This sponsored post is produced by MicroVentures.

VentureBeat recently reported that funding marketplace MicroVentures raised over $16 million for tech startups. Over the past 2 years, MicroVentures has reviewed over 2,000 companies and through its rigorous review process, filtered the prospective list to less than 40, which met the criteria to raise on the platform. This represents approximately 2 percent of the companies that initiated the process. Once the SEC issues the final rules around the JOBS Act, it will pave the way for funding portals to start equity-based crowdfunding, giving more startups an opportunity to find a place to raise capital. Many of those 2,000 companies will now have another resource available to raise capital online.

What does this mean for investors?

It means that investors will likely spend more of their time searching multiple “Equity Crowdfunding” sites attempting to understand the risks associated with deals on any given platform. Early stage investing is inherently high risk/reward. However, risk correlates closely to transparency, which can only be achieved through professional due diligence performed by experienced individuals. Over the last year we have seen an uptick in the number of companies requesting funding as a result of the JOBS Act. Because of this, it is critical that investors are only offered opportunities that have been properly vetted and reviewed prior to listing on a given site, in order for the investor to make an intelligent and informed investment decision. This review coincidentally also adds value to the company looking for capital, as it helps them understand what information is important to investors from Day One, helping them start with shareholder value in mind.

What do online investors look for in a deal?

Here are a few of the many factors investors look for when reviewing a startup:

1)     Experienced Team – Investors look for a team that has experienced both success and failure. They look for teams that have met challenges and figured out how to get over, under, around, or through.

2)     Traction – For early stage companies traction doesn’t necessarily have to be revenue. It could mean a successful beta with active users and a healthy growth rate. However, proof of execution is key.

3)     Angel Money – Investors would like to see investments from angels or VCs, who can add value beyond simply capital.

Receiving positive feedback in the three areas above may create initial interest from investors reviewing an opportunity on an online platform. However, in order to create a win-win for both investors and the company raising capital, investors must have access to fundamental information about the company and be able to determine whether any growth inhibiting liabilities exist. Without rigorous due diligence, this is impossible. For example, it is great to see high profile angel investors participate in a round with a company you might have interest investing in, but that information alone provides you with no detail regarding that investor’s agenda, reason for investing in the given company, personal relationship with the company, etc. It is paramount as an investor that you understand how each startup featured is being vetted and that the due diligence criteria matches aligns with your methodologies for making risk-based decisions.

At MicroVentures, we proactively perform two levels of due diligence before our investors review an opportunity to ensure that we are offering what we believe are high quality, curated opportunities. Further, MicroVentures provides the necessary transparency and tools to investors so they can perform their own due diligence before investing. If you would like to be a part of the investor community at MicroVentures, please sign up today. It is free to join.

Sponsored posts are content that has been produced by a company, which is either paying for the post or has a business relationship with VentureBeat, and they’re always clearly marked. The content of news stories produced by our editorial team is never influenced by advertisers or sponsors in any way. For more information, contact sales@venturebeat.com.

The Department of Homeland Security issued a warning to its employees this week, saying it was alerted to a vendor vulnerability that could have exposed social security numbers.

The vendor, which DHS does not disclose in its alert, deals with background check information. It helps the investigation process, and stores personally identifiable information collected during a background check. The vulnerability could have exposed names, social security numbers, dates of birth, and other personally identifiable information that stretches beyond the “username and password” you usually see in breach notifications. This, however, did not involve an actual breach. The department says that it has not found any evidence that a breach took place, simply that the vulnerability existed.

The vulnerability affects both DHS employees and anyone who was given DHS clearance. The department is attempting to reach out to anyone it believes could have been affected by the vulnerability, which dates back to July 2009.

Once the issue was found, the vendor was ordered to stop all work and fix the security hole immediately. The Department of Homeland Security may take legal action and is “engaged with the vendor’s leadership to pursue all costs incurred mitigating the damages.”

DHS suggests that anyone whose information was at risk should contact credit reporting agencies to have their credit reports monitored for suspicious activity.

via ThreatPost; DHS image via DonkeyHotey/Flickr

Peter Thiel’s late-stage venture firm Mithril Capital Management is planning to invest in space exploration and transportation.

Mithril partner Jim O’Neill denied in an email that he is raising a dedicated fund, but confirmed that the firm just hired several space industry experts to join the investment team.

“We are delighted to have hired two space industry veterans on our investment team to help us examine hard technology companies, including transportation and space,” he said.

Sources also said that several million dollars has already been poured into the fund to build vehicles for space exploration. Mithril denied this, and said they will not be raising additional money beyond the existing $402 million fund.

Likewise, the extent to which Thiel will be personally involved with exploring space-related opportunities remains unclear.

San Francisco-based Mithril is a growth fund that fits between Thiel’s other investment firms, Founders Fund, which typically focuses on earlier stage investments, and Clarium Capital, a global hedge fund.

Founders Fund has invested in SpaceX, a private space transport company. And in a 2011 interview with the New York Times, Thiel said that not enough energy is spent tackling big challenging problems, “like space exploration.” Bloomberg BusinessWeek reports that Thiel is a science fiction junkie obsessed with putting his money behind ideas that would expand human possibility.

Thiel is known for making risky investments that most venture capitalists wouldn’t touch — the billionaire has backed a nonprofit, Breakout Labs, in a bid to kickstart scientific innovation.

Mithril would be among the first private funds to venture into space exploration — Kentucky Space LLC announced last month the formation of SpaceTango, the first business accelerator for entrepreneurial space ventures.

Peter Thiel image via Ken Yeung 

Rumors came out earlier this month that Yahoo was interested in Hulu after Yahoo CEO Marissa Mayer met with members of Hulu’s executive team. Hulu’s current owners — News Corps, Disney, and Comcast — tried to sell the company for around $2 billion in June 2011 after irreconcilable differences over business strategy. No one came close to the asking price and the sale was officially terminated. Instead, the owners decided to focus on growth.

A report in AllThingsD today said “a person familiar with the process” revealed that Yahoo submitted an offer this morning.

Hulu offers high-quality videos of popular TV and movies. Its revenue increased by more than 65 percent last year to $695 million. It has more than 4 million paying subscribers and had commercials from more than 1,000 advertisers in 2012, a 28 percent increase from a year earlier. The content is free or costs $8 a month for newer programming, and advertisers are willing to pay high prices to run their ads alongside the videos. A report in Bloomberg said that Disney prefers the advertising-focused business model, while News Corp. wants to rely on subscriptions. Now a number of other companies are entering the bidding fray to join the discussion (and rewards).

Other bidders include cable TV provider Time Warner Cable, Amazon, Guggenheim Digital Media, and former News Corp. President Peter Chernin, who made a $500 million offer.

With this renewed interest from buyers, the real question is how much are they willing to pay?

Yahoo recently placed and lost a bid to acquire a $300 million, 75 percent majority stake in Dailymotion, a French video service. This deal fell through after the French Industry Minister Arnaud Montebourg decided he didn’t want to see a successful French business sold to an American company. Hulu could be an alternative option for Yahoo, which recently signed an exclusive deal for all Saturday Night Live clips and acquired popular social media site Tumblr for $1.1 billion. Yahoo is clearly eager to scoop up popular content that it can monetize through advertising.

With that huge cash deal fresh on the books, does Yahoo have the resources to throw down for Hulu as well? And if so, how much is it willing to spend? Until this all gets settled, I’ll be watching the latest episodes of Modern Family for “research.”

Photo Credit: Shutterstock

July 9-10, 2013
San Francisco, CA

Early Bird Tickets on Sale

It’s all sunshine and lollipops over in Windows Phone land today.

Google announced that it’s ending its fight over Microsoft’s YouTube Windows Phone app and that the two companies will be working together on a revamped version.

In a statement, Google says it will be “working together to update the new YouTube for Windows Phone app to enable compliance with YouTube’s API terms of service, including enabling ads, in the coming weeks.” Additionally, Google says Microsoft will replace the existing YouTube app with an earlier version for now.

Microsoft caught fire for its unauthorized YouTube app last week, which notably blocked YouTube’s ads, let users download videos, and didn’t respect platform requirements set by video authors. For its part, Microsoft said that the app was in response to Google blocking access to YouTube’s APIs, which prevented it from offering a fully featured app on Windows Phone. Google simply called Microsoft’s app a violation of YouTube’s terms of service.

Microsoft likely knew what it was getting into when it released its rogue YouTube app. During Google’s I/O keynote last week, Google chief executive Larry Page bemoaned the negativity in the technology world as well as the lack of decent interoperability between services. While it made for a great speech, Page’s comments were somewhat hypocritical given Google’s refusal to let Microsoft properly access YouTube’s APIs.

Now, at least, Microsoft has Google’s attention.

This week I did something that I hadn’t done for five months and 12 days: I went to Flickr on my laptop, accessed some photos on my hard drive, uploaded them, named them, tagged them, and organized them in a set.

The magic of the Internet happened before my eyes, and they joined the other rectangular images on the venerable photo-sharing site. And finally, for the first time in almost half a year, I had something beside square pics on my Flickr photostream.

Yahoo announced its massive revamp of the Flickr service with three missing Es, calling the updated site Biggr, Spectaculr, and Wherevr. But really, the update boils down to two massive changes: Dropping freemium and making an old and tired user interface awesome.

