The Latest from TechCrunch |  |
- The Social Network 2 – If Zuckerberg Deleted Facebook Parody Trailer
- AT&T Takes Two Steps Back With Hopes To Inch Closer To T-Mo Deal
- The Future Of Foxconn: Ten Thousand Horses Galloping
- EU Court Rules ISPs Can’t Be Forced To Filter Out Illegal Content
- Superfly Takes On Google And Kayak With Personalized Flight Search
- Presentify.me Turns Unused Groupons Into Gifts
- Alibaba.com Grows Revenues And Profits, Misses Expectations
- Cracking The Krakow Code – Poland’s Newest High Tech Cluster Emerges [TCTV]
- Video: Super-Realistic Dental Training Humanoid “Simroid”
- Daily Crunch: Cold Birds
- “Leaked” Facebook Law Enforcement Guides Already Available, Still Bad For PR
- With IPO On Hold, Kayak Reports Q3 Revenue Up 28 Percent To $61M; Net Income Up 44 Percent
- The App Store Game Subscription Plan That Wasn’t
- Quora Gains A Twitter/Facebook Growth Expert, Loses Top Engineer to Pinterest
- Walkie Talkie App Voxer Is Going Viral On iPhones And Androids, Trending On Twitter
- Carrier IQ Retracts Their C&D, Apologizes To The Android Researcher They Hassled
- Decide.com & Consumer Reports Partner On New Deals Site
- Google Goes After YouTube Domain Typo Squatter
- The 5.39%. Occupy Movement Sites Most Visited By “Jet Set Urbanites”
- Saul Klein’s List Of Europe’s Next Billion-Dollar Tech Companies
| The Social Network 2 – If Zuckerberg Deleted Facebook Parody Trailer Posted: 24 Nov 2011 09:22 AM PST  Would our society come crumbling down if Facebook suddenly disappeared? A hilarious new parody film trailer explores a ghastly future where “Zuckerberg deleted Facebook. And then he killed himself. Forever.” Watch and see the panic ensue: I know Aaron Sorkin, director of the Oscar-winning Social Network 1, is only considering making a movie about Steve Jobs. Still, I’d love to see Nice Piece Productions, the team behind this trailer, take on “Steve Jobs 2″. I’m imagining the beloved inventor being brought out of cryogenic sleep to fight off an alien invasion with his own line of sleek, stylish ray guns. And if you want more Social Network fun, here’s another vision of the sequel where Julian Assange and Facebook team up to fight off Google+.
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| AT&T Takes Two Steps Back With Hopes To Inch Closer To T-Mo Deal Posted: 24 Nov 2011 07:16 AM PST  Well, this isn’t the strategy I was expecting, but it seems the FCC’s request to investigate the AT&T/T-Mobile deal under the lens of an administrative law judge last week just doesnt sit well with AT&T. Rather than be scrutinized, the company has instead withdrawn its application for the merger. But don’t let that confuse you. Buying Deutsche Telekom AG’s T-Mobile is still big blue’s end goal — the FCC just happens to be blocking the road at the moment. What may be more interesting is that AT&T’s confidence seems to be dwindling. According to an official release, the company agreed to pay a $4 billion pre-tax charge on its fourth quarter accountancy sheet, which is the exact amount it would owe to affected parties should the deal fall through. $3 billion in cash would go to Deutsche Telekom as a default payment, while another $1 billion would go to the book value of spectrum that big blue would be forced to relinquish. In other words, AT&T is preparing for the worst in a very real way. Well, the worst for them, not necessarily the worst case scenario for everyone. What I find most interesting is that AT&T decided to release this information on Thanksgiving. Maybe they assumed we media types would be stuffing our faces with stuffing (ha!). Either way, AT&T is still putting on a brave face, officially stating the following:
The question now is, will a deal between AT&T and T-Mobile ever really be “practical”?
