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Online reviews site Yelp to go public (AP) : Technet |
- Online reviews site Yelp to go public (AP)
- Newspaper owners team up in deal-finding venture (AP)
- Angie's List stock rises in first trading day (AP)
- NASA creates first-ever high resolution moon map (Yahoo! News)
- Just Show Me: How to configure app settings in Facebook (Yahoo! News)
- JumpTime Changes How Online Publications Measure Content's Value (Mashable)
- Motorola stockholders approve acquisition by Google (Reuters)
- Google launches music service (Reuters)
- Skype software update adds Skype-to-Facebook calls (Digital Trends)
- Android App Tablet Review: Snapbucket (Appolicious)
- PayPal introduces app for sending money to Facebook friends (Digital Trends)
- Walmart rolls out digital movie downloads with Vudu-to-Go (Digital Trends)
- Minecraft: Pocket Edition leads iPhone Games of the Week (Appolicious)
- Apple patent shows ideas for crack-resistant iPhone airbags (Digital Trends)
- Hands on with iTunes Match: A step in the right direction, with a few downsides (Digital Trends)
- Amazon Can Bait Rumormongers Just as Well as Apple (The Atlantic Wire)
- Intuit narrows loss as small business unit grows (Reuters)
- Salesforce.com Acquires Model Metrics in Social-Mobile Play (NewsFactor)
| Online reviews site Yelp to go public (AP) Posted: 17 Nov 2011 04:52 PM PST SAN FRANCISCO – Yelp is hoping investors give it a five-star rating, as the popular online review site plans to raise $100 million in an initial public offering. Yelp made the announcement in a filing Thursday with the Securities and Exchange Commission. The amount of money the startup is seeking in its IPO will likely change as its bankers determine how many shares should be sold and at what price. That process typically takes three to four months. San Francisco-based Yelp, a website best known for reviews of restaurants, bars and other local businesses, said in its filing that it recorded a loss of $7.6 million, or 13 cents per share, on revenue of $58.4 million in the first nine months of the year. This compares with a loss of $8.6 million, or 16 cents per share on $32.5 million in the same period a year earlier. Most of Yelps' revenue comes from local businesses advertising on its site. The company has $32.1 million in debt, and $23.1 million in cash and cash equivalents, the filing said. Yelp plans to put proceeds from the offering toward general corporate uses, including sales and marketing, capital expenditures and working capital. Yelp is no newcomer to the tech scene; the company was founded in 2004 by former PayPal employees Jeremy Stoppelman and Russel Simmons as a way for consumers to post reviews about — and discover — local businesses ranging from all-you-can-eat buffets to zip line operators. Stoppelman, 34, is currently its CEO. The site has grown rapidly in the years since. It had over 22 million reviews at the end of September, and an average of 61 million unique visitors per month. Yelp is available in 43 markets across the country and 22 markets around the world. Its popularity has not been without controversy. Yelp uses an automated program to weigh reviews and sift out those that are potentially unreliable, such as a negative review that a pizzeria owner might write about a competitor. This has resulted in complaints from business owners about the way reviews can mysteriously come and go from their Yelp pages, and several lawsuits (which were subsequently dismissed). In an attempt to assuage irked merchants, in 2010 Yelp began allowing visitors the option of seeing any filtered reviews. According to the regulatory filing, Yelp's largest shareholders are currently Bessemer Venture Partners, which holds a 22.5 percent stake, and Elevation Partners, which holds a 22.4 percent stake. Benchmark Capital Partners is its third-largest stakeholder, with 16.2 percent of Yelp's stock. Max Levchin, a PayPal co-founder and early Yelp investor who is chairman of Yelp's board, owns a 13.8 percent stake, while Stoppelman has an 11.1 percent stake. Stoppelman, Levchin and some other insiders have already cashed in on Yelp's success. The filing said that as part of a company financing round in Feb. 2010, each man sold 7.4 million shares to Elevation Partners for $15 million apiece. Several others sold stock to Elevation then, too. Yelp is the latest in a string of tech companies that have navigated the road to an IPO in recent months. It filed its initial IPO papers the same day that another reviews site, Angie's List Inc., began trading on the Nasdaq Stock Market. The stock jumped $3.26, or 25.1 percent, to finish trading at $16.26. Unlike Yelp, Angie's List charges a monthly fee for access to its reviews of local services such as dentists, veterinarians, roofers and plumbers. Yelp, meanwhile, is free. Yelp's underwriters include Goldman Sachs, Citigroup and others. |
