Category: Tech news

Editor’s Note: Semil Shah is an EIR with Javelin Venture Partners and has been a contributor to TechCrunch since January 2011. You can follow him on Twitter at @semil.

“In the Studio” kicks off some special holiday episodes this weekend by hosting a repeat entrepreneur, a product maker and marketer, a technology operator, a venture capitalist, an innovator in the venture model space, and a longtime friend of TechCrunch.

Ron Palmeri, founder of MkII Ventures (pronounced “Mark 2″ Ventures) is one of my favorite kind of entrepreneurs, the type who has throughout his career helped start, incubate, and bring new ventures to market, all while not trying to seek too much attention for himself. After a career in business development in Silicon Valley, Palmeri helped Minor Ventures help start companies from scratch for about five years, and as that fund closed, he wanted his next fund to be a more interwoven into the startup community.

The result is MkII Ventures, where Palmeri launched the model alongside co-founding a company, Prism Skylabs, to prove out the concept. As Palmeri sees it, his latest move is a generational variant on his time at Minor, but now MkII can build deeper relationships with founders in the community, take outside money, and still make a small handful of investments each year to launch new companies, like they did with Prism. Overall, Palmeri’s moves fit into the narrative of the evolution of venture capital, especially as it pertains to early-stage investors. Earlier this year, in fact, Palmeri moderated a great panel at TechCrunch Disrupt with Harj Taggar of Y Combinator and John Borthwick of Betaworks where many of these issues were discussed. All in all, the traditional venture model continues to undergo changes, especially at the early stages, and innovators like Palmeri are pushing the limits of what new models can do in the future.

ComScore yesterday predicted that e-commerce sales would jump by 14% this holiday season compared to last year, to $42 billion, and some numbers just out from IBM’s Benchmark service – an ongoing measurement that covers some 500 of the largest online retailers in the U.S. — indicate that consumers are getting a head start today. Online sales, it says, are already up by 14.3% on last year, with the average order at $132.57. IBM also highlighted a particularly strong showing in mobile commerce. [updated figures below]

As of noon Eastern time today, IBM says the number of consumers using a mobile device to visit a retailer’s site was at 26.5%, compared to 15.8% in 2011. The average number of pages viewed on a mobile device was 7.13.

Some argue that this is because mobile devices, in fact, have made the process of online shopping more socially acceptable during a group gathering like Thanksgiving. They are less anti-social, or perhaps more discreet.

Apple has a lot to do with that: IBM says the iPhone led as the most popular device driving retail shopping, with 9.6% of traffic coming from it. In a very close second place was the iPad, at 9.3%. IBM aggregates all Android devices together, and collectively they drove 7.3% of all traffic.

Mobile devices are also becoming better tools for actually buying things, too. IBM says that 14.1% of consumers have been using their mobile devices to make purchases, up four percentage points on last year.

Less strong, however, is so-called “social shopping” — that is, retail being driven via social network referrals on sites like Facebook, Twitter, and Pinterest. This, so far, has only generated online sales of 0.2%, says IBM.

This might be down to two reasons: either social networks are not getting used by people to look for deals, or it’s simply still too much of a nascent space for e-commerce referrals. Still, these results seem to run in contrast to studies from companies like Eventbrite. The online ticketing company makes a direct connection between ticket sales to events, and those events getting shared on social networks. It recently noted that “dollars per share” were at their highest point ever, at $3.23.

Overall, consumers both online and on mobile are ordering an average of 3.67 items, IBM says.

Given that most stores are closed on Thanksgiving, today is essentially more of an e-commerce day than Black Friday, the weekend, or Monday will be. Some big brands like Apple are already getting into the action internationally.

IBM Benchmark collects and analyzes data directly from the web sites of over 500 large U.S. retailers. That list, IBM tells me, includes close to 50% of the Internet Retailer Top 100, so it becomes a good barometer for what is happening across the larger online e-commerce landscape. It tracks more than a million transactions per day, analyzing terabytes of raw data in real-time, and it’s issuing updates through today and Black Friday, and again on Monday.

Update: IBM put out another report at 3pm Eastern time, which noted another increase: Thanksgiving 2012 e-commerce spend is now 16.4% higher than 2011. All other metrics also increased very slightly. Retailers like eBay are predicting another jump in activity as consumers crawl to the sofa to go online after gorging themselves on food.

