Category: Tech news

Pioneer’s AppRadio was pretty darn cool when it first launched and now there’s another version with improved apps, improved UI, and improved hardware. We hung out with Pioneer at CES yesterday and here is the raw feed featuring Pioneer’s products including car stereos, AppRadio, iPhone interfaces for your whip.

Every business seems to want its own mobile software, and now Pyxis Mobile is transforming to help companies build apps for themselves. Previously, Pyxis created apps for enterprise financial services companies, but today pivots to offer its app development platform directly to clients. The company has rebranded itself as Verivo Software, and taken a $17 million funding round from Commonwealth Capital Ventures, as well as existing investors Ascent Venture Partners and Egan-Managed Capital.

The new funding will build on the combined $7.15 million secured in Pyxis Mobile’s Series A and B rounds. The money will go towards marketing, product development, recruiting, APIs, and growing its global presence with new offices in Europe and Asia.

Rather than having to work with an outside vendor to issue updates and support, Verivo’s platform will let clients take care of everything in house. Clients can build apps with a drag-and-drop interface, deploy them across device types and operating systems, and manage functionality changes.

The shift from Pyxis Mobile to Verivo has been 16 months in the making, so the platform has already been utilized by several clients beyond financial services. Sales companies like Bunzl have built field operations apps for their employees, Indiana State University offered a campus information app to students, and health tech companies like Healthrageous have used apps to retain customers. Other clients include Allstate Insurance, Halliburton, and Oracle.

Enterprise mobility software demand is booming. Verivo saw license bookings increase by 220 percent and revenue run rate up 50 percent in 2011. By distributing the development power, Verivo can improve its platform in a scalable way instead of fixing the apps of individual clients.

Gary Shapiro, President of the Consumer Electronics Association

Every year we try our best to talk to Gary Shapiro, the man behind Consumer Electronic Show. He’s a guy who at least appears to genuinely wants to see big and small companies succeed. Last year we spoke about his book, The Comeback: How Innovation Will Restore the American Dream, that calls America to action. But this year, with Microsoft leaving CES and the show seemingly shrinking, we had a bit more to talk about.

Interestingly enough, Mr. Shapiro states loud and clear Microsoft isn’t leaving CES en mass like the Internet would have everyone to believe. They will keynote another CES, he said. But for the short term, it’s better for CES, the attendees and also Microsoft if the Ballmer steps down from the podium for a bit.

Well, you know, you can watch the video above and see for yourself. If nothing else, watch as I flub my way through the first part of the interview. Of course I know about Parrot and their awesome A.R. Drone.

I’ve been meaning to write about this for awhile now, but I’ve been a bit under the weather and, well, email is not a subject I always enjoy — in discussion or in practice. Yes, as many have written before, we have a love-hate relationship with email, which has been shown in even starker relief with the redesign of Gmail.

We first wrote about ToutApp back in June of last year and again in November, because they are a young startup (backed by some smart people) trying to give us a shot at greater email productivity.

Put simply, ToutApp integrates with Gmail and scans your inbox to parse through emails to identify the most commonly-sent mass emails, then creates a dynamic template for that email chain, allowing users to autofill recipients, auto-CC, attach files, etc. ToutApp also lets your outbound emails be tracked both for views and clickthroughs, so that you know when the recipient of the email has opened it and is planning a response.

It may sound invasive to some, but it’s a great tool, and you have to respect Tout Founder TK Kader’s perspective on email and entrepreneurship. Those put off by this scanning may balk at Tout’s year-end offer, but for those who receive a lot of email, I highly recommend it.

ToutApp has been offering something called “Your 2011 Emails In Review” that gives you a thorough look at everything from how many emails you received versus how many you sent, to what time of day you spend most time in your email, to the top recipients of your emails. More than 10,000 people have jumped on the bandwagon, which shows that this has already been a big success, publicity-wise for Tout.

Yes, you have to give Tout access to your email inbox, and as I said, some may balk at this. But if you’re willing, in less than 72 hours, Tout can give you a fairly complete set of analytics on your email habits. Catching a glimpse into your email activity can give you a better shot at productivity, efficiency, and, perhaps, a peace of mind. Perhaps not the latter, but at least your email will get a thorough vetting.

