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

Related articles by Zemanta

• Google Shuts Out TechCrunch From Zeitgeist - We're Seeing Too Much Of Eachother, OK? (techcrunch.com)
• With the New Google Latitude API, Build Latitude and Location Into Your App (googlecode.blogspot.com)
• Google Wave Makes Me Feel Stupid And Angry (GOOG) (businessinsider.com)
• Google To Take On Amazon S3 Directly With New Cloud Storage Product (thenextweb.com)
• Google Maps API v3 Now Standard & Enterprise Ready (thenextweb.com)
• Google Latitude Has 3 Million Active Users, Check-Ins Likely On The Way (MG Siegler/TechCrunch) (techmeme.com)
• Facebook is Not the Next Google (revenews.com)

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
Chatfe Conversation - ThisIsLike.com
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

Related articles by Zemanta

• Nepal Maoists rally in Kathmandu (news.bbc.co.uk)
• New Hotmail takes aim at Gmail's top features (Paul Boutin/VentureBeat) (techmeme.com)
• Clashes hit Nepal 'peace rally' (news.bbc.co.uk)
• Prachanda's Second Big Mistake? (demrepubnepal.blogspot.com)
• Colorado man goes to Nepal to seek missing daughter (cnn.com)
• Naked Apartments Strips the Hassle out of Real Estate Hunting (mashable.com)
• Share Your Latest Purchases With Scordit (mashable.com)
• Design Free Digital Business Cards with DooID (mashable.com)
• TextMarks Makes Sending Mass Text Messages Easy (mashable.com)
• Hollrr: Foursquare for Product Reviews (mashable.com)
• Keep Your Online Calendar in Check With Plan.fm (mashable.com)
• Swipely and "Will People Do ___ Online?" (leehower.com)
• Foursquare and Starbucks team up to offer mayoral perks (business.financialpost.com)
• Maoists rally in Kathmandu (cnn.com)
• Sprout Social Raises Funding, Offers Business Tools For The Social Web (techcrunch.com)
• Chatfe: Start A Conversation With Someone New (techzulu.com)
• How Venture Capitalists are Using Social Media for Real Results (mashable.com)
• OpenBook Lets You Search Public Facebook Updates (techie-buzz.com)
• Hollrr: Foursquare for Product Reviews (mashable.com)
• Startup Riot Pitch Hour 3 (weatherby.net)
• Track Your Favorite Band's Online Buzz with Next Big Sound (mashable.com)
• The New Hotmail Challenges Gmail (thaibrother.com)
• The New Hotmail Challenges Gmail (googlesystem.blogspot.com)

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

Related articles by Zemanta

• Legendary VC Vinod Khosla Covers Also Legendary VC Tim Draper's Daughter With Paint (businessinsider.com)
• Hunch Takes $12 Million From Khosla Ventures, Adds Former Facebook CFO To Board Of Directors (techcrunch.com)
• Investing in Clean Tech (online.wsj.com)
• Jerry Brown and Vinod Khosla to Speak at Green:Net 2010 (gigaom.com)
• Decision engine Hunch confirms $12M led by Khosla (deals.venturebeat.com)
• Khosla-backed Sakti3 bags $7M for advanced batteries (green.venturebeat.com)
• Vinod Khosla: In energy, ignore the experts (news.cnet.com)
• Readings: Sovereign Risk, Khosla, Tennis, Chess, Roubini, etc. (paul.kedrosky.com)
• Silicon Alley Insider: We're Pretty Sure Foursquare Will Take Funding From Khosla Ventures (businessinsider.com)
• Painting Silicon Valley a New Shade of Green [Voices] (voices.allthingsd.com)

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

Related articles by Zemanta

• Start-up visa (news.bbc.co.uk)
• The Startup Visa Act Must Be Stopped (businessinsider.com)
• Startup Visa Introduced: Is it a No-Brainer? (readwriteweb.com)
• The Startup Visa (update) (avc.com)
• BBC 6 Music's audience rises 50% (guardian.co.uk)
• YC-Funded Nowmov: Sit Back, Relax, And Watch An Endless Stream Of YouTube Videos (techcrunch.com)

Patent Absurdity

Video: Patent Absurdity - Dokumentarfilm (28:54)

Via Fred Wilson

Related articles by Zemanta

• Phenomenal Essay On Why Software Patents Are The Problem (feld.com)
• Software Patent Absurdity (myventurepad.com)
• Software Patent Absurdity (feld.com)
• "The real reason the independent software industry emerged is that operating systems and APIs made it..." (konterkariert.tumblr.com)
• EU Patent Examiners Warn Parliament Will Have "No Power" (yro.slashdot.org)
• Open Source to Strap on Patent Body Armor (arnoldit.com)
• You Might Want to Rethink that Email Pitch: Your VCs Have Declared Email Bankruptcy (readwriteweb.com)
• Fred Wilson on the StackOverflow Investment (avc.com)
• Fred Wilson: A DJ (technbiz.blogspot.com)
• "And the best answer we could come up with was, let's make the damn thing free, and get some VC..." (caterpillarcowboy.com)
• Fred Wilson Wants To Bring The Chatroulette Founder To NYC (businessinsider.com)
• Are NYC VCs Jealous Of Fred Wilson? (businessinsider.com)
• Fred Wilson: DJ (technbiz.blogspot.com)
• Facebook and You (laf.ee)

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

Related articles by Zemanta

• Time Warner Posts Profit (online.wsj.com)
• Time Warner ads bring in profits (news.bbc.co.uk)
• Time Warner's TNT And TBS Turn On TV Everywhere For Verizon FIOS Custmers (techcrunch.com)
• Time Warner Strikes 'TV Everywhere' Pact With Verizon (paidcontent.org)
• Time Warner Eyes MGM for $1.5 Billion (dailyfinance.com)
• Warner Bros, Imax reach 20 picture deal to 2013 (seattletimes.nwsource.com)
• Ad Recovery At Time Inc., Turner Helps Time Warner Beat Street (paidcontent.org)
• Fashion label partners with Warner Bros to launch True Blood-themed collection (mumbrella.com.au)
• Time Warner Executive Vice President Edward Adler Leaves The Company (TWX) (businessinsider.com)
• Post-split Time Warner in profit (news.bbc.co.uk)

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.

Adam Smith And The Inbox Space

Image via CrunchBase

This guy Adam Smith popped up in my inbox today. Responding to an urge by Fred Wilson a few days ago, I signed up for the Venture Hacks mailing list, and today they sent me Adam Smith. It has been a cool find. Although I remember getting amused by the inbox spelled backwards thing from a few years back, in passing, (I remember watching that Bill Gates video that Adam inserts in his presentation in the video below, and I might be off on the time stamp) I am learning the guy's name for the first time today.

Venture Hacks Daily Newsletter

My interest in Adam Smith is that I have been giving some thought to the inbox space here at my blog recently.

Reimagining The Inbox The Simple Way
2010: Location, Random Connections, The Inbox, Frictionless Payments

I like it how he says no he has not solved the inbox problem, that problem is too big, he has not even attempted to solve the inbox problem. More than humility, it is a matter of fact. There is much work that can be done in the inbox space. Could you make the inbox sexy again?

@asmith
@dharmesh



Adam Smith's blog. (founder of Xobni) "We make email software that makes it easier for people to manage relationships and find information in their email......included in the MIT Technology Review's list of Top 35 Innovators Under 35, and Inc Magazine's Top 30 Entrepreneurs Under 30."

From Zero to a Million Users - Dropbox and Xobni lessons learned
Amazon S3’s Pricing Model is Arbitragable, and the Future of Cloud Storage
The Market Opportunity to Undercut Sonos Let me know if you’re interested. There are a couple of other interesting product and marketing angles that we could jam on, and I might want to put some money in.
The Great Q& A Wars of 2009 ~ 2014 The major players are now Quora, StackOverflow, and Hunch..... Aardvark had about 40 bytes of information about me. They knew I was into startups, programming, and San Francisco. ....“everyone on the SO team works remotely from home” ..... dreaming about the company's problems at night, not talking at too many conferences, or doing other fake CEO stuff.
Magic in the software -- what the point and shoot camera industry needs I take pictures on my iphone using the Dropbox app. Pictures I take are immediately copied to all of my computers. .... There are a ton of apps that remain out of reach to point and shoots. ..... The magic is in the software.
Seven Major Websites that Send Passwords Unprotected, and State Sponsored Deep Packet Inspection Seven of the 36 sites I tested sent passwords in the clear, available for an Internet Service Provider to read. .... 50% of the Chinese websites I tested were offenders. .... There are well known, easily implementable techniques for securing passwords sent back to a server.
Technology to circumvent online copyright enforcement “Why it might become civil disobedience to serve up random data.” .... Any given copyrighted work could be expressed across 10 random-looking files.
How to Find and Hire Amazing People, Part 4
How to Find and Hire Amazing People, Part 3
How to Find and Hire Amazing People, Part 2
How to Find and Hire Amazing People, Part 1
My Startup Bootcamp Talk
How To Find A Market For Your New Company, Family Edition
How MIT Didn't Prepare Me For a Startup, Part 1
13 Ways Acting Classes Improved My Public Speaking Skillz
MIT Students Send Cameras Into Stratosphere, Very Cool!
Some Thoughts: the Online Backpacking Travel Industry

Related articles by Zemanta

• From Zero to a Million Users - Dropbox and Xobni lessons learned (slideshare.net)
• the other adam smith (3quarksdaily.com)
• The Myth of Adam (Smith) (firedoglake.com)
• Xobni now Office 2010 32/64-bit Compliant (on10.net)
• No Way! Adam Smith Said THAT? (themoderatevoice.com)
• Cable TV Won't Lose To The Internet Because It's Making Too Much Money? (techdirt.com)
• Xobni Takes Enterprise Push to Redmond (businessweek.com)
• Boettke Receives 2010 Adam Smith Award (stephankinsella.com)
• JERRY POURNELLE ON FINANCIAL REFORM: Were it left to me I'd reform finance regulation all right, ... (pajamasmedia.com)
• Billionaire Jumps Into Florida Senate Race (politicalwire.com)