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Monday, September 30, 2013

Retail Giant Tesco Follows In Amazon's Footsteps With Hudl, A Cut-Price, Own-Brand Android Tablet




TechCrunch » android





Retail Giant Tesco Follows In Amazon's Footsteps With Hudl, A Cut-Price, Own-Brand Android Tablet



pharaoh_4colour__2_



Tesco, the UK-based retail giant with 20 million customers in 12 countries across Europe and Asia, today took its biggest step yet into digital commerce and content: the company launched Hudl, an own-brand, seven-inch-screened Android (Jellybean) tablet priced at £119 ($190).


The idea will be for Tesco to use the hardware to promote use of its own range of digital content and e-commerce services, and in keeping with that it will be even cheaper to buy the device for those who use the company’s Clubcard loyalty card. Those who buy Hudl on the Clubcard can buy it for less than £100 ($160) when the device goes on sale September 30, first in the UK market.


Tesco is playing on a magic combination of factors: it already has a pretty large range of digital services (from entertainment through to shopping and banking); we still have relatively low tablet penetration in markets like the UK; and it’s being very Tesco-like (that is, competitive) on price. It’s also just chapter one for Tesco in this game, says its CEO (emphasis mine):


“Hudl is a colourful, accessible tablet for the whole family to enjoy. The first stage in our tablet offering, it’s convenient, integrated and easy to use with no compromise on spec,” Tesco Chief Executive, Philip Clarke, said in a statement. “Customers are quite rightly very discerning about the technology they buy so we knew we had to be competitive on all fronts.”


In some ways, offering a tablet is a logical progression for Tesco, which has in the past year acquired Mobcast, an online bookseller, for $7.2 million; and beefed up its Blinkbox film and TV service. Alongside this, the company has its web portal for online shopping and grocery delivery, as well as various consumer-focused financial services like online banking and insurance, and brodband, telephone and cellular services.


As with Amazon and its e-commerce operation and content holdings and subsequent foray into hardware with the Kindle e-readers and subsequent Kindle Fire tablets, Tesco pulling all of these together and putting them front and center will help the company promote these products more effectively, in a way that only Tesco would be able to do on its own device.


Right now, the intention appears to be to offer these devices in the UK market only, which is Tesco’s biggest, with nearly half of its 6,784 stores; over 310,000 of its 530,000 employees; and most of its profit. Indeed, Tesco points out that in the UK right now some 75% of households do not own a tablet; and the market for these is still in its early days, even in developed markets, and it is there for the grabbing.


But I suspect the sights are bigger. Just as Tesco has plans to take its various online services out to other markets (those include China, India, Malaysia, South Korea, Thailand, Czech Republic, Hungary, Republic of Ireland, Poland, Slovakia and Turkey), it would make sense to bring Hudl along for that ride.


“Currently there is nothing specifically planned outside the UK, but that’s not always going to be the case,” a person close to the company told TechCrunch on the occasion of its Blinkbox digital content launch earlier this year, when the company also made a big point of hinting hard about a tablet launch.


Today, a spokesperson echoed that sentiment. “We wouldn’t rule out other markets in the future,” he said, in response to questions about what will come after the UK.


Going global is also what the company did with other digital pushes, claiming that it “built the world’s first virtual store where commuters buy groceries via their mobile phones in South Korea.” (Those services first came online in its home market, the UK.)


In fact, you could argue that, with the economies of scale that you need to make hardware break-even or profitable business, pushing the tablet into international markets will be an important part of the equation for Tesco, which says that it is producing the tablet with a “manufacturing partner based in China…which also manufactures well-known products for Microsoft, HP, Blackberry and Sony.”


And while it makes sense for Tesco to push hardware to “close the loop” on the digital proposition, it is also an imperative for the company in a wider sense. Philip Clarke, Tesco’s chief executive, remarked recently on how conditions outside the UK remain “challenging” with the UK currently “subdued.” Pushing into new areas like hardware and tablets in that regard is an important offensive move to defend against erosion and competitive pressure elsewhere in the business.


Specification detail:

· 7” 1440 x 900 HD screen

· Android Jellybean 4.2.2

· 16GB storage which can be expanded to 48GB with microSD cards.

· Quad-core 1.5GHZ processor

· 9 hours video battery life (Conditions may vary dependent on video format and content, audio volume, screen brightness and processor load)

· Micro-HDMI port

· Bluetooth 4.0, GPS

· Dual band Wi-Fi for a more stable connection

· Access to over a million apps via Google Play™

· Comes in 4 colours: black, blue, red, purple

· Wi-Fi only

· Sleek, high-quality design, with a durable, matte, soft-touch back for better grip

· Scratch resistant touch screen










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Violin Memory Struggles In IPO And Now Faces A Fierce Storage and Enterprise Market

Sep 30, 6:35AM

Infinite StorageOn Friday, Violin Memory's IPO did not exactly go that well. The company priced its IPO at $9 per share but opened at $7.41, 17.7 percent lower than the offering price. It closed trading at $7.02 per share, down 22 percent.


Google Fiber Compared To Broadband By Putting A Middle Age Guy In A Bath Robe And Soaking Him With A Firehose

Sep 30, 1:00AM

Google_Fiber_vs._Broadband_-_Provo_City_-_YouTube-3Provo, Utah is getting Google Fiber in the next few months. So how do you explain to the people of this small city north of Salt Lake what that will mean for their Interent service?


MLB's iBeacon Experiment May Signal A Whole New Ball Game For Location Tracking

Sep 30, 1:00AM

mlbeacon03There's been plenty of buzz about iBeacons and Bluetooth Low Energy radios -- they're supposed to do wonders for in-venue positioning, and plenty of companies have already expressed interest in deploying them in the field. But what is it like to actually stroll through a beacon-laden area? Curiously enough, Major League Baseball took on that challenge and recently decided to show off its vision of a Bluetooth-enabled ballpark at Citi Field in Queens, NY.


AppSeed Relies On Computer Vision Tech And Your Phone To Speed Up UI Design

Sep 30, 12:00AM

AppSeedDigital designers point your eyes at this neat Kickstarter project which is utilising computer vision tech to speed up the early stages of the design process. The basic idea is to give designers a way to quickly transform the sketches in their (paper) notepad into a functioning UI prototype to test work flow and get feedback on early-stage app design.


Azimo Raises $1M Seed Funding To Take Its Money Transfer Service To Europe

Sep 29, 11:01PM

Screen Shot 2013-09-29 at 11.02.16It seems there's still money to be made in money transfers. Azimo, the UK-based social money transfer service that competes with legacy players Western Union and Moneygram, and to a lesser extent, PayPal, has raised just over $1 million in seed funding from the European arm of VC firm eVentures, and existing investors -- money it'll use to expand to Europe.


The Upcoming Glass Development Kit Launch Will Finally Allow Google Glass To Live Up To Its Potential

Sep 29, 10:00PM

glasscloseupThe limited launched of Google Glass earlier this year was greeted with a lot of hype and the inevitable backlash, but one thing this first version of Glass didn't show yet was the full potential of the platform. That's because developers can't do all that much with Glass right now. They can push messages and receive images, videos and audio from the device through the so-called Mirror API, but that's about it right now.


What Games Are: Steam's Big Bet

Sep 29, 9:00PM

Screen Shot 2013-09-29 at 11.12.11 AMWith new consoles and microconsoles starting to pop into existence, this week Valve finally revealed its answer: SteamOS. Steam Machines. Steam Controllers. Boom. Its ambitions are not to launch a console but a whole solution for home gaming entertainment. In a sense it has to.


Video: Every iPhone Ever Gets Speed Tested Side-By-Side

Sep 29, 8:05PM

iPhonesSure, each new iPhone is faster than the last.. on paper. But how do these speed increases actually translate into day-to-day use? It's one of life's oldest questions; one that scholars and scientists have spent billions trying to answer, to no avail. Fine. Maybe not. But it is something that's cool to see put to the test in a two minute video on a beautiful Sunday afternoon.


