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IBM Is Not A Cloud King
Oct 21, 6:54AM
IBM reported its third quarter financials this past week that showed a company struggling with its legacy hardware business and the problems that come with a confused cloud services strategy.
Revenues were down $1 billion with hardware sales declining 17 percent.
Field Testing Microsoft's New Surface 2, And Surface Pro 2 Tablet Hybrids
Oct 21, 4:00AM
Microsoft has two new Surface tablets that are currently up for preorder, and a crop of refreshed accessories. I’ve had the Surface 2, Surface Pro 2, and new Touch and Type covers for a few days now, and can report on their performance. The above video clip has all the hardware specifics that you could possibly want. TechCrunch’s previous coverage of the new tablets, including an interview with the team that built them, is worth reading if you have the time. We’ll start with a brief overview of the two devices, and then talk each over each individually. Hardware Roundup The Surface 2 and Surface Pro 2 are a doubling down on the bets that Microsoft made with its first generation hardware: Tablets with kickstands, and attachable keyboards that serve as a case. From that we can infer that Microsoft is confident in its hardware ‘package.’ The Surface Pro 2 has been incrementally improved in a number of ways, but its core value proposition, when compared to its predecessor, is greatly extended battery life. Battery life was the chief complaint that Microsoft cited as guidance when it explained its building of the device. Holistically, the Surface 2 is a more improved device, with changes to its hardware stretching from its screen, cameras, battery life, casing, and so forth. It’s a truly great, light device. Whilst as Starbucks – doing requisite road testing of the Surface 2: low power, bad wi-fi, light, loud noises etc are great friction for getting to know the bones of a computer – it appeared that I had the most attractive device in the shop. The new Touch Cover is a dramatic improvement over the original Touch Cover. If you felt unsure typing on the first generation, the second will be worth checking out. The new Type Cover has a smaller improvement delta over its preceding version. Still, if you demand moving keys, it’s a fine option. That’s the brass tacks of it, let’s dig in. Surface 2 The Surface 2 is more important of the two Surface tablets. The Surface RT was a sales disappointment. Keep in mind that potential success of Windows RT is essentially now predicated on the success of the Surface tablet that runs it. The new Surface 2 must help establish Microsoft as an OEM of note, drive revenue for the company, slow the sagging of the PC market as a
AmEx Partners With VeriFone To Allow NYC Taxi Passengers To Pay For Cab Fares With Rewards Points
Oct 21, 4:00AM
Similar to other credit cards, AmEx card holders have been able to use the rewards points they earn for flights hotels, retail purchases and access to concerts and sports events. Today, AmEx is taking this a step further by allowing users to access membership rewards points at point of sale, via a VeriFone integration. In a new partnership announced today, AmEx will allow card holders to use their points to pay for their fare in VeriFone-enabled NYC taxi cabs. 
Ketchuppp Is An App That Wants To Help Friends Catch Up In Person - Not On Facebook
Oct 21, 2:00AM
Are you spending too much time looking at what your friends are posting on Instagram and Facebook, and not enough time hanging out with each other IRL? The founders of Ketchuppp think so. Their answer to this problem is of course another app -- one that's designed to help you meet your buddies when you happen to be near enough to do so. In other words: a proximity-based social networking app. Or a social-mobile-local app if you prefer.
OKpanda Lands $1.4M From 500 Startups, Mafia Wars & Tapjoy Founders To Bring Better English Language Learning To Asia
Oct 21, 1:15AM
That's how a new startup called OKPanda hopes to stand out from the noise. Co-founded by serial entrepreneur and app developer Adam Gries and Nir Markus, the former co-founder and CTO of popular multiplayer-games-as-a-service startup PlayerDuel, OKPanda wants to help change the way people learn English in Asia, beginning with Japan. To support its mission, OKPanda has raised $1.4 million in a round led by Resolute Ventures, Innovation Endeavors, Kapor Capital and 500 Startups. A handful of angel investors also contributed to the round, including the founder of Karma and Tapjoy Lee Linden, the former chairman of APAX Asia Max Burger, Producteev founder Ilan Abehassera and Mafia Wars co-founder Roger Dickey. 
