Category: Tech news

I am primarily writing about this startup because I need it desperately, and because it is the problem I would attempt to solve if I ever decided to flip the switch and become a startup founder instead of the personification of “those that cannot do write” or whatever. Unlike WordyHQ or earlier Web 1.0 professional editing services, Kibin is an editing community that allows you to upload a piece of writing and get it edited and proofread for free in a matter of 24 hours. You have no idea how much I want this to succeed.

Okay so you say that there’s no such thing as a free anything … Well the way Kibin works is that users can accumulate points for editing other people’s work, and use those points to get their own work edited. If you don’t have the time to edit other people’s work, or just suck at it (eh, hem) you can pay 50 cents for a Kibin credit (founder Travis Biziorek tells me that credits average out to one cent a word, so that a 1,000 word essay costs around $10 with the option to pay more if you need a faster turnaround) and use those credits to buy editing time. Biziorek says that edits usually get done in under 24 hours.

Even though the company is currently focused on students, if Biziorek can get the turnaround time down to under hour, this will be a godsend for bloggers, who — I don’t have to tell you guys this — usually sacrifice grammar and punctuation for speed.

It is invaluable to have another pair of human eyes on your work — spellcheck can’t tell the difference between “complimentary” and “complementary,” for example. That kind of attention to detail is worth its weight in gold. I’m sure there at least 20-30 mistakes in this post even but I just don’t have the time to figure out which ones they are. Also, I am typo-blind. Anyways my point is there’s a market for this.

The 500 Startups-backed Kibin is currently 40K into its 400K seed round and has just over 35K users according to Biziorek, growing at 44% week over week (he ditched law school plans to work on it last April). Biziorek’s future plans for Kibin include encouraging its best editors to turn pro and start charging for their services as well building a custom API for services that mass-produced content. “We’re thinking, ‘How can we produce as many happy users as possible?’ Travis tells me.

Sweet Lord Jesus please let this succeed.

You can watch Kibin’s demo video and the rest of the 500 Startups’ Demo Day here.

One of the niftiest features of Google+ is its group videoconferencing app called Hangouts. Not only is the service free, with support for ten simultaneous users — it also attempts to negate the awkwardness that’s often associated with coordinating video calls by making the experience more casual and free-flowing (any of your friends can hop into and out of a Hangout at any point, provided you’ve shared it with them).

One of the app’s other neat features is its ability to play a YouTube video for all of your friends at the same time (and, of course, you can immediately talk about the video). This evening, YouTube’s rolled out a new option that makes it easier to jump into one of these video-sharing sessions: you can now initiate a Hangout directly from a YouTube video’s ‘Watch’ page (you’ll find the option under the ‘Share’ menu).

The feature works as you’d expect: click it, and a browser window will pop up, prompting you to choose which Google+ Circles you’d like to share the Hangout (and video) with. Comb your hair, click share, and your Hangout will start.

This is just the first of what will likely be many more integrations to come for Hangouts —  Google has repeatedly said that the app is built as a platform for enjoying shared experiences with friends. In other words, in a while you’ll probably be able to Hangout while playing games, showing off photo galleries, or perhaps even enjoying a live-streamed sporting event with friends.

Of course, this assumes that your friends are all on Google+ and are still logging in on a regular basis. Alas, aside from my ‘tech friends’, most of mine aren’t.

You’ve read the inspirational posts on Hacker News. You’ve purchased the recommended books. You’ve bookmarked the online tutorials. You even plopped down $80 on a set of instructional videos, promising yourself that the investment would only make you more motivated. And for some reason, you still don’t know how to program.

Codecademy, a new site that went live earlier this evening, might just be the answer.

It’s a web-based, interactive programming tutorial that holds your hand and walks you through the basics of JavaScript. At this point it’s just getting started — the lessons only go as far as ‘While’ loops — but it clearly has loads of potential for one key reason: it actually feels fun.

Codecademy’s initial signup process is very clever: there isn’t one, at least at first. As soon as you land on Codecademy.com you’ll be prompted to complete the first lesson, which involves printing out and finding the length (in letters) of your name. It isn’t until you’ve made it through a few lessons that the site prompts you to create a user account, when it reminds you that if you don’t register, all of your progress will be lost. At which point you’ll probably register.

The lessons themselves are pretty straightforward. A sidebar on the left hand side of the screen will instruct you to complete a task, like, say, create a new variable called ‘myName’. You edit code using the web-based terminal, hit return, and your code is executed. The site hits a good balance between telling you exactly what to do, and prompting you to reuse something you learned in a previous lesson, so it doesn’t feel frustratingly difficult or boring.