Generation Touch Will Redraw Consumer Tech

Sep 29, 6:00PM

TeensTen years ago, young adults and those in their late teens were among the fastest and earliest adopters of new social networks -- Friendster, Myspace, and ultimately Facebook -- and many other products that define us today. So we should be looking to today's generation, who people often refer to as Millennials, to predict how we will all live and connect 10+ years from now. This generation has grown up differently than everyone who came before it (including me). They have grown up in a world of constant mobile connectedness. They are as different from prior generations as were Baby Boomers who grew up with the first televisions, and earlier generations who grew up with the very first cars or electricity. They have never really known a world without Internet, mobile devices or social media.


The Harsh Realities Surrounding Mobile App Investing

Sep 29, 5:02PM

app-store

Rohit Sharma from True Ventures likes to say: "Mobile is the only under-hyped thing in tech." I think he's right. Yet, for mobile developers and mobile founders out there, an overheating iOS app ecosystem hamstrung by distribution challenges makes for a tough game, a game many technology investors have often decided is not worth the risk and prefer to wait and chase things that break through the wall. Investors need scale. However, of course, some mobile-first apps do continue to get funded out of the gate, and here's how I briefly explain to others what those are. I wanted to write this for mobile entrepreneurs out there who are looking for investment, to give them one person's view into how to read the tea leaves. (These aren't data-driven facts, but rather observations I've made operating in iOS and concurrently being on the investing side evaluating them.)




VetCloud Hopes To Unlock The Dormant Data In Veterinary Clinics Around The World

Sep 29, 2:33PM

vetcloudUnlocking the value hidden in data that has long gone unaggregated and unanalyzed is a hugely attractive proposition of big data and cloud-based SaaS startups, and newcomer VetCloud is no exception. The startup was part of TechStars London, and while it's targeting a very specific niche, it could hold the key to a problem that any government in the world would be happy to have help with.


Peerby's Local Lending App Is Ready To Help Neighbours Participate In The Sharing Economy

Sep 29, 12:40PM

peerbyYou've got stuff, but not all the stuff you need. Dutch startup and TechStars London first cohort member Peerby is hoping to unlock the use value of that stuff with a collaborative consumption model that features some crucial differences when compared to others who've tried to turn caring into sharing for neighbourhoods.


After Near-$1B Inventory Write-Down, BlackBerry Starts Selling Unlocked Smartphones Direct To U.S. Buyers

Sep 29, 10:20AM

Screen Shot 2013-09-29 at 11.18.03 AMWell that was quick: Not long after T-Mobile announced it would stop carrying BlackBerry hardware in its retail stores (but continue selling them online), the Canadian smartphone maker has revealed a new direct selling model that it likely hopes will shore up that retail channel loss. BlackBerry now offers unlocked Q10 and Z10 smartphones via its own site, for $549.00 and $449.00 respectively.


The Danger And Opportunity Of The Intermediate Metric

Sep 29, 4:00AM

intermediate metricAre social media companies overvalued? The question is not just a matter of revenue multiples (low or high), but rather whether that revenue is actually generating new sales for advertisers. Google convinced the world to believe in the click, Facebook has done the same with the Like, Twitter with the follower, and Pinterest is planning on unveiling the same with the Pin.


The Science Behind Using Online Communities To Change Behavior

Sep 29, 1:00AM

brainIs it just me, or is it impossible to talk to technology entrepreneurs without mentioning user engagement and behavior? I'm a behavioral psychologist, so that might be why I keep having conversations about engagement, but I don't think that's the only reason. I think it's because entrepreneurs have realized that behavior change and engagement is critical to technology development (and to everything else in our lives). Whether we're trying to get people to download or keep playing our fantasy sports applications, convince ourselves to avoid that extra scoop of ice cream, or get our neighbor to stop hitting her snooze button at 5:00, 5:10, and 5:20 a.m., we understand how difficult it can be to engage people and change behavior.


NSA's Targeting Prowess Doesn't Extend To Ads

Sep 28, 11:01PM

2013-09-28_16h12_50If the NSA only invited TechCrunch to its birthday party, it'd have to eat its cake alone. While we aren't big fans of the NSA, it appears to fancy our readers, as it consistently advertises on our site. This makes me slightly uncomfortable, as I have spent a good portion of my time these past few months excoriating and blasting the NSA for what I view as unconstitutional abrogation of our Fourth Amendment rights. And here is the NSA, spending dollars to reach our audience, through those very posts. I suppose it is vaguely democratic to grant them part of our space to make their case, but as this is a financial relationship (they pay us, either directly or through a third-party), it’s not a question of free speech. I’ve never felt a conflict of interest with an advertisement before, due in no small part to the fact that I tune them out like the rest of you. But to have the NSA directly hawking its wares on pages that sport my name doesn’t sit right with me. Here’s the NSA advertising its career listings on our Microsoft subject page: My name appended to a page that sports bright (lurid?) NSA branding. Please, no. Today brought fresh revelations on how the NSA collects data on United States citizens. Here’s the New York Times reporting the tracking of our social graph, based on documents leaked by Edward Snowden: Since 2010, the National Security Agency has been exploiting its huge collections of data to create sophisticated graphs of some Americans' social connections that can identify their associates, their locations at certain times, their traveling companions and other personal information [...] Because of concerns about infringing on the privacy of American citizens, the computer analysis of such data had previously been permitted only for foreigners. Because of my distaste for the NSA and its surveillance programs, I don’t want it making payments (again, either directly or through some third-party targeting or retargeting) to any group that I have a financial relationship with. And as TechCrunch pays the rent, some NSA dollars have likely leaked into my own bank account. That’s revolting. Also revealed recently is the fact that the Justice Department targeted Edward Snowden’s email provider the day right after he went public. That ended poorly. And the Senate just admitted what we already knew, that the NSA directly taps the core fiber cables of the


CrunchWeek: Microsoft's New Surface 2, BlackBerry's $4.7B Buyout, Big Changes In Fundraising

Sep 28, 10:00PM

Screen Shot 2013-09-28 at 11.29.30 AM Happy Saturday! It's time once again for a new episode of CrunchWeek, the show that brings a few of us writers together to chat it up about some of the most interesting stories from the past week in tech news. This time around, Leena Rao, Alex "Warhorse" Wilhelm (I didn't know that was his nickname until I saw it on his TechCrunch author page, but I dig it) and I spouted off our opinions on


Advertising's Logged-In User Revolution Is Brewing

Sep 28, 9:00PM

logged-in-f1Native advertising may be the buzzword stealing the attention of the advertising technology landscape, though a much quieter revolution is brewing around the space: the fight for the logged-in user overtaking cookie-based advertising. You see it manifesting itself from all corners: Google's relentless investment in Google+, Facebook releasing Custom Audiences, and most recently Twitter's acquisition of MoPub. Data management companies like Datalogix and Catalina Marketing are creeping up, matching what takes place online into offline purchases.


