Poco Podcast Tech episode 5: Golden Bird

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**UPDATE: A feed issue is preventing Episode 5 from appearing on iTunes.

Episode 5 is now available on iTunes.

Intro:
Welcome to Episode 5 of Poco Podcast Tech, where we cover the top tech stories of the past week. I’m Kevin Nuest. This episode is brought to you by Go Daddy. Summer’s almost over. Hurry and take advantage of Go Daddy’s special summer sale offer and get a new dot com domain name for as little as $7.49. Visit http://PocoPodcast.com/godaddy for more information.


10 year anniversary of 9/11
Business Insider – These were supposed to be the top stories of 9/11/01
Congressman Condit was in the press for a flight attendant scandal
Then Senator Joe Biden criticized Bush
Rumors that 38 yr old MJ was coming out of retirement again
Mashable – what the web looked like
CNN, NY Times, LA Times sites with pictures of planes hitting twin towers
Thanks to all that day and currently protect the US and world


Twitter Has 100 Million Active Users
Twitter has 100 million active users, over 200 million signed up
active = log in at least once a month
what about businesses that have personal and business stream
bit of a stretch to call once a month active
Actively get hair cut, wash my car, pay my rent
How many accounts have at least one tweet per day and aren’t spam bots?


Twitter raises $400 million of $800 million
Series G funding round, first half
CEO says it’s more money than he has ever seen
$8 billion dollar valuation
Employees can sell up to 20% of their shares before an IPO or acquisition, $16/share
Early backers like Spark Capital are getting out
Late stage investors like Benchmark are staying in, probably because they have to, to make a profit
What do you do with $800 million additional dollars to make this magical bird make money?
Already had $1.2 billion in funding
Too many apps to rely on advertising dollars
How about a premium subscription service that prunes down the Twitter feed to something useful by subject matter similar to Subjot.com


Facebook can’t out-pace Google (Infograph)
Facebook’s rev grows fast, but Google was faster
Compares Yahoo, Google, and Facebook
At year 4, Google and Facebook are close, both well under a Billion
Year 5, 6, and 7 Google and Facebook crush Yahoo, but Google wins by $2 billion
Facebook still impressive for share holders
Life lesson, don’t mess with the Goog, not much you can beat it at


Amazon 7 inch Kindle Tablet
New Amazon tablet in November for $250
Runs super modified version of Android OS
Also get a free Amazon Prime membership (just in time for holidays)
Great Deal – reader and a tablet that can do apps
I still prefer my original Kindle because all it does is let me read
shiny object syndrome


Apple iCloud runs on Microsoft and Amazon
Apples new iCloud runs on Azure and AWS
AWS makes sense, but Azure?
Azure’s moment to shine
Using both services as a fail-safe
Supposedly able to quickly access data from either, making it faster
Could become the new default for cloud-based solutions


Facebook Auto-Groups your friends
100′s of friend’s, hand-full you pay attention to
Now Facebook is profiling my friends
Smart Lists – People you work with, went to school with, live within 50 miles (potentially friends in real life)
People in the trenches with, comradery
Lots of classes and groups in college, so I probably forgot a good share of those people
In the same town, reconnect and grab a drink with
Auto-profile by something cool like what genre of music you listen to, concert buddies


Google buys Zagat
Google has made yet another acquisition – Zagat
Strengths Google Offers, competes with Groupon, Yelp, Facebook
Reviews in search stream
Get everything from reviews to addresses and hours of restaurants, hotels…
Google featured on Zagat home page
2010 the decade of Content Consolidation – never go to Zagat, always to Google


Yahoo CEO Fired
Yahoo CEO Carol Bartz fired over the phone
Board said they would sell for the right price
What are they going to do to make the shift?
Lots of dead weight, no core product
No one uses Yahoo to Google
Cut it down to Fantasy Sports and Celeb News
Facebook to overtake it’s display dominance


Sprint Gets the iPhone 5
Rumors everywhere that sprint is getting the iPhone 5
Techcrunch, Business Insider,
Sept. 30 – Oct. 15 blacked-out vacation days
Sprint offering unlimited data for iPhone, already running commercials
Finally get some real competition for iPhone network


Shout-outs
Leave a review on itunes – get a shout-out
Sellerjd for the 5 star review
Always remember your first and much appricated


Outro:
Did you like this week’s more raw format? Leave your comments on the show notes at PocoPodcast.com/Tech
Until next week, adios!


8-Bit Outro Song
Tik Tok – Ke$ha




Poco Podcast Tech episode 4: Baby Bump

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Intro and Sponsor:

Welcome to Episode 4 of Poco Podcast Tech, where we cover the top tech stories of the past week. I’m Kevin Nuest. This episode is brought to you by Go Daddy. Take advantage of Go Daddy’s special summer sale offer and get a new dot com domain name for as little as $7.49. Visit http://PocoPodcast.com/godaddy for more information.


