With the deal, the Seattle-based company is on track to collect sales taxes in 12 states, which make up about 40% of the U.S. population, by 2016. Amazon currently collects taxes in five states. Since 2011, it has reached agreements with seven other states, including Texas, to begin tax collection over the next four years.

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

Enjoy:

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

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

Yes, boots in Texas. Heh.

Here is a video ParkMe did about the effort:

In an interesting twist on the accelerator and incubator model for entrepreneurs, StartUp Health Academy announced its first class of “healthcare transformers” today at SXSW in Austin.

StartUp Health, which is chaired by former Time Warner CEO Jerry Levin and is backed by AT&T and the California HealthCare Foundation, is backing 10 entrepreneurs who are focused on “fixing a broken healthcare system in ways that significantly reduce costs and dramatically improve care.”

Unlike programs that support start-ups, some of these companies are well on their way in terms of funding and staff. What has been missing, according to StartUp Health, are the other support functions aimed specifically at companies in the still-nascent digital health care field.

Most of all, it’s a nice break from similar groups that back companies designing apps to help people stalk each other at SXSW bars.

Here’s the press release about the 10 that were picked, who were selected from nearly 400 applications and will be part of a three-year curriculum:

StartUp Health Announces Its Inaugural Class Celebrating “Healthcare Transformers”

AT&T and the California HealthCare Foundation Provide Scholarships to the First Class of the Academy for Health and Wellness Entrepreneurship

Austin, TX — SXSW — Monday, March 12, 2012 –Today StartUp Health announced the ten “Healthcare Transformers” that will make up the inaugural class of the StartUp Health Academy for Health and Wellness Entrepreneurship. These extraordinary and passionate entrepreneurs and innovators are on a mission to solve one of the great challenges of our time: fixing a broken healthcare system in ways that significantly reduce costs and dramatically improve care. StartUp Health also announced that both AT&T and the California HealthCare Foundation will be generously providing full-tuition scholarships for the first class of Healthcare Transformers accepted into the program.

“StartUp Health represents a new model for helping innovation succeed in the health sector and is based on a simple premise,” said Jerry Levin, Chairman of StartUp Health. “The best way to transform healthcare is to support and promote entrepreneurs with ongoing inspiration, education, and access to customers, capital, and other critical resources so that innovation and growth can occur more quickly.”

“StartUp Health Academy is the first program of its kind and is based on our unique methodology and platform for supporting Healthcare Transformers,” said Steven Krein, co-founder and CEO of StartUp Health. “The Academy is structured as a 3-year curriculum with strategic thinking tools and collaborative peer groups designed to help innovators navigate the many challenges of building a sustainable growth business in the health sector. We believe there is great power in these networks and in the access we provide to the community of customers, investors, and partners we have organized to transform healthcare.”

The first class of Healthcare Transformers in StartUp Health Academy are all highly accomplished and are operating companies at various stages of the growth lifecycle. All of them have already received funding or financial backing for their venture via venture capital, angel investors, grants, or customer revenue. Five of the class are serial entrepreneurs, two are healthcare professionals, and half are located on the East Coast and half on the West Coast.

The group includes:

Sundeep Bhan is a serial entrepreneur on a mission to revolutionize the way physicians and patients leverage lab testing to make better decisions leading to improved health. Sundeep is CEO of Medivo (medivo.com), which he co-founded with Jason Bhan, MD, and Destry Sulkes, MD, and is headquartered in New York City. The company recently raised $7 Million in a Series A from Safeguard Scientifics. Sundeep’s previous company Medsite was acquired by WebMD in 2006.

Veer Gidwaney is a serial entrepreneur on a mission to improve people’s health through daily behavior change. Veer is CEO of DailyFeats (dailyfeats.com), which he co-founded along with Morley Ivers, President & COO, and Vinay Gidwaney, Chief Product Officer, and is headquartered in New York City and Cambridge, MA. DailyFeats is profitable and growing rapidly with numerous partners including Walgreens and Cigna. Veer’s previous company Control-F1 was acquired by Computer Associates in 2005.

Samer Hamadeh is a serial entrepreneur on a mission to make it easier for people to find and book appointments with alternative healthcare and wellness practitioners ranging from acupuncturists and chiropractors to massage therapists, physical therapists, and personal trainers. Samer is the Founder and CEO of Zeel Networks (zeel.com), headquartered in New York City. Zeel has raised over $1.5 million in seed funding from angel investors including Esther Dyson, Ravi Mhatre, Tim Kendall, and Matt Ocko. Samer was recently EIR at Lightspeed Venture Partners. Samer’s last venture, career site Vault.com, was acquired by private equity firm Veronis Suhler Stevenson in 2007.

Nadeem Kassam is a serial entrepreneur on a mission to reinvent how people track and manage their health. Nadeem is the Founder and Chief Alliance Officer at Basis (mybasis.com), which he manages with Jef Holove as the CEO, and is headquartered in San Fransisco. The company has raised $9 Million in a Series A from Norwest Venture Partners & DCM. Jef was previously CEO at wireless photo card maker Eye-fi and spent almost a decade at Logitech.

Hesky Kutscher is a serial entrepreneur on a mission to revolutionize and simplify the way families manage their children’s health. Hesky is Founder and CEO of MotherKnows (motherknows.com), headquartered in Palo Alto, CA. MotherKnows has raised $1.7 Million in a Series A from First Round Capital, Charles River Ventures, Giza Ventures, and Band of Angels. Hesky’s previous company Shoplocal was acquired by Tribune and Gannett in 2004. Hesky is also Chairman and founder of High Gear Media, a leading automotive content network.

Bill Scott is a Board Certified Neurotherapist on a mission to revolutionize therapeutic treatment options by giving clinicians the ability to easily and cost-effectively use neurofeedback to help patients train their brains to be more adaptive and healthy. Bill is CEO of BrainPaint (brainpaint.com), which he co-founded with Cora Scott, President, and is headquartered in Malibu, CA. BrainPaint is profitable and growing rapidly with over a 125 customers including Promises treatment centers and hospitals in 35 states and 7 countries.

Bronwyn Spira is a physical therapist on a mission to deliver mobile applications for physical therapists that transform the delivery of care. Bronwyn is co-founder and President of FORCE Therapeutics (forcetherex.com), which she founded with her husband Mark Lieberman, a serial entrepreneur and technology executive, and is headquartered in New York City. FORCE Therapeutics has raised seed funding from prominent CEO investors including Thomas Layton, John Pleasants, Joseph Varet, and Randall Winn.

