Category: Tech news

In the seemingly never-ending discussions about Europe vs. Silicon Valley – how much digital ink can be spilled on ‘why Europe will never be the next Silicon Valley’, ‘why Europe will definitely become the next Silicon Valley’ and ‘Silicon Valley and Europe: a comparative look at fauna and flora’ anyway? – I’m quite amazed by how often pundits point out we could use more role models in Europe’s tech industry.

The idea seems to be that, inspired by their story of how their startup became the next Google, aspiring entrepreneurs need only look at people who’ve built or even exited companies and became fabulously famous and wealthy in the process. I disagree.

Three weeks into his job, Facebook Director of Gaming Partnerships Sean Ryan made bold advances to developers during the M&A panel at Inside Social Apps. When discussing what games should be built on what platforms, Ryan said, referring to Facebook, “Well if you’re building social I can’t image you not building on the world’s best social network” a statement which made some noise in the crowd.

Ryan went on to say that single player games like the immensely popular Angry Birds “wouldn’t make a lot of sense” on the social network, as building on the almost 600M strong Facebook platform isn’t just about an endless supply of users but about games that highlight interactions.

When asked to explain further about ‘Angry Birds’ versus a game like ‘CityVille,’ Ryan said,

“We don’t bring anything to the table but it’s still a great game. If you have a social game, we believe you should build it for us, that’s what we do. If you have a single player game, it’s not clear why you should build it for us, you should probably build it for other people. Folks like PopCap have been able to brilliantly take a downloadable game, which was Bejeweled and after a lot of work turned it into a social game. So you can do it, but there’s not much point.”

When asked if there was a game that wasn’t on Facebook that he thinks should be Ryan said “‘Civilization’  … it’s one of the best multiplayer games ever, and it’s not yet on Facebook. Whenever there’s a true multiplayer game that involves a lot of social interaction it arguably should be on our platform, because that’s what we do.”

When asked if Facebook would ever acquire a gaming company or go into the content business themselves Ryan said no, “That’s not our gig.”

Never before has an electric vehicle been named European Car of the Year, but this year that honor falls to the Nissan Leaf. Similar to the North American Car of the Year, which the Chevrolet Volt won, the European COTY is chosen by auto journalists: 58 of them from 23 European countries. So why did the Nissan Leaf win?

When you look at just how efficient the Nissan Leaf is you begin to understand just why EVs will become a part of our everyday life. The award jury seems to have been motivated by a distinctly forward-looking philosophy this year.

Continue reading…

We’ve all walked down the street and seen someone with a weird tattoo and thought, “they’re going to regret that later”. What may seem cool at the time, might not seem so cool years from now. Is it possible that the current crop of mobile photo filters will lead to the same type of regret? PicPlz clearly thinks it’s possible.

A new feature the service announced today is Dropbox integration. This nifty ability has been turned on from the backend, so iPhone, Android, and web users can use it immediately. And if you do use it, you’ll be able to automatically save both your original photo and your filtered photo to your Dropbox account in the cloud.

It’s a cool integration that’s a good idea. I’m sure we’ll see more mobile services utilize it.

But the reasoning behind PicPlz’s move here is just as interesting. As they write:

This way, you can use picplz to post images with filter effects and not worry about:

Permanently and irreversibly altering your valuable pictures

Leaving the unfiltered version of the picture trapped on your phone

While PicPlz, like rivals Instagram and Hipstamatic, is built around the idea of taking and sharing photos that have been altered using filters, they’re also clearly aware that some users are hesitant to do this. In fact, there’s no shortage of people who think this type of behavior is simple a fad that will pass. And then we’ll all be longing for our original, unfiltered pictures — we’ll want to remove the tattoos.

Whether that’s true or not remains to be seen. Plus, both PicPlz and Instagram have already allowed you to save both the original version of a picture and the filtered version. But this new integration does make it a bit easier  to not think about.

