Month: May 2011

Rumors swirled yesterday of a Skype acquisition by Microsoft and they’ve now been proven to be true. Microsoft has officially announced a deal under which Microsoft will acquire Skype, the leading Internet communications company, for $8.5 billion in cash from the investor group led by Silver Lake. This is a very aggressive move by Microsoft to get into the “increasingly-converged worlds of communication, information and entertainment.”

Buying Skype—a service that connects millions of users around the world via Internet-based telephony and video— would give Microsoft a recognized brand name on the Internet at a time when it is struggling to get more traction in the consumer market.

The acquisition will increase accessibility of real-time video communications for both consumers and enterprise users, in addition to providing revenue opportunities for both parties. Skype’s 170 million users will join the family of real-time communications platforms at Microsoft, including: Lync (which saw 30 percent revenue growth in Q3), Outlook, Messenger, Hotmail and Xbox LIVE.

“Skype is a phenomenal service that is loved by millions of people around the world,” said Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer. “Together we will create the future of real-time communications so people can easily stay connected to family, friends, clients and colleagues anywhere in the world.”

Skype will be taken under Microsoft’s wing as a new business division within the company. Skype CEO Tony Bates will become President of the Microsoft Skype Division, reporting directly to Ballmer, who says “Bates has a great track record as a leader and will strengthen the Microsoft management team. I’m looking forward to Skype’s talented global workforce bringing its insights, ideas and experience to Microsoft.”

Egon Durban of Silver Lake said about the deal, “We are excited about Skype’s long-term future with Microsoft, as it is poised to become one of the world’s most dynamic and comprehensive communications platforms.”

If you recall, it was just a short while ago that Google and Facebook contemplated a Skype acquisition. Now, Microsoft puts itself in a better position in this communications race by teaming up with Skype.

via WSJ.com, Microsoft ht SocialWayne

Microsoft has announced the availability of the Windows Azure Toolkits for mobile devices, including: Windows Phone, iOS, and a preview of tools for Android. These tools allow developers to leverage the cloud to accelerate creation of mobile apps. Groupon, for instance, is using the platform to create a consistent mobile experience for users.

“At Groupon, we recognize that people aren’t tied to their computers and want to get deals – whenever and wherever they happen to be. Taking advantage of the Windows Azure Toolkits for Mobile Devices, we can rely on a common backend to create consistent, next generation mobile experiences like real-time notification services that integrate into each phone’s home screen and app experience,” said Groupon’s Michael Shim, vice president of Mobile Business Developer & Partnerships.

Mobile apps is a booming industry and is only growing. Forrester predicts the market will exceed $7 billion by 2015. The problem is that there are too many options out there for developers to create for. They’re forced to prioritize one mobile platform over another and, even when they do try to cover all platforms, the user experience can be inconsistent.

The Windows Azure Toolkits simplify things by providing a common back-end to share features like requirements like device notifications, authentication, storage. Developers can still write client code that exploits the strengths of each individual platform.

Microsoft is also announcing a “Cloud Ready” package for the toolkit. This simplifies the process of setting up services in Windows Azure and allows you to get started quickly without worrying about modifying services. Check out the screencast below for a tutorial on Windows Azure for iOS and hit TechNet Blogs for more details.

The Resumator, a service aiming to “take the hassle out of hiring”, has secured $700,000 in funding led by Rincon Venture Partners, with Paige Craig, ff Venture Capital and Christopher Muenchhoff participating. The Pittsburgh-based company is a graduate of the May 2009 AlphaLab program run by seed stage investor Innovation Works, which was also part of this round.

The Resumator is no stranger to Black Web 2.0. Founder and CEO Don Charlton is featured on our list of Tastemakers and was at our recent NewMe conference. He’s shared his knowledge and experiences here a number of times, including details on what he learned from participating in the AlphaLab accelerator program, and has shared some strategies for starting your own new media property (don’t forget part 2).

In our Q&A with Charlton back in 2009, he described The Resumator:

For small businesses and startups, hiring is extra work, and no one’s expertise. Someone is usually “deputized” to manage the hiring process, and this person (the CEO, office manager, or “unlucky stiff”) usually has no formal experience in recruiting.

The Resumator helps these deputized HR managers save time and money on hiring by instantly replacing the inefficiency of their HR inbox with an entire online recruiting platform for promoting jobs and reviewing resumes.

Companies who trust The Resumator for their hiring include Evernote, ThinkGeek, Dreamhost, Disqus, and Daily Burn.

