Jason Ball's TechBytes

Migrating to Wordpress.com

Hi, I've migrated TechBytes to Wordpress.com. If you subscribed a while back, hopefully the RSS feed made the transition, if not, you might want to visit http://feeds.feedburner.com/jasonball to grab the freshest RSS feed.

Thanks for your patience if you find any site glitches- I'm working through those that I find...

Also, finally, after 2 years of waiting on TypePad to introduce a mobile design, you can now read my site on your mobile (that's one of the many reasons I've moved over to Wordpress). Flexibility is good. And the Wordpress app for iPhone and iPad rocks. Here's looking forward to the next 10 years of TechBytes on Wordpress.

Streetcar Exit- a London success story

Congratulations to Andrew Valentine, CEO at Streetcar on the company's sale to Zipcar.

I've known the company for a long time, and have watched it grow since Streetcar presented to the London Business Angels network when I was the "gatekeeper" there...

More info on the exit is available over at Techcrunch.

Wired Up

  

I picked up the May copy of Wired's UK edition this week. I've always preferred the US version since I'm not in the US- it keeps me up to speed on what's happening there- but it hit me how powerful the UK version is for the European start-up scene.

Enter the Wired 100 People.

Everyone knows the legends in the Valley, and everyone goes on and on about the Valley (it *is* a special place afterall). I've been here for 10 years and Europe has always had problems gaining start-up momentum - there's no epicenter, there's no critical mass- and there are no Heros.

Wired is creating local Heros, and I applaud them for it. Singling out successful entrepreneurs, investors, inventors- and holding them up - is something Europe desperately needs. It's not going to instantly make a scene- but the Wired 100 + the Silicon Alley map they produced last year + .... starts to create a sense of community. And that's just what Europe needs.

(Also, special congratulations to you Reshma for coming in at number 12. Reshma Sohoni is CEO of  Seedcamp- another group that's doing a great job building a strong European start-up scene. If you're just starting out, and you don't know about Seedcamp- you need to get to one of their mini seedcamps as soon as you can.)

Cool iPhone Apps

Hi there! 

No, I'm not dead- this blog is live... I've just been too busy lately to blog. So, to get me started blogging again, I thought I would share a few apps that I'm using regularly these days:

Sleep Cycle- actually monitors your sleep pattern by using the accelerometer in your iPhone. $0.99 to see how you've been sleeping. The best part is you set what time you'd like to wake up, and the app decides when you're in the best state to be woken. The sleep graph shows you the "quality" of your sleep the night before.

Remember the Milk- the app is for premium RTM users, and it's worth every penny. The best part: Location based To Dos. If I'm on Regents Street I can open up RTM and it shows things I want to do/see nearby… This is the only to do list I've seen that leverages location. 

Amazon- never miss another book recommendation. Open the app, search, ask "is this the book you mean?" When you get the nod, click add to basket. Wonderful…

BBC Weather- I live in England, so I'm overly preoccupied with weather. I'm a cyclist which means I'm obsessed with weather. It's a web app, but it's light and snappy. BBC has the best hour by hour forecast out there. For anywhere besides England, I've found Accuweather's hour by hour forecast is the best one on an iPhone.

Ocado- UK online grocery store. So easy to add "Milk" to your upcoming order.

Tripit- Getting your trips into tripit can be tricky if you're not in the US, but if you can, this is the best app for travel, hands down.

Convert- I'm always converting currencies and units. This little app is a lifesaver. Costs $0.99.

Foodspotting- If you like food, this is your app. Figuring out what to eat takes on a whole new dimension with Foodspotting. Instead of reading reviews, you look at pictures of food. And what looks good, is where you end up going. Fantastic site. The iPhone app intelligently filters based on location.

I'll post another set of apps in the near future. Feel free to add your favorites/recommendations in the comments section...

Age of Abundance (The Dedicated Device Rule)

There's a fresh article in this month's UK Wired- "Watches are the ultimate proof that we are not rational", which applies directly to me (and an increasing number of my VC friends.)

It reminded me of a discussion that happened during my MBA - we were asked to envision what "the watch of the future" would be- ideas of mini-computers embedded in watches, internet connected glasses, etc populated the conversation. I suggested that the watch of the future was no watch- time was all around us and on every phone (this was when my Ericsson T29 constantly showed the time, not my black as night iPhone), and for a long time I lived by my prediction- no watch. Just my phone. My personal philosophy for many years has been one of simplicity- having just *one* of anything...

But days have changed, and on the watch front, I now own more watches than ever before… my three favorites are my Suunto T3 heart rate monitor- my trusted companion as I pedal away on my bike for 100+ miles a week, my Casio CA53W-1 for splitting up the dinner tab, and my Explorer II because it needs to be worn to be wound-  I love the idea of a self sufficient, kinetic watch. The one thing the three watches have in common is that they all offer dual time; as an expat that's one point that never crossed my mind during my MBA (even though I was sitting in Spain at the time)- how important knowing what time it was in more than one city at any given moment. Instantly. But they are all very different watches, designed for different purposes or occasions.

Yes, my iPhone shows me the time (and weather) across the globe, but having a dedicated item on my wrist has taken on more importance over the years- and I've had a proliferation of watches in the interim. 

I think the same applies the digital devices world. (I've had device creep without even realizing it.) 

