FSF Response To Steve Jobs's Letter

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HTC's Incredible addition to the Android phone market - Washington Post

Washington Post

HTC's Incredible addition to the Android phone market Washington Post It's an exciting time to shop for a new smartphone. Which is to say, it's a confusing and maybe frightening time to buy a smartphone. Consider the sleek Droid device, running Google's Android software, that Verizon Wireless's site touts ... Review: HTC Droid 'Incredible' A WinnerInformationWeek HTC proves credible about Incredible phonePress of Atlantic City Latest Droid phone not quite incredible but closeMilwaukee Journal Sentinel PhoneNews.com -PC Magazine -CNET all 320 news articles »

Five apps to download immediately for your new 3G-enabled iPad (Appolicious)

“The Lorax” e-book iPhone app a delight for readers of all ages (Appolicious)

The Fizz-Giz: Carbonate on the fly

You’re a busy man. A man on the go. You have no time for Big Soda telling you what you can and cannot carbonate. As Homey once said, you don’t play that.

So what is a modern carbonation lover to do? You could be tethered to your countertop with the Penguin Soda Maker or you can be free with the Fizz-Giz. This thing is basically a little CO2 gun that uses those tiny CO2 capsules you’ve probably seen in stores (I’ve actually never seen then, but maybe you have.) Anyway, as the above video shows, you put the special cap on a bottle of non-fizzy stuff and shoot gas through. A few squirts and you’re off to the races.

Obviously this is a portable kit. Perhaps you can keep it at work or in your purse for the creation of club soda tableside, thereby avoiding the expense of purchasing soft drinks – or hard – on the go. I’d also like to carbonate stuff like whiskey and gravy, just to see if it’s possible.

The kit costs $29.95 and includes a clever little CO2 delivery system and a few caps fitted with airtight rubber gaskets. You plug the delivery popper into the hole and shoot. While the website lacks a bit of panache, I think the creator’s dedication to the process of creating fizzy drinks makes it worth a second look.

Going It Alone, Part III: Inside the Factory Walls

Adam Hocherman, 34, is an entrepreneur and founder of the consumer electronics company American Innovative in Boston, MA. Adam founded the company in 2003 with the help of the US Government’s SBA loan program and is currently the 100% owner. He holds a BS in Mechanical Engineering and an MBA, both from Cornell University. Adam’s writings can be found on his blog at DesignTheatre.net and through his Twitter feed. He welcomes your comments. Read more about sourcing in China here.

Part III of the Going It Alone series will answer the question: What is a factory and how can I tell one from another?  I will answer the question from a consumer electronics perspective and I will assume an audience that has little or no prior knowledge of manufacturing.  The purpose of this article will be to try to introduce the burgeoning entrepreneur to the basic components of electronics manufacturing in China.

I will do this in the context of manufacturing the simple electronic product shown below – a digital kitchen timer that we call the Klip!
Read more…

Going It Alone, Part III: Inside the Factory Walls

Adam Hocherman, 34, is an entrepreneur and founder of the consumer electronics company American Innovative in Boston, MA. Adam founded the company in 2003 with the help of the US Government’s SBA loan program and is currently the 100% owner. He holds a BS in Mechanical Engineering and an MBA, both from Cornell University. Adam’s writings can be found on his blog at DesignTheatre.net and through his Twitter feed. He welcomes your comments. Read more about sourcing in China here.

Part III of the Going It Alone series will answer the question: What is a factory and how can I tell one from another?  I will answer the question from a consumer electronics perspective and I will assume an audience that has little or no prior knowledge of manufacturing.  The purpose of this article will be to try to introduce the burgeoning entrepreneur to the basic components of electronics manufacturing in China.

I will do this in the context of manufacturing the simple electronic product shown below – a digital kitchen timer that we call the Klip!  This is an item that we sell at The Container Store chain and at gourmet stores across the United States.  I chose this product because, while relatively simple, it still encompasses all of the major facets (noted in the white boxes) of manufacturing a mass-produced electronic item of greater complexity.  I’ll start with a little background, then I’ll give a very basic overview of each manufacturing sub-process and I’ll conclude with a summary that will serve to make your first visit to a third-party manufacturing facility more effective and productive.  Armed with the knowledge from this post you should be able to walk into an Asian plant for the first time and have the basic working knowledge that you need to converse intelligently about the creation of your item.

Although the scope of my company’s products is fairly narrow, my personal background in manufacturing is more broad.  I have visited upwards of 50 plants both here in the United States and in China which include facilities as diverse as the GE Locomotive factory in Erie, PA to the Dunlop Tire plant in Buffalo, NY to the massive VTech Electronics factory in Asia.  I am knowledgeable of lean manufacturing techniques, Poka-Yoke and Kaizan events just to name a few.  I mention these subjects only to give you a taste of how deep the topic of manufacturing can get.  As someone who is planning to contract with a third-party rather than build a factory of your own, these subjects are more academic in nature than you need to know about for now.

Origins of a Factory

The Exterior of a Plant. While Not Gorgeous to Look At, This Is One of AI’s Best Partners

One of things that I like about working with the factories in China is that big or small, I am typically interfacing directly with the owner and director of the facility.  I like these people because they are, like I am, entrepreneurs.  I respect these people because as difficult as it is to start and run a company in a country that encourages and embraces capitalistic activities – try doing it in a country like China.  Many a long car-ride I have spent trading war stories with these factory owners – one entrepreneur to another.  I know that many of you who read my first two posts draw your line between America and China, but I draw it between the entrepreneurs and the corporations.  We live in a global economy.  These individuals work as hard as anyone I’ve ever met, put people to work and make a life for their employees and their families.  To me, that is as honorable a pursuit in China as it is in this country.  More on this topic at a later date – for purposes of this article I plan to focus on the mechanics and leave further discussion of the culture for another post.

Assembly
Take a moment to put modern-day electronics in perspective.  If you’re under 20 years old, you may feel like inexpensive electronic gadgetry has always been as ubiquitous as it is today.  However, I’m 34 and I still remember the mechanical alarm clock that my parents had which displayed digital-like numerals on a series of “leaves” which “flipped” by gravity, as a mechanical gear-train churned away to keep the time.  This product predated the advent of the inexpensive, mass-produced integrated circuit (IC) and related display technologies (7-segment LEDs).
Of the factories that American Innovative works with, the oldest ones are a mere 25-30 years old and the youngest one is no older than American Innovative itself – about 7.
Admittedly, the young factory is not as sophisticated as the older factories but, much like the older factories, it began primarily as an assembly house.  Over time this factory has (and will continue) to acquire machines and technology that will allow them to bring more and more functions in-house, that are currently performed outside.  Perhaps other functions will never be brought in-house.  While we tend to view in-house injection molding (see below) as a sign of a more mature facility, we work with at least one very high-quality facility that continues to outsource this, presumably by design.

Assembly Line – Notice the instructions behind each worker which outline the detail of that step.

Assembly is what most of you probably think of as the heart of the factory, and it is.  All related components have either been acquired from outside sources or manufactured elsewhere in the facility and they come together in long rows of moving conveyor belts and – yes – young, predominantly female, wage-workers which perform a solitary function on the line (more on who these people are in a future post).

