Category: Tech news

Apple’s iPad mini announcement is set for early next week, and the big variable still remains price. Now, a couple of new reports that surfaced this weekend shed a little more light on what we might expect with pricing. KGI Securities analysts Ming-Chi Kuo has an early look at the likely bill-of-materials (BOM) for the iPad mini, and 9t05Mac reports on likely U.S. retail pricing, meaning we can take a closer look at how the iPad mini might figure into Apple’s existing lineup when it comes to comparing gross margins.

Kuo’s estimate of the BOM and manufacturing costs of an iPad mini will start at $195 for a 16GB Wi-Fi only version, and range up to $254.50 for the 64GB, LTE + Wi-Fi edition. His estimates are based on educated guesses, existing price and component lists from other Apple devices, and reported suppliers of parts for this new tablet. Separately, 9t05Mac has information indicating price points of $329, $429 and $529 for 16, 32  and 64GB Wi-Fi only models of iPad mini, and $459, $559 and $659 for Wi-Fi + LTE versions in corresponding capacities. That works out to a gross margin of 40.73 percent at the low end, and 61.38 percent for the fully loaded iPad mini.

Margins are Apple’s bread and butter, as I explained in a previous post, and the reason it manages to stay ahead of its gadget-making competition in terms of market cap, profits and cash on hand. The iPhone 5, for instance, carries a gross margin of 68 percent for entry-level devices, and  72 percent for its most expensive model, thanks to a markup of 256.72 percent. But taking these two reports together puts an iPad well within acceptable limits for Apple – the newest iPad has a 36.66 percent gross margin for the 16GB Wi-Fi model, and a 50.70 percent margin for top-end devices.

Unlike Amazon, Apple just wouldn’t market a device on which it was merely breaking even or losing money, since it isn’t driving the bulk of its revenue from its digital content ecosystem (though it does take in a fair amount that way, too). But taking these two new pieces of information together, you can see how Apple would be able to market a new device at a price point considerably under its existing iPad offerings and still enjoy margins well within its existing acceptable range.

Of course, if 9t05Mac’s information is accurate, that would also mean that the iPad mini would be priced well over the cost of entry of competing devices like the Nexus 7 and Amazon Kindle Fire. But as mentioned, shipping hardware as a loss leader just isn’t an arrow in Apple’s quiver, and besides, Apple won’t be framing the discussion around place, but instead will emphasize quality and the reputation of the original iPad line, and I have a feeling those are arguments that a lot of consumers will find convincing.

The holy grail of online marketing is a viral video campaign. And for good reason. Corporate ‘design by committee’ marketing departments aren’t known for their Olympic-style archery skills for hitting the spot between silly and sarcastic that’s typically needed to push the Internet’s like button. A notable exception is 2010′s Old Spice man – who even stepped up his game, despite it being pretty darn good from the get-go, by responding to individual tweets.

The trick — beyond the pre-requisite of being funny — appears to be adopting a universally mocking tone (self-mockery is certainly a key ingredient) without being out-and-out offensive, yet also remaining polished enough to get past the internal brand censors.

Earlier this week I was sent a link to a video (see below) that hits this spot exceptionally well  – not least because it has an unlikely source: the marketing team for feminine hygiene products brand Bodyform (yes, turns out periods can be hilarious).

This video is not actually a campaign. It’s a response to an equally amusing post on Bodyform’s Facebook page – by a bloke called Richard — pointing out the discrepancy between the company’s excitement-fuelled visualisations of that time of the month and the less-than-fun reality of periods. This was a genuine Facebook post, swears SCA (the company that owns the Bodyform brand), not something the company’s marketing department cooked up to drive Facebook page engagement.

The video response is all fakery of course — since it purports to star the ‘CEO of Bodyform’ (Bodyform doesn’t have one), making a faux apology (‘the visualisations you’ve seen in our advertisments are actually metaphors’) for not telling the truth about periods in its commercials (well, duh — it’s not known as ‘period hell’ for nothing).

A particular highlight is when the faux CEO raises a glass of fake blue liquid — the sort of clinical fluid used in countless feminine hygiene commercials as a blood substitute — and drinks deep. In short: LOL.

Bodyform’s confessional CEO is not the first self-mocking video from a maker of period products — as the Guardian’s Arwa Mahdawi points out, Kotex has done this sort of thing before — but it’s perhaps the first to self-mock so quickly in response to a specific social media post. And in the social media echo chamber Bodyform’s video has done exactly what the company must have been hoping for — sparked lots of positive engagement on Facebook and racked up the views on YouTube.

So how was Bodyform’s viral video born? SCA says it took eight days from noticing the “likes were escalating” on the Facebook post — it’s 95,000+ likes and counting now — to posting their video response. “Eight days in social media terms is quite slow,” says SCA’s spokeswoman. “But in advertising terms it’s really quick.”

SCA’s media agency Carat was briefed on the Tuesday evening by Bodyform’s internal marketing team  – when likes on the Facebook post had reached 20,000 — and they kicked off an ideas brainstorming session on how to respond. On Wednesday the ideas were presented to Bodyform and the video response was selected as the best. Production company Rubber Republic was chosen, having availability to film the video over the weekend, and a team of four script writers at the company delivered an initial script that afternoon. Rubber Republic also handled the casting call to find the CEO (played by actor Charlotte Palmer).

Carat describes the process after getting the initial script as follows

From this point on it was an intensive collaborative creative process between Rubber Republic, the core team at Carat [of three people] and the client – from our side mainly on tweaking the script and co-ordinating the filming (including a location hunt at our offices in Regent’s Place). We were conscious that we needed to balance the humour with something that was right as a response to [Facebook poster] Richard at a personal level and right for Bodyform as a brand.

Palmer was cast on Friday. By Saturday the video was being filmed, and it was edited on Sunday — with a few last minute tweaks made on Monday. At this point PR agency Myriad was also brought in to start making noise via its mainstream press contacts. Rubber Republic “seeded” the video to a variety of blogs too.

The video itself was posted on Tuesday morning. And the rest — as they say — is viral video history.  Or at least 2.3 million YouTube views and counting. Not bad for a topic that’s even more media shy than the Samwer brothers.

SCA says it will be “looking very closely” at how it engages with social media platforms in future — having managed to pull off the trick of making people laugh and talk publicly about a subject that’s, if not exactly a taboo, then at very least drenched in lashings of sanitised, unreal blue liquid.