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| The Future Of Foxconn: Ten Thousand Horses Galloping Posted: 24 Nov 2011 06:26 AM PST  Shenzhen is a town of migrants. The estimated median ages is between 15 and 25 and the old and battered sits in wild contrast with the brand new. Even in the few years between my last visit and this one, the city has changed so drastically that I barely recognized it. The last time I was here I imagined the place as a cross between a favela and Blade Runner, high and low tech mashed together, the sharp tails of known carcinogens mixing with the soft end of Suntory in a highball glass and the scent of a young executive assistant’s Chanel No 5. Now it’s mostly Suntory and Chanel, the carcinogens banished to the outskirts of town. There’s a boom in China, and Foxconn’s executives see a way out of many of the messes, real or imagined, that plagued the company. Foxconn is pinning their future success on their employees’ future success. While this may seem like uncessary largesse, it is an interesting bet on the future of a working class that has been transformed into a middle class. And those workers, once forced by circumstance to stand for ten hours a day, are workers that no longer need or want what seemingly meager financial benefits Foxconn has to offer. The future of Foxconn, if Louis Woo has anything to do about it, is in retail. While the retail – or channel – business is less than 1% of Foxconn’s revenues, the goal is simple: to empower Foxconn employees through education and entrepreneurship. “We call this ‘integrated services,’” said Woo. His mission is to create a system wherein a Mom and Pop shop in the hinterlands can sell white goods – appliances, fridges, and the like – as well as electronics. Foxconn would take the orders and ship out immediately (if the item isn’t in stock) and the local representatives, who were trained on the line in Shenzhen, would be able to handle installation, troubleshooting, and minor repair issues. Think of it as a million Best Buys blooming. “The stores are called 10,000 Horses Galloping and we’re opening them primarily in the third-tier cities,” said Woo. “So these are the small format stores which means they’re about a 1000 to 2000 square feet.” The company has opened 304 so far, with many more planned. How do they work? Foxconn employees, including line workers and engineers, can apply to the program after five years at a major factory. Employees receive various benefits including a large line of credit, direct support from Foxconn’s customer service representatives, a two-month investment in advertising and real estate. In 2010, the company announced it would invest $45 million in the effort, giving each store owner about $13,500 in credit (90,000 yuan). Most of the after sales support will be handled in the shops. “The managers will be able to troubleshoot the items sold at these stores nless it’s a major malfunction with the chips,” said Woo. “After all, many of them worked on the line where they were made.” This move reflects China’s burgeoning middle class where, as one importer put it: “The Chinese once only sold noodles to other Chinese. Now they’re selling everything.” “I think a lot of Chinese consumers today are wary about what they bought or what they are buying. There are lots of counterfeits,” said Woo. “So we put our reputation behind the product.” Normally, many of these smaller cities and towns would have no access to white goods and technology of any kind. Many of the shops will end up like general stores. “Demands for PC products other than mobile phones are not that at that big at this point in time. So we want to make sure that our store would be able to service the consumers in those cities first,” said Woo. In many cases just having access to a washing machine or air conditioner is a big deal, let alone the latest tablet. Woo gets applicants every day who want to expand the brand and bring the stores back to their home towns. The company is also planning to open more of a mail-order presence in the mainland as well as partnering with MediaMarkt, a European chain, to bring big box retailing to major Chinese cities. They’re also launching something they call the IT Malls, which currently work in 34 centers in 20 cities in China. These shops will bigger than the 10,000 Horses Galloping model but smaller than the big box stores. It is, then, a comprehensive retail plan that will be isolated in China, at least for the time being. “The American market is already mature,” he said when asked if the shops would come to the U.S. Foxconn is also changing how it treats trained workers. The company now offers advanced training to experienced managers including classes in engineering taught by professors from Tsing Hua University, one of the major technical and engineering schools in the country. These same employees can work towards their PhDs while working at Foxconn. I asked if anyone can make the rags to riches move – from assembly line to PhD – but no one has thus far. However, line employees can take reduced-price classes in order to work on their degree while working in the factory. Foxconn is reacting to the idea that there is little promise – and in fact, there is more than a little threat – in continuing to manufacture in many of China’s urban areas. While we are still decades away from any meaningful change in the manufacturing equation, the company is looking ahead to a time when Chinese are not workers but consumers. The company is also seeing the importance in openness – at least as practiced by a $100 billion company in the heart of the Chinese mainland. “In the 37 years of our history we never talked to the press,” said Woo. “Most of the time our customers don't even want us to write about anything.” “So, you know in a sense, for the last 30-something years we were living quite comfortably kind of under the radar,” he said. Woo said the company is trying to change as quickly and efficiently as possible, turning itself into more than a black box – product in, product out. Through the rise of education, automation, and efforts like entrepreneurship, Foxconn is working to build a company for a new century. How far they can run from the past is still not certain. “The Chinese mentality was such that when when you are small you hope the things would just go away,” Woo said of the Foxconn suicides and the future of the company. “But given our size, we have no guarantees that nothing like that anything like that will happen again. There is a certain Chinese philosophy that believes that if you are person of integrity, a company of integrity, then your name will be cleared eventually.” Woo looked pained as he picked at his lunch in the conference room where we met, in a seemingly unused office building near the main circle. He picked at some of the fish from lunch, fish that was cleaned, cooked, and served by Foxconn. Outside, the birds in the trees continued to trill and the young people, perhaps night shift workers unable to sleep, wandered the grounds, stopping in the Foxconn cybercafe, grabbing a library book from the high-tech machine near the dorms. It was a closed system, one of those biospheres made to test how humans would survive on Mars. But how long does this biodome last? How long before it becomes to expensive to make a cheap product here? How long before other countries fix their infrastructure enough to rival China’s best efforts? It won’t be long, to be sure, until others grab for Foxconn’s crown. But, for a while, while the rest of China roiled outside, this city that manufacturing wrought was a relative oasis. “We don't want these issues in China, any more than you want them in the US,” he said, finally. This is part four of a four part series that will run this week about Foxconn. You can read the whole series here. Click to view slideshow.
