Monday, June 10, 2013

tech now

tech now

Fab Finds Gold In Europe's Ecommerce Friendly Hills

Posted: 10 Jun 2013 09:12 AM PDT

fabe

Fab, the design powerhouse, appears to be going, shall we say, gang-busters in Europe. Figures released to us indicate that design-conscious Europe is becoming a crucial cost center, and may even affect the future direction of the startup that has raised $171m in funding to date.

Some 40% of Fab's global sales now come from Europe (this figure was 10% in September last year). Out of European sales as a whole, the UK now represents 30% of sales and Germany 50%. Both territories were negligible last year when Fab’s European acquisitions, such as Lustre, were only just being integrated.

European CEO Maria Molland attributes this to a tangible increase in marketing, especially TV advertising and particularly in the UK which is widely recognized as the leading ecommerce market by far in Europe.

“UK consumers are design centric” she told me in an interview, “and we have no direct competitors because we offer multiple categories and price points.” Indeed, Fab is having less trouble with clone competitors than it has with major offline retailers.

The biggest change says Molland is that the site is no longer a flash sales site and is closer to becoming the ‘world’s design store’, mainly via its strategy of partnering with noted home furnishing designers.

Other interesting stats coming out include the news that its apps for iOS and Android now represent 35% of revenue generated in Europe – pointing to what we already know about in the explosion of tablet use.

Following its acquisition of German company Massive Concept, Fab is now producing customized furniture in the European market and owns a physical design show room in Hamburg. FAB “Designed by you” has an average price point of €1,000.

Molland says this points to how they may approach the offline world in the future. “It’s similar to the way Apple did it. We want to do something for design. We’ll try out small cities and add some more.

“The main thing that we have seen develop is “emotional commerce” – capturing attention and then keeping people coming back for more. We think if you own a customer in the whole journey, that they will come back and buy a higher price point like furniture.”

They now have 3.5 million members in Europe with a monthly growth rate of 37%. There are 1 million members in the UK, and 200 employees in Berlin.

Giggem Provides A Matchmaking Service For Musicians, Managers, And Other Industry Professionals

Posted: 10 Jun 2013 09:00 AM PDT

giggem logo

If you know any serious musicians, you’ve probably heard them talk about the challenges of finding people to play with. You might also have seen those “drummer seeks band” ads in coffee shops or newspapers (or listened to that great segment about those ads on This American Life). Well, a startup called Giggem aims to make it easier for musicians to find bands, for bands to promote themselves to fans, and hopefully to eventually get signed with managers and labels.

If you’re a musician, you create a profile on the Giggem site showing off your interests and experiences. For example, founder and CEO Emir Turan is a musician himself, so on his profile he lists the type of music that he plays (alternative rock, alternative metal, glam metal, and more), the instruments he plays, his level of experience, and what he’s looking for (i.e. a band in his city). He also includes videos, audio tracks and photos of his performances.

Turan said the profile functions as a résumé for musicians, and there are similar profiles that can be created by bands, songwriters, music labels, managers and fans. Once you’ve got a profile, the Giggem algorithm kicks in and starts recommending people you should connect with. Because it knows your interests, experience, and what you’re looking for, it can make pretty solid recommendations about users who’d be a good match.

Of course, this kind of matchmaking algorithm can’t account for the human element of, “Hey, am I going to get along with these people? Is there any chemistry there?” Turan acknowledged that Giggem can’t handle the entire selection process for you. However, it can take care of that first step, helping bands or musicians filter down to the most likely candidates. Many of those candidates might be people they wouldn’t have found otherwise. And if they aren’t happy with Giggem’s suggestions or just want to cast a wider net, they can conduct their own searches on the site.

Giggem has been live for months, but today is the official launch. I was a bit surprised that there isn’t anything similar out there already, but Turan insisted that there isn’t. There’s Indaba Music, but it’s more focused on helping musicians collaborate on specific projects. There’s Fandalism, a social network where musicians can connect with other musicians and showcase their work, but Turan noted that it doesn’t focus on matchmaking the way that Giggem does, nor does it allow other industry pros to become members on the site.

I also wondered whether musicians are going to stay active on Giggem after they find a match. Turan noted that bands can also use the site to promote themselves, and in a follow-up email, he added that there’s an enormous amount of circulation in the industry and among bands, due in part to the “human factor” that we discussed earlier.

“So, Giggem will always be a useful tool for a band to find a new member quickly, anytime they need,” he said.

Turan has currently invested $600,000 of his own cash into the company. He eventually plans to make money through advertising and by offering pro tools.

Data Scientist As A Service? Spinnakr Raises ~$1 Million From Andreessen Horowitz, 500 Startups & Others For Smarter Web Analytics

Posted: 10 Jun 2013 08:45 AM PDT

Spinnakr-Logo

A new real-time web analytics platform Spinnakr is launching out of its closed beta today, accompanied by a seed round of just under a million from Andreessen Horowitz, 500 Startups, Point Nine Capital, Sand Hill Angels, and others. Though analytics is already a crowded space, Spinnakr’s product is offering something different – it’s bringing the intelligence of a data scientist to all web publishers, while also offering tools allowing its customers immediately take action on the insight provided.

Spinnakr was founded a year and a half ago by former college debate rivals, Adam Bonnifield and Michael Mayernick. The two had built some of the first online targeting systems used in politics, including fundraising tool Giv.to, which helped them raise millions for political campaigns over the years.

Deciding to get out of politics for what they believed were even bigger opportunities in data analysis, the two decided to focus on how they could use their expertise to build a new kind of web analytics service.

“If you look at the way analytics products are built…they’re built for people who want to do data analysis,” explains Bonnifield. “Even Google Analytics is even too complicated for the average person to get value out of,” he adds. “There’s always been this assumption that you need to ask a human being to sit between the customer of the data and the data itself, and do all this analysis on it to understand it. So we thought, what if we tried to build a system that would just automate all that analysis?”

With Spinnakr, they did.

The web analytics product provides the insights, the recommendations, and even enables you to take action to respond to its suggestions based on trends it’s spotting. Like other real-time web analytics systems, Spinnakr can help spot things like traffic spike, search queries leading users to the site, and other important events that even human eyes might miss.

However, instead of putting these into a dashboard which others have to site and watch to gleam an understanding of what’s happening on the site, Spinnakr’s “insight engines” track events, rank them by importance, then drop the data into a feed that looks something like a news feed. Plus, if the trend or event the system spots is urgent, it can alert customers via email or through notifications in a web browser extension.

Then there’s the really clever bit – Spinnakr also helps customers take action on its recommendations. Using the same bit of code which helps it with the web analytics and tracking, the system can also customers immediately manipulate the content on their website to address the event or trends, even catering to a specific kind of searcher with a custom message.

You may have seen things like this before – like when a blog greets visitors with a “welcome Google Searcher!” message, for example. But Bonnifield explains that Spinnakr’s system platform agnostic (while those other messages are often crafted via WordPress plugins), and it can also do much more.

“It’s quite sophisticated,” he says. “Not only can it drop in messaging along the top, it can also let you choose headlines or place content into the body of the website. And all of that can be controlled easily with our visual editor.”

The system can target anything you want, whether that’s changes in visitor loyalty or the geolocation of visitors. It can spot an influx of job seekers for example, those being directed from a particular traffic source or site, or any other specific info you indicate. It also leverages the trends across its network of users (currently 150 million visitors) to generalize conclusions more quickly.

