Techcrunch.com – Gabriel Catalano®

What Did It Take To Get The Gap To Reverse Its Logo Redesign?

… Only a mocking fake Twitter account, a fake Gap logo generator called Craplogo, a Twitter and Facebook avatar campaign, a failed logo crowd sourcing project, unflattering comparisons to MySpace which also launched a new logo, the unearthing of a Gap branding lawsuit, an Ad Age article which posited that the company had designed an intentionally bad logo on purpose and $247 million dollars in stock loss (the logo design unfortunately coincided with a disappointing sales report, see below). Whew!

From their President of Brand, Marka Hansen.

“We’ve learned a lot in this process. And we are clear that we did not go about this in the right way. We recognize that we missed the opportunity to engage with the online community. This wasn’t the right project at the right time for crowd sourcing.”

Alexia Tsotsis | http://techcrunch.com/2010/10/11/gap-logo-redesign/

From their President of Brand, Marka Hansen.

Google Is Making Your Account Vastly More Secure With Two-Step Authentication

So what exactly is two-factor authentication? Most of the login systems you’ve probably used are only ‘one-factor’ — you enter one password and you’re in, but if that password gets compromised, you’re toast. More secure systems are common in large businesses, and often require both a password and a physical card or dongle to login — these are called ‘two-factor’ systems, because they require both your password and another key, and are far more secure because a hacker probably isn’t going to have that physical token. Unfortunately these security systems are generally quite expensive. But Google is bringing one to the masses.

Jason Kincaid | //techcrunch.com

“Two-factor authentication” may be the least sexy-sounding feature I’ve ever written about. But if you’ve ever worried about being phished or having your password hacked, it could be your best friend — because it makes it much, much harder for a hacker to break into your account. Today, Google is announcing that it’s bringing the security feature to its millions of users: the feature will be rolling out first for Google Apps Premiere, Education, and Government edition customers, with plans to bring it to all Google users (even those who aren’t using its Apps suite) in the next few months.

So what exactly is two-factor authentication? Most of the login systems you’ve probably used are only ‘one-factor’ — you enter one password and you’re in, but if that password gets compromised, you’re toast. More secure systems are common in large businesses, and often require both a password and a physical card or dongle to login — these are called ‘two-factor’ systems, because they require both your password and another key, and are far more secure because a hacker probably isn’t going to have that physical token. Unfortunately these security systems are generally quite expensive. But Google is bringing one to the masses. Continuar leyendo «Google Is Making Your Account Vastly More Secure With Two-Step Authentication»

The Global Education Race

At the event, Kauffman Foundation senior fellow Ben Wildavsky discussed key findings from his book, The Great Brain Race. He documented that student mobility is now taking place to a degree never been seen in history. More than three million students travel outside their home countries to study—a 57 percent increase in just the past decade. What’s more, those extraordinary numbers are projected to nearly triple, to 8 million, by 2025. In a competitive global marketplace, student recruiting is fierce. (New Zealand even resorted to a viral video showing two students making out in the corner of a hot tub; the camera pulls back to show a pair of disapproving adults in the other corner followed by the caption “Get further away from your parents”.)

Western universities are bringing their offerings to students all over the world. There now have more than 160 branch campuses, mostly in the Middle East and Asia—an increase of 43 percent in just a few years.

Vivek Wadhwa | //techcrunch.com

Earlier this week, I participated in a fascinating series of discussions at The Economist magazine’s summit called “The Ideas Economy: Human Potential – When the world grows up”. I came away with the realization that we’re not tapping into even a tiny fraction of the potential that human beings have. Additionally, we have a unique opportunity, today, to leverage the entire world’s talent. In Silicon Valley, in particular, ideas are the currency that matter, and these are the keys to innovation and economic success. Knowledge creation has globalized and there is a fierce race underway for talent. We can fear this all we want, but we have a choice: raise protectionist barriers and lose the race, or recognize the new reality and take advantage of the opportunities for collaboration and innovation. Continuar leyendo «The Global Education Race»

Facebook Is Secretly Building A Phone

Facebook is building a mobile phone, says a source who has knowledge of the project. Or rather, they’re building the software for the phone and working with a third party to actually build the hardware. Which is exactly what Apple and everyone else does, too.

