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Ten Lessons I Learned from Shark Tank Posted: 25 Feb 2012 08:52 AM PST Editor's note: James Altucher is an investor, programmer, author, and entrepreneur. He is Managing Director of Formula Capital and has written 6 books on investing. His latest book is I Was Blind But Now I See. You can follow him @jaltucher. I just gave up all parenting responsibilities this weekend to Mark Cuban. Meaning, my kids and I watched eight straight episodes of “Shark Tank”. For the past two years, people have been begging me to watch "Shark Tank". One friend of mine, who has co-invested with me on two deals, has given me two pieces of advice in life. One is: "you never know what someone is worth until they declare bankruptcy". The point is, we all speculate that someone is worth $100 million or a billion or whatever, and the next day you read in the newspaper that they declare bankruptcy. Now you know. The second thing my friend and co-investor was always telling me was that "James, you need to watch Shark Tank". Now, after watching every episode, I can say I agree with him. For those of you who don't know what Shark Tank is, it's the best reality TV show I've seen. 5 investors sit on a stage, keeping them slightly higher than the supplicants who come in asking for money. Then, one by one, aspiring entrepreneurs are led into the "Shark Tank" where they pitch their products and the Sharks, right then and there, decide whether or not to give them money. The entrepreneurs are often humiliated, laughed at, insulted, ask the stupidest questions I've ever heard, but occasionally get some good advice and even better, walk away with a check if one or more of the "Sharks" think their business is a good idea. (A Shark Tank Pitch) "The Sharks" as the show describes them, "are filthy rich" and invest their own money. It's not always the same sharks each show. Mark Cuban is often a shark. (See also, “How I Helped Mark Cuban Make a Billion Dollars“) And the rest of the often rotating cast includes Barbara Corcoran, of real estate fame, Kevin O'Leary, who started and sold "The Learning Company" for $3.2 billion to Mattel. Robert Herjavec, who I had never heard of but he's sold "companies worth $350 million", Daymond John who started Fubu and "has sold $6 billion worth of products" and Jeff Foxworthy, the comedian who has created an empire out of making fun of rednecks. Power to him. God bless them all. I'm never jealous of any of these people. Money doesn’t buy happiness but it certainly solves your money problems. It's up to you after that to be happy or not. To not self sabotage at every opportunity. I can tell you this: I am very good at making money but have often had a talent for self sabotage. A talent I have been hoping these past few years to suppress. So I think highly of the people who have learned through experience not to sabotage their successes. So what have I learned from the show. Some items are good for investors, some for entrepreneurs, some for me, and some for my kids. First, Math: The first thing that happens when an entrepreneur enters is: "Hi, my name is ABC and I'm asking for a $100,000 for  10% stake in my company."  At this point we would pause the show and I'd ask my kids how much the company is worth. Any trader, investor, entrepreneur, does this math instantly and I wanted my kids to get good at it. And they did. At first the answers (from either kid) would be a nervous "I don't know". Then they'd start to figure it out but still be nervous "one ….million?" And then finally, by the last episode, they were doing it in their head and blurting it out before I even hit pause. But sometimes the entrepreneurs would present confusing numbers like, "I'm asking for $85,000 for 15% of my company." And then they'd launch straight into their story. To be honest, I can't even do this accurately and quickly in my head. I always wondered if these entrepreneurs did this on purpose, so that the sharks would focus more on the product than the specific valuation. Second, Not everything is as it appears. This is a TV show. Not a venture capital firm (where, also, by the way, not everything is as it appears. In fact, in all of life, nothing is as it appears but this is never more true than a "reality" TV show.) For instance, in the beginning intro the show says "Barbara Corcoran took a $1,000 loan and turned it into a real estate empire worth hundreds of millions." Except she sold her "hundreds of millions" company for "60 million", which they don't say. (Barbara Corcoran) I'm not saying she's poor. She's incredibly smart and successful. But the TV show hypes it up. There's subterfuge like that throughout the show. Kevin O'Leary, who plays it up as the most obnoxious member of the Sharks, is described as someone who "built a software company in his garage and sold it for $3.7 billion". That's true. He built The Learning Company and sold it to Mattel. What they don't say is how much he owned of it (so we can estimate his worth). He clearly made some money on it. But he bought hundreds of companies first. So each company, assuming it was bought in part for stock, diluted his share. So his stake might have been tiny. And then, Mattel repeatedly missed their earnings estimates because of the acquisition of his company. In fact, the acquisition has been described as "one of the worst acquisitions in history" in various articles about it. But, fair enough. Kevin turned this "success" into having a role at a venture capital firm. I am guessing it’s his firm's money (rather than his personal money) which he uses when writing checks on the show. I went through this exercise with each "Shark" and in every case it was not how they described it on the show (except in the case of Mark Cuban). My only guidance for the people who are going on the show, or for anyone who pitches any investor, is to carefully study every aspect of the background of the people you are pitching. There are many ways you can use that to your advantage in the actual pitch. And because these guys, in particular, have very public personas, there are a lot of venues you can research their net worth, their successes, their failures, their interests, their distastes, and so on. Third, Sell the Dream, not the Sales. Many of the entrepreneurs go in there and say, "I sold $11,000 of this product last year from my garage." These are the people that get either the worst deals or no deal at all. Nobody cares about $11,000 in sales. Sometimes the Sharks didn't even care about close to $1 million in sales over the last year. (A great example was games2u.com which I thought was an excellent company but walked away with no deal). And yet some companies with no sales walked away with a great deal. Here's what the Sharks, or any investor, want to really understand: Do you have a great product? Do you know what the size of your market is? Do you have some sense of a business model? And, in some cases, do you have big breasts? How do they know if you have a great product? They can tell by your background, they can tell by the technical expertise you needed to make the product, they can tell if you have a patent, and they can tell if you say, "I have 3 distributors about to send me purchase orders for the product." You might not have a dime of sales but if you show that people are interested and that your product is special, you'll get an offer. If you also say, "and for the last three years I've had a total of $53,000 in sales even though I've had a full time job" then you will definitely not get a deal. Sell the dream. Better not to have sales unless you are going to blow them away with your sales numbers. (She sold the dream) Fourth, Don't Nickel and Dime. It's not so bad to "nickel plus dime" and I'll explain that in a moment. But if you went in there and said, "I'd like $100 for 25% of my company" and you have no sales and one of the Sharks says, "I'll give you $100 for 40% of your company" then just say yes. What do you care about the percentage? As Cuban said in one of the episodes, "better to have 20% of a $100 million company than 100% of nothing." With one successful company I sold I wanted my partner to take 10%. Instead they asked for 50%. I gave it to them and sold the company 4 months later. To them! Because with 50% they had to care. With 10% maybe they would not have cared. However, you should nickel plus dime. If Mark Cuban offers you $100k for 30% of your company push forward and ask for a few more nickels. Price is often the least important part of a negotiation. Ask him: can you introduce me to Netflix, can you get me a promotional deal with the Dallas Mavericks, are there any distributors you can help me license my product to? Get value out of every deal aside from the money. Money won’t save or help your business for more than a short time. But the right deal and connections will make or break you. So while they are playing around with the dimes, make sure you collect as many nickels that they may have left lying on the floor. If you want a deal, then take a deal. Unless… Fifth Don't Take the 'Hail Mary' Deal Kevin O'Leary is famous for this deal. He waits for the other Sharks to say "I'm Out" and then he knows he's the only possibility left for the entrepreneur. So then it suddenly doesn't matter at all what they are asking for. Let's say the entrepreneur is growing, they  have profits, they have one million in sales, etc. Kevin O’Leary doesn't care at all. Instead, he makes the Hail Mary offer. Let's say they were asking for $500k for 10% of their company, valuing their company at $5 million. Even if the company could be reasonably valued at that, he doesn't care. He'll say "I'll take 51% of your company for $500k". It doesn’t matter to him if they say “yes” or “no”. If they say “yes”, then it’s a great deal for him. He just bought control of a company he knows is worth a lot more. If they say “no”, then no problem, one out of ten will say “yes” and he just has to wait it out. It’s the same concept as the story of the guy who wants to have sex so he stands on a street corner and asks every woman who passes him to have sex with him. Obviously every girl will say “no” to him. Except for maybe one out of 200. He’s just standing there waiting for that one. And he’ll get it. Unless it’s me. Then its one out of three thousand. (Kevin O'Leary) Sixth Be the Source Kevin O’Leary has two other techniques as a Shark that I have to admire, despite his persona as very obnoxious on the show. That persona becomes an asset in various ways because the entrepreneur is instantly trying to get on his good side. But that’s not the technique I admire (by the way, that technique of being obnoxious first—a technique I would never be able to pull off is similar to Neil Strauss’s “negging” technique in his book “The Game” when he talks about seducing women.) One technique Kevin does is he sits there while one or two of the Sharks make their offer. Then he asks the entrepreneur to leave the room. Then he turns to the Sharks who made the offer and says, “Lets join forces and do this one together”. Then the entrepreneur comes back and whereas before they had 2 or 3 competing offers (an auction environment is always what you want), now they have only one combined offer. They have a minute to decide, and the offer is worse than the lowest offer they had before. Kevin takes charge of the auction, makes it an “all or nothing” deal and again places himself in a can’t-lose situation. The other technique he uses is to be the Source for the entrepreneur. Almost as if they are his friend. Three or four of the Sharks might make an offer and are competing. Kevin will then say, “Ok, to summarize, here are your four offers.” So he’s being a source of information. He’s “the bank” all of a sudden, seemingly in control of all four offers, and he can spin them in any way he pleases and quiet the Sharks who protest because he behaves as if it’s a legitimate part of the show. When you are the Bank, it gives you a slight edge over your competitors because the customer wants to do business with the Bank. Seventh, The Deal Doesn’t Close Until The Money Hits Many times the entrepreneur will strike a great deal. He comes in asking for $100 for 10% of his company and he might get $300 for 5% of his company. At the end, the Shark who made the deal and the entrepreneur will smile and shake hands (or hug, in the cases when the entrepreneur has big breasts and the Shark is a male). It’s all good. Then, in typical Mark Burnett reality show-style, there’s the post session interview where the entrepreneur is whooping it up and saying, “Yeah! I just made a deal with the Shark Tank! Yeah!” My guess is most of these deals don’t close. I only have anecdotal evidence. But I looked up several of the companies afterwards and there’s no mention of their new co-investor. There’s only mention of “see us on ABC’s Shark Tank this Tuesday!” One deal, Hyconn, got $1.25mm for 100% of his company, from Mark Cuban, with a three year employment agreement and a royalty. He sold some sort of contraption which made it easy to attach your hose to the faucet or whatever you call it. But when you go to his facebook page he talks about another group of investors and he says, the deal with Mark Cuban didn’t work out. No other details. Any deal in life goes through several stages: sales, initial questions, the auction (if there is one), the accepted offer, the honeymoon period, due diligence, legal contracts, potential buyer/seller remorse, and then cash getting wired. The TV show only takes us through “the accepted offer” but at any point there’s the chance the deal can fail. This is important to remember in any deal at all, including personal relationships. Eighth, Know What You Are Good At When an entrepreneur first steps through the door, we would try to figure out which investor/Shark was good for the entrepreneur and we were usually right. If it was a clothing idea then if the FUBU guy didn’t like it, it was all over. If a product looked like it would be ideal for an infomercial (a pushup machine that makes pushups easier) and the informercial expert didn’t like it then no deal. If it was an Internet play and Mark Cuban didn’t like it, then no deal. This is useful to me as an investor. I don’t like to think very hard when I invest in private companies. I like to know that expert investors who are experts in the space of the company are co-investing alongside of me. In fact, another Kevin O’Leary trick: he would stay silent, but if he saw that the informercial king was investing, he’d try to get in on the action and partner with him because he knows the infomercial king would make an infomercial, get it on TV, and do all the hard work. It’s also useful to entrepreneurs. Pitch to the right guy. Don’t just throw it out there to Barbara Corcoran, the real estate queen, if you have a product that you are going to sell to fire stations. Which leads me to Ninth, Get Advice When You Can Some of the pitching entrepreneurs simply had bad ideas. If you’re selling a pair of jeans, for instance, and the FUBU guy doesn’t want to buy it, then that tells you right there that you probably have a bad idea. But I only once on the show heard anyone ask, “what did I do wrong in this pitch” asking for advice. And even then, when they gave him advice, he was defensive and insulting to them. If you don’t get the deal, learn what you did wrong, and either modify your product, your approach, or just start a new business. This is not the end of your life if you don’t get some crappy deal on Shark Tank. Finally, Tenth Who Cares? You just presented your product for 15 minutes on a nationally broadcasted TV show that will be re-aired at least two or three times and sell a ton of shows on itunes. That sort of advertising would cost about a million dollars or more. So who cares if you get a deal? Make sure your website is ready for publicity, for the onslaught of traffic and orders no matter how good or bad the product is, and be thankful for the free publicity. Some of these people were crying when they couldn’t get a deal. An entrepreneur takes advantage of every situation and opportunity. A million dollars worth of free advertising plus great advice from a bunch of insulting billionaires is a great experience for you and your business. Make the most of it. These ten lessons are for my daughters, because I told them at the end of our marathon Shark Tank session that if they don’t have an idea by next week that they can build into a business then “No Christmas this year and no summer vacation!” Which would make my life infinitely easier. That’s the way I roll. Take it or leave it.

