Category: Tech news

MyFitnessPal, which allows users to track and share their exercise and nutrition, is rolling out an update that should make it easier to find your friends on the service.

Connecting with friends was an important feature on MyFitnessPal before, but until now, you had to know their email address or user name. With this update, you can log in with Facebook and connect with your Facebook friends, or invite your Facebook friends to join the service. You can also look up users from your smartphone address book. If, on the other hand, you’re not interested in sharing your weight and other fitness info with your Facebook friends, you have the option of keeping your profile private.

When I asked why MyFitnessPal is making this update now, co-founder Albert Lee told me via email:

This is a feature our users have been asking for, and we’ve been working hard to make sure the integration was perfect. We’ve been recruiting heavily, and as we’ve grown and added additional talent to our team, we’re finally able to push out even more features that our users have been craving.

The update is now live in the MyFitnessPal iOS app, and a spokesperson tells me the company will update the website and Android app next week (although I’m already seeing some of the new functionality on the website).

Back in October, the company announced that it had 30 million registered users.

In a show of solidarity with those grieving tonight over a school shooting at Sandy Hook Elementary in Connecticut, Google placed a subtle vigil candle below its search box. Google’s graceful, yet poignant gesture speaks to the uniqueness of this particular tragedy. Earlier today, scores of citizens flooded the White House’s official online petition website, WeThePeople, calling for “immediate” gun control reform, in what could be the fastest petition ever for the site. And before that, a clip of a tearful Obama speaking about the incident went viral on the web. More and more unprecedented signs on the web reveal a nation uniquely scarred by the tragedy in Newtown.

Rally.org, a social fundraising startup that even partially raised its Series A round through its own platform, is putting together a charity campaign on behalf of San Francisco’s Glide Church that awards time with Silicon Valley super-angels like Ron Conway, Kevin Rose and Tim Ferriss.

Glide, a San Francisco institution that’s one of the city’s best-known churches, is launching online campaign that will give 10 people the chance to meet with Floodgate’s Mike Maples, Google Ventures’ Kevin Rose, Eric Ries, Four-Hour Work Week author Tim Ferriss, and Relay Ventures partner John Occhipinti.

The grand prize is an invitation to watch a San Francisco Giants game with Ron Conway in the SV Angels’ suite, a lunch with an investor of their choice, and roundtrip airfare to the Bay Area.

The Tenderloin-based church provides hundreds of thousands of meals every year to the homeless, along with running dozens of social programs that provide child care for the needy. On top of that, its gospel choir is one of the best-known and best-loved in the city. So far, the Glide campaign has picked up 312 supporters and has a goal of raising $15,000.

Rally.org’s co-founder and CEO Tom Serres came up with the idea for the company out of his work on political campaigns. He noticed inefficiencies in the fundraising process and thought that it could be managed better.

Out of that, came Piryx (which was Rally.org’s original name). The platform lets non-profits and other organizations create simple fundraising pages that can collect funds from any eCheck services or any of the major credit card networks. Rally takes 4.5 percent of every donation to cover costs, and there aren’t any additional monthly fees or costs.

Rally raised a $7.9 million round this past summer, with participation from (you guessed it) many of the investors who are part of this campaign’s prizes. Relay Ventures, Mike Maples of Floodgate Fund, Reid Hoffman of Greylock Partners, Kevin Rose of Google Ventures, Craig Shapiro of Collaborative Fund, Bebo co-founder Michael Birch, Tim Ferriss, Eric Ries, Josh Spear and Scott Belsky all participated.

The company says it has more than 21,000 rallies or causes on its platform right now with more than 3 million users, who are either donors, fan-fundraisers, or supporters of a rally.

Famed inventor, entrepreneur, author, and futurist Ray Kurzweil announced this afternoon that he has been hired by search engine giant Google as a director of engineering focused on machine learning and language processing. He starts this upcoming Monday, according to a report issued on his website.

It’s unclear whether he’ll be working at Google full-time or on a consulting basis, and whether he’ll be working from the Mountain View, California headquarters or his longtime base in Massachusetts. We’ve reached out for more details and will update this with word we receive. Update: In an email to TechCrunch, Ray Kurzweil provided some more information on his new gig, writing:

“It is a full time position in Mountain View. The focus of the position is on new technology development, however I will be continuing my role as a thought leader through lectures, speaking with the press, and such initiatives as my recent book.”

It’s certainly very interesting news, but it does not come as a huge shock. Google co-founders Larry Page and Sergey Brin are known to be keenly interested in the theory of an upcoming “technological singularity,” a time when human beings and artificially intelligent machines will sync up to push innovation forward at an unprecedentedly fast rate. Kurzweil is one of the most prominent individuals associated with the singularity movement.

Here is the report as published on his website:

“Ray Kurzweil confirmed today that he will be joining Google to work on new projects involving machine learning and language processing.

“I’m excited to share that I’ll be joining Google as Director of Engineering this Monday, December 17,” said Kurzweil.

“I’ve been interested in technology, and machine learning in particular, for a long time: when I was 14, I designed software that wrote original music, and later went on to invent the first print-to-speech reading machine for the blind, among other inventions. I’ve always worked to create practical systems that will make a difference in people’s lives, which is what excites me as an inventor.

“In 1999, I said that in about a decade we would see technologies such as self-driving cars and mobile phones that could answer your questions, and people criticized these predictions as unrealistic. Fast forward a decade — Google has demonstrated self-driving cars, and people are indeed asking questions of their Android phones. It’s easy to shrug our collective shoulders as if these technologies have always been around, but we’re really on a remarkable trajectory of quickening innovation, and Google is at the forefront of much of this development.

“I’m thrilled to be teaming up with Google to work on some of the hardest problems in computer science so we can turn the next decade’s ‘unrealistic’ visions into reality.””

I had the chance to interview Kurzweil in Austin, Texas earlier this year during the South By Southwest Interactive conference (Andrew Keen also spoke to him via Skype for a recent post on TechCrunch TV.) Here is the footage from the SXSW sit-down — it was a wide-ranging interview that touched on many topics, so we split it into two videos. In the first, he talks about entrepreneurship and startups; in the second, we get a bit into his thoughts on wellness, biotechnology, healthcare, and why “you are what you think.”

Please read the disclosure about Google in my author bio.

Update: The petition has reached 25,000 signatures

Almost immediately following the tragic school shooting in Connecticut, over 16,000 people have signed an official White House WeThePeople petition to “Immediately address the issue of gun control through the introduction of legislation in Congress.” Signatures seem to be increasing rapidly in speed, in what could be the fastest petition in the site’s history.

“The goal of this petition is to force the Obama Administration to produce legislation that limits access to guns. While a national dialogue is critical, laws are the only means in which we can reduce the number of people murdered in gun related deaths.”

According to WeThePeople guidelines, if 25k signatures are reached, the White House will issue an official response. While there are no guarantees that WeThePeople petitions will influence policy, the White House set up the online petitioning system to explore the urgency of issues through a more democratic medium. Given the extraordinary pace of this petition, it could influence the White House to make more expedient policy on gun control.

View the petition here and watch President Obama tearfully address the incident earlier today:

AngelList, a service that matches early stage startups with investors, is raising a big round of financing at a valuation that multiple sources say will top $150 million. Investors may include Google Ventures and Andreessen Horowitz, among others, say our sources. This will be the company’s first outside financing.

Founded by Naval Ravikant and Babak Nivi, AngelList has evolved into an incredibly powerful platform in the investing world. The hybrid social network, communication and crowdsourcing platform allows startups to access investors, and has also become a resource for investors looking to boost dealflow and connect with other investors.

The site currently has around 100,000 startup profiles. As of April, nearly 40 startups on AngelList had been acquired and 1,000 startups had been funded since 2010.

