Steve Woda's blog

links for 2010-03-18

2010-03-18T10:01:32-04:00

U.S. National Debt Clock : Real Time

(tags: national debt clock visualization)
Health-reform vote deserves a reasonable process - washingtonpost.com

We understand the administration's sense of urgency on health-care reform. But what is intended as a final sprint threatens to turn into something unseemly and, more important, contrary to Democrats' promises of transparency and time for deliberation.
House Speaker Nancy Pelosi told reporters Monday that she is leaning toward a parliamentary maneuver under which the House would vote on a package of changes to the Senate-approved reform bill, and the underlying Senate bill would then be "deemed" to have passed, even though the House had never voted on it. That may help some House members dodge a politically difficult decision, but it strikes us as a dodgy way to reform the health-care system. Democrats who vote for the package will be tagged with supporting the Senate bill in any event. Why not be straightforward about it?

(tags: politics healthcare)
Android Rivals iPhone in Smartphone Loyalty - eMarketer

As more handsets have been rolled out running Google’s Android operation system, mobile users have become more familiar with the platform and more likely to consider purchasing an Android-based smartphone.

Further data from Crowd Science confirms the trend: 66% of smartphone users are aware of Android, up 6 points since the introduction of the Nexus One handset in January.

What’s more, current Android users are nearly as loyal to the operating system as iPhone owners are to theirs. iPhone owners were more likely to say their next purchase would be an Android phone than vice versa.

(tags: google android smartphone mobile)

links for 2010-03-16

2010-03-16T10:01:14-04:00

Congratulations to Don Rainey at Grotech for being named the 2009 VC Awards' Friend of the Entrepreneur - Boston Business Journal:

One clue to why Don Rainey is a friend to entrepreneurs comes from the way he talks about the executives running the companies in which he invests. There is pride in his words, a paternalism that reveals the Grotech Ventures general partner has more than just money in the game. “LivingSocial is a deal we added to in 2009. It is a company full of young energetic entrepreneurs,” he says. “It is really and exciting time for that company and I am certainly very proud of them.” It sounds like he is talking about one of his children, or one of his students. LivingSocial, which runs social networking Web sites, raised $5 million in venture capital from Vienna-based Grotech and from Steve and Jean Case. Rainey says the co-founders of LivingSocial — Tim O’Shaughnessy, Eddie Frederick, Aaron Batalion and Val Aleksenko — “are going from being an early success to being one of the leaders in social networking. They are helping define social commerce.”

(tags: rainey grotech vc Entrepreneurship)
Robert J. Samuelson - Obama's illusions of cost-control - washingtonpost.com

One job of presidents is to educate Americans about crucial national problems. On health care, Barack Obama has failed. Almost everything you think you know about health care is probably wrong or, at least, half wrong. Great simplicities and distortions have been peddled in the name of achieving "universal health coverage." The miseducation has worsened as the debate approaches its climax. There's a parallel here: housing. Most Americans favor homeownership, but uncritical pro-homeownership policies (lax lending standards, puny down payments, hefty housing subsidies) helped cause the financial crisis. The same thing is happening with health care. The appeal of universal insurance -- who, by the way, wants to be uninsured? -- justifies half-truths and dubious policies. That the process is repeating itself suggests that our political leaders don't learn even from proximate calamities.

(tags: politics obama healthcare)

Cost of Internet fraud on steep rise - washingtonpost.com

U.S. citizens reported losing more than $550 million in 2009 in Internet fraud, falling prey to a variety of increasingly sophisticated scams, according to a report by the Internet Crime Complaint Center. The loss was more than twice that reported in 2008, according to the agency, a partnership of the FBI and the privately funded National White Collar Crime Center. The center, based in West Virginia, tracks Internet crime around the world. "Criminals are continuing to take full advantage of the anonymity afforded them by the Internet. They are also developing increasingly sophisticated means of defrauding unsuspecting consumers," said Donald Brackman, the center's director.

