Blancer.com Tutorials and projects

One of the founders of Reddit, a Digg-clone, openly criticized Digg founder Kevin Rose yesterday for his plans to implement “me-too” features into the new version of the service. We consider this to be absurd and rather impolite.

Yesterday we discovered a video showing some of the features of the upcoming relaunch of Digg. In a nutshell, Digg has been trying to find a way to leverage social sharing to make the site more relevant, and users will soon see links to interesting things based on the what people and entities they choose to follow are voting on.

That goal isn’t anything new, founder Kevin Rose has been talking openly about it for more than a year now.

Will it help save Digg, which has been stuck in a no-growth cycle for years now as services like Twitter and Facebook have surged? I have no idea. I do know that Digg will now become much more personally relevant to me, and TechCrunch will certainly be auto-publishing to Digg and adding a Digg button to posts.

I love nothing more than shouting my opinion on things, and I’ve been particularly harsh on Rose and Digg over the last several months. But opinions are one thing. Rewriting history is another.

Hypocrisy Alert

Reddit, a site for discovering and sharing new things, was launched in mid-2005, more than six months after Digg. There were very few differences between Reddit and Digg then, and they haven’t diverged all that much since then, either. Both sites allow users to vote on submitted stories/links, and the most popular stories are on the home page. Reddit ripped off the core Digg idea when it launched. Which is totally fine in my opinion, since the Internet has evolved in this way from the beginning. You take someone else’s ideas and you try to improve on them.

But Reddit cofounder Alexis Ohanian says Digg needs new ideas. From his post:

…this new version of digg reeks of VC meddling. It’s cobbling together features from more popular sites and departing from the core of digg, which was to “give the power back to the people.”

Those are your words from that aforementioned 2004 video segment.

Now what matters is how many followers & influence a user has and how many followers & influence they’ve got.

Where have we heard this before: Twitter? Facebook? GoogleBuzz?

Kevin, you absolutely deserve all the credit for starting the movement — fascinating things happen when online communities can efficiently share content. Whales get silly names and we can expose the tragedies our fellow man endures faster than ever before.

It’s a damned shame to see digg just re-implementing features from other websites.

Is it reasonable criticism? Absolutely (although I disagree with it). And when it’s being said by someone who cloned the site that he is now complaining is copying features from others, it becomes absurd.

But hold on just one minute – Ohanian says he never even knew about Digg when he decided to build Reddit half a year after Digg launched:

Funded by Y Combinator, Steve Huffman and I started work on reddit in June 2005, which we launched a month later. A month after that, we learned about digg and realized this was going to be an interesting new space — we had some catching up to do.

Is that possible? Did they really invent the Digg idea completely independently from Digg six months after Digg launched? And no one at Y Combinator pointed out that there were similarities?

Paul Carr put this best when we were discussing this post internally on Yammer: “So at best they did zero research before they launched Reddit into a space that kinda relies on the founders knowing where to find cool new stuff online.”

At worst of course he’s simply lying.

Everyone knows that Digg needs to do something to find relevance again. This new version looks as good to me as anything else I’ve heard suggested, and it certainly doesn’t smell like something the venture capitalists forced down their throat. Kevin returned to a full time role at Digg earlier this year and clearly wants to prove that he can bring this company back to life. He’s excited about Digg, clearly. He may succeed. He may fail. But at least he’s in the arena and fighting valiantly.

Back in January, I wrote a post entitled An iPhone Lover’s Take On The Nexus One. At the time, the Nexus One was soon to be released as the latest and greatest Android phone, and a number of iPhone users were wondering whether it was worth it to switch for the benefits of Android (and perhaps more importantly, another network besides AT&T). My take: it was the best Android phone yet, but it wasn’t better than the iPhone. Now I’m going to do the same type of review for the new HTC EVO 4G phone, which Sprint is launching next week.

At Google I/O, the search giant gave the phone away to every attendee complete with one month of service to try it out. Just as with the Nexus One, I’ve decided to use it as my primary phone for the past week or so to get a real sense of the pluses and minuses of the device. Just as with my Nexus One review, this isn’t meant to be an all-encompassing review or roundup (for that, see here or here or here). Instead, this is just my reaction to the device as an iPhone user.

