Tuesday, February 21, 2012

The Latest from TechCrunch

The Latest from TechCrunch

Link to TechCrunch

Microsoft Adds Former Symantec CEO And IBM Exec John Thompson To Board

Posted: 20 Feb 2012 09:16 AM PST

John W. Thompson_ Chief Executive Officer, Virtual Instruments

Microsoft has added a new board member today—John W. Thompson, the chief executive officer of Virtual Instruments and former chairman and CEO of Symantec. This brings Microsoft’s board’s size to 10 members.

Thompson currently serves as CEO of Virtual Instruments, which offers products that ensure the performance and availability of applications deployed in virtualized and private cloud computing environments. Thompson also served as chairman and CEO of Symantec from 1999 to 2009. He stepped down as CEO of Symantec in 2009, and stepped down from Symantec’s board of directors in 2011.

Previously, Thompson held a number of executie positions at IBM, including sales, marketing, software development and general manager of IBM Americas.

“John has extraordinary technology and business expertise, and we are delighted that he is joining Microsoft’s board of directors,” said Bill Gates, Microsoft chairman.

In addition to Thompson, Microsoft’s board of directors consists of Gates, CEO Steve Ballmer; Dina Dublon, former chief financial officer of JPMorgan Chase; Raymond Gilmartin, former chairman, president and CEO of Merck & Co. Inc.; Netflix founder and CEO Reed Hastings; Dr. Maria M. Klawe, president, Harvey Mudd College; David F. Marquardt, general partner at August Capital; Charles H. Noski, vice chairman of Bank of America Corp.; and Dr. Helmut G. W. Panke, former chairman of the board of management at BMW AG.

Symantec has had a complex relationship with Microsoft over the past, which makes Thompson’s appointment interesting. As described by ZDNet in 2007, Thompson has previously described Microsoft as a partner, ally and competitor to Symantec.

UPDATING

The Post-Office Generation

Posted: 20 Feb 2012 09:02 AM PST

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A recent post on MinimalMac posits an interesting case for the slow, growing sense of the irrelevance of Microsoft, at least in the applications space. Go and read the piece – it’s excellent – but the gist is that for years Microsoft banked on Office being as important to users as, say, Windows. Office is Microsoft’s biggest money maker and for most of this decade no self-respecting IT department would consider any alternatives, even though they existed. You needed it to get work done. OpenOffice? That stuff was just weird.

However, with the rise of tablets, office workers have suddenly noticed that they don’t need Office anymore. All they need is an email app, a notepad, and something like Dropbox. You can open Office docs on any device, you can edit text on nearly any tablet, and $9.99 gets you a capable word processor on the iPad. In short, Office is becoming irrelevant.

Patrick Rhone calls this a “miss” but I call it a paradigm shift. This shift is probably as jarring to offices as the transition from paper to electronic records and I doubt the reverberations of this shift will die down any time soon.

The story of office automation has been one of slow and inexorable change. As a child of the 1980s, I’m amazed when I watch movies and documentaries that show records being stored in a big room staffed by the office equivalent of librarians. As an adult of the aughts, on the other hand, I find myself appalled at the necessity for paper records and often, in a fit of pique, I fill out forms with my own style of chicken-scratch handwriting. Take customs forms at the border, for example: what government will ever be able to go through those written records in time to notice, say, a nefarious pattern? It’s literally impossible and it’s a waste of paper. Harumpf.

But old habits die hard and although we’re not even close to a paperless office yet, I think the rise of tablets will move us that final step towards a place of no printers. For most of this century, the main means of communication has been a typewritten report or memo. People needed eight hours in an office just to go through paperwork. When they took work home they took paper home. Even the desktop paradigm – the trash can, the inbox, the folder – mirrors this concept.

But what is the paradigm now? Mobile OSes don’t have trash cans or folders. Email apps talk about accounts and the icons show little paper airplanes rather than a flying letter. That the OS X Mail icon is still a stamp is as much an anachronism as saying you’re “dialing” a cellphone (but don’t get me started on Apple’s incessant desire to mirror real-world objects. Leather calendars? Really?). In less than a decade, our mental models for getting work done went from “go to some guy in records to find a number” to “Google it.”

And what was Word if not the ultimate typewriter? Word was the gold standard for the printed word, a way for the design-challenged to create a handsome training manual or break room notice (“Do not drink the ‘milk in the fridge’ it is Tonys.”). What was Excel if not a handsome, electronic ledger? You could print out reports with the important numbers in bold or, if your office was really rich, you could print it on the color laser printer.

And what was Access (remember Access?) but a way to put those poor schlubs in records out of a job?

