As you might have expected, the new iMac redesign that introduces a much slimmer case also has some negative consequences for overall device repairability and DIY upgrades, iFixit’s teardown of the machine has revealed. The site’s traditional peek under the hood of Apple’s latest all-in-one also shows off some impressive feats of engineering to fit all that good stuff in a much sleeker package.

In good news, RAM, hard drive and CPU are all possible to replace, should things go wrong or should users want to upgrade their memory or internal storage. The bad news, though, is that unlike on previous generation iMacs, none of these pieces are easily accessible. iMacs used to at least have user-accessible RAM trays on the underside of their face, which actually made it really easy to swap out upgrades. Now, while it’s still not soldered to the motherboard like on the latest Retina MacBook Pros and MacBook Airs, getting at the RAM requires removing the screen, and also behind the logic board, meaning you’ll have to essentially take the iMac completely apart to change things up.

In better news, the iMac packs some engineering changes that will help with user experience, including dual microphones to make FaceTime calling and general audio input without mics better overall. And iFixit says that the friction stir welding used to combine case pieces together isn’t just marketing smoke; it should create strengthened welds without traditional weak spots due to areas that are completely melted and reformed. Apple has also moved from three fans to just one, which is located near the iMac’s rear back bulge (which is mostly accounted for by the iMac’s main Wi-Fi antenna), and saves a ton of space versus previous designs.

Be sure to check out the entire teardown if you’re after the gritty details, but the main takeaway here might be that the iMac has seen a drop from a 7 out of 10 to a 2 out of 10 in terms of iFixit’s repairability score between generations. That’s not the best news for DIY-ers, but Apple is clearly of the opinion that the dramatic design changes more than make up for internal component accessibility sacrifices.

Microsoft is doing a lot lately to unify services across its platforms, and Xbox Music, a scan-and-match cloud music locker that’s planned for iOS, Android, Windows Phone and Windows 8 is a big part of that. Now, it looks like that service might also become part of SkyDrive, making it available from any browser, reports the Verge.

Graphic assets discovered in the SkyDrive website by Liveside, as well as code mentions of a music player suggest that Microsoft is building out web-based access to music playback, though it isn’t yet definitely connected to Xbox Music. But Microsoft has already committed to delivering cloud storage of music in the new year, and an earlier report from the Verge claimed that sources with knowledge of the project did indeed believe a browser-based, plugin-free version of the player for the service was also in the offing.

Of course, it’s also possible this is just a music player designed for handy playback of any media files users happen to have stored in their SkyDrive accounts, unrelated to Xbox Music. But as the company looks to pull together its cloud services and consolidate features across platforms, a cloud-based component of Xbox Music could definitely add a whole lot of appeal for users weighing its merits against competing services from Google and Amazon.

Six weeks ago I was out drinking in a Kipling-themed bar in Rangoon, Myanmar — as you do — and happened to find myself next to a table of high-powered international telecommunications consultants, overhearing juicy lines like “Skype and Viber are going to kill us.” Needless to say I told Twitter right away. Then an old friend who’s also a genuine International Man Of Mystery got in touch and asked if we could chat about Myanmar’s proposed ban on VOIP. Securely.

He has his very good reasons to insist on secure communications. But to my embarrassment and dismay, given that I’m a software pro with scads of hacker friends, I was largely unprepared for that request. The sad truth is that real online security has never seemed worth the hassle to me. Oh, I switched my Facebook connections to HTTPS-only as soon as I could; I select/Control-C/Control-V a portion of every password I enter when in Internet cafes; and I disabled Java when its huge security hole was revealed earlier this year. But truly secure communications? That’s always seemed like more trouble than it’s worth.

I felt foolish and credulous and unprepared — until earlier this month. So I’d just like to thank David Petraeus for making me feel a whole lot better about the situation:

You'd think the head of the CIA would be better at keeping secrets.—
Aaron Levie (@levie) November 10, 2012

The sad truth is that real online security, while possible — ignore the conspiracy theorists who claim that hackers can break into absolutely anything — is hard to do right and easy to screw up. This is a big deal and a big problem. Not just for Syrian activists today; as the panopticon society grows up around us, soon online privacy will be just about the only kind of privacy we’ll have at all.

Alas, right now it seems that many-to-most people value conformity more than privacy. What’s more, instead of worrying about security ourselves, we trust others — Amazon, Apple, Facebook, Google — to take care of it for us. As the great Bruce Schneier points out, in some ways we’ve regressed to a feudal notion of security.

The problem is, you can’t trust a feudal lord. For instance, Andrew Auernheimer, aka “weev,” was recently found guilty of hacking in a case which has been analogized — correctly, in my view — to finding someone guilty of trespassing because they looked past the sign on a shop window to see what goods were on sale within. This is, well, insane.

Being an ass is not a crime. Running a script is not a crime. Exceeding authorized access is, but the AT&T site was coded to spill data.—
jennifer granick (@granick) November 21, 2012

Can we start a list of exposés of security vulnerabilities that will become illegal based on the precedent set by @rabite's case?—
Asher Wolf (@Asher_Wolf) November 21, 2012

Companies like AT&T who shoot the messenger when they are at fault risk their customers even more in the future.—
  (@skry) November 21, 2012

The CFAA continues to be a terrifying broad law that's getting interpreted as "if you do something tricky with computers, it's illegal."—
DJ Capelis (@djcapelis) November 21, 2012

You know who your masters are when they can jail you over their embarrassment. #FREEWEEV—
Josh (@midnite_runr) November 20, 2012

If the government wanted to drive vulnerability research/disclosure underground they just accomplished that swimmingly.—
TacticalIntelligence (@Tactical_Intel) November 20, 2012

.@rabite found guilty. so i guess we just shouldnt bother disclosing any vulns anymore.—
Tom (@semiboganman) November 20, 2012

@maradydd @graydon_moz Does this mean that if I write a web spider, it may commit a crime? Do these same rules apply to Google? Bing? Yahoo?—
Adam (@AdamOfDc949) November 20, 2012

@maradydd @graydon2 The implication is that the powerful can interpret the law arbitrarily to punish those who challenge them.—
Robert David Graham (@ErrataRob) November 20, 2012

(All tweets above via Meredith Patterson.)

