Given that Apple and Samsung have been working together for years — the first iPhone chips were Samsung made, after all — I’m not entirely sure why anyone is surprised that this Samsung fab was expanded to accommodate, among other customers, Apple.

Maybe the cybernetic voice of the iPhone’s marquee feature, the personal assistant Siri, should sport a Texan twang, rather than a non-specific accent. There’s a lot more inside the iPhone that comes from Texas than just the A5.

For one thing, the chip itself, or some significant portion of it, was probably designed in Texas to begin with. Remember Intrinsity? That’s the boutique chip design company that Apple acquired in 2010. Yes, that’s the one. Where was it based again? You guessed it: Austin, Texas.

There’s more. This is the very same factory that Samsung announced it was going to expand last year with a $3.6 billion investment. Indeed, yours truly even covered the announcement for Bloomberg News.

The previous fabs have been turning out Flash memory chips since the late 1990s. And since Samsung is the world’s largest supplier of Flash memory, and Apple is the world’s largest consumer of Flash memory, there’s a pretty good chance that the iPhone you’re carrying right now contains flash chips built in Texas. However, Apple buys flash memory from other companies too, including Toshiba and Hynix.

Then there are lots of other smaller components that come from Texas. Texas Instruments supplies the chip that drives the touch screen. As its name implies, TI is based in Dallas and has six fabs in Richardson, Texas (and many others around the world), one of which may turn out the touch screen controllers that iSuppli found in the iPhone. (TI wouldn’t confirm one way or the other if it’s made in Texas, but there’s a pretty good chance!)

And then there’s the audio codec chip from Cirrus Logic, found by market research firm iSuppli in its teardown analysis. It’s another company based in Texas, and so while the chip itself was probably manufactured in Asia, it was designed at Cirrus HQ in Austin.

And finally, don’t forget that Apple itself maintains a huge presence in Austin. The Austin American Statesman reported last year that the company was nearing a deal to lease 55,000 square feet of office space for the Intrinsity team, and is thought to employ about 2,500 people in and around Austin, most of them based at a 400,000 square foot campus.

So for all of Apple’s California good vibes, there’s a lot of Texas in every iPhone it makes.

According to sources close to the situation, longtime Yahoo front page chief Liz Lufkin has parted ways with the company.

The departure last week appears to be related to a reorg by newish editor-in-chief Jai Singh, who used to run the editorial efforts for the Huffington Post, at the Silicon Valley Internet giant.

Singh appears to be setting up his own team and, thus, Lufkin was out.

Lufkin has been at Yahoo for many years, most recently as VP of front page programming. In that job, according to one bio, she supervised “editors in Sunnyvale, Santa Monica, New York and Dallas and consult[ed] to various international Yahoo! sites. Liz’s group contributed to the successful development of Yahoo’s pioneering content optimization personalization system, improving the relevancy of Front Page for users and providing new insights on audience behavior.”

Previous to Yahoo, she had been deputy managing editor at Gannett’s USATODAY.com and USA Today. She had a similar job at the Hearst-owned San Francisco Chronicle.

Lufkin’s job at Yahoo is a critical one, given how powerful the front page of the site is, with 600 million unique visitors and billions of page views.

While the portal system has been under siege in recent years, it is still a massive driver of traffic to Yahoo’s own Web properties and elsewhere on the Internet.

Yahoo declined to comment (but I am right!).

UPDATE: Yahoo said that it had hired CNET editor-in-chief Scott Ard to take Lufkin’s place. Ard, who worked for the CBS-owned tech news property for 12 years, will report directly to Jai Singh, editor-in-chief of the Yahoo Media Network.

In a bold and definitive move, AOL is paying $315 million, mostly in cash, to buy the Huffington Post, one of the Web’s most prominent news and opinion sites.

As part of the deal, Huffington Post co-founder Arianna Huffington (pictured here)–who was derided by some when she co-founded the left-leaning site in 2005 with investor and well-known communications exec Kenneth Lerer–will become president and editor in chief of the Huffington Post Media Group within AOL.

The deal was signed late this afternoon, and the board of directors of each company and shareholders of the privately held Huffington Post have approved the transaction.

In an exclusive video interview BoomTown conducted earlier today in Dallas, just before Super Bowl XLV, both Armstrong and Huffington were jovial that the whirlwind deal, begun in November, actually worked out so quickly.

Perhaps giddy, they hit upon a common motto:

“One plus one equals 11.”

Get it? One and one next to each other is the number 11!

Let’s move on, shall we?

AOL said it is expected to close in the late-first or early-second quarter of 2011.

Once culminated, it will put Huffington in charge of all AOL content and other properties, including well-known names such as Engadget, Moviefone, MapQuest and TechCrunch.

She said she plans to move to New York from Los Angeles, although she will also maintain her longtime Brentwood home there.

And content for all these sites will be integrated deeply into the Huffington Post, giving it a huge new infusion of editorial material.

More to the point, the flashy acquisition–which essentially came together in less than two weeks in January–will become the linchpin of AOL CEO Tim Armstrong’s aggressive, if risky, strategy to focus the long-troubled company as a content and advertising powerhouse.

For AOL, the deal gives it a popular branded site that is very good at generating lots of page views and impressions very efficiently–which is the company’s whole thrust these days.

That means lots more ad inventory to sell and an injection of content talent, giving AOL the scale it desperately needs.

The move also obviously gives AOL a much-needed editorial identity and cohesion, which it doesn’t really have.

In fact, many think AOL needs a rallying point to bring clarity to its hodgepodge of recent acquisitions that all center on the notion that a strong company has yet to emerge in the premium content space.

Here is a mock-up of the front page of AOL tonight (click on it to make it larger):

While it all makes for a riveting narrative by the charming Armstrong, AOL still has not delivered the business turnaround promised after its spinoff from Time Warner in 2009.

Wall Street, which has given Armstrong a lot of rope, has become more impatient of late to see results–especially more robust increases in its display advertising business, as its access business dies off–after AOL spun off from Time Warner in 2009.

In its quarterly report last week, AOL reported earnings of 61 cents a share on revenue of $596 million.

But, as MediaMemo’s Peter Kafka wrote:

The bigger picture is that Armstrong’s turnaround is still in progress. Ad revenue was down 29 percent in the last quarter, although that number is worse than it looks. A big chunk of the decline comes from moves AOL has intentionally made that will cut revenue in the short run in return for more profitable sales down the road.

A more representative data set for Armstrong are his display ad sales, which are down 14 percent overall and eight percent in the U.S..

The bad news is that the rest of the Web ad industry is well into rebound mode; the good news is that AOL has trained Wall Street to expect numbers like these. If you’re waiting to see positive sales numbers, Armstrong said during AOL’s earnings call this morning, wait until the second half of this year.

