The Good NET Guide

Posts Tagged ‘president-obama’

Apparently there was some sort of media summit in Abu Dhabi recently, and a big topic of discussion was copyright infringement. (I think we need to reserve the word “piracy” for actual, sea-faring piracy, not kids grabbing the random Sublime song off LimeWire.) Rupert Murdoch called on governments to stop copyright infringers, asking them to punish them as they would shoplifters. I guess Murdoch doesn’t understand the different between theft and copyright infringement

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Isn’t President Obama a little busy to be concerning himself with kids downloading pop songs?

In the second installment of a series of open interviews with government leaders, YouTube is going to field questions to Federal Communications Commission Chairman Julius Genachowski, following the launch of the National Broadband Plan next Tuesday (The FCC is the federal agency that oversees all elements of the U.S. communications sector). The plan aims to connect all Americans to fast, affordable high-speed Internet.

Similar to the question and answer session with President Obama following the State of The Union speech, users can submit video or text questions on CitizenTube via Google Moderator You can then vote on your favorite questions submitted by the community. YouTube will present the top-voted questions to Chairman Genachowski in the interview next Tuesday. The deadline for submission is Sunday, March 14 at 11:59 p.m. PT.

Google and the Obama administration have been working to incorporate the social video sharing site into government events. YouTube also aired the debate between President Obama and lawmakers over the President’s proposed healthcare reform at the Healthcare Summit in February. Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi, Minority Leader John Boehner, and Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid answered select questions submitted via Google Moderator at the end of the summit.

2009 TechCrunch50 winner Redbeacon, a service that pairs consumers with service providers, is releasing a number of new features today, launching a distribution relationship and sharing key data from their beta trial. The 50,000 foot view is, this startup has legs.

Users go to Redbeacon and search for real world service providers (housekeepers, plumbers, handyman, personal trainers, etc.). The service sends you firm quotes from local service providers, based on price and other factors, such as previous reviews and expertise with the specific job you want done. You can book an appointment online, and Redbeacon takes a 10% fee from the service provider.

The service first went live in the San Francisco bay area in October, and now has thousands of local service providers.

Most queries receive firm quotes within an hour, they say, and many get quotes within minutes. 100% of queries have received firm quotes, and “a very high percentage” of users are then booking appointments, says cofounder Ethan Anderson.

But the beta period has given the company much needed feedback, too. Service provider profiles need to have a lot more information, they say, for users to feel comfortable booking with them (and perhaps bringing them into their home). So the company has greatly expanded profiles to give that information. Redbeacon has also created better tools to allow users and providers to communicate before, during and after a job.

User can now upload more information on a job, such as a picture of the problem (a hole in the wall for a handyman, etc.). That leads to more and better quotes, says Anderson.

New Features, New Deal

Today Redbeacon is adding a social feature to the product that allows users to ask friends about which quotes they should accept, or to recommend different providers. They’re doing this through Facebook Connect, and allowing users to post their questions directly onto Facebook. This has the added benefit of viral marketing, of course.

Recent studies have shown that people love to ask their friends for advice when it comes to buying goods and services, and the success of services like Aardvark, which allow exactly that, aren’t surprising.

Redbeacon is also adding organization memberships and badges for services providers (BBB, etc.). This gives extra assurance to users that the provider is legitimate.

First Distribution Deal

Redbeacon is also announcing their first third party distribution deal, with Bigtent. These deals push the Redbeacon product directly into third party sites in exchange for a revenue share with the partner. Look for more of these over time, says Anderson.

The Value In Redbeacon: Real Reviews

Redbeacon provides a valuable service that blows away things like the Yellow Pages. But there’s also a hidden gem – the service knows for sure when a transaction occurs, so a review by a user is going to be legitimate. All those problems with fake review on Yelp will be avoided on Redbeacon.

Redbeacon pulls in review from Yelp, Google, etc. as well. But over time the review data they gather will be far more valuable than those services, simply because of verified transactions.

What’s most amazing about Redbeacon is that the startup has held off on raising any outside capital at all until now, despite a feeding frenzy around the company (multiple venture capitalists and angel investors have begged us for introductions over the last few months). I’d imagine that fast will soon be over. Now’s the time to raise a good round of financing and push Redbeacon to multiple markets beyond the bay area.

Gossip mongers and sports fans alike are eagerly awaiting Tiger Woods’ press conference tomorrow morning, when he’ll confront the public and apologize for his string of affairs that tarnished both his image as a role model and his endorsement earnings. And, according to one source, you’ll be able to live stream it from the world’s most popular video portal: YouTube.

This is interesting for a few reasons. First, it’s going to get a lot of traffic, as many people will be at work and won’t be able to watch the conference from their TV sets. But it’s also another live video feed on YouTube, which historically has almost exclusively featured recorded content. Over the last year or so, YouTube has been experimenting more often with live feeds, with broadcasts including YouTube Live, numerous political debates and events including President Obama’s record-breaking inauguration, and more recently, earnings webcasts. But the Tiger Woods event, while certainly newsworthy, is a different beast. It’s related more to gossip and sports than it is to our nation’s future or Google news.

