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Yes, BoomTown Made Drake the ATD Intern Camp Out for the iPad [BoomTown]This weekend, while BoomTown was still indisposed, All Things Digital intern Drake Martinet was dispatched to the Palo Alto, Calif. Apple store–in the heart of Silicon Valley–to camp out with the freaks and geeks awaiting the 9 am PT sale of the iPad on Saturday. Yes, he camped all night to nab two of them “magic tablets.” While doing so, he found one Microsoft (MSFT) Windows computer user, did pinch-and-zoom exercises with some “iPadanistas” and generally seemed rather punchy, despite all the Apple (AAPL) mania. And, inexplicably, he managed not to get an interview with the attention-seeking missile that is Robert Scoble. In any case, here are two videos Drake did (and you can also see his interview with the founder of Chatroulette, also waiting in the line, here): Source: All Things Digital | 5 Apr 2010 | 4:18 am Google To Buzz Users: Are You Sure You’re Not Oversharing?
Two days after launching (prematurely), Google tweaked the product to make it clearer for new users what was going on behind the scenes when they click the ‘Buzz’ tab, and they made even more changes two days after that. But those changes only affected new users, and not the – reportedly – millions of people who gave it a whirl in the first four days after launch. Later today, Google will start prompting all existing users to review their existing privacy settings upon launching the service. The company will soon publish a blog post in which they admit they “didn’t get everything right” and confirm that they will gradually start presenting the following screen to users who click the ‘Buzz’ tab over the course of the day:
This page essentially highlights users’ current Buzz settings, which they can promptly confirm or change. It lets users view and edit the people they’re following as well as the people following them, choose whether they want those lists appearing on their public Google profiles, and modify any of the sites connected to Google Buzz (e.g. Flickr, Twitter and Google Reader). The news comes shortly after multiple lawmakers had asked the U.S. Federal Trade Commission to investigate Buzz for breaches of consumer privacy. But while some are now implying that Google is letting users reset their privacy settings to get Congress off its back, the truth is that Google had already stated this was coming on February 13, when it blogged:
Of note is that Google has also set up a dedicated YouTube channel for Google Buzz, including eight videos explaining the basic concept and specific features. In an amusing twist of irony, 7 out of 8 videos are currently set to ‘Private’ and cannot be viewed yet. Information provided by CrunchBase      
Source: TechCrunch | 5 Apr 2010 | 4:08 am Yes, BoomTown Made Drake the ATD Intern Camp Out for the iPad [BoomTown]This weekend, while BoomTown was still indisposed, All Things Digital intern Drake Martinet was dispatched to the Palo Alto, Calif. Apple store–in the heart of Silicon Valley–to camp out overnight with the freaks and geeks awaiting the 9 am PT sale of the iPad on Saturday. Yes, I made him camp all night to nab two of them fancy magic tablets. While doing so, he found one Microsoft (MSFT) Windows computer user, did pinch-and-zoom exercises with some “iPadanistas” and generally seemed rather punchy. And, inexplicably, he managed not to get an interview with the attention-seeking missile that is Robert Scoble. In any case, here are two videos Drake did (and you can also see his interview with the founder of Chatroulette, also on the line, here): Source: All Things Digital | 5 Apr 2010 | 4:07 am Twettle: The Story of a Tweeting Kettle
Two London designers decided to come up with a get-rich-quick scheme whilst waiting for a bartender to mix their drinks. The result? A kitchen appliance which could communicate through Twitter. And what kitchen appliance would any self-respecting Englishman choose? An electric kettle, or the Twettle. When we first saw Tweeting appliances, they were a laughable novelty: a Twittering toilet designed to show up the banality of most Tweets, for example. But as the network has grown into a ubiquitous and always-on tool, a tool designed for fast, short and current messages, using it to tell you your toast is cooked now seems a lot less trivial. Designers Ben Perman and Murat Mutlu decided to put their circuitry inside a kettle, because a) tea is “the cornerstone of British culture” and b) an actual working product is a lot more sexy than a circuit board and a bundle of wires. It is also a device which benefits from remote monitoring. The Twettle’s production story is long and fascinating, and as far from a cable-sprouting Arduino hack as it could be. Mutlu’s blog post takes us through the process, including the design decisions needed to make a kettle that could connect to the internet but still be simple enough to use and setup. The tech is also designed to fit into any other appliance, like a washing-machine, so that needed to be considered, too. The Twettle works via WiFi, connecting directly to the internet and tweeting when it has boiled. Now, if you switch it on yourself, you know that the kettle will boil in a minute or two, but in, say, an office, it might be helpful to know that the water is done so you can rush to the kitchenette with a sachet of powdered soup, or even to catch up on gossip as others make their tea. But putting WiFi into a dumb appliance isn’t easy. You need, for instance, a way to get the network password into the wireless radio (housed in the kettle’s base). The simplest way turned out to be a small screen, something that microwaves and other appliances already have. You also need to enter Twitter account details. The Twettle also has an API (application programming interface) to allow others to hack it and add functionality. For instance, you could actually switch the kettle on via Twitter Direct Message (useful in student houses where nobody wants to leave the sofa - or the joint - to make the tea). Or the Twettle could be told to “boil” at a lower temperature for making coffee. The API also allows for stats, as seen below. You can count how many cups you have made, for instance, to make sure you reach the weekly quota required to remain in the country. Putting refrigerators and other kitchen devices on the internet has been a weird obsession of manufacturers for years now, but it is finally starting to make sense. Only instead of automatically ordering milk when you use the last drop, the Tweeting fridge would just remind you to grab a carton on the way home. So when can you buy yourself, or your favorite Englishman, a Twettle? It might be a while. The biggest challenge for Mutlu and Perman turned out not to be the design but the manufacturing costs. If they aim for a price of £75 ($115), then the required production run will cost around $500,000. The boys are looking for funding. In the meantime, they can enjoy a nice cup of tea. Twettle. The Kettle that Tweets [Mobile Inc. Thanks, Murat!] See Also:
Source: Wired: Gadget Lab | 5 Apr 2010 | 4:02 am Space shuttle crew arrives for pre-dawn launch - The Associated Press
Source: Sci/Tech - Google News | 5 Apr 2010 | 4:00 am Inside the iPad SDK: Bigger screens, continued frustrations (InfoWorld)InfoWorld - The wraps are off, and the iPad is now in real users' hands. So what can developers create for the iPad using the iPhone OS 3.2 SDK that Apple released in late January? Apple required developers to keep the SDK details secret until the iPad's shipment this past weekend, but now everyone is free to discuss the extended dance remix of the iPhone.Source: Yahoo! News: Technology News | 5 Apr 2010 | 4:00 am InfoWorld review: Apple iPad surprises, disappoints (InfoWorld)InfoWorld - So you've probably heard about the iPad. Apple is once again making headlines with the release of a consumer-focused computing device, and the level of hysteria surrounding the iPad is fascinating from an anthropological point of view. But is the iPad really worthy of this craziness? Yes and no.Source: Yahoo! News: Technology News | 5 Apr 2010 | 4:00 am iPad is problematic, promising e-reader - BusinessWeek
Source: Sci/Tech - Google News | 5 Apr 2010 | 3:49 am Developers Are in a Scramble to Strike iPad Gold - New York Times (blog)
Source: Sci/Tech - Google News | 5 Apr 2010 | 3:22 am Creepy, creepier, Japan’s new Android (video)
If you still needed evidence Japan is the country churning out the most realistic androids out there, here’s another hint for you. Meet Geminoid-F, the newest robot from one of Japan’s most famous robot makers, Hiroshi Ishiguro. Ishiguro-san’s invention is as realistic as it is creepy, but also very cool. The android you see on the picture above is a doppelganger of the human model on the right. It mimics the facial movements of human beings through twelve pneumatic actuators, for example by smiling or frowning. The system works via a camera that detects facial expressions coming from the human and sends the data to the robot whose head (based on that data) starts moving like the original. Professor Ishiguro is planning to commercialize the doppelganger robots, estimating each unit will set you back $110,000. Here’s a video (in Japanese) showing Geminoid-F in action: Via Gizmodo via IEEE Spectrum
Source: CrunchGear | 5 Apr 2010 | 3:21 am Tsunami Warning From Space?Peter bayley writes "Tell me I'm crazy or tell me someone has already done it — but wouldn't a satellite equipped with a laser be a great way to warn people of tsunamis? I was pondering how to warn people in remote coastal areas once evidence of a seismic incident has been received by the monitoring stations that have now been set up following the large Boxing Day tsunami. The idea is to illuminate the areas that are likely to be at risk with a bright (but not dangerous) light. People would be told to head to higher ground if such a light appears in the sky. Put the satellite in a geosynchronous orbit. Make it tunable so that different colors can convey different meanings. You would be able to warn anyone, anywhere they can see the sky. The laser could be directed to illuminate only those areas at risk, skipping unnecessary areas to save power. Power could be varied so that it is visible day and night and through cloud (raise the power where the satellite detects cloud cover). I emailed some people at NOAA about it but they said it would stand on too many toes by circumventing local emergency service organizations in the various countries. I replied that countries could easily opt out, in which case the laser would be turned off for those countries — but received no further reply. Anyway, I thought the massed minds of Slashdot would relish the chance to demolish my idea."
Read more of this story at Slashdot.
Source: Slashdot | 5 Apr 2010 | 3:12 am Source: Elevation Partners Got About 1% Of Facebook For $90 Million
Private sales occurring on SecondMarket at about the same time were closing at higher prices, in the $25/share range. As we wrote in the first post, Elevation Partners is clearly counting on this investment to offset losses on investments in Palm and Forbes, and save the fund:
The new pricing info, though, is better news for Elevation Partners. DST paid a $10 billion valuation for Facebook in May 2009, albeit for Preferred Stock with additional rights over the Common Stock that Elevation Partners now owns. And DST has also dollar cost averaged their price per share down with additional Common Stock purchases at a $6.5 billion valuation. In a couple of years this will likely look like a very smart, albeit somewhat odd, investment by Elevation. Odd because venture capitalists rarely buy common stock in startups at market prices. Smart because they’re likely to make a very good return on the investment anyway. And who knows, if some of their other unannounced deals are winners, too, the fund can get some of its shine back.      
Source: TechCrunch | 5 Apr 2010 | 3:11 am Teens With ADHD Benefiting From Online EducationPORTLAND, Ore., April 5 /PRNewswire/ -- High school students who struggle with Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD) may only be a click away from a helpful alternative option.Source: RedOrbit News - Technology | 5 Apr 2010 | 3:00 am Manpower Inc. Announces Completion and Preliminary Results of Exchange Offer for COMSYS IT Partners, Inc.MILWAUKEE, April 5 /PRNewswire-FirstCall/ -- Manpower Inc. (NYSE: MAN) announced today that it has successfully completed its previously announced exchange offer for all of the outstanding shares of common stock of COMSYS IT Partners, Inc.Source: RedOrbit News - Technology | 5 Apr 2010 | 3:00 am Bay Area Philanthropists Featured in Video Touting Humane Society Silicon Valley's New Animal Community CenterMILPITAS, Calif., April 5 /PRNewswire-USNewswire/ -- Some of the Bay Area's most visible philanthropists who have made gifts to Humane Society Silicon Valley's (HSSV's) New Beginnings building campaign appear in a video on HSSV's website and other social media outlets discussing HSSV's new Animal Community Center, its unique programs and why they chose to make a gift to the campaign.Source: RedOrbit News - Technology | 5 Apr 2010 | 3:00 am IPad Likely Beat Estimates, Signaling Tablet Revival - BusinessWeek
Source: Sci/Tech - Google News | 5 Apr 2010 | 2:58 am Creating voter registers using mobile phonesThe East African on how mobile phones used in money transactions, already tied to citizens identity cards, could be moved onto electronic voting. In East Africa, where the technical infrastructure of...Source: RSS feed - channel BNBlogTech | 5 Apr 2010 | 2:56 am 'Where Everyone Knows Your Twitter Handle' [Voices]By Susan Dominus, Columnist, New York Times Some people want to go to a bar where everybody knows their name. And some people want to go to a bar where no one will judge them if they put their iPhones on the table, compulsively text while chatting and talk social media marketing long after the workday is done. The go-getting digital crowd gets to have both: Tom & Jerry’s, a bar on Elizabeth Street in NoHo that has a mysterious snack mix, a massive moose head and, most important, flawless cell reception. Read the rest of this post on the original site Source: All Things Digital | 5 Apr 2010 | 1:36 am Shuttle Crew Boards for LaunchThe four-man, three-woman crew slated to fly aboard shuttle Discovery this morning are climbing aboard their ship, aiming for a 6:21 a.m. EST blastoff. The shuttle is slated to spend 13 days in orbit, nine of them at the International ...Source: Discovery News - Top Stories | 5 Apr 2010 | 1:29 am You may not be interested in iPad, but iPad is interested in you.Looking at the list of places that had iPads in early, you'll notice that most are owned by print mags or newspapers. Only one or two independent blogs got review loaners. "Why us?" is the obvious question,...Source: RSS feed - channel BNBlogTech | 5 Apr 2010 | 1:21 am You may not be interested in iPad, but iPad is interested in you.
