Category: Tech news

Vibrating sex toys have been around for over a century, starting out as crude steam powered devices and now resembling something very cool that you might pick up at an Apple store. Sex toys have been the source of giggles, controversy, pleasure and up until the last 5 years, were not a mainstream product. They were devices you bought and had shipped in unmarked brown packaging or slipped into a toy store late at night to buy, but were not something you’d ever imagine picking up at Nordstrom or your local Wal-Mart.

Millions of men and women use them every day and yet, it isn’t something we talk about much. Considering there’s a lot of tech that go into these devices these days, I think it is a topic worth exploring and definitely something we should no longer be ashamed of.

Today’s episode of Speaking Of covers the journey of an amazingly brave entrepreneur, Ethan Imboden, Chairman of Jimmyjane, who set out to design something meaningful that would change people’s lives. He’s not the first to create a stigma free product. Many cool products have been sold in stores like Good Vibrations for years, but he’s the first to bring a safe, non-toxic, sexy, virtually stigma free brand to the mainstream market. His efforts were what I consider truly disruptive and changed the landscape for the availability of pleasure toys for consumers everywhere. I’ll never forget the day I saw one of his products in a local lingerie store and how I started stumbling into them at mainstream stores everywhere. Seeing these products available to people in comfortable settings brought me so much joy and I’m excited to be able to share his journey into creating such a wonderful product with all of you.

Ethan shares his journey of starting out as an electrical engineer, becoming a designer for Herman Miller and how he was encouraged to start revolutionizing the sex toy space. We learn about him as a DJ, world-traveler and the fact that his arch nemesis designer was the guy who designed Swingline staplers. At the end of the episode, we get a tour of some of his products that are quite stimulating to look at and at the time of the interview, he hinted at the launch of their new Form 4 product, which is now available.

We have one product giveaway for commenters. Best, most insightful comment on the sex toy industry wins one of Jimmyjane’s awesome products that they gave to us in the studio. The deadline is Sunday 6pm PT. You must be 18 years old to win.

Ethan Imboden – Photo credit: Laist.com

As we saw from retailer JC Penney’s recent downfall in search rankings, using ‘black hat’ SEO tactics and gaming search is considered deceptive and ‘tantamount to cheating’ by Google. J.C. Penney said that it had no idea that this was happening and fired its SEM agency right away. But the retailer’s search ranking had already been “adjusted” by Google, and the damage was done. These sort of situations are considered deceitful by many in the search industry (including Google) and generally cast a malevolent cloud over a company’s search tactics. So, it’s surprising to find that a Sequoia Capital -backed Chinese startup, called Milanoo, appears to be gaming Google search results with these same black hat links spam tactics.

Milanoo, a China-based online retailer and wholesaler with a “passion for fashion,” is an ecommerce company serves customers with fashion apparel and related products in over 180 countries around the world, in seven languages (including English, Spanish and French). Launched in 2008, the startup just raised “millions of dollars” from Sequoia. According Digital Due Diligence, a small agency that provides in-depth investment research into online assets of companies; Milanoo has been caught using similar tactics as J.C. Penney.

Here’s what Digital Due Diligence found: For a number of very valuable keywords in Google search,, Here’s how Milanoo ranks for “cheap dresses” (position 2), “evening gown” (1), “cheap wedding dresses” (1), and “summer dresses” (2). Digital Due Diligence partner Doug Pierce (who also served as an expert in the New York Times J.C. Penney expose), writes that those four keywords alone have an equivalent cost of nearly $200,000 per month in Google AdWords.

It’s a red flag, explains Pierce’s fellow partner Byrne Hobart, when a search for evening gown or summer dress results with Milanoo as the second highest result as opposed to a major retail brand, like Macy’s Saks, Dillards, the Gap etc. In full disclosure, I am an avid online shopper and despite the company being in operation for three years, had never heard of Milanoo until it was covered on a TechCrunch a few weeks ago. So it is a little surprising to see that the site is listed as the second result in a search for the term “evening gown” under Bluefly, a site which I frequently visit.

This could indicate that Milanoo may be paying for spam and links to boost their ranking, which Google considers to be deceptive. Basically, Google’s algorithm considers and counts ingoing links to pages as a way to determine search rank. The more links a website collects, the higher it could rank. Google of course attempts to determine the source of these links, but in some cases, this can be overlooked.

In the situation with Overstock.com (who Google put in a penalty box for gaming search results), the retail site was paying for inbound links from Edu addresses, which Google tends to consider as more authoritative. In the case with J.C. Penney, many of the links to the retailers site were from spammy sites, where the company paid for these sites to link to the retailers for keywords like “evening dresses.” For example, a fashion blog linking to a retailer is fair. A Bulgarian property portal link is not.

Basically, Milanoo appears to be doing the same thing as J.C. Penney. The ecommerce site has been buying spammy links to both its homepage as well as to individual product pages, and these sites have linked, thus boosting Milanoo’s ranking above other, more well-known retailers in Google search.

