Category: Tech news

All right. That’s it. You kids come in off my lawn, gather round the table, throw a log on the Nest, and hear now a tale of the dread and fabled Time Before The Web.

In the beginning, ¹ there was Usenet, and it was good: online conversations ordered by topic, built around ongoing threads rather than individual posts, so that they could and often did last for months. Then came the Web. And eventually, lo, the Web gave us Digg, and it was good, for a while. Then Digg declined. Then there was Reddit, and it was good, for a while. Now Reddit too has declined. Us techies had Slashdot, until it declined. Now we have Hacker News… which is arguably in decline.

But at least we have Gawker! No, wait. “Capture the intelligence of the readership? …That’s a joke. For every two comments that are interesting, there will be eight that will be off-topic or toxic,” saith none other than Nick Denton himself, re the ‘tragedy of the comments’. Ah, but that’s just them. Here at TechCrunch, all comments are from incisive, witty people who have both read and understood the article they are commenting on, right? Right? …Sigh.

Back in the ’70s and ’80s, science fiction writers saw the Internet coming and started trying to predict the way in which it would work. John Brunner anticipated direct online democracy. Vernor Vinge and William Gibson opted for virtual-reality “cyberspace.” Not yet, guys. You know who came closest to getting it right? Orson Scott Card (who’s now, alas, something of a loathsome crank) in Ender’s Game. It’s mostly a book about killing aliens, but there’s also a plot thread in which the protagonist’s brother and sister (anonymously) argue so brilliantly and cogently in online forums that they become major political forces.

Well, OK, he got the existence of the blogosphere right. Its effects, not so much. Nobody in a position of actual power much cares what bloggers think, and why should they? It's almost impossible to express and maintain a coherent message in a medium whose elements–individual blog posts–are so transient. That’s why some startups are trying to reinvent blogging. Quora, for one; and, more recently, Branch, which (so far) basically hosts invitation-only symposiums on subjects like “How do blogs need to evolve?” (I know, I know, how meta.)

The answer increasingly seems to be, amusingly, “Be more like Usenet!” Plus ça change, plus c’est la même chose. Unfortunately, that won’t help. Whether we’re talking about Digg, Reddit, blog comments, or Usenet itself, the fundamental problem with online conversation is this: the larger the community, the more its conversation regresses to the mediocre mean.

Back in the glory days of Usenet, this was called “the September problem”; most participants were at universities, so every autumn brought a new flood of students. Then, as conversation quality declined, the phrase “It is always September on the Internet” arose. And so it has been ever since. Restructuring conversations around questions (a la Quora) or subjects (a la Usenet) rather than posts-and-comments won’t affect this. Invitation-only symposia will, but are by their very nature elitist and distancing. People want to talk back.

I respect all the attempts people have made and are making to improve online conversation; social filters, gamification, etc. But I don’t think the problem can be fixed by mere incentivization. Call me a SNOOT (PDF), but I prefer a simpler solution: turn off all spellcheckers, and the Facebook Comments grammar corrector, and build a machine-learning system to automatically rank and filter comments and other conversation by grammar and spelling. (Adjusted for whether they’re written in the author’s first language, ideally.)

A pipe dream, you say? But no! I give you the contentiously named StupidFilter, “an open-source filter software that can detect rampant stupidity in written English.” This just might be the future. Because, in the words of another great SF writer, “The analysts … concluded that it was just human nature and you couldn’t fix it, and so they went for a quick cheap technical fix.” Words to live by.

Image credit: FigzBox

¹By “in the beginning” I mean “in the early nineties, when I was a teenager.” I am told that back in the dim mists of forgotten time before even then, there were things like the Well, but surely these are only myths.

Editor’s note: Contributor Ashkan Karbasfrooshan is the founder and CEO of WatchMojo, he hosts a show on business and has published books on success.  Follow him @ashkan.

This isn’t an anti-entrepreneur rant. It’s also not a piece to discourage anyone from launching their own business. It’s a warning for those who seek to launch their startup to understand some of the lesser-discussed reasons why 99% of new businesses are Dead On Arrival.

As outlined, success is

1) subjective, relative and fluid:

i)                    we define success based on what drives us,

ii)                   but we tend to measure it relative to other people’s success and over time,

iii)                 we convince ourselves to change its definition, revising upwards or downwards, depending on the conditions on the ground.

2) a function of six variables: vision, ambition, determination, execution, timing and luck.

Part 1: Before You Launch Your Startup…

Sometimes, Macro Timing is Everything

Success is as common as an eclipse, the result of externalities lining up at the right time.  However, entrepreneurs rarely launch their business as a result of market (macro) conditions, but rather, personal (micro) timing and circumstances that have little to do with the broader landscape, even if the macro backdrop is at odds with the micro circumstances.

An example of this is launching a hiring startup in a recession when companies are laying people off by the boatloads.  No amount of vision, ambition, determination, execution and luck will offset your bad timing.

Ideally the macro and micro come together at the right time.

Don’t underestimate the micro timing, either

Of course, that isn’t an excuse for those who fail due to the wrong timing, either. You can overcome bad timing if you execute well otherwise.

However, more often than not, entrepreneurs launch businesses when they’re inexperienced or when their personal situation doesn’t lend itself to the startup life’s rigors (recently married, new child, student loans, etc.)

What are you: an Intrapreneur or an Entrepreneur?

Assuming the timing isn’t off, many aspiring entrepreneurs simply aren’t cut out – or truly willing – to be entrepreneurs, whose roles and responsibilities literally include janitorial services.  The sheer majority of people who launch businesses are in fact intrapreneurs – entrepreneurial types who can succeed in a larger organization by launching new products, business units etc., when they benefit from support in administration, sales, marketing and have the stability that comes with a regular paycheck.

Too many brilliant minds waste energy and mindshare on non-value generating functions because they think they‘re destined to be entrepreneurs when they are, at best, possibly intrapreneurs.  For these, it’s far better to launch a product, service, division within an existing company to have a better chance to succeed and then over time, if desired, pursue the traditional entrepreneur route which includes mind-numbing, back-breaking and otherwise demoralizing tasks that don’t add value.

Part 2: Still Want to Launch a Startup?

 “I’ve failed over and over and over again in my life and that is why I succeed” – Michael Jordan.

The mark of a good entrepreneur (and athlete or entertainer) is learning from mistakes, somehow turning them into opportunities and coming back stronger to win.  It’s part art, part convincing job, part delusion.

The instant you realize you’ve made a mistake, learn from it but find ways to turn it to your advantage.

If mistakes demoralize you to the point of bringing you down or giving up, stop now: entrepreneurship isn’t for you.

Failing to Ask Around and Asking The Wrong People

Entrepreneurs are accused of not listening, but the best ones are listening and learning all the time.  However, we’re selective in how we process and apply what we hear and learn; that’s part of what makes entrepreneurs seem difficult.

A common mistake is hatching, launching and growing a startup without actually asking people around you what they think.  I’m not referring to friends and family, but people in the industry or other entrepreneurs who have battle wound scars.

If you’re going to launch an ad-supported business, for example, ask people on Madison Avenue.

If you’re going to need massive funding for a disruptive product, ask VCs on Sand Hill Road.

Don’t Underestimate the Critical Milestones of Your Startup

People don’t think that the status-quo is broken, and even if it is and they voice their discontent, human beings are creatures of habit.  So don’t simply assume that advertisers will beta test your service or users will adopt your product.

Wrong Geographic Market

VCs oftentimes remind entrepreneurs to set up shop where they can hire talent.  It’s equally important to be in hubs where you can rise with the ecosystem.  This doesn’t mean that you “have” to be in NY, San Francisco, etc., but usually the pros will offset the cons.

Open Your F*****g Blinders

Sometimes we have a tendency to launch a new venture based on our previous limited experience.  As proud individuals, entrepreneurs also tend to launch projects based on some kind of personal drive to prove people wrong.  That can be a positive source of motivation but it can also send you down the wrong path.

Stealth is Stupid

Do yourself a favor and drop the stealth approach.

Whatever you’re thinking of, no matter how unique and revolutionary it might seem, others are doing what you’re doing.  In fact, you ought to tell everyone what you’re working on so that you 1) find out about the others and 2) get feedback to avoid shipping a clunker.

I’ve never seen a stealthy project come out and be either impressive or interesting; usually it’s overhyped and underwhelming.

Experience is What You Do With It

A failure can be a learning experience, or a shock to your confidence.  Winners come back from defeats and overcome setbacks.  If you can’t do that, then maybe entrepreneurship isn’t for you, at least not now.

Everyone can be an entrepreneur if they realize what it takes to be a successful one.

If you enjoyed this, you might like things entrepreneurs should avoid when fundraising.

[image via flickr/fireflythegreat]

More people leaving Google Wallet means more founders for mobile payments startups!

Jonathan Wall, a founding engineer on Google Wallet, and Marc Freed-Finnegan, its product lead, are already heads down on their next venture Tappmo after having their last day at Google on March 5. They’re not saying too much about what it is aside from saying it’s about revolutionizing offline payments. (No surprise there.)

“We think the next few years will bring groundbreaking developments in mobile commerce and we are excited to dive in with our new venture,” Freed-Finnegan says.

Google Wallet has seen a wave of departures over the last month or so and the company may need to rethink its strategy. There are so many constituencies that Google needs to have on its side to win.

But everyone including the carriers, retailers, Google, the banks and PayPal wants control. And nobody — especially the carriers — really wants to give up power. Verizon has even actively blocked the Google Wallet on the handsets it sells. After losing so much of their direct relationship with customers over the past few years with the advent of the iPhone and Android, carriers want to hold onto what may be their last lucrative tie with consumers beyond their monthly bills.

So you have Google Wallet, which has the support of one relatively weaker carrier with Sprint. Then you have the major carriers like AT&T, Verizon and T-Mobile trying to collaborate on their own payments solution Isis. Then there’s PayPal, which is trying to do cloud-based payments and is shying away from NFC. Then the big-box retailers like Walmart and Target are collaborating on yet another solution. Then there are startups like Square, Dwolla and more.

It’s a mess, really. So it will be curious to see if a few Google Wallet insiders can offer an interesting solution to a very tangled space.

Back in October 2010, billionaire tech investor Mark Cuban jumped into the daily deals game with a $1.5 million seed investment in gift online shopping deals startup JungleCents. Because the startup took a somewhat alternative approach to daily deals, using a lead generation model to give publishers supplemental revenue streams, today, JungleCents has seen some pretty good traction. Its deals are now reaching 2.2 million email addresses (publishers included), and its sign-up rate tripled in the last three months of 2011.

However, at the beginning of this year, Cuban acquired all of the JungleCents assets, allowing the startup’s co-founders, Sameer Mehta and Nadir Hyder, to take off to found a new venture. Today, we’re getting a bit of a glimpse into what the guys have been working on, as they are officially ready to announce a new startup, called 12Society. Joining Mehta as co-founders of the new venture are Chirayu Patel, a former solutions architect at VMWare, and one slightly more well-known name: San Francisco Giant and two-time Cy Young Award winner, Tim Lincecum.

Because the startup is still in stealth mode, the co-founders are remaining tight-lipped about just what they’re cooking up, but this much has become clear: 12Society is a guy-focused lifestyle company built on “the intersection of culture, technology and commerce,” according to CEO Sameer Mehta. The kernel for 12Society came out of a problem that the co-founders identified while at JungleCents, specifically that many brands out there want not only to get the attention of the 18 to 35-year-old male demographic, but they want to get them actively engaging — and shopping.

The co-founders said that one of their biggest take-aways from their experience was companies that find a smart way to be an intermediary between products and male consumers, while reducing the friction standing in the way of direct purchasing, then that company is already setting itself up for success. Because guys tend to be less brand conscious — yet more loyal to the brands they choose to wear on their t-shirts or in the phones they buy — they can make for great brand ambassadors.

That is, if you can get them involved in a way that isn’t underhanded, kitschy, or that reeks of shilling. The same is of course, true for women, and collectively the co-founders say that editorial-driven marketing leads to higher conversion (and receptiveness), because it’s inherently more personal, curated by the people who create that content.

The point of saying all this is that, while 12Society’s model is not yet ready for the light of day, the startup will be developing its content with influencers like Tim Lincecum to create a user experience that is both guy-focused and feels more like a realtime conversation with these influencers.

The 12Society CEO said that there eventually will be six celebrity or “notable” figures involved — interestingly, all at the founding level. Whether deals, offers, gossip, or short form content, you can be sure that those influencers will be heavily involved in the creation of that content. The startup has already been working with Hollywood agencies, like ICM, Brillstein Entertainment Partners, and Management 360, to ensure that the “culture creators” they represent “have a front row seat.”

As to the San Francisco Giants starting pitcher, Mehta says that his “passion and perspective in what we are doing has already been a great asset to the company.” While the company has been self-funded thus far, the team in the process of raising its first round of outside funding, and it would be awesome to be privy to the meetings in which Lincecum pitches 12Society to investors. Get it?

Startups have been turning to celebrities and influencers more and more of late as a way to build instant buzz, but how many celebrity-founded startups can you name that have stood the test of time? Not many. So it will be interesting to see if this dynamic is able to have success where others have failed. To guide them along the way, the team has added Anthony Saleh of Atom Factory, Founder of Young and Restless Dee Murthy, and Mike Walsh of Rockstar Group (and also an investor in Uber).

The team will be announcing further notable co-founders in the coming weeks, and it sounds like at least a few more athletes will be in the mix. Official launch to come within the next few months. Stay tuned. For more, and to sign up for beta access, check the startup out at home here, or see the announcement on Tim’s Facebook fan page here. They’re also on AngelList here.

It seems that noted firebrand Mike Daisey’s story – the one about the crippled, underaged factory workers who unspooled tales of woe and torture at the hands of their evil Foxconn masters at Apple’s behest- was at least partially fabricated. He was outed as, at best, a bad journalist and at worst, a fraud. To be clear, he’s a monologist and playwright and had no business telling this story (just as he really had no business telling Amazon’s story way back when) but he, like so many creatives, riffed on science and technology for popular effect and got both drastically wrong.

Daisey was a droning Woody Guthrie whose intentions were good but whose rigor was lacking. His efforts to expose the Great Sin of our technological age – that the items we use and love must be made by unhappy hands – were noble and I believe he’s done some good. What he failed to grasp in his effort to dramatize the horrors of modern manufacturing was its absolute banality. There is no great demon forcing humans to work at his forge. There are no hellions bent on the destruction of the peon’s will at some dimly-lit workbench. There are simply young people working for older engineers in well-lit assembly lines. In an effort to save time and money, the engineers require their employees to work in a manner that streamlines both time and money and for their efforts they receive a small salary and housing.

