Category: Tech news

Twitter co-founder and creative director Biz Stone took to his personal blog today to respond to Fortune’s cover this week on the operational problems plaguing the company.

Stone basically says that Twitter has received its fair share of good press over the past few years from media outlets and it was only a matter of time before a publication knocked the company down. He writes, the normal press cycle is to put a company on a pedestal and then knock it down. He says that Facebook and Google have both received the same sort of treatment from the press.

He doesn’t really do much in the post to defend the reports from yesterday but he did say that Twitter has to prove that the press is wrong so we can write a comeback story.

From his blog post: Twitter is an important company and it’s under scrutiny from journalists—this is exactly how it’s supposed to work. Now it’s our job to prove the reporters wrong so they can write an article later about how we have made dramatic progress.

Instructure, a startup that develops and open-source online learning management system, has raised $8 million in Series B funding led by OpenView Venture Partners, EPIC Ventures, Eric Schmidt’s Tomorrow Ventures, and Tim Draper of Draper Fisher Jurveston. This investment brings Instructure’s total funding $9.2 million.

Instructure’s software, Canvas, presents a more streamlined online course management product than competitors like Blackboard. The hosted SaaS solution features an integrated gradebook, assessment tools, discussions, multiple assignment submission types, rubrics and web chat. The SaaS also includes drag-and-drop file uploads, HTML5 video and automatic speech-to-text conversion. And it integrates with Google Docs and Facebook.

In February, Instructure announced the availability of Canvas as an open source software product. The company is now servicing more than 30 educational institutions, the majority of which have switched from Blackboard to Canvas.

Instructure is led by Mozy Founder Josh Coates, who sold the online backup solution to EMC for $76 million in 2007.

Here’s a commercial the team created for the product, based on the Apple “1984? commercial.

Mobile entertainment startup mSpot, which lets users stream and watch full-length movies on their mobile phones and on the web, is lowering the pricing for newly released movies today, making the startup’s movies more of a bargain than movies available on competitors like iTunes.

mSpot says that average pricing for instantly streamed new releases is typically $3.99 and now mSpot users can get many new releases for as low as $3.00 as part of their mSpot membership. In case you aren’t familiar with the service, mSpot has struck deals with Sony, Disney, Paramount, NBC/Universal, Lionsgate, Warner, Image Entertainment, and Screen Media Ventures to stream full-length movie rentals to users’ PCs and cell phones, allowing you to switch between both devices as you pick up and leave off throughout a movie.

The service works on over 50 different handset devices – including the iPhone, Blackberry, Palm, Android, Windows Mobile and others. Now, users can stream individual new release movies for $3.99 each (or old movies for as low as $1.99) or join a monthly Movie Club: $4.99/month for up to 4 movies, $7.99 for 8 movies, or $15.99 for 16 movies. With the mSpot Movies Club, the startup says users can save money on streaming rentals by purchasing pre-paid credits for a select number of rentals every month, based on their plan.

mSpot says that new releases on mSpot Movies are often available the day DVDs go on sale, which means that people can watch these movies 28 days before subscription services like Netflix offer the same DVD.

The startup is playing in a competitive space both in terms of its movie (iTunes and Netflix) and music streaming services. With the launch of Amazon’s digital music locker, mSpot has been left with another competitor, and is taking measures to mitigate this competition. For example, mSpot just lowered the prices of storage for its music service. I have a feeling that lowering the prices of newly released movies is another way the startup is hoping to fend off the competition.

Delicious founder Joshua Schachter always had a funny answer when we asked him what his new startup, Tasty Labs, would focus on.

Last year, for example, he said “I’m either going to launch an open source operating system for unmanned aerial vehicles, or build a first person shooter to teach non-violent solutions based on buddhist principles. Or a pet food review site. Which one do you like best?”

But a few months have gone by, the company raised a nice store of cash and they’re about to release their first project, currently called “Secret Tasty Labs Prototype.” It’s time to get seriousish, and Schachter is starting to talk.

I have been testing the service along with a few friends and family of the team (and investors). “Welcome to our secret society of trusted Tasty Labs testers. We’re inviting you to try out our first prototype application,” says the happily received email in my inbox.

There are ground rules to my participation. We can’t go into too much detail on the product just yet. But we can write a teaser and talk about it in broad strokes. The service is a place for users to interact and follow others (think Quora). The main purpose of the interaction is asking for and giving advice on things and services people need. The best restuarant in San Francisco open late. Who to tall to get a phone line installed with out going crazy. Etc. There’s only a handful of people using the service but robust conversations are breaking out. It’s an engaged audience and real content is being contributed and shared.