How To Get People To Do What You Want Posted: 25 Feb 2012 08:29 AM PST Editor's note: Contributor Ashkan Karbasfrooshan is the founder and CEO of WatchMojo, he hosts a weekly show on business and has published books on success.  Follow him @ashkan. Leadership in management is the art and science of getting others to do what they don't necessarily want – or don’t understand why they're being asked – to do. Doing it at a startup is accomplishing all of that in the face of uncertainty and with little resources. Now imagine doing that without the war chest supplied to you by VCs as you bootstrap. Good times, but also a pain in the ass. First: Yes, the Usual Clichés Without a doubt, the mere minimum you need to do to recruit and retain talent is to show respect, empower, provide feedback and be a generally good person to want to work for. Treat employees not just like partners, but also how you want to be treated as an employee. But, hiring during boom times is very different than during a downturn. Depending on your industry, your company might be grounded due to the inability to hire. Your Business Isn't a Fortune Cookie "Hire slow, fire fast" is a great sound bite, but it's usually wrong, especially if you lack the cash to hire anyone you want. Either way, not everyone is a visionary or sees the lay of the land; a lot of people need direction and to be cast in a role. I am not recommending you to hire a putz and promote him, but if you saw something in a candidate and things aren't working out at first, chances are they may be really good at something else. Vegetable Lasagnas Need Not Apply Hire a bunch of plain-vanilla yes-men and I promise you your company is DOA. But that doesn't mean that you need to go out and try to hire a number of all-stars, because that's not really how championship teams are built, either. Life is all about team dynamics and balance. The Ego Has Landed Realistically, everyone has an ego, and in all honesty, that's not a bad thing. As a boss you need to differentiate between self-centered people who place personal objectives ahead of the common good versus those who take pride in their work and will in turn set a good example for others. In fact, those two things are not even mutually exhaustive, so as long as the latter outweighs the former, you should check your own ego and live and let live. Also, Don't Lie to Yourself Moreover, while you as the leader are driven to succeed and may have virtuous and altruistic objectives, ultimately you stand to gain financially when others help you achieve your goals, so you cannot be disingenuous in at least recognizing that others may have their own reasons for participating in your adventure. But More Importantly, Don't Lie to or Disrespect Others The golden rule is candor, because people don't like to be ridiculed or made fun of. If Maslow's hierarchy were modified to reflect something other than needs, I'd argue that pride and self-esteem would place rather high. Respect everyone on your way up, even those who have what society perceives to be lower-ranking jobs and functions. When you're on a date, for example, a woman will pay particular attention to how you treat a waiter or doorman, because it will say a lot about you. Similarly, if you're having lunch with a potential hire and you're rude to the waiter, it sends a red flag to the person you're trying to recruit. You Are Neither Il Duce Nor George Washington The key is to manage like it's a democracy but to remember that it's not. After a series of "bad" CEOs, P&G chose nice guy John Pepper as CEO. He had a tendency to agree with the last person he spoke to. That doesn't work in startups, where everyone has their own ideas of what to do but, but enough resources to do the one thing you need to do properly. You’re Only As Weak As Your Strongest Link Saddam Hussein had a peculiar habit of balancing his sons' powers. While you shouldn’t take management lessons from the Butcher of Baghdad, the reality is that you need to build a team that is balanced, so having one superstar is a recipe for disaster regardless of whether that employee leaves or stays. The Psychological Value of Equity Those that have equity tend to envy those with high salaries, and those who have high salaries crave ownership. Equity, as such, isn't simply a financial motivational tool, but a golden pass that truly aligns and bonds employees to your company and mission statement. That being said, you never know how people's roles will evolve over time, so despite what some may suggest, be conservative to leave you with more options down the road. Equity is the most important lever you have to offset your lack of money; it’s your lifeline as the bootstrapped CEO. Creative People, Be It Artistic or Technical, Can't Be Told To Be Creative In a Sandbox Not only can't you micro-manage the best people, but you also can't kid yourself and think that you can hire the Crazies and expect them to remain successful within a tight, narrow sandbox you create for them. The best employees are thinking and performing at a level that you can't imagine even in your wildest dreams. That is why you hire them. If your ego can overcome that, you're well on your way to greatness. Perfectionists vs. Shippers Of course, you can have the big thinkers, the smooth talkers, as well as the perfectionists; unless they actually deliver the goods and ship – or walk the walk – then you're back to square one. Always go with results and achievers. You don't go to war with the army you want, you go with the army you have. But if you play your cards right, you'll realize that they can be one and the same despite the lack of resources. (image: Everett Collection, shutterstock)

16 Chinese Startups Came Out With A Bang At The ChinaBang Conference Posted: 25 Feb 2012 07:54 AM PST Editor's note: Guest author Gang Lu is the editor of TechNode, a bilingual blog based in China. ChinaBang conference, an annual two-day event with a focus on local startups, innovation and entrepreneurship, was held last weekend in Beijing. With a mixture of keynote and panel discussions from local startup founders and entrepreneurs, the awards ceremony recognized the best Chinese startups and founders in 2011 and featured a startup launchpad contest. Organized by TechNode, ChinaBang's Launchpad competition had 16 teams pitch to 14 judges (from GSR Ventures, IDG, Qiming, Matrix Ventures, Atomico, Singtel, Paypal, Innovation Works, CyberAgent, Rovio, Infinity Ventures, Taishan, CSDN) and a live audience. Each team was given 10 minutes to present on stage – five minutes pitch time and five minutes for answering judges' questions. The judges scored each team on a scale of 10 points. The teams were then ranked by point average to result in the top three, who all would be walking away with prizes including cash and overseas trips. Here is the rundown of all startups presented on stage in the launchpad. First Prize: TukeQ – Won RMB10,000 and A Trip to Finland, the home of Angry Birds Founder Alex Su presented an attractive demo of his social web and mobile travel organizer app, TukeQ. TukeQ has already been recognized for its big potential as a former incubatee of Innovation Works. In his presentation, Alex demonstrated the ability for users to intuitively and quickly drag-and-drop activities or places of interest into an itinerary. Brilliantly, the map automatically populates the route from A to B to C. For example, if you were in Sydney, Australia and wanted to go from Bondi Beach to Circular Quay to Chinatown, your itinerary would show you when and where to go and map out the path. The most compelling thing is its ability to leverage social connections. Meaning, people in my network can recommend places to visit and things to see. You can see the recommendations, and drag them into your own plan. People on TukeQ can connect using Sina Weibo. Kelly Poon of Atomico suggested TukeQ consider creating an English version for foreigners to organize their travel to China, but Alex clearly defined his market as the burgeoning crowd of newly-rich Chinese travelers, looking to explore and experience the world. As the winner, TukeQ took away the biggest cash prize of RMB10,000 sponsored by Silicon Valley Bank and a trip to Finland, the original land of Angry Birds, co-organized by Rovio and presented by Paul Chen, CEO of Rovio China. Second Prize: Mugeda – Won RMB5,000 As web and mobile are converging, HTML5 is quickly becoming the bridge between the two. Knowing that everyone will need a web and mobile strategy, Mugeda is a cloud-based animation generator, where you can create, share, and publish organic HTML5 animation content all in your browsers, without any download or installation. The target use cases are for the creation of advertising, games, tutorials and cartoons and can be easily viewed across PC, smartphones and tablet devices. As this is very new, some of the examples on the site look very basic but the potential to create sophisticated animation is big. Interestingly, although the team is based in China, the site is in English and presumably targeting the foreign market. It is based on a freemium model where advanced users are charged for extra services like cloud-storage and technical support. Third Prize: Smart Album – Won RMB5,000 Incubated by Shanda, SmartAlbum is an innovative technology which organizes Android smartphone contacts and photo albums by people's faces rather than just their names. For most people, remembering someone's face is much easier than their name. For this reason, it makes more sense to be able to just find someone's face then click to call them. By using face recognition even in your Android smart-phone's photo album, you can also click to call or message directly there, saving time and effort. YinXiangMa Ever get tired of discerning distorted characters from CAPTCHAs that prevent websites from being cracked by bots, but sometimes drive people to madness? Qingdao city-based startup Yinxiangma smartly solves the issue by transforming CAPTCHAs into advertising. Here's how it works: when signing into a website, Yinxiangma's "ImpressionAd" is substituted for the original twisted, barely-recognizable characters. ImpressionAd usually consists of an image or video ad with accompanying text (see example below), the image/video could be any type of product, the text could be any relevant keyword, e.g. price and so on. So instead of typing in CAPTCHA words, web users can now easily input the keyword, such as a smartphone's price, company slogan, etc., and then get access to whatever he intends to visit, smartly and subtly turning CAPTCHAs into ads. MadeiraCloud MadeiraCloud raised an angel investment last June to better organize cloud applications. CEO Dan O'Prey and CTO Zhao Peng call themselves the Microsoft Visio of cloud computing. Their WYSIWYG web GUI enables users to simply drag and drop their cloud resources onto a canvas and connect them visually to configure the ports. Once the architecture has been designed, a template (stack) of the whole setup can be saved for reuse and launched multiple times into live applications, without having to worry about conflicts in configuration. The main business case is leveraging the public cloud to take advantage of on-demand resources to demo proof of concept (PoC) software to potential clients. Madeiracloud’s closest competitor is a small startup called AppCara. However they don't see them as a big threat as they "believe that we are a lot further down the development cycle and our product has superior usability and functionality." The business model will work like many other SaaS. There is no initial set up fee, but a free package – limited to two running applications; a pro package – limited up to 10 running applications for $99/month; and an enterprise package – with pricing depending on requirements. VKU A report estimates the number of mobile video users in China will reach 282 million by 2013. At the same time, online video, mobile Internet and online payment were deemed the three Internet trends with the most potential in the Chinese Internet sector. VKU (or 微酷), taps into these trends with its mobile video sharing tool/community that combines both mobile Internet and online video. Anyone can shoot short clips (no longer than 30 seconds) easily and share them with friends through popular social media platforms like Sina Weibo and so forth. VKU is also a powerhouse for shooting and making short video clips. Underpinned by its strong technical team, VKU supports some unique and awesome features like realtime filtering and editing, video effects, subtitling and dubbing, all on your smartphone. Especially, with its pre-installed effects like LOMO, black and white, old times and so on, you can produce high quality professional footage with just a few clicks. Gates2Asia Founded in March last year, Gates2Asia (G2A) is a B2B cooperative buying site for international based SME's to buy directly from low cost Asian suppliers like China. Essentially, it’s like a Groupon for SMEs, meaning when teaming up with other SMEs to buy the same things in bulk, it leads to lower costs and greater competitiveness. The market size is evidently big. In 2009, SMEs imported $124 billion in goods from China alone and 80 percent of SME imports were from wholesalers and non-manufacturing companies. Such a big opportunity was not neglected when Japan-based Infinity Ventures and SOS Ventures, invested $3 million into OrderWithMe.com, the winner of TechCrunch Disrupt Beijing in 2011. The process is fairly simple. SMEs can join G2A, state what they want to buy and in what quantities. After sourcing and negotiating with suppliers, they post the details on a board. Other SME buyers can join the co-operative and when there is enough, the purchase order is made. Of course everyone saves money because the total order is large. ShenBian Shenbian, the innovator of weibo-based social IM is pushing the frontier of mobile communication further by capitalizing on the social power of Sina Weibo and the real-time fun of ambient communication. Shenbian, differentiates itself from other location-based mobile social networks in the Weibo-binding and group chatting. People who log in with their Sina Weibo credential will be able to find other weibo connections (followed, followers) around them. And you can easily switch between private chatting and group chatting whenever you want. You can imagine its group chatting feature as a location-based Weibo-user-only chat room. MobileMoMo MobileMoMo takes a lightweight approach to mobile social networking in product design by leveraging 3G and your phone book. All your phone book contacts will become your MobileMoMo friends automatically (with privacy concerned, though), and you can send text messages, files and share your location with contacts even though they have no MobileMoMo client installed in their phone. All the information will be displayed on your mobile browser. The receiver could directly reply to your text or download the file from the browser. Qiyu Qiyu is a location-based elastic social networking service aiming to help people in the same area get connected. The app also encourages users to transform their connection from online to offline with real-life gatherings, using it is like starting an adventure, you never know what's gonna happen next, said Gao Cao who designed the product. Qiyu launched the first version early last December, as of now the service has more than 60,000 users while more than 13 percent of them are in Taiwan, which according to Gao Cao is quite an interesting surprise, because there's nothing similar in Taiwan. Groupcells Groupcells claims itself the world’s first group-based sCommerce (social commerce). Every node in its social network is a photo group which is based on users’ location or interests. Every user can share and sell everything to the most precise crowd by uploading photos. All groups can be created automatically and flexibly, there are no group owners and anyone can join and leave multiple groups freely. Fit of Daily Workout Fit of Daily Workout is an iOS social application which helps make exercising at home free and fun. You basically hold your cell phone, choose from a collection of body exercises, turn around your body, and the application will use its patent-pending technology to automatically calculate the time of exercise, exercising strength and weight loss. You can share the fun with your friends and family through the Facebook, Twitter, Weibo and Soybean, etc. You can even compete with other users to see who is having better results! Yikuair Founded in early July of last year, Beijing-based Yikuair (or 一块儿微集市) is trying to leverage the power of social media to reshape the online marketplace. Being the first, and as of now the only company to build upon Sina Weibo's virtual currency Sina Weibi (新浪微币), Yikuair has developed a marketplace combining social, local, mobile and commerce in an effort to help connect online/offline merchants and consumers and to offer them special deals through a distinct micro-payment system powered by Sina Weibo, the No. 1 Chinese twitter-like service. As of now Sina Weibo has more than 250 million registered users, a huge user pool that Yikuair could tap into. And besides social media like Weibo, the marketplace is also considering coming up with its own mobile app and weibo app to help merchants reach out to more customers. Pandai Online consumer finance or Peer to Peer (P2P) is a very new concept in China, where cash still dominates most transactions. Founded by Roger Ying, a Stanford Graduate who grew up in South Africa, Pandai.cn delivers next generation online financial services by providing credit loans for borrowers and high fixed-income products for lenders on a safe, transparent and easy-to-use online platform. Moreover, Pandai will be the only company in China that will allow its customers to build tailored credit and price loans. Duanzumi Duanzumi simply could be described as a Chinese-AirBNB, a website to list rooms for short-term rental. The short-term rental space is starting to get competitive with existing property portals such as Youtx.com from Soufan.com and Mayi.com from Ganji.com (a Chinese classifieds site). Of course, this occurred after AirBNB became one of the hottest start-ups from Silicon Valley and has been valued at over $1 billion. However, many of these sites have been criticized for simply taking existing property from their parent sites and listing them on a per-night basis without the landlords knowledge. Similar to Airbnb, Duanzumi charges a transaction fee to the room owner and it is only collected after the guest has arrived. Botata Traditional live webcasting is both time and money intensive. You need to buy or rent expensive live broadcasting equipment, hire operational professionals and negotiate with solution providers to make sure all your customized needs are met. Botata, a turn-key live webcasting service provider, has a simple and cost-effective solution to free live webcasters from all these pitfalls. Founded May 2011, the Beijing-based company built a cloud-based live webcasting client device (with the shape and weight of a conventional laptop) that takes the input from a camera-ready Internet-connected device like a smartphone or tablet and outputs it to an Internet-connected device via a cloud-based content distribution system. It currently supports H.264 video coding standard and 1080i, 1080p and 720p image quality. In addition, ChinaNetCloud sponsored all top seven teams with one year's free cloud server hosting management. Although not officially one of the Launchpad finalists, a four-person gaming company, Walnut Company Limited, presented their attractive game production and development skills. Their game, Final Fury, is similar to Gun Bros and impressed Akio Tanaka of Infinity Venture Partners. As a prize, Akio selected Walnut to attend the next Infinity Ventures Summit in Japan with flight and accommodations paid for. Photo is courtesy of Chris Tow

Daily Crunch: Dead Heat Posted: 25 Feb 2012 01:00 AM PST Here are some recent stories on TechCrunch Gadgets: Intelligent Design And The Modern Cellphone Dumb Buyer Beware: Chinese State Police Seize Hundreds Of Fake Apple iPhone… Gas Stoves Microsoft To Replace "Live" Branding With "Microsoft Account" In Windows 8 Looking For A Classy Or Offbeat iPad Case? Here Are 16

Microsoft To Replace “Live” Branding With “Microsoft Account” In Windows 8 Posted: 24 Feb 2012 05:09 PM PST The long-running “Live” name Microsoft has placed on its many connected services (Mail, messenger, photos, etc) is coming to an end in Windows 8, as part of their ongoing, major brand rehaul. Zune, of course, has been on its way out for some time, but will receive the coup de grace in Windows 8. Their main services are being rolled into bundled applications with a native Metro look and simpler names — Mail instead of Windows Live Mail, Photos instead of Windows Live Photo Gallery, and so on. The new apps will be tightly integrated, as we’ve seen in demos, and will retain much of the Live cross-service functionality. They’ll be unified by a single “Microsoft Account.” But Live isn’t going away entirely: the name is too strong to take away from Xbox Live and its subsidiary components, and in fact Xbox Live may be coming to Windows as the main entertainment brand — for music, games, and video content. This will replace Zune, which Microsoft has been gradually sweeping under the rug over the past two years. Zune fans mustn’t despair, though: Zune pass functionality will remain intact, and chances are the old desktop player and Zune hardware will continue to be supported in some way. And the fact is that Zune has left an indelible mark on Microsoft’s operations, pioneering the look and feel found in Windows Phone 7 and Windows 8. Smaller services, like Writer and Games for Windows Live, will likely be rolled into existing products. It’s in major brand shakedowns like this that one starts to realize just how many platforms and pieces of software Microsoft actually has and supports. This coalescence of services is probably coming as a huge relief to the company, though the labor involved in repurposing them is, naturally, Herculean. Conspicuously absent from the lineup mentioned is Messenger, which may be seeing some integration with Skype. A multi-service messenger/video-chat app with Skype built in seems likely, though Skype would definitely have to have a discrete presence as well for power users. No doubt they’ll leave behind many irate users who want things to remain the same — and indeed how Microsoft intends to accommodate these legacy users isn’t clear. Their new clean-break approach maroons many people on the old Windows XP/7 mainland, where they’ll likely remain until the launch quakes of Windows 8 clear away and the new land is safe for colonization. (This failed to publish earlier in the day, which accounts for its lateness)

