Taking that one step further, on Monday morning Google launched Hangouts On Air, an extension of the Google+ group video chat that allows users to stream Hangouts live for anyone across the world to watch. Just like local access, you can broadcast your ideas, music or wacky opinions into the online ether and hope that at least someone is interested in what you have to say.

“This is a much more efficient and pervasive way to organize a conversation,” Hangouts product manager Nikhyl Singhal told AllThingsD in an interview. “Maybe I needed satellite trucks and switchboards for something like this in the past.”

It works the same as an existing Hangout: Host a video chat, with up to nine other people joining you in the conversation. But flip the “enable Hangouts On Air” switch, and your chat goes from private to public. What’s more, you’re not limited to broadcasting to Google+ users alone; embed the Hangout in your Web page or your YouTube channel, and folks can watch from there, too. It’s also possible to record the broadcast for replay later.

Yes, part of this is to allow the everyman the ability to speak to a larger audience, similar to the way YouTube broke new ground in the user-generated content realm back in 2005.

When giving users content carte blanche, however, the inevitable questions arise: How will Google deal with hate speech, illegal activity and porn? I’d urge you to take a spin on Chatroulette if you don’t think this is inevitable.

Though Singhal wouldn’t get into specifics, he said Hangouts already has plenty of help to deal with that from YouTube. “How do you flag copyrighted content? How do you deal with a live conversation? We’re leveraging the expertise of YouTube, who have been thinking about this problem for several years. The technology that we’ve employed — support, operational pieces, copyright rules — all of that is based on YouTube’s experience.”

Aside from potential obscenity, there’s a whole other part to the initiative: Catering to those who already have a following. Google has already hosted On Air Hangouts with big names like David Beckham, the Muppets and President Barack Obama, and the company has invested time and resources into training other large outlets — like the New York Times and Wired, to name a couple — on how to run their own On Air Hangouts.

To some degree, it can’t hurt for these stars and media outlets to give Hangouts a try. It’s free and easy publicity for them to do a quick online chat (for celebs, it’s like an online press junket for an upcoming film or TV release). And there’s also the potential to drive traffic to other pages.

Of course, Google wants to bring aboard as many people as possible. While Larry Page has no problem touting Google+ sign-up numbers, user engagement is a whole other issue. According to a comScore report released in February, users on average spend mere minutes a month on Google+, while that number is measured in hours on Facebook.

And, now more than ever, it’s important to remind users about Hangouts, one of Google’s strongest advantages over Facebook. Currently, Facebook offers Skype integration for one-on-one video chat between users, but lacks the group chat option that Google+ touts so heavily.

Thing is, people actually want to use Facebook. A lot. The jury is still out on Google+. So perhaps giving users the chance to blab about whatever they want, on air and uninhibited, will actually convince them to spend more time on the site.

At the very least, they won’t be sandwiched in between infomercials in a 2 am time slot.

(Image courtesy of quicheisinsane/Flickr, doctored by Mike Isaac)

Code Advisors is getting a $25 million investment from financial services giant JPMorgan Chase for a minority stake in the Silicon Valley-based boutique investment bank and advisory firm.

The influx of cash will allow Code to grow quicker, said Quincy Smith, one of the firm’s founders, which also include Michael Marquez and Fred Davis.

The non-exclusive deal, the two firms said, is the natural extension of a longer-term relationship that has been developing for a while.

“To the extent that the money means we are getting even closer together, that’s great,” said Smith in an interview earlier today. “This solidifies a partnership that has existed for some time.”

Plus, it presumably also gives each what the other cannot offer clients. Usually a big bank might try to kill or buy a firm like Code, so this move is unique.

“We are growing our business and getting access to next-generation entrepreneurs that Code knows well,” added Kurt Simon, co-head of Technology, Media and Telecom Banking at J.P. Morgan. “And it’s a sign of continued investment in our important West Coast businesses.”

Indeed, J.P. Morgan has been competing with Goldman Sachs and Morgan Stanley for a higher profile in Silicon Valley. It recently was selected with the pair as one of the lead bankers in the upcoming Facebook IPO. It has also worked recently with LinkedIn, Skype and Pandora.

Code has taken on smaller deals with a range of hot start-ups and entrepreneurs, which was one of the attractions for J.P. Morgan. That includes representing Spotify and LivingSocial, and making investments in Path and Flipboard.

“For J.P. Morgan, it’s like making an limited partner investment in another venture firm,” said Smith. “And for us, we can offer a lot more services to our clients as they grow.”

As part of the deal, Jes Staley, CEO of J.P. Morgan’s investment bank and a member of the firm’s operating committee, will become a non-voting observer on Code’s board.

Here’s the full press release on the deal:

CODE ADVISORS ANNOUNCES A $25 MILLION INVESTMENT FROM JPMORGAN CHASE

San Francisco May 3, 2012 — Code Advisors announced today that JPMorgan Chase (NYSE: JPM) has agreed to make a $25 million minority investment. Jes Staley, CEO of J.P. Morgan’s Investment Bank and a member of the firm’s Operating Committee, will also act as a non-voting observer at Code’s Advisory and Investor Board meetings.

“We are thrilled that JPMorgan Chase has decided to invest in Code Advisors,” said co-founder Quincy Smith. “This transaction demonstrates how together we might energetically adjust to serve the new needs of entrepreneurs and companies. The chance to work more closely with Jes and his team gives us awesome global and experienced perspective.”

J.P. Morgan’s investment and relationship will allow Code to accelerate its growth opportunities and allow each team to offer complementary services to their respective and shared clients.

“Identifying and supporting great ideas early in their development is particularly important in the technology space,” said Staley. “Code continues to uniquely identify next generation companies, and together we are excited to help those entrepreneurs grow and expand their businesses.”

Large private equity firm Silver Lake is buying a large stake in powerful Hollywood talent agency William Morris Endeavor Entertainment, which is being described as a way to turbocharge its digital efforts.

While the pair would not disclose any financial details of the deal, which they are calling a “strategic partnership,” sources said Silver Lake is acquiring 31 percent of WME.

“Over the years, we have been brick-building, as we have been doing more and more digitally,” said Patrick Whitesell, co-CEO of WME with Ari Emanuel, in an interview today. “But the opportunities are so vast, there is a need for more capital to do more.”

Whitesell and Emanuel said they had been considering a range of investors, especially among media entities, but that they wanted to work with Silver Lake since it had more digital experience as an active investor in technology.

Skype, for example, was the driver of the sale of Internet telephony giant Skype to Microsoft for $8.5 billion, while WME reps stars such as Matt Damon and Hugh Jackman, among others.

“In addition to capital, we really wanted a partner that to help us build it out that had more technology expertise,” said Emanuel. “We are good with brands and creative and talent, but there are many more Silicon Valley opportunities.”

In fact, WME has long tried to up its digital portfolio to respond to the needs of its clients and the changing nature of entertainment distribution as consumer Internet use has exploded. That’s included a digital advertising effort, as well as one in online gaming.

Silver Lake, which has most recently looked at investing in Yahoo, it was a chance to get closer to a trove of premium entertainment content.

“You have two forces at play, ubiquitous distribution and four billion people connected,” said Silver Lake’s Egon Durban. “As that distribution has been commoditized, the only way to differentiate is through A-plus content.”

Along with the core investment, WME and Silver Lake said they will also be considering other possible deals together as they move forward.

“There is nothing we like more than handing our best partners more money,” said Durban, who will join WME executive committee and also help create a technology advisory counsel at the firm.

Calling Marc Andreessen! Actually, in an interesting factoid, it was the well-known tech investor and entrepreneur who introduced Durban to Emanuel.

But this movie has been shown before and is not the first Hollywood-tech hookup to happen. A variety of efforts have waxed and waned over the years — most of which have largely been underwhelming.

Last year, for example, Accel Partners invested $40 million in Legendary Pictures and, back in 2008, Accel, the then William Morris Agency and AT&T formed an investment consortium to focus on Southern California start-ups.

Most closely related was the 2010 deal, in which TPG Capital took a 35 percent stake in Creative Artists Agency.

Here is the official press release on the Silver Lake-WME deal:

WME Press Release_5 02 12_FINAL

According to sources close to the situation, Demand Media was deep into discussions with a private equity firm to complete a deal that would have taken the online content company private, nearing a price that was double its current value.

But Demand abandoned the effort this past week — which was born from an aggressive attempt by Boston-based Thomas H. Lee Partners to purchase the company for a price of up to $1.2 billion. That was due to a number of challenges, including complications related to its financing and the ability to retain executives in its aftermath.

The move on Demand by private investors is perhaps no surprise, and is part of a wider trend related to some Internet companies whose stocks have a depressed value relative to the worth of their assets.

Among companies having been and also being evaluated by private equity firms, whose business it is to turned the undervalued into a goldmine: Yahoo and AOL.

And also Demand, which is now worth only $605 million, a market cap that is off 65 percent since it went public in February 2011. Shares now trade at $7.25 each.

