While it is one of the largest consumer electronics and mobile companies in the world, Korea’s Samsung has a relatively quiet profile in Silicon Valley.

In fact, while it has had a longtime facility in San Jose for two decades, its execs are not well known to many except the top echelons of the tech sector here and Samsung’s interactions with the entrepreneurial culture have been decidedly low key.

No longer, it seems.

Besides a previously announced new 8.5-acre campus in Mountain View for its U.S. research and development center, slated for completion in 2014, sources said the company is close to signing a deal for a prominent venue in downtown Palo Alto that will house a start-up accelerator.

The location that the company is now negotiating is the second floor of the former Borders Books space on University Avenue. The historical property has a splashy movie marquee, since it used to house the Varsity Theatre.

It’s not quite Oppa Gangnam Style, it is a big move for Samsung.

While it is unclear if the new office will focus on making investments in start-ups or incubating its own innovation, sources said it will be aimed at linking Silicon Valley entrepreneurs and other players more closely with Samsung.

Sources said the move is being spearheaded by a relatively new hire by Samsung: David Eun, who became its EVP to lead a new push to create more media offerings in December. Previous to Samsung, Eun has been an exec at both Google and AOL.

Eun is well known in the Valley already, but a new location that will focus Samsung’s digital efforts should raise the company’s profile with the digerati here.

Also on the docket to do that is Samsung’s other new major facility. In September, right in the middle of its high-profile patent trial with Apple, the company announced that Samsung Information Systems America, its U.S. R&D Center, would expand and relocate to a new campus.

“The R&D Center will provide a state-of-the-art campus that can support the current rapid growth in the organization, and also provide the infrastructure to support Samsung’s open innovation and university collaboration activities,” Samsung said in a press release at the time. “Construction is anticipated to start in the second half of 2013 on the company’s two new six-story class-A office buildings totaling approximately 385,000 sq. ft. and two 5-6 story parking structures, with occupancy expected in 2014.”

In other words, Apple: Samsung is now officially in the house in Silicon Valley.

A hot Internet company poised for an even hotter IPO is attacked in court by a competitor whose lunch it has been eating.

Sound familiar? Actually, it’s just as much Google in 2004 as Facebook yesterday.

What the pair have in common is Yahoo, for whom this kind of patent infringement lawsuit is a whole lot of been there, done that.

In Google’s case, Yahoo was suing the then-smaller company over search patents from its Overture acquisition. The pair settled 10 days before the Google IPO, with Yahoo getting 2.7 million more shares of that stock, which it then sold off relatively quickly.

As part of the settlement from a lawsuit started in 2002, Google licensed U.S. Patent No. 6,269,361, entitled “System and method for influencing a position on a search result list generated by a computer network search engine,” which was owned by Yahoo Overture subsidiary.

In plain terms, the patent was over its key pay-for-performance service, which was at the heart of Google’s business of allowing bidding for search results placement related to relevant keywords.

In Facebook’s lawsuit, Yahoo is alleging intellectual property violations by the social networking giant, and is also taking credit for Facebook’s success.

The 19-page lawsuit over 10 patents — related to advertising, privacy, customization, messaging and social networking — comes as Yahoo is seeking to right itself under new CEO Scott Thompson.

“Facebook’s entire social network model, which allows users to create profiles for and connect with, among other things, persons and businesses, is based on Yahoo’s patented social networking technology,” Yahoo’s lawsuit reads, in part.

(Cue the movie script: If Yahoo had invented Facebook, it would have invented Facebook.)

That includes, Yahoo alleges, Facebook’s popular News Feed, advertising methods, privacy settings and more. The company adds that Facebook has been “free riding” on Yahoo’s intellectual property, and that royalty payments alone will not suffice.

What happens next today will be interesting — way back when, Google finally gave in in the delicate game of chicken with Yahoo, at the last minute.

But it’s not clear whether Facebook will flinch — or not.

Until we find out, here’s the press release from the 2004 settlement between Yahoo and Google to peruse:

Yahoo! and Google Resolve Disputes

SUNNYVALE, CA & MOUNTAIN VIEW, CA — August 9, 2004 – Yahoo! Inc. (Nasdaq: YHOO) and Google Inc. today announced that the companies have resolved two disputes that have been pending between the companies.

Under the terms of the settlement agreement, Google will take a license to U.S. Patent No. 6,269,361 and several related patents, held by Yahoo!’s wholly-owned subsidiary, Overture, and Yahoo! dismissed its patent lawsuit against Google. The two parties have also resolved a dispute regarding shares issuable to Yahoo! pursuant to a warrant to purchase Google shares in connection with a 2000 services agreement.

In connection with the settlement of the warrant dispute, the patent lawsuit, and in payment for the license, Google issued shares of its Class A common stock to Yahoo!.

Among the hot and hyped Web 2.0 scene, not many would pick out 13-year-old digital promotions site, Coupons.com.

But, on the heels of a recent $200 million funding — which valued the quiet Mountain View, Calif., company at $1 billion — and a surging online discounting market, it has nabbed another $30 million from Greylock Partners.

Greylock has already invested half that amount, via a secondary market transaction, and is Coupons.com’s first venture investor. Its previous funders have been institutional investors.

“Coupons.com have been quietly building all the key infrastructure in this area,” said Greylock’s Reid Hoffman. “We think they are poised for the massive shift that is coming.”

The new funds, said its CEO and co-founder Steven Boal, will be used for a variety of things, including an aggressive mobile and social push for the longtime site.

“We are now focusing on hypergrowth,” said Boal, who noted that coupon clipping is perhaps the original social media. “Saving is kind of hip these days, even if we have been around for a long time with this exact focus.”

Coupons.com had already moved in the mobile/social direction with the 2009 acquisition of Grocery iQ, a mobile app that lets users manage shopping lists and discounts on phones.

There will be more to come, said Boal, who said the growth of the category is inevitable as consumers use these devices to manage their spending habits.

Coupons.com will also use the funds to expand its staff from 288 employees now to more than 450 by the end of the year, operating in about 13 countries. While Coupons.com has been profitable on a cash-flow basis, all the new initiatives will be costly.

And, while that kind of expansion could remind you of the explosive daily deals sector — and it is easy to put Coupons.com in the same highly competitive arena as Groupon — the company operates more as a platform and a white-label provider of discounting services to manufacturers and retailers, especially supermarkets and chain stores.

In fact, Coupons.com provides a lot of such services for them, garnering $100 million in revenue this year, up from $60 million last year and $40 million the year before. Much of that money is made when a customer uses its site or sites it powers and downloads a coupon for redemption.

One area of promising growth, said Boal, is managing discounts on Facebook’s social networking site, which is increasingly being used by consumer goods companies to test promotions and increase loyalty.

“It’s a really interesting area as product companies can be really nimble in managing their promotions,” he said. “And the ability to really drill down on the response of a certain sector of consumer is very powerful.”

