Category: Tech news

This morning Pinterest co-founders Ben Silberman, Paul Sciarra and Yashwanth Nelapati woke up to a barrage of tweets, “So @myspace has completely ripped off @pinterest. It really pisses me off when an old, tired hack tries to undermine hardworking inovators. [sic]“ Myspace revealed its new redesign last night and Pinterest users quickly picked up on the similarities between the two site aesthetics, leading to an intense Twitter debate.

The offsite grid layout used by both Myspace and Pinterest is nothing new; Lazyfeed, http://enjoysthin.gs and countless other sites have a similar design (there’s even a Tumblr theme). But the fact that former Myspace Director of Technology Dave Peck emailed Pinterest back in March asking for an advance invite is interesting, especially when you read the email.

Founder Silberman told TechCrunch, “The Myspace product team joined our site really early and so I’m sure they took inspiration from it. Our impression was that they took some information and we were touched that our users were vocal about it.”

However, Silberman who retweeted the accusations from the official Pinterest account this morning, emphasized, “I wouldn’t go as far as saying they ripped it off. They’re probably in tune with organizing friends around interests after they missed the boat on friends,” referring to how you can now use Myspace to follow Topics pages.

Pinterest is still invite only and is currently seeking funding. Despite being in stealth mode, the social cataloguing startup has 17,000 users and is about to experience its one millionth “pin.” Silberman plans on launching in a couple of months, encouraged by all the user support today, “It’s cool when you’re a small company and your users stick up for you.”

Myspace had 90 million users this September according to comScore, marking a 18% drop from last year. This recent design and concept overhaul was an attempt to win back some of the traffic lost to competitors like Facebook.

Myspace screencap via The Guardian

Earlier today, Apple’s 10-K form was released for their 2010 fiscal year. The long document is full of tidbits about the state of Apple’s business. One thing of note is just how much Apple ramped up their advertising spending in 2010.

For 2010, the company’s advertising costs were $691 million. That’s up from $501 million last year. And it’s the first huge jump for Apple in recent years. In 2008, for example, they spent $486 million. And in 2007, they spent $467 million. In other words, in previous years, the ramp up in ad spending has been about $15 to $20 million. This past year? A $190 million jump.

But what’s pretty incredible is that even despite this huge ramp up, Apple continues their trend of lowering the percentage of revenues they spend on advertising. While the spend was $691 million this year, total revenues were over $65 billion, so Apple only spent about 1 percent of their revenue on this. Last year, that percentage was 1.37. In 2001, it was 5 percent.

So even though Apple is ramping up ad spending, they’re bringing in money much quicker so the overall percentage of money they’re spending keeps getting less and less.

And while $691 million may seem like a massive amount of money, it’s still less than half of what Microsoft spent on advertising last year. And it’s less than what Dell spent last year.

So what did Apple spend that extra $200 million on? They don’t break it down, but you can bet a bunch was their new category: iPad. And those great Don Draper-like iPhone 4 ads.

[image: AMC]

It’s very apparent within seconds of sitting in the 2011 Ford Edge Sport that it’s different. It feels like the future. There are two LCD screens flanking a lovely analog speedometer, flush mounted inductive-type controls on the center stack and of course, a large infotainment screen. It’s like a car from the future! (It’s not)

Inside is the latest generation of Ford’s in-vehicle system. Dubbed MyFord Touch, it’s reach and capabilities are unlike nearly anything else in the same price range. But this system isn’t just stuck in the center stack, tasked with the job of controlling the climate and radio. The MyFord Touch is also in the dash cluster in the form of two LCD screens. This is where it gets interesting and validates its place in Ford’s future.

Yahoo has hired Ross Levinsohn, the former President of Fox Interactive Media, as EVP America’s Region, we’ve confirmed. AllThingsD first broke the news that he was close to taking the job.

Levinsohn will replace Hillary Schneider. Yahoo announced Schneider’s departure last month.

Levinsohn will take control of Yahoo’s Americas business, including content, advertising and partnerships. Some 2,000 employees will report into his organization.

This is also the first high profile executive hire at Yahoo since bringing in Chief Product Officer Blake Irving earlier this year.

Levinsohn is currently a partner at Fuse Capital, a venture firm with ties to Best Buy. Levinsohn’s former partner at Fuse Capital, Jonathan Miller, now runs News Corp.’s digital business, effectively the same position Levinsohn held.

While at Fox Interactive Media Levinsohn oversaw the $580 million acquisition of MySpace as well as the nearly $1 billion advertising deal with Google.

Many of his previous employees have gone on to do interesting things. Adam Bain is now President, Revenue at Twitter. And Heather Harde, our CEO, ran M&A for Levinsohn.

And for once, we have nothing negative to report about Yahoo.

You can watch an interview with Levinsohn by Sarah Lacy at TechCrunch50 last year here, and we’ve embedded it below.

At the beginning of this year, I was very excited. You see, at Google’s launch event for the Nexus One, they made one thing clear: they were going directly after the dominating carrier lock-in model that had held everyone in the U.S. captive for years. Then Google chickened out. And things are now getting just as bad as they have ever been. Unless Apple has the cojones to do what Google wouldn’t, that is.

To be clear, the report today from GigaOM’s Stacey Higginbotham isn’t about the U.S. She notes that Apple is working alongside SIM-card manufacturer Gemalto to make a built-in hardware SIM card that could work with many carriers across Europe. Essentially, this would allow customers to jump from carrier to carrier as a better deal came along or as they were traveling without having to swap SIM cards.

The thing is, in many European countries, this already isn’t nearly the problem that it is in the U.S. because the market is much more competitive. But here’s the key to all of this from Higginbotham:

Then customers will then be able to choose their carrier at purchase at the Apple web site or retail store, or buy the phone and get their handset up and running through a download at the App Store as opposed to visiting a carrier store or calling the carrier.

Sound familiar?

That’s almost exactly what Google’s plan was to sell the Nexus One originally. They created a web store where customers could pick their phone, their carrier, and a plan. Of course, at launch, Google only had the Nexus One with T-Mobile on board. But they noted that soon other carriers like Sprint and Verizon would be on board as well. That never happened.

It’s true that the Nexus One wasn’t selling well that way. But the reality is because it was the carriers’ fault. Google’s original plan was to sell the Nexus One for $99, unlocked, on their website, we’ve heard. Let me repeat that: $99. Unlocked. But when they ran this idea by the carriers (which they had to work with because they control the networks they need, remember) they were told to go to hell.

And so what we got was a Nexus One that you could either buy unlocked for several hundreds of dollars — which basically no one did. Or a carrier-subsidized one. Just like the good-old days.

When the Nexus One didn’t sell well on their site, the other carrier partners bailed on the Nexus One altogether (undoubtedly patting themselves on the back as they did). And Google stopped selling it to consumers. In other words, the entire idea blew up in Google’s face.

They should have stuck to their guns, sold the Nexus One as they wanted to. And told the carriers to screw themselves. Of course, had they done that, Google wouldn’t have had the buddy-buddy relationship with carriers that they now enjoy. That gamble could have risked the success of Android. And Google wasn’t willing to go there. It was a smart business maneuver, but it sucks for us, the consumers.

Enter Apple.

The company has proven time and time again that they don’t care who they piss off in order to push their own agenda forward. That agenda includes creating the best consumer experience possible. A big part of that in the cellphone business would be allowing customers to buy a phone and pick carriers based on who has the best deals/options.

Obviously, that hasn’t been the case with Apple in the U.S. as they’ve been tied exclusively to one carrier, AT&T. But that’s about to change. And that time spent with AT&T wasn’t a total waste. They’ve been able to build themselves from literally nothing into a force to be reckoned with in the mobile space. The iPhone is now by far Apple’s largest source of revenue. And customers from all of the other carriers are demanding the phone come to their network.

