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- An Impotent Facebook Army: Non-voters Favor Obama 2-1
- Facebook Passed Yahoo To Become The Second Largest Video Site In The U.S. In July
- TechCrunch Disrupt Finalist Hmmm Switches Gears: Now Building Hubbl, A “Gamified” App Discovery Platform
- Social Comms For Start-Ups — The Myths And Realities
- Facebook’s Stock Price Plunges In Early Trading A Day After The Lockup Expired
- This Could Be The Samsung Galaxy Note II
- Samsung’s Black Galaxy S III Said To Launch In October With 64GB Of Storage
- WWE Launches Mobile Apps For On-Demand Video And Second-Screen Viewing
- Deets For iOS Keeps Contacts Up To Date Automatically, Lets You Share Files, Photos & More
- Color-Changing Soft Robots Will Someday Simulate The Crawlers Of The Deep
- Windows RT Tablets Up To $300 Less Than Win 8 Tabs, Says Lenovo Exec
- LeapFrog’s LeapPad2 Kid-Friendly Tablet Sees Better Specs At The Same Price: $99
- Investment Vehicle For Ideas, Motif Expands To Fixed-Income Products
- YC-Backed Markupwand Takes The Pain Out Of Translating Photoshop Files To HTML And CSS
- IHave50Dollars Is An App.net For People With $50
- Trulia Goes After Zillow’s Real Estate, Files $75M IPO; Now Has 22M Monthly Users
- Your Last Chance To Apply For START At Dublin Web Summit
- Disrupt SF Goes Global – Welcome To LatAm, Asia, Europe And Africa
- Nokia Grows Something: Zynga Deal Now Includes Draw Something, Poker For 100M Asha Feature Phones
- 5 Considerations For The Flash Market Now That Texas Memory Is IBM’s Darling
| An Impotent Facebook Army: Non-voters Favor Obama 2-1 Posted: 17 Aug 2012 08:45 AM PDT  Elementary school algebra shows that social media has nearly zero impact on elections: Obama has 7 times more Facebook fans than Mitt Romney (28 million vs. 4 million), yet he is ahead by only 3% in national polls. A survey from USA Today unearths new evidence why Obama’s Facebook army is all bark and no bite: non-voters favor him two-to-one. This new evidence lends support to the argument we’ve made before that there are three kinds of people who bother following a politician on Facebook (none of whom are swing voters): reliable supporters, opposition spectators, and the growing demographic of non-voting 20-somethings. To be clear, the last group is still civically active: according to the survey, 2/3 of these citizens are actually registered to vote and 80% feel that government has an impact on their lives. But as Political Science Professor, Russel Dalton, has found, this group prefers non-institutional action. They tweet, read the news, facebook, share YouTube videos, and protest, but they don’t like to vote, or work with political parties. And, because a large slice of them are young, in 2008, had noone under the age of 30 voted, Obama still would have won ever state but two. Media outlets seem to struggle with interpreting the numbers. Buzzfeed, for instance, made a valiant attempt at arguing that Facebook follower count was less important than the number of people actively engaged, noting that slightly more people are “talking about” Mitt Romney’s fan page than Obama. Unfortunately, what they’re saying about Romney isn’t very nice, nor is it indicative of the education level of someone who turns out to the voting booth. Exhibit A: the quote below was literally the first comment that was shown to me on Romney’s page:
This is not to say that social media is totally irrelevant. It can help underdogs get much-needed buzz outside of the mainstream media (like the once-scrappy Senator Obama). But, if social media really did make a difference on the big issues Ron Paul would be the Republican nominee, Chick-fil-A would be bankrupt, Occupy Wall Street would be as powerful as the Tea Party, and Marijuana would be legal. As far as the research goes, if you want to make a real impact on the election, get outside with an old-fashioned clipboard and knock on doors. Nothing beats face-to-face conversation for bringing people to the voting booth.
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| Facebook Passed Yahoo To Become The Second Largest Video Site In The U.S. In July Posted: 17 Aug 2012 08:35 AM PDT  comScore’s monthly online video data is in and it looks Facebook passed Yahoo in July to become the second largest video site in the U.S. behind Google/YouTube. According to comScore, more than 184 million U.S. Internet users watched 36.9 billion online content videos in July, while video ad views totaled 9.6 billion. Google/YouTube still outpaced the rest of the online properties with 157 million unique viewers in July, compared to 53 million from Facebook, 48.7 million from Yahoo, 44.8 million from Vevo and 42.7 million from Microsoft. Nearly 36.9 billion video content views occurred during the month, with Google Sites generating the highest number at 19.6 billion, followed by AOL with 665 million. Google also took the top spot for engagement as well. Facebook has passed Yahoo in terms of views in the past, but more recently the social network has been behind Google, Yahoo, and even Vevo (from May). In terms of ads, Google ranked first with 1.5 billion ads, followed by Hulu with 1.2 billion, Adap.tv with 1.1 billion, SpotXchange Video Ad Marketplace with 1 billion and TubeMogul Video Ad Platform with 830 million. Time spent watching video ads totaled 3.9 billion minutes, with Adap.tv delivering the highest duration of video ads at 627 million minutes. Video ads reached 52 percent of the total U.S. population an average of 61 times during the month. Hulu delivered the highest frequency of video ads to its viewers with an average of 46, while ESPN delivered an average of 26 ads per viewer. Drilling down on YouTube partner data, VEVO had 43.9 million viewers on July followed by gaming channel Machinima, with 25.3 million viewers. Warner Music and Maker Studios saw 24.9 million viewers and 20.4 million viewers, respectively. This is the first time Machinima, which just raised new funding led by Google, has taken the second spot in the partner rankings. Among the top 10 YouTube partners, Machinima demonstrated the highest engagement (83 minutes per viewer) followed by Maker Studios (45 minutes per viewer). VEVO streamed the greatest number of videos (571 million), followed by Machinima (564 million). comScore reports that 85.5 percent of the U.S. Internet audience viewed online video in July (compared to 84.8 percent in June).
