Category: Tech news

Sonos this morning sent out an email to users advising them to immediately update their wireless music system software with a security “enhancement” in order to plug a hole that “in rare cases” could have been exploited by malicious people to gain access to sensitive, personal customer data.

In the message, which was also posted on its forum, Sonos says it is not aware of any breaches so far:

This update fixes a bug that, in rare cases, could allow someone to access the usernames and passwords of services used on your Sonos. Currently, we are not aware of any customer data being compromised. If you have any evidence that your account credentials were inappropriately accessed please contact Sonos customer service at http://www.sonos.com/support.

In addition to updating your Sonos with this security enhancement, it’s always good practice to use strong and different passwords for your online accounts.

To update, go to ‘System Settings’ on any Sonos Controller and select ‘Online Updates’.

With 250 million Android devices out there, growing by more than 700,000 activations a day, a lot of mobile video is watched on Android cell phones and tablets. It is not quite as much yet as on Apple iOS devices but it is catching up fast.

A year ago in January, 2011, Apple dominated mobile video views, with iOS devices accounting for 87 percent of all mobile views, according to data from video encoding and short-url service Vid.ly. Android had a scant 5 percent. By December, 2011, Android’s share of mobile video watching grew to 32 percent, while Apple’s shrank to 52 percent.

Vid.ly is a service run by Encoding.com, which launched a year ago. The data is only from its service, but is from a large enough sample (more than 1 million video views a month for each platform) that it should be representative.

Mark Zuckerberg added his touch to a graffiti wall at Facebook’s new headquarters. In the video above, graffiti artist David Choe, who was commissioned to paint the wall, incorporates a stick figure painted by the Facebook founder into a mohawked trollish creature wearing a wife beater with a raised fist. It’s quite a transformation.

Zuckerberg needs to practice first, admitting: “I’ve actually never spray painted anything.”

Choe painted the walls at the original Facebook headquarters. Maybe the new art will help keep the startup vibe going as Facebook prepares to IPO.

At some point, you may have found yourself bored out of your mind by your current music selection, and resisting the urge to try one of the eleventy million music discovery services out there, you think, “By God, I’m going to do it myself.” You rush home, download a music suite, start furiously clicking and recording, only to be sooner or later confronted by the reality that you have no idea what you’re doing, and reprimand yourself for turning down those music lessons in fourth grade.

The Korea-based, VC-funded MusicShake launched back at TechCrunch40 in 2007 to solve these woes, allowing users to create their own music in a fun an intuitive way.

Today, MusicShake provides over 2 million different music patterns, categorized into different generes and samples, to allow users to build music — as if with Lego blocks. For music novices, MusicShake has an intelligent algorithm that, when starting with a blank slate (or staff), you can add different samples or templates, picking and choosing from sounds you like, and the algorithm works in the background to optimize them, make sure the different parts are aligned — so you sound like a maestro.

MusicShake Founder Kihong Bae tells us that it’s essentially a free, web-based GarageBand, which has very low barriers to entry and is a bit more novice-friendly. It can’t compete toe-to-toe on every level, but its a great alternative.

All of the service’s samples are created by the team’s very own musicians and “music robot,” which means they’re copyright free. The team revamped the service last year, offering a brand new website, and a user experience that allows you not just to create new music, but comment, listen, consumer not only your music, but those of other aspiring musicians — the goal of which was to create a mini-community for all music lovers.

MusicShake also enables users to add their tracks to slideshows and videos, then upload those videos to YouTube or their social network of choice. To date, MusicShake tunes are acting as soundtracks on over 300,000 YouTube videos that have generated over 1 billion page views. Again, this is all free, unless of course you’re looking to use the tracks for commercial purposes, in which case the company charges a reasonable $20 for licensing. (The company recently released its “YouTube Producer” iPhone app, which lets users search for copyright-free music, add to their videos on their iPhone and upload directly to YouTube.)

Naturally, many video and content creators want to add music to their content, and as MusicShake provides a trove of license-free tunes, it’s a great resource to quickly find and upload soundtracks. With this in mind, MusicShake has recently launched a whole new addition to their service that focuses on education — in bringing its service into the classroom. Nearly every school, whether it be elementary, middle, or high school, has media class where students learn to generate video, music, slide shows, etc. — and there’s always musical accompaniment.

