One thing that was particularly fantastic from the protests over the two bills in Congress that most of the Internet was protesting over yesterday, was the plethora of creative videos that were released.

Here are two that I liked a lot — a comic one from Jest, called “Wikipedia/SOPA Survival Kit”; and a very cogent argument against the legislation, from Clay Shirky on the TED Web site, titled “Defend our freedom to share (or why SOPA is a bad idea)”:

Two of the more interesting online media properties are apparently joining up for a year-end online idea festival.

The AOL-owned Huffington Post, and TED, the massive conference organization and online site dedicated to its offerings, will jointly feature 18 of the best onstage speeches from TED’s excellent year-round global events.

The idea-thon will be called “Best of TED 2011: A Countdown of 18 Groundbreaking Ideas to Reshape the World in 2012.” A post on the Huffington Post site noted that it will feature the popular TEDTalks and combine them with “new blog posts written by the people who delivered them, examining how their ideas were impacted by being shared with a global audience.”

Out of a total of 300 possible choices, the number of speeches has been narrowed down to 18, because TEDTalks are limited to no more than 18 minutes. The talks range over a wide array of topic areas, including science, art, music, tech and more.

In an interview today, HuffPost majordomo Arianna Huffington said that the aim was to spur thinking around big problems the world faces.

“We are trying to be people to rethink everything in a super engaging way,” she said. “That is what TED is famous for and we wanted to shed a lot of light on it.”

Here’s today’s, with game developer Kevin Slavin on “How Algorithms Shape Our World”:

Showyou is a new iOS app with an imaginative interface built for social video consumption. It’s meant for spurts of time dedicated to watching videos.

The main Showyou view is a never-ending tiled video wall intended primarily for use on the iPad. Scroll horizontally or vertically and you’ll find videos shared by your friends (the organization seems somewhat random, but more recent videos are generally up and to the left, and popular older videos are down and to the right). Click on a video and it pops out from the wall and plays immediately.

Videos keep loading on one page as you move, giving the (somewhat overwhelming!) sensation that there are infinite options to watch. It might be disconcerting not to have a playlist function or a way to filter videos by any sort of topic, but Showyou does also offer a more traditional feed view that shows just the activity of other Showyou users you follow.

The app comes from San Francisco-based Remixation, a True Ventures-backed start-up which for the last four years has been working on a video curation tool called Vodpod. Vodpod still exists, but the Remixation team has in the last six months shifted almost entirely to work on Showyou, in part inspired by iPad consumption experiences like Flipboard.

At launch, Showyou only supports YouTube, Vimeo and TED videos (in part because they are available in HTML5 for display on iOS). There are also a smattering of social tools in the app, so you can click to share a video, “thank” your friends or comment on videos within Showyou. And Showyou is living-room-ready at launch–that is, if you have Apple TV 2.0 with Airplay.

Pretty cool! Also, kinda scary!

At least it is in this video Search Engine Land’s Danny Sullivan shot yesterday outside the TED conference, where the search giant was demoing the project for attendees. It was also implicitly trying to explain, again, why it is exactly that an Internet company is building self-driving cars. But whatever. Check out this video!

And now ask yourself: If push came to shove, and I needed to chase down a drug thug who’d hopped onto the NYC subway, who would I want driving my car–Google? Or Popeye Doyle?

Duh.

Here are three companies you’ll likely be hearing about again:

In recent weeks multiple people have told me about Bubbli, saying it’s a see-it-to-believe-it experience. At TED on Wednesday, the company gave the first public demo of its augmented reality application, which creates navigable photos.

Basically, Bubbli enables you to take a picture with your phone camera that shows not just what’s directly in front of you, but also what’s all around, above and below you. Then, other people can navigate the view of the world captured by that “bubble” by holding their own phones in front of them. When their phone is moved up or down or left or right, they see what you would have seen in that same direction.

At least, that’s how I think it works. The Bubbli demo was a bit raw, in part due to connectivity issues.

Bubbli co-founder Ben Newhouse gained recognition for building the Yelp Monocle feature, which was the iPhone’s first augmented reality app. It uses the phone’s built-in compass to overlay Yelp restaurant ratings onto a camera view of the surrounding area.

Bubbli, which is funded by August Capital, describes its goal as to “build the matrix by defining a new medium to express the physical world around us.”

Meanwhile,

Bluefin Labs co-founder Deb Roy used his full-length speaking slot to describe the process of surveilling his house with video cameras to capture the process of his son learning to speak. In order to analyze more than 90,000 hours of video, his MIT team created machine learning systems that helped trace the evolution of his son’s learning moment by moment.

Roy has now taken a leave of absence from MIT to extend these machine-learning techniques to social media discussions of television programs. His company, Bluefin Labs, raised $6 million in Series A funding led by Redpoint Ventures.

In a previous conversation with NetworkEffect, Roy told me that Bluefin now analyzes 30 television channels 24/7 and computes their intersection with Twitter Firehose data, Facebook updates and blog posts in real time. Bluefin’s customers are big brand advertisers, agencies and media companies, who want to better understand how ads and programs resonate with online audiences.

TED attendee and financial commentator Paul Kedrosky was effusive about Roy’s talk on Twitter, calling it the best ever.

“Epic, moving and wondrous. Generated biggest standing O in ages,” Kedrosky tweeted.

And on Tuesday,

Push Pop Press showed off a reimagined digital version of former Vice President Al Gore’s book “Our Choice” built for the iPad and iPhone with interactive infographics, videos and voice overs. For instance, one demonstration of wind energy generation can be manipulated (as pictured) by a user blowing on the device’s screen. That was a big crowd pleaser.

TEDsters (you’ll notice they’re an effusive bunch) called the demo “mind-blowing” and “amazing.”

I’ve written before about how Push Pop Press is highly anticipated given its founders’ background. Mike Matas, who showed off the app on stage at TED, was formerly a design prodigy at Apple.

Caveat: I am not at the conference myself, but have a press pass for the live stream. TED continues through Friday, and session videos will be posted online in the coming weeks.

Photo credits, via TED:

Mike Matas in Session 3: Mindblowing, on Tuesday, March 1, 2011, at TED2011, in Long Beach, California. Credit: James Duncan Davidson/TED

Today, the formal program at the famous TED conference begins, with the theme title: “The Rediscovery of Wonder.”

BoomTown will be flying down to Long Beach, where the event is now held and runs through Friday (and where I will be sadly missing the Apple iPad 2 launch in San Francisco on Wednesday).

As usual, it’s a highly diverse and unusual speaker schedule, full of artists, scientists, educators and architects.

Among the most interesting to me are speakers such as: Data artist Aaron Koblin, who is now creative director of the Data Arts team in Google’s Creative Lab; Wrongologist Kathryn Schulz, who writes a Slate series featuring interviews with high-profile people about how they think and feel about being wrong; and roboticist Dennis Hong.

And, of course, I will be paying mind to whatever Microsoft Co-founder Bill Gates has to say about his latest philanthropy efforts.

There is a lot more you can read about here in TED’s schedule.

What I like a lot about the TED event is that what’s onstage in terrific videos soon appears on its very robust Web site.

I will be taking my own videos, of course, so get ready.

Coinciding with the release of her book “Reality Is Broken: Why Games Make Us Better and How They Can Change the World” is McGonigal’s keynote tomorrow at the Gamification Summit in San Francisco, and I’ll be interviewing her onstage afterward.

While there’s been much industry discussion of gamification, it’s often about adding lightweight gaming elements to all sorts of things to entice people to participate. McGonigal, it seems, is talking about something different: Using the motivation, focus and creativity of massively multiplayer online gamers to solve real-world problems.

I’m interested to hear her apply her ideas to social games, the stripped-down mindless diversions like Zynga’s CityVille that are growing so fast and addictive to so many.

What would you ask McGonigal? Email me, comment or tweet your questions, and I’ll be sure to incorporate them.