Even worse, it will have a deadly chilling effect on security researchers everywhere. We need people like weev to find security flaws, and disclose them in a (relatively) responsible manner before serious black-hat bad guys do. Security through obscurity is no security at all, and feudal security isn’t much better. Ask David Petraeus.

Security is, by its very nature, something most people generally hardly worry about at all – until and unless that one awful day comes when it’s the only thing they worry about. By then it’s usually too late to start taking it seriously. But even if/when people realize this, and start taking responsibility for their own online privacy and security, if security tools aren’t dead-easy to use, they’ll be used incorrectly or not at all.

What can you do? Well, the EFF recently posted “Don’t Be Petraeus: A Tutorial On Anonymous Email Accounts,” which everyone should read. And next week I’m going to post a brief overview of some other security tools out there now. Be advised in advance that I’ll probably get some things wrong: I’m a good software developer but no security expert. Let’s hope that in a few years’ time the tools are easy enough that even non-techies can use them without fear — because increasingly, if you don’t have privacy and security online, you won’t have it at all.

Image credit: yours truly, Flickr.

For the first time in the history of comScore’s MobiLens U.S. mobile market share report, Apple has come in second overall among handset OEMs. Apple grew its U.S. market share by 1.5 percentage points from 16.3 to 17.8 percent in the three-month period ending October 2012, according to the report. During the same period, Samsung also saw its share grow, but only by 0.7 percentage points, from 25.6 to 26.3 percent. Apple seems to have begun narrowing the gap on the back of the iPhone 5, which went on sale in the U.S. towards the middle of the period covered by comScore’s latest report.

Apple climbed to second over LG, which saw a dip of 0.8 percentage points from 18.4 to 17.6 percent during the period. Motorola and HTC rounded out the top five, both experiencing slight drops and finishing the quarter with 11 and 6 percent of the market, respectively. Another key metric comScore found, and one which helps explain what finally pushed Apple into second place, is nearly 52 percent of all subscribers in the U.S. were on smartphones, up 6 percent from the previous quarter. Apple only sells smartphones, so its fortunes rising in lockstep with the decreasing popularity of feature phones makes perfect sense.

As mentioned, Apple also released the iPhone 5 during the quarter covered by this report. We’ve already seen from Kantar Worldpanel that the iPhone 5 propelled Apple back to the top of the U.S. smartphone charts, and it’s likely that device is also the reason Apple now comes in at number two overall among handset makers of all stripes.

Platform market share still shows Google with a commanding lead, and one which grew during the period, from 52.2 percent of subscribers to 53.6 percent. Apple also gained, rising 0.9 percentage points from 33.4 percent to 34.3 percent, while RIM was the biggest loser among the top five with a decline of 1.7 percentage points. Microsoft and Symbian round out the top five, both with minor drops in overall share.

The next quarter will be an interesting one to watch for. It covers November through January, which means that we’ll see the holiday effect on all OEMs. It also should include LG’s sales of the Nexus 4 device, which seems to be remarkably popular, or at least in very short supply. Depending on how LG allocates supply among its Optimus G and Nexus devices, we could see it claw back into second, since the gap is still quite narrow, but it has to contend with Apple’s holiday iPhone sales, which are generally very strong.

The HTC 8S is a Windows Phone 8 handset that’s lightly specced compared to its more powerful sibling, the HTC 8X. The 8X is HTC’s flagship phone based on Microsoft’s mobile OS, and apparently the only one the U.S. market may ever see, according to an official statement from HTC issued late Friday afternoon. The budget 8S won’t make it to U.S. shores, an HTC official told Engadget, which shouldn’t come as much of a surprise.

The HTC 8S is a not a bad-looking piece of hardware, based on the versions I saw at CTIA MobileCon before they were allowed to be displayed running a live version of Windows Phone 8. But inside it’s a device built for a budget: It lacks a front-facing camera, has a much lower resolution display, a weaker rear camera, less RAM and a slower processor than its big brother. The Verge reports that delays in carrier testing of the 8S had already pushed back its retail availability (where it was targeted for T-Mobile), but the new statement from HTC indicates we probably won’t ever see the phone on sale stateside.

The Windows Phone 8X is now said to be HTC’s area of focus on the Windows Phone side for the U.S. market, where it’s sold at AT&T, T-Mobile and Verizon Wireless. While Windows Phone 8 sales are said to be exceeding the launch performance of Windows Phone 7 devices, no one’s putting any firm numbers behind that as of yet. It’s possible that what HTC saw regarding sales of its 8X indicated that the wise course would be to focus on promoting a single WP8-based device in the U.S. market, rather than splitting their focus between two handsets.

Editor’s note: Cherian Thomas is founder and CEO of Cucumbertown, a recipe-publishing platform. Follow him on his blog and Twitter.

For entrepreneurs, it is now both easier and harder to raise capital: easier because of powerful platforms like AngelList; harder if you’re not part of an accelerator or don’t have a strong network.

Silicon Valley has more startups than ever before. My startup, Cucumbertown, raised its first round a month ago, and during the course of this journey, I realized that, as a first-time entrepreneur without any solid Valley footing, my run toward raising funds as a non-American co-founder was somewhat unique.