There’s a lot more to it than that. In particular, on the back end a lot of the free text people are typing in is being structured and organized. If a lot of people are talking about “Acme Sushi,” it’s going to get auto linked to a page with information about Acme Sushi. You can see the evolution of this in process in the teaser screenshot above, where the entire last answer is a link instead of just parts of it. But overall, it works really well.

They’re trying to solve many of the issues that Aardvark, purchased by Google a year ago and then promptly never heard from again, was aiming for too. Find friends and friends of friends who can give you first hand advice on tackling everyday problems, and then use software to make the interaction as useful as possible. While Aardvark stripped social features relentlessly away from its product, keeping it a one on one experience, Tasty Labs is embracing social, and the still young product may have real traction. Only time, tweaks and scaling will tell, but this is a hell of a team. You’ll also see a lot of nice auto-refreshing, Flash-free features. The basic design architecture and UI is very good.

If you’re an engineer and want to work with this team, you’re in luck. They’re hiring like crazy, Schachter tells me. Contact them here. This is the first of many projects the team is working on.

And if you are dying to try out Tasty Labs, here’s how you get in. You have to get someone to tell you the secret URL for the service, which is wide open once you get there. They’ll probably shut down new signups once that happens, though, so be quick or just wait a few weeks until they open their doors to all.

Today during the Q1 2011 earnings call, Google had a few things to say about Chrome and Chrome OS that were interesting. Well, more like intriguing — because they were a bit odd.

First of all, a few times during the call, Google executives touted the fact that Chrome now has 120 million active daily users. This is supposedly up 40 percent in the past year, which sounds about right. But they also said that they’re now seeing 30 percent growth quarter to quarter in terms of usage. The problem is that they’ve given out this exact stat 120 million before — in December of last year.

Yes, exactly a quarter ago, Google also said they were seeing 120 million daily active users of Chrome. So if they’re growing 30 percent quarter to quarter, shouldn’t they have significantly more users now? I asked Google specifically about this, and all a spokesperson had to say was that 120 million is the most recent number they had.

During the same call, new SVP of Commerce and Local, Jeff Huber, noted that Chrome OS was coming “later this year”. This wording led some to wonder if that means yet more delays for the fledgling OS — after all, Google has been saying for months that users should expect to see the first Chrome OS devices this summer (after delaying them from last holiday season).

So why wouldn’t Huber say “this summer” or “soon”? “Later this year” seems to imply something further off than a couple months from now. I also asked Google about this. Their response? Chrome OS is still on-track for a mid-2011 launch. Mid is June. As in two months from now. We’ll see.

At another point in the call, Chief Financial Officer Patrick Pichette noted that Chrome was being heavily invested in by the company because each user is a “locked-in”. “Everybody that uses Chrome is a guaranteed locked-in user, in terms of having access to Google,” was the actual quote.

Probably not the best way to phrase that. And it’s not even fully true — when users load Chrome for the first time, they have the option to select between Google, Bing, or Yahoo as their default search engine (though I’m sure the vast majority do choose Google). But it’s not like they’re really “locked-in” — you can always change this in the settings.

Towards the end of the call, a couple questions wondered if Google would be using Chrome as a way to alter search results or to introduce new products? This is a bit of a touchy subject since Google has been playing up Chrome as an “open” browser for the web (though technically it’s Chromium that is the open source version). None of the Google executives shot down these ideas and in fact, they played up these possibilities.

In other words, yes, Chrome could eventually be yet another way Google is following your movements online and using it to their advantage. Again, probably not the best way to answer those questions.

So overall, Google’s management of the Chrome message today was unpolished at best, and just wrong or misguided at worst. You would have thought that if they were planning on talking about the product this much, they would have trotted out their newly minted (with a newly minted bank account) SVP of Chrome, Sundar Pichai. I have the feeling that at the very least, he would have given some better answers.

Update: In a comment below, Google Biz Dev Manager Bob Meese explains the first discrepancy:

Regarding your first point, at the December Chrome event the number was 120M but the metric wasn’t DAU (it was a more generic “Active Users”). Here’s Danny Sullivan’s article, which has a picture of that slide: http://searchengineland.com/live-blogging-the-google-chrome-os-netbook-press-conference-58014. I think the move to a more standard metric like DAU is probably a good thing.