HTC's CEO Sheds Some Operational Responsibility To Focus On Product Amid Falling Market Share
Oct 20, 10:36PM
Today the Financial Times reported that HTC's CEO Peter Chou will relinquish some of his daily operational responsibilities to Cher Wang, another of the company's founders. Chou will use his now freer schedule to focus on HTC's smartphones.
What Games Are: A Farewell To Games Stores
Oct 20, 9:00PM
They still hang on in there selling used games and new releases, but the long-predicted death of the video game store has not wavered. It's happening inch by inch, but may speed up considerably with the release of new game consoles. As we all go 100% digital in our games, game stores will eventually just go away.
Apple Pushes New Version Of OS X Mavericks GM To Quash Last Minute Bugs
Oct 20, 8:15PM
The consensus is that Apple currently plans on announcing the details of OS X Mavericks availability and pricing during this week's event in San Francisco. We're hearing that, in order to kill some last-minute bugs, a quiet update has been made to the Gold Master version of Mavericks previously shipped out to developers.
VCs Try A New Method: Curated Events
Oct 20, 7:09PM
VCs have long thrown events for portfolio startups to share knowledge, and learn from each other and from previous successful entrepreneurs. Last year’s Kleiner Perkins CEO Summit featured fireside chats with Bill Gates, Colin Powell and Al Gore. Google Ventures CEO Summit last year included Sergey Brin and Ron Conway, among others. And most other firms hold similar CEO and founder summits for their portfolios. But we’re starting to see a new trend on Sand Hill Road when it comes to events. VC firms are starting to hold curated, topic-based events that include a broader swath of the entrepreneurial community, including non-portfolio companies and founders. Google Ventures and Greylock recently co-sponsored a Product Manager Meetup at Google’s San Francisco office, hosted by GV partner Ken Norton and Greylock partner Josh Elman. Of the 200 or so product managers who attended, 41 percent were from the Google Ventures portfolio, 38 percent were from the Greylock portfolio, and 20 percent came from outside the portfolio. The event itself was created to help attendees learn from some of the leading product minds in consumer tech including Craig Walker (Firespotter), Johanna Wright (Google), Adam Nash (Wealthfront), and Peter Deng (Instagram/Facebook). Kleiner Perkins held an event called 12-200 for a number of both portfolio and non-portfolio founders with startup whisperer and Intuit chairman Bill Campbell. The series was started as a way to focus on issues and challenges that entrepreneurs have when their company is at the stage of 12 to 200 people. Additionally, in a few weeks, the firm will be holding a panel addressing technology and engineering needs for portfolio startups and outside founders and entrepreneurs with partner Michael Abbott, Nest founder Matt Rogers, Flipboard CTO Eric Feng and a few others. With the launch of its new content site Grove, Sequoia Capital announced its new event series "drinkups," which features a discussion between a Sequoia partner and portfolio founder. The first one, which was sold out, included Roelof Botha and Evernote’s Phil Libin talking about how to price a product. The events themselves are open to non-portfolio startups and founders, but like the Kleiner, Greylock and GV events, these drinkups are a curated, handpicked group of potential and current entrepreneurs. This year, First Round Capital is hosting a quarterly event around the power of design for startups and entrepreneurship that included Airbnb co-founder Joe Gebbia, and others. In some cases, VCs are
The NSA Hacked Former Mexican President Felipe Calderon's Email While He Was In Office
Oct 20, 6:38PM
Documents leaked by former NSA contractor Edward Snowden demonstrate that the National Security Agency (NSA) hacked the email of former Mexican President Felipe Calderon while he was in office, according to a report in Der Spiegel. The operation, dubbed “Flatliquid,” exploited a mail server to garner access to the account. The compromised system was also in use by other Mexican governmental authorities. Calderon, no longer president, was a leader noted for his close work with the United States government. The two countries are large trading partners, have a long border, and have intertwined economies. Also, they share a common struggle with the drug trade and drug-related violence. That the NSA snooped on Calderon should come as small surprise. It was revealed in September that the NSA had also spied on Calderon’s successor as President of Mexico, Enrique Pena Nieto, while the latter was merely a candidate for the office. The implication of the revelations taken together is simple: Regardless of your nation’s status as an ally or adversary, the United States government finds it completely inside its legal purview, authority, and mission to spy in your affairs. Der Spiegel makes this point well, by implication: “Now, though, the revelation that the NSA has systematically infiltrated an entire computer network is likely to trigger deeper controversy, especially since the NSA’s snooping took place during the term of Peña Nieto’s predecessor Felipe Calderón, a leader who worked more closely with Washington than any other Mexican president before him.” Precisely. Rewarding cooperation with industrial-grade espionage isn’t too good an idea. What faith should the current Mexican government have in its dealings with the United States, when we could negotiate and at once read their internal communications? Do you honestly think that the United States government has ceased spying on the Mexican government, or any other government where the NSA can spread its tendrils? Top Image Credit: Matthew Rutledge
Cooliris Reports Big Growth in Asia And 3B Connected Photos
Oct 20, 6:00PM
Over the past year or so, photo service Cooliris has been announcing a number of international partnerships with companies like Renren, Yandex, and most recently Baidu. Earlier this week I met with Cooliris CEO Soujanya Bhumkar and VP of Business Development Sebastian Blum, who told me that these efforts have been paying off. There are now 3 billion photos connected to the Cooliris service, and 1 billion of those photos have been engaged with in some way. Bhumkar also said that Asia now accounts for 35 percent of the company's user base (compared to 30 percent a quarter ago), and he expects that percentage to go above 40 in the next three months.