David Wong, MD, PhD, is a dermatologist on a mission to make it easy and affordable for anyone to get online access to board-certified dermatologists and get immediate assistance in the diagnosis and management of skin diseases. David is CEO of Direct Dermatology (directdermatology.com), which he co-founded with Rajnish Gupta, MD, PhD, and is headquartered in Palo Alto, CA. Direct Dermatology has received funding from California HealthCare Foundation and angel investors.

Faheem Zaman is a young entrepreneur who recently left Harvard University to become one of the first Thiel Fellows and pursue his dream of rethinking healthcare by leveraging technology, data, and elegant design to make quality care more accessible. Faheem is founder of a “stealth mobile health company,” which he co-founded with Ilya Vakhutinsky, and is headquartered in New York City. Ilya brings expertise in contextual design and data visualization from his work at the Princeton Plasma Physics Laboratory. Faheem is a recipient of $100,000 from Peter Thiel and the Thiel Foundation’s “20 Under 20″ Thiel Fellowship program.

George Zamanakos, PhD, is an entrepreneur on a mission to make it easier and more affordable for pregnant women to get remote care from anywhere in the world. He is heading up a “stealth mode” initiative backed by some of the biggest visionaries in the ecosystem, and is headquartered in San Diego, CA. George has a PhD in Physics from Caltech, was an associate principal at McKinsey, and previously worked with Johnson & Johnson’s leading strategy and product development in diabetes.

The inaugural group of ten entrepreneurs represents the first of at least four classes StartUp Health will launch in 2012 and marks the beginning of its decade-long mission to help inspire, educate, and provide resources to 1,000 Healthcare Transformers as they build world-class growth companies. The entrepreneurs were selected from nearly 400 applications. The StartUp Health Academy operates on a “rolling admissions” basis and all entrepreneurs who have already applied will also be considered for subsequent classes.

“These entrepreneurs, along with their co-founders, represent a diverse group of Healthcare Transformers focusing on solutions ranging from mobile and digital health services to new diagnostic technologies and devices that will dramatically improve health and wellness and lower the cost of care,” said Unity Stoakes, co-founder and President of StartUp Health. “This group has visionary dreams and are already busy making them come true and pushing the entire ecosystem forward in the process.”

“The California HealthCare Foundation is excited to support StartUp Health on their mission to help Health Transformers grow and innovate more quickly so together we can spark innovations that can reduce the costs of healthcare and expand access to services for the underserved,” said Margaret Laws, Director of the Innovations for the Underserved Program at the California HealthCare Foundation.

“Innovation and collaboration are critical to drive changes in healthcare, and we’re pleased to support this amazing class of healthcare entrepreneurs in the StartUp Health Academy,” said Eleanor Chye, Executive Director, Mobility Healthcare and Pharma, Mobility Product Management, AT&T Business and Home Solutions. “We’re committed to helping the health and wellness ecosystem grow and support new ways that mobile technologies and smart networks can be used to improve the quality of care, reduce costs, and contribute to a healthier world.”

Anyone who wants to support the movement to help innovate in health and wellness can get involved or apply for a future class at startuphealth.com.

Earlier this week, I slogged through the rain in a very dorkish GroupMe plastic poncho at SXSW in Austin to attend what I thought was one of the more interesting sessions, titled “Why Cleanweb Will Beat Cleantech.”

Perhaps because it was not yet another creepy location app (memo to Banjo and Highlight users, please stop attempting to get me to allow you to stalk me, cuz I ain’t!), it was more sparsely attended.

But the presentation by longtime Silicon Valley entrepreneur Sunil Paul was a good one, given his premise that current information technology tools were at the heart of creating solutions around energy conservation.

The founder of Brightmail — and also the first start-up partner of Zynga CEO and founder Mark Pincus at a Washington, D.C., company called Freeloader (where I first met the pair) — thinks that clean technologies like solar can be better leveraged with Cleanweb, which he defined as the “application of information technology to resource constraints.”

In other words, more Airbnb (fewer hotel rooms mean less carbon emissions), more Zappos (fewer stores, less driving to stores, etc.) and more teleconferencing (that’s easy to grok) is evidence that the Cleanweb could be an important contributor to saving the planet.

Quoting a recent tweet he saw, Paul noted that a smartphone today has as much computing power as the computers that put a man on the moon, but all we do with them is launch birds into pigs.

“I am saying we can do something better with the aggressive application of software technology,” he said.

Actually, those Angry Birds are now in space, too.

In any case, here’s Paul’s interesting deck from the talk:

cleanweb_presentation-Sunil-2012-mar-10

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You’re watching this unbelievable hysterical optimism despite the terror.

– Mona Eltahawy on citizen journalists on Twitter in Syria and elsewhere, speaking at SXSW Interactive conference in Austin, Texas

The Cupertino, Calif., company said it will add 3,600 jobs in the next 10 years to its existing work force of 3,500 employees there. Apple said the move is part of a rapid expansion from 1,000 employees in 2004.

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Being the huge fan of “Top Chef” that I am — hellllloooo, Padma! — it was even more a treat to see former Microsoft legend, controversial patent grabber and full-time fiddler Nathan Myhrvold as a guest judge this past week on the current season of the popular cable television show.

For those who usually associate him with geekery, he is also a big foodie and the author of fancy tome “Modernist Cuisine: The Art and Science of Cooking.”

Right now, the six-volume, 2,400-page book set retails for $499 on Amazon. As described on the site: “The authors and their 20-person team at The Cooking Lab have achieved astounding new flavors and textures by using tools such as water baths, homogenizers, centrifuges, and ingredients such as hydrocolloids, emulsifiers, and enzymes.”

“Top Chef” is now set in Texas, so the topic was barbecue, an apparent fave of the techie too. But I really liked the competitor chefs’ race in the Quickfire Challenge to pull off some feat of molecular gastronomy best.

A side of patent troll pâté anyone?

Here are the videos:

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Even Gowalla CEO Josh Williams isn’t pretending a deal for Facebook to buy the location-sharing company isn’t happening, as you can read below in an email he sent to his investors.

Both companies declined to comment on a story on Friday and over the weekend. CNN had the scoop about the social networking giant acquiring Gowalla, which I have taken to calling Not-Foursquare.

