Because I get bored on Sunday nights, I opened up Yahoo’s recent regulatory filings for some light reading and, as usual, found some tasty information that the company had kindly dropped in for my erudition, but declined to call my attention to.

Namely, that the Silicon Valley Internet giant is paying not so very much for its mobile acquisitions, according to several documents the company has filed.

In fact, Yahoo’s average price paid for each of five of the 10 startups it has purchased since last fall is a tiny $3.2 million in cash.

For example, here’s last week’s 10-Q referring to three of CEO Marissa Mayer’s first acquisitions — content curation app Snip.it, which Yahoo bought in January (funding amount unknown, but the $10 million acquisition price reported by some sites is clearly wrong, as you will see from the filing); recommendation app Alike (funding amount unknown), which was on February’s menu; and recommendation app Jybe (funding amount unknown), which the company picked up in mid-March:

The Company did not make any acquisitions during the three months ended March 31, 2012. However, during the three months ended March 31, 2013, the Company acquired three companies, all of which were accounted for as business combinations. The total purchase price for these acquisitions was $10 million and consisted entirely of cash consideration, primarily allocated to goodwill. Goodwill represents the excess of the purchase price over the fair value of the net tangible and intangible assets acquired and is not deductible for tax purposes.

The Company’s business combinations completed during the three months ended March 31, 2013 did not have a material impact on the Company’s condensed consolidated financial statements.

Going back further, Yahoo’s purchase of recommendation app Stamped last October (it had $3 million in funding) and video-chat app OnTheAir ($880,000 in funding) in December were also on the cheap — a bargain at $6 million total — according to its 10-K filed a few months ago:

During the year ended December 31, 2012, the Company acquired two companies, which were accounted for as business combinations. The total purchase price for these acquisitions was $7 million. The total cash consideration of $7 million less cash acquired of $1 million resulted in a net cash outlay of $6 million. Of the total purchase price, $6 million was allocated to goodwill and $1 million to cash acquired. Goodwill represents the excess of the purchase price over the fair value of the net tangible and intangible assets acquired and is not deductible for tax purposes.

The Company’s business combinations completed in 2012 did not have a material impact on the Company’s consolidated financial statements, and therefore pro forma disclosures have not been presented.

It will be interesting to see what Yahoo reveals as to the price, and how it will account for the late March acquisition of Britain’s news reader Summly, which AllThingsD reported was a loftier $30 million.

The Summly deal did not appear to have closed by the end of the quarter, so no purchase information has been released, although it will be soon enough, along with that of the more recent string of mobile buys by Yahoo: To-do app Astrid, social polling app GoPollGo, travel rewards app MileWise and mobile gaming studio Loki.

For those four tiny companies, which were doubtlessly also bought for very little, Yahoo did tout what it’s really after in a festive tweet on Friday.

Warm entrepreneurial bodies:

We recently added 22 entrepreneurs to our growing mobile team. Welcome to Yahoo! @astrid @gopollgo @milewise @lokistudios!

— Yahoo! Inc.(@YahooInc) May 10, 2013

As has been widely reported and according to sources we have confirmed it with, Facebook is indeed in serious talks to buy Waze for $1 billion, the social traffic application that helps drivers navigate the road with crowdsourced traffic information.

While no deal has been struck as yet, these sources said, the discussions are advanced and closely resemble the social networking giant’s lightning-fast purchase of Instagram a year ago.

The similarities do not stop there. The price is the same and is a mix of cash and stock, said sources. In addition, as Facebook has done with Instagram, Waze will be allowed to operate relatively independently within the company if the deal is struck.

Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg recently praised the purchase of Instagram, which has grown to more than 100 million active users in a short time span. More importantly, it has been a critical perceptual part of Facebook’s effort to distinguish itself in the mobile space and has added a highly engaged audience to its audience.

The news of the Waze acquisition interest by Facebook was first reported by Israel’s Calcalist. The Israeli-based company has been the subject of numerous rumors of acquisition, including by Apple and Google, neither of which seems to have panned out.

Not so here and the main question now: Why would Facebook buy a mapping company?

It’s not that much of a surprise, actually. The digital industry has moved its focus to mobile over the past few years, as users are increasingly accessing sites through their smartphones instead of desktop sites. As of Facebook’s last earnings, more than 750 million people visit Facebook via mobile device on a monthly basis.

After intense investor worry over its lack of mobile strategy caused a huge drop in its stock, Facebook quickly shifted to the idea that it needed to own the mobile experience. First, as has been reported by AllThingsD.com previously, that was going to be a proper phone. Then, abandoning that effort, the company mulled creating its own operating system. Finally, it settled on Home, essentially a Facebook-ified version of the Google Android mobile operating system that can be downloaded to run on many Android-enabled phones.

Clearly, Facebook has wanted to own the mobile experience without doing the intense work and uphill fighting of creating its own hardware or building an operating system from the ground up, both of which would struggle for marketshare, just like RIM’s BlackBerry or Microsoft’s Windows Phone.

But as we’ve seen with Google and, most recently, with Apple’s iPhone, if you want to truly own a mobile operating system, you’ve got to own the maps.

Why? Well, it’s an endless treasure trove of continuously updated data directly from your users, including their locations, their habits, their preferred businesses and their travel destinations. It’s why Apple snipped off Google Maps and switched its users over to its own mapping product, despite some problems with its software. And it’s why Google spent the past decade building up its maps to lead the industry.

To avoid getting left out, Waze, in particular, makes a certain amount of sense for a Facebook buy. For years, Facebook has yammered on and on about “social from the ground up” — you can’t just build apps and services and then slap a social layer on top and then just call them social. The network, Facebook argues, doesn’t work like that.

Waze is a perfect example of social from the ground up. From the beginning, the app has relied on not only the passive input of traffic and location data from its users, but the active contribution of data like accidents, police traps and more.