Spinnakr has been running a closed beta over the past six months with some 200 companies, ranging from small startups and blogs to large content sites, including music.com, for instance. Its waiting list, in the meantime, has grown to around 3,500. Today, those users will begin to be let in along with any others who sign up. Pricing is still being tweaked, but the company is offering a free level of service to entice users to give them a chance, then will charge on a monthly basis by number of visitors.

With the new funding, Spinnakr is growing its now six-person team and  further developing the product, though Bonnifield didn’t want to delve into specifics on the latter. What he would speak to, more broadly, are other things he expects the company to launch sometime later this year.

“Right now, people still think of the website as a dead, static document – as this thing that just sits there. And then they use tools like Facebook and Twitter and other platforms to do their connecting with their audience. We see that changing,” he says. “We see a rebirth of the website to be more contextual, more fluid, and more conversational. The other things we’re working on are an extension of what we’ve already built…where you’re thinking of the website as a community, and less as a document.”

Amazon Bets On Web Groceries, Expands AmazonFresh To L.A.

Posted: 10 Jun 2013 08:45 AM PDT

logo-amazonFresh-splashLanding

Confirming reports from earlier this month, Amazon has today expanded its online grocery service AmazonFresh to it first non-Seattle market: Los Angeles. The company homepage was quietly updated this morning with news of the expansion, and the AmazonFresh mobile applications for iOS and Android have been refreshed as well, announcing the new availability. L.A. customers will now have access to AmazonFresh’s over 500,000 products, the company says.

Earlier in June, a Reuters report stated that Amazon would be bringing AmazonFresh to L.A. and San Francisco this year, with twenty more markets scheduled for 2014, including some outside the U.S. Now the first of those expansions is live, in select L.A. zip codes.

Amazon Prime members can test the service under a free 90-day trial, then will be charged $299 for the next year, and annually after that, the AmazonFresh website explains. This charge, though seemingly high, actually includes the $79 Amazon Prime membership, too, which offers other member discounts like free two-day shipping, Amazon Prime Instant Video access, Kindle Lending Library access and more. Still, the price for Amazon Prime Fresh will still dissuade bargain shoppers for now, instead targeting those who value convenience more than others. That should also keep the user base from expanding at too rapid a rate, possibly outpacing the number of orders Amazon can feasibly handle at this point.

After all these years, the $568 billion grocery market is still ripe for disruption by online retailers like Amazon, especially as it and others are now beginning to figure out the logistics and opportunities surrounding same-day delivery. Google, eBay, Walmart, and even startups have been experimenting with similar same day delivery services, all looking to tap into consumers’ desire for conveniences on-call with a tap of a button.

But with grocery items, there are a number of hurdles to overcome – perishable grocery inventory has to be stored and transported refrigerated, which is costly. Getting the margins right is key, and it’s something which Amazon has been working on for years. You may remember all the way back in 2007, the company had announced AmazonFresh as an invite-only service in Seattle, while memories of dot-com flameout Webvan were still in recent memory.

Amazon has had half a decade to trial, test and iterate, which gives it an advantage. But it could also face serious competition from Walmart, which though now the world’s largest brick-and-mortar merchant, has been losing ground to Amazon online. Last week, Walmart CEO Mike Duke announced the company was poised to hit $10 billion in e-commerce sales this year, but the retailer also recently said that it has no immediate plans to expand its U.S. grocery delivery operations outside of tests in California right now, because it’s not convinced there is significant consumer demand at this time.

That hasn’t stopped other companies from reading the tea leaves and launching services betting on online grocery trends, most recently mySupermarket.com which just today announced the expansion of its “Kayak for web groceries” service, now available in the U.S.

AmazonFresh is accepting sign-ups from L.A. users here.

Live From Apple's WWDC 2013 Keynote

Posted: 10 Jun 2013 08:30 AM PDT

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It’s that time again! This morning, Apple CEO Tim Cook will take the stage at the company’s own Worldwide Developers Conference to unveil everything they’ve worked so hard to keep secret for the past many months.

We’ll be seeing iOS 7 for the first time — thats pretty much certain. But what else? Will we see a new version of OS X? New MacBooks? Apple’s fabled Pandora competitor, perhaps?

You’ll have to tune in to find out. We’re live at the keynote, and we’ll be bringing you all of the news as it breaks with our up-to-the-second live blog.

The keynote is scheduled to begin at 10 AM PT (12PM Central, 1 PM Eastern, 6 PM London), but we’ll be bringing you photos and commentary from the scene beginning at about 9 AM — so get here early!

Thanks To Twitch, Watch Microsoft's 2013 E3 Press Conference Right Here

Posted: 10 Jun 2013 08:15 AM PDT

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Watch live video from TwitchTV’s Official Channel on www.twitch.tv

Forget WWDC. E3 is where it’s at. Except we’re not there in person this year. But of course all the action is streamed live on the interwebs, and Twitch is all over it.

As expected, Twitch, the gaming community startup, is going big at E3 this year. Throughout the show, the company will be streaming all sorts of content from their E3 booth. The full schedule is here.

But today, the company is also streaming several big press conferences with Microsoft on tap at 9:30am PT/12:30pm ET. Ubisoft follows at 1:00pm PT/4:00pm ET with Sony closing the day at 6:00pm PT/9:00pm ET.

The player above will work for all of Twitch’s content.

This marks Twitch’s second year at E3. Since launching in late 2011, the startup continues to roll out new features to their customers and recently ticked over 35 million users. Twitch raised a $15M Series B in September 2012.

Grocery Comparison Site mySupermarket Launches U.S. Megastore For Finding Best Prices Across Amazon, Walmart, Target & More

Posted: 10 Jun 2013 07:23 AM PDT

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On the heels of reports that Amazon is preparing to significantly expand its online grocery service AmazonFresh, grocery comparison shopping site mySupermarket is today bringing its service the U.S. Operating something like a Kayak for grocery and drugstore products, the new U.S. version of mySupermarket lets shoppers find the best prices across top stores, including Amazon, Walmart, Target, Costco, Walgreens, Diapers.com, Soap.com, and Drugstore.com.

mySupermarket was founded back in 2006, and now has offices in London, New York, Tel Aviv, and Tokyo. The company currently operates a U.K. version of the site which offers price comparisons across major European retailers including Tesco, Asda, Waitrose, Ocado, Sainsburys, Boots, Superdrug, Majestic and Virgin Wines. That business has 4 million monthly users, and sees average baskets of around $130.

Last April, mySupermarket raised a $10 million round of funding, with $7 million from media and ad giant WPP, and the rest from existing investors Greylock and Pitango, with the key goal of entering into the U.S. market.

Today, the company is making that debut with the official launch of mySupermarket.com. (The U.K. site is mySupermarket.co.uk.).

CEO Allon Bloch joined the company around five and half years ago, after previously co-founding Wix, because he believed there was an opportunity to change the way people shop online for small ticket items.

“When you buy a big-ticket item – a car or TV – you do a lot of research online, you ask people, and there are ways to do it,” he explains. “We want to make it really easy to shop [for small ticket items] and easy for you to understand the trade-offs on other options, bulk opportunities, or across different brands.”

The idea is that by comparing across not just brands – like consumers do while shopping a single store online or off – but also across stores, and combining that data with the ever-changing lineup of promotions and deals, mySupermarket can help consumers find the lowest available prices.

“People spend, on average, close to $1,000 per month buying these things, and you don’t really know what you’re paying for and you have little control and visibility into this,” Bloch says. “This is not an anti-retail play, it’s a pro-consumer play.”

