Category: Tech news

When Silicon Valley venture firms set out to conquer China five-to-seven years ago, most of them picked one of three strategies.

There was the branch office strategy, whereby the China partners and Valley partners would still work as one firm, making all investment decisions together as a unit and sharing in the returns equally. There was the more common franchise model, where a brand name Valley firm lent its name to a group of local Chinese investors, but mostly left them to make their own decisions. And then there was the joint venture model, where a well known Valley firm didn’t seek to create a China office, it just partnered with an existing one.

That last tack – the join venture model – is the one Accel took, partnering back in 2005 with IDG Ventures– one of the pioneers of investing in the Chinese consumer Internet.

IDG already had a great hit-rate, having backed an all star roster of Chinese Web giants including Ctrip, Baidu, Sohu and Tencent. But it was investing out of a relatively small seed fund with no allocation for follow-on rounds. That meant a early IDG investment in Tencent netted a tidy 20x return– but paled in comparison to the return that South African media firm Naspers got when it bought the company out in the early 2000s. Naspers bought out existing investors for a cool $30 million, giving it 50% of what has become the third largest Internet company on the planet. Ouch.

The partnership with Accel allowed IDG to make sure that didn’t happen again, by co-raising two growth funds (which is more like what we’d consider a classic early-stage fund) and a capital fund over the last six years, a combined total of nearly $1.5 billion dollars that has already yielded seven IPOs. “Even though we did very well with previous IDG funds, we could have done better if we had larger fund sizes and could invest more aggressively in follow-on investments,” says Hugo Shong, the founding partner of IDG who negotiated the original deal with Breyer.

Last night, the two closed on the third growth fund totaling $550 million and the second capital fund totaling $750 million. Here’s the best part: The funds were raised entirely in seven weeks, mostly from Accel’s existing US limited partners. Ok, part of that is due to a raging Chinese Web bubble: One-quarter of all US IPOs last year were by China-based companies. But it’s still an impressive feat.

Breyer had nothing but positive things to say about the partnership thus far, noting that none of the senior IDG partners has left. Indeed, that’s something not even firms like Kleiner Perkins and Sequoia can boast. And IDG has a 99-person team spanning five cities in China. When I asked what hadn’t gone as well as planned — this is China after all– Breyer said, “The most challenging part is the pace of the market it China. It moderates fast when the market declines, and when it’s up and to the right as things have been in China deals are somewhere between being priced for perfection and outright euphoria. Navigating through the euphoria is a challenge.”

When I asked if he was worried about a China crash, he laughed and said, “I’m always concerned about crashes– both here and in China.”

The New York-based Pipeline Fund, which aims to increase the number of women who become angel investors and social entrepreneurs in the U.S., today announced its inaugural class of Pipeline Fund Fellows and mentors (listed at the end of this post).

The Pipeline Fund Fellowship accepted ten women who are influencers in their fields, and have a track record of charitable giving. Together, they will go through a six-month “boot camp” in New York, learning how to route some of their wealth into angel deals, that will score them an equity stake in for-profit, for-good businesses.

The founder and chief executive of the Pipeline Fund, Natalia Oberti Noguera (image below) is serious about resolving bias against women that she — and many others — perceived in the investment and startup ecosystem.

She believes that women with enough cash to become angels, while they may not be “needy,” could use help from seasoned investors figuring out: what makes a viable portfolio strategy, how they should conduct due diligence, valuations, or scare up a strong pipeline of deals. She’s enlisted accredited angel investors, many of them men she noted, as mentors.

Accepted Pipeline Fund Fellows are required to chip in $5,000 each to a collective fund, and agree to select a female-led, for-profit social venture in which to invest their first $50,000 together. They’ll be asked to run a pitch “summit,” which they’ll host in June in New York City, to select the right startup.

TechCrunch asked Ms. Oberti Noguera if she is concerned that the philanthropists who get hip to the notion of investing in for-profit social ventures, may wind up slowing down their philanthropic giving. She said she would never encourage them to divert cash from charitable efforts. She also explained:

“This is the inaugural year of our program, so we don’t really know what the impact will be in full, but we will study the outcome carefully.

In the application process, we told fellowship candidates, there will be a group decision to be made about funding a social venture. We asked: what if your favorite is not chosen, how will you react?

