Category: Tech news

ATP Capital, the firm that runs JLA Ventures, Clairmont Capital, and BlackBerry Partners Fund, is ready to start investing a new $150 million fund — and it will be doing so under a new name, Relay Ventures.

Technically, the new fund will be called the BlackBerry Partners Fund 2, but it sounds like the firm will be deemphasizing the individual funds in favor of the larger Relay Ventures brand. Just looking at all the names listed in the paragraph above should give some sense of Relay’s previously fragmented identity. The BlackBerry fund is particularly confusing, since it’s not a BlackBerry-exclusive fund, nor is it the official venture arm of BlackBerry-maker Research In Motion. (However, RIM is a limited partner in both the initial BlackBerry fund and the new one.)

“We haven’t done a very good job in the past of creating a brand that tells the complete story across everything we do,” says co-managing partner Kevin Talbot.

The ATP Capital name was one attempt to clear up the confusion, but Talbot says it had problems of its own — the “ATP” part of the name suggested a biotech focus, while the “capital” part made some think the firm might be focused on later-stage investments, rather than early ones. Hence the switch to Relay Ventures.

Name confusion aside, Talbot says the firm has been investing aggressively across its three funds. (JLA focuses on digital media, while Clairmont invests in enterprise and software-as-a-service.) As one sign of this, he points to data from Ridgecrest Capital Partners showing that between January 2009 and February 2012, Relay actually invested in more mobile and wireless companies than any firm except Sequoia Capital and Intel Capital.

As for the new mobile fund, Talbot says the firm actually raised the money last year, but the limited partners (led by Northleaf Capital Partners) agreed that Relay wouldn’t have to start investing it until this year.

The first of these investments as Relay, $4.5 million in in-app messaging specialist PubNub, was also announced today. More on that here.

“We’ve really sort of extended our vision of the mobile computing paradigm” to one that includes tablets and more, Talbot says. He predicts that in the coming years, it will increasingly difficult to make “a software investment that isn’t impacted by mobile or enabled by mobile.”

Last fall, Talbot moved from Toronto to Silicon Valley to open a new Relay Ventures office. John Occhipinti, previously a partner with Woodside Fund, is now joining Talbot as a partner in the Silicon Valley office.

Index Ventures may be best known on these pages for its technology investments, but today it launched a new fund that points to how the company is willing to put its money into other examples of strong innovation. The life sciences fund will see Index put in $100 million of its own capital, and have it matched by $50 million each from big pharma leaders GlaxoSmithKline and Johnson & Johnson.

Much like the new $400 million fund from Iris Capital, Orange and Publicis, this fund is all about bringing in major players into an environment where they can make more investments into the technologies and services that could well be the future of their industries, but have possibly been too difficult to track and engage with up to now. This time around, the focus is not tech per se, but promising, early-stage R&D innovation in health.

This is not the first time that Index has invested in biotech but it is the first time they have raised a fund dedicated specifically to it. Previous investments include Genmab A/S, PanGenetics B/V (acquired by Abbott Laboratories, Inc,), Aegerion, Inc., Addex Pharmaceuticals Ltd, ParAllele BioScience Inc. (acquired by Affymetrix), Molecular Partners AG and ProFibrix BV as well as several later-stage investments.

In this new fund, Index will take the lead on investment decisions, maintaining full decision-making rights, while GSK and J&J will participate in a “scientific advisory board” to share their expertise. Index has up to now focused largely on European and Israeli startups working on one or two projects; and this is likely to be the same aim with this new fund. Index says it will also consider opportunities in the U.S.

The fund is being led by Francesco De Rubertis, at Index, who noted that this kind of partnership between two would-be competitors, working together in a venture fund, is something of a first: “The fact that these two global pharmaceutical leaders are committing substantial resources to seek early-stage opportunities through a pure-play classic Venture Capital fund is a testament to the visionary leadership behind the companies,” he said in a statement.

The advisory board will have nine people on it: from GSK, Dr. Moncef Slaoui and Dr Paul-Peter Tak, Head of GSK’s Immunoinflammation Therapy Area Unit; from Janssen, Dr. Paul Stoffels and Dr. Bill Hait, Global Head, Research and Development; and five Index Ventures-appointed executives: Francesco De Rubertis, Kevin Johnson, Michele Ollier, Roman Fleck, and Remy Luthringer.

[image: SydneyUni on Flickr]

As tech enthusiasts and entrepreneurs nursed their hangovers and headed home after SXSW Interactive, there were still newsworthy launches, panels, and campaigns going on at SXSW Music. MOG hinted at its future revenue streams, Sean Parker predicted the fall of iTunes, and products launched from Rap Genius, Monstro, and others.

The second half of SXSW is much more about concerts than startups, but it’s the only place to see next year’s buzz bands while making business connections. Luckily for those who missed it, or slept through the business hours, I survived the 11-day marathon of the two conferences back-to-back to bring you this breakdown of what the tech world needs to know about SXSW Music.