Using the Open Site Explorer tool from SEOMoz, Hobart and Pierce say they couldn’t find a single inbound link that points to the page that isn’t spam or paid for. We too took a look at Open Site Explorer, searched for Milanoo’s link to “Evening Gown,” and found incoming links from NicePromOnline. Ok, so these aren’t as far fetches as J.C. Penney, but spammy sites nonetheless.

Then I did a search on Open Site Explorer for the link to Cheap Wedding Dresses on Milanoo, which resulted in inbound links from NFL New Jerseys, Auto News. Wow. Looks like Milanoo may have been caught red-handed in link exploitation.

So it’s a little surprising that Sequoia, a top-tier venture capital firm, would invest in a company that is using underhanded tactics to game Google’s search algorithm. And ironically, Sequoia is an early investor in Google. Pierce tells us that many times, investors don’t do the sort of in-depth digital due diligence that would flag these types of issues. His company is trying to provide investors with the tools and services to prevent situations like this.

If Google does find that Milanoo is gaming it’s search algorithm, the punishment can not only be damaging to a company’s search results, and brand but also to their top line. Overstock penalty by Google, which resulted in lower search rankings on the search engine hurt sales by 5 percent during the penalty period.

Similar to Overstock and J.C. Penney, a steady flow of visitors is key to Milanoo’s ecommerce business. And search is clearly a way to get those visitors.

The speakers for Disrupt just keep on getting better and better. Today, we are extremely excited to announce four more guests who will join us at this year’s Disrupt in New York City: Marissa Mayer, David Karp, Kevin Systrom, and Tony Conrad.

Marissa Mayer joined Google in 1999 as Google’s first female engineer. She ran the search product for years and is now the VP of Local & Maps at Google. Mayer will be one of the finalist judges at the Startup Battlefield. She’s tough, she’s done it before, and we are grateful to have her back.

David Karp is the CEO and founder of Tumblr, one of the hottest startups in New York and also one of fastest-growing websites, period. Tumblr is built on the principle that self-expression should be easy. Karp recently raised $30 million to keep up with all the growth.

Kevin Systrom also knows a thing or two about hockey-stick growth, but at an earlier stage than Tumblr and on mobile. Systrom is a co-founder of Instagram, an incredibly popular photo sharing application for the iPhone. Instagram took only 6 weeks to pass 2 million users and shortly after was adding an estimated 130,000 users per week.

Finally, Tony Conrad is the CEO and co-founder of about.me, which was acquired by AOL is December of 2010. Tony is a Founding Venture Partner at True Ventures where he serves on the Board of Directors of Automattic, appssavvy, StockTwits, and more. He is also a Special Advisor to AOL Ventures.

As we get closer to Disrupt NYC 2011, we are going to keep announcing new guest speakers week after week. You can read the full list of announced speakers here. If you haven’t purchased a ticket already, you can do so here. Early bird ticket prices end April 30th at midnight PST, so if you want the best prices, make sure to purchase them soon.

Disrupt in NYC is going to be big. We have taken over a Pier 94, we are planning amazing after parties, and we have more surprises in store. If you’d like to become a part of the Disrupt experience and learn about sponsorship opportunities, please contact Jeanne Logozzo or Heather Harde for more information.

Marissa Mayer
Vice President of Location and Local Services, Google

Marissa Mayer is the Vice President of Local & Maps at Google. Previously she was Vice President of Search Product and User Experience. Mayer joined Google in 1999 as Google’s first female engineer, where she led the user interface and web server teams at that time. Her efforts have included designing and developing Google’s search interface, internationalizing the site to more than 100 languages, defining Google News, Gmail, and Orkut, and launching more than 100 features and products on Google.com. Prior to joining Google, Mayer worked at the UBS research lab (Ubilab) in Zurich, Switzerland, and at SRI International in Menlo Park, California. Mayer has been featured in various publications, including Newsweek (“10 Tech Leaders of the Future”), Red Herring (“15 Women to Watch”), Business 2.0 (“Silicon Valley Dream Team”), BusinessWeek, Fortune, and Fast Company.

Tony Conrad
CEO & Co-founder, about.me

Tony Conrad is CEO & co-founder of about.me (acquired by AOL in December 2010). He is also a Founding Venture Partner at True Ventures where he serves on the Board of Directors of Automattic (WordPress), appssavvy, StockTwits, RescueTime, PastFuture (GDGT), KISSmetrics, 20×200, FREEjit, Small Batch (Typekit), WeGame and led True’s investment MakerBot & Plancast. Tony also serves as a Special Advisor to AOL Ventures. Previously, Tony co-founded Sphere which was acquired by AOL in April, 2008. In addition, Tony has served on the Board of Directors for Oddpost (acquired by Yahoo), Iconoculture, MusicNow (acquired by Circuit City), and Centive (acquired by Xactly). Tony also played an active role managing investments in Post Communications (NASDAQ: NTVS), QuinStreet (NASDAQ: QNST), Danger (acquired by Microsoft), Sabrix and Stonyfield Farms (acquired by Groupe Danone).