More recently, AngelList has started to actually be a part of the transaction itself, facilitating deals with legal documents. This includes standard term sheets, automatically generated closing documents, and tools to manage the process including electronic signatures, managing wire information, generating PDFs, and more. Earlier thus year, AngelList launched a way for startups to create a more interactive pitch deck. 500 Startups started using AngelList for applications for its incubator.

Recruiting is also an area where AngelList is thriving. The company has made hundreds of introductions between talent and startups, and has been interested in developing additional ways to make this process more efficient.

Another factor in AngelList’s favor is the recently passed JOBS act, which makes it legal to publicly announce that you’re raising money, raise money through equity crowdfunding sites and raise money from unaccredited investors. Currently, we’re waiting on the SEC to outline the actual provisions which is expected early next year. If more startups and businesses can raise money from both accredited and unaccredited investors, AngelList can be the platform of note to connect these parties. And, importantly, take a fee from any money raised.

AngelList declined to comment on this story.

Many, including us, thought that the introduction of Google Maps might lead to a rapid uptake in iOS 6 adoption, the idea being that many were holding out in order to keep Google’s offering as the default on their iPhones, iPads and iPod touches. But Chitika, a mobile ad network that regularly tracks iOS adoption rates based on devices accessing apps using its platform, has found negligible impact on how many users have upgraded a day and a half after the Google Maps release.

Chitika’s data shows that of users accessing its network, the average number using iOS 6 went from a very high 72.77 percent when Google Maps was released at midnight ET on Dec. 13 to a very slightly higher 72.94 percent as of 2:24 PM on Dec. 14. That difference is slim enough that Chitika says there was “no immediate impact” at all on iOS 6 adoption rates vs. the existing trends the network has been seeing. There was virtually no difference, let alone a dramatic spike. The takeaway? While a vocal minority may have claimed that they were holding out for a dedicated Google Maps app before upgrading, it seems that overall, many had decided to already take the iOS 6 plunge long before the app’s arrival.

Of course, Google’s Maps app for iOS was hardly the best kept secret in the world: rumors that it was arriving before Christmas had already surfaced the day after iOS 6′s release, and later reports only seemed to confirm we’d see something from Google hit the App Store before the end of the year. Chitika saw considerable increases in iOS 6 adoption between its last study in October 2012, when adoption was at 61 percent, and this most recent study, so it’s entirely possible many users had already updated, figuring there was no reason to delay further if Google was indeed planning on delivering its own app relatively soon.

It’s also possible that we’ll see adoption rates spike in the near future as more people become aware of Google Maps being available, but I’d argue that the app is hardly keeping a low profile, given the media attention it received over the past few days, and the fact that it quickly skyrocketed to the top of the iPhone app charts. Still, the fact remains that based on this data at least, it looks like the perception of masses of iOS users hunkered down and refusing to update before Google Maps returned may have been more figment than fact.

Jason Calacanis has announced via blog post that he’s planning to wind down his podcast network ThisWeekIn.com and return the remaining funds to investors.

Two of the shows, This Week In Startups (which Calacanis hosts) and Kevin Pollak’s Chat Show, will continue, but the company itself is shutting down. Calacanis wrote that ThisWeekIn wasn’t a failure, just “a moderate success” that “would not be able to scale.” Here’s his argument about why a podcasting company is unlikely to make big money:

Very, very few podcasts have made it to scale, and to me that says this business will never be big. Why? Well, you need folks like Leo [Laporte] or Adam [Carolla] to make millions of dollars and have breakout success, but if they decide to stop doing their show, the networks will shutter. That simple.

It just doesn’t make sense to invest in a business with this kind of limited upside.

…

In fact, the only way to make podcasting a real big business would be if you could somehow get the top seven podcasters to team up and make a meganetwork. If Leo Laporte, Kevin Rose, Adam Carolla, Kevin Pollak — plus three or four more — all did shows as one company, it would have $8M to $15M in revenue and be worth $50M to $75M, but that’s a lot of personality to try and corral — I dare say it’s impossible.

