AllThingsD » Austin

Boxer App Has Some More Ideas About Fixing Mobile Email

Liz Gannes — Wed, 05 Jun 2013 13:00:34 +0000

Boxer, a new iPhone app for managing email, launches today, with some tweaks that may appeal to some — and to others may seem like just more email.

Boxer‘s motto is “email isn’t broken, it’s just unfair.” That is: Everyone who knows your email address gets the right to make your pile bigger. So you should have better tools to quickly make your pile smaller.

What Boxer does, much like the Dropbox-acquired Mailbox, is add some simple swiping gestures to help people triage their email.

The special Boxer actions are “Like,” a way to acknowledge an email without actually replying; “Quick,” which helps send prewritten responses; “To-do,” which moves a message into a to-do list; and “Request,” which helps establish and track other people’s to-dos.

There’s also Dropbox integration and Rapportive-like contact summaries with profile photos.

What Boxer doesn’t do is minimize the actual number of emails you send and receive. In fact, it adds to it. When you “Like” a message, the original sender receives an email saying “So-and-so liked your message with Boxer.” Yes, yet another email. And the Request tracking stuff seems to work best if the other person uses Boxer too and can see what priority you designate.

Why? “Everyone tries to get out of the inbox, but they’re inevitably drawn back,” explained Boxer co-founder Andrew Eye, who formerly worked on a similar product called Taskbox.

In March, Taskbox bought Boxer — a stealth startup founded by Jason Shellen, formerly of Brizzly (which was bought by AOL) and Google Reader. The combined company has raised a “small seed round,” mostly from Austin-based investors.

So why would people use Boxer versus any other new email client from a major provider or a third party? One advantage of Boxer is that it works with Gmail, Exchange, Yahoo, AOL Mail, iCloud and others at launch. And the other is that it’s not an IMAP client that intercepts people’s email, so it should theoretically be faster and more secure. “We’re a true client — we’re not doing anything funny in the cloud,” Shellen said. Using Gmail as an example, “We want the connection to be between you and Google, not you and then us and then Google.”

But what are the long-term prospects for an independent email app company? Well, Boxer’s ambitions are bigger than that, Shellen said. He wants the startup to offer broader “social task management” tools that serve as a “dashboard for everyday worklife.” Email is just the first application.

Boxer expects to charge users $4.99 per app download, but it’s giving the first 100,000 downloads away for free, starting today.

Google Fiber Is Coming to Austin, Eventually

Arik Hesseldahl — Sat, 06 Apr 2013 16:49:36 +0000

So it’s increasingly looking like Austin, Texas, is going to be the second market for Google Fiber.

Having yesterday sent out invitations to a bunch of reporters about a “very important announcement,” speculation quickly turned to Google Fiber, the one-gigabit service that is about 100 times faster than speeds available from almost any service provider — almost — in the U.S., along with pay TV service.

Local TV station KVUE, an ABC affiliate, finally nailed down the story, citing sources in the city government. (See the video below.) And Engadget briefly spotted overnight an empty post on a Google blog with the headline “Google Fiber’s Next Stop: Austin, Texas,” which was quickly taken down.

So that pretty much answers what the important “something” is. And it certainly makes sense. Austin is certainly the kind of mid-sized community that could benefit from the speed of Google Fiber. There are several tech companies either based in or with significant corporate presences there, including Dell, Apple and Samsung.

But it’s probably going to be a long process before anyone in Austin has the superpipes installed at their house. If Google follows the same path it did in Kansas, it has to first get approval from local regulators to offer pay TV service. In Kansas City, that process started months before Google made its big announcement.

Then it has to select local neighborhoods where it will build out the network. Again, if it follows the same process it did in Kansas City (notably on both sides of the Kansas-Missouri border), it will hold a competition, pushing different sections of town to campaign for the distinction of being among the first. In one case, the Colorado-based venture capitalist Brad Feld bought a house in a Google-Fiber ready neighborhood, and then held a contest, the prize being getting to live in the house.

Once the neighborhoods have been selected, its a matter of waiting on the construction itself to get done, and that will take some time. Hint to Austin residents: Here’s a site you’re going to want to become familiar with: The Google Fiber status update dashboard, where you can either enter your address or click through on a map to see which parts of town are up and running. It’s worth noting that it’s been nearly nine months since the initial announcement in Kansas City, and as yet no installations are expected to begin before the fall of this year.

So, Austinites, be happy that you’re benefiting from Google’s big experiment. But be patient, because it’s probably going to take a while.

Here’s the local TV report from last night:

Google Plans to Announce Something in Austin Next Week

Arik Hesseldahl — Fri, 05 Apr 2013 21:02:43 +0000

Google and the city of Austin, Texas, will be making what they call a “very important announcement” next week — at least, according to a batch of invitations that have been sent to reporters in the last few hours.

VentureBeat is speculating that the company will reveal the next city selected to become part of the Google Fiber project, which the search giant started in the Kansas City area last year. Or that Austin might become the home of the latest Google campus.

In case you missed it, Google’s idea with Google Fiber is to offer smoking-fast 1 gigabit broadband Internet connections — almost but not entirely unique in the US — along with pay TV service, all via its own fiber optic lines.

One reason that it’s probably not Google Fiber is that months before Google made its formal announcement about the service, it first petitioned local regulators to allow it do so, and it was widely covered by the media. (Cable TV rights are, in most states, regulated at the city or county level.) There hasn’t been a peep about regulatory approval for Austin.

What else might it be? A new building? Maybe. There are plenty of tech companies, including Apple and Dell, with big presences in Austin. Or maybe just free Wi-Fi for a few neighborhoods. Google did that in New York City — not the whole city, mind you, just the neighborhood surrounding its massive office in the Chelsea section of Manhattan — earlier this year, and even got Mayor Bloomberg himself to show up at the announcement.

