Category: Tech news

Photo: Alex Washburn/Wired

It’s criminal to charge $50 or more for earphones with only so-so sound — especially when somebody comes along and proves you can deliver a fantastic-sounding headset for half that price.

This is the second time I’ve been impressed by a pair of earphones from NuForce, a small California company that’s mostly known for making audiophile amps and digital-to-analog converters. Last year, I tested the company’s NE-700 M/X in-ears, and I found them to be pretty outstanding for a pair of $70 buds. They earned our Editor’s Pick award for the best earbuds under $100.

These newer earphones, the NE-600 M/X, cost only $25. Amazingly, they deliver a sound profile that’s almost as sweet as the 700s, and they do it for less than half the money. The 600s are shockingly inexpensive for how good they sound, and in my opinion, they blow away other in-ear headphones that run between $40 and $50. If you’re looking to replace the freebies that came with your phone, or just shopping for a backup set of earbuds you can wear everywhere without worry, these cannot be beat.

The build quality doesn’t look like much, with lots of plastic instead of the machined metal found on the 700s. This pays off not only in affordability, but also in weight. In-ear headphone manufacturers have been experimenting with titanium, aluminum and other metals of late, but sometimes, sturdy plastic like this wins out. And actually, I’m a fan of the design, which is simple, logo-free and unassuming — provided you choose the model with the black cable, as there’s nothing stealth about the bright green or red cables NuForce also offers.

The sound is in line with other lower-end earbuds in that the bass is exaggerated and the highs are rolled off. But NuForce has tuned the 11-millimeter drivers just right — the bass is big, but it’s fast and not flabby, and it’s assertive without being so overbearing that it crowds out the mids. There’s still plenty of detail in vocals, keyboards, melodic instruments, and everything important that lives in the middle bands. Of course, they are less detailed in the highs, but to my ears, they provided just enough isolation and high-end detail to keep me happy. The myriad little things you usually miss when you slip in a pair of cheap earphones? They’re all here. The overall sonic quality is admirable for a headset that costs only $25.

One quibble about the isolation: You only get three pairs of rubber tips in the box, and the sizing is rather extreme. I had a hard time finding a good seal using the tips in the box. But luckily, being the headphone whore that I am, I dug through my Giant Box of Rubber Ear Tips to find a set that worked with the 6-millimeter posts on the NE-600s. Your mileage may vary. Once I had achieved a Goldilocks-approved full seal, the isolation was great, with minimal cord noise from the flat cable (usually not a fan, but it’s fine here, and it comes with a chin slider). No leakage, either.

Tips aren’t the only frills NuForce has omitted — there’s no carrying case and no collar clip. Also, the $25 version (NE-600X) doesn’t have an in-line remote/mic, so if you want to use it as a hands-free headset replacement, you’ll need to lay out an extra fiver for the $30 NE-600M model.

These issues aren’t deal-breakers, though. Just take a deep breath, slowly recite the words “twenty-five dollars,” and enjoy the music.

WIRED Great sound for a low cost. The best-sounding value-priced earbud you can buy. (Yes, better than Monoprice’s torture devices.) Light weight is perfect for runs or other sweaty shenanigans. Only took a few hours to burn them in. Bass for days, son!

TIRED Bass will be too much for some. Tough to find a good seal with the included tips. Plastic build doesn’t scream “durability.” Extra $5 for a mic. No box candy.

Photo: Ariel Zambelich/Wired

Harman Kardon first made its name as an audio powerhouse over half a century ago. The company started out making sleek and (for the time) technologically advanced radios and home hi-fi equipment, then later branched out into car stereos and digital audio components. But Harman Kardon is perhaps best known to the current generation of consumers for those fancy, see-through desktop speaker systems you’ve seen plugged into iMacs at the Apple Store. The iconic, clear plastic iSub 2000 and Sound Sticks speakers, tailor-made for Apple’s computers, have won the company industrial design awards, more importantly, a deep level of brand recognition among Apple fans.

Which all leaves me wondering why it’s taken so long for Harman Kardon to branch out into iPhone-friendly headphones. But here they are — new for the fall of 2012 is an entire line of sleek, compact earphones and headphones primed for use with smartphones and tablets.

There are two over-the-ear headphone models (one wired, one Bluetooth), and two compact in-ear models, the $100 noise-isolating NIs and the $150 “acoustically enhanced” AEs. The company sent me a pair of the nicer AE in-ears to test.

Not surprising: the Apple-inspired design philosophy is on full display here. The AEs have aluminum-alloy bodies that match the look and texture of Apple’s hardware. The small details get just as much attention, from the attractive mic/remote assembly to the luxe carrying case, which has soft little nooks to cradle your buds.

What is surprising: The sound isn’t spectacular. Harman Kardon is pitching these in-ears as offering true low-frequency reproduction, but I found them to be quite muddy in the low end. Also, they have a fairly dark sound profile overall. Certainly bass-heavy, but also murky and dreary. I listened to some reverently recorded acoustic music from Sean Hayes, and some of my favorite rock albums of late (Dungen, Lower Dens, Kelley Stoltz) and the AEs erased too many of the small details in the high end. EQing the iOS music player to show more high-end just made the AEs sound more hollow.

What did sound good? Moody, gothy stuff like My Bloody Valentine, Ty Segall and Joy Division. Music that was born from the dark fog sounds pretty good in a dark fog, it turns out.

Photo: Ariel Zambelich/Wired

One definite high point is the fit. The AEs ship with a few different sizes of rubber tips, plus a pair of Comply foam tips. As with any in-ear headphones, finding a good seal in the ear canal is crucial, especially if you want the best bass response. I actually found all three sizes of rubber ear-nubs to fit me comfortably, and all four tip choices gave me different sound profiles. So there’s plenty of room to experiment.

And the flip-top, hard-shell carrying case is awesome — it’s a small thing, but if you’re spending $150 on a pair of headphones, I certainly hope you’re taking care of them. HK’s case makes it easy, offering two little nooks where you nestle the buds, and enough room to neatly coil up the cord. Speaking of the cord, it’s also really nice; stiff and high-quality with a 3-button remote that echoes the design of the aluminum and black ear-pieces.

So here are a pair of headphones that get almost everything right: a smart design, excellent comfort, and longevity-minded details. It’s too bad the biggie — the sound — is an acquired taste.

WIRED Sleek, pretty and austere. All aluminum and black plastic — if you want some headphones to match your iPhone 5, look no further. Comfortable fit from both rubber tips and the Comply foam tips. Lots of bass from the 9-millimeter drivers.

TIRED Sound is dark. Not enough detail in the high-end. Too heavy to wear while exercising. Expensive.

Photo: Ariel Zambelich/Wired

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If you grew up in the late ’80s or early ’90s, you probably remember the slap bracelet craze — those delightfully ridiculous bands you put on by slapping them across your wrist. It was a relatively short-lived novelty for most of us, and some schools subsequently banned the bracelets because, I can only assume, they hated fun.