It goes without saying that newspapers that previously dominated this industry have been on the wane.

The massive funding also sets up Coupons.com for a possible 2012 IPO, especially given its dominance — it serves nine out of 10 big grocery chains, four out of four pharmacy giants and such — in the digital couponing sector.

Presumably, there would be no discounts for that stock.

Here’s the official press release:

COUPONS.COM ANNOUNCES GREYLOCK PARTNERS INVESTMENT

Company’s Rapid Growth Including Mobile and Social Couponing Solutions to Benefit from Greylock’s Expertise

Mountain View, Calif. — October 3, 2011 — Coupons.com Incorporated, the recognized leader in digital coupons, including online printable, social, mobile and loyalty card promotions, today announced an investment by Greylock Partners. Coupons.com, which recently raised $200 million from institutional investors, is transforming the multi-billion dollar coupon industry and accelerating the shift from the newspaper to digital. The investment, a secondary market transaction, will enable the company to tap into Greylock’s expertise as it continues to produce market-transforming couponing solutions, including its mobile- and social-based products and services.

“We are very excited to work with Reid Hoffman and James Slavet and the entire Greylock team,” said Steven Boal, CEO of Coupons.com. “Greylock’s expertise and relationships will prove invaluable as we continue connecting brands with consumers via money-saving offers at every touch-point across the digital landscape — including web, social and mobile — and along the consumer’s entire path to purchase.”

“We’re very pleased with our investment in Coupons.com and are excited about working with the team as they continue to build a substantial, market-defining company,” said Reid Hoffman, Partner at Greylock Partners. “Coupons.com is almost single handedly transforming the multi-billion dollar coupon industry by ushering the newspaper-dominated business to digital. The market opportunity the company faces is immense, and we look forward to contributing in any way to their continued success, particularly in the context of social and mobile solutions.”

Coupons.com powers the vast majority of coupons printed online via a network of tens of thousands of sites in addition to their flagship site, Coupons.com, which is the 39th most trafficked site in the country. Coupons.com Incorporated is also the go-to resource for manufacturers wanting to coupon-enable their digital marketing initiatives, and virtually every major consumer packaged goods manufacturer resides on the company’s client roster. The company is aggressively building its team, expanding its full time staff from 288 employees in June to more than 450 expected by the end of the year, a growth of over 50 percent during the six-month period.

In addition to capturing a growing share of the multi-billion dollar newspaper-dominated coupon industry, Coupons.com is also expanding the couponing market by lowering the barriers to entry for companies to offer coupons, enabling smaller manufacturers — which could not place offers in the newspaper insert because of budget requirements or category exclusivity restrictions — to utilize coupons to engage with consumers. In addition, Coupons.com attracts a new demographic of coupon users, who engage with new couponing methods like digital, social and mobile coupons, but typically would not engage with traditional paper coupons.

Arriving at Silicon Valley’s Computer History Museum, in the heart of the tech industry, with the leader of the free world talking jobs and digital, you might expect fantastic wireless access.

You might, but not so much if you are a “local” reporter and can’t jack into the extra-secret-special wireless link the national White House press corps apparently has reserved for itself. (They also get a lovely noshing buffet, whilst we tech reporters have been instructed not to touch the pineapple and scones or else!)

Famished for coffee and carbs, we’re left with glomming onto the museum’s slowish wireless service — there are lotsa geeks here today jamming up the lines — and every now and then getting some juice from Google. The search giant blankets the Mountain View, Calif. area near its HQ with free Wi-Fi, but it fades in and out.

I am now reconsidering the antitrust investigations that the Obama administration is conducting against Google, as long as its signal is good enough to check Twitter.

So this liveblog of President Barack Obama’s LinkedIn Town Hall — which will center on jobs and is titled, “Putting America Back to Work” — could be glacial with not much news, much like what I am expecting from the event itself.

I’d certainly like to work, as long as the wireless does! (Plus, limited power outlets in the room, so it’s every reporter for herself!)

But bygones, while we await the Prez!

10:18 am: One thing that made me flee Washington, D.C., when I worked for the Washington Post, was all the rigmarole that surrounded the appearance of and access to politicians.

I get it, the security and all, and am all for it on a general safety level. But, no matter how you slice it, it hinders any kind of movement or genuine interaction, like being stuck at a really dull opera. All the world’s a stage and we are all merely waiting in traffic.

In contrast, and one of the joys of Silicon Valley, is that anyone can get up right up into the grill of the various billionaire potentates littering the landscape, engage in a debate and get a possibly real answer.

Thus, I am hoping for a lot here from LinkedIn CEO Jeff Weiner, who is going to moderate the hour-long session with the President.

By the way, while he is busy running the business-focused social networking site, Weiner is looking good in a fancy suit, almost as if he could be Secretary of the Internet. I’d vote for him.

10:28 am: Some painless but hip music is playing now, as we wait, wait, wait for Obama, who is set to begin in 30 minutes.

I wonder if the President is ever early. Wouldn’t that freak the peeps out?

(Obviously, I am bored, so I shall now go monitor Twitter to catch up on the latest in the new bad-marriage-or-not cat fight between Brad Pitt and his ex, Jennifer Aniston — as if we need him to tell us Angelina Jolie is more interesting. Frankly, Angie’s midday snack is more interesting than Jen.)

There is now what appears to be a Secret Service dude next to me, giving me a hairy eyeball. If I am jailed over my wireless protest, please give generously to my defense fund.

Free the Internet! Free the Internet!

10:35 am: Finally, the production guy is up giving out the rules. Turn off the cellphones, no making noise.

The head Secret Service guy then takes the stage. No getting out of your seat. No sudden movements. And no crossing the blue line in the front row.

“All joking aside,” he says, he will take you down. He also notes that if the President moves toward you to shake your hand, “do not move toward him.”

I love Secret Service agents — especially when played by Clint Eastwood — and wish I had one to give a few people in tech a little smackadoo on my behalf. And not only if they moved toward me!

10:47 am: This little frisson of excitement is followed by more waiting, as the final seats are filled up in the room, which is an unusually (and welcome) multi-racial and gender-balanced crowd for Silicon Valley.

Various White House aides skitter back and forth like nervous ground squirrels — I would imagine their life is one big effort to avoid any gaffe — so the Prez must be near.

I am actually looking forward to seeing him, as I never have in person and am looking forward to seeing the famous Obama charm and techie cred.

Indeed, he is probably the most fast-forward tech president there has ever been. That said, buffeted by more serious issues facing the nation, his administration has delivered on few — by which I mean none — of its promises around the digitization of the U.S.

Our high-speed broadband, for example, is still woefully slow, inordinately expensive and not easily available nationwide.

And I will not even go into the need for increased focus on math and science education or the importance of our broken visa policies.

But the topic today is jobs, which is an arena where Silicon Valley and tech shines in the U.S., even as manufacturing of it has mostly moved overseas. How tech can help improve in the creation of jobs will be issue No. 1 here.

10:55 am: Total silence with five minutes to go. I need the President around to quiet my kids.

Now, LinkedIn Chairman and VC Reid Hoffman comes in, so the event is probably about to begin.

And, indeed, Weiner emerges to cheers, to give a little speech on “changing the way we work … and connecting talent to opportunity.”

11:01 am: Then, the session starts right on time with President Obama.

He begins with a rote speech on jobs, which is nonetheless the most important issue he faces going into next year’s election.

11:14 am: Ah, wireless glitch! Back!

President Obama is inexplicably in the middle of a Medicare question, which gives him an opportunity to talk about the need for the rich to pay more taxes.

And pass his American Jobs Act, of course.

11:17 am: More on proposing legislation for retraining workers, such as the questioner’s mom.

Now to a group of email questions. The first is about when small businesses are going to get a break from onerous regulations and taxes.

President Obama says since he has been in office, he has cut taxes 16 times for those who create a business.

But he is not going to apologize for some regulations, such as those for the financial industry over the mortgage crisis.

“There are some regulations that have outlived their usefulness,” he says, but others not so much.

11:24 am: The next question is from a Chicago IT employee. Except she is not employed.

She is asking a question about keeping her skills up and what programs are needed.

“The best thing we can do for you is that the unemployment rate goes down,” said President Obama, but also adds that making it easy to go to school while waiting on a job is also important.

“Just looking at you, I can tell you are going to do great,” he tells her in an awkward effort at reassurance.

Thanks, Barack, but she needs a job!

11:28 am: A veteran is asking a question about transitioning out of the military.

Obama launches into a story of a medical technician who faced all kinds of experiences, but had to start over again with new classes when out of the military. He suggests some level of credentialing based on experience.

11:33 am: Obama gets to pick out someone from the crowd and manages to pick out a dude who is a former Googler — although he only says that he works down the street — and is out of work by choice.

He asks: “Will you please raise my taxes?

A plant? I wish!

President Obama asks the name of the start-up. “A search engine,” says the ex-Googler-in-disguise, who is Doug Edwards, an early marketing exec there who actually wrote a book on being an ex-Googler.

“That worked out well for you,” kids President Obama.

Everyone likes a rich-guy joke!

He is soon onto the idea that we’re all dang lucky and declares he does not want it to turn the debate over taxes into a rich-poor war.

Bottom line, he notes that we have to raise taxes on the very wealthy. Frankly, if we raised taxes on a bunch of folks in this room, it would help a lot.

11:42 am: A teach-training question, especially math and science teachers.

President Obama is all for it.

He is meaning well here, but all he seems to offer is a lot of bromides about the importance of education and errant related anecdotes.

Like one from IBM, where the company hires the kids in the program at the end.

President Obama wants students to see a direct connection between learning and jobs.

Then, he kind of says it again. Gosh, he can talk. How does the well-fed and wirelessly connected White House press corp take it? Lotsa donuts, I would imagine.

President Obama also wants us to turn off the electronics and video games for kids, too, thereby instantly losing the votes of my two sons!

Another laid-off guy is up at the mic. He had 22 years in IT management and is disheartened.

He wants a statement of encouragement from the CEO of America.

President Obama assures him that his track record of success gives him a leg up, but that the problem is the economy and the global meltdown, too.

It’s systemic, apparently.

“The problem is not you, the problem is the economy as a whole,” says President Obama.

That was the last question. Weiner, who has been sitting quietly (I know it was hard, Jeff, but good job), thanks the President and tells him that this is a big issue.

President does his thanks, too, for being able to speak, although not really that much was actually said.

And then a genuine moment, finally, of clarity.

“Look, we’re going through a very tough time, but we have gone through tougher times before,” he says. “But the trajectory we are going on is one that is more open, more linked …”

He talks about the need for being ready to take advantage of that opportunity.

“Things have gotten so ideologically driven, putting party above country,” he adds, that nothing is getting done. That’s why the people, the voters, have to demand leadership from their elected officials.

Or, presumably, fire them and let them try to find another job, too.

It might turn out to be the best idea yet, if these pols don’t agree on something and quick.

Earlier this month several city council members criticized a proposal by Google to build bridges over a creek that separates existing offices from land it leased from a federal agency. Starting in 2013, Google plans to construct up to 1.2 million square feet of buildings on the land, including offices, recreation facilities and corporate housing.

The new development will extend the Google campus into the leased land, crossing public trails along Stevens Creek that are used by commuters and outdoor enthusiasts. While the trail will remain public after Google’s expansion, council members said at a recent hearing they were concerned about the need to relocate part of the trail due to the construction of the bridges, among other things. The topic will be revisited in future hearings.

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Pixazza is dead. Long live Luminate.

Well, from a brand perspective, at least, as the image advertising start-up changes to an easier-to-say name and also launches a new platform for image applications.

The Mountain View, Calif.-based start-up — which is backed by Google Ventures, CMEA Ventures, August Capital, Foundation Capital and Shasta Ventures, as well as by angel investors Ron Conway, Gideon Yu and Maynard Webb — aims to do for Web photos what the search giant did for text.

The new name for the company that called itself “AdSense for images” pretty much speaks for itself.

In addition to Luminate’s previous sharing, commerce and advertising apps, the company will offer information, navigation and public service apps, which you can see below

Luminate says its interactive images are viewed three billion times per month.

Here’s the official press release for the name change, as well as the image app platform:

PIXAZZA, INC. REBRANDS ITSELF AS LUMINATE, INC.

New Name Better Reflects Vision For Making All Online Images Interactive

Company Enables Images at Rate of 30 Billion Image Views per Year

MOUNTAIN VIEW, CA — July 27, 2011 — Pixazza Inc., the worldwide leader in making images interactive, today announced its new company name — Luminate, Inc. With its new services and the introduction of a groundbreaking new platform (see separate release: Luminate Launches World’s First Platform for Image Apps), the company opted to rebrand itself with a name that better reflects its bold vision of making every image interactive.

“We started the company to change the web by offering information relevant to online images, engaging consumers in a novel way while offering advertisers and publishers additional revenue streams,” said Bob Lisbonne, CEO of Luminate. “We’ve since developed the technology and scale to enable images to do even more. Moving forward as Luminate, we will continue to elevate the role of the image and dramatically improve the web experience.”

Rapidly scaling to accommodate the new demand for interactive images, Luminate now reaches more than 150 million unique visitors per month.

Its publisher network also has grown to more than 4,000 publishers, and the company enables images at a rate of 30 billion image views per year. This is significant because just as page views are commonly used to measure web site traffic, Luminate tracks image views, which count the number of times a web publisher serves up a Luminate-enabled image. It is a clear marker of audience interest.

The name change and announcement of the Luminate™ platform for image apps, comes on the heels of an innovative partnership with Hearst Digital Media. The company’s explosive momentum has also been a draw for top talent including CRO and head of publisher development, Chas Edwards, formerly of Digg; Terry Murphy, CFO, formerly of LiveOps. Luminate also added Elliot Schrage, the Vice President of Global Communications, Marketing and Public Policy at Facebook, as a strategic advisor to the Luminate Board.

Please visit www.luminate.com to learn more about how Luminate is changing the way consumers, publishers and advertisers use and interact with online images.

LUMINATE UNVEILS WORLD’S FIRST PLATFORM FOR IMAGE APPLICATIONS

Company Brings Images to Life with Image Apps Designed to Create Rich Consumer Experience

Luminate Transforms Images Into a Canvas to Shop, Share, Comment, Examine, Curate, Search and Socialize

MOUNTAIN VIEW, CA — July 27, 2011, Luminate, Inc., formerly known as Pixazza, Inc., today unveiled a groundbreaking new platform for image applications. For the first time ever, consumers can launch applications within the individual images on their favorite websites.

With this exciting new platform, Luminate opens a new world of image apps, breaking down a wall and bringing flat, static images to life. Online images become more than visual stimuli — they become a gateway for accessing rich and relevant content across the web. The apps available on the Luminate™ platform will allow consumers not only to conduct their favorite everyday online activities such as shopping, sharing, commenting and navigating directly from the images, but can also facilitate entirely new services made possible by the development of apps specifically for images.

“Image apps transform images from static pixels into interactive experiences,” said Luminate CEO Bob Lisbonne. “Just as phones evolved from merely voice calls to smartphones with apps, now consumers can enjoy relevant apps inside every online image. The explosive use of images fueled by mobile, social, and cloud computing trends sets the stage for Luminate’s pioneering new image apps platform.”

How It Works:

When a consumer sees the Luminate icon in the corner of an image, it indicates that the image is interactive. Consumers simply mouse into the image and choose from a variety of image apps. They can easily share an image or specific points within an image with their friends, discover statistics about their favorite athletes, see where to purchase similar products to those featured in a photo, uncover the latest information about a particular event, reveal geo tag or Wikipedia information, read more content about the people or places featured in an image, listen to music or see a movie trailer related to an image.

Image Applications:

Image applications will span a number of key categories including: Commerce, Information, Social, Organization, Advertising, Navigation, Public Service, and Presentation. Luminate’s platform currently offers such applications as: unique Twitter Share, Facebook Share, and Email Share apps that give consumers the power to select precisely what they want inside an image and share it with others; an information app called Annotation that allows publishers to quickly and easily tag any spot within an image and add information relevant to that image; a commerce app called Products, which enables consumers to mouse over the image and interact with tags on the picture; and an Advertising app that offers publishers a seamless way to place relevant advertisements within an image.

Luminate plans to roll out new applications frequently to address the varying needs of consumers, publishers and advertisers. Its platform is designed to ultimately enable the development of any conceivable app that is relevant to a particular image. It is this capability that will help define the future of web images.

This cutting edge platform for image apps comes from the company that pioneered the use of images as real estate for delivering ecommerce and advertising three years ago as Pixazza, Inc. With the introduction of the new platform, the company has been rebranded as Luminate, Inc. (see separate release: Pixazza, Inc. Rebrands itself as Luminate, Inc.) as it takes the next step in executing its vision to make every image on the web interactive.

The Luminate Approach:

What makes the Luminate platform so compelling is its breakthrough ability to link images with applications and content beyond the website where the image is viewed. To create the best possible consumer experience, Luminate focuses on all of the data relevant to a particular image or part of an image. Luminate has long employed a unique recognition system that combines visual algorithms with human crowdsourcing. With its new platform, the company has multiplied the sources and ways to uncover information about images. In addition to the data derived from its team of experts, the company can avail itself of information from end users and publishers with the goal of creating a richer, more immersive experience for the end user. Luminate has the most sophisticated system in the industry for tagging relevant content.

“The reason images remained stagnant for so long is because it is remarkably difficult to contextualize their composition and link them to other pieces of relevant content across the Internet,” said James Everingham, CTO of Luminate.

“We were the first to develop the technology to overcome these complexities, turning images into an even more valuable asset. With our platform and the introduction of image apps, we believe that the entire Internet can become connected in a more meaningful way.”

To learn more about how Luminate is changing the way consumers interact with images, please visit www.luminate.com.

With its annual meeting this coming Thursday, you’d think Yahoo CEO Carol Bartz would be taking a rest.

Not so!

She has been a regular Carmen Sandiego, in fact, jetting to Yahoo hotspots around the globe from Dubai to Milan to New York and then back to Yahoo’s Sunnyvale, Calif., HQ.

As do Yahoos, I get most of the Friday emails she sends out, but I usually don’t bother to post them.

That said, I liked the can-do tone of this one, shades of Bartz early in her term, even in the face of a stock price that’s dropped almost eight percent this month to close at $14.69 on Friday.

(To be fair, the shares of Google are down by a little more in the same time, although its CEO Larry Page seems to prefer to remain holed up in his digital cave in Mountain View and lick his stock wounds.)

No matter, as Bartz writes, it’s nothing a little retail therapy can’t fix!

I myself am off on an international biking vacation in Ireland next week, so while I am gone, please enjoy Carol’s letter to Yahoos:

Last week was a crazy one -– Dubai and Milan in five days! You may not know it, but the Middle East and Italy are two of our hottest markets in the EMEA region (and I do mean hot — it was 114 Fahrenheit and very humid in Dubai — I thought I was going to melt!).

First on the itinerary was Dubai, where I met with government officials, advertisers, the media, and our awesome Yahoos there.

I kicked things off Monday with the Deputy Ruler of Dubai, Shaikh Maktoum Bin Mohammed Bin Rashid Al-Maktoum. Turns out he is a BIG Yahoo! fan. He told me that he’s on our sites every day to check the latest news and sports headlines. It makes sense — we’re huge in the Middle East and North Africa. Since we acquired Maktoob a year and a half ago, we’ve grown from 30 million to 53 million users. That’s impressive in a region with more than 70 million people online today.

We’re tops in entertainment with omg! Arabic, and with our women’s lifestyle site, Helwa. And we’re a strong #2 in News, thanks in part to our new Arabic homepage that launched six months ago. Already, it’s our fourth most popular homepage in the world — right behind the U.S., India and Taiwan. Meanwhile, Yahoo! is #1 in the Middle East and North Africa for display advertising with 40% market share.

Then on Wednesday it was off to Milan, where I visited with advertisers and our passionate Yahoos there. (I love that our Italian headquarters also happens to be located in one of the fashion capitals of the world — so convenient! An hour of retail therapy goes a long way).

We are winning it Italy. In a business review, our folks called themselves the Yahoo! “Italian Racing Team,” and I believe it. They’re firing on all cylinders. The country boasts some of the highest engagement numbers for us in the EU. We reach 66% of the online population in Italy. We’re top three in seven content categories, and #1 in four of them: Mail, News, Answers and Flickr. Plus, these #1 sites are growing faster than the market. And on the ad side, May was a record month for our display advertising in Italy — we’re taking share while growing revenue.

Throughout my trip to Italy and the Middle East, one thing came through loud and clear: Our local teams are able to execute and grow user engagement more quickly than ever before. This is thanks, in large part, to the great work of our Products org.

Take, for instance, our new Yahoo! Publishing Platform (aka LEGO). Our editors have put it to good use on our Italian Movies site. We’ve seen a 90% increase in page views, and a 60% increase in users. And that’s just in the first three weeks! This is exactly what we’ve been working so hard on for the past two years. We’ve completely re-architected our infrastructure, and it’s incredibly satisfying to see it pay off in so many parts of the world.

After all that fun, I headed back across the Atlantic and spent two good, solid days covering a lot of business in the Big Apple — press, investors, agencies and Yahoo! Sales leaders. Then it was back here to Sunnyvale for CEO staff meetings and a great “Coffee with Carol” with 30+ Yahoos.

I’m off to have a good weekend, hope you do too — especially you Dads on Father’s Day!

Carol

According to a press release about to post, LinkedIn will price its shares at $45 each in its IPO tomorrow.

The price, at the top of its range, will give the Silicon Valley business networking company a $4.5 billion valuation.

That’s a stunning number for LinkedIn and a sign that the once moribund market for Internet companies is back, with investors clamoring to be part of the Web game again.

It’s also stunning given LinkedIn earned just over $15 million on revenues of $243 million last year.

But it does have 100 million business users and seems to be the spear tip of a number of promising Web companies that are expected to be coming to market, including Facebook, Groupon and Zynga.

LinkedIn’s stock is set to begin trading tomorrow on the New York Stock Exchange under the LNKD ticker.

And here is the official press release:

LinkedIn Corporation Prices Initial Public Offering

Mountain View, Calif.–May 18, 2011 — LinkedIn Corporation, the world’s largest professional network on the Internet, today announced the pricing of its initial public offering of 7,840,000 shares of common stock at a price to the public of $45.00 per share. A total of 4,827,804 shares are being offered by LinkedIn Corporation, and a total of 3,012,196 shares are being offered by selling stockholders. In addition, LinkedIn Corporation has granted the underwriters a 30-day option to purchase up to an additional 1,176,000 shares to cover over-allotments, if any. LinkedIn will not receive any proceeds from the sale of shares by the selling stockholders.

The bookrunning managers of the offering are Morgan Stanley & Co. Incorporated, BofA Merrill Lynch and J.P. Morgan Securities LLC. Allen & Company LLC and UBS Securities LLC are the co-managers. LinkedIn’s common stock will trade on the New York Stock Exchange (NYSE) under the symbol “LNKD.”

The offering of these securities will be made only by means of a prospectus , copies of which may be obtained from the offices of Morgan Stanley & Co. Incorporated, Attention: Prospectus Department, 180 Varick Street, 2nd Floor, New York, New York 10014, or by email at prospectus@morganstanley.com; BofA Merrill Lynch, 4 World Financial Center, New York, NY 10080, Attention: Prospectus Department, or email dg.prospectus_requests@baml.com; or J.P. Morgan Securities LLC, Attention: Broadridge Financial Solutions, 1155 Long Island Avenue, Edgewood, New York 11717, or by telephone at (866) 803-9204.

This press release shall not constitute an offer to sell or the solicitation of an offer to buy, nor shall there be any sale of these securities in any state or jurisdiction in which such offer, solicitation or sale would be unlawful prior to their registration or qualification under the securities laws of any such state or jurisdiction.

Since Google said in January that longtime CEO Eric Schmidt was stepping aside, Mr. Page has made a series of moves to cut through the firm’s 24,000-person bureaucracy and figure out ways the company can act more like a start-up than an incumbent.

Mr. Page has asked product and engineering managers to email him about their projects to potentially winnow them down, said people familiar with the matter. He has persuaded top executives to sit and work together every day in a public area of the company’s Mountain View, CA, headquarters so employees can directly approach them on matters, these people said.

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Google hosted singing sensation Lady Gaga today at the Googleplex in Mountain View, CA.

What more can BoomTown say, except that it is certainly interesting to see the sublime meet the ridonkulous–like one of her kooky music videos come to life.

It would have only gotten better if Gaga had worn a dress made of organic tempeh from Google’s cafeteria.

Here is the video of the interview with the Silicon Valley search giant’s Marissa Mayer:

Recently, BoomTown took a walk down digital Memory Lane with Bob Lisbonne, CEO of Pixazza, the photo-tagging service that has nicknamed itself “AdSense for images.”

That’s because Lisbonne used to be a big wheel at Netscape Communications, the iconic Internet browser company that truly changed the digital world–before crashing and burning in a very public way.

We talked about the old days, of course, but more about the new days and his business focused on putting all kinds of advertising within online images.

The Mountain View, CA, start-up–which is backed by Google Ventures, CMEA Ventures, August Capital, Foundation Capital and Shasta Ventures, as well as by angel investors Ron Conway, Gideon Yu and Maynard Webb– aims to do for Web photos what the search giant did for text.

At least that’s the hope.

Pixazza is selling itself as a win-win for online publishers–who certainly could use one.

Essentially, the company lets publishers match and link images of products or places with its network of advertisers, via a single line of code.

When users on that site mouse over the photos, they get rich information about pricing and more, as well as a clickable way to purchase the items.

Quite possibly annoying, but Pixazza is growing quickly anyway, with the company claiming 20 billion image views per year and reaching 70 million unique visitors a month on sites deploying its technology.

There are rivals in the space, of course, such as GumGum and Vibrant, but Pixazza does come armed with $18 million in venture funding, as well as that relationship with Google.

Here’s Lisbonne talking about it all in a video interview I did at Pixazza’s Silicon Valley HQ:

]]> http://allthingsd.com/20110322/pixazzas-bob-lisbonne-talks-about-adsense-for-images/feed/ 2 http://allthingsd.com/20110308/competing-against-amazons-cloud/ http://allthingsd.com/20110308/competing-against-amazons-cloud/#comments Tue, 08 Mar 2011 20:20:36 +0000 Cari Tuna http://voices.allthingsd.com/?p=37387 As more telecommunications carriers launch rivals to Amazon.com’s popular computing-services business, a Silicon Valley start-up is aiming to help them beat the Web giant’s prices by tackling one layer of the computing “stack”—data-storage software.

The software sold by Nexenta Systems of Mountain View, Calif., builds on a trend the industry calls “virtualization,” a broad term for pooling computing resources across physical hardware to make the gear more efficient. Virtualization is a key technology for companies that sell computing services over the Internet to business customers, a growing market known as “cloud computing.”

