Thursday, January 28, 2010

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Michael Dell Shows Off the Mini 5 Slate, Confirms US Arrival? Top
The Dell Mini 5, Dell's Android-powered Snapdragon slate, popped up at CES this year but we never got a clear look at it. However, when the CEO of Dell rolls into the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, he can show off anything he wants and our boss got a quick hands-on in the Swiss slush. To recap, the Mini 5 is a 1GHz Snapdragon-powered netpad (did I just coin a phrase?) running Android 1.6 with 5-megapixel camera, Wi-Fi, Bluetooth, and 3G mobile. It should be selling for $1,098 before carrier subsidy.
 
After The Bloodletting, Deezer Appoints A New CEO Top
Following controversial moves in which its CEO went missing from a major conference and initially appeared to have been ousted, the streaming music startup Deezer , has finally clarified the company’s new structure. In a terse press release, the startup announced the appointment of Axel Dauchez as CEO, replacing former CEO Jonathan Benassaya. Dauchez was the CEO of leading European animation group Moonscoop for nine years. See our previous story for all the juicy background.
 
Why Carriers Didn't Want to Allow 3G VoIP Before. And Why They're Now Setting It Free Top
I've used VoIP apps on the past few iterations of the iPhone as well as a number of other devices including some from Nokia, HTC, and Samsung. Those apps always only worked over WiFi and have mostly worked as advertised. Experience shows that if there's one thing cellular companies are good at it's ensuring a call can get from point A to point B (although AT&T has been sucking wind lately). It's what they've been doing for almost two decades. Now that Apple has lifted the ban VoIP over 3G - note it is Apple lifting these restrictions, not AT&T - you have to wonder what's going on. Won't 3G tear down the network around our ears? Won't dogs and cats start living together?
 
Top 10 Reasons The Apple iPad Will Put Amazon's Kindle Out of Business Top
Editor’s note : Ever since yesterday’s debut of Apple’s iPad, the debate has been raging about what it means for Amazon’s Kindle . Will it kill it? Will it not? Is comparing the two like comparing a computer to a typewriter ? To add fuel to the fire and, well, because we love top 10 lists, we present this guest post from Ben Elowitz , who comes down very firmly on the Kindle-is-kaput side of the debate. Ben is co-founder and CEO of Wetpaint , a media company with an audience of 10 million monthly unique users; and author of the Digital Quarters blog. Prior to Wetpaint, he co-founded Blue Nile (NILE), the largest online retailer of fine jewelry. 1) The multi-functional capability. Buy a Kindle and you get… a reader. Another dedicated device to carry. Buy an iPad, and you get a whole new companion that can do pretty much anything. Games, movies, browsing, documents, and more—all in one. And zillions of iPhone apps. It's sooooo much more than a reader, it's a whole-life device. 2) The screen. Full color, multi-touch screen, gestures, and more. It's a pleasure to look at it – and we all can rely on Steve Jobs' aesthetics to know that it's a pleasure to hold as well . 3) The compatibility. iPad supports ePub out of the box, overcoming publishers' resistance to having to support a proprietary format such as Kindle's; and creating compatibility with books sold through a leading standard format through any channel. (Something tells me Amazon will be making an announcement about ePub support real soon…) 4) The iBooks store. Apple has captured the magic of shopping. Once again, whereas Amazon does great with the functional needs of buying a book, Apple goes beyond to create an experience. 5) The experience. The Kindle provides a good functional experience for readers—in a very Bezosian way, it meets all our needs. But Apple's creation goes beyond, to make the experience fun and cool.  You can swipe through pages on an iPad.  On the Kindle, you have to dutifully click a button. 6) The economics. Publishers have been deeply concerned about price erosion with Amazon's $9.99 pricing—and have been up in arms over Amazon's 70% revenue share take. Though Amazon has reversed the revenue share (to match Apple's reported offer at 30%), it would require publishers to cut prices and offer deep discounts. Considering the threat the publishing industry is under, the last thing that publishers want in a time of transition is to have their revenues crammed down further by Jeff Bezos. 7) The apps. In a digital age, a book is (finally!) becoming more than just words on a page. But the Kindle has been slow to recognize this. With the iPad, out of the gate publishers can create whole experiences . Want to create something unique in the market to draw consumers? Publishers can go beyond e-books, and create an app using one of the world's most popular SDK platforms. 8) The marketplace. Apple's iBook and App Store marketplaces will instantly be a must-attend venue for publishers. The anticipated sales of the iPad will mean exposure to so many more consumers than Kindle; and Apple already has 125 million consumer store accounts with 12 billion products already downloaded. Amazon won't even release the number of Kindles sold, because the number of consumers buying its device pales next to Apple's reach. 9) The price. For $10 more than a Kindle DX, consumers get an incredible ebook reader, and so much more: a device that they can use for, well, pretty much anything. The options, consumer experience, and flexibility for that $10 are a no-brainer. 10) The Apple factor (a.k.a. "sexy"). Let's face it, Apple is a brand people want to be affiliated with. It has a cool factor. Even those of us who are smart enough to know better still fall in love with Apple products, and carry them with pride. Amazon just doesn't have that. As Jason Kottke says , "the iPad makes the Kindle look like it's from the 1980's". Apple has upped the game for Amazon.  Jeff Bezos and his team better start a clean sheet of design if they want Kindle to catch up again and play as a leader with consumers. It's clear that Amazon is already scared: witness their recent moves in the last few days running up to Apple's announcement. Just this month, they've announced an app framework and a new royalty structure to be more attractive to publishers – and both moves are clearly defensive catch-up plays to respond to the threat of the iPad. Amazon is even trying to win love by giving away free Kindles to their best customers. But the best plan for Amazon isn't to try to buy customers or try to match Apple's approach. Rather, they'll need to re-think their consumer experience from  start to finish. They've done a great job so far of digitizing books, but now if they want to compete with Steve Jobs' inventiveness, they'll have to step up to be a must-have device in consumers' digital lives.  Of course, they can also just surrender and continue to sell books through their existing iPhone app, which should be compatible with the iPad like all the other apps in the App Store. CrunchBase Information iPad Amazon Kindle 2 Information provided by CrunchBase
 