On the e-commerce megastore, shoppers can browse across grocery categories (beverages, snacks, pantry, pets, etc.) as well as personal care and health items (mom and baby, beauty, etc.), in order to find out who has the best price. Users can drill down by category, brand-name and more, and sort results by relevance, price, popularity, or alphabetically. When viewing any of mySupermarket.com’s some 60,000 items, users can also add that item to their list or cart, share it across social networks, and view a chart of that item’s historical price changes. The site may also alert you if you’re buying something where it found a better value elsewhere.

After filling a cart with the best-priced items from your favorite brands, the real magic in mySupermarket is its universal checkout. You don’t have to go to each site you bought from and checkout individually – the service automatically splits your bill for you with each e-commerce store, while still making sure you have access to any special promotions or membership program discounts you would normally be able to use if shopping directly (e.g., Amazon Prime free shipping, discounts for new customers, etc.).

mySupermarket is not operating in partnership with the e-commerce sites users buy from, but has rather created its own proprietary technology which allows it to crawl those sites and pull down data, then adding its own images to accompany the items, and in time, nutritional info will be added, too. Also on the roadmap are plans for a mobile experience that would help to alert shoppers to promotions on their favorite items while shopping in a brick-and-mortar store.

Today the U.K. audience does more of its grocery shopping online (around 7 percent is online), while the U.S. is still hovering around 1 to 1.5 percent. “But it’s growing quite quickly in certain categories,” Bloch notes, “especially non-perishables.” And, he adds, as established companies like Amazon push forward into this market (with Amazon Fresh, for example), other players like Walmart will follow.

The company is not the first to attempt to aggregate pricing of online groceries and household goods from multiple sources – a startup called NetPlenish raised $1.9 million in seed funding last spring for a similar idea which would allow shoppers to buy from a variety of online merchants, including many that mySupermarket now indexes. But NetPlenish (now Shop Genius) has since pivoted to offer a browser extension for price comparisons and coupons instead.

“Wherever we launch, people try to copycat us – including our typos – but they never survive because doing this is tough,” Bloch claims. “And we still have a long ways to go on mobile,” he admits. The company’s app, expected in the weeks ahead, will allow brands to communicate with consumers who want to hear from them – alerting to price drops on favorite items a consumer is tracking, for instance, or reminding you it’s time to replenish one of your staples.

“We want to help people shop wherever they want to shop,” says Bloch.

The mySupermarket.com website is live now, and offers free shipping for baskets over $75.00.

Crowdfunding Campaign Aims To Reward NSA Whistleblower For His ‘Courage'

Posted: 10 Jun 2013 06:13 AM PDT

Edward Snowden Crowdfunding

Edward Snowden is being hailed as a hero by some, and now a Crowdtilt crowdfunding campaign is raising money to reward the whistleblower for his “courage” and pay his bills. The campaign doesn’t specify how the money will be delivered to Snowden, and is raising questions about if donations constitute aiding an enemy of the state.

The campaign was started by Facebook employee Dwight Crow with $1,000 of his own money. The description explains “We should set a precedent by rewarding this type of extremely courageous behavior. It’s definitely apparent that legal fees may soon be a big part of his future, but I don’t care how he uses the funds raised, whether it’s for a business-class trip to Iceland or just to pay his hotel bills, it’s a reward that I believe we shoudl [sic] band together and provide him with.”

Snowden asked to have his identity revealed by The Guardian after he leaked to the British paper and The Washington Post details and documents regarding NSA programs to monitor phone records and Internet activity of Americans. He says he’s currently holed up in a Hong Kong hotel, choosing the city because “they have a spirited commitment to free speech and the right of political dissent.”

However, some worry Snowden could still be arrested and extradited to the United States. The Guardian explains that the U.S. and China have an extradition treaty where “both parties agree to hand over fugitives from each other’s criminal justice systems, but either side has the right of refusal in the case of political offences.” Hong Kong has in the past raided funds and expelled international criminal suspects. Scared to leave his room, Snowden says he’s been racking up huge room and food bills. Those in part inspired Crow to set up the crowdfunding campaign.

“Reward Edward Snowden for courageously leaking NSA docs” has been slow to pick up speed, though, possibly because of fears regarding government retribution to funders. Its originator Crow was the co-founder of the Y Combinator used car sales startup Carsabi before its team was acqui-hired by Facebook in October 2012. Crow is also known for appearing on the Start-Ups: Silicon Valley reality TV show. Despite Crow’s extensive network as an employee of Facebook (one of the companies Snowden detailed was legally obligated to provide data to the NSA), and the Crowdtilt page appearing on Hacker News, as of press time only 55 contributors had stepped forward to pool under $5,000.

Many who provided monetary support for imprisoned WikiLeaks source Bradley Manning faced no repercussions, but it’s unclear how the government would treat this situation. Without any public information on Snowden’s exact whereabouts, and his suspected weariness of communicating over the web, it’s unclear how he would claim the proceeds of the Crowdtilt campaign. Crow noted in a Facebook comment that the funding might go to Snowden’s family members. Still, this uncertainty may also be dissuading people from contributing.

Others around the web have called for a legal defense fund for Snowden, though none has arisen. A small GiveForward campaign has started to “Help Edward fight the government!” but it’s received even less support. A preemptive petition to the White House has received over 8,000 signatures in hopes of winning Snowden a pardon for any crimes committed in the act of his whistleblowing.

The crowdfunding campaign and its issues come in the middle of a debate about whether the NSA’s actions are warranted for protecting the United States and Snowden’s leaks jeopardize those efforts, or whether the NSA is engaging in a wholesale assault on privacy and liberty.

Here's The Live Video Stream For Apple's WWDC 2013 Keynote

Posted: 10 Jun 2013 05:55 AM PDT

WWDC

It was a bit of a mystery as to whether or not Apple had plans to live stream their WWDC 2013 keynote out to the Internet at large, but consider that one solved: just hours before the announcement itself, the official streaming pages have gone live.

While Darrell Etherington and I are going to be live blogging away at this morning’s Apple keynote, some people just wanna watch everything unfold themselves. It’s okay. We understand. I guess.

Here’s what you’ll need:

So far, Apple is offering two different streams. Both of them require you to embrace an Apple product in one way or another.

  • On The Web: It looks like you’ll need to be running Safari on a Mac (“Safari 4 or later on Mac OS X v10.6 or later”) or on iOS for this one to work, but give it a shot in other browsers come 10 AM and let us know how it works down in the comments.
  • AppleTV: Right around the crack of dawn this morning, an “Apple Events” channel popped up on AppleTV devices. If you’ve got Apple’s lil’ media box plugged into your TV, you should be able to find it right on the homescreen.

Not on a Mac? Stuck at a job where taking an hour long break to watch Apple unveil stuff is frowned upon? Here’s our liveblog!

The keynote is scheduled to begin at 10 am Pacific.

iRobot And Cisco Build A Roving Telepresence Rig So Remote Workers Can Still Roam The Office

Posted: 10 Jun 2013 05:32 AM PDT

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It’s no secret that iRobot’s domestic cleaning machines can carry some interesting things while they putter around and wipe up your floors, and iRobot and Cisco have taken that notion to its next logical step. The two companies have just announced that they’ve taken this smart roving robotics platform and stuck this pricey enterprise video conferencing monitor on top, all to facilitate West Wing-style walk-and-talks with colleagues who couldn’t be bothered to schlep into the office.