That depressed share price has been due to a number of issues, most especially changes to Google’s search algorithm to improve results. Called Panda, the changes at the search giant — a critical partner of Demand’s — has cut traffic to its major content sites and also called into question its ability to monetize its scaled editorial efforts.

Such a situation is nearly irresistible to PE firms — in this case, Lee, which approached Demand.

Several sources said that the board threw out a hefty number that it assumed would shut down any interest and the pair began talking with an initial offer to take the company private at $11.28 a share.

That equals close to $1 billion for Demand, which also has more than $100 million in cash. But sources said Lee and Demand also discussed the addition of a large loan as part of the ongoing discussions, for possible acquisitions related to a content roll-up strategy it had, which would bring the total up to $1.2 billion.

One source underscored that the board of the Santa Monica, Calif., company had no interest or intention to sell the business, but that the premium was large enough that it engaged.

The deal from Lee, which also included a strategy of splitting up the content arm from Demand’s lucrative domain-registar business.

There were also large cash-out provisions for major shareholders, as well as for CEO and co-founder Richard Rosenblatt.

Thus, the two sides engaged intensely in the last several weeks in crafting an agreement, although the devil would prove to be in the details.

One big issue is that taking Demand private was still a big financial commitment for Lee — which tried to engage some of its limited partners in the transaction — as well as other investors, including Silicon Valley’s Marc Andreessen.

That proved harder than Lee thought, said sources, with some balking at the firm’s ability to make a big enough score on the possible turnaround.

“It was hoped it would be a Skype situation, but there were worries,” said one source, referring to the blockbuster sale of the Internet telephony company by private investors to Microsoft for $8.5 billion last year. That deal was widely considered a PE home run, given the excessive premium paid for it.

Demand’s challenges increasingly worried the firm as it moved forward, sources said, causing it to reevaluate its earlier bid several times.

Also a worry: Retaining major talent, including Rosenblatt and others, after they sold large chunks of their equity.

After Lee asked for more time to complete the financing, Demand ended the talks last week.

Another source, as is typical in these endings, said it was the Lee that walked away (who knows and, really, who cares — both sides were engaged seriously).

One thing was true: “Demand was definitely at the altar, but it did not get to the vows,” said one source.

Another source noted that the board also determined that Demand’s situation was improving, and that new trends are showing that the bottom might be been reached. The company reports its first-quarter earnings on May 8, which is expected to show some traction related to its many challenges.

“There is nothing Lee could do that Demand could not do for itself,” said one person. “So throwing in the towel seemed premature for now.”

Lee declined to comment, as did Demand.

With the move, Microsoft’s Internet calling service is now no longer as much of a second-class citizen on Microsoft’s own devices.

Microsoft completed its $8.5 billion purchase of Skype last October, but until this February’s Mobile World Congress there wasn’t even a beta version of the software for Windows Phone.

As of Sunday, Skype for Windows Phone has earned the official 1.0 moniker.

That doesn’t mean that the software is necessarily on par with its Android and iPhone counterparts, however. A key limitation, as noted by the Verge, is that Skype can’t run in the background. So you can’t stay on a call — or even receive one — unless Skype is the application in the foreground of the phone.

A month ago, I posted an initial list of speakers for the 10th D: All Things Digital conference.

After a decade, the event — which is held in Rancho Palos Verdes, Calif., just south of Los Angeles, at the end of May — has attracted another amazing group of speakers, including: New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg; serial entrepreneur Sean Parker, who will appear with Spotify co-founder and CEO Daniel Ek; Zynga founder and CEO Mark Pincus; Federal Trade Commission Chairman Jon Leibowitz; LinkedIn Chairman and VC Reid Hoffman, who will appear with the social business site’s CEO Jeff Weiner; and Skype CEO Tony Bates.

Now, here’s another group of stellar speakers we’ve added to the programming lineup (and there are still even more big names to come in the weeks ahead): Oracle CEO Larry Ellison; former tech analyst superstar and now VC Mary Meeker of Kleiner Perkins; Intellectual Ventures’ Nathan Myhrvold; Pixar co-founder and Disney animation head Dr. Ed Catmull; and Visa President John Partridge.

Larry Ellison, CEO and founder of the enterprise giant Oracle, needs little introduction, as one of tech’s highest profile figures and a true Silicon Valley icon. Frankly, I think the short bio that’s on Oracle’s Web site says it all: “Larry Ellison has been CEO of Oracle Corporation since he founded the company in 1977. He also races sailboats, flies planes, and plays tennis and guitar.” There will be a lot to talk about with the voluble and always entertaining exec — who appeared at the D conference once before many years ago — from the current state of the tech industry to insights to where it’s all going. (In addition, Ellison has agreed to appear on a panel we are doing as a tribute to his close friend, Apple’s former CEO Steve Jobs.)

Another well-known tech figure is Meeker, who is now a partner at Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers, having joined the storied venture capital firm in early 2011. She focuses there on investments in its digital practice and via KP’s Digital Growth Fund, working with companies such as Spotify, Jawbone and One King’s Lane. But Meeker is perhaps best known for her long stint — 1991 to 2010 — as a star Internet research analyst at Morgan Stanley, where she brought many of the Internet’s great companies to the attention of Wall Street and beyond. She also wrote a series of groundbreaking reports on the landscape. That includes her annual “State of the Internet,” which Meeker will debut this year at the conference in an extended demo of her always riveting Internet trends presentation.

Nathan Myhrvold is also a tech legend, having worked for 14 years as chief strategist and CTO of Microsoft. But, instead of retiring, the avid inventor decided to focus on patents, founding and leading a controversial company called Intellectual Ventures, which buys them up and licenses them out (or sues if it doesn’t sell). With all the mishegas around patents right now, it’s a good time to have Myhrvold back to explain it all and perhaps to take some of the blame for the explosion in intellectual property lawsuits. (Myhrvold also co-authored a cookbook, “Modernist Cuisine,” so we hope we will also get some sort of futuristic cooking demo. Perhaps, Patently Delicious Flan?)

Speaking of tasty, the animation from Pixar over the years has been just that and it’s been one of Disney’s greatest acquisitions. Given how much Pixar has contributed to animation technology, we are glad to finally get Dr. Ed Catmull onstage. As co-founder of Pixar Animation Studios and president of Walt Disney and Pixar Animation Studios, he will discuss where entertainment and technology are intersecting and where they are not. Catmull is a geek’s geek in the industry — having also founded the computer graphics laboratory at the New York Institute of Technology, the computer division of Lucasfilm, as well as Pixar, which he did with chief creative officer John Lasseter. Get ready to talk about image compositing, motion blur, subdivision surfaces, cloth simulation and rendering techniques, texture mapping and the z-buffer. Also, Catmull’s five Academy Awards.

Lastly, it is perfect timing for bringing on John Partridge, president of Visa. With swirling issues around online identity theft, digital privacy, the future of money and the rise of upstart competitors such as Square, Partridge has his hands full at the credit card giant. One of the most neglected arenas in tech, the way we manage payments is perhaps the biggest story of the next era, especially as it relates to mobile and the rise of smartphones as all-purpose devices.

That remains the reality, even after a bunch of media reports on how a vulnerability in Java has led to the creation of a Mac botnet about 600,000 strong.

Today I’ve been getting calls from people who say something roughly in line with the following: “I thought you said Macs didn’t get viruses? What about this?”

No, I explain, I never said Macs will never get viruses or other Malware. But historically its record versus other platforms compares favorably. As is the case with investment instruments, past results are no guarantee of future performance, and let’s face it, there’s no such thing as a perfectly secured computing platform.

But let’s look closely at the facts around the Flashback Trojan causing all this consternation, and clear up what it is versus what it is not, and put the results of the incident in perspective.

Yes it’s true that some 600,000 Macs are confirmed to have been infected. The claim, first made by Dr. Web, an outfit I had never heard of, has since been corroborated by Kaspersky Labs, whose research and analysis capabilities are well-respected. More than half of the compromised machines are in the U.S., 95,000 in Canada, 47,000 in the U.K., and 41,000 in Australia.

The trojan targets a vulnerability in software that is not even an Apple product: Java. You’ll recall that Java is add-on software created by Sun Microsystems and now the property of the software giant Oracle. Rather common, it is no longer shipped as a default add-on to Apple’s Mac OS X beginning in 2011, when Apple first shipped Lion.

Through this hole in Java, certain Web sites are serving up malicious Java applets. Once inserted on the machine, the software then prompts the user to enter the password they use to run the machine. It attempts to trick the user by appearing as an update to Adobe’s Flash video and animation software.

If the user doesn’t fall for the trick, it tries something else. Here again it checks to see if there are any Microsoft Office applications on the machine, or Skype. If there are, it deletes itself.

Then it does something interesting. It scans the contents of the Mac’s hard drive to determine if certain applications are present, and if they are, it deletes itself. Among those applications are security tools such as Little Snitch, a networking security tool, or Packet Peeper, another security tool. It also deletes itself if it sees the user has installed XCode Mac developers tools, and any kind of anti-virus software.

