrighted material. Dotcom remains positive, however. When faced with three of his coworkers before the press in a New Zealand court room, he invited pictures and video. When a lawyer asked the press to stop, Kim Dotcom interjected with, “We have nothing to hide.” via Cnet, Washington Post, Images via RT/YouTube Filed under: media, VentureBeat        
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| Google+ steps toward web domination with automated signups for new Google accounts Posted: 20 Jan 2012 11:38 AM PST
Today, the astute webmonkeys over at the Google Operating System unofficial blog noted that joining Google+ was automatically included with starting a new Google account. However, this feature has been rolling out since last November, a Google spokesperson told VentureBeat in an email. “We hadn’t changed our Google Accounts sign-up flow in more than seven years, so it was due for a refresh,” the rep continued. In an official statement, Google said, "We’re working to develop a consistent sign-up flow across our different products as part of our efforts to create an intuitive, beautifully simple, Google-wide user experience. Making it quick and easy to create a Google Account and a Google+ profile enables new users to take advantage of everything Google can offer." Our Google contact continued to say that if a new Google user wants to delete his or her Google+ profile, he or she can do so any time from the Account Settings page. Last November, around the time the Google+ signup automation started rolling out, we chatted at length with Google exec Bradley Horowitz, who told us the company needed a way to unify all its various web products, from email to maps to videos and beyond. The current multi-account system was confusing and inelegant, to say the least. "We think of Google+ as a mode of usage of Google, a way of lighting up your Google experience as opposed to a new product,” Horowitz said at the time. “"We have browsers, phones, self-driving cars, TVs. In many ways, these products have grown up very autonomously and have veered off in different directions, and it's clear that we can now rationalize them and make them coherent and accretive to each other … It's easy to think of Google+ as something other than just Google, and I think it'll take more launches before the world catches up with this understanding." As of yesterday, Google+ claims to have 90 million users (that’s registered, not necessarily active, users), a statistic that has Google social chief Vic Gundotra excited — not just about the present, but about the unfolding future, as well. "Four months ago, when we opened [Google+] to the public, we were not sure what kind of reception we would receive," said Gundotra on his own Google+ page. "Expect us to deliver something truly beautiful. We've only just begun to work on that promise." Filed under: social        
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| VC investment rose 10% in 2011, & web companies grabbed the lion’s share Posted: 20 Jan 2012 11:01 AM PST
According to data from Dow Jones, overall investment in newer companies showed a 10 percent year-over-year hike. For Internet companies, though, the increase was closer to 23 percent between 2010 and 2011. VC investments in web and mobile companies (classified by Dow Jones as the consumer information services sector) added up to $5.2 billion for 452 deals during 2011. These numbers represent a 23 percent increase in the dollar amounts raised between 2010 and 2011 and a 14 percent rise in the number of deals year over year. The numbers for venture capital investments were buoyed by large rounds for later-stage companies such as Twitter and Zynga, both of which raised hundreds of millions of dollars in institutional funding in 2011. Twitter closed two separate $400 million rounds in 2011, one in late July and one in September. Zynga’s February funding round, which closed between $250 million and $500 million, left the company valued at around $10 billion. Altogether, late-stage deals for older startups like these accounted for 72 percent of the money raised for the web sector in 2011. Seed rounds and first rounds made up 57 percent of the deals for the consumer web industry. "Venture capitalists still have a strong appetite for early-stage web startups, but more mature companies may be swallowing some of the available cash," said Dow Jones VentureWire editor Zoran Basich in a release today. "As companies delay the process of entering the public markets during a difficult time for IPOs, the additional venture funding they need is leaving investors with less capital for new investments." While the median amount for a first-round investment in a web startup shrank by 33 percent to just $2 million, the median for a later-stage round rose by 43 percent to $10 million in 2011. Other particularly bright spots were IT software and enterprise services and technologies. IT startups raised $7.9 billion in 1,004 deals during 2011, a slight increase from the 967 deals raising $7.7 billion for all of 2010. The software sector of IT was the most active area for investment and was the only area of IT companies that saw an increase in both deals and capital raised — $4.1 billion for 671 deals in 2010, a 12 percent increase in deals and a 13 percent increase in capital raised. The business and financial services category saw rising investments for the third consecutive year. Due to VC interest in data management, marketing, and advertising, 2011 brought 546 deals for enterprise tech and services startups. Altogether, these types of companies raised $5.1 billion, a 9 percent increase in deals and a 36 percent increase in capital raised between 2010 and 2011. While VCs seemingly had no problem writing checks in 2011, investment firms did have a lackluster year in 2011 when it came to raising funds themselves. All told, 135 U.S. venture capital funds raised $16.2 billion, representing a 12 percent decline in the number of funds raised this past year. "The industry has not yet bounced back from the recession," said a Dow Jones spokesperson in an email. Also, in the middle of 2011, many investors were citing a lack of confidence in the current startup market, especially regarding web startups, where many investors saw a bubble swelling. At the time, one investor stated, "2011 will be remembered as the year that everyone went nuts and overpaid — $1B is the new $100M valuation. For most, this will end in tears." Another VC said his confidence in consumer-side tech was "high … in the next six to twelve months until the bubble bursts." Our apologies to the managing partners at First Round Capital whose images were used in the thumbnail above. We thought they might have a good sense of humor about such things. Filed under: deals, VentureBeat        
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| Posted: 20 Jan 2012 10:45 AM PST
Gamesbeat: We wanted to do a little session about “This is your life” and capture some remembrances about your career. What was your reaction when you heard you got this award? Tim Sweeney: I was really impressed. John Carmack was the first tech guy to receive this award and that was a big event in the industry. He has always impressed me from Wolfenstein 3D (one of the first fast-action 3D games on the PC) to everything. I was impressed that I would be recognized for my contributions to the industry. I have done some cool things but certainly I didn't create an industry like Carmack did. I was really honored to be considered for it. GB: You’ve always been one of the people at Epic who has been in the background. You’ve got some other colleagues who do a lot more of the talking. TS: (laughs) Yeah well some folks actually talk a whole lot more than me so I’m grateful for the people like Cliff Bleszinski. He talks about our games and Mark Rein talks about our business strategy. I’m the shy programmer myself. GB: So that fits with your style. You’ve always been that way? TS: Yeah. I really take pride in the approach and especially the technical aspect of the work these days. Whenever there is somebody at Epic who is capable of doing something better than me, I let them at it. Starting from the early days where I did everything myself, I have seen my responsibilities diminish one by one as we brought on better people in all areas like game design, management, and art work. My experience with Epic is handing off more and more power to the point where I can just sit back and look at our strategy or technology. I provide guidance without being responsible for any particular part of the company.
TS: Oh gosh. My role is more like a chairman and founder. I am used to overseeing the company’s heritage and our strategy. The CEO role is really divided between (president) Mike Capps, who runs development and marketing, and Jay Wilbur, who runs sales and the business side of Epic. They are both world-class managers. I only take on about 10 or 20 percent of the CEO duties. GB: What is your focus now then? The technology direction is definitely one of those things you do? TS: I do three things day-to-day. Epic strategy is about what kind of business we are, what platforms we are supporting, how we are prioritizing engines or development. I help direct the long-term direction of our strategy and technology. In the last decade, I really shifted into the technology side. I wrote the first generation engine and I have never seen the engine since. Especially now. We are working on our next generation of engines and our future hardware. We have a lot of decisions to make about future hardware, editor tools and other features like that. I have been heavily involved with that. And I still do a lot of programming for the research into what our long-term goal is. I still do a lot of external projects with rendering or programming languages. I don’t have any day-to-day programming responsibilities on our engine itself. GB: So now you're sort of setting the direction for the engine creators to pursue? TS: Yeah. Gosh wave about 45 people who are contributing to our engine programming and so it’s a big team. If I were to come in and dabble in that, I would create more trouble than good with the project of that magnitude. Once you get to that size, it takes some serious management. We have a director of engineering that oversees all the programming and certainly he's responsible for a particular project and features of the engine. GB: So what, how do you do something like figure out where graphics can go next? If you look at something in a scene, and study how good it looks, how do you figure out how it can look better? TS: We think really long-term at Epic. Once you get a piece of hardware like the Xbox 360 or the PlayStation 3, it’s up to the individual engineers to figure out how they can push it. But the really important thing that we do long term is work with the hardware manufacturers like AMD, Nvidia and Intel and really talk deeply about their long-term roadmap. Not just what's coming next year but what's coming out in two years, five years from now. Where is the industry going to max out? We give each other a lot of feedback and can have considerable impact on their direction. GB: Yeah I remember that back to the original Xbox where co-creator Seamus Blackley was consulting with you pretty regularly. TS: One of the cool things about being a leading engine developer is that the hardware guys want to talk to us about long-term plans so we are in sync. The development of the Xbox was a great thing and we have talked with Intel about their long-term CPU and graphics plans. The same with Nvidia. They are really valuable relationships. We run our engine a lot like a hardware company runs its products. At any moment, we are shipping product and we are also programming things that aren’t going to ship to consumers for three to five years. It’s a multi-dimensional effort. It really puts us out ahead of other developers who are working from project to project. That is one of the things that makes Epic unique in the game industry.
TS: Oh yes absolutely. We sometimes take controversial positions when talking to the partners. With each generation, we think really deeply about what it's going to take to fundamentally distinguish it from the previous generation. We don’t want it just twice as good. We want it dramatically better. We fight really hard with our partners to get there. We do our part on the software side. Filed under: games        
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| Intel shuffles its executives and puts two on the CEO succession path Posted: 20 Jan 2012 10:17 AM PST A day after reporting record annual results, Intel announced today some management changes that clarify who might eventually succeed current chief executive Paul Otellini (pictured). Two executives appear to be on the path toward more important roles in the future. Brian Krzanich, senior vice president in charge of worldwide manufacturing, has been named chief operating officer, reporting to Otellini. Krzanich will oversee manufacturing, information technology, and human resources. It seems like both would be in the running to eventually replace Otellini as head of the world’s biggest chip maker. Dadi Perlmutter, head of the Intel Architecture Group, has also been named the chief product officer. As previously announced, vice chairman Andy Bryant will become executive chairman starting with the annual meeting in May. Chief financial officer, who previously reported to Bryant (the former CFO), will now report to Otellini. Bill Holt, senior vice president and head of technology development, will also now report to Otellini rather than Bryant. Kirk Skaugen, vice president and head of Intel’s data center business, will be chief of the PC Client Group. He takes over from Mooly Eden, who is moving back to Israel at his own request. Eden is going to be president and general manager of Intel Israel, where the company designs many of its microprocessors. Diane Bryant, vice president and CIO, will take over the data center business from Skaugen. Kim Stevenson, vice president of IT global operations and services, will succeed Bryant as CIO. She will report to Krzanich. Filed under: VentureBeat        
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| Megaupload lawyer: Swizz Beatz is not CEO of the file-sharing site Posted: 20 Jan 2012 10:12 AM PST In the weirdly unfolding case of Megaupload, the “rogue” file-sharing site that was taken down by the Department of Justice Thursday, another puzzling element has come to light. Just days after the New York Post claimed that musician and producer Swizz Beatz was CEO of the company, the top lawyer for Megaupload has said that Beatz was never officially the company’s chief executive. “To my knowledge, Swizz Beatz was never involved in any meaningful way,” Megaupload attorney Ira Rothken told VentureBeat. “He was negotiating to become the CEO, but it was never official.” Beatz, whose real name is Kasseem Dean, was not listed a single time in the 72-page indictment filed yesterday by the Department of Justice. But his publicist had earlier confirmed to BetaBeat that they believed Beatz was the CEO. Beatz was also briefly listed as CEO on Megaupload.com, which is a bit puzzling too. The Megaupload case was first revealed via a press release by the U.S. Department of Justice and the FBI yesterday. The DoJ has shut down the file-sharing site on claims that it is involved with a massive criminal enterprise led by founder Kim Dotcom. The feds allege that the criminal enterprise has caused more than $500 million in harm to copyright owners, while generating more than $175 million in criminal proceeds. Those defendants appear to be well off, with a vast cache of money and luxury cars. Seven individuals including Dotcom were charged with felonies. Dotcom and three others were arrested in New Zealand yesterday, and their bail hearing is set for Monday. Three others are unaccounted for and have not been arrested. Rothken said the U.S. government will try to get Dotcom and the rest of the defendants extradited to the U.S. for trial in Virginia courts, where the original indictment was filed. “Megaupload thinks these allegations lack merit and will vigorously defend against these criminal claims,” Rothken said. “We will be assembling a worldwide team of top-notch lawyers, intellectual property lawyers and tech lawyers to defend this. There’s a good chance Megaupload will prevail in this case.” Rothken said that Megaupload was unfairly targeted and charged without due process, as the site was taken down without a hearing or giving Megaupload a chance to defend charges. “Under the law, they are supposed to get specific notices for each file accused of infringement,” Rothken said. “Here, they’ve decided to bypass their own rules and shut down the entire site. The government has a lot of explaining to do.” Hackers across the web appear to have taken Megaupload’s side, with hacker group Anonymous launching a large number of coordinated denial-of-service attacks on the Department of Justice and record label web sites. Keep tuned to VentureBeat for the latest on this strange media soap opera. Swizz Beatz photo: Aisia Williams/Shutterstock Filed under: media        
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Rocky Agrawal is an analyst focused on the intersection of local, social, and mobile. He is a principal analyst at reDesign mobile. Previously, he launched local and mobile products for Microsoft and AOL. He blogs at 
Following the news that the 
Google, as it has long promised, is taking another step toward unifying all its web products under the Google+ umbrella by making Google+ a big part of signing up for a new Google account.
While the overall economy in 2011 was still on shaky ground, VCs continued to “make it rain” on startups in need of institutional funding.
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