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

2012-02-11T08:01:50Z

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

2012-02-11T08:01:52Z

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

2012-02-11T08:01:53Z

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]

This week's new events

2012-02-11T01:10:49Z

Imagine Children's Festival, London

Rock'n'roll bingo, superhero workshops, Dennis The Menace live, plus a funfair with an original 50s helter skelter; this cultural cornucopia for kids sounds so good, those without children might look to loan some. Other highlights include Charles Hazlewood leading 250 local youngsters – and the Philharmonia Orchestra – in song; the Red House Children's Book Award (featuring Michael Morpurgo and Malorie Blackman); a "beat-boxing blowfish" set for under-twos with DJ Charlie Dark; and Beastie, a kids-only interactive theatre piece for which grown-ups can be dispensed with altogether.

Southbank Centre, SE1, Sat to 26 Feb, southbankcentre.co.uk

Colette Bernhardt

GEEK2012, Margate

If you've ever watched an episode of the Big Bang Theory and found that it speaks to you, this aptly-titled fest of the nerdy is well worth your time. There's Manga workshops, comic art exhibits and film screenings (Robocop!), but the main draw will undoubtedly be the feast of retro videogaming on offer, including Pong, Mario Kart 64, a journey through the Fifa football series, plus the already retro, relatively unloved Halo 2. There's also chiptune showcases (music made using vintage videogame consoles), Grand Verse Quarto – gaming-inspired verse – plus talks with indie game developers, CGI experts and a discussion headed by BBC tech correspondent Rory ellan-Jones.

Various venues, Wed to 19 Feb, geek2012.co.uk

Stuart Goodwin

Coastival, Scarborough

Brr. The Big Chill might have been cancelled this year, but in choosing February to attract folk to the seaside, this varied one-dayer would've done well to have borrowed the name. On offer: Stacy Makishi provides fib-based multimedia theatre piece The True Story Of Bull, while Slung Low showcase a new commission. Then there's a bill of international film shorts, while Craig Charles brings the noise with his Funk & Soul Club. Meanwhile, those impervious to the elements can make like an amped up Womble in the Surfers Against Sewage beach clean, where Tori Gower will be converting the collected trash into a new art work.

Various venues, Sat, coastival.com

Out & about

Scarecrow Festival, Knutsford, Saturday to 19 Feb

Freak out kids with 30+ straw-stuffed peeps. And if they're not put off, they can make their own.

Tatton Park, events.tattonpark.co.uk

Jorvik Viking Festival, York, Saturday to 19 Feb

See a viking wedding, assorted skirmishes, a strongman comp (fun one for youngsters too) and – no kidding – "make your own replica historic poo".

Various venues

Dino Discovery Day, Bristol, Tuesday, Wednesday

More history for half term – kids can find fossils, meet experts and build their own dinosaur.

Arnos Vale Cemetery

Fort William Mountain Festival, Wednesday to 19 Feb

Film and lectures on mountain culture, plus workshops in climbing, walking and cycling.

Nevis Centre and various venues

London Fashion Week, Friday to 21 Feb

Loads that you wish you could wear, and tons that you wouldn't even if you could.

Various venues

Stuart Goodwin

Colette Bernhardt

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

2012-02-11T00:07:42Z

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

2012-02-11T00:07:42Z

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.

Restaurant review: Aurelia, London W1 | John Lanchester

2012-02-11T01:10:49Z

There's a lot to like about Aurelia. Until the bill arrives

The Waney group aren't household names, but they are admired in the restaurant business as the minds behind two very successful sort-of Japanese restaurants, Zuma and Roka. The cooking at these school-of-Nobu places is easy to like, and their popularity is helped by the fact that they hit various other right-now trends: small plates, sharing dishes and good service in an atmosphere that is so non-fine-dining, former tennis stars have sex in the broom cupboard. Another trend, not so likable, is for a bill that accumulates by stealth and leaves you wondering how a meal with individual dishes costing single digits added up to a total that's well into three figures.

Apart from Zuma and Roka, the Waneys also run La Petite Maison, the slightly pointless twin of an identically named joint in Nice. Their new venture, Aurelia, resembles a mash-up of everything they've done so far: the Mediterranean cooking of La Petite Maison, the small plates and sharing of the Japanese places, the informal but efficient service. And then there are the prices. Aurelia is in Cork Street, in darkest Mayfair, where nothing is cheap; even so, the bill isn't so much steep as cliff-like. It's a pity the online menu doesn't display the prices – that's roughly half the reason customers consult them. One result is that you start shaking your head as soon as you see the right-hand side of the menu, and by the time you hand over your card to pay, you're shaking it so hard, there's a risk of it falling off.

The upstairs is small and noisy and has a bar counter, the downstairs is roomier and has a view into the kitchen. I went twice and sat upstairs both times. On the first visit, the acoustics were terrible; by the second, they had been fixed, but replaced by loud music. That seemed a bit thick. The customers are the usual Mayfair international mystery rich. The service is professional and nice with it.

The food is good, ranging from charcuterie and nibbles through small-plate starters to rotisserie specials and grills, with a detour via pasta – not the easiest thing to share, but the restaurant is no doubt putting what punters want ahead of ideological purity. The pasta we tried, a wild boar ragù, was a very satisfying plateful, the rich, tangy sauce dressing the noodles with just the "pauper's touch" recommended by Italian-American chef Mario Batali. I'd have happily made a meal of just that, with an antipasto and a salad.

Croquetas are comfort food and as such hard to make into something exceptional, but Aurelia's are superb, with a perfect balance of crunchy exterior and melting interior, and with a salt cod filling that you can actually taste. They outshone the other two fried dishes I've tried, one of thin zucchini strips with parmesan batter, the other of squid with the lightest sprinkling of chilli. Tuna tartare comes with a raw quail's egg and dollop of oscietra caviar so tiny, it could easily be omitted. The fish was superbly fresh, chopped and seasoned like a steak tartare, and came with a piece of crisp bread to add crunch and maybe to bulk it out a little. Lobster salad, on the other hand, was comedy-small, in fact only just visible, and noticeably poor value at £18.

Veal chop is one of those things that never tastes quite the way it does in Italy (it's weird, but even those little Campari bottles taste different in Italy). I liked the Aurelia version, though, a thick chop, served medium, with a generous dollop of olive as a condiment-slash-sauce to tweak it. Pudding was a chocolate truffle bombe, served wrapped in greaseproof paper with layers of ice-cream and biscuit, and so much cocoa powder on top that it made us sneeze.

