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Work At A Startup: Weebly, Codecademy, And Stripe On Startup Recruiting [TCTV]
May 29, 1:28AM
Earlier this month, Y Combinator held its Work At A Startup Event, where many of its alumni took the stage — not to pitch investors (as is the case at the incubator's enormous demo day), but instead engineers who might be lured to work at the startups in question. After the presentations, I grabbed some one-on-one time with a few of the presenters (Weebly's David Rusenko, Codecademy's Zach Sims, and Stripe's John Collison) to answer some basic questions: Why should someone work for your startup? And what's it like to recruit right now?The Art of Raising Seed: You're Either Hot, Or You Make Your Own Heat
May 28, 10:35PM
I'd started raising 3 rounds. One fell apart and the others raised $1M & $1.3M in a few weeks each. The startup game is a marathon and while I'm not yet qualified to give advice about crossing the finish line, I feel like I know a lot about the first 5 miles… It's from that perspective I give the following advice to fellow founders who are looking to raise their seed rounds.As Layoffs Loom, RIM's Chief Legal Officer Steps Down
May 28, 9:55PM
There goes another one -- RIM announced today that Chief Legal Officer Karima Bawa will soon be leaving the company. This is RIM's second major departure in as many weeks, with RIM sales head Patrick Spence leaving the ailing smartphone maker last Wednesday. At the time, sources pointed to audio electronics company Sonos as his likely landing spot, though neither Spence nor Sonos have officially commented on the situation. Unlike Spence, who reportedly jumped ship after being passed over for the company's vacant COO spot (Sony Mobile EVP Kristian Tear eventually got the job), Bawa's situation seems much less contentious. After spending nearly twelve years with the company (two of which were in her current spot), she's finally looking to retire.Death To Powerpoint! Piccsy Rethinks The Pitchdeck, Gets Tons Of Pageviews
May 28, 6:53PM
Your Powerpoint pitchdeck is so boring. So. Freaking. Boring. Although tech bloggers aren't sent startup's actual pitchdecks as often as investors are (thankfully), we're still walked through them on dreadful, "let me read to you from my Powerpoint" phone calls more often than should be socially acceptable. That's why when image aggregator Piccsy, which is simultaneously a competitor to Pinterest as well as a top 20 content source for the site, pinged us to take a look at its pitch deck, we were pleasantly surprised. A pitchdeck that's actually fun to read? Can such a thing exist?Yahoo! Licenses Platform To Reach Out To The Arab Web
May 28, 6:26PM
We're currently used to more drama-oriented stories coming out of Yahoo!, but that doesn't mean business hasn't entirely halted there. Yamli is a service which offers a smart Arabic keyboard that allows users who type in Latin characters to find -in real-time - the most accurate equivalent Arabic term. It debuted in 2007 but has become an important part of a market which serves hundreds of millions of users worldwide. The platform also offers services to help navigating the 'Arabic web'. Today Yahoo has acquired a license to use Yamli for its Arabic service, Yahoo! Maktoob, which will see it integrate Yamli's existing technologies into a new product, "3arrebni," or "Arabize me" in other words.How Face(.com) Recognition Could Fit Into Facebook Mobile
May 28, 6:13PM
Face.com's CEO has shrugged off rumors that it is being acquired by Facebook for up to $100 million when we asked. But the addition of its facial recognition tech to Facebook's mobile apps could make sure friend tagging continues as the social network's user base shifts away from desktops. In fact, about 45% of users of Face.com's app KLIK end up sharing their photos on Facebook, which shows how popular mobile facial recognition could be.Got Money To Burn? iPad Prototype Appears On eBay, Shows Off Its Two Dock Connectors
May 28, 6:05PM
Every gadget that graces our shelves goes through plenty of tweaks and changes during its design phase, but it isn't too often that we get an actual glimpse of those scrapped iterations. It can be tremendously cool to see what our stuff could have looked like in some alternate timeline, and a new eBay listing reveals a peculiar iPad that may have been. The listing is for an early first-generation iPad prototype, and unlike the final model it sports two dock connectors, allowing the iPad to be docked in either portrait or landscape mode.Apple Rejects Apps Integrating Micro-Payments Service Flattr, Company Claims "It's Not the End"
May 28, 6:00PM
