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- Wael Ghonim: If You Want To Liberate A Government, Give Them The Internet
- Zipzoom Raises $2.2 Million To Help Connect Shoppers And Local Businesses
- Nokia Microsoft Is Like Yahoo Bing – Nokia’s Days As Innovator Are Over
- Time Inc. Releases Sports Illustrated Digital Subscriptions
- Nokia Share Price Takes A Hell Of A Nosedive, Down 14%
- GE Acquires Tall Turbine Tech From Wind Tower Systems
- Former Microsoft Vet Chris Weber To Lead Nokia’s USA Business, Louison Is Out
- ArticlesBase: The Profitable Content Farm With 20M Monthly Visitors You Don’t Know
- Reddit Doubling Down On Programmers — Almost Six Years After Launching
- Nokia’s Road Ahead Will Be Rough But Not Impassible
- Twitter App Store Oneforty Refocuses On Helping Business Users Manage ‘Social’
- Siine Lands $880,000, Aims To Change The Way We Type On Touch-Screen Keyboards
- TechCrunch Giveaway: A Google Chrome Cr-48 Notebook #TechCrunch
- Turner Broadcasting Flips Women’s Website TheFrisky.com To BUZZMEDIA
- Look Vic Gundotra, Nokia CEO Stephen Elop Can Also Tweet Cryptically!
- SEC Watch: Start Fund Raises First Round, Totaling Nearly $6.5 Million
- Via NFC: Japanese Social Network Mixi First To Let Users “Share” Real-World Items
- Detroit Needs A Statue of RoboCop! Best Kickstarter Project Yet.
- One Kings Lane Grows 500% In 2010, Takes $23 Million Investment
- Valentines Day Bait & Switch: Groupon Must Avoid Becoming Just Another Useless Coupon Site
- Nokia Confirms Microsoft Partnership, New Leadership Team, Organizational Changes
- Movie And TV Recommendation Startup Inveni Closes $483K Funding Round
- You Can Now Punch People On The iPhone, Congratulations Humanity
- The Funny Coincidence between Bing’s Rise And Conduit’s Declining Traffic
- UN Secretary Rice On Facebook And Twitter: “Governments Are Increasingly Cognizant Of Their Power” [Video]
| Wael Ghonim: If You Want To Liberate A Government, Give Them The Internet Posted: 11 Feb 2011 09:34 AM PST
Ghonim, is of course, referring to the fact much of this revolution was organized on Twitter and Facebook (similar to the Tunisian protests). Ghonim was believed to have hosted the first Facebook page that organized the January 25th protests. When Blitzer asked “Tunisia, then Egypt, what’s next?,” Ghonim replied succinctly “Ask Facebook.” He went on to personally thank Mark Zuckerberg, and said he’d love to meet Facebook’s CEO. Ghonim says that he’s looking forward to getting back to his work at Google but he plans to write a book, “Revolution 2.0″ about the role of social media and the internet in political demonstration. There’s no doubt that social media has changed political activism irrevocably, and this moment will surely be a historic moment for Facebook and Twitter. Ghonim and Blitzer ended the conversation back on the topic of Zuckerberg, with Ghonim saying “Ask Zuckerberg to call me!!.” Yeah, or send him a message on Facebook.        
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| Zipzoom Raises $2.2 Million To Help Connect Shoppers And Local Businesses Posted: 11 Feb 2011 09:10 AM PST
Exclusive - Zipzoom, an Ontario, Canada-based startup building an online marketplace where consumers can hook up with local and/or national businesses, has scored $2.2 million in angel funding from a number of private investors, we’ve learned. The company recently launched the beta version of its service, which aims to connect ‘ready-to-buy’ shoppers with ‘ready-to-sell’ businesses. Registered users say submit queries (i.e. communicate what it is they need), and are supposed to get a lot of quotes from local vendors they can easily choose from. They can do so anonymously, and completely free of charge. Of course, this is a tried and tested Internet business model, so innovative Zipzoom is not. And of course, everything depends on how whether Zipzoom can ramp up both the supply and the demand side of the equation, which I reckon requires far more capital than a couple of million dollars. Note that they basically have to convince people to stop using Google or Bing to find local businesses and email them for personalized quotes and head on over to the Zipzoom site instead – good luck with changing consumer behavior at significant scale.        
