Saturday, June 8, 2013

tech now

tech now

The Enterprise App Economy

Posted: 08 Jun 2013 08:00 AM PDT

AngryBirds

Editor's note: Aaron Levie is CEO and co-founder of Box. Follow him on Twitter @levie.

Next week, thousands of developers will converge on WWDC, the vast majority representing companies and products that didn't exist before the creation of Apple's iPhone and App Store.

They'll talk about the future of mobile gaming, photo sharing and, of course, Snapchat. But what likely won't be center stage is how transformative Apple's devices and ecosystem have been in the enterprise.

The enterprise world was once solidly dominated by PCs. Today, nearly all of the Fortune 500 are testing iPads. Combined, Apple and Android (and Android's partners) represent nearly 91 percent of smartphones and tablets used today. And it's not just that people are buying a new category of device; they're actually buying fewer PCs in aggregate, as well. In the last holiday season, PC shipments sunk 6 percent, the first decrease in an entire decade.

Responding to this influx of new hardware and the unpredictable – yet frequent – revolutions in the market, the vast majority of enterprises now support a Bring Your Own Device (BYOD) model. But despite the ubiquity of these new devices, the enterprise app ecosystem is nascent compared to its consumer counterpart. There are success stories, sure, but the potential for enterprise app distribution and monetization has barely been tapped.

Why don't we have any enterprise Angry Birds?

From The PC Era To The Post-PC Enterprise

From the late 70s, the start of the PC revolution, to 2007, the beginning of the post-PC era, the way enterprises bought and used technology remained largely unchanged. The proliferation of PCs created a long-standing oligopoly led by Microsoft and its OEMs, enabling the rise of only a handful of giants – like Oracle, Siebel, PeopleSoft and Lotus. Smaller players were left out of a complex ecosystem that was designed to build up software empires, help IT buyers avoid too much chaos, and solve the rudimentary technology challenges emerging in corporate America.

Like all other important shifts in technology and society, the move from a PC-driven enterprise to a post-PC one isn't linear; it will be a giant step-function change. The entire premise of post-PC computing is driven by a new set of capabilities and use cases that are only just being realized by the earliest adopters.

Unlike the back office, where most work gets done in a typical workspace, the front office is no longer about the office at all: It's mobile, it's on the road, it's at customer sites, directly at retail stores, on airplanes, and in subways. And all-new technologies from all-new vendors are emerging to power these business use cases.

Doctors are pulling up medical images on their iPads with VueMe; field workers are submitting forms from their mobile devices; airline pilots are going paperless; sales people are Webexing on the go; federal judges are pulling up court documents on iPads; and distributed teams are getting connected on Lua.

Even though emerging enterprise apps are eating our iPads, they're not yet eating the legacy vendors' lunch.

And instead of applications being simple ports of their PC analog, an entirely new breed of tools and apps will be created for tablets and mobile devices in the enterprise. Chris Dixon suggests, "If the historical pattern repeats, productivity apps that are 'native' to the tablet will be invented."

For the most part, traditional players like Microsoft, Oracle, SAP, IBM and others are nowhere to be seen. When apps are just a quick search and tap away, vendor lock-in becomes a relic of a different computing paradigm. End users can web conference, grab CAD software, access blue prints, invoice customers, and pull up a new CRM app in minutes. Apps stand out based on their design, usability, simplicity and value – not simply because of their attachment to an enterprise license agreement.

In a previous era, such change might have taken years to make its way through an enterprise – slowed down by infrastructure deployments, software and maintenance contracts and compatibility issues. Today, things are quite different. “Any new product introduced follows a different adoption curve in the enterprise… And enterprises today are looking at a whole different world,” Steven Sinofsky recounted recently at the recent D11 conference.

Welcome To The Enterprise App Economy

For as much money as is poured into enterprise software every year – $297 billion to be exact – mobile apps have barely made a dent in spend today. While BYOD brought a new set of devices into corporate America, it so far hasn't dramatically changed software purchasing behavior. You know those tens of billions of dollars generated by mobile apps? They're going to the consumer space, not the enterprise.

In gaming, we've seen small upstarts like Angry Birds or Supercell generate hundreds of millions of dollars a year, producing overnight disruptors to traditional gaming companies. In the communications space, services like WhatsApp, Line and others have built disruptive business models to traditional communications services, cutting billions of dollars out of the traditional carriers and making large sums in the process.

Even though emerging enterprise apps are eating our iPads, they're not yet eating the legacy vendors' lunch. Why?

We're benefiting from dramatically reduced barriers for building and distributing mobile apps, but the way enterprise software is procured and sold (and thus monetized) remains mostly unchanged. While consumer apps can thrive on $9.99 (or even $.99) one-time downloads, in-app purchases, display ads and e-commerce, enterprise apps haven't flourished under the same economic models.

In the enterprise, a different set of dynamics are in play. While mobile apps ultimately serve – and are acquired by – the end-user, individuals outside of IT often don't have the budget or responsibility to bring in or standardize on (paid) applications easily. The whole point of post-PC is speed, efficiency and simplification, yet the way enterprise software is bought today is anything but.

Responding to this, we'll need more scalable approaches for developers to sell their wares broadly in an organization and get paid for their services without friction – methods with far lower barriers than how most enterprise software is typically procured. We'll also need better ways to create annuity revenue streams for mobile app developers, better aligning long-term customer value with the apps themselves.

Unlike in the consumer market, where you care what apps your friends are using, we'll need to make it easier for apps to be discovered and shared across a company. And we'll need new capabilities and offerings from the operation system players to support this new economy. In return, apps will need new levels of guarantees, SLAs and security models to gain the trust of enterprises.

When these new models are unlocked, we'll begin to see far more innovation, and adoption, in the post-PC app world.

Fortunately, given the rapid growth of post-PC devices and apps, we can rest assured that economics for developers will eventually match the kind of scale and potential of these markets. Tablets have only been around for three years, and are already reaching 200 million units sold a year – a feat that took the PC 27 years to accomplish.

And the addressable market for software vendors is rapidly expanding: by 2015, the number of mobile workers will surpass 1.3 billion. For app developers, this brings unprecedented and previously unreachable scale to building technology for businesses. The potential of the enterprise app economy is massive, and we're just getting started.

Blanket Surveillance. Total Secrecy. What Could Possibly Go Wrong?

Posted: 08 Jun 2013 06:00 AM PDT

eye-of-sauron

Imagine that one day you came home to find a shiny little bubble of one-way glass in an upper corner of every single room, and a notice left on your kitchen table: “As required by the Safe Society Act, we have installed remotely controlled cameras throughout your home. (Also your office.) But don’t worry! They’ll probably only be activated if the government believes that a non-US citizen might have entered this building.” Would that give you warm fuzzy feelings of safety and security?

I ask because that’s a pretty good metaphor for what happened this week. I refer of course to PRISM. You may have noticed the flurry of reports followed by a flurry of denials regarding the “top-secret National Security Administration data-mining program that taps directly into the Google, Facebook, Microsoft and Apple servers among others.”