Of course, some schools have the funding resources to buy Macs for their classrooms, and thus already have GarageBand in use. Of course, most schools don’t have that budget, and when teachers want to grab music, they’re forced to rely on paying for stock music, which isn’t cheap, or taking their chances with free music.

MusicShake EDU gives students an unlimited supply of music to use in their projects without requiring them to have prior music experience. Songs can be created instantly and used immediately, or students can refine each block in the song; plus, music samples are copyright free. At $499 per year, the service is pretty affordable, especially as it provides unlimited MP3s and WAVs for every student in your school, which, in most cases is less than one dollar per student per year. (It also helps that MusicShake meets the California Learning Resources Network review criteria, meaning it’s approved for social content.)

Next up, MusicShake will be building out an API, so that smaller video-creation services can quickly add tunes from the MusicShake catalog into their content, in addition to focusing on creating an award system to encourage users to return and up the level of stickiness.

MusicShake struggled through the recession, but they’ve seen increased traffic since launching their web app. Bringing the service into the classroom and to small video providers is a great way to increase their reach. We’ll see if it can help turn the startup around.

For more, check out the introductory video below, and let us know what you think.

An startup called tumblecloud is launching the public beta test today for its easy way to create high-quality slideshows.

Founder and CEO Brian Andreas (an artist who also runs the boutique publishing house StoryPeople) describes the company’s “clouds” as a new form digital storytelling, but they’re probably easier to think of as multimedia slideshows. tumblecloud breaks the process down into three steps — grab, mix, and share. You can pull photos, music, and other media from your computer or from other online services; use a simple drag-and-drop interface to assemble everything into a presentation; then share it with other users.

When describing the service, Andreas puts a big emphasis on two aspects — collaboration and “true” multimedia. The collaboration can happen between individuals, where users work together on a single cloud, or share media with one another (one of the most striking clouds created during the private test period mixes photos of the Occupy movement taken by Jessica Lehrman and music by Gabrile Quin, who live on opposite sides of the Untied States). It’s also happening on a community level, because tumblecloud offers a library of Creative Commons-licensed media, which Andreas is hoping users will contribute to.

As for multimedia, Andreas notes that tumblecloud isn’t just about mixing photos and music, but also supports things like websites and PDFs. He contrasts that approach with what he calls more “video-oriented” services (he didn’t mention anyone in particular, but he may have been thinking about Animoto). The point, he says, isn’t just to create a slick-looking video, but rather to incorporate more media types and allow viewers to interact with the individual elements that into the presentations.

For now, tumblecloud is completely free. Andreas says he plans to add a marketplace for different media, which is one business model. The company might also start charging for extra storage or other services, or it might also make money by accepting sponsored content.

PowerVoice, a new social media marketing company founded by former federal consultant at IBM Ryan Landau and ex-Googler (and brother) Andrew Landau, is launching today. The service compensates users for sharing brands’ messages on social networks in a somewhat similar fashion to Adly. However, unlike Adly, it’s not focused solely on enabling celebrities and other public figures to earn additional income through recommendations. Instead, on PowerVoice, anyone can sign up and get paid to promote brands’ ads.

Of course, since PowerVoice users aren’t celebrities, they’re not going to receive hundreds or thousands of dollars for each brand message they choose to share – the payouts are much smaller. But, says COO Andrew Landau, “we’re democratizing the social media space, so people who don’t have the time or the resources to connect with these brands, and may not have an agent….can come to PowerVoice and get paid.”

The company has been operating a private beta since Thanksgiving, and now has a network of a couple thousand users who are sharing these advertisements on Facebook and Twitter. The types of ads PowerVoice has seen to be most effective involve “like” campaigns (i.e., to “like” a brand on Facebook) and video views, but a brand can determine the message they want to promote, be it a discount, contest, coupon or some other promotion. Brands can also control the commission rates by offer, but PowerVoice says it prefers to give a 60% to 80% cut to its publishers.

PowerVoice has around 30 companies in its system, but most have come through affiliate networks to start. These include Starbucks, Sheraton, American Greetings and W Hotels, for example. Andrew Landau was previously account executive at Google’s Affiliate Network, so this is an area he’s familiar with.