Luxury watchmaker Ritmo Mundo is hoping to cash in on the nostalgia with its Reflex slap watch line. The Reflex is essentially a dressed-up slap bracelet with a slim watch inside, shiny lights on the outside, and a so-very-big $150 price tag.

The band is made out of smooth silicone and comes in 13 colors. The bright LED display looks cool, but the band feels unnecessarily thick and bulky, particularly the end where the battery is stored.

The Reflex certainly makes for great entertainment due to what I’ve deemed, “the slap factor.” It turns out that slapping on an accessory is just as fun now as it was in 1995. (Pro tip: don’t slap with the thicker, metal-backed battery end down first.)

Telling time with the Reflex is another story. The display consists of two columns of LEDs. On the left are 12 lights indicating the hour, and two lights to denote a.m. or p.m. On the right, you get the lights that show the minutes: 1 through 9, then 10, 20, 30, 40 and 50. Press a button on the watch once, and the LEDs will light up to display the time. Press it again and you get the date, with the 12 hour lights now indicating the month, and the minute lights indicating the date.

All the colored lights are neat, but it’s not a particularly intuitive way to tell time. For example, if it’s 12:37 p.m., the numbers 1 through 12 and the light for p.m. will glow on the left, and on the right, you’ll see 1 through 7 and 10, 20 and 30 on the right. Got that? Now try making sense of all the lights in the few seconds the LEDs stay lit.

If you’ve ever worn an LED watch like this, or an obfuscated watch like those from Tokyoflash, the layout will seem familiar. If not, it takes some getting used to.

There are other downsides. The LEDs, while extremely bright, only work well in certain situations. They’re difficult to read in bright daylight, but they’re obnoxiously bright in the dark. When I checked the time in a dimly lit bistro, the whole restaurant noticed, turning to admire the bright blue spotlight on my face.

Because it conforms to your arm when you slap it on, the Reflex fits snugly on all wrist sizes. I appreciated this at first — I have small wrists, so most watches are too big for me. But it soon became too tight, and there’s no way to adjust the fit. And the smooth silicone material, which makes for more comfortable slapping, doesn’t breathe at all.

The Reflex watch is undoubtedly fun to wear and play with. But, unfortunately, Ritmo Mundo is about 20 years too late to the slap bracelet party. Once you get over the novelty of the Reflex, you’re left with an expensive watch that requires too much brain power to use.

WIRED Bright LED display looks cool. Has nostalgia appeal. Lights up about 3,000 times before you need to replace the battery.

TIRED Too expensive for a novelty. Can’t adjust fit. Lights are obnoxiously bright in dark rooms.

Not too long ago, Google and Bing seemed fully focused on adding as many social features to their search engines as possible. For Google, that meant adding lots of Google+ features and for Bing it meant making the best out of its exclusive relationship with Facebook. Since then, though, it seems the two search engines’ strategies have changed, with Google slowly deemphasizing social search and Bing going all in by adding more social features than ever.

Bing Now Emphasizes Social Search

Bing, in its early days started out as a ‘do engine,’ as Microsoft liked to call it. Thanks to its acquisition of Powerset and in-house expertise, Microsoft had all the requisite knowledge to actually answer people’s question on Bing beyond just showing them the usual 10 blue links. The focus during those first months of Bing was on providing instant answers for queries related to topics like sports, finance and music. Lately, however, Bing’s focus seems to have shifted toward its social sidebar, where Bing shows you relevant status updates and links from your friends on social networks like Facebook, Quora and Foursquare.

Google Slowly Demotes Social Search And Focuses On Its Knowledge Graph

After social search become the hot topic in the late 2000s, it almost felt as if Google panicked. Even before it launched Google+ last year and “Search Plus Your World” earlier this year, the company started cluttering its search results pages with social search results in 2009 (that’s so long ago, Google even showed results from FriendFeed back then…). Most of Google’s “Search Plus Your World” features are still happily sitting on its search results pages today, but it’s hard not to feel as if the company has started to pull back on its social search strategy a bit.

Google’s focus these days, it seems, is squarely on its Knowledge Graph – a project that feels more like the realization of Bing’s early promises than Google’s recent obsession with social search. The Knowledge Graph, which is featured prominently on Google’s search results pages, is now taking precedence over social search, which has been slowly demoted over time. Instead of emphasizing social search, these results are now highlighted with an easily overlooked gray icon. The ‘share’ feature has also been deemphasized and now only appears after you hover over a search result.

Instead of social search, it actually feels as if Google’s emphasis has shifted toward ‘personal search.’ Just a few months ago, after all, Google started a field trial that uses the sidebar to prominently show you search results from your Gmail inbox and Google Drive. Bing, on the other hand, uses this space to focus on social search and what your friends and other experts say about a given topic. Today, when you search for a band or musician on Google, you’ll get a bio, links to upcoming concerts and YouTube videos and other info in the sidebar. Bing often shows some of the same info, but it’s randomly distributed in between the regular search results (to be fair, it often does a better job with movies than musicians).

Right now, it definitely looks as if Bing is moving more toward social search and Google is more interested in semantic search, though both, of course, continue to offer a mix of both. Which one of those you prefer is a matter of personal preference. I never found a lot of value in social search, but most of the data I’ve seen says that highlighting social signals do influence people’s decision to click on a link or not.

Somewhere out there, a woman named Sarah Perez is probably very frustrated by technology. No, not me, a different Sarah Perez. She signs up at websites to receive information, and it never comes. Friends invite her to gatherings, and she never hears about it. She tries to reset her password, but the password reset never arrives. You see, Sarah’s problem is that, since around 2008, I’ve been getting her email.

I don’t know how the problem started exactly, but the other Sarah Perez can’t seem to remember her email address. It’s not sarah.perez@, as she mistakenly believes. The dot doesn’t matter – the email still comes to me.

This isn’t the only person whose email I’ve mistakenly received. There are also a couple of other Sarahs, who do know their email address, but whose friends can’t keep it straight. For example, when I received Sarah E. Perez’s email, I looked down in the thread and found her actual email address, and forwarded it. She apologized. It never happened again.

Then there are those who are less tech-savvy. One time, Sarah J. Perez’s mom sent me a photo slideshow, so I emailed her back to tell her I wasn’t her Sarah, and to please let her daughter know that this my address. She then did so, cc:ing me. Her daughter replied all: “I was only in Tampa for a short time,” she wrote her mom. I scratched my head over that one for a minute, but then figured it out. You see, I’m in Tampa. And her mom told her that someone else had her email address in Tampa, so Sarah thought that we had both been assigned the same email because we had both lived in Tampa. Like email was a phone number that had been reassigned.

Oh, dear. Poor Sarah J.

That was in April 2008. Five months later, Sarah’s mom sent me another photo slideshow.

But outside a couple of odd incidents, the bulk of the misdirected email seems to be for someone (or multiple someones?) who think they are sarah.perez@gmail.

This began in 2008. I began receiving email during a time when some Sarah Perez was attempting move from New York to Connecticut. At first, I assumed the emails from the apartment searchers and movers were spam. But upon closer inspection, I realized that the companies were emailing me with very specific information – searches that matched a narrow set of criteria, estimates on moving costs, etc. At one point, I emailed one of the companies back to inform them that I was the wrong Sarah. After a couple of tries, it worked. The email stopped.

Not too much later, a friend of Sarah’s emailed me a photo of black chiffon dress she found on eBay. Then things were quiet for a while.

In 2009, I received another note for Sarah. This time a realtor was emailing her details about a condo she was looking at. Wrong Sarah, I told him. Oh sorry, he said. “I forgot to put a ‘.’ between the first and last names,” he replied. I didn’t bother responding. The dot doesn’t matter. Sigh.

A month later, a friend of Sarah’s invited me to Facebook. Two months later, Sarah’s aunt Nancy emailed. Great, now Sarah is giving out the wrong email address to family and friends, I thought. I get enough email as it is, I don’t need someone else’s.

In October 2009, the woman who thinks she’s sarah.perez@ started getting invitations to her Bible study group. I responded again to the sender: wrong Sarah. Oops, came the reply. But in November, I was invited to attend again.

Sarah’s friends may have started catching on at some point because that same month, someone sent out a feeler emailer, saying “just to check and make sure this gets through.” Nope, wrong Sarah, I wrote again. OK, came the reply, I’ll let her know.

2010 rolled around. Sarah’s church friends emailed again, another friend sent her an Evite to a party, and in April, the same friend who had promised me she would let Sarah know that I’ve been getting her personal email, emailed me a second time. This time, she was sending Sarah information about where she could get free healthcare, since she didn’t have any health insurance.

Well, now I was worried. I hope Sarah is OK, I thought. I secretly hoped for more misdirected email after that – you know, just to be sure.

In June 2010, Sarah Perez received a small $500 scholarship from The Red Cross, but I think that might have been for a different Sarah. Maybe a student. In July, Sarah’s friend invited her to a museum outing. And in December 2010, I got an email about the family reunion.

By March 2011, I guess Sarah gave up. She clearly couldn’t remember her email address, so she created a new one. I got that email too, this time, from Google. Apparently, Sarah somehow associated her new email address with her old one. (I have no idea.)

Congratulations on creating your brand new Gmail address,
[redacted]@gmail.com.
Please keep this email for your records, as it contains an
important verification code that you may need should you ever
encounter problems or forget your password.

You can login to your account at http://mail.google.com/

Enjoy!

The Gmail Team

Oh Sarah, will you never learn?

Yes, I suppose I could have emailed her at her new address, but I didn’t have time to do so when the notification first came through, and based on the numerous password reset requests I’m getting now, I don’t think Sarah can access that new account currently. I missed my window.

Despite the new address, the emails kept coming. I was invited to a bridal shower in summer 2011. In July 2012, a funeral. I did not bring a salad or dessert as requested, but I’m sure somewhere out there Sarah Perez was sorry for your loss. (I just hope she heard about it.) I couldn’t help but glance at the Mission Trip photos attached to the email that arrived last month, but I ignored the “Hey, what’s up” email from Sarah’s boyfriend (?) Jesus and the open house invite in March.

This summer, I guess I gave up, too. I just archived all those password reset emails that came in during August, September and October. Sorry, Sarah, I hope you got back into your new email account. Maybe you should just start over again. May I suggest Hotmail?

In late September, Sarah Perez signed up for Photobucket. I received her account welcome email, and so far, about seven emails confirming her photo uploads. Fortunately for her, Photobucket is password protected when I click through. That’s too bad, because after all these years, I was hoping to get a glimpse of the other Sarah Perez.

But I’m glad she’s well.

In this series titled “Defining a growth hacker,” I will be exploring the meaning and practical application of growth hacking through a number of interviews with prominent growth hackers. This is the fourth post of the series. The previous posts are as follows: common characteristics here, growth hacking’s impact on marketing here, and impact on product here.

Paul Graham reminded the startup community that it is in the business of growth. “A startup is a company designed to grow fast,” Graham writes.

Though growing a business is a universal desire, implementing growth is unique to the product, the market, and the company. Nabeel Hyatt, venture partner at Spark Capital, said that there is no single way to grow a company. Execution is a startup’s fingerprint: distinctive and hard to replicate.

A growth hacker’s role is not static but constantly adapting to the organization’s needs. Building growth into a team starts with adopting a culture of growth, recruiting the right team, and implementing with the right corporate mindset.

Adopting a culture of growth

Valuing “growth” is more than just filling a position. It operates like a fundamental value or a “creed” that the rest of the organization uses to prioritize decisions. “Growth is not just the concept of ‘how do I market this?’. Rather, it is a company belief and value,” said Hiten Shah, co-founder of KISSmetrics.

From day one, company culture is being fastened and formed. Inserting growth creed at a later point in time requires more energy and time to implement, which slows down learning. “At the founder level, a growth hacker designs product around inherent distribution and sets a data-driven culture,” said Matt Humphrey, co-founder of Homerun. “This is probably the most important phase of a company.”

Adopting a growth creed at any point in time requires trust in the process and continuous internal advocacy. When it comes to growth, results require patience. The founder is the best person to integrate the creed into the organization, allocate resources and establish the organization’s vision on growth.

“Growth has to be part of the culture from day one,” said Jim Young, co-founder of HotorNot and Perceptual Networks. “It is much harder to staple on a growth team when there is an entrenched development process that is not as metrics oriented or fast-paced. A growth hacker works best as a founder, since they will be able to establish the culture for growth from the very beginning.”

Recruiting the right team: a growth hacker

Implementing growth depends on the company’s maturity and resource accessibility. For an early stage company, a growth hacker is typically a strong generalist with a good product intuition due to the need to fill multiple roles.

“At first, a company needs to have a good product intuition with clever hooks,” said Mike Greenfield, co-founder of Circle of Moms and 500 Startups Growth Hacker-in-Residence. “Later on, the quantitative part of growth starts to matter.”

With a small data set and highly variable user behavior, a growth hacker in the early stage is hustling every channel. Jesse Farmer, co-founder of Everlane, said that scalable growth in the early stage is a challenge: “Early on it’s distribution über alles and getting to the first few thousand users. Sometimes that’s hard to do through pure engineering due to the lack of scale. Growth hackers try to bootstrap through other avenues, such as press and inbound marketing.”

In this stage, having coding skills as a growth hacker pays off in a steeper learning curve and faster iterations. “It is always better to be an engineer whether you are in product, a CEO, in marketing or in data. Engineering is a multiplier effect in speed,” Farmer said.

But this confluence of skills is rare. “Earlier on, it is best to have those coding skillsets,” Shah said. “But those people are unicorns. Most good growth people are great marketers and product people. Being a coder is not necessary to be a good growth hacker.”