That’s because — despite its often clever approach and innovation — it never caught up with the leading social location service.

Gowalla, which changed its approach several times, had been for sale for some time, said several sources.

The Austin-based start-up has raised just under $11 million from a range of investors, including Greylock Partners, Shasta Ventures, Alsop Louie Partners and the Founders Fund, along with a batch of well-known angel investors.

But let’s put this one to bed with the email that Williams sent out after the CNN story broke Friday, which was read to me tonight, so I might not have all of it perfectly and it is missing a sentence about I-will-smack-the-leaker):

Subject: Rumors and speculation

CNN just broke the news that Gowalla has been acquired by Facebook. This story was leaked from an unknown souurce.

The ink on the deal is not dry, so our holding pattern is that we do not comment on rumors and speculation. I have another email penned that was ready to send you today, assuming you would get this news before the story was officially released.

But now it is all over Twitter, so you have likely heard. A longer email will be sent soon. Until then, I am so very grateful for what you have done to make Gowalla a success.

The second confirmation email has apparently not yet been sent, but I will try to get it when it is, along with the price.

So, until the official official yes, here’s a video interview I did with Williams in April of 2010 about the location “wars”:

]]> http://allthingsd.com/20111204/heres-gowalla-ceos-non-denial-denial-email-to-investors-about-facebook-acquisition/feed/ 0 http://allthingsd.com/20111123/cisco-to-hp-please-stop-suing-those-employees-we-poach/ http://allthingsd.com/20111123/cisco-to-hp-please-stop-suing-those-employees-we-poach/#comments Wed, 23 Nov 2011 20:47:49 +0000 Arik Hesseldahl http://allthingsd.com/?p=147150 Networking giant Cisco Systems would like to stop hearing so often from lawyers at rival Hewlett-Packard. More specifically, it would like HP to stop suing ex-HP employees seeking jobs at Cisco.

In a Cisco blog post, the company’s general counsel, Mark Chandler, accused HP of overzealously lawyering up to try to stop former HP employees from going to work for Cisco. The fear is that those former employees will share HP’s confidential information to Cisco’s benefit. “Trade secrets are protected by intellectual property laws, not by non-compete agreements and vague theories that a new job would ‘inevitably’ cause an employee to use trade secrets of his or her former employer,” Chandler helpfully reminded HP’s legal team.

Courts in California have generally held the kind of noncompete agreement that would prevent someone leaving HP for Cisco, or vice versa, to be unenforceable. But one of the people in question used to work for HP in Texas, and moved to California for the Cisco job. HP lawyers, Chandler says, swooped into a courtroom in Texas hours before a related hearing in California (the point being that the court that hears the case first is the one that tends to decide the case).

Chandler doesn’t name the employees involved, but that Texas-to-California move sounds an awful lot like the case of Paul Perez, the former CTO of HP’s StorageWorks, who resigned earlier this month for a job at Cisco; John Marsh, at the Ohio law firm of Hahn Loeser, writes about the case here.

I asked HP for a comment on this, and they haven’t gotten back to me. However, HP is not the only one with aggressive lawyers trying to enforce noncompetes. A federal appeals court recently ruled in favor of HP and an executive it had hired earlier this year from IBM. Giovanni “John” Visentin, who had been a general manager, quit his job at IBM in January and said he was going to HP, but offered to stay on for a transitional period. IBM sued him the next day, and asked the court for an injunction that would have prevented him from taking the job. The trial judge and the appeals court both ruled that IBM’s aggressive behavior made the “emergency” its lawyers said existed worse by its refusal to even talk to the employee.

Chandler closes his post with a promise that the company “will apply California’s rule in favor of employee mobility nationwide,” which is a comfort should you be mulling a job offer from Cisco and work at a rival outfit.

And though the circumstances are different, Cisco is not without its own history of over-aggressive lawyers, as in the infamous case of Peter Adekeye, a former Cisco employee who started his own company servicing Cisco gear; Ars Technica covered the case here. Having filed an antitrust suit against Cisco in the U.S., Adekeye wound up arrested and detained in a Canadian jail. A judge there finally let him out, saying that the only “reasonable inference I can draw from the facts is that the criminal process was used to pressure the applicant (unsuccessfully) into abandoning his antitrust lawsuit against Cisco.”

When it comes to ex-employees, lawyers tend to get really tough.

Update: Like I said, the Adekeye case is different circumstances, and as a Cisco spokesman points out in the comments below, Adekeye is under indictment; though it’s been described as a “ridiculous” case, you sure can’t beat it for weird legal twists and turns.

]]> http://allthingsd.com/20111123/cisco-to-hp-please-stop-suing-those-employees-we-poach/feed/ 0 http://allthingsd.com/20110902/uk-arrests-two-more-suspected-members-of-lulzsec/ http://allthingsd.com/20110902/uk-arrests-two-more-suspected-members-of-lulzsec/#comments Fri, 02 Sep 2011 13:30:29 +0000 Arik Hesseldahl http://allthingsd.com/?p=116560
The summer that started out dominated by news of attacks by the hacker gang LulzSec/Anonymous is closing with news of more arrests of alleged members of the group by police in the U.K.

Scotland Yard says it has nabbed two more people that it says are members of the group; one of them is said to be connected to crimes committed under cover of the online identity “Kayla.”

In a statement, police did not release the names of the two men arrested. They are aged 20 and 24, and one comes from the town of Mexborough, while the other comes from Warminster. The arrests were conducted in cooperation with local police and the FBI. In one case, a home was searched and computer equipment taken.

It was the second pair of arrests in as many days. On Thursday, police arrested two others as part of the growing worldwide investigation into the activities of LulzSec and Anonymous.

And yet the hacker crimes continue, seemingly unabated. Anonymous has dubbed today “Texas Takedown Thursday” or #TTT on Twitter. The target: Law enforcement agencies in the state of Texas, in apparent retaliation for the arrests earlier this summer of 16 people said to be associated with Anonymous.

The group says it has leaked about three gigabytes worth of email and other data from private email accounts it says belong to certain police officials in Texas. It also claimed credit for defacing a Web site belonging to the Texas Police Chiefs Association.

It’s the second such targeting of police officers in a particular state. In June, the group went after the Arizona State Police, posting home addresses of officers.

LulzSec and Anonymous, in their various contortions, have had a busy summer. The group and its sympathizers started out making Sony’s existence miserable, on the heels of an attack on the PlayStation network; the attack brought the network down for several weeks.

]]> http://allthingsd.com/20110902/uk-arrests-two-more-suspected-members-of-lulzsec/feed/ 0 http://allthingsd.com/20110707/amazon-seeks-greater-fulfillment-by-adding-distribution-centers/ http://allthingsd.com/20110707/amazon-seeks-greater-fulfillment-by-adding-distribution-centers/#comments Thu, 07 Jul 2011 21:53:37 +0000 Tricia Duryee http://allthingsd.com/?p=95382 Amazon is expanding its warehouse capacity at an insanely aggressive pace, having already announced five new distribution centers so far this year, including two since yesterday.

The five new facilities will add about four million square feet of space and hire thousands of new employees.

But that’s just the beginning. The company has plans to expand even more as it adds more merchandise to its inventory and tries to speed shipping to meet the popularity of services like Amazon Prime.

In all, the Seattle-based e-commerce giant plans to add at least nine fulfillment centers this year, of which roughly half will be located in North America. If the company’s growth rates continue, it may end up building even more, execs disclosed during its last earnings call.

It is the second year in a row that Amazon has built out more capacity, having added 13 fulfillment centers in 2010. The company currently has fulfillment centers in Arizona, Delaware, Indiana, Kansas, Kentucky, Nevada, Pennsylvania, Texas and Virginia.

Today, it announced it will build a fourth distribution center in Phoenix, spanning 1.2 million square feet, making a total of 4 million square feet in the state. For perspective, that’s the equivalent of nearly 70 football fields.

Yesterday, it said it was adding 900,000 square feet in Indiana.

Amazon hires thousands of full-time positions at these facilities, including roles in picking, packing and receiving, and shipping.

Amazon did not specify how many employees would be necessary at each location, but said for example that it was seeking 2,000 workers in Lexington County, S.C., and 2,700 in Hamilton County, Tenn. (not including 4,000 seasonal workers).

The company’s impressive growth was put into context earlier this year by Geekwire, which reported that Amazon had hired 4,200 employees in the first quarter to bring its total to 37,900.

While Amazon must build these facilities to keep up with demand, the investments are costing it significantly. In the first quarter, Amazon’s revenues jumped 38 percent, but net income fell by 33 percent compared to the year-ago period.

Still, it’s a price that must be paid. You can’t store everything in the cloud.

]]> http://allthingsd.com/20110707/amazon-seeks-greater-fulfillment-by-adding-distribution-centers/feed/ 0 http://allthingsd.com/20110421/pre-200-million-valuation-flipboards-mike-mccue-at-sxsw-the-full-onstage-video/ http://allthingsd.com/20110421/pre-200-million-valuation-flipboards-mike-mccue-at-sxsw-the-full-onstage-video/#comments Thu, 21 Apr 2011 18:30:38 +0000 Kara Swisher http://kara.allthingsd.com/?p=42950

In March, BoomTown travelled hipster-Texas-style for the South by Southwest festival in Austin.

I was there to check out the geek-packed scene, but also to interview Flipboard’s Mike McCue in an onstage interview there.

The Silicon Valley start-up, which makes an innovative and highly designed social media reading app for the Apple iPad (iPhone and Google’s Android mobile operating system to come), recently raised $50 million in new funding, giving it a $200 million valuation.

This interview with McCue took place before that, but it’s still a wide-ranging map to where the much-touted Flipboard is headed.

Here’s the video:

]]> http://allthingsd.com/20110421/pre-200-million-valuation-flipboards-mike-mccue-at-sxsw-the-full-onstage-video/feed/ 0 http://allthingsd.com/20110414/exclusive-flipboard-confirms-50-million-funding-at-200-million-valuation/ http://allthingsd.com/20110414/exclusive-flipboard-confirms-50-million-funding-at-200-million-valuation/#comments Thu, 14 Apr 2011 20:23:12 +0000 Kara Swisher http://kara.allthingsd.com/?p=42652

Late last month, BoomTown posted about a huge venture funding effort by the high-profile and even more highly designed social media reading app for the Apple iPad, Flipboard.

Today, its co-founder and CEO Mike McCue confirmed the $50 million round at an eye-popping $200 million valuation, in a wide-ranging interview at the start-up’s Palo Alto, Calif., HQ.

“We’re obviously thrilled, because we think it confirms our focus that people want a beautifully designed way to interact with content and to share it,” he said. “And there is a lot more to come–on a scale of one to 10, we’re just at a two or three.”

The bulk of the new second round of funding–Flipboard had previously raised $10.5 million–came from New York-based Insight Venture Partners.

Insight’s Jerry Murdock said in an interview that he was excited about the idea of “social endorsement” that Flipboard was pioneering.

“We back great entrepreneurs and Flipboard is that and also in an obviously unique position to solve a problem of media consumption in the digital age,” he said. “The sky is the limit. Or more precisely it is the best environment to consume curated real-time content for Twitter and Facebook, because of the user experience and social endorsement integration with the content.”

Insight is also an investor in Twitter.

Also stepping up in the new Flipboard round is Comcast’s venture arm, as well as previous investors, including Kleiner Perkins, Index Ventures and a spate of well known angels, such as Twitter co-founder and product guru Jack Dorsey, Facebook co-founder and Asana dude Dustin Moskovitz, the ubiquitous Ron Conway, actor Ashton Kutcher and the investment company of former News Corp. exec Peter Chernin.

“From a Comcast perspective, we’re intrigued with Mike and what he’s doing with content aggregation,” said Amy Banse, Comcast Interactive Capital’s new head. “We think we can learn from him and he from us.”

Co-founded by longtime entrepreneur McCue (Netscape, Tellme) and former Apple iPhone engineer Evan Doll in January, Flipboard launched to much attention in July.

The elegant Flipboard–which McCue recently told me in an onstage interview at the South by Southwest conference in Austin had zero revenues thus far–has changed the game on the consumption of social media.

Its innovative social magazine concept is attempting to make the social networking universe more accessible, consumable and, perhaps most importantly, visually arresting via its rich app.

Essentially, Flipboard pulls information from media RSS feeds and sites such as Twitter and Facebook data streams and then reassembles it in an easy-to-navigate, personalized format in a mobile tablet touchscreen environment.

