Verizon Wireless Cancels Plans To Charge $2 “Convenience” Fee

Well, that didn’t take long. Less than 24 hours after word got out that Verizon Wireless planned to introduce a painfully ironic “convenience” fee of $2 for anyone paying their bill online, the carrier has just officially confirmed that such plans have been cancelled.
Why? Because the Internet more or less exploded in their face. We called it a joke immediately. An army of armchair protestors rallied almost instantly, with a petition against the fee hitting 50,000 signatures in a matter of hours. By this morning, the F.C.C was already investigating the fee.
What’d they expect? The masses went absolutely bonkers went Netflix hiked their fees up a few bucks, and that’s something people actually like to pay for. Charging them a convenience fee for paying online? Yeah, they’ll just love that.
Verizon’s official statement on the matter:“At Verizon, we take great care to listen to our customers. Based on their input, we believe the best path forward is to encourage customers to take advantage of the best and most efficient options, eliminating the need to institute the fee at this time,” said Dan Mead, president and chief executive officer of Verizon Wireless.
Source:http://techcrunch.com/2011/12/30/verizon-wireless-cancels-plans-to-charge-2-convenience-feee/

Damn It Google, Where Are My Magic Android Lightbulbs?

Back at Google I/O in May, members of Google’s Android team unveiled a new initiative that’s going to extend the mobile OS beyond smartphones and tablets — and take us one step closer to Back to the Future II.
Dubbed Android@Home, the project aims to bake special hardware and software into a variety of gadgets, which will allow users to control these devices from their Android phones. Think alarm clocks that fade in with your favorite music, lighting systems that blink based on events in the game you’re playing, and more. Eventually the @Home project will include everything from home stereos to dishwashers, but the first planned device was something a bit more modest: the lightbulb.
At the event, Google said that it had partnered withLightingScience to launch Android@Home LED lightbulbs by the end of 2011. I’ve been waiting patiently since then, scowling each time I had to get up out of bed to flick off one of my ‘dumb’ lightbulbs when I should have been able to simply tap a button on my phone. I may have even boasted to my iPhone-toting friends about my impending luminescence superiority.
Alas, LightingScience and Google have failed to keep their promise. We are now at the end of 2011, and there are no such lightbulbs in sight. Nor, for that matter, is anything else Android@Home-related. At I/O, Google said we’d be hearing more about the project in the next few months (we didn’t).
Given the amount of stage-time Google gave to the project and the huge potential here, I strongly doubt that @Home has gotten the axe. But it’s disappointing all the same. Google seems to have fallen into the nasty habit of showcasing impressive technology at I/O that’s still a long ways off (Google Music first made its debut at I/O 2010, and didn’t launch in beta until a year later).
Google declined to comment on the current status of the lightbulbs.

Source:http://techcrunch.com/2011/12/30/damn-it-google-where-are-my-magic-android-lightbulbs/

A New Era For Social Interest Sites: Twitter, Tumblr And Pinterest Go Big In 2011

One of the most interesting trends in comScore’s 2011 social networking report is the new growth of social sites that cater to users’ interests, rather than their real-life social graphs. In particular, according to comScore data, microblogging platforms Twitter and Tumblr have had break-out years, and they’ve been joined by new online pinboard site Pinterest.

But all this growth doesn’t seem to be coming at the expense of Facebook. That site’s traffic growth has only appeared to slow (but not fall) in places where it is running out of new users to add. The site that has been taking a beating is MySpace. It may be that users who previously used that site to express themselves and follow the celebrities they care about are now doing the same thing across these other sites.

Twitter has the most fascinating story here. The short-form messaging service hit the mainstream in early 2009, and received an amazing amount of media hype — but third-party measurement firms like comScore mostly showed flat traffic in the US since then, with monthly visitor numbers ranging between 20 million and 25 million, according to comScore.

And even this year started out slow. In April, the company had 24.5 million unique visitors. But, from May through November the company grew to 35.5 million. Twitter’s worldwide numbers have looked just as strong. In the past 12 months, it has grown from 103.0 million uniques to 167.9 million overall. Yes, this growth was likely in part due to its integration with iOS 5, which the companyrecently said has led to a 25% increase in sign-ups. However, the integration only went live in October, which doesn’t explain all the new usage over the summer.

What’s even more interesting is that the company itself has consistently said that third-party services undercount its traffic. In September, for example, it announced that it had grown to 400 million unique visitors worldwide based on its Google Analytics stats, up from 250 million at the start of the year. Many of its visitors don’t actually tweet, or aren’t even signed up. At that point it said it had 100 million active users (and it reiterated the same number in December).

So, the comScore visitor numbers don’t exactly match up with the internal ones, but the trend is the same: more people are reading tweets than ever before. The five year old company appears to have finally made it past the ups and downs of the hype cycle, and become a solid and growing part of how mainstream people use the web.

Tumblr, which will turn five early next year, has also been coming of age. From November of 2010 to last month, it has grown from 6.9 million unique visitors to 15.9 million in the US. Worldwide, its new traffic is just as pronounced, going from 18.6 million to 44 million in the same period.

A new interest-oriented site has also gotten into the mix: Pinterest. Although the company has been around since 2008, it only began sending out invites in early 2010. It has taken off this year, going from less than a million in May, according to comScore, to more than 6 million uniques worldwide in November.

MySpace may not be losing users directly to these pseudo-rivals, but it’s definitely continuing to hurt. Worldwide, it has fallen from 81.5 million to 61.0 million from November to November. And in the US, the drop is even more pronounced, dropping from 54.4 million to 25.0 million.

Based on all these numbers, 2011 is looking like a banner year for the next era of public self-expression and sharing. The ugly, hacked-up MySpace user profiles of past years are less popular than ever, and users are busy sharing through their beautiful Tumblr themes, through Twitter’s simple 140-character messaging service, and through their online Pinterest pinboards.

What can we expect in 2012? Can Facebook’s new public sharing features like its Subscribe button tap into all the attention these other sites are getting? Early signs indicate  yes. And just where is all this usage going? It may be that 2011 is just the start of a new era, where the average internet user is comfortable sharing everything they think is interesting with the public, and following the people who are most interesting to them, not just friending those they meet in real life.

[Top graphic, which I should note is October to October not November to November, is via comScore's 2011 social network report, which you can download here.]

