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The new version of The Sandbox, a pixellated free-form creativity app on iOS, is available today. It has characters from the world of Invincible, the comic book series created by Kirkman, Corey Walker, and Ryan Ottley. The move is yet another attempt to bring a popular brand into a mobile game in order to help it stand out from the pack of a million other apps on the App Store. With well-known characters, even pixellated ones, Pixowl hopes to draw more attention for The Sandbox.
So far, the world-crafting game has been downloaded more than 14 million times on Android and iOS. More than 1.5 million worlds have been shared in the online gallery.
Pixowl is based in Paris and San Francisco, and it has a big development team in Buenos Aires, Argentina. Pixowl is also working on a game based on the Garfield cartoon character.
That should come as good news to developers who work in PHP and prefer to run their applications on the biggest public cloud around.
Zend Server 8 is a PHP application server with tools for deploying, monitoring, and debugging PHP-based apps. PHP, for its part, is one of the most popular server scripting languages on the Internet, used on more than 80 percent of Web servers.
The version coming out today for AWS Marketplace comes with a new version of the Z-Ray panel that can sit at the bottom of web browsers, so developers can watch what happens when they tinker with live web applications. Not only does it come with tools for getting insight into commonly used PHP applications components like Magento and WordPress, it also comes with a little pop-up window to track the underlying Amazon cloud infrastructure the applications are using.
"If [developers are] spending a lot of their time in the dashboard, why not also start showing them things they need to know about their environment?" Zend cofounder and chief executive Andi Gutmans told VentureBeat in an interview.
The consolidation of infrastructure and application monitoring tools could be a convenient touch for developers. More generally, it acknowledges that application developers are more and more concerned with the deployment and maintenance of their applications.
Meanwhile, Zend's decision to build more tools specifically for AWS suggests that cloud-based application development and monitoring is becoming more important to the company.
The growth rates for Zend's cloud software are "much, much higher" than in other parts of the business, Gutmans said.
Expansion to clouds other than Amazon could be next.
Zend is "absolutely looking to expand our partner ecosystem around this, because we think there is a lot of choice," said Gutmans, who has been working on PHP since 1997.
RunKeeper says that Spotify integration has been "hands-down" one of its most requested features for years.
Spotify is really starting to ramp up its integrations with big-brand third-party platforms. Just yesterday, it announced an exclusive partnership with Sony which will see it power a new PlayStation Music service this coming spring. And back in November, Spotify teamed up with Uber to let passengers control the music.
With 38 million users, RunKeeper is one of the most popular GPS fitness-tracking apps, so this is a big-win for Spotify. You will, of course, require a Premium Spotify subscription — which costs $10 per month — to use this feature. And in return, Spotify will also deliver some fitness-focused playlists to remove the hassle of building your own.
Spotify is pushing hard to grow beyond 15 million paying subscribers, 25 percent of its user base, so RunKeeper integration is one more reason for a would-be subscriber to sign-up.
While you could already listen to Spotify, Pandora and other third-party music apps in the background while using RunKeeper, today's news brings Spotify inside the RunKeeper app itself, meaning you can open playlists directly from within.
This now means you can not only control your locally-stored iTunes catalog, but your cloud-based Spotify library too, without switching between apps.
The bad news is that, for now at least, the integration is restricted to the iPhone app, which is usually the case for new RunKeeper updates. But it should be arriving on Android eventually.
RunKeeper isn't the first GPS fitness-tracking app to integrate with Spotify. Runtastic has supported Spotify for a while, though only within its Android app — and that integration feels much more like a "shortcut" between the two apps than anything else.
RunKeeper feels a lot more deeply integrated, and the Boston-based company says that it will work with Spotify to "look at all the ways fitness data can power a more personalized music experience, and vice versa."
While no more specifics have been given, it does allude to a number of potential outcomes — Spotify could tailor playlists to suit an individual's level of exercise. For example, if a runner is slowing down because they've hit a hill or have been running for hours, the music could change to reflect that.
Spotify also has music intelligence company The Echo Nest under its wing following its acquisition last year, and that is another tie-up that could help tailor music for RunKeeper users too.
Nintendo's released an update for its celebrated brawler, Super Smash Bros. for Wii U, today, which adds 15 more stages to its hectic 8-player battle mode.
The Japanese gaming giant has only recently started issuing updates to its games — something other developers and publishers have been doing for years — but it's making up for lost time with some decent extra content here. The new stages are free as part of a 316MB download, and they won't be the last additions to Super Smash Bros. for Wii U. Nintendo's also due to add a stage based on its Miiverse social network and a 64-player tournament mode.
There is one paid-for addition on the way, too, and that's the Pokémon, MewTwo. Available for free to gamers who bought both the Wii U and 3DS versions of Super Smash Bros., it's eventually going to be paid-for DLC.
Nintendo isn't charging for any of this extra Smash Bros. content (beyond MewTwo) and the games' director, Masahiro Sakurai, has played down the possibility of adding significant paid-for downloadable content, saying: "Creating DLC would involve large additional costs and require the involvement of a lot of people."
Nintendo's other recent hot title, Mario Kart 8, did get paid-for DLC. The first of its two packs — containing new tracks and characters — was pretty well received, and the second pack is due out this May. Nintendo's charging $8 for each pack (or $12 for both), adding sales value to its game beyond the initial retail price.
The full list of extra 8-players stages is below. It's split into regular stages and Omega stages, which offer a level arena without extra platforms and hazards:
Regular stages
Omega stages
The new CEO, Andrew Tang, was formerly managing director at ABB Technology Ventures. He is also currently managing director of the Draper Dragon Fund.
The complexity of the new Draper Ecosystem is a bit dizzying, so I asked Draper to explain a bit.
"It all revolves around growing entrepreneurs and providing deal flow for Draper Associates," Draper said. "We want to provide as much service as possible for entrepreneurs because we want to continue to attract the best from all over the world."
To that end, the Draper Ecosystem contains four unique components:
In addition, a constellation of venture funds are standing by to soak up all the deal flow the above four components will generate:
Draper University is a bit of an odd experiment, which is maybe not that surprising coming from the guy who has a plan to split California into six states. It's located in downtown San Mateo, California, in an old hotel building that has been converted into student dormitories and classrooms (it's a residential program). The front of the building sports giant photos of entrepreneurial "heroes" Steve Jobs and Elon Musk, and the University's rhetoric is unabashedly focused on the "heroism" of entrepreneurship.
Despite the oddity, the program appears to be successful, with more applicants than spaces for every quarter since it started in 2012. Including the class that just kicked off — its 8th — Draper University has over 300 alumni from 38 countries.
"We have set out to make a long term personal investment in the entrepreneurs and want to create more heroes in this world," Tang told me.
"It's hard to put a number on the value of the networks they build here, but to give you a few examples, many students, through our networks, have found investors and gotten funding in the five, six and seven figure range; students have gotten jobs through our network, and learn invaluable skills that would be difficult to attain in such a short-period."
]]>The HTML5 web app is launching just in time for the Super Bowl. It isn't a real-money gambling app, but it could be used for that at some point in the future. In this social-sports game, you bet virtual currency, and you can do it hundreds of times in a single football game. Life-Bet measures immediately how competitive you are on the leaderboards versus your friends.
Tens of millions of people tune into football games, especially for the Super Bowl, which will air on Sunday, Feb. 1. And lots of those players say they would support legislation to legalize gambling on the NFL. But Live-Bet doesn't have to wait for that legalization since you don't win real money in the game.
"I chose to do the free-to-play space because I believe that a lot of people will enjoy this experience but are not likely to be gamblers," Castle told GamesBeat.
The startup, Live-Bet Sports in Las Vegas, is headed by former Westwood Studios game veteran Louis Castle. The app can resolve the wagers in real time thanks to technology from Metric Gaming, a Las Vegas company that supplies the real-time tracking technology not only for Live-Bet Sports but also for real-money gambling companies in Europe. Castle is the chairman of Metric Gaming, and he also runs Live-Bet Sports.
Live-Bet is a free-to-play, play-by-play live sports-betting platform that gives players bragging rights. Players who are on top of the leaderboards can win real-money giveaways. Players are given enough free currency to enter entry-level tournaments, and they can earn their way into bigger tournaments where the giveaways are bigger.
Metric Gaming has created analytics, and it uses human/professional odds makers. The HTML5 app runs on iOS and Android devices, including smartphones, tablets, and web browsers. Players can log in via Facebook. But there isn't a specific iOS or Android app yet since the company decided not to release an app for just a single football game yet.
The company has raised $700,000 in funding, and it has another $300,000 committed against a $3 million valuation, Castle said. The investors include Castle, Metric Gaming, Bellwether (a social-casino platform maker), and other private investors.
Rivals include makers of fantasy football apps or live-event apps. Those include FanDuel, Draft Kings, and King of the Hill Sports. King of the Hill Sports offers a similar live-betting concept, but Live-Bet offers what it calls "true odds" driven by an analytics engine and odds maker.
The data scored at live events is fed into Metric Gaming's analytics engine, which offers a human market maker bets they can show to players in real time. Bellwether's social-casino platform broadcasts the bets to mobile devices of all kinds using HTML5.
Castle said that he saw a demo of Metric Gaming's technology, and he was intrigued at how it could make sports more fun to watch.
"I saw the entertainment potential, giving me an experience that makes me lean into the screen," Castle said. "You get a constantly engaged feeling."
Castle has more than 30 years of experience in video games. He was a co-founder of Westwood Studios, a general manager of Electronic Arts' Black Box Studios, and the CEO of Instant Action. He served as a general manager at Zynga and was a longtime board member of Shuffle Master. He then served as chief strategy officer for Shuffle Master before orchestrating the company's sale to Bally in 2014. He does consulting in both video game and casino gaming.
Metric Gaming has 25 full-time employees and 60 contractors. Live-Bet has five people.
"We can do other sports besides football, but we are not announcing any yet," Castle said.
The DataLift platform uses big data analysis to help mobile-game advertisers acquire large numbers of users in an automated fashion. The goal is to acquire loyal and paying users based on assessments of the user's lifetime value (LTV), or the estimated amount of money generated by a user during the course of playing a single game.
AppLift said the technology optimizes toward campaign goals, including post-install LTV events, and enables more transparent user acquisition. The company said that it helps marketers create smarter media buys and track the results in a granular fashion across more than 50 advertising networks and exchanges. DataLift centralizes campaign management into a single hub.