Update 2: Two more posts out with further updates, both times e-commerce spend jumping further, culminating at 17.8% higher than 2011, mobile traffic up to 28.5%; the number of consumers using mobile devices to buy things at 15.4%, and the iPhone accounting for 10.5% and iphone for 10.1% of all visits; Android at 7.7%. Social shopping was the only number to stay flat at 0.2%. The data will continue to flow on Friday.

Photo: Flickr

Editor’s note: As a publisher relations manager at Chartboost, Nate Barker ensures the revenue of his Indie developer partners is always “up and to the right.” Jamie Evans, the company’s advertising account manager, assists Chartboost’s partners in their user acquisition efforts.

It’s holiday season again, which means that the gamers, and non-gamers, of the world will soon be unwrapping a slew of mobile devices and heading to their respective app stores thirsty for content. But don’t panic, mobile game developers. We’re here to fill you in on a few things to help you stay calm, cool and collected during the holidays, so you can maximize the effectiveness of your mobile marketing budgets.

1. Plan ahead. No, plan even further. Choose which network and direct-deal partners to use for monetization and user acquisition, and be sure the technology is integrated by the end of November. Set up your campaigns in advance and don’t forget to test, test, test! Test not only your new releases and in-app content, but also partner integration.
2. Target appropriately. Plan your spend allocations with partners that you know can deliver not only high conversion rates but also that can align your promotions with games targeting a similar demographic and overall play style to your game. You’ll have a better chance of attracting new users and making money if they see something that’s similar to what they’re already playing and enjoying. The best way to know what they like is to test pre-holiday and then ramp up your spend.
3. All that glitters is gold. That said, add some holiday glitter to your game. Work up some themed in-app purchases, game icons, background skins, and promotional creatives, and don’t leave out featuring assets for the App Store or Google Play store (Yes, Christmas miracles do happen). Take Supercell’s Hay Day, for instance. It’s a top 10 grossing game and it’s already been updated with an awesome Christmas theme for the holidays.
4. Churn, baby, churn! Get ready to be dumped. A lot. Holiday users are the ficklest of the fickle. They’re looking for quick fixes by the truckload on their shiny new devices, so try not to take it personally.
5. Prepare for the worst. No, not a zombie holiday apocalypse, but you should be prepared to go sans servers. That means delivering a quality user experience for those who don’t have their new devices set up on Wi-Fi yet or aren’t connected to a server due to a possible outage.
6. When temperatures drop, the app store will freeze. Each year in the interest of stabilization, Apple freezes the App Store charts. This means that whoever’s at the top stays at the top while all those shiny gadgets are being opened. Unfortunately there’s no way to tell when or for how long (unless Santa brought you a crystal ball last year).
7. Prepare for scale. Publishers, don’t be surprised if you see some crazy spikes in traffic depending on which countries your apps are most popular in. Make sure you’re ready to handle up to 10x your normal number of daily game sessions. And advertisers, crazy spikes in traffic for publishers means crazy spikes in traffic to your UA campaigns, but be sure to keep in mind No. 4 when establishing bids and budgets.

Happy Holidays!

The life and times of Steve Wozniak are awesome enough already. But now Woz can add ‘becoming an in-game character alongside a badass movie star’ to his achievements — having been rendered in pixel-form for a retro 8-bit style iOS platform game called Vengeance: Woz with a Coz. The legendary Apple co-founder also lends his voice to the game, for voiceover and sound effects, and apparently helped write the script (replete with Spanglish exclamations such as “oh tortillas!” and “ah tequila!”).

The story kicks off with Woz and his wife, J-Woz, taking a romantic segway ride together through the dreary, industrial wasteland of Fusion City when head hoodlum, Ricardo White, rocks up in a van and kidnaps J-Woz — leaving Woz to battle through levels stuffed with knife-wielding, gun-toting gangsters to rescue his beloved. Yep: that old-as-the-hills games plot chestnut. 

Woz is just the half of it, though. The other half of the game involves veteran tough guy movie actor Danny Trejo, also translated into 8-bit sprite form. His character is unlocked as you progress, so you can switch from playing as Woz to blasting away baddies as Trejo.