We’ve seen plenty of curious telepresence rigs before, but this is one of the few that makes it a point to break away from the confines of a desk. Once everything is put together, the Ava 500 stands at about 5’5″ and artfully dodges office debris the same way the more janitorial units do. Meanwhile, those remote users also get to control that roving robot by way of an iPad app, though the process isn’t as hands-on as one might hope — the Ava 500 handles most of the control itself after the user selects a destination so it’s perfect for remotely touring dangerous corners of the factory floor, but not so perfect for doing donuts outside of Conference Room B.

In case the notion of buying one of these to remotely dick around with friends has you reaching for your checkbook, you may want to look into a less ambitious way to go. iRobot looks at the Ava 500 as a strictly enterprise device and it has a price tag to match: according to the Boston Herald, the Ava will cost companies in the neighborhood of $70,000 when it launches next year, or about $2,000-$2,500 if you lease it monthly.

Fotopedia's Reporter App Focuses On Creation As Much As Consumption, Crosses 300K Downloads

Posted: 10 Jun 2013 05:05 AM PDT

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Fotopedia has made quite a name for itself as one of the leading media consumption apps for travel, but the company (led by former Apple Apps Division CTO Jean-Marie Hullot) is ready to zero in on media creation as well.

In April, the company soft-launched a new app called Reporter, in the hopes that the app’s user base would grow organically. And grow, it did! Fotopedia Reporter has already racked up 300,000 downloads, with a user base that is coming back every single day, says founder Hullot.

Reporter works like this: When you download the iPad app, you have the option to browse through various “magazines.” These magazines are stories (told almost entirely with images and a little text) that were created by other users around a particular event, passion, or just a day in the life.

Creating a “magazine” is just as easy as browsing. Users can choose their photos, select a particular design or theme from pre-created options, and then publish within the Reporter platform or to Facebook or Twitter.

According to Hullot, over 20 percent of the user base are creators as opposed to readers only, which is a solid figure. Consider this: the app has only been available for a couple of months and has already surpassed 100,000 stories on the platform.

But why Reporter? Well, Hullot explained that with the other apps out of Fotopedia, like Heritage, users loved the content but the magazines had to be created by Fotopedia itself. This wasn’t scalable, in the eyes of Hullot.

However, Reporter lets people create the stories themselves, which allows for more variation in content and much more content in general. Clearly, users are taking a liking to the idea of curating their own content, which has been specifically apparent with Flipboard’s launch of personalized magazines.

Since Fotopedia has troves of data concerning the way users interact with content on the iPad and web, Fotopedia was in a particularly advantageous spot when creating reporter. Their data set parameters like the fact that users can only create stories with 10 to 20 pictures in them, because that’s how many images users usually consume from other Fotopedia apps. The data also encouraged the Fotopedia team to take inspiration from Windows 8, “as weird as that sounds coming from a bunch of former Apple people,” Hullot added. “We want the images to be big and central, so that people click in a big way.”

In terms of generating revenue, Fotopedia reporter is working with advertisers to offer a few different ways to promote within the Reporter app. Brands, such as Rolex, can create their very own magazine within the app using all of their own content. However, certain brands might benefit more from aggregating user-generated content within the Reporter app and pulling it into a central story (which happens to be another option for brands).

The Fotopedia Reporter app was updated just this morning to version 1.1, to help users deal with the abundance of content in the app. Feature additions include a “My Feed” section, letting you curate stories to your own interest, the ability to create your own aggregated magazine from your interest, and subscribe to personal magazines. Reporter also hooked in to Flickr so users can pull in their own images for magazines.

The Fotopedia Reporter app is available now on the App Store.

Angry Birds-Maker Rovio Picks Up A New COO In Nokia Veteran Teemu Suila

Posted: 10 Jun 2013 03:49 AM PDT

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Rovio is continuing to cycle in new executive level management with Nokia veteran Teemu Suila taking over as chief operating officer after former COO Harri Koponen stepped down after about two years in the role.

Koponen is moving on to do business development for the main investment company behind Rovio, presumably controlled by chairman Kaj Hed, who is the father of CEO Mikael Hed and owns about 70 percent of the company.

Koponen isn’t the only longtime senior exec at Rovio to move on in recent months. They also recently brought on a new executive vice president of games in Digital Chocolate’s Jami Laes after Petri Järvilehto also moved on. Järvilehto is taking time off.

Another Rovio SVP of brand marketing, Ville Heijari, also recently went to gaming monetization network Playhaven.

I’ve reached out to Rovio to get more background on the moves. The new COO Suila used to oversee startup activities and corporate strategy at Nokia after working for the Finnish handset maker for almost 20 years ago. That experience working on relationships with startups could help Rovio as it has been quietly scouting for studios to acquire for game development talent.

Koponen held the role for about two years as the company scaled up to make $195 million in revenue in the past year and roughly 650 employees throughout Helsinki, Tokyo, Shanghai, Los Angeles and Seoul.

Revenue doubled-year-over-year into 2012 with $71 million in net income as the company focused on a heavy merchandising strategy. Games revenue was about 55 percent of the company’s overall in-take last year, but Rovio has been making extra strides in doing more licensing deals with soft drinks and amusement parks. They also recently added Mika Ihamuotila, the CEO of Marimekko, a globally-known design company, to the board.


France's MyJobCompany Brings Its Social Headhunting Platform Across The Channel

Posted: 10 Jun 2013 02:31 AM PDT

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MyJobCompany is another take on the social recruitment idea. Its platform, which expanded beyond France and Latin America to the UK last week, enables anybody to become what it calls a “social headhunter” by recommending friends and acquaintances for a job. Or, put another way, by sending their social and professional networks job adverts, which if lead to a qualified application or actual hire, earns them a commission for doing so.

The way MyJobCompany’s platform works is as follows: A company with a position to fill posts a job ad to the site along with detailed information on the type of candidate and skills they wish to target, and how wide a reach they want the campaign to have. This request is then algorithmically matched to MyJobCompany’s thousands of social headhunters, based on their own social and professional profiles, ensuring that the process remains highly targeted. They in turn pass the advert on to (hopefully) suitable candidates via their own networks. The incentive to do so is a small fee for a referral that leads to a quality application, and a much bigger and lengthier commission for a successful hire — not unlike the recruitment agency model.

It’s not an entirely new idea, of course. There are a ton of startups and more established companies in the recruitment space, many of which have a social component. Sweden’s Jobylon, with its jobs “bounty” feature, probably comes closest, while U.S.-based RolePoint also has a similar proposition.

The idea also appears to be resonating with users: Since launching in France in January 2012, MyJobCompany has recruited 20,000 social headhunters to its platform. Meanwhile, its more recent Chile launch has seen it garner another 5,000 headhunters. Recruiters, however, who spend from €380 to several thousand Euros depending on reach and seniority of the social headhunters being targeted, tally around a more modest 300 to date.

In addition to its broader social recruitment offering, MyJobCompany sells a version to enable companies to run their own internal social referral programs, pitting it against something like Zao (among others).

In January 2013, MyJobCompany raised a €650,000 seed round from ESSEC Business Angels and Paris Business Angels.

Twitch Updates SDK To Boost Engagement, Get Its Streams Embedded In More Video Games

Posted: 10 Jun 2013 12:01 AM PDT

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Streaming service provider Twitch is updating its software development kit to help its developer partners increase engagement with players and viewers that are tuning in to their games. The new online toolkit will be especially useful for community portals, providing more social features, as well as tools to improve content discovery.

