The Latest from TechCrunch |  |
- Asana and Orchestra Help Me Slowly Regain Control of Email
- GoodRx Grabs $1M+ From SV Angel, Founders Fund & More To Help You Find Cheap Prescription Drugs
- Beyond Facebook: The Rise Of Interest-Based Social Networks
- Mobile Advertising Is The Baby Huey Of The Media World (And Apple Is Taking The Low Road)
- Seize Your Opportunities Like Jeremy Lin
- The Forest, the Trees, and the Next Big Thing
- From College To Silicon Valley: Tips From A Veteran
- I Have Seen The Future, And Its Sky Is Full Of Eyes
- Gillmor Gang: Apple’s High Definition Anxiety
- New Hope For Open Source Textbooks
| Asana and Orchestra Help Me Slowly Regain Control of Email Posted: 19 Feb 2012 08:00 AM PST  Editor's Note: TechCrunch contributor Semil Shah currently works at Votizen and lives in Palo Alto; you can follow him on twitter @semil This is not a rant against email. This is a story of hope. It sounds nuts, but I really enjoy email, though I realize I'm in the tiny minority and that it's legitimately unmanageable for many, especially those that don't use clients that automatically thread messages by subject or label. The complaints against email are universal and valid: Lines of lines of emails accumulate with the force of a snowball racing down the side of a mountain during an avalanche, and the business of crafting and answering emails only creates more email. It's a never-ending cycle, making any "Inbox 0" achievement ephemeral at best. I see three main reasons why email falls short. First, anyone has the ability to invade your inbox if he/she can get your email. Filters and labels help, but it’s not enough. Second, there are currently few tools in place to empower the recipient to limit the size of emails that come into his/her inbox, though one could imagine it wouldn’t be that hard to build these features into current products. Third, the work of creating context and prose around all these emails places a cognitive burden on the recipient to determine what action to take on the email, and then how to track that action to a point where it can be mercifully put to bed. Twitter, to its credit, gets you quite far. There are no expectations around responding to public replies, and users can limit their DM inbox simply by which accounts they follow. Of course, those messages are limited to 140 characters in size, and while DMs are insanely effective for short bursts of private communication, oftentimes those conversations are moved back to email in order to coordinate. So, we're back to the drawing board. The plain fact is that email still remains a very strong channel and will continue to be for a long time to come. As anyone who has worked on user acquisition metrics will know, despite all the time we're collectively spending on social networks, the click-through rates through other private social messaging systems is typically below the rates email can produce. Additionally, nearly everyone on the planet has been trained to check their email as the first and last things they do on a computing device. A billion people may be on Facebook and billions of tweets may be sent per week, but not everyone you need to communicate with is on these messaging services — they're mainly using email. And, then, after all this, here we are. Email is not going away. I’ve concluded that the only thing we can do is to create systems and layers on top of our email in order to exert control on our work flow and time. To that end, I've been testing out a few new products and services and thought I'd share my opinions, but I’d also like collect your points of view in the comments below. First, I've attempted to route most of my unsolicited emails through my About.me page. Anyone can send me a message through the site, limited by character size. The email I receive truncates any long message and I don't feel compelled to write back if I don't want to. But, my email is pasted all over the Internet, so this doesn't solve all the problems. Second, I've attempted to tie a Shortmail account to my Gmail, which limits emails by character size, and I'm excited to really test the service when it's ready for it (you can import your contact lists from Gmail and Twitter, and start to convert over), At the moment, I never received a few test messages to my Shortmail so wasn’t able to test this integration. Even if I could tie it back into Gmail, this tie-in may only make sense for someone who receives an insane amount of inbound email and needs to place a restriction on the email flow immediately. And, third, I've tried to convert inbound emails, both at work and personally, into action items. It boils down to asking, upon receiving each email: “What is the action item?” It's really hard for me to do create this new habit, but I'm trying. (I know there are many options in this category — too many to list here — such as Clear and Workflowy, among many others. Therefore, I'll just share what I've been using and would be curious to know what works for you.) At work, we've been using Asana for nearly all nontechnical tasks. I love the web app, the soft blue hues of the software, and how lightweight it feels. Your team members can send tasks to your Inbox (either from within the app or by forwarding an email to Asana, which is powerful), and then you get to mark if it's something that will be done today, or if it's upcoming, or if it's for later. For each task, your teammates who are following that task can comment within the thread, and just that slight option actually reduces the amount of and size of correspondence around a task. The single best part of Asana’s design is that you can control the order of your "Taskbox" and experience the satisfaction of marking a task as "complete" and then archiving it out of sight, out of mind. I'd be lying if I said that our team doesn't go back into email for certain communications, but I have noticed that the number of emails has decreased, and that everyone knows what each other is working on. Adoption in the work place is a bit easier since we all have to collaborate to get things done. It's early in the process, but so far, the net-net is positive. (I've also been using Asana's iPhone app, which looks nice but mimics the interaction design of the Facebook iOS app, a design that reduces my desire to use it on the go.) For personal matters, I've converted all of my to-do lists and tasks to Orchestra, a beautifully designed iPhone app that also has a web app. I had been using Google Tasks, which is really easy because