 Time Warner Cable released an official iOS app early last year that let subscribers watch live TV. Despite some early issues with channel agreements, the app is still going strong, and appears to be popular with customers. So popular, in fact, that the company has just updated the app to also work with the iPhone and iPod touch, so now no matter what iOS device you have, as long as you're a TWC subscriber, you can tune in to some live television. The app is called TWC TV, and it's a free download on the App Store. As you might guess, it requires a good, reliable Internet signal, so you'll need a Wi-Fi connection for streaming. You can also browse through program schedules and information, and even set your compatible DVR to grab your favorite shows. The Time Warner app was a nice surprise when it appeared, and it's one of the best things that old media companies have done to work with iOS. It's good to see that it's not only popular enough to support with an update, but that Time Warner is getting dedicated about making its content available even on Apple's platforms for customers. Time Warner Cable's app goes universal originally appeared on TUAW - The Unofficial Apple Weblog on Tue, 24 Jan 2012 15:30:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.
Source | Permalink | Email this | Comments
from TUAW - The Unofficial Apple Weblog http://www.tuaw.com/2012/01/24/time-warner-cables-app-goes-universal/
President Obama will present the annual State of the Union address to Congress this evening. Mozilla and PBS have teamed up to add an interactive facet to the event. Volunteers will be able to help transcribe and translate the President's speech.
The crowdsourced captioning will be attached to a Web-based video stream. Viewers around the world will be able to experience the State of the Union address with subtitles in their own native language. The captions will also help make the speech more accessible to viewers with hearing impairments.
The browser-based transcription tools are built on the Universal Subtitles system created by the Participatory Culture Foundation, the same organization that develops the open source Miro video player. Captioning the State of the Union is part of a broader program launched by the Corporation for Public Broadcasting called Open Election 2012. The initiative will bring similar volunteer transcription to election coverage.
Read the comments on this post
from Ars Technica http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/news/2012/01/state-of-the-union-address-to...
Tonight, President Obama will be addressing the nation in the annual State of the Union address. Mashable has been invited by the White House to attend a State of the Union tweetup.
The event (using hash tags #sotu #whtweetup) will be held at the Eisenhower Executive Office Building in Washington, D.C, next door to the White House. We’ll be watching the White House’s enhanced version of the State of the Union, which will include graphics, data and statistics that TV audiences won’t see (If you’d like to see the stream, visit the White House’s website).
During the speech, we’ll be watching for any technology-related announcements the president might make. We’ll keep you updated about what those announcements could mean for you.
SEE ALSO: How to Watch and Interact With the State of the Union Address Online
After the State of the Union, we’ll be attending a panel with White House deputy director of the Domestic Policy Council Mark Zuckerman, special assistant to the president for education policy Roberto Rodriguez, deputy director of the National Economic Council Brian Deese, deputy national security adviser for strategic communications Ben Rhodes and deputy White House communications director Jen Palmieri.
They’ll be taking questions from the tweetup audience and over Facebook, YouTube and Google+. If you’ve got a question you’d like Mashable to ask, tweet @mashusworld with the hashtag #sotu.
The tweetup will begin at approximately 7:30 p.m. ET Tuesday and conclude at 11 p.m. Follow along with the Mashable US & World team as we bring you the speech and panel live:
[View the story "The State of the Union, Live From the White House" on Storify]
Images Courtesy of The White House
More About: president obama, state of the union, White House 
from Mashable! http://mashable.com/2012/01/24/state-of-the-union-live-tweeted/?utm_source=fe...
If you were a Super Bowl viewer in 1984 who left the room during Apple’s famous “1984″ ad introducing the Mac, you would have soon discovered you made a massive mistake.
In those days before YouTube, if you missed a Super Bowl ad, you really missed it. That was especially true for Apple’s ad, which ran only once. In 2012, of course, it’s a different story. With about two weeks before the big game, some ads are already available online. As for the rest? Try not seeing them after the game.