Several applicants said they would consider investing on their own, beyond the Pipeline Fellowship. We view that as a positive for social ventures, and female founders.”

[Ed’s note: While optimistic about programs that support a diverse investment and entrepreneurial community, TechCrunch will be interested to see if these newly-minted angels continue to invest in businesses led by women after the session ends. For more on women in tech, investing and startups, check out TechCrunch’s ongoing coverage.]

Image: Snow angel (CC) via Lars Christopher Nøttaasen

2011 PIPELINE FUND FELLOWS

Dawn Barber
Dawn is the co-founder of NY Tech Meetup, and is also the Apprenticeship Director for the Tow-Knight Center for Entrepreneurial Journalism at the CUNY Graduate School of Journalism. She is on the board of InSITE, and is a New York City Trustee of The Awesome Foundation. Dawn lives in New York City with her husband and daughter, and received her B.A. from Clark University.

Conor Barnes
Conor currently works at Good Cents Bookkeeping providing financial management to small businesses while pursuing a Master’s Degree at Rutgers University Business School. She is also a member of Echoing Green’s Social Investment Council. Conor holds a A.B. in Political Science from The University of Chicago.

Monica A. Barrera, D.D.S.
Monica holds a D.D.S. from New York University. She has owned and operated her own dental practice in New York for the last 16 years. Monica is a medical member of the Surrogate Decision-Making Committee of the state of New York, which advises on medical needs for patients with disabilities.

Elizabeth Crowell
Elizabeth is the partner/owner at Sterling Place, a Brooklyn-based, boutique retail store that specializes in home furnishings, rare antiques, and specialty gifts. She serves as the Co-Chair of the Atlantic Avenue Business Improvement District Steering Committee and as a Troop Leader for the Girl Scouts of Greater NY. Elizabeth holds a B.A. in Philosophy with a minor in Latin American Literature from Smith College.

Erica Frontiero
Erica is a Senior Vice President in Capital Markets at GE Capital. With over 10 years in debt sales and trading, Erica sells commercial loans raised for corporations and private equity clients across a wide spectrum of industries to investors. She is also the co-leader for the NY/NJ chapter of the Women’s Network at GE, which fosters women’s professional development, and is an active volunteer with Dress for Success; serving as the President of Y.E.S.!, Young Executives for Success. Erica is a member of the creative advisory board for Orchid Worldwide and holds a B.A. in Economics from Wake Forest University.

J. Kelly Hoey
Kelly is a business strategist and adviser to companies and firms on networking; creating and engaging voluntary communities; and, business relationship development strategies. She is the former President of 85 Broads, a women’s global business network. Kelly holds an L.L.B. from the University of British Columbia and a B.A. in Political Science and Economics from the University of Victoria.

Diane Kaslow
Diane is the President of Kaslow Fine Art and an investor in Food52.com. She has been actively involved with the development and growth of several charities. Diane holds an M.B.A. from Case Western Reserve University and a B.S./B.A. from John Carroll University.

Jessica Magoch-Roazzi
Jessica most recently served as Regional Vice President of Sales at Atlantis Health Plan. She is a Kundalini Yoga instructor and Shotokan Martial Artist. Jessica holds a B.F.A. in Acting from New York University’s Tisch School of the Arts.

Emma Nothmann
Emma is a Principal at Booz & Company and is based in San Francisco, California. She leads the firm’s North American Education Practice and currently serves as a Harvard College Interviewer. Emma holds an A.B. from Harvard University in East Asian Studies.

Maggie Williams

Maggie recently joined the Wright Group, a government relations firm where she assists social justice organizations with their legislative advocacy. Prior to the Wright Group, Maggie worked in the New York State Senate, first as counsel to then Senator now Attorney General Schneiderman and as Judiciary Counsel to the Democratic Majority. In addition, Maggie serves on the boards of the North Star Fund and Resource Generation. Maggie holds a J.D. from Columbia University School of Law and a B.A. in History from Yale University.

2011 PIPELINE FUND FELLOWSHIP MENTORS

Neil Anderson, Founding Investor, ARC Angel Fund; Founder, Immersive Enterprises Incubator; Director, Acol Advisory
Rob Delman, Vice President, Astia; Managing Director, Golden Seeds; Partner, ARC Angel Fund
Brad Feld, Co-Founder and Managing Director, Foundry Group; Chair, National Center for Women & Information Technology (NCWIT)
Francine Hardaway, PHD, Co-Founder, Stealthmode Partners
Katie Rae, Managing Director, TechStars; Co-Founder, Project 11 Ventures
Ed Reitler, Partner, Reitler Kailas & Rosenblatt LLC; Founder, Angel Round Capital, L.P.
Dimple Sahni, Founding Partner, DS Inc; Co-founder, Epylon.com
Kathleen Utecht, Principal, Wharton WVP Ventures
Claire Wadlington, Partner and CFO, FA Technology Ventures
Mike Yavonditte, Founder and CEO, Hashable

Mobile ad network JumpTap has raised $20 million in new funding, according to a recent SEC filing, out of a $27 million round. This would bring the company’s funding to nearly $90 million. We’ve contacted the company for confirmation.

JumpTap is one of the largest remaining independent mobile advertising networks, in addition to Millennial Media, Greystripe, InMobi and others. Jumptap’s data-driven technology promises highly targeted advertising and the company partners with digital and media agencies, publishers, wireless carriers and brand advertisers to serve an array of mobile advertising solutions.

While it’s unclear who the investors are in the round, the company recently landed a deal with Tokyo-based cyber communications (cci). Part of the partnership included an investment in the mobile ad network, so the SEC filing could relate to this deal.

Despite the heated competition in the mobile advertising space, JumpTap appears to be growing, at least in terms of employees. The company added 23 employees since the beginning of 2011 from companies including Apple, IAC, Time Inc, and Maxus.

It’s always feels sort of good to be able to de-bunk a prank on April Fools. Now most of us got that Rachel Sequoia’s insane startup pitch for ‘Share The Air’ was fake, but the event it took place at, the SEO-optimized Venture Capital Fundraising Club of Silicon Valley was real in the sense that 5-6 real start-ups pitched there, hoping to practice in front of an audience of 80 people before they pitched VCs.

The whole thing was orchestrated by Trademarkia founder Raj Abhyanker and Spiral Moon’s Dan Carlson for two purposes, a) To give young startups a place to practice their pitches b) To add some levity to the mix with Rachel Sequoia/’Share The Air’ parody of Silicon Valley.

Actress Rachel Cherones was paid a $100 for the unorthodox gig and was given two hours to come up with the character after being given slides created by Carlson. She too was surprised by how much pickup the YouTube video, initially uploaded as a personal record of the presentation, received. Said Cherones, “Most of the people that came up to me afterward said, “I don’t care about blessing the air, but I think they’re legitmately a market for what you’re doing.” Heh.

The fake Rachel Sequoia account now has over 2,000 followers on Twitter, the video has over 200,000 views on YouTube and people have approached SpiralMoon, who is now working on a feature length film, with  acquisition offers. The second meeting of the Venture Fundraising Club of Silicon Valley will take place on April 28th.

See you there!

If you meet a lot of CEOs and startup founders, you will notice a personality trait that many of them share. No matter how many people tell them they are wrong or stupid, they remain unusually optimistic, almost blindingly so. In the Founder Stories video above, which is an outtake from last week’s interview with Bnter CEO Lauren Leto, host Chris Dixon talks about the importance of rejection. “Every day, I try to get rejected,” he tells Leto. Sometimes this requires him sending emails to Steve Jobs that never get a response.

But being able to handle rejection, and even seek it out, is a crucial skill for entrepreneurs. The flip side of getting rejected over and over again, of course, is perseverance. It doesn’t matter if 49 VCs pass on your startup if the 50th one hands you a check for $1 million, or if 24 engineers say No, but the 25th is a rockstar who says Yes. Getting to yes means letting the negativity wash over you.

Leto and Dixon also talk about pitching VCs and the need to own the room. Confidence matters. You need to leave the room with investors thinking there is a one percent chance your company can be the next Twitter, Google, or Facebook. Leto had this experience when she raised money for Bnter after Texts From Last Night took off. You can listen to the full interview here.

Check out other Founder Stories episodes or subscribe on iTunes.

Amazon may have introduced its digital locker music service, the Cloud Player, before similar services from rivals Google and Apple (that are widely believed to be launching this year), but that doesn’t mean it will be an easy existence. Not long after the company published a note on its Web site inviting users to give Cloud Player a try did one of the major record labels offer a warning. “We are disappointed that the locker service that Amazon is proposing is unlicensed by Sony Music,” a Sony spokesman said. Is Amazon on a collision course with the music industry, and if it is, could that be a good thing for consumers?