Here’s McGonigal speaking at TED last year, calling for 21 billion hours of online gaming a week by the year 2020.

Many years ago, before Google went public, I had an unusual late-night conversation in the lobby of the TED conference with its co-founder Larry Page about the prospect, about which–despite its inevitability–he had more than a little nervousness.

That would be: Taking the search company public.

After much ruminating, Page concluded that one of the more important reasons he felt compelled to have an IPO was to finally reward Google’s employees for all the work they had done to build the company.

While I have never had a similar chat with Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg about the powerful social networking company and an initial public offering, I suspect that he would not express any such sentiment.

And it’s not because Zuckerberg does not value his staffers any less than Page did–instead, it’s because he seems to value his privacy most of all.

I know–ironic!–given how many perceive the company to be cavalier about important issues related to disclosures of personal information uploaded to Facebook by the mountain-load daily by its hundreds of millions of users.

That aside, Zuckerberg’s clear intent to keep the lid on Facebook tight–with no information about the details of financial performance and other pertinent information a public offering would require be disclosed–is clearly about to become a nettlesome issue for the company.

While that effort at preserving secrecy by staying private has resulted in little more than cute Silicon Valley media guessing games about a possible IPO, its most recent machinations are too clever by a half.

That would be the new and giant investment from Goldman Sachs, as well as a deal to get $1.5 billion of pre-IPO shares in the hands of the investment bank’s rich customers.

Aside from the appalling image that only the very wealthy can get an early shot at Facebook shares, which instantly became a press meme yesterday after the Goldman deal was announced, pretending this single investment entity–called a “special purpose vehicle”–simply feels like a Wall Street trick.

Plus, a special purpose vehicle sounds like a car that bankers use to take people for a ride.

Thus, a gaggle of rich doctors in New Jersey are treated like one blob, instead of what is plainly true to all. As the old Latin legal phrase goes: Res ipsa loquitur (the thing speaks for itself).

Of course, this strategic move is designed to keep the number of primary stockholders under 500, which is the IPO tipping point for the Securities and Exchange Commission.

Therefore, by all means, let’s do it!

Or not, because I had an intense déjà vu about all this, and an unease that it felt vaguely familiar as a negative characteristic of Zuckerberg’s leadership that seems to cling to him.

That would be the dicey origins of Facebook, which remain a controversy to this day, including garnering an entire Hollywood movie on the subject.

Anyone with a passing knowledge of Facebook’s history knows the basic question: Did Mark Zuckerberg “steal” the idea for Facebook from the Winklevoss twins, as well as sandbag their efforts, while they were all students at Harvard University?

And, more to the point, was it illegal?

The Winklevii certainly think so, continuing in their Don Quixote quest to take Zuckerberg down in a series of ever-more-comical lawsuits.

For me, the answer is a lot more complex–I think Zuckerberg most definitely screwed with the Olympic rowing twins and it was very creepy that he did.

But, in terms of breaking the law, not so much.

Of course, if you are endeavoring to always act with ethics in your career, this should not be the bar set. But in practical terms, it was most definitely an aggressive knee-capping that is not uncommon in business.

Zuckerberg has shown similar tendencies many times since then, especially around the thorny issues of privacy, where fast-and-loose behaviors are quickly followed by the I’m-sorry-I-didn’t-mean-it excuses.

Okay, fine, I get it. Business is war.

But, as it moves into a more mature place, the question now is whether Facebook should keep stressing this kind of wink-wink-nudge-nudge propensity, because it feels–how can I say this in the nicest way–icky.

Plus it will surely attract unneeded attention from the SEC, which is already looking into the opaque market for trading shares of closely held companies and where Facebook is the star attraction.

And this is to say nothing of other issues–for example, could there be insider trading problems around the buying and selling of these private shares, as one person close to the situation has noted to me?

Facebook, of course, will defend what it is doing as above board, say it’s not unfair to give special access to its bounty to the very rich in what is essentially a private IPO and wag a finger at critics like me and tell us we don’t understand sophisticated financial issues.

But here’s what I grok without a Harvard Business School degree: It feels sneaky, it feels elite, it feels opaque, and this kind of fancy financing footwork could end in tears.

Because these legitimate questions on how Facebook handles its stock will continue to dog the company until–when he is good and ready (and finances at Facebook look prettier)–Zuckerberg eventually pulls the trigger on an IPO.

It would be nice, even if Wall Street applauds his cleverness, if he didn’t keep shooting himself in the foot along the way.

In the middle of the report, I embedded a video from a recent speech Facebook COO Sheryl Sandberg made at a women-focused TED event, which I thought spoke eloquently to the topic.

In fact, the social networking giant–as well as social gaming site Zynga, social buying site Groupon, geolocation site Foursquare and microblogging site Twitter–was one of the companies without any women on its board.

Including Sandberg, although she attends its meetings (but not its executive sessions).

Here’s her TED talk, which is well worth watching:

In one memorable episode of the famous old short films “The Little Rascals,” after not getting invited to a party, the Our Gang little dudes decided to form their own group, comically called “The He-Man Woman-Haters Club.”

In other words: No girls allowed!

While it was wink-wink cute when Spanky, Alfalfa and Buckwheat huffed and puffed about keeping out Darla–which they never ever could do–back in the last century, it’s not quite as adorkable when it comes to the boards of all the major Web 2.0 hotshots these days.

That would be Twitter, Facebook, Zynga, Groupon and Foursquare, none of which have any women as directors.

As in zero.

What’s most remarkable is that most of these start-ups are run by what I consider enlightened and open-minded entrepreneurs, mostly young enough to be part of a generation more inclined to value equality and diversity in the workplace.

In addition, each of these companies has a massive base of women consumers, in some cases well over 50 percent of its audience.

Thus, it would seem logical that in casting about for those to help guide these companies, one or two women leaders might slip in.

To be fair, it’s not for lack of trying, but of completion, as was the case with Twitter’s recent addition of three new board members.

They were longtime Silicon Valley exec Peter Currie, Flipboard CEO and co-founder Mike McCue and former DoubleClick leader David Rosenblatt.

All are deeply qualified for the Twitter board, which is obviously prepping for its next stage of growth and maturity.

But in its search, the San Francisco microblogging site did not manage to cast the net quite wide enough.

While sources said at least one prominent online woman exec was considered, there were some legitimate issues with her appointment, and it was not completed.

Still, one might imagine Twitter could have tried harder to find other workable choices.

Currently, the Twitter board is made up of the new trio, as well as Benchmark Capital’s Peter Fenton, Union Square Ventures’ Fred Wilson, Bijan Sabet of Spark Capital, CEO Dick Costolo and co-founders Evan Williams and Jack Dorsey.

Things are not any better over at Facebook, which has several prominent women execs running the show, most especially its high-profile COO Sheryl Sandberg.

But, inexplicably, though she does attend board meetings, she is not yet a director of Facebook, nor is any other woman.

In fact, here is Sandberg on topic at a recent TED event for women, in an eloquent speech titled “Why We Have So Few Women Leaders”:

Instead, the Facebook board is all men, all the time, composed of CEO and co-founder Mark Zuckerberg, prominent techie and venture capitalist Marc Andreessen, investor Peter Thiel, Accel Partners’ Jim Breyer and Washington Post head Don Graham.

It is no better at three of the most prominent recent Web 2.0 start-ups, which one source attributes to the lack of woman VCs, who are often the first board members after major investment rounds.

At Zynga, the hot social gaming company in San Francisco, it continues, with an all-male board, despite a very heavily female audience for its casual social games.

That would be co-founder and CEO Mark Pincus, COO Owen Van Natta, investor Bing Gordon of Kleiner Perkins, investor Reid Hoffman and Brad Feld of the Foundry Group.

The same is true at woman-targeted–spas, spas and more spas–social buying site Groupon, which has an unusually large board for a start-up and made up of–as per usual–all men.

