Tuesday, October 2, 2012

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Marc Andreessen On Facebook's Monetization Plans: Successful Companies Defer Gratification Top
marc andreessenThere's lots of criticism going around about Facebook's monetization strategy, and in a similar vein, like it's pretty common to criticize startups that grow without worrying about revenue. But venture capitalist and Facebook board member Marc Andreessen said today that's looking at things the wrong way. In fact, he argued that what great companies have one thing in common — "a willingness to defer gratification." Andreessen, along with Sheryl Sandberg, was interviewed on-stage by Charlie Rose at the IAB MIXX advertising conference. He said it's common to complain about Facebook and other new companies by saying that they're just run by "a bunch of kids", "Facebook will never be able to monetize", and that "it's all falling apart." Then these companies turn into big businesses, and the critics say, "Wow, that was a fluke."
 
Scaring Users Into Buying Bogus AntiVirus And Porn Scrubbing Software Gets 160M Fine Top
scareware_sysdefscan_crop1The Federal Trade Commission brought the hammer down on predatory advertisers who scare users into believing that their system is infected with virus and porn. The peddlers of so-called "scareware" are facing a $163 million fine for  misrepresenting "expressly or by implication, that they had conducted scans of consumers' computers and detected security or privacy issues, including viruses, spyware, system errors, and pornography." Users who surf the internet enough will recognize scareware advertisements as the ones pretending to have found malicious content on their computer and then, conveniently, offer an expensive solution ($30-$100) to fix it.
 
Sheryl Sandberg: We're More Afraid Of Losing By Standing Still Top
Screen Shot 2012-10-02 at 1.13.16 PMIn response to a question by Charlie Rose at New York's IAB conference, "Have you guys made assumptions that were not right?" Facebook COO Sheryl Sandberg confirmed yes, and referenced Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg's comments about the failure of Facebook's HTML 5 efforts at TechCrunch Disrupt. "You want these companies taking risks," co-interviewee Marc Andreessen said defending Facebook's moves, "When tech companies start being conservative, that's when they go completely sideways." Andreessen also referenced a "hit rate for new ideas": "If a company is hitting more than 50% of its goals it's too conservative."
 
Forget Saying Happy Birthday To Your Friends On Facebook, It's All About Gifts Now Top
7111590033_4ca79f297f_zWe know that Facebook is in full-gear when it comes to monetization. It was obvious the second that the company announced its "Gifts" offering, which lets you send a physical or virtual item to your buddies. It's kind of cool, and the first gift I've ordered is in the mail. One of the things that I enjoy doing the most on Facebook is saying "Happy Birthday!" to someone on their wall. Facebook had made this a super simple process by adding a quick link on your Newsfeed that said "Write on their Timeline." Well, that easy shortcut is gone now, and "Give them a gift" has replaced it.
 
Developer Services Lumped Together In The Oracle "Cloud" With Everything But The Kitchen Sink Top
oraclecloud-1Oracle made a gesture to developers today with a new platform play it unveiled at Oracle OpenWorld. But a closer look shows Oracle is lumping developer services with every possible "cloud" offering you can imagine that the company sells. It's all of course still on the Oracle cloud, a beast of sorts - part cloud, part hosted and something in between.
 
Crowdsourced Music Streaming Service Jelli Raises $9 Million, Plans To Go International Top
2_OnAirJelli, the crowdsourced social radio platform, is today announcing $9 million in additional funding, in a round led by new investors Intel Capital and Relay Ventures. The round also saw participation from existing investor First Round Capital, as well as individuals including Roger Ames, former Chairman of EMI Music. Related to the funding news, Jelli also detailed its growth over the past year, saying that it has expanded its user base by 250% to reach 2 million listeners per month, and it has expanded its lineup of station partners, and is now delivering 500% more radio ad impressions than it did a year ago.
 
Steam Starts Selling Windows Apps Just Before Windows Store Launch Top
Steam-LogoAs anticipated in August, digital game seller Steam is now offering Windows non-game applications. It acts like a traditional app store. After the reviewing process, apps are available to purchase in a centralized store. Users can choose where to install their apps in the latest Steam beta. However, like Amazon's Appstore for Android, Valve can discount apps if it thinks that it would benefit the customer and the developer.
 
Unison Wants To Build Better Online Meeting, Chat And Collaboration Spaces For Business Top
Snapshot 9:26:12 12:34 AMOnline communication tools for business are many, but as someone who has used a fair number of them in his life, I can tell you there's still room for improvement. That's what Unison hopes to provide, with its mobile, web and desktop based tool that combines elements of standards like Campfire and Yammer with principles of real-world interaction to hopefully making working with a distributed team feel less distributed.
 
Vetoed: Warrantless Spying Is Here To Stay Top
tower-flickr-kiwanjaCalifornia Governor Jerry Brown struck down a privacy bill that would have required a warrant before tracking the location of a citizen's mobile device, signaling a trend among Democrats and Republicans, at all levels of power, that warrantless spying has become a staple of American life. Earlier this month, the American Civil Liberties Union reported that wiretapping has nearly quadrupled under President Obama. After Senate Democrats refused to pass a cybersecurity law for America's infrustructure installations, such as power plants, the Obama administration is reportedly penning an executive order to push through some of the measures.
 
Behold! The First Fancily-Printed Panoramic Photo From The iPhone 5 Top
IMG_3403If you've wondered what you can do with your iPhone 5 panoramic photos, wonder no more. The folks at CanvasPop have proven that you can print your big honking photos onto big honking paper so you can have a hugenormously long photo on your wall. The guys at CanvasPop told me to go take a panoramic picture and they set it to print at 10"x50" (the max is 15"x75"). The photo, arguably, is pretty terrible, but to prove it could be done, they slathered it down onto the material and now there exists an under-lit, vaguely menacing photograph of Sunset Park in Brooklyn.
 
