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Apple Aims To Take NFC Mainstream; Perhaps The Greatest Trick They've Ever Pulled?
Jan 25, 8:29AM
Bloomberg has an interesting report tonight, but they have the headline all wrong. Apple Plans Service That Lets IPhone Users Pay With Handsets — is technically correct (assuming the report is true, of course), but it completely downplays the potential ramifications of what Apple is apparently attempting to do. If Apple can nail Near-Field Communication (NFC) and tie it directly into their already-established iTunes payment system. It could change everything. It could transform Apple from the biggest technology company in the world, to the biggest company in the world, period. By far. Granted, that's a very big "if" in the above statement. And there are many unknowns from this report, which I'm simply extrapolating out. But there's also a lot that makes sense, if you think about it. First of all, Bloomberg's Olga Kharif reports that Apple will build NFC chips into the next iteration of the iPhone. That should be absolutely no surprise — in fact, we reported on it months ago. Plus, given that rival Google has already done this for the Nexus S Android device, it has gone from a no-brainer to a must-do.
SafetyWeb Acquires iHound And myID, Pushes People-Centric Security Solution
Jan 25, 7:52AM
SafetyWeb is a Silicon Valley startup that until recently has focused on serving anxious parents who want to know what their kids are up to on the tubes. But they've been on an acquisition tear - Odojo back in July, and now two more small security startups - iHound Software and myID They aren't disclosing the terms of either new deal, other than to say that each deal involves both cash and stock. The company is also on the verge of launching new products based on internal development as well as the stuff brought over from the three acquisitions. And they aren't just focusing on child safety any longer.
HighNote Is Group Messaging With A Multimedia Twist
Jan 25, 6:19AM
What sets group messaging app HighNote apart from the current wave of group texting apps like Kik, PingChat and Beluga is that it adds a multimedia focus to the act of messaging in multiple. Aside from being a free Internet Protocol-based messaging app for members, the service (available on the iPhone, iPad, iTouch and Android today) is unique in the richness and range of messages you can send and receive. With HighNote you can share music, video, (through iTunes), voice recordings, pictures, maps and pretty much any media that's fit for a phone.
WITN: No, New York Media, It Isn't 1999 All Over Again (Thanks For Asking)
Jan 25, 5:44AM
In this week's Why Is This News, we discuss the latest Silicon Valley bubble. Or specifically, we discuss why there isn't one - and why New York media has to stop claiming there is every time a company has a high valuation. Yeah, Business Week's Chris Farrell, we're looking at you. Video below.
What Is Quora's Biggest Challenge?
Jan 25, 3:33AM
By now, everyone has an opinion of Quora and is waiting to see if their mom starts following them there, too. In the past week, in addition to winning the Crunchies award for best new startup, it is also the target of growing skepticism. Well-circulated articles have been written about the company's ascent. Katherine Boehret from the Wall Street Journal wrote a review in which she asserts Quora is "uninviting, geeky, and poorly explained." Matthew Ingram from GigaOM wrote about the site's technical growing pains, wondering if one day the site will wish "it had remained small and exclusive." On Sunday, TechCrunch contributor Vivek Wadhwa wrote an opinion column on why he does not buy into the hype around Quora. Quora does face some real challenges, but I believe they are more nuanced than some of the other critics have suggested. In this last post on my series on Quora, I will lay out what I believe to be the short-, medium-, and long-term challenges facing the company and product after using the site for the past six months. The most immediate issue, simply put, is noise. How can it make sure that users are not inundated with discussions they care nothing about? 
I Feel Like A Kid Again With HeyTell, The Social Walkie-Talkie App With 3 Million Users
Jan 25, 2:33AM
When I was a kid, there were few things cooler than a walkie-talkie. I recall spending many a night running around hotels causing havoc as my friends and I pretended we were on some sort of secret mission, talking to each other back and forth over these devices. Then cell phones came along and changed everything. For a short amount of time, push-to-talk technology in some phones replicated the idea. But smartphones quickly put an end to the fun. But there's hope for the walkie-talkie making a comeback. At least in app form. In fact, maybe it already has very quietly. An app called HeyTell already has 3 million users.
Weekend at Myspace: And Other Upcoming Silicon Valley Movies
Jan 25, 1:29AM
Whether the audience agreed or not, our favorite part (of ours) of the Crunchies was the movie posters bit. Inspired by the success of the Social Network, we'd brainstormed a few ideas for Silicon Valley themed movies of our own, complete with promotional posters to help with the pitch. In case you missed seeing them live, here they are...