Manufacturing isn’t frightening because it exploits the worker – all endeavors, in some way, exploit the worker. It’s frightening in its brutal and absolute efficiency at consuming resources, human effort, and intellect to cast a torrent of consumer goods at the endless open maw of the world consumer. We don’t need a new ethical iPhone. We need to make do with the one we have, at least for a year.

To feel schadenfreude at Daisey’s fall is wrong. I will instead remind you that most of what he said was, technically, true. And while his story may have been a fabrication, his mission to help the oppressed was a good one, and a true one. We can learn from his example, at least in terms of consuming less and reducing our endless neophilia. Over the next few years, Foxconn will change. The people working there will slowly spread out into the Chinese cities and countryside, replaced by increasingly adroit robots. The age of men and women building complex things dawned in the 1700s, reached its apex in the Industrial Revolution, and is now seeing its nadir. The small, quick hands of a factory worker will be replaced by small, quick pincers and the sun will set on the manual worker in Shenzhen and other points east. This is inevitable.

Until this change sweeps away all of Daisey’s concerns, we can adjust our expectations, reduce our consumption, and stop ascribing totemic powers to new technology. Or, more likely, we won’t. Either way, a million iPads will roll down a thousand assembly lines, five hundred tired eyes scanning the screens for the tiniest imperfections while the relentless juggernaut of our own desire ravages the planet and pulls us further from the sense of humanity that Daisey tried to mightily to impart on the impassive faces of the Asian manufacturing giants.

He may have failed as a journalist, but he humanized a problem that we have been avoiding for too long. For that, at least, we can’t fault him.

Some people are surprised when they find out that Getty Images is just 17 years old — its brand name has become such an institution in the image licensing and stock photography space that many people assume it’s been around for decades longer. But starting in 1995 just at the dawn of the Internet age does make it a veteran in many ways in the web photo space. So we were pleased to have the chance to interview Getty Images’ co-founder and CEO Jonathan Klein while he was at the South By Southwest Interactive conference in Austin, Texas this week to get his insights on how his company has grown up until this point and where it is headed in the months and years to come.

Watch the video above to get Klein’s thoughts on revenue models (“We may be old fashioned around here, but we actually think that people have to pay for content. We think that content creators also need to make a living”), enforcing intellectual property ownership (“[The music labels] did something that is unspeakable: They sued their fans and their customers”) and going with the flow (“The customer is not always right, but the customer is almost always ahead of you.”) There are plenty more bon mots where those came from, so please do watch the interview in full.

Feature image of Jonathan Klein courtesy of Flickr user Joi Ito

These new wedges from SCOR offer varying degrees of loft, giving you more accuracy when you’re close to the green. Photo by Ariel Zambelich/Wired

For most golfers, well over half of their shots are played within 100 yards of the hole. That figure runs about 60 to 65 percent, depending on your game.

While it’s sexy to crush the ball off the tee, for most of us, getting better with a putter or wedge in our hands would do much more for our scores than adding 15 yards to our drive.

SCOR Golf recently released a system the company calls SCOR4161. The 4161 is for the available lofts of the clubs it makes, from 41 degrees of loft all the way up to 61 degrees, in one-degree increments. That’s a range that lets golfers replace their standard 9 iron and pitching wedge from their set of irons, as well as other wedges they might be using, with a set of clubs designed for precision from 130 yards and closer.

SCOR’s claims here are that the shots we normally hit with a 9 iron and pitching wedge are much more like sand wedge shots than 5 iron shots; therefore, it makes sense to design those clubs to be more like a sand wedge. In my testing, I wasn’t as convinced of that notion. Usually, I’m hitting a 9 iron and PW more as a full shot. There’s not the same need for feel and finesse with those shots, and for me, I tended to be more consistent with the clubs from my iron set than with the SCOR clubs.

But when I got to the three lofts that would be more traditionally thought of as wedges (49, 54, 59 degrees), I was very, very impressed with the SCOR clubs.

Photo by Ariel Zambelich/Wired

A couple of things stood out. Wedges traditionally include a certain amount of bounce on the club — the trailing edge is lower than the leading edge. This keeps the club from digging into the ground when you swing. Usually, different lies call for different bounce angles: higher bounce for sand or softer turf, lower bounce for firmer, tighter lies.

The SCOR clubs include a bounce angle innovation (the company calls it V-Sole) that lets you use each of the clubs in different situations. The very leading edge of the club is ground with a very high bounce angle — sometimes 25 degrees or more — to keep the club from digging in. But the rest of the sole is ground at a much lower bounce, in the 5- to 9-degree range, which gives good performance on harder turf.

The result for me was a versatile club that felt like it handled different conditions without much issue. The clubs aren’t quite as easy to open up as traditional sand wedges for big flop shots, but that was more than made up for by their consistency in different lies.

Other thoughtful touches abound. The grips on the club come marked with places for your thumb spaced out every inch. The idea is that you can take a little distance off by choking down on the club, and begin to understand exactly how far you hit it based on your hand position. SCOR even provides an e-book outlining the method, and a bag tag that lets you jot down your results. It’s a great way to get better control over your distance, which is a key to good rounds.