If Google Fiber it is, it may mean that Google is simply announcing its intent to start a process that will include seeking local regulatory approval. Indeed, Austin has been campaigning to be among the next cities to which Google brings its fiber pipes. Here’s a short video in support of that effort starring game developer and space tourist Richard Garriott.

(Image is of this awesome t-shirt from KONG Screenprinting in Austin.)

Despite Controversy in Austin and Philly, Ride-Sharing Service SideCar Expands to Boston, Brooklyn and Chicago

Liz Gannes — Fri, 15 Mar 2013 12:00:00 +0000

SideCar, the peer-to-peer ride-sharing service that has courted controversy in its recent launches, is adding three more cities today. Its last two launches earned a car-impounding sting, a lawsuit and 20,000 free rides requested, so this should be exciting.

The company connects riders and drivers through its smartphone apps, with payment in “gifts” rather than fares.

It is launching weekend service in Boston, Brooklyn and Chicago. Previously, the company started operations in San Francisco, then expanded to Seattle, Los Angeles, Philadelphia and Austin.

But those last two cities didn’t go too smoothly. In Philadelphia, local authorities conducted a sting and impounded the cars of SideCar drivers.

In Austin, the transportation authority declared ride-sharing was illegal, so SideCar filed a lawsuit against the city a week ago, and made all rides free for now.

Free rides were an easy non-sell during SXSW, with more than 20,000 requested during the Interactive (a.k.a. technology) portion of the festival. (Obviously, not all of those were fulfilled. But such is the nature of the system.)

SideCar spokeswoman Margaret Ryan said of the Austin situation via email, “We’ve since had productive meetings with city officials, many of which are pro-rideshare. We’re hoping to have resolution so we can go back to operating as usual soon.”

Meanwhile, San Francisco-based SideCar is still in discussions with regulators in its home market, where competitors Uber and Lyft have already settled with the California Public Utilities Commission, but SideCar had resisted terms that limited an open interpretation of ride-sharing.

In Boston, Brooklyn and Chicago, SideCar will be available from 5 pm to 3 am on weekend nights until it reaches critical mass.

The company had also said last month that it was recruiting drivers in Washington, D.C., for launch this year.

SideCar raised $10 million in Series A funding last year from investors including Lightspeed Venture Partners and Google Ventures.

Ride-Sharing Service Lyft Gets Literal at SXSW, With Piggyback Rides

Lauren Goode — Sun, 10 Mar 2013 21:16:46 +0000

Uber, SideCar, Getaround and Lyft: These are just a few of the services you may have heard by now, all of them attempting to disrupt the transportation industry with car summoning through mobile apps or peer-to-peer ride-sharing options.

Many of them, of course, have also faced cease-and-desist orders or other obstacles from local governments that have expressed concern about liability — and legality.

So, Lyft, probably best known for the giant, hot-pink mustache emblem that drivers slap on their cars, has come up with a SXSW stunt that gets them a little bit of attention without getting into legal hot water in Austin: Free Lyft piggyback rides.

The startup has dispatched around 20 ride-givers — some of them semiprofessional rugby players — to give conference-goers a literal lift around the town.

If you’re not lucky enough to run into one of these pink-mustache-wearing men on the street, as I did today, you can request a Lyft piggyback ride as a temporary option from within the Lyft mobile app. (The full version of the Lyft mobile app, which connects you with real-people drivers willing to use their own cars to give rides, is currently only operating in San Francisco and Los Angeles.)

John Zimmer, co-founder and COO of Zimride, the company behind Lyft, says the piggyback rides were mostly just about having a little bit of fun in Texas.

Lyft isn’t the only one getting creative in Austin, where taxis, pedicabs, and limousines are tightly regulated. SideCar is making all rides free during the fest, and Uber, which primarily hooks users up with town car service, is offering pedicab rides around the city.

Attention SXSW Hipsters: Watch This Video and Get Some Much-Needed Help

Kara Swisher — Sun, 10 Mar 2013 18:49:31 +0000

I have loved this video since it appeared on YouTube a few weeks ago, and now I have a chance to post it in context, as I recover from Day #1 at the SXSW interactive festival in Austin, Texas.

As I wrote in a broader cultural post about the annual event for Vanity Fair this week:

“No matter how young you are, you’re too old for SXSW. I already feel about 136 or so getting on the plane headed to Austin from San Francisco. It’s loaded down with fresh-faced hipsters, all eager to make a splash at the interactive part of the annual festival, with the enthusiasm of out-of-control puppies headed for the park, pulling on their leashes.”

That’s a perfect segue into this video, which asks the important question: “Are you ironic? Do you have a beard? You may be suffering from HIPSTER. Luckily, there’s a cure.”

By the way, from the looks of things at SXSW, where I always feel as if I am in some endless indie loop of “Girls” on HBO, this really will help:

WordPress's Matt Mullenweg Talks About Future of Blogging in a SXSW Pedicab

Kara Swisher — Sun, 10 Mar 2013 16:59:01 +0000

Yesterday, I did an interview session at the SXSW interactive festival in Austin with Matt Mullenweg, where we discussed the lofty topic of the future of blogging.

He’d know, as the founder of Automattic, the company behind the giant blog-hosting platform WordPress.com, which powers a lot of websites big and small (like this one, which is both!).

We talked about a lot of topics onstage, including the recent work-from-home debate (he’s for it), new trends in Web design and software, to-sell-or-not-to-sell, and, of course, the importance of mobile to the ecosystem.

Before the session, I did a little pre-interview video with the always affable entrepreneur as we rode through the streets of the Texas capital in a pedicab.

