Category: Tech news

Editor’s note: Contributor Ashkan Karbasfrooshan is the founder and CEO of WatchMojo, he hosts a show on business and has published books on success.  Follow him @ashkan.

“Where do you get the time to write so much as a company CEO, and more importantly, shouldn’t you be closing deals or doing something more useful?”

Fair enough.

Do What Comes Naturally To You

Some entrepreneurs are technologists, others are salespeople, a few are storytellers.

The best coders don’t stop coding even if they run the company.

The best cooks never stop cooking even when they open their restaurant.

Musicians are always jamming no matter what.

Similarly, a storyteller doesn’t put the pen down because he’s in pursuit of profit, too.  He finds a way to marry the two.  If you enjoy writing and happen to be the CEO, then it’s a marriage made in heaven if you can balance your duties.  Regardless of your craft, once you’re an entrepreneur, you’re the eternal cheerleader, finding yourself shilling one thing or another.  It comes with the territory.

When it comes to writing articles – be it on industry publications or on your company/personal blog – it’s actually ineffective to come across as a booster.  You’re better off developing your voice as a contrarian that highlights the macro opportunity in a more realistic and sober way.

If you can pull that off, writing will pay dividends, but you will have to address the odd doubter who may wonder if you’re wasting your time writing.

The Obvious Reasons for Blogging

#1 – Own Thyself

Anthony Robbins put it best when he said: “We’re defined by the stories we tell ourselves.”  Indeed, in a world where others’ perception of you is a function of a Google query, you need to own your online presence, especially as we move away from the Algorithm to an increasingly social world.

#2 – Influence, Authority, and Brand

Value is driven by goodwill (defined simply as the value of your brand).  Brand building is an exercise done through B2B and B2C initiatives.  B2B tools include trade advertising, press releases, the conference circuit as well as writing about the industry you’re in (and as the CEO of a startup, lessons in entrepreneurship and management, as well).

You are competing with many others, some of whom the press will be more enamored with.  PR is one of the tools in your arsenal to level the playing field.  However, the industry’s three worst-kept secrets are:

–          Press releases are ineffective and generally viewed as noise.

–          Blogs are always looking for more content, so they tend to welcome new guest authors.

–          Traditional industry publications are seeing their resources reduced, so they will rely on social media and writers on blogs more than ever, creating an opportunity for you to land on big name websites.

In any case, once they decide to start writing, initially many executives offer their worldview on their company blogs.  This is a sound strategy early-on as you test the waters and hone your style and skill.  Before long, publishing on your own blog yields diminishing returns as you won’t cut through the clutter.

As you migrate to publishing on third-party sites, you have to invest the time to embrace and learn the sites’ editorial voice.  Then, once you clear that hurdle, you face a cynical audience that assumes you’re merely shilling.  To win them over, you need at least three things: impartiality, authority and repetition, but oftentimes to accomplish any success you need to invest way too much time.  It certainly is worth it though, in ways you may find surprising.

Less Well-Known Benefits of Becoming the Chief Pontificator

#3 – Leave Your Staff Alone

The cardinal sin many CEOs make is micromanaging and suffocating talented employees.  Worst even, many try to manage what they don’t understand.  This isn’t always a result of ego or bad faith.  True, some CEOs have a tendency to think they are the lord’s gift to management and their “hands-on” experience knows no boundaries and as such they over-extend themselves.  But frequently it’s because they’re bored.

#4 – Bide your time

Everything takes longer than anticipated.  You submit a proposal, then wait.  You ask one of your lieutenants to work on something, then wait.

More often than not, CEOs find themselves waiting even though few would be considered patient.  As such, CEOs look for things to focus their attention to.   Effective blogging will keeping a CEO busy and avoid him from micromanaging staff and lieutenants, allowing even the best of teams the time and freedom to do their job.

Externally, conventional wisdom suggests that you spend all of your time closing deals.  But, the fact is: blogging will be the best lead generator you can imagine, and the point isn’t to sign as many deals as possible, it’s to sign the right deals under the right terms.  Developing a reputation as an industry leader will enable that.

#5 – Efficiency

CEOs field the same questions and repeat answers to multiple stakeholders all the time.

Verbal communication is undervalued these days, but people don’t listen, so sending an article that you wrote (and one that was published on a leading and respected publication) is a powerful way to convey the message.

Blogging is also far more efficient and effective than attending conferences.  As one industry acquaintance once told me, conferences are akin to AA meetings where you sit around and realize everyone else has the same problems you do.  Pick an industry, any industry – chances are that if you compare the speaker and panelists you will find the same people across the board.  Writing on a big platform allows you to reach far more people than attending conferences will, and it will save you tens of thousands of dollars.

#6 – Shutting Up

The best part of writing so much is that when you meet people, there’s a good chance they’ve read your work, so you can shut up and listen, letting others do the talking because you don’t need to shill and give them your pitch.

#7 – Learn

To publish, you not only need to research your topic, but you need to distill a lot of information into a coherent and cohesive argument or summary.  But the true learning starts after you press publish and readers chime in via email, in the comments section and on counter-posts.

Yes, Writing is Risky (but so is eating shellfish, get over it)

A word to the wise:

–          You want to avoid giving your team the impression that you’re communicating through [the Word]Press (even when you are).

–          People will misinterpret you.  That’s their problem, not yours.  But be prepared for it.

–          You can divulge too much (perhaps, but no one really cares about you that much anyway).

–          Sure, it’s nice to build your personal brand, but the focus ought to be on the company – 100% of the time.

There are risks, but writing is one way to strike balance against the rigors of entrepreneurship.  After all, if you wake up in the morning and are greeted with bad news, don’t worry too much because you’re bound to get worst news later on in the day.  And if ever you are greeted with some good news, enjoy it cause it won’t last, something is bound to go awry.  That’s the startup life.  It’s the end result that matters most (while the journey is a learning experience to you, too).  Writing gives you the perspective to be able to see through the trees.

To quote Steve Jobs, “you can’t connect the dots looking forward“, but provided writing comes naturally to you, then over time you look back and realize why it always made sense.