The BlackBerry PlayBook tablet is a good-looking piece of hardware.

Like the proto-humans in 2001: A Space Odyssey, you’ll be eager to touch the monolithic object’s black, buttonless visage. But once you do, things get a little more complicated.

The PlayBook’s design exudes the same sense of finely honed “business chic” that Research in Motion has perfected in its BlackBerry smartphones. But the PlayBook’s software suffers from several missteps and oversights, especially in the drought of useful apps — the very things that have made tablets such a hit — and the lackluster performance of Adobe’s Flash player.

At a svelte 7.6 inches by 5.1 inches, the PlayBook is about the size of Samsung’s Galaxy Tab, and considerably smaller than the Motorola Xoom and Apple iPad 2. That may prove bothersome if you prefer watching videos and gaming on a larger screen. But in a trade-off for the small screen size, the PlayBook makes gains in portability.

At just under a pound, long reading sessions don’t cause as much fatigue as they do with larger tablets, and the rubberized backing adds a pleasing tooth to the grip. You won’t be worried about dropping it on the floor of the bus.

RIM is banking that those who bemoan the loss of screen real estate will use the tablet as a media hub for larger devices. You can drag and drop media files from your desktop to the PlayBook the same way you’d move files to a USB flash drive. You can also transfer files wirelessly over your local network.

Once the PlayBook is loaded up with movies, use the HDMI-out to connect the tablet to a television and watch everything in full 1080p on a 16:9 wide screen. On both the big screen as well as the PlayBook, videos look damn good.

And they sound good, too. The PlayBook’s two speakers flank the screen’s face horizontally, projecting sound outward toward your ears. The quality is surprisingly clear for the size of the speakers. There’s no tinniness or distortion, even with the volume cranked.

There are no buttons on the face, but there are four along the top edge: a Play/Pause button, a two-way volume rocker and a Power button. They’re unobtrusive, though sometimes to a fault. It takes a noticeable amount of effort to push in the Power button, which is frustrating if you want to turn the screen on or off quickly.

In the absence of a Home button, there’s a new UI convention to learn: You touch the frame along the bottom of the screen and swipe up when you want to return to the home screen. Touch sensitivity is very responsive, and the swipe controls work great.

Taking a note from Palm’s webOS, RIM brings multitasking to its QNX-based BlackBerry Tablet OS, letting you switch back and forth between simultaneously running apps. By swiping a finger to the side of the screen, you can jump from the YouTube video you were watching back to a paused game of Tetris, without having to return to the home screen.

Also cool: the ability to multitask with apps running on a peripheral display. When the PlayBook is hooked up to an HDTV, you can watch video at 1080p on the big screen while browsing the web on the PlayBook. Or, you can show a presentation on a projector while swiping through your speaking notes on the tablet.

Be forewarned of resource hoggery, though. Try running too many apps at once, and a low-memory notification will pop up in the left-hand corner telling you to cool it. The PlayBook comes loaded with 1 GB of RAM to protect against this, though on occasion when I ignored the warning long enough, my browser crashed.

Move closer to the software level and things get even stickier.

It hasn’t taken long for iTunes and iPods to worm their way into our car and living room stereos, but it’s been a bumpy ride along the way. Mixing and matching traditional stereo components with newfangled computer software and devices is too often a prescription for a troubleshooting headache and frazzled nerves.

Pioneer aims to make this analog-digital marriage a smoother ride with the VSX-1021-K, a 7.1-channel AV receiver with a booming 90 watts per channel. It’s an affordable, network-savvy receiver that plays nice with Apple’s iTunes and iGadgets, and it doesn’t require an IT administrator or a bottle of Advil to get the ball rolling.

For a receiver packed to the gills with goodies, the 1021’s design is understated. Two large knobs on either side control volume and inputs, and small buttons across the face give you access to various features and audio settings. The overall build quality seems OK — plastic face, plastic knobs, lightweight — and about par for a midlevel component these days.

The remote has 64 buttons. Yes, I counted. Almost all of them look alike (tiny rectangles), with the volume only slightly larger than the rest. Industrial design has come so far, but it seems remote controls have most missed the boat — too many functions are crammed into tight quarters, with tiny text printed next to each button. Fortunately, there are now some great alternatives to using a supplied remote, and that’s where the fun really begins with the receiver.

