Category: Tech news

In the same social enterprise space as Yammer and Podio, the Adobe-funded Scrybe Labs is launching its basic collaborative product today, available at Convofy.com. As identified in a lot of the pre-launch press hype, Convofy wants to go beyond being a private Facebook and Twitter to let companies collaborate around content like web pages, images PDF files, Powerpoint files, Word Files and Excel. “We’ve enabled the activity stream to work in the context of your work,” says CEO Faizan Buzdar.

The desktop tool uses Adobe Air and the HTML5 browser Web Kit to provide users with an separate interface to have realtime discussions around images, articles and third party apps like Twitter and Google Maps. A lightweight mobile app is also available at http://convofy.com/m/.

In addition to manually uploading them into the app, Convofy allows you to drag and drop files and links into a Quick Add field in the upper left of your desktop. New comment notifications appear in the top right of your screen.

When discussing context, Convofy gives users a Markup tool bar where they can select, underline and drill down into specifics like the RGB and CMK of colors in images as well as comment on their selections.

Right off the bat there’s one niche use case where I can see this being valuable, and that’s in product or other types of design. While Convofy could probably be a godsend in situations where you need to be able to interact with content in order to communicate, I’m not sure the same utility applies to companies who do not need the heavy image and document support.

Convofy has a lot of potential, especially since the Enterprise 2.0 space is in dire need of disruption. But as of right now the product itself is quirky, with plenty of behaviors that might be hard for new users to learn. For example you have to manually type in who you’re addressing into a “To” field in the comment stream (CEO Faizan Buzdar tells me this will be fixed) or each user has a “presence bubble” that expands in the right hand corner, signifying how much they contribute to the group.

The company, which has just under 2 million in funding, plans on monetizing by offering companies a premium version for $5 per user per month, with administrative features like content moderation, the ability to block domains and users and a custom TOS. Convofy also plans on integrating with non-web app companies, and has a partnership announcement coming up with a major player in the oil and gas vertical.

Back in August of last year we wrote about MessageParty, a new location-based chat service that let you exchange messages with people (even strangers) located nearby. But that didn’t really work out — outside of a few random events, there was never a high enough density of users for people to really interact with each other. So today the company is announcing that it’s relaunching (I’m avoiding the ‘P’ word) as something very different: location-based blogging, or, as CEO Amanda Peyton calls it, “Geo-Blogging”. The service is going live today in New York City, and you can download the iPhone app right here.

The service is sort of like Foursquare Tips — but instead of leaving notes like “The bathroom code is 1985″, MessageParty is for photos, video, and richer narratives. Say you were wandering through Central Park and you came across some particularly impressive street performers. You might take a YouTube video of them to share with friends, and you could also put it on MessageParty so that anyone else wandering through the park could see it too. In a way, MessageParty is trying to help give physical locations their own multi-media histories.

So why the switch from group messaging? Peyton says in addition to the user density issues mentioned earlier, the company also noticed that rather than chatting with other people (which was difficult given that other people were rarely on the app), users were blogging about what was going on at their current location. So MessageParty took that use-case, expanded on it, and launched what we’re seeing today.

The application is available as an iPhone app and also as a website at MessageParty.com (there are mobile web apps for phones other than the iPhone). Fire up the app, and you’ll see that you can browse through messages using three modes: Nearby (which, as you’d expect, shows messages in the immediate vicinity), the 25 nearest messages (which should show messages around the city), and then a global stream of messages displaying all content submitted to the service.

Of course, MessageParty isn’t the first company to tackle location-based blogging. Other attempts include SocialLight (back in 2005), Blockchalk, and Graffitio, which was one of the first apps to launch on Apple’s App Store. In other words, it’s been tried before, and none of these services have become close to mainstream.

But Peyton thinks that the world is finally ready to start adopting geo-blogging. She explains that location-enabled devices have become so common — and people have become so used to the idea of sharing their location — that the time is ripe for services where location is the central driver of the service, as opposed to an add-on.

I don’t think she’s wrong (I think it could be cool to fire up an app and see interesting tags left by other people). But MessageParty has a tough road ahead of it. The service doesn’t currently have any inherently viral mechanics so it’s going to take a lot of work to gain traction. The ’25-nearest’ and global views should help with the chicken-and-egg problem to some extent, but it’s going to take plenty of users to produce the hyper-local content — a photo of the record store I’m standing in front of, or a video of a violin player at my local subway stop — that would keep me coming back for more.