As you progress through the lessons, you’ll rack up points and trophies, which are displayed on your profile. Friends can check out your profile to see how you’re progressing, and it isn’t hard to imagine the site building out additional social features, like leaderboards and competitions.

The application still has some bugs, which isn’t all that surprising — the company’s cofounders Zach Sims and Ryan Bubinski say that they started working on the app only a week and a half ago. In fact, they weren’t ready for the site to get so much attention so quickly (they posted it on Hacker News hoping for some initial feedback, and had 1,000 concurrent users within a few hours).

And there are still plenty of questions. The founders aren’t sure if they’re going to let the community create new lessons, and their monetization plans aren’t set in stone (though they do plan to make money). But they’re off to a solid start.

I just wish the first lesson included the words ‘Hello World’.

With skyrocketing valuation numbers for upstart tech companies, it’s not just naysayer pundits crying “bubble.” Activision (Activision-Blizzard, to be precise) is skeptical of the numbers being put forth for competitors like Zynga and Rovio, whose billion or multiple billion dollar valuations put them out of reach for easy acquisition. Perhaps they’re hoping to pick them up for a song after the supposed bubble pops. Is Activision playing a long game, or is it just wishful thinking?

Speaking at Gamescom in Cologne, Activision Publishing CEO Eric Hirshberg poured cold water on the idea of the company making a major investment in social gaming via a high-profile acquisition:

Valuations of some of the companies in that space are out of whack, so that’s an issue when it comes to acquisitions…But don’t mistake careful, methodical planning for inaction. Any new place where people are playing games, at scale, is something that we’re interested in.

Unfortunately, in the fast-moving social gaming space, too much planning occasionally does amount to inaction. While Activision has plenty of successful titles, none approach, or even attempt to replicate, the super-wide, super-shallow distribution of titles like Angry Birds and Farmville. Meanwhile, million-sellers are made overnight in waves of virality which Activision seems incapable of producing.

At the same time, the rapidity of the sector’s growth speaks to the volatility of the market. While Rovio is unlikely to suddenly reveal that it’s folding due to an underdiversified game library, it is possible that the next year will bring more sobering results, or a flattening of the field as more examples of quick growth suggest a pattern not unique to these companies — in which case the high valuations might be looked on as optimistic. At this point Activision would have successfully waited it out.

Either way, Hirshberg’s comments don’t suggest any great level of illumination on Activision’s part. This kind of bemused skepticism doesn’t inspire confidence in shareholders, either, who are (like Nintendo’s) probably impatient with the failure of the world’s biggest game-maker to grasp this new gaming paradigm. They may be starting to see the light, though: they are planning on social-izing Call of Duty, one of the most popular franchises in gaming, with the Elite in-game social network. They’re still late to the party; I guess they hope that’ll turn out to be a good thing.

As I write this, I’m sitting in a cafe. Around me, there are five people on laptops — four of them are MacBooks. Four other people are using tablets — all four are iPads. Welcome to the Post-PC world.

That phrase was one of the first things that jumped to my mind today when I heard the news that HP was not only killing off their TouchPad and Pre webOS-based products, but also trying to spin-off their PC business. The largest PC business in the world, mind you.

And HP’s statements during their earnings call today only further reaffirmed the idea of the Post-PC world.

“Consumers are changing the use of their PC,” HP CEO Leo Apotheker said. “The tablet effect is real and sales of the TouchPad are not meeting our expectations. The velocity of change in the personal device marketplace continues to increase as the competitive landscape is growing increasingly more complex especially around the personal computing arena,” he continued. He then repeated, “the tablet effect is real”.

But wait, then why is he exiting the tablet space after only a matter of weeks? Because when Apotheker says “the tablet effect”, he really means “the iPad effect”.

Put another way, “Apple, you win.”

And not just in the tablet space. Again, the largest PC-maker in the world is exiting the space. Think about how crazy that is for a second. It sounds like a completely irrational panic move. But maybe it’s not.

After all, while HP may be the worldwide leader in PC sales with massive revenues, their actual profit from those sales has already been far surpassed by Apple. Further, while overall PC growth continues to contract, Apple’s Mac sales continue to grow and have outpaced the rest of the PC industry for 21 consecutive quarters. That’s over five consecutive years. That’s certainly another way to interpret ”Post-PC world”.

The writing is on the wall. HP is perhaps reading it a bit early, but they may well be reading it clearly.

Let’s look back at what Steve Jobs said last March when unveiling the iPad 2:

I’ve said this before, but thought it was worth repeating: It’s in Apple’s DNA that technology alone is not enough. That it’s technology married with liberal arts, married with the humanities, that yields us the result that makes our hearts sing.

And nowhere is that more true than in these post-PC devices.

And a lot of folks in this tablet market are rushing in and they’re looking at this as the next PC. The hardware and the software are done by different companies. And they’re talking about speeds and feeds just like they did with PCs.

And our experience and every bone in our body says that that is not the right approach to this. That these are post-PC devices that need to be even easier to use than a PC. That need to be even more intuitive than a PC. And where the software and the hardware and the applications need to intertwine in an even more seamless way than they do on a PC.

And we think we’re on the right track with this. We think we have the right architecture not just in silicon, but in the organization to build these kinds of products.

And so I think we stand a pretty good chance of being pretty competitive in this market. And I hope that what you’ve seen today gives you a good feel for that.

What’s perhaps most noteworthy about HP’s move today is that they, more so than any other company attacking the tablet space, seemed to have a grasp of what Jobs was talking about — undoubtedly thanks to Jon Rubinstein, the longtime Apple general leading webOS. The Post-PC device is about the combination of hardware and software all built and integrated by one company. Google doesn’t get that. RIM can’t execute. But with the Palm/webOS purchase, it seemed that HP had both the vision and resources to possibly compete with Apple.

In fact, a year ago, that’s exactly what we had heard the plan was. The subsequent talk about webOS integration across their entire product line as well as the unveiling of the TouchPad and a new Pre seemed to reaffirm this. But something funny happened on the way to the battle with Apple. Amid scandal, then-HP CEO Mark Hurd was forced to resign.

This happened just three months after HP acquired Palm for $1.2 billion. At the time of the deal, HP told us very clearly: “our intent is to double down on webOS“. Again, while they wouldn’t explicitly admit it at the time, the plan was to compete with Apple.

But with Hurd out, HP turned to Apotheker, the man who previously ran SAP. He had been with the enterprise company for 20 years. This whole “HP as Apple” plan must have sounded like Latin to him.

Since the wheels of this plan were already in motion when he came on board, Apotheker stuck to it. But while he watched for any sign of shakiness, he scooped up some data companies like Vertica. It was probably clear to those inside HP what was going on. Last month, Rubinstein switched roles, to be an executive at HP instead of the guy in charge of webOS.

When the TouchPad launched, and subsequently floundered out of the gate, Apotheker had what he needed. He landed Autonomy and it was set. HP wasn’t going to be the next Apple. They were going to be the next IBM.

Not IBM, the PC juggernaut, mind you — IBM the company that cut loose the PC hardware division and focused on data and enterprise. That’s what so jarring about today’s news: HP just did a full stop and then a 180 before our very eyes. Apple and IBM both resurrected themselves in recent years, but each did it in opposite ways. The Apple plan didn’t work for HP, Apotheker decided. He now clearly believes the IBM plan will.

During today’s earnings call, Apotheker also cited the threat their “business critical services” were facing from Oracle. That’s interesting since Hurd landed at Oracle as a co-President. The two companies hate one another. In choosing the IBM resurrection model over the Apple one, Apotheker has also better aligned his company for a full-on battle with Oracle.

So where does all of this leave webOS? The TouchPad is dead. The Pre sleeps with the fishes. HP seems to be open to all options including licensing out webOS for others to use. But the simplest solution will probably end up being the one they go with: a sale of webOS to some other entity that can actually use it. HP VP Richard Kerris made this option pretty clear in a tweet today.

HTC? Samsung? Facebook? Google?! One thing to consider: Jon Rubinstein sits on Amazon’s board…

Something else to consider: when HP bought Palm for $1.2 billion last year, the world was a different place. These days, companies are paying $4.5 billion for a group of patents. Google is paying $12.5 billion for Motorola, a large portion is which is also for patents. Along with Palm and webOS, HP got Palm’s 1,500+ patents last year, as they emphasized to us at the time of the sale.

If those patents are as important in the mobile space as some believe, they alone could be worth more than the $1.2 billion Palm sale price now. If HP can flip those for north of that price, the whole acquisition won’t look like nearly as much of a disaster as it does right now.

But the big picture item of today remains what HP is no longer doing: making Post-PC devices or even PCs themselves. In less than the span of a year, the biggest PC maker in the world realized not only that they couldn’t be Apple, but that they couldn’t even compete with Apple. And they admitted it. And called the fight. It was a first-round T.K.O.

