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A Deeper Look Inside Apple's Secrecy And Its Sustainability
Jun 17, 2:00AM
WWDC this past week confirmed that Apple is as strong as ever. The company's steady stream of new products and announcements are a good indication that it's business as usual. But when will Apple face its first real post-Steve Jobs test? It's hard to say but not anytime soon. Last week at Startup Grind in Palo Alto I sat down with Adam Lashinsky, the author of Inside Apple: How America's Most Admired and Secretive Company Really Works. The book is the most compelling inside look I've seen of the culture and attitude that Steve Jobs instilled after his return in 1997 and what it will take to maintain that lead without him. The first positive or negative indicators will come from within Apple's walls and work it's way out.>From TC40 To $10.1M In Funding And A $120M Acquisition, TripIt Tells All
Jun 16, 11:04PM
It feels like only days have passed since TechCrunch Disrupt NYC went down, but as every season turns (turns, turns...) another Disrupt is on the horizon. Our San Francisco event will commence on September 8, and every time preparation begins for the massive conference I can't help but take a look back at the incredible success stories to come out of Disrupt. In fact, a whole mess of them can be found right here. But those aren't even the half of it, which is why we've decided to revive our "Where They Are Now" series, starting with TripIt. Since launching on the TC40 stage back in 2007, TripIt has survived the rise of the smartphone, raised a total of $10.1 million and funding, and completed a super successful exit in the form of a $120 million acquisition by Concur. I sat down with Andy Denmark, a founder and VP of Engineering, to hear the tale of TripIt's journey from our stage almost 6 years ago to today.Doo.net Lands Series A Funding To Organise Documents, Automatically For The People
Jun 16, 8:53PM
Paper continues to be a problem inside organisations. we just can't seem to get rid it despite all these computers. And organising it is annoying. Doo.net hopes to solve the problem by organising documents with a cloud-based service. It's now launched its public beta on OS X and announced a Series A round which takes the companies total funding to $10m. Plus, an app for the Windows 8 Store is close to final approval and mobile apps for iOS and Android. A Google Docs integration, will come in the next few weeks.Social Commerce, Pinterest And The Future Of Fashion Retail
Jun 16, 8:00PM
Death of brick-and-mortar retail Andrew Chen recently recommended a video to me, which inspired this post. It's a keynote by Ron Johnson, the CEO of JC Penney and the man behind Apple's retail revolution. In the video, Johnson spoke about the history of the department store and why JC Penney has fallen behind. It wasn't very long ago that stores like JC Penney, Nordstrom, and Gap were the pinnacles of fashion retail. These retailers provided better products at unbeatable prices. Retail buyers acted as personal curators for customers and the in-store experience was exceptional. Then came e-commerce. Predictable products like books, CDs, and electronics drove the first wave of e-commerce for e-tailers like Amazon. But fashion lagged behind. Consumers want a tactile, in-person experience when it comes to garments. They need to touch and try it on. Even as e-tailers offered lower prices, consumers preferred to shop in stores. That all began to change when...A.R.O. Reveals Saga, An "Ambient Companion" That Watches What You Do To Make Personal Recommendations
Jun 16, 6:30PM
We've just been given a first look at Saga, a new mobile companion emerging from Seattle startup A.R.O. You can think of Saga as Siri's little sister, perhaps. Instead of asking it questions or giving the app simple tasks (what's the weather, add meeting calendar, e.g.), Saga is there, quietly tracking your behavior, your location and learning about your preferences, in order to make smarter recommendations about what you should do next. It's the next evolution of those "ambient location" apps which were all the rage at this year's SXSW, perhaps.Twitter Finally Ditches "50+", New and Old Tweets Now Show Exact Counts Of Retweets and Favorites
Jun 16, 5:05PM
Tweets past, present, and future now show their exact number of retweets and favorites instead of showing "50+" if they pass that count -- a move that could promote vanity and competition on Twitter. Since the change is applied retroactively, you can see a tweet about stopping polio from Bill Gates last year got 1,178 retweets and 119 favorites, and yes, all Justin Bieber had to do was tweet "New York City. #BELIEVE" this week to score 22,276 retweets. The change could remove the need for some wildly popular accounts to use third-party measurement tools, but mostly it will just let the average person see when they or someone else has a true moment of brilliance. Some might find this fun. However, the exact counts could make people feel like they have no influence when they see they've received two retweets while someone else got twenty thousand.Target Practice
Jun 16, 5:00PM