Presuming it finds none of them, it proceeds to contact a command-and-control server for the purpose of downloading and installing more malware. That malware is being used to commandeer the Macs and generate Web traffic to boost revenue for some pay-per-click ads on Web sites, making money for someone who’s behind the scheme. Nothing surprising there.

Apple has issued a fix to Mac OS X that closes the hole in Java, and you can protect yourself by running Software Update from within your machine’s System Preferences. Today would be a good day to do that if you haven’t already. Once you’ve done this you’re no longer vulnerable to the attack.

If you’re among the 600,000 already compromised you can turn to third parties to help you remove it. F-Secure has some instructions here for determining if your machine is affected. If you’re comfortable running some commands in the Mac’s terminal program, there are also some good instructions here at ArsTechnica.

So what does all this say about the state of security on the Mac? Nothing that wasn’t true already. No system is perfectly secure, and this, along with MacDefender, amounts to exactly the second security incident worth mentioning to hit the Mac in about a year. The number of machines affected is less than 1 percent of the 63 million Macs currently in use around the world.

The conventional wisdom has often held that Macs are targeted by malware less often than Windows machines because of their relatively small market share. This still has some merit, but the fact is that Windows is also where the vulnerabilities are. Historically, Mac OS X has been substantially less vulnerable to this sort of thing than Windows.

Does that let Apple off the hook entirely? No, though to its credit, Apple had a fix ready within a week of learning of this vulnerability. That’s not exactly a pokey response, especially when the problem lies not directly within Apple’s software, but in Oracle’s.

Here’s a thought: Turn off Java in your Web browsers. You probably won’t miss it. Here’s some instructions for that.

If debates rage about the meaning of the past year in the Middle East, one would not sense much doubt among over 1,000 young regional entrepreneurs and early stage investors gathered here in Beirut. Their message is clear: There is no turning back, and the demographically young, wired, connected new generation in this region plan to take business opportunities into their own hands.

ArabNet Digital Summit is the brainchild of Yale MBA and Lebanese entrepreneur Omar Christidis. His vision has remained throughout to create a hub of shared ideas, experiences and connections among the nascent but rapidly growing start-up communities throughout the Middle East. Innovators from 22 countries are networking, competing in start-up competitions and participating in sessions familiar to any entrepreneur in the United States — e-commerce, big data, mobile, the cloud and social networks — but with sensitivity to local and regional opportunities as yet untapped.

Saad Khan, one of the few American VCs here, is a young veteran of Silicon Valley — having been a part of one of the world’s first incubators at Garage.com (which launched Pandora) and now at CMEA Ventures (where he sits on Blekko’s board). He has travelled extensively throughout the region over the last two years, and he believes that something pivotal is happening in the Middle East. “This is not about looking for ways to transport Silicon Valley here,” he notes, “MENA is a different market. Building connections with tech smart people in the Valley is great — shared, reciprocal learning both ways can be more powerful. Mobile is on fire in this region, everyone has a cellphone and smartphone penetration is deploying rapidly as pricing has dropped. Look for mobile innovation here to come from MENA, even leap-frogging the US.” He adds that some of best innovations in the cloud computing and ad analytics (like Cloudera, Revenue Science, AdMob and Bre.ad) are coming from Arabs and Arab Americans connected to the States and globally.

Moderator Alex Tohme, entrepreneur and Digital Strategist for Ogilvy One in Dubai, argues that while she prefers to run a company with the team under one roof, technology facilitates connections among skills around the region. “My ideal start-up would have tech engineers from Jordan, creatives from Egypt and have Lebanese sell it,” Alex Tohme notes. “ArabNet is great, as we’ve all connected regularly online over the last year and can meet here in real life. Talent is in many places, and many ‘hubs’ will spring up and connect with each other.”

Many of the more successful start-ups at ArabNet are regionalizing/arabizing ideas that have worked elsewhere in English. In fact, some of the leading competitors at the start-up demo competition would be familiar to the western world. Cinemoz announced significant business development partnerships with the best in Arabic TV and movie content, creating a Hulu for the region. ReserveOut is a fast-growing reservation-booking and backend for restaurants and spas similar to OpenTable. Arab Rooms allows business travelers in Saudi and beyond to find cheap, clean and convenient rooms somewhere between a Hotels.com and an AirBnB.

Habib Haddad is a Lebanese entrepreneur who created the first Arabic translation search engine, Yamli, and has created wamda.com in Beirut as the cornerstone of an entrepreneurial ecosystem of breaking information, education, research and angel investing in the region. He believes that such “copycats” are a great thing. “The Middle East and Arabic market is huge, has perfect demographics and has hunger for services for them on their terms and in their language. As success breeds success, more innovation will follow.”

Panelists and participants concur universally that the mere act of creating content and services in Arabic offers significant opportunity. Surveys have shown that over three quarters of Internet users in the region would prefer content in the Arab language, yet a tiny fraction of content online is currently in Arabic. Barry Newstead, Chief Global Development Officer for Wikimedia Foundation, noted in his talk here that on Wikipedia there are over 22 million individual articles in 280 languages. Only 100,000 are in Arabic. Denmark alone has over 200,000.

Rob Kniaz, General Partner of Hoxton Ventures out of London, who specializes in early investments in emerging markets, told me that Arabizing the web not only creates services to large markets who wish to have them in their own languages, but also opens up new, now-dormant business opportunities. “Local, Arabic advertisers have nowhere to go, so aggregate dollars are small and ad CPMs can be a few cents. Think of the pent-up demand over time as this is addressed by more Arabic content,” he notes.

Demo Competition winner May Habib founded Quordoba first as a B2B platform for businesses to outsource translation needs online, creating a network of over 400 vetted translators, many with industry expertise, to turn around documents in a matter of hours. But rapid demand is now also coming from English consumer media companies looking to reach Arabic audiences — and not only book publishers, but authors themselves, want them to both translate and distribute their books digitally and offline in the Middle East.

There is plenty of grumbling about infrastructure issues at this gathering — each country with its own challenges of logistics, delivery and regulation. But there is a special place of frustration among attendees over mobile broadband quality and cost. During a panel with executives from some of the region’s telecom giants, many participants drilled into the quality of services, the scaleability of capabilities as more smart phones come on board, and the access charges that are high by any global standards. The Twitter feed of #ArabNetME retweeted themes like, “Only Skype matters” while the executives also described their hopes for expansions into 4G and beyond.

But many entrepreneurs find opportunity in infrastructure weakness. Rasha Khouri, Lebanese Palestinian founder of diaboutique.com and dia-style.com — the largest growing fashion and e-commerce website that allows global access to some of the most innovative and hard to find fashion brands — noted: “I’m very impressed with the number of start-ups here trying to solve issues we face infrastructurally. More efficient online banking, mobile charging, billing, teaching advanced computer skills. Some of these aren’t necessarily ‘innovation’ as in ‘new technology’ — but critical for innovation to flourish.”

Jordanian entrepreneur and competition finalist Fouad Jeryes could not agree more. He co-founded Codely as the first fully online education platform for schools to teach specific programming and tech skills to high-school age kids, offering supplemental but often unique educational opportunities. “We surveyed kids and asked them what computing skills were all about and most said ‘Facebook,’ or ‘a way to play games’ or ‘secretarial skills.’ Our programs not only teach skills but create awareness of whole new worlds they really never have understood existed for them. We are lighting a fire in kids minds to make this understanding real. I believe we will help create the next generation of entrepreneurs in the Middle East, and eventually completely globally.”

Regional venture capital — from the Arab world and Turkey — is hovering closely over the ArabNet attendees. Egyptian VCs Sawari Ventures and Amman incubator Oasis 500, some of the most active regional investors with nearly 50 investments last year, split their time equally here with portfolio companies and looking for new investments. Middle East Ventures announced five new investments from the stage, including two follow-ons in music, job discovery, gaming and mobile payments. Noted Oasis 500′s Salwa Katkhuda, “I came with good expectations to be about the same as last year. But so much more is going on now in the region in terms of start-ups funded, a few success stories, more VC funds and so on.”

Will western investors be far behind? Saad Khan notes with conviction: “The answer to what will happen in five years is in the hands of the people in this room, period. And wins tend to beget wins.” He likes what he saw at ArabNet.

Christopher M. Schroeder @cmschroed is a U.S. Internet entrepreneur and angel investor. His most recent company, the social and content online health platform healthcentral.com, was acquired in December 2011. He has been active in following entrepreneurship in emerging markets, especially in the Middle East, and has written for AllThingsD on these experiences.

His latest venture, FreedomPop, continues in that tradition. Due to launch later this year, the service will offer users a variety of options to get mobile data for their phones, tablets and laptops, at little or no cost.

FreedomPop isn’t building a network of its own, but rather buying from wholesale provider Clearwire, among others.