Overall, there’s not much to quibble with here. The clubheads are soft, which is good for feel, although they’ve gotten a little nicked up during my testing. The design of the clubhead is classic and confidence-inspiring, but the graphics on the shafts and the grips are a little distracting; something more understated would be nice.

But by far the most important thing about SCOR is that it’s trying to build a system that helps your short game, from clubs to technique. Most golfers buy wedges by feel — they pick a motley group, trying out a few and seeing how they hit. If SCOR can get you to think about how all your clubs come together to influence your game, it will have done the whole golfing world a huge service.

WIRED Beautiful build quality. Consistent feel across clubs, consistent performance across conditions. Sensible advice in owner’s manual to help improve short game. Small company leads to great customer service.

TIRED Ever so slightly garish design. Clubs are $150 each, and five clubs will set you back $640.

Ever wish you could fold your tablet in half and stick it in your pocket? Well now you can! It’s all thanks to the innovators at Sony, who figured that what the Android tablet market is missing can be summed up in one word: foldability.

The Sony Tablet P, which has already been affectionately nicknamed the Sony Taco, looks decidedly unique, but isn’t altogether tough to grok. It’s a tablet that folds in on itself, closing up into a clamshell when not in use.

Kidding aside, this is not a frivolous innovation. There a few surprisingly good reasons why you’d want to fold up your tablet. The main one is portability: When snapped shut it really does slip easily into your back pocket, a jacket pocket, or even a smallish purse. For users who’ve wondered what to do with their iPad when both hands are needed for something else, the Tablet P is a decent solution. The design also helps to protect the screen from damage without the need for a special case.

Naturally, Sony has also addressed the Tablet P from a software standpoint. E-books split across two “pages.” Email can be read on one screen, while messages are scrolled on another. Sony has its own developer network for additional dual-screen apps, and off-the-rack apps that don’t support both screens can toggle between single and dual-screen mode with an on-screen button.

Another big focus of the Tablet P is its incorporation of Sony PlayStation games. No, not PS3 games. PS1 games. Games like MediEvil and Crash Bandicoot, all developed in the late 1990s. Paying $6 for an old PlayStation title may give you a little nostalgic thrill, but the on-screen controls are no match for a physical controller. They are placed too high on the lower screen, and I found them unresponsive and difficult to master. (We had the same problem with Sony’s other PlayStation tablet, the book-shaped Tablet S.)

Specs are largely on par with other (non-folding) Android tablets: 1GHz Tegra 2, 1GB RAM, dual 5-megapixel and 0.3-megapixel cameras. It runs Honeycomb. Off-the-shelf storage is limited: 2GB on-board and a mere 2GB microSD card is preinstalled. Benchmark scores were good to above-average across the board. The screens are both 5.5 inches diagonally, with resolutions of 1024 x 480 pixels, and exceptionally bright.

So how compelling is all of this? In the final analysis, I think the Tablet P remains a pretty tough sell for most users. Even with Sony’s customizations, there are layout issues to deal with (like overlapping text squeezed into a single screen), and dragging items from one screen to another isn’t always easy. And some functions — like movie-watching — just aren’t built for split-screen action. The Tablet P puts your video up top and controls on the bottom, the result is that video doesn’t take up much more real estate than watching it on a phone.

But, hey, you can’t fold your iPhone in half now, can you?

WIRED Has a sort of geeky clamshell-curiosity factor akin to the HP 95LX. Rocklike sturdiness. Unbeatable portability in a tablet.

TIRED Graphically intense apps suck the battery hard; I got under 3.5 hours on a charge. Speaker is tinny and far too soft. No way to get an unbroken screen experience; full-screen apps always look weird. Some app compatibility problems.

Photos: Ariel Zambelich/Wired

Most of the patents that Yahoo is suing Facebook over are for vague concepts that underly a wide variety of web services, but one is for a much more specific protocol that Facebook definitely employs: seamless communication between email and instant messaging users.

If the other patents are ruled invalid for being too broad to enforce, it’s maybe this Patent 7406501 that could stick. Facebook could need a separate defense or answer to this complaint, or it could be forced into a settlement to close the case prior its IPO.

Filed way back in 2003 before Facebook existed, and issued in July 2008 by the time the social network had roughly 200 million users, the patent’s abstract reads:

“Systems and methods allowing an instant messaging user to exchange messages with an e-mail user. To the instant messaging user, the experience is a seamless exchange of instant messages; to the e-mail user, the experience is a seamless exchange of e-mail messages. Conversion of an instant message to an e-mail message includes insertion of a token into the e-mail message, and conversion of an e-mail message to an instant message includes validating a token extracted from the e-mail message.”

My research hasn’t surfaced any other prominent companies that provide this service. Many will deliver email notifications about missed instant messages, but not actually allow users to have their full emails delivered as instant messages and vice versa.

Over two years after the patent was filed, Facebook launched its unified messaging product that offers this service. Email users can send messages to [username]@facebook.com to have them delivered as Chats or Facebook Messages. Messages or Chats sent back are delivered as emails. That means Facebook is directly infringing on Yahoo’s patent.

