Category: Tech news

I thought I was a fanboy. I’ve got nothing on Jonathan Mann.

Regular readers may recall that Mann is the guy behind the Bing jingle (which we didn’t like – but students did, or were forced to), the song about me (which we did like), and most recently, the iPhone 4 antenna song (which not only did we love, but apparently Apple did too). Mann, touched by the fact that Apple decided to play his song at their press conference last Friday, decided to follow it up with a serenade for CEO Steve Jobs.

Warning: if some of my posts about Apple drive you crazy, this song is going to make your head explode.

We have lyrics like:

• “If that sounds like Moses, it’s no accident. The cult of Macintosh is a religion.”
• “We bow down to products that make us weep. The beauty of simplicity. The shepherd and his sheep.”
• “In his guarded temple, there’s a beating drum. And it’s made of glass and of aluminum.”

But the craziest thing about this song is that it’s good. Seriously. It’s so damn catchy. Mann continues to impress.

The Car Charging Group, Inc. (CCGI) this weekend announced a partnership with LAZ Parking in New York and New Jersey to begin outfitting its facilities with smart, electric vehicle charging stations.

The Miami-based CCGI installs and maintains electric vehicle charging stations in government-owned lots, and at commercial sites like shopping malls, hotels, stadiums and corporate parking garages. LAZ Parking operates over 1,300 parking facilities in 21 states and 99 cities. The LAZ Parking sites will be equipped by CCGI with smart, ChargePoint Level II, 240 volts charging stations, manufactured by Coulomb Technologies.

Smart charging stations, unlike those designed for home-garage use, have metering and e-commerce capabilities, and are visible online. Drivers can find smart charging stations on Google Maps, for example.

Coloumb Technologies, the recipient of a $15 million Department of Energy grant (funded by the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act through the Transportation Electrification Initiative) is a leader in sales of charging stations in the U.S.

The company is, with some of its government grant money, setting up — sometimes temporarily free — public electric vehicle charging stations throughout the country, including New York City’s first.

General Electric and Toyota have announced that they are developing and will sell their own smart charging stations, as well.

The Department of Energy estimates that charging station locations in the U.S. will increase 41 times over between 2009 and 2012.

Citing consumer demand and a slew of new charging station technology, and vehicle models — like the Nissan Leaf, GM Chevy Volt, Fisker Karma, and Tesla Model S — Car Charging Group, Inc.’s president Andy Kinard said Saturday that he wouldn’t be surprised if the Obama administration fulfilled its goal: getting one million plug-in hybrid and electric vehicles on the road by 2015.

To recharge at public or commercially installed stations, Kinard says hybrid and electric vehicle owners should be prepared to pay about $3 per hour. He noted: “It’s hard to get 220 volts out into the streets. [Parking facilities] do have to charge more than it would cost an electric vehicle driver to plug in at home. But that’s nothing compared to gas prices now. And it will still be cheaper than what you spend driving an internal combustion engine.”

One of the most exciting things to watch in tech these days is various groups’ estimates for Zynga’s revenues. Depending on what you read and on what day, they are all over the map. It’s been that way for a long time too, because the social gaming service is simply growing so fast and monetizing the hell out of their properties. Now that we’re more than halfway into 2010, the consensus seems clear that Zynga made about $300 million in revenue in 2009. But 2010 is proving even tougher to nail down, it seems.

The New York Times has a feature on Zynga that’s online now but running the paper tomorrow. In it, they cite data from Inside Network, a service that tracks Facebook and social games, stating that Zynga is on pace to make $835 million in revenue this year. That huge — unfortunately, it’s not true. NYT actually read the data from Inside Network’s wrong. Their data said that $835 million would be the revenue for the social gaming market as a whole in 2010. We’ve confirmed with both Inside Networks and Zynga that NYT got that wrong.

That said, even though it’s inaccurate right now, that moonshot estimate may not end up being that far off. Two weeks ago, we broke the news that Google had secretly invested over $100 million in Zynga earlier this year. For that story, sources told us that Zynga’s revenues for the first half of 2010 would be an amazing $350 million. So if you double it for the other half of the year, that’s $700 million in revenue for 2010. Not bad. Actually, amazing. But it’s certainly seems likely that Zynga will continue to grow and make more money as the year goes on, so again, the $835 million number may end up not being that far off. It’s just not correct right now.