What Apple is signaling with its WWDC announcements is an adoption of this Netflix/iTunes streaming model to the technology business. Built on push notification and the intersection of Siri, Maps, and AirPlay, the next season (iOS 6) begins in the fall, crescendoes with iPhone 5, and then accelerates with software (apps) that harvest the efficiencies and user comfort with the new media consumption model. Cars add buttons for directions, gas, food, group swarming around location-based deals for products, and authority-based recommendations on store-and-view media strategies.Five Secrets Of Companies That Build Great Teams
Jun 16, 4:20PM
As the name of a recent conference in San Francisco suggests, there's a war for talent going on right now. That shouldn't come as a surprise to anyone. Over the last couple of years I've been fortunate enough to talk to many successful entrepreneurs and executives from some of the fastest-growing companies in the world. While the specifics of those conversations remain confidential, I've noticed some general trends that seem to separate the winners in the talent war from those who aren't doing as well. Here are five I've picked up on:The Way Things Work
Jun 16, 4:00PM
Magic, they call it. And indeed we may add an appendix to that old saw: any sufficiently advanced, or sufficiently obscure, technology is indistinguishable from magic. You must know the story of the Mechanical Turk. How princes and tradesmen were amazed by this ingenious device's ability to play chess intelligently. In an age of steam and brass hinges! Yet at the time thousands were fooled. Had they known a bit more about machines, they might have realized it was not just improbable, but impossible. The Mechanical Turks of our day aren't designed for entertainment, but to be bought and used, yet a similar goes into preventing the secrets of their operation from being questioned. In fact, we are already at a time where it is more or less impossible for one person to understand or question them. Apple may be ahead of the curve on this trend, but while it appears they've been leading the industry by the nose, they in turn are being led by the inexorable forward motion of technology. Open hardware advocates fight the good fight, and they fight it valiantly, but defeat is inevitable.Virgin Galactic Hits Milestone As Commercial Space Travel Rockets Toward Reality
Jun 16, 2:40PM
NASA may not be sending anyone to Mars anytime soon, the exploration of space and beyond - though on a much smaller scale - is being spearheaded by folks like Richard Branson and Jeff Bezos. (Maybe you've heard of them.) Though Bezos and Blue Origin continue to work under a veil of secrecy in Texas, Virgin Galactic keeps humming along in the Mojave having recently scored a major milestone for the sub-orbital space tourism arm of Branson's Virgin empire. Earlier this month Virgin Galactic and its partner Scaled Composites received an experimental launch permit from the Federal Aviation Administration, the first for a manned experimental aircraft. Considering there have been numerous test flights of both the mother ship (WhiteKnightTwo) and spacecraft (SpaceShipTwo) since 2009, I asked Virgin Galactic president and CEO George Whitesides what comes next.Notes From The Ebook Trenches
Jun 16, 1:00PM
I keep a close and interested eye on the world of ebooks, and I'm pleased to report that it keeps getting weirder. British supermarket chain Sainsbury - who I worked for once, helping to program a new payroll system for a few months, until they scrapped the whole project - recently bought HMV's share in ebook hub Anobii for a whopping, er, one pound. (Americans: that's about $1.50.) Huh? Meanwhile, HarperCollins announced its "HarperCollins 360" global publishing program, which at first I thought was them taking a page from the music industry's post-Napster '360 deals' -- but no; on sober second thought it has nothing to do with those except for name. Instead it's an attempt to make all of their English-language books available to all English-language readers. I know, I know: they're only doing this now? Just as ebook revenue exceeds that of hardcovers? Ah, publishing. Meanwhiler, Startup Weekend founder and semi-vagabond Andrew Hyde Kickstartered, wrote, and self-published a travel book called "This Book Is About Travel," and then discovered that Amazon was marking up its digital delivery fees to the tune of an estimated 129,000%. Nice margin if you can get it. But for the rest of us, well, not so much. Here are some cold hard numbers from Amazon for yours truly, for the first half of this month:Aidin Finds $600K From General Catalyst & More For A Yelp For Continuing Care
Jun 16, 3:02AM
Aidin, a startup that helps people find better continuing care after they leave the hospital, is announcing today that it has raised $600K from General Catalyst, HLM, Red Swan and a band of angels and physicians from the healthcare space. The startup, a member of the NYC healthtech accelerator Blueprint Health, will use the funding to accelerate its growth and keep rampin' up that team. Everyone needs more developers these days. But what does this healthtech company do? Well, you shouldn't want to go there anyway, but hospitals need patients to find better care providers after they leave the hospital. Because they keep coming back. In the U.S., one in four Medicare patients are readmitted to the hospital within 30 days, and readmissions have a $17.4 billion price tag for hospitals.#FailedTechBands Is Funnier Than Most Hashtags, Shows Genius Of Twitter Personalized Trends
Jun 16, 12:15AM
"The Black IPs" lol. I follow nerds on Twitter, so rather than just the latest pop stars and sports games, I was delighted to see a nerdy hashtag in my Trending Topics. It's thanks to Twitter's new Tailored Trends that launched on Tuesday and shows you personalized trends based on who you follow. "Creedence ClearRecentHistory? Revival" brilliant. In just a few days Tailored Trends has shown algorithms can beat back the stupidity of the Internet. Here's why this matters, and a look at the best of #FailedTechBands.Yahoo Mobile Sales Head Paul Cushman Joins Ad Targeting Startup Drawbridge
Jun 15, 11:51PM
Drawbridge, a cross-device ad targeting startup backed by Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers and Sequoia Capital, announced today it has hired Yahoo's former mobile sales head as its new vice president of sales and business development. The hire in question is Paul Cushman, whose official title at Yahoo was senior director of mobile sales strategy. Despite the turmoil at the top of Yahoo, and the virtually unending criticism it seems to get in the press, Cushman insists that his departure shouldn't be read as a sign of dissatisfaction with his old employer.Fritz Lanman's 'Livestar' Launching Soon, To Fill The Gap Between Foursquare And Yelp
Jun 15, 11:22PM
It's been a little over a year and a half since we wrote about Fritz Lanman's departure from Microsoft, to build his own startup called "5Star." Well, now we're hearing that his startup, actually called Livestar, is going to launch soon, judging by a demo video posted on Lanman's Facebook page. As early as next week even. Since our initial article, Lanman, a former Microsoft and Yahoo deals guy, has made some pretty savvy angel investments, most notably getting in early on Pinterest and Square. And now he's ready to focus on his own project.>From The Archives: Watch Yammer's First Public Demo And Launch At TC50
Jun 15, 11:00PM
Way back in 2008, Yammer made its first public appearance at the TechCrunch TC50 conference. David Sacks, who introduced himself as the CEO of Geni, not Yammer, gave an 8 minute demo of the new product. He finished the demo by flipping the switch and officially launched Yammer to customers. Less than 4 years later, Yammer appears close to a $1.4 billion exit and purchase by Microsoft.Zynga And CBS Are Working To Bring Draw Something To Primetime TV
Jun 15, 10:53PM
So you wondered how Zynga was gonna make money off its $210 million acquisition of OMGPOP? How about this: Hit game title Draw Something will soon be at the center of a new primetime game show, according to a report by Variety. The show's pilot, which was picked up by CBS after an apparent bidding war, will be produced by Sony Pictures Television, Ryan Seacrest Productions, and Embassy Row. According to Variety, the pilot concept will pit multiple celebrities and users against each other in front of a studio audience, translating a title most people play in their spare time while commuting or before bed into a hilarious new game show. Viewers at home will reportedly also be able to play along with the folks on TV. While Ryan Seacrest will help produce, he won't have an on-air role. A host has yet to be picked for the project.EBook Revenues Beat Hardcovers For The First Time
Jun 15, 10:40PM
The Association of American Publishers released a report today that shows that ebooks have beaten hardcover revenues for the first time. Ebook revenues topped out at $282.3 million YTD while hardcovers hit $229.6. Almost exactly a year ago the tables were turned with ebooks hitting $220 million and hardcovers brushing past $335 million. The only growth in hardcovers is in the young adult/children's category where hardcover revenue rose to $187.7 million and children's ebooks rose to $64.3 million, up from $3.9 million in 2011. In short, ebooks are winning.Hardware Accessory Maker PCH International Acquires Design-Centric Lime Lab
Jun 15, 9:53PM
You may have never heard of PCH International. But this Irish company makes packaging and accessories for some of the most iconic hardware products in the world. Nudge, nudge. Wink, wink! They make cases, chargers, docks and earphones, among other accessories. They also create those whizz-bang unboxing experiences for many of the world's best-known hardware makers, but they can't disclose who their clients are. Now the company just picked up Silicon Valley design consultancy Lime Lab to bolster its product development know-how. Lime Lab was co-founded by former Ideo director Andre Yousefi and former Design Within Reach director and Apple manager Kurt Dammermann.TechCrunch Giveaway: One Free Ticket To Disrupt SF #TCDisrupt
Jun 15, 9:22PM
TechCrunch Disrupt SF last year was a huge hit and we are all ready to do it again! Disrupt SF is coming up, quicker than we realize, and we are already starting to plan like crazy behind the scenes. Believe me when I tell you this event will be just as awesome as last year's. Last year we had incredible speakers, the popular and somewhat intimidating Office Hours, fancy after parties, dozens of impressive startups battling it out for the ultimate grand prize, hundreds of startups getting noticed in Startup Alley, and almost 1,000 hackers who gathered together to build some awesome, and some funny, products in their allotted 24 hour time slot.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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