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Tim Armstrong — I Love TechCrunch And It Made AOL Cool Again

admin2 — Wed, 23 May 2012 00:58:20 +0000

A panel run by TechCrunch’s Josh Constine with with Tim Armstrong, CEO of AOL and Melissa Brenner of the NBA was billed as being about how social advertising is working for those content brands. In the end, we heard a lot more about the future path of AOL and TechCrunch perhaps. But let’s review. Armstrong admitted that AOL was originally built as a portal and on a subscription model but that it needed to head in a content direction. He said the overall premise is that “content is going to be what differentiates platforms” from search and social. AOL “invested early in the curve and deep into content” in order to tie in business models and eventually move into paid content. A social strategy offers the possibility of huge distribution for this content play. But, asked Constine, was there a do-or-die moment regarding portals? Armstrong’s view is that “humans need curated information daily” and that may even mean the old notion of a portal coming back into vogue – something that helps people go about their daily lives. That requires content brands. He admitted that despite having some dissident shareholders that “don’t believe”, in the content strategy, most of AOL’s shareholders do believe in it. But should portals be powered by engineers or one where the brands and the people behind them “leave if they’re not treated right,” asked Constine in a barely veiled reference to Michael Arrington’s controversial departure last year. Armstrong took the diplomatic path. It’s important to “let strong strong brands thrive” he said, and AOL was “becoming a house of strong brands”. But, pushed Constine, why did people leave TechCrunch and Engadget? It was at this point that Armstrong was on the spot to address the issue directly. AOL has focused on letting its “brands have their own voices.” We will check the audio again, but I believe has also added “I don’t think you’ll see AOL play a super heavy role again in those.” So perhaps confirmation that AOL effectively plans to dial down its own brand in favour of pushing its portfolio of individual content brands. He went on. AOL invested in CrunchFund for instance… (yes I believe we’ve heard of that). Armstrong had a chat with Arrington backstage in fact (we’d love to have been a fly on the wall for that one). But AOL is now figuring out the branded content business for the next few decades. But by now Constine was on a roll. What did Tim think about looking “like a dark overlord”? “Did it drive people away?”. Ok… Armstrong came back. It’s about entrepreneurs, he said. Some sell up (to AOL) and leave and some don’t and stay put. His job as CEO is about making those brands thrive, and trying to keep the entrepreneurs involved and engaged. A lot of entrepreneurs have taken on bigger roles inside AOL he said, we presume referring to Arianna Huffington, rather than Michael Arrington. Constine kept on. Did TechCrunch make AOL cool again? Tim: “I think it did, and I hope to keep that atmosphere.” Ok folks, then we were back to talking about the actual topic for the panel… “How is AOL’s ad business going?” “It’s doing well”, said Armstrong. The ad space is getting more data-driven, and he’s placing his bets on Project Devil for instance. He said AOL’s ad network recovered from a double digit decline to double digit growth. AOL is building a CMS into the ad business to let brands be social. Melissa Brenner of the NBA said the NBA is “in the content business” and it’s up to her group to determine the best platforms for that. Social “has a place” said Armstrong, and Facebook has done a great job, but the content business is about allowing users to share. As a Boston Celtics fan, he said because of its online and social strategy the NBA now feels like it’s about a great deal more than just the TV broadcasts and programming. Constine then asked, “Don’t publishers wish they had Facebook’s data?” Brenner pointed out that without social they would not have realised how big NBA was in places like the Philippines, for instance. One thing AOL is doing that’s different to social is tracking offline behaviour. Social networks have a lot of data, but the content business has a lot of data on the migration between channels. So for instance, AOL knows the highest consumption of fashion information is on Saturday morning and Sunday night. That affects how AOL programs content around social. Brenner said that one big thing with social is that when it first appeared it was about real-time updates. As the NBA got deeper into it, they realised fans would be planning what they were watching that evening and used that to suggest NBA programming. Constine asked what what Facebook could do better, such as launch an off-site ad network. Armstrong said he’d seen 40-50 major AOL ad customers recently and social is a “big topic” for advertisers. So there seems like an opportunity to have a second-generation version of Facebook, which might involve an external ad network. Constine asked about blunders in AOL and the NBA’s strategies to date and the answers ranged from the wrong tweet into the wrong channel, and that perhaps some AOL sites were “over-monetized” (read: too many ads). And “sticking social buttons everywhere” is not the way to go, said Armstrong. Finally, Constine went into curve-ball mode and asked Armstrong which he loved more, TechCrunch or the Huffington Post? “I love them both. They are both my children. But they serve different markets. TechCrunch as a brand has a global opportunity to reconnect the future of where technology is going. Technology touches every person, every household and business. I would hope TechCrunch becomes a global tech property with much bigger scale,” said Armstong. He pointed out that former TechCrunch CEO Heather Harde was consulting with the company after some “scuba diving and yoga”. “I think TC is just starting.”

