LONDON (Reuters) — A leading technology company is set to launch a new digital music file format that will embed additional content for fans including lyrics, news updates and images in what could be a successor to the ubiquitous MP3 file.
The music industry has been hammered by piracy in the last decade and is looking to develop new offerings to entice consumers to buy their music from legitimate sites, instead of taking it from illegal outlets.
The new proposal, which is called MusicDNA and has the backing of the original MP3 digital music file inventor, would allow fans to download an MP3 file on to their computer, which would carry with it additional content.
Music labels, bands or retailers could then also send updates to the music file every time they have something new to announce such as the dates of future tours, new interviews or updates to social network pages.
The user would receive as little or as much of the information as they want, every time they are online. However anyone who downloads the music file illegally would receive only a static file which would not receive any updates.
BACH Technology, the group behind the MusicDNA file, says it is looking to partner with retailers, music labels, rights holders and technology companies and is happy to provide its technology for others who could use it under their own brand. BACH is based in Norway, Germany and China and has Germany’s Fraunhofer Institute for Digital Media Technology as a partner.
“We are getting very good feedback and the fact we are looking to include everyone in this, and not competing against them, helps,” Chief Executive Stefan Kohlmeyer told Reuters.
The music files can play on any MP3 player including Apple’s iPod. The music player, or online music library, can also be adapted to suit the user and could, for example, be integrated into existing social networks.
Kohlmeyer said the service would hark back to the time when music fans enjoyed looking at the lyrics and artwork on an album almost as much as they enjoyed listening to the music itself.
“What we are bringing back to the end user is the entire emotional experience of music,” he said. “We think it got lost in the transition to the digital era. We think a beautiful piece of audio has been reduced to a number code. We want to enrich it again.”
BACH, which counts the inventor of the MP3 and a former chief executive of Sony Music Entertainment among its investors, is also hoping that software developers will create new applications and content for the MusicDNA player.
A beta version of the file will be available in the Spring and a full commercial rollout is expected by the summer. It also hopes to roll out a mobile version of the music player.
BACH has already signed up a host of partners across the industry and is in talks with the major record labels.
Rob Wells, the senior vice president of digital at Universal Music Group International, told Reuters he thought the new offering was exciting and said Universal could quite possibly work with the company, but said they still needed further commercial conversations.
“I think the music industry has got a great opportunity to open up completely new revenue streams,” Kohlmeyer said. “They haven’t contemplated in the past all the aspects of rich media.”
(Reporting by Kate Holton and Matt Cowan; Editing by Rupert Winchester )
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Wednesday, January 27, 2010
Augmented Social Music? From Wired: Is the World Ready for the Successor of the MP3?
Guys, do you agree? From Scientific American: Men Won't Ask for Shopping Directions Either
January 25, 2010 | 7 comments
Men Won't Ask for Shopping Directions Either
A study in the Journal of Consumer Marketing finds that men are less likely than women to ask for expert advice when shopping, in this case for wine. Karen Hopkin reports
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They say that men don’t like to ask for directions. Well, that reluctance to seek expert advice may extend to the shopping cart. Because a study in the Journal of Consumer Marketing finds that guys also will likely avoid asking salespeople for suggestions about wine.
Researchers from the University of New Hampshire set their sights on vino because lots of people drink the stuff, so lots of people purchase it. And choosing which wine to bring to a party or to offer the boss is one of those things that can induce different degrees of anxiety, depending on one’s experience and general level of snobbishness, I’m sorry, confidence.
The scientists surveyed more than 500 participants, asking whether and where they might turn for advice when selecting a wine for themselves or for others. And they found that women tend to talk to friends, family, or the guy stocking the shelves, before making a purchase. Whereas guys are more likely to go it alone or to rely on information they’d found online or next to the register. So wine merchants take heed. Ads seem to work on guys. Now all they have to do is find their way to the liquor store.
—Karen Hopkin
[The above text is an exact transcript of this podcast.]
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Wednesday, January 20, 2010
These days, geting info's easy - using it's the challenge. From HBR: 5 Keys to Creating an Info Advantage
The value of having superior information has been true throughout human history. I believe that in addition to the analytics movement, which my friend Tom Davenport has so beautifully documented, an information advantage actually derives from a more comprehensive set of principles — great analytics being one of them. Let's take a look at the case of a scion of the legendary Rothschild family.