In any case, the move is a good one for the Huffington Post since it will vault it to the next level of growth.

Other companies, such as Yahoo and NBC Universal, had looked at the company as a purchase target, and many expected it to eventually sell out to a larger company.

Sources close to the Huffington Post said that that outcome seemed the most likely, and the recent expansion of the site and its audience made it a good time to do a deal now.

Talks with Yahoo last year went nowhere, sources said, but Armstrong was not as slow to act.

Indeed, the actual deal happened quickly, said Armstrong and Huffington in a video interview with BoomTown earlier today (which you can see here).

The pair started talking in early November of last year at the Quadrangle Conference in New York and continued their discussions through the holidays.

Armstrong made the official offer to Huffington by phone in January, while she was at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, and he was snowed in in New York.

Five time multiple to the Huffington Post’s upward of $60 million in expected revenue for the coming year, and nearly 10 times the $31 million for 2010, the offer was accepted quickly.

AOL used cash for $300 million of the purchase and $15 million in stock for the rest.

“The idea of turning a fire hose of traffic onto our content made enormous sense,” said one person close to the situation. “Everything is changing so fast, it seemed like the time was right.”

An IPO was also considered for the Huffington Post, sources said. But since the site only recently moved into profitability–although barely–such an event would have been farther out.

That’s despite the fact that the Huffington Post has seen fast-growing traffic and influence, spurred in part by Huffington’s larger-than-life persona in both the mainstream media and blogosphere.

The wide-ranging site–which has added a number of content areas in recent years beyond its flagship political offering–currently has almost 26 million unique monthly visitors, according to recent stats, moving in close range to established news organizations such as the New York Times.

That kind of success seemed unlikely when the Huffington Post launched on May 9, 2005, positioning itself as as a liberal counterweight to the popular right-leaning Drudge Report.

But the Huffington Post’s heady mix of celebrity bloggers, personality and voice, as well as aggressive curation of links from other sites, quickly caught on.

To fund its efforts, the New York-based online media company has raised $37 million from angel investors such as Lerer–the largest individual shareholder, followed closely by Huffington–and venture firms such as Greycroft Partners, Softbank Capital and Oak Investment Partners.

The growth has not been without controversy around issues such as lack of payments to bloggers who contribute and accusations that the site uses too much content from other Web sources when linking.

And Huffington herself has also been a lightning rod, which has been both positive and negative for the site.

But, there is no question she is one of the Web’s most prominent players, along with writing books, appearing on television frequently and being a fixture at high-profile events in New York, Los Angeles and Washington, D.C.

That includes a never-ending panoply of parties that feature a potent mix of movie stars, corporate poo-bahs, glad-handing politicians and lots of journalists from all over the media.

In fact, full disclosure, I was at one of those parties this past weekend for actor Colin Firth and others involved in the making of the Oscar-nominated film “The King’s Speech.” (Apropos of nothing, actor Helena Bonham Carter is as smart as you would expect, but much more delicate.)

As part of the AOL deal, CEO Eric Hippeau–who has been integral to professionalizing the business and will be joining Lerer Ventures–and Chief Revenue Officer Greg Coleman will leave the Huffington Post.

Ironically, Coleman was replaced by Armstrong as head of ad sales at AOL after he took over as CEO. Coleman got a big payout and will now apparently get another.

But the rest of the 200 Huffington Post employees are moving over to AOL with Huffington, who Armstrong hopes will be the company’s ace in the content hole going forward.

There are likely to be changes to come too at AOL, within weeks, especially in its content-side management and site staffs.

AOL provided some quotes in support of the deal from prominent Internet figures who know Huffington well.

“Arianna is one of the preeminent authors and editors of our time, and Tim has a remarkable track record of business success,” said Facebook COO Sheryl Sandberg. “Bringing them together creates tremendous potential for AOL.”

And Twitter co-founder Biz Stone said:

“Editorial vision and leadership are essential in order to transmute our shared cacophony of voices into a valuable dialogue. Arianna’s expertise, empathy, and entrepreneurial enthusiasm forms a kind of alchemy turning mere words and phrases into powerful expressions of humanity.”

Inter-Internet harmony: How sweet!

Here is the official press release, with all the details, but there is also an 8 am ET AOL conference call tomorrow:

AOL AGREES TO ACQUIRE THE HUFFINGTON POST

Acquisition Will Solidify AOL’s Strategy of Creating a Premier Content Network With Local, National and International Reach

Arianna Huffington To Lead Newly Formed The Huffington Post Media Group Which Will Integrate All Huffington Post and AOL Content, Including News, Tech, Women, Local, Multicultural, Entertainment, Video, Community, and More

The New Combined Media Group Will Reach 117 Million Americans and 270 Million Globally

Group Uniquely Positioned To Redefine the Future of Brand Advertising and Marketing For an Engaged and Influential Audience

New York, NY–February 7, 2011–AOL Inc. [NYSE:AOL] announced today that it has entered into a definitive agreement to acquire The Huffington Post, the influential and rapidly growing news, analysis, and lifestyle website founded in 2005, which now counts nearly 25 million unique monthly visitors*.

The transaction will create a premier global, national, local, and hyper-local content group for the digital age–leveraged across online, mobile, tablet, and video platforms. The combination of AOL’s infrastructure and scale with The Huffington Post’s pioneering approach to news and innovative community building among a broad and sophisticated audience will mark a seminal moment in the evolution of digital journalism and online engagement.

The new group will have a combined base of 117 million unique visitors a month in the United States and 270 million around the world**. Following the close of this transaction, AOL will accelerate its strategy to deliver a scaled and differentiated array of premium news, analysis, and entertainment produced by thousands of writers, editors, reporters, and videographers around the globe.

As part of the transaction, Arianna Huffington, The Huffington Post’s co-founder and editor-in-chief, will be named president and editor-in-chief of The Huffington Post Media Group, which will include all Huffington Post and AOL content, including Engadget, TechCrunch, Moviefone, MapQuest, Black Voices, PopEater, AOL Music, AOL Latino, AutoBlog, Patch, StyleList, and more.

“The acquisition of The Huffington Post will create a next-generation American media company with global reach that combines content, community, and social experiences for consumers,” said Tim Armstrong, Chairman and CEO of AOL. “Together, our companies will embrace the digital future and become a digital destination that delivers unmatched experiences for both consumers and advertisers.”

Armstrong continued, “Arianna is a singularly passionate and dedicated champion of innovative journalistic engagement, and a master of the art of using new media to illuminate, entertain and enhance the national conversation. Arianna is a remarkable person and she will continue to create remarkable outcomes for the combined company.”