Since I was just wondering about reupping my Pro account, the first is really significant.

Yahoo’s giving each Flickr user a full terabyte of space for images for free, which essentially means you don’t need to be a Pro user anymore. You still can, for an ad-free account, or to add even more space … but I don’t mind a few ads, and I’m only using 0.8 percent of my freely available terabyte anyways.

But the best and most important is the incredible new look.

There’s varied response to the new look, to say the least, and the official forum thread on the new layout has a staggering 241 pages of user comments: 24,102 in total so far. The vast majority of them are negative, and most of those appear to be from long-time users who liked the site the way it was and are asking Flickr to change it back.

Good luck.

Flickr as it was was turning into a byway, a leftover, and an also-ran. Which is why most of the pics on my photostream and home page were square: They were exports, shares from Instagram photos. In other words, Flickr was changing from the place where you went to share photos from, to the place where you shared photos to. That may be a small change in the English language, but it’s a massive change in user engagement.

And it had huge effects on Flickr’s traffic, which dropped about 40 percent in the last year alone:

The new look is gorgeous and photo-centric, giving photos — the raison d’etre of Flickr — center stage.

Sure, it’s Pinterest-ic and Tumblr-y. But if you love images and imagery, the new Flickr displays photos immeasurably better that the previous iteration. In a funny modern way, your digital photostream now resembles an old-fashioned photography album, without any cheesy in-your-face design elements attempting to highlight the fact.

In addition, the new layout options gave Yahoo the option of displaying images with much more creativity while honoring the photographer’s shot selection — such as Flickr displaying panorama shots across the entire page:

I’m sold. Flickr, I’m back.

“I think Flickr is awesome again with these new announcements,” Yahoo CEO Marissa Mayer said. “Photos make the world go around. Flickr was awesome once. It languished. But now it’s awesome again.”

I agree. And so does one of the more famous photographers on Flickr, Thomas Hawk:

despite all of the naysayers about the new @flickr, my page has never had more engagement than it has there in the last 3 days.

— Thomas Hawk (@thomashawk) May 23, 2013

Image credits: John Koetsier

This is a guest post by Aaron Perlut.

In spite of being home to some of America’s most successful companies, as varied as Anheuser-Busch, Enterprise Rent-A-Car, Purina and Energizer, St. Louis has never been perceived as a bastion of progressivism.

The question as to “why” has no easy answer. Maybe it’s the old-line manufacturing heritage, a culture of Midwestern conservatism, or perhaps even the vast amount of trust fund dollars controlled by families who seemingly invested more into charitable causes (how dare they?) rather than into new technologies.

Regardless, for many years the perception from outside of St. Louis was of a nice, conservative Midwest town, possibly waiting for a rebirth of the industrial revolution. But over the past two-plus years the region’s business and entrepreneurial ecosystem has begun to drastically evolve and flourish.

On several fronts, St. Louis is very much becoming a tech town.

“St. Louis is seeing an incredible amount of early-stage tech activity right now, which is leading to a strong funnel of great deals,” said Gabe Lozano, CEO of LockerDome, whose company recently closed a $6 million Series A financing round. “Without question, we will be globally recognized as a top 10 city in technology within 10 years.”

There’s the unexpected, such as the big data pioneers Appistry, which has pulled in nearly $40 million from private investors; digital media-based upstarts ranging from Lozano’s LockerDome to CrowdSource.com, which recently closed on a $12.5 million Series A from Highland Capital Partners; to later-stage tech companies like Answers.com, which is valued in the nine-figure range. And then the not so unexpected, like the biosciences and ag-tech principally headquartered on the CORTEX and BRDG Park incubator campuses.

“The collective energy and momentum surrounding innovation and entrepreneurship in St. Louis right now is pretty palpable,” said Chad Stiening, who’s early-stage life sciences company Kypha has raised more than $3 million in private capital since moving to St. Louis is 2011.

“We’re seeing the human, intellectual, physical and financial capital all reaching critical mass and it’s creating an ecosystem that’s essential to be competitive in the marketplace,” he added.

Indeed, the number of St. Louis-based technology jobs posted on Dice.com jumped 25 percent over the past year, with average salaries rising 13 percent — besting the likes of Austin, Charlotte and Phoenix. And that was before Boeing announced it is moving 600 tech jobs to St. Louis over the next three years.

In addition, there are now more Ph.D. plant scientists in greater St. Louis than anywhere else in the world, according the Danforth Plant Science Center.

While much of the activity has flowed from the robust talent pools coming from Monsanto, the Danforth Center, Washington University Medical Center, and others — the reality is that easy access to capital is breeding a deeper degree of innovation.

“Entrepreneurs follow opportunity,” said St. Louis native and Square founder Jim McKelvey in explaining why so many companies with St. Louis DNA have left town previously. “We now see that trend reversing. Entrepreneurs are moving here, and well they should.  I know two successful firms that would be dead now if they hadn’t come to St. Louis.”

Venture capital and angel activity, of course, is an essential and growing component. There are organizations like Cultivation Capital, in which McKelvely is a partner, or Arch Angels, Billiken Angels and upstart iSELECT Fund; the State of Missouri is leveraging its Missouri Technology Corporation (MTC) to lure out-of-state start-ups, and there are unique incubator programs like Arch Grants and Capital Innovators.

Change is afoot, and just as there was no easy answer as to “why” the region has not in recent years been considered a progressive business environment, there’s no easy answer as to why there’s been dramatic shift in St. Louis’ “Progressivism DNA.”

It’s more than likely the culmination of many colliding factors: A new generation of leaders with a collective vision for the region, young, smart minds producing fresh ideas that are now more readily accepted, an increase local funding sources, and a reduction of silos amongst varying organizations.

Whatever the case might be, the region’s clear progress indicates better days ahead for start-ups and investors alike.

An eight-year resident of St. Louis, Aaron Perlut is founding partner of digital marketing and public relations firm Elasticity, co-founder of the not-for-profit regional marketing initiative Rally Saint Louis, and is a pioneer in the free facial hair movement (no, seriously).

Erply provides POS system and inventory management software for commercial retail and e-commerce businesses. Today the company announced raising $2.15 million in its second round of funding, according to a report in TechCrunch.

The iPad app and cloud-based platform provide a centralized place to manage multiple areas of a retail business, including POS, inventory, payroll, accounting, and multi channel e-commerce in an integrated system. Businesses can easily add new locations into the system and the retail CRM feature tracks customers and captures their data. There are also sales and marketing campaign tools.

Erply can handle data across physical shops, online stores and warehouses, and provides real-time dashboards of activity. The software is integrated with other platforms including accounting programs like QuickBooks and web-shops like Magento, Amazon, eBay, and Google.

Old school POS systems are difficult to manage, not connected to the Internet and expensive, not to mention cumbersome. Retailers used to deal with printers, cash registers, barcode, scanners, physical receipts, inventory software etc… and none of these systems were connected.

Over the past few years, a crop of startups has given the POS industry a mobile, cloud-based overhaul. The most well-known of these startups is Square which pioneered a small piece of hardware known as a dongle that is accompanied by a suite of software called Square Register. However retailers that have existing POS systems may not want to throw them out the window, and Erply’s technology helps them bring together the convenience and connectedness of cloud-based systems, with all the features and support they need.

The company has 100,000 small to medium business (SMB) customers and 120,000 users, and its client base is growing by around 20 percent each month. Customers include Elizabeth Arden, BMW and The Athlete’s Foot and the company is making a push to support Fortune 500 companies and gain traction in the enterprise space.

Erply has offices in New York, London, Australia, Denmark, and Tallinn, Estonia. Previous investor Redpoint Ventures led this round of financing to fuel growth and international expansion, and take on bigger players like Square and PayPal, other startups like GoPago and Vend. Index Ventures and Dave McClure also participated in this round.

It has raised $2 million in 2010 and this brings its total capital raises to $4.2 million.

Photo Credit: Shutterstock

Meet Max

Max is a mechanical engineering student at Santa Clara University. This June he’ll be graduating and is currently searching for a job in Silicon Valley. I asked him to test Collegefeed’s services to see how useful he found it and what his general thoughts on the site were as someone who is the company’s target market.

How easy is Collegefeed’s sign-up process?

When registering for the site, new users are promised “3 steps, 1 minute, and Collegefeed will be personalized just for you.” Max listed the top three companies he would like to work for, then he listed three areas of interest, and finally he filled out basic information on himself, though he was able to pull most of this automatically off of LinkedIn through the site. He said he found the registration straightforward and very easy.

After completing his registration, he worked on filling out his profile. Here he felt that some of the information asked of him was a little specific or odd. For example, the site asks for users to upload work samples. Not sure what to include and hesitant to go searching through old binders and folders, he opted just to skip this step.

As part of filling out his profile, he was asked to create a personal statement, something which he equated to the first question in a real job interview. He thought it would be a good way for employers to quickly get an idea about him. Overall, he thought his profile was a simple but effective way of conveying information about himself and what he values.

With his profile (mostly) completed, he started to navigate around the site. You have three areas outside of your profile to explore: “companies,” “jobs,” and “peer assistance.”

