Sunday, October 3, 2010

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Wheretheladies.at Shows You Where The Ladies Are At Top
At the Tahoe Tech Talk this weekend, someone from the audience introduced themselves as a representative of Wheretheladies.at , a domain whose extreme ridiculousness piqued my interest a) because it is actually real and b) because most events in San Francisco can easily go from a bonestorm to a bronado to a category five hisicane in a span of 30 minutes. Founded by Path’s Danny Trinh and Digg’s Jeff Hodson , Wheretheladies.at is an iPhone friendly web service which uses Foursquare to gage how many females have checked into venues in your vicinity, stack ranking and featuring the places that have the most women checking in. Seriously. The service crawls the Foursquare API to track female checkins based on first names which admittedly leaves room for inaccuracies (here’s looking at you dude Courtney). But, as someone who deals with dorky guys desperate for practice consistently, I think this is brilliant and totally gets an “A” for effort and vision. Says Trinh, “The few chicks that check-in are a decent sample of where more might be.” Using any female checkins as signifiers of an even larger “lady” ratio, it’s like Trinh and Hodson have totally made an app giving nerds some kind of advantage in natural selection. And while apps like Assisted Serendipity and Kissmobs attempt to do something similar, Wheretheladies.at has the simplest solution UI-wise for the moment. The service, which started out as a joke between friends at SXSW, is currently experiencing high volume traffic in San Francisco and is branching out to other cities shortly, targeting New York, LA and then Minneapolis. A Wheretheladies.at iPhone app is also in the works, which, get this, is JUST A BIG COMPASS POINTING YOU IN THE DIRECTION OF LADIES (see screencap to the left). Ladies and gentlemen, but especially ladies, what we are witnessing here is called evolutionary advantage. On this note, Trinh and Hodson are not looking for funding and are currently just focusing on “helping our fellow dudes around the world find the ladies.” CrunchBase Information Digg Information provided by CrunchBase
 