Valley funding used to be an impenetrable fortress that opened up only by way of introductions. Your success in raising capital decreased to insignificant levels otherwise. The only other chance to make yourself noticeable was traction, which trumps everything. But the market dynamics of fundraising is shifting, and investors are no longer clustered in the Valley. Accelerators are becoming the showcase for promising startups. I was initially disappointed when a VC told me their firm only focuses on YC companies. But then I realized it makes more sense for them to look at YC, 500Startups or TechStars than to sift through hundreds of decks. These accelerators are becoming the entrance exams for selection.

So here’s how my month of experience as a non-accelerator, non-American fundraiser translates into advice.

Make Friends Fast

I was scheduled to meet 500Startups Partner Paul Singh on the second day of fundraising. As I waited for my appointment, Courtney Powell, CEO of PublikDemand, asked me about Cucumbertown. We became friends within the hour. The PublikDemand team invited me to crash at their home and Courtney taught me everything she knew about fundraising. We continue to meet whenever I am in the Bay Area. Courtney even re-wrote my press release notes.

After I read Darius Monsef’s article on TechCrunch, I contacted him, and he put me in touch with Rajiv Bhat, co-founder of YC alumni Mertado. Rajiv advised me on everything from convertible caps to living life as an Indian founder in the Valley. Nowadays Rajiv and I meet frequently here in Bangalore to track one another’s progress. I even bake for him.

Cucumbertown’s first investor and the co-creator of Farmville was Sizhao Yang, and we became great friends. He also offered constructive criticism of Cucumbertown. Every now and then Zao mails me one-liners reflecting something on the industry worth understanding. Zao now is my 1 a.m. friend/investor on call.

Cucumbertown’s most important advisor and friend is Naval Ravikant. He responds to every email and takes action when necessary. He even follows up. When Naval said stop, I stopped. When he asked me to meet him at AngelList HQ in San Francisco, I changed all my other plans.

These people represent only a fraction of the relationships I built in less than a month, and they represent the change in Cucumbertown’s trajectory to success.

Meet With Companies Who Have Raised

It’s also important to meet with companies who have recently raised. They have a wealth of tribal knowledge that can help you save time. For instance, I met with a company that closed its funds in October, and they advised me about the shift in investors’ herding mentality due to the September YC Demo day this year. This was a wealth of information, as I was able to strike a number of investors from my potential list.

Get On AngelList

AngelList is powering the Valley’s revolution in investing and raising funds. During one of my lunches with an investor, he said that raising funds for the first company he co-founded was near impossible. And raising series A was much more difficult than that. His company’s investors played waiting games and did not introduce the company until their contacts came into the picture. He said shady acts like this frustrated him as an entrepreneur.

AngelList changes all of that and is perhaps the most important tool you’ll need as an entrepreneur raising capital. It is the canonical source of all things related to angel funding in technology now. Never has Silicon Valley been in a position where every investor and fundraiser could e-meet at a platform.

Cucumbertown represents a first-time investment for Mokriya‘s CEO Sunil Kanderi and partner Chandra Kalle. I met them during a growth hacking conference in San Francisco, and they expressed their desire to be connected to Cucumbertown. Our profile on AngelList, our existing investor list there, and our testimonials offered the credibility we needed to gain their trust. And investor Stefano Bernadi followed us out of the blue on AngelList and subsequently invested in Cucumbertown.

Here are some things I learned to be successful on AngelList:

• Build a concise and compelling profile.
• Make it equally good for your team, too.
• Follow investors early on, even during your idea incubation stage, to understand their modus operandi.
• Follow partners at VC firms to understand the deals they are seeking. You can view their activity stream.
• When you get your breakthrough investors, immediately connect with their connections and start the conversations (AngelList allows you to talk to connections of connections).
• Showcase your strengths in the status messages. Don’t overdo it.
• Respond to everyone who initiates a message with you. But once you start calendaring in people become selective in appointments.
• Get your investors to write testimonials for you.
• Almost every company listed there is exceptional. Being different is difficult. But seek the difference.

Silicon Valley works largely by clustered investments. Your company would have always had a chance of being invested in by people who knew each other. And limited by them, too. That has changed with AngelList.

Calendar Every Meeting

I met 28 investors/funds over three weeks, and more were scheduled. The Valley is flooded with investors, and it can get pretty overwhelming once people start responding. Keep it organized and calendar all meetings. The executive assistants for most of these investors will reschedule your meeting at least three times. You have only once chance, so be prepared to move around.

Learn To Say No

As tempting as it was to accept capital from anyone — especially with the uncertainty of the future looming over our heads — we said no to investors who did not align with our thought process and principles. It was difficult. But we sleep well today. My new best friends in the Valley taught me this quality, as well.

Maintain Heat

The Valley has more startups now than ever before, and investors are bombarded by a hundred pitches every week. You are as valuable to them as the other 99 and so are likely to get lost within three days. Be proactive in the conversation, and try to get a response in a week.

Fundraising is a game. If you know you have a good product/team/traction, then get in to win. You are already here because you believe in something. Continue the journey to win. Persevere.

Thanks to Maneesh Arora, advisor and investor in Cucumbertown, for the draft review.

[Disclaimer: 500 Startups is an investor in Cucumbertown. But we are a non-accelerator investment. Though Naval is AngelList’s co-founder Cucumbertown did not benefit any special status. Cucumbertown wasn’t a featured startup or did not show up in the trending list. Dan Hauk is Cucumbertown’s American co-founder. But Dan was not involved in fundraising. Cucumbertown is a distributed startup and none of us co-founders have seen each other. I travelled to the Bay Area to raise funds.]