In other words, Waze is based on social contributions for the greater good of others using the app. Talk about something Facebook would be into, even at the high cost of one billion dollars.

But that’s something the company is used to pulling the trigger on. It outbid Twitter for Instagram almost one year ago, in a deal that was closed over the course of a weekend. While Zuckerberg had spent a lot of time creating a relationship with its co-founder Kevin Systrom, in that instance he showed the inclination and the power to grab for what he wants and very quickly.

Facebook declined to comment, with a spokesperson saying: “We don’t comment on rumors and speculation.”

Earlier this week, I appeared on Bloomberg West with the ever-delightful Emily Chang to talk about my recent article in Vanity Fair magazine about the rise of Instagram and its sale to Facebook, titled “The Money Shot.”

You can read the full piece here or here, but this turned out to be a long — 10 minutes — interview that has a lot more detail (if you are interested, of course).

Among other things, Chang asked me more about the fractured relationship between the mobile photo-sharing app’s co-founder and CEO Kevin Systrom and one of his key mentors, Twitter inventor Jack Dorsey, in the wake of the billion-dollar sale to Facebook (and not Twitter), which I called a “bromance gone awry.”

Indeed, Dorsey’s quote on the end of their relationship over Instagram’s choice was pretty sad:

“I found out about the deal when I got to work and one of my employees told me about it, after reading it online I got a notice later that day since I was an investor,” said Dorsey. “So I was heartbroken, since I did not hear from Kevin at all. We exchanged e-mails once or twice, and I have seen him at parties. But we have not really talked at all since then, and that’s sad.”

As I also wrote, “Dorsey’s last Instagram shot perhaps said the proverbial thousand words about it all: A picture of an empty Muni bus” (which is seen above).

You can’t always get what you want, but here’s the Bloomberg West interview, anyway:

There’s no picture of the moment when everything changed for Kevin Systrom. But if there were, it would look something like this: A lanky, very tall, dark-haired man in his late 20s sits on a bench at the Caltrain commuter station in Palo Alto, Calif. A sepia tone and weathered patina might underscore the mood of weighty contemplation.

It was early April of last year, and Systrom was waiting for his business partner, Mike Krieger, to arrive from San Francisco. Systrom had just left Mark Zuckerberg’s nearby house and was still digesting the offer that the Facebook founder and CEO had made him: To buy Instagram, the photo-sharing app that Systrom and Krieger had launched just 18 months before. The price Zuckerberg offered was $1 billion — $300 million in cash and the rest in Facebook stock, an especially generous-seeming deal on the eve of his company’s much-anticipated initial public offering.

The offer was even more impressive given Instagram’s size and age. At the time, it had just 13 employees, operating out of a cramped space in the South Park section of San Francisco. Still, the small crew had managed to attract 30 million Apple iPhone users in just a year and a half by offering a service that allowed a person to quickly upload, prettify through the use of filters and publish images to the Web for friends to see. A version for Google’s Android mobile operating system had launched the week before, attracting another million users in a single day.

What’s more, although the app generated no revenue, it had attracted so much attention from venture capitalists that the startup had nearly closed an impressive new round of funding at a wildly high valuation of $500 million. Zuckerberg had just doubled that, leaving Systrom with a lot to think about on that train-station bench.

Click. If there ever was a money shot to take for Instagram and Systrom, that was it.

(Photo by Jonas Fredwall Karlsson, used with permission by Vanity Fair)

Read the rest of this post on the original site »

Microsoft said on Tuesday that there is a test version of updated Facebook software for Windows Phone 8. The beta software adds support for high-res photos, post sharing and the Facebook Timeline.

However, the companies apparently mean it when they say beta.

“Don’t like it when apps crash?” Microsoft said in a blog post. “This probably isn’t the program for you.”

The app isn’t available in the Windows Phone marketplace, but is available via this direct link.

Separately, an app geared toward to making it easier for folks to switch from Android to a Windows Phone has made its way onto the Google Play and Windows Phone stores. Developed by Quixey, Switch to Windows Phone helps ease the move and allows one to see which of their apps are available for Microsoft’s operating system.

Maybe you’ve just come back from the best vacation of your life, or maybe it was a horrible experience and you want to warn others never to book that hotel. In either case, you fill out a standard review form, press “submit” and send it out to the Internet without a second thought.

A new app called Triptease wants to change this whole process by making it easy to write concise reviews with large, eye-catching images that look like they’re straight out of Travel + Leisure, or National Geographic Traveler. In doing so, this London-based startup company hopes to become a destination where people not only write reviews but also spend significant time researching and booking travel plans.

Triptease, which is free to use, is available on the Web and also as an iPad-only mobile app. The company says an Android app is also in the works.

I’ve been using Triptease for the past week, writing and sharing about half a dozen travel reviews. I’ve accessed it from both the iPad app and the website. There weren’t any notable differences between the website and mobile app, except that I prefer to type on a laptop over an iPad.

Triptease does what it promises to do: It makes travel writing fun, and the results are slick. I really liked composing reviews, whether it was for Central Park or a hotel in Tokyo, and channeling my inner travel photographer to find the right photo or photos to illustrate my reviews. Triptease requires that you get at least three “likes” on each review before you can write another one, so the app really encourages social sharing in order to get eyeballs on your write-ups.

The problem is that Triptease doesn’t offer much more than that — at least not right now. It’s okay for browsing, and there are around 3,000 reviews currently on Triptease. But the reviews don’t go very deep: Each one is just one person’s opinion of that spot or location, and is limited to 1,200 characters, which results in a short write-up that doesn’t include much detail.

And one of Triptease’s biggest drawbacks is that it doesn’t include very many negative reviews. About 95 percent of the reviews on the site have a rating over five (out of 10). Call me a cynical traveler, but when I look up travel reviews, I tend to go to the one-star write-ups first. I want to know about the deal-breakers — reports of bed bugs, cold-water-only, terrible service, icky stains on the carpet and hotels featuring photos that are far off from reality, like a bad online dating profile.

Occasionally, I saw a critical comment attached to an overwhelmingly-positive Triptease review. For example, in a review of Balthazar in London, one commenter said, “I think Brasserie Chavot is the better place to eat. Not sure this warrants such a high mark.”

But that brings me to my other gripe about Triptease: Currently, the only way you can add upon an existing review is by leaving remarks in the comments. You can’t contribute to the overall rating of the place. In this way, it’s more like an online magazine than it is a reviews site that values each contribution equally. The most visible opinion of any reviewed location is that of whoever wrote about it first.

Let’s say you’re not dissuaded by this, though, and you still want to dive into Triptease.

When you download Triptease on the iPad, you’ll be prompted to sign up or log in by either connecting through Facebook or creating a new Triptease account. The main page has three options: Editor’s Pick, Following and Popular, a good way to filter out some of the thousands of reviews. Following shows you the reviews of the other “teasers” you are following (fortunately, they’re not called “trippers”).

In the upper right-hand corner of the screen, you’ll see three, smaller bits of text: Explore, Add Review and You. Explore is Triptease’s search function. Here you can search for a hotel, the zoo, that Italian restaurant you heard was good, or a landmark. The reviews are generally attractive, often featuring one large photo and an elegant block of text right next to it.

I liked that they included personal touches and first-hand experiences. “It was a bumpy ride, and we were very glad we had the GPS in the car” is much more helpful to me than, “This hotel is located approximately two hours from the airport.”

Creating my own travel review was easy and addictive. First I identified where I traveled, and when. Then I was prompted to upload a photo, either from the iPad’s camera roll or from my computer (most photos are supplied by the reviewer, although Triptease does offer a database of photos to choose from for popular locations). Using the iPad’s touchscreen, I could edit and move my photo. I then added my sub-1,200-character text component.

You can choose from six “themes,” which give the write-up some visual pizzazz. Five of these themes allow for just one photo, but a theme called Tripfive lets you upload four small additional photos, which I used for my review of a hotel in Costa Rica.

Finally, I assigned a rating to my reviews, ranging from 0 to 10, with 10 being the highest possible rating. I gave mostly high ratings. The one exception was a sushi restaurant here in New York that I feel is, well, overrated.

From there, I shared my reviews via Facebook and email. I received enough “likes” to continue writing reviews, and fielded some comments from other members in the Triptease community.

Triptease isn’t the first app that aims to make travel reviews “pretty” on the iPad. Earlier this year, I wrote about a new iPad app called Desti that not only encourages crowdsourced reviews, but promises better search results when you use natural language, such as, “Where can I find a restaurant near here that’s dog-friendly?”

Last year, I reviewed another travel app for iPad, called Stuck on Earth, which contains beautiful, user-captured photos to offer a travel guide around the world. It bases these recommendations on your personality type. But it’s more inspirational than actionable.

True jet-setters should be aware that none of these apps, including Triptease, allow you to search for or book flights. Triptease says, however, that it wants to position itself more toward the booking end of travel. It currently has a limited number of pages for hotels that allow you to book rooms directly from the app.

Triptease is a fun app for creating good-looking travel reviews. It has potential. But right now it’s still luring consumers to the app, and is mostly a travel app you go to after the fact, rather than the main squeeze you rely on for all your travel needs.

]]> http://allthingsd.com/20130422/can-travel-reviews-be-sexy-triptease-thinks-so/feed/ 0 http://allthingsd.com/20130418/twitter-music-is-here-today-and-this-time-you-can-use-it/ http://allthingsd.com/20130418/twitter-music-is-here-today-and-this-time-you-can-use-it/#comments Thu, 18 Apr 2013 12:16:00 +0000 Peter Kafka http://allthingsd.com/?p=313443 Yep, that was Twitter on “Good Morning America” just now, announcing, via an ABC proxy, what we told you last week: Twitter’s music app is now rolling out to everyone.

What is it?

We’ve had a pretty good sense for awhile – it’s a music “discovery” app, not a full-blown music service –  but here’s the GMA lifestyle correspondent’s description of it: The new app “puts artists front and center … it’s like really getting recommendations from your friends, who happen to be music superstars.”

For the last week, Twitter has been putting the iOS app and (and related Web service) in the hands of a … varied group of musicians, some of whom really are superstars. Others, less so. In any case, all of them have been dutifully tweeting out their approval.

So … sometime today, you should be able to start playing with it. For now, the Twitter Music landing page still has a “coming soon” message.

And by the way, I wouldn’t put a ton of stock in the “leaked” tech specs that surfaced last week — I think the list of music services Twitter will partner with in its initial go-round will be more limited than this post suggests.

Update: Ah, here you go — ABC’s Joanna Stern has a full-fledged preview.

]]> http://allthingsd.com/20130418/twitter-music-is-here-today-and-this-time-you-can-use-it/feed/ 0 http://allthingsd.com/20130418/yahoo-ups-its-apple-apps-including-new-standalone-weather-offering/ http://allthingsd.com/20130418/yahoo-ups-its-apple-apps-including-new-standalone-weather-offering/#comments Thu, 18 Apr 2013 07:13:11 +0000 Kara Swisher http://allthingsd.com/?p=313427 According to 9to5Mac, as well as sources I checked with, Yahoo is set to introduce a new weather app for the Apple iPhone and iPod, as well as an iPad version of its Yahoo Mail service. While the tablet version of its email app is a long time in coming, the weather app is an interesting wrinkle, given that the Silicon Valley Internet giant is the source — actually using data from the Weather Channel — for Apple’s default weather app on the iPhone and iPod. In Yahoo’s Q1 earnings call earlier this week, CEO Marissa Mayer pointed out that although Yahoo does not directly monetize its Apple weather app relationship, it benefits from links taking users back to its website. Yahoo also provides data for Apple’s preinstalled stock app, and offers a standalone weather app for Google’s Android.

]]> http://allthingsd.com/20130418/yahoo-ups-its-apple-apps-including-new-standalone-weather-offering/feed/ 0 http://allthingsd.com/20130417/six-cool-apps-you-need-to-see-from-ddive-into-mobile-video/ http://allthingsd.com/20130417/six-cool-apps-you-need-to-see-from-ddive-into-mobile-video/#comments Wed, 17 Apr 2013 17:34:43 +0000 Lauren Goode http://allthingsd.com/?p=313200 At this week’s D: Dive Into Mobile conference, we were feeling particularly app-happy, as one might expect at a mobile-phone-focused event.

But the apps showcased as part of our App Marketplace weren’t your average location-based-layered-photo-sharing, “like Instagram-for-pets” apps, as far as features go.

CellScope, which will officially launch later this year, was the most interesting of the bunch. It turns your iPhone into an otoscope — the device doctors stick into your ear to diagnose ear infections — with the help of an attachable speculum.

Heatma.ps, which last year introduced an app of the same name, gave us a first look at Wisdom. This new product offers easy A/B testing for app developers looking to get feedback on design changes before they take the plunge and redo their apps. Then there was Fresh Paint, a Windows 8 app that makes Bob Rosses (“happy little clouds”) out of all of us — but instead of a palette, you’re using a tablet.

Zappar lets anyone create an augmented-reality “skin” over physical objects: Point your phone at a poker chip, or a photo of a band, and it will cue a video clip or other media. GoBank wants to make banking entirely mobile, and Lulu has created a ladies-only app in which women are supposed to rate the men they know and alert each other to bad eggs.

And those were just a handful of the app companies that were there. This video from the conference offers a quick glimpse of what some of these apps can do:

]]> http://allthingsd.com/20130417/six-cool-apps-you-need-to-see-from-ddive-into-mobile-video/feed/ 0 http://allthingsd.com/20130416/can-a-247-medical-app-save-your-life-better-thinks-so/ http://allthingsd.com/20130416/can-a-247-medical-app-save-your-life-better-thinks-so/#comments Tue, 16 Apr 2013 16:40:25 +0000 Lauren Goode http://allthingsd.com/?p=312402 Imagine this scenario: You’re flying across the world for a business conference, and something goes wrong — with your health. You’re in a foreign country, and you’re not sure of your options for medical care.

You reach for your mobile phone, and instead of calling for help, you open up an app. A doctor is on call for you, 24 hours a day. Private care and a flight back home are quickly arranged.

That’s the world imagined by Better, a new company funded by the Social+Capital Partnership. Better has made a mobile app that taps into the vast database of the Mayo Clinic to provide immediate health care information and assistance.

Appearing onstage today at D: Dive Into Mobile, Better founder Geoff Clapp gave a demo and explained his vision for better health care through his new mobile app.

Feigning stomach pains, Clapp went through a “symptoms checker” on the iPhone app, which pointed him to celiac disease as a top result. He pressed a button to call a Mayo Clinic nurse (who, for the purpose of this demo, was waiting for the call — but Better promises nurses and doctors can be accessible in everyday situations, as well).

The nurse, Linda, asked him a few questions, then explained that celiac disease is a medical term for gluten intolerance. Her diagnosis was inconclusive over the phone, but she offered some suggestions. The Mayo Clinic knows that he’s traveling on the East Coast right now, so the clinic scheduled a blood test for when Clapp arrives back in California. The nurse also emailed him a list of gluten-free restaurant options nearby in New York.

“What happens when you Google this? You have celiac — or an aneurysm. This is unbelievably scary stuff for most people,” Clapp said.

Better is available as a beta app now, and is expected to officially launch this summer. It will be iPhone-only to start; the company also plans to create an Android app.

There is a free version of Better, but the pricing is where it gets interesting. For free, you get access to the Mayo Clinic website, and you can create health records for you and your family. The subscription plans are still being worked out, Clapp says.

One, for example, might include a personal coach for weight loss or quitting smoking. Another subscription level would include 24/7 access to a Mayo nurse, who can coordinate appointments, tests and prescriptions for you. The next level would include an always-on-call, Mayo-trained doctor — and emergency services that include travel bookings. That’s the “black card,” Clapp says, comparing it to the American Express card for high rollers.

This will all range from around $90 a month to several thousand dollars a month, although Better believes the sweet spot is between $100 and $500.

With health care costs in the U.S. increasingly getting pushed onto the patient, shelling out $100 to $500 a month might not be ideal. Clapp was quick to point out that Better is HIPAA-compliant and can be paid for using pre-tax health savings account dollars. And, he says, if Better isn’t something you feel you need for yourself — maybe you want it as a supplemental health care product for your family.

Even at the less-expensive levels, “You can send in a picture of your child’s rash, or research diabetes,” he said, knowing the data you get back is coming from the Mayo Clinic, not Dr. Google and every source on the Web.

]]> http://allthingsd.com/20130416/can-a-247-medical-app-save-your-life-better-thinks-so/feed/ 0 http://allthingsd.com/20130414/trillion-dollar-idea-one-that-texts-you-when-it-turns-red/ http://allthingsd.com/20130414/trillion-dollar-idea-one-that-texts-you-when-it-turns-red/#comments Mon, 15 Apr 2013 06:59:53 +0000 Voices http://allthingsd.com/?p=311824

Billion dollar idea: An app that sends you a text when the light turns green.

– Damien Fahey, via Twitter

]]> http://allthingsd.com/20130414/trillion-dollar-idea-one-that-texts-you-when-it-turns-red/feed/ 0 http://allthingsd.com/20130411/twitters-new-music-app-launches-friday/ http://allthingsd.com/20130411/twitters-new-music-app-launches-friday/#comments Fri, 12 Apr 2013 02:38:50 +0000 Mike Isaac and Peter Kafka http://allthingsd.com/?p=311355 Next up on the jukebox — Twitter Music.

The microblogging service plans to launch its new standalone music application on Friday, according to sources familiar with the matter.

(Update:: Of note — another source claims that the app will indeed launch this weekend at Coachella, though not necessarily on Friday.)
(Update 2: It’s out! But unless you’re one of a very select group of famous Twitter users, you’re going to have to wait a week to use it.)

The app suggests artists and tracks to users based on a number of personalized signals, including the Twitter accounts a user follows on the microblogging service. Users will be able to listen to clips of music from inside the app, using third-party services like iTunes and SoundCloud; they will also be able to watch music videos provided by Vevo, the music video service owned by Universal Music and Sony.

Earlier today, Twitter acknowledged that it had acquired music recommendation service We Are Hunted last year and put its staff to work building the new app.

Timing of the launch couldn’t be more appropriate. It’s the weekend that kicks off Coachella, the huge music festival presented every year in the middle of the California desert, attracting some of the music industry’s top talent.

Twitter did not respond to a request for comment.

]]> http://allthingsd.com/20130411/twitters-new-music-app-launches-friday/feed/ 0 http://allthingsd.com/20130410/evernotes-phil-libin-talks-about-global-expansion-google-incursion-and-more-video/ http://allthingsd.com/20130410/evernotes-phil-libin-talks-about-global-expansion-google-incursion-and-more-video/#comments Wed, 10 Apr 2013 18:32:42 +0000 Kara Swisher http://allthingsd.com/?p=310730

Last week, I motored on down to Evernote’s spanking (and quite delightful) new offices in Redwood City, Calif., to talk to Phil Libin, its CEO and co-founder, about what has been happening of late at the popular note-taking software startup.

Things have recently been made more interesting with the entry of search giant Google into the sector, with a renewed competing mobile app effort called Keep (which is really a version of its older Notebook offering) for the Android mobile operating system.

Libin seemed sanguine about the move, noting that Evernote’s Android app has a much better user base than Keep. Instead, he said that the company — which has attracted about $250 million in total funding that has valued it at close to $2 billion — is more focused on bringing out new versions of Evernote, which allow a user to save text, Web links, photos and more, as well as on continuing to widen its productivity-app portfolio.

Also a priority is a recently launched premium, business-oriented version of Evernote, as well as even more international expansion, which makes up an increasingly large part of its user base of 45 million (a small number of whom currently pay to upgrade).

Libin talked about all this and more, including continuing to tout his “100-year” strategy for the company (it’s good to plan ahead!) in this video interview:

]]> http://allthingsd.com/20130410/evernotes-phil-libin-talks-about-global-expansion-google-incursion-and-more-video/feed/ 0 http://allthingsd.com/20130409/facebook-gets-a-hold-on-phones/ http://allthingsd.com/20130409/facebook-gets-a-hold-on-phones/#comments Wed, 10 Apr 2013 01:03:44 +0000 Walter S. Mossberg http://allthingsd.com/?p=310596

Facebook wants to take over your phone. It aims to immediately immerse you in its social network with just a glance at the phone’s opening screen, without making you run its app or even unlock the device. Right from the lock screen of your phone, you’ll be able to see your Facebook news feed — including text posts and eye-catching, full-screen photos posted by friends — and to comment on, or Like items.

Facebook Home uses the lock screen to show new posts and other things.

Also, with one swipe, you can go right to Facebook Messenger, the social network’s chat feature, to communicate directly with people and even send and receive text messages.

All of this is possible before you even see the usual start or home screen of your phone filled with app icons, by using a new suite of software Facebook is introducing for Android phones on Friday called Facebook Home.

The idea is that during spare moments — say, while waiting in a line — you’ll get immediately hooked by Facebook.

Facebook Home, which replaces several key aspects of a phone in addition to the lock screen, will be an optional, free download for U.S. users at launch on four leading Android phones, including the very popular Samsung Galaxy S III. It also will be available that day, preloaded, on a midrange, $99 model, the HTC First, from AT&T. At least two other major Android phones also will be compatible when they hit the market.

I’ve been testing Facebook Home for five days on the HTC First, but this isn’t a review of the phone hardware, which is unremarkable. I focused my testing on Facebook Home, the boldest attempt by any non-hardware company to alter a phone’s native user interface.

Swipe your round photo to one of three icons: Facebook Messenger, app-launcher screen and Last App used.

In effect, Facebook has created its own phone without having to build or sell hardware. The HTC First, so far the sole phone on which it’s preloaded, even boots up with the Facebook logo.

I found Facebook Home to be easy to use, elegantly designed and addictive. Although I’m a regular Facebook user, I found that, with Home, I paid more attention than ever to my news feed, Liked items more often and used Facebook’s Messenger service more often. So, if you are a big Facebook fan, Facebook Home can be a big win.

But I found some downsides. Facebook Home blocks the one-step camera icon some Android phone makers place on their lock screen to allow you to take pictures without first unlocking the phone. It also overlays other lock-screen features some Android phone makers include, such as weather information or favorite app icons. And if you do go to the icon-filled home screen, you’ll find that Facebook Home has taken that over as well, topping the screen with a bar that makes posting to Facebook easier and eliminating the bottom bar of heavily used apps.

By default, the first of these Facebook Home app screens contains Facebook’s apps, including the popular Facebook-owned service, Instagram, plus apps from other companies, like Google Maps and Google Search, and the camera app. You can remove these and add others.