Good News: We're Not Axing Net Neutrality. Bad News: US Gov Probably Shutting Down

Sep 28, 7:42PM

Screen Shot 2013-09-28 at 12.28.54 PMThe intersection of fiscal politics, national crisis, and technology regulation is a silly place, as there should be no overlapping space between the three issues. And yet. Good news: We’re not ending net neutrality. The bad news, depending on your politics, is that we’re likely going to shut down the United States government. That said, the current Washington dynamic has offered up a new fact: Technology policy and regulation is game for political football. That’s a damn shame. Long gone now, it seems, are the days in which technology managed to steer mostly clear of politics. Perhaps there never was such a time, and we have merely invented it. But whether it did or did not exist before, it is certainly gone now. Let’s review. A House bill that would fund the government, but remove funding for the Affordable Care Act (ObamaCare), was slapped down in the Senate. The House began to compile a bill to replace its first effort that contained a grab-bag of conservative wishes. One of those wishes was the ‘blocking’ of net neutrality. So, tech policy was lashed aside fiscal policy as a gimme to House members who think that the regulation is somehow anti-Internet, and likely accept large donations from telco firms that are opposed to it. Happily, that idea is dead. Instead, according to Politico and nearly every other political outlet, House Republicans will strap a one year delay of ObamaCare to their bill to fund the government. Senate Democrats and the President have flatly stated that any such bill is dead on arrival. So, net neutrality managed to dodge whatever might have come its way, but the government itself is still hosed. I don’t see a way that we avoid shutdown. But Verizon won’t be able to charge Netflix exorbitant fees to send its content to its subscribers. That’s good. And other ISPs won’t be able to slow the content of rival companies, which is also a pretty decent outcome. Anyway, that’s where we are at. It’ll be an interesting week. Top Image Credit: House GOP Leader


NSA Uses Facebook And GPS Data To Identify Suspects In Networks Of Americans

Sep 28, 7:14PM

FILE PHOTO  NSA Compiles Massive Database Of Private Phone CallsThe National Security Agency has slowly been mapping it's own massive network of suspects with associations to US citizens. The New York Times obtained documents that reveals how the NSA is utilizing social data to map intelligence connections.



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Sunday, September 29, 2013

Security Concerns Abound Over Unofficial Android iMessage App That Uses Chinese Servers To Process Data




TechCrunch » android





Security Concerns Abound Over Unofficial Android iMessage App That Uses Chinese Servers To Process Data



androidevilplus

An unauthorised app that lets Android users chat on Apple’s closed iMessage network is causing a big stir. It’s had viral downloads in the tens of thousands amid claims that it could be spreading malware; but the Chinese developer who developed the app tells us everything is cool.


[TechCrunch has opted not to include a link to the app page because of the security concerns]


It’s the latest security scare for Google’s popular mobile operating system, whose Play store in 2012 accounted for 79% of all smartphone malware – meanwhile Apple’s highly protected iOS App Store consisted of just .7% malicious apps.


While the controversial Android-based iMessage app has successfully bridged the messaging gap between the two disparate ecosystems, developer Jay Freeman discovered the app achieved this in a relatively insecure manner, which includes processing data on a remote third-party server in China. The questionable techniques used to send the messages between the two disconnected platforms are not best practice, and also mean that Apple can’t simply block the app based on its IP address.


“Clearly, this is suboptimal from a security perspective,” Freeman wrote on his Google+ page.


According to the app’s Google Play page, it was released earlier this month by Daniel Zweigart and has been downloaded over 10,000 times and features 132 one-star reviews — almost double the amount of five-star reviews.


TechCrunch contacted the developer Huluwa via an email address listed on the website, and received a response from a Chinese developer, Zengyi, who explained that Zweigart is a friend who lent him his Google Play account.


Zengyi said the app was not malware and he plans to release a new version that will process data on the phone, adding the app required strong permissions, such as the ability to install components in the background, “to ensure a message that can be received at any time.”


“Because some information is difficulty dispose [sic] in android, so we need a server,” Zengyi wrote in broken English. “Now, I find a way, I think it will help me not use server.”


During an iMessage chat (when he used his Android device) Zengyi said he plans to make the source code publicly available on GitHub.


Freeman said the developer’s responses on the Google Play page have raised more questions than answers.


“The developer is even responding to reviews about login issues asking only for user’s Apple IDs, which makes it sound like even the authentication must be under his direct control (where it can be logged and debugged given only the username),” Freeman wrote.


A lengthy discussion on Hacker News flags several security issues about how the app works, and generally warns users against entering their Apple user ID on the app.










Sep 29 - New 'TechCrunch' feed email from feed2email.net

Hi there!
Here's the latest feed from TechCrunch.

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The Danger And Opportunity Of The Intermediate Metric

Sep 29, 4:00AM

intermediate metricAre social media companies overvalued? The question is not just a matter of revenue multiples (low or high), but rather whether that revenue is actually generating new sales for advertisers. Google convinced the world to believe in the click, Facebook has done the same with the Like, Twitter with the follower, and Pinterest is planning on unveiling the same with the Pin.


The Science Behind Using Online Communities To Change Behavior

Sep 29, 1:00AM

brainIs it just me, or is it impossible to talk to technology entrepreneurs without mentioning user engagement and behavior? I'm a behavioral psychologist, so that might be why I keep having conversations about engagement, but I don't think that's the only reason. I think it's because entrepreneurs have realized that behavior change and engagement is critical to technology development (and to everything else in our lives). Whether we're trying to get people to download or keep playing our fantasy sports applications, convince ourselves to avoid that extra scoop of ice cream, or get our neighbor to stop hitting her snooze button at 5:00, 5:10, and 5:20 a.m., we understand how difficult it can be to engage people and change behavior.


NSA's Targeting Prowess Doesn't Extend To Ads

Sep 28, 11:01PM

2013-09-28_16h12_50If the NSA only invited TechCrunch to its birthday party, it'd have to eat its cake alone. While we aren't big fans of the NSA, it appears to fancy our readers, as it consistently advertises on our site. This makes me slightly uncomfortable, as I have spent a good portion of my time these past few months excoriating and blasting the NSA for what I view as unconstitutional abrogation of our Fourth Amendment rights. And here is the NSA, spending dollars to reach our audience, through those very posts. I suppose it is vaguely democratic to grant them part of our space to make their case, but as this is a financial relationship (they pay us, either directly or through a third-party), it’s not a question of free speech. I’ve never felt a conflict of interest with an advertisement before, due in no small part to the fact that I tune them out like the rest of you. But to have the NSA directly hawking its wares on pages that sport my name doesn’t sit right with me. Here’s the NSA advertising its career listings on our Microsoft subject page: My name appended to a page that sports bright (lurid?) NSA branding. Please, no. Today brought fresh revelations on how the NSA collects data on United States citizens. Here’s the New York Times reporting the tracking of our social graph, based on documents leaked by Edward Snowden: Since 2010, the National Security Agency has been exploiting its huge collections of data to create sophisticated graphs of some Americans' social connections that can identify their associates, their locations at certain times, their traveling companions and other personal information [...] Because of concerns about infringing on the privacy of American citizens, the computer analysis of such data had previously been permitted only for foreigners. Because of my distaste for the NSA and its surveillance programs, I don’t want it making payments (again, either directly or through some third-party targeting or retargeting) to any group that I have a financial relationship with. And as TechCrunch pays the rent, some NSA dollars have likely leaked into my own bank account. That’s revolting. Also revealed recently is the fact that the Justice Department targeted Edward Snowden’s email provider the day right after he went public. That ended poorly. And the Senate just admitted what we already knew, that the NSA directly taps the core fiber cables of the


CrunchWeek: Microsoft's New Surface 2, BlackBerry's $4.7B Buyout, Big Changes In Fundraising

Sep 28, 10:00PM

Screen Shot 2013-09-28 at 11.29.30 AM Happy Saturday! It's time once again for a new episode of CrunchWeek, the show that brings a few of us writers together to chat it up about some of the most interesting stories from the past week in tech news. This time around, Leena Rao, Alex "Warhorse" Wilhelm (I didn't know that was his nickname until I saw it on his TechCrunch author page, but I dig it) and I spouted off our opinions on


Advertising's Logged-In User Revolution Is Brewing

Sep 28, 9:00PM

logged-in-f1Native advertising may be the buzzword stealing the attention of the advertising technology landscape, though a much quieter revolution is brewing around the space: the fight for the logged-in user overtaking cookie-based advertising. You see it manifesting itself from all corners: Google's relentless investment in Google+, Facebook releasing Custom Audiences, and most recently Twitter's acquisition of MoPub. Data management companies like Datalogix and Catalina Marketing are creeping up, matching what takes place online into offline purchases.