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| EU Court Rules ISPs Can’t Be Forced To Filter Out Illegal Content Posted: 24 Nov 2011 06:06 AM PST  The European Court of Justice this morning ruled that content owners can not strong-arm Internet service providers (ISPs) into filtering out copyright-infringing content. This case has its origin in a dispute between ISP Scarlet and SABAM, a Belgian management company responsible for authorizing the use by third parties of the musical works of authors, composers and editors. In 2004, the right-holders group established that users of Scarlet’s services were downloading such musical works from its catalogue by means of peer-to-peer (p2p) file-sharing networks. Belgium’s Court of First Instance ordered Scarlet, on pain of a periodic penalty, to bring those copyright infringements to an end by making it impossible for its customers to send or receive in any way electronic files – a filter, in other words. Scarlet appealed the decision, claiming the ruling was incompatible with EU law as well as the e-Commerce Directive. Indeed, EU law says national authorities must not adopt measures which would require an ISP to carry out general monitoring – let alone filtering – of the information that it transmits on its network. Thus, Europe’s highest court this morning ruled:
The European Court of Justice said the filtering system would also be liable to infringe the fundamental rights of an ISP’s customers, namely their right to protection of their personal data and their right to receive or impart information. The court also said that while intellectual property rights are enshrined in EU law, there is “nothing whatsoever in the wording of the Charter or in the Court’s case-law to suggest that that right is inviolable and must for that reason be absolutely protected”. Common sense, really, but always good to see a court agree with it.
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| Superfly Takes On Google And Kayak With Personalized Flight Search Posted: 24 Nov 2011 06:00 AM PST  Israeli startup Superfly, which debuted at TechCrunch Disrupt in 2010, launched earlier this year as a service to organize travel rewards (i.e. frequent flier miles or hotel rewards) and educate users on how to maximize their value when using rewards points or miles. Today, Superfly is taking this a step further by allowing users to book air travel through the website and receive personalized recommendations based on status, miles and more. Once you sign in with your accounts, Superfly will display miles earned over time, spending patterns, and more. While on many travel sites you can search flight inventory by cost, time, or airline; Superfly's engine adds an individual's data, including frequent flyer miles, elite statuses, rewards programs and individual preferences into the decision-making process of choosing a flight. So if you search for a flight from Chicago to San Francisco, and have miles on American Airlines and United, you can sort your flight search by value. Superfly will show you which flights make sense for miles usage and which don’t. In the future, founder Jonathan Meiri says that Superfly will expand to hotel search and bookings as well. And the site plans to aggregate and parse the data from its users to make recommendations. For example, Superfly will show you which hotels American Airlines Gold members tend to stay at when on a business trip to London. Of course, Superfly will be going head to head with Kayak, Google and others with flight search. But Meiri says that the personalized nature of Superfly’s flight search, as well as some of the future data insights, will help differentiate the portal from some of these travel and search giants.