Here you go:

[ See post to watch video ]

Some More Inconvenient Truths (Including Spider Goats): Al Gore Talks About "The Future" at SXSW

Kara Swisher — Sat, 09 Mar 2013 22:06:12 +0000

Former Vice President Al Gore took to the stage at the SXSW interactive festival today to tell a packed auditorium at the Austin Convention Center about the future.

No, really, “The Future,” which is the name of his new book, with the heavy-duty subhead “Six Drivers of Global Change.”

Among these drivers are — no surprise for him — severe environmental damage, as well as overpopulation and changes in biology via technology, and all the problems that come with that. Among the other critical issues, Gore also noted money politics, the ever-more-sophisticated antibiotics for livestock, and the reliance on supercomputers for stock market trading.

Gore told AllThingsD editor Walt Mossberg in an interview that some of these global developments were both a “peril and opportunity.”

But, in all, it’s a pretty depressing picture overall that he is painting, despite pointing out that knowing you have a problem is the first step.

“Our country is in very serious trouble,” he said. “But that does not mean I am not optimistic.”

Which is right before Gore started reeling off the problematic pressure that money has put on politics. “Our democracy has been hacked,” he said.

“American democracy has never been perfect, but more often than not, the will of the people did drive policy,” he added. “Congress today is utterly incapable of passing any reform of any significance unless they get permission from special interests.”

For example: “The NRA is a fraud,” about the National Rifle Association and its links to gun manufacturers.

“I wish I could get you to be more outspoken,” joked Mossberg.

“Timidity has always been an issue with me,” joshed Gore back.

Gore, who often likes to talk in full and very extended paragraphs, slowly worked through the rest of the list, before he got to the issue of spider goats.

Indeed, spider goats, which are created using genetics to mix the genes of spiders and goats.

“You can’t farm spiders for a number of reasons, so people are talking the genes from spiders and splicing them into goats,” explained Gore. “They look like goats, then these spider goats secret silk through their udders. ‘Everyone okay with that?’”

Um, no.

Still, Gore added that there are “blessings” that come with genetic engineering, including the elimination of a range of devastating diseases.

Gore soon moved onto the issue for which he is best known — global warming — after his movie “An Inconvenient Truth” gained worldwide attention.

“It’s not me saying it — I’m delivering the message. Every single national academy of science on the planet agrees with this, he said, before moving onto the recent devastation of Hurricane Sandy on the East Coast. “Mother Nature has the most powerful voice in this debate.”

But Mossberg and Gore soon parried over the sale of Gore’s media company, Current, to Al Jazeera.

You sold your network to Al Jazeera, which is owned by a government that’s a big oil producer,” asked Mossberg. “How could you do that?”

While hemming and hawing about that, Gore then came back with a good one: “I don’t ask you why you continue working for Rupert Murdoch.”

This meant war, since this site is owned by News Corp. “Last I checked, he’s not in the oil business,” countered Mossberg.

“He’s also not strictly in the news business, either,” said Gore.

Oh dear, time to get back to global warming, because it’s getting hot in here.

It was then onto a short Q&A, with one question about the Internet — an issue near and dear to Gore’s heart. In truth, despite all the jokes, he was critical when a senator to turning the Internet over to the people, from its origins as a government project.

And in this Gore finally pointed to a bright glimmer of hope. “The future of democracy,” he said, “may well depend on the continued freedom and independence of the Internet.”

Moon Shot: Earthbound Investor Milner Talks About Origins of the Universe at SXSW

Kara Swisher — Sat, 09 Mar 2013 17:18:21 +0000

There were, of course, the questions on his famously huge Facebook investment many years ago, and why he’s put money in Y Combinator to spur startup innovation.

But it’s clear from his mainstage interview at the SXSW interactive festival in Austin this morning that high-profile Russian investor Yuri Milner of DST Global has been striving to think much bigger thoughts of late.

While he’s gotten a lot of attention for his big bets in the social networking site, as well as with Twitter, Spotify, Airbnb and many others, he’s slowed his investing in the U.S. considerably to focus more on what he and many others in Silicon Valley are calling “moon shot” ideas.

“Somehow, we have lost interest in big ideas,” said Milner, in an onstage interview with Vanity Fair contributing editor Bethany McLean about shifting away from thinking — which he has funded, in part — that has gotten more short-term and pragmatic. “I think we still have a destiny as human beings.”

That has included starting up his Fundamental Physics Prize, which has now become the priciest academic award, last year. And, more recently — with Facebook co-founder Mark Zuckerberg, Google co-founder Sergey Brin, and Genentech mogul and Apple Chairman Art Levinson, among others — the launch of the Breakthrough Prize in Life Sciences Foundation.

As Mike Isaac wrote when that initiative was announced less than a month ago:

“The first round of prize recipients includes 11 scientists from a range of research disciplines, including studies in genetics, cancer research and neural behavior. Each of the 11 prize winners will receive a $3 million award for their work, and Brin, Zuckerberg, Milner and the rest of the sponsors have agreed to a five-year commitment to awarding prizes.”

Milner, who was a physicist in his early career, said onstage that he has been disheartened to see that not enough younger people choose to go into fundamental science anymore. Thus he is aming to make it more attractive via his prizes.

“We don’t have enough heroes who are admired by a large portion of the population due to their scientific achievements,” he said, noting that it will require rewarding individuals in a “disproportionate manner.”

Still, in the Q&A session, the crowd in the Austin Convention Center wanted to know mostly about more earthbound questions, such as what tech company would last 100 years, as IBM has.

According to Milner: Google, Facebook and Wikipedia, due to network effects.

Another attendee wanted to know what he thought it takes to be an entrepreneur these days.

“It’s almost a heroic effort, and kind of goes against set ways of doing things,” answered Milner.

Then someone wanted to know how the political arena could be similarly transformed.