In its current offering, there are pull-quotes, photos, videos, status updates and even the first paragraphs of linked-out content. There is also the ability to comment and share, as if one were on a social networking or microblogging site.

McCue said the new giant pile of cash will be used to increase its 32-person staff to about 50, international expansion, small acquisitions and more product development on more platforms.

The next in the arena will be the iPhone version of Flipboard, said McCue, followed by one for the Google Android mobile operating system eventually.

Left unsaid, of course, was the need for funding to fight the likelihood of increased competition in the hot space for delivering both professional and social content to consumers on a wide range of devices.

Rivals are varied, such as Silicon Valley’s most adorable news reader start-up Pulse and also Zite, a news reader which was recently sued for copyright infringement by a group of major publishers.

There are bigger potential players, such as Google, which is trying to find various ways to move into the social space.

In fact, said several sources, Google and others have made acquisition approaches to Flipboard, which has instead opted for raising more funding and staying independent for now.

McCue declined to talk about that, but did note that he is not surprised by publisher interest, especially of the worried and wary kind, in the arena.

“Anyone not respectful of others’ content is going to get in that kind of trouble,” he said, noting Flipboard has struck deals with 17 big publishers so far, including this morning’s announcement about a partnership with Oprah Winfrey’s and Discovery’s OWN cable network. “There is not one half to this equation.”

Right now, the Flipboard app is free and the business plan is advertising and some possible subscription scenarios.

McCue said advertising will be the key to Flipboard’s business plan in the future, although it’s not clear if the company will ever sell advertising itself.

Rather, it will partner with publishers seeking better distribution in the explosive tablet and smartphone market, where Flipboard has been gaining traction quickly.

But until that is sorted out, there is now $50 million more in the Flipboard kitty to figure it all out.

“With this funding, we can grow at the right pace and have a lot of flexibility to get the product right,” said McCue. “And, that’s the most important thing.”

]]> http://allthingsd.com/20110414/exclusive-flipboard-confirms-50-million-funding-at-200-million-valuation/feed/ 4 http://allthingsd.com/20110413/yahoo-bored-meeting-not-this-time/ http://allthingsd.com/20110413/yahoo-bored-meeting-not-this-time/#comments Wed, 13 Apr 2011 16:35:48 +0000 Kara Swisher http://kara.allthingsd.com/?p=42578

Today and tomorrow, Yahoo’s directors are gathering here in Silicon Valley for one of their regular meetings that take place over the course of the year.

While board meetings in general are usually pretty dull affairs–and Yahoo’s, in particular, are typically glacial ones–there is a lot on the plates of those with purview over the machinations of the long-struggling Silicon Valley Internet giant.

Here’s a primer of what might (and might not) be happening, according to sources, of course, as Yahoo continues on its quest to reinvigorate itself–a journey that is beginning to make Siddhartha’s transformation into Buddha enlightenment look speedy.

A Yahoo spokeswoman declined to comment on anything below, although I did run it all by them.

The U-Shaped Turnaround

At Yahoo’s recent sales meeting in San Antonio, CEO Carol Bartz went all Sesame Street on the troops, using the letter “U” as an illustration to indicate where in the cycle the company was in its turnaround.

Apparently, just on the other side of the very bottom of the letter, heading inevitably upward.

Her argument was that the company has finally cleaned up its platform mess and its confusing corporate structure, and that its display and search advertising business is now recovering nicely.

All true, except there are some other key issues, such as the slowness of the search and online advertising partnership with Microsoft to make some serious hay.

In fact, although its display business will show a definite strong recovery in Yahoo’s quarterly results next week, its search business–both in market share and revenue per search (RPS)–has, as one person close to the situation put it succintly, “fallen off the cliff.”

That’s due, in part, to getting the new system with Microsoft delivering better results, which is not happening yet (if ever!).

In this quarter, Microsoft has honored its contractual guarantees and will make up the difference–which will result in masking the magnitude of the RPS loss. It’s a worrisome trend to watch.

The Asia Situation

Yahoo and its Asian partners are still mulling over various options regarding the company’s large ownership stakes there.

What is happening with its share in China’s Alibaba Group, according to sources, is precisely nothing right now, as has been made clear in recent comments by its CEO and co-founder Jack Ma.

“If you cannot make the business cool, you have no right to be angry with me,” said Ma in an article in Forbes published this week, referring to Yahoo. “I just don’t trust them…I’ve been working with them for years, and I’m disappointed.”

Relations between Ma and Bartz, sources said, remain as bad as ever, and even the normally close one between Ma and Yahoo co-founder Jerry Yang is strained.

Plus, Ma told Forbes, as he has said before, Alibaba is not taking its auction site, Taobao, public–leaving Yahoo in possession of an appreciating but decidedly private asset.

Japan is a different story, with the disposition of Yahoo’s stake in Yahoo! Japan the subject of long and continuing negotiations for a while now.

While the earthquake and tsunami crisis there did slow discussions down, there is still active recent movement about a variety of cashing-out scenarios, all of which have massive tax and regulatory issues.

Without boring you with the specifics, one option is to create a tracking stock, another a spin-off of the asset and still another some sort of stock trade.

But no matter what happens, Yahoo will have to pay some sort of taxes on its 35 percent stake in Yahoo! Japan, now worth $8 billion.

But if its CFO Tim Morse–the key figure working on the deal–can pull it off, what will Yahoo do with all that money?

Acquisition Guns Blazing? Or Sputtering?

In a recent forum in Silicon Valley, one of its M&A minions said Yahoo had its “guns blazing” with regard to acquisition activity in 2011, as deliciously reported in The Wall Street Journal, despite the company’s lackluster acquisition record.

Sources said the exec had his ears soundly boxed by his managers for the dopey remarks, since Yahoo has had such a lackluster record in the arena–especially compared to others.

And, oh yes, Yahoo’s M&A head just decamped to gaming phenom Zynga.

That aside, Yahoo should be deep in the market for hot start-ups to help revive its innovative spirit, but it remains hindered by a continued reluctance by new start-ups to join it and by its reputation for being a place where entrepreneurs go to die.

That certainly could change at any time with the right execs in place, but Yahoo is competing with a plethora of more exciting companies and also a seemingly endless venture capital gusher of cash of late.

While it is the board’s job to approve acquisitions and not source them, perhaps it is its job to pressure Bartz and other execs to get off the stick and hit at least one of the targets Yahoo aims at.

Targets are plentiful in advertising, content and even social, with many start-ups playing right into a lot of arenas Yahoo needs some help.

And help it does need as talent keeps walking out the door daily, mostly to hotter prospects such as Zynga and social buying sites Groupon and LivingSocial.

There is no question it is hard for any large company to hold onto top staff when there are so many enticing bonbons out there as options, but it can be done.

One good thing: Its newish head of product Blake Irving and head of U.S. media and advertising Ross Levinsohn seem to be playing well together and are setting a tone of stability that is much needed.

Enter the Kenny

That said, there remains endless swirl, especially with key investors, about the performance of its CEO.

While she started off as a publicly in-your-face exec, Bartz has definitely stepped out of the limelight of late, as her pugnacious manner started to irritate Wall Street and others.

It was a good idea, since it has taken the focus off the lack of stock and revenue progress she had loudly promised.

Still, Yahoo shares have continued to stay locked in the mid-teens, as investors wait for some sign that Bartz’s turnaround has worked.

The entrance of its spanking new director, Akamai President David Kenny, has further increased speculation about management and board changes at Yahoo.

This is Kenny’s first board meeting, but this well-connected newbie is someone who is clearly going to rise quickly to the top of decision-making at Yahoo.

That’s because the smooth and well-liked Kenny, who also has deep advertising experience as founder of the Digitas agency, has a long relationship with Yahoo and also with Yang.

He also now has much more tech cred as a leader of one of the Internet’s most important infrastructure companies, with a ton of regular contacts with media giants, ad networks and video providers that are Akamai’s clients.

In other words, Kenny (pictured here) is the full package of ad and tech experience that would make him an obvious Yahoo CEO candidate when Bartz’s contract is up in early 2013, if not before.

He’s also the person most likely to take over for longtime BoomTown punching bag Roy Bostock as chairman of the board at some point.

None of this is happening soon, but it is clearly an interesting development.

There are other machinations, of course, from continued interest from private equity players in Yahoo, as well as a variety of takeover scenarios, each more complex than the next.

While often derided as yesterday’s news by the elite of Silicon Valley as on an inevitable downward path, those plots are there because Yahoo remains a stellar brand with consumers worldwide and an Internet property with huge traffic and a big ad business.

In other words, it’s a U that someday maybe could be a V.

]]> http://allthingsd.com/20110413/yahoo-bored-meeting-not-this-time/feed/ 6 http://allthingsd.com/20110323/liveblog-is-yahoo-still-in-search-apparently-its-answers-not-links/ http://allthingsd.com/20110323/liveblog-is-yahoo-still-in-search-apparently-its-answers-not-links/#comments Wed, 23 Mar 2011 17:20:14 +0000 Kara Swisher http://kara.allthingsd.com/?p=41913

At least once a day, BoomTown gets a call from investors, analysts or other troublemaking types–you know who you are!–wondering why Yahoo is still plugging away in search.

With a declining market share in the arena and a search technology outsourcing deal with Microsoft, it’s not a bad question to ask.

But Yahoo begs to differ, introducing a new feature called Yahoo Search Direct at a press event in San Francisco today.

I liveblogged it, natch.

10:14 am: I was late, as per usual, but walked in just as the session was getting started.

Yahoo’s Chief Product Officer Blake Irving–looking fetching in a purple cashmere sweater–was talking about search.

He immediately turned it over to Shashi Seth, Yahoo’s head search dude, who immediately said: “Answers not links.”

Huh?

Actually, the product is pretty nifty, showing a lightning-speed box that shows more robust search results, although not unlike offerings from both Microsoft’s Bing and, of course, Google Instant.

While both have different takes, it is essentially a direction in which search brings in maps, photos, and–of course–advertising.

You can see a movie times example here (click to make the image larger):

10:23 am: Wait, it was over before it started! Whoa. No more bells and whistles?

And I still was enjoying Irving’s sweater and I wanted to touch it, but that would have been wrong.*

Seth then took questions from the reporters.

“We believe the next generation of search…people are looking for answers,” he said.

Very true, but perhaps not so much from Yahoo anymore.

Still, Yahoo Search Direct is a laudable try and it’s also nice to see some innovation from the long-troubled company.

“We are the premier digital media company,” said Seth, parroting a new description of Yahoo that the Silicon Valley company is now using since its recent sales meeting in San Antonio.

I asked a question about whether there is a dedicated app for the tablet of Yahoo Direct Search, which sources had also told me was shown to the troops in Texas.

Yep! It will be ready later this year.

I also asked about how much all this search innovation was costing compared to return on the investment.

No answers from either Irving or Seth.

Someone then asked if there would be a lift in market share from the feature.

That’s the plan, Stan!

10:41 am: More questions about the comparisons to Google Instant. Of course, it’s the same type of thing, in the contest to win the King of Relevancy crown among consumers.

Google Instant. Yahoo Search Direct. Quora. My dentist, who seems to know everything. In case you didn’t know, dentists are very erudite.

Seth noted that even though Yahoo has only 15 categories covered in Yahoo Search Direct, there will be hundreds to come, as well as more features on top of this feature.

Personally, I want my search delivered to me on a silver tray by a man in a purple cashmere sweater.

Speaking of purple, the demo dude kept putting Elizabeth Taylor into the query box, which depressed me. Violet eyes now closed forever.

That was the real story today.

As if to round out the event, someone asked whether critics are right about whether Yahoo should still be in search.

“We’re in this for good,” said Irving firmly.

“Look, we are not focused on the past,” added Seth, who was not here in this very room at a similar Yahoo search event years ago, when similar promises were made about search going away from a page of blue links. “I don’t even know if you’d call it search in three years.”

What would you call it then?

“Find,” joked Irving. And later, “It’s actually ‘found.’”

Apparently, Yahoo was lost and now is found via Yahoo Search Direct.

*By the way, I touched the sweater, which was–in fact, Blake–periwinkle, which is a twee version of purple.

(You can see a video interview I did with Seth after the demo here.)

]]> http://allthingsd.com/20110323/liveblog-is-yahoo-still-in-search-apparently-its-answers-not-links/feed/ 0 http://allthingsd.com/20110323/pretty-flipboard-fundraising-at-an-even-prettier-200-million-valuation/ http://allthingsd.com/20110323/pretty-flipboard-fundraising-at-an-even-prettier-200-million-valuation/#comments Wed, 23 Mar 2011 14:15:12 +0000 Kara Swisher http://kara.allthingsd.com/?p=41854

Flipboard, the high-profile and highly designed social media reading app for the Apple iPad, is out raising another round of funding at an eye-popping $200 million valuation, according to numerous sources close to the situation.

The Palo Alto, CA, company declined to comment on its new funding efforts, which sources said had recently accelerated.

While that valuation might change, several sources considering the investment said it is unlikely to go down in the current frothy financing market in Silicon Valley, especially given Flipboard’s splashy profile and top-drawer pedigree.

Co-founded by longtime Silicon Valley entrepreneur Mike McCue and former Apple iPhone engineer Evan Doll in January, Flipboard launched to much attention in July.

That included $10.5 million in venture funding from Kleiner Perkins, Index Ventures and a spate of well known angel investors, such as Twitter Co-founder Jack Dorsey, Facebook Co-founder Dustin Moskovitz, the ubiquitous Ron Conway, actor Ashton Kutcher and the investment company of former News Corp. exec Peter Chernin.

At the time, it was unclear what Flipboard’s valuation was. But now, said several sources, it’s clocking in at a hefty $200 million, which is perhaps no surprise at a time of increasingly lofty investments in tech start-ups.

Suddenly, Foursquare’s $95 million valuation seems like a bargain! (Sorry, Dennis Crowley, for comparing you to the Kool-Aid pitcher dude.)

In any case, the elegant Flipboard–which McCue recently told me in an onstage interview at the South by Southwest conference in Austin had zero revenues thus far–has changed the game on the consumption of social media.

Its innovative social magazine concept is attempting to make the social networking universe more accessible, consumable and, perhaps most importantly, visually arresting via its rich app.

Essentially, Flipboard pulls information from sites such as Twitter and Facebook data streams and then reassembles it in an easy-to-navigate, personalized format in a mobile tablet touchscreen environment.

In this offering, there are pull quotes, photos, videos, status updates and even the first paragraphs of linked-out content. There is also the ability to comment and share, as if one were on Twitter or Facebook.

Flipboard has since added a number of features and will be launching its new iPhone app later this year.

Right now, the Flipboard app is free and the business plan is advertising and some possible subscription scenarios.

It will be interesting to see who will jump into this leader in a nascent market, besides its current investors. Sources said one likely target group for Flipboard could be a large traditional media company.

Until the financial dust settles, here is the video of an onstage interview by the Digital Solution’s Katherine Boehret with McCue at the All Things Digital event, D: Dive Into Mobile, in December:

(Full disclosure: ATD is part of Flipboard’s publisher beta program.)

]]> http://allthingsd.com/20110323/pretty-flipboard-fundraising-at-an-even-prettier-200-million-valuation/feed/ 8 http://allthingsd.com/20110314/video-groupme-dudes-talk-group-messaging-phenom-and-drink-beer-at-the-same-time/ http://allthingsd.com/20110314/video-groupme-dudes-talk-group-messaging-phenom-and-drink-beer-at-the-same-time/#comments Mon, 14 Mar 2011 22:01:45 +0000 Kara Swisher http://kara.allthingsd.com/?p=41586

If you had to pick the hotsy-totsy start-up to win the media darling of South by Southwest award for 2011–following in the precious footsteps of Foursquare and Twitter from years past–it would probably have to be GroupMe.

The group messaging/conference call/location/photo sharing service has, as these things tend to, garnered a lot of heat since its debut less than a year ago.

That has, of course, also meant the requisite big venture funding–$11.5 million in total–for the New York-based GroupMe, including from SV Angel, betaworks, First Round Capital, Lerer Ventures, General Catalyst Partners and Khosla Ventures.

And, no surprise, the dead-simple idea now has many start-up rivals, all vying to use combine mobile, texting, social, location, groups and smartphones into some unholy megatrend.

Still, GroupMe has built a slick little offering, which is likely to get scooped up by some bigger entity (or perhaps just copied, which is the sincerest form of flattery in tech).

Until then, its Co-founders Jared Hecht and Steve Martocci are enjoying their day in the sun–quite literally, at their free grilled-cheese-and-beer giveaway at SXSW this weekend in Austin, Texas.

Here is my video interview with their-future-is-so-bright-they-have-to-wear-shades pair:

]]> http://allthingsd.com/20110314/video-groupme-dudes-talk-group-messaging-phenom-and-drink-beer-at-the-same-time/feed/ 1 http://allthingsd.com/20110314/video-boomtown-versus-texas-hipsters-and-cheddar-cheese-cats-at-sxsw/ http://allthingsd.com/20110314/video-boomtown-versus-texas-hipsters-and-cheddar-cheese-cats-at-sxsw/#comments Mon, 14 Mar 2011 19:18:17 +0000 Kara Swisher http://kara.allthingsd.com/?p=41575

As it turned out, BoomTown did not succumb to hipster poisoning on my sojourn this past weekend to Austin, Texas and the famous South by Southwest festival.

The annual gathering, which has interactive, music and film elements, started last week and is still going strong–fueled, as far as I can tell, by beer, blogging, empanadas and excessive start-up hype.

Actually, it was a good time had by me, despite assertions from some longtime attendees that SXSW had somehow jumped the shark.

I personally saw no shark-jumping, but there certainly were a lot of free t-shirts and fake tattoos.

Here is a video of a variety of scenes from the weekend, from all over SXSW, from our very own All Things Digital party (I now can retire, since I had a drink named after me) to encountering a giant cheddar cheese sculpture of cats.

Yes, it was that kind of SXSW.

Enjoy:

]]> http://allthingsd.com/20110314/video-boomtown-versus-texas-hipsters-and-cheddar-cheese-cats-at-sxsw/feed/ 0 http://allthingsd.com/20110309/memo-time-yahoo-reorgs-its-ad-staff-as-the-race-begins/ http://allthingsd.com/20110309/memo-time-yahoo-reorgs-its-ad-staff-as-the-race-begins/#comments Wed, 09 Mar 2011 14:15:12 +0000 Kara Swisher http://kara.allthingsd.com/?p=41437

In the wake of the departures of two top ad execs to social buying sites, the hiring of another from AOL and a whole new sales management team in place, it’s got to be time for a reorg at Yahoo!

And so it is.

Below is an internal memo from Yahoo’s head of U.S. ad sales Wayne Powers–who was hired in November–about changes in the Silicon Valley Internet giant’s key advertising unit.

The changes come in time for Yahoo’s global ad sales meeting, taking place in San Antonio, Texas next week.

The theme of this year’s event is “The Race Is On,” sources said, which BoomTown does not exactly grok.

Who is Yahoo racing? Does it have a fast car to do so? And is it an amazing race or just meh?

Sources tell me that, unlike at previous such confabs, there will be no big names speaking, with a focus instead on the basics of sales training and operations.

More interesting: Apparently, there are no phones allowed and violators will get their wrists slapped.

Obviously, you ad sales people will have to leak to me via carrier pigeon.

In all seriousness, it will be an important gathering as Yahoo seeks to revitalize its sales team, which has seen a spate of management changes recently.

Most recently, two longtime sales execs have left–Lee Brown to Groupon and Mitch Spolan to LivingSocial–while former AOLer Mark Ellis joined.

Here’s the rest of the mishegas via the memo:

From: Wayne Powers
To: XXX@yahoo-inc.com
Cc: Carol Bartz
Cc: Ross Levinsohn
Cc: Blake Irving
Cc: Elisa Steele
Cc: Tim Morse
Cc: David Windley
Cc: Rich Jacquet
Cc: Rose Tsou
Cc: Wayne Powers
Cc: Christophe PARCOT
Cc: Susanna Lee
Cc: Linda Lubsen
Cc: May Petry
Cc: Tekeita Lodge
Cc: Zealous Wiley

Subject: Organization Announcement

Sent: Mar 8, 2011 3:01 PM

Team,

As we evolve our best-in-class sales organization, I would like to make two key organizational announcements. I am pleased to announce that Liz Ritzcovan will be joining Yahoo! as vice president of Marketing Solutions, leading our Sales Development organization. I am equally excited to announce the promotion of long time Yahoo!, Andrea Morokutti, to vice president of Sales Operations and Strategy.

Liz was most recently vice president, Corporate Sales and Client Services, Digital at Time, Inc. where she led all media efforts and oversaw strategic digital planning processes in coordination with Time Inc, Amex Publishing and Time Warner Broadcast. Along with her team, she was focused on developing and forging sales and marketing partnerships to ensure broad distribution and effective media planning for Time’s corporate and brand partners.

Liz brings an impressive history increasing profits and expanding client and partner bases for various organizations ranging from entrepreneurial start-ups to leading multi-billion dollar global corporations. Prior to joining Yahoo! she held various leadership positions at Interbrand, CondeNast and Miller Publishing. Her expertise in print, digital, broadcast and emerging media strategy and new advertising models will be a tremendous asset to the organization. Liz has a B.A. from University of New York at Potsdam. Liz will be starting later this month and will be based in New York. She will also be at the sales conference and is looking forward to meeting many of you.

With nearly 11 years under her belt at Yahoo!, Andrea’s most recent role has been vice president of Demand Ops Finance in the Americas Region under Mark Liao. Prior to that, Andrea held various leadership positions within finance, including support of the CMO organization, Mobile and Corporate. With Andrea’s solid expertise in finance and business strategy, this new role was a natural progression for her and we excited to have her join the team. Andrea will continue to be based in Sunnyvale.

Both Liz and Andrea will report directly to me. Frank Weishaupt will continue to lead our North America Region Ad Marketplaces organization. And I’d like to thank him for his leadership of the Sales Development and Operations organizations over the last nine months.

Please join me in welcoming Andrea to the team and Liz to Yahoo!.

On a related note, Mark Ellis started last week and is up and running. He’s hitting the road and spending time meeting clients and Yahoos. Look out for him next week at the sales conference.

I’d like to thank Mitch for his many years of service at Yahoo! and wish him the best of luck in his future endeavors.

Wayne

]]> http://allthingsd.com/20110309/memo-time-yahoo-reorgs-its-ad-staff-as-the-race-begins/feed/ 1 http://allthingsd.com/20110307/viral-video-attack-the-block-and-boomtown-debut-at-sxsw/ http://allthingsd.com/20110307/viral-video-attack-the-block-and-boomtown-debut-at-sxsw/#comments Mon, 07 Mar 2011 08:15:42 +0000 Kara Swisher http://kara.allthingsd.com/?p=41306

Like many a geek–and after a decade away–I’m headed to South by Southwest later this week.

To get in the mood for the well-known multimedia festival in Austin, here’s one of the films making its debut this coming weekend.

It’s called “Attack the Block,” and is about a teen gang fighting an alien invasion. Plus, it has the best tag line ever: “Inner City Versus Outer Space.”

Which is just about how I am feeling about SXSW!

In any case, despite my lack of hipster cred, I will be there for a party hosted by WordPress with drinks by The Wall Street Journal Digital Network and All Things Digital on Friday, as well as to interview Flipboard Co-founder and CEO Mike McCue on Saturday in an afternoon session with the subtitle: “Game-Changer or Passing Fad?”

NetworkEffect’s Liz Gannes and The Digital Solution’s Katherine Boehret will also be at SXSW, so expect plenty of coverage from Texas.

Until then, enjoy this movie trailer, y’all:

]]> http://allthingsd.com/20110307/viral-video-attack-the-block-and-boomtown-debut-at-sxsw/feed/ 0 http://allthingsd.com/20110217/amazons-exit-spurs-tax-fight-in-texas/ http://allthingsd.com/20110217/amazons-exit-spurs-tax-fight-in-texas/#comments Thu, 17 Feb 2011 13:00:05 +0000 Ana Campoy http://voices.allthingsd.com/?p=36464 The planned closure of an Amazon.com Inc. distribution center in a suburb here has opened a debate about whether taxes or jobs is the better answer for Texas’ tattered budget.

The online retailing giant said last week that it would close its center in Irving due to a dispute with the state comptroller, who is demanding that Amazon pay $269 million in sales taxes it should have collected on goods sold to Texas residents.

Comptroller Susan Combs, a Republican, said she was disappointed to see the facility’s 119 jobs go, but her duty was to collect.

That position had caused discomfort for Gov. Rick Perry, who promotes his policies as job-creating. In a rare public disagreement with a fellow Republican, he said Ms. Combs made the wrong call.

Read the rest of this post on the original site

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