Category: Tech news

Wallaby Financial, a startup that’s building a cloud-based wallet that will optimize the rewards, points, airline miles, and other benefits consumers earn when charging purchases, has just closed a seed round of $1.1 million. The round was led by Founders Fund Angel and included participation from WI Harper Group, SLP Ventures, Lion Wells Capital and other individual investors, including some former Green Dot executives. The startup also had some backing from Santa Monica-based MuckerLab, where it was a member of that incubator’s inaugural class this year.

Now, I know what you’re thinking – another startup building a wallet? But before you roll your eyes, wait; this one is interesting. Well, at least it’s doing something unique. Wallaby will offer customers a universal credit card. Yes, a physical card. One card to rule them all.

The idea came to Wallaby CEO Matthew Goldman because of his own experiences. He used to travel a lot for work, and was always trying to be savvy about using the right card at the right time to maximize the accumulation of airline miles and other points. The situation was less than ideal. ”The average American consumer has three-and-half credit cards, not even including store credit cards, and most of those cards carry some form of rewards,” explains Goldman. “And most of those programs can be rather complicated and are becoming increasingly so.”

With some programs, there are bonus categories which change every three months or twice a year, he explains. Others have limits and restrictions, which means that the consumer has to always be thinking about which one to use in order to get the best deal. “We think that’s overly difficult for consumers, and that’s a problem that can be solved with technology,” says Goldman.

Wallaby’s solution, then, is a cloud-based digital wallet which is presented to consumers as a physical, “swipeable” credit card. The card will carry a network brand (it’s either Visa or MasterCard, but Goldman hasn’t received permission to state which one yet), so it can be used just like any other credit card anywhere that brand is accepted. However, the card will be connected to all the other cards consumers carry, routing transactions to the appropriate card based on the consumer’s preference. Oh, and here’s the kicker – this routing will be done in real-time.

Consumers will be in control of what those preferences are, telling Wallaby that they want to maximize airline mile accumulation, for instance, or that they’re mainly concerned with getting the most cashback for their purchase. Based on these rules, Wallaby will make a real-time decision about where to route the payment. Then, after getting the authorization from whichever credit card was selected, it will send the approval back to the merchant.

Does this process slow down transaction times? Not much, but some, Goldman admits. “It does make it a little bit slower, but not noticeably so – under a second,” he says. “Usually what takes the longest time after swiping the card is actually the transaction getting from the store into the payment network. A lot of stores still use a modem to do that,” he says. And Wallaby’s decision-making process is sub-600 milliseconds on its end.

The speed comes comes courtesy of co-founder and CTO Todd Zino, whose previous company DemDex was acquired by Adobe. Although that company was focused on ad-targeting, not payments, there’s similar know-how involved in designing a system that can make a decision rapidly – whether that’s which ad to display or which card to select.

Wallaby had previously opened up its beta for sign-ups back in June, but Goldman now says that it will still be a few months before it “opens the floodgates,” allowing anyone to create an account. Like Simple, and other startups operating in the financial services space, there are risks involved requiring slower, staged rollouts. That said, the company has already managed to waitlist over 10,000 users since June. Further down the road, Wallaby plans to do more than just smartly selecting the right credit card. It also aims to support debit cards, store cards and even gift cards. It could also work towards selecting cards based on balances, limits, or interest rates, and helping with bill pay, perhaps.

“Our vision for the company is to really bring intelligent automation to a variety of financial services for people and help them achieve their goals,” says Goldman. Sign-ups are being accepted on Wallaby’s homepage here.

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Few laptops have been as anticipated in 2012 — if such a sentiment actually exists — as Lenovo’s latest ultrabook, the ThinkPad X1 Carbon. At 14 inches diagonally and a hair under 3 pounds, Lenovo is offering a machine at the same weight as most 13-inch ultrabooks, including the MacBook Air, but giving you an extra inch of screen size and more room to stretch out.

The contrast of spacious screen to weight on the Carbon is really quite jarring. It’s at least 25 percent lighter than other 14-inch laptops I’ve tested, a real leap forward in portability. That lightness is largely due to the reliance on carbon fiber in the lid and in the internal roll cage (hence the name). Lenovo says this design choice gives the notebook the same strength as aluminum, but at one third the weight.

The X1 is tapered like the MacBook Air, which makes it look thinner than it actually is. At 23mm (including the footpads) in the rear, it’s really no thinner than other ultrabooks on the market — and quite a bit fatter than some recently released laptops, like the Samsung Series 9.

The X1 Carbon comes in four configurations, starting at $1,400. Lenovo sent us the top-of-the-line model ($1,850), which features a third-generation Core i7 at a blazing 2.5GHz, 256GB SSD drive, 4GB RAM, and a dazzlingly bright screen with 1600 x 900-pixel resolution. Ports include a mini-DisplayPort jack (keep compatibility in mind, as this is the only video connector available), a card reader, and two USB ports (one 2.0, one 3.0). Wired Ethernet is available via an included USB dongle.

Performance is dazzling, as you’d expect from a computer with a top-of-the-line chip like the X1 Carbon offers. There’s no dedicated video card, so don’t expect to be gaming with it, but general app performance is very speedy. That performance, combined with the super-bright LCD, comes at a cost, though. The Carbon’s battery life, at barely three hours, just isn’t impressive.

Another problem with the Carbon is its clickpad. I’d thought Lenovo had worked the kinks out of its touchpad issues, but the X1′s clickpad — which, in a first for the company, uses a glass surface — is a bit rattly and loose. This makes clicks and even taps difficult to accomplish without the cursor jumping around on the screen. This became increasingly frustrating during my testing, but fortunately, the Carbon also features the famous ThinkPad pointing stick, too. So, if the clickpad gets to be too aggravating, you have an out.

