Monday, April 16, 2012

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Txtr Fights Amazon/Apple With iPhone/Android eBooks For The Rest Of Us Top
txtrWhile Apple, Amazon and competition authorities globally tussle over book pricing, a fleet-of foot startup is quietly building an alternative platform others would do well to check out. txtr is one of the largest independent eBook platforms in Europe. The Berlin based startup began back in 2008, deciding, as one did back then, to bring out an eReading device called the "txtr reader". I actually saw some of the early units. However, as colleague John Biggs noted in 2009, there wasn't much point in doing devices without a store. And so they've since switched pretty succesfully to a BtoB business model, backed by large investor 3M. Now they are cleverly expanding around into the nooks and crannies so far unpopulated by the 800 pound gorillas, and have their own iPhone and Android apps to prove it.
 
Mobile Messaging Consolidates: Myriad Group Buys Synchronica For $38M Top
text messagingSome consolidation afoot in the evolving world of mobile messaging: one messaging provider, Switzerland's Myriad Group, is buying a UK-based rival, Synchronica, for £23.9 million (around $38 million), in what looks like an all-share deal. Myriad says the deal will make it one of the biggest providers of messaging services in the world. Together they provide messaging services to a huge range of tier-one carriers including ATT, Verizon, Vodafone, Telefónica, Orange, T-Mobile, América Móvil, NTT Docomo, MTS, Softbank, Megafon, Telcel, TIM, Airtel and Claro -- altogether covering some 2.5 billion subscribers and 100 carriers and 25 OEMs worldwide. The two companies have been in negotiations since last November, and in February 2012, Myriad argued to Synchronica shareholders that they needed to sell in part because Synchronica could not meet its repayment obligations to Nokia. Synchronica last year picked up Nokia's messaging business for $25 million as the struggling handset maker was offloading less profitable assets.
 
What's In A Name? Australia Wants Apple To 'Change The Name' Of The iPad Over 4G Incompatibility Top
ipad australia 4gLooks like we may see another development today in Apple's ongoing iPad/4G controversy in Australia. The country's Competition and Consumer Commission is meeting with Apple in court again today to try to get Apple to officially change the name of the device when it is sold in Australia. Although many people know it as "the new iPad" since launching the product in March, Apple has also been marketing the product as the new iPad with 'Wi-Fi +4G' in the country. But Apple quickly ran into trouble when the ACCC said Apple was misleading consumers: in fact, the tablet is not actually compatible with Australia's 4G network. Since then, Apple has agreed to refund consumers who bought the device thinking they were getting 4G; and the company has also been putting up notices wherever the iPad is sold warning them that it didn't work with Australia's 4G. But the ACCC, it seems, does not think that this goes far enough.
 
Netflix's Reed Hastings Chastises Comcast Over Net Neutrality And Its Shady Xfinity App Top
netflix-reed-hastingsIn the latest battle in the war for living room domination, Netflix's CEO Reed Hastings took to his public Facebook account and called out Comcast's latest attack on Net Neutrality. As he explains Comcast's just-launched Xbox 360 Xfinity app does not count against the provider's ISP data caps. However, if the same exact program is viewed through Hulu, HBO Go and, yes, Netflix, it deducts the data used against the subscribers monthly allotment. Yeah, as Hastings points out, the policy is not very neutral.
 
The Best iOS Apps To Watch On Apple TV Top
hero_appletv_2ndgenDevelopers don't have to wait for a fully baked version of Apple TV to come out to get a feel for how their apps will play on the big screen. Although an eco-system for Apple TV apps does not yet exist, there are dozens of quality iOS applications that are best consumed on an HDTV via AirPlay Mirroring. Creating apps specific to the leaned-back setting of the living room requires more than just supersizing titles originally conceived for smartphones or tablets. Successful Apple TV apps need to source and showcase entertainment, news and social activity in ways not currently possible via cable, satellite or video streaming providers. Inside are the 10 best iOS apps available on Apple TV today.
 
Blinksteady: The Bike Light Apple Would Make If Apple Made Bike Lights Top
lean_postWhen's the last time you really splurged on something for your bike? The old girl gets you around town, puts up with your ridiculous maintenance regimens, and shifts and rattles in just the right way to get you up and down the hills of your hometown. Why not show her you love her and, thanks to Blinksteady, put a ring on it. The Blinksteady is the world's smartest bike light (citation needed). It turns on when it's dark and turns itself off when your bike is stopped. You no longer have to reach back to turn on your light when dusk turns to night and, better still, you never have to risk being hit by a nightblind SUV driver in some deserted late-night cul-de-sac.
 
User Experience And The Poison On The Tip Of The Arrow Top
161936732_1e175da046I used Path twice. None of the people that I know are using Path. I even checked with an early adopter of social media recently and one of Path's earliest users. She told me that she doesn't see a lot of people using it. Generally, this is not a good indication. Maybe there are millions of secret Path users (or users in another geography that I don't know about) but it seems that Path just doesn't pick up. Sure, Path 2.0 design is amazing. However, amazing design is not enough. It is like fashion. Everybody is excited about it at the beginning, but then people are getting used to it and eventually it wears out. After it does, the user is left with the essence of the user experience and what Path misses most is a compelling and unique user experience that will make using it worthwhile.
 
Steve Blank Teaches Entrepreneurs How To Fail Less Top
SteveBlank_1While secretly wanting to be an entrepreneur but working at Electronic Arts, I would sometimes sneak out early and jet to Stanford campus to crash Steve Blank's entrepreneurial lecture series. Steve literally wrote the book on customer development with "Four Steps To The Epiphany" and now he's back again co-authoring a 500-page reference guide with Bob Dorf called "The Startup Owner's Manual". If you don't know Steve or his blog, he's a founder eight times over who teaches at both Stanford and Cal Berkeley. His insights and association with Eric Ries laid the foundation for "The Lean Startup" methodology and I was fortunate enough to interview him last week at Startup Grind.
 
An Open Letter To Those Not Employed At Instagram Top
instagramDear Non-Instagramers, Sorry that you didn't get bought out for $1 billion last week. That's got to be a bummer. Kevin Systrom just made enough money to buy a boat big enough to make Larry Ellison jealous and you're still living in a studio apartment. Instagram is a one-off. A fluke. An anecdote that many entrepreneurs will mistake for data. Please don't be one of them. This happens about every half a decade. The first mover in a space gets taken out in record time with a ridiculous valuation and the founders look like epic geniuses. Do you remember YouTube? Sure you do. But what about Revver, Metacafe, Guba and Veoh? I didn't think so.
 
How Social Currency Is Driving Identity, Trust and New Industries Top
social-currencyAs our lives increasingly move to the digital realm – whether it's what we read, what we watch, photos that once sat in frames now uploaded to a server farm somewhere in the rural United States, or even the 140-character thoughts we share with the world ­­– comes the very reconstitution of our identities online. A German artist named Tobias Leingruber recently took this concept to its logical extreme when he produced physical identification cards based on Facebook profiles (this attempt at satire was executed so well that Facebook sent Leingruber a cease-and-desist letter three days later). Between the lines of Leingruber's satire, though, is a very real, emerging concept. What Leingruber hit on is something I refer to as social currency. Social currency essentially refers to the idea that every person has an online identity formed through participation in social networks, websites, digital communities, and online transactions. Our everyday activities -- web searches, status updates, 'likes', tweets, and comments -- they all leave a trail of data behind which we tend to see as ephemeral or throwaway.
 
Why Startups Should Pay Attention To Skyrocketing Patent Prices Top
US-PatentTrademarkOffice-SealAs large companies increasingly look to protect their revenue streams through IP risk mitigation, startups with strong patent holdings will become increasingly valuable because they provide an opportunity to remove dual potential threats to the potential acquirer's revenue stream -- as a competitor and as a patent threat. Startups that are able to position themselves as part of an acquirer's IP risk mitigation strategy make themselves more attractive targets for acquisition. For example, Twitter acquired Tweetie days after Tweetie filed for a patent application on the pull down to refresh feature and Google recently acquired Apture and Katango, two small startups with multiple pending patent applications relevant to Google's businesses. Although some have described these deals as talent acquisitions, the value presented by the associated IP to the acquirer should not be ignored.
 
Government Poised To Provide A Huge Boost To Healthtech Startups Top
Regina Holliday - Meaningful UseCurrently, the federal government is poised to level the playing field for healthtech startups. An unprecedented wave of innovative healthtech startups has been developing over the last few years. You can see them at conferences such as Health 2.0, TechCrunch Disrupt, TEDMED and demo day events that Blueprint Health, Healthbox, Rock Health and StartUp Health host. Nonetheless, the health sector may be the single most challenging arena for startups. Nothing would result in population health improvement (and decrease healthcare costs) more than having greater involvement/engagement by individuals in the healthcare process. The Office of the National Coordinator (ONC), which is part of Health & Human Services could catalyze an unprecedented wave of innovation with a stroke of a pen by strong inclusion of patient engagement requirements in the Meaningful Use requirements.
 
Stop Looking For A Technical Co-founder Top
Picture 2"How many of you want to start a company?" David Tisch asked. All hundred hands went up. That's why we were there, crowded into a Wharton classroom to seek startup advice from an industry luminary. "Keep your hand up if you are technical." Five hands remained. Maybe six. "Keep your hand up if you are looking for co-founders." The only remaining hand belonged to a CS freshman in the corner. Most quality software engineers today have offers of amazing work environments and 6-figure salaries from the likes of Google and Facebook. Few are crazy enough to say no to that. Those that do typically have their own ideas, aren't sure they need you, and have heard enough cliche pitches to ignore you by default.
 
Nokia Lumia 900 Review: This One's A No-Brainer Top
lumia 900-4Guys, this one's such a no brainer that I shouldn't even have to lay it all out. But I will. The Nokia Lumia 900 is an excellent handset, comes packed with a fresh new operating system in the form of Windows Phone 7.5 Mango, and thanks to a nifty AT&T bill credit from Nokia, you can essentially get this $100 LTE-equipped phone for free until the 21st. Repeat: for free. Like I said, this one's a no brainer.
 
Surviving The Scramble For San Francisco Office Space Top
getaroundThe residential real estate bubble isn't the only real estate challenge facing startups in Silicon Valley. Office space within the city limits is becoming more scarce by the day as tech companies continue their aggressive growth. Relief is on the way, but it isn't an instant solution. The San Francisco Giants announced a $1.6 billion plan last week that would add 1000 rental units and 1.7 million feet of office space in the 27 acres that is currently being used as their parking lot. That's wonderful, but construction won't begin until 2015 and the estimated completion date is 2021.
 
Riding The Third Wave of TV Transformation Top
eric-eliaEric Elia (@ericelia) is a member of the founding team at Brightcove, and is currently the vice president of TV solutions. Brightcove, a video and app solutions provider, went public on Feb. 17 on the NASDAQ and now trades with a market cap of $509.3 million. When we started Brightcove seven years ago, we expected a five-to-10-year transformation period until we reached a world of purely Internet-based, on-demand TV, motion pictures and "long tail" content. Sometimes it's hard to see change happen when we are in the middle of it, but amazing to look back and see just how far we've come. I look at the past seven years as driven by three waves of innovation.
 
The Post-PC Enterprise Top
larry ellisonIn 1997, Larry Ellison had a vision for a new paradigm of computing which he called the Network Computer (NC). The idea was simple: a group of partners would build devices and services that leveraged the power of the Internet to compete against the growing Windows monopoly. Ellison believed that the computer in the client/server era had evolved into too complex a machine for most tasks. With the NC, the 'heavy' computation of software and infrastructure would be abstracted from the actual device and delivered instead to thinner terminals via the web, thus radically simplifying access and enabling all new applications and mobility.
 
The Mobile Paradox Top
mobile-addictionGoogle's stock declined by over 4% yesterday. Many have put this down to the company's decision to create a non-voting class of stock as part of a control-retention exercise as the founders sell shares. But more is going on here. In the same week Facebook acquired Instagram for $1 billion as part of its efforts to be more relevant on the growing mobile platform, Google, for the second consecutive quarter, suffered a decline in "Cost Per Click" rates that is in large part attributable to the shift in traffic from the desktop/laptop to the mobile platform.
 
The Cloud Will Kill The Resume, And That's a Good Thing Top
job interviewI was recently going through an old banker's box that I packed up years ago while I was cleaning out my office. There was a Palm Pilot, a mini cassette recorder, and even a stack of floppy disks. It was like a time capsule of obsolete technology. All I needed were a few Polaroid pictures and a beeper to make my time travel complete. In one of the file folders, I found about a dozen resumes that I had wanted to keep and in another there was a bunch of printed product brochures from various vendors. Every gadget I found in that box had evolved or been replaced by some new innovation.  Even the non-gadgets like printed product brochures have been replaced by websites that can present information in much richer context.  Only the folder of resumes stood out as the unchanged medium. It baffles me how the lifecycle of so many products and business processes can be extremely short and are so easily disrupted by innovation, yet an individual's resume is still a one or two page document.
 
FCC Wants To Fine Google $25K For WiFi Investigation Delays Top
street view carIn its investigation of whether Google's Street View cars illegally collected personal data from WiFi networks, the Federal Communications Commission has reached a decision that seems like a mix of good news and bad news for the search giant. The good news: The FCC did not fine Google for violating electronic eavesdropping laws. Instead, it concluded that there was no precedent for the commissions' enforcement of the law in connection with WiFi networks. The FCC also noted that, according to the available evidence, Google only collected data from unecrypted WiFi networks, not encrypted ones, and that it never accessed or used the data.
 

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