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Zynga Marketing Master Padma Rao Joins Foundation Capital As An Entrepreneur In Residence

2012-02-11T06:47:00Z

Padma Rao’s analytical marketing skills have made a big impact at more than one company in the Bay Area, and now she’s bringing a decade of experiences to her new role as an entrepreneur in residence at Foundation Capital.

Her most recent efforts helped turn a gaming startup into a booming public company.

Few people realized it at the time, but in late 2008 and early 2009 social game developer Zynga had figured out how to get a great return on investment from Facebook advertising. The social network had developed its ad system over the previous few years to the point that it was able to deliver ads closely targeted to users’ interests — but most people hadn’t realized that yet, so prices were cheap.

Rao joined Zynga at the beginning of 2009 to help lead the development of its marketing platform. An engineer by training, she took a look at the few third-party ad bidding tools available for Facebook and decided the company needed to build its own. She did the same for its user email system. The market timing turned out to be perfect. Zynga had also just figured out how to monetize casual-style simulation games, and in quick succession over the course of the year, it launched hits like FarmVille, Café World, PetVille and FishVille. As I detailed in this December article, the inexpensive growth it got via ads and social communication features during this period brought it up to traffic levels that it has worked hard to pass even today.

“I like having the technical chops to understand what needs to happen and why — and to understand why something might take a long time,” she tells me. “It makes a big difference, especially in online marketing, which is actually a very technical business. Having that background has saved me more than once… my approach is, if a tool doesn’t exist, we’ll build it.”

Zynga wasn’t the first place she’s done this. During a three year stint at Gap earlier last decade, she discovered that getting results from direct marketing were taking up to two and a half weeks. So she created a tool that would deliver results in 30 minutes. “This didn’t just mean faster results, it meant iterating faster, it changed the business” she explains. “It’s all about getting the right tools for people.”

She’s becoming an EIR for the same reason a lot of other product people do, including her new Foundation EIR colleague and former Twitter product head Anamitra Banerji. “I’ve had my head down working at companies,” she says, “and I’ve never taken the opportunity to see everything that’s out there.”

So what is she working on at Foundation? She’s actually already been doing some consulting work with social browser Rockmelt and other startups already. But she’s far from deciding whether to join or found. “I want to stay on the consumer side of things, and obviously mobile is fascinating — there’s lots of functionality that’s not probably not leveraged like it could be…. My dream is to start something, but I don’t want to do it just for the sake of doing it. If I find something great that someone else has started, I’m not going to ignore that because ‘I want to be a founder.’”

Busta Rhymes Waxes Enthusiastic On Google Music

2012-02-11T06:47:00Z

When Google Music launched a couple months ago, there was some criticism regarding how the service was promoted. What many saw as just another music locker and streaming service (albeit a perfectly good and free one) others saw as a great new vector for music sales and distribution. But the music locker portion seemed to hog the spotlight, and the cool Band Camp-esque new artist hubs lurked in the gloom.

Busta Rhymes seems to be a fan of the latter, and not just because he’s in an official partnership. In an interview on MTV, he was positively effusive about Google’s new platform. Check out the short clip, from MTV’s Sucka Free:

I think he’s being truthful when he says that “with that power that they have, that it was almost blasphemous for them to not have their hands in music as well.” Google, via YouTube, is the world’s foremost player in video distribution on the web (though as far as purchased content goes, Netflix is king). One almost wonders why music didn’t come first.

In case you were wondering that, the reason is that the user-focused structure of YouTube makes it a platform for viral videos and self-expression, not studio-produced content. They’ve been trying to change that, but it hasn’t been very effective (people don’t think of YouTube that way, for good reaosn). Google Music lets them start fresh and try to build something that works both from the top down and the bottom up. So whether they “sign” guys like Busta or a dude recording on an 8-track in his living room, they can provide an end-to-end buying, listening, and sharing solution.

“Google ain’t really trying to just sell music” is about as capsule-sized a summary as you can get, and it’s true. Google hates selling things, in fact. And in the music world, it might be that in a few years, selling things like music tracks just won’t be something you do, and Google will have positioned itself well to be a non-purchase solution.

Whale Hunting: Facebook Hooks 1st-Time Buyers With $5 Of Game Credits For $1

2012-02-11T06:47:01Z

Only about 5% Facebook gamers pay to play freemium games. If Facebook could up this percentage, it and its third-party app developers could make a lot more money. That’s the idea behind a new promotion Facebook announced today where those who’ve never bought Facebook Credits virtual currency before will be offered $4 in free Credits when they buy $1. This gets users to set up their credit card and experience the rush of paying for an enhanced gaming experience.

Years ago when Facebook first launched its Credits virtual currency, it offered free Credits to some users. While this might have got them hooked on spending virtual currency, it didn’t addict them to paying for it.

Facebook needs credit card numbers badly. Apple has amassed an enormous collection after 10 years of iTunes Mp3 sales, which is now helping it easily sell apps and in-app purchases. If Facebook wants to grow its revenue to satisfy outside investors and be a competitive mobile gaming platform, it needs to get users ready to pay.

But like the street corner pusher says, “this ain’t no charity”. Facebook is only surfacing the promotion in sidebar ads, and TrialPay in-game promotions and offer walls to those who haven’t already bought Credits. User than have to set up a credit card or connect a PayPal account and pay $1 to get the extra $4, or 40 Credits. And next time, they’ll have to pay full price. Facebook wisely does not provide any way to reach the promotion directly in order to deter users from trying to cheat their way to free currency.

If you want to claim your own free Credits, your best bet is to play games by clients of Facebook’s official offers partner TrialPay, such as those by Playfish, Playdom, Kabam, Crowdstar, and iWin. These include The Sims Social, Gardens of Time, It Girl, and Kingdoms of Camelot. Then visit the offer wall or click through Deal Spot signs within games.

