Category: Tech news

Tumblr is attracting a lot of attention right now There is talk of a big funding round in the works and it is making significant hires. Why all the interest?

Sometime last June, blogging service Tumblr hit an inflection point. It’s visitors and pageviews just took off. According to comScore, Tumblr served up 1.2 billion pageviews in the U.S. in October, up a mind-boggling 1,540 percent from the year before (see chart above). Unique visitors from the U.S. hit 6 million, up 150 percent (see chart below). Worldwide visitors in September were around 14 million.

But something definitely started to click this summer. As you can see by the charts, that is when growth really took off. U.S. pageviews were only 373 million back then. In August, it passed its one billionth cumulative post. All those posts add up. The more people who use the super-easy blogging service (there are nearly 9.7 million different Tumblogs now), the more overall readers the platform attracts, which creates a virtuous cycle of more publishers.

Update: I asked a couple VCs why they think Tumblr is growing so fast. Bijan Sabet, the partner at Spark Capital who is on Tumblr’s board, told me via a Twitter DM:

I don’t think it was one thing. It was a series of things (web improvements, network effect, david’s obsession, iPhone, etc). 100% organic.

An Fred Wilson, whose VC firm Union Square Ventures is also an investor, although he is not the partner on the board, replies:

I have no idea but my daughter came home from college this weekend and told me that all her friends have tumbles

In other words, all the kids are doing it.

Hello, my name is John, and I am addicted to movies. My drug of choice is DVDs, especially since my local cineplex isn’t exactly fighting to screen an Eric Rohmer retrospective or hosting a Godzillathon. Sometimes I find myself ordering a bunch of kung fu classics from a Hong Kongbased website at 2 a.m. I need help.

Help that is, with my massive DVD binder cases and slew of ripped files scattered across multiple computers. It can take me 20 minutes just to find the flick I want to watch, if I can find it at all. Did I mention I’d also like to cut my insane cable bill?

Thankfully, Western Digital’s new WDTV Live Hub has arrived to try to save me from myself. The latest of WD’s media streamers, the WDTV Live Hub faces an onslaught of buzz about AppleTV and GoogleTV, but it manages to organize and stream digital entertainment without much hassle. And unlike its competition, the Live Hub also includes a 1-terabyte storage drive for cramming in enough content for most users.

Like most media streamers, the WDTV is simple to navigate and responds to commands quickly. Some pretty-detailed setup options will have you tweaking everything to your liking, down to customizing subtitle style and font size. AV geeks will like the basic remote-admin features: Just type in the IP address into a web browser, and you can perform some basic functions like configure iTunes streaming and set up internet media sources.

There’s even a virtual remote for the PC that looks just like the WDTV remote. Click a button with your mouse and you can control pretty much any WDTV function. It’s pretty slick.

While there is a wicked-simple setup guide included in the box, you’ll have to go to WD’s website to download the full manual. Cables aren’t included either, so add buying HDMI and ethernet cables to your list. Once I had everything plugged in, the WDTV instantly saw all my network shared folders, and bam — all of my content was aggregated in one place.

You can set the WDTV to automatically sync with attached USB storage and even remotely shared network folders, for easy aggregation of your flicks and tunes. If you have a large collection of videos and music (guilty!), you’ll fill up the 1-tearabyte internal hard drive pretty quickly. But you can plug in a USB drive for more capacity, and it easily streams from any local network source too, so your storage options are essentially unlimited.

One not-so-small criticism is that the WDTV makes you choose your media source before browsing, instead of indexing everything in one central place. So, you’ve got to pick between the built-in hard drive, attached USB storage and any network devices with shared folders. Can’t remember where you saved that folder of party pictures? You’re out of luck, especially because the search feature doesn’t scan across multiple devices.

It’s not a dealbreaker, but it would be icing on the cake if you could browse and search all media in one central location, regardless of where it’s stored. To slightly offset the search limitations, you can add music and movies to a queue as well as set favorites, so they’re easily found again.

Compared to the WDTV Live Plus we reviewed back in October, the WDTV Live Hub is a massive step forward. The boxy chassis has been upgraded to a slimmer, better-looking box.