Now Apple is in position to make a move. But the main problem in the U.S. is that the carriers run on networks powered by different technologies. That’s not the case in Europe, so it makes sense to start there with this carrier-killing SIM, while the U.S. transitions to the much more universal LTE technologies that are forthcoming.

And let’s not forget a huge part of this equation. Apple, unlike Google, runs their own retail stores. Hundreds of them. Around the world. Does anyone doubt that the iPhone would still be a massive success if it was only sold through their stores and website? If they do, they’re foolish.

So Apple can absolutely do what Google couldn’t/wouldn’t. The question is, would they really be willing to possibly alienate their carrier partners by screwing them over? Again, the iPhone is Apple’s biggest business, but that’s largely thanks to the subsidies the carriers pay them. Could Apple risk that?

It looks like we may find out shortly.

[photo: flickr/protohiro]

CRM and cloud giant Salesforce.com is shelling out $170 million to fully acquire its Japanese subsidiary, Salesforce Japan, from VC firm SunBridge and other stockholders. The subsidiary was formed in 2000 as a joint venture between Salesforce and SunBridge. Until now, Salesforce has the majority control (with 73 percent) but is purchasing all outstanding shares from the VC firm and other stockholders. Salesforce says the joint venture agreement has subsequently been terminated with the acquisition.

It appears that the reasoning behind the move is financial. Salesforce says that Jaapan is the largest revenue contributor in Asia Pacific for Salesforce, and “acquiring full ownership in Salesforce Japan allows Salesforce.com to further benefit from the growth in the Japanese cloud computing market and integrate and align its financial and operational functions.” In the first half of 2010, Asia Pacific sales accounted for 14 percent of Salesforce.com’s revenue, which is an 11 percent increase from the same period in 2009.

A few weeks ago, Salesforce announced that it would be adding a new data center in Tokyo to support a growing customer base in Japan. Clearly the company sees the country as a valuable revenue stream and counts Japan-based Canon and Fujitsu as customers.

Since the Yankees are not in the World Series this year, my allegiance shifts to the San Francisco Giants. And, yes, while I may be a fair-weather baseball friend, I am willing to go to bat for my new favorite team, at least through this series. What better way to show my support than to “beardify” my Facebook photo with the Brian Wilson Beardifier app? (You can become a fan of his beard on Facebook too).

Brian Wilson is the Giants relief pitcher with the 95 mph fastball and pitch-black beard. He intimidates his opponents, who have learned to “fear the beard.”

And now you can intimidate all your friends by spreading the fear and Brian Wilson’s beard on Facebook. Unfortunately, it doesn’t take over your profile pic for every status update, unless you upload it as your new pic. It’s not quite the same as turning your Twitter avatar green last year to support democracy in Iran, but it is probably just as effective.

Americans exporting renewable energy resources to the Middle East? It’s not opposite day.

A Mountainview, Calif. company, SolFocus, announced a deal with a major construction company in Saudi Arabia— Advanced Vision Electro Mechanical Company (a.k.a. Vision) — that is building a new, commercial solar power plant in Bahra.

The plant will be the first in Saudi Arabia to use concentrator photovoltaic solar power systems, or CPVs according to a joint press release from SolFocus and Vision. In general, CPV systems consist of solar cells and optics that concentrate sunlight onto the cells increasing their power output and, in the end, decreasing the cost of solar-generated electricity in sunny, dry environments.

SolFocus sells warranty-backed, concentrator photovoltaic solar systems that it manufactures primarily in Mesa, Arizona. To date, SolFocus has raised $143 million in venture funding.

The new solar power plant in Bahra employing SolFocus technology will deliver around 300 megawatt hours of solar energy per year, representing a 132 kilowatt nameplate capacity.

