The start-up quickly fixed the bug, as Betabeat reported, and issued a cheeky apology. The gaffe was probably annoying to some users who might not have wanted repeat reminders of what they did on hearts-and-flowers day 2011. But Timehop is still hitting the right nerve at the right time.

In other words, it’s trying to be funny, capitalizing on social media nostalgia in its efforts to chronicle all things pertaining to your digital history. And it’s looking beyond social networks as it bulks up the service.

A little Timehop history: A couple of months ago, you might have noticed, as I did, that you started to receive emails from “Timehop Abe,” with a Twitter message or Foursquare check-in you posted a year ago. And if you’re sensitive to email spam or simply lose track of all the services you sign up for, as I often do, you might have wondered, why am I getting this email?

Turns out you might have signed up for Foursquare and Seven Years Ago, which was the name of the app created at Foursquare’s first hackathon last year; or maybe PastPosts, a later iteration of the app. In December, the group behind those apps became Timehop — encompassing Foursquare, Twitter, Facebook and Instagram posts.

But Timehop isn’t like Facebook’s Timeline, compiling a digital album of your past social media activity, said its co-founder, Jonathan Wegener. And it’s not an app that conducts a search for old tweets or status updates — something avid social media users complain can be an arduous task. It’s a small, digestible slice of the past, sent via email.

Shortly after the name change, the New York-based start-up snagged $1.1 million from a Who’s Who of New York tech start-ups, including Bryce Roberts, Spark Capital, Foursquare’s co-founders and GroupMe’s founders.

It was an interesting show of faith in the company, since Timehop — despite the fact that it works with mobile app APIs — has no mobile app of its own, is tied to Facebook Connect for Web sign-ups, and has no real moneymaking strategy in the works. Its user base is in the tens of thousands.

“It’s a ‘user-first’ model, like Twitter and Foursquare,” Wegener said. “Making money just isn’t something we’re thinking about yet.”

Email is the company’s biggest asset right now, Wegener said. “Our open rate is great — over half of the emails we send out get opened and, if nothing else, we could have some sort of killer email advertising business.”

Wegener said the company realized a while back that it had to change its approach with the daily emails being sent out. Some users complained they were too harsh, including one user who received a jocular reminder that he was at a cemetery for a funeral the year before. Timehop has since hired a part-time advertising writer to craft quips for them.

Timehop is also starting to add more context to its emails, such as references to what was going on in pop culture and the news a year ago to the day.

Eventually, the company hopes to tap into other data — such as users’ calendar events — to compile an even bigger digital glimpse of the past, something that Greplin has gotten a jump-start on.

“The data you have on your calendar, the photos you have on your phone and desktop — that’s the stuff we’re finding really interesting from a context perspective,” Wegener said.

With more and more concerns emerging about the sharing of personal data through Web and mobile apps, Wegener is quick to say that Timehop is a private product that doesn’t post on your “walls” or anyone else’s, and that the company doesn’t share email addresses or scan contact lists.

But in order to work, the app does require access to your social networks — leaving users to decide whether a good laugh from a daily dose of the digital past is worth it to them.

According to Apple, the new update (iOS 4.3.2) is designed to address an issue where users encountered a blank or frozen screen when conducting FaceTime chats as well as an issue “that prevented some international users from connecting to 3G networks” on the iPad.

Apple said last week it was investigating an issue that had caused 3G connection problems for some Verizon iPad 2 owners.

The update also aims to close several security holes. Apple also issued security updates on Tuesday for the Mac OS and for the Verizon iPhone, which has yet to reach iOS 4.3.

The company had originally hoped to have an update adding copy and paste out to users by January, but ran into several hitches. At this point, Microsoft has approved that update but not all customers have it as carriers continue to do their testing.

Belfiore said that the company has added both staff and infrastructure to the unit that handles testing of updates. It has also added a “Where’s my update?” page.

“We expect we are going to get these problems licked,” he said.

With that, Belfiore turned his focus to Mango, the larger-scale update due out later this year that will offer improved multitasking, better browsing with Internet Explorer 9 and integrated Twitter support, among other features. Belfiore also announced on Wednesday that Mango will add support for 16 additional languages and increase the number of countries from which apps can be submitted as well as the number of countries in which users can buy apps from the marketplace.

On the feature side, Belfiore said that developers will have access to new controls, including deeper access to the camera, SQL database and more. The new capabilities, he said, are what will allow Skype to come to Windows Phone with the new update. Developers will also be able to have live tiles that jump to a feature within an app. As an example, Belfiore showed how Amazon might be able to have an option that lets those running its app go straight to a bar code reader.

The new background audio feature of multitasking will allow third-party programs to play sound while another app is running, something that wasn’t possible in the first version of Windows Phone 7 but is a staple of other platforms. Spotify will be among those taking advantage of the new feature, Belfiore said. (Of course, Spotify still isn’t available in the U.S., but maybe it will be by fall.)

Belfiore also announced that a promised spring release of Angry Birds for Windows Phone will come May 25.

The company is also working to offer a new motion control that integrates data from a compass and gyroscope. Belfiore showed that in action doing a demo of Layar, the augmented reality app that recently got an update for iPhone and Android.

Microsoft has said it expects to be able to have Mango on new phones and as an update for existing users this year. Belfiore made a reference on Wednesday to it showing up on new phones by fall.

As for developers, they can get their hands on the tools needed to take advantage of the added features next month, Belfiore said.

Also, Mobilized noticed that the hardware that Belfiore was using to demonstrate the new features was an unreleased phone model from Asus.

As for the new browsing, it uses a version of Internet Explorer 9. Belfiore did a demo showing a “speed reading” test with the new Windows Phone rendering far faster than the iPhone 4 and an Android device.

“First, I was wrong when I said ‘most people have received the February update,’” Belfiore said in the posting on Microsoft’s Channel 9 site. “There are many of you who have yet to receive it, and I don’t blame you for speaking up and pointing out my mistake.”

The update delivers copy and paste features, along with performance updates and improvements to the Marketplace for buying apps.

Belfiore and others at Redmond have talked about the update in the past tense, though many customers have yet to get it. Part of this has to do with the fact that both Microsoft and carriers have to sign off and schedule the update, a process that is still under way.

Redmond has posted a schedule of when to expect the update in the U.S., as well as in international markets.

The update is already on some new phones, including the HTC Arrive, the first Windows Phone 7 model from Sprint. In addition to copy and paste support, the so-called NoDo update is the first version of the Windows Phone software that supports CDMA networks such as Sprint and Verizon. AT&T is also adding the HTC HD7S phone, which also will run the newer version of the software.

This is not the first stumble Microsoft has had when it comes to updating Windows Phone 7. The company had to delay the roll-out of an earlier update after the process caused problems on some Samsung phones.

The purpose of that update was merely to test the updating process and prepare for future updates.

The copy and paste update has also been delayed a bit, to late March.

Challenges with these updates raise questions about how timely Microsoft will be in delivering a more substantive update to the operating system. At Mobile World Congress in February, Microsoft said it would have a broader update later this year that offers improved Web browsing, multitasking and integrated Twitter support.

Here is the full text of Belfiore’s comments:

Many of you are making critical comments here which are certainly fair. First, I was wrong when I said “most people have received the February update.” There are many of you who have yet to receive it, and I don’t blame you for speaking up and pointing out my mistake. Second, I referred to our updates as “complete” because I was thinking of the internal process where we pass completed software to another group who delivers them – but of course no update is complete until you all have it. Plus, at the time I did the interview we had started the NoDo (“march update”) delivery process and I knew “it was going well” from our perspective: people were officially getting it, the success rate of its deployment on real-world phones was looking good, and we were happy that the process had STARTED well. Still—these are NOT the same as all of you getting it and I’m sorry that I came across as insensitive to that fact.

I am a very, very big advocate for all our end-users and developers, and it bothers me a lot if I sounded out of touch. I wasn’t as prepared for this interview as I should have been—I walked into the studio with an informal state of mind, thinking about MIX and what we WILL be talking about, and I didn’t have the right up-to-date information to give a good explanation on updates which I know to be a very high-interest topic right now.

I have read all of the comments here (and many of them on the other blogs) and so has pretty much everyone in our management team. We know it’s been frustrating to wait for features/fixes and (probably worse) to hear little from us on specific dates. We are sorry the process has been rocky. The “where’s my phone update” table is our first step to try to remedy this in the face of technical problems that have made our first wave of updates take longer than we expected. We know the table would benefit greatly from more detail, and we are hoping to add more to it by working with the Operators who own the “testing” phase to get more clarity. If your phone is shown in “scheduling”, it’ll be worth checking the table next week.