Though a growth mindset should be adopted into the culture from day one and baked into the product, growth hacking is primarily a post product-market fit enterprise. Growth is an optimization problem. “Most of the tools of trade don’t apply until after product-market fit and initial traction,” Hyatt said. “Most great growth hacks are optimization problems.”

Recruiting the right team: growth teams

As a product surpasses early adopters, growth compounds in complexity and difficulty. “The first stage of growth usually involves scrappy techniques to raise a round and prove the idea,” Humphrey said. “The next phase gets more complicated with monetization and user accounting. This is when a startup sets itself out from the pack as a rocket-ship.”

Growing beyond early adopters presents a new set of growth challenges that requires specialization and more minds on the task of growth. A single, generalist growth hacker can be ineffective as a product gains mass adoption. Andy Johns, growth product manager at Quora, said, “You need to build a team focused on growth, not just an individual,” said Johns.
A growth team is different from a growth hacker in that it’s the specialization of a growth hacker’s role. “Different stages of company growth requires different types of growth teams,” Shah said. “Growth hacking is not the same thing as a growth team. A growth hacker is a generalist who can attack several channels effectively. Growth teams are a group of specialized growth hackers.”

Though a growth team retains most of the mantra of a growth hacker, growing into a larger team naturally reduces agility and some of the hacker (“black hat”) nature. “Comparing a growth teams to a growth hacker is like comparing marital arts to mixed martial arts. Both are fighters but on the ground, in a growth at all costs environment, you need a mixed martial artist,” Farmer said.

Implementation

Implementing growth touches every part of a company. Growth hackers and growth teams do not isolate themselves. Growth is a systematic endeavor. “Growth is the confluence of hiring, organization building, analytics, data science, design, engineering, Internet marketing, and a trained mentality,” Johns said.

Growth hackers and growth teams work very closely in a product role across an organization to make an impact as quickly as possible. “The role of the product manager and growth hacker is starting to collide,” Danielle Morrill, CEO of Referly said. “Traditionally the product manager has been the gatekeeper of what gets built next, but the growth hacker looks at daily metrics and wants to move a lot faster.”

A creative yet systematic view of the product helps foresee how small changes can have a big impact. “Growth hacking is about levers, not guessing,” Shah said. “If you make one tweak, you should know or estimate the impact it will make in your product, directly and indirectly.”

Implementing growth is not always bright and sunny optimism because failure is essential element of growth. “You don’t need to fall in love with your first idea. This is an objective science. You are either right or wrong,“ Hyatt said. Growth is a learning process. Trust in the growth team is fundamental to success because not every concept works.

There are several misunderstandings around growth. The buzz on “growth hacking” has intimated the misconception of simple overnight successes and a “LEGO” conceptualization of conquering growth challenges. “Growth is not sexy,” Johns said. Implementing growth is not easy. It requires continuous and proactive advocacy without realizing gains until a later date. Growth hackers are validated on a post-hoc basis.

However, when a growth hacker does get it right, they are right in a big way.

In my next post, I will discuss common myths and misconceptions about a growth hacker.

Aaron is currently a growth hacker in U.S. presidential politics and leads the growth committee for the Growth Hacker’s Conference. You can follow him on Twitter and his blog.

Editor’s Note: Kevin Gao is cofounder & CEO of Hyperink, a next-gen publishing platform. Previously, he worked at shopkick, McKinsey, and self-published 2 ebooks. You can follow him on Twitter here.

In Silicon Valley, there’s a widespread belief that VCs don’t invest in content businesses. Here are 3 reasons – based on my experience with Hyperink – why investors hesitate to invest in content-heavy startups.

To simplify, here’s what I’ll consider a “content business:”

1. The startup owns content as a core asset. In other words, it’s not just a UGC platform (eg, Tumblr).

2. The startup competes with big content companies. For books, an example would be HarperCollins.

Let’s take a quick look at Sequoia’s portfolio. Of the venture-stage investments on their site (77 in total), only 7 are “content” companies.” Yet people spend at least 33% of their time online consuming content, and this doesn’t include search activity and social activity (where the average person consumes more Facebook newsfeed content than he creates it). Kids spend 7+ hours every day consuming media.

Why the disconnect?

Reason #1: Content businesses are tough to scale quickly

The venture business is about scale and speed. Pinterest reached 11.7 million monthly uniques in nine months. This sort of growth has changed the game (Chris Dixon does a great job explaining how).

For content businesses, your core asset is your content and the experience you build around it. Content is expensive to produce (unlike Reddit, your users aren’t doing it for free!) and requires a lot of infrastructure at scale (WordPress can only take you so far). YouTube recently began investing $100 million into original, exclusive content. Netflix, Hulu, and others are doing the same.

The content companies that have scaled the most quickly are hits-driven (Angry Birds). But hits are tough to predict and expensive to manufacture – just look at the increasingly formulaic but mediocre movies that Hollywood’s been putting out.

So what do you do if you’re a content business? Create your own content, but also allow users to contribute. Your content can get the ball rolling and users can annotate, add, expand, etc. Your brand can be incredibly valuable so be thoughtful about it from the start!

wikiHow is doing a great job balancing UGC with their own. Cheezburger started by creating their own memes and have now built a platform to allow others to do the same.

A final example: Demand Media. Demand’s gotten a bad rap because of perceived low-quality content (eg, eHow.com). However, the company did a great job scaling, at one point managing 13K+ writers and editors creating 5K+ pieces each day. And they now have tons of eyeballs and steady growth! Their content production expertise also gives them flexibility to try new things, such as creating ebooks, producing branded video, etc. The best part of it all? Cash money-tons of ways to monetize and no, it’s not just AdSense.

Reason #2: Content businesses don’t have large exits

Let’s take Random House. Founded in 1925, it’s the largest book publisher in the world by revenues. Yet they sold for only $1.4 billion to Bertelsmann in 1999. By contrast it took AdMob 35 months to reach half that price—$750 millon.

Here are some other content-related exits:

While they’re all good exits, they don’t capture the same multiples—and speed—as companies like Instagram ($1 billion in 2 years) and Playdom ($763 million in 2 years).

The plus side? Content has multiple ways to earn cash money. First, people are used to paying if its quality (books, music, movies, cable TV). Advertising commands high CPMs because unlike user-generated stuff, it’s predictable and safe. Many content verticals have lucrative affiliate and lead-gen models (DUI lawyers, anyone?).

So what do you do if you’re a content business? Figure out your growth expectations and exit options (with your founding team) before you raise money (if you raise at all). If you want a homerun ($100 million+ exit), start thinking platform (Demand is a platform; Audible is a platform). It’s the only way you can grow quickly enough to satisfy VC outcomes. As Dave Shen puts it, “you can make money off other people whom you do not have to pay.” Raise money the normal way (from the best VCs, and more than you think you need).