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Tim Armstrong — I Love TechCrunch And It Made AOL Cool Again

Netflix Co-founder Joins Getable’s Board To Help It Bring The Rental Industry Online

Administrator — Wed, 23 May 2012 00:51:19 +0000

Getable , the artist formerly known as Rentcycle, started out with a mission to bring the rental industry online, offering free, realtime reservations for consumers along with business management tools for local rental shops. It’s an ambitious goal, and one that found almost immediate support from investors . However, in tackling such a big obstacle, the startup quickly learned that it would need to go deeper, so in March, it re-branded as Getable, rebuilt its website, and took a page from OpenTable’s book, launching a more robust in-store rental management solution for local shops. In so doing, Getable made its cloud-management tools available to businesses through both web and iPad apps, allowing businesses to organize inventory data, customer information, payments, view analytics, while managing in-store reservations through the same system they use for online reservations. Like Square meets OpenTable for the whole rental industry. The OpenTable influence in Getable’s solutions for the rental industry is no accident. As part of its seed funding back in August , OpenTable Founder Chuck Templeton joined the startup’s board of directors. In turn, Getable co-founder and CEO Tim Hyer also struck up a relationship with Jeff Jordan, the former chief exec at OpenTable and current partner at Andreessen Horowitz, and both Jordan and Templeton have since, to varying degrees, helped to shape the startup’s approach to the market. And, while it’s certainly a steep hill to climb, that market is a big one, as rentals collectively represent an $85 billion industry. Unsurprisingly, Templeton and Jordan are not alone in seeing both a huge market opportunity and big potential for Getable’s business model. That’s why the startup is today announcing that Marc Randolph , the co-founder and visionary behind Netflix will be joining Templeton and Collaborative Fund Founder Craig Shapiro on the startup’s board of directors. Obviously, this will not be Randolph’s first experience with online rental platforms, having been at least partially responsible for the video rental industry moving online, much to Blockbuster’s chagrin. He also currently serves on the board of BookRenter.com and has invested in P2P car rental marketplace, Getaround. “The idea of shared access is a concept I first embraced at Netflix,” Randolph said in a statement. “I’ve since had the chance to deepen this commitment through my involvement with Getaround, BookRenter, and Quintess. Getable brings the same kind of access to consumer products, everything from tuxedos and power tools to sporting goods. Moving a traditionally offline industry online is always an exciting challenge.” If payment systems are played correctly and find the right fit for the type of business they serve, they can have the potential to completely alter the customer experience at that local store, including the entire flow of business on the floor. But it’s not easy introducing small merchants, who are used to their offline systems, to a new model. It requires them having to put their entire store, including the way it operates, and flows, in the hands of a new system and technology — in this case, Getable. It’s for this reason that the startup has cleverly decided to focus on a particular geography and a particular vertical. In conjunction with Randolph joining its board, Getable is announcing its first official vertical focus: Bike rental. Like so many others, the majority of bike shops still organize their rental reservations with pencil and paper. And considering Hyer estimates that 2,500 bikes are rented per day to tourists in San Francisco, Getable is focusing its efforts at home, forging partnerships with top bike rental chains like Blazing Saddles, Bay City Bike and Big Swingin’ Cycles, all of which will be using Getable’s tech to run their store operations. Since rolling out its in-store solution last month, Getable has already received commitments from businesses representing more than 50% of all bike rental volume in San Francisco. And with some veteran leadership experience on its board, Getable will be looking to accelerate expand its reach to an even greater extent in the coming weeks. OpenTable and Netflix have both followed extremely successful trajectories in their push to digitize rental services, so you can’t ask for much more than to have their founders in your corner. For more on Getable, check ‘em out at home here.