Singularity University graduates its first class
For the first story of the week, hot on the heals of Y-Combinator and winding down the summer startup sessions, Singularity University graduates a class of 80 inspired entrepreneurs. Singularity University is a little different than other startup programs and can be summed up by their mission statement: …to assemble, educate, and inspire leaders who understand and develop exponentially advancing technologies to address humanity’s Grand Challenges. Not only are Singularity students asked to think big, they are asked to tackle some of the largest problems affecting our world. When selecting this year’s applicants that represent 37 different countries, they chose people that have already shown some progress towards this goal, but need help scaling up. It will probably be a while before the students fully process the 500 hours of lectures and discussions from some 200 speakers, but I’m sure there are some great hidden nuggets of inspiration. One of the company ideas from this year’s class was AstroTrash. It would try to secure all the dangerous debry in space left over from years of space travel and debunked satellites. PrimerLife was another participate. This startup has already raised almost $200,000 in funding to focus on improving global healthcare by using artificial intelligence and genetic data to ultimately develop “Personal Coaches.” Singularity University asks a lot of its entrepreneurs and I look forward to seeing the impact they make.


Box.net Crib on TechCrunch
I don’t usually watch a lot of the video content on TechCrunch, but one video in particular caught my eye this week. It’s the TechCrunch cribs edition of Box.net. With Box.net growing to over 200 employees, I wanted to see how they still keep that startup feel and quirky culture. They have a pretty cool physical space that doesn’t include high cubical walls and the lore needed to keep the culture alive like naming a conference room after Mark Cuban, one of Box.net’s first investors. If you have 15 minutes, check it out for yourself. There is a link in the show notes on PocoPodcast.com/Tech


Flickr Adds Geofencing:
Geotagging photos on Flickr is nothing new. This feature has been around for about 5 years. But what if you don’t want certain people to know the exact location of where you took a particular picture of say your house or school. On Flickr, you can now draw a circle on a map and set specific privacy controls for any photos you geotag in that area. For example, you could set the privacy so only friends and family can see the geotagging data of pictures uploaded with a mile radius of your apartment. It’s cool that the geo technology has advanced this far to 1. allow accurate enough geotagging that this can even be done and 2. that these types of privacy settings aren’t seen as overkill. Here are my predictions of the top 3 ways geofencing will be used:
1. By uber paranoid people that always think someone is following them home.
2. When people discover really cool photo-op areas that they don’t want over-run with amateur photographers.
3. To post pictures of illegal activity but think they are smart because they hide the exact geo-location.


Zynga IPO Delayed
Zynga decided to push its IPO out to Q4 due to current market conditions. There are talks of a November IPO but it could be as early as mid-October or as late as December if there are any hang-ups in the SEC reviews. 12 other companies have also delayed their Initial Public Offerings due to market volatility. While the US stock market isn’t the greatest right now, it’s a lot better than in 2008, which is why we are seeing so many large tech companies line up for their final payday. One thing that worried me was that companies with inflated valuations could go public and create another tech bubble. Potential revenues don’t always match-up with the money Venture Capitalists put in. So far, it looks like the SEC is doing a good job of examining these companies. They already called out Groupon for not making any real money. I believe the SEC is doing the same thing with Zynga when they reviewed Zynga’s accounting practices and told them to stop focusing on the bookings metric so much. Booking is almost always inflated and falls below the actual dollars recognized for a time period. Plus, with only 5% of Zynga’s users actually buying virtual goods, their customer base is fairly small and could become fickle. I’m all for startups getting the chance to cash out with an IPO, but definitely want to see them valued correctly when it happens.


Apple 2010, The Decade of Tim Cook
Apple looks to make 2010 the decade of Tim Cook, new CEO of the beloved brand. Cook has signed a 10 year contract that goes through 2021 and gives him the chance to earn 1 million shares of stock currently worth over $380 million dollars. Cook would receive half in August of 2015 and the other half in 2021 if he is still CEO of Apple at that time. These two checkpoints set a few years out definitely forces Cook to keep thinking into the future vs managing a quarter over quarter or year over year stock price. The iPhone was launched 4 years ago. As great as it is, the mobile market is changing too fast to ride the coattails of the iPhone success for another 4 years until 2015. What vision does Cook have to execute before then? Maybe more importantly, can Tim Cook command the same presence as Steve Jobs at a product unveiling and make everyone so giddy about the next piece of Apple tech that they day-dream about how they are going to use it when their pre-order arrives?

Groupon down, LivingSocial up
Groupon down, LivingSocial up. Groupon’s traffic has declined 50% since June according to Hitwise. In defense of Groupon, there was a reported 25% decline is all traffic for daily deal sites this summer. Consumers sited that they were overwhelmed by the number of daily deals in their inbox. Ok, so half of Groupon’s traffic decline can be accounted for by market trends. Where did the other half go? Looks like straight to LivingSocial, Groupon’s largest competitor. Hitwise stated that LivingSocial saw a 27% increase in traffic during the same time the daily deals industry was down 25% as a whole. Compounded by a stalled IPO, this could be really bad news for Groupon. Even worse, Forrester released a report that says while online spending will continue to increase, the concept of daily deals will all but be dead by 2016. I know there have been shorter, but less that five years would be a pretty short tenure as a public company should Groupon complete its $750 million IPO this year.


