VentureBeat |
- Here’s how easy it is to brick a Tesla
- SimpleReach raises $1.5M from High Peaks and Village Ventures for stealthy pivot
- EU’s highest court to determine if ACTA is legal
- Manage your service business with Jobber, SalesForce-like software for handymen, gardeners
- Verizon experiencing 4G LTE outages across U.S. again — can you connect?
- Sony’s PlayStation Vita starts moving off the shelves
- Dylan’s Desk: “Tech journalist” doesn’t have to be an oxymoron
- Striiv says its step-counting gadget inspires people to walk more
- PopCap bets on Facebook casino-game gold rush
- Microsoft files complaint against Motorola in EU for ball-busting on essential patents
- Apple supplier Foxconn hid underage workers before inspection, says labor rights NGO
- “Facebook for scientists” ResearchGate raises a fresh round of funding
- Moontoast’s new analytics tool makes sense of all that social commerce data (exclusive)
- How the cookie crumbles. Safari user sues Google over privacy violations
- ABC’s rare look inside Apple’s Foxconn factory
- Twitter updates iPhone and Android apps, releases Kindle Fire app
- Stitch Labs makes running an online business a snap, raises $1M (updated)
- 6Scan releases WordPress plugin that hacks your site on purpose (exclusive)
- Microsoft goes on the attack against Google Apps (video)
- Comcast launches ‘Netflix-like’ Streampix to complement expensive cable packages
- Sony’s marketing chief: PlayStation Vita to be biggest marketing spend ever in U.S. (interview)
- PlayStation Vita: THE hardware review
- Flickr needs more than a facelift to return to former glory
- What’s in your startup’s information diet?
- If you love browsing Facebook, but loathe dealing with email, try Fluent
- Brands, don’t kill your social feed by over-automating it
- Microsoft Office for iPad reportedly coming within weeks (updated)
- What to expect when you’re expecting a Facebook IPO
- Netflix’s licensing deal with Weinstein Company should make HBO flinch
- Yandex strikes deal with Twitter for access to tweets
| Here’s how easy it is to brick a Tesla Posted: 22 Feb 2012 09:44 AM PST If you own a Tesla and want to turn your shiniest toy into a useless brick, all you have to do is park it. As soon as the battery is fully discharged, you have a useless, albeit pricey, hunk of metal on your hands, and Tesla will charge you $40,000 to get it up and running again — almost as much as the full cost of a new Tesla Model S. Occasional blogger Michael DeGusta is on the waiting list for a Tesla Model X. In doing research on the cars, he found that if any Tesla car’s battery is fully drained, the owner will be unable to recharge it or even push it. The owner will eventually have to pay the aforementioned $40,000 to get a new battery from Tesla. The battery can be fully drained simply by parking the vehicle too long without charging it because of the vehicles’ always-on systems running quietly in the background and using minuscule amounts of power over the hours and days. For a Tesla Roadster, this can happen over the course of 11 weeks, less if the battery is not fully charged when the car is parked. “Either these issues will be resolved by the time it's ready, Tesla will be gone by then, or I'll most likely give up my spot and get a refund,” he wrote this morning on his blog. DeGusta found five examples of bricked Tesla Roadsters so far, all of which were related to him by a Tesla service manager. In one case, a customer shipped his Roadster to Japan, where incompatible voltages and dwindling time quickly reduced him to a brick with no real options for economically advisable reanimation. The kicker is that the owner’s warranty is voided in these scenarios due to the owner’s “failure to maintain the Battery at a proper charge level at all times." Normal insurance policies don’t cover this situation, and payment plans are not available, DeGusta was told. Mostly, though, DeGusta was perturbed that Tesla isn’t emphasizing the risks of battery drainage to prospective owners. On its website for the Model S, for example, the company states, “The Tesla battery is optimized for nightly charging… The Model S battery will not lose a significant amount of charge when parked for long periods of time. “For example, Model S owners can park at the airport for extended vacations without plugging in.” Unless you park it on a less-than-fully-charged battery then go on a month-long honeymoon or hiking expedition or missions trip, to counter Tesla’s example with a few rather common ones we can think of off the top of our heads. That kind of scenario might leave the hapless owner with a bricked car and little recourse. We’ve contacted Tesla about the issue and are waiting for a reply. Filed under: VentureBeat        
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| SimpleReach raises $1.5M from High Peaks and Village Ventures for stealthy pivot Posted: 22 Feb 2012 09:38 AM PST  Image via William Brawley There’s time for one last tune before breaking up the band. Village Ventures, where Bryan Birsic was a senior associate, wound down its operations last week. But Birsic isn’t taking any time off. He is president of SimpleReach, a startup that helps publishers to better engage their readers, which has just raised $1.5 million to build out its business in a new direction. If you click over to the SimpleReach site right now, its product looks a lot like fellow New York company Outbrain, in that it serves up a recommendation for readers at the bottom of an article with a sliding bar that comes in from the side. But Birsic says that the funding is going into something completely new. “It’s hard to let go of the slide because it was a success. It’s on hundreds of sites right now serving up millions of impressions. But we learned from that product and are going after a much bigger opportunity.” The company is hiring data scientists and engineers with experience in the field of content discovery. “We don’t want to tip our hat just yet,” Birsic said. “It’s a really frothy space and we’ve got a unique approach.” The co-founders of Village Ventures have headed off to Bain and Greycroft after finding that their investment thesis, “didn’t scale,”. SimpleReach is the final investment the firm made, although the fund does have follow on capital set aside. Mark Peter Davis from High Peaks Venture Partners also led the round. Filed under: deals        
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| EU’s highest court to determine if ACTA is legal Posted: 22 Feb 2012 09:27 AM PST The European Union announced today that it will ask the European Court of Justice for a legal opinion on the highly protested Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement (ACTA). For those not familiar with the trade agreement, ACTA is an international treaty aimed at giving countries the ability to stop copyright infringement and other forms of intellectual property theft — a standard framework so that all countries around the world can charge and prosecute digital piracy. However, many Europeans have protested against the trade agreement under the claim that it could stifle free expression on the Internet while not directly addressing the problem of piracy in a meaningful way. ACTA has also come under fire due to the secrecy behind getting EU trade partners to sign the agreement without consulting the public. The court is being asked to determine if ACTA — as well as its implementation — complies with the EU’s fundamental rights and freedoms, according to EU trade head Karel De Gucht. “Let me be very clear: I share people’s concern for these fundamental freedoms … especially over the freedom of the Internet,” De Gucht said in a statement reported by the BBC. “This debate must be based upon facts, and not upon the misinformation and rumour that has dominated social media sites and blogs in recent weeks.” ACTA has already been signed by 22 EU member states, including the U.S., U.K., Japan, and Canada. More recently, countries like Germany and Denmark have refused to sign the agreement due to the widespread protest across the continent. Since ACTA is intended as a universal framework for stopping digital piracy, having a few key democratic countries that do not comply will likely weaken the overall effectiveness of the trade agreement. Image via kihupotru Filed under: media, security, VentureBeat        
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| Manage your service business with Jobber, SalesForce-like software for handymen, gardeners Posted: 22 Feb 2012 09:00 AM PST
SalesForce and other services like it have been around for several years to manage contacts, calendars, task, and invoicing. But, most services are aimed at business executives and startup companies, not smaller businesses. Jobber’s goal is to bring business management and customer relationship management tools to “field-services” providers, like handymen, painters, and landscapers. "We provide field service business owners with a powerful modernization tool that is enabling growth and providing a competitive advantage,” co-founder and chief executive Sam Pillar said in a statement, “We’re making our customers happier business owners." Jobber realized that many small businesses in the field-services industry use either old software or pen and paper to manage their business, so it set out to bring these companies up to date. Jobber’s product includes a CRM tool, task management, job tracking, sceduling, invoicing, and QuickBooks integration for accounting, all of which are targeted specifically at small businesses. The company puts a lot of emphasis on easy to use software that anyone can start using with minimal training. The entire service is web-based and is available for all the major mobile platforms. Service Auto Pilot and Click Software are among Jobber’s closest competitors, though Jobber told VentureBeat in a statement that its competition is ”split between web and desktop based software. The desktop offerings are dated, ill-supported and lack innovation but still have a relatively strong following despite their lack of sophistication.” The company’s funding was led by Vancouver venture capitalists, entrepreneurs Boris Wertz, Vik Khanna, and Pankaj Agarwal, and venture capital firm Point Nine Capital. Jobber will use the seed funding to expand its team, develop new features, and improve its user experience. Jobber is based in Edmonton, Alberta, Canada and was founded in 2010 by two freelance programers, Sam Pillar and Forrest Zeisler. Lawn mower image via Shutterstock Filed under: deals        
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| Verizon experiencing 4G LTE outages across U.S. again — can you connect? Posted: 22 Feb 2012 08:51 AM PST Verizon Wireless appears to be having yet another wide outage of its 4G LTE data network, according to various reports on Twitter. The network reported three data outages in the month of December. Verizon swiftly blamed the down time on “growing pains.” Verizon said today that it is looking into the issues, which are reportedly affecting users in Indianapolis, Milwaukee, Phoenix, and parts of Pennsylvania and Ohio. “VZW is investigating customer issues in connecting to the 4GLTE data network,” Verizon said via Twitter. “3G data, voice, and text services are operating reliably.” While Verizon is saying its 3G network is fine, several users of 4G phones say they can’t even access 3G on their phones. Eric Gilkey said on Twitter: “Your 3g WAS out for a while. Let’s not act like it was unaffected.” Let us know in the comments if you are having any trouble connecting to Verizon’s 4G or 3G networks and where you are located.