Forget Those Scraps Of Paper, SnipSnap Lets You Save And Share Coupons From Your iPhone

blogger — Wed, 23 May 2012 00:03:56 +0000

There was a time when I would watch shows like Extreme Couponing with a sense of morbid amusement — there was clearly plenty of money to be saved by clipping bits of dead plant matter out of a newspaper, but the process of keeping track of or remembering them when I go to the store has always stymied me. That may no longer be the case, if Ted Mann and his Philadelphia-based team have anything to say about it. They’ve just released a new iOS app called SnipSnap that’s meant to simplify the process of snipping, saving, and even sharing those money-saving scraps of paper. Click to view slideshow. In a nutshell, SnipSnap lets you snap pictures of all your coupons and save them on your iPhone so they’re handy when you’re put in the field. Taking the picture is just the beginning though — from there, the images are uploaded to SnipSnap servers where all the pertinent information (barcode, expiration date, cashier code) are pulled from the image and and saved alongside it so your cashier won’t have to try and scan or read something off a photograph. The idea for SnipSnap came to be after co-founder (and father of two) Ted Mann found himself at the store buying diapers at full price after realizing he left his much-needed coupons at home. After chewing on the idea for a while he rallied local techies Kostas Nasis and Kyle Martin to become the company’s CTO and VP of Product respectively, and got to work building the app towards the end of last year. There’s a strong social aspect at play here too. Unlike some other competitors in the mobile coupon space, SnipSnap relies mostly on users to clip the coupons they find interesting and share them with others. Though that means there may be fewer coupons to discover during the early days, they’re coupons that other people have found worthy of saving. Oh, and my favorite bit — if you have, say, a Target coupon saved in SnipSnap, the app will issue a push notification whenever you’re near a Target store. On top of that SnipSnap also lets you know when individual coupons are close to expiring, so you can plan your next shopping trip(s) accordingly. I’m not the sort of person who normally even pays attention to coupons because of the hassle they usually entail, the app managed to make a convert out of me. The moment I managed to get 10% lopped off of a bill at an Indian restaurant thanks to a coupon someone else shared sealed the deal — I’m a couponer now (my girlfriend will be thrilled). As useful as SnipSnap sounds in theory, it isn’t without its potential headaches. While the service was still in its beta testing phase, some users found that certain stores just wouldn’t accept coupons that weren’t physically in customers’ hands. There’s not much the SnipSnap team could do to change store policy, so they added the ability to report on whether or not the coupon worked a la RetailMeNot . SnipSnap also doesn’t play well with manufacturer coupons (like the kind you get at the grocery store), though Mann assures me that the team is working on getting that functionality live as soon as they can. While they’ve been slaving away on the app, they’ve been honing their monetization plans too — SnipSnap aims to generate revenue by offering coupons and affiliate offers to users based on the coupons they’ve already scanned and redeemed in stores. If you’re a big pet lover and have scanned handsful of pet store coupons for instance, don’t be surprised if you get pushed a full-screen offer for PetSmart (just an example). The company is also looking at partnerships with major retailers, and Mann noted onstage that they just recently linked up with Aeropostale. Disrupt Q&A Q. What’s stopping retailers from not taking these coupons? A. We leave that up to the retails, but our coupon success ratings are a good indicator of which coupons to use. Q. What demographic is most likely to clip coupons? A. Usually females from between 30 to 50 years old. Q. What’s the barrier to entry here? It seems straightforward enough to copy this. A. Pulling in data and interpreting coupons isn’t a simple thing to do, and we’re going to move as fast as we can to stay ahead of the competition. Q. Is a focus on analog coupons the right move right now, with digital deals becoming more popular? A. We’re building our user base by taking printed coupons and turning them digital, but we’ll be offering more digital deals over time.