Oprah may have dropped the ball on this one. Mukami Kinoti-Kimotho is an “on-air personality, journalist, organizational ambassador and celebrity spokesperson” based in Washington, DC. Last year, she had the opportunity to compete for a spot on Oprah’s OWN network. She didn’t win, but that hasn’t stopped her from seeking to become a media mogul.

Mukami’s own multimedia company, MaWazo Media, will launch their first season on May 12th at 4pm EST (that’s this Thursday). Mukami will tweet the event live from her account (@MukamiTV) using the hashtag #MukamiTV.

Why do you want to tune in? Not only is Mukami living the dream and taking advantage of the fact that the gatekeepers are gone, but there is a greater purpose in her hustle. Not just another pretty face, she tackles issue like “Global Diversity and Inclusion, Leadership Development, Gender Equity, Child Survival, Health, Education and Sustainability of the Arts.” One of the goals of the show is to “amplify the voices of individuals doing extraordinary things,” highlighting those her are “overcoming obstacles” and “working and succeeding at becoming their very best and fulfilling their ultimate purpose in life.”

read their guide here

Subscribe to the MukamiTV YouTube channel, mark your calendars, and be sure to check out the first episode of the season this Thursday.

via afrospear

Apple Updates iMac. Adds Thunderbolt and Next Gen Quad-Core Processors

After Apple shut down their online store for a while, many assumed it was in anticipation of an iMac refresh. Those rumors turned out to be dead on. Pricing for the new iMac start at $1,199 for a 21.5″ model with a shiny new 2.5GHz quad-core Intel Core i5 processor and 3x faster graphics. These new iMacs also feature a Thunderbolt port and a FaceTime HD camera. Shipping time is 24 hours. The basic all-in-one design is the same, but these bad boys are now packing some serious heat.

via Engadget

Google Chrome Supports It Gets Better Project

The Google Chrome team is doing their part to reinvigorate the It Gets Better Project, which has been around since last September. A few weeks ago, a video circulated featuring Apple employees sharing personal message for the project. Now, the Google Chrome team has done a similar video. This is not the first time Google has taken part in the project, as several Googlers were featured in a video back in October. Even Obama has done his part to support the It Gets Better Project in a video.

via TechCrunch

Sprint + Google Voice Integration Rolls Out

Sprint and Google are finally rolling out integration with Google Voice. This allows you to route your calls through Google Voice using your Sprint number or a Google Voice number. Very convenient, but many are having serious issues. Some Google Voice accounts have become completely crippled. Many are not able to activate the GV account with Sprint at all.

Some international calls are not being routed through Google Voice, resulting in serious fees. At least one user tried to deactivate the integration and now, when he makes calls via Google Voice, the person he is calling ends up in his voicemail with full access. Google Voice has been my primary phone number for over a year now and I haven’t had any problems since integrating with Sprint, but I’m keeping my fingers crossed and knocking on wood.

via Engadget

It seems that scammers have found a way to infiltrate Google search to push malicious software to visitors. Many have complained about Google Image search results directing them to pages that prompted them to download anti-virus scareware via misleading error messages and alerts (ie. Your computer is infected! Click here to fix!).

According to SANS Internet Storm Center, these attackers have been able to distribute malicious scripts across an unknown number of sites which populate the pages based on topics from Google Trends. These scripts than grab images from other sites which makes them look legit in an image search.

“The user’s browser will automatically send a request to the bad page which runs the attacker’s script. This script checks the request’s referrer field and if it contains Google (meaning this was a click on the results page in Google), the script displays a small JavaScript script…[that] causes the browser to be redirected to another site that is serving FakeAV. Google is doing a relatively good job removing (or at least marking) links leading to malware in normal searches, however, Google’s image search seem to be plagued with malicious links.”

A Russian malware researcher, Denis Sinegubko, says this is “the most efficient black hat trick ever,” and added that it was very simple to set up. Sinegubko says about 5,000 sites have been hacked, with the average site containing 1,000 of these bogus pages. This results in Google sending 15 million visits to these sites every month.

Google spokesman Jay Nancarrow said the company is aware of the attacks and is making “active efforts to improve both the quality of the results and malware detection.” He added that they are “improving, as are the people trying to put users at risk, and in the interests of those users it’s best if we don’t reveal everything that we’re doing about this.”