Filed under: mobile        
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| Sony’s PlayStation Vita starts moving off the shelves Posted: 22 Feb 2012 08:02 AM PST Sony began selling the PlayStation Vita last night a midnight Eastern time. The portable gaming device is the company’s bid to stay relevant to gamers in an age of iPads and smartphones.
This is the moment of truth for Sony, which has struggled with losses and just changed its chief executive. “Today marks a historic day for the PlayStation brand and our fans,” said Tretton in a statement. “PlayStation Vita is the most powerful and connected portable gaming system ever created. For the first time ever, consumers will find compelling PS3 console-like gameplay experiences on-the-go from the most popular PlayStation franchises as well as titles unique to PS Vita.” Sony is launching a $50 million ad campaign in the U.S. to get consumers to buy into the PlayStation Vita brand, which is expected to be around for five to 10 years. That amount of money is a record spend for the launch of a new game platform by Sony, according to Guy Longworth, senior vice president of marketing and PlayStation Network at Sony. The Vita is selling in the U.S. for $250 and the games go for anywhere from $5 to $50.The device has also begun selling in Canada, Latin America, Europe and Australia. More than 25 games are available at launch. A 3G version sells for $300, with a $15 a month data plan for 250 megabytes of data per month, a $30 plan for 3 gigabytes, and $50 for 5 gigabytes. The device is already on sale in Japan and it replaces Sony’s PlayStation Portable gaming device. The Vita hardware includes two analog joysticks, a touchscreen, a back touchpad, PlayStation control buttons, and a 5-inch organic light emitting diode (OLED) screen. It will be interesting to see if Sony sells out in the U.S. Longworth said the company has been working closely with suppliers to ensure adequate supply, but would not say whether the company expects a sellout. For a roundup of our reviews and coverage of the Vita, click here. [Photo credits: Sony] Filed under: games, VentureBeat        
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| Dylan’s Desk: “Tech journalist” doesn’t have to be an oxymoron Posted: 22 Feb 2012 08:00 AM PST The tech business deserves a better press corps. By “better,” I don’t mean “friendlier.” I mean journalists and bloggers that treat technology with the same serious and critical eye that is (or should be) afforded to presidential candidates and Fortune 500 companies. The tech industry and the entrepreneurs behind it are busy rebuilding our world, in profound and often unanticipated ways. The impact of the technologies we use today will have far-reaching consequences. Google, Facebook, and Apple are massive profit-making (and job-creating) businesses, but they’re also changing the way we live our lives, interact with each other, express ourselves, and think about the world. Just try to remember life before Google, or (if you’re a bit older) life before email. Or mobile technology: Seemingly overnight, we’ve all been given pocket oracles that can guide us to any destination, keep us in touch with all of our friends, and answer any question we may have. It’s no surprise that people on the streets of the city or in subway cars are all hunched over, staring at little blue squares of light, where before they were reading books, window shopping, or staring vacantly into the middle distance. You can’t cover those changes adequately just by being a cheerleader for the tech industry or for entrepreneurs. But you also can’t do justice to those stories if you don’t, on some level, appreciate how earthshaking these changes are, and how much creativity and opportunity is being unlocked through tech innovation and entrepreneurship. In other words, you need a combination of enthusiasm and skepticism. Most of all, you need some principles. There’s a reason the public holds journalists in only slightly higher esteem than bankers. Over the past decade, we haven’t had a very good track record at sticking to our principles of seeking the truth, and reporting it. Weapons of mass destruction? Made up, and newspapers published tenuous pretexts for war almost as quickly as the White House came up with them. The mortgage crisis? Foreseeable, but somehow almost every major business reporter missed it. Climate change? Yeah, journalists were still trying to give both sides of that “debate” equal time for a long time after the science was settled beyond a reasonable doubt. In tech journalism, many of us jumped way too enthusiastically onto the dot-com bandwagon, only to watch it evaporate like a summer daydream. But more recently, we’ve done better. For example, it’s worth holding Apple accountable for allowing iOS apps to upload users’ address books without letting users know they’re doing it, as VentureBeat and other tech blogs have done. Staying on top of Facebook’s ever-changing privacy policies has also been a worthy endeavor, especially now that the service has over 845 million users and reaches into many corners of the web with its buttons and badges (including on this site). And it’s also worth reporting when and how the IPO market doesn’t serve the interests of ordinary investors. Applying critical analysis to much-hyped public offerings, like those of Groupon, Zynga, and Yelp, is something tech journalists can and should do. For VentureBeat’s part, we’re trying to avoid conflicts of interest while providing fact-driven news, intelligent commentary, and informed context with every story. Our approach is laid out in VentureBeat’s public ethics statement. No, we’re not perfect, but we make an effort to talk to sources, verify facts, and provide honest, informed context whenever possible. And if we make mistakes, we correct them. Most of us journalists don’t match the purity embodied by legendary New York Times photographer Bill Cunningham, who won’t accept so much as a drink of water during the events he covers, much less a few million dollars of seed funding. But that’s a model worth aspiring to. Photo credit: Shutterstock/Tobias Naumann Related articles
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| Striiv says its step-counting gadget inspires people to walk more Posted: 22 Feb 2012 08:00 AM PST Striiv has taken the humble step counter and turned it into a “personal trainer in your pocket.” The Redwood City, Calif.-based company says that in the two months since its release, the company’s step-counting gadget has inspired people to walk a lot more frequently and farther.