So, I’ll start off with what you really want to know: is the EVO 4G an “iPhone Killer“? No way. Not even close. Does it have some advantages over the iPhone? Of course. But it has more disadvantages. And, in fact, this isn’t even the best Android phone I’ve tried. Both the Nexus One and the Droid Incredible are better. If you want details about some of that, read on.

4G

Let me lead with a big caveat: I haven’t been using this thing on an actual 4G network. Sadly, neither San Francisco or New York City (the two cities I’ve used the device in) have Sprint 4G yet (both should get it later this year). That said, as just about every other reviewer has pointed out, the 4G is almost more of a detriment to the device because while it does offer faster download speeds, they’re not that much faster than 3G — and 4G usage destroys the battery life of the device worse than even 3G does. Also, I have used Sprint’s 4G network before, in Austin, Texas, and I can confirm that it is faster but not that much faster that I would consider it a killer feature at this point. Hopefully that will change as the network matures.

Battery

And let’s start with the battery. Simply put: it sucks. Again, I’m not using the 4G network (and yes, I have the 4G radio turned off), and it absolutely blows. My iPhone 3GS is about a year old now, so its battery isn’t at the peak condition that it once was. Still, it almost always lasts me for at least a full day doing what I would consider to be moderate usage of the web, texting, taking pictures, etc. The EVO? Good luck getting more than 4 hours of moderate usage out of this bad boy.

It’s almost unfathomable how bad the battery is in this thing. Why? Well you might assume it’s the massive 4.3 inch LCD screen. But according to the Battery usage area in the Setting menu on Android, the display is only eating up 5% of my battery on average. Instead, it’s “Cell standby” (again, I have 4G off), “Phone idle,” and “Android system” that eat up over 75% of the life. Am I doing anything odd that makes it drain faster than an average user would? I don’t think so, and talking with others who have the device, all report the same awful battery performance. I have no doubt that “regular” users are going to bitch about this as well.

I’m terrified to think what this thing would be like if I were using 4G. A mobile phone that lasts for 2-3 hours? Ugh.

Screen

Speaking of the massive screen, there’s no denying that it’s beautiful. Rather than using the same OLED screen that the Nexus One uses (which you can barely see in daylight), this uses a standard TFT display, so it’s easy to see at all times. The 480×800 resolution is great, and everything looks crisp. That said, this (and the HTC HD2 — the WinMo phone with the same size screen) proves that bigger isn’t always better.

The screen is too big. Or maybe a better way of saying it is that the screen makes the device too big. Mat Buchanan of Gizmodo has called this the “Escalade of smartphones,” and it’s a perfect moniker. For people with huge hands, and huge pockets, this thing will be great. For everyone else, I have little doubt they’ll find this too big. There’s a reason many smartphones tend to hover around the same 3.5 inch screen (iPhone, Nexus One, etc): it works.

Camera

The camera on the EVO is great. And there are actually two of them. The one in the back is 8 megapixels and destroys the iPhone’s 3 megapixel camera. The front one is a lower resolution (1.3 megapixels), but is convenient for vanity pictures and video chatting if that’s your thing. The back camera also can take 720p HD video, which again destroys the iPhone (there’s some debate as to just how good the “HD” bit-rate quality is — to me, a novice, it looked very nice).

Of course, the new iPhone is expected to be unveiled in just about a week. And it too is likely to have two cameras (one front and one back). I doubt the back one will be 8 megapixels, but it should get a boost to 5 megapixels. And the front one will undoubtedly be fine-tuned for video chatting as well. And the rumor is that it will take HD quality video as well.