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| Presentify.me Turns Unused Groupons Into Gifts Posted: 24 Nov 2011 05:48 AM PST  Looking for a last-minute holiday gift? How about that Groupon you never used? Daily deal vouchers wouldn’t actually make bad presents if there was a way to gift them that didn’t involve an email printout tucked into a card. That’s where Presentify.me, which turns deal vouchers into attractive gift certificates, can help. The new startup was created by the London-based team behind the deal aggregation service Dealzinga.com, Alex Vander Hoeven, Bob Pluss and Chan Yin. During a 24-hour hackathon earlier this month, the group came up with the idea after having a discussion about whether or not daily deals were acceptable gifts. Says Vander Hoeven, “there are so many good deals out there that I’m sure people would love to give as gifts, but no one wants to get a standard voucher as a present.” Presentify.me aims to the solve the aesthetics problem by turning vouchers into pretty gift certificates. It currently works with vouchers from Groupon, Dealfind, Tippr or GiltCity, with more on the way. To use the site, you’re walked through a quick wizard where you input the pertinent info (the link to the deal, voucher number and your name) and choose a design. For now, there are only three holiday-themed designs to choose from, but Vander Hoeven says they’re preparing themes for other occasions, like birthdays, Valentine’s Day and Easter. Further down the road, user-generated designs will also be featured. It’s a simple idea and a handy tool…at least until the big guys figure out that this is the kind of thing they should be offering deal-buying customers themselves. Presentify.me has $400,000 in angel funding from Andrew Bachman, Tim Skyes, and Jamie and David Dingman.
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| Alibaba.com Grows Revenues And Profits, Misses Expectations Posted: 24 Nov 2011 04:31 AM PST  Alibaba.com, the massive B2B e-commerce company based in China, this morning published (PDF) its results for the third quarter of the year. The company reported a 11.9 percent increase (to $64 million) in its Q3 net profit, with revenues rising 10.6 percent to $250 million, year-over-year. This was below Wall Street expectations; Alibaba blamed a weak U.S. economy, a decline in manufacturing, the eurozone debt crisis and on-going platform enhancement activities for missing analysts’ forecasts. During Q3 2011, Alibaba.com attracted roughly 4 million new users for a total of 72.8 million registered users, and now hosts more than 360,000 new storefronts for a total of 9.6 million. The number of paying members declined in the third quarter by 27,725, to reach a total of 787,653, for which Alibaba blames the execution of its long-term ‘enhancement’ plans. Operating expenses rose a considerable 13 percent. The Alibaba Group, which Yahoo has a 40 percent stake in, has reportedly been in talks with PE firms about making a bid for Yahoo. Microsoft has also signed a non-disclosure agreement with Yahoo to take a good look at its books.
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| Cracking The Krakow Code – Poland’s Newest High Tech Cluster Emerges [TCTV] Posted: 24 Nov 2011 04:17 AM PST  I recently had the pleasure of visiting a European city which is to a great extent a true example of how technology is changing society and business across Europe today. Once, Krakow was a city infamous for its nearness to Auschwitz and a terrifying example of how the Nazis could destroy a previously peaceful society where people of many creeds had lived together in peace. Under the Soviet occupation, it was just another grey Polish city. But since liberation in the later 1980s and the emergence of a strong Polish market economy in the 1990s/2000s, Krakow is taking its place in the technology world, along with the major hub of Warsaw, as a crucible of technology innovation. I flew to Krakow to join the burgeoning startup group there known as Hive which showcased pitches from local startups aiming to go global. While there I shot the ‘mini documentary’ below which gives you a flavour of some of the early startup companies in Poland.
