The Good NET Guide

Posts Tagged ‘mimics-the-look’

Last summer, when Apple pulled third-party Google Voice applications from the App Store, one of them was VoiceCentral. Apple’s subsequent rejection of the official Google Voice app spurred an FCC investigation, but Google Voice never made it to the app store and none of the other apps ever made it back in.

Well, that’s not stopping the developers behind VoiceCentral. They are bringing back their app to the iPhone via the browser. They call it the Black Swan edition. You can get on a waiting list to be on the private beta here. The app is completely browser-based but has the look and feel of a regular app, complete with a dialer, list of transcribed voicemails, and SMS messages.

When you dial a number, Google Voice simply makes a call to your iPhone while simultaneously calling the number of the person you are trying to reach, so you still pay for the voice minutes. But the appeal of having Google Voice on your iPhone is the ability to read transcribed voicemails, or play them, and avoid SMS charges by texting through Google Voice. (You cannot yet do all of these things when you access Google Voice via the iPhone’s browser directly).

The downside is that it cannot access your contact list on your iPhone through the browser. Although, VoiceCentral mimics the look and feel of the iPhone contact manager, you have to export your contacts to Google Voice first and access them that way. Another limitation is that the audio plays through the speaker instead of through the earpiece, but if you are using a pair of earphones that is not a problem.

VoiceCentral will probably be a paid app, but Apple won’t get any of the revenues since it is simply a mobile Website. It even offers offline caching and takes advantage of the HTML5 features of mobile Safari. This could very well be the future of mobile apps. As mobile browsers become more capable, more and more developers are going to ask themselves why bother with the limitations of the App Store and be at the mercy of Apple’s whims? And it won’t just be developers like VoiceCentral who have no other choice.

Below is a promotional video which shows some of the features of VoiceCentral’s Black Swan app. Remember, this is all happening in the browser:

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It’s been a long drought for IPOs, but venture capitalists and tech entrepreneurs are hopeful that 2010 will be the year they rain down on the Valley once gain. Earlier this year, a handful of IPOs trickled out, such as OpenTable, Rackspace, and A123Systems. But what people are really waiting for is another Netscape moment—an iconic IPO which will whet investor’s appetites and open the floodgates for others to follow.

Below is our list of the top ten IPO candidates for 2010 in the technology industry (and, no, it doesn’t include Twitter). I conducted an informal survey of some top VCs and angel investors. These are the names whispered about the most in the Valley and other tech circles. The hope is that the economy will swing back and the public markets will become receptive to IPOs, especially towards the second half of the year.  The stock market in general is finding its legs already.  The S&P 500 is up 24 percent this year. If the bull market continues, that will be good for the prospects of seeing these potential IPOs.  And if it doesn’t, there’s always M&A.

1. Facebook. Total raised: $716 million.

If there is one company which everyone is looking towards for a new Netscape moment, it is Facebook.  The company can pretty much go public any time it wants.  It is already the fourth largest site in the U.S. and the world.  Its last private common stock sale valued the company at $11 billion, which may or may not be rational.  The key to a large public valuation will be whether Facebook can figure out how to turn all of that attention into advertising dollars.  So far it is said to be on track to beat its $550 million revenue projections from earlier this year.  A Facebook IPO would certainly create a halo effect for other tech offerings.  Even if it doesn’t go out in 2010, the prospect that it might could still help other companies go public as hungry investors grab what they can get.

2. Zynga. Total raised: $219 million.

Social game developer Zynga is on a tear, with more than 230 million people a month actively playing its games such as FarmVille, PetVille, and Texas HoldeEm Poker.  The company just raised a whopping $180 million round.  It is believed to be Facebook’s largest advertiser and pulling in at least $250 million in revenues on its own.  But it is also at the center of the Scamville controversy over how it makes some of its money from scammy offers.  If it can convince investors it has cleaned up its act, they will gobble up an IPO.

3. LinkedIn. Total raised: $103 million.

The other social network, LinkedIn is like the enterprise version of Facebook. It is where business gets done and people find jobs.  LAst year alone it raised about $75 million at a $1 billion valuation. Founder Reid Hoffman has spoken repeatedly about LinkedIn’s ability  to IPO.  Earlier this year, he recruited former Yahoo exec Jeff Weiner to be CEO and is spending more time himself as a venture capitalist, which has always been his sideline.

4. Glam Media. Total raised: $125 million.

Glam Media is one of the fastest growing ad networks and collection of fashion- and women-oriented sites.  At a time when traditional media and women’s magazines are suffering, Glam is saw display advertising revenues across its network up more than 50 percent in 2009.  CEO Samir Arora expects the company to be profitable in the fourth quarter, and is recruiting executives with big-company experience.  Ad networks which dominate their niche are an easy lay-up for investors.

5. Demand Media. Total raised: $355 million.

Demand Media is another LA-based company, started by former MySpace chairman Richard Rosenblatt.  Demand Media owns a collection of sites such as eHow, Livestrong, and countless niche sites.  It also owns domain name registrar eNom, which generates a lot of its cash.  Demand Media is a content mill, churning out articles and videos for its niche sites like Golflink.com and Trails.com  cheaply and quickly in response to what people are searching for.  It may not be sexy, but it is lucrative enough that potential acquirers are sniffing around and AOL’s Tim Armstrong is looking to copy and improve on the niche content model.

6. Gilt Groupe. Total raised: $48 million.

Gilt is a private online shopping club for luxury goods.  Its revenues are reportedly around $200 million this year, and expected to more than double next year.  IPO talk is already in the air.  Gilt’s counterpart in Europe, Ventee-Privée, is rumored to be in acquisition talks with Amazon for around $3 billion.  And Kleiner Perkins just invested in One Kings Lane, another private shopping club based in England.

7. Etsy. Total raised: $31.6 million.

Another niche e-commerce play could be Etsy, the Brooklyn-based marketplace for handcrafted goods.  Sellers on Etsy are on track to trade $200 million worth of goods on the maretplace this year, double from last year.  Founder Rob Kalin recently took over again as CEO and says the company is now profitable.  Etsy will never be as big as eBay, but its focus means that can become a the alternative eBay for buyers and sellers of high-quality, custom-designed apparel, furniture, and other goods.

8. Yelp. Total raised: $31 million.

Yelp was nearly acquired by Google for around $500 million before the deal broke down last week.  The fast-rising local reviews site now might try the public markets instead.  The company already has 300 employees and is becoming a powerhouse in the online advertising for local businesses, which is an area of growth every major Web company wants to participate in.  Already the IPO filings are starting to come in, with ReachLocal filing to raise $100 million for its local ad network.

9. Tesla Motors Total raised: $783 million.

Why would you invest in GM IPO if you could invest in Tesla instead?  Silicon Valley’s electric car company is expected to hit the public markets.  Building a car company takes massive amounts of capital, and Tesla has raised nearly $800 million so far.  Most of that comes in the form of government loans, such as the $465 million it received as part of the government’s $25 billion bailout of the U.S. auto industry.  A lot of the capital also comes from partner Daimler, and billionaire founder Elon Musk.  But, hey, at least Tesla is profitable, which is saying a lot for a car maker.

10. Skype Total raised: $69 million

Despite all the drama surrounding eBay’s recent sale of Skype to a group of private investors including Silver Lake Partners and Andreessen Horowitz for $2.75 billion, the deal got done.  Skype is already a major Internet brand, with more than 500 million users of its Internet calling, IM, and video communications service, and $185 million in quarterly revenues.  Before eBay found its buyers, it was very publicly pursuing the IPO route.  And given that eBay retains a 30 percent stake in Skype, that is still an option if its growth continues apace.

Runner’s Up:  The ten names above are the most likely to go public if the markets open up.  Other companies which might tap the public markets include Associated Content, Brightcove, Digg, StumbleUpon, LiveOps, Workday, MerchantCircle, ExactTarget, Chegg, and Rearden Commerce.  Most informed observers do not expect a Twitter IPO next year.  It is too early.  The company just raised $100 million, and still needs to figures out its business model.  Maybe in 2011.

Which of these companies do you think is most likely to IPO?  Which ones would you invest in?

Photo credit: Flickr/David Paul Ohmer

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We’ve received multiple tips of a new phishing attack that has broken out on Facebook. If you get an email message that looks to be from Facebook with the subject, “Hello,” and featuring the text below, don’t bother clicking on the link included. Doing so takes you to a site called fbaction.net that mimics the look of the main Facebook login page, hoping to get you to sign in. Naturally, if you do that, the site will have access to your account and can send out more of these messages to your friends.

The message body will apparently read something like this (with YOURFRIEND being replaced by the name of a friend of yours):

YOURFRIEND sent you a message.

Subject: Hello

“Visit http://www.facebook.com/l/4253f;http://fbaction.net/”

We’ve contacted Facebook about the situation to see what it is doing to remedy this. In the meantime, be on the lookout for any link related to fbaction.net.

Update: And it looks like “fbaction.net” is now the #2 hot trending search topic for all of Google Trends. This thing is apparently spreading quick.

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Time Warner announced first quarter earnings today, giving us a peak at how AOL is doing. It’ seen better days. Revenues were down 23 percent to $867 million. Of that advertising revenues made up about half ($443 million), but were down a gut-wrenching 20 percent. Yahoo, in comparison, saw a 12 percent decline in advertising revenues during the quarter, and Google saw 6 percent growth in total revenues on an annual basis. Even Microsoft did better on the online advertising front, suffering a smaller 16 percent drop in the quarter.

Also revealed in the 10Q filing with the SEC is Time Warner’s intention to separate the old dial-up access business and spin off the rest of AOL:

Although the Company’s Board of Directors has not made any decision, the Company currently anticipates that it would initiate a process to spin off one or more parts of the businesses of AOL to Time Warner’s stockholders, in one or a series of transactions. Based on the results of the Company’s review, future market conditions or the availability of more favorable strategic opportunities that may arise before a transaction is completed, the Company may decide to pursue an alternative other than a spin-off with respect to either or both of AOL’s businesses.

New AOL CEO Tim Armstrong gets a pass this quarter because he was just hired away from Google in March. But he has to stop the bleeding before a spin-off or sale is possible. Meanwhile, on the product front, AOL is pushing forward with tweaks to its homepage that more fully integrate blogs, Twitter, and social networks. And AOL is positioning AIM and Socialthing as a single sign-on alternative to Facebook connect and Google Friend Connect.

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Once again, Google is facing antitrust scrutiny, this time over its proposed settlement with the Authors Guild that would clear the way for it to scan out-of-print books. Most sane people seem to agree that scanning these books and making them available in digital form is a good idea, and the settlement even provides for a token payment of up to $60 per book to go to copyright holders.

The objections, and there are many of them, seem to revolve around the right Google negotiated for itself around orphan books—books still under copyright whose copyright owners cannot be found or who simply fail to register in the Book Rights Registry set up under the settlement. If authors and other copyright holders fail to register by the deadline, which has now been extended for another four months, under the settlement Google will not be liable for any copyright infringement claims stemming from orphan works. The concern is that this will give Google monopoly rights over all orphan works, which is what it appears to do.

In letter to the judge overseeing the settlement, the Internet Archive asked to be added as party to the settlement because it too scans hundreds of thousands of library books, but it won’t be protected from “potential copyright liability.” The judge denied the Internet Archive’s request, but its arguments (embedded in the letter below) spell out the main objection:

The Archive’s text archive would greatly benefit from the same limitation of potential copyright liability that the proposed settlement provides Google. Without such a limitation, the Archive would be unable to provide some of these same services due to the uncertain legal issues surrounding orphan books.

There is also the issue of monopoly pricing. If Google is the only entity with blanket protection, it could start charging more for access to these works, or those works which prove valuable. Any single work is probably not that valuable, but taken all together they are very valuable, especially to Google which benefits by simply being able to add the text of all these books into search results and then make money off the associated search ads.

So Google is now in the position where it negotiated a favorable settlement on its behalf, but competitors are playing the monopoly card and saying that settlement would give Google an unfair advantage in book search and retrieval. And they kind of have a point. So what is the answer? Google should amend some of the terms of the settlement to make it non-exclusive and the Author’s Guild should extend the same terms to any other company or organization that wants to digitize orphan books.

In other words, Google needs to free the orphans. Don’t make this just a deal between authors and Google. Make it a deal between authors and any existing or future book digitizer. Copyright holders should also have the option to place their works under Creative Commons licenses. If Google wants to stop being treated like a monopolist, it needs to stop acting like one.

Internet Archive Intervention: Google Book Search

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