Looking at the list of places that had iPads in early, you'll notice that most are owned by print mags or newspapers. Only one or two independent blogs got review loaners. "Why us?" is the obvious question, but it's the wrong one. The question that keeps coming back to me is "Why you?"But first, here's Fake Steve "Dan Lyons" Jobs on iPad reviews, as quoted by TechCrunch: [Apple's] head of PR told my predecessor, Steven Levy, to pass word to the powers that be at "Newsweek" that Apple wasn't happy with the idea that they were going to hire me. Yes, that happened. And Apple plays this game. I mean, notice who got iPads and who didn't get iPads. Notice who got access and who didn't. Adds TC's Devin Coldeway: "They have the press in the hollow of their hand, with the iPad more than ever." It's true that it picked Time over Newsweek. Shocker! But it also loaned one to The Root, one of WaPo/Newsweek's legion of sister publications, albeit with a distinctive editorial identity of its own. And, of course, to Boing Boing, despite our frequent criticism of Apple and its policies. Check out our archives; plenty of posts praise Apple or one of its products, but the majority don't. It's not just Cory and BBG, either, who lob darts at Cupertino. Xeni pokes them also, and links to negative coverage elsewhere. We even became a hotspot of the OSX netbook hacking scene for people who wanted easy advice on how to perform the EULA-busting installations. And we do our fair share of Apple-themed photoshops and other cheeky amusements, too. What, you think they don't know? There's nothing special or virtuous about this spectrum of coverage. A similar mix is characteristic of all the best tech blogs, including those that were 'snubbed' by Apple last week. If there's one thing I'll bet Engadget, Gizmodo, Techcrunch, Wired, Boing Boing, et al., all share in common, it's the fact that our mailboxes are chock full of people complaining about how much we love Apple--right by the ones complaining about how much we hate them. In any case, Apple's choice of who to give loaner iPads seems not to be influenced by what we've written in the past. It's a pitch, to audiences it hasn't yet won. It loaned early units to newspapers and mags not to entice their publishers into the App Store fold--they need no further convincing at this point--but because it wants their unconvinced audiences to buy iPad. A similar plan holds true here: vast and diverse as it is, the readership here includes an awful lot of tech-savvy culture hounds who don't follow the gadget scene too closely and are suspicious of Apple's policies, but who remain susceptible to the lure of new technology. And you win some and you lose some. But then there's the delicious thought that we haven't quite made up your minds. Our collective ambivalence is reflected in the comment threads, too! A few of you chewed out Apple's myriad corporate errors only to describe a simple design change--a 7" version of the iPad, for instance--with which it could still win you over. Apple is supremely self-confident in the quality of its work, and for all the talk of 'inner circles' it hasn't ever shown any interest in holding court for critics. There's no guarantee it'll offer us an early look next time unless it wants close attention from you--not us--again. We buy interesting but compromising products because we know they wouldn't be a threat to anything if there existed quality alternatives. This holds true for Apple's iPad because there's nothing else like it, even accepting truthful irrelevancies like "It's a giant iPod Touch" or "It can't do things a netbook can do." With the thing now in stores, you can go and see for yourself. But I do notice that writers often like to polish off their Apple coverage with neurotic biblical references that dissolve into bathos, and on that front I too can deliver! To understand the appeal of Apple's excellent gadgets, you don't need to ask true believers "whither thou goest?" every single damned time. You just need to point out "hither thou always art" and leave it at that. All the same, if you're tempted, you should wait for the version with cheap 3G. Source: Boing Boing | 5 Apr 2010 | 1:21 am OhGizmo Review Sceptre x270W 27-Inch MonitorWhen I first started working at an electronics store, we only had two choices when it came to monitor sizes. Most of them were 17-inches, though we did have a pair of the larger 19-inch screens that I...Source: RSS feed - channel BNBlogTech | 5 Apr 2010 | 1:07 am Blockbuster: Icahn Slashes Stake [Voices]By Eric Savitz, Blogger and Columnist, Barron’s, Tech Trader Daily Investor Carl Icahn has sharply reduced his holdings in financially troubled video retailer Blockbuster (BBI). In an SEC filing Friday, Icahn said he now controls 3.77 percent of the company’s Class A shares, and 5.65 percent of BBI’s Class B shares. That’s down from 5.14 percent of the A shares and 6.05 percent on March 31 – which was down from 16.87 percent of the A shares and 7.73 percent of the B shares in late January, when Icahn announced his resignation from the BBI board. Read the rest of this post on the original site Source: All Things Digital | 5 Apr 2010 | 1:04 am Our Friends Become Curators of Twitter-Based News [Voices]By David Sasaki, Contributor, MediaShift Idealab I like to listen before I talk. Which means that during my morning routine I read before I write. But where to turn and what to read? Read the rest of this post on the original site Source: All Things Digital | 5 Apr 2010 | 1:03 am Newser.com: Why Michael Wolff & Co. Are Way Over the Line [Voices]By Sharon Waxman, Founder & CEO, TheWrap.com When it comes to “coompetition” (cooperation + competition) on the internet, I’m all in favor. We compete and we share. We break stories and we aggregate the breaks of others. Read the rest of this post on the original site Source: All Things Digital | 5 Apr 2010 | 1:02 am Why I Won't Buy an iPad (and Think You Shouldn't, Either) [Voices]By Cory Doctorow, Co-editor, Boing Boing I’ve spent ten years now on Boing Boing, finding cool things that people have done and made and writing about them. Most of the really exciting stuff hasn’t come from big corporations with enormous budgets, it’s come from experimentalist amateurs. These people were able to make stuff and put it in the public’s eye and even sell it without having to submit to the whims of a single company that had declared itself gatekeeper for your phone and other personal technology. Read the rest of this post on the original site Source: All Things Digital | 5 Apr 2010 | 1:01 am CrunchGear Week in Review: Chamber Edition
Here are some of the past week’s stories: Hands-on with the Apple iPad: Groundbreaking or not, it’s still amazing
Source: CrunchGear | 5 Apr 2010 | 1:00 am Trouble In Paradise: iPad Users Complain Of Wifi Issues
Count me in as someone who’s having iPad Wifi issues as well. The device works fine near the router, but on the other side of the house, nada. But my Macbook pro and my Nexus One and other various devices I’ve brought into the house pick up wifi just fine in that area. Early Macbook Air users complained of Wifi issues, too. I eventually abandoned the computer because the only place Wifi worked was in the Apple store, even though I was using Apple networking equipment at home. My understanding of Wifi issues on devices, particularly cramped devices like the Macbook Air and iPad, is that it’s usually a hardware/design issue and something that can’t be fixed via a software patch. I hope that’s not the case with the iPad, because faulty Wifi would make this a very unattractive device. Particularly if they run into Macbook Air type problems. As one commenter on the Apple site said, “Not spending $500 on something I cant even use. Its going back tomorrow.” Information provided by CrunchBase      
Source: TechCrunch | 5 Apr 2010 | 1:00 am EMC's Gelsinger Shares Storage Federation Vision (PC World)PC World - Pat Gelsinger made headlines in September 2009 when he left Intel to join EMC as president and COO of information infrastructure products, a group that includes the company's information storage and information security businesses. Now, Gelsinger -- who was Intel's first chief technology officer and led both the desktop products group and the digital enterprise group during his career at the chip maker -- is making waves again.Source: Yahoo! News: Technology News | 5 Apr 2010 | 12:30 am H. Edward Roberts dies at 68 - Washington Post
Source: Sci/Tech - Google News | 5 Apr 2010 | 12:08 am Pumping Sunlight Into HomesByronScott sends a snippet from Inhabitat that begins "What if you could light your entire building using no electricity or artificial lights – but just the natural light from our favorite star, the Sun? Enter the Sundolier, a powerful sunlight transport system that's like putting a solar robot on your roof to pump sunlight indoors. The manufacturer claims a single Sundolier unit can provide enough light to illuminate a 1,000-2,500 sq. ft. area [93-232 sq. m] without any other sources." The company's website is a bit thin on details, such as what happens on cloudy days, or how many days of sunlight per year on average are needed for the device to perform acceptably.
Read more of this story at Slashdot.
Source: Slashdot | 5 Apr 2010 | 12:06 am Wi-Fi on the iPadSo you might have heard about this thing Apple released on Saturday: I've had one for a day, and while it's marvelous--certainly the best computing device ever produced of its size or nature--there's nothing...Source: RSS feed - channel BNBlogTech | 5 Apr 2010 | 12:05 am The Fool's Gold At The End Of The iPad Rainbow [Voices]By Mike Masnick, Editor, Techdirt The media has been making a huge deal about how the iPad is supposed to “save the business,” because suddenly everything will return to apps, and people pay for apps, and toss in a big dose of “Steve Jobs!” and there’s some sort of magic formula which includes some question marks and inevitably ends in profit! Now, the iPad does look like a nice device, and I have no doubt that it will do quite well for Apple (AAPL), and many buyers will be quite happy with it. Read the rest of this post on the original site 
Source: Gizmodo | 4 Apr 2010 | 11:16 pm The GeneralSource: RSS feed - channel BNBlogTech | 4 Apr 2010 | 11:07 pm Build Your Own Keg StoolBy Chris Scott Barr There seems to be something in our blood that makes a guy want his own room full of man stuff. We affectionately refer to this room as the Man Cave. Be it in the den, a basement or...Source: RSS feed - channel BNBlogTech | 4 Apr 2010 | 11:05 pm Origami NapkinsBy Andrew Liszewski If the conversation at your next dinner party doesn’t turn out to be as scintillating as you had hoped, your guests can always entertain themselves with these Origami Napkins...Source: RSS feed - channel BNBlogTech | 4 Apr 2010 | 11:01 pm Our Network is AliveThe British novelist Ian McEwan said, "The naming of what is there is what is important." But there is a thing, or an idea, a system or network, that we live with every day, that we live in, that we, in...Source: RSS feed - channel BNBlogTech | 4 Apr 2010 | 10:15 pm Headfirst Insanity: 6 Gnarly Helmetcam Videos<< previous image | next image >>
Surfing 30-foot waves, skiing off cliffs, and biking down the stairs in a Rio slum are the exact kind of heart-pumping insanity that most of us have far too much sense to attempt. That doesn’t mean you can’t get a glimpse of what it’s like, though. We found a few crazed adrenaline junkies who’d recorded their exploits using helmet-mounted cameras that let you see their exploits from their point of view. You won’t get the adrenaline rush, but you will get to see what it looks like — in HD. These videos were shot using GoPro cameras. Lightweight cameras like these will run you around 300 bucks, but the video footage you’ll get is priceless! Assuming you survive, that is. Helmetcam: Surfing a Tube at SunsetThis sequence is shot from surfer Gabriel Villaran’s point of view, using an HD Helmet Hero Cam from GoPro, somewhere in Mexico. Normally this camera shoots in widescreen, but he used a 4:3 aspect ratio so the top of the wave didn’t get cut off. 960p mode, 1280 x 960, 4:3, 170-degree angle of view, 30fps. 
Source: Wired: Gadget Lab | 4 Apr 2010 | 10:00 pm April 5, 1998: Tamagotchi Distracts Driver, Kills CyclistFad turns fatal in France. Keep your eyes on the road, lady!
Source: Wired Top Stories | 4 Apr 2010 | 10:00 pm Video Gallery: Headfirst Insanity -- 6 Gnarly Helmetcam VideosUsing helmet-mounted cameras, six adrenaline junkies have captured heart-stopping POV videos of stunts most of us have far too much sense to attempt. Most of us.
Source: Wired: Gadgets | 4 Apr 2010 | 10:00 pm 5 Secrets of YouTube's SuccessWired goes behind the scenes of the site that launched a million memes. Here are the five secrets of YouTube's success.
Source: Wired Top Stories | 4 Apr 2010 | 10:00 pm Video Gallery: Headfirst Insanity -- 6 Gnarly Helmetcam VideosUsing helmet-mounted cameras, six adrenaline junkies have captured heart-stopping POV videos of stunts most of us have far too much sense to attempt. Most of us.
Source: Wired Top Stories | 4 Apr 2010 | 10:00 pm Jargon Watch: Vyomanauts, Climate Velocity, Gulfo, Electroweak StarAdd a new name for an astronaut, a possible new star and a potential new currency to your already really impressive vocabulary.
Source: Wired Top Stories | 4 Apr 2010 | 10:00 pm NSFW: It’s Easier To Run, And Other Lessons That Entrepreneurs Can Learn From ELEW
Dressed in a black suit and white shirt – cuffs open and flapping at his wrists – he sat in front of a grand piano and prepared to play his version of ‘Going Under’ by Evanescence. Despite the apparently mundane choice of music, the audience had been told to expect something special. And so it began. For the first full minute of his performance, ELEW didn’t touch a single key. Instead he reached inside the lid and began plucking and jabbing and pounding the piano’s strings. The sound was one that nobody in the auditorium had ever heard before. Even the piano seemed surprised at what it was capable of. Then came the keys – and with them, ELEW’s transformation from man to – well, something else; his face contorting along with every note: eyes first closed and then bulging, brow furrowed, teeth gritted in a kind of quiet rage — not so much playing the music but beating it into shape. The performance lasted ten minutes; short by ELEW’s standards – he’s been known to play at this pace for an hour or longer – and when it reached its climax the audience gave their verdict. A standing ovation from one of the world’s most hard to please crowds. In the months that followed, ELEW went from virtual unknown to solid circuit fixture as YouTube clips of his TED performance went viral. For some reason, Silicon Valley became particularly obsessed with his work, and for a few months during the middle of last year, it seemed like you couldn’t attend a tech event in San Francisco without catching a performance by ELEW and his piano. In fact, it was at one such event – a fundraiser for DNA Lounge, organised by Zivity’s Cyan Bannister – that I first saw him play, and ended up turning over an entire installment of my Guardian column to how I’d been reminded that virtual experiences could never beat the visceral rush of this kind of amazing live performance. So gushing was the fanboyism of my (I admit, generally somewhat cynical) column that ELEW’s manager asked if I’d expand on it in a short essay that could be used to promote his forthcoming debut album. (Disclosure: I was paid for my time. Although, as you’ll surmise if you read my original column, I’d have gladly given it for free). So what does this all have to do with TechCrunch? Why – you might very well ask – is this news? Well. As part of the research for the essay, I spent some time talking to ELEW about his apparent overnight success. What quickly became clear was that – as is almost always the case – there was almost nothing ‘overnight’ about it. But more interestingly, I realized is that ELEW’s story isn’t that of an artist at all. Not really. In fact it’s the story of an entrepreneur. Moreover, it’s a story that offers several valuable lessons for anyone – entrepreneur, artist, or otherwise – who wants to be ridiculously successful in their chosen field. So, given that I spend half my life talking about my own failures as an entrepreneur, and given that it’s Easter – a holiday celebrating new life and all that crap – it seems appropriate to take a week off from cynicism and shift into inspiration territory. Or perhaps it just seems like a good opportunity to be paid twice for the same research. Feel free to decide in the comments. Meantime, on with the first lesson…
Three years before his TED performance, ELEW didn’t exist. What existed was Eric Lewis; a supernaturally gifted jazz pianist who had won the Thelonious Monk Piano Competition at age 23 and was playing regularly with – amongst other famous names – Wynton Marsalis and the Jazz at Lincoln Central Orchestra. And yet, for all of his accomplishments, Lewis was trapped. His preferred performing style just didn’t fit in the jazz world. “I was less into a swinging form of jazz, and more into a rock form of jazz… but I was attempting to drive myself to exciting heights, while playing behind horn players” he deadpans. “I was called ‘crazy’ and ’show off’ and all those other cliches. People said I was difficult to work with.” Lewis responds to the criticism with a cliche of his own: “Never try to teach a pig to sing; it frustrates the teacher and annoys the pig.” Lewis knew that to be successful, he’d have to turn his back on what he had previously been his career for life. So he did.
“I’d always believed in the system: work hard, become accomplished and get a record deal with a jazz label, that’s how it was supposed to work.” But it didn’t work. “I realized that the whole system was corrupted, and not in my favor. So I closed my head to that system. It was like breaking up with someone after a long relationship. I completely restructured my reality and started thinking – strictly by numbers – how to survive as a piano player. I looked at people like Kenny G, Dave Sanborn – people who are called ‘heretics’. I looked at what they’d done, but I also applied the thinking of a chess hustler.” Zugzwang. That’s the word Lewis uses. It’s a German word – literally ‘a compulsion to move’ - used in chess to describe the point where a player finds that, whatever move he makes, he is going to be at a disadvantage. But while a chess players is trapped within the confines of the board; Lewis realised that there was nothing stopping him from changing his game. “I decided to fully embrace the rockstar ethos they’d tried to remove. And by rockstar ethos I mean what is known in some circles as ‘fun’.” It was at that point that Lewis stopped thinking like an artist and started thinking like an entrepreneur. Realising that if he wanted to be successful he’d need to turn himself into a brand, he started cramming every branding book he could find; books with salesy names which insist that “it pays to be a winner” – which, Lewis points out, also happens to be one of the slogans of the Navy Seals. To most artists the idea of creating art using the principles of business – let alone those of the Navy Seals – would sound hideous but thinking commercially was what lead Lewis to make two significant decisions. First was his personal reinvention. Eric Lewis became ELEW, a name which Lewis admits he chose because “there were many Eric Lewises on Google search results, but I was the only ELEW.” The name, though, reflected an entirely new persona: “before then I felt like I’d been hiding my real self under a cloak – just a tease”.
The second result of ELEW’s hustler-thinking was the concept of ‘Rockjazz’. “I wanted to be a one man rock band; using the piano to recreate the sound of the electric guitar; the vocals; the bass. Like how Beethoven and Bach were trying to reflect and emulate what they saw.” He pauses. “Except with them, of course, they were trying to emulate bees and things of that nature.” Lewis acknowledges that others have tried to cover rock music in a jazz style before but “the fact is they didn’t care enough about what they were doing to give it a new name. That says a lot.” This habit amongst jazz musicians of refusing to take rock seriously particularly irked him. “They are too concerned with trying to be clever, adding layers of esoterica that you have to peel away to get to the fun.” With Rockjazz, the fun is first. Indeed – when I talked about ELEW with other professional musicians, all of them took pains to explain how much skill is required to produce his sound. They were concerned that there’s so much fun in ELEW’s music that audiences might not realise how talented he is. They needn’t worry. Regardless of whether audiences recognise ELEW’s skill, though, they certainly recognise that his style is something they’ve never seen before. Inevitably he’ll attract imitators but that’s fine – when people think of RockJazz, they’ll still think of ELEW.
And so began the process of turning his concept into actual performance, a process that started with a chance encounter and a harsh realization, which will be familiar to every traditional business person who suddenly found their industry threatened by the Internet. “I met a guy who worked with Coldplay, and he told me ‘we should get you to do a kind a dueling pianos with Chris Martin’. I just stared at him… who is Chris Martin? Who are Coldplay? I literally didn’t know. The guy looked at me like I only had half a brain. But he didn’t budge; didn’t feel the need to explain. Here was me with all my reputation and experience in the jazz world – I’ve played with Cassandra Wilson and Elvin Jones, people like that – and I realised none of it mattered. I thought ‘I’m in the big world now, no one knows who all these jazz people are. I’m away from my jazz world now and I’m back on the bottom.’” Thus came the harsh realization. “That’s when I knew there was no place for ego anymore, just a three year process of realization. The realization that I suck. Forget audiences saying ‘wow’. No. I suck. My new masters were sixteen-year-olds with guitars. They have their own rules and authority – they have relevant information that I don’t have, and that I needed to learn. It’s their way or the highway. I felt like the 30 year old guy who suddenly has a 19 year old boss. I can either disrespect the guy or I can give him the service and dedication and respect that he deserves. There’s the lyric in Smells Like Teen Spirit: “I found it hard, it’s hard to find / Oh well, whatever, nevermind.” That’s how I felt. I can’t convincingly render surfer rock. Poor Eric… oh well, whatever, nevermind. I had to learn. My hands cramp when I try to play the opening to Lights and Sounds… oh well, whatever nevermind. These are growing pains. I could quit or I could suffer through the muscle process and learn. And, well we know how that went…” And so we do. Last May, ELEW accepted an invitation to perform at The White House for the President and First Lady. His album followed a few months later, comprising tracks which, surprisingly given that the only thing missing from ELEW’s performance is vocals, were chosen in large part for how their lyrics reflect his journey. From the Killers’ Mr Brightside – “A song about betrayal… I felt betrayed by the jazz world” – to Easier To Run by Linkin Park – “it is easier to run.. but I knew it would be worth it, and that that we were all going to have fun in the end”, ELEW makes his final lesson clear: “After years of feeling like a square peg in a round hole, now finally I’ve found where I am. That’s what matters.”
     
Source: TechCrunch | 4 Apr 2010 | 9:53 pm With iPads in the wild, buyers react - CNET
Source: Sci/Tech - Google News | 4 Apr 2010 | 9:15 pm Shuttle to Launch 'Plug and Play' Micro-LabsShuttle Discovery will carry equipment and experiments to the space station on Monday. However, one payload is particularly exciting. Discovery News speaks with the president of Kentucky Space to find out more.Source: Discovery News - Top Stories | 4 Apr 2010 | 9:09 pm Astronaut Careers May Stall Without the ShuttleHugh Pickens writes "NPR reports that former shuttle commander Chris Ferguson now moonlights as a drummer for MAX Q, a classic rock band comprised solely of astronauts. 'Perhaps we'll have some more time to practice here once the shuttle program comes to a slow end,' says Ferguson, raising the question — what does the future hold for NASA's elite astronaut corps after the agency mothballs its aging space shuttles in the coming months? NASA currently has about 80 active astronauts, as well as nine new astronaut candidates hired last year. But there will be fewer missions after the shuttle program ends, and those will be long-duration stays at the space station. When the Apollo program ended, astronauts had to wait years before the space shuttles were ready to fly, but the situation was different back then. Space historian Roger Launius says, 'Even before the end of the Apollo program, NASA had an approved, follow-on program — the space shuttle — and a firm schedule for getting it completed.' These days, no one knows what NASA will be doing next. Meanwhile, private companies are moving forward with their efforts, raising the possibility of astronauts for hire. NASA administrator and former astronaut Charlie Bolden talked about that prospect earlier this year, saying it would be a different approach for NASA to rent not just the space vehicle, but also a private crew of astronauts to go with it. 'When we talk about going to distant places like Mars, the moon, [or] an asteroid, we will not be able to take someone off the street, train them for a few weeks and expect them to go off and do the types of missions we will demand of them,' said Bolden."
Read more of this story at Slashdot.
Source: Slashdot | 4 Apr 2010 | 8:58 pm Top VCs Debate Rising Startup Valuations [Video]
The venture capital valuations for still-have-that-new-car-smell startups like Quora, FourSquare, Blippy are reaching unprecedented levels, and we wanted to find out why. Top VCs Marc Andreessen, Ron Conway and David Hornik came by the TechCrunch offices to debate the issue. Four month old Blippy is worth around $38 million. Quora, still in private beta, is valued at around $86 million in its most recent round. And Foursquare will be worth $80 million or more when it closes the round it’s negotiating now. These are all young, basically pre-revenue startups. A year ago these valuations would have been unthinkable. So what’s driving the feeding frenzy? The IPO market is still mostly closed to startups, and most acquisitions are still in the low tens of millions of dollars. There’s no clear profitable exit for VCs who invest at these valuations.
He also says that the hottest deals tend to have valuations at 4x what comparable startups can command – meaning some intangible factor pushes the valuation of a startup way beyond what the numbers will support. Hornik also says that history has proven some crazy valuation deal to be very smart in hindsight. He uses Greylock’s investment in Facebook at a $500 million valuation as an example. At the time a lot of people said they were crazy. Now, it looks like the deal of the decade. “Silicon Valley has a very short term memory,” says Hornik, saying that overpriced deals that eventually go south are quickly forgotten. And smart deals tend to be remembered. Conway says that venture capitalists need to do their due diligence. He invested in Google at a $75 million valuation in the late 90s, and the company had no revenue and no business model yet. But the search engine was so exceptional, he says, that the investment made sense when they looked deeply at the team and the product. Obviously, he was right. Good diligence plus good deal flow equals a good portfolio, he says. What’s most interesting about the talk is that none of these guys seem particularly concerned with rising valuations. Getting a piece of the hot deals seems to be of crucial importance. This was a 30 minute conversation and there were lots of great side discussions as well, such as how they deal with entrepreneurs who want to sell out of a startup instead of going the distance. And near the end I hounded Andreessen on when Skype might go public. The full transcript is below. Mr. MICHAEL ARRINGTON: This is Mike Arrington. I am here with Marc Andreessen, Ron Conway and David Hornik. Welcome, guys. Mr. DAVID HORNIK (Partner, August Capital): Thanks. Mr. MARC ANDREESSEN (Co-Founder, Andreessen Horowitz): Hi, Mike. Mr. RON CONWAY (SV Angel): Hello. Mr. ARRINGTON: Just quick bios. Marc, you co-founded Netscape and I’ll say brought internet to the masses in the mid 90’s. You also founded Opsware, which was sold at HP in 2007 for 1.6 billion. Mr. MARC ANDREESSEN: Yup. Mr. ARRINGTON: And you co-founded Ning. In 2009, you co-founded Andreessen Horowitz, a new venture fund and you’ve made a big splash already with a number of investments including Skype and Zynga and that seems to be your full-time job now as a venture capitalist. Mr. ANDREESSEN: It’s a big – it is a very big deal and we’re having a lot of fun with it. Mr. HORNIK: And you enjoy quiet walks on the beach. Mr. ANDREESSEN: I really do and I like puppy dogs and ice cream. Mr. HORNIK: Excellent. Mr. ARRINGTON: And you brought doughnuts to the office… Mr. ANDREESSEN: I did. Mr. ARRINGTON: And made you an instant hit in the TechCrunch offices. Ron Conway, who didn’t bring doughnuts today, is the most… Mr. CONWAY: Sorry, cupcakes tomorrow. Mr. ARRINGTON: Is the most successful prolific angel investor in Silicon Valley. I think – I think both of those are actually true. You’re the most successful – arguably the most successful, clearly the most prolific. You – one of the first investor… Mr. HORNIK: He’ll trade though. Mr. ARRINGTON: Well, one of the first investors in Google and pitching your startup for Ron Conway – and your team – is clearly a right of passage in Silicon Valley. Would you guys… Mr. CONWAY: Yup. Mr. ARRINGTON: Your investments include just about every successful startup you’ve ever heard of. Name a few? Mr. CONWAY: Oh, PayPal, Ask Jeeves, Way Back. Mr. ARRINGTON: Google. Mr. CONWAY: Google. Facebook. Mr. ARRINGTON: Facebook recently. Mr. CONWAY: Twitter. Mr. ARRINGTON: All of them literally. Mr. CONWAY: Zappos. Great – great, great companies. Ad Mob… Mr. ARRINGTON: Any of the big ones you’ve missed? Mr. CONWAY: SalesForce.com, Zynga. That list probably is as long but… Mr. ARRINGTON: David Hornik is a partner of August Capital. Your investments include Ohai, Six Apart, StumbleUpon, VideoEgg, Blippy, which we’re going to talk about in a little bit – and Gravity. Another investment, Aardvark, was recently acquired by Google for how much, $6 million? Mr. HORNIK: I don’t know that was ever reported. Mr. ARRINGTON: You guys are a great group to talk about the main thing I want to talk today, about – which is freaking Silicon Valley out – which is these valuations on these private companies. So, Blippy is your investment, you invested a few million dollars at a $38 million post is my understanding. Is that confirmed or… Mr. HORNIK: No. But… it’s a theory. Mr. ARRINGTON: It’s a theory. Mr. HORNIK: Theory. We’ll go with it as a theory. Mr. ARRINGTON: Another startup Quora founded by ex-Facebookers, 86 million rumored valuation. Haven’t even really launched it yet. Mr. CONWAY: Is it pre or post money? Mr. ARRINGTON: That’s post money to my understanding, haven’t even really launched it yet. In fact they only went into private beta in January. FourSquare, the rumor is 80 million-ish. Actually, Marc, you’re rumored to be involved in that deal and maybe we’ll talk a little bit more about that. FourSquare probably has somewhere between five hundred thousand and a million users but not much in the way of revenue yet. And if you go back a little bit, you’ve got Zynga and Facebook and Twitter all in the billion plus range as well. I think even Ning was valued at over a billion in its last round. Mr. ANDREESSEN: No. Mr. ARRINGTON: Half a billion Mr. ANDREESSEN: That would be dramatic. Mr. ARRINGTON: It was valued at half a billion. Mr. ANDREESSEN: If true, but not true yet. Mr. ARRINGTON: What’s driving this? I mean, are you guys alarmed or not alarmed? Is this – what’s going on? Mr. CONWAY: Well, I think it’s turning from a buyer’s market to a seller’s market for the right company or for the right idea. Mr. HORNIK: I guess, the question is why though? I mean, in fact, if anything there is less money, the decreasing amount of money, the market is getting tighter, so it shouldn’t be, right? It should be a buyer’s market. It shouldn’t be a seller’s market. Mr. CONWAY: VCs have a lot of uncalled capital. Mr. HORNIK: But we always have. Mr. CONWAY: VCs have plenty of – there’s plenty of money out there. Mr. ARRINGTON: What’s different now? It’s just there are as many good deals. Marc, you’re in the FourSquare deal. At least you’re rumored to be one of the four firms in that. Let’s assume that was true without you confirming or denying the rumors. What makes you interested in a startup that young and small at that high of a valuation were you to be in it, in that deal? Mr. ANDREESSEN: Yes. So, obviously, I don’t want to talk about a deal that we’re not actually in, or you know, investment that is not yet, that is – where the company’s raising money. But, in general the theory is that every year there’s a small number of companies that have the potential to be incredibly important, incredibly important companies. Those are also the companies that have the potential to be very financially successful and to me like, important and financially successful in this industry turns out be the same thing. Those companies are started by the founders who have the ability to build big, important and successful companies. If you look at the math over a 20-year or 25-year period, Andrew Rachleff who is a good friend of all of us from Benchmark, did the analysis on this. Well, actually, in Stanford Business School. If you look out over time basically what you’ll see at the long run is that every year the tech industry creates about 15 companies that ultimately will end up doing 100 million in annual revenue or more and those are the companies that are the big important franchise companies such as the Googles and Salesforces and Facebooks and so forth. And you know, those companies are the main event. And so, when you know as an investor, when you think you have an opportunity to invest in a company that has that kind of potential, you know, if you’re the kind of VC that wants to invest to those kinds of companies, then, those are the types of companies that you go after and those companies are naturally going to be A, in demand. And B are, you know, merit the prices, now, assuming they work. You know, the nature of VCs is sometimes they work, sometimes they don’t, and the nature of startups is sometimes they work and sometimes they don’t. But there were plenty of investors all through Silicon Valley who passed on Google due to the valuation, there are lots of VC’s who passed at 30, 35, 43, you know, who now very much wish they can go back in time. And we found out there’s investors who passed on Facebook at similar valuations and wished they could go back in time. So you know, when you think you have one of those then it makes sense to pay a rational, but a meaningful price. Mr. CONWAY: Especially since the day you invest in that company after you’ve done the due diligence, after you’ve competed for a high priced round, you really do believe that they’re going to be one of those 15 companies that’s going to do a hundred million a year. Mr. HORNIK: So, I mean, that is precisely the dynamics, right? Ultimately it is. You can talk yourself into pretty much any valuation. You can march your way up to… because at the end of the day if it’s the multi-billion dollar outcome, then having done it, you know, done around it a hundred million pre- is sort of irrelevant. The difference between 50 million and a hundred if it’s the same multi-billion dollar company is nonexistent. The only problem is, do you get it right? And if you do that every time, right, if you’re certain of that every time, will you end up with a successful portfolio? And that’s, I think that’s the math that everybody needs to do because I think, it’s very simple to say, gee, when David Sze invested out 500 million dollar valuation in Facebook everyone thought he was insane and he’s like, ah, you know. I mean there were lots of justifications for it that weren’t this is going to be a good investment. And then, it turned out, it was a monumentally good investment in all likelihood, a monumentally good investment. But if you carry that to the extreme, we will all invest at any price. And then, the question is, which are the good deals? I mean, if there was a slightly larger spread on that, maybe then we could keep prices down. We all seem to agree on what the things are that might be those interesting deals and that’s driving up the price. Mr. ANDREESSEN: Well, actually let me actually quibble with one part of that… Mr. HORNIK: Yeah. Mr. ANDREESSEN: Which is that, we’re finding, you know, we’re fairly early to actually be a professional venture capitalist so, you know, limited data on this but we’re finding just anecdotally in the market as much as a 4x spread in valuation and multiples on any factor you try to look at – correlating to hotness. Now, by the way, that doesn’t mean that you should not invest in you know, in the super hot deals if they really are having in a little bit high quality. But you know, for everyone of these that’s on your list, you know, we’re seeing another set of what we think are very – let’s say comparable – quality companies and nobody knows about them just because they’re not hot, they are not covered on TechCrunch and they’re not just talked about all that much. For a fourth of the price. Mr. HORNIK: So, we should only do those. Mr. ANDREESSEN: Well. Mr. HORNIK: Right. And so, basically, if they’re as likely to be successful, if there are in fact as high quality, but are not hot, then the logical thing to do is never invest in a hot company. Mr. ANDREESSEN: Well, I don’t think that follows because the reality is that there is a very small number of companies that have the ability to actually get to the point of… Mr. ARRINGTON: How much is the marketing play a role? You invested in Skype, right off the bat – right after the launch. From a marketing standpoint it’s like wow, Marc is going – is a player, he’s not messing around… Mr. HORNIK: Because before that you were a schmuck… Mr. ANDREESSEN: Amateur. [Laughter] Mr. ARRINGTON: And Zynga as well has a very high valuation. Mr. ANDREESSEN: So, we made both investments because we think we’re going to make a lot of money on that. Mr. ARRINGTON: Yeah. Mr. ANDREESSEN: Skype actually did not work quite the way that we’ve been talking about. The initial reaction was, what a bunch of freaking idiots to invest with in thing with that litigation, right? The initial reaction was. Mr. ARRINGTON: But actually, you worked all that out in the background. Mr. ANDREESSEN: Well, we knew we’d be able to work it out – or we had very high confidence that we’ll be able to work it out. But actually, the initial reaction was not, not what you would refer to as positive. Mr. ARRINGTON: Well, TechCrunch is actually highly positive on that. Mr. ANDREESSEN: You guys might have been. We’ve got a tremendous amount of phone calls from people including some of our investors. They were like, oh, my god! Mr. ARRINGTON: We might have asked a couple of questions. Mr. ANDREESSEN: Well now it’s working out fantastic. We are very confident that our investors are going to be happy with the outcome but, you know… Mr. CONWAY: Because you did good due diligence. Mr. ANDREESSEN: Well, we’ve studied the situation, yeah, extensively. I mean, we spent a long time, and a lot of effort. You know, making sure we understood what we’re getting into. Mr. ARRINGTON: But, you know Zynga… Mr. ANDREESSEN: But you know I will qualify that. I will say that was a provocative investment, you know, when those work, it’s great… Mr. ARRINGTON: There also was all this drama around it as well, but from a marketing standpoint, you’re saying, it was actually neutral to bad because people were questioning your… Mr. ANDREESSEN: I would say it started out bad and now it’s a good, yeah, you know… Mr. HORNIK: But I think you have a point, I mean, you said, they’re great when they work but if it turns out it doesn’t…. And it’s interesting because, I actually think that Silicon Valley has a very short memory. And I remember this thing called ‘It’ that turned out to be a Segway. You know, it’s like, wow, that thing’s going to be – hype hype hype! – yet… oh, it’s a Segway. You know, it’s like a replacement for people who don’t want a bike. You know, but Silicon Valley doesn’t care, we’ll moved on… Mr. ANDREESSEN: Although it helped in that case. John Doerr you know – one of the legendary great all time VCs, invested in Segway and Google and right around the same time, right around the same terms, right around the same amount of money. Mr. CONWAY: He knows how to hedge. Mr. ANDREESSEN: You know, and one of them, you know, made his LPs, you know, I don’t know five or 10 million dollars and the other one lost them 25 million. So you know. Mr. ARRINGTON: Speaking of hedging. What with this rumor that we – actually we’ve just confirmed it now – with the Facebook investment by those guys – what’s their names? Mr. HORNIK: The Russian guys. Mr. ARRINGTON: Elevation Partners, $90 million in Facebook we hear, at a 20 billion dollar valuation. Are you guys in this as well? Mr. HORNIK: No. I heard nothing. Mr. ARRINGTON: Nothing? Mr. CONWAY: Well, I’m an investor in Elevation, but I swore myself to confidentiality… Mr. HORNIK: Is this direct or… Mr. ARRINGTON: We’ve heard they’ve invested in the secondary market. They bought $90 million of stock in secondary market. That might be their hedge and the rest of their funds which include some of, the companies aren’t doing quite so well. Mr. CONWAY: It depends on the valuation they paid. Mr. HORNIK: at 20 billion? That’s the hedge? Mr. ARRINGTON: That’s what we’ve heard, yeah. Mr. ANDREESSEN: I can’t comment. Mr. CONWAY: Says Facebook. Mr. HORNIK: That makes sense. Mr. ANDREESSEN: I just can’t talk about it. Mr. ARRINGTON: Because you’re conflicted eight different ways. Mr. ANDREESSEN: Yeah, well, no, specifically I’m on the board of Facebook, so I think that would be inappropriate but… Mr. HORNIK: Do we want to talk today about the SEC and Facebook or should we do that in another future show, Mike? Mr. ARRINGTON: I’d love to talk about that. Mr. HORNIK: We’ll do that in the future. Oh, well, that’s not fair to Marc. Mr. HORNIK: Well, come back at some other time… Mr. ARRINGTON: Well, Marc, you did bring the Facebook financials with you. Mr. ANDREESSEN: Yeah, they’re in my back pocket… Mr. HORNICK: They’re under the whatever, the doughnuts. Mr. ANDREESSEN: (unintelligible). Mr. CONWAY: They’ll be up on the screen as a commercial break. Mr. ANDREESSEN: Well, I’ve brought them Ross Perot style on little cards to hold up to the camera. Mr. ARRINGTON: Let’s do it. Mr. ANDREESSEN: Well, oh darn, I forgot. Mr. ARRINGTON: Ron, you’ve invested in Google in what valuation? Mr. CONWAY: Seventy-five million pre with KP and Sequoia. Mr. ARRINGTON: And that worked out very well? Mr. CONWAY: It worked out very well. But at the time it seemed like a lofty valuation, if you did not do your due diligence. But at the time we had… Mr. ARRINGTON: What year was this, ‘99? Mr. CONWAY: 1998. Mr. ARRINGTON: Yeah. Mr. CONWAY: Yeah, I think ‘98. Mr. ARRINGTON: So, they don’t have monetization. I don’t think they had any revenue at all. Mr. CONWAY: No, they were – Larry and Sergey were very honest and said, you notice, that at the end of the presentation there is no financials and nothing about a business model because we don’t have one. Mr. ARRINGTON: Yeah. Mr. CONWAY: And… Mr. ARRINGTON: And, so they hadn’t monitized well till then. They haven’t come up with this model of monetizing it so. Mr. CONWAY: Well, Ask Jeeves had and we had just taken Ask Jeeves public. Mr. ARRINGTON: OK. Mr. CONWAY: So… and Ask Jeeves was a very lofty IPO, So, the minute we saw the Google Search Engine, I’ve took one of my partners with me and I talked to Larry and Sergey while he played with the engine. And I had always heard that based on page rank and relevancy, that was what, Larry and Sergey were talking about. I said, wow! Those are pretty interesting criteria to be searching by, you know, page rank and relevancy. If it’s as good as they’re saying it is, I want to invest in this. Mr. ARRINGTON: Yeah. Mr. CONWAY: So, my partner was doing searches that he had thought about before. And I said, you know, once you do the searches against Ask Jeeves, if it’s good, give me a nod and we’ll keep that meeting going until we come to some closure. Mr. ARRINGTON: So if you want this… Mr. CONWAY: Because KP was already in the deal. Mr. ARRINGTON: Yeah. Mr. CONWAY: Sequoia had not been contacted yet. Mr. ARRINGTON: OK. Mr. CONWAY: And I helped with that because they wanted Sequoia in the deal… Mr. ARRINGTON: That’s the first time they built investors. Mr. CONWAY: …for the Yahoo relationship. Mr. ARRINGTON: Yeah, is that right? Mr. CONWAY: In a while, it would fall in between. Mr. ARRINGTON: So, my point is this, you’ve invested, early… made a lot of money. All these companies… Mr. CONWAY: But we did diligence. It’s all about good deal flow… Mr. ARRINGTON: Sure. Mr. CONWAY: Good diligence usually equals a decent portfolio. Mr. ARRINGTON: But you tend to get in really early even, you know, regardless of the due diligence. Now, all these companies – I mean, are you an investor, you’re in FourSquare, right? Mr. CONWAY: Yeah. Mr. ARRINGTON: You’re in Blippy, right?. Mr. CONWAY: We sure are. Mr. ARRINGTON: You work in Zynga, but you were in… what valuation do you invest in Facebook? Mr. CONWAY: Well, in Facebook, I’m actually an adviser, so… Mr. ARRINGTON: Oh, you didn’t put any money then. Mr. CONWAY: It’s common stock. Mr. ARRINGTON: That’s OK. Mr. CONWAY: It says at the time, Marc thought I did a lot of work. He did not want me to pay for the stock. Mr. ARRINGTON: You’re in Twitter? Mr. CONWAY: That’s exactly what he said at that time. So, why should you have to pay for this stock when you help? Mr. ARRINGTON: You’re in Twitter? Mr. CONWAY: Yes. Mr. ARRINGTON: So other than Zynga and are you in Quora? Mr. CONWAY: I’m not going to comment on that. Mr. ARRINGTON: That’s interesting. Mr. CONWAY: I’d like to be in Quora. Mr. HORNIK: And there’s the comment. Mr. CONWAY: Who wouldn’t like to be in Quora? Mr. ARRINGTON: OK, so… Mr. HORNIK: And there’s the negotiation. Mr. ARRINGTON: Four of the six companies – even putting Quora out – that – are now in sort of big valuatiobs. You got in at what valuations here? A few million dollars at most, right? A few hundred thousand dollars? Mr. CONWAY: Well, Twitter, Twitter, Twitter funny enough. Ev Williams was the first angel in Twitter. Ev funded Twitter for the first couple of million bucks. So Twitter, the first round that any investors were in was really like a series A or series B. So Twitter was more like 20 million when the first investors outside came in. Mr. ARRINGTON: Their last round was