It’s nice to know what time of day I’m at my busiest, what day of the week, what buzzwords appear most in my email chains, and who is the unfortunate soul who receives most of my email communications. (Your mom!) This can help improve working relationships, your relationship with your inbox, and perhaps even with yourself.

I saw nearly 70,000 emails in 2011, and that doesn’t include my personal email. All in all, at over 100,000 emails, I saw how much people respond to the emails I wrote, and had the time for a bit of personal reflection on how best to optimize this percentage, along with how frequently I’m responding.

Unfortunately, Tout’s Year In Review is only for Gmail and Google Apps users, but it’s worth a look for those Googlers out there, and it’s a great complement to ToutApp’s freemium CRM email service (and $1 iPhone app). Check it out, and let the emailing begin — with improvements for 2012.

Following its November launch, OnSwipe competitor (and TechCrunch Disrupt finalist) Pressly is bringing another major media outlet’s content to the tablet interface. The company is today announcing the launch of a new publication called Electionism. The app was built for the Media Lab, an internal product innovation team inside The Economist Group, which includes The Economist, CQ Roll Call and other businesses.

The new app offers coverage of the 2012 election in the U.S., including insight, analysis and other content from The Economist and CQ Roll Call. A section called the “Latest from Twitter” aggregates tweets from candidates, political pundits, publishers and other organizations, while a “Noted Elsewhere” section allows Economist journalists to share links to what they are reading.

Like some other media outlets, including the iPad-only The Daily or the Financial Times’ own app, the Electionism app was built for tablet computers – it doesn’t exist as a newspaper or in any sort of printed format. In addition, if you try to visit the site from a desktop web browser, you’re alerted to the fact that the app is for tablets only, and pointed over to The Economist instead.

The difference between something like The Daily and Electionism, however, is that the latter is an HTML5 web app – not an iOS app or Android app built using native code and sold in an app store. Pressly CTO Peter Kieltyka previously referred to his company’s product as “Sencha for tablets,” meaning that Pressly is meant to serve as a framework for building HTML5 web applications for the increasingly mobile-optimized web.

The current version of the app supports the iPad (iOS 4.3+), the Samsung Galaxy Tab and the Kindle Fire, the company says.

Earlier this month, The Financial Times Group, which owns a 50% share of The Economist Group, acquired the development firm that built its own HTML5 web app, a move indicative of publishers’ growing interest in HTML5 . Pressly’s other big customers are also publishers, including The Toronto Star and Ziff Davis, which recently brought its tablet shopping experience Logicbuy to the iPad.

If you’re using a supported tablet, you can view Electionism in action here.

Editor’s note: Guest contributor Frederic Lardinois is a tech writer who blogs at SiliconFilter

Google announced the next iteration of its social search initiative this morning. Google Fellow Amit Singhal introduced this as “search, plus your world.” In reality, of course, this is pure hyperbole. The only source of social data Google uses to personalize its search results is Google+, which despite its success, likely doesn’t represent “your world” very well yet at this point. Indeed, unless you and your friends are very active on Google+, there’s a good chance you won’t see too many of the new personal results for the time being.

In the early days of social search on Google, the company used data from third-party service like Twitter, Facebook and others. Google let all of these deals expire in favor of fully concentrating on Google+. Google told Search Engine Land’s Danny Sullivan that it would would work with others if they were willing to give Google deep access to their data. The chance that Facebook, which already has a good relationship with Bing, would give Google full access to its data – and maybe even its users private data – isn’t highly unlikely.

That’s Not “My World”

For the time being then, Google’s interpretation of what “your world” looks like will remain very limited – maybe even to the point where those personal results you do see aren’t even that useful because almost all your real friends are on Facebook and Twitter instead of Google+.

Google has said that “Google+ is Google itself.” It’s becoming a central part of every single aspect of what Google does. In a way, Google is betting the company on the success of Google+. Search, then, is just a logical next step for adding Google+, but it’s also one of the best places to promote it. Google+ profiles are now prominently featured in autocomplete and the names of publishers, Google+ avatars and links to their profiles appear next to articles in your search results, for example. Google will also heavily promote the profiles of some celebrities on Google+ when you search for certain topics.

Facebook, when it announced its new timeline feature, said that its service is now about sharing “the story of your life.” Google thinks Google+ represents “your world.” It may just be semantics, but at times, it feels like these services fundamentally misunderstand our relationship with them and the people we “friend” on their platforms. Maybe it’s time for the big social networks to acknowledge that the things we share on their services just represent a small sliver of our online personas and are neither fully representative of who were are online or offline. Google saying that Google+ represents “your world” is yet another example of this.

Hands On With The Parrot AR Drone 2

It’s CES time again and we’re out in full force with the live video and the streaming and the interviews. Here are some highlights from the past weekend when we interviewed a number of CES notables as well as attending some of the major press conferences of the week including Samsung, Sony, Nokia, and Intel.

We were also live last night at Digital Experience where we saw a pet tracker and a glass-backed laptop.

An Interview With Eton Radios

Chilling With One Laptop per Child

Lifestyle Connect by Zomm

Exclusive: We’ve received more details on how PayPal will be scaling its in-store payments technology at major retailers. As we reported last week, PayPal is currently testing the mobile payments and point-of-sale integrations at Home Depot on a friends and family basis, in five stores. Today, we’ve learned that PayPal is partnering with AJB Software, a company that provides point-of-sale software to large brick and mortar retailers, to integrate the online payments giant’s technology into their offerings.

AJB basically provides a communications gateway that connects a retailer’s point-of-sale system with financial institutions. Over 140 large-scale retailers including Kohl’s and BestBuy use AJB’s software to manage payments. In a nutshell, the partnership allows an easy way for big box retailers to offer consumers a way to pay via PayPal in their stores.

AJB will build a native PayPal interface within its integrated payment solutions platform. The interface can then be made available to AJB’s retail customer base. AJB’s Retail Transaction Switch will provide the framework to allow the millions of PayPal account numbers to be processed as financial tender by existing and future customers of AJB. Similar to the Home Depot integration, PayPal members will have the option of paying for merchandise by swiping a PayPal Access Card or by entering the mobile telephone number and password associated with their accounts.

The integration with AJB’s offerings will roll out in the first quarter of this year, says the companies.

While it’s still unclear the exact nature of how PayPal’s in-store integrations will work, the bigger vision of brick and mortar partnerships are set to include location-based offers, making payments accessible from any device and offering more payments flexibility to customers after they’ve checked out.

Users will also have the ability to access realtime store inventory, receive in-store offers, and real-time location-based advertising from stores. PayPal will also help retailers use location and transaction data to improve the experience for consumers.

For PayPal, this is one way that the company can scale the reach of its in-store payment system without having to partner individually with each retailers. PayPal’s Anuj Nayar tells me that the Home Depot test program was individually established (not via AJB) but going forward, PayPal will be making a number of similar payments ecosystem deals in the coming months to expand the reach of the new payments option.

In terms of specific scale, AJB has the potential of extending PayPal to 250,000 point-of-sale terminals at large retailers nationwide. For PayPal, it makes sense to create partnerships like these to make it easier for retailers to simply plug the system into their existing AJB integrations. But PayPal will also need to educate larger retailers on why it is beneficial to implement the new payments system in their point-of-sale terminals.

PayPal has already started showcasing its technology for retailers and the press over the past few months, and considering PayPal’s 100 million-plus userbase, and growing revenue, the payments giant shouldn’t have too much of an uphill battle convincing retailers that the option makes sense for consumers.

The Daily, News Corp’s tablet news reader app, will no longer be iPad-only. A deal has been struck with Verizon to pre-install an Android version of the app on the Samsung Galaxy Tab 10.1 this month, with more Verizon Android devices to receive The Daily in the future. Verizon customers will get week’s free trial of the app before the $4 a week / $40 a year subscription cost kicks in. This distribution deal could significantly increase The Daily’s readership and sales by relieving Android users from having to go out and download it.

Existing Galaxy Tab 10.1 users will receive the app bundled with a software update this month, while new buyers will see it on their home screens. The Samsung Galaxy Tab 7.7 has been confirmed as one of the next devices to come with The Daily pre-installed. The Daily hit 1 million downloads in May about 4 months after launch, and was the 3rd highest grossing iPad app of 2011 without being pre-installed. This bodes well for the Android sales from this distribution deal.