With any luck, Facebook will be able to up the percentage of users who monetize, and thereby discover new whales — gamers who spend orders of magnitude more than the average payer and drive the bottom lines of both indie developers and giants like Zynga. Call him Ishmael…Zuckerberg.

[Image Credit: Screenrant]

Google AdWords Gets Shared Lists To Eliminate Duplicate Data Entry

2012-02-11T06:57:47Z

Sick of inputting the same things across multiple campaigns in Google AdWords? Yeah, Google suspected that was the case. Following the same philosophy that spawned the introduction of negative keyword lists in January of last year, Google has added placement exclusion lists and list suggestions....

Please visit Search Engine Land for the full article.

Kickstarter’s Big Day: $1.6M Pledged In 24 Hours

2012-02-11T06:47:03Z

They say when it rains, it pours. That’s not usually a good thing, but when it’s raining money, things are a little different. That was the case at Kickstarter yesterday, where they had their biggest day of funding ever, beating the record set… the day before yesterday.

It was also the day that marked the first Kickstarter project to break $1,000,000 in funding. And the day that marked the second project to hit that number. And New York’s city council endorsed the site as a way to highlight community projects that need funding. Oh, and they’re on Portlandia.

Definitely the biggest day in the site’s history, then. They’ve commemorated it with a great blog post that might just make your Friday a little better. It also brings up a few new and interesting questions regarding how the site should or will be used. But first, watch the Portlandia clip:

Double Fine, whose adventure game drove much of the funding sum (and is up to nearly $1.5M alone as of this writing), is different from many projects we’ve seen. Often Kickstarter is thought of as a venue for people with very limited means but a good idea to execute that idea. The Elevate Dock is a good example of this.

But Double Fine is an established game studio with office space, employees, and many products under its belt? Why should it go to Kickstarter? Well, Tim Schafer explains that in the video, at least for this project: no publisher would go near a point and click adventure game, but they knew at least some people wanted it. Reasonable enough.

The question, really, is why we even question it. If people want to make something, and people want to fund it, why shouldn’t it be on Kickstarter? The easy stuff — cool accessories or small devices that need a little capital to get started — are just the first wave. Why not pothole repair on a neighborhood street? Why not a new coffee shop? Why not a feature film? Some of these have been tried, no doubt, and perhaps failed — but the principle is sound. If you want to make it, and others want you to make it, this is a way for you to connect.

Congratulations to the Kickstarter, Elevation Dock, and Double Fine teams. Great way to end the week.

Look Out AT&T Customers, Your Upgrade Fee Doubles On Sunday

2012-02-11T06:47:03Z

If you’re an AT&T customer coming off of a contract and looking to snap up a new phone, you should probably get on that right now. According to an AT&T memo obtained by BGR, AT&T will be raising their device upgrade fee from $18 to $36 as of February 12, which means you’ve got until Sunday to swap phones before your first post-upgrade bill gets even bigger.

The memo states that the fee hike is needed because “the overall costs associated with upgrading to a new device have increased.”

In AT&T’s defense, it’s a fee that’s most people will only have to deal with once every two years or so, but the additional cost is unlikely to please customers. They’re also not the only big carrier that has had to hike up their fees — Sprint made the transition to a $36 upgrade fee this past September. But still, AT&T doubling their upgrade fee is a puzzling move when their biggest rival (Verizon) still doesn’t charge one at all.

Strangely, the part of the memo that BGR has released doesn’t mention anything about a cap like the one Sprint offers, so it’s possible that families and groups looking to upgrade en masse could really get stung here.

And here’s a question worth thinking about: what will the consumers have to say? Verizon Wireless got a very public earful when it was discovered that they planned to charge customers a $2 “convenience fee” whenever they used a credit card to make an online or over-the-phone bill payment. After one day, public pressure and scrutiny from the FCC forced Verizon to kill the plan in its tracks. Given enough exposure, AT&T customer may be inclined to lash out in a similar way.

Hopefully this move doesn’t inspire Verizon to try something similar. We’ve seen it happen before: Verizon killed their unlimited data plans one year after AT&T did, and AT&T began requiring data packages for messaging phones not long after Verizon implemented the idea.

Scientific Agency to Drop BlackBerry for iPhone

2012-02-11T02:31:47Z

Research in Motion can't catch a break. Joining the large crop of businesses and organizations ditching the BlackBerry, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration said it planned to provide employees with Apple's iPhones and iPads.

Anonymous Says It Knocked C.I.A. Site Offline

2012-02-11T02:31:47Z

Hackers claimed responsibility for knocking the Web site of the Central Intelligence Agency offline, under the banner of the hacking collective Anonymous. By late Friday afternoon, the site was still unavailable.

SearchCap: The Day In Search, February 10, 2012

2012-02-10T23:07:10Z

Below is what happened in search today, as reported on Search Engine Land and from other places across the web. From Search Engine Land: Now, Mitt Romney Has A Santorum-Like Bing & Google Problem Perhaps Google may finally have to figure out a “fix” for Rick Santorum’s...

Please visit Search Engine Land for the full article.

New Hybrid Solar Cells Harness More Of The Sun’s Light Spectrum

2012-02-10T22:55:15Z

Scientists at the University of Cambridge in the UK have found a way to improve the efficiency of photovoltaic cells by as much as 25% through harnessing more of the sun’s spectrum than most traditional silicon-based solar cells can.

The new design, developed at the university’s Cavendish Laboratory in the Department of Physics, can absorb both red and blue light, and generates electrons from photons at a two-to-one ratio on the blue light spectrum. Most current solar cells lose blue photon energy as heat, leaving them unable to turn more than about 34% of the sunlight they absorb into power.

The team, led by professors Neil Greenham and Sir Richard Friend, recently published results in a paper. The hybrid cells have an added organic semiconductor called pentacene, which helps harness blue light energy to strengthen the electrical current coming from the cell, making the product up to 44% efficient.