How Facebook Can Become Bigger In Five Years Than Google Is Today Top
Remember three years ago , when Microsoft paid a quarter-billion dollars for 1.6% of Facebook and the exclusive right to run banner ads across Facebook.com? Tell the truth, how many of you thought that was a killer business decision? I can’t say I did at the time. But as that deal is about to expire in 2011 , Facebook’s status as a revenue juggernaut is rarely  questioned any more. In fact, I have been mulling over data from both companies, and I’m ready to declare in public my belief that Facebook will be bigger in five years than Google is right now , barring some drastic action or accident. Futhermore, Facebook will grow without needing to cut into Google’s core business of text ads, which are still 99% of Google’s profits . Even if every single Facebook user performs just as many searches with Google as ever—including Google Instant, mobile search, and YouTube—Facebook will inexorably grow as big as Google is today and maybe bigger, because Madison Avenue’s brands are less interested in targeting than they are in broadcasting to vast mother-loving buckets of demographically correct eyeballs, and Facebook has become the perfect platform for that. What do I mean by bigger? Facebook already has more page views than Google. People already  spend more time spent on Facebook than Google. I’m referring to the life blood of any business: revenues. Google’s 2010 revenues will be $28 billion , give or take a billion. The goal of this writeup is to illustrate the ways that Facebook’s annual revenues could grow from $2 billion to more than $30 billion in five years a diverse set of revenue streams that have one thing in common: people . Facebook’s future revenue streams, like their applications, are naturally social , and engage consumers with social intent , not just a  widget or  “social layer.” We repeat: social is not a layer you add ; it is core to monetization. Facebook has figured out its business model , and wants to keep it out of the public eye as long as possible. Facebook’s alleged revenue has grown from $275 million in 2008 to $635 million in 2009 to a rumored $2 billion this year, which is much higher than the also-impressive  $1.2 billion number circulating earlier this year. Let’s pause and reflect for a moment. Facebook is allegedly already earning double the revenues Google reported when it filed to go public. When we do the archaeological dig of Google’s actual revenues during its private years, we discover  similar pattern to Facebook’s : $86 million in 2001, $440 million in 2002, and $1.4 billion in 2003 . . . and so on. Note, however, this divergence:  Google Web Sites earned more than twice the revenue in 2009 as the gross evenue brought in through Google Network Web Sites, even though in 2004 they were roughly the same. The value of properties Google owns has been much greater and faster growing than all of the external Web sites with whom Google shares revenue. This will almost certainly be even more true of Facebook, given the private nature of much of its content. For many consumers, Facebook is the Web. Facebook’s second-mover advantage affords the company the luxury of offering both types of Internet money-making product: Advertising and Commerce .  As a result, instead of an open Web-like ecosystem, Facebook could choose to partner with a few friends— Microsoft ,  Amazon ,  Zynga , perhaps even Apple —and also lock out Google and anyone else, big or small, who Facebook deems not a friend, to best serve its revenue goals. So, how does Facebook ride Advertising and Commerce into a future of more revenues than Google? By creating a virtuous cycle of cross-promotion: targeted lead-generations and subsequent transactions feed into the next series of even-better-targeted lead-generations and subsequent transactions, naturally. Facebook Advertising does not directly compete with the text advertisements of Google’s AdWords and AdSense. Instead Facebook is siphoning from Madison Avenue TV ad spend dollars. Television advertising represented $60 billion in 2009, or roughly one out of every two dollars spent on advertising in the U.S.; the main challenge marketers have with the Internet till recently has been that there aren’t too many places where they can reach almost everybody with one single ad spend. Facebook fixes that problem. Specifically,  Sheryl Sandberg went on record in August saying that some brands have increased their spending twentyfold in the past year: Two years ago the big brands were experimenting with us.  They started buying with us a year ago. Now, they’re going big. She took this observation even further in a recent BusinessWeek article, “ Facebook Sells Your Friends “: Davide Grasso, Nike’s chief marketing officer, says Facebook “is the equivalent for us to what TV was for marketers back in the 1960s. It’s an integral part of what we do now.” … In 2008 [Sheryl Sandberg] left Google for the experience of running a startup—and because she believed Facebook was the better bet to win in brand advertising, which accounts for 90 percent of the $600 billion ad market. “We are in a much bigger market than Google, and we have much, much more runway,” says Sandberg. She’s not the only one who believes how huge this market opportunity is. Just in the last week, TechCrunc quoted Paul Buchheit in his belief that people are significantly undervaluing Facebook compared with Google, and interviewed Peter Thiel about his conviction that Facebook is undervalued at $30 billion . Of course, these are all self-interested insiders.  I scratched my head at this week’s declarations of undervaluation, until I took the perspective of Mad Men. Facebook Ads employ demographic characteristics ( Age/ Sex / Location and Interests ), which corporate brand managers and television ad buyers have been accustomed to purchasing for half a century. By contrast, Google AdWords target on the intent revealed by search queries, a practice that has seemed odd and new to Madison Avenue for the past decade and frankly has many of them worried for their jobs. But it’s not just Madison Avenue. I keep thinking about putting BusinessWeek’s $600 billion ad market in context; Google seems to be having as hard a time getting into brand advertising as Microsoft had getting into search. By contrast, Facebook is making this look easy. Yahoo just paid $1 per like , and buying fans is only going to get more expensive as the lifetime value of a “fan” is better understood. Five years from now, could enough brand managers and television ad buyers be so impressed with their returns from Facebook campaigns that they collectively increase their spending on Facebook fivefold to $10 billion annually? Heck yes, even if that entire budget comes out of the current $60+ billion annual TV ad budget (and remember, that is just in the U.S.).   Especially if the entire budget comes out of that, because Facebook is more targeted, has better analytics, and engages its audience directly and interactively through conversations —aka chat and photos . Plus, Facebook is getting stronger at developing products for advertisers, and once they set their mind on adding algorithmic search and/or an AdWords or AdSense competitor, I’m sure some of the over 100 ex-Google engineers who are now at Facebook will volunteer for the job. Could that also represent a multi-billion dollar advertising stream by siphoning some market share from Google for searches placed within Facebook? Perhaps, though I note again that they don’t even have to go there to reach $30 billion in annual revenues. Five years from now, billions of dollars of advertising will be spent to direct consumers from one part of Facebook . . . to another part of Facebook, where we’ll be offered real items to buy for ourselves or others (birthday alarm, anyone?), premium services to subscribe to, virtual goods to procure and play with, and deals-of-the-moment available for immediate purchase (or we’ll miss out forever!). This is where the manyfold revenue streams of Facebook Credits become apparent, and they all have in common this observation: if you give Facebook users a few free Credits with the block of Credits they buy (at Target ,  online , and soon  anywhere ), they will spend all of those Credits and then want to purchase more. Rather than a straightforward discount, the new math of Facebook Credits means that consumers will never quite be sure if they’re getting a discount or cash back or more for less. Kind of like frequent flier miles where we’re never quite sure what the conversion rate is. Or eBay auctions where we “win” the ability to spend money. Facebook Credits are poised to be this generation’s American Express: an “affordable luxury” lifestyle brand and credit card with reward programs, frequent flier miles, and other incentives built right in so that the more you use it, the more you earn.  ”Facebook Platinum”, anyone? I would have thought they’d need a better brand name than “Facebook Credits” but then again, I would have thought they’d need a better brand name than “Facebook”. Off the top of my head I can think of five potential billion-dollar revenue streams that dovetail into Facebook Credits—Games, Groupon/Pages & Places, Amazon/Commerce, Inbox, and Photos—and if you really pushed me I could probably think of more, like Banking.  (Remember when Peter Thiel thought part of PayPal’s business model was to capture the float ? Well, guess who’s bringing sexyback …) Games. Facebook is running the real mafia wars, taking 30% while letting the game developers do the heavy lifting. (Hello, Disney, EA, and Zynga!).  Can worldwide virtual goods and other in-game payments represent $10 billion annually floating through Facebook in 5 years? You betcha ; more so if “ social gambling ” Zynga-style becomes more en vogue (that is: legal authorities say it’s okay). Facebook’s 30% cut of that? A cool $3 billion . Groupon / Pages and Places. This one’s simple: Facebook should just copy 2010′s Flavor of the Year,  Groupon , and make it self-service for every Facebook Page and Facebook Place.   Early bird got the  worm ; Facebook will get the gold. (All that glitters is not Gilt.) Imagine if any Facebook Page or Facebook Place could make
 