Now Office’s namesake, the office, is changing. I’m not saying it’s changing quickly nor is it changing as wildly as I would like, but with the move to web-based business interfaces, cloud computing, and instant sharing, there is less impetus to make documents look “professional” and more on just getting them out the door. I think the real switch will come when documents, as a matter of course, will be signed electronically and not by hand. This will spell the death knell for Office and usher in a new era of entirely cloud-based document handling.

Is Microsoft sunk because of this? Absolutely not, but they’d better start spinning up some services that speak to the post-Office generation. After all, who needs Word templates when you can make this in two seconds.

Motorola Atrix 3 Leak Promises A Quad-Core Chip, 720p Screen, And A Huge Battery

Posted: 20 Feb 2012 08:53 AM PST

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The Motorola Atrix line has been a big one for the company. Yet with two iterations out so far, the phones have yet to really wow anyone. But according to this specs/photo leak, the Atrix 3 may leave you humming a different tune.

Tian Jin Daily reports that the Atrix 3 will sport a 4.3-inch 720p display, which is a nice start but that’s not even where things get exciting. Under the hood, you’ll find a quad-core Tegra 3 processor, 2GB of RAM and a massive 3300mAh battery.

That’s the same battery we’re seeing on the Droid RAZR Maxx and let me tell you, even with a 4G LTE radio on the whole time that battery will last you all day, no problem.

Though we’re not 100 percent sure this is the Atrix 3, it makes sense based on the timing and the fact that this phone seems to be built around Atrix design language rather than that Razr-esque style Moto’s been so fond of lately.

The purported Atrix 3 should also pack a 10-megapixel camera with dual-LED flash. No word whether or not this bad boy will run Ice Cream Sandwich out of the box, but based on the fact that Moto already has a Medfield-powered ICS handset in the works, I’d say it’s officially safe to have hope.



Forkly 2.0 Puts Your Taste Graph To Use With New, Personalized Recommendations

Posted: 20 Feb 2012 08:15 AM PST

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Forkly, the food rating app from Brightkite founders Brady Becker and Martin May, just launched a major update dubbed “Forkly 2.0.” Along with a user interface overhaul which features a faster feed, bigger photos and an upgraded user profile design, the app update also includes improved menus and a “Discover” function to offer better, personalized recommendations. Hey, your Forkly “taste graph” just got useful!

Although similar to competitors Foodspotting and Nosh, Forkly’s emphasis has been more on rating food items, not just taking pictures of them. Although the visual element gets a refresh with Forkly 2.0 (bigger photos!), Forkly’s core function is still to help its users develop their own “taste graph” – that is, a personalized profile of what you like to eat based on your previous ratings (“like,” “love,” “not for me,” etc.).

With Forkly 2.0, the app is pushing itself more into the foodie utility category than the social one. With the updated menu feature, for example, Forkly delves into its user ratings to show you the restaurant’s most popular items, the average ratings on a dish, and what your friends thought. It also reminds you of any “Wants” (bookmarked items) and “Hads” (things you’ve eaten before), to help you make more informed ordering choices.

In addition, from the refreshed feed in Forkly 2.0, you can now double tap to add dishes to your Wants, and read comments inline. User profiles have been redesigned, too, with an increased focus on finding friends and earning “influence” points.

But the biggest part to Forkly 2.0 is the new recommendations feature. In the Discover section, Forkly now gives you personalized dish recommendations based on category. This option reminds me somewhat of what Alfred was doing (pre-Google acquisition), in that it also let you tap on categories like “breakfast,” “lunch,” “coffee,” “dessert,” etc., to find dining options that fit your interests.

Of course, how Alfred and Forkly generate those recommendations are different. Alfred rapidly built up a user’s taste graph via short quizzes, while Forkly is less in your face about its taste graph-generating function, the app’s “taste and rate” section. And of course, the way the data is analyzed on the backend is different, too, given that each company uses its own proprietary algorithms to make suggestions.

Still, it’s these personalized dining recommendations that are the real benefit to using food rating/ranking/sharing apps like Forkly, and it’s also a feature that appeals to a wider demographic than just those who go around photographing their food and then tweeting or Facebooking about it.

Forkly (ver. 2.0), now an Apple featured app for foodies, is available in the App Store here.

comScore: Long-Form Video Content Views On The Rise In January

Posted: 20 Feb 2012 08:09 AM PST

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comScore just released its monthly U.S. online video data, and while viewership dipped slightly in January 2012 (from December), long-form video content views are on the rise. According to comScore, 181 million U.S. Internet users watched nearly 40 billion videos of online video content in January, compared to 182 million users who viewed 43.5 billion videos in December. And 84.4 percent of the U.S. Internet audience viewed online video in January. The duration of the average online content video was 6.1 minutes (up from 5.8 minutes in December), while the average online video ad was 0.4 minutes.