Beyonce’s baby bump breaks twitter records
The Super Bowl, Tsunamis, Hurricanes, all pale in comparison to how many tweets per second Beyonce’s Baby Bump can drive. Beyonce announced that she was pregnant a the MTV Music Awards. After Beyonce performed on stage and revealed to the world her little secret, Twitter exploded with almost 9,000 tweets per second. This surpassed the previous record of just over 7,000 tweets per second during the close finish of the Women’s World Cup finals. Kanye was able to make his way into this year’s big MTV awards scandal by immediately congratulating Jay-Z. Thank goodness Taylor Swift was no where to be found or who knows what might of happened. TPS now refers to more than just a report in Office Space, it’s apparently the new measurement of how fast the internet moves.


Facebook Bug Squashing
Would you have the guts to openly invite people to hack into your site, and then pay them for it? Facebook does. In the last month, Facebook has started a Bug Bounty program that rewards people for submitting bugs on the largest social network platform in the world. Facebook pays a minimum of $500 for each bug and has paid up to $5,000 for one bug. $40,000 in total have been paid out in rewards for this program, which is just a drop in the bucket if you think about how much a large bug could cost Facebook if it’s exploited. The part I like best about this initiative is that Facebook knows they already hired some of the best security experts but are willing to take advantage of the different perspective from members of their 750 million user community. Also, Facebook went out of its way to be very clear in its policy that they will not pursue litigation if the exploits and bugs are found by using methods in the grey or illegal spectrum. Why aren’t more large sites doing this? $40,000 is nothing compared to the salaries they are paying out, or the potential loss of revenue and brand value from downtime. Just ask Sony about their recent Playstation Network outage that cost them $171 million. As a side note, this story came from CNN Money Tech. I know I said before that Tumblr doesn’t have any reputable sources on its blogging service. I discovered that CNN Money Tech has a blog on Tumblr that posts some of their more raw content. Keep in mind, that’s still only 1 out of 27 million blogs!


ATT and T-Mobile merger
Are you a T-Mobile customer waiting to see if your service with be affected by ATT’s patented call dropping technology after the merger goes through? Well, you may have to wait a little longer. The US Department of Justice is going after ATT, saying that there is not enough competition in the market to support the merger. With only 4 major mobile players in the US, the choice to block the merger seems to be a pretty easy one. The problem is that Verizon and ATT have such a strangle-hold that it may not be possible for T-Mobile or Sprint to successfully exist on their own. If ATT is unable to push this merger through, would the US government allow T-Mobile and Sprint to join together? The biggest question is, when will the US catch-up to Europe in both cell phone technology and service. We have locked-down hardware with long contracts that prevent users from voting on service with the dollars they spend compared to the other consumer goods and services we buy. If users were able to more easily switch mobile carriers, smaller players or even startups could come in and capitalize on the areas that the big 4 struggle in.


Google +1
For our last story of the week, Google has finally confirmed that the +1 buttons will eventually shape search results. Google has been fighting people that try to game the ranking system for a long time. One of the biggest changes Google made in recent months was to penalize content farms that just crank out cheap, light content to get pageviews and ad dollars. Besides personalized recommendation from friends, the +1 button will be used to crowd source the best content on a particular topic. This could really help clean up a lot of long-tail searches to make them more useful if there are enough people contributing to the crowd source curating. Other factors like historic searches and clicks will still play a part in delivering personalized results. One of my favorite signals that a search engine can take into consideration, whether I am on a desktop computer or my phone, is my geo-location. It is extremely helpful when I am searching for a business or restaurant if the search engine takes into account that I am in Phoenix and displays results for the establishment in my town and not one with a similar or exact same name in New York for example. While the +1 button could be very helpful in boosting the rankings of an informational how-to article, what kind of impact will it have on branded searches for companies? Will they have to lobby for Google +1′s just to keep their spot on the first results page?

To see all the articles as well as a transcript from this week’s podcast, visit the link dump at PocoPodcast.com/Tech. You can also leave a review on iTunes and let us know what you liked or disliked, which helps others find this podcast. Until next week, adios!


8-bit intro/outro song
Seven Nation Army – White Stripes






Poco Podcast Tech episode 3: Steve Jobs Steps Down

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Welcome to Episode 3 of Poco Podcast Tech, where we cover the top tech stories of the past week. I’m Kevin Nuest. This episode is brought to you by Go Daddy. Take advantage of Go Daddy’s special summer sale offer and get a new dot com domain name for as little as $7.49. Visit http://PocoPodcast.com/godaddy for more information.


Steve Jobs steps down as CEO of Apple
In our first story, the big news of the week, Steve Jobs steps down as CEO of Apple. This came as a shock to most as Jobs issued a letter stating that he could no longer fulfill the daily duties of CEO, but requested serve as Chairman of the Board. Apple COO Tim Cook will take over the role of CEO. Some are worried that this is poor timing for the announcement as we are leading into Q4, but Apple’s stock rose more than $27 this week, so I would say they will do just fine. With the iPhone 5 on the horizon along with iPad and iPod holiday sales, revenue in the foreseeable future is taken care of. The question is, how far ahead has Jobs thought? There could potentially be years of product iterations sitting on the shelf, just waiting for their execution plan to begin. Steve Job’s impact will be felt for years. Entrepreneur.com did a great piece about 10 things to thank Steve Jobs for which included iTunes and the iPod, focusing on design, and not doing it for the money. Did you know that when Jobs rejoined Apple in 1997, he set his salary at just $1. All the money he made was from his investment in Apple. Now THAT is a performance driven CEO. No $10M golden parachute there. Job’s inspiration and innovation will be missed by all in the tech industry, but he has already supplied one of the greatest tech company turnaround stories of all time. What more do you want from the guy?