It can also tap into real-time bidding or non-real-time bidding ad inventory.
"Currently, due to a fragmented and transparency-challenged market, mobile advertisers often fall short of unlocking the full potential of unified media buying at global scale," said AppLift co-founder Tim Koschella in a statement. "DataLift enables advertisers to unleash additional performance by applying our proprietary optimization engine to historical and granular campaign data across all our channels."
AppLift works with more than 300 advertisers of games, including King, Zynga, Glu Mobile, Nordeus, NHN Entertainment, and Tap4Fun.
AppLift also announced the addition of two industry veterans to its management team. Gal Levenhaim will be vice president of products, and Maor Sadra will be vice president of strategic development. Both have more than 10 years of mobile, ad-tech, and high-tech experience. Levenhaim was formerly VP Products at Taptica, a Tel Aviv-based ad-tech player. Sadra held several executive roles at various Israeli ad-tech companies (including Matomy) and was most recently the managing director of International Business at supply-side platform Inneractive.
The new release is "an entirely new platform, built on entirely new infrastructure," CEO and cofounder Sanchin Kamdar told VentureBeat. It's the first major revision since the product was launched.
This is an "evolution of the platform to incorporate a unified view of the [current] publishing industry," he said, with a new emphasis on reader growth, engagement, and loyalty. Customers include Conde Nast, Slate, Dallas Morning News, Talking Points Memo, and the Daily Beast.
For Parse.ly, the drivers to rebuild have been "a mixture of fear and opportunity."
"What we've seen is publishers recognize [that,] if the focus is only on ad dollars," there are only so many ad dollars, he said. New revenue streams for publishers now include a greater emphasis on events, ecommerce, sponsored content, research reports, and paywalls.
His company needed to offer "a platform that's flexible enough for these new streams [and that] allows a fuller picture of how visitors are interacting with content," Kamdar said. He noted that the old version was too focused on page views and visitors.
Newly added metrics include average engaged time on a page, number of returning visitors, topics generating the most loyal readers, and types of content generating the most growth in visitors.
There is also now a more extensive ability to view metrics by desktop, mobile, or tablet, and users can customize the platform to get specs on specific device models.
One thing the new platform doesn't show, however, is direct revenue generation, such as sales conversions.
Kamdar said this can be inferred from such stats as the most loyal readers, since they are most likely to buy subscriptions or premium content. There is also an API to interface with other systems that can track this.
Event tracking, needed to track monitor conversions, is one of the reasons competitive tools like Adobe Analytics and Google Analytics are complicated to use, he said. If it adds such event tracking, Parse.ly would do so in steps.
"Starting out with goal setting [as a next step] would be a great approach for us," he said, such as being able to set a goal of getting more email subscriptions.
While Google Analytics, Adobe Analytics, Webtrends, and similar products can be used to track visitors, page views, and other metrics, Kamdar said "it takes a lot of work to get the right kind of data into them." These publisher-specific metrics, which Parse.ly offers out of the box, include stats showing which writers are driving the most user engagement or the ability to immediately see current data in a historical context.
"The main things we offer are ease of use and accessibility of the data," he said. With Adobe, Google, and the like, he said, "only a few people know to use them," while there might be "hundreds" of Parse.ly users in a big publishing organization.
]]>"Everyone stops at scoring" likely customers, he told VentureBeat. This is why his company is releasing a new product today that gives recommendations on what to do to turn free or trial users into paying customers.
Called the NAVIK Converter, the cloud-based tool uses such data as usage patterns or demographics to identify which freemium or free-trial users are most likely to buy subscriptions — and then it suggests specific steps to take.
"You're unlikely to pay for a product you're using now [for free]," Kaul pointed out. "We predict the next best action" needed to turn you into a paying subscriber.
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During its beta period, that's how the Converter saw use from Hightail, the file-sharing company formerly known as YouSendIt.
Hightail wanted to convert freemium users into paid. Once the Converter identified likely candidates, it also provided several recommendations.
Recommendations are intended for specific segmented groups of potential customers. They can include product features that should be changed, promoted, or discounted, what kind of offer the message should include, the best time to approach the prospect, and whether the approach should be made through social media, email, or some other channel.
Accompanying the recommendation options is a projection of how many paid users will come out of the effort, and this is based on a simulation. As the effort unfolds, the Converter tracks results and can offer suggestions for mid-course corrections.
For Hightail, Kaul told us, the projections were 90 percent accurate. Once the steps are chosen, an API delivers the specs to an integrated marketing automation platform like Marketo for implementation. During the beta, Absolutdata said, the Converter increased conversion rates for client companies by five to 30 percent without increasing marketing budgets.
It's "a completely new type of category we're creating, 'Decision Engineering,'" he said.
Founded in 2002, the Alameda, Calif.-based company has offices in eight cities and focuses on big data, predictive modeling, business analytics, and reporting/data management services.
"The closest competitors we get" for NAVIK Converter, Kaul said, "are focused on which customers" to target. He mentioned Lattice Engines as a good example.
"Their focus is on who to target," he said. "What to do after that is not what they do."
]]>The Supreme League of Patriots takes some decent voice acting and a promising premise — a point-and-click adventure about a misguided superhero — and it stuffs them into a boring, clumsy package.
The result is a frustratingly slow-paced game that you can't click through fast enough. It launches today from developer No Bull Intentions and publisher Phoenix Online in three episodes ($6 each or $15 for a season pass) on Steam and other online stores for PC, Mac, and Linux. I played on both PC and Mac.
Each chapter runs about three hours in a normal playthrough. But it feels much longer.
The setup: superhero gone wrong
Kyle Keever is a big blond goof auditioning for a TV reality show, America's Got Superpowers, in a bright purple Uncle Sam suit (whose colors ran in the wash). His British sidekick, Mel, is the best character in the game: dry, sardonic, subtle, a real human being.
It's clear from the start that the rest of the cast is going to be over the top, which isn't a bad thing. And the premise — this accident-prone doofus's audition and a later accident that makes him think he's his alter ego, the Purple Patriot — seem ripe for humor.
The voice acting
The entire game has voice acting, a mountain of lines all told, and the talent is good. The voice of Mel in particular is easy to listen to, spot-on for comic delivery, and enjoyable. The lines are sometimes crisp and well written.
"Dennis Leary is coming to town," Kyle tells him early on. "Are you going to go see him?" "No, I saw him in 1987," Mel replies. "I'll wait until he has some new material."
While the conversations the rest of the characters deliver aren't nearly as good, the voice actors do a good job of imbuing them with some feeling of investment and emotion. The judges at the talent show, the other contestants, the boss at their day job at the police station, the Stan Lee knockoff at the bar, all sound like people you'd consider having a beer with, or at least laughing at.
The controls
Supreme League of Patriots could give a little more instruction on how to use one object in combination with another, but overall, its controls are intuitive and well executed. A utility belt-like display holds the objects you're currently using, with a longer belt as an inventory method.
You use radial menus to interact with the surroundings. And a well-drawn map enables you to teleport around the city (the only part of this game that's fast).
The cheerful story's twists
The progress of these characters through the scenes is painfully slow (see below), but the story itself is generally unobjectionable and has some nice twists once you get to them. Kyle has to work through challenges at a number of one- or two-room locations (his apartment, the police precinct, the studio, a bar, a park, a hospital, etc.) to fulfill his objectives of getting on the show, becoming a real superhero, and the like.
I won't spoil the plot of Kyle's adventures, since it's one of the better aspects of this game, but it's interesting, makes good use of the locations, and probably looked tremendous on paper when developer Philip Ings was storyboarding Supreme League of Patriots. Unfortunately, we don't get the storyboard. We get the game.
The oozing, predictable, painful pace
I adore adventure games. I've been playing them for decades, and I know the drill: lots of dialogue to click through, lots of items to click on, puzzles to solve, and things to put together. I couldn't wait to start this one, because an adventure game that's also funny is a rare treat.
]]>The new app delivers both multiplayer and better quality graphics to players of Disney Infinity 2.0, the toy-game hybrid that is Disney's big entry in the transmedia space, or cross-media entertainment. The move shows that Disney is putting more emphasis on mobile games, which have become a $25 billion worldwide market, according to market researcher Newzoo.
Disney said the free-to-play app features all of the tools and enhanced features of Toy Box 2.0 from Disney Infinity (2.0 edition), where players can create their own characters and game worlds. It also offers new multiplayer functionality for mobile gamers, who can create their own one-of-a-kind Toy Boxes with their favorite Marvel and Disney characters.
The game also uses the Apple iOS 8 Metal graphics engine's processing power to deliver a console-like game experience on iOS.
"With the Disney Infinity: Toy Box 2.0 app, we wanted to give our fans the chance to build and play console-quality Toy Boxes on their tablets and smartphones, and Metal allows us to offer the highest quality Disney Infinity experience, whether players are already on console or coming to the game exclusively through their mobile devices," said John Blackburn, the senior vice president and general manager of Disney Infinity, in a statement. "Disney Infinity's mobile players have been some of our most engaged in our community, with iPad users downloading and uploading more Toy Boxes than all other platforms combined over the past year."
With Toy Box 2.0, gamers can transfer their creations across platforms and edit or play them on the new device. The game also brings Marvel Super Heroes with some of Marvel's characters from The Avengers, Spider-Man, and Guardians of the Galaxy universes.
Players can now build and play simultaneously in a Toy Box on their mobile devices online with Wi-Fi connection.
Founded in 2009, Imgur has amassed a solid fanbase over the past six years, now claiming 130 million unique visitors each month and 1.5 million images uploaded each day. It's more than a simple photo-sharing platform though, as the community discusses, curates, votes, and comments the content into a sort of real-time stream of image-based stories.
Last April, the company raised $40 million in its first ever round of funding, money that is being used to refocus the company and build it into a business that leans on native advertising, and literates with new tools … such as a delightful new GIF generator.
This move isn't entirely surprising, given that founder and CEO Alan Schaaf told us last year that they were "developing an [animated] GIF generator tool, but I don't really want to give anything away."
Today, all is revealed.
With the aptly titled "Video to GIF" generator, Imgur is capitalizing on the seemingly never-ending parade of cute looping-videos that permeate the social sphere. Thanks, Vine.