They know what they're doing at Aurelia, but my hunch is that the location is so costly that they've been forced down the route of safety-first. There's a lot of that going on in London at the minute. The wariness is completely understandable, of course, but it's making the city's new restaurant scene less lively than it might be. Expensive and cautious – where's the fun in that?

• Aurelia 14 Cork Street, London W1, 020-7409 1370. Open all week, Mon-Fri lunch noon-3pm, dinner 6-11.30pm, Sat 12.30-11.30pm, Sun 12.30-10.30pm. Three-course meal for two with drinks and service, about £140.

John Lanchester

Cairo: My City, Our Revolution by Ahdaf Soueif – review

2012-02-11T01:10:49Z

Soueif celebrates Egypt's capital city

It was on the 15th day of the Egyptian revolution that I first encountered Ahdaf Soueif in Tahrir Square. She wore big round sunglasses that swallowed her face, and a dark scarf covered her head and fell over her shoulders. It would have been easy to dismiss her as just another spirited revolutionary, but a flock of fellow protesters grew around her, and followed her, and stuck.

"Write, please write," one man urged her. "I live in one room, I have six children. Please, bring a TV crew and film my home. I am willing to work, willing to earn an honest wage, willing to put in long hours."

"I have documents, proof of what they've done, the government," another began.

I approached her myself when I too, realised who she was; she spoke first of women and their extraordinary role in the revolt, and then looked me in the eye and said that she had dreamt of this. "I had a vision of revolution. It happens in Tahrir – Liberation Square."

Whether Soueif actually dreamt of the revolution in its current form – as many have themselves claimed since – or whether she simply yearned more broadly for liberation, I never did find out. But to read her new book is to understand that the novelist and commentator long sought if not a liberation, or even reconciliation, then at least a gentle closure and a means of addressing her longing for the city of her youth.

Much of Soueif's fiction over the years has felt burdened by a melancholy for Cairo, which became her second home after marriage took her to London in 1984, and she begins this new book with an almost chilling admission of such: "Many years ago I signed a contract to write a book about Cairo; my Cairo. But the years passed, and I could not write it. When I tried it read like an elegy; and I would not write an elegy for my city." For anyone who has lived the decline of Cairo over the years and under the increasingly despotic and corrupt Mubarak regime, the sense of loss, of the irrevocable, had become as much a part of the urban fabric of place as it had become a state of mind. Cairo has felt heavy. "Streets were dug up and left unpaved. Sidewalks vanished. Prime and historic locations became car parks. Streetlights dimmed. Nothing was maintained or mended. Old houses were torn down and monstrous towers built in their place … The day the Cairo Tower lost its discreet white uplighting and was caught in a net of flashing coloured dots I cried."

In these details of her Cairo, which are interspersed throughout her record of the revolution, Ahdaf captures a cultural memory that is shared by many. Equally, she documents the events and predicaments that both troubled her and also came eventually to make January 25: "A quarter of a million children lived on the streets and some people set up shelters for them and some filmed them and some stole their kidneys and corneas. Police officers ran protection and drug rackets. People regularly fell out of windows during questioning or had heart attacks in police custody … The top judges of the country stood for two hours in silence in the street outside the Judges' Club with their sashes and ribbons and medals on their chests. We knew then that judgment would surely come."

In this book, which stands much more as a chronicle of that judgment, or revolution, than anything else – a personal testimony of time and place and experience – we are introduced to a writer who seems lighter, freer, less conscious of the weight of her prose and the story she has set to tell.

There are many records of the Egyptian revolution, but Cairo takes us on a more intimate journey; one that goes far beyond the 18 days of Tahrir Square, to the places in her memory: her aunt's flat in Lazoghli, now the centre of the battle with state security; Maspero, where she had her first job, and now the mouthpiece of Mubarak's regime; and the many rooms and views and places that bring back memories of her mother ("I cannot tell you how many people in the Square have said to me, can you imagine if your mother were alive today? How she would have enjoyed this?"). We gain access that only a local – and a well-connected one – can provide, and we get an insight to a world that only a member of the Soueif family could offer: Soueif's sister, brother-in-law, nieces and nephew are all seasoned and prominent activists, and in the course of the narrative we hear of their beatings and arrests and disappearances and detentions. She offers glimpses of past and future as well as present. Of 28 January 2011, she writes: "Through the night of this Friday that will come to be known as the Day of Wrath, the regime killed hundreds of Egypt's young … Families will spend months of heartbreak finding out and trying to prove how they were killed. Brave doctors and lawyers will speak up for them. The Dakhleyya (interior ministry) will continue – as I write – to deny responsibility".

Although Soueif admits to worrying about "writing the revolution" when she actually needed to be part of the revolt, she seems to have successfully done both. Her voice in Cairo is different to that in her two novels and several collections of stories and commentaries; it is a voice that speaks of her own story but also speaks for thousands, perhaps even millions, of other Cairenes.

Soueif writes that this book, the one she signed on to write many years ago, was never written because "it hurt too much". Yet I find myself wondering if this really is her definitive Cairo book, or if there is yet another one, a deeper one, a more nuanced one – the book that she had been struggling with, and that she alludes to, and that lies somewhere on a hard-drive or in a drawer unfinished. I find myself still wanting to know more about this lyrical Cairo of hers of which we catch only fleeting and compelling glimpses.

Yasmine El Rashidi's The Battle for Cairo is published by NYRB.

Yasmine El Rashidi

Ghent for foodies

2012-02-11T01:10:49Z

Ghent is fast becoming Belgium's best city for foodies, with dynamic chefs championing fine local produce. Here are the stars of its culinary scene

Volta

It is well worth the 10-minute walk out of the city centre to discover Volta, a cool restaurant housed in a vast converted turbine hall. The kitchen is run by genial young chef Olly Ceulenaere, who prepares a fabulous seven-course tasting €59 menu in the evening, with surprising dishes such as crunchy white cabbage topped with smoked eel and parsley root.
• 2b Nieuwe Wandeling, +32 9 324 0500, voltagent.be, mains €32-€40.Open Tues-Sat noon-2pm, 7pm-9pm

JEF

Newly opened JEF typifies the changes going on in Flemish cooking. Chef Jason Blanckaert abandoned the Michelin-starred cuisine of the chic but classic C-Jean restaurant to open his own casual, minimalist diner. It's what the chef calls "real food": hearty portions of slow-cooked veal and belly of pork and oven-braised cod with shellfish and pumpkin. Don't expect rich sauces – the ingredients are the star here.
• 10 Lange Steenstraat, +32 9 336 8058, j-e-f.be, lunch set menu €25, dinner set menu €55. Open Tues-Thurs noon-2pm, 7pm-10pm, Fri noon-2pm, 7pm-1am, Sat 7pm-10pm, closed Sundays

De Vitrine

One of Belgium's most talented chefs, Kobe Desramaults cooks his signature "earthy" cuisine in a cult restaurant in the Flemish countryside, but now he has just opened De Vitrine, an ancient butcher's shop in Ghent, run by one of his young team, Mathias Speybrouck. Drinks and Flemish tapas are served around the butcher's marble counter, with a small dining room at the back, fully booked way in advance. Mathias creates fresh, surprising recipes such as young sprouts topped with cockles.
• 134 Brabantdam, +32 9 336 2808, de-vitrine.be, three-course lunch €33, three-course dinner €45. Open Tues-Fri noon-2pm, Tues-Sat evening reservations at 6.30pm or 9pm

Yuzu

There are all the usual famous-name Belgian chocolates on sale in the centre of Ghent, but real chocoholics will search out this off-the-beaten track boutique showcasing the creations of local chocolatier Nicolas Vanaise. He makes his seductive, zen chocolates each morning in his own home, starting at 5am, and can scarcely keep up with demand. Travelling regularly to Japan for inspiration, his chocolate truffles resemble calligraphy art works, mixing strange combinations of flavours and textures, such as lemon and coffee.
• 11a Walpoortstraat, +32 47 396 5733. Open Tues-Sat 10am-6pm

Gruut

Annick de Splenter has renovated another of Ghent's old industrial buildings, installing brewing vats and transforming the rest of the space into a friendly bar and restaurant. She brews twice a week, and these Gruut beers are delicious – not too strong compared with traditional Belgian Trappists. The menu features hearty local favourites such as waterzooi, a tasty chicken stew, or stoverij, tender beef braised in beer.
• 10 Grote Huidevettershoek, +32 9 269 0269, gruut.be, mains from €10-€14. Open Mon-Sat 11am-11pm, Sun 2pm-7pm

Guido Meersschaut

Ghent has a beautiful medieval fish market, but it is now being turned into offices and a brash modern brasserie. The last fishmonger to leave was Guido Meersschaut, the fourth generation of a family who began in 1846 selling Ostend shrimps in wicker baskets. You have to grab a cab to his new premises but it is worth the trip. There is a tasting bar where clients can discover the difference between Breton, Dutch and Colchester oysters, sample maatjes (raw herrings, €2 a piece), or try traditional paling in het groen (eel braised in a parsley sauce, €38).
• 27 Ajuinmarktstraat, Gent-Ledeberg, +32 9 232 3322, meersschaut.be. Open Tue-Sat 9am-12.30pm, 2pm-6pm

Tierenteyn-Verlent

Tierenteyn looks more like an apothecary than a delicatessen, and although the shelves are stocked with stone jars of spices and herbs, everyone comes here for their unique mustard, dating back to 1790, and shrouded in secrecy that resembles medieval alchemy. There are no preservatives used, which means the mustard can only be sold here on these premises. Once you have tried Tierenteyn, everything from Dijon to Colman's pales in comparison.
• 3 Groenmarkt, +32 9 225 8336, tierenteyn-verlent.be. Open Mon-Fri 8.30am-6pm, Sat 8.30am-12.30pm, 1pm-6pm

Roomer aperitif

Maarten and Jeroen Michels look like a couple of mad scientists, and are known around town as "the Roomer Boys", after the unique aperitif they invented using Heath Robinson-like stills and their grandmother's elderflower wine. Today, Roomer has its own state-of-the-art distillery, and is the perfect drink for the waterside terraces of Ghent's numerous cafes.
• roomer.be

Temmerman

Housed in a splendid baroque mansion on the Leie river, Temmerman is the town's favourite old-fashioned sweetshop. The shelves are lined with tempting jars of sticky toffees, fruit gums and liquorice, but what makes Temmerman so famous is its speculoos gingerbread and an array of eccentric candies – such as mammelokkers (breast lickers), or cuberdons, distinctive "red nose" raspberry jellies.
• 79 Kraanlei, +32 9 224 0041. Open Wed-Sat 11am-6pm

Het Hinkelspel

Thirty years ago, three students began making organic cheeses using non-pasteurised milk in the cellar of an ancient convent, and they've become something of an institution in Ghent. There are four basic cow and goat cheeses, and the ones not to be missed are Dulse, flavoured with red algae, and Pas de Bleu, which is actually as blue as Roquefort, and delicious to taste with the dairy's own beer, Lousberg.
• 33 F Lousbergskaai, +32 9 224 2096, hethinkelspel.be. Open Mon-Sat 10am-1pm, 2pm-6pm

• For more on Ghent's foodie scene, see the blog by three of its top chefs, flemishfoodies.be/eng, and the new one by the town's barmen, belgianbarflies.be

John Brunton

Four tales of holiday romance

2012-02-11T01:10:49Z

To inspire you to go a bit further this Valentine's Day, our writers reveal how they met the loves of their lives in foreign lands

I fell for my rescuer in Bhutan

Years ago, I met some very nice Bhutanese people who were working in New York. We became friends, and they always urged me to visit their country.

And so in August 1994, I found myself limping along on a mountain road in Bhutan, trying not to panic. I'd left my very agreeable guide and driver at the hotel and set off on a half-day hiking adventure through Punakha, a heavenly valley filled with poinsettia trees and orange trees and temples in the clouds. There wasn't a soul around, and I'd recklessly slipped off my boots and waded into the sparkling river that ran parallel to the road on which I'd been walking. It was fantastic until I slipped in the icy water and twisted my ankle. I climbed back up to the road and, struggling, put my boots back on.

Eventually a man on a motorcycle came along. I flagged him down, and he gave me a ride back to my hotel. After depositing me there and refusing tea or monetary reward, he took off.

I rested for a day or two, my enthusiasm for the place not the least bit dampened, then carried on with my tour of this country of impossible beauty and charm. Like everyone who visits this kingdom in the clouds, I fell in love with Bhutan. It was a love like I had never experienced before, bordering on obsession. I visited the country two more times for even lengthier stays in as many years, and in 1997, I came to teach English to students and artisans of the National Art School just outside Thimphu, Bhutan's capital. I felt I had found the centre of the universe.

I was over 40 and had never married, eschewing that institution for a life of travel and adventure. So everyone was surprised, myself included, when, in 2000, the auspicious year of the dragon, I married one of my co-workers. He was a handsome, shy painter of Buddhist scrolled art or thangkas. He was the nicest person I'd ever met.

Namgay and I moved to a little house beside yet another gorgeous river that wound its way through the magical mountains outside Thimphu. And one day, two years into the marriage, as we sat in the garden chatting and drinking tea, he asked me if I remembered the time I hurt my ankle in Punakha. Dear reader, this was eight years after the event. "How do you know I hurt my ankle?" "Because I gave you a lift," he said, matter-of-factly. We'd known each other for four years. He'd never mentioned it until then. I was stunned. I whooped and laughed like a crazy person. Why had he never mentioned it? I ask him this all the time. Well, sometimes he says he forgot. Then sometimes he says he thought I knew; that we were in silent collusion.

Now we've been married 12 years, and living in Thimphu, and another dragon year has rolled around. It hasn't always been easy, this intercultural marriage of ours, but it has always been interesting. The truth is Bhutan is a tiny country of fewer than 750,000 people. I was probably one of a handful of visitors in August of 1994. In other words, as a lone American woman walking on a rural road, I would have stuck out. So it's not as incredible as it might seem. For me the truly amazing thing is my husband's quiet equanimity. It's still the reason I adore him. And it's still the thing that makes me swoon.
Linda Leaming
Linda's book, Married to Bhutan (Hay House, £8.99, tinyurl.com/leamingbhutan), is out now

We are hard-core travellers and met on the road

Our eyes met across a crowded room in a hostel … the story of how I met Dorothee is ridiculously corny but also the result of an amazing twist of fate. After riding a 50cc scooter across Europe and the Sahara, I decided to travel to Alaska with the aim of buying another scooter and riding down to the southern tip of Argentina. At almost exactly the same minute as I checked in for my flight in London, my wife-to-be checked in for her flight in Montreal, setting off on the same journey – Alaska to Argentina.

The man in the scooter shop in Anchorage advised me to move to a different hostel to the one I was staying in. I'm glad I did because that was where I met my wonderful wife. She was also travelling to the tip of Argentina, but on a bicycle! I had truly met my match and greatly respected her because she'd already cycled across Canada, leaving a very good job behind.

Dorothee set off before me and then I blew my engine so I didn't catch her up till the deserts of Baja, Mexico. It is true that I chased her a bit as I think men should do. It took me a week to fall for her and her for me. We then travelled together for a year. Dorothee would set off first, I'd catch up with her along the way, then ride ahead to set up a camping spot and wait for her to arrive in the evening. This was our story and it was the most fantastic period of my life. It was the perfect mix of travel, love and an amazing feeling of freedom. We completed the trip, and after returning home to Cumbria I missed Dorothee terribly and realised I had no choice but to leave everything and move to Montreal to marry the love of my life.

Three years of saving and a two‑year-old (Oceanne) later, in 2009 we decided to go on a good old-fashioned family bike ride – from Edinburgh to China along the Silk Road. We survived a bitter European winter and, after 14 months on the road, made it back to the UK in time for Christmas 2010.

Our journey entailed crossing 14 countries, and accounted for 35 flat tyres. It was the hardest yet most rewarding thing I have ever done. The biking was the easiest part of this trip – it was the one part of the day when I was comparatively alone to reflect. Among the many highlights of the journey was the incredible generosity of people we met on the way who fed us and offered their houses for the night. My all-time favourite country is Turkey, for its food and atmosphere, and we experienced amazing generosity in Iran where the cycling was incredible. My favourite people have to be the Uzbeks, especially in the Fergana valley region, which is supposedly a hotbed for terrorist activity – what rubbish. The most beautiful landscape was without a doubt Huashan mountain in China.

The hardest part of the trip was the hours of packing and unpacking because it gets so boring, and with a child it takes so long – especially when we were camping, which was half the time. When we were knackered at the end of the day and Oceanne just wanted to play, it was pretty tough. However she is such a wonderful girl and was really relatively easy to travel with. She had a lot to contend with – her environment was constantly changing, and a million and one people wanted to take her picture. In China there would sometimes be 50 people at once. She took it all in her little stride and it was probably because of Oceanne that we met so many people.

Travelling as a family was very rewarding. Because of our stubbornness and determination we realised it's possible to follow your dreams of adventure and take your kids along for the ride.

People think we must have limitless cash lying around but it's not so. There's no secret – we just saved. We ended up spending double what we'd saved, but I'd do it again in a second. We are very proud of our journeying and really hope it acts as an inspiration for others to travel with their little ones. There's no mystique to it – I can't understand why so many people just dream when they could be doing.
Rupert Wilson-Young (as told to Julian Howson)

We eloped to Scandinavia

I've never dreamed of a big white wedding. I wouldn't know how to deliberate over floral arrangements or seating plans. And I don't see the point of spending a year's salary on a single day. Luckily for me, when it came to tying the knot, my fiance, Stuart, felt exactly the same way.

Last September we flew off on a budget airline – with our two‑year‑old, Phoebe, in tow – to Copenhagen to get married. We didn't invite any friends or family. We rented a flat that we found on the internet for the weekend – in Vesterbro, an arty area full of independent bars and shops. The owner kindly left us a bottle of fizz in the fridge when she found out what we'd come to do.

When the not-so-big day dawned, the weather was freakishly good. We ditched our coats, picked up some takeaway coffees and sauntered towards town.

Coincidentally, the local community was protesting against the city council's plan to fell a 114-year-old tree to make way for a new metro station. In relaxed Nordic fashion, their demo resembled a makeshift festival. Families sat in the grass around the tree, eating sausage sandwiches from a barbecue and listening to reggae pumping out of a sound system. There was even a vintage clothing sale. We found ourselves being serenaded by a children's steel band. They walked behind us playing the Stevie Wonder song "As" – one of my favourite tunes – for several blocks.

At the mock-gothic town hall, we were ushered into a foyer with two other wedding parties to wait for our turn. One of the other couples took some snaps of us – they were clad in jeans and made us feel overdone in our cocktail dress and suit combo.

The ceremony itself lasted 20 minutes (it cost around £55 and the paperwork had been easy to arrange beforehand by post). It was performed by smiling officials in medieval-style robes. Our toddler, entirely unaware of proceedings, played with keys that one of them thoughtfully handed to her. We both cried.

Afterwards, we had lunch in the brasserie of the rather kitsch Nimb hotel (nimb.dk), which resembles a Disney-style Moorish palace. It was so warm we sat outside on the terrace overlooking Tivoli Gardens. The waiters, who thankfully didn't notice our daughter drawing on their white table, poured us complimentary champagne and took more photos.