Those numbers are up hugely from earlier this year when managing director at Lightspeed Venture Partners, Jeremy Liew, broke down what he believed Zynga’s revenues to be for us. At the time, Liew estimated that Zynga had made about $240 million year to date. That was May, so extrapolated out, that would equal a little over $500 million in revenue for all of 2010.

And those numbers were up from a BusinessWeek article in April, which stated that Zynga should do $450 million in revenue in 2010. Yes, the revenue estimates are soaring each and every month, it seems.

Two weeks ago, our sources told us that Zynga is projecting revenues of at least $1 billion in 2011. So it seems we’re going to be playing this game into next year as well. And at least until Zynga goes public, at which point they’ll have to release their actual numbers.

As a side note, the NYT story also confirms our Zynga Google-funding story from two weeks ago with their own sources. According to them, the Series D round was $300 million split “roughly” equally between Softbank and Google. This means Zynga now has about $520 million in funding.

Update: NYT has now updated their story with the following:

An earlier version of this article misstated the revenue Zynga was expected to take in this year, according to the Inside Network. It is as much as $500 million, not $835 million.

[image via ubergizmo]

Earlier this year, you probably heard that Apple blocked Adobe’s Flash-to-iPhone App converter from the App Store on the eve of the tool’s launch. That may have crushed Adobe’s dream of allowing developers to write their Flash apps once and deploy them wherever they’d like, but its AIR platform still works with Mac, PC, and Linux, with support for Android devices coming later this year.  That means developers will soon be able to write applications that will work on both the desktop and smartphones.

Of course, the prospect of running cross-platform applications is a lot more impressive when you can see one in action. Which is why Adobe Technical Evangelist Christophe Coenraets has put together a demo showing off what AIR can do when it’s used to deploy the same application across both Android and desktop computers. He’s built a basic video conference app in 30 lines of code, which he demos in the YouTube clip above (the heavy lifting was pre-written, powered by Adobe’s LiveCycle Collaboration Services module). Obviously the application is quite basic, but it’s pretty impressive nonetheless.

I’ve never been a big fan of AIR — I’ve yet to run into an AIR app on my Mac that didn’t feel a bit out of place, with quirky window behavior and decidedly non-native UI (though this may be the fault of third-party app developers building on the platform). Still, it’s hard not to see the benefit of being able to build an application that runs on both mobile and PC.

Los Angeles based CrowdGather, which offers forums for online communities, has aquired the assets of Silicon Valley based Lefora. The size of the all-stock transaction isn’t being disclosed.

Lefora, founded by Paul Bragiel, first launched in 2008. It’s notable because of how simple it is for users to create and embed forums onto their sites.

The much larger CrowdGather boasts around 4.5 million monthly unique users and 80 million monthly page views. The company has raised $3 million or so in funding and has been on an acquisition tear – albeit always very small deals.

CrowdGather is also licensing technology from Tal.ki, another company founded by Bragiel. Tal.ki is acquiring the remaining assets of Lefora as well.

Bragiel also recently cofounded i/o Ventures, a work/cafe incubator located in San Francisco.

This week’s episode of Speaking Of… (video below) features the founder/CEO of Halcyon Molecular, William Andregg.

Andregg grew up in Arizona. There’s a song by The Orb called Little Fluffy Clouds that describes the light-pollution-free Arizonan sky quite perfectly, with amazing clouds, sunsets and stars. Most Arizonans – at some point in their lives – will lay on the hood of their car and gaze towards the grandness of those fluffy clouds and the Milky Way, but most probably won’t come to the same conclusions that William did about it all.

William yearned to travel beyond the clouds to the stars, but become perplexed by the fact that he most likely wouldn’t make it due to an unfortunate condition that plagues us all — mortality. He knew that in order to reach the stars, which he so desperately wanted to do, he must dedicate most of his life to prolonging and increasing human lifespans so that he or others like him might have a chance to go where no man has truly gone before. In order to go big, he went very small. Our DNA.