The way FreedomPop sees things, cellular service is already becoming a commodity — so why not push things along a little faster? Its plan is to give away mobile broadband and look to make money in other ways, through a variety of other services. The company, he said, is modeled more on Internet ventures such as Dropbox and Zynga than on the carriers with which it competes.

“We call ourselves a Webco versus a telco,” FreedomPop Marketing VP Tony Miller told AllThingsD. “We’re trying to build something more interesting.”

Miller says FreedomPop has quietly tested more than 100 services under another name, winnowing down to seven or eight paid services that it plans to offer at launch.

FreedomPop will offer customers at least three options for connecting to its service at launch — a USB connector for laptops, a mobile hotspot, and a case for the iPhone that both connects the phone with data and acts as a hotspot for other devices. The company also wants to build a case for the iPad, noting that some 80 percent of the Apple tablets are used only with Wi-Fi, creating a big opportunity.

In its basic plan, FreedomPop will give users at least 1GB of data for free, charging about $10 for each additional gigabyte. Other plans will offer more data for rates well below those typically charged by the major carriers.

“We’re commoditizing it even further,” Miller said.

There’s a heavy social component to what FreedomPop is doing, Miller said. Users will be able to pool their data, with those who have megabytes to spare able to share them with friends in need. Customers will also get additional data to use by bringing along their friends, and friends will be able to see each other’s location and presence data.

Although it has started sharing a few details, FreedomPop is staying mum on a lot of issues, including how many employees it has, its list of investors beyond Zennstrom, and many of the details about its service and partners.

In addition to Clearwire, Miller said FreedomPop has a deal with another major carrier, though he declined to name that company. FreedomPop also once had a deal with LightSquared, the company whose plans to build a 4G wholesale service stalled amid concerns about GPS interference.

Despite its apparent failing, LightSquared managed to push the industry toward lower wholesale prices, something that paved the way for FreedomPop to offer its service.

“Just 12 months ago, our model didn’t work,” he said.

Whether or not FreedomPop ever makes a penny, its business model is likely to put pressure on the existing wireless carriers, who have been trying to find ways to increase prices and add new limits in an effort to pay for expensive upgrades to 4G networks.

Skype, Miller said, was originally designed be part of a bigger free broadband service, but the calling program itself proved to be so popular that the company ended up focusing on that. Zennstrom and his team later sold Skype to eBay, and he then joined a group that reacquired the firm, before again selling the company last year to Microsoft.

As for when to expect FreedomPop to begin its service, the company is only committing to “sometime this year.” I’m hearing it could be early in the third quarter.

]]> http://allthingsd.com/20120322/how-skypes-co-founder-hopes-to-make-money-giving-away-mobile-broadband/feed/ 0 http://allthingsd.com/20120309/here-come-the-first-d10-speakers-new-york-mayor-michael-bloomberg-entrepreneur-sean-parker-zyngas-mark-pincus-and-more-on-the-red-hot-seat/ http://allthingsd.com/20120309/here-come-the-first-d10-speakers-new-york-mayor-michael-bloomberg-entrepreneur-sean-parker-zyngas-mark-pincus-and-more-on-the-red-hot-seat/#comments Fri, 09 Mar 2012 18:40:29 +0000 Kara Swisher http://allthingsd.com/?p=182153 Even though our D: All Things Digital conference always sells out well in advance every year without our announcing even one single speaker (like this one, too), it’s the action on stage that truly matters.

And in 2012 — which also happens to be the 10th anniversary of the confab of tech and media titans — it’s already shaping up to be another fantastic event in terms of programming, with a lineup of onstage appearances that is sure to make some news.

There are many more very big names to come, but Walt Mossberg and I are pleased to introduce the first group of interviewees, which will give you a glimpse into the firepower we expect at D10 in late May. It is again being held in Rancho Palos Verdes, just south of Los Angeles.

The initial speakers we have confirmed so far include: New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg; serial entrepreneur Sean Parker, who will appear with Spotify co-founder and CEO Daniel Ek; Zynga founder and CEO Mark Pincus; Federal Trade Commission Chairman Jon Leibowitz; LinkedIn Chairman and VC Reid Hoffman, who will appear with LinkedIn CEO Jeff Weiner; and Skype CEO Tony Bates.

It’s hard to imagine someone we have wanted to have onstage more than Michael Bloomberg, a man of many talents and interests. He’s known worldwide as the 108th Mayor of the City of New York. First elected in November 2001 (and again in 2005 and 2009), he is also one of the most compelling politicians in the U.S. today.

But Bloomberg is also a pioneer in terms of the business of digital news and information technology, having built a huge and groundbreaking media company and information service. Bloomberg (the company) has 310,000 subscribers to its financial news and information service, and more than 15,000 employees worldwide.

There will be a lot to talk about with him, from the upcoming presidential election to the state of our government to the future of innovation, news and technology.

Also sure to be voluble is Sean Parker, the legendary Silicon Valley entrepreneur who has been on the cutting edge of innumerable important digital trends of the recent decade. In 1999, Parker co-founded Napster, the controversial and industry-changing music service, at the age of 19.

He followed up with early contact information service Plaxo, and then shifted over to his critical involvement as founding president of Facebook in its early days as a start-up, an experience which was dramatized in the movie “The Social Network.” Parker continued to found and also invest in companies, from Causes to Spotify to his most recent, Airtime, a social video company that he is doing with his Napster co-founder Shawn Fanning.

Parker will be appearing onstage with Daniel Ek, another serial entrepreneur and technologist, who started his first company in 1997 at the age of 14. The Swedish native later co-founded online music phenom Spotify in 2006, with Martin Lorentzon.

The former CTO of Stardoll and founder of Advertigo leads a company that is changing the way music is delivered and consumed by fans, against a backdrop of intense change in the industry, succeeding even as a plethora of other services have stumbled.

Also a groundbreaker is Zynga CEO and founder Mark Pincus, yet another serial entrepreneur, whose latest effort in the online gaming arena has finally resulted in his biggest success. It recently went public, and now has a nearly $10 billion market cap.

Before founding Zynga in 2007, Pincus had already started three other companies: Push start-up Freeloader in 1995; automated tech-support company Support.com after that; and early social networking site Tribe.net in 2003.

(I met Pincus when he was at Freeloader in Washington, D.C., while writing a profile of him for the Washington Post, so I have enjoyed tracking his progress since then.)

Pincus is also an avid angel investor, with early stakes in Napster, Brightmail, Twitter and Facebook.

Reid Hoffman was another early investor in Facebook, along with many of Web 2.0’s most successful ventures. Well-known in Silicon Valley as an entrepreneur and VC, and recently dubbed the “start-up whisperer” by the New York Times (although I am not sure exactly what that means), he’s also chairman of LinkedIn, the business-networking service that also recently went public (at a $10 billion valuation, too).

He’ll appear with LinkedIn CEO Jeff Weiner, who started out life in Hollywood, but soon made his way to Silicon Valley as a top exec at Yahoo. After running its media division, Weiner spent a short time at venture firms before going operational again at LinkedIn.

What it takes to build and maintain momentum as tech companies move into more mature stages, as well as how the social networking space evolves, are among the many topics on tap for the pair.

The evolution of a start-up phenom — in this case, Internet telephony service Skype — will be among the topics covered by Tony Bates, who is now a president at Microsoft, which bought it last year.

As such, he is responsible, says the software giant in its description of his job, “for overseeing the company’s direction, strategy and overall mission to become a global communications service that will eventually reach billions of users.”

That’s a tall order for Bates, who came to Skype from a top job at Cisco. Bates has deep roots (or maybe, routing?) in the guts of the Internet, having done backbone-engineering strategy for Internet MCI. The U.K. native also holds nine patents.

Lastly, given all the activity we expect will happen between government regulatory agencies and tech companies over the next few years, we felt it was key to bring in FTC Chairman Jon Leibowitz. He has been at the FTC as a commissioner since 2004, but was given the top job by President Barack Obama in 2009.

Among his priorities, according to his bio, is “promoting competition and innovation in the technology sector through law enforcement and policy initiatives; and protecting consumers’ privacy — especially while they are using the Internet.”

Uh-oh!

Leibowitz knows from regulation, having served as the Democratic chief counsel and staff director for the U.S. Senate Antitrust Subcommittee from 1997 to 2000, where he focused on competition policy and telecommunications matters, as well as a similar stint at the Senate Subcommittee on Terrorism and Technology before that.

There will be a lot more speakers to come, of course. But, so far, we think D10 is off and running fast.

]]> http://allthingsd.com/20120309/here-come-the-first-d10-speakers-new-york-mayor-michael-bloomberg-entrepreneur-sean-parker-zyngas-mark-pincus-and-more-on-the-red-hot-seat/feed/ 0 http://allthingsd.com/20120227/skype-for-windows-phone-hits-beta/ http://allthingsd.com/20120227/skype-for-windows-phone-hits-beta/#comments Mon, 27 Feb 2012 12:51:22 +0000 Arik Hesseldahl http://allthingsd.com/?p=178246 The long-expected version of Skype for Windows Phone has been released as a beta at Mobile World Congress in Barcelona. It boasts a new user experience that’s tied in to the Windows Phone interface, Metro.