Good News: We're Not Axing Net Neutrality. Bad News: US Gov Probably Shutting Down

Sep 28, 7:42PM

Screen Shot 2013-09-28 at 12.28.54 PMThe intersection of fiscal politics, national crisis, and technology regulation is a silly place, as there should be no overlapping space between the three issues. And yet. Good news: We’re not ending net neutrality. The bad news, depending on your politics, is that we’re likely going to shut down the United States government. That said, the current Washington dynamic has offered up a new fact: Technology policy and regulation is game for political football. That’s a damn shame. Long gone now, it seems, are the days in which technology managed to steer mostly clear of politics. Perhaps there never was such a time, and we have merely invented it. But whether it did or did not exist before, it is certainly gone now. Let’s review. A House bill that would fund the government, but remove funding for the Affordable Care Act (ObamaCare), was slapped down in the Senate. The House began to compile a bill to replace its first effort that contained a grab-bag of conservative wishes. One of those wishes was the ‘blocking’ of net neutrality. So, tech policy was lashed aside fiscal policy as a gimme to House members who think that the regulation is somehow anti-Internet, and likely accept large donations from telco firms that are opposed to it. Happily, that idea is dead. Instead, according to Politico and nearly every other political outlet, House Republicans will strap a one year delay of ObamaCare to their bill to fund the government. Senate Democrats and the President have flatly stated that any such bill is dead on arrival. So, net neutrality managed to dodge whatever might have come its way, but the government itself is still hosed. I don’t see a way that we avoid shutdown. But Verizon won’t be able to charge Netflix exorbitant fees to send its content to its subscribers. That’s good. And other ISPs won’t be able to slow the content of rival companies, which is also a pretty decent outcome. Anyway, that’s where we are at. It’ll be an interesting week. Top Image Credit: House GOP Leader


NSA Uses Facebook And GPS Data To Identify Suspects In Networks Of Americans

Sep 28, 7:14PM

FILE PHOTO  NSA Compiles Massive Database Of Private Phone CallsThe National Security Agency has slowly been mapping it's own massive network of suspects with associations to US citizens. The New York Times obtained documents that reveals how the NSA is utilizing social data to map intelligence connections.


Should Facebook Start Its Own Version Of Google Ventures?

Sep 28, 6:00PM

TechCrunch_-_Convo-2Over the past year, Facebook has seen its fair share of departures from employees and executives who are either starting a VC fund or camping out at a firm to figure out what their next startup or company will be. In the past two weeks, product manager Justin Shaffer left, and rumor has it he is starting a VC fund. Facebook engineering and product lead Greg Badros announced his departure, and it sounds like he'll be focusing on investing. Former Facebook exec Chamath Palihapitiya has been collecting technical talent from Facebook into his EIR program. And there are many more examples of Facebookers going to VC firms or starting to invest of late. Our question is, why doesn't Facebook just form its own venture group so some of these employees could stay connected to the company?


Gillmor Gang: Sensorship

Sep 28, 5:00PM

gillmor-gang-test-pattern_excerptThe Gillmor Gang — Robert Scoble, Keith Teare, John Taschek, Kevin Marks, and Steve Gillmor — new iPhone + new OS = continued Apple domination. Twitter vacillates between NYSE and NASDAQ. Age of Context The Book ships as publishing gestation shrinks from 9 months to 2 weeks. It is only toward the end of the show that someone in the chat notices @scobleizer isn't wearing Google Glass. Apple keeps on piling up yardage, reminding us not only of Steve Jobs' prophetic vision of the future, but his persistent hammerlock on our wallets.


The Genius Of Twitter: A Paean

Sep 28, 1:00PM

whaleIt's the first app I launch in the morning, and the first I install on a new phone, and my most-visited web site. Which is strange, because I don't much like most social media. I'm on Facebook only reluctantly; 90% of my posts there are automatic reposts from my tweet stream. I want to like Google+, but I keep failing. Twitter, though, is the hub of my online life. Now that Twitter is officially on track to IPO it's being lavished with praise, which irks me.


Bizness Apps Launches DIY Website Builder, Looks To Become A Full-Service Digital Marketing Suite For SMBs

Sep 28, 11:46AM

website-builderOnce upon a time, if you wanted your own website, you either had to speak fluent Internet, or write a large check to someone who did. However, thanks to the laundry list of companies and services that have sprouted over the last five years — like Weebly, Wix and Squarespace, to name a few — the barriers to building a snappy website have vanished. Today, website creators are free, and the only technical skill required is the ability to locate the Internet. Today, as smartphones flood the market, a similar story is unfolding in app development. With their customers going mobile, businesses are eager to do the same. A bevy of services emerged to meet the growing demand, offering businesses a quick and easy way to create their apps for iOS, Android and beyond. Bizness Apps launched in 2010 to do just that, providing companies with a low-cost way to build their own mobile apps and website without needing to know how to code. But with so many options for DIY site builders, both mobile and desktop, these services have to differentiate themselves from the competition if they’re going to stand out — and survive. As a result, many choose to specialize, offering the same basic features as everyone else, while focusing on adding more features and value around, say, social networking, flier creation or shopping. Like SnapPages, to differentiate itself in this crowded market, Bizness Apps developed a white-label program to allow both companies and businesses to build mobile apps for their existing clients or SMBs in their local area. Shortly thereafter, the startup added a CRM platform to help its white-label resellers sell apps and websites to startups and other SMBs, and today Bizness Apps is adding the last piece of the puzzle. In a platform play that aims to round out its self-service development suite and sees it moving into the realm of the Weeblys, Wixes and Squarespaces of the world, the startup is today launching its own drag-and-drop, DIY website builder, called Bizness Web. The website creation service will allow SMBs to quickly design and publish a fully-functional website for desktop, smartphones and tablets in under 10 minutes, says founder and CEO Andrew Gazdecki — regardless of technical skill. In an effort to provide businesses with a feature set that’s comparable to its competitors, the website builder will offer a library of hundreds of templates, designed


It's Official, The Nirvanix Cloud Storage Service Is Shutting Down

Sep 28, 6:55AM

blackcloud2It's official, Nirvanix is shutting down its business. The cloud storage company has scrapped its web site, replacing it with a statement and how to get in touch with customer support.


Software For Auto Repair: With New Funding In Tow, Estify Sees Big Opportunity In An Unsexy Market

Sep 28, 6:43AM

dashboard imageThe collision industry probably doesn't rank at the top of the "Sexy Markets" list for startups, but sometimes the most obscure, fragmented and pulchritudinously challenged industries can offer the most opportunity to those willing to grit their teeth and immerse themselves in the mess. Estify, a graduate of Amplify LA's business accelerator, is doing just that. Co-founders Jordan Furniss, Derek Carr and Taylor Moss went looking for the most unsexy market they could find, with bonus points awarded for both size and level of inefficiency. They quickly found their Shangri-La: The collision and auto repair market.


Where Webvan Failed And How Home Delivery 2.0 Could Succeed

Sep 28, 4:00AM

truckWebvan is well-known as the poster child of the dot-com "excess" bubble that led to the tech market crash in 2000. Business schools study Webvan's overly ambitious rush to the biggest IPO to date in Silicon Valley, as a prime example of what to avoid doing while scaling. Are those mistakes being repeated a dozen years later in the slew of activity -- even excitement -- in the home-delivery space?