Back in October, Imgur introduced a new GIFV format that automatically converts uploaded animated GIFs into smaller files while maintaining a high degree of quality — and they also play nicely for those wishing to share to Twitter and Facebook. With its latest tool, however, you can now extract an animated GIF from 500 online video sites, including Vimeo, YouTube, and Vine, simply by pasting in the URL and choosing your clip.
While the Internet has no shortage of GIF-creating tools that work much in the same way as Video to Gif, Imgur's goal is to make the process not only easier, but improve the quality too, thanks to its own GIFV format.
"We looked at GIF creation tools across the web and found them hard to use and slow, with low quality results," explains Sam Gerstenzang, the director of product of Imgur. "With 'Video to Gif', we're enabling a whole new generation of creators with a tool that's simple enough for novices but robust enough for editors, too."
Creating an animated GIF really is a piece of cake with Imgur's new tool, and we were impressed with the end-result — the quality is fantastic. You're also able to add captions to your clips for added zing (see below), while no registration is required to use Video to Gif.
]]>"Alibaba is a company with strong values," said Joe Tsai, Alibaba's executive vice chairman on an earnings call with reporters and analysts. "We believe this report was false and was based on arbitrary methodology."
The escalating feud between Alibaba, which held the biggest tech IPO in history last year, and the Chinese government burst into public yesterday when a government agency, the State Administration for Industry and Commerce, published a white paper this week. (For a copy and translation, see this report from Quartz.)
According to the report, officials from the SAIC met with Alibaba officials in the months leading up to its IPO last year to flag issues regarding "selling banned, dangerous, and counterfeit goods, dealing with unlicensed vendors, holding misleading sales promotions during its having a flawed credit ranking system for sellers, and lax internal staff controls," according to Quartz.
While the white paper was subsequently taken down from the SAIC website, it could still be seen here today. The report sent Alibaba's stock down 4.36 percent on Wednesday.
During the call today, Tsai said the company was planning to file a complaint against the SAIC for the substance of the report and its disclosure. He added that while the company continues to fight to weed out fraudulent products, the fact that new buyers are flocking to its service indicates that overall there is a high degree of trust and satisfaction on the part of customers.
"We feel compelled to respond when there are inaccurate reports published about us," Tsai said. "We have zero tolerance for these kind of activities on our platform."
]]>RADNOR, Pa. & GÖTEBORG, Sweden–(BUSINESS WIRE)–January 29, 2015–
Cortendo AB [ticker: CORT on NOTC-A], a global biopharmaceutical company initially focused on orphan endocrine disorders, today announced that it will present the study protocol of its global Phase 3 study of COR-003 in patients with endogenous Cushing's syndrome at ENDO 2015: The Endocrine Society's 97th Annual Meeting & Expo March 5-8 in San Diego, CA. This abstract will also be published in the April issue of Endocrine Reviews.
Additional information on the Cortendo presentation:
Title: An Open-label Study to Assess the Safety and Efficacy of Levoketoconazole (COR-003) in the Treatment of Endogenous Cushing's Syndrome
Abstract: 20580
Presentation Date and Time: Friday, March 6, 2015, 1 – 3 p.m.
Location: Poster session, Expo Hall, San Diego Convention Center
Posterboard: FRI-376
This abstract is available online: https://endo.confex.com/endo/2015endo/webprogram/Paper20580.html
Cortendo AB is a global biopharmaceutical company incorporated in Sweden and based in the United States. The Company's initial strategic focus is to be the global leader in commercializing innovative medicines for orphan endocrine disorders. Cortendo is leading the way in the field of cortisol inhibition through the investigational drug, COR-003 (levoketoconazole) currently being studied in the global Phase 3 SONICS trial for the treatment of Cushing's syndrome. COR-003 (levoketoconazole) has received orphan designation from both the European Medicines Agency (EMA) and the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA). The Company's intent is to independently commercialize its Orphan/Endocrine assets in key global markets, and partner non-strategic product opportunities, such as diabetes, at relevant development stages.
Cortendo AB
Ruth Thieroff-Ekerdt, 610-254-9200
Chief Medical Officer
Donna LaVoie, 617-374-8800, Ext. 107
David Connolly, 617-374-8800, Ext. 108
Today, the two giant companies announced the formation of the Sequencing the Food Supply Chain Consortium. And while the effort has a long and unwieldy name, and will embark on some complex science, the goal is simple: develop better knowledge about what makes food safe, and unsafe.
Every year, according to IBM, food-borne disease kills 3,000 people in the U.S. In addition, Big Blue said, more than 128,000 people end up in the hospital, incurring $9 billion in medical costs. At the same time, $75 billion in tainted food is thrown away every year.
Add it all up, and the costs of contaminated food are tremendous — and that's just in the United States.
According to James Kaufman, the manager of public health research at IBM's Almaden Research Institute in San Jose, Calif., the new consortium was started to "demonstrate how one can use advances in microbiology and next-gen sequencing — figuring out the order of DNA or RNA, the building blocks of nature — to measure the fingerprints of the community of organisms, the bacteria, that you expect to see in food."
The two-year joint project will begin with scientists studying the genetic marks of organisms such as bacteria, viruses, and fungi, and how they develop in a variety of food-industry environments, like ingredients, kitchens, and factories.
The idea is to understand which organisms are meant to be in food, and which are out of place. Detection is key. Know what's not supposed to be there, and you may be on the way to making food safer. Yet, while you may think that bacteria in food is always a problem, Kaufman would say that some foods, like yogurt, can't exist without living organisms.
The food industry has long had a detection system called PulseNet, run by the Center for Disease Control and Prevention, that "compares the 'DNA fingerprints' of bacteria from patients to find clusters of disease that might represent unrecognized outbreaks."
But Kaufman said that the problem with PulseNet is that it is dependent on looking for known organisms. What if something new enters into the food system that's never been seen before? He pointed to the melamine scandal in China in 2008, when thousands of infants were sickened, and several died, after a milk producer secretly added the ingredient — which affected the organisms in the milk — in an attempt to save money. "How do you test for" what you don't know might be there, Kaufman said.
By sequencing the genes of organisms, and creating a database of known bacteria, IBM and Mars think they can set the food industry on a path towards being able to recognize ahead of time when something is wrong with what people are eating.
In the early going, IBM will test samples from a Mars pet food factory, not once but several times over two years, aiming to generate a baseline of the known organisms in the ingredients, and how they change based on the season.
From time to time, Kaufman added, someone will "spike the samples" with a contaminant, in order to help scientists better identify anomalies.
IBM and Mars believe that as the cost of gene sequencing and computation have dropped, and as the world's food needs explode — Kaufman said the world's food supply will need to increase by 75 percent by 2050 to keep up with population growth — companies throughout the industry could benefit by joining the consortium.
And since "we're not going to see farms buying supercomputing clusters," Kaufman added, IBM hopes it can generate business by making its cloud-computing tools available to the industry at an inexpensive cost.
IBM also hopes that companies in the food industry will recognize the value of being able to access a large, and growing, database of organism fingerprints. "You can always go out and hire microbiologists and computer scientists in isolation," he said, "but you lose because you don't have access to the larger data."
The company says that its platform, which helps marketers manage organic and paid channels on mobile devices, is used by 60 percent of the top-grossing apps in Apple's App Store.
Tune's platform helps marketers "run campaigns across dozens or hundreds of channels like search, social media, app store discovery, email marketing, retargeting, and any number of advertising partners," CEO Peter Hamilton told VentureBeat via email.
Hamilton noted that the mobile ad and app scene has "overlapping providers," ranging from mobile ad measurement firms like AppsFlyer and Kochava to app store analytics provider App Annie. "Tune unifies these marketing disciplines, providing one platform to the enterprise marketer," he said.
Founded in 2009 by twin brothers Lucas and Lee Brown and managed by Hamilton, the company's customers include Uber, Sephora, Trulia, Alaska Airlines, and EA. Tune has two main products, MobileAppTracking (MAT) and HasOffers.
MAT tracks app installs, in-app engagement, and purchases, so they can be attributed to advertisers.
On its separate website, HasOffers describes itself as "a white-labeled affiliate tracking software that allows thousands of businesses around the world to track and manage their own affiliate programs." HasOffers was Tune's original moniker, until a name change last summer.
In August, Tune bought mobile marketing provider MobileDevHQ, which provided intelligence on how apps are doing in the App Store.
In February of last year, the company was dumped by Facebook because of issues relating to data retention. The social network charged that HasOffers kept user data too long, in violation of Facebook privacy policies.
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The Series B funding, which marks a kind of vindication in Tune's bounceback from the Facebook episode, will go toward growing the engineering teams, Hamilton told us, "and perhaps some acquisitions along the way."
He also promised "some really exciting products [will] come to market over the next two quarters, with the continued goal of unifying everything the marketer needs in one place."
There will also be what he called a "doubling down on education and support for the ecosystem," through new programs, webinars, and dedicated account management.
But $27 million is quite a haul. "We don't plan to spend it all," Hamilton told us.
The new funding was raised by Icon Ventures (formerly Jafco Ventures), along with Performance Equity Management and Accel Partners. A Series A round in 2013 scored $9.4 million. Tune is based in Seattle, but has offices around the world.
]]>Google Cloud Storage, BigQuery, Google Cloud Datastore, and Google Cloud DNS will become available through VMware's vCloud Air public cloud service, the two companies announced today.
VMware's vCloud Air, initially announced in 2013 under the moniker vCloud Hybrid Service, contains single-tenant and multi-tenant compute power, block storage, disaster recovery, backend as a service, and other features. Now VMware wants to flesh out its offering with high-performing services running in Google data centers, with a direct, secure connection between Google and vCloud Air.
"You don't have to establish a relationship with another cloud provider," a VMware spokesman told VentureBeat in an interview.
The alliance could help bolster Google, which is trying to increase its foothold in the market for cloud services. Google is also beating cloud competitors Amazon.com and Microsoft to the punch in winning a reseller relationship with VMware, whose virtualization software is deployed inside many enterprises' data centers.
Cloud analysts like Gartner have already seen Google come up as real competition to Amazon. And partnerships like this one with VMware could improve Google's position relative to the market leader.
That's because Alibaba said today that revenue climbed 40 percent in its third quarter to $4.219 billion, a huge number that still fell below the $4.45 billion that a consensus of Wall Street analysts had projected. Profits were up, as were mobile users. But will that be enough to calm investors?