My iPhone was the holy grail when I bought it (and gets more powerful with each generation and app release), and I thought it would be the only device I needed… but I carry an iPhone and a Blackberry daily, and if rumors are to be believed, will probably add an iTablet to the mix soon. In the computing world, I also own 3 computers (iMac, Macbook Pro, Lenovo PC) but will also be getting a cloudbook next month. I tend to travel with both my Macbook and my PC. A cloudbook may replace my Macbook, but that remains to be seen… (I imagine it will end up being for checking mail and social activities online from the couch more than as a road warrior…)

I was even handed a dedicated wikipedia device last week as well- which is designed to be used by school kids.

All of the devices mentioned above are designed to perform one core function, with overlapping functionality in other areas. For me, I believe the future of devices will be exactly the same. Simplicity and function will drive this proliferation of dedicated devices-  the kindle, the flip, etc indicate the future... all in one devices means lowest common denominator. Dedicated devices mean optimal design and performance....

Venture's Back II

Last month I posted suggesting that Venture might be back... The post below from trueventures makes a strong case, that yes, indeed, Venture is back.

http://www.trueventures.com/blog/2009/12/02/venture-is-back-baby/

Also, I was at Noah earlier in the month; company after company spewed out fantastic stats:

Betfair- online betting, 6.5m trades per day, 5 bn pageviews per month, 2.5m registered users, 600k active users, £13bn annual deposits, £300m revenues- £150M UK; £150M international

Delticom - online tire sales (yes, tires) €200M Revenues, €53M gross profit, €15M Ebitda, €10M net profit

Zed- entertainment (http://www.business.zed.com/) Started off as mobile content player, expanded into everything - including tv $700M revenue;

Bigpoint - browser gaming; playstation 2 quality Free games, community based 1000 distribution partners TV partnerships with rev streams to broadcasters Virtual goods/currency- micro transactions Subscription = one price; virtual goods means variable pricing 95M registered users, 250k new registrations per day

Spotify- online music, 6m users (3m UK), 15k new registrations  per day 120 staff Avg engagement: 94 min per day; 

Stardoll- online "paper" dolls, 40m members, Avg age 13.8, 12m uniques/month

There were several billion dollars of revenue on stage that morning - representing some of Europe's more mature startups... with companies like these in VCs portfolios, and the exit market opening up-  it's easy to understand why venture's back.

Venture's Back

I'm sure everyone has been seeing what's happened in the US Equity markets- NASDAQ is up 30%+ YTD, with many stocks like Apple showing 131% gains this year. Strong earnings reports mean public companies have cash to deploy...

I attended GP Bullhound's Mobile Sector Breakfast two weeks ago, where Manish reported some positive liquidity stats (available here): M&A activity in the mobile sector has seen a 77% increase in transaction value and an increase in transactions over $50M (AT&T's acquisition of Plusmo is one example)

Today's announcements that Google is buying AdMob for $750M and EA's acquisition of Playfish for $300M (congrats Hussein) adds further fuel to the fire- and is very good news for the venture industry. Unless this is a dead cat bounce, it looks like the venture cycle just might be back...

Entrepreneurial Leadership Speaker Series

Hussein Kanji has organized a venture capital and entrepreneurship lecture series starting in October, which will be held at London Business School. Current speakers announced are:

Robin Klein, The Accelerator Group, Thursday Oct 1
Stan Bowland, Icera, Thursday Nov 5
Stefan Glaenzer, Last.fm, Thursday Dec 3
Bernard Liautaud, Balderton, Thursday Feb 4
Jos White, MessageLabs, Thursday March 4
Herman Hauser, Amadeus, Thursday, May 6
Mike Hedger, KVS, Thursday June 3

Other speakers will be announced in the near future.

If you're interested in venture capital and entrepreneurship; then this is the series of speakers you need to get to...and it's FREE. It's a stellar lineup, and the price is right. Full details and bios available at the London Business School website or on Hussein's blog.

See you there.

Feeds 2.0 and the Netflix Prize

I've blogged about my friends at Feeds 2.0 many times over the past few years; I've followed the Netflix prize out of interest since it was covered in Wired back in 2007, mainly because I was rooting for the Feeds 2.0 team...

For those of you who may not spend your weekends and evenings reading up on artificial intelligence, here's an overview of the Netflix competition:

Netflix released a large movie rating dataset and challenged the data mining, machine learning and computer science communities to develop systems that could beat the accuracy of their in-house developed recommendation system (Cinematch) by 10%. In order to render the challenge more interesting, the company will award a Grand Prize of $1M to the first team that will attain this goal, and in addition, Progress Prizes of $50K have been awarded on the anniversaries of the Prize to teams that have made sufficient accuracy improvements. Apart from the financial incentive however, the Netflix Prize contest is enormously useful for recommender system research since the released Netflix dataset is by far the largest ratings dataset ever becoming available to the research community. Most work on recommender systems outside of companies like Amazon or Netflix up to now has had to make do with the relatively small 1M ratings MovieLens data or the 3M ratings EachMovie dataset. Netflix provided 100480507 ratings (on a scale from 1 to 5 integral stars) along with their dates from 480189 randomly-chosen, anonymous subscribers on 17770 movie titles. The data were collected between October, 1998 and December, 2005 and reflect the distribution of all ratings received by Netflix during this period. Netflix withheld over 2M most recent ratings from those same subscribers over the same set of movies as a competition qualifying set and contestants are required to make predictions for all 2M withheld ratings in the qualifying set.

I was thrilled when I saw the final Leader Board: The Ensemble (Feeds 2.0 + others) was at the top:

The final winner will not be announced until next month; Netflix still has to decide which of the leading algorithms perform best and how they score on various tests...

So, as the latest Wired article says, it ain't over til it's over.

Good luck Nicholas!