Chasefuture's Platform Coaches Mainland Chinese Students On University Admissions

Sep 28, 3:19AM

chasefuture-logoThe allure of top-tier Western universities isn’t lessening anytime soon for the hundreds of thousands of Chinese high school graduates emerging out of the country’s best schools. That’s why a host of different startups helping mainland high school students with admissions like InitialView have cropped up in the last year or two. Chasefuture, a one-year-old startup from serial entrepreneur Greg Nance and Han Shao, is looking to be the go-to place for students across mainland China to study abroad in the U.S. or Europe. They are a platform that connects alums and admissions officers from top-tier Western universities to serve as mentors for students across China. “We basically bootstrapped our way to a top position in the study abroad consultation market,” said Nance, who moved to Shanghai a year ago after finishing up at Cambridge University’s business school. Chasefuture, which has 450 paid clients, is aiming to 10X that year to more than 4,000. They connect applying high school students to real admissions experts and mentors who are alums of their desired schools. Two-thirds of the company’s clients are in China, while the rest are mainly international students in the U.S. aiming for masters or Ph.D’s. So far, they’re sending 17 students to USC, 16 to Columbia University, 16 to Imperial College in the U.K., 11 to the London School of Economics, three to Cambridge’s business school for a master of finance. They have basic products that help with admissions essays and choosing schools, then higher-tier packages that can cost several thousand dollars depending on how much hands-on help a client wants. But they’re also particularly picky about who gets to join the program, with a 10 percent acceptance rate. (One could argue, of course, that they’re cherry-picking the candidates with the best chances anyway.) Nance says the company’s addressable market in China is maybe a quarter million students, who are looking to study abroad. To attract mentors, they look for alums or existing admissions experts who they pay about $40 an hour as a base. Nance says this is more than double what other competing platforms pay. If they are able to refer other quality mentors, they get a bonus as well.


JustFab's Checkout Tactics Are JustShady

Sep 28, 2:53AM

Screen Shot 2013-09-27 at 7.28.38 PMThis Hacker News complaint about JustFab scamming a user's girlfriend -- which gets resubmitted whenever JustFab raises money -- is a little off, because JustFab is not a scam in the traditional sense. The company is, however, abusing a tricky UI, loaded with dark pattern design gimmicks like forced continuity and sneak into basket -- all in the name of getting customers to sign up for a JustFab VIP membership they may not have wanted.


Palantir Is Raising $197M In Growth Capital, SEC Filing Shows

Sep 28, 1:13AM

PalantirPalantir, the big data company that has counted the NSA, the FBI and the CIA among its clientele, is raising up to $196.5 million in growth capital, according to an SEC filing. The company declined to say who the new funding was from, according to Lisa Gordon, who handles media and government relations for the company. Another source close to the company says the round is also not finalized yet. Morgan Stanley is managing the deal, according to the filing. Forbes reported last month that a round could value the company at between $5 and 8 billion. Founded back in 2004, the company was the brainchild of Paypal co-founder Peter Thiel, who believed that the payments company’s anti-fraud technologies could be used to fight terrorism. Current CEO Alex Karp, Joe Lonsdale (who went on to found Asia and Silicon Valley-focused investment firm Formation 8), Stephen Cohen and chief technology officer Nathan Gettings put together an initial product. It’s now become an analysis platform that government agencies use to manage the war against terrorism and drug trafficking. Palantir’s platform pulls disparate reams of data and puts them together in a way that makes otherwise hard-to-detect patterns and connections much more visible to users. It’s since grown into a business that Karp says may do $1 billion in contracts next year. It is not yet profitable, however. The company’s earlier investors include Founders Fund, Yelp’s Jeremy Stoppelman and Ben Ling among others.


Wish, The App For Logging What You Want, Launches A Complementary Gifting Feature

Sep 27, 11:39PM

2_gifting_acceptWell, folks, it’s September. The holiday gift giving season is ON! Wish, the mobile shopping app that lets users create lists of items they would like to purchase later, has launched Gifting, a feature that enables others to purchase and ship products to their friends. It draws from users’ existing wishlists and uses them to predict other items they would like. It’s a frazzled gift giver’s dream. Gifting has been part of the plan since the inception of the app, Wish CEO Peter Szulczewski said, which makes every bit of sense, since it’s the natural other half to wishlist creation. At this point, Wish is seeing half a million people on the app daily, at an average session length of 29 minutes. According to Szulczewski, sending presents was already a use case among Wish users prior to the feature’s launch this week. In looking at transactions, the team realized that people were requesting different shipping addresses for their purchases in order to send items to their friends. In addition to allowing users to create and share targeted wishlists (the easiest way to get it right), Gifting also predicts items that friends most want and uses social integration to notify users on their friends’ birthdays. “We use collaborative filtering in the same way that Amazon.com uses it,” Szulczewski said. “People that buy this will also buy these items.” As Szulczewski explained, the Wish demographic skews toward the young and female. Gifting is a way to access an older demographic, like fathers who don’t really know what to buy their daughters, nieces, or granddaughters. While there are a slew of gifting apps out there — like Giftly for gift cards, the locally-focused Yiftee, Karma, and Wrapp — the fact that Wish draws on pre-existing knowledge of the recipient’s likes ups the giver’s odds of nailing it. Wish has been bulking out its features this summer, having launched Wish Closet in late July to provide users a platform to resell their clothing. The plan is to grow internationally. Currently 55% of usage comes from North America, although there are growing communities in Europe and Latin America, which Szulczewski said present huge opportunities to grow the brand.


Microsoft Extends Its Trade-In Program: $200+ For Your "Gently Used" iPhone 4S, 5

Sep 27, 11:32PM

Screen Shot 2013-09-27 at 4.21.00 PMMicrosoft wants to take your Apple product off your hands, today expanding its trade-in programs to allow owners of dated iPhone hardware to cash in their now-passĂ© electronics. If you own an iPhone 4S or 5 that is “gently used” and not much worse, Microsoft will offer you no less than $200 for it. The kicker? The funds come in the form of Microsoft Store credit, so you are trading in your Apple hardware for the chance to buy Microsoft goods. What does Microsoft want? That you drop that iPhone off with them and wander out with a Surface 2 pre-order or a Lumia Windows Phone handset. Microsoft has cash and wants market share; this is a natural outgrowth of those two facts. Microsoft also has in place a deal that will grant store credit for iPads. In short, if you have an Apple device that Microsoft competes with – recall that Microsoft doesn’t build PCs that are not tablet-based, through its Surface line – it wants to buy it from you and get you onto its own hardware. In a way the move is ballsy: Microsoft is betting its own money that you will be content with its wares after a long stint on Apple silicon. And it is paying to make the wager. Precisely what Microsoft intends to do with all its accumulated Apple hardware remains opaque. Microsoft is in the process of purchasing Nokia’s handset business, and recently announced new Surface hardware that replaces its first-generation attempts at OEM supremacy. Expect more moves like this to support Microsoft’s yet-nascent devices business. Top Image Credit: brett jordan


Former Microsoftie And Googler Lucovsky Leaves VMware For New Project, No Word On Chairs Thrown

Sep 27, 11:11PM

Screen Shot 2013-09-27 at 4.12.44 PMVMware VP of Engineering Mark Lucovsky is leaving the virtualization giant for a ‘new chapter’ he’s referring to as ‘#nine’ on Twitter. Lucovsky has been with VMware for around four years and before that held positions at Google and Microsoft. VMware told GigaOm that “during his more than four years at VMware, Mark Lucovsky  has been an important contributor to the company's developer efforts as a Vice President of Engineering, including his work to help establish VMware's Cloud Foundry which is now part of Pivotal. We thank Mark for his contributions and wish him well.” At Google, Lucovsky served as an engineering director working on its API strategies. Since he went there from Microsoft, where he worked on Windows NT, a lot of people read into his hiring as a harbinger of a ‘Google OS’. Lucovsky spent 16 years at Microsoft working on a variety of projects including the ‘open web’ project HailStorm, which never quite materialized. He was awarded the title of ‘Distinguished Engineer’.  Though he worked on many projects during his Microsoft tenure, the most memorable anecdote of his career there undoubtedly came when he told CEO Steve Ballmer that he was going to leave for Google. A statement given in a corporate poaching case between Microsoft and Google back in 2004 paints a vivid picture: Prior to joining Google, I set up a meeting on or about November 11, 2004 with Microsoft's CEO Steve Ballmer to discuss my planned departure….At some point in the conversation Mr. Ballmer said: "Just tell me it's not Google." I told him it was Google. At that point, Mr. Ballmer picked up a chair and threw it across the room hitting a table in his office. Mr. Ballmer then said: "Fucking Eric Schmidt is a fucking pussy. I'm going to fucking bury that guy, I have done it before, and I will do it again. I'm going to fucking kill Google." …. Thereafter, Mr. Ballmer resumed trying to persuade me to stay….Among other things, Mr. Ballmer told me that "Google's not a real company. It's a house of cards." Lucovsky only used the cryptic hashtag to indicate what he might be up to next, but we’ll keep our eyes peeled for more. It is doubtful any chairs were thrown when Lucovsky turned in his notice after 5 years with VMware.



