Tuesday, November 2, 2010

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Moving Beyond Electric Motorcycles, Mission Motors Becomes EV Tech Supplier Top
San Francisco-based Mission Motors has gained some recognition in the Valley for its flagship electric motorcycle, the Mission One Superbike . The sleek vehicle, which features a lithium ion battery park, can reach speeds of 150 mph and go for 150 miles on a single charge. The problem is, it’s not quite ready for prime time. Despite earlier promises for a Q4 2010 release and then a Q2 2011 release, production has been marred by delays and there is now no clear visibility on a delivery date for consumers. Given the recent setbacks, Mission Motors is wisely diversifying its business beyond the Mission One. On Tuesday, the startup unveiled a new unit: Mission Electric Vehicle Technology, or MissionEVT. MissionEVT will suppy vehicle manufacturers (from motorcycles to cars to trucks) with electric vehicle technology, including “energy storage systems, drive systems and software intelligence,” the company said in a statement. In addition, MissionEVT will also offer integration services for their clients, such as electric drive expertise and test facilities. “Our company will be able to expand into new markets, bringing the advances we have made in EV technology to multiple vehicle platforms and manufacturers,” CEO Jit Bhattacharya said in a statement. “This creates a tremendous high-volume opportunity for Mission’s powertrain technology, while solving a critical need for vehicle manufacturers trying to keep pace with the rapid electrification of vehicles.” The powertrain technology offered by MissionEVT is based on the research and development for Mission One. According to Bhattacharya, this development process yielded several core building blocks— in areas like battery storage and software— which can now be molded applied to other vehicle types.
 
ClearMyInbox Adds A Comprehensive Task Manager To Gmail (Invites) Top
Gmail is a great communications platform for personal and professional use but its task manager is fairly simple. Google recently launched Priority Inbox, which does help prioritize email, but tasks are can be a separate tool that people use for organization. Today, the folks at Wizehive are launching ClearMyInbox, a plug-in that adds a comprehensive task manager (like Producteev ) to any Gmail account. The app is in private beta but we have 1000 invites for TechCrunch readers; just use the code “tcrunch” here. Similar to Rapportive, ClearMyInbox displays your task list to the right of the Gmail screen. It allows you to turn emails into tasks, create tasks, manage your own task list, move items up and down lists, mark items as complete, and assign tasks to others from within Gmail without having to log into another system. And you can sync your tasks and task lists with an iPhone app and with WizeHive accounts. Similar to WizeHive, ClearMyInbox organizes tasks and task lists into Workspaces. You can share workspaces with different groups of people (ClearMyInbox currently limits you to creating 3 workspaces). The tool is free and currently works with Chrome and Firefox. CrunchBase Information WizeHive Information provided by CrunchBase
 
The Times UK Lost 4 Million Readers To Its Paywall Experiment Top
Back in June, News Corp put two more of its newspapers, other than the Wall Street Journal, behind a paywall: The Times of London and the Sunday Times . We kind of expected it to be a disaster , but now we actually have some results. The company announced that it signed up 105,000 paying subscribers, plus another 100,000 who were already subscribers to the print newspaper. But what did the Times lose? According to comScore, the Times UK website saw its online readership decline by 4 million unique visitors a month worldwide to 2.4 million, or a 62 percent drop. Pageviews fell off an even steeper cliff, plummeting 90 percent from an estimated 41 million in May, 2010 to 4 million in September, 2010. People did what you’d expect them to do when faced with a paywall at a news site. They said, “No, thanks” and clicked away to another site. So is this tradeoff worth it and will other newspapers like the New York Times suffer the same fate once they erect planned paywalls? Mathew Ingram at GigaOm explains why this experiment looks like a failure. Before we pile on here, let’s take a look at those numbers. Basically, those 50,000 monthly subscribers are paying $12.80 a month, or $640,000 a month total. Let’s say the other 55,000 pay-as-you-read crowd is generating another $160,000 a month in subscription revenues (I am being generous here and assuming two days a month per person at $1.60 per day). That comes to $800,000 a month, or $9.6 million a year in online subscription revenues. What did they give up in online advertising revenues? At 41 million estimated pageviews a month, assuming a $5 CPM (cost-per-thousand-impressions), that was only $200,000 a month in online advertising revenues. I am not counting the Sunday Times site here, but the lion’s share of the traffic went to the Times UK site. Maybe the average CPMs were higher if the online ads were bundled together with more expensive print ads, but in order to match its paltry subscription revenues the Times online ads would have to command a $20 CPM, which is really high for a general news site. Depending on the actual CPM, financially they are doing at least two to four times better than they were before. And that is with only about 1.5 percent of their former readers becoming paying subscribers. You don’t need that many subscribers to make up for lost advertising revenues online. But the way the (offline) media business works is that subscriptions and advertising go hand in hand. the more subscribers you can show advertisers, the more they are willing to pay. On the Web, that calculus breaks down, so media companies are forced to choose between going after advertising revenues or subscription revenues, but rarely both. Whether or not going behind a paywall makes sense depends on two things: 1) how many paying subscribers can you get with a paywall versus 2) how big an audience can you get with a free site. Could the Times UK double or quadruple its online audience if it were still free? Alternatively, could it raise its advertising rates. That all depends on how good its articles are and whether they can attract a growing audience. On the other hand, maybe it’s easier for the Times to add another 50,000 or 100,000 paying subscribers. The fact that News Corp decided to put the paper behind a paywall speaks volumes about which path it thinks is going to be easier. But media businesses require advertisers. They always have, they always will. Advertisers want to reach broad audiences. The number of loyal readers willing to pay for an online subscription to the Times will peak eventually if it hasn’t already. Once it does, where will the Times go from there? CrunchBase Information News Corporation Information provided by CrunchBase
 
Google TV Fragmentation Starts At Launch. The Key Differences Between The Logitech Revue And Sony Internet TV Blu-ray Player Top
Google TV launched on two retail product lines: The Logitech Revue and Sony Internet TV. I have both of them and there are definitely some clear distinctions between the two. I’m not sure one is entirely better than another, but it’s strange, although not without precedent, to see Google TV implemented differently. It’s just more fuel for the Android comparison. The Logitech Revue seems a bit more consumer-friendly where the Sony Google TV Blu-ray player has Sony’s distinct industrial feel throughout the hardware and the software. The Logitech option ships with a touchpad-equipped full keyboard where Sony opts for a QWERTY keypad controller slightly smaller than the a PS3 controller. One does the Internet better, while the other plays nicer with more AV hardware. There’s enough difference here to at the very least cause several interested shoppers to pause, stare at the two for a bit and then move on in a daze. Read More
 
Google Voice Is Having Serious Trouble Making Outbound Calls. This Is Bad. (Updated) Top
If you want to be a phone company you can’t go dead . Ever. People rely on their mobile phones for everything these days, so when calls aren’t going through it’s a really big deal. And as far as we can tell, Google Voice is currently having some serious issues. Update , 12:15PM PST: After over an hour of issues, Google says that the problem should be resolved. Both Michael Arrington and I use Google Voice exclusively for our phone calls. And this morning, we simply can’t place calls: we’ll dial a number, hear the familiar rings as we wait for our contact to answer, and… nothing. The phone just keeps ringing forever — it never even gets to the recipient’s voicemail. The worst part is that most people probably don’t even realize that anything’s wrong, because when you initiate a call  it sounds like everything is working fine because you still hear those familiar rings. We’ve tried a handful of different setups to figure out what’s going on. We’re both on Nexus Ones, so it’s possible (though unlikely) that the problem is associated with this handset in particular. Update : Based on comments below it’s affecting other handsets as well. When we place a call directly from our Nexus Ones, it actually does go through to the recipient, but it comes from a random number and when they go to pick up they hear silence. We also tried initiating a call using Google Voice’s web interface (you enter the phone number you want to call, and it calls both your phone and your contact’s phone). This doesn’t work at all. The only thing that does seem to work is Google Voice’s integration with Gmail. Which is great if you’re sitting at a computer, and useless if not. The only consolation is that inbound calls are still working. Google is looking into the problem, and while it doesn’t seem to be affecting all users, there are clearly a significant number of people having this problem. Google has given us this statement: “We’re aware of the issue, which is affecting some Google Voice users, and are working on a fix.” This isn’t the first time Google Voice has had issues with reliability — it had a major outage back in April 2008, when it was still GrandCentral. I’ve also encountered sporadic problems over the last year that I’ve used it (though no worse than I used to have from AT&T). CrunchBase Information Google Voice Information provided by CrunchBase
 

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