"mypublic" via Dinesh in Google Reader

YC Startup Custora Helps Businesses Battle Churn

2011-03-03T03:30:42Z

While there are lots of tools that help businesses get customer's attention and boost conversion rates, there's little out there to help businesses with the challenge of retaining those customers once they're in the door.

That's the aim of Custora, a Winter 2001 Y Combinator startup that launched this week. "Google brings them in," states the company tag-line. "We keep them around."

Sponsor

Custora helps companies gain a better understanding of their customers, a key to being able to meet their needs and retain them. The startup says it provides the other half of funnel analysis. That is, it can help not only identify the steps that it takes in order to convert someone to a paying customer, but that it can break down that "someone" to identify the different types of users they might be, as revealed by statistical clusters, in order to better offer better targeting and messaging.

"We don't just detect churn," Custora says, "we manage and optimize email campaigns to keep your customers engaged."

The startup has already had some solid successes with this during its beta, with Salesforce and Plaxo signing up as customers, and it boasts that it's obtaining 5x better conversion rates from targeted emails and 9x more accurate customer-level revenue projections.

The first 50 ReadWriteWeb readers who mention "readwriteweb" in the comments section of the startup's sign-up page will get automatic access to the startup's private beta.

Discuss

This Computer Teacher Made 17-Year Old Student Play "Strip Video Games" at His House [Wtf]

2011-03-03T03:00:00Z

Larry David Twigg, a 53-year old computer teacher from Waterloo, Iowa, was recently arrested for having a 17-year old student of his play "strip video games," take a "chocolate syrup shower," and make a snow angel in his boxers. This is all terrible, obviously, and the Iowa Board of Education is currently considering terminating Twigg's license (because for some reason they haven't yet?). But it also raises the question: with Wii Dare still as yet unreleased, what the heck kind of video game were they playing? [WCF Courier]

Epic Says This Is What Next-Gen Should Look Like [Next-gen]

2011-03-03T02:40:00Z

Epic Games isn't just showing off the latest improvements to the Unreal Engine 3 at GDC 2011. They're showing us what the next-generation of games should look like. Do the images hold up to the hype? More »

The "Switzerland of NoSQL" Joins Basho

2011-03-03T02:00:00Z

Mathias Meyer, the so-called "Swizterland of NoSQL," is neutral no more. He has joined Basho as a developer advocate, the company announced today. Basho, which we covered here, is the sponsor company of the NoSQL database Riak.

Previously, Meyer worked for the Berlin startup Peritor on its cloud hosting platform Scalarium. He confirmed on Twitter that he'll still be working on Scalarium. Meyer will remain in Berlin.

Sponsor

Meyer - known for blogging and tweeting about infrastructure, scalability, databases and coffee - is also working on the NoSQL Handbook.

According to Basho, Meyer's first public appearance as developer advocate will be at JSConf in Portland, OR from May 2-3.

For more background on Meyer, here are two interviews:

MyNoSQL: Getting Started with NoSQL.

The Geek Talk: Mathias Meyer.

Discuss

Man Arrested for Making 'Cat Bombs' [Wtf]

2011-03-03T02:00:00Z

West Virginia's Brian Bailey don' like dem wiley cats runnin' 'round on his property so much. So ya see, he took a lil' bit of toilet bowl cleaner and some of that tin foil and threw it in a plastic bottle, so that when he threw it at the lil' sumbitches, it goes BOOM in their faces and scare the lil' bastards away. More »

Alleged Wikileaks Leaker Faces Death Penalty

2011-03-03T02:00:00Z

Bradley Manning, the U.S. Army private who allegedly passed classified documents to the whistle-blowing site Wikileaks, has just been charged with 22 additional counts, according to his attorney, Lieutenant Colonel David Coombs. Among these are "aiding the enemy," a capital offense.

Before we go on, you should understand two things. First, I am Son of Regular Navy. Second, I am not a fan of Wikileaks. Both of these things are relevant to my understanding of what has happened to Manning.