Striiv counts the number of steps you walk in a day. If you swipe across the screen, you can see how many miles you’ve walked, how many stairs you’ve climbed, the number of minutes you’ve spent being active, and the number of calories burned. You are prompted to do more with rewards and achievements, such as energy to build things in a fantasy world. After 12 weeks, the majority of Striiv users check their results about 29 times every day to see how many steps they walked. That’s nearly as frequently as they look at email on their smartphones (34 times). The more people use Striiv, the more they walk. Users who unlock the Striiv gadget (pictured) 34 times a day walk about 69 percent more than users who unlock Striiv just five times a day. "There is a handful of gadgets geared to health, like Nike's FuelBand which claims 'life's a sport,'” said David Wang, chief executive of Striiv. “But we are for everyday, busy people, who may not have time for the gym, or aren’t avid athletes. Striiv fits into any schedule; making it fun and meaningful is the key.” Wong said that the longer people have the product, the more they use Striiv. And the more they interact with it, the more they walk. Striiv charts your progress and tracks your records, such as how much you walk in a day on average. I’ve used Striiv for about a month and it tells me I walk 8,622 steps on average, or 4.1 miles a day. My personal best was 7.8 miles walk during the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas. Knowing that makes me want to beat those records. Striiv also has a “walkathon” feature where the company donates toward causes such as clean water, polio vaccines or saving the rainforest. The more you walk, the more it donates. On average, Striiv users are walking nearly 60 minutes per day. They log about 3 miles per day and walk up eight flights of stairs per day. The Striiv device costs $99 and is available on the Home Shopping Network, HSN.com, Amazon, and Striiv.com. The company was founded in 2010 and it has raised $7.5 million to date. Investors include Ronald Chwang of iD Ventures; Colin Angle, founder of iRobot; Dado Banatao of Tallwood Ventures (a private investment); along with other angel investors. Rival technologies include Basis, which makes a wrist band that you wear so that it can measure both your movement, heart rate, and perspiration. Other rivals are FitBit, Jawbone, and Nike. [Image credits: Striiv] Filed under: games, VentureBeat        
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| PopCap bets on Facebook casino-game gold rush Posted: 22 Feb 2012 08:00 AM PST Ever since the Justice Department opened the door to the legalization of online gambling, the leading creators of social games are feeling increasingly lucky. PopCap Games just launched Lucky Gem Casino with a collection of seven slot machines themed after its brands such as Bejeweled and Zuma. It marks the entry of the Electronic Arts subsidiary into the increasingly active casino game market. Leading Facebook game publisher Zynga is adding Bingo and Slingo to its Zynga Casino family, which already features the most successful Facebook Poker game with more than 30 million active monthly users. Traditional gambling companies are quickly moving into the market as well. In January, slot machine maker International Game Technology acquired Facebook casino game publisher Double Down for $500 million. The current crop of luck-based Facebook games are legal in the US because there is no way to cash out the virtual earnings. In Lucky Gem Casino players can purchase additional coins for real money, using the Facebook Credits system. But even if they hit the jackpot, payouts occur only in virtual currency and can’t be converted back into cash. The big prize for social game makers could arrive when more states follow Nevada’s example and legalize online gambling, a move made possible after a Justice Department ruling in December that allows online betting as long as it does not involve sports. Companies who have already gathered large player communities could see revenue boosts if social game platforms allow money payouts. Though the initial release version is limited to slot machines, PopCap pledged “to evolve Lucky Gem Casino to enhance the experience, add more games [and] community features” — which sounds a lot like the ideas behind Zynga Casino. PopCap VP Dennis Ryan also promises they will be “enlivening traditional casino games with our franchises,” as seen in the Bejeweled Spin slot machine. All of a sudden, a Plants vs. Zombies poker table doesn’t seem quite such a far-fetched idea. Filed under: games, social        
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| Microsoft files complaint against Motorola in EU for ball-busting on essential patents Posted: 22 Feb 2012 07:48 AM PST Microsoft has filed an antitrust complaint against Motorola Mobility with the European Commission on grounds that it is unfairly leveraging its patents, it announced on a company blog today. The move comes hot on the heels of Apple’s decision last week to also file a complaint against Motorola in the E.U. Both Apple and Microsoft lawsuits come just days after the U.S. and E.U. approved the sale of Motorola to Google for $12.5 billion. In a post colorfully titled “Google: Please Don't Kill Video on the Web,” Microsoft VP Dave Heiner makes the case that Motorola is playing hard ball with its patents tied to watching web videos. “In legal proceedings on both sides of the Atlantic, Motorola is demanding that Microsoft take its products off the market, or else remove their standards-based ability to play video and connect wirelessly,” Heiner wrote. “The only basis for these actions is that these products implement industry standards, on which Motorola claims patents. Yet when the industry adopted these standards, we all were counting on Motorola and every contributor to live up to their promises.” Heiner’s post contrasts Microsoft offering its patents for license versus what Motorola is offering. Microsoft allows manufacturers who create a $1,000 laptop to use more than 2,300 patents for “2 cents.” But Motorola is now saying Microsoft needs to pay a royalty of $22.50 for 50 patents on the same $1,000 laptop. For a $2,000 laptop, Motorola is demanding a royalty of $45. The 50 patents are related to the H.264 video standard, which is essential for watching most web videos. Patent wars commentator Florian Mueller writes that what Motorola is doing could be looked at as unfair because they are cutting into a standard agreed upon by an industry. He explains: “Standard-essential patents aren’t powerful because of their technical merits,” Mueller wrote. “Most of the time they aren’t particularly innovative. They’re just critical because they cover mandatory parts of standards. That’s the only reason they can’t be worked around once they are part of an industry standard. It’s key that the owners of such patents act responsibly, and if some of them don’t, antitrust intervention is needed.” Do you think Motorola is playing unfairly when it comes to these standard patents? Steve Ballmer photo: Dennis Hamilton/Flickr Filed under: VentureBeat        
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| Apple supplier Foxconn hid underage workers before inspection, says labor rights NGO Posted: 22 Feb 2012 07:46 AM PST Foxconn, the Chinese manufacturer that Apple heavily relies on for its products, may have tried to clean up its act before inspectors from the Fair Labor Association descended on its factories, according to a Hong Kong non-governmental organization dedicated to workers rights. Foxconn allegedly pushed underage employees out of sight before the FLA inspection, Debby Sze Wan Chan, a project officer from Students & Scholars Against Corporate Misbehavior (SACOM), tells AppleInsider. “All underage workers, between 16-17 years old, were not assigned any overtime work and some of them were even sent to other departments,” workers from the Foxconn factories reportedly told Chan. Apple’s supplier code of conduct allows for factories to employ workers aged 16 to 18, but they’re also supposed to receive additional protections:
We’ve asked both Apple and the FLA for further comment and will update when we hear back. Let’s be clear: SACOM isn’t alleging that Foxconn is hiding workers under 16, which would be a major child labor issue. Instead, the group says the supplier simply moved slightly older workers around to avoid scrutiny from the FLA. It makes sense for Foxconn to shape up in preparation for a highly publicized inspection, the real question is how these 16- to 18-year-old employees are treated once the spotlights disappear. Last night’s ABC Nightline report gave us our best glimpse yet into Foxconn’s inner workings. The FLA, meanwhile, is still conducting its inspection of the factories. FLA president Auret van Heerden called Foxconn’s factories “first class” last week in an initial statement, but he also noted that there were many issues that needed to be solved. Speaking about the overall atmosphere at the factories, Chan recounted one of her recent trips to AppleInsider, “The workers always tell us they resemble machines. Their regular day at Foxconn is waking up, queuing up for baths and work, work and go back to the dormitory and sleep. They do not have a social life and they are doing the same monotonous task in the factory for thousands of times a day. If they are not efficient enough or they make some mistakes, they will be yelled at by their supervisor or punished.”
Filed under: mobile, VentureBeat        
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| “Facebook for scientists” ResearchGate raises a fresh round of funding Posted: 22 Feb 2012 07:00 AM PST
What’s a scientist to do when they want to connect with a colleague and share research? They can’t just go Facebook to share their guarded secrets, which is why ResearchGate was created. “ResearchGate is a full-blown network for scientists and researchers to connect, share and collaborate; they can login through their Facebook accounts as well, a representative for the company wrote in an email to VentureBeat, “Research/Science is moving to more openness, and with global mass adoption of the Internet and smartphones, people’s norms and expectations are changing in how they interact with each other online.” Co-founder Dr. Ijad Madisch (pictured above) got the idea for ResearchGate while studying for his PhD. He wanted a way to connect with other science students to collaborate and share knowledge. Scientists can post information and reports, connect with their peers to exchange ideas, and collaborate on problems. The social network has been up and running for four years now, with 1.3 million members from the scientific community. ResearchGate fits in with the trend of scientists shying away from publishing research to scientific journals and instead flocking to sites like ArXiv and PLoS to publish work quickly. ResearchGate takes online publishing a bit further by adding a social element. Members of ResearchGate can comment on published research and offer feedback, which isn’t available on other scientific publishing sites. ResearchGate raised its first round of institutional funding in September 2010, though the company hasn’t disclosed how much money it has received. Benchmark Capital, Accel Partners, Michael Birch, and David O. Sacks participated in this latest round. The company is based in Berlin, Germany and has more than 40 employees. Filed under: deals, media        
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| Moontoast’s new analytics tool makes sense of all that social commerce data (exclusive) Posted: 22 Feb 2012 06:00 AM PST Turning social media influence into gold is one thing, but measuring how you did it is quite another, according to social commerce startup Moontoast. Moontoast provides musicians, celebrities, and brands with a way to generate money from the often large followings they have on social media platforms like Facebook and Twitter. The startup does this primarily by letting its clients embed a "distributed store" into a social network status update or third-party website (Walmart, Target or an affiliate blog). Users can make purchases from those embedded stores seamlessly without having to navigate away from the site — thus enhancing impulse purchases and/or removing hassle that would prevent an online sale of things like merchandise, special deal coupons, digital music files, and more. Today the company launched its Social Analytics Suite, which collects data from each time a client uses a “distributed store” as well as the corresponding social media activity. So for instance, if a client tweets three exclusive t-shirt offers and shares one exclusive signed poster offer on Facebook, the dashboard would show data for four separate “stores.” “We found that most of our clients behave more like an agency than a brand, so we built the analytics dashboard to accommodate that,” said Moontoast VP of Marketing and Client Services Tim Putnam in an interview with VentureBeat. Each client sees a one-page analytics dashboard consisting of four unique rows, which adds a touch of simplicity for people who aren’t super familiar with making sense of digital impact data (see screenshots below). The first row allows clients to customize the data by date range, brand, campaign type, and distributed store type. Below that is a row dedicated to social influence reach and revenue. Basically, the second row is an easy way for people to gauge their return on investment, but it doesn’t provide you with enough information to understand how to duplicate successes and avoid failures. The third row consists of a comprehensive graph that combines all the different sales and social reach data with their social media activity. Looking at this should give people an accurate measure of how well they’re doing, as well as how they can improve. Each time someone initiates social activity (such as a tweet), a dot is placed on the graph, which clients can click for additional information. Clients can then see how the activity impacted sales, social engagement, etc. It’s a pretty cool tool most digital marketing managers are likely to fall in love with. A collection of purely social media engagement and participation is displayed on the dashboard’s fourth row. It’s very similar to what you’d find in Facebook’s advertising dashboard, but far more useful since it tracks multiple social networks. Moontoast currently offers all clients a free version of the analytics tool that doesn’t show the entire scope of social data collected from each campaign. The full Social Analytic Suite is, however, a paid service. We’ve embedded a video demo of the new tool below. Founded in 2008, Moontoast originally began as a social knowledge base that allowed "experts" within specialized fields to turn a profit by performing various services. The company, which has offices in Nashville, Tenn. and Boston, Mass., pivoted in 2010 and brought on interim CEO Stephen Collins, formerly of DoubleClick. Its early investors include country music artists such as co-founder Bucky Baxter, Wynona Judd, Vince Gill, Amy Grant and Kip Winger. Moontoast closed a $6 million round of funding in January 2012 from The Martin Companies, with participation from prior investors. The startup has raised a total of just over $9 million in funding to date.
