@NYC

Wanderfly Makes Time’s Top 10

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Last week at TechCrunch Disrupt, I had a chance to see the revamped Wanderfly.

Christy Liu, Wanderfly’s co-founder and Director of Marketing, put me behind the new dashboard of this visually intensive travel recommendation site as we looked for warmer spots while shivering during an unusual late May cold spell.

The photos I looked at for Italy (Rome, Venice, Sienna) are stunning.  And for my next job, I’d like to be the house photographer for Wanderfly.

I learned from Liu yesterday that Wanderfly made Time Inc.’s list of  “10 NYC Startups to Watch” and Entrepreneur magazine’s “100 Brilliant Companies”.  Continue reading

Archaic Telecom

Why Else Would You Go to the Grand Canyon?

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There may be good arguments in support of AT&T’s acquisition of T-Mobile, but improved WiFi access in the Grand Canyon is not one of them.

But that’s the claim that the Grand Canyon Hotel Operators Association makes in its comment to the FCC.

In the words of this trade group: “What our beloved canyon does not have, however, is state of the art wireless broadband service.”

Continue reading

Archaic Telecom

Back at the FCC: Sprint Files 377-Page Petition

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I’m going to review this massive petition to denial filing—redacted, though, for public viewing—over this short holiday week. Not surprisingly, Sprint Nextel is not happy with AT&T’s bid to swallow T-Mobile.

With the word duopoloy (according to my PDF search) showing up on 21 pages and anti-competitive on another 23 pages, I think you get an inkling of how this carrier feels.

And here’s a choice nugget from the beginning of this thing:Continue reading

The Rack

Quixey: Applification or Bust

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I like the idea of Quixey.

It has the Google-like cyclops interface —a single search box— but instead of searching the web, it’s looking for apps from the crowded shelves of mobile app stores.

I saw Quixey for the first time at TechCrunch Disrupt last week. I discovered this well funded company—cash from Eric Schmidt’s fund— around the corner from the Startup Alley area, in the more exclusive sponsored neighborhood.

After talking with the Quixey gang, I learned that instead of searching on app descriptions alone, their software culls blogs, forums, and social media to accumulate additional descriptive content.

So how does it do?Continue reading

@NYC

TechCrunch Disrupt: The End

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My gut told me that Getaround, the peer-to-peer car rental service, should be the Battlefield winner.

It was a crowd favorite and solved the age-old problem of finding temporary access to wheels without paying any up-front fees.

However, it seemed to me that the judges found this a messy proposition with possible regulatory issues, insurance issues, and potential customer satisfaction headaches—’the car I rented smells funny’, etc, etc.Continue reading

@NYC

Tales from Startup Alley: Shoutomatic

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If tweets are the short form of a blog post, then what’s the short audio equivalent for a podcast?

I found the answer at Shoutomatic’s booth talking to its co-founder and COO Michael Levy. The idea is simple: why not give give the people the power to quickly record short audio messages or shouts, and tweet out the embedded link or post it onto a FaceBook wall?

There are other, more cumbersome ways to do this kind of thing in the Web world.

Shoutomatic, though, is its owns ecosystem and social network—profiles, real-time shout stream, follow-follower model, etc.

Most intriguing to me and a powerful differentiator of this service is its celebrity shouters, which include Andy Dick, Eurythmic’s Dave Stewart, rapper Chuck D, Danny Bonaduce, and American Idol winner Bo Bice.

Celebrity and branded shouts are really the core of the for-pay business of this startup.
Continue reading

@NYC

Tales from Startup Alley: Openspace

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I was in the middle of getting a demo of Openspace’s app finder technology when the CEO and co-founder Robert Reich cruised up to the booth on his skateboard like he was some whiz developer.

Actually he is! He was also the founder and developer of a  mobile advertising network called OneRiot. And with his new startup, he’s continuing his mission to help the developer community.Continue reading

@NYC

Tales from Startup Alley: invoiceASAP

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I’ve been to many, many trade shows and conferences over the years. TechCrunch Disrupt is the first I’ve attended that’s devoted to startups.

You notice differences.

No security detail of marketing and PR staffers who hover around a sprawling booth that has its own zip code. No rock wall. No laser light shows. No roboticized, soulless pitches.

At Disrupt, the startups run lean: there’s a table, the product, and the CEO or CTO him- or her-self enthusiastically handling the foot traffic.

That was the case with invoiceASAP. They have a tablet app for the small business marketplace that I am completely charged up about.Continue reading

Archaic Telecom

Parlor.fm Launched at TechCrunch Disrupt

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I  get a small thrill out of finding voice-oriented apps in these normally data centric startup events. That was the doubly the case with Parlor.fm, which launched its smartphone software earlier today at TechCrunch Disrupt.

After years of having been traumatized by partially cooked “unified communication” software from the legacy PBX makers, it’s reassuring for me to see a well-designed, perfectly intuitive app that uses voice as the foundation.Continue reading

@NYC

TechCrunch Disrupt: The Secret to Entrepreneurial Success

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I ducked into the “What Makes Great Entrepreneurs Great” session this morning and listened to Michael Arrington and Ron Conway explore and mull over a survey results collected from over 300 startups during a ten-year period.

The conclusions were not totally surprising. The ideal startup is one in which there are multiple founders all under the age of 30.

This holds very true for ventures that exit with a $25 million and over valuation, and more so for ones lucky enough to reach the $500 million mark.

In some ways, these startups parallel the success arc of a good ball club: youth and teamwork, at least among the originators.Continue reading

@NYC

Live from NY: TechCrunch Disprupt’s Hackathon

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This was a NYC-class hack gathering: a big stage set up in the large Pier 94 hangar, enormous video screens, an enthused audience, and more demos than there were lights on Broadway.

With a long line of hackers waiting to be guided to the appropriate demo computer on the crowded dais, TechCrunch staffers I think must have consulted the New York Department of Transportation for traffic management tips.

I had my own traffic problems of a more traditional kind: a massive jam up on the West Side highway prevented me from seeing two of the eventual winners—Gilt-ii and Docracy. Continue reading

Archaic Telecom

Jon Stewart on Meridith Baker’s Jump to Comcast

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I didn’t think there was much to say about FCC Commissioner Meredith Baker’s bold decision to leave the FCC for NBC Universal.

Shocking? No really.

As we all know Baker voted to approve Comcast’s acquisition of NBC a few months ago. She’ll move her files, notes, and computer gear over to the cable company’s Washington lobbying offices after her resignation takes effect in June.

Her new position has the fancy title of senior vice president for governmental affairs.

Fortunately, Comedy Central’s Jon Stewart has used Baker’s speedy exit as grist for his “Well, that was fast” segment.   Continue reading

@NYC

NYU ITP Spring Show 2011: Apps at at Exhibition

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Last night, NYU’s ITP program put on its vernal show of student projects. I couldn’t resist.

I made the trip to lower Broadway to see solenoids, DC motors, pulleys, gears, transformers, cameras, OR gates, laser-etched plexiglass, magnets, propellers, large touch screens, finger puppets, spare parts from Xbox, and clever software (of course) mashed up to create something pretty, gadgety, joyful (sometimes dark), and at times vaguely practical.

Can you believe that none of the object de gadget had even a reference to Twitter, Facebook, or other social media forms?  Continue reading

Archaic Telecom

Libyan Rebels Keep GSM Network Going

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Aljazeera has a long, interesting article detailing how engineers kept cell service online in the rebel-controlled eastern part of Libya.

According to reporter Evan Hill, Gaddafi’s government severed a fiber cable connecting Tobruk in the east to Ras Ajdir in the west. Without access to central HLR servers, a GSM network element containing a registry of cell phone numbers, service was lost in eastern Libya.

But a separate cell provider, Libyana, was able to restore voice communication by configuring a spare HLR located in Benghazi.Continue reading

Archaic Telecom

Back at the FCC: Carrier Voice Revenue is Shrinking

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Last week, the FCC released its annual report on carrier revenue based on Form 499 filings, this blog’s favorite regulatory worksheet.

And those numbers confirm what we already knew: revenue from voice—both mobile and fixed line—has already plateaued and is coming down fast.

The FCC reported that the total 2009 telecom revenue pot from both end-users and carriers providing services to other carriers dropped to $281 billion from 2008’s $297 billion.

The 2010 FCC numbers, while preliminary, all point to the inevitable and long-predicted slide as the industry transitions to data services.Continue reading

@NYC

NJ’s EDA Helps Tech Startups at NJTC Bootcamp

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One of the advantages of living close to a major NJ academic institution is that universities, especially tech-oriented ones, are often hubs of entrepreneurial activity.

That is the case with NJIT, which is located down the road from me in Newark

This engineering-focused school boasts an incubation program at their Enterprise Development Center, which to date has hatched over 80 businesses and continues to attract seed money.

And NJIT also hosts interesting conferences, like the New Jersey Technology Council (NJTC) Bootcamp, where entrepreneurs get to tap into the wisdom of business veterans, investors, accounting firms, lawyers and the rest of the ecosystem that keeps the tech scene in this area rolling along.Continue reading