Social Shopping Site ThisNext Raises $1.2 Million Top
ThisNext has raised $1.2 million in funding according to an SEC filing. This brings the startup’s total funding to nearly $9 million. Launched in 2006, ThisNext’s social shopping site combines browsing for items online with comments, tagging, social recommendations, comment ratings and a wish list. Users can also create a website widget to show products they like to others via any website. The site faces competition from Polyvore, Kaboodle and Like.com.
 
AT&T Already Has One Million eReaders On Its Network, Without The iPad Top
Mobile data devices are a boon for AT&T.  The company  reported strong earnings this morning, seeing a 26 percent rise in fourth-quarter profit.  AT&T sold 3.1 million iPhones in the fourth quarter, with the device being called out as one of the key drivers of the success for the telecommunications company. Quarterly earnings increased to $3.01 billion from $2.40 billion from the previous year, matching Wall Street expectation. Revenue from wireless services was strong, rising 9.2 percent with the addition of 2.7 million net subscribers during the fourth quarter. But another area of growth for AT&T is in wireless eReaders connected to its 3G data network.  Currently, the Amazon Kindle, the Sony Reader Daily Edition and the Barnes & Noble Nook are all using AT&T for data connectivity. During the fourth quarter, the number of these devices on AT&T’s wireless network increased by more than 1 million in the fourth quarter, which was the strongest quarter in this category to date.  And as we learned yesterday, AT&T will also provide internet connectivity for Apple’s new iPad. It is expected that this category will continue to grow like gangbusters, especially with the addition of the iPad, which boasts an app called iBooks, Apple’s own collection of digital books formatted for the device. Apple partnered with five publishers to make books available for sale through the iBooks store. Jobs claimed yesterday that the iPad will take Amazon’s Kindle technology to the next level. The iBooks support the ePub format, allows readers to flip through pages and supports pictures, video, and other graphics. The first book available will cost $14.99. It’s expected that the eReader market as a whole will grow by millions in 2010, with Forrester predicting that 10 million e-readers will be sold in the coming year. The firm estimated that 3 million eReaders were sold in 2009. So what does this mean for AT&T? More money, obviously.  The company said that its earnings were partly bolstered by the rapid growth of the e-reader device. AT&T only recently brought the Kindle on board, after Amazon dropped Sprint last fall for the Kindle 2.  However, while all Kindle’s come with a data plan, not all iPads will come with 3G connectivity.  Only the most expensive ones will.  All models also connect via WiFi. CrunchBase Information iPad Information provided by CrunchBase
 
