Category: Tech news

Currently I am not in Cancun. The reason I am not in Cancun is out of my control (an over three hour Virgin delay on the tarmac at JFK caused me to miss my connecting USAirways flight at SFO). I spent a good part of those three plus plane-trapped hours bitching on Twitter, asking both the @VirginAmerica and @USAirways Twitter accounts for guidance, because calling their respective 800 numbers either put me on hold or wouldn’t go through.

Guess which Twitter account responded? Guess which one I’ll consider purchasing tickets from again. And according to a recent survey of 2049 Twitter users completed by Twitter Q&A search service inboxQ, I am not alone: 64% of the inboxQ survey respondents were more likely to make a purchase from a business account that answered their questions on Twitter, 24% were just as likely and only 12% were less likely.

Another added benefit of answering user questions on Twitter (ARE YOU LISTENING @USAIRWAYS?) is that users are more likely to follow a business that answers their questions, at 59% versus 29% who are just as likely and 12% who are less likely.

The inboxQ survey results are filled with other lovely “well duh” info nuggets like how users with high follower accounts are more likely to receive answers to their questions, at 41% respondents with more than 100 followers receiving an answer from a business versus 21% with less than 100 followers (Maybe brands don’t think its worth the effort? Or maybe the questions from low volume accounts get lost in whatever social media monitoring service businesses are using?).

In any case, pro tip: If you’re a business serious about user engagement on Twitter, go out of your way to sincerely answer sincere questions from users, no matter how many followers they have. They might just end up buying something. Or not hating you.

@bmull
Brenden Mulligan

I specifically this (6 hour) @usairways flight because they advertised it had wifi. But it doesn't. Boarding for my last @usairways flight!

May 29, 2011 3:00 pm via Twitter for iPhoneReplyRetweetFavorite

This past Thursday, Twitter rolled out a new small feature that garnered quite a bit of positive buzz. Essentially, they now allow you to see what other users see when they look at Twitter. In other words, if you click on the “Following” area in my profile, you can see the main tweet stream that I see with all the (public) tweets from people I follow. Very cool. But it’s actually not new at all.

In fact, Twitter had this feature in place two years ago. We mentioned this in passing in the post, but then I was directed to the blog post explaining why they removed it in June of 2009. It’s pretty interesting. From the post on June 4, 2009 on their Twitter Status blog:

Recently we made a change to remove the With Friends tab from user profiles. We did this after finding out that this tab was both a relatively rarely accessed as well as computationally expensive page for us to serve.

Yep. The feature was “relatively rarely accessed” by Twitter’s own standards. And it was eating up precious cycles on their taxed servers at the time.

So why bring it back now?

Well first of all, Twitter is clearly beyond their main scaling issues. Sure, they have downtime every now and then, but it’s nothing like the nightmare that it was two years ago. There would be hours seemingly everyday where the service was down or parts of it were taken offline to keep the main functionality up. This included features like the “With Friends” feature. This ended up being one of the many casualties. Other included tweet-to-IM, auto timeline updates, and yes, track.

Because of those issues back then, the building of a robust social graph was more of a secondary concern at the time. But today it’s one of the primary concerns as Twitter has had no problem adding new users, but they need a way to keep them on the service and engaged. Features like “Who To Follow” help with this, and the resurrected “See What I See” should help as well. It’s more or less a self-tutorial to show new users what Twitter can look like when you get a feed of interesting users to follow.

Considering it’s fairly buried (you have to click on a profile and then click on the “Following” link — or use the drop-down), it will still probably be “relatively rarely accessed”. But I would assume they’re figure out a way to highlight it more on the main homepage for new (or logged out) users. Perhaps that’s why they included a “Shuffle” feature as well.

Plus, again, it’s a feature that will no longer cripple Twitter, so why not include it? And it makes good on a promise made two years ago.

The reason for the aforementioned Twitter post was because a group of users were upset that Twitter killed off this feature without saying anything (specifically, the feed for the feature, which some were using to follow tweets). In response, Twitter wrote:

It’s our hope to bring back the access to these feeds at some point. But for stability reasons, we’re unable to restore them at this time. We should have done a better job explaining this up front and anticipating this problem. Apologies for this; it’s our highest priority to provide a reliable, stable service for everyone.

Two years later, mission accomplished. Well, except the feed part. But who uses feeds anymore anyway? That’s what Twitter is for.

It’s good to see Twitter in a place where they can bring back old features rather than killing ones off to stay alive.

This guest post was written by Ethan Kurzweil. Kurzweil is a Vice President with Bessemer Venture Partners in Menlo Park, California. He works with Internet companies of all types, including Playdom, Zoosk, Crowdflower, Twilio, adap.tv, Reputation.com, Skybox Imaging, and OpenCandy. You can find him on twitter at @ethankurz. The views expressed in this post are his own, and do not represent those of Bessemer.

Hardly a day goes by anymore when I don’t hear about a reportedly “radical, new” business concept summarized succinctly as “X” (some well-known existing business) for “Y” (some specific market segment, use case, or other qualifier). These descriptors range from the logical – “Groupons for Moms” (okay, clear enough) – to the absurd – “Pandora for Cloud” (huh?). Often, I don’t even understand the analogy, as it’s so obscure, or I have never even heard of the company being compared. Sure, these monikers may satisfy our need for efficiency and brevity, but I’m convinced that in the long-run, we need to expand our collective attention spans just long enough to really describe what our businesses do. Otherwise, we run the risk of setting a model for entrepreneurship that’s entirely devoid of creativity and true innovation.