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Forget Those Scraps Of Paper, SnipSnap Lets You Save And Share Coupons From Your iPhone

Tagbrand Gives Fashionistas An App To Check-In Their Brands

vertical8 — Tue, 22 May 2012 03:00:42 +0000

“All people wear clothes!” declared one of Tagbrand’s founders on stage at Disrupt today. That’s true, but let’s review. DailyBooth was (is still perhaps?) a phenomenon for a time as people became accustomed to sharing their daily lives in a more quirky manner than mere video can afford. (Ok, OK, it’s a bunch of teenagers sharing their zits, but work with me here, people). Now Tagbrand wants to apply that model to fashion, but with a tagging twist. The model is simple enough. Take and upload photos of what branded clothes you are wearing and tag them. Effectively, it’s a photo check-in for brands, or ‘Foursquare for fashion’, if you will. The twist is that users are encouraged to tag up pictures with a visual tag of what brand each item of clothing is. Alas, the site does not yet do visual recognition of the clothes. Maybe one day… TagBrand doesn’t call this check-ins, but – wait for it – “brand-ins”. People can then comment or vote on the brands their friends are wearing. Clearly the opportunity here is to capture a fashion-obsessed audience and provide a platform for advertisers. Thus, although Tagbrand is like DailyBooth if everyone on DailyBooth was obsessed with fashion, it’s this tagging element which looks pretty viral. The product combines contains brands, polls and e-commerce. There’s a lot of virality built into the service – every tags has a Twitter or Facebook button on it. But clearly the people who do this are obsessed with fashion. TagBrand gives them the tools to be obsessive. The polls certainly feature makes the experience more entertaining when you’re trying clothes out. Now, clothing brands and retail stores are constantly chasing these people. This is one way of delivering them a highly targeted audience. Tagbrand’s business model is based on creating a special marketplace for them which is visible while browsing the brand’s tag on a photo. The stores provide Tagbrand with a price-list and its system attaches them to a “Recommended” block. So while browsing their friends’ clothes, users see the real-world item beside the image and can purchase from there (click are on a CPC basis). Users also get delivered latest news on brands they such as new collections. Admittedly they have older competition in the UK operation, WIWT.com , but Tagbrand’s visual tags are a slightly cuter way of doing it. TagBrand has secured a $100,000 seed investment from Russian investor Glavstart, while founders Ivan Olenchenko and Alexandr Kobozev have been working on startup projects in Russia for a while now. (And we should add they did a pretty good pitch at a TechCrunch meetup in Moscow last year). Q&A Judges asked about extending the app into giving users the ability to upload their own home made brands, and that seemed to be on the cards according to the founders. Currently in Russian and English, the app launches today in the US. The Judges also had an issue about copyright and the images uploaded, which seems a fair point. Right now 80% of usage of the product is on the iPhone app versus 20% on the web. So far they’ve had 15,000 registered users in 2 months with no promotion/marketing just in the Russian market. With about $4.5 billion spent annually on advertising clothes, they reckon there’s plenty of money to be made out there. Da!

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Tagbrand Gives Fashionistas An App To Check-In Their Brands