Sponsor

Little Lord Fauntleroy vs. the Fighting Man

As regards putting the lives of military people in danger, anything which does that leaves me absolutely arctic. You cannot understand what it's like to go through an entire year not knowing, each day, whether your father has been killed unless you have in fact gone through it. And unless you have, shut up. Try not to forget, by the way, that the overwhelming majority of the men and women who risk their lives in the service are poor people. I don't mean people who can't afford decent weed. I mean people who know what it's like to go hungry.

As to the notion of Wikileaks being a journalistic organization, well, being someone who cavalierly plops into a web page a bunch of stuff they were handed by a person who actually took a risk without adding any value to it seems to strain the definition of journalist. (That's the definition of a blogger.) The arrogance and disregard for simple fellow feeling repeatedly evinced by the knuckleheaded Little Lord Fauntleroy of the left, Julian Assange, leaves me red-hot.

(Some say the world will end in fire, some say in ice.)

So, both of those things established, I would not hesitate for a moment to cheer a death sentence for PFC Manning if he had passed the information he allegedly stole to a foreign government or armed group; especially one like Al Qaeda, which has unequivocally announced its continued desire to kill my fellow citizens. Manning has simply not done this. Because he has not, these charges come off as politicized revenge by politicians who have been made to look stupid simply by showing the world what they actually did!

Actions vs. Theatre

Last June, Manning was initially charged with four counts of violating the Uniform Code of Military Justice's Article 92, for disobeying orders, and eight counts of violating Article 134, a general misconduct charge, for disclosing classified information.

These charges seem proportionate to what Manning is alleged to have done. Adding 22 additional counts, including a capital charge, is the kind of disproportionate and deadly political theatre I have come to expect from a country like Burma or Iran. American exceptionalism aside, this action flies in the face of every ideal the U.S. claims for itself and promulgates abroad - ideals which I claim as my own.

Did Manning break the law? There seems to be evidence to that effect. Did he "aid the enemy"? Unless there is a raft of information that is currently not being shared even in outline, he certainly did not. And if that is the case, put it on the damned table. Otherwise, to each of the wrinkled, embittered and embarrassed old gremlins who've used this deluded boob as a sweet bit of political legerdemain to disguise their own impotence, I say:

Act like a damned man.

Other sources: MSNBC

Discuss

Will the iPad 2 Make the Grade for Classroom Usage?

2011-03-03T01:35:43Z

Apple has always been popular in education, embraced by school teachers and tech coordinators for its ease-of-use for students, for its better selection of educational software, and for its more reliable hardware and operating system. Schools that went with Macs decades ago have stayed with Apple, even while the rest of the business world seemed to go with Microsoft in the era of the personal computer.

Apple CEO Steve Jobs declared the end of the PC era today as he unveiled the iPad 2. And he touted the educational benefits of the iPad in his presentation, highlighting in one video the impact that the device has had in particular on autistic children.

So is the iPad 2 ready for the classroom?

Sponsor

Drawbacks to the iPad (v1.0) as an Educational Device

Some teachers eyed the iPad with skepticism when the first generation of the device was announced last year. The iPad v1.0 had no multi-tasking. It had no camera. It had no USB port. It didn't support Flash. There were only a limited number of educational apps and e-textbooks available. There were no educational discounts in iTunes. The iPad couldn't print. It couldn't be opened up, tinkered with, hacked. The iPad was part of a closed system, all under the control of one company - albeit, yes, a benevolent one in many teachers' eyes.

Blasted by some as an expensive device for content consumption, teachers want their students to have computing devices that foster content creation. Could the iPad deliver that, they wondered.

Yes, it could. It has.

Will the iPad 2 Meet Students' and Teachers' Needs?

Many of the limitations that make the device ill-suited for the classroom have already been addressed - through various iOS upgrades and by the explosion of educational apps and e-books. The iPad now has multi-tasking (sort of). You can print. The App Store offers a volume purchase program.

The iPad 2, unveiled today, addresses even more of the drawbacks of the iPad as an educational device. The big one: the iPad 2 will have two cameras. The addition of GarageBand and iMovie - two very popular pieces of software in the classroom - will enable students to create multimedia projects. The cost of the new iPad isn't any higher - that's good news. And the addition of the HDMI cable will mean that iPad content can be connected to a HDTV (which really isn't the projection device that most teachers have in their classrooms, but it's a start).

With all the limitations of the device - many of which have been addressed with various iOS updates and by third-party apps over the past year - many schools piloted iPad programs and have reported on their success. Students are managing to do more than simply "consume" via the iPad. And whether the iPad is just a shiny, engaging, but expensive novelty, if nothing else, trading in a backpack full of textbooks for a 1.3 lb tablet is a win for students' physical well-being.

The Verdict?

There are still questions - lots of questions - about iPads in the classroom. The cost (particularly in tough economic times) of any one-to-one mobile computing program - whether those tablets are Apple or Android - may be beyond many schools' reach. There are still kinks to be worked out to make what is, really, a consumer electronic product and marketplace, function in a shared and open educational setting.

Has Apple, already the beneficiary of a lot of good will from teachers, shown today that it's ready to take on the challenges of bringing iPads into the classroom? Teachers, students, administrators: did you see something today to make you think that, as Apple suggests, the iPad will "change the learning landscape"?

Discuss

Rogue Cop Ruins Rodeo Cook-Off with Tear Gas Attack [Wtf]

2011-03-03T01:20:00Z

Houston police officer Mike Hamby is facing some serious What the hell, man questioning from his colleagues after attacking a rival team during a rodeo BBQ competition. Stop and process that sentence. Nobody knows why Hamby loosed the attack, either. More »

Ashton Kutcher's Twitter Account Hacked at TED

2011-03-03T00:56:05Z

TV star Ashton Kutcher may have more followers than all but 5 other people on Twitter (6,393,559) but he apparently has at least one snarky and politically minded adversary at the prestigious TED conference this week. Kutcher's account on Twitter appears to have been compromised minutes ago, having posted two messages purportedly from someone else nearby. How excited will the stars Twitter seeks to get onboard be when they find out how easy it is for strangers to hijack their identities? Probably not very excited!

"Ashton, you've been Punk'd," the first of two Tweets read. "This account is not secure. Dude, where's my SSL?" SSL, or Secure Sockets Layer, is a security measure that many people have called on Twitter and Facebook to enable by default. "P.S. This is for those young protesters around the world who deserve not to have their Facebook & Twitter accounts hacked like this. #SSL," read the next message.

Sponsor

Last Fall a program called Firesheep hit the web that made it easy for anyone to sniff out unsecured Twitter or Facebook users' credentials on a local network. Counter-measures were quickly developed, but not everyone thinks to implement them when in public. An official switch by social network providers to SSL by default is believed by some to be the best solution, but that hasn't happened.

Update: @TwitterGlobalPR just Tweeted, "Users can use Twitter via HTTPS: twitter.com. We've long been working on offering HTTPS as a user setting & will share more soon."

The venue this occurred in is particularly humorous. TED is a world-famous conference of brainiac and wealthy do-gooder elite. Apparently one of those attendees decided to make use of Kutcher's account to prove a point that he himself would likely agree with.

According to a profile of Kutcher in last month's Men's Fitness magazine, the star spends all his free time cross-training to survive the apocalypse. Hopefully he'll be more vigilant in those circumstances, lest he fall prey to mischievous tricksters at end times, too.

Discuss

Cloud Startup Spotlight: CRM Pioneer Jon Ferrara's Nimble Launches Public Beta

2011-03-03T00:45:05Z

Nimble, a hosted social CRM solution, finally went into public beta today. But it's already received a lot of buzz. Partially because it has a good story. Nimble founder Jon Ferrara also co-founded one of the first CRM companies, GoldMine, back in 1989. GoldMine sold to Ixchange (now known as FrontRange) in 1999 for $83 million. Now this pioneer is back to reinvent CRM.

But it's not just the story that's generating buzz - the product itself is, too. It's working towards something of a holy grail in social software: the universal inbox. Nimble's not just a contact manager, it's a full communication center. It brings email, Facebook and Twitter into one place. And it does so in a surprisingly elegant way.

Sponsor

"CRM tools are more a tool for management to keep their hands around the throat of the sales staff, not to help help sales people manage relationships," Ferrara told us. "Sales people don't use CRM to manage their relationships with customers. They just feed the info into their CRM system at the last minute before it's due so the management can run the reports."

Ferrara wants to change that by creating the most natural and intuitive social CRM platform on the market. So far Nimble's doing a good job. The Facebook and Twitter clients feel quite natural. It really does seem like something you could hand to users without giving them any training. And the Klout integration is a nice touch.

The company is focused entirely on small business. In his CRM Watchlist 2011, Paul Greenberg wrote, "He was very targeted to this market and not really interested in any other one - a real positive in my book."

Ferrara hopes Nimble will build a strong developer community. "We don't want to be the Microsoft Office of CRM, we want to be the WordPress of CRM," he said. "We provide the most basic services and let developers build out everything else." Nimble was built with Python and MongoDB, both of which are popular with developers.

Nimble has plenty of competition. Notably Bantam Live, which was just acquired by Constant Contact, and Salesforce.com.

Discuss

Everyone Needs Firesheep Protection, Even Ashton Kutcher [Security]

2011-03-03T00:47:24Z

Whoops! Looks like someone took over the Twitter account belonging to actor/former underwear model/producer Ashton Kutcher. More »

Battleheart for iPad [Video]

2011-03-03T00:40:00Z

For your average gamer (me!), RPGs can be daunting. It always seems like some confusing soup of powers and power-ups, like everything's in some mystifying and dorky language that I just don't speak. Battleheart, an adorable and addictive RPG, is more my speed. And it might be the perfect iPad game. More »

Best Stories of Today, March 2, 2011 [Total Recap]

2011-03-03T00:00:05Z

Here are the best stories on Gizmodo today. Enjoy them! More »

How to Live with the Minimal Amount of Storage Space on Your iOS Device [Ios]

2011-03-03T00:20:00Z

Today's iPad 2 announcement brought many enhancements, but like many past iDevice announcements there was no increase in storage space. The max is still 64GB and the poor man's iPad still starts off at 16GB. Fortunately, there are several ways to work around these storage limitations. Here's how. More »

Watch the iPad 2 Keynote Again [Apple]

2011-03-02T23:35:36Z

If you missed today's iPad 2 announcement, you can either catch up at live.gizmodo.com (with Jason's witty zingers) or watch the full keynote over at Apple (with Steve Jobs' reality distortion field). Your choice. [Apple] More »

This Bike Makes Psychedelics Seem Redundant [Video]

2011-03-02T23:20:00Z

If you take this Suffolk Deluxe Electric Bicycle to the Nevada deserts for the Burning Man festival next summer, I promise you'll be the king of that strange, strange land in no time flat. [DesignBoom] More »

Infinity Blade: The Deathless Kings Update Brings New Arenas, Weapons, and Enemies [Apps]

2011-03-02T22:40:00Z

Infinity Blade, the stunning Unreal Engine 3-powered iOS game, just got a fat new update, bringing six new game arenas (essentially doubling the size of the game), ten new enemies, and over 30 new swords, shields, magic rings and the like. Hopefully you're knight's well rested. Oh, and the app is on sale for just $3 to celebrate the occasion. [iTunes] More »

Did The Father Of Microfinance Just Get Fired?

2011-03-02T22:40:00Z

by Jacob Goldstein

Muhammad Yunus — Bangladeshi economist, Nobel laureate, father of microfinance — may or may not have been fired this week.

This is the latest in a string of problems in the microfinance world.

Here's an explanation of what's going on with Yunus, and what the broader implications are.

Who is Yunus?

In 1976, Yunus launched a project to explore making very small loans to very poor people in rural Bangladesh. That project grew into Grameen Bank, which became famous around the world as a model for what came to be known as microfinance.

What's happening now?

Yunus has continued to run Grameen. But the government of Bangladesh, which owns a minority stake in the bank, appoints the chairman of the bank's board. The chairman says Yunus has been dismissed.

The chairman's rationale: Because the bank is partly owned by the government, its employees should be bound by the government's mandatory retirement age of 60. Yunus is 70.

Grameen, meanwhile, said today that Yunus is "continuing in his office" at the bank.

To learn more, I talked today with David Roodman, who is writing a book on microfinance around the world.

He said what's really going on here is a political fight between Yunus and the prime minister of Bangladesh, Sheikh Hasina.

Yunus has a higher global profile than the prime minister. On top of that, he considered launching a political party a few years back. As a result, the prime minister perceives him as a political threat.

The issue will be resolved in court — and the court is likely to rule in favor of the government and against Grameen, Roodman said.

What are the broader implications?

As we've noted before, there's been a widespread backlash against microfinance in recent years, with questions about its effectiveness as well as the motives of some of its practitioners.

The backlash has been particularly notable in India, where the founders of a for-profit microfinance bank got rich when the bank had an initial public offering. At the same time, there was a rash of suicides among microfinance borrowers there.

On top of that, Roodman said, private microfinance came to be seen as a threat by some local politicians.

Yunus has explicitly distanced himself from this sort of for-profit microfinance.

But the move to oust him makes it clear that he, like his counterparts in the for-profit world, now faces stiff political resistance.

For more: Listen to our podcast, "What's Better For Helping The Poor — Greed Or Charity?

"Ladies Mapping Party" Strengthens Google's Africa Maps

2011-03-02T22:00:00Z

If you like the idea of a quilting bee but prefer your bits electronic instead of fabric, you might be interested in a "ladies mapping party." 70 Kenyan women were, and showed up to a Google-sponsored a ladies mapping party at Nairobi's iHub in February.

The women used Google Map Maker, and their specific local knowledge, to fill in schools, health centers, market centers, community development projects, restaurants and roads in a country too often neglected by cartographers.

Sponsor

Jacqueline Rajuai, Geo Specialist with Google, said the mix of women and the skills and knowledge they brought ranged widely.

"We had a mix of students, web developers, Non-profit CEOs, an advocate and even an editor. Their backgrounds were quite an interesting mix as we had Computer Science students and Geography students, participants with an environmental background but the common factor is that they had an interest to improve the Kenya maps. Either where they live, where they have projects or areas they frequent."

This is hardly the first time Google has invited people to an intensive mapping party. Not unlike the independent Map Kibera experiment, Google invited the inhabitants of Korogocho to put themselves on the map. A Pakistan project brought people together last year to map changes after that country's horrific mudslides.

Google is hardly a non-profit. All the information entered is available for further iterations of the company's maps. However, Rajuai says this undertaking extends beyond making a profit.

"The bigger aim of all this is to make the world's information accessible, and also to make sure that we get more African content, and to make the internet useful and relevant for Africans."

Any readers involved in other crowdsourced mapping projects? Let us know in the comments.

Discuss

Five Ways Tablets Will Be Different (And Maybe Even Better) Than Smartphones In The Enterprise

2011-03-02T21:06:13Z

While there is still much innovation taking place in the smartphone space, the advent of the iPad has ignited a new battlefront in the tablet form factor. Although initially frowned upon, the tablet space has now become the new frontier for mobility. This Executive Insight considers five reasons why the tablet form factor will spur [...] Related posts: