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Citing "Short-Term Difficulties", HTC Forecasts Weak Q1, Significant Revenue Drop
Feb 06, 9:20AM
Smartphones and tablets maker HTC this morning said it foresees a huge drop in revenue (PDF) in the first quarter, citing "short-term difficulties" as it gears up to - reportedly - launch four new phone models at the Mobile World Congress later this month. The Taiwanese company sees revenue dropping as much as 36 percent in Q1, to between NT$65 billion and NT$70 billion (roughly $2.2 and $2.4 billion) due to this "product transition".More MegaUpload Fallout As BitTorrent Search Engine BTjunkie Calls It Quits
Feb 06, 8:42AM
BTjunkie, a popular BitTorrent search service, has been 'voluntarily' shut down by its operator(s). In a goodbye message, BTjunkie writes: This is the end of the line my friends. The decision does not come easy, but we've decided to voluntarily shut down. We've been fighting for years for your right to communicate, but it's time to move on. It's been an experience of a lifetime, we wish you all the best!
Wealthfront Allows Tech Company Stock Holders To Test Share Sale Strategies Post-IPO
Feb 06, 8:01AM
One of the challenges that many post-IPO tech company employees will face is when to sell stock and how much stock to sell once the their stock lockups conclude.Financial advisors can help with this, but some aren't experienced enough with the specific fluctuations of tech companies to create a financially wise strategy. Wealthfront (formerly kaChing), a startup that has been disrupting the investing and personal finance space, is debuting a new tool employees use to test option sale strategies post IPO. Basically, Wealthfront will allow you to test various strategies against the actual stock behavior of a number of tech companies that went public in the past 10 years. The tool is actually embedded below so you can test it out. As we've written in the past, Wealthfront brings the quality investment theories of a fund manager online, at a much lower fee, essentially democratizing private wealth management to the masses. The startup is the brainchild of Andy Rachleff, who was formerly a founder of Benchmark Capital.Pedestrian Map App, Lumatic, Raises $800K From Joi Ito And 500 Startups
Feb 06, 6:10AM
All the major map apps like Google Maps, Bing Maps, and Mapquest have walking directions as a standard feature, but the folks at Lumatic don't think they are good enough. It is creating mobile maps designed for pedestrians, cyclists, and people who use public transit. Originally a TechStars company called Omniar, serial entrepreneur Scott Rafer (MyBlogLog, Lookery, Mashery) joined as CEO a year ago. He recently raised a seed round of $800,000 from Joi Ito's Neoteny Labs, 500 Startups, Chamath Palihapitiya, Allen Morgan, Ted Rheingold, and other angels.In The Future, The Business Founder Will Not Be Ignored
Feb 06, 5:50AM
The entrepreneurial world loves nothing like a good meme. One of the more recent ones making the rounds from Palo Alto to Paris is that a startup simply can't get off the ground without a technical founder. Investors, entrepreneurs and tech journalists alike will tell you that if you're not a whiz kid fresh out of Stanford's CS program, you are essentially not fundable -- entrepreneura non grata. Well, I am here to tell you that they are right. For now. Soon, however, I believe we'll see a marked shift in who holds the cards in the startup world.Andreessen Horowitz-Backed Nicira Pulls The Curtains Back On Disruptive Network Virtualization Platform
Feb 06, 5:00AM
The enterprise is moving towards simplicity, and this extends to the data center. Nicira, a stealthy virtualization startup with backing from big-name investors, is pulling the curtains back on its disruptive platform that hopes to change the way server and storage virtualization is done. And Nicira is revealing that it has raised with $50 million in funding to date from Andreessen Horowitz, Lightspeed Venture Partners and New Enterprise Associates, as well as individual investors including VMware co-founder Diane Greene and Benchmark Capital cofounder Andy Rachleff. Nicira's NVP is a software-based system that creates a distributed virtual network infrastructure in cloud data centers that is completely decoupled and independent from physical network hardware. Nicira says that it is shifting the intelligence and control of the network away from hardware and into software, simplifying the virtualization process.Twitter: In The Final 3 Minutes Of The Super Bowl, There Were 10,000 Tweets Per Second
Feb 06, 4:29AM
Big TV events are becoming an increasingly popular catalyst of activity on social media, with sporting events being at the top of the list. Many of us can no longer enjoy a Super Bowl without checking Twitter every three seconds. Last year, there were several moments during the Super Bowl that set records for the most tweets per second during a sporting event, with a high of 4,064 TPS. The highs during the Super Bowl were no match for New Years Eve 2011 in Japan, which saw 6,939 tweets per second.First Legal Streaming Super Bowl A Success, But Audience Still Denied The Real Show
Feb 06, 4:03AM
Lately, we've been seeing more and more big television events come with an online streaming counterpart. Big sporting and televised events are showing up online, with the 2010 Olympics seeming to be one of the first big global events where both viewers and media publicly recognized the power and potential of carrying an event like that online. For the first time ever, the Super Bowl is being shown online, for free. And it's completely legal. I was going to say "in a brilliant move by the NFL," but this should be default. Showing an enormously popular event like the Super Bowl online should not be a "brilliant" move. It should just be second nature. But, wishful thinking aside, the NFL and NBC both wanted to give home viewers options to watch the big game on the Web, without having to rub elbows with the riff raff at a local sports bar.Tech Bowl: Best Buy Spotlights Mobile Innovators, Founders In Super Bowl Spot
Feb 06, 1:48AM
Every year, Best Buy runs a big Super Bowl spot, and traditionally they go the route of hiring a big celebrity to hawk their brand message. Last year, it was "the Biebs" and Ozzy Osbourne. This year, Best Buy has opted for something a bit different, choosing to highlight innovators and give more than a nod to geeks in its tech-focused Super Bowl ad. Drew Panayiotou, Best Buy's U.S. marketing chief, told Bloomberg that the company had initially planned to continue down the celebrity track, but the outpouring of affection for Steve Jobs after the Apple CEO passed away was strong evidence that "Silicon Valley inventors are today's stars."To Heck With The Super Bowl: GOG Features Sierra Game Three-Packs For $5
Feb 06, 12:43AM
Good Old Games is running a $4.99 sale on multiple Sierra titles including Space Quest and Kings Quest. The games come in packages of three and are compatible with Windows (sorry, Mac users, but here's a consolation prize).Ahead Of Its IPO On The NYSE, Yelp Shows Growing Losses
Feb 05, 11:30PM
It may now be obscured by all the hoopla surrounding Facebook's going public, but back in November the popular user-generated review site, Yelp, filed to go public and planned to raise $100 million ahead of its IPO (at an expected $1 to $2 billion valuation). On Friday, Yelp filed an amended S-1 that shows that the company plans to list on the New York Stock Exchange under the symbol "YELP."Keep It Simple, Stupid: The Enterprise Version
Feb 05, 11:30PM
Back in 2009, my colleague MG Siegler wrote a brilliant piece titled 'Keep It Simple, Stupid,' which delved into how having a simple and easy to use product is a key formula for winning in the consumer tech space. A few days ago, Greylock Partner John Lilly echoed MG's thoughts, explaining that simplicity is quite simply very hard to beat. While this doctrine has been applied tonconsumer technology products like Dropbox, Gmail, Twitter and most famously, Apple; reinforcing simplicity in the product thought process is becoming an ever-present part of enterprise technology as well.Facebook Could Jumpstart HTML5 Platform With App Bookmarks On News Feed
Feb 05, 10:22PM
Facebook's late-comer HTML5 mobile app platform lags way behind the Apple App Store and Android Marketplace. Yesterday I spotted Facebook's latest effort to catch up -- a test showing bookmarks for third-party applications at the top of the mobile news feed. Currently, Facebook buries HTML5 app bookmarks at the bottom of its mobile site's pull-out navigation menu, and only shows them in the iOS or Android Facebook app's search bar. Placing them much more prominently atop the mobile home page could increase engagement -- the first step in attracting developers to the platform and earning money on in-app purchases.Apple Schooled Music Execs Then, Here Are The Lessons Online Video Should Learn Now
Feb 05, 9:21PM
Apple's all-in-one physical flat-screen iTV is coming, make no mistake. And, when it does, it will represent Apple's attempt to reinvent the television experience in much the same way it did for music. But, while media execs were hopelessly naive in Apple's presence back then, they feel they are ready this time. They are determined not to let Apple rule the premium online video world like they did (and still do) for online music. The question is, do they have the will?Personalized eCommerce Is Already Here, You Just Don't Recognize It
Feb 05, 8:08PM
Reading Leena Rao's recent article on Techcrunch about the personalization revolution, you get the sense that the tech world is waiting for a bus that isn't coming. Rao quotes well-known industry experts and luminaries describing what needs to happen for e-commerce to finally realize the promise of personalized shopping, a future where online retailers predict what you'll want to buy before you know yourself. Ironically, Rao and her pundits are missing the zooming racecar that's speeding by them as they wait for the personalization bus to arrive. That racecar is Pinterest and the new breed of startups marking the beginning of what I call the "Curated Web."Bang!
Feb 05, 7:18PM
The Artist parades its conceit at every turn of its familiar romance. We're doing this no sound thing for you because it's good for you. Things will work out fine. The dog needs no dialogue. The music tells you what to feel. It's already half over, and besides, it's already better than the last five movies you've seen. Google Search + parades its conceit at every turn. It's free, so we can improve it any way we want. We're already reading everything you write in Gmail, so now we're blurring the metadata into one big data pool so we can better read your mind and sell the results back to marketers. It's OK because Facebook already does this. We'd add all the other networks if they would just let us have their data too. And besides, we're doing this.The Future of Peer Review
Feb 05, 7:00PM
This guest post was written by Richard Price, founder and CEO of Academia.edu — a site that serves as a platform for academics to share their research papers and to interact with each other. Instant distribution Many academics are excited about the future of instant distribution of research. Right now the time lag between finishing a paper, and the relevant worldwide research community seeing it, is between 6 months and 2 years. This is because during that time, the paper is being peer reviewed, and peer review takes an incredibly long time. 2 years is roughly how long it used to take to send a letter abroad 300 years ago.White House Pushes Green Button To Liberate Your Energy Data
Feb 05, 6:35PM
The future of easy home energy monitoring may be a little bit closer, thanks to a government initiative designed to allow consumers direct access to their energy consumption data. The White House's new Green Button gives utilities a way to simplify and standardize sharing usage statistics with their customers via a one-click download. Two California providers, Pacific Gas & Electric and San Diego Gas & Electric, already launched the feature, adding what is literally a green button to their websites. Utility companies in other regions are expected to implement it within the next year. Customers can click the button to download their personal usage information in one place.Designing for Mobile: 7 Guidelines for Startups to Follow
Feb 05, 5:00PM
As an investor, I've seen hundreds of mobile application pitches. And as a consumer, I've downloaded hundreds more – some out of curiosity and others in the hope that I'll find something so useful and exciting that I'll make room for it on my iPhone's home screen. >From both perspectives, I am rarely excited by download numbers. What gets my attention is engagement: how frequently an application is used and how engaged users are. This ultimately is the barometer for an application's utility and/or strength of community. And if either of those two factors are strong: growth will certainly come. Just ask Instagram, Evernote, LogMeIn and others.How Facebook Really Stacks Up Against Pre-IPO Google
Feb 05, 4:21PM
Now that Facebook is preparing the biggest tech IPO in history, it is possible to compare its financials and potential market value to Google's when it went public. At first glance, all of Facebook's numbers look bigger. Its pre-IPO revenues of $3.7 billion in 2011 are more than two and a half times larger than Google's 2003 revenues of $1.5 billion (Google's IPO was in 2004). Facebook's $1 billion in profits is ten times larger than Google's pre-IPO profits of $106 million. And its expected market cap of between $85 billion and $100 billion will dwarf Google's IPO market cap of $23 billion. Facebook, no doubt, will be emphasizing these differences. But in many ways it is a false comparison. Facebook is going public after 8 years as a private company. Google went public much earlier in its development, after 5 full years. So, yes, Facebook at Year 8 is much bigger than Google was at Year 5 of its trajectory. A better way to see how the two companies stack up is to compare their revenues and profits at the same points in their histories.If at any time you'd like to stop receiving these messages, just send an email to feeds_feedburner_com_techcrunch+unsubscribe-hmdtechnology=gmail.com@mail.feed2email.net.
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