Monday, January 16, 2012

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Ex-TechCruncher Launches Semantic Q&A Service Beepl Top
beeplBeepl is a questions and answers service, which launches today. Co-founder/CEO and ex-TechCrunch blogger Steve O'Hear actually left TC to do this startup is convinced that Beepl can take on the the so-called Q&A field better than Quora. But how?
 
Brainient Raises $1.8 Million To Scale Video Ad Performance Platform Top
shoesWe've been watching online video advertising startup Brainient for a little while, given that the online video market looked poised for a lot of growth. Just how much growth was revealed at CES last week when YouTube stood up and predicted that 75 percent of all future channels will be born on the Internet and it had logged a trillion hits in 2011. That's a lot of potential advertising inventory and someone out there is going to have to come up with some answers to make this work. To that end Brainient has brought round a few people to the same idea, given that today it lands $1.8 million in funding from a number of strategic investors.
 
Gadgets Week in Review: To Go Top
1522Here are some of the past week’s posts on TechCrunch Gadgets: IK Multimedia Adds MIC Cast, STOMP and MIX to their iRig Line TC/Gadgets Interview: Up Close With The Lytro LG Styler Refreshes Your Stinky, Wrinkly Clothes With Steam New Pocket Projectors From 3M Pump Up The Lumens EV Mini Sport: Mini Electric Sports Car From Japan (Video) Bre Pettis Of Makerbot: "The Future Is Already Here"
 
We've Become A Nation Of Phone Starers Top
Screen Shot 2012-01-16 at 2.19.00 AMThe signs are all there: Essays that insist that incessant phone staring at dinner is the wave of the future, New Yorker cartoons painfully highlighting the phone-fixated state of socialization today, the fact that I broke my toe once because I was too busy tweeting via mobile to notice a sharply angled door, blogs about clever ways to prevent phone staring at dinner and now this ...
 
INFOBAR C01: Japan's Newest (And Most Colorful) Android Phone Top
infobar01Japan's mobile landscape is currently in the midst of an Android revolution, and today KDDI au (the country's second biggest carrier) announced another 5 smartphones with that OS on board for the local market. The most interesting model in the new line-up is the so-called INFOBAR C01 [JP], a candy bar coming with a heavily customized UI (based on Android 2.3). KDDI au introduced a similar model back in May last year, the INFOBAR A01 (both handsets are part of KDDI's designer sub-brand iida).
 
Zappos Suffers Security Breach; Customer Emails And Passwords Affected Top
zapposIt appears that Zappos was the victim of a cyber attack today from a hacker who gained access to the company's internal network through the company's servers in Kentucky. While specifics of the attack were not revealed, Zappos says that credit card and payments data were not accessed or affected by the criminal. CEO Tony Hsieh writes to employees, The most important focus for us right now is the safety and security of our customers' information. Within the next hour, we will begin the process of notifying the 24+ million customer accounts in our database about the incident and help step them through the process of choosing a new password for their accounts. (We've already reset and expired their existing passwords.)
 
Some Key Social Media Trends To Look For In 2012 Top
Social-Media-CollageIn 2011, social media had its share of growing pains. Large brands and corporations took to social media in force to try to find footing in this expanding medium. Some brands found success, while others found peril and new PR nightmares. One person who has helped brands navigate the proverbial social media minefield is Amy Jo Martin. She is the founder of Digital Royalty, a social media firm that has set itself apart by helping A-listers find their social media voice.
 
The Winners And Losers Of CES 2012 Top
ces_headerCES 2012 has come and gone, and it's time for the inevitable summary and think pieces on the directions the industry is heading, the highlights of the show, and so on. We'll also be posting some interviews and highlights from our live coverage this week, but before that it is, of course, necessary to publish some sort of top 10 list. So here are five winners and five losers of CES, as judged by those of us who went to the show, and with consideration both for the limited, short-term nature of the show itself and the longer-term sea of trends on which these companies and devices are sailing.
 
Can Technology Transform Education Before It's Too Late? Top
symbalooAs technology continues its march toward the Singularity, transforming the way we work, socialize and play at an increasing rate, there is one very important aspect of American society that lags behind: education. Many in Silicon Valley have strong opinions on how education should be improved, perhaps most notably Peter Thiel, who believes we are in a higher education bubble and should be encouraging kids to skip college and pursue entrepreneurship instead. I agree that Americans are placing too much emphasis on higher education, but I think the debate over Thiel's statements misses a much deeper point.
 
Online Marketplace For Designer Fashion Boutiques FarFetch Raises $18M From Index Ventures Top
farfetchFarFetch, and online marketplace for independent fashion boutiques, has raised $18 million in funding from Index Ventures, eVenture Capital Partners and existing investor Advent Venture Partners. This brings FarFetch's total funding to $24 million. Launched in 2008, Farfetch.com is marketplace which brings independent fashion boutiques from Europe and North America under one roof. The London-based company offers a curated network of online boutiques from designer brands like Fendi, Gucci, and Chloé as well as from emerging designers. Currently the site offers clothing for both men and women, and includes over 35,000 products.
 
Mobile Game Design: How Evil Monkeys Chased Temple Run To App Store #1 Top
Temple Run TitleThis is the story of how a husband and wife team designed a game with more daily active users than anything by Zynga. Now the #1 free iOS game, Imangi Studios reveals its Temple Run has hit 20 million downloads and 7 million DAU. Co-founder Natalia Luckyanova tells me how by designing Temple Run to be fun without having to pay, it became the top grossing iOS game despite only 1% of users monetizing.
 
Getting "Internet Freedom" Straight Top
granny-holding-internet-freedom-torchWhat is Internet freedom? The United States government has an "Internet freedom" agenda, complete with speeches by the Secretary of State and millions of dollars in program funding. A key United Nations official last year issued a major report emphasizing the right of all individuals freely to use the Internet. Taking a different tack, Vint Cerf, one of the Internet's founding fathers and "Chief Internet Evangelist" at Google, recently argued in the New York Times that Internet access is not a human right. And Devin Coldewey parsed the debate in TechCrunch, noting that the Internet is an enabler of rights, not a right unto itself.
 
Will We Need Teachers Or Algorithms? Top
robot teacherIn my last post, I argued that software will take over many of the tasks doctors do today. And what of education? We find a very similar story of what the popular – and incredibly funny! – TED speaker Sir Ken Robinson calls "a crisis of human resources." At the TED 2010 conference, he stated that "we make poor use of our talents." In the same way that we misuse the talents and training of doctors, I believe we misuse the talents and training of teachers. But I want to comment on what I consider a far greater misuse of talent and training: that of our children/students. We have focused so much of our education system on children attending primary school, then middle school, then high school, all with the objective of attending university, that this is a progression that still remains unchanged. Yet, this system is completely linear and, most tragically, unwaveringly standardized not only through instruction methods, but also through testing. Worse it is mostly "fixed time , variable learning".
 
Lost And Found In The Paneldome: The iRiffPort Top
iriff1We get mailed a lot of stuff at TechCrunch and sometimes a good item will slip through the cracks. This iRiffPort has been sitting in my pile of gear since it came out in October. I wrote a review. Shot some photos. It was all ready to roll and then somehow it got misplaced and I forgot about it completely. Too bad, because it is a good cable. This week, I received a postcard from Kevin Robertson, head honcho at PocketLabWorks and also the creator of the iRiffPort. He asked me what I thought of his device (and the software with which it works). The iRiffPort...Oh yeah, I think I remember that I liked that thing. What happened to it? I dug through my closet, found it, plugged it in and lo and behold, I had remembered correctly—it was a solid device.
 
The New Political Battleground: Your Social Network Top
Photo Credit: Creative Commons Flickr/ George ParrillaI have a stark fact to share with the majority of registered voters in the United States: your vote is worthless. Yes, that's right—worthless. Due to the "winner take all" nature of this country's Electoral College system, if you live in California, New York, Idaho, or any other state that safely votes for one party, your vote in the Presidential election is essentially treated as a pro forma. Instead, campaigns focus their real attention (and war chests) on targeting a small number of swing states where the outcome could go either way, ignoring the vast majority of voters. Social networks, however, are changing this dynamic in new and exciting ways. We now have the ability through our friends, followers, and fans to reach the voters in particular geographic areas that campaigns find so valuable. For example, you may live in California now, but if you grew up in Florida (or Ohio, or Pennsylvania, or any of the other 2012 battleground states), you're likely to be connected to the exact people whose votes are so prized by the campaigns. As a result, we are likely to see a Presidential campaign where many citizens are valued more for their personal networks than for their actual votes.
 
Things Entrepreneurs Should Avoid When Raising Capital Top
_1101957_money300Alright, in my last post I argued that bootstrapping is just as over-rated as raising venture capital. But for those who decide to pursue fundraising, here are some things entrepreneurs should avoid when raising capital. For all of the talk about how much excess capital there is, it's actually hard to raise capital because very few projects fit the VC profile—even though many VC-funded projects come across as frivolous, me-too projects.
 
SOPA Supporters On The Run Top
No SOPASupport in Washington for the SOPA anti-piracy bill in Congress (and its Senate equivalent, PIPA), is waning. After weeks of mounting uproar online, Congressional leaders started backpedaling last week and the Obama Administration weighed in on Saturday in response to online petitions to stop the bills. The White House issued a clear rejection of some of the main principles of SOPA. While the White House supports the major goal of the bills to stop international online piracy, the growing chorus of complaints about the ham-fisted way the law is going to be implemented may finally be acting a s a counterweight to all the media-company lobbying which is trying to push the bills through. In fact, the White house blog on the subject almost amounts to a pre-veto of the bills as they now stand (and which have yet to be voted on, much less approved, by either house of Congress).
 
The Seductive Danger Of Half Measures Top
Half beardIn the wide world of startups, we mostly like to think of ourselves as go-getters, ass kickers, "in all the way" sorts. We also like to think of ourselves as iterators, tinkerers, rapid iterators who test unceasingly. But the combination of those two traits can lead to one of the most dangerous cycles in startup - half measure syndrome (HMS). Interestingly, HMS starts off as something very intelligent - the team does not want to commit to a single strategy until it can prove that that strategy will create the hockey stick. When controlled and focused, that impulse is an excellent driver of evolution, but when not properly grounded in the reality of where you are, it becomes quite dangerous.
 
Liveblogging Platform CoverItLive Hacked Top
coveritliveCoverItLive, the Demand Media-owned liveblogging platform used by many outlets to cover major events in real time, has just alerted their users of a potential data compromise.
 
A City Is A Startup: The Rise Of The Mayor-Entrepreneur Top
4816608544_acb0bc2034On stage at last month's Le Web conference Shervin Pishevar, a Managing Director at Menlo Ventures, stated "The World is a Startup." It's an interesting perspective and I think what's true for the world is also true for countries, states and cities. With developments like last month's announcement that Cornell was selected to build a new tech campus in New York City, it seems to follow that if "a city is a startup" then the best mayors are the ones who are looking at their cities in much the same way as entrepreneurs look at the companies they have founded. The ingredients for a successful startup and a successful city are remarkably similar. You need to build stuff that people want. You need to attract quality talent. You have to have enough capital to get your fledgling ideas to a point of sustainability. And you need to create a world-class culture that not only attracts the best possible people but encourages them to stick around even when things aren't going so great.
 

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