Back in 2010, the company raised $300,000 in funding from Matt Coffin, Sky Dayton, and Calacanis himself. At the time, Calacanis compared the model to Weblogs Inc., the blog network that he sold to Aol. (Before the funding was announced, Leo Laporte, host of This Week In Tech, criticized Calacanis for using the “This Week In” name. Calacanis responded that he’d gotten Laporte’s blessing.)

Over email, Calacanis (who runs Mahalo and the Launch conference, and may be preparing for something new) emphasized that the company was doing all right, breaking even with $500,000 in annual revenue and two hit shows (Calacanis’ and Pollak’s). He also said that there will be no layoffs, with the five full-time employees continuing to work on This Week In Startups.

Following October’s update of its Android application, Dropbox today released a new version of its iOS app, which focuses on refining the photo-viewing and sharing experience. In today’s update, there’s now a new Photos tab, which offers a way to tap into a scrollable timeline of the photos you’ve uploaded into your Dropbox account.

As with the Android update, which preceded this one, the new iOS app offers a more visual interface for browsing through the photos you’ve uploaded – and, in particular, those you’ve added through automatic “camera upload” functionality introduced in an earlier release. At the top of the new photo gallery, there’s a link to your camera uploads section which will display your ongoing photo upload progress. Or, if you’re out of space, this section offers a link to buy more storage.

While the main section of Dropbox’s app still lists your folders and files, including those dedicated to “Photo” and “Camera Uploads,” the second button to the left now takes you to this new photo gallery.

Here, the files aren’t laid out in a list, but rather as thumbnails – similar to what you would see in the iPhone or iPad’s default photo gallery application. When you tap on a photo, it appears full screen, with all the navigational and sharing buttons hidden from view. On the iPad, the thumbnail gallery can also display on the left side of the screen while in portrait mode, while photos can be viewed and shared from the right.

Buttons in the photo gallery allow you to favorite, download or share the photo via email or text, Facebook (post or message), or via Twitter. You can also copy the link to your clipboard from the sharing menu.

Other Changes

In addition to photo-sharing, Dropbox also added a plus “+” button to its user interface, appearing at the top right of any folder. This allows you to upload items directly from your iPhone or iPad to Dropbox or create a new folder quickly.

Overall, Dropbox’s design and user interface was also improved with today’s release in a number of more subtle ways. There’s a new icon, for example, and the app also removed the text labels on its tabs for simplicity’s sake, among other things.

The updated app is now available in Apple’s App Store here.

Google likes to make sweeping changes in bulk, getting rid of features that it thinks don’t really matter. Why don’t they matter? Its users tell them so by not using them.

In its “Winter Cleaning,” Google made some minor cuts, as well as a somewhat major one — the shutdown of Punchd, its loyalty card app and service. Merchants must not have been getting enough bang for their bucks by integrating it into their offerings.

The sync service drops are interesting, specifically Google Sync Exchange within Gmail, Contacts, and Calendars. The last Google “cleaning“ was the official death of Wave, so the company doesn’t mess around when things just never stick with its users. The company says it aims to make things more “seamless” in 2013, something we’ve seen with its Chrome, Gmail, Google+, and Maps apps for iOS recently.

Here’s what Venkat Panchapakesan, vice president of engineering, had to say:

Technology offers us a way to make a big impact on the world. In 2013, we’ll keep working hard to build a seamless, amazing Google experience for you.

The following will be going away:

– On January 4, 2013, we’ll be shutting down several less popular Google Calendar features. You’ll be unable to create new reservable times on your Calendar through Appointment slots, but existing Appointment slots will continue working for one year. In addition, we’ll discontinue two Calendar Labs—Smart Rescheduler (we recommend Find a time view or Suggested times as alternatives) and Add gadget by URL. Finally, Check your calendar via sms and Create event via sms (GVENT)—U.S.-only features for creating and checking meetings by texting information to Google—will be discontinued today, as most users prefer mobile Calendar apps.