Source:http://techcrunch.com/2011/12/30/twittertumblrpinterest/

A Web Of Apps

It is remarkable to think that we’re in the early days of the app era, when there are already close to 600,000 iOS applications and nearly 400,000 on Android (source: Distimo). The growth of these app ecosystems has been rapid, exponential and shows no signs of slowing down. As well it shouldn’t: the untapped, addressable market for mobile apps involves hundreds of millions of users.
And yet, app discovery remains a challenge. Whether in an app store, on the device itself, or via a third-party service. Whoever cracks the nut of app discovery will have the potential to be the next Google: the search engine of the modern age. The search engine for a web of apps.
App discovery is a key focus for a number of startups. Off the top of my head: Chomp, Quixey,Xyologic, Appolocious, AppsFire, Kinetik, and Crosswa.lk are approaching the challenge of app discovery in new ways. (And yes, you too, millions of companies I neglected to mention).
While that’s a rich topic for examination, it’s not one that can be summed up in a single post. So for today, one aspect of building a web of apps: connectivity.
Why do I keep referring to a web of apps? Apps are not like the web – they are not hyperlinked creations that allow you to move seamlessly from one operation to another…or are they?
Perhaps not yet. But they could be, if more developers chose to implement this functionality. Using something called “app URL schemes,” apps can communicate with each other. For example, on the iPhone, iOS developers can call up the built-in apps, like the Messaging app, Email app and the Phone app. Apple’s URL schemes are published in developer documentation, but all apps have URL schemes available.(On Android, something similar can be accomplished via “intent filters.”)
Apps can launch other apps. Apps can connect to other apps.
It’s still somewhat rare to see this in action, but it’s starting to happen. Facebook is probably the most high-profile example of this. In the iOS app, on the left-hand side an “apps” section will link to Facebook apps which also exist as iOS applications. Tap the app in the list and Facebook launches the app on your phone. If you don’t have the iOS version installed, it launches the App Store instead.
Clever.
Facebook as a portal to the mobile “app web.”
But there are lesser known use cases, too. For example, PhotoAppLink, an open source initiative that aims to simplify photo editing by tying multiple photo-editing apps together. Currently, in order to edit a photo in multiple apps, you have to save the edited photo to the camera roll each time as you move in between applications. But with PhotoAppLink-enabled apps, you simply select another app to use from within your current app.
Another example (actually, a potential example): the educational startup KinderTown offers an iOS app that’s a actually a curated version of the iTunes App Store. Designed to help parents discover kid-friendly, educational apps, KinderTown directs you to the iPhone’s App Store for downloads when you tap the app in question. Imagine if it could also help you find, filter and launch the apps you already have installed on your phone instead of just those you’ve newly discovered.
Meanwhile, at AnscaMobile, a recent tutorial for developers took the concept of app URL schemes a step further. Being able to launch an app using a URL scheme is great, wrote Jonathan Beebe on the company blog, but what’s even better is being able to tell your app to do something in response to being opened via a URL scheme.
“Think for a moment just how powerful this can be,” he says. “You could tell your app to do different things, or start in a different state depending on the URL string that was used to launch your app.”
Indeed, powerful stuff. And sadly under-utilized.
The possibilities for inter-connected apps using app URL schemes are endless, but actually connecting them together is still a challenge. The problem stems from the fact that there isn’t a simple way to discover the custom URLs for the apps you would want to link to.
This summer, a company called Zwapp attempted to address this situation by launching OneMillionAppSchemes.com, an initiative which aims to open source the unpublished custom URL schemes for iOS applications. Using a downloadable tool, Zwapp scans your iTunes library to locate the custom schemes for your apps then uploads those to the website. The goal, as you may have guessed by the name, is to collect one million of these app schemes. It’s not quite there – only 15,066 have been submitted to date.
Despite the Zwapp’s outreach and call-to-action in the app developer community, what it has implemented is really more of a hack – a way to workaround for the fact that there aren’t better tools available.
Whether the usage of URL schemes will ever really take off is unknown. While it’s one thing to launch your own app in creative ways, developers seem to balk at the concept of linking out to other apps.(Send my app’s users, which I fought so hard to acquire, to another app? No thank you!)
But just like hyperlinks allowed users to begin surfing through what’s now a seemingly infinite number of pages on the web, linking apps could prove to be a way to  overcome today’s app discovery challenges, too.
Source:http://techcrunch.com/2011/12/30/a-web-of-apps/

Aol Employees Make Zombie Video About Talent Exodus

In case you haven’t noticed ;), it’s an especially slooooooooooooooooooooow time for the tech industry. So slow that some Aol employees — the only one I recognize is Sol Lipman — made a video about the recent Aol talent exodus, using ZOMBIES as a metaphor for all the people who’ve decided to leave Aol.

If I understand the video correctly, the zombie attack was apparently sparked by some design changes made to the Huffington Post (rimshot), which turn recent departures Brad Garlinghouseand Kiersten Hollars into zombies, who in turn zombify the rest of Aol’s Palo Alto HQ.”We should have quit when Maser left!” is a reference to Aol VP Mike Maser, who was formerly at Digg.

While the video honestly isn’t that funny, it is sort of endearing, as the employees come to realize that the only way to fend off the zombie attacks (/talent exodus) is with “quality” Aol products like Editions — which literally kill zombies in the movie.* Using the acronym MAMA (Mail Aim Mobile About.me) to fight of the undead, the Aol* survivors proclaim 2012 as the year the company turns around, “Our friends may have been eaten by Zombies, but we’re still going to have a lot of fun.”

Awwwwwwwwww.

* Which is weird, because they’re inadvertently comparing Aol products to a bullet to the head, but I digress.

*Yes, I know it’s officially AOL (not Aol), but I just write it this way to piss off Robin — who for some reason is really stubborn about us spelling it in all UPPERCASE.

Source:http://techcrunch.com/2011/12/30/aol-zombies/

Apple’s Terrific And Tumultuous 2011

It was the best of times, it was the worst of times…
Those words seem to encapsulate Apple’s 2011 perfectly. The year saw the company both became the most valuable company in the world and lose its founder, savior, visionary, and leader.
Earlier, Erick published his roundup of the bigger stories and themes in tech this year. Topping that list is the passing of Steve Jobs, a story so big that it far transcended typical tech news. But even without that sad news, 2011 was all about Apple. There was certainly enough news to constitute its own roundup. So here we go.
January
Though January has historically been a huge month for Apple where key products were unveiled at Macworld, 2011 marked the second year of Apple marching to its own beat.
January marked the first time the company surpassed a $300 billion market cap. The only public company ahead of them in that regard was Exxon. And that wouldn’t last…
On January 6, the Mac App Store officially opened for business, phase three of Apple’s plan to kill off the optical disc. The Mac App Store also offered an early taste of OS X Lion, which would come later in the year.
On January 7, Verizon sent out mysterious invites to an event in New York City. The fact that I was invited said something. Sure enough, Verizon took the stage with then-Apple COO Tim Cook tounveil the Verizon iPhone. Finally.
And of course, January saw the beginning of the iPad 2 rumors…
On January 17, Apple announced that Steve Jobs would be taking another medical leave of absence, and released Jobs’ letter to the company. As with his past medical leaves, Tim Cook would step in to the lead the company day-to-day, but Jobs would retain his CEO title (and remain involved). Sadly, this time, the situation was not temporary.
Apple’s Q1 earnings were the best ever for the company, with $26.7 Billion in revenue, $6 Billion in profit on 7.33 Million iPads and 16.24 Million iPhones sold.
At the end of the month, the App Store hit 10 billion downloads.

February
The month kicked off with controversy after Sony’s eReader app was rejected by Apple. The issuewasn’t that Apple changed their App Store rules, it’s that they started enforcing them (around in-app purchases) which jumpstarted a shitstorm.
Part of the App Store tweaking was due to the fact that Apple was about to launch full-on subscriptions starting with News Corp’s The Daily, which launched on February 2 — incidentally, the same day Google unveiled Android Honeycomb, the first version of their OS built for tablets.
The iPad 2 rumors continued. And rumors of the iPad 3 started! And so did new rumors about an “iPhone nano”. And, of course, the iPhone 5.
Meanwhile, Apple’s stock continued to soar — they became the most valuable tech company by over $100 billion dollars.
When Apple formally launched in-app subscriptions in the middle of the month, the shitstorm hit new highs. It sure looked like all kinds of apps ranging from Dropbox to Pandora were in danger of having to drastically alter their business models to work with Apple.
Work on OS X Lion was wrapping up — and a developer preview hit. Work on a new Final Cut Pro version was also believed to be nearing completion.
Whispers of new MacBook Pros started, potentially with something called “Thunderbolt“. A few days later, they hit.

