Tuesday, June 1, 2010

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Android Chief Andy Rubin: Updates Will Eventually Come Once A Year Top
In an interview with the Silicon Valley Mercury News, Google VP Andy Rubin — who founded and leads the Android platform — shared some information about the future of the mobile OS. One of the more interesting answers he had concerned Android’s rapid pace of innovation, and how things may slow down a bit in the future. Since launching in fall 2008, Android has come an incredibly long way. In fact, in the interview Rubin acknowledges that the inital release felt more like a ‘.8′, rather than a full 1.0 release, but the platform has matured considerably with at least four major updates since then. However, many phones are still running versions of the OS that are months out of date, and developers have to worry about ensuring compatibility with each new upgrade. That’s going to change in the future: Rubin says that updates to Android are now coming around twice a year, and that once things settle down it will probably be more like once a year. So we launched it, and from our internal 0.8, we got to 1.0 pretty quickly, and we went through this iteration cycle. You’ve noticed, probably, that that’s slowed down a little bit. Our product cycle is now, basically twice a year, and it will probably end up being once a year when things start settling down, because a platform that’s moving — it’s hard for developers to keep up. I want developers to basically leverage the innovation. I don’t want developers to have to predict the innovation. In other words, Android will likely be adopting a more iPhone-like release schedule. While this isn’t fun to hear (I like getting my new features as soon as possible), it’s probably better for the health of the platform in the long run. Carriers/OEMs will be better able to keep up with rolling out upgrades, hopefully leading to less fragmentation, and developers won’t have to worry about optimizing for as many new releases. In another question, Rubin also identified which products we’re most likely see to see Android on beyond phones, namely PCs, cars, and TVs. This isn’t really a surprise — we’ve already seen a few cars running Android, and   Google TV debuted last month —  but it sounds like these aren’t just going to be viewed as Android side projects: Rubin says that Google will be doing “everything [it] can to get the big ones”. We’re at about 4 billion cell phones. About 1.4 billion Internet connected PCs — that includes desktop and laptops and everything else. Like 1.2 billion automobiles. Some 800 million TVs. And it’s like, “OK, let’s target the top four.” Let’s do everything we can to get the big ones. Remember, our business is volume, because it’s an advertising business and we want to delight a lot of people. And how do you delight a lot of people? You get in the products that they use every day. CrunchBase Information Andy Rubin Android Information provided by CrunchBase
 
Awareness Technologies Raises $6.5 Million For Threat Management Software Top
Enterprise threat management startup Awareness Technologies has raised $6.5 million from Brad Miller , the former CEO and Chairman of Perimeter eSecurity, and First New England Capital. Awareness develops InterGuard, a SaaS-based threat management platform that helps enterprises cover data loss prevention, web filtering, employee monitoring and laptop recovery. InterGuard allows businesses to limit access to certain software applications, PSP, chat, social networking sites and even tracks employee work output and productivity. The software also monitors, records and controls employee computer activity and detects and averts activities and data-flows that could put a company in jeopardy.
 
Paid iPhone Applications Tend To Top Rankings Longer Than Free Apps Top
(click image for a larger size) App store analytics startup Distimo just released its May report , and zoomed in on the average number of days applications across various categories maintain their top rankings in Apple’s App Store. Analyzing data collected from November 2009 to April 2010, the company found that paid applications in the Top Overall, Games, Business and Entertainment categories stay in these categories for 27, 39, 59 and 38 days on average, respectively. Free applications stay in the Top 100 for a significantly shorter time in those categories, with 19, 21 and 39 days on average, respectively. The exception to the rule seems to be the Entertainment category, in which free apps stay in the Top 100 for a slightly longer period of time than paid applications; 43 days compared to 38 days. The likely reason: there are approximately three times as many paid apps for the iPhone than there are free ones, so there’s less competition in the gratis segment. In the App Store, the majority of paid applications that have been in the Top 100 Overall during the entire period of 6 months measured fall into the Games and Entertainment categories. The paid applications that have been in the Top 5 for the longest period of time are Doodle Jump (140 days), RedLaser (73 days) and Skee-Ball (68 days). The paid application that has been number one for the longest period of time is Skee-Ball (24 days). The free applications that have been in the Top 5 for the longest period of time are Facebook (12 days) and Paper Toss (7 days). Zooming in on the iPad, the highest ranked paid iPad application in the Apple App Store in April 2010 was Pages, followed by GoodReader for iPad and Pinball HD. The highest ranked free iPad application in the Apple App Store was iBooks, followed by The Solitaire and Break HD Free. CrunchBase Information Distimo Information provided by CrunchBase
 