He first clicked on “jobs” and found that the “jobs for me” section was the most helpful. Here the site recommended positions and companies that were similar to the companies and areas of interest he named when registering. The rest of the “jobs” section he found less effective, namely due to being forced to search for companies or keywords rather than just browse. He said this made it difficult to find jobs he was interested in, but once he did find something interesting, it was just a click of a link to be taken to the application page for the position.

Next he navigated to the “companies” section.

“The companies tab is pretty cool, actually. Search by name and then you can click on one and it will give you an overview of the company. The company page has sections for overview, products, jobs, and competition. Although, they don’t always have as much info as I would like, they still have a ways to go to improve the size of their database,” he said.

The “peer assistance” section was where he spent most of his time. In this section other users posted accounts of interviews with different companies and the questions asked. He mentioned that although he found it potentially very useful, the fact that there were not many companies represented diminished its effectiveness.

Overall, Max thought that the site had some kinks to work out but that he found it very useful. Only a user for a few days, he says he plans on using it in the future to find jobs and that once the small issues and limited content issues get fixed, it will be even more helpful of a tool.

How Collegefeed goes about addressing these small issues and lack of content will determine how the company, whose site had a limited launch in March and a nationwide release ten days ago, succeeds in the future.

Collegefeed’s plans for the future

In a phone interview, Sanjeev Agrawal, Collegefeed’s chief executive, revealed that the number of current users was only in the thousands. He would not reveal a more specific number than that. Following up on this point though, he said that the company is not pursuing a large user base at the moment, instead focusing on developing the social network.

According to Agrawal, Collegefeed is currently “like Facebook when it was only likes and pokes.”

Planned for the near future are more conversations between recruiters and users using Google+ Hangouts. The capability to connect with other users is also planned for the near future, though the company is trying to make sure connections are used as a tool to be leveraged, rather than just another metric for the site to boast.

“We don’t want to be social just for the sake of being social,” Agrawal said.

In a landscape with competition such as LinkedIn and ReadyForce, Collegefeed is hoping to attract both new users and companies. The company is currently speaking with investors regarding raising a first round of funding and this capital could be used to attract the users and companies the site needs to truly thrive.

Photo credit: Collegefeed

Editor’s note: Keynote Systems’ Startup Shootout Index provides some insight into the three-screen challenge — desktop, smartphone, and tablet — now facing anyone with a web presence. We’ll be bringing you a fresh set of data from Keynote every month. Check out previous Startup Shootout results.

New technology allows us to take an even closer look at the impact of Web performance on the desktop user experience. Rather than simply measuring the time it takes for the entire page to load, new standards allow us to capture details about how long it takes for the visitor to see something change in the browser and how long before a visitor can begin to interact with a page. These are important points in the user experience, which mean that not all load times are equal. Let us explain.

For years, Web sites have used monitoring services that provide an external perspective of performance by measuring complete page load times. However, this doesn’t represent how well a user’s Web browser is actually assembling that content or how soon the user can begin to interact with the page. We also know there are many ways to assemble and display content on a site – some methods are better than others.

New industry standards supported by modern browsers like IE9, Chrome, and Firefox can reveal performance more holistically—based on users’ true experience during the page load. The browser itself now saves timestamps from various events in the process of loading a new page, including timestamps for the starting and ending of phases to help measure:

• The first point at which the user sees something other than a blank screen or the previous screen (“Time to First Paint”)

• When a page can be clicked, swiped and scrolled (“Time to Interactive Page”)

• The total time a page takes to load all assets on the page (“Total User Experience Time”)

As an example, imagine you visit two sites, each with a page load time of five seconds. If site A starts delivering content in half a second and site B doesn’t start giving you any content at all until four seconds, your perception of site A will be much more positive even though both sites have the same overall five second user experience time.

Rovio, where art thou?

On the Keynote Startup Shootout Index, digital entertainment media company Rovio has a woefully slow desktop response time of 7.75 seconds. Given its stature amongst the mobile device user community, it comes in with an also unimpressive 5.71 seconds on the iPhone and 6.59 seconds on the iPad.  Users have high expectations today; sites like Rovio should be aiming for two seconds end-to-end page load times for the desktop and no slower than six seconds end-to-end page load times on 3G mobile networks. Rovio’s desktop site could definitely be faster than it is. We were surprised at some missed opportunities and failures to follow best practices.

Time to Paint

In addition to slow end-to-end page load times, Rovio is also showing a very slow time to first paint. We are seeing over 63 elements loading before the browser is able to render any content on screen. This includes 15 JavaScript files, five CSS files plus four custom font files (few websites use custom fonts, in part because of the effect they have on performance, as the site might need to load fonts before its initial render).

Compression

Interestingly, Rovio is also not using gzip compression on all the elements that are compressible. All modern browsers support gzip compression, which shrinks file sizes for transfer over the network before decompressing them to use in the browser. If the Rovio site were to use gzip on all page assets, many files could be 60-70% smaller, again helping to speed performance. There really is no reason not to do this.

Image Bloat 

We see a number of images loading, such as YouTube video thumbnails that the Rovio site is displaying at a lower resolution in the browser.  The images are being downloaded at 480×360 pixels, but then displayed at 160×120 pixels. This means that the Rovio site is downloading images 9X larger than it needs, an inefficient use of network bandwidth and client-side processing time.

HTTP Persistent Connection

And lastly, Rovio is failing to take advantage of HTTP persistent connections (also known as HTTP keep-alive or HTTP connection reuse).  Without HTTP Keep Alive turned on at the web server, browsers are making and then tearing down dozens of unnecessary network connections to the server.  HTTP Keep Alive allows the same network connection to be re-used for multiple requests, and is much faster.

Conclusion

The three additional metrics for measuring web performance add a very useful nuance to being able to truthfully gauge how a user will perceive a page loading in the web browser.  It gives developers and site owners an additional dimension to improve and refine. Let’s hope Rovio takes some time to step up performance across these best practice areas.

To view the full range of Keynote Indices, please visit here.

Keynote tests the sites in the index hourly and around the clock from four locations over the three largest U.S. wireless networks, simulating visitors using three different devices. Data is collected from multiple locations and then aggregated to provide an overall monthly average in terms of both performance and availability.

Intel‘s fourth-generation Core microarchitecture, formerly code-named Haswell, has been heralded for a long time, but it’s finally arriving in a variety of low-power computing devices over the next month. Those devices will have 50 percent better battery life than current-generation Ivy Bridge devices when used on active tasks. They will also have double the graphics performance and much lower power consumption in standby mode, Intel executives said in a briefing.

The Haswell chip family (dubbed fourth-generation Core) is the last hurrah for Intel’s outgoing chief executive, Paul Otellini. And it is a convergence architecture that, along with other 22-nanometer chips coming this year, will find its way into PCs, laptops, tablets, and smartphones. The chip family will inspire a new generation of hybrid devices, such as two-in-one concepts like a laptop that can be converted into a tablet. HP showed one such device off this week: the HP Envy Rove 20, a 20-inch all-in-one desktop computer that can be converted into a touchscreen tabletop computer.

For more than a year, Otellini has been pounding the drum on Haswell, which he described as delivering the “largest generation-to-generation improvement in battery life in Intel history.”

Rani Borkar, vice president and general manager of the Intel Architecture Group, said Intel is getting that improvement not only from moving to a more efficient manufacturing process, but also because it designed the chip from the ground up for mobility and low power. For instance, the chips use extensive “power gating,” where unused transistors — the on-off components of digital computing — are turned off when they are not in use and reawakened quickly when needed. Borkar said new devices will have a better “instant on” responsiveness when you hit a button.

“Haswell is a revolutionary product from Intel,” she said. “It will lead to a large number of form factors and industry firsts. It redefines what you expect from a conventional processor.”

Intel says the standby mode has 20 times better power efficiency than the Sandy Bridge processor-graphics combo chip from a couple of years ago. That means you can now watch three high-definition movies before your laptop runs out of power.

The Haswell microarchitecture is akin to putting a V12 engine in a car that used to have a V6, without expanding the size of the engine. Intel will make a variety of low-power Core processors using the microarchitecture, each of them with different code names and final product names. Those products from high-performance servers to “sleek ultraportables” are rolling out starting June 5 and throughout the year, and they’ll blur the line between devices, just as motorcycles, scooters, golf carts, and Ferraris are all variations on moving vehicles.

“This improvement in power is not coming at the expensive of performance,” Borkar said.

Kaizad Mistry, vice president of Intel’s technology and manufacturing group, said Intel is using an enhanced version of its 22-nanometer Tri-Gate 3D transistor manufacturing process. That version is optimized for low power, giving transistors the same operating frequencies while consuming low power.

Borkar said the Haswell-based chips will scale from chips that consume just 7 watts to some that consume 75 watts.

Intel first introduced its Atom processor for netbooks in 2008. Those failed, but Intel has a huge share in the mobile processing market for computers. Since 2006, Intel says, the integrated graphics performance of its microprocessor and chipset combinations (now often integrated in a single chip or a single package with two chips) has increased 75 times.

The chip includes integrated eDRAM memory and an improved interconnect between the processor and the chipset across two chips that are contained in a single package. Intel said that it achieves a “non-linear reduction” in idle power consumption thanks to a new power management design, new ways to power down a chip quickly when not in use, and new ways of moving data around the chip quickly.