With Home, Facebook is essentially staging a land grab of Android, the hugely successful mobile operating system made by one of its key rivals, Google. Facebook Home leaves all the standard Google apps in place and doesn’t alter the underlying Android operating system. But because it’s so dominant, it makes it less likely that a user with limited time will launch Google products that compete with Facebook, such as Google’s own social network, Google+, or rival services from other companies, such as Twitter.

A Home app screen with Facebook’s apps, such as Instagram, and standard Android apps from Google.

This is all made possible because Android allows third-party companies to alter the lock screen and other core features, such as the app launcher, which displays app icons and widgets.

By contrast, Facebook Home can’t run on Apple’s iPhones, because Apple doesn’t allow others to take control of these core functions. Apple has integrated Facebook (and Twitter) to some degree into the iPhone, mainly by making it possible to sign into the services as part of its basic settings and to share almost any content to them easily. But that’s as far as it goes.

When you first turn on the screen on a Home-equipped phone, you see the time and a small circle at the bottom displaying your Facebook profile picture. If you don’t touch the screen, your news feed, called the Cover Feed, starts to display, automatically scrolling from one post to the next. You also can manually swipe through the feed. Each post takes up the whole screen. If it’s a photo, it’s displayed in all its glory. If it’s a text post, the author’s larger wall photo appears faintly in the background. The effect is mesmerizing.

If you want to Like a post, you can double-tap it or tap on a Like button. To comment, or read comments, you can tap on a comment icon.

To get beyond the feed, you touch your little round picture and swipe it over to one of three icons that appear. Swipe up to see a home screen, or app launcher of your favorite app icons. Swipe left to go to Facebook Messenger. Swipe right to go to the last app used, whether it’s a Facebook app or not.

Facebook Home has another major feature: Chat Heads. These are the profile pictures of people who send you Facebook messages or text messages via Messenger. Unlike message notifications that appear only briefly on most phones, these remain visible, atop any app you’re using, tempting you to keep chatting via Facebook. You can move them around if they’re blocking something, but you can only get rid of them by dragging them off the screen to the bottom. Whether they annoy or delight you will depend on how much you use Facebook Messenger.

Chat Heads shows profile pictures of people who send you Facebook or text messages via Messenger.

Facebook stresses that Home is purely optional. Nobody needs to install it, or buy the sole phone on which it’s preloaded. You can still use Facebook the way you always have — through the app. In fact, Home doesn’t fully replace the app, which has many more features.

And you can turn all of it, or parts of it, off. I was able to turn it off even on the HTC First and also to require the phone to be unlocked before I could see my feed.

Facebook says it hopes eventually to include feeds from other services, such as Twitter, in the automatic stream of updates on the lock screen. Even now, alerts — but not full posts or photos — from other products, such as Gmail or Twitter, appear on top of the news feed. However, this only works on the HTC First. Other phones only display Facebook alerts in Home. There aren’t any ads in Cover Feed currently but Facebook says there may be in the future.

You cannot view customized news feeds, like ones containing only certain people, in Cover Feed. You also can’t compose new posts from the lock screen, though Facebook says it hopes to add that feature.

I didn’t notice that my test phone suffered any significant battery loss while running Home constantly, but Facebook does provide settings for data use and image quality that can lower the battery load of Home. The default setting is “medium.”

Facebook Home is a very clever and very well-done product that will delight Facebook fans. If you aren’t in that category, or prefer the standard Android user interface, it won’t be right for you.

Email Walt at mossberg@wsj.com.

]]> http://allthingsd.com/20130409/facebook-gets-a-hold-on-phones/feed/ 0 http://allthingsd.com/20130409/circas-matt-galligan-on-building-a-different-kind-of-news-reader-video/ http://allthingsd.com/20130409/circas-matt-galligan-on-building-a-different-kind-of-news-reader-video/#comments Tue, 09 Apr 2013 19:01:00 +0000 Kara Swisher http://allthingsd.com/?p=310343

Earlier this week, I went for a visit to the San Francisco HQ of Circa, the startup that always seems to get lumped into the mobile news reader aggregation category with others such as Pulse, Zite and Flipboard. While it shares some obvious similarities — there is no original news gathering going on here with all of them — the approach that it has taken is different and a bit more nifty.

Built currently for the Apple iPhone, the mobile-designed app is aimed at rejiggering how readers consume breaking news. To do this, a team of writers crunches and munches small bits of information about a range of current news events from a variety of sources and forms them into separable flashcard lists to make up a story.

Circa is using the odd phrase — “atomic units” — to describe the end product, which users can swipe through quickly to get the key elements of a story, along with adds of art, photos, maps or graphs. While some disparagingly call it a Cliff Notes for breaking news, it is much more like a television report or a just-the-facts feed from wires services. If you want to get even more digital, it reminds me of a smart and collated version of Twitter.

While it could use more sourcing — I like to know from whence my atomic units are born — it’s a still a good way to consume news on the fly on a smartphone. Users can also follow favorites stories, which are updated and which increases engagement.

I talked about it all with CEO Matt Galligan, one of Circa’s several founders, as well where the next version of the product is going (expect an Google Android and perhaps an tablet version, for example)

How Circa is going to make money is a good question — it has only a few million in seed funding — since it does require people to create the stories, rather than some algorithm. But the market is hot in the acquisition arena for this category. Both Pulse and Zite have been bought (LinkedIn and CNN), as well as the decidedly less substantive Summly (Yahoo picked it up for the excessive price of $30 million), so one could see Circa also getting snapped up at some point.

Until then or whatever news breaks on it, here’s my video interview with Galligan:

]]> http://allthingsd.com/20130409/circas-matt-galligan-on-building-a-different-kind-of-news-reader-video/feed/ 0 http://allthingsd.com/20130408/confirmed-apple-kicks-appgratis-out-of-the-store-for-being-too-pushy/ http://allthingsd.com/20130408/confirmed-apple-kicks-appgratis-out-of-the-store-for-being-too-pushy/#comments Mon, 08 Apr 2013 17:26:39 +0000 John Paczkowski http://allthingsd.com/?p=309934 Apple has ousted a popular app-discovery application from its iTunes App Store, claiming the app circumvented App Store rules preventing applications promoting other apps and direct marketing.

On Sunday, AppGratis, which promotes paid apps by offering one for free everyday, abruptly vanished from the App Store without explanation or comment from Apple. This, just a week after Cupertino had approved the iPad version of the app. At the time of its disappearance, word on the street had it that Apple banished the app for violation of an App Store Review Guideline clause that states:

2.25 Apps that display Apps other than your own for purchase or promotion in a manner similar to or confusing with the App Store will be rejected.

And that was indeed the case — partially. Apple confirmed to AllThingsD Monday that it removed AppGratis from the App Store for violating clause 2.25. But it said that the app also violated clause 5.6.

5.6 Apps cannot use Push Notifications to send advertising, promotions, or direct marketing of any kind.

Apple declined further comment on AppGratis’s ouster, framing the move as a standard response to guideline violations. But sources close to the company say it was more than a little troubled that AppGratis was pushing a business model that appeared to favor developers with the financial means to pay for exposure. “The App Store is intended as a meritocracy,” a source familiar with Apple’s thinking told AllThingsD.

In other words, app-discovery platforms are fine as long as they’re not built on paid recommendations.

In other words, app-discovery platforms built on paid recommendations aren’t going to fly with Apple.

This is a tough turn of events for AppGratis, which recently closed a $13.5 million Series A round of financing. But it’s also foreboding news for other apps with similar business models. Sources say that Apple is looking at them, too, and they could face the same consequences if they’re found to be in violation of 2.25 and 5.6. Recall that this isn’t the first time Apple has eighty-sixed a discovery app for running afoul of its guidelines. Last December it ousted AppShopper for violating 2.25.

AppGratis did not respond to a request for comment.

]]> http://allthingsd.com/20130408/confirmed-apple-kicks-appgratis-out-of-the-store-for-being-too-pushy/feed/ 0 http://allthingsd.com/20130402/matrix-partners-adds-two-new-eirs/ http://allthingsd.com/20130402/matrix-partners-adds-two-new-eirs/#comments Tue, 02 Apr 2013 15:06:52 +0000 Kara Swisher http://allthingsd.com/?p=308306 Matrix Partners has added two new entrepreneurs in residence, Kevin Barenblat and Mihir Shah. Barenblat founded social music app SpotDJ and Context Optional, a social marketing software startup which was bought by Adobe. Shah was the former CEO of mobile advertising platform Tapjoy, and also worked at social app firm RockYou and QuinStreet, a performance marketing firm. Both will focus on cloud, mobile, consumer Internet and ad tech at the Silicon Valley venture firm.

]]> http://allthingsd.com/20130402/matrix-partners-adds-two-new-eirs/feed/ 0 http://allthingsd.com/20130402/mango-health-app-that-games-taking-meds-launches-with-target-partnership/ http://allthingsd.com/20130402/mango-health-app-that-games-taking-meds-launches-with-target-partnership/#comments Tue, 02 Apr 2013 12:30:45 +0000 Kara Swisher http://allthingsd.com/?p=308311 San Francisco-based Mango Health — a new mobile app aimed at allowing people to manage their personal health by tracking medications and nutritional supplements they take — is launching after a 16-week pilot program and a strategic deal with retail giant Target. The app rewards users with gift cards or allows them to make charitable donations for correctly following their medical regimens by using game design concepts. Consumers can also check for interactions between medications, supplements and foods, and get dosage reminders. Mango has raised $3.1 million in seed funding from venture firms First Round Capital, Floodgate and Baseline Ventures, as well as angel investors Mark Pincus and Keith Rabois.

]]> http://allthingsd.com/20130402/mango-health-app-that-games-taking-meds-launches-with-target-partnership/feed/ 0 http://allthingsd.com/20130327/come-se-dice-i-ran-five-miles-today/ http://allthingsd.com/20130327/come-se-dice-i-ran-five-miles-today/#comments Wed, 27 Mar 2013 13:00:04 +0000 Lauren Goode http://allthingsd.com/?p=307085 RunKeeper, the popular running app for iOS and Android that coaches users along their outdoor running routes, has just introduced six international-language versions of the app: French, Italian, Spanish, Brazilian Portuguese, Japanese and German. RunKeeper claims more than 17 million users, with two-thirds of its user base already using the app outside of the U.S.

]]> http://allthingsd.com/20130327/come-se-dice-i-ran-five-miles-today/feed/ 2 http://allthingsd.com/20130326/new-flipboard-news-and-posts-handpicked-and-shared/ http://allthingsd.com/20130326/new-flipboard-news-and-posts-handpicked-and-shared/#comments Wed, 27 Mar 2013 01:02:58 +0000 Walter S. Mossberg http://allthingsd.com/?p=306977

One of the best ways of following topics that are interesting to you is Flipboard, a popular app for Apple and Android mobile devices that automatically turns social-network posts and news from online publications into beautiful, magazine-like pages you “flip” through by swiping.

Now, a new second generation of Flipboard, out Tuesday, is extending the app so it allows users to create and share their own handsome digital magazines with a few clicks and without any design talent required. If you make your magazine public, anyone with Flipboard, which is a free app, can read it and comment on it.

I’ve been testing this new version of Flipboard, which has some other improved features, over the past week or so, on several iPads and an iPhone. My verdict is the new features make a great mobile app even better. There are some limitations to the new capabilities, but they make your mobile device more personal and more of a creative tool, rather than just a means of consumption. For now, the new version is only available for Apple’s devices, but an Android edition is in the works.