| Newspaper owners team up in deal-finding venture (AP) Posted: 17 Nov 2011 01:58 PM PST SAN FRANCISCO – A group of newspaper publishers and other media companies are teaming up to sell more advertising aimed at people looking for online deals. Eight companies formed a joint venture that has acquired Find n Save, a search engine focused on discount offers made by merchants in cities across the U.S. The venture acquired Find n Save as part of its purchase of Travidia, an online shopping service. Financial terms of that deal weren't disclosed in Thursday's announcement. The joint venture's initial owners include: Advance Digital, part of Advance Publications Inc., whose newspapers include The Plain Dealer in Cleveland; A.H. Belo Corp., owner of The Dallas Morning News; Cox Media Group, owner of The Atlanta Journal-Constitution and more than 100 radio and TV stations; and Gannett Co.; owner of USA Today and more than 80 other newspapers as well as more than 20 TV stations. Discussions are being held with other media companies interested in joining the venture. Find n Save is tapping into the coupon craze that helped turn Groupon's daily-deal service into a hot commodity. Although it's still losing money, Groupon Inc. is growing so fast that the 3-year-old company already has a $15 billion market value. Unlike search engines such as Google, Find n Save specializes in showcasing discounts offered by advertisers within local markets. A consumer can type, say, "burrito" into a search field, and receive a list of nearby Mexican restaurants and the deals they're offering. The search engine makes money from the advertisers in its database. Other ads can be placed by companies looking to connect with people whose search engine requests have signaled their interest in certain products and services. The participating newspapers will share in the revenue and contribute daily deals covering their markets to Find n Save's index. Find n Save currently tracks local deals in 19 of the top 50 U.S. markets. The joint venture plans to add 21 more top markets to the list during the next month. By the end of 2013, the joint venture expects more than 400 newspapers to be affiliated with Find n Save. Newspapers have been mining the Internet for more revenue to offset a steep decline in print advertising that has triggered bankruptcies and massive cutbacks during the past three years. The drop has been driven by the Internet's appeal to advertisers looking for less expensive — and in some cases, more effective — alternatives to print advertising. The joint venture overseeing Find n Save will be run by acting CEO Christopher Trippe, who helped newspapers put together a partnership with Yahoo Inc. that began five years ago. The venture's other partners include Hearst Corp., whose newspapers include the San Francisco Chronicle and 14 other dailies; MediaNews Group, owner of the San Jose Mercury News, The Denver Post and more than 50 other newspapers; McClatchy Co., owner of The Sacramento (Calif.) Bee, The Miami Herald and 28 other dailies; and The Washington Post Co., publisher of the largest newspaper in the nation's capital. |
| Angie's List stock rises in first trading day (AP) Posted: 17 Nov 2011 02:10 PM PST NEW YORK – Consumer-reviews site Angie's List Inc. saw it stock grow by 25 percent on its first day of trading Thursday, showing ongoing investor appetite for Internet companies. The company's public debut came the same day that another reviews site — San Francisco-based Yelp Inc. — filed for an initial public offering of stock. Founded by Angie Hicks in 1995, Angie's List runs reviews of dentists, doctors, veterinarians, gardeners, plumbers and other businesses offering local services. On Wednesday, Angie's List priced its offering of 8.8 million shares at $13 each — at the top of the range it had expected. It follows big IPOs by LinkedIn Corp. and Groupon Inc. this year. And it precedes the public debut of online game company Zynga Inc., which is expected before the end of the year. Unlike Yelp, Angie's List charges consumers a monthly fee, betting that people will want to pay for the assurance that the reviews are trustworthy. The company bans anonymous reviews and doesn't let businesses pay for good ratings. It says it has more than 1 million paid memberships. How much users pay to access Angie's List depends on what types of ratings they want to see and for how long. There are ratings for home, pet and car services, for example, and for wellness businesses, including medical and dental practices. A combined wellness and services bundle costs $5.20 a month. But it goes down to $2.67 per month if you sign up for four years for $128. The Indianapolis-based company had revenue of $59 million in 2010 and $62.6 million in the first nine months of this year. It says it lost $27.2 million for 2010 and $43.2 million for the first nine months of 2011, largely because it is spending a lot on marketing to attract new users. Angie's List plans to use the proceeds from the offering, which it announced in August, for advertising and general corporate purposes. Angie's List said it plans to continue aggressively investing in advertising, particularly in New York and Los Angeles. It has also said it is expanding into new categories. The stock is trading on the Nasdaq Stock Market with the ticker symbol "ANGI." The stock rose $3.26 to close at $16.26 on Thursday, valuing Angie's List at about $904 million. It opened at $18 and traded in the range of $15.02 and $18.75 during the day. |
| NASA creates first-ever high resolution moon map (Yahoo! News) Posted: 17 Nov 2011 05:34 PM PST |
| Just Show Me: How to configure app settings in Facebook (Yahoo! News) Posted: 17 Nov 2011 05:24 PM PST |
| JumpTime Changes How Online Publications Measure Content's Value (Mashable) Posted: 16 Nov 2011 02:49 PM PST The Spark of Genius Series highlights a unique feature of startups and is made possible by Microsoft BizSpark. If you would like to have your startup considered for inclusion, please see the details here. Name: JumpTime [More from Mashable: Was the AP Wrong to Reprimand Reporters for Publishing News on Twitter First?] Quick Pitch: JumpTime analyzes the economic value of content based on both its own advertising value and the advertising value of pages to which it directs traffic. Genius Idea: A new metric for measuring content value. [More from Mashable: Boxee: Cut Your Cable, With Our HD Antenna]
At first glance, popular web content translates to profitable web content. But after setting economists and computer scientists to work on modeling the reality of the situation, JumpTime begs to differ. The company launched a product in 2009 that measures a web page's real-time value based not only on how many times it's viewed and how much advertisers have paid to be placed on it, but also on how good the page is at directing users to other valuable content on the site. In many cases, content with low appeal to advertisers still adds revenue to the overall website by leading more visitors to pages with higher appeal. This was the case, for instance, with one of Jumptime clients' user-generated content sections. From an editorial and brand standpoint, the publication liked the section. But the ad team couldn't sell it, and the publication planned to eliminate it -- until the company measured its value using JumpTime's metric, FloPower, and saw that it was actually one of the most valuable areas of the site. "People would go from these areas to the articles with high [ad costs]," JumpTime CEO Michele DiLorenzo says. "It was in [the publication's] best economic interest to drive traffic to what had before been considered an area with zero value."
MSNBC.com, Warnerbros.com, ESPN.com and Hearst Newspapers have all signed on for similar insights. JumpTime's dashboard shows them the real-time value of each page on their websites and helps them move content that's creating the most revenue to the forefront. Color overlays indicate more traditional metrics such as clickthrough rates. While there are numerous tools such as Chartbeat and Google Analytics that help track website traffic data, few analyze the real revenue generated by that traffic. Better number crunching has changed games ranging from Baseball to the stock market, and web publishing could be the next. "The only way you get this kind of insight is to use a big data solution," DiLorenzo says.
Image courtesy of istockphoto, Jaker5000
Series Supported by Microsoft BizSpark The Spark of Genius Series highlights a unique feature of startups and is made possible by Microsoft BizSpark, a startup program that gives you three-year access to the latest Microsoft development tools, as well as connecting you to a nationwide network of investors and incubators. There are no upfront costs, so if your business is privately owned, less than three years old, and generates less than U.S.$1 million in annual revenue, you can sign up today. This story originally published on Mashable here. |
| Motorola stockholders approve acquisition by Google (Reuters) Posted: 17 Nov 2011 05:02 PM PST (Reuters) – Motorola Mobility Holdings Inc said late on Thursday that its stockholders approved the $12.5 billion deal to be acquired by the search giant Google Inc. Motorola, which was one of the two parts split from Motorola Inc, said that 99 percent of the shares that were voted, voted in favor of the $40 per share deal. The shares represented about 74 percent of the company's total outstanding shares. In August, Google said it will buy the handset device manufacturer in its biggest deal ever, paying a steep premium of 63 percent. Libertyville, Illinois-based Motorola's shares closed at $38.94 on Thursday on the New York Stock Exchange while shares of Google closed at $600.87 on Nasdaq. (Reporting by Kavyanjali Kaushik in Bangalore; editing by Carol Bishopric) |
| Google launches music service (Reuters) Posted: 17 Nov 2011 04:09 PM PST LOS ANGELES (Reuters) – Google Inc has turned on the music at its new online store, aiming to wrest the lead from Apple Inc and Amazon.com Inc in audio entertainment distribution despite the absence of a major record label. Google Music, with more 13 million songs, will be integrated with Android Market, the company's online store for smartphone apps and videos as it plays catch-up with its rivals. Apple, Amazon and Facebook have to varying degrees integrated music into their core online and mobile products. Google Music will allow the Web search leader to do the same by letting consumers access music from various Internet-connected devices and easily share tracks with friends. But analysts said the lack of soundtracks from Warner Music - a major label whose artists include Led Zeppelin and Prince, among others - will limit the appeal of Google Music. "They've got to get that catalog filled pretty quickly," said Mike McGuire, an analyst at industry research firm Gartner. "It's a launch, but it's kind of like a work-in-progress." Google Music was unveiled at a splashy event at the Mr. Brainwash Studios in Hollywood, California on Wednesday. Google has negotiated U.S. deals with three of the four major music companies: Vivendi SA's Universal Music Group; Sony Corp's Sony Music Entertainment; and EMI. It has also signed deals with the increasingly influential independent label group Merlin and London-based Beggar's Banquet