Category: Tech news

On August 16, Steve Jobs biopic “JOBS” will hit theaters nationwide. The movie follows the story of a young Jobs deciding to start Apple, building the world’s first personal computer out of his garage, and going on to lose the company he built only to be asked to take the helm once again, years later.

Ashton Kutcher, who took on the role of Jobs and even ended up in the hospital along the way, sat down with TechCrunch alongside co-star Josh Gad (who plays Steve Wozniak) to discuss the biopic.

“We’re taking on two people who are enormously important, who are still a part of the cultural zeitgeist, one of whom is still living and breathing,” said Gad. “So we didn’t take that lightly.”

For Kutcher, however, his biggest challenge was pleasing both groups of people who knew and interacted with Jobs, the group that loved him and the group that didn’t like him so much.

“He was a polarizing character,” said Kutcher. “He had a 95 percent approval rating from his employees but he would berate somebody for doing something wrong. I wanted to tell that story honestly in a way that both sides said ‘Yeah, that was Steve.’”

Kutcher said that having a lot of friends in the tech world that worked with Jobs helped him better understand the man, and it drove him to honor their love for him while still portraying an honest tale of who he was.

There had been a bit of drama over Steve Wozniak’s refusal to participate or consult on this film, instead being a “tutor” for Aaron Sorkin’s Jobs film. Yet, Kutcher and Gad didn’t express that they felt hindered by that.

“I think we successfully let Woz function the way he wanted him to, which was to be Steve’s conscience,” said Gad. “He is the Jiminy Cricket of the story.”

But outside of the roles, and the movie itself, Kutcher says his big screen turn as Jobs has most certainly made him a more well-rounded investor and advisor.

“The biggest thing I’ve drawn from this that I can share with entrepreneurs is a focus on making this thing so intuitively dumb,” said Kutcher. “A lot of engineers are the most brilliant people you know, and they think it’s easy to figure it out. But it’s easy because they made it. It needs to be so simple that everyone can use it or otherwise it’s not ubiquitous and it’s not accessible.”

As YouTube networks go, there are some that are designed to attract talent from all over the spectrum, and then there are those which focus on specific verticals. With that in mind, Santa Monica, Calif.-based Tastemade has become the leading next-generation video network for foodies in just a few years.

We visited Tastemade as part of our tour of Los Angeles digital media companies emerging to ride the “next wave” of video viewing online. Like Machinima, Tastemade is focused on a single group of viewers: the company fancies itself as a lifestyle network for food lovers, gathering up creators who have built their followings around their love of cooking (and eating). It also has its own regularly scheduled programming that it creates for the network, in the company’s custom-built studio space.

The Tastemade space used to be an old MTV Studios production studio back in the day, according to co-founder Steven Kydd. In that space, the company has built out five different sets that it can film in, including its ‘Brooklyn Kitchen’ set (which is about five times the size of any Brooklyn kitchen I’ve ever been in), a cooking school set, and even one that looks just like a fancy cocktail bar. Behind the scenes, the company has also built a sound-proofed prep kitchen for chefs to use to actually cook the meals that they’re showing off on camera.

While the space can be used to film on-demand episodes of creator cooking shows, Tastemade also uses it to host live filmings of certain programs and events. For instance a live “Japan week” in which it filmed episodes from a bunch of Japanese creators cooking and collaborating with each other.

So why food? Tastemade was founded by a couple of former Demand Media executives, who wanted to work on building a new media business, and themselves are passionate about food. It’s also a hugely monetizable business, and the team wants to build a huge brand online, in the same way that big cable brands emerged a few decades ago.

“We believe that just like 25 years ago, some of the biggest brands in cable were formed in those early days, that same opportunity exists today on digital platforms,” Kydd told me.

Watch the video above to learn more about Tastemade and what it’s doing. And be sure to check out the rest of our series on the new YouTube economy, with videos released every Monday and Wednesday over the next few weeks. In the meantime, here’s the whole series that we’ve put out so far:

• Get Ready For TechCrunch TV’s Tour Of The New Hollywood
• Inside Machinima, The New Video Network For Gamers And Fanboys
• Fullscreen Gives Video Creators The Tools To Collaborate And Make More Money On YouTube
• Meet Tastemade, The YouTube Network For Food Lovers

Mobile weather applications may be becoming the new playground for user interface designers, but few can also make claims as to advancing the technology behind the display of the weather on users’ smartphones, as well. But that’s the case with Minutely, a newly launched mobile weather application for iPhone and Android which not only offers the usual assortment of weather info, like temperatures, forecasts, and precipitation details, but also a 3D view into the weather itself in an application built on top of Unity.

Yes, Unity – the cross-platform video game development engine, which is rarely (if ever) used to build non-game mobile applications for smartphones. In fact, when Minutely’s co-founder and CEO Justin Re told Unity CEO David Helgason about his plans, he was told that such an idea was just “crazy.” But with the debut of Minutely’s mobile application, that crazy idea seems to have paid off.

Minutely is the new app and rebranding from a company called Ourcast, which had previously raised $1.3 million and launched a weather app by the same name back in April 2012. But Re explains that Ourcast’s problem, basically, was that it was built by engineers. “It didn’t have a very good product focus,” he admits. “It was more of a utility app.”

Ourcast was interesting, though, because it could predict the weather down to the minute, through a combination of weather data, algorithms, and crowdsourcing from the app’s network or users. But the company wanted to do more.