There’s no word from News Corp as to when or if Android device owners on other carriers will gain access to The Daily. Presumably if the app has been successfully ported to Android, the only thing stopping wider distribution is an exclusivity deal with Verizon. The iPad exclusivity deal lasted about a year, so it could be 6 months or a year before AT&T, Sprint, and T-Mobile customers gain access to Murdoch’s news reader.

Back in late November I wrote about a walkie-talkie mobile app called Voxer that had looked like it was starting to break into the big leagues of mobile communication. Since then, it has, at various points passing a few competing walkie-talkie app startups… and also Facebook, Skype, and most other mobiles apps for that matter, on both iOS and Android.

It’s been among the top three top apps in the social networking category on both iOS and Android over the past month and a half or so here in the US. That’s included the #1 spot on iOS for 25 of those days and #1 on Android for 22 of them. It’s also regularly been in the top 25 overall in the app stores, only getting temporarily displaced by a rash of heavily marketed games for a few days here and there over the holidays.

Beyond app store rankings, I’ve also been hearing that downloads have been averaging around 200,000 per day. Company vice president of growth Gustaf Alstromer confirms this range, saying that the “number changes every day but that’s in the ballpark.”

What’s driving all the new growth and usage? People who want the walkie-talkie social experience like what Nextel phones used to offer, where you push a button on the interface to stream a quick message to a friend or group. Because you’re basically just recording short clips of yourself, other people can go back and listen to the recordings later on if they’re in the middle of something else. Think of it as the voice version of text messages, in a way that won’t cost you minutes on your phone plan.

The app appears to have first taken off with young people in black communities in Cleveland and other US cities, with other users around the world hearing about it and joining since then. It’s been getting a few media hits — celebrities like Soulja Boy and Kevin Durant have talked about it, and passionate users have written songs about it. CNN also aired a segment on it a few days ago, where the cable news serviced interviewed founder Tom Katis about how the app came out of his experiences as a special forces communication specialist in Afghanistan — he needed a better way to help people communicate in the heat of battle.

Voxer has since gone global, and is currently among the top 25 social networking apps in more than 60 markets, according to app tracking service App Annie.

On the backend, infrastructure service providers Joyent and Basho Technologies have also been working to support the growth, with the latter recently issuing a press release bragging about how it has helped Voxer scale up using the open-source Riak database.

Where to, now? It’s too early to say how long it’s going to be a hit. Some users on Twitter claim to be bored already, or annoyed by the spammy way it shows you any Facebook friend or phone book contact who adds it. But the company thinks it’s on the leading edge of a bigger change — Alstromer notes that seven out of the top 15 apps in the social networking category in the app store have voice functionality. “If you get the opportunity to re-invent voice communication beyond the traditional phone call,” he says, “what do you do? Removing the interuptive part of phone calls is a good place to start.”

The app is currently free but the plan is to add some premium features at some point. You can download it for iOS here and for Android here.

Showtime is today joining HBO GO as another premium cable channel that’s bringing its content to mobile devices. Through the new iPad app Showtime Anytime, customers can now watch Showtime’s original programming, including its TV series, movies, sports and documentaries anywhere there’s an Internet connection.

The content is only available for Showtime subscribers, of course, a list which includes just AT&T U-Verse and Verizon FiOS for now. Comcast customers will be able to access Showtime’s content through the Xfinity TV service, but the Showtime Anytime app is “coming soon” for those customers, the company says.

The app provides mobile access to Showtime’s top shows, like Dexter, Weeds, Homeland, Californication, Shameless, Nurse Jackie, The Big C, Episodes, The Borglas and The Real L Word and will offer access to upcoming series like House of Lies and Inside Comedy.

The network’s movies will be available too, starting with The King’s Speech, Blue Valentine, The Hurt Locker, Inglourious Basterds, I Am Number Four, The Twilight Saga: New Moon & Eclipse and others. Sports programming includes Showtime Championship Boxing, Inside NASCAR, Strikeforce Mixed Martial Arts and more.

iPad users can navigate through the app using a “My list” option that lets them create a personalized list of favorite shows and can share their viewing habits by “liking” and “following” their favorite shows on Facebook and Twitter, or posting to either social network from the app’s interface.

The app supports play shifting, too – meaning that it lets you pick up where you left off when you change devices. That will have more impact when the app arrives on the iPhone and Android platforms in early 2012.

You can grab Showtime Anytime for the iPad here on iTunes.

The 8.2-inch Motorola Xyboard. Photo by Jon Snyder/Wired

Motorola’s Droid Xyboard a slick, well-performing tablet that’s easy on the eyes. Too bad it has such a stupid name.

The Android device, which runs on Verizon’s 4G network and is available now in Verizon stores, is actually Motorola’s second shot at the tablet game. The Xyboard is the company’s follow-up to its pricey, not terribly popular Xoom tablet, which was released in February of 2011.

The design has been overhauled to match Motorola’s newest mobile hardware — the tablet has clipped corners like the Droid Razr. The Xyboard comes in both 8.2-inch and 10.1-inch configurations, and on my 8.2-inch tester, the funky corners actually made it more comfortable to hold with one hand.

The back, too, shows some stylistic creativity in the industrial design department. A rubberized outer rim houses a power button and volume rocker, while centered in the back of the tablet is a sheet of dark gray anodized aluminum. The metal plate is held in place by six visible screws — think robot chic. The gummy edge makes it easy to prop the tablet up on a table or desk, or even those fold-out tray tables on the airplane.

While the positioning of the device’s scant buttons makes for a clean appearance, it unfortunately leaves your fingers searching when it comes time to crank up the volume or put the thing to sleep. If each button had a raised icon, like plus, minus and power symbols, I think it’d be easier to use and wouldn’t detract from the aesthetic.

With most tablet manufacturers either going with a large 10-inch stunner, or the 7-inch “really big smartphone” design, the 8.2-inch size is welcome. It’s a good compromise — small enough to wield in one hand with ease (the 0.86-pound weight helps too), yet large enough that watching a full-screen HD video is pleasant. Pair that with Verizon’s 4G speeds, and you’ve got a great portable streaming video platform.

The tablet’s overall experience is smooth, an improvement over many of the past iterations of Honeycomb, which I found to be rather buggy. Perhaps the software engineers just needed some time to stabilize things. Powered by a dual-core 1.2GHz processor with 1GB of RAM, app load times are swift. On-screen animations and swipes between screens within the Honeycomb interface are completely stutter-free.

Unlike HTC and Samsung devices, Motorola’s tablet is not heavily skinned, so your Android OS experience is pretty close to what Google intended, rather than a bogged down, bloated mess. The Xyboard will be eligible for an Ice Cream Sandwich upgrade at some point in the future, but for now, it runs Honeycomb. At least it does it well.

The Xyboard 8.2 has a crisp, bright 1280 x 800 resolution display. The 10.1-inch model has the same resolution, but the 8.2-incher’s screen has a higher pixel density. Unfortunately, that gorgeous, high-res screen eats up battery life. After turning up the brightness to the highest setting, the tablet’s battery life dropped from around 20 percent to around 5 percent in less than an hour. You’ll need to be conscious of your brightness settings if you don’t want your tablet to die on you quickly. Watching a full length film like Terminator on my home Wi-Fi network on Netflix with brightness at about 80 percent, the battery level dropped from full to 50 percent by the movie’s end.

If you’re one of those people who likes to take pictures with their tablet (read: you are a dork), the Xyboard has a 5-megapixel back-facing camera and a 1.3-megapixel webcam on its face. The rear camera’s quality is relatively sub-par compared to what you’d get from comparable cameras, and definitely shoddier than the 8-megapixel cameras standard on the current crop of smartphone handsets. The colors are bright and close to true to life, but the overall images lack sharpness when the flash isn’t used. The camera has an assortment of adjustable settings — white balance, color effects, a scene mode — but it does a good job of picking out what’s best for a shot when you leave everything on automatic. Video quality was also just “meh” — videos taken indoors were noticeably grainy.

Overall, the Xyboard 8.2 is a good smaller tablet, but at $430, you’re paying a premium for the extra screen real estate and smoother experience over a less-expensive 7-inch competitor. Most consumers have proven be happy enough with something half the price, like the Kindle Fire or Nook Tablet, so paying $400 for a tablet, even one this capable and powerful, may seem like overkill.