I only wish they’d been able to squeeze in a reference to binders full of women – for, you know, maximum internet points.

Apple’s new iPod touch and iPod nano, announced alongside the iPhone 5 at an event last month, saw their shipping times improve over the weekend, from an expected two week shipping timeframe to 5-7 business days. The  new iPod were first given the open-ended retail window of “October” when initially announced, and then began rolling out to pre-order customers earlier this month.

The new iPod touch boasts the 4-inch display of the iPhone 5, as well as Bluetooth 4.0 and the new Lightning connector I/O standard. The touch does get the shaft a bit when it comes to processor (A5 vs. A6 on iPhone) and RAM (512MB vs. 1GB on the smartphone), but reviews generally suggest that in practice, the difference isn’t all that noticeable. Apple also offers the latest iPod touch in six different colors, a first for this particular line of its personal media players.

The new iPod nano is another dramatic design departure for Apple’s most affordable media player with a screen, with a 2.5-inch multi-touch display, Bluetooth and a Lightning port. This generation replaces the small square nano with the integrated clip, which spawned countless variants on the wristwatch strap case accessory.

When the new iPod first started showing specific anticipated ship times, they were at 3 weeks back in the first week of October, so going to 5-7 days now is probably just the clock ticking down on that original estimate, which means Apple is still selling units from what’s likely its second large production batch after handling pre-order shipments. Generally, Apple’s iPods have enjoyed declining fortunes compared to its other product lines. This year, watching how the new iPods fare in a lineup that includes not only the iPhone and iPad, but also a host of iPad mini models should prove very interesting.

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 third post of the series on product. You can find the first post on common characteristics here and growth hacking’s impact on marketing here.

“Viral marketing is not a marketing strategy,” Andrew Chen wrote back in 2007. “Successful viral products don’t have viral marketing bolted on once the product has been developed. It’s not a marketing strategy. Instead, it’s designed into the product from the very beginning as part of the fundamental architecture of the experience.”

While growth hacking has changed the worldview of many great marketers, growth hackers are also rethinking and redesigning the way products are developed and analyzed. Today, successful growth implementation starts at the product level because growth hacking at its core is a product-based role.

A growth hacker is a product-based role for four reasons: growth hacking is a sub-specialty of both marketing and product, engagement is central to growth hackers, growth is a form of product “R&D,” and growth hackers are empowered in a product role.

Growth as a sub-specialty

Growth is a blend of both marketing and product. While both specialties contain a partial growth perspective, growth hacking is a sub-specialty with the sole focus on pushing metrics and designing outcomes around growth. Matt Humphrey, co-founder of HomeRun, explained that growth hacking is not a new role that fits within marketing. “It’s an entire product and business level understanding of what drives users to the product, back to the product, and into their wallets,” said Humphrey. Growth hackers have a much deeper technical understanding of product as it relates to marketing.

This technical and scientific perspective on marketing pushes for a different attitude towards distribution and getting in front of customers. “Growth hacking is definitely more than direct marketing, quantitative analysis, and engineering,” said Jesse Farmer, co-founder of Everlane. “For example, Tumblr just updated their API to permit user-to-user following via HTTP POST. That sentence is a Bat Signal for any growth hacker but probably means nothing to the average marketer.”

On product, growth hackers zero in on the distribution and engagement side of product. Growth hackers are “syncing with product teams to ensure the product is built around distribution or core features are put in place with distribution as a central reason,” Humphrey said. Having both a marketing and product mindset allows a growth hacker to make a stronger product that combines both marketing’s acquisition objectives and product’s engagement objectives. “The best kind of growth generally comes from understanding the subtleties of what users want, and then being able to change the product to accommodate that,” said Nabeel Hyatt, venture partner at Spark Capital.

50% acquisition; 50% engagement

A growth hacker does not stop at the first levels of a conversion funnel. “Typically, a marketer’s job would stop at the sign up form,” Farmer said. As growth has become more difficult over the past few years due to channel saturation, good marketers have responded, reaching into the domain of a product manager to drive growth with engagement. Playing in the domain of a product manager is more technical- and data-driven than most marketing.

“Retention, cohort, usability, usage segmentation, etc. used to be a report that came from the product team,” Farmer said. “Growth hackers are a response to the need to connect inbound [product] and outbound [marketing] dots.”

Hiten Shah, co-founder of KISSmetrics, agreed. “Back in the day [dot-com era], it was a land grab—there was little analysis on users and funnels,” he said. “Growth today is more about retention than acquisition. It is far more complicated.” Designing growth in post Web 2.0 is no longer just bringing traffic, but also retaining those users over time. Marketing has moved down the funnel and is now optimizing areas that used to reside within the product team.

A new kind of research and development

While integrating the growth perspective into the product is essential, the best growth hackers and their larger siblings (growth teams) value self-sufficiency to a high degree. A growth hacker or a growth team operates like a product research & development (“R&D”) team you would find in a larger company.

“Growth teams are constantly iterating and developing new concepts,” said Dan Martell, founder of Clarity. “This process can be an unnecessary distraction to core product development. This is why it is best for an autonomous team to test and focus on growth.” Growth teams and growth hackers are in a perpetual state of “work-in-progress,” which can slow core product momentum with its mindset of iteration and testing.

A self-sufficient R&D growth team also ensures continuity and quick iterations, which is essential for a well-executed growth strategy. “Ideally, a growth hacker can single-handedly put in a bunch of changes, such as A/B tests for copy and buttons,” said Mike Greenfield, 500 Startups Growth Hacker-In-Residence and co-founder of Circle of Moms. “One person with both technical and marketing skills can reduce friction and facilitate rapid iteration. Growth success comes from a lot of this background work.”

Continuous testing and speed in a growth team translates to reaching the inflection point sooner. A growth hacker and a growth team should operate independently to take those big risks that can make the difference between a small win and a big win. “Anyone working on growth needs to have the authority to be making important changes to the product,” Hyatt said. “A growth master is on an everlasting hunt for 10x growth opportunities. They are searching for a way to change the product in a way that will change the game.”

Decision maker

Some companies never find their growth due to the lack of serious investment. “Growth is hard to focus on when there are hundreds of other product concerns driven by customers to partners,” Farmer said. “It is a question of priorities.”

Product decisions are based upon a priority filter. Often, growth-related projects fall in the realm of very important but not urgent, but startups primarily operate in the realm of urgent and very important. This natural disposition can place growth on the back burner.