A Perfected Help Center Could Be Facebook's First Step Toward The Search Engine Promised Land Top
6300758263_467cf1b8cb_zHere's the deal: Facebook is playing around with search right before our eyes. CEO Mark Zuckerberg even alluded to that fact at Disrupt. Today, Facebook introduced a revamped Help Center on its site. That might not sound like a big deal at first, but when you think about how many users are on the site daily, it just might be the most important feature that the public company has to offer these days. Facebook can't have the same loosey goosey attitude it likes to have about rolling out and testing new features if it doesn't have a solid Q&A/Help offering.
 
Bollocks To Blind Clicks, Every URL Deserves A Preview Top
Lemmings"Check out this link: http://bit.ly/QGuBiv " If you clicked that, you experienced something dumb but familiar on the web -- blindly clicking a link only to end up somewhere you've been before or you didn't want to go. Come on, Internet. We're better than this. We're too busy, and there's too much beauty, humor, and knowledge abound for us to waste time. Every URL deserves a preview. Who's gonna make that happen?
 
Leaked iPad Mini Pics Show Nano-SIM Card Slot, Anodized Aluminum Casing Top
ipad-mini-uk-leak-1The iPad mini is taking shape. Pics of the 7.85-inch tablet hit the interwebs today and show a tablet similar to the iPhone 5. The tablet is said to sport a nano-SIM card slot for wireless network support. The casing is also reportedly anodized aluminum, a material iPhone 5 owners quickly discovered scratches very easily. These pics match the form factor foreshadowed by the 3rd party cases currently available from Chinese manufacturers. The pics show a tablet that looks more like a big iPhone rather than a smaller iPad. The side bezel is smaller and the speakers are placed on the bottom, flanking a Lightning port.
 
Google's Motorola Unexpectedly Withdraws Its Latest ITC Complaint Against Apple Top
motorola_mobilityIn August, Google's Motorola Mobility filed a patent-infringement lawsuit against Apple with the U.S. International Trade Commission (ITC), asking the ITC to basically ban the import of virtually all of Apple's hardware products. A few weeks ago, the ITC decided to formally investigate these claims. Now, however, Motorola has unexpectedly withdrawn its complaint.
 
Opera 12.10 Beta Now Supports SPDY, Retina Displays And More Web Standards Top
opera_next_OOpera just released the first beta of Opera 12.10 for Windows, Mac and Linux. With this update, which should reach the stable release channel within the next few weeks, Opera's desktop browser now supports Google's SPDY protocol, Apple's Retina displays and numerous new web standards like the Fullscreen API and the Page Visibility API. Opera 12.10 will also feature improved support for the increasingly popular WebSocket API.
 
Ube Aims To Make Home Automation Cheaper With IP-Enabled Smart Devices, Mobile App Top
88389_Ube_logo_largeHome automation in its current state can be costly and, more importantly, unintuitive. But platforms like iOS and Android have made the idea of automating one's home easier, more accessible and significantly cheaper. Today at DEMO, Austin-based Ube ("yoo-bee") is showing off its "Internet of things" wares, including an app that can virtually control any IP-based smart device in your home. So far, the company has raised a $300,000 seed round to complete its first round of prototype hardware and first rev of the aforementioned mobile app (iOS, Android).
 
Social Reading App Readmill Adds Adobe DRM and PDF, Adds New Stores Top
readmill_teamSocial reading iPad app Readmill has been slowly increasing its footprint among publishers and today announces new support for Adobe DRM-protected ePub and PDF formats. The new app is coming next week, but you can grab it an update later. While the startup has oft been associated with socialising books, its ability to make excerpts from PDFs sharable across its social network of users will substantially widen its appeal beyond books to reports and research and academic papers. It has also integrated into the Google Play and the Kobo store.
 
Lenovo Computers, Soon To Be Made In America Top
lenovo-usaLenovo is looking to set up shop in America but don't expect your next ThinkPad computer to sport a Made In The USA sticker just yet. IBM offloaded its computer business to China-based Lenovo in 2005. This brought harsh criticism upon IBM, a shining example of American success. But soon Lenovo will be able to advertise something long forgotten by American computer companies Dell and HP. Lenovo plans to open up an assembly facility in North Carolina, thus becoming the first major computer company to build computers on American soil in a generation.
 
Why Apple Being Sued Over Passbook Brings Back Unpleasant Memories Of Lodsys Top
iOS-6-PassbookApple has been sued over Passbook, newly discovered court documents show. The suit was filed by Ameranth, a San Diego company that wears its patents proudly on its sleeve (or the front page of its website, in a literal sense). The suit claims that Apple infringed four patents that revolve around wireless synchronization tech to do with mobile payments, point-of-sale systems and other issues related to Passbook's ability to digitize hotel bookings, airline tickets, reward cards, coupons and other items.
 
comScore: Samsung Flat, Android Grows Stronger In U.S.; Apple Grew Most Leading Up To iPhone 5 Launch Top
muscle mancomScore today released its latest U.S. mobile market rankings, covering usage by 30,000 consumers over a three-month period ending August 2012 -- that is, in the period just before the launch of Apple's newest iPhone, and during the time when Samsung was slapped with a $1 billion+ fine over a patent suit brought against it by Apple. In that time, Samsung retained its position as the country's most popular handset maker, covering both smartphones and feature devices, but its share actually remained flat, at 25.7% of all users, while Apple's share grew the most and other top players declined. Google's Android OS, meanwhile, solidified its position as the most dominant smartphone platform, now being used on nearly 53% of all smartphones.
 

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