Rethinking The Seductiveness Of Mobile-First
Oct 20, 5:00PM
Editor's Note: Semil Shah works on product for Swell, is a TechCrunch columnist, and an investor. He blogs at Haywire, and you can follow him on Twitter at @semil. For the past few months, my weekly column here has been focused on some aspect of "mobile." There's no denying the scope of the platform shift, user volume, and consumer attention. Yet, for startups, being "mobile-first" in today's market is a dicey proposition given the harsh realities of distribution and the fact consumers are bombarded with too many indistinguishable choices. Taken together, it begs the question: "For new startups today, is mobile-first the right choice?" In this post, I'll share some conditions under which being mobile-first today either isn't necessary or puts a new startup at a disadvantage. The idea here is to play the devil's advocate for a day, to gently push back against the strong mobile tailwinds and reexamine some reasons why new startups can or should begin their work on the web, even if they end up with a mobile presence eventually. With that spirit in mind, and in no particular order, here's what I came up with: Some markets make mobile-first simply unnecessary or unviable. Consider products aimed at people in large corporations who work on desktops or laptops all day long. Yes, this segment is not growing as fast as mobile is, but then again, nothing is growing as fast as mobile. Specifically, products targeting users in larger enterprises, or where security in information technology (especially in mobile) is a concern, or where the user is required to create content through heavy input (like writing or number-crunching) provide examples where mobile-first just doesn't work. Applications and solutions targeted at these types of customers are likely better off to start web-first and then grow from this point of origin. Relatively speaking, easier to recruit web developers versus mobile developers. The market for experienced, quality iOS and Android developers and designers is extremely tight. If and when these folks do their next thing, it will likely be as a founder or close to formation of a new company. In the absence of a mobile developer on the team, focusing on the web can make it slightly easier to find and recruit engineers. Faster cycles for iterations, testing, and moving toward product-market fit. With the team of web engineers ready to go, building for the web, relative to mobile, is a more sane path in many regards.
Skim Is Snapchat For Text
Oct 20, 4:00PM
Serious question: Which would you prefer? To have all of your chat conversations instantly deleted upon receipt (Snapchat-style), or to keep a record of each and every word forever on the internet? A new app, Skim, is looking to answer that question. Not unlike Ansa, a Disrupt alumni, the app automatically deletes the message as soon as it's opened. When a user sends a message, it's gone forever, no longer viewable to the sender and instantly disappearing when received. In many ways, it's just like Snapchat but with text instead of photos. 