I see two primary problems with the current state of affairs. First, we’re losing the ability to appreciate a truly novel business concept that doesn’t boil down to a knockoff of something that already exists. And when I say we, I’m referring to a large number of us in the startup community – angel investors, VCs, entrepreneurs, executives; we’ve all adopted the convenient shorthand of translating new business ideas into three words. Having a short elevator pitch that neatly summarizes a new idea is important, but constraining such descriptors to less than a tweet is a step too far in my view. It’s understandable of course given the sheer number of new companies being formed every day, that we would need a shortcut for describing new concepts quickly. But this inevitably leads to constrained thinking as to the strategy and business model to be applied to a particular product or service. If Google had thought of itself in the early days as “Yahoo for better search results,” they may not have happened upon the juggernaut business model that is AdWords. More alarming is our natural tendency to evaluate a company’s prospects as an offshoot of the success of the descriptor. Would anyone have taken Groupon seriously if we had referred to them in the early days as “some Chinese company that no one has heard of for the US”?

My second concern is even more cause for alarm as this way of thinking is quickly becoming a self-fulfilling prophecy – at least based on the business ideas I hear about. This is not surprising since entrepreneurs take note of and emulate companies that get funding, press mentions, social media glory, and perceived traction – then turn around and get that same publicity with their copycat, reinforcing the same behavior. This sends a clear message that budding entrepreneurs should pick an idea only slightly dissimilar from something that already exists, get it out there quickly (because someone else is probably working on the same copycat), and then sit back and cash their ticket to fame and fortune. Even worse is the message that entrepreneurs should be afraid to champion an idea that’s so new, it simply can’t be categorized, because investors and others just don’t know how to pigeon-hole it yet. We could end up unwittingly deterring the future Google and Facebook founders out there from ever getting started.

To be clear, it’s certainly not the case that a knock-off idea can’t be a good business – and often these kinds of derivatives pivot from the original idea to something different and, hopefully more innovative. But the odds of a true homerun for this model of company are exceptionally low and we need to stop glamorizing this model of entrepreneurship.

Think of all of the truly revolutionary businesses and business models out there, and you’ve rarely heard them described in knock-off terminology. Pandora toiled for years in relative obscurity, ignoring popular sentiment that you couldn’t build a successful Internet music service with advertising, only to be saved by the groundswell of support from their users lobbying to keep them alive and profitable. Zynga built applications on a platform with no demonstrable track record or model for success. And the Twitter founders conceived of an ingenious and quirky way to let people share their thoughts, one sound bite at a time.

Nowhere along the way did Larry, Sergey, Zuck, Jack Dorsey, or the other founders of great Internet successes study some other business and wonder – what’s some nuance of that other successful company that I can replicate? Instead, they focused on previously unsolved problems, and, by addressing these needs, built powerhouses that will forever shape the way we entertain, live, work and communicate. So the next time I hear “Airbnb for Endangered Species,” I’m going to tune out and browse “Myspace for People that Use Their Real Name” and “Facebook Status Updates for people that like to express thoughts in 140 characters or less” instead.

Image by kubina on Flickr

Last week at Disrupt, Chris Dixon did a version of Founder Stories onstage with Quora founder Charlie Cheever. We learned that Quora is not looking to sell, but we also learned a lot more.

For instance, what convinced Cheever to quit Facebook with co-founder Adam D’Angelo was that tried to “imagine a world where I knew everything that I wanted to know, as long as someone else in the world knew it.” And that’s what Quora wants to build. It’s a pretty outrageous goal, which is what makes the startup so interesting.

But like all Q&A sites, Quora relies a lot on search traffic. Dixon asks, “Do you worry about being so dependent on SEO?” Cheever has a good answer:

“Not really. I think we do get a lot of traffic from search engines because there’s lot of good content that matches what people are searching for. But we also, Quora also kind of works a little bit similar to a blogging platform, where people sort of promote their own stuff that they write.”

In that sense, it is like a blogging platform for people who only want to blog occasionally, or can’t be bothered to set up their own blog. Quora takes a blog post that might only live for a few days and turns it into evergreen content. And since people are promoting their own answers, they also get a lot of traffic from Twitter. Watch the whole interview above.

Earlier this week, I took part in Infinity Ventures Summit (IVS) Spring 2011 in Sapporo [this and many of the following links are in Japanese], a two-day, invitation-only event that takes place twice a year in Japan. IVS attracted over 400 people from the domestic and international web industry this time and is organized by VC firm Infinity Venture Partners (which just raised US$41 million for their IVP Fund II).

Apart from panel discussions and presentations, some hours of the program gave a total of 14 Japanese start-ups the chance to present their services onstage. Here’s a rundown of all companies that participated at the IVS launchpad this time.