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| Nokia Microsoft Is Like Yahoo Bing – Nokia’s Days As Innovator Are Over Posted: 11 Feb 2011 09:05 AM PST
As I was plugging in to power my iPhone to live stream today’s Nokia press conference, I overheard someone lean over and say “This is the most important day of your life”. It was whispered into the ear of Nokia’s PR spokesman as he took the stage today to introduce Nokia CEO Steven Elop. It certainly was important – but not in a great way. Today his boss effectively ended Nokia’s history as an ecosystem of its own, laid down its guns, and gave in to a Windows Phone future. To me the direct comparison is Microsoft taking over as the search engine behind Yahoo. Under Carol Bartz, Yahoo surrendered in the search war to Google and decided to let someone else try: Bing. From that day on Yahoo gave up it’s long tradition of innovation. Exactly the same thing has happened today. Everything about this event screamed that. Elop is Nokia’s Bartz. He’s looks at this entirely as a business transaction. Sure, he recognised the problems. But he took the decision not to fight.        
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| Time Inc. Releases Sports Illustrated Digital Subscriptions Posted: 11 Feb 2011 08:15 AM PST
The new platform will offer the “iconic print magazine” on all devices, starting with Android tablets and smartphones as well as a web-based version on si.com. How much does this privilege cost? $48 annually or $4.99/month for a print and digital subscription or $3.99/month for a digital-only subscription. Current SI subscribers will receive free digital access immediately for the remainder of their subscriptions. SI isn’t new to portable devices. Thus far they’ve released an iPad app, an HTML5 version for Android and a Fantasy Football game. In addition to their sports content, SI will release more pictures of nearly naked ladies with further expansion of the Swimsuit line, including a 3D version. Publishers are scared, friends, and we should laud SI for this move. Everyone and their dog can say they have an iPad app, but like it or not, Android will will run the show very shortly and SI knows that dudes who love sports – and the ladies who love them – love Android. Sports is the next frontier for tablet content. Witness, for example, The Daily’s dedication to sports content, occasionally to the detriment of their other coverage. SI is doing the right thing and if they can slowly switch Luddites to tablets, expect them to be around for at least a few more years.
       
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| Nokia Share Price Takes A Hell Of A Nosedive, Down 14% Posted: 11 Feb 2011 08:08 AM PST
How low can Nokia‘s share price go? It was to be expected, but that doesn’t make it any less newsworthy: Nokia is really taking a beating on the public markets right now. Stock price was down about 14% last I looked (NYSE), but it has been hovering around a 13.5% drop in the past few hours. In case you hadn’t heard, Nokia this morning announced a major strategy shift, switching to Microsoft’s Windows Phone as its primary smartphone platform, shaking up the management team and pushing through other organizational changes. For what it’s worth: Nokia CFO Timo Ihamuotila posits that the company should get a long-term financial boost from the strategic partnership with Microsoft.
       
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| GE Acquires Tall Turbine Tech From Wind Tower Systems Posted: 11 Feb 2011 07:53 AM PST
Longer wind turbine blades, generally, capture more energy from wind. Taller towers to accommodate these blades can be difficult to ship, install and keep steady in the field, however. According to a GE press statement, the technology it acquired from Wind Tower Systems is “space frame tower system technology” for use at wind farm sites that require hub heights of 100 meters or more. The tall towers can be shipped in standard flatbed trucks, and can be installed without heavy-lift cranes, using WTS’s “Hi Jack” systems instead. The tall space frame towers and lifting system concepts were developed by WTS with the support of the U.S. DOE and California Energy Commission to drive lower wind energy costs. GE plans to test the technology this year, and if all goes well, make it commercially available to wind farm developers in 2012.        
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| Former Microsoft Vet Chris Weber To Lead Nokia’s USA Business, Louison Is Out Posted: 11 Feb 2011 07:50 AM PST
Following Nokia‘s strategy shift announcement, the Finnish mobile phone giant has just announced that it has appointed former Microsoft executive Chris Weber as President of Nokia Inc. (United States), and head of Markets, North America. That means Mark Louison, a long-time Nokia employee who was appointed that role back in March 2007, is out to “pursue new career opportunities”. Weber comes to Nokia from his own consulting business, but he’s mostly known for his career at, yup, Microsoft. Weber was with the Redmond-based software juggernaut for 16 years – he held several senior executive positions in sales, marketing and professional services. Among his key roles were Corporate VP leading Microsoft’s US Enterprise and Partner Group as well as heading the US EPG National Sales Excellence and Industry Organization. He pledges to “work relentlessly on winning the trust of our customers and the hearts of consumers”. Exactly what Nokia has famously long been struggling with in the US.        