Early signs indicate: Nope.
With Alibaba reporting earnings before markets opened in the U.S., its stock dropped 6.14 percent to $92.73 in pre-market trading, down from its closing price yesterday of $98.45 per share. The company's stock has been trending down gradually since Nov. 10 lwhen it closed at a peak of $119.15 per share.
Alibaba officials quickly sought to shift the focus to the company's explosive growth as well as the massive opportunity it still has in its home country.
"We delivered a strong quarter with significant growth across our key operating metrics," said Jonathan Lu, chief executive officer of Alibaba Group, in a press release. "Our business continues to perform well, and our results reflect the strength of our ecosystem and the strong foundation we have for sustainable growth."
The company said that earnings per share climbed 13 percent to 81 cents, a figure that doesn't count the cost of employee stock grants. Analysts had projected EPS of 75 cents.
Alibaba pointed out that the number of annual active buyers across its e-commerce services increased to 334 million in 2014, up 45 percent from the previous year.
"A number that surpasses the entire population of the United States is now shopping on our platform," said Joe Tsai, Alibaba's executive vice chairman during an earnings call with reporters and analysts.
The company also added 48 million monthly active users from Q2 to 265 million on its mobile platforms and generated more than $1 billion in mobile revenue during the quarter. That represented about 42 percent of all transactions, up from 36 percent in the last quarter.
]]>Half of American adults have at least one chronic disease, such as diabetes, obesity, or heart disease. The Center of Disease Control estimates that these illnesses make up 70% of deaths in the U.S. Chronic diseases not only cause pain and daily activity limitations for the individual, but are also a huge economic burden for society.
Several risk factors for chronic diseases are well known: smoking, lack of physical activity, and poor nutrition. These are factors everyone has a chance to take control over. However, often we fail to do so. So how can unhealthy habits be changed?
Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Tina Rosenberg's argues in her book, Join the Club: How Peer Pressure Can Transform the World, that the search for status and peer approval is the most powerful motivator of our personal behavior. This can then be used to encourage good habits. Peer pressure fighting the good fight, if you will.
Rosenberg gives a number of examples of how this can be successful, such as in antismoking programs, AIDS awareness campaigns, and in calculus training for minority students. Even social reforms in rural India, and the overthrowing of Slobodan Milošević can happen with the force of peer pressure.
Whether someone has a personal lifestyle goal or wants to fight a dictator, the connection with others is critical in order to achieve that goal. In Bell County, Kentucky, the program Team Up 4 Health has become an example of what communities can achieve when working together. A large number of the 30,000 residents were suffering from chronic illnesses, including one-third being obese, when Humana partnered with Microclinic International, a public health organization, to change that. They created the program that focuses on helping people influence each other to adopt healthy habits.
The residents were invited to join small groups that met twice a week for ten months. The groups received education on nutrition and health, such as how to control portion sizes, manage sugar and fat intake, and read food labels. They also exercised and cooked together, and made grocery store visits.
After the program, 95 percent of the participants improved in at least one of the following measures: weight, body mass index, waist circumference, HDL cholesterol, HbA1c, and blood pressure. Most participants reported increasing their physical activity, and half of them ate healthier.
What's the key to this positive outcome? The participants describe that it got "contagious". Lakin Brown, the Team Up 4 Health Program Facilitator, argues that the strong support system that the program created, with community members motivating each other to make positive lifestyle changes, is key to the success.
Peer pressure is obviously just as, or more, important than the pure educational element. Could be we need to make sure that the healthiest kids are the coolest ones.
So if you don't live in Bell County, or if you just don't want to hang out with your neighbors twice a week, what do you do to break a bad habit?
Go online of course (apologies for that year 2002 comment).
Chicago-based WellRight might have what you need. With the bombastic advertisement "If you don't take care of your body, where will you live?", this wellness platform is aimed towards organized groups or work places. They offer a basic health-screening program, and health risk assessment based on biometrics such as weight, height, blood pressure, cholesterol, and blood sugar. There are health educational features available for the users, as well as the ability to add on data from a number of third-party sensors and apps to the health tracking. WellRight promises to "take your wellness program to the next level".
The built-in challenge section is where the peer pressure comes in. Every desired goal (well, more or less) can be customized for the users. How about the recent "Dirty Dish Competition": Every participant has to cook a meal, post a photo of it, and whoever made the least healthy meal gets to clean the coffee break room dishes for a week. That's community.
This post brought to you by Humana. Click here to learn more.
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Actually, that day may be here.
Barcelona-based Whisbi, which for the past seven years has been providing online video calls from salespeople to help website visitors, is now extending that service to virtual store visits through wearable video devices.
It's "a revolutionary omnichannel software-as-a-service technology," VP of global sales and marketing Luigi Mallardo told me from Spain, via the same system.
"Can you imagine a physical store without store assistants?" he asked.
"Then why shouldn't e-shops have them? Why [is] sales conversion per visit much lower on e-shops compared with physical stores? Is it because [of] the lack of this human touch?"
He described his company, which also has offices in London, Madrid, and Sao Paolo, as "the only company in the world making a bridge between ecommerce and the retail store experience."
A visitor on a Whisbi-enhanced website clicks on a "Need more help?" or similarly labeled button. The visitor can enter a phone number, and the system will call both the visitor and the sales rep in the store. Or the website visitor can call a Whisbi phone number, and the system automatically connects the rep.
The rep is then shown in a one-way live video from the retail store or showroom. The visitor is not shown.
In Whisbi's telepresence incarnation, the rep is wearing Google Glass, Epson Moverio smart glasses, or the camera in an Android smartphone, possibly on a lanyard around the rep's neck or with the camera end of the phone sticking out of a shirt pocket. The rep can then walk through the showroom, picking up and demonstrating new products in live point-of-view video.
The rep can also show a Web page — to indicate where a desired product can be found online, for instance — or can show a file or live app. The system also supports a text chat and the ability for file transfer between visitor and rep.
The visitor can have any kind of phone, and any computer setup with browser and Internet connection. No special plugins or downloads are required, and, since a phone is used and there's no video of the visitor, the website visitor needs neither camera nor speakers.
Whisbi has been offering this point-of-view service for retailers in Europe since September. Vodafone, Fiat and Telefonica are clients, and Whisbi says they have doubled their sales conversion as a result.
"A key point," Mallardo said, "is that if you show your product, conversion rate increased."
The service is now available in the U.S. but has not yet implemented. Mallardo told me the company is in discussions with several U.S. retailers.
While a variety of companies offer click-to-call functions on their websites, and some offer the ability to click for a live video of a sales rep — including Amazon's Mayday button for Kindle devices — Mallardo says he is unaware of any other company that offers this kind of click-for-telepresence from the showroom or retail store.
The company has received two U.S. patents, and two are pending. They cover synchronization between computer transmissions and phone audio, transmission of video using very low connection speeds, and other aspects.
If showrooms with telepresence catch on, Google Glass and other wearable video devices could dramatically change the current interaction between ecommerce sites and their physical stores.
Although some marketing platforms have been attempting to add real-world store environments to their tools via iBeacons, point-of-sale interaction, geofencing, and the like, the website version of a retailer and the physical store version still represent very different experiences. The ability to see remotely into a store or showroom, essentially through the eyes of a knowledgeable, live store rep as he walks around and demonstrates products, could provide a new kind of experiential tunnel connecting store and website.
In fact, Mallardo envisions companies building real showrooms exclusively for support of their ecommerce sites, which could expand each website by the unique qualities of the remote location. Or, if the website uses existing physical stores, the brick-and-mortar property could find a new reason for being.
Pricing for the service ranges from $250 per rep per month for a smartphone video version and $500/rep/month for the Google Glass or Epson glasses version. Hardware for the rep, such as Google Glass, is not included in that price.
]]>As usual, there are no life-changing disclosures in the quarterly earnings report submitted to the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission. But the filing did contain a handful of interesting, if minor, revelations. Here are five for Apple fans to ponder:
1. iTunes media sales continue to crumble. Overall, Apple is seeing growth in its iTunes category, thanks to the App Store. But last fall, the company acknowledged for the first time that sales of media content had declined in its fiscal year 2014 that ended in September. In Q1 2015, the company said that growth in iTunes was "partially offset by a 7 percent year-over-year decrease in net sales of digital media consisting of music, movies, TV shows and books."
It appears that music and video-streaming services are taking a bigger bite. And it would seem that Apple's hopes to compete with Amazon.com on e-books sales is also falling flat.
2. People are opting for more memory on their iPhones. Apple reported that average selling prices for the iPhone increased 8 percent in the first quarter from the same period a year ago. Why? In part because the iPhone 6 was pricier. But also because of "an increased mix of higher storage capacity." Makes sense, since people want to take a gazillion photos. Also, if you don't have a ton of memory, updating iOS is a royal pain because it's grown so large.
3. People are buying cheaper iPads. It's not bad enough that unit sales of the iPad fell 18 percent in Q1. People are also opting for lower-price models, according to Apple. That's part of the reason Apple says the ASP for iPads fell 5 percent in Q1.
4. Japan hearts the iPad. Of Apple's five geographic regions (Americas, Europe, Greater China, Japan and Rest of Asia Pacific) Japan was the only one where sales of the iPad increased in Q1.
5. Capital expenditures are booming. The company spent $2.1 billion on capital expenditures in Q1 compared to $779 million for the same period a year ago. The money goes to new stores, manufacturing tools, data centers and "corporate facilites." (Side note: How is the new campus coming along?) World take note: Apple is investing even more in its business.
]]>What? Isn't Google Wallet already in the U.K.? Technically, yes. There, as in many parts of the world, you can open a Google Wallet account to pay for items in Google Play. But today's rollout is the first step toward bringing the full version of Google Wallet to the U.K. — and potentially beyond. Google clearly has its sights set on Europe for growing adoption of its digital wallet. The company first launched 'send money' for Gmail back in 2013, but this is the first time the feature will make its way out of the 50 states.
As of today, users in the U.K. can start sending British pounds to one another via Gmail. When you compose an email, a little '£' ' symbol will appear alongside various attachment options. Both senders and receivers will have to set up a Google Wallet account in order to use the new tool.
Once the search giant has enough registered users in the U.K., it will probably push out its tap-to-pay mobile wallet app. Unlike the U.S., the U.K. is well versed in contactless payment solutions, so Google Wallet could potentially see higher adoption rates there than here.
