We last heard about AirCover — an app developed by Founders Den co-founder Jason Johnson’s own startup BlueSprig — when it launched as an all-in-one protection assistant, letting people secure their devices from viruses, back up files, locate a lost iPhone or Android handset, track family members, and more. Fast forward to today, and Blue Sprig is launching the first offshoot of that flagship product, AirCover Family Locator, which takes the people-tracking element and extends it into a standalone app.
But while you often hear of spinoffs coming out of the success of the original app, it seems that the opposite is the case here. → Read More
Editor’s note: Gil Elbaz is an entrepreneur and pioneer of natural language technology. In 1998, he co-founded Applied Semantics, which developed contextual advertising products, including ASI’s AdSense. In 2003, Google acquired ASI, and after a four-year stint at Google, Gil found Factual in 2007. Follow him on Twitter.
The term data market brings to mind a traditional structure in which vendors sell data for money. Indeed, this form of market is on the rise with companies large and small jumping in. Think of Azure Data Marketplace (Microsoft), data.com (Salesforce.com), InfoChimps.com, and DataMarkets.com. → Read More
Editor’s note: Brenden Mulligan is an entrepreneur who created Onesheet, TipList, ArtistData, MorningPics, and PhotoPile. He’s a mentor for 500 Startups and several startups. You can find him on Twitter at @mulligan.
I recently returned from a trip where I embedded myself in a few Asian cities and worked as if I were home. The goal was to explore how technology has enabled legitimate work / travel. The first stop was Hong Kong, where I spent August 30 – September 4 meeting entrepreneurs and working. → Read More
Facebook has to show more ads to make more money, right? Wrong. Or at least not necessarily. If it expands its new off-site ad network and Gifts ecommerce product, it could rely on its data, not its traffic, to grow its revenues. That would leave its site and apps uncluttered, designed to maximize enjoyment, the amount we share, and our feeling of connection instead of page views.
You might say I’m a dreamer… → Read More
Microsoft’s rebooted mobile OS, Windows Phone 8, arrives in a matter of weeks — so it’s a case of Windows Phone 7 is dead, long live Windows Phone 8 right? Not so fast. WP8 is certainly Microsoft’s new weapon of choice for competing in the smartphone space — with no further OS updates planned for WP7 beyond the customizable homescreen in the 7.8 release — but the older of the two WP siblings could still have a vital role to play in helping Redmond gain significant marketshare. → Read More
Open source fear mongering is still a reality. But in today’s world, it is nuanced with the belief that an open enterprise means open APIs.
They are not the same and should not be confused.
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Short version: These two battery-powered bluetooth speakers are the first modern boomboxes designed by the newly created subsidiary Logitech UE. Acquired in 2008, Ultimate Ears is well-known for its in-ear monitors used by many musicians in concert, not for its speakers. Even though the Logitech UE Mobile Boombox is limited, it is no surprise given the entry-level pricing. The real surprise comes from the big brother, the Logitech UE Boombox. → Read More
Editor’s note: Editor’s note: Mike Hirshland is the founder of Resolute.VC, a seed-stage venture capital firm. Prior to Resolute, he was a General Partner with Polaris Venture Partners where he led the creation of Dogpatch Labs as well as Polaris’s investments in companies including Automattic (WordPress), Quantcast, KISSmetrics and Q1 Labs (IBM). Follow him on his Resolute.VC blog and Twitter.
Back in the “old days” (as in 5 or 10 years ago) the very definition of a seed investment was investing before any product had been built or prototyped. Since then, the ability to build a startup on far less capital has made seed investing less risky. But, oddly, it seems that seed investors have become more risk averse. → Read More
Serial entrepreneur and investor Jason Calacanis appears to be gearing up for the launch of his next venture, which may also signify one more pivot for his information site Mahalo. And that next step also looks like a new chapter for an internet domain that itself has seen a couple of pivots.