Pioneer means to impress with its slick integration with Apple products, and it starts with two free apps that let you control the receiver using an iPad, iPhone or iPod touch. Using Apple’s AirPlay technology, you can stream CD-quality music from your iTunes collection — hosted on any networked computer — to the stereo.

To start the setup, you need to hook an ethernet cable into the back of the VSX-1021-K. There is an optional wireless adapter you can buy from Pioneer, but you have to fork over $150 for the privilege of life without wires.

Once connected, the iControl AV2 app lets you browse and access your iTunes library using your preferred Apple gizmo. The app’s interface on the iPad is polished, and a huge upgrade from the physical remote.

There’s a big volume knob front and center, where it belongs, and a collection of source icons below. On the side are menus where you can go and dial in the sound to suit your room and system.

My iTunes and other music libraries on my laptop popped right up when I started the iControl app, and I was off and running. When I pulled up long lists of albums and artists (50 GB or so), the scroll had a lag that was slightly bothersome, but the names slowly appear as it communicates over Wi-Fi.

Over the course of a week using the 1021, I experienced occasional delays using the iControl app, and it lost its connection to my router on several occasions, but recovered quickly. All in all, though, it’s a slick app that allows for quick, easy access to multiple music sources, and gives you a glimpse into the world of high-end, multiroom AV systems and their customized visual remotes. So go ahead, pretend you’re Puffy for a day.

I don’t normally listen to internet radio stations, but when they’re a quick click away, the idea becomes more tempting. While browsing the myriad countries and stations, how could I resist nuggets like “4U Rock N Metal” and “Brasilia Super Radio.” Sound quality varies wildly, as you’d expect, but many stations come in plenty crisp and clear. Anyhow, it’s way more fun than spinning the dial-o-crap — aka FM radio — in the minivan.

Another nifty wireless feature is the Air Jam app, which lets you connect up to four Bluetooth devices. When connected, you and friends can make collective playlists that are viewable on one another’s devices. As with Wi-Fi access, there’s a Bluetooth adapter you need to buy (for $100) to make all this collaborative magic happen.

In terms of video support, Pioneer’s receiver can handle five HDMI inputs (using the HDMI 1.4a spec), and also accommodates non-HDMI video sources. After hooking the supplied iPad–iPod adapter cable into the USB slot on the front of the receiver, I was able to use the iControl app to play Toy Story 3 and several TV shows, which all looked good passing through the receiver’s video processor.

However, it would’ve looked better using a component connection, rather than the RCA composite video input that the cable and receiver employ. And hopefully, future versions of the receiver will allow for AirPlay video streaming, so you can do away with the cable altogether.

To make the most of your sound system, the VSX-1021-K comes with Pioneer’s Multi-Channel Acoustic Calibration system, which uses a microphone and test tones to customize the output based on your listening environment. If you’ve got a seven-speaker surround system, this is an important step. In a 2.1-channel scene, I can do without it, and so can you.

To evaluate its sound quality, I cruised everything from jazz to hip-hop to metal in my music collection, and the results were solid across the board. The unit is designed to be a versatile AV receiver — handling web radio, digital music and DVD soundtracks alike — and lets you select from a long list of surround-sound settings for the type of music or TV you’re listening to. You get the standard presets: sports, sci-fi, classical, rock–pop and so on.

I was pleasantly surprised by the detail I heard in Ahmad Jamal’s “Toulouse,” a demanding track with lots of shifting dynamics, a circus of percussion in the background, and some chunky, tight bass lines for good measure. The receiver was equally adept in handling Big Boi’s wall of sound and thundering bass in the extra-salty track “Tangerine.”

Pioneer has a history of offering good-bang-for-the-buck AV gear, and the VSX-1021-K is no exception. At 550 clams, you don’t have much to complain about here, especially if you have an iPad, iPod or iPhone to use as a remote. The 1021 lets you play content from these devices with relative ease, using an iControl interface that is sharp, intuitive and easy to navigate.

WIRED Flexible, wireless music options. Easy setup and configuration. AirPlay makes iTunes integration a breeze. Mucho features and solid sound quality for the bucks.

TIRED No AirPlay video, just audio. RCA cable for video input from iPad. Physical remote control is what it is. You have to shell out extra coin for wireless options.

Boy, are my Instagram friends going to be jealous. Now, when I share a photo using my favorite Lomo-Twitter mobile app, my photos are going to look sharper, crisper and better than everyone else’s.