FetchBack Fetches $40 Million From GSI Commerce Top
Let the ad retargeting acquisitions begin. This morning, GSI Commerce announced it purchased FetchBack , an advertising startup which specializes in retargeting. The size of the cash deal was not disclosed, but one source puts it in the $40 million range. FetchBack raised a single round of $1 million in January, 2008 led by Gersh Venture Partners, which is now Metamorphic Ventures (a New York City venture firm with strong ad-tech portfolio which likes to put in small amounts of capital in startups which become self-sufficient quickly). Angel investors Erik Matlick, 24/7 co-founder Geoff Judge, and Jeff Stewart also invested. The company quickly became profitable and never needed to raise another round. CEO Chad Little will continue to run the business within GSI Commerce. The way it works is that if somebody visits an e-commerce site on the Web, FetchBack will show that same person related ads from that retailer or even the page they visited when they go elsewhere. The conversion rates are much higher than with standard display ads because they are being shown to people who have already shown an interest in the exact or similar products. GSI Commerce powers many online retailers. Adding a retargeting capability to its marketing services is a no-brainer, since retargeting is basically a way to drive customers back to your shopping site after they’ve left. One of the biggest problems e-commerce sites have is shopping cart abandonment. Retargeting also allows retailers to present the items in an abandoned shopping cart in the form of a display ad. On average, less than one percent of visitors to e-commerce sites end up purchasing anything. With retargeting, Fetchback is able to get that number up to 8 to 10 percent. The trick is getting the analytics right and drilling down to what works and what doesn’t for each individual potential shopper. Retargeting is a hot area right now in the ad world. French retargeter Criteo recently raised $7 million from Bessemer , and Google is getting into the game as well. CrunchBase Information FetchBack GSI Commerce Information provided by CrunchBase
 
Crowley, Founder Collective And IA Ventures Put $2.5M In Realtime Data Startup Metamarkets Top
Realtime data startup Metamarkets has raised $2.5 million in seed funding. The round included an all star team of investors: IA Ventures (who led the round), Village Ventures, True Ventures , Founder Collective , Mike Maples , Stan Shuman (Managing Director at Allen & Company), AOL Ventures , Jim Pallotta, Josh Stylman, Peter Hershberg , and Dennis Crowley . Metamarkets provides price data and predictive analytics to large-scale global media companies. Launched in late 2009, the company aims to solve the problem of ad price discovery on mobile and web platforms for media companies. Metamarkets aggregates billions of electronic media transactions to deliver dynamic price data, proprietary price and volume aggregations, and analytic media market views to sell-side media principals. The startup serves ad server data, order insertion data, targeting data, audience data, conversion data, and more, enabling media companies and publishers to shift strategy in realtime based on how web and mobile formats are monetizing. Founded by David Soloff, the former lead architect at ad startup Rapt (which was acquired by Microsoft in 2008), and Michael Driscoll, the founder of a data consultancy Dataspora, Metamarkets will use the new funding to build out the startup’s engineering team. While the company is currently serving its data to a number of media companies, Soloff declined to name which companies are using Metamarkets. CrunchBase Information Metamarkets Information provided by CrunchBase
 
StatCounter: IE6 Usage Falls Below 5% In The US, But IE8 Still On The Rise Top
Microsoft’s oft-lamented browser, Internet Explorer 6, may finally be put to rest . This will make many a Web developer happy – but also Microsoft itself . Web analytics company StatCounter claims its latest global data set shows IE6 usage in the US and Europe has fallen to 4.7 percent of the market from 11.5 percent a year ago. That said, IE8 usage in the US increased to 30.5 percent in May (up from 8.5 percent a year ago) while IE7 is currently at 16.6%, so it’s not all bad news for Redmond. Firefox 3.6 comes in second in terms of browser usage in the US, with almost 19.85%, while Google Chrome 4.0 only has some 6.5% of market share according to StatCounter. Update: Results from Net Applications paint a similar picture, although different numbers: the firm has Internet Explorer’s overall share dropping to below 60 percent from 67 percent and Firefox at the 24 percent mark, up 2 percent from the same period last year. NetMarketShare has Chrome's usage at 7 percent in May, up from 3 percent a year ago. Still according to Net Applications, Internet Explorer 8′s share in May surpassed 31% among Windows customers, the only OS on which Internet Explorer is available, and 28.94% share across all operating systems. Undoubtedly, major Internet services dropping support for IE6 on an ongoing basis ( YouTube , Google Docs and Sites , Google Reader , etc.) are advancing its impending death. But the reason Internet Explorer 6 is still around in the first place is likely because of some large corporations still clinging on to it despite massive security issues with the ancient browser. StatCounter also adds that Africa and Asia, where IE6 still has 20.8% usage, are making it harder to kill support for the browser already. Hopefully, everyone will soon see the light . (StatCounter says the data is based on an analysis of 15 billion page views – 3.8 billion from the US and 4.3 billion from Europe – for May 2010 collected from a network of over three million websites.) CrunchBase Information Windows Internet Explorer Information provided by CrunchBase
 

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