Mayer Amschel Rothschild (1744-1812) developed a small fortune lending money and handling the shipment of bullion during the Napoleonic Wars (1799-1815). As his wealth grew, he dispatched his five sons to different cities throughout Europe (London, Paris, Frankfurt, Naples and Vienna) and set up a pan-European network of messengers and carrier pigeons so they could quickly gather information that might affect their investments. Rothschild ran a decentralized empire, but with tight controls. Each son was allowed to make the optimal decisions regarding investments in his country, but information was kept tightly within the company by the family bonds and arranged marriages with close relatives.
Just as investors watch Warren Buffet to see what they can learn, the Rothschilds developed a reputation for being in the know and were carefully tracked by speculators looking for where to place their bets. During the Battle of Waterloo, the stakes were particularly high. Speculators knew that if the Seventh Coalition (consisting of Britian, Russia, Prussia, Sweden, Austria, The Netherlands and a number of German states) won, the era of uncertainty caused by Napoleon's expansion would be over. Britain would become the dominant force in European politics, and the ensuing political stability would drive up financial markets and the value of investments throughout Europe. The Rothschilds knew this, too.
Shortly after the battle ended, and long before anyone else knew the outcome, Rothschild began selling stocks. Speculators and traders assumed this meant Napoleon had won the battle at Waterloo, which started a mass sell-off. When prices crashed, Rothschild used his agents to buy up everything they could and he turned his small fortune into a colossal one. Although the SEC might not have approved of his innovative tactics, Rothschild demonstrated the power of asymmetric information — having knowledge that no one else has yet.
Rothschild used five tactics to get his information advantage:
- He created a network of data gathering that allowed him to possess data others lacked;
- He used the best technology (pigeons) in a new way to help in the data gathering;
- He analyzed the implications of the data with insight and precision;
- Once analyzed, he considered how to best use these insights to his advantage — in this case, he knew the market would be watching for his movement — and therefore used his information first to drive down prices, first, before buying. If he had simply bought in, his advantage would not have been maximized.
- He had great timing and execution.
Today, Wal-Mart has a superior data network that allows them to sense and respond to the marketplace in a way that is impossible for others to replicate. The investment banks who perform high frequency trading use their access and analysis to create massive profits. UPS moves about 6% of the US GDP and if they were willing to use their data for investing purposes — which they are not — they could make a fortune.
The reason that an information advantage is becoming more important in today's world is that information about your customers, your market and your suppliers is one of the few proprietary assets that are available to you. Talent, capital, intellectual property, resources, can all be purchased. Distinctive competencies, patents, and customer knowledge are among the few defensible advantages over the long term.
Yet many organizations don't spend the time and effort to turn their data into dollars. They don't look at their network of relationships as a way to gather new and interesting information about the market and their customers. Those few who do, enjoy higher margins, more agility, and less volatility — because they can react faster and better.
Where will this go in the future? I believe that with the three clouds of computing (which I have written about before) there will be more opportunity to create an information advantage. For instance, AT&T developed an iPhone app that allows customers to tell them where the network is weak or strong. Soon, every product and service will have constant feedback from customers — online, and on their mobile devices. Those firms that can make sense of these emerging patterns, consider the best way to use the information, and execute flawlessly will win in the marketplace.
My question for senior executives is: Have you learned the lessons of Rothschild? Do you:
- Have a proprietary way to collect vital data?
- Use the best technology to gather and amplify it?
- Analyze it in a timely manner?
- Consider how to best use it for advantage?
- And do you execute with timing and flawless precision?
Monday, January 11, 2010
This should extend to ALL mass media. From the NYT. Smartphones Helping Magazines Become Interactive
Print may be a flat medium, but that has not stopped magazine publishers from trying to add dimension to their pages. For at least a decade, they have been experimenting with bar codes and icons that could take readers to Web sites, trying to add a bit of Internetlike interactivity to their pages.
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Black-and-white codes on a page from the March issue of Esquire can link Web-enabled phones to styling advice for items in the magazine.