The lines are setup such that each worker performs a very specific task, which is carefully planned and designed in advance.  The details of that tasks are outlined on a sheet of paper which hangs alongside the station.  More recently I’ve seen a more sophisticated setup in which flat screen monitors replace the papers that you observe in the photo here.

A single assembly line step might be to use an electric, torque-limiting screwdriver to secure a PCB (Printed Circuit Board) to a plastic, injection molded base.  Another worker might then solder two wire leads to a speaker and a third might be an in-line QC (Quality Control) person which uses a harness to connect power to the partially-built product and test the speaker.

SMT PCB Manufacture
So where does said PCB come from?  Printed Circuit Boards are obviously the lifeblood of any electronic product and, not surprisingly, the technology used to create them has come a long, long way.  There are two common types of PCB – through-hole and SMT.  If you’ve ever assembled a circuit board from a kit using a soldering iron then you’re familiar with through-hole technology.  Wire leads from individual components are hand-fed into the PCB (etched previously).  The leads are then soldered and snipped.  Some components are still done in exactly this manner today but more recently newer, less manual-intensive, technology has replaced this process.  SMT stands for Surface-Mount Technology.

American Innovative Klip! Timer PCB

Look closely at the photo above.  This is the PCB that is the core of Americ
an Innovative’s Klip! kitchen timer.  The board above is an example of an SMT PCB.  On the far right you see a shiny metal cylinder which contains the quartz crystal responsible for running the clock.  This is the lone through-hole component on this board.  Next to that you can see two white wire leads which run to the speaker.  There are a couple of wire jumpers and the battery contacts on the left but other than that the remaining components are surface-mount technology.  The small, rectangular boxes are various resistors, transistors or diodes which comprise the circuit.

SMT Machine – Notice that many small PCBs are being assembled all at once. They are later separated.

These special SMT components are placed on the PCB using a machine which literally grabs the components one at a time and places them on the board using a guided positioning system or in some older machines I’ve seen (like the one picture at right) by moving the PCB itself around, with the feed mechanism stationary.  As an aside, I’ve even been to a factory that makes these machines – there happens to be one in upstate New York.  If you ever wanted to know what the machine is that makes the machines that make the machines?  Well … it’s us.

There are countless videos on YouTube that will allow you to see an SMT machine in action.  Here’s one that I located randomly.  Next the boards are run through a machine called a wave solderer that essentially solders every lead all at once, thereby replacing the extensive manual labor that used to go into the creation of a similar board made using through-hole technology.  The SMT boards are smaller and more reliable.

IC Bonding

IC Bonding Machine in Action – The Finished Item Will Be a Walkie-Talkie

Looking at the photo of the PCB again, you’ll notice that I haven’t mentioned anything about what that ubiquitous little black blob is.  That is a blob of epoxy.  Beneath the epoxy is the board’s MCU (Micro Controller Unit).  The MCU is “stitched” to the board in a process that looks not unlike sewing with a sewing machine.  A worker aligns the IC bonding machine with the receiving area of the PCB using a high-power digital magnifier and then the rest of the process is completely automated.  Finally a blob of epoxy covers the delicate MCU pins to prevent damage and deterioration.

Look for the second half of Adam Hocherman’s Going it Alone, Part III tomorrow.

Delivering Happiness: A Movement

Editor’s Note: The following guest post was written by Cyan Banister, the founder and CEO of Zivity, a venture-funded adult content site that invites users to interact with models and photographers. Banister is also an active angel investor.

In just over a month, my friend (and Zappos CEO) Tony Hsieh will be launching his new book, Delivering Happiness: A Path to Profits, Passion, and Purpose (you can pre-order it here). Reading a preview copy of the book led me to think back about the first time I met Tony, and what an impression it made on me.

You meet a lot of people in your life. Think about it for a moment. How many people do you think you’ve met? Count up all of the social events, work, airplanes, school and checkout counters. Out of all of those people, think about who you really remember. Think about those people and then pick out the most memorable five people of all and trace back the steps to where you first met.

We sometimes forget those moments until prompted, but I truly feel those are some of the most precious moments in our lives. They are like birthdays. Tiny sparks of joy and connection that sometimes you get the immediate hunch will last a lifetime. That’s how I felt when I met Tony Hsieh. I’ll never forget it and I’m going to guess I’m not alone.

Like meeting Tony, I’ll never forget my first Zappos experience. I was working at IronPort and a coworker liked my shoes and asked me if I ordered them from Zappos. I asked what Zappos was and he said proudly, “Only the greatest shoe store online. You can order as many shoes as you like and they’ll send them overnight. You try them on and send back the ones you don’t like. No questions asked.” This sounded too good to be true. It wasn’t. I now own at least 15 pairs of shoes from Zappos and even though I had the option, I never sent anything back.

So, on one of my trips to Defcon, I decided it was time to put on a pair of those shoes and take a tour of Zappos. I had left IronPort, which had an amazing culture, but it wasn’t a consumer company. It was an enterprise company hellbent on winning and never sleeping. There were cultural aspects of IronPort I knew I wanted to take with me, but I knew I needed to learn more. I had heard about Tony and Alfred and I hoped I’d like them, because I hoped we could be friends and that we could learn from each other.

I arrived at Zappos and received my first smile. The front desk is a bit of a celebration. There’s a popcorn machine, library, seating area, Zappos gear, music and just a lot going on. I arranged my tour with Tony directly and I expected him to outsource that to someone else in the company, but he came out to show me around personally. He picked up a Zappos themed tour flag that he carried the rest of the journey.

Tony was curious about my background and when he found out that I ran worldwide support for IronPort, he immediately took me to meet all of his support managers and he let me ask them any question I wanted. We talked openly and I was floored. In the 30 minutes we spent together, I learned so much about how Zappos delivered amazing service. I toured HR, engineering, marketing, purchasing, the break room, the nap room — everything.

I asked Tony, “How do you hire so many happy people? How do you hire so many smiling people?” and he responded, “I only hire people who smile.”

After the tour was over, Tony asked me about my favorite books and then he picked up a Zappos bag and put two books inside, the Zappos culture book and Made to Stick – why some ideas survive and others die. He told me those were his favorite books.

Then, the moment I’ll never forget happened. He took everything out of my hands and he and Alfred Lin walked me to my car carrying it. They put it in the car and took me to lunch. The CEO and COO of Zappos carried my bag. The CEO and COO of Zappos carried my bag! I repeated it over and over in my head.

To be honest, I wasn’t sure if I wanted to start Zivity anymore. Part of me really wanted to work at Zappos. Part of me really wanted to be part of the team that expanded that culture from 200 to 1000 employees. However, sadly, I didn’t live in Las Vegas and couldn’t. I settled for a lifelong friendship with Tony and Alfred. Not a bad deal.

After the Amazon acquisition of Zappos, I wondered what Tony would do next. A lot of CEOs say they’ll stick around and I believed he would, but I figured he had other fun things up his sleeve. When I found out it was a book, I was excited, but I wasn’t sure I’d have a lot to learn from it after two tours (I went back again!) and years of getting to know him and Zappos.

I was wrong. What I didn’t know about Zappos was what I didn’t know about Tony. This book is raw and it is a slice of who Tony is and why Zappos is. You learn about little Tony and his family. You follow him from childhood to modern day Tony and you learn about worm farms, mail-order businesses, pizza, quitting jobs, poker, raves, hikes up mountains, epiphanies and you get a strong sense of why Tony joined Zappos.