Digg Data Reveals What We Read But Are Too Scared or Embarrassed To Share Posted: 24 Feb 2012 04:51 PM PST Digg’s January saw an increase in page views by 35 percent and was its highest traffic month since October 2010. When it dug into why, it found we’re proud to look smart, hip, or funny by sharing tech news and offbeat content, but we keep our guilty pleasure entertainment and divisive political reading to ourselves. Specifically, Digg analyzed what people read vs what they shared to their Facebook Timeline in part through the new Digg Social Reader Open Graph which has helped boost Facebook referral traffic by 67 percent. It discovered telling psychological trends in how people want to portray idealized versions of themselves. According to Digg’s data, ”Entertainment stories were 14 percent of all stories read but less than 4 percent of those added to the Timeline. Likewise, political stories comprise less than 2 percent of those added to a user's Timeline but close to 10 percent of what people read”. Gaming was another content type rarely shared. It seems that while many of us are addicted to celebrity gossip and war games, we don’t want everyone to know. We might geek out privately with fellow enthusiasts about Kim Kardashian’s latest romance or a new Call Of Duty map pack, but there’s a stigma about allowing those interests to define our identities. Meanwhile, our social graphs often span across party lines, so we’d rather not share polarizing political content. Better to stay silent than offend someone, it seems. Out of top 100 stories most often published to Timeline, only 244 shares were political and 72 were gaming stories. [Postscript: Yes, maybe people don't share niche content because they think it will bore most of their friends. But what really bores me is the softball, middle of the road content I can find anywhere. Expose me to your niche, show me why you love it, and I might just geek out with you.] Instead we try to put our best foot forward, showing off our sense of humor and how in the know we are about developments in tech. Of the stories most shared to Timeline, tech stories got 5,086 shares, 2,060 for offbeat, 951 for world news, and 785 were of business related stories. The first data points are certainly biased by the irreverent tech-loving demographic Digg appeals to. However, the significant presence of world news and business show our desire to appear cultured and motivated. Diggers are gamers and many lean left, but you couldn’t tell from their Timelines. Screw that. We shouldn’t be embarrassed. Sharing what we’re truly interested in attracts people who love us for who we really are. Why surround yourself with people who don’t get what excites you? No, you don’t need to be overtly confrontational by sharing every hate piece about the demopublican party, but be willing to say something controversial if you believe in it. You’ll spark discussion, and hear conflicting perspectives that help refine your views. At their worst, social networks like Facebook let us compartmentalize our identity and show different sides to different people. At their best, they connect the different sides and encourage us to be mindful not of what we share, but of how we actually spend our time. That’s what really defines us. So BRB, I’m going to share my love of Marvel comic books, because that’s me.

Looking For A Classy Or Offbeat iPad Case? Here Are 16 Posted: 24 Feb 2012 03:51 PM PST Look, sometimes you just have to take a break and skim Etsy for cool iPad stuff. Are you thinking of picking up a new iPad 3 when they come out, or maybe just celebrating the release with a cool new case for your existing tablet? Check out this little round-up of cases collected by a felt-loving blogger on a Friday afternoon. These are mostly iPad-sized, but many are made to order and could easily accommodate a smaller (Kindle Fire) or larger (Transformer) device if you ask nicely. And most are soft enough to accommodate a small change in size, like what’s expected for the iPad 3. Note that I have not tried these out! I just think they are all great. Felt & Leather Here are some lovely, sober grey wool items with leather accents. Perfect for someone who doesn’t need to express themselves through decals or color, yet loves good design. Like me. From top left, these are available from Charbonize (you can customize the tag), Feruto Bags, Freckle Cases, and England Caramel, who says theirs is the perfect Valentine’s Day gift. Yeah, if your girlfriend is an iPad. Felten For someone who wants something with a little more personality. From top left: the Soul Sleeve, which is just about as cute as possible; a dyed felt case from MaricFineGoods (also available in mustard yellow); a case from PinsnNeedles that is actually for e-readers but was too cool to pass up; another from PinsnNeedles that kind of looks like an elephant. Oh, and they make a cozy for your French press as well. Herringbone If you’re tired of herringbone, you’re tired of life. These two come from MariForsell — iPad bag, iPad case. Hemp and Fluff I love these soft, natural-fiber cases from ColcaSac. The natural hemp-colored one is the Uintah and the black one is the Zagora. They’re made with pesticide-free Chinese hemp, from China you understand. The blue one, Cusco, uses traditionally-grown cotton from Oaxaca. Leather Here are two leather options, comprising the two reasons leather exists: to look old, and to look fancy. The one on the left is made to order, hand-tooled, and antiqued. Perfect for watching Game of Thrones on the go. The one on the right is strictly for having in your hand when you step of your private jet. Is my car here yet? No? Wood The wooden smart covers are Narra and Cherry respectively, but don’t worry, there’s nice brown leather underneath. The flip-top case is made of Black Walnut and Baltic Birch, and fastens with a magnet. Just looks cool as hell. The newsprint one is not, in fact, wood, I have deceived you. It’s cotton, and closes with Velcro. I just like the way it looks and had an extra spot in the “wood” image. And cotton is a plant, so it’s kind of true.

LA Times Jumps On The Paywall Bandwagon Posted: 24 Feb 2012 02:30 PM PST The Los Angeles Times reports that The Los Angeles Times will be adopting a paywall (they prefer the term “membership program”) starting March 5th, joining the ranks of other large newspapers hoping to replace plummeting subscription revenues. Readers, naturally, are incensed, though the change was inevitable for such a large newspaper. Although the move to a paid or at least somehow powerfully monetized online model is going to be critical for the L.A. Times and other major print establishments, it appears that everyone in the industry is still in the “flailing” stage, and hoping that a model rejected and circumvented by readers will somehow work for them as it has (in a way) worked for others. Because the fact is that, in fact, paywalls can work, and do. But something like the New York Times’ paywall has worked in strange ways and also because of a huge emphasis on publishing online via apps and mobile. Is the L.A. times giving an opportunity to readers to pay to get content in a new and better way, or is it just installing a ticket booth? Their model is very similar to the New York Times: 99 cents for the first four weeks, then $3.99 per week, or, bizarrely, $1.99 per week if you want the the Sunday paper in addition to your digital copy. The reasoning for this is that the Sunday paper is chock full of advertisements, so much so that the L.A. Times will essentially pay you $2/week to receive it. So the model isn’t new, and it’s not unreasonable. Many will choose to go around the paywall (mobile and tablet browsers will automatically skip it, it seems) but many, as others have shown, will pay rather than go through the rigamarole of adding referrers to their URL or installing a browser extension to do it for them. The article announcing this change is a treat to read. It is written as though it is a normal news story and not an internally produced announcement, and has the air of people trying unsuccessfully to convince themselves that this is going to turn out great. It may end up fine in the end, but the tone of the article is unrelentingly self-deceiving to a degree even consumer electronics press releases fail to reach. [via PaidContent]

Tesla Further Responds To Battery Claims, Calls The “Bricking” Report An Unfounded Rumor Posted: 24 Feb 2012 12:56 PM PST A single blogger recently relayed comments made by a single Tesla service tech who reportedly knew of five Teslas that were “bricked” by owners who left them off the charger too long. This single unverified report spread like wildfire across the blogosphere. Tesla came out and acknowledged that it was possible to destroy the Roadster’s battery pack by keeping it unplugged but Tesla has employed numerous counter-measures to prevent that from happening. The company responded further today in a lengthy blog post titled “Plug It In. Here’s a key excerpt from the blog post, A plugged-in Tesla is not only charging its battery, it is also keeping key systems within the car functioning properly. Tesla owners around the world keep their cars charged on a daily basis without any issues at all. If ever the battery in your Tesla runs low, the car is designed to let you know with repeated visual and audible warnings. If you continue to ignore the warnings, they will persist and increase. The vehicle also protects the battery itself by communicating with other systems in the car to conserve energy when the state of charge gets too low. Starting with Roadster 2.0, owners can also elect for their car to contact Tesla headquarters once the state of charge falls below a specified level, and we can then contact the owner. For what it’s worth Autoblog, our sister site in our Aol Huffington Post Media Group, did a little Googling and discovered that the random blogger and apparent Tesla owner are long-time business partners and not random acquaintances as the original blog post would have you believe. Tesla’s service is legendary. I’ve spent a lot of time following the company over the last four years and have only heard extraordinary reports. I’m not saying the company is perfect, and it is totally possible to brick a Tesla, but the company has taken reasonable steps to prevent that from happening. But sometimes morons slip through the cracks.

