The goal of the Smartsheet Sales Pipeline Management app is to give small companies an easier transition from the tool many of them are using to track their sales leads — a spreadsheet. At some point, you’ll want something more sophisticated, but if you switch to a system like Salesforce.com, you’ll have to learn a whole new interface. With Smartsheet, on the other hand, you’re still storing your leads in a spreadsheet (er, a “Smartsheet”), but you can do more with them.
The Bellevue, Wash. company says its CRM tool has three major benefits. First, it’s easy to use — you can import your leads from a Google Spreadsheet with two clicks. The Google integration goes further, with the ability to log in using your Google account, attach Google Docs, import Google Contacts, and export your list back into Google Spreadsheets. Second, you can store everything else you need for the sale in your Smartsheet, such as related documents and emails. Third, you can use crowdsourcing to find new leads, where (using Smartsheet) you pay people small amounts of cash to find and type in other potential customers. This method should be much cheaper than buying a sales contact list.
Yesterday at the Web 2.0 Summit, Founder’s Fund managing partner Sean Parker gave a provocative presentation entitled “The New Era Of The Network Service.” In it, he argues that so-called “network services” like Facebook (which he helped start) and Twitter will soon dominate the web, rather than “information services” like Google and Yahoo.
It’s a very interesting idea, to say the least, and obviously you’re interested in it, as about 200 of you commented on it yesterday. So we’ve obtained Parker’s full slide deck from his presentation. Find the full presentation embedded below, definitely worth the read.
Amazon shares hit an all-time record -- Today’s $118.49 price is higher than the $400-plus days of 1999, because of splits in the years since. Today’s share price would be about $700 without the splits, says the Wall Street Journal. The Journal hauled out Mary Meeker, a big booster of Amazon and other dot-com stocks in the late 1990s who still follows the sector:
Morgan Stanley analyst Mary Meeker attributed Amazon’s recent surge to “continued success in adding new customers.”
She added that the rally “indicates that Amazon.com’s value proposition (lowest prices + best selection + great customer service) is succeeding in attracting consumers as they transition from offline to online in search of value.”
Another factor driving Amazon is sales of third-party products sold in its marketplace, a business once dominated by eBay Inc. Third-party units rose 32% from a year ago and 14% from the second quarter.
About 31% of Amazon’s sales now come from third-party merchants who sell goods on the site and give Amazon a percentage of revenue.
Wall Street, which refused to reward Yahoo for beating the street’s estimates a few days ago, went ga-ga for AMZN today, sending prices up 27% and boosting Amazon’s market value to $51.2 billion. VentureBeat will not make fun of the Kindle today.
Microsoft’s results add to continuing hopes for a tech-sector recovery – Microsoft is the General Motors of the tech sector, so today’s report of an 18% drop in quarterly results from last year could likely have triggered a selloff. Instead, investors bid Microsoft shares up 5.4% to $28.03 today. The Journal attributes it to consumer demand that offsets weak business spending.
Fifteen percent of adult Americans don’t have cellphones — Claire Cain Miller at the New York Times tracked down and interviewed people across America who have chosen to live — for now — without a mobile phone.
“It’s a luxury not to be reached when I’m out and about,” said Gregory Han, a 34-year-old writer and editor living in Los Angeles. Life for him is a lot more planned than most, the consequence of not having a cellphone — or even a landline — at home.
Netflix to roll out streaming-only service outside the U.S. — CEO Reed Hastings wouldn’t tell ReadWriteWeb in which countries Netflix will test streaming-only subscriptions that don’t require the customer to sign up for Netflix’ DVD-by-mail service. But those countries will not be the USA. Hastings said he wants to prove the business model before trying to serve it to the entire United States of America.
Windows 7 reader questions answered by our man Pogue — The guy is kind of touchy about his hatemail from Mac fans, but he takes one for the team today by answering the most broad, what-do-I-do questions about Windows 7 from his inbox. Send this to your parents.
As for PC pundits who trash-talk Windows Vista, former PC World editor Harry McCracken looked up all of the major reviewers’ write-ups of Vista from its debut days. All but one liked it. None forecast the sprawling, deep disinterest with which the general public responded to Vista. I’ll repeat my quickie review from yesterday: Windows 7 is a complicated operating system that I use to run a browser, in which I do all my work. Google’s Chrome OS is starting to appeal to me: A simpler, more stable browser with a Unix filesystem beneath it. For free. I’m not saying Windows is going to be gone from most desktops anytime soon, but it may be gone from mine.