“That, I don’t know,” said Milner.

Moon shot, indeed.

This Year at SXSW, the Next Killer App … Maybe Isn’t

Lauren Goode — Fri, 08 Mar 2013 12:34:30 +0000

In recent years, the annual SXSW Interactive festival in Austin, Texas, has become a hive for new platforms, with early tech adopters buzzing about the latest and greatest apps, sending some of them into flight.

But this year, the next big app is … well, it isn’t clear. After asking nearly a dozen of the hippest, smartest, earliest-adopting people I know in tech, media and digital advertising, the consensus is:

No idea.

What — no new killer app?

Of course, SXSW will still go on and will probably even be fun, even if there isn’t a new app that “wins” the event. And here’s why:

SXSW Interactive was never really a launchpad for apps. With the exception of Foursquare — which the social location company hustled to finish in the few weeks leading up to the 2009 conference — most noteworthy apps haven’t actually launched during the conference.

Twitter didn’t, despite popular mythology, although its numbers did swell during the 2007 SXSW conference. And some articles that year ventured to say that SXSW was a “tipping point” for the newish microblogging site. But the first tweet? It came a year before that.

Also not new-kids-on-the-block were the messaging apps that were all the rage in 2011. GroupMe, now owned by Microsoft, launched the August before; Beluga had been around long enough to get acquired by Facebook just before SXSW that year.

The hype machine is broken. Last year’s pre-conference predictions were over the top. Remember Glancee, Highlight and Sonar? These were hot. They were changing the world! In theory, these apps were taking geolocation services to the next level. Some call this SoLoMo. Others call it MoLoSo. (I get these confused and it hurts my head.)

In any case, users quickly ran into battery issues with their smartphones, since these types of apps constantly track and ping users when other app-happy friends are nearby. And by the end of that week, AllThingsD writer Liz Gannes reported, a good SXSW icebreaker question was asking which apps people had deleted during the event, not downloaded.

Highlight creator Paul Davison said the company never sought out that kind of attention. “We had a lot of visibility after SXSW, which was great,” he says. “But after coming back, we said, ‘Okay, we really need to spend some time building out infrastructure and optimizing battery life. We need to make this a long-term product, not a festival product.’” Highlight has just released a new version of the app, hoping to take a second stab at success at SXSW this year.

There are too many apps. App fatigue isn’t a new theory, but it’s one I’ve heard mentioned a lot more in recent days. “I think it might be more difficult for newer companies to launch things there now,” says Tristan Walker, entrepreneur-in-residence at Andreessen Horowitz, who was part of the early days of Foursquare. “There are only so many new apps you want to download, and you’re not going to benefit from having 16 of them on your smartphone.”

Venture capitalist Bill Tai echoed this sentiment: “There are so many apps, the barrier is harder to break through.” But Tai, who has backed a brand-new app called Posse that he hopes will gain traction at SXSW, added, “I do think some app makers still see it as a good place to launch.”

Exciting hardware is stealing some attention away from apps. It’s hard to imagine SXSW becoming the next CES-like miasma of gizmos and gadgetry, but the New York Times’ Jenna Wortham highlights a hardware trend in her piece this week, with keynotes coming from Tesla’s Elon Musk and the founder and creator of the Ouya gaming console, as well as plenty of 3-D printing sessions to go around.

SXSW isn’t just about apps. It’s about the networking … at the parties. And the non-digital, real, live, human-to-human connections you’ll make … at the parties. And the interesting keynotes and panel sessions … followed by parties. So, if you’re looking to get value out of this year’s fest, you might want to consider this piece of advice, courtesy of Ad Age: Stop looking for the next big app.

Also: Get to a party.

(Feature image: Rondo Estrello / Flickr.)

Artificial Intelligence, Al Gore, Modern Blogging and More: Where to Find ATD at SXSW

Lauren Goode — Thu, 07 Mar 2013 19:40:47 +0000

Time again for app-flicking, party-hopping, BBQ-eating and, somewhere in between all that, panel-picking.

The interactive portion of the SXSW festival — known as “South By” to hip conference goers — kicks off Friday in Austin, Texas.

And speaking of panels, members of AllThingsD will be moderating a few key ones throughout the fest that you won’t want to miss. (We promise not to call you out if we see you hungover and sleeping in the back row. Just come.)

First off, nobody knows more about blogging than the boss, Kara Swisher, who has literally made liveblogging Yahoo’s earnings calls an award-winning venture. So on Saturday, March 9, at 12:30 pm local time, she’ll be interviewing Mr. WordPress, Matt Mullenweg, about the current state of blogging. More details here.

Later that afternoon, AllThingsD’s other boss, Walt Mossberg, will interview former vice president and New York Times bestselling author Al Gore about his new book, “The Future: Six Drivers of Global Change” — described as “a frank and clear-eyed assessment of the emerging forces that are reshaping our world.” That panel takes place at 3:30 pm local time.

Early risers, reporters who snoop and sources who snitch should add Peter Kafka’s panel to the calendar: At 9:30 am Saturday, he’ll be joined by panelists Ed Lee of Bloomberg News, Greg Galant of MuckRack and Joe Ciarallo of Salesforce.com (formerly of Buddy Media) to discuss the shifting dynamics between reporter and source in the age of social media. Here are the details on Peter’s panel.

And on Monday, March 11, I’ll be moderating a panel on artificial intelligence — think robots, “smart” calendars and natural-language search apps — with Dror Oren, executive director at SRI International; Raj Singh, founder of Tempo AI; and Nadav Gur, co-founder and CEO of Desti. That panel takes place at 3:30 pm.