Panels

MOG CEO Discusses Interest In Exclusive Content and Automobiles – During the Social Music Strategies panel, MOG‘s CEO David Hyman joked that when Howard Stern’s contract with Sirius XM Radio ends, he’ll try sign him to MOG. Afterwards Hyman told me Stern would probably be too expensive but that “we’re big enough to start acquiring unique content”. The streaming service’s first in-car integration recently shipped with new BMWs, and Hyman told me he wants non-music such as audio books on MOG to give drivers more listening options. Hyman didn’t mention anything about being acquired, though AllThingsD says that HTC is close to buying the company through its Beats headphones subsidiary.

Sean Parker Says Spotify Will Overtake iTunes In 2 Years – In his on-stage interview, Napster co-founder and Spotify director Sean Parker said Spotify will earn more revenue for the music business than iTunes within 2 years. Billboard’s Glenn Peoples did some excellent digging into the numbers. He determined that for Spotify to beat iTunes’ projected $2.08 billion in 2013 revenues, it would need 12.34 million paying subscribers plus advertising revenue. As of 2 months ago Spotify had 3 million subscribers.

Product Launches

Rap Genius Verified Accounts, Official Lyric Meanings – The crowd-sourced lyric explanation site Rap Genius began verifying the identities of musicians featured on its site, and allowing them to provide official backstories on their songs. Rapper Nas was the first, offering breakdowns of his similes and tales of how he met the characters in his rhymes.

A huge volume of web searches are for lyrics, and providing meanings straight from their authors could make Rap Genius a premier destination. The startup has also recently branched out into hosting explanations for rock songs by Bon Iver and others in what it calls Stereo IQ.

Monstro’s SXSW Charts Show and Stream Popular Artists – Music discovery site Monstro tabulated all the SXSW Music-related tweets to compile charts of who were the most talked about artists by day, genre, and across the festival. Dubstep king Skrillex was crowned most talked about. From a consumer end the service doesn’t sound too monetizable, but co-founder Jeff Fedor told me the company will make money selling data to the record labels like successful startups Next Big Sound and Big Champagne (which sold to Live Nation).

Billboard To Include Data From BandPage, Spotify, and More – Stalwart music popularity chart Billboard will begin integrating data from music streaming services Spotify, Rhapsody, Rdio, MOG, Slacker, and Cricket, Hypebot reports that Billboard told the Wall Street Journal. Facebook music profile app BandPage which now supports 500,000 artists will also provide data to Billboard on upcoming acts.

Parties

One way to tell which companies are serious about competing in the crowded music space is to look for who has a big presence at SXSW Music. MOG featured well-known headliner The Roots at its day party, which could signal financial optimism from rumored talks to be acquired by HTC. Spotify put on 5 days of concerts from smaller acts at a dedicated venue. Turntable.fm’s parties were the hardest to get into, packing tiny venue’s with fan favorites like Flying Lotus, Diplo, and ?uestlove.

Though not as showy as its show last year with Kanye West and Jay-Z , VEVO paid for a huge gig from Nas and Sleigh Bells. The music video distributor also teamed up with Nike FuelBand for a series of dance parties with Major Lazer and Girl Talk at an impressive venue where the lights responded to the physical exertion of the crowd.

Though it didn’t feature big-name acts, BandPage provided a crucial service to attendees. When the bars closed and the streets filled but nobody wanted to go home, many ended up at the BandPage HQ which featured DJs spinning until 3 or 4am for 9 straight nights in a laser-filled auto shop.

If it didn’t come on the heels of the deathly-exhausting Interactive conference, SXSW Music would be a dreamland of business and pleasure. Instead most tech folks and journalists tell me “I’ll go next year”. Well, sack up. It’s too good to miss.

Must be something in the air. Less than a day after Google announced that it’s adding social media reports to Google Analytics, Adobe is unveiling its own social analytics tools.

Even though the company is best known for design software like Photoshop and development technologies like Flash, Adobe also pitches itself as a digital marketing company — a point that the company emphasized in its most recent earnings announcement. This week Adobe is hosting its Digital Marketing Summit in Salt Lake City (near the headquarters of Adobe-acquired analytics company Omniture), where it’s announcing the new product, called Adobe Social.

One of the big challenges, according to Product Director Matt Langie, is the fact that the social analytics landscape is currently made up of “a lot of point solutions” focus on a specific social network or only provide limited types of data and functionality. Adobe Social, on the other hand, brings together a company’s data and tasks from multiple social networks, so Langie calls it “the first solution to integrate all of the key roles and responsibilities in social marketing.”

Adobe actually offers a social analytics product already, predictably named Adobe Social Analytics, but Product Director Matt Langie says the new Adobe Social is more comprehensive. Instead of just providing basic “listening” tools to help marketers see what people are saying about their companies, it also manages the process of creating and publishing social network content and advertising. It also includes features for tracking whether social network traffic actually leads to purchases on your website (something that Google was also touting).

The company is making a number of other announcement at the Adobe Digital Summit. Probably most interesting is the fact that it’s now promising “predictive marketing” capabilities across multiple Marketing Suite products. So instead of just looking at reams of data and hoping for the best as they make marketing and advertising decisions, companies can now run scenarios based on that data. So if they’re wondering “What if we changed our advertising mix to X?” they can actually see the likely outcome before spending any money.

