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The Block Album
Jan 16, 1:43AM
Every few eons we get another RSS is dead swarm of stories, usually involving Dave Winer versus the rest of the universe. Sub-themes include dead calling is stupid, I found this post on RSS, and get off your porch grandpa. Typically Dave uses the event to launch yet another version of Radio 8 tricked out to convince us that his lack of business model business model beats traditional data silo roach motel closed software. It may sound like I am pursuing a personal vendetta. I'll admit to some mixed emotions about Winer and his attempts to regain control of what he calls RSS but is in fact a new socially adept layer dominated by Twitter. Starting with my post several years ago on TechCrunch, I've stated the obvious, that RSS has become at best a formative technology that has led to the development of realtime social streams of citations.
OMG/JK: Pushing Google's Nonexistent Buttons
Jan 16, 12:32AM
Earlier this week we had a special episode of OMG/JK to mark the launch of the Verizon iPhone, but we're already back for more. I know what you're thinking: this may be the best week, ever. In this episode we discuss recent rumors about the iPad 2 — which will likely come with a new, higher resolution screen and a SD card slot. We also take a look at the rumors that the iPad and iPhone may soon ditch their single, iconic buttons. Next, we examine Google's recent bold moves to promote WebM and move away from H.264, which has the web in a bit of a tizzy as it debates what this will mean for the future of web video. Finally, we take a broader look at some of the problems that Google has had lately, and why the public and the press seem to have been criticizing the search giant more than usual.
Gillmor Gang 1.15.11 (TCTV)
Jan 15, 8:00PM
In the good old days of tech media, Microsoft led the charge in impossibly convoluted contortions around self-interested maneuvers. Today Google has taken over that role. And the new Microsoft stands as a pale shadow of itself, fighting tooth and nail to rescue defeat from the jaws of victory. With Steve Ballmer as Donald Trump: Nice job, Bob. You're fired. As we found out on today's Gillmor Gang, Google is being called on a transparent bluff. Namely, that yanking H.264 from Chrome is all about the open Web. That WebM will stop Apple from eating the heart out of Android and Chrome and maybe YouTube. Already Google is re-explaining the move. But not soon enough to stop Danny Sullivan, Robert Scoble, Kevin Marks, John Taschek and me from having some fun on the Gang this week. Kudos to Microsoft and Google for their hard work this week. Thanks for the material, guys. 
A Brief Explanation Of Why Minecraft Matters
Jan 15, 7:57PM
On Wednesday, it was announced that a game called Minecraft had hit a million sales. This probably isn't the first time that you, a denizen of the internet, have heard that word. But unless you're in the habit of following up on every mention of every indie game you happen to see, there's a good chance this particular title might have slipped under your radar. So what is this Minecraft, and why is everyone talking about it? And more importantly, why should you care?
The 4-Hour Body: The Real App You Are Working On Is An App Called Yourself (Review)
Jan 15, 5:27PM
Tim Ferriss is a 33-year-old Silicon Valley angel investor, consultant, Singularity University advisor, and former entrepreneur who in 2007 published a book called The 4-Hour Workweek; in 2008 won Wired's "Greatest Self-Promoter of All Time" prize; and last month published a sort-of-sequel, The 4-Hour Body. His books seem roughly equally divided between really worthwhile, interesting advice and totally ridiculous crap. What's most interesting about them is their approach. In his own bizarre yet effective way, Ferriss has become the world's first hacker-guru. And I hate to admit it, but I must confess: I have halfway become a devotee. The 4-Hour Body attacks self-improvement in the same way Silicon Valley startups strive for success: data-driven decision-making, A/B testing, iterative development, willingness to pivot. This isn't new. A sizeable subset of the hacker community has been "hacking their body" for years, and sites like Lifehacker have grown around that approach. Ferriss, though, is the first to promulgate that ethos to the general population - and he has been wildly (and deservedly) successful. 4-Hour Body rocketed straight to the top of the New York Times bestseller list.