Abound Solar, which makes thin-film cadmium telluride solar panels, has attained certifications that will allow the company to receive feed-in tariffs in the U.K. and pursue sales there aggressively.

With a feed-in tariff, utilities agree to pay a premium, but stable, rate for power generated from renewable sources, both as the utility uses the power, or as it is fed back through the grid to be redistributed and sold elsewhere.

Often controversial, feed-in tariff are meant to drive the rapid adoption of clean energy by homeowners and utilities alike. Critics believe they give a better payout to utilities, and hurt consumers, or that they tip the scales in favor of one technology (like solar) over others (such as wind, or geothermal) unfairly.

Solar subsidies in France, Bloomberg reported last week, led to an all-out boom in the installation of residential solar systems, and then to government debt. The agency that guaranteed premium rates for solar generated power can’t cover as much as installed systems have begun to produce at the locked-in, higher-than-market rates according to the report. As a result, the country is cutting the incentives, and that could hurt solar companies that have heavily invested, there.

A similar thing happened to the solar market in Spain around 2008, according to a report by analyst Stephen Marcus for Cleantech Group. Japan is currently considering cutting down its solar feed-in tarrifs now, too PV-Tech reported today. A decision there is due in February.

Abound Solar’s modules previously received certifications from Underwriters Laboratories (UL) and the California Energy Commission (CEC) which helped the company to gather momentum, domestically. The company manufactures its technology in Indiana, having recently secured a federal loan guarantee of $400 million to build its operations there in a facility that once made auto transmissions.

To date, Abound Solar (formerly known as AVA Solar) has raised $150 million from private investors and institutions, including: Invus Group, DCM, Bohemian Companies, Technology Partners, GLG Partners, and the Department of Energy’s Solar Energy Technologies Program.

Mark Chen, a director of marketing and product manager at Abound Solar, said on Tuesday:

“We have no immediate projects in the pipeline in the U.K. but are optimistic about our market potential there, as the government is highly supportive of solar. We will follow some of our existing customers there from Germany, Italy and the U.S. including probably Juwi Solar and WirSol both German companies.”

Today at the Inside Social Apps conference in San Francisco, Inside Network’s Kim-Mai Cutler sat down with Eric Chu, a group manager at Google for the Android platform. The two discussed the platform mainly from a developer perspective. And the initial question may have been the most interesting.

When asked about the status of an in-app payment system for Android, Chu noted that it was set to launch last quarter, but it was forced to be delayed. Why was it delayed? “Developers were busy with their Christmas applications,” Chu said. “So we couldn’t get enough feedback,” he continued.

“Helping developers monetize is very important to us,” Chu said promising that instead in-app purchase ability will come this quarter. “So stay tuned,” he said.

Cutler asked if the plan was to use carrier billing for this in-app purchases when it does launch? Chu responded that they’ve invested a lot in carrier billing over the past several months. “It’s one fo the lowest-friction models,” he said. But he said it wouldn’t just be carrier billing, they’d use the Android Market payment system as well, and they’re working on adding other methods. When they do add more, developers won’t have to do a thing, Chu said.

Later, a question from the audience asked if the in-app system would require the latest versions of Android, Chu ensured everyone that the majority of current Android devices will be able to use the system.

Chu also reiterated that apps coming through the Market will have to use Google’s own payment offerings. But those outside the system can take advantage of Android’s openness.

Hey, if I dish it out, I have to be able to take it, too. And take it today I have. We’ve put up this ridiculous interstitial ad here on TechCrunch that appears the first time you visit the site.

It’s an ad for Dell. I like Dell, and before I went to Macs I mostly bought their computers. But the ad sucks.

Anecdotally I’ve heard that interstitial ads perform well because they don’t give the visitor any choice. They view the ad, then they get on the site. Lots of impressions and clicks and stuff that the sales guys love.

But like you I don’t like them. I tend to stop visiting sites that show them. They aren’t as bad as the ridiculous ads that float over the text you’re trying to read, but they are in the same ballpark.