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| ArticlesBase: The Profitable Content Farm With 20M Monthly Visitors You Don’t Know Posted: 11 Feb 2011 07:10 AM PST
Judging by Demand Media’s successful IPO, HuffPo getting bought for $315 million and Wikimedia raising over $16 million from Wikipedia users and fans, it appears online content is red hot (again). So when a company asks me to have a look at their online article directory, which they say gets visited by more than 20 million unique users every month, I pay attention. Remember, for all the attention blogs like The Huffington Post receive, the network was visited by 28 million unique monthly visitors last month, up from 24,5 million in December 2010, so clearly said company – ArticlesBase – is playing among the big boys traffic-wise. Even more surprising are those stats when you look at the size of the company: only 11 employees, but ArticlesBase is already – self-reportedly – raking in about $500,000 a month, at a 80% profit margin. And you’ve probably never even heard of it. So what gives? Launched in 2005, Articlesbase is basically an online directory of syndicated articles, spanning 26 verticals, including health, finance, business, home improvement and education. A global library of articles, too, with over 3 million articles in six different languages (English, Portuguese, Russian, Spanish, French and Hebrew), and growing at 5,000 new articles per day. It has a how-to video section with over 175,000 videos and a recently launched Q&A section with more than 100,000 questions. Get this: ArticlesBase says more about 500,000 contributors add thousands of new articles on a daily basis, and they don’t even get paid. All they get from contributing to the site is, essentially, attribution and traffic. No monetary compensation per article, letter or pages viewed. Nada. Zip. The Israeli startup behind the site deems ArticlesBase a destination site, with the majority of traffic coming from organic search, but claims it thrives on high-quality content and no SEO trickery. Looking at the available content, I seriously doubt that, though. Some random articles found on the site: 7 Ways As to How to Make a Man Kiss You Without Seeming Needy Or Too Desperate Myspace Backgrounds According to your Wishes Thai Wives and Girlfriends: a Few Stories Not exactly Pulitzer material there, but obviously that’s not the goal – this is a content farm business if I ever saw one. Again, their contributors do this for free, so it’d be rather foolish to expect to find a lot of high-quality content on ArticlesBase. Still, you may not like it, but it’s quite a nice little business they’ve got there. Think about it: a completely bootstrapped startup, a team of 11 employees and an annual revenue rate of about $6 million. I can think of plenty of startups, even venture capital-backed ones, that would love to be able to report such numbers.
       
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| Reddit Doubling Down On Programmers — Almost Six Years After Launching Posted: 11 Feb 2011 07:01 AM PST
By most accounts, the past several years under Conde Nast rule have seen Reddit run very lean — probably far too lean. And after an explosion of growth this past year, they’re finally doing something about it. Earlier this week, the service revealed that they had carried out a “dramatic expansion” of hiring by adding four new team members. And today they’re announcing their intention to double the programming team by adding three more there as well. Specifically, Reddit wants a frontend programmer, a backend programmer, and someone in between. And in typically quirky Reddit fashion, the way to apply is interesting. Instead of sending in your resume, they’re asking would-be employees to solve one of two problems. The first asks you to clone Reddit. Yep, they want you to build a copy of their service — one that works. The second problem asks you to rebuild the backend tool that they use to find gamers of their system. If you can do either, then you earn the right to send them your resume. Doing it the other way around (the normal way), is like ”trying to pick the best cellphone by comparing the manufacturers’ press releases,” the company says. Good point. For the rest of the details about the problems as well as more about the jobs, check out Reddit’s blog, it should be up shortly. So why all the Reddit love from Conde Nast all of a sudden? The aforementioned growth this past year is key, but we also hear it may have something to do with Sarah Chubb, the long-time president of Conde Nast’s digital arm, leaving the company. There’s at least a dozen “better late than never” jokes in here somewhere.        
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| Nokia’s Road Ahead Will Be Rough But Not Impassible Posted: 11 Feb 2011 06:20 AM PST
I first started noticing Nokia’s steep decline in about 2007. It was at the launch of the XpressMusic, a music phone for the masses that, for once, actually appeared in the US. This was about the time the iPhone began washing on the shores of Finland like a pernicious parasitical plant. The company released the XpressMusic as a cheap, entry-level phone for folks who wanted to listen to music. However, at the core of this move was Nokia’s consistent disregard for the changing status quo. By 2007, the smartphone was slowly dying. Windows Mobile and Symbian, while arguably the most popular end-user platforms around the world, were light years behind than the upcoming Android and iOS and users were already pinning their hopes on future technology including a nascent WebOS.        
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| Twitter App Store Oneforty Refocuses On Helping Business Users Manage ‘Social’ Posted: 11 Feb 2011 05:47 AM PST
But interestingly, after nearly two years, Oneforty has found a specific target market for its products—business users. As more businesses, both enterprise, large and small, look to incorporate social media into their marketing and PR efforts, these companies are also looking to spend money on expertise, services and tools for these strategies. And Oneforty has now become a destination for business users. Social media consultants have already built out 700+ guides on the site to help businesses tackle all things social media, including Twitter and Facebook. Fitton tells us that many businesses are confused about social and are spending money on business expertise, services and tools. She adds that the “social business” market opportunity is huge and the site has turned partly into a consultancy of sorts for businesses who want to incorporate social elements into their workflow or marketing efforts. Today, the company is publicly rolling out its B2B platform on social business, which includes information on how to invest a budget, what other companies are doing and more. Other content includes a buyers guide for brands looking to adopt social media software and reviews of social media tools. Fitton assures us that the App Store is still thriving, but that this focus makes sense for Onforty longterm. Inn fact, new business user signups have grown 5 times since October. And the company plans to roll out additional comparison tools, case studies, webinars and events. Of course the elephant in the room is that one of the reasons Oneforty has shifted strategy is that businesses will actually pay for tools and services, as opposed to consumers who can simply download free apps to suit their needs. As for funding, Fitton says the company has no immediate plans to raise another round.
       
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| Siine Lands $880,000, Aims To Change The Way We Type On Touch-Screen Keyboards Posted: 11 Feb 2011 05:12 AM PST  Siine, a Spain/UK-based developer of software that aims to change the way we communicate using touch-screen phones and tablets, has raised £550,000 (roughly $880,000) in seed funding from Atomico Ventures, the investment vehicle established by Skype founders Niklas Zennström and Janus Friis. The company says it has created unique systems that make it easier for people to type and transfer text via touch-screen devices, reducing the number of keystrokes required to use virtual, on-screen keyboards. That pitch, of course, sounds eerily similar to Swype's.
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| TechCrunch Giveaway: A Google Chrome Cr-48 Notebook #TechCrunch Posted: 11 Feb 2011 04:53 AM PST
We have 1 Google Chrome Cr-48 Notebook to give away! You can read our extensive review on it here. If you would like to win a Cr-48 Notebook, just follow these steps to enter. 1) Become a fan of our TechCrunch Facebook Page: 2) Then do one of the following: - Retweet this post (making sure to include the #TechCrunch hashtag) The contest starts now and ends tomorrow, February 12th at 7:30pm PST. Please only tweet the message once or you will be disqualified. We will choose at random and contact the winner this weekend with more details. Anyone in the world is eligible, as long as you can receive delivered packages. Good luck everyone.        
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| Turner Broadcasting Flips Women’s Website TheFrisky.com To BUZZMEDIA Posted: 11 Feb 2011 04:45 AM PST
Entertainment publisher and lover of capital letters BUZZMEDIA this morning announced that it has acquired The Frisky from Turner Broadcasting System (TBS). Originally launched in 2008, The Frisky focuses on a female audience with entertainment news, celebrity, fashion and women's lifestyle items. According to comScore, the site attracted 2 million monthly readers, on average, in 2010. The site will now join BUZZMEDIA’s line-up, which includes complimentary, if not a bit overlapping, websites like Celebuzz, Buzznet, Concrete Loop, TheSuperficial and SocialiteLife. Turner, meanwhile, is said to shift its focus on sites that tie more closely to its own digital news, entertainment and sports-driven properties.        
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| Look Vic Gundotra, Nokia CEO Stephen Elop Can Also Tweet Cryptically! Posted: 11 Feb 2011 04:26 AM PST
Google VP Vic Gundotra raised some eyebrows with his apparently ‘brilliant’ tweet commenting on the Nokia / Microsoft partnership that was announced this morning. #feb11 “Two turkeys do not make an Eagle”, the man tweeted. Yes, well, Gundotra, Nokia CEO Stephen Elop says two bicycle makers from Dayton, Ohio, one day decided to fly. Nokia has confirmed to me that the tweet was posted on Elop’s real Twitter account – it looked legit enough, but you never know. Obviously, the tweet refers to the famous Wright brothers, who started out retailing and manufacturing bicycles before moving on to airplanes. I’m sure I won’t be the only one noting that one of those brothers died at a relatively young age (45), though I’m pretty sure that’s not the message Elop wanted to convey. Now someone please organize a panel featuring both gentlemen – I’m sure having both former Microsoft execs on one stage would turn out to become one phenomenally quotable event. Via Mobile Tech World and Engadget.        
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| SEC Watch: Start Fund Raises First Round, Totaling Nearly $6.5 Million Posted: 11 Feb 2011 04:00 AM PST
Remember Start Fund, the investment vehicle established by DST’s Yuri Milner (as an individual) and Ron Conway's angel fund, SV Angel? A couple of weeks ago, we broke the news that the fund, which is managed by SV Angel partner David Lee, made a gutsy blanket investment offer to every single one of the 40 or so Y Combinator startups in the most recent batch. Start Fund offered to provide $150,000 in convertible debt to every one of those Y Combinator startups. Mike Arrington at the time correctly calculated that if all of them would accept the loan, a total of $6 million will be invested. This morning, Start Fund’s first SEC filing surfaced, and it looks like $6,450,000 was raised. Milner and SV Angel have declared that they intend to make a similar offer for each Y Combinator startup in the future, too, so no doubt there will be follow-up rounds after this one. We’ll keep watching. In related news, Dave McClure‘s 500 Startups fund recently set up an incubator program similar what Y Combinator and other programs are doing to support young tech startups. An exciting time for fledgling tech companies in Silicon Valley indeed. Now where are the international equivalents?        
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| Via NFC: Japanese Social Network Mixi First To Let Users “Share” Real-World Items Posted: 11 Feb 2011 02:51 AM PST
Last year already, Mixi added two functions to its mobile site, which NFC is supposed to boost:
The NFC-powered versions are named “Mixi Real Check In” and “Mixi Real Check”. NFC (Near Field Communication) technology makes it possible to exchange data between devices in close proximity to each other. Mixi Real Check In allows you to check in to places by tapping their Android phone on an NFC tag in the real world to share your location with your Mixi friends in real-time. These tags, which cost a few cents and can contain any kind of information (i.e. a URL or Twitter handle), can be attached to a wall or poster in a store or restaurant, for example. As Mixi Real Check In is based on NFC, a GPS signal (which can be weak in certain areas, like underground) isn’t necessary. The tags can also contain information on where exactly the user is located (for example, to broadcast to your friends in which section of a department store the tag was scanned). Mixi engineer Kyosuke Inoue demonstrates Mixi Real Check In in the company’s HQ in Tokyo:
Mixi Real Check is potentially more interesting: this function allows users not only to share websites with friends but any object in the real world that has an NFC tag attached to it. Tapping or waving the phone near NFC stickers found on i.e. books or posters is enough to share the information on Mixi, in real-time. This could be anything from further information on the products to details on promotion campaigns a brand wants to run on Mixi. Bringing social functionalities to the real world is a great idea for a social network, but there are two downsides at this point: Mixi users interested in these new functions must own a Nexus S (the only Android device with the necessary hardware for NFC so far) and have Taglet (a special NFC app for Android) installed. The Nexus S isn’t even officially available in Japan currently, which means almost all Mixi users still must wait for the future.        
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| Detroit Needs A Statue of RoboCop! Best Kickstarter Project Yet. Posted: 11 Feb 2011 02:50 AM PST
How is this tech-related? First of all, RoboCop is tech. He’s probably the most badass tech ever created in a fictional Detroit future. Secondly, there is actually a campaign underway right now on the crowdsource funding startup Kickstarter to get this statue built. Yes, it may be the best Kickstarter project yet. It easily surpasses the iPod nano watch with raised a mere $940,000+ from over 13,000 backers this past December. I mean, iPod nano watches are cool and all — but freakin RoboCop! So far, over 250 people have committed just under $6,000 to the project. They hope to raise $50,000 and they’re definitely going to get there as they still have 43 days to go. And when they do, the RoboCop statue go into product to eventually reside on a piece of property on Roosevelt Park facing Michigan Central Station in Detroit. The backstory for all of this is arguably the best part. Apparently it’s all because some random guy in Massachusetts tweeted to Detroit’s Mayor Bing that the city should have a RoboCop statue similar to the Rocky one that Philadelphia has. And Mayor Bing actually responded, saying, “There are not any plans to erect a statue to Robocop. Thank you for the suggestion.” And so off to the Internet it was. A Facebook event popped up (with over 4,500 people RSVP’d), Reddit had some fun, and then everyone got down to actual business — on Kickstarter. Let’s get this RoboCop statue funded! Detroit absolutely needs a RoboCop statue. And RoboCop would totally kick Rocky’s butt.  @MT@MT @mayordavebing Philadelphia has a statue of Rocky & Robocop would kick Rocky's butt. He's a GREAT ambassador for Detroit.  @mayordavebingMayor Dave Bing @MT There are not any plans to erect a statue to Robocop. Thank you for the suggestion.        
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| One Kings Lane Grows 500% In 2010, Takes $23 Million Investment Posted: 11 Feb 2011 02:00 AM PST
And it’s a big one – $23 million in a round led by Greylock Partners and Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers. Kleiner is a previous investor, as is Greylock Partner Reid Hoffman. The size of that previous round was never announced. Previous investors First Round Capital, as well as Hoffman, also invested in this round. As did TriplePoint Capital and Marissa Mayer (this is the first investment by Marissa that we’ve heard about). The company also says that 2010 sales were up 500% over 2009, and more than 75% of sales come from repeat customers. One Kings Lane is like Groupon with daily deals, but only handles upscale products for the home. Furniture, bedding, art, stuff like that. I’m a regular customer there, and the good stuff always sells out very quickly each morning. The Pincus family is turning into a bit of an entrepreneurial dynasty.        
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| Valentines Day Bait & Switch: Groupon Must Avoid Becoming Just Another Useless Coupon Site Posted: 11 Feb 2011 01:21 AM PST
Groupon has been different, though. They’ve had real discounts, verifiably way below normal retail costs. That’s why so many tens of millions of people look forward to their Groupon email every day, and why so many people sign up for skydiving lessons that they never knew they wanted. There are signs, though, that the model may not scale infinitely forever. Beyond just common sense, I mean. Some merchants have failed to take the coupons they’ve already sold on Groupon when they saw the overwhelming volume it brought in, for example. Groupon seems to do a very good job of returning money to unhappy customers in those situations. And by doing that they’ve kept their brand strong and synonymous with getting genuine good deals. Not today though.
Which is fine except that the regular FTD site shows a price of $40 for the same item, meaning Groupon users only really got $10 off, not $20. This is all kinds of things. False advertising by FTD to start, since they’re showing a different retail price for Groupon users v. people coming to FTD without the Groupon link. And, say users, the coupon only works if you go through the Groupon link. There are other complaints about the offer as well, like FTD pushing deliveries to February 15, and charging a service fee. Those things are annoying. But the different price point is what really worries me.
For Groupon to continue to grow they need to get more big national advertisers, and those advertisers need to not be screwing around with customer trust. The Gap campaign was well handled. This FTD “deal” wasn’t. Sour deals like this hurt Groupon’s brand, because burned customers won’t be so eager to check out the new daily deals. They’ll just assume it’s a scam, and ignore it all. Just like those HUGE SALE! signs in the window at your favorite retail store. Image credit (first image)        
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| Nokia Confirms Microsoft Partnership, New Leadership Team, Organizational Changes Posted: 10 Feb 2011 11:39 PM PST
Ahead of its Strategy and Financial Briefing in London, Nokia has shared some details on what it plans to announce at the event. As expected, the company is aligning its strategy with Microsoft. By now, you’ve probably seen the ‘burning platform’ memo penned by the fresh CEO of the world’s largest mobile phone manufacturer, former Microsoft executive Stephen Elop (the existence of the brutally honest memo was first reported by TechCrunch Europe and later published in full by Engadget). In it, Elop addressed the company’s formidable competitors (Apple and Google with its Android OS strategy), who are consistently out-innovating Nokia and steadily taking over its market share. Clearly, Elop was gearing up for the announcement of some significant changes with regards to Nokia’s strategy going forward. He delivered. (full press release below) Here’s the meat:
Windows Phone to become Nokia’s primary smartphone platform = huge. Microsoft reportedly offered Nokia hundreds of millions of dollars to make that switch. Nokia will use Bing for search functionality across its devices, while Nokia Maps will become core to Microsoft’s mapping services. Nokia’s content and app store will be integrated with Microsoft’s Marketplace. More info about the partnership is available here.
Nokia says Symbian will become a ‘franchise platform’, while MeeGo will become an open-source, mobile operating system project. In their words:
Nokia still plans to ship a MeeGo-related product later this year. The biggest change to the management team: Alberto Torres has apparently stepped down, effective February 10, to “pursue other interests outside the company”. Torres joined Nokia in 2004 and was EVP of MeeGo Computers, Mobile Solutions. As of April 1, Nokia will also boast a new company structure, which features two distinct business units: Smart Devices and Mobile Phones. You can learn more about what that means in the press release below, which will no doubt be ripped apart by press and analysts in the following hours and days (and beyond). When the company recently reported its fourth-quarter earnings, Nokia said its estimated market share had shrunk to 31 percent. With this broad partnership with Microsoft and the organizational overhaul, is a veritable comeback in the cards for the ailing mobile phone maker?
       
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| Movie And TV Recommendation Startup Inveni Closes $483K Funding Round Posted: 10 Feb 2011 07:40 PM PST
Inveni is a free web service that serves up movie and TV recommendations based on a user’s unique tastes. How does it work? Think of it as technology akin to that which drives Netflix’s personalization and recommendation features. Inveni’s software assists you in creating a customized “Taste Profile” by enabling you to share the preferences you’ve already established on sites like Amazon or Hulu. Speaking of Amazon, Inveni founder Aaron Weber told me that the startup is being advised by former NetPerceptions executives, the makers of the collaborative filtering software that drives Amazon’s recommendation engine. Though Inveni’s technology draws obvious parallels with Netflix and Amazon, Weber said that the two services essentially rely on an algorithm to aggregate taste preferences and serve recommendations, and Inveni differs from this — sort of. The service has used a bot to crawl other sites on the web that offer user-generated content recommendations (i.e. sites that let users recommend movies and TV shows to each other) and it’s incorporated this data into its own database. Which doesn’t really sound Kosher, but we’ll let it slide. Just this once. And unlike the fully automated algorithms, Inveni users can publish the TV shows and movies they’ve watched, which leads the site to ask their friends and other Inveni members what they should check out next. Update: Weber says that this crawling is one component of the recommendations and explains that staff, contractors, and the site’s users establish the majority of connections. The crawling is intended to help Inveni staff make recommendations faster. The startup will initially remain focused on movies and TV, but says plans are in the works to expand beyond Hollywood — potentially to books and music. Founded in 2008, Inveni debuted its service at TechCrunch Disrupt SF in September 2010. Since then, it has remained in beta, but Weber told me that he hopes to launch officially this spring.        
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| You Can Now Punch People On The iPhone, Congratulations Humanity Posted: 10 Feb 2011 07:11 PM PST
Oh Western culture, when will you cease to amaze me! First the fact that you can buy a Julian Assange as Che Guevara shirt in the WikiLeaks “mall” and now this … “Punch Your Friends” is an iPhone app created on a lark by Blippy co-founder Philip Kaplan, while he was on vacation in Hawaii. When I asked him for more information about the app he responded, “Flattered but it’s not really TechCrunch worthy yet. Frankly the app isn’t that great.” But, mainly because of Sturgeon’s Law, I’m writing about it anyways. “Punch Your Friends” lets you take/upload pictures of your friends, enemies or boss and then touch punch them, giving the illusion of bruising. The more you touch punch the more the pictures bruise and yes Kaplan is right, after the initial novelty of getting to see what your friends look like all beat up, the app is kind of crappy. And while the smacking noises are indeed awesome I find the bruises pretty unrealistic (see above). Said Kaplan, “Think of it like a 99-cent app that I’m preemptively giving full refunds for because it sucks.” Inexplicably, the app is currently clocking in 1,200 installs per day and is at #307 in downloads for free apps in the US. It is also featured in the App Store in France. I’ll leave you to draw your own conclusions. You can download the app here.        
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| The Funny Coincidence between Bing’s Rise And Conduit’s Declining Traffic Posted: 10 Feb 2011 05:15 PM PST Last December toolbar startup Conduit announced they were bailing on Google search in favor of Bing. In January Bing surged in search market share, up over 2 points to 12.8%. You wouldn’t think Conduit was the main force behind the rise. But the data suggests it is. Conduit didn’t just bail on Google in favor of Bing. They also changed the way they do search. They previously put Google results onto their own domain. Now when someone searches from the Conduit toolbar the user is results are shown on Bing.com directly. So Conduit is losing all those page views and sending them to Bing. Look at this comparison of Bing and Conduit from Alexa:
Comscore shows much the same mirror effect. Bing added 138 million more page views worldwide in January than December, and Conduit lost 165 million in the same period. Coincidence, or cause and effect? That Conduit search deal may have been a lot more important than anyone realized at the time it was announced.        
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| Posted: 10 Feb 2011 04:40 PM PST American UN Ambassador Susan Rice gave an unprecedented livestreamed townhall at Twitter HQ today, “a very interesting and exciting day” due to the at the time impending speech of Egyptian president Hosni Mubarak. The talk was replete with questions from Twitter users and had its own hashtag #askambrice. Rice began the townhall praising Twitter for leading the charge and redefining the media landscape in these unique times.
Rice went to address Twitter user concerns about the genocide in Sudan, the brutal actions of the Lord’s Resistance Army, the value of the UN, President Obama’s commitment to technology and entrepreneurship as well as the possibility of Hosni’s resignation (“We support democracy in Egypt”). While the entire video is fascinating to watch (Craigslist co-founder Craig Newmark makes a brief but hilarious appearance), the most intriguing part for me at least was when Rice was asked a question about how foreign governments viewed Facebook and Twitter.
The outcome of today’s events in Tahrir Square is still “to be continued,” and the scope of influence of Twitter and Facebook on the protests in Egypt, Tunisa, Yemen and now Syria is subject to endless debate. But Rice is right, there’s no denying that social media has a powerful effect on social movements, but as to its exact magnitude we can only begin to speculate, fittingly, hopefully, on Twitter.        
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By now, you’ve probably heard the news that Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak has 
There is a vast hole in the Internet now. Two things are missing and those two things are sports commentary and, once a year, images of scantily clad women. Time Inc. is righting these wrongs by releasing “All Access” digital subscriptions to Sports Illustrated on the web, Android, and WebOS.
General Electric (GE, NYSE: GE) announced today that it acquired technology from Wind Tower Systems, that can enable the company to build and ship wind energy equipment that’s more efficient, taller and longer than what it offers now. 
Normally, when you hear that a company is doubling their programming team, you’d likely assume it’s some red-hot new startup. But this time, it’s actually a company that’s over five years old. And one that was acquired well over four years ago. 
When 
When it comes to things the city of Detroit needs, there’s undoubtely a pretty long list. And if there is an official version of such a list, I’m pretty sure that a statue of RoboCop isn’t on it. But that’s dumb. It totally should be. And that’s exactly why God invented the Internet.
I assume that “sale!” signs in retail businesses are usually just BS. The stores keep normal prices higher than they should be so they can offer customers a faux discount. Whether it’s always true or just often true doesn’t matter. People don’t really get all that excited about signs that say “HUGE SALE 50% OFF” or whatever. We’re desensitized to it.
Groupon offered users throughout the U.S. a $20 off coupon for Valentines Day flowers from FTD. People who bought the coupon had to use a special URL to purchase the flowers. And then they were shown a regular price for the flowers of $50 before the $20 coupon. 
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