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POcode Gives Small Businesses An Easy Alternative To GPS
Oct 17, 8:03AM
One of the many joys of exploring a city like Taipei is its maze of lanes and alleyways, which are lined with small shops, incense-filled temples and leafy parks. The downside is wrangling with addresses like this: 台北市南港區八德路四段768巷1弄18號B1之1 (B1-1, No. 18, Alley 1, Lane 768, Bade Rd Sec 4, Nangang District, Taipei City). A new startup called POcode wants to help businesses in cities with equally serpentine, non-English addresses attract customers and prevent them from getting lost on their way over.
Twitter Says A 'Technical Issue' Is Preventing URLs From Being Sent In Direct Messages For Some
Oct 17, 6:16AM
Earlier this afternoon Twitter users began experiencing difficulty sending URLs or ‘links’ via Direct Message. Depending on the client used, error messages popped up that indicated the DMs being sent included links to ‘malware’, or simply indicated that the message could not be sent. A Twitter spokesperson said only that “there is a technical issue with URLs in Direct Messages.” Though there was no information forthcoming beyond that, it seems unlikely that the inability to send DMs with links in them is a widespread policy decision based on issues like spam or the new DM behavior, though I suppose anything is possible. This has been a fairly widespread issue, and accounts continue to be easily found via Twitter. Verified users appear to have better luck sending links to both other Verified users and to non-Verified users. However, we have confirmed that even non-Verified folks can send links in some cases. Though the initial error messages indicated a ‘malware’ threat to be the cause of the stoppage, the inconsistency of the errors and the way that they began suddenly indicated that this was a bug, rather than an intentional change in behavior on Twitter’s part. Though some spam on Twitter is sent via DM, this is more rare than the simple ‘@reply’ spam that litters its ‘airwaves’. Usually, an account password of one of your followers must be compromised to send a DM to you, the person that followed them. This naturally limited the scope of these kinds of attacks, making a sweeping change to all DM communications unlikely and unnecessary. Especially, as pointed out to me, as Twitter itself uses DMs to experiment with features like recommendations. Recently, Twitter gave some of its users the ability to receive DMs from anyone, regardless of follow status. Previously, only mutual follows could exchange DMs. This led to some speculation that the cause of the URL DM fail was this new behavior, whether it was intentional or a bug incurred by the new behavior rollout. We will continue to press for more information on the situation and will update this post when we receive a reply. Image Credit: Will Keightly/Flickr CC and Glenn Fleishman for the error
Tibco Tibbr Gets File Sharing, Tasks And A New Publishing Engine
Oct 17, 5:51AM
Tibco, the middleware company, showed again its push to become an enterprise collaboration provider with the latest version of its tibbr service by adding file storage and sharing capability, task management and a publishing platform for managing content. The company also announced a partnership with Huddle and support for the new Microsoft Surface launching October 22.
Cory Booker And The Silicon Valley Makeover Of The Democratic Party
Oct 17, 2:15AM
Newark Mayor Cory Booker cruised to victory in New Jersey’s special election tonight. As a long-term presidential hopeful, he’ll instantly become one of the Democratic Party’s most powerful voices. Booker represents a permanent shift in how Silicon Valley is trying to give an ideological overhaul to the Democratic Party. Booker is a world-class tweeter, co-founder to an ailing video startup, and beneficiary of Mark Zuckerberg’s $100 million education donation to Newark schools. But to see how Booker might act as a legislator, it’s helpful to look at the policies of other tech industry favorites in the Democratic Party. The Silicon Valley poster children, President Barack Obama, New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg, Cory Booker, and their new favorite, Ro Khanna are distinctly different from the traditional fight-for-the-underdog Democrat. Overwhelmingly they favor innovation and general prosperity over civil liberties and income redistribution. Mayor Bloomberg outright admitted that “we're going to have more visibility and less privacy” in a candid radio Interview on his push for drone-powered surveillance. He also threatened to “fucking destroy” the taxi industry over its existential fight with