The list: Co-founder and CEO Andrew Mason, Accel Partners’ Kevin Efrusy, former AT&T President and COO John Walter, New Enterprise Associates’ Harry Weller and Peter Barris, former AOL exec Ted Leonsis, 37Signals co-founder Jason Fried and early investors Eric Lefkofsky and Brad Keywell.

And, much smaller, is Foursquare’s board, which is the trio of co-founder and CEO Dennis Crowley, co-founder Naveen Selvadurai and Union Square Ventures’ Albert Wenger.

New investors–Ben Horowitz of Andreessen Horowitz and O’Reilly AlphaTech Ventures’ Bryce Roberts–have observer status and both are, needless to say, dudes.

There is no question it is tough to make sure there is a good balance of qualified women leaders to men in tech–it is an issue we wrestle with every single year for the program of speakers at our own All Things Digital conference, although we are most excellent on this issue on our Web site and conference staff.

But it can be done, especially at public tech companies. Google has two women on its board of nine directors; Yahoo has three of 10; even Oracle has two of a dozen.

But a grand total of zero at the leading companies of Web 2.0 is not just a coincidence.

It’s a shame.

Tomorrow, BoomTown will post a list of great women who would be superb directors for any of these companies, but until then, let’s not follow in Spanky’s steps:

Who: David Maher Roberts

What: CEO

Why: David came to The Filter from the publishing world. The Filter used to be a music-selection engine (pre-Apple Genius). Today, after a major overhaul, David says it’s trying to be a recommendation engine that brings “the world of entertainment, filtered for me.” Now The Filter offers that service to businesses that want a recommendation engine on top of their own content services. NBC is the company’s latest major client.

Where: thefilter.com (Web site); @davidpmr (Twitter); Bath, United Kingdom (analog place)

Who Else: Apple’s (AAPL) Genius is trying to supply the service on top of its own content engine in iTunes. Pandora is in the mix too.

Five Stats You Won’t Find in His Facebook Profile:

Man of the World: I don’t know where my accent is from. I’m half French and half English and was raised in international schools in Brussels. I’m a true European.

Started Life: I went into journalism as a photographer. When I was 24, I started a couple of magazines, which didn’t go well, but I got picked up by a U.K.-based publisher (Future Publishing) and moved up their ranks.

Biggest Influence: Chris Anderson, founder of Future Media (David’s former employer) and now of TED.

Real Passion: I was trained as a jazz drummer from the age of 10 and always played in bands and things.

On His Playlist: All based around French Electro Pop. Right now, I’ve fallen in love with Owl City. It represents exactly the sort of music I grew up with in France. It just makes me smile. My staple diet is much more British. Stuff like the Twang. My favorite band of all time is Belle and Sebastian.

Bio in 140 Characters

Lives in Bath, U.K., but began life a citizen of Europe. David commutes globally so his family doesn’t have to.

The Five Questions

Break this down for me. What does The Filter do now, and why is Peter Gabriel involved?

Yeah, so Peter Gabriel was one of our founders and is an investor now. He and our CTO, Martin Hopkins, had the idea about 10 years ago that we would need some kind of tool to help us navigate the world of content when we had too much choice. Our model has changed since then, but we still do basically the same thing. Today, we are basically in the SaaS, software-as-a-service, business. Our technology gets laid on top of other businesses’ content to deliver more relevant recommendations.

A good example is Nokia (NOK). They use us to combine information about your content preferences and your geolocation to give you recommendations about events nearby.

Let’s say I’m listening to music online. How much information about me does my music service need to give you in order for this to work?

Well, what we offer to most of our customers is an anonymous service. We do a lot of personalized services too, though. We can do a good job not knowing anything about the person and just about the session they are in right now. We take input like the piece of music, how many times you’ve listened, whether or not you’ve shared it or saved it to a play list, and then recommend statistically similar content. At its core, our product is a Bayesian inference engine, so it assigns mathematical probabilities to whether or not you will like something and then computes the best fit. We blend the metadata connections with the behavioral connections, and then we filter the output.

I’m a little hazy on how you connect consumers to their data and then make recommendations. You said you do use individual-level data sometimes. Do you guys use data collected from one company to inform the algorithm that recommends content at another?

Well, there are two things we are being careful about, as you’d imagine. Generally, we use data from within an organization to inform the decisions made there. We do anonymize and aggregate all of the data and use that for all of our customers. The individual-level data we try to keep anonymous.

What does a paper publishing guy have to offer a digital recommendation engine?

I came in originally as a consultant to help them with their “come to market” strategy. I was running all of Future Publishing’s Web operations for Europe and stumbled upon Eden Ventures, who are the VCs behind The Filter. I came in, and there was already a CEO. I didn’t realize they were trying to replace him, but we worked on what they should be doing and at the end of it they offered me the job. I would say that I come in from the content and publishing world, and I know how media companies make the kinds of decisions like using a service like The Filter.

What is the eventuality you guys hope for here? Is success in ubiquity or in being bought up?

I think my goal with The Filter is to grow it to be so large that it is the glue that connects people to their content. Once that happens, I think we’d hope for a large business to be so connected to our technology that they want to own it.

The In Living Color Interview

]]> http://allthingsd.com/20100416/almost-famous-david-maher-roberts-of-the-filter/feed/ 0 http://allthingsd.com/20100411/paid-search-inventor-bill-gross-moves-to-monetize-tweets-with-tweetup-and-without-twitter/ http://allthingsd.com/20100411/paid-search-inventor-bill-gross-moves-to-monetize-tweets-with-tweetup-and-without-twitter/#comments Mon, 12 Apr 2010 04:00:45 +0000 Kara Swisher http://kara.allthingsd.com/?p=26418

Just as Twitter finally prepares to announce its plans to make money–after what has seemed an eternity–the man responsible for the invention of paid search is beating the microblogging site to the potentially profitable punch, and without its involvement.

Armed with $3.5 million in venture funding from a group of leading investors, well-known entrepreneur Bill Gross is launching a public beta of TweetUp, a keyword-based bidding marketplace akin to Overture/Goto.com, the first paid search system he created a decade ago.

Gross will be the CEO of TweetUp, which will also offer an organic search service to surface the best tweets, a move that seems to put it in competition with Twitter’s own search service.

This comes just as Twitter is aggressively moving to take over key parts of its ecosystem, which has largely been left to third-party developers.

TweetUp could now give these developers a chance to make money on Twitter without relying on Twitter.

TweetUp is backed by Index Ventures, betaworks, Revolution LLC, First Round Capital and other investors, including Mahalo’s Jason Calacanis and BuzzMachine’s Jeff Jarvis.

And TweetUp has struck a number of distribution deals with well-known Twitter search clients and Web sites–such as Seesmic, Answers.com and others–and will pay them half its revenue.

Gross has been working on the service since February at his Idealab start-up incubator in Pasadena, Calif.

He said he got the idea after he was struck by how hard it was to sort through good tweets from the TED conference, as well as how quickly a substantive tweet he posted, which was related to the global climate change event, disappeared as more recent ones replaced it in real time.

Said TweetUp in a press release about its system:

“In addition to an algorithm that combines a variety of factors to determine relevance, tweeters can bid on keywords in a competitive marketplace very similar to what now occurs at Internet search engines. This sophisticated combination of factors pushes the best tweets to the top of the results of users’ searches, allowing them to find the most compelling tweeters, and it enables serious tweeters to expand their following quickly and cost-effectively. TweetUp search will work alongside Twitter’s traditional search to provide a richer array of results.”

Twitter is also making several moves to monetize itself of late, with most observers expecting an advertising system to be announced soon.

The company has also been adding tools, which puts it in direct conflict with outside developers. On Friday, for example, Twitter announced it was purchasing Tweetie, maker of a popular Apple (AAPL) iPhone client for the messaging service.

The start-up has traditionally relied on third-party developers to build apps for the service, much as Facebook did at its start.