Learning a new language can be tedious and frustrating. Thankfully, a new generation of startups are leveraging advances in mobile and web technologies to make that process more enjoyable and rewarding. Today, companies like Livemocha, PlaySay, Voxy, italki, MindSnacks and Duolingo provide increasingly viable alternatives to traditional language-learning software — the Rosetta Stones of the world.

Another recent entrant into the space is Y Combinator grad Verbling, a venture-backed startup that wants to help turn language learners into polyglots by using video chat to connect them with real, live native speakers. Unlike the text-focused and algorithm-based Duolingo, Verbling wants to help users reach fluency and avoid the drop-out bug by creating a frictionless, in-browser live video chat experience that encourages immersion — albeit a virtual one.

After joining, the startup automatically pairs people that want to learn Spanish and are fluent in English, for example, with the opposite — those who are fluent in Spanish and want to learn English. It’s immersion via reciprocity. Users are matched by their experience levels and are encouraged to switch back and forth between languages (by an accompanying timer), with the system suggesting various prompts and targets along the way.

Since launching earlier this year, Verbling has focused exclusively on English and Spanish, but today the company is adding support for nine new languages, including Italian, French, German, Mandarin, Japanese, Hebrew, Portuguese, Arabic, and Russian, bringing the total to eleven. Founder Mikael Bernstein told us that these have been the most-requested languages from its users and, really, they represent the most-commonly spoken languages in the world.

Its new support for 11 languages puts the startup in good stead compared to Duolingo, Voxy and MindSnacks and puts it on par with the site that it probably most closely resembles — Busuu. A number of sites offer some kind of tool for connecting with native speakers, including courses and lessons on top of that. Bernstein believes Verbling has an advantage in this regard because its been laser-focused on its novice-to-expert matching and one-to-one video model.

The co-founder tells us that users are now participating in over 50,000 practice sessions per month and that sessions saw 317 percent month-over-month growth in November, which he expects will compound with the launch of its new language support. On tap of that, with sessions increasing, Verbling is also launching its own classes.

But it’s doing so by sticking to its video-chat roots, as “Verbling Classes” offer nine language students the ability to join Google Hangout-powered classes led by an official, TEFL-certified Verbling teacher. Bernstein says that, they were initially skeptical of using Hangouts, but after Google reached out to propose the solution, they considered it more seriously as a valid way to replicate a classroom setting. Something he says that can provide a virtual classroom experience that’s more fun and conversation-based and one that could become a future monetization vehicle.

For its main one-to-one video chat experience, Verbling tries to improve stickiness by allowing users to stay in touch with a chat mate if they enjoyed the conversation and found it productive. Learning a new language is definitely aided by adding a little constancy and familiarity, so being able to send a friend request via the platform, message each other (or just do a voice call if video seems awkward) is a great way to encourage users to build working professional relationships and pick up where they left off.

At first, the startup will only be hosting its Google Hangout language classes in English, which will be limited to nine-per-class but will be hosted on a range of subjects. Nine will get to directly participate, but even if you don’t make it, you can still listen in and actively participate. Going forward, Bernstein says that the startup wants to be able to allow students to pay a small fee to guarantee their spot in one of its classes.

Going forward, Verbling will be focused on building out this portion of the site and will be raising an additional round of funding to support this growth. The startup $1 million from DFJ, Learn Capital, Start Fund, Inspovation Ventures, SV Angel, Meck Investments, Ace & Company and others, back in January. The co-fouder also tells us that Verbling recently added Gustav Rydstedt as its new CTO, who was formerly the lead engineer at Blizzard on Diablo 3 and hired T20-under-20 finalist and FamilyLeaf co-founder Brandon Paton.

Today, Google bought an Ontario-based company called BufferBox. In a way, it kind of came out of left field. Since it’s a Google Ventures company, one can guess that those on Google’s campus were very familiar with the service, which provides an easy alternative to waiting around for packages at your house.

Not only is package delivery a bummer, because things get lost, hitting up your mailbox when you get home isn’t that much fun either. The worst is when you don’t even have a mailbox and you come home to twenty pieces of junkmail slipped under your door. The mail delivery system is broken and old. It’s ripe for…disruption. How broken? The US Post Office lost $15.9B in 2012.

So at first blush, one could say that Google wants to compete with the likes of shipping magicians like Amazon and UPS, but I think that it goes a bit deeper than that. This doesn’t feel like an “e-commerce” play. Google has the knack of honing in on verticals that are a pain for people in the real physical world. Don’t want to drive your car? Maybe one day it’ll drive itself thanks to Google.

Back to BufferBox, the YCombinator company that currently only operates in Canada. It’s an area that is great to test things out in, away from our needy grubby hands in the United States. Google also rolled out its Fiber product in Kansas City, away from us geeks in San Francisco and New York, so that it could perfect its product before unleashing it on the universe.

This is how BufferBox describes itself on its website:

Today’s parcel delivery system is outdated – missing package deliveries is crazy! You’re not home during the day, so stop shipping parcels there! Ship them to your closest BufferBox instead! We’re a network of parcel pick-up stations that are conveniently located, allowing you to grab parcels securely and on your schedule!

Google challenging the Post Office? Altruistic? Kind of. Business savvy? You betcha. Sounds like it’s right up Google’s alley. What does a company have to have to take over the mail routing system? Brilliant mapping technology.

One day, I could see a world where we don’t have mailmen and women coming to our houses every single day to deliver junkmail. These things can be dropped off in a box in a place that’s more convenient for you, say by your office. That way, you can pick it up when you want to, and come home to a nice relaxing home, and clean doorstep. Let’s not forget to mention the anxiety of worrying about a package being stolen by a neighbor. It happens.

So in a nutshell, one must only wonder why Google picked up BufferBox, because Google never really goes into great detail on why it acquires companies. It doesn’t really have to, for competitive reasons. Just know that everything at Google tends to happen as part of a master plan, and this particular acquisition could lead to a massive master plan.

