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Andy Rubin Says He's "An Entrepreneur At Heart" In Message To Android Partners About Changing Role
Mar 13, 9:18PM
Google's Larry Page today announced in a blog post that former Android chief Andy Rubin would be stepping down from that position and moving on to something else within the company, to be replaced by Chrome VP Sundar Pichai. Now, The Wall Street Journal has obtained an email to Android partners from Rubin describing his pride in Android and his reasons for taking a new role.Kleiner Perkins' Bing Gordon On How Entrepreneurs Can Keep Creativity Alive [TCTV]
Mar 13, 9:13PM
Bing Gordon has become known in recent years for his role as a partner at venerated Silicon Valley venture capital firm Kleiner Perkins Caufield and Byers, but anyone who knows him will tell you that he isn't your typical finance head. As someone whose career has spanned not just technology and VC but also gaming, literature, and entertainment, he has a very well-honed creative side. And according to Gordon, that's not as unusual in this world as people might think. In a chat this week at South By Southwest in Austin, Texas, he said that tech entrepreneurship is actually a naturally very creative endeavor in itself -- and offered some insight for how entrepreneurs can overcome bouts of the proverbial "writer's block" that artists and creatives often face.Send In Your Questions For Ask A VC With MkII Ventures' Ron Palmeri
Mar 13, 9:00PM
After a brief hiatus for SXSW, Ask A VC is back this week with MkII Ventures' Ron Palmeri. As you may remember, you can submit questions for our guest either in the comments or here and we'll ask them during the show.Umoove Is Poised To Blanket The World With Mobile Head-Tracking Tech, With Or Without The Galaxy S IV
Mar 13, 8:53PM
Israeli startup Umoove has attracted a lot of attention for its head- and eye-tracking technology after early reports that it might be powering a feature that does the same in Samsung's Galaxy S IV. Now Bloomberg is saying the new flagship smartphone won't launch with that tech on-board. And while Umoove is keeping mum about any active deals it has with OEMs or other partners, the startup is being very vocal about its intent to make accurate head and eye tracking an everyday part of a user's mobile experience.Hardware Startups: Spots Are Filling Up For Hardware Alley At Disrupt NYC
Mar 13, 8:49PM
I love hardware. That's why I want you guys to bring some of the coolest hardware projects imaginable to Disrupt NY this year. That's why I want you guys in our Hardware Alley and spots are almost full.
Facebook's About Page Redesign Is A Trojan Horse For A Graph Search Data Grab
Mar 13, 8:15PM
Years ago Facebook made a wildly successful data grab by putting About details at the top of the profile. Now with its Timeline redesign's "Suggested" sections, Facebook could fill out graph search by making it easy to select and show off where you've been, what you Like, and what you've watched, read, and listened to. And Facebook does more with that data than you might expect.With Q4 Earnings Two Weeks Out And Stock Dipping, BlackBerry Suddenly Announces Mystery Order Of 1M BB10 Handsets
Mar 13, 8:02PM
BlackBerry issued a press release today that amounts to little more than "Look! We're selling handsets!" The four paragraph release hit the wire at 3:17 ET, and shares (which had been down on the day on the NASDAQ) shot up immediately afterwards. BlackBerry provides no details about who placed the order or why, noting only that it's the single largest purchase order for the devices "in history." And ending the release with a reminder that BlackBerry's fiscal 2013 fourth quarter earnings results will be reported in two weeks time.Kickstarter's First Project With Major Studio Support, Veronica Mars Movie Hits $1M In Record Time
Mar 13, 7:55PM
If you were a fan of the teen detective TV show Veronica Mars, this was an exciting morning — creator Rob Thomas launched a Kickstarter campaign to finance a Veronica Mars movie. (I'm a fan, and I've backed the project.) But even if you didn't watch the show, the campaign should be cause for some excitement. That's because (as a Kickstarter spokesperson confirmed) this is the first project to have the blessing of a major movie studio. Thomas writes that if he succeeds in crowdfunding the production, Warner Bros. (which owns the rights) has agreed to distribute the film.After A Change Of Heart, WhatsApp Officially Debuts On BlackBerry 10
Mar 13, 7:46PM
When BlackBerry 10 launched, it did so with a dearth of big-name applications available in its BlackBerry World content portal. Even now some companies (I'm looking at you Netflix) continue to shy away from the platform, but at least one company has changed its tune on the BlackBerry 10. After a representative noted late last year that the team had "no plans to support" BlackBerry's new OS, WhatsApp is now available for download on BlackBerry 10 devices.Oracle Buys Nimbula For Cloud OS Software, Not OpenStack
Mar 13, 7:20PM
Oracle is buying Nimbula, the cloud OS startup started by some of the original creators of Amazon Web Services (AWS). But contrary to the reactionary hype, the purchase is for the team and the company's technology and not as a means to join OpenStack, the open cloud organization that Nimbula participates in as a member.AudioTweets Is A Twitter Client That Lets You Earn $ By Listening To Your Twitter Stream
Mar 13, 7:18PM
With all kinds of content creation services out there, and numerous voice-enabled digital assistant apps sprouting up, TextAd is toying with ways to make your Twitter consumption more natural. That said, the company has developed a new mobile iOS Twitter client that reads your stream aloud, and pays you to listen — think Pandora. Of course, AudioTweets doesn’t pay per tweet, but rather per audio commercial that you hear in between a set of tweets. This means that Twitter could turn into a sort of Pandora-style situation, letting you passively listen to both ads and tweets like you listen to music and audio commercials. AudioTweets also lets you earn money by referring friends to the service and from AudioTweets discount partners who offer deals through the service. Once users have accrued more than $10 on the service, AudioTweets will send you a MasterCard debit card with your credit on it, usable at over 24 million locations worldwide. To be honest, AudioTweets isn’t the most intuitive Twitter client for the highly active. If you reply to tweets, RT, and are generally more of a creator than a consumer on the micro social network, AudioTweets probably isn’t for you. There’s no natural way to reply to tweets or RT. However, various gesture controls let you swipe back and forth from profile, to timeline, to mentions, to messages, and finally to lists, Tweetdeck-style. You can also click through to external links. Perhaps best of all, you can listen to your tweets spoken from a digital Siri-like voice in your phone. It reminds me of Winston, an iOS app that summarizes all the crucial information from Twitter, Facebook, and your favorite news sources to bring you a verbal daily briefing. However, where Winston brings you more actual sources, AudioTweets reads everything word for word, so there’s no contextual gaps like there is on Winston. The company recently added new leadership, in the form Rick Marini from BranchOut and Steve Jenkins from gamerID Network, CheatCodes.com and Google Adsense Online Advisory Council, who will be joining the Advisory Board at TextAd. AudioTweets is available now in the App Store.Google Launches Its Third Year Of Earth Developer Grants For Maps That Help Nonprofits Accomplish A Mission
Mar 13, 6:53PM
Google has opened applications for its third annual Google Earth Outreach Developer Grants. The program provides $10K-$20K of funding to nonprofits that are willing to use Google’s Map technology to help them accomplish their goals. The company has used its own technology to help out during times of crisis, most recently and notably during Hurricane Sandy and the flu outbreak in the U.S. Google Earth’s Tanya Birch wrote about the program on the Google Maps blog this afternoon, outlining some of the previous successes the program has helped shape. Some of the issues addressed with map technology in the past include environmental issues, humanitarian causes and disaster-relief prevention. One of Birch’s favorites from the 2011 batch is a project by WWF called “Eyes on the Forest.” Its map tracked deforestation in Sumatra, which helped convince 17 U.S. retailers to stop buying toilet paper from companies that cut down wood in rainforests and tiger habitats that are labeled as critical. This is an example of a technology platform helping to tell a story that will then go on to make a case for a non-profit’s mission. Google has quite a few of these programs, and we’re not always updated on how the grants do once they’re given. It’s nice to see the fruits of their labor this time, as it’s easy to come up with great ideas on paper but never follow through with them. One other project mentioned by Birch was done by HALO Trust, which clears minefields in areas of the world that have been ravaged by years of intense war. These undetonated mines devastate small towns and unsuspecting children who are merely trying to farm their way around the countryside or head home to their families from work. This particular project, with a grant from Google, targeted Angola, Afghanistan and Cambodia. If you’re a nonprofit and could use Google’s mapping technology to help tell your story or solve complex social problems, then it’s worth submitting an application. If you’ve done so, please reach out to us and let us know what the process is like. We’ve never heard that side of the story. [Photo credit: Flickr]Andy Rubin's Next Moonshot Could Happen At Google's Project X
Mar 13, 6:47PM
The announcement that Sundar Pichai is taking over from Andy Rubin as Google’s head of Android sure came as a surprise. Pichai is a perfect candidate for the job, no doubt, but Rubin obviously did a great job growing Android from a minor mobile operating system to the powerhouse it is today. Unlike the usual corporate press releases that announce these kinds of moves, Larry Page himself made today’s announcement, which is unusual in itself, and there’s no “he wants to spend more time with his family” or a similar statement in the post. Instead, Page writes that Rubin will “start a new chapter at Google.” That next chapter for Rubin, I think, will play out in Google’s secretive X Lab skunkworks division, the birthplace of Glass and Google’s self-driving cars. More Moonshots Please! Why? Page writes: “Having exceeded even the crazy ambitious goals we dreamed of for Android—and with a really strong leadership team in place—Andy's decided it's time to hand over the reins and start a new chapter at Google. Andy, more moonshots please!” The place where Google’s moonshots happen these days is the X Lab (also sometimes referred to as Google X , Project X or simply x), as the company is prone to point out lately. For Larry Page and Astro Teller, the current head of Google X, a ‘moonshot’ is a project that has the potential to make something 10x better and that’s worth investing in, even if the chance of succeeding is small. Rubin’s background in mobile makes him a great candidate for the X Lab, which focuses heavily on wearable computing, but it’s also worth remembering that Android itself was the kind of moonshot Page loves so much. Nobody really thought Google could pull this one off and the first version were definitely still crude. The project that is going to carry this idea forward, in many ways, is Google Glass – which runs on Android. Rubin has been great at turning ideas into products and that’s something Project X could surely benefit from. We’ve also heard some rumors that Rubin was simply ousted at Google. That is, of course, always a possibility, but it seems unlikely. It’s not Google’s style to make these kind of announcements to begin with and its unprecedented for Larry Page to write a blog post about it. Page is also clear about the fact that Rubin willPhotobucket Is Looking To Raise $9.5 Million In New Equity Funding Round
Mar 13, 6:15PM
Photobucket, the longstanding photo and video sharing site, is raising $9.57 million in a new equity funding round, according to regulatory documents filed this week with the Securities and Exchange Commission. The document indicates that $5.6 million of the round has been committed as of March 11, leaving some $3.9 million of equity left to be sold. The first sale of the round occurred on February 28, according to the filing, which was pointed out in a Tweet this morning by Term Sheet's Dan Primack.Would Facebook Have Sold To Yahoo for $1.6 Billion? We'll Never Know
Mar 13, 6:02PM
Venture Capitalist Peter Thiel talks about Facebook rejecting a $1 billion offer from Yahoo in 2006. He and Accel’s Jim Breyer were on the same page – “take the money and run.” But Zuckerberg said no. He “barely humored the idea of selling,” says Thiel. Which is about the same thing we heard back then: “At one point in the Yahoo negotiations, the talks extended into the weekend, says a person familiar with the matter. Mr. Zuckerberg, this account continues, said he couldn't take part because his girlfriend was in town. Others pointed out they were closing in on a billion-dollar deal. Mr. Zuckerberg said it didn't matter: his cellphone would be off.” Even better was the way Zuckerberg handled the simultaneous negotiations with Microsoft: “During one series of talks with Microsoft, Facebook executives told their Microsoft peers they couldn't do an 8 a.m. conference call because the company's 22-year-old founder and chief executive, Harvard dropout Mark Zuckerberg, wouldn't be awake.” Obviously Zuckerberg made the right decision. But what I’d love to know is what would have happened if Yahoo was able to make their top offer – some $1.62 billion. Late in 2006 I obtained the internal Yahoo presentation analyzing a possible Facebook acquisition. Based on projected growth in Facebook users, Yahoo was willing to at least 60% more than the $1 billion they formally offered. What if Zuckerberg had been willing to work that weekend, and Yahoo got in a new offer closer to what they were actually prepared to pay? Perhaps Zuckerberg would have said yes. Perhaps Thiel and Breyer would have threatened to murder him if he still didn’t budge. We’ll never know for sure, of course, but I’m guessing Facebook would have said yes. Given Yahoo’s track record back then, though, it still wouldn’t have been a good deal for them. More likely than not, they would have destroyed Facebook, and would be moaning today about how much they overpaid.To Drive More Sales, Twitter Updates Its Ads Dashboard With More Data On Performance, Analytics And Spend
Mar 13, 5:41PM
In the route to growing revenues, Twitter has been making a lot of upgrades to its advertising services -- most notably through the release of an API -- and today the social network added to that with the release of a new, upgraded dashboard for the Twitter Ads center. The new interface provides significantly more data to make it easier for brands to measure how ads are performing on the network, in a bid to get those brands to spend more.When Is It More Than Inspiration? Burner CEO Calls Out Hushed As An "Obvious Clone"
Mar 13, 5:33PM
Sometimes it's hard to pinpoint what's a clone, what's iterative and what's just inspiration. This is but one example. Greg Cohn, the CEO of Burner, an iPhone application offering disposable phone numbers that raised seed funding from 500 Startups and other angels this fall, is calling out a competitor's app as a clone. The app in question is Hushed, which first debuted on Android before arriving in the App Store this past week. Hushed offers a similar feature set and pricing model to Burner, but Cohn thinks some things were just a little too familiar.Twitter Reportedly Building Standalone iOS Music App Based On Recent Acquisition, As It Did With Vine For Video
Mar 13, 5:29PM
Twitter is reportedly planning to release a standalone music app on iOS, possibly later this month, according to a new report from CNET. CNET has learned that Twitter acquired music discovery service We Are Hunted, and is using its tech to build the app, similar to the approach it took with Vine earlier this year. The difference here would be that Twitter's music app would carry its own branding, according to CNET's sources.Amazon Drops Kindle Fire HD 8.9″ Price From $299 To $269, Releases It In Europe And Japan
Mar 13, 5:20PM
Amazon just announced that it would be dropping the price of the 8.9-inch version of its Kindle Fire HD. The tablet will now cost $269 for the Wi-Fi only version and $399 for the Wi-Fi and LTE version. The Kindle Fire HD 8.9" is now available in the UK, Germany, France, Italy, Spain and Japan as well. Canada won't get the device this time around.SET Media Adds New Tools To Optimize Video Ad Campaigns
Mar 13, 5:20PM
Video ad startup SET Media is working hard to take deep ad analytics and apply what it knows about category and video inventory to help advertisers optimize their campaigns. It wasn't too long ago that the company relaunched and rebranded its product to help advertisers make better buying decisions. It's taking things a step further with even more tools in its Guide media planning dashboard.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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