Facebook did make some significant improvements to what Yahoo patented. Rather than blindly delivering communications as Chats or emails, Facebook dynamically assesses what the best delivery medium is. If a recipient is actively logged in and “online” to Chat, they’re delivered as Chats. If someone is on the website but logged out of chat, or are completely logged out they’re delivered as Messages. If the recipient is on Facebook’s mobile interfaces they’re delivered through the standalone Messenger product, in-app Messages, or even as SMS.

Yahoo’s move to troll Facebook with its patents was dastardly, opportunistic, desperate, and frankly anti-Internet. It’s also likely a poor business move because it will make make recruitment very difficult, and could send current employees packing to more scrupulous companies. Still, Yahoo might have a valid patent infringement case against Facebook over instant message-email communication because:

• Yahoo’s patent is relatively specific
• The technology is not widely used
• Facebook does appear to infringe upon on the patent
• Instant message-email communication isn’t essential to Facebook or social network, Facebook just wanted to make its product better

The case’s outcome could include some combination of Facebook buying this patent from Yahoo outright, paying exorbitant licensing fees, offsetting it with patents Yahoo infringes on, and shutting down the feature. Facebook should start thinking which it would prefer.

[Image Credit: Shutterstock – JelanaA]

Mobile is getting sexier and sexier, and businesses are increasingly looking to establish a branded, mobile presence, giving their customers access to their services — across platforms, while on the go. With the consumerization of enterprise heating up, big companies want a platform that allows them to build their own customized apps, offering both web and native app experiences to their clients. Enter: AnyPresence, a venture-backed startup that brings a cloud-based platform for building HTML5 and native apps to enterprise, without requiring big companies to install or develop tools or SDKs.

But the market is rife with DIY mobile platforms, you say! There certainly are other players in the space, yes. So, for easy taxonomy, let’s say that these services tend to fall into three different categories. There are open mobile frameworks, like Sencha, Appcelerator, and PhoneGap, which offer third-party developers the ability to build apps quickly, while generally requiring technical expertise to install and use their frameworks.

Then there are the SMB platforms, like Bizness Apps and Apps Builder, which are geared towards businesses that don’t have back-end IT systems to integrate with, are easy to use, and targeted at non-technical users with a focus on content features, like WordPress plug-ins. Or there are enterprise mobile platforms, like Kony, Verivo, and Antenna — higher-end platforms that offer enterprise mobility features, typically for business process apps. These tend to be more expensive, because they come with stuff like capabilities for user roles and authentication, integration into source systems, extensibility, cloud data management, etc.

To define its own niche, AnyPresence essentially wants to provide the enterprise-grade infrastructure and features from the latter category, with the lower cost of ownership, ease of use, and consumer feel of the platforms that target SMBs. The startup wants to target customers like utilities providers, second tier telecom companies, regional banks — big businesses that need robust apps but don’t have the time and money to spend on traditional enterprise platforms.

While the platform does require some technical knowledge, AnyPresence wants its customers to avoid hiring contractors, specialized external mobile development — to be a platform their internal IT team can easily make sense of. So, they’ve built a platform that makes it easy to design and modify apps right from the browser, using pre-assembled “starter app” templates embedded with mobile user experience best practices that let them quickly build both employee and customer-facing apps.

And to get at those enterprise-grade features, the AnyPresence platform is a cloud-based “Back-end-as-a-Service” platform, which allows businesses to deploy HTML5 apps instantly to a scalable cloud infrastructure, as well as compile native iOS and Android apps in the cloud, while making them available for local testing, over the air distribution, or submission to app stores.

Beyond reducing development costs and offer cross-platform deployment, AnyPresence also wants users to be able to support data access and security policies with user roles, app permissions, and data availability, along with enabling them to extend their reach to non-smartphone mobile users through text messaging and interactive voice response capabilities. Going beyond other non-technical, consumer-facing options, the platform supports services-based platform extensions and allows IT staff to use any programming language of choice, in addition to offering a set of APIs to assemble and generate custom apps or enable app development from third-parties.

Another bonus is that, in the attempt to build a platform that’s extensible, the startup offers integration with Twilio out of the box and wants to add further, comparable integrations soon, including Dropbox, for example. The teams also said that, since the consumerization of enterprise has been taking off, gamification is also very much on the radar.

Founded by former SAP, Oracle, and Siebel Systems executives, AnyPresence is backed from $2 million in venture funding from Kinetic Ventures, and is currently in the process of raising its series A. The startup is launching their platform in beta today, with general availability set to arrive next month. (You can sign up for the beta here.) As to pricing,
Co-Founder & CMO Richard Mendis says that the startup’s pricing begins between $15K and $20K per year, and scales up based on usage from there.

For more, check out AnyPresence at home here.

As South by Southwest transforms from a massive tech party to a massive music festival, Twitter has unveiled Twitter for Musicians and Artists, a page offering tips on how musicians can use the service to connect with their fans.

Even if you’re not a world-famous musician, many of the suggestions will be pretty familiar. (Use hashtags! Reply to your fans!) Perhaps the most interesting thing is the suggestion that artists share their music through specifically through links to YouTube, Rdio, or iTunes — in other words, sites whose content is directly viewable in tweets, without having to leave Twitter.