Why? Because I’m not using the crappy camera on my phone. I’m using a nice prosumer camera with an Eye-Fi Mobile X2 card in it. Every time I press the shutter, my photo transfers wirelessly and directly to the phone in my pocket. From there, I can add whatever fancy, appy goodness I want, and share it on the internet.

Eye-Fi has been making waves for a while by producing SD memory cards that can transfer pictures from your camera to your PC wirelessly. We’re big fans — we gave the Eye-Fi Pro a great review in 2009.

This new product, the Eye-Fi Mobile X2, builds on Eye-Fi platform but eliminates the PC part of the equation and sends photos directly to an iPhone, iPad or Android device over the air.

Slap this card into your prosumer shooter, download an app to your mobile device, and every picture you take with your camera will appear in your phone or tablet’s photo library about 10 seconds later. If you have neither smartphone nor tablet (really?), you can just send the photos to your PC, as with the older Eye-Fi cards. It also has 8 GB of regular SDHC storage, too.

The new functionality is something Eye-Fi calls “Direct Mode” — it transfers your photos wirelessly even if there’s no Wi-Fi connection available. So if you’re out birdwatching at your cabin on the Lake Isle of Innisfree, the card itself becomes a hot spot and transfers the photo using the Wi-Fi radio in your phone.

There are Eye-Fi mobile apps for both iOS and Android devices. I tested it on a Nexus S running Android. (The iPhone/iPad app was developed concurrently, but it won’t be available for download in the App Store until around April 16 or 17.) We were only able to test the Android version, but the company says the experience will be the same on both Android and iOS.

The apps are free, but the card costs $80. A regular Class 6 8-GB card is about $15, which means the extra $65 adds nothing but convenience.

Eye-Fi is launching the Mobile X2 card on April 17, when it will be exclusive to Best Buy for a short time before showing up at all the other retail outlets. As a bonus, anyone with a last-gen X2 Eye-Fi card — Explore X2, Connect X2 or Pro X2 — will get Direct Mode enabled on their existing cards via a firmware update.

You start by plugging the card into a Mac or Windows PC using the supplied USB card reader. The card mounts on your machine, then you browse it and install a simple desktop app. Here inside the app, you configure the card to transfer to and from your various devices.

You can also set it up with login information for any wireless networks you may use. You can add login info to the card with one click if your computer can see a network, or you can add networks manually.

I didn’t do any of this when I tested it. I just downloaded the Android app and gave permission for the card to talk to the phone, then popped the Eye-Fi into a Canon G11 and started shooting. The Eye-Fi defaulted to Direct Mode and transferred each picture to the Nexus S about 10 seconds after I took it.

So, the Wi-Fi login information isn’t necessary if you’re using Eye-Fi’s Direct Mode, but it’s nice to have that stuff stored on your card so you can utilize Wi-Fi when its available. The transfers in Direct mode take about five seconds each. But once I added the Wi-Fi information to the card and connected to the same network as the phone, I was able to shave a second or two off of each of the file transfers.

I was shooting in the highest quality JPEG setting on the Canon. The Eye-Fi transfers the whole file, whether video or still photo, without employing any additional compression. If you prefer to shoot RAW, the phone probably won’t be able to understand the file type, but it can store the files.

But the killer feature of the Eye-Fi Mobile X2 is that it turns any camera into an always-on device. You’re out walking around and you see something you want to Tweet or Tumbl or what-have-you. You’re no longer limited by the crappy camera in your phone. You can shoot through real glass using a quality sensor, then whip out the phone and upload the picture.

Sure, you could argue that for super-processed Instagram photos or for Facebook party shots, the phone in your pocket is good enough. And you’d be mostly right. But the Eye-Fi lets you use whatever camera you want and post the results without having to go home and dump the card.

That’s enough of a convenience factor to get enthusiasts excited. It should also raise a few eyebrows among users of iPad photo-editing apps like Photogene and PixelMagic.

In addition to the hardware, Eye-Fi also offers a cloud-based storage service called Eye-Fi View. You can upload web-accessible versions of your photos there and store them for seven days. If you need more time, you can pony up $5 per month for an Eye-Fi View account with no limits on time or storage space. Using Eye-Fi’s web service, you can also auto-publish to any of the two dozen or so supported photo sharing sites, including all the biggies.

This isn’t a notable feature for most of us, though, because we already have that end of the equation figured out. But for your Pep Pep who just started a Tumblr, it might be the best thing he’s ever used.

WIRED Sure to please Instagrammers and mobile Facebookers who prefer to use real cameras. Easy to set up and use. Mobile apps are svelte and free. You can stop wrestling with ShutterSnitch.