The keyboard is in line with Lenovo’s move to island-style keys on all its laptops. The action and travel are good, but not great. In general, it’s one of the better ultrabook keyboards I’ve encountered, and it’s suitable for long-form typing.

Of course, price is going to be the big sticking point with this laptop, and I suspect most buyers will gravitate toward the lower-end configurations. The $1,400 version is about in line with the $1,200 MacBook Air, and that’s clearly the machine which both Lenovo is targeting and which buyers are going to have to weigh the Carbon against. They are both exemplary computers, but in the end, I still have to give the nod to Apple for now, as the weak battery and frustrating clickpad on the X1 tips the scales in Cupertino’s favor.

WIRED Head-turningly svelte and blazingly fast: Everything you want from an ultrabook. MIL-SPEC approved. Absolutely gorgeous display. Good old flat-black Lenovo charm.

TIRED Slow to boot (nearly 30 seconds). Surprisingly buggy during normal operations, like running Windows Update. Clickpad is merely OK. Puny battery.

Whether you’re a sports fanatic or an indie filmmaker on a budget, POV cameras are great for adding a humanizing bit of perspective to your video. Strap one of these to your head, body, board or bike, hit “record,” and put your audience directly into the middle of the action. Drop in on a wave or jump out of a plane, and your viewers get taken along for the ride.

One player has dominated the market recently: GoPro. Since its foundation in 2002, the company has been challenging the idea of what should be expected from an affordable POV camera. Recently, however, several other companies have introduced cameras that compete with the same core strengths — picture quality, ruggedness, usability and price. We decided to test the GoPro HD HERO2 against two of the strongest contenders, one camera from Contour and the ION Air Pro. The video above shows results from all three, and the full reviews are below.

ION Air Pro Wi-Fi

The sturdy and sleek ION Air Pro Wi-Fi ($350) is made to take a dunking — it’s completely enclosed in a waterproof housing that allows it to safely film at depths of 30 feet. With a 170-degree field of vision, it would be pretty hard to miss any of the action you see through your snorkeling mask.

ION Air Pro Wi-Fi
$350, iontheaction.com

One of the best features about the ION Air Pro is that the camera itself vibrates when it begins recording — really helpful feedback when the camera is mounted somewhere you can’t see it. Speaking of mounting, the ION Air Pro comes with a huge selection of accessories for attaching it to helmets, bikes and other sports gear. It can shoot up to 60 fps, and with the Wi-Fi back, you can use a tablet or phone as an external monitor (not recommended under water).

And now, the negatives. The camera’s settings can only be programmed through a computer, so if you forgot to switch to the mode you need before a shoot and you don’t have access to a computer, you’re stuck. Also, the ION Air Pro automatically flips its frame between portrait and landscape, and more than twice during testing, I ended up with vertical video when I didn’t want it. Lastly, and most importantly, the image just doesn’t hold up that well. The color temperature seems off, as if the daylight temp is set to at least 7,000k. This gives the image a warm, saturated feel. Also, it suffers badly from the rolling shutter effect (when the sensor quickly scans across the frame rather than capturing the entire frame at once, causing wobbles, jiggles and other artifacts). As a result, much of our captured footage was borderline unusable.

UPDATE: I should note that just last week, ION released an update to its iOS app that lets you adjust more of the camera’s settings, and a firmware update that fixes the image-flipping issue. Neither of these updates were available during our testing period.

WIRED Vibration feature is super-helpful. Wi-Fi pairing lets you use a touchscreen device as an external monitor. Reliable, user-friendly and diverse mounting system.

TIRED Super-saturated colors and rolling shutter effect really hurt image quality. Lacking an external battery.

Contour+

The Contour+ ($500), which we reviewed independently earlier this year, has a cylindrical aerodynamic build, as well as a one-touch slider bar for recording. It can connect to a smartphone to do the remote-viewfinder trick. The camera also has a 170-degree field of vision — all attributes that bring it pretty close to the ION Air Pro.

Contour+
$500, Contour.com

However, compared to the ION Air Pro, the image produced by this camera is simply amazing, especially when used in reasonably stable settings. As a bonus, you can manually twist the lens to pick the appropriate horizon for a specific angle. The color temperature has also been dialed in perfectly, and with an f/2.8 aperture available, the camera is able to cut down significantly on image noise. As far as setup and adjustment, it was the most user-friendly POV camera in the line-up.

My biggest quibble: the dreaded rolling shutter effect. While the Contour+ is more stable than the ION Air Pro, the picture still suffers from its lack of image stabilization. Also, the Contour+ can switch between two user-determined settings, but only two. If you want to program more modes, you have to plug it into a computer. Finally, it doesn’t come with many mounting options — you get a profile mount and a pair of flat-surface mounts. If you want more options (like waterproofing or sport-specific mounts) you’ll have to pay extra.

WIRED Wide-open aperture and excellent picture quality when stable. Manual horizon control. Built-in GPS puts your radness on the map. Tremendous ease of use when mounting and recording.

TIRED Image suffers from persistent rolling shutter effect. Lack of useful mounting systems included with the camera is cause for frustration. Expensive.

GoPro HD HERO2

What the GoPro HD HERO2 ($300) offers that its competitors don’t is access to all of its settings and features using only the on-camera controls. With this model, you can pick between frame rates ranging from 30 fps to 120 fps, choose NTSC or PAL, and set the quality between 720p to 1080p — all without the need to carry your laptop into the field.