The question is: does this make HP look foolish, cowardly, or smart? The answer today may be different from the one tomorrow.

You’re probably familiar with telepresence robot or two. We even had one rolling around the TechCrunch office for a while. They generally have fairly simple navigation interfaces: forward, back, turn left, turn right, and some controls for the camera and speaker. The trouble is that these controls are generally accessed by traditional means: keyboard, mouse, or handheld controller. And a major application of telepresence is allowing people unable to get around on their own to do so virtually. People with extremely limited mobility often aren’t able to reliably use their fingers or limbs, so custom systems using head inclination, blowing and sucking, and eye tracking are necessary.

Robert Oschler is a robot and telepresence enthusiast who has been making his own software for years. The latest version of his Robodance client adds support for the EPOC EEG-monitoring PC peripheral, and he’s hoping to get a little support on Kickstarter. Isn’t that something worth throwing a couple bucks at?

He’s been footing the bill for a long time, and I’m guessing the costs started adding up for this version. His software supports a number of robots but not many dedicated telepresence bots, which usually have their own private clients. The Rovio bot Oschler adores seems to have rather poor reviews on Amazon, unfortunately, but there’s no reason the software couldn’t be made to support other robots if they were selected by, say, a medical establishment.

In the end I think it’s just a worthwhile project, and could end up helping a few people in a very real way. I’d rather this guy was helped along in his quest than, say, some guy makes yet another designer iPad case. Check out the Kickstarter project here.

This morning, HP admitted failure.

After spending $1.2 billion to acquire Palm, they announced that they were killing off the development of all smartphones and tablets running Palm’s webOS platform — including the just launched TouchPad. Having survived for just 49 days before its death, it’s tragic that TouchPad lived just one day longer than the oft-mocked Microsoft Kin.

webOS itself, as a platform, isn’t entirely dead. HP says they’ll “continue to explore options to optimize the value of webOS”, which is really just a fancy way of saying “Yeah, we’re still not entirely sure what the hell we’re going to do with this thing.”

There’s a way out here, HP — and it’s all thanks to Google’s acquisition of Motorola.

You see, Google’s surprise $12.5 billion buy-out of Motorola has undoubtedly left Android’s other, non-Motorola partners (Samsung, HTC, LG, etc.) a bit… shaken up. In the blink of an eye, Google went from having what was essentially 0% of the hardware marketshare for their own operating system up to a domineering 30%. Out of nowhere, Google went from being the nice guy who builds all the software for free to something resembling a direct competitor. Google insists that Motorola will operate as a separate entity — but at the very least, they’ll be able to sneakily leverage Motorola to influence Android’s hardware ecosystem as a whole.

But where else are Android’s other partners to turn? Windows Phone 7? Great! Lets keep throwing licensing money at Microsoft. They only completely screwed up by sticking with Windows Mobile 6.5 for far too long, launched Windows Phone 7 way too late in the game whilst simultaneously way too early in its own development, inexplicably tried (and failed) to launch the Kin platform at the same time, and have been dickishly throwing a wrench in the Mobile world’s gears by demanding patent licensing money from anyone who finds any success with Android.

Here’s your move, HP: Fill the gap that Google has just left open.

• 1) Open webOS:

  Share webOS’ source code. Bits of webOS are already available under a GPL license, but it’s time to open the rest as much as possible. Perhaps not with everyone — at least not at first, as suddenly sharing a mountain of once-closed source would be a great way to totally bone all of the existing, unlikely-to-be-updated webOS devices currently floating around out there

• 2) Give It Away. For free. But only to those willing to help make it better:

  With Android’s popularity and free-except-for-patent-licensing price tag and Windows Phone 7 floating around as an alternative, webOS licenses would be a rather hard sell. That’s why HP needs to just give it away — but only to those willing to improve it. webOS is, in many ways, kind of amazing. It’s ridiculously user-friendly, the notifications/alerts system is top notch, and it’s undeniably one of the most beautiful operating systems ever created… but it has its faults. Among other things, it doesn’t seem to be terribly efficient; even Palm could never seem to make a device on which webOS ran better than a 4-year old with bricks tied to his feet. Furthermore, Palm just could never allot the resources to properly build out webOS for third-party development; it lacks much in the pre-provided functionality front (read: APIs), and that which is there could really do with better documentation.

  And that’s where the trade comes in. Willing to make substantial improvements to webOS? You get a webOS! And you get a webOS! And you get a webOS! Not willing (or don’t have the man-power) to commit to improvements? No sweat — you can still license webOS on the cheap.

  The definition of “substantial improvements” as well as the definition of “cheap” would have to vary based on company size/revenue, but anything is better than HP trying to tackle webOS alone. Palm’s best engineers took off when the buyout went down, and HP has never proven themselves capable at making software.

• 3) Promise to never set foot in the smartphone/tablet arena again:

  This part is key. Be the hands-off, no-competition software provider that Google has decided they don’t want to be anymore. Throw webOS into printers, cars, toasters, whatever, but just let the guys who know what they’re doing in mobile do their thing.

• 4) Form a foundation to guide the overall product:

  More cooks in the kitchen can just make things worse — and that’s why there needs to be a foundation of sorts (separate from HP) formed amongst the largest contributors to act as a guiding hand for the product’s future. Major contributors get to discuss and steer the future of the product. And if one wants to do build something into the project that the majority veto? No problem — they’ll just have to build it into their own branch. Think of it sort of like Nokia (et al.)’s Symbian foundation, minus the suck.

Will it earn HP back the $1.2 billion they spent on Palm? Nope! But they still have Palm’s patent armory to show for that. Will it score webOS the throne as the #1 or #2 platform in the mobile world? Nope! iOS and Android have that locked down for the next few years , and there’s very little that could change that — but it does make it a viable contender against WP7 for that coveted bronze medal. It also makes the platform a whole lot more viable to third-party developers, if only because it would boost the number of purchased webOS devices above.. like, twelve.

HP ends up with a better webOS, and they avoid looking like they’ve completely wrecked the platform. Partners get a platform — and one with quite a lot of potential — in exchange for allotting manpower they’d already have to allot if they were to explore it in the first place, and they get to help steer its future to boot. Developers get a third platform worth developing for. (Oh, and, in some sense, it makes a licensed webOS more defensible against patent attacks, because of all the major players that had an official hand in its development.)

It’s not a resounding victory, but it’s probably HP’s best move at this point.

The Canadian luxury buffs over at Mobiado have been churning out obscenely expensive (not to mention obscenely designed) phones since 2004, and if you were to look at their line-up, one thing would become immediately clear: none of them are worth the price. Dumbphones swathed in gold and pearl inlays are still dumbphones, after all.

That said, Mobiado is trying something new with their Grand Touch series: bedazzled smartphones! The Grand Touch and the Grand Touch GCB are Gingerbread-powered handsets with 4-inch Super-AMOLED displays. Not too shabby, compared to everything else in their inventory. Both devices have sapphire crystal buttons and sapphire crystal backplates, but while the Grand Touch’s body is made of “precision CNC machined from solid aircraft aluminum,” the Grand Touch GCB is plated in 24k gold.

What Mobiado declines to tell their discerning customers, though, is that you can buy the exact same device for (I would imagine) considerably less, without all the gilded trappings. That’s because what Mobiado seems to have done is buy a up a boatload of Samsung Nexus Ss and gave them a makeover. The slightly-curved screen is a bit of a giveaway, but things like port placement and the amount of fixed internal storage (16GB) seal the deal.

Still, they’ve got quite the racket going. These sorts of devices were always meant for people who have more money than taste, and who’s to say the uber-rich won’t fall in love? Mobiado has declined to list a price for the Grand Touch series, but there’s a useful rule of thumb when it comes to this sort of thing: if you have to ask how much it is, you probably can’t afford it.

Salesforce just posted its Q2 2012 earnings today, posting record quarterly revenue of $546 million, which is up 38% Year-Over-Year. Non-GAAP diluted earnings per share increased 3% year-over-year to $0.30. Analysts expected EPS of $0.30 and $529 million for revenue.

Subscription and support revenues were $509 million, an increase of 38% on a year-over-year basis. Professional services and other revenues were $37 million, an increase of 44% on a year-over-year basis.

Q2 GAAP net loss per share was ($0.03), which includes a one-time charge of $0.04 per diluted share associated with the legal settlement over a California state wage and hour lawsuit. The company’s non-GAAP results exclude the effects of approximately $55 million in stock-based compensation expense, approximately $19 million in amortization of purchased intangibles, and approximately $3 million in net non-cash interest expense related to the company’s convertible senior notes.

Salesforce says that it added 6,300 paying customers during the quarter, which brings its total to 104,000 clients using its SaaS products (a quarterly record for the company). Since July 31, 2010, the company added 21,600 net paying customers, an increase of 26% on a year-over-year basis.