Let's Compete on Innovation Rather Than Patents
Jan 15, 3:00PM
The next generations of telecom technologies are called "LTE" or "4G". China's Huawei believes that by 2015, it will hold 15–20% of the worldwide patents in these technologies, and that these will it at least 1.5% of the sales price of every device—every cell phone, laptop, and tablet—that uses them. Huawei is on track to achieve its goals: in 2007, it held just 152 patents; by the end of 2009, it had applied for 42,543 patents, of which 11,339 had been granted in China, 215 in the United States, and 1282 in Europe. Huawei's rival, ZTE, claims to hold 7% of the world's LTE patents and plans to increase this to 10% by 2012. Emboldened by these successes, the Chinese government has initiated a nationwide program to make China the world leader in patents in every important industry. The New York Times reported that the government is offering cash bonuses, better housing, and tax breaks to individuals and companies filing the most patent applications. According to the Times, China's goal is to increase the number of its yearly "invention" patent filings from this year's 300,000 to one million by 2015. And it wants another one million "utility-model patents", which typically cover items like engineering features in a product. In comparison, there are 500,000 invention patents granted every year in the U.S. The requirements for "utility-model patents" are so mundane that they are not even recognized in the U.S. as a legitimate criterion for the existence of intellectual property. 
Union Square's New $165 Million Fund Is All About Growing With The Network
Jan 15, 1:27PM
Back in December, we spotted an SEC filing indicating that Union Square Ventures was raising between $135 million and $200 million for a new "Opportunity Fund." The offering wasn't complete and the firm could not discuss it, but today partner Fred Wilson explains in a post what the new fund (which ended up being a $165 million fund) is all about. The fund is not about going after different opportunities than Union Square has been focussed on since the outset. It is that the size of the opportunity Union Square is focussed on—which Wilson describes "Internet services that create large networks"—is larger than ever. And the new fund will provide more dry powder to invest in network startups, whether they need $25,000 or $25 million. Wilson explains:
What Facebook Should Steal From Microsoft's Playbook
Jan 15, 12:48PM
Editor's note: This guest post was written by Raj Lalwani, the co-founder and CEO of Hallmark Social Calendar (formerly Social Calendar), a birthday reminder app on Facebook. In 2007, when Facebook opened its platform to developers, it seemed Facebook was using Microsoft's playbook - let developers create apps using their platform and see what apps succeed (Lotus 1-2-3, WordPerfect, Harvard Graphics). Then acquire or clone the successful ones (Microsoft Excel, Word, PowerPoint) as the cash cow and leave the crumbs (relatively speaking) for others. Something seems to have gone wrong - the third-party app ecosystem is not exactly thriving and Facebook still has no cash cows like Microsoft has (Office and Windows). Facebook is increasingly looking like Yahoo! - it does everything from Photos, Chat, Email to Places. It provides just enough features to be functional but leaves much to be desired, and increasingly depends on advertising as the revenue model. Here is what Facebook should steal from Microsoft's playbook which until recently had the largest market cap in technology (it's Apple now).
Instagram For The BlackBerry [Screenshot]
Jan 15, 3:55AM
Inspired by the epic Angry Birds for Blackberry, Myspace VP Sean Percival has come up with a hypothetical of what the popular photosharing app Instagram would look like on the text heavy and camera weak Blackberry platform. The above image is particularly humorous when coupled with the fact that Instagram, which just hit one million downloads, has not yet launched on Android. Percival's ultimate message here is intended to go beyond the lols however, "With so many brands getting into Instagram I was curious how a piece of humor (or viral) content might do within the Instagram ecosystem itself. No doubt those brands will need to bring something more than that perfectly filtered photo of a kitty cat to make an impact."
Twitter For Mac's Spectacular Hidden Little Feature: Tweet Anything From Anywhere
Jan 15, 3:11AM
I love Twitter for Mac. Love it. It has completely altered my day-to-day workflow. And it has changed the way I use Twitter itself. And that was before I found out about this killer little hidden feature today: Tweet from anywhere. I don't know how I missed it before, but apparently installing Twitter for Mac adds a new "Tweet" command to basically a ton of apps running in OS X. MacStories first pointed this out earlier today, and now I can't get enough.