Sinegubko is developing an add-on for Firefox that can flag these evil Google Image search results by placing a red box around them. You can also protect yourself by using an add-on like Noscript, which restricts what sites can run scripts in your browser. Similar add-ons exist for Google Chrome as well.

via Krebs on Security

CNET reports that a third attack has been planned against Sony. According to an Internet Relay Chat user frequenting a channel used by hackers, the attack is planned for this weekend. Their plan is to publicize information whole or in part that was copied from Sony’s servers during a previous intrusion.

Should the planned attack succeed, it would be the latest blow in a series of devastating security breaches of Sony’s servers over the past month. The failure of Sony’s server security has ignited investigations by the FBI, the Department of Justice, Congress, and the New York State Attorney General, a well as data security and privacy authorities in the U.K., Canada, and Taiwan.

Several weeks ago, Anonymous targeted a number of Sony sites with their “patented” distributed denial-of-service (DDOS) attack. Their members feel that Sony acted unfairly against hacker George Hotz. Later, another attack resulted in personal customer information being exposed for millions of Sony customers. This forced Sony to shut down PSN, Qriocity, and Sony Online and they are still working to bring theses services back online.

Sony doesn’t know who orchestrated this last “highly sophisticated, planned” attack, but are hinting around that it may have been Anonymous. The group denies any involvement in the breach, though. They’ve issued a statement denying it was involved: “While we are a distributed and decentralized group, our ‘leadership’ does not condone credit card theft,” the statement said.

via CNET News

Reuters reports that “wo sources with direct knowledge of the discussions” say both Facebook and Google are separately mulling over a merger with Skype. This comes after Skype decided to delay its initial public offering.

These sources say Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg has taken part in discussions regarding a Skype acquisition, as well as reaching out to Skype about a joint venture. One source says Google has been in early talks for a joint venture with Skype as well.

Although an IPO is still in the cards for the second half of 2011, Skype remains in discussions with other companies, two of the sources said. If it goes through, a Skype IPO would be one of the most hotly anticipated debuts by a U.S. technology company this year.

While Skype’s IPO is expected to raise about $1 billion according to several sources, a deal with Facebook or Google could be valued at $3 or $4 billion according to one source.

Skype is very popular, boasting 124 million users last year, with 8.1 million being paying customers. The problem for them is that both Google and Apple have stepped on their toes, along with a number of other smaller companies. As the competition heats up for video calling, Skype’s value in an IPO drops. Investors are also worried about the huge number of non-paying users Skype carries.

Analysts say that a merger with Facebook might make the most sense as Google already does video and voice calls. Both Facebook and Skype stand to gain a lot from such a partnership. Facebook would expand its portfolio of social features while gaining ground on Google due to the sheer number of Skype users. Facebook is also a standard application on most smartphones.

“This is very synergistic,” said Trip Chowdhry, an analyst with Global Equities Research. “It puts Facebook two steps ahead of Google because of the number of Skype users.”

“In your social network, you will now have another very compelling service — Skype,” he added.

Skype has already changed hands a couple of times and it looks like a merger or acquisition may be best for their future in this case. What do you think?

via Reuters

Mobile Web Ghana had their first awards ceremony. A jury decided which of ten projects which entered the competition would win one of two prizes donated by Vodafone Ghana. The race started with a training program, which ran from February 24th to March 19th.

The jury, composed of senior professionals in the mobile sector, Judged each team on the following criteria:

• A novel and/or practical integration of Web technology, as taught during the training session.
• the quality of the presentation, and the team’s ability to pitch its project in a limited amount of time.
• the quality of the implementation of the project’s prototype / demo
• the project’s ability to answer a specific need or spot a hidden opportunity
• the creation of an innovative and solid business model
• a clear vision of how to progress further

The jury members (John Totoe from MobileContent, Nii Quaynor from AFNOG, Mark Davies from BusyInternet and Nana Manu from Vodafone Ghana) elected the following two projects:

• First prize GHC10,000: Music Request Service, by Alfred Anyan, Gerald Abraham and Martin Zonyrah. A mobile service designed to provide an easy and cheap means for people to request and share their favorite songs using their mobile phones.
• Second prize GHC5,000: Mobitix, by David Agbenyega, a mobile application that allows mobile users to buy tickets and event organizers to issue tickets, monitor their sale and validate them.

The winnings will be used to build businesses around the winning projects. All projects, even those who did not win, will be provided with further business mentorship and helping accessing capital and providing media exposure.

via World Wide Web Foundation

According to a study commissioned by digital agency Beyond, Only 17% of mobile users check-in using social location-based services like Foursquare and Facebook Places. While 48% of those avoiding these location-based apps did so because of privacy concerns, 50% just don’t have a smartphone to check-in with.