at a billion, right? Mr. CONWAY: Yes, I think they’re worth every nickel of it. Mr. ARRINGTON: So, are you – do you ever sell in these big rounds. I mean, these guys are just getting in to some of these bigger deals. Are you – do you ever sell on those rounds or do… Mr. CONWAY: I don’t. I like to see him through to – whatever the liquidity is that the founder gets his money is when I want to get my money. Mr. HORNIK: Well, the founders… Mr. CONWAY: I had criticized people for doing that. I – but I like to see it through. Mr. HORNIK: The founders are getting plenty of money in these secondaries, right? I can’t speak to all of these, but many of these deals, the founders are getting… Mr. CONWAY: Well, Evan Williams hasn’t sold as far as I know and Mark Zuckerberg hasn’t sold. I’m talking about the founder and the visionary. Those people typically want to see it through, you know, through to the IPO or an M&A deal. Mr. ARRINGTON: Is Crowley trying to take money out of FourSquare? Mr. CONWAY: I hope not, but I don’t know and I – but I highly, highly doubt it. Mr. ARRINGTON: He’s actually sealed his lips together now. Mr. CONWAY: I highly doubt it based on the quality – based on the quality of that entrepreneur, I’d be shocked if he was… Mr. ANDREESSEN: He’s a very high quality entrepreneur. Mr. ARRINGTON: And Blippy? Blippy, those guys are… Mr. HORNIK: They are high quality entrepreneurs. Mr. ANDREESSEN: They are, by the way – those guys are great. Mr. ARRINGTON: But you passed on the deal. Mr. ANDREESSEN: We didn’t do that deal but I think it’s a fantastic deal. Mr. ARRINGTON: It’s just not 38 million dollars fantastic. Mr. ANDREESSEN: If I were an LP… put it this way… if I were an LP in August, I’ll be happy they did the deal. Mr. ARRINGTON: If you were an LP in August, how happy would you be if the Aarkvard guys sold out at 60 million dollars? Mr. ANDREESSEN: Well, so, I don’t want to second guess anybody’s individual decision. I would say in general, I – in general, I’m in business to help people build big important franchise companies. So my preference is that companies go the distance. Mr. ARRINGTON: And going the distance, isn’t selling to Google for…. Mr. ANDREESSEN: Well, going the distance is to basically find out how big your market really is. If it turns out that it’s big, go get it, like go win the market. If it turns out the market is not that big, which you discover in a lot of these things at a certain point in time, that a market is just not that big, in that case, it didn’t make sense to do a strategic transaction, put it in the hands of somebody who has maybe more market throwaway, which is actually what we did with (unintelligible). But in general, we’d like to help people build franchises, the kind of entrepreneurs we like are the ones who build franchises. So, in general, we prefer that people persist over a longer period of time. Mr. CONWAY: But if an entrepreneur ends up wanting to sell, you can’t step in the way of it. Mr. ANDREESSEN: Yeah, you have to – you have to help. You have to put your weight behind helping them do that because without the entrepreneur, you wouldn’t have a company… Mr. CONWAY: Right. Mr. ARRINGTON: Yeah, but isn’t it a sort of – almost a bargain made for the entrepreneur and the VC where, you know, you kind of have an agreement at the start, that you’re going for something and not going to sell at 60 million? Mr. CONWAY: You try. You try. Mr. ANDREESSEN: In general, you try to but, you know, but sometimes things go sideways for one reason or another. Mr. CONWAY: I think Angels are different though. We actually invest in companies where we actually have a discussion with the entrepreneur where I will say this is probably a 50 or a hundred million dollar business. Mr. ARRINGTON: Yeah. Mr. CONWAY: The realistic market size. Do you understand that your liquidity is probably going to be an M&A event? The entrepreneur says yes and this is the size of market that I want to go after right now. So we’ll invest knowing that this is probably going to be an M&A outcome, it’s probably 25 percent of our portfolio. Mr. HORNIK: So, we won’t – I mean, I’m with Marc. Mr. ANDREESSEN: Yeah, VCs… Mr. HORNIK: That’s not our business. Mr. CONWAY: Typical… Mr. ANDREESSEN: Yeah, VCs don’t… Mr. HORNIK: But the reality is that I think entrepreneurs start companies – even the ones who don’t say, oh, this is a 25-million dollar business for me, a hundred million dollar business, whatever. At any given moment, at any point in time, they sort of recalibrate. Oh, OK, not necessarily what’s the market, right? You know, the market for Aardvark was massive, there isn’t any question, but ultimately, you know, what are the risks, what are the challenges, these types of things? And so, going through that process – and frankly the guys who built Aardvark said, you know, here’s an opportunity to build something big and interesting and get it launched and get it out there and they viewed that as valuable, and so in combination, they thought that those were, you know, the factors that made sense and – well, you know, at the end of the day, we do what the entrepreneurs want to do because we’re not – you know, I wasn’t the CEO of Aardvark. I was a buyer, but in the end, I’m happy for them to have found a, you know, an incredible place to build the company. Mr. ARRINGTON: OK. Mr. CONWAY: I’d like to go back to the Blippy, Quora, FourSquare. You look at those three deals and you say, our valuation is getting out of control. And I say, you know what? You have to look at each one of those individually. Blippy, based on hearsay, I think, did get into what might be called a bidding war, where there were a couple of firms and somebody decided to, you know, lay down the gauntlet. Mr. ARRINGTON: That was the Elevation Partners is my understanding as well, is that they… Mr. HORNIK: In Blippy? Mr. ARRINGTON: In Blippy, yeah. Mr. HORNIK: I wouldn’t know anything about it. Mr. ARRINGTON: Yeah. Mr. CONWAY: I thought they were going after big stuff. Mr. ARRINGTON: I may be wrong. Mr. CONWAY: So, at Quora, I really don’t know what the story was but… Mr. ARRINGTON: Oh, I’m sorry, it was Quora who was with Elevation Partners. I got that wrong. Yeah. Who – I’m sorry, you told me before – but Blippy? Who was it that you were bidding again? Mr. HORNIK: It’s always amazing to me that you – this obviously works sometimes. Mr. ARRINGTON: I apologize for anything – I’m sorry. Yeah. Mr. CONWAY: The interesting dynamic is one where I know a little bit more and I admire what’s going on is FourSquare, where I believe – unless I’m being mislead and I don’t think I’m being mislead. In the case of FourSquare, I believe that it’s a very mature entrepreneur who does not want to conduct an auction… Mr. ARRINGTON: Yeah. Mr. CONWAY: For dollars. He is conducting an auction for value add services to his company, which I think is pretty awesome… Mr. HORNIK: But I would say that they’re not typical. I’m sure that’s true, except for the fact that the price has already started at a very high price. And so, what – here’s what I think has changed… Mr. CONWAY: But the price could be double. I’ll bet you FourSquare, if he held an auction, would be double the price he will end up with. Mr. ARRINGTON: A hundred and sixty million dollars. Mr. HORNIK: I think that’s – I think that’s extraordinarily unlikely. I think that chances that… Mr. ARRINGTON: Are you saying 160 for FourSquare? Mr. ANDREESSEN: I can’t… Mr. CONWAY: Is there an investor out there that would? Mr. ARRINGTON: Later on. Later on. Mr. CONWAY: I bet you I could find three. Mr. HORNIK: Really? Mr. CONWAY: I’m dead serious. Mr. HORNIK: So, this is what’s interesting to me about what’s going on right now. Mr. CONWAY: And they’d be private equity firms. Mr. HORNIK: So, I actually don’t think that’s true at all, but let’s assume it is. What’s interesting to me is that… Mr. ARRINGTON: Did you just call Ron a liar? Mr. HORNIK: No, I said I didn’t think it was – yes, I did. No, you can disagree. But the bigger point is that there are great firms out there with good reputations, all of whom… all of the firms rumored to be interested in investing in FourSquare, and frankly, there were many more that were interested in investing in FourSquare, are great firms. Right? So, the idea – you know, we’re looking for value.. well, everybody talking to him right now could provide real value and these are firms that have great reputations, and they have money, they have a future. So, I understood when it was a time when there were firms that were needed to make their reputation or they had challenges or whatever that were all.. I’ll bid up because all I have is to compete with is price. But what happens now is that there are so many top tier firms that are excited about these companies that it’s price and value. It’s not just value. Mr. CONWAY: No, the value that each firm offers is night and day different. How many of the firms understand the location based service market? Are they passionate about it? Can they go help FourSquare in their relationship… Mr. HORNIK: I – believe me, I believe in value added investing as I’m sure Marc does… Mr. CONWAY: This is the kind of stuff that I think Dennis is looking for at FourSquare… he’s going – OK, money is money. I want to have somebody who can mentor me and add true value and grow my business. I’m just pointing out that that’s a really mature attitude, you know, that he’s not conducting an auction. Mr. HORNIK: I understand what you’re saying. I’m just saying that whether you’re conducting an auction, oh, gee, here’s the price, beat it or not. When the prices get to these lofty values, with a set of excellent investors, then, you know, call it what you want, ultimately this is – this is a supply and demand problem, right, which is, there is a very small supply… Mr. CONWAY: Yeah, Gowalla, Loopt, there’s all kinds of LBS companies out there. Mr. ARRINGTON: What I’m hearing here is that… Mr. ANDREESSEN: MyTown. Mr. ARRINGTON: Normally prices are getting high, but you also have only the best firms, you can even get into these deal. Mr. HORNIK: This is the interesting situation. Mr. ARRINGTON: Second tier firms. But you guys all happen to be first tier, so you don’t have to worry about that problem. Marc, you have to talk a little about… what excites you about FourSquare as a user? Mr. ANDREESSEN: Let’s talk about a different one. Mr. ARRINGTON: As a user? Mr. ANDREESSEN: As a user? I just – I think that the product makes total sense. I mean, I think it’s just … it’s the kind of thing that I’d describe as obvious in retrospect. Before Dennis did it, it wasn’t obvious to anybody, but now that he’s done it you look at it and, of course, like this makes just total sense. Mr. CONWAY: FourSquare in its space is Twitter three years ago. So, Twitter three years ago, you know, had just developed the API. Nobody was developing products around it. I think FourSquare could be the next Twitter of location based services. And I think that’s why people are so interested in it. Mr. ARRINGTON: And how about Quora? Mr. CONWAY: Rock star team with a rock star product. Mr. ARRINGTON: Did you look into… Mr. CONWAY: What’s wrong with that? Mr. ANDREESSEN: Quora – without commenting on the specifics – Adam and Charlie are two of the best guys from Facebook, outstanding pedigree, really, really talented guys, the product is outstanding. Mr. HORNIK: So, the other thing that’s interesting is we’re all on these services. You can actually see what people find exciting because we’re all on it. Right? In fact, you know, when the Gowalla financing was happening, we were all checking in – you could see – they were even checking in where they were visiting. So, you could see where Josh was pitching because he’d go, oh I’m at August Capital, right? And so, we’re on Quora, we see -we answer questions for each other, you know, oh, this is fun. You know, we’re on Blippy, I could tell you all the people who may or may not be interested in Blippy, by oh they’re tracking their transactions. You know, the thing that’s interesting about the consumer stuff is that we get to use it and the people who are really engaged in the market love it. I mean, we don’t just invest… I bought the company. I love this so much, you know, I bought the razor company. So, it’s really interesting, I mean, and it creates this a very interesting dynamic where, you know, when you’re on a service that you’re excited about and you like what it is, you can see everybody else is excited as well. Mr. ANDREESSEN: And this why – this all true and this is also why we also like investing in the things that people never heard of because there are services that people don’t use themselves, so, there’s – any number of other things like that. Mr. ARRINGTON: What investments do you have coming up that you haven’t announced? Mr. HORNIK: Right, what are those? Mr. ANDREESSEN: Oh, for example, we are very, very interested and active right now in the enterprise software and a very large number of professional investors think enterprise is dead and, you know, we just think that is absolutely not the case. Mr. ARRINGTON: It certainly isn’t as fun as FourSquare. Mr. ANDREESSEN: Well – so there are some incredibly high quality entrepreneurs, we just – it’s not been announced – but we just backed an incredibly high quality entrepreneur. With a great track record… Mr. HORNIK: Someone who is awesome. Mr. CONWAY: Can we co-invest? Mr. ANDREESSEN: He’s building a fantastic – he’s building what’s going to be a great – he’s going into a huge market, you know, going up against incumbents, you know, all the incumbents in the space have been bought by the likes of Oracle and… he’s going up against, you know, incumbents that are not going to make the shift to the next generation nearly as aggressively as he is and there’s all kinds of market demand for this and numerous companies. But none of us are ever going to use the product – it’s not that kind of product. Mr. HORNIK: Well, this is the thing – right, actually, one of my most interesting companies right now is this company Splunk, which is a search engine for your data center. Does anyone have any idea what Splunk is? No, but on the other hand, it’s pretty exciting. So, call me. Call me. Mr. ARRINGTON: IPO? Just say it. Ms. SARAH LACY (Off camera): Skype IPO Mr. ARRINGTON: Skype IPO. Ms. LACY: Jesus Christ. Mr. ARRINGTON: I thought you say Stopio – I’m like is that the name of the company. Mr. ANDREESSEN: Maybe it was Stop BO or something like that… Mr. ARRINGTON: When will we see the Skype IPO? Just give us that one… Mr. ANDREESSEN: No specifics but the company is in great shape… Mr. ARRINGTON: They could go any time. Mr. ANDREESSEN: The company could go basically any time they want to. Mr. ARRINGTON: They’ve got the technology worked out now. Mr. ANDREESSEN: The whole litigation is long settled, they’ve got the band back together and the company is growing very fast, from the numbers I’ve read. I mean, Skype was a great idea on the day it was founded, Skype is a great idea when they first raised money. Mr. ARRINGTON: They had a lot of trouble raising money… Mr. ANDREESSEN: I know they did. Mr. HORNIK: Wekk it was that same kind of like litigation and it was like – hey, I’ll meet you on the corner and such and such, I mean… Mr. ANDREESSEN: There were some – and it was in Europe and the engineers were in Estonia and it wasn’t completely, you know, it wasn’t like you could go visit it in downtown Palo Alto. But it was a great idea every step of the way, they executed marvelously every step of the way and the thing, it’s a classic network effects business and it just keeps growing. Mr. ARRINGTON: So, from a point of view – this is our last question – on a scale of one to 10, where one is we’re in a terrible industry right now, every VC we know is going to go out of business, and 10 is we have more money that we can count and we’re all going to make a billion dollars this year, where do you think the VC industry is right now? Is it a six, seven? Is it OK or are we – are things looking down because of the valuation? Mr. HORNIK: You can’t talk – I mean, the problem is you can’t talk about the VC industry right now as a whole… Mr. ARRINGTON: How healthy is the market right now? Mr. HORNIK: So, I think that we would all say that we are, you know, eight, nine, 10s about how our portfolios are doing, how the market for great entrepreneurs is, all of that stuff. So, to judge the market as a whole, I think that there’s all sorts of money that’s come into the venture market that, you know, will have a hard time finding its way back out. But on the other hand, I think that, you know, I feel good that I’m going to do well for my LPs and I would happily invest with these – I would happily be an LP in their funds. So, I think sitting around this table, you know, we’ll give it a – what do you think, a nine? I’ll give it a nine because, you know, I’m an enthusiastic positive kind of guy. Mr. ARRINGTON: You’ve only been doing this a… well, you’ve been investing forever, but you’ve only been a full-on VC for a year. You like it…? Mr. ANDREESSEN: Oh, yeah, I love it. It’s great. As a profession, it’s a great profession because you … basically you get to be educated by all the smartest entrepreneurs right now on all of the most interesting projects which is great. Mr. CONWAY: I agree with Marc, you get to talk to people who are telling you through their crystal ball what’s going to happen. Mr. ARRINGTON: And you haven’t gotten tired of this? I mean, you’ve been doing it… Mr. CONWAY: Hell no – 20 years. Mr. ARRINGTON: All right. Thanks, guys. Thanks very much. Mr. HORNIK: Thank you. Mr. ANDREESSEN: My pleasure. Information provided by CrunchBase      
Source: TechCrunch | 4 Apr 2010 | 8:24 pm Amazon: What iPad? [MediaMemo]Sure, some Apple zealots camped overnight to get an iPad this weekend. But Amazon wants to remind the rest of us that it has a popular gadget, too.* Here’s what greeted visitors to the e-commerce giant’s front page on Sunday night (click to enlarge):
Meanwhile, the Wall Street Journal reminds us, Amazon (AMZN) can boast of one thing that Apple can’t right now: The ability to sell books from Random House. The publisher has yet to agree to “agency model” that Apple (AAPL) is using with the rest of the industry, where publishers get to raise the prices for their titles but receive less for each sale. *As my readers note, Amazon has already released an iPad app, so you can’t argue that Amazon is ignoring the competition. It will be interesting to see if Amazon ever rolls out a marketing campaign that compares its device directly to Apple’s. Source: All Things Digital | 4 Apr 2010 | 8:16 pm iWork Pages for iPad: A Primer for Word Users
|
 Telegraph.co.uk | IPad Taps Familiar Apple Suppliers Wall Street Journal A look inside Apple Inc.'s new iPad points to more business for some familiar component suppliers to the Silicon Valley giant. Firms that specialize in disassembling and analyzing electronic hardware say they also found some new clues ... Did Steve Wozniak get a two-hour iPad start? Inside Apple's iPad: FCC Teardown Photos Apple's new iPad Points Known Apple Providers |
Even a casual glance at new Russian site BigLion shows you that the creators not only copied Groupon’s business model, but they also just ripped the site design and navigation off completely, too. The sites look nearly identical, even down to the smallest details.
What’s more, the practice seems to be accepted in Russia, and the new service has gotten some legitimate press that plays the cloning out as if it’s just a smart business decision (translation here).
dp.ru says the service is “ideologically close” to Groupon (an alternative translation says it’s an “analogy.” and notes that Groupon raised $30 million in late 2009, “and thereby confirmed that the business model works.” Not a word about the ethical and legal issues around cloning the site and the business model.
There’s a handy note at the end of the article for any other would-be Russian cloners out there. They note that CrunchBase posts news of “promising American startups” that have received investments.
Perhaps a Russian or German clone of your startup is a simple badge of honor. But how anyone can hold their head up high when this is how they make a living is beyond me. There’s real tech innovation going on in Russia. Things like this just crush the entire community’s reputation.
Update: Groupon CEO Andrew Mason points out Groupon.cn, another clone of Groupon. They go one step further than BigLion by just ripping off the name, too.
Read more of this story at Slashdot.
It’s no secret that there weren’t many iPads given out ahead of time. Apple is, of course, notorious for their extreme secrecy and the hammer that inevitably comes down on leakers and embargo breakers. They have the press in the hollow of their hand, with the iPad more than ever. Time and Newsweek are competing for who gets the best coverage of the device both establishments hope will revitalize their industry. The power balance is tipped unusually far in Apple’s direction, and while you can’t blame them for whipping the world into a iFroth over their new product, you can certainly be annoyed that you don’t get to do your job and write about it, as has been the case with many tech journalists.
Daniel Lyons, AKA Fake Steve Jobs, makes a living (or at least a hobby) of reporting and lampooning Apple news. Unfortunately, his controversial status meant that his employer, Newsweek, got pretty much left out of the iPad party. Lyons and Recovering Journalist blogger Mark Potts weigh in on Apple’s tactics and the politics of tech journalism in this interview on CNN’s Reliable Sources.
It’s no secret that there weren’t many iPads given out ahead of time. Apple is, of course, notorious for their extreme secrecy and the hammer that inevitably comes down on leakers and embargo breakers. They have the press in the hollow of their hand, with the iPad more than ever. Time and Newsweek are competing for who gets the best coverage of the device both establishments hope will revitalize their industry. The power balance is tipped unusually far in Apple’s direction, and while you can’t blame them for whipping the world into a iFroth over their new product, you can certainly be annoyed that you don’t get to do your job and write about it, as has been the case with many tech journalists.
Daniel Lyons, AKA Fake Steve Jobs, makes a living (or at least a hobby) of reporting and lampooning Apple news. Unfortunately, his controversial status meant that his employer, Newsweek, got pretty much left out of the iPad party. Lyons and Recovering Journalist blogger Mark Potts weigh in on Apple’s tactics and the politics of tech journalism in this interview on CNN’s Reliable Sources.
Obviously there’s a lot going on here, what with multinational corporations doing business with each other, and in the case of a haughty and personality-driven company like Apple, you’re always going to see sparks fly. Everybody knows Apple is a big seller when it comes to eyeballs, and Apple knows this too — their “punctuated equilibrium” product model lends itself to highly controlled press orgies like the one that’s been raging for the last few months. So they have the power and they’re not afraid to use it. Good for them and their shareholders. But what about news organizations? Are they beholden to a higher standard than staying in the black? Lyons:
Their head of PR told my predecessor, Steven Levy, to password word to the powers that be at “Newsweek” that Apple wasn’t happy with the idea that they were going to hire me. Yes, that happened. And Apple plays this game.
I mean, notice who got iPads and who didn’t get iPads. Notice who got access and who didn’t.
And the other interesting thing here when you’re talking about the media and Apple is that, you know, the media — “The New York Times” was on stage with Apple, with Steve Jobs, at the announcement of the iPad, right? “TIME” had to have Stephen Frey, an actor, write about the iPad because their tech editor is running their iPad, their iPad development team.
So, the media in this case has really gotten in bed with Apple. And yes, it does raise questions about, how do you cover something when it’s your own business, in a sense, you’re covering?
[note: Levy, or someone claiming to be him, disputes that Apple contacted him.]
It’s not a condemnation of the news organizations; they’re just casting about for a bit of wood on which to stay afloat in these troubled times. This one was big enough to really get their arms around, and they’ve done so with gusto. I can’t blame them, but it’s perfectly reasonable to ask whether they even would give a negative review to something in which they’ve invested so much, indeed in which they themselves are invested. Is it a conflict of interest? Sure. But they’re between a rock and a hard place. What could they do, just not cover it? I don’t envy their position, and I don’t envy the position of someone like Lyons, who is prevented from doing what he does best.
Here’s the rough transcript of the interview. There’s no video yet but I’ll update if it hits.
Apple has sold about 700,000 of these tablets so far. And Newsweek’s cover story says it is indeed a very big deal. “The very simplicity of the iPad masks its transformational power,” writes Daniel Lyons. Some say the iPad heralds a new era of computing, and I’m inclined to believe them.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
MCFADDEN: And we turn now to technology and what some people say is the smartest, coolest company in America.
KYRA PHILLIPS, CNN ANCHOR: It’s the hottest tablet since Moses carried a couple down off the mountain. I’m talking about the iPad.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE, “MODERN FAMILY”: His last wish was an iPad.
JOHN BLACKSTONE, CBS NEWS (voice-over): In an ambitious act of product placement, last night’s episode of ABC’s “Modern Family” was all about the iPad.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE, “MODERN FAMILY”: Oh, my God. You got it! All this time I thought I didn’t care, but I do care. I care so much!
(END VIDEO CLIP)
KURTZ: From the moment that Steve Jobs rolled out his new gizmo back in January, many in the media have treated it as the second coming. And there’s been chatter that the device could breathe new life
into the struggling newspaper and magazine business by providing a hot new platform.
But is the iPad really as important as some of the breathless coverage suggests?
Joining us now here in Washington, veteran journalist Mark Potts, now chief executive of Growth Spur, an online technology company. And in Boston, Daniel Lyons, senior editor for “Newsweek” and the author of this week’s cover story.
Dan Lyons, “Newsweek” cover, “TIME” cover, “New York Times” front page, all over TV.
Is the iPad, this thing that I didn’t realize that I needed, that awe-inspiring?
DANIEL LYONS, SR. EDITOR, “NEWSWEEK”: Well, I think it is a really important device. It’s really cool. But I think, you know, the other thing to consider is, if you’re a tech writer like me, you cover
technology, you never get a chance to shine.
Technology’s pretty boring stuff. And so these things are like the Super Bowl for us. You know?
I mean, once a year, I have to sit through all that Super Bowl coverage even though I don’t care about football. In our world, in the world of tech geeks, yes, this is our Super Bowl. This is a really big
deal for us, I think. And that’s why we all kind of hyperventilate about it.
KURTZ: I don’t know, it seems like the Super Bowl, the World Series and the Final Four rolled into one.
Mark, you’ve got your hands on one. You can hold it up if you like.
How is it, Mark, that Apple always seems to get the media in a total lather about its latest product?
MARK POTTS, “RECOVERING JOURNALIST” BLOG: You know, I’m not sure. It really is amazing. It’s been going on for years.
I remember going to the announcement — they were going to announce the Newton a year beforehand and getting a huge crowd. There’s something about Apple that seems to get this kind of attention that no
other product seems to get. You know, three years ago, the Netbook computers came out and no one really said anything. It wasn’t an Apple product, but they’re just as revolutionary as the iPad is in their way.
KURTZ: Dan, you blog as fake Steve Jobs. How does the real Steve Jobs do it? For example, here, giving your competitor, “TIME,” an exclusive interview and he gets his face on the cover?
LYONS: Well, you know, Apple has been very, very good in terms of playing the media for a long, long time. For decades, right? And the game they always used to play was to play time off of “Newsweek,” for example, and to get them both to sort of compete to see who would get the access to Steve, who would get the exclusive interview.
“Newsweek” sort of opted out of that game when they hired me a couple years ago. Apple doesn’t like me at all because of the blog I write. And Apple actually made it clear to “Newsweek” before they hired
me — or they got wind that I was going to get hired — that they didn’t want “Newsweek” to hire me, they weren’t going to like this.
And “Newsweek” hired me anyway, but sure enough, we didn’t get any access, we didn’t get — I don’t have an iPad. I didn’t get a device from Apple.
KURTZ: You don’t have an iPad? You’re admitting that on national television?
LYONS: No.
KURTZ: Well, let me make sure I understand this.
LYONS: And yesterday — I was going to buy one yesterday, but then I was busy and I have kids. And, you know –
KURTZ: You had a life.
LYONS: — I like to wait anyway and see –
KURTZ: I just want to follow up on something you said. Apple executives went to “Newsweek” and said don’t hire this guy, Dan Lyons? We don’t like he writes this fake Steve Jobs — they tried to block you
from being hired?
LYONS: Their head of PR told my predecessor, Steven Levy, to password word to the powers that be at “Newsweek” that Apple wasn’t happy with the idea that they were going to hire me. Yes, that
happened. And apple plays this game.
I mean, notice who got iPads and who didn’t get iPads. Notice who got access and who didn’t.
And the other interesting thing here when you’re talking about the media and Apple is that, you know, the media — “The New York Times” was on stage with Apple, with Steve Jobs, at the announcement of the iPad, right? “TIME” had to have Stephen Frey, an actor, write about the iPad because their tech editor is running their iPad, their iPad development team.
So, the media in this case has really gotten in bed with Apple. And yes, it does raise questions about, how do you cover something when it’s your own business, in a sense, you’re covering?
KURTZ: That’s an interesting point, Mark Potts, which is that every media organization — and I’ve been flooded with e-mails — is touting its own app for the iPad. And so they are both covering the story,
they’re part of the story, they’re hoping to profit from this new device, and hoping that it — particularly for print, hoping that it revives a business that’s clearly battered and struggling.
So, does that put everyone in a little bit of a conflict situation?
POTTS: Yes, I think it does. There certainly is a lot of wishful thinking attached to the industry right now — can this be our savior? The traditional industry is falling apart.
On the other hand, a lot of that’s going on in the business side of the publications. The editorial side theoretically is separate. I think there’s probably some of the same — some of the same wishful
thinking.
But I think there’s also the fact that a lot of tech writers, a lot of people who cover technology, are Apple fans to begin with and they’re inclined to like things from the company. And they don’t — you know,
they don’t get as excited about something from Dell.
KURTZ: Interesting.
I wonder since you say — go ahead, Dan. Go ahead.
LYONS: Well, for good reason. I mean, when is the last time anything came out of Dell that was anything to get excited about?
I mean, it’s not really — I agree with you, most of us in the media, I like Apple products, most of us use Apple products. And so because of that, we’re kind of fan boys anyway.
But really, honestly, I mean, when was the last time Microsoft came out with anything that you really wanted to ooh and ah about, that you really wanted to see? And it’s not just that we don’t like Microsoft or
we don’t like Dell. They just don’t come out with things that are very interesting or very beautiful.
I mean, I like to look at the Pontiac Aztec. You know, it had four wheels and an engine and everything, but it was an ugly car. Nobody wanted it. Well, most of the tech industry is making Pontiac Aztecs.
You know?
POTTS: Well, actually, Microsoft had a tablet six or seven years ago they did with HP and others that was interesting in its way at the time as the iPad is, but it didn’t get anywhere near this kind of
coverage.
KURTZ: I’ve got half a minute here for you, Mark Potts.
Do tech writers have a tendency to get swept away by all the cool features and not focused on ordinary people who are asking, why shouldn’t I pay $500 or $800 for something that doesn’t have a camera
and doesn’t have a physical keyboard and so on?
POTTS: You know, I think that’s a really good question. And I think — I’d almost go a different way with it, which is tech writers tend to focus on the cool tech things it doesn’t do and say, well, it
doesn’t multitask and doesn’t use flash.
Most people watching this have no idea what that means. And tech writers think it’s very important. For most people, they want to know, does it turn on, can I type on it, can I use it, can I read the Web on
it, can I do my e-mail on it? That’s what they care about.
KURTZ: And while you were answering that question I borrowed your iPad and I’m holding it up right here. I don’t know if you can see, but it’s got “USA Today” on it, and you can move it around. It’s cool.
Can I play with this after –
POTTS: Absolutely.
KURTZ: All right. Mark Potts, Dan Lyons, thanks very much for joining us.
Edit: I feel I should add something to the effect that although it may seem like entitlement for every blog to think Apple has an iPad just for them, there is a level of reasonable expectation that is generally fulfilled by other companies. With Apple, however, one has the feeling of being either part of their plan or completely negligible, something I noted before. I’m not questioning their right to do this, or the tactic’s effectiveness, I just wish it were otherwise and I know I’m not alone in that.
(Thanks, Al!)
2010 Hugo NomineesBEST NOVEL (699 nominating ballots) Boneshaker by Cherie Priest (Tor) The City & The City by China Miéville (Del Rey; Macmillan UK) Julian Comstock: A Story of 22nd-Century America by Robert Charles Wilson (Tor) Palimpsest by Catherynne M. Valente (Bantam Spectra) Wake by Robert J. Sawyer (Ace; Penguin; Gollancz; Analog) The Windup Girl by Paolo Bacigalupi (Night Shade)
BEST NOVELLA (375 nominating ballots) "Act One" by Nancy Kress (Asimov's 3/09) The God Engines by John Scalzi (Subterranean) "Palimpsest" by Charles Stross (Wireless) Shambling Towards Hiroshima by James Morrow (Tachyon) "Vishnu at the Cat Circus" by Ian McDonald (Cyberabad Days) The Women of Nell Gwynne's by Kage Baker (Subterranean)
BEST NOVELETTE (402 nominating ballots) "Eros, Philia, Agape" by Rachel Swirsky (Tor.com 3/09) "The Island" by Peter Watts (The New Space Opera 2) "It Takes Two" by Nicola Griffith (Eclipse Three) "One of Our Bastards is Missing" by Paul Cornell (The Solaris Book of New Science Fiction: Volume Three) "Overtime" by Charles Stross (Tor.com 12/09) "Sinner, Baker, Fabulist, Priest; Red Mask, Black Mask, Gentleman, Beast" by Eugie Foster (Interzone 2/09)
BEST SHORT STORY (432 nominating ballots) "The Bride of Frankenstein" by Mike Resnick (Asimov's 12/09) "Bridesicle" by Will McIntosh (Asimov's 1/09) "The Moment" by Lawrence M. Schoen (Footprints) "Non-Zero Probabilities" by N.K. Jemisin (Clarkesworld 9/09) "Spar" by Kij Johnson (Clarkesworld 10/09)
FROM APPLETELL - Don’t worry if your funds are depleted after your iPad purchase because these are what I’m thinking are the best free apps available at launch.
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I've spent ten years now on Boing Boing, finding cool things that people have done and made and writing about them. Most of the really exciting stuff hasn't come from big corporations with enormous budgets, it's come from experimentalist amateurs. These people were able to make stuff and put it in the public's eye and even sell it without having to submit to the whims of a single company that had declared itself gatekeeper for your phone and other personal technology.
Danny O'Brien does a very good job of explaining why I'm completely uninterested in buying an iPad -- it really feels like the second coming of the CD-ROM "revolution" in which "content" people proclaimed that they were going to remake media by producing expensive (to make and to buy) products. I was a CD-ROM programmer at the start of my tech career, and I felt that excitement, too, and lived through it to see how wrong I was, how open platforms and experimental amateurs would eventually beat out the spendy, slick pros.
I remember the early days of the web -- and the last days of CD ROM -- when there was this mainstream consensus that the web and PCs were too durned geeky and difficult and unpredictable for "my mom" (it's amazing how many tech people have an incredibly low opinion of their mothers). If I had a share of AOL for every time someone told me that the web would die because AOL was so easy and the web was full of garbage, I'd have a lot of AOL shares.
And they wouldn't be worth much.
Incumbents made bad revolutionaries
Relying on incumbents to produce your revolutions is not a good strategy. They're apt to take all the stuff that makes their products great and try to use technology to charge you extra for it, or prohibit it altogether.
I mean, look at that Marvel app (just look at it). I was a comic-book kid, and I'm a comic-book grownup, and the thing that made comics for me was sharing them. If there was ever a medium that relied on kids swapping their purchases around to build an audience, it was comics. And the used market for comics! It was -- and is -- huge, and vital. I can't even count how many times I've gone spelunking in the used comic-bins at a great and musty store to find back issues that I'd missed, or sample new titles on the cheap. (It's part of a multigenerational tradition in my family -- my mom's father used to take her and her sibs down to Dragon Lady Comics on Queen Street in Toronto every weekend to swap their old comics for credit and get new ones).
So what does Marvel do to "enhance" its comics? They take away the right to give, sell or loan your comics. What an improvement. Way to take the joyous, marvellous sharing and bonding experience of comic reading and turn it into a passive, lonely undertaking that isolates, rather than unites. Nice one, Misney.
Infantalizing hardware
Then there's the device itself: clearly there's a lot of thoughtfulness and smarts that went into the design. But there's also a palpable contempt for the owner. I believe -- really believe -- in the stirring words of the Maker Manifesto: if you can't open it, you don't own it. Screws not glue. The original Apple ][+ came with schematics for the circuit boards, and birthed a generation of hardware and software hackers who upended the world for the better. If you wanted your kid to grow up to be a confident, entrepreneurial, and firmly in the camp that believes that you should forever be rearranging the world to make it better, you bought her an Apple ][+.
But with the iPad, it seems like Apple's model customer is that same stupid stereotype of a technophobic, timid, scatterbrained mother as appears in a billion renditions of "that's too complicated for my mom" (listen to the pundits extol the virtues of the iPad and time how long it takes for them to explain that here, finally, is something that isn't too complicated for their poor old mothers).
The model of interaction with the iPad is to be a "consumer," what William Gibson memorably described as "something the size of a baby hippo, the color of a week-old boiled potato, that lives by itself, in the dark, in a double-wide on the outskirts of Topeka. It's covered with eyes and it sweats constantly. The sweat runs into those eyes and makes them sting. It has no mouth... no genitals, and can only express its mute extremes of murderous rage and infantile desire by changing the channels on a universal remote."
The way you improve your iPad isn't to figure out how it works and making it better. The way you improve the iPad is to buy iApps. Buying an iPad for your kids isn't a means of jump-starting the realization that the world is yours to take apart and reassemble; it's a way of telling your offspring that even changing the batteries is something you have to leave to the professionals.
Dale Dougherty's piece on Hypercard and its influence on a generation of young hackers is a must-read on this. I got my start as a Hypercard programmer, and it was Hypercard's gentle and intuitive introduction to the idea of remaking the world that made me consider a career in computers.
Wal-Martization of the software channel
And let's look at the iStore. For a company whose CEO professes a hatred of DRM, Apple sure has made DRM its alpha and omega. Having gotten into business with the two industries that most believe that you shouldn't be able to modify your hardware, load your own software on it, write software for it, override instructions given to it by the mothership (the entertainment industry and the phone companies), Apple has defined its business around these principles. It uses DRM to control what can run on your devices, which means that Apple's customers can't take their "iContent" with them to competing devices, and Apple developers can't sell on their own terms.
The iStore lock-in doesn't make life better for Apple's customers or Apple's developers. As an adult, I want to be able to choose whose stuff I buy and whom I trust to evaluate that stuff. I don't want my universe of apps constrained to the stuff that the Cupertino Politburo decides to allow for its platform. And as a copyright holder and creator, I don't want a single, Wal-Mart-like channel that controls access to my audience and dictates what is and is not acceptable material for me to create. The last time I posted about this, we got a string of apologies for Apple's abusive contractual terms for developers, but the best one was, "Did you think that access to a platform where you can make a fortune would come without strings attached?" I read it in Don Corleone's voice and it sounded just right. Of course I believe in a market where competition can take place without bending my knee to a company that has erected a drawbridge between me and my customers!
Journalism is looking for a daddy figure
I think that the press has been all over the iPad because Apple puts on a good show, and because everyone in journalism-land is looking for a daddy figure who'll promise them that their audience will go back to paying for their stuff. The reason people have stopped paying for a lot of "content" isn't just that they can get it for free, though: it's that they can get lots of competing stuff for free, too. The open platform has allowed for an explosion of new material, some of it rough-hewn, some of it slick as the pros, most of it targetted more narrowly than the old media ever managed. Rupert Murdoch can rattle his saber all he likes about taking his content out of Google, but I say do it, Rupert. We'll miss your fraction of a fraction of a fraction of a percent of the Web so little that we'll hardly notice it, and we'll have no trouble finding material to fill the void.
Just like the gadget press is full of devices that gadget bloggers need (and that no one else cares about), the mainstream press is full of stories that affirm the internal media consensus. Yesterday's empires do something sacred and vital and most of all grown up, and that other adults will eventually come along to move us all away from the kids' playground that is the wild web, with its amateur content and lack of proprietary channels where exclusive deals can be made. We'll move back into the walled gardens that best return shareholder value to the investors who haven't updated their portfolios since before eTrade came online.
But the real economics of iPad publishing tell a different story: even a stellar iPad sales performance isn't going to do much to stanch the bleeding from traditional publishing. Wishful thinking and a nostalgia for the good old days of lockdown won't bring customers back through the door.
Gadgets come and gadgets go
Gadgets come and gadgets go. The iPad you buy today will be e-waste in a year or two (less, if you decide not to pay to have the battery changed for you). The real issue isn't the capabilities of the piece of plastic you unwrap today, but the technical and social infrastructure that accompanies it.
If you want to live in the creative universe where anyone with a cool idea can make it and give it to you to run on your hardware, the iPad isn't for you.
If you want to live in the fair world where you get to keep (or give away) the stuff you buy, the iPad isn't for you.
If you want to write code for a platform where the only thing that determines whether you're going to succeed with it is whether your audience loves it, the iPad isn't for you.
Nazanin Rafsanjani of NPR's On The Media took a look at legislation aimed at curtailing SLAPP lawsuits -- the kind designed to silence critics rather than right wrongs. As we have some experience of this, I got to tell Rafsanjani all about our case for the segment.