They also slow the site down significantly.

In the past our sales guys have brought up these kinds of ads, and our CEO Heather has shot them down. In this case I’m not sure who’s responsible. AOL has now taken over some of our ad sales, I believe. And our awesome sales team (who has to put up with stuff like this) is handling the rest. I think so anyway, normally I don’t pay much attention to that side of the business. So far my internal requests for more information have been ignored.

Whoever did it, I’m going to try to stop it. Which will probably involve six hours of internal meetings and at least one power point deck. So at least you know that it’s going to cause me a lot more pain than it’s causing you.

You’ve got that going for you, which is nice.

Earlier today, we reported on a lot of chatter that Twitter was being blocked in Egypt amid rising protests. We can now confirm that they are being blocked. Two tweets from the service tonight confirm it.

“We can confirm that Twitter was blocked in Egypt around 8am PT today. It is impacting both Twitter.com & applications,” Twitter communications head Sean Garrett just tweeted out via their new PR account. “We believe that the open exchange of info & views benefits societies & helps govts better connect w/ their people,” he continued in a second tweet.

The protests began happening in Cairo this morning after people rallied together using services like Facebook and Twitter, and after seeing similar protests in Tunisia about corruption.

@twitterglobalpr
Twitter Comms

We can confirm that Twitter was blocked in Egypt around 8am PT today. It is impacting both Twitter.com & applications. (1/2)

about 3 hours ago via webRetweetReply

@twitterglobalpr
Twitter Comms

Re Egypt block: We believe that the open exchange of info & views benefits societies & helps govts better connect w/ their people. (2/2)

about 3 hours ago via webRetweetReply

At the tail-end of Yahoo’s fourth quarter earnings conference call today, CEO Carol Bartz was asked about competition with Facebook in display advertising. Facebook has come out of nowhere to account for nearly a quarter of all display ads on the Internet.

“There is some confusion about whether Facebook leads in display advertising,” Bartz responded. “It is because they have a lot of little impressions. We actually lead in display revenue.” But in fact, the two may be neck and neck. In 2010, Yahoo’s reported display ad revenues (after taking out traffic acquisition costs, the part they give to partner sites which run its ads) were $1.89 billion. Meanwhile, Facebook’s estimated global ad revenues for 2010 were $1.86 billion, with ad revenues expected to more than double to $4 billion this year.

Take this comparison with a grain of salt because one is real audited numbers versus an estimate of a private company’s business, but if that estimate is anywhere near correct, Facebook will soon surpass Yahoo in display ad revenues as well as impressions, if it hasn’t already.

Yahoo showed significant improvement to its bottom line in the fourth quarter, with profits doubling to $312 million. However, its revenues of $1.2 billion (again, minus TAC) were down 4 percent. To fend of Facebook, Yahoo has to get overall revenues growing again, and fast.

Yahoo is growing profits by cutting costs (as it did today with more layoffs) more than by growing its business. Although if you break down Yahoo’s revenues, display ads is the one bright spot. It was up 16 percent to $567 million in the quarter, whereas search revenues were down 18 percent to $388 million. (See earnings slides below).

Bartz also seems to have a better answer to the question, What is Yahoo? She seems to have settled on Yahoo becoming a “great content” company. In other words, a media company. “We just want to create content that is interesting to people,” she said. Don’t we all.

Enterprise software isn’t as sexy a topic as the iPhone or consumer apps. So why do I love to cover it? The fights.

While most consumer Internet companies view their market as a warm and fuzzy place where there can be multiple winners, in enterprise software, it’s a slug fest. Companies are competing head-to-head for deals and customers want as few software vendors as possible. That means scrappy founders who love to joust– especially those trained in the school of His Royal Highness of Jousting, Oracle’s Larry Ellison.

