lalawag » Alaska Miller

Tech Roundup: Michael Arrington Spat On

Alaska Miller — Tue, 27 Jan 2009 18:00:52 +0000

Fast and quick this time around:

- TechCrunch editor Michael Arrington is sick with the flu at the Digital Life Design conference in Munich. But if that’s not miserable enough, according to Robert Scoble’s convoluted TwitFriend feeding stream, someone did a spat and run on poor Arrington.

- Score one for the anti-paparazzis, New York congressman Pete King wants to introduce legislature to make sure cell phone makers always enable clicking sounds when taking pictures, copying similar existing requirements in Asia to stop the perverted and sneaky.

- Hulu is going to try to go even more mainstream by spending millions on a Super Bowl ad. They’re easing us making it super secret. I hope they use some kind of cute animal.

- Apple was granted a patent for its multitouch interface. Pundits are theorizing this will be used as an axe to chop away at Palm and their Pre phone.

- CNBC’s Power Lunch host Dennis Kneale is a technology and media analyst but that doen’t make him any better than you. MySpace CEO Chris DeWolfe appeared on the show this morning to reassure the public they’re still relevant with the recession, layoffs, and Facebook being awesome. Kneale suggested that combat Facebook’s awesomeness, and $15 billion dollar evaluation, that News Corp. should split MySpace off and let the market decide. At least DeWolfe didn’t laugh too loud when he replied that the idea wouldn’t work.

(Banner photo by Miky Jpeg)

Tech Roundup: Morgan Webb Commits to G4

Alaska Miller — Mon, 26 Jan 2009 17:00:13 +0000

The morning’s fresh and it’s a start of a great week! Despite the thousands of layoffs and the likelihood of the state being broke, the bright side of everything is that it just means there’s a lot more people bored and online ready to try your startup. Some important stuff around the corners of the web:

- Morgan Webb — the perky producer and star that moonlights as a model and Michael Arrington crush — has decided to give up the that delightful and glamorous life of being a web star and will stop taping her quick-hit web show talking about technology and news. Instead, she’s going to focus more on her TV show on G4 network. Allen Stern of CenterNetworks points out the real loser here is Federated Media and their diminishing grasp on advertising networks.

- The country’s financial system melting down it’s time to start considering eating the rich. Besides looking ridiculously gauche in Louis Vuitton, they’re also selling their multi-million dollar mansions to their spouses for under a $100, using your ~~taxes~~ bailout money to buy multi-million dollar jets, sees nothing wrong with spending millions to redecorate their 1,400 square feet offices, and most importantly handing themselves billions in bonuses before collapsing. Get the Sweet Baby Ray’s ready.

- Wall Street Journal editor Julia Angwin is finally releasing her delayed book about the behind-the-scenes action at Santa Monica-based MySpace. Too busy to read? Here are the major revelations in the book: Chris DeWolfe was looking for a way to utilize his spam emailing list and ended up with the social network idea, Tom Anderson is actually a much older pervy porn site operator with yellow fever, DeWolfe also turned down buying Facebook twice for bargain prices in 2004. Add this to that book about Web 2.0 founders and Facebook that you’ll never read.

- eBay is going to sell Skype after realizing what a monumental mistake that was. About time.

- Davos World Economics Forum is next week! It’s being held at the luxurious nestled in between the frozen bosoms of the Swiss mountains. What does one do at such an event fist full of important and famous world leaders, business tycoons, and stars? If you’re Meghan Asha of NonSociety — and then Arrington beau — you would just tape yourself playing with a Rubick’s cube. If you are Rebecca McQuigg of Los Angeles and winner of the MySpace/YouTube contest, you can try to videoblog it and do the rest of us unfortunates a favor of explaining what went on. The lovely Ms. McQuigg’s entry below:

Davos Video Submission – Rebecca M.

