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iPhone 4: Consumer Reports Needs To Get It Together
Sometimes I want to buy something like a blender or a car or a washing machine. And sometimes my wonderful and loving mother ( who’s birthday is coming up) finds out because I accidentally tell her, or my dad does, or she uses that mom ESP thing that she used to find out I was hiding beer in my closet in high school. Anyway, she finds out. And then I can’t buy the one I want to buy, the shiny one on Amazon, because some issue of Consumer Reports said that the better one is the boring unshiny one and I need to be more responsible and stop wasting money on stupid stuff. And so a chart of red and black dots gets to decide for me. Because one thing I’ve learned in life is to never make mom unhappy. She’s upset enough that her son turned out to be a blogger, whatever that is. But the thing is, that trust that my mom gives to Consumer Reports was hard earned over decades of obsessive use. She trusts Consumer Reports. And if I read it I might trust it too. If they rated stuff on shininess I’d definitely subscribe. But suddenly Consumer Reports is crazy for the link bait. This iPhone 4 antenna problem has them going absolutely batshit crazy and, and nearly every day they’re firing off a new set of recommendations, or demands, that conflict with the old recommendations and demands. I would like to say this is just process journalism and applaud it. But they actually seem completely schizophrenic . It’s not a process, it’s chaos theory. The best parts are the constant updates to all the old articles where they try to justify all of their conflicting justifications simultaneously. July 2 : “iPhone 4′s supposed signal woes aren’t unique, and may not be serious” July 3 : “iPhone 4 signal debate rages; we experience signal loss in some calls” July 12 : “Consumer Reports can’t recommend the iPhone 4,” adding “ Cover the antenna gap with a piece of duct tape or another thick, non-conductive material. It may not be pretty, but it works.” July 13 : “Why Apple—and not its customers—should fix the iPhone 4″ (what happened to the duct tape?) July 14 : Forget the duct tape! “Apple’s Bumper case alleviates the iPhone 4 signal-loss problem” People who subscribe to Consumer Reports don’t want to read about using duct tape to fix their stuff. They aren’t early adopters and they do want to be given a clear buy rating. They don’t need breathless up to the minute updates on what sticky non-conductive material will be best suited to make a broken phone work. My poor mother must be so confused right now. So I’ll just tell her what she needs to know: Don’t buy an iPhone 4 until this problem is fixed . And then still don’t buy one because AT&T is awful. Buy an Android instead. CrunchBase Information Apple iPhone 4 Information provided by CrunchBase
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iPhone 4: Consumer Reports Needs To Get It Together
How I Think The iPhone 4 Antenna Press Conference Is Going To Play Out
Perhaps you heard, Apple is having a little press conference on Friday . The reason? Officially, it’s about the iPhone 4. That’s all they’ll say. But everyone knows the slightly more detailed reason: the iPhone 4′s antenna . The only details Apple is giving out about the event is that it’s going to take place on their campus on Friday morning at 10 AM PT. But talking to some other people who got calls from Apple as well about the event may hold some clues as to what we can expect. First and foremost, the whole thing is bizarre. Apple has announced events with very little notification before, but never this little notification. The event is Friday morning and they notified people on Wednesday evening (or night for those people on the east coast). This essentially gives people one day notice. And they’re calling people across the U.S. about it, and asking if they can make it. For some, this means last-minute cross country flights. Obviously, Apple isn’t going to be paying for those, so it’s not clear how many people from outside the Bay Area are going to attend. And many are unsure if they should attend because Apple is being so vague about what they’ll be talking about. But you have to imagine if it’s a last-second press conference, it has to be pretty major, right? Not necessarily. My sense is that the main idea behind this event is to get a bunch of big publications and other key Apple influencers into a room to go over the iPhone 4 antenna issue once and for all. I have little doubt that Apple CEO Steve Jobs himself will be leading this discussion, with other Apple executives talking as well. I also suspect we may see some antenna and wireless industry experts to offer their insights as well. The purpose of such a gathering would be to cut off the backlash against the iPhone 4 at the knees. The Consumer Reports flip-flop would seem to be the major catalyst here. And regardless of what you think of Consumer Reports, Apple knows that it is a brand many average consumers trust. In fact, Apple has had no problem citing it before when they rate the iPhone favorably (incidentally, the iPhone 4 is Consumer Reports’ highest-rated smartphone , despite the non-recommendation). Still, the Consumer Reports story is just one thing. More troubling to Apple has to be the cascade effect it has had on the media. CNN is talking about it, MSNBC is talking about it , local news is talking about it — even David Letterman is talking about it . The situation has gotten out of control in a way the tightly-controlled Apple cannot find comfortable at all. So that’s what I believe this event is about. A way to pivot the message back to what