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Julie Uhrman Recalls Being 'Scared Shitless' When She Launched OUYA's Kickstarter Campaign
Mar 11, 8:55PM
When OUYA launched the enormously successful Kickstarter campaign for its Android-based gaming console, CEO Julie Uhrman said she had "no idea" whether it would succeed. "I was scared shitless," she said. Uhrman, who gave a keynote interview this afternoon at South by Southwest Interactive, admitted, "our path to market was unique" (though thanks to Kickstarter it's becoming less unique). After all, when the campaign launched, there was no product — just an idea and a team. There wasn't even really a website, but instead a URL that redirected to the OUYA kickstarter campaign.Unicorn Apocalypse Is Real And It Sucks
Mar 11, 8:51PM
Unicorn Apocalypse, the mobile game Samsung promoted in its TV ads that began airing at the beginning of the year, isn't fictional after all - it's a real, playable game live now in the Google Play app store. Generally speaking, the Samsung ads, designed by an agency called 72andSunny, were both relevant and memorable - they even featured cameos from Tim Burton, Seth Rogen and Paul Rudd at times.After Previously Blocking It, Microsoft Now Enables Flash By Default On IE10 For Windows 8 And RT
Mar 11, 8:46PM
Today, Internet Explorer 10 in Windows 8′s Metro/Modern UI mode and on Windows RT blocks Flash by default and only allows sites on Microsoft’s curated Compatibility View (CV) lists to play Flash content. Tomorrow, that’s changing: all Flash content will run by default and the CV list will now be used to block sites from playing Flash content. Windows 8 users previously had to switch to the desktop mode to view Flash-enabled site. Now, however, Microsoft says only about 4 percent of the “thousands of domains tested” are still incompatible, so the team has decided that switching the policy around was the right thing to do. That’s a pretty unexpected change, but Microsoft argues that after thorough “testing over the past several months, the vast majority of sites with Flash content are now compatible with the Windows experience for touch, performance, and battery life.” More sites should “just work” in IE10, Microsoft’s Internet Explorer group manager Rob Mauceri writes, and “the primary device you walk around with should give you access to all the Web content on the sites you rely on. Otherwise, the device is just a companion to a PC.” Before the launch of Windows 8 and RT, Microsoft worked with Adobe to develop a version of Flash that is optimized for touch – obviously one of the central features of Windows 8. Microsoft, however, worried that Flash would degrade battery life, security and reliability, so the first version of IE10 in Metro mode for Windows 8 and RT relied on the CV list to just allow sites that were touch-enabled and didn’t have any obvious negative effects on other aspects of the experience. Starting tomorrow, Microsoft’s modern.IE site, which it launched last month to help developers ensure their sites work on Internet Explorer 10, will also feature a tool that allows developers to check whether their sites are on the new Flash block list.AWS Just Made It A Whole Lot Easier For Anyone To Create A Virtual Private Cloud Showing Again How Enterprise Tech Is Obsolete
Mar 11, 8:44PM
Amazon Web Services will now offer the option for everyone to have their own virtual private cloud (VPC), another sign of the company's intent to push into the enterprise market. The service means that every customer using EC2 will see the option for a VPC as an instance type. Until now, the VPC was a separate service.How YC's Curebit Has A "Sixth Sense" Into E-Commerce Startups That Are About To Blow Up
Mar 11, 8:21PM
Bonobos. Dodocase. Warby Parker. A generation of e-commerce companies is growing up using a vertically-integrated strategy where take more ownership of the design, production, marketing and branding of their products. But how do you know very early on if you have a hit? With a purely web-based or mobile product, startups can watch how well they retain users after a week or a month. With e-commerce companies, repeat purchases is an obvious metric, but there are also ways to track the virality of an e-commerce product. A YC-backed startup called Curebit has built a business around tracking word-of-mouth referrals for companies like Bonobos. Based on that, the company