As you may have heard, online music streaming service Grooveshark made headlines after Google booted its Android app from the Android Market. Google hasn’t revealed much insight into why the app was pulled but has told reporters that Grooveshark violates its “policies”. CNET reported that sources said top music labels accused the service of violating copyright law. Now Groovershark is confirming to us that Google received a letter of complain from the RIAA (The Recording Industry Association of America is the trade group that represents the U.S. recording industry), and that is one of the reasons behind why the app was pulled.

Here’s the statement from Grooveshark:

It is our full intent to get Grooveshark for Android back into the Android Marketplace, and we haven’t received any specific information from Google about what in the developers’ terms of service, exactly, we need to address to be re-admitted to the marketplace–only that Google received a letter of complaint from the RIAA.

As a user-sourced service, like YouTube, Grooveshark complies speedily with all DMCA requests to make sure that we operate within the law and respect the wishes of content owners. Unlike Apple’s iPhone ecosystem, Android is an open platform, and Google is traditionally a supporter of DMCA-compliant services–indeed, Google itself relies on the DMCA for the very same protection that Grooveshark does.

Grooveshark works night and day to develop new successes in the music industry, as well as pay the many content partners with whom we work. The current unavailability of our app is taking money from the thousands of hard-working labels, artists, and content partners who benefit from a share of Grooveshark’s mobile subscription revenue. We look forward to working with Google to get our app reinstated.

For Grooveshark, this is sort of like deja vu. Last year, Apple yanked the app from the App Store after it received a complaint from Universal Music Group UK about the app. The company has also been embroiled in legal battles with EMI over copyright infringement.

Here’s a fun tidbit for you: I really like the Motorola Xoom. The web browsing is fantastic, email is great, the notification bar is tops and, well, Verizon’s service rocks. It’s tad pricey but in my mind it’s still a great tablet. Is it better than an iPad? Well, not really, but it scores major bonus points for advancing the user experience of a tablet thanks to Google’s Honeycomb.

However, it doesn’t matter what I think. Apparently it’s not selling well with early estimates putting the Xoom’s sales numbers around 100,000. That’s about how many iPad 2s sold the first couple minutes it was available. The whole thing just smells of failure from all angles. This wasn’t just one man’s fault. Everyone had a hand on pushing the Xoom over the edge and into the barren world of niche gadgets. So who killed the Xoom? Everyone.

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I guess $1 billion under management just wasn’t enough. Andreessen Horowitz has just announced a new growth fund of $200 million. The fund with co-invest alongside the firm’s most recent $650 million fund, providing more capital for the kinds of late stage deals that have been raging in the Valley of late. (Check out our three part series on the trend here, here and here.)

That “co-invest” part is makes this announcement very different from other firms’ late stage funds, says general partner John O’Farrell. “This is not Fund III. This is a completely discretionary fund that gives us more firepower to invest in great high-quality, high-growth companies along with Fund II, but there is no obligation to do so,” he says. In other words, the firm may invest all of the $200 million, none of it or somewhere in between. At the end of Fund II, it goes away no matter how much is left.

And this may be the biggest distinction from other growth funds: Andressen Horowitz is not charging investors any management fees associated with this fund. “We wanted to be completely aligned with investors,” O’Farrell says. “If it’s truly a discretionary fund, we should not be charging management fees on it. We would be doing that due diligence work anyway since this co-invests with Fund II. Why double up on the fees?” (Big points scored with the firm’s limited partners there, and a big message sent to other firms. Fees on growth funds are one of the most contentious issues in the industry today.)

Notable late stage investments made so far by Andreessen Horowitz include Skype, Zynga, Facebook, Twitter and most-recently Jawbone. There are more details in a guest post by O’Farrell on Ben Horowitz’s blog. (Come on, guys! Can’t O’Farrell get his own blog?)

We spoke with O’Farrell about what opportunities are still out there now that the big social media plays like Facebook, Twitter, Zynga and Groupon are plied full of late-stage cash. O’Farrell obviously didn’t want to name names of deals that aren’t yet done, but he pointed to two existing portfolio companies as examples: Jawbone and Box.Net. One is a consumer products company and one is an enterprise company; two industries that can require large amounts of growth capital to go truly mainstream. “They aren’t household names yet, but we believe they will be,” O’Farrell says. Another promising vertical is e-commerce, he said.

He drew a distinction between “high-growth” and “high-quality,” saying the firm turns down companies that are merely growing quickly all the time if they don’t have a stellar management team and a truly global market opportunity. He also noted that profitability wasn’t necessarily a requirement. ”A company may well still be losing money if they are investing very heavily in marketing, but as long as we can see the lifetime value of a customer is greater than the cost of acquiring them, that’s fine,” he says.

Editor’s note: This guest post was written by Jason Jacobs (@jjacobs22), the co-founder & CEO of RunKeeper, a mobile fitness platform for runners and other fitness enthusiasts.

People are leading busier lives than ever before – working longer, sleeping less, stressing more, working out less frequently, and eating the wrong foods. As a result, it’s gotten more difficult for an increasing number of people, myself included, to stay in shape. Unfortunately, there’s no pill you can take or button to push to ‘make it all better.’ Staying in shape requires developing healthy habits across a number of key areas over a sustained period of time (hopefully, a lifetime).

Different things motivate different people when it comes to increasing physical activity. Some are data junkies, who long for more data to analyze and to hold themselves accountable. Others are social creatures that thrive on the encouragement they receive from others. Some are competitors, and do their best when head-to-head. And still others are at their best when you turn things into a game and dial up the fun. The key is to identify your personal motivational drivers, and then set up a routine that best aligns with them.

Many of the characteristics described above can already be found in the physical world – join the gym, sign up for a group fitness class, take lessons from a personal trainer, participate in a running club, etc. These are all good options for people who have the time, the resources, and the flexibility in their schedules to make these options work. But what about for everyone else?

Well, there’s good news for everyone else. Exciting innovations are occurring on a number of fronts, making it possible for the emergence of a new kind of platform – a virtual fitness platform. I believe so much in this future that I am building a company to try to make it happen faster. These platforms will embody the best attributes that exist in the in-person physical world, and enable people to access them virtually, from wherever they are, whenever they have time, easily and inexpensively.

Several convergences are happening in parallel that will elevate these platforms from a cool niche for early adopters or data junkies to powerful systems that gain mainstream, global adoption. One is the rise of smartphones as mobile computing devices. Many applications that used to require expensive, standalone devices are now harnessing the power of smartphones instead. This means that instead of purchasing an expensive fitness tracking device, in many cases, the phone is becoming a worthy and inexpensive (or even free) substitute.

Another exciting trend is the emergence of connected health/fitness sensors. More and more health/fitness data is being collected from increasingly powerful sensors, ranging from smartphones to wi-fi bathroom scales to sleep monitoring devices, and beyond. Even equipment like treadmills at the gym is becoming connected, and more sensors collecting additional biometric data are emerging almost weekly. The fitness sensors that collect this data are less expensive, easier to use, more powerful, lighter, and more accurate than they have ever been before. It’s also easier to get the collected data off of these devices, and to store and gain meaningful insight from this data over time. Ultimately, aggregating the data from these devices and equipment in one place will enable users to correlate their data across categories, and to spot trends in order to gain insight into their individual health drivers in a way that has never been possible before.

The final piece to fall into place is the online social revolution. Web services are able to foster user experiences that more closely simulate real-world interactions. Participate in a virtual community, train with virtual activity partners, get cheered on by virtual spectators, follow virtual training programs, and get trained by virtual coaches. The more realistic these virtual experiences become, the lesser the need to make special trips to the gym, pay for personal trainers, or sign up for in-person fitness classes; you can get comparable results virtually for less while enjoying greater flexibility.

Virtual platforms have a fundamental advantage over their counterparts in the physical world that will enable them to deliver far better results over time – access to data. Data about individual users that empower them to make changes to their health. Data about the aggregate community that allows users to see how they’re doing against others who are like them and have similar goals. And data that fosters the optimization of the platform itself over time, as it learns how to continually make changes that enable the aggregate community to get healthier. As the components of virtual platforms continue to evolve, they’ll continue to deliver better results across more aspects of people’s health/fitness.

Global health is gaining more and more mind-share as people realize the scope of the obesity problem and the corresponding costs that come with it. As virtual health/fitness platforms evolve, they have the potential to fundamentally alter the state of world health in a positive way, by empowering people to better manage their health on an individual basis, by making these tools accessible to the masses, and by using the aggregate data sets they generate to continually self-optimize and improve the way that their services are delivered.

There are several contenders vying to be the virtual platform that makes meaning of all of this data. Some are device manufacturers like Garmin. Others are footwear/apparel companies like Nike or Adidas. And some, like Google Health or RunKeeper (our platform) are taking more of an open, input-agnostic approach. It is still the early phases of this platform evolution, and while there may ultimately be consolidation, there is more than enough room in the meantime for several interesting companies to get built.

Salesforce originally launched Chatter as a way to add a social layer on top of its CRM, Service Cloud and other offerings. BranchIt for Chatter makes Salesforce.com even more social by bridging the gap between corporate email and CRM.

Specifically, BranchIt for Chatter aims to uncover relationships held by employees across the entire company and feed them through Salesforce Chatter. Functionality includes automated contact syncing, relationship strength scoring, contact following, account following and more.

You can update your colleagues on who you’re meeting with, and obtain personal introductions to contacts from colleagues. Since launching last year, BranchIt has signed up over 20,000 business users including Bell Aliant, Penske, Enterasys Networks, Freeman, and William Blair. The app also won Salesforce’s AppQuest competition. The startup is also keeping BranchIt free for the remainder of 2011.

Adding a social and contextual layer on top of email is certainly something that Salesforce is looking to integrate into its own offerings. The company recently bought email contact manager Etacts.

After the success of its Chrome web app, TweetDeck is launching a full-fledged web app, which should pose major competition to both Twitter and Seesmic. According to a blog post, TweetDeck Web is built on the same core as Chrome TweetDeck and features a similar UI and product features. Unfortunately, TweetDeck Web does not include Twitter streaming.

The reason why TweetDeck, which makes a massively popular desktop Twitter client, is making a Web version is because it will be browser agnostic. TweetDeck will be asking for select users who have whitelisted accounts to test the browser-based app, specifically targeting Chrome, Firefox 3.6, Firefox 4 and Safari, with support for Opera and Internet Explorer 9 being added soon.

The twist to all of this is that TweetDeck was just acquired by Twitter client powerhouse UberMedia, which had some unfortunate run-ins with Twitter over TOS violations. All is well for now, but recently Twitter made some aggressive comments about the vision of their ecosystem.

Basically, third-parties shouldn’t be creating straight-up Twitter clients any further. Of course, this sleek new web version of TweetDeck will no doubt compete with Twitter’s new web client so it should be interesting to see how things shake out. Because TweetDeck Web is still private, it’s hard to tell how popular it will be. But if the Chrome extension’s popularity is a predictor of the new client’s success, TweetDeck web could be a hit.

Back when we wrote about Trunk Club in 2009, the startup was an innovative new way that men could hire their own personal shopper via Skype video sessions, who try to figure out what kind of clothes they wear, what is lacking in their wardrobe, and what kind of clothes they might be willing to try. Similar to a retailer, Trunk Club sent desirable, stylist-picked clothes to gentlemen, which they tried on for stylists via Skype. The gents and Trunk Club stylists then nixed the clothes that didn’t work and the men were only charged for the clothes that they kept. Unfortunately, there were major problems with this model.

Trunk Club was built around a loose network of contractor stylists all over the country who were paid on commission only. Product was then drop-shipped from wholesalers. The disjointed and fragmented model ended up being a customer service and quality control nightmare. About one year ago, an investment firm funded the company and brought on a new CEO to breathe new life into the company.

The firm’s choice was Brian Spaly. You may remember Spaly from Bonobos, a recently-funded startup that makes custom-fit pants for men. Spaly and Andy Dunn founded Bonobos together and clearly didn’t part ways on the greatest terms. Spaly simply says that his vision of Bonobos diverted from Dunn’s, which is why he left.

So shortly following his departure from Bonobos, the investment firm pitched him on the Trunk Club opportunity and he quickly realized that there was greater potential in the model with a few simplifications. First, he centralized Trunk Club in Chicago and eliminated the disparate network of stylists from around the country.

Instead of Skype chats, professional stylists on staff who are based in Trunk Club’s Chicago offices, coordinate with clients via phone and email. As Spaly tells me, some men want to spend 20 minutes talking about what they need in their wardrobe and some men prefer to coordinate their picks over email. Second, Spaly focused the company on a particular genre of clothing—nights and weekend style, or “smart casual.” Inventory includes jeans, casual pants, sweaters, polo shirts, jackets, t-shirts and shoes. Designers range from Penguin to Lacoste. And all of the clothes Trunk Club ships and sources are stocked in a massive store room in the startup’s Chicago offices.

In terms of the sourcing of clothing, business model is the same as a retail store. The Trunk Club buys clothing at wholesale and sells it at a normal retail markup. There are no sales/discounts on clothes and Trunk Club stocks its own inventory. Customers don’t pay anything extra for them as they would in a fancy department store.

So how does it work? A gentlemen can sign up via the website, pick preselected looks, and answer a small questionnaire with questions like “where do you shop right now?,” “what’s your favorite item in your closet,” sizes, price and color preferences and more. A stylist will then call/contact the customers via their preferred method of communication. Once the stylist gets an idea of the customer’s style, he or she will send a “trunk,” of clothes and ship out via Fedex a handpicked collection of shoes, pants, shirts, and more.

Once the customer receives the order, he can try on the items and send back the clothes he doesn’t like in a prepackaged box. The customer is only charged for the clothes he keeps and isn’t charged for any shipping costs. Outside of of Illinois, customers don’t pay sales tax either. Spaly says that some customers, both Chicago-based and outside of Chicago, prefer to visit Trunk Club’s offices to try on and pick clothes as well.

Speaking purely from a personal standpoint, I know this model would work for my husband, Suneel. He works long hours, wears old t-shirts, threadbare hoodies and ripped jeans to work, but likes to look decently put together when we go out for dinner. But he hates to go shopping and doesn’t even really have the patience or time to peruse online retail sites. With Trunk Club, he can get the clothes he likes, hand-picked by a professional stylist, shipped to our front door, and I can pick which ones look best from the comfort of a couch (because, as his wife, I get final say). Trunk Club is the perfect solution for him (and me).

But Trunk Club is not for everyone. Some men may prefer being able to try on clothes in-stores. Or others may want to be able to find clothes on sale (Or others may not have overbearing wives, like me). And certainly the type of clothing that Trunk Club offers requires customers to have an expendable income. But it does present men with a relatively painless and less time-consuming way to shop. And this seems to be a fairly growing demographic if sales are any indication.

Spaly tells us that in 2011, the startup is expecting $5 million in sales (that’s up from basically nothing a year ago), and is on the path to profitability. The average transaction size is anywhere from $500-$850, and the company is pleased with repeat purchase rates. The company previously raised $1 million in capital and is looking to raised a larger venture round now to support its efforts to possibly expand into new geographies. While Trunk Club’s 1,900 customers are located all over the country, Spaly is considering opening up satellite offices in cities like Atlanta, Boston, Dallas and San Francisco.

There’s no doubt that as technology advances, shopping is taking on new forms and models. For example, J Hilburn is also creating a unique retail experience for men with designer-like customized shirts. I anticipate that we’ll see many more startups, like Trunk Club and J Hilburn, that not only aim to bring the shopping experience online, but also save the customers (and their wives) time and in some cases, money.

On March 29, 2011, CIO Australia published an interview with Andy Lark, Dell‘s global head of marketing for large enterprises. In the interview, Lark made a lot of “quotable” statements, among them:

“An iPad with a keyboard, a mouse and a case [means] you’ll be at $1500 or $1600; that’s double of what you’re paying,” he claimed. “That’s not feasible.”

Let’s forget for a moment that $1500 seems a little high, even for a tricked-out iPad. The fact is that even $1500 is definitely not too much for enterprises to pay for tablet computers.

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In late 2009, LinkedIn opened up its API to allow select developers make applications that tap into LinkedIn’s social network. The professional social network released nearly a dozen APIs which gave third-party developers the ability to access user profile information, message LinkedIn contacts, search LinkedIn and more. Over 1,000 developers tested the platform, which has served one billion page views since November 2009. Today, LinkedIn is opening up access to the network’s new platform to all developers. The network is releasing support for OAuth 2.0 and Javascript APIs, as well as access to LinkedIn’s new customizable Plugins, which are features that can be customized and embedded on websites with minimal effort.

The idea behind plugins is to give developers are more lightweight way to embed LinkedIn functionality and data on third-party sites. ALl of the plugins can be integrated onto websites with just a few lines of javascript and are customizable, says LinkedIn engineer Adam Nash. For example, LinkedIn’s Member Profile plugins brings a snippet of user profiles to a third-party site and can show users who they know within an application in a professional context. Company Profile plugin delivers at-a-glance summaries of companies on LinkedIn’s network, including location, number of employees and more.