Meanwhile, the photo-taking software on Android continues to lag behind the iPhone’s. And I do mean lag — often times it would take up to a minute for the controls to show up onscreen. And oddly, they can only be oriented to take pictures in landscape mode. And it’s far too many clicks to switch between the front and rear cameras (this is buried in the camera settings area). But all of that is somewhat excusable – what’s not is that more than half the time while trying to take a picture, I would get the message “Unable to save file to SD card due to insufficient file permissions.” I have no idea what that means, nor did I care enough to figure it out. Nor will most users when they get the same message. It worked sometimes, and sometimes it didn’t. I’ve never had this problem with the iPhone — nor is it possible since there is no SD card slot.

The photo browsing element of the EVO, meanwhile, is better than other Android phones I’ve used. But it’s still not nearly as good as the iPhone.

The EVO has a pretty good flash — something the current iPhone doesn’t (but again, the next one likely will). But it’s pretty poor compared to a regular camera flash. Point is, if you’re buying this thing to get a good camera, you should probably just invest in a good camera.

Exterior

The exterior of the EVO is pretty nice. As I said, I prefer the size of the Nexus One (and iPhone), but the EVO feels just as solid (unlike many other Android phones). Taking off the back to access the battery is a bit wonky. The entire back faceplate is removable, but each time I did it, I was sure I was going to snap off one of the clips that holds it in place. I was also sure I was going to snap off my fingernail at one point (which they suggest you use to open it up — brilliant).

There’s also this rather odd kick-stand on the back of the EVO. Presumably, it’s to make watching media on the huge screen more appealing (so you don’t have to hold the big, heavy thing). It’s also probably good for video chatting. But it’s a gimmick at best. And my colleague Jason Kincaid actually almost broke it off when he thought that was the way you get to the battery.

Unlike the Nexus One, the EVO has no trackball. I think that’s a good thing. Some people seem to like it (I assume ex-BlackBerry users), but I never understood the point of having it on a touchscreen device. Good riddance.

My biggest gripe about the exterior though has to be the top on/off button. It lays way too flush against the actual top of the device itself, making it very hard to click. I endured much frustration when I would pull the thing out of my pocket and would try to turn it on quickly. Sometimes I was hitting the button, sometimes I was hitting nothing — and it was hard to tell.

Software

All the other problems aside, the software may be what really kills the device — for now, at least. The EVO out-of-the-box runs Android 2.1 with the HTC Sense UI. Android 2.1 is far too slow. Even running on these devices with 1 GHz chips, there’s noticeable lag when doing things such as simply scrolling through your apps. It’s unacceptable.

The good news is that Android 2.2 mostly fixes this. I have been using 2.2 running on the Nexus One, and it’s much, much better. The bad news is that it’s not yet clear when 2.2 will come to the EVO because HTC has to update Sense to work with it.

Speaking of Sense, some people love it. I do not. While I find Android’s standard UI to be a bit bland, Sense is almost too much of the opposite — it’s garish. It also takes up way too much screen real estate with things such as the default time/weather widget. Do I really need the time taking up half of the main screen? No. I want apps there. Luckily, it’s easy enough to delete those default widgets.

The EVO does come with some pretty nice ways to integrate your Twitter, Facebook, and Flickr accounts when you set it up. And then you can easily see friends’ activity from the nice Friend Stream widget they provide. Sadly, this widget loads way too slowly. I also like the Twitter widget they give you. It’s a very simple way to update your Twitter status without even launching a client.

HTC also has a brilliant pinch-to-zoom mechanism to access each of your 7 main Android screens. In fact, it’s exactly like the Expose feature in OS X. You pinch on the EVO (or if you’re on the main screen, hit the home button) and the screen you’re on zooms out to reveal thumbnails of all of the screen you have, and shows what’s on each of them. Apple should consider copying this for the iPhone because it’s much better than the current scroll from page to page method.

The worst part of the software though is the keyboard. It’s laughably cluttered. The soft keyboard built into Android is bad enough — mainly because it lags (which again, Android 2.2 fixes). This Sense one is much, much worse. It’s set up in a way so that you can access things such as numbers on the top row of keys, but you have to hold them down to do so. And actually, numbers are also found if you hit the “12#” button at the bottom of the keyboard. It’s redundant and confusing.

