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Millennial: Android Continues To Account For Over Half Of Mobile Ad Impression Share
Mar 18, 9:38AM
Millennial Media's monthly mobile report is out today, giving us a view into how each OS and manufacturer is performing on the mobile ad network. Millennial, whose ads reach 90.3 million users monthly in the U.S.; reports that for the third month in a row, Android continued to lead iOS as the largest Smartphone OS the network with over half (51 percent) of all U.S. mobile ad impression share (which is around 21 billion each month) in February. This is actually down from 54 percent share in January. iOS followed with 27 percent of mobile ad impression share, which is decrease of 1 percent. RIM followed with a 14 percent impression share, which is up 3 percent from last month. According to a recent IDC report, Millennial is the third largest network behind Google AdMob and Apple's iAd, so data shared on Millennial's network is certainly indicative of the state of mobile advertising. 
SXSW: Sights and Sounds (TCTV)
Mar 18, 6:35AM
The SXSW interactive and technology programming has just ended and the music festival is getting underway. The interactive portion featured hundreds of panels inside the convention center. But much of the action, networking and fun took place in the streets of Austin. As MG Siegler wrote, maybe "people should just show up in Austin next year and not even go to the actual conference." If you did that this year, here's what you might have seen. In between our interviews, we sent our TechCrunch TV videographer John Murillo and his Canon 7D out to capture the sights and sounds of SXSW - the food, beer, games, and parties. 
StumbleUpon's Garrett Camp On What It's Like To Buy Back Your Company
Mar 18, 3:46AM
There aren't many startup founders that have done what Garrett Camp has done. After selling content discovery service StumbleUpon to eBay for $75 million in 2007, Camp and investors decided to buy it back for a reported $29 million in 2009. After the initial series A that was folded back into the spinoff, Camp raised $17 million from August Capital, Accel, and others in a Series B just last week, making StumbleUpon the most rare of comeback success stories.
CoolPlanetBiofuels Draws Google Ventures Investment To Make Gas From Grass
Mar 18, 3:00AM
CoolPlanetBiofuels — a company that converts grass, woodchips, and other non-food crops and farm residue into high-grade fuel — attracted a series B investment From Google Ventures, the companies revealed Thursday. Based in Camarillo, Calif. CoolPlanet claims its biofuel products are not just net zero, but "negative carbon fuels," because the byproducts from making and using them can sequester carbon, and therefore act as a soil conditioner. Converting cellulosic plant material into gasoline could help the agricultural sector by creating demand for non-food crops, and potentially new jobs in rural farming communities... 
Not Even Kevin Rose Really Uses Digg Anymore
Mar 18, 2:47AM
How bad are things at the once-mighty Digg these days? Not so good. It's been months since Digg relaunched in August in a quest for relevance. They had 18 million unique worldwide visitors that month according to Comscore. That dropped to just under 12 million in January, a 33% drop in just five months. Everything official coming out of Digg says things are great and that a the company will find a way to success. But everyone knows how unlikely that is. Even, it seems, founder Kevin Rose. He's barely even using the service anymore. There was one 22 day period in December that he didn't submit, comment on or even "digg" a single story. 
"Save Japan" Initiative At SXSW 2011 (And How You Can Help Without Being There)
Mar 18, 2:39AM
I am currently in Austin at SXSW 2011, but mentally absent: I was at Tokyo airport on Friday to fly off to Texas, on my way to the gate, when the earthquake hit Japan (where I am based). As everybody knows by now, the quake marked the biggest disaster in Japan's history after WWII, leaving thousands of people dead, wounded or homeless. After 6 years of living in Japan and being there when it happened, I, too, am devastated. The Japan delegation for SXSW Interactive consists of about 10 people, and in the light of what was and still is happening in their home country, everybody toughed it out, took part in their panels and did a great job. (I know because I got a ticket at a later date and luckily was able to moderate two panels related to Japanese tech and speak at another one. I was too late to attend the first Japan panel.) 
After A Series Of Big Time News Events, Ustream Hits 10M Broadcasters, 60M Monthly Unique Viewers
Mar 18, 2:10AM
Video service Ustream has seen an interesting six months, between broadcasting the Chilean miner rescue, the newsfeeds of revolutions in Tunisia and Egypt, the debut of the Charlie Sheen show and the news surrounding the Japanese Tsunami and earthquake last Friday. VP of Marketing and Communications Lynn Fox tells me that the service has seen unprecedented growth, and hit 10 million total broadcaster signups at the end of February, averaging a rounded 20% growth month over month since December. 
The SXSWi Trade Show, Up Close, With Penguin
Mar 18, 2:00AM
Watch me and my three chins walk through the SXSWi trade show talking to all sorts of exciting people including GroundLink, Animoto, and Volusion. Fast forward to 5:15 to see me talking to a giant, mute penguin!
Saying "SXSW Is Over" Is Over
Mar 18, 1:17AM
A lot of the talk surrounding SXSW this year has reminded me of one of my favorite skits from IFC's show Portlandia. It starts off with a guy peering into the window of a bar and telling the locals inside how much he loves the place. The next day, he comes back to the same bar and sees some new guy in a buttoned-up shirt sitting there. "Aw come on — a guy like that is hanging out here? This bar is over," he declares. Likewise, SXSW is over. Or is it? Depending on what you read or who you talk to, this was definitely the year that SXSW jumped the shark. In fact, I think we even declared it over before it even began. What was once a conference that was hip, now attracts the guy in the buttoned-up shirt — therefore, it's over.
On Nuclear Power: Regulating Our Reaction
Mar 18, 12:46AM
As a result of the ongoing tragedy in Japan, in particular the threat of meltdown or catastrophic radiation release from the Fukushima nuclear power plants, there has been a renewal of the discussion of nuclear power and its risks. As a tech site that occasionally covers scientific research in this area, and has a whole section dedicated to "green" technology, I thought we should at least touch on the subject, though of course to delve more deeply requires expertise we obviously lack. That said, I just want to put down a few words regarding the safety and development of nuclear power. I feel we must be careful to maintain in this area the most powerful weapon we have in the rest of the tech world: a strong disinclination to cleave to common wisdom. We're a community of early adopters, entrepreneurs, and creatives — let's not fall into the traps of fusty prejudice and common misconceptions. We don't do it when we talk about the internet, so why should we when we talk about something as serious as the future of our power infrastructure?
Gobbler Puts The Fun Back Into Collaborative Media Projects
Mar 18, 12:15AM
If you've ever worked on a big music or video project you'll probably love Gobbler immediately. Just don't get too excited - it's still in early beta and for now all they've released is their audio product. The company first debuted publicly at the Launch conference last month, but seems to have attracted almost zero notice from the press until now. But users have definitely noticed Gobbler. Feedback on their first project is so intensely positive, says CEO Chris Kantrowitz (who cofounded Gobbler with his sister, former MySpace exec Jamie Kantrowitz), that the company is accelerating plans to support video. It should be here by summer. SSo what is Gobbler? First it's desktop software that keeps your media projects organized. Gobbler will locate all of your projects across your various internal and external hard drives, and then keep track of them. Even when you disconnect that external drive, Gobbler knows the project is there and keeps showing it in the file system. That alone makes Gobbler incredibly useful for people who keep grabbing new hard drives to store their terabytes of photo, video and audio projects. Do you even know where all your photos are? I don't. A lot of them used to be on Flickr, but my pro account lapsed and Yahoo is holding them hostage until I pay up. But that's another story. 
Is Groupon Worth $25 Billion? Revenue Now "Multiple Billions Of Dollars"
Mar 18, 12:09AM
As Groupon pursues its plans for an IPO, it's proposed valuation keeps on going up. First it was $15 billion, now it's $25 billion, according to a report by Bloomberg. Remember, it was only in January, 2011 that it closed a $950 million venture round at a valuation just shy of $5 billion. What's going on here? Is this yet one more sign of Internet valuations getting out of hand—dare I say the "B" word? One of Groupon's venture investors, Ben Horowitz of Andreessen Horowitz, doesn't think there is a bubble. At a press dinner last night in New York City, we were discussing valuations in general and he pointed out that Groupon is now doing "multiple billions of dollars in revenues." To be fair, Horowitz was in a roomful of bloggers and journalists trying to pin him down on a number and he was hemming and hawing, but he seemed to be referring to expected 2011 revenues. I take "multiple billions" of dollars to mean more than $2 billion, which was the annualized run-rate back in December. Compare that number with the $760 million in revenues for 2010 reported by the WSJ and you get a sense of its growth. Remember also that Groupon is only two years old. The faster the growth rate, the higher the valuation. But this isn't only about valuation, it's about ego. At $25 billion, a Groupon IPO would nudge Google to become the largest venture-backed IPO ever.
Print – And Burn – After Reading: It's Time To Fight Back Against The Footer Fascists
Mar 17, 11:56PM
You've seen them, I've seen them. We've all seen them. Those screamingly pompous email footers that IT departments append to millions - billions? - of emails every day, urging us to "Consider the environment!" before asking "Do you really need to print this email?" I think I can say, without fear of contradiction, that they are literally the most antisocial human innovation since McDonald's started giving away chewing tobacco with Happy Meals. Worse, they're so utterly pointless: never once in the - what? - two decades? - the messages have been plaguing our inboxes has a single soul ever heeded their message and considered the environment before printing. Most people don't print emails, and those who do, do. There is not a single tree still standing because some Dilbertesque corporate responsibility dickhead had nothing better to do with his time than to lecture total strangers on their obligations to mother earth. Enough is enough.
First Impressions Of The Nintendo 3DS: 3D Done Right
Mar 17, 11:51PM
I'll be the first to admit that I thought the 3DS would be a gimmicky also-ran. I followed the handheld console from E3 to a hands-on at CES and now with the device in my hands I can report that Nintendo will have a hit on their hands. The 3DS is the DSi grown up. The UI is highly polished and there are a number of interesting features including a "suspend mode" for games that allows you to drop into Nintendo's communication and photo interface to take pictures and send notes. If I didn't know any better, I'd say Nintendo was trying to create a lifestyle device a la the iPod Touch, a path they've hinted at in the past with the DSi.
Youngest Y Combinator Founders Launch MinoMonsters, The Pokemon Of Social Games
Mar 17, 11:40PM
At age 15, most normal people are going to high school, learning to drive, not listening to their parents, and doing things that they'll later tell their kids not to do. Josh Buckley is not a normal teenager. At 15, he was selling his first company for just over six figures. Today, the 18-year-old entrepreneur and angel investor has partnered with 17-year-old engineer Tyler Diaz to co-found MinoMonsters, a social game in which players collect and battle pet monsters. According to Y Combinator Partner Paul Graham, Buckley and Diaz are the youngest pair of founders it has ever accepted into the fold. What's more, to put the icing on the Millenial entrepreneurs' cake, Buckley told me that the startup just hired Apple's youngest engineer. (But cannot yet reveal his name for legal reasons.) 
Pixelate 2.0 For iPhone Shows You How Colors Will Look On Your Clothes, Walls
Mar 17, 11:19PM
While it's not magic, it's close to it -- Pixelate 2.0 landed in the iTunes store today. The app, which is yet another step towards the future, allows you to try out colors of paint on your walls, or clothes or what ever you'd like to change the color of by selecting image, selecting a color and gradually using the UI to paint one color over the other. With Pixelate you can either grab images from your phone or snap a picture, choose a color from the Color Matrix or by select one from an image. Once you've decided on what you want to replace and with what, use the Update Image button to automatically paint over the colors selected. It usually takes a couple of iterations of color selection to cover the whole wall. Select Erase to erase away any color spill over and select Paint if you'd like to manually color in smaller areas through touch. You can then send the final product to someone via email, or save it to your photo library.
The UK Beats The US To A Startup Visa – But Will It Make A Real Difference? [TCTV]
Mar 17, 11:00PM
Earlier today, Mike Butcher over on TechCrunch Europe gleefully reported that the UK had beaten the US in creating an entrepreneur/startup visa. One of the organizations credited with helping the British Government in crafting the terms of the Visa was Seedcamp, an early-stage micro seed investment and mentoring programme, not hugely unlike a European YCombinator. As someone who has been - to say the least - cynical about the future of tech entrepreneurship in London, I was keen to find out more. And who better to ask than Seedcamp partner Reshma Sohoni, who joined me via Skype to explain what this means for London tech, and whether it represents a genuine step forward for European entrepreneurship. Video below.
As My Future Self Feels Good About HuffPo, My Past Self Is Determined To Get Me Fired
Mar 17, 10:00PM
I love book publishing. It's my favourite industry in the world, staffed by some of my favourite people and producing content that, more than in any other medium, is capable of changing the world. Being a published author, in a respected publishing house, is the sine qua non of success as a writer. And yet - there's one aspect of publishing that is just plain infuriating. And that's the lead times. Just over a year ago, I wrote the final sentence of my newest book. Since then, the manuscript has been through round after round of edits, libel reading, further edits, typesetting, proof reading, cover designing, pre-sales and more -- and it's still just shy of two months away from publication. By comparison, I started writing this blog post about thirty seconds ago and it'll be posted in another minute or two, typos and all. Generally, the only real price of publishing's monstrous lead times is boredom, and a dash of frustration: a price well worth paying. Every so often, though, in the time between writing and publication, circumstances will change and bite you in the ass. Which is exactly what just happened to me. And it wasn't even one of my own books.
Keen On… Bruce Sterling: "Network Society Isn't Compatible With Democracy" (TCTV)
Mar 17, 8:14PM
Appropriately, Bruce Sterling closed SXSW this year. It's appropriate because after Bruce, there really isn't much to say. He's just about the smartest and funniest historical science fictional writer in the business. And the edgiest too Рeven though he's built a professorial fa̤ade to disguise the punk in him. So it was a huge honor to catch the darkly euphoric Bruce in Austin where he talked to me about his upcoming new book Gothic High Tech and Favella Chic, on why "hactivism" isn't democracy and why he finds Sarah Palin "super interesting." Video ahead.
SXSW By The Numbers: iOS, Foursquare And GroupMe Emerge Victorious
Mar 17, 7:27PM
SXSW Interactive is no longer about the panels or keynotes, having become a five day experiment in the ability of technology to withstand the load of over 20,000 influencers congregated in the same location, trying to network using various digital tools. It's some sort of sped up playground for app and device Darwinism, where the rest of the world functioning as a control group. SimplyMeasured has analyzed the #SXSW tweet streams and come up with some preliminary results to the booze-fueled undertaking. According to SimplyMeasured's data, GroupMe dominated people's #SXSW Twitter streams in the group messaging class with 65% of the mentions, iOS devices won the platform battles with 74% of the tweets (split into 60% for the iPhone and 14% for the iPad respectively) and Foursquare won the location based check-in war at 65%. 
Moki.TV Is The Ultimate, Personalized Guide To What's Streaming On The Web
Mar 17, 7:06PM
As more services like Netflix, Amazon and others stream television and movie content on the web, consumers are able to basically watch whatever they want, whenever they want. But TV shows and movies are spread across a variety of websites, and platforms, including iTunes, Hulu, Amazon, Netflix and others, and it can be difficult to sort through all this fragmented content. Y Combinator-backed Moki.TV is launching today as a personalized guide to all TV, video and movie content on the web. Moki.TV is a directory of all paid and free content included on Amazon's streaming service, Netlfix, Hulu, iTunes, and others. At the moment, the site has 40,000 movies, and 60,000 TV episodes indexed; and this number is growing daily, says co-founder Matt Huang. Users can use the site to search for content and find where this content is streaming. 
Scribd's HTML5-Based Document Viewer Is Now Portable, Retroactively Upgrades 20M+ Embeds
Mar 17, 7:00PM
Last May, document sharing hub Scribd launched one of its biggest features yet: a document reader based entirely in HTML5. Up until then Scribd had presented its documents using a Flash-based viewer called Flash Paper, which worked well but had a few shortcomings — namely that it didn't work on mobile devices like the iPhone. Scribd's solution was to use optical character recognition on a document to effectively recreate its fonts in a digital format, then to use HTML5 to style and lay out the document's content. And it really works. Today, Scribd is taking the next step on its HTML5 rollout: it's swapping all of its embedded document widgets that are using Flash over to a new embeddable version of the HTML5 viewer (and new document embeds will be in HTML5). This is important, because Scribd already has 20 million embeds scattered across the web that will be automatically converted to the new viewer (CTO Jared Friedman says this shouldn't break anything). The reader will allow document embeds to be read on mobile devices that can't use Flash, like the iPad and iPhone, and it should generally offer a more native feel in the browser than Flash does. 
The Google Loophole Has Become The Facebook/Twitter Loophole
Mar 17, 6:31PM
There are a lot of interesting angles to the news this morning about The New York Times' new paywall. Top news will remain free, a set number of articles for all users will remain free, there will be different pricing tiers for different devices, NYT is fine with giving Apple a 30 percent cut, etc, etc. But to me, the most interesting aspect is only mentioned briefly about halfway down the NYT announcement article: all those who come to the New York Times via Facebook or Twitter will be allowed to read for free. There will be no limit to this. Up until now, we've seen paywall enthusiasts like The Wall Street Journal offer such loopholes. But they've done so via Google. It's a trick that most web-savvy news consumers know. Is a WSJ article behind a paywall? Just Google the title of it. Click on the resulting link and boom, free access to the entire thing. No questions asked. This new NYT model is taking that idea and flipping it. 
Zero Motorcycles Raises Another $17 Million To Make More Electric Bikes Domestically
Mar 17, 6:11PM
Zero Motorcycles in Santa Cruz, Calif. today revealed that Invus, LP, the company's earliest financial backers, have invested another $17 million in the business, with potential to add $9 million more over coming months. The capital will go towards expanding the Zero's U.S. operations, primarily, and towards expanding the company's global sales efforts, research and development, according to a company press statement. Invus, LP invested in Zero Motorcycles in April 2008 and has remained the company's principal investor... 
Online Subscription Billing Is Still A Hassle, SaaSy Aims To Change That
Mar 17, 5:00PM
Small business owners have about a gazillion things to worry about when it comes to running their company. It's enough just to manage and execute their business model, let alone having to worry about software, infrastructure, tracking, compliance, customer service and so on. As more and more Web businesses turn to subscription-based models to make money, services have popped up left and right to meet the demand, but the fact remains, developing and maintaining the many moving parts of an e-commerce infrastructure is still time-consuming and expensive. Enter SaaSy, a company launching this week that wants to take the process of building, managing, and improving an e-commerce system (in other words, the hassle) out of your hands to allow you to focus exclusively on the development and marketing of your subscription-based service. (What's actually important.) 
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