Users have to earn at least $50 before receiving a payout, and so far “dozens” have been paid, with some earning “hundreds of dollars,” says Andrew. The average active user earns around $55 per month. In other words, a bit of extra income, but don’t quit your day job.

Also important to the company are disclosures – that is, users must say that what they’re posting is an ad. On Twitter, this is done via the hashtag “#ad,” while on Facebook the text includes “sponsored promotion.” Messages can also be shared through email, blogs and forums.

To combat the obvious challenge of dealing with fraud and spam, as is case on any platform where money is being handed out in exchange for clicks, the company is using technology from Cactus Media, a product that two of PowerVoice’s investors, David  Weinberg and Aaron Weitzman, happen to own. PowerVoice also sees the majority of its signups via Facebook Connect, which helps to verify a user’s identity. (Plus, spamming your friends is not only bad business, it’s bad for your reputation.)

Speaking of reputation, UserVoice will very soon begin tiering the system based on user’s Klout scores where higher payouts would be given to those with higher scores. Thankfully, this may be implemented alongside other metrics, so even those with low scores but high engagement levels will have similar opportunities as the highly ranked. This is interesting, though, because it’s one of the first companies to really use Klout’s scores in something that leads to tangible rewards outside of Klout itself: i.e., cold, hard cash.

It should be noted that this whole thing has been tried before, not only with Adly, but also Twittad and Magpie (acquired by another – IZEA’s Sponsored Tweets), for example. In addition, Adly once operated very much like PowerVoice is proposing to do now, before switching to the far more lucrative celebrity endorsement market. Of course, this was in the pre-Klout era. With “real” metrics (err, Klout scores) in tow, plus support for additional social networks (yes, Google+ is coming soon), PowerVoice hopes to raise itself above its competitors.

PowerVoice currently has seven angel investors, mostly from Detroit, and has raised an undisclosed amount of seed funding. It’s now looking to raise additional funding.

LuxeYard, a luxury home furnishings and decor site, is launching its e-commerce platform today, but adding a twist to the flash sales model.

Similar to sites line One Kings Lane and Gilt, LuxeYard offers up to 70 percent discounts on furniture, home decor and other accessories in daily sales. However, LuxeYard also offers what it calls ‘concierge buying,’ which allows members to request items they would like to purchase at a discounted price by posting photos to LuxeYard’s Facebook page. The most popular product will be voted up by members, and the startup’s experts will attempt to source either the exact product, or a similar product and offer this on sale to members.

LuxeYard members also have the ability to push product prices down for certain items by using Facebook and Twitter to encourage others to purchase a product, which will drive the price down. For example, members may purchase an item for $100; share the information on Facebook encouraging others to buy the same product; and two days later find out that customer demand, which they helped drive, dropped the price to $50. Everyone who purchased the Group Buy Item will pay the final lowest price.

The site also includes a set of featured design professionals and influencers provide design curation and offers aesthetic insights, product recommendations and special events exclusively for LuxeYard members. Consumers can also enter room dimensions and/or upload a
photo of the room in which they’d place the piece to get a sense for how it fits with the current décor and layout before they buy.

LuxeYard has raised $3.5 million in funding from a group of undisclosed investors.

Jon Fisher, co-founder and CEO of startup CrowdOptic, just told me that he has invested another $500,000 so that the company can build out what it’s calling a “new social medium.”

The idea is to create automatic clusters of people based on their location and line of sight. I met with the CrowdOptic team this weekend — they demonstrated the technology by whipping out their phones and taking photos of the same spot off San Francisco’s Embarcadero. CrowdOptic can detect when people are all looking at the same thing, and it sends a notification asking whether they want to form a discussion group, where they can share photos and comments.

The company actually launched in 2010 as a photo service for event organizers, and customers already include the Bank of the West Classic tennis tournament and the Infineon Raceway. Then it became more interested in augmented reality, delivering relevant content based on where your phone was pointing. Now it’s using that technology for more social purposes. This should still appeal to event organizers — it’s a way to help attendees interact with each other, and to deliver targeted messages and ads. (Other customers are using it as a way to coordinate their security, the company said.)

COO Jim Kovach told me that sports seem like an obvious match (after all, he used to be a linebacker for the San Francisco 49ers), but the vision is broader. For example, he said CrowdOptic is looking to partner with large Internet properties to provide instant crowdsourced content. Over email, Fisher was even more grandiose, saying that he wants CrowdOptic to be the underlying technology any time “crowds aim phones to memorialize happenings.”