David Karp
Founder & CEO, Tumblr

David Karp is a high school dropout and the founder and CEO of Tumblr. Karp grew up on the Upper West Side of Manhattan, the son of Barbara Ackerman and Michael Karp. He attended The Calhoun School from 3rd to 8th grade, where his mother taught science, until high school when he briefly attended Bronx Science before dropping out at the age of 15 and being homeschooled. Karp began interning for animation producer Fred Seibert at 14, and from there went on to work as a software consultant for UrbanBaby, an online parenting forum. Karp left UrbanBaby in 2006 and began working on Tumblr later that year. The site launched early in 2007.

Kevin Systrom
Co-founder, Instagram

Kevin Systrom is a co-founder of Instagram, a photo sharing application for the iPhone. He also founded Burbn, an HTML5-based location sharing service. Kevin graduated from Stanford University in 2006 with a BS in Management Science & Engineering. He was an intern at Odeo that later became Twitter. He spent two years at Google, the first working on Gmail, Google Reader, and other products and the latter where he worked on the Corporate Development team.

Here is another chance to win a free ticket to this year’s Disrupt in NYC. We have announced some amazing guests and speakers for this year’s Disrupt and we will be announcing more later on today. Tim Armstrong, Arianna Huffington, Ron Conway, Dennis Crowley, and Chris Dixon will all be joining us, just to name a few. For now, you can check out the full list of speakers and guests here. As you know, we will be taking over Pier 94, overlooking the Hudson River in west Midtown Manhattan. However, not only are we taking over a pier, we are also taking over some amazing spots in New York City for the after parties. We also have other special surprises we will announce as we get closer. A special congratulations to Adam Growald for winning last week’s ticket.

Disrupt is happening May 23rd to May 25th in New York City and we want you to come with us. To win this week’s free ticket, all you have to do is follow the steps below.

1) Like our TechCrunch Facebook Page:

2) Then do one of the following:

– Retweet this post (including the #TechCrunch hashtag)
– Or leave us a comment below

The contest starts now and ends tomorrow, April 30th at 7:30pm PST.

Please only tweet the message once or you will be disqualified. We will make sure you follow the steps above, choose at random, and contact the winner this weekend with more details. Anyone in the world is eligible.

Please note this giveaway is for 1 ticket only and does not include airfare or hotel.

Good luck!

Nokia Siemens has closed the acquisition of the wireless network infrastructure assets of Motorola Solutions today. The company reports that it paid $975 million in cash for the assets and approximately 6900 employees will transfer to Nokia Siemens Network from Motorola. The finalization of the deal come after China regulators approved the acquisition a last week. The full release is paste below.

As of April 30 2011, the company says that responsibility for supporting customers of Motorola Solutions’ GSM, CDMA, WCDMA, WiMAX and LTE products and services transfers to Nokia Siemens Networks. Part of the approval is due to the fact that Motorola reached an agreement with Chinese manufacturer Huawei over a pending patent lawsuit relating to the assets being acquired. In January, Huawei filed a lawsuit to prevent Motorola from giving Nokia Siemens Huawei’s IP information.

The litigation was recently settled for an undisclosed financial amount.

It’s been nearly a year since Nokia announced the acquisition of Motorola’s wireless assets. Back then, Nokia was planning to pay $1.2 billion for the network and the deal was predicted to close by year end.

Nokia says that based on revenue, the acquisition of Motorola Solutions’ Networks assets makes Nokia Siemens Networks the third largest wireless infrastructure vendor in the United States and the leading non-Japanese wireless vendor in Japan. And as part of the deal, Nokia Siemens Networks is acquiring a number of research and development facilities including sites in the United States, China, Russia, India and the UK.

Nokia Siemens Networks completes acquisition of certain wireless network infrastructure assets of Motorola Solutions
Pays US $975 million in cash
Approximately 6900 employees will transfer to Nokia Siemens Networks
Takes on responsibility for 50 operator customers in 52 countries
Nokia Siemens Networks and Motorola Solutions, Inc. (NYSE: MSI) today jointly announced that Nokia Siemens Networks has completed its acquisition of Motorola Solutions’ Networks assets paying US $975 million in cash. As of April 30 2011, responsibility for supporting customers of Motorola Solutions’ GSM, CDMA, WCDMA, WiMAX and LTE products and services transfers to Nokia Siemens Networks.

“The people, customers and technology we’ve acquired greatly complement our existing business by taking us into new markets and broadening our market share,” said Rajeev Suri, chief executive officer, Nokia Siemens Networks. “Our combined knowledge and experience will provide our newly expanded customer base with the means to grow by providing greater value to their subscribers.”

“Motorola Solutions is pleased to complete this transaction to combine our Networks team with an industry leader,” said Greg Brown, president and chief executive officer, Motorola Solutions. “This is great news for our customers, our investors and our people and will allow Motorola Solutions to further sharpen our strategic focus on providing mission-critical solutions for our government and enterprise customers.”

