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The Samsung Doth Advertise Too Much, Methinks

ACMAir — Tue, 07 Feb 2012 05:57:20 +0000

At CES, the AOL booth where we worked, did interviews, and ate lunch was just a few short feet from Samsung’s huge Galaxy Note booth, where they were giving out free shirts printed with your caricature, drawn, of course, on a Galaxy Note. There was a line around this thing the entire time we were there, scores of people waiting for hours for their free t-shirt. Outside CES there were enormous banners in the most prominent and expensive ad spots on the convention center. Phone? Tablet? It’s Galaxy Note™! And just yesterday, in a grandiose ad rather out of keeping with their well-done “next big thing” campaign, the Note was made out to be the end of all our troubles, ending the tyranny of using our fingers and letting us circle and cross out and all those things you wish you could do on your obviously-now-obsolete iPhone. But I saw the Note at CES and formed my opinion in about five or six seconds: it’s weak. And that’s why this advertising blitz makes so much sense. First, let me just justify my judgment. At CES, I was handed a Note at some trade event. I felt it, hefted it: weird size, not big enough to make shows and movies and games pop, not small enough to be considered compact in any way. I was handed the pen, and made a few squiggles and letters. It was, like almost all active stylus LCDs, slightly laggy, accurate up to a point, and generally unsatisfying. And I’m in favor of using a stylus . The rest of the details will be in our full review when we get one for that purpose (I won’t be writing it), but as far as I’m concerned, it’s a pointless device. But that’s not what this article is about. The thing is all this advertising. It reminded me very much of movies recently where they don’t allow advance reviews, gag people who go to screenings, and saturate the airwaves with promotional material. In the case of the movie, it’s so people will form a resolution to see the movie before the critics start beating on it. And even then, that earlier drive to see it will often overcome bad reviews. Who among us hasn’t gone to a blockbuster regardless of reviews? Samsung is doing the same thing with the Galaxy Note. Although of course the European version has already been reviewed, consumers at large are not aware of that and likely think it’s a different product. Samsung is carpet bombing the world with Galaxy Note advertising so that people will decide they want it before they find out that it’s not, in fact, a killer product. Sure, it might be great for a few people who were looking for this kind of thing. But like the Flyer , HTC’s stylus-enabled tablet of old, it fails to deliver on its own promise. The screen and stylus aren’t new or interesting technology, nor is the OS. And as for the size, well, Dell tried it . But again, the point is not the device itself, which I obviously don’t like, it’s the launch strategy. Sure, other companies have big launches all the time. But this is the biggest delta that I’ve seen, I think, between the effort to promote and the real confidence in the device. I think they put all this weight behind the Note because if they didn’t, the thing would sink without a trace. This way they might sell a few. And there’s nothing wrong with that. But treating the consumer electronics world like the movie world and selling on hype alone isn’t likely going to be a winning proposition. Devices can’t succeed on spectacle, and the economics are totally different. Samsung makes a lot of great things, but the Note is not one of those things. It’s an awkward experiment that they felt could only break even on if they promoted it so relentlessly that people would have to believe it was a big-deal device. It’s a troubling trend and marks another point on the trend of CE companies competing awkwardly on either personality or spec. Few CE companies have any personality, unfortunately, and spec-sells are at best misleading and at worst a pack of lies. Samsung has no personality, and the Galaxy Note’s specs aren’t really salable. So they’re in the awkward position of selling by sheer visibility.

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The Samsung Doth Advertise Too Much, Methinks

Arianna Wants To Put A Nap Room In TechCrunch HQ. LOL.

Achilles — Sat, 04 Feb 2012 03:48:36 +0000

This funny little piece of email just got forwarded to me … From: “****, ***” Date: February 3, 2012 10:11:04 AM PST To: Greg Barto [@ TechCrunch] Subject: NapQuest Hey Greg It is one of our goals to get a “nap room” set-up in every location. Basically, it’s a closed room where we would put a chaise or couch, darken the windows and allow people to nap as the [sic] like. This is high on the priority list for Arianna and your office is one of the few where we don’t yet have it in place. When I visited your office on Wednesday, I looked around. It strikes me that the room (3rd office from the back corner) might be a good choice? There are currently a couple of desks in there we would need to remove. Then I would purchase the furniture and arrange to have the window glass tinted. What do you think? I just need your agreement to move ahead and I will coordinate making it happen. Let me know. Thanks, **** **** Sr. Facilities Manager, PA/SF Corporate Services, AOL Inc. 395 Page Mill Road Palo Alto, CA 94306 After making a bunch of “nap room” jokes and laughing uncontrollably like a hyperactive child around the office, I’ve finally figured out why this “high Arianna priority” (LOL) strikes me as so funny — other than the fact THAT IT IS ACTUALLY CALLED NapQuest. This is Silicon Valley, where we herald founders like Jack Dorsey for working 16 hour days (at not one, but two! companies). People at startups are never not working. Silicon Valley absolutely, positively doesn’t need a nap room because in theory we don’t sleep, let alone nap (and if we do need to nap — like in an emergency — we take that shiz home, far far away from hungry competitors!). Please Aol Mr. Sr. Facilities Manager, take that money and buy us a bunch of Diet Coke to drink late at night or that great beef jerky we used to have or a copyediting slave intern or passes to Burning Man or anything but a room specifically designed for being less productive. Oh sure, it could be worse. At least they’re not trying to install one of these things. Image: Roger Jegg – Fotodesign-Jegg.de

Fear Not: Google Will Still Support The Verizon Galaxy Nexus

bestcbstore — Sat, 04 Feb 2012 03:29:23 +0000

Earlier this afternoon Droid-Life noticed something strange: the Android developer devices page had been modified to remove the Verizon Galaxy Nexus, leading the site to question whether Google may have removed support for the device because of its spat with Verizon over Google Wallet. Which would stand to infuriate a lot of new Galaxy Nexus users (including myself), who are looking forward to receiving device updates directly from Google and not having to wait for Verizon to get around to pushing their own releases. Thankfully, we’ve confirmed this isn’t the case: Google says it will indeed be updating the Verizon Galaxy Nexus in the future. Turns out Droid Life made a bit of a logical leap, as the page stated that No CDMA Devices were supported any more, and other devices including the Sprint Nexus S 4G had been removed as well. In response to the post, Google has written a clarification to the Android Contributors group, in which it explains that CDMA devices are being removed from the Android Open Source Project site because they need carrier-signed .apk files (which users can’t generate). Here’s the post: Hello! This is a quick clarification about support for CDMA devices. For various technical reasons, recent CDMA Android devices implement core telephony functionality in .apk files provided in binary form by the carriers. To function correctly, these .apk files must be signed by the so-called “platform” key. However, when an individual creates a custom build from the AOSP source code, they don’t use the same signing key as these CDMA flies were signed with. The result is that these files don’t work properly, and pure AOSP builds running on these devices can’t place calls, access mobile data, and so on. Because we aim to make sure that we are as clear as possible about the degree of support that devices have, we updated the docs over at source.android.com to reflect this reality. We will still make available as many as possible of the closed-source binaries for these devices, and Nexus devices will continue to have unlockable bootloaders. And, of course, GSM/HSPA+ devices are still supported, as are any other devices we’re able to support. We’ve simply updated the documentation to be clearer about the current extent of CDMA support. We are of course always working to improve support, and we’ll keep everyone updated as we make improvements. Thanks as always for your interest in AOSP! – Dan

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Fear Not: Google Will Still Support The Verizon Galaxy Nexus

HuffPo Unique Visitors Up 47%, Plans Streaming Network To Kill Cable News

Administrator — Fri, 03 Feb 2012 03:04:06 +0000

Say what you will about The Huffington Post and AOL, their merger has given HuffPo the resources to conquer the online news aggregation business. Today HuffPo dropped some big stats about the year since its acquisition, most importantly a 47% growth of monthly unique visitors to 36.2 million. Next it’s aiming to take down CNN and the cable news industry with The Huffington Post Streaming Network , which will stream content live on the web for 12 hours a day. HuffPo proudly announced that it added 170 editors and reporters, as well as 9,884 bloggers. Omitted was the fact that it laid off 120 editorial staff members earlier this year, and that swaths of Huffington Post freelance bloggers got the axe in favor of full-time journalists. On a brighter note, the site launched 44 new verticals, including HuffPost Green, and HuffPost Gay Voices, which are topping the comScore unique visitor charts for their categories. The Huffington Post Streaming Network, or HPSN its abbreviated, will be “a never-ending talk show” to “mirror the Internet experience” says HuffPo founding editor Roy Sekoff. 100 employees in HuffPo’s NYC and LA office will work on the project which launches next quarter, and it will bump up to 16 hours of streaming a day next year. Hollywood Reporter says there will also be on-demand clips, that the live stream will include a news ticker at the bottom, and that viewers will be encouraged to video call in and participate. Regarding the potential to become a full blown cable tv network, Sekoff said “We are happy to have it happen as long as we stay true to our format. We do not want to become like everyone else.” YouTube recently announced partnerships with 100 content providers including Reuters , Slate, and SB Nation to create original web tv series. Unfortunately, you still have to make an active choice of what to watch next when you finish a video, as shown above. HPSN is another example of the tech industry disrupting the inefficiency of old world media. Right now, news junkies have to pay enormous monthly cable bills to get a constant supply of video content. Sure they could go online and bounce from news clip to news clip, but that experience is exhausting. HPSN’s relaxing, laid back experience will work on the web, but it could be a big winner on internet-capable televisions. Disclosure: The Huffington Post is owned by AOL, TechCrunch’s parent company. Image Credit: Shutterstock – Arcady

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HuffPo Unique Visitors Up 47%, Plans Streaming Network To Kill Cable News

AOL Beats The Street, Q4 Revenue Down 3 Percent To $577M

A D M I N — Wed, 01 Feb 2012 20:36:56 +0000

AOL reported better than expected fourth quarter earnings this morning. The company, which owns TechCrunch, reported revenue of $576.8 million, which is down 3 percent from Q4 2010 revenue of $596 million. Earnings came in at $0.23 per share, or $22.8 million, which is down 66 percent from $66.2 million a year ago. Analysts expected $0.16 per share. AOL says total revenue decline was its lowest rate of revenue decline in 5 years. While global advertising revenue was 10%, subscription revenue declined by 18%. AOl also saw a 15% growth in global display revenue and a 20% growth in third party network revenue. “AOL took a large step forward in Q4 and I am very pleased with the way we ended the year,” said AOL’s CEO Tim Armstrong. “Our Q4 results highlight AOL’s ability to methodically improve our consumer offering and financial performance. We continue to invest in AOL and will continue to improve our operations during 2012.” The company says that traffic was flat from Q3 2011 as “growth in the Huffington Post Media Group sites offset declines at MapQuest and AIM.” View this document on Scribd

DMARC Promises A World Of Less Phishing

user — Mon, 30 Jan 2012 14:31:43 +0000

Some 15 companies, including Google, Facebook, Microsoft, Yahoo, PayPal plan to jointly work on a standard for blocking phishing e-mails by verifying that they come from legitimate companies. It seems obvious that trusted, legitimate companies could come together to do this, but it’s only started happening in the last 18 months. DMARC.org – or the Domain-based Message Authentication, Reporting, and Conformance – is a new white-list system will be available for use across the Internet. The other companies in the DMARC working group are AOL, Bank of America, Fidelity Investments, American Greetings, LinkedIn, and e-mail security providers Agari, Cloudmark, eCert, Return Path, and Trusted Domain Project. The move follows an announcement in November that Google, Microsoft, Yahoo, AOL, and Agari were authenticating emails from Facebook, YouSendIt, and other e-commerce companies and social networks. DMARC said the anti-phishing initiative has actually been going on for the last 18 months. According to Google, about 15 percent of all e-mail comes from members of DMARC, but by published their DMARC records, these records can not be domain spoofed. This makes the anti-phising group much more effective at stopping criminal gangs from using phasing to dupe unsuspecting users. DMARC.org plans to submit the DMARC specification to the Internet Engineering Task Force for standardisation. So perhaps we’ll start to see the ending of phishing once and for all.

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DMARC Promises A World Of Less Phishing

Mint Competitor And Personal Finance Platform HelloWallet Raises $12M From Morningstar

Budowniczy425 — Thu, 26 Jan 2012 20:25:47 +0000

HelloWallet, a personal finance software, has raised $12 million in Series B funding from Morningstar and TD Fund. The startup previously raised $9 million in Series A funding, from Grotech Ventures and AOL co-founder Steve Case’s VC fund Revolution Ventures. HelloWallet, which launched last year, helps users track and proactively manage their personal finances from both the web and mobile. But HelloWallet aims to be a full-service financial advisor, and looks forward to proactively uncover savings opportunities and potential threats for its members. Additionally, HelloWallet does not allow banks to advertise or promote products, so its recommendations claim to be untouched by any business interests. The startup plans to use the fund to further product development and build out its businesses development team. HelloWallet’s team of consumer finance experts have developed a platform that helps users set and reach specific financial short- and long-term goals for important life milestones including buying a home, saving for retirement, reducing debt safely, and saving for college. For example, HelloWallet stores tuition information for nearly every college and university across the country, and models the tuition out to a users’ expected enrollment date. The service is then able to make specific recommendations for the best approach to educational savings, on an individual basis. The company has sold more than 300,000 subscriptions since it launched its enterprise application in mid-2011. During this same period, HelloWallet’s personalized financial guidance has helped its average members increase their monthly savings contributions by more than 80 percent, creating about $350 in extra savings contributions every month per person. The new funding will be used to expand its client base.

CloudFlare Builds ‘Stop Censorship’ App, Lets Sites Easily “Black Out” Against SOPA

blogger — Tue, 17 Jan 2012 05:08:41 +0000

Whatever position you may take on SOPA, or on whether or not sites should black out against SOPA (Yes it has come to this), the issue has reached a boiling point today with sites like Wikipedia and Reddit pledging to blackout on Wednesday in order to further raise awareness of the measure’s pitfalls. Because SOPA and PIPA threaten the existence of sites that link to copyright infringing content (like Twitter, Wikipedia, Facebook and every other site on the Internet) the bills — which are currently stalled in Congress — have sparked a massive online backlash. In addition to Reddit, Wikipedia and Icanhazcheezburger , Web security startup CloudFlare has thrown its large hat into the anti-SOPA ring, with the “CloudFlare Stop Censorship” app — which essentially solves investor Fred Wilson’s problem of not knowing exactly how to black out. As of 4pm PST, anyone who uses CloudFlare can download the app with one click from the CloudFlare App Marketplace (and those who don’t can grab the code from Github here ). “We thought it was an effective way to reach a mass audience and raise awareness about the dangers of a law like SOPA/PIPA,” CloudFlare founder Matthew Prince told me, “We see more than 25 billion page views per month for more than 400 million unique visitors. To give you some sense, that’s more page views than Amazon.com , Twitter, Wikipedia, Zynga, and AOL — combined . 400 million uniques is about 25% of the Internet’s entire population.” Prince spent most of the weekend making sure that everything was in working order and that use of the app wouldn’t affect site search ranking. Prince plans to keep the app available for the next month or so until the threat of SOPA has passed, he tells me, “I’m a recovering lawyer and still teach Internet & Technology law, so this is a subject I’ve been following closely and understand the real risks of. I’m pretty excited we’re helping make it easy for sites that want to participate in Wednesday’s blackout to do so.”

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CloudFlare Builds ‘Stop Censorship’ App, Lets Sites Easily “Black Out” Against SOPA

Microsoft Bing Search Queries Overtake Yahoo For The First Time In December

jos — Wed, 11 Jan 2012 21:48:37 +0000

comScore has released its search data for December 2011, and Google continues to dominate in terms of share, with 65.9%, compared with 65.4% in November 2011 and 66.6% in December 2010. Year-over-year, queries increased 9.7% in December. Yahoo queries came in with 14.5% share, compared with 15.1% in November 2011 and 16.0% in December 2010. Microsoft’s Bing’s share of searches in December was 15.1%, compared with 15% in November 2011 and 12.0% in December 2010. Since Bing powers Yahoo search, combined the two search engine’s share of searches was 29.6%, compared with 30.1% in November 2011. AOL queries declined 8% in December with 1.6% share. In terms of search queries, this was the first month Bing overtook Yahoo in terms of search queries, says Citi analyst Mark Mahaney. Both search portals are powered by the same technologies but clearly Yahoo search traffic is declining, which is just another problem added to new CEO’s Scott Thompson’s list of problems for the company. As Mahaney writes in his report citing the new data, “Scott Thompson has his work cut out for him.”

Colbert Asks Steve Case About The ‘Sharing Economy’, Invents Toasterster

ACMAir — Fri, 06 Jan 2012 17:58:46 +0000

Steve Case , the co-founder of AOL (which owns TechCrunch blah blah blah) and founder of Revolution , was on The Colbert Report yesterday to get interrupted by host Stephen Colbert after every other word he spoke while attempting to explain the ‘sharing economy’ to him and the audience. Fortunately for viewers, the interruptions were amusing, especially when Colbert lays out his vision for a new startup called Toasterster, which would enable New Yorkers to pick up and ‘rent’ toasters at a central location and return them there after using it for the couple of minutes they need it for. He made the rookie mistake of not securing toasterster.com though (gone in 3, 2, 1 …).

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Colbert Asks Steve Case About The ‘Sharing Economy’, Invents Toasterster