says it’s able to not only drive sales but predict hits. What they do is create referral campaigns for e-commerce companies — like those landing pages that says you’ll get 25 percent off or $25 off your next purchase if you send a friend by e-mail, Facebook or Twitter. Curebit will optimize the landing pages, copy, art direction and then track how many people convert to making a purchase after they’ve seen the page. On that strategy, the 12-person startup has grown to about 3,000 clients and a breakeven runrate. Their customers include Bonobos, Restaurant.com and Jawbone. “We still have a lot of cash in the bank,” said the company’s CEO Allan Grant. Since creating landing pages for referrals isn’t technically that difficult, the base version of Curebit is free. The startup makes money off custom services like testing hundreds of variants for the highest-performing campaigns. For that, they’ll charge $10,000 for the first $100,000 in extra sales generated by the campaigns, then they’ll take a 10 percent after that. “Just having a basic feature set is not enough,” Grant said. “We engineer virality the way that social gaming companies measure and optimize their K-factor, viral loops and every step of the funnel.” Here what’s the funnel might look like for a client – Curebit drove 25 percent of the Bonobos’ new customers last year, which helped double the New York-based company’s customer base in 2012. Over time, Bonobos had to change its referral strategy. It was centered on Facebook sharing at first, but Curebit found that e-mail converted better for the company. That’s unusual since Facebook is a stronger channel in 93 percent of Curebit’s cases, Grant says. He says the average lift in sales from referrals on e-mail, Facebook or Twitter is about"I Would Like OUYA To Be On Every Television" Says OUYA's Julie Uhrman
Mar 11, 8:18PM
Julie Uhrman, the CEO/Founder of the smash Kickstarter-project-turned-gaming-console known as OUYA, was the third keynote speaker at SXSW Interactive 2013. Interviewed by The Verge's Joshua Topolsky, the two dove in the intricacies and challenges of crowd funding and creating a new hardware startup.Watch SpaceX's Reusable Grasshopper Rocket Blast Off And Safely Land On Its Feet
Mar 11, 6:51PM
Spoiler: The video shows SpaceX's 100-foot-tall Grasshopper rocket blasting off, hovering in the air for about 30 seconds and then descending back to terra firma. And it's set to Johnny Cash's Ring of Fire. That's it. There's no drama, fireworks or anything shocking, but it's still absurdly important and totally worth watching.Gmail's Mobile Web And Offline Apps Get The iOS Treatment, Adds Improved Search And Calendar Support
Mar 11, 6:45PM
Google just announced that it is rolling out a new design for its Gmail mobile web app for Android, iOS, Blackberry and Kindle Fire. The new design looks very similar to Gmail’s recently relaunched iOS apps, with a generous amount of whitespace and larger fonts and icons. The web app now also features Gmail for iOS’s improved search tool and calendar integration. This means the mobile web app now also offers auto-complete predictions for your searches, and it’s much easier to RSVP to Calendar invites than before. The Gmail Offline app for Chrome, which is essentially a widescreen version of the mobile app that gives you a two-pane view of your inbox, will also get the same design update. Here is Google’s full update: A refreshed look for Gmail on mobile web and Gmail Offline Since launching the rebooted Gmail app for iPhone and iPad in December (http://goo.gl/2m7pd), we've heard from many of you that you like the redesigned UI, along with new features such as improved search and integration with Google Calendar. Today we're rolling out a similar refreshed look to the Gmail mobile web app as well as Gmail Offline (http://goo.gl/0f1ae) that includes many of these same changes. Try it out at gmail.com in the browser of your Android, iOS, Blackberry or Kindle Fire device. #MobileMondayBrazilian Tech Blog Startupi Raises $300K From Redpoint eVentures, Initial Capital, And Others
Mar 11, 6:25PM
Startupi, a site covering the Brazilian startup scene, has raised a $300,000 seed round of its own. The team was pitched to me as the "TechCrunch of Brazil," and in fact it has attracted the backing of Roi Carthy, who covers Israeli startups for TechCrunch. (Carthy invested through his firm Initial Capital, which backs early-stage Israeli and Brazilian companies.) Other investors in the round include Redpoint eVentures, a partnership between Redpoint Ventures and BV Capital's eVentures.Dennis Crowley On Using Foursquare To Build The 'Marauder's Map'