The university’s team also innovated on how the cells are made, by producing the cells in bulk using a roll-to-roll printing technique. While cheaper, more efficient photovoltaics sound promising, there remain hurdles to be overcome. The greatest costs in building a solar power plant are installation hardware, labor and land, so a cheaper solar cell is only a piece of the puzzle.

StartX Demo Day: A Direct Link Between Silicon Valley And Top Stanford Student Entrepreneurs

2012-02-10T22:55:15Z

On the surface, the StartX Demo Day last night could have looked like any other accelerator pushing its latest class of startups. Nine groups got on stage and fired off presentations about how they were working on something cool, and why they deserved funding.

But it wasn’t the rash of lightweight consumer applications you often see at other demo days. These were Stanford students, particularly technical graduate students, who have been nerding out on solving real problems for years in their labs and dorm rooms, and who are now in the middle of commercializing their hard work. Big-name investors from around Silicon Valley unsurprisingly showed up to check them out.

Before I get into the companies, which ran the gamut from health care to batteries to professional networking, it’s important to understand what StartX is. It’s the non-profit accelerator arm of Stanford Student Enterprises, which is a student-run, independent organization that handles a variety of stores, directories, financial services and other businesses for students. SSE is the business branch of the student government, and it’s independent enough from the university that StartX companies get maximum freedom. They own their own intellectual property, and neither StartX/SSE nor any other entity takes any equity.

The only requirements are that at least one cofounder of each applying company needs to have enrolled at Stanford within the last three academic quarters before the application period, and that person needs to own significant equity.

The program is young — it started in 2010 and this is its fifth class. but it’s on the right track. The energy in the room was what you feel at that rare tech event where everyone present knows they’re getting in early on something big.

We’ll no doubt be covering many of the presenting companies in more detail over the coming months, but here’s a quick look at each, in the order they presented:

MindSumo: Employers want to find smart students with skills and interests that they can develop. The problem is that student resumes are normally skimpy on this information because, well, students have mostly been in school and not the workforce. MindSumo’s answer: partner with employers to create “challenges,” or sets of questions for students to answer. For example, Recology, a large recycling and trash disposal company, is currently asking “What can you do or make with glass (A LOT of it)? Propose three alternate uses for recycled glass so that we can use our resources in an innovative way and keep them from landfill!” Currently in private beta, MindSumo has already been running challenges for seven companies (some of whom are paying), with 500 or so Stanford students participating.

AgeTak: Health care data is currently separated across insurers and health care providers, which makes it hard for doctors to do comprehensive analysis of diseases and other conditions. AgeTak uses distributed databases to combine, anonymize and get user consent for data sharing. Founder Pratik Verma, who recently got his PhD in computation chemistry from Stanford, is on a personal mission here. His father passed away in 2010 from nerve cell disease ALS, which has no known causes or cures. His father’s only option was to participate in extensive clinical trials over the years, in the hopes that doctors would make breakthroughs by discovering trends among those afflicted. But, as Pratik discovered, data from patients was not being shared by researchers because it was siloed at institutions, and held back by privacy concerns.

Through AgeTak, the anonymized and aggregated data can be used by analysts, researchers, physicians and pharmaceutical companies. Insurance giant United Health is already using it for a drug claims database, and OptumHealth is using it to offer graphs that show consumers how their health care costs stack up against the average. AgeTak has already made $3.7 million in revenue; it’s headquartered in Minnesota with offices in Menlo Park and India. Check out this recent writeup by Barb Darrow at GigaOm for more details.

Zoku: If you’re trying to build a network — let’s say, to help with your new startup — you want to know who out there is doing something relevant to your needs. But it can be hard sorting through all the noise on Facebook, LinkedIn and other sites to spot the key people and activities. Zoku lets you combine your email and social networking contacts, then pick out people and actions that you want to keep track of. It uses algorithms to filter for what you care about, then shows you the signals – people who are visiting town, changing jobs, or doing anything else relevant to what you might need to get done — in a dashboard on its site.

Vi Energy: In what looks like the most ambitious technical idea out of all the presentations, Vi Energy is developing a new kind of rechargeable battery that promises to be three times cheaper and last 50% longer than anything on the market today. Over the past twenty years, lithium ion batteries have dominated, but they can be unsafe, have relatively weak capacity, and are expensive. As a mature technology, there’s only marginal improvements to be had from them. Sister-cofounders Meghali and Sonali Chopra have, with the support of top scientific researchers, already created a pilot battery that uses significantly cheaper raw materials, can be easily synthesized, and has a unique spherical morphology with conductive codings for better performance. Their lab tests already show that the new battery lasts longer than the lithium ion ones on the market today.

Breakthrough: This online mental health treatment startup has been featured before — on stage at TechCrunch 50 (Disrupt) back in 2009. It uses secure video and chat features to help people connect with professionals to get the help they need privately and immediately. As Leena noted before, clients can search for providers (including psychiatrists, psychologists and nurses) on a variety of criteria, including price, speciality (i.e. depression, schizophrenia, post traumatic stress disorder), and gender. On a provider’s page you can see his or her education, experience, pricing for services, the insurance the professional accepts, and even a video introduction of the provider explaining his or her specialities. BreakThrough certifies all providers are credentialed professionals.

TipTopMed: How much will a trip to the doctor’s cost? How much, in particular, if you don’t have a good insurance plan? That’s a question more and more Americans are asking themselves — that TipTopMed is trying to answer. Its site will show local providers, and include information about them like the upfront price, and other details about provider specialties. Users can then book an appointment, and pay online. Providers — mostly small and medium-sized businesses — want this because they lose lots of money on patients who can’t or don’t pay. The site is launching at the end of this month, and will feature a proprietary database of Bay Area health care professionals.