Halcyon Molecular has come out of stealth mode, letting William tell his story in order to encourage a few good business women and men to join their plight to end aging. They’ve discovered an inexpensive and most importantly, fast way to sequence the entire human genome. If commercialized successfully, their discovery will change the world of medicine as we know it and increase our chances of living even longer.

Biotech startups are rare now, but we’re going to start seeing more and more of them pop up over the next decade. Technology that was once incredibly expensive is now becoming obtainable and the next wave of tech startups will delve into the largest market of all, human health. William is the only person I know with one of the world’s most powerful electron microscopes operating out of his garage, which is pretty damn cool.

What about frogs? Well, the dissection of frogs in high school almost led to William avoiding an entire career in biotech, which struck me as one of many things we should consider revising in our public education system. We need more Williams, not fewer.

(Exciting Note! Speaking Of… is now available via RSS/iTunes Podcast: )

Editor’s Note: The following is a guest post by Steve Faulkner. He is the CEO of the GeoHuddle, a Madison, Wisconsin based startup developing community geothermal heating and cooling systems. You can follow him on twitter @southpolesteve.

Most people associate Wisconsin with cheese and beer, but you should think about adding startups to that list. Led by a tidal wave of mostly young entrepreneurs, Madison, Wisconsin is staking a claim as the startup capital of the Midwest. Madison was recently ranked as the 7th most innovative city in the country by Forbes magazine – just above perennial powerhouse Boston, MA.

Several key organizations are driving the growing startup community. Capital Entrepreneurs is a group of over 56 companies that meet on a regular basis to help founders network and develop connections. MERLIN Mentors provides free mentoring services to new startups. Applicants are assigned a team of experienced entrepreneurs who help founders navigate many of the challenges facing a new company. These groups, along with the University of Wisconsin, are fostering a great culture for new startups.

Here are just a small selection of technology companies in the area:

Entrustet is a free online service that allows you to securely list all of your digital assets, which are all of your online accounts and files on your computer, and decide if you would like them transferred or deleted when you pass away. It is like a Will for your digital life.

Virent is commercializing a proprietary sugar to hydrocarbon conversion process developed at the University of Wisconsin. This means they can take biomass and directly convert it to gasoline, which has attracted a lot of interest from the oil industry. Most recently, they received a $46 million dollar investment from Shell.

PerBlue is a mobile and social gaming company. They are the makers of the popular mobile game Parallel Kingdom, which currently has over 150,000 players worldwide and was the first location based RPG for the iOS and Android platforms. PerBlue was founded by University of Wisconsin students with their own limited cash, and continues to grow.

Alice is changing the way people shop for everyday household items. It allows users to buy home essentials directly from the manufacturer and have them shipped, for free, to your door. Based on your user profile, it will also remind you when it is time to restock on common items. This is CEO Brian Wiegand’s fourth company. Previously he sold Jellyfish.com to Microsoft for approximately $50 Million.

Networked Insights was founded in 2006 by CEO Dan Neely and provides social media analytics. Clients include P&G, Kraft, American Family Insurance, EA Games, Omnicom, and Starcom MediaVest. SocialSense, the company’s social media listening platform, analyzes conversation from 300 million individuals and 20 million sites that matter most to a brand. Networked Insights has raised over $9 million in VC funding.

Photo Credit/Flickr/infowidget

Time Magazine Editor Josh Quittner and AOL CEO Tim Armstrong took the stage on Friday afternoon at the Fortune Brainstorm Tech conference in Aspen. Most of the interview was centered on AOL’s content strategies.

But what I really wanted to know about was what AOL’s plans were around search. Their long term Google deal expires in December. And from what we hear both Microsoft and Google are gunning for AOL’s search traffic.

Why? AOL is the fourth largest U.S. search engine, but they have just 2.5% market share.

If Microsoft could add AOL’s searches, though, they’d be, with Yahoo’s share, above 30%. Search volume brings more advertisers, and more advertisers means a more robust bidding system. Microsoft needs that 2.5%.

But there’s more. AOL visitors tend to click on search ads at more than twice the rate that people click on ads on Google’s search engine. So that 2.5% market share is really more like 6% of total search advertising market share.

Google has paid AOL more than $600 million/year for search over the last several years. With the appropriate amount of negotiating leverage, that number could increase dramatically.

Armstrong says there are more than two companies competing for their search traffic, which presumably means Yahoo has somehow gotten itself into the mix. But the only real competition, says our sources (and common sense), is Microsoft and Google.

Both companies want the deal. The bids are getting high enough that one person familiar with the negotiations suggested (jokingly, I think) that it may be cheaper just to buy AOL outright – their current market cap is just $2.25 billion.

Lots of people are keeping an eye on the ongoing MySpace search negotiations. But the MySpace deal will be a pittance compared to what AOL brings in. We expect a deal to be done by September, based on information from sources.

Monday marks the 20th anniversary of the signing of the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA), a code of law that has influenced society and tech companies in interesting ways already, and is expanding to influence them even more.

One recent example: feds encouraged schools around the country, notably Princeton and Arizona State University, to drop the idea of requiring students to use e-readers, specifically the Amazon Kindle DX, until the devices were made “accessible.”

Accessible and acceptable e-readers would need features that work for students who are deaf, blind or have limited manual dexterity.

The Civil Rights Division of the Department of Justice – which enforces the ADA – published plans today for four new ADA proposals that would impact our movie going experiences, the way 911 call centers operate, and how automatic teller machines and government websites are built.

No matter how much you think government should be involved in private sector business, it’s worth asking from a design standpoint:

Why can’t a deaf person watch a movie at the theater with closed captions alongside hearing friends? Does an ATM work more effectively in a tiny room where wheelchair access is impossible? Why should 911 dispatchers accept calls from the voiced, but not a text message from someone mute?

There’s definitely a market demand for more accessible technology. Today some 54 million Americans are disabled, or one in every five people, according to government estimates. Seniors and veterans returning from combat are adding to this population.

Some companies realize the needs and potential of the market, there. On display at Apps4Access in Washington D.C., today, an event hosted by the not-for-profit Committee on Disability Power & Pride and sponsored by AT&T, were products like the Braille Controller and Vlingo apps.

The Braille Controller (or Alva BC 640) by Optelec, a keyboard-like device that’s been around for a few years. It can “read screens” within Windows, web browsers, and now Skype and Facebook, and turn what’s on screen into either narrated audio content, or tactile Braille. Yes, its keys raise and lower almost like the web is typing back. It works with USB or Bluetooth enabled smart phones and PCs and a range of software.

A more mainstream technology provider, Vlingo created the already-popular “search by voice” apps for Blackberry and iPhone, and recently rolled out their Android “Super Dialer.”

According to the company website, Vlingo apps let mobile users search the web by voice, listen to incoming email text and text messages, and update their Facebook and Twitter profiles by voice. Vlingo is useful for people with vision loss, blindness or limited manual dexterity. But it’s also pretty useful for commuters stuck in traffic, or people who hate typing on touch screens.

On a bright note, Americans with disabilities are gaining access to the internet and all the information and sites that can help them there says a new survey by Harris Interactive (sponsored by Kessler Foundation and the National Organization on Disability).

Eighty two percent of 18-29 years olds with disability access the internet (compared to 92% of people without disability in their age group). Among seniors, only 37% of those with disability access the internet, while 70% of seniors without disability do so. More than half of all disabled Americans have internet access.

Celebrations of the ADA, and conferences concerning the civil rights of Americans with disabilities will be taking place throughout the weekend and on July 26th through regional offices of the ADA Network around the country.

[FDR statue image via Jim Bowen]

I’ve fielded a lot of questions today about the iPhone 4. No, not about the antenna — that was last week — today, all people want to know is why the hell is white version being delayed again? Like everyone else outside of Apple, I have no idea. Is it a problem with the glass supplier? That they’re prioritizing the black ones for now? That they’re working on an antenna modification? Any of those things could be the reason behind the delay (though if it’s the last one, Apple is going face a whole range of new questions). But I can’t say for sure what the reason actually is. What I can say that this is potentially a real problem for Apple — and I don’t mean from a manufacturing perspective.

