10 Ways to Stay Happy as an Entrepreneur
At last week’s The Next Web Conference it was interesting to hear how entrepreneurs are changing their goals. At previous events we would often hear about monetization, scalability and the Long Tail. Starting at last year’s event, entrepreneurs seemed to give more attention to building 100 year companies, doing what’s best for the customer, and working ‘from the heart’. These aren’t ‘new age’ entrepreneurs who found Zen or don’t care about revenue anymore, but it seems like a lot of...
The Next Web10 Ways to Stay Happy as an Entrepreneur
At last week’s The Next Web Conference it was interesting to hear how entrepreneurs are changing their goals. At previous events we would often hear about monetization, scalability and the Long Tail. Starting at last year’s event, entrepreneurs seemed to give more attention to building 100 year companies, doing what’s best for the customer, and working ‘from the heart’. These aren’t ‘new age’ entrepreneurs who found Zen or don’t care about revenue anymore, but it seems like a lot of...
Twitter Adds Keyword Targeting To Ad Platform
Twitter has finally crossed the rubicon and will allow advertisers to target ads to you based on the words that you tweet. specifically, the feature is called ‘keyword targeting in timelines‘, and its available today in 15 languages and all markets. Twitter previously used the content of tweets to fill out its interest graph for advertisers, but this update brings laser targeting based on the topics that you tweet about to the product. Twitter uses the example of a person who tweets about...
GoCardless Helps SMEs Accept Direct Debit Payments Online
GoCardless is launching a new tool today to help small and medium-sized businesses accept direct debit payments online. Large companies have had access to this for years, but many smaller firms are still stuck sending out invoices, waiting for cheques or long-winded bank transfers from numerous clients. It’s tiresome and ultimately involves an awful lot of legwork, which is a detrimental to small teams who just want to keep developing their core product or service. PayPal has been doing this...
Aviary Updates Its Photo Editor for iOS With New Tools And Features
Photo editing service Aviary on Wednesday released an update for its Photo Editor iOS application. With version 2.0 now available, the company bills it as a completely redesigned app with new and updated tools, enhanced effects, faster saving, and more. In the company’s blog post, it’s known that this new version didn’t happen overnight. On the contrary, Mike Mignano, Aviary’s Head of Product, says that it took months of brainstorming, white-boarding, designing and coding to get where the app...
Zach Braff Funds 'Garden State' Follow-Up Through Kickstarter
Zach Braff is the latest celebrity to successfully fund a film through Kickstarter The Scrubs actor raised $2 million in three days to fund a follow-up to his 2004 film, Garden State, according to the Associated Press. Currently, more than 30,000 backers pledged over $2.1 million to Braff's Wish I Was Here, with 25 days left in the campaign. The actor said he was inspired to turn to Kickstarter after seeing fans flock to the crowdfunding platform to back a Veronica Mars movie. "After I saw the...
MashableLouisville Leads The Final Four Social Media Buzz [Infographic]
Michigan Wolverines. Louisville Cardinals. Syracuse Orange. Wichita State Shockers. Big name basketball teams with big name social media followings. Well, 3 out of 4 big names, and 2 out of 4 big social media followings. Welcome to the NCAA Basketball Tournament's Final Four, where these four teams are fighting it out for the National Championship - and social media dominance. According to a new infographic from digital marketing agency Prime Visibility and Salesforce's Radian6, Louisville...
ReadWrite
Gartner May Be Too Scared To Say It, But the PC Is Dead
Gartner has finally come out and said it: The PC market is dying. Except it hasn't said that, quite. But it is, and saying so is really important. The market-research firm predicts a 7.6% decline in PC sales this year, to 315 million units (including desktops and notebooks) from the roughly 341 million PCs sold in 2012. The real knife in the PC's heart, though, is that Gartner is now finally willing to predict a long-term decline: 302 million PCs in 2014, falling to 272 million in 2017,...
Microsoft 'Humbly Suggests' The Real Deal For Facebook Home
Facebook’s unveiling of Home yesterday appears to have ruffled a few feathers over at Windows Phone HQ. Frank Shaw, Corporate Vice President of Corporate Communications at Microsoft, has criticized Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg’s new feature for its underlying similarities with the Windows Phone mobile operating system. In a blog post entitled ‘Welcome to the People Party,’ Shaw explains rather mockingly how he had to check his calendar “a few times” to remind himself that the event wasn’t...
