3 min read · 30 March 2010
Living in San Francisco and writing about Silicon Valley, it's easy to forget that not everyone in the country is obsessed with spanking new technologies, but a new Nielsen report on smartphone adoption underscores that point: as of right now, just 21 percent of American wireless subscribers are using an iPhone, Blackberry, Droid, or other smartphone. That's changing quickly. At the end of 2008, just 14 percent of wireless subscribers in the U.S. were using smartphones; Nielsen anticipates that by some time next year, that figure will jump to north of 50 percent, given that 45 percent of respondents to one of its surveys said their next phone will be a smartphone. (This assumes that those respondents are unlike my mom and dad, who've
1 min read · 29 March 2010
A few days ago, we talked with the mayor of Peoria, Ilinois about his city's efforts to persuade Google to build its ultra-high speed broadband network in its backyard. The hundreds of municipalities that are vying to become a test bed for Google’s ultra-high speed broadband network had until week's end to make their case to the search giant. In addition to some other low-key efforts, Peoria hoped that flying a banner over the Googleplex in Mountain View at lunchtime on Friday might just draw the right amount of attention to its town. It's too soon to say whether the effort -- which involved an additional plane to film the first -- will pay off; Google has until the end of the year to make a decision. Given how hard Googlers tend to work, it's also hard to know how many of them actually spied the banner. Either way, if you've ever wondered what Google's sprawling campus look like from 3,000 feet in the air, take a look after the jump:
1 min read · 29 March 2010
Investing is stressful stuff. One day you're a hero; the next day, you're a zero. Even the legendary David Swensen has faced criticism for mismanaging Yale's endowment. So if you're tired of the slings and arrows of managing outrageous fortunes, have we got a deal for you...
1 min read · 26 March 2010
If there’s one point that Kwedit founder Danny Shader would like to communicate above all else, it is that his one year-old company -- which already has been excoriated by Stephen Colbert and favorably reviewed in the NYT -- is a serious operation with two potentially lucrative ways to change how we pay for things. Shader's message may be hard to stick. Kwedit, which went live on February 3, has received attention mostly for one aspect of its business: Kwedit Promises. The feature allows anyone over age 13 to pay for digital goods online by extending them small amounts of credit. Later, using the company's Kwedit Direct system, he or she can pay back what was borrowed using Mom or Dad's credit card; by sending in cash through a Kwedit-supplied envelope; or by printing up a barcode that can be scanned at a nearby 7-Eleven, which accepts cash payments, then alerts Kwedit that a particular “promise” has been kept.
8 min read · 26 March 2010
3 min read · 25 March 2010
4 min read · 23 March 2010
2 min read · 23 March 2010
For Matt Mireles, 29, life after graduating from Columbia University in 2008 was “hard and lonely,” he says. “I was on my own, trying to make things happen” for his startup, 18-month-old SpeakerText, a Web application that lets users navigate and search through video. Then, in January, Mireles began writing about launching the startup at his blog, the Metamorphosis. First came an attention-grabbing two-part series titled “How to Start a Company in a Recession” that was republished by Silicon Alley Insider, where Mireles once moonlighted as a writer. Last month, Mireles wrote a newer post titled, “Face It: NYC Is Not the Best Place for a Startup,” which “caused quite the shit storm,” as one commenter on Metamorphosis noted, adding that from now on, he'd be reading Mireles's writings. By this past weekend, Mireles’s newest piece, “How I Judge Investors” had practically become required reading for tech reporters, entrepreneurs and, seed-stage investors, the latter of whom wondered what Mireles might say about them this time.
7 min read · 23 March 2010
Sometimes you can’t get too much of a good thing. So believes serial entrepreneur Sam Yagan, who is right now organizing a new, 13-week, Chicago-based training camp a la TechStars for high-tech entrepreneurs that’s modeled after the Boulder, Colorado program. Called Excelerate Labs, applications for its program, which will award between 5 and 10 startups as much as $20,000 in seed capital, are being accepted through April 2. “We’re treating this as much as a venture fund as we are a community activity,” says Yagan, who co-founded the file-sharing service eDonkey in 2002 and the online dating site OkCupid in 2003. “We want the investments to be good. We also want to make a contribution to the city.”
2 min read · 22 March 2010