Attention George Foreman: report to an Apple Store near you immediately. There’s a hot (literally) product, you simply must buy the entire inventory of to keep your grilling empire alive: the new iPad.

Or at least, that’s what the latest nonsense from Consumer Reports would have you believe.

We’ve seen this ridiculousness from Consumer Reports before. In June 2010, at the height of “Antennagate”, Consumer Reports figured out the art of click-bait. If you say something outlandish, even if it directly contradicts something you previously said (and sometimes that’s even better!), you must harp on a story to keep those precious pageviews flowing in. And so harp they did.

The reality of the Antennagate situation was always this: it was real, but it really wasn’t a big deal. The fact that the iPhone 4 went on to sell tens of millions of units — record numbers for Apple at the time — bringing in billions of dollars for the company with very few returns, sure seems to suggest Consumer Reports blew the situation way out of proportion. And what they’re doing today is arguably worse.

To be clear, it is true that the new iPad gives off more heat than the previous models. We were among the first to report this in our initial review of the device last week. Guess who didn’t note it in their initial report? Consumer Reports. A week ago, everything was peachy keen: The new iPad is shaping up as the best tablet yet.

But that review apparently didn’t generate the pageviews they would have liked. So today, we have the outlet firing back: Our test finds new iPad hits 116 degrees while running games.

While there’s nothing factually wrong with that title (presumably, I don’t have my iPad thermometer handy), it is misleading for average consumers — you know, Consumer Reports core audience. 116 degrees sounds hot. Really hot. Death Valley hot. It sounds like the thing is a grill.

The reality is that 116 degrees isn’t that hot for a computer. In fact, it’s only about 10 degrees or so hotter than the not-complained-about iPad 2 ran. And this is at the extreme, when graphic-intensive games that max out the new A5X chip are running. Even at this temperature, Consumer Reports notes:

During our tests, I held the new iPad in my hands. When it was at its hottest, it felt very warm but not especially uncomfortable if held for a brief period.

That’s pretty much what we noted last week:

One other slight downside which I have to assume is related to either the battery or the LTE functionality is that unlike previous iPad models, the new iPad does get noticeably warm in the lower left corner after prolonged use. It’s never hot, just warm. But again, I never noticed this on other models.

Warm. Not hot. But that didn’t stop Consumer Reports from giving their “scoop” to CNBC this morning and “upgrading” the new iPad from “not especially uncomfortable” to “uncomfortable”.

And that continued. As Consumer Reports spokesman James McQueen told the Associated Free Press today:

People need to exercise caution. We are not saying it is a dangerous product, but 116 degrees can be a little uncomfortable.

That, in turn, led the mainstream media and analysts to do what they do best: use jackassery in an attempt to pray on the masses and reap the rewards. One example:

Consumer Reports confirms iPad heat problems, could cause burns :usat.ly/GBGvmC

— Rob Enderle (@Enderle) March 20, 2012

“Could cause burns” — what the hell? I’ve been using the new iPad for nearly two weeks now. A lot. Not only has it not come close to rising above “warm”, I don’t even notice the heat anymore. Certainly, it’s still runs much cooler than almost every single laptop on the market today. And that’s something you have to put on your lap. Body exposure is maximized.

But a story about laptops being hot is boring. Everyone already knows that. No one would read it. The iPad is the sexy new thing. And it runs a little warm sometimes!!! AHHHHHHH!!!

Now we have “Warmgate” — complaints so ridiculous, they read like satire. But it doesn’t matter, Consumer Reports has done their job. Not their actual job, mind you, which is protecting consumers. They’ve done their new job: generating pageviews by any means necessary.

We will absolutely have a follow-up story from them tomorrow. And probably another one the next day. Then one contradicting what was previous said (which they’ve already done, of course).

We need a Consumer Reports to protect us from Consumer Reports.

EXCLUSIVE: Consumer Reports cannot recommend Hansel — too hot right now.

— MG Siegler (@parislemon) March 20, 2012

Philip Cortes is co-founder of people discovery startup Meeteor. Follow him on Twitter @philipcortes.

No clear winner came out of South by Southwest’s battle of people discovery apps. Highlight seems to have received the best press, and according to Robert Scoble, about 5% of SXSW used the service. Despite this buzz, the consensus was that all of these services fell short of expectations.

Why did these apps fail? And what should we as an industry be focusing on? Here are some ideas:

1) Lack of Single-Player Mode. What value does the very first user to sign up for your service get? If you haven’t answered this question, you’re going to have a really hard time overcoming the glaring network effect problem of this space. Foursquare solved this issue through badges and mayorships. You could be the only person in Chicago using Foursquare, but you were still rewarded for your check ins. Furthermore, you communicated your victories (badges) outwardly by posting them to Twitter and your wall. You also demonstrated the use of the service every time you checked in at a restaurant in front of your friends. I can’t even count the number of conversations that have been kicked off about about Foursquare when I tried to subtly check in at brunch. Services like LinkedIn overcame this problem by being the first online repository for your online resume.