TIRED You’re paying $80 for the convenience of not having to walk over to your computer, empty your SD card and sync your phone. For some, that’s a bargain. For others, not so much.

“Nice car! What is it,” the waitress asked as she brought us our food. She’d seen us drive up in a Spicy Red 2011 Kia Optima SX and she was interested — in the car, of course.

“It’s a brand new Kia Optima,” I replied.

“Oh,” the waitress said, crestfallen. “My mom says those aren’t very good cars.”

I wanted to point out the French seam on the dashboard leather, pop the hood and show off the all-new turbine housing that channels air to reduce turbo lag, let her take the car and floor it on a highway offramp, all just to prove her wrong.

It’s the automaker’s curse: You’re known not by your current lineup, but by whatever now-irrelevant crap you foisted on the public 20 years ago. It explains why, for legions of car buyers, General Motors is defined by the plastic-paneled Lumina APV but Mercedes is remembered as the builder of the rock-solid E300.

Hyundai, who shares a corporate parent with Kia but entered the U.S. market eight years earlier, is already gaining legions of fans who are impressed with a good car, not just the car’s good price. Kia remains new enough that it’s unfairly still considered a budget brand also-ran in most circles. (Are you listening, Geely, BYD and Tata?)

If Kia has any chance of lifting the curse, however, it’s with the Optima, a solid car that exceeds all the requirements of a family four-door. It’s the first, and so far only, Korean car to get perfect scores in NHTSA crash tests, and the 100,000-mile drivetrain warranty inspires even more confidence than a short test drive.

Though Kia’s Optima and the Hyundai Sonata share parents, a platform and a powertrain, the two siblings couldn’t be more different. The Sonata grew up to be a pharmaceutical salesman with a modest wine collection, while the Optima owns his own construction firm and plays flag football on the weekends. In LX and EX trim, it’s a sporty and stylish competitor to the Accord and Camry.

Check off the “SX” box, however, and you’ve got an entirely different animal, one that has no living competition.

The 18-inch brushed-aluminum wheels appear to have been pilfered from Big Ben’s innards, while the side skirts, spoiler and lower front and rear bumpers mimic a Gulfstream V on final approach. Also exclusive to the SX are HID headlights, LED tail lamps, paddle shifters and alloy pedals.

The gas direct injection (GDI) turbo four — also available in the PG-rated EX trim — uses all kinds of technical wizardry to get 274 horsepower and 269 pound-feet of torque out of an engine that still promises 34 mpg highway and 22 mpg city. We had a lot of fun driving the car over the course of 500 miles and still managed 27 mpg.

Punch the gas and power is instantaneous and dramatic, with not even a hint of turbo lag. Still, around-town driving remains placid. Even at full throttle, the interior stays quiet with the exception of road noise from the low-profile tires.

The SX’s stiffer suspension makes for a harsher ride over potholes but offers more confidence in corners. Steering, however, is unnecessarily heavy and, at times, feels numb. It does the job, though, as there’s not even a hint of torque steer, and the car gripped the roads even during rainstorms.

Inside, the cabin feels comfortably classic and could be considered a modern evolution of the automobile dashboard had right angles not been banished in the mid-’90s. Even with the sharp roof line, our tester’s heated and cooled back seat has ample room for three medium-size adults, and visibility is not compromised. The dual-panel sunroof is a nice touch, as is the cooled glove box, straightforward nav system and backup camera.

We’re not crazy about the leather-with-mesh trim seats that look more like a pair of New Balance cross trainers than premium upholstery, and we wish the fancy but vestigial “trip info” screen would interact with the main nav screen. For instance, the smaller screen could show turn-by-turn directions while the main screen is being used to change the radio station.

Small gripes aside, this is still an impressive car that leaves us with only one question: Who is this car’s target audience? Our tester, as equipped, had a sticker price of $30,840. The only similarly optioned cars in the same price range and with the same attitude are pre-owned Nissan Maximas and Acura TLs.

Perhaps Kia is targeting the SX squarely at skeptical Americans, hoping a “halo car” can generate buzz and move foot traffic into showrooms. By building an eye-catching sport sedan, Kia is hoping that buyers will also take a look at the practical and modestly priced LX and EX models.

And maybe, just maybe, they might convince that waitress’ mom.

