VentureBeat |
- Practice Fusion’s free health record system for docs
- Nokia CEO’s biggest hurdles: speed, accountability, and laziness
- Limos.com lands $10M for swanky online limo services
- Nokia files another ITC patent lawsuit against Apple
- Evernote revamps its website following slew of upgrades
- Review: Steel Diver for Nintendo 3DS has depth perception, but not depth
- Succession planning should extend beyond the C-suite
- Amazon beats Apple and Google to cloud music
- Why a fall iPhone 5 release could be brilliant for Apple
- New York Times launches digital subscriptions: Are e-readers an afterthought?
- Causes.com introduces a new kind of do-gooder advertising
- RealNetworks CEO resigns after little more than a year
- Got memes? Cheezburger Network buys Rocketboom’s Know Your Meme
- The U.K. gets a $60 million early stage fund
- Nook Color takes on iPad with possibly 3M units shipped
| Practice Fusion’s free health record system for docs Posted: 29 Mar 2011 09:00 AM PDT This post is brought to you by Xerox.
He and practice manager Ken Harrington researched electronic health record systems throughout the fall of 2009, ultimately sinking tens of thousands of dollars into a complex EHR system for the growing Washington D.C. medical practice. What it actually provided, however, was a disaster. Within two months of installing the system, West jettisoned it and headed back to the drawing board. One night, Harrington and West were looking up EHR systems online and came across Practice Fusion. On a whim, they decided to try it. Now scheduling appointments, prescribing medications, storing and pulling up medical histories, preparing home care instructions for patients – none of it generates paper. West says the improved efficiency has allowed him to reduce staffing and cut hours from his work day. That's what Practice Fusion CEO and founder Ryan Howard had in mind when he left his position developing a claims management system for a large medical group. Too much technology was going into medical payment systems, he feared, while very little was being focused on the records that actually make a difference in patients' lives. And that wasn't about to change, he worried, because most medical practices are small businesses unable to hire dedicated IT personnel. With EMR systems starting around $50,000, most doctors simply couldn't afford to go digital. "Ninety percent of doctors do have a computerized billing system, but 90% of doctors don't have an electronic medical records system," he says. "That means the focus is on getting paid, not on healthcare." Practice Fusion initially planned to charge doctors $300 per month to use its web-based software, but Howard quickly dropped all charges. Physicians now use Practice Fusion for free and the company has started to make money by analyzing the generalized health data that they pour into the system each day. Already, more than 70,000 physicians treating 9 million patients use the software, while on average 350 more users sign up Nurse-practitioner Raymond Zakhari says the service has let him create "a turn-key hospital in a backpack" with which he now conducts house calls throughout New York City. Using Practice Fusion, a laptop with a wireless connection, and a few basic medical tools, Zakhari can do physical exams, collect blood samples, prescribe medications, and track a patient's progress without ever making them leave home. And because his company, Metro Medical Direct, has few overhead costs, Zakhari says he can be profitable with only two house calls per month. "I can take care of documentation without carrying around pounds of papers," he says. "I can see a patient's chart, so I'm not prescribing blindly. I can send prescriptions to any pharmacy and because so many of them deliver, the patient can have the medication in just a couple of hours. That's better than some hospitals can do." [Image via The National Guard/Flickr]
      |
| Nokia CEO’s biggest hurdles: speed, accountability, and laziness Posted: 29 Mar 2011 08:20 AM PDT