Opera reinvents the web?

"Opera today (well, last week. I've been a little slow getting this post out) unveiled Opera Unite, a new technology that shakes up the old client-server computing model of the Web. Opera Unite turns any computer into both a client and a server, allowing it to interact with and serve content to other computers directly across the Web, without the need for third-party servers.

Opera Unite makes serving data as simple and easy as browsing the Web. For consumers, Opera Unite services give greater control of private data and make it easy to share data with any device equipped with a modern Web browser.

For Web developers, Opera Unite services are based on the same open Web standards as Web sites today. This dramatically simplifies the complexity of authoring cutting-edge Web services. With Opera Unite, creating a full Web service is now as easy as coding a Web page." Full press release here.

Very interesting concept which I imagine Google will copy quickly, roll into Google Wave and Chrome...and leave in beta for 5 years. But they wouldn't be alone....

Nokia also has been working on making your phone into a server. I spent a lot of time last year looking into this space. It has some interesting implications on network usage and ease of use for photo sharing, etc... another problem that gets solved by having a local server is separation of data and application.

One of the problems with web apps is that the data and the application are intertwined. Separability of data and application was very clear in the desktop world- you could tote your word files with you anywhere... but with cloud apps, this is becoming much more difficult. (For example, have you tried to export your gmail messages?) As they say, if you can't take data with you, it's not yours... One of the benefits of having a "server" on your phone or laptop is that any pictures you take can still be accessed on Facebook, but you can host those on your own "server".  (And we all know Facebook is trying to build their own private version of the internet. If you believe things like that.)

The current problem with having a local server on your machine (any machine) is that you need to be a geek to make it work. Opera is moving this towards the masses, but it's still a Yahoo Pipes mass appeal. Google needs to make this dead easy to use - maybe that's part of what their doing with Wave...

Qualcomm Ventures - Business Plan Competition

Today we announced the Qualcomm Ventures Business Plan Competion. 

It's open to startups in the US, Europe, China and India. Semi-finalists from each region will win $100k, and then compete for a further $150k at the Qualcomm Ventures CEO Summit in November.

We're looking for companies that impact the wireless space in the following areas:

• Consumer/enterprise applications and services
• Communication devices
• Semiconductor and component technologies
• Mobile platforms
• Digital media and content
• Healthcare technologies and services
• CleanTech 

Additional details on the Qualcomm Ventures' QPrize competition and submission guidelines are available at www.qprize2009.com. Deadline for business plan submissions is July 31, 2009.

European Startups... Still alive and kicking

Just in case you thought innovation was dead (or maybe non-existent) in Europe, the guys over at Mashable have pulled together a short list of European startups. If you missed the The Next Web conference and are interested in monitoring the space, The Next Web is a great resource (with pretty swell twitter too).

Five Steps to Music Nirvana

Step 1. Get Spotify

Step 2. Sign up for an account at last.fm

Step 3. Enable scrobbling inside the prefs pane in Spotify

Step 4. Check this site to find new artists based on your las.fm recommendations  http://lutt.se/lastfm+spotify+new/

Step 5. Enjoy your new found music nirvana

The Future of Search

I've been blogging about the search space for a couple of years, and this has to be one of the most promising developments I've seen: Wolfram Alpha. 

While Nova Spivak has an excellent overview of what Wolfram Alpha is trying to achieve, this will give you an idea:

Where Google is a system for FINDING things that we as a civilization collectively publish, Wolfram Alpha is for COMPUTING answers to questions about what we as a civilization collectively know. It's the next step in the distribution of knowledge and intelligence around the world -- a new leap in the intelligence of our collective "Global Brain." And like any big next-step, Wolfram Alpha works in a new way -- it computes answers instead of just looking them up.

Doug Lenat has also posted his thoughts on Wolfram Alpha.

The wrapper comes off in two months for everyone to access the service. I can't wait.

Pitch your startup: VCIC 2009

I've been a judge for the VCIC competition held at London Business School for the past few years. The school is actively looking for entrepreneurs willing to pitch to a room a VCs and MBAs learning to be VCs. The venture funds present (previously) were Accel, Atlas, Amadeus, Balderton, Doughty Hanson, et al plus corporates like Microsoft and Qualcomm Ventures.

London Business School is currently recruiting Entrepreneurs to pitch at either of the competitions- general requirements are: 

• Actively looking to raise capital
• No previous institutional funding
• Has product.  Preferably has customer traction
• Available to present on 20th /21st February and/or 27th February

 
It’s an opportunity for your start-up to present to several top VCs in one shot. If you are interested in pitching at VCIC please contact ccarrillo.mba2010@london.edu and/or for more information regarding pitching click here.

Amazon Web Services Meetup- London

I received this in an email today, in case anyone is interested in learning more about Amazon's services in Europe:

Amazon Web Services Technology Evangelist for Europe Simone Brunozzi and Cohesive co-founder Alexis Richardson will be hosting the next AWS Meetup in London on Cloud Computing and AWS, with details on S3, EC2, CloudFront and the other services!

Details of this free evening event are as follows:

When: Wednesday 4th February, 6.30pm start - as usual afterwards we will go to the Crown for drinks and further discussion
Where: Skills Matter, 1 Sekforde St, Clerkewell, London EC1R 0BE
Format: Simone and Alexis will each speak for 20-25 minutes and there will be time for some Q&A after that.