The Internet Travels Faster Than An Earthquake
It finally happened. As the earthquake hit DC this week, people in New York read tweets about the tremors before actually feeling it themselves just seconds later. This was predicted in an xkcd comic about a year ago that at one point, the information would travel faster on the internet than waves of an Earthquake, warning people in the blast radius. The comic also mentions that a Twitter user’s first instinct will not be to take shelter in the few seconds they have before the Earthquake hits them, but to re-tweet out to their followers instead. This is a fun social media example, but it also peaks curiosity about how to get alerts out to people 60-90 seconds before natural disaster events strikes them. Could Twitter warn people about Tornadoes or Monsoons in their area? I saw a great comment the article that said the web is faster at getting the news before the news gets you.


Blackberry Gives Up – Lets Android In
Blackberry has finally given up. RIM has announced that its new QNX operating system will support Android software when it is released. Blackberry is losing the battle so bad that they are essentially saying they will revert to a hardware manufacture with a built-in messaging service (I’m referring to that BBM or Blackberry Messenger service that all current owners claim as the differentiating factor for their phone). RIM has slid off the cliff very quickly and is just looking for anything to cling to at this point. The senior execs are probably sitting around, reminiscing for the good old days when business and technology professionals all cared that hockey-puck shaped phone which was lovingly called the crackberry. It reminds me of the great cartoon from last year about how smart phone users see themselves and each other. The typical Blackberry user sees himself as a sharp, suit wearing businessman, but is viewed by the android users as a literal dinosaur. Check out the link-dump on PocoPodcast.com/tech for a link to the cartoon.


Spotify teams up with SoundHound
With Spotify still trying to get a foothold in the US, they still found the time to partner up with SoundHound to extend the mobile listening experience. SoundHound uses your phone’s microphone to listen to nearby music and then tells you what the song is. Users will then have the ability to play the song on their Spotify app. SoundHound as also added song lyrics to its music discovery option. This is currently only available in Europe, but is very likely to extend to the US to follow suit with Spotify’s current game plan. There is always another way to slice up music discovery, but getting the critical mass of users is becoming harder and harder in the US with dominate players like Pandora and iTunes as well as a saturated market. I would like to see some continued consolidation of these types of music services to create an irresistible offering that can become a powerhouse.


Skype Acquires GroupMe
Skype is making a move to acquire GroupMe, even while Skype itself has a pending acquisition with Microsoft. GroupMe is a group text-messaging or chat service that received a lot of positive feedback at South by Southwest in Austin, TX this year. GroupMe has only been around for a year and has already raised $11M and received a bid for the company. Not bad. Some say that Skype is positioning against Google+ Huddles. Skype (and its future parent company of Microsoft) currently have great relationships with Facebook. I wouldn’t be surprised if the GroupMe’s reach somehow bled into the Facebook ecosystem. Picture a group of friends all chatting together in the same conversation, one on a cellphone, one on Skype, and one using a laptop to access Facebook, all using GroupMe. That’s some powerful cross-platform and device integration, allowing each user to decide his or her favorite way to communicate with a group in real-time.


Y-Combinator Demo Day
It’s that time of year again. Time for the rapid-fire Y-Combinator Demo Day. It showcased this summers 63 companies that completed the program. In one of the most intense presentations these founders have ever had to give, they received just 2 minutes to present their idea in front of top investors. Despite accepting 63 companies this session compared to the previous 43 companies, the Y-Combinator acceptance rate is still only 3%. With the bonus $150,000 in seed funding this group received, it’s not like any of them are hard up for cash. You can see a list of company summaries and additional coverage by checking out the article link on PocoPodcast.com. Once startup that caught my attention was Codecademy. It is a place to learn programming languages through hands-on lessons. It has already received a lot of interest from programmers, but currently only contains a few basic lessons on javascript. Creating beginner, intermediate, and advanced course content for multiple programming languages will be challenging and time consuming, but with so many programmers being self-taught, this could be a huge idea if executed correctly. Another one that caught my eye was Snapjoy. It’s a site that is currently in Beta and promises to be the only photo organization solution in the cloud that you will ever need. In the first two weeks of being live, the site had almost 2M photos uploaded from 2,500 users. One thing I really like about this startup is that even though it is currently free during their beta, they already have a pricing tab on their website that says to expect a cost of $1/mo per 4GB of storage. They have a business model in mind right out of the gate and are already letting their users know what to expect in the future. Out of all the startups from this Y-Combinator session, Snapjoy has my vote as most likely to be profitable.