2) Not Capturing Intent. Two years ago, we launched the very first version of Meeteor.com at Wharton. The goal of Meeteor at that time was to manufacture serendipity amongst students based on their calendar availability and social overlap. (The same type of algorithm driving connections on Glancee + Highlight today). The feedback from users was unanimous: “This is neat, but when I wake up Monday morning, I don’t have a pressing need to meet people around me randomly just because we have the same interests.” People would then try to give us a specific use case they would imagine using our service for: “Why don’t you sell this to universities to match roommates?” or “Why can’t I tell you exactly what I’m looking for?”

The social overlap between users can act as the lubricant that facilitates meeting, but it alone won’t compel two strangers to meet. For two people to connect, they need to have overlapping needs, desires, or wants. Two people looking to date or two people who can help each other are examples of mutual overlap. Another would be two people who can help each other professionally. Prompting me to talk to someone nearby because we share two friends in common and both are into kite surfing will never be a compelling enough reason for me to reach out to and connect with a complete stranger in life. We need to better understand our user’s needs, and help them fulfill those needs.

3) Transparent Privacy Settings. Early adopters may be willing to try anything, but in order to cross the chasm, People Discovery services need to do a perfect job of letting users control their privacy.

4) Pick a Niche. This is borrowing from Chris Dixon’s “bowling pin” strategy, which you can read here. Do you want to connect people as a dating service? Do you want to connect people professionally? Capturing intent helps answer this question, but it’s very difficult to gain mass adoption if you try to be all things to all people. Individuals will have a hard time figuring out what a good use case is for your service, and when there’s no clear use case, they’ll forget about it entirely.

5) Mimic Offline Behavior. What is it that people are currently doing, that you can do better? One interesting opportunity here is to help two people who are already chatting with one another, and providing them with additional topics of conversation. (Read: I’m at the conference coffee table and about to kick off a conversation with the guy next to me, dear iPhone, please help me come up with some solid discussion topics). Knowing that I have two friends in common with the person I’m “stuck” talking to would be a significant value add, and would certainly make me enjoy the conversation a lot more.

All five of these solutions don’t have to be solved perfectly in order for one app or web service to win the race. Finding a solid Single Player Mode for your service, for example, could be a good way to buy enough time to figure out what your deeper value proposition is. Some would argue that Foursquare is only now adding the value layers (Radar + Exploresquare) that will make their service everlasting.

A combination of several of the above points, however, is likely to be mandatory before any service crosses the chasm and gains mass adoption, Twitter-style.

Airbnb has acquired Crashpadder, a London-based company that runs an online marketplace where people can list their homes and apartments to be rented out for short stays (essentially, it was like a smaller Airbnb.) Financial terms of the deal haven’t been disclosed.

Visitors to Crashpadder’s website are automatically directed to a landing page about the Airbnb deal, which will apparently affect Crashpadder users immediately. A message signed by Crashpadder co-founders Stephen Rapoport and Dan Hill (impressively, the company’s only two employees) reads in part: “As part of the transition, we will automatically move your Crashpadder account to Airbnb. All of your account and listing information will be preserved. For security reasons, you will need to set a new Airbnb password upon moving your account. Simply click below to learn more and get started.”

Airbnb has been ambitious on the international expansion front in recent months, having drummed up lots of fanfare about its “London launch” last month and laying out plans to open up new offices in Spain, Denmark, Italy, Russia, France and Brazil over the course of this year. The timing on its expansion in London especially is key, with the 2012 Olympics slated to be held there this summer. It will be interesting to see how much more international growth Airbnb does through M&A in the months ahead.

Online ticketing platform Eventbrite is making a big push towards reaching $1 billion in gross ticket sales in 2012; after doubling both the number of events on platform in 2011 (458,207 events in 2011) and tickets sold last year (20,798,509 tickets sold in 2011). In 2011, the company sold $400 million worth of tickets, which is double the $207 million it did in 2010. To reach that $1 billion and expand sales, last year Eventbrite debuted the beginnings of the new Eventbrite Box Office. Traditionally, Eventbrite tickets are sold online, which means that people who decide to spontaneously show up at the door can’t use the platform. In December, the company launched the Eventbrite ‘At the Door’ iPad app, and today the company is debuting the complimentary credit card reader to allow event organizers to collect ticket payments on the go.

Called the ‘At The Door Card Reader,’ the lightweight, plastic device is just under two inches long and fits into the iPad’s dock connector port to allow users to swipe credit cards. The device, which is the company’s first piece of proprietary hardware, is orange and rectangular.

The reader itself makes collecting spontaneous payments on the go fairly easy. But the beauty of the new device is how it works with Eventbrite’s companion iPad app. The app and reader aim to offer a complete box office, at the door solution for event organizers. With the app, you can swipe an attendees card, and obtain their email, name and other information for further use. Event organizers can also factor all the last-minute ticket sales into total sales data from an event.

The ability to capture and track important data from on-site sales is important. By accepting payments via the At The Door app and card reader, organizers will have a full, comprehensive picture of their sales data captured through the Eventbrite platform – from both on-site sales and online sales data. This capability gives organizers powerful visibility into the behaviors and preferences of their attendees, as well as an easy way to stay in touch with them.