And, of course, if you see us elsewhere — at the Mailbox/Dropbox/Highlight cocktail hour Sunday, at the Path/Spotify/A-Grade party that same night, at the Funny or Die + Team Coco’s Comedy Climax Party on Monday, or just hanging around the GroupMe Grill — come say hello.

(Feature art courtesy of Flickr Creative Commons.)

Michael Goddard, a 25-year AMD Veteran, Jumps to Samsung

Arik Hesseldahl — Wed, 26 Dec 2012 22:25:42 +0000

Add another name to the list of veterans decamping from troubled chipmaker Advanced Micro Devices to other jobs amid an ongoing reorganization and recent job cuts.

The latest is Michael Goddard, a 25-year AMD veteran whose last title at that company was corporate VP for product design engineering and chief engineer on client products. At AMD since 1988, according to his LinkedIn profile he changed jobs this month, joining South Korean chip giant Samsung as a VP and system architect at its facility in Austin, Texas.

During his years at AMD, Goddard (pictured), a deeply respected engineer at the company, worked closely in the late 1990s with Dirk Meyer, the AMD engineer who later served as its CEO from 2008 to 2011. He also spent some time with AMD’s design operations in India. People close to AMD were surprised by the move, and say its unlikely that Goddard was pushed out. Goddard couldn’t immediately be reached for comment, though he has been spotted at industry events in recent days quietly telling people he had started the new job at Samsung. An AMD spokesman confirmed Goddard’s departure, adding that the company is continuing to make strategic hires.

Goddard’s move comes amid a talent exodus from AMD. Before Goddard, at least 26 executives of varying levels of seniority left the company in recent months. Some were fired in earlier rounds of reorganizations ordered by CEO Rory Read, some left for new jobs.

The company cut 15 percent of its workforce this fall and is expected to cut even more jobs early in 2013. It has also been reported to be exploring options, code companies use when they’re considering a breakup or sale, though AMD has since strenuously denied that it is actively seeking a buyer.

In fairness, it hasn’t been all departures at AMD. In August, it hired Jim Keller, the former head chip designer at Apple. And last year it hired its CIO away from Hewlett-Packard.

AMD shares fell today by more than 2 percent to $2.43. The shares have fallen by more than 55 percent this year.

IBM to Acquire StoredIQ, a Manager of Corporate Data

Arik Hesseldahl — Wed, 19 Dec 2012 16:32:07 +0000

IBM said today that it will acquire StoredIQ, an 11-year-old Austin-based company focused on managing big caches of corporate data.

A classic problem in Big Data circles is the reflexive urge to move data before you manage it and do anything useful with it. StoredIQ’s approach calls for managing data in the place it is originally stored. It works with a lot of different kinds of data sources — desktop machines, file shares, even old tapes. The point is to analyze them all, find the important bits, and delete the bits that aren’t important.

IBM will add StoredIQ to its Information LifeCycle Governance Suite, which aims to help companies spend less on the data they accumulate over the years. Data has a bad way of multiplying. If you’ve ever seen an email chain with attachments get sent to lots of people — then re-sent, forwarded and so on — you can pretty easily understand how unnecessary copies of the same data make storing it all so difficult. And if it’s happening on your email servers, it’s happening with other kinds of data, as well. Copies get made, then copies of copies. In time, it becomes unrealistic to sort through it all and just clean it up.

There is value in that older data as it ages. There are business patterns that repeat themselves that aren’t apparent years later: Pricing data, seasonal patterns and other information that’s worth keeping on for years and years. That’s where IBM’s analytics chops come into play. The key is figuring out which bits are important and which aren’t.

It’s not a trivial problem. Some companies are required by law — there have been a lot of new regulations around data retention in recent years — to store everything in case of a lawsuit or an enforcement action by a regulatory agency. As data multiplies, so does the cost to store and manage it, creating a headache for both the CIO and general counsel.

The deal builds on prior IBM acquisitions, like PSS Systems in 2010 and Vivisimo earlier this year.

Apple's Getting Bigger in Texas

Arik Hesseldahl — Tue, 11 Dec 2012 23:46:38 +0000

It’s not as though we needed another indicator of how far the tech world has shifted in the last decade, but, well, here’s another indicator.

Apple appears to be on its way to becoming the biggest employer in the Austin, Texas, area and may soon eclipse Dell. Having gotten under way in May with the construction on a new $16.5 million, 200,000-square foot building in North Austin to open by 2015, plus a second, $226 million, 800,000-square-foot office building due no later than 2025, Apple is required under a deal it reached with commissioners in Texas’ Travis County to hire no fewer than 3,655 workers on top of the 4,000 it employs in Austin now.

If current trends continue and Apple keeps adding people — and Dell keeps cutting, as it has been over the last few years — Apple will become the biggest job creator in Central Texas. The prediction comes from local economist Angelos Angelou.

The expected increase in Austin may or may not have something to do with Apple’s plans to shift some of its Mac manufacturing footprint to the U.S. and away from China next year. CEO Tim Cook disclosed the plan in interviews with Bloomberg Businessweek and NBC last week, but first hinted about it in his appearance at D: All Things Digital in May.

And Apple is also responsible for indirectly creating a lot of jobs. Example: South Korean chip giant Samsung manufactures Apple’s A5x and A6 chips used in the iPad and iPhone at a factory outside Austin.

AMD Shares Up on Real Estate Sale-Leaseback

Arik Hesseldahl — Wed, 28 Nov 2012 17:38:48 +0000

Shares of chipmaker Advanced Micro Devices are rising by more than 4 percent today on word that the company expects to make between $150 million and $200 million on a sale-leaseback deal pending on its 58-acre campus in Austin, Texas. The move had been rumored earlier this month, and will alleviate a worsening shortage of cash.

One More Thing …

Voices — Thu, 25 Oct 2012 06:59:44 +0000

– John Gruber, responding to news that Zynga had closed its Boston office and laid off more than 100 employees from its Austin office during the Apple event

Zynga Confirms 5 Percent Staff Reduction, 13 Game Closures

Tricia Duryee — Tue, 23 Oct 2012 22:04:12 +0000

Zynga’s founder and CEO Mark Pincus has just sent out a letter to the troops detailing the magnitude of the cutbacks today, which include a 5 percent reduction in staff.

“We don’t take these decisions lightly as we recognize the impact to our colleagues and friends who have been on this journey with us. We appreciate their amazing contributions and will miss them,” he told employees in a letter.

More details will be provided on the earnings call tomorrow, but the high-level takeaway is that the troubled social games maker will be “sunsetting” 13 games, which seems like a lot, and closing the Boston office. It is also proposing closures of the Zynga Japan and U.K. studios.

As previously reported, it confirmed it was reducing staffing levels at its Austin studio, where The Ville was developed.

With as many as 3,400 on its payroll, a 5 percent layoff works out to about 170 employees being let go.

And on what was already a rough day, it didn’t help that Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg pointed to Zynga’s struggles as one of the drags on his payments business.

Here’s the note that was provided by a Zynga spokesperson:

How Obama or Romney Should Have Answered the iPad Question

Arik Hesseldahl — Wed, 17 Oct 2012 16:05:25 +0000

Toward the end of last night’s presidential debate between President Barack Obama and Gov. Mitt Romney, the moderator, CNN’s Candy Crowley, asked a perfectly legitimate question, one that Obama himself is once reported to have asked a group of tech executives that included the late Apple CEO Steve Jobs. Essentially it was this: Why can’t iPhones and iPads be manufactured in the U.S.?

Here’s her question, which you can find on page 48 of the transcript:

The correct answer is that, under current conditions, which are highly unlikely to change no matter who is president, the job of assembling iPhones and iPads and other consumer electronics is now done mostly in China by companies that specialize in manufacturing, and will never come back to the U.S. And that’s okay.

Sadly, both Obama and Romney flubbed their answers, and educated voters not at all.

Romney made his response about how China is a currency manipulator and steals American intellectual property. Obama got started down the right path, correctly admitting that certain low-skilled jobs aren’t coming back, and mentioned “high-wage, high-skilled jobs.” But he failed to close the deal on his point. He then got off track talking about investing in research and training engineers. In part because the time was so short, neither delivered a clear correct answer about an issue that is widely and fundamentally misunderstood by most voters.

Here’s what one of them — either one, I don’t care which, and assuming no time limit — should have said in response:

“Candy, I understand how some people might get frustrated when they see Chinese workers assembling iPhones. It’s easy to think that those jobs rightly belong in America. The reality is a little more complex, but when you understand it, there’s a surprising amount of good news for American workers.

“The fact is, assembling iPhones and iPads is the final step of a complex process, and is really a low-skill, low-cost kind of job. China has spent decades building much of its economy around these low-skill jobs, in part because it has such a large labor force and plenty of workers who are willing to do the work. And, frankly, here in America you wouldn’t want to try to support a family on the kind of wages a job like that would pay. I know it sounds harsh, but it’s true. So I know this may sound odd when I say it, but I ask you to hear me out: I’m perfectly comfortable letting those kinds of jobs go to China or somewhere else.

“In fact, some researchers at the University of California at Berkeley found that for every iPad or iPhone manufactured, Chinese workers add $10 or less to the value of an iPad or iPhone. On an iPad, they found that American workers add $162 worth of value, and on an iPhone it was more than twice as much.

“In America, when we talk about manufacturing, we should be talking about advanced manufacturing jobs for highly skilled workers that require a solid education and pay wages on which you can support a family. And the fact is, there’s a lot of American work that goes into an iPad or an iPhone or a Mac.

“For one thing, there’s our semiconductor companies, like Intel, an American company that makes the most advanced and complex device ever created — the microprocessor — and that does it better than any other company in the world. It makes the primary brain that goes inside the Mac, most of the world’s personal computers and most of the servers that power the Internet. And most of those chips are made right here in California and Arizona and Oregon. Some are made in Israel, too. But most are made here in the U.S.A.

“And the microprocessors that go inside the iPad and the iPhone are made right here in America, too. Apple doesn’t make its own chips, and when it went looking for another company to help it do that, it picked a Korean company called Samsung. And where did Samsung decide to build these chips? Some place in Korea? No. The answer will surprise you: Texas. That’s right. Samsung operates one of its very biggest chip factories in Austin.

“Then there’s the shatter-resistant glass that you touch every time you use an iPhone or iPad. It was invented in America. And it’s made in America, too, by American workers at a company called Corning, in Kentucky and New York.

“And that’s just one piece of it. There are a lot of other great jobs held by American workers. Apple has a lot of smart designers who sweated over every little detail of how the iPad and iPhone look, and how they feel in your hand, and how the button works. Teams of software developers slowly, painstakingly designed and built and tweaked and refined the software that makes it so fun and useful.

“And we’re not done there. If you have an iPhone or an iPad, you have a favorite app. Right now, my favorite app is the one created by my campaign staff. And when I take a break on the campaign bus, my wife and I like to relax for a few minutes playing Words With Friends. She beats me every time. And how many apps are there? A million? A zillion? But that’s an example of another American company, Zynga, creating jobs for the people who create game software. And there are lots more Zyngas, some of them really small companies with just a few people, and some a lot bigger. Apple once counted, and said that there were more than 200,000 people working at jobs just making apps.

“And let’s not forget that just a little more than five years ago, this branch of the technology industry didn’t exist at all. Apple brought out the first iPhone in 2007, and the first apps started coming to the marketplace in 2008. And don’t get me started about Google and its Android phones and tablets, and the chips and software that go into those. Or Facebook, and all the interesting things it’s doing.