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| Video: Super-Realistic Dental Training Humanoid “Simroid” Posted: 24 Nov 2011 02:12 AM PST  Simroid, a super-realistic dental training robot developed in Japan, caused quite a splash in news outlets worldwide when it made its debut in 2007. The level of realism was pretty high back then, but it’s even higher in the new version that was showcased in Tokyo a few days ago. The basic idea is that Simroid simulates a human patient during a dental check-up by moving and speaking as realistically as possible, including the simulation of gag reflexes or negative reactions when the doctor touches her “breasts” by accident. Two cameras are recording the treatment, which makes it possible to evaluate the performance of dental students after each training session. Professor Hamura from the Nippon Dental University, the mastermind behind Simroid, explains:
The newest version is bi-lingual (English and Japanese), meaning Simroid might go on sale in the US and other places soon, too. This video, shot by Diginfo TV (in English), provides more insight:
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| Posted: 24 Nov 2011 01:07 AM PST  Here are some recent stories on TechCrunch Gadgets: Move over Kinect — Displair from Russia is a gesture interface in thin air Penguin Shuts Down Libraries' Access To New E-Titles On Amazon's Kindle How To Enable Panorama Mode On Your iPhone – No Jailbreak Required
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| “Leaked” Facebook Law Enforcement Guides Already Available, Still Bad For PR Posted: 23 Nov 2011 07:14 PM PST  Several news outlets today wrongly reported that Anonymous Antisec hackers had leaked “newly available” Facebook law enforcement guidelines that explain how and what data can be obtained by officials with a subpoena, warrant, or court order. In fact, many versions of the outdated guides were already widely available thanks to an Electronic Frontier Foundation Freedom of Information Act request, as well as from other sources. Though previously available and out of date, the new coverage about how Facebook provides user information when obliged by law could stoke fears about data privacy and Big Brother. By being more public with its law enforcement, guidelines Facebook could have avoided seemingly like it had something worth “leaking”. [Update: Facebook has just published "Information for Law Enforcement Authorities" to its Safety Center. Most of the information was already available in the guides, but it includes details about data requests from international agencies, cost reimbursement for Facebook attaining and delivering data, and that Facebook does not provide expert testimony. By making this information publicly available, Facebook is less likely to be perceived as having something to hide.] Talking Points Memo, which incorrectly wrote the guides were new, also reports that Facebook plans to publicly release a current version of its law enforcement guide next week. As of press time, Facebook’s Public Policy team couldn’t be reached to comment on the forthcoming guide. If published, it could fuel or quell discontent depending on details of how much data Facebook releases and what hoops officials must jump through to get it. Follow @EFF@EFF Anon "leaks" Facebook's 2010 law enforcement guidelines, which have been available on the EFF website since Jan: eff.org/r.H7t #foia The “Facebook Law Enforcement Guidelines” explain how Facebook has in the past provided data sets with scary names such as “Neoprint” (all profile information and public communication), “Photoprint” (all uploaded and tagged photos), as well as IP logs of up to 90 days and user contact information. The latest versions of the guides from 2010 show that Facebook will release data “Upon receipt of a valid subpoena or a legal document with equivalent”. The guides are a good read if you want to know exactly how Facebook and law enforcement cooperate. One move of Facebook’s that privacy advocates might like is that the company will suspend all fake accounts, even if belonging to law enforcement, as well as disable accounts wrongly accessed by law enforcement. There’s also some fun edits if you compare versions over the years. For example, Facebook has stripped out the line “Privacy and Integrity are cornerstones of the Facebook application and company philosophy.” Facebook still stands to take damage from the trumped up release of these “leaked” guides. Facebook is in the business of building trust. The more secure and private people think their data is, the more they’ll be willing to give to add. Getting users to share biographical, location, online activity, and other data types is core to Facebook goals of showing users the most relevant content from their networks and powering its ads products. If it publicly releases a current version the law enforcement guide, the company’s best bet is to be as transparent as possible. Critics could attack if additional unreleased information comes to light. Facebook will also need to message very clearly that it is legally obligated to provide data when ordered by the court. Then it can try to show that law enforcement agencies cannot carelessly request huge swaths of data. For most people, it’s potential for invasion of privacy without just cause that rattles trust in Facebook.
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| With IPO On Hold, Kayak Reports Q3 Revenue Up 28 Percent To $61M; Net Income Up 44 Percent Posted: 23 Nov 2011 07:00 PM PST  As AllThingsD reported in September, travel search engine Kayak has put its IPO on hold until market conditions improve. Kayak filed its S-1 for a public offering nearly a year ago. Today, the company just filed a new S-1 with its revenue numbers from the third quarter ended September 30, 2011. During the most recent quarter, Kayak posted $61.16 million in revenue, up 28 percent from the same quarter in 2010. The company also increased revenue slightly from the second quarter 2011, which came in at $56.7 million. Net income for the third quarter 2011 was $12.7 million, up 44 percent from the same quarter in 2010, in which net income was $8.7 million. Profits were up from $5.7 million in the second quarter of 2011. In the nine months ended September 30, 2011, Kayak processed 679 million user queries for travel information, which is up 45% over the nine months ended September 30, 2010. It’s a good sign for Kayak that revenues and profits are increasing both yearly and quarter over quarter considering the intense competition the site faces in the online travel space. Google just launched its flight bookings and search portal, which is powered by the recent acquisition of ITA Software. Of course, it’s important to note that in the filing itself Kayak says that the most ‘significant portion’ of its revenues is earned in the second and third quarters, with revenue declining in the fourth quarter. These positive numbers could bode well for Kayak’s pending IPO. With Yelp, ExactTarget, Zynga and perhaps even Facebook in the mix, the IPO market for tech companies hasn’t dried up.