It was a little less than a year ago that we broke the news that Google was working on a phone of its own – which was eventually revealed as the Nexus One. It was about that time, says out source, that Facebook first became concerned about the increasing power of the iPhone and Android platforms. And that awesome Facebook apps for those phones may not be enough to counter a long term competitive threat.

Specifically, Facebook wants to integrate deeply into the contacts list and other core functions of the phone. It can only do that if it controls the operating system.

Two high level Facebook employees – Joe Hewitt and Matthew Papakipos – are said to be secretly working on the project, which is unknown even to most Facebook staff.

Both have deep operating system experience.

Michael Arrington | //techcrunch.com

Specifically, Facebook wants to integrate deeply into the contacts list and other core functions of the phone. It can only do that if it controls the operating system.

Two high level Facebook employees – Joe Hewitt and Matthew Papakipos – are said to be secretly working on the project, which is unknown even to most Facebook staff.

Both have deep operating system experience. Continuar leyendo «Facebook Is Secretly Building A Phone»

Email Overload Fix: 3 Sentence Emails

My inbox problems are nothing compared to the TechCrunch writers. Or, to my boss Michael Arrington. Two years ago, when he wrote a post about email overload and a crisis in communication, he had 2,433 unread messages sitting in his inbox. Today, the count is 8 times higher: 20,131 unread messages. And this doesn’t include additional inbox items from Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, voicemail, text messages, Skype, etc.

Let’s assume Mike did nothing else but read emails 24/7 – no writing posts, no talking on the phone, no eating, and no sleeping – well, that one might be accurate. It would take him 1 week to just read his email, assuming each email takes an average of 30 seconds to read and digest.

Now, let’s say all of his emails were 3 sentences or less. The average time to read them would be drop to about 10 seconds. He could get through them all in a little more than 2 days.

I’ll admit the 3 sentence email isn’t going to solve the email problem completely. In Mike’s email post two years ago, he wrote “The long term answer is that someone needs to create a new technology that allows us to enjoy our life but not miss important messages.” He said if he had the right solution, he would quit his job and go do it. Since then, there have been some minor solutions, but the email giant seems to grow just like Moore’s law.

Jon Orlin | //techcrunch.com

Email is taking up too much time in our lives.

Do yourself and your recipients a favor by making your emails 3 sentences or less.

If we all do it, imagine the time we’ll have to do other things.

If this was an actual email reply and not a blog post, it would have ended before this sentence started. I’ve been trying a new solution to email overload by limiting emails to 3 sentences or less. You can learn the details in just 5 sentences at three.sentenc.es. The basic concept is to treat all email replies like SMS messages. I take this one step further and try to write initial emails in 3 sentences or less whenever possible.

I first learned about 3 sentence emails from a post by Kevin Rose, where he lists 5 good email time saving tips.

The inbox has become the “dreaded inbox” for so many people. A recent study by Xobni claimed 1 in 5 Americans check email either as the first thing they do in the morning or the last thing at night. 26% of Americans feel they can’t handle or feel overwhelmed by the number of emails they receive during vacation. Another report [PDF] by The Radicati Group says the typical corporate user sends 36 emails and receives 61 legitimate emails during the average day. An IDC study estimates email consumes an average of 13 hours per week per information worker.

Since starting at TechCrunch TV, I get about 100 to 200 emails a day which require action or a response. The newly launched Google Priority Inbox, which is getting postive reviews, helps. Although venture investor Jeff Clavier discovered it can make some mistakes. Google decided his wife’s emails weren’t important. Not good. Continuar leyendo «Email Overload Fix: 3 Sentence Emails»

Syncronizer: A Chatroom Community With Twitter-Style Following

Started as a way for University of Michigan students to gossip during class, founder Dan Rich says he was inspired by the simplicity of sites like Texts From Last Night and FML when he built Syncronizer, a community where you can follow chat conversations about anything from “Jersey Shore” to “Econ 503.” In fact Rich brings up stealth startup BNTER, started by Texts From Last Night founders Lauren Leto and Patrick Moberg, as a possible competitor.

Here’s what I like about Syncronizer: Like Facebook, it’s another socializing platform germinating from hotbed of all social interactions, a college campus, and despite the fact a lot of the conversations degenerate into the usual fratty deliberations on boobs and beer, it seems as though there is something unique happening here.