That’s because even if you avoid YouTube, chances are one of your Facebook friends is going to post one. That’s the upshot of a survey by ad agency Venables Bell and Partners. The San Francisco ad shop polled 1,000 people online who watched the 2011 Super Bowl and planned to watch this year’s as well.
Venables Bell extrapolated those responses and found that there will be a tremendous amount of sharing going on after this year’s game. Most notable: Some 40 million people are likely to post their favorite ad on Facebook. Since the average user has 130 friends, that comes out to 4.5 billion impressions. All of the sudden, the reported $3.5 million for a 30-second spot during the game seems like a huge bargain.
What do you think? Do you intend to share your favorite Super Bowl ads? Let us know in the comments.
Click the image to enlarge.
More About: Advertising, Facebook, Marketing, Super Bowl



from Mashable! http://mashable.com/2012/01/24/super-bowl-facebook/?utm_source=feedburner&utm...
With 1.9 million instances of social media chatter, the CNN Southern Republican Presidential Debate generated more activity than any other debate to have topped our past social TV charts.
During the event, CNN posted five Facebook topics, which produced over 6,000 Likes and comments. In response to CNN’s 28 Twitter updates regarding the debate, users retweeted 4,500 times, up 258% from the average of the three debates last year. And those are just CNN’s stats…
American Idol came in second, squeezing into the charts Sunday night, right after the NFL Championship game ended on FOX. Not too shabby.
The data below is compliments of our friends at Trendrr, who measure specific TV show activity (mentions, likes, checkins) across Twitter, Facebook, GetGlue and Miso. To see daily rankings, check out Trendrr.TV.
Image courtesy of iStockphoto, narvikk
More About: features, Social Media, social tv, social tv charts, Trendrr, TV For more Entertainment coverage: 
from Mashable! http://mashable.com/2012/01/23/social-tv-chart-1-23/?utm_source=feedburner&ut...
I have had a lot of conversations lately with entrepreneurs about how to value their businesses. This is always an emotional topic but a very important one nonetheless. In this blog post, I will put forward three methods for valuing a start-up, all three of which I believe should come in to play for most businesses.
Method #1 – using financial metrics:
No duh, right? This is how you are supposed to value a business. This is the kind of stuff they teach in business school. When we look at public companies, we talk about their value in terms of their P/E ratio in an effort to collapse all companies into a common measurement where we can understand their value (price) relative to how much cash they generate on an annual basis (earnings).
However, start-ups do not have any E yet. Let alone earnings, they may not even have any revenue in the early days! Notwithstanding, it still makes sense to think about value relative to key financial metrics. I like to understand a company’s financial opportunity from both a tops down and bottoms up perspective. This is probably enough material for another blog post, but basically, entrepreneurs should be able to talk about their market opportunities from a tops down perspective and be able to demonstrate that they are attacking a large and growing market that is ripe for whatever disruption they are bringing into it. Likewise, they should be able to talk about their business strategy from a bottoms up perspective and demonstrate just how much of that market they will capture, when they will capture it, and at what level of gross margin. Tops down proves that the market is worth pursuing, and bottoms up is the litmus test that measures just how well the entrepreneur can pursue the market. The bottoms up approach should walk the thin line between ambition and realism, as entrepreneurs are so often required to do.
So, for early-stage ventures, valuing a company on financial metrics is almost always forward-looking. Looking backward to trailing revenues (as is common with traditional companies) is unattractive to the entrepreneur because an early-stage company is typically in hyper-growth mode. However, looking ahead is entirely subjective. There are two key considerations:
1) What is the likelihood that the forward-looking revenue can be attained? Answering this question demands an evaluation of the entrepreneur, the plan, the market conditions, the resources (i.e. cash, sales people, etc.) required to get the company to the sales milestone. The chief evaluator in this question is whoever is trying to value the company, most likely an investor or potential acquirer.