And the cursor movement keys at the very button of the keyboard are one of the dumbest things I’ve ever seen. Again, this is a touchscreen device, why do I need touchscreen soft keys to move around whatever I’m writing? Just touch where you want to go.

WiFi Hotspots

Okay, I’ve been fairly hard on the device so far. But there is one thing that despite all its problems, would make me consider it: the WiFi hot spot feature. It’s hard to explain how awesome this is. But there are a few big catches.

I’ve tested out a Sprint Overdrive (mobile hotspot creator) before, and it’s great. But it’s also yet another device you have to carry around, and it’s somewhat of a pain to boot up, get connected to the service, etc. The EVO is like an Overdrive that you’re going to have on you at all times. And turning it on is one touch of a widget on the screen. This creates a new WiFi hotspot that up to 8 people can connect to. You can set the password right from the included software.

The other day, I was in a cafe in New York City but only had one hour of free Internet access. When I ran out, I turned on the EVO Hotspot and was up and running again in seconds. And it was fast (again, even without 4G).

Yes, the battery issue remains — this thing may work for a couple of hours as a hotspot, maybe less — but there is no disputing the ease-of-use.

Mobile hotspot creation is being built-in to Android 2.2, but it will be up to the carriers to decide how they use it (meaning, they decide whether or not to turn it on, and how much to charge for it, if so). This Sprint version is different (it’s not the built-in Android version) — and right, now entirely free. But that is expected to change following the actual launch. Reports indicate that Sprint will offer the Hotspot feature for free through July, but only to those on 4G networks. After that (and for other users) it will cost an extra $30 or so a month, apparently.

That’s a buzzkill.

Of course, next to the iPhone, which still doesn’t have any tethering option in the U.S. thanks to AT&T’s inability to maintain their network, this is still a great feature.

Overall

So, that a lot of words about what, as an iPhone user, I like and don’t like about the EVO 4G. Would I give up my iPhone for this? Not a chance. Hell, I wouldn’t give up a Nexus One or Droid Incredible for this, even with 4G. The battery life is simply too poor, and the whole device is too large.

The Android software continues to make steady improvements, but Sense, in my opinion, doesn’t help it at all. Instead, Android 2.2 is the thing to get, and that won’t be available on the EVO at launch.

The EVO has many of the strengths of the Nexus One — mainly, the way Google services interact with the phone (Google Voice, Gmail, Maps, etc), but it adds a bunch of weaknesses.

If you’re a fed-up iPhone user looking to switch to an Android device, there are better options. If you’re a happy iPhone user that is interested in Android devices, you probably won’t like this one much at all.

And no matter what camp you’re in, if you do buy this thing now, you’ll probably be kicking yourself in a couple of months as better 4G devices hit. Or you’ll be kicking yourself in a couple of months when better Android devices hit. Or you’ll be kicking yourself in a few weeks when the new iPhone HD (or whatever it will be called) hits.

Forgive me, but: this is probably not the Android device you’re looking for.

It’s no secret that mobile, hyperlocal advertising is poised to grow into a massive market in the next few years, spurred by the proliferation of GPS-equipped smartphones. Earlier this week we saw the launch of another competitor called BeThere Deals that’s hoping to crack the nut. The service offers a self-serve platform for local businesses, who can quickly deploy time sensitive deals that are limited in quantity.

While it’s focused primarily on time sensitive, local deals, BeThere Deals isn’t really in the same vein as GroupOn and LivingSocial — it doesn’t have a ‘group buying’ mechanic, and it features many deals in an area, rather than one or two. Instead, it’s more competitive with apps like Yowza!!, Mobile Coupons, and Mobiqpons.

The service is pretty straightforward: you download the free iPhone app, then open it up when you’re in a supported city to find some regional deals. At this point the service is only available in San Francisco, but it will be expanding to Los Angeles and New York City in the near future.