But the average consumer did not own a bar-code reader — until now. With the sudden ubiquity of smartphones, which have apps that can read bar codes, and cameraphones, which can easily snap pictures of icons, magazines like Esquire and InStyle are adding interactive graphics to their articles, while Entertainment Weekly and Star are including them in ads.
Meanwhile, publishers using text-messaging programs to try to enliven their pages are packing information into the messages and using reader responses to calibrate their coverage.
The idea is not new. Back in 2000, a company called Digital:Convergence introduced a product called the :CueCat. The premise was advanced, but simple. Pages could be printed with bar codes, which readers could scan, and then be connected to specific Internet sites. That would help them find the shirt being advertised, or specs on the Ford truck they liked.
But the technology was clunky. Publications using the :CueCat, including Forbes and Wired, had to mail a hand-held scanner and a CD-Rom with :CueCat software to their subscribers. The subscribers had to install the software, then attach the device to their computer and wave it over the printed bar codes. It wasn’t portable or easy, and, in most cases, it was more trouble than doing a search or typing in a lengthy Web address. That’s a major reason the :CueCat disappeared.
Today, though, consumers don’t need a :CueCat — they have a cellphone.
“This idea is basically the same — it’s just everyone has a scanner in their pocket,” said Jonathan B. Bulkeley, the chief executive of Scanbuy, which is working on a mobile program with Esquire, among other publications.
Of course, 10 years later, some concerns remain. Publishers can print bar codes to their hearts’ content, but getting consumers to understand and use them is another matter. While bar codes are integrated into everyday life in countries like Japan — people get nutrition information from bar codes on McDonald’s hamburger wrappers — American consumers have never quite picked up the habit. And now that search engines are fast and accurate, advertisers and publishers will most likely need to offer something spectacular, not just a plain Web page, to get people to bother scanning anything.
In its March issue, Esquire will print Scanbuy codes in a spread on “The Esquire Collection” — “the 30 items a man would need to get through life,” said David Granger, editor in chief. Printed near each item will be a small code that looks like a group of black and white squares. Readers scan the code into an Internet-enabled phone, and the code takes them to a mobile menu that provides Esquire’s styling advice for the item and information on where to buy it.
An application called ScanLife, widely available online as a free download, turns a phone into a bar-code reader. Versions exist for the iPhone and BlackBerry as well as Android-based handsets, and the app comes preloaded on many Sprint phones in the United States. ScanLife can also read many standard bar codes on many phones, so it can perform price comparisons, for example.
“We kept hearing about different technologies that enabled people to close the gap between the inspiration of seeing something in a magazine and then going to do something about it,” Mr. Granger said.
Though Esquire will be giving readers information about stores where they can buy items, Mr. Granger said, for now the magazine would not be seeking a percentage of sales resulting from use of the technology.
“I’m not sure we have a smooth way of getting a cut yet,” he said, “but it would be nice if this takes off.” Mr. Granger added, however, that Esquire would need to carefully consider questions about editorial integrity raised by such technology.
Mr. Bulkeley said that Esquire’s choice to introduce Scanbuy with its editorial pages, rather than with ads, made sense. “I think advertisers will see that and say, ‘Hey, can we do that too?’ But it is important for editorial to lead, to show advertisers they are supporting it, because there is an educational component necessary,” he said.
Levi’s Dockers khaki pants are among the items featured in the Esquire spread. Jennifer Sey, vice president for global marketing for Dockers, said the company was interested to see how readers respond, adding that running ads containing a code “is a really interesting idea — it’s certainly something that we would consider.”
Rather than running a printed code on its pages, InStyle is using photographs of clothes as the key that links print and online.
In its March issue, InStyle will run a “clothes we love” article, and will direct readers to hold up the pages featuring each of six items, like a miniskirt and a safari jacket, to their Web cameras. The browser will then open related three-dimensional videos.
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Recommend More Articles in Business » A version of this article appeared in print on January 11, 2010, on page B1 of the New York edition.
Monday, January 04, 2010
KYC. Know Your Customer. From the NYT. Unboxed - A Data Explosion Is Remaking Retailing
MOST people think of the grand challenges in computing as big science projects, like simulating nuclear explosions or protein folding. But with the holiday shopping season just ended, consider another: retail marketing.