2) What type of multiple can be assigned to the forward-looking revenue? This is really a market driven metric and it ranges from as low as 2x in bad times to 10x+ in good times. Check around with other entrepreneurs or advisers (call me!) to check on this metric and how it is trending. Also, consider your gross margin, not just your top line revenue. It is a pet peeve of mine when gross margin is ignored. If your gross margins are low, it does not make sense to peg your value to a forward-looking revenue multiple, similar to what a company with high gross margins can get.
Admittedly, this is all very subjective, which is why it is so important for an entrepreneur to be able to articulate a plan to attack a large and growing market and also to incite confidence in others that he or she is the one to do the attacking.
Method #2 – using strategic metrics:
All of us in the start-up ecosystem love “strategic value” because it basically means that some companies are willing to pay well beyond what makes financial sense because the asset is so strategic to them. That is the positive side of strategic value. The negative side is that there is almost always a limited universe of players who will view the company in such a way.
As a result, strategic value is a great thing to leverage when selling your company, but it is a much harder thing to leverage when financing your company. Sure, entrepreneurs can bring in strategic investors to a round of financing, but they need to be well aware of the timing and impact of such a move, especially if it means that business opportunities with another strategic partner are limited as a result. If the entrepreneurial company’s strategic direction can remain open and unencumbered, then bringing in a strategic investor can be a great move.
Within the strategic value framework, especially with respect to acquisitions, there are three ways to think about assigning value:
1) Financial assets: you may hear this referred to as an “accretive” acquisition – i.e. one that has an immediate impact on the acquiring company’s bottom line. The valuation method here will be more similar to the financial metrics described above, although the acquiring company may think about costs they can strip out of the target business as well as scale they can achieve because of their established sales & marketing infrastructure, branding, etc.
2) Technology assets: oftentimes, the entrepreneurial company’s advantage is that it can develop technology and products faster and better than large companies. A “technology” sale proves that out as the superior technology of the smaller company becomes part of the product offering of the larger company. This can be a great outcome for an entrepreneurial team, especially if going to market would have been difficult for the smaller company due to cost, competitive pressure limiting access, etc. The valuation exercise here is to assess how much further investment is needed to prepare the technology for commercial success inside the larger company and then to weigh that cost against the financial upside (again using the financial valuation methods described above).
3) People assets: another key differentiator for entrepreneurial companies is their ability to attract intelligent and creative people who are excited to attack problems on the bleeding edge of the market. This is incredibly valuable to large companies as well, especially once the entrepreneurial teams have amassed market knowledge and domain expertise. Therefore, large companies will sometimes acquire companies to get access to their employees. This is especially true in times like this when hiring advanced engineers is difficult and competitive. One caveat: the acquirer is valuing the people much more than the company or the assets it owns (i.e. technology, products, etc.) and that is reflected in what they are willing to pay. These acquisitions are typically good for the employees (salary, bonus, long term incentives like stock options, etc.), but they are not as good for the shareholders (i.e. the acquirer is not really willing to pay up for the company’s stock).
Method #3 – using practical metrics:
Everything above needs to be tempered with a level of common sense and practicality. We are at a point in the market where certain companies – i.e. Facebook, Twitter, etc. – are able to raise money at astronomical valuations based on very forward looking multiples (in the case of Facebook) or highly differentiated strategic value (in the case of Twitter). Those kinds of extremes do not apply to 99% of entrepreneurial companies.
When entrepreneurs think about the value of their company, they need to consider the business objectives of those who are buying in. For example, when raising a round of venture capital financing, the venture investors need to own enough of the company to be incented to spend their time, continue to invest capital as needed, etc. and the need to buy in at a price where there is reasonable upside potential for them. This is the practical governor that kicks in when entrepreneurs think about valuing their companies, even when things are going great and the valuation methods described above point to a big number.