“This is truly a merger of visions and a perfect fit for us,” said Huffington. “The Huffington Post will continue on the same path we have been on for the last six years–though now at light speed–by combining with AOL. Our readers will still be able to come to the Huffington Post at the same URL, and find all the same content they’ve grown to love, plus a lot more–more local, more tech, more entertainment, more finance, and lots more video. We are fusing a legendary and powerful new media brand with a vibrant, innovative news organization, known for its distinctive voice, a highly engaged audience, an expertise in community-building, and a track record for demystifying the news and putting flesh and blood on the data while drawing our audience into the conversation.”

Huffington continued, “By uniting AOL and The Huffington Post, we are creating one of the largest destinations for smart content and community on the Internet. And we intend to keep making it better and better.”

Kenneth Lerer, The Huffington Post’s Co-Founder and Chairman, said, “The Huffington Post team has created a potent brand with the proven track record of knowing how to grow traffic, inform and entertain its readers and build a one-of-a-kind online community. Add that to the powerful scale and resources of AOL and you have the perfect combination for today and the future. Together these two companies will be a premier online content provider. From local citizen reporting through AOL’s Patch, to The Huffington Post’s national reporting on politics, business and culture, consumers will have access to everything they want whenever they want it.”

AOL has agreed to purchase The Huffington Post for $315 million, approximately $300 million of which will be paid in cash funded from cash on hand. The Huffington Post is privately owned by its two cofounders, as well as a group of investors. The proposed transaction is subject to customary closing conditions, including receipt of government approvals. The boards of directors of each company and shareholders of The Huffington Post have approved the transaction. The transaction is expected to close in the late first- or early second-quarter 2011.

The Huffington Post over-indexes on educated, affluent users, reaching the key decision makers in C-suites around the globe. The Huffington Post speaks to this influential audience via a host of prominent voices on its group blog. Among those who have blogged on The Huffington Post are: President Barack Obama, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, Mayor Michael Bloomberg, Larry Page, Diane Sawyer, Buzz Aldrin, Nora Ephron, Bill Maher, Madeleine Albright, Robert Redford, Katie Couric, Neil Young, Rahm Emanuel, Mia Farrow, Senator Russ Feingold, Senator Al Franken, Ari Emanuel, Harry Shearer, Senator John Kerry, Representative Nancy Pelosi, Madonna, Lawrence Summers, Jamie Lee Curtis, Ryan Reynolds, Craig Newmark, Alec Baldwin, Aaron Sorkin, Natalie Portman, Scarlett Johansson, Russell Simmons, Sean Penn, Bill Gates, Norman Lear, Charlie Rose, Elizabeth Warren, Tavis Smiley, Sheryl Sandberg, George Clooney, and former President Bill Clinton. And the audience speaks back, generating four million comments a month***.

The Huffington Post’s affluent, influential audience, that is growing at a rate of 22 percent (December 2009 vs. December 2010)****, when combined with AOL’s massive scale, video offerings and local expertise, will represent an incredibly desirable demographic for a broad range of advertising partners across the board.

And here is Armstrong’s internal memo to the AOL staff:

AOLers,

We are taking another major step in the comeback of AOL. Today we are announcing that we have agreed to acquire The Huffington Post, one of the most exciting, influential, and fastest growing properties on the Internet. We believe in brands, quality journalism, and the positive role of communities in the world–The Huffington Post shares our values and the combination of the two companies will create the premier global and local media company on the Internet.

Co-founded six years ago by Arianna Huffington and Ken Lerer, The Huffington Post has grown to become an industry leader–one of the Web’s most popular and innovative sources of online news, commentary, and information. Arianna and team have created a brand and a destination that focuses on the consumer experience. By combining The Huffington Post with AOL’s network of sites, thriving video offerings, local expertise and enormous reach, we will create a company that is laser-focused on serving our audiences across every platform imaginable–social, local, video, mobile and tablet.

The Huffington Post is core to our strategy and our 80:80:80 focus–80% of domestic spending is done by women, 80% of commerce happens locally and 80% of considered purchases are driven by influencers. The influencer part of the strategy is important and will be potent.

The Huffington Post is a strong influencer brand and it attracts a valuable audience, including a great focus on women’s content. In addition, Arianna Huffington is a world-renowned expert on women’s topics and issues, and has enabled The Huffington Post to grow rapidly by continually developing new audiences.

In the local area, the combination of the two companies will create a scaled connection between global and local communities on one platform. This will create a new way for people to get local and global information in a timely and entertaining way.

The Huffington Post will join the family of AOL Brands that are destinations for an influencer audience, brands like TechCrunch, Engadget, AutoBlog, and Moviefone. Uniquely, The Huffington Post is the platform for influential people–the people that drive trends, commerce, politics, entertainment, news, and information. Adding this strategic platform to our already strong network of sites, including the AOL homepage, has the potential to make AOL the most influential company in the content space.

Arianna Huffington is one of the most successful entrepreneurs in the Internet space and someone that is even more successful in building communities and relationships in every corner of the globe. The Huffington Post and Arianna have created a company that has partnered with the most successful and well-known leaders in all aspects of society that touch important topics to give consumers direct access to the most influential decision makers and community leaders.

This acquisition will create a high-quality and diverse digital ecosystem encompassing local, national and international news, politics, entertainment, technology, fashion, sports, health, personal finance, green, lifestyle, the arts and more. This deal will combine the amazing talent at AOL with the innovative and talented staff of The Huffington Post. Here are just a few high-level points around what this deal brings to market:

* Together, AOL and The Huffington Post will have 117MM unduplicated domestic monthly UVs, and ~270MM monthly UVs worldwide (according to comScore Dec 2010).

* The Huffington Post is one of the fastest growing web properties on the Internet. It grew 22% last year–that’s faster than Twitter, which grew 18% – and 15x as quickly as the Internet grew last year (comScore Dec ’09-’10).

* Both AOL and The Huffington Post count powerful, affluent users among their top loyal visitors, significantly over-indexing in $100K+ income users.

* AOL passed Hulu in unique viewers on video in the fourth quarter of 2010; video views on AOL are up 400 percent year-over-year.

* Between AOL’s innovative Project Devil ad unit, engaging users for 27 seconds longer than traditional display ads, and The Huffington Post’s highly-vocal community, with 4MM+ comments per month, we will marry attention-grabbing content and brand experiences for both advertisers and consumers.

In the local area, the combination of the two companies will create a premier global/local syndication network at scale. This will create a new way for people to get local and global information in a timely, informative and entertaining way.

To maximize the strategic advantage of this great deal, we will be creating a new group at AOL called The Huffington Post Media Group. Within this group will be AOL Media, AOL Local & Mapping, AOL Search and our new friends at The Huffington Post. We will continue operating the towns structure, AOL.com and HuffingtonPost.com.