GoPro HD HERO2
$300, gopro.com

Aside from being able to shoot at a best-in-test 120 fps, the folks at GoPro have somehow found a way to greatly reduce the rolling shutter effect on the camera’s CMOS sensor. All this and it’s still very affordable: it’s $300, and depending on the bundle you choose, the camera comes with a variety of sport-specific accessories and mounts for motorsports or surfing.

The GoPro’s versatility comes with a trade off: Choosing settings is time-consuming. Since the GoPro uses a two-button system to access all the settings, you have to cycle through every option to move around the menus or exit the screen. Also, the GoPro HD HERO2 lacks the built in Wi-Fi or Bluetooth feature for using a remote viewfinder. In order to monitor a shot, you need to either buy the LCD or Wi-Fi back, or connect a monitor to the mini HDMI output, (which isn’t really an option in the half pipe). Lastly, much like the ION Air Pro, the image from the GoPro HD HERO2 is warm and slightly over-saturated, so it makes the process of matching footage from multiple formats more difficult. Still, the overall stability of the picture trumps the minor annoyances.

WIRED Variety of frame rates, including 120 fps. Limited rolling shutter effect. Access to all the settings using on-camera controls.

TIRED Oversized, plasticky build feels dated. Picture quality drops to 848 x 480 when shooting at 120 fps. Two-button menu navigation deflates your stoke.

People don’t give technology enough credit as an art form — the specifics of infrastructure and hard science behind it ultimately overshadow its more inchoate creativity.

But the clichéd trope of a socially awkward engineer coding in a hole somewhere is on its way out. Instagram is a mass product used to cover news events, Twitter is a celebrity playground and you can use Square to pay at Starbucks: The people who build technology companies now have as much influence as Oprah. In fact, Oprah is hanging out on their platform.

There is no entrepreneur alive who exemplifies tech’s creative ethos more than Jack Dorsey, and it’s no surprise he’s got a hand, either as an investor or founder, in all of those aforementioned companies.

Dorsey’s storied life could be a cross between an Ayn Rand novel and a Wes Anderson film. His early obsession with mass-transit and dispatch introduced him to programming, but he’s had many a career turn before doing double duty at Twitter and Square. He’s spent time as a certified massage therapist, botanical illustrator and has even dabbled in fashion design. His dream job is Mayor of New York City, and he has an Integral tattoo on his forearm.

“People who know what an integral is would generally not have tattoos. It sums up what makes Jack an interesting entrepreneur—his ability to blend ideas,” Sequoia‘s Roelof Botha told Vanity Fair earlier this year.

Dorsey will be joining many other interesting entrepreneurs and Valley superstars at Disrupt including TechCrunch founder Michael Arrington, Yahoo CEO Marissa Mayer, salesforce CEO and Chairman Marc Benioff, super angel Ron Conway, Vinod Khosla, LinkedIn and Greylock Partners’ Reid Hoffman, San Francisco Mayor Ed Lee, John Borthwick, Cloudera’s Kirk Dunn, Emmy award-winning director Greg Yaitanes, Ben Horowitz, Twitter’s Biz Stone and Evan Williams, Path’s Dave Morin, Kevin Rose, Box’s Aaron Levie, Khan Academy’s Sal Khan, The Honest Company’s Jessica Alba and Brian Lee, and many more. You can view the whole list of speakers here.

We are two weeks away from one of the biggest technology conferences of the year and I for one can’t wait to see Jack and all of the above onstage (Get your tickets here!)

As always, if you are interested in becoming a sponsor, opportunities can be found here. Students can also come and be a part of Disrupt SF. Students, be sure to check out your options here.

Jack Dorsey
Co-founder & CEO, Square
Co-founder & Chairman, Twitter

Jack Dorsey is the creator, co-founder, and Chairman of Twitter, Inc. Originally from St. Louis, Jack’s early fascination for mass-transit and how cities function led him to Manhattan and programming real-time messaging systems for couriers, taxis, and emergency vehicles. Throughout this work, Jack witnessed thousands of workers in the field constantly updating where they were and what they were doing; Twitter is a constrained simplification designed for general usage and extended by the millions of people who make it their own every day.

Jack was recognized as one of Time Magazine’s 100 most influential people and was named an “outstanding innovator under the age of 35″ by MIT’s Technology Review.

MasterCard is once more extending its reach into mobile money services in Europe in partnership with a carrier — this time in the mobile-savvy UK market. The payment processing giant has cut a five-year deal with Everything Everywhere, the JV between France Telecom’s Orange and T-Mobile, to develop mobile payment solutions, with a “co-branded, prepaid solution for mobile devices” enabling contactless NFC payments one of the first planned out of the gate. Later, the two want to include money transfers, loyalty rewards and more.  Everything Everywhere is the UK’s largest carrier and the deal will cover 27 million subscribers.

It comes on the heels of MasterCard inking a mobile payments partnership with Deutsche Telekom covering Germany and other T-Mobile operations in Europe, as well as a deal with Turkcell in Turkey. MasterCard has also worked for the past three years with Orange on QuickTap, the first commercial NFC payment service in the UK, as well as the Orange Cash prepaid card.

It looks like that Orange Cash card will be central to how Everything Everywhere and MasterCard will work together. Orange Cash, currently a prepaid MasterCard, will become an on-device option for Everything Everywhere customers who want to use their mobiles to pay for goods. In turn, that could, for example, work with the NFC chips embedded in the handsets. (I’ve heard these carrier-branded prepaid cards described as “gateway” payment options to help people associate carriers with payments, as step one of a mobile payments solution: that’s what is being played out here.) Using an Orange Cash prepaid account also means that this service is open to any user — not just those using MasterCards already.

“By moving our existing co-branded card offers onto mobile devices, we are closer to a world where our customers will be able to use their phone to pay for travel to work, pay for small purchases and take advantage of loyalty rewards from their favourite retail outlets,” Gerry McQuade, CMO at Everything Everywhere, said in a statement.

NFC is only one of the services the two say they will develop together using their combined technology and payment-processing know-how: also included will be person-to-person money transfers, loyalty and rewards services and digital payment services: in effect, the two are laying out their ambitions to be at the center of the holy grail of mobile payments: a fluid, secure and easy-to-use payment system that works with whatever it is that you are doing, whether it’s buying digital content through your device, paying a person or a bill, or picking up your groceries at the shop.

As with companies like Square, iZettle and PayPal, MasterCard and Everything Everywhere are also planning to develop services that are aimed at small businesses to accept payments using their mobile devices. “More details to be announced later this year,” the companies say in their statement.

“MasterCard’s vision is of a world beyond cash, where consumers and small businesses alike can benefit from simple payments using smart technology,” said Marion King, President of MasterCard UK & Ireland, in a statement.

MasterCard will provide the network for the financial transaction, while Everything Everywhere will provide the network delivering other kinds of non-transactional, secure information to users: records of payments and so on.  It isn’t specified in the release whether EE will be using NFC-enabled SIM cards similar to those that its part-owner, France Telecom, is rolling out in France.

Everything Everywhere has been trying to carve out a reputation for itself as a first-mover in the UK market: the company recently pulled off a big coup by getting the UK regulator Ofcom to agree to let it launch 4G/LTE services using existing spectrum — potentially many months ahead of its competitors.

This announcement could see the carrier stealing a march on the likes of Vodafone and O2 once again. (Although it should be pointed out Vodafone works with Visa, and O2 appears to also be overhauling its O2 Money card, perhaps also as an on-mobile payment service?)

MasterCard and Everything Everywhere note that this co-branded prepaid solution using NFC will be “one of the first products to launch through the partnership”. If they pull it off, and if people really do use the service, it could prove to be the first wide-scale mobile NFC solution in the UK.

MasterCard notes that there are already 100,000 retailers equipped to take contactless payments already in the UK. Last year, between the UK and France, Orange says it sold some 500,000 NFC-equipped devices: that number is likely to be significantly higher this year as the number of NFC-equipped handsets has grown, as have the number of people using smartphones.

Tapbots has announced on their blog that the alpha version of Tweetbot for Mac will no longer be available. As Twitter limits an app’s user base to only 100,000 users, has fallen victim to the new API rules, albeit indirectly. The third-party app currently offers a better user experience than Twitter’s own official app. It is therefore a controversial outcome.

Tapbots contacted Twitter to see if they could implement a workaround to prevent wasting user tokens during the free alpha test, but Twitter was intransigent.

With the version 1.1 of the Twitter API, a new controversial rule was implemented to supervise developers of third-party Twitter clients. There is now a user cap of 100,000. After that, you can just hope that Twitter will raise that cap for your app — but there is no guarantee.

Tweetbot for Mac will be a paid app available in the Apple App Store. But the alpha version was distributed as a free download on Tapbots’ website. Those builds will expire after a certain period of time. As with many applications, the alpha stage is a good way to try out the software, even if you don’t plan to use it.

Yet, user tokens don’t expire and can only be revoked by the user by going to Twitter settings — a cumbersome process that does not bring any apparent benefit for the user. That is why the developers have decided to pull the alpha from their website in order to preserve their number of tokens for the paid customers.

Development is still active. “Just to be perfectly clear, Tweetbot for Mac will still be available for sale in the near future, we are just stopping the public part of the alpha/beta testing,” said Paul Haddad, the programmer of the team. “We wish we could continue on but we didn’t make the rules, we just have to live within them,” he continued.

The announcement is one of the first consequences of the API changes instated by Twitter. Developers now have to adapt their development workflow. The philosophy “release early, release often”, popularized by open source software advocate Eric S. Raymond, will be harder to follow for Twitter app developers.

Even more worrisome, Twitter did not concede at all, meaning that the company is willing to implement word for word its new API rules. Reading between the lines, even though the official Twitter Mac app has not been updated for a long time, Twitter does not seem to care about Tweetbot’s future. It confirms that Twitter wants its users to go through its website in order to display ads more easily, push changes quickly to Twitter Cards — supposedly a big part of Twitter’s monetization effort — and, in general, control the experience across different platforms.

While the search continues for a new top executive for Flickr, Yahoo and its new CEO have found a new chief marketing officer — and one with former operations experience. This afternoon Yahoo announced that Kathy Savitt will be joining the company as CMO on September 14th and will report directly to Marissa Mayer.

Yahoo gains significant experience at the top of its marketing arm, as Savitt has held a number of consumer, retail and tech executive positions during her career. Most recently, she was the founder and CEO of social commerce company, Lockerz, a site that now counts 45 million users.

Prior to Lockerz, Yahoo’s new CMO was executive VP and CMO of American Eagle and, before joining American Eagle, she held a number of senior leadership positions at Amazon.

“Yahoo! is at an important and unique inflection point in its storied history,” Savitt said in a statement today. “I believe passionately in Yahoo!’s ability to inspire and delight users, partners and advertisers around the world and am excited to join Marissa in defining Yahoo!’s next chapter.”

Former Yahoo CMO and EVP Elisa Steele left the company in December, after initiating a decentralization of Yahoo’s marketing department, as reported at the time by Kara Swisher. Last month, Steele jumped to Skype, becoming the company’s new CMO.

Since then, Yahoo marketing has been without an official chief, but that ended today with Mayer’s first (reported) high level appointment, and perhaps the first of many baby steps toward restoring faith in Yahoo leadership — or at least a sign of movement in that general direction.

Editor’s Note: Leonid (“Lenny”) Kravets is a patent attorney at Panitch, Schwarze, Belisario and Nadel, LLP in Philadelphia, PA. Lenny focuses his practice on patent prosecution and intellectual property transactions in computer-related technology areas. He specializes in developing IP strategy for young technology companies and blogs on this topic at StartupsIP. Follow Lenny on Twitter: @lkravets and@startupsIP.

In the wake of Apple’s billion-plus dollar win in their patent suit against Samsung last week, much of the focus appears to be on the flaws in the patent system. Many argue that the suit involved patents that are “obvious,” and that Apple is a bully in enforcing them. These arguments show blatant disregard for the job of Patent Examiners in reviewing patent applications and prior art, and the jury in hearing and deciding the case, which listened to both sides of the arguments and decided that the patents are valid.

The obviousness argument highlights a misconception held by many about the patent system. Patent law requires that obviousness of a patent claim be considered at the time the invention was made. This means that the Patent Examiner considering a patent application must determine whether the invention would have been obvious as of the filing date (or possibly even earlier) of the patent application. It is irrelevant whether the invention is obvious when the patent is being examined, and is even more irrelevant whether the invention seems obvious many years after the invention has been brought to market. After-the-fact obviousness arguments being presented by many of the Internet commentators are therefore improper under the current patent law system.

The patents involved in Apple v. Samsung provide a perfect example of why this obviousness standard is proper. Perceptions of the state of the art (and therefore what is obvious) change quickly. For example, in 2007, when the BlackBerry was still king of the mobile market, many ridiculed Apple for the iPhone’s lack of a keyboard. Today, a phone with a physical keyboard is becoming rare. Therefore, I don’t think it is any stretch to say that Apple’s release of the iPhone revolutionized the mobile phone industry. This chart from AllThingsD’s John Paczkowski compares Samsung’s pre-iPhone selections to those that came after the iPhone’s release.

One of the jurors, Manuel Ilagan, pointed to this piece of evidence in support of the jury’s decision, saying that, “the e-mails that went back and forth from Samsung execs about the Apple features that they should incorporate into their devices was pretty damning to me. And also, on the last day, they showed the pictures of the phones that Samsung made before the iPhone came out and ones that they made after the iPhone came out….”

So why wasn’t Samsung able to prove obviousness? Granted patents are afforded a presumption of validity, making invaliding them more challenging. In such a high stakes case, it is likely that Samsung spent a great deal of time and energy trying to find prior art which would invalidate Apple’s patents. Despite their best efforts, the results of the case demonstrate that Samsung was ultimately unsuccessful in their search. It should be noted that this does not mean that relevant art does not exist, rather Samsung was simply unable to produce any such art that convinced the jury that Apple’s patents were invalid. Many believe that the jury was wrong on this point. However, given that the jury received extensive instructions on how to determine patent validity and had a chance to review all the evidence offered by both sides, their opinion on the validity of the patents was much more informed that most of us watching the case from the outside.

So what can startups take away from this decision involving two tech giants?  For one, patents in the U.S. are incredibly valuable, and will continue to be valuable for the foreseeable future. Two, if you believe your technology holds any value, it is probably valuable enough to protect it through intellectual property rights. This is especially true where a startup is operating in a crowded space and producing innovations that may only be improvements over a competitor’s existing products or designs. As Apple demonstrated, these improvements – even if subtle – may be adopted and indeed even become commonplace in the startup’s market. As Benedict Evans so eloquently put on Twitter, “[t]he measure of Apple’s achievement: what was unimaginable in 2006 now seems so obvious that people claim Apple should have no patents.”

Finally, if you are a startup worrying about competitors suing you out of existence, consider Robert Scoble’s take on the Samsung decision, “I think this is actually a sizable win for Samsung. Why? It only cost $1 billion to become the #2 most profitable mobile company….I bet that RIM wishes it had copied the iPhone a lot sooner than it did. So does Nokia, and HTC and a raft of other manufacturers I bet. Samsung is a much healthier company than any of those BECAUSE it copied the iPhone.” So while as a patent attorney I never advocate knowingly infringing the patent rights of others, and patent licensing and purchase deals can avoid many of the troubles faced by Samsung (if Samsung had simply taken Apple’s license offer, their total cost would have been half the jury verdict), Samsung may still be in a better position having copied Apple and been found to infringe than if it had never copied at all.

Special thanks to patent attorney Joseph Holovachuk (@twitchuk) for his comments in drafting this article.

After a decade bereft of IPOs, venture-backed tech companies have come roaring back into the public markets over the last couple of years. But in case you think this means we’re in a bubble, some of these companies — including Zynga, Groupon and Facebook — have struggled in their market debuts.

So how are top investors handling the opportunities and pitfalls of taking top companies public in the current era? How are they changing their strategies to prepare the next generation of startups for big exits? You’ll be hearing all the details at Disrupt SF during our panel with leading VCs on Wednesday, September 12. Here are some of the things we’ll touch on… (and get your tickets here!)

First, Wall Street does indeed love some tech companies. ServiceNow is up nearly 200% from its opening price early last month. Palo Alto Networks has risen nearly 20% since its late July IPO. Both, however, are “unsexy” businesses — IT cloud management services and network security.

Luckily enough, Sequoia was in both deals. So is its success in enterprise causing it to move away from other areas? Sequoia Partner Alfred Lin comes from the e-commerce world, having just finished a big stint at Zappos, and he’s investing in more e-commerce startups like Humble Bundle these days. Lin will be on stage to explain what he’s most excited about now.

LinkedIn is perhaps the most consumer-facing tech company of this generation that’s above its opening price in IPO. Having gone public more than a year ago, its shares have since gained over 12% on the strength of revenue growth in areas like recruiting services. Greylock, which is chock-full of former LinkedIn execs, is certainly not getting out of consumer, though.

Along with Kleiner and other top VCs, it has put money into private mobile social app Path. James Slavet, the Greylock partner joining us on the panel, has been focused on consumer tech for years — with exits ranging from DoubleClick to Farecast, Kongregate and more.

Meanwhile, as top VCs are finally getting the big exits they’ve been aiming for all these years, they’re also transforming themselves to adapt to the broader startup world. They’re hiring more public relations people, they’re becoming more transparent, and they’re going further out of their way to invest in early-stage companies. They’re becoming full-service operations, in other words, for startups of any size.

Longtime Kleiner partner Aileen Lee, for example, has just started a new fund that will be focused on seed-stage investments. David Lee of SV Angel is now leading Silicon Valley’s formative angel firm, expanding in a big way to other markets like New York City in order to find the next generation of top talent.

And, Bill Maris, the managing partner at Google Ventures, will talk about his firm’s view of the world as an ambitious independent entity that still has strong connections to its corporate parent.

Aileen Lee
Founder, Cowboy Ventures

Aileen Lee is founder of a seed-stage focused fund currently called Cowboy Ventures, announced in July 2012. She is also a partner at Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers, which she joined in 1999. She focuses on working with consumer-oriented digital companies. Aileen has worked closely with the teams at companies such as ShopKick, Zazzle, Bloom Energy, Miasole, Blue Nile (NASDAQ: Nile), Friendster (acquired by MOL Global), Good Technology (acquired by MOT), Tellme (acquired by MSFT). She currently works with companies including Callaway Digital Arts, Dollar Shave Club, One Kings Lane, Plum District, Rent the Runway, True & Company, and RMG Networks (formerly Danoo), where she was founding CEO for two years.

Prior to joining KPCB, Aileen worked at Gap Inc. in various operating roles. She has also worked for Odwalla and for The North Face in brand and product marketing. Aileen began her career at Morgan Stanley in technology mergers & acquisitions.

She has a Bachelor of Science from MIT and an MBA from the Harvard Business School, and is a Henry Crown Fellow of the Aspen Institute.

David Lee
Managing Member, SV Angel

David Lee is the Managing Member at SV Angel, where Ron Conway is a Special Partner. SV Angel focuses its investments on early-stage consumer media companies.

He focuses on investments within the consumer Internet, mobile, video and other IT industries. Prior to SV Angel, he was at Google, where he led new business development efforts in video, media and content/data partnerships. After Google, he led all business development-related efforts for StumbleUpon.

Recently he was a partner at Baseline Ventures and also an attorney at Morrison and Foerster representing high-tech companies in commercial transactions. He is a graduate of Johns Hopkins, NYU (JD) and Stanford (MSEE), where he was a National Science Foundation Graduate fellow. He is an individual investor in Square, WePay, Chomp and EQAL; an adviser at ScanScout, SocialDeck (acq. by Google) and Rupture (acq. by EA); and was on the board of directors of BookFresh (acq. by Sugar Inc.).

Alfred Lin
Venture Capitalist, Sequoia Capital

Alfred is a venture capitalist at Sequoia Capital. He currently sits on the board of Humble Bundle and Stella & Dot and works with consumer Internet, enterprise and mobile companies.

Previously, Alfred was Chairman and COO/CFO at Zappos. He joined Zappos in 2005 and was responsible for all financial, administrative, and warehouse operations. Alfred focused on bringing focus, strategy and financial discipline in order to grow the business efficiently and profitably. Prior to joining Zappos, Alfred served as VP of Finance and Business Development at Tellme Networks, helping grow that business from no revenue to over $120M in recurring revenue per year, 30% cash margins and a $0.5B estimated contracted revenue backlog.

Prior to joining Tellme Networks, Alfred co-founded Venture Frogs with Tony Hsieh. Venture Frogs is an incubator and investment firm that backed Internet startups, including Ask Jeeves, Tellme Networks, and of course, Zappos.com. Prior to Venture Frogs, Alfred served as VP of Finance and Administration at LinkExchange, where he managed the sale of the Company to Microsoft for $265M. Alfred met Tony Hsieh (Zappos CEO) in college, when Tony was running a pizza business and Alfred was his #1 customer.

Bill Maris
Managing Partner, Google Ventures

Bill is the Managing Partner of Google Ventures, and brings with him a combination of technical expertise and hands on start-up experience, including founding Web hosting pioneer Burlee.com (now part of Web.com), where he built much of the key computing, network and technological infrastructure.

Prior to that, Bill was a biotechnology and healthcare portfolio manager for Stockholm, Sweden-based Investor AB. Bill’s background also includes research at the Duke University Medical Center, Department of Neurobiology.

Bill received his degree in Neuroscience with honors from Middlebury College, and is based in Mountain View, CA.

James Slavet
Partner, Greylock

James Slavet is a partner at Greylock. His primary areas of investment focus are e-commerce, online advertising, and Web-enabled consumer services. James’ investments include Auditude, Groupon, High Gear Media, One Kings Lane, Redfin, Revision3 and TellApart.

He previously represented Greylock in its investments in Farecast (acquired by Microsoft) and Kongregate (acquired by Gamestop). His complete profile can be found at LinkedIn here.

[Bubble traffic photo via Alexia.]

Don’t expect to make mid-flight phone calls from your smartphone anytime soon. While the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) is putting together a group to re-examine current testing procedures and policies airlines have in place for gadgets, they will not be considering airborne use of cell phones for voice communication.

But that is a small price to pay for safety, especially considering that these policies and procedures are way behind the speed at which we adopt new technology. The government-industry group will look at how these devices are tested for use in the air, as well as the current standards for use of portable electronic devices on board an airplane.

The group will meet for six months before giving recommendations to the FAA for a policy refresh. But the first step starts with the public. The FAA is looking for feedback on the current policies, opening up an official Request for Comments tomorrow, August 28. You can check that out here.

FAA Administrator Michael Huerta had this to say:

We’re looking for information to help air carriers and operators decide if they can allow more widespread use of electronic devices in today’s aircraft. We also want solid safety data to make sure tomorrow’s aircraft designs are protected from interference.

Apple announced today that Craig Federighi, vice president of Mac Software Engineering, and Dan Riccio, vice president of Hardware Engineering, have been promoted to senior vice presidents, where they will report to Apple CEO Tim Cook and serve on Apple’s executive management team.

The company also announced that senior vice president of Hardware Engineering Bob Mansfield will stay on at Apple to “work on future products.”

Apple says Federighi will continue to lead development of Mac OS X and Apple’s common operating system engineering teams. Riccio will take Mansfield’s old post, as was announced in June when Apple said Mansfield was retiring, and head the Mac, iPhone, iPad and iPod engineering teams.

Just two months ago it was reported that Mansfield would retire this summer. Now, the company says he will stay in an undefined role.

Apple also announced that Bob Mansfield, who announced his retirement in June, will remain at Apple. Mansfield will work on future products, reporting to Tim Cook.

Riccio has Mansfield’s old position, which was to work on future products and report to Tim Cook. So we’ll have to wait and see what Mansfield works on and how it differs from his previous position, but it seems like a win for Apple to retain a key executive, no matter what role he’s in.

I’ve reached out to Apple for comment and I’ll keep you posted.

Cloud gaming company OnLive has announced that the company’s founder and CEO Steve Perlman is “departing to work on his myriad of other projects.” Lead investor Gary Lauder is taking over as the company’s new chairman, while Charlie Jablonski, the VP of operations, has become Onlive’s COO and acting CEO.

The news follows a fairly convoluted piece of corporate maneuvering, presumably brought on by financial pressure, that saw the company sell its assets to a new entity that will also do business under the name OnLive. The new OnLive said “almost half of OnLive’s staff were offered employment at their current salaries,” with the rest offered consulting positions in the new company in exchange for stock options. (None of the previous options transferred over.)

One of the big controversies when the move was first reported was whether Perlman made money from the deal while “screwing employees”. So when OnLive actually announced the deal, it insisted that Perlman was not receiving any compensation, including stock in the new company. (Other executives reportedly took “educed compensation to allow the company to hire as many employees as possible within the current budget.”

Just last week, OnLive issued a statement that “Steve continues as CEO and is currently concentrating on the transition; once this is complete, he’ll be very focused on our next product releases and the vision,” and also claiming that the deal, by putting OnLive on “firm financial footing,” would take the company to “a higher level.” Looks like someone changed their mind.

The service was first announced in 2009 and launched in 2010. Here’s the full press release:

OnLive, the pioneer of instant-action cloud computing, announced today that Gary Lauder, the lead investor in OnLive and the Managing Director of Lauder Partners LLC, will become the new Chairman. The company also announced that Charlie Jablonski, the former head of OnLive operations, will become OnLive’s COO and acting CEO. Steve Perlman, OnLive’s founder and
former President and CEO, is departing to work on his myriad of other projects. “Steve has created an extraordinary company that no one else could have created. He is a unique entrepreneur and deserves his legendary status in Silicon Valley as a creator of groundbreaking companies,” said Chairman Gary Lauder.

The new OnLive is emerging with greater financial security and a brighter outlook on the future. OnLive is now positioned to execute against longer-term projects with our breakthrough technology, products and services,” said Lauder, also adding, “I spent my first week with OnLive listening, to gather people’s thoughts and suggestions. It’s an impressive group, and I am even more convinced that this company is poised for greatness.”

The company plans to continue building the OnLive management team in key categories as the company delivers on its mission of breaking new ground in cloud services both for games and remote application delivery to thin devices, legacy platforms or any platforms with a fast connection. The new OnLive is looking to hire great people for the business development team, as well as a senior marketing leader.

About OnLive
OnLive is the pioneer of on-demand, instant-action cloud computing and instant-play video game services, delivering real-time interactive experiences and rich media through the Internet. With groundbreaking video compression technology, OnLive harnesses cloud computing to provide the power and intelligence needed to instantly deliver full-featured, media-rich applications and the latest, premium game titles to tablets, smartphones, PCs, Macs and HDTVs via the OnLive® Game System or connected TVs. OnLive is available in North America, the UK and Belgium and will continue expanding into Europe and Asia. OnLive’s technology is backed by hundreds of patents and patents pending worldwide. The company is headquartered in Palo Alto, California. More information is available at www.onlive.com, www.onlive.co.uk and www.onlive.be.

Microsoft’s Windows 8-powered surface tablet may be nabbing all the headlines (at least partially because some of Microsoft’s myriad hardware partners were miffed by the company’s decision to make it in the first place), but a newly-revealed convertible device from Sony seems like it may be able to give the Surface a run for its money.