If, that is, it can get there before Apple Pay.
Apple is currently in negotiations with several banks in the region, which is stalling a launch planned for sometime in the first half of 2015, according to the Telegraph. But most mobile phones in the U.K. run on Android, so there's still plenty of opportunity for Google in the mobile payments space.
]]>The debut comes less than two months after Microsoft acquired email startup Acompli for $200 million. In fact, Julia White, general manager of Microsoft Office, tells VentureBeat the Acompli team has already been integrated into the Outlook team, and today's launch is a direct result of that.
The pitch is simple: Outlook will let you manage your work and personal email on your phone and tablet as efficiently as you do on your computer. The app also offers calendar features, attachment integration (with OneDrive, Dropbox, and even Google Drive), along with customizable swipes and actions so you can tailor it to how you specifically use email.
Outlook for Android will be in preview for a few months, unlike its iOS counterpart. This is a strategy Microsoft has adopted for its various cross-platform apps: there are simply more Android devices out there, and the company wants user feedback to work out any potential kinks.
The Outlook app for Google's and Apple's mobile platforms is free for consumers. It supports Office 365, Exchange, Outlook.com, Yahoo Mail, Gmail, iCloud, and other major email services.
We say "free for consumers" but it is technically free for businesses users as well. That said, Microsoft does plan to offer business-specific features for the app that will require an Office 365 subscription.
White tell us these premium features are currently slated "for the first half of this calendar year." While we don't know everything that's coming, she confirmed data protection, rights management, and encryption are all in the pipeline.
Microsoft says Acompli users will find the Outlook app a familiar experience because it was built from the Accompli code base. The company also promised to "rapidly update the Outlook app" — aside from pay-for premium features, however, it didn't discuss what's next.
"Since the acquisition, we've been working hard on integrating our team and development processes to ensure we're able to continue rapidly delivering new features and functionality to our customers," Javier Soltero, Outlook general manager and former CEO of Acompli, said in a statement. "Our mission is to bring the best mobile email experience across platforms, in a way that is as familiar and functional as Outlook itself."
Soltero also threw out some interesting numbers: the average business user today sends and receives 121 emails per day, and users spent an average of 24 seconds inside Acompli's app every time they opened it, which happened dozens of times per day. He believes those 24 seconds need to be "as productive as they can be" and today's Outlook app is supposed to deliver just that.
Microsoft already offers an Outlook.com app for Android, as well as the Outlook Web App (OWA) for business users on iPad, iPhone, and Android. None of these apps can access other email providers outside of Microsoft's.
As such, they have never really properly represented Outlook, and when we asked, White confirmed that they are going away. Going forward, they will all be merged into the main Outlook app released today.
These apps will remain in their respective app stores for the time being, though Microsoft plans to move users over "as quickly as possible." That said, White noted Microsoft doesn't have "a specific timeline" nor "a hard deadline" and aims to make the transition a "gradual one" for users.
All of the above is for Android and iOS. Windows Phone, you might remember, is the only mobile platform that has a "proper" Outlook app. With the release of Windows 10, Microsoft is planning a touch-optimized version of Office that includes Outlook as a universal Windows app. That means this new Outlook, when it arrives along with Windows 10, will work on PCs, tablets, as well as smartphones.
In short, Microsoft appears to be cleaning up its email act for those on the go. If all goes according to plan, this is the year Outlook will finally get an experience on mobile that is comparable to the desktop.
]]>The launch follows Microsoft's big Office news on November 6, when it made mobile editing free, launched Word, Excel, and PowerPoint for iPhone, as well as the same apps in preview for Android tablets. Since then, the company has seen 80 million downloads of Office for iPad and iPhone, 250,000 downloads of the Android tablet preview apps, and 4+ ratings for all.
The Android tablet apps offer similar features and functionality as the iPad apps; "We want to make sure we're delivering a similar set of experiences on the same form factors," Microsoft product manager Amanda Lefebvre told VentureBeat back in November.
While the Word, Excel, and PowerPoint for Android tablets are free downloads for consumers like their iPad counterparts (log in with your Microsoft Account to create files, print documents, and edit for free), premium features for businesses require an Office 365 subscription. To gain access to those, you'll have to log in with your Office 365 business credentials.
With iPad, iPhone, and Android tablets now all with their own separate Word, Excel, and PowerPoint apps, all that is left is for Office Mobile for Android phones to be split in three. Also on November 6, Microsoft promised these individual apps were in the pipeline and would arrive "at some point later."
Today, Julia White, general manager of Microsoft Office, told VentureBeat the company would have more to share "in the summertime." That's a long time to wait, especially given that they will probably launch in preview and users will have to twiddle their thumbs even longer for a stable release.
Maybe, just maybe, Office for Windows 10 will be out before then. That way, Windows users will finally have touch-optimized versions of Word, Excel, and PowerPoint on their phones before Android users. Either way, iOS has already won.
This is the world we now live in: Microsoft is perfectly happy building cross-platform, and if that means its own platform doesn't get first pick, then it simply has all the more work to do. Presumably, the company has learned from its Office mobile push and will make building apps for Windows 10 the best of both Android and iOS developing worlds.
]]>Today's news comes just eight months after Deliveroo raised a £2.5 million ($3.8 million) round, led by Index Ventures. Index Ventures is participating in this round too, but it's being led by Accel Partners, with Hoxton Ventures and Hummingbird Ventures also chipping in.
Founded in 2013, Deliveroo differs from other food-delivery companies insofar as it focuses on the "premium" end of the cuisine spectrum. While there are many online channels and aggregators for ordering food, they typically don't offer finer-dining eateries — which is usually because such establishments don't offer a takeaway service.
Just Eat, another London-based company and a "global version of GrubHub", IPO'd last year on the London Stock Exchange at a $2.5 billion value. With Just Eat, however, you have thousands of local takeaways signing up to make their menus available to households around the country. And each takeaway uses its own delivery drivers. Deliveroo partners with restaurants but uses its own drivers and cyclists, as it's looking to bring a more consistent experience to the ordering process.
Though Deliveroo is focusing on the higher-end restaurant market, it isn't all "lobster and caviar" — but the kinds of restaurants you'll find on there aren't typically on other platforms. There are national chains such as Nando's and Gourmet Burger Kitchen, but then there are also indie eateries such as Ollie Dabbous' Barnyard and Martin Morales' Andina.
By managing the technological facet of launching an online takeaway service, and taking care of the logistical delivery side of things too, Deliveroo lets restaurants concentrate on being a "sit-down restaurant" while cooking additional orders for those who prefer to sit down at home.
However, there may be downsides to working in this way — surely it takes longer to grow and scale when you're providing the transport infrastructure to make the business work. Deliveroo has mainly operated in London so far, and it has yet to reach all neighborhoods of the city. But it also recently expanded to cover Brighton, and it will be launching in Manchester this week too.
Despite any scaling limitations, Deliveroo today claims 50,000 people use the service regularly. And with $25 million more to play with, Deliveroo is now looking to grow "aggressively" across the rest of the country and into international markets.
The model itself is perfectly simple, and it's one that can be scaled with the right investment. And this is why a company with a relatively small impact thus far has managed to add $25 million more to its coffers.
"Deliveroo is one of the fastest growing companies in our portfolio," said Martin Mignot from Index Ventures. "The main reason behind this growth is its win-win-win proposition. Customers get access to good food they couldn't get delivered before, restaurants increase their revenues, and hundreds of drivers generate new income."
]]>Datadog's service gives developers and operations teams the ability to monitor performance metrics, as well as specific events, from a variety of cloud services, all in a single dashboard. It's free for up to five hosts and costs $15 per host per month for up to 100 hosts, with enterprise pricing available for quantities above that.
The round was led by previous investor Index Ventures, with participation from RTP Ventures, Openview Partners, and others.
The company is based in New York, and launched in 2010. It says that its monitoring service works with thousands of customer companies, comprising more than 100,000 servers in all.
It supports most major cloud providers, including Amazon Web Services (AWS), Microsoft Azure, Google Cloud Platform, and Red Hat OpenShift, as well as the OpenStack platform. The company says its monitoring service works with more than 100 different types of technologies used on these cloud platforms.
]]>In my world, I have an endless stream of requests to do something for an hour. I just looked at my calendar for the next two weeks and almost everything that someone else scheduled and invited me to is for an hour.
In contrast, all of the things I (or my assistant) have scheduled are for 30 minutes. And many of them will take five minutes.
If you schedule a meeting for an hour, it's remarkable to me how often it takes an hour, even when it doesn't need to. Three-hour board meetings, especially when board members have traveled to them, take — wait for the drum roll — three hours.
During the day, between Monday and Friday, I generally have a very scheduled life. I go through phases where I shift into Maker Mode, now no longer schedule anything before 11am my time (with occasional exceptions), and try to have a very unscheduled weekend. But Monday to Friday looks like the image to the right.
Over time, I've come up with some approaches to deal with this massively over-scheduled life in order to stay sane. Here are a few of them.
30 minute schedule slots: I've tried it all. 60 minutes. 15 minutes. 5 minutes. 45 minutes. 37 minutes. The only thing that I've found that works is 30 minutes. If I schedule for 15 minutes, I inevitably have too many things in a day and get completely exhausted. If I schedule for more than 30 minutes, I find myself twiddling my thumbs and trying to get finished with the meeting. 30 minutes seems to be the ideal amount to get any type of meeting done.
A walk: If I have a longer, more thoughtful discussion I want to have with someone, I go for a walk. I have four routes around downtown Boulder – 15, 30, 45, and 60 minute walks. All of these walks have the same loop so even when I schedule for a 60 minute walk, I have an easy way to turn it into a 30 minute walk if it's clear that's all it's going to take. Or, if I'm into the first 15 minutes and realize it needs to be an hour, I just extend to the 30 minute segment. My worst case on a walk that goes too long is that I get some steps for my daily Fitbit habit.
Phone calls: I schedule almost all phone calls, except for ones with high priority people. This high priority ones interrupt whatever I'm doing or get done on a drive to and from the office. If you hang around me, you'll see that my phone rarely rings (except for Amy) and I rarely make calls outbound as most of my world runs on email or real-time messaging.