I’m thrilled to announce that Arianna Huffington will join AOL’s executive team as President and Editor in Chief of The Huffington Post Media Group. We have asked Jon Brod to lead the overall operational integration on the AOL side of the combined entities. Jon will lead the local group integration and work closely with David Eun and the teams in AOL Media. We will work quickly with The Huffington Post to create a combined organizational design to coincide with the deal closing. While we wait for the required regulatory reviews to be completed and the transaction to close before implementing the design, we will move very quickly to plan the details of the integration of the two companies. To this end, we will announce the new organizational structure as soon as possible.

In the meantime, we will continue creating great content and products for our consumers within the town structure and stay laser-focused on the aggressive goals we have set for our winter luge. We are on the right track and will continue our weekly operating cadence and town structure to drive successful results against our company goals.

Here’s a special message for all of you we taped to welcome The Huffington Post and Arianna to our AOL Family:

http://today.office.aol.com/company-news/2011/02/aol-agrees-buy-huffington-post

And of course we wanted to welcome Arianna to our “You’ve Got” video of the day–check her out on AOL.com.

We will be holding a company all hands meeting to address your questions related to today’s exciting news. We will video conference from our New York office on the 6th Floor at 9:30 AM ET and will be joined by Arianna Huffington and key executives from her organization. We will also be holding a call for our west coast offices at 2:00 PM ET and for our Patch offices at 2:45 PM ET. See below for meeting info (conference rooms will be sent out shortly).

AOL is playing to win…and The Huffington Post and AOL will occupy a unique place in the future of the Internet. Let’s go get it done.

–TA

(More full disclosure: As has been previously reported by MediaMemo, All Things Digital had the briefest and most preliminary of discussions with Armstrong about moving to AOL last year, while exploring several other options. All’s well that ended well: We stayed at Dow Jones, which is owned by News Corp.)

Here’s an exclusive video interview BoomTown did with Huffington Post co-founder and Editor in Chief Arianna Huffington and AOL CEO Tim Armstrong this morning at Super Bowl XLV in Texas, just ahead of their announcement tonight that the Internet company was buying the news and opinion site.

Like both the Green Bay Packers and the Pittsburgh Steelers, the pair are going for an Internet content win, after AOL paid $315 million, mostly in cash and a small amount of stock, for the Huffington Post.

With the acquisition of one of the Internet’s best-known news brands, AOL is making its biggest move so far as it seeks to establish itself as a content leader on the Web.

As part of the deal, Huffington will become editor over all AOL content properties.

And editorial material from all these sites will be integrated into the Huffington Post, giving it a huge new infusion of editorial material.

The pair talk about all this and more in the longish video interview here, which I did in Dallas earlier today:

]]> http://allthingsd.com/20110206/aols-tim-armstrong-and-huffpos-arianna-huffington-talk-about-deal-touchdown-from-super-bowl/feed/ 31 http://allthingsd.com/20110127/verizon-wireless-executive-joins-carrier-led-mobile-wallet-initiative/ http://allthingsd.com/20110127/verizon-wireless-executive-joins-carrier-led-mobile-wallet-initiative/#comments Thu, 27 Jan 2011 12:00:09 +0000 Tricia Duryee http://emoney.allthingsd.com/?p=2031 Isis, the joint venture formed by three of the top U.S. carriers, has appointed Ryan Hughes to the position of chief marketing officer.

Hughes, the former Verizon Wireless VP of business development and partnerships, joined the organization only four days ago, we have learned.

Isis is a joint venture between AT&T, Verizon Wireless and T-Mobile that will try to get a piece of the huge payments market. When the JV launched in November, it had announced only the appointment of Mike Abbott as CEO.

Abbott’s background includes working in credit card services and for GE Capital, so Hughes will bring his expertise from the wireless industry.

The Isis initiative will be going up against a host of other players–some of which are direct competitors, while others, taking a slightly different approach, could act as partners.

For example, Square is trying to turn the cellphone into a point-of-sale machine for small businesses, Boku and Zong have been primarily focused on selling digital goods that get charged to your carrier bill, and others–ranging from PayPal to Visa and MasterCard–have strategies, as well.

Isis’s initial focus will be on using near-field communication–or NFC–chips to enable customers to make purchases in a store by waving a phone over a compatible reader.

Hughes’s appointment is part of the organization’s initial ramp-up. Once the management team is in place, it will be officially based in New York, with offices in Atlanta, Dallas and Seattle to be close to its carrier partners.

Hughes will feel right at home at Isis, having been part of the original team at Verizon Wireless that helped hatch the joint venture behind closed doors over the past two years.

In order for it to be a success, Isis will need the participation of the carriers, handset makers, merchants and banks.

Hughes said they are open to working with everyone and is optimistic about all of the suppliers working together–even the fiercely competitive carriers. ”It’s going to happen faster than any of the pundits think it will happen, for near-field, in particular,” he said.

Over the next 18 months, the organization has the goal of introducing its service in a few key markets.

Abbott added that meeting its goals will have a lot to do with relying on standards and technology that already exist. NFC has been around for years, and already the likes of Google is integrating it into its next version of Android.

The longer-term vision is that it won’t be just about payments, but about the whole wallet–by combining coupons, location check-ins, loyalty points and cards in one place.

Abbott declined to provide specifics on how the organization is funded, other than that it’s supported by a substantial investment from the carriers involved.

For now, Sprint is the only one missing from the list of major U.S. carriers.

Hughes admits that the initiative will likely need as many carriers on board to get enough scale.

Back when he was representing Verizon Wireless, he thought it was impressive enough to say that he covered 90 million consumers when talking to banks or merchants. “But we were told frequently, and more often than not, ‘That’s a lot, but I don’t want to do this three or four times [for each carrier].’”

]]> http://allthingsd.com/20110127/verizon-wireless-executive-joins-carrier-led-mobile-wallet-initiative/feed/ 0 http://allthingsd.com/20101202/with-goopon-stealing-the-spotlight-tippr-says-dont-forget-about-no-3-or-its-patents/ http://allthingsd.com/20101202/with-goopon-stealing-the-spotlight-tippr-says-dont-forget-about-no-3-or-its-patents/#comments Thu, 02 Dec 2010 15:00:01 +0000 Tricia Duryee http://emoney.allthingsd.com/?p=42 Tippr CEO Martin Tobias hopes that between Google’s potential big-ticket purchase of Groupon (a.k.a. Goopon) and Amazon’s pending investment in LivingSocial, consolidation in the group-buying space will accelerate as others scramble for a partner.

As the No. 3 in the market, the Seattle-based company may be the next candidate, if things remain as frothy as they have been.

“My phone is certainly ringing,” Tobias said in an email yesterday.

Tippr has taken a slightly different approach than either LivingSocial or Groupon. It doesn’t have thousands of employees, for example–only 45, of whom 24 are in sales.

In February, it had launched in Seattle with five subscribers. Today, it’s up to 13 markets and “hundreds of thousands of subscribers.” The growth is not only thanks to their own sites, but also by enabling others to join the group-buying frenzy, as well.

Tippr wants to be a platform, not a brand, so if you haven’t heard of it, it’s possible you never will. Even in Seattle, deals seem sporadic, and most offers are from places within walking distance of Tippr’s Queen Anne neighborhood office.

But, to cast a wider net, Tippr recently signed a partnership with Belo Corp., a television network that leverages Tippr’s platform to power its own local deals site, Yollar.com. It uses its own local sales force to make deals with merchants in markets such as Dallas, San Antonio, Houston, Seattle, St. Louis, Portland and Boise. All these individual sites, powered by their own sales force, creates a magnifying affect that Groupon can only match by adding more sales people.

“Groupon is not like Facebook or eBay, where the winner takes all,” he said. “This is more like search.”

EBay became successful by generating a critical mass of buyers and sellers, and Facebook has staying power because once you define your social network, Tobias posits, you don’t want to have to build it again.

“With Groupon there’s nothing locking you in,” he said. “You haven’t invested anything, and the merchants don’t care either.”

Tobias talks tough–despite the apparent lack of interest from Google or Amazon–because he believes he has the IP to back it up. In November 2009, he acquired the patent portfolio of defunct Mercata, a Paul Allen-backed group-buying venture from Web 1.0.

He traded stock in Tippr’s parent company Kashless for the patents, which include more than half a dozen granted patents covering areas like price optimization, demand curve modeling and buyer-seller interaction models. Today, Tippr is announcing a strategy around these patents. A spokesperson said its new “patent licensing program for group-buying” will charge anyone, from white label partners to competitors (theoretically, Groupon), a fee to license them.

Tobias is also bullish, because in his last venture he was attempting something much larger. As CEO of Imperium Renewables, he raised around $500 million in capital to produce biodiesel on a mass scale, which he admits is not enough “when taking on Exxon.”

But taking on Groupon, which may have annual revenues of up to $500 million? To him, that’s doable.

]]> http://allthingsd.com/20101202/with-goopon-stealing-the-spotlight-tippr-says-dont-forget-about-no-3-or-its-patents/feed/ 4 http://allthingsd.com/20101116/shopkick-checks-in-with-target-ceo-cyriac-roeding-talks-about-social-shopping/ http://allthingsd.com/20101116/shopkick-checks-in-with-target-ceo-cyriac-roeding-talks-about-social-shopping/#comments Tue, 16 Nov 2010 18:28:13 +0000 Kara Swisher http://kara.allthingsd.com/?p=37354

The idea of being rewarded for being a consumer is getting a lot of heat of late, as retailers seek to take advantage of the fast-moving social phenom among consumers, especially young ones.

Thus, a wide range of efforts to combine location-based mobile apps with purchasing, both online and offline.

Earlier this week, BoomTown posted on a funding for one such start-up, Topguest, which links check-ins with airline and hotel loyalty programs.

Today, another company in the space, shopkick, announced it had added another store–Minneapolis-based Target–to its list of retailers deploying its platform and mobile app.

As with customers of Macy’s, Best Buy and others, users of the shopkick app will receive points and other rewards, as well as instant mobile coupons, just for walking in the store.

The point being: Retailers need to reward foot traffic and not just purchases.

The Target partnership is limited now to 242 stores in the Chicago, Dallas, Los Angeles, Miami, Minneapolis, New York City and the San Francisco area.

Target will also offer scannable mobile coupons to customers for redemption at checkout.

It will be interesting to see how effective apps such as shopkick are as they roll out, as consumers test them.

Unlike others that offer quick deals–from Foursquare to Facebook to, now, Yahoo–shopkick uses its “kickbucks” as an enticement simply for being present in a store or scanning certain barcodes.

It’s certainly easy enough–my son, Louie, did it with ease and definite enjoyment–although a user does need to remember to fire up the app when entering a participating store.

There is also a small device retailers need to install need to make the shopkick ecosystem work.

CEO Cyriac Roeding, a former EVP for CBS’ mobile unit, created the concept for the Menlo Park, Calif.-based start-up while an entrepreneur-in-residence at Kleiner Perkins.

The company has raised $20 million in venture funding from Kleiner’s iFund, longtime Silicon Valley investor Reid Hoffman, as well as Hoffman’s home at Greylock Partners.

Here is a video interview I did with Roeding about where shopkick is going next:

]]> http://allthingsd.com/20101116/shopkick-checks-in-with-target-ceo-cyriac-roeding-talks-about-social-shopping/feed/ 1 http://allthingsd.com/20101005/zynga-makes-another-acquisition-dallas-bonfire-studios/ http://allthingsd.com/20101005/zynga-makes-another-acquisition-dallas-bonfire-studios/#comments Tue, 05 Oct 2010 17:00:58 +0000 Kara Swisher http://kara.allthingsd.com/?p=34890

Zynga announced another small acquisition today, as it continues to vacuum up small independent online game developers across the U.S. and internationally.

This time it’s Dallas-based Bonfire Studios, which the San Francisco-based social gaming start-up said would now be called Zynga Dallas.

Bonfire makes titles for the PC and Xbox 360, such as “Age of Empires,” “Age of Mythology” and “Halo Wars.”

Zynga said Bonfire’s three founders–David Rippy, Bill Jackson and Scott Winsett, will become GM, creative director and senior art director, respectively, of Zynga Dallas.

Zynga’s other recent purchases include Challenge Games, which is based in Austin, as well as several others abroad.

Financial terms of the deal were not released by Zynga.

]]> http://allthingsd.com/20101005/zynga-makes-another-acquisition-dallas-bonfire-studios/feed/ 3 http://allthingsd.com/20100729/liveblogging-microsofts-financial-analyst-meeting-its-a-beautiful-day/ http://allthingsd.com/20100729/liveblogging-microsofts-financial-analyst-meeting-its-a-beautiful-day/#comments Thu, 29 Jul 2010 15:24:42 +0000 Kara Swisher http://kara.allthingsd.com/?p=31378

BoomTown took the corporate All Things Digital jet–aka Virgin America, seat 10A–up to Redmond, Wash., today to attend Microsoft’s annual Financial Analyst Meeting, which also includes a passel of media drones like me.

I will be liveblogging the event all day, which is essentially a cavalcade of top execs from the software giant taking the stage and showing off their wares.