March
It started out with a bang as Apple held an event with a special guest — Steve Jobs. He wasn’t about to let his medical leave let him miss the iPad 2 unveiling.
One of the cooler new elements of the iPad 2: the Smart Cover.
On March 11, the iPad 2 went on sale in the U.S. and a handful of other countries. A few weeks later, it went on sale in 25 more countries.
On March 23, Apple announced that Bertrand Serlet, the SVP of Mac Software Engineering, was leaving the company. He had worked with Steve Jobs for 22 years. Craig Federighi, the driving force behind OS X Lion, took his place.
Word started to get out that iOS 5 would be pushed to the fall, instead of a summer release. But the good news was that it sounded like Apple’s new cloud service would be launched at WWDC.
Apple set the WWDC dates for early June. But it seemed clear this year would be different, with the fall playing a key role for iOS products instead of the summer.
April
News hit that an official Steve Jobs biography was being written and would be released in 2012. Of course, that plan changed later in the year.
Apple announced the new Final Cut Pro X at NAB with a very attractive new price (thanks in part to the new Mac App Store distribution): $299.
Meanwhile, left for dead, rumors of the white iPhone began to resurface. I even saw one at dinner one night in San Francisco. It became official on April 28.
Apple earnings were a blow-out again with $24.67 billion in revenue on 18.65 million iPhones, 4.69 million iPads, and 3.76 million Macs sold in Q2. Apple’s quarter was so good that they actuallysurpassed Microsoft in terms of profitability, something which hadn’t happened in a couple decades.
There was a flare up over location tracking information found in iOS (and Android phones). But it was largely overblown.

May
Apple kicked off the month by refreshing the iMac product line with better chips, graphics, and cameras.
We started our reports on Apple and Nuance, which would turn out to be important later in the year when Siri was unveiled.
Apple and Google were forced to defend themselves about location privacy in front of the Senate.
A lot of talk started circulating that Apple was finalizing a deal with the record labels for a cloud music service.
The name “iCloud” started gaining a lot of steam — and for good reason. On May 31, Apple actually pre-announced it ahead of WWDC. Weird.
Meanwhile, we started hearing an interesting rumor: there would be Twitter integration in iOS 5.
Talk also started picking up about an upcoming bid for Nortel patents…

June
On June 6, Apple held their WWDC keynote. OS X Lion, iOS 5, and iCloud were the main areas of focus. Among the more notable things: iMessage, Newsstand, and the aforementioned Twitter iOS 5 integration. Oh, and iTunes Match. There was nothing about a Nuancepartnership however, that would come later.
On June 7, Steve Jobs (still on medical leave) went to Cupertino City Hall to pitch Apple’s plan for a massive new headquarters in the city — one that looked like a spaceship.
Amid pressure from multiple sides, Apple quietly backpedaled from their new (and not yet fully implemented) App Store in-app purchase and subscription rules. It was the right move.
Apple’s stock continued its run. By June 13, Apple was worth more than Microsoft, HP, and Dell —combined.
Nokia and Apple settled a patent dispute — after Apple agreed to pay up. Meanwhile, Apple’s patent war with Samsung continued.
On June 21, Apple released new Time Capsules and released Final Cut Pro X into the Mac App Store. Massive backlash started immediately about the latter.
Rumors of an actual Apple Television started popping up again. And with the WWDC no-show, new rumors about the next iPhone(s) started.

July
On July 1, it was revealed that not only had Google lost the Nortel patent bidding, but a familiar foe won them: Apple (along with others like Microsoft).
The App Store hit 15 billion downloads.
Apple destroyed earnings estimates once again in Q3 with record revenues, profits, iPhone (over 20 million), and iPad sales. As a result, Apple shot past $400 a share on the stock market.
On July 20, Apple updated the Mac Mini, the MacBook Air, and their displays (now withThunderbolt power).
Also released: OS X Lion.
By late July, Apple had more cash (and cash equivalents) on its books than the U.S. government.
August
Apple quietly launched the ability stream television shows from their cloud.
Google got really mad about Apple and Microsoft’s patent strategy.
On August 9, Apple pushed past Exxon to become the most valuable (in terms of market cap) public company in the world. For the rest of the year, they would go back and forth.
The launch of Steve Jobs’ biography was pushed up to November of 2011 (up from 2012).
Referencing the success of the iPad, HP shocks the world by saying they’re not only giving up on tablets, but looking to get out of the PC game as well (they would later backtrack on this after a CEO change).
Talk suggests the next iPhone will be a GSM/CDMA dual-mode one. Meanwhile, talk starts to circulate that Sprint will be getting the next iPhone as well (though the stuff about an iPhone 5 exclusive turns out to be nonsense).
On August 24, a shockwave is sent around the Apple universe when Steve Jobs formally steps down as CEO. While he had been on medical leave since January, this was a clear sign that he didn’t think he would ever feel well enough to return fulltime. Jobs asks the Apple Board to appoint Tim Cook as CEO (which they do) and asks to stay on the Board as well (which he does).
September
“iPhone 5″ rumors hit a fever-pitch but not much actually happens in the month leading up to October…

October
Apple holds an event on October 4 to unveil the iPhone 4S.
But the star of the show is Siri, the new iOS 5 feature exclusive to the iPhone 4S. Also new to iOS 5 isFind My Friends.
With the 4S, the iPhone 4 price goes to $99 (with a contract). And the iPhone 3GS goes free (with a contract).
Apple announces that 6 million copies of OS X Lion have been sold, outpacing Snow Leopard. They also announce that iTunes now has over 20 million songs which have been downloaded 16 billion times. Apple also announces that 300 million iPods have been sold in 10 years. Tim Cook also says that 250 million iOS devices have now been sold.
On October 5, just one day after Apple’s iPhone 4S event, Apple announces that Steve Jobs passed away earlier that day. Worldwide, tributes to Jobs begin to appear and this lasts for weeks.
After days of mourning, Apple starts iPhone 4S pre-orders, which top 1 million in just 24 hours.
On October 12, iOS 5 is released.
Two days later, the 4S goes on sale and in the first weekend alone, over 4 million units are sold — double the pace of the iPhone 4.
Apple’s Q4 numbers were a bit of a surprise for many, because for the first time in several years,they actually missed on Wall Street’s expectations.
Apple’s stock plunged as a result of the miss, and Tim Cook did something odd: he went on the record predicting record iPhone and iPad sales in the upcoming quarter (Apple’s holiday quarter).
Following Jobs’ passing, the release date of his biography was moved up again, to October 23.
Leading up to the day, several excerpts from the book were leaked. The most intriguing one revolved around Jobs’ comment about Apple finally “cracking” the television market.
On October 24, Apple quietly updated the MacBook Pro line again (though very subtly). They alsotweaked the Smart Cover colors.
By the end of the month, many iPhone 4S users are experiencing battery issues (Apple begins work on a software update to fix them).

November
On November 8, Adobe announced they’ll be winding down support for Flash on mobile devices. This was long a sore point between Apple and Adobe, to say the least.
Five years after it was released, Apple recalled the first generation iPod nano.
On November 14, iTunes Match officially finally launched — it had been promised by October.
Rumors of a 15-inch MacBook Air (or thin Pro) begin. More rumors of a “Retina” iPad 3 also surface. And the talk of a larger-screen iPhone 5 starts up again.
December
Talk starts to pick up again that Tim Cook is open to the idea of Apple issuing a dividend to shareholders as their cash supply approaches $100 billion.
The patent nonsense continues. Depending on which country you select, Apple or one of their rivals may be banned from importing their devices. But not really since there will be endless appeals.
Apple announced their “iTunes Rewind” apps of the year awards. Instagram wins for the iPhone, Snapseed for the iPad.
Apple announced 100 million downloads from the Mac App Store in less than a year.
In mid-December, it’s reported that Apple bought flash memory company Anobit, for several hundred million.
The iPad 3 unveiling is rumored to be weeks away…
Business as usual despite a crazy year. 2012 should be the most fascinating one yet.

Source:http://techcrunch.com/2011/12/30/apple-2011/

Keeping Up With The Normals

The holidays for most people who read this site involve answering a cornucopia of tech support questions for their relatives. Honestly, I’ve watched friends field the most frustrating 45 minute IT department-level questions during holiday time with the family, which inevitably devolves into more of those types of conversations in between, “Pass the gravy.”
These conversations will only increase in frequency as the average consumer wakes up to smartphones and the app economy. According toFlurry, nearly a quarter of a billion app downloads this year occurred on December 24th and again this Christmas Day, more than 2x any other day thus far, ever.
If you’re building an app or another kind of tech service you better pay attention, as increasingly many of your users will be what investor Chris Dixon and others refer to as “Normals.” Or what I like to call, dumb people. JUST KIDDING.
So who are these “Normals”? Well the Normals are a group of people who don’t check into Foursquare, use Square or upload photos to Instagram, until they do. The Normals are more likely to know what Pinterest is than Quora. The Normals had no idea that ‘Angry Birds’ was a phenomenon when they downloaded it because it was a featured app in the App Store (true story). To Normals the name Michael Arrington rings absolutely no bell.
Sometimes you almost even envy them.

Introducing mom-in-law to Adele. Also trying to explain why Adele album isn't on Spotify. And also, what Spotify is.And sometimes they’re as annoying as all hell. Arguing for the 20th time with your Dad about the superiority of an iPhone versus a Blackberry is not fun — Neither is getting into an email race at the Thanksgiving dinner table, and winning like you knew you would. Okay, maybe that is fun.

So what are you supposed to do if you’re a techie faced with trying understand how a Normal would view a product? Well first of all pay attention: Normals above all care more about problem solving than acquiring the newest fanciest thing. And if you’re designing products for them, you should be painfully aware of that.
As a public service announcement I asked Quora, a product that is still fumbling around in the Normals department, how product designers gather insight into handling a Normal user’s needs versus a techie’s.
Techies are “driven by writing their blog post and voicing their opinions or by staying ahead of the curve,” answered Quora product designer Rebekah Cox, “Normal people don’t have those artificial needs which fuel a drive to discover something new for the purpose of discovering something new. They have actual problems to solve.”
Cox reveals the flaws in the ways that techies adapt their products for Normals with two different examples, one of a sample thought process that leads a techie into thinking they know what a Normal person wants [1] and then, what a Normal actually wants (versus what a techie thinks they want) at [2]:

[1] “There’s so much work involved in managing all my Twitter accounts, there should be a tool to manage that and Facebook and YouTube and my RSS feeds all in one place.”
[2] “My home theater isn’t great, but I’m not sure what I need to make it better. Tom has Blu-ray and is happy with it. Can your site help me with that?”

In the first case [1], the early adopter is extrapolating that a normal person would have the same problem that they do but at a lower frequency, based on the (wrong) assumption that normal people just have less complex versions of the problems held by techies (lots of RSS feeds). In fact normal people just don’t have unmanageable quantities of social accounts and most likely don’t even know what RSS is. All they care about is that their home theatre is up to snuff [2].
“I would advise that you orient your UI around the job to be done — around the problem — and not the person,” says 37Signals product manager Ryan Singer echoing Clayton Christensen. The issue with this argument is that many problems have much narrower use cases than a given product designer could aim  for, for example, Cox’s [1] above.  And hitting the widest use case possible is a sweet spot that is essentially the holy grail of technology — as it basically means traction.
YouTube product manager Hunter Walk holds that the differences between scaling big and scaling small are subtle yet super important especially considering the nuances of user interface design. He uses his experience with Google an example …

“The notion of using certain keywords such as adding ‘weather’  to a location query in order to display a forecast on the results page (eg New York City weather) was something us geeks did early on and many normals learned to do over time.
On the other hand, search operators (such as using an * as a wildcard) are totally geeky and will never cross over to normals who don’t need a command line language for Google. Instead operators are aimed at power users who when they are especially satisfied with a service are more likely to generally recommend it to normals.”

It’s sort of tricky. In order to figure out how to entice Normals to use their products, many technology entrepreneurs have to serve as “aimchair technology anthropologists.”  Normal adoption can mean the difference between success or failure, 10 million downloads versus 100k.
Startups like Wolfram Alpha and Friendfeed have learned hard way that you can’t ignore Normals just because you’re really smart. You can be a tech industry darling like Foursquare, Quora or even Google+ and be completely blindsided by something like Pinterest — which got way more press coverage in mainstream (and female focused) media before it ever really resonated with the tech press. Pinterest has an approachable personality and it’s easy to use. Learn from it guys.
Techies can’t see the forest for the trees, and Normals can only see the forest. The solution may lie in applying that metaphor to a famous Oscar Wilde quote, “We’re all in the forest, but some of us are reaching for the trees.” Or maybe remembering that you once were (and in some ways are still) a Normal, even if you’re now a techie.
Source:http://techcrunch.com/2011/12/31/the-only-normal-people-are-the-ones-you-dont-know/

Rumor: Apple Will Debut Two iPads Next Month, Retina Displays In Tow (Update)

The Apple rumor mill never takes a break, even during the holidays.
In the past months we’ve heard two very specific allegations concerning the iPad — both out of Digitimes — focused on a smaller sized Apple tab at 8.75 inches and a release date of early 2012. As Devin explained so well, the notion of a smaller iPad out of Cupertino is a bit hard to believe. It would mean that Apple is going back on its word that the iPad is the right size.
Today Digitimes backtracks from its previous rumor with a new one: Instead of the 7.85-inch iPad, Apple will supposedly be bringing two new Retina-style iPads to the market to fill in the mid- and high-end market segments, while the current iPad 2 hangs around to take on the Kindle Fire.
Apple’s stuff tends to be a bit pricier than the competition, but Cupertino still likes to round out its categories. Just look at the iPod. Each model, ranging from Classic, to Touch, to Nano, to Shuffle is a very different product, but combined they still cover very different price points.
Digitimes sources claim that the new models will hold true to Apple’s 9.7-inch screen, but with a QXGA resolution (1536×2048) and dual-LED light bars. And if said sources are to be believed, Sharp is now taking the lead on panel supply, with a little help from LG Display and Samsung Electronics.
The report goes on to say that Samsung will continue to supply Apple with its chips, specifically the quad-core A6 this time around, and that Samsung has come on as a supplier of CMOS sensors. Apparently Samsung will be supplying 5-megapixel sensors for the mid-range model, while Sony provides 8-megapixel sensors for the high-end iPad.
Digitimes has also gathered information regarding the new iPad batteries, stating that Simplo Technology and Dynapack International Technology have both taken orders for batteries with a capacity of as high as 14,000 mAh. And if that weren’t enough, Digitimes even claims to know when the new models will be unveiled: January 26, 2012 at the iWorld conference.
Granted, this is quite a hefty amount of information and I’d wager that not all of it is 100 percent spot on (Digitimes has been wrong before… but also right). Still, I think higher-res iPads with better cameras make much more sense out of Cupertino than a smaller tablet just for the sake of following competition. The Kindle Fire is selling great, and Apple doesn’t want even one competing tablet to start draining market share. But Apple has never fought back by copying.
The true assault will be a price drop, and from what we’ve seen happen with the iPhone 4 in recent months it wouldn’t be that surprising to see the current iPad 2 shed a couple hundred bucks from its price tag.
In order to compete with the $200 Fire, it’d have to.
Update: LoopInsight’s Jim Dalrymple, who is certainly one of the more reliable sources for Apple news, has checked with his sources and believes that Apple will not debut a new iPad (or two) at MacWorld or CES this year. As for the supply chain sources and the information they gave… Well, that’s still up for debate.
Source:http://techcrunch.com/2011/12/29/rumor-apple-will-debut-two-ipads-next-month-retina-displays-in-tow/

