Google Is Having A TechCrunch Day

Image via CrunchBase

Google is not a company TechCrunch talks about a whole lot. TechCrunch stays on the lookout for that hot new startup. So I was surprised to see so many Google related posts on TechCrunch today.

Watch Out Rivals, With Latitude API Google Starts Taking Location Very Seriously
Kiss My App Store
Now Open To Everyone, Google Believes Wave Is Finally Ready To Roll
Is Firefox Headed Towards A Massive Decline? Its Co-Founder Thinks So

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Chrome Operating System

Chatfe: Audio, Interest Based Random Connections On Skype?

Paul Orlando

I got to meet Paul Orlando at a Microsoft event towards the end of January: his startup won an award. I hung out for hours after the formal event was over. We then exchanged a tweet or two over the weeks. We were angling to meet again. Finally we met near his office in Chinatown.

We went to two dumpling places after that. Eating dumplings is the best thing I learned in Kathmandu where I did a bunch of my schooling. Paul introduced me to a place - Lan Zhou on 144 E Broadway - that I have revisited many times after. Great quality, super low price, how do you beat that? 50 frozen dumplings for $8. That is cheaper than if I were to buy the ingredients and make them myself, only I would not know how to make them.

I am mayor of that place on FourSquare. But since I check in through text message on my prepaid, I have ended up mayor of another establishment of the same name. But who is counting?

Paul is married to a Taiwanese. The dude has spent a few years in Hong Kong. He has a MBA from Columbia.

Chatfe

Chatfe: Start a Conversation
Chatfé on Twitter
Chatfe.com - Talk With Strangers Over The Web | Visit chatfe.com
chatfe' on Vimeo
Chatfe - Start a conversation | Facebook
Web2NewYork | Networking for post-internet media, advertising and...
Talking with Chatfe at the recent BizSpark camp for Windows Azure...
Chatfe Conversations (New York, NY) - Meetup.com
Chatfe Wins Microsoft BizSpark Award for "Best Viable Business"
Chatfe: Equalizing the Chance for Interest Based Conversation...
Chatfe Blog
Chatfe.com – Talk With Strangers Over The Web | Startup Websites
Chatfe: Start a Conversation
YouTube - Chatfe's Channel
Chatfe: Start A Conversation With Someone New
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Chatfe Inc. - Company Profile on LinkedIn
Chatfe.com – Talk With Strangers Over The Web - Programming Blog
Bringing Omegle and Chatroulette to plain old telephones: Chatfe...
Chatfe.com – Talk With Strangers Over The Web « Startup Ranking
Chatfe Blog: Fantastic Data
Chatfe.com - Talk With Strangers Over The Web - Moopz
Web2Barcelona | Networking for post-internet media, advertising...

Paul dropped a nugget over lunch that day. Instead of expecting people to talk over their phones, what if Chatfe made a switch and used the Skype platform instead? I got excited. I started having visions of Chatfe exploding to Chatroulette like numbers.

Chatfe is in the random connections space. It is based out of New York City. And it is run by a friend of mine. That's three strikes. I am excited.

There are a few advantages Chatfe has over Chatroulette. Sticking to audio only is a good move. With video you end up with a hugely distorted male-female ratio and some roudy behavior, it seems. Also with Chatfe, it is not completely random connections. You register a topic you want to talk about. But maybe Chatfe is tightening that noose a little too much. It should be a little more random than that.

I should be able to insert my location into my profile and topics and subtopics I am interested in talking about. And I should be able to similarly do searches based on location and topics of interest. Also, you probably want to be able to specify your language(s). In my case that is more than half a dozen. And you want to be able to arrange talks for later. As in, I want to talk in Hindi to someone in Mumbai about Amitabh Bachchan's latest movie for about 10 minutes at 10 PM NYC local time. Any takers? And if I have more than one person interested, I want that to be turned into a conference call on Skype. I would like it medium rare.

This much tweaking and I think Paul Orlando is going to be running all over Chinatown for server space.

Chatfe: Audio only, interest based random connections on the Skype platform. And Chatfe takes off into the stratosphere.

Venmo Could Make Moves
Adam Smith And The Inbox Space
Venmo And Frictionless Payments
Could 2011 Be Venmo's Year?
Reimagining The Inbox The Simple Way
Dropio's Indian Cofounder Darshan
The FourSquare Appeal For Me
What Are You Doing Monday? Come Meet Al Wenger
FourSquare Must Cut A Deal With Yahoo
Digital Dumbo: Here I Come
FourSquare Office, Dropio Technology
4:16 PM @ FourSquare
I Have Been Quoted In Fast Company
Not Union Square Ventures
2010: Location, Random Connections, The Inbox, Frictionless Payments
Fred Wilson: A DJ
Chatroulette Is For Real

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Has Google Been Able To Scale Well?

This summary is not available. Please click here to view the post.

TED Talks

Nina Khosla's Notes.
TED Talks

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Seth Godin, Jack Dorsey, Marc Andreessen

Me @ BBC

Image by Getty Images via Daylife

This BBC article is the biggest media mention of me to date. The last time I had anything even remotely close was when a German newspaper wrote an article calling me Robin Hood On The Internet, ("Robin Hood Im Internet") and that was in 2006 for my fierce work into Nepal's democracy movement. That article also resulted in me getting interviewed by German radio right here in Manhattan. They said that newspaper article created a demand among many local radio stations. And that of course they will translate, and the voice over will be in German. I showed up at their state of the art studio, did my interview, and left. No snacks, nothing. Around that same time I was also lined up to appear over the phone for a BBC program. This was going to be live. But I overslept. And felt so bad about having overslept. It was like winning a marathon and missing out the awards ceremony. But I blogged saying I got invited on to the program. (BBC Calls) That was like giving myself a consolation prize.

It is also a good feeling to get followed by Ann Curry on Twitter. (Direct Messages From Ann Curry, Steve Case, Robert Scoble) I am strong on social media, on new media, but I have always been big on old media. You have to grow up listening to BBC radio as your only reliable news source in a non democratic country to truly appreciate what that brand name means. And I was a guy who could even listen to the BBC in English. That impressed a lot of people back in the days.

You can speak English? Okay, so speak. I want to hear what it sounds like.

United States To Woo Entrepreneurs With New Visa Law BBC News

Paramendra Bhagat, a budding entrepreneur, wanders around the cream of New York's tech scene, shaking hands and making contacts.

This is the NY Tech Meet-Up, a well-known monthly gathering of more than 700 people, including venture capitalists (VCs) looking to fund the next Facebook.

Sitting in a large auditorium in Chelsea, there is a crowd of hip, skinny people and the earliest of early adopters. One man ignores all the presentations to watch live baseball on his iPad - four days after it launched.

"I'm here because this is where all the opportunities are, in New York," Mr Bhagat says.
After the presentations finish and the mingling begins, he goes around talking to the investors, telling anyone prepared to listen about his start-up, which aims to bring poor people in the Indian sub-continent online.

But Mr Bhagat is from Nepal, and despite having been in New York since 2005, US visa regulations mean there is no easy way for him to stay in the US as an entrepreneur.

Even though, he says, "there are immigrants who want to come, and VCs who need them".

The news article mentions Paul Graham, it mentions Brad Feld. That is august company.

A Soft Spot For Mike Arrington
Paul Graham: Y Combinator
An Immigrant Story For Brad Feld

Kabir Chibber| NewsCred
Kabir Chibber- Goal Blog - NYTimes.com
Kabir Chibber (kchibber) on Twitter
Kabir Chibber on Vimeo
Kabir Chibber [Monocle]
Kabir Chibber - LinkedIn
Kabir Chibber - journalisted.com
Kabir Chibber” Search Results « Prospect Magazine

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Patent Absurdity

Video: Patent Absurdity - Dokumentarfilm (28:54)

Via Fred Wilson

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A Time Warner Vacation

I have not had internet access for a week now.

Thank you Time Warner for the vacation.

Marriage From Hell: AOL, Time Warner

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Venmo Could Make Moves

Peer to peer payments can be thought of as a great first step for Venmo, but staying there will not bring it hockey stick growth. How often to you pay money to your friends? On the other hand, how often do you pay money at a bar? Or a restaurant?

One place to start might be at the bar where the NY Tech MeetUp hosts its after party. The NY Tech MeetUp crowd would be a great crowd to get hold of.

Another stop on the way might be the 2,000 vendors on FourSquare that have been identified as merchants that might qualify for merchant accounts. I believe they now have the option to call up FourSquare, verify ownership of their spaces, and activate their merchant accounts. That would give them options to better track all those who do check into their establishments.

Venmo might want to partner up with FourSquare to give those 2,000 establishments a heads up on the Venmo way of accepting payments. People likely to check in using FourSquare are also more likely than most to be the early believers in the idea of paying for your drink with a text message. Pay Drink Bar $6 for beer. That might take less time and effort than pulling out the wallet to dole out cash, wait for change, perhaps wait to sign a credit card receipt.

In FourSquare I see a partnership opportunity for Venmo.