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| Posted: 17 Aug 2012 08:25 AM PDT  The makers of Hmmm, the TechCrunch Disrupt NYC 2012 finalist which had a different take on social networking, is taking their company in a new direction. I guess you could even call it a pivot, but as usual, “pivot” is too vague a term here. Hmmm is not being shut down, it’s just not getting the team’s development attention while they focus on their new thing. Or rather, it’s not really a “new” thing – they’re just returning to work on what they had been building before Hmmm: an app discovery service called Hubbl, named after the famous telescope. According to founders Archana Patchirajan and Kusha Choksi, launching at Disrupt did a lot to raise their profile and help them make connections with the tech community and investors, and it even prompted 10,000 downloads of Hmmm in the first week following the event. But the problem was that they couldn’t scale Hmmm up to the next level. “We were struggling to find ways to market our app and make it compete with a thousand other apps out there, and the competition was growing,” explains Patchirajan. And acquisition costs for new users had grown to around $5 per user for Hmmm, adds Choksi. “We didn’t have that kind of budget,” he says. The founders had been bootstrapping with their own savings, and have around $150,000 in seed funding from friends and family – not enough to keep Hmmm growing. ”The concept of Hmmm is a little bit ahead of its time,” Patchirajan admits. “The minute Facebook tries to monetize their mobile platform – that’s when people will slowly start coming out of Facebook and will look for a new network with the kind of privacy tools we built inside of Hmmm.” So the team returned to the concept they had been working on prior to Hmmm: Hubbl, an app discovery platform which they had originally thought could serve as a marketing vehicle for Hmmm after it launched. Yes, I realize there are A LOT of these app discovery platforms out there. To name a few: AppFlow, Kinetik, Crosswalk, Discovr Apps, AppsFire, Xyologic, and even Apple-acquired Chomp. But Hubbl is at least approaching with a slightly different concept. It’s not just a recommendation service or search engine, it’s a game too. Here’s how it works. Hubbl captures the opinions about an app from around the web by aggregating content from mainstream media articles, blogs and app enthusiasts. It combines these opinions with those from your friends on Facebook (if you sign up with Facebook), your friends on Hubbl and the Hubbl community at large in order to organize the apps into smart collections. These collections aren’t just general categories like “games” or “social,” but can be narrowly focused on one particular app feature, too. For example, Evernote is a Productivity and Note-taking tool, but you can tag it “LifeLogging” if that’s what you use it for. These categories work like Twitter hashtags in the app. If you tap on “LifeLogging” in the above example, you would come across a list of apps that also fit that genre. And then you may end up tapping on one of those apps’ other hashtags to follow drill down into a different feature set, too. There’s a feeling of serendipitous, zigzagging discovery here. In Hubbl, you can explore apps by popular tags, you can view those trending in the news, or you can view the stream of the apps your friends recommend within different sections of the platform (“Explore,” “Buzz,” “Stream”). However, the game element comes into play under “Contests.” Every day, Hubbl will have a contest where users submit or vote on the most appropriate tag for a given app. The first person to submit the winning tag gets a $15 iTunes Gift Card. The idea here is to create an incentive to classify the newly added apps – not the Evernotes and Instagrams, necessarily, but those that aren’t yet tagged. Choksi says that the contests are needed because people get tired of curation after some point, and it’s difficult to maintain a network around app organization and friends’ recommendations when people stop participating. With contests, users are encouraged to return the app and to help Hubbl continue to classify the new additions. The contests would also be open to sponsorship, too, allowing app publishers to take over the contest for the day and offer their own award for help in picking out the best tags for their app, as well. It’s an interesting concept to use a gamification element to encourage repeat visits to an app discovery platform, and people certainly like to win stuff, so it could catch on. However, Hubbl isn’t quite ready yet for its big debut – that’s still a few weeks out - so it’ s hard to review the experience based on what we can test right now. Final judgement is on hold. For now, you can sign up here to be notified when Hubbl goes live. Stay tuned.
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| Social Comms For Start-Ups — The Myths And Realities Posted: 17 Aug 2012 08:13 AM PDT  This is a guest post by Lloyd Gofton, managing Director or Liberate Media. Engaging with your target audience through social media is one of those actions often pushed to the bottom of the pile for start-ups, or even worse, it is assumed that social communications will be covered by the knowledge of existing team members. Unfortunately that rarely turns out to be the case. If you haven't developed a plan for social, you may be leaving the communication of your product, conversations with your customers/potential customers, and potential investors, to chance. Let's start by clearing up a few misconceptions about what social communications are. Brand communications in a social environment should be focused on customer need. This need is not motivated by being a fan or friend of your organisation but by deriving value from the customer's engagement with the organisation. Before you decide that you don't have time, perhaps ask yourself what you are making time for. The Harvard Business Review Analytics Services survey of 2,100 organisations recently discovered (PDF) that 79% are currently using social media channels. They also asked them what they saw as the benefits of social media. Here are the top five results: The major benefits of Social Media So assuming you're ready to invest some time, what are the options for start-ups? In an ideal world the social campaign would be run by an individual or group of individuals in the organisation that has passion for the product, knowledge of the theories of social communication, and experience of the social tools that will be relevant to your business. Given an ideal world does not exist for Start-Ups, focus on identifying the person or team that has the passion for your product, and ultimately the person that is willing to listen and talk to your community. They can very quickly build the other skills required. Remember, social communications means engaging person-to-person. It's not about the technology; it's about the person using it and the conversation. So as a Start-Up your team's closeness to the product should give you an advantage. The learning and planning element is where you should consider applying budget. Training on the theory and practicality of the social web will be a short-term cost for a longer-term gain. It's very important at this early stage to learn from many case study examples of success and failure because if/when something goes wrong, blaming a member of the team is not a plausible excuse. As a rule of thumb, you need to allocate resource relevant to your digital footprint and potential customer base. Consider: • a training budget to get your people up to speed You will also need to consider the tools that will help you to communicate – not just social networks such as Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, Google +, Pinterest but also the social media monitoring tools that will allow you to identify your community and connection points as well as track conversations within the community. These social media tools come in a range of shapes and sizes; some cover a wide range of elements, others a small part; some are paid for and others are free. You are likely to need to use a paid platform such as Radian6, Brandwatch, Engage Sciences and UberVU mixed in with other free or low-cost tools to get a full picture. When you have these elements in place, you need to start building your campaign. As with any area of social media, or any conversation, the best place to start is by listening. Start-ups should only engage and add value when they have listened to and understood the problems, challenges and issues that customers and the wider community are experiencing. When you have the platform, processes and people in place to listen, you need to feed this infrastructure with actionable data such as what your community is saying and how this helps you. This is the fuel that drives the social campaign and the quality of the data fuel will relate directly to the effectiveness of the social communications process. Engagement should be relevant and useful, and not always in the form of a simple text-based response. Content can be used to engage and convey a key part of your offering. So don't just think of engagement as a response. Think of it as an opportunity to build a conversation. In summary, these are the key points that Start-Ups should take into consideration when thinking about a social communications plan: • Don't assume it is being taken care of or leave it in the hands of the uninitiated – you will regret it. • Select the best individual on the grounds of product passion and social skills and get them trained and give them a reasonable budget
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| Facebook’s Stock Price Plunges In Early Trading A Day After The Lockup Expired Posted: 17 Aug 2012 07:48 AM PDT  Facebook’s stock price (NASDAQ:FB) took a nosedive this morning after opening slightly higher from yesterday’s close. The stock price opened at 20.08 but quickly started dropping, hitting a new low just 30 minutes after the market opened. This comes just one day after the lockups on Facebook’s stock expired, allowing those who invested at the IPO to dump their shares. This caused heavy trading at the beginning of the day, plunging Facebook’s stock to all-time lows. About 271 million shares hit the open market from such early investors as Microsoft, Accel Partners, Tiger Global Management, Goldman Sachs and Peter Thiel. As of this post’s writing, a mere hour after the market opened, Facebook is trading around 19.25 a share. This is a far cry from the stock’s IPO price of $42 back in May. Worse yet, at least for the initial investors, the downward trend doesn’t seem to be slowing.
So what should Facebook do? Read Josh Constine's thoughts: Stay The Course, Facebook. Even If Your Share Price Crashes
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| This Could Be The Samsung Galaxy Note II Posted: 17 Aug 2012 07:26 AM PDT  Is this the Samsung Galaxy Note II? It shares the same lines as the Galaxy S III. It also shows a home button very similar to the S III. The top-mounted sensors are in the same place and the screen is as gigantic as expected. But at this point it’s hard to say. Samsung is expected to launch the successor to the wildly popular Samsung Galaxy Note sometime this year. The first version went on to sell a whopping 10 million units. An impressive feat considering that the phone is rather huge. With a 5.5-inch screen and stylus, the Note dwarfs the iPhone, making it look a toy from a past generation but some say it’s just too big. Still, the numbers do not lie. People love it. Well, at least 10 million people loved it enough at one time to buy it. The next version will be a big upgrade. If this picture is any indication, it will have a screen around the same size. But inside, Samsung will likely turn to its quad-core Exynos platform, a SoC that’s very capable. The original Note wasn’t exactly sluggish, but the new version will probably silky smooth. Plus, if the phone launches later in the year, there’s a good chance it will rock Jelly Bean rather than Ice Cream Sandwich. IFA is right around the corner. Samsung could reveal the phone as soon as August 29th, but the international rollout could take place later in the year.
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| Samsung’s Black Galaxy S III Said To Launch In October With 64GB Of Storage Posted: 17 Aug 2012 07:02 AM PDT  Samsung’s Galaxy S III is a pretty lust-worthy gadget to begin with, but the Korean electronics giant just won’t leave well enough alone. First they put together a model that managed to combine both an LTE radio and an Exynos quad-core chipset, a combination that unfortunately hasn’t trickled out of the country yet. Now it seems that U.K. phone retailer Clove has the skinny on yet another hardware revision. The folks at Phandroid spotted a landing page for Clove created for that handsome new black GSIII that’s been spotted in the wild that mentions it will ship with 64GB of internal memory in October. Better late than never, I suppose. Galaxy fanatics may remember that Samsung promised a 64GB Galaxy S III at the company’s ostentatious London launch event, but the device failed to appear in due course. Naturally, many assumed that particular model got the axe at some point, a notion that Samsung eventually denied — according to them, the 64GB version was instead slated for a launch during the “second half” of 2012. It shouldn’t come as much surprise that there isn’t much information on what the mildly-tweaked handset will cost, or when we can expect to see it embark on a world tour. In fact, Samsung hasn’t even officially confirmed the device’s existence, but that’s all right — third-party retailers and carriers (including T-Mobile USA, which is a bit of an eyebrow-raiser) are apparently more than happy to spread the word anyway.