When it’s said and done, blogging is a means to an end, so long as it helps you accomplish your objectives, keep writing no matter what some may say.  Eventually you realize you no longer need to blog.  Then, you can put the pen down and step away from the machine, (or not).

Doing meetups and attending conferences is great for uncovering new startups and entrepreneurs, but sometimes you just want to sit down over coffee for a few minutes and explain what you’re doing. So I’m starting a new series of one-to-one sessions which will hopefully be fairly regular (schedule allowing). I’ll be doing “Open Office Hours” sessions at various locations associated with startups, and as I’m based in London that’s where I’ll mainly be doing them. The idea is you apply for a slot and wait for confirmation. This isn’t about long meetings, it’s more about getting a quick heads-up and then following up later. Next week I’ll be at startup space White Bear Yard, home to Passion Capital and a number of their startups. You can sign up for a slot here. The next session after that will be at Innovation Warehouse, slots here. To follow other sessions, here’s my OHours profile or follow me on Twitter, Facebook or Google+.

If a consumer mobile fad comes and goes, and you don’t play consolidation musical chairs, what do you do next?

This is kind of what happened to Kik, a Canadian startup that took off with the explosive growth of its messaging app last year. Amid the hype around messaging, Kik raised $8 million in funding from RRE Ventures, Spark Capital and Union Square Ventures. Not too long after, Kik’s rivals Beluga and GroupMe got acquired in some respectable (but not crazy huge) deals by Facebook and Skype last year.

Meanwhile, Kik has stayed independent and is charting a completely different course.

About two months ago, they launched Clik, a mobile app that lets you control a TV right from your phone. There are a few steps to making it work, but the major plus to Clik is that it doesn’t require additional hardware. You point your desktop or smart TV browser at ClikThis.com, which generates a unique QR code (a two-dimensional barcode). Then you open the Clik iPhone or Android app, aim the camera at the screen, and the phone syncs to the TV or computer. Once they’re connected, you can use your phone like a remote control to play YouTube videos on your TV.

You can see a demo here:

So now the company has two major products under its belt: the messaging app Kik and the TV app Clik. There are no plans to spin either product out of the company.

Chief executive Ted Livingston says this isn’t a pivot. Really.

Kik is very much alive and well with 10 million registered users and 1 billion messages sent per month. It’s maintained a Top 25 ranking in the social networking category in the U.S., according to App Annie, and it currently has a better rank than high-profile apps like Path and Foursquare. The issue is that messaging is a service that could be easily cannibalized by Apple’s iMessages, Facebook Messenger or any change in the way the carriers handle SMS.

But the company’s other product Clik addresses a real hole in the market because most TV controllers are horribly designed. That’s the part that has a real revenue opportunity.

Plus, Clik has attracted interest from more than 100 potential partners that want to explore using it for video or gaming. “Clik has had huge response from developers who see it as a white-label version of Apple’s AirPlay,” Livingston said.

Since Kik has the user base that most mobile developers could only dream of having, the idea is to use Kik to cross-promote and seed Clik’s usage. “We think that Kik will provide viral distribution for Clik,” Livingston said. “We look at Kik as a way to get content from person to person and Clik as a way to get content from person to screen.”

Livingston says that Clik is actually a return to the company’s original vision. You see, back when the company started in 2009, it had the vision of making music very easy to play and share between phones and desktop computers. But licensing from the music labels is a pain, so they used the technology to build a messaging app instead.

Now that messaging has had its moment in the sun, it’s time to move on.

“We always thought that group messaging was a fad,” Livingston said. “We never looked at Kik as a social network. We always looked at it as a way to get content from person-to-person.”

Livingston has shown off Clik in a couple different ways. You can use it to send a YouTube playlist on your TV directly from your smartphone. You can also use Clik to play a game on a TV using an iPhone or Android device as the controller, which has piqued the interest of game developers.

“We’re looking at the entire stack and how to enable pre-existing experiences to be transferred from the phone to the browser,” he said. Kik should remain free indefinitely, but there will probably be some kind of freemium revenue model behind Clik for partners.

And if Apple launches an iTV? Well, that’s just extra marketing for Clik, since Apple would probably pursue a closed solution that would only work on its devices.

“The rumors around the Apple TV and awareness around AirPlay has been great for us,” he said. “We let you connect any phone to any screen and we’re open.”

Facebook today explained why it has taken a positive stance on the Cyber Intelligence Sharing and Protection Act, or “CISPA”, bill currently under consideration in the United States Congress. The social networking company is one of a group of tech companies that have announced support for CISPA — Microsoft, Oracle, Intel, IBM, and Symantec are also among its backers.

In a post today on the official blog for Facebook’s Washington D.C. office, the company’s U.S. public policy VP Joel Kaplan wrote that there are a number of bills being considered by Congress at the moment that would notify companies like Facebook when the US government knows there is a “critical threat” of a cyber attack. Facebook is supporting CISPA, he said, in part because it would not make Facebook share any more of its own data than is currently required:

“A number of bills being considered by Congress, including the Cyber Intelligence Sharing and Protection Act (HR 3523), would make it easier for Facebook and other companies to receive critical threat data from the U.S. government. Importantly, HR 3523 would impose no new obligations on us to share data with anyone –- and ensures that if we do share data about specific cyber threats, we are able to continue to safeguard our users’ private information, just as we do today.”

Kaplan did acknowledge the criticism that CISPA has attracted from those who say the bill is along the same lines as SOPA in terms of the potential threat to individual privacy and freedom on the web (the reasons for this scrutiny are articulated pretty well by this Lifehacker post.) SOPA was, of course, the proposed anti-piracy legislation that ultimately foundered after coming under incredibly intense scrutiny from the tech community and beyond. Critics say Facebook’s support of CISPA is suspect, considering that the company came out publicly against SOPA. But Kaplan vowed that Facebook is committed to defending its users privacy, and that its support for CISPA is in line with that value:

“…we recognize that a number of privacy and civil liberties groups have raised concerns about the bill – in particular about provisions that enable private companies to voluntarily share cyber threat data with the government. The concern is that companies will share sensitive personal information with the government in the name of protecting cybersecurity. Facebook has no intention of doing this and it is unrelated to the things we liked about HR 3523 in the first place — the additional information it would provide us about specific cyber threats to our systems and users.

The overriding goal of any cybersecurity bill should be to protect the security of networks and private data, and we take any concerns about how legislation might negatively impact Internet users’ privacy seriously. As a result, we’ve been engaging directly with key lawmakers as well as industry and consumer groups about potential changes to the bill to help address privacy concerns.”

There will certainly be more developments here as time goes on, but one thing seems for certain: The government has set its sights on the world wide web, and more legislation is coming to the space one way or another. Here’s hoping the larger tech industry is not too fatigued from its fight against SOPA and PIPA — it will be important to stay vigilant about the potential impact of the bills that are yet to come.

If you oppose Facebook’s backing of CISPA, there is a petition to ask the company to rescind its support for the bill here.

The heart of Jeff Bezos’ mission has always to circumvent the traditional “gatekeepers” of commerce. He started with books, an industry ripe for disruption, and moved onto, well, everything else. At this point, his vision has come true. The old gatekeepers in the book sales cycle are on the ropes and electronics companies are already planning to collude in order to maintain a “minimum” accepted price, thereby ensuring Amazon doesn’t eat all of their lunch.

But Amazon is hungry and, like Plainview, they have a long straw. They won’t just eat the world’s lunch, they’ll drink its milkshake, too.

The recent lawsuits against Apple and various publishers are a testament to Amazon’s power. Publishers won’t accept that their product can be sold at Amazon’s prices and Amazon won’t accept that the product can’t be sold at a price that reflects the market. We are, after all, just talking bits shipped to devices and $1,000 made in 1,000 ninety-nine cent increments is the same as $1,000 made in one-hundred $10 increments. Amazon, for the longest time, served as a final lifeline for the paper publishing industry and it seems that this legal move is a way to strip the last vestige of respect from those gatekeepers who, for far too long, made the sale of ideas a process of getting widgets onto shelves. Like the CD makers before them, they just don’t want to give up what has served the industry for so long and so lucratively.

But this is just the beginning. In his letter to investors, Bezos writes:

Arguably, Bezos isn’t a very sympathetic character. His company makes a lot of money and, if we really thought about it enough, we’d realize that he’s a bigger threat to the Mom and Pop stores than even Wal-Mart. At least Wal-Mart helps rural areas retain a sense of community. Amazon is a black box – money in, products delivered. You could live off of Amazon and never leave your house, given enough patience and a good bit of cash.

But it’s this mentality – that you don’t need to roll down to Borders for a book or a movie, that you don’t need to hit the student book exchange to get fleeced on a statistics textbook – that really makes sense in a world where most discourse and commerce is happening online anyway. To hold onto the old ways for sake of the old ways is conservative, to be sure, but it’s also a suicide pact with the writers and creators you’re championing.

Even more than Jobs, Bezos is intent on blowing up the publishing industry. Tim Carmody at Wired writes “He doesn’t care whether Apple, publishers or anyone else stands in the way,” and this is absolutely true. Call him a zealot, but when’s the last time you drove down to the local bookstore and didn’t think that soon this empire of the mind would be gone, replaced by something Gutenberg wouldn’t couldn’t fathom in his wildest imagination? Heck, when’s the last time you drove down to the local bookstore at all?

Nokia certainly didn’t waste any time when it came to fixing that pesky data connection bug that popped up in a few first-run Lumia 900s. Just two days after Nokia acknowledged the issue and pledged to make things right, they’ve already made that critical update available to those in need. In case you were keeping track, that’s a full three days before Nokia promised to have the fix in the field.

Not too shabby, Nokia.

The cynic in me wants to say that the Finnish phone giant could have talked up the original date in order to give understandably upset customers a pleasant surprise, but all that really matters is that the update is out and the Lumia 900′s first crisis is over. If you haven’t already swapped out for handset for a less screwy one, all it takes to perform the update is plug it into your computer — if you’ve already got the Zune software (for PCs) or the Windows Phone 7 Connector (for Mac) installed, you’ll be prompted to update and that’s that.

Those of you on the fence about buying a Lumia 900 may as well bite the bullet now. Nokia’s rather awesome $100 bill credit will continue to run until the 21st and a little scouting around will ensure that you fiscally come out ahead. Perhaps more importantly, customers didn’t have to rely on AT&T for a fix, a trend that hopefully continues for any major updates that should come down the line. AT&T has proven themselves to be a little lax when it comes to pushing updates to Windows Phones, but with Nokia once again gunning for some American limelight, they may try and fill in any of those gaps themselves.

Photo by Jon Snyder/Wired

Half the fun of having an adventure is torturing your friends by forcing them to sit through the hours of video you shot. Here’s a camera that makes the experience less torturous for everyone — for your friends especially, but also for you, because it will make you look like a badass when you trot out the visual proof of your insane bike jumps and daring backcountry tree runs, all rendered in glorious HD.

We’ve seen a boom in POV (“point-of-view”) cameras over the last few years. These cameras are made to be attached to your body or your conveyance so they can be operated hands-free. Helmet-mounting a POV camera is very popular — when you turn your head the camera turns too. So when the video is played back, the viewer gets to experience your various stupid human tricks as if he or she was watching the events through your eyes.

Contour is one of the biggest names in POV cameras, and the company is really shooting for the sky with its Contour+ HD. Its 3.8-inch frame is packed with features: a 170-degree wide-angle f/2.8 lens, 1080p, 960p or 720p HD recording modes and a 5-megapixel photo setting, a housing that rotates up to 270 degrees for off-kilter and inverted mounting, a mini HDMI output that plugs directly into a monitor, and a mic plug for an external microphone. And that’s just what’s provided for recording.

There are a variety of mounts to let you attach the 5.3-ounce camera to helmets, snowboard goggles, surfboards, wakeboards, bikes or cars, among other options. I tried it in a number of scenarios, as you can see in this video compilation.

