London’s Tech Investors Start Moving East To “Silicon Roundabout”

The areas around Old Street tube station, Shoreditch and Hoxton, just North of London’s Square Mile and on the border of East London, have come to be known, lightheartedly, as Silicon Roundabout, given that there is now a recognisable cluster of startups there. I’ve been tracking the trend since 2008. But what’s missing is the VCs. While, in Silicon Valley the VCs on Sand Hill Road are but a short drive from Palo Alto and Menlo Park, the VCs in London have preferred to stay in Mayfair, often close to the offices of the Limited Partners who back their funds. It’s not far away from Old Street – 3.2 miles – but it’s different in culture and scene. But to stay close to what’s happening in tech today it makes a lot of sense for investors to co-locate with the startups.

Leading the advance guard almost a year ago was White Bear Yard, a large space backed by three prominent Angel investors. But soon the area will be welcoming well-known startup accelerator programme Seedcamp, dubbed the Y Combinator of Europe by some. And today news reaches us that leading tech VC Index Ventures is to take some desks in the area, co-locating in Scrutton Street.


The Right Way To Work At Yahoo

“6:30a and I am on my way into the office for the first time since November. Man, time flies,” tweets Yahoo front end engineer Dav Glass. Dropping by the office once every 4-5 months and still getting a full time paycheck sounds like the life to me.

Glass lives in Illinois and has been working for Yahoo remotely for the last year. But he’s been with the company since 2006. He’s “one of the few talented front-end developers left there,” a former Yahoo employee tells me, adding “Yahoo is probably the best company to work for if you have above average talent and want to coast. You’ll stand out like crazy.”

I’m certainly not implying that Dav is just “phoning it in,” but I will say this: I love the way he’s set up his work life. I may try something like that myself.

Information provided by CrunchBase


Roundup: Rugged Flash Drives


Flash drives are a dime a dozen these days, so if you’re going to actually spend money on one, it may as well be one that can take a little abuse. After all, if you plan on having it with you everywhere you go, there’s a good chance this thing is going to get dropped, sat on, spilled on, and otherwise beaten up.

The big flash drive sellers all have entries in this category, some newer than others. I thought it’d be worth taking a closer look at these to see whether they live up to their rugged pedigree, and whether that pedigree is worth the money to begin with. Here we check out devices from Corsair, Imation, Kingston, And LaCie.

Continue reading…


Keen On… Bob Metcalfe: No, Bob, The Internet Isn’t About to Collapse (TCTV)

In 2000, Internet pioneer Bob Metcalfe published a book entitled Internet Collapses and Other InfoWorld Punditry. Eleven years later, you can buy used copies of Internet Collapses for $0.01 on Amazon.

But while Bob Metcalfe may have been wrong about the collapse of the Internet, he’s been right about many many other things. Metcalfe not only invented the Ethernet in 1973 (and, by extension, wi-fi as wireless Ethernet), but he also has an eponymous Law named after him – the famous Metcalfe’s Law about the power of the network – as well as being the founder of 3COM, a one-time publisher of InfoWorld, a general partner at the Boston based Polaris Ventures and currently a Professor of Innovation at the University of Texas at Austin.

So it was a real thrill for me to sit down with Metcalfe to talk not only about his invention of the Ethernet and Metcalfe’s Law, but also about what most worries him about the robustness of today’s Internet. And while Metcalfe not longer believes that the Internet is about to collapse, he remains worried about its security threats, particularly from organized criminals and hackers.

And check back tomorrow for the second part of this two part interview when Metcalfe explains why there’s a social networking bubble and what sectors of the Internet economy he believes are just about to take off.

Pioneer of the Internet

No, the Internet Didn’t Collapse


Exclusive: Flashy Website Creator Wix Raises $40 Million

Israeli startup Wix, which allows users to build flash websites, has just raised $40 million in Series D funding led by Insight Venture Partners and DAG ventures, with Benchmark Capital, Bessemer Venture Partners and Mangrove Capital Partners participating in the round. This brings Wix’s total
funding to $61 million.

Founded in 2006, Wix provides a simple mechanism for anyone to create Flash-based websites. Users can customize their Wix websites with a drag and drop editing tool and pretty templates, making the site user-friendly for users who may not be tech savvy. The site makes its money from a freemium model where users pay for extra customization and design features.

Over the course of 2010 Wix, which has nine million users, has doubled in size and the company added a West-coast branch to its existing Tel Aviv and New York offices. To date, Wix has developed 8.5 million individual sites.