This disposition is one of the top reasons growth hackers are involved in product—to bring the growth perspective to the table everyday. “Growth hackers are often in product because that is where the decisions are made on what’s important,” said Ivan Kirigin, who worked on growth at Dropbox before his current startup.

Growth needs to be a pro-active priority. Otherwise, growth may never come to pass until it is too late. “You cannot sprinkle growth on top of the product as an afterthought,” said Blake Commagere, founder of MediaSpike. “Product is the vehicle for growth.”

“Build it and they will come” as an Internet slogan is outdated. It is much harder to grow today than in the past. A saturated market and a distracted user have created new marketing challenges. A growth hacker, with his or her blended mindset of product and marketing, has been one response to today’s marketing challenges.

Product is at the core of many of the best growth experts. Andy Johns, Noah Kagan, Josh Elman, and Siqi Chen have all worked as product managers in the past; however, each played an evolving role as their respective startups grew. As a company scales, a “generalist” growth hacker evolves into a highly specialized team of growth experts. As a product’s scope and feature set expands, growth teams start to formulate and specialize in the different areas that were once covered by a single growth hacker.

In my next article, I will discuss growth teams and implementing growth.

Aaron is currently a growth hacker in US presidential politics and serves on the growth committee for the Growth Hackers Conference. You can follow him on Twitter and read his blog on growth.

Today, at Y Combinator’s Startup School at Stanford University, Rakuten Founder and CEO Hiroshi Mikitani took the stage to talk about the company’s culture, acquisitions and its crazy growth over the last year.

Rakuten, for those unfamiliar, is a Japanese eCommerce company based in Tokyo, which operates a number of web and mobile properties, chief of which is Rakuten Ichiba, the largest online retailer in Japan. It is also one of the largest eCommerce companies in the world, as measured by sales.

The company has made a lot of noise over the last two years for its international acquisitions and investments, namely buying Play.com last September, Buy.com in 2010, Kobo and more. However, it may be best known for leading Pinterest’s $100 million round in May, which valued the growing social network at $1.5 billion.

The round was a clear indication of Pinterest’s intent to expand its global footprint, especially by leveraging its new strategic partnership with Rakuten to grow its presence in Japan, where Mikitani said at the time “Pinterest is growing very fast.”

Beyond smart strategic acquisitions and investments, at Startup School this afternoon, the Rakuten CEO said that the primary driver of the eCommerce company’s growth in Japanese and international markets was mobile — a reflection of skyrocketing mCommerce and tablet adoption at home and abroad. The company had predicted earlier this year that mobile growth would become a big part of the company’s 2012 growth story, and today the CEO gave a snapshot of what that looks like today.

Mikitani said that Rakuten was currently seeing about $5 billion/year in revenues and that 25 percent of that revenue was coming from mobile mobile phones, both feature and smartphones. Forty percent of those transactions emanated from feature phones, with 60 percent coming from smartphones. At present, the CEO said, mobile is growing at 300 to 400 percent year-over-year. Based on this growth, Mikitani said that he believes that 50 percent of Rakuten’s transactions will be mobile-based “within a couple of years.”

The other foundations of building a strong eCommerce business? Create a strong brand and cross-site loyalty program to create cross-selling opportunities and, of course, a powerful database to analyze customer interactions and behavior.

On top of that, the CEO said he believes a “strong operations culture is essential” for scaling a company and that being “analytical and qualitative are important” to building that strong operational culture. Oh, that and never stop improving, or “improving, improving, improving” — to put it in the words of Mikitani.

Two other great pieces of advice for startups and entrepreneurs: Before you finalize an acquisition or a merger, “make sure the cultures mix,” and form a team with divers skills, and “define culture early and build what the market wants.”

Lastly, don’t let noise steal your attention: “Don’t worry about your competition, just improve yourself.”

Rakuten at home here.

Vibease, a Bluetooth controlled vibrator + app that can be controlled by yourself or your partner, just went on pre-order. To mark this momentous occasion, the company released a commercial. An awful, horrible commercial. But the general mobile… sexual… hardware segment(?) has been heating up, with competition sprouting up from the high to the low end.

And you know what I learned today? Almost all startup sex toys have crazy, hilariously awful commercials.

Let’s take a look, yes?

Vibease

• Description: A Bluetooth-enabled clitoral vibrator that pairs with an Android app for duo or “solo” mode.
• Price: $69 pre-order, $149 for a pair
• Video: For one, this commercial kind of displaces the watcher from reality the second that girl runs a towel over completely dry hair. It then gets just a bit more awkward as you watch her fondle the vibrator (rather than use it), as the camera cuts to split screen over some corny acoustic guitar.
• Rating: What’s the opposite of turned on?

OhMiBod

• Description: A variation of vibrators and dildos that mostly come with a 3.5mm headphone jack. When plugged into an iPod, the vibrator pulses to the beat. There is also an iPhone app.
• Price: $79-$120
• Video: This is possibly even less realistic than Vibease simply because (while I don’t speak for everyone) I hope with all my hope that there is no woman who is pleasuring herself by dancing on her bed half-dressed and mocking oral sex with a vibrating dildo. It also doesn’t help that the relatively upbeat, bouncy piano music at the beginning, which was kind of cute, was replaced with chaotic Rock.
• Rating: Yeah right.

JimmyJane Form 6

• Description: To be fair, this isn’t a tech startup per se. But this is a wireless top of the line vibrator with no battery door and wireless charging. It also obviously takes design cues from modern gadgetry.
• Price: $185
• Video: Wow. Well, that’s only slightly better than going to the gynecologist. I’m also not sure about those white gloves. My mind goes from Doctor, to magician, and then to Mickey Mouse. Personally, that is a progression from not sexy to downright awkward. Subtract ten points for using the word “labia.”
• Rating: One step up from an STD clinic.

LovePalz: Hera and Zeus

• Description: LovePalz is a three piece system, including a WiFi-enabled and sensor-equipped “Hera” dildo and “Zeus” man jar, along with an iPhone app (that’s tied up in the App Store). The secret sauce here is that, when paired over WiFi, the partners will feel each others motions in real time.
• Price: $94.95 for the pair
• Video: I’ll give credit where credit is due — this is actually a pretty high-quality video. The music actually captures that lonely but horny mood, while managing to be romantic, melancholy, and semi-sexy at the same time. Bonus points for showing two humans interacting physically without it looking awkward or forced.My main problem is that the actual product is only shown once, as a graphic laid over the video, and not anywhere close to in-use (other than the app). To be fair, this is probably how the commercial manages to be remotely hot.
• Rating: Smart is sexy.

