Category: Tech news

The strategic partnership between Microsoft and Nokia, announced in February, was regarded as auspicious by some and desperate by others, yet some specifics of the agreement were largely a mystery until today. Most notably, Microsoft was rumored to have led the partnership with hundreds of millions of dollars, outbidding Google (!) to woo the once-magnificent Finnish giant. Considering Google’s sights are increasingly set on the low-cost phone market, it’s interesting that they didn’t just write a blank check. Or maybe Nokia didn’t want to appear to be flattened underneath the Android machine. Either way, Microsoft won out in the end, and the settlement paid has been reported by Bloomberg to be over a billion dollars.

Considering the sums involved in control of even a small segment of the mobile world, a billion doesn’t even seem like much. But it is, of course, a billion dollars. The question is: even at that price, did Nokia sell itself short?

Continue reading at MobileCrunch…

I’m leaving the country for a few weeks, so I’m trying to get a few episodes of Ask a VC in the can before I go. We have two exciting guests we’re taping this week: Mike Maples of Floodgate Fund and Peter Barris of NEA.

Maples was early on both the super angel and Web 2.0 bandwagons, investing in companies like Digg, Twitter and Chegg. He’s noted as one of the guys who coined the “pivot” concept– one of the most overused buzz words of the last year.

Barris is more of an old-school VC. NEA is one of the oldest firms and while it hasn’t done as well as its brethren in modern consumer Web movement, it has done one of the best jobs of making huge scale work. The firm has $11 billion in capital under management and invests in three continents.

No doubt, our readers have very different questions for each. Maples arrives in our studios momentarily so get your questions in now to askavc(at)techcrunch(dot)com.

Opera is launching a designated, web-based mobile app store today, called the Opera Mobile Store. The store will be a featured Speed Dial link in the Opera Mini and Opera Mobile browsers.

The Opera Mobile Store is actually powered by Appia (formerly PocketGear), which recently shifted its business model to providing white label mobile app stores for providers. For now, Opera will offers both free and paid applications for a variety of mobile platforms and devices, including Java, Symbian, BlackBerry and Android operating systems .

The storefront experience is customized to each user’s device, providing a tailored catalog based on the phone’s OS, local language and currency. Opera Software has also launched the Opera Publisher Portal, which allows developers to submit apps to the mobile storefront.

Opera says that in its pre-launch state, the Opera Mobile Store attracted more than 15 million users in February from 200 countries, achieving more than 700,000 downloads per day. Clearly this is a big win for Appia, which now powers app stores for world’s top five handset manufacturers (Samsung, T-Mobile, AT&T, and Verizon Wireless) as well as Opera.

Opera’s iPhone app and mobile browser continues to grow in terms of usage, especially outside of the U.S. It makes sense for Opera to offer a mobile app store for its browser but I’m curious to see how much traction the store will get with the proliferation of app stores nowadays.

As you’re aware, I tend to take Apple’s side on almost all matters iPhone versus Android. Having tried over a dozen Android devices ranging from the G1 to the Nexus S, I simply still prefer iOS. And it’s not really close. But there is one argument I absolutely cannot make on Apple’s side: the notification system. On Android devices, it’s good. On the iPhone, it’s awful.

It’s not like I’m saying anything sacrilegious here. Everyone knows it sucks. And that undoubtedly includes Apple, as they have made moves in the past year indicating as such. Moves like hiring Rich Dellinger, the guy who designed the great notification system for Palm’s webOS. And they have been sniffing around some of the Push Notification apps in recent months as possible acquisition targets. But today we bring them all they really need: the idea for how it should work. Please Apple — please — copy this system.

Now, mock-ups of how the notification system should work on iOS are nothing new. But the system Shawn Hickman has mocked up on his site today looks damn near perfect given how I use the iPhone. Gone are the lame, text-message like Push Notification pop-ups. They’re replaced by a new notification bar that appears at the bottom of the screen when a new notification comes in.

Okay, you might think: the last thing the iPhone needs is a #dickbar. But it’s much more than that — and it actually contains useful information, unlike the #dickbar. While bottom notification alert gives the latest notification coming in, the real key is the new left-most screen, where all of the recent notifications are held for you to go through. Yes, Hickman’s idea is to replace the Spotlight Search area with in iOS this new Notifications area. “Spotlight is a cool feature that I rarely use. That space can be used much more effectively,” Hickman writes. I totally agree.