Tawkon Debuts Free Cellular Radiation App for Android [Disrupt Startup Alley] Top
Tawkon , one of my favorite Israeli startups of the past year, was in San Francisco at the Disrupt Alley last week to debut the release of its cellular radiation measurement app for Android . This follows the company’s $9.99 Blackberry version , and its unsuccessful bid to push the same app through the iPhone App Store. If you haven’t followed our coverage of the company, Tawkon developed a technology that collects and analyzes RF-related data it extracts from a mobile phone. It is then able to display a measurement of the estimated radiation a cell phone user is exposed to when using his or her phone. The “harder” the phone has to work to maintain a cellular connection, the more radiation it emits. So for example, if the phone isn’t near a cell tower, or if its own antenna is obstructed , it will increase power to its antenna, which causes it to emit more radiation. Available for free, the new Android version of Tawkon includes: Real-time Radiation Indication – Thanks to multi-tasking support on Android, a small icon on the home screen changes from green to yellow to red, indicating low-moderate-high levels of radiation exposures. Live Prompts & Feedback – Automatic alerts when exposure to radiation rises during a call. Live feedback confirms that suggested actions such as moving to a new location were effective. Personal Stats – Find out how much radiation you avoided by using Tawkon during the last call, day, week, month and six months. CrunchBase Information Tawkon Information provided by CrunchBase
 
World's Most Sincere, Awesome TechCrunch Fan Top
We received this video mail from TechCrunch reader Aditya Kapur shortly after TechCrunch Disrupt , with the subject line “Thank you for Hammer Time.” In it Kapur describes how awesome our Google Ventures/SV Angel party was and apologizes to Ron Conway for “screaming like a little girl at a Justin Bieber concert” within earshot of the powerful VC. Highlight: “I could not believe that I was this close to MC Hammer.” Thank you for reading Aditya. We had a great time as well and, if it means anything to you, we’re thinking about renting out our very own Erick Schonfeld to parties, hospitals and retirement homes in order to spread the joy that his “ Hammer Time” has brought into our lives.
 
