Saturday, March 10, 2012

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DiCaprio-Backed Mobli Pushes Major Revamp for SXSW Top
mobliNot to miss an opportunity to make an impression upon hipsters, Mobli is going to squeeze all the juice it can get out of SXSW with a major app revamp, and a party in Austin to boot. Mobli, which counts Leonardo DiCaprio as one of its investors ($4M funding to date), is dubbing the new version, 'Mobli 2.0'. Personally I feel they should have gone with 'The New Mobli' — zing! Besides a Pinterest-inspired interface, the new version packs a major upgrade to the camera, along with a set of features to edit, touch-up and enhance photos, all bundled under a new section in the app called, 'Darkroom'. Rebuilt from the ground up, the new camera now includes real-time tilt-shift and even real-time video filters. Focus can now be locked and white balance set. This is on top of the 18 brand-new photo filters, superimposed gridlines and a self-timer.
 
At SXSW? Because Paul Carr Is, Launching His Book Today At Bookpeople In Austin Top
Screen Shot 2012-03-10 at 8.32.11 AMJack McKenna here, checking in from South By Southwest to support my old buddy Paul Carr. He may have told me off not so long ago, despite my fine work here over the years. But, we've talked it out and patched things up. You know how things go with bloggers. Anyway, Paul is also in Austin right now, launching the US edition of his book 'The Upgrade: A Cautionary Tale of a Life Without Reservations.' He's doing a reading this afternoon at 5 pm at Bookpeople, (603 N. Lamar, Austin, Tx). I'll be there, and apparently some 'characters' from the book are going to be in the audience too. Also, as Paul tweeted a few days ago… I'm going to spare you the tweet embed, actually. Let's just say the guy is shameless.
 
Save Helpless Faraway Africans From The Comfort Of Your Armchair! Top
congo-volcanoWow. I never dreamed that I'd have a legitimate excuse to write a TechCrunch post about Joseph Kony, the crazed Ugandan warlord whose Lord's Resistance Army has been a pet obsession of mine for some years now. The first draft of my thriller set mostly in Uganda and the Congo had a villain loosely based on Kony, but I had to edit him out, basically because he's far too batshit crazy to be even remotely believable. The world is surprisingly full of things so implausible they would never fly in fiction, and the LRA is one of them. Now, stretching credulity even further, a 30-minute-long LRA-awareness video from the quasi-NGO Invisible Children has gone viral around the world. Celebrities and A-listers everywhere are retweeting it. Of course! Because if we just increase worldwide public awareness of the LRA's horrific depredations, why, then... ...and that's where they lose me. What exactly are Invisible Children hoping to accomplish with this? They claim credit for persuading Obama to send 100 US troops in October to help the Ugandan army find the LRA; but for what it's worth, I happen to know that the US Army was interested in tracking down Kony well before that. (How? Last June, while roaming around East Africa, I went diving in Djibouti with some Special Forces dudes--as you do--and Kony came up in conversation.) Raise your hands: who here seriously thinks the Special Forces will be any more effective because Taylor Swift, Diddy, Rihanna, and Zooey Deschanel are tweeting their moral support?
 
Entrepreneurs Are Difficult At Best And Abrasive at Worst — Get Over It Top
The greatest entrepreneurs follow their gut and as a result are perceived as difficult at best and abrasive at worst. Most people who know me say I'm too diplomatic, but last week my advisor told me that someone asked him if I was "difficult". His answer was "if Ash was difficult, I wouldn't work with him." I was going to write something on the matter, but felt that doing so would make me come across as, you know, difficult. But after a recent brief discussion this week with a fellow executive ended in disagreement, I thought to myself: "well that guy's definitely going to think I'm difficult", even though only a fool would have accepted his offer. It reminded me of that Chris Rock line: "What's sexual harassment? When an ugly guy wants to get some?" Well, what's being difficult? When someone doesn't give you what you want?
 
Paper Or Plastic? Top
taleI have a confession to make: despite having reviewed a few e-readers, and having written dozens of articles about them, I've never really used one. I mean, I've used them enough to know a good one from a bad one, to understand the features, and to do a proper evaluation — but I've never made one part of my life, the way one makes a mobile phone or laptop part of one's life. In that way I haven't really used an e-reader. Until just recently. As a book lover, I view e-readers as interlopers; as a practical person, I acknowledge them as inevitable. But in both cases, I have come to view them as a deeply unsatisfying reading experience. They fall short of paper in meaningful ways, and objecting to them should not be considered technophobic. The future of e-books is bright, but as far as I'm concerned, right now we're still in the dark age — though that isn't to say the stone age.
 
Army Warns Of Danger Of Geotagging Top
locWhile for an ordinary civilian the automatic geotagging of your photos or check-ins might be convenient, in the military it can be a lethal mistake. In 2007, geotagged photos of a new fleet of helicopters allowed enemy forces to mortar the base and destroy several of them; it could just as easily have been a field hospital or barracks. The Army has therefore published an article calling attention to this fact, though its casual tone suggests that they aren't ready to take serious action on the issue. A warning is all it is, and perhaps also an acknowledgement that sometimes it's better to bend with the breeze than fight it.
 
Eyeing An IPO, Kayak 2011 Revenue Up 32 Percent To $225M; Net Income Up 21 Percent Top
kayak-1Travel search giant Kayak just posted new revenue numbers for the fourth quarter and full year 2011 in a new S-1 filing with the SEC. As we heard last September, Kayak put its IPO plans on hold until market conditions improve. Now that the markets are more stabilized, it should be interesting to see when Kayak makes the push to become a public company. For the year Kayak generated $224.5 million of revenues, up 32 percent from 2010. Net income for the year was $9.7 million, up 21 percent from 2010's net income of $8 million For the fourth quarter, Kayak saw a 27 percent increase in quarterly revenue, posting $53.9 million in Q4 2011 sales. In contrast, revenue grew 28 percent in the third quarter.
 
Cater2.me May Be Feeding Your Favorite Startup Top
cater2me logoStartup Cater2.me is trying to answer one of the rarely-discussed challenges facing any company that wants to keep a large workforce happy — feeding them meals that aren't boring. Cater2.me was founded in late 2010 and has already attracted some positive press attention. Now, its client list includes some startups worth bragging about, such as Yelp, Eventbrite, Tagged, Square, Dropbox, Twilio, Causes, Posterous, and Heyzap. The company is serving 40,000 lunches a month (including many to non-startups, of course.)
 
Mobcaster Crowdfunds Its First TV Season Top
mobcasterIt's famously difficult to get a TV show on the air — much less one that still matches your initial vision. That's why startup Mobcaster has launched a new platform where creators can ask fans directly for the financial support needed to produce their shows. The startup just had its first funding success story — The Weatherman, an Australian-produced comedy about, yes, a weatherman, which just raised the funding for its first season. The production company set a goal of $72,500, and it raised $73,975. (As the team notes at the beginning of the pilot episode, traditional television episodes cost hundreds of thousands of dollars or more, so that's a tiny budget for a full season.)
 
PayPal's New Digital Wallet Will Offer Personalized Deals, Flexible Payments, And More Top
PayPal-1We've been hearing recently about PayPal's in-store payments platform for large retailers (which will soon be rolled out to small businesses as well). But we haven't seen PayPal do much in the past few months with its plans for its digital wallet on the consumer side. We know PayPal has a major vision for how payments will be made in the future, but today, the company is giving us a glimpse of exactly what new features will be added to the platform in the coming year. As PayPal's director of communications Anuj Nayar tells us in an interview, "PayPal is changing, and this is the first major revamp of the core PayPal product. We're known as an online payments brand but this is all part of PayPal becoming an actual wallet."
 
Gundotra: Google+ Won't Let 3rd-Party Apps Post Because "Your Stream Could Easily Be Overwhelmed" Top
vic_gundotra_250pxToday at his SXSW fireside chat, head of Google+ Vic Gundotra said "I am 100% to blame" for the social network lacking an API seven months after launch. The reason? "Your stream could easily be overwhelmed" if Google allowed third-party apps to post content on users' behalf. "I'm going to release that API when I'm confident we're not going to screw over developers." Additionally, Gundotra criticized Facebook's inclusion of ads on photo albums and said that only a "very small number of people have turned off social search".
 
A Better Live Wiki: HackPad Could Be Your SXSW Backchannel Top
Screen Shot 2012-03-09 at 1.45.37 PMThere are lots of apps for finding the right people and parties at South By Southwest this year, but what about, you know, actually going to panels and sharing your thoughts about them? Well, there's Twitter for short-form public sharing, and messaging apps like GroupMe for group chats. But HackPad has a more serious idea: actually taking notes about the panels and keynotes you go to, with other people who care. It sounds dangerously productive for the fun-oriented event. And it is -- this is one of the better live group word-processing products I've seen in a while.
 