WIRED Proof it’s high time to start taking Kia very seriously. Impressive performance and fuel economy from the turbo four-cylinder engine for not a lot of money. Earns perfect scores in crash-safety tests. Quiet and comfortable on the inside, flashy and dangerous-looking on the outside.

TIRED Stiff suspension and low-profile tires are more Rocky Road than Smooth Vanilla. Interior trimmings could use a rethink.

Photos courtesy of Kia

It’s NAB (the National Association of Broadcasters conference) in Las Vegas, that means lots of new camera and video stuff. It’s more pro gear than consumer stuff, which is probably why Apple took over a Final Cut-related event there to unveil the newest version of their professional video editing software. They’re calling it as revolutionary as the original Final Cut released back in ’99. Guess the rumors were right.

After a preamble where they described FCP has having over 2 million users and teasing the competition, they launched into the new features. They’re still in the middle of the presentation, but so far it appears we have 64-bit, a revamped UI, and a ton of automatic clip-optimization going on in the background by utilizing Grand Central Station.

Continue reading…

After taking his mobile ads startup out of stealth on Monday, Kiip founder Brian Wong has a lot on his plate, mainly putting a recent $4.3 million in funding and a novel product and business model to good use. And Wong can’t even drink legally yet!

We brought him into the TCTV studio this morning to talk about about the inspiration behind Kiip among other things. Wong says the idea came to him after he did an “iPad creep,” or sneak-peeked at everyone’s iPads while walking down an aisle on a plane. He realized that everyone was playing games, that games were “a holy grail of engagement,: but that game ads basically took up a piece of the screen without adding any value.

Wong then came up with the idea of providing real life rewards, “There has to be a reset button here, we have to try something new … We have to build a company with the DNA of being in mobile.”

After graduating from the University of British Columbia in 2009 (after skipping four grades), the 19 year old got a job in business development at Digg, until a layoff left him looking for the next opportunity. Despite being so young, Wong is an advocate of staying in school, “The notion of finishing something is something that entrepreneurs get a bad rap for, we’re so schizophrenic. [It’s like] hey let’s go to this project, let’s go to that project. Well let’s just finish school, let’s just finish that project.”

Wong also talked about the risks involved with raising funding, and how people might underestimate him and other entrepreneurs because of age, “Obviously I’m a human being, it’s intimidating. You walk into this partners meeting (I didn’t know what a partners meeting was when I was first going to raise money) and there are people there that are going to be your future if they accept you. And you have to be able to talk to them and be able to relate.”

Well Wong obviously convinced somebody he was on to something, as True Ventures, Hummer Winblad and blue chip brands like Carl’s Jr, Sephora and PopChips have now given him the vote of confidence.

So what’s his secret to success? “I like to call it ‘Inception,’ like the movie. You have to seed the idea first, you have to let them think of it as well, at the same time you’re revealing it. If you have that parallel, then you have them, the vision is now in their head.”

When people build startups, we measure their measure success not only by how big is their exit, but also by how many lives their products touch and how long their brands lasts in the minds of consumers. Cisco’s decision today to shutter its Flip Video business two years after paying $590 million for it raises a series of questions which startup founder/investor Chris Dixon and I address in the video above. Why didn’t Cisco sell the business? Was the tax write-off bigger than anything Flip could have fetched?

But namely, was it inevitable that Flip would have failed on its own because it got in the way of the iPhone, or could it have adapted if it stayed independent? There is no right answer here. Imagine if Netflix had been acquired early on by Blockbuster or some other lumbering giant—it would never be where it is today. On the other hand, Android is great example of a company that flourished because it was acquired by Google and given the resources to become the powerhouse that it is today.

It’s not so much about the product. Android originally was working on a Sidekick-like device. “Great founders don’t move linearly,” says Dixon.

The best acquisitions seem to be those where the acquired company is left alone. But it is easier to adapt to a changing market if you are a standalone startup than if you are part of a larger company. Could Flip have survived on its own? And what would it be worth today if it hadn’t sold?

Paul Ceglia may just be a con man, or he may turn out to be the greatest tech investor who ever lived. After all, anyone who invested early in Facebook looks like a genius today. Peter Thiel turned his initial $500,000 investment in Facebook into a 10 percent stake that would be worth at least $5 billion today at the latest $50 billion private valuation. Facebook investor Jim Breyer of Accel Partners tops Forbes’ Midas List. And now we have Paul Ceglia, a convicted felon who claims that Mark Zuckerberg sold him half of Facebook in 2003 for $1,000, and he has the contract and emails to prove it. He later put in another $1,000 for a total investment of $2,000, but if he gets anywhere close to what he’s asking for (half of Zuckerberg’s share, which could be worth as much as $10 billion), he could go down as the best tech investor in history.

