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T-Mobile to headline Google Music event?

Tue, 15 Nov 2011 00:53:55 +0000

Last week Google sent out invites to a special event that is happening on the 16 th (this Wednesday), and while the invitation hinted at Google Music, it looks like we’ve got more clues to what’s going to happen. Another round of invites just went out, and this time it’s a joint invitation from T-Mobile and Google. While it isn’t clear what role T-Mobile is going to play in the event, the invitation mentions a whole lineup of artistes like Drake, Maroon 5, Busta Rhymes, Dirty South and R3hab; tying in even more to the theme of Google Music. Could T-Mobile be announcing new devices at the launch? Or will Google Music start off as a T-Mobile exclusive? (Let’s hope not.) Perhaps it will be the launch of T-Mobile Galaxy Nexus (which should please a lot of people). Stay tuned, and we’ll keep you posted. T-Mobile to headline Google Music event? , By Ubergizmo . Top Stories : iPhone 4S Review ,

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T-Mobile to headline Google Music event?

Links Posted By Big Facebook Pages Have A 0.14% CTR, 1 Click Per 1000 Fans

Tue, 15 Nov 2011 00:51:45 +0000

The click through rate for links posted to the news feed by Facebook Pages with over 100,000 fans is 0.14%, or 1 click per 715 impressions according to a new study shared with us by analytics provider EdgeRank Checker . Pages receive 0.00093 clicks per fan, or roughly 1 click per 1000 fans. These figures should give marketers an idea of how many Facebook fans they’ll need to accumulate to drive significant traffic to external websites, a core way of deriving return on investment from the social network. Facebook only started providing link click metrics to Page admins at the beginning of October. Until then, marketers had to use links with tracking tags or URL shorteners that can reduce CTR in order to determine the referral traffic their Page posts were driving. For comparison, links posted by Pages have nearly 3x the CTR of Facebook ads which average 0.05% CTR, and they top online display ads which average a 0.1% CTR according to Webtrends. Facebook Pages can be a useful marketing channel for brands, especially those that organically accrue Likes from passionate customers such as entertainment, consumer packaged goods, fashion, and automotive companies. To drive significant referral traffic, though, most brands have to invest in advertising in order to beef up the fan counts of their Pages. Most major brands have at least 100,000 fans, and Posts by Pages with few fans have a much higher CTR as you can see in the graph below. Therefore, I excluded them to avoid skewing the data. For all Pages with over 1,000 fans, including those with few fans, link posts still only have a 0.35% CTR, 1 click per 280 impressions, 0.00236 clicks per per fan, and 1 click per 424 fans. EdgeRank Checker’s data is based on 84,000 link posts by over 5,500 Pages in October. The study also looked at which days of the week were the best for Pages to post on. It found that posts on Wednesday receive the most clicks and shares, while posts on Friday receive the fewest. If they spend the time and money, brands like Porche, Netflix, and Old Navy can drive around 2,000 qualified clicks a day for free. Facebook Pages can’t completely replace the need for paid advertising, but they can become an important component of a savvy online marketing strategy.

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Links Posted By Big Facebook Pages Have A 0.14% CTR, 1 Click Per 1000 Fans

The Rise Of The Health Startup? A Peek At The 13 Companies In Rock Health’s Inaugural Batch

Tue, 15 Nov 2011 00:41:06 +0000

There’s been a bit of a debate going on of late among venture capitalists and investors over whether or not web startups are currently experiencing a cash crunch when it comes to early-stage and series A financing. ( You can read Alexia’s recent breakdown here .) As per usual, the answer depends on whom you ask. This recent debate contrasts with the data seen in Column Five Media’s infographic from June , which showed venture funding and investment levels picking back up in the first half of 2011, poised to storm back to pre-2008-collapse levels. Of course, the data showed that not all tech sectors were experiencing the boom times: Health and medical-related investment, for example, was on the low end, receiving only 3 percent of venture funding over the last year. Yet, there may be some evidence that investment in the digital health space may in fact be heating up. Looking at this data compiled by new healthtech startup incubator Rock Health , we see a list of 41 healthtech startups have been funded in 2011. CrunchBase’s data, which uses slightly more generous paramaters for defining “health tech”, puts that number over 120 or so. Of those startups that were founded this year, Aza Raskin’s Massive Health raised $2.25 million in seed funding from Andreessen Horowitz, Charles River Ventures, and more. (Well, Massive Health was actually founded in December 2010, but close enough.) And Azumio , which was founded this year, raised $2.5 million in seed funding from Founders Fund and Accel in July. What’s more, we just covered 100Plus’ $500K seed raise from Founders Fund earlier this week. The personalized health prediction startup was not mentioned in Rock Health’s list, I assume because it is still in private beta. But the point is, as we’ve seen in Dave Chase’s series of guest posts , the healthcare industry is ripe for disruption. Sure, the industry has a long way to go, but we’re seeing some great progress from startups like Practice Fusion, for example, which is busy becoming the largest provider of electronic medical records in the industry. There’s also plenty of room for help in the way of incubators. On Friday, Rock Health, the startup accelerator for health-focused startups, hosted its Demo Day at UCSF Mission Bay, where the 13 startups in its latest class introduced their businesses to 250 attendees, among them investors from Accel, NEA, Khosla Ventures, True Ventures, Benchmark, Kapor Capital, SV Angel, The Social+Capital Partnership, Founders Fund and more. For those unfamiliar, Rock Health provides seed funding ($20K grants, without taking equity), office space, and mentorship to entrepreneurs that want to break into healthcare. We covered their debut here . The thirteen startups that demo-ed range from BitGym , which makes motion-sensitive iOS video games for working out; to IDEO-spinoff Omada , an online support group to reverse diabetes; to CellScope , a smartphone plugin designed to remotely diagnose ear infections. It was also great to see that these teams included entrepreneurs that have previously worked in other areas of tech and media and are now bringing their talents to health: For example, Gabe Vanrenen, the former Founder and CTO of Flurry , Jackson Wilkinson, the former head of UX for Posterous and LinkedIn, to Jeff Lieberman, the host of Discovery Channel’s Time Warp. Again, we covered the initial eight Rock Health startups that were ready to introduce their wares back in June, and you can read about them here . However, five of the startups were not yet ready for the limelight, so we’re providing brief introductions to those below: Bigevidence provides clinicians focused access to the universe of medical evidence at the point of care and within electronic health records, improving quality of care, while reducing costs and risks. BitGym thinks you should be using video games to exercise. Their patent pending technology uses an iPad to turn any cardiovascular machine into an interactive gaming experience. Cake Health is the best free way to manage your healthcare expenses online. The startup was a finalist at TechCrunch Disrupt San Francisco in September. You can read our initial profile here . Crohnology is a social health network for people with chronic medical conditions to share and learn what treatments work, meet others near them, and track and share their health. Heartbeat is a salesforce.com-like enterprise solution for wellness professionals that aims to empower people to be successful doing what they love. Applications for Rock Health’s next class beginning in January 2012 are open until Wednesday, November 16th.

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The Rise Of The Health Startup? A Peek At The 13 Companies In Rock Health’s Inaugural Batch