And actually, he doesn’t kill off Spotlight, he just makes it a secondary option on the same screen. And he even has come up with a nifty way of highlighting when you have a new notification without the slide-up notification: a red dot indicator in the tiny dot area above the dock on iOS to let you know where you are in the navigation.

On this new Notifications screen, you’ll see all your messages sorted by app (see: screenshot). It’s brilliant. It’s like the excellent Boxcar app, but more organized and with a more native iOS look and feel.

Why put the slide-up notifications at the bottom, rather than the top like on Android? Two reasons: “The bottom of the screen is the best place to have a notification come up. It’s non-intrusive and doesn’t interrupt what I’m doing.” And: “Pulling a notifications tray from the top of the screen is not the easiest thing to do, unless you have large hands. Managing one on the bottom of the screen is super easy, regardless of hand size.”

I completely agree with that as well. While Android’s notification system is good, it’s far from perfect. Being at the top of the screen does make it tricky to get to at times.

That said, I’m not sure Hickman’s system wouldn’t be even a little bit better if it pushed the apps up rather than overlaid on the dock (such a #dickbar thing to do). Currently, iOS services like Personal Hotspot have the bar that pushes apps down in a similar manner, only from the top.

Hickman says he didn’t want to add another icon to the menu bar as it’s already too crowded. And presumably, another stand-alone app would work, but again, that would just be Boxcar — Apple’s system should feel more natively built in.

Boxcar is perhaps now my most-used app on the iPhone and iPad. I’m constantly checking it to get my updates. Apple badly needs to fix their system. And this is the most straightforward and simple implementation of how it could work that I’ve seen yet. Please Apple, copy it.

They must be blasting a lot of Sinatra at Uber, the San Francisco startup that lets you order a private car from an iPhone app and watch it as it gets closer on a map. So far the company has been testing its model in San Francisco, and recently expanded to Palo Alto, but that is all child’s play. If it can make it in New York City, it can make it anywhere. And that is exactly where it is headed next.

According to an email with the subject line “An Uber Secret,” which was sent to registered users who live in New York (like me), “Uber is coming to NYC in a few short weeks.” The email includes a link to a survey which asks what people dislike the most about New York City cabs and livery cars, what they would value most about an Uber experience, and where in the city is service most needed. It also tries to gauge how much more people would be willing to pay for Uber than for a taxi (the choices are from 1X to 3X a taxi fare).

Cracking the New York City market won’t be a drive through the park. New York City is not like San Francisco. There are tens of thousands of cabs and car services. Unlike San Francisco, you can actually hail a cab on most street corners, and there are plenty of car services in the outer boroughs. Starting in San Francisco was smart because cab service is horrible there (Michael is totally hooked).

I’ve tried it a few times there myself, and it is awesome. It is also expensive, at least twice as expensive as a cab. For certain situations, though, the reliability and realtime availability it provides is worth the extra cost—especially if you can expense it. Car services in Manhattan are not cheap either, so as long as Uber is competitive with them, residents will give it a try.

Uber just raised $11 million, and no doubt will use that to enter the New York City market. It needs to provide blanket coverage across all five boroughs and beyond to the suburbs if it wants to compete. (Watch this Fly or Die where I ask Uber CEO Travis Kalanick about all the challenges his startup faces). And still, I can’t wait for my first Uber ride in Manhattan.

Buh bye GPS: the Google Maps Navigation Beta is adding traffic re-routing to its free Android app today, further sounding the death knell of traditional (and not free) in-car GPS systems.

From the Google Mobile Blog:

“Starting today, our routing algorithms will also apply our knowledge of current and historical traffic to select the fastest route from those alternates. That means that Navigation will automatically guide you along the best route given the current traffic conditions.”

Previously Google Maps Navigation would take the “fastest” route and set up alternate routes like ones that use highways instead of side roads. As of today all you have to do (aside from buy an Android phone) is open up the Navigation app. The app itself will use realtime traffic data crowd-sourced from users to try to get you there sooner. No guarantees.