In summary, companies are ultimately valued on the cash they generate. Start-ups are not yet at a point where that is a reasonable metric, so valuation is an art more than a science, and the key in understanding value is to assess the likelihood of how much cash can be generated, when it can be generated and for whom (i.e. for the current company, for another company that may acquire it someday and for its investors). Beauty is undoubtedly in the eyes of the beholder, and the best entrepreneurs know how to paint the most attractive picture, accenting both their financial and strategic highlights, all while keeping practical considerations in mind.
Want to learn more? Join The Capital Network next Wednesday January 25 for our Evening Roundtable: Negotiation and Valuation where you can test our your skills and see how they compare to the real thing as we walk through the Endeca story. More info
This post originally appeared on Dan Allred’s personal blog. You can view the original post here.
from BostInno http://bostinno.com/channels/how-to-value-a-startup/
McDonald's restaurants (if you can even call them that) in Australia, having suffered from a recent spat of robberies (who the f*** robs a McDonald's? Taco Bell or GTFO), have teamed up with security firm SelectaDNA to install sprayers above its doors that will douse robbers with an invisible mist of DNA. Why? To make them glow under blacklight for police identification. Wait, WHAT?
The newly introduced DNA will then seep harmlessly into his or her skin for two weeks (and clothes for six months) allowing the police to reveal the culprit using UV light.
The spray is both invisible and odorless, but even if the hapless highwayman notices the deoxyribonucleic acid rain cloud, SelectaDNA assures that its chemical concoction is "virtually impossible to remove." Making matters worse for the offender is that each DNA sequence is unique to the location to which it was installed, meaning a successful forensic identification is 100% admissible in court. Basically, if you get caught in this stuff, you're screwed.
No word if the DNA will cause you to mutate into a supervillain, but brobro in the picture there does look kinda like a Star Wars character, so that's something. Not something I'd be willing to rob a McDonald's to achieve, but I'm also smart enough to only rob Burger Kings. *putting on cardboard crown* NOW LEAD ME TO THE ROYAL TREASURE ROOM.
Australian McDonald's Now Spraying Thieves With DNA [escapistmagazine]
Thanks to Sore_Dong, who may or may yes have permanently injured his unit. Smooth move buddy -- your DNA spraying days are OVER.
from Geekologie - Gadgets, Gizmos, and Awesome http://www.geekologie.com/2012/01/rob-an-australian-mcdonalds-get-hosed-wi.php
mikejuk writes "Professor Sebastian Thrun has given up his Stanford position to start Udacity — an online educational venture. Udacity's first two free courses are Building a Search Engine and Programming a Robotic Car. In a moving speech at the Digital Life Design conference, he explained that after presenting the online AI course to thousands of students he could no longer teach at Stanford: 'Now that I saw the true power of education, there is no turning back. It's like a drug. I won't be able to teach 200 students again, in a conventional classroom setting.' Let's hope Udacity works out; Stanford is a tough act to follow." Read more of this story at Slashdot. 
from Slashdot http://news.slashdot.org/story/12/01/23/2016202/professor-resigns-from-stanfo...