The purported emails, which Facebook says are fake, look pretty damning. They paint a picture of a young Zuckerberg playing Ceglia for some extra cash to help develop Facebook when it was only a dorm room project (Zuckerberg was doing work for hire for another Ceglia project, and got him to fund development of Facebook as well, at least according to Ceglia’s latest complaint). Facebook will either end up fighting this in court or settling with Ceglia for a princely sum just to take the risk of the lawsuit off the table.

Whatever happens, this incident holds several lessons for any would-be entrepreneur or engineer. In the video below, angel investor and Hunch co-founder Chris Dixon and I discuss what every founder needs to know before they give away any part of their company. The decisions made in the first 6 month usually end up being the most important. The biggest takeaway from this incident: Don’t ever sell half your company for $1,000.

Back in 2008 MySpace was on a roll. They racked up $900 million in revenue and the company was still growing. But a year later top execs started to bail (the smart ones went early). Within two months cofounder and CEO Chris DeWolfe was gone.

We’ve gotten a copy of the confidential MySpace pitch book that parent company News Corp. has distributed to potential buyers. Notably, that pitch book doesn’t include any historical financial or user data about MySpace at all. Everything is projected out and forward looking, and even then it’s bleak.

Revenue for fiscal 2011, ending June 30, 2011, is expected to be just $109 million. Expenses for the year are projected to be $274 million, and the company will lose a whopping $165 million for the 12 month period. That’s after massive waves of layoffs, although I expect much of the costs of the layoffs are included up front in 2011 expenses.

After 2011 the pitch book turns to pure fiction. After losing $165 million this year, they expect to actually have $15 million in ebitda in fiscal 2012. How? Revenue will decrease to $84 million, but expenses will fall from $274 million this year to just $69 million. The company will then be profitable, says the pitch book.

That means about $205 million would need to be found in operating cost savings in the next 14 months. That means even more massive layoffs. And yet somehow News Corp. argues that revenue will only fall 23% in the next year. Costs will decrease 75%, and revenue will fall just 23%.

Believable? Nope. But at least on paper it makes MySpace profitable.

The pitch book predicts 2013, 2014 and 2015 revenues to be $101 million, $119 million and $139 million, respectively. With the company losing 14% of its audience every month, it’s hard to see revenue stabilizing and then actually rising.

It’s extremely unlikely that anyone believes the projections in the pitch book are possible. Which is why News Corp. is in the unfortunate situation of trying to offload a money vacuum, and will be lucky to be able to even give it away.

The real question is how much News Corp. should be paying someone to take this off their books, not the other way around. MySpace, in other words, needs a dowry. A sad fate for what was once the largest site on the Internet.

Want to make a long distance call on the cheap? You’ve got plenty of options, including the likes of Google Voice, Skype, and numerous other VoIP providers. But things can get a little tricky if you don’t know someone’s phone number, or they don’t already have Skype installed. Today VoIP service provider Jajah, which was acquired by Telefónica in 2009, has a solution that will appeal to Facebook users: a new feature for its Android application (iPhone’s coming soon) that lets you call your Facebook contacts.

That sounds a bit confusing, but the feature is straightforward in practice. After installing the app on your phone, you’ll be asked to authenticate using Facebook Connect. You’ll then be able to see a list of all of your Facebook friends who are currently logged into Facebook Chat. Tap the one you wish to call, and they’ll receive an instant message with a link inviting them to join a free voice call with you. If they click it, a website will pop up and they’ll be able to talk using their computer’s speakers and microphone (they don’t need a Jajah account). The whole process, which you can see in the video below, takes about 10 seconds.

And in case you’re worried about privacy, the service masks your outgoing phone number. The company originally launched this feature last fall in the UK with support for its Blackberry app, but for some reason it’s remained in private beta. The Android app is now live for everyone, and the iPhone app will be released pending Apple’s approval (the Blackberry app is still on the roadmap, though the release date sounds less soon).

Jajah isn’t the only service that adds voice calling functionality to Facebook — last October Skype released Skype 5, which lets users call their Facebook friends’ phones (instead of sending them a link and initiating a call in the browser). Rumors continue to swirl that Facebook is working with Skype to bring deeper integration of video calling to the social network.