TC@MWC: What To Watch For At Mobile World Congress Posted: 24 Feb 2012 12:34 PM PST It’s hard to believe that Mobile World Congress is right around the corner, but here we are with just under two days to go until the festivities begin. TechCrunch’s MWC delegation is ready to bring you the latest and greatest in mobile tech straight from the heart of Barcelona from the moment MWC kicks off, but there’s going to be gobs upon gobs of nifty stuff on the show floor. Just for your reference, here’s a quick recap of some of the things you should see once we touch down and head into the breach. LG LG's handset business has seen better days, which is why the company seems so intent on making a splash at MWC. In addition to the (peculiar) Galaxy Note LG Optimus Vu the company has announced something like seven new Android smartphones to be released this year — here’s a quick rundown: Optimus 4X HD: This Ice Cream Sandwich-powered handset sports a 4.7-inch 720p display and 1.5GHz quad-core Tegra 3 processor. Expect this bad boy to be LG’s flagship going forward. Optimus 3D MAX and 3D Cube: Remember the LG Optimus 3D/Thrill? Meet its new brothers, which both happen to pack a 4.3-inch 3D display, a 1.2GHz dual-core processor, and NFC support into a 9.6mm thick body. The big difference between the two? Well, the MAX ironically only has 8GB internal memory while the Cube has 16GB; the Cube also sports a NOVA IPS display panel while no mention of the MAX’s screen tech has been made. L-Style Series: Despite some recent twists and turns, LG is fully capable of designing and producing some striking phones (the Chocolate series, anyone?). This new line of Android phones consists of three devices meant to strike at premium, mid-range, and low-end niches, and aspire to five lofty “aesthetic elements.” While these are all interesting in their own right, I’m personally looking forward to the possibility of an LG phone running on Mozilla’s Boot-To-Gecko mobile OS. Nokia The success of Nokia's first Windows Phones already propelled them to the top of the vendor heap, and the folks at Espoo are looking to keep it that way with the introduction of two new devices. Well, maybe just one new devices. The Lumia 900 already got a bit of spotlight when it debuted at this year’s CES, and Nokia is expected to unveil a Europe-bound version (sans LTE support) at the show. Nothing new here. Meanwhile, the Lumia 610 is reportedly a new budget-conscious offering that’s expected have the specs to match the price tag. It always seemed to me as though the 710 was meant to plug that particular hole in the market, but with the Windows Phone Tango update poised to target developing markets, more low-cost hardware certainly couldn’t hurt. Nokia also took to teasing us with a video hyping their Pure View camera technology, which only begs a new question – which phone will it end up in first? Samsung Samsung surprised many of us when they announced that they wouldn’t hold a keynote at the show that previously saw the announcement of their flagship Galaxy S II. Don’t count Samsung out just because they’re not packing a new Galaxy successor though — they’ve got more than a few gadgets that will probably enjoy their turn in the spotlight. The new 7-inch Galaxy Tab 2 (pictured right) is likely to be one of them, as well as Samsung’s speedy new spate of quad-core Exynos processors. And who could forget handsets like the Galaxy Ace 2 and the Galaxy Mini 2? (I just did, honestly.) If nothing else, it’ll tide us over until the separate event scheduled later this year where the Galaxy S III is expected to be unveiled. HTC We've already taken a look at what HTC will be bringing to the Barcelonian table, but here's a quick recap in case you don't much feel like clicking. The Taiwanese company is expected to unveil three new handsets, all sporting the One-series moniker. The slim One X (previously known as the HTC Edge/Endeavor) looks to be the flagship model in the line, while the even-slimmer One S (aka the HTC Ville) shoots for the mid-range. Meanwhile, the music-oriented One V (which is expected to be a twist on the HTC Rhyme) is expected to round out the trio. Those three handsets could be joined by the HTC One XL tablet, which previously made the rounds under the guise of the HTC Whatever. If the tablet does indeed materialize on the show floor, don’t expect a follow-up anytime soon — HTC has said they will be reducing their presence in the tablet market at least for a while. Microsoft: Windows 8. Windows 8. Windows 8. Yep, if you haven’t heard, the Windows 8 Consumer Preview will be launched and demoed on the 29th. Oh, and expect Microsoft to spend some time talking up their forthcoming Windows Phone updates – Windows Phone Tango is meant to run on less-robust hardware making it an ideal fit for low-end, high-volume devices, while Apollo should pack support for LTE, multiple screens, and considerable integration with Windows 8. Asus After CEO Jonney Shih’s legendary unveiling of the company’s Padfone, I’ve long wondered when this magical (and more than a little ridiculous) thing would see the light of day. The answer, it would seem, is at MWC 2012. Asus also teased us with their “Twice The Detail” video, which points pretty markedly at a high-resolution tablet of some sort. It’s very possible that the company’s high-res Transformer Prime TF700T tablet will be making an appearance on the show floor, but I’m hoping that Asus has something new and shiny for us to drool over. The Rest Of The Pack Motorola: Reps from the company told PCMag specifically not to expect much this year, although some news related to their partnership with Intel on mobile processors wouldn’t come out of left field. Sony: This will be Sony’s first MWC after their public divorce from Sweden-based Ericsson, and they’ve managed to keep things buttoned up tight. The smaller Xperia U will likely be on display, and if we’re very very lucky, we may end up seeing a Sony-made Windows Phone. I’m keeping my fingers crossed for that one. ZTE: The other Asian hardware vendor with a three-letter name will be in attendance with a whopping eight smartphones in tow. ZTE is definitely trying to make a big push into the high-end smartphone market, so here’s hoping their eclectic mix of Android devices and Windows Phones does the trick. If this seems like a lot of gear to keep tabs of, you don’t know the half of it. This is just a fraction of the stuff to be seen at MWC, and I have a feeling that some of the best stuff is yet to come. Stay tuned!

So Much For Bouncer: New Android Malware Uses Facebook To Spread Posted: 24 Feb 2012 12:24 PM PST Even though Google recently introduced a malware-blocking system called Bouncer to keep the Android Market safe from malicious software, crafty spammers and fraudsters are still managing to find ways around the restrictions to get their software onto users’ phones. The latest example? A malware program disguised, innocuously, as an Android app called “any_name.apk.” And it appears the malware is using Facebook’s app on Android phones in order to spread. The software was discovered by security firm Sophos, which came across the malware after receiving a Facebook friend request. When checking out the user’s profile, the researcher, Vanja Svajcer, found a link posted to the requester’s Facebook profile page that, when clicked, directed the browser to a webpage which started an automatic download of an unknown software application to the device. The software installed and downloaded immediately, without any request for authorization or input from the end user. However, although Svajcer doesn’t mention this in his analysis, for software to automatically install from outside the Google Android Market, the phone’s default settings must have been changed. Typically, Android phones are shipped with a setting switched on that prevents mobile apps from installing from sources besides the official Android Market. Many savvy Android users switch this setting off, though, because they enjoy the freedom that Android provides in discovering apps from alternative app stores and download locations – like the treasure trove that is the XDA Developers forum, for example. Unfortunately, malware like this is the nasty side effect. And there’s nothing Bouncer can do about it. The link the researcher clicked did not appear to be an APK file by nature of its URL, just a typical website. And it was placed into the user’s About Me section on Facebook, as if it was a link to that person’s homepage. Of course, many folks would simply ignore a friend request from someone they didn’t know, but curiosity often gets the better of us. (Do I know them? Did we meet at some point, and I forgot?) One errant click, and oops, you’re infected. In this particular case, the malware in question appears to be a program designed to earn money for fraudsters through premium rate phone services, a scam popular outside the U.S. for the most part, which involves having unsuspecting users send out text messages to premium rate numbers (those that charge). The scammers, who are operating the numbers, end up collecting the money from the victims’ accounts. The app attempts to associate itself with the Opera browser, and an encrypted configuration file contains the dialing codes for all the supported countries where the premium rate numbers are hosted. As a side note: a few days later, the researcher visited the same URL, but was directed to an all-new website where another APK file was automatically downloaded (hilariously called “allnew.apk”). This one was functionally similar, but different on the binary level, indicating it was a new variant of the same malware. Maybe it’s time for Android’s Bouncer guy to get pre-installed on handsets, too? UPDATE: We spoke to Google about this issue, and they’re telling us that the software installation process portrayed in the Sophos video could not have occurred as demonstrated. Even with an off-market malware-ridden APK file, the app would have downloaded to the device, but additional user-initiated steps would need to have taken place before the software installed and ran as shown. We’re still awaiting a response from Sophos on that front. To be clear, Bouncer is a good first step towards protecting Android users, but regardless of what methods are used to lock down the Android Market, spammers and scammers can always find another way in.