IVS Spring 2011: One winner and four runners-up

enchant.js by Ubiquitous Entertainment (winner of the launchpad)
Best of show went to enchant.js, an HTML5/Javascript-based game engine for smartphones and web browsers. enchant.js is open source and free to use (MIT or GPL dual license). This is an example of how an RPG developed with the engine could look like, here is a jump and run game developed with enchant.js (over 100 games have been developed based on the engine in less than a month). enchant.js was created by 19 year old Ryo Tanaka (more information in English on the engine can be found here).

Location base magazine by Hakuhodo DY Media Partners
Location base magazine is a geo-aware iPhone app that leads users to spots in Japan that were shown in popular TV shows. Last year, maker Hakuhodo DY Media Partners developed an app that helped fans of popular period drama Ryomaden to travel to locations the series was filmed at. The app was even available in English and included a number of additional multi-media features for fans (location-based background music, location-based photo frames etc.).

Feel on! by L is B
Feel on! is a Twitter client that uses a so-called social emotion engine to analyze the content of your tweets and turn your timeline into a comic strip of sorts. Users can switch between comic and “normal” display mode with the push of a button. Feel On!, which is available on the web and in the form of an iPhone app, is currently available in Japanese only, but an international version is already on the works (more information in English can be found here).

READYFOR? by Ohma
Launched in March this year, READYFOR? is Japan’s first crowdfunding service. It works much like Kickstarter in the US, but the focus here is to make it possible for artists in particular to get their projects (music, movies, fashion etc.) financed. The people behind this project, for example, are currently trying to collect 600,000 Yen/$7,400 for a documentary on Fukushima (more information on READYFOR? in English can be found here).

Reengo by Kayac
Reengo is an iPhone VOIP app that lets you call your Facebook friends without having to dial numbers – choosing a person from the Facebook friend list and pushing a button is enough. The app works with 3G and Wi-Fi and was downloaded in the Japanese App Store 80,000 times (it’s bilingual but not yet available in other stores) in 15 days. Reengo for Android is currently in beta, with maker Kayac saying an iPad version is on the way, too.

The other launchpad demos at IVS Spring 2011

• Ubiregi, an e-commerce solution that uses the iPad to replace cash registers and lets users analyze the wealth of sales data that can be collected that way via a web app backend (an English version will be available soon)

• Twepub, a smartphone/tablet app that lets users read, share and publish e-books (in the EPUB format) via Twitter

• Mangaget, a manga sharing site that lets creators publish comics on the PC, tablets, smartphones and Japanese feature phones simultaneously (with 27,000 manga uploaded at this point, it’s Japan’s biggest site of its kind)

• AskSmart.ly, a free iPhone app that businesses can use as a questionnaire and promotion tool (it’s bilingual but currently available in the Japanese App Store only)

• UltraBeam, an Android browser for playing Flash Lite games originally designed for Japanese feature phones (touch control ports are said to take just minutes per title)

• Omotenashi, a semantic match engine that – according to maker Taggy – boosted CTR in ads by a factor of 1.8 during a recent trial run on the Japanese web

• Livlis, a Twitter-based barter service (more information in English on Livlis can be found here and here)

• Social JOB Posting, a social recruiting service running on Facebook

• Lococom, a social/geo-aware/real-time service that lets users share information about their neighborhoods and gives virtual points to active users that can be redeemed in various ways later (available on the web, feature phones, and the iPhone)

Thanks to Kickstarter, the idea of crowd-funding a creative project is nothing new. Post- Cory Doctorow, the notion that an established author might convince his fans to pay upfront for a special edition of an as-yet unpublished book is hardly earth-shattering. And, following the launch of Byliner, even the launch of a digital-only publishing house isn’t really news.

And yet, by combining all of the best elements of those three examples, UK-based Unbound hopes to create something very remarkable indeed.

The premise behind Unbound is this: even established authors sometimes feel under-served by their usual publisher. Perhaps a member of Monty Python suddenly has an idea for a children’s book, or the creator of a cult TV show decides she wants to write her first novel for a decade. The publishing industry being what it is today, such not-quite-no-brainer projects might never make it further than the proposal stage. And yet, as Cory Doctorow admits, self-publishing a physical book can be a painful experience, both mentally and physically.

That’s where Unbound comes in. As with Kickstarter, specially selected authors can pitch their book to fans (and potential fans) in the hope of attracting sufficient pledges to continue. Different pledge levels mean different things: from ebook editions, à la Byliner, to beautiful personalised hardbacks, signed and numbered by the author, as pioneered by Cory Doctorow. Importantly, when it comes to the print editions, all of the production and distribution is handled by Unbound, saving authors from the back-breaking, soul-destroying, wheel-reinventing effort of self-publishing.

If the funding threshold is met, then the writing and publishing process begins. If not, subscribers can either have their money refunded, or apply it to a different project (this is notably different from Kickstarter, where nothing is charged until a project goes ahead). During the writing period, donors are given access to the author’s “writing shed”, where they’ll receive updates on progress, exclusive videos, diary entries and more. For fans of authors like Terry Jones, this element alone is worth the price of admission. High end pledges also bring invitations to launch parties and even lunches with the author.