Facebook Shares Hit $28.26 Per Share, That's a $70+ Billion Valuation
Jan 15, 2:24AM
The SecondMarket Facebook shares auctions are back on after a holiday break, and the valuation is up big time. The last auction prior to this one closed December 15 at $22.75/share. Today it hit $28.26 per share. With 2. 5 billion or so shares outstanding, that's a $70.65 billionish valuation. A month and a half ago shares were trading on SecondMarket at a $50 billion valuation. What's changed? The Goldman Sachs investment announced earlier this month increased the hype even further. No wonder the SEC is starting to pay attention to these trades. Sounds like Accel Partners may have sold a little before the peak.
Posterous Cofounder Garry Tan Steps Down, Heads To Y Combinator
Jan 15, 1:36AM
Garry Tan, one of the cofounders of easy-to-use blogging service Posterous, is moving on from the company. Tan will be leaving to take a position at Y Combinator, where he will serve as a designer in residence. Posterous doesn't put much weight on titles, but Tan had a hand in the site's engineering, design, and product development. Posterous isn't taking off as quickly as its competitor Tumblr, but it has a solid audience and has recently released a neat Groups feature. Tan didn't elaborate much on his reasons for leaving, but says that it boils down to wanting to work with smaller teams, which he'll be able to do at Y Combinator (Posterous is now at around 13 employees). He also added that Posterous is going "gangbusters" and that he expects 2011 to be "really phenomenal".
Want To Know What Your Friends Think? Ask Polling Site GoPollGo
Jan 15, 1:23AM
Former TechCrunch developer Ben Schaechter left TC a couple months ago to launch his own startup and today we finally get to see the fruits of his labor. Sick of the poor analytics, lack of geo-graphical information and little vote analysis on industry leaders like Poll Daddy, Schaechter built GoPollGo to maximize what he felt was the potential of polling services. Says Schaechter, "The polling space is crying out for disruption and innovation. There is *so* much information that can be dervived from vistors. When mashed up with users' opinions, the data gets thoroughly interesting."
Ask a VC: Satish Dharmaraj on India, the Beauty of Fragmentation and Farmers Markets (TCTV)
Jan 15, 1:22AM
I have a dilemma with Ask a VC. Generally, I'm trying to do shows that are under 10 minutes, so they're more consumable. But in the case of Ask a VC, I want to get to as many reader questions as possible and would rather not cut someone off when they are giving you business advice. So starting this week we're going to post the whole show as usual below, and give you links to each question and answer. That way if you don't have 15 minutes to watch it all, you can still find out the answer to your question or a question that you are grappling with. I usually find that its easier to consume long-form videos in podcast form than during my daily blog reading, so as a reminder, you can also download the episodes of any of our TCTV shows from iTunes. This week, Redpoint Ventures' Satish Dharmaraj was our first return guest and we got to a good number of questions including...
Cubeduel Goes Viral Too Quickly, Stumbles Over LinkedIn API Limits
Jan 15, 12:53AM
Yesterday we ran a post about Cubeduel, a service that mixes the best (or worst) of Hot or Not with LinkedIn. Fire up the site and it will show you photos of two coworkers — pick the one you'd prefer to work with, and Cubeduel will present you with another pair of photos. It's addictive, a bit evil, and has skyrocketed in usage over the last few days since it launched. Unfortunately, it took off a bit too quickly. The service went down earlier today for reasons that were initially unclear — did LinkedIn block the site because it ranks coworkers in a way that isn't exactly flattering to everyone, or did the site just get too popular, too fast? Turns out it's the latter — Cubeduel has exceeded LinkedIn's API limits (which is what one of the site's creators, Tony Wright, initially guessed). Here's an explanation from LinkedIn Director of Communications Hani Durzy:
Andreessen Horowitz Hires a New Partner…from Sales?