There’s a great analogy in the book about his worm farm and his first fortune he made from selling Link Exchange to Microsoft. He bet both “farms” and on one he lost his worms and the other was valued at over 1 billion dollars.

What I also didn’t realize about Zappos was how many times it almost died. Many people see success and they just focus on that, but they don’t always realize the hard work that goes into it. Zappos took over 10 years to get to where it is today and almost went out of business no less than 5 times along the way. Following along with every pitfall in the book is like watching an Indiana Jones movie. You know everything is going to turn out great, but you never know where there’s going to be snakes.

What makes Zappos great are its employees and the culture they created. You hear a lot of people talk about how important employees are and how they are their core asset, but I’ve never seen them live it like Zappos. It is inspiring and infectious, but it didn’t come right away. As a matter of fact, it was quite an evolution. Their culture was a constant iteration and I think they’ve found something they want to stick with for a while. Their brand promise has gone through many changes:

1999 – Largest Selection of Shoes
2003 – Customer Service
2005 – Culture and Core Values as Our Platform
2007 – Personal Emotional Connection
2009 – Delivering Happiness

The Zappos boxes used to say “Delivering Service” but now they all say “Delivering Happiness”, because as you’ll see in the book from customer testimonials, their culture bleeds over into each and every customer interaction and it is their true competitive advantage. People love Zappos and Zappos makes them happy. Every box is a unit of happiness. The experience from beginning to end is how each and every experience should be or is how you want it to be when you ride a plane, purchase a ticket, call your cellphone company, order food, etc.

In the beginning of this post, I asked you to think about five memorable people. Now I want you to think about every service you’ve ever interacted with. I want you to think about five that were really memorable and made you happy. If you have a moment, share those stories in the comments. If you don’t have a story, share five services you wish could be improved.

The book is a call to a higher cause in businesses. To align your passions, profits and purpose. To discover what happiness truly is and to make products, work, life and everything you touch something to remember forever.

When I started Zivity, I tried to build a dollhouse. A perfect replica of what I knew in the past. I applied what I thought I learned from Zappos and I failed. We ended up over hiring and letting people go. Reading this book helped me to finally forgive those mistakes, because we figured it out before it was too late and we still have time to get it right.

What I didn’t realize until I read the book was that my company wasn’t completely defined by our employees and customers, but also by our 1500 contractors (models and photographers). I focused all of my efforts in the wrong area. I worked hard on trying to build a culture internally and a community externally.

Inspired by Delivering Happiness the Book, we’re putting together our own culture book. These will be raw testimonials, unedited of what Zivity means to them. Whenever anyone asks me again what Zivity is, I’ll tell them what I think it is and then hand them the book (which may start out as a pamphlet, who knows). I want Zivity to be truly transparent and I want to be able to always know who we are and what we stand for. You can have a community, but is harder to have a strong culture. Our passion, profits and purpose are all aligned, but our culture was not.

If you get a chance, I hope you can read the book and given this blog is read by entrepreneurs (new, experienced or hopefuls), technologists, employees of services and web enthusiasts, I hope that you’ll join the higher cause as well to create amazing varieties of diverse cultures and lasting services that outlast you.

The Data-Driven Life

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iFixit Tears Down The iPad 3G

Desperate to see what’s under the smooth exterior of your new iPad 3G but don’t want to crack it open and void the warranty? Fear not, friend. iFixit has done the dirty work (very cleanly, I might add) and taken the iPod touch jumbo edition to pieces. There aren’t a lot of surprises, but hey, it’s Saturday afternoon and you want to see the guts of an expensive gadget. Get another cup of coffee.

Continue reading…

iPad 3G gets torn down

Desperate to see what’s under the smooth exterior of your new iPad 3G but don’t want to crack it open and void the warranty? Fear not, friend. iFixit has done the dirty work (very cleanly, I might add) and taken the iPod touch jumbo edition to pieces. There aren’t a lot of surprises, but hey, it’s Saturday afternoon and you want to see the guts of an expensive gadget. Get another cup of coffee.

The internals really are very similar to the vanilla iPad’s — the main difference is the communications board, sporting all the fun 3G elements and the A-GPS module. The chips and parts are listed in the teardown if you’re thinking of tinkering. Personally, I wonder whether a modified Wi-Fi antenna might be a worthwhile modification.

And don’t forget that iFixit now has a whole other reason for being. Contribute if you can.

Hot Aisle Or Cold Aisle For Containment?

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New And Old Observations Bolster Asteroid Worries

Washington Times considering sale - report

Russian resupply ship docks at space station with sweets

James Webb Telescope Passes Critical Tests

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iPad 3G Teardown: An Overview (PC World)

Week in Apple: Steve on Flash, devs react to WWDC, and more - Ars Technica

ABC News

Week in Apple: Steve on Flash, devs react to WWDC, and more Ars Technica Dates and topics for WWDC have finally been announced, and the developer community is torn on how to feel about it. The iPad Camera Connection Kit can do more than expected, Apple confirmed its ... Adobe to respond to Apple by giving employees Android phones with FlashApple Insider Free Android phones coming to Adobe employeesCNET In Hindsight: iPhone, Android or Palm? Plus: Apple's Jobs vs. AdobeSan Jose Mercury News msnbc.com -The Money Times -Register all 1,258 news articles »

Free apps roundup for April 30th, 2010

FROM APPLETELL - This week was a bit quiet, but there’s a new app from the guy who made Tweetie, and we see some other great stuff too. Check it out.
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Full Story » | Written by NEWS for Gadgetell. | Comment on this Article »

Courier Tablet Sidelined, Says Microsoft - The Epoch Times

Sydney Morning Herald

Courier Tablet Sidelined, Says Microsoft The Epoch Times Microsoft founder Bill Gates at a conference at the Times Center in New York City on Wednesday July 23, 2009. On April 30, Microsoft announced that Courier, a tablet project, would not be going ahead at this time. ... Microsoft confirms, kills Courier in one fell swoop Top 3 HeadlinesDaily Break News Microsoft Reportedly Cancels Courier Tablet PrototypePC World Microsoft Tablet Project ShelvedWall Street Journal msnbc.com -BusinessWeek -Apple Insider all 283 news articles »

Facebook, The App Store, And The Sound Of Inevitability

“That is the sound of inevitability…“

I’m reminded of this quote from The Matrix as I read headline after headline around the blogosphere about how Facebook and Apple and their (at least relatively) closed ecosystems are going to destroy the fabric of the web as we know it. Me? I’m not worried in the slightest bit. Why? Because it occurs to me that what’s going on now is just a part of a cycle. A necessary cycle. Yes, the web (by which I mean the entire Internet), it seems to me, is cyclical.

Just as the United States goes through periods where conservatives being in power gives way to liberals being in power, the web is currently transitioning from open systems dominating to closed systems taking over. Nowhere is this more evident than with Apple’s App Store, and Facebook. The masses, for whatever reason (and there are reasons, more on that later), are embracing these restricted platforms. And obviously, it has some people scared shitless.

And while it’s good for some people to worry in order to keep the soon-to-be ruling powers in check, I’m certain that one day in a few years (or maybe less), we’ll be back to the so-called “open” web again. It has happened before. You don’t even have to go back that far to find it.