Many Free Android Apps Are Starting To Look A Lot Like Malware
The money-go-round between app developers and ad networks is starting to blur the line between many free Android apps and malware. While these legitimate apps aren't stealing passwords, they're still riding roughshod over user privacy by gratuitously sucking up your contact and location information — or worse. What These Bad Apps Glom Onto Between last September and March, security vendor Bitdefender analyzed 130,000 popular Android apps on Google Play and found that roughly 13% collected your...
What Apple's Jony Ive Can Learn From Facebook Home
Facebook Home, which Facebook has described both as "a new way to turn your Android phone into a great, living, social phone" and "the best version of Facebook there is," won't be available on Apple's iPhone anytime soon, if ever. Does Apple care? Probably not, although it should. More than an app, though not quite a operating system, Facebook Home delivers a highly visual, system-wide presentation of real-time social data that also makes innovative use of touch-based gestures. In the process,...
Why Amazon Isn't Giving You True Cloud Flexibility
Guest author Robert Rizika is CEO of ProfitBricks USA. Cloud Computing is so hot right now that the cloud pretenders are crawling out of the woodwork. You don't have to look very far to find consultants who know nothing and "cloud services" that consist of little more than tacking the word "cloud" onto an otherwise ordinary service. Ironically, though, some of cloud computing's biggest issues come from the paragon of the technology: Amazon. For the past several years Amazon Web Services (AWS)...
HTML5: Alive And Well With CIOs
Apparently, native apps have won. We even said so right here on ReadWrite. After all, Facebook apparently likes native more. Unfortunately, CIOs missed the memo, and the dirty little secret is that most of the world's software, including apps, is written for use, not sale. That means that most of the world's software is not going to follow what Facebook's mobile strategy is, but rather what those stodgy enterprises do. Those stodgy enterprises? They're all in on HTML5. I spent Wednesday...
Another Battle In The Google Vs. Microsoft Cloud War [Infographic]
Microsoft is gunning for the online productivity tools user base in a big way, marketing Exchange Online in an effort to take on Gmail. So, how do these two platforms compare? If you're looking at uptime, which is a pretty big number for any cloud-based system, the Google Enterprise team reported earlier this week that their actual Gmail uptime percentage for 2012 was 99.983% - better than Google's guaranteed 99.9% rate. "This translates to an average of just over seven minutes of service...
Microsoft Execs Flock To Amazon And Red Hat
Microsoft may be a distant runner-up to iOS and Android in the smartphone race, and still lags Amazon EC2 in the cloud wars, but executives from the Windows Phone and Azure divisions aren't hurting for respect. In the past week, senior Microsoft executives have joined disruptive challengers in the mobile and cloud markets, suggesting that Microsoft's brainpower isn't lacking, even if its market share is. The first executive departure was Charlie Kindel, the former Microsoft executive who...
The 5 Best Nerd Movies Ever
These remain the post-glory days of the nerd. From Larry Ellison, island-owning-cutthroat-businessman-billionaire, to Mark Zuckerberg, billionaire-coder-CEO-visionary, the once-lowly nerd — with Silicon Valley serving as his Xanadu — is now creator of much of the world's riches, seer of the world's future, and the person to whom Presidents and hopefuls come for money, anointing and benificent manipulation of Big Data. It was not always thus. Even while Bill Gates was destroying the competition...
And Privacy Kudos Of The Week Go To… Apple??
Good news: If you're running a local crime syndicate from your iPhone, the authorities are going to have a hard time reading your texts. That's because, as the DEA recently complained, the company's iMessage protocol is encrypted end-to-end, which prevents law enforcement from spying on users' messages, even with a court order. This is good news for iOS-loving drug lords, but, more importantly, it's a big win for digital privacy. And from Apple, no less. With government requests for personal...
The Force Was Never With LucasArts
One hundred fifty four days after acquiring Lucasfilm — and the rights to everything Star Wars — for a cool $4 billion, Disney has shut down LucasArts, the Lucas division long responsible for making video games. The tech press had two immediate reactions to the news, both of them wrong. Some greeted the news with sadness and longing. Per TechCrunch: While the move was not unforeseen (the company’s last few games haven’t been very successful, and rumors of projects being shuttered have trickled...
Facebook Home Could Be a Pain, Unless You Really Love Facebook
Facebook Home is something we've never seen before. It's far more than just an app and beyond just a skin, but something less than an operating system. It doesn't replace Android or skins like TouchWiz, but installing it will radically transform your Android phone — and not necessarily for the better. What Home boils down to is this: if you're obsessed with Facebook, Home is for you. But if you'd like to use your Android phone for something else — like checking email, for example — you'll...
Facebook Home: A Facebook Phone & A New Facebook Mobile Experience
The journalists, analysts and camera crews queued up in a chilly rain at Facebook's Menlo Park, California, headquarters to get the first look at Facebook's new home on Android - the long-rumored Facebook Phone. The Hype Was Heavy Would it be new "skin" software designed to put Facebook front and center on any Android device? Or an actual device in of itself - the rumor mill suggested HTC - built from the ground up to feature the social networking giant. Or would it be something completely new...
Is BioShock Infinite The Last Gasp For The Triple-A "Art Game"?
When it comes to video games, the death knell is rung loudly and frequently. In an industry so intrinsically tied to technological innovation, we won't stop hearing any time soon about what former trend or gaming mainstay has its head on the chopping block. The most recent forecast from worried gaming circles: original, story-driven, triple-A games are too bloated and risky to survive in a cheaper, stripped-down and more mobile world. Unfortunately, there's a lot of evidence backing this claim...
So, Did Tim Ferriss's BitTorrent Book Gamble Work?
It's been five months since Timothy Ferriss launched his bold experiment in modern publishing. The best-selling author bypassed the "big six" publishers, signed with Amazon and, as if that weren't unconventional enough, partnered with BitTorrent to help promote his new book, The 4-Hour Chef. The whole thing seemed almost designed to generate press, which it did. But now for the important part: Did the experiment work? It sure looks that way. Despite being boycotted by Barnes and Noble and...
Facebook Announces Android "Home"
Facebook is set to announce its new "Home" on Android today at its campus in Menlo Park, California. Will it be a Facebook Phone? An application layer for all Android devices? We will find out soon enough. ReadWrite managing editor Fred Paul is on the ground for the announcement. Follow Fred on Twitter and and the official ReadWrite Twitter account for updates. Join the conversation, let us know what you think of Facebook's announcement in the comments. Update: The event has ended. Facebook...
The Kinder, Gentler Apple (We Really Don't Want)
Apple is a different place since Steve Jobs left us. The stock price is way down, and the company apologizes at an unprecedented rate. Granted, Apple almost never apologizes for anything, and when it does, the apologies tend to be less than apologetic. So "unprecedented" simply means "more than once per century" - but this Apple is different. For one thing, Apple just apologized for being, well, Apple. Apple's China Strategy Breaks New Ground In Apple's apology to China over allegedly shoddy...
Where Do You Buy Your Technology? [Poll]
Samsung is setting up shop - literally - with a new plan to open mini-stores within 1,500 U.S. Best Buy stores by June. But is the electronics giant getting in front of where consumers really buy their technology? The new in-store shops will have Samsung employees demo and sell a wide range of Samsung's products, including smartphones, tablets and televisions. Five hundred of these mini-stores will be open by April 8, in time to help promote the upcoming Samsung Galaxy S4 smartphone. In an...
Wi-Fi Above 10,000 Feet: Which Airlines Provide Best Connection?
Once upon a time, air travel was just about the only time I could escape the Internet. Now with in-flight Wi-Fi becoming more pervasive, even air travel has become a time to check Twitter, respond to emails and keep up with Arsenal's latest loss. I nearly always fly Delta, which has Wi-Fi on virtually every flight. But for those who fly other airlines, here's a quick review of which airlines lead and which lag in providing in-flight Wi-Fi. As of September 2012, only 31% of US domestic flights...
How The iPad Totally Changed The World In Just Three Years (AAPL)
Apple's iPad was released to the world three years ago on April 3, 2010. At the time, a lot of people were underwhelmed. We even called it a "big yawn," and said, "Jobs introduced something that is probably going to sell in the range of a few million units this year, much closer to one of the company's Macs than its runaway hits like the iPod and iPhone. Not the company's next huge growth story." Oops. We got that one very wrong! In the three years since the iPad launched, it's changed...
