Sunday, October 30, 2011

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The Entire $1.65B Acquisition Of YouTube Took A Week, Was Negotiated At Denny's Top
Screen Shot 2011-10-31 at 1.09.39 PMIn an interview at TechCrunch Disrupt Beijing today, YouTube co-founder Steve Chen reminisced about selling his company to Google. "Was there any way you could not have sold?" Sarah Lacy asked? Hindsight is 20/20 Chen replied. Chen revealed that the entire $1.65 billion YouTube acquisition was completed in one week's time. Chen met with executives from both Google and Yahoo, including Yahoo's Jerry Yang, at a Denny's in Palo Alto, "We didn't want to meet at offices, so we were like, 'Where's a place that none of us would go?'"
 
TCTV: A Fireside Chat With Rovio's Peter Vesterbacka Top
The Mighty Eagle himself sits down with us at Disrupt BJ and talks about Rovio's plans for the future, the Rovio's desire to become more than a games company, and how the Birds won't end up like Pac-Man.
 
Android Winning In China, But The Market Is "Going Through A Chaotic Phase" Top
scaled.DLNG2270At the Android Fever panel here at Disrupt Beijing, Wang Hua of Innovation Works, John Lagerling, Director of Android Global Partnerships at Google, and David Chao of DCM. These folks are bullish on Android, noting that there are currently 40 million android phones in country and that China is number three in terms of development kit downloads.
 
TC Disrupt Beijing: A Fireside Chat With Tencent CEO Pony Ma Top
Pony-Ma-CrunchBase-ProfileTechCrunch Disrupt Beijing kicked off with a bang this morning: Pony Ma, founder, Executive Director, Chairman, and CEO of Chinese giant Tencent took the stage for a fireside chat with our own Sarah Lacy. Tencent, for those who aren't familiar with it, is one of the world's biggest Internet giants. The company sees $3 billion in revenue and $1 billion in profit annually, with services that include web portals, games, social networks, and IM. According to Forbes, Ma is the 9th richest person in China. The interview spanned many topics, ranging from Tencent's past to the role China will have as the web continues to grow and mature. And it was notable for another reason: this was the first time Ma agreed to be interviewed on stage by a foreign journalist. You'll find my takeaways below, and a recording of the whole interview above — it's well worth watching.
 
Kai-Fu Lee On Why China Isn't Ready For The Next Mark Zuckerberg Top
DLNG2218InnovationWorks founder and former Googler Kai Fu-Lee took the stage at TC Disrupt Beijing today with Sarah Lacy to talk about the startup ecosystem in China. InnovationWorks is a Chinese incubator focusing on early stage internet companies in China – interest in startups is exploding, and InnovationWorks saw 7,000 resumes in response to open applications for its first batch, "There's nothing that matches the Chinese entrepreneurs desire for success," he said.
 
New MobiUs Browser For iOS Makes Mobile Web Apps Act More Like Native Apps Top
MobiUs_BrowserMobile development firm appMobi is launching a new HTML5-powered browser for iOS on Monday which will bring additional capabilities typically found only in native apps to the mobile Web. The MobiUs Web App Browser, as it's being called, works both as a standalone browser alternative or in conjunction with Apple's mobile Safari, similar to the way browser extensions work on the desktop Web. Although HTML5 can already tap into some of a smartphone's sensors, like the GPS and accelerometer, for example, appMobi's MobiUs Web App Browser will go beyond HTML5's current capabilities to provide access the smartphone's camera, the ability to scan QR codes and barcodes, support for augmented reality, accelerated graphics, the ability to lock the rotation of the device and more.
 
With Angry Birds Merchandise, Rovio's Peter Vesterbacka Plans To Pirate The Pirates Top
scaled.DLNG2127As proven by the massive success of the Angry Birds plush line, the world has a hungry for real-world Angry Birds wares. No where is that more apparent than Beijing, where the halls of countless toy shops and electronics stores are filled foot to ceiling with sundry Bird-themed goods, from sweatshirts and jeans to candy and balloons. The catch? Rovio didn't authorize any of it. Where others may see a problem, Rovio Mobile's Mighty Eagle (read: CEO) Peter Versterbacka sees opportunity. He roams these aforementioned shops in search of unauthorized goods — but not to complain or throw around legal orders. He's there to find the best items… so he can copy them.
 
Live from Beijing – Watch TechCrunch Disrupt! Top
disrupt beijingFirst up, Tencent CEO Pony Ma, and then YouTube's Steve Chen.
 
Disrupt Beijing Kicks Off with Tencent CEO Pony Ma. Watch the Livestream Here! Top
After many sleepless months, our first ever international Disrupt conference will be starting at 9 am Beijing time/6 pm PST. Even if you didn't make the trip over, you can still catch all the excitement on our livestream thanks to Tudou and Ustream. In case you can't watch the whole event, check out Alexia and my top picks for today in the video above. We are kicking off the first day of TechCrunch Disrupt Beijing 2011 at 6pm PST. We've embedded the livestream of the event below.
 
Weekly Watch Round-Up Top
Clerc-Hydroscaph-Chronograph-10It is hard to pull of a good futuristic dive watch design as more traditional looks tend to be more timeless. Clerc however has done well with their Hydroscaph collection. Check out a review of the Clerc Hydroscaph Limited Edition Chronograph watch here.
 
Up Close With Two Disrupt BJ Hackathon Winners Top
Although most of the Hackathon Hackers escaped before we could interview them, we corralled two interesting groups backstage and asked them about their products and experience at TechCrunch Disrupt Beijing. First we had Tianji Connect, an interface to the local LinkedIn clone that allows you to look up anyone on the Internet and see their experience and skills.
 
Competing Against The Big Guys Top
Aaron LevieThe narrative of the little guy going up against the hulking giant is baked into the history of Silicon Valley, starting with the traitorous eight leaving Shockley Semiconductor to subsequently found Intel, AMD, Kleiner Perkins, and many other industry disruptors of their time.  Fighting unnaturally large battles is part of the technology industry's DNA, and yet it would seem that every startup begins the process anew, rewriting the story of how to compete and succeed in the face of formidably large competitors. There are times when competing against the incumbent feels like an insurmountable challenge (and by "times," I mean pretty much every day).  Your larger, more established and better-resourced competitor is an ominous and omnipresent danger to your existence.  It will subsidize its products to compete with you, monopolize the distribution channel, spend more on marketing a single launch than you will ever raise, and create uncertainty in the market about your product among customers.  Given all this, startups should be in an inherently disadvantaged position in any market, emerging or mature.  And in most industries outside of technology – those that rely on high fixed costs, retail distribution, or a vast network of partners – this is absolutely the case.  But in the world of internet-delivered services, rapid innovation and evolution, and constant disruption, no one's power is guaranteed.  This creates huge opportunities for startups going up against the big guys, if executed properly.
 
Facebook's Zuckerberg: If I Were Starting A Company Now, I Would Have Stayed In Boston Top
zuckYesterday, Facebook founder and CEO Mark Zuckerberg took the stage at Y Combinator's Startup School in a candid interview with Y Combinator Partner Jessica Livingston. You can watch the full interview here, and it starts around the 43 minute mark, and lasts for roughly 40 minutes. If you have some time to spare, it's well worth a look. Zuck revealed a number of fascinating things about entrepreneurship, founding Facebook, and product development, but one of the more interesting (and surprising points) came at the end of the interview when Livingston asked him what he would do different if he could go back in time. Zuck replied: If I were starting now I would do things very differently. I didn't know anything. In Silicon Valley, you get this feeling that you have to be out here. But it's not the only place to be. If I were starting now, I would have stayed in Boston. [Silicon Valley] is a little short-term focused and that bothers me.
 
(Founder Stories) Drew Houston: "Dropbox Users Save A Billion Files Every Three Days" Top
Ooyala Backlot WebIn episode II of Erick Schonfeld's Founder Stories interview with Dropbox co-founder, Drew Houston, Houston describes how releasing a demo video to Hacker News during Dropbox's early days catapulted his company into elite company.
 
We Came, We Saw, We Hacked #TCDisruptBJ Top
What fuels Silicon Valley is a never ending desire to solve problems, make things work and get things done, no matter what the obstacles. If anything is testament to the universality of this spirit, it is the emergence of a fervent strain of entrepreneurship in China -- most recently evidenced by the 46 hacker teams that poured their hearts and minds into their computers at the TechCrunch Disrupt Hackathon.
 
Siri Ported To iPhone 4 and iPod Touch 4G Top
In a moment as historic as Alexander Bell's call to his assistant, an iPhone hacker wrote on Twitter that he had successfully ported Siri to the iPhone 4 and iPod Touch.
 
Introducing The First TechCrunch Disrupt Beijing Hackathon Winners Top
DLNG1354Between bridging the translation gap, the lack of and then abundance of morning coffee, collective Internet struggles and the many many hacks using TianJi's ("the LinkedIn of China") API, the TechCrunch Disrupt Beijing Hackathon just happened, and it was nothing short of amazing. Around 300 hackers signed on to spend 24 hours together, and 100 actually braved a night full of spotty connectivity and vegetable noodles in order to present their hacks at 11:00 am Beijing time. Each team was given a minute to show their stuff in front of the multi-lingual audience and judges.
 
Watch TechCrunch Disrupt Beijing Hackathon Live Top
Ni hao! It's now morning and all of us here at the Disrupt Beijing Hackathon are somehow awake. We've got around 50 survivors of a grueling night spent coding about to take the stage and present the fruits of their labors, the excitement is palpable. For the many of you not in China, you can (miraculously) watch the very first ever international Disrupt hackathon on the livestream above. Good times.
 
Classy: Google Is Running Zagat Ads Against Mobile Searches For "Yelp" Top
Yelp searchIf you search for "Yelp" on Google from your mobile phone the top paid result, even above the organic result to Yelp.com, takes you to Zagat.  While it is a common practice for companies to advertise against their competitors' names in search advertising, in this case it is Google itself which is bidding for that search term and taking the top spot.  A classy move. Google bought Zagat last September to shore up its local reviews for Google Places, which is its answer to Yelp.  Google Places and Yelp have a contentious history, with Google borrowing liberally from yelp to help build up its local directory.  Now with Zagat, Google finally has a large corpus if its own review, in addition to the ones people are slowly adding to Google Places.  By redirecting some of the people who are looking for Yelp to Zagat, Google is keeping up its pattern of punching Yelp in the face every chance it gets.
 
Apple Revealed As Purchaser Of Mapping Tech Company C3 Top
thangBack in March, we posted a demo of C3 Technology's extremely cool 3D maps. The reconstructions of landmarks and buildings are created by a technique (as I understand it) similar to the Kinect hack we posted that uses compiled depth and parallax data to continually build and refine a 3D model of whatever it's looking at. C3's version obviously works on a larger scale and thus has different strengths and requirements, but it's almost completely automated as long as you can afford to send a plane or copter up with the equipment. They were bought earlier this year, but the purchaser was not known at the time. 9to5Mac has been informed that the buyer was none other than Apple. It makes sense: Apple has bought two other mapping companies, Placebase in 2009 and Poly9 in 2010. It seems beyond a doubt that they are deep into a skunk works operation to revamp their maps.
 

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