Jan 14, 11:59PM
When Marc Andreessen and Ben Horowitz launched their venture firm, they talked a good game about things being different; about having a smorgasbord of partners skilled in different areas that could tag in-and-out of portfolio companies as appropriate. And a lot of that sounded like the usual "value-add" venture capital spiel. But two funds into the firm's life, that vision is starting to take shape. Witness today's announcement that Mark Cranney will be joining the firm as a partner. Cranney isn't some techy whiz-kid, visionary founder or even a financial wizard. He's a sales and operations guy and his job will be to help teach Andreessen Horowitz's predominately engineer-centric founders and CEOs to be a little bit more like those things many of them decry: a sales guy, an MBA, a grown-up manager. Look at him! He even looks like a sales guy!
Speaking of… Cindy Morgan, from Original TRON [TCTV]
Jan 14, 11:15PM
My special guest on this week's Speaking Of is actress Cindy Morgan. Cindy is known in the film world for two iconic roles: as Lacey Underall in Caddyshack and as Lora/Yori in the original TRON. I didn't mention this in my original overview of TRON Legacy, because I didn't want to spoil much of the movie for everyone, but I was very saddened by the fact that two of my favorite characters (Bit and Yori) from the original TRON didn't make an appearance in the sequel, when so many other main actors did, including Bruce Boxleitner (shown holding Yori in the original TRON poster). When I asked about this, Cindy admitted that she'd only seen the sequel two days prior to our interview, and that it was like going to the prom without a date. She made a small cameo in Sam Flynn's room on his poster and that was about it. Cindy is incredibly gracious though, understanding that movie producers have to make difficult decisions. She hopes she'll appear in the next sequel - and I'd love to see that happen too. Video ahead.
Smart Energy Consultancy, Gridpoint, Raises Another $23.6 Million
Jan 14, 11:02PM
A new SEC filing revealed today that Gridpoint — a smart energy consultancy based in Arlington, Virginia — raised another $23.6 million to design, build and install energy tracking and management systems for companies or government agencies seeking to cut costs and reduce consumption. Founded in 2003, Gridpoint appointed a new chief executive, John B. Spiritos, last quarter (October 2010). In the spring last year, the company won a $28 million contract with the United States Postal Service (USPS) to install energy management systems in selected post office locations across the U.S. It also made a number of acquisitions in the smart-grid space. 
Chairman Of Build Your Dreams, A Major Clean Tech Manufacturer, Wins "China's Peace Prize"
Jan 14, 9:45PM
The chairman of Build Your Dreams (BYD) one of the world's largest clean tech and electric vehicle manufacturers, Chuanfu Wang, won China's Canton Provincial Award for Individual Contribution the company announced today. The Canton Government awarded the CPAIC, a.k.a. "China's Peace Prize," to Wang for leading a business that has consistently developed and commercialized solar power, battery, LED and electrified transportation technologies. Use of BYD products in Canton, the government there claims, significantly reduced air pollution in the province. Also known as Guangdong, the Canton region drew scrutiny over air quality issues leading up to the Asian Games which it hosted in November 2010...
So Much For Standards, Google Says WebM Plugins Coming Soon For Safari And IE9
Jan 14, 9:32PM
We've already done a full breakdown of Google's clarification of their H.264 pullout today. But buried in their post is another interesting nugget worth highlighting by itself: WebM plugins are coming shortly for Safari and IE9. Yes, plugins. This is both humorous and terrifying on a few levels. First and formost, the point of all of this H.264/WebM stuff is so that the web can shift to an HTML5 video standard going forward. Of course, since neither IE nor Safari will support Google's, Mozilla's, and Opera's preferred codec for that standard, we're right back to plugin land! Why don't we just call WebM, Flash 2.0?