In the early 1990s there was no World Wide Web. Well, there was, but no one you know used it because there was no widely-used web browser. Instead, the Internet mainly existed as things such as Usenet, Gopher, and FTP. The system was open. Sure, there was some barriers to entry (such as a modem), but the real barrier to entry was that basically no one knew what “online” was, and even fewer knew how to get there.

Then the companies Prodigy, CompuServe, GEnie, and America Online came along. In 1991, all of these services worked on DOS (Microsoft’s operating system before Windows), and offered a relatively easy way to get online. More importantly, it gave them something to do there, such as read structured news in article form. But, in return for the ease-of-use, each of these services had access fees. This was a closing of the Internet — but people didn’t care. These services grew quickly.

None grew faster than AOL. A key aspect to their service was a nice user interface that anyone could understand (CompuServe, by comparison, was oriented more towards the tech community). They also put an emphasis on being able to communicate with other AOL members (but only other AOL members) through chat rooms. Usage quickly exploded. Again, a closed system.

The fact of the matter is that closed systems are useful in certain circumstances. One key one is mainstream appeal. AOL was appealing to people because it was easy to understand and seemed (relatively) safe. People started using Facebook because it was easy to understand and seemed (relatively) safe. People are now using the App Store because it is easy to understand and seems (relatively) safe. You get the picture.

This is the type of system needed to take mainstream adoption to the highest levels. (Notice I only said “take” not necessarily keep them there.)

Closed systems can also adapt and change faster than open systems. To return to politics for a second. It’s a bit like how a government under a King is more efficient that one under a Republic. Governing by committee is slow, a King can rule on something and it’s done. But yes, a King can also make mistakes faster — there are pluses and minuses.

This ties into what Joe Hewitt, the famed web/iPhone developer (now with Facebook), said yesterday in a long rant on Twitter against the current state of web development. “I want desperately to be a web developer again, but if I have to wait until 2020 for browsers to do what Cocoa can do in 2010, I won’t wait,” Hewitt said. His point is that the state of web languages as presided over by the W3C (the Republic) are moving too slow. Cocoa, a framework presided over by Apple (the King) is a good 10 years ahead of it.

Maybe Hewitt’s right, maybe he’s wrong, or maybe he’s just exaggerating. It doesn’t matter. The fact of the matter is that something will come along and force these closed systems open again — or they will perish.

Speaking of perishing, let’s go back to AOL. By the mid-1990s, it was dominating. Once they switched to a flat monthly fee (instead of an hourly fee — yes, they had that in place for a long time and people still used it) usage soared into the tens of millions. This may not seem like a lot when you consider that Facebook is approaching 500 million users, but this was a much different time. Many people signing up for AOL were using the Internet for the first time ever. By 2000, AOL was so powerful and had so much money thanks to its winning (again, closed) model that it actually bought Time Warner for $164 billion. Then everything started falling apart.

A few years earlier, AOL added a feature that would be its eventual downfall, the web browser. Yes, at one point in the 90s, a lot of people were browsing the web from within AOL’s walled-garden. But the web was open, and AOL didn’t block you from going anywhere on it. Content on the web started growing so quickly, and got so diverse, that people started to question if they actually needed AOL at all. When the telephone and cable companies started offering always-on access to the Internet that people could get to directly through a web browser (cutting off AOL), the only reason a lot of people still kept the service was for their AOL email address.

This was no longer a sustainable model. AOL’s profits started diving as their dial-up access business did. The open web had won — and in part because AOL gave it a window to operate. But without AOL (or some company like it) you could argue that people would have been slower to adopt the Internet, and the web as we know it today would have been slower to evolve.

Does any of that sound familiar? Think about the iPhone. It’s a walled-garden (though much more open than AOL was as third-party developers can work within it, provided they follow the rules), but it too has an open window to the outside: the web. The Safari web browser is the iPhone’s peephole. And Apple even plays that up at times. If people criticize them for now allowing certain apps, they note that anyone can build apps using HTML5 that will work on Safari. Apple doesn’t regulate those at all.

As Hewitt notes, HTML5 is not mature enough yet to produce apps that are on par with native apps. But some are getting fairly impressive. It could well be that in a few years, HTML5 leads to the fall of the App Store model as we know. I’m not saying the model will crash and burn as AOL’s did — Apple may adapt and take down their walls (or do something else) before that happens. But I do believe HTML5 (or some other technology we’re not even thinking about right now) will lead to an opening back up of the system.

Facebook is a slightly different matter. Whereas they were a fairly closed system at first, they’ve been opening up more in recent years. First we got the Facebook Platform, which allowed third-party developers to play within Facebook’s walls. Then we got Facebook Connect, which allowed other sites to play within Facebook’s walls. And now we have the Open Graph, which seem to extend Facebook’s walls to the broader web (at least those sites that adopt it). Yes, the system is still closed in that Facebook still has control of much of the data flowing in and out, but there are parts of it that are open too.

I happen to think that Facebook may have found the right mixture of open and closed with the Open Graph. It’s open enough that they can continue to extend their reach beyond their already incredible (nearly) 500 million members. And yet it’s closed enough that some semblance of order is maintained and people (at least for now) will keep using it.

Thanks in part to their closed roots where a system of trust was built, Facebook was able to establish and grow the ultimate social graph. Like AOL’s mail and chat systems before it, this is a form of lock-in for users. AOL failed because it was too slow to open up their system and realize that they already had hooks in place to keep users from leaving. Facebook doesn’t appear to be making the same mistake. They already won the social networking wars, so now they can afford to open up and go after the larger web. And Google.

So while everyone fears what the Facebook-ification of the web will mean, I’d argue that the only way Facebook can continue to grow and keep their users is if they continue to open up. At some point, I’d bet that it won’t be in their best interest from a business perspective to do that, and that’s when they may start to decline. But there’s a wild-card. If the company can figure out a Google AdSense-type way to make money while continuing the march towards open, they may be able to hold on.

In both of these “closed” examples, Facebook and the App Store, they key to longevity is a movement towards open. If either Facebook or Apple resist that, they’ll become AOL. Something will come along and shove them out of way. It has happened before. It will happen again. And it will keep happening. It’s inevitable.

Facebook's "Evil Interfaces"

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General Growth board to vote on bids this weekend-source

Animated panorama of a stadium implosion -- from the inside!

Mack sez, "This is easily the single coolest video you will watch all month: Immersive Media captured the controlled-implosion death of the defunct Texas Stadium on video that can be viewed as a full 720-degree Quicktime VR. Spin around as the charges go off and the roof collapses around you. Giddy fun."

Stadium implosion video/QTVR (Thanks, Mack!)

Dogpatch Labs Unveils New Brood

Dogpatch Labs, the self-described “frathouse for geeks” has revealed the new class of start-ups that will inhabit its San Francisco location for the next six months. Starting this Saturday, the residents will have access to free office space, internet, coffee, lunch and other perks like visiting advisers, conferences and workshops. The program, backed by Polaris Venture Partners, features a mix of new and former residents, some of which are pretty notable, including Formspring, Burbn, JibJab, StickyBits, and Animoto. Full list with descriptions (Dogpatch Labs’ descriptions are in italics) below:

New San Francisco Residents:

TaskRabbit (formerly runmyerrand.com)
Helps individuals and small businesses in a community outsource their tasks and deliveries, leveraging the latest technology and the social networking paradigm.
According to the site, you can sign up for free or just post a task. You put a price tag on the task and a runner will select the job (average response time is 30 minutes). When the task is complete you pay and then score the runner based on his or her performance. Most tasks will pay $10 to $15, but runners can make counteroffers or bid on the task.