One of the best features of the Contour+ is that instead of a recording button, it uses a huge slider on the top. This may seem like a minute detail, but the 2-inch slider is much easier to use than a button when you’re wearing heavy gloves. More importantly, it makes the camera’s recording status obvious. Some POV cameras use a button to start and stop the recording, followed by a series of cryptic beeps that let you now whether or not you’re rolling. Worse are the ones with a red LED that turns green when the camera’s recording. How am I supposed to see that when I’ve got the camera strapped to my head? (Never mind that I’m red/green colorblind, which has led to countless clips of me staring quizzically at the camera, trying to figure out if it’s recording). The beefy slider never leaves you wondering whether or not your death with be recorded for posterity.

Another great feature is the Contour+’s Bluetooth connectivity. When you download the corresponding app, you can connect your camera to your iOS or Android device. This turns your mobile device into a live viewfinder and lets you change your camera’s settings in the field. A nice touch: the app automatically shuts down when you start recording, so you’re not tempted to stare at the viewfinder while bombing down a hill.

An integrated GPS tracking system is activated when the camera turns on. The GPS antenna tracks your position, elevation, and speed. The GPS tracking really shines if you use Contour’s Storyteller software to edit your video and prep it for sharing. While your video plays, a smaller side window displays a Google satellite image of your location with the option to see a photo image, a topo map or a plain old road map. A dot tracks your movements while the video plays and displays your elevation and speed.

The camera only ships with a 2GB microSD card, and this limits the camera’s usefulness when you shoot in the highest-quality mode. Using the 1080p “Highest quality” setting, I got just over ten minutes of footage before the card filled up. It’s possible to upgrade to a 32GB microSD card, which holds about 8 hours of 1080p footage. That’s plenty of time to show all your friends how much fun they missed.

WIRED Crystal-clear 30fps picture with a 170-degree field of vision. Bluetooth controls and viewfinder are very handy. Giant sliding button makes it easy to know when you’re recording. Microphone input and streaming features turn you into a media mogul. Removable battery lasts about 2 hours, and spares are available for about $25 each.

TIRED No chest strap. Only comes with a 2GB card, which gets eaten up in minutes. If you want passable audio, plug in your own external mic.

Photo by Jon Snyder/Wired

For a small fraction of the car-buying public, price is irrelevant. These people simply see something they want and buy it, regardless of cost.

You may picture this demographic buying Ferraris, or Bugattis, or even mammoth quantities of more prosaic stuff (“Fifteen BMW M3s, one for every Caribbean island I own? Hell yes!”). And they do. But some of them buy Corvettes. And when they buy Corvettes, they do not buy the cheap ones. Because that would be silly. And slow.

They buy this: the $113,500, 638-hp Corvette ZR1.

Forget for a moment that the ZR1 costs more than any other new Corvette. In supercar terms, this is pennies; a Ferrari 458 is more than twice as expensive, a Bugatti Veyron Super Sport, over 10 times as much. Why, you ask, would the 1 percenters want something that plays at the bottom of the scale? Why bother with the cheap seats, even if that term is relative?

Simple: Supercars exist to provide insanity. And few mass-produced, warrantied machines are more insane than this.

Consider the alternatives. That 458? The chassis is flawless to the point of being distant, and you always get the feeling that the car hates you. Porsches? Almost universally lovely, but not as raw and toothsome as they once were. The Bugatti? A technological wonder and one of the fastest cars on earth, but it’s doing way more work than you are; a blindfolded Lindsay Lohan could break lap records with that thing, and she drives like a dead moose. There are Paganis and McLarens and Shelby SSCs and such, and they are all well and good, but they all come with caveats. Most are fiendishly impractical, emotionally dull, or both.

And then there’s the ZR1, which wants to both kill you and be your best friend. It also carries a 100,000-mile powertrain warranty, makes a hellacious noise, and looks much like an ordinary Corvette, so the cops won’t get suspicious. Happily, and unlike with most supercars, you can see out of it in traffic.

Words cannot describe the appeal.

The ZR1 is the biggest, baddest ‘Vette in Chevrolet’s arsenal. The supercharged 6.2-liter LS9 V-8 under the car’s carbon-fiber hood produces 638 hp and a massive 604 pound-feet of torque. Computer-controlled magnetorheological shocks — made by Delphi, and the same technology found on the Ferrari 599 GTB — are standard, as is a great deal of carbon-fiber bodywork, an aluminum frame shared with the base Corvette, and carbon-ceramic brakes. As on lesser Corvettes, a two-mode exhaust system keeps noise to a minimum unless you boot the throttle. Curb weight is a respectable 3,353 pounds, or roughly as heavy as a BMW 1-Series M Coupe, which makes about 300 fewer horsepower.

The ZR1 has been around since 2008, when it was introduced as a 2009 model. When Car and Driver tested one in late 2008, the magazine saw a 3.4-second sprint to 60 mph and a 7.6-second run to 100. Grip with the ZR1′s base tires is an astounding 1.07G. On a normal car, these numbers would be amazing. Coming from a machine that carries a 100,000-mile engine warranty, they are ridiculous.

There are few changes for 2012, save the addition of a $1,495 “High Performance Package” (kind of a redundant name, no?) that includes Michelin Pilot Sport Cup run-flat tires. For the uninitiated, this is what enthusiasts call an “R-compound” tire, DOT-certified street rubber that resembles a racing slick but is legal for road use. It offers more grip than the ZR1′s base tire, which is both ludicrous and awesome. The only penalty is a homicidal lack of grip when wet or cold. This is not an exaggeration. Want to die cold and fast? Drive a Sport-Cup-equipped ZR1 on a wintry mountain road, in the rain, with stability control off. If you live, pat yourself on the back and start buying lottery tickets.

Consider the engine. That blown V-8 dominates the ZR1 experience — there’s even a plastic window in the hood so you can look at it — to the point where you can think of nothing else while behind the wheel. But 638 hp? What do you do with that? Where do you go without breaking laws or bones? At what point do you find yourself wrapped around a tree, dead and grinning?

I spent one day with a 2012 ZR1 on public roads before the answers became obvious: Six hundred-plus ponies cannot be properly exercised on a highway. So you go to a track, as I did. You get comfortable with the car and its silly power, and then you turn traction control and the Corvette’s trick “active handling” stability-control system completely off (not counting full disable, there are five settings, from “Wet” to “Race”). And then you cackle until your face hurts, because you have just unlocked Darth Car, Evil Incarnate.