The acquisition strengthens Nokia Siemens Networks’ position in key regions, particularly North America and Japan, as well as with some of the world’s major service providers. Based on revenue, the addition of Motorola Solutions’ Networks assets makes Nokia Siemens Networks the third largest wireless infrastructure vendor in the United States and the leading non-Japanese wireless vendor in Japan. In addition, the acquisition reinforces Nokia Siemens Networks’ position as the world’s second largest wireless infrastructure and services provider.

As part of the deal, responsibility for supporting 50 operators across 52 countries, as well as approximately 6900 employees, will transfer to Nokia Siemens Networks. In addition, Nokia Siemens Networks is acquiring a number of research and development facilities including sites in the United States, China, Russia, India and the UK.

AudioMicro, a site where you can find royalty-free stock music and sound effects backed by DFJ Frontier and Fotolia, has struck a deal with Microsoft to provide music and sound effect files to Microsoft Office 2010 users worldwide.

Under the terms of the licensing and distribution deal, Microsoft Office 2010 users are able to select from a hand-picked collection of over 1,500 music tracks and sound effects at Office.com to use with any Microsoft Office project.

The partnership is noteworthy because AudioMicro launched in 2008 with a heavy emphasis on the needs of PowerPoint slideshow creators, AudioMicro founder and CEO Ryan Born says.

Royalty-free sound effects offered by AudioMicro on Office.com include parts of The Hollywood Edge sound effects library created by the sound editors of Soundelux, whose credits include such films as Unstoppable, Inglourious Basterds, The Bourne Ultimatum and Braveheart.

AudioMicro is not all about stock music and sound effects, by the way – the company operates a constantly growing network of digital content licensing marketplaces, including for cartoons, celebrity pictures, and tattoo flash.

The company also announced that it recently brought on Myspace VP Sean Percival as an advisor – he will be helping the young company out with all things SEO and social.

Matrix Partners, a US-based investment firm with additional offices in India and China, this morning announced that it has closed two new funds: Matrix Partners China II (at $350 million) and Matrix Partners India II (at $300 million). The funds bring the firm’s total international assets under management to $650 million in China and $600 million in India.

Matrix Partners established an India presence back in 2006 and has an experienced entrepreneur running its investment team there: Avnish Bajaj, co-founder and former CEO of India’s largest online marketplace Baazee.com (acquired by eBay).

The firm has been active in China since 2008.

Matrix was an active player in the development of the VC industry in the 1980s. The firm’s predecessor, Hellman Ferri Investment Associates, was founded by Paul J. Ferri and Warren Hellman (founder of San Francisco-based PE firm Hellman & Friedman).

Matrix Partners was an early stage investor in companies like Apple, JBoss, SanDisk, Tivoli Software and VERITAS Software. Recent investments include Anjuke, HubSpot, Zendesk, Care.com, GOGII, BuyWithMe, Gilt Groupe and Zong.

Editor’s Note: This is a guest post by Mark Suster (@msuster) a VC at GRP Partners. He blogs at BothSidesoftheTable.

Banner Ads. They first started in 1994 and are therefore almost as old as the Web itself. They were very effective back then, with the original ad garnering a 78% click-through rate (CTR)!  I guess from there we had nowhere to go but down.

Nowadays banner ads get on average 0.2% CTR meaning for every 1,000 ads that are served up only 2 people click on them. And as Jon Steinberg of Buzzfeed points out, the CTRs for social media banner ads are just 0.08%.

Holy Shiitake!

Despite its creation more than 15 years ago, banner ads have been surprisingly resilient despite their lack of efficacy. In the IAB study that revealed the graph above, brand advertisers indicated that their number one objective in online advertising was “creating awareness” followed by “creating purchase intent” or “likelihood to recommend” the product. Yet these seem to be the least effective attributes of banner advertising.

The fundamental problem with banner ads is a condition called “banner blindness” meaning that our eyes are really quickly trained to look at what is most relevant on the page – the content we want to see. Check out this chart from eye-tracking research conducted by the usability guru Jakob Nielsen published in this piece. It shows that our eyes are trained to focus on the text, not the ads.

I’m sure it probably resonants with how most of you read the web.

So I’ve spent the last few years checking out companies that are trying to solve for this problem. The global advertising market is estimated at around $475 billion / year with only 12% of this online and measurable. (some data sources have this estimate much higher.) We believe that the structural industry changes will continue to create big opportunities for technology firms that enable the changes in media consumption for television, radio, inbound calls, online & social media. We are investing heavily in these changes.

One company that I previously wrote about trying to change this industry is, Solve Media, (I am not an investor) has created an interesting ad unit designed to drive up brand “engagement” and recall. The idea is that if I can serve you an ad for a function that you already need to perform on the web anyways – a captcha – with a brand message I can drive recall. And market research seems to confirm this.

