Sunday, April 1, 2012

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Foxconn Plans New Iowa Plant, Will Hire 10% Of State's Population Top
iowa-foxconnAfter a highly visible meeting with Apple CEO Tim Cook, Foxconn's founder Terry Gou announced plans to open a sprawling Foxconn factory in Guthrie Center, Iowa, essentially replacing the approximately 2,000 residents of that small town with workers from in and around Iowa. The company will hire 300,000 employees for the new factory, about 10% of Iowa's population. The plant will include dormitories for workers, multiple swimming pools and Internet cafes, and meal seating for 100,000 employees.
 
Fragmentation? Open Source? Buzzwords For Android, And Also Google's Latest Effort, Google Campus Top
Eze VidraLondon's claim to being the hub for tech startups in Europe got a boost last week, when Google opened the doors of its latest effort, Google Campus, a seven-story centre for startups, which it has launched in partnership with several existing organizations, and big ambitions to galvanize some of the tech activity that has already marked out London to take it to the next level. The company is keeping much of its corporate profile at arms length from the project, but ironically, in describing Google's aims, Campus' head, Eze Vidra (pictured here), falls back on some of the terminology that has marked out one of Google's other, massive efforts, Android: the building, he says, is "open source." And the aim is to do away with some of the "fragmentation" in the London tech scene. Does that, in effect, lay out both the challenges and opportunities that Campus faces going forward?
 
Google's Sergey Brin To Retire: "I'm Really Into Blues Guitar" Top
Brin-bluesGoogle Co-Founder Sergey Brin has expressed interest in retiring "in a year or so" to take up the intense study of blues guitar, sources inside Google say. The decision places the company at a crossroads in terms of management succession and a replacement is already being groomed. Brin has been learning blues guitar from a number of major players including Eric Clapton (who was given $40,000 for a series of three lessons in a Palo Alto park), Keith Richards, and Ralph Macchio.
 
Defining The Television Experience In A Single Word Top
escaptvEscape. Yes, that's it, escape, that's whole secret right there.  Some say "entertainment" but I believe that is merely a subset of escape, as an experience.  And to be clear, I do agree that people choose to watch television as a form of entertainment.  But when you consider a "typical" 4+ hour session of watching TV in a "typical" North American household, I think it's a little beyond being entertained.
 
Funding Circle, a Kickstarter for SMBs, Picks Up $16M From Index, Union Square Ventures Top
funding circleSome great news for small business owners, and perhaps a sign of more crowdsourced funding coming to the U.S. soon: the UK startup Funding Circle -- a Kickstarter for small businesses -- has just announced that it has raised a $16 million round of funding to further build up its business of enabling non-bank lending to small businesses. The investment included participation from existing investor Index Ventures as well as new investor Union Square Ventures -- a sign of how Funding Circle may have its sights set on taking advantage of the new crowdfunding laws to expand to the U.S. This Series B round takes the total raised by Funding Circle to $21 million.
 
Creating Victims And Then Blaming Them Top
Screen Shot 2012-03-31 at 10.53.40 PMGirls Around Me is a perfect storm of everything too many people find creepy about the new mobile age. Download an app to your iPhone, link up your Facebook account and Girls Around Me will find girls around you who've recently checked into Foursquare near your location and return their Facebook profiles. Before Foursquare shut off access to their API and they were pulled from the App Store, Girls Around Me met your 21st century stalking needs, complete with in-app purchases. It is an undoubtedly fascinating story, raising too many issues to discuss in one article. But I found myself with a growing sense of discomfort after reading much of the coverage and discussion surrounding the app. This stemmed from two points that were raised again and again:
 
A Fistful of Smart Media Dollars Top
fistfulThe rise of smart, multi-screen streaming media is fundamentally changing the TV experience. This year, for the first time ever, Americans will watch more movies over the Internet than on physical media like DVD and Blu-ray. Ooyala's Video Index Report found that non-desktop video plays doubled in the fourth quarter of 2011. Tablet sales continue to explode. People now spend more time on Xbox Live streaming movies and TV shows than playing video games. And consumer electronics manufacturers are gearing up to ship 125 million Smart TVs in 2014. Simply put, TV is no longer constrained to a single box, a single screen, or a single UI. Smart networks, broadcasters, studios and service providers recognize that there's real money to be made as TV moves into the information age. People are not only watching more movies and TV shows online, they are paying for access to premium video content. Recent studies reveal that over half of American tablet owners paid to watch a movie in Q4 2011 and more than 40% paid for TV content. These are strong signs that we've come a long way from Jeff Zucker's "digital pennies" remark back in 2008.
 