Carl Icahn, the Yahoo investor who attempted a hostile takeover of the company last year, has resigned from the board of directors.
Icahn’s move against Yahoo’s board, especially then-chief executive Jerry Yang, was prompted by the failure of the struggling company to reach an acquisition deal with Microsoft. Last July, Icahn threatened to try to get Yahoo’s entire board replaced with members more open to a Microsoft deal, but instead negotiated to get a seat on the board himself.
Last week Apple surprised the iPhone’s developer community with the annoucement that it was finally allowing free apps to offer in-app purchases. The move will likely lead to a fundamental shift in the way developers conduct businesss on the App Store (we’ve already begun to see some changes). I sat down with SGN CEO Shervin Pishevar to talk about the annoucement’s effect on SGN’s upcoming games, as well as its impact on the market in general.
Pishevar says that he was estactic when he heard the news — he almost immediately recorded a video sharing his elation that he sent to all of SGN’s 100+ employees worldwide. He explains that this is really the announcement that he’s been waiting for, but that he had no expectation that Apple might do it so soon. Now the company is working at a brisk pace to take advantage of the change: it will soon be releasing a new free version of its smash hit game F.A.S.T., which has done over $1.8 million in sales before Apple’s cut. The new version of F.A.S.T. will feature an extensive array of virtual goods, which users will be able to purchase once they’ve downloaded the core game, which will be free. I also suspect that many (if not all) of SGN’s games will be released for free from here on out.
After discussing the impact on SGN’s apps, the conversation turned toward how this will impact developers in general. The App Store is going to see some major changes, and some of those won’t necessarily be for the better. For one, it will become even harder for premium applications to get noticed — before now they only had to compete against other ‘paid’ apps for a chance to appear on the Top Apps list. Now many of them will be migrating to the much more crowded ‘free’ section, which means they’ll be facing off with the vast array of ‘fun’ apps that are so enticing for impulse downloads. There’s also the possibility that the store will become flooded with applications that you can download for free, but really offer nothing of value until you start paying for features, despite what users may have been led to believe (a so-called ‘bait and switch’).
Pishevar agrees that the new market may pose a challenge to new developers, who may have trouble getting noticed and establishing trust with users. But he says that the development houses that can establish a relationship with users will be able to rise to the top, even more so than before. That scenario would obviously put SGN, which has millions of installs across all of its games, in a good position.
But Pishevar emphasized that SGN isn’t going to be content to simply rest on its laurels and exploit its large audience by rehashing games that have already been successful (he notes that the the highly derivative nature of many games on Facebook was one of the reasons SGN decided to shift over to the iPhone). Instead, he says he wants to push the limits of the iPhone, and eventually other mobile platforms. And to prove that wasn’t just marketing talk, he gave me a sneak peek at some of the projects that SGN has in the works. I’m sworn to secrecy on those for now, but suffice to say, SGN has some seriously cool things in the pipeline right now that really will take mobile gaming to the next level.
Crunch Network: CrunchBoardbecause it’s time for you to find a new Job2.0
As the largest public utility in the country, the TVA owns more than 32,000 megawatts of production capacity. Now, it has announced that it will buy 200 megawatts more from other projects in the Dakotas. These other projects, owned and operated by Maryland-based Competitive Power Ventures Renewable Energy (CPV) and Chicago-based Invenergy Wind, sold the assets in an auction including a total of 60 companies looking to sell power to the TVA. Many of these candidates dropped out because they were unable to offer prices competitive with future energy market prices.
CPV has operated nearly 5,000 megawatts of natural gas power and 8,500 megawatts of wind power since 2005. Now it is looking to expand into solar generation. Invenergy is similarly invested with 2,000 megawatts of wind power and 2,200 megawatts of natural gas. Currently, it says it has many projects at all stages of development in North America and Europe, including several solar thermal and photovoltaic projects.
So far, both companies are relatively small. Given that they will be shipping power from the Dakotas to the Tennessee Valley, it is unclear how they were able to offer a competitive bid for cheap wind power. More is to be revealed on this front as the deal progresses. Wind power from the Dakotas isn’t expected to be up and running until 2012.