Trejo’s presence explains the Vengeance component of the game’s title, which is a reference to an eponymous forthcoming movie in which Trejo plays an undercover cop accused of a crime he didn’t commit (another, er, classic plot). Not that Woz (or his wife) star in the movie — so this is one double act to file under ‘very unlikely partnerships’. Woz is the cheese to Trejo’s chalk, I guess. In any case, only a fool would try to make too much sense of game plots. (Turns out Woz is buddies with the film’s director/producer — and the rest, as they say, is app history.)

This app caught my eye because I’d previously thought Woz would make a great game character. I imagined something a little more Mario than Street Fighter, though — with Woz transformed into a cutesy looking bear, say, wandering around a nice, cuddly place called Wozland, on a mission to make all the sad pandas happy by dispensing bear hugs. Safe to say, Vengeance: Woz With a Coz is nothing like that at all. But it’s still a lot of fun.

It’s a classic side-scrolling platformer, with obstacles to jump, duck or blast through, as well as baddies to shoot, knife and club. You can buy even more badass weapons with the gold you bag from fallen baddies. And you’ll probably need to get passed the end-of-level bosses.

The main component of the gameplay is endless scrolling — meaning you have to be nimble in your movements to avoid mis-timing jumps and ending up splattered against walls, crates or at the bottom of holes. There are three on-screen buttons to control Woz/Trejo: one for jumping, one for sliding (to duck obstacles) and one for attacking with whatever weapon proximity to your target allows.

The gameplay actually feels quite tough by modern, casual gamer standards — Angry Birds this is not. And, when you die, you end up right back at the beginning of the level no matter how far you’ve battled, so be prepared for a little frustration. Still, with the soothing tones of Woz accompanying your death throes, Woz with a Coz never gets too stressful.

The app, which is made by React! Games on behalf of movie and TV company ITN Flix, went live on the iTunes store today. And the cost of having Woz’s dulcet tones and 8-bit likeness in your pocket? A mere $0.99. How’s that for a Thanksgiving treat?

One of the most interesting startups to appear at the Slush conference in Helsinki this week was Holvi. Not a million miles away from Bank Simple, seed-funded Holvi plans to attack traditional bank accounts with a super simple service which also gives the account holder a tonne of tools traditionally offered by online accountancy services. Just like a traditional bank account it allows you to store money and make transfers in and out. But you can associate as many accounts with your Holvi pro?le, making it possible to separate ?nances for different projects, while at the same time giving you an overview of the account. It’s an ambitious vision.

Holvi’s opportunity to disrupt traditional bank accounts exists thanks to new Pan-European legislation for payment services. This has opened the doors to companies able to provide the services of a traditional bank across the European economic area. The integrated euro currency zone is making the process more simple, leading to payments across borders for the same price as local payments. And all of this without capital requirements and a regulatory process, which is far less complex than a full banking license would require.

The very simple user interface gives a big picture of the account and is optimised for web and mobile. Accounts also come with a merchant account allowing users to take payments, so they could sell products, collect donations or membership fees and invoice clients. Contacts have a built-in CRM.

Co-founder Krista Kauppinen told me: “We’ve brought in a lot of new functionalities into the account (such as a bookkeeping engine, accepting payments, invoicing etc.) that Bank Simple does not have and our accounts are shareable, making them well suited for group activities and work.”

It will be fascinating to see what people make of it when it launches outside of Finland, as the team plans.

Along with the Thanksgiving-themed Google doodle gracing the Google.com homepage in the U.S. today (this year, it’s a Thanksgiving Day parade with Google’s letters as balloons), Google is also using the valuable advertising space below the search box to push Google+ and other Google properties. The homepage text reads “Hang out with the whole family this Thanksgiving,” but after clicking through, you’ll discover more than just tips on using Hangouts’ video chat.

Instead, what Google has created is a guide to many of Google’s services, including, in addition to Hangouts, Google Play, Google+ for iPhone and Android, the Google app for iPhone and Android, Google Docs, Google Knowledge Graph, Nexus, Chromebooks, Google Shopping, Maps, and more.

For those already familiar with everything Google, there really isn’t any new or interesting information contained here, as it’s clearly meant to introduce Google’s services to mainstream users who will hit up the search engine after stuffing themselves with turkey in order to get details on Black Friday sales. (Shopping, of course, is one of the highlighted sections in the new guide, pointing to Google’s now pay-for-play Google Shopping vertical and Google’s indoor maps of malls).