There should be a little bit of swanning, since Microsoft (MSFT) turned in very good financial results last week, posting a huge increase in earnings and revenue due to the uptick in PC sales and the intro of the Windows 7 operating system. Losses at its Online Services division remained high, so thank goodness for servers and tools!

Here we go:

8:15 am PT: I was late due to the completely confusing streets of suburban Redmond, all of which look exactly alike, as does every building on Microsoft’s sprawling campus. I am a streets of San Francisco girl, obvi.

In the Conference Center, though, things had not started well past the 8 am start time, as we await the entry of investor dude Bill Koefoed.

U2′s “Beautiful Day” was playing over the sound system, which it was not up here in the Pacific Northwest this morning–it was kind of cold and gloomy, a la “Twilight”–but hopefully will be for sparkly Microsoft execs. We’ll see!

Finally, Koefoed came out and started in on feedback, touting the newly renovated investor relations site, which he is “pretty proud of.” It is nice looking, as are most of Microsoft’s hand-out materials.

In fact, he sent me an excited note last week, because I posted Microsoft’s pretty fourth-quarter slides.

Dear Bill: You need much better things to get excited about! Like the new Magic Trackpad from Apple (AAPL)! Wait, I mean Windows Phone 7!

Koefoed moved quickly to point out last week’s strong results, which is no surprise. When you’ve got lemonade, make more lemonade!

Then he outlined the various Microsoft’s eight “core” businesses, such as Xbox, Bing, Microsoft Office, Windows Azure and, of course, Windows, that the company will be going over.

That’s a lot of core, isn’t it?

Some questions to be answered: Business PC refresh and share momentum? Impact of iPad/slates? Windows 7 phone? Expense control?

Beautiful or not, it was going to be a looooong day.

8:42 am: A jaunty Kevin Turner, Microsoft’s COO, bounded out. He tried to get the crowd more lively, but this was not to be unless there was a lot more coffee.

I had great hopes for a goofy quote this morning from Turner, who declared at the Microsoft Worldwide Partner Conference earlier this month about Apple’s antenna controversy: “It looks like the iPhone 4 might be their Vista, and I’m okay with that.”

I don’t know about you, but insulting a competitor by shooting off your own foot is a gift that keeps on giving to me.

In any case, Turner said Microsoft was now “leading with the cloud,” a move that the company had been resisting in the past. Now: All in!

He outlined all the various services for business customers. “We are the market leader in cloud services for business,” said Turner, noting Microsoft had been too quiet about the inevitable move of data and software services to big services in the digital sky.

(Actually, in its secret heart, Microsoft was hoping this whole Internet thing would go away and it would be back to a PC on every desktop, but that horse has left the barn, so it’s cloud time!)

Next up for Turner: The much deserved popularity of Windows 7. Of course, since Vista was Microsoft’s Antennagate–except much, much, much worse–it was not hard to be better.

Turner then moved on to bashing Google (GOOG) and other competitors. Turner put up some quotes from Jaguar employees, after the car company switched to Google for email and other services.

One said Google was like vinyl seats. Ziiiiing!

Next Turner victim: VMware (VMW)! He claimed its products were pricier and not cloudy enough.

As for Linux: Meh!

Oracle (ORCL): Customers don’t want to be locked into the land of Larry Ellison!

Cisco (CSCO): Just you wait, John Chambers!

9:19 am: Turner headed off and Chief Research and Strategy Officer Craig Mundie started in on his speech, titled “Reimagining Microsoft’s Future.”

That would be the client plus the cloud, natural user interface and something he called “working on your behalf.”

Mundie launched into his future-dude schtick, but he’s not exactly Alvin Toffler, so I started desperately mainlining the caffeine.

He talked about movable data centers, the “Internet of Things” and other cloud innovations, but there is no new idea here to blow your mind.

Is it too much to wish Mundie would talk about an invisibility cloak? Instead, it was the orchestration of data authority.

That will apparently be a new data marketplace product, codenamed Dallas, to shop for giant data sets and more.

Mundie than showed off some personalization-driven features in the Bing search service, which are also not new concepts.

For example, he showed a menu, embedded in a table, that might know what you like to eat at a particular restaurant you frequent.

This is what would be on my table and there is no need of a fancy computer table to know this: Donuts, donuts, donuts.

Speaking of which, FAM minions: Where the heck were my donuts?

Mundie then moved onto Kinect, once called Project Natal, the actually cool gesture interface for gaming that will be available for Xbox soon.

Finally, he finished up with a video clip of a medical triage assistant. Great, even less customer service from hospitals. The demo was flatly freaky.

The morning session wrapped up with a visit to the technology showcase to “expect the unexpected,” although I was not expecting that in any way, and then it was off to lunch.

Next up in the afternoon session: CEO Steve Ballmer at 1 pm PT.

]]> http://allthingsd.com/20100729/liveblogging-microsofts-financial-analyst-meeting-its-a-beautiful-day/feed/ 2 http://allthingsd.com/20100213/weekend-update-02-13-10-the-hot-mess-edition/ http://allthingsd.com/20100213/weekend-update-02-13-10-the-hot-mess-edition/#comments Sun, 14 Feb 2010 06:14:47 +0000 Beth Callaghan http://digitaldaily.allthingsd.com/?p=34853 Rogue waves aren’t completely unheard of during surfing competitions in Northern California, but a foot of snow in Dallas? About as likely as Yahoo CEO Carol Bartz grilling Kara Swisher in front of a packed auditorium.

All right, it was a cafeteria packed with Yahoo (YHOO) employees, but still. Check out Kara’s write-up and video of the experience, but be warned: no embed of the official Yahoo video so far, so those of us who weren’t there have no idea (yet) about what sort of profanity ensued. We’ll keep you posted. Kara also took a look this week at the serialized drama that is MySpace. The latest episode, of course, is the firing of brand new CEO Owen Van Natta, who may or may not have wanted to leave anyway. An insider described the company to BoomTown as a hot mess, since it’s both “impossible to save and hard to give up on.” BoomTown started off the week with a couple of the more amusing takes on Google’s Super Bowl ad, “Paris Love”–now its own meme–which includes the search history of Tiger Woods and a different kind of Parisian story.

Walt recently fired up Windows 7 on a late-model Apple (AAPL) MacBook Pro, using both Parallels Desktop 5 and VMware Fusion 3. Not at the same time, although both have been updated to get the most out of Snow Leopard and Windows 7 and will run the two operating systems simultaneously on an Intel-powered Mac. The quick version is that Walt thinks Parallels is the better product. The version with all the logic and details is in this week’s Personal Technology. He also took time to answer some readers’ questions in Mossberg’s Mailbox about iPad batteries, zooming on text in Firefox, locating the calendar in the latest version of Windows Live Mail and feeling stuck between a Kindle and a Nook. In this week’s Mossberg Solution, Katie Boehret tested some stylishly small scanners and desktop printers: the Fujitsu’s ScanSnap S1300 and PlanOn System Solution’s PrintStik PS905ME. Not surprisingly, she found that style comes at a price with both gadgets.

