What Tongues are Wagging About

• TechCrunch pay for play drama: Michael Arrington posted an apology late last night, and the offending intern, Daniel Brusilovsky was canned. A good play by play with links is here: http://www.inquisitr.com/60670/daniel-brusilovsky/?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+Inquisitr+%28Inquisitr%3A+All%29
• Daniel’s parents are also supposed BFF with Arrington, which he confessed to a Sparkster was how he got the gig
  • Lots of ramping up from mobile companies of all sorts for the annual giant meetup Mobile World Congress in Barcelona, Feb 15-18
  • Big controversy this year about both Nokia and LG pulling their booths from MWC, but rumours are they have hired nearby venues to host meetings, events, etc.
  • Android dominated the conversation and will again this year
  • With the success of AppStore and the announcement of iPad and Kindle, expect more emphasis on the app ecosystem
  • Spark has 6 clients attending the show: INQ Mobile, Ideaworks Labs, Waze, VirtualLogix, AlertMe and GetJar
  • TechCrunch UK will host another half-day satellite event on Wednesday from 2-6pm and many Spark clients are speaking
  • Popular mobile blogger Rudy de Wael is hosting a “Mobile Sunday” event with the international mobile blogger community as well
  • Here is a great link for all the parties happening at MWC including those listed above:

http://socializemobilize.com/2010/01/14/mwc2010_parties_events/

• Top 10  Superbowl Ads: http://www.computerworld.com/s/article/9152078/Top_10_Super_Bowl_tech_ads
• Apple iPad fail? http://www.retrevo.com/content/blog/2010/02/apple-ipad-hoopla-fails-convince-buyers

Events:

• Mashable Social Media Party took place on 2/5 – will send recap in next WIM

VC & Portfolio Cos:

• Alexa chart was posted in the comments on TC. Sarah’s MyHeritage story was fantastic and the traffic surge is really impressive.
• TrialPay Q&A with Alex in PEHub: http://www.pehub.com/62239/qa-with-trialpay-ceo-alex-rampell/
• Saul in VentureWire’s “Tough Times Ahead For Start-Ups Raising Second Rounds”
• Bernard’s Q&A (to also include Mimecast news) will appear in next issue of VCJ

Awards:

• San Francisco Business Times Technology and Innovation Awards:
• Best CEO at a big company (companies with revenue over $100 million)
• Best CEO at a small company (companies with revenue under $100 million)
• Best Venture Capitalist (an individual, not a firm)
• Best startup (a company that is less than three years old)
• Best Gaming/entertainment company
• Best Internet advertising/marketing company
• Best security company
• Best social media company
• Best mobile application or service
• Best gadget or product
• Best business application or service
• Due 3/11/2010

Forbes just published its list of top 25 web celebs, and it’s no surprise that some of our favorite bloggers topped the list… including Michael Arrington of TechCrunch (#2), Pete Cashmore of Mashable (#3) and Om Malik of GigaOm (#11).  Congrats!

http://www.forbes.com/2010/02/02/web-celebrities-internet-thought-leaders-25_slide.html

Yes, it has a cringe-worthy name. Yes it’s a closed development environment. Yes it’s $500 I don’t NEED to spend. Yes it is highly derivative of the iPhone. Yes it has a huge bezel. Yes it’s on AT&T’s shameful excuse for a network. And yes, I want–nay–must have one. I will now address each potential problem area point by point.