“We started looking at everyone [making weather apps] and what they’re trying to do,” explains Re. “And we took all the best features from the other apps – including our own – and combined it into one.”

The company also wanted to do something with a more visual element to it, but found they were restricted by the nature of the available tools for traditional app developers. That’s how the team ended up turning to Unity, which allowed them to map out not just the x and y axis of the radar data they pull in, but the z axis, too. This gives the new app Minutely its unique 3D view into storms, which will also be one of its key selling points to consumers.

However, while 3D weather maps is Minutely’s standout feature, the overall app experience is also well-designed, and definitely a step up from the company’s earlier efforts with Ourcast. The app’s homescreen features at-a-glance information including current temps, highs and lows, a 2-day forecast, an animated weather icon (e.g. sunny, overcast, heavy rain, etc.), and a chart that displays both the temperature and chance of rain over the next 24 hours.

From this main screen, tapping on various elements or “view more” links will offer more details, like a written-out “full forecast” for the day, an extended forecast for the week ahead, a rain gauge, or, if you tap the weather icon, a way to report the weather yourself.

A “Waze” For Weather

This is another one of Minutely’s notable features – it’s also a crowdsourced weather application, where user reporting actually helps to inform its model. That is, if a certain number of users report data that contradicts what Minutely’s weather feeds and algorithms say, the weather report changes. (The number of people needed for that impact to occur will grow over time as the product becomes more widely adopted.)

What’s nice about Minutely’s variation on the crowdsourced weather reporting interface, as compared with a competitor like Weathermob for example, is that the interface for reporting this data is extremely simple. You just tap on the animated homescreen icon, choose a picture, then tap “report.” Weathermob instead asks users to choose three icons – a weather descriptor, sentiment, and what the weather is good for (e.g. grilling out, golfing, etc.)

For those who want to submit more details with their weather reports in Minutely, they can do so via the prominent “Report” button, which also allows you to add a photo, write a message, or share to Facebook or Twitter. In addition to helping make Minutely’s weather reports more accurate, these reports display on the app’s map interface, though they can optionally be turned off here if getting in the way of seeing the radar data and storms.

The 3D visualization of the precipitation is the app’s big whiz-bang feature of course, and Re says this will be improved in time. Because the app is built on Unity, they’ll be able to display the rain as droplets and the snow as flakes, and so on, to give you a better feeling of what kind of weather is happening where. It’s worth noting that the 3D element actually works better on Android, and doesn’t run well on anything below an iPhone 4S. It’s also hard to say how practical such a feature is – many may find the traditional 2D maps meet their needs, as is. But assuming users are really sold on 3D, the company may decide to break that off as an in-app upgrade in the future.

But at the end of the day, it may not be the 3D interface that’s the bigger sell here, but rather, the crowdsourcing. Following the acquisition of Waze by Google, there’s a renewed interest in what else crowdsourcing can do via a network of mobile devices. Weather is an obvious fit.

Launching Now

Ourcast had grown to some 30,000 active users, but those who remaining will be pushed to the new Minutely app starting tomorrow since the company can’t maintain both apps going forward.

Minutely soft-launched a few days ago, ahead of today’s more public debut. The company, a distributed team of five full-time in Melbourne and San Francisco, plans to raise its Series A later this year.

Interested users can download Minutely from here. (iTunes here, Android here on Google Play.)

Yes, you read that right. The Washington Post Company just announced that it has reached an agreement to sell its newspaper publishing business to Amazon founder and CEO Jeff Bezos for $250 million.

“I, along with Katharine Weymouth and our board of directors, decided to sell only after years of familiar newspaper-industry challenges made us wonder if there might be another owner who would be better for the Post (after a transaction that would be in the best interest of our shareholders),” said Post Chairman and CEO Donald Graham in a press release. (The Graham family has owned a controlling stake in the Post since the 1930s.) “Jeff Bezos’ proven technology and business genius, his long-term approach and his personal decency make him a uniquely good new owner for the Post.”

In the same release, Bezos promises that “the Post’s values will not change.” He has supposedly asked Post CEO and Publisher Katharine Weymouth, President and General Manager Stephen P. Hills, Executive Editor Martin Baron, and Editorial Page Editor Fred Hiatt to remain in their roles.

In addition to acquiring the Washington Post itself, Bezos is also buying the Express newspaper, The Gazette Newspapers, Southern Maryland Newspapers, Fairfax County Times, El Tiempo Latino and Greater Washington Publishing. Slate magazine, TheRoot.com, Foreign Policy, Kaplan, Post–Newsweek Stations, Cable ONE, and other parts of the business will be remaining with the Washington Post company. Since it has sold off its namesake newspaper, the company will be changing its name to a yet-to-be-announced title..

Other recent media sales, such as the $70 million acquisition of the Boston Globe by Boston Red Sox owner John Henry, were less surprising since the owners had publicly declared their interest in selling. (The Post’s editorial staff was taken by surprise, too.)

Just to be clear, this is a purchase by Bezos as an individual, not Amazon. Earlier this year, he also invested in the Business Insider news site.

In a letter to the Post staff, Bezos wrote:

I won’t be leading The Washington Post day-to-day. I am happily living in “the other Washington” where I have a day job that I love. Besides that, The Post already has an excellent leadership team that knows much more about the news business than I do, and I’m extremely grateful to them for agreeing to stay on.