Distimo's Q3 App Store Breakdown: Games, Free Apps, And More Top
App store analytics provider Distimo has released a new report today, analyzing the top applications on Apple’s App Store for iPadand iPhone, BlackBerry App World, Google’s Android Market, Nokia’s Ovi Store, Palm’s App Catalog and Windows Marketplace for Mobile for Q3 2010 in the U.S. You can download the free report here. According to Distimo, the iPhone App Store has the most Games (55% free, 55% paid) among the 100 most popular applications, followed by Windows Marketplace for Mobile (23% free, 45% paid), and the Apple App Store for iPad (25% free, 40% paid). Games are least popular in BlackBerry App World (12.5% free, 28% paid) and Palm App Catalog (33% free, 16% paid). Distimo’s analysis doesn’t include games on the Android Marketplace because Google ranks them in a separate category from other apps. There are approximately 15,000 games on the Android marketplace. The most popular free applications on all the platforms are iBooks (for the iPad), Type n Talk (the iPhone), BlackBerry Messenger (BlackBerry App World), Pandora Radio (Android Market), ZumZum (Nokia Ovi Store), Facebook (Palm) and Microsoft My Phone (Windows Marketplace). In terms of paid applications, Distimo reports that Pages (iPad), Angry Birds (iPhone), BeBuzz (BlackBerry), Beautiful Widgets (Android), ToonWarz (Nokia Ovi Store), mCraig (Palm) and Meon (Windows Marketplace) are all the top apps on the respective app stores. Both the apps for Netflix and iBooks are among the ten most popular free applications for the iPhone and iPad. Because of the nature of the platform, it looks like RIM publishes the best apps on its App World. Research In Motion develops four of the ten most popular free applications in BlackBerry App World: BlackBerry Messenger, BlackBerry App World, Facebook and Twitter. In fact, Palm and Microsoft are also the publishers of the Facebook application in its own stores The data isn’t really that surprising, but it is interesting to see the app breakdown over three months versus one month. CrunchBase Information Distimo Information provided by CrunchBase
 
Group Texting App Fast Society Distracts My Entire Panel Top
It isn’t often you get to see people enthusiastically using a brand new app in the wild; At the Tahoe Tech Talk today, while on a three hour panel Q & A with angel investors Chris Sacca, Dave McClure, Travis Kalanik, Dave Morin, Kevin Rose , Ben Kaufman and Gary Vaynerchuk , I got to see this exact thing happen, as the aforementioned seven wouldn’t stop texting and laughing onstage. While I still have no clue on exactly “what” was being shared (my guess is they were either colluding or making fun of McClure) after some investigation I figured out the “how.” They were all using Fast Society , a seven day old app that sets up instant temporary group texting through your iPhone, as well as instant conference and group location sharing if you’re so inclined. Like the digital version of kids passing notes in class, group chats on Fast Society have an expiration date; You can set up a chat for a group of up to 15 people, for three hours minimum and three days maximum. Founder Matthew Rosenberg tells us that the next version will let you set limits of up to seven days and 25 hours. While in the same space as Plannr, and GroupMe (which was built at the TC Disrupt Hackathon ) the app requires no signups, no usernames, no passwords just your phone number. And the text groups are temporary, so you don’t have to be stuck with your fellow conference panelists once they have out worn their welcome. Also, and this is the most important element, none of the onstage panelists are currently Fast Society investors — they genuinely were really into the app, which was built and is bootstrapped by Rosenberg, Andy Thompson, and Michael Constantiner. Rosenberg explains the motivation behind creating it. “We were at a Bloc Party concert in NYC and having a hard time getting our friends together, it was impossible to coordinate everyone in a group. Then we thought, we should just build it ourselves.” Plans for an Android and a Blackberry version are currently in the works. CrunchBase Information Fast Society Information provided by CrunchBase
 