In the spirit of “MIX as a conversation” – I will make sure that when I show up in Vegas that I’m well prepared to give an update in person and to try to answer your questions as best I can. You folks are obviously a very important audience for us and it’s right for you to expect us to communicate and execute better. I know at this point it’s our actions that matter… The main thing we are trying to do is to get the updates out to everyone in a way that is reliable and works, and then make our process better and more transparent in the future.

Thanks,
Joe

What’s more is that this update isn’t even the one that adds features like copy and paste, performance improvements and support for CDMA carriers like Sprint and Verizon. This update is just the one to prepare for that update, which is due later this month.

In a blog post late on Friday, Microsoft said that it believes only about 100 people globally were affected by the second issue and that now more than 90 percent of customers are able to update their phones successfully. Most of those that are having problems at this point are either encountering Internet connectivity issues or don’t have enough space on their computer’s hard drive. (The update is available only via a PC or Mac, not as a direct, over-the-air update to phones.)

For those that are still having problems getting the update to install, Microsoft has posted a workaround, though it is an involved process that requires users to delete music and videos and, in some cases apps, from their device and then reinstall them.

It’s not the most encouraging sign for a company that is counting on two important software updates this year to help close the gap between its software and that of its rivals such as Google’s Android and Apple’s iPhone. Beyond the imminent copy-and-paste update, Microsoft has said it plans a more significant upgrade later this year that will add broader multitasking, improved Web browsing and integrated Twitter support, among other features.

At a press conference due to start any minute, the Taiwanese cellphone maker is set to show off a pair of Android phones–the Cha Cha and the Salsa–as well as its first tablet and several other Android devices.

HTC’s move follows that of INQ Mobile, which last week announced two Android models that feature heavy Facebook integration. Gemalto also announced Monday it plans to integrate Facebook into SIM cards, allowing users of low-end phones better access to the social network.

Like many others’ news here at the show, most of HTC’s had leaked out well ahead of the event.

One particularly nice touch–HTC planned ahead and ran Ethernet cables to each seat in the theater. (Unfortunately, Mobilized left the MacBook Air Ethernet adapter back in the apartment.)

Mobilized has live coverage of the event below.

9:58 am: Still waiting for the press conference–which was due to start a half hour ago–to get under way. We do have comfy seats and soothing music, but would have prefereed an extra half hour of sleep.

9:59 am: Apparently all I had to do was complain. Now it’s getting started with CEO Peter Chou taking the stage.

“2011 is going to be an amazing year,” Chou promises.

Some analysts predict smartphones will outsell feature phones, Chou says.

“Features that were once fancy, extra, are now becoming standard,” he says. “‘Nice to have’ is turning into ‘must have.’”

Hardware is important, but so are software and services like Sense and HTCSense.com. Company plans new versions of HTC Sense for phones with keyboards, larger screens, etc.

10:04 am: Some stats from Chou:

25 million smartphones sold last year, more than double the prior year, with revenue up 93 percent.

The company’s global brand awareness reached 50 percent, up from 13 percent a year and a half ago. (Of course, that means half of consumers still don’t know HTC, but a big improvement nonetheless.)

10:05 am: On to 2011: 4G networks will change everything again. HTC Thunderbolt, its first LTE smartphone, shipping this week with Verizon.

10:07 am: Company is announcing five phones today, the most it has ever announced at one time. Chou says.

“I hope you agree it has been worth the wait,” Chou says, bringing out John Wang, HTC’s chief marketing officer.

10:07 am: Talking about HTC Sense. Location-data for 83 countries. HTC spent a year and a half building the maps product. You can preload, so travel won’t cost a fortune in roaming charges.

Weather is another good example, Wang says, where the company aimed not just to provide information, but also offer an emotional experience.

“When it is sunny you almost feel the warmth on your body. When it rains, you almost want to wipe your phone dry.”

10:10 am: First demo fails as video he wants to show won’t play.

“Well, maybe later on,” Wang says, moving on to the new phones.

And another fails as whatever was supposed to happen isn’t happening.

Okay, here we go. HTC Desire S. And, we’ve got some more demo fail going on.

10:12 am: “We apologize for this,” Wang says, annoucing a few-minutes pause.

10:15 am: And we are back, with HTC Desire S, Incredible S and Wildfire S.

Desire S doesn’t have front and back. Machined out of a single block of aluminum. “It feels solid in your hand,” Wang says. Also has full HD video recording.

Wildfire S, smaller and in three colors. “It can almost disappear into your pocket. (Mobilized hates it when that happens. We’ve put two iPod Nanos through the wash.

10:20 am: HTC Incredible S. As you rotate the large Android phone, the icons on the buttons also rotate. 8-megapixel camera, integrated video chat with front-facing camera. “Incredible S combines premium design with premium experience,” Wang says.

So, essentially these are updates to the existing product line.

Next up, the Facebook phones.

10:22 am: There are 500 million Facebook users worldwide, but 200 million check it on their phones. Those users are twice as engaged. Many young people check Facebook right when they wake up with a significant number doing so from their phones before they even wake up, Wang says.

Now showing a video of HTC’s work with Facebook to build the new phones.

10:24 am: Video of Facebook CEO Marc Zuckerberg touting the device.

“A lot has been made about a Facebook phone,” Zuckerberg says, but adds that there will be more than a dozen phones this year with deep social integration. “HTC is doing that here.”

Mobilized is apologizing in advance, but I may not make it through the whole press conference.

10:26 am: The new phones–the Cha Cha (with keyboard) and Salsa (touch-only) both have a dedicated blue Facebook button at the bottom.

10:27 am: Can use button to post updates, but also if taking a picture can use that button to share social network. “When you press this button, the photo is instantly uploaded to Facebook,” Wang says. Button blinks also when reading an article on the Web. Press the Facebook button and it will share that on Facebook. Similar, when you are listening to a song, pressing the button will share that information.

If you hold button down, you check in on Facebook Places.

Both phones also support Facebook messaging and chat.

“We did not just add social networking to the phone,” Wang says.

10:30 am: Bringing up Facebook VP Chamath Palihapitiya to talk about the partnership.

“I’m just frankly very thrilled we are taking this very important step, which I think will be the first of many,” he says, saying he expects Facebook and HTC to do more things together.

10:32 am: Chou back up, saying he could just stop with five great phones and ensure another great year. But he’s not. There’s a tablet coming.

10:34 am: Chou says the company could have rushed out another “me too” experience, but says that wasn’t what the company wanted to do.

Showing video of how the company came up with its tablet, the HTC Flyer.

10:37 am: Chou holds up the Flyer, then hands things back to Wang. Flyer also has unibody design, which he says makes the tablet feel solid but keeps it lightweight.

HTC wanted it to be comfortable to hold in hand. At 415 grams it is about the same weight as a paperback book.

Here are a few features: 1.5GHz chip, 6-hour battery life, dual cameras, Flash 10 and HTML 5 support, along with new 3-D-based HTC Sense experience.

10:40 am: Also has a stylus–unique among Android tablets–HTC Scribe technology.

Allows you to share things more easily, Wang says. Just scribble “let’s go” on a restaurant Web page and press a button and it is sent.

You can also use it to do audio note taking–a la Livescribe, where notes are synchronized to the audio.

Mobilized has to jam to our next meeting, but I think we have hit the high points.

The more interesting of the updates is the second one–a major release–due later this year. In a Mobile World Congress keynote, Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer plans to demo only a couple of features of the release, including improved multitasking, simultaneous game play with an Xbox as well as the addition of the company’s Internet Explorer 9 browser.

An earlier update, now due out by March, brings the long-awaited copy-and-paste features to the operating system as well as some performance tweaks and support for CDMA networks.

Windows Phone unit President Andy Lees told Mobilized that the new release later this year should answer critics who worried that Microsoft wouldn’t be able to innovate fast enough to catch up or leapfrog over features available on rivals such as iPhone and Android.

“Part of what we are doing is sharing technology across the company,” Lees said in an interview. In other examples, Microsoft is showing a demo of how a user on the phone might play a game throwing balls at someone playing with an Xbox or Kinect. Microsoft also plans to allow sharing of Office documents directly between phones, Windows PCs and the cloud-based Windows Live service.

Moving the full IE9 browser over to the phone will allow for hardware acceleration and other features that had not been possible on phones in the past, Lees said. For battery and other reasons, Lees said that the new release won’t support Adobe’s Flash, but Lees said it is not a religious issue for him, and that the company may add such support down the road.

“We’re not allergic to Flash,” Lees said. “It’s not in this update, but we’re not making some particular statement that it will never be there.”

Microsoft also plans to announce that it will integrate Twitter into the People hub in much the same way that the initial release brings in Facebook updates.

The update later this year will be the one adopted by Nokia in its first Windows Phone, Lees said. Nokia announced last week, of course, that it plans to make Windows Phone its primary smartphone operating system going forward.

As for early reaction to the Nokia move, Lees said the response has been positive, both from mobile operators as well as from phone makers, even those that now find themselves with a new competitor.

Lees said that basically all of the companies that make Windows Phone devices also make phones for Android and have plenty of competition there as well. Lees said that, if anything, Nokia’s move could spur some device makers that were on the fence about supporting Windows Phone 7.

“We have had other [phone makers] approach us who were talking to us and have now increased their, should I say, level of focus,” Lees said.

As for Nokia CEO Stephen Elop’s comments that the amount of money flowing to Nokia from Microsoft is measured in billions rather than in millions, Lees said that one must consider that the deal includes partnerships around search and services as well as the amount of marketing and other support being directly provided by Microsoft.

“We’re not talking about specifics,” Lees said. “But it’s a sizeable opportunity.”

Update: 4:00 pm Barcelona time: I finally made it in after being stuck in a massive crowd (see image). Ballmer’s keynote is slated to begin shortly and I’ll add live updates shortly.

4:06 pm: Ballmer has taken the stage, talking about rapid pace of change in industry and for Microsoft.

Talks about first update, the copy and paste one, which will come in first two weeks of March.

4:09 pm: Ballmer said most of smartphone competition the same–a “sea of icons” that lead to applications that lead to actions. Windows Phone is easier and simpler, he said. “With Windows Phone it’s easier to see information at a glance,” Ballmer said.

4:12 pm: On to new stuff, in the “near future in 2011, we will bring multitasking to Windows Phones” Ballmer said.

Ballmer is talking IE9. “We need to give people the full Web on their phone, like we do on the PC,” Ballmer said. (Wouldn’t that also include Flash, Mobilized wonders?)

4:15 pm: Apps are great, Ballmer said, but not enough. “It’s often too hard to find what you want when you want it,” he said. That, he said, is why Windows Phone also has task-specific hubs like People, Pictures, Office, Music and Video.

4:16 pm: Interesting note, Ballmer has again touted 93 percent customer satisfaction number, but no new sales figure.

4:19 pm: Windows Phone exec Joe Belfiore comes onstage to demo the new features coming to Windows Phone later this year.

4:26 pm: Both updates will be available for all Windows Phone 7 owners, Belfiore said.

4:30 pm: Belfiore showing an IE9 demo highlighting its hardware acceleration feature. In the demo, Belfiore shows IE9 for Windows Phone allowing 50 fish to rapidly swim around in an aquarium demo. He then shows the same demo on an iPhone 4 with the fish barely swimming.

4:32 pm: A few demoes fail. Streaming video doesn’t work because of connection issues. “This is preliminary not final code,” Belfiore said. “We’ll get all these kinks worked out.”

On to multitasking…

4:36 pm: Press-and-hold back button lets users access the new multitasking and see tiles for recently run apps.

Also shows Slacker playing with other tasks. Until now, only Microsoft’s own Zune could play in the background, not third-party apps.

4:39 pm: Last demo is the Xbox one showing Kinect game being played with the phone. Shows a “tech preview” of Windows Phone being used as a companion in Kinect’s dodgeball/breakout game.

4:42 pm: Ballmer back and talking about the ecosystems and Microsoft’s interaction with device makers and mobile operators as well as growth in the number of mobile apps for Windows Phone 7.

“We’re off to a strong start,” he said. “We know we’ve got a lot of work to do.”

Ballmer said the company knows it needs both scale and variety.

4:44 pm: Now he’s talking Microsoft-Nokia deal.

4:47 pm: Ballmer invites out Nokia CEO Stephen Elop,

Elop calls the deal “a natural partnership,” in which Nokia will bring the global reach and scale that Microsoft needs, while giving Nokia a needed in back to the North American market, where it has struggled badly.

Elop repeats now well-worn point that Microsoft-Nokia will offer mobile operators a third viable choice to iPhone and Android.

4:51 pm: Ballmer makes the same point Lees made in our interview, arguing that the Nokia deal will even help other Windows Phone device makers by giving the ecosystem a needed level of scale.

“Today, customers are falling in love with Windows phones,” Ballmer said, adding that the company is investing to further popularize the phone, including new features.

]]> http://allthingsd.com/20110214/microsoft-to-add-multitasking-internet-explorer-9-to-windows-phone-later-this-year/feed/ 0 http://allthingsd.com/20110209/bubbly-voice-twitter-service-launches-in-the-philippines/ http://allthingsd.com/20110209/bubbly-voice-twitter-service-launches-in-the-philippines/#comments Thu, 10 Feb 2011 06:53:20 +0000 Liz Gannes http://networkeffect.allthingsd.com/?p=3444 I last wrote about Bubble Motion, provider of the Bubbly mobile messaging service, exactly a year ago. At the time, the company had 150,000 users. Today, it has more than seven million.

Bubble Motion, which is funded by Sequoia Capital and others, is now launching Bubbly in the Philippines, after releases in India, Indonesia and Japan (chosen because of their deep mobile phone penetration). Its launch partner in the Philippines is Globe Telecom.

By the midway point of this year, Bubbly will be rolled out to all major carriers in those four countries, for a total potential audience of 800 million.

Bubbly allows users to send each other voice-based status updates. People who follow a user receive an SMS each time a new status message is posted, and pay to listen to the status message with a fee added to their regular phone bill. This can be used both for communicating with friends and family and for subscribing to updates from celebrities.

Users pay either a monthly subscription fee for celebrities in India and Indonesia, or per message in the Philippines and Japan, following the carrier billing styles in each country. The average user gets one to two messages per day.

Celebrities on Bubbly often have two to three times as many followers as they have on Twitter, bragged Bubble Motion CEO Tom Clayton on a phone interview on Wednesday. And that’s despite the fact that Bubbly costs money and Twitter is free.

Part of the reason is Bubbly has more reach than Twitter in the four countries it has launched in, Clayton said, given it is a mobile service and Twitter is often accessed over the Internet.

But grooming a stable of stars might not be defensible in the long term, given Twitter is ramping up its mobile efforts and celebrities may want to have a broader reach than they can achieve with local phone carriers and voice updates. Clayton said another edge his company has is the infrastructure it has built to deliver voice files–250 million of them since Bubbly was first launched–without overloading carrier networks.

Clayton said Bubble Motion, which has raised about $30 million in funding, is not profitable yet but is growing revenue with a direct correlation to its traffic, which is to say, doubling every quarter.

]]> http://allthingsd.com/20110209/bubbly-voice-twitter-service-launches-in-the-philippines/feed/ 0 http://allthingsd.com/20110209/the-streak-7-bargain-tablet-from-dell-is-no-real-deal/ http://allthingsd.com/20110209/the-streak-7-bargain-tablet-from-dell-is-no-real-deal/#comments Thu, 10 Feb 2011 02:01:23 +0000 Walter S. Mossberg http://ptech.allthingsd.com/?p=1759 If you could get a tablet for the price of a smart phone, and if it also worked on one of the new, faster, 4G-class cellular networks, you’d jump at the chance, right? Dell and T-Mobile hope so, and that’s why they’ve brought out the Dell Streak 7, at just $200 with a two-year service contract.

The Streak 7, Dell’s second effort to compete with Apple’s $500 iPad, is the least expensive tablet I’ve seen from a major manufacturer, and claims to be the first capable of 4G cellular speeds (it also has Wi-Fi). Like many planned iPad competitors, it runs Google’s Android operating system. It’s also the first I’ve tested using a fast new processor from nVidia, the Tegra 2, which will power a number of new tablets this year.

Unfortunately, after a week of testing, I found the compromises Dell made to get to that low price make it impossible for me to recommend the Streak 7. Its screen, battery life, and software are all disappointing, and vastly inferior not only to the iPad’s, but also to those on the Samsung Galaxy Tab, a high-quality Android tablet about the size of the Streak 7 released late last year. In other words, you get what you pay for.

Like the Galaxy Tab, the Streak 7 has a 7-inch screen, measured diagonally, or less than half the size of the iPad’s. But it’s large enough to be properly called a tablet, unlike Dell’s first Streak, an odd tweener device with a 5-inch screen—more like a big phone—that was released last year to a tepid response.

Dell concedes it wasn’t trying to build “the Cadillac of tablets” with the Streak 7, but was aiming for budget-conscious families and home use. Dell notes it has plans for a range of tablets with different prices, screen sizes and specs.

The Streak 7′s screen, battery life, and software are all disappointing. In other words, you get what you pay for.

The Streak 7 has some strengths. Like the Tab, it’s smaller and lighter than the iPad, so easier to hold in one hand. It plays Flash videos, which the iPad can’t. And it has front and rear cameras, unlike the iPad. It can also be used, unlike the iPad, as a Wi-Fi hot spot.

Also, I found its cellular data speeds impressive. In tests I conducted in Silicon Valley, the Streak averaged 4.63 megabits per second in download speed on T-Mobile’s souped-up 3G network (which it calls 4G because it claims similar speeds). That was nearly twice as fast as the download speeds provided by my hotel’s Wi-Fi network. Cellular upload speeds were a bit slower than Wi-Fi, but still averaged about 1.2 mps.

But, in my view, the Streak 7′s minuses outweighed its pluses. Let’s start with battery life. In my tests, the Streak 7 conked out after a pathetic two hours and 10 minutes of watching movies. That compares with about 11.5 hours of continuous video playback for the iPad and just under seven hours for the Galaxy Tab, when I tested them. In a more mixed-use pattern, including Web surfing, game playing, music, email and social networking, with some short videos thrown in, the Streak 7 lasted between 5.5 and 6.5 hours, still underwhelming for a tablet.

Dell says its target audience will use the Streak 7 plugged into wall outlets and TVs through an extra-cost dock, but I wouldn’t buy a tablet with battery life this poor.

Screen resolution also was so low as to be fuzzy at times, especially in reading small type, and viewing the screen at an angle often reduced the image to a ghostly outline. The Streak 7′s screen has a resolution of 800×480, below the much smaller iPhone screen, and well below the resolution of the iPad or the Galaxy Tab. While the internal chips drove video fine—as long as the batteries lasted—it looked worse than on the other two, as did photos.

The software also is a problem. It’s an older version of Android, called 2.2, which was never intended for tablets, and whose core apps—such as email, contacts and calendar—were designed for the smaller phone screens. Months ago, Samsung used the same version of Android on the Tab, but compensated by rewriting key apps to take advantage of the tablet screen, with more PC-like designs. Dell has done none of this on the Streak 7. All it added was a thin user interface called Stage featuring big, blocky widgets that group things like contacts and social updates, an old concept. It preloaded some kid-friendly and family-friendly apps, but some are mere come-ons that require downloading the full app.

Worse, the Streak 7 appears shortly before the true tablet-optimized version of Android, called Honeycomb, and Dell can’t promise that Streak 7 buyers can upgrade to Honeycomb. The company says the device has been designed to accommodate an upgrade, and is hopeful that it’s possible. But there is no guarantee. Buyers might get stuck with the old version built for phones.

Even on a tight budget, the Streak 7′s deficiencies might not make it worth the price. You’ll pay T-Mobile $30 or $50 a month for a capped data plan for two years. By contrast, the base iPad requires no payments to a cellular carrier, as it’s Wi-Fi only. Even if you buy the iPad with cellular connectivity from AT&T, there is no contract. You pay $15 or $25 a month and end the cell service at will, with no penalty.

You can buy the Streak 7 without a contract, but then it costs $450, too much for a device with its drawbacks, and only $50 less than the far superior base iPad. Even the Streak 7′s subsidized price of $200 is only $50 less than what its carrier, T-Mobile, charges for the better Galaxy Tab with a two-year contract.

Dell is serious about competing in the tablet wars, and it may produce a winner yet. But its first efforts, in my view, missed the mark.

Find all Walt Mossberg’s columns and videos at the All Things Digital website, walt.allthingsd.com. Email him at mossberg@wsj.com.

]]> http://allthingsd.com/20110209/the-streak-7-bargain-tablet-from-dell-is-no-real-deal/feed/ 0 http://allthingsd.com/20110203/hearsay-labs-brings-compliance-to-social-media/ http://allthingsd.com/20110203/hearsay-labs-brings-compliance-to-social-media/#comments Thu, 03 Feb 2011 13:00:42 +0000 Liz Gannes http://networkeffect.allthingsd.com/?p=3222 Hearsay today launched a social media platform for companies that have both corporate brands and local representatives, with existing customers such as Farmers Insurance, State Farm and 24 Hour Fitness.

The San Francisco-based company helps its customers manage compliance with brand guidelines as well as regulations from the SEC, FINRA and the FTC. That’s especially important when local representatives and franchisees are networking with and recruiting their own clients under the banner of a corporate name.

It also helps these types of companies push out social media content for their local representatives to personalize, and analyze the effectiveness of their efforts on Facebook, LinkedIn and Twitter.

The idea isn’t to make social networking boring and corporate, necessarily, but rather to provide sample content to riff off and to flag inappropriate updates before they go up.

Hearsay stems from the work of co-founder and CEO Clara Shih, who wrote “The Facebook Era,” an early book about how businesses can use social networks. Shih then wanted to found a company around those ideas, and iterated her efforts until she found a fit. The company has been in stealth mode since 2009, but it is already cash-flow positive.

Hearsay raised a little more than $3 million in funding last March in a round by Sequoia Capital. Other investors are Michael Abbott (Twitter), Steve Chen (YouTube), Ron Conway (SV Angel), Nils Johnson, David Lawee (Google), Thomas Layton (former OpenTable), Dave Morin (Path), Patrick Pohlen (Latham & Watkins), Alberto Savoia (Google), Aydin Senkut (Felicis Ventures) and Aaron Sittig (former Facebook).

]]> http://allthingsd.com/20110203/hearsay-labs-brings-compliance-to-social-media/feed/ 0 http://allthingsd.com/20110202/twitter-offers-metered-pricing-for-firehose-of-tweets/ http://allthingsd.com/20110202/twitter-offers-metered-pricing-for-firehose-of-tweets/#comments Thu, 03 Feb 2011 01:43:44 +0000 Liz Gannes http://networkeffect.allthingsd.com/?p=3207 Twitter data is a hot commodity for all sorts of projects, including search, brand monitoring and customer relationship management. But pricing and access to its data is not something the company has prioritized. Starting today, one much-clamored-for Twitter data option has been made available: Filtering the full, ever-growing real-time Twitter data set for keywords on a per-tweet basis. Gnip, Twitter’s only official data reseller, will give customers access at a cost of 10 cents per thousand tweets in a new joint product called “Power Track.”

For back story, Twitter has for the last year sold access to its “Firehose” real-time stream of every tweet to companies like Google and Microsoft. It gives other developers access to a random sampling of tweets (a.k.a. the “Gardenhose” and “Spritzer.”) Then in November it gave Gnip permission to sell more precise sampler products like the Decahose (10 percent of tweets for $5,000 per month).

But many companies, especially social media monitors, would rather get just the relevant tweets from the total data set. With Gnip’s Power Track they’ll be able to avoid Twitter’s polling rate limits and get exactly what they want, for a fee.

As for the actual Twitter users slaving away to produce those 140 character updates? No, they don’t get a cut.

This story was updated to correct Power Track pricing.

]]> http://allthingsd.com/20110202/twitter-offers-metered-pricing-for-firehose-of-tweets/feed/ 7 http://allthingsd.com/20110202/security-software-taxes-and-wi-fi-for-ipads/ http://allthingsd.com/20110202/security-software-taxes-and-wi-fi-for-ipads/#comments Wed, 02 Feb 2011 23:00:02 +0000 Walt Mossberg http://mailbox.allthingsd.com/?p=839 Q:

I have a Windows PC. Microsoft sends regular updates to their “computer protection” software. Do I still need other security software?

A:

It depends what you mean by “computer protection” software.

If you are using Microsoft Security Essentials, then you already have security software and don’t need another brand, unless you are unhappy with it.

If you are referring to general security updates to Windows, these do close vulnerabilities in Windows, but don’t obviate the need for security software.

Q:

I’m an accountant and do a few tax returns for my clients in my spare time. Would you please give me some recommendations on a computer that I could use for preparing tax returns and filing them electronically?

A:

While preparing tax returns might require some skill on your part, it doesn’t require an especially powerful computer, or one configured in any particular manner. Pretty much any PC or Mac on the shelves can do it.

If you have a favorite tax software program, perhaps one geared more to accountants than to average consumers, you might check its system requirements and be guided by these.

For instance, if it runs on only certain versions of Windows, or requires a certain amount of memory, you should buy accordingly.

Q:

We have two new iPads, the models with only Wi-Fi connectivity. Can I use the Wi-Fi hot-spot feature of an Android phone to provide them with Internet access?

A:

Although I haven’t tested this scenario, I see no reason why not.

The hot-spot feature creates a Wi-Fi network from a cellular data connection and should work with any Wi-Fi capable device, including your iPads.

You can find Mossberg’s Mailbox and all of Walt Mossberg’s other columns online at the All Things Digital website, http://walt.allthingsd.com. Write to Walt at mossberg@wsj.com.

]]> http://allthingsd.com/20110202/security-software-taxes-and-wi-fi-for-ipads/feed/ 1 http://allthingsd.com/20110131/interview-t-mobile-ceo-phillip-humm-embraces-role-as-challenger-to-verizon-sprint-and-att/ http://allthingsd.com/20110131/interview-t-mobile-ceo-phillip-humm-embraces-role-as-challenger-to-verizon-sprint-and-att/#comments Mon, 31 Jan 2011 13:30:40 +0000 Ina Fried http://mobilized.allthingsd.com/?p=3239 When Philip Humm meets with the other CEOs of T-Mobile subsidiaries, he is often the odd man out. While the others can boast of their 30 percent market share and compare notes on how their iPhone is selling, Humm can’t really relate.

T-Mobile has a fraction of that market share and no iPhone to speak of. Instead, T-Mobile USA is trying to operate as a feisty underdog. It’s a role that Humm said he not only relishes, but one that is also a natural fit for his company, which was born with the 2001 acquisition of VoiceStream, a scrappy regional carrier.

“The organization is going back to its roots,” he said in an interview last week. “VoiceStream and later T-Mobile really started in the market as a challenger. They started with big buckets of minutes at the time and later with unlimited minutes. These are things which, in a sense, are coming back now.”

While Verizon and AT&T are shifting away from unlimited plans and Sprint is hiking the cost for smartphone data rates, T-Mobile says it plans to offer lower rates in an effort to win back market share. From its $10 entry-level data rates to unlimited family plans that can save hundreds of dollars per year, Humm said the company is putting its money where its mouth is.

“We are a very good value,” Humm said.

But before Humm can win over customers, he knows he must start with the company’s own employees, some of whom became disenchanted as their company saw itself slow to move to faster networks and embrace the latest technologies.

Humm is currently traveling around the U.S., spending each Wednesday through Friday from now until April meeting with workers in different key markets.

“In the beginning of the week I pick up my job slip from my assistant,” he said. “[I learn] ‘Where do I have to fly this week?’” Last week he stopped in San Francisco, San Jose and Los Angeles. This week he is due in Texas.

In each city, Humm outlines the plan and shows off the company’s combative ads, which feature a young man as the iPhone, hobbled by the slow speed of its networks. T-Mobile, meanwhile, is a beautiful young woman, riding fast and free on T-Mobile’s network. So far, he said, the message has resonated with the company’s employees.

There is more to do than just cut prices. In the absence of an iPhone, T-Mobile needs to do a better job of embracing Android, he said. And that doesn’t necessarily mean doing a lot of customization work, as it and others have tried to do, or spending a fortune building its own brand, as Verizon has done. Humm said that T-Mobile can have a good Android strategy, in part by just being open and quickly adopting the work done by Google and others.

“It is key for us to maintain the strong relationship we have with Google and to be very fast with Google, testing and then launching improved operating systems,” Humm said. “I don’t think it is our most important duty to really tailor all the things in a complicated way.”

One of the areas for improvement in the market is just staying current with Google, both with new updates and in offering timely upgrades for existing customers. The company is in the process of launching a new program called Reinvent, Humm said, that will do just that.

T-Mobile is also working aggressively to speed up its networks. Although it lacks the spectrum to immediately move to an all-new technology like the Long-Term Evolution network being adopted by Verizon and planned by AT&T, T-Mobile is working quickly to roll out faster versions of its existing network. That solution may only be a stop-gap, but it can offer some pretty good speeds for the next couple of years, anyway.

The company also wants to embrace new categories of devices, such as tablets. The company plans to have a 7-inch Dell Streak very soon, to be followed by a Honeycomb-based tablet from LG.

“I do not see a reason why a customer should not have two devices minimum,” Humm said. However, that is tricky when doing so requires two separate data plans and tablets require customers to plunk down $500 or $600 on top of whatever they paid for their smartphone. Lowering the up-front and monthly costs is key to broad adoption of multiple cellular-equipped devices, Humm said.

And it’s not that Humm wouldn’t like one of the options to be an iPhone.

“We never said that we would not like to have an iPhone,” he said. “We think the iPhone is a great and iconic device.”

He notes that the company has been very clear to go after the companies offering the iPhone and their networks, rather than against the iPhone itself.

“The potential of the iPhone is by no means realized on the network it is running,” Humm said, adding that things won’t improve when it comes to Verizon because it will run only on that carrier’s older CDMA network.

As for when or if the iPhone might ever come to T-Mobile USA, though, Humm has no answers.

“It really is a question to ask Apple,” he said.

]]> http://allthingsd.com/20110131/interview-t-mobile-ceo-phillip-humm-embraces-role-as-challenger-to-verizon-sprint-and-att/feed/ 0 http://allthingsd.com/20110128/film-students-tap-iphone-to-film-distribute-tv-series/ http://allthingsd.com/20110128/film-students-tap-iphone-to-film-distribute-tv-series/#comments Fri, 28 Jan 2011 13:20:04 +0000 Ina Fried http://mobilized.allthingsd.com/?p=3150 From practically the moment they first got their hands on the iPhone 4, Michael Koerbel and Anna Elizabeth James set out to explore the device’s potential as a filmmaking tool.

The USC film students saw in the iPhone 4 a way to produce low-cost, high-definition movies. And because of its small size, James said, she also knew it could go places that other cameras just couldn’t.

In a span of less than 48 hours, the pair, using only the iPhone, created a video, which they called Apple of My Eye. The short movie was posted to Vimeo and quickly got half a million hits.

From there, the pair, both screenwriting majors, set up their studio, Majek Pictures (named for the first letter in each of their first and last names). They had a script for a TV pilot and figured the iPhone opened the door to make it on their own.

Now they have an ongoing series, “Goldilocks,” that is not only filmed on the iPhone, but also distributed via the App Store. New episodes come in as updates to their app, which runs on the iPhone and iPod touch. The app, which is free, includes some Apple iAd advertising, though Koerbel said that hasn’t been a huge source of revenue.

Although they have been happy with their work on the very small screen, the pair would also like to see “Goldilocks” available on DVD via Netflix.

James and Koerbel were at Macworld Expo on Thursday to give a talk on mobile filmmaking. Ahead of their session, the pair talked to Mobilized in a video interview:

]]> http://allthingsd.com/20110128/film-students-tap-iphone-to-film-distribute-tv-series/feed/ 0 http://allthingsd.com/20110126/facebook-brings-back-part-of-beacon-and-no-one-blinks/ http://allthingsd.com/20110126/facebook-brings-back-part-of-beacon-and-no-one-blinks/#comments Wed, 26 Jan 2011 12:30:51 +0000 Peter Kafka http://mediamemo.allthingsd.com/?p=28585 In 2007, Facebook unveiled a plan to let brands turn Facebook users’ online activities into ads. Cue uproar, and an eventual apology from Mark Zuckerberg.

Yesterday Facebook unveiled a plan to let brands turn Facebook users’ online activities into ads. If anyone is complaining, it’s news to me.

Easy enough to see why: There are some very big differences between Facebook’s ill-fated Beacon and Sponsored Stories, the site’s new ad unit.

For starters, Facebook unveiled yesterday’s news in the trade press, not in a high-profile, Apple-aping event. More important is that while the new ads can tell your friends what you’re doing outside of Facebook, they’re mainly focused, for now, on what you do on the site.

Most important: The ads are replicas of the updates your friends are already seeing in their Facebook newsfeeds. So while Starbucks doesn’t pay a cent when this shows up on on the center of your friends’ pages:

It can now pay up and place this on the right side of your pals’ pages, too.

Users can’t opt out of the ads, which seems like a red flag given Facebook’s history. But if a brand wants to shell out money to tell your friends something you’ve already told your friends, who cares? No one, apparently.

Still, recall what Zuckerberg was saying less than four years ago, when he was going to “build a new kind of ad system” based on “social actions” and “information that is shared between friends.” At the time, that sounded wildly ambitious, and maybe a bit creepy.

And look what Sponsored Stories does now. Marketers can purchase ads that tell your Facebook friends when you’ve “liked” something of theirs. Or posted on one of their Facebook pages. Or checked-in to one of their outposts or played with one of their apps.

And they can do it when you’re not on Facebook, too, via “likes” you make on sites that have tied up with the social network.

This is what Zuckerberg was talking about in 2007, right? He just needed time to get there. So did his users.

Remember that when Facebook rolled out Beacon, the site was a big deal, but not the biggest: A mere 50 million users, not 600 million. Many of those people were still trying to get a handle on how the site worked, and what they ought to do with it.

And recall that the newsfeed itself–more or less the core of today’s service–was still a relatively new idea too, introduced just a year earlier. (Another controversy, and another Zuckerberg apology.)

Now, I think, just about everyone who uses Facebook knows, more or less, what they’ve signed on for: A place that wants you to share as much of yourself, with as many people, as you can.

Letting advertisers help you share that much more? No big deal. This is isn’t 2007, you know.

]]> http://allthingsd.com/20110126/facebook-brings-back-part-of-beacon-and-no-one-blinks/feed/ 11 http://allthingsd.com/20110121/is-larry-page-the-consummate-anti-social-ceo/ http://allthingsd.com/20110121/is-larry-page-the-consummate-anti-social-ceo/#comments Fri, 21 Jan 2011 09:00:44 +0000 Liz Gannes http://networkeffect.allthingsd.com/?p=2557 Google’s new CEO isn’t much for the social Web. If he has a presence on Twitter, Facebook or LinkedIn, it was created with deep privacy settings or a fake name. I couldn’t even find a fleshed-out Google profile for Larry Page.

There are many other Fortune 500 CEOs in the same boat, and they certainly have plenty else to do with their time than post Facebook photos from Davos.

But non-Twittering CEOs are likely a dying breed, as transparency and authenticity in corporate communications come into vogue, and the younger generations move up through the ranks.

Google’s entire executive leadership is particularly anti-social for an Internet company, although unlike Page, Eric Schmidt, its CEO of the last 10 years, had the gumption to at least try Twitter and post updates every couple of weeks.

That their bosses decline to participate in what many see as the future of the Web is particularly grating for some young Google employees.

While the company circles around launching its own fully fledged social strategy, many Googlers feel that accountability for “getting social” starts at the top by leaders using the products themselves, rather than outright ignoring them.

Certainly, Page is incredibly private in all sorts of situations, both online and off. Here’s a memorable section from Ken Auletta’s book “Googled”:

“Larry Page is aggressively disdainful of marketing and public relations. In early 2008, Page instructed Google’s public relations department, which consisted of 130 people, that he would only give them a total of eight hours of his time that year for press conferences, speeches or interviews.”

That doesn’t seem like an approach that will go over well now that Page will be CEO of a company of Google’s stature, although perhaps he could save some time by crafting short tweets in lieu of full speeches.

While Page seems to be ignoring the social Web’s existence (he said Thursday he thinks it’s at the “very very early stages,” ceding comment on the topic to his co-founder Sergey Brin), the category has already had a significant competitive effect on Google.

The company says social is not yet negatively impacting its search business, but there are other ways it is creeping in: Through a significant talent drain to companies like Facebook, and a tarnishing of the company’s position as a tech leader.

In a way, part of the reason Page took control seems to be in response to the rise of Facebook, although there are clearly many other factors at play).

That’s because Page has now reinstated himself in a sacred position in Silicon Valley: The founder CEO.

One of the most impactful things the social Web has done is raised a new founder CEO to the tip-top of the tech industry: Mark Zuckerberg.

And, according to sources, the rise of Zuckerberg has been especially hard for Google co-founders Larry Page and Sergey Brin to watch.

Zuckerberg was also just named Time Magazine’s Person of the Year, an honor Page and Brin have never received.

And his company also just arranged a deal to raise money at a $50 billion valuation, making his own stake worth $15 billion, which happens to be the approximate net worth of each Page and Brin.

(As for Zuckerberg’s social media presence, he obviously uses Facebook quite actively, and also has a bare-bones LinkedIn profile and a Twitter account that hasn’t been updated in more than a year. And, like Page, he would not be considered a social butterfly in real life.)

So now Page has returned to presumably make Google innovative again with the passion of a founder. But with 10 years elapsed since he last had the job, he may want to go out and do a little personal market research on this whole social thing.

Please see the disclosure about Facebook in my ethics statement.

]]> http://allthingsd.com/20110121/is-larry-page-the-consummate-anti-social-ceo/feed/ 13 http://allthingsd.com/20110119/collecta-another-real-time-search-engine-bites-the-dust/ http://allthingsd.com/20110119/collecta-another-real-time-search-engine-bites-the-dust/#comments Thu, 20 Jan 2011 02:09:05 +0000 Liz Gannes http://networkeffect.allthingsd.com/?p=2506 Los Angeles-based start-up Collecta has shuttered its real-time search business, including a destination site, API and publisher widgets. The two-year-old company isn’t closing down, but will pivot to unannounced and related projects, said CEO Gerry Campbell in a phone conversation today.

Asked whether creating a real-time search engine is a viable start-up business, Campbell answered quickly: “No.” His company’s pivot is the latest of multiple efforts in the space; last year, OneRiot gave up its search business to pursue real-time advertising, and Ellerdale sold to Flipboard to help add relevance analysis to its social magazine app.

The exit of Collecta and its competitors from real-time search is remarkable given they had swarmed to the space only a couple of years ago.

In 2009, many entrepreneurs and their investors bet that real-time search was the next frontier, recognizing that search engines were having trouble handling the onslaught of status updates and fresh information streaming onto the Web from Twitter and elsewhere.

Given the companies’ emphasis on speed, perhaps it’s not surprising that they failed and moved on so quickly.

Campbell would not say how many employees Collecta had laid off as part of the change, but he maintained the company has plenty of money in the bank from the $4.7 million it raised last spring from Dace Ventures and True Ventures. Mashable reported earlier today in its story about the Collecta changes that co-founder Jack Moffitt is no longer with the company.

Campbell said Collecta will apply its “very serious technology” to other real-time projects, but it will not become a real-time ad engine like OneRiot.

Who’s left in real-time search? There are still a few, including Wowd and Topsy.

Topsy’s tweet search is much more comprehensive than Twitter’s own, and it serves half a billion queries per month, mostly through its API, Topsy co-founder Rishab Aiyer Ghosh told NetworkEffect via email today. And while Google and Bing also index tweets (and Bing has an extensive relationship with Facebook), they have not fully incorporated social updates into their core search engines.

“With TweetMeme, CrowdEye and Collecta all pivoting out of it, Topsy may be the only real-time/social search engine left,” Ghosh said. He maintained that there’s still an opportunity to build an independent real-time search engine “done right,” despite the competition dropping like flies. Topsy has raised $15 million in funding from investors including BlueRun Ventures, Ignition Partners and the Founders Fund.

]]> http://allthingsd.com/20110119/collecta-another-real-time-search-engine-bites-the-dust/feed/ 3 http://allthingsd.com/20110118/quora-question-and-answer-social-network-review/ http://allthingsd.com/20110118/quora-question-and-answer-social-network-review/#comments Tue, 18 Jan 2011 23:38:35 +0000 Katherine Boehret http://solution.allthingsd.com/?p=1602 If brief communications like Twitter’s 140-character messages, Facebook status updates and text messaging leave you longing for more substantial discourse, you may be in luck. This week, I took a look at Quora, a question-and-answer site that encourages thoughtful—even long-winded—discussions.

Quora (Quora.com) was launched about six months ago by two former Facebook employees who wanted to create a forum where in-depth questions could be posed and answered. Users vote answers up or down according to how good they are, the idea being that the best answers get pushed to the top of the queue by the community of users. Few of these questions can be answered with a simple yes or no. For example, one question asks, “What role did social media play with regards to the revolution in Tunisia?” (See here for the answer with the most votes: http://3.ly/8Gqf.)

One thing to be wary of: There’s nothing that qualifies the most popular answers as accurate, nor do people who write the most popular answers necessarily qualify as experts. This could lead to confusion or even danger, like medical questions that are answered incorrectly. Quora users are required to register their real email addresses, and some answers are more believable than others according to who answers, like the CEO of Netflix answering a question this past fall about how much the company spends on postage per year (answer: between $500 million and $600 million).

As soon I signed up for Quora by submitting an email and password, I walked through steps to “follow” certain topics that interest me—like technology, journalism, media and news—so whenever those topics are discussed, the related questions and answers appear on my Quora home page. I also linked my Twitter and Facebook accounts to my Quora account, which clued Quora in on some topics or people that might interest me according to the information in those accounts. Once these accounts are linked, it’s a lot easier to share Quora questions or answers with people on Twitter and Facebook.

People, like topics, can be followed. If someone I follow posts a question, answers a question or votes an answer up or down, this activity appears on my Quora home page.

Though Quora may sound simple, I found it uninviting, geeky and poorly explained. The site lacks instructions on how to use it; people just have to figure it out as they go. For example, a newcomer might not know that Quora answers can be voted up or down by seeing two tiny triangles that appear beside each answer. If I select the up triangle, this indicates I voted for that answer, and news of this vote is shared on the Quora home page of anyone who follows me. A number beside each answer indicates how many votes it has received so far. But unless you’ve used the site for a while, you wouldn’t know any of this.

After a few weeks of use, I found I preferred using Quora less for asking my own questions and more for reading other people’s questions and answers about topics I liked. I occasionally voted on answers to show whether I supported them or not. One user asked me a direct question, which I answered. I asked a question of the Quora community, but no one replied.

I found Quora’s questions and answers to be rather smart and entertaining. Its Silicon Valley roots are evident in its numerous technology-related questions and answers. I typed “tennis” into a box at the top of the screen and one of the first questions that surfaced was “Is tennis popular in Silicon Valley?” Instead of that question, I selected “What is the history of tennis’s strange scoring system?” and read the answer with the most votes, which seemed right to the best of my knowledge. Interestingly enough, this answer also included a link to a related article on Wikipedia.

But compared with the rest of the Web, where images, videos, animations and sound entertain website visitors, Quora’s text-filled pages can come off feeling a bit like textbook reading assignments. This is because all but a handful of questions are answered with just text. Video isn’t enabled on the site, though founder Charlie Cheever told me that this might be possible in the future.

Another problem with Quora is that most people who use the Internet are conditioned to rely on search engines like Google, Bing or Wikipedia for queries, typing the right key words to get the intended results. And people are often searching for quick answers that take just a couple seconds to read.

Plenty of other question-and-answer forums exist, like Yahoo Answers, which has been around since 2005, ChaCha.com and Ask.com. Facebook introduced Facebook Questions to a small number of its users over the summer, but when asked, a company spokeswoman wouldn’t say whether or not this offering would be available to all users anytime soon, if at all.

Quora’s combination of social networking (following topics and people) and in-depth answers helps differentiate it from those services.

Private messages can be sent from one user to another through Quora, and new messages are indicated with a red number that appears over your personal “Inbox” at the top of the Quora site. Likewise, when new notifications appear on the home page, a red number is shown above Home at the top of the page. This home page can be viewed in one of three views: Your Feed, All Changes or Followed Questions; users can toggle between these views.

Only people who have created accounts can browse the Quora.com site, though links to content can be opened by anyone. This differs from Twitter.com, which can be visited and searched by anyone regardless of whether or not they have a Twitter account. Quora also lacks one central home page where everyone can go to see every Quora question and answer, or which answer received the most votes on the entire site. Mr. Cheever told me that the site deliberately tries to keep your world small so you can focus on the topics or people you follow.

Quora relies on its community members to police one another, like Wikipedia, and less than 100 users are also granted administrator privileges to do more serious operations like deleting answers that use hate speech or other offensive remarks, which aren’t permitted according to the site’s policies. Every edit made to an answer is logged in the Quora system for everyone to see. This helps users understand an entry’s history on Quora.

This site doesn’t put much emphasis on interaction with others, though you are notified whenever someone follows you and you may be prompted to suggest topics for someone who starts following you. Like Facebook and Twitter, a list of users who you might want to follow is suggested in Quora.

For now, Quora feels like a website designed for techie insiders without instructions for mainstream users. But its smart community, intriguing questions and way of showing users just the content they want to follow will keep people coming back to the site. With a lot of polishing, Quora could be a social network people use every day.

]]> http://allthingsd.com/20110118/quora-question-and-answer-social-network-review/feed/ 0 http://allthingsd.com/20101223/skype-talks-about-just-how-full-that-half-a-glass-is/ http://allthingsd.com/20101223/skype-talks-about-just-how-full-that-half-a-glass-is/#comments Thu, 23 Dec 2010 18:27:16 +0000 Ina Fried http://mobilized.allthingsd.com/?p=1343 While some people are still having trouble using Skype and a few features remain unavailable, the Internet telephony company issued a statement on Thursday touting those services that have returned to operation after a massive outage on Wednesday.

“In the last hour, we’ve seen evidence of a significant increase in the number of people online,” Skype said in a blog posting. “Because of the way the Skype software works, it’s not possible for anyone to obtain an exact figure, but we now estimate it to be over 10 million.”

However, according to a graphic elsewhere on the company’s Web site (see above), that’s still short of the service at peak times (and one would assume that, absent an outage, two days before Christmas might be one of those peak sorts of times).

The blog goes on to mention a few of the other lingering issues. “Please note that some features may not work as reliably as expected,” it said, adding that “peoples’ online status may be slow to update, and instant messages might not be delivered as quickly as they are normally. Group video calling will take longer to return to normal.”

Of course, all that is a lot better than yesterday, when the bulk of the service was down for millions of people.

UPDATE, 11:50 am: Things are looking up, according to the latest post from CEO Tony Bates. He reports that there are now about 16.5 million users online, about 80 percent of normal for this time of day. And a make-good offering is in the works. “I realise that it’s difficult to compensate you for not being able to talk to or see your friends, family or colleagues, but we’re planning to offer Skype Credit vouchers to all of our loyal paying customers to thank you for your continued support,” said Bates.

Here’s the video of his message:

UPDATE, 3:02 pm: Another dispatch from Bates, this time reporting that traffic volume is up to 90 percent of normal now, the system has been stabilized and the engineers think they know what went wrong (and it wasn’t a malicious attack). Bates also offered a few more details on the customer compensation plan. Here’s the video:

]]> http://allthingsd.com/20101223/skype-talks-about-just-how-full-that-half-a-glass-is/feed/ 0 http://allthingsd.com/20101222/skype-details-problems-says-may-take-hours-to-fix/ http://allthingsd.com/20101222/skype-details-problems-says-may-take-hours-to-fix/#comments Wed, 22 Dec 2010 19:36:54 +0000 Ina Fried http://mobilized.allthingsd.com/?p=1286 Amid a widespread outage on Wednesday, Skype said that it has identified the issue but cautioned it may take several more hours to resolve.

The issue, Skype said, is that its service, unlike a regular phone or even instant messaging service, relies on millions of individual connections, including many especially important computers known as “supernodes.”

“Under normal circumstances, there are a large number of supernodes available,” Skype said in an explanatory blog post on its Web site. “Unfortunately, today, many of them were taken offline by a problem affecting some versions of Skype. As Skype relies on being able to maintain contact with supernodes, it may appear offline for some of you.”

The company says the solution is the creation of–wait for it–”mega-supernodes.”

“Our engineers are creating new ‘mega-supernodes’ as fast as they can, which should gradually return things to normal,” Skype said. “This may take a few hours, and we sincerely apologise for the disruption to your conversations. Some features, like group video calling, may take longer to return to normal.”

The company thanked everyone for their patience and said to continue following @skype on Twitter for further updates.

Update, 1:10 p.m.: Skype said in an update posted to Twitter that things are slowly getting back up and running.

“Skype is now gradually returning to normal–we expect it may take several hours for everyone to be able to sign in again, however,” it said.

]]> http://allthingsd.com/20101222/skype-details-problems-says-may-take-hours-to-fix/feed/ 0 http://allthingsd.com/20101221/twitter-triples-team-in-one-year-buys-qa-startup/ http://allthingsd.com/20101221/twitter-triples-team-in-one-year-buys-qa-startup/#comments Tue, 21 Dec 2010 18:01:02 +0000 Liz Gannes http://networkeffect.allthingsd.com/?p=1506 Twitter announced today it has acquired the talent behind Fluther, a Web Q&A product, in order to beef up its efforts to help users discover content. Twitter specifically said this is a talent acquisition of four engineers and one designer, and that the Fluther product will remain independent, though mostly unmaintained.

Twitter execs have often expressed a desire to improve their relevancy and discovery efforts so that the service’s constant stream of updates does not overwhelm users. Now, long after stating the priority, they’ve hired a team to make that happen.

Twitter co-founder Biz Stone had served as an adviser to Fluther, which had been backed with $600,000 in funding from angel investors including Ron Conway, Naval Ravikant, Marc Andreessen, Ben Horowitz, and FF Angel. Three-year-old Fluther had launched its own site, which focused on matching people with questions to experts with answers, as well as on a white-label tool for others to offer Q&A.

Along with announcing the acquisition, Twitter made the stunning disclosure that it now has three times as many employees as it had last year. The company said more than half its team is dedicated to engineering and operations.

Twitter has for most of its existence had plenty of funding, but it started staffing up seriously only in the past year or so, despite recurring problems with uptime. The company just raised $200 million at a $3.7 billion valuation in a round led by Kleiner Perkins.

]]> http://allthingsd.com/20101221/twitter-triples-team-in-one-year-buys-qa-startup/feed/ 2 http://allthingsd.com/20101216/oracle-beats-q2-earnings-forecasts/ http://allthingsd.com/20101216/oracle-beats-q2-earnings-forecasts/#comments Thu, 16 Dec 2010 21:10:56 +0000 Arik Hesseldahl http://newenterprise.allthingsd.com/?p=726 Oracle’s earnings are in. Both revenue and profits beat the expectations of analysts.

Sales were $8.6 billion, helped mostly by new software license sales that grew 21 percent to $2 billion, while updates and product support revenue grew 12 percent to $3.7 billion. The consensus estimate was $8.34 billion. Sales grew 47 percent from the same period a year ago.

Non-GAAP per-share earnings were 51 cents, beating the 46-cent forecast estimate of analysts surveyed by Thomson Financial. Earnings after one-time items were 37 cents, up from 29 cents a year ago.

Gross margins on Sun-branded hardware increased to 53 percent.

Shares are up almost 4 percent in after-hours trading.

There’s a quote from CEO Larry Ellison, reminding us how fast his new products are, and digging once again at the competition:

“Sun’s new SPARC Supercluster computer shattered the world record for database transaction processing performance by running 3 times faster than IBM’s fastest computer, and a stunning 7.5 times faster than HP’s best ever database performance,” said Oracle CEO, Larry Ellison. “Our new generation of Exadata, Exalogic and SPARC Supercluster computers deliver much better performance and much lower cost than the fastest machines from IBM and HP.”

Here’s another quote, from Oracle co-President (and former HP CEO) Mark Hurd, about the Exadata product line:

“Since joining Oracle I’ve met with and visited many customers that have expressed a high level of enthusiasm around our strategy of engineering hardware and software that works together,” said Oracle President, Mark Hurd. “That enthusiasm translates into an Exadata pipeline that has now grown to nearly $2 billion. That number is a good leading indicator that customers are planning to increase their investment in Oracle technology.”

Yes I would say there’s enthusiasm. It was precisely because of the Exadata line that Macquarie Research upgraded Oracle today.

More from the conference call, which starts at 5 pm ET.

4:53 pm: Seven minutes to go before the Oracle earnings conference call starts. Right now it’s all mellow classical guitar.

Call is running a little late.

5:10 pm: And we’re underway with the safe-harbor statement.

Ellison, Hurd and president Safra Catz are on the call.

Americas grew 32 percent in U.S. dollars.

5:15 pm: Balance sheet: $24.8 billion in cash and short-term investments.

Generated $3.7 billion in free cash flow.

5:15 pm: Safra Catz is now speaking. We exceeded the high point of license guidance. Even excluding a payment for legal fees, we beat guidance by 4 cents.

5:16 pm: All geographies reported double-digit growth.

5:16 pm: “We continue to take share from SAP.”

5:17 pm: With Sun, included operating margins were 44 percent, which is better than SAP. [Another dig.]

5:18 pm: Hardware guidance: $1.1 to $1.2 billion in revenues.

Non-GAAP EPS expected to be 48 to 50 cents, and 34 to 36 cents on a GAAP basis.

Here’s Larry:

5:19 pm: Our goal is to be No. 1 in high-end market for servers. Right now our numbers are behind HP and IBM.

5:20 pm: IBM’s and HP’s servers are slow, and software is slow and expensive and have no software value-add. [Another dig at the competitors.]

5:22 pm: Exadata pipeline continus to grow. We expect our new generation of Sun machines will enable us to win significant share, and position us in the No. 2 position behind IBM very soon. And then we’ll fight it out for No. 1.

5:23 pm: Now Mark Hurd is speaking.

5:23 pm: I want to focus on our opportunities to grow significantly.

5:24 pm: Deal volume was spread across companies of all sizes and strength in the public sector as well.

5:24 pm: All of our customers and competitors are reacting to us.

5:25 pm: 150,000 Middleware customers. We ended the quarter with a record hardware backlog.

5:26 pm: Now going to Q&A:

A question from UBS. Are you starting to see a halo impact on adoption of the Oracle suite?

Larry: Close rates are improving. You’ll see great improvement in Exadata sales from Q2 to Q3. Because it’s new, people were running a lot of benchmarks and trying it out first. We’ll sell a lot more Exadata in Q3 than in Q2.

As for the halo effect, when you buy these servers you buy them to run specific software. Engineer them at the same time and make sure they run well together. We have a huge advantage over IBM and HP. The notion of systems, hardware and software that run well together will dominate the high end of the business.

Q: You clearly have a lot of irons in the fire with Fusion apps coming up and Exadata. Focus on Exalogic. Can you share early feedback from customers and compare that to Exadata ramp.

Mark: Exadata experience benefits Exalogic. We’ve matured the use case, we think we know where the targets are. The Exadata experience is a big deal for us.

5:31 pm: A question about Fusion Middleware.

Larry: We’ve been in the middleware business for a long time. With release 11 everything has been rewritten. It’s a much better user experience, you can patch our entire suite with a single file. We think the fact that we have an integrated suite gives us a huge advantage over IBM.

5:33 pm: A question about Europe. It was better than expected. Apps business was really strong. Look at competitors. You’ve been gaining share against SAP. We are seeing a pickup in general environment.

Hurd: I’m not an economist, but we’re doing well in Europe. It was broad-based. It was not singular to a deal or country. It was broad-based to countries where we have been gaining share. It’s been one quarter after another, a pretty steady beat.

Larry: We had a wonderful set of industry specific applications, in telecommunications and banking and retail, and that’s unique vis-a-vis SAP. that has helped us a lot to establish us in a lot of industries. Also Fusion is right around the corner.

5:35 pm: Q: How frequently is an Exadata deployment resulting in the displacement of a competitor’s product?

Hurd: About 70 to 75 percent of the time. About 20 to 25 percent of the time it’s a consolidation.

We’ve sold Exadata now in 50 countries, and 30 to 35 percent of our customers have made a second purchase. You’re starting to see repeat purchases. We’ve learned a lot about this and so as we launch Exalogic we can accelerate our learnings.

5:36 pm: Q: Margin was also great. What can we expect going forward and what were one-time items?

Catz: In general, it’s the business. The only nonrepeatable thing is the $120 million legal settlement, which we will not repeat. Hardware margins and operating margins, this is something we’ve done for many years.

5:38 pm: Q: What is visibility for database licenses?

Larry: A couple quarters ago, someone noticed database licenses were growing nicely. We think Exadata is going to be a nice turbocharge to our database business. Across the board our database business is going to get strong with Exadata.

I just looked at after-hours trading in Oracle shares and they’re up more than 4.5 percent.

Hurd: “The secret to Exadata is bringing the smarts to the data, versus bringing the data to the smarts.”

5:42 pm: Q: What continues to drive the database business? Is it just core database, add-ons?

Larry: We think our technology is getting faster and more reliable at a faster rate than that of our competitors.

5:43 pm Larry: As far as applications, we think there are lots of reasons we continue to gain share every quarter over the last few years over SAP.

It’s the industry-specific applications. We have telecom companies that are running only Oracle software. We have some banks that are making the same kind of commitments up and down the stack. SAP just doesn’t have that.

5:44 pm: Larry: We’ve got this extremely modern Java-based suite called Fusion that is going to strengthen our competitive stance against Salesforce.com and against Workday.

5:46 pm: That seems to be it. The call is concluded.

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