Twitch has been working to get its platform for live broadcasting video game sessions embedded in a wide range of games and gaming consoles. Last summer, it introduced an SDK to make it easier for developers to do so. And, since then, it’s done pretty well for itself, with adoption on major game franchises such as Call of Duty: Black Ops 2, and from developers such as Electronic Arts, Activision, and Ubisoft.

The latest update to the SDK will add features that are designed to make it easier for users to find and watch streams that they want, while also providing new ways for them to engage with content within a game. One feature, for instance, will automatically identify key highlights from a gaming session and suggest that users share them.

Oh yeah, that dude you killed? Now you can tag him and he’ll be notified that you’re shaming him publicly to all your friends, and he, too can share being PWNED with his friends.

There’s also a discovery aspect that will help viewers check out interesting video streams. The SDK will help developers promote the most popular streams, as well as provide ways to sort videos based upon player level or specific game levels. Developers will also be able to highlight players and have them automatically updated on a realtime leaderboard.

Of course, that’s what’s available. It’ll be up to the developers to actually build that functionality into their streams, to provide all the data that’s needed to create custom leaderboards and to allow viewers to find new streams.

Twitch raised $15 million in Series B funding led by Bessemer Venture Partners, along with Alsop Louie Partners and Draper Associates. The company, which is based in San Francisco, now has 80 full-time employees.

How Apple's iOS Fragmentation Problems Distort Design Thinking

Posted: 09 Jun 2013 10:00 PM PDT

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Editor’s note: Kevin Marks is VP of Open Cloud Standards at Salesforce.com, and a host and co-founder of TummelVision.tv. Over the last 20 years he’s moved between giant companies and founding startups – BBC, The UK MultiMedia Corporation, Apple QuickTime, Technorati, Google, BT. He is one of the driving forces behind microformats.org, activitystrea.ms and portablecontacts.net. Follow him on Twitter @kevinmarks.

As someone who uses both Android and iOS regularly, I’m getting increasingly frustrated by fragmentation. However it’s not on my Android devices I see this, but rather on the iOS ones.

I install a popular, well-funded application like Instagram, Flickr or Circa on my iPad, but when I launch it, three-fourths of the screen is black bars, with a teensy little app in the middle. Or I can choose to scale it up without smoothing, so jagged pixels I haven’t seen since the 1990s reinforce the sense that I am doing something wrong by attempting to run the app. Every affordance is pushing back at me saying I’m doing it wrong.

By contrast, on Android, applications scale up to fill the space sensibly — buttons stay button-sized, text and image areas expand well. Developers can add alternative layouts to better handle varying sizes, but if they don’t, things remain legible and touchable.

On the Android Nexus 7 (left), Instagram looks great. On iPad, Instagram looks like a Victorian death notice.

One Hand Or On Your Knees?

More pernicious is the artificial dichotomy into which the iOS world leads our design thinking. You’re either on the held-in-one-hand phone, briefly standing somewhere, or you’re sitting down in the evening using your iPad (so big and heavy that you have to rest it on your knees – Steve Jobs even brought out a sofa to sit on at the launch). This false “mobile versus desktop” dichotomy even misled Mark Zuckerberg when he said “iPad’s not mobile, it’s a computer.” and at the Facebook Home Launch, a tablet version was said to be “months away,” though a working version was hacked together by outside programmers within days.

Meanwhile, nobody told Barnes & Noble, whose 7-inch Nook did so well that Amazon launched a Kindle range the same size, leading to the lovely Nexus 7 from Google and finally to the iPad Mini from Apple. This is the form factor, tested for years by paperback books, that makes one-handed long form reading comfortable. If you spend any time on public transit, being able to read standing up or in narrow bus seats is an obvious benefit. But the hermetically sealed company-coach commuters at Apple missed this for years.

Steve Jobs even said you’d have to file down your fingers to use it. The thing is, on iOS it does feel like that. The iPad sized apps have too-small buttons, the iPhone ones are too big if zoomed. There is no way for an app to know how big your finger is compared to the screen, let alone a website.

The supposed advantage of iOS is fewer sizes to design for, but now you need 12 different layouts to cope with the horizontal and vertical orientations of each device, and the general layout tools don’t handle this as well as Android, requiring complex updates. Chiu-Ki Chan explains the pain, whereas Android Studio just made this even easier for developers.

No App Is An Island

The other fragmentation problem on iOS are the missing links. Not in the evolutionary sense, but the ability to readily connect between applications using URLs, as we’re used to doing on the web. Applications can’t claim parts of a URL, only a whole scheme. As Apple says:

If more than one third-party app registers to handle the same URL scheme, there is currently no process for determining which app will be given that scheme.

On Android, any app can claim any scheme, host and path, and the OS will resolve as appropriate, giving you a choice if more than one possibility is available.

On iOS, each app ends up embedding webviews inside it rather than linking to a browser, fragmenting your web history. I have to remember whether I got to the page via Twitter, or Facebook or email to go back to it later on, and I only get to share it to the iOS-approved places, Twitter, Facebook, email or iMessage. On Android, any installed app that can handle that type of media is an option to share to, or create a photo, make a phone call, any of hundreds of “intents” that act as bridges between apps and, through browsers, the web.

This means that Android apps don’t end up doing everything, but hand off to each other as needed, meaning that you can replace any function cleanly across apps. Better keyboards are the obvious example here, but camera apps, browsers, and SMS apps can drop themselves in, with the choice made by the user.

On iOS, you have to explicitly link to the scheme, which is per-app. Ironically, this means that Google (or Facebook) can release a set of iOS apps that connect to each other preferentially, leaving the Apple applications out of the loop. But it also makes it harder for developers to specialize in doing one thing well and linking to the rest.

What Of The Web?

The other pernicious influence of iOS fragmentation has been the rise of the mobile-only site: the “m.” layout that was tuned for iPhone use, then slightly adapted for other mobile users, often giving rise to farcical single-column layouts with huge whitespace on tablets. In the early iOS days this was a bonus, as it encouraged function-first design without the organisation-chart-inspired cruft around the edges that websites accumulate over time. As the effective resolution of mobile devices has increased, now often exceeding what is available on desktops, the assumptions that drove mobile-specific sites are breaking down.

Now that Android is the dominant operating system, Google is getting serious about it as a web platform, too, which is very welcome. The Android browser was installed as part of the OS and didn’t get upgraded over time. This has changed, with Chrome now the default Android browser, and it is on a regular update pipeline like Desktop Chrome and Firefox. iOS’s Safari updates are frequent too now, and Microsoft is now pleading with developers to give them modern web apps.

Truly responsive design has succeeded mobile-first as the best choice for websites, and we’re seeing this spread as browsers converge on HTML5 features. What this means is that the web platform is now evolving rapidly, without any one browser provider being a bottleneck. The installed base for SVG passed Flash a while back, and even Adobe is now backing the web fully, bringing its design know-how to HTML5 features such as regions and exclusions. Also in the pipeline for HTML5 is browser-to-browser audio, video and text chat via WebRTC.

Hoping Apple Continues The Revolution

This web platform revolution was catalysed by Apple with WebKit and Mozilla with Firefox, and picked up by Google, Microsoft, Adobe and others. We now have a Browser Battle to be more standards-compliant and consistent, rather than a Browser War to be different and proprietary. What I’ll be hoping for from Apple at this week’s WWDC is a clear recognition of these design lacunae and new and better ways for developers to succeed both with native apps and on the web.