But Twitter management and key investors have recently been signaling that the company would be taking over key aspects of its business. This has caused tensions, obviously, in the wider Twitter ecosystem.

Thus, it will be interesting to watch how Twitter reacts to what Gross is doing with TweetUp.

(BoomTown also did an exclusive video with Gross about it all, which is posted here, as well as a tour of Idealab.)

Here are a few screenshots of TweetUp (click on images to make larger):

TweetUp Client

Answers.com

Business Insider

Business Insider Search #1

Business Insider Search #2

And here’s the official press release from TweetUp:

TweetUp Establishes Twitter Marketplace Where the Best Tweeters Rise to the Top

Unique Combination of a Relevance Algorithm and Bidding System Increases Number of Followers and Improves the Quality of Twitter Searches

PASADENA, CA–APRIL 12, 2010–TweetUp, Inc., announced today a new Twitter marketplace designed to showcase the world’s best tweeters and enable them to grow a highly targeted following. TweetUp is a new patent-pending platform that combines the popularity, relevance and influence of tweets and tweeters with a bid-based marketplace. Major partners, including leading Twitter search clients and top web sites, will display the results, enabling users to easily find the best tweets and tweeters in the world.

TweetUp was founded by Bill Gross at Idealab, where he also devised the first model for paid internet search, Overture/Goto.com, over a decade ago. TweetUp is backed by Index Ventures (investor in Skype, last.fm, Myheritage and Playfish), betaworks (investor in Twitter, TweetDeck, Bit.ly), Revolution LLC (founded by Steve Case, investor in Zipcar, LivingSocial, Everyday Health), First Round Capital (investor in Mint.com, StumbleUpon, CoTweet), Jason Calacanis (founder of Mahalo) and Jeff Jarvis (founder of BuzzMachine).

“Twitter has such tremendous potential as a real-time information network far beyond what has been realized to date,” said Bill Gross, Founder and CEO of TweetUp. “For most people, though, 80% or more of the tweets that fly by them when they’re searching for something are useless noise. For serious tweeters, the task of attracting interested and relevant followers is equally daunting. TweetUp will change all of that.”

TweetUp has addressed the needs of both users and tweeters in a single search mechanism. In addition to an algorithm that combines a variety of factors to determine relevance, tweeters can bid on keywords in a competitive marketplace very similar to what now occurs at Internet search engines. This sophisticated combination of factors pushes the best tweets to the top of the results of users’ searches, allowing them to find the most compelling tweeters, and it enables serious tweeters to expand their following quickly and cost-effectively. TweetUp search will work alongside Twitter’s traditional search to provide a richer array of results.

Danny Rimer, a partner with Index Ventures, TweetUp’s lead investor, said, “TweetUp is an opportunity to bring real-time information to the entire Web, and to do it in a way that creates value for everyone concerned. We feel that TweetUp can dramatically improve both the utility and ubiquity of Twitter, and in doing so build a monetization mechanism for real-time search that rivals that of traditional Internet search.”

TweetUp’s search results will be available to hundreds of millions of individuals through revenue-sharing distribution agreements with leading Twitter clients, including one of the leading multi-platform clients, Seesmic, one of the leading Android clients, Twidroid, the leading source of tweets, TwitterFeed, and the leading social media authority and influence ranking system, Klout, as well as popular web sites including BusinessInsider.com, Answers.com, and PopURLs.

Together, these clients and web sites will bring TweetUp search results to more than 40 million unique users per month and serve more than half a billion impressions per month.

“Increasingly, people looking for answers want more than just black and white facts, but also real-time insights relating to the issues surrounding their questions,” said
Bob Rosenschein, Answers.com CEO. “We are at the forefront of meeting that demand, and partnering with TweetUp is an exciting new way to add value to the
Answers.com user community.”

“I have been sharing in social networks and blogs for ten years and realized the power of having a true community,” said Loic Le Meur, CEO of Seesmic. “This is why
I was immediately attracted to working with Tweetup. People who are serious about sharing and having a community around themselves are also often those who have the most interesting ideas to contribute.”

“We believe that the impact of the real-time web, and of Twitter in particular, has only just begun,” explains John Borthwick of betaworks, a major investor in TweetUp, as well as in TweetDeck and Bit.ly. “Because TweetUp will be accessed on mainstream websites across the world, Twitter will be introduced to hundreds of millions of new people. Furthermore, these new users will experience thoughtful tweets, in context, targeted to them according to their areas of interest, and delivered from serious tweeters who care about building a passionate audience.”

“When we created AOL 25 years ago, we believed in the power of community and built a significant company around it,” said Steve Case, AOL co-founder and founder
of Revolution LLC. “Twitter is proving the power of community continues to thrive, and I am excited to be backing Bill Gross and TweetUp as they innovate in the social
media space by making Twitter more useful to a mainstream audience.”

With today’s announcement, TweetUp launches a public beta period in which tweeters can open an account and begin adding search keywords to their profile. For the first 1000 who sign up, the company is providing a $100 in credits to allow tweeters to see how TweetUp’s network can improve their standing in search resultsand attract more followers.

]]> http://allthingsd.com/20100411/paid-search-inventor-bill-gross-moves-to-monetize-tweets-with-tweetup-and-without-twitter/feed/ 1 http://allthingsd.com/20100401/time-warner-gets-the-ipad-seal-of-approval/ http://allthingsd.com/20100401/time-warner-gets-the-ipad-seal-of-approval/#comments Thu, 01 Apr 2010 18:40:10 +0000 Peter Kafka http://mediamemo.allthingsd.com/?p=18035 Many Web publishers are scrambling to make some or all of their sites “iPad ready,” which basically means stripping their homepages of Adobe’s (ADBE) Flash. Some, but not all, are being rewarded with a shout-out from Apple, via a page that identifies “iPad Ready” sites.

Here’s the list of publishers Apple (AAPL) says “deliver content that looks and functions beautifully on iPad”:

CNN
Reuters
New York Times
Vimeo
Time
Major League Baseball
The White House
Virgin America
Sports Illustrated
Flickr
People
TED

Apple acknowledges that this isn’t a complete list of iPad-compatible sites–both NPR and The Wall Street Journal, for instance, are overhauling their pages for the gadget–and it’s unclear whether Apple has any criteria for calling out these sites in particular. (For the record, I’m told that All Things Digital should work just fine, too).

But for whatever reason, the list appears to be particularly heavy on sites owned by Time Warner (TWX). CNN makes the cut, as do Time Inc. magazines Time, People and Sports Illustrated.

One other note: Check out the description Apple uses for each of the sites it calls out and you’ll see that “iPad-compatible” doesn’t mean “completely free of Flash.”

In many cases, Apple can’t say that all of the sites’ videos will play on the gadget. Just “most” videos, or “recently published” ones.

]]> http://allthingsd.com/20100401/time-warner-gets-the-ipad-seal-of-approval/feed/ 0 http://allthingsd.com/20100324/viral-video-eat-pray-love-plus-elizabeth-gilberts-doomed-ted-speech/ http://allthingsd.com/20100324/viral-video-eat-pray-love-plus-elizabeth-gilberts-doomed-ted-speech/#comments Wed, 24 Mar 2010 09:53:07 +0000 Kara Swisher http://kara.allthingsd.com/?p=25877

While the film adaptation of Elizabeth Gilbert’s hit book, “Eat Pray Love,” has exactly zero rock-em-sock-em blockbustery feel, unlike all the others being released this summer, its trailer is gaining in popularity online.

The movie, which stars Julia Roberts, is about a woman in search of, well, herself, via copious travel.

Here’s the video of the trailer, as well as a speech Gilbert gave at TED in 2009 about creativity and genius and how the success of her book and, now, movie, might mean she is doomed:

]]> http://allthingsd.com/20100324/viral-video-eat-pray-love-plus-elizabeth-gilberts-doomed-ted-speech/feed/ 3 http://allthingsd.com/20100305/almost-famous-mehdi-maghsoodnia-of-bookrenter/ http://allthingsd.com/20100305/almost-famous-mehdi-maghsoodnia-of-bookrenter/#comments Fri, 05 Mar 2010 09:35:13 +0000 Drake Martinet http://voices.allthingsd.com/?p=22116 A feature wherein All Things Digital looks at up-and-coming and innovative start-ups you should know about.

This week: We took a coffee break (and made an interview and video) with Mehdi Maghsoodnia, CEO of BookRenter, a company that claims to be “numero uno” in online textbook rentals, a bone of contention between it and larger competitor Chegg.

Who: Mehdi Maghsoodnia

What: Chief Executive Officer

Why: BookRenter is in a battle with competitor Chegg. Mehdi freely admits that Chegg holds more market share, but says his model has the staying power to outlast it. Presumably, Chegg begs to differ.

Where: bookrenter.com (Web site); @bookrenter (Twitter); Campbell, Calif. (analog place)

Who else: BookRenter is in a battle for the hearts and minds of college students everywhere. On one side, it competes with college bookstores, Amazon (AMZN), and a trial-rental program from Barnes & Noble (BKS). Once a customer goes the way of rental rather than purchase, BookRenter has to fight with Chegg, the textbook service now led by longtime Silicon Valley exec Dan Rosensweig and whose eggshell has been stuffed with $144 million in venture funding.

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Five Stats You Won’t Find in His Facebook Profile

Worst Job Ever: I used to sweep the grounds for a hotel in San Francisco, called Roberts at the Beach Motel (it’s still there). It was right next to the zoo, and the wind would blow all the dust, sand and junk into the hotel, and my job was just to sweep the floor. That was not at all fun.

Geek Crush: I’m a fanatic in terms of business models, and I track the careers of people I admire. I keep track of Maynard Webb, who used to be the COO at eBay (EBAY). I track people with clever minds and clever ideas.

Gadget of the Moment: I love my Apple (AAPL) iPhone–for the first time recently I traveled without my laptop. It was great. The app environment is fascinating. If you look on my phone, the apps are in two distinct sections. One is all the games that keep my kids busy, and the second category is functional things for me. News feeders, banking…and I watch all kinds of videos on the TED app when I’m traveling.

International Businessman of Mystery: I was born in Iran. Then, we moved to London. I traveled a lot and lived all over. I realized early on that a consequence of that is I’m culturally very unmarketable. It’s pretty impossible to market to me. Which, by definition, means I’m not the greatest marketer, because I don’t know what makes people want to buy things.

It’s All in the Family: I sit on the board of Nature Air, an airline in Costa Rica. It’s the first regional green airline, and it’s the family business.

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Bio in 140 Characters

Mehdi grew up global, but landed in Silicon Valley. He spent time as a VC then moved to head CafePress. Now he’s CEO at BookRenter.

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The Five Questions

Let’s get right into this. How are you guys different from Chegg?

When I was at CafePress, we were the biggest online t-shirt retailer in the world. We spent a lot of time getting shirts in from China, organizing them, putting them in bins, tracking them, printing them and so on. I observed how much of our management bandwidth and resources went into back-end fulfillment as a retailer. I came out of CafePress and was sitting on the venture side when I saw Chegg and BookRenter. I said, “These are two teams satisfying specific demands out there, but with totally different business models.”

Chegg was trying to do everything–taking on warehousing, buying the books, etc. There were many companies doing that, by the way. Amazon among them. The BookRenter team was clever, and they said, “Let’s flip this on its head.” Investing in a book as stock is a losing venture, because your individual investment on the book loses value over time. You also lose money on leasing the warehouse, forklifts, all of it.

At BookRenter, we have all kinds of partnerships that handle those logistics, including recent partnerships with school bookstores themselves. We are in a cyclical business, where maybe four months out of the year we are handling books, and, in the other eight, the books are in the students’ hands. Our costs adjust within those cycles as quickly as changes happen.

How do you track and price all the books when you don’t own them?

So, most of the business is done today on an inventory capitalization model. That is to say, you have a position on what books you have. Everyone buys books and then has to find a match for that book in a rental relationship.

BookRenter takes a very different approach. Our software system creates rental relationships in real time, which means it figures out prices and availability for every new rental. If you come to us and say you want to rent a biology book, the system turns around and queries our suppliers and decides who will be able to get us that book at the lowest overall cost. Our cost algorithm is complex and takes into account things like the reliability of the provider for meeting its commitment on that book.

Once the determination has been made, only then do we take a position on that book and add it to inventory. I can offer as many books as [Chegg] or anyone else, because I’m offering that book virtually. I only pay when I have a paying customer.

You’ve got a lot to say about how you are going to gain on Chegg. Is this really a market that is worth the fight?

Oh yes, the market is growing very fast. We saw 300 percent growth year over year in January. The textbook business is a $9-billion-a-year industry. Someday we hope that a third of that is rentals. The value proposition is there. Renting is cheaper than buying. It’s even cheaper than buying used. Eighteen months from now, we are still going to be a smaller player, but we have the longevity.

Do you do this for the competition, or is it something else that drives you?

I’ll be honest. The best possible outcome for us is that Chegg stays prosperous. Both of us are fighting the same battle in terms of converting some of the buying market to a renting market. So, we are all in the same market development boat. But what I really like about this is the process. I see our business as a 0.9 version, so there are so many things we can still work on.

Organizationally and market-wise, it’s a very exciting thing to design a system for. You have to balance the needs of all kinds of partners. It’s like playing multidimensional chess with very good players. It’s just fun. Also, the growth factor is great. If I had to solve these problems in a business that wasn’t growing, that’s not a lot of fun.

I’ve been there man, that’s deadly. You put a lot of intellectual work into it and you can’t get anyone to care.

As a current student, I’ve got to ask: How have you dealt with undoubtedly the biggest customer problem–highlighting?

[Laughs] You know, that was a real issue early on. Our early policy was no highlighting at all, of any kind. It turned out that students didn’t seem to mind [the highlighting], and in fact many liked it. It was like someone had already done the work of showing them the important parts of the book. Today, we will only charge for damage if there’s been a real issue, like, someone spilled water all over the book and really ruined it.

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The In Living Color Interview

]]> http://allthingsd.com/20100305/almost-famous-mehdi-maghsoodnia-of-bookrenter/feed/ 0 http://allthingsd.com/20100227/weekend-update-02-27-10-get-to-high-ground-edition/ http://allthingsd.com/20100227/weekend-update-02-27-10-get-to-high-ground-edition/#comments Sat, 27 Feb 2010 22:14:36 +0000 Drake Martinet http://digitaldaily.allthingsd.com/?p=35741 Everyone up here in the Bay Area is still a little on edge from all the earthquake/tsunami talk this weekend. People here know that the devastation seen in Chile could just as easily be visited along any of our own dozen major faults. Weekend Update’s heart goes out to those coping with disaster in Santiago, Concepción and the rest of the Bay Area’s doppelgänger cities in Chile. Weekend Update is definitely going to text some relief funds down that way.

Kara was full-tilt geek this week with an early post from TED’s viral video division. It seems Bill Gates told the assembled geekerati his one true wish. Wanna know what it is? We guess you’ll have to watch the video to find out. Kara then gave us some perspective on Yahoo (YHOO) playing social catch-up with its recent Twitter deal. Everyone may be muttering “too little, too late,” but it could be worse. The Internet giant could have tried to release its own social network. Kara then jetted off to sunny Mexico to give a keynote at SISCTI, Mexico’s major infotech conference. We’re hoping she brings us back a sombrero.

Everyone is chattering about Web-delivered video this week, but Peter brought some real perspective to all the racket. It looks like Walmart (WMT) is coughing up $100 million for Vudu in its theoretical bid to compete with the iTunes store. That’s a way bigger ticket than had been expected, but it looks like the world’s largest retailer is getting some serious skin in the game. Midweek, Peter brought us a story of triumph from the world of newspapers. It seems that the financial situation at the Washington Post (WPO) was “less bad” last quarter. The bleeding has slowed, but the patient is still in the ICU. Peter rounded things out with a dose of reality for Apple’s (AAPL) otherwise magical rhetoric. Billions of songs, billions of apps and download volume that leaps every quarter do not equal impressive profits, apparently. Don’t feel too bad for Steve though. We all know songs and apps are just fuel for the iFire.

Digital Daily started off the week all aflutter with news that Twitter is pumping out 600 tweets per second. That means if all those tweets are paced end to end, multiplied by 60 seconds in a minute, 60 minutes in an hour and 24 hours in a day, Twitter still isn’t making any money. After a slew of posts early in the week, John tied up Palm coverage with some thoughts on “Project Jumpstart.” It seems Palm (PALM) should be thinking about a different sort of project, maybe one that involves getting bought. Finally, in everyone’s favorite category, John covered some more Apple speculation in the iPad afterglow. It looks like analysts are expecting a refreshed iPhone that will cost less and potentially have some new gesture-based features.

Walt’s column was of particular interest this week, especially if you’ve got finances to deal with or a certain gray-bearded uncle to pay in mid-April. Walt gave the rundown on the latest Mac version of Quicken. The Mac-Quicken relationship has always been tricky, and people (Weekend Updaters included) have used some tricky workarounds to keep using the Windows version of Intuit’s (INTU) popular finance program. Sadly, the latest version for Mac doesn’t really close the gap, and Walt wasn’t too up on making the switch. Mossberg’s Mailbox was full of magicJack mail this week–sort of like the leftovers from last week’s wild VOIParty. It turns out that it’s not the best idea to try to fax over the magicJack, even if it does sort of work for some people some of the time. That settles it. Weekend Update is gonna get one and hook it up to our Clapper-activated file-server.

Finally, Katie brought the cloud down to ground level this week with a review of Pogoplug, a device that lets you host and stream your files from a home hard drive over the Internet to your devices. You can be your own cloud, sort of, and Katie said she liked it just fine. Low-level clouds…maybe we can get the term fog computing to catch on.

Stay safe, be well, and have a look at the some of the stuff coming out of Chile this weekend. This time it was Santiago, but AllThingsD HQ sits on the ring of fire too.

]]> http://allthingsd.com/20100227/weekend-update-02-27-10-get-to-high-ground-edition/feed/ 0 http://allthingsd.com/20100224/viral-video-bill-gates-ted-talk-on-innovating-to-zero-emissions/ http://allthingsd.com/20100224/viral-video-bill-gates-ted-talk-on-innovating-to-zero-emissions/#comments Wed, 24 Feb 2010 13:15:59 +0000 Kara Swisher http://kara.allthingsd.com/?p=24787

One of the more remarked-upon talks at the recent TED conference was by Microsoft co-founder and mega-philanthropist Bill Gates.

Rather than talk about his work around AIDS and other global medical issues like malaria (last year he released a box full of mosquitoes at the conference to make a point), or education reform, he focused, surprisingly, on the future of energy and the need to reach zero carbon emissions by 2050.

In fact, the Microsoft (MSFT) leader said that if he had one planetary wish, this would be it. Well, also someday beating Google (GOOG) in search, but Gates managed to keep that to himself.

All kidding aside, it was a very interesting talk, and here is the video of the speech by Gates:

[Photo Credit: James Duncan Davidson for TED]

]]> http://allthingsd.com/20100224/viral-video-bill-gates-ted-talk-on-innovating-to-zero-emissions/feed/ 5 http://allthingsd.com/20100216/karas-ted-video-no-sarah-silverman-cussing-but-shocker-rob-glaser-touts-bill-gates/ http://allthingsd.com/20100216/karas-ted-video-no-sarah-silverman-cussing-but-shocker-rob-glaser-touts-bill-gates/#comments Tue, 16 Feb 2010 13:18:55 +0000 Kara Swisher http://kara.allthingsd.com/?p=24458

For goodness sakes, the controversy over Sarah Silverman’s appearance at the tail end of the TED conference last week can be distilled to this:

You either like the gutter-mouthed comic or you don’t.

BoomTown does and thinks the whole bit about adopting a mentally-challenged kid was very funny, although decidedly sick. If you listen to even a tiny bit of her act, this is pretty much what you might expect to hear from Silverman.

But, we press on!

Here’s a video I did from the event, the highlights of which were Nathan Myhrvold’s demo in which he lasered mosquitoes, Jake Shimabukuro’s masterful ukulele playing, chef Jamie Oliver’s wish for better nutrition and a lessening of obesity, and, perhaps, Microsoft (MSFT) co-founder and now megaphilanthropist Bill Gates’s interesting focus on stopping all CO2 emissions stat.

You can see the Oliver video below, and the rest of the talks soon on the TED site.

And here’s my video, in which I take a tour around TED and interview a variety of folks, including former RealNetworks (RNWK) CEO Rob Glaser–who used to work for Microsoft–praising Gates’s speech:

]]> http://allthingsd.com/20100216/karas-ted-video-no-sarah-silverman-cussing-but-shocker-rob-glaser-touts-bill-gates/feed/ 2 http://allthingsd.com/20100212/googles-brin-says-he-is-always-optimistic-about-china-solution/ http://allthingsd.com/20100212/googles-brin-says-he-is-always-optimistic-about-china-solution/#comments Fri, 12 Feb 2010 19:47:34 +0000 Kara Swisher http://kara.allthingsd.com/?p=24416 Please see this disclosure related to me and Google.

Google’s Sergey Brin took the stage at the TED conference this morning for a brief discussion about the search giant’s recent declaration that it will pull out of the country if it has to continue to censor results.

Google has been quiet about its plans in China since it said a month ago that it was contemplating leaving the country over a range of issues centered on onerous censorship laws there.

Explaining Google’s “new approach” to China in a Jan. 12 blog post, chief legal officer David Drummond wrote:

“We have decided we are no longer willing to continue censoring our results on Google.cn, and so over the next few weeks we will be discussing with the Chinese government the basis on which we could operate an unfiltered search engine within the law, if at all. We recognize that this may well mean having to shut down Google.cn, and potentially our offices in China.”

While not adding a lot more to what has been said, Brin did shed some light on his own and Google’s thinking.

While the Google (GOOG) co-founder would not directly blame the Chinese government for the security attacks on his company, or for others, he did note that the entity was so huge that there was no telling where they came from.

“It might represent a fragment” of the government, he said, although he did not give any specifics, in a short Q&A interview with curator Chris Anderson at TED, which has been taking place this week in Long Beach, Calif.

Brin also noted that he wished all those who underwent cyberattacks, as Google claims it has, would go public.

“If all companies came forward, we’d all be better,” he said.

As to where Google goes from here, after declaring its “intent” to withdraw from China, Brin said the company would definitely not censor political results in the future.

That said–nearly a month after the original statement, Google does continue to censor search results in China.

This will end, Brin seemed to indicate, although he did allow that other kinds of censorship around porn or gambling barred by Chinese law, similar to what Google does in other countries, would remain in place.

Brin said he did not know how the situation would turn out or if Google would come to some kind of compromise.

But he said he is “always optimistic” about some kind of detente with China.

“We want to find a way to work within the Chinese system,” said Brin, but without having to censor political results. “A lot of people might think I am naive and that might be true.”

]]> http://allthingsd.com/20100212/googles-brin-says-he-is-always-optimistic-about-china-solution/feed/ 2 http://allthingsd.com/20100211/microsoft-demos-live-fish-throwing-in-bing-maps-at-ted/ http://allthingsd.com/20100211/microsoft-demos-live-fish-throwing-in-bing-maps-at-ted/#comments Thu, 11 Feb 2010 23:55:32 +0000 Kara Swisher http://kara.allthingsd.com/?p=24393

Well, BoomTown did not expect Microsoft to toss fish and bench-press crabs during its demo today at the TED conference, but that’s just what it did.

Debuting a series of eye-candy features in its ongoing oneupmanship with Google (GOOG) in the increasingly competitive mapping arena, Bing Maps architect Blaise Aguera y Arcas unveiled a new series of enhancements to its spatial search offerings, some of which are available today.

I am not sure which tech giant is going to prevail in the online mapping battle, but it is certain that consumers will be enjoying some innovative advances over the next few years.

Coolest new ones from Microsoft: Indoor panoramas to move mapping inside and real-time video overlays to maps.

In the demo, a Microsoft (MSFT) team was at the famous Pike Place Market in Seattle showing off some fish-tossing and giant crabs there back to Long Beach, Calif., in real time as Aguera y Arcas showed off the feature.

Here’s a quick summary of what Microsoft demonstrated:

Streetside Photos application (in technology preview): Available today, this tech preview mines geo-tagged photos from Flickr, and relates them to the Streetside imagery in Bing Maps. As more people contribute and share imagery, we can reunite those photos with the location where they were taken. This application will also enable the layering of historical imagery, so people can go back in time and see a location as it existed decades prior.

World Wide Telescope Integration: We’re not just stopping at the street, and are excited to announce our vision for the initial integration with the World Wide Telescope, a project out of Microsoft Research. Once launched, you will literally be able to
“walk” outside in Streetside mode, look up, and see what’s above–way above, with constellations coming to life.

Indoor Panoramas: At the same time as we’re getting more “universal” with World Wide Telescope, we’re also getting more intimate. Today, we’re showing the first results of our indoor panoramas work. This will provide an experience identical to Streetside, but won’t be limited to places you can take a vehicle. Whether you’re exploring Seattle’s Pike Place Market, or your favorite theme park, Bing Maps will give you the most immersive experience of the place.

Video Overlay Technology: Today, Blaise also demonstrated a preview of our new video overlay technology, which enables real-time video to be overlaid seamlessly on street-level imagery, adding another dimension to the mapping experience. In the coming year, we think you will be pleasantly surprised with how far Bing takes this new technology. Stay tuned.

And here is a video demo of Streetside Photo application and WorldWide Telescope integration, but not indoor panoramas and video overlay technology:

]]> http://allthingsd.com/20100211/microsoft-demos-live-fish-throwing-in-bing-maps-at-ted/feed/ 1 http://allthingsd.com/20100210/boomtown-heads-to-ted-and-promises-no-pretentious-tweets/ http://allthingsd.com/20100210/boomtown-heads-to-ted-and-promises-no-pretentious-tweets/#comments Wed, 10 Feb 2010 08:09:18 +0000 Kara Swisher http://kara.allthingsd.com/?p=24239

What is it about TED, the iconic conference founded an astonishing 25 years ago, that gets so many people who don’t go in a lather?

Read one tweet from Mathew Ingram of GigaOm, for example: “and so it begins–all the pretentious and annoying tweets from people at TED, just to prove that they are that special :-)”

Yes, that’s it! Maybe because they did not get enough hugs as kids! (Personally, I would tweet from, like, a fist-pumping party with the “Jersey Shore” cast to prove I was special.)

All kidding aside and back to TED, I suppose it could be the high cost of the ticket or the fact that it is hard to get in at all for any price, since it sells out so quickly, or that the presentations from the stage by some of the world’s top thinkers are so incredibly highbrow.

All true. Nonetheless, TED still represents one of the best venues for deep and varied thinking on a wide range of important issues, even if there are moments that might seem twee and elitist to some.

TED2010 officially opens tomorrow morning in Long Beach, Calif., although events at the conference actually began last night. Speakers run the gamut and will talk on a wide range of topics, from poverty to clean tech to global warming to ukulele playing.

There are celebrities and billionaires in the crowd too, which also includes a lot of Silicon Valley’s movers and shakers. All that Davos-in-California vibe is what probably irks people, but it is a lot less annoying than you might imagine.

In fact, as someone who runs another conference–D: All Things Digital–with Walt Mossberg, I can appreciate how well TED is managed, run and presented.

To the naysayers, I would also have to point out this: The entire content of TED–as well as other TED events across the globe–pretty quickly gets put up on the Web, on one of the better designed and more innovative Web sites out there, for all to experience. Embeddable and free.

While it might not be the same as schmoozing real time, if it is quality content you care about–and I do–then anyone with Internet access can eventually see it.

And it is indeed well worth exploring that nonprofit conference–originally created by Richard Saul Wurman, using the acronym for “Technology, Entertainment and Design,” and now run by Chris Anderson–digitally.

So even if you are overly annoyed that you aren’t there–Chris, you might want to invite Sarah stat anyway to stop her from writing another heartbreaking diatribe next year–see it for yourself online from the TEDTalks site.

Here is one video of activist Eve Ensler, for example, talking about “girl cells” at TEDIndia, which is just amazing to hear–and there are plenty like it to choose from:

]]> http://allthingsd.com/20100210/boomtown-heads-to-ted-and-promises-no-pretentious-tweets/feed/ 2 http://allthingsd.com/20091029/kara-visits-tedmed-featuring-synthetic-skin-and-heart-scanning-iphones/ http://allthingsd.com/20091029/kara-visits-tedmed-featuring-synthetic-skin-and-heart-scanning-iphones/#comments Thu, 29 Oct 2009 09:05:11 +0000 Kara Swisher http://kara.allthingsd.com/?p=20071

Can your cellphone check your blood sugar? What does a wireless BandAid do? Is my pill networked? Can a videogame cure cancer? Will a robot care for my mom? Can an Apple (AAPL) iPhone save my life?

And, of course, does synthetic skin feel gross?

The answer to the last question is yes, but it is also pretty astonishing to touch, as noted in one of the many tech-heavy talks at TEDMED, the medical and health-care conference, which has returned after a five-year hiatus, to Hotel Coronado near San Diego.

The four-day gathering is being helmed by RIchard Saul Wurman, the legendary creator of the original Techonology, Entertainment and Design conference. After he sold it, Wurman struck a deal to license the name for this independent event from TED.

Speakers include famed inventor Dean Kamen, pioneering genomic scientist J. Craig Venter, 23andMe co-founder Anne Wojcicki, CNN Chief Medical Correspondent Sanjay Gupta and Qualcomm (QCOM) CEO Paul Jacobs.

Here’s a video I did, which includes interviews with Wurman, as well as his new conference partner, Marc Hodosh, and clips from presentations by Intel (INTC) Fellow Eric Dishman comparing mainframe computers to hospitals, and actress Goldie Hawn, who talked about the benefits of a happier classroom:

]]> http://allthingsd.com/20091029/kara-visits-tedmed-featuring-synthetic-skin-and-heart-scanning-iphones/feed/ 0 http://allthingsd.com/20090708/gadgets-showhow-much-power-your-house-eats/ http://allthingsd.com/20090708/gadgets-showhow-much-power-your-house-eats/#comments Wed, 08 Jul 2009 22:36:03 +0000 Geoffrey A. Fowler http://ptech.allthingsd.com/20090708/gadgets-showhow-much-power-your-house-eats/ Curtailing your home electricity use is a bit like losing weight: You already understand the basics, but it’s hard to accomplish without help and motivation. An array of gadgets are vying to serve as electricity personal trainers, monitoring home power use minute by minute, and making you feel guilty about indulgences like blasting the air conditioner.

I have been testing three of these devices, the Power Monitor from Black & Decker Corp. (BDK), the very similar PowerCost Monitor from Blue Line Innovations Inc., and the more-sophisticated The Energy Detective 5000 from Energy Inc. In my tests, the Black & Decker model provided the most effortless electricity-tracking service. At $99.99, it is also the least expensive.

The devices provide real-time data about how much power you’re using across the house in terms that are easy to comprehend: cost per hour and cost per month. Turn on the microwave and watch the cost jump from 10 cents to 25 cents an hour. Turn off some lights and see the cost drop a few cents.

The firms say their customers have, over time, seen drops of as much as 20% in power bills by being more mindful of electricity use and making informed purchases. An independent Oxford University study in 2006 found that people getting direct feedback on their power consumption reduced use 5% to 15%.

After I began monitoring, my most-recent electricity bill dropped $10 from the month before—but that could also be due to my living in a city where air conditioning isn’t a summer necessity. I find myself thinking more about electricity, and even running back into the house to make sure the lights are out.

The monitors sold by Blue Line and Black & Decker are almost identical, because they’re both manufactured by Canada-based Blue Line. The Blue Line model costs $109, is a bit larger, and features a slightly longer range for the wireless signal that transmits power use from your electric meter.

Connecting these two devices to my electric meter was simple. First, loop a metal belt around the glass dome covering the meter. Then align a sensor attached to the belt on top of the glass to read the data collected by your meter. On my old-style meter, the Power Monitor’s sensor keeps track of how fast a dial rotates. The companies say their products work with about 90% of meters in North America.

The sensor you attach to the electric meter wirelessly sends raw data to a digital monitor that is kept inside the house. Before using the monitor, you have to enter data from your electric bill, but finding the right data can be tricky. Black & Decker’s instructions on this are relatively clear, and entering the data into the digital monitor involves a process similar to setting an alarm clock.

The digital monitors, about the size of a large remote control, can sit in one room or travel about the house. A button labeled “tare” on the Black & Decker model helps you calculate how much electricity is being used by any single appliance that you can turn off and on.

The Black & Decker model features a rudimentary display that only reports the aggregate power use for your house at any given time. It can’t go back and show you changes over time.

But the latest model from The Energy Detective, known as TED, connects directly to a house’s power supply for a more-precise read than the Black & Decker. It comes with software that graphs how use patterns change over time. The TED 5000 costs $199.

But installing TED requires turning off your home’s main power line and inserting a sensor into your circuit breaker—a process that the company says should be done “by qualified personnel only.” I sought help from a friend who has a lot of wiring experience, but after several hours, we were unable to make TED work. My issue was likely a decades-old circuit breaker. The company said my configuration is atypical and that problems like this are rare. A colleague has been using TED for several weeks after hiring an electrician to install it.

While TED 5000 offers many more advanced tools for sleuthing your home’s electricity waste than the other models, all of its sophistication won’t necessarily help the average user do much of a better job remembering to turn off the lights. For most of us, the large cost-an-hour sign on the Black & Decker Power Monitor offers the only feedback we really need.

And before buying any of these devices, keep in mind that many utility companies are installing a new generation of so-called “smart” meters, which not only measure real-time power use, but also offer two-way communication with the power company to help cut costs. And Google Inc.’s (GOOG) nonprofit foundation is working with power companies on a free service that connects data about your power use into an online widget.

Walt Mossberg is on vacation. Email Geoffrey A. Fowler at geoffrey.fowler@wsj.com

]]> http://allthingsd.com/20090708/gadgets-showhow-much-power-your-house-eats/feed/ 0 http://allthingsd.com/20090513/tedtalks-go-global-online-in-40-languages-including-urdu/ http://allthingsd.com/20090513/tedtalks-go-global-online-in-40-languages-including-urdu/#comments Wed, 13 May 2009 09:55:14 +0000 Kara Swisher http://kara.allthingsd.com/?p=13535

Some of the best delivery of video on the Web right now is via the TED Web site–the Internet part of the well-known conferences where big thinkers express bigger thoughts, mostly focusing on technology, entertainment and design.

The organizers have long put those analog talks, called TEDTalks, online, but are now trying to make them even more accessible globally, starting today.

According to TED Media Executive Producer June Cohen, “every TED talk will have subtitles, an interactive, time-coded transcript, and the capacity to be translated by volunteers worldwide. We’ll launch with 300 translations in 40 languages (including lesser-knowns like Tamil, Telugu, Urdu, etc).”

Yipes! We were planning to translate All Things Digital in Pig Latin–for example: Ittertway isway away ecretsay otplay otay estroyday ethay umanhay aceray iavay Ashtonway Utcherkay–but nixed the effort due to cost.

In all seriousness, this “Open Translation” project by TED is of the kind that has become common across the Web as volunteers help sites go global, an important thing given that too many are still English-only.

Facebook, for example, has used this method to get its sites up quickly internationally.

Thus, a Wade Davis TEDTalk on endangered cultures is now in 22 languages, for example, while Barry Schwartz’s speech on the loss of wisdom is in seven, including Hungarian.

According to Cohen, every talk now has English subtitles, that time-coded transcript, translated headlines, the ability to browse for talks by language and language-specific URLs.

Here is an example of a page (click on it to make it larger):

Here’s the interesting explanation of the project, financially backed by Nokia (NOK), from the TED Web site:

A year in the making, the TED Open Translation Project brings TEDTalks beyond the English-speaking world by offering subtitles, time-coded transcripts and the ability for any talk to be translated by volunteers worldwide. The project launched with 300 translations in 40 languages, and 200 volunteer translators.

Generously supported by a visionary sponsorship from Nokia, the TED Open Translation Project is one of the most comprehensive attempts by a major media platform to subtitle and index online video content. It’s also a groundbreaking effort in the public, professional use of volunteer translation.

Subtitles and transcripts

Every talk on TED.com will now have English subtitles, which can be toggled on or off by the user. The number of additional languages varies from talk to talk, based on the number of volunteers who elected to translate it.

Along with subtitles, every talk on TED.com now features a time-coded, interactive transcript, which allows users to select any phrase and have the video play from that point. The transcripts are fully indexable by search engines, exposing previously inaccessible content within the talks themselves. For example, searching on Google for “green roof” will ultimately help you find the moment in architect William McDonough’s talk when he discusses Ford’s River Rouge plant, and also the moment in Majora Carter’s talk when she speaks of her green roof project in the South Bronx. Transcripts will index in all available languages.

The interplay between the video, subtitles and transcript create what we call a Rosetta Stone effect. You can watch, for example, an English talk, with Korean subtitles and an Urdu transcript. Click on an Urdu phrase in the transcript, and the speaker will say it to you in English, with Korean subtitles running right-to-left below. It’s captivating.

The translations

Rather than simply translate a few talks into a handful of major languages, TED and technology partner, dotSUB developed a set of tools that allow participants around the world to translate their favorite talks into their own language. This approach is scalable, and–importantly–allows speakers of less-dominant languages an equal opportunity to spread ideas within their communities.

To seed the site, a handful of talks were professionally translated into 20 languages. But all translations going forward will be provided by volunteers. At launch, volunteer translators had already contributed more than 200 published translations (with 450 more in development). These volunteers range from well-organized groups working together in their own language, to lone translators working individually and matched by TED with others.

At launch, the Open Translation Project included 300 translations, in 40 languages, including Arabic, Basque, Bengali, Bulgarian, Chinese, Danish, Dutch, Finnish, French, German, Greek, Hausa, Hebrew, Hindi, Hungarian, Italian, Japanese, Kannada, Kirghiz, Korean, Macedonian, Norwegian, Persian, Polish, Portuguese, Romanian, Russian, Spanish, Swahili, Swedish, Tamil, Telugu, Thai, Turkish, Urdu and Vietnamese. Our translators hail from cities from Beijing to Buenos Aires; Tehran to Tel Aviv; Espoo, Finland, to Barranquilla, Colombia.

To help ensure quality, we generate an approved, professional English transcript for each talk. (This is the transcript upon which all translations are based.) Once the talk is translated, we then require every translation to be reviewed by a second fluent speaker before publishing it on TED. TED controls the final “publish” button. All translators and reviewers are credited by name for their work. After publication, we provide feedback mechanisms for ongoing discussion or improvement around the translation.

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