Source: Boing Boing | 4 Apr 2010 | 3:12 pm
This post is by Chris Fralic, a managing partner at First Round Capital. Last week Chris gave a presentation at BootStrapperSummit in New York on the “art of the introduction” and we asked him to write a version of that presentation for TechCrunch. First impression matter, and getting the right introduction can make or break a business deal. You may also want to read out post titled Greetings! for more tips on first interactions. You can follow Chris on Twitter at @ChrisFRC
I’ve been a VC for about 4 years now, and I do a lot different things in my job. But I’d have to say that making introductions, asking for them, and being introduced is something I do every single day. In fact, I looked through the 12,403 emails I sent in 2009, and 2,603 or over 20% contained the word “intro” or “introduce” or “introduction.” Along the way I’ve noticed there are some best practices, so I’ve put together a Top Ten list here from what I’ve learned.
Some qualifiers: First, this is for email introductions only, and focused on busy people who live and work in email. Second, it helps to have a personal reputation – it’s not just the words or format in your email, but it’s about who you are and the previous experience others have had with you. In the post below you’ll see I’ve called the person asking for the introduction the Subject, the person you’re trying to reach or making the introduction to is the Target, and the person making the introduction is the Connector. So let’s get started with a practical guide to The Art of the Introduction to help you increase your effectiveness, reduce your inbox load, and have people look forward to responding to your introductions.
1. SUBJECT LINE MATTERS This one is a big one – DO NOT use just “Introduction” or “Intro” alone as email subject line. That’s the equivalent of sending a resume titled “resume.doc” – it says nothing. You should have the names and company names of both people being introduced in the email subject line.
2. WHAT’S IN IT FOR THE TARGET? Ever hear the line about everyone’s favorite radio station? WIFM – What’s In it For Me. WHY should the Target care about this introduction? Put it in the first sentence or paragraph. Another way to look at it – is there any evidence in your email introduction that you know anything about the Target whatsoever?
3. CONTENT MATTERS Are you being specific enough about what you’re asking the Target to do, and are you actually saying what your company does? If you’re looking for a job or career help, did you attach your resume? If you’re introducing your company, did you attach a deck or executive summary or at least a paragraph explaining what you do? Links are not enough – they’re generally useless if the person reading it is on a Blackberry or on an airplane.
4. MAKE IT EASY TO REACH YOU Consider having your email signature (and your reply signature) contain all of your relevant contact information. You want to be one click away from a call or email. Every deck or executive summary should contain your contact information on the first and last slide.
5. MAKE IT EASY TO HELP YOU DON’T just verbally ask someone to make introduction – the follow through rates on those are usually low, and it puts too much work on the Connector. A best practice is to craft an email from the Subject to the Connector that contains EVERYTHING and can be easily forwarded to the Target (from the road a Blackberry, etc.)
6) CREATE FIREWALLS This one needs some explanation and some caveats – if the Connector is really close to both parties or has achieved a certain level of relationship with the Target, it can be fine to introduce both parties directly. But it often makes sense to consider the benefits of using a “Firewall” – the best/easiest example is via LinkedIn where it’s easy and completely up to each party to forward or accept the Introduction. Another alternative to a direct introduction is for the Connector to forward information to the Target to see if they’re interested first.
7. “LEAN FORWARD” ON YOUR RESPONSE When someone engages on a response you can really tell – it makes a difference and gets the ball rolling (e.g. offering some quick insight into the problem or opportunity at hand, offering multiple times/places to meet, etc)
8. CLOSE THE LOOP But don’t create an endless loop – don’t copy everyone on each of the 12 emails it takes to find an open time to talk. Instead…
9. EMBRACE THE BCC Blind Carbon Copy is the most powerful and least used feature in email. One simple BCC lets the Connector know that the introduction has been received and is under way.
10. EVERY INTRODUCTION CAN BE A WIN/WIN Help people out when you can and be honest and helpful even if you can’t.
I hope you find something useful here, and I’d love to hear about the best tips you’ve learned as you practice The Art of the Introduction.
Read more of this story at Slashdot.
Dean spotted that bowdlerization is afoot in the iPad's bookstore's selection of classic literature! This includes obvious candidates such as a certain Joseph Conrad classic.
But ... sperm?
I’ve been watching this for about 40 minutes now (instead of dutifully posting it up like a good blogger). Stuck at home in a post-brunch coma? Here’s 90 minutes of spot-on commentary (and a few too many serial killer asides) on the movie we all wanted to redeem The Phantom Menace but ended up sucking pretty bad. I remember waiting in line to see it in the theater, and being pumped when Yoda was doing his thing, but man — it really is pretty rotten.
They’re all lined up for you to view at Metafilter, where, predictably, there is a debate raging.
FROM APPLETELL - I wasn’t even out of my pajamas this morning when the UPS fellow dropped off my iPad this morning. But before I get started with my day, I thought you all might like to see this baby in the meantime.
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I did a quick exploration of the syncing and sharing features for the iPad and found them slightly confusing but, ultimately, robust. Here are a few issues/findings I think you'll be interested in:
No PDF support - You can drag ePub files over to your iPad and they will appear in the reader. However, you will need to convert all other formats. You can convert almost any format using Calibre, though, so fret not.
iWork, Microsoft Office and email play well together - If you email yourself a Word doc, you can open it in Pages. This is excellent.
And we’re done… the iPad has been jailbroken and can currently run an SSH server. The 3.2 firmware still has a number of security holes which allowed the iPhone Dev-Team to break it using the iPhone 3.1.3 hack.
It hasn’t been officially released, so keep your pants on.
I did a quick exploration of the syncing and sharing features for the iPad and found them slightly confusing but, ultimately, robust. Here are a few issues/findings I think you’ll be interested in:
No PDF support – You can drag ePub files over to your iPad and they will appear in the reader. However, you will need to convert all other formats. You can convert almost any format using Calibre, though, so fret not.
iWork, Microsoft Office and email play well together – If you email yourself a Word doc, you can open it in Pages. This is excellent.
Kindle Reader works great on the iPad – As I said, you only want an ereader and already have a Kindle, you’re not missing much. But if you have used the Kindle store in the past, the new app works wonderfully.
Wireless apps like Bump work – Most of the stuff you can do with the iPod Touch you can do with the iPap.
Desktop document sync is a bit wonky – To get iWork documents onto your iPad you need to “import” them in iTunes. There’s no drag and drop. You can also just email them to yourself.
Screenshot works just like on the iPhone – Hit power and Home to take a quick screenshot. Useful if you want to keep a map or web page but don’t want to worry about Wi-Fi.
Don’t go nuts with the resolution – The iPad can’t support video past 720p. Downconvert HD video with Handbrake
In email
Importing
In Pages
Giz has a great list of tricks as well.
Section: Business News, Web, Websites
A few days ago, Stephen Elop, President of Microsoft’s Business Division, announced some interesting information regarding the future of Office. The Apple iPad is definitely an interesting opportunity for Microsoft to work into some Office products, but at this point in time, they are simply taking a “wait and see” plan of action. While such a plan is never terrible, the iPad becomes vulnerable for other competitors to sell their services to iPad owners. Everyone at Microsoft is tight-lipped about any possible iPad venture, even the folks at the department of Microsoft that works with Apple PCs to develop Office claim they “don’t have anything to share at this time.” In addition, Elop claims they are not worried about Google, because they simply do not see Google entering the business software market.
Office 2010 is set to become available for businesses on May 12, while the consumer version is set to become available in late June. While Google boasts of Cloud computing, and free alternatives to the costly Office, Microsoft claims Office brings in about 90% of the business revenue and remains the largest and most lucrative industry. In addition, six million people have already downloaded the prerelease beta version of Office 2010 and reviews are positive. 80% of the users would recommend Office 2010 to friends, and 90% found the Office 2010 software increased productivity. With numbers for the Office 2010 seem high and positive, it makes sense that Microsoft is not worried by Google at all.
Read [Bloomberg]
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FROM GAMERTELL - Haven’t caught all of the Gamertell news this week? Here’s your chance to catch up on this week’s top 10 articles…
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All Things Digital intern Drake Martinet spent a long cold night in front of the Palo Alto, Calif. Apple (AAPL) store. He filed this dispatch:
What do you do when you’re 17, you’re visiting the United States from Russia, and you’ve created the Internet meme of the moment?
Of course, you spend your Friday night camped out in front of an Apple store.
Chatroulette creator Andrey Ternovskiy is a really big deal right now, but he had to wait in line for his iPad along with the rest of us. It was a long wait, so I got him to spend some of it telling me about changes he has in store for the site, which lets you talk to, gawk at or “next” random strangers.
He’s made a subtle but important tweak already, including some changes to the “reporting people” function, which is designed to cut down on the male genitalia that famously crops up throughout the site.
I had the honor of going on Chatroulette with its creator and the changes seemed to be working, as we were “nexted” by 30-plus people without seeing a single offense. We were greeted by a couple middle fingers, which Ternovskiy said is an accepted greeting on Chatroulette.
Then, Ternovskiy agreed to show me what developments he’ll be releasing next.
First, he showed me something likley to be termed Chessroulette, where a chessboard or another simple game shows up on the screen where users tap out messages. The idea is that they can play instead of type.
“People meet each other and don’t have anything to talk about,” Ternovskiy said. “This is kind of like an ice breaker.”
He also showed me a nearly completed version where instead of seeing a small image of yourself and another small image of your Chatroulette pal, “you open the window and you just have one big picture of your partner.”
One thing that Ternovskiy doesn’t have in the works: An iPad version of the site.
Why not? For starters, the iPad doesn’t come with a video camera. But you could presumably resolve that if you wanted to.
The bigger problem is that Apple’s gadget, famously doesn’t support Adobe’s Flash (ADBE), and that’s the code that makes Chatroulette possible. Ternovskiy said it might be possible to rewrite the site in HTML5, which would fix the problem, but said he didn’t have any plans to do that.
Maybe that will change now that he has one of his own to play with.
Here’s the video, in front of the Apple store in Palo Alto:
Just another friendly heads-up, guys and dolls. Good Old Games, the Web site that sells good, old games (and completely DRM-free), has a bit of a sale going on right now that’s surely worth your time. Fallout for $2.99! Myst for $2.99! And more~!
There’s 10 games on sale as part of the Spring 2010 promotion, and if you were to buy all 10 it would cost $39. And these are 10 good games, not 10 pieces of junk. If you were to calculate the value of something like Myst, which takes like 400 hours to finish, it would just be silly. How long did it take you to beat Modern Warfare 2 or Battlefield: Bad Company 2, six or seven hours? And they’re both $60 each!
Value, folks. It’s all about value. Oh, and the iPad. Obviously.
Read more of this story at Slashdot.
With iPad app frenzy in full force, the App Store is growing by the minute as iPad apps are being approved. Early this morning, Mobile ad exchange Mobclix tallied the number of apps and the breakdown between paid and free apps in the store. According to Mobclix, there are a total of 3,122 iPad apps in the store (keep in mind, these numbers could have changed slightly in the past few hours). As of Thursday evening, there were 2300 iPad apps available for download.
Currently, 80 percent of iPad apps in the store are paid apps, coming in at 2523 apps total. Only 599 of the apps are free, representing 20 percent of all apps. In terms of overall app numbers, games still rule; 942 of the 3,000 plus apps are games, with 804 of these apps being paid apps and 138 being free. Unsurprisingly, most of the 154 book apps available for the iPad are paid apps. Mobclix says the average price of apps is $4.99; and it will run you $12,572.78 to buy all the apps in the store.
While iPad apps may not be easy on your wallet, Apple’s iPhone app store’s breakdown of free vs. paid apps are similar. As of mid-February, when the App Store included 150,000 plus iPhone apps, 75 percent were paid applications.
Of course, the actual prices of paid apps should go down, if iPad apps follow the same trends as paid iPhone apps. And perhaps companies will ditch their pricey app strategy if users tend not to buy pricey paid apps. Time Magazine’s iPad app costs $4.99 per issue with the Wall Street Journal’s iPad subscription coming in at $17.29 per month.
Read more of this story at Slashdot.
Photo: Stéfan Le Dû
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FROM APPLETELL - Now that I’ve had my (or, more accurately, my wife’s) iPad for a while, I’ve been able to dig a bit deeper into its functionality. It’s mostly been great, but there has been a problem.
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Section: Gadgets / Other, ebooks, Lifestyle, Web, Downloads
Just yesterday, the New York Times announced a price increase of their Times app for the Kindle from $13.99 a month to $19.99. This 43% increase in price will be felt heavily by possible Kindle subscribers as they will now have to pay a seven dollar higher price than their friends who got the app a week ago.
As the iPad has just become available, the New York Times probably realizes iPad owners would still want a subscription and will probably be willing to pay the higher price. Since the Wall Street Journal announced their pricing of $17.29, it makes sense for the New York Times to also increase their price. In addition, Amazon has also released their Kindle app for the iPad in efforts to compete with the iBook service.
Those who already have a subscription to the New York Times on the Kindle will continue to only pay $13.99 a month for the next six months. However, after the six months are up, you will be required to pay whatever the current subscription price may be. It is almost obscene how much news apps are costing for the Kindle and iPad. Will you be purchasing the New York Times app for the Kindle or iPad?
Read [TechCrunch]
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FROM APPLETELL - It’s April 3rd 2010. Do you know where your iPad is? I do. It’s right here, and I thought I’d do an unboxing for you, just in case you missed out on the fun today.
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Ben Patterson - The UPS guy handed me my new iPad just a few hours ago, and yes--the jumbo-sized screen is as glorious as they say, and I was shocked by how good HD videos looked. But I was also surprised by how heavy the iPad feels, and if you were hoping to read e-books all day under the clear, bright blue sky, well...bad news, folks. These and more iPad surprises, coming right up.
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When 
We’ve been digging deeper on the 
Just 
February 2009, and mid-way through the 
Andreessen says there are very few “main event” startups, pointing to a study that says Silicon Valley creates an average of fifteen startups a year that eventually get to $100 million/year in revenue. Those are the startups venture capitalists are aiming for, and valuation is secondary to just getting in the deal. Those deals tend to get bid way, way up.