Apple perceives to be the facts. Apple will undoubtedly acknowledge that holding the iPhone 4 does affect the signal . But they’ll note once again that this is true of all cellphones. And perhaps some experts will chime in to show some results to prove this to be the case. They’ll also undoubtedly point out how the iPhone 4 actually has the best antenna Apple has ever produced. They’ll probably have results to back this up as well. The focus will be on the facts that Apple has studies to prove. And the idea behind all of this is to drill it into our heads that the antenna issue is being blown out of proportion . That it’s an easy headline about a hot product. And Apple’s tactic may just work. Because it’s a lot harder to blindly write about one side of a topic when the other side has very directly addressed and refuted the issues with you. Apple will also likely talk about the software fix that is currently testing (iOS 4.1) which they say will help the issue as well. Our early tests show iOS 4.1 doesn’t fix the antenna issue at all (it is, after all, a hardware issue). But it does alter the bar indicators to make them more accurately reflect your actual signal, which is what Apple said it would do. Earlier tonight, a MacRumors forum poster laid out a similar scenario about how this event may play out. The difference is that he believes Apple will give out $50 gift cards that iPhone 4 purchasers can use to buy iPhone bumpers (cases) if they wish. I’m not sure how likely that is. But I wouldn’t be surprised if Apple does announce a way to specifically give away these bumpers (which are normally $29) to people who buy (or have bought) the iPhone 4. Another thing the forum post didn’t really hit on was the importance of who is invited to this event. As I said, Apple seems to be focusing on key influencers in the tech media. My belief is that Apple is hoping that by aiming at the top, the message will trickle down and overwhelm the Consumer Reports fall-out. Again, whether you agree with it or not, it seems like a pretty good strategy. Of course, all of that is just speculation. With this little amount of time before the event, it’s unlikely that anything will leak out before it happens. But there is always the possibility of one giant curveball. While I still find it hard to believe that Apple is thinking about an iPhone 4 recall at this point, the possibility is interesting for this Friday event. After all, it makes more sense to issue a recall in a controlled manner (where journalists can digest the news and ask questions), rather than to issue a statement about it and have everyone scream bloody murder. Again, I don’t think that is going to happen, but it’s not entirely out of the realm of possibility if say, Apple is willing to acknowledge that there are at least some defective iPhone 4 antennas. The thing that’s a bit curious about this press conference is that Apple has already set a precedent by issuing a statement about the antenna issue on July 2. If they’re now doing a full press conference, surely their announcement must be more significant, right? But again, that statement was before Consumer Reports changed its mind and decided you shouldn’t buy the iPhone 4 due to the antenna issue. And that report has led us to where we are now. To combat that, Apple may feel the time is right to pull out their not-so-secret weapon: Steve Jobs. On a stage. Talking . [photo: flickr/ acaben ] CrunchBase Information Apple iPhone 4 Information provided by CrunchBase
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How I Think The iPhone 4 Antenna Press Conference Is Going To Play Out
France Launches Multi-Lingual Tourist Website. It Goes Down And Stays Down.
Far be it from me to criticize the French . But yesterday France launched France.fr with a middling amount of press attention. But the site went down almost immediately after launching. This morning we gave it a pass, but tonight it’s still down. And we’re not sure anyone is working very hard to get it back up – it is just an information website, after all. From The Connexion on the launch: A NEW official website providing information about France in English has been launched by the French government. France.fr went live this morning to coincide with the fête nationale and is available in French, English, German, Italian and Spanish. The site aims to promote the country to tourists but also to provide residents with practical information about all elements of life in France – including studying, working, setting up a business and day-to-day living. The prime minister’s office, which is managing the new online project, said the site would grow in the coming months and it will contain some 12,000 links to other online resources including Météo France and tourist offices. And France’s senior government official overseeing the Internet, Nathalie Kosciusko-Morizet , even took the time to tweet “Lancement aujourd’hui du portail officiel de la France dans le monde” (“Today’s launch of official website of France in the world” ). A French friend says of the site (when it was live) “It just does not work, full of bugs, and the english translation is hilariously bad.” He won’t let me attribute his quote though, saying he’d like to remain in good standing with the French community. For now France.fr has a landing page saying the site is unavailable in a variety of languages. In French it goes into more detail, noting that the site is a victim of its own success. There’s the joke about how the only people France can beat at anything are the French themselves, usually noting the French Revolution. But I won’t repeat that here. Instead I’ll just say – Vive la France!
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France Launches Multi-Lingual Tourist Website. It Goes Down And Stays Down.
Apple Calls A Special Press Conference For Friday, Antenna Issue Likely The Subject
Word is breaking that Apple is calling a special press conference on this coming Friday to talk about the iPhone 4. Yes, you can probably guess what this is about. Apple blog The Loop has the (basically non-existent) details right now — that it will be in California on Friday morning and about iPhone 4. A small group of press are reportedly getting the invites right now. Update : We just got the call, we’ll be there at 10 AM PT on Friday to cover it live. The big question that everyone must be wondering is if Apple will announce a recall of the iPhone 4 based on the antenna problems — which are very real . We still believe that’s pretty unlikely. That said, it’s very, very, very rare (in fact, I don’t think it has ever happened) that Apple would call a special press conference at the last second. If they didn’t have something very major to say, they’d much more likely issue a release. But with all the talk and speculation flying around out there, perhaps Apple (and CEO Steve Jobs in particular) just wants to sit people down to talk about the issue. Apple has been widely criticized for saying basically nothing about the issue beyond Jobs’ quotes that users should buy a case or hold the phone different . Apple released the first beta of the iOS 4.1 software today. As our sister site MobileCrunch noted , it does not fix the antenna issue. Instead, it simply does what Apple said it was going to do: make the signal strength indicator more accurate. CrunchBase Information Apple iPhone 4 Information provided by CrunchBase
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Apple Calls A Special Press Conference For Friday, Antenna Issue Likely The Subject
Foursquare Founders Pull Out $4.6 Million For Themselves From Last $20 Million Round
Dennis Crowley didn’t get the big personal payday he would have if he had sold Foursquare to Facebook, which he almost did. But Crowley and co-founder Naveen Selvadurai did okay with the $20 million Series B funding they raised from Andreessen Horowitz, Union Square, and O’Reilly AlphaTech. According to an SEC filing (first spotted by Dan Frommer at SAI ), the two founders personally took home $4,636,688 from that round, or 23 percent of the total amount raised. Under a part of the filing titled “Use of Proceeds,” the company had to disclose “the amount of the gross proceeds of the offering that has been or is proposed to be used for payments to any of the persons required to be named as executive officers, directors or promoters in response to Item 3 above.” There are only three people listed as “executive officers, directors or promoters”: Crowley, Selvadurai, and board director Albert Wenger of Union Square. It would be highly unusual for one of the VCs on the board to take personal liquidity out of a deal before his firm does. And Union Square put more money into this round. No wonder Crowley flew to South Africa to watch some of the World Cup games right after the round closed. With the IPO markets not as attractive as they once were and companies staying private longer, it is becoming increasingly common for founders to take some money off the table during later venture rounds. (Other recent venture rounds saw much bigger sums going to founders). As long as the company does well, nobody will blame them. But if the company hits on hard times when that cash could be helpful, well . . . then a different story will be told. Update : Foursquare says the founders sold shares essentially so that investors could buy more. Spokesperson Erin Gleason sent me the following statement: As is common in Series B financings, Dennis and Naveen sold a small portion of their personal equity as a secondary offering to allow our investors to achieve their ownership objectives. CrunchBase Information Dennis Crowley Naveen Selvadurai Foursquare Information provided by CrunchBase
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Foursquare Founders Pull Out $4.6 Million For Themselves From Last $20 Million Round
Foursquare Tidies Up Venue Pages To Emphasize Tips
Foursquare , freshly flush with cash , is in the process of altering its service. They realize that the check-in model can only go so far, and they have to build utility on top of it. Part of that is changing the game aspect . Another part is the user-generated “Tips.” Today, those have been made a clear area of emphasis on Foursquare’s website. On the newly redesigned venue pages (here’s TechCrunch , for example), there is now a big text input box for Tips. You type in what you want, and hit the share button and the tip immediately appears. This is much more seamless (and obvious) than the previous process. And tips are hugely important to Foursquare. They’re the things that pop up every time a contact checks-in to a place. You can also mark tips so you remember to do them later (and note what you have done). This is all about adding value on top of Foursquare’s fast growing social and place graph. These new pages also make it more obvious how the owner of a venue can claim the place as theirs (something Foursquare hinted was coming soon ). And it more prominently shows “Total check-ins,” “Total people,” and “Your check-ins.” And, of course, the Mayor of the venue is displayed prominently. Foursquare, which is a mobile application, is in the process of gearing up for the launch of the 2.0 release of its service. You can bet that tips will be a big part of that as well. CrunchBase Information Foursquare Information provided by CrunchBase
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Foursquare Tidies Up Venue Pages To Emphasize Tips
Prediction: This Statement Is Going To Come Back To Bite Microsoft In The Ass
“ It looks like the iPhone 4 might be their Vista, and I’m okay with that. “ That was Microsoft COO Kevin Turner during his keynote speech at the company’s Worldwide Partner Conference (WPC) in Washington today. I’m going to go out on a (not very big) limb and predict that this comment is going to come back to bite Microsoft in the ass. Microsoft has a long, illustrious history of putting its foot in its own mouth with comments like this. But usually it’s CEO Steve Ballmer making the comments . Ballmer’s most famous remarks are also about the iPhone. After it was announced in 2007 (but before it launched) Ballmer seemed willing to tell anyone who would listen that the device would fail. Who can forget this video ? And then there’s his comment to USA Today : “ There’s no chance that the iPhone is going to get any significant market share. No chance. ” He went on, “ But if you actually take a look at the 1.3 billion phones that get sold, I’d prefer to have our software in 60% or 70% or 80% of them, than I would to have 2% or 3%, which is what Apple might get. “ The iPhone is now Apple’s most successful product in its history. Microsoft, meanwhile, is in the process of completely pivoting its mobile product offering after bleeding market share in the years after the iPhone’s release. Of course, this comment by Turner is a bit different. He’s commenting on the antenna issues with the iPhone 4 — a problem which is very real . But comparing the problem to Windows Vista, Microsoft’s operating system in between Windows XP and Windows 7 that is generally considered to be a failure (even by many inside Microsoft), and a massive misstep by Microsoft, is foolish. The iPhone 4 antenna issue is a scar on a beautiful woman. You don’t break up with the woman because of it, you work around it because of her other attributes. She might even put on some coverup (the bumper) so you don’t even notice it. And some may not even notice it at all. Windows Vista is Kathy Bates in Misery . Turner’s assumption is that the antenna issue is going to damage Apple’s brand to the point where people start jumping ship. And he hopes to have Windows Phone 7 waiting with open arms. “ One of the things I want to make sure you know today is that you’re going to be able to use a Windows Phone 7 and not have to worry about how you’re holding it to make a phone call ,” Turner said. But all indications right now is that this exodus is not and will not happen. Engadget did a nice roundup of writers and experts all around the country to get their reaction to the iPhone 4 antenna issue. The consensus? No big deal. Either all of them are brainwashed fanboys on Apple’s payroll — see, I saved you a comment right there, commenters — or they’re just giving their honest
Product Management Software Company Atlassian Takes A Huge, $60 Million First Round Of Funding From Accel
It is not often that a company’s first round of venture funding comes in at $60 million and eight years after it was founded with $10,000 worth of credit card debt. But Atlassian , which was founded in Sydney, Australia in 2002, is taking its first venture money today from Accel Partners. The company pulled in $59 million in revenues in its fiscal year ended June 30, 2010, and has been “profitable from Year One,” says co-founder and CEO Mike Cannon. The money will be used to give some liquidity to the founders and employees, expand its product portfolio, and possibly acquire other startups. n order to get a return on its minority stake, Accel is expecting Atlassian to one day have a very successful IPO. But he is in no rush. Wong thinks that once the company passes $100 million in revenue, it will be time to start thinking of an IPO. If revenues continue to grow 30 percent a year, that will be only a few years away. Atlassian makes software product development software that is used by 20,000 customers around the world, including Facebook, Zynga, Cisco, and Adobe. “In our belief,” says Accel partner Rich Wong, “these guys are the standard in product development software—20,000 customers can’t be wrong.” Its products include the Jira bug tracker, Confluence wiki and collaboration suite, and a host of software project development tools. Wong compares Atlassian to Salesforce, except without the sales people. Atlassian has 225 employees, but hardly any sales people. The company spreads virally within organizations. “In the same way that Salesforec.com is about streamlining collaboration, this is about streamlining the product development process.” Atlassian offers its products both behind teh firewall on a comapny’s own servers and as a software service, and its pricing is an order of magnitude below what something like IBM’s Rational software would cost. Atlassian’s products bring a familiar interface to enterprise software. “It is a little more modern in thought,” says Cannon, “a bridge between enterprise software and the consumer world.” The interface bring in elements like activity streams and avatars familiar to engineers and product managers from applications like Facebook. CrunchBase Information Atlassian Accel Partners Information provided by CrunchBase
PayPal-Backed BillFloat Launches, Secures $4.5 Million Series A Round (Exclusive)
BillFloat , a San Francisco-based startup incubated by PayPal and Venrock , has raised $4.5 million in a Series A round led by First Round Capital , with renewed participation of PayPal and Venrock and joined by early-stage funds and angel investors such as Jeff Clavier’s SoftTech VC , Ron Conway’s SV Angel and Mint.com board member Mark Goines . The company soft-launched last week with a proper website and is today for the first time presenting its value proposition to the world. In a nutshell, the company aims to help people get their bills paid in time. Here’s how that works: you go to the BillFloat website and select one of the 3,000 (United States-based) billers currently in the BillFloat database, ranging from phone, cable and satellite providers to utility, housing, leasing and insurance companies. Next, indicate how much your bill is and when it needs to be paid, fill out some personal details, and BillFloat will take care of it, for a fee relatively small in comparison to what most banks and short-term lenders tend to charge for time extensions (from $4.99 and upwards per bill depending on how high the amount is). You get more time to see to it you can clear the bill payment, and you can repay the micro-loan in the 30 days following the scheduled payment. It’s effectively a micro-credit provisioning play, but you needn’t worry about credit checks, as BillFloat skips that part. To mitigate the obvious risks that come with that approach, the company says it has a ‘decisioning engine’ in place that runs in the back-end to avoid too many people not paying back the micro-loans in time, or at all. It wasn’t crystal clear to me how this works, exactly, but that engine better be top-notch since it has the potential to kill the venture before it even gets off the ground properly. Ryan Gilbert , BillFloat co-founder and CEO, says: “BillFloat has entered the micro-credit market with a clear focus on delivering the best way for consumers to get ahead of their bill payment obligations. This allows consumers to build and maintain good credit scores and graduate to traditional financial offerings. We will provide consumers relief from the $32 billion in overdraft protection, non-sufficient funds, and late fees that are paid by American families every year.” “We know from our own consumers, and data from the FDIC and Center for Financial Services Innovation (CFSI) that 47% of the $50 billion in high cost loans, borrowed by consumers every year, is used to cover basic living expenses. BillFloat’s provides a more affordable and reliable alternative for bill payment”, added Sean O’Malley , BillFloat’s other co-founder. What I like about the BillFloat model is that its system can be made available directly on billers’ websites, effectively lowering the barrier to entry and the cost of customer acquisition. The startup says it is also partnering with financial services partners including pre-paid and debit card issuers, payroll services and walk-in payment centers. Obviously, PayPal integration is high up on the to-do list. Is this something you see yourself using? CrunchBase Information BillFloat Information provided by CrunchBase
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PayPal-Backed BillFloat Launches, Secures $4.5 Million Series A Round (Exclusive)
Crocodoc Closes Angel Round, Launches Revamped Document Collaboration Tools
I’ve said it before , and I’ll say it again: I detest Adobe Acrobat. Scarred by years of wrangling with bloated software that requires premium upgrades for some basic features, I’m happy to try out any other solution. YC-funded Crocodoc is one promising startup that offers a very straightforward alternative: it makes it dead-simple to upload and start marking up a PDF file (and a variety of other document formats) using a web-based editor. And today it’s launching an overhauled site that makes it much easier to start marking up documents in tandem with a team of friends or coworkers. The company is also announcing that it has closed an angel funding round, with a strong roster of participants including Dave McClure, Joshua Schachter, Paul Buchheit, Steve Chen, and XG Ventures. Crocodoc CEO Ryan Damico says that the earlier version of Crocodoc had some issues, namely when it came to document collaboration, which has been a popular use case. Crocodoc has allowed users to annotate their documents for some time, but this typically involved using virtual sticky notes. That works well enough if you only need to leave a comment or two, but people would wind up covering their documents in these sticky notes to get their point across, leading to a big mess. The new version of Crocodoc axes stickies in favor of a system that lets users comment and respond to each other’s comments in the document’s margins, which should work much better. Damico says that the new version of Crocodoc includes plenty of other changes as well. The UI has been overhauled, as have most of the editing tools. Document exporting works better than it did before. And the site has also built out its API and embedding features. The site offers some premium features, like SSL encryption and password protected documents, but Damico says that Crocodoc is currently focused on making sure it is addressing the major pain points for users with its free product, with other plans to monetize down the road. Crocodoc isn’t disclosing the size of their round, other than to say that ”it falls into the category of typical angel rounds in terms of size”. CrunchBase Information Crocodoc Information provided by CrunchBase
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Crocodoc Closes Angel Round, Launches Revamped Document Collaboration Tools