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Saturday, September 28, 2013

Poor Sales In India Force Maps Provider Sygic To Release Navigation App For Free




TechCrunch » android





Poor Sales In India Force Maps Provider Sygic To Release Navigation App For Free



Screen Shot 2013-09-23 at 5.22.24 PM

App developers are struggling to make money in India because of low credit card penetration, according to Michael Stencl, CEO of maps provider Sygic, which has now dropped the $5.58 fee to download its GPS navigation app. As Indian Android owners remain reluctant to purchase apps, mapping providers are turning to features such as offline availability to compete with Google, which has grown in stature since launching turn-by-turn navigation and live traffic updates for Indian smartphone users last year.


Stencl told TechCrunch it was forced to eliminate the fee for the Android version of the Sygic India: GPS Navigation app because of low daily sales in India (~$250 a day) — about a sixth of sales in the United States (>$1,500 a day). Meanwhile, Sygic’s iPhone app, which also uses data from local digital cartographer MapmyIndia, still costs a prohibitive $27.99.


“Our Sygic & MapmyIndia app has been one of the most successful and top-grossing in India on Google Play, but India still has a very low penetration of credit cards, which makes it difficult to monetize there successfully,” Stencl said. ”In order to maintain a competitive marketshare, we have decided to make our app free, and wait until the market in India is more developed.


“Over the past four years, Sygic has witnessed revenue growth of nearly 250%, and we feel that by continuing to invest development resources in key geographies like India, and maintaining a customer focused strategy, we will be able to extend our leadership position globally.”


While Indians downloaded 150 millions apps from the Google Play store by October 2012, only 0.5 percent of customers paid to download these apps, according to a recent report called “India’s mobile internet 2013” by Avendus Capital. The average price was just over $1, and Avendus estimates the Google Play store sold about $25 million worth of apps this year. However, the report predicts that the Indian app market will grow five-fold by 2016, to be worth about $330 million.


India’s credit card adoption languishes at around 20 percent, according to a 2012 HSBC report, but credit spending could pick up in the future as more cards have been issued in recent years.


Sygic’s new free app also works offline, which is a useful feature in a country where the network coverage is sporadic as you move around cities and into the rural areas. TomTom recently released a local version of its Android navigation app, which costs about $30, and also works offline. It also allows users to search for a location based on a nearby landmark or point-of-interest (this is the most popular, and usually the most accurate, way to get around cities in India). So far the TomTom app has been downloaded between 10 and 50 times, compared to over 10,000 downloads for the Sygic app. It’s still a far cry from Sygic’s 30 million global downloads.


The offline availability is a key differentiator from incumbent Google, which is increasingly integrating Waze’s social navigation and traffic data into the Maps apps, following the search engine giant’s recent $1 billion acquisition of the Israeli startup.










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Software For Auto Repair: With New Funding In Tow, Estify Sees Big Opportunity In An Unsexy Market

Sep 28, 6:43AM

dashboard imageThe collision industry probably doesn't rank at the top of the "Sexy Markets" list for startups, but sometimes the most obscure, fragmented and pulchritudinously challenged industries can offer the most opportunity to those willing to grit their teeth and immerse themselves in the mess. Estify, a graduate of Amplify LA's business accelerator, is doing just that. Co-founders Jordan Furniss, Derek Carr and Taylor Moss went looking for the most unsexy market they could find, with bonus points awarded for both size and level of inefficiency. They quickly found their Shangri-La: The collision and auto repair market.


Where Webvan Failed And How Home Delivery 2.0 Could Succeed

Sep 28, 4:00AM

truckWebvan is well-known as the poster child of the dot-com "excess" bubble that led to the tech market crash in 2000. Business schools study Webvan's overly ambitious rush to the biggest IPO to date in Silicon Vally, as a prime example of what to avoid doing while scaling. Are those mistakes being repeated a dozen years later in the slew of activity -- even excitement -- in the home-delivery space?


Chasefuture's Platform Coaches Mainland Chinese Students On University Admissions

Sep 28, 3:19AM

chasefuture-logoThe allure of top-tier Western universities isn’t lessening anytime soon for the hundreds of thousands of Chinese high school graduates emerging out of the country’s best schools. That’s why a host of different startups helping mainland high school students with admissions like InitialView have cropped up in the last year or two. Chasefuture, a one-year-old startup from serial entrepreneur Greg Nance and Han Shao, is looking to be the go-to place for students across mainland China to study abroad in the U.S. or Europe. They are a platform that connects alums and admissions officers from top-tier Western universities to serve as mentors for students across China. “We basically bootstrapped our way to a top position in the study abroad consultation market,” said Nance, who moved to Shanghai a year ago after finishing up at Cambridge University’s business school. Chasefuture, which has 450 paid clients, is aiming to 10X that year to more than 4,000. They connect applying high school students to real admissions experts and mentors who are alums of their desired schools. Two-thirds of the company’s clients are in China, while the rest are mainly international students in the U.S. aiming for masters or Ph.D’s. So far, they’re sending 17 students to USC, 16 to Columbia University, 16 to Imperial College in the U.K., 11 to the London School of Economics, three to Cambridge’s business school for a master of finance. They have basic products that help with admissions essays and choosing schools, then higher-tier packages that can cost several thousand dollars depending on how much hands-on help a client wants. But they’re also particularly picky about who gets to join the program, with a 10 percent acceptance rate. (One could argue, of course, that they’re cherry-picking the candidates with the best chances anyway.) Nance says the company’s addressable market in China is maybe a quarter million students, who are looking to study abroad. To attract mentors, they look for alums or existing admissions experts who they pay about $40 an hour as a base. Nance says this is more than double what other competing platforms pay. If they are able to refer other quality mentors, they get a bonus as well.


JustFab's Checkout Tactics Are JustShady

Sep 28, 2:53AM

Screen Shot 2013-09-27 at 7.28.38 PMThis Hacker News complaint about JustFab scamming a user's girlfriend -- which gets resubmitted whenever JustFab raises money -- is a little off, because JustFab is not a scam in the traditional sense. The company is, however, abusing a tricky UI, loaded with dark pattern design gimmicks like forced continuity and sneak into basket -- all in the name of getting customers to sign up for a JustFab VIP membership they may not have wanted.