Read more…

Robbie Bach, the former president of Microsoft’s Entertainment and Devices division, has apologized to PC gamers for the “consolization” of their hobby. “Am I happy to have been a part of the destruction of PC gaming? No, of course not. But I am proud of the fact that I’ve helped convince a generation of gamers that it’s cool to pay $10 for a pair of virtual sunglasses and that playing online should be considered a premium feature. Look, guys, no one’s stopping your from installing Doom II and playing through that again, right? I mean, what’s the difference between that and Black Ops, really?”

Read more…

Like pretty much anything that comes out nowadays with “3-D” in the title, Hasbro’s My3D — which lets you play 3-D games on your iPhone or iPod Touch — isn’t really great yet… but it has potential.

At the moment the device, available exclusively through Target until June, is basically a glorified View-Master. Snap your handheld into the appropriate tray, connect the tray to the viewfinder, close the device, and peer through the goggles to see your phone in three dimensions.

Thumb holes in the bottom of the contraption allow you to select menu options, navigate within games and — depending on what the game demands — shoot stuff.

There are six Hasbro games available for download (all free, for now) in the App Store and one 3-D hub, which lets you watch trailers for movies like Kung-Fu Panda 2 and scroll through 3-D pictures of fish and animals.

For the most part, unfortunately, the games and 3-D offerings are pretty dull. And, while there is some initial excitement at being immersed in your iPhone, it wears off pretty fast.

Sector 17, for example, is a space-based shooter, where you play the role of a gunner and take down approaching enemy space ships. They come at you from all sides — all the game environments are 360 degrees — and you tap a button on the iPhone screen to fire lasers at them.

It’s fun, but a bit repetitive and not very nuanced, though younger kids would likely be entertained by any of the games offered.

All of this could easily be remedied by an SDK. Game developers — any developers, actually — would have a field day coming up with ways to use the 3-D in new ways. As far as that’s concerned, however, Hasbro simply says “stay tuned.”

The company also says it plans to release new 3-D games throughout the year. Hopefully, they’re a bit more developed.

All that considered, the low price point is enough to make it a reasonable impulse buy, especially for people who love 3-D. It’s an easy bet that once the games start getting good, the My3D will be an essential purchase for anyone who loves playing on their phone. If you can get past the occasional bout of motion sickness and looking like a big dork when you use it in public.

WIRED Reasonably priced. Games are good for kids. Watching trailers for 3-D movies in actual 3-D is fun. People with glasses won’t have trouble seeing through the view finder.

TIRED Navigating through the thumb holes is a bit awkward. The games available leave much to be desired for serious gamers or adults. Price points for future apps is still an unknown. No case.

Photos by Jon Snyder/Wired

See Also

• Nintendo 3DS Review: It’s Totally in Your Face
• Why PlayStation Move Could Give ‘3-D Games’ a Whole New Meaning
• Buyer Beware: Rating Nintendo 3DS Launch Games
• Gaming Platforms Take the 3-D Plunge

LaCie’s FastKey is a mutt. It’s not sure whether it wants to be a svelte, mid-capacity SSD or a girthy, high-capacity USB stick.

At least there’s no doubt about the FastKey’s appointments, which are dazzling: blazing USB 3.0 speed, a durable but surprisingly lightweight ruggedized aluminum case, AES 256-bit encryption and up to 120 GB of storage. All squeezed into something that weighs about an ounce and can be clenched in your fist.

Of course, the major gotcha is the heart-palpitating price — $150 for 30 GB, $250 for 60 GB, and $475 for 120 GB.

While it is specifically designed for computers with the newish USB 3.0 standard, it’s also backward-compatible with USB 2.0. To get the best performance, you need to use a computer that has native USB 3.0 on board. For most of us, USB 3.0 is accessible with add-on PCI expansions cards or, for notebooks, ExpressCard adapters. Read and write times with the add-ons are impressive, but still not as fast as native 3.0.

In our unscientific tests, the 60-GB FastKey excelled with a 201 MB per second read time, but averaged just 88 MB per second when writing data. That’s about the same or below many USB 3.0 external hard drives’ writing capabilities. When we tried the FastKey in a USB 2.0 drive, it read at an impressive 35 MBps but wrote data at an unexceptional 28 MBps, the comparable speed of standard external hard drives.

LaCie, a French company, is already a highly regarded manufacturer of USB 3.0 storage devices, like its desktop RAID. It’s also known for making some rugged wrappings. The company almost always bundles software with its storage products, and the FastKey follows suit.

It doesn’t come preformatted. Instead, on first use it starts with a temporary partition with a setup assistant loaded. Here, you chose to format it with either NTFS for Windows or HFS+ for Mac. Pick wisely, because once the quick-partitioning process starts, this temporary partition is eliminated, taking the management software with it.

On Windows XP or later, you get a single 120-GB partition named “La_Public.” Want to also exchange data with a Mac or Linux computer? Then you get two partitions: an 88-GB La_Public partition for Windows only, and a 32-GB partition accessible by Windows, Mac and Linux called “Exchange.” Loaded on the Public section are LaCie utilities, a 256-bit encryption app that can set up yet another password-protected partition, and a Turbo USB app that supposedly lets you read and write data over USB 3.0 more quickly. What is it, some magical Red Bull for your USB port?

And as an extra, LaCie throws in a two-year 4-GB subscription to the online storage service Wuala.

So, you get a lot of SSD capacity and security in a small portable package. Whether it is worth the steep price to you depends primarily on whether you already have USB 3.0, and, to a lesser extent, how much the convenience of the exceedingly small form factor appeals to you.

WIRED Exceptionally fast data throughput when used over native USB 3.0. Only one ounce. Small size belies its capabilities. Flexibile partitioning options. Nice encryption features.

TIRED Its 4-inch length and 1-inch width may prevent it from fitting in some USB slots. Detachable USB cover cap can be easily misplaced or lost.

Photo courtesy of LaCie

For a company that manufactures such boring and pedestrian objects as vacuum cleaners, fans and hand dryers, Dyson sure deserves points for concentrating so heavily on style.

It’s not that it takes an army of brilliant engineers to design a device that pushes air in one direction or another. A well-designed vacuum cleaner needs to be lightweight, display good ergonomics and be easy to control, and still, you know… suck.

All of this designy goodness drives the price up, and Dyson products command a premium. But whether paying that premium make sense this time, for what is essentially an optional cleaning device even for the small apartment dweller, isn’t as clear cut.

The DC35 Digital Slim is Dyson’s high-end entry in the decidedly downscale vacuum stick category, where you can get something that works for less than ten percent of what this model will cost you. Having said that, it’s a faithfully scaled-down version of the bagless design found in their full-sized uprights. There’s the familiar tornado-like chamber, snap off modular parts and all-around attention to detail.

It does what it’s suppose to do at least as well as any other stick I’ve used, and in my household we’ve been through a few in that Quixotic search for the elusive perfect pick. Dyson boasts that the DC35 is the most powerful cordless on the market, and in some random dust busting it performed admirably. This is not a powerhouse machine, of course, but the point of a stick is that it’s easy to grab and, especially for a cordless, always at the ready for jobs that are just too small or inaccessible for an upright or a canister.

In addition to power, it’s the little things that matter in this hard-to-differentiate sector. Like the very Dyson trap door which, when you’re emptying the bin, doesn’t create a new mess from the old one you’ve just cleaned up.

Same goes for how you turn it on. At first I didn’t care for the dead mans’ switch. But after a while I decided that the trade off of having to apply pressure to a trigger was better than having to throw a switch twice.

Also impressively anti-intuitive was the decision to put the weight at the handle, rather than in the mid-section, which is typical on other devices. The center of gravity is such that the wand feels much easier to wield in any position, and possible to deploy where even other cordless sticks are not — outstreched, and even above your head. Weight is weight, however, and some users may find wielding this for very long is a little hard on the wrist, even when only vacuuming the floor.

I didn’t bother to check battery life: You aren’t likely to use this for any length of time between the automatic charges from its wall-mounted holder. For the same reason, don’t bother to ask yourself if you should use the “Max” setting all the time. I’ll repeat the advice given to me by the guy who sold me my first turbocharged car: you always want that on.

So, yes, it’s an awesome vacuum cleaner. The trouble with Dyson’s stuff is that it always comes down to the value proposition. At $300, the Digital Slim is up against a slew of competitors who charge a fraction of that price for vacuums which, when push comes to shove, will do just fine for most people. Sure, at the full-sized vacuum end of the spectrum you will still pay more for a Dyson, but the price disparity isn’t nearly as shocking when alternatives are clustered in the double digits and you are charging hundreds or dollars.

When I reviewed the Dyson Pedestal “air multiplier” fan, I noted its hefty $450 price could be worth it to an owner who might leverage it as an object d’art in an eclectically-decorated modern living room. It’s hard to imagine the DC35 making many public appearances. Is spending $300 for something — instead of maybe $60 — that worth it? I guess if you have to ask…

WIRED By far the coolest way to vanquish dust bunnies. Works on multiple floor surfaces — wood, tile, carpet. Short configuration for close-up jobs. Tell your kid the long wand attachment is a light saber and he’ll keep his room clean.

TIRED The “wow” factor versus cost us wearing thin. Seriously: This couldn’t be priced at less than a 32GB iPhone?

Photos courtesy of Dyson

Until recently, even the best-sounding speakers resembled R2-D2 hiding in a wastebasket. But a design renaissance has swept audioland, with everyone from Dr. Dre to Bowers & Wilkins pushing the aesthetics of sound components. The most striking example we’ve found: Avantgarde Acoustic’s Trio Classico—a 5-foot-tall assemblage of injection-molded horns and German-engineered audiophile geekery. Each made-to-order unit blends the benefits of old-school horn design—efficiency, range, nuance—with hi-fi opulence like 27-ohm voice coils, 12-pound magnets, and Kevlar midrange cones coated in trillions of microscopic fibers to absorb high-frequency distortion. It’s like a live concert in a Henry Moore sculpture. Of course, people who can afford these can hire their own orchestra.

There’s no replacement for a good doctor, but these home health monitors can help keep you informed and focused between checkups.

If I told you I test-drove a Lamborghini Aventador, what features would you most want to hear about? The feel of the perforated leather steering wheel? The purr of the 700-horsepower, 6.5-liter V-12 engine? Or would you rather hear a poetic description of the gas in the tank and the highway I raced it on?

Indeed, the HTC ThunderBolt is an excellent piece of hardware. It’s not quite the Lamborghini of the mobile phone world, but it certainly tops every other 4G device currently available from HTC, and it’s the first phone to run on Verizon’s 4G LTE network (That’s the “highway,” and don’t worry, we’ll get to that in a minute).

Unlike HTC’s EVO or Inspire, the ThunderBolt’s 8-megapixel camera sits flush against the back of the device. It’s a perfect gesture of form and function, which vastly improves the feel of the phone, and also prevents the lens from scratching. There’s also a front-facing camera for video chat. The optics are satisfying: The dual-LED flash was surprisingly effective, even in pitch dark. The 720p video quality and color saturation were solid.

The ThunderBolt’s brushed metal kickstand is as well-constructed as it is practical: I used our ThunderBolt like a Chumby — to stream e-mail or RSS while working at a desktop. And the phone’s vivid, oversized 4.3″ WVGA TFT touchscreen was also fantastic for video playback.

Under the hood, too, the ThunderBolt is no slouch. The 1-GHz Snapdragon processor is zippy, to say the least. It comes loaded with Android 2.2 and with version 2.0 of HTC’s own Sense user interface on top.

OK, so what about that highway? The ThunderBolt is the first phone to run on Verizon’s 4G LTE, a network which — up until now — was reserved for laptop data cards or dongles. The short of it: LTE is really, really fast. While web-browsing, I experienced minimal clipping. Pages loaded, at times, in a matter of half-seconds. On average, downloading apps took about 10 seconds, literally.

We ran a few side-by-side speed tests in various locations throughout San Francisco. LTE mightily outperformed the other networks. In one instance, we tethered an iPhone 3GS on AT&T to the ThunderBolt. According to SpeedTest.net’s latest app, the Wi-Fi clocked in at 5.77 Mbps (down) and 3.15 Mbps (up), whereas prior to tethering, the iPhone only logged 0.14 and 0.03 Mbps, respectively. In another instance, we fired up an HTC EVO 4G on Sprint. The absolute best (4.862 down, 1.025 up) was no match for the ThunderBolt (7.529 down; 6.261 up).

Of course, it’s worth wondering whether LTE can continue serving up the same speeds as more users flock to the network. Because, hey, a newly paved backcountry road can’t stay traffic-free and smooth forever, right? But if you’re considering this phone, you should take solace that Verizon is expanding its 4G network to 147 cities this year.

So, what’s not to like about the ThunderBolt? Test-driving the device felt a lot like racing a sports car with a 3-gallon engine. The high speeds are alluring, but really punching it means you won’t get nearly as far.

When tethering the phone and streaming music via Rdio, the 1400-mAh battery served up a measly 2 hours, 45 minutes. That said, dialing the data usage back down to basic web surfing and e-mail, along with reducing the screen brightness, granted us closer to 6 hours. Sure it’s no fun driving a car 35 mph when you know you can get up to 125. Then again, it beats walking.

WIRED An ample 8 GB of on-board memory (woot), plus a whopping 32 GB microSD included (WOOT!). At 0.56 inches, profile is trimmer than a supermodel. Front-facing 1.3-megapixel camera makes you look good when chatting. Standard-sized 3.5-mm headphone jack. 2750-mAh battery upgrade available. Prestocked with apps like Adobe Reader and Kindle.

TIRED Battery tended to heat up faster than a car with a faulty radiator cap. A tad on the heavy side at 6.23 ounces. Loudspeaker is rather tinny — and hidden behind the kickstand. Flash content cannot be viewed while Wi-Fi hotspot is in use. No HDMI port.

Photos: Jon Snyder/Wired.com

With 35 hours of video uploaded to YouTube every minute, the Google-owned video behemoth would be the second biggest search engine were it standalone site. I’d say these are fa web video has become a powerful medium. But, I think it’s also fair to say that this powerful medium is in serious need of curation. What if you’re just looking for a quick laugh, a short video, and don’t want to wade through billions of videos — what if you want to create your own, personally curated streaming video channel? Hmmm? Thankfully, content curation has come to video: ShortForm shows it’s here to stay.

The San Francisco-based startup allows users to create personalized channels of web video content, easily pulling clips from YouTube and other video sites. You can play videos back-to-back to create a stream of video, not unlike the TV viewing experience. Creating custom channels is simple, and I would say the UI is more user-friendly (or at least more attractive) than that of YouTube.

ShortForm curates its own videos, but the real focus is in encouraging its users to become VJs (video jockeys), curating their own channels. And with the recent addition of an embed-able widget, publishers can embed their own video player and curated channel lineups on their site. This means that the channels you create on ShortForm are available anywhere. It’s these kind of additions that pushed the startup past the one million users mark.

So ShortForm has all these visitors, but how is it going to make money? The startup is planning to place interstitial ads between videos. The Interstitial ads will be in the camp of video promotions that feel more like content and are fun to watch, ShortForm CEO Nader Ghaffari said, and they’ll be targeted based on channel context, so sports channels will get sports related video promotions. The cool part, though, is that even though the interstitial ad model will be rearing its annoying head, the startup plans to share its ad revenue with its VJs. After all, it’s the VJs who create the channels.

“When it comes to mixing the world’s videos into channels, we want our VJs to have all the tools at their disposal to make VJ-ing channels fun and easy”, Ghaffari told me. “We are integrating with Vimeo in the coming weeks, for example, so our VJs can mix YouTube and Vimeo videos, and soon we’ll be adding new features for VJs to further personalize their channels”.

ShortForm also has a leaderboard that lets VJs see how their channels are doing relative to other VJs, and viewers can scan it to find channels of interest to subscribe to. ShortForm also plans to provide VJs with more social feedback on their channels, like who has watched, shared, liked, and subscribed, for example, and VJs will be able to add commentary into their channels.

But, as you are probably readying your comment for the comment section, I should say that ShortForm isn’t the only video curation startup in the game. VodPod lets users share collect and share videos with their friends and Magnify.net allows website publishers to make video channels for their sites. ShortForm differs from its competitors in that it, unlike VodPod, it enables back-to-back streaming, and, unlike Magnify, is focused on the consumer rather than enterprise.

The startup is also teaming up with CollegeHumor (one of my favorites) this week to launch a best video contest on Facebook, which will allow users to watch and vote for their favorite videos on CollegeHumor. Once a vote has been registered, a leaderboard can be accessed that shows the leading vote-getters. Check it out.