The excellent ReadNow application, which allows you to easily read articles from your Instapaper and Read It Later articles on your Mac, has been pulled from the Mac App Store "...because of an infringement letter." Developer Michael Schneider added "[i]n my current situation I'm not allowed to provide any further information." The good news is that if you have already purchased the app, you can still download it from the "Purchases" tab in the App Store.app even though the iTunes page for ReadNow now leads to the message, "Your request could not be completed." However, as I waited for the Mac App Store to load on my iMac this morning, I found myself wondering "What would I do if I couldn't re-download it from the Mac App Store?" Fortunately I have the app on my MacBook Air, so I could go to /Applications/ReadNow.app and then select File » Compress "Read Now" (or control+click the app and choose "Compress" from the menu). Terminal option If you wanted to make a copy of ReadNow (or any app) on the command line, I believe that your best option is using ditto like this: sudo ditto -v --keepParent -kc ReadNow.app ReadNow.zip (I don't claim to be a ditto expert, but I can tell you that worked for me. The -k option tells ditto to make zip archives. The --rsrc --extattr and --qtn options are all the default, so they don't need to be explicitly specified.) I then copied the 'ReadNow.zip' file to my Dropbox so I would have it, just in case Apple removes the option to download it. This should work for all Mac App Store apps (Xcode and "Install Lion" excepted), but may not work for other apps which use an installer and may install other files besides the ones in /Applications/. Show me all of my Mac App Store apps Speaking of the command line, if you want to see a list of all the Mac App Store apps that you have installed on your computer, you can run this command in Terminal.app:
find /Applications \-path '*Contents/_MASReceipt/receipt' \-maxdepth 4 -print |\sed 's#.app/Contents/_MASReceipt/receipt#.app#g; s#/Applications/##'
Note: this won't show you Xcode, because Xcode is an unusual case. It is an installer which installs Xcode and then the installer is removed. An ounce of prevention There has been no indication that Apple will remove ReadNow from your list of Purchased apps, I just wanted to have a backup 'just in case.' Hopefully the "infringement letter" issue will be settled soon and it will be available again. However, if the iOS App Store is any indication, eventually jettisoned apps will become unavailable for re-download. Also, the upcoming sandboxing requirements may lead to some existing applications being removed. As always, it's good to have your own backups rather than relying on being able to re-download anything from "the cloud." I wrote a small shell script which will look in /Applications/ for any applications which have the Mac App Store receipt, and create a .zip file for each of them. (While I have tested it myself and it works for me, YMMV, use only at your own risk, etc.) To use it, download the script to your Desktop (or wherever) and then run: chmod 755 ~/Desktop/backupmas.sh And then run it via ~/Desktop/backupmas.sh (Obviously if you saved it somewhere else, use that path instead of ~/Desktop/.) It may ask for your administrator password. If so, that's the one you use to log in to your computer, not your Mac App Store password. How to backup your Mac App Store apps originally appeared on TUAW - The Unofficial Apple Weblog on Mon, 23 Jan 2012 16:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.
Source | Permalink | Email this | Comments
from TUAW - The Unofficial Apple Weblog http://www.tuaw.com/2012/01/23/how-to-backup-your-mac-app-store-apps/
Sina Weibo, one of China’s premiere microblogs and alternatives to Twitter, saw a record number of messages sent per second Monday, in honor of the Chinese New Year.
Kicking off the Year of the Dragon, the new record — 32,312 messages per second — trounces Twitter’s record 25,088 messages sent per second, which was set last December in Japan during a TV screening of anime movie Castle in the Sky.
Chinese news site DoNews reports the first minute of the new year saw 481,207 messages sent, roughly three times the number of messages sent during the first minute of the last new year. That figure is on par with the site’s 296% increase in users during 2011.
Sina Weibo now has 250 million registered users, making the site slightly smaller than its largest domestic rival, Tencent Weibo, which has 300 million registered users. However, according to DoNews, Sina Weibo is the more-used of the two, seeing some 100 million users visit the site each day.
SEE ALSO: China Has 500 Million Web Users, Half of Them Are Microbloggers
Denver Broncos quarterback Tim Tebow’s overtime touchdown pass earlier this month set the U.S. record for the most tweets per second at 9,420.
Perhaps, given the Twitter-based enthusiasm of football fans, the upcoming Superbowl Feb. 5 will give the U.S. a chance to catch up with the Chinese and Japanese microblogging records.
As China’s online population continues to grow, do you expect microblogs like Sina Weibo to continue to appeal to the mainstream? Let us know in the comments.
Image courtesy of iStockphoto, kizilkayaphotos
More About: china, microblog, sina weibo, Twitter For more Social Media coverage: 


from Mashable! http://mashable.com/2012/01/23/sina-weibo-record/?utm_source=feedburner&utm_m...
|