Palantir Is Raising $197M In Growth Capital, SEC Filing Shows

Sep 28, 1:13AM

PalantirPalantir, the big data company that has counted the NSA, the FBI and the CIA among its clientele, is raising up to $196.5 million in growth capital, according to an SEC filing. The company declined to say who the new funding was from, according to Lisa Gordon, who handles media and government relations for the company. Another source close to the company says the round is also not finalized yet. Morgan Stanley is managing the deal, according to the filing. Forbes reported last month that a round could value the company at between $5 and 8 billion. Founded back in 2004, the company was the brainchild of Paypal co-founder Peter Thiel, who believed that the payments company’s anti-fraud technologies could be used to fight terrorism. Current CEO Alex Karp, Joe Lonsdale (who went on to found Asia and Silicon Valley-focused investment firm Formation 8), Stephen Cohen and chief technology officer Nathan Gettings put together an initial product. It’s now become an analysis platform that government agencies use to manage the war against terrorism and drug trafficking. Palantir’s platform pulls disparate reams of data and puts them together in a way that makes otherwise hard-to-detect patterns and connections much more visible to users. It’s since grown into a business that Karp says may do $1 billion in contracts next year. It is not yet profitable, however. The company’s earlier investors include Founders Fund, Yelp’s Jeremy Stoppelman and Ben Ling among others.


Wish, The App For Logging What You Want, Launches A Complementary Gifting Feature

Sep 27, 11:39PM

2_gifting_acceptWell, folks, it’s September. The holiday gift giving season is ON! Wish, the mobile shopping app that lets users create lists of items they would like to purchase later, has launched Gifting, a feature that enables others to purchase and ship products to their friends. It draws from users’ existing wishlists and uses them to predict other items they would like. It’s a frazzled gift giver’s dream. Gifting has been part of the plan since the inception of the app, Wish CEO Peter Szulczewski said, which makes every bit of sense, since it’s the natural other half to wishlist creation. At this point, Wish is seeing half a million people on the app daily, at an average session length of 29 minutes. According to Szulczewski, sending presents was already a use case among Wish users prior to the feature’s launch this week. In looking at transactions, the team realized that people were requesting different shipping addresses for their purchases in order to send items to their friends. In addition to allowing users to create and share targeted wishlists (the easiest way to get it right), Gifting also predicts items that friends most want and uses social integration to notify users on their friends’ birthdays. “We use collaborative filtering in the same way that Amazon.com uses it,” Szulczewski said. “People that buy this will also buy these items.” As Szulczewski explained, the Wish demographic skews toward the young and female. Gifting is a way to access an older demographic, like fathers who don’t really know what to buy their daughters, nieces, or granddaughters. While there are a slew of gifting apps out there — like Giftly for gift cards, the locally-focused Yiftee, Karma, and Wrapp — the fact that Wish draws on pre-existing knowledge of the recipient’s likes ups the giver’s odds of nailing it. Wish has been bulking out its features this summer, having launched Wish Closet in late July to provide users a platform to resell their clothing. The plan is to grow internationally. Currently 55% of usage comes from North America, although there are growing communities in Europe and Latin America, which Szulczewski said present huge opportunities to grow the brand.


Microsoft Extends Its Trade-In Program: $200+ For Your "Gently Used" iPhone 4S, 5

Sep 27, 11:32PM

Screen Shot 2013-09-27 at 4.21.00 PMMicrosoft wants to take your Apple product off your hands, today expanding its trade-in programs to allow owners of dated iPhone hardware to cash in their now-passĂ© electronics. If you own an iPhone 4S or 5 that is “gently used” and not much worse, Microsoft will offer you no less than $200 for it. The kicker? The funds come in the form of Microsoft Store credit, so you are trading in your Apple hardware for the chance to buy Microsoft goods. What does Microsoft want? That you drop that iPhone off with them and wander out with a Surface 2 pre-order or a Lumia Windows Phone handset. Microsoft has cash and wants market share; this is a natural outgrowth of those two facts. Microsoft also has in place a deal that will grant store credit for iPads. In short, if you have an Apple device that Microsoft competes with – recall that Microsoft doesn’t build PCs that are not tablet-based, through its Surface line – it wants to buy it from you and get you onto its own hardware. In a way the move is ballsy: Microsoft is betting its own money that you will be content with its wares after a long stint on Apple silicon. And it is paying to make the wager. Precisely what Microsoft intends to do with all its accumulated Apple hardware remains opaque. Microsoft is in the process of purchasing Nokia’s handset business, and recently announced new Surface hardware that replaces its first-generation attempts at OEM supremacy. Expect more moves like this to support Microsoft’s yet-nascent devices business. Top Image Credit: brett jordan


Former Microsoftie And Googler Lucovsky Leaves VMware For New Project, No Word On Chairs Thrown

Sep 27, 11:11PM

Screen Shot 2013-09-27 at 4.12.44 PMVMware VP of Engineering Mark Lucovsky is leaving the virtualization giant for a ‘new chapter’ he’s referring to as ‘#nine’ on Twitter. Lucovsky has been with VMware for around four years and before that held positions at Google and Microsoft. VMware told GigaOm that “during his more than four years at VMware, Mark Lucovsky  has been an important contributor to the company's developer efforts as a Vice President of Engineering, including his work to help establish VMware's Cloud Foundry which is now part of Pivotal. We thank Mark for his contributions and wish him well.” At Google, Lucovsky served as an engineering director working on its API strategies. Since he went there from Microsoft, where he worked on Windows NT, a lot of people read into his hiring as a harbinger of a ‘Google OS’. Lucovsky spent 16 years at Microsoft working on a variety of projects including the ‘open web’ project HailStorm, which never quite materialized. He was awarded the title of ‘Distinguished Engineer’.  Though he worked on many projects during his Microsoft tenure, the most memorable anecdote of his career there undoubtedly came when he told CEO Steve Ballmer that he was going to leave for Google. A statement given in a corporate poaching case between Microsoft and Google back in 2004 paints a vivid picture: Prior to joining Google, I set up a meeting on or about November 11, 2004 with Microsoft's CEO Steve Ballmer to discuss my planned departure….At some point in the conversation Mr. Ballmer said: "Just tell me it's not Google." I told him it was Google. At that point, Mr. Ballmer picked up a chair and threw it across the room hitting a table in his office. Mr. Ballmer then said: "Fucking Eric Schmidt is a fucking pussy. I'm going to fucking bury that guy, I have done it before, and I will do it again. I'm going to fucking kill Google." …. Thereafter, Mr. Ballmer resumed trying to persuade me to stay….Among other things, Mr. Ballmer told me that "Google's not a real company. It's a house of cards." Lucovsky only used the cryptic hashtag to indicate what he might be up to next, but we’ll keep our eyes peeled for more. It is doubtful any chairs were thrown when Lucovsky turned in his notice after 5 years with VMware.


Agolo Aims To Algorithmically Curate Your Twitter Feed

Sep 27, 10:33PM

For all the good it's capable of, Twitter is all too often a cacophonous mess of marketers, celebrities, talking heads, and friends who all like to jabber at the same time. Sage Wohns and Mohamed Altantawy are co-founders of a New York startup called Agolo, and as far as they're concerned, not every bit of information pouring forth from that social firehose is worth paying attention to. Instead, they want to home in on just the stuff that's important to you and make sure you see if before it's too far gone to catch up with.


Airbnb Victory In NYC: Environmental Control Board Reverses $2,400 Fine On Renting Out A Room In An Apartment

Sep 27, 9:59PM

AirbnbA big regulatory victory for Airbnb today: the company has managed to win an appeal in New York City over a fine against a host called Nigel Warren, whose landlord was fined $2,400 in June after Warren rented out a room in his apartment. If the fine had stuck, it would have set a business-threatening precedent for Airbnb in the city.


Ask A VC: Emergence Capital Partners' Kevin Spain On The Next Disruptions In Health Tech And More

Sep 27, 9:39PM

Emergence_Capital_Partners___People___Kevin_SpainIn this week's TechCrunch TV's Ask A VC show, we had Emergence Capital Partners' Kevin Spain in the studio to talk about his perspective on investing in health tech and more. Spain, who has led investments in the LinkedIn for physicians Doximity, and social health management platform Welltok, talked about where he sees some of the next disruptions in the health tech world. He also sees potential in applications using Google Glass, and mobile-first technologies. We also chatted about corporate acquisitions and the acquisition environment in general (prior to his career in VC, Spain was a senior member of Microsoft's Corporate Development group).


Shyp Raises $2.1M To Pick Up And Ship Your Stuff

Sep 27, 9:02PM

shyp logoI don't consider myself a lazy man. To the displeasure of many a recent startup, I like to do stuff for myself. I like to clean my own house. If I want a Philly Cheesesteak from Philadelphia, I think "I should go to Philadelphia!" and then don't and then eat Quiznos and feel sad. But man, do I hate shipping things.


Microsoft Increases Windows 8 And 8.1 App Roaming Limit To 81 Devices

Sep 27, 8:36PM

Windows 8.1 Pre-release Start screen with desktop backgroundAt its Build developer conference earlier this year, Microsoft announced that it planned to increase the roaming limits for apps purchased in its Windows Store. As the company announced today, that limit is going to be 81 (and yes, that's Microsoft trying to be funny). Starting October 9, users will be able to install all Windows Store apps on this many devices – provided they are all associated with a single Microsoft account.


Gillmor Gang Live 09.27.13 (TCTV)

Sep 27, 8:14PM

Gillmor Gang test patternGillmor Gang - Robert Scoble, Kevin Marks, Keith Teare, John Taschek, and Steve Gillmor. Live recording session for today has concluded. Like us on Facebook at facebook.com/GillmorGang


Ebay Acquires "Content Meets Commerce" Shopping Site, Bureau Of Trade, As Its Personalization Efforts Heat Up

Sep 27, 7:47PM

bureau-of-trade-logo-07jul2012eBay has acquired online marketplace for men’s shopping Bureau of Trade, the company announced today. Founder Michael Phillips Moskowitz is joining the eBay Marketplaces team, where his focus will be on helping eBay improve its personalization efforts. Terms of the deal were not disclosed, but it was an all-cash deal and an “acceptable” and positive (if not stellar), outcome for Bureau of Trade’s investors. The startup had raised $1.2 million in seed funding in a round led by Foundation Capital, with contributions from Founder Collective, FF Angel, Courtney Holt on behalf of the Techfellows Fund, and other angel investors. The deal speaks to eBay’s increasing efforts to modernize its website by experimenting with new kinds of shopping experiences. The first results of Moskowitz’s work at eBay will be seen as early as this fall, we’re told. Though Moskowitz declined to discuss Bureau of Trade’s sales or user numbers, he said that the company’s blending of content meets commerce had proven to drive up the sales price for items on the site. “The average good on eBay will sell at X purchase price. That same piece of merchandise when covered by the Bureau – when written about by us – created in many instances a 50 to 100 percent price increase. That’s profoundly valuable,” he says. He hints that there’s something interesting in the works with what he’s learned through Bureau of Trade that’s now coming to eBay, but couldn’t provide details. Bureau of Trade remains online for now, and will have some sort of “big surprise in store this fall” with regards to its future. Sometime in either November or December, the site will introduce “something you’ve never seen before,” Moskowitz teased. (TechCrunch has seen quite a lot, actually, but he swears it will be new.) In fact, Moskowitz says he can’t even tell us his title at eBay, because it’s a role that has never before existed and would give away too much. eBay, he notes, now has his startup Bureau of Trade, plus other acquisitions like Svpply and Hunch, which he describes as a “triumvirate that’s uniquely positioned to do something catalytic and game-changing later this fall. We’re all working together symbiotically,” he says. As you may recall, eBay had first announced a Pinterest-inspired redesign last October, which featured an image grid and improvements to site search. That revamped homepage was then rolled out to all U.S. customers in February, with eBay touting


Swiftype Raises $7.5M From NEA To Develop A Smarter Search Engine For Web And Mobile Sites

Sep 27, 7:43PM

black-logo-0Swiftype, a Y Combinator-backed startup that creates a smarter search engine for websites, has raised $7.5 million led by NEA, with angel investors participating. The startup previously raised $1.7 million in seed funding from Andreessen Horowitz, NEA, Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers, Ignition, CrunchFund and angel investors. NEA partner Jon Sakoda will join Swiftype's Board of Directors as part of the financing.


TechStars London First Cohort: Our Three Favorite Startups From Demo Day

Sep 27, 7:27PM

techstars-logoThe TechStars inaugural London Demo Day boasted an impressive group of companies, but we put our heads together and came up with a consensus decision on our top pick, as well as a couple of runners up for the show. The best presentation and interview went to OP3Nvoice, a company already decently well along to becoming a market leader with a dozen customers and a market reach of a million users.


This Week On The TC Gadgets Podcast: Steam News Breaks While We Record, Surface Sequels And Adobe Gets Mighty

Sep 27, 7:00PM

kqwqOEeA rare treat this week as you can hear the TechCrunch team react to breaking gadget news (the Steam Controller, to be specific) live as it unfolds. It's like being inside our brains without the echoes and cobwebs. We also cover the big Surface 2 reveal, Steam OS and the Steam Box announcements, and Adobe's Mighty hardware.


Evernote Updates Its Business Product With Social Features And Salesforce.com Integration

Sep 27, 6:33PM

evernoteEvernote today announced version 2.0 of its business product, appropriately called Evernote Business 2.0. CEO Phil Libin introduced the product onstage at Evernote's EC3 conference and said it will be released next week. In its first nine months, 7,900 companies have signed up for Evernote Business (which was announced at last year's conference). Libin emphasized that at its core, Evernote Business is just the consumer Evernote app, but with additional features like shared notebooks that allow teams to work together. That's still true in version 2.0, but the company has added some additional features on top of the app, many of them social.


A New Batch Of Socially Conscious E-Commerce Startups To Put On Your Radar

Sep 27, 6:24PM

Moss Handmade_Full Circle NecklaceIs #FeelGoodFriday a thing? With the launch of e-commerce site Zady last month, we’ve been keeping our eye on other conscious consumerism startups in the pipeline. Here for your consideration, three newcomers to the transparency scene and one new program from the three-year-old Everlane. Such startups don’t come without skeptics. It’s hard to shake the feeling that socially conscious ecommerce sites are just paying lip service to ethical production. Videos can be fudged, factory workers asked to smile, manufacturing cycle infographics simplified and rendered in cheery colors. Without actually visiting a production site in person, who’s to say we’re not all being played? It’s hard to know for sure. But as Nielsen pointed out, consumers are increasingly willing to spend more on goods from socially conscious companies. Savvy entrepreneurs should be looking to capitalize on this. And they are. Given Goods Newly launched e-commerce site Given Goods is an impact-driven decor, kitchen, and accessories site. Rather than revealing the production process, Given Goods’ product descriptions speak to who benefits from each purchase. It may be the makers themselves — as with a glassware company that gives jobs to unemployed individuals in Idaho — or the brand may donate a percentage of each purchase to a particular organization or charity. The site includes the all-but-obligatory impact map to help consumers visualize where their goods are coming from. RVNA A startup called Runa (stylized RVNA) is opening an Indiegogo campaign in October to raise around $20,000 to get its Colombia-sourced fair trade clothing line off the ground. They are promising three things on the transparency and impact front: showing customers exactly how much the main worker in the production process was paid, a video profile of said worker upon purchase, and follow-up videos to track that worker’s progress. The micro-collection they’re showing now has a clean, simple aesthetic, and with it Runa is hoping to shake the somewhat frumpy image of fair trade clothing. The startup’s target audience is young professionals in their 20s and 30s — a cohort that can and will pay for ethically produced goods.  If they meet most of their crowdfunding goal, the plan is to have the e-commerce site up and running by March 2014. Everlane Everlane has built its brand on a clean, classic aesthetic and on transparency in the manufacturing process of its goods. Through their Everlane Explores videos, they’ve been working to give customers a behind-the-scenes (albeit edited) look at the factories



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