Archive for February, 2012
Pinweel: Caterina Fake ‘interested’ in buying our trademark (exclusive)
Tuesday, February 28th, 2012
When Flickr co-founder Caterina Fake announced her new travel-note app Pinwheel earlier this month, the folks over at photo-sharing app Pinweel (no “h”) weren’t happy. In fact, the company even asked that she “cease any further or intended use of the name.”
Pinweel has revealed exclusively to VentureBeat that Fake (pictured) has now expressed interest in acquiring the company’s trademark rights for Pinweel, which could indicate potential worry on her part.
“Ms. Fake has responded to our letter notifying her of our trademark rights,” Pinweel said in a statement. “In her response she expressed an interest in possibly acquiring our rights to the Pinweel mark. We’ve since responded to Ms.Fake, explaining that we have no interest in selling any rights to our name. Our focus right now is on continuing to improve Pinweel in order to provide the Pinweel community with the easiest and most satisfying way to collaboratively share photos.”
Pinweel, a photo-sharing app for the iOS, was launched in the Apple App Store on Feb. 14, 2012, but it filed for the Pinweel trademark in March 2011. The company made the its first notable appearance at TechCrunch Disrupt NYC back in May 2011, and its goal is to help people create photo albums and share them with friends and family.
Fake’s Pinwheel application is in now private beta. She has described it as a way to “leave notes all over the world.” Notes left on top of locations can be public, private, or shared, and available to one person or to an entire group. Users can organize their notes into sets, making travelogues or journal entries. The company is backed by $ 2 million in funding, which was led by Redpoint Ventures. The trademark for “Pinwheel” appears to be held by the company and was filed for on Dec. 31, 2011.
If Pinweel took Fake to court over the name “Pinwheel,” it’s unclear what the outcome would be, according to Jefferson F. Scher, Partner at Silicon Valley-based Carr & Ferrell. Scher told us that if there is a high degree of customer confusion, you can make the case that the name “Pinwheel” will hurt the trademarked “Pinweel.”
“With two different apps co-existing on the same device, there’s an argument that there could be confusion,” Scher said. “But if they are different enough in what they do, it may not be a problem.”
Fake did not respond to a request for comment. We will let you know if she gets back to us.
Finally, here’s a glimpse of “Pinweel”:
And here’s a look at “Pinwheel”:
Caterina Fake photo: Joi Ito/Flickr
Pinweel screenshots: Pinweel
Filed under: mobile, VentureBeat 
‘interested’, buying, Caterina, Exclusive, Fake, Pinweel, trademark
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Marvell launches new chips for smartphones in emerging markets
Monday, February 27th, 2012
Marvell is showing off a bunch of new chips for smartphones, smart TVs, networking, and other gear at the Mobile World Congress event this week. Among the new products is the world’s first TD-HSPA+ modem chip for smartphones used in emerging countries such as China.
Mobile chip makers are dueling to get their chips designed into the latest smartphones and tablets at this week’s event, which is being covered live by VentureBeat’s Devindar Hardawar. Nvidia, Qualcomm, and Intel have all announced big customer wins already at the show.
The new modem chip, the Marvell PXA1202, can triple the data rate for phones connected to TD-SCDMA networks. Phones using the so-called 3.5G technology can download data at rates of 8.4 megabits per second, compared with 2.8 megabits per second for current phones.
Marvell is also launching its LTE multimode modem chip set for phones that can transfer a lot of data at a low cost. The new PXA1802 chip will help address geographic fragmentation problems that have slowed adoption of certain mobile standards. The chip targets China’s TD-SCDMA network technology for mobile phones.
Marvell said it will have a number of new handset design wins for its TD-SCDMA chips for emerging markets such as China. Those designs use a user interface from Marvell dubbed Kinoma.
Kinoma Play is a user interface for smartphones, tablet computers, and other mobile devices. It can be built into a single application or become the user’s main interface for operating the multimedia apps on a phone. Kinoma Play is functional, fluid and fast interface. It works great with a touchscreen, letting you do tasks more easily, such as flipping through your music collection or zooming in on a face in a picture. Marvell acquired the small software company Kinoma last year.
Among Kinoma’s new features: the ability to manage your home appliances and lighting from afar. It makes sense for a chip maker to do this because it isn’t all about the hardware. Great smartphone software can show off the power of a chip through applications such as photo browsing. Intel has learned that too and is designing entire phones for its first smartphone customers.
“I am very proud that we are a strong driving force behind the evolution of the smart devices people around the world use every day in the home and at work, from mobile smartphones and smart TVs, such as Google TV, to smart appliances, energy-efficient lighting and mobile printing,” said Weili Dai, co-founder of Marvell.
Marvell’s new WiFi platform, Avastar, will be upgraded to handle 802.11ac, which promises much faster wireless networking in the not so distant future, as well as near-field communications (NFC) for more ubiquitous phone-based payment platforms.
Marvell said it is also launching technology to support easier mobile printing via WiFi networks.
Filed under: VentureBeat 
chips, emerging, launches, markets, Marvell, smartphones
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Flickr disables Pinterest pins on all copyrighted images (exclusive)
Saturday, February 25th, 2012
As the third most popular source of content on digital pin-board site Pinterest, Flickr and its photographers are subject to frequent acts of copyright infringement. But a site-wide update to Flickr promises to better protect members and their copyrighted works.
The Yahoo-owned photo-sharing site has just added Pinterest’s newly introduced do-not-pin code to all Flickr pages with copyrighted or protected images.
“Flickr has implemented the tag and it appears on all non-public/non-safe pages, as well as when a member has disabled sharing of their Flickr content,” a Flickr representative confirmed to VentureBeat Friday. “This means only content that is ‘safe,’ ‘public’ and has the sharing button enabled can be pinned to Pinterest.”
Pinterest, as a refresher, is the digital pin-board site that encourages members to “pin,” via bookmarklet, the products, recipes, clothes, photos, and other items they love to collections called boards. The private beta site has grown into one of the most-trafficked social networks online.
The site has also given birth to the most inherently viral variant of the status update yet. This new breed of update, however, often promotes piracy as pins including copyrighted works spread from person to person.
To protect itself from copyright lawsuits, and appease disgruntled photographers and publishers, the young social media company introduced a snippet of code Monday that website owners can now add to their sites to prevent unwanted pinning. If a person on Pinterest attempts to share something from a site with that code in place, she will see a message that reads: “This site doesn’t allow pinning to Pinterest. Please contact the owner with any questions. Thanks for visiting!”
Flickr can’t prevent all acts of photo piracy just by enabling the code — determined sharers will just work around the inconvenience and manually download and post images — but the act signals the site is proactively looking out for its photographers.
Filed under: social, VentureBeat 
copyrighted, disables, Exclusive, Flickr, images, pins, Pinterest
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Apple’s shareholder meeting: no dividends yet, Facebook a “friend”
Thursday, February 23rd, 2012
Apple held its shareholder meeting today and discussed its pile of cash, relationship with Facebook and how to elect members to its board.
The meeting began with a push from shareholders for Apple to require a majority vote by shareholders in order to usher in new or keep existing board members. The adoption came after much lobbying from a number of majority shareholders, including pension fund Calpers. It’s a step toward breaking down the executive walls at Apple, which were thick after Steve Jobs joined Apple as chief executive for a second time. Last year, shareholders voted for the same, but were shot down by the company. This year, shareholders were deterred from the idea, but overarching desire for more control over the board won out. Today, all board members were approved by majority shareholder vote, but if this was not the case, the board member in question would be invited to voluntarily resign.
Also on shareholders minds were dividends. Apple reported a $ 13.06 billion profit in the first quarter of 2012, and the company is sitting on $ 90 million in cash. Chief executive Tim Cook explained the cash flow as “more than we need to run a company.” He also assured shareholders that the company is heavily considering how best to spend the money, though it doesn’t look like a dividend is coming any time soon.
One shareholder expressed the opinion that Apple shouldn’t administer a dividend, but rather reinvest the money in media acquisitions. Acquisitions are another way the company could use its money to create a better product and lift its stock prices, though it doesn’t provide an immediate payout to stock owners.
Another shareholder brought up the company’s deeper ties with Twitter, particular now that iOS 5 provides options to tweet right in the operating system’s user experience. Cook said that while the integration has been “great for Twitter,” it has also been “great for our users.” But where does that leave the other giant, social elephant in the room Facebook? Cook calls the social network a “friend.”
“We do a lot with them, our users use Facebook an enormous amount,” said Cook at the shareholders meeting, “I’ve always thought that the two companies could do more together.”
Shareholders weren’t the only people who showed up to the meeting. Protesters gathered outside 1 Infinite Loop to demand an “ethical iPhone” after recent reports on working conditions in Apple’s Chinese suppliers.
Oddly, however, it doesn’t seem China or Apple’s new relationships with the Fair Labor Association were addressed at the meeting.
Apple campus image Joe Ravi via Wikipedia
Filed under: VentureBeat 
“friend”, Apple’s, dividends, Facebook, meeting, shareholder
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Twitter updates iPhone and Android apps, releases Kindle Fire app
Wednesday, February 22nd, 2012
With one fell swoop, Twitter has confronted privacy concerns, returned missed features to its mobile audience, and opened its information network up to even more tablet-toting folks.
Twitter for iPhone and Android received updates Tuesday. The fixes address previously identified shortcomings, and optimize Twitter to run on Android tablets.
Twitter released a version of its application for the Kindle Fire on the Amazon Appstore today. The company also promised that the Barnes & Noble Nook Store will get a Twitter app on Thursday.
Both iPhone and Android applications now alert the mobile Twitterer before accessing her address book to find friends. Should the Twitter user navigate to the “Find Friends” feature in the Discover portion of the app, she will find a message that reads, “We will securely upload your contacts to help you find friends and suggest users to follow on Twitter.” The user must then click “OK” before proceeding.
The addition of the alert comes just a week after VentureBeat uncovered evidence showing that a slew of iPhone applications, Twitter included, access the user’s mobile address book without first requesting permission.
Twitter’s mobile apps also now include a much-loved shortcut feature of yore that allows a person to swipe a tweet to interact with it. The swiping action brings up a shortcut screen that includes reply, retweet, favorite, share, and user profile-viewing options. The feature should (again) appeal to the power Twitterer.
iPhone application users may appreciate the returned abilities to copy and paste the text of tweets and mark all direct messages as read.
Filed under: mobile, social, VentureBeat 
Android, apps, Fire, iPhone, Kindle, releases, Twitter, updates
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LG unveils the 5-inch Optimus Vue, the new “phablet”
Monday, February 20th, 2012
LG unveiled Sunday its new 5-inch device that blurs the line between phone and tablet. It’s called the Optimus Vue.
Before Samsung released its Galaxy Note, the term “phablet” wasn’t in our vernacular. But since the Note measured in at 5.78 inches tall by 3.27 inches wide with a 5.3 inch screen, it pushed the limits of how big a smartphone could be. Especially since the Note is just two inches smaller than the seven inch tablets on the market, including the Kindle Fire and the Samsung Galaxy Tab.
Now, LG is diving into the phone-tablet form factor with its Optimus Vue. The Vue is slightly smaller than the Note with a five-inch screen. The Optimus Vue also takes a hit in screen resolution, delivering 1024-by-768 pixels compared to the Note’s 1280-by-800. Both phones are come with a 1.5 Ghz dual-core processor and eight megapixel rear camera. The Optimus Vue also has 32GB internal memory and runs Android Gingerbread 2.3. And what phone-tablet hybrid would be complete without a stylus? The Optimus Vue comes with a Rubberdium pen to use when your finger just won’t do.
LG describes the phone as “the slimmest among all LTE phones currently on the market and is perfectly suited for a hand and fits comfortably in a jacket pocket.” Note that it doesn’t mention a jean pocket, because we’re sure even LG realizes this phone won’t fit into most pants pockets.
The Optimus Vue launches in March 2012 in Korea. No word yet on whether it will make its way to Europe or the United States. Maybe that’s a good thing though, I’m not sure America is ready for two Frankenstein-like phablets just yet.
LG hasn’t yet released pricing details for the device.
Filed under: mobile, VentureBeat 
“phablet”, 5inch, Optimus, unveils
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Researchers create on/off switch for credit cards to prevent RFID theft
Saturday, February 18th, 2012
Researchers are working on an on/off switch for the next generation of credit cards. No, not to stop you from spending money you shouldn’t, but to help protect you from theft and fraud.
Credit cards are moving away from magnetic strips to more modern, no-contact technology. Now, with radio frequency identification (RFID) chips or near-field communication (NFC) cards, you can just wave your credit card in front of a reader to quickly pay for a cup of joe.
However, this ease could open up the doors for a new type of criminal. In theory, shady characters with portable scanners can read the information off your RFID card by getting close enough to so that your card is in their reader’s electromagnetic field. This type of theft hasn’t taken off yet, due to clunky technology and minimal monetary gain (most RFID and NFC cards have low spending caps), but an on/off trick could be a smart preventative step.
Researchers at the Pittsburgh Swanson School of Engineering are working on a simple new technology that would require customers to place their finger on the card to turn it “on” when they pay. When you place your finger on a specific spot on the card, say a logo or icon, it would complete a circuit and enable readers to charge the card. If the circuit isn’t complete, the card’s NFC or RFID technology would be disabled and not work.
“Our new design integrates an antenna and other electrical circuitry that can be interrupted by a simple switch, like turning off the lights in the home or office,” explains professor Marlin Mickle in a statement. “The RFID or NFC credit card is disabled if left in a pocket or lying on a surface and unreadable by thieves using portable scanners.”
The extra step would take very little time for the customer, and researchers think the technology would be fairly easy and inexpensive for credit card companies to adopt. They recently filed a patent application for the on/off card technology.
Filed under: mobile, VentureBeat 
cards, create, credit, on/off, prevent, Researchers, RFID, switch, theft
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Twitter partners with AmEx to tackle local ad market
Friday, February 17th, 2012
Twitter has announced a new partnership with American Express to allow small businesses to advertise on the popular social network. The program is due to launch in late March for American Express cardholders and merchants.
Until now, advertisers have had to work with Twitter’s team. This has limited the number of advertisers Twitter could successfully scale to.
If done right, this partnership represents a significant threat to recommendations site Yelp, which is on its road to IPO. As I wrote earlier, Yelp charges some merchants a $ 600 CPM for advertising that is often lacking in any relevance to the business.
Yelp also requires a commitment of at least three months and charges early termination fees for businesses that don’t meet their commitment. These rates and conditions are so bad that I can’t recommend Yelp for any business.
On the other hand, I recommend that every small business create a Twitter account to connect with their existing customers.
While Yelp’s model most closely resembles a Yellow Pages model, early indications are that Twitter’s product will be more performance driven and accountable.
A number of startups have been pushing small businesses to use their services for new customer acquisition. But tools from companies like Groupon, LivingSocial, and Yelp are not cost effective.
Many small businesses will do just fine using Twitter’s free accounts to build loyalty. But Twitter’s self-service platform offers the promise of a cost-effective new customer acquisition vehicle. Businesses will be able to pay for each new follower and build an ongoing relationship with those consumers.
I would expect that, over time, consumers will be able to load electronic offers onto their American Express card directly from a tweet. This would open the door to redemption-based advertising, where advertisers are only billed when an ad delivers a new customer.
I would also like to see Twitter develop a localized version of its user recommendations; when someone is first signing up for a Twitter account, they can enter a location and get a list of recommended businesses to follow.
There are two important keys to success with small businesses:
- Simplicity of the user interface. Complex bidding and keyword management won’t work. An interface with a lot of form fields won’t work.
- Marketing. Small businesses need to be aware of the product offering. This is an area where American Express can help, with its large merchant base. American Express is also funding $ 100 in marketing credit for the first 10,000 eligible cardholders and merchants.
Without both of these in place, a self-serve product won’t work. A third important factor is scale — and only Twitter, Facebook, and Google have the scale that is necessary for success with self-serve in the highly fragmented local market.
The companies that have reached a reasonable degree of success with small businesses have mastered both. Groupon, LivingSocial, and Yelp all work with a very simple user interface — the telephone. You don’t have to use a computer to manage their ads. They also have an effective marketing program — someone calls you.
But because dialing for dollars is expensive and takes a large team, their marketing programs are also expensive with large commitments.
Twitter and American Express have the potential to deliver better targeted prospects for far less money.
Rocky Agrawal is an analyst focused on the intersection of local, social, and mobile. He is a principal analyst at reDesign mobile. Previously, he launched local and mobile products for Microsoft and AOL. He blogs at http://blog.agrawals.org and tweets at @rakeshlobster.
Filed under: deals, VentureBeat 
AmEx, local, market, partners, tackle, Twitter
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Welcome to VentureBeat’s bold new look
Wednesday, February 15th, 2012
VentureBeat has a bold new look today.
We’ve had the same site design for several years now. It’s worked well, but it was past time for us to update it with some of the best features that modern HTML and AJAX design can offer. Plus, as the quantity of posts we publish has grown, it’s become harder for readers to find the stories that they care about and that are most important; we needed a better way to point readers to our best stories. We wanted to make it easier to find content related to whatever you’re currently reading. Finally, we wanted a look that reflected the sophistication and excellence of the content we produce.
Our new design accomplishes all that.
Here are some of the highlights of the new look:
A more dynamic homepage. We’ve got a bigger, bolder section at the top of our home page to show off the top, featured stories of the day. This section now has a greater variety of layouts, and we’ll update it several times each day to reflect the most important, breaking stories of the moment. Check out the before and after screenshots below (the old site is on the left, the new site is on the right):
A better way to show off our best stories. Just below the featured stories section, we’ve got a section for “editor’s picks.” These are the stories that we’re proudest of, selected from the past several days of VentureBeat. This is where we step outside the breaking news cycle and bring you longer features, interviews, reviews, and other pieces that are worth reading. This is a rolling selection of stories that will always show the most recent 10 editors’ picks.
More consistent VentureBeat branding throughout the site. You may notice that the old “VentureBeat” logo has been replaced with a black and red “VB” at the top of this page. That’s going to appear on every page in every section. In the previous version of the site, each section (SocialBeat, GreenBeat, MobileBeat) had its own look, but now we’re going for a more consistent look. We’ve also eliminated the “Beat” suffix from these section names, with one exception: GamesBeat is still GamesBeat (more on that in a minute).
A better way to discover related stories. When you’re reading a story on VentureBeat, like this one, there’s a “carousel” of related stories at the top of the page. This shows three stories at a time, selected from the same section as the current story. You can scroll left and right to see even more stories. Here’s a comparison of the old story page (left) and the new one (right):
A window into the most popular stories on our site. In the right-hand sidebar, there’s a box that shows the most popular stories from the past several days. A second tab in this box shows the stories that readers have been sharing the most.
Easier navigation and sharing. When you scroll down to read a story, a navigation bar pops up at the top of the page to provide a few tools for sharing the story on Twitter, Facebook, Google+ and the like. If you like what you’re reading, we hope you’ll use these buttons to share our stories with your friends. This bar also has arrow buttons to let you read the previous story or the next story in the same section.
Finally, there’s one section that has retained the “Beat” designation, and that’s GamesBeat. In the next couple of months, we’ll be building a better, stronger GamesBeat, turning it into a destination site in its own right as we incorporate the community members and content from Bitmob, our most recent acquisition. Stay tuned for more details on that. In the meantime, GamesBeat will remain a section within VentureBeat. It will have many games-related stories that don’t appear on the VentureBeat homepage, so if you’re interested in games, bookmark the GamesBeat homepage and subscribe to the GamesBeat RSS feed.
VentureBeat’s new design is the brainchild of Henry Brown, with technical implementation by Oomph, led by our chief technical officer Christopher Peri.
Filed under: VentureBeat 
bold, look, VentureBeat’s, Welcome
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Instant messenger app IM+ raises $10M
Monday, February 13th, 2012
Shape, the company behind online instant messenger service IM+, announced Monday it has raised $ 10 million from Russian brokerage firm Finam.
IM+ is an online instant messenger and mobile app that connects with many instant messaging services including AOL instant messenger, Jabber, Skype, Google Chat, and Facebook Chat. You can send instant messenges with multiple accounts in one interface and save your chat history. The service has more than 17 million monthly users.
Shape also recently released a new instant messaging app called Beep (pictured above) to compliment IM+. The app sends push notifications to your phone when you receive an instant message. The company hopes the app will take the place of traditional text messages.
“With the new release of Beep in-app push messenger [it will] allow people to save on SMS and MMS while simultaneously chatting on Facebook, Skype, Google Talk and tweet,” said IM+ founder Igor Berezovsky in a statement.
The funding kicks off a partnership between Finam and Shape, which are teaming up to create an instant messenger service for the Russian market.
Shape was founded in 2002 and has grown to include more than 60 employees. The company’s headquarters reside in Germany, and it maintains offices in the U.S. and Asia.
Filed under: deals 
$10M, Instant, messenger, raises
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