Wednesday, May 30, 2012

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A/B Tester Optimizely Raises Funding From Battery And Google Ventures, Plans Mobile Launch Top
optimizely logoOptimizely, the Y Combinator-incubated startup that helps companies A/B test their websites, just announced that it has raised new funding from Battery Ventures, Google Ventures, and InterWest Partners. The startup previously raised $1.2 million from angels including Ron Conway, Chris Sacca, and Ashton Kutcher, but this is its first venture round. Co-founder and CEO Dan Siroker (who was director of analytics for Obama's presidential campaign in 2008) says he isn't disclosing the amount — which is the exact thing that a tech journalist doesn't want to hear — because he doesn't want to get into a competition over valuation and "vanity metrics."
 
Want To Be Like Steve Jobs? Well It's Probably Not Going To Happen, Says BFF Larry Ellison Top
Screen Shot 2012-05-30 at 6.17.54 PMBecause Steve Jobs had visited the AllThingsD stage so many times over the course of the past decade, Walt Mossberg and Kara Swisher decided to pay him tribute by inviting two of his friends for 25 years, Dr. Ed Catmull and Oracle CEO Larry Ellison, to talk for the closing hour about "The Lessons of Steve Jobs." When both men were asked by Mossberg about what advice they had for aspiring entrepreneurs who'd like to replicate Steve's success, both had similar answers but Ellison, who was Jobs next door neighbor in Woodside, dominated the conversation. Want to be like Steve Jobs? Well you're not going to get there by trying, Ellison asserted.
 
Y Combinator's Harj Taggar On Bad Pitches, Learning To Code, And The Power Of Hacker News [TCTV] Top
Screen shot 2012-05-30 at 6.05.22 PMPaul Graham may be the most public face of Silicon Valley startup incubator Y Combinator, but as the firm has grown so has its managing team. One of the first people to join YC as a partner besides its founders was Harjeet Taggar, an Oxford-educated entrepreneur who first came on the startup scene as the co-founder of Auctomatic, a company in YC's 2007 class that went on to be acquired by Live Current Media in 2008. Though he's relatively young, once you hear Taggar speak for a few minutes you get why YC snapped him up as a partner...
 
Larry Ellison Has Learned To Embrace Cloud Computing, Not Convinced It's An "Incredible New Thing" Top
larry ellisonOracle's Larry Ellison has acquired a reputation as a cloud computing opponent — after all, he famously called the term "complete gibberish" a few years ago. Today, however, he said, "I'm no longer resisting the name. Call it what you want." In fact, Ellison made it sound like he doesn't get enough credit for starting the trend: "NetSuite was my idea. I called up Evan Goldberg and said, 'We're going to do ERP on the Internet.'" That, he said, was an early example of software-as-a-service, and Salesforce.com co-founder Marc Benioff (who has worked to tie his company's identity to the cloud) copied the idea a few months later, but "in a narrow way." (Apparently this got a smirk out of Benioff, who was in the audience.)
 
NASDAQ's Gamble With Facebook's Fortune Top
NASDAQ DICE FinishedNASDAQ had a choice. When its systems buckled under the titanic volume of Facebook IPO share orders, it could have pushed back trading a day, or at least recommended as much to Mark Zuckerberg and company. But as the IPO's scheduled time passed, NASDAQ made a cavalier decision to stumble forth on broken legs, pretending like little was wrong rather than halt trading as brokers asked. There seemed to be no plan for if things went wrong. An error-filled day of trading ensued, and confused investors pulled back. Financials aside, public perception is important for a public company. And when Facebook's share price sunk, public perception went down with it.
 
Kleiner Perkins Partner John Doerr Speaks Out On Lawsuit: "Our Firm Does Not Discriminate Based On Gender" Top
John Doerr PictureJohn Doerr, the longtime partner at Silicon Valley venture capital stalwart Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers who is perhaps the firm's most recognizable public face, has spoken out for the first time about the gender discrimination lawsuit filed against the firm earlier this month by partner Ellen Pao (news of which was first broken by TechCrunch last week.)
 
The Internet Never Forgets: Politwoops Saves The Tweets Your Politicians Tried To Delete Top
sunlight_foundation_logoOnce something is on the Internet, it's typically pretty hard to delete it. Unless somebody retweets a posting to Twitter, though, a deleted tweet it is pretty much gone forever. With Politwoops, however, the Sunlight Foundation is now preserving these tweets for posterity. Politwoops follows all the 433 official Twitter accounts for members of Congress, as well as President Obama's and Mitt Romney's. As Tom Lee, the director of Sunlight Labs, noted in today's launch announcement, "in politics, Twitter is part of the ever-present 'spin room' of the digital age. But unlike other mediums, the record of events can be edited; tweets deleted from twitter.com are hard or impossible to see after the fact."
 
Death To The Dock Connector? Apple Is Looking For A Connector Design Engineer Top
apple-dock-connector-to-usb-cableCould Apple really be looking to end their longstanding affair with the 30-pin Dock Connector? It's been a move that's been rumored for years, and a job opening at Cupertino for a Connector Design Engineer adds a bit of fuel to that fire. This person will be "responsible for managing multiple connector designs and developments in support of the iPod product lines." It goes on to describe that this task will "involve adaptation of existing connectors or complete new designs." It's apparently important enough to Apple that they've got another, very similar listing on their jobs page.
 
Sean Parker: Apple Tried To Keep Spotify Out Of The U.S. Top
photoAnswering a question at AllThingsD, Sean Parker confirmed that "there was some indication" that Apple tried to keep Spotify out of the U.S. market. "There was some indication that that was happening," Parker said, "It's a very small industry in a lot of ways, certainly smaller than it was 12 years ago," He joked.
 
So Why Is LinkedIn An IPO Standout? Top
Screen Shot 2012-05-30 at 1.57.16 PMEarlier this morning at D10 KPCB analyst Mary Meeker showed a pretty definitive slide about the current state of the public markets with regards to tech companies. "The private market is in a bubble," Meeker said, "We have a $1 billion fund, and didn't invest once in Q1 because the valuations too crazy." The problem with these valuations is that public market investors are more skeptical, Meeker asserted bringing up the above slide comparing the IPOs of Facebook, Zynga, Groupon, Pandora and LinkedIn. Because of this skepticism their valuations are suppressed, almost all were trading at 20% lower than their initial IPO pricing, all except LinkedIn that is. The public market has taken kindly to the career focused social network, which is currently trading at $100 a share, 137% above its strike price of $32.
 
MiniDates Schedules Real-Life (Legitimately) Blind Dates For You Top
Screen shot 2012-05-30 at 4.37.18 PMTraditionally, dating sites like eHarmony and OkCupid follow the same format. You input your info, browse through all the thumbnails accompanied by A/S/L, and send out a barrage of flirty messages. Then you wait. Maybe you're hit with some match-type options, but for the most part it's a lot of browsing/messaging. But a new crop of online dating services have found interesting ways to approach the space, not least of all MiniDates - Time2Meet. MiniDates joins Cheek'd and Coffee Meets Bagel in pushing a real-life connection much harder than a virtual one, by simply scheduling dates (or MiniDates) for you based on your schedule and suitor preferences. No messaging, no browsing, just a real-life blind date at a neutral, public location.
 
Flipboard Officially Opens Up Their Android Beta To Interested Testers Top
flipdroid3Well, that was quick. The news of an impending Flipboard Android beta only began making the rounds earlier this morning, and now the Flipboard team has opened up the beta process to anyone interested in taking the plunge. Users interested in taking the pre-release version of the app for a spin can mosey over to Flipboard's Android landing page, where they can sign up for the beta and wait patiently to receive a download link in their inbox. The confirmation email mentions that the waiting period could stretch up to 24 hours, though we're hearing that plenty of people are receiving their download links without too much of a delay.
 
Google Voice's New Update Lets Users Manage Anonymous Calls Top
google_voice_logo_medFor all its faults, Google Voice has gotten to be pretty solid with regard to how it routes calls from different groups of people, and today the search giant has gussied up the service even more. According to the official Google Voice blog, a new update now gives users more control over what to do with people who hide their phone numbers when they call. But let's back up a minute here.
 
Aaron Sorkin's Steve Jobs Movie Probably Won't Be "Cradle To Grave" Biography Top
aaron sorkinScreenwriter Aaron Sorkin offered some early thoughts today on the movie adaptation of Walter Isaacson's biography Steve Jobs, which he has signed on to write. Sorkin was speaking at the D10 conference, and it sounds like he hasn't actually written any of the screenplay yet — he said the initial stages of the process will look at lot more "like watching ESPN."
 
Mary Meeker: "We Are Still In Spring Training — Magnitude Of Upcoming Change Will Be Stunning" Top
re-imagining-computing-devicesMary Meeker's annual Internet Trends report is usually full of good stuff and this year is no exception. We already covered her comments about mobile monetization and the Facebook IPO, but one of the most interesting sections of her presentation were her thoughts about the future of the Internet. In her view, technology has already allowed us to re-imagine everything from book to news to note taking to crime awareness. Still, according to her, "we are still in spring training" and "the magnitude of upcoming change will be stunning."
 
InstaEDU On-Demand Video Tutoring Gets An A+ and $1.1M Seed From The Social+Capital Partnership Top
InstaEDU LogoIt's midnight before your final exam and you need help. Do you know where your tutor is? InstaEDU, says a $1.1 million seed round from former Facebooker Chamath Palihapitiya's fund The Social+Capital Partnership and several angels. Stumped high school and college students pay InstaEDU by the minute to video chat with tutors from top universities at any hour of the day. InstaEDU will use the seed to grow its team and build critical features like advanced scheduling. Co-founder Alison Johnston was the community manager of on-demand Q&A service Aardvark which was acquired by Google. With plenty of students and their parents happy to pay to get into a great school or job, now she's bringing the same satisfaction of instant answers to the lucrative tutoring space. In fact, 55% of student-tutor matches are made in under a minute and TechCrunch readers can get a free trial of InstaEDU at the end of this article...
 
Keen On… Big Data: Why UC Berkeley Might Have An Edge Over Stanford [TCTV] Top
Screen Shot 2012-05-29 at 4.20.11 PMBig data is not only hot in the startup world but also in the university. Stanford, with its intimate access to Silicon Valley is most readily associated with the study of big data. But UC Berkeley, the other great university in the Bay Area, is hot on Stanford's heels in terms of making sense of our new data driven economy. And later this week (May 31-June 1), Berkeley is hosting a conference about big data entitled Data Edge which promises to explore many of the most interesting questions about defining, understanding and extracting value from big data.
 
Microsoft Launches Office 365 For Government Top
office_365_logoGoogle scored an important win over Microsoft a few weeks ago when it won a $35 million U.S. government contract to bring its cloud-based office solution to the Department of the Interior. Microsoft's legacy solutions, of course, remain a staple in government offices, but as more and more agencies want to move their productivity and collaboration services to the cloud, Microsoft is running the risk of losing out in this lucrative market. Today, however, the company is launching a new service that should give more of its government customers, which tend to have very strict data security and privacy regulations, the option to move to the cloud. Microsoft's new Office 365 for Government is, in the company's own words, "a new multi-tenant service that stores US government data in a segregated community cloud."
 
If The Spec Is Dead, So Is The Nexus Tablet Top
Nexus-6-ReplicantsIt seems the much-rumored Google Nexus Tablet is nearing release. Citing Basemark benchmarking reports, the device is supposedly codenamed Grouper, running Android 4.1 (Jelly Bean) and employing a 7-inch, 1280 x 768 display powered by a 1.3GHz quad-core Tegra 3. If true, this means the upcoming tablet will likely lack 4G wireless connectivity since Nvidia's latest SoC is incompatible with current 4G chipsets. Without 4G, and since this is a forward-thinking Nexus device, it's safe to say that the tablet will lack a data wireless radio of any sort and will instead ship with just WiFi. Besides, even without the compatibility issues (which might be resolved), Google will not be able to launch a wireless-enabled tablet at a Kindle Fire price. They can't in essence eat their Jelly Bean and have it too.
 
True&Co Takes $2M Seed Funding From First Round, SoftTech, Others To Shake Up The Bra Industry Top
True&Co logoThe women's liberation movement once taught ladies to cast off their bras in solidarity and empowerment; now a new startup, founded by two women, is inverting that formula to make sure that when you put it back on, that bra fits like a glove. True&Co is launching an online bra fitting service and shop that takes a very traditional (and tedious) process -- finding bras you like that actually fit well -- and makes it quick and kind of fun, and it is doing it with $2 million in seed funding from a great list of investors: First Round Capital, SoftTech VC, Aileen Lee, Softbank Capital and former LinkedIn executive Ellen Levy. (Lee's investment comes from her new, yet-to-be-named seed fund, True says.)
 

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