One innovation is dubbed FIVR, short for Fully Integrated Voltage Regulator. It consolidates all of the power used in the chip into an integrated voltage regulator and measures power usage in real-time. That reduces the cost of the device.

Later this year, Intel will unveil the Silvermont microarchitecture for future Atom microprocessors, which are targeted at low power devices. The Bay Trail version of Silvermont will be used in tablets this holiday, Avoton will be used in microservers, and Merrifield will be used in smartphones. Intel will talk more about its roadmap at the Computex trade show in Taiwan in the first week of June.

Muhammed Yunus is a 2006 Nobel Peace Prize winner and the founder of Grameen Bank, and he sparked a movement with the simple question: “If you are a socially conscious person, why don’t you run your business in a way that will help achieve social objectives?”

Today, entrepreneurs and investors in Silicon Valley — and increasingly in tech hubs around the world — have taken this mission to heart. The trend is often referred to as “social entrepreneurship” or “impact investing,” and the goal is to use business process to drive positive change.

But social entrepreneurship has its critics. Serial entrepreneur Steve Blank quipped in a recent interview that it’s a “a bit of a fad” and startups that “confuse social good with being in business usually end up as 501(c)(3)s.” Likewise, Clay Johnson, author of the Information Diet, accused Change.org (the poster child for social entrepreneurship that just pulled in $15 million) in a story for the Wall Street Journal for being a “lead-generation business disguised as a social-change organization for whoever is willing to pay them for the email addresses.”

Related: Read more about the young entrepreneurs who are changing the way we do business.

Pierre and Pam Omidyar with Virgin’s Richard Branson.

To take a closer look at social entrepreneurship, I headed to Omidyar‘s annual conference in San Jose, Calif. Omidyar is not your average venture firm — it refers to itself as a “philanthropic investment” practice. Its founders are eBay’s Pierre Omidyar [pictured above and left] and his wife, Pam. Its private event ONEF has grown each year with more interest from entrepreneurs and mainstream venture firms.

I caught up with Omidyar’s Todor Tashev and Paula Goldman, Lenddo cofounder Richard Eldridge, and d.light president Ned Tozun to speak to the trend for our “idiot’s guide” series.

VentureBeat: Let’s dive in with a basic question. What is social entrepreneurship? 

Todor Tashev: Right now, it’s a huge tent, meaning there is a very loose definition. Lots of people are pursuing it, and interpreting it in different ways. Generally speaking, social entrepreneurs are delivering a product or service, but it’s intended to address a fundamental social issue.

Social entrepreneurs don’t just make widgets. They make widgets to advance a real benefit for the world.

VentureBeat: Can it be tricky to align the social mission and the profit motive?

Tashev: We look for companies where there is no conflict between the two. We call it a “single engine.” Some people would put companies like Facebook or Google in this category, but they view social good as a side benefit.

Paula Goldman: There is some question of intentionality. Are you doing this with the explicit goal of making a difference?

Omidyar investment partner Todor Tashev.

VentureBeat: Can these social enterprises be for-profits? Or are they typically nonprofits? 

Tashev: More recently, the trend was associated with companies that are for-profit — or have a blended model. Benefit corporations are a popular option [As of January, 13 states -- including California, Maryland and Hawaii -- have passed legislation allowing for the creation of B corps. --Ed.]

B corp’s like Couchsurfing and Change.org are not just driven by maximizing shareholder value. 

It’s important for companies who need a better way to explicitly convey to their users, backers, and to the general public that they have a broader mission. Couchsurfing may well be the first in history to have attracted mainstream venture capitalists – General Catalyst led a series B round.

Goldman: We are not trying to replace traditional philanthropy. But we believe we can use the market; we will have impact more quickly with these for-profit models.

Remnants of a brainstorm on a dusty window at Change.org’s San Francisco office.

VentureBeat: Is this a trend that is primarily supported by Silicon Valley’s tech billionaires?

Tashev: The trend is much broader than the Valley; it’s gone global. But to sustain itself, we need a strong supply of entrepreneurs.

VentureBeat: Is that the biggest challenge? A lack of talented entrepreneurs?

Tashev: I would say there is more of a supply of capital than a supply of entrepreneurs right now. We held a forum recently on “impact investing.” It was amazing to see the interest. I haven’t done the math but there must have been $20 billion or $30 billion dollars represented around the table.

VentureBeat: Do B corps typically grow as quickly as Internet companies like Facebook and Twitter? 

Tashev: Some people think that social entrepreneurs aren’t as driven. We just invested in Change.org — Ben is passionate about scaling the company and growing users just like any CEO or founder.

Richard Eldridge: I agree. I set out with a vision to economically empower the middle class. We thought we could make the most impact using my best skillset: tech. I thought it could scale fast and impact lots of people. We built a platform “Lenddo” for people to engage their social network to gain access to life improving loans. We’re optimized to serve emerging markets.

Ned Tozun and team started d.light because it’s “unjust that billions of people still use Kerosene lamps for light.”

Ned Tozun: We build solar powered lights and energy products. We started the company because we wanted to get two billion people access to electricity. The market is a really effective means to address that solution. But at our core we have a strong social mission.

VentureBeat: Is “collaborative consumption” or “sharing economy” services like Zipcar and Airbnb social entrepreneurship? 

Tashev: Collaborative consumption is a similar category. But if you’re part of this economy, it doesn’t necessarily mean you’re a social entrepreneur. Brian [Chesky] from Airbnb would identify himself this way — they have a broader societal impact. It’s good for the environment and resource optimization.

VentureBeat: Will the majority of businesses have a social mission or function like B corps in the next 20 years or so?

Goldman: It’s hard to say, but we do know that millennials really care about purpose and their work. You will see a new class of entrepreneurs who aren’t subject to this false dichotomy: for-profit or nonprofit. Entrepreneurs will hold the keys as capital is increasingly a commodity.

Tashev: Listen — it’s going to take some time. But in the business schools, the social entrepreneurship classes are oversubscribed. The interest will percolate throughout the system.

VentureBeat: Is it more difficult for social entrepreneurs to hire and retain talent? Especially if they can’t compete on salary?

Eldridge: When we recruit people, one of the first questions we ask is “Do we you want to change the world?” A lot of our data science team in New York is ex-Wall Street. They wanted to do something where they could make a difference.

Tozun: It’s similar for us. Most of our engineers are passionate about building a product that millions of people will use. There are motivators besides money. You will make a real impact; not just put stuff in landfills.

Top image via Omidyar Network // Change.org photo credit: Christina Farr // Todor Tashev headshot photo credit: Joi via photopin cc // d.light photo credit: Global X via photopin cc // Omidyars with Richard Branson photo credit: pmo via photopin cc

Best Buy is putting the iPhone 5 on sale starting Sunday. Two plus two equals?

According to a report by AllThingsD, Best Buy is planning to offer $50 off the iPhone 5, 4S, and 4 models starting Sunday and lasting for four weeks. The electronics retailer is also planning to offer discounts on older Android smartphones from Samsung and HTC … but not the just-released and hot-selling Samsung Galaxy S4.

Source: http://sjbbs.zol.com.cn/2/30_11361.html

The iPhone 5S in limited production, supposedly.

Rules aside, it’s not completely unheard of for iPhone to go on sale. And Apple has been experimenting lately with discounts (excuse me, incentives) in price-constrained markets such as India. But if it’s not the sign of the iPhone 5S showing up next month, it’s certainly the footsteps we’re hearing from the not-too-distant future.

Apple is certainly getting ready to release the 5S, with screens reportedly entering mass production in June, and one report saying actual phones hitting the market in August.

Which, if correct, means we still have three months to wait.

However, analyst Brian White of Topeka Capital Markets has predicted a June announcement and a July ship date for iPhone 5S as well as a new, cheaper iPhone Mini, which he says will be available in multiple colors.

photo credit: Incase. via photopin cc

Science has come a long way in the past 100 years. We’ve sent humans to space, landed devices on Mars, proposed groundbreaking theories, exploded nuclear bombs, decimated diseases, and more.

But with all these advancements, why is still so hard for us to predict future weather conditions? A new video from popular YouTube channel Vsauce explains.

“We can send satellites into orbit and people to the moon and predict solar eclipses thousands of years into the future, but yet we cannot reliability predict which way the wind will be blowing in the next hour or so,” the video’s narrator says. “How can such monumental cosmic movements light minutes or light years away from us be understood whereas the weather … remains a mystery?”

Mostly, it has to do with the limits of what we are able to know. Predicting the future events of planets and cosmic objects is more doable because we know orbits and other conditions, so predictability becomes easier. But there are so many variables to weather and the air molecules on Earth that it becomes incredibly difficult to generally predict weather outside of about a week.

As a society, we’ve certainly gotten better at communicating when severe weather events are about to occur or are in progress. (We saw some of that in regard to the devastating Oklahoma tornado Monday.) But it will take more scientific breakthroughs to get us closer to predicting these types of events will be occurring more than a day or a week out.

Vsauce’s video also dives into other topics related to predictability, the butterfly effect, chaos theory, the possibility of a moon landing failure, and more.

Check out the fascinating clip above.