Filed under: social, VentureBeat        
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| How the cookie crumbles. Safari user sues Google over privacy violations Posted: 22 Feb 2012 04:38 AM PST  Image via Flickr's Werwin 15 The repercussions keep rolling in from the Wall Street Journal’s expose that detailed how Google was bypassing the default privacy settings on Apple’s Safari browser in order to place tracking cookies that followed users around the web. Matthew Soble, an Illinois resident, has filed suit against Google in a Delaware federal court and is seeking class action status, reports Bloomberg. Soble’s lawyers assert that Google knowingly violated federal wiretapping laws by placing these cookies in the browser of Safari users who believed that their setting blocked this kind of advertising technology. “The Journal mischaracterizes what happened and why. We used known Safari functionality to provide features that signed-in Google users had enabled. It's important to stress that these advertising cookies do not collect personal information,” Rachel Whetstone, a senior vice president of communications and public policy at Google, told VentureBeat by email. “Unlike other major browsers, Apple's Safari browser blocks third-party cookies by default. However, Safari enables many web features for its users that rely on third parties and third-party cookies, such as "Like" buttons. Last year, we began using this functionality to enable features for signed-in Google users on Safari who had opted to see personalized ads and other content–such as the ability to "+1" things that interest them.” The search giant’s position is that they were simply trying to see if users were already signed in with their Google account so they could use the +1 button without logging in again. But in doing so, the company also placed advertising cookies. “We didn't anticipate that this would happen, and we have now started removing these advertising cookies from Safari browsers. It's important to stress that, just as on other browsers, these advertising cookies do not collect personal information,” Whetstone said. Filed under: security, VentureBeat        
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| ABC’s rare look inside Apple’s Foxconn factory Posted: 22 Feb 2012 12:01 AM PST What is it like inside a factory that makes Apple iPads? Tuesday night, an ABC Nightline special called “iFactory” gave us the first peak at actual factory working conditions and the people living on the assembly line. Bill Weir, a reporter for ABC, traveled to Foxconn, a Chinese manufacturing company, soon after the media began taking a closer look at Apple’s assembly line practices. He went along with the Fair Labor Association, which Apple recently invited to audit its facilities in an effort to improve its conditions, or perhaps combat criticism. It also offered to post the audits to its website to keep transparency. Weir notes that Apple paid both to get into the FLA, and also for the audits it will perform, though an FLA employee assures that any “white-washing” will be obvious in the audit report. You can check out its “Supplier Responsibility at Apple” page here.
“We didn’t see a cluster effect until, I think, the fifth or the sixth one,” said Louis Woo, a Foxconn executive, on the idea that Foxconn may have a suicide problem. The worker dormitories, where many of the suicide nets are set up, are an important part of how Foxconn works. When the commute is only minutes, no work time is wasted in travel. When many hours can be worked, more iPads can be shipped. To be fair, this makes good business sense, but the conditions aren’t anything to write home about. Dormitories hold up to eight people at a time in metal beds. They are small, concrete, and not meant to be enjoyed. Two meals are kept to an hour each day, and workers must travel there in a single line. Mike Daisey described the cafeterias on This American Life as being able to hold 10,000 people, an amount hard to fathom. Work weeks are now capped at 60 hours, a long week in comparison to the average American electronic assembler’s work week of 42 hours, according to Weir. Tim Cook recently said 84 percent of its surveyed workers were obeying the new cap. Shifts at Foxconn are split into two, 12 hour periods. In a day, workers can pump out 300,000 iPad camera modules. An iPad is crafted in five days, with 300 hands touching the product.
The factory seems clean, anti-static gear accessible, and assembly lines efficient. It’s not conditions of dirt that keep some Foxconn employees disgruntled, however, it’s the wages. The report introduced us to one woman who can afford to visit her family only once a month. She, like many, must leave homes to live at the factory. When asked if she would change anything about the experience, she expresses a need for higher wages, and perhaps benefits from her employer. She is not allowed to join a union. Unions similar to the ones that exist in the U.S. are illegal in China. “We’re all here to work, naturally we want better pay and benefits,” she said, according to a translation. Mounting conversations about cheap labor in China and elsewhere is bound to start pressuring companies to raise pay. Apple has already given its factory employees a raise, but after earnings reports that boast $13.06 billion in profit, the company may be pressured to invest more of its $90 billion in cash to its workers. Would Foxconn want to pay its employees more if Apple supplied the means? “Why not,” said Woo, speaking to Weir. “That would be good for the employees, and good for China, and good for us because we will have more stable workers who would love to work for our company because they would get paid a lot more than anyone else.” VentureBeat executive editor Dylan Tweney offers another thought: if you’re upset by factories such as Foxconn’s, don’t just blame Apple, blame yourself. Because for all the gadgets we buy, we are in a way supporting the working conditions in which they were made. If we can’t resist the gadgets we love, one woman scraping excess material from the 3000 iPad’s apple insignias she handles each shift has a request: “When [you] use it, please use it with care.” Filed under: VentureBeat        
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| Twitter updates iPhone and Android apps, releases Kindle Fire app Posted: 21 Feb 2012 06:23 PM PST With one fell swoop, Twitter has confronted privacy concerns, returned missed features to its mobile audience, and opened its information network up to even more tablet-toting folks. Twitter for iPhone and Android received updates Tuesday. The fixes address previously identified shortcomings, and optimize Twitter to run on Android tablets. Twitter released a version of its application for the Kindle Fire on the Amazon Appstore today. The company also promised that the Barnes & Noble Nook Store will get a Twitter app on Thursday.
The addition of the alert comes just a week after VentureBeat uncovered evidence showing that a slew of iPhone applications, Twitter included, access the user’s mobile address book without first requesting permission. Twitter’s mobile apps also now include a much-loved shortcut feature of yore that allows a person to swipe a tweet to interact with it. The swiping action brings up a shortcut screen that includes reply, retweet, favorite, share, and user profile-viewing options. The feature should (again) appeal to the power Twitterer. iPhone application users may appreciate the returned abilities to copy and paste the text of tweets and mark all direct messages as read. Filed under: mobile, social, VentureBeat        
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| Stitch Labs makes running an online business a snap, raises $1M (updated) Posted: 21 Feb 2012 06:10 PM PST Stitch Labs, a startup that helps small businesses manage inventory, orders, and shipping, announced today it has raised $1 million in seed funding from True Ventures. Co-founder Jake Gasaway told VentureBeat in an interview that Stitch Labs really took off after it integrated with Etsy and Shopify. Many of the millions of Etsy users began making their way over to Stitch Labs and became paying customers, which helped the company gain attention from venture capital firms. Stitch Labs attributes its seed funding to showing VCs that they could build a business that generates revenue and could convert people into paying customers. “Something that was pretty much consistent with our users, is that they loved our product. Once we integrated with Etsy and Shopify, we gained new customers — not just sign ups, but paying customers,” said Gasaway, “We spent time last summer talking to people, networking with small businesses to pave our way.” Stitch Labs manages contacts, inventory, sales, invoicing, and shipping for online businesses. It displays all relevant information in a dashboard, so business owners can manage orders, payment, and many other aspects of their operations. The company also integrates with the shopping cart platforms from Etsy and Shopify and can manage data from several different business, both online and off, in one dashboard. Pricing starts at $12 per month for single-person businesses, up to a monthly fee of $80 for larger companies. Co-founder and chief executive Brandon Levey began working on Stitch Labs in 2011 when he was running his own design and manufacturing company. He was frustrated with the lack of software available to small businesses to manage inventory and sales. “We see a lot of changes going on the e-commerce world, we want to make it easier for them to succeed,” Levey told VentureBeat. ”We take a more holistic approach to all the ways businesses sell their products, offline and off.” Stitch Labs will use the funding for product development and customer growth. The company is also hiring new employees. Stitch was founded in 2011 and is based in San Francisco, California. This is the first round of funding the company has received.