Tablet Bubble Coming?
Being a Negative Nancy this week, Acer’s CEO is declaring a tablet bubble. Acer Chairman, JT Wang, calls out the tablet PCs saying they are for entertainment and that notebooks can also be used for learning and business. While Wang doesn’t refer to any specific tablet PCs, like the iPad, he does talk about a customer survey Acer recently did that shows high interest for its new Ultrabook. Yes, the HP Touchpad was recently liquidated in the US at a price of $99, down from the original $500 price tag, but does that mean tablet computing is dead? Is there really going to be a dip in iPad sales going into the holiday season? Notebooks with Windows 8 will play a big part in back to school in 2012, I’ll give Wang that, but tablet computing still has its purpose. For example, the students on the other end of the age spectrum. Kids under 10 have no problem operating an iPad. There are already apps specifically targeted at them. Parents can also keep their kids busy by using the Netflix streaming app to watch movies on the go. Heck, kids are bringing iPads to class for show-and-tell. This could continue to be a major market for tablet computing for a long time.


Facebook Deals are Done
Facebook Deals are Done. That was quick. 4 months ago, Facebook rolled out its local deals offering to compete with Groupon. They said in their testing since April, they found out it doesn’t work and are making a shift. Facebook recognizes its value in driving sales for small businesses, but daily deals have become a commodity at this point. With no barriers to entry and no company successfully proving deal sites can be profitable on a large scale, Facebook doesn’t want to waste anymore time on a sinking ship. My advice to Facebook is to keep pursuing how to make the discovery of small local and online businesses easier for its 750 million users. If I absolutely love the mom and pop pizza place in town, how does Facebook help my friends or other people that are within my geo but not my friend circle find out about it, and then monetize that information? On the flip side, for small ecomm businesses that are only online, how can Facebook profit from creating the ultimate product recommendation engine? These are the domains with high barrier to entry, especially when you are talking about the reach influence of 3/4 of a Billion users.


Tumblr Raising $100 million
The blogging platform Tumblr is looking to raise some capital. Just $75 – $100 million, no big deal. This money is needed to support the explosive growth Tumblr has went through in the last year. 800% growth from 10 million monthly unique visitors a year ago to 90 million per month now. The site also hosts 27 million blogs. Its ease of use and expanding feature set has helped it continue to capture market share. I think the surprising part of this funding round is the 800 million dollar valuation Tumblr is raising this capital at. That’s getting serious, unlike the majority of the blogs hosted on their service. I have yet to come across a really reputable source on Tumblr. I decided to lean on SocialMediaExplorer.com for a top 25 list of blogs on Tumblr. The link is also on PocoPodcast.com if you would like to take a look. I was proven correct. Most Tumblr blogs are just a random collection of cartoons, memes, and videos with no real content. There is even a blog dedicated to lesbians that look like Justin Bieber. Can you imagine how many more websites we could have like that for $100 million? Awesome!


Pandora is Everywhere
For our last story of the week, there are 744 hours in a month and 600 million of them are filled with Pandora. Wait, what? That’s right, Pandora’s +100 million user racked up 1.8 billion hours of listening time in Q2. That’s 3.6% of all radio listening in the US. Based upon Pandora’s revenue driven from mobile, listening on the go makes up about half of the hours. I mentioned this before when talking about Spotify,but  Pandora is my music service of choice. It’s like going to your favorite local restaurant where they know you by name. Pandora already knows my likes and dislikes and the longer I use it, the higher the switching cost because I would have to give up all that learning. I listen to Pandora when I workout, in my car, at work, and even while I write the script for this week’s podcast. It does surprise me that with the huge install base it already has, Pandora only accounts for just over 3.5% of the radio ecosystem. That goes to show you the stranglehold that traditional radio still has as well as satellite radio or other alternatives, like actually owning specific albums or songs. Trust me, once you make the choice to stop buying single tracks on iTunes, it is so liberating and you will actually discover more great music faster instead of being stuck inside the top 40 songs that you purchased. The plus side for Pandora investors is that there is still tremendous amounts of room for growth if they haven’t even captured 5% of the market yet.


To see all the articles as well as a transcript from this week’s podcast, visit the link dump at PocoPodcast.com/Tech. While you are there, leave a comment and let us know what you liked and disliked about this week’s podcast or stories. Until next week, adios!


8-bit intro/outro song
The Middle – Jimmy Eats World




Poco Podcast Tech episode 2: Winklevoss Style

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Welcome to Episode 2 of Poco Podcast Tech, where we cover the top tech stories of the past week. I’m Kevin Nuest. This episode is brought to you by Go Daddy. Take advantage of Go Daddy’s special summer sale offer and get a new dot com domain name for as little as $7.49. Visit http://PocoPodcast.com/godaddy for more information.

Google to buy Motorola
For our first story, in a huge bombshell this week, Google has made a $12.5 billion bid to acquire Motorola. Looks like Google wants to make more than just the popular Android mobile operating system. This could be an official shift for the search giant to one of the largest mobile software and hardware makers in the world. Some say it is a defensive move by Google to maintain their beloved Android platform. With Motorola holding over 14,000 patients, they could sue the pants off just about anyone in the mobile space, Winklevoss style. At some point, does the FCC just call “shenanigans” on Google and say “Really, Google?” Now they are just submitting larger and larger deals for approval that makes their previous deals pail in comparison, and all other acquisitions look like they couldn’t possibly effect the competitive landscape negatively. The FCC says, “Ok Google, you can buy Motorola, one of the largest cell phone manufactures in the world, but we reject your offer to buy Amazon for $300 billion.”