The Battle To Be First App Opened

Posted: 09 Jun 2013 08:00 PM PDT

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Competition is heating up in the on-demand transportation industry, but unlike other segments of the market, there’s no lock-in that keeps customers loyal to one service or another. Users looking for a way to get from one place to another seemingly only care about the cost, convenience and reliability of the service.

With that in mind, services like Uber and Lyft aren’t fighting to be the only app people use necessarily, but they definitely want to be the first app passengers turn to when requesting a ride. With convenience and reliability becoming commoditized, the next battle will be waged based on price.

Making On-Demand A Commodity

Once upon a time, Uber was pretty much the only game in town if you needed a fast, reliable alternative to hailing a cab on the street or calling one of the local taxi dispatchers. It’s not surprising, then, that it charged a premium for that convenience and reliability. If you needed to be somewhere, it was worth it to pay a little bit more to know that a car was on its way and, well, how far away that car would be.

Over the last few years, however, competitors have popped up with on-demand ride apps of their own. On the one hand there are apps like Hailo, which allow customers to use their phones to hail a taxi, rather than having to find one on the street or rely on a local dispatcher. And on the other hand, there were apps like Lyft, which rely on community, non-commercially licensed drivers to get passengers from point A to point B.

In both cases, Uber’s competitors undercut its traditional black car prices by a significant margin. With convenience and reliability becoming commoditized, they’re competing on price instead.

Of course, Uber hasn’t been sitting still since its lower-cost competitors have arrived. It, too, has been working on making lower-priced options available to users. In cities like New York, that means its own e-hail taxi service. And in San Francisco and some other cities, it’s moving forward with its own peer-to-peer ride-share offering as part of its UBERx service.

First App Opened

But while UBERx’s prices are lower, they’re still above the typical cost of a Lyft or SideCar ride. That’s led some in the San Francisco Bay Area to switch. Anecdotally, I know a number of people who are active users of both services in San Francisco, but tend to open the Lyft app first when they need a ride.

Price is a big reason for choosing one over the other. But the community aspect is another reason. Say what you will about the big pink mustaches on Lyft rides, or the obligatory fist bump when you enter the car of one of its drivers, but those things let users to know what kind of experience they can expect when they get into a Lyft. (Then again, it’s not for everyone — I know plenty of people who would prefer not to get into a conversation with their driver when requesting a ride.)

For a while, even if those users opened the Lyft app first, there was no guarantee that there would be rides available. The startup went through some growing pains in San Francisco at the beginning of the year, as demand outstripped its supply. It seems like Lyft has gotten those problems mostly under control over the last few months, as it more than doubled the number of drivers it has serving the city.

Even still, there are times when an Uber will be available and a Lyft will not. In those cases, Uber wins the ride, but those cases are becoming rarer as Lyft removes its supply constraints and better positions its drivers.

Price Wars Are Coming

What happens if UBERx becomes cheaper than Lyft, though? That’s a scenario we will see play out soon, as Uber is poised to lower the price of UBERx fares by 25 percent, according to a memo it sent its drivers last week. While lower fares will reduce the amount drivers will make per ride, Uber is betting that the increase in volume will more than make up for it.

That’s a bet Uber likely feels comfortable making, in part because it has years of data to back it up. And it’s a bet that Uber can make in part because it has a diversified set of higher-priced services in UberBLACK and UberSUV that will be able to provide healthier margins even as it reduces fares on UBERx.

Will that make it first app opened? Or maybe only app opened? You can be the guys at Uber sure hope so.

What Android Has That iOS Has Not (Yet)

Posted: 09 Jun 2013 07:23 PM PDT

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Android is open and customizable. iOS is closed, designed for ease. But iPhone users are maturing, demanding more personalization, and Apple might give it to them at WWDC. At D11, Tim Cook said "I think you will see us open up more in the future, but not to the degree that we put the customer at risk of having a bad experience." Here we’ll look at some Android options Apple could unlock for iOS.

I agree with John Gruber when he speaks of how the average smartphone user has matured. “The design of the iPhone software was entirely informed by the fact that this was a new experience. It needed training wheels. Look around you. We all get it now. iOS-style computing is no longer novel. The training wheels can now come off.” 2007 is very different from 2013 in terms of our mobile literacy, and it’s time iOS reflected that.

Apple’s concern is likely that novice users might download and install an interface-changing app and not know how to remove it — “a bad experience.” Apple would need to determine how to reconfirm configuration changes with users such that veterans don’t get annoyed but newbies don’t get stuck.

If it can strike the right balance, some new capabilities iOS users might gain include:

Keyboard Replacement

The most commonly requested customization we hear from iOS users is the option to replace the default keyboard. Simply shrinking a typewriter keyboard down for a tiny touch screen may not be the most efficient way to type, especially one-handed. Android lets you replace the default tap-to-type version with third-parties keyboards like SwiftKey which learns how you type to predict your words, and the popular Swype gesture typing keyboard. Advanced prediction and the ability to drag your finger between letters can drastically speed up communication.

Widgets

The iOS lock screen and home screen have begun to look quite static. With so many real-time feeds of information out there, from weather to finance to social, staring at wallpaper or a set of dead icons and folders buries information. Android lets you pull that data out from apps and splay it across your lock and home screens for value at a glance. While Apple has sought to make the iOS interface consistent, more experienced users would appreciate the ability to deviate to their own tastes.

Phone App Modifications

One under-appreciated advantage of Android is the ability to change the most basic part of a phone — the phone part. Apps can allow you to block certain numbers or entire area codes from calling you or send their calls straight to voicemail — handy for dealing with insistent telemarketers or ex-girl/boyfriends. You can set up custom Do Not Disturb modes that repond to calls or SMS with a pre-written text message. There’s even crowd sourced caller ID apps that pull in what other people have named numbers so you always know who’s calling. Mr. Number was a particularly powerful phone app mod who was rewarded for its innovation by being acquired by WhitePages. Mr. Number doesn’t even offer an iOS version because none of this functionality was allowed on iOS 6 or older.

Homescreen / Launcher Replacements

Launchers have long been a favorite of Android users, but Facebook Home brought the open / closed issue to the mainstream, demonstrating how your entire phone experience can be reskinned. Home lets you read the news feed from your lock screen, while others like GO Launcher EX, LauncherPro, and SO.HO let you navigate through gestures, offer quick access to certain settings, and provide pre-made themes amongst other options.

Cross-App Functionality, Data Sharing, and Defaults

Android doesn’t erect boundaries between apps like iOS. Thanks to App Intents, apps can easily share information and content with each other so you can send a photo from one editing app to another. They can even run over the top of one another, like Facebook’s Chat Heads which overlays chat conversations on whatever app you’re currently using. On iOS, Chat Heads is trapped within the Facebook app. Android also lets you pick which app you’d like to default to for opening certain media types, or doing certain actions. My fellow writer Frederic calls for Apple to treat us like adults and choose if we want to use Chrome as our default browser or Google Maps for default navigation.

Multi-User Support

Sharing one device between many people is a huge pain on iOS. You all have to use the same instance of the operating system. That means frequent log-ins and outs of different apps, overlapping phone books, a shared camera roll, and big issues for parents who don’t want to let their kids meddle with their whole phone or tablet when they hand it over to let them play a game. Android lets each user customize their account to their liking.

There are plenty of other personalization options on Android, including automation for scheduling tasks; quick controls for brightness, wifi, and airplane mode; the ability to track and manage your battery and data usage by restricting what certain apps can do; and SD cards for slotting in new data.

Of course, Apple isn’t fond of just following so we’ll hopefully get some true innovation in iOS 7 at WWDC tomorrow. But adding some of these features could unlock new opportunities for the developer community, attract more hardcore tech users, and let people feel like the Apple devices they carry everywhere are truly their own.

[Image Credit: OMGdroid]

Waiting For Prometheus

Posted: 09 Jun 2013 06:00 PM PDT

Prometheus brings fire to mankind (Heinrich Füger)

What is the real issue brought up by this whole PRISM debacle? It’s not that the government is willing to overstep its role using national security as an excuse. That’s been going on for thousands of years. It’s not that companies in a position of power are willing to throw those that rely on them under the bus in order to get ahead. Again, that’s nothing new. And it’s not that the institution of journalism has crumbled into a dismal wreckage of its former glory. Possibly true, but beside the point.

The issue central to all of these is that the fundamental balance of power when it comes to control of information has been allowed to shift unthinkably far away from the individual and towards a set of institutions with motives that are at best mercenary. It’s about time we fixed that, don’t you think?

To address the PRISM scandal itself briefly, I think we will be less surprised at the existence of such a program than, as I think will inevitably transpire, the incompetence and inefficiency that almost certainly define its methods and usage. Allegations of a massive conspiracy that goes so deep that the most powerful tech companies in the world are muzzling themselves and spitting lies out of fear and legal obligation assume, as other theories often do, that this shadow government pulling the strings is both massively effective and operates totally in secret, two things that are highly incongruous with the likely reality of incompetent civil servants, out-of-date methods, and bureaucracy choking everything in sight like the inextinguishable weed it is.

False Start

But whether they are siphoning our private data well or poorly is beside the point. The important thing is that they (whether “they” is defined as the NSA, Google’s marketing department, or malicious hackers and organizations) have access to your data in bulk and on demand. Why do we allow this?

And I don’t mean “why does the law permit it?”. It also doesn’t matter much whether the government is doing it legally or illegally, because “abuse” is difficult to define and easy to justify in retrospect. What matters is that they are even capable of viewing and collecting our personal, private data in this way. Why is it even possible that Verizon has this level of data to disclose? Why is it even possible that Apple can infer and cache our locations based on metadata? Why is it even possible that our emails can be skimmed for advertising opportunities? If we did not explicitly permit these things, then we have implicitly done so by choosing to go ahead and use the Internet this way either because the pros outweighed the cons. But now the cons are starting to add up.

Think about this. When we decided we wanted to keep our personal matters separate in the real world, we built walls. Walls we bought or built ourselves, with means to peer out, grant ingress and egress, and so on at our own discretion. What’s more, walls work whether they are legal or not, whether the government wants them to or not, and no matter who you bought them from or what brand of mortar you used. They’re really quite effective.

Fast forward a few thousand years. The Internet brings a massive decline in the importance of physical objects and presence. A huge proportion of human interaction is now non-physical, and consequently physical walls can no longer effectively cordon off the private from the public.

So naturally, we built virtual walls, right? Not quite.

The Internet (and later, the web) was not built with the isolation of data in mind — quite the opposite, of course. Practically everything that makes the Internet worthwhile is based on the idea of transmitting information between two or more points. Of course, if you’re not in control of those points, you essentially surrender control of that information. A bit like how in walking outside your home, you surrender a degree of your privacy. So far, so expected.

First we reached out and took things that were stored elsewhere. But the advances in storage, bandwidth, and processing power over the last 10 years or so have made it so that we use the Internet as a sort of phantom extension of our own computers, putting things where they are accessible to us but we are not responsible for them. This was the so-called web 2.0: every personal computer and device, vastly more powerful and connected than ever before, yet acting as a thin client.

Clearly, this is where we began to lose touch with reality.

Unfortunate.ly

How did we decide we were in control of the data we sent Google or Facebook? Why would we submit to such an obvious delusion? Does anyone really believe that these companies have our best interests in mind to any greater a degree than a dairy farmer and his cows?

We submitted because they were the only option. Like turkish delight, the future they proffered was too tempting not to try, and once we had a taste, we would take nothing else. A familiar story that rarely has a happy ending. And so it progressed, and the people running their own servers and encrypting their hard drives and eschewing cloud services were mocked as paranoiacs, nostalgia junkies. Get with the program, we said! Look how well Gmail works! Look how easily we can share plans on Azure! How fun it is to track each other on Foursquare! Stop living in the past, when you had to look after your own data. Someone does that for you, now, and you don’t have to pay a dime.

And now, after we voluntarily put all our data in someone else’s keeping, alternately trusting and ignoring them when they told us how they can read it but wouldn’t dare, could sell it but don’t need to, might disclose it to the government but only if they have to, we’re finding out they’ve been doing all this and more the whole time. We’ve been pouring our data into the river for years and just pretending there was no one downstream.

We never built walls to keep ourselves safe and separate online because we bought a line years ago that it wasn’t possible. Funny how the ones who told us it stood to benefit immensely if we thought it was true.

So now we’ve come miles and miles down a path that minimizes every individual’s control over his or her private data. Just try to look at it objectively: in a day and age where we have gigabit connections, insanely cheap and spacious digital storage, and processing power that puts supercomputers of the recent past to shame, we decide not to store, process, and serve that data ourselves, but to hand it over to companies to index and sell ads on, with a few trivial benefits almost certain to be replicable by more trustworthy platforms.

Here, then, is the real question: where is the breakthrough device or software that decouples our data from the oppressive web 2.0 superstructure with no loss to functionality? One might ask: where is the Napster for privacy?

And no, I’m not talking about HTTPS everywhere, or good data security practices, or even something like TOR. I mean where is the total upset in basic popular understanding of privacy and how files and data are transferred and stored online?

Not that Napster was some avenging angel, raining down digital retribution on the abusive media companies. Broadband and decent compression were the tinder and Napster was one spark among many — but it’s true that Warner Brothers, EMI, and all the others have been trying to put out the fire ever since. Once digital distribution was out of the box, there was no putting it back in. (At the bottom of the box in the legend of Pandora, there was the pale specter of Hope; for the studios, the last thing left in the box was “modest profits,” and they have yet to truly accept this.)

Interestingly, now, the roles are reversed. In the early 2000s, technology allowed people to get a jump on “The Man” and force an industry into accepting the modern era. Now it’s the other way around: the technology we’ve trusted has gotten a jump on us and is forcing us to rethink the choices that led us into this undesirable position. And until we take control, we’re just going to keep getting abused — again, and again, and again. In a way, we want the opposite of Pandora’s box. Something that, once shut, no one can open but us: Pandora’s lockbox.

The Highway

So here we are, cursing the gods and waiting for Prometheus to deliver us from our servile dependence.

Where’s the big idea, the big change that obsoletes the idea of trading privacy for convenience, and moots every standard cyber-eavesdropping technique in the NSA’s playbook? The thing that gives people the same confidence in the security of their data as walls give them in the security of their homes?

What will be the combination of new (or forgotten) technologies or ideas that produces something totally unexpected? Will it be personal encryption keys and mesh networks? Will it be self-hosted data havens? Quantum transistors? Smoke signals?

I wish I had a better idea. But over a huge proportion of the web-oriented sites, startups, and new technologies I’ve encountered during the last decade has been aimed at microscopic conveniences, further abstraction of possession and control, and iteration of existing services — fundamental problems intact. Their primary improvement has been platitudes on the landing page. I realize this is a bit “We can put a man on the moon, but we can’t do this?” but the direction of development in the tech sector really does seem geared towards trivialities.