Remember when Google bought GrandCentral? It turned into Google Voice. The service that could one day compete with the likes of AT&T and Verizon. That acquisition was led by Google’s Wesley Chan, now a partner at Google Ventures. He thinks big, so does Google. Just when you thought the GrandCentral acquisition was going nowhere, Google Voice was launched.

Searching all of the world’s information, free or cheaper Internet for all, free phone numbers and voicemail, devices like laptops that are priced fairly for Education and lower-income families running powerhouse open-source software, services that make everything we do online feel more intimate and social, both at work and home, reinventing television…there is an obvious pattern. Google wants to help reshape, and evolve, the world.

You’ve got Google Mail.

Editor’s note: Alexander Aghassipour is chief product officer and co-founder of Zendesk. Shajith Chacko is lead software engineer at Zendesk. Both contributed to the development of the new Zendesk product. 

The Web is a far different place than it was when Zendesk launched six years ago. As more and more people use consumer apps like Twitter and Facebook, enterprise applications need to build an interactive experience that doesn’t look old or slow when compared to the rest of the real-time Web.

As a cloud help-desk software provider, we recognized that our customers’ needs were also changing. A few years ago, web support meant email. Today there’s chat and click-to-talk voice support, and most customers demand instant answers and help. These real-time channels benefit from a more modern application approach than our original HTML application afforded. From the support side, customer support agents might be chatting with one customer while simultaneously updating another customer’s files. Meanwhile, large support teams need to collaborate in real time. The platform can’t slow the pace of work.

As our customer expectations have grown over the years, so has the application. Any evolving application reaches the point where another incremental change just won’t do. Rip and replace was the only option in order to balance the complexity of features with the simplicity of design. Moving to a single-page, JavaScript-based app enabled us to create an interactive, real- time experience that’s streamlined and agile.

Selecting A JavaScript Framework

From a technical perspective, a single-page Web application is delivered as one page to the browser and typically does not require the page to be reloaded as the user navigates to different parts of the application. This results in faster navigation, more efficient network transfers, and better overall performance for the end user.

When it comes to designing single-page applications, there are several JavaScript frameworks available to facilitate the task of writing complex client-side applications. While the choice of frameworks is a rather subjective decision (and each developer will have his or her own opinion), we ultimately went with the Ember JavaScript Framework due to several key reasons:

• Ember.js is constructed with large applications in mind and fits a larger team and project like Zendesk.
• Ember.js has more conventions and structure, and these established conventions make it easier to bring new developers on board.
• Ember.js is primarily based on dynamic bindings that automatically update the UI when data changes; this allows us to easily describe UI that knows when to update.
• Ember has a vibrant, growing community of very clever people.

Other Technical Considerations

In addition to selecting a JavaScript framework, there are a few other things to keep in mind if you’re considering a similar move to a single-page app.

• Before we could begin writing in JavaScript, we needed to significantly build out the API to cover everything. Modern one-page apps have a really effective API with the JavaScript client written on top. This was a large task, but the final API can now be used by the whole Zendesk community.

• A JavaScript application relies on browser features, such as advanced CSS. Therefore, supporting advanced features requires a fairly modern browser. Early on, we decided not to support IE8 and below in order to keep our development costs down. It’s important to define the supported (and not supported) browsers from the start.

• While JavaScript tools are maturing by leaps and bounds, they aren’t quite on par with what developers may be accustomed to using with HTML. For example, we didn’t find an out-of-the-box testing automation tool to use, so developers needed to rely on manual testing or writing their own test scripts for testing in the browser.

Transitioning Developers From HTML To JavaScript

Before we began the shift to a single-page application, only about 10 percent of our engineering resources went toward JavaScript coding. That was about to change dramatically. We ended up hiring just two JavaScript-only programmers, and for the rest we relied on ramping up the JavaScript skills in our existing engineering staff.

While learning any new skill takes time, we got buy-in from the engineers early on. Convincing our engineering teams to take on this challenge was relatively easy. This transition gives everyone the enviable opportunity to work with modern methodologies and tools. However, there still is a learning curve that must be factored into the project schedule.

Preparing For The Adjustment Period

No matter how fantastic the next-generation application may be, the simple fact is that existing end users have been happily accustomed to doing things a certain way. Getting used to changes to the status quo takes time.

To help ease the transition, we rolled out the new version of Zendesk for new accounts and trials. Existing customers are free to stay with the original Zendesk version for the time being. In addition, we started with a soft launch to a small subset of customers. This was followed by a four-month beta period, which allowed us to see how customers responded to the new design and workflow.

Ripping down an application to rebuild is a risky proposition. However, it’s sometimes the only way to move forward. The journey requires a commitment from all involved – including end users and developers. A major project of this scope won’t happen overnight, but the agility, performance, and real-time nature of the results are well worth the effort.

[Note: This is a weekly series. If your company is doing something amazing to help a charitable cause or doing some good in your community, please reach out.]

Sometimes, it’s not only political powerhouses who have the power to change the world. Sometimes it’s true-blue entrepreneurs who live to solve problems. One such person is Gurbaksh Chahal, who, with some pretty impressive backers, launched BeProud.org after the shootings at the Sikh temple in Wisconsin in August 2012.

The point of the multi-million-dollar campaign is to put an end to hatred and to encourage self-pride. Using the web to help bring attention to this is a fantastic idea. I had a chance to chat with Chahal on his background and the future of the BeProud initiative.

———

TechCrunch: Please tell us a little bit about yourself and your background.

Gurbaksh Chahal: I am a three-time Internet entrepreneur, with two successful tech ventures under my belt. I am currently working on my third business as the founder and CEO of RadiumOne, which delivers programmatic advertising across the web, mobile, and Facebook.