To be fair to our startups, even the biggest sex toy manufacturers in the world have commercials that range from mildly hot to mildly disgusting (yet funny).

My point, I think, is that it’s nearly impossible to market a sex toy through video because a sex toy commercial is called porn. And chances are we’ve all seen it, probably on Sex.com or Pinterest, if not sought it out directly at one time or another.

There’s clearly a trend here, as far as Bluetooth and sex toys and mobile apps are concerned. But manufacturing can make this a really difficult space. So here’s to the startups that are trying, bellyflop or not, to get you, well, turned-on by their products.

Take a look around. Explore your spicy side. Drop that credit card like it’s hot.

Another post-IPO executive departure for Facebook, this time on the international front. Joanna Shields, the vice president and managing director of Facebook’s Europe, Middle East and Africa operations, is leaving to become the chief executive of the Tech City Investment Organisation. And in a (possibly temporary) step up for another exec, Facebook tells us that Shields’ reports will now report to Carolyn Everson, the global VP of marketing for Facebook.

Tech City is a David Cameron/Conservative government initiative to develop a technology hub in the East End of London to rival that of Silicon Valley and other major tech centers.

It looks like for now Carolyn Everson’s assumption of Shields’ reports may just be an interim measure, but it also could be a sign of her growing position at the company. Indeed, as Facebook continues to position itself for more revenue-generating activities, in some respects, the marketing relationships that fall under Everson’s (and formerly Shields’) remit are perhaps the ones that Facebook can least afford to let drop while it weathers churn at the management level.

The news of Shields’ new job was first reported by the Telegraph (a Tory-backing newspaper) earlier tonight.

Shields, an American ex-pat, is coming into a role that has been up for grabs since June, when chief executive Eric van der Kleij said he was stepping down to serve as an advisor to the Canary Wharf Group, a real estate development company that wants to bring more tech companies to the Docklands area of the city, which is currently very heavy on investment banks and other financial industry businesses.

Tech City has had its ups and downs since first being established in 2011. Started with some fanfare by Cameron as a route to revitalizing the East End of London by catalysing some of the tech startup activity that was already happening there, critics asked why the government chose to focus on one part of London when there are tech companies spread out to many other parts of England, such as Cambridge for hardware. Some have accused Tech City of being little more than a PR machine.

Whether Joanna Shields will be able to turn that image around will be the big question. The TCIO has already said that it plans to split the job into two, with the CEO having an external facing role and a deputy CEO acting as more of an event organizer.

Shields is already looking to take the Tech City vision into something beyond just London. “The spotlight has been thrown on the east London cluster,” Shields told the Telegraph in an interview. “We have to give this Government credit for recognising the success of it and then reacting with policies that are absolutely spot on for incubating businesses, not just in the cluster, but all across the UK.”

To be fair, there have been some very notable advances in London-as-tech-hub: among them, Google establishing its multi-story Campus incubator and events space; Amazon and Facebook both building out their operations in the city; General Assembly arriving in town; hundreds of startups in between all of that; and even an exit (the first, apparently).

Some of that is also just a consequence of how the tech world has continued to grow and globalize. We’ve also seen huge developments in Dublin, Berlin, across Israel, in Russia and more. Is London extra-remarkable in that context?

Before coming to Facebook, Shields had already established her tech credentials at the executive level: she had previously been the CEO of social network Bebo and also worked as a senior executive for Google in Europe, among other roles. This is her first foray into public policy.

Shields’ departure from Facebook follows a string of other executives leaving after Facebook’s IPO. Among them have been CTO Bret Taylor, Platform head Carl Sjogreen, and Ari Steinberg (influential engineer who had most recently been leading FB’s Seattle office). Three other recent business exec departures include head of partnerships Ethan Beard, director of platform marketing Katie Mitic, and platform marketing manager Jonathan Matus.

We have reached out to Facebook to find out who will replace Shields and will update this post as we learn more.

Update: Facebook has sent us the following statement:

Joanna has been a tremendous contributor to our EMEA organization and her leadership and passion will be missed. Facebook supports the UK Government’s vision for building a stronger technology-based economy and start-up ecosystem, and we wish Joanna every success as she moves into her new role at the Tech City Investment Organisation and as the Business Ambassador for Digital Industries.

[photo: Flickr, Eirikso]

I just got back to San Francisco from the 15-year celebration of LIVESTRONG, the Lance Armstrong Foundation. It was an interesting time to be in Austin, as most of the world is still shell-shocked from Armstrong stepping down as the Chairman due to outside pressure from his doping scandal. However, most people had a positive attitude when it comes to the direction that LIVESTRONG is going in, but there’s definitely room for improvement.

Cancer is just one of the diseases that needs better treatment and a cure. While I was in Austin, I thought a lot about my smart friends back in Silicon Valley and all of the hard problems that they’re solving in their daily jobs at startups or companies like Facebook and Google. Those thoughts led me to wonder what would happen if you put all of those brilliant people into a room together to “hack a cure.” I’m talking about all-in stuff here, not a conference or chat “once in a while.”

Think about all of the things that Apple has done with hardware and software for the mobile industry in the past five-lus years, I still can’t get over how small the iPhone 5 is compared to the 4S. It really is lighter and thinner, even though it’s “bigger.” If we can solve “problems” like that, which aren’t really problems, I’m sure that we could come up with some unique practices, tactics and technology to beat diseased like Cancer and AIDS into submission.

I know that there are a lot of health care companies out here who are already helping patients access their records, interface with doctors and improve their experience battling a wide range of illnesses. There’s also companies like 23andMe who are mapping our DNA to try and help direct us to preventative health care.

I love it, but we can do more, can’t we? Celebrities are getting involved in charitable causes, and that’s cool. It helps spread more awareness for important things. There’s a place for geeks in this equation.

If the health care industry could ship information as quickly as Facebook ships code on its site, and with the same passion as Zuckerberg’s crew, I think that we could do some real damage when it comes to lengthening our lives and improving health care overall. Why hasn’t it been done yet, though? Health care isn’t a sexy industry. Neither is education, sadly.