Mar 11, 6:21PM
Foursquare CEO Dennis Crowley discussed the company's evolution from an app that was primarily focused around helping people to find their friends, to finding out more about the world that they live in. Crowley said that one of the underreported stories is the number of companies which rely on Foursquare's map data and what developers can potentially do with that.Bitly CEO Peter Stern Steps Down From The URL Shortening And Analytics Company
Mar 11, 6:15PM
In a statement on its blog today, Bitly has announced that CEO Peter Stern has stepped down as CEO. The reason is that Stern is to “pursue other interests”; further details aren’t known at this time. The NYC-based company has raised $28.5 close to $23 million to date, with the last round being a monster $15 million one by O’Reilly, RRE and Khosla last July. Stern was the CEO for a little over a year, after founding Zenbe, a mobile collaboration company with mail, shareflow and list services. Bitly was in the driver’s seat for link-tracking analytics with its popular short-URL service, and the definition of a hot startup. Once the social web took off, marketers and advertisers everywhere clamored for ways to see how their campaigns were doing in real-time. Bitly has since cooled off since services like Twitter have started handling their own short URLs. In January, the company announced a new set of social-tracking APIs for developers in the hopes that its service would be included in other hot metric products. Regardless, this definitely seems like an odd time for a CEO to get bored and move on, so we’re digging for more details: Bitly is announcing today that Peter Stern has resigned to pursue other interests. "Peter has been a key leader and contributor to the Company," said Bitly Board member Sam Mandel. "In particular he has been instrumental in transforming Bitly into a successful business while growing its unparalleled data set. We are very happy that he will remain a shareholder and supporter." We’ve reached out to Bitly for more information and will update as soon as we hear back. Sources tell us that the overall health and direction of the company is in question, which might explain why the short blog post announcement had a quote from a board member via betaworks. If you’ve heard anything, do reach out to us on the tip line. Something smells fish.ly. UPDATE: While we haven’t been able to dig up too many specific details on the exit of its CEO, we’re told that the company is transitioning away from being an Ad Tech company, which is one potential reason for the change. Currently, Chief Scientist Hilary Mason and VP of Engineering Peter Miron are steering the ship until a replacement is found, along with guidance from betaworks’ Sam Mandel.Netflix Launches Speed Index To Highlight The Best ISPs For Streaming
Mar 11, 6:12PM
For the last few months now, Netflix regularly released an index of the fastest ISPs for streaming video. Today, the company launched a dedicated site for this data, the Netflix ISP Speed Index. The Speed Index includes data from many of the countries the service is currently available in, including the U.S., Mexico, Ireland, U.K.,Norway, Sweden, Denmark and Finland. Unsurprisingly, Google Fiber, with an average speed of 3.35Mbps, offer the highest average bitrate for Netflix streaming, followed by Sweden's Ownite (2.99Mbps).Payments Company Stripe Makes First Acquisition, Buys Team Task Management And Collaboration App Kickoff
Mar 11, 6:02PM
Hot payments startup Stripe has made its first acquisition today -- Kickoff, a chat and task-management app for teams. Financial terms of the deal were not disclosed.Sheryl Sandberg's "Lean In" Book Tops Amazon's Best Sellers List On Its First Day Of Sales
Mar 11, 6:00PM
Facebook COO Sheryl Sandberg's highly anticipated book, Lean In: Women, Work, and the Will to Lead, is already a success - and not just because it has sparked a national conversation about women in the workplace and the current state of feminism. It's also now No. 1 on Amazon's Best Sellers list on its first day of sales.QloudSync: A Dropbox Competitor Running On 100% Renewable Energy
Mar 11, 5:57PM