label group, home to the year's biggest selling artist, Adele. Analysts say selling online music is unlikely to provide much of a lift to Google's revenue. But they say Google needs to be in the market to ensure that its Android-based mobile efforts can match offerings from competitors. Android is the world's No. 1 smartphone operating system, powering about 200 million devices worldwide. But without a music service, Android-based smartphones and tablets may not be as attractive to consumers seeking a product that offers a seamless media experience. And with music storage increasingly moving to remote Internet servers in "the cloud" rather than on the device itself, companies like Google and Apple have a way to keep users locked in to their respective mobile services, said BGC Partners analyst Colin Gillis. "Everyone is using music and media as a jail. Ultimately, this stuff is going to be stored in the cloud and it becomes harder and harder to switch systems," he said. To help jump-start the new music store, Google said it will offer one free song for consumers to download every day. Google will also allow consumers to share purchased songs with friends on the Google+ social network. The feature will give users of Google+ a "free, full-play" of songs purchased by their friends. "Recommendations from friends are the single most important way that people discover music and we think that this feature has the potential to really transform purchasing behavior," said Zahavah Levine, Google's director of content partnerships for Android, at Wednesday's event. Music executives said that even though sales have struggled in recent years, music usage has never been more popular on different types of formats like social networks and mobile devices. Facebook, the world's largest social network, unveiled a tab in September through which music services like Spotify, Rdio and MOG enable Facebook users to share music. Amazon has also long been a major music retailer and has a music locker service Earlier this year, Google unveiled the Google Music beta, which allowed users to upload their music to Google servers, and access the music from multiple devices. Shares of Google, which finished Wednesday's regular session at $611.47, were up 72 cents in after-hours trading. (Reporting by Lisa Richwine in Los Angeles, Yinka Adegoke in New York and Alexei Oreskovic in San Francisco; Editing by Gerald E. McCormick, Bernard Orr and Richard Chang) |
| Skype software update adds Skype-to-Facebook calls (Digital Trends) Posted: 17 Nov 2011 09:01 PM PST
Announced on the official Skype blog earlier today, the communications company released new versions of Skype for both Mac and Windows that include the ability to connect to Facebook. After installing Skype 5.4 Beta for Mac or Skype 5.7 Beta for Windows, users can click the Facebook icon on the left side of the screen and authorize Skype to access Facebook data through the Facebook Connect button. However, users have to agree to release a bevy of information from Facebook in order to activate the Facebook functionality. The software brings in the Facebook feed of both previous Skype contacts as well as all Facebook friends. Similar to the Facebook feed, users can like updates from friends in addition to reading or adding new comments on previous status updates. Just last month, Microsoft completed the acquisition of Skype for an estimated $8.5 billion. Microsoft is expected to integrate the Windows Phone platform with Skype and will likely include Skype within Microsoft's upcoming social network called Soci. The social network is expected to include video chatting capability that creates a video chatting "party" between friends. This article was originally posted on Digital Trends More from Digital Trends Microsoft will make out thanks to Facebook, Skype deal Facebook’s ‘awesome’ product is video chat from Skype |
| Android App Tablet Review: Snapbucket (Appolicious) Posted: 17 Nov 2011 04:30 PM PST |
| PayPal introduces app for sending money to Facebook friends (Digital Trends) Posted: 17 Nov 2011 07:04 PM PST
Launched earlier today, PayPal has launched a Facebook application that allows Facebook users to send money to other Facebook friends. Aptly called Send Money, users can attach a payment to an e-card along with a message to celebrate an event or simply send the money without a message. PayPal has included 22 different categories of e-card which includes major holidays such as Thanksgiving and Christmas, occasions such as anniversaries and weddings in addition to cards for friendship. After giving PayPal authorization to access the friends list, a user can simply type a friend's name into the form in addition to an email address to send payment. After verifying the payment, it is sent immediately to the Facebook user. PayPal is hoping to take advantage of the 500 million e-cards annually that are sent annually according to the Greeting Card Association. There's no fee to include one of the e-cards with the monetary gift. The application is also ideal for quickly reimbursing friends for small transactions like lunches in addition to firing off an e-card when Facebook notifies users of an upcoming birthday. According to PayPal, over eighty percent of active PayPal users also have Facebook accounts. This article was originally posted on Digital Trends More from Digital Trends Facebook’s ‘Read. Watch. Listen.’ announcements mark a turning point for the site Report: Facebook may wait to file for IPO until late 2012 |