On a tip from a reader, we visited inside.com and found this:
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Marketers are increasingly personalizing their products and services to meet their customers’ changing needs. But customization used in conjunction with powerful persuasion techniques is arming marketers with new weaponry to boost customer engagement and drive profits. → Read More
Living in the digital age is a privilege. All the content you could want, whether it’s music, video, games, or apps, is at the tip of your fingers every time you fire up the old MacBook or iPad. But these portable devices – our smartphones, tablets and notebooks – aren’t really prepared to deliver that content at the highest quality possible. In terms of visuals, Retina displays and the like have gone a way to improve this, but where sound is concerned…
Consumer and enterprise. Software and hardware. Infrastructure operations and user experience. Products and services. No matter the focus, innovation in technology, and especially around Silicon Valley, has ebbed and flowed across these areas. Some new companies focus on building solutions for the enterprise, and perhaps nowadays its too easy to take the consumer route. The purpose of this week’s column is to shed a bit of light on a growing class of new startups that are not selling directly to big companies or individuals generally, but focusing on software and infrastructure developers specifically.
Selling into enterprise — going B2B — has been an attractive route for myriad reasons. There are barriers to entry in technological development, it takes real venture investment and time to build these products, and established sales channels and newer marketing avenues make the pursuit of these markets tantalizing. With the enterprise comes a promise of scale, size, and predictability, often in the form of pay-per-seat pricing models, built-in distribution, and lock-in. → Read More
Editor’s note: Grant Ritchie is the CEO and founder of Locationary, which created the Saturn management and exchange platform for local business profiles and POI data. Follow Locationary here.
The Apple iPhone 5 has been quite a story for a while with many “firsts”: the fastest hardware, the most first-week sales, and so on. The device is also now famous for what it doesn’t have: Google Maps. → Read More
Editor’s note: Andy Rachleff is President and CEO of Wealthfront, an SEC-registered online financial advisor. He serves as a member of the board of trustees and vice chairman of the endowment investment committee for University of Pennsylvania and as a member of the faculty at Stanford Graduate School of Business, where he teaches courses on technology entrepreneurship. Prior to Wealthfront, Andy co-founded and was general partner of Benchmark Capital.
Everywhere I go in Silicon Valley I hear people discussing their angel investments. The conversations remind me of fish stories. People love recounting the one time they caught a big fish, not the many futile hours they spent waiting for a bite. → Read More
Game startups have long struggled to find funding (especially in Europe) because of a tension between being perceived to be hit-driven (like movies) while actually needing to be funded like technology companies. However this year, crowdfunding has changed much about how we think of games and their fans, and hopefully will help us find a better way. → Read More
Amazon’s shiny new Kindle Paperwhite will start trickling out of the company’s myriad warehouses in short order, but it seems e-reading rival Barnes & Noble won’t let Amazon set foot in the illuminated e-reader market unanswered.
To that end, B&N has announced that it has cut the price of its conceptually similar Nook SimpleTouch with GlowLight from $139 to $119 — the same price as Amazon’s ad-supported Paperwhite model.
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Simon Cowell is on the hunt for the next Mark Zuckerberg or Bill Gates. According to The Sun, the former American Idol and current X Factor judge is teaming up with Black Eyed Peas rapper Will.i.am to find the next hot tech entrepreneur.
Details are sparse on when the show will debut and the exact format, but if the tech-focused show is anything like X Factor, it sounds like would-be entrepreneurs will be pitching their ideas to an all-star panel of judges. It also appears that the show will be based in the UK. → Read More
Thanks to the rise of in-classroom technology, the focus in education tends to be on student engagement and how to improve learning. It becomes easy to forget the importance of great teachers. Startups, entrepreneurs, businesses (and the rest) need to remember that technology doesn’t have to put teachers in jeopardy; it can help them lead the education evolution, even if their traditional role in the classroom becomes obsolete.
Last year, Italy’s official statistics bureau, ISTAT, produced a report on the state of the Internet in Italy. It found that in world terms, Italy was below average in terms of Internet usage. The European average is 73 percent usage by population, and Italians were hovering around the 63 percent mark. But official statistics can be cruel and out of date – and it’s clear now to any observer on the ground that whatever is happening in the home market, Italian tech startups aren’t just shooting for their own country but for yours, as well. → Read More
Editor’s note: Alex Cornell is co-founder and creative director at Firespotter Labs, makers of ÜberConference, NoshList, Nosh, and Jotly. Firespotter is backed by Andressen Horowitz and Google Ventures. Follow him on his website and on Twitter.
I’ve always found it interesting when the non-creatives in a company estimate how long it will take the creative team to accomplish something. What’s often baked into their scheduling assumption is that the creatives will deliver results at a predictable and regular rate. They expect that 10 hours of creative work will produce 10 hours worth of pretty pictures; as predictable as a banker crunching numbers. → Read More
Let’s put it out there right now: I am personally not a fan of Klout, which ranks people based on their Internet interactions and engagement on services like Twitter, Facebook, and Google+. I have nothing against the company whatsoever, and this is a vertical that someone was going to get into sooner or later.
However, I still feel like the whole concept is bunk. → Read More
Editor’s note: Sergio Monsalve is a Partner at Norwest Venture Partners where he is focused on early and growth investments in the digital media, mobile, and social areas. Follow him on Twitter.
E-commerce is one of the fastest-growing sectors in technology and is poised to get even hotter, with sales expected to double between 2010 and 2015, according to eMarketer. So how can discerning investors find the most promising opportunities? They have to first take off the rose-colored glasses. → Read More
Is the new iOS App Store a step forward or step back for mobile app developers, users, and the app economy overall? Some developers are complaining that since the introduction of the Chomp-inspired App Store redesign in iOS 6, sales have noticeably dropped. Others say the changes are good for indie developers.
Whichever side of the coin you’re on, there are a number of reasons why developers are feeling the effects. In the new iOS App Store, the user interface now encourages a slower search method (flipping through cards, not scrolling through vertical lists), less attention is given to new releases and category-based search as “Genius” recommendations are given a higher billing, App Store SEO (ASO) is basically a black box that no one seems to understand, and more. → Read More
Canadian wireless and internet provider Rogers is currently experiencing a widespread, continued outage of services on both its cellular and cable home internet data networks, according to various user reports. Rogers is the second-largest internet provider in Canada by subscriber count, and the largest cellphone provider with somewhere around 10 million mobile customers. → Read More
It’s a powerful thing, this Internet of ours. The greatest tool for the distribution of knowledge, the administration of compassion, and development of conversation ever created. And the events of this week have shown how it can be a platform for tolerance and understanding, for love and peace.
Particularly touching was the story of a man who, with the assistance of friends and the Internet, was able to confront a tormentor with his misdeeds, bringing the young troll to heel and redeeming a child who surely knew not what he did. An example for the ages of gentleness and cooler minds prevailing over humanity’s companion and adversary, hate.
Yes, isn’t it pretty to think so? → Read More
Editor’s note: Wayne Sutton is the founder and CEO of PitchTo, a mobile development lab that builds tools for investors to make smarter decisions and help entrepreneurs deliver exceptional pitches. This article is inspired by Dave McClure’s “Women in Tech: Put Your Money Where Your Mouth Is.” post. Follow Wayne on Twitter.
What a difference a year makes.
Last year the question was “Where are the minority entrepreneurs?” It was highly motivated by the 2010 CBinsights Venture Capital Human Capital Report, which stated that only 1 percent of minority tech startup founders were founded by African-Americans. But the conversation about minority entrepreneurs didn’t only apply to African-Americans, it also included women and Hispanics. The dialogue reached its peak by various snippets from the CNN’s “Black in America 4” documentary and niche tech blogs. → Read More
Another day, another iOS-based telepresence rig. The Helios is a tiny little two-wheeled car that drives around with your iPhone or Touch in the passenger seat, allowing you to move around a scene and interact with remote subjects through the magic of telepresence.
They are raising money through Kickstarter.
→ Read More
Facebook just launched a new version of its Messenger app for iOS. Messenger, the company’s stand-alone chat app, got a bit of a user interface refresh with this update, as well as a speed boost and official support for iOS 6 and the iPhone 5′s larger display. Today’s update comes just a bit more than a week after Facebook also launched an update to its Messenger app for Android and, for the most part, this update brings the iOS app’s design on par with the Android app. → Read More
Editor’s note: Boris Wertz is the founder of version one ventures, and has invested in more than 35 early-stage consumer Internet and mobile companies, including Chloe & Isabel, Julep, and Indochino. Follow him on his blog and Twitter.
There has been more e-commerce innovation during the past year than there has been during the last decade. First, flash-sale and daily-deal sites brought a much-needed breath of fresh air to a vertical that hadn’t seen much change since Amazon and eBay arrived on the scene. Now there’s a whole new generation of e-commerce players. → Read More
Twitter’s Bootstrap, an open-source framework for quickly building web sites and apps, has been a massive success. It’s even starting to spawn its own ecosystem of related services now. Mark Otto and Jacob Thornton, the two developers behind the project, however, have now decided to leave the company to pursue new opportunities at GitHub and Biz Stone’s and Evan Williams’ Obvious Corp. respectively. → Read More
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