The whole day was magical, utterly romantic … and really, really laid-back. I wouldn't have had it any other way.
Melissa McClements

We pursued each other around the world

Sometimes you find The One in the most peculiar places. I met Chris at a turtle conservation project in Costa Rica in 2007. I would lie on my belly in the black sand, exhuming rotten eggs from an old nest, while he tallied results. It was hard and dirty work, though one day we found a baby turtle alive in the sand, like a piece of buried treasure. Together we released it on the beach and watched it splash to freedom.

We volunteered for two weeks, but were just friends. We saw each other briefly in Brighton months later, but it wasn't until 2009, when I was returning to Europe from Australia, that we clicked.

With a free week before my tour of Europe started, I sent him a quick email: "I know this is a silly question … but is there any chance you want to take a week off work, fly to Italy and meet me?" His response was immediate. "That is a silly question. Of course I'll meet you – and if it's in Italy, even better!"

We met at our hotel in Rome, and after an awkward start checking in ("Would you like the room made up as a double or two singles?"), we fell for the city and each other. As we wandered through the labyrinth of backstreets in Capri days later, he whispered that he loved me.

I started my tour and he flew home to his native Holland, but he wasn't done wooing me around the world. Two weeks later in Istanbul, I spied him trying to look inconspicuous near the Blue Mosque. He'd flown to Turkey to surprise me. Instead I surprised him. Abandoning my bus, I doubled back behind him and tapped him on the shoulder to applause from the bus.

After two days in the Netherlands, three weeks together in Sydney and a relationship that bloomed across four continents, I moved to Holland to be with him, just five months after we'd met up in Rome. We haven't looked back.
Shaney Hudson

Romantic ski chalets for two

2012-02-11T01:10:49Z

Why risk sharing a chalet with rowdy strangers, or even rowdier friends? Here's our pick of five romantic retreats in the Alps

Mazot les Tines, Chamonix, France

This cute cabin is total fairytale fantasy, all made of wood with little shutters, a small upstairs bedroom with balcony, reached by a ladder; a neat little wooden kitchen and dining room; plus a cosy lounge with a large bay window. It's between Chamonix and Argentière, with stunning views of the Mont Blanc range. If you have kids, you could squeeze them in on the mattresses on the mezzanine.
• collineige.com/chalet-mazot_les_tines-en.htm, from €785 in April

The Bubble House, Sainte-Foy Tarentaise, France

This stone cottage is a perfect Alpine chalet in miniature, modernised with details such as a Smeg oven and funky crockery. There's a log fire in the lounge, above which is the mezzanine sleeping platform.
• oneoffplaces.co.uk, from €450 per week. Availability in March and April

Le Mazot, Hameau les Clèves, Switzerland

This luxury chalet is on two floors, linked by a ladder. The lounge has a wood-burning stove, iPod dock and Wi-Fi. It's near Nendaz (a lovely little resort that links to the Verbier ski area).
• hameaulescleves.ch, from CHF1,330pp (£900) per week, with breakfast and dinner, and use of an outside hot tub

Le Mayen, St Luc, Switzerland

Bella Tola is one of the Alps' most chic and luxurious hotels. A short distance away lies Le Mayen, a secluded little spot. It's a gorgeous retreat for a few days – a hamper is provided so you don't ever have to leave …
• bellatola.ch, about £140pp per night, minimum stay four nights

PODhotel, Flims, Switzerland

These basic, but cute, snow-covered POD houses have two or three beds, electricity, lights and heating, though you have to bring a sleeping bag and there are no cooking facilities.
• laax.com/en/accommodation/hotels/hotel/podhotel-camping-flims, from €62 per night for a two-bed pod

Gemma Bowes

Easter rising

2012-02-11T01:10:49Z

It may be remote, but even Easter Island is adapting to the 21st century, with a new luxury hotel and a tour exploring the islanders' cultural history

Easter Island's post office – a six-metre-long, breeze-block cabin – is where tourists come to get their trophy passport stamp. Like me, the elderly Germans by the counter have already gone through the Chilean immigration desk, but it seems none of us can resist this cutesy souvenir. For a dollar, we get the more attractive version, featuring the fuzzy blue outline of three moai statues.

As the desk clerk, dressed in ultra-short shorts, presses the ink on to our pages, I realise that what most people know about this Polynesian island could be written in a space of roughly the same size. When I told people I was travelling here, to one of the most isolated inhabited places on earth, sitting between Chile (3,700km to the east) and Tahiti (4,000km to the west), their curiosity went into overdrive. "All I know is that it has big stone heads and deforestation," said one. That about summed it up for me too.

Easter Island, or Rapa Nui (also the name of the native language and the people), is just 63 sq km, with a population of around 5,000, yet it's shrouded in myth. I've come to try and get under its skin, and also because I hear tourism here is changing. The big news this year is the inauguration of the main town's first luxury hotel and I've also heard about a new tour, which focuses more on the islanders' traditional way of life, teaching you how to farm and fish.

It only takes 10 minutes on the island to dispel one of the most common misconceptions. The moai statues do not comprise just those few photogenic ones seen in the coffee-table books. In reality, there are around 900 of these stern, big-headed figures scattered across the island. You see them everywhere you turn, dotting the coastline and green hillsides. Some look angry; some look anxious; some are topped with red-rock hats that make them look as though they are auditioning for 1980s band Devo. At one point, in approximately 1500AD, the Rapa Nui people were churning them out like a factory production line. In the quarry, you can still see half-finished ones built into the rock.

Today, the island looks like someone has taken hair clippers to its hillsides, leaving just occasional tufts, which mainly comprise of eucalyptus imported from Australia. The theory is that the ancient inhabitants felled all the trees to transport their increasingly ambitious moai statues. Yet, as barren as it is, there is nothing bleak about this isolated land. Its simple colour palette features mainly golden greens and granite, all surrounded by the Pacific. Occasionally, there's a stretch of soil the colour of wet brick or a flash of glacier-mint blue when the surf crashes over a rock.

Hanga Roa is where 90% of the population lives. The harbour won't blow you away as a destination in itself, but for such a tourist-focused place it is very tasteful and no building seems out of place. The town has very strict construction laws and there are no chain businesses, aside from one bank. There are plenty of small guesthouses and even a couple of campsites. I spend one of my nights in Petero Atamu homestay, an oblong bungalow painted sky blue and with bougainvillea climbing up its sides. The elderly owner, originally from southern Chile, still gets misty-eyed when he tells of meeting his Rapa Nui wife in Santiago more than 40 years ago. "It was destiny that I came here," he says with a satisfied smile.

