Ajax Girl

Today marked the fourth year of Y Combinator’s startup school, and judging by the overflowing auditorium that persisted throughout the event, it was a runaway success. A crowd of over 650 developers, writers, and entrepreneurs packed Stanford’s Kresge Auditorium for a chance to pick the mind of tech-industry greats. The annual event gives members of the startup community, particularly technically-minded ‘hackers’, a chance to learn and ask questions about venture capital, IP law, and other aspects of the startup process.

This year’s speakers: Sam Altman (Loopt), Marc Andreesesen (Ning, Netscape, Mosaic), Jeff Bezos (Amazon), Paul Buchheit (FriendFeed, Gmail), Paul Graham (Y Combinator), David Heinemeier Hansson (37Signals, Rails), David Lawee (Google, Xfire), Jack Sheridan (Wilson Sonsini Goodrich & Rosati), Greg McAdoo (Sequoia), Peter Norvig (Google), and our own Michael Arrington (TechCrunch).

Highlights:

-A young man named Brandt who couldn’t understand why Sequoia Capital and other top VCs refused to fund his adult website. Sequoia’s Greg McAdoo responded that he had a hard time picturing a porn site’s IPO.

-David Hansson’s presentation, which was easily the most entertaining of the afternoon. Hansson, who created Ruby on Rails and is a founder at 37signals, espoused a pay-for-use model that stands in stark contrast to the free services that seem to define Web 2.0. As he mentioned, this model hasn’t worked for everyone…

-Jeff Bezos dodging a question on Google App Engine, explaining that his company “doesn’t like to talk about other companies.”

-Paul Buchheit’s admission that he spent his last few months at Google “basically doing nothing.”

A video of the entire event can be found at Justin.tv.

Crunch Network: MobileCrunch Mobile Gadgets and Applications, Delivered Daily.

Source: TechCrunch
Original Article: http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/Techcrunch/~3/273849071/

Yahoo has offered a limited release of Yahoo BrowserPlus, a software distribution framework that allows device developers to bridge the browser programming environment to any component.

Skylar Woodward explains:

Some time ago we created a platform team to focus on device software at Yahoo! and this is what has emerged amidst the quickly shifting strategy of the mothership. The 1.0 release of BrowserPlus is intended only for use by Yahoo! sites to enhance customer experiences; however, in the coming months, developers might expect the ability to use components on their own sites. (If you’re interested in this, send us feedback). In the meantime, you can hack the framework on your own system after you’ve installed it to start experimenting. You can experience BrowserPlus currently through the PhotoDropper module on Mash, though direct installs are available for mac or pc.

Ajaxian notes that there were rumors of a Yahoo Gears style project that was cancelled, but BrowserPlus seems to be the fruit of that project. Details so far a fairly light, but competition in this space provided by Yahoo will hopefully fire increased development from competing services as well.

Crunch Network: CrunchBoard because it’s time for you to find a new Job2.0

Source: TechCrunch
Original Article: http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/Techcrunch/~3/273804137/

I can’t say we didn’t see this coming. Quirky online gift catalog site Red Envelope filed for bankruptcy on April 17, according to an SEC filing. Its assets will be purchased by Creative Catalogs in exchange for $5.7 million and the assumption of debt. Red Envelope is also getting a $4.5 million debtor-in-possession line of credit from Creative Catalogs and Granite Creek FlexCap.

Two weeks ago, Wells Fargo terminated Red Envelope’s last credit lifeline, and it started to lay off employees. This could be an early sign that other e-tailing sites may be hit hard by the economic slowdown. Or it could just mean that Red Envelope was poorly managed. Either way, Red Envelope will not emerge from the deadpool.

Crunch Network: CrunchGear drool over the sexiest new gadgets and hardware.

Source: TechCrunch
Original Article: http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/Techcrunch/~3/273707443/

San Francisco-based blogging startup Six Apart has made a significant acquisition, we heard today from someone with knowledge of the deal. “Significant” in the sense of a possible strategic shift for the company, if not in terms of deal size. It will be announced in the next few days.

Who did they acquire? Put your best guess in the comments. First comment that is correct gets a 2 GB iPod shuffle with “I Love TechCrunch” engraved on the back.

Crunch Network: CrunchBoard because it’s time for you to find a new Job2.0

Source: TechCrunch
Original Article: http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/Techcrunch/~3/273452500/

In our new regular weekly round-up of news in Europe, here’s some of the broader stories that may be of interest.

• The European Union is never very far away from reaching for the regulation trigger, so it was refreshing this week to see that it was warning member states that people should not be criminalised for the file-sharing of copyrighted material if they are not profiting from doing so. I guess they’ve heard music is going free.

• Phorm, the “deep packet inspection” company which works with ISPs to target adverts, continued its PR woe in the UK where it has been having a torrid time trying to convince the press, government and consumers that it won’t be spying on everyone. It’s now hired a chief privacy officer to try and allay fears. In Europe we tend to be more concerned about private companies snooping on our privacy/data than governments, slightly the reverse of the general attitude in the States I believe.

• Google is rapidly becoming Britain’s biggest advertising business. It earned $803 million (about £407m) in the first three months of 2008, about 40% up on a year ago. By contrast the biggest TV broadcaster, ITV, had net advertising revenues of £1.5 billion. So Google is on track to beat it by the end of this year. In general the UK internet advertising market is at £2.8bn in 2007 up 38% on 2006.

• Everyone is expecting Finland’s Nokia to come up with an ‘iPhone killer’ with the rumoured “Tube” handset, but it had better hurry up. Nokia’s shares were hit after it said the market would shrink in value in euro terms this year for the first time.

• After the EU fined software giant Microsoft 899 million euro last February, things have cooled off a little. Until a question by EU Parliament representative about whether the EU’s legal findings against the company kicked off yet more headaches. Plus ca change!

• In the UK the head of the BBC’s new media department controls a budget of £400 million, so it’s of keen interest to everyone in the tech commmunity. The former Microsoft executive Erik Huggers is tipped to be the BBC’s new director of future media and technology, replacing Ashley Highfield, who is leaving to head the commercial web TV venture Project Kangaroo.

• The iPhone in Europe is a “patchy” success. So far it’s officially available in France, England, Germany, Austria, and Ireland. Demand has been strongest in England. French sales have been just okay. Germany, however, is cool on the Jesus phone. One third of the iPhones sold in Europe are unlocked after purchase.
They may also be being sold at a loss. And is Orange testing a 3G iPhone v2.0 with GPS in France? And maybe it’ll launch in Russia soon? I predict a lot of unlocking…. Luckily we’ll soon be able to use them on flights in Europe.

• And in other news TechCrunch UK is bringing 20 UK startups to ‘press the flesh’ in Silicon Valley this week. So at least were bringing a bit of Europe to you. Much easier!

Crunch Network: MobileCrunch Mobile Gadgets and Applications, Delivered Daily.

Source: TechCrunch
Original Article: http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/Techcrunch/~3/273421565/

Encyclopedia Britannica is used in often case studies as a definitive example of how new technology can disrupt a business. Everything was great for the nearly 250 year old privately held company until the Internet came around and category five hurricaned on their parade. According to Comscore, for every page viewed on Brittanica.com, 184 pages are viewed on Wikipedia (3.8 billion v. 21 million pave views per month). In short, they are a classic example of the Innovator’s Dilemma (see also the Music Industry).

You can purchase the 32 volume Britannica, which has 65,000 articles and 44 million words, for just $1,400. Or you can access it on the web for $70 per year.

And now, you can get access to the online version for free through a new program called Britannica Webshare - provided that you are a “web publisher.” The definition of a web publisher is rather squishy: “This program is intended for people who publish with some regularity on the Internet, be they bloggers, webmasters, or writers. We reserve the right to deny participation to anyone who in our judgment doesn’t qualify.” Basically, you sign up, tell them about your site URL and a description, and they review it and decide if you’ll get in. I wonder if Facebook, MySpace and Twitter users are eligible? They all certainly “publish with some regularity on the Internet.”

Once you’re in, you get to link to the full version of articles - people clicking the link can read that article but they can’t go and read other parts of the Britannica site. Participants can also embed widgets like the following:

Half Pregnant

Britannica is doing a lot of things right - a relatively small staff of a hundred or so editors manages 4,000 unpaid (I believe) contributors who are recognized experts in their field. But, like the music labels, they still somehow feel as though people should pay to consume their content. And that means search engines can’t index their content. And that means they don’t exist.

Instead of going free and opening up to all, they’re using the new program to simply price discriminate. Give people who may link to the site free access. Everyone else has to pay. So in effect they’re aiming to be half pregnant - they want the benefits of web linking but don’t want to give up the subscription fees from the fools who continue to pay them.

As an outsider, Britannica’s future is clear. Eventually, and if they don’t go out of business first, they’ll be forced to make all their content freely available on the Internet, and will probably create a wiki-like format that allows user editing. Their differentiating factor from Wikipedia will be that they have experts guiding articles, so they’ll have a claim to be more authoritative. This is, by the way, the business model of Citizendium, created by Wikipedia co-founder Larry Sanger in 2006.

The sooner they do that the more likely they’ll be around for the long term. Perhaps they can even continue to sell those 32 volume sets to a few libraries. But it’s hard to give up that online subscription revenue. When this fails, they’ll try something else.

Crunch Network: CrunchGear drool over the sexiest new gadgets and hardware.

Source: TechCrunch
Original Article: http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/Techcrunch/~3/273366933/

According to a new report from Thomson Reuters and PricewaterhouseCoopers, venture capital investment in the United States headed south in the first quarter of 2008.

The report found that venture outlays dropped 8.5 percent to $7.1 billion in the three months ending March 31 from the $7.8 billion invested in the previous quarter, resulting in the lowest quarter since Q4 2006. Funding for early and late stage companies declined in the first quarter, though funding rose for expansion-stage companies.

The Boston Globe noted that the VC slow-down was in line with the declining US economy, and quotes Nina Saberi, managing general partner for Castile Ventures saying that new startups are being hit the hardest:

“We see from early-stage investments that the economic slowdown has had an impact”….She cited an inhospitable climate for initial public offerings and a tougher market for acquisitions, two routes for cashing out of investment.

The first quarter of the calendar year is usually the quietest so part of the decline may be seasonal, and yet it would appear that the venture capital market, and in turn new stage web investments will not be immune from the increasingly dire American economy. It’s not all doom and gloom: internet investments overall were up this quarter, but the exuberance in the market over the last 12-24 months would appear to have peaked. The only question now: how far will it drop, at what rate, and how much of the broader downturn in investments affect internet venture capital.

(via Venture Beat)

Crunch Network: CrunchBoard because it’s time for you to find a new Job2.0

Source: TechCrunch
Original Article: http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/Techcrunch/~3/273343369/