TechCrunch: What is it about your history that made you want to dedicate your life to making things better for others?

Gurbaksh Chahal: I’m a big believer in the more you give back to the universe, the more it gives right back to you. For the first 18 years, I faced immense racism and hardship because I looked different. I thought I had it tough growing up, but I never imagined at 30 I’d watch a massacre unfold when in early August a white supremacist stormed into a peaceful Sikh temple in Wisconsin and murdered six people and wounded several others. I was sickened. I realized the only way change could happen is if I made this my problem and did something about it. Violent hate crimes, including unnecessary gun violence, have escalated to a grotesque level; we need to do all we can to eliminate them. BeProud isn’t about raising awareness for any particular group. It is greater than any religion, culture, nationality or appearance. It’s about realizing we are all human first and we should be proud of what makes us unique.

TechCrunch: What have you learned along the way with BeProud.org that makes the foundation and campaign special and long-lasting?

Gurbaksh Chahal: I’ve learned that you need to give a voice to those who have something to say but aren’t being heard. BeProud is an awareness and advocacy program dedicated to ending hate in the world. By unifying this country under one common goal, we are putting a stop to this horrific epidemic. We have great traction with dozens of influencers (Nelson Mandela Family), various celebrities (Deepak Chopra), and international stars endorsing the cause to help raise awareness.

TechCrunch: What are your goals for this in the next 3-5-10 years?

Gurbaksh Chahal: We will continue to create thought-provoking campaigns that evoke powerful emotions. Hate is something that we’re taught not born with. I’m convinced if you can connect with people on a universal level, change will happen. Our initial campaign was just the beginning. Our next step will be to build deeper, engaging campaigns online and offline, allowing people to connect and become part of the solution. Hate takes effort. Love is constant.

TechCrunch: What tools have you used to help get the word out there, what has worked for you? What didn’t?

Gurbaksh Chahal: BeProud is a multimillion-dollar campaign that crosses traditional and social media. We launched a prime-time PSA that ran 133 times in November. Mark Cuban has also shown his support by running the PSA across his TV networks for free through January 21st. An extended web version of the PSA has already been viewed 100,000 times and can be viewed here:

We launched a Facebook application that turns profile pictures into your own BeProud stamp, created a Twitter account and a YouTube channel. Users are encouraged to upload 60 second videos to YouTube answering the questions: “What are you most proud of and what do you stand for?” including the tags, #BeProud and #EndHate. I’m a big believer in social media as a long-term outlet for social causes to elicit change. If governments can be overthrown through social media, then we have the power to evolve as a society by connecting everyone together to end hate.

TechCrunch: What are some of your personal favorite foundations that “do things right”?

Gurbaksh Chahal: I am a big fan of how the Kony2012 movement started and loved the viral nature of the “It Gets Better” campaign. The power of social media was the ingredient behind their success. I am convinced long-term, with over 1 billion people connected across various social networks, the power of information will become the power of change.
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While the “whats” of a social campaign for change are great, it’s nice to hear about all of the thought and mechanics behind it. If you’re a company or non-profit wanting to grab awareness and support for your cause, then Chahal is someone worth reaching out to, asking questions of and getting advice from.

The web is a wonderful place, you just have to dig a little bit deeper to find the good sometimes.

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The Weekly Good: Cory Booker On Public Service, Twitter, And…Burning Buildings

Early-stage startups die if they don’t nail their core products quickly. But like all companies, they also need to process loads of paperwork required for basic operations, from crunching numbers in Quickbooks to churning out piles of human-resource forms for new hires. So, as any startup executive knows, the balance between product development and rote paperwork is a constant frustration — which is where Backops comes in.

The company, which has just closed a $1.5 million seed round, combines 15 or so modern business productivity tools with crowdsourced labor from stay-at-home workers. Startups get a simple dashboard that shows them what’s happening across the organization, from accounts received to job offers accepted.

If the exec wants more detail than the dashboard’s accounting summaries and human resource statuses provides, they can request custom reports or data dumps from Backops.

So, sure, there are a few established office outsourcing businesses out there already, like TriNet for human resources, but a closer look at Backops plans shows why it’s such a smart new idea.

The first is the overall “consumerization of IT” trend. A wave of well-designed online business software has been gradually rising over the past decade, sweeping away expensive legacy systems for accounting, HR, content management, customer relations, and more. The result is that workers can learn new systems and produce results more easily.

This fits in well with the other trend that Backops takes advantage of, which is crowdsourcing labor from people who work from home. A long list of companies, like Amazon and its Mechanical Turk, have created marketplaces for workers. Perhaps pushed by high unemployment and underemployment, more and more workers are looking for additional income through online jobs.

Backops does a few other smart things to capitalize on these trends. On the software side, it’s staying nimble, swapping in new productivity apps as they become available. Right now it’s using Expensify to help process expenses, Bill.com for bill processing, and popular accounting software like Quickbooks. It doesn’t disclose the full list of vendors, but cofounder Mark H Goldstein tells me that they just brought in a new HR system over the weekend. That adaptability is in sharp contrast to the time it would take a business to change its own internal software, or the time it would take a traditional vendor.

Even if business software is getting easier to use, experienced workers can do a better job faster. Goldstein adds that Backops has gone looking for past employees from firms like H&R Block to help staff its accounting needs.

All in all, Backops is becoming a platform for hot new enterprise startups.

The biggest issue could be defensibility. In addition to its list of vendors and its experienced employees, it also has proprietary software knitting its vendors together. Others, including modern market leaders like Salesforce and Google, could take a similar approach. In fact, both already offer platforms for other vendors to reach existing enterprise clients — just not tightly integrated like what Backops does.