If you’re ok with a base hit (eg, a $100 million exit or lots of the profits), find investors who are comfortable with smaller outcomes. Start thinking monetization as soon as you have the right product/market fit and a steadily growing audience. As a content business, you should be able to reach ramen profitability without breakaway growth. This gives you flexibility and leverage. If your content is evergreen, it will be valuable for at least 3 to 5 years.

*Jack Herrick of wikiHow makes a great point that funding for content companies—like other verticals—goes in cycles. How-to was hot from 2006-2008 and there was a lot of money going to HowCast, Mahalo, etc.

Reason #3: VCs think of content businesses as lifestyle businesses

Lifestyle business is a silly phrase as we all know. For this article, let’s say it’s one where the founders can build a profitable, steadily-growing business with a longer timeframe and smaller outcomes than funded businesses.

Because content businesses can generate revenues quickly, and early overhead costs are low (fewer engineers, more freelance writers & editors), it can be hard to convince Kleiner or Accel that you’re in it for that blockbuster Google IPO. Another wrinkle—accurate or not—VCs value engineers over writers/editors.

So what do you do if you’re a content business? Not every business needs millions of dollars (Chris Dixon to the rescue again!). If you want that Series B(ling), then present a long-term vision and methodical plan for how you’ll reach $100mm and then $1 billion in revenues – anything less is insufficient.

Even better: have data that shows this is already happening.

If your envisioned product cannot grow 30% monthly for the foreseeable future (startups = growth), you might not want that $5 million from NEA.

Disclaimer: Hyperink does ebook publishing, so I know text content best. And we’ve only raised a $1mm+ seed round, so I’m far from being experienced at this. The post is part-personal experience, part-conjecture.

Editor’s note: Joe Medved, a partner at SoftBank Capital, focuses on early-stage consumer and enterprise mobile, social marketing, gaming, and commerce investments. He serves on the boards of BestVendor, CrowdTwist, Jump Ramp Games and Thumb. SoftBank Capital’s other investments include BuzzFeed, Buddy Media, The Huffington Post and Omgpop. You can follow Joe on Twitter @joevc or read his blog at www.joemedved.com.

As recent doubts have been cast upon Facebook in response to its stock market dip, it’s interesting to take a step back and look at the company from a different perspective. Despite the precipitous fall of Facebook’s stock price post-IPO, the company continues to grow at a rapid pace globally and sees high retention of new users, with over half of monthly active users coming back daily. In October 2012, Facebook announced hitting 1 billion monthly active users (MAUs), meaning 1 in every 7 people on the planet log into Facebook monthly. The company’s leadership in engagement is also undeniable; the average user is spending over six hours on the site each month.

However, as the world shifts from Web to mobile, there has been a lot of scrutiny as to how Facebook will monetize mobile users. Investors are now looking out for social companies that can build upon Facebook’s success in engagement and growth, and learn from the company’s weakness by driving monetizable behaviors on mobile devices.

Pinterest blew up in 2012, and despite slowed growth in recent months, has continued to build on its large base of monthly active users. Although the virtual pinboard has yet to home in on monetization, the company has set itself up for success by creating a community that generates monetizable intent. According to Shareaholic, Pinterest now refers more traffic than Bing and Twitter, and it is soon to overtake Yahoo! Similar to other social networks like LinkedIn and Yelp, Pinterest has fostered a focused user base that attracts consumers with a specific purpose, creating a clear path for financial prosperity.

From my standpoint as an investor, my fellow VCs and I are taking note to nascent social networks that have shown clear achievement in mobile, and continue growing in terms of both user base and engagement. Emerging networks like Thumb, which sees users spending over 5 hours on the app each month, are showing that they have what it takes to deliver the robust mobile experience that Facebook lacks. We also see Path having the potential to make Facebook sweat. As of March 2012, the network had users showing three times the engagement as Facebook at the same point in its lifecycle, and the company recently announced 3 million global users. Social messaging apps are also catching investor attention as they continuously explode across the globe. Kik Messenger shot up in the App Annie charts over the past several months, taking the helm as the number 1 social networking app throughout most of July and August 2012. Japanese communication app Line has proven ubiquitous as well, as it made a drastic leap from over 30 million users to upwards of 65 million users between April and October 2012.

These up and coming networks show the investment community that there is an inseparable relationship between user engagement on mobile and long-term value creation. The chart below expresses some of the social services with the highest engagement rates. None of these services have achieved their tremendous levels of engagement through growth hacking alone, but have delivered real value to the user, which ultimately allows them to not only reach such high engagement, but also sustain it.

In searching for the next generation of successful social companies, VCs will look for not only growth, but engagement, mobile success and strong intent.

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

In this post, I’m going to try illuminate a tactical problem many application developers face, but unfortunately, I must claim upfront that I don’t know if any solution exists without a fundamental change occurring. The topic for this week’s column is to peel back the layers on mobile app distribution in Apple’s iOS, and in doing so, hopefully illuminate areas developers can exploit given the treacherous conditions that currently exist.

As is the case with many of these kinds of posts, I’ll get a few disclaimers out of the way. First, I’m focusing on the iOS app ecosystem because that’s what I’ve been mainly exposed to. Yes, I have tried Android products in the past and I do recognize its open system allows developers to build things faster and with less restrictions than would be the case within Apple’s universe. Second, I’m going to ask readers to, for this post, to put aside iOS apps that are games, communication utilities, extensions of large brands (I’m sure Target has a large install-base), native Apple apps (like iMovie), especially those that come preloaded, and basic utility apps like Fandango (for movie tickets) and so on — the apps that have the most downloads and the most competition. It goes without saying that these types of apps are downloaded most often, so with these cast aside for a moment, how do the rest of us who aren’t Instagram get real iOS distribution?

The short answer is: I’m afraid, at least right now, for many it feels like an unattainable goal.

It took some time to arrive at this conclusion. Over the past few months, I’ve been exposed to and tested many exciting mobile concepts, and on the few occasions where I saw a product and could envision a long future with it living on my phone, I got tripped up on one recurring question: “Great, but how can this app imprint on millions of phones, not just a few hundred thousand? And if it does breakout, what’s the plan to have the app provide value on a daily basis, or close to it?” What was most frustrating is that, in these few cases I could easily envision a future where nearly every iOS customer would use these apps and they would provide great value, but it was both sad and scary to think that the first hurdle — distribution — may be the highest.

It’s easy to get enamored by “mobile” these days. All the sensors. The speed, the sleek handsets. The always-on, background capabilities. And, the success of apps and services like Angry Birds, Uber, Voxer, and Instagram make iOS even more tantalizing. These apps have, in a way, created a modern-day app gold rush, and now that is easier to build these apps, everyone is in the game, from big brands to schoolkids worldwide who just want to build something they want to see exist. From a “maker” standpoint, it’s phenomenal; from the consumer perspective, it can be overwhelming, as TechCrunch’s Co-Editor Alexia Tsotsis pointed out in this brilliant post from November 2011. The result today is a hyper-fragmentation of apps and services, to the point where even some savvy app developers can be genuinely surprised run into five or more apps that are basically similar to theirs.

One result of this gold rush is a “mobile first” mentality. The prevailing wisdom seems to be that companies build for iOS first, and that certainly makes sense. This is what Instagram did, and then they eventually expanded to the web by creating separate pages for pictures. Lately, however, I’ve encountered a few founders who have originally intended to be focused on mobile with their new companies, but for these specific distribution-related concerns, started on the web first. There are some legitimate reasons to consider a “web first” approach in today’s environment. App makers can experiment in finding where an initial audience may come from, they can build awareness for their brand, and they can drive sign-ups and measure retention, engagement, and other key metrics, as well as enjoying the ability to iterate faster. I’m not suggesting that every app retool their strategy to adopt this approach, but it is worth considering given the circumstances, and the few companies I have seen using web and/or email first either have or likely will emerge from seed-stage to raise healthy Series A rounds — and I have to believe, in part, their web-to-mobile sequenced play had something to do with it.

Once an iOS app is ready to go, developers have to use every trick in the book to nail the launch. This can translate into a variety of tactics around public relations, press releases, invitation and referral hooks, and twisting the arm of every colleague, friend, investor, and advisor to the share the news and reviews of your app launch on their social networks. An unfortunate side-effect of this is that some companies have decided to dip into their funds and spend on more traditional marketing and PR efforts just to help get that initial lift, which is oftentimes has a low return on investment and usually isn’t sustainable over time.

If the app offers something new, chances are people will use it more and more (hopefully), and then developers can employ techniques to give themselves every chance at growth and retention. Like Instagram, they make it easy to share into social networks on the belief that good content spreads, hoping one day that network effects kick-in. Additionally, there are a number of techniques one can use to increase retention and engagement. Like Lift, they may use default opt-in email alerts that tie back into the native app experience. Like Highlight, they may use iOS notifications to run in the background and send you alerts depending on context. And, like Angry Birds, they all cross their fingers and hope for the type of word-of-mouth virality even money and fame cannot buy. But, before we can have retention and engagement that matters, the initial distribution hurdle needs to be cleared.

Taken together, the picture seems bleak. Where do we go from here?

One point of view is that this burden rests with the handset and OS maker to make application distribution, discovery, and sharing easier, so that users can be exposed to a better set of apps, which in theory could, over time, not only help installation numbers, but create better user retention and engagement. Maybe Facebook could help, since most people have Facebook installed in their phones, and both companies have a decent sense of what apps we use and could recommend to friends. As it stands now, I only hear about apps via worth-of-mouth from friends, or if it somehow appears in my Twitter feed. I’m there are 101 suggestions for Apple and their newly redesigned app store, so I won’t go into them here, other than to point out that developers do feel this pain — and the new redesign of the iOS App Store seems to be a step back for app discovery.

Another point of view, however, is that this burden falls on app makers (and consumers) alike. Consumers will likely have a hard time distinguishing between apps that appear to be similar except for a few minor differences. Many iOS users have many screens of “dead apps,” once downloaded and tried out, and now just rotting in the background. How many apps can one person really use, right? Perhaps we all in the tech world are too accustomed to testing everything new, so that we can be one of the first to anoint new winners, but the reality is that everyday consumers will likely only pay attention to apps that provide them with context-specific information and services, or something entirely new, novel, and engaging. This could be a new design (like Circa has done with creating snack-sized news morsels), or a new business model (like Lyft has done with ridesharing, aggregating offline to pair with mobile demand), or a habit-forming interaction (like Lift has pulled off quite well), or a well-defined daily use case wrapped around a familiar mental model (like Sosh has done with going out after work), or harmonizing user data across social networks to create new products (like Brewster has done, pairing social networks with phone contact lists), or bringing real technologies to a mobile form-factor (like Prismatic has been able to do with its personalized news service). Maybe these apps have cracked through all the barriers and all the noise because they recognized the minefields across the iOS landscape and prepared for this battle accordingly.

I do not have many answers here. Maybe Apple could change some aspects of the App Store. Maybe the threshold for apps and services that breakout needs to remain extremely high. Maybe developers will slowly move away from native and use HTML5 or some variant to sidestep the native app discovery problem, instead using the mobile web to power their distribution. Maybe consumers are happy with a fragmented app landscape, or maybe the best course of action is to build entirely new product experiences in the few categories that seem to drive the most attention on iOS. I’d love to read your thoughts and suggestions below, though one thing is clear — there is a problem somewhere, users remain inundated with choices, developers are frustrated with these constraints, and the competition to build the next thing is only accelerating. The result is that a “mobile-first” strategy may, for this particular moment in time, not be the exact right approach for specific applications in certain categories given the environmental factors surrounding us. Plan for your app’s future accordingly.

Photo Credit: techburst / Flickr Creative Commons

Windows Phone 7, Microsoft’s big return to the smartphone stage after Windows Mobile’s gradual decline and demise, turns two today, according to a tweet by Joel Belfiore, Microsoft’s head of Windows Phone product definition and design. So I thought it would be fitting to take a look back at Windows Phone 7′s life up until now, and what the mobile OS has or hasn’t done for Microsoft so far.

On October 21, 2010, the first Windows Phone 7 handsets officially went on sale in New Zealand, Australia and parts of Europe and Asia. 10 launch devices brought the mobile OS to users, made by HTC, Dell, Samsung and LG (early highlights of the lineup included the LG Optimus 7, Samsung Omnia 7 and HTC HD7), spanning 60 carriers in 30 countries, and expanding to more in 2011. Early sales were promising in some markets, and even generated lines according to an AT&T spokesman, but overall failed to impress, with only 40,000 total units reportedly sold in the first day of U.S. availability.

In December, Microsoft Corporate VP of the Mobile Communications Business and Marketing Group Achim Berg revealed in an interview posted to Microsoft’s official blog that Microsoft had sold over 1.5 million devices – but that was to carrier partners, not sales through to customers, which meant there was no telling how much of that was sitting on store shelves or in stock storerooms. Berg hedged against potential criticism in that interview, saying that Windows Phone 7′s “numbers [were] similar to the performance of other first generation mobile platforms.”

The news didn’t improve terribly in January the following year, when Microsoft announced passing the 2 million mark about 10 weeks after its Windows Phone 7 launch, but again, those numbers were to retailers, not overall sales to customers. By most accounts, users seemed pleased with the OS, but growth rates still looked to be a considerable challenge.

A month later, in February 2011, Nokia and Microsoft announced a broad partnership, with the aim of using Nokia’s hardware expertise to boost Microsoft’s struggling mobile OS. The idea seemed sound: Nokia was enjoying flagging fortunes in the worldwide handset market, having trouble competing with Android and iOS device gains, and Microsoft needed a focused hardware partner it could work closely with to both guide the future Windows Phone’s software design, and also make sure device/OS integration was as tight as possible. Here are three crucial bullet points from the press release announcing the arrangement:

• Nokia would adopt Windows Phone as its principal smartphone strategy, innovating on top of the platform in areas such as imaging, where Nokia is a market leader.
• Nokia would help drive the future of Windows Phone. Nokia would contribute its expertise on hardware design, language support, and help bring Windows Phone to a larger range of price points, market segments and geographies.
• Nokia and Microsoft would closely collaborate on joint marketing initiatives and a shared development roadmap to align on the future evolution of mobile products.

It was a bold move on both sides, and one that seemed on the surface to have at least some potential to help both companies rally in the increasingly competitive mobile ecosystem. But it would take until October before consumers got any inkling of what kind of hardware we’d see from the partnership, with the official unveiling of the Nokia Lumia 800, and another month after that before it would ship to consumers. The Lumia 800 was fairly well-received by reviewers, and included Windows Phone 7.5 “Mango,” a significant update that brought a number of features to the OS users thought were missing in the original release. Mango also made it to a lineup of other devices from manufacturers besides Nokia, though by this time, it already seemed like some of Microsoft’s other hardware partners might be losing interest, owing to its special relationship with Nokia.

Nokia Windows Phone 7 sales failed to impress, and Microsoft remained mum on the subject during the first conference call it had following the Mango device launches, which wasn’t reassuring anyone. Then, in June, Microsoft essentially dealt Windows Phone 7 a killing blow, saying that it wouldn’t be possible to upgrade devices running Windows Phone 7 to Windows Phone 8. They announced Windows Phone 7.8 at the same time, which would bring some functionality from the newer OS to older devices, but the damage it did to existing hardware sales was evident in Nokia’s most recent earnings, as it only sold 2.9 million Lumia devices, with its smartphone sales overall taking a sizeable blow.

In July 2012, a Nielsen report put Windows Phone 7′s market share relative to other smartphone operating systems at just 1.3 percent, and predictions from analysts at the time only saw it rising to around 4 percent by end of year. Windows Phone 8 will prove important for Microsoft in terms of its ability to gain ground on the other mobile operating systems out there, and at least one analyst firm believes Windows Phone will still become the second most popular smartphone OS by 2016. As for Windows Phone 7, it will live on in 7.8 updates pushed out to existing owners of Lumia and other devices, but for all intents and purposes, it’s on the path to oblivion. But despite not taking the world by storm, Windows Phone 7 may have paved the way for a return to mobile prominence for Microsoft, even if it’s hard to see that happening based on the current state of affairs.

The boundaries of our personal rights have been summed up more or less concisely in the observation that they end where those of others begin. And this is a perfectly good lamp by which to guide our actions in many cases. But the Internet has led to the destruction of location and identity as necessary considerations when calculating our rights and privileges. This deserves a long and careful consideration, which I am incapable of giving in the space of this column, but this week furnished some interesting examples of how things are shifting — and warnings of where it could lead.

On the pedestrian end of things was the farcical incompatibility of Minnesota state law with Coursera and other online education services. Briefly stated, the state requires (reasonably enough) educational establishments that offer a certain level of service to register with the state and pay a not-insubstantial fee. It transpired at some point that people taking courses online with Coursera and others were technically doing so against the law, and it’s imaginable (if the legislators were more hawkish) that the service itself could face fines.

Of course, it is a perfectly natural occurrence for modern technology to collide gently with aging laws, and it will serve to spur the state into updating its policies. But it’s a small example of the type of conflict that is changing the way all law must work. Coursera, by means of the Internet, was able to reach the citizens of Minnesota — for good, as it happened, but it could just as easily been for ill. Why should it be a one-way street? Should Minnesota be helpless to say, within reason, this is how things work in this state?

They should, to a certain degree. But the scope of its sovereignty, already modest, is being reduced further by the simple fact that the Internet is no respecter of borders. The state line is irrelevant, even invisible.

In Minnesota this will, in this case at least, be a welcome and modernizing influence. But what about in Germany, where Twitter has finally exercised its ability to block users on a per-country basis? Here, as many people noted when the policy was announced, is a tool for a corrupt state, dictatorship, or otherwise malfunctioning government to suppress free speech. But as Twitter noted at the time, a global service must make concessions to the customs and laws of local government, because that is simply how sovereignty works.

The problem is that, again, the Internet does not have the capacity to respect laws, just as a hammer does not have the capacity to discriminate between a nail and a hand. The hammer strikes, and the Internet communicates. The best you can do is tell people not to hammer each other, but in that case there is a clear violation of rights — specifically, your right to not be hit by my hammer. In the case of the Internet, you have very little if any clear violations of rights. What you generally have is a reduction in the capacity of any authority to regulate communication — deadly to dictatorships, of course, but that’s not all.

It may be used in Germany to hide from sensitive and well-meaning eyes the ravings of a group of bigots, but are we to take good intentions for universal permission? Doubtless Mao Zedong meant well when he suppressed literature he felt was damaging to the state, which to him was of course synonymous with the people.

And when there is clear evidence of harm, or misuse, of communication for ends universally discouraged, the “shouting fire in a crowded theater” of the Internet — such as the case of Michael Brutsch, known as Violentacrez on Reddit? It gets awfully complicated, so much so that it would be pointless to embark on an analysis here. But if the bad guys have to pay for the universal access to free and anonymous communication, let’s not pretend that the good guys don’t as well. This coin has two sides, and while one side empowers the oppressed and disenfranchised, the other grants impunity for acts we imagine to be widely abhorred. The pyre for tyranny is also a furnace for atrocity.

So when we find ourselves wishing for the indictment of a ne’er-do-well like Brutsch, we are in a small but very real way attempting to curtail speech in the same way as a dictator would, though we defend our actions because by saying we have just intentions. But that’s a more difficult call to make than we think. When protecting your rights means subtracting from another’s, that’s not a consideration to take lightly. How that compromise is made defines entire cultures, and as we find the existing compromises to be, as in the cases above, unsuitable, we must take care that we do not redefine it poorly.

According to a new report from The Next Web today, Google is readying a number of new devices for announcement at the event it recently announced for October 29, including new Nexus tablet hardware and Android 4.2 features. Some notables from the list of upcoming reveals include improved Nexus 7 tablets (one boasting 3G connectivity), a 10-inch Nexus tablet and a new Nexus reference phone from LG.

The report from “a source with knowledge of Google’s plans” includes ample detail, including apparent confirmation that a 32GB version of the Nexus 7 will be unveiled, which is a widely anticipated move. New, however, is the suggestion that we’ll also see another version of the 32GB model that includes a 3G, HSPA+ antenna for on-the-go connectivity. Google’s Nexus line has been Wi-Fi-only until now, a considerable disadvantage relative to competing products like the iPad for frequent travelers.