After Ten Years, Round Two Of The Legal Battle Over Internet TV Is Here Top
Editor’s Note: The following is a guest post by Matthew Scherb, an attorney at the San Francisco office of Winston & Strawn LLP. He litigates complex copyright, trademark, and Internet-related disputes. In 2000, the now-defunct iCraveTV allowed its users to watch live television over the Internet.  It retransmitted broadcast television without obtaining permission from or paying broadcasters, framed the retransmission with paid advertisements, and users watched while paying nothing.  A federal court in Pennsylvania found iCraveTV was likely on the hook for copyright infringement.  iCraveTV shut down, and the court’s decision appears to have had a blanket chilling effect on Internet-based television.  No one came along to take iCraveTV’s place. Fast forward to 2010: Seattle-based ivi has arrived.  Like iCraveTV, ivi lets you watch live television on the Internet.  Also like iCraveTV, ivi has not sought permission from or paid broadcasters.  Unlike iCraveTV, there is no paid advertising: ivi draws revenue from a flat monthly fee.  For a premium, ivi offers DVR “time sifting” features such as pause, rewind, and fast forward.  ivi currently streams programs from New York and Seattle affiliates of ABC, CBS, NBC, Fox, and a few other networks.  So, next Thursday you could watch an episode of The Office as it airs on WNBC (an NBC station in New York) or, next month catch Major League Baseball’s World Series on KCPQ (a Fox station in Seattle).  You might cheer the return of Internet television.  You might be glad to see a potential competitor to your cable or satellite provider.  But does ivi’s retransmission of broadcast television run afoul of copyright law?  Will it face the same fate as iCraveTV? We may soon find out. In mid-September, broadcasters and copyright owners (including the major networks and Major League Baseball) sent ivi a cease-and-desist letter.  They accused ivi of copyright infringement and demanded that ivi stop streaming their television programs.  Fearing a lawsuit from its accusers, ivi preemptively filed a lawsuit in Seattle federal court on Monday, September 20.  ivi seeks an order declaring that its Internet television service is legal.  In quick response, the broadcaster and copyright owners filed their own lawsuit against ivi in New York federal court on September 28.  If ivi wins or obtains a favorable settlement in these cases before it runs out of money, it can proceed with a stamp of approval from a federal judge or from its accusers.  A loss could torpedo its ambitions. ivi's legal hopes likely rest, in the first instance, on a rarely-invoked but potentially powerful exception to copyright liability: the “passive carrier exemption.”  The exemption makes it lawful to retransmit a transmission intended for the public so long as the retransmitter lacks control over the content of the original transmission or over the recipients of the retransmission. ivi believes that by retransmitting freely-available, over-the-air broadcasts and offering basic DVR-like services, it is nothing more than a passive carrier and exempt from copyright liability. The iCraveTV case never dealt with the passive carrier exemption.  Because iCraveTV framed its retransmissions with advertisements, it probably could not have claimed the passive carrier exemption in any event: by adding advertisements, it was arguably modifying and exercising control over the original broadcast transmission. Major court decisions involving the passive carrier exemption are, like the iCraveTV case, also a decade old.  They offer mixed signals. In 1999, the same New York federal court now hearing the broadcasters’ and copyright owners’ lawsuit against ivi denied the exemption to a company called Media Dial-Up.  Media Dial-Up retransmitted radio broadcasts via telephone to its customers who paid a fee for access.  Even though Media Dial-Up did not control the content of the radio broadcasts or limit reception to particular individuals, the court refused to classify Media Dial-Up as a “carrier.”  ”In an era of rapid technological change,” the court wrote, “possibilities for the capture and retransmission of copyrighted material over the Internet . . . are enormous.”  If Media Dial-Up could be a passive carrier, it “would threaten considerable mischief.”  The court called this “common sense.” Just two years later, in 2001, a Massachusetts court reached the opposite result.  It applied the exemption to Insight, a company that facilitated retransmission of Boston-area television broadcasts, including National Football League games, to Bell Canada for a fee.  It noted that Congress had intended courts to give “carrier” an “expansive” definition. Will ivi distinguish itself from iCraveTV and Media Dial-Up and align itself with Insight? If it can, ivi will have succeeded in making the passive carrier exception a powerful shield for itself and others, perhaps other Internet retransmitters such as Ustream or Justin.tv looking to offer new services or cable and satellite retransmitters looking to make the leap to the Internet. As for television broadcasters, though they may prefer to control the market for Internet television themselves, they may actually benefit financially from having their broadcasts retransmitted on the Internet and other media.  They will reach more eyeballs and could presumably demand higher advertising fees. Stay tuned for the court’s decisions and also keep an eye on Congress, which can revoke or modify the passive carrier exception.  Congress created special, compulsory licensing regimes for cable and satellite retransmitters as those technologies matured.  Cable and satellite retransmitters do not infringe copyright when they retransmit a television broadcast, but they must pay a royalty fixed by statute.  Congress could choose to impose a similar regime on Internet retransmitters. Meanwhile, if ivi cannot qualify as a passive carrier, it can argue that it qualifies as a "cable system" and try to take advantage of the compulsory license. View this document on Scribd View this document on Scribd CrunchBase Information Winston & Strawn Information provided by CrunchBase
 