Tourism on the island took a more upmarket turn in 2007, with the opening of the Explora lodge, 8km out of town. The new 75-room Hangaroa Eco Village & Spa is the first high-end hotel in the town centre and I'm surprised to find it blends in so well. Its discreet style is inspired by the old Rapa Nui dwellings, which someone described to me as flat-roofed igloos but with grass growing over the top. The hotel generates its own energy with solar panels and small wind turbines. The stylish, seaview rooms have freestanding, hand-carved clay baths and desks made from volcanic rock.

The hotel is currently having a soft opening with the official inauguration set for August, but getting to this point hasn't been easy. In 2010, it was one of six buildings occupied by a local family who claimed ancestral rights to the land. The press pitted this as a "locals versus the outside company" battle, but, from asking around, I find the reality is more complicated. There is no single "local" opinion about this on the island, because there is no single local way of life. Some are pushing for independence and a return to simpler ways of living, while others welcome investment and a certain amount of development. After a lengthy court battle, it was ruled that the hotel has the rights to operate for 35 years and recoup its investment, then its operations will be handed over to a Rapa Nui foundation.

The intriguing thing about Easter Island is that on the one hand, it has an ancient past spanning thousands of years and on the other, you have its remarkable recent history. The changes the current population has seen in its lifetime are astounding. My tour guide, Hugo, tells me his 87-year-old great-grandmother used to live in a cave. She and many islanders also remember their confusion the first time they saw a plane circling overhead, causing children to run off screaming in fear.

These days, Easter Island has a plane landing every day, rising up to three in high season. It's now on a route linking Chile, Tahiti and Peru. I'm also surprised to find mobile phone reception. The travel articles I read before setting off told of a way of life stuck in the past, with horses tethered outside nightclubs. It turns out these are long out of date. Although people do still ride horses – and thousands of them roam wild on those golden pastures – cars and motorbikes are by far the preferred method of transport.

If you want to learn more about how the people live here, thousands of miles from anywhere, one of the most unusual operators in town is a company called Ancestral Tours. Moi, an outgoing Rapa Nui guy with a grey‑flecked beard and long, black hair, runs experiential tours with his equally friendly Chilean wife, Dayan. Like many Rapa Nui, Moi learned to work both the ocean and the land, while on rainy days he would stay at home to practise artisan carving.

"I am fishing man, I am farming man, I am artist man," he says, switching to broken English from Polynesian-accented Spanish without losing any of his characteristic exuberance. "And now … [dramatic pause] I am turismo man!" With that, I half expect him to rip open his shirt, reveal a logo and then fly out over the Pacific, but instead he goes straight into a burst of the Rapa Nui version of the Maori haka. "See! I am music man too."

I try his sea-orientated day tour, which starts with snorkelling at Ovahe beach. The island's coastline is generally rocky, but it does have a few sandy beaches with picture-postcard appeal on a sunny day. I realise that though wildlife on the island is minimal, there are plenty of weird and wonderful discoveries to be made offshore. Puffer fish and trumpet fish dart into view. Next, Moi takes us to learn to fish. There are no boats or rods involved, just one large net, which we manage from the water. The tide pushes the fish in and we have to form a human barrier to stop them retreating. I'm not convinced I'm much help, clumsily treading water in my flippers, but Moi takes charge and soon we have a few dozen fish, which he chops up for us to eat raw.

He cooks the rest of our catch on a traditional hot-stone fire. It turns out Moi is also "chef man". The whole experience is very hands-on, with everyone chipping in with the preparation and our small group – from Argentina, Chile and Korea – loves it. All this while, 15 moai statues stand directly behind us, watching over us like bodyguards.

Sadly, many of the other moai statues now lie face down or are broken. Easter Island's story is a tragic one of a civilisation that famously turned on itself. Its population plummeted from 15,000 to near-extinction by 1877, with just 111 survivors following a period of famine, disease, slave trading and cannibalism. Fighting between the two rival tribes is believed to be the reason all the moai were knocked to the ground. The ones that are standing today were hauled back into place from the 1950s onwards.

After a few days I start to see the island as a good example of the issues surrounding development. There are the complications of merging tourism and local life; the trials of managing immigration; the dangers of plundering natural resources; and also the issue of having eco hotels, but needing to fly to get here.

The one time when the entire population is completely in sync is during the week-long Tapati festival, which will be in full swing by the time you read this. I'm disappointed to miss it by a few days, especially the race where toboggans are carved out of banana trees and ridden down a steep hillside. Last year, women were allowed to do it for the first time, so I quite fancied having a go.

However, I do manage to catch festival rehearsals in a school gym. As part of the carnival queen competition, two local girls will be going head-to-head, each putting on their own dance show with an army of dancers. There are at least 300 people here, practising their routines and hoping to do their candidate proud. There are plenty of places around town to see a traditional dance show, but this is a different experience altogether, seeing a community with mixed abilities taking part and young children hovering around the sides, copying their elders.

All the islanders I speak to are welcoming and fiercely proud of their culture. One night, I go for a stroll and meet Maxi, a young pineapple farmer. Could he imagine living anywhere else, I ask. "Why would I ever leave this? It's magical," he insists. And, with that, he volunteers to give me a moonlit ride around the moai on his horse.

Seeing the statues' imposing outlines with no one else around is definitely a trip highlight. "Is this your preferred mode of transport?" I ask, wrapped up in the quixotic moment. But then, like a typical young Rapa Nui, Maxi admits he usually travels at a faster pace. "It's just for tonight. My motorcycle is in the garage."

Vicky Baker

A safari solo?

2012-02-11T01:10:49Z

All you need to do is bypass the honeymooners and head to a lodge like Oliver's Camp in Tanzania, where your fellow guests may be even more entertaining than the animals

The honeymooners in Ralph Lauren safari chic ask which national park I'm going to. Ngorongoro? Serengeti? Neither, I say, Tarangire. They look puzzled. Either it's second rate or so exclusive they've never heard of it. And on a chilly night in the arrivals hall at Tanzania's Kilimanjaro airport, I'm not sure which is correct.

Next morning at Arusha airstrip for my flight to Tarangire, an American couple argue at the counter about the price of a cappuccino – $4 – and when workers in the coffee plantations next door earn a dollar a day, it does seem a bit rich. Nonetheless, you feel faintly embarrassed. A German gay couple ask if I know the exchange rate between Tanzanian pounds and euros. It gets all the more perplexing when an Italian couple start cooing next to me. They're lovely, but I'm starting to realise I'm in couples hell. Everyone is with someone, mostly someone they're in love with. Evidently safaris aren't made for saddo single travellers like me. Am I going to feel like a freak?

Messenga is my rescuer. He's formal and hesitant when I land at Tarangire, as we play out the ritual of the rich tourist arriving on a private plane. It's a game neither of us is comfortable with, but as we head for Oliver's Camp in a Land Rover, I'm not yet aware of the stroke of luck I've had. The quality of your guide will make or break your safari. In South Africa and Botswana, I now realise, the guides I've had – colonial types in the great white hunter mould – were competent but unexceptional. They impress Europeans and Americans as they point out a marvel you'd never spot yourself. They are trained to seek what the customer wants (everyone asks for lions) then radio ahead and deliver.

Messenga is different. He grew up in a nearby Masai village and his knowledge of the landscape comes not from books but from a lifetime of observation and devotion to his environment. Am I being misty-eyed? Maybe. But as a solo traveller, you will spend six to eight hours a day alone with your guide, and finding one who keeps you engaged and excited is extraordinary.

Tarangire can, just about, do the "big five" – the lion, elephant, leopard, rhino and buffalo – although it can't compete with the wildebeest migration in the Serengeti or Ngorongoro's volcanic landscape. But in the dry season, the permanent water in the Tarangire river attracts huge numbers of migratory animals including herds of elephant, wildebeest, zebra, eland and oryx. For Messenga though, Tarangire is not about the big five but the "beautiful five" and (his favourites) the "ugly five".

As tourists head for the big game, they miss Tarangire's real treasure – it's 550 bird species. Lilac-breasted rollers are at the top of Messenga's list. They perch on high branches, ready to hunt, all over Tarangire. The yellow-and-green bee-eater, the bar-tailed trogon and two types of honeyguides make up the rest of the beautiful five.

Travelling solo with a guide gives you the chance to set your own pace. Leopards, schlepards, I think, as the other camp vehicles chase a rumoured sighting. Mostly we dawdle, catching the kudus and hartebeests, spotting a tawny eagle, and having a giggle as a herd of zebras cross our path. I stare and stare at the giraffes, in Tarangire more docile and approachable than any I've encountered. "Mr Patrick, would you like to move on?," Messenga asks. "No, I'm OK."

We talk Tanzanian politics – a presidential election is looming. We talk safari park politics – the maintenance of wildlife reserves for rich, mostly white, tourists in a country where average incomes are just £350 a year and where pressure on land is intense. And we talk about the Masai, still holding on to their traditions.

On holiday alone, you almost automatically engage more. I learn how the country has largely avoided tribal clashes that wreck so many African nations. The ujamaa collectivism of Julius Nyerere, Tanzania's first president, did little for the economy but his legacy is a uniquely national rather than tribal identity across the country.

Evening meals are the dark night of the soul for the single traveller. Couples at every other table, when your only companion is a book. But Oliver's Camp is different. Meals are taken at a single long table, and my Come Dine With Me companions come straight from central casting. A French UN official on a break from the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda, a guy who was in charge of public health for San Francisco, doctors from North Carolina and four Seattle women in their 50s, resting after scaling Kilimanjaro. The manager of Oliver's Camp is a dead ringer for Julie Christie in the 1960s. Who needs romance?

Oliver's Camp is unfenced, a reminder of its exquisite exclusivity; it's the sole encampment within the 1,100 square mile park, permitted to exist only if animals are free to roam through it. A security guard walks you back to your tent, assuring you a lion is unlikely to pace past in the night. It's about the only time you wish you weren't alone.

But breakfast is your payoff. Silent, alone, a book lazily in hand, a fine cup of coffee, and giraffes lolloping past not more than a couple of hundred metres away. It's fantastically expensive. And worth it, at times like this.

Only once is the serenity shattered, when the next day I share a tour. "No, not that. Only want lions," barks the fat rude German when Messenga pauses for a lilac-breasted roller, while his oriental partner, at least 25 years his junior, looks on impassively. When we later find a lion, I want to feed him to it. Who needs company when you have a thousand square miles of safari park to yourself and almost the greatest concentration of wildlife on earth?

• An eight-day trip to northern Tanzania with Audley Travel (01993 838000, audleytravel.com) costs from £4,973pp, including a safari at Oliver's Camp, return flights from Heathrow, internal flights, transfers and meals

Patrick Collinson

Emma's Eccentric Britain: Brighton sewer tour

2012-02-11T01:10:49Z

Emma Kennedy takes a deep breath and descends into Brighton's Victorian sewer system – and meets two of the bravest men on earth

It's a beautiful morning in Brighton: cloudless sky, crisp winter wind blowing in from the south and cresting surf crashing on to the pebble beach. I stand, hand in pockets, and take a deep breath of clean sea air. "What a lovely day," I say, to my friend. "It's almost a shame we're going underground."

"And into a shithole," she replies, screwing her mouth sideways.

I'm going down into the bowels of Brighton, journeying into its Victorian sewer system built, primarily, to keep the shit off the beach. I am haunted by visions of drifting poo and rivers of urine and I can't stop imagining that the smell is going to hit me like a freight train and make me never want to smell again. I'm also worried about touching anything. I don't want one speck of any stranger's effluent anywhere near me. "It is dirty down there," says Stuart, one of our guides. He's worked down here for more than 40 years. He's grinning from ear to ear. "Laurence Llewelyn-Bowen came here once. He wore a white suit. And he left without a single speck on him."

I'm wearing a white safety helmet and I've been given a numbered tag to wear around my neck "in case there's a flash flood and you're washed away to sea" explains Stuart.

I stare at him and blink. I'm in a holding room being shown a video about a man called Dr Russell who wrote a dissertation on the benefits of seawater for disorders of the glands. It's his fault they had to build a sewer. Between him and the Prince Regent, Brighton became a Must-See location and before they knew it, the town officials had more shit than they knew what to do with. And so the Victorians, who had sensitive noses and longed for clean pebbles, set about building the Brighton sewer system.

I'm yet to have a full blast of the smell. I have been assured that "once you're used to it" it's fine and that I should, "take a deep breath as you go in so that the senses at the top of your nose sort of die".

I am dreading this. My friend has already declared her intention to vomit and as we ready ourselves to go through the vault-like door and into the abyss, Robert, our other guide, turns round and quips: "It's a good job you're not here on a Saturday morning after all the beer and curry's been tipped into the system. Now that's a smell."

At this point I foolishly ask whether anyone has ever fallen in. Robert, to my horror, nods. "We have to get into it to clean the fat and remove the debris. I saw a man go under. He had to spit shit out of his mouth. Remember that. If you fall in, keep your mouth shut."