PocketNow managed to score some images of the forthcoming Sony VAIO Duo 11, a Windows 8 tablet with an awfully familiar-looking gimmick — the (reportedly 11-inch) touchscreen slides up and latches into place, revealing a full-size, back-lit keyboard.

The eagle-eyed among you may note some distinct similarities between the VAIO Duo and the Eee Pad Slider that Asus released towards the end of last year. While I really dig the fact that the keyboard base actually seems to have some weight to it (imagine trying to use the Surface’s floppy physical keyboard on your lap), there is of course one major downside: it’s going to be a hefty little convertible. It’s a natural side-effect of including a physical keyboard that’s worth using, but the end result may well be a device that’s more cumbersome than the competition when used in tablet mode.

You can bet that Sony’s going to try and downplay that size issue, and in fact they already are. In some photos it almost looks like the Duo is lying flush on that table, but the side view (above) reveals a much different story — the device’s bottom actually curves up to meet the keyboard. To round out the package, there’s a capacitive stylus featured prominently in the images, but there’s no word on whether it’ll come with the Duo or if it will be sold separately. Sadly, there’s little in the way of juicy details right now — the spec sheet, release date, and Sony’s pricing plans are all still shrouded in mystery, but IFA is just around the corner and it wouldn’t be a shock if one of these things appeared on the show floor.

Dwolla, the web-based payments platform, and Crowdtilt, the web-based crowdfunding platform, are formalizing Reddit’s capacity to tap into the power of the Internet as a force for good with today’s introduction of reddit Donate and reddit.Crowdtilt.com. To be clear, neither of these are official reddit products, but were built in conjunction with reddit for use by its community leaders – or in reddit lingo, “subreddit moderators.”

Dwolla’s service makes it easy for them to embed buttons on their page’s (their subreddit’s) sidebar to raise money for a given charity, while CrowdTilt offers both official and more informal fundraising opportunities.

Already, there are several causes which reddit users can support via the new Dwolla-powered buttons, including Doctors without Boarders, DonorsChoose.org, Charity: Water, FCancer, Girls Who Code, and more. The Dwolla option was also built using technology from Stripe, the maker of a payments system for developers. With reddit Donate, the focus is more on non-profit fundraising, as you can tell by the line-up of supported charities. Specifically, the groups which reddit Donate supports are limited to those with 501(c)(3) status. (More details on the requirements are on reddit’s own blog.)

Meanwhile, reddit.Crowdtilt.com had already been in action for the /r/breakingbad fundraiser, as well as the reddit PUNTS Cancer and radio reddit’s Best of Campaign, for example. It has actually been running since the beginning of August, but was not open to the public until today. Notably, this tool makes it possible for reddit users to collect funds for causes that are not related to official non-profits (like when we raised money for Alexia’s new headphones!). That goes a long way towards helping redditors support each other as well as official groups and NGO’s.

There are also some differences in pricing between the two donation options. Crowdtilt is waiving its fee for its service for this collaboration, but charges 2.5% for credit card processing. Dwolla is free for transactions under $10 and 25 cents for those higher. Meanwhile, Stripe is 2.9% + $0.30 for any transaction.

We’re also hearing that the dual announcement caught the folks at Crowdtilt a little off guard – they didn’t know that reddit was working with both them and Dwolla simultaneously. No one’s mad, but it was a little surprising to find out after the fact that the launch was not exclusive. (Dwolla claims they were aware, however. Hmm.) We’re also hearing that reddit is now on the lookout for more partners going foward.

But for reddit users, it’s the more the merrier, we think. Reddit is home to a wide variety of content, and because of the nature of some of its content (seriously, don’t explore too deep into some of those sicker verticals), the site can sometimes be misunderstood. But it actually has the potential to do a lot of good and raise awareness – like when it rallied behind the now infamous cause of the verbally abused bus driver Karen Klein who ended up with over $702K for her extremely bad day at work. Members also raised funds for a three-year old’s bone marrow transplant, which saved the child’s life. Now those same type of fundraising events have more structured and accessible tools for redditors to work with, as need be. And there’s not much you can say that’s bad about that. Unless you you’re a troll.

CEO Paul Maritz has kept pretty quiet about what he wants to do now that he plans to take his new job reporting to EMC CEO Joe Tucci. But in a press conference today at VMworld with his replacement Pat Gelsinger, Maritz gave a bit of insight into what he is thinking about and what he is excited to be doing over the next few months.

The backdrop here is a shifting focus to the cloud but very much in a VMware centric view of the world, which you can get a glimpse of from my last post.

He started by saying he plans to take a long weekend — which he laughed at a bit. Long weekend? Isn’t everyone you know taking a long Labor Day weekend? Dude – take a week off — you deserve it.

He then gave a genuine view about what intellectually he is excited about exploring. Here are the topic areas he discussed:

He gave the usual preamble. It’s what can be done with the new capabilities that we have with the cloud and the way we can deploy resources in a more fluid way than ever before. Nothing new there, really.

The Facebook generation are the first to live in a post paper society. He also made a similar comment in the opening general session this morning. It’s an insight that gives some color into the focus on moving to the top of the stack with modern work tools such as the VMware Socialcast activity stream technology.

The emergence of the Internet of Things. Everything will be attached to the Internet. The amount of data generated will go up by a factor of 10 or 100. Now we are getting  interesting. Data, data everywhere.

You can’t put that data in a relational database. “We need new ways of thinking about things,” he said.  Hello NoSQL?

“That is what I look forward to spending the next several months doing,” Maritz said. “Who knows what will come of it.”