I caught up with Unbound’s co-founders – Justin Pollard, John Mitchinson and Dan Kieran – while I was back in London. All three are successful authors, and Mitchinson’s career also includes stints as Marketing Director of Waterstone’s (the UK’s largest book chain) and as MD of Harvill Press. He is also vice-President of the Hay literary festival and Director of Research for Stephen Fry’s QI TV show.

The team’s pedigree is reflected in Unbound’s ability to attract big name authors from the start, and in its innate understanding of what both authors and readers demand from the publishing process. I’ve never been more than slightly tempted by the hipster-centric nonsense offered on Kickstarter, and I’ve only dipped my toes into Pledgemusic once, but of the five launch projects offered on Unbound.co.uk, there are three – Terry Jones’ Evil Machines, Amy Jenkins’ The Art of Losing and Jonathan Meades’ by Museum Without Walls – that I plan to subscribe to as soon as I’ve finished writing this.

The founders also understand the importance of allowing authors to retain as many rights in their work as possible. Unbound retains the publication rights in books it signs for the first year (“longer copyright terms are increasingly becoming meaningless,” says Mitchinson) but after that authors can sell paperback rights – and the rest – to traditional publishers if they wish. This leaves open the possibility of books proving their worth on Unbound before being picked up by the traditional publishing industry.

Unbound.co.uk launches today.

Well known US VC house Greylock Partners is launching a brand new $160 million fund aimed at internet technology companies, with the fund being deployed between Europe and Israel. Greylock is best known for its stakes in Facebook, Groupon and LinkedIn and European investments including Wonga. Greylock’s move will be a shot in the arm for European tech companies looking for more options when raising financing.

We understand the fund will be run from London by Laurel Bowden, a Partner, and will cover investments from early stage and beyond.

Generally speaking, the odds are stacked heavily against the average startup. The rate of failure among entrepreneurs and startups is startlingly high — it comes with the territory. Otherwise, entrepreneurs wouldn’t be pirates.

But, what if there were a way to reduce that failure rate by cracking the formula of startup success? No easy feat to map the double helix of startups, but entrepreneurs are risk-takers by nature, so four of these risk-loving international entrepreneurs came together to found the Startup Genome Report, a report that is part of a larger project that dives into the very anatomy of what makes Silicon Valley startups successful — or not.

The entrepreneurs who founded the Startup Genome report (Bjoern Herrmann, Max Marmer, Fadi Bishara, Aleksandra Markova), have also created a business accelerator called Blackbox, which will be leveraging the data they have collected (and will collect) from their ambitious R&D enterprise. The Startup Genome Report, as it is today, is a 67 page analysis on data collected from 650+ web startups.

The entrepreneurs recruited both UC Berkeley and Stanford faculty members, like Steve Blank, the Sandbox Network team, the Startup Bootcamp team, and the Pollenizer team, to help coauthor and contribute to the study. The goal of the report is to lay the foundation for a new framework for assessing startups more effectively by measuring the thresholds and milestones of development that Internet startups move through.

Blackbox, which was co-founded by techVenture and other organizations that have a track record of working with 100+ startups, including 15 exits (such as Bebo, Tapulous & Lala), hopes to use the Startup Genome Report as a cipher to help crack the innovation code, and give fledgling entrepreneurs and startups from around the world access to the characteristics and qualities that make Silicon Valley companies successful.

Here are 14 of the most interesting trends identified by the Startup Genome Report, some of which are intuitive and some of which may come as a surprise. Among them? Investors may be less help than they think. Take a look:

1. Founders that learn are more successful: Startups that have helpful mentors, track metrics effectively, and learn from startup thought leaders raise 7x more money and have 3.5x better user growth.
2. Startups that pivot once or twice times raise 2.5x more money, have 3.6x better user growth, and are 52% less likely to scale prematurely than startups that pivot more than 2 times or not at all.
3. Many investors invest 2-3x more capital than necessary in startups that haven’t reached problem solution fit yet. They also over-invest in solo founders and founding teams without technical cofounders despite indicators that show that these teams have a much lower probability of success.
4. Investors who provide hands-on help have little or no effect on the company’s operational performance. But the right mentors significantly influence a company’s performance and ability to raise money. (However, this does not mean that investors don’t have a significant effect on valuations and M&A)
5. Solo founders take 3.6x longer to reach scale stage compared to a founding team of 2 and they are 2.3x less likely to pivot.
6. Business-heavy founding teams are 6.2x more likely to successfully scale with sales driven startups than with product centric startups.
7. Technical-heavy founding teams are 3.3x more likely to successfully scale with product-centric startups with no network effects than with product-centric startups that have network effects.
8. Balanced teams with one technical founder and one business founder raise 30% more money, have 2.9x more user growth and are 19% less likely to scale prematurely than technical or business-heavy founding teams.
9. Most successful founders are driven by impact rather than experience or money.
10. Founders overestimate the value of IP before product market fit by 255%.
11. Startups need 2-3 times longer to validate their market than most founders expect. This underestimation creates the pressure to scale prematurely.
12. Startups that haven’t raised money over-estimate their market size by 100x and often misinterpret their market as new.
13. Premature scaling is the most common reason for startups to perform worse. They tend to lose the battle early on by getting ahead of themselves.
14. B2C vs. B2B is not a meaningful segmentation of Internet startups anymore because the Internet has changed the rules of business. We found 4 different major groups of startups that all have very different behavior regarding customer acquisition, time, product, market and team.