Filed under: deals        
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| 6Scan releases WordPress plugin that hacks your site on purpose (exclusive) Posted: 21 Feb 2012 05:56 PM PST 6Scan released a new plugin for WordPress today, aimed at giving small businesses the same level of cyber security that enterprises can afford. “I think what SMBs [small to medium-sized businesses] want most of all is something that doesn’t take technical expertise to set up,” said 6Scan chief executive officer Nitzan Miron in an interview with VentureBeat. “And it needs to just work. It doesn’t need to require manual work or technical work. It needs to be a ‘set it and forget it.’” The software is completely Internet based and has two different layers, the Patrol and the Bodyguard. The Patrol is what Miron calls “your own white hat hacker.” It crawls a company’s website and attacks it, like a cyber criminal looking for entry would. The attacks are used to find vulnerabilities in the site, which are then transferred to the Bodyguard. This second function then fixes the vulnerability before it can be exploited. Vulnerabilities do not have to be previously discovered for Bodyguard to know how to fix it. The automated system is able to detect and fix unknown issues, which are then published for public benefit. The plugin costs $10 a month, and Miron says more plugins for other website platforms, such as Drupal, are coming. “We capitalize on the fact that most SMBs are running on well-known platforms,” said Miron. “They’re not going to start their sites from scratch, they’re going to start from well-known platforms like WordPress.” 6Scan is headquartered in Israel and serves 2,500 websites thus far. It was founded in April 2011, has eight employees, and has raised an undisclosed amount of funding from YL Ventures. Filed under: security        
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| Microsoft goes on the attack against Google Apps (video) Posted: 21 Feb 2012 03:07 PM PST Microsoft has gone after Google before in ads attacking its search and Gmail products, but today the big M has launched a new off-kilter commercial showing off Google Apps’ biggest weaknesses. The video, titled “Googlighting,” portrays the Google Apps productivity suite in human form as “Googen Apperson,” a slimy salesman who shows up an hour late to his appointment. Apperson has 12 years of advertising experience and is meeting with an executive to sell her company Google productivity software. The executive asks a lot of tough questions, and Apperson squirms in his chair, unable to answer most of them. Without mentioning it by name, the video is trying to attract businesses to Office 365, Microsoft’s cloud-based productivity software. Office 365 brings Word, Excel, PowerPoint, Exchange, and SharePoint to the cloud and aims to make collaboration for teams easy. Outside of having more familiarity with businesses, Microsoft is hoping to position its software as better for your company’s privacy in light of Google’s recent controversial privacy changes. Personally, I didn’t find the ad that funny, but it does make a lot of fair points. While Google Apps is cheaper that Office 365, it still has quite a few limitations. Chief among them is that Microsoft Excel is miles ahead when it comes to spreadsheet creation and management. Excel might be boring on its face, but it is one of the most important applications used in business today. In my hands on with Office 365, I made the case that Excel in the cloud could be the number one reason businesses choose Office 365 over Google Apps. You can watch the full ad here and leave your comments below:
Filed under: cloud, media        
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| Comcast launches ‘Netflix-like’ Streampix to complement expensive cable packages Posted: 21 Feb 2012 02:52 PM PST Comcast is launching a new streaming video service called Xfinity Streampix, which takes aim at similar services from Netflix, Hulu Plus, Amazon Prime. The move is most likely a response to the growing number of people who are ditching their expensive cable TV subscriptions and relying on the web (as well as premium streaming services) to fulfill their video consumption needs. That said, Streampix isn’t a direct competitor of Netflix because it isn’t a standalone service. Streampix, which goes live Feb. 23, is only available to Comcast customers with a double- or triple-play subscription package. That means you have to be subscribed to both the TV service as well as an internet or regular telephone plan to be eligible. For those with a more basic subscription service, Comcast is charging an additional monthly fee of $4.99. While you’re still likely to spend upwards of $100 per month to Comcast to quench your third for video entertainment, you’ll at least be gaining a “streaming anywhere” service that’s cheaper than Netflix and Hulu Plus ($7.99 per month each). In terms of content, Streampix will offer programming from Disney-ABC Television Group, NBCUniversal, Sony Pictures, Warner Bros. Digital Distribution and children’s entertainment network Cookie Jar. When you combine that with what’s already available on Comcast’s Xfinity TV service, it’s a decent amount of content. “We also recognize there’s a marketplace for streaming deeper-library movies and TV shows and that’s where Streampix comes in,” wrote SVP of Comcast Video services Marcien Jenckes in a recent blog post. “With Xfinity Streampix, we’re adding more past season TV shows, more movies and more value to our customers’ subscriptions.” Like Netflix, Streampix will also be available on multiple platforms, such as Xbox 360, web browser, iOS devices, and Android devices. I’m curious to see how this pans out for Comcast in the long run. Streampix is likely to attract people who are more or less satisfied with their current cable TV subscription, but curious about streaming services like Netflix. But Netflix is definitely hustling, offering its own original programing and signing exclusive licensing deals with notable film studios like The Weinstein Company. Plus, Netflix is only $7.99 per month plus the cost of a reliable internet connection. Filed under: media, VentureBeat        
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| Sony’s marketing chief: PlayStation Vita to be biggest marketing spend ever in U.S. (interview) Posted: 21 Feb 2012 02:41 PM PST
Guy Longworth, senior vice president of marketing and PSN at Sony’s U.S. game division, said in an interview that the $50 million U.S. advertising spend will be the biggest the game division has ever spent on the launch of a product in history. Dressed as their favorite game characters, fans are already lining up at the Sony Style store in New York for a live launch event. The marketing plan ranges from “cosplay” live events to a lot of TV advertisements based on the theme “you can never stop playing.” Longworth said Sony’s marketing will show off the line-up of 26 launch titles that are already on the market and underscore the fact that the platform will last for five to 10 years. He noted that a hundred more titles are in development. “We’re focusing the attention on the strengths of the Vita platform: the hardware, the great lineup of games, and access to all of your digital entertainment,” he said. “We think it’s all pretty compelling. We’re aiming it at core gamers who are crying out for the opportunity to have a console-like experience on the go.” Those gamers likely haven’t found the iPad or iPhone compelling enough when it comes to playing hardcore games based on outstanding game brands, such as Sony’s Uncharted series, which is making it to the Vita in the form of Uncharted: Golden Abyss. While that title hasn’t gotten the best reviews (see ours), he said, “What it does is allow you to play a franchise that many gamers are familiar with in a new and engaging way. It has dual analog sticks and touchscreens.” Longworth claimed that reviews of the games and hardware are ahead of Sony’s expectations. So far, the Uncharted title has been the top game selling via preorders and on store shelves, Longworth said. Other hot titles include Mod Nation Racers, Hot Shots Golf, and Little Deviants. Sony’s Unit 13 is also aimed at shooter-game fans. And he noted that Lumines Electronic Symphony from Q Entertainment is also getting a lot of attention. “We are excited to have a lineup that appeals to anyone who is interested in gaming,” Longworth said. “We want to bring the best experiences and best brands to the platform, not only from Sony but from third parties as well. The hardware offers a canvas for developers to do different things. FIFA Soccer plays incredibly well on the Vita, and we think sports games in general will be big on it.” Longworth acknowledged that developers will face a learning curve in creating games for the Vita, but he said, “We are delighted with the speed with which these developers can deliver great experiences. We couldn’t be happier with the quality of the games, and that is why we are spending the $50 million in the first few months.” As for supplies of the Vita, Longworth said the company has been working closely with suppliers to ensure adequate shipments, but he said the availability of the handhelds will depend on demand. While some gamers have balked at the $249 price, Longworth said, “We think this an incredible experience you get with the Vita and that gives great value to the consumer. We have something for everyone, from AAA titles at $49.99 to downloadable games at more accessible prices.” He added, “We have to reiterate that we are in this for the long-term.” Filed under: games        
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| PlayStation Vita: THE hardware review Posted: 21 Feb 2012 02:13 PM PST There is something extravagant about the release of a new game system: the promise of new and previously unheard of software experiences … hardware that is faster, better, and more capable. It is something that will be around for years and thus promises a level of quality generally reserved for far more expensive equipment. But the times, they are a-changin’. Consumers expect more from electronics than ever before. Over 50% of Americans own smartphones that not only make calls but run applications and play games — they are quickly replacing standalone media players. Even Sony has experimented with a smartphone game system in the Xperia Play, which has found only limited commercial success. Even amid fierce competition from products like the iPhone, Android smartphones, and tablets, there is still a burgeoning market for portable video game consoles. The Nintendo 3DS has sold over 15 million units worldwide in less than a year, making it the fastest selling video game machine in history. Can Sony match that success with the more expensive, better connected, and higher-quality PlayStation Vita? Hardware and designAt first glance the Vita appears almost identical to the PSP. It shares nearly all of the PSP’s dimensions, but the Vita couldn’t be more different. It’s sleek, bold, and immediately stunning, unlike the plastic frame every PSP model has shared. The eye wants to look at the Vita’s gorgeous glass front, very crisp labeling, and expertly crafted controls. The front of the Vita is almost exclusively made of glass, a design shared by Apple’s iPhone 4. The Vita doesn’t look like a kid’s toy; it looks like a serious gadget, a futuristic piece of technology. It isn’t soft around the edges nor does it feel childish. A plastic frame is glossy but easy to grip, and on the back are two finger rests to grip the Vita. From top to bottom the Vita looks and feels solid. I carried it around