Despite Attacks, Klout Is Poised To Boost Its Influence

If you even so much as whisper your Klout score within specific circles, you’re likely to be met with a piercing stinkeye. Based in San Francisco with a small pot of funding, there’s something about Klout’s mission — to rank online influence — that ironically draws the ire of many influential people.
A few months ago, TechCrunch’s Alexia Tsotsis kicked things off with a great, provocative post (check out the comments, too) arguing results don’t match up with the offline reality of one’s influence. GigaOM’s Mathew Ingram artfully pointed out Klout is being used by companies for promotions and even in hiring. Marshall Kirkpatrick wrote a short post describing how Klout provides value, helping him sort various Twitter feeds by ranking accounts. There’s also a fascinating Quora thread detailing a host of other sentiments. Whether you’re a fan of the service or not, there’s clearly something polarizing about Klout which generates a range of reactions.
Despite the sentiments, Klout continues to roll with the punches because our online identities are fragmented across different services. These different sites rank their own users, of course, but typically only factor inputs tied down within their own gardens. The main forces, Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, certainly weight their own users’ activity for various reasons, but Klout has built one single, unified score based on its own independent algorithm across these services.
Of course, this “PeopleRank” subjects the company to scorn, yet immunizes them against any changing winds within the different social services people use. A few months ago, Klout announcedan algorithm adjustment that seemed to lower many Klout scores, which generated even more suspect reactions. In the the follow-up to that announcement, Klout hinted that integrating Quora was on their product roadmap, but Quora hasn’t been shy about wanting to rank people, too, so if Klout is able to pull this off, it would be a significant signal toward their own growing clout.
I see no problem with Klout’s aggressive expansion. In fact, in the absence of any viable alternative, it seems to work, more or less. Even PR giant Edelman wants a piece of the space, as does new competitor Kred, but Klout has a great head start. While critics bang the drum for more transparency around the algorithm or hold their nose toward the idea of comparing their rank with others, Klout has been able to manufacture an incredibly simple, strong brand in a relatively short period of time. Larger companies and brands have taken notice, running campaigns with Klout and helping the small startup actually earn money and test revenue models, so much so that they have already hired an experienced Chief Revenue Officer.
Klout is a relatively young company. It is not perfect. It is going to make mistakes, and will continue to rub some people the wrong way. In the future, the company may elect to be more transparent about their algorithm, or expand their “perks” offering, or simply soften their onboarding pop-ups. Just as numerous brands are testing the effectiveness of routing messages through the service, Klout itself is experimenting with a range of ways to make this better for users and, in the process, attract more brands. This kind of ad-targeting is already in full-swing on many other sites—it’s just that it’s more overt on Klout.
All of this tends to bend back to semantics. “Clout” is a powerful word, which has various definitions, and in this context, we think of “having pull” or “influence.” With that connotation comes the impression of power, and that triggers different reactions. It’s worth remembering that Klout only claims to measure one’s online influence, and I tend to think that much of the backlash against the company is rooted in the misconception that one’s Klout score maps to the offline world. It’s easy to grandstand and take a publicly moral stance against what Klout is doing, but as it is with entrepreneurship and certainly the web, there are no rules. Companies and users are making the rules as they go, and that’s just the way it should be.
On the eve of  2012, I wouldn’t be surprised to see Klout move into scoring so-called “expert pundits” in high-value content verticals such as sports, politics, and even technology reporting, as well as partnering with startups themselves to help better tune their initial social-proof marketing efforts. They may also begin to experiment with ad campaigns outside U.S. borders, and could even be an influential social media player as attention focuses around the upcoming American presidential election.
Finally, I believe there’s something about the founder Joe Fernandez and team that positions them for success and will help them weather these current and future storms, embodied in the story of how their domain was obtained in the first place (Fernandez tracked down the previous owner of the domain via Twitter, showed up at a restaurant, and plunked down $5,000 in cash on the table). In fact, I’d argue Klout will get bigger and grow even more influential itself in 2012. With all the “newsfeeds” out there driving the information we consume, and as that content surfaces to mainstream channels, every feed will need some mechanism for surfacing consistently relevant and trustworthy content. If Klout can figure out a way to keep making money via brands and help people find the most relevant signals, it will not only grow, but secure its place within the fiber of the social web.
Source:http://techcrunch.com/2011/12/29/klout-attacks-influence/

The Most Important Gadgets Of 2012

Rather than looking back (which I’m sure we will), I thought it would be nice to look forward to 2012 and beyond and note some of the gadgets that will change the world in the next few years. I’ve included mobile, gaming, and computing gadgets but I think 2012 will also be the year of Windows Phone, 3D printing, and fitness technology that actually makes a difference.
I’m not expecting much in the way of massive change this next year, just more of the same, but better. Here are our picks for the best of 2012.

Autom and Fitbit – Fewer things sell more products than weight-loss claims. Luckily, thanks to some new devices designed to help us get fitter, those claims are no longer snake oil. Take a look atAutom and FitBit (and the other devices competing in the cyberhealth space). These devices promise what geeks crave – stats – and also promise better health and decreased body mass. It’s a desk-jockey trifecta.
While many fitness devices won’t make it past 2013, I think weight-loss systems like Autom and pedometers like FitBit are the future of fitness. You can’t change what you can’t measure, and these devices let you measure just about everything.