Retailing is emerging as a real-world incubator for testing how computer firepower and smart software can be applied to social science — in this case, how variables like household economics and human behavior affect shopping.
To be sure, major retailers like Wal-Mart Stores have long been sifting through in-store sales and demographic information to aim goods at different stores and to tightly manage supplies.
But what is changing, experts say, is the rapid surge in the amount and types of digital data that retailers can now tap, and the improved computing tools to try to make sense of it. The data explosion spans internal sources including point-of-sale and shipment-tracking information, as well as census data and syndicated services. Companies also track online visitors to Web commerce sites, members of social networks like Facebook and browsers using smartphones.
The better tools, they say, are ever cheaper and faster computers and so-called business intelligence or analytic software for finding useful information and patterns in that data.
Retailers are increasingly mining vast troves of digital information to improve the decisions they make about pricing, shelf-stocking and product offerings. “This huge and growing ecosystem of data is an asset that some retailers are really beginning to exploit for competitive advantage,” said Thomas H. Davenport, a professor of information technology and management at Babson College. “It brings more science into the business. Relying on gut feel is yesterday’s strategy in retailing.”
Mountains of data and whiz-bang technology are no cure for tight-fisted shoppers, of course. And this was a challenging holiday season for most retailers. Even computing enthusiasts acknowledge that the technology is far better at fine-tuning decisions on pricing, product assortments and shipments than the basic merchandising judgments about what goods to make and buy from suppliers.
“In the world of retail merchandising, there will always be a mix of art and science,” said Lori J. Schafer, a retail expert at SAS Institute, which specializes in analytic software. “But the more you can get into customers’ heads, the better off you are.”
That is certainly the strategy at Wet Seal, a 500-store specialty retailer of clothing, mainly for teenage girls. Wet Seal is a so-called fast-fashion retailer, meaning that trends in its market change quickly and the company needs little time — as few as three weeks — to put its clothes, shoes and accessories into stores after its buyers make their decisions. Staying in tune with the shifting tastes among young women is crucial, said Edmond S. Thomas, the C.E.O.
Its stores account for more than 80 percent of Wet Seal’s sales, but the company’s presence on the Web is growing, using its site as a source of market insights as well as revenue. Last year, Wet Seal introduced a Web feature called Outfitter, which allows users to put together their own outfits online.
The virtual outfits are posted, and users can browse through them, comment and exchange recommendations. So far, more than 300,000 user-generated outfits have been designed, generating millions of page views.
“We can get a read on where our customer is headed faster than ever before,” Mr. Thomas said. The user designs, he said, helped the company see early signs of a recent trend toward more informal outfits — dressy tops, but casual bottoms, usually jeans.
In October, Wet Seal created its own iPhone application, called iRunway. With it, a customer in a store can tap in an item’s ticket number — bar code recognition comes later this year — and see how it has been used in outfits that other customers have created online.
The user-generated product selections and recommendations, combined with mobile phone access, build a community of customers that should increase sales, Mr. Thomas predicts. “We’re at the very initial stages, but that will be the wave of the future in fashion retailing,” he said.
At 1-800-Flowers.com, Christopher G. McCann, the president, agrees that “social mobile” retailing will be a major venue for sales and marketing. The company also has apps for the iPhone, the BlackBerry and phones using Android software.
Most of the company’s more than $700 million in sales of flowers and gift baskets are online, so it can quickly change prices and offerings on its Web site — often hourly. The company has used analytics software for years to tweak its online store and marketing. In the last six months, Mr. McCann said, 1-800-Flowers.com has improved the conversion rate — browsers to buyers — on its Web site by 20 percent, with more finely targeted pages and e-mail promotions.
The company also uses analytics software to optimize operations — including marketing, shipping, distribution and manufacturing.
The technology, Mr. McCann says, helped cut costs by $50 million last year.
Nihad Aytaman, a senior technology manager at Elie Tahari, a private $500 million-a-year maker of designer clothes for women and men, is an enthusiastic proponent of analytics technology. The information housed in the company’s data warehouse has grown fivefold in the last three years, and is constantly mined for sales trends and to orchestrate supplies and shipping.
“It takes all this data and makes it visible and meaningful, so you can make sense of it and act on it,” said Mr. Aytaman, an engineer with an M.B.A. “But you’re not creating something that wasn’t there. Designers and merchandisers have to go with their gut if they are making something new.
“No computer can mimic human intuition,” he said.
Next Article in Business (18 of 43) » A version of this article appeared in print on January 3, 2010, on page BU3 of the New York edition.
Saturday, January 02, 2010
Thanks for the tip to this article, @guykawasaki. From the WSJ. New Graduates Create Their Own Jobs
By TODDI GUTNER
Andrew Levine knew he wouldn't find a job in investment banking when he graduated with an M.B.A. from the University of Miami in 2008. Wall Street was in the midst of a financial collapse. So instead the 24-year-old focused his efforts on launching a start-up. "I figured that starting my own company was the best use of my time while I waited for the market to thaw," says Mr. Levine.
Faced with an unemployment rate of 16% for 20- to 24-year-olds, a growing number of recent college and grad-school graduates are launching their own companies, according to anecdotal evidence from colleges, universities and entrepreneurship programs around the U.S.
For his part, Mr. Levine built upon a business plan for a niche social-networking company he had created for an entrepreneurship class the prior year. He showed the plan to the father of a college friend who was an angel investor and got $40,000 in seed money in exchange for an equity stake in the business.
Armed with start-up cash, Mr. Levine created audimated.com, an online social-networking site for musicians and their followers. It serves as a forum for the independent music community—both fans and musicians—to discover and promote new music. The site is in beta testing now with a launch expected in January.
This push toward entrepreneurship among young people is likely to continue as employers plan to hire 7% fewer graduates from the class of 2010 than they hired from the class of 2009, which saw a nearly 22% drop in hiring from the class before, according to a recent report from National Association of Colleges and Employers. The annual average percentage of all job seekers starting their own businesses increased to 9% through the third quarter of 2009, according to Challenger, Gray and Christmas, a global outplacement consultancy. That's compared with 5% at the end of 2008.
"Given the state of the economy, and the state of the job market, many young people are getting the push they needed to become entrepreneurs," says Bo Fishback, vice president of entrepreneurship at the Kauffman Foundation, a nonprofit that promotes entrepreneurs. "It's a lot easier to decide to launch your own company when there aren't a lot of jobs out there."
School career-service officials say it makes sense for new grads to go the start-up route. Young adults are often well-suited to put up with the long hours start-ups demand. They don't have the responsibilities and financial obligations that burden older adults. What's more, these graduates grew up on the latest technology and easily adapt to technological improvements.
Of course, young entrepreneurs also are likely to face their own hurdles. "Having the skill set to become an entrepreneur is different than any thing you learn in school," says Susan Amat, the executive director of the Launch Pad at the University of Miami, an entrepreneurship-support program based out of the campus career center.
To that end, it's important for young entrepreneurs to seek the necessary help to get started. For current students or recent graduates, it might be easiest to reach out for assistance on campus. Many schools have campus incubators or offer start-up competitions, like Babson College's annual Entrepreneurship Forum, which offers cash, consulting, legal and Web services to winning business plans. Other schools have business incubators that help students—and sometimes outsiders—hone business ideas and, in some cases, support them financially or with other resources.
Mr. Levine turned to the Launch Pad before he sought out an investor to him sharpen his business plan and investor presentation The program also gave him guidance for creating a revenue strategy and trademarking the site's logo.
A boot-camp training program or organized group for aspiring business owners also can help. The Kauffman Foundation's FastTrac, a 10-week boot camp offered throughout the country, trains aspiring entrepreneurs. And Y Combinator of Mountain View, Calif., and TechStars in Boulder, Colo., offer cash and mentoring to young founders.
The biggest challenge, though, might be convincing investors and customers that a young 20-something has the experience needed to deliver on a plan. One way to clear that hurdle is with strong advisers. "Recruit the right advisers who will vouch for you, who are experts in your field, will let you use their name and are beyond refute," says Mr. Fishback.
Brooks Morgan, a 2009 graduate of University of Kansas, did just that. Mr. Morgan wanted to work in venture capital, but jobs were scarce, so he found work on the other side—at a start-up. As vice president of business development for Infegy, a start-up enterprise social-media analytics company, Mr. Morgan's first order of business was to attract advisers. His last two years in college, he had worked part-time with Richard Caruso, a venture capitalist , who introduced the three Infegy principals to people who could help them land deals with corporations.
"Because we were passionate about what we were doing, [our advisers] were excited to be with and help the younger generation," says Mr. Morgan. Infegy was launched earlier this year and has 20 employees and several Fortune 500 clients.
Printed in The Wall Street Journal, page D5
Solid Selection! From TechCrunch. 2010: My Fifth Annual List Of The Tech Products I Love And Use Every Day
It’s time for my annual list of technology products that I love and use every day. This is the (wow) fifth year I’ve done this. Here are my previous lists: 2009, 2008, 2007 and 2006. The scope of the list has changed over time. In 2006 it was just about websites. Now the list includes other web services, some desktop software and even a few gadgets.
These aren’t necessarily newly launched products (see Daniel Raffel’s post yesterday for a solid list of great new products). This is a simple list of the tech products that are an integral part of my day – work or play. Some have withstood the test of time and I just can’t live without. Others are newcomers that have captured my imagination.
I use most of them every day, or nearly every day, and I would not be as productive or happy without all of them. There are now 24 products on the list.
Just three of these products have been on the list all five years: TechMeme, Skype and Wordpress. As I said last year, TechMeme continues to be the news aggregator I check multiple times per day to keep up on tech news (although Google News is becoming more important over time). Skype is the instant messaging and VoIP platform that I use most often at work and with friends. And Wordpress software powers all of our blogs.
I’ve added 13 new products to last year’s list: Android, Apple Magic Mouse, Dropbox, Evernote, Foursquare/Loopt/Gowalla, Google Docs, Google Voice, Kodak Zi8, MOG, Skitch and Spotify.
I’ve removed seven products from the 2009 list: 1-800-Free-411, Digg, Friendfeed, Google Reader, iPhone, MySpace Music and Zoho.
There are lot of products that I use daily that aren’t on the list for various reasons. My iMac and MacBook Pro and Droid phone, for example, aren’t on the list specifically even though all three products are exceptional. I don’t really have a browser preference, although I suspect Chrome will be on the list next year. And there are lots of websites and services, like Posterous and Amie Street, that I use regularly but just didn’t make my arbitrary cut. We also use Bit.ly extensively on the site for URL shortening, and EventBrite and Amiando for event ticketing.
Here’s my 2010 list of tech products that I love and use every day:
Android
I gave up the iPhone this year and switched to Android mobile phones. First the MyTouch, then the Droid. I’ll soon be upgrading again. What I like best about Android is the deep integration with Google Voice, which I talk about below. These two products go hand in hand.
Website: android.com Location: Palo Alto, California, United States Acquired: August, 2005 by Google In July 2005, Google acquired Android, a small startup company based in Palo Alto, CA. Android’s co-founders who went to work at Google included… Learn More
Information provided by CrunchBaseAnimoto
I first put Animoto on the list last year. The service makes beautiful slide shows of photos, and this year they added videos (here’s one I made). Their iPhone application continues to impress. This company is now profitable and my guess is someone like Apple will acquire them in the next year.
Website: animoto.com Location: New York, New York, United States Founded: August, 2006 Funding: $5M Animoto generates custom, professional-looking slideshows from user-uploaded music and photos. Their “patent-pending Cinematic Artificial Intelligence technology and high-end motion design” drives the web app. They say the Cinematic A.I. analyzes… Learn More
Information provided by CrunchBaseApple Magic Mouse
The Apple Magic Mouse is the best computer pointing device ever made. It functions as a normal mouse but also has multitouch on top. Once you use it you’ll never be happy with an old mouse or touchpad again.
Website: apple.com Location: Cupertino, California, United States Founded: April 1, 1976 IPO: 1980 Started by Steve Jobs, Steve Wozniak, and Ronald Wayne, Apple has expanded from computer maker to include consumer electronics over the last 30 years, officially changing their name from… Learn More
Information provided by CrunchBaseDelicious
Delicious, the social bookmarking workhorse, has been on my list every year except 2007. It’s not perfect but it’s better than anything else out there.