I don’t have answers, but I can at least speculate. I believe we are going to decentralize and cellularize once we realize how needlessly dependent on distant and dubiously beneficial third parties. Why are the equivalent your Facebook timeline, your Google Docs items, your Instagram account being stored and served by anyone other than yourself? One breakthrough will be in making a self-hosted and totally secure email address, Dropbox clone, or what have you as easy as signing up for an email address, and as simple to operate.

The other breakthrough I expect will be a tool that renders of data transmitted to and held by third parties totally unintelligible to them, like files stored on Mega. Mega did it to avoid self-incrimination. We will do it to prevent the likes of Facebook and Apple from even seeing the information they once held hostage. If that means the collapse of countless companies that rely on such methods — good. Their service was a bad service and I hope they break when they hit the bottom.

The networks that we have come to rely on were once only possible through powerful intermediaries. But what was once symbiotic has become parasitic, and those intermediaries have now outlasted their usefulness and squandered whatever trust they conned out of us when we were given the choice between tainted privilege and safe obsolescence.

We did it their way. It’s time to take the highway.

To The Victors Go The Spoiler Alerts

Posted: 09 Jun 2013 05:49 PM PDT

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Warning: this post contains minor spoiler alerts — mainly that the penultimate episode of season 3 of Game of Thrones contains something major, worthy of a true spoiler alert. Something which you probably already know if you’ve used the internet this past week. So, if you’ve been alive.

Last week, I did something I don’t normally do — I watched the latest episode of Game of Thrones right around the time that it was actually airing on HBO. You see, I don’t have cable, so I can’t get HBO. But each week, these episodes tend to find their way to me anyway, as they spread around the internet like wildfire around Blackwater Bay. But I digress…

I managed to watch an episode of Game of Thrones in real time. And thank god I did.

With my mouth still ajar after the episode, I opened up my laptop. What I found was nearly as shocking as the ending of the “The Rains of Castamere”: every single social network had erupted with reactions to this episode in a way I had not seen before.

While this is commonplace for pretty much every television show on Twitter — yes, actual people apparently watch NCIS, not just empty rooms filled with Nielsen boxes — you rarely see this spill over to the other social networks. There will be a post here and there for big episodes of Breaking Bad or Mad Men, but it’s pretty easy to avoid friends talking about entertainment on anything other than Twitter. But again, last week was different. Not only did all the social networks feature reactions to Game of Thrones, it was pretty much all each of those networks featured.

And the result of that was amazing to behold. I saw the episode spoiled over and over and over again on each one of these networks. People couldn’t help themselves. They just had to talk about it. And they couldn’t pussyfoot around the spoiler. I repeat: thank god I had already watched the episode.

But many people had not. (Or, of course, read the books on which the show is based.)

Even the next day, when I figured anyone alive had already had the episode spoiled for them a hundred times over, I posted something spoiler-y to my blog and got a few nasty messages as a result. When I responded to one asking how on Earth they had avoided the ruination for that long, they responded that they had completely avoided all the social networks — but figured my blog was safe. Whoops.

Plenty of us know of the unspoken rule of avoiding Twitter at certain times if there’s a show or sporting event you don’t want spoiled. But again, the epidemic is now spreading far beyond Twitter. You have to basically avoid the internet entirely, lest you destroy your chances of delayed enjoyment. And your smartphone with its push notifications can turn into a not-so-silent assassin of your evening.

This reality coincides with two trends unfolding in Hollywood. On one side, content providers like Netflix are putting up whole seasons of content all at once. On the other side, networks are trying to keep alive the notion of real time, coordinated viewing.

The Netflix experiment made watching House of Cards strange. It was great being able to binge-watch. But it was weird not being able to tweet knowing that others were watching the same episode (or even the show itself) at the same time. The result was less spoilers overall, but also decidedly less of the “watercooler” effect, for a show tailor-made for such chatter. At the very least, the chatter was severely disjointed.

On the more traditional distribution side of things, networks are starting to employ smart tactics to get people watching the show when it actually airs (something they still care about greatly to ensure the commercial revenue keeps flowing in). This includes talent live-tweeting alongside episodes. And the use of hashtags to create the real time watercooler about a show is something both the networks and Twitter are undoubtedly going to dive deeper into.

But I almost wonder if the networks shouldn’t simply resort to scare tactics to get people watching shows as they air. “Watch it now, or don’t bother using the internet for the next few days.” That kind of thing.

Ultimately, I think it’s inevitable that the delayed viewing and Netflix models push the prime-time schedules towards extinction. But until that happens, those of us without cable have to be increasingly careful. Spoilers are becoming so prevalent that the old “spoiler alert” etiquette is becoming passé, almost redundant. If you happen to be on the internet tonight after 9 PM, consider your browser window (or that app you’re using) to be one giant spoiler alert for the Game of Thrones finale.

And in our Netflix future, it could actually be worse. Using the internet at any time could be navigating a minefield of spoilers, depending on when someone you follow happens to be watching a show.

TweetDeck and Tweetbot filtering capabilities are helpful, but the situation is untenable. Tumblr was almost a Red Wedding flip book last week. Same with Flipboard — complete with the flips!

I’m posting this now because I plan to stay off the internet starting at 6 PM PT (when Game of Thrones will be airing on the east coast). Lest one of my friends stabs me in the back like ******** does to ******** during the Red Wedding.

[image via Game of Thrones Tumblr]

After Selling Its Display Network To Ziff Davis, InPowered Expands ‘Earned Advertising' Beyond Tech

Posted: 09 Jun 2013 04:00 PM PDT

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A few weeks ago, we broke the news that InPowered would be selling its NetShelter display advertising business to publisher Ziff Davis. Now the company is ready to talk about what comes next.

Peyman and Pirouz Nilforoush, the brothers who co-founded InPowered and serve as CEO and president respectively, said they’re using the money from the deal (an undisclosed amount) to double down on InPowered’s concept of “earned advertising.”

Peyman said InPowered is taking a very different approach from the social and native advertising companies that are getting a lot of attention right now. You could almost think of it as the opposite of native ads, where advertisers take their own content and package it in a way that matches the content on a publisher’s site — to put it simply, they’re taking ads and packing them as content. With the InPowered platform, advertisers are going in the other direction, taking content and packing it as advertising — they can track the articles that are posted about their products, and then they use ads to promote the ones that they like.

Social ads, meanwhile, are about promoting the influence of friends and family, which Peyman acknowledged is important, but mostly for “impulse decisions.”

“There’s this whole other side that consumers go through every single day,” he said. “If they’re trying to figure out where to go for vacation, it’s an informed decision and you truly require experts.”

That’s been the idea behind InPowered all along, but until now the company has focused on technology. Now, however, Peyman and Pirouz said they’re starting to work with advertisers outside the area. They didn’t give me a full list of every category that they’re planning to expand into — in part, it seems, because they’re still deciding themselves.

“We’re actually letting the data guide us,” Pirouz said.

The first non-tech advertiser is Chevy, and the brothers said they expect to work with similar companies — brands whose products are purchased through considered decisions rather than impulse buys. Peyman and Pirouz said likely categories include auto (not surprising, given Chevy’s participation), fashion, travel, and gaming. They also noted that since they work with ad exchanges to distribute their ads, they don’t need to recruit an entirely new network of publishers for each category.

As part of the sale, InPowered announced that on the tech side alone, it has worked with 20 brands to promote content that has been opened and read by 2 million consumers. As the company expands into other areas, Nilforoush said it’s staying true to its initial goal: “We’re trying to make people better informed and more influential.”
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