Even though CrowdOptic isn’t trying to market an app directly to consumers, the demo reminded me of the first incarnation of mobile startup Color, which also allowed users to share photos based on proximity. Color flopped and is now working on a new product.

When I brought it up, CFO Tony Wu joked that CrowdOptic could almost be seen as the “anti-Color,” since it only raised $1.5 million in funding ($2 million with the new investment), compared to Color’s $41 million. He also argued that, unlike Color, CrowdOptic is connecting people who should have real reasons to interact — after all, they’re attending the same event, and they’re looking at the same thing.

Fisher also noted that he had only raised $3 million when his startup Bharosa was acquired by Oracle.

In July, we wrote about an ongoing case wherein a woman accused of fraud was being asked by the prosecution to provide the password to access her computer’s data, which otherwise would remain encrypted and unreadable, weakening their case. They got permission to compel her to reveal the password, but the defense said that it was unconstitutional to do so, as providing that information was essentially self-incriminating testimony.

The defense and the prosecution disagree, there is no single compelling precedent, and even the Supreme Court, which has weighed in on a similar topic, isn’t quite sure what to make of the situation. So, doing what Judges are made to do, Judge Robert Blackburn made a decision: “the Fifth Amendment is not implicated by requiring production of the unencrypted contents of the Toshiba Satellite M305 laptop computer.”

His opinion, which is embedded at the end of the post, is not a poorly informed or foolish one (like some inevitably are in tech), though it isn’t very transparent. One earlier decision in a child pornography case, though the situations are not particularly analogous, is more lucid and describes its reasoning in more detail, something that may be important in a potentially major precedent-setting case.

The interpretation he gives, notably, eschews analogies (the battle has been over whether providing the password is an expressive act or more akin to simply handing over a key) and sticks to what he feels are the more relevant legal realities: the location and nature of the data is known by the prosecution, the owner of the data and the laptop have also been established, and whatever documents are discovered will be authenticated not by the defendant’s production of the password but by other means. To him, it seems, everyone is arguing over the wrong aspects of the case. It’s a practical decision, but because it is so practical (and specific to this case), it probably won’t live long as a serious precedent.

The question everybody is asking is not whether Ramona Fricosu will be convicted of fraud, but how access to data should be considered in a courtroom. It’s long, long past time when this should have been settled definitively.

But the debate over whether access is “more like” one thing or another, over which there are precedents already, doesn’t seem very forward-thinking. This doesn’t seem like an issue that’s going to be settled by this kind of decision, unfortunately, because as the debate shows, nothing is really an adequate comparator for something like a password to an encrypted drive. The parallels are only superficial, and building legal precedent on superficial similarities just because it’s easier for some people to grasp is no way to build the future.

Unsurprisingly, Fricosu’s lawyers are fighting the decision, asking for a stay of execution on the order so they can take it to the next level, the 10th Circuit Court of Appeals. No doubt the debate will go on for some time, but this case will certainly be considered one of the key documents.

The Consumer Electronics Show, that turgid January gadget fest in Las Vegas, has been widely seen in the industry as a great place to show off your wares if you’re not Apple. But is that true? SigFig, the stealth investing startup that’s growing out of stock portfolio manager Wikinvest, has run some numbers on the market performance of the show’s big-company attendees during the event.

The main trend is pretty clear: there’s lots of buying and selling, but no significant gains. And actually, losses are not uncommon.

This data, I should note before getting further, is from SigFig users — a relatively small but statistically significant group of retail investors who use nearly 70 brokerages to handle stock sales and purchases. The overall market data also shows similar big volume changes, but is partially obscured by the large-block trading activities of institutional investors (which in many cases happens for other reasons).

So, in other words, for all the money and time that electronics companies put into the event, they’re not winning many more believers than they’re losing. Maybe it’s just what they’re announcing that isn’t building enough new enthusiasm to drive prices up? Maybe it’s these sorts of data points that helped convince Microsoft to dial down its participation this year?

Now that all the trades have closed from that week, here’s more detail on how this year looked for some top publicly-traded attendees versus previous years.