What we have here is simply a monster. In terms of user-friendly performance, durability, cost per mile, and longevity, the ZR1 might be the single most competent car on the planet. That hugely powerful engine idles like a Camry, only rocking or misfiring on the coldest of mornings. The throttle is long-throw and progressive, the better to meter out power without letting an involuntary leg twitch throw you into the nearest ditch. The twin-rotor Eaton supercharger whines a little as it builds boost, but the engine barely makes a sound around town. The adaptive shocks work wonders; they’re compliant and comfortable when needed, firm when not. Below 3000 rpm, you tend to forget you’re in anything other than a base Corvette ($50,575 and 430 hp, for the record).

So yes, you can be nice to the ZR1, and it likes that. Or you can nail the throttle, launching the tach needle into the next county. At which point the sky cracks open and your face melts, like that scene in Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade, only without the Nazis and a little more Holy Power of a Thousand Millennia raining down on upon humanity. Below 5500 rpm, the noise is a thundering boom. Above it, and all the way to the 6500-rpm redline, you hear nothing but a deafening, gut-trembling snarl, like a Stuka dive-bombing your lower intestine. It’s intoxicating. When you wake up, you’re two, maybe three time zones away, with no memory of what just happened. And a distinct desire to do it again, immediately.

For all the engine’s glory, however, the ZR1′s chassis is the real star. With the electronic aids on, the car is approachable and friendly and mean all at once. It cuts throttle in corners — a cool “bupbupbup” as cylinders are pulled — to keep sideways weirdness to a minimum. With everything off, the car is a flexible, diabolical contradiction. It desperately wants to frighten you but falls in line under a firm hand. It constantly begs for throttle and convinces you that you know what you’re doing, even if you don’t. It’s stiffly sprung but lets you hammer over track curbing and bumps like they aren’t even there. The carbon-ceramic brakes gain pedal travel when hot but never go away, repeatedly pulling you down from triple-digit speeds and returning to street duty without a hiccup. The six-speed gearbox is slick and easy to shift, clutch effort light and surprisingly friendly. The adaptive shocks adjust themselves from corner to corner, sopping up curbs and seemingly changing bump stiffness — and thus turn-in feel — at different speeds. It’s amazing.

The ZR1 is intimidating at first, long and impossibly wide. On the first lap of the day, you’re scared of it. By the last, you’re exiting 90-mph corners sideways without a care in the world. Supercars aren’t supposed to behave like this.

There are two inexcusable drawbacks. One, the ZR1′s seats are ferociously unsupportive, with no lateral restraint in corners and weird bracing that can make long trips painful. And two, interior quality, even with the optional 3ZR Premium Equipment Group ($10,000, leather-wrapped dash, navigation, et cetera), needs help. The average $40,000 Audi feels more finely crafted than this.

GM has hinted that the next Corvette, due in 2014, will solve some of these issues. Perhaps. Either way, they dull the car’s substantial shine.

I don’t know anything about the GM men and women behind the ZR1; what they look like, what their backgrounds are, nothing. But I would bet you solid money they wake up in the morning — every single one — and piss excellence. When all is said and done, this is the greatest mass-produced speed machine the world has ever seen. Dollar for dollar, it gets no better.

WIRED Makes 638 hp seem reasonable in the right conditions. Docile when you want it to be. Sounds amazing. Easy to see out of. Truly frightening if you try to use all that power on the street.

TIRED Interior quality needs work, and the seats stink. Exterior is an odd combination of tacky and ferocious, like Dame Edna on a bender. Truly frightening if you try to use all that power on the street.

Photos by Sam Smith/Wired

These bespoke speaker cabinets from Leon are crafted from cherry wood. Photo by Jon Snyder/Wired

Barring the occasional HDTV or high-end receiver, most home theater components aren’t much to look at. Especially speakers. More often than not, they’re black. They are boxy. And if you’re lucky, they may come with a nice glossy finish.

But for those who want to inject a little hi-fi sophistication into their living rooms, one company offers a unique service: an entire sound system hand-built to complement not just your flatscreen, but also your room decor or any other opulent design ideas you may have.

This white glove treatment comes courtesy of Leon, an Ann Arbor, Michigan-based speaker company that’s been specializing in bespoke audio systems for the better part of 15 years. If you were at CES this year (or the Wired Store last year), you may have come across one of the company’s more garish creations: the Trithon Reyn TV, a 40-inch LED flatscreen tucked inside a black walnut cabinet, mounted atop an antique surveyor’s tripod, and wrapped in 13 feet of python skin. This $35,000 modern-day relic is a more extreme example of what Leon does, but you get the idea.

I recently had the chance to try out one of the company’s more down-to-earth configurations — a setup that included the new HzUT-LCR sound bar (for my front soundstage), a pair of custom Detail Series Ds114-X-A surround speakers, and an A10-UT passive subwoofer paired with the company’s L3-1K amplifier. This alphanumeric orgy is also known as Leon’s 5.1 Ultra-thin Living Space Theater system. My particular configuration ended up running approximately $6,875. Customization, it turns out, is not cheap.

The whole process began the way it would for anyone else ordering from Leon: I gave the company the make and model of my HDTV (an LG 50PK950 plasma) and some basic design guidelines. It’s worth noting that Leon is capable of matching everything from specific paint swatches to wood builds on credenzas, should you know what you want up front. I didn’t. So while I love python skin and turn-of-the-century projection devices as much as the next guy, I decided to go with a more subdued design scheme for my system. To wit: wood. As the majority of the floors in my house are covered in it, I figured crafting the speakers out of a hunk of cherry might class up the joint a bit.

Mission accomplished. When everything arrived a few weeks later, I was greeted by one of the smartest-looking compact home theater systems I’ve seen. Whether it was the amp’s tank-like enclosure, the perfectly finished speaker cabinets, or the magnetically attached grills, the build quality on everything was nothing short of exquisite. For both the A10-UT sub and my surrounds, Leon used a piece of cherry wood, but also added a nice flourish in the form of beautiful dovetail spline joints on the edges. The entire design scheme looked great against the inlaid baffle on the surrounds, and the cherry ended up being perfect complement to the sleek black aluminum baffle on the sub.

As for the 20-pound L3-1K sub amp, it was another exercise in sleek minimalism. This 1,000-watt, class A/B amp has a tabletop or rack mountable design and comes with plenty of tweaking options, including a single-band parametric EQ, continuous phase control and frequency/gain control. Its heavy-duty steel chassis and brushed aluminum faceplate weren’t anything to scoff at either.

Subs are arguably some of the least-exciting components in any home theater setup, but the A10-UT was both thin and gorgeous. At 4.5-inches deep and armed with a 10-inch aluminum cone driver, it can fit into any number of cramped situations. Even better, it can be converted into a super thin, down-firing sub for covert placement under a couch or chair. My particular version was far too pretty to hide.

Finally, as advertised, the Horizon sound bar was also a perfect fit for my flatscreen. The streamlined cabinet, which matched the exact finish of my LG, is equipped with 2.5-inch aluminum cone woofers and 22mm cloth-dome tweeters, yet is still only 1.5 inches deep and 4 inches tall. All told, the system looked like it had been made specifically for my living room–a truly impressive feat considering the vagueness of my design guidance.

Chrome’s Fortnight pack. Photo by Ariel Zambelich/Wired

All swagger and charisma vanishes when you’re tugging luggage around the concourse at an airport. Between fanny packs stuffed with Purell and high-waisted money belts, it’s hard to look cool while traveling.

If it’s possible for anyone to jetset while retaining his dignity, even bad-assery, it’s John Cardiel. He’s a professional skateboarder, a vocation that’s forced him to log thousands of international travel hours. But Cardiel has also recently developed an affection for fixed-gear bikes after cycling helped him rehab from an accident. He has since befriended the fashionable folks at Chrome, makers of bags, shoes and other wearables designed for the urban cyclist.

Cardiel and Chrome have designed three bags bearing the skater-turned-cyclist’s name. Each model is a different size and has its own purpose, but all three bags can be used in concert for longer trips.

The Cardiel bags will appeal to those who prefer not to check any luggage, as the designs work best as carry-ons. That said, they’re only a good fit for those who, like me, practice a minimalist (bordering on ascetic) approach to packing for a trip.

The flagship of the Cardiel line is the Fortnight ($180), a standard-looking backpack with a zipper closure for the main compartment, which goes all the way around the bag. There are also several outer flaps and pockets for stowing the smaller stuff. As hinted by the bag’s name, the volume of storage would last a spartan bike rider two weeks. Whether or not you’ll get the same mileage depends on your material requirements, but I found 40 cubic liters of storage to be more than sufficient for a long weekend on the road. I didn’t skimp on the creature comforts, either, bringing a MacBook Air, several changes of clothes, work documents and a handful of power tools.

The problem with other backpacks (including some in Chrome’s line) is that when packed to the gills, the top of the bag rises up above the neckline, obscuring peripheral visibility. While riding on a busy street with a different high-sitting bag, I was overcome with paranoia that there was always somebody in my blind spot.

But the Fortnight sits comfortably low, affording a full view of the surroundings. A chest strap and padding on the back keeps the weight distributed evenly. Unfortunately, because Chrome built the pack with truck tarpaulin and Cordura to make it nearly indestructible, it has a bit too much extra weight. Empty, the Fortnight weighs almost four pounds — enough to keep you from feeling lithe while strapped in.

The Shank. Photo by Ariel Zambelich/Wired

After arrival, when you’ve stashed your gear next to the couch on which you’re crashing, the Shank hip pouch ($60) is there to carry the road essentials like tools, a phone, a wallet or a U-lock. I felt confident keeping delicate and expensive electronics in the pack while bicycling through a San Francisco rainstorm. The zippers are covered in waterproof urethane, and the outer shell is made of 1050 Cordura with 18-ounce truck tarpaulin liners — if you’ve seen Freitag’s shoulder bags, you’ll know this material. The one-inch-wide belt strap can be worn across the chest, not just around the waist, which makes it useful for any activity (runs, hikes, motorcycle rides) where you would want your pockets empty.

The third and most novel bag in the line is the ORP, or Operation Readiness Pack ($110). Cardiel took the design of divers’ waterproof bags and simply added comfy shoulder straps.

Most premium backpacks and shoulder bags can’t claim anything past “weatherproof” because your belongings wouldn’t survive total immersion. But Chrome has tagged this bag as fully waterproof, and for almost everything except deep immersion, the claim holds. After folding over the roll-top and snapping in the side buckles, I gave the towels and shoes inside a spin in the shorebreak at Ocean Beach. All the seam-taping paid off, as everything inside remained dry and safe. On land, the ripstop nylon construction refused to stretch or rip even when I loaded with sharp-cornered bricks.

All this durability and the ORP weighs just over a pound. Without any of the rigid linings that let most bags keep their shape when empty, the ORP works more like a stuff-sack, conforming to the interior contents — for better or worse, so stuff carefully. Since it can be compressed to the size of a paper towel roll, it’s ideal for a voyage filled with day trips.

When everything is clipped together correctly, the Fortnight can be used to carry the ORP, the Shank, and even a sleeping bag, which is much more attractive option than dealing with an unruly receptacle filled with a disorganized assortment of clothes, toiletries, gear and auxiliary bags.

My only gripe is one that almost no premium bag maker can solve: When paying close to $200 for a backpack, a plastic buckle system feels inadequate. For a bag so durable and well-constructed, it’s disappointing to see the Cardiel outfitted with plastic fasteners that look like they would break under a heavy boot. There must be a reason, because almost everyone does it. And the bits of plastic are minor annoyances in an otherwise fine series of packs that nail the essential requirements of travel.

WIRED Predictably tough construction. Versatility while traveling. Finally, a waterproof backpack that’s not made for diving.

TIRED Plastic buckles all around. The whole kit will run you $350.

The ORP. Photo by Ariel Zambelich/Wired

Microsoft has announced that it has signed its largest-ever cloud services deal, an agreement with the All India Council for Technical Education to deploy Microsot’s Live@edu service to some 10,000 technical colleges in the country, covering 7.5 million users.

The deal is significant not just for its size but also as a mark of how cloud services are developing in two big areas at the moment: education and emerging markets — and how Microsoft is staking out a claim to be a player in both.