It may not be the end, but the prognosis doesn't look good. Social micro-payments platform Flattr is taking an unkind hit in terms of its future growth opportunities on mobile, the company details on its blog this morning. After being integrated into popular third-party podcast manager Instacast back in February, Apple decided at the beginning of May to reject the app from the iTunes App Store due to its Flattr integration. The result? The only way Instacast could get back into the app store was to change the user flow in the app to direct the actual "flattr" (as the micro-payment process is called) to take place in the Safari web browser instead. Not an ideal user experience, Apple admits, but it's as required by the App Store Review Guidelines.Google Apps For Business Gets ISO 27001 Certification
May 28, 5:45PM
Google just announced that its Google Apps for Business service has earned ISO 27001 certification. This certifies that Google is following the standard ISO information security management protocols and best practices "for the systems, technology, processes and data centers serving Google Apps for Business." If you're a startup or individual user, chances are you don't care too much about whether a company you are working with is following any of the ISO's over 19,000 standards. This certification, however, will likely give give larger and more highly regulated businesses (and the executives who sign off on these deals) the necessary reassurances that moving to Google's cloud solutions is safe.Push Level Agreement
May 28, 5:00PM
That's the big secret Wall Street is struggling with, that push is the monetization model of mobile. Who cares what the UI is, or what the advertising surface is. The moment a push hits your screen, it comes down to a binary decision: do I want to know more, or do I already know enough. To make that decision, we need social metadata to help out. Who said this, who retweeted it, who @mentioned it, and how are these signals parsed to prioritize the queue.Backstage at Disrupt, Cornell's Dan Huttenlocher is Bringing Big Red to the Big Apple
May 28, 3:00PM
Cornell University made big news earlier in the year when it was announced the Ivy League school, located in upstate New York, would open a technology campus in New York City. Leading the charge for Big Red will be Dan Huttenlocher, dean of computing and information science -- and a former Silicon Valley entrepreneur. Dean Huttenlocher was kind enough to come backstage after his session to discuss more details about the campus and program. Cornell will build a technology campus on Roosevelt Island in New York City, which will house a full master's program that combines academic research in computer science and engineering along with a variety of practical training programs. While the curriculum will focus mostly on software, Huttenlocher did hint at the possibility of having programs focusing on smaller-scale hardware, as well. This video would be of interest to folks who are in the New York technology community, as well as those could have some type of relationship with the campus in the future.Surprise! Announcing The TC Mini-Meet Up In Philadelphia On June 19
May 28, 2:28PM
If you're in the City of Brotherly Love, you're in a for a treat. Thanks to constant entreaties by one of your own, Anthony Coombs, we're going to hold a mini-meet up in Philly on June 19 at the Field House, 1150 Filbert St. Please RSVP here.The Authors Of Space Quest Are Back With Another Adventure
May 28, 1:59PM
If you're an older gamer, you will remember the holy trinity of Sierra RPGs - King's Quest, Space Quest, and Police Quest. All three of these games used something called "imagination" and "storytelling" to immerse early gamers in an Ad Lib sound card-induced gaming coma. Now you can relive those heady days with a new game by the makers of Space Quest, Scott Murphy and Mark Crowe (aka "The Two Guys from Andromeda"). Their new game, called SpaceVenture, is a refresh of the old Sierra series and promises spills, chills, and horrible jokes. It's getting funded on Kickstarter as we speak.GameStop Rolls Out Android Tablets With Pre-Loaded Games To 1,600 Stores
May 28, 1:49PM
Diversification is the key to longevity. With that likely in mind, GameStop just announced widespread availability of Android tablets throughout its chain of retail stores. This comes after a 200 store trial that started last October. These aren't ordinary Android tablets, though. GameStop is pre-loading the Samsung, Asus, Acer, and Toshiba with extra gaming titles such as Sonic CD, Riptide, the Kongregate Arcade app and a free issue of GameStop's gaming mag, Game Informer. Thanks to these extras and with prices that are inline with other stores, GameStop actually has a chance to capture a bit of the tablet market.Fast Track To A Facebook Phone — Buy INQ Mobile?