Intelligent Design And The Modern Cellphone Posted: 24 Feb 2012 12:02 PM PST I’ve been mulling this concept over for a long while and it took Josh Helfferich’s single image to bring the concept into sharp focus. My thesis (and you won’t like this) is that every major “flagship” phone in the Western market is now made in the same mold, with the same trade dress, with one goal in mind: to fool the casual observer into thinking that everything is an iPhone. While you can argue on the outliers, the truth is right there. Every major phone released in the past four years has cleaved to this design for dear life. The trend began, popularly, with the Nokia 5800 (some would argue that Meizu M8 was the first) and hasn’t stopped since. The manufacturers’ fear is palpable and it’s time this parade of phones, designed to mimic one major phone, stopped. It’s bad for the consumer, it’s bad for the carrier, and it’s bad for the manufacturer. Before iPhone (BI), manufacturers were fat and sassy, designing phones that came in odd cases and featured whimsical Java stacks. No phone looked like any other and every year designers would pick up cues from each other in terms of popularity. One year it was rugged, the next year it was piano black, the next year it was dark red. Phones came and went and they all looked different. Except for a few lower-end exceptions, going into a phone store now is an exercise in futility. There is no differentiation nor is any phone better than any other. Just as every tablet looks strikingly like every other, every phone looks and works strikingly like every other. The results of this marketing nightmare are clear. You have advertisements that tout meaningless clock speed numbers – as if you’re going to play Angry Birds faster on your Nexus vs. a Samsung Fascinate. Programmers are forced by the vagaries of software to design for the lowest possible system specs. The result, then, is a marketplace cluttered with the same phone, over and over, with various bursts of nervous energy spent championing one identical handset over the rest… until the next model comes out. This constant churn is what is stagnating the mobile industry. For two years after the iPhone the common refrain was “Why don’t manufacturers hire three (or thirty) really good guys, put them in a room for a year, and make them make the best cellphone ever.” This happened exactly once – at Palm – and never happened again. The closest to this vision, I would argue, is HTC, and they’re no great shakes. Apple has done their thing. They’re going to keep doing their thing. They are, to continue the evolutionary metaphor, like a very specialized bird with a beak evolved to eat, say, termites. The rest of the birds saw that the termite bird was thriving so they developed a beak to eat ants – they aimed at exactly the wrong target and now each manufacturer is falling over itself – and starving – as it goes after the well-hunted ants in a non-diverse ecosystem. Samsung, HTC, RIM, LG, Nokia: stop it. Play to your strengths. Reduce your lines to low, mid, and high-end phones. Streamline. The manufacturers took what matters least about the iPhone – the trade dress – and made that an obsession. Take what matters most – Apple’s consumer-focused clarity of vision – and see where that gets you.

Vayable Expands Your Horizons Through Unique Travel Experiences (TCTV) Posted: 24 Feb 2012 12:01 PM PST Ever wish you could explore Paris on a Vespa? Or how about a tour of Santa Barbara wineries from a local? Vayable connects you with guides around the world who offer unique experiences in their city. In the interview above, Jamie Wong, Co-Founder and CEO of Vayable, talks about why she started Vayable, who the guides are, how she built a community and some notable experiences listed on the site including the controversial homelessness tour. While Jamie was living in New York, friends came to her for travel tips and occasionally she would show them around the city Her travel tips became a blog and that led her to realize there were others like her that would be willing to give tours around their cities. So, she created Vayable to be a platform that connects you with locals who offer some kind of experience you find interesting. Categories include arts & culture, food & wine, adventure, and more. There are plenty of interesting experiences listed on the site, but one stands out. A homelessness walking tour in San Francisco. You can even see what it's like to go homeless for a day. Tim Ferriss said it gave him "a much needed perspective/ appreciation reset." Vayable has the opportunity to facilitate cultural learning in places you visit or even in your own city. Unlike most travel experiences or tours, you can see and leave reviews for your guide. And guides are passionate about the experiences they list. That beats signing up for a more lackluster experience you'd find advertised on sites like Orbitz or local tour companies. Like AirBnB, Vayable is helping its guides earn extra income. If you're someone who has a passion like hiking or local art, you can take travelers on your adventure and charge a price you see fit. As with similar marketplaces, Vayable takes a 15 percent cut of everything booked through the site. So, now you too can explore the side of Los Angeles most usually never see or find out what island life in Bocas really is like (hint: it apparently involves scuba gear and dancing shoes). The choice is yours.

TechCrunch Giveaway: iPad 2, iPad 2 Case, And $200 iTunes Gift Card #TechCrunch Posted: 24 Feb 2012 11:28 AM PST Hey everyone, we have a special giveaway for you this week. Yes, the iPad 3 is well on its way, but the iPad 2 is still one of the most sought after gadgets out there. With special thanks to our friends over at GreatApps.com, we have a brand new black iPad 2 32G to give away, ALONG with a Hip Street iPad 2 Bluetooth Keyboard Case, PLUS a $200 iTunes gift card. The lucky winner of this giveaway will win all three items. The giveaway will run for three days, starting now and ending this Sunday, at 7:30pm PT. Make sure you follow the steps below if you’d like to enter. 1) Become a fan of our TechCrunch Facebook Page: 2) Then do one of the following: - Retweet this post (including the #TechCrunch hashtag) - Or leave us a comment below telling us why you want these prizes The contest starts now and ends Sunday, February 26th, at 7:30pm PT. We’ll go through all of the comments and make sure you followed the steps correctly before picking our winner. We’ll choose the winner at random and contact them this weekend. Make sure you only tweet the message once, or you will unfortunately be disqualified.

Netflix: We Have No Plans To Support BlackBerry Devices, Including The PlayBook Posted: 24 Feb 2012 11:23 AM PST It seems as though nobody’s a fan of RIM’s BlackBerry PlayBook. Last year, I would’ve agreed wholeheartedly. What’s a tablet good for — ahem, an enterprise-style tablet no less — if you can’t natively check email, store contacts, or access a calendar. But even though much of that’s going to change with the release of PlayBook 2.0 OS, some peeps still can’t get on board. In this instance, it would be Netflix. According to Reuters, Netflix has stated that it has no plans to support the BlackBerry PlayBook or any other BlackBerry device for that matter. Even with the issues Netflix has had in the past year — including awful streaming margins and a price hike backlash — the fact that consumers are putting even more screens in front of their faces should bode well. Still, Netflix doesn’t seem to be too enthused with RIM or their offerings. Netflix is already available on the iPad, iPhone, and various Android devices. Since the PlayBook 2.0 OS comes with an Android emulator (which lets people play with Android apps on the PlayBook), we had thought that it would be relatively easy for the Android app to be ported over to the PlayBook. Unfortunately, no such luck.