That being said, there are some good examples in this guide to impress those with less familiarity with Google’s offerings. One especially fun demo is of Google’s semantic search integrations collectively known as Knowledge Graph. Here, it’s put to use showing off sports stats. A search for Detroit Lions’ Matthew Stafford includes the entire team’s roster pinned to the top of Google’s search results page, in a scrollable, clickable lineup. Handy.

This isn’t the first time Google has used its homepage as advertising space for its own properties, but it’s the first time so many different Google properties have been featured all at once. In the past, we’ve seen other homepage ads for things like the T-Mobile G1, the Droid, the Nexus One, the Nexus 7, and Google Chrome, for example. Because Google.com is usually ad-free and not for sale to others, it’s always notable when Google decides to take advantage of the most valuable ad space on the Internet for itself.

Verizon updated its FiOS Mobile application for iPad, which now streams 75 channels of live TV. Unlike some of the mobile experiences Verizon has released in the past, the new application doesn’t require you to install software on your Mac or PC to act as the intermediary  – instead, everything streams directly from the Verizon router in your home.

I was drinking away from the computer last night when the app was first pushed out, but this morning I’ve finally been able to test it thanks to the holiday downtime. The mere fact that I’m writing about the application right now is a testament to its success – it’s keeping the kid busy!

One major caveat before you get too excited: Verizon says the Live TV option will only work with HD set-top boxes. Standard definition set-top boxes are not able to communicate with the remote control application, but of course, upgrading is always an option. You’ll also need a Verizon user ID and password (like what you use to log into HBO GO) as well as FiOS Internet and TV services.

The new app includes the top cable channels across categories like entertainment, info and education, music, family/movies, kids, people and culture, pop culture, sports and women, as well as premium channels (for subscribers) such as HBO, Cinemax, IFC, and Epix. (See the complete list at the bottom of this post).

Note that the FiOS Mobile app doesn’t provide streaming access to local channels like NBC, ABC, CBS or FOX, however. It also won’t include all the channels you have access to on your current FiOS subscription due to licensing concerns, but 75 is a healthy start for this sort of application.

For Parents

Parents who are planning to use the app with the children should take note of the pop-up that appears upon first launch asking if you want to enable parental controls. This feature lets you configure a four-digit PIN to control access to adult content, much like the FiOS set-top box does today. However, setting the PIN may give parents a false sense of security – the PIN alone doesn’t enable the content restrictions they may want. By default, it’s set to “ages 18 or older,” which is the first step down from the “all ages” option.

For younger children, parents will need to go into the Settings section (the bottom right button) and then choose between ages 17+, 13+ or 7+. I was surprised that there wasn’t an option to choose only “TV G” content, especially considering how useful this app would be as an alternative to constantly having kiddie cartoons on, but maybe Verizon is sending American parents a message: toddlers shouldn’t be watching unsupervised TV. Fine then.

Live TV

The Live TV channels are displayed in a grid-like pattern, and you can tap buttons at the top to sort them by channel or filter by category. A search box is also available if you’re looking for something specific. This is arguably an easier interface to use than the TV remote and TV guide on your big screen, but then again, I’m speaking from a mobile-first mindset when I say that. If you’re old-school and prefer a more traditional guide, you can switch over to that section of the app instead. The Live TV guide also lets you swap from the grid view to a list-like view if you choose.

Watching TV

When you tap to watch a show, the video doesn’t immediately go full-screen. Instead, there’s additional information about the program shown below, and off to the left is a scrollable vertical guide that lets you move up and down through the other live TV programs. (See the image at the top of this post). You have to tap a button at the top to move into full-screen mode.

For the most part, this worked well, though I did have one odd experience where I was hearing two audio streams at the same time – one from the channel that was streaming previously, and one from the new channel. Closing the app and reopening it fixed the problem, and it hasn’t occurred since.

No DVR Playback

The app features a Video on Demand section, too, where you can order and stream movies. But one of the bigger disappointments is with the DVR section. Here you can view, manage or cancel your recordings, but you can’t play them back. In terms of user experience, that’s a big miss, as much of the content we watch today is time-shifted, not live. But this isn’t Verizon’s fault necessarily – it’s the content providers who don’t want recorded content available on mobile, generally speaking. Still, since this app is tied to a home’s Wi-Fi network, it seems you could argue that the app isn’t really “mobile” so much as a TV replacement with a smaller screen.

Another section helps you find popular programs if you’re not sure what to watch. This “What’s Hot” section, like the FiOS widget by the same name, shows trending content. Verizon actually uses data from subscriber viewing patterns to generate these recommendations in real-time, as opposed to editorially selecting content, which makes for some interesting discoveries.

Overall, the app is a welcome upgrade for FiOS customers, though there’s still some lag upon loading and using navigation. This is a common complaint with Verizon’s apps, sadly – they tend to be slow. But the new interface and design is a major step up from what Verizon offered previously, and if the app was ever able to stream local channels and DVR content, it could easily go from good to great.

You can download the new app here in iTunes. The iPhone FiOS Mobile Remote app was also upgraded on the 19th, but doesn’t offer streaming.

Amidst the awkward barrage of family disfunction that is the American Thanksgiving tradition, there is one constant: the interrogation of career-focused twentysomethings about  why they haven’t given their parents any grandchildren yet. Knowing that much of our entrepreneurial young readers fall into this troubled demographic, we thought it would be helpful for them to know about a new book that can arm them with evidence for a compelling retort: older first-time moms may live longer.

Parents who set aside domestic life to nurture a lucrative nest egg can “reasonably expect optimal health outcomes from delaying motherhood into their thirties,” says Robin Marantz Henig and Samantha Henig in Twentysomething: Why Do Young Adults Seem Stuck?

The Psychology Today excerpt of the newly released book pulls largely from a study of 1,890 mothers, which found that those who had their first child at age 34 had the best outcomes in terms of chronic illnesses, mobility problems, self-reported malaise, and, perhaps most importantly, mortality. “A woman who had her first child at 34 is likely to be, in health terms, 14 years younger than a woman who gave birth at 18,” said John Mirowsky, the study’s author.

The latter half of the 20th century saw a radical shift from family to career focus when the median age of first-time motherhood skyrocketed six years, from roughly age 20 in 1960 to age 26 in 2012 [PDF]. But the proud social evolution from our primal roots, which gave women unprecedented levels of education, opportunities for creative pursuits, and social status, could come with a heavy trade-off: older mothers have a higher probability of miscarriage, stillbirth, and infertility, according to Mirowsky. The human female, biologically speaking, is built for young baby-making. “Humans mature reproductively about a decade before Americans mature socially.”

Like any good academic study, the evidence is far from conclusive (shhhh, don’t tell this next part to your parents). One Canadian research team finds that “timing of the first birth, on the other hand, does not seem to bear strong influence on longevity.”

The problem with finding a definitive answer is a simple statistical limitation: all of the studies are correlational, so there’s a host of variables, like personality or family support, that can’t reliably be sorted out. “Experimental research tracking the effect of fertility on longevity is obviously not possible with human subjects,” acknowledges the team. (If only we could randomly impregnate people–damn you ethics!)

“The 20s are like the stem cell of human development, the pluripotent moment when any of several outcomes is possible. Decisions and actions during this time have lasting ramifications,” wrote Robin Marantz Henig in the New York Times. Many entrepreneurs, have chosen to veer off into the unpredictable world of risky start-ups, cramped apartment-dwelling, and all-nighters.

Our young entrepreneurial readers may be better-equipped to joust their parents this Thanksgiving, justifying their decision not just in terms of opportunity, but now also for their own health.

Still, parents may have an important point. Adolescent delay is a game of chicken: there’s only so long you can stave off family life until you reach a cliff of declining opportunity. I’ll leave you with a much more insightful (and funnier) representation of this modern day dilemma with a clever rendition of two women, one aged 29, and the other 31.

It’s easy when kids are naughty — you only need to find a good lump of coal. But when they’re nice (and they’re smarter than you, to boot), your work is cut out for you.

You know those people who already have everything? Annoying to buy gifts for them, right? Wow the jaded few with these artisanal parcels.

Few people consider the utility of a good ice-cube tray or power tool until they’re in the midst of using one that’s poorly designed — except that one person you know, who thinks about those things all the time. These are the gifts for them.

Here’s a roundup of 20 gifts that will cost you less than $50 a pop.

Searching for a gift for less than a Benjamin? Here’s our 10 picks for under $100.

Subscribe and enter for a chance to win this ultimate Wired gift bag.

Here are 85 jaw-dropping new gadgets, tools, and toys to give and get this holiday season.