But if you’re eyeing the Xyboard, you’re not in this crowd. You obviously want something powerful enough to provide a top-notch tablet experience. And yes, the Xyboard is the real deal. It’s a 4G device, it has impressive hardware specs, and it definitely stands above the cheaper tablets. So, it’s a shame that it’s only shipping with Honeycomb instead of Ice Cream Sandwich. That would really make it feel like the extra cost is worth it.

WIRED 8.2-inch size is convenient and easy to hold while staying large enough to enjoy reading full page articles or watching videos on. Pixel-packed display. Decently powerful stereo speakers housed along the shorter edges of the tablet.

TIRED Battery life is pretty weak — around 4 hours for video at the highest brightness setting. Ships with Honeycomb, not ICS (although it is upgradeable). Price is too high.

Photo by Jon Snyder/Wired

Back in college, my friends and I used to frequent a pretty questionable bar. Despite the luxurious interior, drinks were half the cost of booze at the local dive, intimidating bouncers guarded the door but never checked ID, and dozens of not-so-hidden cameras were trained on usually empty tables.

Still, they made mean margaritas and served up some of the best Tex Mex I’ve had east of the Mississippi. Their half-price specials were cheaper than congealed heat-lamp pizza in the school cafeteria. To nobody’s surprise, with no explanation, the place closed up a few months after it opened. My friends and I all came up with our own theories about what purpose the tavern actually served. Those hypotheses varied only in which drugs were being dealt in which parts of the establishment.

With that amateur sleuthing under my belt, I now suggest the DEA get their dogs a-sniffing over at Nissan headquarters.

Why else would Nissan take a supercar, jack it up about six inches, give it the face of a birthing panda and price it under $20,000? There’s only one explanation: The Nissan Juke is a massive money-laundering scheme, meant to conceal losses from a cocaine shipment seized by federal authorities. I’ll attest to it, because after a week with the Juke, I can honestly say that I’ve never had more fun in a new car that cost so little. It’s got to be a scam.

The tester I drove ($23,980) was equipped in SV AWD trim, which means it came with a continuously variable transmission (CVT) and Nissan’s torque-vectoring all-wheel drive, which splits power evenly between not only the front and rear wheels, but also side-to-side across the rear axle. A slew of sensors monitor everything from wheel speed and g-force to yaw rate and your high school GPA to send the right amount of power to each wheel in order to reduce understeer.

Does it work? Incredibly well. No matter how much I tried — and believe me, I tried — I could not get the Juke to lose its composure. Sharp curves? Hit the gas! Wet roads covered in leaves? No problem! Shenanigans in an empty parking lot? Hang on tight! (Just kidding, Nissan.)

The true wonder is that the car handled really well even with the all-wheel drive switched off. Regardless of the drivetrain setup you choose, this thing clings to the road like a sloth clings to a kapok tree, if that sloth were also a cheetah.

I’ll go out on a limb and say that for the 99 percent, the Juke is actually a more desirable car than the famed GT-R, whose freakishly low sub-six-figure sticker price is also evidence of illicit activity. The GT-R is stupid fast, which means you have to be smart about driving it. Any time spent on public roads is an exercise in restraint, the likes of which I haven’t felt since I discovered a closet full of wrapped presents a month before my fifth birthday. (I got a remote-controlled Pontiac Fiero, in case you were wondering.) Move the GT-R’s throttle any more than a third of the way down to the floor and you’ll lose your license and watch your bargain supercar get towed to a police impound yard. Fun? Unbelievably so. But you better have a track to visit on the weekends or the workday slog will feel like some sort of medieval penance. The Juke, on the other hand, is easy to enjoy anywhere. Plus, it costs about a quarter as much as a GT-R, which leaves plenty of money for traffic school and increased insurance premiums.

This is the year millions of owners of so-called feature phones — devices which handle little beyond voice calls, texts, and photos — will finally upgrade to true smartphones.

At least, that’s the hope of Microsoft and Nokia. The two tech giants have been floundering to get a foothold in the U.S. smartphone market ever since the iPhone launched in 2007. The two companies have partnered up to make a more cohesive play in the realm of touchscreens, apps, and streaming media, and this is their most accessible U.S.-bound device so far.

The Nokia Lumia 710 runs the latest version of Microsoft’s Windows Phone 7 operating system. It’s not the beefed-up, feature-filled flagship phone for Windows Phone 7 fans to rally around. We saw that device, the Lumia 800, last month. But in all honesty, the 710 is an absolutely terrific option for the entry-level consumer.

Aside from being 4G, most of its specs tends towards “good enough.” But with a $50 price point and the ability to pair it with a low-cost data plan from T-Mobile, it’s cheap enough that even those living paycheck-to-paycheck wouldn’t bat an eye.

Windows Phone Mango seems like a lightweight OS compared to something like an HTC Sense-skinned Android. Why do I say that? The 710 runs on merely a single-core 1400 MHz Qualcomm processor with 512 MB of SDRAM, and yet the experience is quite smooth — just as you’d expect it would run on stronger hardware.

The 710’s 3.7-inch, 800×480 resolution ClearBlack LCD display isn’t as bright as that of its big sister, the Lumia 800. But unless you held the two Nokias side by side, you wouldn’t really feel like you’re missing anything. Colors are rich and images are sharp. There just isn’t that Pow! you get from something like a Super AMOLED screen.

The Lumia 710 feels almost like a large pebble when you hold it in your hand. The backside is curved and rubberized, which makes for a firm, comfortable grip. Rather than rely on the capacitive touch buttons common to the faces of most Windows Phone and Android devices, the 710 has a (likely more cost-effective) raised gummy button across the bottom of the front of the handset. It acts as a home button among other things. A discrete shutter button and volume rocker grace one side of the device.

Pictures from the 5-megapixel rear-facing camera are about on-par with that of the iPhone 4 (not the 4S). If you prefer to use the hardware shutter button over the onscreen controls, your photos will turn out slightly blurry unless you have an extremely steady hand. The single LED flash is strong. All in all, the camera is good, but not graceful.

Battery life is excellent — under regular use, the phone lasted about two days between charges.

The only quibble I had with this handset as opposed to other Windows Phone devices I’ve encountered was that it often took a few tries to successfully click a link from a tweet or status update in People Hub, as if I needed to tap the link in a particular spot (rather than anywhere on the URL) for the gesture to register.

This phone is proof that you don’t need top-of-the-line tech specs for a great mobile experience. Like the other cheap Windows Phone for T-Mobile, the HTC Radar, it’s good at everything it does, but it’s not out there to wow you. Although it’s targeted at new smartphone converts, in reality, the Nokia 710 is a good option for anyone looking for a phone with a new flavor and a lot of bang for your buck.

WIRED Cheap. Comfortable size, shape and materials. Comes with enough built-in apps and services (ESPN, Netflix, The Weather Channel, My Account) to be convenient, but not overburdened. Comes in black or white.

TIRED Call quality sounds slightly muddy, even though you sound very clear to people on the other end. Can only record video by pressing the hardware button. 8GB of storage, but not expandable — there’s no SD card slot.

Photo by Jon Snyder/Wired

Editor’s note: Contributor Ashkan Karbasfrooshan is the founder and CEO of WatchMojo.  Follow him @ashkan.

Entrepreneurship requires balancing unbridled optimism with delusional foolishness.  Most entrepreneurs are mocked and misunderstood until they are wildly successful, at which point the chorus changes from “good luck with that ‘business’, pal” to “I always believed in ya, buddy!”

Master of your Domain

There is an undeniable appeal to the notion of bootsrapping your company to success without venture capital. While bootstrapping has many advantages aside from control and ownership—such as being master of your domain and giving you the freedom to build your own Xanadu for all stakeholders—the reality is that the disadvantages may be greater. I speak from experience, having bootstrapped my own company, WatchMojo.

Yes, Mo Money = Mo Problems, but Money = Lifeline

Throwing money at problems is usually a short term fix.  By lacking capital, you’re forced to tackle issues head-on and generate real solutions.

But with no safety net (let alone a warchest) on your balance sheet, you can’t really pivot if your business is hitting a wall.  Even if you’re doing well, money is your lifeline, so lacking it may starve even the most promising of bootstrapped companies, preventing you from investing in growth or supporting your clients.  So in a best case scenario, you’re operating with one foot on the pedal with another in the grave.  You’re basically in a perpetual state of fund-seeking, which is far more distracting than being in fundraising mode.

Mind you, we only hear about the wildly successful pivots such as Groupon, not about the hundreds of pivots that fail.  Undoubtedly, some of those earlier models may become successful with time; albeit not big enough by VC definitions.

Give equity to grow equity

Fundraising is an art, and in Silicon Valley, conventional wisdom suggests that you “raise as much money as you can”.  I’ve heard both Marc Andreessen and Jason Calacanis say this and couldn’t help but imagine that Netscape investor Jim Clark said that to Andreessen, whom Calacanis heard it from and who is now passing it on to the next crop of entrepreneurs.

Except raising as much money—or diluting—as much as one can is good for investors but bad for entrepreneurs. No wonder investors say that!  When you’re wandering in the desert for days, you would give anything for that first glass of water, everything after that is a bonus.

But this shines a light on another reality of value creation: you have to ensure that others want to see you succeed and prosper, and the only way to do that is to hand out equity; as John Doerr says “no conflict, no interest”.

Meet the Board: Your More Objective Bad Cop

Once you have investors on board, the board they assemble will come in handy when you need to make tough decisions.  Knowing that you have a regular evaluation and review of the business’ operational and financial metrics helps you succeed, plain and simple.

It’s also helpful for the CEO to be able to play good cop to the board’s bad cop.  Indeed, many CEOs lack an objective sounding board and have an emotional attachment to an idea which not only wastes money but more importantly, the best years of your life.

So while too many companies chase the flavor of the month at the behest of their investors, the board will push you until your business takes off or you need to pivot.

Psychological Price Floor

While businesses should be valued on their financials, the historical valuation that investors place on your company may play a role in at least determining a floor price in a worst case scenario or a framework, at least.  Solely for purposes of illustration, let’s look at how two recent exits may have gone down.

In the case of Next New Networks, the company had raised $25 million in venture funding from prominent investors including Goldman Sachs.  The company’s high burn rate offset their success in generating views. Not having yet cracked the code to monetize their audience, investors were wary of adding more money.  They weren’t however going to write off their investment altogether either, so they may have insisted on a purchase price equaling what they had put in the company regardless of the P&L.  Rumor has it that Google paid $25 million to allow preferred shareholders to recoup their investment.

In 5Min’s case, it had momentum and growing revenues, so when AOL came knocking, it’s possible that the sale price was a function of both its financials and its funding history.  Let’s hypothesize that 5Min was generating $10 million in revenues; with a 3x multiple it was offered $30 million – too little for 5Min investors to accept.  But having raised $12.8 million over three rounds, it’s perfectly plausible that the final $65 million acquisition price was driven more by a desire to secure a 5x return on the money invested.  Or, assume the VCs had 40% of the company, meaning a weighted valuation of $32 million in exchange for that $12.8 million; a 2x return on that valuation would yield approximately $65 million.  I am clearly making the numbers up, but you see how one’s financing history may affect the final sales price.

Conversely, I have been told at least a dozen times that not having raised any venture capital values my company at a discount.

The Perception Problem: Red flag?

Moreover, not raising money from professional investors is—in all honesty—a potential red flag.  It’s rare for an entrepreneur to run a business and spend millions of dollars without having any outside help.  When that is the case, it’s a normal reaction to wonder: why?  Why hasn’t outside money been raised?  It’s unfair, but saying that it’s never come up would be a lie.

No Sympathy Points

Ultimately, while you may score extra points for building a large business despite being bootstrapped, you don’t actually score many points for running a small business if you have avoided venture capital, even though 99.9% of VC-funded companies wouldn’t exist or last as long as yours if they didn’t have VC funding to rely on.

The cliché is that it’s not the destination that matters, but the journey.  Sure, maybe in Bullshitistan.  In the sports and business world, it’s all about the outcome.  No one remembers the score, let alone how the teams played the game, they remember who won, even if it means giving in to greed and resorting to bad behavior.

When it’s said and done, you can own 100% of a lemonade stand or 1% of Coca-Cola. While these are extreme polar opposites and a middle ground does exist, you have to understand that neither approach to building a business comes without its share of problems and drawbacks. In some ways, you build a business despite bootstrapping or raising VC, and not because of it.

Photo credit: Leonard John Matthews