In Digital Daily this week, John Paczkowski quoted Bill Gates’s underwhelming response to Apple’s iPad hoopla: “It’s a nice reader, but there’s nothing on the iPad I look at and say, ‘Oh, I wish Microsoft had done it.” Then he quoted Gates on his initial reaction to the iPod in 2004: “There’s nothing that the iPod does that I say, ‘Oh, wow, I don’t think we can do that.’” Apparently, Gates was much more forthcoming–with his own Microsoft (MSFT) execs, anyway–about iTunes in 2003 when he wrote in a memo that “Jobs has us a bit flat footed again….” Maybe admitting you have a problem really is the first step toward overcoming it. But then again, Zune as a second step is pretty much three steps back. John also dissected the buzz around Google Buzz this week, which, admittedly, wasn’t overwhelming, but it could still dovetail nicely with the search giant’s mobile strategies.

Jeff Bronikowski, formerly of Universal Music Group–the world’s biggest label–explained in a Billboard interview this week that the business of Big Music is doomed. But Peter Kafka is reserving judgment, at least until a few more music industry vets leave their jobs and weigh in publicly on the matter. Which is not at all the same thing as being optimistic; it’s just being realistic. It’s important to point out, though, that Google (GOOG) made Peter feel better this week about having Time Warner Cable (TWC) as his ISP, which could signal optimism, realism or something else entirely. Back on the music front, MediaMemo spoke with Veoh CEO Dmitry Shapiro and found that although it’s tempting to blame music behemoth Universal Music Group for the company’s demise, the Web start-up dug its own hole.

Here’s hoping for good sound bites for next weekend’s update and no need for mention of the weather. Stay tuned.

]]> http://allthingsd.com/20100213/weekend-update-02-13-10-the-hot-mess-edition/feed/ 0 http://allthingsd.com/20100210/twitter-taps-pixar-exec-as-cfo/ http://allthingsd.com/20100210/twitter-taps-pixar-exec-as-cfo/#comments Wed, 10 Feb 2010 23:48:40 +0000 John Paczkowski http://digitaldaily.allthingsd.com/?p=34666 Twitter has finally found a chief financial officer.

Ali Rowghani, currently CFO and senior VP of strategic planning at Pixar Animation Studios, will bring his financial acumen to the microblogging service come March, making it, for better or worse, a “legitimate” company.

“Ali will be an important member of a growing team focused on creating value for our users and capturing the financial opportunities that result from it,” Twitter CEO Evan Williams said in a statement. “His thoughtfulness on retaining a great culture to work and staying consistent with your principles will also be a significant contribution.”

Great. But how is he with IPOs?

Rowghani’s pre-Twitter bio:

Ali Rowghani is Chief Financial Officer and Senior Vice President of Strategic Planning for Pixar Animation Studios, Disney Animation Studios, and Disney Toon Studios. In this role he oversees the finance teams at each animation division, the Facilities and Real Estate functions at Pixar, as well as the business aspects of Pixar’s RenderMan software group.

Ali joined Pixar in 2001 and has held a variety of finance positions at the studio. He was appointed Director of Pixar’s Production Finance and Strategy group in 2004. Before joining Pixar, Ali was an Associate at McKinsey & Company, a global management consulting firm. During his time at McKinsey, Ali was based for nine months in Germany. He later spent one year in Japan with McKinsey Global Institute, the Firm’s renowned economics think tank.

Ali holds a Bachelor of Arts degree and a Master of Business Administration degree, both from Stanford University. He was awarded a Fulbright scholarship and spent a year studying at the University of Bonn in Germany. Born in Iran, Ali moved to Dallas, TX with this family when he was five years old. He remains a huge fan of the Dallas Cowboys.

]]> http://allthingsd.com/20100210/twitter-taps-pixar-exec-as-cfo/feed/ 0 http://allthingsd.com/20100202/yammer-grabs-10-million-more-in-funding/ http://allthingsd.com/20100202/yammer-grabs-10-million-more-in-funding/#comments Wed, 03 Feb 2010 05:24:50 +0000 Kara Swisher http://kara.allthingsd.com/?p=23966

Yammer, the enterprise equivalent of Twitter, said it had grabbed another $10 million in financing.

But the question for the San Francisco-based microblogging service for businesses and closed groups is: “What are you working on?”

Yammer has both free and a paid–the gold level is $5 per user, per month–versions and is essentially a useful productivity tool.

Emergence Capital took the lead in the Series B round for Yammer, along with ubiquitous Silicon Valley investor Ron Conway and previous investors.

Yammer previously raised $5 million from Charles River Ventures and The Founders Fund.

Here’s the release:

Yammer Secures $10 Million in Series B Funding from Emergence Capital and Previous Investors

Investment To Fuel Product Innovation and Sales Coverage

SAN FRANCISCO, Calif., February 3, 2010–Yammer, Inc., the leader in Enterprise Microblogging and Real-time Communications, today announced that it has received $10 million in its Series B round of funding. Emergence Capital leads the round; with general partner Jason Green joining Yammer’s Board of Directors. SV Angel, led by seasoned Silicon Valley investor, Ron Conway, is also participating as are previous investors, including Charles River Ventures and Goldcrest Investments from Dallas.

Yammer launched its solution in September 2008 and has experienced rapid user adoption with over 60,000 organizations globally having adopted the solution. Drawing on this momentum, Yammer will use the proceeds to accelerate product innovation and increase sales coverage.

“Yammer is revolutionizing the way employees communicate and collaborate, filling a need that email has failed to deliver,” said Jason Green, general partner at Emergence Capital. “Yammer has a passionate and proven executive team, a compelling freemium business model, a loyal customer base and a huge market opportunity. We are thrilled to be joining them in the next phase of their rapid growth.”

Companies and organizations of all sizes across a wide range of industries benefit from Yammer. They use Yammer for a multitude of reasons, including improving workforce productivity, connecting a geographically dispersed team, getting new employees up to speed, and increasing the flow of content and knowledge.

“Yammer is focused on improving the way employees communicate and stay connected to critical information about their company and job,” said David Sacks, founder and CEO at Yammer. “We’re pleased with the rapid growth and market adoption we’ve achieved and are poised to accelerate it with exciting enhancements to our product and with broadened sales coverage. We’re eager to work with Emergence Capital and leverage their expertise in building world-class Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) companies and are gratified that proven technology investors such as SV Angel and Charles River Ventures are also participating in the funding.”