In their two-sentence statement on the matter this morning, all Apple said is that the white iPhone 4 “will not be available until later this year.” This is a quick reversal from just one week ago when Apple confirmed that the device was on track to ship by the “end of July” — which itself was already quite a bit of a delay from the original iPhone 4 launch in June. “Later this year” is a bit ominous. It could mean anything from August all the way until December. The fact that Apple isn’t saying “August” or “another month” seems to suggest that it will be at least the Fall when we see the ivory device.

And again, that’s a problem. Let’s just pick a random month that it could be released — let’s say November. A white iPhone 4 released in November means it will have been a full five months since many customers have had the black iPhone 4 — the exact same device, only black. More importantly, it will only be seven months until the next WWDC event, where the iPhone 5 (or whatever it will be called) will be announced.

Sure, some consumers won’t care about that. But many others now have in their minds three years worth of evidence that a new iPhone will be unveiled every June. Many of those customers will have a decision to make: is it worth it to spring for the white iPhone 4 now and have the latest and greatest Apple gadget for only seven months? Or is it worth it to wait?

Compounding this tough decision at that point will undoubtedly be a whole new round of rumors that Apple could unveil a Verizon iPhone shortly — perhaps even at an event in January. Can you imagine the horror customers will feel if they sign their souls over to AT&T for two years in November, only to have the option to instead go with Verizon a couple months later?

The white iPhone may reveal itself to be a wolf dressed in sheep’s clothes at that point.

But Apple is nothing if not genius marketers. A white iPhone unveiled in November will be spun as a holiday iPhone — the perfect present for Christmas. Look, it’s even the color of snow!

Apple will sell millions of them to customers oblivious to the fact that the next version — one undoubtedly without the same antenna issues we’re seeing now, and possibly one that works on Verizon — is just months away. But plenty of consumers won’t be oblivious to this. And Apple will move less iPhones than it could have.

The issue here is that more than anything else, people interested in the iPhone but who are holding out are doing so for three reasons. First, many are still unsure about the antenna issue and think it may be worth it to wait until the next iteration next year. Second, many are waiting to see if a Verizon version becomes available. Third, many are waiting for the white version of the iPhone 4.

If Apple doesn’t get the white version out there soon, all three of those issues are likely to collide. And it may push a lot of would-be iPhone purchasers back from making the jump until next year.

Either that, or the special edition Disney™ Snow White® iPhone 4 will be the fastest selling iPhone yet.

[image via NQB]

It’s that time of week again: the latest episode of TechCrunch TV’s OMG/JK has just landed. As always, the show features fellow TechCrunch writer MG Siegler and myself discussing (and arguing about) the week’s top tech stories.

This week’s topics include the demise of the Nexus One, AT&T’s troubled relationship with Apple, and plenty of other key information that will help you impress your friends. Also, one thing to note: you can now subscribe to the show as a podcast! Subscribe now, so you’ll never miss an episode. At some point in the near future we’ll be distributing a subscriber-only video featuring MG serenading his iPhone 4. You wouldn’t want to miss that, would you?

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Marriott International today unveiled a prototype that will help it build more green, LEED-certified hotels.

The prototype is the first of its kind for the U.S. hotel industry, the company says.

LEED, or Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design, is a voluntary rating system developed by the U.S. Green Building Council (USGBC).

LEED-certified buildings are designed to meet environmental goals including reducing landfill waste and greenhouse gas emissions, conserving energy and water and lowering operating costs.

The Courtyard Charleston/Summerville is the first of Marriott hotels following the new, green design. It is expected to open for business in South Carolina in 2012.

Using the prototype will save the hotel giant six months of design time on each hotel. That’s about what the company says it would usually take to design a LEED-certificate worth new property. Marriott plans to roll out similar prototypes for its other brands in the future, including Residence Inn by Marriott and Towne Place Suites.

The company also expects to save about $100,000, and up to 25% in energy and water savings on each hotel built following this prototype.

Going green is nothing new to Marriott. It currently owns close to 50 LEED-certified hotels and aims to raise that number to 300 by 2015.

According to the USGBC, there are currently 937 LEED registered and certified hotels in the U.S.

The environmental bug has hit the economy segment of the industry, too.

A Motel 6 in Northlake, Texas became the country’s first LEED-certified motel property earlier this month.

And Motel 6 is using a prototype approach to increase its number of LEED-certified motels as well.

LinkedIn has hired Shannon Stubo as their new Vice President Communications, CEO Jeff Weiner tells us.

Stubo, most recently at OpenTable, took that company through their IPO process. Prior to OpenTable Stubo spent seven years at eBay, eventually as vice president of corporate communications.

Companies usually stack their executive teams with people who’ve previously worked at public companies, and execs who’ve actually gone through the IPO process are particularly valued. Stubo will understand the nuances around complicated SEC rules around publicity in a pre-IPO company.

Of course Weiner says he hired Stubo for other reasons, and won’t comment on the company’s IPO plans. But it’s clear LinkedIn is looking to file for an IPO sometime in the next few financial quarters. Unless, of course, one of the big guys makes them an acquisition offer they can’t refuse.

This isn’t the first addition to the LinkedIn team that indicates that the company is looking to boost its experience of advising a company through an IPO. Earlier this year, LinkedIn brought on its first outside board member, Skip Battle, former Ask.com CEO and board member of Netflix, Expedia and OpenTable. While Weiner told us at the time that Battle’s experience advising consumer focused and enterprise companies made him an ideal choice, it’s clear that the seasoned exec’s role in helping lead a number of technology companies through a public offering may have been a factor as well.

I sat down with Weiner earlier today to talk about the hiring of Stubo and to talk about LinkedIn in general. The company has 70 million users now, and about 40 million people visit the site each month.

He doesn’t see LinkedIn as a professional version of Facebook. I asked him if LinkedIn, which generates significant revenue from job listings and from companies that pay for insights into people for recruiting purposes, if he considers Facebook or Monster the more direct competitor.

Neither, he said. LinkedIn is a unique thing. And just as people think of Starbucks for coffee or Google for search, he wants them to think of LinkedIn for human talent – finding jobs, finding people and making people more successful in business.

After a bit of a slow start, the Android app ecosystem is now growing at a rapid clip, as it nears 100,000 apps. One of the people Google can thank for that is Sun Hu Kim, their lead for Android developer marketing. But come Monday, he won’t be pitching Android anymore, he’ll be pitching Twitter.

Twitter has hired the longtime Google employee (he’s been there just about 4 years) to be a part of Twitter’s fast-growing platform team, the company has confirmed. Kim tweeted about the news a few minutes ago, as well.

Twitter didn’t have any more to say about what he’ll specifically be doing for the company now, but you can bet he’ll be playing to his strengths as a marketing manager. As he notes on his LinkedIn profile, at Google his job was “Encouraging developers from around the world to build apps for Android.” Now he’ll likely be doing the same thing for Twitter.

You may recall that Twitter worked closely with the Android team to make their native Android app. Earlier this year, the head of Android’s core library moved on to the mobile payment startup, Square — a company founded by Twitter chairman (and creator) Jack Dorsey.

In other Twitter recruitment news, earlier today, Twitter’s Join The Flock account (the account they use for recruiting purposes) tweeted that they would soon being recruiting for new employees on college campuses.

“Twitter University Recruiting is coming…need a Twitter-y name for it, suggestions?,” reads the tweet. Twitter is growing fast, but employee growth can’t seem to keep pace with user (and usage) growth, as they made pretty in their post talking about the recent scaling issues. There are over 20 engineering positions they are actively looking to fill — on top of several other ones.

University recruitment is a huge area of emphasis for larger companies like Microsoft, Google, and even Facebook. You’ll soon be able to add Twitter to that list.

Update: Jokes Twitter’s Ryan Sarver, the Director of the Platform team Kim will be joining, “he’ll be working on the twPhone 🙂” iPhone killer watch take 600!