May 28, 1:21PM
As the heat around the "Facebook Phone" story gets higher, our thoughts turn to the days a couple of years ago when it emerged Facebook had been thinking about developing an actual phone. Back then, it transpired that Facebook was working with INQ Mobile on a smartphone. The phone duly emerged - the INQ1 - and did indeed have great Facebook integration. Even if it hasn't exactly been a smash hit, it's fared well enough. Indeed, HTC has also released their own "Facebook" phone, such HTC ChaCha and HTC Salsa respectively. INQ's runs on Google's Android operating system, but with deeper Facebook integration. When asked about the INQ phone back in 2010, Zuckerberg said it wasn't "some massive big thing". But quite clearly, a phone is now firmly on the agenda.A Bit Too Much Klout: User Says He Can Sign In To Someone Else's Account
May 28, 1:06PM
It's not clear if this is a one-off glitch, a signal of a bigger issue -- or a way of pumping up/sabotaging Klout scores for those who care. But it's not great news any way you spin it, if it's true: a Klout user has gotten in touch to say that when he accesses the social influence ratings service, he is getting signed in to Klout not as himself but as someone else. Using an HTC Sensation device running the Ice Cream Sandwich version of Android, IT consultant Halil Kabaca,of Istanbul, Turkey-based Novarum Consulting, tells us that when he goes on to Klout via the phone's mobile browser, he is being signed in automatically as someone completely different -- someone he doesn't know at all who happens to work for Adobe in business development (see screenshots of Kabaca's and the other guy's profiles after the break).EU Privacy Directive: Why All The Fuss? Just Be Open With Users
May 28, 12:45PM
EU Cookie legislation is now in force across Europe, but in a last minute change on Friday, the UK's information commissioner amended the way it will be implemented in the UK. It's now the case that sites will only have to obtain 'implied consent' from users not explicit consent. This is much friendlier for businesses but means the UK is now out of the step with the EU on privacy online and the transparency of cookies. In the middle of a recession, UK businesses probably won't lose too much sleep. This is a much more pragmatic approach and most websites have yet to even comply with the legislation. In this guest post, Mark Macdonald, of Skimlinks argues sites should still consider being up-front with users about their use of cookies.Protip: Do Not Post A Pic Of A Pile Of Cash To Facebook
May 28, 12:43PM
As tempting as it might seem, please do not upload a picture of a bunch of cash and then upload it to a social network. That's just dumb. But that's also what one 17-year-old Australian girl did only to have two robbers armed with a knife and a club show up at her house. The story goes that a 17-year-old girl was helping her grandma. Likely somewhere in between vacuuming and feather dusting, the two started counting money, and, as we all know, the elderly tend to keep a good sum of cash on hand. Apparently the 17-year-old snapped a picture of the pile which was likely fanned-out in the traditional gangster style. This girl then uploaded the picture to Facebook.Yandex.Factory Seed Funding Bears Fruit: SocialMart Launches Social Shopping With Yandex.Market
May 28, 10:01AM
It's not a given that a leader in search can successfully pivot into other areas like social media -- just ask Google -- but a new service launching in Russia today, from that country's search leader Yandex, shows one route a company with a lot of smarts can take to make sure they remain a central player in the social game. Today sees the launch of SocialMart, a social shopping startup financed by Yandex (through its seed-funding program Yandex.Factory), and powered by Yandex (via Yandex.Market), but is not Yandex itself. Both Yandex and SocialMart are banking on the fact that the rising popularity of ecommerce in Russia is inevitably going to cross over with the equally popular trend of social networking: up to now, those twains have not met, unlike in other markets, where services like Mertado (now part of Groupon), Sneakpeeq, and Fab have been running away with the "social shopping" banner, picking up users and funding in the process.It'll Be A Miracle If The Facebook Phone Doesn't Suck
May 28, 5:47AM
Here we go again: Facebook is apparently trying for the third time to get its phone project off the ground -- snatching up iOS design and engineering talent left and right Nick Bilton is hearing. We're hearing (and seeing) similar regarding iOS talent, but with one caveat: Word on the street is that few mobile design whizzes actually want to work at Facebook, but everyone has their price, and post-IPO Mark Zuckerberg is willing to pay that price, whatever it is.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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