So how is BeThere going to survive when there are already some bigger players in this space? The company says it has a few key differentiators. First, it says that it’s primarily targeting local, independent businesses, rather than chains (they say that one goal is to make the application useful for discovering interesting new mom-and-pop stores and restaurants). Second, the application is exclusively for time-specific deals that are deployed in real-time by merchants — BeThere could be used by a local bakery, for example, that’s looking to sell excess pastries at a discount before the end of the day. The service will make money by charging merchants on a per-conversion basis.

The app still has a ways to go. For one, it badly needs push notifications — right now users have to manually open the app to see new deals, which isn’t much help when some of the deals are only available for a few hours (the startup says the feature is on the way). And the service obviously needs to get traction with users before it will be very appealing to many businesses (it’s the classic chicken-and-egg problem). The app is also going to see plenty of competition. Aside from the services mentioned above, location-based services like Foursquare have already started to enter this space.

One thing to note — the iPhone application currently has a pretty low average rating (though most of the written reviews are positive). The company says this is because users outside of San Francisco are downloading it, only to find that they can’t access any deals.

After speaking on a panel Wednesday at TechCrunch Disrupt with Facebook’s Chris Cox and Google’s Vic Gundotra, Foursquare CEO Dennis Crowley sat down with our own Evelyn Rusli for a backstage video interview.

It is clear that he feels Foursquare is still in its infancy and still has a long way to go. “The products is 10% of what it needs to be,” he says. “Look at the stuff we are doing with game mechanics, it is 1.0 game mechanics.” Where does he see it going? The badges, points, and Mayorships that people acquire by using Foursquare increasingly will be used to “unlock free goods” in real places like restaurants and stores.

“The game mechanics are there to grab a user’s hand and bring them through the experience,” says Crowley, “but it is not the meat of the service. The meat of the service is the social utility that we are building. A lot of that going forward is taking the user’s history, like all of the check-in information we get from them, and then recycling that data by giving it back to them in the form of recommendations and tips on what they should be doing next.” The idea of getting real-world recommendations based on the places you and your friends visit is akin to taking Amazon book recommendations or Netflix movie recommendations and applying that kind of collaborative filtering to the real world.

Crowley believes Foursquare’s competitive advantage is that it has been working on the problem for so long, and that it is built for New York City, which is a “really hard city to design for.” Another advantage is Foursquare’ check-in model. As he told Beet.TV in another video interview at Disrupt, the entire service is built around the check-in as opposed to throwing it in as an afterthought.

But the check-ins and the badges are the means to an end, not the end itself. Explains Crowley: “We have a very specific roadmap about changing the way people interact with physical space. It is not just about the check-in. It is what happens after that.”

The H-1B visa has become the beachhead in the battle against the legal immigration of skilled workers. This is because it allows highly educated, skilled workers from abroad to take employment in the U.S. and eventually become citizens. Anti-immigrant groups believe that they can close the door to foreigners by restricting or abolishing the visa. So they have been trying to convince lawmakers that H-1Bs depress wages and take jobs away from American workers. To prove their point, they highlight examples of unscrupulous body shops that underpay their workers, and they cite questionable research published by other anti-immigrants. But a new peer-reviewed study, published in Management Science, a top academic journal, challenges these claims. This research finds that foreign-born I.T. professionals on temporary work visas actually earn more than their American counterparts; and that limits on H-1B visas cause the salaries of foreign workers—rather than of Americans—to increase. This, along with research completed by my colleagues at UC-Berkeley, Duke, and Harvard, confirms what most people in Silicon Valley already know: that foreign-born I.T. workers complement American professionals and make the pie bigger rather than take jobs away.

This new study was completed by University of Maryland professors Hank Lucas and Sunil Mithas, using data from a survey of 50,000 I.T. professionals that InformationWeek and Hewitt Associates conducted from 2000 to 2005.  After adjusting for educational qualifications, work experience, and other individual characteristics, the researchers found that I.T. professionals without U.S. citizenship earned 8.9% more than U.S. citizens. Tech workers on temporary visas were paid 6.8% more than those with U.S. citizenship; green-card holders took home 12.9% more than their American-born counterparts. In years when Congress increased the numbers of visas available, salaries of foreign workers fell. The salary premium for H-1B holders was 10.6% in 2000; 8.1% in 2001; 17.5% in 2004; and 4.7% in 2005. This corresponds to a visa cap of 115,000 in 2000; 195,000 in 2001; 65,000 in 2004; and 85,000 in 2005 When the number of visas rose, the corresponding salaries shrank.