You’ll see a clear problem here. Traditional banner ads only drive 16% brand recall and almost ZERO message recall. So it’s hard to argue that brands shouldn’t worry about CTR rates when it doesn’t seem that banners are very effective for branded advertising or awareness either.

It’s no big surprise that the overwhelming majority of online spend has therefore been “direct response” advertisements (trying to elicit an action) rather than branded advertising as pointed out in this good summary by Jeremy Liew.

So people will spend money online to get you to sign up for credit cards or Netflix but not to change your laundry detergent. I decided to look up one branded company in the chocolate segment to get a sense for the magnitude of spend online. Hershey’s chocolates spends about $365 million in advertising per year. Just $460,000 of this is spend on online display ads (0.1% for those without a calculator handy).

The reality is that advertising has got to become more integrated with content in order to drive efficacy. I know that any time ads are mentioned it makes the blood boil on any self respecting technologist the same way it did when HotWire ran their first ad in 1994 and the way it made Google’s blood boil when Overture launched the sponsored search category.

Ask anybody if they like product placements in movies or TV and they’ll resoundingly tell you “no” but marketers know better, which is why the celebrity endorsement industry is a $50 billion industry.

But even for the consumer reality sets in. Firstly, we care more about getting cheap or free high-quality media than we do about whether we see ads. Give people massive price increases on most media and they’ll abandon it. So how people behave and what they verbally say they stand for are often at odds.

Integrated Advertising

I believe that “integrated advertising” is one of the more effective types of advertising out there. You have to find a way to get your audience to actually “engage” with the content in the way that Solve Media is doing, in the way that in-game advertising works for video games or the way that celebrity endorsements work.

It’s why I still believe passionate in companies like Adly (I’m an investor) who have created ways for celebrities to integrate endorsements “in steam” in a Twitter feed. Yes. Oh, sacred cow. In the steam. Integrated with where our eyes & attention are. I advocated strongly for this 18 months ago and my belief system is as ardent as it was back then. If you’re interested here is my case.

But the simple facts are:

• Our attention is all in the stream. As evidenced by the eye-tracking studies – they will remain in the stream.
• We know that celebrity endorsement works. It has for decades. Celebrities care about their personal brands so will naturally rebuff requests to sponsor inauthentic products.
• The beauty of social media is that consumers can vote with their “unfollow button” so it has a natural self-correcting mechanism. If you get economic value out of having followers you don’t want to lose them over one ad.
• Sure, there needs to be ad disclosure. And naturally we have built in quality controls like: frequency capping, automated measurement so we can pull ads that people respond poorly to, A/B testing tools, data analysis to tell celebrities & brands which products will resonate, etc.

But I can tell you as my firm invested in Overture who created the category of pay-per-search that Google perfected – our company underwent three years of ridicule in Silicon Valley until people looked at the performance data and realized that efficacy matters.

The technology blogs will be aflutter with continued criticisms of in-stream ads while mainstream consumers continue to click on links provided by the celebrities they respect and will buy products accordingly. We already have the data that proves it.

In Image Ads

Another areas that I’ve been really focused on over the past 2 years is “in-image ads” as another form of integrated media. When you think about the eye-tracking we know that people care about the story and the images. And it is already an accepted fact that in many cases the ads & images are blended as any lady who reads Cosmo or Vogue will tell you. The big splashy image ads is part of their reading experience.

So we put our money where our mouth was an invested in the largest in-image advertiser on the web, GumGum, whose network now reached over 100 million monthly uniques with 3 billion ad-compliant images, delivering an average CTR of 0.4% (2x industry average for banners). The eyes are in the image. We believe this is why Google Ventures invested in Pixazza.

As you can see from this image, the ad is unobtrusive and potentially valuable to the reader. The ad unit is served up based on algorithms that determine what is actually in the image and also for whether an ad placement would impair the image. We could even target ads better based on who the end consumer was.

What else is out there in the field of integrated advertising?

Vibrant Media & Kontera have both built large and fast-growing businesses around text-based advertising and there are new entrants doing it in new ways like SkimLinks. Vibrant has a reach of 250 million uniques, making in the 12th largest ad-focused property online and has 3rd-party verified studies suggesting up to 50% increase in brand lift following their in-text ads (I’m not an investor in any of these companies). Text is shown to deliver higher CTRs than banners. Text is what we’re reading. It’s integrated.

There is a whole industry being spawned in the Internet video world and especially in the integration of devices (second screen TVs) and the TV experience. Some of the interactive experiences I’ve seen in recent demos are simply mind boggling and are starting to form new opinions in my head about how we will consume big screen TV in the future (I’ll save that for a future post).

The games industry has massively changed over the past several years to more of an integrated advertising / purchasing media with the growth of virtual goods and ads. An obvious example of integrated media would be the new Rio Angry Birds version. It’s actually very cool. There are increasingly incentivized offers to get more powerful swords & shields in battle games. This has proved far more effective than small crappy banners at the bottom of each screen.

There will always be a tension between advertising wanting to reach audiences through whatever means they can to capture their attention and help them discover new products and consumers who claim a strong preference for ad-free products. Yet the other tension between ad-free products that cost more versus ad-supported models have a clear winner: ads. On products where I’ve seen data the “ad free” versions have converted at 4-6% of the user base at maximum.

So the future of helping make the ad industry more measurable (and more online) I believe will be one of helping make ads both authentic & integrated. Trying to relegate ads to the least intrusive real estate of our computers is missing the point. Advertisers pay for efficacy.

If not, we’d be telling advertisers to just leave all of their branded advertising spend on traditional television in the future. And to stick with their old adage, “Half the money I spend on advertising is wasted. The problem is, I don’t know which half.”

Two California residents, Drew Moss and Sahar Maleksaeedi, have filed a rather peculiar class action lawsuit against Twitter (see documents embedded below).

Basically, they’re suing over the fact that Twitter sent a confirmatory SMS to their cellphone after they themselves used an SMS command (‘STOP’) meant to turn off all phone notifications.

The two men allege that Twitter has engaged in unlawful conduct by contacting them on their mobile phones without their consent, which they say is a violation of the Telephone Consumer Protection Act of 1991 (TCPA) and an invasion of their privacy.

Here’s the relevant part in the lawsuit documents:

At some point Plaintiffs decided that they no longer wanted to receive text message notifications on their cellular telephone from Defendant.

Plaintiffs then responded to Defendant’s last text message notification by replying “stop,” as instructed by Twitter.

At this point, Plaintiffs withdrew any express or implied consent to receive text message notification to their cellular telephone that they may have previous given Twitter.

In response to receiving this revocation of consent, Defendant then immediately sent another, unsolicited, confirmatory text message to Plaintiffs’ cellular telephones.

Moss and Maleksaeedi says an “automatic telephone dialing system” was employed to deliver the confirmatory message, and that they incurred a charge for incoming calls as a result. This is illegal, the two men claim, because the message in question was not sent for emergency purposes and without prior consent given.

According to the lawsuit documents, Moss and Maleksaeedi seek up to $1,500 in damages for each call in alleged violation of the TCPA, which, when aggregated among a proposed class number in the “tens of thousands”, would exceed the $5 million threshold for federal court jurisdiction. The suit is expressly not intended to request any recovery for personal injury.

I’ve contacted Twitter for comment on this rather bizarre lawsuit but haven’t heard back yet (it’s still very early in California, so we’ll update as soon as we get a response).

(Photo by Flickr user mira66, used with permission)

twitter-complaint

The Royal Wedding is finally over, and William and Kate are hitched. The wedding goes beyond just a ceremony, the event is actually a huge business. Between replicas of Kate Middleton’s engagement ring and Royal Wedding china, retailers are profiting off of the nuptials. And eBay and its merchants are part of this business. Here are a few stats related to the searches and purchases of wedding-related items on the marketplace.

• In April, more than $70,000 and 3,000 items related to the Royal Wedding have been sold on eBay
• Kate Middleton searches are five times more popular than those of Prince William
• The most expensive item sold was Kate Middleton/Princess Diana replica ring for $1,500
• Monthly eBay searches for Royal Wedding products have risen a staggering 1,815% in 2011

Sharing what mobile apps you have in a social network has been tried various ways. Appsfire hit on the idea of socialising apps.

Zwapp is coming at it from a slightly different angle. Its iPhone app (iTunes link) auto-discovers what apps you have on your iPhone and connects up your contacts, Facebook and Twitter friends. You then follow people who’s opinion’s you respect when it comes to apps. It even has a live feed where you can see what apps your friends are using and downloading (privacy is now most definitely over it would seem).

Onavo, as we just reported, is a magical iPhone app which literally shrinks the data your phone uses and thus your roaming data bill when you are travelling.

It launches today and I caught up with CEO and co-founder Guy Rosen at The Next Web conference in Amsterdam.

Editor’s note: Zing Toys sent us several boxes of its newest office weapons this week. We took advantage of “Take Our Children to Work Day” to kid-test the toys with the children of various Wired employees. These are their unedited reactions.

Z-X Crossbow ($26)

“I think it’s awesome and I really want it. It shoots hecka far and it sticks to stuff.” –Jude, age 7

“It can’t stick to people. That’s what makes it suck.” –Luc, age 8

“It’s interesting. It shoots for you, so you don’t have to worry about getting your hand whacked.” –Clara, age 10

“This is awesome. You just trigger it, and it goes really far, and it sticks.” –Isabel, age 11

“The trigger is stuck.” –Clara, age 10

Zip-Bak Bow ($20)

“This thing is awesome! It gives you really good aiming. I also like how light it is and easy to carry. It’s made from really light materials so it can go a long distance.” –Isabel, age 11

“The fact that you have to pull it back so hard to get a good shot.” –Isabel, age 11, when asked about any downsides

“When it shoots.” –Ophelia, age 4, when asked what her favorite thing about it was

“Easier.” –Sadelle, age 3 3/4

Zing-Shot Launcher ($10)

“The slingshot’s cool.” –Clara, age 10

“Yeah.” –Ophelia, age 4, when asked if she liked it

“When you let go.” –Ophelia, age 4, when asked what her favorite thing about it was

“This thing’s hard on aim. The chances of me breaking something are about 48 to 100.” –Isabel, age 11

“The shooting part.” –Ennio, age 4, when asked what his favorite thing about it was

Nerf Dart Gun (not actually being reviewed)

“The shooting part.” -Ennio, age 4, when asked what his favorite thing about it was

Photos by Jon Snyder/Wired.com

You could say the original Sidekick was the first shot fired in the smartphone revolution.

