The latest from TechCrunch
- Amazon's Cloud Player Tests The Limits Of The Record Labels' Patience
- Ex-Microsoft Games Chief Apologizes For 'Consolization' Of Gaming
- Angel Investors Counter Y Combinator Start Fund With New $100 Million Early Stage "End Fund"
- How Fast Is Your Site? Measure It With Google's Page Speed Online
- April Fools 2011: The Big List
| Amazon's Cloud Player Tests The Limits Of The Record Labels' Patience | Top |
| Amazon may have introduced its digital locker music service, the Cloud Player, before similar services from rivals Google and Apple (that are widely believed to be launching this year), but that doesn't mean it will be an easy existence. Not long after the company published a note on its Web site inviting users to give Cloud Player a try did one of the major record labels offer a warning. "We are disappointed that the locker service that Amazon is proposing is unlicensed by Sony Music," a Sony spokesman said. Is Amazon on a collision course with the music industry, and if it is, could that be a good thing for consumers? Read more… | |
| Ex-Microsoft Games Chief Apologizes For 'Consolization' Of Gaming | Top |
| Robbie Bach, the former president of Microsoft’s Entertainment and Devices division, has apologized to PC gamers for the "consolization" of their hobby. "Am I happy to have been a part of the destruction of PC gaming? No, of course not. But I am proud of the fact that I’ve helped convince a generation of gamers that it’s cool to pay $10 for a pair of virtual sunglasses and that playing online should be considered a premium feature. Look, guys, no one’s stopping your from installing Doom II and playing through that again, right? I mean, what’s the difference between that and Black Ops, really?" Read more… | |
| Angel Investors Counter Y Combinator Start Fund With New $100 Million Early Stage "End Fund" | Top |
| In a move reminiscent of AngelGate , Silicon Valley’s top angel investors are banding together to counter what they’re considering an existential threat. That threat? Start Fund , a new investment entity created by DST’s Yuri Milner and Ron Conway’s SV Angel. Start Fund shocked Silicon Valley in January when they announced that they’d offer every new Y Combinator startup $150,000, site unseen and without any due diligence. Angel investors panicked, realizing that Start Fund would likely result in soaring valuations. Y Combinator startups were no longer cash strapped, and negotiating leverage moved dramatically in their favor. “Start Fund was created to take traditional angel investors out at the knees,” said one such investor. “It’s highly irresponsible to invest in companies you’ve never met, and there will be unintended consequences that could hurt Silicon Valley over the long run.” Top angel investors were already meeting regularly to align investment strategies to keep startup valuations down. The collusion involved an unspoken agreement (known as the “ $4 million line “) not to compete for deals but rather to let one angel lead a deal and set valuation and then that angel would let the others invest alongside them. “That was a superior strategy and we were successfully keeping startup valuations at reasonable levels,” said investor Josh Felser at the time adding that “nothing we did was illegal because it wasn’t in writing.” But Start Fund changed the rules so much that in the last couple of months, say investors I’ve spoken with, the valuations of startups taking investment has increased dramatically. “Start Fund is the single biggest threat to our existence, and we have to adapt immediately” investor Jeff Clavier said at the Web 2.0 Expo earlier this week. Adapt they have. In a joint announcement today on Angellist , top angel funds First Round Capital, Felicis Ventures, FLOODGATE, SoftTech VC, 500 Startups, and Freestyle Capital, and nearly fifty individual angel investors, annouced End Fund , which plans to invest $1 million in 100 new startups immediately. Like Start Fund, entrepreneurs do not need to pitch their business idea or have any products built or even designed. “We’re investing in people, not ideas,” says First Round Capital’s Josh Kopelman in the release. Dave McClure , principal at participating fund 500 Startups, will lead End Fund as the fund’s only general partner. McClure was chosen, say insiders, based on his ability to make quick investment decisions based on little or no information at all. Last year, for example, McClure invested in a startup who gave him a ride to a meeting. "You did this without any due diligence or research into the company?" I asked him at the time. His answer – "Yes, but I had a referral from someone." “This is a blanket $1 million investment offer to virtually any new technology startup,” says McClure. Like Start Fund, the money is offered as a convertible note with very few conditions. Startups must fill out a web form containing five basic questions about their startup, including a one word description of the business, and agree never to take an investment from Start Fund. The first 100 startups to complete the web form and agree to the basic terms will be given the $1 million via a wire transfer. There is some fine print beyond the initial requirements. Applying entrepreneurs must also have their own computers, internet access and an email account. And the company’s next round of financing cannot be closed at a pre-money valuation of more than $4 million, and the company is only permitted to raise equity in the future from the funds and individual angel investors involved with End Fund. “Unlike Start Fund, which limits its investments to Y Combinator companies, End Fund will invest in any startup at all, with virtually no questions asked and on a first come, first served basis.” The group says that this will reduce risk considerably because of the deeper pool of talent they have to tap v. Start Fund. And the fact that only the first 100 startups to apply will get the funding means that the fund will automatically be structured to favor entrepreneurs who can make decisions and then execute very, very quickly. “We are at a unique point in history, where any two people can create a new startup and have a nearly certain chance of at least modest success,” says McClure . “Even if the product fails completely , Google and Facebook will compete to acquire the team and investors will at least get their money back.” Milner and the SV Angel team could not be reached for comment | |
| How Fast Is Your Site? Measure It With Google's Page Speed Online | Top |
| Editors note : The following guest post is written by Josh Fraser . Josh is the co-founder of a new startup called Torbit which automatically optimizes websites for speed. Yesterday Google announced Page Speed Online , which provides a quick and easy way to accurately measure the speed of your website directly from the web. Previously available only as a browser add-on, Google Labs launch allows you to analyze your site from anywhere and receive instant feedback on making it faster. Chances are, your website could perform better—all of ours could. There are a lot of tools online that only measure server response time, giving an inaccurate picture of your site's speed. For example, blazing fast servers might return your HTML in a fraction of a second, but visitors to your site will still be waiting for images to download or javascript to be executed. In contrast, Page Speed Online uses a webkit-based renderer to time all components of your site for a more complete picture of its performance. Page Speed Online is simple to use. Just enter a URL and get instant suggestions for performance improvements on your site. Page Speed Online gives you a score out of 100 and breaks down suggestions by their priority. Google caches the results, making it faster to use than comparative tools like WebPageTest which offers more features. With Page Speed Online you can also get mobile-specific recommendations. For instance, since mobile device CPUs are less powerful than desktop CPUs, suggestions that reduce CPU consumption will be featured more prominently. Performance matters. We all know that. Everyone can relate to the frustration of waiting on a site that takes forever to load. Website owners in particular should care about performance. The correlation between the speed of your website and revenue has been shown over and over again. Improving your site's performance is the easiest way to increase pageviews, conversions and sales. For example, Yahoo found that a 400ms improvement to the speed of their site increased their pageviews by 9%. Firefox shaved 2.2 seconds off their average page load time and increased download conversions by 15.4%. Shopzilla reduced their loading time from 7 seconds to 2 and increased their pageviews by 25% and revenue by 7-12%. Google has been a long-time champion of making the internet faster. Not only did it rise to prominence by being the fastest search engine, but it also encourages other sites to be fast by using site speed in its web search ranking . Google has also released a slew of tools to help website owners measure and improve the performance of their sites. Google released Page Speed plugins for Firefox and Chrome and include performance data in its webmaster tools. Just yesterday, Steve Souders announced HTTPArchive which keeps an archive of how top websites are built and tracks their performance ranking over time. The data is being recorded using real browsers so the archive is an accurate representation of the experience of actual visitors. Performance is obviously a priority for Google and it's something we all value. Venture capitalist Fred Wilson even calls speed "the #1 feature for startups". Page Speed Online is an important step for the web because it's lowering the bar for people who want to do performance analysis on their sites. You no longer have to download desktop software, install a plugin or even have a copy of the browser that you're testing – all you need is any browser. Google employee and performance guru, Steve Souders told me a story from a party he attended where a startup CTO was asking him for site improvement suggestions: I didn’t have my laptop handy and was about to give up, but then I remembered Page Speed Online. From my mobile phone I was able to run his site through Page Speed Online and give him specific performance fixes. On top of that were the suggestions for mobile. Page Speed Online provides performance analysis for any website for desktop and mobile from any web client. I also talked with the tech lead for Page Speed Online, Bryan McQuade and asked him what was next for the service. He says: Going forward we’re planning to add even more mobile-targeted analysis to the open-source Page Speed SDK, which powers Page Speed Online, our Page Speed browser extensions, and is used by WebPagetest and other sites. Of course, Page Speed Online will only tell you that your site is slow; it won't fix it for you (although there is an Apache module that helps). Our company, Torbit , and others such as Disrupt runner-up CloudFlare and Blaze.io , are working to automate all these best-practises to make websites fast. Torbit is still in private BETA, but you can sign up now to get in before our public launch. CrunchBase Information Josh Fraser Torbit CloudFlare Google Information provided by CrunchBase | |
| April Fools 2011: The Big List | Top |
| Yes, folks, that’s right. That special, special time of year is upon us. It's April Fools 2011! We take April Fools pretty seriously around here, so we’ll be constantly updating this post with the best April Fools jokes and pranks the World Wide Interwebernets has to offer. All night and all day. As long as it takes. If you find a gem, please share it with us in the comments. Thank you in advance. So, without further ado, here is Aol HuffingtonCrunch’s big list of April Tomfoolery: The April Foolings An Airline Finally Offers Child-Free Flights Ryanair beats most to the punch with an announcement that the Irish airline will be offering child-free flights beginning in October. “ When it comes to children we all love our own but would clearly prefer to avoid other people's little monsters when travelling. While half our passengers would like us to divide our cabins up into 'adult' and 'family' areas it is not operationally possible due to our free seating policy, with optional priority boarding” , said Head of Communications Stephen McNamara. Google Places Filed As Spam TechCrunch reports that the internal war at Google continues, as Google Places is officially filed under “spam”, and removed from Google search. Google Chief Revenue Officer Nikesh Arora was even spotted on Demand CEO Richard Rosenblatt’s yacht, Adsense. Marissa Mayer was even quotes as saying, “Screw the webspam team", and "It's not like people are going to start using Bing". You Can Joke About Rosenblatt’s Company, But Not His Yacht TechCrunch reports that Demand CEO Richard Rosenblatt was none-too-happy about Mike revealing details about his yacht, Adsense. Maybe if he had enough sense not to call it Adsense… Spotify Kills European Service To Go American TechCrunch’s Paul Carr reports that everybody-not-living-in-America’s favourite music service, Spotify , is officially ceasing all international operations in an effort to fund the company’s American infiltration. That’ll teach ‘em. Sean Parker, one of the company's first US investors, told TechCrunch, “Europe isn't cool. You know what's cool? America." Atlassian Launches Angry Nerds Atlassian is launching its own take on hit Angry Birds….Angry Nerds. “What do you do when you have bugs in your code? Send in the Angry Nerds. Consider these issues…resolved.” ThredUP Launches Clothing Swap For…Dad Kids clothes and toys swap site thredUP will now be catering to dads with the launch of a paternity clothing swap. Previously the site had been focused exclusively on moms and kids, but is not moving into the Dads market. Deals4Hipsters A Groupon Clone, Deals For Hipsters launched as a daily deals site for the quintessential hipster. According to the site, “Nothing is more important to us than taking your money and spending it on material goods of our own. If you ever feel like Deals 4 Hipsters let you down, give us a call and we’ll think about sending you a nice thanks for trying card – simple as that.” HuffPost Irks NYT In a move sure to irk at least two or three people who work for The New York Times, The Huffington Post has erected a paywall that applies only to NYT employees. YouTube Travels Back In Time Following on its memorable April 1st pranks like, Rick Rolling its entire user base, for example, YouTube will be reverting its videos back to what it would have looked like around 1911, complete with grainy, sepia video footage, no audio tracks (save for piano accompaniment), and title cards in place of the site's normal comments. Joel On Software Gets Pwned Software developer Joel Spolsky rants about everything from software to other kinds of software on his blog, Joel On Software . This hilarious parody site, Joel On Coal , was created for April Fool’s Day. Google Autocompleter Google begins its April Fools celebration with this job posting for an “autocompleter”. “Every day people start typing more than a billion searches on Google and expect Google to predict what they are looking for. In order to do this at scale, we need your help … As a Google Autocompleter, you'll be expected to successfully guess a user's intention as he or she starts typing instantly. In a fraction of a second, you'll need to type in your prediction that will be added to the list of suggestions given by Google. Don't worry, after a few million predictions you'll grow the required reflexes.” Gmail Motion Google introduces Gmail Motion , which allows you to control Gmail with your body. Finally . Groupon Now Owns April Fools Day The uncertainty over April Fools Day’s