The startup also has some early momentum and great investors. So far more than 50 startups have signed up, including AngelList, BadgeVille and Socialize. After raising an initial $1 million from angels including Zynga’s Mark Pincus, AngelList’s Naval Ravikant, and others last month, it has added another half a million from additional ones, including Max Levchin, and closed the large seed round.

Backops’ founding team is also well-equipped to grow the company. The CEO is Kristen Goldstein, a long-time financial officer who has dealt with these problems across the companies she’s worked at — including startups that her husband Mark has cofounded. As successful serial entrepreneurs, they have the experience, skills and connections to go big.

And going big is the plan. Mark Goldstein tells me that the plan is to grow niche by niche. Early-stage startups are an obvious place to start given the needs and the team’s familiarity with the problem (he adds that right now it’s designed for companies in seed through Series C stages, not later ones). The plan is to eventually expand into other areas, like NGOs, and various small business verticals, with Backops setups templated for the needs of each type of business.

The key for the company now is to grow quickly and establish itself as the de facto back office solution before other startups (or nimble big companies) decide to move in.

In today’s edition of Facebook scams comes the story of Nolan Daniels and his $1 million lottery ticket picture. “Looks like I won’t be going to work EVER!!!! Share this photo and I will give a random person 1 million dollars!”, says the Facebook pic. Of course this is legit. It’s on Facebook. Never mind that the numbers on the ticket are out of order.

It doesn’t take Gawker to figure out that this is just a well-timed scam. But that hasn’t stopped 638,006 people (and counting!) from hedging their credibility for a chance at a chunk of this guy’s winnings.

The fake picture was uploaded Thursday night, the day after a $550 million Powerball lottery drawing went to two winning tickets. When the pic was uploaded, only one of the winners had come forward. The second winner has yet to claim his riches.

But alas, the picture is fake. While the ticket has all the right numbers, they’re not in the proper order. Per the Powerball FAQ: “The tickets print the white ball numbers (the first five numbers) in numerical order.”

Sorry, folks. The only way to make a quick buck is to play the lottery.

I didn’t reach out to Nolan because this is a harmless scam.

Yahoo says it “will vigorously pursue all appeals” of a non-final judgement by a Mexico City court ruling Yahoo must pay $2.7 billion for breaching its contract with Ideas Interactivas and its parent company Worldwide Directories. The web giant seems to have had a partnership to work with Interactive Ideas to release a printed Yellow Pages of business telephone numbers for Mexico.

According to the brief press release, “The plaintiffs alleged claims of breach of contract, breach of promise, and lost profits arising from contracts related to a yellow pages listings service” but Yahoo says the claims have no merit. Yahoo filed an 8-K with the SEC regarding the ruling.

Yahoo de Mexico struck a deal with Ideas Interactivas that was announced in 2003 to create “Yahoo! Páginas Útiles” which would help people find contact info for local businesses. As of now, though, the www.paginasutiles.com.mx domain is parked and doesn’t offer any Yahoo content.

The idea was to augment its online local business search with printed book. Yahoo hoped that the two-pronged strategy would let it compete with Google. The books would include maps, business and landmark listings, and a catalogue of offers and discounts. There would be flexible, low-cost advertising options in Yahoo! Páginas Útiles, which was slated for an initial circulation of 800,000 free copies followed by a second print run of 1.7 million units according to a April 2003 article from Mexican website Noticias Dot.

At some point, though, the partnership went sour.

The $2.7 billion ruling against the web portal is very steep, considering Yahoo’s total revenue was just $1.2 billion last quarter, and profit was just $226 million the quarter before. If appeals are unsuccessful, it could strike a major blow to the recovery new CEO Marissa Mayer is trying to mount. It could take months or years for the case to be finalized, and the $2.7 billion penalty could hang a dark cloud over the company’s head until then.

The scope of the contracts between the companies are not yet clear. If the deals were for Mexico alone the penalty would amount to $30 per resident. A 2005 study said there were 4.29 million businesses in Mexico, which would mean Yahoo would pay $630 each. That seems somewhat absurd, so the total Yahoo has to pay could definitely get reduced if it doesn’t beat the charges all together during appeals.

We’re waiting to hear back from Yahoo about details of the originally agreed upon partnership with Worldwide Directories and Ideas Interactivas and its statement on the initial court ruling.

Here’s the full press release issued by Yahoo on its company news page:

Yahoo! Inc. Reports Judgment in Lawsuit in Mexico

November 30, 2012

SUNNYVALE, Calif. — Yahoo! Inc. (NASDAQ: YHOO) today reported that the 49th Civil Court of the Federal District of Mexico City has entered a non-final judgment of U.S. $2.7 billion against Yahoo! Inc. and Yahoo de Mexico, S.A. de C.V. in a lawsuit brought by plaintiffs Worldwide Directories S.A. de C.V. and Ideas Interactivas, S.A. de C.V. Yahoo! believes the plaintiffs’ claims are without merit and will vigorously pursue all appeals. The plaintiffs alleged claims of breach of contract, breach of promise, and lost profits arising from contracts related to a yellow pages listings service.

Rockmelt’s recently released iPad app only offered signup through Facebook and Twitter, leading 50 percent of users not to sign in at all. So today it followed Pinterest and Spotify by moving away from social-only signup and offering email as a login option. “Users don’t want to add social up front and give access to their information,” Rockmelt’s Eric Vishria tells me. “People want a little dating before marriage.”

It’s understandable why a startup wouldn’t want to offer email signup. Facebook and Twitter logins get users to give data permissions that can be used to customize a service and make it relevant and sticky right from the start. Social signup means people are already primed for sharing to their friends, which is critical to growth for a startup.

For fledgling companies, it also means you don’t have to build your own identity and login systems since the social networks let you integrate pre-made ones. That makes it cheap and easy to get a service off the ground. But these benefits come at a cost. That’s why we’ve recently seen Pinterest, Spotify, Pulse, and Turntable.fm add email login options.

Last month after years of working on its desktop browser, Rockmelt for iPad launched to redefine the browser for tablet and touch. Rather than starting at a blank browser screen and going hunting for content, you browse through a customized feed of updates from your favorite news sites, blogs, and friends. The only ways to sign in were through Facebook and Twitter. By getting people to join with these credentials, Rockmelt for iPad could immediately show feeds from outlets and about topics users Liked or followed.

About 37 percent of Rockmelt users were logging in with Facebook and 13 percent with Twitter, but 50 percent of users were engaging with the service without being logged in at all. That meant not only that they weren’t getting immediate personalization, but they couldn’t use the manual customization options to get an experience that evolved and adapted to their preferences.

Believe it or not, some people don’t have Facebook or Twitter accounts. Others have deleted them to live a more “real” existence. Then there are those with social accounts, but who don’t want to give their most private data to just any developer. Their biographical info, location, interests, and the ability to post things to their friends are not things they want to give away without some vetting.

So today with version 2.0.3 of Rockmelt for iPad, users can now login with email. But Rockmelt still loves social. Now emoticode reactions to Rockmelt content like “Lol” or “WTF” can be auto-shared to Facebook through Open Graph. Rockmelt is also adding more swiping gestures plus Twitter sharing and in-line video viewing in this update.

Rockmelt co-founder and CEO Vishria tells me his company learned a big lesson from a big hire — Draw Something’s head of product. She told Vishria that “because of privacy implications, people want to try an app with email and then add social later if they like it.” I call this “try before you pry,” and Vishria explains “there’s a certain level of trust that builds over time.”

Startups shouldn’t worry about losing social data they could have mined by following in Rockmelt’s footsteps. Vishria tells me that in Draw Something’s experience and the research he did on whether Rockmelt should offer email sign-in, he found “it’s additive” and doesn’t cannibalize social logins. Rockmelt can’t afford to be wrong on this. It’s already raised nearly $40 million. Startups that are still worried can bury or minimize the email sign-up option like Pinterest does.

Choosing whether to go social-only for login is a question every app or service needs to answer for itself. If you’re going to be a blank page with no friends and no content without those Facebook permissions, providing an email option could be a disservice to your users. If you have manual customization options that aren’t too painful, or your app inherently offers something to do, give users a choice. Let them dip their toes in with email login, and once they know they enjoy the feeling they can add their Facebook or Twitter data and go swimming in the social stream.

Rockmelt for iPad is available in the App Store, or you can download Rockmelt’s desktop browser.

Features:

• A real, solid-body electric guitar
• USB-out and standard jacks as well as built-in headphone out
• Great sound for a low price
• MSRP: $199.95
• Product Page

Pros:

• Solid, real guitar that works with iOS
• Low-noise DSP built-in
• All standard guitar hardware included as well as mono-out

Cons:

• Arguably not a “premiere” guitar
• Some problems with iOS compatibility
• No case included

Short Version

The Squier Strat by Fender (or Squier by Fender Strat or however they want to name this thing) is one of the first guitars with a built-in digital signal processor. The guitar plugs right into any computer or 30-pin iOS device (Lightning cables are not yet available) so you can play directly into any sound editor including GarageBand and Logic Pro. It’s a $200 guitar that’s designed primarily to plug into a PC or Mac and allows you to almost entirely eschew a standalone amp.

I found the quality outstanding for the price and although I found some compatibility issues, it’s a great starter guitar for folks who feel more comfortable behind a mouse than a microphone.

For Those About to Rock…

The Squier is an Indonesian-made solid-body electric with the standard features including pickup select, volume, and tone controls as well as a 1/4-inch guitar output. However, on the bottom is a 1/8-inch stereo headphone jack and miniUSB port that supports bi-directional audio streaming. It requires no batteries and is powered via the USB bus.

In terms of quality this is on par with any standard entry-level gitfiddle. I experienced the requisite amount of buzz that would come out of a standard unmodified factory guitar and the sound, when plugged in, was just fine. I really had no complaints in terms of playability and one of my buddies, who is a far better axeman than myself, found it to have good height and action.

To use it you simply plug in the guitar to a free USB port and select the Fender as your input and/or output. The sound comes out unadulterated and you can add effects in your audio program or record it as is. The guitar is, in short, quite fun. It’s cheap enough that you can experiment with it and it’s powerful enough for a beginning guitarist to really learn how to record and play with an electric instrument.

How, in the end, does this thing sound? The audio was excellent when plugged directly into a Mac with Garageband. I was able to record a bit of my noodlings but you must understand I’m a novice at guitar at best although I’ve been taking a few refresher lessons with my son. Don’t blame my guitar teacher, however, for the following mess.

And here is a slightly more “acoustic” sound:

Bottom Line

Make no mistake: this Squier is a commodity guitar priced to move. It sells primarily at the Apple store for good reason – it works great with Apple audio programs and is a great experimental guitar for folks looking to wail away a little without worrying about breakout boxes or microphones. While you could get a better guitar (for more money) and a better USB interface (for more money), $199 is a great price for an entry-level axe with just enough charm to keep a seasoned player happy and just enough features to break in a novice player.

I was expecting this guitar to be a sort of messy hybrid but I’m pleased to note that Fender did a minimum of messing about to create a guitar that does a few things well. You can play it just like a traditional Strat, pinwheeling at the strings while your bandmates take down the stacks, or you can plug it into a laptop and noodle away with headphones clapped to your ears like the modern-day troubadour you are. The guitar performs admirably in both cases and is more than worth the price.

Product Page
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