Walt Mossberg’s Flipboard magazine on the American Revolution

The original Flipboard, which is produced by a small, private Silicon Valley company of the same name, was aimed at helping people wade through the welter of information on social networks and the Web, by allowing them to corral posts on popular topics like, say, baking or basketball, into attractive collections. The company says that capability has earned it 50 million registered users and a smaller, but active, core group of millions who use it daily.

I have long used Flipboard to follow tech and political news, or to leaf through everything posted on Twitter or Facebook by particular people or sites. These collections would update as new posts meeting the criteria appeared. If I had a collection about, say, the economy or smartphones, based on tweets on those subjects, it would stay current, showing me automatically any Web pages referenced within those tweets.

With the new personal magazine feature, however, I can make my own Flipboard-hosted publications on particular topics of interest, handpicking the posts or articles I want to include, rather than relying on feeds or algorithms. And it’s easy to do. When you find a post, video or article you want to include in your magazine, you just click a plus button next to it, choose which of your magazines to “flip it” into and it appears in that magazine. The magazine only updates when you decide to update it with a new article, photo or video. The original creators are credited.

Above, one person’s Flipboard page with personal magazines and subscriptions

During my testing, I made five magazines, some public and some private. Since these were just for testing, they weren’t carefully created. But I was impressed by how quickly I could produce them and how nicely Flipboard laid them out, with handsome cover photos, bold headlines and a logical arrangement of photos and articles.

I made public magazines on the American Revolution, Ancient Wonders, the Boston Red Sox and my favorite current TV dramas. I also made a private magazine to store content I wanted to read later.

This process is greatly helped by a much-enhanced search feature in Flipboard, which finds items both in Flipboard itself and in a long list of social networks and sites, such as Twitter, Facebook, Google+, YouTube, Instagram, Flickr, Tumblr and streams of content, called RSS feeds, produced by various sites.

You can add content to your magazines using a special bookmark for most browsers on PCs or Macs. When you see something on the Web you’d like in one of your magazines, click this bookmark and a small Flipboard window opens with thumbnails of your magazines, allowing you to add the item. Alas, this bookmark is very difficult to install on the browsers on the iPad and iPhone.

There’s a new Notifications feature that tells you when people have liked or commented on your magazines. A “By Our Readers” feature suggests public magazines the Flipboard staff considers outstanding.

Publishers are making use of the new magazine feature in Flipboard. Esquire has created a magazine that’s a collection of its interviews and Rolling Stone has published a Flipboard magazine collecting some of its articles on the Beatles.

If you find a magazine you like, you can subscribe to it, for easy and continued access, or share a link to it via Twitter, Facebook or email. If somebody who has Flipboard wants to view the magazine, it’ll automatically open. Otherwise, the link will take a person to a Web page with instructions on how to get Flipboard.

Unfortunately, what you can’t do is to edit your magazine much, or add original or local content to it. You can’t rearrange articles, or create your own text articles, or add photos or videos that live only on your iPad or iPhone. You also can’t rearrange articles. Because Flipboard is so oriented to pulling in content from online sources, to use one of your own photos or videos in your own magazine, you’d have to first post it to a site like Flickr. To use an article you write for your own magazine, you’d have to first post it online.

The only tweaking you can do directly is to change the cover picture, which is typically drawn from the most recent article you include that has a photo; remove an item; create and change the title and a short description of the magazine; and change its status between publicly visible or private.

You also can’t charge for your magazines or sell ads in them, though any ads embedded in the content you include would travel with that content into your magazine.

Flipboard says it expects to add some of these features, like the ability to use photos and videos stored on your device, in updates.

Overall, Flipboard’s new personal magazines are a very good addition to a very good app.

Email Walt at mossberg@wsj.com.

]]> http://allthingsd.com/20130326/new-flipboard-news-and-posts-handpicked-and-shared/feed/ 0 http://allthingsd.com/20130325/sherpa-a-new-predictive-personal-assistant-app-is-one-step-ahead-of-you/ http://allthingsd.com/20130325/sherpa-a-new-predictive-personal-assistant-app-is-one-step-ahead-of-you/#comments Mon, 25 Mar 2013 17:00:22 +0000 Lauren Goode http://allthingsd.com/?p=306325 Pretty soon we’re going to need a personal assistant app that can manage all of our personal assistant apps.

As I wrote earlier today in a column about the new crop of calendar apps, mobile apps are getting better at pulling in and analyzing lots of our data — provided we’re willing to share it — to serve us with faster, smarter solutions for … well, a lot of things. Keeping in touch with friends, dialing in to a work call, letting someone know you’re running late and finding the location of your next meeting are just a few actions our apps can perform for us.

The newest personal assistant app to join the mix is called Sherpa, created by former Google AdWords product manager Bill Ferrell. The app, which currently runs only on iPhone, is soft-launching today, with plans to become more widely available next month.

So, what sets Sherpa apart from the pack? First off, it’s meant to be a “predictive” personal assistant app, Ferrell said, one that anticipates your next step instead of just making tasks easier once they’ve popped up in your calendar. Location plays a big part in Sherpa’s predictive algorithm (which many other personal assistant apps factor in, as well).

An example of this would be Sherpa showing you your hotel reservation information as soon as your flight has landed, so you’re not digging for that info while you’re hailing a taxi or dealing with a car rental.

Another example is weather: Sherpa will tell you if it’s supposed to start raining (or snowing, or sleeting) in the next 15 minutes.

You don’t have to open Sherpa to get these notices — the app’s focus, Ferrell said, “is in pushing information to you.”

Sherpa, to date, consists of a team of six people, and has raised $1.1 million in seed funding from Andreessen Horowitz, InterWest Partners and Google Ventures, among others.

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