Few companies truly understand how the consumer thinks, and even fewer are able to successfully translate this understanding into an integrated mobile experience. But some do, and they’ve agreed to share their experience, opinions, and even some exclusive announcements, in person at our upcoming MobileBeat 2013 event on July 9-10 in San Francisco. See our latest round of speakers below (more to come!), and make sure to snag early-bird tickets while they last!

Rich Riley, CEO, Shazam
Rich Riley joined Shazam with more than 17 years experience as an entrepreneur and leading Internet executive. Most recently, Rich was EVP Americas for Yahoo! where he was responsible for billions of dollars of revenue and managed a team of thousands, overseeing sales, account management, ad operations, B2B marketing, research and business development across the US, Canada and LatAm. Prior to that, Rich held a variety of roles including MD & SVP of the EMEA Region, SVP of the Small & Medium Business Division as well as corporate and business development roles.

James Barrese, CTO, PayPal
With his mobile-first approach and his commitment to creating customer experiences that make things simpler and easier, he heads the world-class teams of technologists who are creating the products, platforms and technology infrastructure to power PayPal’s innovative payment services for tens of thousands of merchants and millions of account holders around the world. With more than 25 years of technology experience that spans the military, the academic world, business consulting, and enterprise platforms and infrastructure, James is uniquely qualified to lead the company’s efforts to transform payments with innovative products and services for consumers and businesses.

Manish Chandra, CEO, Poshmark
Manish Chandra is the founder and CEO of Poshmark, the leading mobile marketplace for fashion which makes it simple and fun for anyone to shop the most fashionable closets across the country and sell directly from their own. Manish has always been passionate about building communities and founded the first social shopping company, Kaboodle, which was acquired by Hearst Corporation in 2007. With Poshmark, Manish has applied his understanding of technology to change the way women think about shopping, building a passionate community based around people’s love for each other and their closets.

Mark Curtis, Founder, Fjord
Mark Curtis served as the Chief Executive Officer at Handmade Mobile Entertainment Limited. Mr. Curtis co-founded Fjordnet Limited in 2004. He has a strong track record in media innovation (for clients such as Yell, RAC & Allied Domecq). Mr. Curtis was a Partner at Fjord, building cross platform and mobile products for Nokia & Orange. Prior to that, he served as a Global Executive Vice President for Razorfish, responsible for 1500 staff.

Pete Flint, Co-Founder & CEO, Trulia
Pete co-founded Trulia.com in 2005 while he was a graduate student at Stanford University. Trulia.com is now one of largest and fastest growing real estate websites in the US with more than 31.4 million monthly unique users. Trulia has moved beyond the desktop real estate search and has become a top resource for homebuyers, sellers. Trulia’s website and 14 mobile apps is now a go-to destination for consumers craving real estate data and local information.

We’ll be announcing a bunch of speakers and program updates over the next few weeks. In the meantime, check out full event details here, and make sure to grab your tickets by next Tuesday to save 20 percent!

Thanks to the following industry leaders for supporting MobileBeat 2013: CloudOn as Platinum Sponsor; New Relic & Tapjoy as Gold Sponsors, Fjord, Flurry, Kontagent, LifeStreet Media, & MoPub as Silver Sponsors; and Helpshift, IDrive, & Urban Airship as Event Sponsors.

Developer James Rundquist has just unveiled Glass Nest, an app for Google Glass that controls your Nest home thermostat directly from your nerdy, nerdy face.

The future is here, and it belongs to white, male dorks. You heard it first here.

Nest is a highly automated “smart” thermostat made by the same folks who created the iPod.

And, in case you’ve been on a silent yoga retreat for the past year, Google Glass is the eponymous search company’s latest attempt to penetrate every aspect of your waking life. It’s a visor-shaped bit of hardware that places a small, clear screen at eyeball-level. You interact with it primarily via voice.

Using the Nest app, you can tell your Glass unit to change the temperature to N degrees and tell Nest when you’re going away or coming home, all the better to put your home temperature control system into or out of away mode.

Rundquist, a Georgia Institute of Technology student who warns this is not an official Nest or Google app, has posted Glassware on Github; feel free to fork the heck out of it.

Image credit: Jolie O’Dell/VentureBeat

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Big Data and Predictive/Real-time Analytics startups: Are you looking to jumpstart development & accelerate market traction? Sign up for the SAP Startup Focus program to receive technology, support, resources and community to help you develop new applications on SAP HANA, a cutting edge database platform. Get started here, and enter promo code “VB2013″ on the form.

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If you follow VentureBeat but don’t regularly check our GamesBeat site, here’s a list of the best video game stories we ran over the last seven days that you may have missed.

This week, Microsoft unveiled the Xbox One, the company’s next-gen console and one-stop living room entertainment device, Ex-EA chief John Riccitiello urges console makers to consider consumer wants before shipping products, and Yahoo continues its acquisition madness by picking up the game company PlayScale.

You’ll also find a review of Resident Evil: Revelations as well as previews for Batman: Arkham Origins, Dying Light, and Civilization V’s Brave New World.

Xbox One

• The DeanBeat: Microsoft and Sony should escape binary thinking
• GamesBeat’s complete coverage for Microsoft’s Xbox One announcement
• Microsoft making $1B bet on Xbox One games, says bigwig Phil Harrison
• Xbox One vs. PlayStation 4: A battle for next-gen supremacy
• Microsoft shows behind-the-scenes design of its Xbox One game controller
• Xbox One: Microsoft’s boldest attempt to unify its services is a game console

News

• DmC: Devil May Cry developer working on beat-em-up for iOS and Android
• Craziest special edition ever? $190K Grid 2 bundle comes with … a car
• PSA: Xbox Live was not hacked today
• Super Stardust HD developer working on spiritual successor for PlayStation 4
• This is what a $150 Grand Theft Auto V: Collector’s Edition looks like
• Nintendo issues another patch for Wii U
• Skullgirls getting arcade port in Japan
• U.S. version of Animal Crossing: New Leaf has Twitter and Tumblr support
• Ex-EA chief John Riccitiello pushes console makers to get four things right in this generation
• Call in sick: Plants vs. Zombies Adventures is out now
• Nintendo promises to ‘discuss’ new Smash Bros., 3D Mario, and Mario Kart before E3
• Defiance developer cuts staff; MMO Rift unaffected
• EA appoints New York Times digital-product expert to its board
• Amazon taking Madden NFL 25: Annivesary Edition preorders — bundled with NFL Sunday Ticket

Mobile news

• Hooked Media turns in an entirely new take on app recommendation — one that Apple can’t kill
• Zynga unleashes Gauntlet-like Battlestone on iOS
• G.I. Joe: Battleground looks to capture the cartoon in a modern mobile game
• DeNA developing Dungeons & Dragons: Arena of War for mobile based on ‘D&D Next’
• Top Eleven developer trumpets the social soccer game’s impressive growth
• Jawfish launches real-time multiplayer game tournaments on mobile devices
• Happy Cloud announces $4.25M funding round and new chief executive
• WildTangent launches mobile games on Asus tablets
• DeNA to publish Peter Molyneux’s Godus mobile game

Acquisitions incorporated

• Marissa Mayer and Yahoo are on fire, acquiring gaming company PlayerScale

Tech news

• Who needs an Xbox One? Nvidia shows off new speedy graphics card
• Big Fish Games takes its cloud-gaming service to all four major screens
• HP launches a 20-inch all-in-one that doubles as a tabletop computer

Trailer hoedown

• Destiny looks like Star Wars, Halo, and World of Warcraft in its newest trailer

Previews

• Warner’s Dying Light will make you a zombie hunter by day, a terrified victim by night (preview)
• Batman: Arkham Origins hits the repeat button hard (preview)
• Civilization V’s Brave New World expansion feels like a culture club (hands-on preview)

Reviews

• Resident Evil: Revelations is classic, slightly buggy, fun (review)

Interviews

• Activision’s Eric Hirshberg bets that 40M Call of Duty fans will follow him to Xbox One (interview)
• Dying Light developer explains how to roam an open world full of hungry zombies (interview)
• How Activision plans to beat Disney with the marketing of Skylanders: Swap Force (interview)
• Batman: Arkham Origins’ senior producer on how — and when — to move the needle (interview)
• How Smooth McGroove quit his day job to record a capella versions of classic gaming tunes (interview)

Pieces of flair

• Beating down a fighting-game master with Divekick’s two-button gameplay
• Ceiling Kinect and Call of Duty dogs: The top Xbox One GIFs and memes (so far)
• GamesBeat’s Favorite Skyrim Mods #9: Dwemer Mechanical Mounts & Followers
• ROUNDTABLE’D! Game characters red-ring the Xbox One!
• The top 6 MMOs you should be playing this year
• EA’s ulterior motive behind killing the Online Pass
• Consoles that won’t die: The Sega Dreamcast

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GamesBeat 2013 is our fifth annual conference on disruption in the video game market. You'll get 360-degree perspectives from top gaming executives, developers, and analysts on what’s to come in the industry. Our theme this year is “The Battle Royal.” Check out full event details here, and grab your early-bird tickets here!

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Foursquare and Gnip have entered into a partnership to fork over your check-in data to developers and big brands. Gnip will get access to Foursquare’s full firehose — every check-in, everywhere, from everyone, and in real time.