Now we have a better sense of what Elop faces at Nokia, thanks to a Bloomberg report from this morning, and it all seems to come down to speed, accountability, and laziness. Speed: Every flagship Nokia phone since the N97’s launch in 2009 has faced delays, including its recent N8 and E7 smartphones. According to research firm Asymco’s Horace Dediu, Nokia has spent between 18 months and two years developing new hardware — a staggering figure when typical mobile product cycles lie around six or seven months, according to Sony Ericsson CEO Bert Nordberg. Accountability: Nokia has been a “ghost town” over the summer for the past four years, according to Adam Greenfield, a former Nokia employee. While Apple was busy dominating the mobile industry with a new iPhone every summer, Nokia managers were on vacation at their lakeside cottages. “If you need a decision and the key person's at the summer cottage? Forget it. You'll resolve that issue in September. It's something that hampers their agility," Greenfield said. Delays like this certainly didn’t help Nokia’s speed problem, but the bigger issue is that managers seemed to be taking it easy when they should have been figuring out a way to defeat the iPhone and Android threat. Laziness: This wasn’t explicitly pointed out in the Bloomberg report, but it seems obvious that Nokia has gotten lazy over the past few years given its problems with speed and accountability. Nokia failed to innovate quickly and deliver MeeGo to the public, and it wasted too much time shoehorning modern smartphone functionality into its aging Symbian platform. It goes to show just how much the company needed to partner with Microsoft for Windows Phone 7 — Nokia was simply unable to keep up with its competitors when it came to hardware and software. Now the company can let Microsoft deliver compelling software, while it focuses on making killer devices. Companies: Apple, Google, Microsoft, nokia People: Stephen Elop
   |
| Limos.com lands $10M for swanky online limo services Posted: 29 Mar 2011 07:39 AM PDT
Limos.com, which provides online bookings and consumer reviews, has become the largest marketplace for limo services, the company said. The company pre-screens all Limo operators and makes it mandatory that they are covered by $10 million in insurance. Limos.com has established partnerships with notable companies including OpenTable and Ticketmaster. Says T.J. Clark, Limos.com President & CEO, "After our experience at Hotwire.com, we couldn't understand why there wasn't an easy way to search, compare and book car services online, which has been so popular for hotel rooms and airfares." Although the industry is highly fragmented, ground transportation in the U.S. is a $36 billion industry, with less than 5 percent of reservations currently made online. The round of funding came from venture capital firm Austin Ventures. Austin Ventures Partners Mike Dodd and John Thornton will join the Limos.com board. Limos.com, which was found in 2007 by former Hotwire.com employees, had previously raised $5M in funding from Canal Partners. Companies: Limos.com People: John Thornton, Mike Dodd, T.J. Clark
   |
| Nokia files another ITC patent lawsuit against Apple Posted: 29 Mar 2011 07:25 AM PDT
If Nokia prevails in these suits, it could slow down Apple’s gains in the market. But it’s clear that Apple represents a threat to the very heart of Nokia’s struggling mobile phone business. Both companies are engaged in a death struggle in both the markets and the courts. Apple hasn’t yet responded to a request for comment. Nokia has added seven more patents in the new complaint against Apple, which is its second ITC complaint. On Monday, a court ruled that Apple was not in violation of five Nokia patents. The two powerhouses have been locked in litigation since October, 2009, when Nokia first demanded royalties on Apple’s iPhone sales. But this lawsuit in the first filed under the watch of Nokia’s new CEO, Stephen Elop. [image credit: Fast Company]
   |
| Evernote revamps its website following slew of upgrades Posted: 29 Mar 2011 06:00 AM PDT
The fact that Evernote launched the new website after taking care of its other products should give you some sense of where the site stands in the company's priorities. I really think of Evernote as a mobile application for storing notes, pictures, and more, and I'm only vaguely aware of the other versions. The company acknowledges that it tackled the other apps first because they're "our four most popular product versions." So what's new? Well, there's a new three-panel interface, which apparently comes from Evernote's desktop versions. There's also a new capability that Evernote plans to add to its other versions — the ability to share individual notes over Facebook, email, and instant messenger. Previous sharing capabilities were focused on team collaboration, specifically sharing an entire notebook, while the new feature is more social. Now every note will include a share button that allows both social sharing of individual notes and team notebook sharing. Other new features include the ability to create notebook stacks, a snippet view of notes, saved searches, and auto-saved. Evernote has raised around $45 million in funding from Sequoia Capital, Morgenthaler Ventures, DoCoMo Capital, Troika Dialog, and others. Companies: Evernote
