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When reading about Andy Warhol and Jean-Michel Basquiat, a reference to the “Electric Circus” was mentioned. Now the surrounding text alluded to drug usage and Mr Basquiat’s premature death at the age of 27, but the first thing that popped into my mind was Common’s album “Electric Circus” and the odd cover used.
In actual fact, the Electric Circus was a Manhattan nightclub open from 1967-1971 in the East Village at 19-25 St. Marks Place between Second and Third Avenues. It was a trendy spot, with many popular artists passing through.
You’ll also find referenced the MuchMusic dance show, which was popular, but not quite as relevant culturally as the Manhattan night spot.
Written by GeniusImpatience on July 18th, 2010 with no comments.
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When it comes to academic research, it’s easy to think that academics are always privy to what their peers are up to, and are up-to-date on the latest research papers in their field. Unfortunately, that’s not usually the case. Academia.edu is a site that’s looking to help change that, by helping researchers connect to each other and find material that’s relevant to their field of study. The site recently closed a $1.6 million Series A round led by Spark Ventures, with participation from angel investors including Mark Shuttleworth (Thawte founder, Ubuntu); Thomas Lehrman (Gerson Lehrman Group co-founder) and Rupert Pennant-Rea (Chairman of The Economist).
CEO Richard Price believes that the community of academics has largely been neglected as the web has evolved, and he’s looking to change that with Academia.edu. The site, which launched in September 2008, serves as a sort of hybrid between LinkedIn, Facebook and Geni, all with a focus on research.
When you sign up, you create a user profile as you would on most social networks, but with one big difference: you tag yourself with topics that are related to your research. The site can be used to keep in touch with your peers, but one of its biggest selling points is its News Feed, which includes a stream of research items that the site believes you’ll be interested in based on those tags. This is similar in some ways to Facebook’s News Feed, with one key difference: Facebook tends to suggest items your firends are interested in. Academia.edu does this too, but it has more of a discovery focus, and tries to surface articles you’ll be interested in even if they haven’t been shared by one of your coworkers.
Price says that the service has 137,000 registered users, has been growing by around 15,000 users a month, and gets over 600,000 unique visitors a month.
Over the last few years there have been quite a few entrants in this space, but Price believes that many of them stagnated in the economic downtown. The remaining competitors include Mendeley, which offers a desktop client for sharing and discovering on research papers, and ResearchGate, which, like Academia.edu, is a web-based network for academics.
Written by Jason Kincaid on April 28th, 2010 with no comments.
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The iPad went on sale 25 days ago. It’s not yet on sale anywhere else in the world besides the U.S. The 3G version, which some are waiting for, still isn’t available. And yet, according to our logs, the iPad already accounts for more traffic to TechCrunch than Android does.
I love the iPad, but even I was surprised when I saw this. The stats are for the last 30 days — and again, the iPad hasn’t even been out that entire time. Here’s a percentage breakdown of which OS visitors to TechCrunch have been using in the past 30 days:
- Windows – 59.68%
- Mac – 27.78%
- iPhone – 5%
- Linux – 3.72%
- iPad – 1.18%
- Android – 0.99%
- iPod – 0.67%
- (not set) – 0.54%
- BlackBerry – 0.28%
- SymbianOS – 0.07%
Now, it’s perfectly possible that the iPad numbers are padded a bit simply because a ton of people just got the device and are trying it out for the first time and TechCrunch is a logical first stop (we hope). But 0.99% is actually the highest Android has ever been — up 0.11 from its previous record last month. The fact that the U.S.-only iPad attributed for more traffic to TechCrunch in its first 25 days than Android (a platform which is 18 months old and available around the world) ever has in any month is impressive anyway you slice it.
And if we just shift the data to start on April 3 (when the iPad went on sale), the iPad’s percentage jumps to 1.5%. (Android moves up slightly to 1.03% in that timeframe.)
The other number that stands out here is just how many TechCrunch readers use the iPhone to read the site. At 5%, it blows away Android. This is somewhat surprising given the report by AdMob yesterday that Android has passed iPhone web traffic in the U.S. Though, the validity of those numbers has been disputed.
It’s also not exactly clear what “iPod” is. The logical guess is the iPod touch, but that runs iPhone OS, so wouldn’t it just be listed under “iPhone” as well? On the flip-side, the iPad also runs iPhone OS (though a different flavor (3.2) right now than any other iPhone OS device), yet it has its own category. So let’s assume “iPod” is the iPod touch. That means that all the iPhone OS devices put together account for 6.85% of all TechCrunch readership in the past 30 days. That’s more than Linux, Android, BlackBerry, and Symbian combined.
Written by MG Siegler on April 28th, 2010 with no comments.
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I’ve been bearish on Palm as a standalone platform since they launched last May and today the sadness-tinged chickens have come home to roost: Palm is now part of HP and, like the iPaq before it, the Pre and Pixi will slowly be subsumed into the company’s line-up.
In fact, I couldn’t be happier for Palm. A recent perusal of HP’s line-up including their new Envy line of laptops show that, unlike Dell, they can produce a beautiful and powerful product at a nice price. Palm, in short, needed out of the hardware business and this gave them that chance.
Written by John Biggs on April 28th, 2010 with no comments.
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HP didn’t just drop $1.2 billion on Palm to simply sit on the assets. There have to be major plans in the works to leverage webOS and slam out some killer consumer devices. This could be huge for not only both companies, but for you and me.
Written by Matt Burns on April 28th, 2010 with no comments.
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As expected, Chinese search giant Baidu posted strong first quarter results thanks in part to a gain in marketshare from Google. Total revenues in the first quarter of 2010 were $189.6 million, a 59.6% increase from the corresponding period in 2009. Net income in the first quarter of 2010 was $70.4 million, a 165.3% increase from the first quarter of 2009.
In the earnings release, Baidu’s chairman and CEO Robin Li also stated that new internet advertising product Phoenix Nest’s performance “continued to exceed” expectations. Baidu likely saw a flux in revenue from the product as it just replaced Baidu Bidding rank in December. Baidu was expected to see gains thanks to stronger paid search revenue as Google’s censorship issues with China escalated. Google shut down its Chinese search engine in late March in response to the widely reported cyber attack on Google in December 2009.
And since Google’s decision to shift products away from China, Baidu’s stock has soared. Of course, Baidu has always had a strong position in China. Baidu already had double its market share in China even before Mountain View publicly disclosed its plans to possibly shutter its Chinese operations, and Baidu is now operating the third largest search engine in the world.
Baidu also recently co-invested $50 million in a giant online shopping mall, and raised another $50 million for its new online video endeavor in China, so it’s poised for growth in other areas than search.
Written by Leena Rao on April 28th, 2010 with no comments.
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As you may have heard, HP has just announced the acquisition of Palm for $1.2 billion. It’s a massive move that HP hopes will reshape the mobile industry. I got a chance to talk with Brian Humphries, HP’s Senior Vice President of Strategy and Corporate Development, about the deal just now.
“This is a great opportunity to take two Silicon Valley idols and put them together,” Humphries noted. That’s an obvious statement, but he quickly moved on to the meat. “WebOS is the best-in-class mobile operating system. Our intent is to double down on webOS,” Humphries said.
That’s important. While it has been known for a while that Palm was looking for a buyer, the future of webOS wasn’t certain depending on who the eventual purchaser was. For example, when HTC was the rumored front-runner, it wasn’t clear if they would alienate their partners, Microsoft and Google, in order to use their own OS on their own devices. But HP doesn’t have the same level of conflicts. While they do have various deals with Microsoft and Google, they are not the major player in mobile that HTC is. With this deal, obviously, they hope to change that.
I asked Humphries to expand a bit about webOS and how it stacks up to rival mobile OSes made by Apple and Google. I also asked why HP wouldn’t just develop its own mobile OS as Apple has done? “We think it’s one of the best operating systems out there today. We see nothing in development in the next 3 to 5 years that comes close,” Humphries said. “We want to take HP’s financial strength and use it to take webOS to the next level,” he continued.
“We’ll compete aggressively in the market with Apple and Google. We’ve got our hands on a very compelling operating system,” Humphries concluded. He also noted that the plan is to keep it as open and friendly to developers as it has been.
When I asked if HP was concerned that Apple might come after them over mobile patents (Palm was rumored to be in Apple’s crosshairs for a while, and HTC is, of course, being sued by Apple), Humphries said, “I don’t think we’re overly concerned. We respect Apple.”
He also noted that with the acquisition, HP is also getting over 1,500 patents that Palm currently controls. Those patents were thought to be a part of the reason HTC was looking closely at the company. And they very well could be the reason Apple didn’t attempt to sue Palm.
Humphries wouldn’t comment on specific product plans right now, but said it’s safe to assume that the key to this deal was webOS and not Palm’s hardware — which has produced lackluster sales and placed Palm in the position where it needed to sell. That’s smart — pretty much exactly what I wrote back in October. He said it was premature to comment on Palm’s current deals with carrier partners, but I think it’s safe to say those are over and that HP will strike new ones when they’re ready.
HP’s press release stated that Palm CEO Jon Rubinstein is expected to remain with the company. There had been rumors he was on his way out, along with other Palm execs. Humphries wouldn’t comment on Rubinstein specifically or the role he would now play. A HP representative also on the call simply pointed me to what it said in the release. He also noted that they’ve put thought into how to retain key members of Palm’s team.
Long story short, HP just (re)entered the mobile space in a major way. And look for webOS to eventually be used across the range of HP products.
Written by MG Siegler on April 28th, 2010 with no comments.