intellectual trademark led Groupon to purchase the rights to everybody’s favorite joke day. You can read Groupon’s patent application here . Groupon has also issued cease and desist letters to all the major violators of its trademark, including TechCrunch. Watch out, you could be next. LinkedIn LinkedIn’s “People You May Know” contact recommendation engine has gotten a little cheeky on this Fools’ Day of April. LinkedIn has begun recommending people that clearly wouldn’t want to become my professional contacts. Though, Albert, if you’re reading this, feel free to peruse my resume. Some great examples of relativity. uTest Launches Dating For Software Testers uTest , a marketplace for software testing services, announced today that they will be launching a dating site, QAdate , for software testers. Even software testers gotta find love, man. Software pimpin’ ain’t easy. Starbucks Thank God Starbucks is finally putting its baristas on scooters , as the coffee giant today launches its “Mobile Pour” feature. Watch out, Zaarly . “We’ve even made ordering easy with our Mobile Pour app for your smartphone. Simply download it, allow it to pinpoint your location, select your coffee order and keep walking. Your fresh, hot Starbucks brew will be in your hands before you can say abra-arabica.” Abra-arabica! /gets coffee thrown in face Google AdWords This just in from Google AdWords: It seems that many newcomers to display advertising feel that they missed out on the glory days of advertising in the 2000s. So, Google is offering an opportunity to make up for lost time with old school ads in Display Ad Builder. Options include: "Punch the Monkey", "Click here for smileys", "LOLcat", "Dancing .gif", "Pop ups galore", and "Scratch off". SoundCloud Music distribution platform SoundCloud today announced it will be adding a righteous new feature that will allow you to customize your profile with some amazing background animations. Because, you see, it’s all about self-expression. You have to express yourself, and there’s no better way to do that than with SoundCloud’s killer new background customization features. Just try not to have a seizure. Hulu Hulu seems to have taken a page from YouTube’s April Fools Day Manual, bringing us back in time to when video killed the radio star — except in Hulu’s case we are transported to a time when modems were dial-up, hyperlinks were underlined, and images were grainy. I believe they called it “the mid-to-late nineties”. Whenever that was. All I remember is the bursting of some sort of bubble. Memory goes blank after that. XKCD The great XKCD webcomic is trying to give us a headache , and I think it’s working. Funny or Die Last year it was Bieber or Die , when the Thing They Call Bieber decided to buy the site and use it as he pleased. This year, Funny or Die has spawned the Rebecca Black version of the site, which is all Rebecca, all the time. Includes such hits as “Betwixt the Music: Rebecca Black”, “The Top 7 Days We So Excited For”, and “Which Seat Should I Take? W/ Rebecca Black”. Toshiba Toshiba, always at the forefront of gadgetry innovation, has announced the world’s first 3D monacle , for all you Monopoly-loving robot guys out there. “Infusing advanced 3D technology into such a small device wasn't easy. Two triangular polarizing lenses were melded in parallel and encased in black-plated tungsten carbide for a lightweight and durable construction. For comfort, the casing was molded into the shape of an average human eye hole, and draped in bonded leather.” Bonded leather?!? Alright! Newslite’s Facebook Announcement Newslite is breaking the news that Facebook will soon be rolling out wedding and baby filters, so that users can turn off the incessant chatter of their friends droning on endlessly about upcoming weddings as well as births and all baby-related content. The social network also expects to soon begin preventing all individuals from uploading pictures of their children to use as their profile images. With these updates rolling out, Facebook expects to hit the 1 billion user mark within weeks. Google Helvetica A fan of web-safe, browser-compatible fonts, then whatever you do, don’t type “helvetica” into Google search. No, just kidding. You should do it. See what happens. We dare you. It’s comical. Sans comical. Qualcomm Qualcomm recently announced its next mobile processor architecture for the Snapdragon family, Krait. Snapdragon is Qualcomm’s platform for smartphones, tablets, and smartbooks. Qualcomm today announced that it will be sending its employees on a “Way of The Dragon Retreat”. Then there’s something involving Kimodo dragons, it’s hard to say really. I do like Bruce Lee, but I’ll let the video explain. Thumbs Up Gadget developer Thumbs Up has a fantastic new product that it will be rolling out worldwide this fall — an iPhone controllable wifi Eagle powered by the Sun. Can you believe it? Simply download the free app and transform your machine into an all seeing remote control roving eye. The "RC Eagle i" will be fully compatible with national wifi networks so you can control your precarious bird of prey from hundreds of miles away. How does it stay aloft? Well, the sun of course. What were you gonna say? A | |
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. |
No comments:
Post a Comment