Eventbrite says the platform features optimized checkout flow that allows the application to process 400+ transactions per hour. And the reason the reader is connected to the iPad’s 30-pin adapter (instead of the headphone jack) is for a more efficient credit card read. The app and reader also features cash drawer reconciliation and wireless integration with the Star TSP143 printer for tickets and customer receipts. This printer will be available for sale here.

Additionally, Eventbrite says that because credit card encryption is done on the reader itself, all card data transmitted through the iPad is fully protected.

The credit card reader will be available in Eventbrite’s new online store, Brite Store, for $10, but this amount will be automatically reimbursed in the purchaser’s Eventbrite account. Event organizers will be charged a 3 percent fee for all transactions as well as a service fee. To celebrate the launch, Eventbrite is waiving service fees on transactions made through At The Door—only credit card processing costs will be applied.

Prior to launch, Eventbrite says that the At The Door app was tested successfully with several large, high-profile events, including Meatopia, The Orange County BBQ Festival, and the IFPDA Print Faire. And the At The Door Card Reader will be part of the mobile box office solution for the Governors Ball Music Festival—taking place on Roosevelt Island June 23-24, in New York City.

This could be a huge money-maker for Eventbrite. The company’s VP of marketing, Tamara Mendelsohn, tells us that at many large-scale festivals, half of the people attending are walking up giving cash. And event organizers have no idea who these people are or how to get in touch with them in the future.

Eventbrite CEO and Co-Founder Kevin Hartz explains, “At The Door transforms an off-the-shelf iPad
into a paradigm-shifting tool for managing sales for events. We’re essentially taking the devices that are proliferating among consumers and transforming them into perfectly-tailored tools for event organizers, at no cost, and with greater impact than anything previously available.”

Hartz has said that the new platform is akin to Opentable terminals at restaurants. Interestingly, Eventbrite will start competing with other mobile payments readers, such as Square, which have been frequently used for at the door payments for fundraisers and other events.

But Eventbrite says they eventually would like to partner with Square and other companies for the card swipe readers, but are waiting for APIs to be released.

It should be interesting to see how often the reader is used, and if the new complete box office platform will help increase sales for the company. The addition a of a reader and comprehensive box office platform does make sense, and the iPad is an ideal device to use for event organizers.

This year, $1 billion in ticket sales would translate into roughly $50 million in revenue for the company. Currently, Eventbrite has raised $80 million in funding from Sequoia and others but still has $60 million left in the bank. The company also expanded internationally last year, opening an office in London.

And we know the company is eyeing an IPO. Last year, Hartz said that Eventbrite could file to go public as early as late 2012.

Checkmout Hartz speaking to Chris Dixon below in this Founder Stories episode from last year.

Pinterest, the hugely popular website that lets people share photos and images on a virtual pinboard, has had trouble brewing for a while over what some people say are frequent copyright violations that happen when users ‘pin’ photos on the site without permission. But one woman recently discovered that the copyright issue at Pinterest is a little more complicated than that: Pinterest’s own rules of etiquette make it very difficult for regular people to use the site at all without being liable in the event of a copyright lawsuit.

Kirsten Kowalski blew the whistle on this issue in a blog post that went viral late last month. Kowalski, who lives in Alpharetta, Georgia, is a triple-threat of sorts: A professional photographer at DDK Portraits, a corporate lawyer, and a passionate Pinterest user.

As Kowalski explains in the interview embedded above, the main issue is this: Pinterest’s community standards, or “Pin Etiquette,” explicitly discourages users from self-promoting by “pinning” photos they have taken themselves. But at the same time, Pinterest’s Terms of Use actually forbids users from pinning any photo that does not belong to him or her, and states that users are subject to any legal action that is taken from the copyright or trademark holder.

Once she looked deeper into this contradiction, Kowalski made the difficult decision to delete all the Pinterest boards she had made that used photos taken by other people. “A site can’t put out something like that and say, ‘If you use it like we intend you to use it, you’re liable, not us,’” she said.

The issue struck such a chord that Kowalski soon received a phone call from Pinterest co-founder and CEO Ben Silbermann that turned into an hour-long conversation. According to her, he acknowledged that Pinterest was “having some growing pains” and vowed that “changes are coming” to the Terms of Use that will make the site better for photographers and users alike. Over the past few weeks, Kowalski has communicated more with Silbermann and others at Pinterest about what those changes could be — and according to what they’ve told her, they are almost certainly on the way.

It’s all part of Pinterest’s evolution into a real, large company — copyright issues, spam problems, patent wars and the like all come with the territory. If anything, it’s all evidence of how successful the company is. But as Pinterest moves into its inevitable revenue generation strategy, it will be important to have these things somewhat more buttoned-up.

We’ve reached out to Pinterest for comment on the situation and what changes they’re working on; we will update this story if we receive any word back from them.

Oh you guuuuys. Rather than just call it what it is (a press conference) Sprint and HTC have just sent out invitations to what they’re calling a “collaboration event” taking place in New York City on April 4. The invitation (as always) is delightfully vague, leaving the rest of us to speculate endlessly in the days leading up to the event.

If the ever-churning rumor mill is to be believed though, this little confab could feature an official announcement of a Sprint-bound HTC One X, the handful of a device that wowed the tech press at this year’s Mobile World Congress. Those reports also claimed that the CDMA-friendly One X/Jet could launch as soon as June 10 and sport an LTE radio, which would put it alongside devices like the Galaxy Nexus and the LG Viper in Sprint’s first wave of LTE handsets.

Whether or not the device will keep its peculiar name is still up in the air. It’s currently being referred to by it’s codename “Jet,” though slapping HTC’s successful EVO branding on the One X wouldn’t exactly be a shocker: not a single HTC device has hit Sprint without the EVO prefix since mid-2010 when the original EVO 4G made its auspicious debut.

As much as I like the One X (and I really like the One X) I’m hoping against hope for word of a new Windows Phone to finally give the Arrive some company — not that I’m holding my breath. Expect more details to drop in the days leading up to the event, with perhaps some device shots to leak shortly. After all, we all know how bad HTC is at keeping secrets when it comes to hardware.

Initial teardowns of the new iPad whetted many a chip nerd’s appetite when they revealed that the A5X chip inside was truly gigantic. At nearly 13x13mm, it is significantly larger than the A5, which was itself already kind of a hefty bugger.

Now some clear images (from Chipworks) have been taken of the die itself (some rather rough ones with initial “floorplans” showed up earlier over the weekend) and it’s becoming more and more clear that the A5X is a stopgap measure: a last-generation product that’s overcompensating, if you will, with a jumbo-sized GPU.

The A5X is manufactured with a Samsung 45nm process, a size Intel and AMD were using back in 2008. Nowadays all the cool kids are using 22nm. That means modern chips can fit around four times as many transistors and cells onto a piece of silicon than the technology used to create the A5X. It’s kind of ironic, since Apple has focused so much on getting four times the pixels into its displays.

Of course, it isn’t quite an apples-to-apples comparison; the ARM architecture and SoC model are a different animal than the x86 model. But it’s not going too far to say that the A5X is the processor equivalent of something like a souped-up street car from a few years back. Sure, it gets the job done, but you can’t keep adding turbos and wings forever. At some point that engine hits its limit. And while the GPU performance is good, the base technology of the A5X is starting to show its age, and the competition may use that to their advantage.

And even before the new iPad was released, the name A5X really tipped Apple’s entire hand. Our speculation was correct, and chances are the “true” successor to the A5 series will come in the new iPhone. Will it be based on ARM’s A15/A7 big.little model? Seems logical. Saving power is essential with the major GPU, screen, and LTE. It may be too late for Apple to adapt it, but anything could happen.

And it must be acknowledged that most consumers really, really don’t care what processor or chip is inside their iPad. But the drama going on behind the curtain is still interesting to those of us who do care, and as we have seen, sometimes these little technical stories shed light on long-term plans.

One last fun thing: if you go to the large photos over at Chipworks, you can actually see the varying densities of the logic cells on the dark areas. It shows up as a sort of mottled, almost sloppy look, but it is in fact highly precise engineering. All the wonders of our modern tech-based world have their base in these microscopic clusters of transistors, memory cells, and logic gates. It’s fascinating (to yours truly, at least) to see them forming this kind of micro-topography.

EggDrop, essentially a mobile app alternative to Craigslist, is starting to pick up steam. The company now boasts half a million downloads of its app on iOS and Android, with $8 million in listings from across the 50 U.S. states and the U.K. (EggDrop’s top two markets).

The app originally launched last June, backed by $1 million in funding in a round led by BlueRun Ventures and SV Angel. But that first experience doesn’t look much like EggDrop today. In November, the company rolled out a major update (ver. 2.0) which completely replaced the auction format found in the original with more traditional marketplace-style listings. Since then, over 5,000 items have been sold within the app, including electronics, games, furniture, and even grand pianos and wedding dresses.

With the first version of EggDrop, the idea was to introduce a somewhat unique pricing model – the “falling price” auction. Instead of setting a price for an item, the seller would enter both a minimum and maximum price. Over 72 hours, the price would gradually fall if there were no takers.

As it turned out, that system didn’t prove to be a hit with users.

“Sellers tend to be very protective of their minimum price,” explains co-founder Dan Zheng as to why the original model didn’t really take off. “When people put down the price range they always think back to what they paid for it, rather than what the fair market value is.”

Now, sellers just create a normal listing with whatever price they want, and leave it up indefinitely, if they choose. In fact, the setting to automatically re-list the item after 7 days is switched on by default, so, unlike with Craigslist, sellers don’t have to continually return to create a new posting. However, if the item is of a time-sensitive nature – like concert tickets, for example – users can configure the item to expire.