Smit’s Crew: The only entertainment-oriented startup out of the mix, it offers a web site and mobile app that lets venue owners (bars, clubs, etc.) create a type of loyalty program for regular patrons. The app lets customers receive advance notifications of discounts and other deals, particularly on slow nights, then buy them immediately. They then go to the establishment and show the waiter or bartender the purchase; because payment has been received, the food and drinks can be delivered immediately, without the hassle of trying to pay with cash or credit card at, say, a packed bar. Even more importantly, the app lets owners keep track of which people are visiting the most regularly and buying the most — this allows them to figure out who they should focus on providing the best service to. The “crew” concept lets customers group themselves together around specific establishments, so the venue can provide group discounts if they show up.

There were also two more health care startups that presented, but they haven’t publicly launched yet so I won’t be including them here. All in all, as you can see, this is a serious bunch of companies, that are interested in solving hard real-world problems.

Venture firms and law offices in Silicon Valley have sensed the opportunity to get in early, and they’ve rallied behind the effort. VC supporters, who provide dollars and mentorship, include Benchmark Capital, General Catalyst, Khosla Ventures, Charles River Ventures and Greylock Partners. Legal backers are Cooley LLP, Fenwick & West LLP, Dorsey & Whitney LLP, Goodwin Proctor, and Orrick. Resource partners include Amazon Web Services, First Republic Bank, Fog Creek Software, Github, Rackspace and Usabilla.

And even that distant global media and advertising conglomerate that owns TechCrunch is involved, it turns out, because it provides office space and other material support. So time for a Full Disclosure: I didn’t even know AOL was involved until I got to the event this afternoon — but good job, whoever made that call at my parent company. I also attended Stanford as an undergraduate, and while I have a variety of feelings about my alma mater, I generally expect a lot out of its graduates — maybe this connection is one reason I think StartX is pretty great? On the other hand, I worked at a key campus competitor to SSE, The Stanford Daily student-run newspaper. So maybe I’m biased against SSE and so my biases all equal themselves out….

The Government Wants To Build An App Store For Real-Life Jack Bauers

2012-02-10T22:55:15Z

The US Department of Defense Explosive Ordinance Disposal unit is look for a few good coders to help build apps and an entire app store for bomb technicians and soldiers involved in ordnance handling. This is when sliding to unlock could mean the difference between life or death.

The request for proposals is as dull as dirt (you can read it here) but the requirements are clear: they’re looking for apps that will replace paper pocket guides and references used by the folks that blow up the big badda booms.

If you’re interested the funding can run as high as $750,000 and $1,250,000, according to an engineer familiar with the proceedings and all you have to do is ensure the product is encrypted and password protected and that it involves lots of cool, wire-frame graphics so it looks like all of those computer programs used by hackers in the movies.

Develop a Smartphone Software Applications (Apps) and distribution system and procedures (known commercially as an App Store) or individual Apps for Joint Service EOD and/or public safety bomb technicians that would provide immediate access to required technical and tactical information and preclude the need to carry paper pocket guides and reference material on site. The application distribution system or individual Apps shall be accessible to all EOD and/or Bomb Squad personnel to view and/or download information as needed and must be compatible with one or more major operating systems of commercially available smart devices (e.g., Android, Apple, Blackberry, etc.). This developed Joint Service EOD distribution system shall adhere to military regulations for distribution of unclassified but limited distribution information. The Apps shall be encrypted (e.g., AES-256) and password-protected or otherwise controlled for limited access to only bomb squad and EOD technicians. A requirements analysis shall be conducted to determine the most feasible and effective method for conversion of existing and future publications and system oversight, including information access, password issuance, and periodic updates of publications.

The deadline is March 9, 2012, so get cracking. Don’t keep the Combating Terrorism Technical Support Office waiting.

Gillmor Gang Live 02.10.12 (TCTV)

2012-02-10T22:55:15Z

Gillmor Gang – Robert Scoble, Steve Gillmor, John Borthwick, and Kevin Marks. Recording has concluded.

Air Force Could Buy Thousands Of iPads And Android Tablets

2012-02-10T22:55:16Z

The Air Force’s Air Mobility Command will be putting in a request for the purchase of a number of tablets soon in an effort to lighten their pilots’loads. Many commercial airlines are already taking this step, and American Airlines has already gotten FAA approval. The Air Force is feeling the sting of jealousy, and in consequence may be requesting as many as 18,000 devices.

The number could also be as low as 63; the Command was not forthcoming on this point. The lower number would probably indicate a pilot program, so to speak, for a few devices, to determine which should get the big order.

Which tablet would actually be ordered is also not specified. Bloomberg cannily plays up the iPad angle in its report (U.S. Air Force May Buy 18,000 Apple IPad 2s), but the spokesperson they talked to, Captain Ferrero, said the request might also be for Playbooks, Galaxy Tabs, Xooms, or Nooks.

If these were to be general-purpose tablets, this little menagerie would be hard to winnow down. But the fact is they are going to be used as virtual flight bags, and the iPad is the only one that has the thousands of hours in the air that the Air Force will require. In a year, maybe, Android tablets will have a little more experience under their belts, but for now it’s probably safe to say that any tablets purchased by the government for the purpose of being electronic flight bags are going to be iPads.

Eventually, these platform issues will have to be settled, though: if part of the military is going with Android for security purposes, and others are going with iOS for EFB and, say, general communication, there’s going to be a reckoning sooner or later.

For And Against The iPad Mini

2012-02-10T22:55:16Z

Rumors of a 7- to 7.85-inch iPad have been swirling around for a long while now. We’ve seen reports get killed moments after they initially break, only to be sneakily resurrected weeks or months later. The rumor simply won’t die.

The problem, however, is that this one in particular is a tough nut to crack. When you take all the evidence both for and against a little iPad, you’re still left with no real conclusion.

So conclusion aside, here are some of the reasons Apple may, or may not, introduce the little iPad:

For:

The greatest threat to Apple’s iPad is the 7-inch Amazon Kindle Fire. It retails at about $300 less than the iPad, sports a solid browser, has access to plenty of Android apps, and is a great hub for any and all of Amazon’s media content. It also happens to be a 7-inch tablet. Should Apple choose to offer a smaller iPad at a lower price (which the market would most certainly demand), it could snatch back the market share Amazon’s stolen in the past few months.

Gaming on tablets is big, but too big a tablet ruins the fun. According to numbers out of comScore in November, 2011, gaming topped the list of entertainment activities on a tablet, beating out watching video and listening to music, with 67 percent of owners gaming at least once a month, and 23 percent playing daily.

That said, Apple’s 9.7-inch iPad isn’t what I’d call the best for gaming. Graphics and display quality are top-notch, to be sure, but holding the device for very long — especially stretching that thumb around the edge — can be incredibly tiring. Despite the fact that it has failed me considerably, I still prefer playing games on my 7-inch BlackBerry PlayBook, even if there aren’t many games to choose from.

Most smaller Android tablets use a widescreen aspect ratio, leaving a dead zone in the middle of the screen that’s mostly untouchable. The iPad 2 sports a 4:3 screen, which makes even the 10-inch model full touchable. A 7-incher would only be that much better, with greater pixel density and a lighter, easier feel in the hand.

Apple is kind of obsessive when it comes to “thin and light,” and a smaller iPad would also mean a thinner iPad. See, if Apple were to build a smaller iPad, chances are it’d be built using the normal screen assembly technology that allows for the iPad 2′s incredibly thin profile.

However, a smaller iPad/screen means a smaller battery, which usually takes up a solid chunk of space under the hood. Less screen means less power needed for backlighting it, which inevitably takes us back to a smaller battery.

Thin and light! Thin and light! Thin and light!

Amazon may release a 9-inch Fire… Why not fight Fire with fire? The word right now is that Amazon has plans to release a 9-inch Fire to compete with the iPad. While, like the 7-inch Fire, it probably won’t have all the capabilities of the iPad, a larger Fire will still retail at a (much?) lower price point than its competitor. For people who mostly browse the web, read, email, and Facebook/Twitter, a lower price point will be more than enough incentive to venture away from the iPad.

To be clear, it’s not like Apple’s in some dire position. Cupertino still dominates the market with a 58 percent share as of January, 2012. But that’s down 10 percent from the previous quarter, while analysts claim that 40 percent of Android’s 39 percent share in the tablet market are attributable to the Nook Tablet and the Fire.

It’s undeniable: Apple is slowly but steadily losing share to Android, most notably the Fire, and what better way to steal it back then by launching a 7-incher right in Amazon’s face?

Against

The most notable and evidential reason why Apple wouldn’t release a little iPad is because Steve Jobs said so. In an earnings call in October of 2010, Jobs said that “7-inch tablets are tweeners: too big to compete with a smartphone and too small to compete with the iPad. These are among the reasons that the current crop of 7-inch tablets are going to be DOA — dead on arrival.”

Jim Dalrymple points out that Apple made both a 7- and a 9.7-inch iPad right at the beginning and chose to go with the bigger version, which at a first glance would indicate that it’s not going to happen. At the same time, that was a long time ago if we’re counting in tech years and it wouldn’t be the first time Jobs obliterated a product category only to announce something similar to it shortly after. Anyone remember iBooks?

Why release a product to compete in a market you already own? Though its market share has fallen since its debut, Apple still absolutely dominates the tablet market right now. A 58 percent share of a market, with not one of its competitors anywhere near that share, leaves Apple with no real reason to put anything smaller in stores.

I’m sure some of you will say I made an entirely contradictory point up there with Amazon grabbing share, but it’s all about perspective. Perhaps one person thinks that now is the time to plug up any leaky market share dribbling into Amazon’s hands, while someone else may think that Apple should wait until it absolutely has to throw a lower-priced option into the ring.

Too many choices can be a bad thing, and Apple’s well aware of this. Look at iPhone releases: one model at a time. Apple’s all about making one absolutely stellar, blow-your-mind, make-you-believe-in-magic product and selling it well. Design, sell, repeat.

Tablets are meant to be simple, easy-to-use products. It’s not like a PC, where users have to review list after list of specs and configurations before figuring out what fits. Some companies, like Samsung, want to stretch across every category of the tablet market with different spec’d and sized models under a shared brand. One of the iPads greatest advantages is being the iPad, rather than an iPad Lite, or an iPad Air, or whatever.

It would be a deviation from Apple’s current strategy and over-arching mission statement of “Keep it simple, stupid” if they were to start switching things up now.

So… Will Apple release a 7-inch iPad? Truth be told, your guess is as good as mine, but it would seem that there are advantages in either case.

I Wanna Be On The StartupBus…So Freakin’Bad (Video)

2012-02-10T22:55:16Z

Just a little candy to kick off your weekend:

Looking to get its state on the StartupBus radar, a group of Lousiana’s innovators met with founder Elias Bizannes this week for the Baton Rouge Area Chamber‘s February Innovation Take-Out. After Bizannes’presentation (which he concluded by announcing the first Louisiana StartupBus!), the members of the local tech community unveiled this parody video: “I Wanna Be On The Startup Bus.”

And yeah, it’s pretty cute, guys. Plus, it’s always good to see the excitement for building startups outside NY and the Valley.

If the song sounds familiar, that’s because it is. Here’s the source. The video was also blasted on a big screen in the middle of downtown Baton Rouge.

StartupBus, for those of you unfamiliar, is the combo hackathon/road trip started by Elias Bizannes nearly three years ago which heads out to SXSW. The group doubled the number of events it’s running in 2012. This year, there will be a maximum of twelve buses, including those that run from San Francisco, New York, L.A., Cleveland and Tampa, plus whichever others get voted in here.

Can someone transcribe those lyrics, by the way? Because that part about TechCrunch sounds pretty weird to me.

UPDATE: Got the lyrics!

I wanna be on the Startup Bus so frickin bad
Try all the ideas Ive ever had
Uh, I wanna be on the cover of Inc magazine
South By will hear I’m the next big thing

[Chorus]
Oh every time I close my eyes
I see my name in shining lights
A different city every night oh
Let’s discuss, they’ll say “he used to be one of us”
When I’m on the Startup Bus

Yeah I would be like Zuckerberg
Hooking up all the nerds
everyday on TechCrunch
got no laughs, just the munch
I’d probably pull a Melinda and Bill Gates
cure diseases, hear the pleases, change all the kids fates
Pitch the angels for the right to equity and big hits
Then do it again and do it again, must have the exit
It’s been a couple months since my last startup so
Looking to do it again, this time make the big dough
Riding on a bus, with little sleep, lots of caffeine
create the best business that VCs have ever seen
All while using mobile wi-fi on I-10
Having this much fun, ha – it should be a sin

[Chorus]

Oh oooh oh oooh When I’m on the Startup Bus
Oh oooh oh oooh When I’m on the Startup Bus

VEVO CEO Tries To Explain Their Hypocritical Act Of Piracy At Sundance

2012-02-10T22:55:18Z

Yesterday I reported on a bizarre incident I witnessed at Sundance last month: VEVO, the music portal owned by some of the biggest record labels in the US, had a pirated NFL playoff game playing on screens throughout its ‘PowerStation’venue.

The incident was immensely hypocritical, given that VEVO is owned in part by Universal Music Group and Sony Music Entertainment (with EMI licensing its content to the service) — the same music labels that have made a habit of attacking consumers over alleged acts of piracy.

Now VEVO CEO Rio Caraeff has written a post to the VEVO blog, where he tries to explain what happened. In it, he writes that the game was accessed and streamed by a guest of the event without VEVO’s knowledge.

A guest of our lounge asked for an NFL game to be aired. We said no. There was a laptop hooked up to VEVO.com that fed into the large TV screens around the bar. Unfortunately, the laptop was easily accessible to the public. That was our mistake for not making sure the laptop was more secure. While VEVO staff was in other areas of the venue, the game was put on – via a website transmitting ESPN’s broadcast of the NFL game – without our permission or knowledge.

As soon as we realized the game was airing to the room, we removed it and went back to playing VEVO videos. The game was not aired in its entirety. Rest assured, we rectified this mistake as soon as we became aware what was going on.

What happened was unfortunate and we can’t take back what happened.

I don’t have any proof to indicate that what Caraeff writes is incorrect, but I’m raising my eyebrow at this explanation. The game was playing the entire time I was at the PowerStation — this wasn’t just a brief blip — and it was playing on several screens, so it was hard to miss, too. After all, one of the key aims of this event was to feature VEVO videos, it wasn’t as if these screens were hidden in a corner.

Likewise, this wasn’t a case of someone launching the stream and walking away — I saw the mouse cursor appear onscreen at least twice, and someone was pretty clearly doing their best to make sure it was watchable. That said, as you can see toward the end of the video below at around 1:39, the computer was potentially accessible to non-employees. But it was hardly inviting, and I have a hard time believing a random guest could just commandeer the computer without any employees noticing.

In any case, imagine what the music industry would say were it on the other side of this. Is there any doubt it would dismiss these explanations and, lawsuits in hand, cry foul over such an overt act of piracy?

Furthermore, this seems no different than an accused pirate explaining that they left their Wifi open, only to have it used by someone else to download content illegally. Which happens to be a defense the RIAA has previously fought vigilantly against, when it sought to make owners of ISP accounts liable for any infringing activity, even if the owner had no knowledge of it. Hypocrisy, indeed.

Below you’ll find Caraeff’s whole post.

You may know we had some fun at the Sundance Film Festival in Park City, Utah last month. Our VEVO Powerstation & Sorel Suite was a popular spot for celebrities to get warm, pick up some gifts from our friends at Sorel and Fresh and, most of all, to relax with a drink and play their favorite VEVO videos. We were excited that LMFAO, James Mardsen, Lil Jon, Tommy Lee, Isla Fisher, Josh Kelley and many others all came down to watch some music with us.

But with all the snowy fun we had, there has unfortunately been a report that something other than VEVO music videos was played at the Powerstation. We feel it important to explain exactly what happened so we hope you’ll take a minute to read further.

A guest of our lounge asked for an NFL game to be aired. We said no. There was a laptop hooked up to VEVO.com that fed into the large TV screens around the bar. Unfortunately, the laptop was easily accessible to the public. That was our mistake for not making sure the laptop was more secure. While VEVO staff was in other areas of the venue, the game was put on – via a website transmitting ESPN’s broadcast of the NFL game – without our permission or knowledge.

As soon as we realized the game was airing to the room, we removed it and went back to playing VEVO videos. The game was not aired in its entirety. Rest assured, we rectified this mistake as soon as we became aware what was going on.

What happened was unfortunate and we can’t take back what happened.

Let’s just make this clear. VEVO is not in the business of streaming illegal video content. We work really hard to give our fans access to the best HD music videos and original programming – legally. VEVO takes intellectual property and copyright issues very seriously. We have always supported our artists and content owners and have the same respect for all content creators in every industry and of every art form. So we are very sensitive to what happened at Sundance and the issues it has raised.

Thanks for reading.

Rio D. Caraeff

New Android App Lets You Flashback To The Arcades Of Yesteryear

2012-02-10T22:55:18Z

The arcade scene here in the United States is but a fraction of what it was back in its heyday, but that doesn’t mean that the love for those classic games has just evaporated. Capcom’s CPS2 arcade board has attained legend status in certain retro gaming circles because of its catalog of instant classics, and a developer named Cpasjuste has just given those games a new lease on life with a new CPS2 emulator for Android.

Before we go any further, know that I’m not here to debate the legality of possessing ROMs — it’s been a sticking point for the emulation community for years. Suffice it to say that CPSEmu was capable of running every retro shooter and beat-em-up I loaded onto my Galaxy Nexus (purely for testing purposes) without so much as a hiccup. Your mileage may vary there though, as some people have noted some issues with crashing on devices like the Asus Transformer.

If you do decide to indulge your inner arcade junkie, just know that getting a feel for the controls will take a little getting used to. The arrows on the d-pad seem thin and easy to miss while in the heat of battle, while the on-screen action buttons are just a bit too small for my tastes.

Of course, as useful as CPSEmu is, it doesn’t do much to make you feel like you’re slinging quarters in a poorly-lit arcade of yore. Those of you looking for a more authentic experience while playing Super Street Fighter II on your Android tab may want to turn down the lights and crank up one of these amazing Arcade Ambience tracks — it’ll be 1993 again before you know it.

Developer Cpasjuste has made the emulator available for free on the xda forums, but feel free to show your support for his work by buying the app from the Android Market for a hair under $4.

2011 API Trends: Government APIs Quintuple; Facebook, Google, Twitter Most Popular

2012-02-10T22:55:18Z

Online directory of APIs and mashups, ProgrammableWeb, just hit a big milestone this week: 5,000 APIs listed. The site has a long history of tracking the API landscape, starting with the launch of its directory back in 2005, five years after eBay created the first web API. Not surprisingly, big names like Google, Facebook and Twitter are now leading the way in terms of sheer numbers of APIs offered, usage, and popularity. Among developers tracking APIs on the site, Facebook now has the most popular API, and it’s followed by Google Maps and Twitter.

However, according to ProgrammableWeb executive editor Adam DuVander, there were some new trends spotted among the last 1,000 APIs added to the directory, too, including an increasing number of government APIs becoming available.

Of the 231 government APIs now listed in ProgrammableWeb’s directory, over half have been added in the last four months. While 2009-2010 has often been heralded as the time when government began embracing transparency, that was mainly true in terms of opening up access to gigs of data, sometimes simply in the form of an Excel spreadsheet. It wasn’t until 2011 that governments really began making that data available through programmatic means, explains DuVander.

Notably, he mentions how New York City’s annual Big Apps contest added an API in 2011. Plus, the NYC Open Data API now gives access to over 750 public datasets. And the San Francisco Ethics Commission Lobbyist API is part of a law requiring transparency of lobbyist disclosure statements, something ProgrammableWeb calls the first ethics API. Elsewhere in the world, platforms like Socrata and CKAN have also made it easier to access public data.

There were just 28 government APIs listed on the site in 2010, but in 2011, there were 130. So while the number of APIs has doubled over the past year, government APIs have nearly quintupled.

While government APIs are trending upward, also retaining their popularity are two other top categories: Internet and Social. There are 500 Internet APIs found on the site, including many cloud and platform-as-a-service APIs. There are also now almost 600 social APIs, a category which saw 35% growth over the past year.

Meanwhile, the site serves up 96 Google APIs, 8 Facebook APIs, Twitter’s 3 official APIs and the 100+ derived APIs, referring to the trend of creating new APIs from Twitter data, like the Klout API and Topsy API, for example. Most APIs are REST, but SOAP is still popular in the enterprise.

ProgrammableWeb says it expects to hit a couple more 1,000 API milestones in 2012. At some point, every company will have an API, DuVander believes.

“Think back to the web of 1995. There were plenty of companies without websites. Very quickly, all these companies realized they needed to have a website to compete,” he says. “We have seen the same thing with social media and that is the way APIs are headed.”

Vulnerability in Google Wallet Leaves Funds Wide Open

2012-02-11T02:31:47Z

A simple procedure demonstrated on some Android smartphones allows anyone to gain access to funds stored in Google Wallet, Google's mobile payment system that acts as a substitute for traditional credit cards. No hacking is required, and it can take a thief just minutes to start spending your cash.

Now, Mitt Romney Has A Santorum-Like Bing & Google Problem

2012-02-10T23:07:10Z

Perhaps Google may finally have to figure out a “fix” for Rick Santorum’s “Google Problem,” now that an anti-Romney site is making it appear that anyone can rank any protest page for any politician’s name. Bing has the same problem, but no one ever seems to care...

Please visit Search Engine Land for the full article.

Search In Pics: Google Sugar Cube, Yahoo Valentines & Chrome M&M’s

2012-02-10T23:07:10Z

In this week’s Search In Pictures, here are the latest images culled from the web, showing what people eat at the search engine companies, how they play, who they meet, where they speak, what toys they have, and more. Valentines Day At Yahoo: Source: Flickr A Google Bike: Source Google+...

Please visit Search Engine Land for the full article.

Comment Notifications!

2012-02-11T00:17:19Z

A few months ago we added Notifications to the WordPress.com Toolbar and recently we released a Chrome extension so that you can always keep up with the activity on your blog. Today we’re adding comment notifications, complete with comment moderation and reply functionality. When your post receives a comment, you’ll get a Notification that looks something like this:

If you’re using threaded comments, you’ll see if someone responded directly to you, right in the notification.

You will see Approve, Spam, and Trash links in your comment notification if you have permission to moderate comments, allowing you to moderate the comment from within the notification:

Clicking Reply automatically approves a comment and displays an area for you to type a reply in. When you’re done, just click Reply and you can get back to whatever you were working on, without having to navigate to the dashboard to manage your comments.

You can still manage comments in your dashboard, but we hope you’ll find the comment notification a convenient shortcut.

For more information about comments and comment moderation: Comments, Manage Comments.

Review: Benarus Megalodon Diving Watch

2012-02-10T22:55:18Z

I rarely like to put my own little fetishistic watch reviews up here unless the watch is something amazingly unique or unless I think you, dear reader, will get a kick out of the quality or styling of a particular piece. That’s why I chose to write up this Benarus Megalodon Diving Watch, a huge monster of a timepiece that is water resistant to 2,500 meters or about 8,000 feet. Considering the deepest SCUBA dive was 330 meters while the deepest ADS dive was 610 meters, I doubt you’ll make it down to 2.5 kilometers in one piece.

Barring improbable diving capabilities, why is the Megalodon so cool? Well first it has a self-winding automatic ETA 2824-2 movement with date window and sweep seconds hand as well as a case the size of a small apple. The case and band are made entirely of titanium and so are surprisingly light and wearable although there were some fit and finish issues with the clasp and bezel.

The Megalodon comes in multiple styles and has a screwdown crown at four o’clock and a recessed automatic helium escape valve at 9 o’clock. The hands and pips – as well as the bezel pip at 12 o’clock, are slathered in bright Superluminova and light up blue in the dark. The clasp has a locking mechanism and the caseback and crown are signed.

Because this is essentially a big hunk of metal, I had a bit of a time unlocking the band clasp and turning the bezel. However, once you open and close the watch band a few times and give the bezel a few turns, the issues slowly begin to recede. I was, however, afraid that I’d break the clasp if I wasn’t careful.

For a watch this size – 49mm including the bezel – it’s surprisingly wearable. The lugs are turned down so even though the case looks like a praire hen egg you don’t notice much overhang. The band is quite comfortable and the titanium ensures you’re not wearing a pound of metal on your wrist.

I also like Benarus because it’s a small company based in Germany and the lead designer lives in Kansas City. Not unlike another favorite, Xetum, Benarus has always existed on the periphery of the high-end watch world, producing inexpensive pieces for forum fans and maintaining a presence in the enthusiast community. They are a “start-up” in the world of watches, which is something I love. For a long time Benarus has been making less expensive watches for watch nerds on the boards and forums, allowing them to maintain a successful indie brand.

I would wager that the Megalodon’s $1,100 price tag would turn off quite a few people and, as a rule, I rarely recommend non-complicated watches out of small houses at above $500 or so simply because often the value and craftsmanship aren’t there. At the low end (and $1,100 is at the low end, believe it or not) too many manufacturers resort to styling and snake oil to make the sale, tactics similar, in fact, to the tricks used by high end audiophile gear salesmen who promise the world and deliver little. However, I’m glad to report that the Megalodon passes the sniff test and is very well made. If you like a bold watch, this Benarus creation is, while polarizing, quite handsome and very wearable.

Product Page
Click to view slideshow.

OpenLabel Exits Stealth, Raises $80K To Turn Barcodes Into Public Labels

2012-02-10T22:55:19Z

OpenLabel, a startup that wants to augment everyday products’barcodes with crowd-sourced information that helps you decide whether to buy, has raised $80,000 in seed funding in a round led by Peter Kirwan, also an investor in IFTTT. Also participating in the round were Tim Drees and Doug Taylor. According to OpenLabel co-founder Scott Kennedy, this $80K is just the first part of a larger $300,000 seed round, which the company expects to close prior to the April launch of the mobile application.

The app, previously in stealth mode, can best be thought of as a Twitter-like platform for sharing information around products. Unlike other barcode scanning applications like RedLaser or ShopSavvy, OpenLabel isn’t about delivering pricing information or product reviews, it’s about giving consumers the ability to share other information.

“We’re about everything but price,” says Kennedy, “we’re about actual information.”

For example, users could add notes about the manufacturer’s use of child labor, sweat shops, animal testing, toxic chemicals, and more, and then give the product a thumbs-down. While those types of things sound like they may give OpenLabel somewhat of an activist slant, there are other types of things that could be shared, too, like the company’s political leaning and donations, its support for or stance against particular political or rights issues, like SOPA or employees benefits for same-sex couples. OpenLabel could also be used to share information about whether the product was recalled or had child safety issues, contained allergens like gluten, or whether it was derived from GMOs.

However, the process of accessing this information wouldn’t be different than when you use a barcode scanning application. You would launch the app, scan the product’s barcode and then read the resulting comments or leave one of your own. All comments have to be accompanied by a buy/avoid selection, as well.

The Twitter model comes into play because users can choose to follow others also on the platform. So, for example, if animal rights was your hot button issue, you could follow PETA’s account or that of another animal rights supporter. (This is just an example – PETA has not stated it’s involved here).

OpenLabel doesn’t police the crowdsourced commentary beyond controlling for spam and profanity, but instead uses Reddit-like up and down vote buttons to help surface the best reasons to either buy or avoid the product in question.

The idea for a crowdsourced “Internet of Things” type product has been tried before, perhaps most notably with Stickybits, before its creator Billy Chasen pivoted to build Turntable.fm. Says Kennedy, things like Stickybits (“they abandoned it too early”) and similar efforts failed due to timing, passion or both. However with his non-profit background and interest in transparency, OpenLabel is a project that’s right in Kennedy’s wheelhouse.

That said, the focus here is on building a for-profit platform that attracts the interest of brands, something that Kennedy says will come naturally.

“Once we get everyone out there scanning items and exchanging data about those items, the brands are going to want to be there. Mostly for damage control, at first, but also because you’re putting a sponsored message into someone’s hand at this really critical point.”

Besides Kennedy, who was the founder of Axcelis and BitStar, OpenLabel’s other co-founder is David Ng, the lead mobile developer from TomTom. In addition, the startup has lined up an advisory board that includes a wide range of folks from NASA Ph.D.’s to retail CEO’s, plus Tapulous co-founder Mike Lee, MacBrain creator Matt Jensen, Green Drinks NYC founder Margaret Lydecker, and others.

The application will launch first on the iPhone, but will also be available on Android. In its ramp up to public launch, OpenLabel is staying in a private beta, where only those interested in contributing to building the crowdsourced database are participating.

TechCrunch readers who want to join in, however, can get access by signing up here and entering “TC” in front of your email address.