Wild Pockets
Is an end to end solution that supports creators throughout the life cycle of 3D game development.
Currently in open beta, Wild Pockets was spun off from the Carnegie Mellon University’s Entertainment Technology Center (it was originally named Sim Ops Studio). The service, which is free, describes itself as an “easier way to make 3D games and media for the web-browser.” Wild Pockets features a browser-based 3D game engine, file hosting, and a library of game assets.

AdCru
Is a pay-per-follower ad network for Twitter founded in September 2009.
Calling itself a “self-service” online marketplace, AdCru brings advertisers and developers together and helps advertisers target users based on keywords or location. Developers can integrate AdCru on their site through a javascript widget and revenues are split with AdCru.

Burbn
Is a new way to communicate + share in the real world.
Still in stealth mode, Burbn is a location-based web app that uses HTML5. Founded by former Google employee, Kevin Systrom, the company received a $550,000 round of seed funding in March from Andreessen Horowitz and Baseline Ventures. See previous coverage.

Recurly
Makes subscription billing easy for developers and organizations of all sizes
Recurly tries to help other companies simplify the billing process for subscription based payment systems. The company recently expanded international support and introduced a tiered fee structure to make their pricing model more flexible. Recurly recently received an undisclosed amount of angel funding from investor Dave McClure. See previous coverage.

FanPop
Is a network of user-generated fan clubs for different topics of interest created and maintained by the community of fans.
FanPop, founded in 2006, allows users to share thoughts, video, photos with other fans. There’s a wide variety of fan clubs on the site but many of the most popular topics are centered on music and entertainment. See previous coverage.

JibJab
Headquartered in Santa Monica and founded by Gregg and Evan Spiridellis, and backed by Polaris, JibJab is a leading e-Card business.
The company behind many of the web’s more humorous customizable videos, like ElfYourself. The site has also made some interesting partnerships with the likes of Weird Al and Soul Train. JibJab has received a total of $16.9 million in funding over three rounds. See previous coverage.

StickyBits
Brings the physical and digital worlds together with barcode stickers which trigger audio, video, photo, and text messages when scanned.
Stickybits, which has $300,000 in funding from Polaris, was founded by Billy Chasen, the original programmer of Chartbeat, and Seth Goldstein, founder of SocialMedia. It is a mobile app that lets you scan a barcode and attach a message, video, photo or voice note to that code. The app itself is free, and you can use any barcode, but you can also purchase barcode stickers from Stickybits (a pack of 20 is $10). See previous coverage.

Animoto
Generates custom, professional-looking slideshows from user-uploaded music and photos. Their “patent-pending Cinematic Artificial Intelligence technology and high-end motion design” drives the web app.
Using a freemium model, Animoto lets users submit photos and music to creates sleek slideshows. Rivals include Slide and RockYou. The company, which turned cash flow positive in 2009, has so far raised $5 million in funding. See previous coverage.

LearnBoost
Is an education platform for secondary schools.
LearnBoost provides web-based software for students, parents, teachers and admins of grades K-12. For example, there are tools for real time collaboration, online gradebooks for teachers and parents can quickly access grades and track their child’s performance across classes and years.

Millenial Media
Delivers the largest reach – 83% of the US mobile audience – through the largest mobile advertising network in the US.
With access to a large mobile media audience in the US, Millenial Media works with advertisers trying to reach mobile consumers and publishers trying to maximize ad revenues. The company recently released an iPad specific SDK. Founded in Baltimore, Millennial has enjoyed robust growth, acquiring TapMetrics in February and raising $37.3 million since its 2006 launch.
See previous coverage.

Current Residents:

Formspring
Ask questions, give answers and learn more about your friends.
Formspring tries to simplify the creation, management and sharing of online data and forms. One of the company’s more popular services, Formspring.me, helps users create quick online Q&As. It’s a very simple process: you invite people to ask questions which you can then answer. People can post questions anonymously or identify themselves, and you can pick and choose which questions you want to answer.
See previous coverage.

Hollrr
Want to help your friends discover a great new product? A quick Hollrr is the easiest way to let them know what deserves a shout out.
Hollrr combines a social network and user-based product reviews. The company, which was founded by former Microsoft employee David Hegarty, merges social recommendation and game mechanics (Hollrr features a badge system). See previous coverage.

FanPulse
Welcomes you to your world of sports. FanPulse is a new sports-service that lets you easily follow the sports you love and talk about them with your real friends.
FanPulse, founded in 2009, includes features like custom feeds, game check-ins and personalized scoreboards.

Trazzler
Helps you answer one question, “Where should I go?” by recommending trips unique to your location and Travel Personality.
Trazzler facilitates the trip planning process, helping users discover interesting trips based on their preferences and location. The company, which was founded in 2008, has raised a total of $1.15 million.

Mr. Tweet
Looks through your extended network to help you find effective relationships and information most relevant to yourself.
Mr.Tweet, founded in 2008, combs your Twitter stream and extended network and helps you identify the key influencers that you should be following. The company has made 12 million new connections since its launch.

Egghaus
Is an interactive agency. We help our clients create and deploy engaging branded experiences on every consumer platform.
The social marketing firm was founded by Rob Abbott (eBay, Ribbit) in 2008. Clients have included Condé Nast, Macy’s, Cisco and eBay.

startupSQUARE
Is a marketplace where entrepreneurs can meet one another and brainstorm their next big business idea.
The mission of StartupSquare is to provide a support service for startups and entrepreneurs. Its a place where people can find co-founders, collaborate on ideas and access tools to help their startup get going and find funding.

Formative Labs
Working on ideas that solve problems and change consumer behaviors.
This company is still in stealth mode but intersects with the green living market.

Twylah
Personal assistant on Twitter.
This company is still in stealth mode and there is no available homepage yet.

Thumbgear
This company is still in stealth mode but focuses on mobile gaming.

Watermarks everywhere

Blurring Lines — Dual Core Atom To Lift Netbooks

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Apple Said IPhone Prototype Stolen, Prosecutor Says - BusinessWeek

Washington Times

Apple Said IPhone Prototype Stolen, Prosecutor Says BusinessWeek April 30 (Bloomberg) -- An Apple Inc. lawyer told law enforcement officials last week that a prototype iPhone belonging to a company engineer was stolen, sparking an investigation that led authorities to seize computers from an editor ... Apple vs. Gawker: Who do you love?HeraldNet When the Gadget Police Come KnockingTechNewsWorld Jason Calacanis Announces His Own Gizmogate VerdictinfoSync World San Jose Mercury News -RedOrbit -Apple Insider all 58 news articles »

Twitter launches official Android app

Section: Communications, Cellphones, Cellular Providers, Smartphones, Mobile, Web, Web 2.0 / Social Networking, Web Apps, Websites

While there have been many third party apps for the popular social networking service, Twitter hasn’t produced their own native app until today.  For several years now, our cell phones have become an integral part of our lives and we use it for nearly everything making it imperative to be connected to social networking sites. 