Of course, the companies tell us all the data will be totally anonymized. And we have no reason not to believe that’s the case. After all, from a business point of view, it’s very expensive and not too profitable to spy on inidividuals; it may be vastly profitable to be able to predict crowd behavior, define mass trends, and measure what kinds of location-based offers have historically performed well.

“Location is one of the most interesting ways to view data and no one understands the power of location like Foursquare,” writes Gnip product manager Steve Perella on the company blog.

“With more than 35 million registered users, nearly 4 billion total check-ins, and over 75 million API calls a day, Foursquare is the location layer for the Internet, helping to connect people with places around the world.”

Real-time firehose access will give Gnip data about every check-in that happens on Foursquare. Gnip, which bundles and resells the data (mostly to big brands), will get the check-in information only (time, date, location); no user data (username, name) will be provided.

So, for example, the restaurant chain Red Lobster could use Gnip’s Foursquare firehose to find out how many check-ins happen at its locations in San Francisco during Lobsterfest, but they couldn’t see who exactly was checking in. (This is so sadly hypothetical, if only because there are no Red Lobster locations in San Francisco. We oughta have a petition. Those biscuits, man.)

Foursquare data scientist Blake Shaw said in a statement, “We are capturing this amazing signal about what millions of people are doing in the real world at every moment of the day in cities all around the globe. We have seen that when we aggregate checkin patterns across many individuals, we can measure features of cities at a higher resolution than was ever possible before. I think this data can act almost like a microscope for cities.”

Image credit: jswaby/Flickr

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Big Data and Predictive/Real-time Analytics startups: Are you looking to jumpstart development & accelerate market traction? Sign up for the SAP Startup Focus program to receive technology, support, resources and community to help you develop new applications on SAP HANA, a cutting edge database platform. Get started here, and enter promo code “VB2013″ on the form.

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“Just a minute!” tweeted NASA’s always adorable Curiosity Rover this morning. “That’s all it takes to see 9 months of my mission thanks to fan @krsanford’s time lapse.”

The labor of love in question is a 1-minute, 6-second YouTube clip showing an animated stream of raw images from the Front Hazard Avoidance Cameras, taken from NASA’s Curiosity pic dump.

It’s an amazing thing to watch. You get to see landscapes change and time pass each day as the rover explores and travels across the red planet, casting its robotic shadow as it gathers samples and laser-drills into rock.

Of course, this wouldn’t be possible without NASA’s open-sourcing the multimedia in the first place. But the real hero here is Karl Sanford, the enthusiastic fan who took the time to put it all together. On the YouTube page for the clip, he says, “This is my first attempt at this process and hope to update and refine these videos as more data becomes available.”

Image credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech

It’s Friday, your big day to waste time on the Internet! But this week, you can do so for a good cause: science.

The Calbug, a project from the Berkeley, Calif.-based Essig Museum of Entomology needs volunteers to type out insect and spider specimen records. Most of the records are for California-dwelling bugs, and each one takes about three minutes to type.

Plus, you get to look at really cool insect pics while you work. And you just might discover a new species while you’re at it.

Examples:

The project currently has thousands of images, labels, and ledgers from the Essig Museum’s collections as well as from individual biologists who maintain the collections. Notes for each image give details on where and when a species was found and can provide clues for important snippets of entomological history.

“We need you to help us transcribe that data and make it available for further use in biodiversity and conservation research,” said Essig reps on the project’s homepage. “Along the way, you will possibly be finding species that have never been observed anywhere else!”

(It’s true; more insects remain unrecorded than any other kind of animal.)

Image credit: Jolie O’Dell/Flickr

Apple’s been through some tough spots historically. And while anyone who remembers the “beleaguered” days of the late 90s and early 2000s can’t think that the company is in too much trouble right now, with the stock losing hundreds of billions of dollars and Google’s Android taking massive mobile market share, there’s definitely a sense that Apple’s best days might be in the rear-view mirror.

But Cook has maintained 90-plus-percent approval ratings internally, according to Glassdoor:

That’s just a shade below Steve Jobs’ lifetime rating of 97 percent.

In addition, Apple employees are still pretty happy to be working at the iconic Cupertino company. Employee satisfaction, which reached a peak 80 percent in the middle of 2012 when Apple’s stock soared to over $700, has only dropped slightly to 78 percent.

Which doesn’t mean that working at Apple is easy. Or that working for Tim Cook is easy.

Cook looks for early hours, according to one Apple manager in Cupertino, who said he was “a CEO who demands work before 6 AM every day, and ‘accountability without control.’” And another Apple employee, an engineer, complained about work/life balance at Apple … or rather, the lack thereof.

“No work life balance is to be expected while working at Apple. Weekly management reviews and expectations from management is that you are reachable after work hours.”

The upcoming Worldwide Developer Conference will be an interesting test for Cook, and Apple. After basically telling the world not to expect any new products before fall, an iOS7 reveal will likely be the big news at the developer-focused show — and well as, possibly, announcements about developments in Apple core services like music and media.

Those announcements have to be good enough to reassure the Apple faithful within and without the company that Apple is still the leader in mobile operating systems and ecosystems and can still amaze and delight its customers.

And its team members.

Image credit: Dean Takahashi

Blogging service WordPress’s parent company Automattic is getting a $50 million investment from Tiger Global, according to WordPress founder Matt Mullenweg.

The announcement comes from a blog post on Mullenweg’s personal site today, and this comes just days after rival blogging platform/community Tumblr sold to iconic tech giant Yahoo for a whopping $1.2 billion.

Mullenweg notes that the investment comes from a secondary sale led by Tiger Global’s Lee Fixel, meaning Tiger Global purchased shares from early Automattic employees and investors. He also notes that Fixel was one of the “quiet geniuses” that previously invested in successful tech companies such as SurveyMonkey, Facebook, LinkedIn, Palantir, and Square.

Here’s what Mullenweg had to say on his blog about the investment:

“Anyway, wanted to get in front of the news that will inevitably come out in the next week or two: there has been a large secondary transaction in Automattic stock, about $50M worth. “Secondary” means that it’s existing stockholders, like the earliest investors or employees, selling stock to another investor versus money going into the company (“primary”). It was led by Lee Fixel at Tiger Global, one of the behind-the-scenes quiet geniuses that has previously invested in SurveyMonkey, Facebook, LinkedIn, Palantir, Square, Warby Parker… Automattic is healthy, generating cash, and already growing as fast as it can so there’s no need for the company to raise money directly — we’re not capital constrained. The minority of stockholders that elected to participate are holding on to the vast majority of their shares. We’re building an independent company that’s going to be a growing part of the fabric of the web for many years to come, so allowing early investors to lock in some returns releases any short-term pressure there might be on the company for a liquidity event and allows us to focus fully on the long road ahead.”

h/t to AllThingsD

Photo credit amperegrino/Flickr

We’re hearing reports that someone (name/gender/orientation/favorite color unknown) has paid a tidy $1.5 million for the pleasure of cruising into space with actor Leonardo DiCaprio.

Insert eye-rolling Great Gatsby space pun here.

At the amfAR Cinema Against AIDS charity auction last night in Cannes, where DiCaprio was promoting his new Jazz Age film, bidding rose to 1.2 million euros for the trip, which will take place aboard Virgin Galactic’s new commercial spaceliner, SpaceShipTwo.

The craft is a suborbital, air-launched spaceplane designed for space tourism. The first flights are scheduled to take off in 2014. Ticket prices have increased from $200,000 to $250,000 this year, but apparently DiCaprio makes the whole experience worth around $1.25 million more. Now we know the value of one of his aging-but-still-dimpled smiles.

What’s more, we read on Space.com that two other tickets for the same flight sold at the same auction for $2.3 million. Now we know the value of the glorious halo that radiates throughout the interior of a spaceplane from one of this aging-but-still-dimpled smiles.

Image credits: 20th Century Fox, Jeff Foust/Flickr

Not so much at U.S. District Court in New York, however.

“I believe that the government will be able to show at trial direct evidence that Apple knowingly participated in and facilitated a conspiracy to raise prices of e-books, and that the circumstantial evidence in this case, including the terms of the agreements, will confirm that,” U.S. District Judge Denise Cote said on Thursday.

The trial features the U.S. v. Apple on a Department of Justice charge that Apple conspired to price-fix ebooks, limited ebook competition, and break Amazon’s hold on the market. And it’s an interesting example of a monopoly-style case being brought against a company with a tiny fraction of the ebook market (Apple), mostly to the benefit of a company with a massive wedge of the ebook market (Amazon).

Apple comprehensively denies the charges.

“Apple has not ‘conspired’ with anyone, was not aware of any alleged ‘conspiracy’ by others, and never fixed prices,” the company stated in a reply to the suit last year.

Tell it to the judge, I guess.

That’s precisely what Apple is attempting to do, but statements like the above must be more than a little worrisome for Apple legal representatives. Perhaps just as worrisome is that Judge Cote has already begun writing a draft of her decision — before the trial has begun.

Evidence has already been submitted to the court, however, and that — apparently — is enough for Cote to form an opinion on the case.

One of those pieces of evidence was a line in an email from then Apple CEO Steve Jobs to News Corp. CEO Rupert Murdoch, whose company owns the publisher HarperCollins. The line that the DOJ released was fairly damning, on the face of it:

Throw in with Apple and see if we can all make a go of this to create a real mainstream ebooks market at $12.99 and $14.99.