(Banner photo by OZinOH)

Eater LA chops editor in chief

Alaska Miller — Thu, 22 Jan 2009 20:00:03 +0000

Eater LA — the Los Angeles centric food and dinning blog part of Curbed Networks, Lockhart Steele’s own Denton-esque fiefdom — no longer has Lesley Balla to call site runner and editor. Balla, a long time notable writer, has worked in various capacities amongst LA’s finest web properties, such as TMZ.com and LA.com, before signing on to help launch the Los Angeles edition of Eater.com two years ago. Her goodbye post was short and didn’t illuminate too much on the insidery action behind the scenes to cause her departure, though she does claim to have new projects coming up. Either way, the foodies of Los Angeles will have to read about dining gossip elsewhere or stick around with Lockhart Steele stepping in for the duration as editor all the way from New York City.

Previously on lalawag:

Tech Roundup: Obama Layoffs

Alaska Miller — Thu, 22 Jan 2009 17:00:33 +0000

Barack Obama is president for one day and here are the results:

- Microsoft lays off 5,000.

- Google might fire 1,000.

- IBM won’t tell you how many people they’re laying off. A prediction puts it at 16,000.

- Sun Microsystems finally makes good on their layoff of 1,300.

- Digg gets rid of 10% of its 80 employees. Digg. 80. Employees.

Welcome to funemployment, folks. Go to the beach.

(Banner photo by stevecadman)

Tech Roundup: WhiteHouse.gov

Alaska Miller — Wed, 21 Jan 2009 17:00:55 +0000

In the first day of the Obama Administration, the tech world’s heart skips a beat. Elsewhere:

- Jason Kottke throws out a point that WhiteHouse.gov has a robot.txt file — the informal handshake between website owners and search engines to determine what can and can not be indexed — that’s shorter, significantly, than the previous administration. Although, the tiny fact that when George W Bush’s website first started, his website’s robot.txt file was equally as clean shouldn’t let you stop loving Obama though.

- Hitwise is very happy to jump and down to let you know that according to their advanced computational metric analysis techniques, they’ve determined Digg and Twitter now have equal amounts of traffic. This might possibly mean that all those Twitter grading sites, Twitter link shortcut sites, Twitter friend spamming sites, Twitter stock tip sites, and Twitter marketing sites work. Or, something.

- Over the past week, Apple CEO Steve Jobs waffled back and forth on wanting to let you know about his health. It culminated to him finally taking medical leave for a few months, letting Apple COO take charge as the iCEO for awhile again. The Internet has collectively agreed that we shouldn’t poke into someone’s personal business. The SEC, however, didn’t like any of the shenanigans and has decided to start a probe into Apple’s disclosures to stockholders. To all other CEOs out there: no one still cares if you’re sick or not.

- Salary for tech workers in 2008 actually went against common perception of a recession and rose 4.6% compared to 2007. Software engineers took home on average $90,000, while IT managers were able to finagle $100,000 a year.

- Friendster — the social network so old that your mom was probably in it — is switching gears and finding a second life in Asia. They have mostly setup operations in Australia with $20 million in funding to better take care of the 28 million users based around the Asian Pacific region.

(Banner photo by Omar Omar)

2008 Crunchies Party Report

Alaska Miller — Tue, 13 Jan 2009 01:00:49 +0000

If brevity was the soul of wit last year, this year the continuing encapsulating keyword is: meh.

In the midst of the 2009 Consumer Electronics Show — and more importantly, the AVN Adult Entertainment Expo — TechCrunch decided to host the Crunchies. Settling once and for all questions such as which web company has the best design, is the best time sink, or had the best startup CEO. Cooliris, Tap Tap Range [sic], Mark Zuckerberg — apparently the best startup CEO of a 700 employee startup with hundreds of millions in VC money. All important things for sure, however, this time without a solid team of bloggers — I heard most of the geeks at CES got busy in enthralling parties setup by porn companies — to reblog it, does it matter?

At least the 2008 Crunchies after party was held at the prestigious San Francisco City Hall, and in the rotunda that Gary Newsom graces, TechCrunch tried its best to entertain those unfortunate enough to end up at Vegas with finger food, alcohol that quickly ran dry, and even poker and roulette tables. Sadly, this time the after-afterparty at the W Hotel didn’t include Jason Calacanis buying shots.

Relive the night via iPhone’s fuzzy shot feature:

Mark Zuckerberg winning his second Crunchies of the night. The load must be tough since he checked his Crunchies at the coat check for the after party.

Close of the ceremony at the grand Herbst Theatre.

The line to get into the afterparty stretched around the block of the San Francisco City Hall. SFPD’s finest made sure the geeks didn’t sneak in weapons.

Phoenix’s DJ Z-Trip spun records to fill the cavernous city hall rotunda with tunes.

Drinking and faux gambling? That’s just how you do it up big.

Mark Zuckerberg and his handler making an appearance.

The after-afterparty was by all means quite tame.

(Banner Photo by TehDik)

Amazon IMDb buys BoxOfficeMojo

Alaska Miller — Thu, 18 Dec 2008 19:00:47 +0000

IMDb — an Amazon subsidiary and an indispensable Los Angeles face book — let loose that it has completed a purchase of Box Office Mojo — a site that chronicles the day by day box office take of newly released movies. Back in July. Box Office Mojo is a 3-person company based out of Burbank, California, and has seen its traffic rise to 1 million unique visits a month since its founding in 1999 by movie analyst Brandon Gray.

In the past, Amazon has purchased various websites that catered to niche markets, such as DPreview.com, a London-based site that reviewed digital cameras and Seattle startup called Shelfari that ran an online community for book lovers.

Previously on lalawag:

Wallop Recovers To Buy EtchStar

Alaska Miller — Thu, 18 Dec 2008 18:00:55 +0000

Wallop — originally a Microsoft Research project in 2006 — was meant to be a social network to compete with the likes of MySpace or Facebook. Not quite an outlandish task considering the market in 2006, but it has since failed to take off. The company’s flagship social network site closed in September and it chose to continue to develop and support two Facebook applications.

Well now using its leftover cash, Wallop has purchased Santa Monica-based EtchStar and renamed itself Coveroo — peddling laser-engraved stickers and coverings for gadgets, cell phones, and household goods. EtchStar was started back in mid-2007 and has production facilities in both Los Angeles and San Francisco. It’s product line included everything from metal and wood business cards to Moleskine notebooks with custom designs.

Sean Percival even took a visit to see their Santa Monica retail location for a video tour:

Metal Business Cards by EtchStar

Tech Roundup: Michael Arrington Breaks Embargo

Alaska Miller — Thu, 18 Dec 2008 17:00:12 +0000

- TechCrunch’s editor Michael Arrington hates you PR and marketing people bugging him all the time and making him agree to ridiculous stuff, such as embargoes. To combat this problem he’s promising to break all and every embargoed news content he gets. How laudable! Then you realize he says he’s more than willing to accept embargo if he — and only he — gets the exclusive. How self-serving! Ladies, if you send me your numbers and your embargo agreements, I’ll promise to break it all night. My contact’s on the right hand side.

- David Bunnell is the guy that started the whole Macworld Expo in 1985, a year after Steve Jobs and Apple’s introduction of the Macintosh. He writes in a piece for the San Francisco Chronicle his memories of Steve Jobs, painting him as the cavalier spoiled-brat-genius that we’ve all come to know and endear.

- Facebook released stats for its member usage today, and all signs pointing to accelerated growth. The social network is now gaining 600,000 to 700,000 new users a day with 700 million users uploading pictures each month and 13 million users updating their Facebook status at least once a day. If only they make money.

(Banner photo by bredgur)

Tech Roundup: Apple Canceles Christmas

Alaska Miller — Wed, 17 Dec 2008 17:00:57 +0000

- Steve Jobs won’t show up for Macworld 2009 in January and Apple will stop attending. Someone thought it was really sad, so sad that it seems like Apple canceled Christmas. People are trying to figure out if it’s because Steve Jobs is walking death around Cupertino. Frankly, the easiest answer is just that preparing for Macworld put an enormous strain on Apple — especially considering they have a two week vacation called the Exodus just 5 days prior to the big show. Let’s rejoice in this because, really, what this means is that old media is dead. Long live new media!

- A survey of venture capitalists indicates that markets will look good again soon. In 2010. Yay! Other people think it’s going be much longer, that we’ll get into a complete depression as well. Be optimistic, maybe things will be better by January.

- CNet — now CBS — relaunched TV.com. Michael Arrington thinks it looks like a rip of Hulu. Arrington also thought Hulu sucked and called it ClownCo. Remember that.

- Yahoo says they’ll delete user data after 3 months after visiting their home page or using search. Google currently has a 9 month retention time for user data while Microsoft is promising holding on to that data for just 6 months. If you never knew this before, then it’s too late to care now about looking up porn.

(Banner photo by alistairmcmillan)

Tech Roundup: Palm Announces Nova

Alaska Miller — Mon, 15 Dec 2008 17:00:46 +0000

- Palm, Inc. — or Palm Computing, or PalmSource, or palmOne — stole Jon Rubenstein away from Apple over a year ago and they now finally have a clue as to what to do next. They’re going to launch an operating system. Code-named Nova, it’s an operating system that Ruby promises to be not as business-y as BlackBerries and not as fun as the iPhone. To make a point of how awesome Palm thinks Nova will be, they’re going to announce it at CES in Las Vegas — exactly when Steve Jobs will be holding court in San Francisco. Smart, indeed.

- Jason Calacanis threw the curtains off the secret squirrel Project A: it’s an answers site called Mahalo Answers, where you can pay strangers to help you find stuff online. A genius idea, just like Yahoo Answers, or Google Answers, or Amazon Askville, or Answers Wiki.

- BitTorrent — the makers of the wildly popular file-sharing BitTorrent protocol — has been trying for years to go legit. They raised $17 million this year to help buy them some respect in Hollywood, but the grand plan has failed. An investor of the company has leaked that the original financing has been reversed and the money returned. BitTorrent raised a new round for $7 million on a $28 million valuation, instead. It’s okay, it just means they have to get a 2 for 1 deal on hookers, instead.

- Google — having spent good bundle of cash and even lending its CEO to Barack Obama’s Superfriends team — is requesting a faster Internet pipeline in Washington, so says the Wall Street Journal. What the issue really is about is something called network neutrality, whereby network operators can develop tiers of access to the Internet and charge accordingly. Well, it turns out the WSJ was just having one of those Fox News kind of days, because Lawrence Lessig smacked down the article by saying Google is still not evil and doesn’t want its own special access to the Internet. This is important.

- Santa Clara-based Magellan has decided to sell their entire consumer GPS division to a Taiwan electronics manufacturer, MiTAC. Not much difference, but just remember this next time you’re walking around Best Buy or Fry’s stores.

(Banner photo by Agile Mind)

World of Warcraft Addiction Might Cause College Dropouts

Alaska Miller — Fri, 12 Dec 2008 21:00:47 +0000

Irvine-based Blizzard Entertainment has been making addictive games since 1991, but none has been as wildly successful multiplayer role-playing game World of Warcraft. The game has spawned a franchise of three expansion packs, elicited parodies from South Park, and a steady following of 11 million around the world willing to pay about $12 a month. Heck, even actress Mila Kunis admits to playing it.

So what more can the Warcraft phenomenon do? Cause students to drop out of college, so says FCC commissioner Deborah Taylor Tate. In a December 5th keynote at the 26th Annual Telecom Policy and Regulation Institute, she states:

But surveys show just the opposite: a late 2006 survey that showed 59% of parents think the internet has been a totally positive influence in their children’s lives–down from 67% in 2004. You might find it alarming that one of the top reasons for college drop-outs in the U.S. is online gaming addiction— such as World of Warcraft—which is played by 11 million individuals worldwide.

Remember kids — be cool, finish off the Captain Skyshatter race quest by beating the Dragonmaw to gain Netherwing reputation points before you start school. [AlleyInsider]

(Banner photo by swanky)

Previously on lalawag:

LA Mayor Is On Twitter, But Who Can Help Him Do More?