| Walmart rolls out digital movie downloads with Vudu-to-Go (Digital Trends) Posted: 17 Nov 2011 08:40 PM PST
Designed for the traveler, Vudu now allows users to download movies that have been purchased on the service. Previously, the service would only allow users to stream content over a PC or mobile device to watch a film or television show. This allows users to download an entire film similar to iTunes and watch at a later time. This also allows users with slower broadband connections to download an entire film instead of waiting for buffering while attempting to steam a 1080p version of a movie. However, downloads are only available for purchased movies rather than rentals. Avid movie watchers will have to stick with iTunes when renting a new movie to watch on an iPhone or iPad. A $5 voucher pays for the cost of a typical 720p HD rental of a new release on the Vudu service, but a 1080p version of the movie costs an extra dollar. Television episodes can also be rented starting at $1.99 an episode. Walmart has also struck a deal with HP that will include the Vudu application on the desktop when a new HP personal computer or laptop is purchased at Walmart. This article was originally posted on Digital Trends More from Digital Trends Change the channel: 5 Netflix and Qwikster alternatives Apple retains dominance in movie VOD market Viewers of online content are starting to prefer gaming consoles over computers Vudu’s popularity increases while Microsoft and Sony lose market share |
| Minecraft: Pocket Edition leads iPhone Games of the Week (Appolicious) Posted: 17 Nov 2011 03:00 PM PST |
| Apple patent shows ideas for crack-resistant iPhone airbags (Digital Trends) Posted: 17 Nov 2011 08:42 PM PST
The patent was apparently filed in 2010′s Q2, and dug up by Pattently Apple who says that one of the patent inventors, Stephen Lynch, worked on the iPod touch and inductive charging projects. One pathway the patent points to for enhancing the durability of devices—assuming scratch attracting plastic isn't considered—is to strengthen the glass. The thinner the device becomes, the thinner the glass cover window which can mean impact will crack or shatter it more readily. Alumino silicate, known as Gorilla Glass, is suggested, but future options to resist thermal shock include sodalime and borosilicate. The main focus in the patent seems to be concerned with types of "apparatus, systems and methods for shock mounting a cover glass for an electronic device." One method involves cover glass and a shock mount—which is an elastic fastener—that buffers between the glass and the rest of the electronic mass. Another method discussed in the patent involves glass, shock mount and sensors which can sense a drop and retract and protect the cover glass. There is also a tunable shock mount option which would "compression and dampening, so as to isolate the cover glass from the remaining mass of the electronic device." The tunable option could have a shock mount made of polymyer, gel, foam, shape memory material, silicone rubber, viscoelastic material and other suitable types. The shock mount could also be made of an inflatable rubber bladder, or one filled with fluid that expands in shock events, e.g. an air-bag. Of course, just because its a patent doesn't necessarily mean it'll be implemented, but its nice to see some of the ideas being juggled by the Apple think tank.
This article was originally posted on Digital Trends More from Digital Trends Analyst says iPhone 5 was Steve Jobs’ last project; expected this summer Our favorite hidden features of iOS 5 |
| Hands on with iTunes Match: A step in the right direction, with a few downsides (Digital Trends) Posted: 17 Nov 2011 02:48 PM PST
It's been a long wait, but Apple's music-in-the-cloud service is finally here with the introduction of iTunes Match. Like Google Music and Amazon's Cloud Player, the service aims to give users access to their entire music libraries on any of their iOS devices or computers running iTunes. The new service will cost you $24.99 each year, but with that users can upload up to 25,000 tracks (downloaded from iTunes or otherwise) to the cloud and then access those tracks from up to 10 devices, which is pretty generous in our opinion. Songs that were purchased through iTunes don't count towards the 25,000 song limit, which makes that number a little more bearable, and also gives users incentive to get their music through iTunes. One of the huge pluses of the new Apple service is that iTunes already has a catalog of more than 20 million songs, meaning that the process is a lot easier and faster than, say, uploading every single track you own to Google Music. Instead, any songs found in your music library that can also be found in the iTunes catalog (whether they were purchased through iTunes or not) will be matched up, meaning that the service only has to fully upload songs that aren't found in the iTunes catalog. Those songs take a longer time to get into the cloud, but most songs that most people own will have a match within iTunes, making the process significantly speedier than its competitors. The service is available now to all users; after you've updated your iTunes to version 10.5.1, you'll be able to purchase a year of iTunes Match. We went hands-on with the new service to see if it's really all it's cracked up to be.