Facebook and Groupon are apparently well-trusted by many mobile users. While 90% of those who actually checkin on their mobile devices said they did so on Facebook Places, 40% who had never checked in said they would consider sharing their location with Groupon. Note that this doesn’t necessarily mean they want to share their location on a social network, but may be interested in getting discounts based on location.

On the same note, 54% of users who check in saying they are motivated to share their location when it involves getting a discount. All those fancy badges and stuff offered by services like Foursquare and Glue? Only 21% of active location sharers are motivated to check in to get them. A staggering 99% of users who don’t yet use checkin apps said badges and status would not motivate them to share their location.

“The results of this study highlights the huge changes that will take place as social location apps move from niche to mass consumer,” says Beyond CEO David Hargreaves. “Brands that can develop ‘Glocal’ social media strategies, tap into the motivations of the mass consumer and leverage the reach of the Facebook and Groupon platforms will be the real leaders in this sector.”

Living Social, Twitter, and Groupon all outrank Foursquare when it comes to non-users, with only 6% saying they would consider using Foursquare. Even among early adopters of location apps, Foursquare comes in 4th with 22% of users saying they use it.

After discounts and coupons, both early adopters and non-users of location apps seem to agree that meeting friends and learning about a location are next on the list as motivations to check in. Very useful data for those in the location game and highlights the fact that simple gaming and badges alone won’t cut it for these services to succeed.

via Mashable

Riding around in a tricked out school bus, the responsibly (yes, small ‘r’) team sat down with TechCrunch to talk about their gifting platform. CEO Antoine Grant points out early on that responsibly is different from other social good initiatives because it does away with the feeling of sacrifice. He says that they are unique because they are “pairing normal human behavior, gifting, with a meaningful contribution to education.”

Responsibly CEO Antoine Grant and COO Stuart Felkner

responsibly works like your average daily deals site, except that 100% of the proceeds is donated to education. You choose which education project you want to donate to. 50% of the proceeds for the purchase go to the school with another 50% matched via corporate sponsorship from Donor’s Choose.

“The education system is in dire need of our help, and we want to start a movement that spreads awareness, brings people on board with our mission and gives them a really easy way to help directly and contribute to saving America’s education,” said Grant on the motivation behind the startup’s for profit mission (they take a cut of sales).

The actual deals are sparse. Right now, you can only buy aromatic Stone Candles, but these offerings will be expanded during the beta period.

Their tour bus is a rolling home office, featuring solar panels and customized fold-out beds. They just came off a 15 city tour during the month of April, visiting schools and leaders from the KIPP, Greendot, and Teach for America programs across America. The goal here is to show they are committed to their cause and to get a better idea of the issues faced by US educators so that they can find the best ways to help.

“Our goal is to be more than a simple commerce platform – we want to connect consumers and companies with charitable giving in an easy and cost-effective way that benefits everyone,” said Felkner.

via TechCrunch

A quote from Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. went viral yesterday following the news of Osama Bin Laden’s death. While many chanted “USA” in the streets, others seemed disturbed that some people were celebrating Osama’s death. The quote that most people saw in response to this was:

“I mourn the loss of thousands of precious lives, but I will not rejoice in the death of one, not even an enemy.” – Martin Luther King, Jr

It turns out, that these are not actually MLK’s words. The Atlantic did some digging and could find no place where King either spoke or wrote these words. Real or not, the quote blew up across the social web with no credit going to the individual who wrote it, which begs the question as to why anyone would do such a thing.

What actually happened is that the original update containing these words, first appearing on Facebook, was Twitterized. On Facebook, many people saw this instead:

I will mourn the loss of thousands of precious lives, but I will not rejoice in the death of one, not even an enemy. Returning hate for hate multiplies hate, adding deeper darkness to a night already devoid of stars. Darkness cannot drive out darkness; only light can do that. Hate cannot drive out hate, only love can do that.

All but the first sentence here is from King’s book, Strength to Love. The first sentence was written by a Facebook user name Jessica Dovey. She posted the update and added on the MLK Quote, but someone later modified the post and removed the quotation marks.

The first sentence here, not MLK’s words, eventually spun off on their own and ended up being retweeted by none other than Penn Jillette from Penn and Teller. From there, his 1.6 million followers did the rest.

In 24 hours, the quote showed over 9,000 hits on Google. In this case, it’s a harmless quote, but it’s easy to see how any false information could spread in the same way. This is illustrated further by the preponderance of death rumors regarding various celebrities. The news of Osama’s death and this fake quote show how quickly social media can spread information, but it’s up to us as individuals to verify that information.

via Mashable from The Atlantic

More rumors are swirling today about a Tweetdeck acquisition. This time, it’s Twitter buying the popular client for $40 to $50 million. According to TechCrunch, the rumors are being confirmed by “a source with knowledge of the deal,” but has not been confirmed by Twitter or Tweetdeck at this time.

Twitter has acquired TweetDeck, we’ve heard from a source with knowledge of the deal, and the transaction will be announced in the next few days. The $40 million – $50 million purchase price includes both cash and Twitter stock, says our source.

It seems that Twitter may have been forced into buying TweetDeck because of UberMedia, who was also looking to acquire it. Ubermedia’s Ubersocial Twitter client is the 3rd most popular while Tweetdeck is the 4th. There was talk last month that Ubermedia was planning to create a Twitter competitor. This isn’t that far-fetched given their popularity in the Twitter ecosystem, and acquiring TweetDeck would have created serious problems for Twitter.

This scenario is confirmed by sources close to the matter. Twitter absolutely could not let Ubermedia gain any more leverage over them. The power is in the user base and Ubermedia would have had too much control over a large number of Twitter users. Check out TechCrunch EU for a rundown of possible scenarios.

via TechCrunch

Many of us will remember these days for the rest of our lives. Some will remember exactly what they were doing at the exact moment that they heard the news. Others casually passed the information around without a second thought. While each person may have taken the news of Osama Bin Laden being found and killed at the command of President Barack Obama, one thing is clear: the news spread like wildfire via social media.

Sheldon Levine of Sysomos talks about what he found using their social media monitoring and analytics platform:

In less than 12 hours since the tweeting began we saw almost 40,000 blog post and news articles and an astounding 2.2 million tweets all talking about Osama Bin Laden. As well, while no surprise that people in the US were talking the most about this event a look at our geo-location map shows us that people all over the world were tweeting about the news.

Not only did the news itself spread quickly, but even jokes about the event caught on and spread rapidly. Many people began checking into Foursquare at the place where Osama was killed while others began checking into a “Post Osama Bin Laden World.” By this morning, Levine found 11,570 tweets that made reference to Foursquare and Bin Laden or were check-in’s related to Bin Laden.

Important to note here is that, while services like Twitter were instrumental in spreading the news, social media doesn’t seem to replace the news. As TechCrunch points out, Twitter was used to amplify the news, but the source could usually be traced back to a traditional news source. Of course, there are always the rare cases where someone beats traditional channels, like the guy who unwittingly live-tweeted the raid on Bin Laden.

Personally, I was deep in an MMO when the news broke. I had just upgraded the wife’s NOOK Color and she was checking out the new apps available. Then, after checking her Facebook, she said everyone was posting about Osama Bin Laden being killed. The next thing I knew, my show was being interrupted for a Special Report.

What were you doing when it all went down?

via Sysomos Blog

Central.ly is a service which helps to “make your business a big splash on the web.” Currently in private alpha, the service makes it easy to create a beautiful and personalized page for your business that will attract customers. These pages cut out the clutter and focus on eye-catching images and your social media accounts.

Brain child of Chris Bennett, Arrel Gray and Edward Robertshaw, they claim that Central.ly can build a new web page in five minutes. Not surprising given the simplicity of the designs, but this very simplicity may be the secret to success. The pages focus on large images with very little content. The focus is in prominently featuring links and content from social networks like Facebook, Twitter, Yelp, Linkedin, and Foursquare.

Central.ly claims to provide the best hosting tools for reasonable prices. They also provide access to analytics tools so that you can track your page’s performance and figure out where visitors are coming from as well as where they end up going. These dedicated pages make locating your business on the web easy and integration with your social media accounts may help to keep your site up-to-date with minimum work.

There are others in the game of creating simple and beautiful landing pages with social media integration, but Central.ly seems laser-focused on the business niche. It would be a great service for businesses and brands who need a basic home on the web, but primarily engage potential customers through social media. Besides analytics, Fudzology is also working on SEO, new media tools, and SEM to improve your pages.

While the service is in private alpha, you can still sign up to reserve your brand or company URL and receive a notification when your site is ready to be set up. As is the trend these days, inviting some of your friends to also sign up for the private testing period will get your access sooner.

via Springwise