   |
| Review: Steel Diver for Nintendo 3DS has depth perception, but not depth Posted: 29 Mar 2011 06:00 AM PDT
The game was in the works for a very long time, giving Nintendo time to hone the game’s innovative graphics that really make the 3DS shine. You get a real sense of depth perception when you look at the screen. Unfortunately, this game could have been but isn’t quite the killer app for the 3DS — due to its lack of depth. That’s too bad because I’m still looking for the flagship title for the Nintendo 3DS, which is competing with a host of smartphones and tablets that are quite capable of playing high-quality and cheap games. Nintendo showed off Steel Diver as one of the marquee games for the 3DS when it unveiled the system at the E3 trade show last year. Like any other newly launched game system, the 3DS needs a cool game that early adopters can rave about to their friends, especially since Nintendo is charging $40 a game. Steel Diver delivers on the visuals, but not on the mechanics of playing the game. As a result, I rate the game about 75 out of 100, which actually compares favorably to the average score of 58 on Metacritic, a game review aggregator. Steel Diver did poke through one of my deeply held criticisms on the 3D visuals. I’m on the record as pretty much hating stereoscopic 3D, except in rare circumstances (like watching the film Avatar in 3D in theaters). I really don’t like the eye strain from the 3DS, even though it uses a novel technology to present images in 3D without the need for special glasses. But the 3D effect in Steel Diver is nicely done, and I haven’t gotten a headache yet even though I’ve played the game for multiple sessions. This is a big concession I’m making to Nintendo, which has won over a large contingent of game makers who are making 3D games.
As you cruise through the ocean floor, the scenery is beautiful. As you look into the screen of the 3DS, you can easily perceive depth, in contrast to some of the other 3DS games. It feels as if you’re looking a couple of inches into the screen, as if you were looking into an aquarium (this makes me think that aquarium games might be cool on the 3DS). You can see schools of fish swimming around, either in the foreground or the background relative to your submarine. You can see plant life, ship wrecks, and other enemy ships at different angles, all creating the illusion of 3D. I could stare at the screen in relatively long 10-minute sessions without worrying about my eyes. When you look at the environment, the background imagery is more like a still image, which is much easier to render against a moving submarine. The backgrounds are sharp and the colors are as vivid as I have ever seen in a handheld game. It all looked so cool, and it reminds me of some of the fun submarine games I’ve played in arcades and on the PC. That’s why I’ve given Steel Diver a relatively high score.
The problem is that the whole collection of missions is too short. The game has a tiny amount of content . A determined player could get through the campaign in a day or two — especially if they don’t take the recommended break of 10 minutes of rest for every half hour of play. I don’t know why Nintendo didn’t add more levels to the game so you could feel like you got your $40 worth. Also, the submarine is very difficult to control with the stylus, since you have to hit the screen multiple times at once to keep your sub from careening into a cavern wall. At the same time, your sub can take a huge amount of damage and you can fix the damage simply by going to the surface. If you go to the surface, you lose valuable time since the missions are timed and you score better the faster you do them. But the surface-repair trick creates a great way to cheat. You can go to the surface and get your sub constantly repaired as you’re pummeled by surface ships. You just keep shooting torpedoes at the surface ships and you eventually win. I pulled this dirty trick to win easily. I would have been much happier if the subs were easier to control and were destroyed with just a little bit of damage. As it is, you can take a direct hit from a torpedo, depth charge or a rock wall and survive it. There is a cool effect when you are damaged. Water leaks spring from the screen and you have to tap them with the stylus until they are plugged.
You can also play against another player, using a local wireless connection. You get a top-down chess-like view of the game that puts you in command of a fleet of ships and a sub. Once you locate an enemy ship, you can enter periscope mode and blast it out of the water. But the sad fact is that this game had a lot of unrealized potential. You might get excited about the underwater imagery for a little while. But once that wears off, you’re stuck with a game that doesn’t play that well and is too short. Companies: nintendo
   |
| Succession planning should extend beyond the C-suite Posted: 29 Mar 2011 06:00 AM PDT (Editor’s note: Jeff Diana is the Chief People Officer at SuccessFactors. He submitted this story to VentureBeat.) Top leadership turnover and shake-ups have been all over the news lately, affecting everyone from AMD to Google to Apple to HP. The turbulence in the big business world underscores the need for companies of all sizes to look at their strategy and planning for leadership roles – and beyond. A small staff doesn't get you off the hook. In fact, it only magnifies the immediate impact of unexpected changes in your team – and the need for thoughtful planning. There are many differences between a company with 10 employees and one with 10,000, but making sure you always have the right people in the right roles is crucial no matter what your size. Successful tech startups tend to experience growth spurts as products gain market traction and capital is added. With fast growth, company needs change rapidly – and there's a natural tendency toward turnover, as your staff experiences changes in culture, roles and work priorities. Any disruption to your workforce is going to have an associated cost. Sure, it's easy to imagine the impact of a key leader leaving the company unexpectedly, but what about the person who knows your reporting systems inside and out? Roles outside of the C-suite can often have even more sudden impact on your organization's performance. Why? These individuals often play critical roles in day-to-day execution with specialized, undocumented knowledge stored only in their heads. Think about the person who handles your core IT systems and supports your customer tracking technology, or your financial planning person who built the assumption model for cash flow expectations for the coming year. These roles exist everywhere from accounting to HR. If an individual has a unique role with specialized knowledge and a high volume of meaningful transactions, it's a good bet your organization would instantly feel a real performance impact if they bowed out without warning. Ultimately, companies should plan for both succession and short-term coverage for every role to keep things running smoothly. So where should you start? Focus initially on the critical roles that have a clear tie to wealth-generation. These positions may be customer facing but they may also be a critical support function to those who work directly with your customers. At General Electric, we called these "Pillar Roles." You may have heard of these as "A" positions as well. The roles that fit this profile will be unique to your business model and your industry. It’s valuable enough to simply determine what those roles are – and make sure you have your top talent in them. Often companies find they do not and need to make some changes. The planning for possible attrition in Pillar Roles follows the same blueprint as for all positions:
When it comes to succession planning, there are a few basic rules of thumb. Keep them in mind as you begin planning for your company’s future: Prioritize – Companies that value their people are rarely caught off guard by unexpected changes in their workforce. They tend to have a steady rhythm around people movement with sincere CEO and executive engagement. Analyze – Succession is important for the entire company but the greatest focus is in key wealth-generating roles. Identify the roles with the greatest impact on customers, products and systems. Assess – Determine the performance of your people to get your arms around the talent that already exists at your company. Then add an experience profile so it’s possible to identify what talent needs to be cultivated in senior levels. Pepsi is a fantastic example of an organization that does this really well. Advanced moves - As your company grows and your workforce becomes larger and more varied, the planning you put toward your investment in people should be equally sophisticated and mature. At some point you will want to combine talent assessments with retention assessments, build succession tracks and measure progress to see what your company’s human capital really looks like.
   |
| Amazon beats Apple and Google to cloud music Posted: 28 Mar 2011 10:13 PM PDT