in a bag and pockets, and though the glass front did give me pause, the Vita is a stable device. It is huge (3.3″ x 7.2″ x 18.6″ h/w/d and 9.8oz), so don’t expect to carry it in tight jeans or small bag pockets. The build quality is very high, and I had no trouble or worry when holding it in a pocket. The Vita has a very similar control layout to the PSP and DualShock controller: a D-pad and analog stick on the left, four face buttons on the right, as well as a PlayStation (home/return) button, start and select buttons, two shoulder buttons, volume controls, and power. The Vita is the first portable game system with a second analog stick, which makes traditional home-console-style titles easier to play on the Vita. Nintendo’s 3DS will receive an attachment with a second analog stick, but the Vita has two unique features over the 3DS: a 5″ OLED touchscreen display and an equally large rear touchpad. DisplayThe Vita has an OLED display. Not AMOLED, not Super AMOLED, and not any of the other OLED technologies many companies are touting. This seems like a questionable design choice; although Sony first brought OLED into the home with the 11″ XEL-1 TV, OLED displays have been consistently lambasted for a lack of visibility outdoors. Solutions used by LG and Samsung address that problem in recent smartphones but don’t solve it entirely. At CES Sony engineers I spoke with said that OLED technology is inferior to LCD panels for several reasons: the lack of brightness, inaccurate colors due to over-saturation, and a blue hue to the screen. That’s why the upcoming Xperia S and Xperia Ion will both come equipped with LCD displays. The Vita, by comparison, seems to have a plain old OLED. Sony isn’t marketing it in any other way. It certainly isn’t plain. The 960×544 display is one of the most beautiful and vibrant I’ve ever seen and is certainly the best in its size. It isn’t dense at 220ppi (the iPhone’s Retina Display is 326ppi, the HTC Rezound is 342ppi), but for gaming and video it is dense enough. Nearly every problem with OLED displays is gone, eliminated in some way that Sony has not discussed publicly. I’ve tested the display indoors and out and am extremely impressed with both color accuracy and brightness. The only trouble is in direct sunlight, not because the pictures on-screen aren’t visible, but because fingerprints and smudges block the screen. The display doesn’t appear to have an oleophobic coating, so cleaning the screen to better see in direct sunlight is difficult. It’s an absolute pleasure to view anything on the Vita’s display. Pictures and video are crisp and very clear — more so than on any smartphone or tablet. Games are reproduced on the display in the best possible light, likely better than most TVs can muster. I can’t recommend using the Vita instead of an iPad or Android tablet for watching videos — bigger is better, of course — but if the choice is gaming and watching movies on one or the other, the Vita wins hands down. The 5″ panel on the Vita is extraordinary. Continue reading for internal components… Filed under: games, mobile, VentureBeat        
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| Flickr needs more than a facelift to return to former glory Posted: 21 Feb 2012 01:56 PM PST  A facelift for Flickr Yahoo-owner Flickr has undergone reconstructive surgery and will emerge, in a week, with a new-and-improved face and a mission to recapture the glory of its youth. But even the best plastic surgery will do little to help the aging photo service compete with a new crop of vibrant photo-sharing applications. Flickr’s makeover, as first detailed by BetaBeat, will feature a more colorful photo view that eliminates most of the whitespace members are currently accustomed to, and will soon include a new photo upload page that looks and functions radically different from today’s upload page. “The product is going to change significantly, and the user experience is going to change significantly over the course of the year,” Flickr senior product manager Markus Spiering told VentureBeat. Just don’t expect these significant changes to happen overnight. The first improvements, as explained by Spiering, will first start appearing next week. Flickr will introduce the new Contacts page, pictured above, on Feb. 28 and will roll out the upload page to users some time in March. Additional changes, not yet divulged, are slated for later release in 2012. “Suddenly the photos look more than four times their current size and lie neatly justified on the page, somehow jigsawing together without cropping or changing the order in which they appear,” BetaBeat’s Adrianne Jeffries said of the new photo view. If the screenshots are any indication, the fresh-faced Flickr will delight those with a penchant for a vivid photographic experience. The facelift, however, will do little to cajole today’s mobile photo-sharer to give the aging service a second look. In 2005, Yahoo acquired the beloved photo-sharing community. And while Flickr has continued to operate with a personality distinct from its owners, it has languished as photo-sharing, especially by way of mobile devices, has thrived. Instagram, an iPhone-only application with photo-enhancing features and filters, has captured the imagination of the iPhoneography community, which includes professional and amateur photographers alike. The service is tailored around expeditious sharing via mobile device and has successfully encroached on Flickr’s domain while Flickr sluggishly embraced the mobile movement. Professional photographers, the audience most likely to pay for Flickr Pro accounts, also seem to be happily exploring their options. 500px has emerged as a vibrant community tailored around the professional, and even Google+’s photo features have gained photographer-appeal. But Facebook is still Flickr’s most agile competitor. The social network has a mainstream audience that posts 250 million photos per day and is happily doing so without paying annual fees for the privilege. Flickr continues to see a substantial quantity of photos posted to its site each day — 3.5 million photos, Spiering said — but it is dwarfed by Facebook. Without a time machine on hand, Flickr’s best chance for a return to glory will be under Spiering’s leadership. Spiering took over as head of product roughly one year ago and has talked openly about 2012 being an important year for Flickr. Influential photographer Thomas Hawk, a big proponent of Google+, is impressed with the pending Flickr changes and believes that Spiering is the right man to spearhead a Flickr turnaround. “It’s super positive to see innovation coming out of Flickr,” Hawk told VentureBeat. “I think Markus Spiering is turning out to be a pretty positive thing for Flickr.” Flickr, as Hawk sees it, has needed a redesign for years, and Hawk thinks that a page focused on better photos will go a long way to encourage more activity. “Hopefully, though, Flickr uses this redesign as a first step in a bigger overhaul that actually addresses site functionality in even bigger and more meaningful ways,” Hawk added. This post was updated with statements and photos from Yahoo. Filed under: social, VentureBeat        
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| What’s in your startup’s information diet? Posted: 21 Feb 2012 12:45 PM PST Technology startups and political campaigns are roughly the same thing: smart, driven people get together to make something that they think is useful happen for the world. Chances are that the campaign staffers for Rick Santorum, Mitt Romney, and Barack Obama all share that same frazzled look of spening a late night working hard to get a release out. It’s roughly the same thing. The problem is, both of these work environments yield delusion. When I was Howard Dean’s lead programmer in 2004, we all feasted on an information diet of news clips about Howard Dean, then wrote and read blog posts about Howard Dean in the afternoon, and watched the West Wing — which we thought was a documentary about Dean’s future presidency — in the evening. And while it was helpful for morale, it wasn’t useful for decisionmaking. After all, when our pollster came out and said Kerry would win Iowa two weeks before the caucuses, we were all taken by surprise. A deliberate information diet would have been helpful, and I think such a diet needs to be a necessary part of a startup’s culture. Now, I don’t mean that your startup needs to go and start planning out a prescribed reading list of things for employees to consume — and dicta that employees should consume only those things. That’s not an information diet; that’s fascism. What I do mean is that your startup should consider making a more deliberate information consumption process happen as part of your corporate culture. Instead, it’s about creating a culture of deliberate consumption inside your organization. How to startFirst, ask yourself, what is your company’s current information diet? What are people reading? What is it that people are taking in? Just like with food, you’re always on an information diet of some kind, that diet just might not be very good. Taking a week, to keep a group journal of everyone’s intake either by using a service like RescueTime or by keeping an analog journal. At the end of the week, have a meeting to share how much and what types of content everyone is consuming. I’ve found that, just like with a food journal, a lot of people are shocked by how much they’re consuming and how many hours of their life they’re spending on stuff that doesn’t matter. But this also gives everyone a chance to deliberately share resources, and knowing where good learning is coming from is important to share. How to correct information diet imbalancesSecond, think about what goes into a healthy information diet for your organization. In my book, I talk a lot about how it’s vital to default to local news and then grow to national news — and local news means really local: what’s going on in your house, at work, and in your neighborhood. The same can be applied to your organization: is everybody tuned in to the political news, or is it comprised of news from far-away places that have little to do with the day-to-day business of things? Isn’t it odd that Reddit is better at communicating to people at your company than you are? Fix that. Third, make sure to diversify your diet. Engaging yourself in constant affirmation about how great things are going, or even how great your industry is going, is a great way to pick up a disease called delusion. You’ve probably figured out that decisions ought to be made mostly on data with a little bit of intuition, but it’s important to empower both that data and that intuition with source material. Steve Jobs was great at his job not because he listened to what the customer had to say but because he knew what the customer wanted. Is your information diet giving you more insight on the former or the latter? Finally, know that decompression time, time spent mindlessly cruising Facebook and the like, is actually good for you in limited doses. So just be conscious of the time you spend; don’t try to ban it outright. And don’t forget, part of a healthy information diet is a healthy sense of humor. Learn to laugh, especially at work. There’s no way to design a universal information diet for every startup. Unlike food, information affects us all differently, and thus there isn’t really a generic prescription for every person or every startup. But a healthy information diet pays dividends. It creates a more open workplace that’s communicatative and responsive. Your business is already on an information diet, so why not make it a healthy one?