And the Company Insider plugin displays in-depth, personalized insights from LinkedIn about companies featured on a site. For example, you can access a summary of who in a visitors’ network works at a given company, a list of new hires, and job changes. Developers can also embed the ability to follow a company within their sites.

Other plugins include a recommend button, which allows users to promote a product on LinkedIn from a third-party site with a link back to the site. And LinkedIn also allows developers to embed a LinkedIn Share button on sites, which is similar to Twitter’s Tweet button and can feature share counts and more.

LinkedIn has also made a number of “infrastructure improvements” to the developer platform. For example, the JavaScript framework loads significantly faster, and the company has added SSL support and
more robust OAuth support. Additionally, LinkedIn has redesigned its Platform and API portal to make it easier for developers to access content and deploy plugins.

LinkedIn just crossed the 100 million member mark, and in order to continue to drive member and visitor growth the network is going to have to present developers with innovative ways to embed LinkedIn functionality on outside sites. Facebook and Twitter have both done this at a massive scale. Launching lightweight plugins that are easy for developers to embed is probably a wise way to spread LinkedIn across the web.

Listen up, haters: The Chevrolet Volt rocks, and General Motors deserves tremendous credit for building it.

Rarely has a car carried so heavy a burden as the Volt. GM has bet the farm on this car, which has been hyped and hated in equal measure. The Volt has its flaws. It’s expensive, for one, and you can argue all day about how cost-effective it is. But doing so overlooks an important point: The Volt is a landmark automobile. It bridges internal combustion and electric power, combining the flexibility of a conventional car and the efficiency and zero tailpipe emissions of an EV.

It also happens to be a remarkably refined vehicle with some of the most sophisticated engineering to ever come out of Detroit — or Japan, for that matter. There isn’t anything else like it on the road.

What makes the Volt unique is operates as an EV, a series hybrid or a parallel hybrid, all depending upon how far and how hard you’re driving. It uses the battery alone for short trips of 35 miles or so. Once the 16 kilowatt-hour lithium-ion pack goes kaput, a small gasoline engine drives a generator to keep the juice flowing.

Complex, yes, but there’s nothing at all unusual about driving the Volt. Push the power button and it starts. Put it in gear and it goes. It couldn’t be more ordinary. The Volt isn’t a rocket, but ample torque makes it feel faster than 149 horsepower and a zero-to-60 time of around 9 seconds might suggest.

The EPA pegs the Volt’s range under battery power at 35 miles. We averaged 32 during three days of Bay Area commuting and back-road blitzing. GM says you’ll get 25 to 50, depending upon how you drive, and we would have done better had we been more mindful of the dashboard nanny’s suggestions for increasing efficiency.

When the battery’s toast, the transition to the gasoline assist — GM calls it “range-extended mode” — is anti-climactic. The engine simply turns on. A display on the somewhat cluttered LCD dashboard switches from showing remaining range to showing how much fuel remains in the 9.3-gallon tank. The engine is utterly smooth and eerily quiet, even when you’re pushing the car hard.

This car is hefty, weighing 3,721 pounds. Most of that’s down low, though, so the Volt is nimble enough in traffic. The chassis is sure-footed and the tires have decent grip, so you can have a little fun on back roads. The electric power steering and regenerative-braking system don’t provide much feedback, though.

General Motors took a lot of heat for the Volt’s styling, which is more pedestrian than the wild concept we saw in 2007. The do-over disappointed many early fans. The changes were made to maximize aerodynamic efficiency and eke every last mile from the battery.

Frankly, we’ve always thought the Volt is a looker. Ours came in the Volt’s iconic “Viridian Joule,” but crystal red metallic is the color to get.

The interior is equally sharp and remarkably quiet, but of limited practicality. The Volt’s 435-pound battery runs down the middle of the car, leaving room for only four seats. Things are roomy enough up front, though the battery infringes on elbowroom a bit. We kept whacking anything we put in the cup holder. It’s a bit more cramped in the back because of the sloping roof line.

Editor’s note: Guest author David Porter is the CEO and founder of 8tracks, the handcrafted internet radio network.

Last week, Amazon launched its Cloud Drive, with an emphasis on music storage.  While there have been a number of “jukebox” services these last 10 years (Napster 2.0, MusicNow, Virgin Digital, Yahoo Music Unlimited, MTV Urge, MOG, Spotify, Thumbplay, Rdio), relatively few “locker” offerings have emerged—although rumors of new locker services from Apple and Google sound promising.  Last week, Amazon leapt ahead of both rivals in launching Cloud Drive, a service that allows you to stream, for free, any songs purchased from Amazon.  

It also allows you to upload up to 5GB from your existing music collection for free storage and streaming; if you pay an additional $1 (or more) per year, you get an incremental 1GB (or more) of storage.  Amazon has not (yet, at least) negotiated direct licenses with content owners for Cloud Drive.

While it is creating quite a stir, remember that music in the cloud isn’t new.  Jim Griffin envisioned the “heavenly” jukebox more than a decade ago, and Listen.com executed a subscription-based version of the concept in the form of Rhapsody in 2001. During the same period, myplay and My.MP3.com introduced the music locker, another vision for music in the cloud but populated with a user’s existing music collection, without the subscription fee. Offering cloud-based access to your music collection obviously extends its value, making it available from another computer or a mobile device, and ensuring you don’t lose it if your hard drive crashes.  

For Amazon, it makes sense to pursue a locker service: they’ve perfected cloud-based content storage and delivery for thousands of web-based startups with Amazon Web Services (AWS). Amazon Web Services (AWS) already provides hosting and data transfer.  What’s interesting, however, is that the consumer-facing Cloud Drive is actually cheaper than its existing business-facing offering.  While Cloud Drive charges only $1 per GB per year (beyond the free allotment), AWS charges $1.08 per GB per year for storage alone.  If each song in a person’s uploaded collection were streamed once per month, on average, AWS would require an additional $1.20 per GB per year for data transfer (or roughly $2.28 per GB in total).

Since Cloud Drive could well generate less than half the revenues as AWS for the same offering, it seems Amazon is offering the storage as a loss leader to gain digital music market share. Amazon undoubtedly hopes to wrestle away some market share from Apple’s iTunes, particularly in view of the growing base of Android users not yet served by a Google download store.  Its bold “first move” without licensing deals from the music labels could complicate and delay negotiations at Apple and Google.  Early adopters of Cloud Drive—especially Android users—might then consider the switching costs and choose to stick around even once Google and Apple launch their own competing services.

In addition, while I’m personally bearish on the mainstream prospects for the subscription-based, on-demand model, it’s also worth noting that a music locker may provide a more logical transition from the a la carte world of ripped CDs, iTunes, and Amazon’s MP3 store to the celestial jukebox of Rhapsody and Spotify.  At some point, it will make more sense for hardcore locker user to switch to unlimited music subscription services. For instance, a Rdio subscription costs $60 a year, which is the same as keeping 65 GB of music on Cloud Drive (5GB for free + 60GB at $1 per GB per year).

But will Amazon get away with offering Cloud Drive without a license?  I think there’s a good chance it will.  While there’s no doubt some grey areas are not yet adjudicated, it appears the labels can live with (i.e. won’t sue) a service that allows people to upload music from their own collections, provided there’s a unique copy of each track stored and no related features that make it easy to infringe.  My.MP3.com was sued and lost because it allowed users to “beam” CDs in their computer hard drive, providing access to the “bits” ripped from CDs purchased by MP3.com (rather than the user’s CDs).  This feature also made it easy to replicate a friend’s CD collection in the cloud.  In contrast, the plain-vanilla locker service of myplay was never sued.

Likewise, the current suit against MP3tunes, another music locker service founded by Michael Robertson, focuses on a user’s ability to “sideload” music they don’t own from around the web, plus the use of a single copy for each track streamed. However, so far, mspot and Amazon—not to mention myriad other services like Google and Dropbox that have broader storage purposes but are often used for hosting music—haven’t been sued.

Although, the industry has been experimenting with different models for online music services for a decade, I am hopeful that the entry of Amazon, and soon Apple and Google, will finally bring music to the cloud in a meaningful way.

photo © 2006 Gene Tew | more info (via: Wylio)In case you haven’t already received the ominous sounding email, data held by email marketing firm Epsilon was compromised earlier this week  – the hack apparently executed by one person.

The breach, which keeps broadening in scope as more companies inform their customers, has thus far affected these top brands: TiVo, Walgreens, US Bank, JPMorgan Chase, Capital One, Citi, Home Shopping Network, McKinsey & Company, Ritz-Carlton Rewards, Marriott Rewards, New York & Company, Brookstone, and The College Board.