End everything early: I try to end everything when it's done. I jump right in and finish when we are finished. When you give things 30 minutes, you don't have time to futz around with intros and catch ups. When someone starts this way, I break in and say as politely as I can, "What's on your mind?" On the phone, I minimize chit chat and just try to get to the point. And, after five minutes when we are done, I revel in the notion that I've got 25 minutes to do whatever I want.
I'm always experimenting with new things. What do you do to keep meetings manageable and sane?
This story originally appeared on Brad Feld.
]]>The game is a companion to Evolve, the highly anticipated console and PC game launching on Feb. 10. That multiplayer game pits four human hunters against a player-controlled monster in a kind of cat-and-mouse hunting game. It is expected to be one of the biggest releases of the year. Mobile gaming has become a $25 billion business, according to market research firm Newzoo.
To maximize the impact of that launch, 2K games, developer Turtle Rock Studios, and mobile app creator Cat Daddy Games created Evolve: Hunters Quest for iOS, Windows, Android and Amazon Fire devices.
Evolve: Hunters Quest is a "match three" puzzle combat game that takes players on more than 100 missions set in the Evolve universe. Players join a team of Hunters on the planet Shear in search of new and unique wildlife and monsters. Players must match three tokens of the same color to unleash attacks on their enemies, fill up energy bars to activate Hunters' special abilities, and earn Mastery Points to level up their characters. It's kind of a clone of Puzzle & Dragons, GungHo Entertainment's popular puzzle-fighting game.
The mobile game also links directly to the main console/PC game for an expanded experience. Players can apply their Mastery Points earned in Evolve: Hunters Quest to characters in the Evolve game on any platform. Players can also discover and unlock unique game art and enhance their console skills by watching replays of their online multiplayer matches from a strategic top-down view.
Cat Daddy Games is owned by 2K, which is a publishing label of Take-Two Interactive Software.
Gamers that missed out on Microsoft's holiday special pricing for the Xbox One now get a second chance via the nation's largest daily deal website Groupon. The Chicago-based deal site is currently offering a 10% off sitewide coupon on all Groupon "Goods" products for a limited time, including the aforementioned 8th generation Microsoft gaming system.
Until tomorrow midnight Central Time (January 29th), the Xbox One Assassin's Creed Unity bundle is only $349.99 at Groupon. By using coupon code TRIPLE during checkout, you'll slash another 10% off the ticket price, bringing the console's price tag down to $314.99 with free shipping.
Unfortunately, the offer excludes residents of Alaska, Hawaii, Canada, and Puerto Rico (undoubtedly because shipping costs are prohibitive).
Quantity available is unknown, and as of writing, there are about 160 units sold.
The Xbox One rarely dropped below $349.99 during the holiday season, with most retailers opting to provide gift cards and free game incentives to move the units.
In contrast, the PlayStation 4 has seen significantly fewer discounts than the Xbox One, although you can currently pick up a PS4 for $349.99 on NewEgg's eBay storefront.
The coupon will work through tomorrow and can be applied to three Local deals, three Goods deals, and three Getaway deals. Full FAQ/details can also be found here.
Then, bang! You get an unsolicited offer to buy your company. The offer is too high for you to dismiss it out of hand. And it has what amounts to a take-it-or-leave-it clause that only gives you a few days to make up your mind. Getting this offer was the furthest thing from your mind and you are unprepared.
What should you do?
The answer depends on the size of the total purchase consideration. If the offer is for something like a few to several hundreds of thousands per employee when you have a small number of employees, then you have one set of guidelines. If the offer values your business at a million or more per employee and you have preferred shareholders, then your investors will become immediately engaged, likely hire a banker, and you will have less to say about what happens next. It is in the smaller scale buyout scenario where the burden falls on you.
As it turns out, what you should have done before receiving such an offer is largely common regardless of the purchase consideration.
Before you even get an offer, make sure you have done the following things:
So now you have completed this preparation and an officer of a public company floats the idea of a deal including a number with you. Your response should be "If it is not in writing, it is not serious. Put it in writing if you want to continue this conversation." Then get up and leave, even if it seems rude.
Legally, there is a huge difference between the suggestion that there might be a term sheet coming and receiving a fully complete term sheet. Anybody can float a verbal offer, but a real term sheet is a legal document that requires lots of approval and thought on the buyer's part. It is the first sign that you have a party in serious acquisition mode.
The reason I say you should walk away and not discuss a verbal offer is that it is not an offer; it is a fishing expedition, and you are the fish. The other party has a mammoth informational advantage on you, and they're trying to gain even more by seeing how you react. When you force them through the approval process of a serious term sheet, you are now making them give you more information and evening out that informational asymmetry.
So now let us assume you have been handed a bona fide term sheet. There are a ton of terms in the document, but fortunately there are only three you need to understand before you decide to take the term sheet back with you. They are:
If the initial purchase consideration is below the minimum amount you are willing to sell your company for, hand it back and tell them the offer is too low. If you've done good research on the deal history in your industry, you should be able to state with confidence that the consideration is well below industry norms and you will not interrupt your business to consider it. This is very tough to do, but you must do it.
To find more exclusive insights from tech industry insiders,
explore VentureBeat's selection of recent guest posts.
(You might ask why I did not factor in the earn outs into the total price offered. The simple reason is that the acquiring party has far more control over whether your earn outs are achieved than you do. Since certain revenue thresholds in a given period of time are almost certainly part of an offer, and since you're counting on their sales force, not yours, to achieve those earn outs, you should factor them down to zero as a base case.)
If the time to close after the term sheet is greater than 60 days, hand it back because this is likely a fishing expedition as opposed to a serious offer. Remember that once you sign the term sheet you are obliged to put satisfying the buyer's due diligence needs ahead of building your business. Unless the economic consideration is very large, the stakes for the buyer are tiny compared to your interests, and they should be able to do this in less than two months, especially if your records are in good shape.
Assuming that the initial purchase consideration is above your floor, and the time to close is reasonable, you want to thank them for the offer, take the term sheet away with you, confer immediately with your pre-qualified counsel, come to a determination about what you think should be done for the benefit of all stockholders, and then inform your board of directors that you have a written offer that needs to be discussed now.
You might wonder what should go into making the decision. It's exactly the same criteria by which you should be evaluating your business all along. Where are you in your chase for product/market fit, how fast are you growing, how much competition are you facing, what is the likely environment for future equity raises, and how enthused is your investor base?
In the case of a small scale buyout, there is not enough money here to pay a banker's fee. You and your board will have to come to agreement about what to do and who will lead the negotiation. If you're a first-time CEO without any M&A experience, do not resist a board member taking the lead.
As a last point, I see too many CEOs wanting to hit the ball out of the park on any deal. Frankly, being able to claim that you gave a positive return to your investors in a short period of time is a lot better than riding your startup into the ground waiting for an offer that your business fundamentals did not support on a rational basis. Remember that your track record with previous investors is a huge determinant of your ability to get another startup off the ground. Do not lose sight of that fact.
Perform your advanced preparation now, and don't forget these simple rules for dealing with an unexpected potentially positive outcome.
Jeff Thermond is a venture partner at XSeed Capital and has been involved in information technology and computer networking for over 30 years. Prior to XSeed, Jeff was Chief Executive Officer of Woven Systems, Chief Executive Officer of Epigram (which he sold to Broadcom for $498 million in 1999), and Vice President and General Manager at 3Com. He currently sits on the board of directors at Lex Machina.
]]>The French company acknowledged that the revenues for the twelve months ended Dec. 31 were "mixed" for its back catalog and "disappointing" for its brand new games launched in 2014.
"It has been a mixed year for Gameloft with its back catalog performing strongly but a disappointing contribution from its 2014 line-up. We launched twelve smartphone games in 2014 compared to more than twenty per year on average in the previous five years," said Michel Guillemot, CEO of Gameloft, in a statement. "In the past few months we have made several internal adjustments that will allow the company to release once again around twenty new titles per year going forward and to launch these games at a regular pace during the year. In the meantime, the ongoing traction of our back catalogue has shown that many of our products have the potential to contribute to revenues for several years. The combination of strong back catalog sales and of a robust line-up of new games should allow Gameloft to return to profitable and rapid growth."
The sales were down 3 percent year-over-year but were up 1 percent when adjusted for currency fluctuations. Back catalog titles were 90 percent of full-year sales, up 15 percent from a year ago. Europe and the Middle East were 33 percent of 2014 sales. North America was 28 percent. Asia-Pacific was 22 percent, and Latin America was 18 percent.
Q4 sales were €60.2 million ($67 million) in the fourth quarter of 2014, down 3 percent from a year earlier and down 6 percent using a constant-exchange rate. Monthly active users were 170 million in the fourth quarter, and average daily active users were 21 million in the fourth quarter. 700 million Gameloft games were downloaded in 2014.
Gameloft expects to launch 20 new titles in 2014.
The company has set up its own in-house digital ad agency and has started as planned to sell the inventory available in close to twenty of its games. "With major advertising companies now switching a larger part of their budgets to mobile, and with Gameloft being one of the leading publishers by downloads and audience, we expect advertising to become a significant new line of business for the company and to unlock long-term shareholder value," added Michel Guillemot.
Microsoft has confirmed that it is experiencing problems with the core services of Xbox Live. This is preventing people from playing many online multiplayer games like Call of Duty: Advanced Warfare or accessing video services like Hulu Plus. The company updated its site to say that it is working on a fix.
"Are you having a rough time signing in to Xbox Live," the company's Xbox Live status site asks. "We're aware, and we're working to provide a solution right away."
We're working hard to look into problems connecting to Xbox Live. Stay tuned here: http://t.co/99xfLNN0o8 for updates on this issue. ^SB
— Xbox Support (1-5) (@XboxSupport) January 29, 2015
Xbox Live is the backbone of the Xbox platform's online gaming infrastructure. This isn't the first time Microsoft's Web service for has prevented people from fully enjoying their consoles in the last month. At the end of December, a cyberattack brought it down over Christmas. It went down again on New Years Eve.
The move is the company's second rare big bet on the mass market reach of television, but it's also another sign that mobile gaming is growing up. Ucool believes that its previous TV ad campaign worked so well at getting new users for the fantasy role-playing game that it is following up with the Super Bowl ad.