]]> http://allthingsd.com/20100202/yammer-grabs-10-million-more-in-funding/feed/ 0 http://allthingsd.com/20091127/almost-famous-savings-coms-loren-bendele/ http://allthingsd.com/20091127/almost-famous-savings-coms-loren-bendele/#comments Fri, 27 Nov 2009 10:43:01 +0000 Drake Martinet http://voices.allthingsd.com/?p=18409 A new feature wherein All Things Digital looks at up-and-coming and innovative start-ups you should know about.

This week: A lunch date with, some questions for and a few pertinent stats about Loren Bendele and his deal-finding social network, Savings.com, just in time for the holiday shopping wars!

Who: Loren Bendele

What: CEO of Savings.com.

Why: Savings.com combines a Web 1.0-style coupon site with social networking and crowd sourcing to create live lists of discounts offered by over 4,000 major online retailers.

And, gasp, the site is profitable.

Where: Savings.com/about (corporate bio); Santa Monica, Calif. (analog place); No Twitter profile (egads!).

Who else: couponcabin.com, retailmenot.com.

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Five Stats You Won’t Find in His Facebook Profile

Worst Job: Bag boy at a Tom Thumb supermarket outside Dallas, Texas. “I was good though. I always got awards for being the fastest.”

Has a Business Crush on: Yelp.

Gadget of the Moment: iPhone from Apple (AAPL). “I love the Flight Tracker app. It’s a game–all about control.”

Wishes There Was an App for: “I know exactly what I want: A simple app where I can assign levels of importance to contacts. The app would remind me when I haven’t called them in a while. Like, some people I want to call once a week, or a month or a quarter. Just something that helps me keep up relationships.”

Fails at: Details. “I hire others who are much better at that.”

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Bio in 140 Characters

Born outside of Dallas, TX. Chem Eng @Texas A&M. Dow Chemical, then to Teleflora, via consulting firms. Became CEO of Savings.com in 2007.

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The Five Questions

Isn’t your model a little too “Pets.com, Web 1.0 bubble” to work?

It is sort of Web 1.0. But really, it’s a social network connecting deal fanatics. So, connecting people who are passionate and knowledgeable about getting great deals.

Some people engage at a very deep level with their own blogs and interaction. We call them our “deal pros.” You can also just come to the site and see what deals are being [rated as the best] by those deal pros. It’s based on votes of the people in the community.

What is this I hear about you being profitable? Don’t you know the start-up rules?

Well, our revenue model was important from the start. We make money because we partner with the retailers whose deals show up on our site. When someone sees a deal on our site, they click the link and go to [for instance] the Gap (GPS) Web site and buy something, we get paid.

We have relationships with 4,000 plus merchants–all of the top online merchants, and when a deal gets uploaded to our site [by a deal pro] we attach a tracking ID to that deal and report it to the merchant. I’m driving over $4 million per month to our top merchants. I’m the top sales driver for a lot of them.

We’ve been profitable since September 2007.

What is the single biggest immediate growth area for Savings.com?

International. We opened a site in England that has been growing like crazy. We had been doing it all from the U.S., with no team over there. You can do a lot remotely, but you can’t make those partner relationships, being face to face, getting the exclusive deals.

You can’t take them out to lunch and make the connections. We’ve just hired a team there full time. We actually hired the guy who was in charge of partner marketing for Amazon (AMZN) in Europe. He was so big on the opportunity that we have, that he left them for us.

What businesses would the world be better off without?

Ugh, I can’t stand predatory online businesses; cashforgold.com or those payday loan places. There are lots of those check-out services where they offer you free magazine subscriptions and it turns out that they start charging you and you don’t find out until a year later.

They tell you they are going to do it, but they do it in tiny print and it’s just dishonest. We get offers to include those sorts of things on our site all the time. It’s just not what we want to do. It’s important to keep the community pure.

When did you get the business bug?

My parents had a popcorn and yogurt shop, so they could buy things wholesale. When I was in fifth grade, I guess, I started selling Blow Pops out of my backpack. Remember those things? I could buy them for like seven cents apiece and sell them for 50 cents.

I made a lot of money doing that until the teachers shut me down.

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The In Living Color Interview

]]> http://allthingsd.com/20091127/almost-famous-savings-coms-loren-bendele/feed/ 0 http://allthingsd.com/20090929/new-ti-factory-shows-how-the-chip-world-has-changed/ http://allthingsd.com/20090929/new-ti-factory-shows-how-the-chip-world-has-changed/#comments Tue, 29 Sep 2009 22:45:06 +0000 Don Clark http://voices.allthingsd.com/?p=16013 It was a big deal when Texas Instruments (TXN) announced plans in 2003 for a massive chip factory in a suburb of Dallas, its home town. Six years later, the company is finally preparing for production there–under a strategy that has changed dramatically.

The company said Tuesday it expects to begin moving manufacturing equipment in October into the facility in Richardson known as RFAB, which has stood empty since the building’s shell was completed in 2006. Those machines will process silicon wafers that are 300 millimeters in diameter, which allows companies to churn out chips at the lowest per-unit cost.

That part fits the original plan. But instead of making advanced digital chips, RFAB will manufacture products based on analog technology–becoming the first 300-millimeter production line turning out such chips. (Others use 200-millimeter wafers).

Read the rest of this post on the original site

]]> http://allthingsd.com/20090929/new-ti-factory-shows-how-the-chip-world-has-changed/feed/ 0 http://allthingsd.com/20080508/godtube-9-rules-for-dating-my-daughter/ http://allthingsd.com/20080508/godtube-9-rules-for-dating-my-daughter/#comments Thu, 08 May 2008 09:35:51 +0000 Kara Swisher http://kara.allthingsd.com/20080508/godtube-9-rules-for-dating-my-daughter/ This is an amazingly hip and funny video from the Sermon Series on Families at North Point Church of Springfield, Mo., posted on GodTube.

GodTube, which describes itself as a Christian video-driven social-networking site, “where users find inspiration, interact, chat, share and upload” Christian video, has about 2 million users per month.

GodTube also lets churches stream sermons and other events live on its “Godcaster” subscription service.

Also, its motto is “Broadcast Him,” but GodTube also calls itself “Jesus 2.0.” Get it?

Perhaps more in the holy-grail territory, GodTube just nabbed $30 million this week in funding from GLG Partners (GLG), which is also an investor in the less-holy Glam Media site, according to paidContent.

That gives the Dallas-based GodTube a $150 million valuation, putting it right up there with other miraculous start-up valuations like yesterday’s $500 million valuation for the online ad agency Spot Runner.

Praise the VC (and, for GodTube fans, JC too)!

Here’s the North Point Church video on GodTube:

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