Togetherville Helps Parents, Kids, And Schools Connect With New 'Communities' Feature Top
Togetherville , a Facebook-like social network for kids 10 years of age and younger, is launching a new feature called School Communities today that aims to “give kids a voice” when it comes to how their schools are run. The feature also represents a big change to the way the site is building its social graph, making it far easier for children to connect with their friends. It’s easy to forget (and many kids probably ignore it entirely), but Facebook maintains a firm requirement that everyone on the site be thirteen years of age or older. That’s where Togetherville comes in — the site appeals to parents by promising a safer, more secure environment, where parents can moderate who their children are connecting with. Parents approve each of their child’s friends, and can also connect with other parents using Facebook’s social graph. Before now, though, the process to find your child’s friends was more tedious than it probably should have been — if your kid wanted to ‘friend’ another child, then you would have to be friends with the other child’s parents on Facebook. The new ‘Schools’ feature makes this easier: during signup you’ll enter the name of your child’s school, Togetherville will present your child with a list of their friends, and they can ask to connect with them (pending each parent’s approval). The addition of schools also brings another dynamic to the social network: communities. Parents can now talk to each other about current school-related issues on the school’s community page (which is analogous to a Facebook page), and it also gives kids a chance to speak their minds. But while parents will be to engage in a straightforward conversation forum, the kids side of things is a bit more complex. Every so often Togetherville sends out mass polls to all of its users — questions like, “What’s your favorite subject and why?” When a child responds to one of these questions, their answer will appear in the feeds of their friends, and their parent will be asked for permission to publish the response on the community page of the child’s school (they’ll also be asked if the response can be published as part of anonymized data aggregated across all of Togetherville). CEO Mandeep Dhillon says that this gives kids a unique chance to share their thoughts on their school — if enough students talk about an issue, then maybe the grownups will take notice (I suspect that student requests will result in a lot of noise, but the trends may be worthwhile). He also says that the community feature will be rolling out for uses beyond schools as well, like coordinating soccer teams. CrunchBase Information Togetherville Information provided by CrunchBase
 
Verizon To Use OpenFeint For Android Game Recommendations Top
OpenFeint, the comprehensive social gaming platform from Aurora Feint, has landed a deal with Verizon to feature the platform’s top Android Games on Verizon phones. OpenFeint recently added Android game developers to its rapidly growing community, launching its plug and play social game development to developers to the public a few weeks ago. According to a recent OpenFeint newsletter sent to developers, the social gaming platform struck deal with Verizon, Rogers Wireless and Bell Mobility to offer their consumers Android game recommendations, all curated by OpenFeint (meaning, OpenFeint has picked the best of its Android games to be featured on those operator services). So why is this a big deal? There are a couple of reasons why OpenFeint’s deal is interesting. First, OpenFeint used to be social gaming platform exclusive to the iPhone; and actually gained a lot of traction on the platform, powering social gaming services for over 30 million users and growing at a monthly pace of 25 percent. But Apple recently launched its own gaming platform, GameCenter, for developers which poses competition to OpenFeint. In turn, OpenFeint is expanding to the Android platform, and deals with Android-phone carriers help expand the reach of their games. For Verizon, this is a way to create its own app and games discovery experience without relying solely on the Android Marketplace, which has sub-par discovery features. We already know that Verizon is launching a V CAST App Store on Android that will exist outside of Android's own Market (thanks of course to Google’s open platform, since this can’t be developed on Apple’s closed platform). Clearly Verizon is looking to provide features, such as curated apps and recommendations, that the Android Market lacks. Of course, Google is trying to create a better Android Market experience, but those efforts could be for naught if Android carriers like Verizon beat them to the chase. CrunchBase Information Aurora Feint Verizon Information provided by CrunchBase
 
235,389 People Tuned In To The TechCrunch Disrupt Live Stream Top
One thing I’m particularly proud of: we have provided a free live stream of nearly every conference we’ve ever put on. We’ve found that we still have plenty of people that want to attend in person. But for those who can’t make the event, the content is available to watch, gratis. Very few other large events do this. The numbers from TechCrunch Disrupt: San Francisco earlier this week are staggering. We’re still gathering the on demand view data from TechCrunchTV. But we’ve just received the high level numbers from Ustream , who powered the live stream of the event. 235,389 unique viewers tuned in at some point during the event (there were about 2,000 people there in person). Over 65,000 hours of video were viewed, and a total of 316,426 streams were served. That’s more than twice as many people that tuned in v. TechCrunch Disrupt: New York in May, when 94,000 unique viewers were logged. We’re committed to continue to provide TechCrunch event content for free via video, and we thank our partners, like Ustream, for helping us make this happen. CrunchBase Information Ustream Information provided by CrunchBase
 
Google Acquires Impressive Touchscreen Keyboard Startup BlindType Top
Google has just acquired BlindType , a very impressive technology that allows you to type on touch screens without even looking at them. See our past coverage of the startup here . BlindType doesn’t force you to type using a virtual keyboard at the bottom of your screen, which is the norm on most smartphones. Instead, you just start typing wherever it’s convenient— BlindType analyzes the position of your finger taps relative to each other to determine which characters you’re typing (check out the video below to watch it in action). Here’s a post that just went live on the company’s blog : We are excited to announce that BlindType has been acquired by Google! We want to thank everyone for their overwhelming support and positive feedback. We know that typing on your mobile device can be a frustrating experience, which is why we’ve worked hard to make touch typing easier and faster than ever – the way it should be. We’re excited to join Google, and look forward to the great opportunities for mobile innovation that lie ahead. The BlindType team BlindType’s website may be ugly, but the video demos are very impressive — I’d love to see this technology make its way into Android. Unfortunately the software isn’t actually released yet (not even as a standalone app), so you won’t be able to try it yourself for a while. In the mean time another fantastic third-party keyboard is Swype , which first made its debut at TechCrunch 50 and now comes stock on many phones, including some Android devices.
 
Leaked Pic: The Full Line Of Angry Birds Plush Toys Top
We are somewhat obsessed here with the iPad game Angry Birds (and really, who isn’t?). When we first caught wind that the Finnish company behind the game, Rovio , will be branching out into movies and plush toys, we were intrigued. When we obtained photographic evidence of one of these toys, we were ecstatic. (Not Dancingerick.com ecstatic, but pretty excited nonetheless). Now we’ve got a photo of the entire line of Angry Birds plush toys, courtesy of Rovio’s U.S. adviser, Peter Levin, who is also the CEO of GeekChicDaily (which I wrote about here ). He’ll be showing off the whole line of toys at the Big Apple Comic Con this weekend in New York City. The toys will be available this holiday season, and some of them will be available as in-app purchases in the iPhone and iPad games. CrunchBase Information Rovio Mobile GeekChicDaily Information provided by CrunchBase
 
Vinod Khosla: New CEOs Should Spend More Than 50% Of Their Time Recruiting (TCTV) Top
Not one to shy away from bold and at times controversial statements, heavyweight investor Vinod Khosla took the stage at Disrupt this week and compared green tech innovation in Silicon Valley to Microsoft’s IE9 browser launch. No offense to Microsoft, but in this analogy Khosla was criticizing the Valley for its deficiency in game-changing technologies and its focus on incremental advances. We got the founder of Khosla Ventures and former CEO of Sun Microsystems, to defend his statements on TechCrunch TV . Khosla had some interesting thoughts to share on the current state of green tech investment and entrepreneurship. According to Khosla, too many companies who want to think big are doomed to remain small because they pick the wrong investors, as he says, “Any investor who looks at exit strategies, or multiples of investment or even does an IRR calculation, a rate of return calculation, probably is the wrong partner for you.” These days, Khosla is used to dispensing advice to entrepreneurs— his own daughter is in the process of securing angel investors for her own startup (no, dad does not plan to bankroll the operation). His best advice for his daughter? “I think the single, most important fact about doing a startup is being clear about your vision and not let it get distorted by what pundits and experts tell you. But the second most important thing is finding the right team, and that’s really, really hard, because people tend to look for people around them…You know, I was relentless… really spent well over 50% of my time recruiting, and I encourage all entrepreneurs to try and do that.” On his specific investments, Khosla was particularly bullish on Eco-Motors and its advancements on an opposing pistons engine. This summer, Khosla and Microsoft founder Bill Gates, invested another $23.5 million into the Troy-based Eco-Motors (his second round of investment). According to reports, Khosla Ventures owns nearly 50% of the company. Video above. Below are some key excerpts: On Entrepreneurship And Investment VC should be a co-founder, who thinks big VK: Your job [(as an investor)] and this is really, really important but misunderstood about startups, startups aren’t big or small, they’re made big or small. So an entrepreneur picking the right partner will more likely end up as a big company, than if they pick the wrong partner who wants a 3X return on money. Any investor who looks at exit strategies, or multiples of investment or even does an IRR calculation, a rate of return calculation, probably is the wrong partner for you. Incremental Innnovation Vs. Real Disruption VK: I’ll tell you, ten times more improvement is possible in the engine, than most people think is true or in your standard car… We’re far away from taking enough large shots at it. One of our companies, Eco-Motors is dramatically redesigning the engine, they’re building what’s called an opposing piston engine, most engines today are like V8s… These opposing piston engines were used in the 1920s and discontinued for a reason but those reasons are no longer true but people don’t go back and reexamine the assumptions again. This needs to happen in every area, whether its solar cells, even looking at coal, cleaning up coal or mining or air conditioning, or lighting, almost everything we do… Question: Going back to those engines, you talked about them with such enthusiasm, you clearly see that as being an important part of your portfolio, what pieces need to align to help this technology take-off? VK: I don’t think a lot needs to align, we’ll build a great engine, we’ll first find some specialty markets, so we make, so instead of putting it in the car on day one, because those companies are conservative, we’ll make generators out of it, gensets out of it. That’s an easier market to get into, it’s less cost sensitive, but efficiency and weight still count… as soon as we prove it there, we’ll be in autos, already we’re talking to auto and truck makers.” Best Advice For Entrepreneurs VK: I think the single, most important fact about doing a startup is being clear about your vision and not let it get distorted by what pundits and experts tell you. But the second most important thing is finding the right team, and that’s really, really hard, because people tend to look for people around them and so it’s the person who they happen to know as opposed to the best possible person they can find…You know, I was relentless, took a lot of time, I used to say when I was starting my first company, I was more of a glorified recruiter than a CEO or a founder. I really spent well over 50% of my time recruiting, and I encourage all entrepreneurs to try and do that. CrunchBase Information Vinod Khosla Khosla Ventures Information provided by CrunchBase
 
Pulse 2.0 Lives: Bigger, Faster, More Organized Visual iPad News Consumption Top
Last May, we noted that Pulse was a “ must-have news app for the iPad .” A few weeks later, no less than Apple CEO Steve Jobs agreed, showing it off on stage at an Apple event. Then the app got pulled over a content dispute. Then it reappeared . Then a competitor with big-time backing appeared, Flipboard . It’s been a crazy ride for the two Stanford grads who built Pulse. And now they’re back on the offensive with Pulse 2.0. The latest version released into the App Store today brings a big list of improvements. The key ones: Source-O-Plenty : Now get 60 sources across 5 pages (12 on each page). Yes, that’s a full 3x our last release. Organize away : We’ve completely redesigned the source management to make it really, really, really easy. When you take the number of feeds to 60, this becomes a bit challenging, but we hope that you are able to organize it easily. Just press the wheel at the top-left, and experience the power! Do give us feedback on how to improve. Pulse Bazaar : Discover new and interesting sources in our own Bazaar. People get thrilled when they find a source that they didn’t know about. Pulse Bazaar is a step in that direction. Zip Zip Zip : Performance enhancements to make your favorite application faster than ever. The $1.99 app remains an awesome visual way to consume news, now it’s just more robust and faster to use. While it definitely competes with Flipboard, the two go about things a bit differently since Pulse is more straight-up RSS, whereas Flipboard is tied to social sharing. People still seem fairly divided over which is better. And soon there will be Qwiki for iPad . To be clear, Pulse 2.0 is iPad-only for now — but the team promises to get it out for the iPhone and Android in the next couple of weeks as well. You can find Pulse in the App Store here . CrunchBase Information Alphonso Labs iPad Information provided by CrunchBase
 

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