For more details about the event and speakers please visit http://skillsmatter.com/event/cloud-grid/amazon-web-services-meetup

Registration is open and places are filling fast so register now at http://skillsmatter.com/event/cloud-grid/amazon-web-services-meetup

M&A Trends for 2008/2009

Every year I start off with a retrospective of what's just happened over the past 12 months. I guess the difference this year is that everyone knows 2008 was simply awful across the board...

Icon Corporate Finance has provided the data points though, demonstrating that 2008 looked very grim:

You'll notice the vast majority of exits were sub $100M last year, while valuations outside of this band are falling fast. This means the venture portfolios are in for tough times... and capital intensive companies will find it much more difficult to raise capital.  Already I'm hearing the "10yr limited life" venture fund model being challenged. People are realizing it might take longer than 3-4 years to build and exit a company. Plus LPs are simply choking...and VCs are feeling the pinch as well in terms of LPs reneging on capital commitments. Yes, some venture funds continue to raise new funds- this is the exception (Accel's $1bn closed in December and Balderton's recent $400M come to mind...)

To state the glaring obvious, 2009 will spell the end for many venture funds and venture backed companies. I believe there was always venture funding overhang from the early 2000s- that will have fully corrected by the end of this downturn... 

The word on the street in California is "this downturn could be as bad as the great depression". The word on the street in London still seems to be, "what recession?". Look for "Sale Now On" signs to change to "Going out of Business Sale" in 2009.

Happy Holidays

It's that time of year, and I'm heading off into turkey, present and (hopefully) gadget land for a few weeks.

No real posts (unless total boredom sets in) until 2009.

Happy Holidays everyone!

(Picture credit: gun show)

Google's Search goes open: Wiki-style

I couldn't believe my eyes this morning when I ran a search on Google. If you are signed in, you can now promote results as well as leave comments. I had asked a Googler last year when they were going to meld Bookmark Sync (social ranking) to Google's PageRank. This is equally good/better.

Google's been wikified.

This appears to be a staged roll out, so here's a screen shot showing where you can promote, remove or comment on a result:

 

There's also a video on YouTube demonstrating Google's SearchWiki in action.

The Android Wars

I was lucky enough to unbox a G1 yesterday. Pretty neat phone, it doesn't outshine the iPhone in my opinion, but it's a great device. Definitely 100x better than any other phone out there (minus the iPhone).

But what makes the G1 great is the apps that take full advantage of *everything* the handset has to offer. Wikitude (worst name ever for the coolest app I've seen to date). Just watch the video.

It doesn't really give the same effect as standing on the 9th floor in a Qualcomm building looking out over the mountains towards Phoenix - seeing your field of view populate with POIs in the area for miles around, but it gives you a pretty good idea... More info/background on Wikitude is available here.

What's clear is that Android is going to be a serious contender- and is a fully functional Battleship.

Go Green- Get out your Bike

Yes, it's another bike post on my blog. I'm turning into a regular gear-head. The WSJ has a feature on cycling in London- approximately 500,000 trips are made via bicycle every day in London. Maybe the credit crunch is having an unexpected positive impact...

Spotify- The Next Great Music App

Congratulations to the Spotify team- they've launched their public beta today allowing anyone to listen to music over the web, in what I think could be the next great music app.

I've been lucky enough (thanks Daniel!) to be one of the beta testers over the past several months- today's the first time I've seen (and heard) ads on Spotify- and they've come up with a great advertising supported music model that's legal. Yes, it's all legit...

Two things you've got to do: 1) Download the app 2) SHARE a playlist. Sharing music via Spotify has to be the most fun I've had in years. (Yes, VCs are kind of sad that way.)

And if you can't wait to get your hands on a beta invite- you can get the premium version of Spotify immediately which has no ads...

This is gonna be a great.

 

Would the real iPhone please stand up?

I agree, the iPhone looks snappy in those Apple TV commericals. I love my iPhone, but it doesn't work *exactly* as advertised. Some guys with too much time on their hands decided to make this comparison video- the "TV" iPhone versus the "Real" iPhone.  

Dropbox- how file sync should be

My beta invite for Dropbox (funded by Y Combinator) arrived this weekend - and my initial impression is very positive. I've migrated my home mac use to a client/server (MacBook Pro/iMac) set up- with my iMac doing most of the heavy lifting.

I've tried multiple back up services and even tried to use iDisk as a "dropbox", but it never worked like it should. I'm now sharing my "Current" folder between the two macs seamlessly- and can even get access via the web if needed. Essentially, Dropbox is what iDisk should be - seamless cross-platform file sharing, complemented by web access:

Apple should acquire these guys ASAP and switch out iDisk for Dropbox...and getting access to these files via my iPhone would make a nice addition to MobileMe too.

Wii Sports Resort: MotionPlus

Normally, I don't post anything portfolio related, but one of our companies, InvenSense, is launching some very cool technology inside the upcoming Wii Sports Resort. The best part is the Jet Ski demo at 2:24.... 

 

European VC takes a nose dive

Don't say you weren't warned: It's back.... VC Doom and Gloom.

According to Venture Source and the NYT, European Venture has hit it's lowest point since 2000. Investment dollars declined by 35% to $1.3 billion and companies receiving investment were down by 42% to 167.

The upshot is that early stage investing isn't dead:

“Venture capitalists are being very selective about the companies they back but they’re by no means abandoning the European market. In the first six months of the year, 44% of venture deals in Europe were seed or first rounds—we haven’t seen this level of early-stage interest since the first half of 2001."

Which is great, b/c these companies can grow up during the downturn and hopefully come out swinging when times are better. For portfolio companies that are long in the tooth though...Fred is rumored to be lurking in his Vadar mask.

Critical Mass London- Get out your Bike [Updated]

<update>

After further thought, I won't be attending. Possibly the most dangerous vehicle on the roads is the Irresponsible Cyclist. 

While I agree that more cycle awareness and support for cyclists is needed, I don't think breaking the law, clogging traffic and generally causing mayhem is the best way to advance cycling in metropolitan areas. 

One of the key criticisms I always hear about cyclists in London is that they "always break the law"- which is something I make a point of not doing. Responsible cycling is really the best way forward... with awareness and respect from motor vehicles- I can't see that Critical Mass promotes that type of protest, so won't be joining. Ping me or leave a comment if you know of any "positive protests" in the City...

</update>

Conditions for cyclists in London can range from pretty poor to extremely dangerous... I literally have *very* close calls on a daily basis. Luckily I haven't eaten any pavement yet, but I'm sure it won't be long, despite being pretty defensive out there.

If you'd like to join an awareness event for cycling, the next Critical Mass London is next Friday at 6pm on the South Bank under Waterloo Bridge, by the National Film Theatre. 

What's Critical Mass? Here's a recent video from the WSJ on its origins:

The Music Revolution

Wow, talk about music news this week. Muxtape got its wrist slapped by the RIAA...

...but there are new music start ups to pick up where Muxtape left off (if it's in fact dead, and not a publicity stunt).

Some new arrivals on the scene are 8Tracks, Grooveshark Lite and Simplify Media. I've covered other cool music sites in the past here as well.

Music startups are not for the faint of heart or the shallow-pocketed. Spiral Frog has spent $12 Million and hasn't even launched. They were reported to be looking for a further $25 Million. And that's pre-launch.

8Tracks has spent about $80k to get the service to where it is today, but has a special license that they're using currently.

I've been watching several guys here in Europe, but see real business model challenges to ad based music services given the royalty rates that the majors are looking for. Silicon Alley Insider has a good overview of why the current licensing model is broken. They calculate 1 ad per song to break even, we've run some numbers and they look higher than that to us- which means if it doesn't work at 1 ad per song, then things just go downhill from there,

Add in the fact that WalMart is pulling/reducing its music inventory, which can't be a good thing for the Labels either... all of which leaves me scratching my head as to where these guys plan on making money (Not online and not in store- that doesn't leave many options.)

So what's next, who's going to start the Music Revolution (or has it already quietly begun)?

(thnx to datsuncog for the tape pic)

The rain in Spain...

It's that time of year again and I'm off for a few days of r&r in the sunny iberian peninsula. Blogging will resume the first week of September.

Under the Hood- Apple iPhone 3G Chipsets

If chipsets are your thing, then feast your eyes on the latest iPhone teardown:

It's interesting that Apple have chosen to go with so many components - making the iPhone larger than it could have been if they had used integrated, monolithic die. It's interesting to see Infineon seem to be taking over the board though...

"...Infineon won big. It supplies the UMTS transceiver, suspected to be the PMB 6952, as well as the baseband processor, which is actually a two-chip module in a single package. The first chip is the X-Gold 208 (PMB 8877), which caters to GSM/GPRS/EDGE waveforms. The second chip is marked the PMB 8802 and is suspected to be the WCDMA/HSDPA accelerator for 3G. While there's still some debate as to whether this combo package with Apple markings may in fact be Infineon's XGold 608 (PMB 8878)..."

More details over at TechOnline.

All things mobile @ Mobile 2.0 Europe

Who knew, my old alma mater, ESADE, has gotten hip and is hosting this year's Mobile 2.0 Europe conference. If you haven't looked at who's attending, here's a comprehensive list.

And hey, be sure to catch the often quoted, Dr Maximilian Niederhofer at 11:45....

iTunes Downloads- 5 Billion Served

Apple announced today that iTunes downloads have now topped 5 billion. I posted back in January 2007 that iTunes had hit 2 billion purchases...

I note we're now comparing downloads with purchases- which may or most likely may not- be the same thing, but the growth curve looks very impressive:

It's worth highlighting that the number of weeks required for the second 2 billion downloads took less than half the time that it took to reach the first 2 billion...hence the exponential curve, not a straight line...the rate of change growth is accelerating... Ray Kurtzweil would be pleased to see exponential growth in action.

You might like... Recommendation Engines

If you're reading this blog, then you might like recommendation engines. I've been continuously impressed by Amazon's recommendation engine. As I've expanded what I buy through Amazon (heart rate watches, cooking utilities, computer peripherals, etc.), Amazon has done a very good job of processing those likes -across categories- and making very intelligent suggestions that have resulted in purchases.

Apple, on the other hand, can't seem to figure out what MUSIC I like despite having bought numerous albums and even being signed up for their artist alerts... Apple constantly alerts me to new hip hop and r&b content. I bought some snoop dogg two years ago...but I'm no big hip hop fan. What about Dave Matthews? I've probably bought about 5 albums. Alerts about Dave? Zero.

I'm aware of the "gift drift" that you can get with Amazon if you buy a friend's kid a copy of The Gruffalo- for the next several months you get offered children's books non-stop (I've actually never had a problem with Amazon's recommendation engine).

Looking forward to the mobile internet, recommendation engines- or agents- are going to become even more relevant- who's around you, what they are listening to, and why you might like it, that your favorite store (based on transaction history) has your favorite stuff on sale and the bus is 12 minutes away... etc.

Apple is smart (understatement), but the problems they have with recommending good music underscores the challenges facing recommendation engines.

If this is something that you're particularly interested in, O'Reilly has published a great book on the topic:Programming Collective Intelligence.

Highly recommended reading.

First-time Entrepreneurs?

Library House's newsletter yesterday (free registration req'd) highlighted an article by David Storey in the FT- making the case that there is no correlation between an experienced entrepreneur/management team and a company's success.

Storey summarises this belief [that failure is accepted in the US, and that it is a source of learning] to dismantle it, arguing that knowledge gained from a failed business makes little difference to future business success, due to the unpredictability of starting a business. ‘The best analogy is with a lottery,’ Storey writes, ‘it is not possible to learn to win a lottery.’

Storey points to research in the UK and Germany which indicates that experienced founders are no more or less likely to succeed in starting a new business than novices. It goes against one of the basic tenants of venture capital investing – focusing on the experience of the management team

At first, I thought that was the stupidest thing I had read in a very long time.

However, after giving it some more thought, I actually agree:

I'm not too worried about entrepreneurs being young or old; experienced or novice. I *am* worried about very large markets where an investment can be the leader (or at least one of the top 3). I'm also worried about great products and real, unmet needs...

An entrepreneur's experience? I've never lost any sleep over that one.

Mozy (aka how not to backup your files)

I posted a great review of Mozy 12 months ago. I even used the word "snazzy".

I just cancelled my account with them. I absolutely DO NOT recommend their backup service. (Please be warned, a rant follows.)

<rant>

My MacBook Pro hard drive failed earlier this year and I needed to restore from my Mozy backup. After following their restore procedure, it became apparent that many, many GB of information were missing. 

I should have known this was coming, and hey to be fair it was beta, BUT they saw no problem in charging me full price during the beta period (I did request a refund, but was told I could "have an additional two months of their service").

Here are some fun email extracts from the saga:

26th June 2007

Sorry to be a pain, but is it normal that I've been waiting 24 hrs for an 8 byte doc to be made available for restore?

That puts a great fear in my heart of what would happen if I needed to restore 18GB....

2nd November 2007

I'm using the Mac client and am trying to restore my "documents" folder. The online archive suggests a file size of 700MB and 4,000 files. When I get the restore email, it is for 200MB and 700+ files.

I've tried twice now, and online it says its restoring less files but then the download is for far fewer files...

2nd February 2008

I haven't used mozy since the problems in november. I've downloaded RC1- it's has caused kernel panics, uses excessive memory (1GB) and has crashed on every attempted backup. I'm even running a fresh install of 10.5...

I really am a very unhappy customer having paid for this service- which was useless when it came to restoring my machine and your support was very sad too. I test lots of beta products and you really shouldn't be charging for this software.

Their answer:

"I always suggest that as the Mac client does work wonderfully for many users, myself included, but there are those times where it doesn't work so well.

I can extend your account by a couple months if you wish to continue using our service."

3rd Feb 2008 (This was after the crash!)

The problem isn't just with the mac client- it was server side. Of the 50+GB i had uploaded, when it came time to restore, only 30-odd GB was available. The restore files that I configured online and downloaded contained a fraction of the files they should have.

And here's the answer:

Good afternoon,

I took a look at the restore that only was able to recover 768 of 5937. It looks like a good chunk of those files are bundles or packages, which weren't supported until 0.9.0.0. I'm not sure why the others weren't able to be recovered. When that happens, we can do whatever we need to do to get the files back.

Except that they DID NOTHING to get them back for me! 

And 768 out of 5937!? That's only 12% of the files I had backed up. I went back and did a double check and virtually zero files were packages (50GB were photos and music- the whole reason for using a backup service).

I've now complained so many times, that I am blue in the face. I have also told them that I'm blogging this.

Please, if you use a Mac and love your files, do not use Mozy.

</Rant>

Smartsynch raises $20 Million (Jackson, Mississippi)

It's not everyday that my hometown shows up in VentureSource, so I had to repost this:

SMARTSYNCH (JACKSON, MS) RAISES $20 MILLION IN SERIES E
--- Industry: Vertical Market Applications Software ---


Credit Suisse Customized Fund Investment led a $20 million round of
series E financing for SmartSynch. Other round investors included Siemens Venture Capital, Beacon Group, and OPG Ventures, Innovation
Valley Partners, Endeavor Capital Management, GulfSouth Capital,
Southern Farm Bureau, and Battelle Ventures. SmartSynch provides
smart metering solutions to the energy and utility industry.

SmartSynch’s solutions provide utility companies and their customers with the unprecedented power to take control of their resource usage. SmartSynch’s core product delivers actionable intelligence from electricity meters via public wireless networks and the Internet.

The Web is winning (go figure)

Right after the mobile world congress this year, I posted that this was definitely the Year of the Browser. Opera have just released some pretty interesting stats on mobile web usage for Q1 2008 through the Opera mini browser:

Social networking stands supreme
Almost 40% of traffic worldwide is to social networks. In some countries, such as the United States, South Africa and Indonesia, the social Web accounts for more than 60% of the traffic.

One Web will triumph over WAP content
Full Web surfing comprises more than 77% of all traffic. Content on WAP and .mobi sites accounted for 23% of mobile Web traffic. This share continues to decline as more consumers both use Opera Mini to access rich Web content and become more comfortable browsing the Web on their phones.

Data Consumed

As the content available to mobile phones improves, data consumption increases. Last month, those 11.9 million Opera Mini users generated more than 33 million MB of data for operators worldwide. This represents an almost 88% growth over the previous quarter.

88% Growth, and they're just talking about OPERA. Nevermind the iPhone, Series 60 phones or Blackberries...I've recently realized that I'm clocking in at circa 100MB of data monthly through my iPhone these days. 

The mobile web is definitely gaining momentum. Start your engines.

Geotag it

One of the areas I've been spending a lot of time looking at is All Things Geo. Three headlines caught my eye today:

Eye-fi Explore -auto geotags your photos before uploading automagically via wifi.

Sony Ericsson- have patented geotagging songs "Proposed technology for a "location dependent music search" would use GPS or a similar mapping method to determine the phone's location and promptly find music associated with the area, whether on the device or on an Internet server. The feature would let users cue songs they associate with favorite areas or download songs from local artists."

MIT Android Demos- a list of recent apps developed on Android- all of which incorporate geo/contextual awareness. My favorite was the last one: snap

It’s kind of like Digg on a map. People can tag certain places and then other users can vote that particular attraction up or down.

So if you’re in a new city, you can pull up your current location and find things around you that other people think are interesting.

If there’s a particular user that’s uploaded a bunch of cool stuff, you can subscribe to his or her stuff. Arrows on the map change color the more popular they get. Very cool

Any other cool geo-related apps out there you've seen? (btw, if anyone has a fire eagle invite, pls ping me)

Up, Up and Up

It's earnings season on Wall Street and the news is very good:

Amazon- Q1 profit up 29%
Apple- Q1 profit up 36%
Google- Q1 profit up 30%
Broadcom - Q1 profit up 22%

Most of the results are due to non-US strength, but they are very stong results across the board...

Web 2.0 Expo Party List

If you're in the Bay Area for the Web 2.0 Expo, here's a list (which has a public Google Calendar as well) of updated, collected, filtered, processed, pre-selected, recommended expo-related events.

Enjoy.

Should I stay, or should I go?

This is the eternal question every Londoner (or any urbanite) faces:

You've missed the bus- do you walk to the next stop to try to catch it, or do you stay put and wait for the next one to come along?

There is a precise mathematical equation that can be used anytime you're faced with this dilemma:

The long and short of it is, if you walk to the next bus stop- chances are the bus will pass you by, and you'll end up waiting even longer...so stay put.

You can read the full proof here, Walk versus Wait: The Lazy Mathematician Wins, if that's your thing.

Can i haz VC?

A great post over on Under the Radar on VC slang:

VC vocab for those of you who are about to venture into, well, venture...and for those of you who could use the refresher:

Star: A portfolio company that generates 5-10x ROI upon exit

Walking Dead/Zombie: A portfolio company that can only generate an ROI, equal to the amount of money invested into it.

Dog: A portfolio company that has no chance of returning any money to its investors.

Kennel Capital: A portfolio of dogs

Dogcatcher: A VC whose portfolio is kennel capital

ArchAngel: A serial Angel investor who has, to date, invested in a number of starts. (See Jeff Clavier)

Blowfish: An early-stage (often pre-revenue) stratup entrepreneur who claims that his company makes better chips than Intel, better software than Microsoft and who knows more about customers and their needs than Dell.

Conservative Estimate: Overly optimistic financial forecasts that inexperienced first-time entrepreneurs generate using Excel.

And our personal favorite.....

Putting Lipstick on a Pig: When an entrepreneur tries to create a positive spin on a negative event (ex. Our management team leaving us at this time affords us an opportunity to retool our entire business focus and go-to-market plans). It can also be used to describe a bad product that is re-launched with new dressed-up front-end or the process in which a VC will over spin a portfolio company's stort to facilitate a high exit.

And just in case you missed Max's excellent post on VC wear (that still has me laughing), you can browse some more originals like the one to the left over at Venture Capital Wear.

Now you can talk like a VC and dress like a VC. (YMMV.)

Nsyght - Social Search Beta released

The guys over at nsyght have been burning the midnight oil... they released a beta version of the social search engine today, and techcrunch has a full blown review.

As Mike points out on the UK site:

This tiny boostrapped startup from West London wants to take your bookmarks and social network and use that to create more relevant search results. The idea is that, over time,a user will have a totally custom-built search index specific to them and their tastes...

...Try a search on “iPhone development” across Wikia, Nsyght and Google. Nsyght comes off pretty well - and they don’t have anywhere close to Wikia’s funding.

In my experience, I would agree- a search like iphone development will give you good results (pretty much any early adopter/geek search will yield better results than Google, et al.) If you haven't taken time to test "social driven search", now's the time to do so...

Jajah on spamming spree... [updated]

[Update, April 9] Just had a call from the guys at Jajah. They were very apologetic and stressed that they had not begun spamming their user base. Some background investigation is currently underway to determine how/where this message got sent...(watch it be my fault)

Even if it did come from Jajah, a call to rectify definitely things puts it right in my book....Jajah is again my favorite voip service. :-)

--

What is it with tech companies these days? First Bebo go and spam everyone and now Jajah (my now ex-favorite voip service) goes spamming my contacts WITHOUT my consent:

Hi!

Do you want to talk to jason@emailaddressremoved for FREE?

Initiate a regular phone-to-phone call with JAJAH at www.jajah.com. Between registered JAJAH users telephone calls are free of charge. I am already registered, so effectively we can talk for FREE. Even before you register you get 5 free minutes. No download, no installation, no headset. Try it out now!

jason@emailaddressremoved also left this message for you:

Initiate a regular phone-to-phone call with JAJAH at www.jajah.com.
Between registered JAJAH users telephone calls are free of charge. I am already registered, so effectively we can talk for FREE. Even before you register you get 5 free minutes. No download, no installation, no headset. Try it out now!