Generation Make

Tue, 15 Nov 2011 00:39:05 +0000

Editor’s note : This guest post is by Justin Kan, cofounder of Justin . tv and TwitchTV . He is 28 years old. You can follow him on Twitter and read his blog . In his New York Times opinion piece yesterday, William Deresiewicz calls the Millennial generation, those born roughly between the end of the 70s and the mid-90s, a generation of salesmen. Emotionless, aspiring to be liked by all, because that is what will attract the most customers. “No anger, no edge, no ego.” He got some things right. We have a distrust of large organizations. We don’t look down on people creating small businesses. But we’re not emotionless, that couldn’t be further from the truth. We have anger, which flares up to become the Arab Spring and OccupyWallStreet movements. We have ego, which I see in every entrepreneur who thinks their tech startup is the best thing since sliced bread. We have passion, and an intense drive to follow our passions through, immediately. Our generation is autonomous. It is impatient. We refuse to pay our dues; if we start an entry level job then 6 months later we want to be running the department. We hop from job to job; the average tenure at any job for an American 25 to 34-years-old is just 3 years. We think we can do anything we can imagine, whether it is rise to fame like Deadmau5 for our music or launch a new product on Kickstarter , and hate the idea that we should ever be beholden to someone else. We do this because we have been abandoned by the institutions that should have embraced us. The past decade has shown us a massively inefficient government that has spent millions in foreign wars, incapacitated by partisan dogma. Politics are controlled by the old, people who don’t understand technology, a situation which seems immutable. Corporations have turned their backs on us: many of us came to age in the 2008 financial crisis, and even though we were promised that a college education was the key to a blessed life we couldn’t find a job post graduation. So we’re making our own way and making our own jobs. We create our own tech startups, we’re making a living producing videos on Youtube. We’re starting our own non-profits instead of joining stagnant, bureaucratic NGOs. We’re growing and selling our own organic food. We don’t need your jobs, your advice, your instruction. Pretty soon we won’t need your music labels or publishing houses; we’ll be doing it ourselves on iTunes and Amazon. We don’t need you at all, except perhaps as a customer. We’re not salesmen, as Deresiewicz states. Selling is just one part of running a functional enterprise, and not the most important part at that. Our hero Steve Jobs knew that without a great product, selling is useless, and that’s why he cared about the products above all else. His showmanship around them was just a reflection of his passion. Before we’re ever selling anything, we have an idea for it, and that is where our love and emotion is revealed. Unlike previous generations, if we’re on the web or at a store and something we want doesn’t exist, our first thought is not “why?” but simply that maybe we should create it ourselves. This isn’t the first time the Millennial generation has been criticized for what is perceived as shallowness, a lack of connection with others, or just a materialistic nature. David Fincher spent an entire 121 minutes trying to pillory Mark Zuckerberg with a made-up fable , and all he did was inspire another generation of would-be entrepreneurs. We are a generation of makers. A generation of creators. Maybe we don’t have the global idealism of the hippies. Our idealism is more individual: that every person should be able to live their own life, working on what they choose, creating what they choose. If you want to build a company to change the world, go for it. If you want to be an independent knife maker, what is stopping you? We follow our passions. If we do it as a business, then we can create the ability to support ourselves doing what we love, and with some measure of security and autonomy that no institution is going to grant us. The Millenial path to self-actualization is the individual path, each man to create it for himself. Is that selling out? We’re just doing what you regret not having the balls to do.

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Generation Make

“Xoom” To Give Way To “XYBoard”?

Tue, 15 Nov 2011 00:37:29 +0000

The Xoom hasn’t been the big hit everyone was hoping for. After an inauspicious debut marked by bugs, a lack of Honeycomb apps, and a non-functioning SD card slot, the big debut tablet from Motorola was quickly superseded by other devices, in some cases cheaper or better Honeycomb tablets, and in others more use-specific devices like the Nook Color. It’s no surprise, then, that the Xoom brand might be getting a revamp. But what happens when the cure is worse than the disease? XYBoard happens. Yes, it seems that Verizon may be rebranding their Droid-related line of tablets with this recently-trademarked moniker, a mishmash of “cyborg” and “board,” with the already questionable X/Z switcheroo of the Xoom. It’s a case of being too clever by half, and I don’t think customers are going to like it. The tablets themselves look stylish and powerful, not that those things guarantee sales, and were announced a couple weeks ago as the Xoom 2 and Xoom 2 Media Edition, but it wouldn’t be the first time a device was completely rebranded for certain markets. It’s actually a fairly common practice for some reason. This is all speculation, of course, but hopefully it’s not true. The Xoom may not have been a blockbuster device, but people at least know the name and associate it with tablets and Android. XYBoard is a groaner — let’s hope this report is mistaken.

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“Xoom” To Give Way To “XYBoard”?

Express Mobile Hotspot from Sprint launched

Tue, 15 Nov 2011 00:30:35 +0000

In addition to the new mobile broadband plans launched today, Sprint announced the launch of its new Express Mobile Hotspot. Offering 3G/4G internet access on any WiFi-enabled device while on-the-go, the Express Mobile Hotspot can provide internet up to 5 devices at once. It features a WiFi range of up to 262 feet and has a removable Li-Ion 2,200mAh battery which is said to give up to 7 hours of data time. In addition to working wirelessly, the Express Mobile Hotspot can also be hooked up to a computer/laptop with a USB cable to stay juiced while sharing internet at the same time. It also features a microSD slot (up to 32GB) which you can use to store important documents, hands-free activation and Sprint DataLink capabilities. The Express Mobile Hotspot can be yours for $29.99 with a 2-year contract and a $50 mail-in rebate or $249.99 off contract. Head over to the Sprint website to find out more/buy one. [ Press Release ] Express Mobile Hotspot from Sprint launched , By Ubergizmo . Top Stories : Galaxy S2 Review ,

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Express Mobile Hotspot from Sprint launched

Bag Week Review: The Incase Alloy Series Compact Backpack

Mon, 14 Nov 2011 23:01:52 +0000

What is it? Happy Bag Week everyone, and please kindly meet the Incase Alloy Series Compact Backpack. I’ve been reviewing this bag for a while now, and I have to say I much prefer it to anything I actually own. I’ll be sad to see it go. However, it happens to look like some sort of space pack you’d see in Battlestar Galactica with its metallic finish, so it’s definitely a love-it-or-hate-it design. Aside from the silver metallic finish (that you can’t help but notice), the backpack itself is pretty plain with no extra bells or whistles. Size-wise it was everything I could ask for. Compact enough to be comfortable and look like it actually fits my body, but big enough to fit most everything I’d need for a day on the job or at play. It fits up to a 15″ MacBook Pro, and still leaves plenty of extra space for an iPad, camera, change of clothes, or whatever else it is you tote around day to day. Made of nylon, the Compact Backpack (it doesn’t have a cool name like the Yalta ) is super light, which made it that much easier to pack it full of gadgets. Thanks to breathable mesh padding along the shoulder straps, back, and top-loading handle, this Alloy series pack was super comfortable for all-day use. The Incase Alloy Series Compact Backpack Type: Backpack Dimensions: External – 18.5″ x 11.75″ x 4.3″ / Laptop compartment size – 14.8″ x 10″ x 1.8″ Pockets: Laptop sleeve, secondary sleeve, internal pouch, front pocket, wallet-sized “hip” pocket Features: Dedicated faux-fur lined iPod pocket, nylon construction, metallic lining MSRP: $99.95 Product Page Accessibility, on the other hand, wasn’t such a breeze. To start, the Compact Backpack has more than enough pockets, one of which is severely misplaced. Incase included a dedicated iPhone/iPod pocket square in the middle of the top of the backpack. The problem is that an iPod or iPhone is something you get out and use frequently in your travels, but you literally have to take the backpack off and hold it in front of you to effectively get anything out of that pocket. Another case of the bright idea gone awry. A bevy of other pockets await you with the Alloy Compact Backpack, including a faux fur-lined laptop sleeve, a secondary iPad/journal sleeve, that dedicated (poorly placed) iPod pocket, a wallet-sized pocket on the lower portion of the left strap, a small pocket on the front, and an internal pouch for pens and such. In fact, only one pocket is missing, though it may not be missed by everyone. I tend to walk or take the train everywhere (which means no cup holders), which means I really appreciate a water bottle pocket. Granted, adding one would probably invalidate the whole “Compact” bit, but it was still dearly missed. Who is it for? Anyone who wishes they were in any syfy series set in space. Anyone looking for a light, spacious primary bag that doesn’t necessarily go with everything (but you can’t see it when you’re wearing it so who cares, right?). Anyone who puts comfort and durability before style, or conversely anyone who has very, um, unique style. Do I want it? The tell-tale question, no doubt, and one which I don’t have a very clear answer to. The truth is I use this bag a lot , and get compliments on it all the time. It does what I need it to (save for store my bottled water), and is pretty comfortable, too. But that one pocket up top (for your never-to-be-accessed iPod) really irks me. I’d say 85 percent of me wants it, and the other 15 percent thinks I can do better. Click to view slideshow.

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Bag Week Review: The Incase Alloy Series Compact Backpack

Google Launches 24×7 Phone Support To ‘Apps For Business’ Customers (Hooray For Humans!)

Mon, 14 Nov 2011 18:48:49 +0000

Google has long been known as a company that favors algorithms and automation — which scale nicely to millions of people — over human-powered services, which don’t. That works well enough for them most of the time, but it’s led to one key issue: if something goes wrong with a Google product, it’s remarkably hard to get an actual human on the phone. It’s hard to get too upset over this when you’re using Google’s free products, but it can be immensely frustrating when you’re forking over money every month to use Google’s Apps for Business suite, which allow business to take advantage of features like custom domains and admin tools. These premium Apps users have historically had some options when things went wrong — Google’s support site includes various automated troubleshooters, and email support. But phone support was limited, so if the issue wasn’t critical, you probably weren’t going to have much luck talking to anyone. Which is a problem when your business is relying heavily on Google Apps. Now that’s changing: during the keynote at its Enterprise-focused Atmosphere event, Google has announced that it’s launching 24×7 phone support to business customers for all issues affecting its core services, which include things like Gmail, Docs, Calendar, and the other key apps. That’s a big deal — plenty of businesses want the peace of mind of being able to talk to someone, and this will doubtless help convince some companies that were on the fence to ‘Go Google’. Google has posted about the news on its Enterprise Blog, which briefly discusses Google’s support satisfaction (80% of small businesses are satisfied, as are 90% of large businesses — Google is shooting for 95%). Since we launched Google Apps for Business in 2007, we’ve been working hard to build a global support offering that’s responsive to the needs of our business customers. In the early days, our customers reached us mainly through email, and our 24 x 7 phone support was limited to critical issues. To improve the experience of our customers, we now provide 24 x 7 phone support to small, medium, and large Google Apps for Business customers for all issues affecting the core services. Our customers may also receive support through our web-based support portal, online help forms, and online help center. All support cases are handled directly by trained Google Apps experts. A support metric that we’re especially passionate about is customer satisfaction. We measure customer satisfaction by asking for feedback on a seven point scale at the time we close a support case. As measured on this scale, 80% of our business customers and 90% of our large business customers indicate that they’re more than satisfied with their support experience. While we’re proud of these ratings, we want to do even better. Our goal is to achieve an overall satisfaction rating of 95%. Image via Epiclectic on Flickr

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Google Launches 24×7 Phone Support To ‘Apps For Business’ Customers (Hooray For Humans!)

10 Classy Covers for Your iPad [PICS]

Sun, 13 Nov 2011 23:08:01 +0000

1. iPad ColorCoat Give your iPad a bold splash of color with the “ColorCoat” matte cover. Cost: $21 Click here to view this gallery. We know you love your iPad, therefore, treat it to some sleek accessories. In the past we brought you some cool cases and desirable decals . This time around we’ve selected 10 covers that protect the back of your iPad, whether you prefer metal, wood, leather, carbon fiber or even denim. Take a look through the gallery. Let us know in the comments about any other cool covers you’ve seen. More About: apple , features , gallery , ipad , ipad accessories

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10 Classy Covers for Your iPad [PICS]

The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim Goes to War … With Modern Warfare 3 Sales

Fri, 11 Nov 2011 21:30:14 +0000

The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim , the latest game in Bethesda’s Elder Scrolls franchise, has been released, adding to the general excitement and mayhem of a blockbuster Autumn for the video game industry. The big fight taking place right now is between the world’s top-selling first-person shooters, EA’s Battlefield 3 and Activision’s Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 3 . While those two giants have been lobbing grenades across the trenches, a slew of triple-A games have given fans a glut of options. Skyrim is a first-person, open-world role-playing-game that drops the player in “Skyrim,” a fantastical nation more-or-less constantly besieged by dragons. It’s the players job, nay, destiny , to rise from a lowly commoner to a hero of legend. There are a bevy of skills, spells, projectiles and weapons placed through the game. There is also an in-depth character creator allowing every player to create a person, or creature, that suits them. Each of these can be improved and leveled up through in-game experience or merchant shops. Think of it like a massive, medieval-themed Grand Theft Auto where the goal is to save the world rather than control it. The game has already generated a ton of buzz and positive reviews. Skyrim currently holds an average score of 96% on Metacritic.com . Industry analysts are predicting the game will be one of the biggest sellers this season. While some say Skyrim has no shot of overtaking Battlefield 3 or Modern Warfare 3 , the game’s pre-order numbers show promise. PunchJump reported that Skyrim was one of the top three pre-ordered games at Walmart. The game even became the number-one best-selling pre-order game at Walmart.com the week before its launch. SEE ALSO: 10 Epic YouTube Videos That Will Get You Pumped for Skyrim Game companies sometimes shy away from releases that coincide with others. Bethesda, however, has entered the fray and seems to be competitive with both Modern Warfare 3 and Battlefield 3 . It will be interesting to see first-week sales for all three games to see just how each fared. It might help that Skyrim is a vastly different game from the two blockbusters. Where those shooters favor Hollywood moments and close-quarters, Skyrim prefers sprawling vistas and near-infinite side-quests and narratives. That breadth, however, is causing some graphic problems with the game. Kotaku reported that installing the game onto an Xbox 360 can actually cause graphics not to load properly or a drop in resolution due to the sheer processing power the game demands. Bethesda has acknowledged the issue and is working on a fix but is recommending Xbox users hold off installing the game for the time being. Is Skyrim at the top of your wish list? Let us know your thoughts in the comments below. Concept Art from Skyrim Click here to view this gallery. More About: game , Gaming , skyrim , video game For more Entertainment coverage: Follow Mashable Entertainment on Twitter Become a Fan on Facebook Subscribe to the Entertainment channel Download our free apps for Android , Mac , iPhone and iPad

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The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim Goes to War … With Modern Warfare 3 Sales