Hackathon Planning In Less Than 10 Steps Top
hackersIt's been about a month since Photo Hack Day 2, and I've recovered sufficiently from my hackathon hangover – a very legitimate ailment, though less literal than a SXSW one – to put some coherent thoughts together. A number of people have reached out, asking for tips, thoughts, and advice on throwing hackathons; only now that the second one is under my proverbial belt do I feel slightly more qualified to speak on the subject. There's so much involved in terms of planning that I can't adequately address the important points in a single post. The emphasis of this article is the requisite planning, whereas the follow-up will focus on best practices for actual execution of demos, which are the most challenging and stressful element of hackathons.
 
OMGPOP Draws Zynga's Daily User Traffic Up By 25% Top
omgpop3.30.12As the dust settles after Zynga's purchase of New York mobile social game developer OMGPOP, the company is visibly taking on a new shape. A 25% larger and more mobile one. That's the percentage growth of its total daily active user base, when you add in the 14.6 million people playing mobile sketching app Draw Something to its existing 55 million players. The game has gone from 1.7 million to 14.6 over the month of March, based on app tracking service AppData. Today, it's nearly the combined size of Zynga's two biggest hits on Facebook, CityVille and Texas Hold'em Poker. Which means Draw Something's share of the market is likely to grow in the coming months. CityVille was launched at the end of 2010, and Poker years before. Zynga has milked them along, and will no doubt continuing doing so far into the future. But, they're never likely to grow significantly beyond their current sizes, based on the overall lifecycle of these games.
 
Tech Jobs And Airbnb Are Squeezing The SF Housing Market — Here's What To Do Top
planet for rentHave you been searching for a place to live in San Francisco lately? You're not the only one thinking @$#%&! on a daily basis. Forget the speculation about a tech bubble. This is a real estate bubble. It's a common scene on a weekend morning: A line of people waiting for an open house at an apartment that just hit the market, with rental applications, credit reports, and certified checks in-hand. The first one who qualifies wins the prize.
 
We're Going To This Super Happy Block Party In Palo Alto, And You Should Too Top
Screen Shot 2012-03-31 at 2.57.43 PMWho throws a party in Palo Alto?! Well actually ... Today Eric Schmidt's Innovation Endeavors, Talent House, Super Happy Dev House and the City of Palo Alto itself have joined forces to give nerds a place to play on University Ave for 12 hours. So why should you stop coding and jump on the Super Happy Block Party bandwagon? Well a gaggle of VCs have occupied the 3rd floor of the High/Alma South Garage, committing themselves to hearing your  ideas until 7pm tonight. Poor things!
 
Tired Of Straight Tech News? Check Out Techcrunch.com/Drama Top
tc-dramaWe know that many of you visit TechCrunch on the regular for a hearty dose of startup coverage, general tech news and opinionated coverage of the tech zeitgeist. But we also know that the trainwreck posting on our hirings and firings, Aol spats, tech gossip and quibbles between staff is what really gets your fingers clicking and blood boiling. I mean, it's like a car accident, you can't help but stare.
 
Dwayne "The Rock" Johnson On Social Media And His Favorite Tech [TCTV] Top
puopolo the rockIt's the eve of WrestleMania 28, and I got a chance to meet with Dwayne "The Rock" Johnson. What does that have to do with tech? Well, in the video interview, Johnson shares his thoughts on how social media has changed the game, what is his favorite tech and how he uses it to engage his fans. Johnson says he launched his Twitter account a little more than a year ago, and that it's "one of the greatest things" he's ever done, because it gives him a way to connect directly to fans.
 
The 'So What' Of The Quantified Self Top
so whatAssuming that each of us has a picture of the "real world superhero" we want to become someday, then the optimal way to level up and reach that goal begins with the ability to measure and score our lives. Thankfully, new technologies in mainstream gadgets like iPhones and the Nike+ enable this kind of measurement, and are fueling the so-called Quantified Self movement, starting with the continuous tracking of various aspects of our physical bodies. Using sensors in our smartphones and other wearable devices, we can chart how many calories we burn, our body fat percentage, how many steps we take in a day, how long we sleep — even how many hours a week we spend commuting or sitting at a desk. Soon we'll be able to access the same kind of statistics on our digital selves: Social reach and influence; tastes and preferences; achievements; credibility and reputation; habits; expertise.
 
Gillmor Gang: Daddy, What's Microsoft? Top
Gillmor Gang test patternThe Gillmor Gang — Robert Scoble, John Taschek, Rob La Gesse, Kevin Marks, and Steve Gillmor — rode out of Dodge and straight into an ambush. Well, no, but in service of the OverAggregator Lord here are our talking points: Microsoft trembles at the alter of irrelevance, Google doesn't get TV but may sneak into the tablet market by giving them away, and HTML5 still can't get a date. I snuck in the usual mentions of Mad Men and push notification, the first a reference to the return of the mesmerizing prequel to Seinfeld, and the second the technology that ensures that you don't have to watch the stream all day to stay up with what's going on. Combining delayed gratification theatre with premature notification will produce the next big hit of the iPad Age.
 
So Long, And Thanks For All The Quantum Research Top
dodoI'd like to be an optimist, like Matt Burns. I really would. Like Research In Motion itself, I was born and raised in Waterloo, Ontario. Like its former co-CEO Mike Lazaridis, I studied electrical engineering at the University of Waterloo. I've seen RIM transform my home town over the years, giving it new parks, new buildings, huge bequests for the university, and the Perimeter Institute for Theoretical Physics. I'd love to see it survive its current dire straits and somehow thrive. But I just can't see it happening. I guess it's still just barely possible to maintain optimism. This was the first quarter since their rise that they've reported a loss; they can still spin that into a Rocky-esque down-but-not-out narrative, as long as they rearrange a few deck chairs. But as Paul Graham recently pointed out, "revenue is a lagging indicator in the technology business." Revenue down 25% year-over-year, for a tech company of RIM's size, in one of the hottest markets in the world? That's not a setback, that's a catastrophe.
 
(Founder Stories) Kayak.com's Paul English: On Hiring Athletes, Design Simplicity & Angel Investing [TCTV] Top
Kayak Video 2 Out.movIn part II of his Founder Stories interview with host Chris Dixon, Kayak.com's co-founder Paul English discusses why job applicants will be hard pressed to find job postings on Kayak.com, relays the lessons he learned from Kayak's mobile app and tells Dixon the traits founding teams need to possess in order to impress him as an angel investor.
 
Is Technology A Zero-Sum Game? Top
pacmanIn last week's Get Rich or Die Trying article, I mentioned that "tech is a zero-sum, winner takes all game".  A reader objected, arguing: "I think that may be an inappropriate use of the term 'zero-sum' - one company's increase in profits (or revenue) does not mean a competitor must see declining profits (or revenue)". History suggests that Jack Welch's philosophy that "a company should be #1 or #2 in a particular industry or else leave it completely" is even more applicable to the tech industry, where the top player can build a sustainable and ever-growing business but everyone else is practically better off getting out.
 
Why Google Might Be Going to $0 Top
googleKen Lang could perform miracles. In 1990 we would head off to a bar near where we were going to graduate school for computer science, and we would bring a Go board. Then we would drink and play Go for five hours. At the end of the five hours, after a grueling battle over the board, I remember this one time when magically Ken would show up with two girls who were actually willing to sit down and hang out with two guys who had a GO BOARD in front of them. How did Ken do that? Fast forward: 1991, CMU asks me to leave graduate school, citing lack of maturity. The professor who threw me out still occasionally calls me up asking me when I'm going to be mature enough.
 
Here Are The Women of Y Combinator And They Are Awesome Top
Olga-VidishevaI would normally rather have a root canal instead of write about the issue of women in technology. I just find most essays on this really tedious and obvious. (Sorry Alexia.) But I do want to point one thing out. When I went to my first Y Combinator Demo Day three years ago, there was one woman. At this week's Demo Day, there were six companies with one or all female founders among the 66 startups in the class. I'm going to keep this post simple. No complaining. Less navel gazing. Just more role models. So here are the women of Y Combinator and they are awesome:
 

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