There’s also a report that Samsung will produce a new 10-inch Nexus tablet for Google, running Android 4.2 and boasting a 2560×1600 display, with an iPad Retina display-beating pixel density of around 300ppi, according to TNW. Also in the Nexus line, the LG Nexus smartphone is reportedly specced as has been reported previously, and will also be powered by Android 4.2, which brings new features like a user account control mechanism that allows for different profiles to provide access to different apps and services on the same shared  device.

Google’s invitation went out late last week, and adds to an already crowded event calendar at the end of October that includes multiple Microsoft events, as well as ones from Apple and Samsung. Unveiling a refreshed, budget tablet line as well as a new Nexus phone one week after Apple’s iPad mini reveal would have clear strategic value for Google in terms of taking the wind out of its competitor’s sales going into the holiday shopping season, so the details of this report definitely make sense from that perspective. We’ll be there covering the event as it happens, though, so we’ll let you know exactly what does get presented by Google on October 29.

This week, Splice Machine raised $4 million to develop its SQL Engine for big data apps. MongoHQ raised $6 million for its database as a service. A third startup, Bloomreach, announced $25 million in funding for its big data applications.

These three companies provide examples for why the investor community will continue to invest in big data startups for many years to come. All reflect a changing dynamic — the rise of the big data app and the need for a new data infrastructure. These two converging trends now drive funding for a widening number of startups that make data functional inside and outside the enterprise.

Data functionality, a term Gartner Research used in a report it published this week about how big data will drive $232 billion in IT spending through 2016, speaks to why investment will continue to flow into companies such as Splice Machine, MongoHQ and Bloomreach.

But data functionality is just part of the story. This week, Cloudscaling Founder Randy Bias wrote a post that more broadly reflects what these individual startups represent.  The market is going through a deep disruption. It’s a model “pioneered by the most massive Internet players (Google, Amazon, Facebook, Twitter).  This IT model starts with datacenters built with extreme power efficiencies (PUEs reaching 1.2 or less), extends to open hardware projects (like Open Compute), and reaches into the transformation to a scale-out software architecture model (epitomized by “big data” projects like Hadoop and Cassandra).”

It’s in this “manifest disruption,” that startups thrive. It means database infrastructures need to change in order to take advantage of scale out architectures. Splice Machine and MongoHQ represent the transformation of the database market. Bloomreach exemplifies how this new data infrastructure enables apps to take advantage of scale out systems and become the next big thing – beyond what traditional SaaS applications provide.

Splice Machine executives say the Splice SQL Engine is used to access data without having to rewrite existing SQL-based applications or Business Intelligence (BI) tools. It is designed to run across web, mobile and analytics applications. It is intended as a solution for those already invested in Hadoop, NoSQL or SQL tools.  The promise: customers don’t have to rewrite existing BI apps.

MongoHQ is a database as service for developers that provides ways to more easily scale big data apps. Tools for database management differentiate MongoHQ, primarily as a means to bring more efficiency to scaling databases, a huge issue for developers. MongoHQ’s tools provide a graphical user interface that has been lacking for developers with MongoDB, a NoSQL database.

Bloomreach mines data through techniques such as machine learning, web crawling and search technology to transform enterprise functions. The goal: drive marketing insights, new customer traffic and new revenue.

Accel Partners’ Ping Li manages the venture capital firm’s big data fund. He said in an interview this week that what you see in the market is a broad and varying need for different database architectures.

As noted in Database Journal, business intelligence applications, for instance, have started to transition from an OLAP data source in a relational database to a new type of service that connects different data sources from social networks, third-party apps and other sources.  NoSQL has emerged as a popular option for its scaling capability across cheap, commodity-based nodes. It’s far less expensive than scaling with vertically integrated systems that require attaching expensive storage arrays.

In other markets, similar scenarios have started to emerge. A new generation of big data applications have blossomed in this ecosystem, which in turn has put pressure on enterprise vendors to modify existing software suites.

Li says that over time, one or two databases will emerge  for horizontal applications with certain verticals having databases for their particular requirements.

In the meantime, venture capitalists will continue to invest in data infrastructure and big data apps that represent the manifest disruption in IT.

(Feature image courtesy of Kunal Anand, data visualizer and director of technology for the BBC)

Best Buy started accepting pre-orders today for the AT&T Nokia Lumia 920 and HTC 8X Windows Phone devices. Pricing details are also now available, with the Lunia 920 available for $149.99 on a new 2-year contract, and $599.99 without commitment. The 8X is $99.99 on contract, and $599.99 without, meaning those interested can get on board with Windows Phone 8 for $50 less with HTC, albeit with some trade-offs.

Those looking for color choice will want to opt for Nokia, however, as the HTC 8X is only available in purple through the current pre-order process, while the Nokia Lumia 920 (an AT&T exclusive for 6 months, according to reports) comes in your choice of cyan, yellow, red, white and black. Also, the 8X has only 8GB of internal storage, while the Lumia 920 offers 32GB built-in. Both devices offer an 8 MP rear camera, but the HTC’s front facing one is 2.1 MP while the Nokia’s is 1.2.  The 8X has a 4.3-inch, 1280 x 720 display with pixel density of 342ppi, vs the Lumia 920′s 1280 x 768, 332ppi screen. Both use the same 1.5GHz Qualcomm Snapdragon S4 processor with 1GB of internal RAM. In terms of physical dimensions, the HTC smartphone is smaller and lighter.

Ship date is still unknown, since all of the devices still say “Reserve today. Will ship when available” on Best Buy’s website.

Last week, we got a peek at HTC’s J Butterfly Japan-only Android phone, with a huge 1080p 5-inch display that manages a crazy 440ppi pixel density, and today, Android Central (via The Verge) is claiming a new North American HTC flagship phone coming to Verizon will offer the same screen on our shores. The HTC DLX, as the report claims it’s called, appears to share both design and specification cues with the J Butterfly, and would be Verizon’s first One-series smartphone.

Specs according to Android Central include the 1080p 5-inch display, as well as either an 8MP or 12MP rear shooter, as well as a quad-core processor (possibly the Qualcomm Snapdrago S4 Pro at 1.5GHz according to an earlier leak by xda-developers forum member Football) and 2GB of RAM, plus 16GB of internal storage and a 2,500 mAh non-removable battery. Android 4.1.1 with Sense 4+ will be on-board in terms of software, according to the leak, and it’s also an LTE capable device. The report also says we should see this launching with Verizon sometime around Thanksgiving.

HTC reported earlier that the J Butterfly’s display would make its way out to other markets, and we’ve previously heard that such a device was on its way and possibly headed to Verizon, so there’s good reason to believe this is real. Also, the specs are in line with that Japan-only smartphone, so it could essentially be a reworked design of that device aimed at the North American market. And if, like me, you’ve been very impressed by HTC’s recent offerings, there’s good reason to get excited about such a possibility, too. But not too excited, now that we’re living in the days of elaborate 3D renders that can do a damn good job of fooling the naked eye.