Worldwide, mobile games are expected to reach $30 billion in revenues in 2015, surpassing overall revenues for console games, according to market researcher Newzoo. Rival Machine Zone also launched a TV campaign with supermodel Kate Upton to recruit more users for Game of War: Fire Age. But while that game has been generating hundreds of millions of dollars in revenue for the past year, Ucool's game is less established.
Jim Ngui, the producer of Heroes Charge at Menlo Park, Calif.-based Ucool, told us in an earlier interview that TV advertising is actually cost-effective. It hits a wider net of mainstream users than targeted mobile gaming ads. But the cost per install of mobile gaming ads has been rising so much that TV doesn't seem so outlandish anymore, Ngui said. The game is the No. 3 top-grossing role-playing game in the U.S. on Google Play, and it is the No. 1 card-based game on iOS in 130 countries.
Heroes Charge debuted in August, and it has slowly rolled out worldwide. But now Ucool will launch the ad campaign in 25 countries on dozens of cable TV networks. The game is targeted at men and women ages 18 to 44.
The new ad is a 15-second national TV spot that will debut on the Super Bowl on Feb. 1, and then it will air on the The Tonight Show Starring Jimmy Fallon. It will also air on ABC, NBC, and other broadcast and cable networks. The ad features the hero, Emberstar, doing some severe damage to skeletons.
"Heroes Charge's success is the result of the studio's focus on exceptionally high quality game design and a strong 'player first' mentality. The vision of Ucool is to completely change the 'freemium' game model," said Ucool's CEO Lu Lu, in a statement. "Unlike others who try to force users to spend money with progress-limiting pay walls, we believe that players will support games that respect their time and money which is why we provide access to all of our game content and upgrades without requiring users to spend a single dollar."
The Heroes Charge app has surpassed 9.7 million installations and maintains a monthly retention rate well above industry average at 27.8 percent. On average, players log in three to four times per day, and play for 45 minutes per session, totaling two to three hours per day each.
While this is a huge deal for the ephemeral mobile app's monetization strategy, and much of everyone's attention was on the app's Discover section, we noticed a couple of other changes in the app. They're much more subtle than the shiny new content tab, and yet definitely worthy of attention and a few words from us.
When Snapchat first introduced the ability to send a text-based message, back in May, I was ecstatic. Finally, Snapchat was listening to my wishes and incorporating the one feature I'd always said Facebook's failed clone, Poke, had over it. Sometimes, you don't want to snap a photo or shoot some video. Sometimes, you just want words.
Yesterday's app update slightly tweaked that feature: You no longer need to have a previous photo- or video-based interaction with someone (housed in your activity feed) in order to send them an ephemeral chat. Now you can open the chat tab, and start typing away.
You see, at the time, Snapchat was pretty clear about still wanting users to communicate through photos and videos, not text. Chat had been a complementary, or auxiliary form of communication so far, but the app's new update lets go of that. Go ahead and send those disappearing text messages now — and feel more "private" than when using other services.
Yesterday's update also included a nifty new way to add friends: You point your camera toward another user's personal QR code (found in their app's profile section), and Snapchat detects and adds them to your friends' list. Turns out, Snapchat's quiet acquisition of Scan.me is behind this feature.
And then you go to the "Add Friends" page, and find two options — adding by username, and adding from your phone's contacts — and a lot of white space. A lot of it, even despite the colorful illustration Snapchat slapped on there in a way that looks like … filler.
This might all be speculation and wishful thinking, but what if the company were planning on adding more to this section? You could have an option to add celebrities or brands to receive their snaps and check out their stories. You could look through a list of nearby users — a handy option if you're at a party, for example.
And you could also swiftly subscribe to premium media content from the new Discover section. Remember Snapcash? Yeah, that would be a perfect way to let you tap a button and trade a few dollars for more media content.
It's no secret that Snapchat has bigger ambitions than just being that silly app 13-year-olds are turning to as they run as fast as they can from Facebook (not true, but we'll leave that for another time). It did, after all, famously turn down a $3 billion acquisition from Facebook.
And it's probably because Snapchat wants to take a big, fat bite out of Facebook's mobile business and eyeballs. For years, Facebook has been working hard to be more than just a way for people to create a profile and stalk each other, and instead be the portal they turn to for everything. Case in point: Facebook Home — literally an attempt to take over your phone.
But if you're chatting, exchanging photos and videos with friends, and now getting your news and entertainment from Snapchat, why would you need anything else?
Others have already compared Snapchat's new model to what Yahoo should be (remember the "daily habit" idea?), but we'd argue the lunch money it's really stealing is Facebook's. In recently leaked emails, chief executive Evan Spiegel scoffed at Facebook's ad businesses, arguing that its failure to really anchor big-brand ad dollars — something Spiegel is strategically going after — will cause its demise. The only capability we've yet to see is how Snapchat handles the organic distribution of content — sharing articles and clips with friends or followers — but it's pretty easy to envision how they could implement that.
It'll be interesting to see just how the young social network and its bold CEO navigate the path ahead.
]]>The mobile gaming hit Badland is coming on eight platforms in a new "game of the year edition" for consoles and PC.
The Helsinki, Finland-based indie game development studio Frogmind Games announced that the award-winning platform game has a rerelease this spring with new high-definition visuals and a control scheme that fits the new platforms. Badland: Game of the Year Edition is for PlayStation 4, Xbox One, Nintendo Wii U, PlayStation 3, PlayStation Vita, and Steam for Windows, Mac, and Linux.
Fans will likely go bananas over the announcement, since Apple named Badland as its 2013 iPad Game of the Year. The wider distribution of a game that has been downloaded more than 20 million times ensures a new life for Badland and even more revenue for developer Frogmind.
"It's not just a one-touch character anymore," said Badland co-creator Johannes Vuorinen in an interview with GamesBeat. "You have more control, and because of that, we had to change every level of the game. We designed Badland as a console-quality game for mobile. We came from a console background. So now it really looks good on a big TV now, and it runs on the consoles."
I interviewed Vuorinen in Marseille, France, where we were judges for the International Mobile Gaming Awards. Frogmind won the IMGA Grand Prix top prize last year.
Badland was the creation of just two developers, Vuorinen and Juhana Myllys. It's a side-scrolling action-adventure game where you play a little black, sponge-like creature. You move through a mysterious forest where something has gone wrong. As the cute character, you bounce around and solve physics-based puzzles. And you try to unravel a mystery.
The original game has beautiful hand-painted art and moody music. Now it has been remastered with the help of Blitworks (which brought Fez, Spelunky, and Bastion to secondary platforms) and Frozenbyte, the studio behind Trine (a series known for its gorgeous visuals). The new game has over 15 hours and 100 levels of single-player story content and 100 co-op and 27 multiplayer death match stages in an up-to-four-person local multiplayer mode.
Now the team has 13 people and it is hard at work on two other games, Vuorinen said. The only major platform that the new Badland will not appear on is the Xbox 360, mainly because it isn't easy to do self-publishing on that system, Vuorinen said.
Vuorinen said that he still likes working in small teams, but he won't say exactly what the new games are yet.
"Badland was made with two guys, and our new games will be small teams too," Vuorinen said. "We are fully focused on the Badland brand. We want to leverage it."
The original mobile game has been a huge hit around the world. It was released in 2013 on iOS as a tablet game, and has now been published on BlackBerry 10, Android, and Windows Phone 8.
So far, it hasn't been published in China, as it requires a larger download than is customary for Chinese mobile games.
"We're going to have a really huge update coming," Vuorinen said. "But I'm not talking about that yet."
Girls are just better at school, it appears. So why aren't there more women in key roles at tech companies?
Girls outperform boys in academic achievement in 70 percent of the countries around the world, according to a recent study. The study, done by researchers at the University of Missouri and the University of Glasgow, looked at the educational achievement levels of 1.5 million 15-year-old students around the world, from 2000 to 2010.
"Even in countries where women's liberties are severely restricted, we found that girls are outperforming boys in reading, mathematics, and science literacy by age 15," said one of the study's two authors, David Geary, a psychology professor at MU.
The only places where that was not the case were Colombia, Costa Rica, and the Indian state of Himachal Pradesh. In the United States and United Kingdom, boys and girls had comparable levels of educational achievement.
But everywhere else, on average, 15-year-old girls do better in all subjects, including science and math.
As the researchers write in their paper, this finding "raises the question of why – despite educational opportunities and success – women are under-represented in leadership positions in politics, business, and academia."
Or, as many have been asking in Silicon Valley lately, why aren't there more female programmers, engineers, product managers, and tech executives at our companies?
The researchers put forward two theories. One is that, while the average performance of girls is higher, it's the top-performing individuals who go on to these kinds of leadership positions, and "boys at the highest levels [do] equally well [as] or better than girls at the highest levels."
The other is that relative performance matters to each individual. If you're better at language arts you're more likely to become a humanities major in college; if you're better at science and math, you're more likely to become a science, math, or engineering major.
In other words, even if you're better than most of the boys at math, you still might go into the humanities if those are your strong suit.
The authors acknowledge that there are other issues involved, such as the way cultural norms might feed boys into a "pipeline" of clubs, interests, and majors that culminate in the kinds of skills needed to land a tech job — while girls get directed into other kinds of educational and extracurricular tracks.
Put another way: Between the ages of 15 and 21, most girls face an enormous amount of social and academic pressure to leave science and math. They have to put up with schools, peers, and a society that expect less of them, and people who actively discourage them from pursuing these fields. Despite starting academically ahead, they have to work extra hard just to keep up with the boys, who don't have to spend half their energy simply justifying their right to be there. Faced with stereotypes, discrimination, exclusion, peer pressure, and more, most girls give up.
But the study didn't tackle that issue.
There's a third possibility, which is that academic performance doesn't correlate with aptitude, and that from ages 15 to 21, the math-science abilities of boys start to outstrip those of girls.
A blogger who goes by the pen name Scott Alexander has done some interesting, detailed analysis of GRE scores and SAT scores by university department, and has found very strong correlations. Physics and engineering departments have a much higher average score on the math part of the test, and a much smaller number of women, while art history and English literature show the opposite pattern.
Now, GRE scores are taken by college seniors, so that could reflect the benefits of four years of schooling. But SAT tests are usually taken by 17-year-olds, and they show a similar, if slightly weaker, correlation. In other words, Alexander writes, by 11th grade, there is already an aptitude gap between girls and boys in terms of their math abilities.
There are all kinds of ways to argue with that point (going back to the pipeline and stereotype arguments, of course), but it can't be easily rejected out of hand. Whatever the cause, the gap seems to be there.
