Saturday, January 14, 2012

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9 Things Every Entrepreneur Needs to Learn From Woody Allen Top
img-woody-allen-2_111333973473.jpg_article_singleimageI hate Woody Allen. Here's why. Because if you're Jewish and a little neurotic then it has become a cliché that nerdy neurotic Jewish people describe themselves as "Woody Allen-esque" thinking it will attract women. They do this on dating services. The idea is that they will then attract some waif-like Mia Farrow-ish  (or the 17-year-old Mariel Hemingway in Manhattan) blonde who will love all of their neuroses and want to have sex all the time and will, in the ideal case (the 17-year-old Mariel Hemingway in Manhattan, the 21-year-old Juliette Lewis in Husbands & Wives), be the most mature  in the movie and yet still be madly in love with the 30-year-older Allen. This only happens in Woody Allen movies. And power to him. He made the movies. He can do whatever the hell he wants in them. If Mariel Hemingway wants to have sex with him all the time then no problem. He wrote the movie! It's up to you whether you believe it or not. Allen puts out a new movie or two every year. So he's built up a substantial body of work that we can learn from. Why learn? Because clearly he is a genius, regardless of what other opinions anyone might have of him (and I only know him through his work. I don't know his personal life at all). It is interesting to see how he, as an artist and creator, has evolved. To see how his idiosyncratic humor has changed,  how he twists reality further to stretch our imagination. He always stands out and stays ahead of the other innovators. And for other people who seek the same, he is worth observing.
 
Daily Crunch: Into The White Top
1521Here are some of yesterday’s Gadgets posts: Hands-On With Blue Microphones' 2012 Lineup Health Sensors Are Everywhere: Up Close With Striiv And Fitbit LG Styler Refreshes Your Stinky, Wrinkly Clothes With Steam A Million Developers On A Million Keyboards: Ecosystems Require R&D Density All The Little (But Awesome) Things You Definitely Missed At CES
 
Tech News Can Be So Dramatic Top
Screen Shot 2012-01-13 at 5.55.09 PMSo I tend to think of news in this industry as falling into two basic categories 1) Boring as fuck 2) So hyper-dramatic I feel like I need to take a ton of anti-anxiety medication just to read Techmeme. While tons of crap posts this week have fallen into the former category, a few have fallen into the latter, mostly MG Siegler's work surrounding Google's failed efforts at, well, anything.  All of MG's posts have been, to borrow a phrase, "very well done" -- Mostly because they lean into the drama.
 
WalkScore Raises $2M To Rate The "Walkability" Of Potential Housing Top
Screen Shot 2012-01-13 at 4.24.47 PMYou might have seen the subtle brag at the bottom of Craigslist apartment searchposts -- WalkScore 99! WalkScore 100! WalkScore 85! Well, why should you care about whatever a WalkScore is? Because the score rates accessibility by foot to things people want to access by foot like restaurants, theaters and public transit for any address in the US, Canada and New Zealand. Useful right? Well it made sense to investors, who've just angel funded the company to the tune of $2 million -- those investors included Shel Kaphan, Rudy Gadre, Edward Yim and Geoff Entress.
 
ITC Sides With Motorola In Key Apple Patent Suit Top
droidshotBack in fall 2010, Apple filed suit against Motorola alleging that the company was violating several of its patents with its flagship line of Droid smartphones, all of which run Android. The case was filed with the US International Trade Commission — a favorite battleground for these smartphone suits, as it has the ability to block potentially infringing devices from import into the United States. Today, Motorola has gotten some good news: the ITC has released its initial determination on the case, and it is ruling in Motorola's favor. The news was first broken by CNet. As the CNet article reports, this is only an initial determination, and won't become final until it's been voted on by the ITC's full committee.
 
Putting The Google-Is-Ripping-Off-A-Kenyan-Startup Story In Perspective Top
Screen Shot 2012-01-13 at 3.59.57 PMWhen you think about what Google, the 32,000-employee search engine conglomerate, is strategically focused on these days, here's one thing that doesn't come to mind: an initiative to get more Kenyan businesses online via manually grabbing data from a local startup that's trying to do something complementary. I've been looking into the well-researched story that Mocality, a Kenya-based business listing service, published this morning. There are certainly serious issues it brings up, as Google has admitted. But there's nothing anywhere near the same magnitude as, say, the press fallout and antitrust probe around the new Google+ search integration, or the Motorola acquisition, the Android patent licensing issues, or the many other efforts and problems it has happening every day.
 
LG Styler Refreshes Your Stinky, Wrinkly Clothes With Steam Top
If you needed any more proof that the future is already upon us, take a gander at the LG Styler. It looks like a refrigerator at first glance, but opening the door reveals that it isn't meant for food -- rather, it's your clothes are meant to go inside.
 
Droid RAZR MAXX To Launch On January 26th? Top
Droid RAZR MaxxWhile there wasn't much to say about the recently announced Droid RAZR MAXX to begin with (it's essentially the Droid RAZR with a bigger battery and more storage), Motorola and Verizon decided to leave out one key bit of detail: the launch date. That, it seems, has been fixed.
 
A Million Developers On A Million Keyboards: Ecosystems Require R&D Density Top
shutterstock_58664Walking around CES this week it's easy to see the future: just look at the components being sold in the nether regions of the show. These include specific things - Bluetooth powered electrical cords, for example - and "pieces" like smaller motherboards, cases, and materials. When planning a launch line-up, major manufacturers peruse catalogs of potential hardware and materials solutions to decide what to create next, then task their hardware designers to choose the proper parts in order to build in the features that meet their initial requirement. Does this TV need a 64-inch LED backlit screen? Four HDMI ports? A blue bezel? Designers figure out which parts fit where and place their parts and assembly order. It's been like this for decades. When I write that Samsung could be the next Apple, I meant that Samsung seems to have finally bucked this trend, at least in part. The problem with the above shop-design-build process is that there is little synergy among various business units. The mobile guys have a certain menu from which to pick while the TV guys have a different menu. The phone OS has always been different than the TV "OS" (really UI, but TVs need a little code in them). Work may be duplicated multiple times, even from year to year.
 
All The Little (But Awesome) Things You Definitely Missed At CES Top
All the thingsIt's true. CES is out of control. I have no reference point since this was my first visit, but from the first second you disembark the monorail and look down over the sprawling campus of the LVCC, you know you won't see everything. The inkling gets stronger as you enter the building, and find that the Samsung booth is about as big as a mall. Luckily for you, John Biggs and I ventured into the deepest corners of the show to find the little booths you most certainly missed. Enjoy!
 
Bloomberg: iPad 3 To Have Quad-Core CPU, LTE, High-Def Screen Top
ipad 2You've just got to love the timing. First, Apple announces their education-focused media event smack dab in the middle of CES. Now, just as CES is winding down, Bloomberg has "three people familiar with the product" spilling purported details on the next iPad. Whether or not Apple won CES without even being there, they're certainly trying.
 
Hands-On With Blue Microphones' 2012 Lineup Top
Blue Mics showed up to CES 2012 with three swanky mics. No, really. They look great but that's because Blue Mics knows how to make a good looking mic. Brian Biggott, Blue Mics' CTO, sat down with me on the TechCrunch CES couch for a quick chat about the company's upcoming mics.
 
Not At Any Price: Twitter Denied Data To Google And Bet On Itself Top
Twitter Google Deal BrokenIf Twitter continued to sell its firehose to Google, fewer searches would occur on Twitter's internal search engine where the microblog platform can serve its own ads. That's why sources familiar with the negotiations tell me Twitter wouldn't renew the data access deal at any price, or at least set a ludicrously high price to sink the deal. Cash and increased visibility on Google Search was more valuable to Twitter in 2009 when it was still trying to gain serious traction. But by July 2011 Twitter was more established and ready to try monetizing without Google. A firehose deal would have impeded this, so it's understandable why Twitter walked away.
 
Hands-On With The LG Spectrum: So Last Year Top
Here at CES 2012, phones are a bit in short supply. At least, new phones are. LG is one of the few companies to officially announce a new smartphone at the show, and I have to say it's one of the best phones we've seen out of LG. Unfortunately, that still leaves the Spectrum quite a ways behind some of the other new phones we've seen recently like the Xperia S, Titan 2, or the Galaxy Nexus (of course). The real stand-out feature here is the 4.5-inch 720p display with a True HD Graphic Engine and Corning Gorilla glass, boasting 326ppi. The phone also touts Verizon's 4G LTE, which is mostly solid unless it's December.
 
Apple Releases List Of Its Suppliers, Discloses Labor Violations Top
AppleApple has, for the very first time, released a report of its suppliers. There are 156 suppliers listed in the PDF the company published (available here), including big names like Sony, Intel, Samsung and Foxconn (also known as Hon Hai Precision Industry Co.), which dragged Apple's name into the light over questionable labor practices, when fourteen of the company's workers plunged to their death at the Foxconn factories in 2010. Since then, the company has been under increased scrutiny, with critics saying it should to be more transparent about the working conditions throughout its supply chain. Today, Apple appears to have answered its critics' calls.
 
Razer CEO Min-Liang Tan Shows Us Project Fiona And The Blade Notebook Top
razerWe couldn't go to CES and not see what Razer had on display, and fortunately, CEO Min-Liang Tan was on hand to take us on a quick tour through the company's booth. In between talking about the company's new gaming accessories and their Synapse cloud storage system for game settings, we were (thankfully) able to get our hands on the Project Fiona tablet and the long-awaited Razer Blade gaming notebook.
 
With SimpleGeo's Shutdown Imminent, Parse Swoops In With A Life Preserver Top
Screen Shot 2012-01-13 at 2.32.59 PMYesterday Urban Airship announced that it would be shutting down SimpleGeo on March 31 2012, only a few months after acquiring the company for around $3.5 million. The news irked plenty of developers — you can find a thread on Hacker News here where some SimpleGeo customers are voicing their frustration. So what are developers supposed to do now? Urban Airship's blog post outlines a few options, including a partnership with Factual to port over any Places data developers might have stored on SimpleGeo. But SimpleGeo also has a handful of other classes of data, like Storage, that Factual can't be used for. Now Parse is stepping in to try to help out (and snag) any customers looking to figure out where to move next.
 
TechCrunch Gadgets Finale: Hands On With The Terrifying Parrot AR Drone 2 Top
Screen Shot 2012-01-13 at 1.30.50 PMIn our last TechCrunch Gadgets Webcast on the CES 2012 show floor, we interviewed Henri Seydoux, CEO of Parrot. We had the opportunity to watch the drone in action - it was wildly terrifying having this thing floating above our heads while we talked - and we recapped the show including some of our Best of Show picks and, important, interviews with actual event-goers who loved to talk about what they saw.
 
Ari Emanuel Told Marc Andreessen, Ron Conway That He'll Help Them Fight SOPA Top
Screen Shot 2012-01-13 at 12.28.09 PMDuring the Q&A of a press conference for the SFCiti initiative, investor Ron Conway told a pretty interesting story about a meeting he had yesterday with William Morris CEO Ari Emanuel and Marc Andreessen in Southern California. "These bills are tantamount to censorship on the Internet," Conway said, segueing into the anecdote where Andreessen apparently asked Emanuel whether the entertainment industry "wanted to turn the United States into China?" with the Stop Online Privacy Act.
 
ESPN Feels Lonely: A Chat Regarding ESPN's Role In The Barren 3D Landscape Top
ESPN, the Worldwide Leader In Tim Tebow news, attended CES this year in the name of 3D TV. The network is fully committed to providing content in 3D and in fact hosted a live boxing match here at CES, which was broadcasted in 3D. I sat down with Bryan Burns, ESPN's VP of Strategic Business Planning to talk about ESPN, lack of 3D content and the boring 2012 BCS Championship game.
 

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