Curious? Check out www.jajah.com, get 5 free minutes and register to talk JAJAH too!

Note: Your Email address was only used for this message.

Talk JAJAH! http://www.jajah.com/

WHAT?! I was floored when I got a response to this email. Very naughty Jajah...

 

Quote of the Day- Gordon Brown

Responding to criticism that the UK property market is crashing, Gordon Brown stated:

"We've seen house prices rise by about 180% over the last 10 years and they have risen by about 18% over the last three years, so a 2.5% fall is something that is containable," Brown said.

A quick check shows that Bear Sterns was up 150% over the last 10 years as at Dec 2007 ($90/share)...

Then, the bottom fell out and the stock is trading down (87%) YTD ($10/share). What destroyed their share value? The credit crunch.

Guess what's about to crack the UK housing market?

Ireland Venture Capital/Startup Events

Continuing with the Startup Events theme, I thought I'd start posting what I'm seeing around Europe. Conor over at Argolon gave me the low-down on what's happening on the green isle:

Dublin has traditionally been the mobile dev centre here (Movidia, Newbay, Xiam, Puca, S3, Rococo etc etc) and I think that is still the case. Scattered around the country you have start-ups like Cubic Telecom and YouGetItBack in Cork, VoiceSage in Limerick, Nubiq in Waterford. We're only just dipping our toes into mobile/wireless etc in LouderVoice with SMS reviews/customer feedback. Medium term aim is full LBS functionality along the lines of Socialight or Whrrl.

We had the big success with DemoBar last autumn and there was supposed to be a follow-up in January but it hasn't happened yet. TechLudd is a new monthly meetup but it is mainly concerned with the web (and techies). The OpenCoffees in Cork, Limerick, Waterford, Galway, Belfast and Dublin are still pretty small (we average 15 or so in Cork) but particularly strong mobile presence in Limerick. They are also kicking off a BarCamp there pretty soon. Web2Ireland is still probably the best place to keep an eye on for events. The TechLudd guys have also recently started http://irelandstartupevents.com/ which looks good. Finally, Mobile Monday Dublin seems to be a bit quiet at the minute (http://www.momodublin.com/)

I found out via irelandstartupevents.com about the upcoming Adobe Air developer day here in London (too late, now full)...

What other resources/upcoming events should the budding europreneur know about? Post any thoughts in the comments...

(+ I'm planning a trip to Denmark in the near future- anything I should be sure to catch?)

iSurprise with Kleiner's iFund

Wow, who would have thought Steve's "One more thing" would be a $100 million fund dedicated to iPhone apps. (It's not everyday that I can blog about Apple AND Venture Capital in the same post...)

The only part that threw me was it's Kleiner Perkins and not Sequoia. Unless my history is wrong, Sequoia backed Apple, not KPCB- so why aren't they running the iFund? Accel are running the Facebook Fund. If you back the original, surely you back the ecosystem too?

That aside, I'm really excited that Kleiner are putting some muscle behind development for the platform.

Yahoo OnePlace- An Intelligent Mobile Agent?

Continuing with the theme of The Next Web, Yahoo has announced Yahoo OnePlace today:

Yahoo! onePlace brings together all your interests, passions and important information into a single location, creating a rich, highly personalized experience around it for you. Everything is instantly organized, dynamically kept up to date, and served up to you the way you want [to your mobile]...

...News feeds, websites, videos, images, emails, search queries, etc.—all can be linked into Yahoo! onePlace from anywhere across the Internet with a single click [and delivered to your mobile]....

and

...Yahoo! onePlace will list each of these for you as well provide a preview of the underlying content, which is continually refreshed throughout the day.

If they pull this off, this is going to be an exceptional service to bring the internet to the mobile. Before you dismiss Yahoo out of hand, pick up your iPhone and search for anything inside safari. Look at the google results. Then go to prefs and change to Yahoo as your search engine, and run the same search. Then, sit back and admire Yahoo's implementation of mobile search...

The Next Web

Good post over at Genuine VC yesterday covering the History of the Web:

...a transition among three distinct phases of consumers’ primary activity online from receiving, to hunting, and now doing...

Receiving, Hunting, Doing is a good indication of what we've seen so far- and I think we're going full circle to "Receiving" again- only this time from intelligent sources.

Two examples are Kwiry or Tripit. With Tripit, you email them your travel itneratry and they scour the web in the background and send you a nice package of maps, directions, thoughtful suggestions, etc. I've posted many times about "intelligence inside" which lives in the same neighborhood as the Semantic Web:

...I also think there's a huge opportunity to get to data sooner via the sensor revolution. When phones report location, when phones listen to ambient sound, when credit cards report spending patterns, when cars report their miles traveled, when we're increasingly turning every device into a sensor for the global brain, there will be more and more sources of data to be mined...

All of which means the process is reversing: doing by machines, hunting by spiders and receiving by users- remix and repeat.

Google Gears on Mobile Devices

Google has announced Google Gears for Windows Mobile 5 and 6 devices.

Google Gears works in exactly the same way on a Windows Mobile 5 or 6 device as it does on a desktop PC. If you've already written an application that uses Google Gears, your application will also work on a Windows Mobile 5 or 6 device. Except, of course, only within the limitations of that device. This means you need to consider things such as small screen and limited ability to input text as well as the limitations of the Document Object Model and CSS APIs present on mobile devices.

If Google Gears is expanded to work on Safari (Desktop and iPhone), then Gears might provide an easier way to develop for an iPhone than even Apple's own SDK.