The idea of following group chats instead of people is also novel, and socializing becomes more about tracking interests and less about individual personal nodes. You now have the ability to communicate with friends and strangers in both visible and invisible modes, and, in the case of “Econ 503″ some rooms are closed to non-members. The site bridges the gap between public and private so users can pick and choose which conversations to track through your dashboard.

Alexia Tsotsis | http://techcrunch.com

Twitter’s New Mini Platform: The Right-Side Pane

While the new design of Twitter.com itself is big news, just as big is what it means for the Twitter ecosystem. I’m not talking about the third-party clients that have similar features to the ones Twitter just rolled out, but rather the partners that Twitter is (or is not) working with to bring more content directly into their environment.

Specifically, I’m talking about Twitter’s initial 16 partners: Dailybooth, DeviantArt, Etsy, Flickr, Justin.TV, Kickstarter, Kiva, Photozou, Plixi, Twitgoo, TwitPic, Twitvid, USTREAM, Vimeo, Yfrog, and YouTube. Each of these services now has content which can be viewed directly from Twitter.com — potentially taking pageviews away each of them. Why on Earth would they agree to that?

MG Siegler
//techcrunch.com

Some of those companies have already given their diplomatic answers — that this way will be better for the end users. That’s undoubtedly true, but many of those sites rely on the advertisements they show alongside the media they host. Such ads will not be shown on Twitter.com. So again, why agree to do this? Continuar leyendo «Twitter’s New Mini Platform: The Right-Side Pane»

Google Health Gets A Wellness Makeover, Now Integrated With Fitbit And CardioTrainer

Google Health, which enables you to store and manage all your health information in one place on the Web, is getting a much-needed redesign and feature upgrade today. And Google, which launched Google Health in 2008, has partnered with popular mobile health app CardioTrainer and personal health and wellness monitoring device Fitbit to integrate data from these applications into your Health profile.

Leena Rao
//techcrunch.com

TechCrunch / News

Quicksee Confirms It Was Acquired By Google, Remains Vague On Details

Robin Wauters

14 Sep 2010 | 3:32 am

Israeli newspaper Haaretz recently reported that a local startup called MentorWave Technologies was being acquired for its Quicksee product, which enables anyone to create and upload location-based, interactive 3D videos. The reported purchase price was $10 million, and the general consensus was that Google would be buying the fledgling company for its technology, which would enhance its own geo products such as Google Maps, Earth and Street View. Both companies remained numb about any acquisition, though, until now. In a brief message posted on the Quicksee website, MentorWave Technologies…
Traffiliate Is A One Trick Landing Page Pony (Ad Network, That Is)

Roi Carthy

14 Sep 2010 | 3:14 am

It’s easy to be cynical about ad networks. I remember a media exec I once had drinks with who equated the online ad business to prostitution: “They are the only two major industries working on prepayment basis because both promise much bigger fantasy than they ever deliver.” Like I said, easy to be cynical. Recently though, an ad network came my way that has interesting twist. Its name is Traffilliate and it doesn’t serve banners, keyword ads, or paywall offers – all it serves are landing pages. Developed originally as a for-internal-use-only tool at media group DMG,…
Being “First” Versus Being “Best”

MG Siegler

14 Sep 2010 | 2:51 am

Like many people today, I read Jose Antonio Vargas’ 6,000-word profile of Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg in The New Yorker. Unlike some, I found it neither boring nor damaging, but rather, thought-provoking. But actually, the thing that stuck out the most to me about the piece (beyond The West Wing stuff, which I still find humorous/interesting) wasn’t about Zuckerberg at all. Instead, it was something Chris Cox, Facebook’s head of product, said towards the end of the piece. “Getting there first is not what it’s all about. What matters always is execution. Always,”…
Nokia Sells 260,000 Smartphones A Day

John Biggs

14 Sep 2010 | 2:44 am

For all the crap Nokia has been getting lately about falling behind, not innovating, or releasing products that don’t really compare with the competition, you could be forgiven in thinking that they may be on death’s door. So you’d probably be surprised to hear that Nokia still move more smartphones than the Big Two. How many you ask? Try about 260,000 a day. To put that into perspective, last I heard, Apple ship somewhere around 80,000 iPhones per day, and Android activate 200,000 devices per day. Read more…
CG/TC Meet-up In Jerusalem, Thursday September 16

John Biggs

14 Sep 2010 | 2:08 am

Once again I’m teaming up with Yael at the Tel Aviv Beer Tweetup to join you guys in some merriment on Thursday, September 16 from 7:30pm – 11:30pm at the Inbal Hotel in Jerusalem. You can RSVP here on Facebook or email rsvp at crunchgear dot com with the subject line “TWEETUP.” Read more…

http://techcrunch.com/

What Is It You Do? The Need For Simplicity

Go ahead and click on that link, read a few things and then come back here and tell me if you know what SimpleGeo does. Here’s what that other developer said to us in the email:

they’re an impressive team and i’m sure it’ll be interesting to see what they do. while i didn’t ask this question i’ve often wondered WTF simplegeo offers. i took a look at their initial APIs and while i’m very comfortable with geo i couldn’t figure out how they were useful. these new ones are def more interesting.

in any event, you’d think a co-founder could rattle off a few simple use cases vs pointing someone at developer docs. it often feels like there’s too much of this highfalutin talk in the valley.

Michael Arrington

Warren Buffet is famous for telling people they should only invest in businesses they understand. A corollary to that is that a company should be able to describe in simple terms what they do. Even if what they do is really technical and complicated.

Why? First so employees and investors can get on board and help the company get where it wants to go. But it’s just as important that your potential customers know what you can do for them. And just because you offer a product to businesses or developers instead of everyday consumers doesn’t mean you don’t have to keep things simple.

We see startups all the time that we don’t understand. I used to think I was just in over my head. But over the years I’ve met CEOs who can explain the most complicated technology in relatively simple terms via analogies or use cases. Those that can’t aren’t doing their job.

Not to pick on SimpleGeo, but I will. A developer I know emailed me this Quora conversation this evening where another developer was asking what the heck SimpleGEO does: Continuar leyendo «What Is It You Do? The Need For Simplicity»

Anssi Vanjoki, Nokia’s smartphone champion, resigns one day before Nokia World

Imagine if Jonathan Ive, the designer of the Mac and the iPhone, walked out of Apple one day before its world developer’s conference? Well that’s the kind of impact of the resignation today of Anssi Vanjoki, who has announced his departure one day before Nokia World, the company’s major annual event. Vanjoki was widely seen as being the potential ‘Steve Jobs” of Nokia – a product obsessive who could get things done. There’s no sign he’s left for another job and the short press release contains no words of thanks from colleagues. Wow.

by Mike Butcher

Vanjoki only recently (as in, July) became the company’s Mobile Solutions leader – the one guy that was poised to knock heads together and turn Nokia back into a major smartphone player against the iPhone and Android. But no more. Continuar leyendo «Anssi Vanjoki, Nokia’s smartphone champion, resigns one day before Nokia World»

All You Did Was Weaken A Country Today

Everyone is talking about Craigslist finally folding and taking down its adult services section. Earlier this month they took it down on the U.S. Craigslist sites without public comment, replacing it with a “censored” logo. A couple of days ago even that censored logo was removed. The debate is centered around prostitution. And in particular around sex slavery, sex crimes and underage prostitution. Nasty stuff, which is probably why Craigslist eventually surrendered. It’s hard to debate that kind of emotion with logic, even when the law is on your side.

as nothing but a freedom of speech issue, saying “Through this now years-long struggle, Craigslist’s legal position has been and remains absolutely, unequivocally correct…The federal statutory immunity upon which Craigslist relies is not some clever loophole. Rather…a conscious policy decision by Congress to protect individuals and companies who would otherwise be vulnerable targets to litigants who want to silence speech to which they object, illegal or not.” Continuar leyendo

For-Profit Automattic Gives WordPress Trademark To Non-Profit Foundation

“It’s not often you see a for-profit company donate one of their most valuable core assets and give up control,” Automattic founder Matt Mullenweg writes today in a post announcing that the WordPress trademark has been transfered from his company to the WordPress Foundation. “This is a really big deal,” he continues.

What this means is that the key ingredient behind Automattic is now in the hands of the organization in charge of “promoting and ensuring access to WordPress and related open source projects in perpetuity.” So why do this? Mullenweg says it has been his goal since the beginning to blend a non-profit business, a for-profit one, and not-just-for-profit one under one banner. Now that he feels each of those aspects is stable enough, he wants that main banner, WordPress, to be “protected” as a “beacon for open source freedom.”