“What’s Hot” is Getting Old

When I look at my inbox and see thirty new photo-taking apps, I get really frustrated. Not because people aren’t trying hard, but that we’re stuck on solving the same “problem”, which really wasn’t a problem in the first place, over and over again. Too much time, creativity and money is being spent on buying short domain names, beautiful interfaces and a business model that might help you raise a buck or two. But what comes after that?

Not everyone is going to sell to Facebook. Trust me.

What if the folks who are working really hard on copying things that are already successful forked over to a new set of problems, like the medical industry, health care or education? Sure, it’s not “sexy”, and sure you won’t get 20M users and lots of press coverage, but engineers who are experienced in moving and computing massive amounts of data could actually stumble onto a breakthrough accidentally. That’s how clinicians and doctors find cures and new drugs. Trial and error.

What if Silicon Valley Paired up With Doctors?

That trial and error approach from the medical industry, with creative tactics to solve complex problems from Silicon Valley, is exactly what’s missing in the world right now.

While I was in Austin I spoke to many folks who volunteer at LIVESTRONG and I asked them what we’re lacking in cancer research and support right now. Most of them said “technology.” They don’t mean apps, they mean they need the brains, passion and manpower of the best place to kick thing’s ass in the world. That’s Silicon Valley.

Sure, a lot of folks who have flipped companies have given money to charity, and that’s great. Really, it’s awesome to support a charity you care about, even if its not LIVESTRONG. But what’s more important than money is time. There’s only so much time on this planet to do things, and if you don’t have enough people doing them, you have yourself a time shortage.

That means it’s like that you, the reader, will be affected by some nasty illness or disease at some point in your life. It’s scary to think about, but it doesn’t have to be. We have a real opportunity in this information age to make a difference.

No more talking

What I’m doing right now is talking, and that’s not going to get anything done. What it can get done though is spark the minds of those really smart people that I mentioned at the top of this piece. Maybe someone who has a few spare cycles on the weekend or nights can look at some of the latest clinical trials, maybe reach out to a Doctor or lab, and get involved.

Maybe the whole health care industry needs to wise up and reach out to the Valley too. Maybe they should open their doors to smart people in flip-flops more often. Hold a hackathon for good, and not worry about being out-smarted by someone who doesn’t have the degree, experience or credentials that they have.

See, to do really amazing things, sometimes you need to suck it up and just do it.

I honestly believe that a cure for cancer will be assisted largely in part by a new breed of technologist, one who doesn’t care about the glitz and glamor of being a “Silicon Valley Rock Star”, but one that truly wants to change the world.

Let’s do something. Geeks, meet Doctors. Doctors, meet Geeks. Go have babies named “Cure.” It ain’t sexy, but it could save our lives.

(Just in case you’re wondering what action I’m going to take, I am working with LIVESTRONG to bridge the gap between Austin and Silicon Valley. In fact, I’ll be pitching some big companies on doing a few meetups and hackathons in the coming future. I need some help though.)

Photo by Cameron Martindell/Wired

When you’re out adventuring beyond the reach of cellphone towers — at sea, in the jungle, on the glacier — it’s reassuring to think there’s somebody back home who knows exactly where you are.

But in order to pass along your whereabouts to friends, family, and fellow travelers (or even search-and-rescue teams) while you’re deep in the wilderness, you’ll need a satellite messenger. The popularity of these devices has exploded over the last few years. They’re very simple — from just about anywhere on Earth, you can press a button and send an “OK” message along with your coordinates to anybody who wants to track you. Pair a satellite messenger with a smartphone via Bluetooth and you can add some additional stuff like short, Twitter-style messages or map data. (If you’re wondering how these differ from Personal Locator Beacons (PLBs), REI has a pretty good summary.)

Some of the most popular satellite messengers are made by SPOT. But now, the company is seeing some competition from DeLorme’s new InReach device. Both are small, about the size of a GPS unit. In fact, they are GPS units, but they’ll only pass along your location to the folks back home. Neither unit has a screen, so they can’t tell you where you are while you’re in the field.

What they can do is collect your pings and plot your route and latest locations on a map that’s accessible via the internet, and send an “OK” message of some sort. Anyone following your adventures can keep an eye on you using these two data streams. Both devices also have SOS buttons to send your coordinates to the International Emergency Response Coordination Center to evacuate you or a member of your party in the event of an emergency.

While they’re similar in basic functionality, there are some nuanced differences between the two, and which one you should buy depends on your budget, your messaging needs, and where your adventures are taking you.

I’ve used previous SPOT devices for the past few years on mountaineering expeditions and river trips in the Alaskan Arctic. I hadn’t yet tested SPOT’s newest device, called Connect, or the DeLorme InReach, but I got the opportunity to test both of them side-by-side on a recent trip to Peru. I used both devices to send “OK” updates as we moved between Lima, Cusco, Machu Picchu and the rural community where we were building a classroom with an amazing organization called Peru’s Challenge.

Photo by Cameron Martindell/Wired

SPOT Connect

SPOT’s latest device, the SPOT Connect ($169, plus $100 per year for the service plan), pairs with your iPhone or iPod via Bluetooth. Download the free iOS app to your phone, and you can send custom 41-character messages like: “At camp. Wet, tired but doing well.” Don’t expect any sympathy, though — you can’t receive a message back.

The SPOT Connect is compact and only has two buttons: “Power” and “SOS.” This way, even if your iPhone’s battery dies, you can still send an SOS message to get rescued. Bluetooth is a pretty huge battery-drainer on both the device and your smartphone, so the Bluetooth tether between the two automatically times out after a few minutes of inactivity. If you’re sending an OK message every hour or so, it gets tedious to re-connect the Bluetooth link every time. Also, the devices don’t always re-connect on the first try, and I sometimes had to restart both the SPOT and my phone to get them to see each other. Once connected, however, I could use the SPOT to send updates to my pre-defined contact lists on my phone, as well as Twitter and Facebook.

The interface with a smartphone is appreciated because it eliminates the need to decipher the cryptic flashing lights on the SPOT. Using the messenger unit by itself, you press the “OK” button and a number of lights flicker, telling you the power is on, battery is good, it sees the satellite, and that your message is going through. You have to study the manual to know what each sequence of blips means. On the smartphone, all that stuff is simply spelled out for you.

Some other gotchas: SPOT’s units don’t cover the entire globe. Because it uses the Globalstar Satellite network, areas like arctic Russia, the Antarctic, southern Africa and much of the Pacific Ocean are out of range. Also, the admin webapp and the smartphone app lack the intuitiveness I’d hoped for. The basic functions are all easily accessible, but to go beyond those, you have to dig. Fortunately, when I contacted the SPOT team at the end of the review period, I learned that the third generation of the SPOT Messenger is due out early 2013, and some of the woes I encountered will be resolved.

WIRED Price is attractive. Unit is compact. Auto-off feature preserves power.

TIRED Coverage area is kind of limited. Bluetooth connectivity has issues. Limited functionality as a standalone device. App is iOS-only.

Read Cameron’s review of the InReach on page two.

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When was the last time you watched live TV? Save for sports, most of us DVR, stream, and even occasionally rent what we want to watch. The whole concept of “appointment television” died right around the time Lost ended its run.

And yet the Sling Media Slingbox still exists, offering traveling couch potatoes the chance to stream their home TV feed to their laptop, tablet, smartphone, or other connected device. Neat? Sure. Essential? These days, not so much.

Like its predecessors, the new Slingbox 500 sits between your cable box or DVR and your TV. There, it intercepts live signals and “slings” them across the interwebs to wherever you happen to be: Tokyo, Tallahassee, or even just the conference room at the office.

If you’re a sports nut who routinely misses home games because they’re not broadcast where you are, this is the next best thing to having Scotty beam you back to your living room. The downside: Just like in your living room, whoever’s actually at home has to watch what you’re watching. Doesn’t matter if your DVR has multiple tuners; the Slingbox delivers only one output. And you control that.

The 500 resembles a Blu-ray player that’s been squashed at opposite corners. It’s a distinctive design, but not very practical: Forget stacking another component on top of it. More to the point, why is it so big? Given the hockey-puck proportions of streamers like the Apple TV and Roku box, the 500 seems downright mammoth. Even the TiVo Stream, which accomplishes much the same thing as the Slingbox (but only with TiVos, natch), is a fraction of the size.

A funky design isn’t the only thing that separates this Slingbox from its forebears. The 500 can stream full 1080p video, and it’s the first model with built-in Wi-Fi and HDMI connectivity. Unfortunately, you’ll probably also need to run component-video cables from your DVR to the box, as many broadcasters prohibit streaming via HDMI. And that means you’ll get only 1080i, not 1080p — though that’s hardly a huge deal when viewing on laptops and tablets.

Arguably, these features should have bowed years ago, but better late than never. After installing the Slingbox between my TiVo Premiere and my TV and running through a quick remote-powered setup, I found myself slinging both live and recorded shows to my laptop, iPad, and iPhone 4S. The picture and sound quality were consistently superb, regardless of whether my mobile device was connected to a Wi-Fi or 3G network. But paying $15 per iOS SlingPlayer app (it’s not universal) left a rotten taste in my mouth.

A forthcoming update will let you access media stored on a USB drive, which can plug into the Slingbox’s backside, and stream photos and videos from your Android or iOS device to your TV. While that adds some much-needed value to the proposition, you can already accomplish the latter with a much cheaper Apple TV or Roku.

Ultimately, the Slingbox remains the ultimate tool for folks who want the experience of watching live TV at home when they’re not at home. And the 500 represents the best of the Slingbox breed to date, offering all the features fans have been wanting and even a few nifty extras. But the price seems out of whack relative to its capabilities, especially in this age of on-demand everything. For this to be worth your $300, you’d better really like sports.

WIRED Finally supports HDMI, Wi-Fi, and 1080p. Built-in IR blaster. No monthly fees. Still the single best way to watch live TV when you’re away from your TV.

TIRED Big and expensive. Mobile apps cost $15 apiece. Hijacks the TV feed from whoever’s watching at home. Some premium channels require component-video connection, even if you’re already using HDMI. No tuner.

You may have never been mugged. You may have never gotten lost in the woods. You may have never been bullied. But you can’t trust your luck forever.

So here’s an insurance policy you can wear on your back: The Urban Crew bag from iSafe is a backpack with an alarm system built in. When you get into trouble, just trip the alarm by tugging on the grenade-like pin hidden in the left shoulder strap. The pair of 125-decibel sirens will fire off their piercing tones and a set of flashing strobes will stun and annoy anyone close to you.

Urban Crew originally developed the bag for school kids to serve as a defense against bullying and in-school crime. But it’s also useful for us non-children who want to surround ourselves and our valuables with an extra layer of personal protection.

At just three pounds, the rip-stop nylon bag itself is surprisingly light, with the alarm mechanism (and its two 9-volt batteries) contributing just 8 ounces. I found the Urban Crew to be decidedly spacious. It has four main compartments loaded with pockets or pouches. The padded computer pocket can hold a laptop up to 15.6 inches. The alarm system, located in the small front pocket, is wedged in with Velcro straps with wires to the trip cord, the alarms and the strobe lights concealed in the bag’s lining.

To the test the alarm, I dared a colleague to come at me with menacing force. I let him get close, and then I pulled the pin and gave him an earful. The sirens are loud enough to cause hearing damage, and painful enough to make you spin on your heels and run the other way. The alarms are positioned on the rear of the backpack facing outward, as are the strobe lights. While this positioning keeps the user from suffering serious harm, the sound is so completely obnoxious, you want to shut it off almost immediately. Sticking the pin back in the control switch does exactly that. The twin batteries will power the sirens for two hours, and the strobe lights (which are quite feeble, but still nice to have) can continue for 36 to 60 hours.

It’s not the best backpack ever made, but it’s one of the only ones that will protect you against a possible assault — or save you from starvation if you happen to be wearing it when a big earthquake leaves you trapped under 10 feet of concrete.

WIRED Ear-piercing alarm system wards off potential threats. Strobes are effective in emergency rescue situations. Lightweight backpack has a laptop compartment and pockets for your other valuables.

TIRED Over-protective zipper flaps make it difficult to open and close. Left-handed folks may find the alarm switch awkwardly positioned.

Photo by Ariel Zambelich/Wired

Biodegradable shoes. The idea seems silly at first — Will they disintegrate while I’m walking around? — but it’s one worth exploring.

Look at it this way: The average shoe contains an astonishing amount of synthetic fiber, hard thermoplastic, EVA foam, and all sorts of other materials that cause untold damage to the waterways, air, soil and wildlife in the corners of the world where they’re produced. Larger shoe companies are waking up to this reality — Nike is making clothing and footwear from post-consumer recycled materials as part of its Nike Better World initiative, Puma is moving into post-consumer materials next year, and the shoes in New Balance’s NewSky line are crafted from recycled plastic bottles. But even as more manufacturers are shifting toward eco-friendly materials and methods, there’s still plenty of stuff inside the shoes and sandals you’re wearing today that’ll wind up floating in the Pacific years after you toss them.

Spanish company One Moment is already one step (ahem) ahead. It’s producing shoes made from soft and durable bioplastics that are not only eco-friendly in construction, they’re 100 percent biodegradable. Wear them around, throw them in the laundry when they get dirty. When you’re done with them, shred them and toss them in the compost bin. Within six months or so, they’ll break down and leave no waste.

Photo by Ariel Zambelich/Wired

One Moment’s 01Ms are closer to rugged slippers than anything else. They certainly aren’t running shoes — the upper is only about 1 millimeter thick and the anti-slip sole is 2 millimeters thick. The whole shoe is one solid piece of soft vegetable-based plastic made using an injection-mold process. Available in a variety of neon colors, they resemble some sort of psychedelic elven bootie. They’re minimal, and so’s the cost — they run about 10 euro ($13) per pair.

There are other companies specializing in biodegradable minimalist footwear, like Feelgoodz flip-flops ($45), and bfflz, which are only $10 a pair and closer in spirit to One Moment’s slipper-things.

Since there’s very little material between you and the ground, the feel of the 01Ms is closer to going barefoot, so they work best in situations where you’d be comfortable shoeless. I wore my test pair in the backyard, and they were quite welcome on chilly, foggy mornings. They kept my feet dry when walking on wet concrete and damp sand, and while watering the plants. Wearing them on strolls to the corner store was a different matter, as they don’t offer much protection against the more painful bits of sidewalk. Also, they don’t breathe well. Mine were snug, and my feet got clammy after a couple of hours.

I washed them out using (biodegradable) dish soap and water, then hung them upside-down to dry them out. They were as good as new the next day. They roll up like socks, so unlike most flip-flops or sandals, you can stuff them in your jacket pocket.

While the 01Ms are quite limited, there are enough situations where some protective foot-sheathing is called for (on the beach, in the dewy campground, at the gym, in sketchy hotel rooms) to make these funky hippie shoes an attractive purchase. Best of all, they’re guilt-free — after wearing my testers for a month, I sliced them up into thin ribbons using scissors and threw them into my compost barrel out back. Next spring, I’m going to feed them to the bougainvillea.

WIRED Sustainably produced and 100 percent biodegradable. Made and packaged using the minimum of materials. Easy to care for and even easier to dispose of. Roll them up like banana peels. Cheap. Unisex. Sized for kids, too.

TIRED They aren’t much more than soft, plastic socks. Not breathable. Fit isn’t perfect, so you might get stuck with a shoe that’s too big or too small, even if you wear a common size. The color selection is so … Euro.

Bräuler Beer Growler
Photo: Greg Broom

If you’re so serious about your beer that you buy directly from a brewpub, you use a growler, a refillable half-gallon glass jug made for transporting and storing tap-fresh beer. But glass has problems. Aside from being slippery and fragile, it allows in light, which can cause certain chemicals in hops to smell and taste skunky. The striking new Bräuler solves all of that. Snug in its optional grippy neoprene sleeve ($15), the laser-etched stainless-steel beauty kept beer colder longer than the glass growler that was the control in our test. It’s also more durable, lighter (1.3 pounds vs. 2 pounds), dishwasher-safe, and better at maintaining carbonation. Coming soon: a CO₂-powered “FreshCap” that will keep the contents under pressure.

WIRED Massive 2.5-inch mouth for easy filling and pouring. Sleek, attractive, frat-party-proof construction.

TIRED Hard to gauge how much beer you have left. Pricey. For sale only at brewpubs.

Photo courtesy of Lenovo

Touchscreens obviously aren’t anything new. While tapping and swiping on the glass screen has become commonplace on mobiles, the same gestures haven’t quite made their way to many notebooks or desktops. That’s all going to change with Microsoft’s Windows 8 — which famously centers the user experience around a colorful, tile-based grid of apps that’s meant to be navigated by touching the screen with your fingers.

Soon enough, we’ll see a flood of desktop PCs and notebooks that let you make grand sweeping gestures to scroll through pages, zoom in on photos, and destroy the pigs of Angry Birds.

Lenovo’s IdeaCentre A720 is one of these forward-looking devices. The dominant feature here is its giant — and surprisingly satisfying — 27-inch touchscreen.

Interacting with a huge touchscreen like this one is unfamiliar at first. You have to move your entire arm at times. It’s an odd sensation, but it grows on you quickly, and actually ends up being quite fun. I can’t wait until more devices like this enter the market, which will surely happen when Windows 8 becomes widely available on Oct. 26.

In the meantime, the IdeaCentre A720 is shipping now with Windows 7 onboard, and well-prepared to handle a Windows 8 upgrade. Using it with Windows 7, I found it to be an excellent all-around desktop machine. The display offers full 1080p HD capability and runs at a resolution of 1920 x 1080 pixels. Of course, Windows 7 doesn’t feel as natural to navigate using multitouch gestures, but the desktop also ships with a traditional mouse and keyboard, which I used most of the time.

For the touch-o-philes, however, Lenovo also offers Idea Touch 4.5, a touch-enabled app launcher of sorts. You can use it to browse photos, watch videos, and queue up music tracks. The large navigation buttons are difficult to miss as you tap with your fingers. If this custom browser isn’t enough to drive home how touch gestures can turn a giant, 27-inch computer into a super-cool entertainment hub, it also ships with Angry Birds, as well as other touch-based games like Fruit Ninja. They’re addictive enough on a phone, but play them on this massive screen, and you’ll wonder where the last hour went.

Overall, I enjoyed the touchscreen experience. It wasn’t overly sensitive or jittery, and I never experienced the frustration of taps failing to register. Even gestures like pinch-to-zoom worked as seamlessly as they would on a smartphone or tablet. Navigation is aided by the fact that the giant screen’s viewing angle is adjustable over a very wide range, from 95 degrees (tilting slightly toward you) to a flat zero degrees, so the screen is parallel to the table.