If we try to square this two papers, it looks like something happens after the age of 15. Girls, who start out very strong in science and math, gradually drift away from it — for whatever reason — and that causes them to lose ground.
If I were looking to solve the gender gap in tech, I'd start by trying to keep 15-year-old girls engaged with science and math — and prevent people from pushing them out.
The Missouri study raises another issue for me. It suggests that Silicon Valley companies, which pride themselves on being meritocracies, are missing a big opportunity.
It's a competitive job market, which means that many companies would be eager to find a pool of talent that is easier to recruit — and perhaps less expensive — than the usual suspects.
This study shows that there's an enormous pool of talent like that: women, who for whatever reason, had high levels of academic achievement in science and math early on but wound up going into different fields in college.
Now, granted, many of these talented people will lack the kind of training that most companies need. But with the wealth of coding academies around — many of which are aimed at women — it should be pretty easy to rectify that problem.
You just need to find talented candidates who did well in science and math during high school, regardless of whether they followed up on that interest in college, and then train them up. It's the Moneyball strategy.
Or, you know, you could just look for culture fit.
]]>Folks in attendance included Michael Arrington, Matt Mullenweg, Dave McClure, Jeremiah Owyang, Brian Solis, Scott Beale, and another 200+ influencers from Silicon Valley. They all showed up in Napa Valley to pay their respects to one of the most influential players in the industry.
The amount of love the tech community has for Robert Scoble is overwhelming. If the tech community were a country, Scoble would be its ambassador. Not only because we would want him to be, but because he truly knows more about the state of the global tech community than anyone else on planet Earth. I've known Scoble for seven years, and I've always been in awe of how much knowledge this man possesses about so many startups.
The last few days have led me to think about Scoble's unique role in the tech industry. Part thought leader, part evangelist, part connecter, there's no one quite like him.
Why is it that he is loved by so many? Here are my thoughts — and some lessons I believe other influencers can take from Scoble's example.
So many influencers in Silicon Valley shut themselves off from entrepreneurs, most probably because they've been pitched one too many times and feel jaded — or perhaps because they feel they've reached a higher status. In my eyes, there are very few people in our industry who could be considered higher stature than Scoble, and yet for the seven years I have known him, not once have I seen him turn away anyone. He listens to every single person that pitches him and gives his honest and truthful opinion.
This sort of feedback is invaluable to entrepreneurs while developing their products and also puts Scoble in a unique position to influence the shape and form of so many technology products out there. Did you know, for example, that he helped out in the early stages of many well-known startups such as Instagram, Flipboard, Twitter, Siri, and Box?
This openness to entrepreneurs is also the reason that Scoble always hears of the best and most innovative apps and services before anyone else – he is always there first to listen.
By making himself accessible, not only is he gaining new contacts in the tech community every day, he is also spreading his influence over the technology they're producing.
People feel open enough to share their dreams, wishes, and stories with Scoble, because he shares everything about his life with them as well. Scoble has always been very open, whether he's discussing his latest thoughts on the state of Facebook or sharing much more personal stuff about his life. Scoble holds nothing back.
For instance, much to the shock of all of his followers and especially those of us who attended his birthday, a day after his birthday event, Scoble posted a touching, yet somewhat alarming Facebook status that he had been diagnosed with skin cancer.
This post was a clear depiction of the way Scoble has always been: totally transparent. He is open with those around him and expects nothing less from the entrepreneurs surrounding him. He feels a sense of commitment to his followers, to let them know everything that's going on with him – whether it's his personal thoughts on life or views on products.
This behavior causes entrepreneurs who have never met Scoble before and meet him for the first time, to feel like they're meeting an old friend, so they share everything with him while also feeling a sense of camaraderie.
Scoble has the capability to make or break startups, and he knows it. However, unlike other influencers who may let this power go to their heads, Scoble always makes sure to either say positive things, or alternatively, if he has negative feedback, to make sure and say it in a positive and friendly manner.
His feedback is always genuine and meant to ultimately help create a better product. This is yet another reason why people love him so much. They know that he will always be straight to the point with them, and this feedback comes from an honest place. You can count on Scoble to give you a reality check so that you realize if you're on the right path or not.
Scoble has always been very open in giving his opinion. However, unlike other influencers, he has never been ashamed of saying "I was wrong!"
One example is his recent Facebook status congratulating Box on its IPO and stating that when he initially met Aaron Levie, he never thought Aaron would make it in this industry.
Another more famous example, is Scoble's initial excitement over Google Glass, saying he would never take it off, not even in the shower.
But now that Google Glass isn't doing so well, Scoble wasn't afraid to declare that it needs a rethink.
Due to his influential status, Scoble gets many perks from entrepreneurs around the world, just like most influencers do: Free gadgets, access to apps, invitations to visit conferences and stay in nice hotel rooms, and so on. These are usually forgotten by most influential figures in the Valley. However, Scoble never forgets these gestures and always acknowledges them — either through a Facebook post, tweet, or a reciprocal gesture. He doesn't just take these benefits for granted like other folks of his caliber might.
Entrepreneurs, of course, appreciate this and remember him for it. Many of the activities throughout Scoble's birthday for example, were contributed by individuals, due to their admiration for Scoble and appreciation of him.
Now I know that being like Robert Scoble can be tough for most people. There are only so many pitches that most people can take, and only so much openness that most people are willing to commit to.
However, in the end, I think the most important thing that Silicon Valley should learn from Scoble, is just to be nicer to and more patient with one another. I know that sounds corny, but it's true. In this industry, all of us are constantly looking for the next big thing, searching for higher ground. Let's just all take a moment to appreciate the entrepreneurs around us, to understand what they might be going through, to put ourselves in their shoes, and to think about the value they bring into our lives.
As Scoble said about Aaron Levie and success: "Who is next? I have no idea, is what I learned. Which is why I take calls from any random goofball."
None of us know what the future will bring or who will be the next Zuckerberg, but we can all try to be a little nicer and kinder with one another, in the hopes of creating better products together — and ultimately a better, more supportive tech community.
Ayelet Noff is the founder & CEO of Blonde 2.0, one of the world's leading digital marketing companies, helping brands worldwide with all their PR & social media activities.
]]>The company announced today that it has paid out $57 million to those who have made in-game items that gamers can buy and equip on their characters in Team Fortress 2, Dota 2, and Counter-Strike: Global Offensive. That money was spread across just 1,500 people in 75 countries, which means that the average content creator earned around $38,000. That's a pretty good salary for someone designing digital goodies. These items often take the form of hats or other decorative gear that players in Valve's top releases can use to help their characters stand out. Using the Steam Workshop, anyone can build and release their own items, and Valve splits the revenue it earns with the creators. This is by far the biggest game company working with its fans to offer them a way to make money, and Valve is the only company actively working to add this type of functionality to more releases.
In addition to the payouts, Valve announced that is is expanding its Steam Workshops to finally include games that Valve did not make.
"The limitation of paid, revenue-generating Workshops to Valve content has been an unfortunate consequence of the sheer number of challenges required in order to scale to a global audience of creators and players," Valve developer Alden Kroll wrote in a blog post. "Today, we're happy to announce that after a ton of work, the first curated Workshops for non-Valve games have opened: Dungeon Defenders: Eternity and Chivalry: Medieval Warfare."
This means both that people can express their individuality in more games, but it also means that creators have more opportunities to build items and to make money.
"We expect more curated Workshops to become available for creators and players in various games over the coming weeks and months," wrote Kroll.
Finally, Valve is providing its community creators with a set of tools that provides real-time data on who is buying which items. This should empower these folk to figure out what kinds of stuff people want more of.
The Consumerist brings us a story today from consumer advocate Chris Elliott in which a Comcast agent, after having some trouble with a customer on the phone, decided to change the person's first name to "Asshole" in the billing system.
So when the customer, Lisa Brown, got her next paper bill from Comcast, the name on the account was listed as "Asshole Brown." The account was in her husband, Ricardo's name, so it was he who suffered the indignity.
Brown says all she did was request that Comcast remove the pay-TV part of her product package because her family was having financial difficulties. She was even prepared to pay a $60 cancellation fee. But predictably, Comcast put up a fight, transferring the call to a "retention specialist" — possibly the weirdest, most passive-aggressive position ever created within a corporation.
It was just such a retention specialist who was responsible for the now-famous "Customer Service Call from Hell" back in July.
"I was never rude," Brown told Elliott. "It could have been that person was upset because I didn't take the offer."
Brown said she tried to get an explanation as to why said megacorporation had rechristened her "Asshole" Brown, but nobody at the local or regional office was willing to help.
After Elliot made some calls on Brown's behalf, somebody at Comcast corporate headquarters figured out the possible PR ramifications on Brown's rechristening, and issued a swift apology.
"We have spoken with our customer and apologized for this completely unacceptable and inappropriate name change," a company rep tells Elliott. "We have zero tolerance for this type of disrespectful behavior and are conducting a thorough investigation to determine what happened. We are working with our customer to make this right and will take appropriate steps to prevent this from happening again."
Then, Comcast senior director of government affairs called Brown and offered to waive that $60 termination fee and promised that the employee responsible for the name change would be fired.
Another regional manager called to assure Brown that her husband's real first name had been restored in the billing system.
Brown, justifiably, is not satisfied. "This is unacceptable," she told Elliott.
She's now asked Comcast to refund every cent she's ever paid them.
]]>This afternoon, Facebook announced its earnings for the fourth quarter of 2014. For this period, the company reported revenue of $3.85 billion, up 48.9 percent from $2.58 billion in revenue a year earlier.
The company also broke down its revenues by geographic region. In the U.S. and Canada, it reported sales of $1.86 billion. In Europe the number was $1.03 billion, Asia-Pacific saw $564 million, and the rest of the globe accounted for $403 million.
Interestingly, the percentage of revenue in the U.S. and Canada grew fastest during the fourth quarter. Last year, the two North American countries accounted for $1.2 billion of Facebook's $2.58 billion in total revenue, or 46.65 percent. For the fourth quarter of 2014, that number was 48.4 percent.
This suggests that even as the company expands around the world, it is still counting on Americans and Canadians as its most valuable users. However, Facebook chief operating officer Sheryl Sandberg said during the company's Q4 earnings call that exchange rates are also likely a factor.