– Google Sync was designed to allow access to Google Mail, Calendar and Contacts via the Microsoft Exchange ActiveSync® protocol. With the recent launch of CardDAV, Google now offers similar access via IMAP, CalDAV and CardDAV, making it possible to build a seamless sync experience using open protocols. Starting January 30, 2013, consumers won’t be able to set up new devices using Google Sync; however, existing Google Sync connections will continue to function. Google Sync will continue to be fully supported for Google Apps for Business, Government and Education. Users of those products are unaffected by this announcement.

– In addition to Google Sync, we’re discontinuing Google Calendar Sync on December 14, 2012 and Google Sync for Nokia S60 on January 30, 2013. We’re also ending service for SyncML, a contacts sync service used by a small number of older mobile devices on January 30, 2013.
The Issue Tracker Data API allows client applications to view and update issues on Project Hosting on Google Code in the form of Google Data API feeds. We’ll shut down the Issue Tracker API on June 14, 2013.

– Punchd is an app that keeps loyalty punch cards on your smartphone. On June 7, 2013, we will discontinue the Punchd Android and iOS apps, and merchants will no longer honor Punchd loyalty cards. Users can continue to earn punches and redeem rewards at participating businesses until June 7, 2013. We remained focused on developing products that help merchants and shoppers connect in new and useful ways.

Do any of these shutdowns affect your own personal flow with Google products? Any surprises? Share those issues in the comments.

Apple’s iPhone 5 is a “hit” according to English-language Chinese newspaper Shanghai Daily, despite the fact that there were not huge lineups or riots in the streets as there were on iPhone 4S launch day. That’s because most of the new phones were sold at China Unicom and China Telecom stores, the newspaper reports, rather than at Apple’s three Shanghai stores. In Shanghai alone, the newspaper puts first day sales at around 20,000 iPhone 5s through brick and mortar retail.

That includes around 15,000 sold through carrier outlets, making for a “robust” launch according to market watchers speaking to the Shanghai Daily, and adds to the 300,000 pre-orders seen through Apple’s China Unicom alone, which the carrier itself reported earlier this week. China Telecom wasn’t as transparent about its overall pre-order numbers but a Beijing subsidiary did reveal amazing 5,000 reservations for Apple’s new smartphone.

Other outlets also report strong iPhone 5 sales, including 100,000 pre-orders from home appliance retailer Suning, which also sold 20,000 handsets through its retail channels in China. It’s hard to compare this to data from previous launches, as last year riots halted sales early with the iPhone 4S. The iPhone 4 sold 60,000 units (across the entire country, not just in Shanghai) on launch day, however, with over 200,000 pre-orders through China Unicom, then the exclusive iPhone carrier in the country. The 3GS did far worse, netting 100,000 sales only after six weeks of availability, but it also came to China two years after it had been available in the U.S.

Jay Yarow at Business Insider points out some reasons why this launch appears on the surface to be weaker than others have in the past, including the implementation of a tightly regulated reservation system by Apple to defray the kind of trouble it ran into with the 4S, and also to prevent grey market resale. Apple is also using a lot more third-party resale partners than it has in the past, and as noted above, buyers seem to be flocking to those outlets.

This launch is definitely a much more muted affair than what we saw last year, but those proclaiming that they’re a sign of a weak opening in China could be jumping to conclusions before all the data is on the table.

If you’ve never heard of Toca Boca, then you must not have kids. The studio behind a series of popular children’s applications for iOS (iPhone and iPad) has just passed 22 million downloads across its portfolio of now 16 applications, and is today expanding to Android, starting with support for the Kindle Fire. More Android releases are planned for early next year, the company says.