And while it takes a while to begin streaming, WD seems to have addressed video-stuttering issues with better caching, at least I didn’t notice any, using a hard-wired ethernet connection. Local network streams were very quick to start, but online Netflix streams took a good 20 seconds to begin.

After watching dozens of videos, overall playback quality was razor sharp, with true-to-life motion and sparkling audio fidelity. As always however, video quality is still largely dependent on the speed of your local network and internet connections, as well as how the file was encoded in the first place.

The remote has gotten an upgrade as well, with some customizable shortcut buttons, 0–9 alphanumeric keypad, and even a mute button. It’s actually a pretty good remote compared to the quality of most “included in the box” remotes. As a side note, you can also connect a USB keyboard to make typing in searches easier. I even got my wireless keyboard to work.

Unfortunately, if you want to cut your cable bill, this WDTV Live box can’t quite do it. It does serve up a handful of the better online services: Netflix, Youtube, Blockbuster, Live 365 radio, Pandora and Mediafly.

However, you’re out of luck if you like Hulu, and many of the better Mediafly channels are audio-only. For now at least, there is a massive gap between all the content available on cable, what you can view on a PC web browser, and what you’re limited to on a media streamer.

The WDTV Live Hub will keep you entertained as long as you’re aware of its limitations, but I’m probably asking too much from a pretty simple box. If you’re looking for something more robust, build or buy a home theater PC.

For the rest of us, the WDTV Live Hub bridges the gaps among computer, TV and internet — and does it well. It kicks tail if you’ve already got a large media collection, and while it won’t actually tidy up your digital clutter, it will at least motivate you to organize your media. At least it did in my case.

And if it can save me from digital-entertainment ennui, it can certainly save you.

WIRED It’s a streamer! It’s a server! Robust format support. USB keyboard compatible. Extremely easy to set up, especially remote-admin features. A/V quality is sharper than Carl Sagan’s intellect. Simple and responsive interface. 1080p resolution: Suck it, AppleTV.

TIRED You can only search and browse for content on one device at a time. Cables and full manual not included. No built-in Wi-Fi and no Hulu support? We no like. Online streams can be slow to start. Some features can get buried in backwater sections of menu. Want to cut your cable bill? Ha, not with this.

See Also:

• Logitech’s Google TV: Brilliant Concept Hampered by Networks
• Battle of the Boxes: Apple TV vs. Western Digital and Seagate
• Sweet Set-Top Box Transforms Your Mac Into a DVR
• For Apple’s New Stream Machine, Jobs Giveth, Jobs Taketh Away

iPhone:iPad :: Galaxy S:Galaxy Tab

That simple analogy is all you really need to know about the highly anticipated Galaxy Tab and what it can do.

With the first legitimate competitor to iPad for the consumer-focused tablet-computer market, Samsung continues to take its cues from Apple — just as it’s been doing with cellphones.

That is not necessarily a bad thing. For all its faults, the iPad is still the tablet to beat. The Galaxy Tab takes direct aim at iPad’s shortcomings and does a credible job at addressing nearly all of them.

The most immediately noteworthy difference from the iPad is that the Galaxy is considerably smaller — physically about half the size and weight, with a 7-inch diagonal screen instead of the iPad’s 9.7 inches. However, the Tab’s 1024 x 600–pixel resolution makes this less of a big deal than you might expect. Considering the iPad’s 1024 x 768–pixel resolution, you’ll find the Tab nearly as spacious, although the screen (a standard LCD) is not as bright and as clear as the iPad’s beauty.

What you gain, however, is considerably better portability: The iPad is not always convenient to tote with you, while the Tab really feels like a jumbo-sized cellphone and slips easily into any bag and many jacket pockets.

Any screen shortcomings are rapidly put out of mind by the Galaxy Tab’s rich feature set. Everything you’d want from a modern Android phone (version 2.2, upgradeable when 3.0 hits) is here: Full app support (though, as with running iPhone apps on the iPad, many apps look JUMBO SIZE in use), a fair-enough camera (3.2 megapixels) with flash, a mobile hotspot and tethering option, and virtually no buttons. The only physical buttons are the power button and volume toggle, both on the upper right side. Four touch-sensitive Android-standard buttons on the bottom of the front screen are usable only when the display is active.

Storage is what you make of it: A 16-GB microSD card, accessible via a flap on the side, is installed by default, and you can upgrade to 32 GB.

In use, the Galaxy Tab performs well, but is not exemplary. It feels snappy enough, but longish load times can sometimes be tiresome, and webpages invariably loaded more slowly than the iPad — sometimes taking twice as long. We also ran into a few issues with apps hanging and the Wi-Fi connection suddenly vanishing without explanation. Reboots solved both issues.

On the hardware side, the light, 13.4-ounces unit just fits in a single hand, but the slick surface tends to be slippery and prone to dropping. If you’re the kind of person who is always finding his phone falling out of your grip, your Tab is going to spend a lot of time on the floor. (Maybe that’s why Jobso was so critical of these devices?)

Compounding matters is the problematic location of the power and volume buttons. Holding the device in your left hand often causes you to hit these by accident. They’re temperamental and touchy, until you eventually adapt to a grip further down the chassis.

Pricing is complicated and modeled after the cellphone, so pay close attention: The base unit is $400 with a new or upgraded two-year contract, or $600 without a rate plan. Data costs extra: $30 a month for 2 GB of service plus unlimited messaging, or $60 a month for 5 GB and unlimited messaging. Mobile Hotspot support is extra ($30 a month), and Sprint Navigation is extra, too.

These are relatively minor complaints, in the end. The Tab requires some retraining in the way you use a mobile device — it’s somewhere between a phone and a regular tablet — but once you get it, it’s a pleasure to use. The Tab ultimately reveals itself not as a competitor to the iPad but as a new class of mobile devices: a minitablet that is designed to go everywhere you do.

WIRED Smaller form factor offers much better portability. Bright, high-resolution screen. Runs Flash? Oh, yeah.

TIRED Some stability concerns. Proprietary connector and cable (looks like an iPod port, but ain’t). Battery is nonreplaceable.

See Also:

• Mobile Product of the Year: Apple iPad 3G
• JooJoo Tablet Is a Real Piece of DooDoo
• New Archos Tablet Is a Kid’s Toy, Not Suitable for Adults
• NYT: Google Android Tablet Imminent
• Android ePad Tablet Reviewed. Verdict: Junk

As we’re all well aware, with the recent launch of Windows Phone 7, Microsoft is about to enter into yet another major war with Google, this time in the mobile space (or at least, they hope it will be a war). So perhaps it shouldn’t be too surprising today that when one of them bought an ad on Twitter, the other followed suit. Yes, both Microsoft and Google are running Promoted ads right next to each other today.

Now, this obviously could be a coincidence. But it seems like it could be calculated as well. After all, they’re both specifically targeting the mobile crowd with these ads. Microsoft is running a Promoted Trend for Windows Phone, while Google is running a Promoted Account for Google Mobile.

One thing to note is that while Promoted Trends show up across all of Twitter no matter what, Promoted Accounts are supposed to vary on a user-by-user basis. That said, I’ve asked a number of people and all of them seem to see the same GoogleMobile account as being promoted.

Might we start to see more rivals doing this? On Google, rivals advertising on queries for their competitors is one of the oldest tricks in the book. On Twitter, those doing the advertising will have to be a little more clever, but perhaps we’re starting to see that.

[via Steve Olechowski]

We’re in the midst of a very important race that could help dictate the future of location-based services. But instead of the usual Silicon Valley weapons of engineering talent and network effects, this one is a bit less technical. It’s all about stickers.

Head to the Macy’s in downtown San Francisco right now and you’ll see a prominent sticker at the entrance prompting you to check-in using Facebook to get a special deal. That’s pretty impressive given that Facebook only launched its its deals service a week ago. And it’s only a taste of what’s to come — expect to see many other large retailers start to slap on Facebook’s stickers as the social network flexes its biz dev muscles.

These windows stickers aren’t anything new. Yelp is probably the best known web company to use the tactic, and has long distributed stickers to businesses with the slogan “People Love Us On Yelp!”. Over the summer, Foursquare began distributing its own stickers that prompt users to check-in. And Facebook has actually been distributing stickers of its own to help businesses promote their Facebook Pages since April. But these deal and location stickers could be different.