Nexenta’s software virtualizes data-storage systems but with a twist: the software can run on basic server systems from any hardware vendor. That makes the start-up a competitor to both storage behemoths such as EMC, which sells hardware-software systems, and providers of on-demand computing resources such as Amazon, Nexenta executives said. Amazon, the 800-pound gorilla in cloud computing, uses storage software it built in house to maximize the capacity of its gear, they said.

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]]> http://allthingsd.com/20110308/competing-against-amazons-cloud/feed/ 0 http://allthingsd.com/20110224/video-mozilla-ceo-gary-kovacs-talks-firefox-4-competition-with-googles-chrome-and-more/ http://allthingsd.com/20110224/video-mozilla-ceo-gary-kovacs-talks-firefox-4-competition-with-googles-chrome-and-more/#comments Thu, 24 Feb 2011 19:12:16 +0000 Kara Swisher http://kara.allthingsd.com/?p=41020

Yesterday, BoomTown paid a long overdue visit on the Mountain View, Calif., HQ of Mozilla, the unusual public-private company that makes the Firefox browser, to chat with its (relatively) new CEO Gary Kovacs (pictured here).

There is a lot to talk about with the new exec, especially the near-to-official launch of Firefox 4, the increasing coopetition with Google and its Chrome efforts and where Mozilla goes next (mobile).

Kovacs, in fact, has a deep mobile background, having arrived in the late fall of 2010 to take over from John Lilly, who moved on to a stint as a venture capitalist.

Before Mozilla, Kovacs worked on a range of products at Sybase–until after its purchase by SAP–and also on mobile and devices at Adobe. Before that, he played a key role at Zi Corporation, a company specializing in embedded software and services for mobile and consumer devices.

He’ll need all that expertise if Firefox is to do as well on mobile devices as it has in gaining market share on the desktop, an effort that has been challenged by a continual and intense effort at upgrade and improvement by No. 3 Google especially.

According to a recent poll, for example, Microsoft’s Internet Explorer holds the dominant 56 percent share, with Mozilla’s Firefox at almost 23 percent and Google at just above 10 percent. Apple’s Safari and Opera follow.

Of course, Firefox has been playing nicer with Chrome cousin Android, which is beginning to dominate the smartphone market and is moving aggressively into the tablet arena. In fact, Mozilla just released a new beta in the marketplace for Google’s mobile operating system.

Still, some have fretted as Mozilla delayed its official release of Firefox 4 several times since last fall.

Nonetheless, by dislodging IE from its dominant market position, Firefox has proved not only that open-source projects can provide better software, but that it’s possible for a particularly well done one to become an everyday consumer application.

Despite its success, Mozilla still has to keep up its innovation and technical prowess. But given its unusual status as both a profit and nonprofit, it is hindered in that it is not likely to go public and shower its Silicon Valley employees with giant gobs of overhyped stock.

In the video below, Kovacs talks about Mozilla’s relationship with Google (not easy!), feature improvements in Firefox 4 (a new Chromish user interface!), how to hold onto talent in Silicon Valley (also not easy!) and what it’s like to deal with Apple (definitely not easy!).

Enjoy:

]]> http://allthingsd.com/20110224/video-mozilla-ceo-gary-kovacs-talks-firefox-4-competition-with-googles-chrome-and-more/feed/ 3 http://allthingsd.com/20110223/transphorm-nabs-20-million-from-google-ventures-kleiner/ http://allthingsd.com/20110223/transphorm-nabs-20-million-from-google-ventures-kleiner/#comments Wed, 23 Feb 2011 19:00:40 +0000 Kara Swisher http://kara.allthingsd.com/?p=41003

Yet another “stealth” start-up came out of hiding today with a big Silicon Valley funding.

That would be Transphorm, a power conversion technology company, that has raised $20 million more in a Series C financing led by Google Ventures and including Kleiner Perkins, Foundation Capital and Lux Capital.

That adds to $18 million already raised.

Said the Transphorm about its goals:

“Inefficient electric power conversion results in hundreds of terawatts of lost energy across the electrical grid, equivalent to 318 coal-fired power plants and costing the U.S. economy $40 billion a year. Leveraging breakthroughs in modern materials and a world-class team, Transphorm’s ultra-efficient and cost-competitive power modules eliminate up to 90 percent of all electric conversion losses.”

Here’s the official press release:

Transphorm emerges from stealth to redefine energy efficiency

Company backed by $38 million from leading venture capital firms Kleiner Perkins, Google Ventures, Foundation Capital, and Lux Capital

New approach to electric power conversion eliminates multi-billion dollar efficiency losses

Mountain View, Calif. February 23, 2011–Transphorm Inc., redefining energy efficiency with the most efficient and compact power conversion technology, emerges from stealth mode today at a private event at Google Ventures. The company announced it completed a $20 million Series C financing led by Google Ventures, with participation from existing venture investors Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers, Foundation Capital and Lux Capital. This brings the total capital raised from all rounds to $38 million.

Inefficient electric power conversion results in hundreds of terawatts of lost energy across the electrical grid, equivalent to 318 coal-fired power plants and costing the U.S. economy $40 billion a year. Leveraging breakthroughs in modern materials and a world-class team, Transphorm’s ultra-efficient and cost-competitive power modules eliminate up to 90 percent of all electric conversion losses. From HVACs to hybrids, from servers to solar panels, Transphorm enables significant energy savings across the grid.

“We founded Transphorm to re-imagine what enhanced efficiency in the generation and use of electrical energy can do for our economy,” said Umesh Mishra, CEO of Transphorm. “Why put up with needless energy waste in every electrical system and device, when we can quickly and cost-effectively design products that are inherently energy efficient? Transphorm’s next-generation power modules cut waste, increase efficiency, reduce system size and simplify overall product design.”

“Since we deliver a complete solution from the original materials through to the final modules, we are in a position to rapidly innovate and deliver product in quick response to demand,” said Primit Parikh, President of Transphorm. “We look forward to helping our partners open a new era in ultra-efficient and compact power conversion.”

Founded by the experienced entrepreneurial team of Umesh Mishra and Primit Parikh, Transphorm boasts world-class engineers as well as top business and manufacturing executives who will guide the commercialization of Transphorm’s technology.

“Solving the enormous problem of power waste will create immediate, long-term shared value for Transphorm’s customers and investors,” said Randy Komisar, partner, Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers. “It was imperative for our firm to get behind Transphorm because it is the first company with a viable, commercial-scale solution to energy losses associated with high-voltage power conversion.”

Transphorm delivers custom-designed power modules that are easy to embed in virtually any electrical system, from consumer electronics products, to industrial motor drives, to inverters for solar panels and electric vehicles, and sells these modules to power equipment manufacturers. The company will unveil its first product at the upcoming APEC conference, taking place in Fort Worth, Tex. from Mar. 6 -10, 2011.

“We recognize the need to innovate to uncover new opportunities for optimal energy efficiency,” said Toshihiro Sawa, Managing Director, Technology & Development Division of Yaskawa Electric Corporation. “The time is right to develop power conversion technologies that can cut power waste and reduce excess heat, and Transphorm provides a viable solution today.”

“It is imperative that power conversion efficiency be increased both to cut unnecessary losses and to save energy, but also to reduce waste heat which has negative impact on volume, weight, cost and reliability,” said Dr. Leo Casey, CTO, Satcon Corporation. “The innovations made by Transphorm offer an attractive solution to this problem.”

]]> http://allthingsd.com/20110223/transphorm-nabs-20-million-from-google-ventures-kleiner/feed/ 0 http://allthingsd.com/20110215/nerd-alert-here-comes-two-more-google-books/ http://allthingsd.com/20110215/nerd-alert-here-comes-two-more-google-books/#comments Tue, 15 Feb 2011 15:01:33 +0000 Kara Swisher http://kara.allthingsd.com/?p=40802

Although there have already been several big-deal books on Google already–including Ken Auletta’s “Googled,” which was bought by Hollywood for a movie–a new pair is about to debut in coming months.

One is penned by prominent Silicon Valley journalist Steven Levy, who had a lot of access to the Google and its denizens, and the other is what appears to be an insiderish tell-all by a former employee.

That would be “I’m Feeling Lucky: The Confessions of Google Employee Number 59,” which sounds naughtier than it probably is.

Reads the Amazon description of the book, coming out in mid-July, in part:

“Comparing Google to an ordinary business is like comparing a rocket to an Edsel. No academic analysis or bystander’s account can capture it. Now Douglas Edwards, Employee Number 59, offers the first inside view of Google, giving readers a chance to fully experience the bizarre mix of camaraderie and competition at this phenomenal company.”

Apparently, Edwards was the search giant’s first director of marketing and brand management, although I do not recall him at all from when I covered the company in its early days.

Actually, the book likely to get more attention–and written by someone I do know well–is Levy’s, coming out in mid-April and titled “In The Plex: How Google Thinks, Works, and Shapes Our Lives.”

That would be the Googleplex in Moutain View, Calif., where Levy was ensconced for a while.

It will be interesting to see what he comes out with, given he seems to have been up close and personal for Google’s two biggest crossroads–the rise of its Android mobile operating system and the rise of social networking giant Facebook.

So too, the recent hand-over of top management from CEO Eric Schmidt to co-founder Larry Page, which will take place right around when Levy’s book comes out.

While business tomes, especially ones on Internet companies, have yet to make big bank, the topic will be much in the news then.

]]> http://allthingsd.com/20110215/nerd-alert-here-comes-two-more-google-books/feed/ 0 http://allthingsd.com/20110213/exclusive-motorola-mobility-to-acquire-ex-googlers-stealthy-android-for-the-enterprise-startup/ http://allthingsd.com/20110213/exclusive-motorola-mobility-to-acquire-ex-googlers-stealthy-android-for-the-enterprise-startup/#comments Mon, 14 Feb 2011 06:48:38 +0000 Ina Fried http://mobilized.allthingsd.com/?p=4053 Motorola Mobility plans to announce later on Monday the acquisition of 3LM, a tiny 10-person Mountain View start-up with the little goal of making Android a secure platform for the enterprise.

The company, which is also just on the verge of launching its product, was started by two former Google employees from the Android team. CEO Tom Moss said he and Gaurav Mathur saw a huge opportunity to offer companies the flexibility of Android with the kind of security features companies get with BlackBerry and Windows Mobile 6.5.

“This trend of consumerization of IT is really shortsighted,” Moss told Mobilized in an interview on Monday morning. Businesses still want the same things they always have, including high levels of manageability and security. However, the rise of the iPhone and Android with their powerful capabilities have left IT in reactionary mode. “We’re kind of going against the trend but we think it’s the right bet.”

As part of the deal, 3LM will be a wholly owned subsidiary and continue to work with multiple device makers, Moss said. Financial terms were not disclosed. Motorola was one of the companies that 3LM had been working with.

“We didn’t pursue anybody,” he said, noting there were multiple interested parties. “They are the only OEM that is just doing Android, which kind of matches our mojo and our DNA. We really think it is the best platform for enterprise IT.”

As for the acquisition, Moss said he had built a small team that did a lot of product development in a short period of time, but needed to start building up capabilities for sales and support, all of the kinds of things that would have required some sort of financing. “We don’t have to worry abut funding.”

The deal will also help the company get an in with the kind of customers and partners it needs. “It’s hard as a 10-person start-up to be taken seriously, where as if you are Motorola people will at least talk to you.”

Moss said there is a narrow window to shift the trend away from enterprises just “giving up” and allowing all manner of devices onto their network as long as they have secure email. Although that is where things are headed, Moss noted that a lot of businesses still use BlackBerry and even Windows Mobile devices because of their higher security, though clearly that trend is shifting.

“We really want to get that out there before people just give up on security,” he said. “It’s a question of urgency. We wanted to get out there really quick.”

The company, which started last year, has about $1.5 million in seed investment from angel investors and VC firm Accel Partners.

]]> http://allthingsd.com/20110213/exclusive-motorola-mobility-to-acquire-ex-googlers-stealthy-android-for-the-enterprise-startup/feed/ 0 http://allthingsd.com/20110128/google-to-show-off-honeycomb-next-week/ http://allthingsd.com/20110128/google-to-show-off-honeycomb-next-week/#comments Fri, 28 Jan 2011 22:20:58 +0000 Ina Fried http://mobilized.allthingsd.com/?p=3192 Google is planning an event next week to show off the inner workings of Honeycomb, the next version of Android that is optimized to work on tablets and other devices, Mobilized has learned.

The software, which was first shown off at the D: Dive Into Mobile conference last year, is being built into products starting next month with the arrival of Motorola’s Xoom. T-Mobile’s LG tablet is also expected to follow shortly thereafter.

In addition to a brief onstage demo by Android chief Andy Rubin, Google has posted a video showing a bit of Honeycomb in action, but Wednesday’s event is designed as a deeper dive into the inner workings of the operating system, which Google is positioning as the biggest change to Android’s interface since the debut of the operating system.

At the event, which will take place on Wednesday in Mountain View, Google will have hands-on demos, and Google’s worker bees will be on hand to demonstrate various pieces of the operating system.

With Honeycomb, Google is aiming to make Android better suited to a wider array of devices over time, but most immediately for tablets. Among the changes are an elimination of dependance on hardware buttons, as well as the ability to show information in multiple panes.

More details to come.

]]> http://allthingsd.com/20110128/google-to-show-off-honeycomb-next-week/feed/ 0 http://allthingsd.com/20110127/here-comes-another-web-ipo-linkedin-s-1-filing-imminent/ http://allthingsd.com/20110127/here-comes-another-web-ipo-linkedin-s-1-filing-imminent/#comments Thu, 27 Jan 2011 10:16:23 +0000 Kara Swisher http://kara.allthingsd.com/?p=39968

LinkedIn, the online business networking site, is likely to file regulatory documents for an initial public offering as early as today, according to sources close to the situation.

Sources said LinkedIn is ready to submit an S-1 filing to the Securities and Exchange Commission, its first step in the IPO process, and that could happen after the markets close this afternoon.

The offering is likely to be led by Morgan Stanley, although Goldman Sachs is an investor in LinkedIn and could also be part of the underwriting team.

The Mountain View, Calif., company currently has what it describes as “the world’s largest professional network on the Internet with more than 90 million members in over 200 countries and territories.” It has 1,000 full-time employees.

LinkedIn’s entry into the public market is one that many expect will be followed by other Internet firms in the coming year, including Zynga, Chegg, Groupon, and, most anticipated of all, Facebook.

Demand Media, a Santa Monica, Calif., online publisher, went public yesterday, with an offering that valued the content company at $1.5 billion.

How much is LinkedIn worth? According to a NetworkEffect post, “recent purchases of its stock have valued the company at more than $2 billion. Pushing the company toward the public markets would help set a price range up higher.”

LinkedIn was founded in the living room of co-founder and Chairman Reid Hoffman–who is also a well-known Silicon Valley entrepreneur and investor–in 2002 and launched in 2003. Its current CEO is former Yahoo exec Jeff Weiner.

Its investors include Sequoia Capital, Greylock Partners and several others, with a total venture funding of $103 million.

A LinkedIn spokeswoman declined to comment (but, in a very lovely manner).

]]> http://allthingsd.com/20110127/here-comes-another-web-ipo-linkedin-s-1-filing-imminent/feed/ 2 http://allthingsd.com/20101228/some-new-years-resolutions-for-the-mobile-industry/ http://allthingsd.com/20101228/some-new-years-resolutions-for-the-mobile-industry/#comments Tue, 28 Dec 2010 15:00:48 +0000 Ina Fried http://mobilized.allthingsd.com/?p=1365 While I’m not privy to their actual New Year’s resolutions, here’s my list of what I imagine is making the lists in Cupertino, Espoo, Mountain View, Redmond, Seoul and elsewhere. To be clear, this isn’t my opinion on what anyone’s resolutions should be, it’s just my summary of what they actually seem to be.

Palm: Stay the cool kid at Hewlett-Packard, so it’ll keep giving us lots of toys and not merge the smartphone acquisition into the PC unit. Release that tablet we’ve been working on and get our phones out of the clearance section of the stores. Remember to include “and printers” on all our slides when asking for more money.

Microsoft: We were going to copy and paste from last year’s resolutions, but it turns out we can’t copy and paste yet. So, that’s resolution No. 1. But since we’re going to solve that in January, we’ll move on to some other ambitions. Let’s see, open up to more developers, convince developers we’re worth their time, add features, support more networks.

Hmm. Last year’s “Try not to suck so much” is starting to seem easy by comparison.

Research in Motion: Learn some new ways of saying “Everything is great,” so it doesn’t get too repetitive in public speeches. Meanwhile, keep shaking things up behind the scenes. Buy a few more companies. Get some apps for that PlayBook. Find some more really big countries that the other people are ignoring and sell them a boatload of BlackBerrys.

Samsung: Keep going with this whole Galaxy thing–it worked to the tune of about 10 million phones this year. Try to convince Google phone king Andy Rubin to get a tattoo that reads “Galaxy S smartphone.” Remind the carriers that they really did agree to market all our phones that way.

HTC: Good thing we went Android a couple years back, but now we’re kind of glad we didn’t give up on Microsoft. Now, we have to figure out how to convince them to let us customize Windows Phone 7.

Motorola: Keep telling Verizon and Google that they’ve hurt our feelings and see what other perks we can get via guilt. Hey, it worked well with that tablet, didn’t it?

Apple: We are already perfect, so where do you go from there? Follow a magical 2010 with an even more magical 2011. How’s that?

What else? Let’s see. Okay, here’s one: Keep trashing smaller tablets until the day we come out with one.

Google: Release six or seven more versions of Android. Rename “Nexus Tablet You Should Have Made” to something less insulting to the hardware makers. Travel to foreign countries and discover more desserts, because we’re running out of code names for the next version of the tasty mobile operating system.

Nokia: Ship something to the U.S. so they’ll stop making fun of us and realize that we actually do make smartphones. Speaking of shipping, we really should ship some of these products we’ve been talking about for years. Most people are starting to think “Meego” is just a code word we use when we don’t know what to say.

Verizon: Stay on Steve Jobs’s good side. Print iPhone posters on the back of all those Droid billboards from last year. Release a whole bunch of LTE phones, so that the iPhone shelf isn’t lonely in the stores.

AT&T: Work on next-generation networks using that spectrum we picked up from Qualcomm. Talk about how we really love the other non-iPhone smartphones and actually mean it this year, because we have to.

T-Mobile: Keep talking about how we can just keep making the current network faster, while trying to convince the feds to let us have some more spectrum. Make more of those commercials making fun of AT&T. They are funny and it’s so much easier than having to deal with Catherine Zeta-Jones. And lots of Android, along with some tablets too.

Sprint: Find a way to remind people that, while we still don’t have an iPhone, we do have a next-generation network up and running, complete with phones and data devices. Add a 4G tablet or two to the mix. (Hey, Jon Rubinstein, is that PalmPad ready yet?)

]]> http://allthingsd.com/20101228/some-new-years-resolutions-for-the-mobile-industry/feed/ 0 http://allthingsd.com/20101221/fashion-community-strutting-user-generated-trends-down-the-cat-walk/ http://allthingsd.com/20101221/fashion-community-strutting-user-generated-trends-down-the-cat-walk/#comments Wed, 22 Dec 2010 02:58:14 +0000 Tricia Duryee http://emoney.allthingsd.com/?p=919 Fashionistas may roll their eyes at the effort, but Polyvore is trying to make designing and merchandising apparel more data driven–and presumably less arbitrary.

To do so, the online fashion community will be crunching user-generated data to roll out analytical tools for designers and retailers. Think Quantcast or Compete, but for the fashion industry.

The beta tool, called Style Analytics, will be free and openly available to anyone on Polyvore’s Web site. It’s expected to launch officially tomorrow afternoon.

The data points are coming from its community of users, who create virtual outfits–or what they call “collages” of clothing–by mixing and matching shirts, pants, dresses, shoes, skirts and accessories from around the Web.

Jess Lee, Polyvore’s co-founder and head of product management, said it will show what’s trending, so brands can make better decisions. Specifically, it shows how consumers associate your brand, for instance, with Abercrombie & Fitch or Juicy Couture.

“The fashion industry, from designing to merchandising and marketing is inefficient and not data driven,” she said. “Our goal is to open it up and make it more democratic and more data driven.”

The Mountain View, Calif.-based company has raised about $8.7 million in venture capital since 2007. Each month, its two million registered users create one million collages that generate 140 million page views.

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