How Healthcare.gov Doomed Itself By Screwing Startups
Oct 20, 3:00PM
Healthcare.gov, a government-run e-commerce website for the Affordable Care Act, does not actually need to exist. The still-dysfunctional federal site could have offloaded all of the work to startups, which were already building more sophisticated price-comparison alternatives to the official site, just like Orbitz does for airline companies. Healthcare.gov was supposed to be an information hub for the needs of millions of uninsured citizens who are now legally required to have a healthcare plan. The federal website ended up offering insurance directly, after 24 states (mostly Republican) refused to design their own e-commerce websites for their residents. Unfortunately, at launch, the federal and state sites crashed. Three weeks later, Obama’s signature law, the Affordable Care Act (“Obamacare”), is in danger of losing public confidence and the enrollment numbers it needs to meet its promise of cheap, quality insurance. But, it’s unclear why the state and federal exchanges websites were built in the first place. “It’s akin to the state wanting to build a search engine,” says Gary Lauer, CEO of health insurance e-commerce site, eHealth. eHealth is one of a handful tech companies certified as “web-based entities,” which are legally allowed to act as alternatives to the federal and state e-commerce sites. Yet, as the regulations were designed, startups take a backseat to government websites. State exchanges are given the option to interface with private partners. Two of the largest states, California and New York, have delayed tech partnerships for about two years. “In the first year, we can’t custom interface, we don’t have enough bandwidth, we don’t have the technological capacity,” Covered California spokesperson, Anne Gonzales, told USA Today. People familiar with Healthcare.gov argue that government-run websites are necessary to conceal the IRS income data that exchanges use to calculate discounts. Obamacare is principally designed for the 48 million uninsured Americans; most enrolling will have some discount based on their age, family status, and income. To protect consumers, the government argument goes, only Healthcare.gov should have access to income data. However, there are plenty of existing federal systems that securely transmit personal information with private companies. If you use H&R Block or TurboTax to complete your tax return, you already have confidence that tech companies can safely deal with your most sensitive data. “There’s nothing new in this privacy area, nothing new that we haven’t been doing for years and years,” says Lauer. For instance, ID.me, which facilitates military veterans
Apple Product Placement Architect Suzanne Lindbergh Confirms Departure To Jawbone
Oct 20, 2:56PM
Apple executive Suzanne Lindbergh, who has been with the company for 25 years, confirmed via email today that she has accepted a new position with speaker and Bluetooth accessory maker Jawbone. The marketing specialist had the official title of "Worldwide Director of Buzz Marketing" at Apple, which put her in charge of making sure Apple products showed up front-and-center in both big and small screen entertainment. 
Twitter's #Music App Could Be On The Way Out, Says New Report
Oct 20, 11:53AM
Twitter's #Music app, which offered social music discovery culled from activity on the 140-character sharing service, is reportedly nearing the end of its brief life, according to a new report from AllThingsD. Twitter is "strongly considering" shuttering the mobile app, after its download and usage numbers have dropped precipitously following a respectable launch.
In Which Jack Dorsey Reads Us Some Poetry And Lists And Plays Us A Jazz Tune
Oct 20, 2:32AM
Jack Dorsey seems to be at the tech world's center of attention over the last few weeks, thanks to a series of articles and an upcoming discussing the early days of Twitter, and whether or not he screwed over friends and coworkers in the early going. But the co-founder of Twitter, which also just happens to be in a quiet period while it prepares for IPO, sidestepped any unnecessary or awkward questions that might have come his way today by giving a presentation of poetry reading, lists, and jazz tunes at Y Combinator's Startup School today.
Twitter Exec Makes Really Inopportune BART Strike Joke
Oct 20, 1:21AM
The thing about race, class, religion and gender is that, for the most part, it is out of people's control. This all-encompassing feeling of lack of control is why when chronically underpaid service professionals like teachers or transport workers strike, there is an equally out of control discussion around the societal and economic value of these professionals. It becomes the real life version of our comments section.
Airbnb Has Now Served 9M Guests Since Being Founded, Up From 4M At The End Of Last Year
Oct 20, 1:18AM
Airbnb continues to grow at an amazing pace, and now has served a total of 9 million guests in the five years since being founded. At Y Combinator's annual startup school today, Airbnb co-founder and CTO Nate Blecharczyk demonstrated what hockey stick-like growth looks like after several years in a row. 
Loop: The Future Of Mobile Payments Or A Temporary Fix?
Oct 20, 1:00AM
Loop is a new mobile payments startup making some fairly big claims. The company says it has invented a technology that lets you pay with your phone at nearly any point-of-sale across the U.S., without requiring merchants to upgrade their hardware. Nor do you have to own a particular device, like those NFC-based smartphones required for mobile payment services like Google Wallet or Isis. Instead, consumers can either use a dongle plugged into their smartphone or a special charge case that is simply held close to the magnetic stripe reader (the place you swipe your credit card) at checkout. Seemingly like magic, the payment processes as if you had swiped your card as usual.
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