The notification emails each brand has been sending their customers is some version of the below.

We have been informed by Epsilon, the vendor that sends email to you on our behalf, that your e-mail address may have been exposed by unauthorized entry into their system.

Epsilon has assured us that the only information that may have been obtained was your first and last name and e-mail address. REST ASSURED THAT THIS VENDOR DID NOT HAVE ACCESS TO OTHER MORE SENSITIVE INFORMATION SUCH AS SOCIAL SECURITY NUMBER OR CREDIT CARD DATA.

Please note, it is possible you may receive spam e-mail messages as a result. We want to urge you to be cautious when opening links or attachments from unknown third parties.

In keeping with standard security practices, the College Board will never ask you to provide or confirm any information, including credit card numbers, unless you are on a secure College Board site.

Epsilon has reported this incident to, and is working with, the appropriate authorities.

We regret this has taken place and apologize for any inconvenience this may have caused you. We take your privacy very seriously, and we will continue to work diligently to protect your personal information.

Sincerely,

The College Board

Epsilon is assuring its customers that “only” email addresses and customer names were revealed in the breach but that’s actually not so reassuring. The ability to target spam emails to specific people leaves those affected by the attacks more vulnerable to phishing scams. People are more likely to trust something that looks like legitimate, direct communication. Again: Put on your thinking cap before you give anyone sensitive information like a password or social security number online.

The world’s largest email marketing service, Epsilon sends 40 billion emails a year and manages the customer email database for 2,500 clients according to Security Week. It is currently investigating the incident according to its own announcement.

Editor’s note: The following guest post is written by Joe Sipher, co-founder of Pinger, which makes the popular Textfree app.

So AT&T wants to buy T-Mobile and some are screaming it will reduce competition and hurt the consumer. Sprint is now going to court to try and stop the merger. I am in the mobile communications industry and, to be honest, I couldn’t care less. This isn’t going to affect the companies pushing the real growth and innovation and it’s not going to affect the consumer. The consumer has plenty of options that have nothing to do with carriers and that list is growing daily.

For the legal fees it will take for these two giants to merge, ten new startups could be funded. The companies creating new business models for mobile communications are iterating out of sight of the big carriers, away from calling plans, contracts and traditional views of how people communicate. The Internet and the emergence of a robust mobile application layer have changed things forever.

Over-the-top services that provide calling, texting and other communication options over the wireless data channel are getting to carrier size in less than two years. For instance, my company, Pinger, now moves over a billion text messages every month and millions of minutes of voice calls. And we are only a fraction the size of Skype. There are many more companies like ours out there too. Increasingly, users pay nothing for calls because these new over-the-top services apply internet monetization methodologies to communication services. Advertising based communication services mean no contracts, no calling plans, no overage fees.

Before you say the newly extra gigantic evil carriers will shut down these over-the-top (OTT) services using their monopoly powers, let me say that the carriers are getting bigger, not dumber. Mobile operators make money with nearly every text, call, and tweet coming to their subscribers from OTT networks. These services are good for the operators because they help them sell phones and data plans. Allow me to use a couple examples from Pinger, because that is what I know. If you have a $19.99 unlimited text plan from Pinger and send 1000 texts per month, you pay $0.02 per text. Do the math: $0.02 x 1 billion is $20 million a month for the carriers on texting from our service alone. Not bad. The carrier appreciate that revenue.

In fact, new app-based communications services are helping carriers discover new revenue because most of the traffic coming to their networks from over-the-top services isn’t even coming from phones. In fact, 80 percent of our voice traffic comes from connected devices like iPod touch, iPad, and even desktop computers.

But here’s the real truth: an entire generation isn’t getting their first mobile number from services like ours. They aren’t even making their first call from a phone! Because communication is simply an app, as kids grow, these apps will just work on their new device whether it’s on the web, an iPad, an iPod touch, an iPhone or an Android device. Kids love Facebook, Twitter, Skype and all of these new communications apps because they offer better communication alternatives and the price is right. The thought of signing a contract just to communicate is going to be about as foreign to these kids as paying for cable TV!

The real story here is that the consumer has more options than ever, and the bigger the traditional operators get, the more their scale interferes with their ability to innovate.

Will there be sufficient competition in the marketplace if these two cell carriers connect? Plenty.