Cubeduel Now Back In Action, Says We Like Facebook Employees Best
Jan 25, 1:14AM
Last week, we reported that Cubeduel, the service that's a hybrid of Hot or Not and LinkedIn, went offline due to some serious growing pains. Initially, it was unclear whether the site had gone down because its content was somehow inappropriate, or whether it had simply gone viral too quickly. LinkedIn Director of Communications Hani Durzy stepped in to say that Cubeduel had exceeded LinkedIn's API limits and was shut down accordingly. The question then became: would Cubeduel have to restructure its site or would LinkedIn generously increase its API limit to accommodate Cubeduel's rapidly growing user base? Today, Cubeduel Co-Creator Tony Wright answered this question, informing us that LinkedIn had almost immediately stepped in on Cubeduel's behalf, raising the API ceiling fivefold to allow for a greater flow of traffic.
Founder Institute on a Roll– Amsterdam Is Now Open Too
Jan 25, 12:16AM
Adeo Ressi of the Founder Institute was blown away by the comments and response he got from our post last week reporting the incubator's new offices in South America and intention to keep expanding globally. Readers were invited to make the case for their city in the comments and more than 40 locations caught his attention. The post even wound up expediting the opening of a new Amsterdam chapter. 
YouTube's "Life in a Day" Is Coming To Theatres, Compliments Of National Geographic
Jan 25, 12:02AM
On July 24, 2010, YouTube decided to do a little experiment: it invited its millions of users around the world to record video footage of their day, and then to submit that footage for a chance to be part of a special documentary called Life In A Day. The film was directed by Kevin Macdonald (who previously did The Last King Of Scotland), edited by Joe Walker and has Ridley Scott as its executive producer, so it has the potential to be quite compelling. And now it sounds like a lot of people will get a chance to see it. YouTube has just announced that National Geographic has acquired the rights to distribute the film in the United States, and that it will be coming to movie theaters this summer on July 24, 2011 (one year to the day after the footage in the movie was shot). At this point it isn't clear how broad the release will be, but fear not — you'll be able to watch the film very soon on your computer, free of charge.
Patent Risk Advisory Firm RPX Files For An IPO
Jan 24, 10:09PM
"Defensive patent aggregator"RPX (Rational Patent) filed an S-1 form with the SEC on Friday, stating its intention to go public. According to the form, RPX is looking to sell up to $100 million of its shares in an IPO underwritten by Goldman Sachs, Barclays, Allen & Company LLC and others. Co-founded by former Intellectual Ventures VPs John Amster and Geoffrey Barker, RPX only launched two years ago but it revenues are through the roof, growing from $0.8 million in 2008 to $32.8 in 2009, the year in which it reached profitability. The company hit $10 million in profit on $65.2 million in revenue for the first nine months of 2010. 
appMobi Closes $6M To Improve Mobile App Technology
Jan 24, 9:52PM
Mobile development vendor appMobi has just closed an impressive $6 million round of all-angel series B financing to further provide platform as a service tools for developers and others in the mobile ecosystem. The money will be used to hire more engineering staff as well as bolster marketing and promotion efforts for appMobi's mobile technology suite. More than 8,000 developers (including those at Robitussin and Fox News Radio) use appMobi's XDK, leveraging the cloud-based development technology to create apps for iOS and Android devices under their own brand. 
Apple Brings The App Store To Twitter Promising Exclusive Offers
Jan 24, 9:33PM
Apple and Twitter have had an interesting but cautious relationship over the past couple of years. Early on, the only official Apple accounts belonged to various iTunes properties, which utilized the service for promotions. Then Apple secured a deal with Twitter for Ping, their social network within iTunes. Then some Twitter executives starting joining in on the fun (though some more vocally then others). Now it appears that Apple is taking another step into official Twitter land today with an account for the App Store. About an hour ago, the first tweet was sent from the account saying, "Welcome to App Store on Twitter! Follow us to discover new apps, get exclusive offers, and share with friends. #appstore". Looking over the vitals, the account has about 3,000 followers at the moment, but is only following 5 users — all iTunes official accounts. And while the App Store account isn't yet verified, Twitter has altered their practice of doing that, so we'll have to take the fact that both iTunes TV and iTunes Music are following the account as a sign that it's legit (we've also reached out to Twitter about it). 
Keen On… John Borthwick: The New Medium Mogul Behind Bitly, TweetDeck, Chartbeat, and SocialFlow (TCTV)
Jan 24, 9:27PM
As the CEO of betaworks, John Borthwick is one of the most influential architects of the social web. Borthwick, who used to run technology strategy at Time Warner, co-founded betaworks as a new medium company for the social economy. Today, betaworks is a network of around 30 companies – including Bitly, Tweetdeck, Chartbeat and SocialFlow – all, in Borthwick's words, "loosely connected at the data level." Just as betaworks is a new medium company, so Borthwick is a new medium mogul. Richly networked (note the unscripted appearance of AOL chief executive Tim Armstrong – a betaworks investor - at the end of the second video), the understated Borthwick is a master not only of social media technology, but also of knowing the right people in today's social economy. This may explain why betaworks is based in networking capital of the world, New York City, and why Borthwick's chairman is Ken Lerer, the co-founder and chairman of the Huffington Post. Video ahead.
Meet The Satarii Star, The Crowdfunded iPhone Accessory Of Every Blogger's Dreams
Jan 24, 9:18PM
I'm really starting to love this whole crowdfunding thing. Even if you look beyond gargantuan success stories like the TikTok Nano watch, you've still got all sorts of all sorts of wonderful concepts like the PadPivot, the mBrace, and the C-Loop all taking huge steps toward production thanks to ultra-early-adopters who were willing to pledge their cash up front. Last week, I had the chance to sit down and chat with a new company called Satarii, which is a pretty small operation (just a couple of engineers in a garage) banking on crowdfunding to help push their product -- the Satarii Star, an iPhone/Camera base that rotates to follow you around the room and keep you always in frame -- over the last few hurdles in the journey to production. Really, though — check this thing out. 
Zuckerberg, Doerr and More on How the iPad Has Changed Everything (TCTV)
Jan 24, 8:37PM
Paul Carr and my jokes aside, the Crunchies is pretty much an unabashed love-fest. We even get along with our arch-competitors GigaOm and VentureBeat long enough to co-host the event. But our annual love for Apple remains mostly unrequited. We shower them with awards and praise, and they don't even send so much as an intern to accept their monkey statues. In the past, we've filled the sad, awkward void with humor. But this year with Apple CEO Steve Jobs back on medical leave that didn't seem fitting. Instead I tracked down some of the industry's biggest luminaries including Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg, Foursquare founder Dennis Crowley, LinkedIn founder/Greylock partner Reid Hoffman, DreamWorks founder Jeffrey Katzenberg and Kleiner Perkin's John Doerr to do the acceptance speech for Apple. I asked why they thought the iPad was more than just a cool device. In case you missed the show, the video is below.
Blekko Finally Gets Cool As Ashton Kutcher Invests $200k
Jan 24, 8:26PM
Blekko, a search engine, isn't exactly a flashy new startup. There's the name for starters - it was something they came up with as a placeholder while they were stealth and decided that was a good long term name, too. And then there was the whole Cuil fiasco. Which would make any new search startup blanch. So Blekko hasn't turned on the hype machine at all. They're just quietly doing their thing, and growing nicely. Now, though, they've gone Hollywood. Ashton Kutcher (image is from TechCrunch50 2008), whose movie is currently no. 1 in box offices, is making a somewhat more geeky splash today. He's invested $200,000 in Blekko, as an extension to the company's most recent round of funding. 
Google Creates An Opt-Out Extension For Those Likely Blocking Their Ads Already
Jan 24, 8:03PM
First of all, let me say that I think it's awesome that Google has finally created a simple solution to allow users to opt-out of advertising tracking. This new Chrome extension already seems like a much better idea than the somewhat convoluted controls or browser plug-ins that they've created in the past to placate government agencies and concerned users. It's also great that Mozilla is taking the same steps — though I'm going to focus on Google here since their entire business revolves around ads. (Though I guess you could argue that Mozilla's does indirectly as well since they're business revolves around the revenue they get from Google.) And it's even better that they're open-sourcing the whole thing. But let's be honest here: this really doesn't mean much of anything.
Jive's Tony Zingale Makes a Case for Social Enterprise– with Actual Numbers (TCTV)
Jan 24, 8:02PM
There's been a lot of debate about how much Twitter and Facebook buzz can really benefit big companies, and even more debate over the value of so-called "social enterprise" software offerings from the likes of Jive, Yammer and Salesforce. So Jive commissioned a third-party survey of their customers to find out just what benefits they were seeing. The results were pretty staggering. Internally, companies reported a 37% increase in project collaboration and productivity, 30% higher employee satisfaction and a 32% reduction in time to find answer. The most welcomed result might be a 27% reduction in email. Externally, customers reported a 31% increase in customer retention, 34% higher brand awareness, a 27% increase in new customer sales and a 28% decrease in call support volume. (For another view on how companies should use social media, check out Jeremiah Owyang on NBC's Press:Here, which aired yesterday.)
Study Finds Unsafe Amounts of Lead In Reusable Bags Sold By Major Retailers
Jan 24, 7:58PM
A new study published today by the nonprofit Center for Consumer Freedom (CCF) based on testing done by Frontier Global Sciences in Seattle, found that many reusable bags sold by major U.S. retailers today contain unsafe amounts of lead. The CCF advertises itself as a force against the "nanny-state," and advocates for "consumer freedom." They also appear to argue that food, beverage and restaurant businesses should be able to do, sell and give away whatever the heck they please, never mind the environmental or social consequences. Frontier Global Sciences is a privately held business that provides environmental sampling and analysis services. Their study found...
Video Search Engine Qwiki Is Now Available To The Public
Jan 24, 7:56PM
TechCrunch Disrupt winner Qwiki launched publicly today after a week filled with the news, most notably that of an $8 million funding round led by Facebook co-founder Eduardo Saverin and YouTube founder Jawed Karim. Qwiki, for those of you who haven't been following the hype, basically reads heavily Wikipedia-sourced articles out loud with photo and video accompaniments. 
UberMedia Continues Shopping Spree; Buys Social News Platform Mixx
Jan 24, 7:36PM
UberMedia (formerly known as PostUp and TweetUp) is on a serious shopping spree. In the past two weeks, the company has acquired Twitter client developers EchoFon, and UberTwitter. Today, the company has announced that it has acquired social news startup Mixx.com. Mixx's apps allows brands and users to curate social content into channels of information. In 2009, the startup launched TweetMixx, as a Twitter client that allows you to easily discover the links and content your Twitter contacts share. 
MoshiMonsters To Launches First Toy Range, Aims At $22 Billion US Market
Jan 24, 7:34PM
Tomorrow MoshiMonsters, the educational social game aimed at young children, is moving heavily into licensing its brand. Tomorrow it launches its first toy range at the London Toy Show, in conjunction with Master Toy partner, Vivid. MoshiMonsters now has over 30 million users worldwide - creating a tonne of kids who would really like toys based on the characters. The line is being stocked by all major UK retailers (Tesco, Sainsburys, Toys R US, Argos, The Entertainer etc) and an international roll out to the US is coming soon. This is a new direction for brands aimed at kids. In the old world toys might give rise to a game, usually lame. These days the games are creating the real-world toys, and Angry Birds is just another game moving in this direction. It's no surprise that Moshi founder Michael Acton Smith and Peter Vesterbacka from Rovio / Angry Birds realised they have a lot in common after meeting at this week's DLD in Munich. 
Murch And Ebert's Misguided Malignment Of 3D
Jan 24, 7:34PM
An article is making its way around the net today, a letter written to Roger Ebert by an Oscar-winning editor and sound engineer, Walter Murch, decrying a fundamental flaw in 3D filmmaking that he assures us ruins the entire idea. Despite Murch's depth of experience in the film industry, I think he's off the mark in this assessment. So hopefully I can dispel some of the incomplete information he's spreading (no doubt with the best intentions) via Ebert's blog. Murch names a few subjective complaints first: the glasses compress the movie-watching experience, the image is dark, and the everlasting complaint that you don't need 3D to tell a good story. You didn't need color or sound to tell a good story in the 20s, of course, or movies in the first place, but that is something that is routinely overlooked by hasty critics of 3D. His main complaint, though, is neither new nor as grave as he seems to think.
Sayonara Six Apart Brand and Six Apart Japan
Jan 24, 7:32PM
It's the final chapter of the old Six Apart-- literally. Say Media-- the videoegg/Six Apart combo platter-- has finally sold Six Apart's Japanese business, something the company has been working on since before the VideoEgg acquisition. The buyer is Infocom Group, a Japanese software company. Bundled into the deal are the global Moveable Type business, an early TypePad code base that Say is no longer using and the Six Apart brand name. The price was undisclosed, but this wasn't really a deal about price. These assets -- once so important to Six Apart in blogging's early days-- just weren't that strategic anymore. The company says little will change for Moveable Type users, because they'd already shifted the line of business to Japan pre-acquisition. This is more closure than anything else. The deal isn't huge news, but it's an interesting milestone for the blogging industry. Moveable Type was at one time the core of Six Apart's strategy; a behind-the-firewall software product to help any company get up and blogging in a controlled, secure way. Blogging was already an unsteady opening of the corporate kimono, but using an untested, hosted solution was a step too far for many of the Fortune 500 companies and large media giants like Conde Nast and BusinessWeek. I first used it when we started blogs at BusinessWeek, and the magazine was terrified. I can't imagine us using something as open as WordPress. Moveable Type was like blog training wheels-- important for a time, but sadly not so relevant now.
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