Stevie Turns Your Social Feeds Into TV Shows

vertical8 — Tue, 22 May 2012 02:47:36 +0000

We spend more and more time on social networks, but sometimes it can feel like work. I mean, scrolling through your news feed isn’t work work, but it’s not quite as easy as vegging out on your couch and watching TV. That’s where a new startup called Stevie comes in, with a website launching today at Disrupt, along with mobile apps that function as remote controls. Stevie looks at content shared in your social network feeds and elsewhere on the Web, and it assembles that content into TV shows that you can watch, shows with names like The Comedy Strip, Music Non-Stop, and Celeb TV. Naturally, the shows incorporate video content that your friends have shared, but they also include things like Facebook status updates, tweets, shared headlines, and birthdays, running mostly as tickers under the video. Essentially, it’s a way to watch Facebook and Twitter on your TV. Co-founder and Chief Creative Technologist Gil Rimon argues that this is the right way to do “social TV.” Apps like GetGlue, which offer check ins and other social interactions around existing TV content, aren’t a good fit for how people watch TV now, because they ignore its essentially passive nature. Stevie takes the opposite tack — instead of trying to encourage new types of behavior, it’s introducing new content into the traditional couch potato experience. Rimon compares the app to Pandora. In the same way that Pandora learns your musical tastes and preferences, automatically delivering music that’s tailored to your tastes, Stevie uses something that the team calls “The Stevie Factor” to look at your social data (such as Facebook Likes) and automatically stitch together the videos and other content that you’ll probably enjoy. When Rimon demonstrated Stevie for me, I was particularly impressed by the look and feel. Granted, I don’t watch much TV aside from Game of Thrones and Doctor Who , but the video content struck me as quite bubbly and polished, especially for something that was being algorithmically assembled on-the-fly. Rimon’s experience in TV writing, editing, and presenting probably helps with that. I expect Stevie will become even more appealing when it’s available on connected TV devices. The company has raised $300,000 in angel funding from investors including Jeff Pulver and Gigi Levy, and it’s participating in the Microsoft Accelerator for Azure program in Tel Aviv. Oh, and if you’re interested in couples who run startups, here’s another one — Rimon is married to his co-founder and CEO Yael Givon. You can visit the Stevie website here , download the iPhone app here , and download the Android app here . (Again, the apps aren’t standalone experiences, but remote controls for watching on the browser.) Disrupt Q&A Q: How do you connect the Internet to the TC? A: We’re not delivering hardware — it’s a web-based experience, with more devices (starting with iPad) coming soon. Q: Who is your competition? A: No direct competition, though of course there are other video discovery companies. But they’re not replicating the TV experience. The real competitor might be old-fashioned TV channels. Q: Why hasn’t connected TV taken off? A: That’s changing — see, for example, the growth of Apple TV.

KurbKarma: A Social Network, And App, To Find Parking Where And When You Need It

A D M I N — Tue, 22 May 2012 01:46:08 +0000

We have all been there: you are in your car, you need to park, and you cannot, no matter how much you try, find a space. You see cars pulling away, but it’s too far for you to get there before another car swoops in. You see people walking and you trail them, hoping they’re heading to a vehicle. It’s a frustrating state of affairs, but a new startup, KurbKarma , is launching today at TC Disrupt New York to try to solve it. “Parking where and when you need it” is the basic idea here: you have people who have spaces they are about to leave; and you have people who need spaces. The app works like an ad-hoc social network to link these people up. Those who have a space can post their status on an app, those who need a space find one on the map. The app integrates with Google Maps to plot spaces near you, and lets you send messages — several sendable with the touch of a button — to let the space owners know how far away you are. Spaces are “sold” with KarmaKredits: people who donate their spot pick up one KarmaKredit. People who need a space use two KarmaKredits to buy them. Like many of the best ideas out there, KurbKarma came out of the immediate needs of its founders. Neha Sampat and Matthew Baier are friends with longstanding backgrounds in tech, who are both also qualified as sommeliers, and they had a plan to get together to scheme for their next enological activity. Arranging to meet in the North Beach district of San Francsico, they drove around, looking for a place to park — which can be an impossible task in that part of town. By the time finally found a place to park, they knew what they had to do next: try to solve this problem for themselves and others. What’s interesting about the app is that it has both a practical and a moral twist to it. “There’s an element of paying it forward,” says Baier. “It’s a community effort to make parking easier; you are adding additional parking spaces to the public domain.” He also points out that the app helps aid the “peace of mind” of the driver, allowing them to focus on driving rather than looking off the road for a spot. But it’s not all about charity and goodwill: KurbKarma has also started to work a revenue model into the business, in the form of a virtual currency. You can always use the app free of charge, but if you have not had the chance to pick up KarmaKredits by offering spaces to the network, you can buy some through the App Store, with each credit costing $0.99. The app is free in the app store, and every new user gets 10 free KarmaKredits for signing up. The pair have been picking up a mailing list of users for launch with a bit of viral marketing that has clearly struck a chord in the traffic-choked streets of San Francisco: they went around a few areas of town — including the financial district and Dolores Park — and put what looked like parking tickets under the wipers of various cars. Then they stepped back to watch: people would pick them up, thinking “Oh no, not another parking ticket,” said co-founder Matthew Baier. Inside: a note about how annoying parking can be with a link to a fun domain offering a solution for how to improve it. (example: parkingisabitch.com ) They’ve collected 2,500 names this way so far. In the future, there are some exciting developments planned for KurbKarma. They include an Android version to complement the iOS app coming out today. And there are also discussions with other device makers (eg GPS system producers) to integrate with some of the other tools that drivers already use to get around. (The reason that the pair went with iOS first, says Sampat, is because they are launching in New York and San Francisco — both cities where people use their smartphones for navigation; in the future, when the company expands to other markets, especially in regions like Europe with GPR in-car navigations systems are very popular, other hardware will need to come into play.) Baier also says that KurbKarma is working on expanding the kinds of spaces that they will integrate into the app: right now it’s geared at public parking, but down the line there will also be options to take private parking, in the form of garages, driveways and other off-street spaces. And, crucially for the business’ scale, it is talking with some large third parties that already focus on car-based city travel to help market the offering. I have to admit when I first heard the idea for KurbKarma, I had my doubts: it puts too much weight on the goodwill of other people, and being able to plan and stick to commitments with total strangers — and there are so many variables: traffic that can delay you; people needing to rush away and leave the space before they said they would; and people changing their mind and staying longer than originally intended. There are some elements already worked into the app that should help discourage flaky behavior, such as user ratings after a transaction is completed (or not, as the case may be): “It will happen from time to time that people leave,” notes Sampat. “But if they do that they will see negative ratings. The ratings will weed out those who do not follow the rules.” And sometimes it is the most unlikely — and original — of ideas that really take off. Just think of Airbnb and the idea of people who had never thought of themselves as ad-hoc hoteliers suddenly giving up rooms in their private homes: that, too, sounded like a big leap for people to take. And yet today I think it’s miles better than most of the hotel options many cities offer. “Sharing models are becoming more mainstream,” says Baier. “The idea is already out there.” I’d put a few KarmaKredits on KurbKarma striking a similar chord.

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KurbKarma: A Social Network, And App, To Find Parking Where And When You Need It

Backstage With The Disrupt NYC Hackathon Winners: Thingscription, PoachBase, & PractiKhan

blogger — Mon, 21 May 2012 08:40:52 +0000

The speaker schedule for TechCrunch’s Disrupt NYC conference has been set for a while now, but three brand new presenters were just added to the lineup: The winners announced earlier today at the finale of this past weekend’s 24 hour Disrupt 2012 Hackathon, Thingscription , PoachBase , and PractiKhan . Since the winning apps were so seriously awesome — and we have a very, very small sadistic bent (most of these people had not slept for at least 24 hours at this point , so a video interview with bright lights was especially fun) — we pulled aside all three winning teams for interviews with TechCrunch TV backstage. Embedded above you can see our chat with the people who built the Hackathon’s first place winner, ThingScription, a platform to let people get subscriptions for deliveries of potentially any consumer good. And in the videos below, you’ll first find our interviews with three of the five-person team that built the second-place Hackathon winner PoachBase, a web app for finding the most poach-able potential hires in the tech industry. Below that is the developer behind the third-place winner PractiKhan, an app that lets teachers create online lessons and tests utilizing content from Khan Academy.

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Backstage With The Disrupt NYC Hackathon Winners: Thingscription, PoachBase, & PractiKhan

Report: Pakistan Blocks Twitter Over Blasphemous Content, Facebook Complies?

vertical8 — Sun, 20 May 2012 15:58:26 +0000

Another day, another example of a country making it harder for its people to use the web and some of its most effective channels of communication. There are reports coming in from Pakistan that it has become the latest country to ban the use of Twitter. According to the blog Dawn , the chairman of Pakistan’s telecommunications authority has today imposed the restriction because of blasphemous content: it reports that Chairman Mohammad Yaseen blocked the site today “because Twitter refused to remove material related to a competition on Facebook to post images of Islam’s Prophet Muhammad.” Facebook, apparently, has complied with the request, says the blog. Others are now starting to report the same circumstances, and below the break we have a screenshot of how accessing the site looks from one of our readers in Lahore who says he “cannot access the site at all.” Getting blocked in Pakistan is particularly ironic because the two, paired up, played a major role in one of the most important news events to be broken in recent history: the raid and demise of Osama bin Laden, which was tweeted by at least two people watching the raids as they happened in the mountains of the country. This is a developing (and slightly confusing) story: just yesterday, about 12 hours ago, Senator Rehman Malik, of Pakistan’s People Party, tweeted that nothing was getting blocked: “Dear all, I assure u that Twitter and FB will continue in our country and it will not be blocked. Pl do not believe in rumors,” he wrote. We have contacted Twitter and Facebook for their responses to this story. Update : more details coming in from Pakistan’s Express Tribune : The request to block the site was made by the Ministry of Information and Technology, it says, citing the competition on Facebook. The ministry, apparently, made several requests to Twitter, which responded that it “cannot stop any individual doing anything of this nature on the website.” Directives to block the site were sent to ISPs in several parts of the country, including PTCL Broadband and Wi-Tribe. It also reports that Twitter is still accessible by mobile using secure browsers like Opera, as well as proxies and VPNs like Vtunnel. [original report continues] This is not the first time that Twitter has been blocked in the country: a similar ban took place in 2010 for the same reason. That lasted for two weeks. The move underscores how susceptible social networks remain to higher powers in government. And Pakistan is not the only country to pull something like this. Sites like Facebook and Twitter are still officially forbidden in China (although millions use it anyway using VPNs — virtual private networks), with the bans often having strong political overtones around people expressing contary opinions. Developing countries with big populations represent some of the biggest potential growth opportunities for scale-oriented social networks — when they can get used. Even developed countries like the UK have floated ideas about how to restrict the flow of information on social networks — this was something that came up last summer during the London riots and the role that some believed services like BlackBerry Messenger played in gangs getting organized to loot. Update 2 : One of our awesome readers in Lahore, Waqas Ali , sent us this screenshot: Ali also played a role in a campaign in the country to keep Facebook from getting banned. He says that he cannot access Twitter at all right now but that a friend is able to use the Opera Mini browser to access the site. [Image: Farooq on Flickr]

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Report: Pakistan Blocks Twitter Over Blasphemous Content, Facebook Complies?

The Disrupt NYC Hackathon: We’re 8 Hours In

admin2 — Sun, 20 May 2012 05:32:33 +0000

There’s a strong murmur in the room with random spurts of excitement. Hackers and coders have teamed up and mostly (hopefully) decided on a project. There are only 15 hours left. But night is approaching. That’s when things tend to get loopy thanks to the sudden influx of food and beer. So far the event has been fantastic. There’s a 3:2 ratio of Macs vs PCs. Epic t-shirts are everywhere . Caffeine is flowing thanks to Red Bull and Outburst Energy Bites . The event runs until tomorrow morning. Coding a fantastic app is just part of the fun. Starting at 11:00 am tomorrow morning, teams will have one minute to present their project, hopefully winning over the judges for a shot to present at TechCrunch Disrupt. But first the participants need to make it through the night. Click to view slideshow.

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The Disrupt NYC Hackathon: We’re 8 Hours In

The Free Ride Is Over For Streaming Video

bestcbstore — Sat, 19 May 2012 21:45:12 +0000

Comcast’s plans to do away with its 250 GB data cap and charge users based upon usage marks the end of an era for cable TV providers, and for the online video industry. No longer will users be able to endlessly stream all the content their hearts desire. Not just that, but the fact that usage-based pricing is arriving at the same time that more, higher-quality content is appearing online could have a dampening effect on demand for services like Netflix or Hulu Plus. Comcast, of course, says that its new, usage-based pricing policy is pro-consumer, and to a certain extent it is. The average broadband subscriber — those who only use up about 8 GB or 10 GB of data a month — shouldn’t necessarily pay the same as those whose usage goes above 300 GB in the same period of time. But for those of us who are avid streaming video users, usage-based pricing models could change the overall value proposition of watching video on the Internet. Can streaming video be a TV replacement? I’m a subscriber to Netflix, Hulu Plus, and MLB.tv. I have a Roku box and an Apple TV, and I frequently purchase season passes to shows like Mad Men, Justified, and Sons of Anarchy. Even though I don’t pay for cable, I take advantage of access to TV Everywhere applications from the likes of Showtime and HBO, from my family’s Xfinity TV account, as well as test accounts that I occasionally get from some of the cable networks to check out their new services. In other words, I watch streaming video in the same way a lot of other people watch regular TV. But instead of recording shows and watching them from a DVR, I watch them on-demand online. I’m also a Comcast broadband subscriber, and I’m probably what the company would consider a heavy data user. While I’ve never bumped up against the 250GB cap, I’ve definitely started to come close over the last several months. In April I racked up 160 GB of data usage, and about halfway through May, I’ve already used 90 GB. That might be atypical for the average Comcast broadband subscriber, but I think that type of usage is becoming a lot more common, particularly for highly connected people like me. More importantly, the amount of data I’m using has rapidly increased over the last year or so. It wasn’t so long ago that I was typically using less than 100 GB a month. And I expect it to continue increasing, to the point where I wouldn’t be surprised if I hit and surpass Comcast’s new 300 GB data limit at some point over the next 12-18 months. Part of that is due to me just watching more stuff — I’ve been re-watching old episodes from The Wire, for instance, in addition to a regular slate of weekly shows. And with baseball season up and running, I’m streaming a lot more MLB.tv as well. But part of it is also due to more bandwidth being used by higher bit rate streams, as services like Netflix improve the video quality of their products. Putting things into perspective But what about data usage for everyone else? The average video on Netflix uses up about 1 GB of data per hour, but most of those streams aren’t in full HD. The highest quality setting for Netflix, which is what most viewers would like to stream to their TVs, uses more than twice as much data per hour. According to Nielsen, the average TV viewer consumes about five hours of video a day , or about 150 hours of video per month. For those keeping track at home, that means that you’d have to watch even more video online than your typical TV watcher if you ever plan to max out Comcast’s 300 GB allotment. Of course, that’s where things are now, but video quality continues to improve for all of these services, and that means higher bit rates and more data streamed per movie or TV show. What happens as these services improve, as more content and higher-quality content makes its way online? And what happens as more people tune into those services? Today, about 30 percent of users have streamed a video to their TVs, either because they own a so-called “smart TV” that came with access to streaming video services, or because they’ve connected a game console or streaming box (and in some cases a PC) to a dumb TV. What happens when that hits 50 percent? Or 75 percent? Hell, what happens when Apple’s mythical iTV gets released and users suddenly have access to a whole new set of streaming applications in 1080p? That will change the value proposition of online video dramatically. For me, between all the different subscription VOD services and the cost of 8-10 season passes that I buy every year, I’m probably already paying more for streaming services than I would pay for TV if I just purchased a basic cable package. But then, I wouldn’t have the convenience of on-demand access to most of the content that I want from a number of different services and devices. And I also wouldn’t have the pleasure of watching most of that content without ads. For now, it’s a trade-off I’m willing to make. But in the future, if I have to pay an additional $10 for every 50 GB of video I consume over a 300 GB limit, though? Then I’m not so sure it’s worth it. That’s the world we’re about to enter. What Comcast’s moves are really about For me, the debate over Comcast’s treatment of its streaming Xbox Live app isn’t even about net neutrality or whether it treats the traffic of online competitors any differently than it treats its own. What it really comes down to is, do you want to pay for a TV and VOD service that you can stream to your Xbox or an iPad, computer, or connected TV… Or do you want to piece together an alternative solution from a variety of different streaming services? It’s a judgment between the current value of online video offerings versus what you can get from TV. Due to the relatively cheap nature of most online video services, that made the choice easy for people like me. You could pay $100 for an HD cable package and DVR, or you could pay a couple of different services less than $10 a month each for a lot of similar content on-demand. And you could get those streams on pretty much any device you wanted to access them on. But things are changing rapidly. With the introduction of Comcast’s Xbox app, as well as new applications coming on devices like Samsung Connected TVs and other devices, the cable company is making its service a lot more attractive to potential customers. At the same time, the implementation of usage-based pricing changes the potential cost of online video services and makes bundled pay TV and broadband services a lot more attractive as a result. That’s not to say that the recent moves by Comcast are going to kill the online video industry — I think that Netflix, YouTube and others are beginning to create enough value on their own through device access and new original programming to begin offering a real alternative to cable. But it could make people think twice about how they choose to access content and through what services, if it means additional broadband charges down the line.

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The Free Ride Is Over For Streaming Video