It is only now that I get my first experience of the smell. To be fair, it's not as bad as I thought it would be, and it is true that after the first sharp punch, you get used to it pretty quickly. All the same, it has a depth to it, slightly thick, cloying and with a sinister undercurrent of death and decay.

We walk through a narrow tunnel and come out into the "catch tank". Stuart shines a torch down into a flowing mass of sewage. "What do you think that is?" he asks. We look down and I can see, just under the flowing murky liquid, something unformed and anonymous.

I think it's fat. I've guessed that because Stuart has told us about the icebergs of fat that float through the system. The fat forms rafts so thick they can stand on them. But it's not fat. "That's sanitary towels," says Stuart, with a delightful smile. "Later, I'll show you where they really gather." He says this as though it's a massive treat.

"Once, when I was down there," he adds, "I found a severed finger."

I don't need to hear another thing. Stuart and Robert are the bravest men on earth. And don't put fat or sanitary towels or tampons down your toilets. Stuart asked me to tell you.

• Brighton's sewer tours (01903 272606, tinyurl.com/brightonsewers) run from May to September, and must be booked in advance. Adults £12, children £6 (minimum age for tours 11 years old)

Follow Emma on Twitter @EmmaK67

Emma Kennedy

Hotel review: Grasshoppers, Glasgow

2012-02-11T01:10:49Z

Scandinavian styling, Caledonian oak floors, Italian lighting – it may sound like an architectural pick and mix but this new Central Station-side hotel is sleek, stylish, and budget-friendly

Taking Network Rail's disused property stock and turning it into a smart but budget-friendly hotel beside a city station sounds like such a winning idea (once you've sorted the soundproofing) that you wonder why nobody has done it before. But, of course, they have. Ex-lawyer Barrie Munn founded the Sleeperz hotel (sleeperz.com) in Cambridge 15 years ago and, though Munn is no longer involved with it, the idea stuck. In partnership with Network Rail, Munn is now the man behind a new Glasgow hotel, Grasshoppers.

A modern, unpretentious take on railway hospitality, this 30-room venture covers the sixth (top) floor of a building directly adjacent to Central Station, above the unpromisingly scruffy entrance lobby of the local offices of Virgin and ScotRail. Step out of the lift up above, however, and all is clean, serene and Scandinavian, a vision of contemporary pale grey and white styling with a rainbow-striped carpet leading you down the centre of an oak-floored corridor.

Off it are dove grey, mustard and white bedrooms that each spin a variation on the pared-down theme. All feature modern Italian lighting, Caledonian oak floors and bathroom "pods" fitted beneath ash pelmets, which mimic the building's original cornicing. This may sound like an architectural pick and mix custom-built for insomnia, but the result is surprisingly sleek and restful.

The rooms are refreshingly no-frills, and the basics are done brilliantly. The sheets are Egyptian cotton, showers are powerful and rooms come with bespoke desks, pretty handmade wallpapers by MissPrint (missprint.co.uk), free Wi-Fi and Sky HD.

There's heritage at play here as well as modernity. The building was designed in 1905, by James Miller for the Caledonian Railway Company and bedrooms look out over either the rooftops of Union Street or Central Station's glass roof, whose many thousands of panes glow at night like a Brobdingnagian firefly. Which, in a tenuous way, brings us to the hotel's name. It may sound more like a backpacker hostel on the Khaosan Road than a smart Scottish hotel but Munn apparently liked its memorability.

Back on that corridor, The Kitchen is the setting for simple but very good breakfasts of muesli, fruit juice, bacon, cooked-to-order eggs and delicious, toast-your-own bread. Since December the hotel has also started offering pre-bookable suppers (Mon-Thurs nights only) of no-fuss favourites such as fish pie, steak and cranachan.

It's been a long time since I've liked a hotel this much, probably because it's not trying to offer anything other than a straightforward, decent place to stay for the night. If they dropped the gimmicky name, it would be perfect.

Follow Rhiannon on Twitter @rhiannonbatten

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

2012-02-11T00:07:42Z

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

2012-02-11T00:07:42Z

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

2012-02-11T00:07:42Z

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.

Ship Wars@ Google Waterloo: A virtual battle of intergalactic spacecraft

2012-02-10T22:56:24Z

On Tuesday, January 24, Google Waterloo opened its doors to engineers from the Kitchener-Waterloo area to participate in the first ever Ship Wars Programming Competition. The brainchild of myself and another Waterloo engineer, Garret Kelly, Ship Wars is a competition in which participants code their own intergalactic crafts in the programming language of their choice, and then battle against each other in a virtual environment. The inaugural competition proved quite popular, drawing nearly 40 participants, ready for battle.

The game itself went through a lengthy series of internal tests and refinements at the Google Waterloo office in the weeks leading up to the tournament. On the day of the event, participants quickly learned how to play and were able to code, test and enter their virtual ships into competition in under three hours. Not an easy feat!

The engineers brought their own machines (mostly laptops, but a few brought in huge desktops) to build and run their ships. After a brief overview of the rules, they were able to get started coding their ships in the language of their choice—some even switched languages mid-way through the event, changing their plan of attack. They were able to control the way the ships moved (direction and speed) and the strength of their weapons, but were only given clues as to how their ship and weapon systems would behave inside the simulation— the rest had to be deduced by playing test matches against example ships. This type of on-the-fly problem solving proved to be a unique and exciting challenge.

To test their ships in battle against other engineers’ creations, head-to-head battle stations were set up around the room. At these stations, participants could see how their ships were shaping up, watch them in action and ultimately decide what changes they could make before the final competition.

Local engineers design their virtual battleships

At the end of the evening, guests were given a tour of the Google Waterloo office while their ships “went to battle.” Thousands of simulated head-to-head battles and 15 minutes later, to the sound of much laughter and raucous cheering, the ship captains saw their results and watched replays of some of the most dramatic battles. Prizes (a Motorola Xoom Tablet, a Samsung Galaxy Tablet and a Google messenger bag) were awarded to the designers of the three ships with the most wins. For more photos, here’s a link to our album.

This wildly successful event will be expanding out to a few other Google offices in the near future. Be on the lookout, Pittsburgh and Cambridge: Ship Wars is coming to you next!

Posted by Aaron Kemp, Software Engineer

(Cross-posted from the Technical Programs and Events blog)

Gillmor Gang Live 02.10.12 (TCTV)

2012-02-11T00:07:42Z

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

Air Force Could Buy Thousands Of iPads And Android Tablets

2012-02-11T00:07:42Z

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

2012-02-11T00:07:43Z

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)

2012-02-11T00:07:43Z

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

2012-02-11T00:07:43Z

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

2012-02-11T00:07:43Z

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.