Saudi Arabia is the world’s largest producer and exporter of total petroleum liquids according to theU.S. Energy Information Administration.

At the 2009 United Nations’ Summit on Climate Change, Saudi Arabia’s negotiator Mohammed Al-Sabban expressed disbelief that global warming is caused or accelerated by humans, and was concerned about the likely economic impact to the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC) if others reduce their use of oil.

Still viewed as an obstructionist by global sustainability advocates, Saudi Arabia began investing in renewable energy recently. Why would the OPEC leader warm up to solar? First, the region gets a lot of sun.

Co-founder and chief of technology at SolFocus, Steve Horne, also explained on Wednesday:

“The Saudi king has recognized climate change, and wants to reduce the carbon footprint of the country. A significant percentage of the oil that’s extracted from Saudi Arabia is used internally. That’s what they’ll be able to offset by using renewable energy. The king is interested in exporting renewable energy as well. There is a process of putting together a transmission line that runs up the east coast towards Kuwait, now. The king has a long-term vision for the country as a generator of renewable energy.”

Mark Crowley, chief executive officer of SolFocus said in a press statement:

“The high sun conditions of the Middle East provide an ideal environment for reaping large-scale, low-cost solar energy from CPV systems. Together [we] will bring the world’s most efficient and resource-friendly solar technology to Saudi Arabia, providing energy diversification for the country.”

The project developers, Vision, will also build and install additional solar power plants within the research centers at the King Abdullah University of Science and Technology (KAUST) and throughout Saudi Arabia.

Hassan Chahine, general manager at Vision said in a press statement: “This is a breakthrough in Saudi Arabia’s thrust for energy diversification. We believe the Bahra plant will serve as a model for the further research and study of clean water and power solutions that diversify the region’s energy mix.”

We’ve gotten word this morning that online streaming video service Ustream has laid off 9 people from its 200 person staff. With social news site Digg having other notable layoffs this week, it’s crucial to remember that startups often shed staff when going through product and business goal realignments. This is also the case here according to Ustream VP of Communications Lynn Fox.

“This is about us looking forward, we are totally pumped about our future and this is a way to get ourselves conditioned to meet our goals.” said Fox

Ustream, which has $87.8 million in funding, just launched its own Open Pay Per View and Ad Free Broadcasting services. The startup also recently made some key hires, including Fox, in order to better adapt to the changing landscape of online video.

While Ustream wouldn’t reveal what exact positions were laid off, if any former Ustreamers are looking for a job, there are plenty to be had here.

Many sellers on sites like eBay, Etsy, and Amazon have created profitable small businesses out of opening up online storefronts on these e-commerce platforms. But these storefronts aren’t conventionally considered small businesses by the financial community and it can be difficult for them to raise working capital from banks. Kabbage is entering the space as a way for online merchants and sellers on eBay and Amazon to get capital they otherwise wouldn’t qualify for at a bank.

Kabbage uses technology to analyze online merchants’ sales and credit history; customer traffic and reviews; and prices and inventory compared to competitors. Via PayPal’s Adaptive Payments API, Kabbage will make cash advances available to eBay and other online marketplace sellers fairly quickly (Kabbage says that many transactions take as little has ten minutes).

Kabbage makes money off of fees charged to merchants for the working capital. Fees depend on how long the online merchant keeps the capital (6 month maximum) and the customer’s repayment risk. Rates range from 6 percent to 16 percent of the original advance amount.

While the startup only supports eBay for now, Kabbage, which has raised $2 million in funding, plans to extend its services to Amazon and Etsy sellers in the near future. It actually seems like a pretty good idea, that is, as long as sellers continue to pay Kabbage back.

It’s hard to have metaphysical conversations in the technology game. Most of chat – even with techno-evangelists and social media utopians – is disappointingly mundane. But once-in-a-while, one comes across an exceptional individual who thinks so deeply about technology that he makes it seem profound, even other-worldly.

