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Posts Tagged ‘seattle’

Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers partner John Doerr, perhaps the most celebrated venture capitalist and certainly one of the most successful, will leave the Amazon board of directors this year.

Venture capitalists often try to stay on public company boards well after their investments have run their course. It’s a status thing, but it also puts them in a terrific position to help their younger portfolio companies. There’s no reason for Doerr to step down from the Amazon board of directors based on time commitments, which is what Amazon is saying. There’s just too much upside to being on the Amazon board of directors.

So what is the reason?

Our guess is that Doerr is leaving the Amazon board for the same reason Google CEO Eric Schmidt left the Apple board of directors in 2009.

Competition and conflicts of interest.

Google is increasingly competitive with Apple. But the company also competes with Amazon in a number of areas, particularly web services and big data. And down the road, Google may compete directly in other ways as well. Froogle was a flop, but don’t think Google doesn’t want a bigger chunk of ecommerce revenue from people who begin their product searches on their search engine. We’re betting Doerr had to choose between the two companies.

Or maybe Doerr just got sick of flying up to Seattle for the board meetings.

This is the lede, verbatim, from a story that appeared in The Hill yesterday : “The Internet allowed extremists to contact, recruit, train and equip the suspect responsible for the attempted Flight 253 bombing on Christmas Day ‘within weeks,’ a top Pentagon official told lawmakers Wednesday.” What’s the implication, that because someone used the Internet to plan something, something bad , we should get rid of it? Fine by me, believe me.

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Pentagon partially blames the Internet for that Christmas underpants bomber

Data storage company Pivot3 has raised $25 million in Series D funding led by Focus Ventures with existing investors InterWest Partners, Lightspeed Venture Partners, Mesirow Financial Capital Partners IX, and Silver Creek Ventures participating. This brings the startup’s total funding to over $75 million.

Pivot3’s storage solutions offer integrated server virtualization for data to enterprise customers. Its RAID-based solutions are generally used to store video surveillance data. The company has over 140 customers including Port of Seattle, the Mall of America, and the City of Trenton. The investment will be used to expand sales operations internationally and for product development.

Will Spain repeat its Euro 2008 success? Greetings from lovely Seattle! I’m here on the West Coast for two reasons. One, Thursday was Adidas’ World Cup Media Day in Portland, and I was invited to check out all the hi-tech wonderment that the company has in store for this World Cup year

Continued here: 
The many hi-tech wonders of Adidas at this year’s World Cup

Blippy, the Twitter-like service that lets users publish the details of all their purchases, is just a couple of months old. But it already got Stephen Colbert’s attention (thumbs up). And now it has Amazon’s too (thumbs down).

Cofounder Philip Kaplan first mentioned that Amazon had turned off Blippy’s access to the service on an episode of TWiST with Jason Calacanis. I spoke to Kaplan tonight about Amazon’s reaction to Blippy.

He says they didn’t block Blippy, but simply insisted that the service stop pulling user purchase data, and erase all historical data they had already collected. They were also summoned to Seattle to speak with a “high ranking executive” of the company. Blippy complied (with both the summons and the demand to stop accessing user data).

Kaplan is soft stepping around the Amazon issue, and is hoping to come to some agreement with the company to allow them to access data in the future. He says “We believe our users feel strongly, as we do, that it is their right to access and use their data however they want. We’re optimistic that Amazon will come to the same conclusion.”

None of the other thirteen companies Blippy takes data from have complained, Kaplan says. And he notes that users must actually request data to be collected before Blippy begins to do that.

There is certainly an issue with how Blippy collects data – by storing user credentials on their own servers. But Blippy says they use APIs to log users in when available. And that may be the issue Amazon has with Blippy.

But it doesn’t explain why they’re insisting Blippy delete historical data that’s already been collected. The users have given their permission, and in fact have indicated that they want this data to be moved to Blippy. And it is the users’ data, after all. Amazon would be smart to remember that.

Perhaps, and I’m speculating here, there’s a reason Amazon doesn’t want all this data published. They’ve engaged in variable pricing in the past to test the demand curve, for example. They certainly may be using it again.

Short Version : The audio is only passable (at least at speed) and the fit questionable, but hey, these do just what they set out to do: put some headphones in a decent hat. Feels a little weird to plaster my face all over the front page like that, but hats without heads in them are even less photogenic than I am. Features: Several styles to choose from (this review is for “Cotton T Black”) In-line mic for iPhone/Blackberry Low-profile headphone drivers Regular 3.5mm jack Pros: Hey, they work Hat is decent quality, fairly warm Easy to set up and remove (handy for washing) Cons: Sound quality not so good White cable not so hot against black hat, or going to non-iPod device Tight fit can make headphones press against ears too hard Full Review: I have to say that when I first tried these out, biking about a mile over to the Central District, I was pretty disappointed.

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Review: Aerial7 Sound Disk Beanie headphone-hat

Short Version : It costs a bundle, but the Soyuz is a fantastic backpack.

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Bag Week: Chrome Soyuz weather-proof laptop backpack

Charles Babbage is cited as the father of modern computing — although perhaps “uncle” would be more accurate, since his designs never actually saw completion and computing is based on totally different principles. But his idea of a “difference engine,” a hand-cranked device that could solve mathematical problems, is essentially the first instance of a computer in human history. Unfortunately, the device, designed to tackle the huge amount of calculation involved in tracking the British navy, was never completed

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Babbage’s 19th-century “difference engine” on display in Mountain View

Microsoft’s PR folks in Germany have officially asked journalists not to use or talk about Apple products during their events. Why

See more here: 
Microsoft Germany: Sprechen nicht von Apple!

A lot of people use location-based apps to find out one thing: Which close-by bars have the best happy hours. But many of those apps include a wide range of other options that often muddle up the straightforward desire to drink. A new iPhone app aims to cut through all the other BS, and simply get you down to business.

Happy Hour App, created by Boomtown Apps, has one purpose: To show you the locations of bars with happy hours. But it does it well. Once it figures out your location (you can also manually enter one), it gives you a list of bars that are close by. From there you can sort by the time until that bar’s happy hour starts, as well as the typical price of drinks at the particular happy hour. You can also see all the bars represented on a map, for a more visual way of finding a place to drink.

Clicking on any of the bars will give you more details about it such as an address and phone number, but also valuable information such as whether or not they take credit cards. The top area is reserved to give you a countdown until that bar’s happy hour, or how long you have to take advantage of their deals if the happy hour is already going on. You can also easily tag your favorite happy hour bars.

Unfortunately, perhaps the most valuable part of such an app, the listed drink specials, seems a bit unfinished. Many of the bars are listed as having $0.00 happy hour specials simply because there is no data as to what that bar is actually offering. But there is an easy way to submit information updates about a bar and its specials from each bar landing page, so hopefully that will improve as more people use the app.

Right now, Happy Hour App works in a few select cities such as New York, Los Angeles, San Francisco, Las Vegas, Seattle, and Nashville. But the plan is to roll it out in other cities shortly. They also note that while there are other competitors in the drinking app field, Happy Hour App feels like it covers the widest range of bars in the cities it is in, and will update the most often. “Our goal with Happy Hour App is to break through the noise of online listings and recommendations to create a concise list for eager drinkers to find cheap booze,” writes co-founder Nick Daze. As usual, we respect that honesty, much like the one Power Hour app that didn’t try to tell us it was really about exercising in an hour.

Happy Hour App is $1.99 in the App Store. Find it here.

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