There is no shortage of cloud-based file storage and synchronization solutions: Dropbox, Box.net, Ubuntu One, and on and on and on. Most offer pretty much the same things. A few niche players offer something special, like Spideroak's approach to encryption, or ownCloud's host-it-yourself solution. QloudSync puts forward two interesting differentiators: it's powered by 100% renewable energy, and it's hosted in Iceland.The Top End Of The 'Steam Box' Line Goes On Sale For Just Under $1000
Mar 11, 5:55PM
Valve's Steam Box initiative will probably not end up being a single device, but a platform approach which includes a variety of hardware from different OEMs. The first such device is available now for pre-order from Xi3, for the hefty price of $999.99 (or $899.99 right now with a $100 pre-order discount). At that price, it's not likely to sway anyone considering an Xbox, but it shows that Valve and its partners might be pulling a Google by showing the world the top end of the market before they launch more practically priced gadgets.Shaq Is Actually A Big Tech Geek - And He Might Want To Invest In Your Startup [TCTV]
Mar 11, 5:30PM
TechCrunch TV sat down with Shaquille O'Neal yesterday afternoon here at South By Southwest in Austin, Texas to talk about his current focus on all things tech, and it was pretty amazing. People who are successful in the worlds of sports and entertainment aren't usually the types that you'd associate with nerdiness. But Shaq, who was famously one of the first major celebrities to take to Twitter and had the service's first verified account, says that he has been a big geek since way before he became a superstar in the NBA and Hollywood -- and so being here in the world of technology is coming very naturally to him.Rovio's "Angry Birds Toons" To Be Bundled In Company's Mobile Games, Will Arrive March 17
Mar 11, 4:42PM
Following the announcement in February that Rovio would be introducing a cartoon series called "Angry Birds Toons" later this month, the company today revealed that the cartoons would actually be bundled inside Rovio's Angry Birds mobile games.OpinionLab Raises $15M To Power Customer Feedback Technology For Brands
Mar 11, 4:30PM
OpinionLab, a company that powers customer feedback technology for websites, has raised $15 million in growth capital financing from SSM Partners.Microsoft Wants Students To Give Office A Try, Gives Them Up To 6 Free Months Of Office 365, 20GB Of Extra SkyDrive Storage
Mar 11, 4:25PM
With Office 365 out of the door, Microsoft has now set its sights on getting more college students to give it a try. The company, which already makes a heavily discounted $80/4 years version of Office 365 University available to students, just announced a new offer that gives college students three months of free Office 365 access, plus another three months when they also share the offer on Facebook. In addition, students get 20GB of additional SkyDrive storage. As a Microsoft spokesperson told us, the company is launching this campaign because it has “seen a lot of excitement among customers as they use SkyDrive to access documents and collaborate anywhere on any device. In particular, Microsoft has seen through direct feedback that students are one group that can really benefit from these types of tools.” To promote this offer, which is open to anybody with a .edu email address in the U.S., Microsoft also launched a new marketing campaign that features "Parks and Recreation" star Aubrey Plaza. Microsoft’s biggest competitor in this space is obviously Google, which makes its Drive apps available for free. Microsoft Office, however, is arguably a more feature-rich product and still the standard on many campuses. But Microsoft’s hold on the academic world is slowly shrinking despite quite a few colleges that have adopted Office 365 for Education (formerly Live@edu). Like most offers for students, this deal is clearly meant to lock students into the Microsoft Office ecosystem early, but given that the documents are all in standard formats, you can obviously always leave and take your documents with you. After the trial is over, the Office apps enter read-only mode, so you can only view and print documents, but the files are obviously still yours to download from SkyDrive (and the basic Office Web Apps on SkyDrive will also still work).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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