Cash generated from operations for the fiscal second quarter was $83 million, an increase of 9% on a year-over-year basis. Total cash, cash equivalents and marketable securities finished the quarter at approximately $1.3 billion.

The company is raising its guidance for Q3, projecting revenue to be $568 million to approximately $570 million. Revenue for the company’s full fiscal year 2012 is projected to be in the range of approximately $2.22 billion to approximately $2.23 billion.

HubSpot has acquired social business management platform Oneforty.

Oneforty originally launched two years ago as an app store for Twitter, the startup undoubtedly filled a hole in the media platform. The brainchild of Laura Fitton, the startup provided a comprehensive e-commerce marketplace where third-party developers on the Twitter platform can sell their apps. The idea was such a hit in the Twitter ecosystem that rumors swirled that Twitter was potentially interested in buying Oneforty.

But after nearly two years, Oneforty, which has raised a little over $2 million in funding, found a specific target market for its products—business users. The site turned into a destination for business users to figure out how mange social media, including Twitter and Facebook. The company’s B2B platform on social business includes information on how to invest a budget, what other companies are doing and more. Other content includes a buyers guide for brands looking to adopt social media software and reviews of social media tools.

According to the release, the oneforty directory will merge into the HubSpot App Marketplace, the an app store for marketing.

For background, HubSpot helps manage customers websites and generate leads. HubSpot, which just raised a massive $32 million from Sequoia Capital, Google Ventures, Salesforce and others, has been on a bit of an acquisition spree and just bought Performable.

Financial terms of the deal were not disclosed.

In their statement regarding the Motorola Mobility acquisition, Google said that they would “run Motorola Mobility as a separate business.” I understand that to mean that they won’t simply be devouring them, firing redundant personnel, and Borging all Moto functionality into the Google name and brand. On the other hand, they’re not just going to let it ride and skim the profits (and patents).

Their business-level plans are still a matter for discussion, but what I’m really excited about is something else entirely: Google’s new playground for hardware.

The capacity for the creation of real objects within Motorola is huge. Google produces almost no real objects at all. Motorola designs and produces things meant to be touched and put in pockets. Google designs and produces things that are untouchable, unpocketable. From some perspectives, it’s a terrible match, like Archie and Veronica. But something Google has, which I doubt they have in Motorola, and almost certainly lack in Microsoft and Apple, is upward idea mobility. Google Hardware Labs, anyone?

Consider Google’s “free time” policy, in which employees spend a significant portion of their workday tinkering or collaborating on independent projects. There’s been some disagreement about how productive or expensive this program may be, but I definitely think it’s a strength. It may not create a lot of million-user products, but it has created a great number of viable and interesting niche services. I think it’s a perfect match for bored hardware engineers.

I wrote a while back about how Microsoft needs to turn itself upside-down. Google’s not the utopia some people may think it is, but it approaches this ideal more than the competition. I’m always stumbling across microscopic Google projects to improve physics research, or solar cells, or image compression. Things that won’t serve up millions of ad impressions, but act as a sort of ambassador between Google and non-consumer communities like the medical establishment, circuit benders, and various random industries. It speaks to a certain indulgence within the company, and an eye for quality that picks out worthwhile projects for elevation.

Microsoft has smart people, but their vast and territorial network of middle managers play “Mother May I” with pet projects, stifling growth. It’s a miracle that something like the Kinect ever floated to the top, though both Windows Phone 7 and Windows 8 seem to indicate a more open, focused company. Apple probably has plenty of skunk works engineers, and a whole research division. But compared with Microsoft’s and Google’s, theirs are almost completely hidden from prying eyes. Microsoft Research engineers are collaborating with universities and putting together fascinating demos for SIGGRAPH, while the fruits of Apple’s research are only revealed in patents and final products. Both approaches have their merits — I just wanted to demonstrate two types. Motorola is of the Apple school, but less creative, and Google is of the Microsoft school, but less varied.

If Motorola engineers are given a little room to breathe (think: fewer feature-phone PCB designs), they might create some very interesting work. It’s not a guarantee — just like Googlers aren’t guaranteed to create something worthwhile in their 20% time. But Google may combine a clear eye for potential (even — perhaps especially — niche potential) and a willingness to take a risk going public to fast-track some projects and produce some really interesting devices.

Google likes hardware. They just never get a chance to confess it. The closest we see is when they cherry-pick designs for their G-series phones, or produce something like the Cr-48, soaking in understatement and Google’s function-first form. And the Open Accessory Toolkit is like a valentine to hardware hackers.