Website: delicious.com Location: Sunnyvale, California, United States Founded: November 1, 2003 Acquired: December 1, 2005 by Yahoo! Delicious is a social bookmarking website – the primary use of Delicious is to store your bookmarks online, which allows you to access the same bookmarks from any computer and add bookmarks from anywhere, too. On Delicious, you can use tags to… Learn More
Information provided by CrunchBaseDropbox
Dropbox is a new addition to the list this year. It’s just dead simple file syncing across all your computers, mobile devices and the cloud. It’s also a great way to privately share big files. Dropbox is now one of my must-have productivity tools. I just wish Google offered something similar so that I could have an integrated dashboard for my Google Docs files and Dropbox stuff.
Website: dropbox.com Location: San Francisco, California, United States Funding: $7.2M Dropbox is a software product that makes it easy to securely share files with other people, sync them across multiple computers, access them from anywhere, and keep them safe.
Dropbox was founded by Drew Houston and Arash Ferdowsi in 2007, and… Learn More
Information provided by CrunchBaseEvernote
Evernote is also a new addition this year. Like Dropbox it is an amazing productivity tool that lets you capture, organize, and find information across multiple platforms. You can take notes, clip webpages, snap photos using their mobile phones, create to-dos, and record audio. All data is synchronized with the Evernote web service and made available to clients on Windows, Mac, Web, and mobile devices. Additionally, the Evernote web service performs image recognition on all incoming notes, making printed or handwritten text found within images searchable.
Website: evernote.com Location: Mountain View, California, United States Funding: $25.5M Evernote allows users to capture, organize, and find information across multiple platforms. Users can take notes, clip webpages, snap photos using their mobile phones, create to-dos, and record audio. All data is synchronized with the Evernote web… Learn More
Information provided by CrunchBaseThis is the third year in a row that Facebook has been on the list. Facebook has won the social wars, and even the biggest companies are now surrendering to them. Facebook Connect is turning into the defacto online identity solution for tens of millions of people.
Website: facebook.com Location: Palo Alto, California, United States Founded: February 1, 2004 Funding: $716M Facebook is the world’s largest social network, with over 350 million users.
Facebook was founded by Mark Zuckerberg in February 2004, initially as an exclusive network for Harvard… Learn More
Information provided by CrunchBaseFoursquare, Loopt and Gowalla
These three startups (Foursquare, Loopt and Gowalla), among others, are battling to control mobile social networking. They all have variations of the check-in model, where users are encouraged to note where they are for their friends to see. Foursquare has all the early adopter momentum, But Loopt has millions of users and Gowalla has a compelling product. All three are likely to win.
Website: foursquare.com Founded: 2009 Funding: $1.35M Foursquare is a location based social network that incorporates gaming elements. Learn More
Website: loopt.com Location: Mountain View, California, United States Founded: January 1, 2005 Funding: $13.3M Loopt is a mobile social mapping application. Using cell phones and mobile devices, it displays the locations of a user’s friends along with their presence status (available, away, etc) visually on maps or on lists. Based on GPS and related data,… Learn More
Website: gowalla.com Location: Austin, Texas, United States Founded: August 28, 2007 Funding: $10.3M Gowalla, also known as Alamofire, creates games and game-like experiences for the social web.
Gowalla is a location-based social networking game launched as a public beta in March 2009. Gowalla uses a large catalog of virtual goods to encourage… Learn More
Information provided by CrunchBaseGmail
This is the fourth year in a row for Gmail. It’s the best webmail out there, and I appreciate the free imap support and forwarding. Enough said.
Company: Website: gmail.com Launch Date: April 1, 2004 Gmail, also known as Google Mail, is a free email service with innovative features like “conversation view” email threads, search-oriented interface and plenty of free storage (almost 7GB). Gmail opened in… Learn More
Information provided by CrunchBaseGoogle Docs
This is a new addition for me this year. I never bothered installing Office on my new laptop, and find that Google Docs has all the functionality I need, plus easy sharing with others and storage in the cloud. I may never install Office again. I previously had Zoho on the list, a competitor, and removed it only because I find that centralizing as many services as possible at Google makes things easier for me as a user.
Company: Website: docs.google.com Launch Date: October, 2006 Google Docs is Google’s free web-based word processor, spreadsheet, and presentation application. The online app allows users to easily share documents and collaboratively work on them in real-time.