In this second segment of our sit down with Jive’s CEO Tony Zingale, he throws down on competitors like Yammer and Salesforce and explains why he loves his competitors’ freemium model, saying “They’re the best lead gen source we have, because the moment anyone gets serious they call Jive.”(By the way, if a named competitor would like to come on TCTV and have your say, you’ve got our number.)

Only an enterprise software exec would say someone calling his sales force “ex-Mercury sons-of-bitches” was “flattering.”

For part one of our interview, where Zingale details the ROI of social enterprise software, go here.

In an industry first, Sony Ericsson Strategic Business Developer Martin Essl just announced that Sony Ericsson will integrate Facebook’s Single Sign On system across all its Android phones in the next couple of months. Launched in December, Single Sign On is like Facebook Connect for mobile apps, removing friction because it allows you to log into all apps that use Facebook Connect just by logging into one.

Essl did not go into the specifics of the integration but revealed that the Facebook app for Android will come preloaded on all phones and there will be an (optional) initial walk through process for Single Sign On as part of the phone setup. Essl also said there would be additional integrations beyond what the Facebook app can already do.

“Sony Ericsson’s core values are entertainment, communication and we strongly want to see communication as entertainment by deeper integration with Facebook,” says Essl.

Connecting mobile and social is a huge thing theme here at the Inside Social Apps conference and panel moderator Mattheus Krykowski hinted at this announcement at the beginning of the talk by affirming that “the most important thing Facebook did is Single Sign On” because it offers easy accessibility of the social graph on mobile.

Being able to easily import your friends contact information into your phone is becoming a mobile game changer and Sony Ericcsson’s move to adopt Single Sign On for Android is subtle but bold, as Facebook nears 600 million users (1/10 of the world) the solution to this problem will be increasingly one sided.

Other panelists, like Storm 8 founder Anil Dharni, expressed doubts, holding that the Single Sign On system was still “in its infancy.”

After the news that Facebook Credits would become mandatory in five months was broken yesterday, Facebook Head of Product Marketing Deb Liu addressed developer concerns today at the Inside Social Apps conference.

When moderator Eric Eldon alluded to fears that mandatory Facebook Credits would put some developers out of business, Liu said, “Every single day we know developers get to choose between our platforms and another platform” a statement which was met with laughter from the audience, as Facebook is the most dominant player in the space and for some the only option for such large scale distribution. Liu recomposed, “We want to make Facebook the most attractive place to invest, and keep users with credits in their pockets.”

Liu went on to focus on the incentives for developers using Facebook Credits, including emphasizing Facebook’s promotion of games that used Credits as their sole payment, frictionless payments, and the new “Buy With Friends” feature that allows a developer to set up a feature to enable users to share purchases within games — their friends can then buy those items at a discount.

When asked at the end of the panel if the Credits-only decision would be poisonous to “whales” or users who spend extreme amounts of money in-game, Liu said it was a legitimate concern and system improvements would have to be made on a case by case basis.

Over the past year, the support system for New York City entrepreneurs and tech startups has grown significantly including the addition of: TechStars NYC mentoring and seed funding program, a new Manhattan branch of Accel Partners, and the opening of a startup academy and co-work space for startups and serial entrepreneurs, General Assemb.ly.

Today, DreamIt Ventures announced its expansion to the city, just one hour or so away from its original Philadelphia startup accelerator.

DreamIt Ventures provides up to $25,000 in seed funding to its portfolio companies, along with coaching, exclusive speaking engagements, a chance to pitch at a Demo Day to affiliated angel and venture investors, and a collaborative workspace. The organization has yet to sign a lease on (or reveal the address of) its Manhattan location, but has confirmed that the following entrepreneurs will serve as advisors to companies accepted into its NYC program this spring:

Gil Beyda: Founder, RealMedia (acquired by WPP)

Bryan and Jeffrey Eisenberg: Founders, FutureNow, and New York Times bestselling authors

John Eley: CEO, Pivot; Former CEO HotSpot FX (acquired by Knight Capital)

Jason Finger: former CEO/Founder, SeamlessWeb (acquired by Aramark)

Jonah Goodhart: Co-Founder, Colonize.com; Board Member of Right Media (acquired by Yahoo)

Ken Seiff: former CEO and Founder, Bluefly (NASDAQ: BFLY)

Jonathan Shapiro, CEO, MediaWhiz; Former Chief Strategy Officer, Doubleclick; Former President, Lillian Vernon

Nat Turner: former CEO, Founder, Invite Media (acquired by Google)

Kaleil Isaza Tuzman: CEO, Founder, KIT Digital (NASDAQ: KITD)

Michael Yavondite: CEO, Hashable; former CEO, Quigo (acquired by AOL)

The program will run from mid-May to mid-August this year. Applicants to DreamIt Ventures’ NYC program will be reviewed on a rolling basis with an early decision deadline of February 28, 2011 and a final deadline of March 16, 2011, according to the accelerator’s site. DreamIt has “Hacker” and “Strategist” tracks where individuals not yet affiliated with a company can apply to potentially join a portfolio startup, on either the technical or business front.

DreamIt Ventures plans to admit ten to fifteen companies into its NYC program, five of which will be digital education businesses. That’s the same setup as the Philly program. In both cities, DreamIt Ventures partners with Startl — an organization funded by the MacArthur, Hewlett and Gates Foundations — to help five, digital education startups build their businesses.

DreamIt Ventures alumni companies have included SCVNGR (2008), SeatGeek (2009) and MindSnacks (2010).

It was only this past October that Hipmunk closed a “hyper-competitive” from many of the usual angel suspects. But Hipmunk obviously has lofty goals to disrupt the airline travel industry. So they’re probably going to need more than $1 million to do that. And now they’re getting more — they’re in the process of closing a new $6 million round of funding, we’ve learned.

The company has confirmed the new round, but has declined to offer up any further details just yet. We’re still digging — the current SEC document on the funding suggests that they’ve only secured $4.6 millon of the round, so far. The Y Combinator company also previously took a very small seed from the incubator back in mid 2010.

Back in November, Hipmunk brought Christopher Slowe on board, after years running the Conde Nast-controlled social news site Reddit. That’s notable since Reddit co-founders Steve Huffman and Alexis Ohanian are also now working on Hipmunk. Shortly after that, the startup landed a deal with ITA — which is huge for their airline search results. And that’s interesting since Google is in the process of trying to buy ITA — something which has pissed off basically everyone in the online travel industry.

The startup has also be able to secure one airline that has been elusive recently to bigger services like Orbitz and Kayak: American Airlines. Part of the reason is that Hipmunk links directly to those airlines for customers to make purchases — something which American has been trying to promote instead of using one of the all-in-one travel sites.

I have a confession to make: I’m completely and utterly addicted to browser tabs. It’s a sickness. I might have 15 or 20 or more open in each window at any given time. That’s why I love Chrome. The ability to pin tabs is a life-saver by way of being a space-saver. But there’s always been one big downside.

When you pin a tab in Chrome, all you see is the favion. That means you lose the title of the tab itself. Normally, this isn’t a big deal, but for apps like Gmail, Twitter, and Tumblr that show unread counts in this area, it’s actually an annoyance. As a result, I’ve had to install extensions just to be able to see when I have new messages. Not anymore.

Google has just launched a small, but awesome new feature in Gmail Labs: Unread message icon. With in enabled, you’re Gmail favicon will change in realtime to display the number of unread messages in your account window.

Google notes that this feature will only work Chrome 6 and above and Firefox 2 and above. In other words, everyone who will care about such a thing should be able to use it. To enable it, simply go to the Labs area in Settings and turn it on and save.

One other small thing: it appears to only count messages that are deemed “important” if you’re using Priority Inbox. But that’s just fine by me.

Thank you, Google. Now we just need this for Twitter, Tumblr, Facebook, and Quora.