Nokia Lumia 710 – A year ago I would have written Nokia off as a dead company. They were rudderless, without product, and perceived, at best, a commodity feature-phone player in a very competitive smartphone world.
With the arrival of cheap Windows Phones, however, Nokia is looking to take back the low end and win the business of folks who are either too busy, too annoyed, or too cash-strapped to invest in iOS or, increasingly, the more powerful Android flagships. To the anti-Microsoft contingent, Windows Phone is too little too late. In reality, we’re talking about Microsoft: when have they ever been on time.
There are plenty of folks out there without smartphones and no one ever got fired for picking something from Redmond for their IT fleet. Sure, the $50 Lumia 710 requires a two year contract with rebat and all that rigamarole, but the key number isn’t “2-year contract:” it’s $50.
Makerbot – This small, Brooklyn-based company isn’t very big but it’s very powerful. The company just raised $10 million and is working on better ways to get 3D printing to the masses. While not many of us – myself included – can see the value in a 3D printer in the home, I see 3D printing as a technology that just hasn’t caught up with our imagination. A decade ago a laser printer was a distant dream machine that cost thousands of dollars and seemed out of reach for many consumers. Now you can get a color model for a few hundred and every tech-savvy household has at least one color inkjet that can produce better photos than almost any photo lab.
3D printing is in the same boat: the machines are prohibitively expensive and complex, but with a few UI and marketing twists, I foresee a day when the kids print out model car parts the way they print out book reports.
Ultrabooks – Thinking back on the great netbook debacle of a few years ago: the rise in popularity, the fall in pricing, and their eventual death, it’s not difficult to imagine the ultrabook is phase two of the hardware-maker’s lemming rush. However, ultrabooks are a necessary addition to the laptop ecosystem and should be taken seriously. I could definitely see a large buyer picking up a few thousand ultrabooks for employees rather than a few thousand fat-and-heavies from Dell and Lenovo. It makes sense in terms of power, price, and portability.

Kindle Fire – Love it or hate it, the Kindle Fire is Amazon’s first salvo against the iTunes juggernaut. Amazon wants to sell you stuff. They don’t want to impress you with a tablet that runs Ice Cream Sandwich and can compute SETI@Home strings. The device is Amazon incarnate, an all singing, all dancing tablet for readers that will become, for many, the primary way to consume streaming video.
I’m not suggesting the Kindle Fire is great, but future Fires will be on the 2012 Christmas lists for many casual tablet users.

PSP Vita – I put the Vita here not because it will be particularly successful (handheld gaming is a hard business and phone gaming is making it even harder), but because it is the first of the next gen consoles to roll, inexorably, towards our living room. The Vita will ship in 2012, followed by E3 announcements by all the majors about updated hardware (I’m betting on a new Xbox announcement this year, but I doubt it will be released until 2014). The Wii U is next on the upgrade list while Microsoft and Sony are still trying to figure out what a next gen console is supposed to do and what it’s supposed to look like.

Source:http://techcrunch.com/2011/12/29/2012-predictions/

Is Verizon Joking? Paying Online/By Phone Will Soon Cost You An Extra $2

Yesterday Droid-Life obtained a leaked internal document from Verizon that had a surprisingly annoying little tidbit within: “Beginning 1/15/12, there is a $2 ‘convenience fee’ for making a credit or debit card bill payment online or via call-in channels.”
Sometimes leaks are faked or forged, and I hoped against hope that this particular leak was a load of malarkey. But alas, Phonescoop has apparently received confirmation via email that Verizon will in fact impose this “convenience fee” starting January 15.
Happy New Year, everyone.
Conveniently enough, Verizon has laid out a few ways for you to avoid such a convenience.
I realize I’m harping on it, but the only joke bigger than this $2 fee is the fact that they’re calling it a “convenience fee.” Convenient to whom (other than Verizon, of course)? You’d think that processing online payments would actually be more convenient for Big Red than processing paper payments, and it doesn’t necessarily encourage environmental friendliness, either.
Either way, you won’t have to pay the extra $2 if you choose to send in an electronic check through My Verizon Online, My Verizon Mobile or via telephone. Using Autopay will also rid you of this charge if you’re using credit/debit/ATM cards or electronic checks. If you pay through customer home-banking services, pay in-store at the kiosk, or use a Verizon Wireless gift card or device rebate card to pay a bill in-store, online or by telephone, the fee will also be waived.
Obviously, you can always pay with a standard paper check mailed directly to Verizon Wireless along with your bill (the same way people paid their bills in the olden days), but some of us live in the 21st century.
Verizon customers who don’t check the blogs or news as much as you fine people will be notified at the time of payment (both online and by phone) that an extra $2 is being charged.

Source:http://techcrunch.com/2011/12/29/is-verizon-joking-paying-onlineby-phone-will-soon-cost-you-an-extra-2/

Keen On…. Kurt Andersen: Why 2011 Has Only Just Begun (TCTV)

While 2011 is almost over, the year has only really just begun in terms of determining its historical significance. 2011 wasn’t, of course, just another year. Like 1989, 1968, 1917 and 1848, 2011 was a revolutionary year, one that – from Cairo to Athens to Tunis to Wall Street to Moscow – may have changed the world forever. And to mark the historic nature of 2011, Time magazine just made The Protestor its person of the year.
According to Kurt Andersen, who wrote Time‘s cover story for its Protestor edition, rebellion was the “defining political trope of 2011″ – thereby making it a “great year in world history”. And, as Andersen told me over Skype, this “contagion” wouldn’t have happened without social networks like Facebook and Twitter which, he insists, were “key” to the 2011 revolutions. The Internet, Andersen thus explained, has emerged as the alternative to the free press in countries like Egypt, Russia and Tunisia; without it, he insists, there would have been no revolutions anywhere in 2011.
This is the second of a two part interview with Andersen. Yesterday, he told me why nothing (outside technology) has changed much in the last twenty years.
Source:http://techcrunch.com/2011/12/29/keen-on-kurt-andersen-why-2011-has-only-just-begun/

Tampa’s TechStars Network Member Gazelle Lab Opens 2nd Location In Orlando

Gazelle Lab, the brand-new Tampa Bay-based TechStars Network member which just held its first Demo Day in November, is expanding its operations. The accelerator has just announced the opening of second location in Orlando, Florida, where it will be working with local academic institution Rollins College.
The Orlando team will be led by founder Richard Licursi, CEO of Florida’s Spectrum Bridge, Inc. You may remember hearing about that company as being the first to win the FCC’s approval to manage a database in the newly-opened “white space” spectrum. Licursi will be responsible for leading the fundraising for the Orlando crew, along with three other founders and support from the original St. Petersburg team.
In addition to Lucursi, Orlando’s Gazelle Lab founders include Allen Kupetz, Executive-in-Residence, Crummer Graduate School, Rollins College; Pete McAlindon, Ph.D., CEO of Blue Orb, Inc.; andPat McNair, CPA, Interim CFO, at RowShamBow.
This is only the second TechStars member to open an additional location. TechStars proper, of course, has multiple locations across the U.S. while network member Startup Bootcamp is live in a few cities in Europe.
As to why there’s a need for more locations so early into the group’s founding, Gazelle Lab founder Daniel James Scott explains that the team feels that the region deserves a statewide effort.
“One of the biggest lessons we had during the first cadre of Gazelle Lab is that if we are going to accomplish our missions of building community and a true seed-stage funding pipeline, these would have to start happening at the state level,” he says.
Scott says there’s been demand for even more Gazelle Lab-branded programs across the state, but Orlando had the right mix of founders, investors and partners that Gazelle could plug its support, mentors and application pipeline into. With this announcement, the group is hoping to tie together all of central Florida into a cohesive early-stage funding scene, while tapping into the talent from area universities like Rollins, USF, and others.
Florida entrepreneurs are invited to apply to program via the Gazelle Lab website. The group is also supporting the new acelerato.rs application system, which lets you send in your application to multiple accelerator programs at once.
Source:http://techcrunch.com/2011/12/29/tampas-techstars-network-member-gazelle-lab-opens-2nd-location-in-orlando/

LTE-Capable Windows Phones Should Ship In The First Half Of 2012

There are a lot of naysayers out there when it comes to the Windows Phone platform, but asRobin pointed out a couple of days ago many haven’t really given the OS a fighting chance. Some of it has to do with the fact that people often equate cost with quality, and most Windows phones are (at the moment) rather inexpensive.
But Redmond apparently has plans to get some higher-end devices on the market next year.
According to WinSupersite’s Paul Thurrott(who has yet to formally reveal his sources, but promises the news is legit), Microsoft and its partners will release at least three new LTE-capable Windows phones in the first half of 2012.
The Nokia Ace, HTC Radiant, and Samsung Mendel will all run on AT&T’s 4G LTE network during the first half of next year, the Ace specifically hitting shelves on March 18. Thurrott also claims that the Nokia Lumia 710 (which does not run on any 4G LTE network) will head to Verizon in April of 2012, three months after it hits T-Mo shelves in January.
Past that, we know very little about the new LTE Windows phones. Will they run Mango? Tango?WMPoweruser’s leaked road map of what is supposed to be Microsoft’s update plans leads us to believe that Apollo won’t make its way onto the market until late 2012, but it’s unclear whether or not the incremental Tango update will be included on this next batch of phones.
Either way, it’s good to see Windows Phone catching up to Android when it comes to LTE support. And if things go as we expect them to, iOS may be the last to join the 4G LTE party.
Source:http://techcrunch.com/2011/12/29/lte-capable-windows-phones-should-ship-in-the-first-half-of-2012/

Tubalr Is Like Having Your Own Personal 80′s MTV

Say what you will about YouTube’s affinity for cats or their audience’s collective inability to write insightful comments, but there’s one thing that YouTube really just doesn’t get enough credit for: saving the music video. As MTV losts its original love in favor of Nick Cannon Presents: Whacky Garbage Nonsense and re-runs of America’s Next Quickly Forgotten Reality Show Person, music videos went without a proper home for nearly a decade. Then came YouTube.
The only bad part about watching music videos on YouTube? Everything else on YouTube. The soul-crushing comments; the gawdy artist backgrounds; the endless recommendations. That’s where Tubalr comes in. It’s YouTube’s glorious music video collection, minus all of that darn YouTube.
Looking past the fact that Tubalr has a downright ridiculous name (is that supposed to be tubular? Tuba Lore? Two-baller? No idea), it’s quite great. You punch in an artist name, then pick either “only” (to play only that artist’s videos) or “similar” (to play videos from similar artists.) It queues up a big playlist, and you can go about your business as the tunes play on. Think Pandora’s concept, mashed up with Youtube’s music video archive.
The search algorithm still needs a bit of tuning (a search for “Reel Big Fish” built a playlist of nineteen music videos… and one clip called “Jessica the Hippo”, which was three minutes of an older gentleman talking to a hippo at a zoo.) but this is definitely something I expect to have running on one of my monitors throughout the day. Check it out here.

Source:http://techcrunch.com/2011/12/29/tubalr-is-like-having-your-own-personal-80s-mtv/

Good Luck Occupiers, But Here’s Why “Facebook For Protesters” Won’t Work

Members of the Occupy movement are building a “Facebook for protesters” called The Global Square, Wired reported yesterday. Less than a traditional social network, it’s an international collaboration network. While a valiant effort, I see 3 big problems with the project’s concept that will limit its success and impact.
The Global Square is designed to allow Occupy Wall Street, local Occupy movements, and other protesters to coordinate and share knowledge across different content management systems. Some of the reasons for starting the project that its developers told Wired include:

1. Connecting and mobilizing protest movements
2. Creating an open-source alternative to Facebook and other corporate social networks
3. Protesters don’t trust Facebook to keep their data and messages private from authorities

I agree, The Global Square is something Occupy and other protesters need. To scale Occupy’s flat organizational structure, it will require a way for geographically dispersed groups to interact without using representatives. I believe in Occupy’s goal of widespread, grassroots institutional change, and The Global Square will help. However, here’s why it might not work as well as planned:

1. The Global Square Will Be An Echo Chamber

Coordinating different groups is great, but then what? A major distribution mechanism for the movement’s message has been the corporate social networks. That’s because there the message can reach an uninitiated mass audience and grow the movement’s ranks. In contrast, a dedicated protest could devolve into an echo chamber of the converted preaching to the converted
By organizing via these mainstream networks instead of on a dedicated protest network, there would be no loss of momentum from planning to execution. It would also make it significantly easier to onboard new members. If The Global Square and the Occupy movement at large is going to succeed, it will at least need a substantial presence on Facebook and Twitter. It might be better to build there too.

2. There’s Already Diaspora

Pent up discontent with Facebook and Twitter has in part been relieved through Diaspora and other existing open source social networks. Diaspora offers a great deal of flexibility in how individual, decentralized “pods” function. Working within Diaspora rather than parallel to it could be more efficient. A “Global Square pod” could also draw participation from those already familiar with Diaspora — a demographic that likely has a lot of overlap with protesters.

3. Still Subject To Subpoena

Unless data was housed in international waters, The Global Square’s data and messages would still be subject to subpoena by the government of wherever it was hosted. If located in the US where its developers reside, The Global Square could make it more difficult for law enforcement to request data than Facebook, or even Twitter which has historically been less cooperative with authorities. Still, its creators could be punished if they don’t comply with direct court orders for data.
With all the corruption and lack of transparency in today’s governments, changing the system is a noble goal. There are definitely advantages to developing a new, dedicated tool for this purpose. To accomplish its end goal, though, The Global Square will need to harness world’s frustration as efficiently as possible. An isolated network may raise too high a barrier to participation.
Image Credits: #OccupyFacebo0k, fffound

Source:http://techcrunch.com/2011/12/29/occupy-facebook/

How to Survive Your First Year As An Entrepreneur

I loved talking to the skankiest prostitutes at three in the morning with a camera crew around me, fires burning in the street, sad, abused people clinging to scraps of life for their pleasures, bailed out prisoners and the drug dealers waiting for them to be released, homeless addicts with nowhere to go and they only weren’t freaks if you saw them at three in the morning .
In short,  I loved my job.
Entrepreneurship ruined it. I’m not like how Mark Zuckerberg describes himself: “a builder”. My guess is, I’m not like most of the smart people who read this blog who go out there and build things to improve the lives of others. And yet, I kept doing it to myself over and over again. Once you enter the world of “eat what you kill” you can’t go back to being spoon-fed by the pencil factory anymore. Sadly. I write about my first job here (and the prostitutes).
I had a regular job at HBO. My title: Junior Programmer Analyst in the IT department. I told HBO, “you do original TV programming so why not do original web programming.” And magically, from 1996-98, they let me do whatever I wanted to do at three in the morning and then put it on their website.  My original job was to do some Unix/ Oracle thing that I was totally unqualified for and didn’t know how to do. So I figured out a more fun idea for myself and persuaded them to let me do it.

