In its investigation of whether Google’s Street View cars illegally collected personal data from WiFi networks, the Federal Communications Commission has reached a decision that seems like a mix of good news and bad news for the search giant.
The good news: The FCC did not fine Google for violating electronic eavesdropping laws. Instead, it concluded that there was no precedent for the commissions’ enforcement of the law in connection with WiFi networks. The FCC also noted that, according to the available evidence, Google only collected data from unecrypted WiFi networks, not encrypted ones, and that it never accessed or used the data. → Read More
Little sleep, lots of stress, free food at all hours, and Paul Singh constantly try to booze you under the table. Sounds like the old college days when you tried to rush for Sigma Chi, doesn’t it?
But nope. That describes life at 500 Startups.
For a former fat kid like me, it’s an environment where I can accidentally gain 15 lbs in the blink of an eye. Put a pizza or a tray of doughnuts in front of me and I will devour the goodies without a second thought. Unfortunately (or fortunately), being the co-founder of a fitness startup does not afford me this pleasure. → Read More
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When Google launched Gmail in Germany in 2005, it was quickly barred from using the Gmail name for its email product there. German entrepreneur Daniel Giersch, after all, had registered the ‘G-mail’ trademark (short for Giersch mail) for his physical and electronic mail service in Germany in 2000, long before Google had even announced its own service. Instead of ‘Gmail,’ German Internet users who wanted to use Gmail had to go to googlemail.com. Google tried to appeal this decision, but ran out of legal options in 2007, after Europe’s Office for Harmonization in the Internal Market rejected its appeal. For a long time, it seemed like that was the end of the story, but last week Google quietly settled its dispute with Giersch. According to Germany’s GoogleWatchBlog, the gmail.de domain and the Gmail trademark were transferred to Google on April 13. → Read More
There is a certain type of company that can only exist in Silicon Valley. People outside of the Valley scratch their heads at how a company with no revenue and no apparent business model can be called successful, much less be worth $1 billion.
But maybe the problem is that we’re mis-categorizing Internet and mobile products as businesses in the first place. What if we looked at them as TV shows instead – where success and failure is determined by ratings not revenue? Isn’t Instagram closer to American Idol than it is to Oracle? It entertains millions of us for a few minutes every day – maybe that’s enough. Perhaps the Valley is pioneering a new business model, one where revenue isn’t the goal but where distribution and engagement are paramount. → Read More
Before leaving Goldman Sachs to earn a millionaire’s salary with Chicago High Frequency Trading (HFT) startup Teza Technologies, Sergey Aleynikov made one last transaction. At 5:20pm on his last day, just before his going-away party, Aleynikov uploaded 500,000 lines of encrypted source code from the Wall Street firm’s proprietary HFT system to a server located in Germany. Following the clandestine upload, Aleynikov deleted the encryption program, wiped his command history, and headed to the party.
Although Aleynikov later managed to download the source code to his home computer in New Jersy before flying to Chicago, he was apprehended by the FBI while returning through Newark Liberty International Airport.
But after his conviction at trial and imprisonment during the appeals process (his dual US-Russian citizenship presented a flight risk), Aleynikov is now a free man.
The reasons why touch the entire software industry. → Read More
If you are a marketer who has spent the last 10 years mastering the art of capturing and converting customers on the desktop web, the rapid rise of smartphones and the iPad might make you nervous.
You’ve built businesses on paid search, written essays about optimizing lead forms and studied the ever-changing subtleties of SEO. Using cookies that follow us around the web, you’ve turned display advertising into a performance medium. But just as you were beginning to wrap your heads around the whole social thing, along come the iPhone, Android and the iPad and with them a whole new reality: the post-PC world.
→ Read More
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As my partner Bipul Sinha noted in a post last year, direct selling is one of the most interesting opportunities in commerce in the time of social. Direct selling is being invigorated right now, not just in Latin America, but also in the US, due to three key reasons.
The first is the economy. In this slow economy, people are more willing to supplement their income (and seek alternative career paths) than they have been over the last few decades. Direct sales is one of the most attractive and accessible ways for people to supplement their income. The last golden age of direct sales was during a period when women had few traditional career path options. As more women found success in the mainstream economy, the labor pool available to direct sales diminished. In this slow recovery, with unemployment still high, more people are willing to explore direct sales. → Read More
Grabio has been around for about a year but they’ve recently update the app and added a number of features. What does it do? Essentially it’s a mobile Craigslist with notifications and location-based searches for classified listings. You can enter any neighborhood, do a quick search, and pick up a broken girls bicycle seat or a gently used full body cast for a few bucks. Pretty slick, eh?
Founded by Horatiu Boeriu and Chris Popa, both currently living in Chicago, the company is bootstrapped and went through a number of iterations before it settled on its current incarnation. At launch they saw 5,000 users, although that number is creeping up. → Read More
From some of the chatter out there, it seems like the prerequisites to have “deep knowledge” about the TV industry is to have ever watched TV. Yes, that sounds pretty cynical, but I see post after post espousing wisdom on topics that are so misguided it makes my head shake – involuntarily. While everyone is certainly entitled to their opinions, there’s just something to be said for a little research, a little fact checking, and deep diving with industry experts. I think the “future of TV” industry at large would benefit greatly from a little more of the above, and a little less jumping on bandwagons.
Accordingly, here are the 5 topics I see on practically a daily basis that are just plain tired, and should be put to rest. → Read More
It is freaking cold here in Indio California, so cold that half of the folks in the house I’m staying with for the weekend left the Coachella music festival last night around 9pm. Even though I stayed until midnight (made it to Swedish House Mafia, yesss!), I ended up buying an ugly $60 Coachella hoodie to not freeze my buns off. A LOT of people now own this hoodie, I think we should totally pass it on to our kids.
In lieu of watching Coachella live, my de facto PGA Villa roommates — who have paid hundreds of dollars for their VIP tickets — have been instead addicted to the livestream on YouTube, sitting in front of our fireplace at home. Brave New Musical Festival world we live in. This is actually the second year that YouTube has livestreamed the festival, and as I attest to above people, like normal people, are watching it. → Read More
Who needs governments? The ongoing trend toward mobile, social and crowdsourcing apps has led to a wealth of new community-based resources that support or supplant traditional civic and government services. Think Kickstarter instead of the NEA or Canada Council. Or consider the new Circle of 6 app, which is intended to help prevent violence before it happens, by letting users reach out to friends when dicey situations arise, instead of calling 911 after they get out of hand.
Circle of 6 is the brainchild of health educator Deb Levine and anti-violence activist Nancy Schwartzman, who have found that it’s often easier for people to reach out for help via a screen, and that it’s important for groups of friends to offer concrete strategies for supporting each other. It’s already won the White House’s Apps Against Abuse challenge, and racked up tens of thousands of iPhone downloads. “We are working to get the app in the hands of Android users as soon as possible,” says lead developer Christine Corbett Moran (an astrophysicist with a double-major Physics/CS degree from MIT, who develops apps in her copious spare time.)
Apps like Circle of 6 are the thin edge of a really interesting wedge. → Read More
The Gillmor Gang — Robert Scoble, Dan Farber, Kevin Marks, and Steve Gillmor — have a lot to work with this week: Instagram, a Google+ redesign, and Ann Romney joining Twitter. But if Larry is Larry, who are Moe and Curly? @dbfarber makes a good case for Twitter owning the realtime media; if you make it on Twitter, you can make it anywhere. We don’t know Moe’s business model, but who cares.
That leaves Zuckerberg as Curly, the intellectual whose empire keeps growing no matter what mistakes he seems to make. In fact, those mistakes usually turn out to be ephemeral. Lose trust with overwhelming growth, buy the most phatic startup and its 30 million users. Facebook is betting only a few will bolt, and where are they gonna go anyway? The Three Stooges are beating each other up, but what they’re really doing is keeping Microsoft boxed out of the social party. Nyuk nyuck nyuck. → Read More
A year ago, Peter Thiel called it a bubble. Whatever you call it, the cost of attaining a college degree has skyrocketed to the point of absurdity — to the point of one trillion red flags. Student debt in the U.S. recently pushed over $1 trillion, and the average debt per student now stands at more than $25K. (And 30 percent of students are more than 30 days overdue on payments.)
StraighterLine, a Baltimore-based startup, is one of many young companies trying to find a solution to these rising costs, through online education. Founded in 2010, StraigherLine offers a low-cost, subscription-based service that allows students to take a variety of accredited, general ed courses online. And, now, with the goal of bringing its service to a wider audience, the startup has announced that it has raised $10 million in venture capital. → Read More
I left off last time talking about how gamification and the Quantified Self — the use of sensors and devices to gather and analyze as much personal numeric data as possible for new insights into the self–can help us have fun while getting closer to our ideal selves. It’s time to explore how that last idea has evolved in the past few years and how savvy entrepreneurs are putting it to work.
Each of us has that picture of who we want to be and where we want to go. This is the version of ourselves we want the world to see. Convincing others that there is no gap between that image and our real selves used to be the domain of public relations professionals and doting parents. But in this era of social networks and constant connectivity, we all take the reins of our own reputations. → Read More
“Where do you get the time to write so much as a company CEO, and more importantly, shouldn’t you be closing deals or doing something more useful?”
Fair enough.
Do What Comes Naturally To You
Some entrepreneurs are technologists, others are salespeople, a few are storytellers. → Read More
Doing meetups and attending conferences is great for uncovering new startups and entrepreneurs, but sometimes you just want to sit down over coffee for a few minutes and explain what you’re doing. So I’m starting a new series of one-to-one sessions which will hopefully be fairly regular (schedule allowing). I’ll be doing “Open Office Hours” sessions at various locations associated with startups, and as I’m based in London that’s where I’ll mainly be doing them. The idea is you apply for a slot and wait for confirmation. This isn’t about long meetings, it’s more about getting a quick heads-up and then following up later. Next week I’ll be at startup space White Bear Yard, home to Passion Capital and a number of their startups. You can sign up for a slot here. The next session after that will be at Innovation Warehouse, slots here. To follow other sessions, here’s my OHours profile or follow me on Twitter, Facebook or Google+. → Read More
If a consumer mobile fad comes and goes, and you don’t play consolidation musical chairs, what do you do next?
This is kind of what happened to Kik, a Canadian startup that took off with the explosive growth of its messaging app last year. Amid the hype around messaging, Kik raised $8 million in funding from RRE Ventures, Spark Capital and Union Square Ventures. Not too long after, Kik’s rivals Beluga and GroupMe got acquired in some respectable (but not crazy huge) deals by Facebook and Skype last year.
Meanwhile, Kik has stayed independent and is charting a completely different course.
About two months ago, they launched Clik, a mobile app that lets you control a TV right from your phone. There are a few steps to making it work, but the major plus to Clik is that it doesn’t require additional hardware. You point your desktop or smart TV browser at ClikThis.com, which generates a unique QR code (which are two-dimensional barcodes). Then you open the Clik iPhone or Android app, aim the camera at the screen, and the phone syncs to the TV or computer. Once they’re connected, you can use your phone like a remote control to play YouTube videos on your TV. → Read More
Facebook today explained why it has taken a positive stance on the Cyber Intelligence Sharing and Protection Act, or “CISPA”, bill currently under consideration in the United States Congress. The social networking company is one of a group of tech companies that have announced support for CISPA — Microsoft, Oracle, Intel, IBM, and Symantec are also among its backers.
In a post today on the official blog for Facebook’s Washington D.C. office, the company’s U.S. public policy VP Joel Kaplan wrote that Facebook is supporting CISPA in part because it would not ask Facebook to share any more of its own user data than is currently required. → Read More
The heart of Jeff Bezos’ mission has always to circumvent the traditional “gatekeepers” of commerce. He started with books, an industry ripe for disruption, and moved onto, well, everything else. At this point, his vision has come true. The old gatekeepers in the book sales cycle are on the ropes and electronics companies are already planning to collude in order to maintain a “minimum” accepted price, thereby ensuring Amazon doesn’t eat all of their lunch.
But Amazon is hungry and, like Plainview, they have a long straw. They won’t just eat the world’s lunch, they’ll drink its milkshake, too.
→ Read More
Nokia certainly didn’t waste any time when it came to fixing that pesky data connection bug that popped up in a few first-run Lumia 900s. Just two days after Nokia acknowledged the issue and pledged to make things right, they’ve already made that critical update available to those in need. In case you were keeping track, that’s a full three days before Nokia promised to have the fix in the field.
Not too shabby, Nokia.
→ Read More
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