The Seattle-based online retailer said it will offer music playback on its web site as well as from any Android device. The advantage is that you don’t have to tie your music down to a single computer (Apple allows you to spread your music collection across five computers). Since it is stored in cloud servers, or Amazon’s centralized, web-connected data centers, you can log in from anywhere and get your music. The long-rumored cloud-based music service went live on Monday night. You can buy music from Amazon or upload your own music to the cloud from a computer using Amazon Cloud Drive, or Amazon’s own online storage. You can play back the entire digital music collection using Amazon Cloud Player on any Mac, PC, or Android phone or Android tablet. New purchases of MP3-based music from Amazon’s store can be directly saved to the Amazon Cloud Drive for free. The service will also work with music purchased from Apple’s iTunes, (but presumably only files that do not have Apple’s digital rights management security technology). Users can get 5 gigabytes of storage to store content for free and pay an annual fee if they want additional storage. Songs purchased from Amazon don’t count toward that storage limit. Those who buy an album from Amazon can get their free storage raised to 20 gigabytes. It’s possible that other kinds of media could be added later, but for now the service is limited to music. "Our customers have told us they don't want to download music to their work computers or phones because they find it hard to move music around to different devices," said Bill Carr, Amazon's vice president of movies and music at Amazon, in a statement. "Now, whether at work, home, or on the go, customers can buy music from Amazon MP3, store it in the cloud and play it anywhere." Google is rumored to be testing its cloud music service internally. Apple is also believed to be working on its cloud music service as well, particularly since it bought Lala.com some time ago. Spotify, a cloud music service in Europe, is also planning on moving into the U.S. market, as is Sony, which announced its music service was also coming soon to the cloud. The service works with newer Internet Explorer browsers, versions 8 or 9, but not with IE6 or IE7. It also works with Safari, Firefox and Chrome. It does not work with the Opera browser. Amazon said consumers don’t have to worry about losing their music to a hard drive crash. Files are securely stored on Amazon’s Simple Storage Service (Amazon S3) and each file is uploaded to the Amazon Cloud Drive in its original bit rate, meaning there is no loss in quality. Amazon S3 has multiple backup systems. If you want to buy 20 gigabytes of space for a year, it costs $20 (if you don’t take advantage of Amazon’s album offer). One of the complexities for Amazon to sort out is the fact that customers of its Amazon Web Services technology (outsourced computing power) and its Amazon S3 service will likely be competing directly against Amazon itself now. Companies: Amazon People: Bill Carr
   |
| Why a fall iPhone 5 release could be brilliant for Apple Posted: 28 Mar 2011 09:18 PM PDT
If true, the news would be a pretty major change for Apple, which has traditionally announced new iPhone models early in the summer. But I don’t think a fall delay would be the end of the world for Apple — in fact, it could end up being one of the wisest decisions Apple has ever made. Here’s why: LTE - There’s just about zero chance that the iPhone 5 would include support for LTE 4G networks if Apple was aiming for a summer release. Instead, that schedule would point to an LTE 4G iPhone coming in 2012. Apple isn’t in a rush to get to 4G (remember that the first iPhone only supported 2G networks), primarily because it doesn’t want to get stuck with first-generation LTE chipsets that are power-hungry and take up lots of internal space. But if Apple aims to get the iPhone 5 out for the fall, it’s a different story altogether. The company may be able to take advantage of newer LTE chipsets that are smaller and more efficient. Also, by that point in the year both Verizon and AT&T will have extended their LTE 4G networks to cover more of the country. Obscene anticipation – If you thought the typical wait for a new Apple product whipped gadget geeks into a frenzy, prepare for a hurricane of iPhone 5 news, rumors and anticipation if Apple delayed it until the fall. By this point, we’re used to our typical new iPhone fix in the summer. Without it, we’ll be shaking like addicts desperate for our next hit. Let’s not forget that Apple just released the Verizon iPhone in February — delaying the iPhone 5 to the fall would serve to build up more anticipation than a spring release, which likely wouldn’t have as much impact. Coordination with iPad 3, iTunes/MobileMe cloud services - With several rumors pointing to an iPad 3 coming this fall as well, offering the iPhone 5 at that point would be a clever one-two punch for Apple. They would both serve as flagship devices for iOS 5 (which is also rumored to come this fall), and Apple could even offer incentives to buy the iPhone 5 and iPad 3 together. The release of a new iPad and iPhone at the same time would also sell the power of Apple’s upcoming MobileMe and rumored cloud-based iTunes services. From what we know so far, Apple is working on allowing users to stream media, instead of storing it physically on their devices. That sort of universal access to media would definitely appeal to users rocking both the iPhone 5 and iPad 3. (Then again, the features will most likely be available to most older iPhone and iPad models as well.)