My one problem with using the all-in-one touchscreen is that it can get tiring. Playing more than a few games of Fruit Ninja actually wore my arm out. On the bright side, it at least got me moving in front of a screen.

The rest of the machine doesn’t skimp on specs. You get the latest, third-generation 2.3GHz Intel Core i7 processor, 64GB of SSD and 1TB of HDD storage, 8GB of memory, and a discrete Nvidia GeForce GT630 2GB graphics card. That’s plenty of horsepower for games and fullscreen videos. I didn’t experience any problems while playing games; everything ran smoothly.

In my benchmarking tests, the IdeaCentre A720′s above-average graphics performance compared favorably to computers with the same Nvidia card. It didn’t, however, return outstanding numbers on PCMark 7 benchmarking tests, performing on-par with mid-range Windows 7 all-in-one desktop machines with Core i5 processors.

But our A720 came spec’d up to a premium price of $2,100, which is a lot to pay for something that doesn’t offer an outstanding level of performance. The A-series starts at a slightly lower $1,750, putting the device in the same price range as Apple’s iMac.

The all-in-one comes with all of the necessary entertainment ports: HDMI input and output, two USB 2.0, two USB 3.0, audio ports, a jack for a TV tuner antenna, Ethernet, a Kensington lock port, and a six-in-one SD card reader. There’s also a Blue-ray disc drive, in case you still want to pop in a movie. A standard HD 720p front-facing webcam allows for high-quality video chatting. One minor, though irritating, design flaw is that the Ethernet port is placed right next to the L-shaped power plug. When you plug in your Ethernet cord — this is a desktop, so the chances are you will — it has to sit awkwardly above the power plug. Or you can turn the power plug and leave it to rub against the base. Sure, it’s nit-picking, but this just isn’t good cable management.

The wireless mouse and keyboard that ship with the desktop are uninspired, though they do the job. Beware though, if you have larger hands, the keyboard will feel cramped. It worked fine for me, but a male co-worker with larger hands did complain when using the keyboard. To save more space, you can stash your keyboard and mouse on the IdeaCentre’s base. It’s a nice feature for those who also use their computer as a TV, and for those who will be spending a lot of time doing touch-only tasks in Windows 8.

With respectable performance specs and a giant, well-functioning touchscreen, this machine does have a lot to offer. For Windows users who want to dig into the bright, colorful Windows 8 interface, the IdeaCentre A720 is among the better all-in-ones currently out there.

WIRED Sleek and sensible design. Fully adjustable screen can be laid flat, and the IPS panel offers great viewing angles. All the entertainment necessities are here, including Blu-ray, HDMI in/out and a TV antenna jack. One of the best touchscreen all-in-one PCs available ahead of Windows 8′s launch.

TIRED Display resolution is a bit low for a 27-inch screen. Performance doesn’t quite match the price. Bundled peripherals are uninspired.

Venture capitalists invested $6.5 billion in 890 deals in the third quarter of 2012, according to the MoneyTree Report from PricewaterhouseCoopers LLP and the National Venture Capital Association (based on data provided by Thomson Reuters). For the quarter, investments were down 11 percent in terms of dollars and five percent in the number of deals compared to the second quarter of 2012 when $7.3 billion was invested in 935 deals.

Investment for the first three quarters of the year was $20 billion into 2,661 deals. The report says that this level is below what it was at this point last year last year, making it likely that 2012 will fall short of 2011 in terms of both dollars and deal volume.

Tracy T. Lefteroff, global managing partner of the venture capital practice at PwC US, said in a release “We’re seeing fewer new venture funds being raised which means less capital is available for new investments. And, we’re seeing venture capitalists be very cautious with the capital that is available due to the lack of a significant number of liquidity events. Instead, venture capitalists are continuing to support the companies already in their portfolio.”

The Software industry received the highest level of funding for all industries with $2.1 billion invested into 304 deals during Q3, marking the fourth quarter in the last five in which investment in Software exceeded two billion dollars. This level of investment represents a 12 percent decline in dollars and a one percent increase in deal volume from the second quarter when $2.4 billion was invested in 300 deals.

Internet-specific investing fell 12 percent in dollars and eight percent in deals from the previous quarter with $1.7 billion going into 250 deals but remained well above the billion dollars per quarter level that has been prevalent for the last two years. Additionally, six of the top 10 deals for the quarter were in the Internet-specific category.

Square of course was one of the largest VC deals in the quarter, raising $200 million. Box also raised a hefty amount this past quarter, bringing in $125 million. Fab raised $105 million, GitHub raised $100 million, JustFab nabbed $76 million and Quirky raised $68 million; all in the past quarter.

Other big raises in Q3 include Zendesk, Nimble Storage, Zscaler,, Edmodo, DocuSign, and Jumptap.

In terms of stages, VC investment declined across all stages of development in both dollars and deals in the third quarter of 2012. Seed stage investments fell 22 percent in dollars and seven percent in deals with $178 million invested into 67 deals in the third quarter. Early stage investments also declined, falling 21 percent in dollars and seven percent in deals with $1.7 billion going into 395 deals. Seed/Early stage deals accounted for 52 percent of total deal volume in Q3, compared to 53 percent in the second quarter of 2012. The average Seed deal in the third quarter was $2.7 million, down from $3.2 million in Q2. The average Early stage deal was $4.4 million in Q3, down from $5.2 million in the prior quarter.

Expansion stage investment decreased just three percent in dollars and one percent in deals in the third quarter, with $2.6 billion going into 241 deals. Overall, Expansion stage deals accounted for 27 percent of venture deals in the third quarter, and the average Expansion stage deal was $10.8 million, down from $11.1 million in the prior quarter.

Investments in Later stage deals decreased 10 percent in dollars and four percent in deals to $2.0 billion going into 187 rounds in the third quarter. Later stage deals accounted for 21 percent of total deal volume in Q3, similar to Q2 when $2.2 billion went into 195 deals.

Financings where companies are receiving venture capital for the first time declined eight percent in dollars to $1 billion in Q3, but the number of deals increased one percent to 297 deals in the third quarter. First-time financings accounted for 16 percent of all dollars and 33 percent of all deals in the third quarter, compared to 15 percent of all dollars and 32 percent of all deals in the second quarter of 2012. Companies in the Software, Media & Entertainment, and IT services industries received the most first-time rounds in the third quarter. Seed/Early stage companies received the bulk of first-time investments, garnering 82 percent of the deals.