Google Clarifies Their H.264 Stance, Hands Keys Of Web Video's Future Back To Flash
Jan 14, 9:04PM
Earlier this week, Google wrote a very short post on their relatively small Chromium blog to announce a big change: they were dropping support for the H.264 codec in Chrome. While they may have tried to whisper it, the post resulted in a shitstorm that reached high into the heavens. It seems as if just about everyone weighed in on the decision (including us, twice). As a result of the fallout, Google decided to follow-up on their three-paragraph post with a ten-paragraph one today more clearly outlining why they're making the move. It certainly is more clear, and that's perhaps what makes it even more frustrating. As Google notes, this is all about the HTML <video> tag. The search giant cites an impasse in figuring out one codec to use for the future of HTML5-based web video. Safari and IE are backing H.264, but Mozilla and Opera refuse to, and had been backing Ogg Theora. So Google dreamed up WebM and got Mozilla and Opera to sign on board. Unfortunately, we're still at an impasse, because it does not appear that Safari and IE will be doing the same any time soon.
Boingo Wireless Files For $75 Million IPO
Jan 14, 8:55PM
Boingo Wireless, a nationwide WiFi provider, has just announced that it has filed an S-1 registration statement with the SEC for a proposed initial public offering. While the company's statement says that number of shares to be offered and the offering price range are still to be determined, the filing indicates that the IPO is prices at $75 million for now. It's important to note that this is the amount, Boingo is trying to raise but is not the set amount for the IPO. Boingo "believes" that it is is the world's largest commercial Wi-Fi network, with 211,000 Wi-Fi locations in over 100 countries. The company installs, manages and operates wireless networks in locations like airports and restaurant chains, which Boing says had more than 800 million visitors in 2009.
TechCrunch Giveaway: Tickets To The 2010 Crunchies #Crunchies
Jan 14, 8:41PM
The 2010 Crunchies Awards are coming up fast and tickets are sold out. But we are giving away two more pairs of tickets. Yesterday, we also announced that a very special musical guest will be joining us. He shocked us at DisruptNY and now, thanks to MailChimp, ELEW will be performing at this year's Crunchies! His Rockjazz renditions of hits by artists such as Coldplay, The Killers, and Nirvana will serenade us throughout the award ceremony, as well as at the after party. The awards are being held at the Palace of Fine Arts Theater in San Francisco on January 21, 2011 at 7:30pm PST, with the after party following right after at the Exploratorium until 11:30pm PST. We will have music, food, drinks, games, and many other fun surprises! We will choose 2 winners tomorrow, January 15th at 5:30pm PST. 
The #Tunisian Revolution Wasn't Televized, But You Could Follow It On Twitter
Jan 14, 8:21PM
For those of you not following the hashtags #sidibouzid (the Tunisian province where this month's protests started) #Tunisia, #Tunisian, or #Tunise here's the executive summary: Tunisian dictator Zine El Abidine Ben Ali fled the country today after weeks of unrest sparked by the suicide of produce vendor Mohamed Bouazizi. Bouazizi, who reportedly killed himself after police seized his fruit stand, became a galvanizing symbol for unemployment and corruption in Tunisia.
Why American Mothers are Superior
Jan 14, 7:52PM
Editor's note: The Wall Street Journal lit up the blogosphere last weekend with an article titled, Why Chinese Mothers Are Superior. This played right into the stereotypes about Asian parents being obsessed with their children's education and myths about Chinese and Indian education being superior to U.S. education. The Journal article was over the top—way over. In fact, TechCrunch contributor Vivek Wadhwa called it "bizarre" in a response that he wrote in his BusinessWeek column. Chinese and Indian parents really do care about their children, just as American parents do, as do others all over the world. Some Chinese and Indian parents are really strict and push their children extremely hard. But he doesn't know any who would call their children "garbage" either in private or in public as the Journal described. And he doesn't know any middle-class Indian or Chinese children, in this day and age, who allow themselves to be subjected to the type of abuse the article details. You can read his views. But here is the perspective of one of his Twitter followers, Dr. AnnMaria De Mars, President of The Julia Group. She said that she felt compelled to write this after reading his piece.
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