“So, to answer your question, Candy, I’m not terribly worried that American workers aren’t assembling iPhones and iPads in America. They’re busy doing more important jobs, and earning good wages doing it right here in America. And as president, I’ll do everything in my power to help encourage the creation of more jobs right here in America, and to encourage entrepreneurs to start new companies so they can create the next Apple or Google or Intel or Facebook.

“It’s something we in America do better than anyone else. And we can argue about the details of how we should go about doing that. My opponent and I have some strong differences of opinion on some of those things we might do, and you should learn about those differences and think long and hard about them, because they’re important. But, over the long term, when I look at the iPhone and the iPad, I see something that could only have happened in America. And I feel pretty good about the role the American worker plays in it. And so should you.

“Next question.”

=====
Update: A few people have pointed out that President Obama in his response to Crowley’s question got off to a better start than I initially gave him credit for. However, I don’t think he quite closed the deal on the argument. Then, owing I think in part to the tight time constraints, he got off track. Either way, I’ve adjusted that lead-in paragraph above to reflect this.

For the sake of discussion I’ve added the text of the full exchange below.

CROWLEY: Mr. President, we have a really short time for a quick discussion here.
IPad, the Macs, the iPhones, they are all manufactured in China, and one of the major reasons is labor is so much cheaper [there]. How do you convince a great American company to bring that manufacturing back here?

ROMNEY: The answer is very straightforward. We can compete with anyone in the world as long as the playing field is level. China’s been cheating over the years, one, by holding down the value of their currency, number two, by stealing our intellectual property, our designs, our patents, our technology. There’s even an Apple store in China that’s a counterfeit Apple store selling counterfeit goods. They hack into our computers. We will have to have people play on a fair basis. That’s number one.

Number two, we have to make America the most attractive place for entrepreneurs, for people who want to expand a business. That’s what brings jobs in. The president’s characterization of my tax plan …

OBAMA: How much time you got, Candy?

ROMNEY: …. is completely … is completely false.

CROWLEY: Let me go to the president here, because we really are running out of time. And the question is can we ever get — we can’t get wages like that. It can’t be sustained here.

OBAMA: Candy, there are some jobs that are not going to come back, because they’re low-wage, low-skill jobs. I want high-wage, high-skill jobs. That’s why we have to emphasize manufacturing. That’s why we have to invest in advanced manufacturing. That’s why we’ve got to make sure that we’ve got the best science and research in the world.

And when we talk about deficits, if we’re adding to our deficit for tax cuts for folks who don’t need them and we’re cutting investments in research and science that will create the next Apple, create the next new innovation that will sell products around the world, we will lose that race. If we’re not training engineers to make sure that they are equipped here in this country, then companies won’t come here. Those investments are what’s going to help to make sure that we continue to lead this world economy not just next year, but 10 years from now, 50 years from now, a hundred years from now.

Google Ventures-Backed Roqbot Lets You Rock the Jukebox From Your Phone

Lauren Goode — Tue, 12 Jun 2012 14:07:39 +0000

We all know that guy, the one who hovers by the jukebox at the bar with wads of dollar bills to make sure he gets “Don’t Stop Believing” and a little Poison into the music rotation.

Fortunately, there’s an app that lets you select and pay for jukebox songs from your smartphone — and allows other people in the venue to vote on the songs, too.

It’s called Roqbot, and it just nabbed $1.2 million in seed funding from Google Ventures and Detroit Venture Partners.

Roqbot, which launched at the SXSW Interactive Festival in 2011, is a free app for iPhone and Android smartphones.

So far, only 40 venues around the U.S. have installed Roqbot-friendly digital devices — a small number compared to the footprint of something like TouchTunes. But Roqbot is not limited to bars: Gyms, barbershops and even a go-kart track have taken advantage of it, too. Roqbot says it has access to about six million music tracks, and that the company covers the licensing costs for the venues.

It can cost anywhere from 50 cents to $2.50 to play a tune on a digital jukebox. Roqbot says, though, that in most of the venues using Roqbot, the plays are sponsored. For example, in a recent promotion, a bar in Austin, Texas, ran beer ads within the app, and music plays were free.

App users can check in to the venue via Foursquare, but a check-in isn’t required. The app queues up music based on order of requests, but it also allows people using the app to give the thumbs-up or thumbs-down to songs in the queue, which could help speed along the play of a popular song.

One element of Roqbot worth noting is that it’s not pulling from a cache of music tracks — bye-bye, CD flipbooks — but streams tracks from the Web, which might not work so well in bars or other places with spotty Internet connections, perhaps resulting in some thumbs-downs from patrons who have just paid to play. Roqbot says there are certain devices that venues can install — like boxes from BrightSign — that will cache some music to aid in uninterrupted playing.

(Image courtesy of Flickr/Studiotre)

Designed by Apple in California -- Assembled in the U.S.?

John Paczkowski — Fri, 01 Jun 2012 19:20:21 +0000

Apple once operated a factory in the United States. Will it ever open another one? Will we ever see an Apple device labeled “Designed by Apple in California -– Assembled in the United States”? Apple CEO Tim Cook isn’t sure, but he’s certainly open to the idea, though it’s not an easy one to execute.

“I want there to be [another U.S.-manufactured Apple product],” Cook said onstage at our 10th D: All Things Digital conference earlier this week, adding that some important pieces of a few of Apple’s devices are currently made in the States.

“This is not well known, but the engines for the iPhone and iPad are built in the U.S., in Austin,” Cook said. “The glass on the iPhone is made at a plant in Kentucky — and not just for the U.S., but for other markets outside the U.S. as well.”

But those are just a few components. And the bulk of them are not only manufactured outside the U.S., but assembled into Apple devices there as well.

Could assembly ever be done in the U.S.?

Said Cook, “I hope so, one day.”

But in order for that to ever happen, the U.S. really needs to up its game.

“The truth is the tool-and-die-maker skill in the U.S. began to go down in the late ’60s and early ’70s,” Cook said. “How many tool-and-die makers do you know in the U.S. now? I could call a meeting and invite every tool-and-die maker in the United States and we wouldn’t fill this room.”

Not so in China, though. Said Cook, “In China you could fill a city with tool-and-die makers.”

So there’s significant work to be done if we’re ever to reach that “Designed by Apple in California -– Assembled in the United States” dream.

“There has to be some fundamental changes in the education system and the tool-and-die business in the United States to really bring consumer electronics assembly back to the U.S. But there are things that we can do, and that’s what we’re working on doing, and you can bet that we will use the whole of our influence to do it.”

Apple to Build New Austin Campus

Arik Hesseldahl — Tue, 01 May 2012 21:33:35 +0000

Apple will soon be staffing up and building in Texas. The company just completed a deal with commissioners in Travis County, Texas, under which it will build a $16.5 million, 200,000-square foot building in North Austin by 2015, plus a second, $226 million, 800,000-square-foot office by 2025. The deal, which gives Apple a series of tax breaks and incentives from the county and state worth a combined maximum of $35 million over 15 years also requires Apple to hire a minimum of 3,655 workers by 2025. It employs 3,100 at its current campus in Austin now.

Viral Video: Let the Hipster Games Begin!

Kara Swisher — Mon, 09 Apr 2012 07:16:26 +0000

I meant to post this last week — a very clever spoof on the hit movie “The Hunger Games.”

This version: “The Hipster Games,” with ironic young people from five districts — Portland, Austin, Brooklyn, Oakland and Silverlake in Los Angeles — fighting to the death for that old Talking Heads vinyl record album.

Enjoy:

Viral Video: The ParkMe Dudes Booting Austin

Kara Swisher — Tue, 20 Mar 2012 07:31:04 +0000

ParkMe is an app that AllThingsD writer Ina Fried wrote was “the best (and worst) marketing gimmick in Austin” at the SXSW Interactive festival last week.

Simply put, the Los Angeles-area start-up used fake tickets and boots to get the word out about their app, which recommends the “cheapest and closest parking around you.”

Yes, boots in Texas. Heh.

Here is a video ParkMe did about the effort:

Party On … And On … And On, Geek (But Not Much Else): A Newbie Reflects on SXSW

Ina Fried — Wed, 14 Mar 2012 15:00:50 +0000

Never having been to South by Southwest, I really didn’t know what to expect after I landed in Austin.

As I take off on a plane away from Austin, I have a few observations, many of which seemed to be shared by others I chatted with.

To be clear, I’m referring to the interactive piece of the event. I have far too poor taste in music and movies to pass judgment on those portions, nor did I stay for those parts.

The event is an incredible party.

SXSW Interactive is actually a conference surrounded by many, many small (and not-so-small) parties. But the parties are so numerous and so close to the conference that it is more like one big party than it is a discrete set of events.

It’s mostly a marketing and PR thing.

Marketing and branding are a big part of any event, but they seem to be the raison d’etre for this conference.

South by Southwest is a great place to try to identify your company as hip and edgy, and there are plenty of the kinds of folks in attendance who help decide those sorts of things. It’s also a good barometer for which companies have lots of money to throw around. (Full disclosure: AllThingsD hosted two parties, one for the launch of its new All Things Reviewed site — which was very lovely, if we do say so ourselves.)

It’s not a big place for news.

Folks looking for lots of interesting headlines were disappointed. As far as big trends, the closest thing I saw was the need for a breakthrough in battery life for all our digital gear.

While SXSW has been a place where apps and services have taken off in years past, most of those have been apps and services that help aid the sort of schmoozing that is the best part of the Austin event.

There were good discussions to be had, both onstage and off. I had good chats with people I knew and many people I didn’t.

It’s a terrible place for sleep.

Largely because of the fact that it is one big party, it is very hard to achieve downtime in Austin. There is literally always something going on, and with so much good food and music, even wallflowers can be persuaded to leave their comfort zones. The enforced insomnia was exacerbated by the fact that the event coincided with the shift to Daylight Savings Time, depriving conference-goers of one more precious hour of sleep.

I talked more about some of my experiences on Monday’s “Digits” show, as well as in an interview on Southern California Public Radio’s “Madeleine Brand Show,” discussing the trends from Austin:

[ See post to watch video ]

AllThingsD Takes SXSW by Storm (in Pictures)

Lauren Goode — Tue, 13 Mar 2012 21:46:17 +0000

SXSW Interactive is, thankfully, almost over. We came, we saw, we ate from food trucks. We stood in lines in the rain (grudgingly wearing branded ponchos), we strained our eyes and ears for any slivers of news that might come out of the panels, and we got more texts and buzzes and pings from our phones’ location-based and messaging apps than we thought was technically possible.

We learned that video games are good for you, that TV has ruined politics in the U.S. and that social media should fix it, and that Jimmy Fallon has different activities in mind when he thinks of “activity wristbands.” We learned how to be disruptive. We heard Google’s designers explain how they convinced their company to take on that infamous redesign.

We identified one of the worst marketing gimmicks in all of Austin (aside from this controversial one), and heard about all the crazy tasks SXSW-ers hired people to do for them. We learned that an impromptu Jay-Z concert will light up Twitter like it’s Arab Spring in Austin. We hosted not one but two parties at SXSW, announcing at the first event the new All Things Reviewed section of our Web site.

Since words can only say so much, we’ve put together a slideshow for you, below, and our full list of stories is below that: