Saturday, September 29, 2012

Y! Alert: TechCrunch

Yahoo! Alerts
My Alerts

The latest from TechCrunch

Klout Would Like Potential Employers To Consider Your Score Before Hiring You. And That's Stupid. Top
6056125359_d96b0bfa05_zLet's put it out there right now, I am personally not a fan of Klout, which ranks people based on their Internet interactions and engagement on services like Twitter, Facebook and Google+. I have nothing against the company whatsoever, and this is a vertical that someone was going to get into sooner or later. However, I still feel like the whole concept is bunk.
 
A Venture Capitalist's E-Commerce Shopping List Top
Niren Shah - Norwest Venture PartnersEditor's note: Sergio Monsalve is a Partner at Norwest Venture Partners where he is focused on early and growth investments in the digital media, mobile, and social areas. Follow him on Twitter.  E-commerce is one of the fastest-growing sectors in technology and is poised to get even hotter, with sales expected to double between 2010 and 2015, according to eMarketer. So how can discerning investors find the most promising opportunities? They have to first take off the rose-colored glasses.
 
Five Big Changes In The iOS 6 App Store (And What Developers Should Do) Top
appstoreiconIs the new iOS App Store a step forward or step back for mobile app developers, users, and the app economy overall? Some developers are complaining that since the introduction of the Chomp-inspired App Store redesign in iOS 6, sales have noticeably dropped. Others say the changes are good for indie developers. Whichever side of the coin you're on, there are a number of reasons why developers are feeling the effects. In the new iOS App Store, the user interface now encourages a slower search method (flipping through cards, not scrolling through vertical lists), less attention is given to new releases and category-based search as "Genius" recommendations are given a higher billing, App Store SEO (ASO) is basically a black box that no one seems to understand, and more.
 
Canadian Internet Provider Rogers Experiencing Major, Prolonged Outage [Update: It's Back!] Top
rogersCanadian wireless and internet provider Rogers is currently experiencing a widespread, continued outage of services on both its cellular and cable home internet data networks, according to various user reports. Rogers is the second-largest internet provider in Canada by subscriber count, and the largest cellphone provider with somewhere around 10 million mobile customers.
 
Hate Top
big_blackIt's a powerful thing, this Internet of ours. The greatest tool for the distribution of knowledge, the administration of compassion, and development of conversation ever created. And the events of this week have shown how it can be a platform for tolerance and understanding, for love and peace. Particularly touching was the story of a man who, with the assistance of friends and the Internet, was able to confront a tormentor with his misdeeds, bringing the young troll to heel and redeeming a child who surely knew not what he did. An example for the ages of gentleness and cooler minds prevailing over humanity's companion and adversary, hate. Yes, isn't it pretty to think so?
 
The Search For Minority Entrepreneurs Is Over — Now They Need To Be Ready For Investors Top
minority-ntrepreneursEditor's note: Wayne Sutton is the founder and CEO of PitchTo, a mobile development lab that builds tools for investors to make smarter decisions and help entrepreneurs deliver exceptional pitches. This article is inspired by Dave McClure's "Women in Tech: Put Your Money Where Your Mouth Is." post. Follow Wayne on Twitter.  What a difference a year makes. Last year the question was "Where are the minority entrepreneurs?" It was highly motivated by the 2010 CBinsights Venture Capital Human Capital Report, which stated that only 1 percent of minority tech startup founders were founded by African-Americans. But the conversation about minority entrepreneurs didn't only apply to African-Americans, it also included women and Hispanics. The dialogue reached its peak by various snippets from the CNN's "Black in America 4" documentary and niche tech blogs.
 
Kickstarter: Helios, An iPhone Telepresence Rig On A Budget Top
aca97df6ac15f6781e4166361db41bf0_largeAnother day, another iOS-based telepresence rig. The Helios is a tiny little two-wheeled car that drives around with your iPhone or Touch in the passenger seat, allowing you to move around a scene and interact with remote subjects through the magic of telepresence. They are raising money through Kickstarter.
 
Facebook Updates Messenger For iOS With New Chat UI, iOS 6 And iPhone 5 Support Top
facebook_messenger_ios_logoFacebook just launched a new version of its Messenger app for iOS. Messenger, the company's stand-alone chat app, got a bit of a user interface refresh with this update, as well as a speed boost and official support for iOS 6 and the iPhone 5's larger display. Today's update comes just a bit more than a week after Facebook also launched an update to its Messenger app for Android and, for the most part, this update brings the iOS app's design on par with the Android app.
 
The Next Big E-Commerce Wave: Vertically Integrated Commerce Top
Boris WertzEditor's note: Boris Wertz is the founder of version one ventures, and has invested in more than 35 early-stage consumer Internet and mobile companies, including Chloe & Isabel, Julep, and Indochino. Follow him on his blog and Twitter. There has been more e-commerce innovation during the past year than there has been during the last decade. First, flash-sale and daily-deal sites brought a much-needed breath of fresh air to a vertical that hadn't seen much change since Amazon and eBay arrived on the scene. Now there's a whole new generation of e-commerce players.
 
Bootstrap's Maintainers Leave Twitter For GitHub And Obvious Corp., Will Move It Into Its Own Organization Top
Twitter BootstrapTwitter's Bootstrap, an open-source framework for quickly building web sites and apps, has been a massive success. It's even starting to spawn its own ecosystem of related services now. Mark Otto and Jacob Thornton, the two developers behind the project, however, have now decided to leave the company to pursue new opportunities at GitHub and Biz Stone's and Evan Williams' Obvious Corp. respectively.
 
Should You Trust Your Gut? The Answer Is Yes. Top
Screen Shot 2012-09-29 at 1.16.30 AMEditor's note: Derek Andersen is the founder of Startup Grind, a 30-city event series hosted in 15-countries that educates, inspires, and connects entrepreneurs. He's ex-Electronic Arts as well as the founder of Commonred. A few years ago I asked a successful entrepreneur for advice on what I should do with my latest product idea. His reply was simple. "Trust your gut. What does your gut tell you?" I confidently replied, "That this is a $100MM business." To which he added, "Then go for it." So that's exactly what we did. We went for it and a year later we didn't have a $100MM business or even a $10MM business. We didn't even have a….ok I'll stop there. But how did I get it so wrong? Is my gut untrustable? Was I wrong to follow it? Or was my stomach just acting up after a recent trip overseas? I recently sat down with Charles River Ventures Partner George Zachary who has had his fair share of big successes.
 
PSA For Win8 Devs: The Only Way To Distribute Your Metro Apps Is Through The Windows Store Top
3482.Windows Store_thumbHere is a reminder for developers who want to write apps for Windows 8's Metro mode (or whatever Microsoft prefers to call it these days): the only way to distribute your apps to consumers is through the Windows Store. This isn't actually a new policy but one that Microsoft announced a year ago. Judging from this Hacker News thread, though, this still comes as a surprise to many developers and it's clearly something Microsoft hasn't stressed enough in the run-up to the Windows 8 launch on October 26.
 
Gillmor Gang: Platformicide Top
Gillmor Gang test patternThe Gillmor Gang — John Borthwick, Robert Scoble, Kevin Marks, Keith Teare, and Steve Gillmor — watched in amazement as Twitter made good on its promise to hobble the core of its viral power adopter developers and users. By shutting down third-party clients to focus monetization on its core clients and the Web, Twitter leaves itself exposed to its challengers for control of the realtime wave. To some of the Gang, Apple's move to eject Google Maps in favor of its own immature product seems similarly motivated and fated to bad results. But Twitter has historically made these kinds of protective overreaching moves in order to protect the fledgling company from being overrun by more powerful competitors. This time it's different, as Twitter releases services designed to capitalize on the innovations of its ecosystem. The real calculation is whether the openings provided to Google+ and, to a lesser extent, Facebook can be leveraged before innovation dries up in the Twitter pipeline. A high-stakes game of Chicken.
 
Apple's Maps Is A Black Eye, Nothing More Top
IMG_9634Editor's Note: Jim Dalrymple is a former Editor at Large at Macworld, and contributing expert on Apple-related topics on CNN, Fox, CBS and ABC. You can follow Jim on Twitter at@jdalrymple, and on his blog The Loop. With the release of iOS 6 last week, Apple introduced a brand new version of Maps, the company's new turn-by-turn mapping application that replaced Google's offering on the iPhone. While the fervor over Maps has given Apple a black eye, it's certainly not the beginning of a downward spiral for the company, as some tech pundits like to say.
 
Lessons From The Dramatic Slow-Motion Death Of Wikitravel Top
broken-globeOnce upon a time, in 2003, there were two entrepeneurs with a dream. Their names were Evan Prodromou and Michele Ann Jenkins, and they dreamed of a collectively edited global travel guide -- a Wikipedia for travel, if you will. So they created Wikitravel. And it went over like the proverbial "lead zeppelin." Two years later, a company named Internet Brands bought it from them for $1.7 million; pretty good money for those long-lost days before the startup craze began. And Wikitravel thrived, and lo, it was good. Until Paradise came crashing down in flames.
 
Startup Success Requires The Drive For Data Top
Jeff MaEditor's note: Jeff Ma is the founder of tenXer, a startup that provides tools to help people better understand their performance, progress, and productivity at work. Previously, he helped start GolfSpan.com, CircleLending, and Citizen Sports. Follow him on Twitter. The first thing you learn when you start playing Blackjack is something called basic strategy - a decision matrix that tells you the correct play for every hand based on your cards and the dealer's exposed card. Data and statistics will tell you that basic strategy is always the optimal strategy. In fact, following it perfectly reduces the casino's edge over the average player from 3 percent to 0.5 percent.
 
Here Are The Singers Competing In Next Week's 'American Idol For The Geek Set' Top
silicon valley voice logoEarlier this month, I wrote about Silicon Valley Voice, a karaoke competition for the tech world hosted by Silicon Valley Bank and Coverflow (a cover band made up of techies including Mayfield Fund's Tim Chang, Facebook's Ethan Beard, and Fandalism's Philip Kaplan). Now, the finalists have been selected, and you don't even have to wait until next week's event to hear them sing. Coverflow member (and Mayfield managing director) Raj Kapoor  tells me that all of the regular tickets have sold out, with 800 RSVPs. But the organizers convinced Silicon Valley Bank to expand the budget, which means there's room for another 200 people.
 
Rest In Peace, Charles Alfred Eldon: A Pioneer Of Silicon Valley, A Role Model For This New Generation Top
180px-Eldon_005Decades before Steve Jobs, the Google founders, and Mark Zuckerberg, small groups of unglamorous technologists turned Santa Clara Valley into the world-changing region we are still reinventing today. My grandpa, Charles Alfred "Bud" Eldon, was one of them, a Hewlett-Packard engineer and executive since the days of the apricot orchards. He passed away at 7:45am this morning. I'm going to share a little bit about his life below, because my generation in Silicon Valley and the tech world needs to know about all the shoulders of giants we are standing on, and the heights we can also reach. Too many of us don't right now. His story begins in Hawaii during the Great Depression.
 
Ford CTO Paul Mascarenas On Bridging The Worlds Of Silicon Valley And Motor City [TCTV] Top
Screen Shot 2012-09-28 at 5.41.04 PMWhen you think about Detroit, you don't often think first about technology; you think about automobiles. But the reality is that nowadays, the two industries are more intertwined than ever. Indeed, it's becoming increasingly apparent that, as Marc Andreessen likes to say, "software is eating the world" and becoming more central to the future of many traditionally non-techie companies. Ford Motors is no exception to this trend.
 
Post-SingTel Acquisition, Photo Aggregation App Pixable Gets An Image-Centric Redesign Top
pixable_newA little more than a week after announcing its acquisition by telecom giant SingTel, Pixable is releasing a substantially redesigned version of its iPhone photo aggregation app. As with the old version, the Pixable app aggregates photos and videos from social networks, highlighting the ones that are most likely to be interesting to you. The big theme with the redesign, the company says, is "letting the photos shine." That may seem like an odd claim for a photo app — weren't the photos front-and-center before? Well, the change is obvious when you compare at the old home page and the new one.
 

CREATE MORE ALERTS:

Auctions - Find out when new auctions are posted

Horoscopes - Receive your daily horoscope

Music - Get the newest Album Releases, Playlists and more

News - Only the news you want, delivered!

Stocks - Stay connected to the market with price quotes and more

Weather - Get today's weather conditions




You received this email because you subscribed to Yahoo! Alerts. Use this link to unsubscribe from this alert. To change your communications preferences for other Yahoo! business lines, please visit your Marketing Preferences. To learn more about Yahoo!'s use of personal information, including the use of web beacons in HTML-based email, please read our Privacy Policy. Yahoo! is located at 701 First Avenue, Sunnyvale, CA 94089.
Posted by at

No comments:

Post a Comment

Subscribe to: Post Comments (Atom)