Once again, YouTube ranked as the top online video content property in January with 152 million unique viewers, followed by VEVO with 51.5 million, Yahoo Sites with 49.2 million, Viacom Digital with 48.1 million and Facebook.com with 45.1 million. Google Sites (YouTube) generated the highest number of views at 18.6 billion, followed by Hulu with 877 million and VEVO with 717 million. The average viewer watched 22.6 hours of online video content, with YouTube (7.5 hours) and Hulu (3.2 hours) seeing the highest average engagement.

Specifically on YouTube, video music channels VEVO (50.6 million viewers) and Warner Music (29.7 million viewers) were the most popular amongst viewers. Gaming channel Machinima ranked third with 23.8 million viewers, followed by Maker Studios with 12.5 million, FullScreen with 11.6 million and Big Frame with 8.2 million. Among the top 10 YouTube partners, VEVO demonstrated the highest engagement (62 minutes per viewer) and highest number of videos viewed (696 million), while Machinima exhibited the second highest engagement (60 minutes per viewer) and number of videos viewed (347 million).

Americans viewed 5.6 billion video ads in January, with Hulu delivering the highest number of video ad impressions at 1.4 billion. Adap.tv ranked second overall (and highest among video ad exchanges/networks) with 652 million ad views, followed by BrightRoll Video Network with 598 million, Tremor Video with 580 million and Specific Media with 398 million.

Time spent watching video ads totaled more than 2.3 billion minutes during the month, with Hulu delivering the highest duration of video ads at 540 million minutes. Video ads reached 47 percent of the total U.S. population an average of 38 times during the month. Hulu delivered the highest frequency of video ads to its viewers with an average of 43, while ESPN delivered an average of 20 ads per viewer. Video ads accounted for 12.2 percent of all videos viewed and 0.9 percent of all minutes spent viewing video online.

Nokia Siemens Network, Qualcomm Prepare MultiFlow HSPA+ To Keep Data Signals Strong

Posted: 20 Feb 2012 08:06 AM PST

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Our phones can do all kinds of things these days. Hell, millions of people — people from all different OS persuasions — are walking around talking to their phone. But even some of the most basic features — like, oh I don’t know… connecting to the Internet — could stand a few upgrades.

That said, the Nokia Siemens Network and Qualcomm are putting together a new network technology called HSPA+ MultiFlow. It’ll basically allow for one person to use the connection from two different base stations to heighten network efficiency.

So, in other words, if you were near the very edge of a network base station’s cell coverage, your phone would automatically connect to the next closest cell along with the one it’s on to make sure that what would be a rather choppy connection (connected to just one of the stations) is nice and smooth (thanks to a connection to both stations).

The duo is set to show off the technology at Mobile World Congress in about a week.

According to the official release, MultiFlow HSPA+ can up to double data speeds for users at the edge of cell coverage. What’s even better, it doesn’t take billions of dollars in installation to set up. Carriers can use a simple software upgrade to their existing HSPA+ network to enable MultiFlow.

Serial Entrepreneur & GetTaxi Co-Founder’s ‘Loyalize’ Acquired for $5M

Posted: 20 Feb 2012 07:50 AM PST

Shahar Smirin

Loyalize, a social TV audience platform, has been been acquired by Function(X) for $5M in cash and stock. The company intends to integrate Loyalize into Viggle, a television loyalty product designed for iOS devices.

Loyalize was founded by serial-entrepreneur Shahar Smirin whose current flagship project is GetTaxi, which former TechCrunch Editor Sarah Lacy called ‘Way Beyond Uber‘.

Smirin, along with his GetTaxi co-founder, Roi More, are also the founding duo of Vigoda.ru, a major daily deal site in Russia and the Ukraine with expected revenues for 2012 in the range of $200-250M.

Loyalize’s white-label platform allowed audiences using mobile devices and connected TVs to engage with TV shows, sporting events, and political debates by way of games, polls, discussion and sharing. Viewers were awarded badges and loyalty points, redeemable for real rewards.

The company’s customer roster included Yahoo and Viacom/MTV. Its platform was also utilized in this year’s Superbowl & Grammy Awards.

Smirin believes Loyalize has found a perfect home as in his eyes FunctionX’s strategy is to establish itself as a key social TV player. Worthy to note that FunctionX which has a market cap of nearly $1B was founded by Bob Sillerman, owner of, wait for it—American Idol.

