The word “lobbyist” surely doesn’t have the best connotation in the world. Depending on your reading of the definition, it generally signifies an attempt to influence government decisions, traditionally by targeting legislators or regulators. What isn’t often taken into consideration, however, is that while there are lobbyists in dark suits roaming the halls of Congress funded by entities such as big oil and pharmaceutical companies, “lobbying” is also conducted by nonprofit groups funded by different kinds of special interests. We think of efforts, however, as “activism,” but at the end of the day, they’re just another form of lobbying.
Now, a new form of “lobbying” has emerged, but instead corporate checks or individuals donations, the currency has shifted from cash to social connections, where financial power will be trumped by network power: “social lobbying.” → Read More
So, there’s been some hubbub around Electronic Arts over the last few days, as the company ramps up for the release of its third quarter earnings on February 1st. Yesterday, EA’s stock closed at $17.54 per share, which, in context, meant that the gaming goliath’s stock was down 30 percent since hitting its 52-week high in early November. This drop was mostly due to the collective shock relating to the news concerning its recently released title, Star Wars: The Old Republic, which now has a ridiculous price tag attached to it — as Wall Street is estimating the cost to be between $150 and $200 million. → Read More
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Like all of y’all I just read Paul Graham’s SOPA-soaked call for a tech startup that would kill Hollywood. You would have to be a complete idiot to think Hollywood (or at least some part of Hollywood) isn’t ripe for disruption BUT …
“The people who run it are so mean and so politically connected that they could do a lot of damage to civil liberties and the world economy on the way down. It would therefore be a good thing if competitors hastened their demise.”
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Google has more than 40 core products, and hundreds depending on how you count them. Even with over 30,000 employees, that’s a lot to support. In the name of refocusing, today the company announcedthat Picnik, Sky Map, Urchin, Needlebase, Google Message Continuity, and the Social Graph API are all headed for the deadpool, open source, or absorption into more central divisions. → Read More
Delicious has just announced 4 new features to make its stacks, or collections of links, more social. Because the only thing better than a bundle of your favorite kitten websites is bundle co-created by you and your friends. You can now collaboratively build stacks, comment on whole stacks, respond to a stack with a stack similar to a YouTube response, and create private stacks. The features will permit new use cases like stealth cooperation and give Delicious an advantage over Pinterest which doesn’t offer private boards yet.
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You can’t always count on the wisdom of crowds. But this particular project turned out not merely good, but amazing. Star Wars Uncut is a project by filmmaker Casey Pugh (and edited by Aaron Valdez and Michael Pugh), in which Star Wars: A New Hope was divided into 15-second segments, each of which was replicated by fans in whatever way they chose. Connect the new segments and voila! Crowdsourced magic.
Watch the video inside. → Read More
The social gaming industry has been getting more and more interested in a potentially big new way to make money: online gambling. And investors, who are now able to buy stock in market leader Zynga, are following suit.
Today, Zynga told All Things D that it was considering how to approach the new opportunity: “We build games and experiences that our players want and love. Zynga Poker is the world’s largest online poker game with more than 7 million people playing every day and over 30 million each month. We know from listening to our players that there’s an interest in the real money gambling market. We’re in active conversations with potential partners to better understand and explore this new opportunity.” → Read More
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We’ve been hearing rumbles about Groupon taking its Groupon Goods initiative more seriously, and those rumbles have a little more weight today, as the company has acquired Mertado, the social shopping startup that uses Facebook as a distribution platform.
From the Mertado blog:
“Our mission at Mertado has always been to expose a selection of high quality, unique, lifestyle-oriented products to consumers wherever they spend their time. Working toward this goal, we have strived to create shopping experiences that build bridges between content, commerce & community.
The controversial Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA) has been pulled and its Senate counterpart, the Protect IP Act (PIPA) is on hold. The Internet won this round, it seems. But don’t celebrate just yet. The forces behind these acts are simply regrouping. Should SOPA and PIPA be killed, or can they be fixed? We invited Viacom’s General Counsel and EVP Michael Fricklas and David Sohn, General Counsel and Director of the Center for Democracy And Technology, to debate the issue in the video above. → Read More
Another day, another hack. The company whose data was compromised this time? DreamHost. → Read More
Building on their education and training video platform for startups and SMBs, Grovo is today launching an “Expert Series” that aims to “shed light on the evolving world of Web 2.0,” in which entrepreneurs, small business owners, celebrities, journalists, and investors will offer insights into successful operation strategies, brand building, differentiation, how to leverage social media, and everything in between. The goal is to not only help others understand how to use popular web services and tools, but why they’re important and how they’ve helped grow their own businesses. → Read More
Have you voted for your favorite startups of 2011? Well what are you waiting for? Vote NOW.
The Crunchies Awards are only a week away and we have been hustling behind the scenes getting ready for the big event. For those of you who do not know what the Crunchies Awards are about, think of them as the Oscars for technology. We host the awards show every year with our co-hosts GigaOm and VentureBeat and every year it’s a smash hit with all-star guests and winners. We have categories ranging from Best Technology Achievement, to CEO of the Year, all the way to Best Startup of the Year. For this year’s awards show, you can take a look at all of the final nominees up for the award here.
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Imagine you’re a hunter-killer robot, hovering over the broken wasteland that used to be the world of men. You have surprised a group of biologicals in an act of petty insurrection, and they have split into two groups and begun to flee. You can only pursue and eliminate one group, but you don’t have the spare milliseconds to analyze your high-definition imagery; yet you must determine which group is greater if you want to meet your termination quota.
It’s a good thing that back in 2012, a university lab in Italy helped machines like you evolve approximate number sense! → Read More
Big-box retailer Home Depot has acquired home services marketplace and TechCrunch50 winner Redbeacon. Financial terms of the deal were not disclosed.
Redbeacon lets users search, browse and book local home service providers, including plumbers, roofers, painters, and house cleaners, on its website. Service providers pay a fee to Redbeacon for new paying customers for a lead. The company has expanded from San Francisco to New York, Chicago, Los Angeles, Washington DC, Atlanta, Seattle, and Houston. → Read More
With a reported 30 million monthly unique users, the bragging rights of being the top iOS music app last October and a slew of newly released auto integrations at CES, the under-the-radar TuneIn is sitting pretty. The service, which like iheartradio takes terrestrial radio stations and streams them online, differentiates itself from other contenders in the music space by offering up traditional radio mainstays like DJs and contests, etc.
And as of this week the company is sitting a little prettier, on some freshly signed terms sheets for a new round of funding from existing investor Sequoia Capital and new investor General Catalyst Partners. → Read More
Postagram, the mobile app from Sincerely that lets you create and mail real-life postcards from your phone photos, has worked out a clever real-world integration with Bing for the Sundance film festival this weekend. A street team is wandering the snowy roads of Park City, Utah, taking photos of attendees, collecting their addresses, and mailing them Bing-sponsored postcards.
“Your mailbox has a few bills in it, and other boring stuff like that. The thing that’s going to stick out is when you get a card with pictures of you or your friends,” founder Matt Brezina explains. Especially if it’s a photo of you with your favorite actor. The Sundance Postagrams show the Bing sponsorship logo on the backing board for the photo, and include a link to get a free postcard courtesy of Microsoft’s search engine. → Read More
Gaming startup Heyzap first launched its social discovery service for mobile games nearly a year ago. Now it’s unveiling the first list of partners who are using the service.
Some of these partnerships weren’t exactly a secret before — you could just open up the Heyzap app and see which games were available. But now the startup is really trumpeting those partnerships, in part to show off some of the big names who are buying into its vision. → Read More
Google appears to have made some changes to its account creation process. Whereas before, all it took was an email address of any kind and some basic demographic data, now you are required to create both a Gmail account and a presence on Google+. This doesn’t strike me as a user-friendly change. → Read More
We have a greater capacity to change the world today than the kings and presidents of just 50 years ago. Whether you’re a programming prodigy or the office manager holding it all together, technology empowers small groups of passionate people with an astonishing degree of leverage to make the world a better place. Yet I fear that our industry is squandering its opportunity and its talent. In companies large and small, great minds are devoting their lives to endeavors that, even if wildly successful, fail to do great things. → Read More
While the once long list of legitimate reasons to jailbreak your iPhone has taken a hit with each new iOS release, that burning desire to “Free your device” and/or “Fight the power” and/or “Just do crazy stuff that other people can’t do” never really goes away.
3 months after the release of the iPhone 4S and 10 months after the release of the iPad 2, the ridiculously talented iOS hacking community has finally cracked the ultimate challenge for both devices: the untethered jailbreak. → Read More
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