]]> http://allthingsd.com/20120227/skype-for-windows-phone-hits-beta/feed/ 0 http://allthingsd.com/20120215/cisco-appeals-europes-approval-of-microsofts-8-5-billion-skype-acquisition/ http://allthingsd.com/20120215/cisco-appeals-europes-approval-of-microsofts-8-5-billion-skype-acquisition/#comments Wed, 15 Feb 2012 17:30:40 +0000 Arik Hesseldahl http://allthingsd.com/?p=174871 Networking giant Cisco Systems today appealed to European regulators to reconsider their approval of Microsoft’s $8.5 billion acquisition of the Internet calling service Skype. The EU approved the deal without conditions in October.

Cisco announced the appeal in a post to Cisco’s corporate blog by Cisco’s senior VP for video and collaboration, Marthin De Beer. In it, Cisco argues that the EU should reexamine the deal because Skype doesn’t work with other video and audio calling systems that use industry standard technologies, such as Cisco’s.

“Imagine how difficult it would be if you were limited to calling people who only use the same carrier or if your phone could only call certain brands and not others,” De Beer wrote. “Cisco wants to avoid this future for video communications,” and so has filed the appeal. Messagenet, a European IP calling service, joined Cisco in filing the appeal. Both had commented to the European Commmission during initial hearings on the deal before it was approved.

Cisco doesn’t want the merger rescinded, but rather wants the EC to impose some interoperability conditions on Microsoft. Part of Microsoft’s plan with Skype has been to combine it with its Lync video and voice calling software for businesses. Both Lync and Skype use their own proprietary calling technologies, and so aren’t compatible with other video and calling services.

Sources familiar with the matter say Cisco had sought to work with Microsoft to ensure that its videoconferencing gear would work with Skype, but was unsuccessful in reaching a deal.

Skype has about 700 million users worldwide, and before Microsoft acquired it, had sought to go public in April. For calendar year 2010, it reported revenue of $860 million and a net loss of about $7 million. Successful mainly with consumers who like its free service, the company had begun to work on a strategy meant to bring the service to enterprise users, but had suffered some service failures that gave its target corporate customers pause. The Microsoft acquisition, announced in May, happened at just the right moment.

When the deal was announced, Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer said Skype would, in time, be integrated with other Microsoft products, including the Xbox gaming console, Windows Phone for smartphones, and even its Hotmail Web email service.

Cisco’s videoconferencing business is a force primarily among large companies. It has 50,000 companies who use its gear, but it struggled to create a consumer-focused service, and shuttered its Umi product last year amid a wider corporate restructuring.

Microsoft wasn’t immediately available for comment on Cisco’s move, but I’ll add anything I get from it as soon as I have it.

Update: And here’s the official response from Redmond: “The European Commission conducted a thorough investigation of the acquisition, in which Cisco actively participated, and approved the deal in a 36-page decision without any conditions. We’re confident the Commission’s decision will stand up on appeal.”

Here’s the full text of Cisco’s post announcing the appeal:

Video to Video Communications is the Future

In the past decade video communications has moved out of the realm of science fiction to become commonplace in our homes, at work, and on mobile devices. Yet we remain some distance from the goal of video calls being as easy and ubiquitous as phone calls are today – across any network and between all devices.

Imagine how difficult it would be if you were limited to calling people who only use the same carrier or if your phone could only call certain brands and not others. Cisco wants to avoid this future for video communications, and therefore today appealed the European Commission’s approval of the Microsoft/Skype merger to the General Court of the European Union. Messagenet, a European VoIP service provider, has joined us in the appeal.

We did not take this action lightly. We respect the European Commission, and value Microsoft as a customer, supplier, partner, and competitor. Cisco does not oppose the merger, but believes the European Commission should have placed conditions that would ensure greater standards-based interoperability, to avoid any one company from being able to seek to control the future of video communications.

This appeal is about one thing only: securing standards-based interoperability in the video calling space. Our goal is to make video calling as easy and seamless as email is today. Making a video-to-video call should be as easy as dialing a phone number. Today, however, you can’t make seamless video calls from one platform to another, much to the frustration of consumers and business users alike.

Cisco believes that the right approach for the industry is to rally around open standards. We believe standards-based interoperability will accelerate innovation, create economic value, and increase choice for users of video communications, entertainment, and services.

The video communications industry is at a critical tipping point with far reaching consequences. Just three years from now the world will be home to nearly 3 billion Internet users, the average fixed broadband speed will be 28 Mbps, and 1 million video minutes (the equivalent of 674 days) will traverse the internet every second. As video collaboration becomes increasingly mainstream, multiple vendors will have to work together to enable global scale and broad customer choice.

For the sake of customers, the industry recognizes the need for ubiquitous unified communications interoperability, particularly between Microsoft/Skype and Cisco products, as well as products from other unified communications innovators. Microsoft’s plans to integrate Skype exclusively with its Lync Enterprise Communications Platform could lock-in businesses who want to reach Skype’s 700 million account holders to a Microsoft-only platform.

At the heart of this opportunity is a question about the model for interoperability. One approach allows each vendor to decide how they will interoperate. Another approach aligns the industry around open standards defined by non-partisan governing bodies. The answer will be critical to whether and how quickly video calls become “the next voice.”

When vendors implement their own protocols and selectively interoperate, they push the burden of interoperability to the customer. We respectfully request that the General Court act on our concerns and for the European Commission to ensure the proper protections are put in place to encourage innovation and a competitive marketplace.

]]> http://allthingsd.com/20120215/cisco-appeals-europes-approval-of-microsofts-8-5-billion-skype-acquisition/feed/ 0 http://allthingsd.com/20120214/on-valentines-day-ol-fashioned-phone-calls-beat-video-chat-for-long-distance-love/ http://allthingsd.com/20120214/on-valentines-day-ol-fashioned-phone-calls-beat-video-chat-for-long-distance-love/#comments Tue, 14 Feb 2012 15:10:05 +0000 Lauren Goode http://allthingsd.com/?p=174345 Turns out Stevie Wonder knew what was up when he just called to say he loved you: Out of all the means of digital communications available to us, the overwhelming majority of users plan to use a smartphone to connect with significant others today.

This is according to a new report from Rebtel, a Stockholm-based VoIP company and Skype competitor.

Of all the participants in Rebtel’s recent survey, 79 percent said they planned to celebrate Valentine’s Day in some way, with 56.8 percent indicating their significant other will be away from home today. A full 86.6 percent of those people said they planned to get in touch with their long-distance lover — which left us scratching our heads a bit about the remaining 13.4 percent who wouldn’t be getting in touch at all. But, hey, not everyone’s into hearts-and-flowers day.

When told they had to choose just one method for communicating with their S.O. away from home, here’s how respondents ranked them:

Mobile phone: 64.3 percent

VoIP calling: 15.4 percent

Landline call: 6.4 percent

Video chat: 4.6 percent

Email: 3.9 percent

SMS: 2.5 percent

Social networks: 1.8 percent

Instant Messenger: 1.1 percent

With lots of free or cheap VoIP calling options out there — Skype, Rebtel and Viber, to name a few — it’s somewhat surprising that VoIP service and video chats ranked so far below mobile phone calling, but many consumers might find it easier just to punch in a number, or simply might not be aware of some of the VoIP apps.

And it’s nice to see that face-to-face video chatting ranks somewhere above SMS text messaging, scribbling on a Facebook wall or sending an IM.

For those of you reading this with sinking stomachs — having just now realized that today is Valentine’s Day — there are a slew of last-minute applications to bail you out, or buy you some time while you search for real, live, analog gift ideas. Like Tom’s Love Letters, or Lovestagram, an Instagram plugin created by the girlfriend of the one of the founders of the popular photo app. You could also send a love-themed playlist from Spotify or Rdio.

There’s also a super-nerdy but fun Web application from Desmos that can draw personalized Valentines with an HTML5 graphing calculator. According to its creator, Eli Luberoff, anyone can choose a romantically-themed graph, add a caption, and then email or tweet it to their significant other. The premise: Math and love are the two universal languages — combined, who knows the power?

Lastly, you can always turn to 1-800-Flowers.com. Which, despite what its name suggests, doesn’t even require a smartphone. Have at it, dudes.

(Photo courtesy of Flickr/Gawen947)

]]> http://allthingsd.com/20120214/on-valentines-day-ol-fashioned-phone-calls-beat-video-chat-for-long-distance-love/feed/ 0 http://allthingsd.com/20120125/real-bonding-with-family-around-the-tv-via-skype/ http://allthingsd.com/20120125/real-bonding-with-family-around-the-tv-via-skype/#comments Thu, 26 Jan 2012 02:03:28 +0000 Walter S. Mossberg http://allthingsd.com/?p=167598 As you read these words, millions of people are conducting video chats using the popular Skype service, now owned by Microsoft. Most of these calls are low-resolution encounters between two individuals, conducted over personal computers.

This week, I tested a new device that aims to transform Skype video chats into room-size experiences, involving whole families or groups of friends on each end—seeing each other, chatting and sharing photos in high definition using TVs. It’s called telyHD, and comes from a small Silicon Valley start-up called Tely Labs. In my tests, it worked well.

This TV add-on product is a black, horizontal bar less than a foot long and under 3 inches high with a wide-angle lens and multiple built-in microphones. It installs quickly and easily—typically on top of the TV—and is controlled by a remote from across the room that can be used to place and answer calls, and to zoom and pan your image. It can connect to any other Skype-enabled device—including PCs, Macs, smartphones and tablets—but some of its advanced features require a telyHD on both sides of the conversation.

The $250 telyHD isn’t just a different way to use Skype. It’s part of the race to reinvent the television—to make it a smarter, more versatile digital device. So-called smart TVs, Internet-enabled sets that connect to the Web and run apps, are offered by most major manufacturers. The telyHD device brings added functionality and connectivity to existing “dumb” HDTVs that lack built-in online features.

There is no monthly fee or subscription required by Tely Labs, and video calls between a telyHD and any other Skype device, including another telyHD, are free. You can also make free Skype-to-Skype audio calls, and audio calls to regular phones can be made at Skype’s normal rates.

I’ve been testing telyHD in my family room on my aging Pioneer 50-inch plasma HDTV. I made multiple calls to people at the company using other telyHD units. And, with my wife at my side, in our usual seats, we made video calls to each of our out-of-state children, who were using Skype-equipped computers.

TelyHD mounts on top of even thin TVs using a built-in clamp.

On our end of the calls, we didn’t have to crowd around a laptop webcam, jump up to fiddle with the unit, or do anything different than if we had been watching TV. Our kids reported they could see and hear us both fine, even though we were about 10 feet from the camera. One person I tested with did report some audio feedback on her computer.

I can say that telyHD worked as advertised, and provided good, generally smooth experiences on every call, whether I used a wired network connection or Wi-Fi on my end. The calls to other telyHDs appeared in high definition on our screen, though the calls to computers were lower resolution, as with many Skype calls. And, if you’re concerned about rogue invasions of privacy, the telyHD has a sliding plastic shield to cover the camera when not in use.

You can buy telyHD from the company’s site, tely.com, or at Skype.com or Amazon.com. Ironically, it is hitting the market shortly after Cisco stopped selling a somewhat similar home video-calling product. Cisco’s product cost much more, wasn’t tied into Skype and carried a monthly fee.

TelyHD isn’t just a webcam. It’s a small computing device, powered by Google’s Android operating system. It contains software and Internet capabilities most TVs lack, some of which go beyond simple video calls. For instance, when contacting other telyHD units, I was able to send and receive video voice mails. And I was able to plug into the telyHD a flash memory card filled with pictures. I could share the pictures with another telyHD user and vice versa. I could even choose to copy a photo from the other party onto my own memory card. You can do the same thing with a USB drive.

(TelyHD isn’t the only way to use Skype for a whole-room view from a TV. Some of the new smart TVs, and even some Blu-ray players, come equipped with Skype software. When paired with a webcam, they, too, can conduct Skype video calls via the TV. I didn’t test these for this column.)

TelyHD can be placed on top of the TV, on a shelf, or on a tripod. It requires a broadband Internet connection, either wired or wireless, and an HDMI port on the TV, which is common on HDTVs. It mounts on top of even thin TVs using a built-in clamp that doesn’t require tools. I set up my test unit in about 15 minutes.

The system can’t be used simultaneously with regular TV-watching. Just as with a DVD player, you must switch to a separate “input” on your TV to bring it up. When you do, it signs you into your Skype account and fills the screen with a carousel of big cards representing your Skype contacts. You click on a card with the remote to place or answer a call. There are various screen layouts you can choose, including a small window that shows what you look like to others and windows that show tips on what the remote buttons do.

My only serious complaint with telyHD is that the remote control seems cheap, with hard-to-press buttons. But the company says it has designed an improved remote and will offer this new one free to existing owners. Also, as with many TV services, it’s a pain to peck out user names, or searches, on an on-screen keyboard. And I found a bug in which the unit didn’t recognize certain Wi-Fi network names, but the company fixed it earlier this week.

Tely Labs plans more versions of telyHD and more features. A pricier model for small businesses is in the works, which will allow live file sharing, and have a better camera and a keyboard. A second software version also is coming. It will allow the unit to send to the TV screen video from Apple’s iPad and will also support photo sharing from online services.

The company is working on allowing video calling among up to 10 devices, though that will carry a fee.

I can recommend telyHD for people with HDTVs who want to move their Skype video calling to where whole groups can get into the picture.

Write to Walt at mossberg@wsj.com.

]]> http://allthingsd.com/20120125/real-bonding-with-family-around-the-tv-via-skype/feed/ 0 http://allthingsd.com/20120118/greylocks-reid-hoffman-invests-in-swedish-social-gifting-company/ http://allthingsd.com/20120118/greylocks-reid-hoffman-invests-in-swedish-social-gifting-company/#comments Wed, 18 Jan 2012 12:31:16 +0000 Tricia Duryee http://allthingsd.com/?p=164486 Stockholm-based Wrapp, which was founded by former executives from Spotify, Groupon and other companies, has just received a $5 million gift from Reid Hoffman of Greylock Partners.

The company, which plans to launch soon in the U.S., has created a way for people to easily give gift cards to their friends through social channels such as Facebook.

Greylock will contribute $5 million to the company’s first round, increasing the total to $10.5 million. Creandum — along with Atomico, which was founded by Skype co-founder Niklas Zennström — invested in the round last year.

“The gift card industry has grown to a $100 billion industry, and yet very little innovation has been done around social networks and smartphones,” Hoffman said in an interview. “You put those two things together and suddenly you get a much easier way to give.”

The funding will be used to launch the service in the U.S. and the U.K. this quarter, with other markets following.

The social gifting service has three components:

First, people can learn about their friends’ birthdays or other occasions on Facebook, or through notifications on their mobile phones.

Second, users will be able to give friends gift cards that mutual friends or family members will be able to contribute to on Facebook.

Third, Wrapp is partnering with retailers and merchants which will also contribute $5 or $10 to the card.

The logic is that if many people are willing to contribute to a gift card, the gift becomes more meaningful. Retailers are willing to participate because it might drive traffic to the stores and get consumers to buy something that they normally may not have bought.

Wrapp was started 2011 by Hjalmar Winbladh and others, including Andreas Ehn, Spotify’s founding CTO, and Carl Fritjofsson, an advisor to Groupon.se.

Wrapp is currently growing more than 30 percent every week in Sweden, where it is working with more than 25 merchants. Already, 2 percent of the nine million residents there are considered active users of the service.

“It’s certainly showing a great early curve in Sweden, and we have every expectation the curve will be replicated in other places, like the U.S.,” Hoffman said.

]]> http://allthingsd.com/20120118/greylocks-reid-hoffman-invests-in-swedish-social-gifting-company/feed/ 0 http://allthingsd.com/20120112/expedia-president-scott-durchslag-resigns-suddenly/ http://allthingsd.com/20120112/expedia-president-scott-durchslag-resigns-suddenly/#comments Thu, 12 Jan 2012 21:04:58 +0000 Tricia Duryee http://allthingsd.com/?p=163348 Closely following the spinoff of TripAdvisor from Expedia last month, Scott Durchslag has officially stepped down today as worldwide president of Expedia.

We confirmed his resignation with a spokesperson, but it was first reported by Geekwire’s John Cook this morning.

The spokesperson did not provide a reason for Durchslag’s departure, adding that the role would now be filled by Expedia’s CEO, Dara Khosrowshahi.

Before Durchslag’s 14-month stint at Expedia, he was the COO at Skype and a corporate VP at Motorola. As seen in the photo on the right, Durchslag attended the  D conference in Rancho Palos Verdes, Calif., last June to announce a travel partnership with Groupon before Groupon’s CEO Andrew Mason was interviewed on stage.

Expedia’s stock was trading down about 1 percent, or 40 cents, today to $28.91 a share.

]]> http://allthingsd.com/20120112/expedia-president-scott-durchslag-resigns-suddenly/feed/ 0 http://allthingsd.com/20120106/exclusive-former-skype-exec-christopher-dean-joins-urban-airship-to-oversee-the-revenue-side/ http://allthingsd.com/20120106/exclusive-former-skype-exec-christopher-dean-joins-urban-airship-to-oversee-the-revenue-side/#comments Fri, 06 Jan 2012 12:00:27 +0000 Ina Fried http://allthingsd.com/?p=160750 Several months after being disconnected from Skype, Christopher Dean has found a new gig as chief revenue officer at mobile-notification service provider Urban Airship.

Dean, who was a victim of a Tony Bates housecleaning last summer, says several months on the beach eased the sting of his ouster. After considering CEO positions at some early-stage companies, and looking around in the mobile, social and messaging areas, Dean said he decided that the role at Urban Airship — which specializes in managing push notifications for mobile services — fits well with his background in messaging and communications.

Urban Airship is coming off a $15 million funding round that included investments from Salesforce.com, Intel and Verizon. Urban Airship also recently scooped up Jay Adelson’s SimpleGeo.

“They have a massive opportunity to drive messaging in the mobile world generally, and specifically around push,” Dean said in an interview on Thursday.

Moreover, Dean said he is excited about his new role, which includes responsibility for sales, in addition to his usual arena of business development.

As for Skype, he says he wishes the service well and hopes it will stay true to its cross-platform roots, even as it lands in the hands of Microsoft.

At $8.5 billion, Dean says Microsoft “paid a full price,” but that Redmond can still have gotten a good deal if it is able to integrate the service into its various properties, ranging from Windows Phone and Windows Live to Lync and even Xbox.

“I’ve always said I think the acquisition is a very strong and good one for Microsoft,” Dean said. “I can absolutely see why they did that.”

]]> http://allthingsd.com/20120106/exclusive-former-skype-exec-christopher-dean-joins-urban-airship-to-oversee-the-revenue-side/feed/ 0 http://allthingsd.com/20120104/cisco-kills-umi-video-conferencing-product/ http://allthingsd.com/20120104/cisco-kills-umi-video-conferencing-product/#comments Wed, 04 Jan 2012 13:49:24 +0000 Arik Hesseldahl http://allthingsd.com/?p=159668 The new year is only four days old, and already another consumer product from Cisco Systems has been put out to pasture: This time, it’s the consumer videoconferencing product Umi.

Julie Bort of Business Insider got a Cisco spokesman to confirm it.

A little more than a year old, Umi was Cisco’s attempt to get consumers using their TVs for home videoconferencing. At $600, it was expensive, unwieldy, and ran up against the fundamental problem that consumers really don’t want to talk to each other from their living rooms in high definition. Also: Skype is pretty good, and it’s free, and there are other ways to videoconference without dropping big bucks.

Anyway, due credit goes to Cisco for trying. At least this time it chose to kill the product quietly, unlike the PR blowback it got when it killed its Flip videocamera last year. And Umi is not so popular a product that there will be a similar hue and cry this time around.

Also? No more awkward Cisco TV ads starring Ellen Page. Here’s one she did for the Umi:

]]> http://allthingsd.com/20120104/cisco-kills-umi-video-conferencing-product/feed/ 0 http://allthingsd.com/20120104/a-banner-black-friday-for-some-disappoints-groupon-and-other-daily-deal-providers/ http://allthingsd.com/20120104/a-banner-black-friday-for-some-disappoints-groupon-and-other-daily-deal-providers/#comments Wed, 04 Jan 2012 10:00:15 +0000 Tricia Duryee http://allthingsd.com/?p=159500 Groupon and the other daily deal providers saw sales tank during the week of Thanksgiving, unlike traditional retailers, which reported robust sales surrounding the holidays.

Daily deal industry tracking firm Yipit reports that the daily deal industry in North America experienced marginal growth in November, as the major sites were adversely affected by the Thanksgiving holiday.

The number of deals offered increased only 1 percent while total industry gross billings grew by 2 percent during the month.

The largest provider, Groupon, saw the biggest decline.

Groupon grew 6 percent in November, but experienced a double-digit decline during the Thanksgiving holiday week.

Yipit bases its estimates on the sales of vouchers, which it tracks closely. Although Groupon no longer reveals exact sales data on its site, Yipit maintains that it is still able to make fair predictions based on historical data and industry insights.

The daily-deal declines were in stark contrast to the Black Friday experience of online retailers, which saw sales increase to $816 million on the day after Thanksgiving. ComScore said it was the heaviest online spending day to date in 2011, representing a 26 percent increase over the same day in 2010.

The holiday declines occurred despite ambitious programs by both Groupon and LivingSocial, which tried to take advantage of the heavy retail season.

Groupon stepped up its marketing efforts through “Grouponicus,” a holiday shop selling local gifts, deals and travel getaways.

LivingSocial’s Black Friday efforts included offering deals for 20 national brands, including gift cards from Electronic Arts, OfficeMax, Verizon Wireless, Skype and BlueNile.com. LivingSocial even launched a national TV campaign and radio spots to promote the deals.

But Yipit says those efforts didn’t pay off.

For the seven-day period ended Nov. 28, LivingSocial’s gross billings were down 30 percent and 19 percent compared to the two previous periods. And, because of the lower-priced national deals, the average size of its deal price fell to $28 in November from $32 a month earlier.

Yipit did not try to explain why the drops occurred around the holidays, except that they are similar to other periods, such as the Fourth of July.

But the patterns could be compared to social gaming space, which saw its usage sink during the holidays because people were not at work.

A secondary factor may be that more traditional retailers are known for Black Friday offers for others, while daily deals have historically been looked at as items you buy for yourself, and are not necessarily thought of as gifts.

Finally, Yipit said following Groupon and LivingSocial, Travelzoo, AmazonLocal and Google Offers ranked as the third, fourth and fifth largest national providers in November.

No word yet on how daily deals performed in the lead-up to Christmas in December.

]]> http://allthingsd.com/20120104/a-banner-black-friday-for-some-disappoints-groupon-and-other-daily-deal-providers/feed/ 0 http://allthingsd.com/20111128/yahoo-will-marc-or-wont-he/ http://allthingsd.com/20111128/yahoo-will-marc-or-wont-he/#comments Mon, 28 Nov 2011 23:54:01 +0000 Kara Swisher http://allthingsd.com/?p=145846

As bidders ready their offers for all or parts of Yahoo this week, a lot of the eyes for one of the more aggressive ones will likely be on well-known Silicon Valley entrepreneur and powerful VC Marc Andreessen.

That’s because he’s deciding whether or not to play a significant role — as a key board member and even possibly as chairman — in an effort by private equity firm Silver Lake to buy part of the troubled Internet giant and attempt a dramatic reversal of its waning fortunes.

Andreessen, who now runs the Andreessen Horowitz venture firm with Ben Horowitz, has visited Yahoo execs, as I reported last week, part of a weighing of whether to deeply enmesh himself in turning around the iconic Web property.

He has been, as was also reported several months ago, allied with Silver Lake on a Yahoo effort since September and worked with the firm on its purchase and then sale of Internet communications service Skype.

For Andreessen — who serves on the board of Hewlett-Packard and has a lot on his plate running a major venture firm with investments at key companies throughout the tech sector — the decision to join with Silver Lake is a tough one, given that the possibility of failure is not unheard of.

“The question is whether Yahoo can be a growth company again,” said one person close to the situation. “And that is still unclear.”

In meetings with Yahoo execs, several sources noted that Andreessen was unusually blunt about the problems Yahoo faces and its mistakes in the past. They noted as well his reticence over the amount of work required to make a difference.

“He seemed very negative on the idea of whether anyone had what it took to turn it around,” said one exec.

Another factor: Possible friction with Yahoo co-founder and Andreessen friend Jerry Yang. The pair have discussed the issue on friendly terms. “Marc would not do this without Jerry being okay with it,” said one source.

That’s because observers expect the entrance of the Netscape co-founder — who has enormous clout with engineering talent across Silicon Valley, which Yahoo dearly needs — to overshadow and even minimize Yang’s involvement.

One thing is clear: Major shareholders, who are wary of any deal that would keep the current regime in place at Yahoo, told me in multiple interviews last week that the only way they would accept a partial investment by a private equity firm — called a PIPE — would be if there was new leadership in any deal.

And the first name mentioned by almost every Yahoo investor as a key get? Marc Andreessen.

Andreessen declined to comment on any of the 53 emails I sent him asking to.

]]> http://allthingsd.com/20111128/yahoo-will-marc-or-wont-he/feed/ 1 http://allthingsd.com/20111118/silver-lake-takes-on-the-big-fish/ http://allthingsd.com/20111118/silver-lake-takes-on-the-big-fish/#comments Fri, 18 Nov 2011 23:24:19 +0000 Anupreeta Das http://allthingsd.com/?p=145829 Silver Lake Partners isn’t among the best-known investors in the private-equity business. But the firm could move a step closer if it pulls off a takeover — and turnaround — of Yahoo Inc.

Emboldened by its success earlier this year with the $8.5 billion sale of Skype to Microsoft Corp., the technology-focused firm is hoping to orchestrate a deal to buy all or part of Yahoo, right the struggling Internet company and reap a rich return in the process.

Read the rest of this post on the original site »

]]> http://allthingsd.com/20111118/silver-lake-takes-on-the-big-fish/feed/ 0 http://allthingsd.com/20111109/iphone-battery-drain/ http://allthingsd.com/20111109/iphone-battery-drain/#comments Thu, 10 Nov 2011 02:00:01 +0000 Walt Mossberg http://allthingsd.com/?p=142644 Q:

My iPhone 4S gets much worse battery life than my iPhone 4 did. I need to charge it by midafternoon, whereas the prior model easily lasted all day. Do you know why and what can be done about it?

A:

Apple says it has found some bugs in its new iPhone and iPad operating system, called iOS 5, which adversely affect battery life for some users. It is promising to release a new version that addresses the problem in a few weeks.

I have heard from several users of the new iPhone 4S and from others who upgraded their older models to the new operating system that their battery lives have degraded.

However, in my own tests and experience, I have seen no reduction in battery life on my upgraded iPhone 4, which still comfortably lasts a full day. And the iPhone 4S Apple lent me for testing also made it through a whole day, every day.

If you can’t wait for Apple’s fix, some websites have reported major improvements by changing a simple setting. You go to Location Services, then System Services, and turn off “Setting Time Zone.” I haven’t tested this and don’t know if it works.

Q:

What is the cheapest device you would recommend to be able to do Skype or any other way of doing video chat?

A:

I’d consider the $199 iPod Touch, which has a front camera, can run several different video chat apps, and requires no monthly cellular service payments.

Another option would be the least expensive Windows laptop or netbook with a built-in webcam. You could also do this with a smartphone, but then you’d likely be paying a monthly bill. Another option is a tablet capable of video chatting, but most cost more than $199.

Q:

How do I sync my new Android phone with my Mac?

A:

Android is generally designed to sync things like contacts and calendar items with online services, especially Google’s, but not with local data on either PCs or Macs.

I have generally found in testing Android phones that you can drag over large files like songs and photos from a Mac by just plugging in the phone via a USB cable and dragging over the files manually.

However, there’s a $40 program called The Missing Sync for Android that claims to facilitate syncing Android phones with both PCs and Macs. I haven’t tested it.

]]> http://allthingsd.com/20111109/iphone-battery-drain/feed/ 0 http://allthingsd.com/20111109/exclusive-silver-lake-signs-yahoo-nda-as-talks-proceed-with-bidders/ http://allthingsd.com/20111109/exclusive-silver-lake-signs-yahoo-nda-as-talks-proceed-with-bidders/#comments Wed, 09 Nov 2011 19:08:27 +0000 Kara Swisher http://allthingsd.com/?p=142381

Score one for Yahoo, it seems, getting some key private equity firms to sign its restrictive non-disclosure agreement to allow them a special peek at its business.

And now that includes Silver Lake, which has already had several discussions with Yahoo management and its board members, including co-founder Jerry Yang.

Silver Lake, which has perhaps been among the more aggressive of the possible bidders for Yahoo, had been a significant holdout over the NDA, because of provisions it felt were too onerous.

That included restricting “cross-talk” among the variety of suitors interested. Sources said Silver Lake had been discussing various scenarios related to Yahoo that might take a consortium of players to realize.

It seems it will agree to none of that, for now at least, joining several others who have also signed on the dotted line of secrecy. While Yahoo could have agreed to changes in the NDA, sources said the one Silver Lake agreed to was the same as others previously signed.

Those NDA-ready PE firms include TPG Capital and KKR. As of today, other bidders — such as Providence Equity Partners, Bain Capital, Blackstone and Hellman & Friedman — have not yet signed the document.

Yahoo had extended a deadline for doing to into this week, but firms can also get involved in later rounds of talks.

In addition, signing the NDA is not the end of the road for those who do not — Yahoo is a prominent public company and there are plenty of sources to talk to about its prospects.

But getting cooperation of Yahoo management could be critical, unless a bidder is contemplating making an unsolicited offer.

And that would be a tough road — just ask Microsoft.

Most of all, getting everyone to sign is important for Yahoo, which wants to control any sales or investment process and wants to avoid bidders taking control of its fate.

Thus, Silver Lake accepting the NDA is a big deal, since it had been considering hooking up with China’s Alibaba Group in a possible bid for all or part of Yahoo.

In addition, it has had success in a smaller but similar scenario around Internet telephony giant Skype, which it eventually sold to Microsoft for a lucrative upside.

As with Skype, Silver Lake is still working with Andreessen Horowitz, as I had previously reported. In fact, principal Marc Andreessen was present in a recent informational meeting Silver Lake had with Yahoo’s Yang.

I asked Silver Lake for comment about the NDA, bur it, um, deflected my swooping inquiry (inside joke alert!).

]]> http://allthingsd.com/20111109/exclusive-silver-lake-signs-yahoo-nda-as-talks-proceed-with-bidders/feed/ 0 http://allthingsd.com/20111031/yahoo-shares-melt-as-rumors-conflict-with-other-rumors/ http://allthingsd.com/20111031/yahoo-shares-melt-as-rumors-conflict-with-other-rumors/#comments Tue, 01 Nov 2011 00:13:03 +0000 Kara Swisher http://allthingsd.com/?p=138192

Do sale rumors make a troubled asset more attractive? Yes — except when more rumors (that those sales rumors might not be true) appear.

Welcome to just another day in the life of Yahoo, which saw its shares drop more than 5.5 percent today. Its stock declined almost a dollar to close at $15.64, after it was reported by various news orgs that Yahoo might be leaning toward no sale and a shareholder dividend, and toward taking control of its own sale of its lucrative Asian assets.

That was counter to the news — from a number of the very same outlets — touting a variety of ever more elaborate and sometimes breathless sale scenarios last week, featuring various configurations of Microsoft, Google and private equity firms like Silver Lake and others.

Silver Lake, in fact, appears to be the most aggressive in the possible bidding for all or parts of Yahoo, and has been noodling such a deal most intently, and for a long time now.

It makes sense, given that Silver Lake was successful in a vaguely similar deal that ultimately saved the Internet telephony service Skype, which it eventually peddled at a high price to Microsoft.

In fact, according to several sources, Yahoo director and co-founder Jerry Yang — also a former CEO of the company, who appears to have seized the ball firmly in the strategy game — met with Silver Lake today for an unspecified little chitchat.

That said, one source told me, “what is deeply uncertain is whether Silver Lake will do something at all.”

This is par for the course in this everything-but-the-kitchen-sink drama. Because — although it makes for a boring post, and the back and forth throat-clearing before an actual event might be entertaining — so far, not very much is actually happening as yet at Yahoo, with regard to its variety of options.

Of course, this could change in an hour. Or tomorrow, or the next day. Most of all, it’s clear that Yahoo’s board has to move in some significant way before the end of the year.

So, yes, the Silicon Valley Internet giant is doing all the sales-oriented stuff it should do with its coterie of pricey bankers (presumably being paid by the hour).

Yes, it has recently hired a talent-search firm, which is eyeing the landscape to find a willing CEO. (Even more adviser costs!)

And, yes, it is still wrangling with its Asian partners — Alibaba Group and SoftBank — over how to do a tax-free transaction (you’d think from all the sweating over it that this deal was harder to solve than the European debt crisis).

And, on schedule, activist shareholders — like hedge-fund agitator Dan Loeb of Third Point — should be attacking again soon, until a deal is done.

But according to many sources both inside and outside Yahoo, what’s happening is pretty much business as usual for this Hamlet of a company, which is lugubriously debating and weighing and pondering its fate.

I suppose it should, given the importance of it all, except it is a conundrum that has been going on for far too long at Yahoo, and under a number of different leaders.

In other words, it’s like “As the World Turns,” except with some new characters and a whole lot more amnesia.

But the slowness of a very real process is also causing deep frustration with all those dealing with Yahoo now — including possible bidders, and definitely its Asian partners.

Their gripes — which are louder than in most deals — are not surprising: They refuse to sign a too-onerous NDA to look at Yahoo’s books; there’s an irksome tone of indecision on the part of the company’s board; and, as always, the incessant leaks about all of this and more are making it worse.

One bidder has likened the company to a “melting iceberg that has a lot less time than the planet has to put its house in order.”

Another bemoaned the variety of trial balloons being floated, and noted that no movement was what Yahoo seems to do best.

That’s not exactly true, of course, so expect to see more leaks about plots and plans and meetings.

But no matter what you hear, keep in mind that having Yahoo’s fate being spun about like a top on a daily basis on Wall Street and in the media is not good for the company itself — or for its employees and shareholders.

Since it makes me dizzy — even though I like a good scoop as much as the next reporter — that’s the reason I have largely stuck to reporting about the actual internal turmoil inside Yahoo, from poor employee morale to various staff rejiggerings to more relentless brain drain.

Because while everyone fiddles, Yahoo’s real prospects of maintaining its core business melt a little bit more every day.

Yahoo is on its third CEO in four years, it has lost advertising momentum to Google and Facebook, its engagement levels are dangerously slowing, its social and mobile strategies are unclear and even its powerful email product is under siege.

And in the end, it is only these things that will matter to whoever runs the company in the end.

[Photo from Mat Honan's fantastic tweet here.]

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