Meanwhile, with (surprisingly) much less furore, the Wall Street Journal took the previous revelation that the NSA “is secretly collecting phone record information for all U.S. calls on the Verizon network,” and expanded it considerably:

The National Security Agency’s monitoring of Americans includes customer records from the three major phone networks as well as emails and Web searches, and the agency also has cataloged credit-card transactions, said people familiar with the agency’s activities.

At first nobody knew what PRISM was. Both Larry Page and Mark Zuckerberg personally and strongly denied the initial allegations, and the Washington Post backed away from its initial claim that the tech companies “participate knowingly.” So who could say what was really going on, given the doublespeak that the NSA uses when discussing surveillance, and the weird way that Page, Zuck, and every other accused tech company (except, oddly, Microsoft) all kept chanting the strange mantra “no direct access” in their denials?

The New York Times, apparently. Hats off to them, and to Twitter; and shame on all the PRISM companies. The NYT’s report on PRISM — which you should all click through to and read — says that:

Twitter declined to make it easier for the government. But other companies were more compliant… The companies were legally required to share the data under the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act… they are prohibited by law from discussing the content of FISA requests or even acknowledging their existence… FISA orders can range from inquiries about specific people to a broad sweep for intelligence, like logs of certain search terms… employees whose job it is to comply with FISA requests are not allowed to discuss the details even with others at the company…

Which is appalling enough right there: but let’s not lose sight of the even bigger and uglier picture, one which includes the WSJ’s claims. Going back to my cameras-in-the-home metaphor, until this week we all knew that the government could break in and install cameras in every home if they wanted to … but now we know they’ve actually done it. Oh, the ones in your home probably haven’t been turned on yet, but they’re there. They’ve been there for years.

And how has the government responded to these revelations? Mostly with frothing fury. Senator Dianne Feinstein immediately called for an investigation….into the leak. Director of National Intelligence James Clapper called this “unauthorized disclosure of information” “reprehensible.”

That’s what really gets my blood boiling. There is no reasonable justification for keeping even the existence of FISA requests and programs like PRISM secret. Does the NSA really think that its targets currently believe that all their online activity is perfectly safe and secure? Well, in the extremely unlikely and idiotic case that that was the reason for total secrecy, then hey, that barn has sure burned down now, hasn’t it?

The powers that be can shout “national security!” and “terrorism!” as stridently as they like, but it seems patently obvious to me that they’re just afraid that the American public might not like it if they find out how much they’re being spied on — and that their blanket surveillance programs might not be legal.

As Bruce Schneier points out, what we don’t know is far scarier than what we do. And to quote the EFF:

The specifics remain shrouded in secrecy, but Senators Ron Wyden, Mark Udall, Rand Paul, and Jeff Merkley, among others, have indicated repeatedly that Americans would be "stunned" to find out how the government is interpreting and using these provisions.

Furthermore,

The sad thing is, this is typical of the Obama administration, which has already prosecuted twice as many whistleblowers as all previous presidential administrations combined. “I welcome this debate. And I think it's healthy for our democracy… I think that's good that we're having this discussion,” Obama said yesterday. Hours later, Reuters reported: “President Barack Obama’s administration is likely to open a criminal investigation into the leaking of highly classified documents that revealed the secret surveillance of Americans’ telephone and email traffic.”

Page and Zuckerberg say “There needs to be a more transparent approach … the level of secrecy around the current legal procedures undermines the freedoms we all cherish” and “We strongly encourage all governments to be much more transparent about all programs aimed at keeping the public safe,” respectively. Too right. But the current administration has shown no real interest in greater openness, much less two-way transparency.

So the only other solution is for the tech world to do what it can to normalize end-to-end encryption of all online activity. Right now HTTPS can (probably) protect your data while it’s in transit between your apps and the Apple/Google/Microsoft/Yahoo servers; but if your government insists on star-chamber surveillance, then that’s no longer enough.

Instead we’ll need to start encrypting our communications all the way from sender to recipient. Security is hard, and there aren’t many good tools for this, yet. What’s more, this would be bad for Google’s business model. But if governments continue to pass and then stretch the bounds of outrageous and draconian laws like FISA, then it’s only a matter of time before angry techies make end-to-end encryption easier to use, and its use becomes widespread.

If there’s any thin silver lining to this debacle, it’s that by insisting on secrecy, and clandestine so-called “accountability,” governments are actually hastening how fast and how thoroughly the online data they so badly want will become unreadable. Given the contempt with which they’re currently treating the populace, I for one can’t wait.

Tech Giants Built Segregated Systems For NSA Instead Of Firehoses To Protect Innocent Users From PRISM

Posted: 08 Jun 2013 12:09 AM PDT

mon

The NSA may have wanted full firehoses of data from Google, Facebook and other tech giants, but the companies attempted to protect innocent users from monitoring via compliance systems that created segregated data before securely handing it over as required by law, according to individuals familiar with the systems used by the tech companies targeted by PRISM.

The widely criticized corroboration with the NSA therefore may have benefited citizens rather than being to their detriment.

How PRISM Requests And Receives Private Data

My sources confirm that the NSA did not have direct access or any special instant access to data or servers at the PRISM targets, but instead had to send requests to the companies for the data. These requests must be complied with by law, but only if the government narrowly defines what it’s looking for. The government may have initially requested a firehose of data, and was happy to take this full data dump from the tech companies and sort it itself. Had the tech giants simply accepted these requests at the minimum level required by law, many innocent citizens’ data could have been monitored.

By working to create “a locked mailbox and give the government the key” which the New York Times reported, rather than allowing widespread monitoring, the firehose is restricted to a trickle of specific requests. When the NSA has specific people they want to data about, they make a specific, legal request for that data that the tech companies are required to comply with. Google or Facebook then puts the specific requested data into the locked mailbox where the government can access it. This keeps requested data about suspected terrorists or other people who are threats to national security segregated from that of innocent users.

By cooperating, companies can better ensure that each request is valid, and narrow enough in its scope. If the request is too broad, the tech companies can send it back and ask for a narrower pull. The method also ensure the data is securely transferred from the companies to the government, opposed to being more forcibly pulled by the NSA in ways that could have left it open for exploit by third-parties.

[Update 1am PST 6/8/2013: This information matches the follow-up statement issued by Google's Chief Legal Officer David Drummond,: We cannot say this more clearly—the government does not have access to Google servers—not directly, or via a back door, or a so-called drop box...Our legal team reviews each and every request, and frequently pushes back when requests are overly broad or don't follow the correct process.]

PRISM’s Scope May Be Smaller Than Feared

Over the last day, tech executives including Larry Page and Mark Zuckerberg outlined that they did not give bulk or blanket access to user data. However, they may not have been able to discuss the exact volume of the legal demands for data they’ve received. That left the exact scope of how many people had data pulled by NSA open for wide interpretation, and many including myself, in some cases assumed the worst. That while not at the volume of the massive request for data on all Verizon users that’s been reported, huge numbers of people may have been spied on.

However, in the last year, there were only 1,865 FISA requests for data. Some believe those requests could include data pulls as broad as anyone who searched a specific term. Legal experts I’ve consulted, though, believe the requests must be more narrow than that for the tech companies to have not pushed back. That means the the number of people monitored by PRISM may have been in the thousands or tens of thousands, rather than in the tens or even hundreds of millions.

Previously I accused Page, Zuckerberg, and other tech executives and companies of trying to hide the scope of their cooperation with the NSA. Their carefully worded denials of offering direct access or back doors to their data seemed to minimize how they were involved with the NSA. I still think they should be more specific on how requests are handled, and could have been despite FISA restrictions on what they could say. However, after speaking with sources, I’ve come to believe the blame rests more on the government for muzzling these companies in the way they explain to their users the complex privacy issues associated with compliance with government requests for personal information on their users.

Both the secure, segregated responses to demands for data, and the limited scope of the monitoring could help ease the fears of the public. It still may be an assault on liberty, but possibly smaller than suspected. And with any luck, the whole PRISM issue will push the government towards greater transparency.

Malaysia Is Poorly Marketed To Entrepreneurs, Says 500 Durians' Khailee Ng

Posted: 07 Jun 2013 11:08 PM PDT

khailee ng

Malaysia is an easy place to get cheap, good, English-speaking talent, with overheads that are often far lower than in more advanced markets in Southeast Asia. But it continues to suffer the effects of brain drain. Simply put, Malaysia isn’t cool to be in for some of the nation’s brightest, and this has hurt its startup scene, according to Khailee Ng.

Ng, who is from Malaysia, was recently hired by 500 Startups as venture partner for Southeast Asia. The Silicon Valley VC also set Ng up with a shiny new $10 million microfund for the region. (The SEC-filing was called 500 Durians.)

Ng was speaking to a roomful of Malaysian startups and the 500 Startups’ Geeks On A Plane delegation that is currently traveling through Southeast Asia.

When I spoke to him on the sidelines of the conference, he said Malaysia has all the makings of a ripe scene to be picked, but he has been watching in dismay as startups flocked to larger, far less Internet-penetrated countries such as Indonesia and the Philippines. And Malaysia often gets outshone by its smaller neighbor to the South, Singapore, where plenty of large corporations have set up shop, and seed funding is readily available, backed by government funding.

Malaysia’s situation is the result of an under-marketed set of funding from the government, plus a syndrome where none of its successful entrepreneurs are keen to let others know about them, said Ng. Some government funds that have been around for a decade already. “Nobody knows they exist, or there are misconceptions that it’s hard to get, or there are bureaucratic hoops to jump through,” he said.

For example, the Cradle fund offers up to $160,000 (RM500,000) in seed funding to projects that are younger than three-years-old. Other non-government-linked funds that have just been set up within this year include $10 million from 1337 Accelerator, $150 million from Catcha Group, and $5 million from the Asia Venture Group.

Ng also said that people are often surprised to find that some of the largest tech companies to IPO in the region are from Malaysia. According to a ranking of publicly-listed companies taken about a year ago, Jobstreet had a market cap of $268.2 million, iProperty Group had $178.2, My EG Services had $151.7 and iCar Asia had $56 million. The fifth in the list was the only one not from Malaysia, and was Singapore-based Asiatravel.com, at $40.4 million, he said.

He said the local scene also needs more experienced professionals coming in. “There’s nothing wrong with fresh grads, but sometimes you get one or two guys who have either had a failed startup, or one of those McKinsey, Accenture guys, and you can really feel things getting serious (in the startup),” he said.

Copycats are also the reason why startups in the region need to think outside their home bases from day one, said Ng. While many often think they should conquer one market and slowly expand outwards, it’s often too late by the time the expansion happens. “Be in as many markets as you can afford to be from the beginning,” he said.

The reason why many copycat models fail is not because transplanting models doesn’t work, but because execution is the main difference, he added. Operational excellence and being “super tight” can make or break a startup. “That’s why you get group-buying being crazy profitable in some markets, but bleeding in just the next country. Same model, right? It’s operational issues,” he said.

Check out Ng’s slide presentation on being a startup in Malaysia.

Samsung And Nokia Could Be Gearing Up For A Smartphone Camera War

Posted: 07 Jun 2013 10:23 PM PDT

s4zoom

So Samsung’s Galaxy S4 Mini and Galaxy S4 Active have officially made the leap from unimaginative rumors to unimaginative reality, which leaves only one oft-rumored version of the popular smartphone left unaccounted for — the curious S4 Zoom.

As the name sort of implies, this Galaxy variant is said to blur the line between smartphone and camera, and we may now be getting our first look at the thing. A set of images from both SamMobile and TechTastic purportedly show off the photo-centric S4 Zoom ahead of a big Samsung press event in London later this month.

It’s hard to judge from the unflattering angles, but these images depict a device seems to be more camera than phone. The thickish frame, protruding lens obscuring a 16-megapixel sensor, and rounded butt are all design choices that are more reminiscent of point-and-shoots than they are of any standard smartphone. Too bad then that the supposed spec sheet that’s been attached to the S4 Zoom seems wimpy in comparison — that hefty sensor will supposedly be accompanied by a 4.3-inch qHD AMOLED display and a 1.6GHz dual-core processor.

If the S4 Zoom is indeed the real deal — and at this point it just about seems like a lock — Samsung may find that it’s not alone in using smartphones as a platform to show off their camera prowess. Persistent rumors of a Nokia Windows Phone sporting one of the company’s mind-boggling PureView sensors have been floating around for over a year now, and a handful of spurious “leaked” images of one such device (codenamed “EOS “)have been circulating these past days. Hell, just earlier this morning we were treated to what may be the smoking gun — a purported recording of the EOS’ gigantic rear camera pod blinking at us.

In case you missed the PureView hullabaloo from last year, Nokia’s EOS isn’t expected to feature the comparatively puny sensors seen in the company’s recent Windows Phones. No no, rumor has it that it will instead sport the same 41-megapixel camera sensor that first graced the chubby 808 PureView back in 2012.

But I think there’s a bigger question here that hasn’t been adequately answered yet — who do these companies think we’ll buy these things? I suspect I may be in the minority on this one, but I’ve always though that the camera-first approach that some OEMs fiddle around with is just sort of silly. Yes, there’s definite value in being able to capture compelling shots on the run, but really: do people really care how good their photos look once quality inches past a certain threshold?

After all, the way we visually memorialize things has changed since the dawn of smartphone epoch — most images don’t wind up printed and tucked away in photo albums any more. They get hastily MMSed to friends. They get marred by fugly filters and splayed up on Instagram. And in some cases (I’m looking at you Snapchat), the real value of these photos is knowing that they’ll quickly be lost to the ages, a pointed rejection of the archaic permanence of images chemically etched on dead tree material. Camera quality ranks pretty low on my list of criteria when it comes time to buy a new phone, and leaning too heavily on one aspect of a device could be… problematic to say the least.

The closest thing Samsung has had to the S4 Zoom to date is the Galaxy Camera, and the company has never broken out Galaxy Camera sales for we hardware business dorks to dig into. Still, the device was hamstrung by carriers requiring customers to buy a data plan along with the thing (a Wi-Fi version was announced just two months ago). And while Nokia has kept its PureView numbers a closely guarded secret, enthusiasts have estimated that the Finnish phone company managed to sell over half a million as of Fall 2012.

That’s a very solid number considering all the 808′s potential sticking points, and Nokia’s moving a solid number of Lumia phones these days so Nokia must be hoping that PureView and Lumia are two great tastes that really do taste great together. Thankfully, we probably won’t have to wait much longer to see these two duke it out — while the S4 Zoom is expected to be outed this month, the EOS could see the light of day as early as July 9.

An Ex-Googler's Take On “The Internship”

Posted: 07 Jun 2013 09:00 PM PDT

The Internship

Editor’s note: Caroline McCarthy is a writer and branded content consultant living in New York. Previously, she worked at Google and before that as a tech reporter for CNET. Follow her on Twitter @caro.

When I worked as a marketer at Google and learned of an upcoming comedy called “The Internship,” which was to reunite "Wedding Crashers" duo Vince Vaughn and Owen Wilson as unemployed 40-year-old salesmen who luck their way into Google internships, most of the reactions I heard from my co-workers could be summed up as “meh.” Neither Vaughn nor Wilson has had a truly funny movie in years. And, I'd surmise, most Googlers have reached a point where the company quirks that the outside world finds so odd and intriguing are accepted as more or less routine, and certainly not interesting enough to hold up the foundations of a decent movie.

Well, "The Internship" hit theaters today, and, I'll admit, both as an ex-Googler and a moviegoer nostalgic for the “frat pack” comedies of the mid-2000s, it was significantly better than I expected it would be. In fact, the only thing that really, truly disappointed me about it was that nowhere in its hour and 50 minutes is the food fight scene from "Animal House" recreated with soba noodles and gluten-free banana pudding in a Google cafeteria. (I was really hoping for that.)

The unexpected enjoyability of "The Internship" is due in large part to the quippy dialogue between Billy (Vaughn) and Nick (Wilson), which very much resembles their banter in "Wedding Crashers." This is at its best in the hilarious scene where the two are in a job interview over a Google+ Hangout (of course) and are given one of the notoriously convoluted brain-teaser questions that are now a solid part of Google lore. (For the record, my half-dozen interviews there didn't contain a single one.) It also routinely gets very funny when the two fast talkers are forced to contend with a company full of extremely young people who, whether they're earnestly overeager or bitterly snarky, are all wildly lacking in social skills.

That friction is what makes "The Internship" less a commentary on Silicon Valley (which 2010's Facebook origin tale "The Social Network" certainly was) than it is on Gen-Y and its supposed best and brightest. Nick and Billy are Gen-X'ers of average brainpower who are used to professional success that comes from boots-on-the-ground routine and a skillful command of smooth talking, whereas their 21-year-old intern counterparts are caricatures of millennials raised on SAT prep classes and flickering screens — one kid stares at his smartphone all the time, another keeps referring to his overbearing "tiger mom," for example. Naturally, this becomes Nick and Billy's secret asset, as they can bring people skills to the table.

But "The Internship" also gets the vibe of working at Google about as well as Hollywood possibly could, from the proverbial Googley details like nap pods, free food, and indoor slides; to more insidery tidbits like accurate internal slang (foodback, TGIF) and the fact that the interns are housed in what appears to be a mid-century Motor Inn by the side of El Camino Real in Mountain View. If you have ever been a Googler who was based outside of the Bay Area, you probably stayed in one of these every time you visited the mothership.

Of course, it's simplified. Though I was never a Google intern, I'm pretty sure that the intern program is not a summer-long competition reminiscent of a ’90s tween sports movies — the scene where teams of interns are pitted together in a Quidditch match (yes) felt like "The Big Green" on fast-forward. Google is so notoriously complex internally that employees like to say it will take you six months just to get situated, so I'll give "The Internship" a pass on making things a bit more Hollywood-friendly. And nothing's wildly off-base. The script was vetted by senior Google executives, and the movie was filmed in full cooperation with the company — a sizable portion of it on Google's own campus. In fact, Google confirmed to CNN that they requested the removal of a scene in which a self-driving car crashes.

What's most impressive to me as an ex-Googler is how well the movie nailed a few very nuanced realities of working at the company — perhaps by accident. In particular, "The Internship" subtly highlighted the weird balance that Googlers have to strike between being in a high-stress environment rife with deadlines while also being in a sun-soaked paradise of expansive lawns, candy-colored "G-Bikes," and beach volleyball courts in between office buildings.

One character, a middle manager played by Rose Byrne, is chronically over-scheduled, overworked and under-slept, and there are a few subtle nods at how she's become over-reliant on Google perks because she has literally no time for life outside the company (concierge dry-cleaning, for example). This combination of the casual and the ultracompetitive is a vibe that runs through pretty much all of Google culture, and kudos to the writers of "The Internship" for picking up on it so well.

That said, "The Internship" gets quite tedious when it starts to veer into a commercial for Google, like early on when Billy gets a little too vocal about the company being a bright spot of hope in the midst of a terrible economy. These moments are thankfully minimal. Several reviews of the movie have already ripped into it for what amounts to product placement because of all the Google products shown onscreen, but to be honest, this is one of the most true-to-Google aspects of the film. Step onto Google's campus and it actually is a celebration of the things the company builds, from plush stuffed Androids in lounges to Chrome on everyone's laptops to meetings conducted over Hangout. They're everywhere.

That's one of the things I loved the most about my two years at Google: Just about every team uses just about every other team's products, creating a sense of company unity that's still admirably intact given how big it’s  grown. The idea of teamwork is a big theme running through "The Internship" but also through Google itself. Sometimes our team-building moments really are that cheesy. (Man, sometimes I really miss that place.)

Oh, and there are two cameos by Google co-founder Sergey Brin. One's very early in the movie, and one's very late. Both are about half a second long, and the earlier one is particularly perfect.

But I'm still miffed there wasn't a food fight.

NYT Claims Tech Giants Gave NSA Access To Private Data, Just Not “Direct Access”

Posted: 07 Jun 2013 08:05 PM PDT

PRISMbriefingS2HApr2013_v1_0.pptx

The fog of confusion is slowly lifting and the facts surrounding the NSA’s PRISM surveillance program are becoming a little bit clearer. According to a new report by the New York Time’s Claire Cain Miller, the tech companies that allegedly helped the government to spy on their people did indeed not provide a direct access back door to their servers.

Instead, the New York Times report claims, they made it easier for the government and the companies, including Microsoft, AOL, Apple, Facebook, Yahoo and Paltalk, “to more efficiently and securely share the personal data of foreign users in response to lawful government requests.”

In some instances, the report says, the companies did change their computer systems to do so. Google and Facebook, for example, apparently discussed plans to build “secure portals” that would allow a government agency to request data, which the companies would then upload to these servers for the government to retrieve. That sounds a little bit like a dead drop from an espionage novel, but some variation of these rooms has long existed in telco switching centers in the physical world.

The report also details one instance where an agent installed software on one of the company’s servers (which one isn’t clear) and used it to download data to a laptop for “several weeks.”

Just like the original report claims, real-time access is apparently also an option.

All of this, of course, doesn’t immediately jibe with the company’s outright denials that they had any knowledge of this. The New York Times argues that the employees who were handling this information were likely not allowed to discuss their work – though it’s unclear how all of this would go unnoticed inside a company like Google or Facebook.

Doublespeak Denials Of PRISM Hid The Truth About Participation

Posted: 07 Jun 2013 07:40 PM PDT

Doublespeak

“Direct Access” didn’t mean no access. “Back door” didn’t mean no door. “Only in accordance with the law” didn’t mean PRISM is illegal. And you didn’t need to have heard of a codename to have participated. Larry, Zuck, you didn’t spell out your denials of the NSA’s data spying program in plain english, and now we know why. You were obligated to help the government in its spying, but were muzzled.

[Update: This article and its headline have been edited, see explanation below.]

The New York Times says you knowingly participated in the NSA’s data monitoring program. In some cases, you were asked to create ”a locked mailbox and give the government the key”, to allow it to peer into private communications and web activity. Even if the exact words of your denials were accurate, they seemed to obscure the scope of your involvement with PRISM. Outlining as clearly as possible exactly what kind of data the government could attain would have gone a long way.

But you were probably cornered by Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act restrictions about what you could say about PRISM. And in fact, you might have beeen subtly trying to fight back by asking the government for more transparency. When you decode Mark’s statement “We strongly encourage all governments to be much more transparent about all programs aimed at keeping the public safe”, I hear “Our hands are cuffed. Only the government can reveal that we participated. We wish they would.”

Sadly, you really were working with the NSA to give it access to our private data, so your supposedly candid statements full of technicalities just broke our hearts, as the truth has come to light.

The terms you used disguised what was going on. Direct access means unrestricted access with no intermediary, but the government didn’t need to be standing in the server rooms to get what it wanted. A back door means access to data without its host’s knowledge or consent, but you were well aware of the NSA’s snooping. The NSA’s actions are likely protected by law, so saying you’re only honoring prying that’s legal didn’t mean no prying. And why would the government tell you the juicy codename or details of its data spying program? All it had to say is it needed your data.

Now these excuses ring hollow. The average citizen doesn’t know the difference. They heard “we didn’t help the NSA”, and you did, so their trust in you has disintegrated.

That’s a threat to your business, and our way of life. I like that all my friends use Google Docs. I like that I can invite any of my friends to a Facebook Event. Seeing them ditch the building blocks of the web you’ve developed because they don’t believe anything you say anymore will be a great inconvenience. And that inconvenience pales in importance to the actual liberty PRISM strips away from us.

Then again, your silence would have been taken as an admission of guilt. What an awful position our government put you in.

[Update 12:45am PST 6/8/13: This article and its headline have been edited as I think the title "Doublespeak Denials Of Prism Participation Were Careful Lies" went a bit far. The execs weren't lying, but by denying specifics rather than discussing their participation in PRISM on a high level, I think they obscured their involvement. However, their companies are legally required to provide private information requested by the government, and were legally restricted in how they could explain the process, so I feel the blame rests more on the NSA than the tech giants. For more information, read my follow-up "Tech Giants Built Segrated Systems For NSA Instead Of Firehoses To Protect Innocent Users From PRISM"]

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Who's Telling The Truth About PRISM? Computer Security Expert Gene Spafford Weighs In [TCTV]

Posted: 07 Jun 2013 06:59 PM PDT

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Between the reports this week about that the U.S. National Security Agency has been mining personal user data from some of the world’s biggest Internet players through a project called ‘PRISM’, to the government’s defense of wide scale data collection for security reasons, and finally the outright denials from the web companies named in the leaked documents that they had ever even heard of PRISM let alone cooperated with it, there’s a lot of information out there — and it’s hard to know what’s right and what’s wrong.

So we were pleased today to have the chance to speak with Eugene H. Spafford, aka “Spaf,” a computer science professor at Purdue University and a noted expert in computer security and ethics whose C.V. includes time serving on the President’s Information Technology Advisory Committee, to help elucidate what’s going on here — and perhaps point us in the direction of the truth here.

It was a wide-ranging conversation, and Spaf is a very thoughtful and knowledgeable source on this, so I’d encourage you to watch the whole thing. But I wanted to pull out one bit of what Dr. Spafford said regarding the timing of this whole situation, starting at about minute 10:18:

“I think there are several things here that are interesting about this. The first is, in the last three days we’ve seen three highly classified bits of information that were at the center of stories broken by the Guardian in England, all involving highly classified U.S. documents. That indicates that there is potentially some very significant leak of someone who is violating their oath, who is disclosing information that is protected by law, and is undoubtedly going to be raising the ire of law enforcement, intelligence, government agents throughout the U.S. because they don’t now what else may be leaked. This is a major problem, it is likely to provoke a significant backlash. It raises some questions about the veracity of the information.

I find the timing interesting that all of this is being released on the days that the president is meeting with the Chinese premier and the major topic of discussion was supposed to be the us complaining about surveillance and cyber attacks by the Chinese.

One of the things in security is that there are no coincidences. So one can’t help but wonder if there isn’t some political motive, and who’s really behind this, if in fact there is a real story.”

There’s so much more where that came from, and you can see it all in the video embedded above.

The Deep Space Tourbillon Is A One-Off, Handmade Watch That Will Take You To Infinity And Beyond

Posted: 07 Jun 2013 04:41 PM PDT

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As you may well know, the tourbillon is one of the hardest (and most expensive) complications to build and only the very rich and very obsessed can afford them. This watch, however, may be just the ticket if you’re a hardcore Trekkie and you just hit a liquidity event.

The Deep Space Tourbillon is made by Vianney Halter and is supposed to look like the Deep Space Nine station from Star Trek. The tourbillon – essentially a rotating balance wheel – is suspended between two gears in the movement and the whole thing has a very steampunk meets Spockpunk vibe. It has a large domed crystal and 46mm case. It is a triple axis toubillon, which makes it extra hard to make and quite unique.

Before you place your order, you should be aware that Halter’s work is often amazing in theory but difficult to build in practice. You should also note that this thing will cost $200,000 when complete and it appears that it has already sold to a buyer in Asia. As we know too well, fools and their money are soon parted and sci-fi fans with money are the most dangerous impulse buyers of all. Regardless, it’s a cool piece with a surprising pedigree and enough geek cred to convince me that Khan shot first.


Following Google's Lead, Zuckerberg Says Facebook Isn't Giving Govt “Direct Access” Either

Posted: 07 Jun 2013 03:24 PM PDT

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Mark Zuckerberg has just taken to Facebook to personally respond to the accusations that Facebook is involved in PRISM, an alleged secret government program that gives the government access to user information, denying that Facebook has ever given any government “direct access” to its servers.

This comes just hours after Google responded to the unfolding events regarding PRISM, which reportedly allows the NSA and FBI access to the servers and user information of multiple major US tech companies such as Facebook, Google, Microsoft and Apple.

Zuck’s response isn’t that different from Larry Page’s:

I want to respond personally to the outrageous press reports about PRISM:

Facebook is not and has never been part of any program to give the US or any other government direct access to our servers. We have never received a blanket request or court order from any government agency asking for information or metadata in bulk, like the one Verizon reportedly received. And if we did, we would fight it aggressively. We hadn’t even heard of PRISM before yesterday.

When governments ask Facebook for data, we review each request carefully to make sure they always follow the correct processes and all applicable laws, and then only provide the information if is required by law. We will continue fighting aggressively to keep your information safe and secure.

We strongly encourage all governments to be much more transparent about all programs aimed at keeping the public safe. It’s the only way to protect everyone’s civil liberties and create the safe and free society we all want over the long term.

The post has over 56,000 likes at the time of writing.

It’s worth noting that the wording in Page’s statement and Zuckerberg’s statement is very similar. Just check out the Doc in this tweet from Alex Madrigal:

All of the companies accused of participating in the program have denied their participation, including Facebook, Google, Microsoft, Apple, Yahoo, Dropbox, PalTalk, and Aol. Five out of eight of those companies denied giving “direct access” to servers to any government agencies. At least half of them have said “they never heard of PRISM”. Page and Zuckerberg both said verbatim that they hadn’t heard of PRISM “until yesterday”.

The seeming coordination here is just one floating and possible theory. The other is that the domino effect was necessary. Once one company denies participation (regardless of the truth, which we clearly are very unsure of right now), the rest must follow suit.


After Picking Up ExactTarget, Salesforce Buys Enterprise Business Intelligence And Analytics Startup EdgeSpring

Posted: 07 Jun 2013 03:01 PM PDT

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Salesforce is on a bit of an acquisition spree this week. After purchasing marketing software company ExactTarget for $2.5 billion, the sales SaaS giant has announced the purchase of EdgeSpring, an enterprise business intelligence and analytics startup.

Though financial terms of the deal were not disclosed, this is likely a smaller acquisition for Salesforce. EdgeSpring just came out of stealth last month, raising $11 million in Series A funding from Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers and Lightspeed Ventures. The EdgeSpring platform accelerates the building of analytics applications that parse business intelligence data like sales, financials and more. The company wants to allow businesses to derive insights from data of any size or structure. EdgeSpring says it enables applications to answer first and second order questions across structured and semi-structured data.

CEO and co-founder Vijay Chakravarthy, who previously worked at Salesforce, explained in May that part of EdgeSpring’s secret sauce is in its patent-pending technology. The core of the platform is built around  EdgeMart, a powerful data store, and the Lens Framework, a dynamic visualization engine.

He writes on the company’s site, announcing the acquisition:

“Over the past two and a half years, we at EdgeSpring have built up a strong team and executed on bringing a next-generation decision-making platform to market. Business Intelligence and Analytics in the enterprise is a massively painful and IMHO still largely unsolved problem today. Being a part of Salesforce.com will give us a tremendous opportunity to take our technology to the next level and deliver truly amazing innovation to solve this high value problem.

Having worked at salesforce.com once before, I am also excited to be (re)joining a company that shares the values that we hold true here at EdgeSpring: being strongly customer centric and focused on bringing consumer-like ease of use to the enterprise.”

Despite being in stealth, EdgeSpring was able to accumulate a number of high-profile customers, including AppSense, Demandbase, Docusign, EllieMae, Equinix, Hara, HighWire, Intacct, Lithium, Neustar, Pandora, SpruceMedia, and Xactly.

It’s not surprising that Salesforce would be doubling down on business analytics and intelligence talent and software — no word yet on whether Salesforce will shut EdgeSpring down or continue to sell the technology.

CAPTCHA Ad Startup Solve Media Says 2013 Revenue's On-Track For $13M-$16M, Should Reach 4B Engagements

Posted: 07 Jun 2013 02:59 PM PDT

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Solve Media, a startup that turns CAPTCHA verification systems into ads, says that it’s growing quickly.

There were more than 1 billion engagements with Solve’s Type-In ads last year, the company says. It will exceed that number in the second quarter of 2013 alone, and it should hit 4 billion for all of 2013. Solve also says that it’s on-track to bring in $13 million to $16 million in revenue for 2013.

The technology takes advantage of all those CAPTCHAs we have to fill out to we’re verify that we’re not robots while using different online services. When a site is running a Type-In ad, instead of just forcing you to enter a random collection of letters and numbers, you’ll see an ad (it can be a display ad or a video) and be asked to type in a brand name or message instead. The publisher gets extra revenue and the advertiser gets the attention of consumers in way that’s supposed to deliver 6.7 times higher brand recall than standard ads. The company also runs a similar ad as a preroll before videos.

“Soon we will release a mobile product that performs as well, from an effectiveness standpoint, as our desktop products,” CEO Ari Jacoby told me via email. “Our main goal this year is to remain number 1 on every campaign that we serve for performance. So far, so good.”

Solve is also announcing that it’s opening an office in London, which it says is the first step in its plans for international expansion.

Ask A VC: Redpoint's Chris Moore On What He Looks For In An Ad Tech Startup And More

Posted: 07 Jun 2013 02:40 PM PDT

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In this week’s Ask A VC show, Redpoint partner Chris Moore joined us in the studio to discuss how he sources and spots promising startups, and more.

Moore focuses on making investments for Redpoint in consumer internet, online marketing and SaaS companies, and has led Redpoint’s investment in Efficient Frontier (acquired by Adobe), Right Media (acquired by Yahoo), Auditude (acquired by Adobe), and IntoNow (acquired by Yahoo). Considering the many successful exits Moore has helped startups navigate through (especially in the ad tech space), we asked him how he knows when a company has the potential to go public vs. stay private, and accept an acquisition offer.

We also tackled a number of reader questions including whether he would rather invest in an entrepreneur who has previous experience working for a technology company in Silicon Valley.

Tune in above for more!

Your Arduino Is In My Android Device! UDOO Mixes It Up With An All-In-One Solution

Posted: 07 Jun 2013 01:48 PM PDT

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For most beginning hardware hackers, Arduino is hard and Linux/Android is easy. The folks at UDOO, a Kickstarter project that ends tonight, aim to solve that by mixing the best of both worlds. The UDOO device contains an ARM processor (dual or quad core) as well as an Arduino microprocessor. This allows you to program the Arduino using the tools you’re familiar with including a standard embedded Linux install and the associated command-line software.

The UDOO contains both and ARM cortex-A9 CPU and the hardware on a Arduino DUE. This includes 54 digital I/O pins, an optional SATA connection, and a number of other pin-outs and connectors. This part of the board allows users to add all of the shields and accessories associated with the highly evolved Arduino environment to the equally evolved Linux and Android environments. Think of it as a Raspberry Pi you can upgrade.

The UDOO also includes a Wi-Fi module, USB ports, and 1GB RAM. The dual core model costs $109 while the quad core costs $129. They’ve already surpassed their funding goal with 25 hours to go.

It looks like a great way to harness the power of Arduino using tools that geeks know and love. It is, as they say, two great tastes that taste great together thanks to complex interoperability and a rabid fan base for both platforms.

Google: There Is No PRISM Back Door To Our Servers, No Open-Ended Access To User Data

Posted: 07 Jun 2013 01:22 PM PDT

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All of the companies that are allegedly involved in the PRISM surveillance program have now issued short statements saying that they are not participating in this program and that they are not allowing the government “direct access” to their servers. Among these, of course, is Google. The company, however, also just issued a longer statement penned by its CEO Larry Page and Chief Legal Officer David Drummond.

In it, Page and Drummond argue, just like in the company’s shorter statement, that Google does not give the U.S. government “direct access or a ‘back door’ to the information stored in our data centers.” Indeed, just like Apple, Google claims that it “had not heard of a program called PRISM until yesterday.”

Google also argues that it had never heard of a broad type of order like the one Verizon apparently received and which led to the release of millions of call records. “Until this week's reports, we had never heard of the broad type of order that Verizon received — an order that appears to have required them to hand over millions of users' call records. We were very surprised to learn that such broad orders exist,” Page and Drummond write.

Most importantly, though, Google continues to argue that it is not providing the government with “open-ended access to [its] users’ data.” “Press reports that suggest that Google is providing open-ended access to our users' data are false, period,” they claim.

The two also use this opportunity to stress that the company frequently pushes back when it does receive legal requests for data and that, in their view, “this episode confirms what we have long believed—there needs to be a more transparent approach.” What exactly this approach would look like, Page and Drummond don’t go into here, but they do note that “the level of secrecy around the current legal procedures undermines the freedoms we all cherish.”

Twilio Raises A $70M Series D As They Consider An IPO

Posted: 07 Jun 2013 01:19 PM PDT

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Twilio, the company whose APIs help developers easily add SMS, voice, and VoIP functionality to their applications, has closed a Series D round of $70M dollars.

The round was led by Redpoint Ventures and existing investors Bessemer Venture Partners, and backed by Draper Fisher Jurvetson. As part of the deal, Redpoint’s Scott Raney will be joining the company’s board of directors.

Still not quite sure what Twilio does? Let’s say you’re building a service that sends its users a daily text with facts about cats. Between dealing with carriers and SMS gateways, sending texts programatically is… actually pretty challenging. Twilio turns it into a single line of code, in exchange for about 1¢ per text sent or received. For most things a developer could want to do over a phone line — be it SMS, voice calling, or VoIP — Twilio can handle the vast majority of the grunt work with just a few simple API calls.

Think this news sounds familiar? We actually broke the news that Twilio was in talks to raise a big Series D almost a month ago. I’d reported then that the company was aiming to raise $50M, which Twilio CEO Jeff Lawson confirmed to me yesterday was in fact their original goal. “We thought we’d raise somewhere between $35M and $50M,” he said, “but in the end, interest proved to be a bit higher than we expected.”

Prior to this round, Twilio had raised $33.5M dollars, making this round alone over twice the size of everything the company had raised before. Twilio is currently made up of just over 160 employees, with the company having just moved into a bigger office — an old paper/textile factory they retrofitted when they couldn’t find a big enough space in the city — last month.

So what’s next? In my previous post on this round, I bet that Twilio was heading towards an IPO. While he wouldn’t positively confirm it, Lawson did say that the company “doesn’t expect to need to raise another round”, and that an IPO would be “the next logical step”.

iOS 7, OS X 10.9, MacBooks And iRadio: What To Expect At WWDC 2013

Posted: 07 Jun 2013 01:08 PM PDT

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Apple is set to deliver its WWDC keynote address on Monday June 10, and there are bound to be a lot of new things revealed on that day. The exact details remain shrouded in mystery, but as with every major Apple event, there have been lots of leaks and rumors leading up to this one, so we can at least sketch in broad terms what we’re likely in for next week.

I’m leading with Apple’s streaming music service, which is probably freshest in most people’s minds if you’ve been following the news today. That’s because the service (which may or may not actually be called “iRadio”) is now likely a done deal with all the major record labels, which should make it possible for Apple to preview it next week, though we’ll likely have to wait a few months for a general consumer release.

Apple’s iRadio service is supposedly a lot like Pandora, but with some added tricks, like the ability to pull from a user’s existing music library in order to offer up better, more personalized streaming content. The service is similar to Genius, according to 9to5Mac, but uses tracks from the entire iTunes catalog, not just those in a user’s library, and offers an easy method for iOS users to simply purchase tracks they hear with a tap directly through iTunes. Typically, DMCA streaming radio does not permit track skipping, but this may be a feature of iRadio, depending on how Apple’s negotiations with labels went.

iRadio will be free, if reports prove true, and instead make revenue for Apple and its music partners via advertising. That will likely take the form of audio ads that come up in the radio stream after a certain amount of tracks are played, according to reports this week from Bloomberg.

Apple’s iOS 7 has been the talk of the town for a while now, ever since reports back in early April suggested that Apple was planning a significant overhaul of the user interface, and that has been echoed in numerous reports ever since, including more recent information brought to light by 9to5Mac. Apple’s design guru Jony Ive is said to be taking the helm of the redesign, which is interesting because he’s an industrial designer, not a graphic designer, but the result is said to be a scaled back, simplified UI that embraces flat design principles in favor of textures that mimic real-world materials like canvas and aluminum. A new picture of the iOS 7 banner at Moscone West that surfaced today suggests we’ll see something clean and simple.

For the system itself, Apple is said to be including additional hooks for social network sign-in, including Flickr for photos and Vimeo for video, each of which will be accessible via the Settings app in the same way that Twitter and Facebook are currently available. Another new feature could be AirDrop, Apple’s easy file-sharing service introduced recently to OS X. That could be an amazing way to move files easily between desktops and mobile devices, especially for users who otherwise might have to resort to email or something.

Apple CEO Tim Cook also suggested that we’d see Apple begin to open up more APIs for developers to take more advantage of additional system and device features, but the extent of just how far things will go isn’t known, though we’ve already suggested some possible areas, including Siri.

We’ve also heard from a source that Apple might introduce blocking features for some of its own on-device services including iMessage and the phone app. This is something Apple has already secured a patent related to, too. It’s not something we’ve been able to reliably confirm, but it’s a possibility for either this version of iOS or one in the future, and it’s something that would definitely go further in terms of making iMessage feel like a proper competitor to third-party products in the same vein.

We’ll see this released as a beta for developers at WWDC, with a full launch likely to follow in fall alongside new iPhone (and potentially iPad) hardware.

This will be named after a big cat, but we don’t know which one yet. The changes we’ve seen rumored so far include mostly minor tweaks, like a new fullscreen mode that doesn’t render other displays completely useless, and tabs and tags added to Finder to make it more complete. For a preview of what this new Finder might look like, check out advanced 3rd-party Finder replacements like Path Finder. These are minor changes that might only be appreciated by a small subset of OS X users, but those who do appreciate them will find them very welcome.

Other changes to OS X include stuff under the hood for developers that will allow them to exploit some of these new power user features, and some reports indicate that Apple wants to bring more iOS into OS X, including via app multi-tasking and switching features that concentrate more on allowing apps to move into the background and take up fewer system resources.

We’ll likely see OS X 10.9 arrive later in the year, but developers stand a good chance of getting access at the WWDC event, possibly immediately following the keynote.

Apple isn’t supposed to be doing much in the way of hardware, but we’ve seen lots of reports that suggest at least some Macs will get updates at the event. The MacBook Pro with Retina display and the MacBook Air are two specific example, and there’s a chance (albeit a more remote one) that says we’ll see a new Mac Pro unveiled at WWDC, too.

New Mac notebooks are almost a sure thing, with retail sources reporting stock shortages, and 9to5Mac saying there are new SKUs showing up indicating at least refreshed MacBook Airs on the way. The new Macs will likely all boast Haswell chips from Intel, as that company announced the new processors just this week, and other hardware upgrades could include full-HD FaceTime webcams, dual-mics on the MacBook Air to match those introduced in the Retina MacBook Pro, and possibly faster Wi-Fi chips that support new breakneck 802.11ac  networking speeds. If we do see those speeds added, it’s likely we’ll see Apple’s routers also updated to support that, too.

The new Mac Pro is a more remote possibility, but Apple has been doing a lot to talk up recently, alongside reports that we’ll see it made in the U.S. as well. Apple has confirmed it will be making a Mac in the U.S. this year, but it hasn’t said it’ll definitely be the Mac Pro. Still, the machine has languished for a long time now, receiving no significant update since July 2010 (it got a processor bump in 2012, but mostly because the part it was using before was probably being discontinued).

As for availability, expect new Macs to go on sale later in June if they are announced at WWDC, as Apple usually spreads out the ship date a little from the event itself when it debuts new Macs at these events.

One More Thing

Apple could announce all of the above, or just some of it at WWDC next week, but it probably still has at least one or two surprises up its sleeve. Will we see a new iPhone? Indications are pretty strong that we won’t. But still be sure to stay tuned as we bring you live coverage of everything they do announce, and hands-on impressions of new software and hardware they make available.

Airport Car Rental Startup Silvercar Ramps Up Expansion, With Plans For 7 Cities By Year-End

Posted: 07 Jun 2013 12:56 PM PDT

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Airport car rental startup Silvercar has increased the number of markets it hopes to launch in by the end of the year, as it seeks to more aggressively make its services available to more potential customers. Now available at three airports, it hopes to add a fourth by the end of the month, and expects to be in seven different markets by the end of 2013.

I’ve been covering Silvercar almost since its launch, and even got a chance to try it out for myself several months ago.* The idea behind the service is that it provides a simple, on-demand way to rent an awesome car online or via mobile phone. The app works by offering users a mobile app for booking, unlocking, and powering services while renting the car.

Silvercar offers one make and model of automobile — the Audi A4 — which simplifies the process of stocking inventory and renting out cars. Since it doesn’t have to handle multiple different classes of vehicle, customers don’t have to worry about different prices of rentals or trying to find just the right car.

Having one type of vehicle also makes opening up at new airports extremely easy for the startup. Well, easy-er. It still needs to deal with finding space near whichever airport it hopes to launch in, you know, a place to stage inventory and have customers pick up their cars.

In its launch market at Dallas/Fort Worth, Silvercar is part of the airport’s ConRAC (consolidated rental car facility). At launch, the idea was that it would gradually introduce services in other ConRACs over time. But there was a problem with that model — openings in those facilities only pop up every now and then, which means that Silvercar’s ability to expand was limited by external forces.

Starting in Austin, Silvercar began testing a way to get around that problem. To make its cars available there, it found space a few minutes near the airport to house its cars. From a user experience perspective, in airports that don’t have ConRACs, customers are able to hit a button once their planes have landed to indicate that they’ve arrived. They then get picked up by a Silvercar employee in a courtesy car, who drives the customer to the nearby lot. Once there, they pick the car they want, scan it with the mobile app, and are on their way.

The service was sold out during SXSW and led the company to keep a presence there. After that success, the company decided to make cars available at Dallas Love Field as well. But it’s looking to move outside of Texas and expects its service to launch in another (unnamed) market by the end of this month.

When we first talked to Silvercar about its expansion plans, the company was targeting one new airport each quarter. Now it’s looking to expand into two per quarter. With three airports now and half a year ahead of it, that means it’ll probably be in seven by the end of the year.

Silvercar raised $11.5 million in series A funding led by Austin Ventures, with participation from CrunchFund, SV Angel, Chris Dixon, and Dave Morin.

==
* Disclosures galore: Silvercar is a CrunchFund portfolio company. That’s important because CrunchFund was started by Michael Arrington, also founder of this website. That test drive of my Silvercar rental at Dallas-Fort Worth back in January was partially paid for by the company. Silvercar also sponsored our recent Austin meetup, offering us a few cars for use during the meetup in exchange for a table and branding at the event.

After Quietly Launching Down South, NoChains Wants To Help You To Find The Best Cuisine In NYC

Posted: 07 Jun 2013 12:50 PM PDT

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Picture this: you’re traveling somewhere new and when it comes time to eat you want to get a feel for some local flavors. You’re not going to want to chow down at the nearby Applebee’s in that sort of situation, which is why South Carolina native Rich Winley and Philadelphian Dan Mall whipped up an iOS app called — creatively enough — NoChains.

NoChains has already soft launched in Austin, Texas and Winley’s native Greenville, SC, but the two-person team has just set their sights on a much more prominent target for their next public beta: New York.

“We originally thought about going to the Bay Area, but it’s very noisy.” That, plus the sheer volume of restaurants in New York City and across the bridge in Brooklyn convinced the small team to set their sights on the East Coast instead.

Winley admits there’s nothing wrong with chain restaurants, but when you’re out in a new place, chances are you don’t want to dine exclusively on familiar fare. And that’s the issue with services like Yelp, or so he says. They’ll show you exactly what eateries are within spitting distance, but hang out in certain parts of the city and you’re likely to see your list of results cluttered with repetitive names.

Not so with NoChains — right now, the app plays home to menu data for hundreds of restaurants across the city, which works out to between 400,000 and 500,000 menu items that the service keeps track of. The team’s approach was a simple one: the founding team leaned heavily on Elance and Amazon’s Mechanical Turk to feed those menu items and prices into the NoChains backend.

All that would mean very little if the app itself wasn’t terribly easy to mess around with (not to mention rather handsome). Once you’ve selected one of the four launch markets, you’re immediately taken to a landing screen that cycles through different recommendations for notable nearby eats. Hankering for something specific? A small slider with common food choices (think pizza, burgers, barbecue, fish, dessert) sit just below those rotating recommendations, as does a search bar to help accommodate your more esoteric desires. One touch brings up a map of local eateries too, in case you’re hungry enough to settle for whatever happens to be close by.

The only real issue at this point is that the app is so new, there are very few user recommendations to be found for New York restaurants. It’s precisely that sort of social proof from native city-dwellers that will ultimately help NoChains become a trusted source for food recommendations, but the team still has a ways to go before it gets to that point. That said, there’s a strong case for using NoChains purely as a menu app for a large swath of the city’s restaurants (that’s how I’ve been using it these past few days), and as more people see that sort of value in it, the more likely they’ll stick around and drop hints about what’s good and what’s garbage.
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