On March 31st, 2008, the Google Docs team… Learn More
Information provided by CrunchBaseGoogle Voice
This has been a big year for Google Voice, previously called Grand Central. The mobile apps let Google Voice completely take over Android phones. I’ve ported my mobile number to Google Voice and now any time someone calls that number I can direct it to any phone I like based on where I am, who’s calling and when. It has changed my life, and I will never use a mobile phone that doesn’t have deep integration with the service.
Company: Website: google.com/googlevoice/about.html Google Voice is a free Internet service that uses VoIP technology to link phone numbers together. GrandCentral was relaunched as Google Voice on March 11, 2009 with new features, including voicemail transcriptions and SMS managing.
Users of… Learn More
Information provided by CrunchBaseHulu
This is the second year in a row for Hulu. I’d love for them to add a paid model and let me watch HBO shows or pay per view new release movies. And I wish they could secure rights to archived libraries of shows, but even as it currently exists, Hulu is a great entertainment service.
Website: https://www.hulu.com Location: Los Angeles, California, United States Founded: March 1, 2007 Funding: $100M Hulu is an online video provider held by NBC Universal, News Corporation, and, as of April 2009, Disney. The site focuses exclusively on… Learn More
Information provided by CrunchBaseKodak Zi8
This digital video camera beats the pants off the current Flip models. The best feature is the ability to add a microphone. Flip doesn’t have this, and the audio quality is often terrible. The Zi8 is a full generation ahead.
Location: Rochester, New York, United States With the slogan “you press the button, we do the rest,” George Eastman put the first simple camera into the hands of a world of consumers in 1888. In so doing, he made a cumbersome and complicated process easy to use and accessible to nearly… Learn More
Information provided by CrunchBaseMOG, Pandora and Spotify
MOG and Spotify are new this year. Pandora has been on every year except 2008, and with hindsight I should have added them that year, too. These are three streaming music services that are awesome. MOG, which is $5/month, is the best music experience on the Internet. Spotify, a desktop streaming service that hasn’t launched in the U.S. yet, lacks the radio and social features of MOG but is currently free. And we hear it will launch on a limited basis in the U.S. very shortly. Pandora is still a very cool place to just sign in and listen to music that I love quickly and easily.
Website: mog.com Location: Berkeley, California, United States Founded: June 1, 2005 Funding: $12M MOG is a place for people to publish thoughts about music, as well as a place to share the names of the songs they play on their computers (using a downloadable program called MOG-O-MATIC that runs in the background and automatically detects songs no… Learn More
Website: Pandora.com Location: Oakland, California, United States Founded: January 1, 2000 Funding: $56.3M Born out of a love for music with 99% of its employees at one time or another working as musicians, Pandora is truly a company wholly dedicated to music. With a database of more than 600 thousand songs, each digitally annotated with musical… Learn More
Website: spotify.com Location: Luxembourg, Luxembourg Founded: December 26, 2009 Funding: €71.6M Spotify has created a lightweight software application that users will simply download and then log onto their service enabling on demand streaming of music. Learn More
Information provided by CrunchBaseScribd and Docstoc
Scribd and Docstoc, two services that let you upload office files like PDFs and Word documents and then embed them on sites, are very useful to bloggers like us. When we have a document that we want to share with readers, we use one of these services and embed it into the post. Both services were also on the list last year.
Website: docstoc.com Location: Santa Monica , California, United States Founded: August 1, 2007 Funding: $4M Docstoc is the premier online community to find and share professional documents. Docstoc provides the platform for users and businesses to upload and share their documents with all the world, and serves as a vast repository of documents in variety… Learn More
Website: scribd.com Location: San Francisco, California, United States Founded: March, 2007 Funding: $12.8M Scribd is a social publishing site where people upload and share creative writing and various documents, regardless of file format. The company claims more than 55 million unique users to the network each month and well-known users such as Barack… Learn More
Information provided by CrunchBaseSkitch
I’ve been using Skitch for years. It’s Mac software that makes basic image manipulation a breeze – sort of a very light version of Photoshop. For 90% of our images, Skitch works just fine. It’s easy to add text, resize and crop images, etc. And it automatically uploads them to the website for you, too.
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