That certainly looks like it could be price-fixing, right?

But here’s the line in the full context of Steve Jobs’ email:

Our proposal does set the upper limit for ebook retail pricing based on the hardcover price of each book. The reason we are doing this is that, with our experience selling a lot of content online, we simply don’t think the ebook market can be successful with pricing higher than $12.99 or $14.99. Heck, Amazon is selling these books at $9.99, and who knows, maybe they are right and we will fail even at $12.99. But we’re willing to try at the prices we’ve proposed. We are not willing to try at higher prices because we are pretty sure we’ll all fail.

As I see it, HC has the following choices:

1. Throw in with Apple and see if we can all make a go of this to create a real mainstream ebooks market at $12.99 and $14.99.

2. Keep going with Amazon at $9.99. You will make a bit more money in the short term, but in the medium term Amazon will tell you they will be paying you 70% of $9.99. They have shareholders too.

3. Hold back your books from Amazon. Without a way for customers to buy your ebooks, they will steal them. This will be the start of piracy and once started there will be no stopping it. Trust me, I’ve seen this happen with my own eyes.

Maybe I’m missing something, but I don’t see any other alternatives. Do you?

In that context, Job’s sentence appears to be simply an option that HarperCollins has. And it looks a lot less damning.

It’s not clear what other evidence Judge Cote has seen. And it’s not clear if she’s trying to urge the parties involved to come to a pre-trial settlement by pressuring Apple to make nice and roll over for the DOJ.

But let’s hope she maintains some level of objectivity in the case she’s judging — and that she at least waits until the case is heard in a court of law before making public statements about whether she believe the defendant is guilty or not.

photo credit: kalavinka via photopin cc

July 9-10, 2013
San Francisco, CA

Early Bird Tickets on Sale

Intel’s long years investing in mobile processors are about to pay off with its biggest win to date. We’ve confirmed that the next Samsung Galaxy tablet, the Samsung Galaxy Tab 3, will have an Intel Atom chip based on the Clover Trail code name.

A source familiar with the matter confirmed to us that Samsung has chosen the Intel chip over other competing ARM-based solutions, including Samsung’s own Exynos mobile processors. If it’s true, that could mean that Intel’s mobile processor business is finally getting some traction.

Benchmark testing sits leaked that news this week. The GFXBench site and the SamMobile site noted the Intel chip appeared to be inside a device dubbed the Samsung Santos 103 tablet with the product name GT-P5200 running Android on an Intel Clover Trail chip. Various sites concluded that was Samsung’s third-generation Galaxy Tab slate, which has a 10.1-inch touchscreen.

Test results say the device has a 1,280-by-800 display and is running Android 4.2.2 operating system. The processor can run between from 800MHz to 1.6GHz in terms of clock speed. That’s within the stated capabilities of the dual-core Atom Z2520 processor. The Intel chip is made in a 32-nanometer high-k metal gate manufacturing process.

Other sources have noted that the Samsung tablet will come in multiple versions and will have an Exynos processor. That may mean that Intel has just one of the versions. Other rivals competing for the business include Nvidia’s Tegra chip.

Intel expects to make more progress in mobile over time. It is releasing chips now with the code-named Haswell microarchitecture that will improve power efficiency and graphics performance dramatically. The graphics will be twice as good as previous Atom chips, and active power will be 50 percent better.

Intel will release new information in a talk at the upcoming Computex trade show in Taiwan. That will include new designs and upcoming low-power chip microarchitectures including Silvermont (used in Bay Trail tablets for this holiday), Avoton (for micro servers) and Merrifield for smartphones.

July 9-10, 2013
San Francisco, CA

Early Bird Tickets on Sale

Searching for a job is a stressful process that involves web searches, exhaustive emailing, networking, and ends with anxiously awaiting a phone call. However a study issued today found that job seekers are increasingly turning to mobile devices for every part of the quest for employment, starting with search.

The study was conducted by Glassdoor, a career and jobs community site. It has information on more than 250,000 companies, 20 million registered users, and 13 million monthly unique visitors. Glassdoor launched an iPad app last week and led an accompanying effort to explore mobile job seeker behavior.

Glassdoor found that 68 percent of job seekers are using their mobile device to search for jobs once a week or more. 3 in 5 job seekers has searched for jobs on their mobile device in the past year, and 30 percent search for jobs more than once a day from their phones. As anyone who has been unemployed (or in transition) knows, the state of uncertainty lends itself to compulsive searching, hoping that your dream job has popped up in the last hour.

60 percent of people are likely to search for jobs on their mobile device, while 54 percent are likely to read company reviews, 52 percent will research salary information when they are on-the-go, and 46 percent want job alerts pushed to them. One in four job seekers are deterred from applying to a job if the company’s career site is not mobile optimized, and 30 percent think applying for jobs on mobile devices is difficult. Phones are good for some tasks, but answering questions about why you are the best suited for a position is best done at an actual keyboard.

As we continue to rely on a smartphones for everything from social media contact to managing health care, job searching is likely to head in this direction as well. 84 percent of respondents said they believe mobile devices will be the most common way people search for jobs within the next five years. Mobile technology lends itself to situations where you want immediate, context-driven results. Part of looking for a job is typing in search parameters and receiving results, but word-of-mouth, referrals, and networking drive recruiting and hiring, at least in the tech world. If you hear about an opportunity while out-and-about, your phone is the clearest method to learn more.

Mobile devices are also useful for staying on top of a company’s news and being prepared for an interview. 64 percent of candidates said they check a company’s social media channels in the hours before an interview. 43 percent of candidates use their smartphones before an interview to read the job description and 34 percent said they visit the company’s website. Once the interview starts however, 78 percent avoid using their phones.

Glassdoor surveyed 1,100 employees and job seekers online. The company has raised $42.2 million to date and is based in Sausalito, California.

Photo Credit:antrophe/Flickr

Sony and Microsoft have made their opening moves in the next-generation video game console war. Their next big revelations will come at the E3 game trade show, and this starts with their press conferences on June 10. The age of digital game consoles has arrived, but I’m still worried that the console makers are caught in binary thinking.

In the days before the original Xbox, back in 1999, Microsoft’s knee-jerk reaction to Sony’s threat was defensive. It wanted to stop Sony’s PlayStation 2 from taking over the living room. That’s why it started on the Xbox, and then the company expanded its thinking from there. Both companies came to see their game consoles as Trojan horses, items people purchased for gaming purposes and eventually used for controlling all entertainment. Microsoft and Sony both have credibility as leaders in games, and their eyes are still on a much larger prize of being the hub for movies, music, TV, communication, and everything else.

But gaming was the linchpin. If they failed with that, nothing else mattered.

That’s still the case today. Some described Sony’s press event in February as rambling and Microsoft’s Xbox One announcement as a disaster. But they’re wrong. They’re simply incomplete events, by necessity. More information — some of it which they’re keeping secret for now — will trickle out over time. By the time of the launches in the fall, potential customers are going to know what they need in order to decide whether to invest in one game console or another. Sony showed off games. It needs to show more broad entertainment and services. Microsoft showed off entertainment and services. It needs to show more games.

But both of them need to show that they understand the rights of consumers in a world where walled gardens are full of holes. The difficulty for these companies is that the world has moved on from completely binary thinking. Gamers watch movies. People play games on more than one device. When you acknowledge that we live in a multitasking world with multiple platforms, and when you design your experience taking that into account, then you can win big. This is the way to grab all of the marbles: being transparent, being more open than you should be, and embracing community.

“I really don’t see this as a binary answer,” said Chris Petrovic, the former head of GameStop Digital Ventures, when asked who would win. “Each of these platforms can and will capture a meaningful share of consumers’ share of time and wallet. There seems to be general consensus in the games industry that it will continue to follow the ebbs and flows of its media brethren — movies, TV, etc. — in that the incumbent platforms will still provide the richest, most immersive premium experiences for the enthusiast while the newer platforms will appeal to the masses because they win on price and convenience.”

You can bet that they’ve got the bases covered on the either or questions. Microsoft said it would launch 15 internally produced games in the first year after launch. It also said it would spend more than $1 billion developing games in this generation. Sony can expand its PlayStation Network and tap into its entertainment properties so they work on PS4. Their approaches to their initial revelations so far reflect some choices. Microsoft chose to focus on non-gamers. Sony chose to focus on the hardcore.

The trick is to pay attention to both sides of the binary choices and give people more than just the basics. You don’t want to be perceived as failing to “get it.” And you have to act like you’re responding to and fostering a community.

With every console announcement, fans look for what they want. They want to make this product their own. If what they want isn’t in the console, they complain. With Microsoft, fans didn’t see enough games. With Sony, it was the opposite. They saw lots of games. But fans also complained about how Sony’s event dragged on. They complained about how Sony didn’t even show its box. In both cases, the companies defended themselves by saying they wanted to hold something back and save it for E3.

In the absence of a ton of games to show (OK, they did show EA Sports, Forza, Call of Duty: Ghosts, and a new one called Quantum Break [below]), Microsoft talked about technology like cloud processing, more accurate Kinect, and the instantaneous switching made possible by having three operating systems. Those could turn out to be big advantages. Sony mostly ignored such technical talk, saving it for the geeks who cared about it but leaving some questions hanging in the open. Sony did point out its advantage of having more processing power fully dedicated to running games (Microsoft has to divert precious silicon to handle Kinect’s constant processing requirements). That is how these machines are basically different.