• The Name – It sucks. Who cares? I’m over it.
• Closed – Oh no! Whatever will I do? As much as some arbitrary app rejections might suck here and there, the App Store has set the standard for all other app stores. All my favorite apps that I can’t live without will be on the iPad. And the fact that the App Store is closed; the fact that Apple makes the hardware and the software, is the very reason why people love the Apple experience. Developers can cry all they want about its policies, but the App Store made buying a mobile app mainstream. Millions of customers that wouldn’t have existed otherwise  are now accustomed to paying for mobile content. You’re welcome, snotty developers.
• It’s $500 – OK, I already have a MacBook Pro, an iPhone 3GS, do I need an iPad? No, I desperately need an iPad. I just do. Tech is my life, it’s how I make my living.
• Just a Big iPhone - Yes! Exactly! That’s like saying that if you have a fifty pound pile of cash–a great thing, who would want a 100 pound pile of cash? Me who. That’s who.
• Huge Bezel – OK, I’ll admit, at first sight of the big bezel–especially after seeing those sexy barely-there-bezeled mock-ups–I was taken aback. But then I thought it through. Where else would you grip it? Would you hold it like a cocktail waitress holds her tray?
• AT&T – This is the only part that kills me. But for my needs, I’ll go WiFi only, and save on the $130 bucks and extra monthly subscription to yet another service. I’ll use it to surf the web at home, and use my iPhone when I’m out in the wild–who wants to lug around a tablet anyway? So by default this doesn’t matter to me at all (I know a total cop-out and AT&T’s SHITE 3G network should be a dealbreaker if you require 3G connectivity).

So yes, sign me up! I have already pledged my soul to the His holiness in the church of Jobs. Call me a sheep, a weak-willed fanboy, but when you are fiddling with your stylus, trying to get your sodding handset to work with that fragmented application, I’ll be joyfully multi-touching my way through the Internet, an ebook or one of the most compelling 140,000 apps ever made for a mobile platform.

Note: this was originally posted by Sparkster Michael Selvidge at Mobile Industry Review http://www.mobileindustryreview.com/2010/01/the_ipad_is_no…orm_to_buy_one.html

What Tongues are Wagging About

• The Apple iPad – never heard so many ‘feminine’ device jokes in such a short time!

o        THE GOOD:

• The starting price ($499)
• The reported life (10 hours of video playback, 1 month standby)
• The new iBook book store
• The potential for gaming, e-reading, and magazine content

o        THE BAD:

• The extra wide bezel
• No multitasking
• No Flash

o        THE UGLY:

• The NAME
• AT&T as a data partner

o        THE MAD FLURRY OF NEWS COVERAGE:
TWiT.tv was superb. Leo Laporte did a live shot outside the Yerba Buena Center an hour before the event. He delivered analysis via cell phone while in line to get inside. Using his cell phone, Laporte delivered live audio for the first half of Steve Jobs’s presentation. For the second half, Laporte (or someone with him) streamed live video (against Apple’s rules). Meanwhile, TWiT.tv personalities anchored the live broadcast in studio. More than 110,000 viewers watched the event on TWit.tv, Laporte said.

gdgt delivered the best live blog, photo-centric as usual. gdgt’s deep investments in its content management system paid off in fast, reliable performance. Gizmodo was photo-centric and stayed reliable. Engadget was photo-centric too, but we lost its feed three times.

Ars Technica and Technologizer suffered from technical difficulties; a third-party live-blogging application named CoverItLive failed halfway through the Apple presentation and remained offline for 20 minutes.

Computerworld blogger Seth Weintraub live-blogged only a few lines before technical difficulties scuttled him. He returned, but too late.

Wired News had a decent live-blog but Condé Nast’s content management system places the oldest posts on top of the page and the newest ones at the bottom. Fail.

CNET.com commentators Molly Wood, Tom Merritt and Rafe Needleman offered live video commentary during Apple’s presentation. Strangely, CNET covered the presentation by kibitzing while showing gdgt’s live feed. We weren’t watching every minute, but SWMS saw no reference to News.com colleague Erica Ogg’s live blog. Just as strangely, CNET’s in-studio video was presented under the banner Live @ CES 2010.

The Wall Street Journal, leveraging video from Fox News, offered a live feed — but on a 15-minute delay. Rupert M. won’t be pleased with TWit.tv picking his pocket. The WSJ’s Geoffrey A. Fowler live-blogged, delivering 19 feeds during one 30-minute span. That may seem like a lot, but it’s an eternity when you have the alternative of live audio and video.