Companies: Apple
   |
| New York Times launches digital subscriptions: Are e-readers an afterthought? Posted: 28 Mar 2011 07:02 PM PDT
The only mention of e-readers on The Times' new digital subscription page is in a footnote pointing out that they are not included in the new plans. However, you can already buy subscriptions to The Times on the Kindle and the Nook for $19.99 per month. And Amazon announced today that Kindle subscribers will get free access to NYTimes.com on their computers, just like the new mobile and tablet subscribers. So why were e-readers reduced to a footnote in The Times' digital efforts? I suspect it's because monetization on the Kindle and Nook were already working just fine, so Times executives focused their efforts on finding new strategies. Now, almost as an afterthought, The Times is returning its attention to the paying readers it already has, so Kindle subscribers are getting website access just like print subscribers. (There's no official word on whether Nook subscribers will get the same privileges, although I'd be pretty surprised if they don't.) In his write-up of the Kindle news, Wired's John C. Abell expressed reservations about "the commoditization of the [Times'] website." I don't know if that's a valid complaint about Kindle subscribers — who are paying customers, after all — but there are still questions about whether The Times' paywall lets too many readers in. As The Times has already announced (confusingly), readers get 20 free articles per month, but links from social networks and other sites will always work, even if you've passed your quota. I suppose the porousness of its paywall is why The Times is emphasizing the device subscriptions, rather than access to the website. It’s much easier to say “you’re paying for an iPhone app!” than “you’re paying for access to a website that you can read for free, sometimes.” Companies: Amazon.com, Barnes & Noble, The New York Times
   |
| Causes.com introduces a new kind of do-gooder advertising Posted: 28 Mar 2011 05:42 PM PDT
One of the most direct methods to support a nonprofit on Causes is by donating money, but people don't always have the financial resources to give as much as they want. With this new program, they can give some of their time instead, specifically by watching a video ad or by filling out a survey or a poll. Those activities serve as advertising and research for Causes' brand partners, who will then donate between 10 and 50 cents per person to a nonprofit that Causes has matched them up with. Causes has already run a pilot program where users filled out a survey for Lexus, then Lexus donated money to the World Wildlife Fund. Vice President of Social Impact Matt Mahan said that from a business perspective, Causes is focused on connecting brands with audiences who are interested in things like social responsibility. The San Francisco-headquartered company already runs a "sponsored cause" program, and he said the new Give a Minute campaigns help "democratize" that concept, making it easier for companies that aren't "a Fortune 50 or even a Fortune 500 brand" to advertise on Causes. Mahan also described the Give a Minute program as embodying a new, improved kind of brand advertising. To find advertising for the program, Causes is partnering with online ad companies SocialVibe, TrialPay, and Y. "We want to raise the bar for advertising," Mahan said. "There’s a reason why cause-based marketing is the fastest-growing area of marketing dollars spent." San Francisco-based Causes was founded by Sean Parker (whose role in the early days of Facebook was dramatized in The Social Network) and Joe Green. It has raised $16 million in funding from Founders Fund, New Enterprise Associates, the Case Foundation, and others. Companies: Causes.com, SocialVibe, TrialPay, Y People: Joe Green, Matt Mahan, Sean parker
   |
| RealNetworks CEO resigns after little more than a year Posted: 28 Mar 2011 04:42 PM PDT
The resignation isn’t a good omen for RealNetworks, which has been struggling to remain profitable and find a reason for being amid a sea of competitors. The Seattle company makes technology for delivering internet media such as video to consumers. Real Networks’ technology has been important as a counterbalance against technologies supported by Apple or Microsoft, but it has had trouble getting richly rewarded by consumers who have lots of different ways to access media now. Kimball had been with the company since 1999 and was a senior executive since 2003. RealNetworks will begin a formal search for a new CEO soon. Bob Kimball has resigned as president and CEO of RealNetworks, a little more than a year after succeeding founder Rob Glaser to oversee an attempted turnaround of the longtime Seattle technology company. Rob Glaser, founder and chairman of the company, told GeekWire that he doesn’t plan to return to the CEO job himself. In a statement, RealNetworks didn’t give a reason for the departure. Kimball’s statement