ridesharing apps, Uber and Lyft. Obama has been an ardent supporter of union-less charter schools and the use of Massive Open Online Courses (MOOCs) in higher education, ignoring the cries of faculty unions. Booker, too, funneled a sizable portion of Zuckerberg’s donation to charter schools–on top of supporting limits on teacher tenure. As mayor, instead of outlawing stop-and-frisk, the racially charged practice of searching suspects on the street without a warrant, his approach was radical transparency. Every stop must now meticulously record the race, location, and reason; that data is then opened to the public for scrutiny. His novel approach won accolades from Newark’s American Civil Liberties Union for balancing public safety and individual rights. But, a traditional liberal would likely have just outright banned the practice. That is, one of Booker’s signature law-enforcement measures was imbued with some Silicon Valley idealism: Open the data and solutions will follow. As a senator he’ll have a chance to bring an innovation-first approach to legislation. Here are a few predictions and an indication of the kinds of liberal policymaking that could become dominant within the Democratic Party. Private-Sector Makeover Of Social Services – At the tech mecca that is the SXSW conference, Booker told me he is a fan of “social impact bonds,” which pay entrepreneurs handsomely for solving social ills better than the
Turn Report Shows Climbing Ad Rates In Display And Social
Oct 17, 1:15AM
A new report from online advertising company Turn shows rising or steady eCPMs (the effective price paid by advertisers for every thousand impressions). The Global Digital Audience Report is based on data from Turn's marketing platform between July and September — the company says the platform has access to 2 trillion ad impressions and makes 100 billion ad impressions each month.
Search Engine Giant Yandex Launches Cocaine, A Cloud Service To Compete With Google App Engine
Oct 17, 1:04AM
Russian search giant Yandex has launched an open-source platform as a service (PaaS) called Cocaine that the company says allows developers to build out their own app engines. Yandex, in its documentation, describes Cocaine as an open-source PaaS system for creating custom cloud-hosting apps that are similar to Google App Engine or Heroku. It supports C++, Python and JavaScript. It is now developing support for Java and Racket.
Bre Pettis, Jeff Clavier, And Matt Rogers Will Join Us At Hardware Battlefield In Vegas
Oct 17, 1:00AM
With the rise of crowdfunding and easier paths to manufacturing, there are more gadgeteers than ever before. And we're looking for some of the best hardware startups to compete on our Las Vegas stage for a giant $50,000 check, tons of publicity and the brand new Hardware Battlefield cup. 
Anki's Self-Driving Race Car Toys Will Launch On Oct. 23rd - We Go Hands On
Oct 17, 12:58AM
Four months ago, Anki co-founder Boris Soffman took the stage at Apple's WWDC keynote. After years of stealthily toiling away in their labs with few outside of the company knowing their plans, the team unveiled their first product: Anki Drive, a racing game for the real world. While the company has been somewhat quiet since their WWDC debut, they've just announced their plans to ship: come Oct. 22nd, Anki Drive will hit the shelves on Anki.com and at Apple Stores around the country. We swung by Anki HQ earlier this week to give their new cars a spin.
Blockchain Smashers
Oct 16, 10:25PM
Electricity in Jakarta, Indonesia costs three cents per kilowatt hour. That's 30 cents less than power in the US and Europe. This means, all things being equal and provided you don't mind your apartment heating up alarmingly, you can make a decent living mining for Bitcoin and Litecoin (another cryptocurrency) using powerful - and hot - graphics cards, each one running at 140 degrees Fahrenheit or more. 
Boxer Raises $3 Million To Tame Your Inbox
Oct 16, 10:19PM
Email management company Boxer has raised $3 million in funding led by Sutter Hill Ventures. Proceeds will be used to expand the company's engineering and design team and to build apps for other platforms, most notably Android. Along with the funding, Sutter Hill Ventures managing director Sam Pullara will join the Boxer board of directors.
This Week On The TechCrunch Droidcast: HTC One Goes Max, LG Mindlessly Curves Glass
Oct 16, 9:30PM
LG is following Samsung's example in providing a curved glass smartphone that makes no earthly sense, HTC is offering a fingerprint scanner that no one needs executed poorly, and Mad Catz is entering the crowded Android console space – for which there is no proven demand.
IBM Revenues Down $1 Billion For Third Quarter As Hardware Sales Falter With Popularity Of The Cloud
Oct 16, 9:09PM
IBM has reported its third-quarter revenues were $23.72 billion compared to $24.74 billion this time last year. The revenues were down due to the company’s underperforming hardware division, which is taking a hit with the growing popularity of cloud services. Revenues for the nine-month period totaled $72.1 billion, a decrease of 4 percent, compared with $75.2 billion for the nine months of 2012. Revenues in the hardware group were down almost entirely across the board. Revenues from its Systems and Technology segment totaled $3.2 billion for the quarter, down 17 percent from the third-quarter of 2012. Pre-tax income decreased $291 million to a loss of $167 million. Total systems revenues decreased 19 percent, and revenues from Power Systems were down 38 percent compared with the 2012 period. Revenues from System x were down 18 percent. Revenues from System z mainframe server products increased 6 percent compared with the year-ago period. Total delivery of System z computing power, as measured in MIPS (millions of instructions per second), increased 56 percent. Revenues from System Storage decreased 11 percent. Revenues from Microelectronics OEM increased 1 percent. Software revenues were up just 1 percent the prior year, showing again the company’s stagnating revenues in the third quarter. “Hardware is down as a trend,” said Ray Wang, co-founder of Constellation Research. “There is an impact because of cloud computing.” IBM had some of its best results with its cloud services efforts. Cloud revenue is up more than 70 percent year to date with revenue in third-quarter exceeding $1 billion, of which about $460 million is delivered as a cloud service. As more companies choose cloud services, it can be expected that this trend will continue for IBM and other enterprise providers.
eBay Barely Beats Investor Expectations With Revenue Of $3.9B, Stock Falls 5% In After-Hours Trading
Oct 16, 8:26PM
eBay reported its third-quarter financial performance today, including revenue of $3.9 billion and non-GAAP earnings per share of $0.64. The company’s revenue was up 14 percent from the same quarter last year, while its earnings per share rose 17 percent. Analysts had expected eBay to earn $0.63 per share (non-GAAP) on revenue of $3.9 billion. In its most recent sequential quarter, eBay had revenue of $3.9 billion, and non-GAAP earnings per share of $0.63. That’s not a typo; eBay’s second-quarter performance matches earlier third-quarter predictions precisely. Put another way, eBay failed to grow sequentially, which investors might find disappointing. eBay unit PayPal drove $1.6 billion in revenue, up 19 percent. PayPal now has 137 million members, up 17 percent. eBay’s “Enabled Commerce Volume” metric was $52 billion for the quarter, up a healthy 21 percent. Digging into the numbers, eBay’s operating margin is now back over the 20 percent mark (20.5 percent), it generated $1.3 billion in cash during the quarter, and repurchased around $146 million of its own stock during the period. eBay ended the quarter with cash, and equivalents of $13 billion. In regular trading, eBay fell just over 1 percent. The company is sharply down in after-hours trading. Why is eBay falling if it managed to best expectations by a smidge? eBay stated in today’s earnings report that it expected revenue of $4.5 billion to $4.6 billion in the fourth quarter. Its non-GAAP earnings per share range is $0.79 to $0.81. The revenue figure is in line with expectations, but the EPS prediction is lower than what the street expected, which was $0.83. It’s never good to meet investor revenue expectations with your forecast but fail to estimate a similar EPS figure, because that can imply that margins are set to worsen. It’s even tougher to say after reporting a quarter in which your earnings per share and revenue were flat sequentially. Top Image Credit: Brian Cantoni
Facebook Starts Letting Teens Post Publicly Despite Risks, As It Aims To Stay Cool
Oct 16, 8:00PM
Like a cautious parent, Facebook is giving teen users new freedom despite risks. For the first time, users under 18 can post publicly. The logic is that other sites don't restrict kids, teens are getting more web savvy, and young celebrities want a voice. This could let minors publicly share things they'll regret, so they must manually opt into public sharing and confirm they understand the risks.
Looking Beyond Video, Jun Group Announces Its Overdrive Format For 'Owned Advertising'
Oct 16, 7:42PM
Until recently, advertising company Jun Group focused on video. In recent months, however, it's been exploring a format that it calls "owned advertising" with a new product called Overdrive. CEO Mitchell Reichgut told me that Jun Group actually "soft launched" Overdrive back in June, and it already accounts for more than 30 percent of the company's revenue. 
Apartment List Acquires RentAdvisor, Bolstering Their Listings With Reviews
Oct 16, 7:33PM
Last we heard from Apartment List, they had just launched their app and were aiming to take on Craigslist as apartment hunters’ tool of choice. Now the service has made its next move: acquiring the reviews site RentAdvisor, which will immediately add 20,000 reviews to the site’s listings. The all-stock deal brings on board 12 new employees, who will remain based in Atlanta at RentAdvisor’s headquarters. RentAdvisor co-founder Jamie Gallo will be joining the management team of Apartment List. Up until now, reviews have been a missing piece of Apartment List’s product puzzle, and one of users’ most common requests. This means that in addition to high resolution photos and floor plans, users will be able to see ratings and reviews on any given listing. The RentAdvisor site will remain separate from Apartment List for the time being, but the two will be rolled into one next year. The team is currently working on integrating RentAdvisor’s reviews, CEO John Kobs said, with the aim to have them live on the site by late October. “The reason we didn’t want to roll out [reviews until now] was critical mass,” Kobs explained. “We just passed 1.5 million monthly visitors, and now we’re in a place to roll it out. If you have too small of a site, and you don’t have that traffic, it could turn into more of a gripe site.” By adding reviews to its site, Apartment List is aiming to be a point of transparency in a relatively opaque market, which could be a big selling point for apartment hunters. Previously, Kobs had pointed to the number of photos posted per listing — an average of 14.5 as of July — as their metric for transparency, as compared to competitors like Craigslist, Padmapper, or Lovely (the latter two of which have both come under fire from Craigslist for aggregating its data). Reviews are a big step up from that. Current residents can post their thoughts on landlord issues or neighborhood safety; when they do, the landlord is notified and can respond in turn. Not everyone meets their landlord before signing the lease, and the fact that they are visible in the review process could add to Apartment List’s appeal. Apartment List did $10 million in revenue last year and expects to double that this coming year. The goal over the next twelve months is to have a complete supply
Windows 8.1 Will Start To Roll Out Tomorrow At 4 AM PDT
Oct 16, 7:15PM
Tomorrow, at 4 a.m. Pacific Daylight Time, Windows 8.1 will begin to roll out as an optional update to Windows 8 users. The new software represents a reset and rebirth of the bets that Microsoft made with its Windows 8 operating system.
Custom Goods Marketplace Makeably Rebrands As "Hatch," Now Updates Pricing As You Go
Oct 16, 6:54PM
Makeably, the New York-based, custom-made goods marketplace that closed on seed funding from Great Oaks, 500 Startups and others earlier this year is now relaunching under a new, easier-to-remember name: Hatch. Alongside the rebranding, the company has also evolved the process by which consumers tweak and "remix" the products offered for sale.
CollabFinder Just Made Founder Dating Super Simple
Oct 16, 5:30PM
Two heads are better than one. It's an age-old saying that has particular poignance in the entrepreneurial realm, where investors are much more comfortable handing over wads of cash to a team instead of an individual. A new startup out of New York, CollabFinder, is banking on that very idea. The service helps designers, developers, artists, and producers find each other to collaborate on projects, based on various groups. New York City used the service (while in beta) to power it's NYCBigApps contest, the city's largest technology competition, and Bloomberg said the quality of the apps produced this year was much better than previous years. 
LinkedIn's Reid Hoffman On Two Realistic Outcomes Of Teaching Everyone To Code
Oct 16, 5:16PM
On a regular basis, we get pitched with major tech industry initiatives to broaden computer science education. A day after Mark Zuckerberg and Bill Gates signed on to a new initiative from Code.org to inspire 10 million new computer programmers, education startup General Assembly launched a new tool for self-taught coding. And just a few weeks earlier, Square CEO Jack Dorsey sat down with House Minority leader, Nancy Pelosi, to chat about a new "coding camp" for young girls.
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