Officially, Jeff Jonas is the chief scientist of the IBM Entity Analytics group and an IBM Distinguished Engineer. Less officially, he is a Las Vegas based ironman triathlete who is paid by IBM to think deep thoughts about data. If intelligent machines could talk, perhaps they would speak like Jonas – elliptically, enigmatically, but with a depth and wisdom that is all too rare in our always-on world of continuous updates and partial attention spans.

How ironic, then, that Jonas should be an expert on this always-on world of data overload. He is IBM’s resident genius on data – it’s his job to bring sense to a seemingly senseless world that is spewing out more and more data. So listen carefully to what Jonas says. Part shaman, part showman, there is something irresistible about the rigor and intensity of his thinking.

What is data?

Why more data makes us more ignorant

Why big data is the next big thing

How data makes us average

Why the future is irresistible

In a post this weekend, I wrote about how the cable tv industry was finally stepping towards the cliff. And we’d learn more today when Comcast, the largest U.S. cable operator, reported earnings. Well, the numbers are out, and it’s not a surprise.

275,000 Comcast subscribers cut the cord last quarter. Its subscriber count is down 3.5% from the same quarter last year. To be fair, some of that loss was offset by a gain in 219,000 digital cable subs. Revenue was up as customers bought higher priced bundles of tv, internet and phone service.

During the earnings call, Comcast blamed the drop on the lousy economy. Always a handy excuse. Sure, many people are struggling right now, and it makes sense that the high cost of cable is an expense they can no longer afford. Comcast said, based on exit interviews, only a ‘small number‘ seemed to cut the cord for over-the-air signals, and they are not planning to switch to internet tv alternatives.

Comcast’s exit interviews run counter to other reports. MediaMall Technologies, maker of PlayOn, digital media server software that let’s you watch over-the-top video on TV, says 30% of it’s customers have canceled cable after using its box. Perhaps they weren’t Comcast customers? MediaMall Technologies estimates its customer base saves $24 million a year in cable fees.

Boxee’s CEO made the point on CNBC yesterday that his box won’t necessarily lead to cord cutting. “Instead, it will usher in a generation of people that never get cable.” He predicts with Boxee, they won’t see the point in cable, just like young people don’t see the point in a landline phone.

The CEO of Verizon, Ivan Seidenberg made the same point last month, saying young people are “not going to pay for something they don’t need to.” He also says “over the top is going to be a pretty big issue for cable.”

Another company to keep an eye on is Clicker. It launched a year ago at TechCrunch50. Clicker bills itself as “the simple way to find, share and watch TV online.” Many viewers agree, based on feedback to my earlier post.

And one more thing. No, not Apple. Actually Yahoo. You don’t hear much about new products at Yahoo. It took the tech community 20 hours to notice Yahoo Mail’s first redesign in five years. But, 600 million user strong Yahoo has a product called Yahoo Connected TV, which gets you access to movies, tv shows, and other web services. It’s already built into TV’s from Samsung, Sony, LG, Vizio, and Toshiba. Crunchgear reviewed it last year.

I haven’t even touched on mobile and DVRs vs Live. Maybe a future post.
But, you can’t tell me cable tv is not an industry being disrupted. Not overnight, but now live on tv.

Back in April, we noted that Google was about to escalate the so-called “location wars” by reworking and rebranding their Locale Business Center as Google Places. They’ve since done a lot of work on improving the area (despite an on-again/off-again war with Yelp over results) and they’re clearly feeling good about it. How do I know? Because starting today, they’re going to add Place results to Google Search in a major way.

Place Search will now reside on Google.com when you’re doing a search that Google believes is attempting to discover a location. And it will also have a home in the left toolbar (you know, where “Images”, “Videos”, “Shopping”, etc reside) as “Places”, which a user can click on to just get location results.