The New York Times’s live blog was 15 minutes late in launching. Its Twitter feed showcased NYT edit talent, and also included Om Malik and Forbes.com’s Brian Caulfield. That feed was fun to read. But in our view, both the WSJ and NYT offered too few pics for such a visual product as the iPad.

• Elevation Partners invests in Yelp: http://news.cnet.com/8301-13577_3-10442753-36.html and AT&T to launch a Yelp competitor: http://www.forbes.com/2010/01/26/att-yelp-advertising-technology-business-intelligence-buzz.html

Event Recaps:

• AppBuzz - About 200 folks showed up for the Unofficial Pre-Apple AppBuzz event and party at 111 Minna. A half dozen apps including SoundHound gave demos, though the wireless wasn’t working well and we couldn’t really hear the presentations – very poor planning in terms of technical support. Overall though, it seemed as though a lot of entrepreneurs were starting new companies – we heard about new TMZ/gossip apps, more FourSquare type apps and health app companies that are in their more nascent, or pre-conception stages. A bunch of press came (eg ReadWriteWeb, a lot of the app bloggers). Overall it was good to mingle and good branding for Spark (we kicked down a couple hundred bucks to help them get it off the ground).

Awards:

• UK Award – “Fast Growth Business Awards” due 2/12/2010: www.fgba.co.uk

Upcoming events:

• #140Conf announces speaker lineup for NY: http://140conf.com/
• Twitter developer conference: http://chirp.twitter.com/

Weekly Spark Missive

Week Ending January 22, 2010

What Tongues are Wagging About

• Google, China and Cybersecurity continues to heat up as Hillary Clinton makes speech on Internet censorship: http://www.businessweek.com/news/2010-01-22/china-says-clinton-remarks-on-internet-censorship-damage-ties.html
• Human “bed-warmers” at Holiday Inn: http://www.reuters.com/article/idUSTRE60K50020100121?loomia_ow=t0:s0:a49:g43:r1:c0.268041:b29955390:z0
• Digital Chocolate’s Hawkins plans to develop games for Facebook and take on Zynga: http://www.businessweek.com/news/2010-01-22/digital-chocolate-s-hawkins-looks-to-facebook-games-for-growth.html
• Watch for Google Fast Flip… it’s growing fast. 90 publications already. Google is investing in it big-time. Use it yet? http://fastflip.googlelabs.com/
• What happened in the Internet in 2009? http://royal.pingdom.com/2010/01/22/internet-2009-in-numbers/
• comScore Reports Global Search Market Growth of 46 Percent in 2009: http://www.comscore.com/Press_Events/Press_Releases/2010/1/Global_Search_Market_Grows_46_Percent_in_2009

Event Recaps:

• Bloomberg 2010 Outlook
• Lise Buyer cautioning not to get too hyped up for IPO mania this year. The majority of the IPOs will be companies that aren’t well known. She also said that SARBOX is actually good for IPOs – about 80% of companies that went IPO in the past 10 years are trading below their opening price.
• Twitter COO said wireless is underhyped and the ecosystem for Twitter is producing fascinating applications. LBS+ Real time web hasn’t even begun to take off, and has myriad business applications. Said Twitter is nowhere near going IPO
• Cisco: We are going to continue to acquire and make a big push with our Tandberg acquisition
• Silverlake guy said that companies still want to go public on US stockmarkets. Also indicated there would be big news from Skype in 6-8 weeks.

Press Riffs

• Met with Bloomberg editorial team who says they are very committed to strengthening tech coverage and now have 20 tech reporters out here
• Contact at BusinessWeek said the dust is still settling at BusinessWeek and the editorial calendar is “very much in flux right now”
• David Lawsky no longer at Reuters
• Computerworld no longer covers appdev and only barely open source. Of course they have not announced this.

Awards

• InformationWeek 500 due April 30, 2010 – tracks the technology, strategies, investments and administrative practices of some of the best-known organizations in the country and wcompanies selected at the top of their industries will be recognized, as well as organizations demonstrating the most innovative uses of technology in the essay portion of the application. http://informationweek.2010informationweek500.sgizmo.com?iwid=PR