After downloading the free Twitter for Android app from the marketplace, you have the option to share news, images, locations via Twitter on many other apps.  In addition, in your contact list, people who also have Twitter will show their latest status update.  The Twitter API will be released to developers to allow them to incorporate Twitter into new apps.  Unfortunately, the Twitter for Android app will only work on Android phones running version 2.1.  Other users will have to use third party apps or use the mobile website version of Twitter. 

Read [Twitter]

Full Story » | Written by Natesh Sood for Gadgetell. | Comment on this Article »

Governments, businesses to discuss cybersecurity threats (AFP)

AFP - Government officials and business leaders from around the world are meeting in Texas this week to discuss what all agree is an area of common and growing concern: cybersecurity.

One In Eight To Cut Cable and Satellite TV In 2010

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

So Hot Right Now: Top 10 Gadgetell posts for the week of April 25, 2010

Section:

Haven’t caught all of the Gadgetell news this week?  Here’s your chance to catch up on this week’s top 10 articles!

• Android Market reaches 50,000 total apps
  ” The Android market, notable rival to the App Store, has finally reached over 50,000 apps, a milestone reached because of the countless Android enthusiasts.  AndroLib is a website that calculates the amount of apps in ten different Android Markets, but it…” MORE »
• iPad gobbling data: 2.5x more than iPhone
  “According to Bytemobile, iPads are consuming more than double the data than iPhones performing the same tasks, based on the companies testing.  Thankfully for AT&T (and it’s customers) the iPad is consuming all this data via WiFi and not on the wireless network.  That is set to change…” MORE »
• Google Nexus One no longer coming to Verizon Wireless?
  ” It looks as if the Nexus One is not coming to Verizon Wireless. If you head on over to the most recent addition on the News and Update page for the Nexus One, the…” MORE »
• AT&T releases Palm Pre Plus commercial, availability expected shortly
  ” Unfortunately we are not yet privy to a release date, however it is looking like AT&T is getting closer to making the Palm Pre Plus available. But release date aside, AT&T has released a commercial…” MORE »
• Android crowned King of Web traffic in U.S.
  ” AdMob, one of the largest mobile advertising companies in the world, has been openly sharing data from their network to… “...help shed light on the trends occurring in the mobile ecosystem.” Well this week they have something very interesting for us to observe.…” MORE »
• Sony announces the end of an era - pulls plug on floppy disc production
  ” I still remember the days of using a floppy disc to save my word documents and whatever else I needed to save.  For a computer that could barely store more than a few megabytes, a 1.44MB floppy disc seemed to do…” MORE »
• Leaks: BlackBerry Bold 9650 and BlackBerry Pearl 3G show their faces
  ” It looks like we have a BlackBerry leak that has revealed the Bold 9650 as well as the Pearl 3G. Overall, we are still waiting on some more of the details, but…” MORE »
• Barnes & Noble Nook outsells Amazon Kindle in March
  ” Digital books have become a fad in their own right. The Kindle, Nook, and even the iPad have all dedicated their services to consuming these goods. Up until now, the Kindle has dominated the space due to the fact that there were…” MORE »
• BlackBerry 9670 clamshell leaked again, verdict—still funky looking
  ” This fine Tuesday morning has brought us all a few more images of the clamshell styled BlackBerry 9670 and I have to say—it still looks funky. But like anything…” MORE »
• Palm Pixi now free (on contract) with Sprint
  ” Those on Sprint that may have been holding out for the Palm Pixi to go cheaper will have see a little happiness in this latest Palm related news—the Pixi is now free with Sprint. Of…” MORE »

Full Story » | Written by NEWS for Gadgetell. | Comment on this Article »

Infant, children's Tylenol, Motrin recalled in U.S.

AT&T On The iPad 3G Video Restrictions: “That’s something you need to ask Apple”

CrunchGear Reviews the Panasonic Lumix DMC-G10 Digital Camera

ADB lends $350 mln to Uzbekistan for energy project

Petrobras could seek other ways to raise funds-exec

Facebook Gets a Little Too Personal - PC World

Globe and Mail

Facebook Gets a Little Too Personal PC World Analysis: "Instant Personalization" has turned into an instant privacy headache for Facebook. Even the US Senate is complaining. When you're a social network with tens of millions of users and you've got the attention of the US Congress, that's almost ... Senators ask FTC to probe Facebook, issue privacy rules for all social mediaSan Francisco Chronicle Activist groups launch new Facebook privacy offensiveCNET Facebook expansion triggers backlashPress-Enterprise ABC News -AFP -CBC.ca all 118 news articles »

H.264 Already Won—Makes Up 66 Percent Of Web Videos

Earlier this week, Steve Jobs kicked the debate about the need for Flash into high gear, especially for Web video. As he explained, Apple products like the iPhone and iPad don’t support Flash because although 75 percent of video on the Web is in Flash ” almost all this video is also available in a more modern format, H.264, and viewable on iPhones, iPods and iPads.” The next day, Microsoft weighed in, saying that Internet Explorer 9 would only support the H.264 codec for HTML video.

So how much video exactly is available in H.264? I asked Encoding.com, which has encoded 5 million videos over the past year for a variety of Websites and customers including MTV Networks, WebMD, Brightcove, Nokia, MySpace, and Red Bull. President Jeff Malkin sent me the chart above, which he believes is representative of the Web in general, including mobile. As the chart shows, in the past four quarters, the H.264 format went from 31 percent of all videos to 66 percent, and is now the largest format by far. Meanwhile, Flash is represented by Flash VP6 and FLV, which combined represent only 26 percent of all videos. That is down from a combined total of 69 percent four quarters ago. So the native Flash codecs and H.264 have completely flipped in terms of market share (Flash also supports H.264, however, but you don’t need a Flash player to watch H.264 videos)

Another data point that Steve Jobs mentions: All YouTube videos are available in H.264, which alone represents 40 percent of all videos on the Web. So these numbers from Encoding don’t seem so crazy.

All of these codecs and formats can seem like gobbledy gook. Malkin offers the following to explain the differences:

The formats can be confusing between containers and codecs. FLV is the Flash container with the old H.263 codec. Flash VP6 is the Flash container with the VP6 codec. H.264 is a codec that is utilized in a number of different containers (.FLV, .MP4, .MOV) and on Apple mobile devices and when deployed by browsers for HTML5. Microsoft just announced that IE will use H.264 as the default codec for HTML5. And, Google will be soon offering the VP8 codec as open source which will add another formidable flag in the format wars.

New, Tougher HDTV Energy Star Standard Takes Effect (PC World)

Which Apple iPad 3G Plan Is Right For You? - PC Magazine

Reuters UK

Which Apple iPad 3G Plan Is Right For You? PC Magazine The Apple iPad 3G just went on sale, but in order to make the most of that built-in cellular modem, you need to purchase a data plan for the device. There are only two choices and choosing wisely could save you a lot of money. ... Out-of-this-world Apple iPad 3G has 5 antennasNetworkWorld.com Teardown of iPad 3G shows Apple using LCD frame as an antennaApple Insider Apple rolls out iPad 3G todayComputerworld FOXNews -CNET -PC World all 310 news articles »

Amazon cuts Penguin hardcovers to ebook prices

Section: Gadgets / Other, ebooks

When Apple introduced the iPad as a ebook reader, it had most of the major book publishers sign on to put their books into the iBooks store.  As a result, many of those same companies tried to pressure Amazon into using the “agency model” for ebook prices. The publishers wanted Amazon to let them set their own prices or else they’d leave for Apple.  Now we’re seeing another way for Amazon to fight back against the publishers.

Penguin’s contract with Amazon ended on April 1, which meant that Penguin started to argue for the agency model.  The negotiations are still ongoing, and Amazon has decided to play rough with Penguin.  Amazon today has lowered the price of many newly-published Penguin hardcover books to the bestseller ebook price of $9.99.  Most of the books aren’t even bestsellers, which would likely make them have a higher ebook price normally.

The major book publishers don’t like the $9.99 because they feel like it’s devaluing books.  That was just for ebooks, though, $9.99 for a new non-bestseller hardcover book could really cheapen the value of new books, which is probably what Amazon is going for.  Or, it’s just trying to prove to Penguin that it can just as easily lose money on hardcovers to offer books at better prices.  Hopefully this could help negotiations along between the two companies to agree on pricing for ebooks that work well for everyone.  In the meantime, cheap hardcover books are certainly a good thing.

Read [Wall Street Journal] Via [Gizmodo]

Full Story » | Written by Shawn Ingram for Gadgetell. | Comment on this Article »

These branded iPad and iPhone apps have the goods (Appolicious)

Rough Seas Again Thwart Cleanup of Oil Catastrophe

Scientists Find Metal Catalyst For Generating Hydrogen From Water

Appletell reviews Wrapsol protection cases for iPad, iPhone 3G

FROM APPLETELL - Regardless of how clean and scratch free you intend to keep your iPhone or iPad, accidents happens and fingerprints appear. Wrapsol aims to fix this problem.
MORE »

Full Story » | Written by NEWS for Gadgetell. | Comment on this Article »

NSF and NPRB Invite Media to Apply for Reporting Slots on Two Bering Sea Cruises

Advice From Founders Who Bootstrapped Their Way to Success

In my last post, I discussed why the odds of a rookie entrepreneur getting seed financing from a VC are very slim. The reality is that less than 5% of venture money goes to seed-stage startups; VCs typically invest when a company has a working product, a tested business model, and a strong management team. It’s the entrepreneurs who take the risk; not the VCs. They beg and borrow money from friends and family, max out their credit cards, and sometimes make do by living at home with their parents. Yet, very often, it’s the VCs who get the glory. I don’t think that’s fair. So in this post, I’m going to highlight three bootstrapped companies, and share the advice of their founders. In my books, entrepreneurs are the real heroes—those who make the innovation happen. They are the ones you should be following on Twitter and learning from, not boastful VCs.

Take Chicago-based Threadless. Its founder, Jake Nickell, built a very profitable $40 million business by bringing crowdsourcing to the mundane world of t-shirt design. Threadless sells millions of tees every year and has been growing annually at double-digit percentage rates. It was founded in 2000, after Nickell, then a 20-year-old web developer, won a t-shirt-design contest. With an investment of $1000, he built a website to which people submitted t-shirt designs, and the favorites were printed in limited-edition runs. In 2006, the company had gained traction, was generating nearly $10 million in revenue, and took a small investment from Insight Venture Partners.

My Q&A with Jake:

Would you have taken a VC investment if you could have, when you started?

Definitely not, as I was starting a hobby and not a business. It’s kind of like asking if I would consider a VC investment to help me start learning to skateboard. Sure, I’d spend a couple hundred bucks on a board, some pads and maybe some materials to build a ramp, but I’m not looking for millions or even hundreds or tens of thousands to just create something for fun. Even if I was starting a business, I don’t think I was raised that way or have that type of personality. I didn’t even have my first credit card until I was maybe 23, so I really just don’t do well with spending money I don’t have.

Why did you take investment and how has that experience been? What changed after taking VC?

We were having major operations trouble and weren’t incredibly excited about fixing it ourselves. I never finished college and my background is more in art/programming. In ’05 if you ordered a tee during our holiday sale, you’d probably get it three weeks after Christmas. We had a few choices… outsource all that stuff (but still have to manage it), work with consultants to help us figure out what to do, or to get someone who knew what they were doing to invest in the company and help us. We felt that last option was best.

The experience has been great. There was no shortage of interest from VC firms in investing in us, so we got to be pretty choosy about whom we worked with. We got really comfortable with Insight as they had some programs in place for helping us, and we got along really well with them. A lot has changed after taking the VC—we are now operationally sound and actually ship orders out in a decent timeframe!

What advice would you give fellow entrepreneurs?

If you want your life to be fun as an entrepreneur, I suggest going into it with realistic expectations and to measure your success in different ways than financially. I’ve done well financially with Threadless, but if I had to give up one thing, the money would be the first thing to go. The happiness, relationships, enrichment in others’ lives, the community that now exists; the opportunities brought to artists—that’s the success that really matters for Threadless. Build your business in a way that lets you say that, and mean it too.

Pointabout is a Washington D.C. based startup that markets a mobile-application builder, AppMakr.com. Founded in 2008, by Scott Suhy, Daniel R. Odio, Sean Shadmad, and Isaac Mosquera, the company started building custom apps for companies like Disney, The Washington Post, Newsweek, and Politico. They used this revenue to fund the development of their flagship product. Two years later, the Pointabout is profitable, with revenues approaching $2 million annually. It’s not that the founders didn’t try raising VC; things are even tougher in D.C. than in Silicon Valley, so they decided to bootstrap.

My Q&A with the team:

Would you have been better off if you could have raised VC when you started?

We’re really glad we didn’t. It’s easy to burn through a lot of cash trying to figure your business out. Bootstrapping (especially in a recession) has forced us to focus on what works, and on gaining traction. The right time to take money is when you have something that works and you want to blow it out of the water with explosive growth. Taking money too early often hurts more than it helps, and looking back on our growth, we believe that would have likely been the case with us.

Did you have to make major tradeoffs by going down the custom development/consulting route?

Sure, we made plenty of trade-offs. Many tough round-table meetings. We funded our growth by developing our AppMakr.com product based on custom app consulting revenue. This month we’ve been successful enough to break out our P&Ls so we can draw a line in the sand between the consulting and product divisions. We’ll continue to separate these two as we grow. The product drives consulting revenue when clients want features that it can’t provide. And since the consulting side is close to the customer, it helps drive our product roadmap.

What advice would you give entrepreneurs?

Focus hard and focus on your core. Almost anyone can make any one thing great if they focus on it and dedicate their life to it. If all you did was think about how to make one specific thing awesome every day, you would succeed.

Entrepreneurism is glamorized and romanticized, but at the end of the day, it’s really, really hard work, and it requires a lot of sacrifice—not just from you, but from the people around you. Make sure your friends and family are ready to support you, and then jump in. Don’t let the fear keep you from doing it. You only live once, so if this is what you’re passionate about, don’t have any regrets looking back on your life. Just do it.

I’ve written about the dearth of women and minorities in tech entrepreneurship. Timothy Bernard Jones, an African-American entrepreneur, is one of the rare success stories. He founded Buzzient in 2007, to market a SaaS application that enables users to integrate social media into business applications. It allows Oracle CRM to integrate data from Twitter, Facebook, and YouTube, for example. Having been an associate at a VC firm in his past, Jones decided to forsake VC and to bootstrap instead. He wants to build considerable value before seriously considering venture capital. With revenues in the “low millions of dollars” and having achieved profitability, Buzzient certainly seems on track.

I asked Tim how much of a factor his skin color was in his decision not to raise VC.

I wouldn’t say being black put either me or Buzzient at a disadvantage, but bootstrapping has been a big advantage. I have had absolutely no illusion about being able to walk into a VC pitch wearing a t-shirt and flip-flops and walk out with a term sheet. I know that if I had dropped out of college, there is no way I would be considered “entrepreneurial” or “visionary”; I’d just be “a college dropout”. So, in my case, and for the company I lead, we’ve created a culture of self-sufficiency that is very different from the mentality I see with so many venture-funded companies. Look, we’ve already outlasted tons of venture-funded companies, and I think that’s a direct result of the survival mentality we created early on.

What were the keys to your success?

The first rule is to relentlessly focus on your customers. We have Global 5000 clients, such as Xerox, Credit Suisse, and Perkin Elmer, who rely on Buzzient for social-media insights on their existing and prospective customers. VC-backed companies often go off on tangents based on business-school strategy sessions and the like; as a bootstrapped company you live and die by how happy and successful your customers are, and in keeping them so. Everything revolves around customer focus; what people you bring into the company and when, what technology you build and what features you add to the specification; everything. If we’d not focused as much on customers, Buzzient would not have made it through the recession.

What advice would you give entrepreneurs?

Don’t believe the hype and noise about how “easy” it is to do a startup and how money is literally falling from heaven into startups. Every time I drive by Sand Hill Road, I see clumps of “fresh fish”, shuffling from pitch to pitch, who equate raising VC with having a successful company. Look, this is hard; if you’re really building something of value, it’s going to be hard, and you have to be prepared to endure a lot. The finish line is liquidity for your shareholders, investors, and employees, not a VC raise.

I’d also advise entrepreneurs to not follow VC insights on what sectors to build companies in. VCs for the most part are following trends, not looking ahead of the curve. So, as an entrepreneur you fundamentally have to do something outside the scope of what VCs are currently investing in; if not you’ll end up doing yet another me-too company that doesn’t stand out. That means you have to consciously ignore a lot of the noise about trends, who got funded, the “blah blah blah” of the tech world. That’s the only way you’ll be able to focus on creating your own unique value proposition.

All these entrepreneurs have great advice to offer, don’t they? There are thousands like these who have paved the entrepreneurial trails—thousands whom you should listen to and learn from.

Editor’s note: Guest writer Vivek Wadhwa is an entrepreneur turned academic. He is a Visiting Scholar at UC-Berkeley, Senior Research Associate at Harvard Law School and Director of Research at the Center for Entrepreneurship and Research Commercialization at Duke University. Follow him on Twitter at @vwadhwa

Satellites, DNA And Dolphins

Bar Patron Who Discovered iPhone Prototype Identified

Germany, Google Iron Out Street View Issues

Review: Panasonic Lumix DMC-G10 Digital Camera

What is this thing?
The rise of micro four-thirds camera is probably biggest potential change in popular cameras since the rise of the point and shoot. Micro four thirds “system” cameras offer the best of both worlds – removable lenses for folks who like to play with focal lengths and primes and a simple interface and low price for entry level users.

The Lumix DMC-G10 is Panasonic’s latest addition to its G family of m4/3 cameras. It is, in short, Panasonic’s attempt at creating a strong competitor to Canon and Nikon’s entry-level DSLR line-up and at the same time attack the entry-level consumer who may be in the market for an ultrazoom point and shoot or, barring that, a standard pocket camera.

Features:

• 12-megapixel sensor
• 720p video recording
• ISO 100-6400 range/li>
• 14-42mm kit lens
• $599

Pros:

• Light and small
• Excellent photo quality
• Built-in flash

Cons:

• Low resolution screen and digital viewfinder
• Some odd interface choices

The Camera
The G10 looks like a standard DSLR. The lenses, while considerably smaller, can fall into the hefty range, especially when you look at the 45-200mm. However, the camera body is only 12 ounces and weighs in at 20 ounces with the kit lens included. This alone would make it a good, portable camera. However, the G10 is sized almost like a DSLR, so you lose much of the portability because of the large hand grip and body.

The camera has a 3-inch LCD on the pack and a “live” view finder which is actually a tiny LCD that mirrors the 12.1 megapixel Live MOS Sensor output. Both the LCD screen and viewfinder display all major camera readouts and on-screen prompts allow you to modify settings on the fly.

The camera has standard Program, Aperture Priority, Shutter Priority, and Manual Modes as well as portrait, landscape, action, macro, backlit, and scene mode. Scene modes include the old standbys like Night Portrait as well as Sunset, Party, Baby (two settings!), and Pet. It has 100-6400 ISO equivalency and a small pop-up flash.

The camera also takes 720p video and can autofocus during filming, allowing you to perform a few fun camera tricks while shooting.

The kit lens is a VARIO 14-42mm with image stabilization. It’s a nice, close shot and is a bit slower than I’d like in low light. There is also a hot-shoe for optional external flash.

In short, you’re getting the equivalent of a mini-DSLR: loads of features in a package considerably smaller than even most ultrazoon fans are used to.

The Quality
So how does it shoot? Since I’m not a prosumer by any means, I did enjoy the auto mode – essentially an automatic mode that takes most of the guesswork out of the shoots. However, I did feel that the camera is overly complex, especially for a new user. The myriad modes and functions do not appear to be well laid out and selecting a Scene mode – one of the popular crutches for beginning photographers – doesn’t bring up a Scene menu immediately. You instead need to hit the iA button to bring up the menu and even then it is unclear when this menu will appear. It took a few tries to get it to pop up.

As for the photos, I was pleased with the bit of shooting I did with this camera. It’s an impressive piece of equipment and with the right glass it takes nice shots.

The Good
The G10 takes great shots and video. I used it in multiple lighting situations over the past week and came away slightly annoyed by some blurring in the wrong light but most of my shots came out crisp and clear. At $599 with lens you’ll be hard-pressed to find a similarly outfitted camera with a removable lens.

There are some sample photos in sunlight there as well as a shot inside a dimly lit cigar bar. The video recording is also quite nice with good focus throughout. I’m going to put up some sample video shortly.

The Bad
The G10 is a bit big. If this is supposed to be a more portable camera for the photog on the go, the lens and body size definitely doesn’t help. I much prefer the size of the Olympus E-PL1 I reviewed, at least in terms of portability. You are just a hair smaller than a DSLR with this camera, and that could put some people off.

Whereas the E-PL1 feels like a good “second” camera, Panasonic is clearly aiming this one as a camera made to pre-empt the purchase of a DSLR. While this is a noble goal, I wonder how many experienced shooters will want another fairly lumpen camera in their mix.

Bottom Line
As a gadget reviewer people ask me all the time what kind of camera they should get. Barring obvious recommendations for folks who are not very tech savvy and just want something for the pocket or purse, I always recommend an entry-level DSLR like the Canon Rebel. I am slowly changing that recommendation to something in the m4/3s family. Although I personally prefer the size of the E-PL1, I would consider this a worthy adversary in the nascent micro 4/3s line-up.

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Look out for 'webby' our little black and white beanie mascot that was behind Moss in the third series. He's there again in the next series!

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