There will of course be change at The Post over the coming years. That’s essential and would have happened with or without new ownership. The Internet is transforming almost every element of the news business: shortening news cycles, eroding long-reliable revenue sources, and enabling new kinds of competition, some of which bear little or no news-gathering costs. There is no map, and charting a path ahead will not be easy. We will need to invent, which means we will need to experiment. Our touchstone will be readers, understanding what they care about – government, local leaders, restaurant openings, scout troops, businesses, charities, governors, sports – and working backwards from there. I’m excited and optimistic about the opportunity for invention.

The Snowden effect continued to roll today, with fresh revelations detailing how the pervasive surveillance of the National Security Agency (NSA) is in fact linked to domestic criminal prosecution. The idea, and the defense, that NSA activity only impacts non-United States citizens and terrorists, is now utterly specious.

The NSA is one of the member agencies of a DEA unit called the Special Operations Division (SOD). The SOD, according to Reuters who broke the story, is at work “funneling information from intelligence intercepts, wiretaps, informants and a massive database of telephone records to authorities across the nation to help” start, and win criminal investigations of United States citizens.

Therefore, there is a direct connection between the NSA and its surveillance efforts and regular criminal prosecution in the country.

The Washington Post read the Reuters piece as an indication the NSA is leaking phone record information to the DEA, through the SOD, but we’re not convinced that it’s a proper reading of the source. However, the SOD does operate the ‘DICE’ database, which the DEA told Reuters has around 1 billion records, both telephonic and digital. The majority, but not all, are sourced by the DEA itself.

What’s most surprising about today’s revelations is the process by which the DEA covers the tracks of its information. Using “parallel construction,” where information came from is hidden. Reuters tells a story in which a judge was told that a tip kicked off the investigation at hand. However, after pressing, it was admitted that the data had in fact been first captured by the NSA, and distributed by the SOD.

By creating new pasts for received data, the DEA can avoid potentially awkward questions about the legality of its evidence.

And the data that the NSA collects could be very useful to the DEA. The NSA, for example, collects metadata on every phone call placed in the United States. It is not clear what the NSA shares, or how often. However, it’s the fact that NSA data is being handed to the DEA through the secret SOD that is troubling prima facie.

This is not the last time that we will have a conversation similar to this one. According to the New York Times, other agencies inside the Federal government are clamoring for the information that the NSA has collected, and continues to collect.

Oversight?

It has also recently been reported that members of Congress are being denied access to information about the NSA’s activities, both by having requests ignored, or simply denied. Glenn Greenwald has primary source information, letters sent by members of Congress asking for specific information.

Others have reported similar issues in more pedestrian fashion, including Rep. Justin Amash, who tweeted that access to certain information was provided for a mere three hours, and that many Representatives missed the chance, and that those who did see the document in question were not allowed to discuss it with those that did not.

There is work afoot, as you might have expected, to keep information regarding the NSA’s activities out of the public eye. To some extent that is perfectly reasonable, given that such agencies are clandestine by nature. When Congress, tasked with oversight of American intelligence operations, is lied to, denied information, and then provided only select facts for limited periods of time, something is wrong.

And, given that the NSA is slipping the DEA information about domestic phone calls, we’ve never needed more stern hands on the NSA’s wheel.

Top Image Credit: Brett Neilson

It’s said that history is written by the victors — or at least, by those who empathize with the victors — so it makes sense that much of the press coverage about the tech industry concentrates on the big wins instead of the losses. But the truth is that the business people best known for being “successful” have also had their fair share of failures along the way. They just don’t discuss them very often.

That silence about failure is something that needs to change. People who are working through struggles in building a business should know that they’re not the only ones who have had dark days.

So we asked some of the most prominent people in the tech industry to talk about a time in their careers that was marked by epic failure and dark days. We got five really good stories, and we’ll be airing them over the coming days in a series we’re calling “Fail Week” (yep, it’s our own answer to Shark Week.)

In this first episode, hear legendary venture capitalist Tim Draper talk about the time that the government knocked on his door about the $6 million he owed them — and put him on their “dirt list” of people they were watching. According to him, before you succeed, you must “fail and fail again.”

OMGPOP almost got an extra life, but Zynga said ‘game over’. Zynga just finalized plans to shut down OMGPOP, the game developer of Draw My Thing it acquired for $200 million in March 2012.  But multiple sources familiar with Zynga tell TechCrunch the OMGPOP team was in direct contact with Zynga leadership in an attempt to buy back the site or continue operating it, yet Zynga refused.

Our sources tell us that multiple OMGPOP team members independently tried to buy back the OMGPOP.com site, games, and intellectual property. These team members wanted whatever Zynga was willing to sell, even if that didn’t include the more valuable Draw Something assets or user data. Even more employees offered to work on OMGPOP.com for free. However, Zynga said this would all take too much legal work and wouldn’t agree to sell anything.

Instead, Zynga laid off OMGPOP’s employees, and today said the whole OMGPOP.com site will go dark September 30th. Several OMGPOP games (excluding the Zynga-rebranded Draw Something and its sequel that shall continue running) will shut down early on August 29th. This includes the games Cupcake Corner, Gem Rush, Pool World Champ and Snoops)

That leaves well over 30,000 monthly active users locked out of the games they enjoy. That’s a bit sad, considering our sources say OMGPOP.com and its non-Draw Something games were earning a decent amount of money —  enough to be run independently of Zynga and make a profit. That will never be, though.

We’ve reached out to Zynga for comment on the news.

Now let’s be clear. Zynga has to trim the fat. If it doesn’t, it risks the whole company going under, which would displace even more employees and gamers. But refusing to give the axed OMGPOP team a second chance on their own doesn’t exactly inspire a lot of sympathy. Nor does it make it seem like an inviting place to work or sell your gaming startup to.

Despite the injection of former Microsoft Xbox head Don Mattrick, one source familiar with the internal workings of the company says Zynga is “ruined”, and more specifically faces serious internal challenges going forward. Things apparently went downhill after Zynga’s December 2011 IPO when former CEO Mark Pincus cashed out nearly $200 million in stock. Morale is now supposedly very low, with employees doing as little as humanly possible to get by. People aren’t concerned with making fun games or long-lasting infrastructure, but just with keeping their metrics high enough to keep their jobs.

If Mattrick is going to turn Zynga around, it can’t just be about getting financials going in the right direction. He’ll need to fundamentally transform the attitude of the team and convince them there’s still time to hit “Continue”.

[Image Credits: FanPop, Kotaku/Final Fight]

Time is moving forward with its plans for a major redesign and relaunch of the Time.com website this fall, announcing today that it has hired design studio Big Human.

It’s an interesting choice, because most of Big Human’s past experience has been on the tech and startup side — past clients include Jetsetter, 1stDibs, and Samsung. (Big Human’s founder Rus Yusupov was also a co-founder at Vine.) In fact, the studio has never worked for a news site before — something that managing director Steve Spurgat said is an advantage.

“Some of Big Human’s biggest success stories are set in industries we had never tackled before,” Spurgat told me via email. “Jetsetter was our first travel site, and we were with them from when they were a small team up until their recent acquisition. 1stDibs was our first ecommerce site, and our redesign had an huge impact on their numbers.”

The Time.com team has been hiring heavily for the relaunch — the company said in May that it was hiring 30 new staffers, an increase of about 50 percent. Managing editor Edward Felsenthal and head of product Daniel Bernard (who both joined recently) told me that the redesign goals include placing a bigger emphasis on the mobile experience, as well as (in Felsenthal’s words) “drawing on our really massive social reach.”

Time says that Time.com had 27 million unique visitors in July, up 40 percent year-over-year, with mobile and tablet traffic accounting for nearly 30 percent of that total.

Asked about why they chose Big Human in particular, Bernard pointed to the studio’s success with e-commerce. Not that Time.com will be unveiling a bunch of new commerce features — instead, Bernard said that perspective can help Time.com figure out “how do we merchandise our news and surface things a lot of different ways?”

Spurgat added:

We of course examine what other news sites are doing well and not so well, but we treat much of our ideation as if Time.com is the first news site in the world. It’s amazing that a brand like Time, with its deep-rooted history and prestige, is onboard with that approach. In the history of online news, I doubt you’ll find such a big news brand working so tightly with a twenty person agency that’s famous for working with startups.

Meanwhile, the company also announced today that it has hired Jeffrey J. Bairstow as its executive vice president and chief financial officer as it prepares to spin off from Time Warner.

A judge denied alleged Snapchat co-founder Reggie Brown’s motion to disqualify Quinn Emanuel from representing Snapchat today. Quinn Emanuel will continue to represent the company as the case moves forward.

Brown filed a suit in February claiming that he came up with the idea for a disappearing messages app that eventually became Snapchat. Brown says he was wrongfully kicked out of the company by co-founders Evan Spiegel and Bobby Murphy, and is seeking a full, undiluted one-third stake in the company–currently valued at $267 million. While admitting that Brown came up with the idea, Spiegel and Murphy contend that he never had equity in the venture.

Brown’s representatives, Lee Tran & Liang (LTL), filed a motion in June to disqualify Quinn Emanuel from representing Snapchat. Brown had previously consulted with and sent files to Quinn Emanuel attorney Anthony Alden. LTL argued that because of this, Quinn Emanuel could not switch sides and represent Snapchat.

However, Brown signed a waiver stating that Quinn Emanuel was not representing him and Quinn Emanuel could represent other parties down the line if it so chose. Quinn Emanuel claims they set up an ethical wall, sealing Alden off from the rest of the firm, and that because of the waiver and ethical wall, the firm should not be disqualified.

“We’re pleased that the Court enforced Mr. Brown’s clear and unequivocal promise not to seek to disqualify the firm,” Quinn Emanuel partner Bruce Van Dalsem said.

While this ruling will likely not have a major impact on who wins the overall case, it saves Snapchat co-founders Evan Spiegel and Bobby Murphy a good amount of time and energy, as they do not have to go find new representatives.

The waiver and the ethical wall were the major points the two sides argued over in oral arguments in front of Judge Joseph R. Kalin this past Thursday.

“Most of the documents are arguing the merits of the case and not necessarily the disqualification of counsel,” Kalin noted. Both sides have submitted ample documentation from the discovery phase in motions that should be solely related to the issue of the potential disqualification of Quinn Emanuel.

The lawyers argued over a number of details, particularly precedents for the waiver, and both sides accused the other’s client of trying to gain an unfair tactical advantage. LTL argued that Snapchat hired Quinn Emanuel because Spiegel and Murphy heard in depositions that Brown had consulted with a Quinn Emanuel attorney. Quinn Emanuel fired back that Brown was pressing to disqualify Quinn Emanuel merely as a tactical move to disrupt Snapchat because he had signed Quinn Emanuel’s waiver before speaking to Alden.