Currently, EggDrop is proving popular in major metro areas in the U.S., starting with L.A. and followed by (in order) New York, Chicago, San Francisco, Atlanta, Miami, Dallas, D.C., Detroit and Denver. Outside the U.S., there’s been some adoption in London, Manchester and Birmingham, U.K. and even a bit of uptake in other regions like Australia, Canada, Argentina and Spain. This, despite the fact that the company hasn’t made any efforts at localization, only a bit of translation work to support Spanish.

Zheng doesn’t have exact numbers on how much of the user base are in these top U.S. metro areas, but if he had to guess, it would be over half the app’s users. He also notes that roughly a quarter of the users (25%-30%) are either moms or students, looking to clean out closets or save a few extra dollars.

Interestingly, one of EggDrop’s key selling points – its ability to cross-post listings to Craigslist – hasn’t had a major impact on the app’s adoption. It’s a very small percentage of users that discover the app that way, something in the “single digits,” says Zheng. Instead, users are finding the app through old-fashioned means: word-of-mouth, app store searches, and, for a week earlier this year, through a “featured” listing on the Google Android Market…Google Play store.

While all the above numbers refer to organic listings created by EggDrop users, at any given time, 5% of the listings are from external, third-party sources, namely Craigslist. Zheng says the team is careful not to include too many of these.

“I’m pretty mindful of the balance between organic listings and third-party listings because the experience is slightly different. I really don’t want to confuse users,” he says.

Over the past few weeks, the company has added a couple of notable features to the app: a built-in anonymous messaging feature that allows buyers and sellers to communicate in real-time without having to share mobile phone numbers, as well as a new section for “Wanted” listings. With the latter, the idea is that EggDrop will be able to match buyers and sellers based on description, price and location.

While originally, the company looked like a modernized take on what Craigslist could be if built in the mobile era, recent events have put the app in closer competition with other newcomers like Zaarly, for example. Up until earlier this month, one of Zaarly’s biggest differentiating features (besides its primary focus on tasks, not goods), was the anonymity of its users. But Zaarly’s revamped reputation system now lets buyers and sellers know exactly who each other are. EggDrop, meanwhile, takes a more middle-of-the-road approach, using badges and “karma scores” to rate transactions, while keeping some aspects of buyer/seller communication anonymous.

Note, too, that Zaarly claims to have 300,000 “semi-regular” users – that’s a different measurement than EggDrop’s 500,000 downloads, to be clear. However, while Zheng says that they don’t have an exact user count, they’re definitely in the “hundreds of thousands” along this metric, too. (And some of them only use EggDrop online via website.)

Now with five engineers on board, including Zheng and co-founder Brian Lynch, the team at EggDrop is working to roll out an iPad-optimized version of the mobile marketplace. No ETA on that just yet. In the meantime, you can download the EggDrop mobile app here.

Exclusive: GoldSpot Media has just unveiled its new “bandwidth-based ads”, a licensable technology that lets advertisers deliver a single mobile ad unit that appears as a simple rotating banner to viewers on 3G or mobile data, but as an auto-playing partial screen overlay video to viewers on wi-fi. Debuted on a new Zyrtec pharmaceutical campaign, you can compare the formats for yourself by turning wi-fi on or off.

GoldSpot’s tech could drastically increase the number of video impression an advertiser gets per dollar. This translates into improved campaign effectiveness and ROI, while preventing a viewer’s limited mobile data plan from being devoured by ads. Bandwidth-based ads will accelerate the metamorphosis of commercials into content by allowing interactive rich-media or even games to be served as mobile ads.

Here’s how mobile video ads often work today.

Regardless of their bandwidth, viewers see a banner that they have to tap before they see the promo video. Few people tap, and the video is rarely seen. GoldSpot’s CEO Srini Dharmaji tells me that if the ad had a $5 CPM, and a budget of $100,000, an advertiser would get 20 million impressions. If the ad had a high click through rate of 0.1%, just 20,000 people would see the video at a cost of $5 per view to the advertisers. Basically advertisers are throwing their money away. Alternatively, advertisers serve an auto-play video to everyone, and those on slow connections get their data plan drained and usually navigate away before the video even finishes loading

Let’s run those numbers again with GoldSpot’s bandwidth video ad tech. Dharmaji says 60-65% of users consume content on wi-fi, and about 30-35% do so on 3G or mobile data. If the combined cost of GoldSpot’s platform and the ad inventory have a $20 CPM, on a $100,000 budget the advertiser would get 5 million impressions.

Even if only 50% of viewers are detected to be on wi-fi and see the auto-play video in a partial screen overlay, the advertiser gets 2.5 million video impressions. That’s 4 cents per view instead of $5. Now do you see why this is a big deal?

Even if all those impressions aren’t full-length, full-screen views, the 2.5 million GoldSpot-powered ad views are going to have a much bigger impact than 20,000 dedicated views. Yes, some viewers could be annoyed by seeing more auto-play video ads, but at least they won’t have to pay for them. GoldSpot is now licensing the bandwidth-based technology to advertisers, agencies, and publishers. It works across ad networks, and provides consolidated performance reporting. It charges a CPM, and clients can use its drag-and-drop creation platform to format their ads.

Started in 2007, the Sunnyvale, CA GoldSpot Media has raised roughly $17 million between its seed, A, and B rounds, and now has more than 75 employees. It has over 50 individual and agency clients including the New York Times, Bloomberg, Chevy, and General Mills. It also provides opt-in device and geo-location ad optimization where viewers can select to provide data to see more relevant ads. Dharmaji calls GoldSpot a “hardcore technology company” with over 20 patents, but says those are for self-defense.

GoldSpot’s technology is a triple-win since in addition to making it money and getting advertisers a better ROI, it doesn’t suck up a user’s limited mobile data plan downloading videos if they’re not on wi-fi and don’t want to see them. Plus, since users on wi-fi are more likely to be relaxed rather than on the move, there’s a better chance that impressions lead to purchases or viewers internalizing an ad’s message.

As we shift to the post-PC era, delivering rich-media ads to tablets where they look great will become even more important. Dharmaji concludes “We give advertisers the power to build much more engaging ads. They have to think about how to increase ROI without pissing off the mobile consumer.”

Skimlinks, a content monetization platform for web publishers, has released a comprehensive API suite. Part of this allows publishers to learn more about their users’ shopping habits. The startup made the news recently when it was briefly used by hot startup Pinterest to monetize its outgoing links – although that arrangement foundered after it attracted controversy.

The four APIs include: Link, Merchant, Reporting, and Product. Link API enables automatic link “affiliatization” using a developer’s custom redirect scripts, or on apps where they cannot run the standard Skimlinks javascript. Merchant API lets publishers search and filter the Skimlinks’ merchant list by category and name. Reporting API can filter and segment data on a highly granular level to help understand users’ purchase behavior and tweak settings accordingly. Product API creates a real-time product search based on product reference, category, merchant or price. Product results are returned in XML, allowing website developers to choose how to display and design their site.

Founded in 2008, Skimlinks now processes 110 million clicks a month on over 700,000 sites, including AVForums, WordPress, Ning, Technorati and Hearst Digital, driving almost $30 million in consumer sales from over 18,000 merchants across 27 affiliate networks.

The company has offices in London, San Francisco, and New York and has backing from Sussex Place Ventures, NESTA Investments, The Accelerator Group and Bertelsmann Digital Media Investments.

For those who may have thought that last week’s patent lawsuit filed by Yahoo against Facebook was a one-off, here are some developments that indicate that we may be seeing more of this to come:

Facebook has now been sued by Mitel, an Ottawa, Canada-based enterprise IT company; and there is emerging evidence of others, including AOL, filing fresh patent applications to cover ever more aspects of social media services.

The Mitel Networks suit, filed on March 16, 2012, in the U.S. District Court in Delaware, alleges infringement of two different patents, one for an “automatic web page generator” and another for “pro-active features for telephony.” They date from 1999 and 2007.

And two patent applications filed last week come from Compass Labs and AOL and respectively cover “user interest analysis and systems” and “content publication activity by a user.”

Mitel says in the suit that Facebook infringed and continues to infringe on its patents. Mitel said that it had originally brought this to light in a letter dated July 2011, and another in September 2011.

“Mitel has suffered and will continue to suffer damage,” the company’s lawyers write. “Mitel is entitled to recover damages adequate to compensate for that infringement in an amount that will be ascertained at trial, but in no event less than a reasonable royalty.”

We have contacted Mitel and the company is not providing much in the way of comment on the suit, neither to us or to The Next Web, which also reported on it, except to confirm the filing. But we have seen that Mitel is not new to this game. Most recently, in March, it settled a case against a company called Klausner Technologies over visual voicemail patents.

Meanwhile, two more patent applications have emerged that also point to potential actions against Facebook and perhaps other social networks.

AOL (owner of TechCrunch), last week assured investors that it had a strategy for its patents. Some of that strategy is getting a bit clearer: on March 15, the company filed a patent application around using messaging to alert users when another user has had some activity on the network. From the patent application:

Collecting and distributing information related to recent content publication activity of an instant messaging (IM) user provides other users in a network with timely, relevant information about people known to the user or within the same social network. A user participating in a social network can quickly and efficiently perceive new information related to other users (referred to as co-users) in a social network by reviewing the co-users’ recent content publication activity. A user may be made able to do so without requiring the co-user to send a communication directly to the user regarding the new facts or new content, and also without requiring the user to actively browse or request information about the co-user.

Interestingly, the filing looks like a revised application, in which some 51 of the original 52 claims have been removed. One patent lawyer told TechCrunch that the AOL filing comes from a line of related cases all filed around 2006; that this application appears to be related to patents already owned by AOL; and that this newest application had gotten the “treatment”:

“It is being honed, specifically, to read on Facebook,” he said. “The claim very clearly has been crafted/tweaked to read on the wall updates that you get when someone posts something new in their status update.  This shows: 1) observation/monitoring of FB features; 2) active efforts to picket fence around these features by AOL.”

He adds that this is another sign of AOL paying attention to Facebook, “which, usually, is a precursor (much like foreshocks) to a larger ‘event’ later on.”

Compass Labs, filer of the second patent application, is also homing in on social media, but it’s less clear that this is directly related to a potential litigation, says the lawyer.