said, “After twelve amazing years at Real, it is time for me to find new challenges and opportunities.” He said the company "has set the stage for Real to embark on its next phase with a clean bill of health and a strong foundation." Mike Lunsford, a senior executive, will become interim CEO. During Kimball’s tenure, RealNetworks focused its business and cut hundreds of jobs. It spun off its Rhapsody music venture as an independent company. RealNetworks is also planning to launch its Unifi cloud-based personal media management service. For the fiscal year ended Dec. 31, RealNetworks reported revenue of $401.7 million, down from $562.3 million a year ago with net income of $3 million, or 5 cents a share, compared with a loss of $216.8 million, or $1.64 a share a year ago. RealNetworks employs around 1,300 people. Companies: RealNetworks People: Bob Kimball, Mike Lunsford, Rob Glaser
   |
| Got memes? Cheezburger Network buys Rocketboom’s Know Your Meme Posted: 28 Mar 2011 03:16 PM PDT
The Cheezburger Network is known for bringing pictures of “LOLcats,” an Internet meme involving ridiculous captions for various cat photos, into mainstream popularity. The captions are usually intentionally misspelled and come across as some kind of rudimentary pidgin. The meme was popular on image-hosting sites like 4chan before the Cheezburger network came into being. The company bought Know Your Meme from Rocketboom, the site’s original owner, to serve as a complement to its current meme repository called Memebase. That site is much more like I Can Has Cheezburger, the company’s flagship site, in that it simply hosts memes rather than documenting the creation and evolution of each meme. “If you think about Memebase, it’s an entertainment destination,” said Cheezburger Network chief executive Ben Huh. “If you look at Know Your Meme, it provides the context for the world around that.” Know Your Meme has a reputation as being an encyclopedia for Internet memes. The site tries to document each meme and trace back to where it began. It uses a quasi-scientific approach in its video series, also called Know Your Meme, that became a sensation on YouTube — with some videos averaging more than 500,000 hits. Outside of the videos, the site also tracks the appearance of memes in search engines and hosts a large number of images for each meme. But the online show’s hosts, Kenyatta Cheese and Ellie Rountree, recently ended their tenure on the series after four seasons and more than 60 episodes. Rocketboom, the owner of Know Your Meme, was reportedly facing financial troubles and a looming mass exodus in January. The video series has since been put on hold until the Cheezburger Network can figure out a way to effectively run and monetize it, Huh said. “I don’t want to produce all this capability and do one or two shows and then stop,” he said. “I want to make sure if we can do it, we can do it for a long time.” Huh started the company in September 2007. The Seattle-based startup has been profitable since them and now attracts 16.5 million monthly visitors adding up to 375 million pageviews and 110 million video views. The company recently raised $30 million from Foundry Group, Avalon Ventures, Madrona Venture Group and SoftBank Capital. Companies: Cheezburger Network, Rocketboom
   |
| The U.K. gets a $60 million early stage fund Posted: 28 Mar 2011 03:00 PM PDT
Partners Stefan Glaenzer, Eileen Burbidge and Robert Dighero were among Europe’s most prolific angel investors, in companies such as social micropayments startup Flattr and courier-bidding service Shutl, before they started investing together informally and decided to launch their own fund. They will invest in digital media and technology startups. Passion plans to make around 50 investments, on average in the range of $170-227,000 per deal. Burbridge told me that the fund will look for very early stage companies with a PowerPoint (a pitch via a slide set) or a prototype. Any verticals, from cleantech to retail, where online software makes a certain process or workflow more efficient for that market will be considered. Passion’s partners are something of a European investment dream team. Collectively they have been involved in 4 of the 10 most successful exits of recent years, including companies like Skype and Last.fm. Stefan Glaenzer was the first investor and executive chairman of Last.fm, seeing that company through to its sale to CBS in 2007 for $270 million. American transplant Eileen Burbidge was investment director for private early stage VC firm Ambient Sound Investments, founded by the Skype founding engineers. Robert Dighero was the CFO of QXL/Tradus which sold to Naspers in 2008 for $1.6 billion. London has emerged as one of Europe’s top startup hubs, and the U.K. government is making strenuous efforts to encourage high-tech startups in the U.K. with plans announced last year to provide $325 million in equity finance for businesses with high growth potential and $320 million for new technology and innovation centers. It also recently introduced an entrepreneur visa, long called for in the U.S. Companies: passion ventures People: Eileen Burbidge, Robert Dighero, Stefan Glaenzer
   |
| Nook Color takes on iPad with possibly 3M units shipped Posted: 28 Mar 2011 02:11 PM PDT
Barnes & Noble shipped close to 3 million units of the $250 Nook Color since it launched in November, Digitimes reports, based on estimates from suppliers of the device’s components. Its success led the suppliers to calculate that the Nook Color currently accounts for over 50 percent of the iPad-competitor market (which includes all other tablets). While far from official sales figures (shipment numbers only tell us how many devices are sent to retailers, not how many are sold), the estimates are still a decent indicator of how consumers are responding to the Nook Color. And not surprisingly, it seems buyers want cheap tablets. (B&N previously said that the device was its best-selling product for this past holiday season.) Barnes & Noble made several bold decisions with the device, including pricing it well below other tablets and bringing it more in line with the Kindle and other e-readers; offering a portable 7-inch size with a high-quality screen; and having it run a locked-down version of Android, which left the door open to expand the Nook Color’s capabilities with apps and other tablet-like features (which are now headed to the device in an April update). It’s also not too surprising to hear that the Nook Color may be dominating the small field of iPad-competitors, most of which are two to three times its cost. Hackers have also taken a liking to the device because it’s cheap and easy to turn into a full-blown Android tablet. According to the suppliers, B&N shipped one million Nook Color units in the fourth quarter of 2010 and shipped 600,000 to 700,000 units a month for January and February. Companies: Apple, Barnes And Noble, Google
   |
When Dr. Michael West decided to make his endocrinology practice a "paperless" office, he had no idea what he was getting himself into.
We knew it would be difficult for Nokia CEO Stephen Elop (pictured right), who joined the company last year and 
Nokia has filed a 
Of the 18 games that debuted with the 
Steel Diver is a slow game, a submarine simulation where you control a sub’s depth and speed as it moves horizontally across the ocean, either on the surface or underwater. As a simulation, it does a nice job of presenting the gamer with the hard task of maneuvering a submarine, given the physics of underwater propulsion. You can go at full speed underwater, but you might just crash into a rock wall or an enemy submarine if you go to fast. That’s because the only way to cut the sub’s momentum is to throw its engines into an immediate reverse. The skill of the game is in using the stylus to simultaneous control the depth and speed so that you can maneuver through narrow underwater caverns.
But there are some fundamental problems with the game too. First, there are only five basic missions, a training level, and two bonus levels. To get to the bonus levels, you have to play through the basic missions with each of the three different types of submarines: a small one, a mid-sized one and a large one. The small Manatee is quick and maneuverable and it can fire a torpedo vertically, but it is no match for heavily armed enemies. The Blue Shark is a balanced sub with both power and speed. The Serpent is a slow giant sub that is easy to crash into walls, but it can fire four torpedoes at once. Each sub can be used for different kinds of missions, and the missions do get harder as you go.
Not all is bad, as there are ways to break the tedium in the game. You can play another mode where you can make use of the system’s built-in gyroscope sensor. With Periscope Strike, you get a view of the surface through a periscope. You have to spin around and launch torpedoes at the approaching surface ships. You rotate your body, fix your aim with the periscope cross hairs, and then let loose torpedoes, always firing ahead of the approaching ships to account for the time it takes for the torpedo to reach them.
Trying to beat rivals 
You won’t see the iPhone 5 until this fall, according to 
After 
The Cheezburger Network, an online entertainment site featuring pictures of funny animals and other Internet memes, has 
U.K. early stage investment firm Passion Capital just raised its first investment fund of $60 million. The fund is a private-public hybrid, with the U.K. government contributing $40 million of the total.
Even though Barnes & Noble hasn’t been pushing the Nook Color as an iPad competitor, its low price and slick hardware seem to have made it one.| You are subscribed to email updates from VentureBeat To stop receiving these emails, you may unsubscribe now. | Email delivery powered by Google |
| Google Inc., 20 West Kinzie, Chicago IL USA 60610 | |
Tidak ada komentar:
Posting Komentar