First Look: Survey Warns Of Consumers Turning Off From Digital Ads Posted: 24 Feb 2012 11:16 AM PST With all the developments we've seen in online advertising over the years, you'd have thought that someone would have figured out how to put a halt to what must be one of the biggest issues of all: people are getting fed up with digital ads. A new report from YouGov, commissioned by mobile marketing company Upstream and provided to TechCrunch before wider release, indicate that people basically feel like there are too many ads, and that they are too pervasive. The situation seems to be a vicious circle. Users are engaging with ads less and less: response rates that were at an average of 7 percent in 1997 have today plummeted down to 0.1 percent for an average online ad. The solution? Serve more ads to get the respond numbers up. The result? More annoyance with online ads, and even less engagement: total digital ad impressions for all media in 2011 were at 5 trilliion, compared to 200 billion in 1997, according to comScore. Surveys like this speak to some of the issues that the online ad industry is going to have to sort out as it keeps growing, and means opportunity for new players and new formats like those being developed by Facebook. But as information gathering becomes more sophisticated, issues around invasiveness and privacy will also grow. "How you connect with people effectively is going to be a major battleground over the next few years," said Marco Veremis, chairman of Upstream. "We need to look at targeting in a different way than we've been taught as marketeers." Surveying 4,150 consumers across the U.S. and UK, YouGov found that 66 percent said that they got bombarded with too many digital ads — online and on their mobile devices. An equal number, 66 percent, said their perception of brands changed when felt their promotions became too invasive. But it can be more damaging than that: some 27 per cent of UK and 20 per cent of U.S. consumers said that too frequent advertising or promotional messages would result in them not using the product from the brand in question completely, while only 1 per cent of UK and U.S. consumers said that excessive messages led them to use products more. And around 10 percent said that they would go activist as a result, taking to social media sites to complain. That has a lot of resonance when you think about some of the more prominent direct marketing campaigns of late — those of daily deal sites that email offers to their users — and the fatigue that has meant less engagement in those promotions. In the UK, YouGov found that some of that dislike related to economic grouping, with upper middle class users less happy with ads than those with less money. (Corresponding numbers were not available for the U.S.) Young adults in both markets (18-34) were slightly more tolerant of ads than older users. Women were more tolerant than men when it came to digital ads. Devices. A clear line was drawn on platform: mobile ads are a much more personal, and potentially more invasive, than other channels. When it came to unwanted ads, while PCs and even tablets scored at under 10 percent for offensiveness, mobile handsets rated at 64 percent (UK) and 67 percent (U.S.). That seems to indicate that although some analysts like eMarketer project that mobile ads will make $2.5 billion in revenue in the U.S. this year — their effectiveness may not match that investment. Mediums. Connected to the sensitivity around mobile, SMS and mobile apps were two of the least-liked channels for receiving ads. But in what might be good news for Twitter as it rolls out its advertising services, it scored as the least-annoying channel for ads compared to Facebook and Google. Where is the silver lining? There do seem to be some small shoots of hope for the digital marketing industry — if advertisers can think of better ways of matching their brands (or their campaigns) to their target audiences. The numbers are still not brilliant, but at least 26 percent said they would be happy to get ads aimed at their personal interests; 21 percent were interested in ads that were "contextually relevant" and between 19 and 22 percent liked the idea of ads that were location specific. (image: Andrew Huff, Flickr)

Jason, May The Force Be With You Posted: 24 Feb 2012 10:29 AM PST One of the marks of a great blogger is following your convictions and convincing the world of the truth you know in your heart. Jason Kincaid is that blogger, whether he is calling out Apple for enabling patent trolls or VEVO’s hypocrisy in using pirated video at an event. Jason joined TechCrunch in 2008 straight out of college. He learned fast and just kept getting better, even veering off into video. Here he is interviewing Al Franken, and he also hosted one of our most popular TCTV shows, TC Cribs. (He is also incredibly stylish). After four years, Jason is leaving TechCrunch. He decided to write his farewell on his own personal blog, which I encourage you to read. Jason has many fans here among readers and the staff alike. He helped to define the character of TechCrunch during our formative years, and he will always be a part of our family. In his farewell, Jason comes back to what makes TechCrunch special and what kept him working here tirelessly. It all comes down to the startups and the conversation writers like him get to have with them: That conversation never gets old. And, better yet, I always got to ask them questions about everything ranging from data mining to real estate to the optimal times to plant vegetables — all of which, somehow, fall under the wide-sweeping umbrella of 'tech', provided they have a website or smartphone app. And when I wasn't meeting with startups, I was often tasked with things that made the lifelong tech geek inside of me gleeful. Jason is not sure what he is going to do next, but he feels it is time to move on. Truth be told, he’s been feeling that for a while, as he notes in his post. Thank you, Jason, for all you’ve given to TechCrunch and sticking it through as long as you did. We can’t wait to see what you do next.

Welcome Back, Nokia Posted: 24 Feb 2012 09:45 AM PST If my Mom asked me what smartphone to buy right this second, I’d tell her to wait — wait until the Nokia Lumia 900 is released. It’s that good. Windows Phone 7 is that good. It’s faster and more idiot-proof than Android and presents core functions like phone calling and messaging better than iOS. Windows Phone is, in my humble opinion, a fantastic product. Nokia has had a rough decade. Trouble started in the States where the company continued to pump budget phones into a market that went upscale. They were an early entrant in the smartphone race, but didn’t curate a developer-friendly ecosystem as quickly as others. They were down, out, and looking dead in the water. Then Microsoft floated by and threw out a life preserver worth $250 million. Now, after just one quarter, Nokia is the top dog of the third most popular smartphone platform. That’s a great spot to be in. I have a T-Mobile Lumia 710 sitting in front of me right now. As John said in our review, it’s impressive to a point. The battery easily lasts days, outlasting an iPhone 4S or even the Droid RAZR MAXX. The hardware feels of the Nokia of old: a tad plasticy but very solid. I doubt it’s as durable as 3310 or 1110i but it can certainly survive drops. I’m not sure I would use it as a daily driver, but I would wholeheartedly recommend it to someone looking for a reliable and simple phone. But this as much about Microsoft as it is Nokia. The partnership is nearly perfect. Microsoft knows software and Nokia knows hardware. Take the Zune: fantastic software hampered by just average hardware that had limited market distribution. Likewise, the Nokia N8 is one of the finest phones I’ve ever felt but the Symbian OS made it unsellable. When separate, these two companies were being pushed out of the mobile race. But together, they’re a major force. Windows Phone 7 might never overtake Android or iOS in marketshare. Apple has legions of fans and Android is growing at an exponential pace fueled by an explosion of devices. But market share only matters to a point. Windows Phone does not have to be first in order to be successful. Still, Microsoft, Nokia and all the rest of the Windows Phone makers are fighting an uphill battle. And they need to fight harder. It’s not cool to own a Windows Phone like it is an iPhone or Droid. Windows Phone needs stronger, more aggressive marketing. Look at Samsung with the Galaxy S II. They’re doing it right. Carriers need a better selection of hardware (read: Nokia needs to get on Verizon). The prices are right but the products are still relatively unknown by consumers. Buy salesman’s love. It’s dirty but spiffs and incentives generally result in higher sales. Per today’s news Nokia holds 33 percent of the Windows Phone 7 market share and they reached that point in just one quarter using classic Nokia tactics. The Lumia 710 is wonderfully inexpensive and the Lumia 800 is not an iPhone competitor in the traditional hardware sense. But people still want them. The large Lumia 900 is hitting soon, which will no doubt increase Nokia’s dominance in the market. If you’re like me, you’re fed up with Android’s nonsense and don’t really want an iPhone. My hope is that Nokia and Verizon releases a LTE-enabled 900 with a battery life comparable to that of the 800. That’s what I want. Nokia bet all their chips on Microsoft. It was a bold move. Windows Phone 7 had yet to show signs of real life and it’s still a tiny sliver on the smartphone market share pie. But there’s still money to be made in third place and Nokia’s bet is looking smarter all the time.

Mail.Ru Issues Gangbusters Trading Figures, Plans More Social Games Posted: 24 Feb 2012 09:32 AM PST Mail.Ru has issued a preliminary trading statement for the fiscal year 2011. The largest Russian-language Internet company, is looking at a margin outlook of 50 percent this year according to CEO Dmitry Grishin, speaking on a conference call, and plans to reinvest the cash to improve its products. Net income in the second half of 2011 almost tripled year on year to $122.9 million. Shares were up on the news. Mail.ru has seen stronger advertising revenue than it expected in the fourth quarter and plans to focus on higher quality products with its online game business. In terms of numbers, the monthly audience of the Mail.Ru portal in December 2011 (according to TNS Russia) reached 30 million Russian users. They had continued growth in social networking and instant messaging with the social network Odnoklassniki reaching 20.8m monthly users (TNS Russia) and Mail.ru Agent, it’s IM network, hitting 22.9m monthly users. In the last year Mail.ru’s web-interface for its email was revamped and improved and they issued updates and releases of desktop and mobile client apps (iOS, Android, WP7, Java, Symbian, Blackberry) of Mail.Ru Agent and ICQ. The Games.mail.ru portal is now the the largest MMO gaming portal in the “Runet” (shorthand for the “Russian Internet”) and it launched 16 new games launched, including more social and mobile games. Grishin said interoperability between Agent and ICQ was introduced, as was support for authorization between other instant messengers and social networks. About 43% of Mail.Ru Agent monthly users are accessing the service from their mobile devices, as well as 34% of their OK monthly users. In fact the mobile user growth is exceeding PC use, not unexpectedly.

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