Toca Boca, for those unfamiliar, operates like a startup within the family-owned, 200-year-old Swedish publishing company Bonnier. Founded in September 2010, Toca Boca CEO Björn Jeffery describes the company’s structure as “a startup with a very friendly bank”: It’s independently run, but doesn’t have to worry about fundraising. That’s a different sort than many in the space. Often, kids app makers are either independent studios or are backed by VC funding.

Bonnier, says Jeffery, saw the potential for the iPad early on. “It was another take on media, instead of repurposing old IP and old materials,” he explains. “A lot of media companies just take what they have and put them on a new screen, and say ‘right, we’re finished.’” Toca Boca, however, grew out of earlier research in Bonnier’s R&D division, where the company had developed concepts for how its media content could work on a digital, touchscreen computer. This research, in fact, was performed before the iPad was even released.

After the iPad’s launch, Jeffery says they realized some of their earlier ideas were right, and others were a bit off. But what stuck out the most was the way the iPad was being brought into family homes and shared. “We thought it would be very interesting to see how we could make a shared experience on the touchscreen for children,” says Jeffery. “The touchscreen itself gives kids the possibility to have their first interactive media experience.”

Toca Boca’s debut app, launched in March 2011, was Toca Tea Party, which mixed digital and real-life play. (The iPad served as the host for a virtual tea party.) Subsequent releases have evolved that original concept of interactivity, but generally now have the child interacting with the characters in the app instead. The most popular series within Toca Boca’s portfolio, Toca Hair Salon, allows kids to wash, cut, color and style various characters’ hair, for example. So far, this series alone has produced over 10 million of the 22 million total Toca Boca app downloads. These are digital “toys,” says Jeffery, not digital games. The company had just 5 million downloads this time last year.

Today, the company is trying to spin off that success with the release of a sequel, Hair Salon 2.  Although it’s early, the potential is there for another hit. The app is now No. 1 on iPad in 18 markets, and top 10 in 55 markets. That’s in paid apps overall, mind you, not kids apps. In the U.S., Toca Boca’s largest market, it’s currently sitting in the No. 3 spot. Toca Boca’s apps are available in 146 countries worldwide and range in price from 99 cents to $2.99. A few are free. The company previously announced it was profitable, but it doesn’t discuss revenues.

As for what’s next, the plan is to continue careful expansion into the Android market in 2013. Jeffery says that they have to research what that market looks like for them. Because of the fragmentation, they want to make sure they’re supporting the majority of their target market, but need to make sure the experience is sufficiently good on all the hardware. That’s one reason Toca Boca started by launching on Hair Salon 2 on the Kindle Fire. The other is that the Fire tends to have a “family-friendly ecosystem.”

Expansion Through Acquisition

In addition, thanks to the success of Toca Boca, Bonnier itself is now looking to grow its own portfolio of kids app companies through acquisitions. To that end, Toca Boca this year established offices in San Francisco, putting it closer to the kids app startups that might see joining Bonnier as a better way to grow their own businesses.

“Sweden is a nice place,” laughs Jeffery. “But it’s not the sort of place that people happen to be in. San Fransisco is more of a hub for these sorts of things.” He thinks that next year, the kids app market will be undergoing changes that will greatly impact startups building in the kids app space, which will make joining Bonnier a better fit for some smaller startups – especially those who want to grow a long-term business, not build a company to sell it in two or three years’ time.

“The amount of money going in [the kids app market] is going to create a different market dynamic, and that is going to require a lot of smaller developers to think twice,” says Jeffery. “You have to have a sufficient amount of budget to even compete. That could be a hard time for a lot of smaller developers. It’s going to be an interesting 2013.”

Acquisition and partnership talks are now under way with a handful of kids app companies, Jeffery says. He expects no more than three acquisitions to be completed in the year ahead.

Patrick Husting runs a small development shop, ExtendedResults where he sells a product called PUSHBI, a mobile business intelligence app. While the app was popular on iOS and Android, he found some interesting results when he moved it onto Windows 8 – his sales, once flat on Windows, went up to the tune of 2,500 downloads in the last few weeks. He admits it’s not a huge sample size but it’s some interesting data coming out of a fairly obscure part of the app ecosystem which suggests that, at least for some people, Windows 8 means increased revenue.