The functionality is available in North America and Europe, where the realtime traffic condition data is currently available.

comScore’s monthly smartphone data is in and it looks like for the first time Android OS has surpassed both Apple’s iOS and RIM in terms of U.S. smartphone subscriber share. The data, which measured smartphone usage from October 201 until January of 2011, showed that 65.8 million people in the U.S. owned smartphones during period, which is up 8 percent from the preceding three month period. While Android passed iOS in terms of subscriber share in the previous period, this is the first time the Google-developed OS has unseated RIM from the number one spot.

Google’s Android platform led smartphone platforms for the first time in January with 31.2 percent market share; RIM ranked second with 30.4 percent market share, followed by Apple with 24.7 percent share. Microsoft followed with a 8 percent market share, with Palm taking 3.2 percent share.

In terms of total mobile device usage, 234 million Americans ages 13 and older used mobile devices for the period. With respect to manufacturers, Samsung ranked as the top OEM with 24.9 percent of U.S. mobile subscribers, up 0.7 percentage points from the three month period ending in October. LG ranked second with 20.8 percent share, followed by Motorola (16.5 percent), RIM (8.6 percent) and Apple (7 percent).

Mobile content usage continues to increase steadily amongst U.S. consumers. In January, 68.1 percent of U.S. mobile subscribers used text messaging on their mobile device, while browsers were used by 37.0 percent of mobile subscribers, which is an increase of 0.8 percentage points.

And 35.3 percent of the mobile audience used downloaded applications, representing an increase of 1.6 percentage points. Accessing of social networking sites or blogs increased 1.1 percentage points, representing 25.3 percent of mobile subscribers. Playing games represented 23.7 percent of the mobile audience, while listening to music represented 16.5 percent (up 1.1 percentage points).

While Android has been eating away at iOS market share, this month’s data shows that the OS is also taking some of RIM’s market share. comScore’s data represents one report in a sea of many similar findings that show that Android is growing fast. But a recent Nielsen report pointed out that because RIM and Apple create and sell their own smartphones with their operating systems, these companies are actually in a better position in the three-way race (in terms of device manfuacturers). Because Google licenses its OS to device manufacturers, the Android ecosystem is more fragmented.

While Android is looking strong, the race has not been won yet.

It would appear that our increased reliance on technology has destroyed our ability to have a good night’s sleep. So says the 2011 Sleep in America poll, which was conducted by the the National Sleep Foundation. Something tells me they would be the guys to go to for all your sleep data needs. The study shows that 95 percent of Americans use a communication device (computer, phone, etc.) in the hour before bedtime, which absolutely wrecks your body’s clock, as it were, thereby preventing you from having a decent night’s sleep.

Read more…

Want to watch Charlie Sheen’s Sheen’s Corner on mobile? Aspire to be Charlie Sheen? Well, just like it did on Android back in January, Ustream today has combined both its Viewer and Broadcaster app into one all-encompassing and newly redesigned iPhone app allowing you to stream and watch live video all from your iPhone.

Taking advantage of iPhone 4′s front facing camera, the Ustream 2.0 app allows you to easily log in to your Ustream account and live broadcast or record video with one click, letting you share your broadcast on Twitter and Facebook as well as launch chat or take a viewer yes/no poll.

While the app retains full functionality in both 3G and Wifi, it does need a strong network to perform the heavy duty task of livestreaming video (Ustream tells me that the quality is better in the latest version). Ustream 2.0 also offers the option to record to your device in case of poor signal for broadcasters but will throw down a “Please check your network connection” message for people who want to view video in less than ideal connectivity settings.

The Viewer part of the app lets you search for shows by Featured, Category, and Ustream show name. You can set up alerts on your favorite content by hitting the Remind Me button on the content you’re interested in or by joining Ustream Crowds and Events (viewable under More > Favorites). You can also check out individual Ustreamer profiles and share what content you’re viewing both on Twitter and Facebook.

While Justin.tv and others have these functionalities in their iPhone apps for awhile, Ustream has been hitting it out of the park with its ability to attract the kind of content people want to view on the go (Chilean Miner rescue anyone?). The service is just about to hit 10 million users and Charlie Sheen’s debacle on Saturday brought in over 1.6 million views despite the show itself being less than impressive. Something tells me we ain’t seen nothing yet (I mean wait ’til Sheen finds out about the app).