Intel, which makes semiconductor chips used by many of the electronics companies in attendance, grabs the spotlight every year with a CES keynote about its plans for the future. This year, on keynote day, its stock price jumped a relatively small $0.82 per share — even though shares bought increased by 129% and shares sold also rose by 123% among retail investors on SigFig. Overall, the stock closed down 2.22% by the end of the four-day show. In 2010, meanwhile, the stock ended up 0.48% on top of an 1402% increase in volume, and in 2011 it ended down 0.05% with a 215% increase in volume.

Google, whose Android operating system can be found in more and more devices at the show, has also not seen big gains among SigFig investors. On its biggest day of trading during the show — 90.64% above the average volume — its shares fell by 0.6%. In 2010 it grew by 1.4% during a 374.84% volume increase, and in 2011 it fell by 1.21% with its trading volume at 369.7% above normal.

What about other firms with a big presence at CES?

AT&T’s CES keynote on the 9th mostly failed to register this year, with only minimal volume increase to show — the volume of those buying actually dropped by over 13%, and continued falling during the conference. Verizon, meanwhile, had purchases surge by 1209% (there’s no decimal missing from that number). The price, however, only increased by 0.82%. Both carriers had volume increased around 100% in the past two years, with AT&T losing 2.77% in 2011, and Verizon losing 3.82%.

More analysis is needed to fully understand what’s going on here, like a broader view of all publicly traded companies that have news at the event, over more years. But I have a bit of speculation, following on my earlier point. Maybe CES is really good at generating attention for these companies, but their own announcements are perenially underperforming the hype? If that’s the case, there’s nothing wrong with attending CES, it’s what you bring with you to launch that matters.

By the way, TechCrunch made the CES trek in a big way this year, and generated all sorts of coverage about the events whether it helped the above companies’ stock prices or not. Check out our hub site here for all the details.

Microsoft Points are dead! Or, they’re dying. At least according to InsideMobileApps. Dead, dying, being taken to a farm, whatever — but man do I hope it’s true.

Citing a “source with knowledge of the company’s decision”, InsideMobileApps says Microsoft is planning to ditch the Points system on Windows Phone (where it’s only used for in-app purchases, oddly), Zune Marketplace, and Xbox Live by the end of the year. Of course, given that it’s January, “by the end of the year” is about as precise as saying “before the end of time” — but in the end, what matters is Points going away.

For anyone who’s somehow managed to avoid Microsoft’s silly-ass points system, here’s the idea: instead of buying content with, you know, money, you buy content with Microsoft Points. Points… which you buy with money.

Imagine you’ve gone to the store, and you want to buy 2 pineapples. You take them to the counter, and the guy at the register says “Great! That’ll be 7 bloo-blops.”

“What? I don’t have any bloo-blops. I only have dollars. Can I just give you dollars?”

“No. You have to give me bloo-blops. Fortunately, I have this pack of 10 bloo-blops right here.”

“..But I thought you said I only needed 7 bloo-blops?”

“You do. But I only sell them in packs of 10. Don’t worry! You’ll have 3 bloo-blops left over to buy anything you want!”

“Oh, okay. What can I buy with 3 bloo-blops?”

“Nothing.”

See? Garbage.

Now, there’s some logic behind the point system — at least for Microsoft. It lets developers set one “price” (in points) globally — if something is 400 points in the US, it’s 400 points in Japan (though what 400 points works out to obviously varies by country.) But it also totally works out in Microsoft’s favor: the dollars-to-points ratio (80 points per $1) makes things seem a bit cheaper than they actually are, and that you always seem to have points left over after each purchase (but never enough to buy anything else) means pretty much everyone with an Xbox is constantly floating Microsoft a few pennies. (It also lets Microsoft cut down on credit card fees, which isn’t a bad thing.)

With all that said, it’s got one other major effect: making me not buy things. Of the many dozens of games I’ve gone to grab, the movies I’ve wanted to rent, and the stupid hats I would’ve bought for my avatar, I’ve ended up buying two — all because I didn’t want to deal with adding more silly bloo-blops Points. I know I’m not the only one.

Causes launched with the Facebook Platform back in 2007 as a way to help friends more easily campaign for the social causes of their choice. The app benefited from getting in early on the platform, being the only one in its category (other developers were building poking apps or games at the time), and from having a tight relationship with Facebook via cofounder Sean Parker.

The product, though, has lost some momentum over the years — at least until a multi-part revamp that the company is in the middle of pushing through. Most strikingly, the Facebook canvas app no longer exists. Instead, as of this past fall, everything is now on Causes.com.

But, consider this a preview of sorts. The company is planning to roll out major new features in the coming months, with a full launch planned for mid-March.

“When [Facebook’s] platform launched in 2007, we made a bet that for Causes to get above the sheep-throwing and zombie-killing noise, we needed to look like an app that was made by Facebook, as natural to use as their Photos or Events apps,” product vice president Chris Chan tells me. ”This was the right call then.”

Even so, he explains, the product got too focused on viral growth and not enough on overall quality. “As the years have progressed the web has gotten a lot more social, and it makes more sense to have our own brand and site. We can still be ‘on’ Facebook in the sense that we plug into News Feed and fan pages, but having our own brand gives us full, top to bottom control over the product experience, something that we think is critical for building the best tool possible for organizers to create campaigns for social change.”

The site today still relies on Facebook as much as ever, but as an Open Graph app developer (as it announced last week) If you’re signed in to Facebook, you can sign in to Causes with the click of a button, and easily do things like invite all of your Facebook friends, or just the ones who have installed Causes at some point in the past. And because it’s an Open Graph app developer, the company is now able to share your activity back to your Timeline and your friends’ Tickers, in addition to the news feed, notifications, etc.

The more dramatic changes have been in what else the site offers. Chan has been leading an overhaul that for the last six months has focused on the user experience, cutting underperforming features, introducing usability testing and other unglamorous but crucial aspects of product development.

The design has been streamlined from the clunky-feeling app to focus on the key aspects of Causes today. A big rotating image shows major Causes across the top of the site, with recent activity by your Facebook friends underneath. The search bar, along with links to your profile and to finding or starting a Cause are located across the top navigation bar. To their right, you’ll find an image of yourself (your Facebook photo) as well as the amount of money you’ve raised and the number of actions you’ve taken. Below on the right-hand side, you’ll see a link to your profile, your friends’ new Causes, and the Causes raising the most money on the site.

The focus, meanwhile, has shifted more to quality awareness-building, away from the promise of fundraising (which has to date not always yielded the funds that many users had hoped for). If you create a new Cause now, you’ll also see some of its newer features added in, like pledges, petitions and polls — and, if you’re a nonprofit, you’ll see that the organizing tools that it had originally launched separately have also been integrated.

While the site is still full of purely altruistic causes, like Village Enterprises’ funding campaign to help support entrepreneurs in developing countries, Causes itself is also available for corporate clients who want to get in on the doing good thing. You know, the companies with lots of fancy-sounding efforts about Corporate Social Responsibility, that often produce less than clear results. Take AT&T, for example. The perennial under-performer in customer telecom satisfaction ratings has a few credible uses of Causes going on. One is a quiz that builds awareness around wasted cell phones — answer it and the company will donate $2 to The Nature Conservancy. Another use is a pledge not to text while driving, where the company promises to donate $2 to “educate drivers” for every action.

Evolving along with Facebook’s platform has brought Causes from being a lightweight app to a socially-powered web site. On the business side, the company is now monetizing through the corporate clients, as well as ads. As a product, it is also maturing as the web wakes up to the true power of online activism. The past year has been full of examples showing how online campaigns can force governments, corporations and other powerful entities to change their decisions, most recently with online activism helping to convince congresspeople to delay SOPA and PIPA, two controversial anti-piracy bills.

Causes traffic, which has fallen after the viral early years of the platform, has already been on the rise in recent months due to the changes the company has been pushing out. As it continues to add features and refine how web users engage with it, Causes is particularly well-placed to be a go-to tool for a new era of internet activism.

In preparation for a ramp up of its monetization efforts and its first beta phase of self serve ads, Twitter has bought security startup Dasient, which specializes in malware and fighting spam. The team will be integrated into “revenue engineering,” a.k.a the ad product team under directors Kevin Weil and Alex Roetter.

From the Dasient blog:

“Since its inception, Dasient has been focused on solving web-scale security problems involving malware and other types of online abuse. In 2009, Dasient launched its web anti-malware platform, capable of scanning URLs and websites for the presence of harmful content. In 2010, Dasient launched the industry’s first anti-malvertising service to protect ad networks and publishers from the scourge of malicious ads. Over the last year, we have been very active in securing the ads and content of the some of the industry’s largest ad networks and web sites.”