Nokia Lumia 900 Won't Hit AT&T Shelves Until April 22 Top
lumia-900We'd heard a while back that the long-awaited Windows Phone-powered Lumia 900 would show up on AT&T's shelves on March 18. However, around the time that this rumored launch date leaked, the Lumia 900 had yet to go through its testing in the technical acceptance process. Turns out, that may be the reason BGR is now reporting that the Lumia 900 launch has been delayed to April 22.
 
Marvel Touts New Deal: Buy A Comic Book, Get The Digital Version Free Top
mobilecomicsPop quiz, hotshot: it's Wednesday, and that means a new shipment of comic books is sitting pretty at your local dead tree retailer. Do you schlep down to the store to buy a physical copy, or will you reach for your smartphone/tablet and buy it from the comfort of your own home? Well, if you want the best bang for your buck, you should probably get dressed and prepare to brave the outside world. Starting in June, any Marvel comic that costs $3.99 or higher (when did comic books get so pricey?) will come with a code that lets the purchaser download a digital copy of that same comic via the Marvel Comics app for iOS or Android.
 
Stride, A CRM System Salespeople Will Hate (But Freelancers Will Love), Launches Into Beta Top
stide-logoStride, a new CRM system designed to meet the needs of freelancers and small business owners, is launching into private beta today. The product, which was born out of an actual need for a more simplified CRM system, is focused on efficiency, not a complex feature set. It's not for adding contracts, managing cases, or allocating tasks to a team of salespeople. Instead, Stride is about deal-tracking and high-level metrics only. "For salespeople, this app is going to make them cringe," says Stride co-founder Andrew Dumont.
 
Apple Goes Big In Texas With $304 Million Austin Campus Top
AnjiiX3CQAAGhRmMost of the news around Austin this week is centered around SXSW, naturally, but Texas Governor (and erstwhile presidential candidate) Rick Perry broke some news today that's unrelated, but still Austin-relevant. Apple, it seems, which has been slowly growing its presence in the state's tech oasis, chose SXSW weekend as an auspicious time to announce a major new campus in Austin.
 
Clouds & APIs: Mayor Lee Unveils The San Francisco Open Data Cloud Top
Screen shot 2012-03-09 at 11.12.23 AMWith 30,000 tech jobs already in town and more (hopefully) on the way, San Francisco has been making a big push to make its city as friendly as possible to entrepreneurs. In January, we saw Mayor Ed Lee, Ron Conway, and former TechCrunch CEO Heather Harde launched sfCITI, a committee which focuses on hiring -- both placing and training competent programmers and just generally bringing smart people into San Francisco's workforce. Last month, the city complemented its hiring committee by announcing a new initiative again aimed at making the city more relevant to its chief industry, called the 2012 Innovation Portfolio, which helps founders, as Eric wrote at the time, do everything from "completing the paperwork for creating a company, to giving developers new access to city data, to actually testing out tech products at City Hall itself."
 
How Green Dot Will Use Loopt To Go After Mobile Payments Top
3938248052_5b5823e58f_mImagine you're walking by your local cafe, and you get a notification on your phone that you'll get a free bagel if you buy a cup of coffee. You walk inside, and make the purchase with your credit card — no need to take out your phone again. The bagel rings up as "free," and you get a notification from your bank confirming you've received the discount. All of this payments and loyalty interchange can happen over the cloud. A lot of companies are trying to get their arms around mobile payments. Many of them, trying to make your phone itself act as the credit card. Google with Wallet, Square, PayPal, American Express, everybody who's experimenting with NFC.
 
How To Win At SXSW: Give Away Experiences, Not Grub and Booze Top
Salesman ShoutingThe fundamental mistake companies make when marketing at SXSW is giving away things I can easily buy on my own. Open bars and taco giveaways only attract freeloaders. If brands want influencers to take notice, they have to provide unique experiences. From my last three SXSWs, I couldn't tell you who provided the ice cream sandwiches or Lone Star beers. But Zynga's warehouse concert with TV On The Radio, Tagged's limo rides, and Diggnation's fire-eating magician -- those I remember.
 
StartupBus To SXSW Day Three: Las Cruces To San Antonio [TCTV] Top
startupbus 2012StartupBus, the hackathon-on-wheels in which busloads of entrepreneurs make the journey down to the South By Southwest conference with the goal of teaming up to create viable web apps by the time they arrive in Austin, rolled into its third day yesterday. in this video you can see how the buspreneurs' apps have gone from concept to code with demos from customizable breakfast cereal app Cerealize and motion detection video technology startup Kinect.ly.
 

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