I spoke with Patrick today to get his take on the OS and market.

TC: Tell us about your product?
Patrick: PUSHBI, we call it a Personal Business Intelligence solution that can be found any iOS, Android or Windows device. That includes Phones, Tablets and Desktops (Windows). It is a business application that provides data to all these devices in a CNBC-like experience, but for your business. PUSHBI allows decision makers in organizations to have information presented to them in a familiar format that allows them to make quick business decisions or to follow an internal social discussion around a metric.

TC: What were your sales before Win8?

Patrick: We are a private company, but I will share percentages. Since we released our PUSHBI for Windows 8 in the 2nd week of November, we are staging deals right now for January and February closing – just the way it works when selling Enterprise software. Right now, we are looking at 4x our 2012 revenue in just the 1st quarter of 2013 alone. And this is with companies that have been evaluating Windows 8 that are upgrading from XP and 7. The past couple of years, our customer base has been very focused on iPad, which is 95% of the demand.

What helped your sales on Windows 8? The store? The UI?

Patrick: We are the only business intelligence application in the Windows 8 Store today. To me, the Business section in the store is kind of neglected, but I would say most people who have Windows 8 are productivity/business people. So they are naturally looking for productivity applications, rather than games.

Also, we really have a different kind of user experience on Windows 8 than we have on the iPad and Android tablets. What I mean is, we simply allow you to manage and monitor your most important metrics – kind of like a stock ticker – drill into the trends and the social discussions in regards to the metrics, then you’re one tab away from calling/IMing someone or drilling into a deeper report view. It is very natural to how business users use data to manage their tasks and business objectives. Again, very similar to watching CNBC.

I think we are having success because our solution tells a story with your data. The end result is, you might have to make a decision and take action that involves browsing to some corporate app. That is where Windows 8 does well on tablets. I get full fidelity when browsing to corporate apps. That can be a shot in the dark on other tablet OS browsers.

TC: What have you heard from other developers re: Windows 8?
Patrick: I’ve only heard some of the negative press about Windows 8, like the gaming company that was complaining about their $83 dollars in sales. Windows 8 is great for business application developers, but we just haven’t seen that many. Our application tends to be better for touch type interfaces like Windows 8, iPad, etc.

My developers love the tools support. They quickly get it and with the wealth of developer support we all get from Microsoft, time to market in development applications is pretty quick.

TC: This is a fairly small sample size. Is there anything that points to bigger future results?
Patrick: Agree, but again, I sell solutions from the mid to the enterprise space, so our download numbers will naturally be smaller. BUT, we make it up in revenue because our software tends to be more complex, which it is, but not for the end user. We know companies using our solutions have a productivity gain, not drain.

TC: What is your favorite Microsoft OS? Did you like Bob?

Patrick: BOB was great. It will come back someday. AI is not going away. Heck, we are adding it into our KPI Server product so we can make our KPIs (metrics) smarter that you.

Windows 7 was ROCK solid. Windows 8 in Desktop mode is even more ROCK solid for business. Windows 8 in tablet mode is great, because I can quickly and easily navigate in a touch experience and still get to my business apps without much fuss.

It’s been launch city for a few big companies and new startups this week. Who’s had the very best week, possibly? That would be Aviary, a company that started out with a direct-to-consumer product that allowed people to beautify and share their photos. The company decided to switch gears and provide its tools to other apps and sites. Some people call it a pivot, but that word can be annoying.

It was a pretty smart move, as Aviary now powers editing and filters for both Flickr’s brand-new iOS app and Twitter’s recent refresh. By focusing on editing photos and adding filters, the company can build great things that can be used by anyone who would like its feature set in their own app.

I spoke with Aviary’s CEO and co-founder Avi Muchnick, whose name is all over this company, about what’s been going on.

———

TechCrunch: How did the relationship with Flickr get started?

Avi Muchnick: We have known the folks at Flickr for a few years and have a great relationship with them, so they are familiar with our solutions. We first officially partnered with them by powering photo editing on Flickr.com in April earlier this year, and that integration was quite successful for everyone involved. So we worked with them again to power the photo editor in their new mobile app.

TechCrunch: As a company, what are your goals?

Avi Muchnick: Our mission is to democratize creativity. We want everyone in the world to feel artistic, no matter their skill level or talents. We’re going to accomplish that by providing our photo-editing SDK to every single app where people use photos to express themselves.

TechCrunch: What things are coming along that are new? Will partners integrate them?

Avi Muchnick: Unfortunately we can’t share the specifics about what’s coming up next but we are always working on innovative new features to take photos to the next level. We always develop new features with our partners’ needs in mind. We test out all new features in our showcase app (Photo Editor by Aviary), which gives partners a chance to see our full feature set, so they can decide which elements they would like to adopt.

TechCrunch: Do you have fans and users who respect your “behind-the-scenes” nature?

Avi Muchnick: Yes. We actually used to have a web-based creative suite which millions of people loved to use, and we were really crushed when we had to make the business decision to shift gears away from a toolset that was so beloved. But I think our passionate fan base understood our reasons and many have followed our progress. They enjoy using our showcase app and often reach out to tell us how happy they are whenever they recognize our tools in our partners’ apps and see our incredible traction.

TechCrunch: Tell us about the Twitter partnership.

Avi Muchnick: We have been working with Twitter for the past few months on this integration, and we are thrilled with how it turned out. Truly a fantastic job by both teams.

TechCrunch: What drives you as a company?

Avi Muchnick: Our passion for creativity. Personally I’m an artist – I used to be a graphic designer, and my co-founder, Iz Derdik, and I have each been in the photo-editing space for more than a decade. We are creative people who love art and love giving people the tools to unleash their own creativity and express themselves in new ways.

TechCrunch: What type of people work at Aviary?

Avi Muchnick: We have an incredibly talented team of 21 people. No matter whether they are engineering, design or business-oriented, they are all extremely passionate, creative and fun to work with. I’m really proud of the team we have assembled.

TechCrunch: How many photos do you take personally in, say, a week?

Avi Muchnick: I actually take thousands of photos! I keep having to bump up my iCloud and dropbox storage quota. I don’t share many of them because they are mostly of my family and I’m protective of my four children’s privacy, but I can’t stop taking pictures of them and making them look great in my favorite Aviary partner apps.

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This is a way to build a sustainable business when your initial vision didn’t pan out. Becoming a partner-friendly company worked for Aviary, and there are others doing the same. These companies have extremely valuable technology, and they don’t have to be squashed and replaced by the “big guys.” When people play nice, it works out for everyone in the end sometimes.

[Photo credit: Flickr]

We happen to live in a massive time of transition. The PC market that has dominated computing for the past few decades is decaying while mobile computing is soaring — with the only limit in sight being the total number of people on the planet. As a result, startups have been gradually shifting their focus from web-first to mobile-first. It’s the reason why I stay up late at night writing posts simply repeating “mobile” hundreds of times.

Mobile is clearly the future, but is it the present? At first, Vibhu Norby, co-founder of Origami Labs thought so. But after a tough time gaining traction with their first mobile product, Everyme, he re-thought that position as he laid out in a post entitled: Why We’re Pivoting from Mobile-first to Web-first.

Some of Norby’s points were so compelling that we had to have him into the TechCrunch TV studio for a discussion/debate.

Disclosure: CrunchFund, where I’m a general partner, is an investor in Origami Labs. We invested based on the mobile-first thesis of Everyme, so I figured if I was going to yell at Vibhu for turning his back on the future, I may as well do it in public. See my other disclosures here.