(Rockefeller. The opposite of me)

Someone in the marketing department at HBO told me, “You CAN’T DO THAT.” But, as the readers of this blog already know, that’s the call to action to anyone who is going to do anything. For John D. Rockefeller it was to roll up all the oil companies in America. Nobody thought he could do it. For Andrew Carnegie, it was to buy all of the steel companies in America. For Larry Page, it was to build the 100th search engine without any ideas about a business model. They became billionaires. For James Altucher, it was to interview all of the prostitutes at three in the morning in NYC for almost no money. We each have the built-in predilections given to us by genes, upbringing, and whatever black magic you call god.
Then other entertainment companies started asking me to do the same thing for them. “Can you make our web presence entertaining and fun?” We want fun, they all said. So I jumped ship. Entered the world of the wild. Suddenly I was an “entrepreneur”. I didn’t even know what that meant. I got to the office. I had nobody to call. And nobody would return my calls anymore. I was no longer at HBO.  I would cry every day. I wasn’t a natural businessman. But I tried to learn from the 5,000 or so mistakes I made that first year.
All I’m saying is, thank god you first-timers have me to now tell you exactly what you should do in yourfirst year of being an entrepreneur. Do everything I say below or you’ll probably fail. I’m dead serious.
-          Don’t hire anyone. Only hire people when you are absolutely desperate for more hands. And then start with freelancers. So you can fire them right away. When people raise money from VCs I notice the first thing  they do is hire people. After my first company, which was profitable from day one and never raised a dollar,  I started a second company where I raised $30 million from VCs and then hired $30 million worth of people, was fired as CEO and from the board, they then raised another $50 million or so and sold a year or so ago for about $1.
-          Keep the cash. If VCs put money in your business then no matter what they say, keep cash in the bank. Don’t act like a big company all of a sudden. Do you really need your lawyer at $400 an hour to take notes at a board meeting? Do you really need a board meeting? You don’t need a secretary until you have at least five, paying, profitable customers, if ever. You don’t need a head of sales or marketing your first year. You are the head of sales and marketing. You don’t need any VPs. You’re all VPs. You just started!
-          Get a customer. In order, here is the easiest cash you can get for your business: Customers, borrow against receivables, borrow against your house, friends and family, angels, venture capitalists, the public. Note that the VCs are near the end. Maybe you never need them. Why does everyone chase big-time VCs all the time? Do you really need $10 million in the bank. You just started! I shoud’ve made this point number one. Don’t even start your business unless you have a customer.
-          Get a customer, part II. Give equity if you have to. Sell your first baby (or take mine). Do whatever it takes to get one paying customer. If you are a content site: get a sponsor. If you are a product or a service, get a customer. If you can’t get a customer then that means you have a shitty product or you’re not passionate enough about it. Go back to the drawing board. Take an extra $5,000 and make some new features. Note: I said “$5,000”. Not “$10 million”.
-          Get a customer, part III – I mentioned this last week. Say “yes” to everything. EVERYTHING. If they need surgery performed on them, you’ll do it. If they need a database updated and your company makes tennis balls then say, “no problem, I have a guy for that. He was the database expert of Bangalore. And now he makes tennis balls for us. I’ll send him over Saturday morning to fix your database. And he’ll bring some pastries.”
-          Corollary to the above: get the potential customer to say “yes”. Even if you have to do stuff for free. Just get them to yes. They can’t say no, for instance, if you say, “we can blow up your enemy for free.”
-          Over-promise and over deliver for every customer. But only the first time. Don’t kill yourself for everyone all the time. You need sleep!
-          If a client says, “I’d rather have this conversation in our offices,” then listen to me: DO NOT EVER go to their office. Don’t go there ever again.
-          Most important: Stay Lucky.  If you don’t stay healthy: physically, emotionally, mentally, spiritually, in your first year, its a guaranteed failure. I’m an expert on failure. Not having the four legs mentioned above means the chair you are sitting on is going to break and you are going to fall.
-          If someone says, “I’m taking a big chance by hiring you”, get paid as quickly as possible. Get paid up front. You’re never going to do business with that person again. If his version of “chance” was hiring you then that’s it. He’s back to the pencil factory for his next vendor (no insult to pencil factory workers.)
-          Every Friday, pay for a masseuse to come in for all of your employees. This assumes you have an office. Ideally, you have no office. But if you do, and employees are there, then get a masseuse. Make: “thank god it’s Friday” mean to your employees: “I’m so glad I’m going into the office today.” I had 50 or so employees at my first business when we got sold. Massages for everyone except me on Fridays (I don’t like anyone to touch me).

-          I’m horrible at followup. But you have to do it. If you have a potential client, move it from the phone to the meeting, to dinner as quickly as possible. Dinner seals the deal. Pick up the tab. Ask about their love lives. If they are lonely, hook them up with your best single friend of the appropriate gender and sexual preference.
-          Once they are a client, make them a partner. There’s three ways to do that:

• Always hold out the bait that they can eventually make the jump from their crappy job at the pencil factory to the cool VP of Marketing position eventually opening up at your company (no offense to pencil factories).
• Ask for advice. Ask them what else do they need that you can help them with, for free if you have to (over promise and over deliver the first time).
• Ask them if they know anyone else who might need your services.

The best new customers are your old customers. The second best new customers are your old customers’ friends.
-          In all of your spare time, do favors for your clients. Hire their mentally-challenged nephews. Contribute to their charities. Volunteer where they volunteer. Give double everyone else when they run in one of those stupid marathons for cancer. I say “stupid” because why can’t the cancer thing just ask for the money without forcing people to run for 26 miles. Your entire free moments of the first year of being an entrepreneur should be spent thinking of favors to do for your clients. Use the techniques of “Super connecting” to build up your clients’ networks. The bigger their networks, the more valuable yours becomes. Don’t horde your network or your favors.
-          Fire immediately any employee with a negative attitude. Employees start to smoke in the stairwell and talk about you. So negative attitudes spread like a cancer. The only way to get rid of advanced cancer is radical chemotherapy to burn off the bad cells. Fire all negative employees immediately. No second chances. You won’t regret it. This doesn’t mean keep only yes-men. But the no-people have to work  with you, not against you. If they start grumbling in anger, then they are fired.
-          If someone wants to be your head of sales, only hire them if they are immediately bringing in enough revenues and profits to cover their salary. Everyone else is a waste of time.

• Corollary: if someone makes an intro for you and it doesn’t work out (i.e. no customer results out of it) then never listen to them again. They gave their best shot and it didn’t work. So their second best shot won’t work either. And once you are on their third best shot then you’re probably an idiot.

-          Reseller agreements are for suckers. Companies have a hard enough time selling their own products. Nobody really gives a shit about your products or services. Maybe in year two. But in year one, if someone wants to resell you then say, “sure, give me some phone numbers to call right now.” Then refer to the corollary above.
-          Steal your competitors’ customers from them. Remember, they over-promised and over-delivered the first time. Then they began to disappoint (or perform like everyone else). Call up the decision maker and offer to do a little project for a little bit of money and totally over-deliver. You’ll be first on the speed dial when your competitor eventually disappoints. Which they will. Nobody can make the best purple tennis ball forever. Remember the easiest new customer is…err… your old customers! And then their friends. And then…your competitors’ customers.
-          Finally, don’t make any of these nine mistakes. By the way, I plagiarized the post that link goes to. But you’ll never find where I plagiarized it from. Just don’t make those nine mistakes in your first year or you will fail. Free PDF of my latest book if you can guess where I take the 9 mistakes from.
Then, on the first day of your second year, if you follow the above, you’ll have customers, cash flows, a network of contacts, new friends who will kill for you, and your entire personality will be different. For the worse. So go back, try to repeat all of the above, and stay healthy. In order to stay sane while you get rich. By the way, you still might fail on that first business. But now it’s too late for you. You’re never going back to the pencil factory. You’re an animal, you hunt in the wild, you dig your sharp teeth into flesh and enjoy it, and at the top of the mountain you roar like a lion and everyone cowers in fear.

Source:http://techcrunch.com/2011/12/29/how-to-survive-your-first-year-as-an-entrepreneur/