Friday, April 27, 2012

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Gripevine's Dave Carroll Tackles Customer Service Resolution After United Broke His Guitar Top
Screen shot 2012-04-27 at 3.36.05 PMIt's an interesting story. One day, Dave Carroll was taking a flight with his band-mates on United Airlines. When he landed at his destination, he noticed that United staff were throwing his $3,500 Taylor guitar around, and ultimately, damaging it pretty badly. When United did nothing to help, Carroll took matters into his own hands with the help of a little video sharing site called YouTube. His music video, "United Breaks Guitars," took off like a rocket, and after realizing the power of social media, he joined up with his other co-founders to build Gripevine.
 
Study: 95% Of Independent Restaurant Don't Have Mobile Sites, Only 40% Have Online Menus Top
Graphics | Restaurant SciencesRestaurants just love to put Flash intros with auto-playing music and animations on their front pages. If you are trying to look at a one of these sites on your mobile browser without Flash, chances are you can't even get to anything else on the site because far too often, there is no way to bypass the animation and get to the information you want, or because the complete site was designed in flash. It's not just these obnoxious animations that make restaurant websites a hassle, though. According to a new study by Restaurant Science, a restaurant industry information and analytics provider, one out of eight full service restaurant chains and a depressing one out of twenty independent restaurants don't have a mobile website. What makes this even worse is that according to some reports, half of all visits to restaurant websites are from mobile devices.
 
Target Neutralized: Amazon Beats Tablet Makers At Their Own Game Top
913d4_funny-dog-pictures-target-acquiredWith the announcement that the Kindle Fire has grabbed 54.4% of the Android Tablet market, it's clear to see that Amazon's Trojan Horse strategy paid off. As I wrote back in December, the Fire is Amazon's way of making all of their offerings "real." Movies, books, and games were Amazon's core competency back when all of that stuff was on disks and on paper and that core competency is repurposed now for the Information Age. That's what all of the other Android tablet makers missed: people don't want general-purpose devices anymore or at least general-purpose devices in tablet form. There is little need to be "productive" on a tablet when consumption is why most people buy them. Sure someone out there is SSHing into their servers and editing documents in Pages, but the average user plops down on the couch with the iPad and calls up some IMDB or some NSFW Reddit, not a text editor.
 
Sony's Gamer-Friendly Xperia Play Could Have Had A Real QWERTY Keyboard Too Top
playphone1Sony's Android-powered Xperia Play debuted to mixed reviews last year, but according to a newly published patent, Sony was apparently toying with the idea of making something much more interesting before settling on the design they ran with. Not content with a single physical keypad meant strictly for gaming, the images associated with the patent depict a Sony smartphone with two of them -- one with the game controls we've become familiar with, and another with a full QWERTY keyboard that would slide down over the game pad.
 
Gillmor Gang Live 04.27.12 (TCTV) Top
Gillmor Gang test patternGillmor Gang - John Borthwick, Danny Sullivan, Robert Scoble, John Taschek, and Steve Gillmor. Recording live at 1pm PT.
 
Yahoo Says Patents Facebook Bought Were Just To Countersue, Lack Good Faith, Should Be Thrown Out Top
Facebook Vs Yahoo Boxing LogoCounter-countersuit! Yahoo today claimed that the patents Facebook is countering its original patent infringement lawsuit against the social network with "were acquired by Facebook for purposes of retaliation", and therefore violate the U.S. Patent Office's "Duty of Disclosure, Candor, and Good Faith" and should be diregarded by the court. Yahoo also claims Facebook couldn't legally know enough about its business to know if it was violating Facebook's patents, that several of Facebook's new patents were illegally filed, and Yahoo also filed two more advertising patent infringement claims against Facebook. Facebook responds that "We remain perplexed by Yahoo's erratic actions. We disagree with these latest claims and we will continue to defend ourselves vigorously." If a court agrees that Facebook can't countersue with patents bought specifically for the countersuit, Facebook could be left wide-open in settlement negotiations, and might have to pay Yahoo a hefty sum of cash and/or stock.
 
Barely 3 Months Post-Launch, Loyalty App Punchcard Is Live In 15M Locations, Nears Profitability Top
punchcard-iosThe mobile apps from stealthy loyalty startup Punchcard have only been on the market since February, but the company is now reporting it's close to being cash-flow positive. Like a digital version of paper punchcards which reward repeat customers for their business, Punchcard's app lets customers snap photos of their receipts in exchange for cash payouts or other rewards directly from the merchant. While not a new concept in and of itself, what's interesting about Punchcard is how it's been acquiring its business: it just switched on loyalty programs for millions of locations across the U.S., even if they didn't ask for it.
 
The IPO Boom Is Back: Pricings Hit A 12-Year High, With Tech Stocks Leading The Way Top
ipo renaissance 1It's official: We're back in boom times from a tech IPO standpoint. 2012 is now on pace to be a record-breaking year for initial public offerings, and technology companies are leading the way. Fifty-seven IPOs have been priced since January 1st, which is the most U.S. IPO pricings the US market has seen during the first four months of year since 2000, according to new data out of IPO-focused investment bank Renaissance Capital.
 
All-Star Cast Invests 750K In Ben Huh And Matt Galligan's Mobile News Startup Circa Top
Screen Shot 2012-04-27 at 11.12.08 AMSimpleGeo's Matt Galligan and Icanhascheezburger's Ben Huh have teamed up to change the way people consume news via mobile. Their startup Circa, which boasts a newsworthy list of advisors like former Digg CEO Jay Adelson, has just raised 750K in seed funding from eonCapital, Quotidian Ventures, Techstars' David Cohen and David Tisch, Tumblr's David Karp, Eric Norlin, Manesh Arora, Pedro Torres-Picon, Rick Webb, Scott Belsky and Soraya Darabi. "40% of our current funding is provided by Davids," Galligan jokes.
 
42Floors' PDA: The War For Talent Among Startups Needs A New Approach. Here's Why Top
WeWantYou-black-400Startups do the darndest things. As you may or may not have seen, Y Combinator startup 42Floors made a bold and fairly unprecedented move today -- as hiring goes, in any case. 42Floors Co-founder Jason Freedman had been following the work of UPenn sophomore Dan Shipper on Hacker News. The two had chatted a few times by phone and on Twitter, and Freedman was so impressed by the quality of Shipper's programming, design skills, and smarts, that he decided to publicly offer the sophomore a job -- via the company blog. Why? Well, first off, it was likely to turn into publicity both for Shipper and for 42Floors. So there's that. It was also done somewhat with an ulterior motive. As Freedman says in his post, the team believes that "hiring is dead." And he has a point: If you're looking to hire the kind of talent that is out there actually building products, companies, etc. (and who isn't?), those men and women likely aren't filling out job applications. So if you want them, you have to court them.
 
Google Drive Arrives In ChromeOS Developer Channel Top
Google DriveEver since Google released its cloud storage service Google Drive earlier this week, there has been some speculation as to what its integration with ChromeOS, Google's cloud-centric operating system, would look like. Today, Google released the first developer version of ChromeOS 20 with support for Google Drive. As expected, Google Drive is now deeply integrated into the ChromeOS file manager, though this is clearly just a first effort and still needs quite a bit of work.
 
Klouchebag, Finally Something More Douchey Than Klout Top
klouchebagToday my Twitter friends are going nuts about Klouchebag, the service that takes social media parody (and Klout puns) to the next level, with algorithms and stuff. As with Klout, you enter your Twitter handle and are given a score between 1 and 100. But instead of measuring social media influence, Klouchebag tells you "how much of an asshat you are on Twitter." Apparently, you're judged on four factors: anger, "retweet abuse", reposting from social apps, and misuse of the English language.
 
TechCrunch Giveaway: 2 Free Tickets To Disrupt NYC #TCDisrupt Top
disrupt_graphic_03-11_info1-1TechCrunch Disrupt NYC is almost here! Yes, we are very excited. And you should be, too. We have already announced some incredible speakers and judges who will be joining us next month in New York, and we have even more surprises in store that will be announced as we get closer to the event. Starting this week, we are going to be giving two free tickets away every Friday. So, if you don't win this time, make sure to check back next week to win. Disrupt NYC is going to be so much fun. These free tickets, each worth around $2,000, will get you into the whole three days of the conference, plus all of the after parties. Check out the images below. We are already all over New York.
 
Social Networking And Gaming Mobile Apps Are Now Neck-And-Neck For Time Spent On Android, iOS Top
instagram-rankingIn another sign that something fundamental is changing on the iOS and Android platforms, mobile analytics provider Flurry has found that consumers are spending as much time in social networking apps as they are in mobile games. Games have historically led usage on mobile. The last time that Flurry took a look back in January, it found that half of app sessions were spent in games while 30 percent was spent in social networking apps. "We take the rise in Social Networking apps as a signal of maturation for the platform," wrote Flurry's vice president of marketing Peter Farago. "As game demand may be hitting its saturation point, consumers are also discovering other apps, namely Social Networking."
 
Be Concise! – The Top Questions Asked At A Y Combinator Interview Top
pgAs of yesterday Y Combinator began its marathon series of interviews to decide which startup teams will ultimately go through the - now world-renowned - program. Interviews go on for five days. Rumours that people have been seen running screaming from the building shouting "The Horror!" have not been confirmed. But I'm currently in the Valley catching up with one or two of those European hopefuls trying to get into Paul Graham's good books - indeed I bumped into one team at San Francisco's SFO airport. Turns out the YC pitch document I saw being worked on a laptop on the plane over was for Stackblaze. The guys behind it, James Cunningham and Colin Hayhurst, also put together a cute web app full to the brim with the kinds of typically blunt questions you get asked at a YC interview. You can check it out here, and subject yourself to the same torture as all those YC hopefuls.
 
Report: 69% Of Tablet Owners Watch TV And Surf The Web Simultaneously Top
3 screen summer event viewing | Flickr - Photo Sharing!Just watching TV without also using a tablet or smartphone at the same time seems to be on its way out. Earlier this month, Nielsen launched the first part of its report on primetime TV viewers in the U.S. and today, the analytics company is taking a deeper dive into the demographics of those who simultaneously watch TV and use their tablets. According to Nielsen, 45% of tablet owners watch TV and use their tablet together at least once a day. A whopping 69% say they do so at least several times a week and only 12% say they never do this.
 
(Founder Stories) Send The Trend's Gugnani & Chris Dixon Discuss M&A Top
(Founder Stories) Send Trend Episode 2.mp4In episode II of Divya Gugnani's Founder Stories interview with host Chris Dixon, the two dive into M&A, a topic that both founders know well. Dixon's company Hunch, was recently acquired by eBay and Gugnani's company, Send The Trend was recently acquired by QVC. On being acquired, Gugnani tells Dixon that she was approached much earlier than she had anticipated and it was a "really intimidating and scary" experience. She adds, "there were really two directions; do I go down this route and potentially distract myself from the base business that is growing ... or do I just keep focusing on my business and have that kind of bravado that you know what, it is going to be worth so much more later?"
 
Now Out Of Beta, Tykoon Teaches Kids (And Parents) About Managing Finances Top
tykoon-logoNYC-based financial services startup for families, Tykoon, is exiting its private beta and is launching its first mobile app for iPhone. The company, which aims to change the ways kids think about and use money, is more that your typical allowance tracker application - it's a platform for earning, saving, giving and spending, the latter which includes kid-friendly access to a curated and controlled Amazon store.
 
HTC Titan II Review: Initial Impressions (Hands-On Photos) Top
IMG_0009The Titan II is yet another success for the hardware team over at HTC. It feels excellent in the hand, even if it's huge, has a nice balanced weight to it, and the little chin at the bottom gives it some extra pizazz when lined up against other designs on store shelves. It calls to me. But there are a few issues, as is the case with most any phone. The first, and most important one, is the screen size vs. resolution. I've said it before and I'll say it again: Microsoft, please push out Apollo so that your hardware partners aren't stuck slapping a 480x800 WP build onto a massive display.
 
Over A Year Since Launch, The Mac App Store Passes 10,000 App Milestone Top
mac app storeApple's iOS App Store always seems to outshine its computer-based counterpart, but it seems the company's Mac App Store has just hit a big milestone of its own. With the help of some timely database queries, French blog MacGeneration reported earlier today that Apple's Mac App Store now plays host to over 10,000 applications. A quick check with iOS and Mac app directory AppShopper homes in a bit more -- at time of writing, they count 10,334 listed apps in the Mac App Store. The Mac App Store, for those of you who don't make it a point to remember minutia like this, launched back in January 2011 with just over 1,000 apps available for download.
 

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