If you’re interested in learning more, detailed analysis of each of these points can be found in the full Startup Genome Report.

The team is also introducing a new survey that aims to help entrepreneurs understand the stage their startup is in and gives them personalized tips and advice for what to focus on based on data from the research project. The more data the project collects, the more accurate its conclusions become, and the more entrepreneurs and their startups can benefit from that knowledge, so check it out here.

There’s a really famous road — maybe you know it. It’s paved with good intentions. And by now you should know all too well where it leads.

It must have been aggravating for ViewSonic — which has made Windows-based tablet PCs since 2001 — to see its market destroyed by the Apple iPad in 2010. So the company did what it (and everyone else has) had to do: embrace Android.

The result is the ViewSonic ViewPad 10, a 10-inch, dual-booting Windows-Android tablet with a lot of heart and lofty goals, and an utter disaster on nearly every front.

To be fair, Android is a whole new world to ViewSonic, and when you boot the device to Windows, the machine isn’t half-bad. That isn’t to say it didn’t have its share of bugs: It took an hour of futzing just to get the two USB ports to work, and I experienced crashes nearly every day I used it. But if you really need Windows in a 1.9-pound slate-tablet design, the ViewPad 10 is at least passable.

It couldn’t complete any of our actual benchmarks — likely due to its 1.6-GHz Atom CPU and just 2 GB of RAM. But it was responsive enough in normal use compared to my low expectations, likely in no small part due to the inclusion of an SSD hard drive — though it’s only 32 GB.

To switch to Android mode, you have to reboot Windows, then push the right button at the right time when the OS choice prompt appears. Once into Android, well, the fun never starts.

The ViewPad 10 originally shipped with Android 1.6, and only during the first week of May did I finally receive the upgrade to 2.2. I used the tablet extensively in both environments. Neither is likely to be in any way satisfactory to even the most casual tablet user. There’s no delicate way to put it, except to say that with Android there is no facet of the device with which I didn’t experience a problem.

To wit: When booting, it often froze or fell back to a Linux command prompt instead of booting into the Android GUI. The Android Market is not installed on the device. ViewSonic says Google won’t allow it on 10-inch tablets.

Instead you get the cut-rate AndAppStore with a paltry number of apps available. That doesn’t really matter much, though. Downloaded apps only installed successfully about half the time. No manner of fussing could get Angry Birds running on this machine.

There is no Flash, of course (ViewSonic blames Adobe), and battery life was even lower on Android (3 hours, 10 minutes) than on Windows (3 hours, 30 minutes). Perhaps that’s because the ViewPad’s screen doesn’t auto-dim or suspend in Android, and there are no options available to make that possible.

Nor are there any volume buttons. Nor do the home and back buttons work properly: The home button takes you back. The back button brings up contextual menus. If you’re an Android phone user, you will never get used to this, nor should you want to.

With all of the product’s Android problems, it feels almost petty to complain about the weird decision to place the 10.1-inch (1024 x 600 pixels) screen off-center, the very dim LCD, and the difficulty of interacting with tiny Windows prompts using a fingertip. Instead I’ll just leave it at that, urging you to look elsewhere for your mobile-computing needs.

WIRED Passable in Windows environment, just barely.

TIRED Android implementation is an utter debacle. Buyers should ignore it completely and stick with Windows. Buggy from front to back, and from boot to shutdown. Reviewer feels bad that someone may get fired because of this review.

Photo courtesy ViewSonic

It’s safe to say there are few companies paying as close attention to the sound, construction and design of the lowly clock radio as Tivoli Audio.

Co-founded over a decade ago by hi-fi–audio veterans Henry Kloss and Tom DeVesto, the company quickly built a reputation for making beautiful-looking and great-sounding radios with stark retro styling. Tivoli systems have big tuning knobs, analog clock faces and come in handsome wooden boxes.

The company is celebrating its 10th anniversary with the release of another well-designed table top system, the Model 10. Like other Tivoli radios, there’s a base unit that runs by itself in mono, and you can buy an extension box that turns it into a stereo rig. Each 8-inch-tall enclosure has a 3-inch shielded speaker and a rear bass port, and you can choose from woods like walnut or cherry, or a variety of finishes.

But instead of the endearing analog controls common to other Tivoli radios, the Model 10 is all digital. It has an LCD display, and you dial up a particular station on the digital tuner using a rubber wheel on top of the left speaker. The wheel actually controls a few different functions: Volume is the default, but if you press it and hold it for a second, it’s your tuning knob. Double-press it and you can select between FM, AM and auxiliary inputs. In the center of the wheel is an audio on-off button that doubles as a snooze. There’s also a small remote control that accesses all the same functions.

Seeing as how the big knobs and simple analog controls on other Tivoli radios are exemplars of midcentury analog cool, the fully digital interface on the Model 10 is a bit of a head-scratcher at first. But the digital upgrade is tastefully executed, and it also happens to do wonderful things for the sound.

You can dig through the menus on the tiny screen to adjust the equalizer and sound settings. The ported cabinets throw out some powerful bass, so it’s helpful to be able to dial back the low end when listening to NPR talk shows or baseball games. Likewise, you can pump up the bass for the “King Biscuit Flour Hour,” or when you plug in your iPod.

It doesn’t go very loud — it’s a clock radio, not a full home-entertainment system — but when I did crank it up, the sound remained sparklingly clear with no discernible distortion.

There’s one hurdle I couldn’t get over, though — for a clock radio, it’s pretty damn complicated. These utilitarian beasts of burden are expected to do one critical thing without fail: wake us up in the morning. The best ones have some tweakable settings for multiple alarms or snooze times. But navigating all the software menus here, and using a remote to fine-tune the settings, seems like overkill.

But the sound remains spectacular. The Model 10 may prove a better companion in your office, kitchen or living room than in your bedroom. It certainly sounds as good as or better than most of the compact units in its price range.

And while spending $300 on a tabletop or bookshelf stereo system may seem insane to most people, if you’re a fan of Tivoli’s other products, or an audiophile who can appreciate the exceptional sound these boxes put out, or just a sucker for beautifully designed stereo equipment, then the Tivoli Model 10 is a bargain.

WIRED Minimalist design and sturdy engineering are classic Tivoli. Killer sound with an impressive punch will shake you awake every morning. Outputs for headphones, a record out and an optional subwoofer. Expanded EQ controls. Radio reception is top rate. All the expected functions of a thoroughly modern alarm clock.

TIRED Price tag ($200 for the mono unit, $300 for the stereo pair) puts it out of reach for most. You can hook up an iPhone, but there’s no charging dock — that’s extra dough. Small screen is crowded. Maybe overpowered for a bedroom system. Do I really need a remote control to use my alarm clock?

Photo: Jim Merithew/Wired

Undeniably attractive and super skinny, Sony Ericsson’s Xperia Arc is ready for a career as a runway model.

This fashionable specimen measures a mere 0.46 inches thick at its thinnest point, the middle of the concave arc that runs vertically down the back of the phone. It manages to make my iPhone 3GS look almost obese in comparison.

Slimness is a virtue in devices, as it reduces that embarrassing Visible Phone Line in your pocket. But premium phones usually have a bit of heft to them, and in that respect, the Xperia Arc feels a little too thin. Flimsy, even. At 4.13 ounces, it’s incredibly lightweight, thanks mostly to the removable plastic rear cover that gives access to the battery, SIM card and SD memory card.

Fragile as it seems, it’s a solid, well-performing Gingerbread phone with an excellent camera and a beautiful screen. There are some problems with the software, and a few head-scratchers in the design, but overall, I can recommend it. The phone is scheduled to arrive in the United States this summer, most likely on AT&T or T-Mobile networks.

The design generates plenty of interest during bourgeois dinner parties when it’s time for the ubiquitous “pull out your iPhone” ceremony after you run out of HBO shows to talk about. The Xperia Arc isn’t an iPhone, and its looks are definitely eye-catching.

Cool tooling aside, the backlit 4.2-inch “reality display” is reason alone to consider the Xperia Arc. The LED touchscreen is powered by Sony’s mobile Bravia engine, a descendant of what the company uses in its HDTVs. It has excellent color reproduction and brightness, even during sunny days.

The iPhone 4’s screen has better resolution — 960 x 640 pixels compared to the Xperia’s 854 x 480 pixels — and is better overall, but the Xperia Arc screen is lovely to behold. When you need a bigger screen for gaming or watching movies, the Xperia Arc has enough power to drive an HDTV using the HDMI connector that Sony Ericsson supplies with the phone.

The camera was probably my favorite feature. The phone sports a Sony Exmor R sensor for its camera and a bright, f/2.4 lens. The images it produces are sharp, fairly noise-free and have great color and contrast. Overall, it takes some of the best photos I’ve seen from a mobile phone.

I shot some test images to compare the Xperia Arc to the current cellphone camera king, the Nokia N8. With its 12-megapixel sensor and f/2.8 Carl Zeiss lens, the Nokia should win this match. But images from the Xperia Arc have better contrast and richer colors. The Xperia’s camera is quick too, unlike the N8s, which needs thinking time as it processes images.

Thanks to the Exmor sensor, the Xperia Arc does very well in low-light situations. This is great because the LED flash is too powerful, often bleaching out the subject you’re photographing, and should be used with caution.

Video clips look good in 720p HD, but the Xperia Arc’s microphone picks up sound in the opposite direction of where you’re pointing the camera, so you’ll get a lot of extraneous noise in the recordings. What a shame.

Another failure with the camera is the shutter button. It’s stiff and small with very little travel — a bit like the Power button, which also suffers from the same awkward size and action. It’s easy to blur images because you have to press so hard on the button, so I resorted to tapping the screen to take pics instead.

Camera-lens placement is also an issue. It’s easy to cover it up with the fingers of your left hand because the lens is right where you’d hold the phone. And where’s the front-facing camera for video calling?

Facebook shares on SecondMarket spiked briefly in March to $34 – an $85 billion valuation. But they settled down to around $31.50 after that and have mostly stayed around that level since then. But something caused the shares to surge past that old record to a solid $35 per share in this week’s auction. Our guess is that newly public LinkedIn’s somewhat impressive P/E ratio of 2,500 may have something to do with it.