Getting music in the cloudThe process to actually get all of your music from your home-based music library (likely your home computer or laptop) has three different steps after you've purchased and launched iTunes Match. To purchase it, make sure you've updated your iTunes to version 10.5.1, then go into the iTunes Store and on the right hand side you will see a link to iTunes Match. Purchase the service with your Apple ID account and you can begin the process of getting your library up into the cloud. First, iTunes Match will spend some time getting all the information it needs about your library. The library that we used has just about 12,000 songs in it, making it no small feat for the service. After about 20 minutes of that first step, iTunes Match will move on to matching up your songs with songs in the iTunes catalog. For us, this step took the longest, at just about three hours. The final step is for the service to upload album artwork and any remaining songs that couldn't be found in the iTunes catalog. The service had to upload 1,119 songs from our library that weren't found in the massive iTunes catalog. Uploading each song during this step takes significantly longer, and it took at least another hour for iTunes Match to complete the process. During those three steps, we had to stop and restart the service twice because it seemed to get stuck. Luckily, both times the service picked up where it left off after we canceled and restarted the Match process. We weren't too surprised by a few glitches since we were dealing with a rather large library of songs. After the process was finished, we got a notification that all of our songs were now in the cloud and would be accessible from iOS devices or other computers running iTunes.
Accessing your library from iOS devicesFor most people, one of the biggest perks about iTunes match will be being able to access, play, and download songs from their cloud library to their iOS devices. We tested out the service from both our iPhone 4S and our original iPad. We ran into a few glitches along the way, but once those disappeared we got a pretty good look at just how Match works with your music in the cloud.To get access to your music library from your iPhone or iPad, all you have to do is go to music settings and slide iTunes Match and Show All Music to "On." Once you do that, your cloud-based music should show up in your music library on your iPhone or iPad with a small grey cloud next to each song. When you select a song to play, the cloud will disappear and you'll see a circle that documents the downloading process of the song. We noticed that there was about a 5-second delay in playing a song when it hadn't been downloaded to our device already. Once you play a song, like it or not, that song will now take up space on your device's storage. You can also easily select songs, artists, or albums to add to your device's onboard (non-cloud) library by selecting "download all" next to that artist or album. To download songs to your device from the cloud, you'll need a strong Wi-Fi connection, or if you're using your iPhone, you can allow your device to use cellular data to download by sliding Use Cellular Data to "On" in your App Store settings. For users with unlimited data plans, this means that they should be able to download music from their cloud library anywhere and anytime. But for users who have limited data, we'd warn against turning that feature on if you don't want to go over your limit. Our biggest problem accessing our music from our iOS devices was that a bug of some kind kept prompting us to enter our Apple ID password over and over again whenever we requested to play and download a song. No matter how many times we entered our password, the notification kept popping up. The service has no doubt had heavy traffic in the past few days, so maybe we can chalk it up to that. When we tried again after giving the service a rest for a night, the problem seemed to have disappeared. Users can also enable Automatic Downloads for music in the App Store settings of their iOS device. When enabled, this means that any time you purchase music through iTunes on any of your iTunes Match devices, that song or album will automatically be downloaded to all of your other devices. If you get all of your music from iTunes or like to purchase music on-the-go but want it to also be accessible from your home computer, this feature will be invaluable. For iOS devices, iTunes Match works almost like your own personal music store, instead of a purely music-in-the-cloud service. You can't stream songs from your library from your iPhone or iPad without downloading them to your device. This could become a problem if you have a large music library, but only have a 16GB iOS device. It would probably take quite a while for that problem to occur, but when it does, you'll be confronted with the pre-cloud problem of having to select which music you want on your device and what songs have to be exiled. A perfect cloud system would include a solution to this problem, in our opinion.