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| The App Store Game Subscription Plan That Wasn’t Posted: 23 Nov 2011 06:22 PM PST  Yesterday, Bloomberg published a story stating that Apple had made a major (and, frankly, somewhat surprising) change to its App Store policies: it was going to begin allowing game publishers to sell bundles of games as monthly subscriptions, as opposed to a la carte. Historically all games on the App Store have been sold as one-off purchases (or for free), and they can generate further revenue by offering in-app goods and services. But last week, game developer Big Fish Games introduced an app with a different model. Gamers would purchase the app, and, for $6.99 a month, they’d have access to “dozens” of games within that application (in other words, each game would not require a separate download). Such a model could potentially be a big deal for other gaming companies like Zynga, which could establish ‘hub’ apps rather than having to launch a new app for each game. As it turns out, that doesn’t seem to be happening any time soon. Apple didn’t comment for yesterday’s Bloomberg report, but the article treated the fact that Big Fish’s app was accepted as indicative of a broader policy change — especially because the two companies had apparently been in negotiations over the launch. According to the original article, Big Fish founder Paul Thelen said, "It took longer than usual to be approved… They needed to be convinced there's a reason to charge customers every month." And it wouldn’t have been the first time for Apple to enact an App Store policy change without officially announcing it. Still, the fact that Big Fish was the only app to launch with the feature was a bit strange — you’d think Apple would have wanted other partners onboard as well. So what was going on? Today, we have our answer: Bloomberg has written a followup story stating that Apple has removed the subscription plan option. Or, more specifically, Big Fish Games’s app has been removed from the App Store, and Apple isn’t commenting. Big Fish is predictably (and understandably) upset:
So what happened? My hunch (and I’m not alone) is that one or more of the reviewers at Apple mistakenly accepted the application, and that there was no intentional policy change. Applications that were in violation of Apple’s terms have slipped through the cracks before. And while Big Fish did obviously interact with someone at Apple during the process, the reviewer may not have realized that accepting the app would have broader repercussions.
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| Quora Gains A Twitter/Facebook Growth Expert, Loses Top Engineer to Pinterest Posted: 23 Nov 2011 05:40 PM PST  Good news people who are really curious about Quora growth! You might one day be reading an article like this about Quora … Because Quora has hired a former Twitter and Facebook guy, Andy Johns, to focus on user growth and engagement. Johns, who tweets under the apropos username @ibringtraffic, spent a year and four months at Twitter, two years at Facebook and is now taking his speciality to the fancy Q&A startup. Quora has additionally hired Zynga’s Robert Matei to also focus on this mysterious growth thing, if you go by this (left) Instagram of his signature on some Quora hiring papers. Which you totally should. You know who isn’t hiring a growth team, or at least doesn’t need to as far as we know? Budding self-expression engine Pinterest, who is apparently signing up a new user every second according to the rumor mill. Pinterest did however recently hire early Quora employee and Pinterest power user Tracy Chou, according to like her bio on every social network and this tweet. Twitter, Facebook, Quora, Pinterest. Just add Spotify and Instagram and you’ve got just about every major startup I’m interested in. So there you go. Image via Robert Cezar
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| Walkie Talkie App Voxer Is Going Viral On iPhones And Androids, Trending On Twitter Posted: 23 Nov 2011 05:39 PM PST  Most of the communications apps that have gotten big on smartphones have been built by well-established companies that have existing user bases they can promote to, with Facebook, Twitter and Skype being the top examples. The other successes have most often had venture money to help them cover advertising costs. But a smaller startup has been climbing up the iTunes App Store and Android Market charges over the last few days. Called Voxer, it provides a walkie talkie push-to-talk voice service reminiscent of Nextel. Or, in modern parlance, it’s sort of like text messages but with voice instead of text. It’s basically a direct competitor to another startup, HeyTell, that we’ve covered, as well as TalkBox… and getting to be more of a competitor every day, judging by its recent trajectory. The app has gone from #40 to #6 within the past week in the social networking category of the United States App Store, following its rise earlier this year in random other countries like Brazil and Saudi Arabia. It’s now a trend among many Twitter users, too. (Yeah, the social networking category isn’t especially big once you get past the leading web services, but this much growth for this type of app is unusual.) To use Voxer, you simply download it from either store (iTunes here, Android here), create a new identity or log in with Facebook, sync it with your phone’s address book and/or Facebook, then start chatting with other individual friends, or groups that you join or create. The interface shows a text message style interface. You hold a talk button to record a quick message for the other party, although there’s also an option to listen live to an incoming message that a friend is recording. You can also send text messages within the flow of correspondence. We talked to Voxer’s vice president of growth, Gustaf Alstromer, for more details. He’s a veteran mobile entrepreneur, from his days growing up in Sweden to his past startup Heysan to his current job. Distribution, as he explains with an acute understanding, has always been the biggest problem. “It’s a really good time now versus any other time in history” to be building a mobile app, he says, because “distribution has been solved by the App Store and Android Market, and now it’s about the tactics you use within that.” Alstromer says the city of Cleveland started getting big first in the US, which has been followed by growth in a number of other cities around the country. While it’s not entirely clear what set the app off, the company has a variety of best practices going for tracking clickthroughs, conversions, and overall usage, using third parties like Mixpanel as well as its in-house systems. Services like this rely on network effects, and its launch on Android earlier this month could have played a big part — iPhone users are no longer stuck just using the app with other iPhone users. Alstromer says that its Android downloads have exploded (although he’s not providing any specific numbers), adding that total usage on Android could pass iPhone within the next few months. The phonebooks are far more essential than Facebook overall, although the latter is crucial for some demographics. The company also has an unusual backstory. It’s founded by veteran entrepreneur Tom Katis, a decorated soldier who previously cofounded a major security contractor, Triple Canopy (here’s a good New York Times profile on the company from 2005). The idea for Voxer originated during an ambush in Afghanistan, he tells me, when he was trying to coordinate reinforcements and the medical team in the middle of a firefight — he needed a way to talk to everyone all at once, and the government-issue walkie talkies weren’t doing the trick. I’ll have more on his story later.
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| Carrier IQ Retracts Their C&D, Apologizes To The Android Researcher They Hassled Posted: 23 Nov 2011 04:34 PM PST  Yesterday afternoon, we wrote about an Android developer who’d received a cease-and-desist letter from Carrier IQ, a company whose Android software he’d been investigating. This morning, under the light of a dozen spotlights, Carrier IQ has retracted their C&D and publicly apologized to the developer. In the months prior to receiving the C&D, developer Trevor Eckhart had published his findings that a number of Android phones (primarily Sprint’s) came out of the box with a nearly unnoticeable bit of software (built by Carrier IQ). This software, claimed Eckhart, could monitor everything from which apps were installed to which keys were pressed. While Carrier IQ uses the press release to ensure that their software does nothing nefarious of the sort, they’ve apologized for taking the course of actions that they took. From the release:
You can find the full text of the release below.
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| Decide.com & Consumer Reports Partner On New Deals Site Posted: 23 Nov 2011 03:00 PM PST  The consumer electronics search service Decide.com is teaming up with Consumer Reports on a new deals site which aims to help shoppers know what and when to buy new electronics. Although the companies are referring to the project as a “daily deals” outlet, they don’t mean “deals” in the sense of Groupon, Living Social or flash sale sites like Gilt or One Kings Lane. Instead, the service is more like a blog/reviews site which features Consumer Reports’ product recommendations alongside Decide’s own data telling you when to buy the item in question. Although Consumer Reports is not everyone’s favorite resource these days, the integration of Decide’s technology with a products reviews service of any kind is intriguing. Today’s gadget reviews sites simply give you the straight news and/or product reviews, but don’t always answer one of consumers’ most burning questions: “should I buy this now?” That’s where Decide comes in. For those of you who missed the news of its launch this summer, Decide.com is the creation of several former Farecast engineers, including Decide CEO Mike Fridgen, formerly the Vice President of Marketing & Product Development at Farecast, and Farecast Co-founder, now Decide CTO, Oren Etzioni. Farecast, later acquired by Microsoft for $115 million, used proprietary technology to determine the best time to purchase a plane ticket. Decide.com and its newly launched mobile app use similar techniques, but the focus now is on consumer electronics, not airfare. To perform its analysis, Decide doesn’t just compare current prices and availability for gadgets – it can also recommend the right time to buy based on product release cycles, historical trends, company announcements, news and rumors published by the media, and more. Using news reports may seem like a questionable way to determine the “when,” as some blogs tend to publish poorly sourced rumors and hearsay, but Decide is smart enough to weed out those weaker signals. Not only can it eliminate the echoes created by blogs that simply republish a rumor started elsewhere, over time, it will also begin to build up a track record and a history of an individual site’s accuracy. These news analysis algorithms (which, frankly, would be awesome to see as a standalone product) will then be used in conjunction with all the other signals to make the recommendations as to when it’s the best time to buy a new device. The Consumer Reports integration is the first editorial partnership for the company, but Decide says it’s working on APIs and blog widgets which will bring its recommendation technology to other outlets. These things are “very high” on the company’s priority list, we’re told, but aren’t available today. That’s too bad because it would be great to see Decide’s algorithms paired up with the gadget reviews I actually read. Oh well.
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| Google Goes After YouTube Domain Typo Squatter Posted: 23 Nov 2011 02:58 PM PST  Pro Tip: If your new business plan entails buying a bunch of domains that are clearly just one letter off from that of a major brand, you’re probably doing it wrong. Such is the case for one gent from Illinois, who snatched up not one, not two, but six domains meant to look nearly identical to YouTube.com, filling them dubious surveys. As you’d expect, Google has now moved to seize the domains. First noted by the super domain-sleuths at Fusible, Google has officially filed a complaint with the National Arbitration Forum (you can find it with case number 1416796). If successful (and it almost certainly will be), Google will be given full control of the domains. The list of domains:
Given that the three primary criterion are “identical or confusingly similar to a trademark” (check), “owner has no rights or legitimate interests in respect of the domain name” (check), and “domain name has been registered and is being used in bad faith” (check! I mean, just look at that screenshot below), this one probably won’t take too long to clear up.
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| The 5.39%. Occupy Movement Sites Most Visited By “Jet Set Urbanites” Posted: 23 Nov 2011 01:59 PM PST  Guess who seems to be most interested in the plight of the 99%? “Jetset urbanites” according to Experian Hitwise, which used its Experian Mosiac audience profiling system to track traffic to Occupy movement sites from various consumer lifestyles, because hey, why not? According to Experian Mosaic, which separates people into Starbucks-esque categories like “Gotham Blend,” “Dare to Dream,” “Aging of Aquarius” and “Bohemian Grove” (a little vomit just came up into my mouth), sites like occupywallstreet.org and others in the Occupy category were most visited in the past three months by “Jetset Urbanites,” a segment of the population that was “highly affluent, progressive and tends to live in major metropolitan areas” with a group of people known as “Colleges and Cafes” coming in second with regards to visits. Quelle surprise! Also not surprising when you think about is the fact that “Small Town Shallow Pockets” — one of the least affluent psychographic segments – is contributing a sizable share of the visits relative to their online population, you know because they actually are the 99% and thus might you know care. Experian also reminds us that interest in the OWS movement ebbs and flows with newsworthy events, peaking during the movement’s first two weeks, then again during the clearing of Zuccotti Park and then again during the movement’s two month anniversary. There’s a Greek saying that goes, “The person with an empty refrigerator doesn’t philosophize.” I don’t know exactly how it’s applicable in this case, I just thought it was kind of cool.
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| Saul Klein’s List Of Europe’s Next Billion-Dollar Tech Companies Posted: 23 Nov 2011 01:59 PM PST  Where will the next billion-dollar startups come from? The tech world and most VCs tend to be parochial, looking at Silicon Valley, maybe New York, and a few other hot markets like China and Brazil. But what about the Old Country? Yesterday, I was having coffee with Saul Klein, a partner at Index Ventures and co-founder of Seedcamp. He believes that in every major city across Europe, Russia, and Israel, there are "a legion of companies that are capable of achieving billion dollar valuations and in some cases are likely to be able to do close to a billion dollars in revenues over the next 3 to 5 years." I asked him to name five while I pointed my iPhone video camera at him, and he was able to give me a much longer laundry list , which I've added below (along with some others he sent me afterwards). I've indicated which ones are Index investments and where each one was originally founded. Which of these will get into the billion-dollar club? (Note that some of these already are billion-dollar companies. You can click through to their Crunchbase profiles to learn more about each one). Skype (London, Index)
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