Sunday, April 22, 2012

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Andreessen Horowitz Made $78M Off $250,000 Investment in Instagram Top
instagram logoAndreessen Horowitz revealed that it made $78 million off its $250,000 seed investment in Instagram in a post that was meant to quell criticism that it "fumbled" its involvement with the company. "Ordinarily, when someone criticizes me for only making 312 times my money, I let the logic of their statement speak for itself," wrote general partner Ben Horowitz. "However, in this case, the narrative that some critics put forth has the nasty side effect of casting two outstanding entrepreneurs—Kevin and Dalton Caldwell—in an unfair light and glosses over an important ethical issue that we faced." While Andreessen Horowitz was one of Instagram's very earlier investors, it said it didn't follow-on because of a conflict of interest with another company it funded. The firm had supported Picplz, another photo-sharing concept that didn't end up having as much momentum as Instagram. The company behind it eventually changed changed course and turned into App.net, which gives other mobile developers landing pages and other tools for acquiring users.
 
Web Video Sucks, But Here's How It Can Be Great Top
Button-Play-iconEditor's Note: Jordan Kurzweil is Co-CEO of Independent Content, an agency that helps media companies launch new digital products and businesses. Prior to starting Independent Content, Jordan worked at AOL running original programming, and News Corp, where he helped bring its traditional brands to digital. You can follow him on Twitter @jordankurzweil. I love movies. I love TV shows. I hate web videos. They suck. But let me qualify: An overwhelming number of professionally produced made-for-the-web videos are just not worth watching and barely hold a viewer's attention for their miniscule run-time. Largely, they're ill-conceived, poorly executed, poorly commercialized or downright boring.
 
The Billion Dollar Mind Trick Top
2961565820_3d59b7bdfbYin asked not to be identified by her real name. A young addict in her mid-twenties, she lives in Palo Alto and, despite her addiction, attends Stanford University. She has all the composure and polish you'd expect of a student at a prestigious school, yet she succombs to her habit throughout the day. She can't help it; she's compulsively hooked. Yin is an Instagram addict. The photo sharing social network, recently purchased by Facebook for $1 billion, captured the minds of Yin and 40 million others like her. The acquisition demonstrates the increasing importance -- and immense value created by -- habit-forming technologies
 
As Pinterest's Hype Peaks, Growth May Be Slowing Top
Screen shot 2012-04-22 at 23.47.44

Pinterest has been on a hot streak this year. Or should we say hype streak?

In February, comScore reported that the site had passed 10 million monthly unique users faster than any standalone site ever. Then we started to hear from sources on Sand Hill that the company has attracted interest at a $1 billion valuation. But numbers from third-party sources like Facebook app tracking service, AppData, are pinning a slightly different picture on the image and link-sharing site.

 
Sins Of The Cloud Top
bad-cloud-computingEditor's Note: Alexander Haislip is a marketing executive with cloud-based server automation startup ScaleXtreme and the author of Essentials of Venture Capital. Follow him on Twitter @ahaislip. In the beginning there was the cloud. And it was good. But over time it can also be surprisingly expensive. If you've ever said "Oh my god," at the end of your billing cycle, you're may be starting to think about putting boundaries on this virtual Eden. Yet you'll quickly find that public cloud vice is hard to stamp out. It's ingrained into human nature and finds its expression through self-service IaaS delivery and opaque billing processes. Here are a few of the sins we've seen.
 
Enterprise Open Source Usage Is Up, But Challenges Remain Top
sonatype-oss-policyI think we can all safely agree that open source software development is here to stay. Open, collaborative development has fundamentally changed not only how we code, but also the code we produce. It's easier than ever to build complex solutions by reusing existing components. A new report from Sonatype examines the current state of open source in the enterprise. Although heavily slanted toward open source Java consumption, the trends are interesting. It's also worth pointing out that Sonatype provides a solution for open source software management, so they have a stake in the game here. Their data is worth a look, though. Nearly 80% of the enterprises surveyed consume open source software. Most interest to me: two thirds of the companies surveyed are actively contributing code back to the upstream projects they consume. Also interesting to note is that just shy of half of all surveyed companies have a formal open source policy in place. And of those with formal policies, half of the respondents cite those policies as detrimental to the success of development.
 
Finally A Redesign!? Ugly Craigslist Hiring UI Designer To Become "Faster, Friendlier And Easier" Top
Craigslist Under ConstructionRecognizable, fast-loading, but outdated as hell website seeks Senior UI / Usability / Front End Engineer. Love it or hate it, Craigslist's design could provide a better experience, and apparently Craig thinks so too, as this weekend the site posted a job opening for someone to make it "faster, friendlier, and easier". It's hoping for a brave designer who can "develop new products and features that will have CL users swooning", "optimize internal team tools", and who has mobile app design and platform support skills. There's plenty of tweaks we'd appreciate like more consistent navigation controls and better use of whitespace. But don't expect Craigslist to ditch its famously minimal facade that's helped it climb to 50 million classified postings and 30 billion page views a month.
 
Panels Are A Waste Of Time, But They Don't Have To Be Top
trashtimeTwo years ago, when I first co-founded Earbits, I started frequenting various startup events like so many other first-time founders. Some of them were mixers, others were pitch competitions, and many were topic-focused panels and discussions meant to provide sage advice to budding entrepreneurs. I had reasonable experience on the ground floor of various startups but raising capital was a mystery to me. Naturally, I went to more than a few panel discussions about fundraising in preparation for doing that at my new company. Every panel I ever went to about fundraising was filled with prominent Angel investors and VC's telling us about how to put together a good deck, how to get their attention through a warm intro, what kinds of things make a company invest-able, and other very common fundraising advice. After having read all of the same advice on Both Sides of the Table and Venture Hacks, I found that most fundraising panels were a complete waste of time.
 
Frustration, Disappointment And Apathy: My Years At Microsoft Top
microsoft-logoI first used Windows on a TULIP portable computer, some twenty years ago. Graphical user interface, icons, mouse, an amazing new world was ushered in before my wide eyes. At uni, I scored a summer internship with Microsoft. I sported a Microsoft collared shirt and showed off my "Microsoft Product Specialist" badge with infinite pride. When Windows 2000 launched, I distributed official evaluation copies to the School of Engineering. Lecturers didn't hide their admiration, and wonder, about my infatuation with this company. They called me the "Microsoft man," which I saw as a compliment.
 
HTC One S Review: Head-To-Head With The One X And iPhone 4S Top
Screen shot 2012-04-22 at 2.02.05 PMI've been fiddling around with the HTC One S for a few days now, and I have to say it's stolen a little piece of my heart. The hardware is just about perfect, with a 4.3-inch qHD display and a slender aluminum unibody shell, and software like HTC's Sense 4 overlay and Android 4.0 Ice Cream Sandwich only sweeten the deal. But, as per usual, there's plenty to consider out there. The wide world of mobile only grows wider by the second, with hot new phones launching left and right. Just today, Sprint's Galaxy Nexus and the LG Viper landed on store shelves, and lest we forget that the iPhone 4S and HTC's mamma jamma One X are also ready and waiting for new owners. So many options. To help, we've put the One S up against it's greatest competitors, the HTC One X and the iPhone 4S, in a spec showdown. Who will come out on top? Well, my dear readers, that ball is in your court.
 
How Technology Can Solve The Financial Industry's Deficit Of Trust Top
Wall-Street-BullTo say Wall Street currently suffers from a deficit of trust would be an understatement. In the last few years alone, the government had to bail out Wall Street to the tune of $700 billion, Madoff and Stanford bilked investors of billions, and ex-Goldman executive Greg Smith's damning op-ed in the New York Times gave everyday people a glimpse into Wall Street's profits over people mentality.
 
Indulge Your Steampunk Urges By Tweeting In Morse Code With Your iPhone Top
teletweetGoogle's promise of bringing morse code to our smartphones may have just been a cleverly crafted joke, but if you're just tickled by the concept's delightful sense of anachronism, a new iOS app called TeleTweet should definitely be on your radar. Released by the team from Shacked Software this past Friday, TeleTweet takes that same concept and runs in a completely different direction. Instead of wrapping morse code in a sleek, modern, more user-friendly interface as Google's own mockup did, TeleTweet aims to send users straight into the past.
 
Thriving Amid An Explosion of UDID Alternatives Top
udid-explosionThe mobile app industry is in a state of confusion in the wake of Apple's recent measures to wean developers from the UDID (Unique Device Identifier), a function broadly used for determining the effectiveness of mobile advertising. In the short term, it seems that notions of an imminent Apple ban on use of UDIDs are premature. However, most in the market have concluded that they need to move toward new methods of marketing attribution for iOS device based advertising. The key for entrepreneurs and mobile app brands is moving to alternatives that will best allow their businesses to thrive. Here are the alternatives and here's how pick which ones you should use:
 
Google, Facebook Spent Record Amounts On D.C. Lobbying In Q1 2012 Top
FacebookMore dollars were poured into the Beltway from technology companies in the first quarter of 2012. As shown through previous lobbying spends, each quarter, Facebook and Google continue to spend more and more on lobbying efforts in Washington D.C. In the most recent disclosure reports filed in the U.S. Senate's lobbying database, both of the companies hit all time highs in terms of lobbying dollars. Google's lobbying spend hit an all-time high again this quarter, with spending coming in at a whopping $5.03 million, tripling its spend from the same period a year ago. Last quarter, Google spent $3.76 million on lawmakers. Microsoft only spent $1.8 million on lobbying for the quarter. In 2011, Google spent $9.7 million on lobbying, and has already surpassed half of that spend in this past quarter alone.
 
New iPhone Unlock Should Work With Any Model Top
77839iPhone unlocks are usually a tetchy experience - you have to have the right firmware on the right model iPhone at the right time. Now, however, thanks to a method that spoofs the activation server, you can unlock almost any iPhone semi-permanently. The system, called Subscriber Artificial Module or SAM, requires a jailbroken iPhone and Cydia. To run it, you de-activate your phone, insert a new SIM, and then activate SAM. SAM spoofs the activation process, convincing the phone that it has been unlocked properly and without issues.
 
Tips For Flacks From A Former Hack Top
nick gonzalezThere are two kinds of stories: great ones and the ones that have to be pitched. This article isn't about great stories. I have a lot of fond memories from TechCrunch -- being there when the YouTube acquisition broke, covering the rise of Y Combinator, and generally speaking to people a recent college grad had no right chatting with, let alone interrogating about their company. However, getting pitched wasn't one of them. Pitching the press is a lot like trying to close any other business deal -- sans the excitement of any money changing hands. In fact, "selling" a pitch means creating more work for the writer, who has to dig into the details of your pitch and craft a story.
 
The 10 Biggest Mistakes Made With Amazon Web Services Top
amazon web servicesAmazon Web Services (AWS) provides an excellent cloud infrastructure solution for both early stage startups and enterprises. The good news is that AWS is a pay-per-use service, provides universal access to state-of-the-art computing resources, and scales with the growing needs of a business. The bad news – AWS can be very hard for early stage companies to onboard, while enterprises usually spend too much time with 'busy work' to optimize AWS and keep costs under control. We launched a private beta of 'KnowYourCloud Analytics' a tool that helps AWS users to get to the bottom of their AWS cloud. By gathering data streams from multiple compute resources and crunching this data with its state-of-the-art analytics engine, Newvem enables AWS users to discover potential cost savings, identify security vulnerabilities and gain more control over availability.
 
More Anti-Trust Woes Ahead For Apple? Top
tim cookWhen John D. Rockefeller was told about the U.S. Supreme Court's decision to break up Standard Oil, the founding titan turned to his golfing partner and said, "Father Lennon, have you some money?"  The priest first said, "No," but then asked, "Why?" Rockefeller replied, "Buy Standard Oil."  It was good advice. Being subjected to stern anti-trust regulation was proof that Rockefeller had indeed built the most valuable private company in the world — one that would ultimately be even more valuable broken into parts. This week, the Justice Department announced new monopolist targets as it slapped Apple and five of the largest book publishers with an antitrust lawsuit. Attorney General Eric Holder accuses the companies of price collusion in connection with e-books. Already, three of the five publishers investigated, the Hachette Book Group, Simon & Schuster and HarperCollins, have agreed to a settlement that is likely to overturn the their "agency" pricing model. Macmillan and Penguin Group USA, also named in the suit, have not yet settled.
 
Microsoft Israel's Best & Brightest on Parade at ThinkNext Tel-Aviv Top
ThinkNextSlowly but surely, Microsoft Israel is making itself more and more relevant for the local startup community. In fact, we recently covered its latest major push, the Windows Azure Accelerator. Then there's the annual ThinkNext conference which has become one of the local tech community's staple events. The more interesting portion of the event (in my opinion at least) is the demo area, where startups chosen by the the local Microsofties showcase their goods. So unless you happen to be at the event in the port of Tel-Aviv this afternoon, here's what you're missing out:
 
Dollars, Sense, And 40 Billion Facebook Credits Top
facebook creditsRoughly 16 billion Facebook Credits were distributed and consumed in 2011. In 2012, I predict that the use of Facebook Credits will soar by three times to over 40 billion Credits spent on virtual goods, digital goods and more. The growth will be fueled by new digital content available on Facebook, use of Facebook Credits to reward brand loyalty and better marketing of a social currency that is still in its infancy. The following chart shows the growth of Facebook Credits revenue reported by Facebook from 2009 to 2011.
 

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