In both cases, nobody answered all of the questions that gamers had. The fair criticism is that they should have had more solid answers on the consumer rights issues that people care more about these days: backward compatibility, used games, and always-online play. All of these relate to whether a consumer has gotten a fair shake, can preserve their investment, and can choose how much they want to be engaged with one product in a sea of other products that they use. By moving to crack down in some way on used games, the companies are taking back something that they once gave as a right to consumers under “fair use” agreements. They should have seen the concern coming from their fans (based on the fan reaction to Electronic Arts’ always-on debacle with SimCity) and headed it off as much as possible. Microsoft and Sony say they have policies in place that will fully describe what they intend to do. That’s not completely reassuring to consumers.

The problem is that, as with the actual launch date and the pricing, is that a competitor would love to know how its rival will deal with these consumer rights issues and act on it. Policies are the easiest thing in the world to change or copy. Software is next. And hardware is the hardest. But in a digital world where anything is possible, these problems have to be viewed in a different light. With backward compatibility, putting in the hardware to make an old game work on a new system is very expensive. It means, at the very least, you would have to put an IBM chip in a box that now has an AMD chip. On top of that, gamers care about backward compatibility in the beginning of a new console generation, but they rarely play old games on new systems.

But the digital realm is where this gets interesting. With cloud streaming technology, it’s technologically feasible to host a game in a data center and let someone play it with any web-connected hardware. If they wanted to, Microsoft and Sony could put digital versions of their old games up into the cloud and make them accessible for consumers. But then we get to the real issue here: a scarcity of engineering talent. The time and resources it takes to do this right could be better spent making a new game system and its live services better.

Those are logical explanations for ditching backward compatibility. A similar case could be made for requiring an always-on connection and for curbing used game resales. But these problems expose a lack of trust. Consumers don’t like walled gardens anymore, and they mistrust anyone who has one. Sony and Microsoft have to regain their trust by showing off outstanding games that will make them drool. And they should also unveil something in the digital realm that truly sets these consoles apart from the last generation.

These machines have gone digital. They’re web-connected. Microsoft will have 300,000 servers available to provide services to them. We want to be so impressed with what those services and digital games can do that we’ll forget about those rights issues and gladly fork over our money. In fact, I hope that we exit this PlayStation 4/Xbox One generation thinking that digital gaming — always-connected and easily accessible — is better than traditional disk-based gaming.

In this column, I’m guilty of my own binary thinking. At E3, we’ll also hear from Nintendo. Maybe it would be cool if a console maker convinced Nintendo to give up hardware and make its software available on a rival platform, as an exclusive king maker.

And beyond E3, gamers will be listening to what Apple has to say about gaming at its own Worldwide Developer Conference. They’ll also be figuring out what happens with Android solutions such as Ouya. Gaming experiences are going to be everywhere. The more we focus on just one thing, the more we’ll be surprised by another. I’m not sure what to call it. But whatever the opposite of binary thinking is, do that. That’s my advice for Sony and Microsoft.

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GamesBeat 2013 is our fifth annual conference on disruption in the video game market. You'll get 360-degree perspectives from top gaming executives, developers, and analysts on what’s to come in the industry. Our theme this year is “The Battle Royal.” Check out full event details here, and grab your early-bird tickets here!

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July 9-10, 2013
San Francisco, CA

Early Bird Tickets on Sale

Apple is widely expected to reveal a new iOS7 on June 10 at its Worldwide Developer Conference. And there are some big changes in store.

Scott Forstall and his love of user interface elements that mimic the “real world” is long gone. Jony Ive, the design genius behind the iMac, iPhone, iPad, and pretty much everything Apple in the last decade, was appointed to overhaul and comprehensively redo Apple’s most important crown jewel in October of last year.

Now, it appears, he’s close to complete.

Ive has been leading a thorough revamp of the iPhone UI in preparation for the upcoming iOS 7 release, and according to 9to5 Mac, he’s also most done. The changes are significant, described as “black, white, and flat all over.”

That’s a massive change from the original colorful, shiny, semi-transparent iOS development language, which tries hard to make virtual controls and objects look and feel and act like real controls and objects. You see that today in the drop shadows behind icons, the compass interface of Find My iPhone, and the physical button-like Apple toggle controls:

Source: John Koetsier

iPhone UI design

Forstall, the former iPhone chief who was cut from the Apple team after refusing to apologize for the Apple Maps disaster, was a big fan of skeuomorphic design: design that connects the new to the old with decorative but — some might say — unnecessary elements.

Those “some” would include Ive.

Apple’s Notes app is an example of skeuomorphic design, with faux leather at the top and the virtual remnants of virtual torn-off pages at the top. On iPhone, iBooks, Find My Friends, and Newstand are examples, with with fake bookshelves, fake stitching, fake leather, and fake shadows.

For a designer like Jony Ive, who has spent his life stripping away excess, simplifying relentlessly, there is something inherently dishonest about skeuomorphic design. It’s something of a lie … because there is no wood in your iPhone, no dead animal skin on the screen, and no paper to be torn off. And, he’s been quoted as saying that software designs built with physical metaphors do not stand the test of time.

There are design elements in the iPhone’s user interface language that are already trending away from the original color and connection to material controls.

Safari and Mail, for instance, have no parchment, no leather, no torn-off page remnants:

There are no images yet of iOS7, which will be one of Apple’s most closely-guarded secrets up to WWDC. Changes reportedly include dropping the textured, cloth-like background of Notifications Center in favor of a flat grey, and the shiny, transparent lock screen will lose its luster for a flatter, less evocative interface. You would have to think that a detail-oriented design-obsessed Ive will have comprehensively altered the appearance of almost everything in the iOS design language, but we’ll know more on June 10 when Apple reveals it.

In all this rush to get rid of skeuomorphic design, there’s one thing to remember.

Perhaps the iPhone was so transformative, so new, and so different, that skeuomorphism was a necessary first step in the evolution of its design language. And perhaps the virtual has now become so real … that now we don’t need it anymore.

photo credit: marcopako  via photopin cc

The bigger Google gets, the more often regulators are getting on its case.

The next probe into the company could from the Federal Trade Commission which is trying to figure out whether Google is leveraging its ad market dominance to push customers to its other services, as Bloomberg reports.

The criticism is a common one lobbed at Google by its critics, the most vocal of which is search engine rival Microsoft. Like much of the European Union, Microsoft isn’t crazy about Google’s ability to own, from top to bottom, peoples’ interactions with the web. While the FTC recently cleared Google of  similar charges, its counterparts in Europe are still on Google’s case.

Unlike Google’s search dominance, however, Google’s ad market share is far from locked down. The company controls roughly 18 percent of  digital display ad revenue — a slight bump over Facebook’s 15 percent, according to the latest numbers from eMarketer. That’s a far cry from a monopoly.

Still, at issue here isn’t Google’s dominance but rather the top-down integration of its many services. It’s one thing to control a market, but its something else to pursue anti-competitive tactics mean to make it impossible for any other company to challenge that control.  The FTC is trying to figure out whether that’s what Google is doing.

One thing to keep in mind is that the probe is still in its preliminary stages and might not officially happen. But don’t expect Google’s competitors to stop lobbying for regulator intervention anytime soon.

Photo: Devindra Hardawar/VentureBeat

Social driving app Waze is attracting its fair share of suitors. Google is reportedly in talks to acquire the company for more than $1 billion, Bloomberg reports, following a report from a few weeks ago that Facebook was eyeing Waze.

It sounds like Waze could be setting itself up for a bidding war between the two companies, and it likely sees itself as more valuable than the $1 billion Facebook paid for photo-sharing app Instagram last year. Other suitors may also join in — Microsoft has reportedly invested in Waze, and the driving app would be a good addition to its Bing Maps.

Waze lets drivers crowdsource driving conditions and other data with its mobile apps, which often give drivers better insight into traffic conditions than other systems. The company may also choose to stay independent and raise another round of funding, Bloomberg notes. Palo Alto, Calif.-based Waze has raised $67 million so far from Kleiner Perkins, BluerRun Ventures, Magma Venture Partners, and others.

If it does come down to a Facebook vs. Google buyout, I’m rooting for Google.

Facebook has no experience with mapping yet, which means it could be some time before it fully taps into Waze’s potential. While snapping up the driving app would be a good way for Facebook to kick-start its mapping ambitions (and it would also work well to support Facebook’s recent local search focus), for Waze it could actually be a step back.

Google, on the other hand, has years of mapping experience — expertise that became clear when Apple tried its hand at maps in iOS 6 with disastrous results. Waze would fit nicely into Google Maps’ mobile turn-by-turn directions, but there’s also a huge amount of potential for the company in Google’s moonshot projects. Imagine Google’s self-driving cars autonomously reporting driving conditions, or Waze integration with Google Glass to give pedestrians the ability to contribute to Waze’s data as well.

Waze’s social elements may seem better suited to Facebook right now, but that’s an area Google is getting better in too. If Waze wants to continue down the road of becoming an essential mapping solution, Google seems like the ideal mate.

Photo: Devindra Hardawar/VentureBeat