$35 per share values Facebook at roughly $87.5 billion. Which is a steal compared to the way the public markets are valuing LinkedIn.

We are writing SharesPost members like you who indicated they would like to occasionally receive news from SharesPost.

We would like to inform you that SharesPost’s affiliated broker-dealer completed its auction of 100,000 shares of the Class B Common Stock of Facebook, Inc. yesterday, May 26th. A clearing price of $35.00 was established at the auction. Members submitting Qualifying Bids at or above the clearing price will be contacted shortly with instructions on next steps for completing this transaction.

The latest Disrupt has wrapped, but given the volume of news it created and the rate at which posts were pushing each other off the front page, you could be forgiven for missing a few items or videos here and there. Don’t worry, though: we’ve got the highlights of the show collected right here.

Actually, that’s not entirely true. We still have a ton of backstage talks and other footage we’re editing and processing, so expect more Disrupt content over the next week as we post these candid interviews with CEOs and Battlefield competitors. In the meantime, enjoy this central repository of all things Disrupt NYC 2011.

• Photos of the hackers working diligently
• …and continuing to work diligently deep into the night
• Video: Lora meets with some of the hackers and collects advice on how to maximize Hackathon time
• Video: Meet a 14-year-old self-taught hacker and his hack, BuyBy
• Video: the winning Hackathon demos and interviews with their creators

Hacks:

• NerdNearby: finds tweeters and people checking in near you
• Gilt-ii: a second layer for shopping site Gilt that lets you auction off your reserved items
• Joinable: a cloud-based tool for providing email and voice mail to the homeless
• JoystiCC: lets you control other human beings like chess pieces?
• Dispatch.io: for easily sharing local documents to cloud services like Google Apps
• Docracy: allows for collaboration and version tracking on legal documents

Interviews, panels, and Fireside Chats (with video and transcript):

• Fred Wilson: “Be your own bitch”
• Dennis Crowley talks about worldwide Foursquare adoption and his Gap sweater
• Arianna Huffington and Michael Arrington discuss the AOL acquisition, Mapquest, and orzo
• Ron Conway and David Lee on their new fund and myths of entrepreneurship
• Nora Ephron, Jay Rosen, and Arianna Huffington discuss new media
• Dave Morin shows off Stacks and explains why they declined to be acquired
• Charlie Cheever discusses Quora’s growth and why they don’t intend to sell
• Jeff Jarvis urges transparency in new media journalism and calls Bill Keller “obnoxious”
• Tim Armstrong explains how paid content can work
• Disrupting music with social
• Disrupting social commerce

Battlefield session one: disrupting search and discovery:

Do@: a slick search engine that searches using apps instead of the web
Rexly: a media recommendation engine based on trusted social graph connections
Weotta: plans an outing for you based on mood and intention
Skylines: a personalized photo stream based on topics and keywords, instead of people
Deja: a flashy interface for video discovery and consumption

Battlefield session two: disrupting location, location, location

SpotOn: recommends places to go nearby, based on your own social network information
Karizma: a video chatting app that connects you with people nearby
Sonar: find people by you who you don’t know but should know, based on mutual connections
Arrived: a location-aware social planning app that tells you what to do now that you’ve arrived
Gnonstop Gnome: an experimental gnome-sharing application with a clever transfer method

Battlefield session three: disrupting commerce

SneakPeeq: a social shopping site that counts down prices until someone buys an item
StyleSeat: a powerful job management system for stylists and other independent operators
Spenz: deep spending tracking app with a reward system for usage
BillGuard: “Antivirus for bills” that identifies fraudulent charges on your bank account
Happy Toy Machine: a plush toy customization engine, “Build-a-Bear on steroids”

Bonus link:

The TechCrunch Disrupt Official Drinking Game

Interviews, panels, and fireside chats:

• Paul Graham on the Y Combinator process
• Ashton Kutcher lays out his investment strategies
• Bing Gordon weighs in on Facebook and Zynga (and drops some rhyme science)
• David Karp and Kevin Systrom on managing hockey-stick growth
• Roelof Botha: RIP Good Times was no mistake
• Disrupting display advertising
• Disrupting publishing, from links to tablets
• Chris Dixon, Ron Conway, and Eric Hippeau discuss the New York startup scene

Battlefield session four: disrupting the real world

Desmos: a platform for rich educational content
Smartheart: world’s smallest hospital-grade ECG and an iPhone app to go along with it
Avado: a tracking and communication platform for doctors and patients
MotherKnows: an app for keeping track of all your kids’ important medical data from shots to height

Battlefield session five, disrupting enterprise

Getaround: rent nearby cars or put yours up for rent, with a special keyfob and app
Thinkfuse: richer, shareable status reports for your business
ccLoop: collects emails into subscribable “loops,” reducing email clutter
ThriftDB: a powerful database tool that’s difficult to describe but very impressive to watch
Foretuit: a platform for collaborating on and tracking projects and sales