Right now, many people (probably most people) have no idea what a check-in is. When Gap launched its free jeans deal, people were actually visiting the company’s Facebook Page to write “checking in“, rather than using the Places function on Facebook’s mobile application. But over the next few months that’s going to change, because more businesses are going to offer deals and users will have a financial incentive to figure out how these things work. And once they do, they’ll start looking for the sticker of the service they’re familiar with.

In other words, these stickers are really a physical proxy for each service’s mindshare. Some businesses will probably slap on a bunch of window stickers inviting their users to check-in on Facebook, Foursquare, SCVNGR, and more. Others — and I suspect, the majority of businesses — will pick one service and stick with it to avoid customer confusion (and so that they don’t have to do deal with managing deals on multiple services). And right now, my money is on Facebook winning out for that window space.

Customers may not initially understand how a check-in works, but they’re probably on Facebook already, whereas Foursquare is probably something they’ve just heard a lot about on the news. Foursquare had several month’s head start may be able to combat this by distributing stickers and other promotions on an even larger scale, but I think it’s too late for that — they’ll need to focus more on adding value on top of check-ins (and it sounds like the company knows this).

Adding a bit more fuel to Facebook’s fire: we just got a tip that a local Chipotle just received a big box of Facebook Deals stickers. Free burritos, anyone?

As we reported earlier today, Cloud OS startup Jolicloud has confirmed the “Jolibook” Netbook is coming this month, although we don’t know the price. Well, we may not know the price, but strolling round the Monaco Media Forum today I button-holed founder Tariq Krim, and got him to reveal where the Jolibook will appear first: the UK.

Although my colleague Robin Wauters was showed the device in Dublin at F.ounders two weeks ago, he didn’t get any video. Well, Robin the next round of drinks is on you, because I got some video of the packaging in a 9 minute interview with Krim. Sorry Robin! I also saw the netbook in action but couldn’t take a photo or shoot video. But boy. Wow. This thing is fast, that’s all I can say.

Krim also says a number of new things on the video. Including that they will be launch an Android version of Jolicloud.

This post was written by David Cohen, founder of TechStars, the seed accelerator program with operations in Boulder, Boston, Seattle and New York City. TechStars is launching ten new startups from its inaugural Seattle Class today. According to results data that TechStars has published, six of the first twenty companies to go through the program have been acquired by larger companies, and about 70% of its companies have been funded and/or are now profitable. The teams are presenting today to about 200 VCs and angel investors for the first time. These companies are about three months old and have two or three founder employees.

Highlighter.com: The startup allow you to highlight, comment, and share on blogs, ebooks and PDFs on any device and manage your highlights.

Deal Co-op: Deal Co-op is a self-serve, white-lable daily deal marketing service for local organizations, publishers, and more.

The Shared Web: The Shared Web is a web based version of Flipboard, serving as a place to discover and share what matters to you the most.

Cabin Fever Toys: The startup wants to tackle the problem of childhood obesity in the United States with toys that measure, encourage and reward outdoor exercise. Cabin Fever Toys are also coupled with an online experience to help reinforce desired behaviors with game mechanics.

Kinizi: Kinizi is aiming to be the place to go when you’re looking for low cost apartment rentals. They’re essentially applying the daily deal model to apartment search, and enabling landlords to quickly fill vacancies using short term special offers.

RewardsForce: RewardsForce helps casinos manage their loyalty rewards programs. The company allows casinos to use iPads or other portable devices to increase repeat visitors and customer satisfaction.

Thinkfuse: Thinkfuse is building tools for team collaboration, and is hoping to create more effective way for teams to manage and share weekly status reports called This Week Last Week.

World Blender: World Blender is creating social location-based first person shooter games such as GPS Assassin.

GoMiles: GoMiles helps consumers track their airline miles and helps educate users on the best ways to protect, earn more, or redeem reward miles.

Giant Thinkwell: Giant Thinkwell is an imaginative social gaming platform featuring celebrity-based games. Their first game is called Raising Uncle Jesse, where players hilariously give birth to a baby John Stamos, and then raise him over time.