Motally Brings Mobile Analytics To The iPad Top
Once the iPad SDK is released, many developers will be in a mad rush to create apps optimized for Apple’s tablet device. Already, developers are flocking to update their apps with the new iPhone SDK optimized for the iPad. But it’s not only the developers of games and apps who are participating in this gold rush. Motally, a startup that provides analytics on mobile devices, is launching the extension of their user-action tracking services for mobile web and apps to include content developed on Apple's iPad. Their analytics will automatically work for iPhone apps accessed on the device with further support to be released specifically for the iPad SDK once it is available from Apple. Motally’s offering allows developers to receive daily reports, web-based dynamic reports and user statistics such as unique users, page views, engagement time search keyworks, average pages/visit, etc. Currently using the iPhone SDK, Motally will support the iPad SDK once it rolls out. Motally offers more advanced features that allows developers to troubleshoot and debug their products from anywhere in the world, without having to re-deploy apps and games to the Apple iPhone store. For a young startup, Motally has seen significant traction as a mobile analytics provider. Backed by renown investor Ron Conway, Motally’s clients include Twitter, Yelp, Fandango and Verizon.
 
As Publishers Try To Adapt To The iPad, Startups Spring To The Rescue Top
Now that the iPad is finally official, any publisher that wasn’t already figuring out how to bring their content to a color, touchscreen device is probably scrambling to do it now. That’s a bit easier said than done though — while it probably wouldn’t be too tough to simply scan in text and present it in a static format, converting it into something that actually takes advantage of the new platform is going to prove difficult. That challenge is giving rise to some new startups looking to help publishers make the transition from paper to digital. One such company is called Inkling , a small startup that’s raised $1 million in seed money from Ram Shriram, Mitch Kapor, Aydin Senkut, and other angel investors. Inkling is looking to help textbook makers convert their content into digitized versions that are more than just static reproductions of the original text. In other words, they’re helping spur the kind of innovation that could change the way we learn (but could take publishers a long time to figure out if they’re left to their own devices). So what exactly can the platform add beyond the text these publishers already have? CEO Matt MacInnis says that Inkling is building tools that give publishers a scalable way to add interactive and dynamic content. They’ll be able to include interactive figures and quizzes. And they’ll be able to give their texts cloud connectivity, allowing students to download new, updated content. Other benefits from connecting to the cloud include the ability to sync your work between multiple devices, and the ability to add social features to a text. Imagine if you had a question about a particular diagram in your text; you could send it to your professor, and they could leave an annotation in the book that would be visible to all other students. Inkling is currently in talks with all four of the major textbook companies, though MacInnis wouldn’t divulge whether they’d signed any deals yet. He does say that the company is also interested in working with smaller publishers, including free projects like California’s free textbook initiative . But Inking isn’t the only startup looking to help publishers take advantage of the iPad. Another player is PixelMags , which is looking to help magazine publishers make the leap themselves. PixelMags has actually been around for a while, offering to help magazines get their content on the App Store for consumption on the iPhone. As of today, they’re making the jump to the bigger screen. They company says that it will allow publishers to include both text and streaming media in their magazines, and they’ll take care of getting the content into the App Store. It’s great to see companies that are looking to help publishers truly take advantage of the iPad, but I am concerned that Apple may soon step on their toes. During its event today, Apple showed off its native eBook reader, but it wasn’t clear if it would be offering a similar universal reader for magazines or textbooks. I suspect they will, otherwise each magazine and book could have an inconsistent user interface. And that means companies like Inkling will have to adjust their content to work within whatever file formats Apple allows for. CrunchBase Information Inkling Inc. PixelMags iPad Information provided by CrunchBase
 

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