The Twitter for Musicians Page returns to some of the other themes of the site’s latest redesign. For one thing, it promotes the idea that an artist’s @username is their new URL.

Overall, Twitter describes itself as “the artist’s voice empowered”:

Musicians are always surrounded by people who want to tell their story. Whether it’s a publicist, a manager, an agent, a label rep, a journalist or that guy or gal you dated in high school, it seems no one hesitates to share their take on you and your work. But the most powerful voice is your own. Whether you’re celebrating a career milestone or need to clear the air, Twitter is the easiest and most powerful way to get your message across, directly and clearly.

This idea comes up later, when Twitter urges artists to use the service to break news: “You don’t always have to rely on a publicist to say that you’re excited that about your GRAMMY nominations; simply tweet it and share the joy instantly.”

Of course, artists who see Twitter as their “true” platform for interacting directly and authentically with fans, and for breaking news, aren’t just building a following — they’re driving attention and traffic for Twitter itself.

Twitter has been periodically rolling out how-to pages like this, starting with a general Twitter 101 page for businesses, and, more recently, specialized sites like Twitter for Newsrooms.

Intel is betting big on the future of human interfaces with a $21 million (143 million kronor) investment in Tobii, a Swedish company that has been working for years on eye-tracking laptops and other devices. A 10% stake, it implies a valuation of around $200 million for the 12-year-old company. In 2007 Tobii raised $14M, then in 2009 another $26.8M, and the $21M from Intel Capital continues that trend of steady R&D funding.

The news, announced by co-founder and VP John Elvesjö and reported by Computer Sweden, comes on the heels of Tobii’s newest eye-tracking device, which was announced a week ago at CeBit. The timing probably isn’t a coincidence.

Elvesjö noted that their plan was always to test at small scale in laptops and then expand into larger markets: cars, for instance, or perhaps mobile phones.

Intel is a leader in desktop computing and servers, but it has been taken by surprise in recent years by rival ARM, which now dominates the embedded and mobile space. Eye-tracking is a potentially influential feature that could grow in value especially in the personal and ubiquitous device areas, and Intel probably hopes to secure a functional advantage by integrating next-generation inferface technologies. Tobii technology has already been demonstrated controlling Windows 8 via eye-tracking, and Intel is certainly highly invested in the future of that OS.

Tobii is not yet profitable, which is to be expected in an R&D-heavy company building out a product on venture investments. 2010 saw a ~$3.5M loss (other earnings haven’t been reported), but if Intel’s valuation is any indication, that kind of spending is perfectly healthy.

The new model of eye-tracker is smaller, cheaper, better, and draws less power than its predecessor. Their products have historically been quite expensive, but they hope that this new, more easily embeddable device will allow the technology to spread downwards towards consumer devices.

Despite launching last October, the Ice Cream Sandwich club is still a pretty exclusive one, and even moreso in the United States. Let’s see, there’s the Galaxy Nexus… and, yeah, that’s really it.

Surprisingly though, while HTC mentioned earlier this week that the Vivid would be among the devices to get the Ice Cream Sandwich update, the new software is already available to anyone who knows how to push the right buttons. Literally.

AT&T has said they haven’t officially begun to push it out to the masses, but Vivid owners who dial *#*#682#*#* can force their device to download the update. Once the file has been downloaded and installed (a process which The Verge reports took a little longer than usual), users are left with a Roboto-sporting, Sense 3.6-toting build of Android 4.0 for them to fiddle with.

While it’s not quite as impressive as the Sense 4.0 UI the Taiwanese company showed off at this year’s Mobile World Congress, Sense 3.6 certainly doesn’t seem to be a slouch. Engadget has an in-depth look at what Sense 3.6 brings to the table, if you’re interested in the nitty gritty, and The Verge’s Chris Ziegler has a quick hands-on video to show you how the whole package works on the Vivid itself.

As a brief aside, I’m really enjoying the fact that the HTC phone that people piled on for being as ho-hum as they come (LTE radio notwithstanding) is the first in the country to receive an official Ice Cream Sandwich update. Let’s also not forget that this is the phone that nearly had to be renamed thanks to the litigious inclinations of a porn company, so I like to think of the update as a little gift to the Vivid for being such a little trooper.

MTV is handing musicians the new keys to a new website called Artists.MTV.

Van Toffler, president of Viacom’s Music Group, was scheduled to announce the initiative during his speech at South by Southwest this afternoon. Beforehand, I got on the phone with VP of Digital Music Strategy Shannon Connolly to talk about MTV’s plans. She said Artists.MTV comes out of a larger discussion about the role that MTV wants to play in the changing music industry. In some ways, it sounds like the music section of MySpace reinvented, but Connolly called as a “pro-artist initiative” that’s “letting artists take control of their MTV presence.”

Right now, the MTV website already has 10,000 artists pages, which are automatically generated and include basic elements like videos, news, and a biography. (For example, here’s the page for Lady Gaga.) With the new program, Connolly said musicians will be taking over these pages, allowing them to share what they want with their fans, and to make money at the same time. So musicians will be able to feature the music, photos, and news that they want that they want, and MTV will be able to dramatically expand the number of artists who have profiles on its site to more than 1 million.

MTV has already been talking to some artists about the effort, and Connolly said one of the big concerns was that these pages would become just another site that to keep up-to-date. Connolly is hoping that instead, these pages can unify an artist’s online presence by integrating and pulling content from their social networking accounts.

As for making money, MTV is partnering with music service Topspin to allow artists to sell music, merchandise, tickets, and more from their pages. It’s a revenue sharing deal, but MTV says artists will see the “majority” of the profit. Artists can also set up tip jars, where fans donate however much they want, and all of the profit goes to the musician.

The network is also announcing a new program called Full Frontal, where fans, artists, producers, and managers will choose one artist per month who will promoted across MTV’s properties.

“In the past, the way that an artist worked with MTV was through a manager or a label,” Connolly said. “When we launch this, we’re essentially creating another door. We’re distilling it down into a very simple value proposition — be heard, promoted, and paid.”

MTV plans to start its “artists only” private beta in May, followed by a fan beta later this spring, and a full launch later this year.

Real-time push notification service Boxcar, currently available on both iOS and Mac OS X, has just closed on a $150,000 seed round with Kima Ventures, bringing its total raise to date to $211,000. The additional funding will be used to grow the company’s consumer-facing services, expand to other platforms (Android in 2 months! Windows Phone!) and will aid in the company’s development of B2B products, we’re told.

And yep, that means what you think it means: Boxcar will soon offer push notifications as a backend service for mobile developers’ use.

In addition to the funding, Boxcar has added Brian Alvey (CEO of Crowd Fusion), Loic Le Meur (CEO of Seesmic), Greg Yardley (Former CEO of Pinch Media), and Sean Byrnes (Flurry’s co-founder), to the company’s advisory board.

In other good news: Kima Ventures is shareholder in Sparrow, the hot, new iOS mail client that serves as a worthy replacement to Apple’s own mail app. Not entirely coincidentally, Boxcar says it now works with Sparrow to provide the push notifications feature Sparrow currently lacks. (Well, that’s good enough reason to download the Boxcar right there, if you haven’t already, I’d say. And Sparrow, of course, I heartily recommend. Go read all about it over on Techmeme.)

For a little background, Boxcar received a lot of attention prior to the launch of iOS 5. When MG covered the iOS version of Boxcar back in March 2011, for example, he begged Apple to copy its notification system immediately. It was that good. But back then, Boxcar was filling a hole in Apple’s OS by providing support for a notifications center where all your app’s messages could be reviewed at a glance. Remember, this was a time before you could just pull down a drawer from the top of your iPhone’s screen. Instead, your notifications appeared as pop-ups, then disappeared, forever lost in the ether.

Apple, of course, since overhauled its notifications with the launch of iOS 5 in fall 2011, seemingly leaving much of the need for third-party systems like Boxcar in its wake. Except for the rare app like Sparrow, which launches prior to supporting push, the need for an alternative system (albeit a more configurable and more powerful one) is somewhat less pressing.

Then there’s Boxcar for Mac. Even though Boxcar serves as a viable counterpart to the ever-popular Growl, both services are now finding themselves in the position of having to compete with core OS features, thanks to the forthcoming release of Apple’s latest version of OS X (Mountain Lion), which is introducing its own push notifications feature.

So where does that leave something like Boxcar? And why is it getting funding now, of all times?

As it turns out, those “B2B” features in development are the big news here. Boxcar will soon be introducing a cross-platform push notifications service designed for developers’ use. This puts it in the same space as competitors like Urban Airship, Xtify, StackMob, Parse and others.

The idea with the new service is to not only provide push and “heavy lifting” for developers, but also help them create sustainable app businesses. To be clear, this is different from what most of the competition is doing today – instead of simply providing developer tools to power backend services like push, Boxcar will allow developers to offer push as an option to their customers – for a fee. The app’s end users will be able to pay for push notifications for the app on either a 6-month or yearly subscription basis, if they choose.

Already, one flagship implementation of this offering is in the wild: Twitterlator Neue, a Twitter app for iOS, is now delivering push notifications that are powered by Boxcar. The move hasn’t been without some pushback from users, of course. As a review of the app on ZDNet notes, Neue received some negative App Store reviews for its decision to charge $1.99 per year for push notifications. (The horror.)

But developer Andrew Stone explained the decision, saying that the decision was about sustainability. “We have to pay for servers,” he said. “That people expect stuff for free will eventually become a problem for most developers.”

Developers in unison: damn right.

Boxcar CEO Jonathan George tells me that several other Twitter apps are in the works, and the company will soon be doing the same with other apps, too. “Any push that requires a backend, we want to power it,” he says.

Originally, the plan was to announce the service for Twitter app developers next week, but a little funding news got in the way, it seems. Although the business offering isn’t officially live now, though, I’m sure interested developers can find a way to get in touch.