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Breaking news, fresh off of the wire: HP just finalized agreements to buy Palm for $1.2 billion dollars.
HP’s $1.2 billion dollar purchase breaks down to roughly $5.70 per share of common stock. While this is pretty close to the price Palm was rumored to be shopping around as of late, it’s still a mammoth difference from what Palm was trading at just months ago. In October 2009, Palm was worth about $17.46 per share; by January of this year, that was down to $13.41. It has, unfortunately, been a downward spiral ever since.
Written by Greg Kumparak on April 28th, 2010 with no comments.
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We’ve all had the experience. You visit cnn.com looking to catch up on the day’s news and have a total WTF!? moment when instead you’re greeted by Jessica Alba’s plans to adopt a child. Meanwhile, bombs are exploding around the world, people are dying — but wait, what’s Tiger Woods thinking right now? Also, how do you harness the power of bugs?
A new site, WTF CNN?, compliments of Breadpig, shows you exactly what world news you’re missing by clicking on CNN. The way the site works is simple: CNN.com is displayed at the top of the page, and under it, you get a choice of seeing the frontpage from one of the following global news sites: ABC (Australia), Al-Jazeera (Qatar), BBC (UK), China Daily (China), Deutsche Welle (Germany), EuroNews (Europe), France 24 (France), or Reuters (UK). Both halves are shown live, and switching between sites is as simple a selecting the one you want from a drop down menu.
When you first hit the site, an overlay reads:
We deserve better than this.
If you’ve ever been frustrated by what headlines the CNN.com front page, this is the site for you. Compare their front page at any given time to that of Al-Jazeera English (or a host of others that regularly put CNN to shame).
Dear CNN,
We know you think this is what we want, but it’s not. We don’t care what random Tweeters think about a news story, how many holograms you have in your Situation Room, or even the latest celebrity gossip.
We care about our world. Instead of using your resources to do the journalism that gives us a better understanding of this world — we get the front page of CNN.com.
Why do we have to look enviously at the front page of Al-Jazeera English for a better sampling of important news stories at any given time? If the CNN frontpage is a reflection of consumer demand, are we to believe that their readers demand real journalism?
Consider this a gentle nudge from the anonymous Internet, CNN.
The humorous site was created by a programmer known as Chromakode.
PS. We still love Wolf’s beard.
Written by MG Siegler on April 28th, 2010 with no comments.
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Last fall Reddit, a very popular link sharing community, launched a new self-serve ad platform that allowed any of its users to spend a little dough to get their links prominently displayed on the site. The logic? People were always trying to game the system anyway, so Reddit figured it might as well get them to pay for it. Today, Reddit is rolling out an upgraded version of the ad platform.
The biggest addition to the ad platform, and the one that most people have been asking for, is targeting — you’ll now be able to specify which sections of Reddit you’d like your ad to appear on (there are many options, including everything from ‘funny’ to ‘cooking’). When you target a link at, say, the Science Reddit, it will appear both on that section and on the Reddit homepage for logged-in users who have subscribed to the Science section. Reddit is also using some logic to help advertisers targeting more niche Reddits get their money’s worth — if you target the ‘Knitting’ Reddit (which isn’t particularly popular), then Reddit will make sure that the small number of users who are subscribed to Knitting will see that ad on the Reddit homepage.
Another new addition gives advertisers the ability to “extend links”. As with normal links that appear on Reddit, advertisers can allow users to comment on their sponsored links, and sometimes compelling discussions get started. In the old system, these comments would be lost to the ether whenever the ad campaign ended — now advertisers will be able to run another campaign using the same sponsored link and keep the discussion alive.
Reddit’s ad system is pretty straightforward: you enter a bid for how much you’re willing to spend on ads each day, decide how long you want your campaign to run, and choose if you want to target a certain Reddit section. Reddit sums all the bids from a given day, sees what portion of that your bid makes up, and gives you the corresponding percentage of facetime at the top of the site (in other words, if I bid $20 and there was a total of $200 spent that day across all advertisers, my ad would appear 10% of the time). The only deviation from this system is for the niche Reddit targeting discussed above. So far, Reddit’s ad platform has been getting around 20 ads per day with an average CPM of $.50-$1.00 and click-through-rates of 2-5%.
If that wasn’t easy enough to understand, Reddit has done something very smart: it recruited The Oatmeal, a cartoonist who is immensely popular on Reddit and Digg, to draw up a guide to using the ad platform (he’s responsible for the art in this post). Everyone loves the Oatmeal, so everyone on Reddit is going to read the guide, and hey, maybe some of them will buy ads.
Reddit’s sponsored link system is similar in many respects to Digg’s Digg Ads, though Digg doesn’t offer a self-serve platform. Reddit actually launched its promoted links to traditional advertisers six months before Digg launched Digg Ads — it was the self-serve version that launched late last year.
Written by Jason Kincaid on April 28th, 2010 with no comments.
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