Splitflix: A Netflix Sharing Start-up That’s Crazy… Like A Fox

Posted: 20 Feb 2012 07:47 AM PST

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When I first saw the pitch for Splitflix over the weekend I guffawed a little into my bourbon. The site purports to allow you to “share” your Netflix or Hulu account with a random stranger using a P2P matching system. You and the other person pay half of the cost of the subscription and then enjoy your cheaper streaming accounts.

However, after a bit of digging, as a product it seems solid and as an act of protest, however misguided, it’s sure to get at least a little bit of attention. It’s even technically OK – or at least not prohibited – in the Netflix terms of service:

BY SHARING THE NETFLIX SERVICE PASSWORD, THE ACCOUNT OWNER AGREES TO BE RESPONSIBLE FOR ASSURING THAT HOUSEHOLD MEMBERS COMPLY WITH THE TERMS OF USE AND SUCH ACCOUNT OWNER SHALL BE RESPONSIBLE FOR THE ACTIONS OF THE HOUSEHOLD MEMBERS.

And Hulu didn’t mention password sharing.

To be clear, I don’t think this is a good idea. I think Hulu and Netflix will find some way to stop it and the possibility that two strangers would share an account without driving each other crazy with movie choices is slim to none. Even if we don’t have to watch the same thing, I’d still go nuts if all I saw were Van Damme flicks in my shared Recently Watched list. I could also foresee a situation where one member of team Splitfix stops paying, but the damage would be limited in that case. You’re also going to be limited in what you do with the site later as I suspect a sale is out of the question.

As a money saving opportunity I applaud Splitflix for giving this a shot. The site is in beta now so there’s no way to “test” it at the moment. There was some talk this summer about cracking down on shared Netflix streams but our anecdotal tests of Netflix and Hulu allowed at least two devices to stream at the same time. It doesn’t seem totally legit, like that picture of the dark overpass with the phrase “Free Hugs” spray-painted on the concrete. But maybe – just maybe – those hugs will be real.

Housebites Cooks Up A Storm As The New Airbnb-For-Takeout [TCTV]

Posted: 20 Feb 2012 07:45 AM PST

housebites

I must admit I was skeptical when Housebites first launched last year. It seemed a quaint little business attacking a hugely established market but in a way which looked, as least from the outside, to be unscalable. The premise of Housebites is this: the average person likes the convenience of take-out food (in the UK it’s called takeaway) but the food itself is usually unhealthy and processed. So why not capture all those wanna-be chefs, connect them with customers via location and, voila, you capture a potentially big business? It seemed all very well, but I figured they’d find a handful of chefs, but vetting them would be too slow. After all, Airbnb had scaled because anyone could register their apartment and start trading. How do you do that with your kitchen when you might actually poison someone?

I’m happy to say I was wrong – Housebites is now growing at a fair clip, now with 10,000 registered users. As CEO and founder Simon Prockter told me in the interview below, Housebites has tapped into a very disruptive model which could well change the whole restaurant industry. But more of that in a moment.

Lucky Sort Grabs Half A Million For Big Data Visualization On Web & iPad

Posted: 20 Feb 2012 07:20 AM PST

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How would you like to crunch your way through big data on your iPad? That’s one of the many promises of Lucky Sort, the stealthy new Portland, Oregon-based startup building a visualization and navigation engine called TopicWatch meant for discovering patterns in live data streams.

The company just raised a half-million seed round from Neu Venture Capital, Invite Investments (founders of Invite Media) and several angel investors, including Adam Riggs (Shutterstock.com), BankSimple co-founder Alex Payne, and, oh, geek out on this one: chaos theory physicist, quantitative trading pioneer, and roulette wheel hacker Norman Packard, Ph.D., who is also now the Chief Science Officer at the firm.

According to Lucky Sort CEO and founder Noah Pepper, “everyone complains about information overload, but until now, there have been few technologies or solutions that can really help a user control and even take advantage of the data deluge in flexible and creative ways.”

That where TopicWatch comes in. With the new service, Lucky Sort’s first product, the company wants to enable users to sift through social media, government filings, news and commentary in real time, in order to find, summarize and analyze any text-based content. To be clear, TopicWatch is not yet another “sentiment analysis” or “social listening” platform – those are just subsets of what can be done on top of its platform.

In addition, TopicWatch isn’t just for public data, like Twitter updates or RSS feeds. While those are supported, users are also able to import their own text content into the platform, and then analyze that alongside other data from Lucky Sort and its (yet to be announced) partners.

The big idea here is that the startup is trying to build the next generation interface for discovering information from huge, unstructured data sets. The system uses NLP (natural language processing) that favors statistics and user input over ontologies.