But making a big bet on flash websites is a risk when you consider mobile. Many companies are scrapping Flash all together and betting on HTML5. Wix founder and CEO Avishai Abrahami tells us that Flash is the best platform for websites being viewed on PCs and other computers but that Wix will be rolling out a mobile site creator in the next few months, which will leverage HTML5 technology for mobile devices (a.k.a. will work on iOS devices). The company is also launching a Facebook application that allows users to integrate Wix websites with their fan pages.

The new funding will be used towards Wix’s new social and mobile product launches in the coming months. Wix faces competition from Weebly and Yola.

Information provided by CrunchBase


LinkedIn Uses Food Trucks And Free Coffee To Advertise Social News Platform

LinkedIn is using the food truck phenomenon to publicize the launch of its new social news product, LinkedIn Today. In San Francisco and New York, LinkedIn has hired food trucks to give away coffee at locations around both cities.

The trucks, which you can follow on Twitter here, are emblazoned with advertisements for LinkedIn Today. Similar to the way that food trucks use Twitter to advertise their locations, the LinkedIn Today trucks will be posting their locations in San Francisco and New York, for the entire week on the account.

As we wrote in our initial coverage of the new product, LinkedIn Today delivers the top stories you need to know from your professional network and industry. The social news platform aggregates the most shared news from professionals in your network and allows you to sharestories with your network, specific professionals or on Twitter.

It looks like LinkedIn is ramping up its marketing efforts as it prepares for a public offering in the coming months. Last week, LinkedIn co-founder and chairman Reid Hoffman sent a personalized note to the network’s early users, thanking the first 100,000 and million users for supporting the network in its early days.

Information provided by CrunchBase


An Incubator From Down Under: Meet StartMate’s First Batch of Aussie Startups

Last year, a group of Australian startup veterans and executives created Startmate, a seed fund and incubator designed to provide small, early-stage investment and hands-on mentoring to local startups.

Bringing the Y Combinator model to Australia, Startmate chooses 5 startups to participate in its 3-month incubator program. It then seeds those 5 companies with $25,000 and offers them access to its impressive list of mentors, which includes Mike Cannon-Brookes and Scott Farquhar, the founders of the software company Atlassian that last year raised $60 million in funding from Accel Partners.

Startmate’s 3-month program includes two demo days, one in Sydney and one in Silicon Valley, and culminates in a two-week trip to Silicon Valley, in which the startups are introduced to American investors.

The startups are currently in the midst of their American tour and are slated to stay in Silicon Valley through March 30th, though some have elected to prolong their stay, said Startmate co-founder Niki Scevak. Silicon Valley tends to have that effect.

For those interested in meeting the Aussie startups, they will be attending a panel hosted by StartMate mentor and VP of Marketing at stylepage.com Julia French and serial Aussie entrepreneur Martin Wells on Monday night at Pier 38 in San Francisco. For tickets to the event, click here. The panel is free and begins at 7pm.

So, here, in no particular order, is a look at the five graduates of Startmate’s inaugural batch:

    Chorus: Chorus is a customer service tool that allows businesses to prioritize its customer service emails based on level of anger and potential PR fallout.

    Thus, Chorus attempts to draw meaning from the 10 billion emails that are sent to customer support departments every year. These departments are bombarded by an avalanche every day, and all they can do is try replying as fast as possible, without any intelligence into which issues are the most important, what the changing trends are, and how customers’ relationship with a company changes over time.

    Chorus lets companies reply to the angriest emails first, decrease risk of bad PR on social networks, and predict future trends and sentiment. The goal: more customer love.

    BugHerd: Aimed at designers and developers alike, BugHerd is a bug tracker that overlays on a webpage, allowing the entire team to log and manage bugs visually, without leaving the page they’re working on. Users can flag and annotate an HTML element on their website and share that issue with the rest of the team.

    A simple change request usually requires the user to take a screen shot, mark out the problem area, write a description, upload the image, and fill out a form, etc — a time-consuming and annoying process for most bug trackers. Most bug-tracking tools out there are, generally speaking, aimed at engineers who want to know every little detail, so BugHerd seeks to provide a tool that works for both non-technical and technical users alike. Embedding directly into your website, BugHerd flags and manages bugs visually without the need to fill out lengthy forms or annotate screengrabs, logging them in as little as 5 seconds. BugHerd is currently in open beta.

    Noosbox: Noosbox is an add-on for Gmail that helps you share and search emails with your work colleagues. Once installed, every conversation has a “share” button which will make that important conversation visible to your coworkers, as well as making the information in it searchable and discoverable. Teams using Noosbox can quickly build up a powerful shared feed of information about the conversations, contacts, organisations they deal with every day with very little effort.

    Co-founders Andrew Jessup, Phil Lee and Tim Lucas said that Noosbox rose out of their frustration with the fact that, no matter how tech-savvy their past employers were and no matter how many organization tools they used, all of the important information they needed to keep track of just ended up in their inboxes. So, rather than trying to replace email with some other tool, Noosebox sets out simply to extend it. The startup is currently in private beta.

    Grabble: A free Android and iPhone app, Grabble allows you to record and store your receipts on your phone so that you don’t have to keep track of those pesky paper copies. With Grabble, you can capture your paper receipts using QR codes or grab your receipt directly from a checkout line. Once the transaction is complete, you can choose to print, or not, and then quickly export to your financial applications. Or, if you want to return an item, you can show the salesperson the receipt and authorize the return there in person.

    IRL Gaming: IRL Gaming makes location based, social games for mobile and web-enabled devices. The company’s first app, “Zombies: In Real Life” is a location-based survival game for the iPhone that uses the real-world as the playing surface. In Zombies: IRL, your town is a horror movie, and you and your friends can compete or cooperate to save your town from the wrestless zombie hordes.

    Via the location-based app, players enter real-world venues to battle the undead, while seeking out food, weapons and medical supplies to help their friends survive. Gamers must fight to reclaim their neighborhood from the zombies, one infested venue at a time.


Jack Dorsey Takes Over Product Again At Twitter As Executive Chairman

Jack Dorsey is back at Twitter in a big way. He just tweeted that he is now taking on the lead product role at Twitter, the company he co-founded and where he’s remained as chairman. To reflect his new operating role, his title will now be executive chairman. Dorsey will remain CEO of Square.

News that Dorsey was negotiating with Twitter for an expanded role came out last week. There was some speculation that he might even take the CEO spot, but it is very difficult to be the CEO of two technology companies at the same time and Dorsey is “200%” committed to Square. All you have to do is watch this video to see how much he cares about building great products. And now he will be doing that at both Twitter and Square, while leaving the business side of Twitter to CEO Dick Costolo.

Dorsey stepped down from the CEO spot at Twitter in 2008, when he was replaced by Evan Williams. Williams subsequently handed over the CEO title to Dick Costolo, ostensibly so that he could focus on the product. But Williams supposedly hasn’t been around that much. When Williams stepped down, that opened the door for Dorsey to expand his role (there was some bad blood between the two), which is what’s happening now.

Twitter is now five years old. Dorsey recently put out some nostalgic Tweets about how the product got started. Today, Twitter is a different beast with more than 200 million users and an array of products (Web, mobile, tablets) that must be best-of-breed. Twitter began much more simply by providing the underlying service and encouraging other developers to build clients and features. The relationship with outside developers is now strained. Will Dorsey work to repair and reinvigorate those ties or focus more on making Twitter’s own products the only ones people need?

Jack Dorsey@jack
Jack Dorsey

Today I'm thrilled to get back to work at @Twitter leading product as Executive Chairman. And yes: leading @Square forevermore as CEO. #200%

about 9 hours ago via Twitter for iPhoneRetweetReply


Zapd Creates Themed Websites Right From Your Phone

Tumblr and Posterous showed the world that making blogging simpler makes it more accessible. Both make also make it really easy to publish from your phone. Now Zapd, a new service from Seattle startup Pressplane, wants to take it one step further and let you create websites right from your phone.

Zapd is an iPhone app that lets you create a themed, well-designed, mobile-friendly website in 60 seconds. You pick a theme, snap a photo, add a caption, and if you want you can even write a little text (don’t strain yourself). When you publish the site or a new entry, you can share a short URL with your friends via Twitter, Facebook, or email. (You can also sign in with your Facebook ID). I tried it and it literally took me a few minutes to create these two sites, Seeking and The Truth.

“We’re trying to demonstrate a glimpse into the future of web publishing,” says CEO Kelly Smith. “It will start from your phone. Not the other way around.” All editing is done on the iPhone (although browser-based editing will come soon). The sites are optimized for tablet and phone browsers, supporting landscape mode and swiping templates. And you can change themes on the fly right from your phone. The app comes with a bunch to choose from.

Pressplane’s other product is Inkd, a graphic design marketplace for business cards, brochures, and other printed designs. The company raised $1.7 million in 2008 and more recently another $400,000 to launch Zapd. Investors include Mika Salmi (formerly of MTV Networks and founder of Atom Entertainment), who is also the company’s new chairman, Mike Slade, and Zillow CEO Rich Barton.


Some Day 1 Verizon iPad 2 Orders Still MIA Despite Immediate Payment Withdraw, Overnight Shipping Promises

Hell hath no fury like an Apple fanboy scorned. Verizon is just now starting to feel the rage previously directed at just AT&T. That’s what happens when iPad 2 orders fail to ship on time. Fanboys take to the forums and unleash the beast.

There’s a large thread of complaints over on Verizon’s official forum that details most of the transgressions. It seems that more than a few customers where promised their iPad 2 would ship either immediately or within 2-3 days upon ordering. That’s not the case. It’s more like 2-3 weeks for some but according to two separate trusted Verizon retail sources, that was the same estimated shipping window given on day 1.

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Shoparatti: Another Daily Deal Aggregator (But Curated By Melissa Rivers!)

Exclusive – There’s a ton of daily deal sites out there, and we’ve seen a bunch of daily deal aggregators pop up in the past few months, too. Today sees the launch of yet another one of those, dubbed Shoparatti.

A ‘one-stop destination for busy online shoppers’, Shoparatti’s claim to fame is its semi-famous editor-in-chief Melissa Rivers, daughter of comedian and actress Joan Rivers.

Rivers and her team of editors will scour more than 100 daily deal web sites and showcase the best offers they can find through Shoparatti.com, Facebook and an iPhone app. According to the press release, Rivers will be drawing upon her “expertise in spotting trends in lifestyle, entertainment and fashion” to make her Shoparatti selections.

Yipit and 8coupons needn’t worry too much at this point, though.

“As a mom and passionate shopper I know what it’s like to spend hours hunting down the best deals on the web; it’s frustrating and time consuming,” said Rivers. “Everyone knows I love shopping, not to mention getting a deal and telling my friends about the great deal I just got.”

Barf.

We’d be somewhat excited about the news if endorsements of involvement from celebrities ever helped a startup succeed in the cutthroat e-commerce industry, but alas. Also, why would anyone boast about the fact that ‘everyone’ knows how much he or she loves shopping?


McAfee: Change In Corporate Culture Leaves Businesses Vulnerable To Hackers

McAfee, the computer security company, has issued a fresh warning to the world’s corporations and other large organizations. The firm has warned that hackers now have these bodies fully in their sights, and that a combination of the de-centralization of the workplace (thanks to to proliferation of mobile devices and the like) and the move to the cloud means in-house security technicians have their work cut out for them. And since there’s a market out there for stolen corporate secrets, you can bet that the bad guys aren’t going to stop anytime soon.

Read more…


Offer Software

This software/app will calculate an offer based on inputted numbers and keep a database of offers, counter offers, project details, pictures, etc. Once the information is inputted, the software needs to have the ability to provide a pdf report of all the details. The mobile application should allow values and generate an offer based on inputted values in same way as the software. The mobile application and the software should be synced to provide consistency between applications.

Joomla Added Functions – Flash Banner And Portfolio Page

I have a new website that is about 80% complete. The site is done Joomla. The initial designer did not finish the work and I am now looking for someone who can do this well and finish the site.

What needs to get done:

1. Make the flash banner on the homepage exactly or similar to the homepage of this website – http://www.bluefountainmedia.com/

2. Create a portfolio page that is sectioned into (Web Design, Graphic Design, and Logo Design)… I want the portfolio page similar to..
http://www.bluefountainmedia.com/portfolio/websites

I like how you can click on the image and a pop up shows up that details more information about the site. A pop up is OK or goes to another page.

If you can’t do this, please show an example of what you can do. Again this is just a sample – doesnt have to be the same. Just a sample.

Please send a sample of similar work.

Need Meta Title Keywords Description For 40 Domains Seo

Based on the provided list of forex (currency trading) domain names we need you to create an excel sheet with the following details

DOMAIN NAME, TITLE, KEYWORD, DESCRIPTION

You will need to have experience in keyword research and SEO according to google terms & conditions to avoid any violations.

we will give priority to users who have experience with setting up forex affiliate websites. please indicate if you have experience in large scale affiliate program setup/structure. our client wants to use some 1000 forex names to refer traffic to up to 10 forex firms and generate income based on click/referral.

We need to know how much traffic each of our domains generate if possible using google analytics or similar for 5000 domains. those 10 forex firms will provide us with their own affiliate statistics but we prefer if we can see our own stats independently.

This job however is ONLY for providing 40 x META TITLE, KEYWORD, DESCRIPTION for the attached domain list.

your bid amount must make sense based on your previous bidding history.