You can get the app either by updating the Viewer app if already installed or by clicking here.

Breaking: Google has acquired the financial product comparison site BeatThatQuote.com for £37.7m. The news was first outed by the blog money.co.uk but has since been made official.

Writing on the UK company’s site, BeatThatQuote Managing Director, John Paleomylites, says that the acquisition offers the opportunity to “develop new and innovative options for personal finance in the UK” by making use of Google’s engineering muscle. Of course, like almost any Google purchase these days, the deal could raise the eyebrows of regulators, especially in regards to how it places the comparison site’s content in its search index.

With that in mind, perhaps, Paleomylites talks up the possibility to “offer more transparency and better pricing information than existing online offerings.”

Last night, after much procrastination, I started my taxes—on my couch with a movie playing on the TV, using only my iPad. I was testing out an early build of TurboTax, which is now available for the iPad (in addition to the online and desktop versions). I got through the bulk of my taxes by the time the movie was over.

Taxes are never fun, even on the iPad. But the new TurboTax iPad app makes it fairly seamless. Anyone familiar with TurboTax will recognize the interface. It takes you through the same guided questions the online and desktop versions do, asks you about your financial situation, and keeps a tally of your refund up top (or, gulp, taxes you still owe). The app works in both landscape and portrait mode, and knows when to pop up a number keypad or the full keyboard.

Just like the desktop version, the entire app resides on your iPad, with no need to connect to the Internet until you file. It is free to download and do your entire taxes on, but once you want to file, it costs the same as other versions of TurboTax (starting at $29.99)

The one big drawback of the app for existing TurboTax users is that you cannot import last year’s data. You have to start from scratch. I thought entering all my personal and W-2 data on the iPad would be a pain, but it really didn’t take that long. And while you cannot import data from previous years, you can move your current year taxes over from the desktop version. So you can start on your computer and type in the bulk of the data, and then move over to the iPad and vice versa.

Next year, you should be able to import data from previous years. And who knows, with the new cameras in the iPad 2, maybe you will be able to simply take a picture of all your tax forms like you can with SnapTax for the iPhone (which only works with W-2s for now, but that’s a start).

Fwix is rolling out new versions of its iPhone and Android apps, which adds social geotagging to its hyperlocal places directory. As we’ve reported last Fall, Fwix originally launched as a hyperlocal news aggregator but has more recently been transitioning to a hyperlocal places directory, sort of a cross between AOL’s Patch and Google Places.

For neighborhoods, businesses and points of interest, Fwix It culls local data from 30,000 blogs and news feeds; status updates from Twitter, Foursquare, Gowalla, Google Buzz, and BrightKite; geo-tagged photos from Flickr, Smugmug, and Picassa; local deals from Groupon, LivingSocial, and MobileSpinach; events from Eventbrite, Eventful, Zvents, Stubhub, Ticketmaster, reviews from Yelp, Citysearch, OpenTable, Yahoo! Local, and Zagat; and government data from SpotCrime, FixMyStreet, and SeeClickFix.

Fwix is launching new iPhone and Android apps that include the new places functionality to give users contextual information around businesses and neighborhoods. So Fwix’s technology will aggregate all the relevant social information around you can look for information around destination and places on the fly. Fwix says it will be geotagging check-ins, geotagged Tweets, reviews, events and local news and blog posts.

This is all part of Fwix’s evolution as a local data platform that is organizing the world’s information by location. A number of media publishers building on top of the company’s API including NBC, AT&T Interactive, New York Times Company, Viacom (BET.com), and others. By indexing the Web by location, Fwix is operating in 7 countries; 61,000 cities; and defined down to 87,000 neighborhoods in the US alone. Fwix says that its content and platform reaches more than 30 million uniques per month.

Hyperlocal news is consolidating with acquisitions, and Fwix has an compelling take on the sector by offering its data as a platform. It should be interesting to see if the startup ends up getting swallowed by a big media company in the coming year.

Atrinsic, the direct and online search marketing agency that acquired the assets of former P2P sharing tool Kazaa a couple of months ago, is trying to drum up some attention for the digital music subscription service this morning. In a press release, the company posits that there’s been a ‘breakthrough’ for iPhone and iPad (and Android) users because its service is now ‘accessible on iOS devices’ simply by visiting Kazaa.com.

Atrinsic is very explicit about why it is not taking the usual route of creating and marketing a dedicated mobile app for the mobile platform(s): it is not pleased with Apple‘s recent announcement that it will keep 30% of revenue generated by new subscriptions and media purchases made within an iPhone or iPad app through its App Store.

In addition, Atrinsic derides Apple’s successful mobile app marketplace by deeming it “just one of many marketing and distribution channels” it already engages in (although there’s never been an official dedicated iOS app for Kazaa to my knowledge).

The company says users can sign up and pay for Kazaa by charging their subscription to a credit card, mobile phone or home telephone bill after visiting Kazaa.com from their mobile phone’s browser, thus bypassing Apple’s rigorous rules.

Well, thanks for making a clear statement on the matter (Apple’s subscription policies are, after all, an enormous issue for music streaming service providers across the board), but how is that move a breakthrough rather than a step to (even more) obscurity?

Needless to say, it’s already quite difficult to compete in the digital music streaming business with dedicated apps for multiple platforms users can easily find through marketplaces like the App Store and Android Market, so having a Web-only solution in my mind only makes it that much harder for Atrinsic to market Kazaa as a solid alternative to the likes of Rdio (which was ironically founded by the co-founders of Kazaa), MOG, Spotify, Rhapsody and many others.

Neverthless, Atrinsic COO Ray Musci proclaims that the company still intends to broaden access for Kazaa with new and dedicated apps, so that the browser is not the only way customers can access the music streaming service.

Which makes me wonder why they’re calling today’s announcement a breakthrough, again.

I read an article on Seeking Alpha this morning that touted Kazaa’s not having dedicated mobile apps as a potential stimulus for a strong comeback, which left me puzzled (even if the author of that article owns shares of publicly-listed Atrinsic).

I simply don’t see how not being available on the various mobile app stores, which are growing more popular every day, can help Kazaa cement itself as a leader or even a serious challenger in the cutthroat music subscription space. It’s tough enough to get discovered by enough users to make the investment in developing and publishing mobile apps viable as it is – going Web-only merely makes it tougher on Kazaa, even if Apple doesn’t touch its margins that way.

The Business Insider is now profitable—just barely. In a post this morning reporting the digital media startup’s revenues, operating profits, and other metrics, Henry Blodget reveals that his collection of bloggy news sites and budding conferences eked out a net profit of $2,127, on revenues of $4.8 million last year. It’s about enough, Blodget notes, for a MacBook Pro.

But that’s actually quite an achievement for a media startup. Remember, the Business Insider was founded only in 2007, and this achieved profitability in its third year of operations. And as you can see by the chart above, its really the revenues that you want to keep an eye on. To put that $4.8 million in perspective, that’s roughly half of TechCrunch’s 2010 revenues of $10 million. Not bad. Most of last year, the Business Insider was pulling in about $1 million a quarter, which then almost doubled in the fourth quarter (I’m guess that bump came from its big conference).

Some other stats to chew on: The Business Insider now has 45 full time employees, and according to its internal numbers is attracting a 7.8 million unique visitors a month across its properties (which include Silicon Alley Insider, The Wire, and Clusterstock). ComScore has Business Insider at 4.6 million worldwide unique visitors in January, but also shows the same growth trend. SAI is now “less than half the total,” Blodget tells me. It looks like growth really took off in the past six months.

See, building a digital media business is possible. We need more, not less. Who’s next?

Adding existing features like third-party check-in and better photo support, the Austin based company updates the Android version of their location software today. Gowalla co-founder and CEO Josh Williams told me in a quick phone call that he feels like “we’ve created a better experience for our Android app than we even have for the iPhone version.”

Strategically, supporting the best Gowalla experience on the fastest growing Smartphone platform makes sense for the company, as they compete with other Check-in services like Loopt and Foursquare as well as hybrid location-chat services like Yobongo. They need to fish where the fish are, for sure.

Read more…