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| If you love browsing Facebook, but loathe dealing with email, try Fluent Posted: 21 Feb 2012 12:31 PM PST
We get it, going through hundreds of emails is not nearly as exciting as commenting on your friends’ statuses or retweeting a witty tweet. Fluent gets it too, so it took the look of Facebook and Twitter and applied it to a new way to manage your multiple email accounts. Former Google Australia employees Cameron Adams and Dhanji Prasanna began working on Fluent last year. Jochen Bekmann, another former Googler joined the cause in November 2011. According to the Sydney Morning Hearld, which first reported on Fluent, the group quit Google after the company did away with Wave. Fluent works exclusively with Gmail, which isn’t surprising given where the founders used to work. More email services, such as Hotmail, are planned in the future. Emails are presented as threads, with the subject and a snippet of the message displayed first and a “more” link you click to display the body of the email. Replies are shown just like comments on Facebook. The point of Fluent is to streamline emails and focus on the content, not the context. Contact information in each email doesn’t feature prominently, similarly to your friends’ names on Facebook and Twitter. Image attachments can be viewed as a slideshow (again like Facebook) and there is a drop-down menu to forward messages or mark them as spam. One of Fluents most talked about features is Instant Search, which will grab search results as you start typing. Sound familiar? It’s the main feature of Google’s search, but the company has yet to include it in Gmail. I can definitely see why Fluent is compared to Facebook, but the look reminds me more of the enterprise social network Yammer. This style of email might not be for everyone (I know I would probably dislike it), but there is definitely a broad appeal. Fluent is free, but in private beta. To request an invite, go to the company’s website. Check out the video below for a look at Fluent. Filed under: VentureBeat        
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| Brands, don’t kill your social feed by over-automating it Posted: 21 Feb 2012 12:00 PM PST
Companies seem to understand that social means constantly providing fresh content to followers. But some have moved to automation to make this happen. It's easy to see the appeal of such applications. Automatic delivery tools such as Hootsuite provide social media managers with a method to post content quickly and easily. Fan page posts and Tweets can be scheduled well in advance and there's little to no limit on how much content can be scheduled either, which is certainly a good thing given how important it is to consistently communicate with social media users. Now, those tasked with managing their brand's social media are increasingly searching for new ways to provide fresh content. One such method that has gained traction lately, particularly among e-commerce and retail brands, is the automation of fan page content and tweets. Thanks to the inherent ease in using such tools, we're seeing brands roll out quite a bit of automated content. Using automation tools for social can be a useful tactic (in the interests of full disclosure, my company, SortPrice, has an automation tool built into the current version of our social commerce platform as well), but relying exclusively on these tools runs counter to the very concept of brands and individuals connecting via social media. It is, in actuality, not social at all. Let's say, for example, that a footwear retailer uses an automation tool to pre-schedule three weeks' worth of Tweets or Facebook fan page posts that are nothing more than links to different pairs of shoes. Sure, that's increasing the exposure of the retailer's product line, but throwing up a different link every day isn't really going to excite anyone or motivate a majority of followers to actually make a purchase. What's worse, that kind of content will seem an awful lot like spam to some people, which could actually result in the retailer losing them as fans or followers altogether. Individuals generally choose to like or follow a brand in the hopes of getting a deal out of it. But when that's not feasible, brands can still find success in their social media interaction by prioritizing one thing above all others: engagement. Quite simply, giving users engaging content—material that entertains them, motivates them, or simply solicits some sort of response even if it has little to do with your company or products—is still the best way to attract (and retain) fans. Doing so stays true to the very essence of social media and what makes it so popular in the first place. Unfortunately, that level of vital interaction tends to disappear when brands rely too heavily on automation. I don't have any firm numbers on how many companies use automation — it's not something I track. But I've seen an upswing in the practice in general, and it tends to involve companies that are extremely new to social networking and Facebook marketing. Such companies may not have enough experience with social media just yet, making automation that much more appealing to them because of the inherent ease. The trend isn't limited to smaller companies per se. I've seen some mid-size to large brands engaging in it as well. I don't believe automation has reached "widespread phenomenon" status just yet, but it is definitely on the increase. No matter how alluring the ease of automation may be, you still need to put in some time and effort to personalize social media outreach. Using automated content during off peak hours or when you're crunched for time is fine, but it's imperative to blend in healthy doses of thought-provoking material whenever possible. For example, a retailer that sells handbags can create a Google News Alert for any article concerning handbags and automatically feed all of those news stories to its Facebook fan page. Yes, the content is relevant, but it's not going to do much to spur interaction or responses. Running jokes or riddles from time to time keeps things light and fun and encourages responses and feedback. You can post open-ended questions or polls about pop culture or current events that also allows for people to weigh in with their opinions. Even sharing funny or entertaining videos or photos can strengthen your connection to users and make them feel they're more than just a number. This kind of material is easy to find—the web is chock-full of it—and using it in your social media strategy keeps you on users' radars and makes it much more likely that they will be receptive to important content like new products, promotions, or sales when you roll it out. Social media is a two-way street of give and take, and turning users into potential customers is tough if you don't give them a reason to keep paying attention. So employ balance and pay attention to detail with your content. Doing so could ultimately be the difference between a standout social media presence and a run-of-the-mill one.
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| Microsoft Office for iPad reportedly coming within weeks (updated) Posted: 21 Feb 2012 11:59 AM PST Updated at 11:59 a.m. PT with an official response from Microsoft. Microsoft’s long-anticipated Office software suite for the Apple iPad will likely launch in the next few weeks, according to a report by The Daily. However, Microsoft has denied the story. The iPad has become a surprisingly hot device for the enterprise since its launch in April 2010. While businesses typically deploy new technology slowly, the iPad has been different as CEOs override the IT department to make the iPad a fixture. Although many developers have come to offer apps and support for the iPad, the most notable missing piece of software is Microsoft Office, the gold standard for document, spreadsheet, and presentation creation. The Daily first reported that Office for iPad was on the way back in late November, but now its sources say the app will soon be submitted to the App Store for approval. According to the usual release schedule, the Office Suite for iPad could easily launch within a few weeks. A Microsoft spokesperson denied the report, telling VentureBeat via e-mail: “The Daily story is based on inaccurate rumors and speculation. We have no further comment.” The Daily claims to have had some brief hands-on time with Office for iPad and noted that “Word, Excel and PowerPoint files can be created and edited locally and online. But it's unclear if Microsoft will support other Office apps at launch or at all.” Because of the gaping hole left by Office not being readily available, OnLive recently launched its Desktop application that runs Office on the iPad. On top of running Word, Excel, and Powerpoint, OnLive Desktop can run many other Windows 7 apps like Paint, Media Player, and Notepad. But the difference here will be that an Office suite designed specifically for the iPad will likely be optimized in new ways for touch and built differently. ZDNet’s astute Mary Jo Foley points out that Office for iPad sounds quite a bit like the Office for Windows 8 on ARM. It’s certainly possible that Microsoft is building the iPad app and the Windows 8 similarly to offer the best possible touch interactions with Office. If Office launches on the iPad in the next few weeks, will you be adding it to your iPad? Crummy Office for iPad photo: The Daily Filed under: enterprise, mobile, VentureBeat        
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| What to expect when you’re expecting a Facebook IPO Posted: 21 Feb 2012 11:53 AM PST Everyone’s been frothing at the mouth over the past few weeks over Facebook’s imminent IPO, and we’ve never been more hungry for details. When will the shares be offered for public sale? How much will they cost? While Facebook left a lot of mysterious blanks in its S-1 filing with the SEC, we can prepare for the blessed event by taking stock of Facebook’s financial performance, the state of the general economy, and recent tech IPOs on a similar scale. To prepare you with a few key facts and a pinch of experience-based speculation, we got in touch with Dun & Bradstreet analyst and tech IPO specialist Lee Simmons. Facebook’s IPO timingThe timing of the IPO, Simmons said, is now “entirely up to Facebook,” but he said the social network will likely be pricing its shares and making its public debut sometime over the summer. “Some analysts are saying May; I would say it won’t be after August, barring any unforeseen economic catastrophes.” And speaking of economic catastrophies, remember last August when a record number of IPOs were delayed? Simmons said that kind of activity is well within Facebook’s purview as well. “You saw a couple companies last year pull in the reins and delay the IPO,” the analyst said. “Facebook can do the same thing.” Simmons said we can expect to see amended S-1s, changed to reflect the number of shares and starting price, within the next few months. And Facebook’s road show should be happening soon, as well. Mostly, though, Simmons said curious onlookers can keep their fingers on the pulse of the general economy to get a sense of when Facebook might go public. Stating that public markets will act as a bellweather for Facebook’s actions, Simmons noted that any market turbulence could make potential investors skittish. “Thinking back to last May when LinkedIn priced, it seemed like the public markets were going to be really robust for the rest of the year,” Simmons recalled. “Then everything tanked.” Last August’s market dive and subsequent IPO delays and disturbances are a model for what might happen if the spring brings any unexpected dips to public markets. Facebook and the cadre of banks underwriting Facebook’s IPO will be keeping an eye on the New York Stock Exchange and the Nasdaq as one factor for determining the best time to price. Facebook’s IPO pricingSo, depending on the general market, we can expect a summer IPO for Facebook. What about its share prices; what can we expect the numbers to do on the first and subsequent days of trading? “Facebook is being compared most often to Google,” said Simmons. Google went public in August 2004, starting shares at $85 each. The company offered just over 19 million shares, and Google closed the day with a market capitalization in excess of $23 billion. Today, GOOG shares are trading at $608.86. “Analysts see a lot of similarities between both companies,” said Simmons. “Their revenue growth is very similar.” But Simmons continued, “The Facebook IPO will most likely dwarf Google’s.” While Google’s shares rose to a high of $104 on the company’s first day of public trading, Facebook’s stock is more likely to mimic LinkedIn’s first day of trading, said Simmons. LinkedIn, which priced at $45 per share to open the day, quickly rose by more than 100 percent and stayed at around $103 for the majority of the first day of trading. In short, said Simmons, “If the company wants to raise $5 billion on its opening day, that’s what it’s going to do. There is a lot of investor enthusiasm.” This analyst (and just about every other analyst we’ve spoken to) has no doubt that Facebook will “enjoy a really big, explosive first day” of trading. “This is the one stock that tech investors have been waiting for for at least 2 years,” said Simmons. “It will garner towards the high end of its potential valuation, between $75 and $100 billion, and I wouldn’t be surprised if it reached the $100 billion mark.” However, whether Facebook stock will have a shelf life longer than a couple of years is something Simmons said only time will. He noted that LinkedIn, which was ostensibly the first American social media firm to go public, has seen “very volatile” trading activity since its debut (LNKD is currently trading at $91 per share). “These stocks are not invulnerable to economic conditions,” Simmons concluded. “A lot of the hype around these web 2.0 companies tends to forget that one key factor: That the economy can make a dent in share price … Two years down the line, it could go either way.” Stay tuned for more information on Facebook’s road show and initial public offering over the next couple of months. Filed under: deals, VentureBeat        
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| Netflix’s licensing deal with Weinstein Company should make HBO flinch Posted: 21 Feb 2012 11:24 AM PST Streaming video service Netflix has finalized a new content deal with film studio The Weinstein Company that brings a new crop of foreign language, documentary, and critically acclaimed movies to U.S. subscribers, the companies announced today. Under the deal, many new films will appear on Netflix exclusively within one year of their theatrical release. Some of those films include French-language World War II drama Sarah’s Key, The Intouchables, Madonna’s Golden Globe winner W.E., Coriolanus, documentary Bully, and 2012 Academy Award nominee The Artist. The deal is of significant importance to Netflix because many of these films usually make their first non-theatrical debut on premium cable channels like HBO, Showtime, and Starz. This also goes a long way toward proving just how big of a threat Netflix may prove for those premium channels in the future. Netflix has stated on multiple occasions that it views companies like HBO as its biggest competitor, rather than comparable streaming video services like Hulu and Amazon’s Prime offering. And like HBO, the company is rolling full steam ahead with its own original content strategy. Additionally, Netflix eventually wants to be nearly three times as large as HBO with 60 million to 90 million domestic subscribers, according to a recent presentation published by Netflix CEO Reed Hastings. This isn’t the first time Netflix has gobbled up a content licensing deal that normally would go to premium cable channels. In September, Netflix announced a deal with Dreamworks Animation, which was previously held exclusively by HBO. The Artist image: The Weinstein Company Filed under: media, VentureBeat        
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| Yandex strikes deal with Twitter for access to tweets Posted: 21 Feb 2012 11:04 AM PST Popular Russian search engine Yandex has something Google doesn’t: The approbation of Twitter and access to the entire stream of public tweets. Yandex has signed an agreement with Twitter to license the full feed of public tweets, otherwise know as the Twitter “firehose,” and will begin including tweets in search engine results. The search engine, which dominates in Russia with 64 percent market share, announced the deal in a press release early Tuesday morning. “With more than 250 million tweets a day, Twitter is a valuable information source and the fastest way to find out what’s happening in your world,” Twitter’s director of business development April Underwood said in a statement. “Through this partnership, Yandex and Twitter will work together to make it easier for Yandex users in Russia and elsewhere to find real-time content about the people and things they care about most.” Twitter-infused search results will be incorporated into Yandex’s “Blog Search” tool. Alternatively, searchers can visit twitter.yandex.ru to specifically query for tweets. “Tweets of over two million users are available for search on Yandex,” the Russian search company said. “Twitter posts of those users who tweet in Russian, Ukrainian, Belarusian or Kazakh, as well as top feeds in any other language, will be included in Yandex’s Blog Search results.” The deal comes more than seven months after Google and Twitter failed to renegotiate an agreement that would keep tweets in Google’s realtime search product. Without Twitter data, Google was forced to dissolve Google Realtime Search. The search giant later turned to its fledging social network Google+ to develop a crafty workaround for incorporating realtime results. In January, Google introduced Search Plus Your World, a controversial addition to the core search product that favors Google+ profiles and content over content from other social sites. Twitter CEO Dick Costolo said the update was not in the best interests of the searcher. Terms of the Twitter-Yandex deal are unknown, but Yandex is likely paying a substantial fee for its access to the Twitter firehose. Previous reports estimated that Google and Microsoft (which licenses the firehose for search engine Bing) paid north of $20 million for their original deals with Twitter. Russia, according to third-party analysis, has under 5 million Twitter accounts and ranks twentieth in terms of Twitter accounts when compared to other countries. Photo credit: The Daring Librarian/Flickr Filed under: social, VentureBeat        
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Both iPhone and Android applications now alert the mobile Twitterer before accessing her address book to find friends. Should the Twitter user navigate to the “Find Friends” feature in the Discover portion of the app, she will find a message that reads, “We will securely upload your contacts to help you find friends and suggest users to follow on Twitter.” The user must then click “OK” before proceeding.
Clay Johnson is the author of 
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