They could have bought a design studio or two, sure. They probably have a few already. But with Motorola acting as Department of Rapid Prototyping, Google has a free hand to try all kinds of things. Not that we should expect Google refrigerators or anything. But imagine things like the Courier being produced instead of buried, just because it was a cool idea. Can’t you picture Google just shelling out for a limited run of these things, to see what people do with them, to create something cool, to be able to say they did it?

I picture something along the lines of a Google Hardware Labs, open to some extent (like Chromium) and with major “releases” getting small-run manufacture. It’s probably pie in the sky, but I can dream, can’t I? And is it really so ridiculous to think that Google might occasionally throw a mil or two at a promising hardware project, the way they’ve done with software projects? Use your imagination. Why not:

• a dedicated Google Maps and Navigation device specifically for cars
• a Courier-like tablet for exploring dual-screen functionality
• a slate device focused on handwriting, sketching, and manual collaboration
• an Android-powered audio processor box with apps, physical dials, and tons of i/o
• a Google camera all about sharing and geolocation

You think that Google doesn’t have guys coming up with this kind of stuff all the time? They’ve probably got a backlog a hundred deep of random devices and interesting hardware spaces they want to explore. Google loves to tinker. And they love to put stuff out that isn’t even close to a finished product. It’s not always a positive, but it demonstrates that, unlike Apple and Motorola, they’re willing to release something to the wild just to see how it runs.

Now, the recent shutdown of Google Labs (putting “more wood behind fewer arrows“) might shake this dream of mine. But my thinking is that Labs occupied a sort of awkward position, internal projects too buggy or specific to be implemented, but not big enough to be features highlighted in a blog post or in-app update. Clearly they’re cutting down on the the levels of granularity projects can occupy — but it doesn’t mean they’re eliminating experimentation, and at any rate a hardware project is big enough to escape that particular crackdown.

With the taste they seem to have in hardware design (and, occasionally, interface design) and the interest they demonstrate in technological dilettantism, I think the purchase of a proven hardware vector is an unabashed good thing, though it’s far from the only or primary reason Google has done so. Whether their newly acquired engineers and designers are producing stuff of their own volition, or carrying out the designs of Google’s fancy, the result will be new toys. And maybe even something useful.

After confirming its intention to purchase software company Autonomy, HP released stronger than expected third fiscal quarter 2011 initial financial results, posting $31.2 billion, an increase of 2 percent from $30.7 billion one year ago.

In the third quarter, preliminary GAAP diluted earnings per share (EPS) was $0.93 and non-GAAP diluted EPS was $1.10. Analysts expected EPS of $1.09 and $31.19 billion in revenue.

For the fourth fiscal quarter of 2011, HP estimates revenue of approximately $32.1 billion to $32.5 billion, GAAP diluted EPS in the range of $0.44 to $0.55, and non-GAAP diluted EPS in the range of $1.12 to $1.16.

Full-year FY11 revenue will be approximately $127.2 billion to $127.6 billion, down from its previous estimate of $129 billion to $130 billion. FY11 GAAP diluted EPS is expected to be in the range of $3.59 to $3.70, down from its previous estimate of at least $4.27, and FY11 non-GAAP diluted EPS is expected to be in the range of $4.82 to $4.86, down from its previous estimate of at least $5.00.

HP warns that this could be effected by restructuring and shutdown costs associated with webOS devices, and acquisition-related charges. We’ll get more details on the rest of HP’s financials at market close.

Brace yourselves, webOS fans.

In the hours leading up to their Q3 conference call later today, HP has just confirmed that they will be discontinuing operations surrounding the TouchPad and all webOS phones.

To quote their press release:

HP reported that it plans to announce that it will discontinue operations for webOS devices, specifically the TouchPad and webOS phones. HP will continue to explore options to optimize the value of webOS software going forward.

This news will come as a rather huge punch to the gut for webOS die-hards (myself included, though you can’t say that we couldn’t see it coming), many of whom have stood by the product for years — first in hopes that Palm would eventually launch a device worthy of the rather fantastic operating system, and later in hopes that HP’s acquisition of Palm would be the spark to the fire that just never seemed to light.

On the upside, webOS itself isn’t dead — at least, not just yet. HP’s wording up above leaves things a bit vague, with at least two potential routes left open: licensing webOS to others, and sticking webOS in other, non-phone/tablet devices (HP has already mentioned plans to put it in printers and cars.) Until further notice, however, it’s essentially dead in the water.

Pour one out for webOS devices tonight, my fellow geeks.

Update: If HP needs a way out while still saving face, here’s the way to do it.

Update: HP’s Stephen DeWitt says “We are not walking away from webOS.” They will continue efforts to advance and perhaps license the OS, but its life as we have known it is certainly over.

Nielsen has found that Android users tend to spend over an hour a day on their phones. Sixty-seven percent of their time is spent “working” with apps while the rest is spent on the mobile web. Forty-three percent of those apps are top 10 Market apps while the top 50 apps are used 61 percent of the time. The rest of the apps – all 250,000 of them – are used the rest of the time.

The stats come in advance of Neilsen’s free webinar, to be held on September 15.

Nielsen will also release the browsing/app habits of iPhone users, a potentially interesting metric to assess the uptake of mobile web apps vs. the native variety.

via Mobileburn

January 19, 2011. It’s a day I’ll always remember. It’s the day I finally got to destroy a Horcrux that had been bringing misery into my life: AT&T.

That’s the day I finally cancelled my AT&T service after years of dropped calls, non-existant service, gross over-charges, and all around frustration. I even did it before I knew for sure that Verizon was getting the iPhone. I had had enough. That I got to cancel it by way of Google Voice, adding insult to injury, was just icing on the cake.  Looking back, it was one of the best decisions, technology-wise, I’ve made in the past few years. And today it’s looking even better.

You see, after months of AT&T being out of sight, out of mind, they stormed back into my brain last night when I read on Engadget that they would be removing individual text messaging plans in a few days. In AT&T marketing parlance, this is called “streamlining”. In my parlance, this is called “bullshit”.

Specifically, AT&T is removing the cheaper $10 a month option which gives users 1,000 text messages. All that remains is the $20 a month unlimited option. Or you can have no pre-set plan and pay $0.20 for each SMS and $0.30 for each MMS.

Sure, that’s “streamlining” in that they’re making three options now two. But what’s important is the motives behind the move.

Here’s what’s really going on. Naturally, AT&T will never admit to this, but they’re scared shitless of the full-on assault currently underway in the SMS space. You see, these short messages have long amounted to a revenue stream of billions of dollars for carriers, with profit margins approaching 100 percent for each message. In other words, it has long been a total rip-off. And the carriers have been milking it dry for years.

But now startups like GroupMe, which allows users to bypass SMS and use data to send short messages, are gaining popularity. Meanwhile, massive players like Google and Facebook have introduced their own solutions for bypassing SMS. And with the launch of iOS 5 this fall, Apple is about to bake a work-around into each and every iPhone out there in the form of iMessage.

AT&T’s “streamlining” is a purely defensive maneuver. The truth is that neither GroupMe or Facebook Messenger are going kill SMS overnight. Nor is iMessage. But what these services are going to do is slowly but surely make people realize they don’t need to send nearly as many text messages anymore. I look at my own usage. In the past six months, I’ve sent seven actual SMS message. Seven. All the rest of my short messages have been through either Beluga, GroupMe, the Google Voice app, or now Facebook Messenger. Each of these messages have been sent or received for free (they’re a just use a tiny amount of data you’re already paying for if your on 3G). This is the future.

So with the services now out there making people less reliant on SMS, what was going to happen? People were going to want to downgrade their plans. Who wants to pay $20 a month when you’re using only a handful of messages? Why not pay $10? Well, now you can’t. You can either pay $20 for unlimited, or have no plan and pay AT&T’s ridiculous per-message rate.

AT&T knows that most people are not going to chose the latter. Again, we’re not to the point yet where people will be fully comfortable letting go of SMS. Hell, all of the services I mentioned use it as a backup in one way or another.

Think of it this way: unlimited SMS is heroin. The $10 a month limited plan is methadone which you could have used to wean yourself off. AT&T has just cut off the methadone supply. They’re daring you to go cold turkey. Most won’t be able to.

I’m sure it’s purely coincidental that this move is happening right now, just weeks before the launch of iOS 5 with iMessage. Sure, AT&T just “streamlined” their SMS plans a few months ago, but why not do it again? I’m also sure it has nothing to do with the fact that Apple unveiled iMessage without telling the carriers. AT&T just felt like customers needed this change right now.

Nope, I don’t miss you one bit, AT&T.

Update: Not even 2 minutes after I publish, does my old foil Seth Bloom write in to note that this change is only for new customers. In other words, this will only affect millions of new users who sign up for AT&T to get the iPhone 5 (or any new Android phone, etc) shortly. No biggie.

In other words part 2: “go ahead, don’t sign up for an SMS plan, we dare you”.