Accessing your library from other computersWhile this feature might not be the most buzzed-about, it's definitely the most seamless when it comes to our iTunes Match testing. We put the music library from our home laptop computer into the cloud for this iTunes Match testing, then added our work desktop to our iTunes Match account to see how it worked to have access to our whole home music library from work.When on another computer (after your original matching process has completed), running iTunes, as long as you are signed in with your same Apple ID, a screen will appear after you select the iTunes Match link within the iTunes store that says "Add this computer" instead of "Subscribe $24.99." Click "Add this computer," and after iTunes shows you a page like the one you started with ("Gathering information about your library," etc.) for a minute or so, your music from the cloud will start showing up in your iTunes library, with the same little grey cloud next to each not-downloaded song. This is where iTunes Match functions the most seamlessly, and lives up to the music-in-the-cloud name. Once your cloud music shows up in your iTunes library on another computer, you can play songs or albums easily without having to download them, just as you would with a streaming service. We found that we could play whole albums without any delay, even though they weren't downloaded to our work computer. This is the kind of functionality that we would ideally like to see for iOS devices as well. When we did choose to download whole albums from our cloud library to our work computer's iTunes library, the downloads were fast and easy.
Worth the wait, or an Apple misstep?While we definitely had some headache-inducing glitches along the way, we think that Apple is on the right track with iTunes Match and its capabilities. Once we got it to function, it functioned well and we can certainly see the benefit of being able to access your entire music library from any of your own personal devices. However, we don't think they've quite hit the home-run that they are looking for yet.Apple definitely has the advantage when it comes to the original process of getting your music library into the cloud. The massive iTunes song catalog significantly speeds up the process, taking a total time of only a few hours for a large library instead of the solid week that it took when we tested Google Music Beta. It also benefits users by upgrading the quality of a matched song if iTunes offers a better-quality version than what was in the user's library. From there, it is also pretty simple to activate the service on iOS devices or other computers. Our biggest problem with the service lies in the inability to stream songs from iOS devices without downloading them. Eventually, we'd like to see iTunes Match function on iOS devices the same way that it currently does on other computers. Users should be able to stream any music from their cloud music library on their iOS devices without a hitch, and without having to download every played song to the device. Right now, that's not the case. It may not be an issue for smaller users, but it will no doubt become a problem for anyone (like us) who has 60GB of music in the cloud and an iPhone with only 16GB of storage capacity. This doesn't make the entire service a misstep, but it's certainly something that Apple should be working towards if they want to blow past the competition and offer an easy-to-use and universally-liked service for Apple customers. After putting iTunes Match through all the paces, we'd say that it's a good solid start for Apple, but they aren't anywhere close to finished yet. For users, iTunes match is still a great service that offers numerous benefits for what we think is a very reasonable price tag of only $25 each year. While we do have criticism of the service in its current form, we are very happy to be able to access and download any music from our home library onto our iOS devices, even if there are a few small glitches in the process. We think Apple users will have similar feelings and be pleased with the service despite its few significant downsides. This article was originally posted on Digital Trends More from Digital Trends Apple iCloud: Everything you need to know Is Sony threatening to pull its music content from iTunes? Steve Jobs masterminds his exit: So what happens to Apple now? |
| Amazon Can Bait Rumormongers Just as Well as Apple (The Atlantic Wire) Posted: 17 Nov 2011 03:39 PM PST Amazon is giving Apple a run for its money on the rumor mill with budding speculation over the possibility of a Kindle Phone. Armchair analysis over whether the Kindle Fire will or won't kill the iPad will have to wait for another day. For now, Amazon's hurting Apple in a different way: stealing some eyeballs and blogger attention away from its media darling competitor. Related: You Can't Escape the iPhone Tracker AllThingsD got things started with a report of some not-so-substantiated rumors of an Amazon phone. A Citigroup analyst wrote a memo that concluded "based on our supply chain check" that Amazon would release a phone at the end of next year with these components: "We believe the smartphone will adopt Texas Instrument’s OMAP 4 processor and is very likely to adopt QCOM’s dual mode 6-series standalone baseband given QCOM has been a long-time baseband supplier for Amazon’s E-reader.” Dozens of tech bloggers have been pontificating on the possibility of an Amazon phone as a result: It's a great idea. It's a bad idea. It might run Microsoft software. It might be "the iPhone of Android phones." Maybe Amazon will compete with cell phone carriers, too. Or maybe they'll throw in service for free. Or they'll pay people to use the phone. Usually, Apple's the one dominating the tech phone rumor circuit. But now that Amazon's a to-be-taken-seriously hardware company, looks like Apple's going to have to share that limelight. Related: How to Watch Apple's Big iPhone Announcement Related: Your Guide to iPhone 5 Rumors |
| Intuit narrows loss as small business unit grows (Reuters) Posted: 17 Nov 2011 04:17 PM PST NEW YORK (Reuters) – Intuit, the maker of accounting and tax preparation software posted a narrower loss for its first quarter than a year earlier as the growth of the products it makes for small business customers helped it weather one of its seasonally slower quarters. Intuit has built a small-business division, which helps companies process credit-card transactions, manage employee payrolls and build websites, into a $1.5 billion-a-year operation. It was larger by revenue than the company's consumer tax division last year. Revenue in the small business unit increased 13 percent in the quarter to $384 million. "We're posting double digit growth in small business when the economy is still in the tank," Chief Executive Brad Smith told Reuters in an interview. That unit helped boost Intuit results in one of its seasonally weaker quarters when people are not thinking about filing their taxes yet. Intuit's most profitable products are its tax software for consumers. But Smith said the tax season is coming up quickly and that the company has high expectations for the performance of its TurboTax software, which now attracts customers increasingly on the Internet. "We're expecting to have a great tax season," he said, adding the products come out after November 25. The company forecast second-quarter revenue of $1 billion to $1.02 billion and earnings per share, excluding items, in the range of 43 cents and 47 cents. Wall Street's average expectation is for 43 cents per share for the second quarter. It posted a first-quarter net loss of $64 million, or 21 cents per share, compared to a loss of $70 million, or 22 cents per share a year earlier. Adjusted for stock compensation and other charges, the company reported a loss of 10 cents per share, which beat Wall Street's estimates by two cents. Intuit's revenue rose 12 percent in its first quarter to $594 million, which beat analysts' average estimates of $580.6 million, according to Thomson Reuters I/B/E/S. (Reporting by Liana B. Baker, editing by Bernard Orr and Carol Bishopric) |
| Salesforce.com Acquires Model Metrics in Social-Mobile Play (NewsFactor) Posted: 17 Nov 2011 04:00 PM PST Salesforce.com is set to acquire a mobile and social cloud consulting services company. Terms of the deal to purchase Model Metrics were undisclosed. Adding Model Metrics to the salesforce.com mix gives the enterprise cloud company more mobile and social expertise to serve enterprise customers. Founded in 2003, Model Metrics was an early mover in developing business process and technologies that companies need to accelerate cloud computing adoption. Model Metrics bet on the importance of mobile and social technologies to enterprise cloud computing nearly a decade ago, and started focusing on strategic app development and deployment. "Our core services strategy has always been to create a thriving partner ecosystem, and this acquisition enables us to double down on that strategy in the world of the social enterprise," said Maria Martinez, executive vice president of Customers for Life at salesforce.com. "With Model Metrics, our strategic services team will have more of the mobile and social capabilities required to enable and accelerate the success of our partner ecosystem." Serving Fortune 100s Model Metrics could be a significant acquisition for salesforce.com. The Model Metrics team has led some of the largest mobile and social cloud deployments. The firm has also developed a mobility practice that delivers enterprise apps with a user-friendly experience. Model Metrics has more than 500 customers, including Blue Shield of California, Heidrick & Struggles, and Standard Register. The firm has already completed more than 1,000 salesforce deployments for companies of all sizes, including some of the Fortune 100. Model Metrics has also partnered with Amazon Web Services, Adobe, Apple and Google. "Salesforce.com and Model Metrics share a vision for the social enterprise," said, Adam Caplan, founder and CEO of Model Metrics. "By joining salesforce.com, we can help more companies unlock the value of cloud computing with disruptive mobile and social technologies." Social Consolidation Salesforce.com has been blowing the social enterprise trumpet by showing companies how they can leverage social, mobile and open cloud technologies. The salesforce.com partner ecosystem can now leverage Model Metrics' strengths in mobile and social design conception, user experience, business process alignment, and frameworks for building employee and customer facing apps. "Mobile and social are two of the biggest trends out there today. Companies are looking for ways to make their product more mobile and what the innovation plan for social media is," said Zeus Kerravala, principal analyst at ZK Research. "The cloud software vendors consolidated a few years ago, but there are lots of niche companies in the social space. That is the next big market companies are going to go after." |
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