To explain why firms pay more to foreign I.T. professionals, the researchers speculate that such foreign workers supply intangible human capital: knowledge of markets and cultures outside the U.S.; social relationships with colleagues at firms located in their home countries; access to networks in home countries and the ability to spot, circulate, and mix ideas and skills from different parts of the world. Foreign-born I.T. professionals are also usually willing to travel for extended periods. The researchers say that because the proportion of the sales and revenue that companies receive from abroad is increasing, they need to hire more I.T. professionals who are familiar with foreign culture; language; and business practice.

UC-Berkeley dean and professor AnnaLee Saxenian refers to the foreign-born professionals in Silicon Valley as the “new Argonauts”. She says that over the past three decades, the region’s immigrant professionals have helped open foreign markets; identified overseas sources of talent and innovation; and pioneered long-distance partnerships. Far from being zero-sum, this process continues to expand economic opportunities for both Silicon Valley and its collaborators. She says that foreign nationals are clearly a complement to the native workforce, their diverse perspectives and global networks being catalysts for local innovation.

The data Lucas and Mithas analyzed did not include all tech professionals: Information Week readers are typically I.T. workers in large and midsized American corporations. The researchers say that they compared their sample with that of other studies and believe that this is more representative of the tech industry than any other research. And unlike other studies, this compares apples with apples (previous research has looked only at aggregate data, not at individual education and skills). The Lucas/Mithas study clearly did not account for the shoddy body shops that break the law and underpay their workers.  But it is likely to be representative not only of the Information Week readership, but also of foreign-born I.T. workers in Silicon Valley. (Silicon Valley tech workers usually have the same advanced educational background and receive the same competitive salaries as their brethren in the I.T. world.) These are the skilled immigrants that American industry needs—to remain globally competitive.

The study also highlighted an issue that I have written about: these workers are earning less than they should. Because of a flawed immigration system, the U.S. has admitted large numbers of workers on temporary visas, but has never increased the number of permanent resident visas (also called green cards) to enable these workers to make America their home. Waiting times for green cards can be longer than a decade, and while workers wait in queue, they can’t easily change jobs. Employers often take advantage of the situation. Indeed, Lucas and Mithas found that H-1B visa holders earned 6.1% less than equivalent green-card holders.

There is a far more serious problem brewing: we’re not letting the foreign-born workers start companies and boost the economy, so they are leaving. Consider that 52% of Silicon Valley companies started in 1995–2005 were founded by immigrants. There are now hundreds of thousands of highly educated and skilled workers who also could be starting companies that are stuck in “immigration limbo”. Many are getting frustrated and returning to their home countries. Others languish in the same jobs they had when they stated their green-card–application process; just as they can’t change companies, they can’t receive a promotion, so if they started as a computer programmer, they can’t become an architect or manager.

Policy makers are used to the constant drumbeat of the xenophobes. To educate policy makers on the facts and to make them aware of the green-card backlog, a group called Immigration Voice is organizing Advocacy Day on June 7 and 8 in Washington, D.C. This group represents the foreign-born I.T. workers sampled in the Lucas/Mithas study and more than 250,000 doctors, PhDs, research scientists, scholars, engineers, and professors also stuck in the green-card backlog.  Hundreds of Immigration Voice members will be travelling to the nation’s capital to tell their stories. They have set up more than 400 meetings with members of Congress and the Senate. Let’s hope they get through and introduce a little logic into the immigration debate.

Editor’s note: Guest writer Vivek Wadhwa is an entrepreneur turned academic. He is a Visiting Scholar at UC-Berkeley, Senior Research Associate at Harvard Law School and Director of Research at the Center for Entrepreneurship and Research Commercialization at Duke University. Follow him on Twitter at @vwadhwa