In their blog post, Google notes:

One of the great things about our approach is that it makes it easier to find a comprehensive view of each place. In our new layout you’ll find many more relevant links on a single results page—often 30 or 40. Instead of doing eight or 10 searches, often you’ll get to the sites you’re looking for with just one search. In our testing Place Search saves people an average of two seconds on searches for local information.

While it’s in the process of rolling out, you can use this link to see what it will look like. As you can see, a search for “Chicago museums” will bring up seven or so museums place pages it believes you may be looking for. If you want more of these place suggestions, you can click on the “more results” link at the bottom of the seven. Or you can click on the Places left sidebar item.

The big question, of course, is what this means for all of Google’s competitors also in the location space? You’ll note that Google rather prominently links to results from sources of place information like Yelp and CitySearch, so some of them could actually benefit from this new style of result. Still, many of them will no longer be the number one result for specific place searches. That could hurt.

That said, this new layout should be much easier for people doing the actual searches to parse and find what they’re looking for.

For their part, Google should make a killing on the sponsored links related to place searches. As you can see below, they’re already populating a ton of these right below the all-important map on the right side. Many place results have sponsored links along the top as well.

Music streaming service Spotify has retained executive search firm Odgers Berndtson to assist them in finding a chief operating officer as the number two executive after founder Daniel Ek. A number of candidates, particularly in Silicon Valley, have been contacted for the job.

Our first source on this story said that Spotify was actually looking for a new CEO to replace Ek. But Ek says this is inaccurate. “We’re looking for a COO to help run the company,” he said by phone this morning.

I also spoke with Ek about the story I wrote yesterday about acquisition attention from Google and Apple. Ek says Spotify has had absolutely no acquisition discussions with Apple at all, ever. “We don’t want to sell, we are here for the long term,” he said.

On the Google story he was less forthcoming, saying only that the story wasn’t correct in its entirety. “Google is a great partner,” he said.

I also asked Ek, since I had him on the phone, about Spotify’s U.S. launch plans. The company has been talking about a U.S. launch for well over a year, but it hasn’t happened yet. The complications appear to be over their very strong desire to offer a free version of the service here, as they do in Europe. Ek says that discussions with labels are ongoing, and that he still “hopes for a U.S. launch this year.”

Today at a press event in San Francisco, Intel and a group of 70 companies announced an alliance to build a system of open standards for cloud computing. Part of the Cloud 2015 initiative, The Open Data Center Alliance makes it easier for customers to deploy cloud computing solutions, as it focuses on interoperability, flexibility and unifying industry standards. The Open Data Center Alliance will represent more than $50 billion in annual IT investment.

Intel, which powers 9 out 10 of the servers for the cloud today, will be a technical advisor and non voting member in the alliance. The companies involved are cross-vertical including Lockheed Martin, Marriott International, BMW and JP Morgan Chase, joining together with Intel towards the ultimate endgoal of simplified virtual computing. While Google, Amazon Yahoo are missing from the list, Intel commented that membership is still open, “There’s a lot of people still in the pipeline. We’re adding people by the minute.”

Grappling with the fact that there will be another one billion people and another 15 billion devices on the Internet in 2015, the Cloud 2015 vision to simplify virtual computing is three pronged: Federated (so clients can better and more securely share data), automated (more efficiency in moving data), and “client-aware” (a cloud API that is device aware, taking into account whether a user is on a phone or a laptop). Intel executives emphasized that communication between the players will be key in achieving the initiative’s goals of decreased IT spending and increased effiency.

“The Open Center Alliance is way to create and unify the voice of cloud consumers and cloud users, using usage models as a way to specify requirements. We’ve never seen this approach before.” said Intel representative Billy Cox.

From the hardware side, Intel also announced an expansion of its Cloud Builders program, which allows companies like Citrix, Dell, HP, IBM, Microsoft, NetApp and VMware to provide solutions for many of the issues brought up by the alliance and the usage model roadmap.