(tags: fraud security Internet FBI)
Technology Review: Startups Focus on AI at South by Southwest

South by Southwest (SXSW) Interactive has a reputation as being the place for social Web startups to hit the headlines. Twitter found one of its first big audiences at the event in 2007, and attendees are among the most eager adoptees of new social Web tools. To harness this cutting-edge mood, last year the event's organizers launched the Microsoft BizSpark Accelerator, a competition showcasing 32 Web-focused startups. This year's competition starts today. Chris Valentine, the event's producer, says that social Web businesses are still king--200 companies applied to compete, and there were twice as many in the social media category as in any other. But he's starting to see a shift in the technology behind the companies involved in the event. "We knew we were going in the direction of artificial intelligence," Valentine says, and this year there are a number of startups harnessing technology from the field--especially natural language processing and computer vision.

(tags: technology startups)
50K Apple iPad Pre-Orders In 2 Hours - InformationWeek.com

Today Apple began accepting pre-orders for its iPad tablet device. Based on analyst estimates, approximately 50,000 were pre-ordered during the first two hours of availability. At that rate, Apple will sell one million by tomorrow. Also, plenty of new details about the device have surfaced.
Gates, Ellison Top Billionaires From Tech Industry - InformationWeek

Seventeen tech-industry executives made the new Forbes list of billionaires, led by Bill Gates in the #2 spot and Larry Ellison in the #6 spot. Can it be true that Facebook parvenu Mark Zuckerberg outranks Apple icon Steve Jobs? Here's a list of those 17 along with their ranks and estimated net worths. The Forbes feature includes lots of details and is cut in multiple ways. I combed through the first 400 and came up with this sublist from the tech business (and no, Facebook's Zuckerberg doesn't outrank Jobs—but he's getting there):

(tags: rich technology forbes)

links for 2010-03-13

2010-03-13T09:01:12-05:00

Pre-orders brisk for Apple's new iPad - washingtonpost.com

Neither recession nor gadget overload shall slow the mania surrounding the introduction of Apple's iPad mobile computer. On Friday, the first day that buyers could pre-order the device (it arrives in stores next month), Apple racked up an estimated 91,000 sales in just the first six hours of availability, putting temporarily to rest the Internet's persistent "iPad fail" meme. Analysts predict the first-year sales could reach 5 million.

(tags: apple ipad)
FCC releases Internet speed test tool - washingtonpost.com

The U.S. Federal Communications Commission on Thursday launched a broadband test service to help consumers clock the speed of their Internet. Located at the site www.broadband.gov, the test is aimed at allowing consumers to compare their actual speeds with the speeds advertised by their providers. The FCC release follows an FCC meeting in September where officials said that actual speeds were estimated to lag by as much as 50 percent during busy hours.

(tags: fcc broadband test)

links for 2010-03-12

2010-03-12T09:01:45-05:00

Five Reasons to Pre-Order the iPad - InformationWeek.com

The Apple iPad will be available to pre-order starting Friday, March 12. If you're in the market for Apple's "magical" device, here are five reasons why you should sign up early and buy on the very first day.

(tags: apple ipad)
iPhone OS 4.0 Reported To Feature Multitasking

One of the chief complaints of iPhone users since the debut of iPhone OS 2.0 and the apps store is the iPhone's inability to multitask (run two or more programs simultaneously). New information suggests that iPhone OS 4.0's biggest upgrade will be multitasking. Also, purported images of iPhone 4G have been spotted.

(tags: apple iphone multitasking apps)

LivingSocial secures $25 million in venture funding - Washington Business Journal

D.C.-based LivingSocial, a service that provides daily retail discounts, has received $25 million in venture capital financing, the company announced Thursday. The funding round was led by Menlo Park, Calif.-based U.S. Venture Partners, and Vienna-based Grotech Ventures and entrepreneur Steve Case’s Revolution LLC also participated in the round. Grotech Ventures and Case had invested $5 million in LivingSocial back in 2008 to get it off the ground. LivingSocial provides a daily free e-mail service that gives a deal on a particular restaurant, hotel, event or retailer, provided a certain number of people participate in the offer. The local company is one of several similar services, such as Groupon, to enter the Washington area market. The new money will allow the company to expand into Chicago, Denver, San Diego and the Raleigh-Durham area in North Carolina, helping bring LivingSocial's reach to 13 markets nationwide.

(tags: grotech LivingSocial vc)

links for 2010-03-11

2010-03-11T09:02:42-05:00

Michael Gerson - What happened to Obama's middle path on health reform? - washingtonpost.com

Whatever the legislative fate of health reform -- now in the hands of a few besieged House Democrats -- the reformers have failed in their argument. Their proposal has divided Democrats while uniting Republicans, returned American politics to well-worn ideological ruts, employed legislative tactics that smack of corruption, squandered the president's public standing, lowered public regard for Congress to French revolutionary levels, sucked the oxygen from other agenda items, reengaged the abortion battle, produced freaks and prodigies of nature such as a Republican senator from Massachusetts, raised questions about the continued governability of America and caused the White House chief of staff to distance himself from the president's ambitions.

(tags: politics obama healthcare)

links for 2010-03-10

2010-03-10T09:01:47-05:00

Technology Review: Drag-and-Drop into the Cloud

It's one thing to design and build software to live in the cloud from scratch. It's something else to move existing applications over to cloud-computing platforms, which many companies need to do. This often means completely rewriting parts of the code to make it compatible with a particular provider's infrastructure. CloudSwitch, a startup based in Burlington, MA, has designed software that could make the transition almost as simple as dragging and dropping a file from one folder to another.

(tags: cloud transition)
RightSide Capital Announces New Seed Fund; Will Make 100-200 Investments Per Year

RightSide Capital Management is about to shatter the funding landscape. Led by David Lambert, Kevin Dick and John Lee, RightSide Capital believes that seed-stage capital needs a complete overhaul. RightSide will make 100-200 investments per year, and literally manufacture companies in a way that no firm has ever done. The fund, announced at TheFunded.com’s Future of Funding event last Thursday, will debut in the second half of 2010 and may give the angel funding market a much-deserved shakeup. Partner Kevin Dick went on stage during a panel on alternative funding methods and laid out what he believes to be the future of funding. Quantity, not quality, is king in the seed stage. Entrepreneurs looking for funding won’t have to go the traditional route of begging for a meeting and then having a second meeting and then waiting 3 months for traction until finally closing a deal. Instead, they will fill out an application – similar to applying to College – and receive a response in 2 weeks.

(tags: vc Entrepreneurship angel fast seed)

Technology Review: What's Wrong with Venture Capital?

In the summer of 1996, Silicon Valley venture capitalists put a few million dollars into a telecom-equipment startup called Juniper Networks. Three years later, after a few more rounds of funding and the release of its first product, Juniper enjoyed an initial public offering of shares, or IPO. At the end of its first day of trading, it was worth nearly $5 billion, and within nine months, it was worth almost 10 times that. The original venture investors, meanwhile, were able to walk away with profits of better than 10,000 percent.

(tags: vc Entrepreneurship)
Cyber-bullying cases put heat on Google, Facebook - washingtonpost.com

The Internet was built on freedom of expression. Society wants someone held accountable when that freedom is abused. And major Internet companies like Google and Facebook are finding themselves caught between those ideals. Although Google, Facebook and their rivals have enjoyed a relatively "safe harbor" from prosecution over user-generated content in the United States and Europe, they face a public that increasingly is more inclined to blame them for cyber-bullying and other online transgressions. Such may have been the case when three Google executives were convicted in Milan, Italy on February 24 over a bullying video posted on the site -- a verdict greeted with horror by online activists, who fear it could open the gates to such prosecutions and ultimately destroy the Internet itself.

(tags: cyberbullying kidsafe)
Saying Goodbye: New Exit Strategies for Today's Venture Capitalists - Knowledge@Wharton

Venture capitalism is not what it used to be. The bountiful returns of the dotcom years are long gone and venture capital (VC) firms are now struggling to exit their investments via initial public offerings (IPOs) or mergers and acquisitions (M&A). Also, a new regulatory landscape is threatening to hinder rather than help the industry, and the companies VCs invest in require watertight strategies for major growth. VC experts highlighted these issues and others during a recent panel discussion sponsored by Wharton Entrepreneurial Programs and titled, "Business Exits in the Current Economic Environment." Appropriately, the event was held at Wharton's campus in San Francisco -- on the doorstep of Silicon Valley, which generates about half of all VC investments worldwide and where venture-backed companies earn about $3 trillion in annual revenues and employ 12 million people, noted the panel's moderator, Wharton management professor Raphael (Raffi) Amit.

(tags: vc Entrepreneurship exits)
President Barack Obama Joins John Walsh For America’s Most Wanted’s Milestone 1000th Episode, March 6 - TVbytheNumbers.com

President Barack Obama will make a special appearance on AMERICA’S MOST WANTED’s milestone 1000th episode, airing this Saturday, March 6 (9:00-10:00 PM ET/PT) on FOX. John Walsh, host of AMW since the show’s inception 22 years ago, sits down with President Obama to discuss some of the administration’s crime-fighting initiatives and the impact that the show has had on thousands of victims and millions of people in its 22 years and 1000 episodes on the air. The President also discusses his administration’s support of state and local law enforcement, including the Recovery Act’s $4 billion that was allocated for state and local agencies. Additionally, President Obama talks to Walsh about his administration’s initiatives to go after and prosecute “white collar” criminals – crimes that John Walsh and AMW have also focused on recently.

(tags: kidsafe safety security walsh obama)

links for 2010-03-09

2010-03-09T09:01:44-05:00

Londonderry NH Teacher Melinda Dennehy Accused Of Sending Nude Photos To Student - wbztv.com

A high school teacher in New Hampshire is free on $10,000 bail, accused of emailing naked photos of herself to a student. 41-year-old Melinda Dennehy of Hampstead is charged with one felony count of indecent exposure. Police say she sent four nude pictures of herself to one of her 15-year-old students at Londonderry High School, where she teaches English.

(tags: sexting kidsafe security)
Android Still At Risk From Fragmentation

Recently Google announced that it will upgrade all US users to Android 2.1. Devices are currently shipping with four versions, so moving to one will help, but that may not be enough to save the platform from fragmentation. The other problem is that there are too many different devices. InfoWorld points out that the Motorola Droid ships with 2.0, but doesn't support multitouch at the OS level while the HTC Droid Eris does through HTC's proprietary Sense UI. However, the Eris ships with Android version 1.5. Even if both get upgraded to 2.1, you'll still have quite a disparity between these two devices. There are dozens of other devices and manufacturers that compound this issue even further.

(tags: google mobile android)

Technology Review: New Windows phones won't run current apps

Microsoft Corp. has said its new software for smart phones, Windows Phone 7 series, is a "clean break" with the past. Now it's clear just how clean that break is: The new phones, expected late this year, won't run any applications written for older versions of Microsoft's phone software. In a blog post Thursday, Microsoft executive Charlie Kindel, who handles contact with outside software developers, said that jettisoning support for older applications was necessary to make the new operating system as powerful and user-friendly as possible.

(tags: microsoft mobile windows)

links for 2010-03-08

2010-03-08T09:01:40-05:00

Set parental controls in Windows Vista - Tips and Advice for Parents and Families - The Kim Komando Radio Show

You probably can’t watch your kids 24 hours per day. Just because they have free time doesn’t mean you do. Luckily, your computer can help out. Windows Vista has robust parental controls. They’ll help you monitor and limit your children’s computer usage. Now, nothing can substitute for parental vigilance. So, talk to your kids about computer safety. And have them read and sign my 10 Commandments for Kids Online.

(tags: kids security kidsafe komando)
Billionaire Bubble: Ten players in the local tech scene look back, a decade later, at the frenzied days of the Internet boom and its fateful bust - washingtonpost.com

There was a time, as 1999 rolled into 2000, when it seemed as if everyone was rich. Or, at least, as if they could be rich. They had equity. Or a big idea. Or a lock on friends-and-family shares in an IPO. With tech stocks soaring and venture capital money flowing, cashing in on the cyber revolution seemed a worthy bet. That was then, of course. It's been a decade since the tech-fueled NASDAQ reached its all-time high, on March 10, 2000, having nearly doubled itself in just a year. It was a dizzying peak reached thanks in part to a spectacular rise in the valuations of companies that had hitched their wagons to the Internet. Later, it would be called a bubble, and much of the paper wealth it had created would evaporate. But in the spring of 2000, anything seemed possible. And the Washington area, with Northern Virginia's tech corridor leading the way, had established itself as one of a handful of national tech hubs.

(tags: technology)

Thomas Heath - A ski bum turns his love of the slopes into a living - washingtonpost.com

Chris Chapman owns an Anne Arundel County business that sounds deceptively simple. It brings him a comfortable six-figure income on more than $1 million in revenue, allows him to employ a handful of relatives and is built around a sport he loves. The company is called Loucon, named for his sons Louis and Connor, and it sells used ski equipment -- skis, boots, bindings, socks and other stuff -- mostly on eBay, but also through Amazon.com and Loucon's own Web site.

(tags: ebay)
Second Life's virtual money can become real-life cash - washingtonpost.com

Dana Moore sells rain. He sells a lot of it, for about a buck per reusable storm. "I don't know why people love buying rainstorms," he said, watching his product drizzle last week, "but they do seem to like them a lot." The attraction isn't rain, per se, but Moore's rain, which can deluge swaths of land on command. The rain falls not in Bowie, where he lives with his wife of 37 years, but in the virtual world of Second Life, the Web portal where he also markets snow, clocks, University of Maryland basketball T-shirts, Duke basketball T-shirts (grudgingly), two-story Tudor-style homes, pinup posters from the 1930s and the sounds of barking dogs.

(tags: secondlife virtual)

links for 2010-03-06

2010-03-06T09:01:40-05:00

TiVo Launches Internet-Enabled DVR - InformationWeek

TiVo on Wednesday introduced a set-top box that the company says makes it easier to access cable, movies, online video, and music through one remote control. While an Internet-enabled digital video recorder is not new, TiVo Premiere is an advancement over other set-top boxes in the way it organizes content, according to the company. The product's search tool, for example, can find programming and movies on cable TV, as well as video for rent or buy on Netflix, Amazon, or Blockbuster.

(tags: tivo dvr)
RSA: Google, PayPal, Equifax, Others Form Open Identity Exchange -- InformationWeek

Google, PayPal, Equifax, VeriSign, Verizon, CA, and Booz Allen Hamilton on Wednesday at the RSA Conference announced that they have formed a non-profit organization to oversee the exchange of online identity credentials on public and private sector Web sites. The organization, The Open Identity Exchange (OIX), will serve as a trust framework provider. A trust framework is a certification program that allows organizations and individuals to exchange digital credentials and to trust the identity, security, and privacy assertions associated with those credentials.

(tags: Identity google equifax paypal)

Crowdunding platform for web and mobile startups

Much the way Kiva matches investors with entrepreneurs in the developing world, so Grow VC brings a crowdfunding platform to mobile and web startups around the globe. Launched earlier this month, Grow VC aims to bring the first truly transparent, global, community-based approach to early-stage funding. Focusing on startup funding needs up to USD 1 million, Grow VC collects membership fees from its participants and pools 75 percent of them into a community fund. That fund then gets invested into promising member startups. Grow VC manages these investments, but members can control how their portion of the fund should be allocated, allowing them to focus on the startups they feel have the most potential. Grow VC users can follow each other in Twitter-like fashion, while reputation statistics reflect their track records. When a startup fails, the community fund covers its own losses. But when one does well, 75 percent of the returns are paid as commissions to top-ranked members.

(tags: crowdsourcing vc Entrepreneurship)
Technology Review: Q&A: Bill Gross, the founder of idealab!

Bill Gross was famous during the Internet boom as the founder of Idealab, an "incubator" that hatched more than 75 companies. His best-known investment was GoTo.com, which created an online marketplace where advertisers bid for primacy in the results of Web searches--the innovation, now called "keyword advertising," that made Google wildly rich (with the all-important tweak that sponsored and algorithmically derived results should be clearly separated). GoTo.com (which became Overture Services) was sold to Yahoo for $1.6 billion in 2003.

(tags: vc Entrepreneurship idealab!)

links for 2010-03-05

2010-03-05T09:00:57-05:00

Technology Review: Androids Will Challenge the iPad

Apple's iPad is certain to grab headlines when it hits stores next month. But a number of touch-screen tablets powered by Google's Android operating system will also debut this year. Competing with Apple's latest consumer gadget won't be easy, but analysts say the software behind these devices could give them a few key advantages.
Like the iPhone OS, which will power the iPad, Android was originally developed for cell phones. This means it will be fast and low-power. "Android is very responsive; it's instantly available," says Jeff Orr, a senior analyst for mobile devices at ABI Research.

(tags: apple ipad google android tablet)