“Moving away from ontologies and dictionaries is pretty radical,” explains Pepper. “NLP relies on using known properties about language data. If you don’t have a database of nouns, verbs, etc., it’s hard to know what the linguistic structure is and therefore how to do more traditional NLP that leverages knowledge from the field of linguistics.”

For the company, Lucky Sort represents a philosophical shift away from trying derive structure from unstructured data, and a move towards embracing unstructured data mining through statistics. OK, that is pretty radical.

And if that’s all too complex an explanation, perhaps this will help. The end result are visualizations that look like this:

This visual interface for data manipulation just happens to work via touch, too. Yes, on the iPad. Of course, if you’re old school, you can do it all on the desktop, and there’s an API available for other developers to use. But that iPad app looks pretty hot, if you ask me.

The product has the potential to turn anyone into a data journalist and/or analyst, as it’s focused on ease of use, despite the complexities on the backend. With TopicView, users can embed and share restricted web views that provide interactive explorations of events or topics directly onto their website.

Forget infographics, these are living, breathing graphics.

Before Lucky Sort, Pepper was the Director of R&D for Qmedtrix, where he oversaw machine learning and visualization platforms to detect fraud and abuse in medical reimbursements. He also serves as a Collaborative Researcher for the Advanced Computation Group at Apple. However, Pepper says the concept for the new startup grew from his earlier work at Reed College’s Artificial Life Lab in the Center for Advanced Computation. He’s joined by CTO and co-founder Homer Strong and Chief Information Architect Devin Chalmers, who both have extensive development backgrounds as well.

The TopicWatch applications for iOS and the Web will launch in May 2012, as will the API. An enterprise private cloud solution will also be available in the future.

For The Young, Smartphones No Longer A Luxury Item

Posted: 20 Feb 2012 07:02 AM PST

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New data from Nielsen released this morning takes a look at the typical U.S. smartphone user, specifically their age and income, as well as the penetration of smartphones into various demographic groups. Data like this can help developers, publishers and advertisers better understand who owns a smartphone, but it can also help to determine if the devices are successfully penetrating the low-end income brackets thanks to lower price points.

The answer to that latter question is yes: even those making less than $15,000 per year are likely to have a smartphone – but only if they’re young. Over half (56%) of this income bracket are smartphone owners, when aged 18-24. In the 25-34 age group, 43% of those at this income level are making room for a smartphone in their limited budgets. In the more pragmatic 35-44 age group, 31% of those making under $15,000 own a smartphone.

While these mobile users don’t necessarily live below the poverty threshold (it’s unclear if they are single, married, supporting families, etc.), they’re not far off. In 2011, a single person making $10,890 or less was living in poverty, for example. Just increase that by a few thousand annually, and all of a sudden, they’re smartphone owners.

Within the older age groups, smartphone penetration decreases – but it decreases within higher income brackets too, for the most part. These numbers, quite frankly, are surprising. They indicate that smartphones, no matter the expense of the device itself or the accompanying data plan, are increasingly becoming a necessity, not a luxury. How else can you rationalize how someone who makes less than $15,000 affords one? They find a way. Maybe they don’t even own a computer? Or maybe in that 18-24 age group, mom and dad still help out. But ages 25-34? Those decisions to buy are their own, likely made while unattached from parents’ pursestrings.

The trend is further reflected in Nielsen’s “smartphone penetration by age” chart, which shows that 80% of those in both the 18-24 and the 25-34 age groups who acquired a phone in the last 3 months chose a smartphone.

Nielsen’s own analysis didn’t concentrate on this aspect of the data, instead focusing on the overall youth-owning-smartphones trend. Or the fact that when both age and income are taken into account, older subscribers with higher incomes are more likely to have a smartphone (i.e., those aged 55-64 making over 100K are as likely to own as those 35-44 making 35-75K).

That’s important, too, especially as it relates to the low-income/younger demographic data. For the older generations, smartphones are a luxury. Those folks are more likely to buy if they have the money to do so.

But for the youngest mobile owners, smartphones are a must. And they’re finding a way to afford them.

Court Reportedly Rules Against Apple In China As The iPads Keep Rolling Out Of Foxconn

Posted: 20 Feb 2012 06:54 AM PST

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A local court in the Guangdong province of China has apparently ruled against Apple in its ongoing case against Proview over the iPad trademark, with the decision that distributors should stop selling iPad tablets in China.

The news is a step in the opposite direction from last week, when it looked like Apple was gaining the upper hand over Proview, with a court ruling in Apple’s favor, and documents detailing a brand-name transaction between the two companies. Apple’s legal representatives are now also threatening legal action against Proview for defamation.

But while that Apple China story continues to remain murky, another one is getting more light shed on it: amid the saga around working conditions at the Foxconn plants that make Apple devices like the iPad comes a new video of what life is like inside one of the plants that make them.

In the Proview trademark dispute, a lawyer for Proview, Xie Xianghui, told the Associated Press (via CNBC) that the Intermediate People’s Court in Huizhou, in the Guangdong province, had ruled against Apple and that “distributors should stop selling iPads in China.”

But it appears that the bureaucratic Chinese legal system is playing a role here, too: Proview has lodged cases in different municipalities, and so this decision, even if it is put in place, may not have much of an impact on a national level. AP notes that Proview has taken its case to no less than 40 cities to request blocks on sales.

The situation is all the more confusing because last week, Apple actually appeared to get a favorable ruling over the same trademark issues. In arguing that case, it also emerged that Apple had documentation proving their ownership of the trademark, which Proview had originally registered in 2001 but Apple bought for $55,000. (One court in China in December ruled that Proview was not bound by that agreement.)

Apple’s case is still pending in mainland China, while it has also lodged an appeal against a separate Proview ruling in the same province.

Update: More intrigue in this trademark dispute. It has also emerged that Apple’s legal representatives have sent a letter (first reported by PC World) to Proview outlining the story as it sees it, and ending it with a threat that they “reserve all rights to take further legal action” against those who make defamatory statements or interfere with Apple’s business as a result.

Meanwhile, the Foxconn video, which will be broadcast on “Nightline” on ABC on Tuesday, is the first time that a news organization has been able to film inside the factories that assemble Apple products. In the video preview posted at the link above, the lighting is bright, the workers diligent and the environment almost hospital-like.

That ABC needed Apple and Foxconn’s permission to film may raise questions over whether there is still a story that is not being told — although to be fair we are getting to see more here than ever before, and for those who are always on the search for more information, that can only be a good thing.

Barnes & Noble To Take On Amazon (Again) With A New 8GB Nook Tablet

Posted: 20 Feb 2012 06:14 AM PST

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Barnes & Noble seemed pleasantly surprised when they announced their Nook Tablet "exceeded expectations" over the holidays, but their 70% year-over-year jump in device sales paled in comparison to rival Amazon's 177%.

That their flagship Nook Tablet cost a full $50 more than the Kindle Fire certainly didn't help, but that should change soon — according to a document obtained by The Verge, Barnes & Noble will release a new 8GB version of the Nook Tablet on February 22.

While the original Nook Tablet sported 16GB of onboard memory, the new version will feature the same amount as the bestselling Kindle Fire. A decrease in memory capacity also signals a corresponding dip for the price tag, which means that BN is looking to take Amazon on at their own game. It's a smart, if possibly-overdue move for BN — Amazon has already been playing up their price advantage with a national marketing campaign, and while it targets the iPad specifically, the message still applies to BN’s slightly pricier tablet.

Still, I wouldn't expect the price break to be a panacea for the book retailer. If the new model Nook retails at or around the $199 price point, purchasing decisions may well come down to the strength of the ecosystem behind the device, an arena where Amazon has the edge. The Kindle Fire isn't so much a tablet is it as a portal to the rest of Amazon's media ecosystem, and the included Amazon Prime trial grants access to faster shipping in addition to streaming video content.

That’s not to say that the Nook Tablet is a slouch — John considers it a better device for handling content and media on the device itself — but BN will have their work cut out for them regardless.

While Amazon and BN continue to slug it out for the low-cost tablet crown, they should also be mindful of their flanks. With devices like the 7-inch Tegra-powered Asus MeMo tablet barreling down the pipeline, the bar for device performance may shift in a way that Amazon and BN aren’t prepared to compete with yet.

Ammado Raises $9M To Solve Global Giving Problem

Posted: 20 Feb 2012 01:43 AM PST

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Following the trend toward global platforms for raising money, such as Kickstarter, Ammado, which connects charities with donors, has raised €7 million ($9M), and signed up several multinational partners. The investment round was led by Belgium-based Saffelburg Investments, which put in €5.5M and John Ryan, founder of Rovi, who put in about €1.5M. Set up in 2005 by Anna Kupka and Peter Conlon, the latter has put in €8.7M to date, which means Ammado has raised a total of €15.7M so far.

Gadgets Week in Review: Juggle

Posted: 20 Feb 2012 01:00 AM PST

Report: Fujitsu To Launch Handsets In Europe. U.S. Next?

Posted: 20 Feb 2012 12:55 AM PST

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Fujitsu once said that it didn’t have any plans to launch mobile handsets outside of Asia, but that strategy appears to be changing rapidly. Today comes a report that the Japanese handset maker — which makes both Android and Windows Phone-based devices — is planning to start selling its devices in Europe, with a debut to take place next week at Mobile World Congress in Barcelona.

The news comes after Fujitsu said that it also planned to sell devices in the U.S. market either this year or 2013.

It’s not clear whether Fujitsu will lead on an Android or Windows Phone line of devices — or whether it will opt to sell both. A story in the FT that reported the European launch did not specify which devices would lead the charge. There are pros and cons to both:

Android is by far and away the most popular smartphone OS at the moment — with more than 50 percent market share as of Q4, according to Gartner — but while that means good news in terms of apps and other services for users, it would also pose a challenge for Fujitsu to create something that stands apart from the pack.

Microsoft’s Windows Phone, meanwhile, is a lot less common, leaving more room for Fujitsu to shine — but it’s also significantly less popular with developers and the consumer public. Gartner’s Q4 figures gave it a 1.9 percent share, while the Windows Phone app storefront currently only has around 50,000 apps, compared to the hundreds of thousands for Android.

The issue of needing to be distinctive when entering new markets is not one that has gone unnoticed by Fujitsu itself: "We don't want to be just another mobile phone," senior EVP Hideyuki Saso told AllThingsD back in January. "We want to be special."

Fujitsu was one of the first handset makers to sign on to Windows Phone “Mango”, and it was actually the first handset maker to ship a Mango device. It’s been a key partner for Microsoft in its bid to make more of an impact on consumers in the Asian market. Some of the more innovative and “different” elements of its hardware, though, have come through on Android: waterproofing, very thin devices, and zany colors, like pink.

Ad Agency BBH Moves Into Social Gaming, Seeks Developers Who Like Lollipops

Posted: 19 Feb 2012 11:08 PM PST

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Bartle Bogle Hegarty today became the latest company to make the leap into social gaming, and it is on the lookout to give seed funding to social gaming developers who want to make the jump with them.

The ad agency’s Singapore-based Asian division, BBH Asia Pacific, has opened a new venture, Chuck Studios, which will be run in partnership with one of its longtime clients, the confectionery giant Perfetti Van Melle — makers of Chupa Chups lollipops. Together, the two will invest in social games promoting the brand, in exchange for a share of whatever revenue is made from the content.

The first product of the venture, Chupa Chucker, made in partnership with studio Atommica, goes live today on Facebook. Future games will also run on iOS, Android, and HTML5, BBH tells us, and may extend to other brands, too.

The news of BBH’s move into gaming was first reported last week by AdAge, although BBH has clarified to us that this venture will not cover investments into more capital-intensive areas like video games.

Rather, it is, at least for now, only limited to the smaller, more casual social games that have spread like wildfire through social networks like Facebook and have lifted the fortunes of companies like Zynga many times over.

It is nothing new for agencies to enlist the help of games developers to create engaging marketing content to promote a brand. But what is perhaps more interesting about this launch is that it puts BBH and Perfetti Van Melle into a potential partnership to actually generate revenues from these games — rather than simply throwing money into making games as part of marketing spend.

Atommica, in addition to developing games, also has created its own “cross-promotion and monetization platform” for social games — presumably this is incorporated into the game, and will help drive that revenue generation.

In addition to giving the developers access to the brands’ IP, BBH says it will also assist in helping to market the games once they’re published.

Product director Pieter Walraven tells us that BBH is not disclosing how much it will typically invest in each game, and in any case it will vary, depending on the work involved. “Deeper games that monetize better often require more capacity to develop which requires a higher upfront investment to lower the risk for the partnering developer and show our commitment,” he says.

He says before a partnership gets the okay, BBH models out the estimated installs on a particular platform and figures out the ARPU per game. “The only requirement is that the numbers have to check out.”

Looks Like Freelance Marketplace Solvate is Shutting Down

Posted: 19 Feb 2012 06:45 PM PST

solvate logo

We’ve gotten a tip that Solvate, a venture-backed marketplace for hiring freelance work, is shutting down. Apparently, the freelancers who do work through Solvate have been told that the service will end effective March 1.

I’ve emailed and called Solvate, and haven’t gotten a response yet. (I will update this post if hear back.) I also tried to sign-up for a new client account on the Solvate website, where I was told that the company is no longer accepting new users. Comments on Twitter seem to confirm that Solvate is sending out emails about its shut down, and notifying users when they log in.

Here’s the text:

Dear Solvate user,

Effective March 1st, we are shutting down this service. We are proud to have connected US-based independent professionals with companies for contract work, but ultimately we couldn’t scale it in its current configuration.

We will collect for work performed through February 29th, and pay talent accordingly, after which you can connect with your existing talent or clients of your own accord. We will issue 1099′s for work performed in 2012 through February 29th.

We regret any inconvenience this may cause you! If you have any questions, let us know: support@solvate.com.

Best,
Team Solvate

Solvate first launched in 2009 as a way to connect businesses with remote assistants to handle basic tasks like PowerPoint presentations or transcription. (In my initial coverage, I wondered whether the company’s aim of providing a hands-on, full-service approach might stunt its growth.) It later expanded to other types of freelance work, such as marketing and creative services.

Judging from Solvate’s wording, it’s not clear whether the company is shutting down completely or will relaunch with a new strategy. The New York-based startup raised a reported $6.3 million in funding from RRE Ventures, DFJ Gotham, and others — including a $4 million Series B about a year ago — so it might still have money in the bank.

Walmart Ups Its Investment In Chinese E-Commerce Giant Yihaodian

Posted: 19 Feb 2012 06:22 PM PST

yihaodian

Walmart is announcing this evening that it has upped its investment in Yihaodian, a massive B2C eCommerce company based in China. Walmart, which originally funded the retail giant last year, has made another undisclosed investment in Yihaodian to bring Walmart’s total ownership stake to approximately 51 percent. Closing of the transaction is subject to Chinese government regulatory approval, according to the two companies.

Launched in July 2008, Yihaodian offers more than 180,000 products ranging from clothing to grocery to consumer electronics. Less than 3 years after launch, the company boasts a whopping 5,400 employees and logistics operations in Shanghai, Beijing, Guangzhou, Wuhan and Chengdu, and delivery stations in 34 cities across China.

Neil Ashe, President and CEO of Walmart Global eCommerce, said, “This investment further enables Walmart to deliver a superb customer experience to Chinese consumers that are already connected to the world through smart phones and social media. We are on track to create the next generation of eCommerce, offering the latest in online innovations to give our customers a unique shopping experience.” Ashe explains that the further investment in Yihaodian also shows Walmart’s belief in retail in China as a growth industry.

In July, Bloomberg reported that Yihaodian is looking at a possible IPO. Yihaodian faces competition from China’s 360buy.com, which has raised money from DST and others.

Over the past year, Walmart has acquired social media technology provider Kosmix, Small Society, and OneRiot.

Mexico City Boards The StartupBus — But It Still Needs Sponsors

Posted: 19 Feb 2012 04:57 PM PST

startupbus

A combined hackathon and road trip to South by Southwest, the StartupBus is in its third year and becoming a bit of a tradition — and this time, it won’t be limited to the United States.

That’s because, after doubling the number of buses, the organizers decided to choose participating cities a little differently this year. To make sure it wasn’t overlooking any cities with passionate startup communities, StartupBus organizers allowed people to vote for their favorite regions. And it turns out that Mexico City was one of the top vote getters, behind only Cincinnati and Tampa Bay.

Until now, the main StartupBus event — founded in 2010 by Elias Bizannes — has limited its departures to US cities. Still, there were signs that it was starting to attract an international following. Entrepreneurs have flown in from other countries to join the US buses, and there was a StartupBus bound for Le Web last December.

Eoin McMillan, who is both “conductor” (basically, the organizer) of the Mexico City bus and director of operations at Bizannes’ new StartupHouse venture, says the entrepreneurs who will actually ride the bus are still being selected. (For logistical reasons, the bus will leave from San Luis Potosi.) In the meantime, there are other obstacles.

The main one, not surprisingly, is money. Some of the costs will be covered by Tec De Monterrey Zona Norte, which McMillan describes as “the MIT of Mexico” and which is sponsoring the bus. In addition, StartupBus will probably be reducing or waiving its normal fee (needed to cover costs like gas and paying the driver). But there are still the basic travel costs associated with the road trip, like buying food and paying for nightly lodging, that could make the trip too expensive for some Mexican entrepreneurs, especially college students.

So McMillan is hoping for help — ideally, he’d like to find a big sponsor who can provide the funding to give each passenger a small travel stipend, but failing that, he’s interested in talking to anyone who might be willing to help. If that’s you, email him at eoin@startupbus.com.

McMillan can speak passionately about the life-changing aspects of riding the bus — after all, he took the trip himself last year, after traveling from Australia to San Francisco to pursue his dreams of entrepreneurship. Now, he admits to not just drinking the StartupBus Kool-Aid, but “mainlining it,” and he says, “The thought that someone amazing who wanted to get on the bus might not be able to because of finances pisses me off.”

He also argues that Mexico City’s involvement is symbolic of a larger trend toward international entrepreneurship.

“It’s no longer about, ‘Can Mexico City compete?’” McMillan says. “It’s about, ‘Can San Francisco compete against the rest of the world combined?’”
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