Alaska Miller — Fri, 12 Dec 2008 20:00:36 +0000

Ask any social media expert what the main lesson is from Barack Obama’s 2008 Presidential campaign — hopefully you asked the reply to be 140 characters or less — it’s that social media works! Just check out Obama’s Twitter account with 147,000 followers and his streams of pictures on Flickr! It’s no surprise, then, how quickly everyone wants to jump on a winning bandwagon, from CNN to now Los Angeles Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa.

On the tail end of the Mayor’s office releasing their green technology web portal, Villaraigosa is trying to further increase his nerd credibility. Just this week, he started tweeting and uploading pictures on Flickr, even soliciting for a new media director to help manage all these Web 2.0 doodads.

You can never fault someone for following in the footsteps of Barack Obama. After all, Obama’s embrace of Internet technology garnered talking points left and right in traditional media desperate to maintain their facade as being the forefront of news. But everyone forgets, just as quickly, the fact that as soon as Obama clinched the election, his activities just stopped. A total pump and dump move, totally alpha male.

The real lesson from Obama’s embrace of new media technology is that it garners attention from everyone with a stake in new media technology. In Los Angeles — a city that attracts social climbers of all varieties — every other person will claim they’re experts at social media that can help you break out. Yet, at the end of the day what do they accomplish? Is it just another jig in the cargo-cult dance of signing up for a Twitter account? Just ask Gary Vaynerchuk. People know what’s good and bad. Just as easily you can attract thousands of new followers, thousands more can quickly realize your disingenuity.

To Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa: if you want to embrace new technology that’s great. But it’s never about what new tools you can use, it’s about you. Hire the person that will tell you most importantly to be the most honest and substantive person you can be. It’ll shine through regardless if you have an account on Twitter, Plurk, Pownce, Jaiku, Seesmic, or 12seconds.

(Banner photo by Kristen DelValle)

Tech Roundup: Google and the Death of Print

Alaska Miller — Fri, 12 Dec 2008 18:00:41 +0000

- Google is being speculated at considering scooping up the rotting corpse that is the family-owned New York Times Company. The good thing about death of print would be all the trees that get saved.

- To help finance that NYT Co. purchase, Google is letting all US publishers access their AdSense for Domains. The program lets domain squatters place ads and generate revenue. Totally not evil, in that toes-on-the-line-but-body-dangling-over sense.

- CBS Interactive — the progeny of CBS’s digital dreams up north in San Francisco and tech publisher CNET — had to fire a lot of people. How many? No one knows, so we’re just guessing 20% of their 275 headcount.

- Howard Stern is threatening to quit, basically over more money. Your 15-year-old inner child might still care.

- Since it’s Friday, here’s media princess Shira Lazar hula dancing:

(Banner photo by Christopher Chan)

Tech Roundup: Tumblr Scores $4.5 Million

Alaska Miller — Thu, 11 Dec 2008 17:00:27 +0000

- Tumblr’s founder and CEO David Karp anted up and scored $4.5 million in funding from Union Squares Ventures. Tumblr is like a blog for hipster kids on Los Feliz to talk about their lives if they weren’t at hipster parties. Thus far the Tumblr virus has only been contained within New York City and San Francisco, but an global outbreak is highly likely.

- Accel Partners has announced they raised $1 billion to make sure they survive the current recession. Half of the money will be used for their European arms to for early stage startups while the rest goes to their San Francisco branch as a “growth” fund for late stage ventures. Accel is mostly noted for having invested early on in Facebook when they were still TheFacebook, but it sounds like they won’t be able to hand over the money to Mark Zuckerberg anytime soon.

- Newsweek is slashing staff, slashing pages, slashing editorial neutrality, and most importantly of all slashing subscribers. Their new long term strategy is to purposely write about controversial subjects in an effort to inflame and trick people in caring about what they have to say. Like 15 year old kids leaving comments on YouTube.

- MySpace released a tool bar for your web browser to make your MySpace experience more extreme. Surprisingly, it’s not called Tila Tequila.

(Banner photo by Christopher Chan)

Where Yahoos are Drinking Tonight

Alaska Miller — Wed, 10 Dec 2008 23:00:59 +0000

Never one to be conventional, the axing of 1,500 Yahoo’s on a Wednesday just makes it so that you get to have a 5 day bender instead of 2. The final tally at the Santa Monica-based Yahoo! Media group seems to be 45 and with all that empty space going up for lease.

Either way: drink half of your paycheck away. According to Yahoo! Maps, there are no less than 10 bars within a 10 mile radius of the Santa Monica campus — 100 according to Google Maps but that’s not important anymore.

The absolute best spot would be Bodega Wine Bar right down the street on 814 Broadway. The classy atmosphere makes the outta-work boozin’ all that much more enjoyable. Don’t bother thinking about working again until next year. Welcome to funemployment!

UPDATE: Both the current and fired Yahoos will be gathering at McCabe’s Bar and Grill around the block at 2455 Santa Monica Blvd. Be kind, buy them a round of drinks.

(Banner photo by stevelyon)

John Rogers Wants To Work As An LA Playboy

Alaska Miller — Wed, 10 Dec 2008 21:00:56 +0000

Take a Minnesota-raised dreamer that started up a string of failed chiropractic clinics, have him run away to San Francisco and give him hundreds of millions to burn through for a tech startup, and sprinkle in some cocaine and it’s not just an Oscar contender. It’s John Rogers’ life story.

John Rogers is most well known as the founder and CEO of a company called Pay By Touch, where the vision was to setup devices in supermarkets across the country that would take payment with the validation of just your thumb print. Beginning in 2003, after moving to San Francisco, Rogers was able to convince a variety of wealthy and influential to believe in his dream, from the likes of Gordon Getty to supermarket tycoon Ron Burkle, and even gotten San Francisco mayor Gavin Newsom’s dad to advise the company. All told, Roger’s Pay By Touch was able to get $340 millions — an impressive feat given that it was prior to the Web 2.0 bubble in 2006. But as quickly as he was able to get he spent it all and gotten the startup bankrupt with 750 people losing their jobs.

In trying to decipher who’s really at fault it just seems like everyone was complicit. From the investment bankers at UBS that solicited NFL players to the Gettys to Ron Burkle to creditors. Everyone was charmed and wanted involved in what seemed like a billion dollar idea without doing their due dilligence in finding out Rogers’ past brushups with the law over narcotics charges, his charges by former girlfriends over assault and destruction of property.

Since the collapse of Pay By Touch, Rogers filed for bankruptcy in late 2007. Amongst his court documents he claims to have needed $2,000.00 a month on electricity and heating fuel, $1,000 for water and sewer, and $1,000 for his telephone line, and yes, $1,000 for clothing — all the while owing American Express $68,272.67.

Well now John Rogers has made his way south of Silicon Valley to start a new startup. Valleywag is saying they heard Rogers is driving a Mercedes Benz G-class SUV and roosting in the fancy blü apartment complex in Beverly Hills. How fancy? Check out their exclusive cheese and wine tasting.

All this champagne and mugging for the cameras is just par for the course in glitzy Los Angeles. John Rogers has always been an elaborate bullshitter. LA has always been the place where it doesn’t quite matter who you were — even if it was Barbara Streisand’s hairdresser. But take heed, if some guy comes up to you while partying at the Edison saying he’s entrepreneur that know Gordon Getty: run.

(Banner and inset photo by NYCAuthor)

Previously on lalawag:

Qwitter Softly Qwits

Alaska Miller — Wed, 10 Dec 2008 18:00:24 +0000

If you’re obsessed with Twitter, figuring out who has stopped following you is a quirky little guilty pleasure. Contrast — a web development firm from Ireland — built and launched their webapp, Qwitter, to do just that. Those little Qwitter emails reminded me every time of who stopped caring about my 140 character messages but for the past few weeks they’ve stopped coming. Who do you get to email you when a webapp quits?

Unfortunately, copying Twitter’s downtime strategy surely won’t be the easiest path to an acquisition anytime soon. Emails to Contrast has been unanswered. Being that they’re Irish it’s 50/50 on whether they’re working on other paying clients or in a pub.

On a related note, marketeer-extraordinaire Brian Solis compiled a list of other web applications that enhances your Twitter experience. Everything from finding out who’s following you to grading your influence on the Twitterverse.

Tech Roundup: Hulu the 6th Largest Video Site

Alaska Miller — Wed, 10 Dec 2008 17:00:49 +0000

- Hulu — the progeny of NBC Universal and News Corps — is now the 6th largest video site in just a little over 20 months, serving up 235 million videos in that time. How do they do it? With child labor. Watch as Kara Swisher of the All Things D drop by Hulu’s LA office to see who’s really running in those hamster wheels.

- Yahoo is firing 1,500 employees right now in both their Sunnyvale and Santa Monica campus. Top management passed out crib notes to mid-level managers to help ease the passing. Oddly, they chose not to copy and paste the script from Mike Judge’s Office Space.

- Oh, Yahoo’s also closing Brickhouse — the skunkworks in San Francisco’s South Park neighborhood. Now’s a good time to woo some pretty good engineers down to sunny SoCal.

- The mobile porn industry is going to hit $2.2 billion worldwide. Sounds impressive, but it’s still 2.2% off from expectations. Adult-oriented mobile content is expected to be $4.9 billion by 2013.

(Banner photo by Mastery of Maps)

Savings.com Gets Money To Save You Money

Alaska Miller — Tue, 09 Dec 2008 19:00:45 +0000

Santa Monica based Savings.com bucked the worrywart trend earlier this month by announcing the closing of their B-series led by US Ventures Partners. What will they use the money on? Expanding their proprietary technology that automatically sends out discount coupons — an often Googled term — to their content partners and search engines.

Despite the funds injunction, it actually makes Savings.com look weak. The big dog of the coupons arena is actually RetailMeNot.com — utilizing a crowd-sourced model to contribute to their massive library of coupon codes. RetailMeNot also has the added benefit of a slicker looking site and that encouraging “hockey-stick” traffic growth according to Compete.

A tough battle ahead to be sure, but given the bad economy and people’s urge to still to buy stuff, both sites could be pretty well off. Hopefully besides just technology and infrastructure, Savings.com buys some good SEO help.

(Banner photo by tshein)

MySpace’s DailyFill Joins The Celebrity Gossip Game

Alaska Miller — Tue, 09 Dec 2008 18:00:08 +0000

To make your life better MySpace’s not-so-secret skunkworks, Slingshot Labs, released a gossip blog, the DailyFill.com. Yes, yet another one for you to read.

I, for one, won’t be judging you if like to be updated constantly on the birthing status of that blonde girl and that blonde guy or the daily whereabouts of that actor guy. To put it simply, this whole site is exactly the same thing after all — except LA techies get snapped via iPhone cams. Sidebar: send us some!

The ~~DailyFail~~ DailyFill sports a shiny and slick design and aggregates most of its contents from its content partners such as GossipGirls.com and MediaTakeOut.com, but the best innovation they bring to the game is their cougar button. Finally, something concise to let people know what they’re already thinking: hot women are hot.

Valleywag is also saying that a Slingshot engineer let it slip the whole site was just thrown together in a matter of weeks. VentureBeat picked up on the fact that Shira Lazar — LA’s online and tv media princess — got a sneak peek back in mid-November. Either way, someone’s gotta pretend they’re worth the paycheck after playing too much World of Warcraft at work.

(Banner photo by Mark Turner)

Tuesday Morning Tech Roundup

Alaska Miller — Tue, 09 Dec 2008 17:00:03 +0000

- The web is abuzz about Gmail getting Tasks. It’s simple and easy to use but not closely integrated into other Google apps like Calendar or Docs. If you’re already using Remember the Milk tasks management with Gmail and Google Calendar there’s no reason to switch. Yet.

- AppleInsider.com picked up a rumor about Apple possible switching to a new iTunes format untethered by digital rights management this morning. Like most things within the Apple rumor mill, it wasn’t true. RIAA, +1.

- Yahoo’s CEO chair — I hear it’s just a purple Steelcase chair — is still vacant. The Wall Street Journal reports that the Yahoo board is deliberating amongst a number of candidates. Vodafone Group PLC’s retired CEO Arun Sarin is rumored to be on that short list. Terry Semel looks like a genius pick now.

- Realizing that it’s not Apple, Sony cuts 8,000 jobs, 4% of the company’s headcount and 10% of their manufacturing capabilities.

- MySpace announces their answer to Facebook Connect — software to selectively share your personal obsessively collected Facebook info with other sites — it’s going to be MySpaceID. The dream of having a single identification account has been a Silicon Valley geek dream since the start of the Internet and I’m just glad I can add glitter text to it.

(Banner photo by Brian Solis)

New Website to Help Promote LA as Green Tech Capital

Alaska Miller — Sun, 07 Dec 2008 22:12:04 +0000

Los Angeles launched a web portal called CleanTechLosAngeles.org to help promote and facilitate with companies work in green industries. The site is aimed at reporting green tech news, research, and events both within the city and the state of California, and to help attract and create new green jobs.

CleanTechLosAngeles.org is an initiative developed by various city departments with the help of Jet Propulsion Labroratory, UCLA, and USC. Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa calls the site integral in his strategy in making Los Angeles a clean technology capital and vows to switch 10% of the city’s energy needs to solar power by 2020.

Girls In Tech Launches LA Chapter

Alaska Miller — Sun, 07 Dec 2008 21:32:54 +0000

This summer, marketing siren Adriana Gascoigne and her co-founders announced a Los Angeles extension of her Girls in Tech organization — an effort to help women working in the technology field.

Girls in Tech’s Los Angeles chapter aims to do what it’s been doing for the past year in San Francisco and New York by offering networking events and workshops that benefits not just those working in technology businesses but women seeking to start their own businesses.

Adriana herself has worked in various capacity in senior management with communications and marketing with various Internet companies while her co-founders Jessica Valenzuela founded her own interactive media company and Davina Anthony work as the creative director for NY Daily News.

Unfettered by the recession, Girls in Tech will be hosting a launch party this Thursday at Causecast’s office in Santa Monica.

Earth Class Mail Does Your Personal Assisstant’s Job

Alaska Miller — Sun, 07 Dec 2008 06:43:37 +0000

Seattle-based Earth Class Mail has decided one of the best ways to spend its $21.4M in VC money is to open up retail locations in San Francisco and Los Angeles. The company provides its customers something sort of a PO box, where they accept all kinds of snail mail. The high-tech kicks in with their ability to securely open your letters and electronically scan them for your perusal online.

The new store location has retail staff that can help setup an account for you and will be based in Hollywood, 8605 Santa Monica Blvd, which adds the benefit of letting people think you’re a hot-shot industry player. Add in a 213 number from Google GrandCentral to complete the facade.

In addition to reading customers’ mail, Earth Class Mail’s publicity magic worked well enough to get them featured on a television docu-reality show called “Start-Up Junkies” by MOJO HD network. Catch the full series on Hulu.

Where Are They Now: Silicon Calley

Alaska Miller — Sat, 06 Dec 2008 22:14:36 +0000

Some of you may remember dear Calley Nye — the nubile tech diva-rette that came into LA, caused a stir, scored a TechCrunch writing job only to later be unpublished.

We haven’t heard much from her lately, so we nudged her on Twitter. Her auto-response to the right. In addition, her TechNews.LA — LA tech startup news site — has stalled and activity on her blog slowed to a standstill since after she solicited for donations from angels in getting her own startup off the ground. Most recently she updated it recently to explain her “winter hibernation.”

Since Los Angeles isn’t quite cold enough for hibernating it seems she’s gone back home to Connecticut. Perhaps come spring, the Twitter birds will sing, and she will reemerge. If not this site just lost about half of its material, sorry folks.

In the meantime you can follow her whereabouts on Twitter:

echo SimplePieWP(array(
'http://twitter.com/statuses/user_timeline/14784586.rss'
), array(
'items' => 15,
‘template’ => twitter

));
?>

(Photo by Andrew Mager)

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