it rests within Gmail, where all of my work flow is, so I had to strong-arm myself to bring everything over to Orchestra. After I did, I realized it was worth the effort. The software design makes it feel as if I’m being more productive, which in turn motivates me to complete tasks faster and faster. I can now dicate my tasks into the Orchestra app, and see them update on the web in real-time. I'll even go so far to say that Orchestra, as a native iOS application, is one of the all-around slickest pieces of software I've seen on the iPhone platform. I've been trying to take each email and ask, "What is the action item from this thread?", and then determine if it makes the cut into Orchestra. Although Orchestra has robust tools for delegating and managing the tasks of others, I haven't used it personally in that sense yet. While it's provided a productivity boost for me personally, I still have to go back to email to announce that other tasks have been completed, though I’m enjoying Orchestra much more than Google Tasks. I'm resigned to believe that until I win the lottery, I'll be checking my email constantly, and that I'll continue to have to monitor it because it's the best channel out there. Therefore, the only thing I can do to exert a bit more control is to ask of every email that comes in. I'm trying to train my brain to do that, but after using email for two decades, it turns out the switching costs are really complicated. That's why we feel we're drowning in a swirling sea of emails, and why products such as Asana and Orchestra provide me with a makeshift raft and navigation device. Here's hoping we all make it safely to shore. Photo Credit: Creative Commons Flickr / Daehyun Park
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| GoodRx Grabs $1M+ From SV Angel, Founders Fund & More To Help You Find Cheap Prescription Drugs Posted: 18 Feb 2012 06:16 PM PST  Like many other services, goods, and commodities, prescription drug prices can vary widely depending on location and what particular vendor is offering them. Launching last September at the Health 2.0 Conference in San Francisco was GoodRx, a service that’s aiming to bring some transparency back to prescription drug purchases by bringing some sophisticated price comparison technology to the everyday consumer. GoodRx was co-founded by Scott Marlette and Doug Hirsch, both early employees of Facebook. Hirsch was VP of Product at Facebook back in 2005, and Marlette, one of the company’s first 20 employees, was an engineer who worked on, among other things, Facebook’s photo application. The culture of transparency, openness, and focus on the big picture, Marlette says, had a lasting influence on him after Facebook, leading he and Hirsch to apply some of that psychology to building a better way to serve consumers with the latest pricing info from the prescription drug market. Thus, with a web service and a free iPhone app, GoodRx is giving its users a simple prompt, where they can enter the name of a prescription drug and their zip code, whereupon the startup serves them with a list and map of prices by brand name and generic versions from both local and mail-order pharmacies. Marlette says that the company’s database already contains over one million prices for more than 6,000 brand name and generic drugs and is growing quickly. On top of offering free, accurate price comparisons between local pharmacies, GoodRx allows customers to find discounts, free coupons, get savings tips, or set up refill reminders or get price alerts through email. When it comes to prescription drugs, many are covered by health insurance policies, but there’s a chance that GoodRx can still save searchers money by finding prices below their co-pays, surfacing bargains in the same way Kayak does for airline tickets. While the White House has been attempting to extend healthcare coverage to millions of uninsured Americans, there are still many plans that cover only fractions of prescription drug costs, and furthermore, there are many out there who are without any coverage whatsoever. GoodRx could represent big savings for the millions of Americans who let their prescriptions go unfilled because they can’t spare the extra cash. To boost the Los Angeles-based startup in its mission, it announced this week that it has raised over $1 million in seed capital from a host of top venture capital firms, including Founders Fund, GRP Partners, Highland Capital, SV Angel, Lerer Ventures, as well as angels like Former CEO of Drugstore.com Dawn Lepore, Mike Ovitz of Broad Beach Ventures, former President of Tribune Broadcasting Ed Wilson, among others. GoodRx is not yet sharing specific numbers, but we’ve learned from sources that the round was in fact over $1 million, which the startup will use to ramp up hiring, and continue to improve the product. Bringing talent from Facebook, Yahoo, and others and applying time-tested consumer tech models to the prescription drug market, to give consumers an easy way to search for prices and discounts from a sizable pool (of what is intended to be every pharmacy nationwide) — could be a winning combination. It’s also great to see that GoodRx provides a Spanish-language version of its service, with access right at the top of the homepage. One potential caveat, though, is that prescription drug prices tend to be in flux, and pharmacies are constantly changing them based on a host of criteria, meaning that it’s an enormous challenge to present prices that reflect the realtime prices offered at the actual stores. If consumers find low prices, then call up the pharmacy only to find that the price for a specific medication is actually different from that being offered on GoodRx, well that starts to chip away at their reputation. That being said, when I searched for prescriptions I take or have taken, all were in line with what was being offered by the pharmacy, and that is music to my wallet. GoodRx will next look to expand the site to better explain savings opportunities and cost for insured consumers, upping the educational factor, and giving users more insight into whether to choose brand name medications or generic, or how to seek out “therapeutic equivalents” to prescription drugs. Of course, in the end, consumers just want to know where they should go, and they want all the information easily accessible. That’s what GoodRx has been focusing on, and it will be interesting to see how the consumer reacts. For more, check out GoodRx at home here. And let us know what you think.
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| Beyond Facebook: The Rise Of Interest-Based Social Networks Posted: 18 Feb 2012 03:30 PM PST  Editor’s Note: This guest post is written by Jay Jamison, a Partner at BlueRun Ventures, who focuses on early stage mobile, consumer and enterprise investments. He also serves on the boards of AppCentral, AppRedeem, Foodspotting, and Thumb. You can follow Jay on Twitter @jay_jamison or read his blog at www.jayjamison.com. With the pending public offering of Facebook anticipated to be the largest tech IPO in history, it's an interesting time to think about where we go from here. Some say "social is done," Facebook is all the social media anyone would ever want or need. Unquestionably, as it nears one billion accounts, in the solar system of social media, Facebook is the Sun — the gravitational center around which everything social revolves. But while some may pronounce that Facebook is all the social we'd ever need, users clearly haven't gotten the memo. Instead, users are rapidly adopting new interest-based social networks such as Pinterest, Instagram, Thumb, Foodspotting, and even the very new Fitocracy. (Disclosure: BlueRun Ventures is an investor in Thumb and Foodspotting.) The numbers tell the tale around users' appetites for these new interest-based social networks. Pinterest, the increasingly popular virtual pinboard, crossed 10M monthly unique users in the US in January 2012, achieving 8 digits worth of monthly uniques faster than any site ever, comScore says. According to Silicon Valley uber-investor Ron Conway, Pinterest is growing like Facebook 5 years ago. On Thumb, a community for instant opinions, user engagement has mushroomed in its short history. Users asking questions can expect to receive over 60 answers from other users within 5 minutes. As a result of this near instantaneous community engagement, Thumb's average usage is currently second only to Facebook's, and is far ahead of mainstream services including Pinterest and Tumblr, though on a smaller base. What accounts for the fast growth of these interest-based social networks, and what does it mean for Facebook's future? Interest-based social networks have a markedly different focus and approach than Facebook. The Pinterest, Thumb and Foodspottings of the world enable users to focus and organize around their interests first, whereas Facebook focuses on a user's personal relationships. Facebook offers us a social utility to deepen social connectivity with our existing social graphs, while these new interest-based social networks enable users to express their interests in new, engaging ways and offer authentic, high value connectivity with new people we don't already know. The different approaches of these interest-based services are distinct from Facebook, and they are powering the massive growth and engagement we are seeing in these new services. On Pinterest, I can curate and express my interests in Crossfit, cars and architecture, giving me the ability to create a strongly personal identity that draws me into new social relationships with people on the basis of my interests. Similarly on Foodspotting, I can easily express my love for ramen, which in turn connects me with other ramen fans who aren't in my current social graph. So if interest-based social networks focus first on an individual's interest graph and Facebook centers on an individual's social graph, which service will be the winner? Both. Humans are inherently social creatures, and we define ourselves both by the people we know and our interests. We make decisions about where to eat, what to buy, where to visit, etc. based on a complex matrix of social relationships, past experiences, location, long standing interests and future goals. Today's platforms approach our lives from different angles but both are integral to how we define ourselves and interact with the world around us. There are opportunities to establish differentiated, sustainable social media brands with large, passionate audiences. Much like the modern day media disrupters (e.g. ESPN or HBO or CNN), these services can establish new social media networks that are differentiated and unique, protecting them from the inevitable concern that they get squashed by Facebook. The traditional "Big 3 networks" (NBC, ABC, and CBS) used to be the only properties that really mattered, similar to how some view Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn in today's social media landscape. Emerging networks will be the new media brands and properties that augment social networking and media. At the same time, the rise of these new interest based social networks does not really threaten Facebook, in fact, they are more likely to benefit Facebook. Specifically, Facebook has evolved itself brilliantly into not only an end user application drawing near to 1 billion accounts but also a robust, powerful platform other apps can leverage in order to drive more users to their services. Pinterest, Instagram, Fab, and many others have adopted Facebook's Timeline API for precisely the reason of wanting to raise awareness of their services and drive more users to their sites. As these new services grow, more content gets pumped back to Facebook, Facebook's platform gets more robust. Wash, rinse, repeat… Facebook's positive feedback loop gains more momentum, and becomes more powerful. In the words of Marc Andreessen, "Software is eating the world", and in the world of social media, there is, for now, plenty of world to go around. Excerpt image credit MignonGameKit.org
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| Mobile Advertising Is The Baby Huey Of The Media World (And Apple Is Taking The Low Road) Posted: 18 Feb 2012 02:30 PM PST  Editor’s Note: This guest post was written by Frank Barbieri, a serial entrepreneur and sometime blogger. You can follow him @frankba. I had dinner last week with a senior exec from a global advertising holding company who asked what I often get asked these days, "What's going on with mobile advertising?" it's a timely question as last week Apple announced they were lowering the buy-in price for iAds from $500,000 to $100,000 and increasing the publisher revenue share from 60% to 70%. The move seems innocent enough, but with a little inspection is actually very worrying for a segment still struggling to shake off its inferiority complex, and potentially chilling for many innovators and entrepreneurs. You would think that the Flurry data posted late last year on exponential mobile adverting inventory growth late last year would correlate with an industry finally reaching maturity. But a couple weeks after that data posted I had a conversation with a Fortune 100 senior media buyer who became bearish on mobile ad spending in 2011. This person has a total media budget in the tens of millions annually, and for the first time since she started buying mobile, she decreased her spend over the previous two quarters and expects to decrease even more in 2012. Why? Perceptual and brand attitudinal data consistently comes back as not even outperforming search engine marketing. Mobile advertising has become the Baby Huey of the media world: it's huge and lumbering, but not mature. Analytics, measurement and targeting have not caught up to where online is, exactly when we're hearing inventory volume is set to surpass online. Neither Comscore nor Nielsen rank the top mobile apps like they rank the top online properties by category and unique users. Nor do they rank ad networks. Phone and operating system manufacturers as well as the carriers have created fragmented and feature poor cookie environments on phones. What is seen as standard operating procedure online, the use of cookies to target users and understand usage, is treated as heresy in mobile. This lack of basic advertising infrastructure means it's hard to manage and measure brand campaigns. Performance is a different story as you just spray massive volume and pay for the converted. But with brand advertising you have to tune the campaign to give the right audience the right message the right amount of times in the right context to move the needle on campaign objectives. All this becomes near impossible without the simple help of a cookie. Only in isolated cases is buying brand advertising on mobile valuable. For instance buying direct from content brands with huge audiences and registered targeting data, like Pandora and The Weather Channel. Or buying video where brand studies still consistently show attitudinal value. Otherwise it's just too hard to buy quality at scale. Look at the somersaults Millennial Media, the largest North American "independent" ad network undergoes just to try and replicate simple cookie functionality to target a unique user (from their S1 filing):
Seriously. Enter hoop, commence jumping. Ad platform managers I've spoken with are now worried that even this will get worse as Apple deprecated unique phone identifiers in iOS 5 and is poised to cloak UDIDs from apps in iOS 6. This is one of the data points Millennial surely uses as do many ad platforms and it means there will be one less credible way to ensure a unique user is targeted. This means brand advertisers will again buy less at lower prices. No doubt consumers have strong opinions about companies using and storing data on their phones, and they should have controls and transparency. But shouldn't the browsers at least shoot for parity with the web? Isn't that a better experience for consumers in the end? Where cookie infrastructure feeds a revenue model and users always have the option to turn cookies off. That revenue model in turn allows great content and apps to flow. Simple unique user targeting is foundational to online ad spending and in mobile we're using magic potions to describe a "likely" unique user. Ad spend will never catch up to online with these constraints. That will eventually hurt developers and end users' access to great content and apps. Apple's strategy now is to help itself while it hurts the industry. iAds can identify unique users through iTunes registration and maybe they'll even reserve UDID information for themselves as a trusted steward of consumer privacy. It just so happens that that stewardship creates an unfair advantage in the ad network space where networks will have trouble competing. Machiavelli would have noted with glee the timing of the announcement and Millennial Media's expected upcoming IPO. Frankly Apple doesn't care as much about advertising revenue as they do about happy publishers. As the lack of ad infrastructure depreciates the value of developer inventory, Apple is providing a life support alternative in the form of higher revenue shares. This is a short-term fix and bad for the industry as buyers like the one referenced at the beginning of this post want to see a vibrant ecosystem of sellers and selling technology to increase their spend to online levels. The move is bad for most publishers no matter what the revenue share. Apple could have easily taken a position to build quality and value in the mobile brand advertising ecosystem by addressing the infrastructure problems rather than pretending that they alone can support the segment. As one platform product manager put it to me, They could have designed a "reliable, and privacy conscious third-party tracking mechanism" that all networks and developers could use. This would help networks and brands to better track and target users and ad usage across properties, web and app. It would lead to a well spring of new ad innovation on iOS devices. This would have started to build the infrastructure for brand buying at scale with confidence and credibility. Users would get higher quality advertising. Developers get more dollars and Apple wins by having happy developers. What they did instead is tell advertisers they are slashing prices and opening up the bargain bin. And they told developers that they'll be happy with the new benevolent ad dictatorship and sole innovator. Shame. Mobile advertising was very close to its Cinderella moment, and Apple just decided to keep the glass slipper and close the ballroom doors.
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| Seize Your Opportunities Like Jeremy Lin Posted: 18 Feb 2012 01:35 PM PST  Editor's Note: Contributor Ashkan Karbasfrooshan is the founder and CEO of WatchMojo, he hosts a weekly show on business and has published books on success. Follow him @ashkan. Last week, Forbes contributor Eric Jackson published a list on the 9 lessons that Jeremy Lin can teach you; number 2 on his list was "Seize the Opportunity". Lin's not the first, and he won't be the last, but his meteoric rise has reminded us once again that anything is possible if you seize the opportunity. In this article, we'll expand on that and discuss how you can seize your opportunities. It is, after all, easier said than done. Carpe Diem Is More Than Words Jackson rightfully pointed out that Lin "got to start for the Knicks because they had to start him." Indeed, with Toney Douglas, Mike Bibby, Iman Shumpert, Baron Davis and Carmelo Anthony all injured – and the Knicks playing abysmally – Lin got the call (the Knicks even considered releasing him to sign another player). What makes Linsanity truly insane is that Lin pounced on his opportunity like a cold-blooded and calculated assassin. All Overnight Successes Are Years in the Making While to most onlookers Lin was the "overnight success", he was anything but. In fact, while it's debatable whether leaders are made or born, they don't appear overnight, so don't get disappointed if you don't have a breakthrough moment. Successes are rarely the result of Hail Marys, but rather, successive 10-yard gains as you march down the field, with the occasional setback (and there will be setbacks). Build on a Strong Foundation For what it's worth, Lin comes from a solid family (his father taught him the sport at the Y). He was the editor of his school paper. As a high school senior, he captained Palo Alto High School to a 32–1 record, winning the state title. In other words, don't expect to slack off all of your life and then be handed an opportunity on a silver platter. It actually does take years of work and sacrifice. Even When You're Good, You May Not Be Lucky Lin wasn't unknown. ESPN's Dana O’Neil reported that Lin “was the runaway choice for player of the year during high school by virtually every Californian publication,” with the “instincts of a killer” according to then-Harvard assistant coach Bill Holden. ESPN's Fran Fraschilla picked him among the 12 most versatile players in college basketball while Connecticut coach Jim Calhoun added: “I’ve seen a lot of teams come through here, and he could play for any of them. He’s got great, great composure on the court. He knows how to play." Take the Road Less Traveled Despite all of the praise, at 6 feet 3 inches, Lin didn't get any scholarship offers and attended Harvard University, which hadn't produced an NBA player in 50 years! Undrafted by the NBA, he signed a two-year deal in July 2010 with the Golden State Warriors, his favorite team growing up, becoming the first American of Chinese or Taiwanese descent in the NBA. You Can Only Succeed If You've Failed His stint with Golden State was unsuccessful, by his second year he was in the NBA's D-League. In December 2011, Lin was cut on training camp opening day. The Houston Rockets claimed him off waivers only to cut him on December 24th. Merry Christmas, indeed, to the Evangelical Christian whose ancestors emigrated from China to Taiwan in the 18th century (Lin himself was born in California). The good news is that in life, you get more than one opportunity. The bad news is that you don't get that many, so don't think that patience is necessarily a virtue, either. No Flash, All Substance Part of what made Lin unsuccessful at the draft explains his success with the Knicks – his third pro team. University of San Francisco coach Rex Walters opined that the NCAA drafting rules hurt Lin: “Most colleges start recruiting a guy in the first five minutes they see him because he runs really fast, jumps really high, does the quick, easy thing to evaluate.” Lin didn't disagree: “I just think in order for someone to understand my game, they have to watch me more than once, because I'm not going to do anything that's extra flashy or freakishly athletic." In other words: keep it simple. Make Your Doubters Pay At Every Level After being outscored 38-34 by Lin and losing to the Knicks, LA Lakers‘ Kobe Bryant noted: “Players playing that well don’t usually come out of nowhere. It seems like they come out of nowhere, but if you can go back and take a look, his skill level was probably there from the beginning. It probably just went unnoticed.” Warriors’ owner Joe Lacob added that "Stanford’s failure to recruit Lin was really stupid. The kid was right across the street. If you can’t recognize that, you’ve got a problem.” People are driven by fear and greed. Make the fear of them doubting or not backing you haunt them, forever. Loyalty Matters Despite effectively filling the injured Carmelo Anthony's role, it was he who suggested to coach Mike D'Antoni that Lin should play more. In other words, you need to be humble and understand the dynamics of loyalty. Respect the Chain of Command Yes, before drilling that game-winning three-pointer against the Toronto Raptors, Lin held on to the ball to kill time. It was a gutsy move; but if you look at the footage, Lin clearly turns to the coach and gets clearance. Strategically it was a sound move, tactically he nailed the shot, and yes, luck was on his side, but luck is required to succeed in life – along with vision, ambition, execution, determination and timing. No Risk, No Reward Ultimately, he took the risk, he prevailed. That's how you seize the opportunity. As they say: nothing ventured, nothing gained. Everything happens for a reason: maybe it was a good thing that he had a chance to fail in a smaller market before hitting the prime-time in the Big Apple. Jeremy Lin didn't just give hope to the Knicks and the NBA, he made underdogs around the world walk taller. Image credit to nikk_la
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| The Forest, the Trees, and the Next Big Thing Posted: 18 Feb 2012 12:05 PM PST  Editor’s Note: TechCrunch contributor Semil Shah currently works at Votizen and lives in Palo Alto; you can follow him on twitter @semil They say hindsight is 20/20. By now, everyone knows about the fastest-growing site on the web. Yet, for a period of time in 2011, despite all the signals pointing toward the phenomena, most in Silicon Valley weren't able to sniff out the trend even though, looking back, the clues were right under our noses. I wanted to write this post to offer a theory as to why the Valley, at large, missed this trend. Additionally, I want to underscore that this post is less about Pinterest, and more about how even the most focused, attentive audiences can miss the forest for the trees. The basic premise is as follows: For the past 24 months, the tech startup community has been identifying and analyzing big trends, almost to the point of over-analysis–myself included. Each one of those trends, in and of itself, represented disruptive opportunities, generating enough excitement to ignite hundreds of new applications in each category. However, by examining each one in a silo, the resulting focus of tunnel-vision reduced the peripheral vision, making it increasingly difficult how each trend, if threaded together, could form a larger force. Let's revisit each trend briefly. First, we have pictures. The excitement around the mobile camera ignited an overwhelming flurry of new photosharing applications. Indeed, photographs are the thin edge of the wedge to building new social products. That's why applications like Path and Instagram continue to grow in popularity. With Pinterest, however, the main interaction around pictures is slightly different — users aren't uploading as many original pictures as they are capturing and repinning pictures that already exist, or as social product guru Josh Elman says, "where people are primarily interacting with content that they didn't create." Whether it's original pictures or activity around existing ones, the community's focus on pictures was the exact right instinct have. Second is "founder pedigree." For the past few years, many have been captivated by the prevailing wisdom that, when searching for the next big thing in the early stages, and in the absence of traction or product-market fit, a founder's background becomes one of the — if not the most — important data points. The stereotypes are played out: Kids who drop out of school, or alumni of the cutting edge social companies, or wizards graduating from the most elite technical programs. This cuts both ways. Sometimes, spending time at certain companies can cast a founder in a negative light. In the case of Pinterest (as well as Instagram), the Founder/CEOs aren't as "technical" as one would expect. Third is location. Over the past few years, we've all pontificated about just "where" the next big thing would emerge from. Will it be from Silicon Valley, New York City, somewhere in the middle of the country, or maybe in Asia or South America? The uncertainty around just where this would originate from caused a frenzy among investors and bloggers to scour the earth, turning over rocks. It's been an attractively contrarian view to assert that the next thing won't be made near the other big players in California, but at least for this round, it appears the next big thing not only happened close to Silicon Valley, but in a town where other big things have started. The fourth and final "tree" is perhaps the strongest force behind the disruption: women. Turns out, women do indeed "rule the Internet." In my opinion, the single best guest post to TechCrunch in 2011 was authored by Aileen Lee, a partner with Kleiner Perkins. If you haven't read it, you must: "Why Women Rule the Internet." Last March, Lee described why the female demographic is not only valuable in numbers, but also in terms of the influence it will exert online in ways we haven't seen yet. On Pinterest, of course, we see a stunning example of just how strong this influence can be. It's anecdotal, but I've heard many women say that spending a few minutes on Pinterest is more "soothing" experience than interacting on Facebook or Twitter. Looking back now, as the network effects have taken root and the branches of growth are increasing in strength, it all seems painstakingly obvious. Until it became obvious, however, for that small period of time when people weren't sure. It's a classic "missing the forest for the trees." We all correctly identified the right trees to examine and climb, but in that exploration, the majority of us weren't able to see those trees together as part of a larger forest until it was too late. Perhaps this is just a brutal fact of nature and a gentle reminder that, despite out collective intelligence and endless search, the next big thing is likely already in front of us — we just have to step away from the trees once in a while in order to see it. Photo Credit: Creative Commons Flickr / jeehon
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| From College To Silicon Valley: Tips From A Veteran Posted: 18 Feb 2012 11:17 AM PST  Editor’s note: Pedram Keyani has been an engineer at Facebook since 2007. He is a manager on the Site Integrity team, the inventor of Keg Presence and a Hackathon enthusiast. Looking for internships and jobs after college can be exhilarating, especially for people with engineering and other technical expertise. In an otherwise tough job market, demand for software engineers is higher than ever right now. You may find that companies are actually competing to pay you for the knowledge you worked so hard to acquire in school. But as pumped as I was when I started out, I also felt a lot of stress: the uncertainty of facing an interviewer; the big differences between companies; the difficulty of deciding which company would be best for me. Companies, like people, have distinctive personalities. Just as you won't get along with every person you meet, you aren’t going to get along with every company that offers you a job. And vice versa. To figure out your best fit, you'll need to ask some meaningful questions to help you figure out what you value beyond the salary. What is the pace of work? What kind of bosses would you like to have? Will that fast-growing start-up be around a year from now? Will that big, established company be boring? I would love to say that if you are a talented engineer, Facebook is the obvious place for you. But it wouldn't be true, because the fit between a person and a company is more complicated than that. It's not just about matching up technical skills and money. It's also about whether a company's culture and mindset resonates with you. In other words, you should be interviewing the company at the same time they are interviewing you. But since you have to get an internship offer before worrying about which company to pick, let’s go over the nuts and bolts of that process. What They Didn't Teach You in School When you solve problems for school, you're usually writing on paper or using your keyboard. But if you're given a problem to solve in an internship or job interview, you will be doing something more: you'll be projecting the kind of person you are. Your words will indicate what you know, and your demeanor will indicate how you think and what kind of disposition you have. Are you calm and patient, or restless and energetic? Confident, cocky or humble? Can you communicate with those around you? There isn't a "right" or "wrong" type, but the interviewer will be taking it all in. To prepare yourself, I have three words for you – practice, practice, practice. Interviewing well is a skill they don't teach you in school, but it's crucial. Fortunately, you can gain the basic skills you need in a Saturday afternoon. Start by picking a few fun programming problems, printing them out and taking them to a whiteboard. To simulate the stress you might feel in an interview, time yourself as you write the solutions and talk them out. Don’t worry if you get tripped up — interviewers are more interested in how you wrestle with the problem, and whether you keep working at it, than whether you come up with a perfect answer. Doing this a few times should make the format feel more comfortable so when you get to the interview, you'll look less stressed because you will be less stressed. That's important, and it will give your interviewer a better sense of who you are. Sampling the Buffet Assuming you passed your interviews, you may have several different internship options. This is when the fun begins. My advice is that you should never intern at the same place twice, even if it's a huge company and you can try a different group. Why? Because internships are like appetizers — you get to try out different bite-sized morsels and see which ones you like best before diving in to the main course. Before starting my first real engineering job, I had internships at four great companies, from Sun Microsystems to Google, and each gave me a very different taste. Sure, you may like the company you were at last summer, but you might love the next company. Use internships to go to big companies, small companies, companies near home and companies in different states or even countries. Why not? What do you have to lose? The Main Course If you do well in your internship, you may very well get a job offer at the end of the summer. If so, great! But if not, don’t worry. You now have strong work experience and will know what to expect in the interview room. But since even the most thorough practice can’t fully prepare you for interviewing at your dream job, my advice is to line up interviews for companies from least desirable to most desirable. By the time you are at that last interview, you'll be a pro. In that interview, it may help to act as if you already have the offer. You shouldn't be arrogant, but it may be helpful to pretend that you have to decide by the end of the day if this is where you want to work. This is when it gets interesting, because now you'll be interviewing the company instead of the other way around. It can be tough to get the answers you need, so ask questions that can reveal concrete details about how the company works. Here are some questions that worked for me. See which ones are important to you:
The Negotiation Let's assume that you got the offer (hopefully multiple offers). Before I get started with specifics, let's deal with the elephant in the room: money. Most of us don’t like talking about money or acting as if it's important. That’s fine, but you should be prepared for that conversation because the only time you can negotiate your compensation is before you start. Once you have signed on, your pay is entirely based on your performance and you won't have much opportunity to re-negotiate (other than by being promoted). Your offer will likely consist of a salary component and an equity component, and both parts are fair to negotiate. Each company will have its own range for new hires based on factors like the candidate's school, degree, and interview strength. It's hard to advise exactly how to Equity is a bit more nuanced. You can't simply look at the number of shares a company is offering, or even their current value. The big question is how much you think the company will grow in the future. This is the classic risk/ reward calculation, and it's a judgment you have to make for yourself. Big, established companies usually offer less equity than small startups because their futures are more secure. A startup has to offer you more stock because it may be gone in a few months. You face two questions. First, how bright do you think the company's outlook is? Second, what's your appetite for risk versus reward? During this process, you will be talking to a recruiter who serves as the company's ambassador to you. Even if he or she casually asks how much salary or equity you want, know that this isn't a casual question, and it's not wise to throw out a number in that kind of conversation. You haven’t had a full-time job, so you can’t be expected to have a reasonable sense of what's fair. It's better to tell the recruiter that you haven’t thought about exact numbers but are excited to see what your offers look like. The recruiters aren’t trying to cheat you, but you are both part of a negotiation and each side has its own interests. Your First 100 Days A new job can be rough because you are starting from scratch and have to prove yourself. Don’t worry, this phase will pass. With every task and project, you will learn something new and start to take on bigger tasks. It’s important to remember that the people around you are there to support you and help you get up to speed (if you've picked correctly). You are going to make mistakes and it’s going to suck, but you will learn from the mistakes and keep going. When things get tough — and they will — don't beat yourself up with thoughts like, "I'm not smart enough" and "everyone around me knows more." The truth is that everybody was new at some point, and everybody has strengths and weaknesses. If you are having a hard time, ask your manager or mentor to tell you about their first jobs or internships and the issues they dealt with. A little perspective goes a long way. Instead of agonizing over your stumbles, focus on doing what you enjoy and give it your very best shot. Trust me, the rest will follow. [image via Flickr/felixtsao]
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| I Have Seen The Future, And Its Sky Is Full Of Eyes Posted: 18 Feb 2012 10:11 AM PST  Allow me just a little self-congratulatory chest-beating. Four years ago I started writing a near-fiction thriller about the risks of swarms of UAVs in the wrong hands. Everyone I talked to back then (including my agent, alas) thought the subject was implausible, even silly. Well, it’s not like I’m the next Vernor Vinge — it always seemed like a pretty blatantly obvious prediction to me — but I am pleased to see that drones and drone swarms have finally become the flavor of the month. In the last month, the Stanford Law Review has wrung its hands about the “ethical argument pressed in favor of drone warfare,” while anti-genocide activists have called for the use of “Drones for Human Rights” in Syria and other troubled nations; the UK and France declared a drone alliance; and a new US law compels the FAA to allow police and commercial drones in American airspace, which may lead to "routine aerial surveillance of American life." We’ve been reporting on UPenn’s amazing drone-swarm research (great title, John!) and Sandia Labs’s self-guiding bullets, and I’ve been on a drone kick for more than a year. Now John Robb, the author of Brave New War, has taken up the drone cudgel with great enthusiasm: in the last couple of weeks, he’s written about drones as the future of warfare, drone diplomacy, defenses against drones, BattleSwarms, and Francis Fukuyama and the inevitable ban on unlicensed drone technology. Go ahead and take a look: I’ll wait. Terrified yet? No? C’mon, go back and read some more. Granted, Robb does have an apocalyptic streak, but I’m pretty confident his central thesis is dead-on. Drones, and swarms of them, will be everywhere; they’ll soon change everything about warfare and surveillance; and the recent open-skies FAA mandate will ultimately be rolled back, as governments start trying to extend their “monopoly on violence” into a “monopoly on drones” as well. Meanwhile, obviously, a lot of people aren’t happy about the notion of police drones –
and would rather they be used by the Occupy movement or by livestreaming media. But the really breathtaking and worrying thing is that all of the above is already yesterday’s news. Tomorrow’s drone swarms will be to today’s clumsy quadricoptors as the MacBook Air is to the Altair 8800. And they’ll be mass-produced. I give you the Harvard Monolithic Bee, insect-sized drones printed — yes, printed — by a team who “have been working for years to build bio-inspired, bee-sized robots that can fly and behave autonomously as a colony.” Want to print (most of) your own drone? Go right ahead. There’s little doubt that tomorrow’s skies will be stuffed full of eyes. Whose eyes, aimed where, for what purpose, under what control? We don’t know yet. That depends in large part on whatever plans, policies, contingencies and/or regulations we collectively come up with. Unfortunately, it seems that everyone’s still scrambling just to react to last year’s technology. I’ve hardly seen anyone look into the future with the understanding that drone technology is evolving with astonishing speed — and I have a nasty feeling that the powers that be won’t understand just how disruptive that technology might become until we run smack into the rotor blades of the first drone disaster. Image credit: Bee swarm, doubleagent, Flickr.
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| Gillmor Gang: Apple’s High Definition Anxiety Posted: 18 Feb 2012 10:01 AM PST  The Gillmor Gang — Robert Scoble, Kevin Marks, John Taschek, and Steve Gillmor — inaugurated a new title format where the topic replaces the date of the show release (it’s in the URL). Today’s topic: what it always is, Apple’s relentless march toward encircling Windows in a sea of HD-quality iOS devices. In the latest update to OS X, push notification, the Twitter social bus, and AirPlay come to the TV by way of the full complement of iOSish devices, now including the Mac. With iPad 3 just weeks away, Apple has made it retinal clear that the company has no intention of allowing anybody to catch up to the economic juggernaut where premium products sell out at prices that can’t be undercut. The realtime global social network fuels demand for the iOS pervasive screen architecture (and coopetive partners such as Android and Amazon) to such a viral extent that the resulting momentum keeps competitors from realizing Apple’s supply chain economies of scale. @stevegillmor, @scobleizer, @jtaschek, @kevinmarks Produced and directed by Tina Chase Gillmor @tinagillmor
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| New Hope For Open Source Textbooks Posted: 18 Feb 2012 09:36 AM PST  Editor’s note: Verne Kopytoff is a technology journalist who lives the the Bay area. A college textbook can cost a staggering $200. Over four years of study, students can easily spend thousands of dollars on books on top of a hefty tuition. The situation is not much better in public elementary, middle and high schools, where taxpayers pick up the bill. California spends around $100 on every math and science book for its 2 million high school students, for example. But textbooks don't have to be such a financial burden. Free digital open source textbooks are a promising alternative for states looking to cut costs and for universities trying to spare students from the soaring price of higher education. A growing number of laptop computers and tablets in the classroom provide an even greater opportunity to switch. Indeed, the fledgling open source textbook movement is getting extra attention these days. Experiments are underway in a number of states and districts. Last month, Utah's State Office of Education said it would start a program to make open source textbooks available to students in kindergarten through 12th grade. Washington State's legislature is considering a similar program. The idea of open source textbooks is not new. They have been around for more than a decade, a period in which the major commercial publishers hiked textbook prices faster than inflation. Until recently, however, open source textbooks gained little traction, in part, because of the byzantine process for approving school books. State and local school boards, which insure that books meet standards, are not known for innovative thinking. California's experiment with open source books started in 2009 when then Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger, facing a huge budget shortfall, endorsed a digital textbook initiative to quickly bring digital textbooks in the classroom. The effort, however, fell far short of the revolutionary change that he had hoped for. A state body evaluated a number of digital high school textbooks as to whether they met state standards. But the review served as merely a guide for local school districts, which have the ultimate say in which books they use and are under no requirement that those books be open source. Nor does it help the cause that most open source textbooks—produced by a mix of non-profits, academics and a handful of companies—lack the polish of the major commercial publishers like Pearson and McGraw-Hill. Anyone scanning the books will immediately notice a shortage of graphics, maps and photos that are standard in the more expensive books and important for making dry subjects interesting to students who may be half asleep in class. One source of hope is a new initiative from Apple that offers publishers tools to more easily create digital textbooks and then sell them in Apple's iBookstore for iPads. Kno and Inkling, two start-ups, offer competing platforms. All three companies welcome working with publishers of free textbooks. In fact, a free open source statistics textbook from 20 Million Minds Foundation, a publisher of open source textbooks, is already available on Kno. But, as it stands, major commercial publishers dominate the school market and charge exorbitant prices. They issue new editions every few years, making older books obsolete. Buying their digital versions is only marginally cheaper. Some publishers even require buying a hard copy to get online access. Contrast that with open source textbooks which are available for free online. Hard copies can be printed for free or, in some cases, ordered for around $25. Printing books remains an important, albeit inconvenient reality because most schools can't afford to give laptops or tablets to every student. Schools that do forego digital miss out on some of its inherent advantages. Digital books can be updated quickly with new information like Pluto's demotion from the 9th planet in the solar system to a dwarf planet. Teachers can also add new lessons based on what they plan to cover in class. Open source is a bit of a misnomer for the books because it brings to mind images of Wikipedia, where anyone can edit an entry. But for a few exceptions, open source books are edited by paid experts and peer reviewed before being published. The "open" refers to the licensing, which is less restrictive than with traditional textbooks and allows for free distribution for non-commercial purposes and copying. Neeru Khosla, co-founder of CK-12 Foundation, a non-profit open source textbook publisher, said that the toughest part of open source textbooks is dealing with the state bureaucracy. California's lengthy review of digital textbooks gave good grades to six of her organization's books, although it's unclear how many of them are being used in the state's classrooms. "It's all about politics," Ms. Khosla said. Ms. Khosla, the wife of Vinod Khosla, the prominent venture capitalist, co-founded CK-12 five years ago (Mr. Khosla is a board member). In that time, people have downloaded more than 1 million of the group's textbooks, which are intended for high schools. It's a good start. But there is clearly much more progress needed for open source textbook publishers to reach a broader public. Competing against the major publishers is tough, even when making textbooks available for free. The major publishers have the big marketing budgets, the experience and the deep pockets to create study guides and other material that supplement the textbooks. Sanford Forte, founder of the California Open Source Textbook Project, expects that in 10 years, open source textbooks will rise from an insignificant share of the market to up to 25 percent. But he does not foresee major publishers imploding during that time, though he said that they will likely have to adapt. "They are being forced to change," Mr. Forte said. "But I don't see the open source movement completely replacing the commercial publishers."
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