With a flip of the thumb, you could expose the physical keyboard hidden behind the screen. It was aligned horizontally to make typing easier, but it wasn’t too bulky. And the large screen — bigger than most other phones in 2002 — made tasks like browsing the web and writing e-mails on your phone actually seem like ideas worth getting used to.

Over the years, the Sidekick and its successors ended up losing out to the newer breed of smartphones ushered in by the iPhone — devices with advanced operating systems and apps, and with touch displays in place of physical keyboards.

So, can the Sidekick make a comeback? Samsung hopes so: The latest iteration of the old classic, the Sidekick 4G for T-Mobile, stays true to its heritage while bumping up its specs and adding a host of media and entertainment perks.

It’s an Android phone built for the 4G now, but it has some hardware and software quirks that make it feel several steps behind.

Samsung stuck with the traditional Sidekick silhouette, with two buttons placed on either side of the 3.5-inch 480 x 800 resolution touchscreen. A Home button and Jump button grace the left side. A Menu key and Back key are situated on the right, with a small optical track button sandwiched in the middle.

Being right handed, it took a while to get used to this button placement. I really wanted the Home button to be on the bottom right when it’s held in landscape orientation, with the Back button above that and the Menu and Jump keys on the left. My thumbs got lost often.

The phone has about the same heft as an iPhone 4, but is slightly longer and about 50 percent thicker. It fits in a front pocket, but it is a bit chunky. That thickness comes from the physical keyboard under the screen. The Sidekick’s screen slides out using a unique “pop-tilt” mechanism, revealing the display’s sassy pink underside, after it’s snapped into a comfortable viewing angle.

Sliding the screen out takes a bit of practice: You need to use both thumbs, applying pressure to the crack between the screen and keyboard. But all you have to do is nudge it free of the body, and the screen springs out the rest of the way on its own. You can’t apply the force horizontally, which is a departure from other slide-out keyboards, and from the swivel screen on older Sidekicks.

Also, the volume rocker and power button sit just a hair below where you need to place your thumbs to push the display out. This leads to a lot of unintended volume adjustments, screen shut-offs and other accidental button-presses when flipping the screen up. Sliding the screen back in without pressing any of the buttons also takes some getting used to.

For my dainty lady thumbs, the QWERTY keyboard was a little uncomfortably spaced out, dropping my texting speed a few notches. Male friends with longer — normal-sized? — thumbs thought the keyboard size was just right.

The Sidekick 4G comes with Samsung’s Kick UX skin for Froyo onboard. It’s less than intuitive — there are three ways to access just about every app or feature of the phone, which can be a little confusing. But it’s fine once you find one method you prefer over the others.

The Jump key (a Sidekick legacy) was particularly handy in this respect: It lets you switch from one recently used application to another while bypassing the home screen. It’s not exactly multitasking, but it is a timesaver.

Once inside an app or widget though, you lose those options. With some apps, like the Facebook widget, you have no choice but to use the Back button (heavily) to navigate. That’s a bit of a shame on a touchscreen device. And although the handset is clearly meant to be used primarily in landscape mode, several apps and functions require it to be in portrait orientation.

The Sidekick 4G stays true to its chat roots with a slew of messaging options, including Google Talk and the phone’s signature Group Text and Cloud Text Features. Group Text provides functionality similar to that of other app- or web-based group texting services like GroupMe, allowing you to create and manage a group of contacts and send mass SMS messages. This is great for getting a message out to a specific group of people (your family, your co-workers, a circle of friends) speedily and easily.

But those subscribed to limited texting plans may not appreciate the barrage of texts that result from the reply-all nature of the service. Cloud Text is similar, but works across platforms, so you can text from your PC or the Sidekick.

There’s a VGA front-facing camera you can use to video-chat through Qik’s service. Around the back, there’s a heftier 3.2-megapixel camera. That’s subpar by today’s standards, but the software offers multiple settings that photo geeks can use to tweak images. You can shoot photos in black and white, sepia and panoramic modes, and adjust the exposure, white balance, contrast, saturation and sharpness. Video quality is nothing special.

If you actually use your phone to make calls, you’ll be happy to hear that the call quality is superb. The phone’s noise cancellation is so well-implemented that during a lull in conversation with my dad on my bus ride home, the line became so silent that he thought the call had been dropped.

