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The Art Of Science
Feb 02, 6:45PM
Like many great startup ideas, the formation of L.A.-based incubator, investment firm, and accelerator Science had its origins at a dinner. In 2007, Peter Pham and Mike Jones found themselves working in L.A., having recently sold companies to News Corp. and AOL, respectively. The duo, who were friends, started to organize dinners, called Beta South, to bring together startup founders and tech leaders in the area. Pham says that attendance at these dinners was in the single-digits but soon expanded to include many more. At that point, Jones and Pham started thinking about ways to foster entrepreneurship and bring more VC dollars to L.A. Flash forward four years, and Jones had just sold News Corp.’s Myspace, where he was CEO, to Specific Media. As he was thinking about what to do next, he came back to what he and Pham discussed. He was certain that the best way to foster more entrepreneurship in L.A. would be to combine the best elements of Idealab, Y Combinator, Betaworks and a VC firm into a startup-creation machine. From the start, Jones had a very different view on how to structure Science, and it's this unique model that he hopes will set it apart from the hoards of incubators that are emerging in the current market. While many of the companies that Science is incubating are interesting, what’s far more intriguing is the process through which Science forms, develops and then supports these companies. Jones reconnected with BillShrink founder Pham who had just, infamously, left the photo sharing app Color, in 2011 at the The Lobby conference, a yearly gathering hosted by August Capital partner David Hornik. Pham was brought on to control investments and the money side of things. One Part Art, One Part Scientific Formula After spending years at News Corp. and AOL, Jones had observed the structure of media companies, realizing that the right management structure could provide strategic services to launch and support businesses. For example, large media companies have some assets that they own 100 percent of, some assets they own part of, and some assets they produce in-house to support other content. This model, says Jones, has not been applied to venture capital yet. “Why weigh a startup down with things like developing customer-acquisition tools, handling financing and legal operations,” he explains. “We have an operational and strategic way we build companies, and there is a set structure behind this.” And Science’sPair, The Mobile App For Two, Buys UK's Cupple And Rebrands As Couple
Feb 02, 6:04PM
Tenthbit, the Y Combinator-backed mobile app studio behind the couples app Pair, is doubling down (literally) on its business ambitions: the company today is announcing that it has bought Cupple, a UK-based rival mobile app for two people only, and, to mark the change, has rebranded itself as Couple.Gillmor Gang: Give Me Your Pants
Feb 02, 6:00PM
The Gillmor Gang — Robert Scoble, Keith Teare, John Taschek, Kevin Marks, and Steve Gillmor — is recorded live in the style of a jazz date, where the group improvises around the themes of the day or week. As we prepare to start, I usually try and get voice levels while at the same time trying to "save it for the show." This time we went ten minutes or so before realizing we'd neglected to record. The result is an abrupt start to a good conversation, post-Crunchies. It turns out Mike Arrington is very tall and the Oliver guy from the Daily Show very funny.MySpace Squandered the Only Thing It Had Left
Feb 02, 5:00PM
Editor's Note: Brenden Mulligan created Onesheet, a tool that enables musicians to create beautiful web presences in two minutes. MySpace. Or is it Myspace. Or is it My______. Truth is, it doesn't matter. What matters is that MySpace has made increasingly bad decisions for too many years to every hope that they'll become relevant again. Their latest bad decision shows how detached they are.Worry About The State More Than The Church
Feb 02, 4:00PM
Editor's note: Jay Kirsch is the President of AOL's Business, Technology & Entertainment Group, which includes properties such as TechCrunch, Engadget, Autoblog, DailyFinance and Moviefone among others. The church and state metaphor is used almost daily in the business of monetizing journalism. For the most part, when episodes like the CNET debacle happen, the damage to journalistic integrity (the church in the metaphor) is the center of attention. That makes sense since writers make their livings on that reputation and want to take it with them to their next outlets. What is frequently ignored is the damage to the state, or business, of properties like TechCrunch, Engadget, Autoblog or CNET.Creator Of The X-Plane Flight Simulator Seeks Help Fighting A Patent Troll
Feb 02, 2:05PM
Austin Meyer, creator of the popular and ultra-realistic flight sim, X-Plane, is facing a potentially destructive lawsuit by an East Texas patent troll, Uniloc. Meyer, who has worked on the simulator since 1995, isn't dealing with a claim against his simulator or the game mechanics within. Instead, he's being sued for using a simple copy-protection system found in almost all Android programs.Don't Mess With The GOOG
Feb 02, 2:00PM
A couple of years ago I wrote in this space: "A spectre is haunting Mountain View. No, not bed bugs: bit rot. Google is in serious decline." Well, credit where it's due. These days Google has put its problems behind it and is soaring from strength to strength. Contenders keep coming and trying to claim its crown--and failing. I give you Apple Maps and Facebook's Graph Search as an example.Micel Helps To Expand Mobile Service In Mexico, Serves As Intermediary Between Customers And Telecom Carriers
Feb 02, 5:00AM
Editor's note: Maria Rocio Paniagua currently works as a project manager at Innku, one of the top mobile and web workshops in Mexico. Mobile penetration in the Mexican market is currently at 90+ percent, according to research firm Our Mobile Planet. Smartphone penetration is 20 percent. They made some wild forecasts about how they expect it to rise to 70 percent by 2015 -- wild because the issue in Mexico and Latin America goes beyond mere access and connectivity.Just Go Change Your Twitter Password Now
Feb 02, 1:37AM
According to Twitter, it was hacked and 250K accounts were affected, so they received emails from the company to change their password. This is not the first time this has happened, but this time it was a real hack, rather than a blend of real hacks and “false alarm” blast of emails like last time. Way to start off our weekends, Twitter. Who knows if you’ll even get the email from Twitter about it, I know that I filter all of those things out. You can read all of the details about the hack and the company response here. I find it really confusing when anything like this happens, because it feels like companies try to diminish the perception of the impact of the situation. Fact of the matter is, its users are seeing sad tweets from their friends about how they got hacked. I even had one person tell me that they felt like they weren’t cool enough because they didn’t get hacked. Instead, or in addition to, just go change your password. We’re all cool enough to get hacked. The number, 250K affected, seems a bit too tidy to me, and I’m not saying that Twitter is lying, I’m just saying that it’s better to be safe than sorry. Twitter also suggests this course of action, which is way too much for most people’s brains to process on a Friday: We also echo the advisory from the U.S. Department of Homeland Security and security experts to encourage users to disable Java on their computers in their browsers. Sure, OK. Happy Tweeting (Maybe)! While you’re at it, change all of your passwords for everything. It’s a good thing to do once in a while, especially if you use the same one for every single site you log into. [Photo credit: Flickr]Twitter Sends Out Emails To 250K Users Who 'May' Have Been Compromised, Says Hack Was Not Related To Yesterday's Outage
Feb 02, 1:34AM
Twitter is sending out emails to 250,000 users it says may have had their accounts compromised in the last week as the site experienced "unusual access patterns that led to us identifying unauthorized access attempts to Twitter user data." Twitter tells TechCrunch that this is "not related" to the widespread, but intermittent, outage the site saw yesterday.The Crunchies 2012 Are Over, But You Can Relive The Magic Right Here
Feb 02, 12:23AM
Last night's Sixth Annual Crunchies Awards show was nothing short of a huge success. With big names like Marissa Mayer, Mark Zuckerberg, Ron Conway, and Mayor Ed Lee in attendance, and equally huge companies like Google, Square and Instagram in the house, one wouldn't expect anything else.Ask A VC: Foundation Capital's Anamitra Banerji Talks About Twitter Ads, Becoming A VC And More
Feb 01, 10:48PM
For this week's Ask A VC episode, we sat down with Foundation Capital's newest partner Anamitra Banerji, who was just promoted from entrepreneur in residence to investment partner at the firm. We chatted about Banerji's decision to become a VC vs. founding a startup, and how being an entrepreneur in residence helped him come to that decision.Qualcomm "Likes" Facebook, Apple, Google And Samsung
Feb 01, 10:05PM
It's Super Bowl week so it's time to talk about chips – the ones that go in "smart" things, not the ones eaten by Americans. This week's headlines have been dominated by Facebook. I hear they are quite big with the college kids. But, Qualcomm really is crushing it. They deserve a little attention. They are bigger than Facebook at $108 billion. Today, Qualcomm added approximately $5 billion to their market capitalization, thanks to a blowout quarter of sales ($6 billion) and profits ($2 billion).Gillmor Gang Live 02.01.13. (TCTV)
Feb 01, 9:07PM
Gillmor Gang - Keith Teare, Robert Scoble, John Taschek, Kevin Marks, and Steve Gillmor. Recording has concluded for today..Google Says 2,000 Schools Now Use Chromebooks, 2x As Many As Just 3 Months Ago
Feb 01, 8:35PM
Google continues its push to bring its web-centric Chromebooks into schools and it looks as if the fact that Google is in this project for the long haul is starting to pay off. According to Google, 2,000 schools now use Chromebooks for Education. That, by itself, isn't a massive number, but what's important to note is that there are now twice as many schools that use Chromebooks compared to just three months ago.CrowdFlower Adds Skill Tests To Find The Right Crowdsourced Labor
Feb 01, 8:11PM
CrowdFlower, a startup that helps businesses manage crowdsourced labor for tasks like image moderation, is looking to expand the types of jobs it can tackle with the launch of new Skill Tests — which, as you probably guessed, are online tests used to measure workers' proficiency in various skills. Until now, anyone doing work on CrowdFlower had been able to access any job. As people do the work, the company performs automatic and human checks to ensure that the results are up to par — if someone's work isn't adequate, then all of their results are removed.YC-Backed Swish Makes Selling Simpler For Inventors And Creators
Feb 01, 7:41PM
It's never been easier for would-be inventors to take a harebrained concept and turn it into an actual, sellable product, but the process of getting those products to the masses could still use a little work. Sure, crowdfunding sites like Kickstarter and Indiegogo have helped laid the groundwork for a revolution in how these passionate folks sell, but the team at YC-backed Swish feel like there are even better ways to do it.As Mobile Devs Get More Sophisticated, Flurry Adds Crash, User Acquisition Analytics
Feb 01, 7:39PM
San Francisco's Flurry initially got its reach through offering a basic package of analytics that more than 95,000 different developers snapped up. But as the iOS and Android ecosystems have matured, app makers are getting more sophisticated. The biggest ones often juggle 30 to 40 ad networks and marketing channels, and need to understand which ones perform the best.Facebook Turns Photo Tag Suggestions Back On In The US — Will Users Like It This Time?
Feb 01, 7:27PM
With a simple post on its privacy page, Facebook yesterday announced it had re-enabled its photo Tag Suggestions feature in the US after the feature was temporarily suspended last year, supposedly to allow for some "technical improvements". The feature means users can use the facial recognition capability of Tag Suggestions to help them "easily identify a friend in a photo and share that content with them". The announcement is not exactly being trumpeted - so far it only has 178 Likes on the post, a very low number given that over a million users have Liked the Facebook privacy page. In addition, Tag Suggestions does not look like it has been switched on in Europe yet, since we're not seeing it on European Facebook accounts right now.Cruel Irony: Egypt's Morsi Announces Protester Crackdown Over Twitter
Feb 01, 7:09PM
In an ironic twist of fate, Egyptian President Mohamed Morsi has threatened military force against thousands of student protesters through one of the very mediums used to liberate the country in 2011: Twitter. "Security forces will deal with the utmost decisiveness to law enforcement and the protection of state enterprises," tweeted the official account, through a string of 1984-ish updates. "Presidency confirms that these destructive practices that have nothing to do with the principles of the revolution and not to any illegal practices in the peaceful expression." (Google Chrome translation from Arabic).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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