Nerd story – SpaceX gets launch day from NASA (schematics images)
For your Nerd Story of the week: The company SpaceX has received its launch day from NASA to test a new rocket on a mission to the International Space Station. This is part of the US government’s effort to privatize space travel and replace the shuttle program that NASA has now retired. There are only a few companies competing for the opportunity to be the niche provider to the US space program. The Dragon (which is a free-flying reusable space craft) will perform a cargo mission to take supplies to the International Space Station and costs $133 million according to the SpaceX website. They also openly share that a Falcon 9 rocket launch costs $54 million dollars in case you are interested or have the need to send something into space. It’s very interesting that a company competing for the top spot with NASA would openly share their pricing for their competitors to see, but SpaceX’s recent blog posts go on to state that they are so vertically integrated that they are confident they can continue to control the price as well as drive it down over time. That’s great news for the rest of us that want to explore the great beyond one day but probably aren’t getting accepted into the NASA space program anytime soon. To see the schematics of the Dragon spacecraft, visit the link dump on PocoPodcast.com/Tech

Watch YouTube videos together on Google+
If you have ever said, “Dude, you gotta see this awesome video on YouTube,” then this next story is for you. Long gone are the times when you pull a group of friend over to your computer and huddle around to watch the next YouTube star make a fool of themselves. You can now get that same instant feedback from you friends on that, uh… “funny video” and experience it at the same time by watching it together in a hangout on Google+. This is similar to the feature available when streaming Netflix on the xbox for example where you can watch a movie with your friends, even if they’re not in your living room. The plus side is you don’t have to put your pants on. Also, if this takes off on Google+, it will really demonstrate how the culture is shifting from old media of network TV shows to new, self-created or short, digestible content. I know I’m more likely to sit down and watch a parody video on YouTube from The Key Of Awesome or a live action short from RoosterTeeth. Check out the link dump on PocoPodcast.com for a couple of great videos from both of these amazing production studios.
Google+ vs Facebook:
Angry Birds movie trailer:
Ke$ha parody:
Jersey Shore parody:

Minecraft mobile:
Minecraft goes mobile! If you are not familiar with this indie cult hit, it’s a game created by Swedish developer, Mojang where you can build just about anything in a sandbox world filed with Lego block style materials. You can chop down a tree, combine that with a couple other objects and next thing you know you have a train running on tracks. This addicting game is making it’s way to Playstation’s Xperia Play first with the Android version following in about a month. No scheduled release date for the iPhone version. The pocket edition won’t feature the nightly raids that Minecraft gamers are used, creating a more relaxed environment for the portable experience. I personally haven’t played Minecraft for fear of getting sucked into the creative world, but I have watched a few videos of people making stuff, including a 1:1 replica of the Starship Enterprise. It has been cool watching the popularity of this game grow. It was originally released as an Alpha at a discounted price and is now in Beta at €15 with plans to sell the final release at  €20. With 12 million registered users, Mojang can afford to keep the game in Beta for a while, Gmail style.

Aisle50 takes social to the grocery store (Spark of Genius)
This next story is about a startup that was featured in Mashable’s Spark of Genius series. Aisle50 is the new Groupon of grocery stores. You can purchase deals on Aisle50 and then redeem them with existing loyal shopper cards you already have on your keychain. Working directly with the manufactures of the products, Aisle50 hopes to tap into the huge marketing budgets of the big brands on your local shelves. Not to be out-done the 800 lb gorilla in the market has made a similar move. Groupon announced a deal with a chain of grocery stores located in New England. Having graduated from Y-Combinator, Aisle50 has a good start, but can they compete with someone that already has the name recognition of Groupon? I’m a firm believer that if you build a business that has a differentiater (in this case Aisle50 works directly with manufactures instead of grocery stores) then you have a chance to create something great that everyone loves. After all, Groupon filed a $750 million IPO because they aren’t actually making any money.

Future of video rental (infograph)
This next story is about a great infograph on the future of video rental. It’s appropriately titled “The Rise and Fall of The Blockbuster Empire.” It starts out with Blockbuster opening its first locations in 1985 with 8,000 tapes (see wikipedia if you are unfamiliar with what a tape is). Netflix enters the picture in 1997 with the announcement of the popular subscription service 2 years later. Behind the 8 ball, Blockbuster launches its online rental service in 2004 and still manages to offend Hollywood Video with a $1 billion buyout offer in 2005. Blockbuster goes head on at Redbox in 2009 by rolling out its own rental kiosks. Fast forward to 2010, with $1 billion in debt, bankruptcy is the only option for this once giant powerhouse and a quiet sale to Dish Network for $320 million. Check out the link to the infograph on PocoPodcast.com to see more, like the market share breakdown of on-demand streaming content.

Windows mobile is in (images)
Getting their slice of the location based activity, Microsoft Bing releases a new app for their Windows phone called “Who’s in?”. Unlike other apps where you check into a location, Who’s in allows you to create an event, invite your friends to a location and then see who’s down, I mean in. Everyone invited to the event can temporarily see the location of the other attendees to see if everyone has made it there or if people are lagging behind. This sounds like it could be a good spin on the mobile location concept. If executed correctly, this could be a cool social feature that differentiates the Windows phone. I am in the iPhone camp, so I unfortunately won’t be able to try it out, but hopefully this sets a new trend of how to do mobile location if it works.

Linkedin mobile app update
The latest mobile Linkedin app updates may finally be the tipping point for me to give up my Friendster account. Linkedin rolled out some sleek new updates to their iPhone and Android apps this week. The new app is faster, sleeker, and has a more social feel. It’s much easier to navigate everything from messages to profiles. With huge growth in the number of users on the mobile app, it was time for a facelift. Almost half a billion Linkedin profiles were view mobily in the last year. Can you believe that number! In addition to updating the apps, Linkedin also updated the mobile website with a new HTML5 version. I am a huge fan of websites having solid mobile web versions of their service. Apps are great, but when are we just going to move to clean mobile websites as our primary access point on the go? With HTML 5, the mobile websites can do just as much if not more than the apps, are generally easier to create rich, customer experiences on, and can be updated at any time without getting bottle-necked in an app market review process. My prediction is that shifting from apps to mobile websites will be the future for phones and Linkedin is setting itself up for success again.

Knock-off Steve Jobs bio
Following up on last week’s story and the knock-off Apple stores in China, there are now knock-off books claiming to be the official biography of Steve Jobs. The book’s title roughly translates to “Steve Jobs Gives 11 Advices To Teenager.” Obviously this isn’t the ligit Steve Jobs bio but at $10, it’s good enough for most people for now. Besides Steve Job’s turtle neck dress style, I don’t know if there is anything else China can rip off from Apple. I heard OSX “Year of the Lion” is due out this winter.

Really? The Winklevoss twins want more money:
Finally, for our last story of the week, this one will make you say “Really?” You may remember the Winklevoss twins from The Social Network movie as the guys that Mark Zuckerburg stole the Facebook idea from. Well, after seeing that Facebook is still rolling in piles of money from Venture Capitalists because of their huge valuation, the Olympic rowers decided they wanted a larger piece of the pie than they received from their original settlement. After a San Francisco judge axed the Winklevoss appeal in April, they moved forward with additional claims in Boston, but those have since been pulled off the table. The Winklevoss twins should cheer up. They received $20 million in cash and $45 million in Facebook shares from their settlement. That’s some nice liquidity to go buy some toys while they wait for their opportunity to sell the Facebook stock at a premium when it goes public.

To see all the articles as well as a transcript from this week’s podcast, visit the link dump at PocoPodcast.com/Tech. You can also comment on this week’s stories as well as tell us what you liked and didn’t like about this week’s episode. Until next week, adios!

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Poco Podcast Tech episode 1: The Beta Episode

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Episode 1 of Poco Podcast Tech is now posted on iTunes!

Transcript and Links:
Welcome to Episode 1 of Poco Podcast Tech, where we cover the top tech stories of the past week. I’m Kevin Nuest. This episode is brought to you by Go Daddy. Take advantage of Go Daddy’s special summer sale offer and get a new dot com domain name for as little as $7.49. Visit http://PocoPodcast.com/godaddy for more information.

Spotify in the US:
http://www.zdnet.com/blog/btl/spotify-signs-up-70000-us-paid-subscribers-in-first-week/53061
Spotify has finally come to the US for some Americana listening pleasure. There are currently 3 tiers: free (which is invite only right now), $4.99, and $9.99 if you want access to their mobile app as well as the ability to listen offline. Spotify has a similar look and feel as iTunes and even gives you the ability to add your own music collection to the mix. From what I can see, it has a pretty good sized library of music, but still lacking a lot of songs I searched for or the songs are obscure remix versions. So far, I’m not blown away by Spotify. I still prefer Pandora selecting a variety of songs for me based on my learned music taste. I got sick of my 12 song Spotify playlist pretty fast. Pandora has stolen my music imagination.

Google Revenue Sources
http://www.wired.com/epicenter/2011/07/google-revenue-sources
http://www.wdyl.com
A great infographic was posted on Wired.com showing the breakdown of where Google makes the majority of its $33B each year. 97% of it comes from advertising which is heavily dominated by their PPC keywords for sale. It is surprising to see that almost half of the keyword revenue comes from only 4 industries: Insurance, Loans, Mortgages, and Attorneys. Insurance companies pay the most at $55 per click to fight for new customers. If someone came up with a more efficient way to connect insurance companies to new prospects, they could eat into $8B of Google’s revenue. With 4 major keyword groups making up the majority of Google’s bankroll, it doesn’t seem like they are very diversified against risk. Looks like Google is going to try for more long-tail search terms by putting the ability to do a search right into ads served on its display space. I came across one of these ads for the first time on Pandora. Google asked me “What Do You Love.” Naturally, I typed “Lamp” and hit search because, “I Love Lamp.” I was dropped on a new kind of results page that had all kinds of widgets displaying content about lamps. Videos, books, news, maps, pictures, even popularity of the search term were all displayed on the page. The new landing page is absent of any typical Google keyword or display advertising, but monetization of these additional searches will most likely come in the future.

Netflix Price Increase:
In the short time since Neflix announced they would change their pricing model and split the streaming and DVD products at $7.99 each, there has been a massive outcry from current customers. This pricing change follows the change just a few months back were a streaming only option at $7.99 was made available. The main reason Netflix customers have both a streaming and DVD by mail plan even though they had the option to save a couple bucks and go streaming only was that the most recent and “Good” movies and tv shows are on DVD only. Sure, they may come to streaming someday, but after waiting month for the latest season of Breaking Bad to be released to DVD, I wouldn’t want to wait another 6 months to a year for streaming access, if it’s ever available. Most Netflix customers would gladly pay more and drop their lower-margin DVD option if the streaming content was more current. Instead of alienating their loyal customers, Netflix could have tapped them to help in an uprising against the studios to demand streaming rights. In YouGov’s BrandIndex containing customer’s perception of Netflix, Redbox, Blockbuster, and DirecTV, Netflix went from the top score at almost 40% to a sharp drop all the way below Blockbuster at -14%. You can see the graphic in the link-dump.



Owling:
http://www.cnn.com/2011/TECH/web/07/21/owling.meme/index.html
Who needs planking when you have owling. In case you missed it. Planking is the phenomenon of laying stiff on different objects then posting a picture of yourself on your favorite social network for the whole world to see. This activity peaked when a 20 year old man in Australia died after falling off a 7 story balcony while attempting a planking stunt. Planking has now been replaced with Owling. If you see people posting pictures of themselves on Google+ perched on objects with a distant, inquisitive stare, you my friend have just been owled.

Who doesn’t want to buy Hulu?:
http://money.cnn.com/2011/07/22/technology/apple_hulu/index.htm?hpt=te_bn2
It has been rumored over the past month that just about everyone under the sun wants to purchase Hulu. Yahoo, Google, Amazon, ATT, Verizon, even Apple. With Netflix in a slump right now, Hulu could be in a power position to command a good sized price tag of between $1B to $2B. Apple could be a good fit for Hulu. Potential integration with iTunes could allow people to watch the latest episode of The Office on Hulu and seamlessly buy season one on iTunes. Also, Hulu could complete the Apple TV offering, making it a really powerhouse and increasing the demand for the little gadget, turning from a hobby as Steve Jobs calls it, to a real business. Apple’s experience navigating licensing agreements could help Hulu secure the long-term content deals they need to ensure success and profitability in the future.

Entire Apple stores knocked-off
http://technology.inc.com/2011/07/25/not-a-knock-off-apple-product-but-a-whole-store/
You’ve got to love this next story. After having the design of their products mimicked by both legitimate competitors and straight up copycats, Apple has now received the ultimate form of flattery. Entire knock-off Apple stores have began opening up. These stores copy the sterile white look of the Apple stores and even often times sell authentic Apple products. The knock-off stores are mostly in China and most of the employees even believe they actually work for Apple just because they have the same blue polo. I wonder if anyone has opened up a fake BestBuy and just purchased a bunch of new tech stuff from Amazon and eBay at half the price and marked it up to sell to gullible, non-savvy people. Most people that shop as BestBuy would never even know if it was a knock-off store.


Airbnb $112M funding round:
http://money.cnn.com/2011/07/25/technology/airbnb_funding/index.htm
http://www.airbnb.com/info/how_it_works
In a huge round of funding, Airbnb has raised $112M to continue growing its vacation rental startup. The site allows people to rent out empty rooms or their entire house in a marketplace exchange. I will admit that before this round of funding, Airbnb was not on my radar. After taking a quick look at the How It Works video on their site, I can see some really cool possibilities. Instead of staying at a hotel when traveling, you can do upgraded couch surfing. It could also allow you to explore some unique locations. I would love to go on a road trip and stay at only Airbnb properties while exploring the country. That could make a really good blog and PR tactic for Airbnb. The funding raised will be used for expanding internationally, which is also exciting and could completely change the way recent college graduates backpack across Europe. To see the Airbnb How It Works video, check out the link dump.


CNN app downloaded more than 10M times
http://technology.inc.com/2011/07/25/cnns-mobile-push-yields-10000000-mobile-app-downloads/
Finally, the last store of the day. A mobile app downloaded over 10M times across all platforms. No, it’s not from Facebook, Smurfs, or even Farmville. It’s CNN’s continued push into making their news content available everywhere. The app covers headlines, videos, and even live TV access. This is another great step for them to ensure they stay ahead of the decline of traditional media. A draw-back to the Live TV access option on your phone is that you do have to use your cable provider login. With more and more people saying adios to their cable TV, it would be great if there was an ala-cart subscription option of $2.99 per month for example. Regardless of any pitfalls with the new Live TV anywhere option, with over 200M mobile pageviews in June alone, CNN is doing something right.


To see all the articles as well as a transcript from this week’s podcast, visit the link dump at PocoPodcast.com/Tech

8-bit intro/outro song:
Feel Good Inc. – Gorillaz