Earlier this year, Facebook reaffirmed its status as a bonafide Internet giant when it broke ground on its first data center, which will be located in Oregon with plans to begin operations in 2011. Today, the company has announced that it’s building its second data center, this time in Rutherford, North Carolina. And it’s not coming cheap: Facebook is investing $450 million to build the new facility.

According to a press release issued by North Carolina Governor Bev Perdue, the project is expected to take 18 months to complete, and will have around 35-45 full-time and contract workers once it’s done. The release also notes that “additional construction phases may be possible in the future, depending on business needs”. In other words, if Facebook continues its rapid growth, it’ll still have some room to stretch its legs.

The release also touts the technology going into making the new data center as energy-efficient as possible, and states that it will use “technologies developed by Facebook to rely on fewer than half the computing power (and energy related energy consumption) that a similar data center would have required” a few years ago.

Facebook isn’t the first tech company to turn to North Carolina to build a massive East Coast data center — Apple is building a $1 billion facility that’s expected to be finished this year. Google and IBM also have data centers in the state.

We heard that Foursquare founders Dennis Crowley and Naveen Selvadurai were going to star in a Gap ad and it looks like the final product is out. You can watch the video here.

The videos addresses the question-”if you could give anything in the world, what would it be?” Gap says that in Crowley and Selvadurai’s appearance, the founders chose to give to Camp Interactive, which is an organization that empowers inner-city youth through the inspiration of the outdoors and the creative power of technology.

Other celebs that are featured in the ad include Model and co-founder of FEED Projects, Lauren Bush; and True Blood’s Ryan Kwanten

Gap is also using the videos and Facebook to raise money. All the videos of the celebs featured in the ads will be available on Gap’s Facebook page. For every “Like” a video receives on Facebook , $1 will be donated to the charitable organization featured in the video, up to $150,000. Plus, each time someone “Likes” a video, Gap will give users 30% off one regularly priced item.

When Ping launched in early September, the music social network had one major problem: it wasn’t social. Sure, you can share stuff inside of iTunes, but there was no good way to post the songs you liked to the two big social networks: Facebook and Twitter. The truth is that Ping launched with Facebook Connect integration, but it was only for contact importing, and then Apple and Facebook had a bit of a dust up. Today, Apple is bringing Twitter integration to Ping.

As Twitter has just announced on their blog, by connecting iTunes to Twitter, you’ll be able to not only find your Twitter friends on Ping, but you’ll be able to tweet out Ping activity as well. That last bit is a key to making Ping actually work in a truly social way.

Perhaps even more interesting is that not only will each tweet contain a link back to the song or album on iTunes, but these links will work in New Twitter’s right-side pane. You’ll be able to listen to iTunes previews right from there — a huge feature that should lead to a lot of music buying, especially when the 90-second previews kick-in.

Facebook, meanwhile, is still MIA after they cut off Ping a day after launch. There’s talk the two side will hook up again, but so far it hasn’t happened yet. That said, there is a button in the drop down to manually post a song or album to Facebook, but it takes you to Facebook on the web to do it. The Twitter integration is fully baked-in.

This first big social integration follows Apple integrating Ping with users’ actual iTunes libraries, an important first step.

Twitter says this iTunes song previews feature will be available on twitter.com in the 23 countries where the iTunes Store offers music.

One big word of caution, when you first hook up your Twitter account to Ping, the default is to auto-tweet out all of your Ping activity — both when you post something and when you just “like” something. It alerts you to this at first and you can change it in your settings so that you can manually choose when to do it, just be warned that this happens.

I have to wonder if this deal is a money-making one for Twitter. Will they be getting affiliate fees for songs purchased thanks to Twitter links? I’ve asked Twitter that very question and will update when I hear back.

Update: Says Twitter on the affiliate fees:

We don’t comment on the underlying financials of our partnerships.

Members-only shopping site JackThreads.com just got a redesign and has begun selling more gadgetry including headphones and Nooka watches. We wrote about these boys back when Thrillist bought the company in May. Similar to Gilt Group, the company sells “hot” and “exciting” items popular with the “kids” for up to 80% off, ensuring that legions of web developers can still find skinny jeans.

Read more…

Today Wal-Mart is offering free shipping with no minimum on walmart.com on around 60,000 items. The deal will run until December 20th and may continue until Christmas. This is, in short, an attempt to grab commerce through this lucrative month and into the next from other retailers like Amazon and Toys’r’Us.

The holidays are usually an extremely brisk time for online sales and retailers are hoping this year will be better than last. Most retailers reported at least a 16% increase in sales last month, which bodes well for the rest of the season. Another interesting data point is the estimated Kinect sales numbers topping out at 425,000 since launch. This either suggests consumers aren’t ready to dance around in front of their TVs or, a more likely scenario, the Kinect will be the must-have item this season and parents are waiting before they buy.

Read more…

Oh noes! No more Fox on Google TV! This will surely cause the Pleideans to finally overrun the earth. Clearly us humans are not capable of getting along. Hopefully the aliens above know that two of the world’s largest media conglomerates haven’t taken the same stance as Disney or NBC Universal. Both Time Warner’s and Viacom’s entire web library works just fine on Google TV and will probably continue to do so as the second and fourth largest media companies in the world seemingly embraced the platform.

I’m not backpedaling on my Google TV “wait” recommendation but the platform is far from dead in the water. Both Time Warner and Viacom constitute a major portion of the cable channels and their entire library — from what I can tell at least — still works. These two media giants even have shortcuts to their video sites built into the Google TV backend, seemingly encouraging users to check out their content through the Internet.

This whole thing is silly, really. If News Corp, Disney, NBC Universal, and CBS are going to put their content online for free, then said media should be accessible on any Internet platform. That’s exactly what Avner Ronen said to Erick Schonfeld yesterday in reference to his Boxee Box. The game they’re playing now stifles innovation, leaving the lowly consumer as the primary victim. Google TV isn’t even about disruption. It’s about merging subscription-based TV with the content already provided free by the media companies. Sigh.

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On the heels of announcing a payments partnership with Facebook, PlaySpan is making another announcement regarding the startup’s UltimatePay payments product. PlaySpan is launching UltimatePay Mobile, a virtual currency and micropayments monetization widget for smartphone platforms. The initial private beta launch will support Android phones and Nokia phones with WebRuntime installed.

UltimatePay is a ‘Monetization as a Service’ platform for apps, games, videos and digital goods. Based on the user’s location, the payments platform draws from over 85 different payment options. Because of its vast variety of payment options (which include PayPal, pre-paid cards, and a number of credit cards), UltimatePay is designed for a global audience.

UltimatePay Mobile gives smartphone developers a way to deliver a one-click payment experience to mobile gamers, and provide a comprehensive payments offering. The platform allows players to view their balance and transaction history, while allowing them to purchase items in-app without ever having to leave the game.

Of course, PlaySpan isn’t the first startup or company to bring in-app payments to Android phones; PayPal, Boku and Zong all offer in-app payments libraries to developers.

PlaySpan, which recently raised $18 million in new funding, already has a number of partnerships with a number of gaming and media companies, including Ubisoft, Sanrio and others. Perhaps the company can leverage some of these relationships to offer UltimatePay in publisher’s mobile games.

Since Paper.li quietly launched in May this year, it’s been building momentum. At first it seemed like a very simple Twitter app which just turned the feed form the people you follow into a rather neat newspaper-style site where you could peruse what was being shared. But coupled with an automatic virality, in that it would make your account tweet the user names name of the people featured in your ‘Paper’, the application has been taking off. Subsequently I have been hearing rumours that it’s traffic was exploding, thus attracting a lot interest from potential investors, although the company denies it is raising financing right now.

Today those rumours surface to some extent in the form of news, exlusive to us, that well known investor Guy Kawasaki has joined its advisory board.

Similar to Twittertim.es, part of Paper.li’s appeal is that it presents the links shared in your feed in a highly digestible form, thus giving it quite a lot of mainstream appeal. It’s also been optimized for use on the iPad.

I caught up with CEO and founder Edouard Lambelet at the Monaco Media Forum for the interview below: