It’s time to launch your product. But where? Choosing the right platform to make your product’s first public appearance is critical. DEMO’s track record of successes, turnkey services and exposure for your company and product to a worldwide audience of VCs, investors, buyers and press, make DEMO your best option. Here are a few reasons why:
DEMO Scholarship Program Guarantees 20 very early-stage company’s spots at DEMO Fall for no charge and 10 partial scholarships for companies meeting funding requirements. For scholarship considering, applications must be received by February 17.
DEMO Innovation Tour. DEMO is more influential because it has a long history of enlisting top VCs to help bring innovators to market, including companies like Accel Partners, RRE Ventures, Austin Ventures and many more. In fact, in February and March, entrepreneurs can apply to launch in front of VCs at Kleiner Perkins, Madrona Group, Atlas Ventures and others..
FREE launch for college groups. DEMO is more diverse, providing a unique College Alpha Program that gives student innovators a free chance to pitch for 90 seconds and promote their product idea to a worldwide audience of potential investors and business partners.
Apply to Launch or Pitch Deadline: February 17, 2012.
DEMO Sage Program: Launch and pitch companies will receive constructive, valuable feedback and help from key members of the DEMO tech ecosystem—DEMO alumni, VCs, CEO’s from fast-growing startups and angel investors, industry luminaries and disrupters
Opportunity to win DEMO People’s Choice $ 1M Advertising Campaign: A robust advertising campaign, devoted to sharing your message and launch video with over 270 million IT buyers worldwide through the powerful brands under the IDG umbrella, including CIO Magazine, CSO Magazine, Computerworld, GamePro, Infoworld, MacWorld, Network World and PC World.
A portfolio of turnkey, personalized services to prepare you for the best launch experience:
PR support and communications training with a national PR agency
Demonstrator presentation review with a professional coach
On-stage rehearsal and feedback
Post-event promotion of launch video across IDG Global Website Network
DEMO Global Launch Program: DEMO Brazil is the newest member of the DEMO family! Any DEMO Spring 2012 launch company can participate as a showcase sponsor, at no charge, at any international DEMO event in 2012.
Why DEMO? Learn more and apply to launch by February 17!
“Facebook makes our life so much better,” Buddy Media CEO Michael Lazerow said at the Digital Life Design conference in Munich today.
The “our” he speaks of may actually apply more directly to brands embracing the social network for social marketing.
New data from comScore, revealed during the Monday morning presentation, highlights traffic gains big name brands recently experienced thanks to a combination of paid and earned media efforts on Facebook.
Mega-retailer Walmart, which launched a Shopycat Facebook application prior to the holidays, saw 275 million display ad impressions as a result of a paid media campaign on Facebook, but experienced an additional 117 million social media impressions thanks to the organic sharing activities of its Facebook fans and their friends, co-presenter and comScore CMO Linda Abraham shared.
comScore also looked at the percentage of people who visited retailer websites during a key week in the 2011 holiday season and found that for Amazon, Best Buy, Target and Walmart a high percentage of visitors to these sites were either Facebook fans or friends of Facebook fans (as seen in the presentation slide deck below).
Sixty-four percent of visitors to Amazon during the week ending November 30 were brand-exposed Facebook fans, for instance, and 36 percent were friends of fans, according to comScore. Leading Black Friday retailers also saw significant year-over-year traffic lift thanks to their various Facebook and social campaigns, Abraham said.
The data, Abraham concluded, shows that brands that know their Facebook fans, know their fans’ friends and push out the right creative message are seeing quantifiable results from their social campaigns.
Brands, she heeded, should keep in mind that Facebook users spend a majority of their time on Facebook on their News Feeds (27 percent). They should alo note that Facebook fans are often a younger demographic group than their average customers, and remember that friends of Facebook fans are an equally important audience to reach.
Samsung showed off a cool transparent liquid-crystal display at the Consumer Electronics Show a week ago. The 46-inch screen will begin shipping this month to retailers who can use it to draw attention to their storefront windows.
It may sound crazy to put a display on a window, particularly one that could get smashed. But the transparent display market is expected to grow from $ 900 million in 2015 to $ 87 billion by 2025, according to Display Bank.
“We look at it as a smart window,” said Bill Beaton, senior manager for LCD marketing at Samsung, in an interview. “You can think of jewelry displays with it or freezer windows at the grocery store that tell you where to find the ice cream. “
The touchscreen could turn what were once boring window displays into interactive experiences and pump new life into the LCD business. It has a contrast ratio of 4,500:1 with high-definition resolution (1,366 x 768 pixels) and a 70 percent color gamut, which means it is as vivid as a lot of TVs in displaying color.
The tough thing is that the greater the transparency, the lower the color. The greater the color, the less the transparency. So Samsung had to strike a balance through experimentation, Beaton said. And since the displays use ambient lighting, such as sunshine, as a backlight, they don’t work in the dark.
It has a TFT display and is 46 inches. Samsung introduced a 22-inch version last year that is just beginning to make it into stores such as jewelry and luxury vendors.
The display is 9 millimeters thick and weighs about 10 pounds. Samsung says it could be used in product showcases, commercial freezer doors in grocery stores, and platform doors of subway stations. It can also be used in other work or home applications including electronic boards, information windows, medical equipment, electronic signs, and, once the displays get smaller, mobile devices. Samsung also showed off a prototype laptop with a transparent display.
Pricing isn’t available yet but the products will ship soon. But Beaton said the manufacturing process is not particularly complicated for the transparent displays, as they can be made in the same factories as other LCD displays. It’s not unlike a technology showed off by General Motors for car windows. Here’s a video of the display.
Apple recently announced a handful of new initiatives focused on making digital books more accessible in the classroom.
The company launched a new version of its iBooks (iBooks 2) iOS application for the iPhone and iPad app, which will offer highly interactive electronic textbooks, as well as a new textbook section in the iBookstore. It also debuted an updated version of its education-based service iTunes U, which gives teachers the ability to do much more than create lectures for download.
While all of these additions are great, some people are skeptical that Apple’s new initiative can do much to improve the country’s education system.
Entering the textbook industry alone is definitely worth Apple’s time if the company’s only motivation is to make money. As VentureBeat previously reported, the education book publishing industry is mammoth, bringing in annual revenue upwards of $ 5.5 billion for sales of lower education (Kindergarten to 12th grade) and $ 3.7 billion for sales of scholarly/higher education in 2010, according to statistics from the Association of American Publishers.
It’s true that Apple is a business, and the principle reason for every business is to turn a profit. But as history has proven with the iPod (a.k.a. digital music revolution), Apple’s business strategies revolve around improving an entire industry to gain long-term, stable profit. This business strategy is also how Apple plans to approach education and textbooks.
There is also plenty of proof that suggests Apple wants to revolutionize education. Dearly departed former Apple CEO and co-founder Steve Jobs discussed the topic in Walter Issacson’s official biography of Jobs, as VentureBeat’s Dean Takahashi recently pointed out. But Apple also owes much of its early success to education, as Apple marketing senior vice president Phil Schiller said at the education event today. (And for what it’s worth, I did use Mac computers almost exclusively while attending public school in the ’90s.)
Ultimately, its impossible to know if the American education system will improve as a result of Apple making its platforms and devices more accessible to learning or teaching in the classroom. It’s reasonable to assume that making Apple platforms/devices more education-friendly will entice more school systems to use Apple products. And it’s highly likely that when teachers or students do used these more classroom-friendly Apple devices, it will improve the learning process.
But if there’s one thing that won’t improve the U.S. education system going forward, its spending an exuberant and unnecessary amount of money on paper textbooks year-after-year. If nothing else, school boards across the country may eventually divert the money they spend on textbooks to spending money on Apple technology as a more efficient use of resources.
Check out the fact-filled infographic below for more information regarding Apple’s ability to save the U.S. education system.
A handful of U.S. websites have decided to go dark today in protest of the Stop Online Piracy Act as well as its senate cousin the Protect IP Act — two piece of proposed legislation aimed at curbing piracy efforts abroad.
Perhaps the most vocal protester of the bunch is search engine giant Google, which has decided to update its homepage with a large sideways black box over the company’s logo. Since the site prides itself on staying very minimal, the logo is basically the most dominant visual element on its search homepage at any given time — meaning it’ll be difficult for the majority of U.S. web users to avoid observing the protest if nothing else.
The Google homepage also features a link to an anti-SOPA/PIPA infographic and a form that allows you to sign a formal petition against the bill. Google writes:
Fighting online piracy is important. The most effective way to shut down pirate websites is through targeted legislation that cuts off their funding. There’s no need to make American social networks, blogs and search engines censor the Internet or undermine the existing laws that have enabled the Web to thrive, creating millions of U.S. jobs. Too much is at stake – please vote NO on PIPA and SOPA.
To summarize, both SOPA and PIPA would give the U.S. government and copyright holders the authority to seek court orders against foreign-operated websites associated with infringing, pirating or counterfeiting intellectual property. If it becomes law, it could drastically change the way the Internet operates. For example, if a website is accused of containing copyright-infringing content, the site could be blocked by ISPs, de-indexed from search engines and even prevented from doing business online with services like PayPal.
In addition to Google, several other staples of the web have also joined in the SOPA protest, including Wikipedia, Mozilla, WordPress, BoingBoing.net, The Huffington Post and many more. Some organizations, such as Reddit and the Cheezburger Network of sites, have chosen to begin their protests or blackouts at 8 a.m. EST tomorrow.
We’ve included a gallery of screenshots below displaying protest messages from several sites. Since it’s only 1 a.m. on the east coast, I’d expect we’ll end up updating this page with more screenshots throughout the day.
For more information about the proposed legislation, check out VentureBeat’s ongoing SOPA coverage.
Cloud services leader Salesforce has hired former U.S. chief information officer Vivek Kundra as its executive vice president of emerging markets, the company announced today.
Kundra made headlines as the federal government’s first-ever CIO when he was hired by the Obama administration in March 2009. While in his job, Kundra managed $ 80 billion in technology investments and instituted a 25-point plan to reform and restructure the government’s IT management. Kundra left his job in August to become a joint fellow at Harvard University’s John F. Kennedy School of Government and the Berkman Center for Internet and Society.
The move to Salesforce as an EVP for emerging markets makes sense for Kundra. Ideally, his time with the federal government will have prepared him to talk up Salesforce’s cloud initiatives throughout the world.
“Vivek Kundra is an amazing technology visionary who opened the eyes of millions to the transformational power of cloud computing,” said Salesforce CEO Marc Benioff, in a statement. “His disruptive leadership is just what the industry needs to accelerate the social enterprise.”
Before serving as federal CIO, Kundra was the chief technology officer for the District of Columbia and the assistant secretary of commerce and technology for the state of Virginia.
Amazon has released their top-selling digital and physical game titles from 2011. The online retailer has quickly become the quintessential center of great gaming deals, release-day shipping, and exclusive pre-order bonuses (including up to $ 20 back, in some cases).
There are a few surprises to be found, including Deus Ex: Human Revolution as the top digital download. Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 3, the top-grossing video game of all-time, dominated physical sales, but barely made the digital downloads list.
Electronic Arts walked away with 50% of the top 10 digital titles, while rival Activision only had one (Call of Duty) on either list. This dominance will likely dissipate throughout 2012 as EA restricts digital downloads of its games to the EA Origin service.
Ubisoft’s casual-friendly Just Dance franchise continued to rake in the cash, with the multiplatform Just Dance 3 selling more physical copies almost every other game this year, while Just Dance 2, released exclusively for the Nintendo Wii in 2010, came in 8th, above Gears of War 3 and FIFA Soccer. Just Dance is an exception to not one, but two rules: It’s a successful entry in the mostly-extinct music rhythm genre, and it’s the only casual title to be included on either list.
Interestingly, and perhaps most telling of all, Nintendo doesn’t have a single product on the lists, despite the number of Wii and DS/3DS units owned outselling any other console worldwide, and the release of several high-profile games last year, including The Legend of Zelda: Skyward Sword, Super Mario Land 3D, and Mario Kart 7.
The last thing to note is that most of the physical titles were released during the holiday season (October-December), while digital titles have a more even spread of releases throughout the year.
Slot machine maker International Game Technology said Thursday it will buy Double Down Interactive for $ 500 million in cash. Double Down, based in Seattle, makes Facebook games such as the DoubleDown Casino.
Publicly-traded IGT is branching out from one type of casino gaming to another. DoubleDown Casino had more than 1.4 million active daily players at the end of 2011 and it was No. 4 in terms of the most popular games on Facebook in 2011. DoubleDown Casino, launched in April 2010, has 4.7 million people playing games each month, up from 3.3 million in October.
With money from IGT, DoubleDown Casino plans to release more social and mobile games. Double Down Interactive has 70 full-time employees and 10 positions open. IGT said the move will propel it into the leadership of social gaming, and it comes at a time when Zynga is beefing up its own casino game business on Facebook.
NVPR introduced the two parties with the Raine Group and Davis Wright Tremaine finalizing the transaction. The deal includes $ 250 million in cash, $ 85 million in retention payments over the next two years, and $ 165 million in bonuses if Double Down hits financial targets.
Greg Enell is chief executive of Double Down and he will continue to lead the business, which will stay in Seattle. IGT had sales of $ 1.96 billion las year.
Stratfor, an organization that provides international intelligence reports to a large (and often influential) clientele, has finally brought its site back online after last month’s Anonymous-driven takedown.
Anonymous, a hacktivist collective, opened fire on the site for reasons unknown. The group gained access to and then published contact and financial information for hundreds of thousands of Stratfor subscribers.
“In the global commons, anonymity is an option,” said Stratfor CEO George Friedman in a statement this morning.
“This is one of the great virtues of the Internet. It is also a terrible weakness. It is possible to commit crimes on the Internet anonymously. The technology that enables the Internet also undermines accountability. Given the profusion of technical knowledge, the integrity of the commons is in the hands of people whose identities we don’t know, whose motives we don’t understand, and whose ability to cause harm is substantial.”
Friedman also recorded a video about the attack and subsequent downtime:
Stratfor announced last month that it had been hacked on December 24, 2011 and that member data had been illegally stolen and exposed.
The company delayed relaunching its website “until a thorough review and adjustment by outside experts [could] be completed,” a Stratfor rep told VentureBeat in an email at the time.
Then, on December 30, Anonymous dumped a huge amount of sensitive data on text-storage site Pastebin. The data dump inlcuded 200GB of names, email addresses and unencrypted passwords for around 860,000 Stratfor users as well as unencrypted credit card numbers for 75,000 paying Stratfor subscribers.
“We knew our reputation would be damaged by the revelation, all the more so because we had not encrypted the credit card files,” said Friedman today. “As the founder and CEO of Stratfor, I take responsibility for this failure.”
Today, Stratfor has finally brought its site back online and is working to scale back up after several weeks of downtime.
Moving forward, Stratfor will use a third party to process credit card transactions for clients and subscribers. Also, Sec Theory consultants have rebuilt Stratfor’s site, infrastructure and email system for better security against possible future attacks.
Verizon and the FBI continue to investigate the forensics of the attack.
“It was deliberate destruction,” Friedman said to Reuters. “Their only motivation in doing that was to silence us. We don’t know why they wanted to silence us.”
All along, we’ve wondered exactly why Anonymous went after Stratfor, which claims to provide neutral intelligence, analysis and forecasts on matters of international security, politics and more.
In a statement issued December 29, representatives of the Anonymous movement wrote, “All our lives we have been robbed blindly and brutalized by corrupted politicians, establishmentarians and government agencies sex shops, and now it’s time to take it back.”
“The consequence of this will not be a glorious anarchy in the spirit of Guy Fawkes, but rather a massive repression,” Friedman countered. “I think this is a pity. That’s why I wonder who the hackers actually are and what cause they serve. I am curious as to whether they realize the whirlwind they are sowing, and whether they, in fact, are trying to generate the repression they say they oppose.”
The U.S. House has invited a small group of security experts and tech industry leaders to testify about potential risks associated with passing legislation like the Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA), the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform announced today.
The list of people asked to address congress includes Reddit co-founder Alexis Ohanian, Rackspace CEO Lanham Napier, Union Square Ventures Partner Brad Burnham, security researcher Daniel Kaminsky and others. The committee has scheduled a full hearing for January 18.
For anyone who’s still in the dark about the proposed legislation, SOPA gives both the U.S. government and copyright holders the authority to seek court orders against websites associated with infringing, pirating and/or counterfeiting intellectual property. The implication of having the act pass is that it could drastically change the way the Internet operates. For example, if a website is accused of containing copyright-infringing content (such as a song, picture or video clip), the site could be blocked by ISPs, de-indexed from search engines and even prevented from doing business with companies like PayPal. [For more information about the proposed SOPA legislation, check out this infographic about the bill's negative effect on business and innovation as well as VentureBeat’s ongoing SOPA coverage.]
“The public deserves a full discussion about the consequences of changing the way Americans access information and communicate on the Internet today,” said committee chairman Darrell Issa (R-CA) in a statement.
The hearing will also explore federal government strategies to protect American intellectual property without adversely affecting economic growth.
As for who will deliver the testimony, it’s a pretty competent group of people who (arguably) aren’t just a bunch of SOPA protesters. For instance, Kaminsky is regarded highly by many computer security experts for his work exploring DNS Cache Poisoning, while Ohanian is the spokesperson for one of the largest and most active online communities in the world.
We’re reaching out to a few of the people on the list below for additional comment and will update the post with any new information.
House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform Chairman Darrell Issa (R-CA) today announced that the Full Committee will hold a hearing on January 18 to examine the potential impact of Domain Name Service (DNS) and search engine blocking on American cyber-security, jobs and the Internet community. In light of policy proposals affecting the way taxpayers access the Internet, the hearing will also explore federal government strategies to protect American intellectual property without adversely affecting economic growth. The Committee will hear testimony from top cyber-security experts and technology job creators.
“An open Internet is crucial to American job creation, government operations, and the daily routines of Americans from all walks of life,” said Issa. “The public deserves a full discussion about the consequences of changing the way Americans access information and communicate on the Internet today.”
Witnesses
Mr. Stewart Baker: Partner, Steptoe & Johnson LLP
Mr. Brad Burnham: Partner, Union Square Ventures
Mr. Daniel Kaminsky: Security Researcher and Fortune 500 Advisor
Mr. Michael Macleod-Ball: Chief of Staff/First Amendment Counsel, American Civil Liberties Union
Mr. Lanham Napier: Chief Executive Officer, Rackspace Hosting
Dr. Leonard Napolitano: Director, Center for Computer Sciences & Information Technology Sandia National Laboratories
Mr. Alexis Ohanian: Co-Founder, Reddit.com, and Web Entrepreneur
This sponsored post is produced by DEMO.
“Facebook makes our life so much better,” Buddy Media CEO Michael Lazerow said at the 
Apple recently announced a 
The U.S. House has invited a small group of security experts and tech industry leaders to testify about potential risks associated with passing legislation like the Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA), the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform announced today.