Battlefield session six, disrupting something else

Lumier: no one is quite sure what Lumier is – possibly a skin for Windows
InvoiceASAP: a mobile invoicing app with cloud backup and media integration
Meporter: a citizen journalism platform aimed at hyper-local news
Everything Butt Art: an iPad app for teaching kids to draw, relying on butt-based drawings (yes, really)
CatchFree: a platform for finding, rating, and recommending free services
Kohort: a unified service for managing groups and events
Tracks: “Color for normal people,” creates collaborative picture timelines for events
Codeguard: an enterprise-level website backup system for consumers

Bonus link:

Lark launches in Apple stores (plus an onstage proposal)

Interviews, panels, and fireside chats:

• Google bets on NFC
• Chris Farmer, a partner at General Catalyst, reveals the top 10 venture capital firms
• John Biggs talks with Yancey Strickler of Kickstarter as well as a few of Kickstarter’s more successful projects
• Security and performance booster CloudFlare reveals some impressive stats
• Electric vs efficiency with Brammo CEO Craig Bramscher and EcoMotors CEO Don Runkle
• Office hours with Paul Graham: The investor brings entrepreneurs from the audience onstage to hash out their ideas
• The first Disrupt NYC winner Soluto offers some cool new features
• Qwiki lets you Qwiki yourself
• Fireside chat with Christopher Poole of Canvas Networks and 4chan
• Mike Arrington interviews Marissa Mayer

The final Battlefield session

The ultimate liveblog of the final battlefield session

And the winner is … Getaround!

From 30 awesome demos came six extra-awesome finalists. We were impressed by every startup that made the stage, but those final six really blew our socks off. Congratulations to all the companies, with special mention to Billguard, ccLoop, Do@, InvoiceASAP, and Sonar — and, of course, the Disrupt NYC 2011 Winner (and Audience Choice Winner), Getaround, which captured the Disrupt Cup with its killer car rental marketplace. Not to mention that they brought a Tesla, which always helps.

And of course, thanks to all our attendees, sponsors, and team members, who all help make Disrupt possible. This was the biggest yet, and we think it was also the best. See you next time.

For as long as I can remember, there has been one app that has constantly held the top paid app spot in Apple’s App Store: Angry Birds. Sure, other apps surge to the top briefly. But Angry Birds always comes flying right back. But a new app appears to be bucking that trend. Today is day 3 of The Heist‘s reign, and sales are quickening.

As The Loop noted after a partial day 1, The Heist saw download numbers just over 25,000. This was already enough to overtake Angry Birds. But what’s really remarkable are the day two numbers. There were 89,798 downloads of The Heist on day two. Again, that’s for a paid app ($0.99).

There are 86,400 seconds in a day so… yeah, the app is selling at a pace better than one a second. Crazy.

In total, that puts downloads now well north of 100,000, and revenues are nearing $100,000 already. In fact, they’re likely well past that number as I write this seeing as the app is also still the top-grossing app in the App Store.

So what is fueling the surge? Well first of all, they had a good launch strategy. The team behind The Heist is the same team behind MacHeist, the popular OS X software bundle. They began hinting about The Heist game earlier this year, and actually hid clues in the initial version of Twitter for Mac (which they had a deal with).

That proved to be enough to push it to number one, past Angry Birds, Tiny Wings, and other insanely popular apps. And getting to number one has its own perks. Because everyone sees you’re number one, they get curious and want to download your app as well, which led to the day two surge.

Well that and the fact that the puzzle game is getting excellent reviews across the board.

The tap tap tap team behind the app is also behind the truly great Camera+ app, which happens to be the number seven paid app in the store. In other words, these guys know how to make good apps — and money.

You can find The Heist here in the App Store.

Munch On Me is a daily deals site for food. But wait, before you click away to a slideshow about hot coders, Munch On Me (Y Combinator Summer class of 2011) has got some features that might just reroute you from relying on the big G for your munchies back to its sweet sweet embrace.

First of all, Munch On Me focuses on giving discounts on specific dishes, instead of on anything in the entire restaurant. Any business who’s been a victim of the Groupon effect knows why this is important, namely because restaurants can prepare for the demand in advance, overloading on the inventory they expect will sell out.

The Munch On Me discount focuses only on one item, and restaurants can upsell after the initial sale (“Would you like fries with that free milkshake?) and can keep offering up deals. Customers can redeem their deals immediately, a food industry-specific convenience that Groupon seems to have caught onto with its Groupon Now concept.

Because it takes less of a cut than Groupon, Munch On Me can get merchants to give out larger discounts as well as items for free in hopes of bringing more people into the store.

Says co-founder Jason Wang, “We were surprised in the beginning too, but merchants are willing to give out ‘freebies’ since we focus on dishes and not the entire menu. It drives a significant amount of traffic to the establishment. For example, when we ran King Pin Donuts in Berkeley, CA for a week, 1,573 people claimed a free donut when it was limit 1 per person.”

But the startup also makes money, “We don’t always offer 100% off. We sell individual dishes as well. For example, when you visit the Featured Dishes page in Berkeley right now (http://munchonme.com/index.php?l=berkeleyeastbay), [and] these cost money for users.”

Munch On Me also has another, more unique competitive advantage to Groupon. Banking on the fact that restaurants can’t take stellar pictures of their own food (food pics are a big deal), it sends out a professional photographer to get the job done.

You can currently peruse 2-4 Munch On Me deals a week in San Francisco and in Berkeley.