The TVA was the first company in the region to add renewable power to its energy mix with its inaugural wind facility on top of Buffalo Mountain. That said, it has since been slow to follow up. Including the recent agreement with the two companies, TVA only operates 250 megawatts of renewable power. Hydroelectric generation accounts for an additional 4,200 megawatts with coal and nuclear making up the bulk of its sum of 32,000 megawatts.
VentureBeat is hosting GreenBeat, the seminal executive conference on the Smart Grid, on Nov. 18-19, featuring keynotes from Nobel Prize winner Al Gore and Kleiner Perkins’ John Doerr. Get your early-bird tickets for $625 before Oct. 31 at GreenBeat2009.com.
First Silicon Valley venture capitalists, and now the Obama administration, are fretting that China might overtake the U.S. as the leader in green innovation.
This, combined with fear-mongering by business lobbyists and politicians who support coal and other carbon-heavy industries, could threaten the ability of the U.S to pass ambitious “cap and trade” legislation early next year. But legislation is urgently needed to set a floor price on carbon. By setting that price, industry would be encouraged to invest in other renewable energy sources, something that could spark a wave of innovation in clean energy.
Yesterday, U.S. Energy Secretary Steven Chu and Commerce Secretary Gary Locke met with business executives to promote climate change legislation, claiming that China could edge out the U.S. as leader because it has ordered strict renewable energy and efficiency goals. It has called for fuel efficiency standards for cars that are more stringent than the U.S. (42 MPG versus 39 MPG), passed a bigger investment tax credit for solar energy and wind energy (50 percent versus 30 percent), and legislated 20 percent use of renewable energy by 2020.
Their message came after venture capitalist Steve Westly told a cleantech conference here in Silicon Valley that the Chinese government is moving faster that the U.S., despite the massive investments the U.S has been making in the Smart Grid. “China will pass the U.S. in 20 years as the largest economy in the world, he reportedly said. “There are only two countries that matter — the U.S. and China. They create 40 percent of the world’s pollution, and the other 191 countries divvy up the rest….I go to China every 90 days — China knows the big health issues they’re facing,” he told the audience at the Cooley Godward law firm-organized conference. Westly recently raised a $140 million fund, and he’s looking for investments into China’s green industry. We’re told his firm should soon make an announcement about an investment there.
The U.S. opinion about global warming comes despite overwhelming consensus among the world’s scientists that global warming is fact, and that the Administration has already warned that urgent action is necessary now to avoid catastrophe. According to the survey, however, 56 percent of Americans do think the U.S. should join other countries in setting standards to address global climate change.
Here’s Wall Street Journal reporting on the comments by Chu and Locke:
Both Chu and Locke recently returned from a tour of China, and the gains the Communist state has made in the industry through its clean-energy fiats, “demonstrates to us…just how much more concerted and aggressive we have to be to respond in terms of climate change and renewable energy,” the commerce secretary said. ”It’s a matter of economic competitiveness,” Locke said. ”If we don’t get our act together, we’re going to be watching the capital, the business and the good-paying jobs end up someplace else. Some 10-15 years from now, we’re going to be saying, ‘How did Shanghai become the Silicon Valley of clean energy?’” he added. Chu said Democrats’ plans to ratchet down greenhouse gas-emission levels in the U.S would “spur innovation that will far exceed what China can ever do.” Though the House passed a landmark climate bill earlier this year and Senate committees next week will begin consideration of a similar version, a raft of political hurdles lie ahead for the legislation.
If you’re an executive in the green technology industry, you should consider coming to GreenBeat, the seminal conference on Nov. 19 about the Smart Grid, for executives and entrepreneurs. We’re showcasing the most disruptive technologies to challenge the existing carbon-based Smart Grid. Former Vice President Al Gore will be among the keynotes. But now and you can get a discount.
Billionaire investor Carl Icahn is resigning from Yahoo’s board of directors. According to MarketWatch, he said “there was not a need at this time for an activist investor” at Yahoo anymore and that he’d rather focus on other companies. The subtext there being that either A) he feels that his work is done and he can move on now that the search deal with Microsoft is moving towards government approval, or B) he can make more money by trying to control some other company.
Icahn wrestled his way onto Yahoo’s board last year when Jerry Yang was still CEO. Initially, he wanted to try to revive Microsoft’s interest in acquiring Yahoo outright, but when it became clear Microsoft didn’t want to do that deal anymore, he supported the search deal as the best way to move forward.
It’s hard to determine whether Icahn is throwing in the towel on Bartz or this is actually a vote of confidence. If he really believes in where Bartz can take the company after the search deal is done, then you’d think he’d keep his board seat to have a stronger influence on the company’s direction. But Icahn has always been a transaction-oriented investor. He tries to push companies to do things that will move the stock in a big way, and then he takes his profits and he leaves.
More likely than not, Icahn doesn’t see another big shift he can push the company to take that will affect the stock in any major way. And with the stock price moving in the right direction, he probably doesn’t see the need to keep shaking the boat. It is much easier for him to just keep selling his shares (he sold almost $180 million worth in August alone) and move on. With the stock trading at $17, some of Icahn’s shares are still underwater, but he also bought a bunch at $10 last November. At this point, he’ll probably be happy just to get all of his initial investment back, which he is still far from doing.
It’s inevitable: With Facebook change, comes Facebook backlash.
Today’s introduction of the new-style News Feed on Facebook has been garnering quite a bit of positive buzz. But this is Facebook we’re talking about. Anytime they change anything, the backlash starts quickly. Sometime’s it’s justified, but quite often it’s users overreacting from the natural human feeling to dislike change.
Not surprisingly, there are already plenty of Facebook groups against new changes. But hands down the best is “I AUTOMATICALLY HATE THE NEW FACEBOOK HOME PAGE,” which of course, pokes fun at what I’m talking about. But the best part? Facebook employees like Ivan Kirigin and Ari Steinberg have already joined it. More notable, so has Mark Zuckerberg.
Here’s the group’s description:
I HATE CHANGE AND EVERYTHING ASSOCIATED WITH IT
I WANT EVERYTHING TO REMAIN STATIC THROUGHOUT MY ENTIRE LIFE
I DO NOT KNOW WHAT I WANT FROM THINGS I CANNOT CONTROL
BY LOGICAL DEDUCTION I AUTOMATICALLY OPPOSE THE NEW FACEBOOK STREAMING HOME PAGE
IF I HAVE TO EXPLAIN THIS GROUP IT IS NO LONGER FUNNY
It would seem that the group is hardly new, one news post is from March of this year. But newly acquired employee Paul Buchheitshared a nice little screenshot on FriendFeed (his service which Facebook bought) today revealing Zuckerberg and company joining it.
The group has some 3,000+ members. Some don’t seem to understand that it’s a joke. Brilliant.
Truth is, it wasn’t hard to find. The app called “Asian Boobs” is a top seller right now in the App Store. So what is it? Well, the title says it all: It’s an app that features the breasts of Asian women. Lots of them. Over 2,500 of them. And actually you can double that, for each breast in each picture. That’s a lot of boobs.
The description of the $0.99 app is also classy:
Photos of sexy asian girls with BIG BOOBS, 100+ galleries and 2500+ photos, updated regularly. Japanese girls, Korean girls, Chinese girls, Taiwanese girls, models, stewardesses, nurses, school girls, teachers, bikini girls, sexy girls and more.
Glad they squeezed the all-important “sexy girls” in there.
Again, to be clear: I’m all for Apple allowing apps like this in the App Store assuming they’re appropriately labels as 17+ (which this one is). The girls aren’t nude (Apple still doesn’t allow those except when it accidentally does), but the boobage is everywhere — as are the ass shots and crotch shots. Pure iPhone fun.
The problem is that Apple is rejecting apps, like Someecards, which are also labeled 17+ — for satire. Apple didn’t seem to like that the app poked fun at public figures like Roman Polanski and yes, Hitler.
It’s just beyond ridiculous that upskirt apps and apps dedicated to boobs are fine, but satire is not. Maybe the majority of app testers are grumpy but creepy old men, I don’t know.
Smartsheet has already expanded its work management application with cool features like a way to crowdsource tasks. Now it’s adding a customer relationship management (CRM) service on top of that.
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Carl Icahn, the Yahoo investor who attempted a hostile takeover of the company last year, has 
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VentureBeat is hosting GreenBeat, the seminal executive conference on the Smart Grid, on Nov. 18-19, featuring keynotes from Nobel Prize winner Al Gore and Kleiner Perkins’ John Doerr. Get your early-bird tickets for $625 before Oct. 31 at 
If you’re an executive in the green technology industry, you should consider coming to 
Remember, earlier this month when we wrote about the 