G Siegler

“It’s not often you see a for-profit company donate one of their most valuable core assets and give up control,” Automattic founder Matt Mullenweg writes today in a post announcing that the WordPress trademark has been transfered from his company to the WordPress Foundation. “This is a really big deal,” he continues.

What this means is that the key ingredient behind Automattic is now in the hands of the organization in charge of “promoting and ensuring access to WordPress and related open source projects in perpetuity.” So why do this? Mullenweg says it has been his goal since the beginning to blend a non-profit business, a for-profit one, and not-just-for-profit one under one banner. Now that he feels each of those aspects is stable enough, he wants that main banner, WordPress, to be “protected” as a “beacon for open source freedom.” Continuar leyendo «For-Profit Automattic Gives WordPress Trademark To Non-Profit Foundation»

My Life As A CEO (And VC): Chief Psychologist

Anybody who has worked with me knows that I have these “control freak” tendencies as I think many leaders do. We want quality, we trust our own instincts & judgments and we think that many people don’t live up to our standards. But we know that ultimately being effective is about finding those people that do. It often takes a while of experimentation and watching their results to start to trust them. But when they start to meet and exceed your expectations it’s magic. You’re suddenly free to focus your energies elsewhere.

Once you’ve been around for a few years, attracted some great people, landed real, paying customers and raised venture capital you’ve likely got a talented team around you. Almost definitionally very talented people will butt heads. It’s your job to give people enough space to flourish without conflict, resolve conflicts when they do occur, encourage your team members to perform at their best and set the culture by which they ultimately treat their colleagues and staff.

My first company was founded in Ireland, headquartered in England and had country operations in the UK, France & Germany. Due to the language and culture issues in Europe we opted for a country structure with an MD in each country and local sales, marketing & customers support staff. We obviously had the debate about whether these functions could be centralized but either strategy has its trade-offs.

Mark Suster

This is a guest post by Mark Suster, a 2x entrepreneur who has gone to the Dark Side of VC. He started his first company in 1999 and was headquartered in London, leaving in 2005 and selling to a publicly traded French services company. He founded his second company in Palo Alto in 2005 and sold this company to Salesforce.com, becoming VP of Product Management. He joined GRP Partners in 2007 as a General Partner focusing on early-stage technology companies. Read more about Suster at Bothsidesofthetable and on Twitter at @msuster.

I’ve had a post in my head for months – maybe longer – about the role of a CEO. My primary role was “chief psychologist” and as I’ve learned over the past few years the same has been true as a VC. Both are basically people businesses.

I finally got around to writing it having read Fred Wilson’s post about what a CEO does. He says it basically comes down to three key functions:

Sets the overall vision and strategy of the company and communicates it to all stakeholders
Recruits, hires, and retains the very best talent for the company.
Makes sure there is always enough cash in the bank.

Matt Blumberg, who runs one of Fred’s portfolio companies, Return Path, follows up with an additional three:

Don’t be a bottleneck (make sure you aren’t holding up people’s work)
Run great meetings (don’t be a productivity drain on the company)
Stay fresh (be mentally and physically fit & attuned to what is going on in the world)

And I’d add to the world of “lists of three” the old adage that many VCs quote about boards having only three roles:

Raising money
Selling the company
Hiring & Firing the CEO

These are good starting points and one day I’d like to elaborate more on the topic of running a company and as only I can do I will take these short lists and make them much longer 😉

But today I’m going to do the opposite. I’d like to boil down the role to just one critical function: chief psychologist. Continuar leyendo «My Life As A CEO (And VC): Chief Psychologist»

Yahoo Engineers Talk Of Outsourcing To Bangalore; Yahoo PR Disagrees

This includes YDN (Yahoo Developer Network, the platform for third party apps to be installed on the Yahoo home page) for the most part. And Yahoo confirms that some California based YDN engineers are being moved to other projects, calling it a “pretty minor internal shift of resources.” But at least two senior engineers were fired outright, we heard (we’re holding the names until Yahoo confirms or denies that).

Michael Arrington

This has been one of the more interesting stories to track down. We got word over the weekend that Yahoo is in the process of moving large numbers of engineering jobs within the YOS group to Bangalore. Yahoo PR mostly denies this.