Wednesday, January 25, 2012

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Facebook Stumbles — Is Anonymous Responsible? (Oops: No.) Top
anonymousIs Facebook the next target for activist hacker group Anonymous? Depends on who you ask. The group went on the warpath last week following the takedown of file-sharing site Megaupload, with attacks that targeted the Department of Justice website, the MPAA, the RIAA, and others. Then, a few days ago, the group seemed to post a video on YouTube, claiming that Facebook would be next, with an attack on Jan. 28.
 
Reed Hastings: "We Expect DVD Subscribers To Decline Every Quarter … Forever" Top
Reed-Hastings-2After some fairly sizable blunders last summer, Netflix suffered for the remainder of 2011, losing money and subscribers. Perhaps surprising many, Netflix bounced back today in its fourth quarter earnings -- in spite of the fact that it will continue experiencing losses throughout 2012 thanks to the costs of rolling out its service internationally.
 
A Foothold For HealthTech: Ultra-Cheap Pacemakers Top
Medtronic-InSync3I read with great interest Vinod Khosla's column two weeks ago that discussed the role of tech in healthcare. But as much as tech has to offer the healthcare institution, its effects are perhaps more reliably trackable in the actual medical devices field. A functioning "Dr. Algorithm" would be great - but a "tricorder" device, like that being chased by this X-Prize? That would be something else. Until these pie-in-the-sky projects come to fruition, though, more modest advances, but which nonetheless save lives, will be made. Medtronic, a major med-tech company, is hoping that the next big thing will actually be small and cheap: a pacemaker for developing countries.
 
Zynga's Stock Rating Gets A Boost, And So Does Its Traffic Top
Screen Shot 2012-01-25 at 4.27.49 PMWall Street has had trouble knowing what to make of Zynga, considering it's the first Facebook-oriented virtual goods business to be publicly traded. The stock has been seesawing below its $10 initial share price since the company went public in the middle of December. Main concerns have been its heavy reliance on Facebook for traffic, and on a small number of paying users for most of its revenue, as well as its relatively flat traffic. But now, it's getting some more positive signs. First, five banks who underwrote its IPO provided their initial coverage today. They haven't been able to say anything up until this point due to the company's now-lifted quiet period. But two less conflicted analysts are also positive. And, traffic is going up.
 
TheFunded Calls Ben Horowitz The Most Disruptive VC Top
ben horowitzTheFunded, the site where entrepreneurs can anonymously review venture capitalists, sometimes a reputation for being anti-VC (especially in its early days), but it's not above showing investors a little love. Today it's the announcing the winners of its awards for Top Investors 0f 2011. Adeo Ressi, founding member at TheFunded, says these awards were determined by user ratings, though a five-person committee, including Ressi, made the final choices. The site has given out these awards for the past four years, usually in private ceremonies (this year's ceremony happened last week), but Ressi says he's trying to make the awards "more public" this year because of "the massive amount of transformation going on in the investment industry."
 
Skyfire Raises $8 Million In A Round Funded By Verizon And Others Top
SkyfireAfter raising just shy of $23 million over the past 5 years, Skyfire today announced that they've raised their second biggest round of funding to date. Coming in at $8 million dollars, this Series C round is being funded by Verizon Investments (as in Verizon Communications' venture arm) along with new investments from previous investors Matrix Partners, Trinity Ventures, and Lightspeed Venture Partners.
 
EU's Proposed Data Laws Can Only Produce One Thing: Outsourcing User Data Top
OnesAndZerosIn 2011, Sony had several major security breaches: Sony Online Entertainment, Sony Pictures, and Playstation Network all were attacked and private data was successfully stolen. Their handling of the attacks, particularly the larger PSN one, was widely criticized. Many users are either unaware or acutely aware of how many sites and services have financially or personally sensitive information on record. Events like the Sony hacks do not reassure them, and actions like Google's yesterday (though arguably innocuous) may alarm them. Users want more control and more security. And the EU is looking to give it to them. But with the threat of enormous fines, many companies will find that the most logical thing to do is move away from the entire business of storing and serving user identities.
 
Netflix Streaming Margins Are 11 Percent, DVD Margins Are 52 Percent Top
netflix2If you look closely at Netflix's fourth quarter earnings, it will become clear why the company wanted to split its DVD and streaming businesses. This is the first quarter that the company is splitting out each business and reporting revenues, profits, and margins separately. While the streaming business is growing (adding 220 subscribers domestically in the quarter), and the DVD business sis shrinking (it lost 2.76 million subscribers domestically), it's margins are much worse than the legacy DVD business. The streaming business has an 11 percent profit margin, compared to a very healthy 52 percent margin for the DVD business.
 
Someone Finally Makes "Shit Silicon Valley Says" Top
Screen Shot 2012-01-25 at 3.21.43 PMAfter an onslaught of "Shit [blank] Says" videos in my Facebook Newsfeed, I appealed to Twitter yesterday, surprised that the industry that invented YouTube hadn't weighed in on the phenomenon. Little did I know that husband and wife team Tom Conrad and Kate Imbach were already on it, coming up with the idea on Monday morning and shooting yesterday, with no script (Imbach just said random techy things and Conrad spliced them together into this in edit).
 
Biz Stone, 500 Startups And Others Put $1M In CRM For Web Businesses Intercom Top
interCRM and 500 Startups incubated company Intercom has raised a seed round of $1 million from angel investors including twitter co-founder Biz Stone, Huddle founder Andy McLoughlin, Dan Martell, 500 Startups and Digital Garage. Intercom's customer relationship management tool (CRM) is designed specifically for web businesses. The web-based SaaS features Google Analytics-like integration so that its database of customers is always automatically up-to-date, tracking every interaction. With its flexible filtering function, users can be segmented into groups for whom the business has different goals (i.e. converting free users into paying customers).
 
Netflix Q4 Earnings Beat The Street, But Next Quarter May Be A Different Story Top
Netflix-LogoSaying 2011 was a rocky road for Netflix would be an understatement, as it split its DVD and streaming offerings into two businesses, then reneged. They also hiked their prices, only to experience a veritable customer revolt, and CEO Reed Hastings was forced to publicly say that they'd made a huge mistake. Today, Netflix has released its fourth quarter earnings from 2011, and it looks like there's at least a sliver of good news, as the company beat Wall Street's forecasts of $0.54 a share and $857 million in revenues, rising instead to $0.73 per share and $876 million in revenues.
 
Show Your Love With These New iPad/Kindle Fire Cases From DODOcase Top
LoveMe_Both_DODOHQ_smJust in time for Valentine's Day, DODOcase released new special edition iPad and Kindle Fire cases. They cost slightly more than the standard versions with the Kindle Fire models costing $69 and then $79 for the iPad 2 versions. But nothing says love quite like a unique case.
 
HP Announces Open webOS 1.0, Outlines Release Schedule Top
hp-web-osIt seems like ages ago that HP announced that webOS would continue to live on as an open source project, probably because they've been awfully quiet on the subject since the big reveal in December. Well, consider that silence officially broken. HP took to their webOS developer relations blog to tell what faithful users still remain all about how their open-source rollout is going to work, and the whole process has begun with the release of their Enyo application framework.
 
Nokia Announces 1.5 Billion S40 Phones Sold Top
Screen shot 2012-01-25 at 4.07.17 PMDoes the term S40 mean anything to you? It's a mobile operating system built by Nokia for its feature phones back in 1999, and first appeared on the 7110. Well, apparently a lady over in São Paulo, Brazil has today purchased the 1.5 billionth phone running the operating system in the form of the Nokia Asha 303. Nokia is calling it "one of the most significant milestones" in company history.
 
Game Your Video Aims To Make Mobile Video Editing As Simple As Possible Top
Photo Jan 25, 11 56 34 AMModern day video editors can be daunting. While it's better than the literal cut-and-paste practices of yesteryear, opening a new video editor can feel like stepping into the cockpit of a spaceship. Unless you're trained to fly spaceships, in which case this analogy is broken (and also, you're awesome.) Looking to distill video editing down to its simplest form — a game like experience, they say — is Game Your Video, a new iOS app from Global Delight.
 
Guidewire Hits The Public Market Running; Shares Jump 30% In Early Trading Top
Guidewire_logo_smallWhile there were some big IPOs in 2011, Zynga and Groupon among them, overall it was a disappointing year for IPOs. Will 2012 be any different? As the first tech IPO of the new year, Guidewire Software certainly hopes so. Back in September, the insurance software company joined MobiTV, Angie's List, Brightcove, and Jive, filing its S-1, announcing plans to raise up to $100 million and to sell approximately 7.5 million shares at $10 to $12 per share, in advance of its IPO on the New York Stock Exchange.
 
Bunchball Says Games Turn Twentysomethings Into Better Workers Top
office dwightBunchball has been touting the benefits of its gamification tools for years, and many of its recent efforts are focused on enterprise customers. Now the company has published a white paper arguing that that gamification is a key way to motivate "Generation Y." As evidence, the paper points to a recent study by MTV saying that millennials (the Bunchball report uses both terms interchangeably) understand their lives through a "game-like metaphor" — in fact, half of the survey respondents said "people my age see real life as a video game." How does that apply in the workplace?
 
1000s Of Journalists Now Use Facebook Subscribe, And That's Bad For Twitter Top
Facebook Subscribe Bad For Twitter4 months after it launched its Twitter-style asymmetrical Subscribe feature, Facebook and its Journalist Program Manager Vadim Lavrusik's efforts to weaken Twitter's stranglehold on breaking news are paying off. The company just announced that thousands of journalists now use Subscribe, including 50 reporters from The New York Times and 90 from the Washington Post. If Facebook can get your favorite journalists publishing through Subscribe, you'll have less need for Twitter. Next I hear it's setting its sights on getting celebrities and entertainment tastemakers onboard. Additionally, Facebook released some best practices for how journalists can maximize the engagement (Likes, comments, and shares) on their posts.
 
Kickstarter: Cassette, A Documentary About, You Guessed It, Cassettes Top
cassetteThose of our readers old enough to remember the 90s will almost certainly recall cassette tapes fondly. The clacky little tapes and their creaky cases have more or less disappeared from the world, and no surprise: they were fragile, limited, and sounded pretty bad. But they were also hugely empowering, and helped produce in an age of comparative consumer powerlessness the same feeling we take for granted today: that we should be able to copy, lend, and duplicate the content we've bought. Cassette is a documentary looking for a few bucks on Kickstarter that hopes to highlight cassette culture then and now.
 
President Clinton's Former Chief Of Staff Says: "Yes We Scan" (TCTV) Top
Podesta-tc_upload.mp4While the topic didn't make its way into President Obama's Sate of the Union speech last night, Mr. Obama's former transition team co-chair, John Podesta, thinks creating a "Digital Library of Congress" comprised of "the vast holdings of the federal government" deserves executive level attention. He's calling the initiative, "Yes We Scan" My suggestion to him: get Google to do it for free in return for a reprieve from the government's never-ending antitrust investigations. I am only half-joking.
 

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