“The advantage waiver was satisfactory and effective under the circumstances,” Kalin wrote in his ruling. “Furthermore, the court is satisfied that Alden has not had and will not have any improper communication with others at the firm concerning the litigation due to the timely and adequate ethical wall constructed by Quinn Emanuel.”

In fitting story lines for this case, Quinn Emanuel represented the Winkelvoss twins in their famous suit against Facebook, and the Lee Tran & Liang firm was founded by former Quinn Emanuel attorneys.

“We disagree with but respect the Court’s decision,” LTL attorney James Lee tells me. “We will evaluate our options but regardless of what we decide to do, we look forward to litigating this case on the merits to get Mr. Brown his rightful 1/3 in Snapchat.”

A trial date has not yet been set but I’m told we can expect it to be sometime in the March or April of 2014. Brown, Spiegel, and Murphy were not present at the hearing, which was expected.

The two sides will have months to discover new evidence and prepare their arguments before arguing them in court, but we know the core of the case. The majority of the case will focus on a few key moments in a five month period in the spring and summer of 2011.

Brown’s representatives will likely argue that he came up with the idea and was joined by Spiegel and Murphy. The trio then moved to Los Angeles together and entered into a joint venture, using Spiegel and Murphy’s old LLC, Future Freshman, for convenience and cost purposes, but never with Brown sacrificing all claims to equity. They will say that Spiegel and Murphy wrongfully outed Brown from the company

Snapchat’s representatives will claim that while Brown came up with the initial idea, which was not a particularly novel idea, it was Spiegel and Murphy who made the application what it is today. Furthermore, they will likely argue that when Spiegel and Murphy converted their old venture, Future Freshman LLC, to the Toyopa Group (an entity which they eventually converted to Snapchat Inc.), Brown had no equity in the group; Brown’s equity claims are tied to a patent that was never approved, and thus his claim is to one third of nothing.

Disclosure: I am heading into my senior year at Stanford and the president of the Stanford chapter of Kappa Sigma. Brown, Spiegel, and Murphy were all members of Kappa Sigma at some point during their time at Stanford. By the time I joined the fraternity, in the spring of 2011 (my freshman year), Murphy had graduated from Stanford, and Spiegel and Brown had left the fraternity.

I have never met Brown. I’ve met Murphy once. I have gotten to know Spiegel since the spring of 2012, mostly through interviews for TechCrunch. This in no way affects my objectivity or ability to report on this lawsuit or the company.

It’s almost a cliche to complain about the alienating effects of technology, but the Internet is an amazing resource for combating isolation. Sites and online forums mean people who suffer from stigmatized conditions like depression can find support that was unavailable just a decade ago. Now Y Combinator startup 7 Cups of Tea wants to help connect people in need of emotional support with the site’s trained listeners.

Founded by clinical psychologist Glen Moriarty, 7 Cups of Tea positions itself as an alternative for people who need more immediate support than an online forum but don’t want to see a therapist (though if necessary, listeners will refer callers to mental health professionals). Users can start with text chats and then switch to voice calls when they feel more comfortable, as well as request specific listeners. 7 Cups Of Tea, which is named after a poem by Chinese poet Lu Tong and soft-launched at the end of June, currently has over 100 listeners and gets 1,000 call requests a week.

“The vast majority of people are not struggling with any really significant disorders. They are just going through a hard time. Maybe their kids are overwhelming them or their marriage is not working out right. They might have a lot of questions about things, like ‘is this normal?’ and feel like they can’t talk to anyone about it,” Moriarty says. “They just want to share it with someone.”

Sometimes callers want to connect with listeners who have had similar life experiences. 7 Cups Of Tea recruited many of its current listeners through organizations like the National Alliance On Mental Illness (NAMI), Active Minds, a student group for mental health advocacy, Narcotics Anonymous and the Down Syndrome Association. Other listeners include military spouses, graduate students in psychology and caregivers of people with long-term health issues.

One of Moriarty’s main is to help people who feel isolated find support.

“One person had two sons with Asperger’s Syndrome. He texted five of his friends because he needed someone to talk to and none of them responded. It’s the loneliest feeling,” says Moriarty, himself the father of twins born prematurely. “With our site, I don’t have to worry about burning my friends out. I can’t call my therapist at 11 o’clock at night, but I can just go on and see if there is a listener available.”

Potential listeners must complete an online training program and speak with Moriarty on the phone before they start taking calls.

“I try to assess why they are interested in being a listener and just make sure that they understand the basic concept. If someone is telling you a story, try to understand what it would feel like to be them,” says Moriarty. “I think most people feel relieved when they get that: ‘I’m not alone, I feel validated.’”

7 Cups Of Tea conducts a background check on all listeners to ensure the safety of users. After each session, they are ranked by the caller on helpfulness, professionalism, empathy and response time. If someone is undergoing a crisis that is beyond the scope of 7 Cups of Tea’s listeners, they are referred to hotlines for specific issues or resources to help them find professional therapists.

Safeguards are in place for listeners, too. Calls are connected through a bridging service that allows both people to remain anonymous and listeners can use a nickname on their 7 Cups of Tea profile. Sessions with harassing or rude callers are disconnected immediately. 7 Cups of Tea is aware that helping others cope with problems can take an emotional toll on even the most empathetic person and provides support for the site’s listeners.

7 Cups of Tea’s team is still working on monetization strategies. Listeners can currently elect to charge a fee and if they do, the site takes a commission. Moriarty says the site’s current focus, however, is recruiting listeners to ensure users get their calls answered as soon as possible.

“We just want to be a place where you can get support,” says Moriarty. “Late at night, when you are all alone, the kids are in bed and you are exhausted and just someone to fill your tank back up, give us a call.”

If you build it, they will come. But what if you don’t know how to build it?

That was the problem facing Mattan Griffel, founder of a new YC-backed startup called One Month Rails that is launching today.

“I didn’t study computer science or anything, but I had this great idea for a startup,” he said. “I just didn’t know how to build it. I spent the next few months looking for someone who could build it for me, and never quite found the right person.”

Eventually, says Griffel, he realized he had to build it himself if he wanted to get it done, and started scouring the web for resources to help him learn to code.

“I realized that when you don’t know anything about coding, you don’t know what language to learn or what you need to know,” said Griffel.

Codecademy and Learn The Hard Way are different from One Month Rails in that they teach a comprehensive curriculum for becoming a coder in general, but don’t necessarily teach you just what you need to know to build your intended product or web app.

According to Griffel, nobody knows which resources to use, or which courses to take to develop the skills they need to build what they want.

One Month Rails teaches Ruby On Rails in less than a month, with a webbed structure so that you learn to build what you want without learning every single lesson under the sun. This way, you can have a functional web app up and running in no time.

But why Ruby on Rails?

Griffel explains that not only is Ruby on Rails highly popular right now (making it easier to troubleshoot problems with a simple Google search), but that Ruby on Rails allows a single developer to handle the front-end, back-end, and everything in between.

As it stands now, the YC-backed startup has over 9,000 paying student customers, with a month of tutorials costing $49.95. Eventually, the team will expand beyond Ruby on Rails to Python, JavaScript, etc.

The U.K. government’s latest tech-related initiative has political photo opportunity written all over it. Said scheme – The GREAT Tech Awards (TGTA) – is heavy on jingoism (yes that’s “GREAT” as in Britain and GREAT as in technology, see what they did there?) – and light on payload and pay-off. But then the business of government is mostly a marketing exercise these days, so none of this should surprise.

TGTA calls on U.S. startups who don’t currently have a U.K. presence, but do have some presence in New York, to enter the competition to win a return ticket to the U.K. in October — season of mists and mellow fruitfulness (well, rain, spiders and gutters filled with sodden leaves, actually).

There will be five ticket winners in all, one U.S. startup in each of following categories: hardware, education, lifestyle, finance and media. (British startups feeling left out will have to console yourself with an ‘advisors’ choice’ award for a “successful British tech company that has established a dynamic presence in the New York market”. No free plane tickets for you, either.)

What do the five U.S. winners get, apart from a free “premium economy” plane ticket apiece? The trip will involve meeting a few bods at No.10 Downing Street, getting some legal and biz dev advice, an intro meeting with a “major British brand” and a tour of a few London co-working spaces, along with a few other bits and bobs (see below for full prize list).

But really that’s just garnish. The real prize is getting to spend a working week running around in UK Plc’s hamster-wheel of spin. Yay! Doubtless the winners will receive a lot of ministerial handshakes in front of carefully selected news media. Politicos love nothing better than a well-composed photo opportunity. Or at very least a barrage of self-congratulatory press releases. So expect plentiful digital emissions from BIS and UKTI come October, about how the government is luring U.S. entrepreneurs across the pond, helped by London’s trendy Tech City initiative. Spin, spin, spin!

(For some political context, the Conservative-led U.K. coalition government is currently trying to make the most of a national economic situation that’s become slightly less dire than it has been for the past three years. So just really dire then. Ergo, it’s especially keen to shout about job creation and business innovation. So yay startups!)

Now this marketing exercise is not entirely without merit. Making some high level noise by rebranding ‘Silicon Roundabout’ as Tech City has arguably helped attract big name tech investment to East London —  which has (also arguably) been helpful in terms of concentrating talent and attracting additional investment to the area to up its credentials as a tech/startup hub. Even though rents have also been pushed higher in the process, actually making life harder for some East London-based startups.  (Think of it as the swings and roundabouts of Tech City spin.)

So a scheme to market the U.K. Plc business opportunities at a handful of U.S. startups isn’t a bad thing per se. It’s just a “drop in the ocean” — as even British Consul General in New York, Danny Lopez, concedes, when asked about what outcomes the government is hoping TGTA will deliver.

“Ultimately the outcome is to increase trade flows,” he tells TechCrunch. “Clearly a very short-term outcome is that those five worthy winners that come over to the U.K. on a bespoke business development package that we put together will hopefully, if it’s right for them, set up in the U.K. and that increases figures. The reality is that’s a drop in the ocean when you look at the context of how many companies we help in the year.”

Five U.S. startups getting a freebie trip to London isn’t going to move anyone’s needle. But a flashy awards bash gives the U.K. government something to talk about when it hob-nobs with — and tries to butter up — U.S. startups.  In other words what Lopez carefully describes as a way to “showcase and increase exposure” can be basically summed up as a UK Plc sales & marketing pitch.

Learning about what foreign startups want, in terms of government policy, is another likely offshoot of the TGTA initiative — which is a good thing, if it ends up “feeding into policy points”, as Lopez puts it. “We will get to celebrate a number of New York based companies who’re looking to the U.K. but we will also, by working with them, learn more about the sort of challenges they face and what more we can do as a government to help them,” he says.

Now, the U.K.’s current immigration policy has been criticised by VCs and entrepreneurs for making it harder for them to bring in the required talent to build their businesses. And it’s likely a lot of the startups Lopez and co are hob-nobbing with will be making that point over their U.K.-taxpayer funded Pinot Grigio and canapés. (Even as current Home Office immigration policy priorities accelerate off in a very different direction.)

Asked if the government is actively looking at how its current immigration policies impact startups — with a view to potentially making them more startup-friendly — Lopez says: ”All we can do from what we do here is feed those views, which is why I’m very keen that we have an initiative like [TGTA]. I can’t comment on immigration reform, clearly that’s the remit of the Home Office, but when it come to what investors tell us that’s what we’re trying to do — collect views and be able to feed them through.”

“It is something that is being raised by companies as something that we should look at,” he adds, after being pressed on the immigration point.

Why is TGTA’s focus on New York, rather than any/all U.S. startups? Presumably because it’s relatively close to the U.K., versus Silicon Valley, so may be slightly more inclined to care about expanding across the pond.

Lopez puts it another way — saying the New York focus is a result of a noticeable “explosion” of disruptive activity in the city over the past two years, and some native synergies between New York and London.

“Whenever my team speaks to companies here they will say that mobile technology disrupts fashion, media, finance, in a way that means that the two epicentres of those three industries in the world — London and New York — have so much in common,” he says. “So if you’re based in New York and thinking about international expansion, London kind of makes sense — and vice versa.”

He won’t disclose how much taxpayer cash the U.K. government is spending on its latest swathe of spin (aka TGTA) — but does note that sponsors are paying for core elements of the awards, including the flights (Virgin Atlantic is stumping up the cash) and accommodation for the duration of the stay (Royal Bank of Scotland funded, apparently).

TGTA’s judging panel includes David Karp, CEO/Founder of Tumblr; John Borthwick, CEO/Co-founder of Betaworks; and Ben Lerer, CEO/Co-founder of Thrillist Media Group and Lerer Ventures.

Here’s the full run down of what the five U.S. winners will get:

• One premium economy round-trip airplane ticket provided by Virgin Atlantic Airlines departing from JFK on October 14, and returning from LHR on October 19, 2013
• A meeting with a senior representative at No.10 Downing St.
• Over $4,000 worth of legal services courtesy of Taylor Wessing LLP
• A two-day customized business development program in London (15-16 October)
• One entry pass to London’s Wired 2013 Conference (17-18 October 2013)
• An introductory meeting with a major British brand to be selected by Sponsor
• A tour of co-working and shared office spaces in London
• A complimentary BritishAmerican Business annual corporate membership (in either London or New York)
• A complimentary Gold Ticket Registration to the BritishAmerican Business Christmas Luncheon (in either London or New York)
• A half page feature on all winners in BritishAmerican Business New York Network magazine

Yahoo continued its acquisition spree last week, picking up RockMelt’s team. The company’s product will be all but instantly axed. Yahoo’s senior vice president of mobile wrote the blog post announcing the hire purchase, so it is not hard to see where RockMelt’s employees are headed.

It joins a string of companies, often small and directionless, that Yahoo has scooped up to help fuel its new mobile focus. Yahoo has been successful at finding firms that might be packed with developers that are otherwise hard to hire, and buying the operation wholesale. I’ve lost track of the number of acquisitions, but it’s nearing two dozen since Marissa Mayer took over at Yahoo’s helm.

It’s time to ask a new question: At what point does Yahoo’s aggressive purchase of outside firms to bolster its internal development corps help it grow its revenue? It is fair to say that under Mayer, Yahoo has undergone transformation in several ways: Internal culture and morale have improved, the company has made big bets on new demographics, and, yes, it has greatly expanded its pool of mobile developer talent that has helped the company grow its mobile usership.

However, those successful efforts have not yet translated to new top line incomes. In short, Yahoo’s reformation has been undertaken during a period of revenue decline; Yahoo’s business is bringing in fewer dollars than it once did. In the second quarter, for example, Yahoo’s GAAP revenue slipped 7%, to $1.13 billion.

Every new CEO should be granted a period of clemency, during which they can make initial reforms to the company that they now run. It takes time to institute change, and so for the first few quarters of a new CEO’s tenure, a respectful position of reasonable doubt is fair. However, that time expires, after which the CEO’s strategy can be measured on its own merits.

Mayer has executed her plan well, as we noted before. If she had not succeeded at creating a better vibe at Yahoo, I’d argue that her ability to hire through acquihire would have been greatly lessened; a less cool Yahoo would be a less exciting potential new home for an ailing startup.

We can therefore begin to judge the strategy’s efficacy. You might argue that it will take more than four quarters to reform a company as old, and large as Yahoo. That’s a reasonable point, but we can also look for signals as to the company’s direction.

Revenue at Yahoo managed to grow by a slim $21 million in the fourth quarter of 2012, on a year over year basis. But thus far in 2013, Yahoo has posted two quarter of consistent revenue decline, again comparing year ago quarters to the current. Perhaps more troubling, Yahoo has had its revenue decline sequentially as well, with the most recent quarter bringing in less than the directly preceding now for both of 2013′s reported quarters.

Yahoo is in no short-term danger. It’s a fantastically wealthy company, and one that has time to find new revenue sources. However, there is a question of pace at work here. When does the new mobile development talent, bought with dollars that could have been returned to shareholders, help Yahoo grow? Until Yahoo can demonstrate consistent revenue growth, Mayer’s strategy will remain unvalidated, and investors could lose at least some of the new faith that they have found in the company.

There are two simple ways that Yahoo could grow its top line, when thinking from the perspective of the companies that it has recently purchased: New talent drives higher usage of new and existing mobile applications, boosting ad income; or, Tumblr is functionally monetized, adding a new revenue column for Yahoo. However, Yahoo is likely hesitant to extract headlong financial return from Tumblr, and building mobile application market share in an ecosystem where every competitor has their own platform, and you don’t, isn’t a simple task.

There is no indication that Yahoo is done hiring through purchase. Criticism of that strategy is in the market, as is defense of what we could call the Mayer Way. Is the criticism fair, that Yahoo is becoming a receptacle for failed companies? Somewhat, but here’s the other side of the coin:

Wouldn’t it just be cheaper and easier to hire programmers on the open market or right out of college? Actually, no. The competition for developer talent in Silicon Valley today is insane. Take this recent piece from San Francisco Magazine describing the day Zynga laid off several hundred employees. Recruiters tried to hire freshly axed programmers in the comment section of news stories about the firings.

The Verge goes on to quote Bloomberg Businessweek, stating that Yahoo is locking newly purchased engineers into two and four-year contracts. AllThingsD thinks that Yahoo paid between $60 and $70 million for RockMelt. If it had 100 employees, Yahoo paid $600,000 to $700,000 per. If they only signed two-year contracts, before salary and the rest Yahoo shelled out hundreds of thousands of dollars per year for each new Yahoo-er.

That’s not cheap.

Yahoo needs to show in the second half of 2013 that it can grow its revenues, charting a new direction north. It would be even better, frankly, if Yahoo could directly draw a line between its current expenditures and new incomes, but that might be hard to directly demonstrate. I wouldn’t even expect that. But spending cash to increase overhead in the face of sliding revenue is a tough course to chart indefinitely.

Undoubtedly Yahoo is better off now than it was before the arrival of Mayer. But a business is the sum of its cashflows, and while they slip, no company can claim full health.

Top Image Credit: Yahoo!

Long before OMGPOP found its sudden (and rather fleeting) success as a mobile game developer with Draw Something, it began its life as an online game network at OMGPOP.com.

After Zynga acquired OMGPOP for around $200M only to lay off much of the team a year later, it was unclear what would happen to this last lingering monument to the company. On September 30th, it’ll be shut down for good. It’s the final period in OMGPOP’s story, a Zynga-branded version of Draw Something left as its only legacy.

Zynga is quick to point out that players will still be able to play Draw Something (both the original and the sequel) and Draw My Thing (the game that inspired Draw Something. I mean, besides Pictionary.) after the main portal goes dark.

Some games (Cupcake Corner, Gem Rush, Pool World Champ, and Snoops) are gettin’ the axe a bit earlier than the rest, dropping off the Internets at the end of August.

Most collaboration software these days seems to focus on real time, but Kivo, a new Y Combinator-backed startup out of the accelerator’s current class, is taking a different approach.

Co-founders Zefi Hennessy Holland (CEO) and Leo Anthias (CTO) argue that most people still work on a draft-based system and send their Office documents back and forth over email. Kivo lets its users sync changes in their documents. The idea is to expand this to a wide range of often-used formats, including all of the standard applications in the Microsoft Office suite. For now, however, it only works for PowerPoint 2007 and 2010 on Windows XP and up (support for the latest version of PowerPoint is coming soon).

In its current version, Kivo allows you to sync documents and track changes on a per-slide basis. The tool integrates itself with PowerPoint and it just takes a few clicks to sync a new version to Kivo’s servers or to restore an older version from Kivo’s repository. The basic idea here is to ensure that users never again have to share files with names like presentation_v4_final_final.ppt.

On the backend, Kivo uses Git, the incredibly popular distributed version control system that was originally designed for source code management, to keep track of all of these changes. As Holland and Anthias told me, this allows users to keep their files wherever they want to and Kivo then hosts the Git repository on its own servers. This also has the advantage that after the initial sync, users only have to download whatever has changed in between sessions instead of the complete — and often very large — document.

Holland and Anthias believe that while real-time editing looks cool, their market research showed that it “doesn’t really fit into people’s workflow most of the time.” Users, they argue, don’t need to see every time somebody moves a box around, and this can quickly get chaotic when you have multiple people work on a document. Most companies, they note, still work on a draft-based system anyway. Kivo helps solve the problems of real-time collaboration and introduces a better workflow, Holland and Anthias add.

Kivo is available for free during its beta period. After that, the team currently expects to move to a freemium model with per-seat/per-month pricing for users who need advanced features. Given that many business users are already paying for document-sharing solutions like Microsoft’s own Sharepoint, the Kivo team believes that getting users to pay for its service won’t be very hard. For now, though, the team mostly wants to learn more about how people will use its service, so feel free to sign up here and give it a try.