PayPal President: No Plans To Go IPO (Video)

October 26, 2010

PayPal president Scott Thompson is happy to be part of eBay!

At the PayPal X conference in San Francisco, PayPal president Scott Thompson confirmed once more that the San Jose, Calif.-based company has no plans to go IPO anytime soon. “We’re happy to be part of eBay, and I don’t believe that it’s likely to change anytime soon!”

More on eBay-PayPal synergies:

“We have nothing on that front to announce. And in fact, as we’ve said in other occasions, nobody that I know of inside of eBay or PayPal is working in any such strategy… There’s a long long runway of synergies left for these 2 businesses [eBay and PayPal] to enjoy together,” says Thompson.

“The one that Bob Swan [eBay CFO] commented on on our earnings call last week was the growth of our credit business, the BML [Bill Me Later] business inside of PayPal and using the strength of the eBay balance sheet in order to fund that growth in receivables and that is a powerful synergy for both businesses: putting the capital they generate to work to help us grow that part of our business and a very profitable part of our business.”

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[FailCon] How New York Times Gadget Guy Almost Lost His Job Using Microsoft Office Mac 2011! (Video)

October 26, 2010

Microsoft Office for Mac 2011 Internal bug list... yet to be fixed!

It’s a true story that just happened last week to New York Times tech columnist David Pogue!

Using Pogue’s own description, Office Mac 2011 is “buggy”, “un-stable”, “problematic”, and “missing features.” Something he experienced first hand when Outlook for Mac failed several times to send his review of the Microsoft software to his editor’s work email account (the one set by default) and got him almost sacked!

So before upgrading to Microsoft’s latest office suite for Mac, make sure to watch the video below first

6 Comments | news, software | Tagged: , , , , , , | Permalink
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[FailCon] David Pogue: RIM BlackBerry Storm, A Piece O’ Crap (Video)

October 26, 2010

Why RIM failed the Blackberry Storm

During his keynote on consumer products failures, New York Times columnist David Pogue shared his personal RIM nightmare story with the audience here at FailCon.

For Pogue, RIM decided to ship the incomplete Blackberry Storm in the Fall of 2008 because it was under pressure to deliver it to Verizon for the start of the holiday season.

“It [Blackberry Storm] was horrible. It was a piece of crap. It was so filled with bugs, I will be on the phone every day with RIM… It just doesn’t work,” explains Pogue.

But what made this a complete disaster for RIM is it continuously denied that the Blackberry Storm had any problems, despite tons of consumer complaints on the Web and a devastating email Pogue received from one of the Storm team member:

“When you wrote that this product was released prematurely, you were absolutely right, and everybody here knew it… Internally, many of us argued that we would be hurting ourselves by rushing it out the door. Obviously, our managers disagreed,” reads the email.

3 Comments | hardware, news, software, wireless | Tagged: , , , , , , | Permalink
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FailCon 2010… A Success ! (Video)

October 26, 2010

Cassie Phillipps, the executive producer of FailCon

Despite the name, the first conference on “failures” (starting, raising investments, scaling, exit…) was actually… a success!

Over 400 people showed up (up from 350 attendees last year) at the Kabuki Hotel in San Francisco to listen luminaries such as Esther Dyson, Paul Buchheit (Gmail, Friendfeed, Facebook), Jay Adelson (Digg, Revision3) or New York Times columnist David Pogue.

For next year, FailCon founder and executive producer Cassie “Cass” Phillipps plans to take, in early Fall, the FailCon concept overseas – Beijing, Paris and Buenos Ares.

“I hoping next year, pending the budget and the assistance, to do a series of international shows making them more like workshops: half day, 100 people, bring 3 speakers from here (San Francisco Bay Area/Silicon Valley) and 3 speakers from the hosted place,” says Phillipps.

If you’re interested to help, contact Cass directly here.

7 Comments | Events, Interviews, startups | Tagged: , | Permalink
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FailCon: The Art to Fail and Rise Back Again!

October 25, 2010

FailCon: a conference about failures and how to avoid them!

We will be attending the 2nd annual edition of FailCon today in San Francisco.

The threat of failure haunts all entrepreneurs, yet discussions about it are scarce. So Executive Producer Cass Phillipps created FailCon to provide an environment where entrepreneurs and technology companies can share their challenges and short-comings, and discuss the best way to prepare for and avoid these in the future.

“I’ve just attended too many events that regurgitate the same success stories over and over,” explains Phillipps. “I realized I can’t do what those people did right – that takes a lot of luck, too. But I definitely can avoid the things they did wrong. So why aren’t they talking more about that?”

FailCon 2010 will cover controversial topics like: “Avoiding and Recovering from Co-Founder Divorce,” “How VCs Handle Failure,” “Surviving The Exit,” “User Privacy,” “Protecting Your Brand,” “Product Disasters,” and “Failures in Digital Communication.”

Speakers include David Pogue of the New York Times, Steve Blank, Philip Kaplan of Blippy, Esther Dyson of EDventures, Cindy Cohn of the EFF, Elad Gil of Twitter, and many more. See the full agenda here.

See you at FailCon!

4 Comments | Events, startups | Permalink
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Logitech Unveils $300 Google TV Box (Video)

October 6, 2010

Logitech CEO unveils the Revue, the world's first Google TV set top box

At a press conference this morning Logitech CEO unveiled the world’s first Google TV set-top box.

The Revue is available today for “pre-order” online at Logitech.com, BestBuy.com, Amazon.com and, in 2 to the 3 weeks on retail shelves.

With this set-top box, the almost 30-year old company targets the 60 million HD TV households in the US.

“Google TV is the first platform that integrates the Web, broadcast TV and applications seamlessly,” said Logitech CEO Gerry Quindlen.

But at $300, the Logitech Revue is going to be a hard sell. So far, no manufacturers, including Apple, succeeded in selling a set-top box at this pricepoint.

So good luck with that!

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Samsung Electronics In “GREEN”novation Push

October 4, 2010

To end the slew of tech announcements coming out this week (read prior post), Samsung is hosting on Thursday, its second annual GREENovation event.

Company executives will discuss current green initiatives to bring more environmentally-friendly products to market and showcase Samsung’s latest green products.

At the event, Samsung executives will discuss about:

  1. green-focused product advancements,
  2. state-of-the-art green technology,
  3. green production enhancements; and,
  4. environmental recycling.

2 Comments | Alternative Energy, Clean Tech, news | Tagged: , | Permalink
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Busy Tech Week Ahead In San Francisco: Cisco, Logitech, Facebook

October 4, 2010

San Francisco this Wednesday will be the battleground of the tech news world… again!

At an event in the heart of the City’s Financial district, Cisco will unveil its visio-conferencing system for the home.

Cisco’s living room telepresence system will connect a person’s high-definition television to the Internet.

The offering will include a video camera and the device to connect the TV and Internet, all of which will cost about $600 and a $30 monthly subscription price.

The cheaper, consumer-friendly version of Cisco’s popular TelePresence videoconference systems is another proof that the San Jose, Calif.-giant is dead serious about entering the consumer market in a big way.

Meanwhile, a few blocks away, Logitech will show off the very first Google TV box at the Clift Hotel. The Revue, as it is called, started shipping last week to retailers including Best Buy and will cost $299. Logitech expects to ship over 500,000 units before 2010 is over!

On the Google TV blog, the search engine said it partnered with  Amazon Video On Demand which offers access to over 75,000 titles for rental or purchase, and Netflix. Google has also launched a new website that provides more information about Google TV and features some of the new applications.

The following week, on October 12th, Sony is hosting its own Google TV event to show off televisions and Blu-ray players with Google TV built in.

Last but not least, and not to be outdone, Facebook just sent out invitations today for a special event on Wednesday morning at its headquarters in Palo Alto.

My guess is that its something about mobile – perhaps some kind of a Facebook phone –  and certainly related to the CTIA wireless show, also happening in San Francisco this week.

Busy week indeed!

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Skype Not Available on Android Market? Get Tango!

October 4, 2010

Skype is still not available on most Android phones

The Skype application is still missing in action for most Android users.

After a private screening of the movie “The Social Network” on Friday in Redwood City, I chat with someone from Skype that assured me the VOIP application was already available for my phone.

At that point, I though that it was game over for Palo Alto, Calif.-startup Tango that just launched at GigaOM’s Mobilize conference, a Skype-like app for smartphones (Android and iPhones) which does audio and video calls over the data network (3G or WiFi).

But when I checked back this morning to do a Skype call with my Android phone (Nexus One on T-Mobile), I realised the Skype app is still only available to Android phones on the Verizon network. Bummer!

So I decided to try out Tango for my all my VOIP calls and have fun with the video calling feature that is, in many ways similar to the Apple iPhone 4 FaceTime video phone call application… but for the rest of us! More on Tango later.

Skype better get its act together, sooner rather than later. Because, although it takes 2 to Tango, Skype might just not be part of the dance for very much long!

3 Comments | news, startups, wireless | Tagged: , , , , , | Permalink
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