SAIAlgorithmically constructed news
In Wired, Steven Levy has a long profile of the fascinating field of algorithmic news-story generation. Levy focuses on Narrative Science, and its competitor Automated Insights, and discusses how the companies can turn "data rich" streams into credible news-stories whose style can be presented as anything from sarcastic blogger to dry market analyst. Narrative Science's cofounder, Kristian Hammond, claims that 90 percent of all news will soon be algorithmically generated, but that this won't be...
Boing BoingPaleo author reviews anti-paleo book
The new book, Paleofantasy: What Evolution Really Tells Us about Sex, Diet, and How We Live, is billed as an "exposé of pseudoscientific myths about our evolutionary past and how we should live today." It was written by Marlene Zuk, a professor of ecology, evolution, and behavior at the University of Minnesota. Many people who follow the paleo regimen have reviewed the book on their blogs, but my favorite review so far is by Mark Sisson, author of The Primal Blueprint (my favorite paleo book)....
LEAKED: Here's What Facebook's New Phone Software Will Look Like (FB, GOOG)
Facebook is reportedly set to announce new software for Android, Google's mobile software, tomorrow. Today, @evleaks, an anonymous mobile leaker, posted photos of what it's going to look like at 9to5Google. Facebook's modification of Android appears to make the operating system simpler. By most accounts, Facebook isn't totally taking over Android. It's just providing a "skin," or its own layer of design atop the operating system. This is widespread with Android. HTC and Samsung each have their...
This Guy's Startup Is So Hot, He Convinced Archrivals SAP AND Salesforce.com To Invest
Salesforce.com and SAP have no great love for one another, yet that didn't stop them from both investing in hot San Francisco startup MuleSoft. Today MuleSoft announced a new $37 million round, lead by VC NEA and including both Salesforce and SAP Ventures (SAP's VC arm). MuleSoft is also backed by Hummer Winblad Venture Partners (Ann Winblad sits on MuleSoft's board), Morgenthaler Ventures, Lightspeed Venture Partners, and others. MuleSoft has raised $81 million so far. In recent years SAP and...
Ugo Serrano: armorer
Daniel sez, "Ugo Serrano is the greatest living armorer, really. A man who camps at the Pennsic war in a 15th Century Italian villa (hat he built/designed that also flat-packs for storage and transportation). The props he makes for the movie/television industry are a who's who of geekdom from Firefly to Riddick to the Haunted Mansion through Zorro. A man whose art helped begin the entire steampunk movement, yet he's almost unknown outside of the SCA, where his themed parties are as legendary as...
TOM THE DANCING BUG: The Education of Louis - Spectator Sport
BE THE FIRST ON YOUR BLOCK to see Tom the Dancing Bug, by @RubenBolling, every week! Members of the elite and prestigious INNER HIVE get the comic emailed to their inboxes at least a day before publication -- and much, much more! Please do click HERE for information. Thank you.
Trapit launches Publisher Suite, its first business tool, to help brands create personalized stories
Trapit, the artificial intelligence technology service developed at SRI International (the creators of Siri), has released its first business-facing product. Called Publisher Suite, it allows media companies, organizations, or any brand to leverage its advanced personalization service to create individual tailored experienced. Alongside the launch announcement, the company is naming its pilot partner: Here Media, a large publisher covering the LGBT community. This is the latest major update for...
CircleUp’s crowdfunding platform helps 11 companies raise $10M in its first year
Today in celebration of its first birthday as a live platform, CircleUp provided TNW with a number of performance metrics from the past year. We covered the launch of the company, and several of its early benchmarks, including the first successful rounds of funding for companies on its platform, and a partnership with General Mills. If that specific union sounds odd for a crowdfunding platform, keep in mind that CircleUp is a technology company that seeks to help firms that are not taking...
The App Economy Is In Rude Health, Says Flurry, But Mobile Browsers Are Being Squeezed By Facebook
App analytics company Flurry, which measures monthly usage on more than a billion active smart mobile devices, has taken a look at how U.S. consumers are splitting their time between mobile apps and browsers. The company found the iOS and Android app economy is in rude health: with consumers spending 80% of the average two hours and 38 minutes per day that they use smartphones and tablets spent inside apps, while only a fifth of that time (20% — or 31 minutes) is spent using mobile web...
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