Twitter advertising’s most likely use of a full staff trained in anti-spam and anti-malware strategy is to protect a product (like Twitter’s self-serve ads for example) from fraud and attempts at abuse. It was a large acquisition according to sources, in terms of sheer size of the team.

The last acquisition Twitter “revenue engineering” made was AdGrok, back in June, and curation tool Summify just got snapped up by a different Twitter department last week. Dasient itself was founded by Googlers Neil Daswani, Ameet Ranadive and Shariq Rizvi and backed by over $4 million from Google Ventures, Benhamou Global Ventures, Floodgate, Radar Partners and others pre-acquisition.

A couple years back, I got to take part in the production of a music video being shot locally on a RED and filmed partially on board a custom helicopter build. It was interesting watching the operator and director work using the rig, but I was struck by how very specialized the copter was. Built from scratch by AerialPan Imaging, it was far from a personalized or affordable solution.

A new Kickstarter project called eye3 intends to make just that: an affordable aerial platform that can be automated and controlled from afar, yet is robust and customizable enough to meet the demands of serious photographers.

There are plenty of rigs out there, but they tend to be extremely expensive, often only available for rent, and not all are built with certain requirements or limits in mind. The six-rotor eye3 is designed for stable, user- or computer-controlled flight, on-board processing and location management, with up to ~12 pounds of camera and lens on board.

Some assembly will be required: it’s shipped as a kit and you’ll need to do a little soldering, but the electronics and main components are all ready to go. The hard part — designing and testing the rig and flight software — has been done.

It also runs in tandem with APM2, a high-quality (they say, and I’m sure they are right) and open-source flight planning and tracking platform built for this sort of thing. They aim to sell the basic kit for $999, with another $2500 package that includes a bunch of the accessories you might need or want.

[via ExtremeTech]

Oh god! Megaupload has fallen and its brethren are dropping like flies! The age of the cyberlocker is passing. No longer will we be able to host a large file somewhere for free and have someone else download it.

Actually, it’s not quite so dire, but it’s true that a number of major file hosts have either shut down, closed part of their service, or changed the way they operate. It’s not the first time that file-sharing tools have received a shock to the system, though, and this little contraction is less the end of an era and more a winnowing of the herd. That’s a good thing.

A few sites have been tracking the changes and shutdowns. At Fileserve and Filesonic you can only download items you’ve uploaded yourself. Sites like Filejungle, 4shared, and Uploadstation are deleting premium accounts and affiliate programs. Uploaded.to has banned all US IP addresses. And the list goes on. There are dozens, some taking more serious actions than others. TorrentFreak has been keeping track, and the ever-zealous commenters there are full of information as well.

Services that have operated more cautiously from the beginning, things like Yousendit and Mediafire, aren’t feeling the heat. The restrictions they’ve placed on their service, and their more rigorous attention to enforcing copyright infringement, means that they can go on as they have done for years. It’s sites that have built a model with sharing as the currency that are spooked. That just means that this model is done for. It was never going to last forever. Neither did Napster.

But the demand for file hosting isn’t going away any time soon. Until point to point transfers and personal sharing via one’s own server are practical solutions, file lockers are a great solution. Where there’s demand, companies will try to fill it and will compete on business models by which they can generate money from that demand. If those models stop generating money (demand dries up or the tech is obsoleted), the sites move on. And if those models turn out to be questionably legal (as in the case of Megaupload and imitators), the sites also move on.

What will the next generation of file lockers be like? The differences will be protective, shielding link pages from Google, streamlining the “report this file” process, building a wall between the site administrators and the users’ activity so they can’t be held liable. Building your site carefully around the current reach of the law has always been the rule, and it will continue to be the rule going forward. Sites that found themselves in danger of being included in copycat takedowns just acted to preserve the future of their business.

For the present, if you need to send a file too big for email to a few people, there are plenty of services that let you do it. The systematized, compensated share networks that tacitly relied on illegal files to bring in traffic were a form that is being phased out, that’s all. Like so many services that have had to reinvent themselves in the face of looming illegality, they’ll come back stronger and better in a few months and this old model, lucrative as it was for many, will be forgotten.