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| WWE Launches Mobile Apps For On-Demand Video And Second-Screen Viewing Posted: 17 Aug 2012 07:00 AM PDT  Ok, so I know this is cheesy, but I spent my childhood watching wrestling with my grandfather. He was obsessed! One of those dudes who would watch every pay-per-view special, on the edge of his seat all the while. I watched Hulk Hogan go from being a good guy to a bad guy and back again so many times I’m still not sure if he was actually a real American or just a commie traitor. Then things got weird with stuff like The Undertaker and I stopped paying attention, because even in my adolescent state, I kind of realized it was a little campy and fake. Well, the WWE is still going strong, and it’s been taking advantage of social media and online video to keep its audience engaged. Its latest tech effort is the release of new iOS and Android apps, which will give fans on-the-go access to videos and other content they might have missed, while also providing second-screen companion experiences. While WWE has played around with different apps in the past, including its Summerslam and WWE Supserstar Slingshot apps (think John Cena meets Angry Birds), it’s never really had a flagship app — one which gives fans a one-stop-shop and encompasses all the entertainment WWE has to offer. But now that’s all changing, with an app that’s available for the iPad, iPhone, iPod Touch, and the Samsung Galaxy SIII. Fans will get access to exclusive videos and other multimedia content, and the app will also offer access to social media streams of all their favorite stars. Users will also be able to buy merch and tickets to local events through the app, while also connecting with other local fans. The app also has a live component, letting fans take part in live polls and other content while Monday Night Raw and other live events are going on. For the WWE, the launch of the new apps are just an extension of its existing social media strategy, as it seeks to engage with fans on multiple platforms. Between its official Facebook and Twitter accounts and those of its talent, it has more than 100 million followers on the social networks. It’s also pushing original content to YouTube, as part of the company’s original programming initiative. The result has been more of a one-to-one relationship between its stars and their fans.
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| Deets For iOS Keeps Contacts Up To Date Automatically, Lets You Share Files, Photos & More Posted: 17 Aug 2012 06:49 AM PDT  Deets is a newly launched mobile app that lets you organize your contacts and keep everyone’s information up-to-date automatically, but that description alone sells it a bit short. This new iOS app is a little bit of everything – it’s a communication hub, a contact synchronization utility and even social networking service. The idea is somewhat similar to the concept of Google+ Circles in the sense that it allows you more control over what info you share and who you share with, but it does so by having you create different personal profiles for each group of contacts. Your “family” group might get your home address and cell number, for example, while your “client” group only sees the office address and phone. In addition to contact sharing, Deets will also allow users to share photos, files, and calendar appointments with each other, too. The company was founded by Linda Miller and Luke Scott, who spun the idea out of an earlier startup called StyleCard. Online sometime just before the iPhone’s launch, StyleCard was something like today’s Moo.com as it allowed users to order customized business cards online. What they saw, however, was that customers were ordering different sets of cards for their different “identities,” so to speak. They would order professional cards for work, others for friends, etc. Some would order as many as four different sets for their various “profiles.” Miller, whose experience at startups dates back to the dotcom days when she was employee #20 at Priceline.com and later led the development of Hotwire’s hotel product before leaving back in 2005, has been thinking about profiles and identity for a long time. After leaving Hotwire, she didn’t have a business card anymore, and she said it was like she lost her identity as well. This inspired her to start StyleCard originally, but after the iPhone came out, she realized that she could more. “We said, let’s regroup, let’s do it digitally, and do it mobiley.” She and StyleCard co-founder Scott started Deets back in late 2009. Built on top of AWS, the company spent a lot of time on making the product scalable while protecting user privacy and managing the security of the data it touches. But to users, the biggest distinction between Deets and some other contact organizers is that everyone’s contact information is updated automatically, once shared with groups. There’s also a big play for the enterprise market here, where teams could share documents (currently via Dropbox only), meeting details and photos privately with each other. On the social front, it’s more like a Everyme, Circle, or – yep – it even resembles Google+. ”We did this before Google+ came out and we were like, ‘are you kidding me?’,” laughs Miller, “‘that’s what we want to do!’ We were busy working on the technology and had to stay really relevant to keep up with the space, because the space it definitely heating up.” She says that Deets’ focus on privacy, mobile communication and synchronization are what make it stand out from the crowd. And the Deets homescreen dashboard (see top screenshot) is handy for seeing at-a-glance, which groups have new updates. The Deets business model is different from many social networks – instead of advertising or mining customer data, the service will eventually go the SaaS route by charging for premium features. While the concept itself is solid enough, the implementation may need a little tweaking. For starters, there’s the cold start problem – although it can pull in your iOS address book, no one’s contact info will automatically update unless they, too, join Deets. Other apps in the space, like Everyme, are smart enough to create groups for you on the fly automatically, while Deets has you manually picking contacts and sending out invites. Even creating your own profile info is a pain because you can’t just point to your contact card in the iOS address book to import your data before adding or removing the pieces you want to share or hide. For these reasons and others, Deets feels more like an app that would make the most sense for small teams in work environments, than it does for the mainstream “friends and family” market it’s trying to target. As it goes to launch, Deets is free as its subscription pricing is still being worked out. The Android version is expected by January, but the web and mobile web version are available now. Deets has $1.5 million in funding, $500,000 of which comes from Connecticut Innovations, and the rest from angel investors. Deets has its tech team in Connecticut, but COO Art Goldberg is based in Silicon Valley.
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| Color-Changing Soft Robots Will Someday Simulate The Crawlers Of The Deep Posted: 17 Aug 2012 06:44 AM PDT  Soft robots are made of silicone and use hydraulic controls to move across a surface or lift an object. Researchers at Harvard University have gotten these guys to walk around (albeit while tethered to a heavy control unit) and now they’ve gotten them to change color. The robots work like octopi in that the pigment colors their skin based on surrounding rocks and foliage. In an article in Science Magazine, the team describes how they’ve created a system that senses the surrounding color and then pumps in color. You can read more about the project on the DARPA website where they go in depth on the impetus behind the project. Why does this matter to the Department of Defense? DARPA foresees robots of many shapes and sizes contributing to a wide range of future defense missions, but robotics is still a young field that has focused much of its attention so far on complex hardware. Consequently, the costs associated with robotics are typically very high. What DARPA has achieved with silicone-based soft robots is development of a very low cost manufacturing method that uses molds. By introducing narrow channels into the molds through which air and various types of fluids can be pumped, a robot can be made to change its color, contrast, apparent shape and temperature to blend with its environment, glow through chemiluminescence, and most importantly, achieve actuation, or movement, through pneumatic pressurization and inflation of the channels. "DARPA is developing a suite of robots that draw inspiration from the ingenuity and efficiency of nature. For defense applications, ingenuity and efficiency are not enough—robotic systems must also be cost effective. This novel robot is a significant advance towards achieving all three goals,” said DARPA project manager Gill Pratt. The robots can also simulate muscle motion for flesh simulators or prosthetics. These robots will help fill the gap between gasp-inducing monsters like Big Dog and microdrones like those at the GRASP lab. They’re cheap, soft, and can camouflage themselves in dangerous situations. Plus they’re creepy as heck.
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| Windows RT Tablets Up To $300 Less Than Win 8 Tabs, Says Lenovo Exec Posted: 17 Aug 2012 06:11 AM PDT  The iPad is about to get some legitimate competition. In an interview with Bloomberg, David Schmoock, head of Lenovo’s North American operations, said that tablets running Windows RT will be $200 to $300 less expensive than their full Windows 8 counterparts. And since he states Windows 8 tabs will be between $600-$700, that puts the RT models well below the iPad. It should be noted that Schmoock is likely only speaking for Lenovo. The highly anticipated Microsoft Surface will likely follow the same pricing scheme. Microsoft has so far been very quiet about its target price. Still, the iPad might finally have some real competition if the Windows tablets are priced as competitively as noted here. Consumers have shown that they want a tablet. That market segment is growing rapidly and should continue as more models are available at different price points. As John noted yesterday, some companies are racing to the bottom, offering stripped-down Android tablets at low prices. But Windows tablets might have to go the other way. Microsoft is reportedly charging OEMs a pretty penny for Windows RT; Windows 8 likely costs even more. Several reports indicate that Microsoft is asking $85 per Windows RT licence. And such it’s not likely that Windows tablet, being of the RT or Win 8 variety, will hit at Nexus 7-ish price point. OEMs will likely swing, at least initially, Windows tablets upmarket, where the air is a little less crowded and the margins a little easier to see. "RT will play in consumer and retail at very aggressive price points," said David Schmoock, head of Lenovo's North America operations. "It will do well but it's going to be more of a consumer price point play to begin with," he said, in an interview with Bloomberg yesterday. Right now there are essentially two tablets on the market: the $499 iPad and the $199 Nexus 7, which replaced the $199 Kindle Fire. And such, the price points in between are wide open. It’s safe to expect Windows RT tablets to undercut the base iPad’s price while offering a similar screen size and local storage. Then, for a few dollars more than an iPad, or so will a PC maker like Lenovo will brag, a Windows 8 tablet is available, but offer a full desktop environment built around a touch interface. But the tablet market might soon get another player. If internet rumors are believed, Apple is about to launch an iPad mini with a price between $250-$350 — slightly undercutting Windows RT tablets, but doing so by offering a smaller screen. The iPad is running the tablet world but there is plenty of room in the growing market for more leaders. Windows tablets are set to offer a different experience than the iPad’s. Even if the pricing is similar, the capabilities and use cases should be different enough that Windows RT/8 tablets might have a chance to succeed at the reported price points. If not, they can always join the race to the bottom and sell gimped versions to compete against the cheap Nexus 7.
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| LeapFrog’s LeapPad2 Kid-Friendly Tablet Sees Better Specs At The Same Price: $99 Posted: 17 Aug 2012 06:01 AM PDT  It was over a year ago that we last crossed paths with LeapFrog’s LeapPad — a clever kid-friendly learning tablet that comes in under $100. Today, the second-generation LeapPad, or LeapPad2 as it were, has become available for the same price. However, it has seen some spec bumps that should offer longer play/learning time as well as more games stored. LeapFrog has doubled the on-board memory, extending it to 4GB, along with adding a bigger battery. But even better, the LeapPad2 has both front- and rear-facing cameras to let kids film movies and cartoons starring themselves. There are hundreds of downloadable apps available on the tablet to help kids learn and play, and LeapFrog also sells game cartridges for use with the slate. The LeapPad2 comes in green, pink, or in a Disney Princess bundle. You can pick it up now in-store or online for $99, or $129 if your daughter happens to be a Disney Princess. Click to view slideshow.
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| Investment Vehicle For Ideas, Motif Expands To Fixed-Income Products Posted: 17 Aug 2012 06:01 AM PDT  Motif Investing, a vehicle that allows you to invest in ideas, is expanding its offerings today to include the ability to invest in 10 new fixed income "motifs,” which are specialized portfolios of bond ETFs tied to certain macro-economic trends. As we’ve written in the past, Motif was founded last year to give individuals a new way to invest based on themes. Instead of choosing to buy stock in specific companies, Motif allows investors to invest in different portfolios of stocks, each called a "motif," that are centered around everyday ideas. For example, motifs can be built around themes and ideas ranging from cloud computing to mobile internet. With the current market volatility, many investors may want to allocate their money in fixed income products (i.e. bonds), says Motif CEO Hardeep Walia. These Motifs, says the company, are created in the same way stock motifs are built—the company's investment team searches for real-world ideas and trends that can be turned into investment opportunities. Fixed income motifs track more fundamental economic topics, like inflation, deflation, and AMT. Fixed-income motifs also include up to 30 securities, but they are constructed from bond ETFs (exchange-traded funds). For example, the American Bonds motif includes US government and corporate bond ETFs and sees an average 1-year return of around 7.93%. Investors can also customize their fixed income motifs. An entire fixed income motif can be bought for $9.95. There is a $250 minimum investment per motif but there are no minimums to open an account with the vehicle. Motif, which officially launched to the public in June, is hoping to attract investors who still want to invest in ideas, but are hoping for more steady returns with their money in the bond market. And some big names in the finance world are advising Motif. Former Citigroup CFO Sallie Krawcheck is a board member and former SEC Chairman Arthur Levitt is a board advisor.
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| YC-Backed Markupwand Takes The Pain Out Of Translating Photoshop Files To HTML And CSS Posted: 17 Aug 2012 06:00 AM PDT  For front-end developers, the process of translating a designer’s Photoshop file into a bit of usable code isn’t easy. It requires either breaking down different layers and coding a page by hand, or outsourcing the work out to a conversion shop and hoping for cross-platform capabilities. Either way, the translation typically takes a few days to get done. Y Combinator-backed Markupwand thinks it has a better way: The startup has created a web application that allows developers to upload Photoshop files and get back well-written, cross-platform code in a matter of minutes. While Markupwand hopes to reduce the amount of time it takes to hand code or outsource development, it could also replace existing tools like Dreamweaver and Fireworks, which neither developers nor designers like very much, and which tend to do a poor job of creating useable code. So the company puts an emphasis on creating code that looks as good as hand-written code. There’s no absolute positioning and minimal markup and CSS. It’s kind of a niche application, but could become a life- and time-saver for front-end developers. In a closed beta period, Markupwand has attracted 3,000 developers from 250 companies and freelance firms across 54 countries. While in beta, Markupwand is making the capability available for free, as it works out the bugs. But it’s planning to eventually charge for the service, either on an a la carte basis for one-off translations, or enabling developers to sign up on a subscription basis. It’s trying to determine pricing now, which could include enterprise licenses for access. Markupwand was founded by front-end developers Raj Natarajan, Alagu Muthuraman, and Suren Mahendran. Muthuraman and Mahendran new each other from NIT Trichy, where they both graduated. Meanwhile, Natarajan and Muthuraman met at Yahoo! bootcamp after joining the company at the same time. The three founders have worked in various positions at Yahoo, Zynga, Interviewstreet, and Myntra.
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| IHave50Dollars Is An App.net For People With $50 Posted: 17 Aug 2012 05:52 AM PDT  Do you have $50? Do you trust strangers with it? Do you like paying for evanescent access to a service you may never use? Then IHave50Dollars is a parody site, obviously (there’s an Easter Egg at the end) but it does offer a fairly poignant criticism of the bandwagon mentality in the Valley. Arguably, I paid my $50 just to see what will happen, but one of the benefits of Facebook and Twitter is that they’re accessible to all and hold few visible, external grandiose visions of a $50-based social utopia. While Biz and Ev saw their service as the pulse of the world, the average user sees it as a place to describe their kitten’s bowel movement. But remember that some real luminaries supported the cause. Marco Arment notes that “Like all of the other smart people (who have $50), I backed IHave50Dollars.com” and Scoble opines (not really) “You know, for $50, what’s another username?” With guys like that on your side, who can be against you?
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| Trulia Goes After Zillow’s Real Estate, Files $75M IPO; Now Has 22M Monthly Users Posted: 17 Aug 2012 05:08 AM PDT  Trulia, the online real estate listings giant, has now publicly filed an IPO of up to $75 million — effectively confirming reports from the end of July that the company had already filed for an IPO privately. The company’s S-1 also provides an update on the state of the business, showing some encouraging signs of user growth. It says that as of June 30, 2012, it has 22 million monthly unique visitors, up from 5 million in June 2009; and paid subscribers — its primary source of revenue, in addition to online ads — have also grown massively. They’re now at 21,544 versus 2,398 two years ago. Revenues in the last six months appear to be growing compared to last year: $29 million today versus $16 million for the period a year ago ($38.5 million for all of 2011). Meanwhile, net losses are also growing: they’re now at $7.6 million ($6.2 million last year). Average revenues per user are up, however. They are now at $1,318 compared to $1,194 a year ago for the first six months of the year, or $140 versus $91 for monthly revenues. Trulia, which has picked up $32.8 million in VC backing from Sequoia, Accel and others, is looking to public markets to raise significantly more money to better compete against its bigger rival Zillow. Its $29 million in revenues for six months puts Trulia at about half the size of Zillow at the moment in terms of sales. The latter company reported in Q2 that it had sales of $27.8 million for the quarter. It also has 33.5 million monthly unique users at the moment. Both companies, which offer listings but lots of new technology to better search those listings, are going after a market that has been in the doldrums for the last couple of years. In Trulia’s case, it offers mobile apps and supplements listings data with local information on schools, crime, and neighborhood amenities to provide unique insights into each community, as well as a social media bent, letting users contribute local information. It says it’s had 5 million unique user contributions to date. The private filing at the end of July is possible because of a provision in the JOBs Act, which lets companies with less than $1 billion in revenue to file without listing publicly with the SEC. Reuters points out that this lets the companies “sidestep” some reporting requirements. It also means that companies can avoid scrutiny if they decide to withdraw the IPO. Seems that Trulia got the all-clear internally and with its financial advisors, which include JP Morgan and Deutsche Bank; hence the public filing today.
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| Your Last Chance To Apply For START At Dublin Web Summit Posted: 17 Aug 2012 05:05 AM PDT  TechCrunch will have a decent presence at the upcoming Dublin Web Summit in October, featuring co-editors Eric Eldon and Alexia Tsotsis and yours truly speaking the event, which also runs just before the so-called ‘Davos for Geeks’ event known as F.ounders. We will also have a custom-built TechCrunch studio for TechCrunch TV (pictured), so you’ll be able to catch back-stage interviews with the tech celebs. This year there is also a brand new side-event called START, which is aimed at 50-60 founders who’ve raised Seed investment and are just starting out. If you want to apply, we’ve managed to get the organisers to extend the deadline till tomorrow for TechCrunch readers, so apply here. START will run alongside DWS and features the likes of Sweden’s Wrapp, the facebook-mafia-backed Nation Builder and Levo League – Sheryl Sandberg’s first investment. It will also feature mentoring sessions from VC’s such as Google Ventures, Earlybird and Greylock as well as an opportunity to meet the press (TechCrunch!) and PR people from the valley. Last year even Bono turned up on one evening. Alongside the 3,000 attendees at DWS from across Europe there will also be a developer conference with its own two day schedule of speakers and parties. DWS is also arranging to block off entire streets for the evening events, featuring bands and various corporate parties. Dublin is known for its parties, or, as they say there, ‘The Craic’. Speakers include a refreshingly balanced line-up with many women speakers including TED speaker Cindy Gallop, founder of MakeLoveNotPorn, Soraya Dorabi, co-founder of Foospotting and Science speaker / technologist Debbie Berebichez. Not to mention Ben Milne of Dwolla and Joe Fernandez of Klout, Jan Rezab of Social Bakers. TechCrunch Readers can use the special voucher code DWS12TC here to purchase two tickets with a discount. Here’s a run down of companies so far selected for START: Nationbuilder (San Francisco) The Levo League (New York) 6WunderKinder (Berlin) – Multi-platform productivity solutions for individuals, groups and businesses. 6WunderKinder received $4.2 million funding from Atomico in their Series A round. Qordoba (Dubai) – Revolutionising online translation and publishing with an unparalled network 450 linguists in 20 countries and 15 time zones to deliver fast, convenient and high quality language services, allowing companies to develop and adapt their content Sponsorhub (New York City) – Known as "Klout for conferences", Sponsorhub is the first platform that allows brands to easily identify, asses and sponsor the 'right' events on a scalable level. The end result is higher ROI for sponsors and better monitization for producers. RetailTower (Ghana) – One of Africa’s hottest startups, specializes in creating e-commerce marketing software that helps online merchants promote their products and drive traffic through leading comparison shopping engines. Wrapp (Stockholm) – Social gifting service for celebrating friends' occasions with free and paid gifts from attractive brands. Raised over $10 million in their Series A. Niklas Zennstrom, founder of Skype, is a board member. GoCardless (London) – A UK-based service that allows smaller merchants to easily set up interbank transfers for customers. Accel, SV Angel and Y Combinator have invested. Scopely (Los Angeles) – Currently in stealth mode with the goal of creating a platform for games developers to market their works. The team includes 12 senior engineers/project managers from Playdom, Mindjolt and Warner Bros. Lua Technologies (New York) – The simplest way for mobile workforces to effectively communicate, coordinate, and stay accountable. Using Lua, teams on-the-go remain agile, connected, and up to speed. A recent graduate of TechStars NYC. 9GAG (Hong Kong) – Image-based social media website which centres around user-uploaded, comical images, or “gags”. The site had 1 billion monthly pageviews as of December 2011.
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| Disrupt SF Goes Global – Welcome To LatAm, Asia, Europe And Africa Posted: 17 Aug 2012 04:17 AM PDT  TechCrunch Disrupt SF is still in the planning stages, but so far it is shaping out to be one of our biggest shows yet. We have announced incredible speakers that so far include: Yahoo CEO Marissa Mayer, San Francisco Mayor Ed Lee, Jessica Alba, TechCrunch founder Michael Arrington, super angel Ron Conway, Path CEO Dave Morin, Marc Benioff, Vinod Khosla and many others. Exciting, we know. We are still a month off, so be sure to be on the lookout for even more speaker announcements to come each week. Tickets are on sale here. We are ecstatic about something new we’re doing this year. There will be a strong global presence at Disrupt. Many of you may be familiar with our Israeli Pavilion we have done for three years now, but this year we are bringing even more countries into the mix. So far, we have a total of 66 startups from these countries, with 52 being from Latin America, from countries such as Brazil, Argentina, Chile, and Mexico. We don’t want to reveal too much, but you’ll also be seeing companies from Africa, Europe and Asia both on the Battlefield stage and in Startup Alley. One of the key trends we are seeing at Disrupt this year is the greater internationalisation of the entire technology economy, as tech companies open up to new markets, and many head towards the Valley while still retaining significant operations in their home countries. We’re all getting just that little bit more globalised, especially as VCs look for value outside of their home markets. Guys, if you didn’t apply this time round then you really should consider it for the next Disrupt event, bookmark this URL for the future. We can’t wait until Disrupt. And you shouldn’t want to either. It is going to be an amazing show. Come and be a part of it with us! Tickets are on sale here. And if you are interested in becoming a sponsor, opportunities can be found here as always. Expect many more pavilions like the one below this year! Sept. 8th - 12th in San Francisco Event GuideWhat is Disrupt?Early Bird Ticket Sales Startup Battlefield Hackathon Startup Alley Sponsor Info
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| Nokia Grows Something: Zynga Deal Now Includes Draw Something, Poker For 100M Asha Feature Phones Posted: 16 Aug 2012 11:50 PM PDT  Nokia is getting ready to reveal a new line of devices for its struggling smartphone business but it is also doubling down on its still-strong feature phone line, too. Today the Finnish handset maker announced an extension of a deal with Zynga to add Draw Something and Zynga Poker to Nokia Asha Touch feature phones along with the rest of the Nokia Series 40 range. The games will start rolling out in Q3 (this autumn) and will cover 100m users, Nokia says. The deal is a sign both of how Nokia is working hard to keep users on its devices in the face of strong competition from Samsung and cheap Android handset makers; and how Zynga is looking to grow its user base internationally at a time when the company’s bottom line has faltered (as have plays of recently-buzzy Draw Something). Both games will be freemium: free to download from Nokia Store with the option of purchasing in-game credits. These are the first Zynga games to make their way to Nokia feature devices. And just as this will help Nokia potentially drive more people to its Asha devices, it is also a potentially big boost for Zynga to grow its user numbers as well — particularly in developing markets where Nokia still often comes out as the most-popular handset maker. It also helps Zynga breathe some new life into one of its older games, Zynga Poker, as well as Draw Something. Zynga bought Draw Something maker OMGPOG for $180 million in April 2012 but has since seen falling user numbers. It’s unclear how and if Draw Something and Poker will be modified for the non-smartphone range. But you can see how this strategy fits in well with other plans that Zynga has: the international (outside of U.S.) online gambling market is worth some $32 billion annually, according to gambling platform maker Betable (also now working in gambling on iPhones, courtesy of a deal announced yesterday with Big Fish games). Zynga has made no secret of its interest in doing more real-money gambling in its games. Given that the Asha is very popular in emerging markets, where gambling rules may be looser than those in the U.S., this could spell a very lucrative opportunity for Zynga. The Zynga games will be added to the range of games already on Nokia Asha Touch devices from publishers like EA, Gameloft, Rovio, NAMCO BANDAI. This is an extension of a deal that Nokia and Zynga announced in June of this year to bring Draw Something, Words with Friends and other games to its Lumia smartphone range. “It’s great to expand our offering of Zynga games to deliver more blockbuster titles across our portfolio of mobile devices, giving consumers great choice and tremendous value,” Bryan Biniak, VP & GM, Global Partnering & Application Development, Nokia, said in a statement. “With premium design, powerful hardware and outstanding gaming capabilities, we’re redefining what consumers expect from today’s feature phone experience.” While Nokia has been seeing its market share in smartphones drastically fall, it has managed to stem the tide considerably with its sales of feature devices, which still make up the majority of phones sold worldwide today. In Q2, the company reported feature phone sales, led by the Asha range, of $2.8 billion, down by only one percent on last year. Meanwhile, feature phone volumes grew by two percent to 73.5 billion units. Nokia most recently reported that some 5 billion apps had been downloaded from the the Nokia Store (formerly known as Ovi). Between January and April 2012, 42% of all of the content in that store was for Series 40 devices. As developers have been flocking to iOS and Android, Nokia has been trying hard to keep them creating for its platform, too. It says that more than 500 Nokia developers have seen downloads of over 1 million for their apps, with India Games, Pico Brothers and Inode have all getting more than 100 million downloads. Nokia has developed three Asha devices to date, and these are at the top end of feature phones rather than basic models: they include the Nokia Asha 311 with a 1GHz processor and capacitive touchscreen; the Nokia Asha 305 that Nokia bills as “a fun and affordable phone”; and the Nokia Asha 306, a single SIM model with WiFi access.
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| 5 Considerations For The Flash Market Now That Texas Memory Is IBM’s Darling Posted: 16 Aug 2012 09:22 PM PDT  IBM’s acquisition today of Texas Memory Systems (TMS) is more proof that customer data demands will fuel a new wave of flash technologies to replace the hard drive systems that have dominated the market for the past 30 years. The acquisition points to a number of shifts in the flash market. Alliances are changing, private companies face threats from publicly traded companies and the giants themselves now have to prove they have the chops to compete with the feisty startups. In particular, eyes are on Fusion-io, which has had a cozy relationship with IBM. But now Texas Memory is IBM’s new darling so it raises questions about the impacts on the market. Fusion-io has been tearing up the flash market with its PCI-flash card technology. IBM has made it the centerpiece of its high-end solid state storage offerings. Texas Memory competes with its RamSan family of caching cards. But TMS is privately held and that makes it difficult to compete with Fusion-io, which had its IPO last year and now has revenues approaching $700 million. With that in mind, here are five considerations, based upon rumbles in the market and research I received from investment firm Sterns-Agee, which follows the flash market and Fusion-io:
The demand for SSD is a huge shift and proof that the storage and service providers will go through a major overhaul of their infrastructure to keep up with the massive scale that we will see as almost everything we can imagine begins to generate data of some kind. There are billions, if not trillions at stake here. This should be a fun one to watch.
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