It could also be a sign of things to come.  YouTube doesn’t stream these events themselves (they’ve often relied on Akamai), but it’s apparent that they’re becoming more open to featuring live streams on the home page. And even though YouTube’s roots may lie in user-submitted videos, it seems foolish to push users to other video sites whenever they want to see a major event live.

The event starts at 8 AM PST. Other sites that will be streaming the event include Ustream and major news networks.

Update: It’s official, YouTube just announced it here.

Yesterday, California’s Chief Technology Officer, P.K. Agarwal, wrote that the government is using a crowdsourcing tool, IdeaScale, to get a consensus on the ideas to spur IT innovation around the California’s IT systems. IdeaScale, which is a crowdsourcing tool produced by startup Survey Analytics, is gaining serious traction as a crowdsourcing tool for government agencies. Currently, 23 agencies in the U.S. Federal Government are using IdeaScale to power crowdsourcing initiatives.

IdeaScale’s technology allows citizens to submit ideas to a site and then vote on their favorite ideas via a Digg-like voting system. The ideas that have the most favorable votes bubble to the top. Agencies can also participate in the discussion by commenting on ideas and posting updates, effectively creating a community around this ideation.

For example, the U.S. Department of State is using IdeaScale to crowdsource ideas and suggestions on policy. The Obama administration also used IdeaScale to solicit ideas from government agencies on its Open Government initiative last year. Of course, IdeaScale’s tool can be used for non-government initiatives as well. According to its website, the platform has been used by Microsoft, RedHat, Navteq and others.

President Obama’s government has been a fan of crowdsourcing, and has used similar tool Google Moderator to power citizen participation on Change.gov, and Town Hall meetings.

Streaming video site Ustream has just pulled in a massive new round of funding: $75 million. This second round was led by SoftBank, a Japanese telecom giant. Previously, the site had raised just below $13 million in funding, which came from its Series A in 2008 and its angel round in late 2007.

Perhaps even crazier is that the service is saying that additional funding commitments are pending from other investors in the U.S. and Asia, so the round will likely actually be larger than the $75 million, which is all from SoftBank. We’re hearing reports that there was quite a bit of competition to be involved in the round, and apparently all the dust hasn’t settled yet.

So why on Earth does Ustream need $75 million+? CEO John Ham says in the release that the money will be used to expand on the other side of the world, particularly Japan (obvious, given the SoftBank involvement), China, Korea, and India. Mobile video is particularly hot in some of the Asian countries where their faster wireless networks allow for more functionality than the comparatively slow ones in the U.S. Ustream will open offices and hire staff in all those countries, apparently.

Alongside this new round, we’re also hearing that the founders of the company, Ham, Brad Hunstable, and Gyula Feher were able to sell some shares as a reward.

Just a few days ago, Ustream launched a new desktop client to help video producers give their work a more professional feel. Prior to that, in December, Ustream made headlines by being the first big video streaming site to offer that (recording) functionality on the iPhone.

Ustream says that its iPhone apps has been downloaded over 1.5 million times to date (it has had other apps before the live streaming one was available too) and notes that 3.8 million people tuned into the service to watch the inauguration of President Obama in January of last year.

In the State of the Union Address last Wednesday, President Obama said “the nation that leads the clean energy economy will be the nation that leads the global economy and America must be that nation.”  At the same time, on the other coast, 75 clean energy investors, entrepreneurs, and researchers were debating whether the U.S. can gain this leadership position.  They agreed that even though Silicon Valley leads the world in technology, it is not clear if it will ever lead in Cleantech. The Valley may develop some breakthrough technologies, but without government help these are unlikely to translate into global leadership. The technology world is rightfully allergic to government assistance and intervention. Cleantech is different, however, and we aren’t dealing with a level global playing field.

The Knowledge Economy Institute Leadership Summit, which I attended, was held at the Joint BioEnergy Institute (JBEI), in Emeryville, California. The question posed: what will take for the U.S. to achieve global leadership in the clean-energy economy? The group concluded that the U.S., by far, has the strongest innovation platform in the world. But other countries may well reap the benefits of its research efforts. China, in particular, is making massive investments and has a huge advantage from focused policy and large markets.  Even though China is not likely to produce its own innovation, it will continue to appropriate U.S. technology and gain a major advantage by combining this with its manufacturing prowess.  American firms which are increasingly choosing to build design and manufacturing operations in China will provide it with additional advantage.

What will it take for America to lead? Despite decades of dominance in technology innovation, America has a dilemma in the clean-energy economy. Most entrepreneurs aren’t getting the support needed, and we are unable to translate research discoveries in our universities into profitable businesses that attract high levels of investment, make lots of money through manufacturing, and create jobs.

There are two problems with university research – the system for commercializing discoveries doesn’t work well, and there is no clear path-to-market for new technologies which do make it out the door. I’ve written about these problems and I prescribed some workarounds. JBEI is a bold experiment to fix some of these problems the right way. It brings together researchers from different disciplines with business. And it has a practical focus on solving real-world problems.

Centers like JBEI may produce major breakthroughs in technology. But that is when the next set of problems kick in both for university research and for entrepreneurs – clean energy is different than other technologies.  Startups typically need hundreds of millions of dollars to develop and scale up technologies.  Investors don’t see steady, strong and growing markets. So, few are taking the risks and making the big investments.

U.S. policy is not as aggressive as other countries in creating sustainable markets, investing in commercialization, or promoting manufacturing.  Take, for example, Japan’s Sunshine Project and related initiatives that have consistently driven that country’s clean-energy policy since 1974.  Japan has succeeded in building infrastructure, markets, and technology companies that help meet national energy security goals for the long-term.  The U.S. has not.

Contrast this with how U.S. government responded to challenges to its semiconductor industry by rallying behind it and keeping a significant value piece here.  How do we keep our innovative clean-energy companies and their design and manufacturing operations in America?

We need to learn from other countries.  In industries like Cleantech, success depends upon consistent and reliable government policy that links market supply and demand over the long-term.  U.S. policy has been cyclical, unilaterally focused on petroleum, and unrealistic about the value of short-term subsidies and support.  American startups suffer from inconsistent pricing-signals that make investors wary.  As investment cycles wax and wane, small companies lose top talent and are unable to recruit it back when funding begins to flow with the next cycle upturn.

Policy makers need to look at things that affect pricing. Energy is a commodity and it is all about cost.  The energy sector is undifferentiated.  Startups compete with large incumbent firms.  Moreover, clean-energy technology often has a deceptive fit with current industry and markets.  Take biofuels, for example. The high ratio of bulk-to-fuel, distributed biomass sources, and inherent chemical variation dictate smaller-scale and more regional patterns of development and deployment than for petroleum.

Consumers are key.   Consumer perceptions of energy prices have potent effects on the market.   China figured this out.  In addition to subsidizing manufacturing, it is training thirty thousand salespeople to sell new clean technologies to consumers. In the U.S. energy is just too cheap, so consumers don’t see the benefits of Cleantech. Rebates and short-term subsidies just aren’t creating long-term demand. As a result, entrepreneurs trying to build companies on energy efficiency are finding it hard to stay afloat.  The demand and growing markets are just not there.

Will America meet President Obama’s call for global leadership in the clean energy economy?  Not likely if Congress and state governments don’t make it a lot easier for startups to attract investment and a lot more attractive to manufacture here.  Governments need to coordinate comprehensive, long term energy policy – now.

Editor’s note: Guest writer Vivek Wadhwa is an entrepreneur turned academic. He is a Visiting Scholar at UC-Berkeley, Senior Research Associate at Harvard Law School and Director of Research at the Center for Entrepreneurship and Research Commercialization at Duke University. Follow him on Twitter at @vwadhwa.

This is a guest post by Mark Suster, a 2x entrepreneur who has gone to the Dark Side of VC. He started his first company in 1999 and was headquartered in London, leaving in 2005 and selling to a publicly traded French services company. He founded his second company in Palo Alto in 2005 and sold this company to Salesforce.com, becoming VP Product Management. He joined GRP Partners in 2007 as a General Partner focusing on early-stage technology companies.

TechCrunch Europe ran an article in November of last year that European startups need to work as hard as those in Silicon Valley and I echoed the sentiment in my post about the need for entrepreneurs to be maniacal about their businesses if one wants to work in the hyper competitive tech world.

Back in November of last year, President Obama admitted that he had never actually used Twitter despite having one of the most popular accounts. The @barackobama account has over 2 million followers and has tweeted things such as “Humbled” after it was announced that he had won the Nobel Peace Prize, but that was actually just one of his staffers tweeting from the account, apparently. To plenty of people that wasn’t a huge surprise, but it was still a bit disappointing to destroy at least the illusion that it was him sending these messages. Today, President Obama finally tweeted.

His first tweet wasn’t from the @barackobama account, but rather it was from the @redcross account. Even stranger was the actual tweet: “President Obama and the First Lady are here visiting our disaster operation center right now.” Yes, he tweeted in third person. The next tweet on the Red Cross account confirmed that it was the President who sent that tweet: “President Obama pushed the button on the last tweet. It was his first ever tweet!”

Obviously, this tweet was a way of showing his support for what the Red Cross is doing to help people in Haiti following the devastating earthquakes there last week. Though it might have been better for him to tweet from his account with over 2 million followers about the relief rather than the Red Cross’ which has a “mere” 50,000 followers.

Mobile donations to the Red Cross alone have already surpassed $10 million, with overall mobile donations now past $20 million.

Here’s what you might have missed yesterday: New Japanese toy: Endless chocolate bar breaker Genius: steel six-pack carrier Locals: “Your radio tower gives us rashes!” Company: “You mean the one that’s been off all this time?” Fear the Boot attacks our site, causing comment havoc President Obama’s policies have pushed the Doomsday Clock back by one minute

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Daily Crunch: Picnic Edition