Under the terms of the deal, the AICTE, an association representing both technical colleges and institutions of technology, will use Live@edu, Microsoft’s hosting communication and collaboration service specially customized for the education sector, to offer collaboration services, email, web apps, IM and storage to 7 million students and half a million faculty members. The deployment will take place over the next three moths, Microsoft said in a statement.

Microsoft has not disclosed the value of the deal, but it won it over competitive bids from some of its biggest rivals in cloud services Google and IBM, another key reason for Microsoft to have secured the deal.

AICTE went for Microsoft, it says, because of the broader portfolio of services that Microsoft offers, and also its competitive pricing.

IT in India is one of the fastest growing segments of its economy — combined with back-office and outsourcing it’s an industry worth around $100 billion at the moment. Microsoft has a strong presence in the country already, so getting buy in from students who will be working in that sector in the country longer-term is a good way to ensure more loyalty to Microsoft’s products in the future.

In all, there are around 22 million people using Microsoft’s Live@edu service, meaning that this newest deal in India represents about one-third of all of Microsoft’s cloud/education business.

[photo: Microsoft in India, flickr]

Livestream, the premium live video streaming service, is announcing an interesting new product today: a $485 hardware encoder that can be connected to virtually any camera and that can stream HD video directly to the Web through a WiFi connection or most USB wireless modems. The small device is fully integrated into the new Livestream platform. The purchase price includes three months of free access to Livestream’s ad-free HD streaming service (normally $45/month). Livestream describes the device as “the industry’s first affordable unlimited ad-free HD live streaming end-to-end solution.”

The Livestream Broadcaster connects to the Internet through a 3G or 4G modem (in the U.S., Livestream recommends using a USB modem that connects to Verizon’s 4G LTE network), but producers can also opt to connect to a local WiFi or wired network.

Once it is connected to the Internet, producers can control it through a small LCD screen on the encoder or over the Web. The Broadcaster supports virtually any camera that can feed it with an HDMI signal (including 1080i, 720p and 480i). The output is encoded in real-time in H.264 video and AAC audio at up to 720p and 2.3 Mbps. The device also has a 3.5mm audio input. Thanks to its tripod mount, users could even install it right on their cameras with a simple tripod to hot shoe adapter.

As the company’s CEO and co-founder Max Haot told me earlier this week, Livestream isn’t planning to become a hardware platform. While he wouldn’t tell me whether the company actually subsidizes the product to keep the price this low, he did note that this is basically a play to get more producers onto the Livestream platform. Because of this, making high margins on the device itself doesn’t really matter to the company.

Hardware encoders – even small and affordable ones – aren’t really new, of course. The real breakthrough here, says Haot, is that the hardware is fully integrated with the online service. In his view, “the missing link to accelerate the adoption [of live video streaming] was seamlessly integrating live video from any prosumer camera to our service without the need for a computer.” Ideally, Haot, told me, he would like to see mainstream retailers like Best Buy sell devices like this in the future.

The company is aiming the device at pretty much the same market as the Livestream service itself: large and small event producers who want to stream their events live to the Web and mobile devices. The company’s customers use the service to stream anything from wedding ceremonies to large movie premiers. Facebook, for example, uses Livestream for the live video stream from its press events.

The closest competitor to the Livestream Broadcaster is likely Cerevo’s Live Shell. At around $299, the Live Shell is cheaper than the Broadcaster (though once you count the three free months of Livestream service, the difference really isn’t that big). Unlike Livestream’s Broadcaster, though, the Live Shell isn’t fully integrated with any third-party service (it only supports Ustream right now) and it also doesn’t stream in HD.

The Livestream Brocaster is available for pre-order today in the U.S. and Europe. It will start shipping in May.

Have you ever wanted a chance to dress Rick Santorum? What about listening to a playlist of your favorite dictators tackling your favorite musical standards? Now you can, thanks to a new iPad app called Punch.

Punch Media co-founder and CEO David Bennahum says the goal was to create “culturally relevant content that could only exist on a tablet” — not on a website or a printed magazine. The format is something called “The Culture Shelf,” where you can tap on different icons leading to Punch’s features. Most of those features are like op culture games, or are at least interactive in some way.

Bennahum describes the format as an updated version of the variety show, where users are exposed to a range of sketches that are (hopefully) funny without being preachy — he cites Spy Magazine and The Daily Show as two influences. The company was co-founded by Maer Roshan, who previously founded Radar Magazine.

I had a chance to play with an early version of the app with, yes, the Rick Santorum and “Despots on the Record” features. Other items included a general pop culture quiz and a chance to sort out whether different names represented hedge funds or organic farms. (The joke? It’s almost impossible to tell the difference.) One sign that it was a pretty engaging experience — I had some friends over, and pretty soon they were all gathered around the iPad, trying to take a turn ranking the box office success of Farrelly Bros. movies or dressing a Santorum figurine in bunny slippers.

One of the challenges, Bennahum admits, is figuring how users can share their favorite Punch content with their friends — each feature will include social sharing options, but since these are interactive features, what gets shared is just “a snapshot of the experience, not the thing itself.”

The app is free. Bennahum says the goal for now is to just get the content into the hands of as many users as possible and see how they engage with it. In the future, the company could make money by adding advertising, offering premium upgrades, and also licensing the publishing technology to other companies. Punch might also expand to Android tablets when they get “more critical mass,” Bennahum says, and maybe smartphones too.

Punch Media has raised an undisclosed amount of seed funding from Betaworks, TechStars, Jason Calacanis, and New Enterprise Associates.

You can download the iPad app here, and get a flavor of the sense of humor in the intro video below.

Instagram’s co-founders Kevin Systrom and Mike Krieger have been noticeably silent since their photo-sharing app Instagram was bought by Facebook earlier this week for $1 billion.

In the meantime there has been a lot written about that deal, from praise to backlash, parsing what it means and why.

But if you’d like to hear a little (actually, a lot) about how Instagram got to where it did, read on.

Last night, Krieger gave a presentation at an Airbnb event for employees and members of the network, part of a regular series called the Tech Talk. The subject was “Scaling Instagram.”

Considering his company was just bought for $1 billion, it’s a pretty remarkable effort, 185 slides in all.

The talk, as the name of the event would suggest, is mainly about engineering and back-end work. It goes through some of the obstacles and solutions that Krieger and team faced as Instagram instantly picked up millions of users. Some notable points:

• It’s true that Instagram never had to create a “fail whale” but they had some clear 404′s early on and “tons of errors.”

• Possibly the truest test of scaling: “replacing all components of a car while driving it at 100mph”. Also: Don’t try to reinvent the wheel in your work. And be open to getting knowledge from others (“awesome advisors”) — without passing the buck (“don’t think ‘someone else will join and take care of this’”).

• In Krieger’s view, that Android launch it had earlier this month ranks right up there with some of the most important aspects of running Instagram smoothly. (One slide notes “scaling for Android” as just as essential as choosing the right database and technology and staying nimble.) Figuring out how they could get that right was one reason why it took so long to bring that Android app to market.

And simplicity, one of the things that makes Instagram so attractive, appears to be a philosophy and approach that Krieger & Co. follow right through to the most back-end parts of the site.

“The cleanest solution with the fewest moving parts as possible,” he says is the goal. We look forward to seeing how that evolves with Instagram’s next chapter.

The full slide deck is here:

“For many Instagram users it’s discomfiting to see a giant company they distrust purchase a tiny company they adore — like if Coldplay acquired Dirty Projectors, or a Gang of Four reunion was sponsored by Foxconn.” — Paul Ford

“ They didn’t sell “out”. They just sold. They’re a company not the fucking Rolling Stones.” — Paul Carr

“They could have done so much more,” is a quip I’ve been hearing a lot the past few days, about, who else? Instagram. The news that the Silicon Valley darling sold to Facebook left so many people heartbroken. Paul Ford over at New York magazine even wrote a long article about why so many people were heartbroken and, gasp,  threatening to delete their Instagram accounts.

When I found out that Instagram co-founders Kevin Systrom and Mike Krieger sold (and if you ever have the chance, ask me to tell you this funny story in person) I was shocked, but also delighted, mostly because I have been around enough entrepreneurs to understand that, although they share many of the same characteristics as artists, they aren’t artists purely — They are also business people. And business people, and especially business people with VC-backing, have one goal only: Exit.

Sure “exit” is a vague term, sometimes, rarely, it means IPO, but more often than not it means “sell.” And in the Valley “sell” doesn’t neatly equate with “sell out” as it does in the music and art worlds. Former Digg CEO Jay Adelson, who has learned this the hard way, assuaged some of the guilt surrounding this issue,”If someone offers you a billion dollars for your business you should say ‘Yes’ [Caveat: With some exceptions].”

But a funny thing happened as tech went mainstream; All of a sudden network news pundits and your parents were weighing in on startup M&A activity, and mainstream rhetoric was slowly projected onto a somewhat niche industry. Everyone knows what its like to cringe when you hear your favorite song used in a car commercial. It’s a purely emotional thing, you get attached to a song and feel like it’s signifying you, but now it’s also signifying Toyota.

Bands, well at least indie bands, aren’t supposed to sell out. And Instagram was as “indie” a startup as you can get, employing 13 people and working out of a small office in SOMA. Systrom, who coded all the filters himself, is a self-taught programmer who interned for Jack Dorsey and worked at Google before starting Burbn out of Dogpatch Labs. Mike Krieger, who famously carried a laptop with him everywhere he went as Burbn scaled, built the startup while on a H1B visa from Brazil. They’ve got the tech equivalent of street cred.

While, as a backseat startup CEO, I would have done something differently — like said no to Facebook and leaked the offer to press — you can’t really begrudge Systrom and Krieger for building their business to do what most businesses were built to do, in one way or another create value or more concretely make money (Fun fact: Sequoia, which dropped $25 million in the startup’s most recent funding round, made back its Color investment with Instagram).

It’s sort of a selfish, myopic impulse to want the products you love to subvert this natural order of things and stay “indie.” Startups want to scale! It’s truly an exception to be that startup that keeps up momentum and control to the point where its scale takes over everything: You can count them on one hand, Facebook, Apple, Google, Amazon — Schmidt’s “Gang of Four.”

Instagram had a real chance at being the world’s mobile only social network, hitting more 30 million users in a little under two years. Which is why Zuck rapidly panicquired it after it received funding on Thursday, doing the deal in a weekend according to what we’ve heard. Same thing with Zynga target OMGPop, which was showing similar potential for mobile market domination as it overcame the Zynga games in the App Store.

But not every company is cut out for manifest destiny, it is seriously just fine for a small company to partner up with a larger company in order to grow. In fact that’s the way the ecosystem works — It is extremely difficult to build a giant network, giant team and big company. There are a lot of variables that go into any decision to sell a startup, and I am sure there are a lot of variables that we as outsiders are not seeing here.

“Then along comes Facebook, the great alien presence that just hovers over our cities, year after year, as we wait and fear. You turn on the television and there it is, right above the Empire State Building, humming. And now a hole has opened up on its base and it has dumped a billion dollars into a public square — which turned out to not be public, but actually belongs to a few suddenly-very-rich dudes. You can’t blame users for becoming hooting primates when a giant spaceship dumps a billion dollars out of its money hole.”

Just think, Ford could have easily written these words if Facebook had succumbed to Microsoft’s acquisition offer years ago. Is something there now something evil/alien about Facebook simply because its gotten bigger? Maybe. In any case Ford does a really great job of dramatizing sort of simple events, as media are wont to do.

“Borg” rhetoric aside, there are many good things about being acquired, namely, seriously though, more resources to feed employees, fight lawsuits, keep the servers running, etc. If anything it’s just awesome that Krieger won’t have to run around chained to his laptop anymore.

I guess this is what people mean when they debate whether or not Instagram “sold out,” like, did Systrom and Krieger cave for the “right” reasons or were they purely motivated by cash? Well we won’t be able to tell, really, until six months from now when we know whether the product has kept growing and kept getting better.

Hell, all they’d really need to do is find a way to let you edit individual post comments and they’d break even in the court of public perception, with me at least.

Image via.