During my testing, I found T-Mobile’s network speeds — HSPA+ 4G or otherwise — to be generally good. The latest episode of 30 Rock downloaded in minutes, and web pages loaded at least as quickly as on comparable smartphones. T-Mobile says you’ll get 5-to-10-Mbps download speeds wherever it can connect to 4G, and I found no reason to dispute that claim. The Sidekick will also act as a mobile hot spot for up to five devices.

Overall, the Samsung Sidekick 4G gives a modern update to the traditional look and feel of the old Sidekick handsets, but it suffers a bit from some odd hardware-design choices, and from software quirks. Viewed as just another Android phone, it’s tough to recommend it over other Android handsets out there. However, longtime Sidekick users or Blackberry owners transitioning to Android will like the Sidekick’s big keyboard, and they should be pleased enough with the user experience.

WIRED Physical keyboard will keep thumb warriors happy. Tons of media options and chat features keep you entertained and connected. Speedy 1-GHz Hummingbird processor gets things moving: Games like Angry Birds Rio don’t stutter in the slightest. Battery life easily lasts all day for normal mixed usage. Background noise? What background noise?

TIRED Screen-popping mechanism is a bit tricky. Button placement is downright poor. The mix of onscreen-touch and physical-button navigation is perplexing and redundant. It takes a lot of work to get a good photo –- if I wanted to mess with that many settings, I would have gotten an actual digital camera.

Photo by Jon Snyder/Wired.com

There’s a reason most cheap in-ear headphones sound that way: They only use one driver in each ear, which limits the audio range. If you want more life, more spaciousness and more oomph out of your favorite
tracks, upgrade to some dual-driver earbuds.

On these models, each earpiece contains two separate speakers— one to handle the high and mid frequencies, and one to handle the bass. This separation creates a more rich and filled-out sound that makes
any kind of music sound better. A dual-driver design is also especially good for listening to high-quality audio from lossless rips, HD videos or other high-bitrate sources.

The earphones have circuitry inside of them to split the signal path appropriately, so there’s no extra equipment to buy. Almost every design on the market will slot right into a standard headphone jack,
and many of them come with familiar controls on the cord so you can pause the music, change tracks and talk on the phone.

Because there’s twice as much speaker tech crammed into the same tiny space, dual-driver earbuds tend to be more expensive than their single-speaker cousins. But we’ve tested four pairs that will do justice to your tunes without blasting your savings.

1. Galaxy Audio EB10

Don’t jog with the EB10s; they’re bulky and tough to keep in place while moving quickly. But if your main goal is listening to high-end audio formats, you’d have to spend hundreds more to find anything better. They pulled the richest sounds from OGG and Apple lossless files of anything we tested, with deep, clear separation and bass that’s lower than the Mariana Trench. They’re not up for marathon listening sessions, though; the ear pads feel the opposite of the smooth tones that pour from them.

WIRED: Mellifluous sound from nearly any file format. Thick cord stands up to repeated abuse. Handsome carrying case.

TIRED: Rough ear pads are brutally uncomfortable for some users.

$280, Galaxy Audio

2. NOCS NS800

These low-profile slugs form a tight, almost symbiotic bond with your ear canal, scotching outside noises and transmitting sparkling tones. They sound like heaven, right? Sure, if your idea of bliss is light on bass. Deep lows are almost nonexistent, and the passive noise canceling can be a little disconcerting. Our advice? Rock these where it doesn’t matter if the external din is muffled to a whisper.

WIRED: Stainless steel construction is as handsome as it is durable. So comfortable you’ll actually look forward to wearing them. Simple, minimalist mic/remote combo.

TIRED: Hermetic seal kills too much ambient sound; it gets disorienting. Dude, where’s my bass?

$200, NOCS

3. Ultimate Ears UE700

Lightweights in heft but not quality, the UE700s were our top choice for the gym. The dainty pills insert neatly without closing off the outside world. We could hear shouts from a personal trainer (“Three more, prom queen!”) while getting down with some Wiz Khalifa. Audio quality is adequate in the low range but gets muddled in the mids. Highs are superb, though—as good as or better than anything else we tested.

WIRED: Lithe and extraportable. Generous ear-pad options ensure proper fit for everyone from kids to cauliflower-eared wrestlers.

TIRED: No volume control or mic on the (surprisingly flimsy) cord. Occasionally distracting levels of ambient noise.

$150, Ultimate Ears

4. Apple In-Ear Headphones with Remote and Mic

Yes, they’re two years old. But Apple’s dual-driver headphones are the cheapest decent ones we’ve found, and they crush the white iCruds included with every audio device coming straight outta Cupertino. The clear mids hold their own against the thump-heavy lows—great for, say, Wu-Tang or Wagner. But pop fans take note: The highest highs come out muddy.

WIRED: Stay planted firmly in ear even when jogging or sweating profusely. Responsive on-cord volume adjustment. Feather-soft silicone ear pads are easy to change.

TIRED: Trouble at the Aguilera end of the sound spectrum. White hue attracts grime and keeps it there.

$79, Apple