If you’ve still got the 3DS price drop blues, perhaps a fresh (and final) infusion of free games will help. Early adopters that signed into the Nintendo eShop before August 11th will find ten GameBoy Advance games tacked on to their handheld’s purchase history, retrievable via the same clunky redownload system that delivered the 3DS Ambassador program’s NES titles. Thankfully, the unintuitive process is relatively simple — just hop into the eShop’s menu, scroll down to “Settings / Other”, and select “Your Downloads,” to claim your (potentially-exclusive) games. Short of having a 3DS guide us through the Louvre, we can’t think of a better use for Nintendo’s fledgling handheld.

Nintendo completes 3DS Ambassador program, delivers 10 GBA games to early adopters originally appeared on Engadget on Fri, 16 Dec 2011 23:53:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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The investment, led by Accel, is a significant boost for the site, which claims more than 7 million users worldwide for its Flash-based twist on the traditional presentation format.

Prezi — which is based in Budapest, Hungary and has offices in San Francisco– kicked up a real fuss when it first appeared in 2009 for one simple reason: it delivered a neat twist on the PowerPoint-style engine.

Presentations built using its toolkit are not simply a sequence of slideshows, but huge images which the speaker can zoom into and track back out of at will. That immediately earned it a ton of attention from early adopters because it made a stolid format much more dynamic, and was great for making the connections between different pieces of information explicit.

You can see how it differs from the traditional, banal formula in this example from Sir Tim Berners-Lee, the inventor of the web.

The idea was originally developed by architect and designer Adam Somlai-Fischer, who found that zooming in and out allowed him to give much-needed context to clients and customers when showing them floorplans.

And it’s certainly proved popular with users, who have latched on in droves to edit and share their efforts through the web.

The service runs on a freemium model that gives paying users the ability to build more presentations, keep them private, and edit them offline — but while the company says it’s been cashflow positive since the early days, a new round of funding has been on the cards for a little while.

When we listed the company in the GigaOM Euro 20 earlier this year, we noted that it needed something extra to move on to the next step:

The noise has died down since that initial hubbub, partly because Prezi was overused by the early adopter crowd, which is something that led to overkill, and allowed others to dismiss it as a mere gimmick. While the buzz has faded, the team has been slowly adding more features, trying to iron out bugs and broadening its scope with new ways to interact with the system. If the way people actually use Prezi catches up with the concept, then maybe it could catch fire again.

It will certainly be interesting to see where this investment takes the business. Cloud-based office services have moved on a lot in the past couple of years, and while Prezi has made improvements, it also needs to accelerate. The company has introduced collaboration options, and last year it released an iPad viewer — but users still can’t edit their files on an iPad. Perhaps they need to move beyond the zoom, perhaps they just need to make the tools broader and even more usable.

If they manage to do that, then it could make them an attractive target for anyone building cloud productivity tools.

Prezi was started three years ago in Budapest with a small seed round from Magyar Telekom, followed up in 2009 by a further .5 million from Sunstone Capital and the TED Conferences. Sunstone is also participating in this round.

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As someone who jumped on the original Nexus One — at the full 9 price — the day it became available nearly two years ago, you’d think I’d be all over the Galaxy Nexus. Quite frankly, I’ve been enjoying my iPhone 4S so much that the new Nexus has taken a backseat to my iOS interest of late. But then I started to see the early reviews and happy tweets from new Galaxy Nexus owners.

Early reviews rock

The Verge gives the new Nexus an 8.6 out of 10, saying, “The Galaxy Nexus is the best Android phone ever made. It’s one of the best smartphones ever made, and with a couple of minor tweaks (particularly to the camera), it could be the best smartphone ever produced.” Chris Ziegler, a senior mobile editor at the site, didn’t write the review, but like I often do, he put his money where his mouth is and ordered an unlocked GSM version. Not long after receiving his own personal Galaxy Nexus, Ziegler tweeted this:

Follow @zpower@zpower
Chris Ziegler

just to be clear, the galaxy nexus is the best smartphone I've ever used. no asterisk.

November 25, 2011 10:56 am via TweetDeckReplyRetweetFavorite

Andy Abramson, a long-time friend who travels more than anyone I know, has very positive thoughts on his own Galaxy Nexus experience. By way of email, he pointed out that the software pairs nicely with the high-definition display dual-core processor, telling me: “Simply put, what Android always promised to be.” Since he travels so much, Abramson focused on how well the Galaxy Nexus can enable modern-day globe-trotters and has excellent VoIP support in his blog post discussing his new phone.

These are just two examples of happy Galaxy Nexus owners. Search the web or social networks and you’ll see even more. No phone is perfect, of course, but between the high-end Samsung hardware and Google’s newest mobile operating system, it already sounds like the Galaxy Nexus will be a hit. Now I can’t wait.

So I bought one

After some online research, I pulled the trigger on my own unlocked GSM Galaxy Nexus which works on both T-Mobile and AT&T’s fast mobile broadband networks. And for my rare overseas trips, I can use the phone on any GSM network. Instead of buying from an importer here in the U.S., I opted to buy direct from a U.K. retailer that will ship me the phone via 3-day FedEx. Some are selling the handset for near 0 — without shipping — but my total ended up being £439.98, which works out to 2.24 U.S. I’m hearing that an unlocked U.S. version could run 9, so the premium to get an early unit isn’t too bad of a deal.

Aside from the positive feedback about the phone, my activities this holiday weekend also influenced my purchase decision. Both kids have a T-Mobile Sidekick 4G, which earned a solid review from us. But over time, both handsets have shown instability, lagginess and freezing; sometimes to the point of having to pull the battery. Samsung may be working on updates to address these problems, but I took matters into my own hands. I rooted both phones and installed a custom ROM on each. Guess what: All of the problems are gone and the phones are running faster than ever.

I like Android’s freedom to play

As I fixed both phones, I looked down at the faithful old Nexus One on my desk and thought back to the number of times I flashed custom software on the device these past two years. I’d guess I’ve done so well over a hundred times. And I had fun each and every time. I also installed the latest Android versions months before most phones saw them; if they ever did, that is.

Being a Nexus device, the new Galaxy will allow me to do the same: have fun by taking control of my phone. Based on the high praise for Android 4.0, I may not have to do so, but at least I’ll have the option to keep tinkering like a little kid with a new toy at Christmas. And of course, I’ll share my own hands-on thoughts with both the new phone and Google’s updated platform along the way.

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[Thanks, Alexandre]

Continue reading ASUS announces Ivy Bridge PCI-Express motherboards, for early early-adopters

ASUS announces Ivy Bridge PCI-Express motherboards, for early early-adopters originally appeared on Engadget on Thu, 29 Sep 2011 09:08:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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There’s no question that Google+ has quickly become the most successful social offering that Google has ever released, racking up more than 25 million users in a matter of weeks. That may still be light years behind Facebook’s user base of more than 750 million, but the search company’s social platform seems to be getting Facebook’s attention, particularly with the recent launch of Google+ social games, such as Angry Birds. While a Facebook executive recently dismissed the Google network as inconsequential, it seems clear that the competition is keeping Facebook awake at night — which may be a good thing.

It was fairly easy for Facebook to dismiss Google’s earlier social efforts such as Buzz and Wave, in much the same way it was easy for users to dismiss them. Neither one managed to gain much traction outside a small group of Google fans and early adopters, in part because Buzz suffered from some serious privacy concerns early on (after it automatically added people from a user’s email address book without making it clear that this would happen) and Wave was just too complicated and the purpose of the service was unclear. Although Buzz continues to exist — for now — Wave has been shut down.

Google+ is everything Google’s other social efforts weren’t

Google+, by contrast, has been hailed by many users as everything Google’s previous social efforts weren’t: attractively designed, easy to use, and with some appealing features such as the use of Circles to separate a user’s social graph into different groups. The company’s approach to the use of pseudonyms has gotten criticism from users — including us — but apart from that it has been well received. And according to comScore, Google+ got to 25 million users more than 10 times faster than any other service in the history of social networking (although some are already complaining it is a ghost town).

Last week, Google upped the ante by adding social games including the popular Angry Birds and Bejeweled to the platform. And that entry into social games definitely got Facebook’s attention, since games are one of the big drivers of revenue and engagement on the larger social network, thanks to a partnership with social-gaming leader Zynga.

Not only did Facebook quickly tweak its game-related features to make them more appealing to developers such as Zynga, but a Facebook executive seemed downright snippy when asked about this new competitor at a recent game-industry event, according to a report in Fortune magazine. In talking about Google’s offer to developers — the search company is offering to take only 5 percent of the proceeds from games, in contrast to Facebook’s 30 percent — director of game partnerships Sean Ryan said:

Google is at 5 percent because they don’t have any users.

Like McDonald’s and Starbucks

Ryan went on to describe Google’s effort as being similar to McDonald’s getting into coffee in an attempt to compete with Starbucks (although that might not be the best comparison from Facebook’s point of view, since a number of analysts believe McDonald’s entry into the coffee business put substantial competitive pressure on Starbucks). And the Facebook executive described Google’s launch as a copycat move, saying the company had managed to “emulate aspects of our system, which… they have the right to do.”

Games aren’t the only element of Google+ that seems to be getting on Facebook’s nerves. There have also been reports — which have been circulated on Google’s network by the company’s head of social, Vic Gundotra — that invitation links to Google+ posted on users’ Facebook pages are not showing up. Given the history of tension between the two companies over issues such as the exporting of contact information, there has been speculation that Facebook might be blocking these links, but the social network says that it isn’t aware of any such blocking.

Can Google+ become a full-fledged competitor for Facebook? The web giant has said that the launch of social games is “just the tip of the iceberg” when it comes to what the company plans to add to its social platform, and some see mobile photo-sharing as a big element of Google’s plans for the future — in part because of the recent launch of a mobile photo application called Photovine. This would take Google+ straight into another core product area for Facebook, which has become the world’s largest photo-hosting service.

This isn’t just about competing with Facebook

As I described in a recent GigaOM Pro report (subscription required), Google is making this push into social networking not just because it wants to compete with Facebook, but because it needs to tap into the “social signals” and activity that users are engaging in on such networks as part of its core search and advertising business. And Google’s new CEO and co-founder Larry Page has made it clear that these efforts are a central part of what the company wants to do by restructuring Google’s incentive system to compensate employees who contribute to its social plans.

Facebook may have had the social-networking business more or less to itself for the past few years, thanks in part to the rapid decline of MySpace, but Google has made it obvious that it wants to become a major player — and while it is still early, the launch of Google+ shows that the search giant may just have what it takes to put some competitive pressure on the larger network. In the long run, that is likely to be good for Facebook users, and for developers of third-party applications as well.

Post and thumbnail photos courtesy of Flickr users Mark Strozier and Jennie Moo

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The field test is spearheaded by Google’s technical program manager for accessibility engineering Naomi Black as well as the company’s engineering director Chee Chew, who kicked off the initiative with a post to Google Plus that explained his personal stake in the issue:

“One area that I’m personally quite passionate about is facilitating communications and community for the deaf. My grandfather, aunt, and uncle were/are all deaf. While I’m very much a novice, i find ASL to be a beautiful expressive language. I hope that Hangouts can be awesome for the deaf (and hard of hearing) community as well as the hearing.”

Video chat applications have long been used by hearing impaired users to communicate via sign language. Skype seems to be particularly popular with hard of hearing users, and some users have turned to the service to learn and practice sign language.

Google is asking Google Plus Hangouts users for feedback on sign language support.

Multiuser video chat would be the logical next step for hard of hearing users, but there are also some technical challenges associated with group video conferencing. Google Hangouts, for example, is optimized for audible communication, as it switches its focus between users based on their microphone input. The idea of this feature is to prominently display the video camera input of the user that is currently talking, which has the added benefit of giving users an incentive not to talk over each other.

Gauging participation based on microphone input levels obviously doesn’t work for users that communicate via sign language, so Google is now looking for other cues. “We need an indicator for who has the floor,” explained Chee in his post, adding: “I’m sure there are subtle issues that I don’t know.”

Making its video products accessible to deaf users isn’t just stewardship for Google, it could also help the company avoid future liabilities. Disability advocates have begun targeting online media offerings in recent weeks to force them to adopt closed captions for web video. Lawsuits against CNN and Netflix allege that the companies discriminate against deaf and hard of hearing users by failing to provide captions for each and every video served online. Some of the points made by the plaintiffs in these cases could also be used to argue that a video chat service that focuses on audible speech discriminates against deaf users.

Regardless of the motivation, early feedback from Google Plus users about the Hangouts field test is overwhelmingly supportive and even enthusiastic. In a comment on Chew’s post, one user summed up his feelings this way:

“I actually cried with joy at reading this post and finding out that Google and the Google+ team actually care about all of their user base. Thank you very much for just thinking about us.”

Picture of kids learning sign language courtesy of Flickr user daveynin.

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That’s becoming more of a pressing question. As I wrote about earlier this week, Microsoft could be poised to turn Android into its next billion-dollar business if it can get enough Android licensees to agree to pay royalties due to alleged infringed use of Microsoft patents. Oracle has now reportedly stepped up a similar campaign and is approaching Android manufacturers with an offer to join an early adopters program that would have them pay to a handset, according to Network World, which quoted Jonathan Goldberg, an analyst with Deutsche Bank.

Network World said none of the companies has taken up the offer, which Oracle has declined to confirm. But if true, it would signal a new headache for Google. The company is being sued by Oracle over Android’s use of Java, which Oracle acquired the rights to when it bought Sun. Oracle is reportedly seeking .6 billion in damages in the suit.

While Oracle may be looking to punish Google, it might be seeing a bigger prize in getting licensing fees from its Android manufacturing partners. If it can convince manufacturers that its lawsuit will prevail, it might be able to induce them into paying fees now, rather than face a potentially higher licensing fee later. It’s unclear at the end of the day how much Oracle would seek to extract from licensees. to could be a starting point.

But if Android makers feel like there’s little recourse and that they need to pay up, that could add up to a significant cost. Microsoft is getting a reported from HTC on every Android smartphone and tablet it sells. It has also struck deals with a handful of other manufacturers for an undisclosed fee on each device they make and is reportedly hitting up Samsung for per Android device. It’s possible Microsoft could be asking for to from Android makers, in line with what it charges Windows Phone 7 manufacturers. But what happens when one manufacturer starts paying out to multiple companies like Oracle, Microsoft and perhaps Apple, which is also suing some Android makers?

Larger manufacturers like Samsung may be able to absorb some of that. But it would definitely cut into the margins of bigger players and could be a big issue for smaller manufacturers. One of the promises of Android is that it’s free. But if its licensing fees pile up, eclipsing what OEMs might pay for something like Windows Phone 7 or webOS, if HP opens it up, it could cause some to reconsider how much effort they put into Android.

Of course, we’re still a ways from that day. A lot has to happen first. Manufacturers will still need to be able to see a profitable future in other platforms. But with Google’s weaker patent portfolio in mobile — which could have been bulked up with the purchase of the Nortel patents that went to Apple, Microsoft, RIM and others — it seems like it’s increasingly open season on Android manufacturers.

Does this mean Android crashes to earth? Hardly. But it may just open the door for Windows Phone 7 or another competitor to come in and steal away some of Android’s momentum. Some carriers and manufacturers would quietly like to lessen their dependence on Android anyway. If things keep up and Google doesn’t have a strong answer on the patent front or a way to work around infringing intellectual property, this might give manufacturers reason to keep their options open.

Image courtesy of Flickr user Stephen Baack.

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Continue reading Sony MiniDisc Walkman to stop spinning in September (video)

Sony MiniDisc Walkman to stop spinning in September (video) originally appeared on Engadget on Fri, 08 Jul 2011 22:25:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Let’s face it: Today, success on the consumer Internet essentially equates with scale. Unless you have scale — which is nothing more than a nerdy euphemism for massive mainstream adoption — you don’t have much of a chance of becoming a major Internet company.

Our systems of monetization on the Internet all hark back to old media — television and print. The concept of audiences and cost-per-thousand impressions are the terminology used by media companies of yore. The other monetization models involve subscriptions, where people pay for a service or information, and what is known as e-commerce, where you buy goods such as books, clothes and shoes.

You need to be Internet scale to fit the current monetization models — advertising and subscriptions — and make meaningful revenues worthy of a large company.

So, What Works on the Internet?

In order to answer that question, I turned on the time machine of my mind and started thinking about successful (and not so successful) Internet companies, many of which have vanished under petabytes of history. If you look hard enough, it becomes clear that many successful consumer Internet services have three things in common that allows them to scale, get investor attention and, more importantly, bring in the much-needed revenues (and eventually profits).

Those things are:

1. They have a clear purpose.
2. They are simple to use.
3. They are fun to use or facilitate some type of entertainment or both

Now I don’t mean to suggest that you must have all three to be successful — but if you do, your chances of finding fame and fortune are much higher. Google, for instance had a clear sense of purpose (search/looking for information) and was simple enough to use (a search box on a white page, you don’t get simpler than that). As a result, it was able to become a 0 billion (in market capitalization) behemoth. Some might argue that finding the results one was looking for was “fun,” but I think that’s a bit of a stretch.

On that note, I don’t want to underscore the fact that these three elements aren’t the only reasons services become a hit. They have to be the right products at the right times. There is the undeniable element of luck, but the services also have to have that mysterious “it” factor, that something which makes millions of people go clicking.

Pop the Popcorn and Turn on Netflix

Now let’s look at a service that combines all three aspects: Netflix, which has seen its market capitalization go up 10 times over past 36 months.

1. It has a clear sense of purpose: Watch movies and television shows.
2. It is dead simple. You don’t need a manual to get started and start ordering DVDs or watching videos online. (Some might want a better Netflix experience. Well, I want to be 15 pounds lighter.)
3. It is all about “fun” or “entertainment.”

And since it isn’t ad-supported, the company has done the next best thing — priced it low enough that people don’t mind paying for the service every month, even though they may or may not tune in enough to justify spending the money. The low price point — a month for the streaming-only option — is why people put up with the service’s limited access to the latest movies.

Yelp Needs No Help

Another company that has done a good job of combining the three aspects successfully is Yelp. The San Francisco-based company is valued at over 0 million and has 41 million users as of December 2010. Yelp offers reviews of everything from local eateries to maid services. It even has had its share of scandals.

It works because it has the three elements:

1. Clear purpose: to help you find inside information on a local restaurant, for example
2. Simple interface: look up a restaurant, peruse a list, then use the “star-rankings” to decide if you are interested.
3. Yelp is about finding fun and entertainment: going out, finding new places and if all fails, reading the comments which are always a source of amusement.

Being a bit of a big-city snob, I don’t much care about using Yelp, but many others do and use it obsessively. In fact, the company is so popular that Google wanted to buy it, and when that failed, it started trying to kill the service.

Yelp, however needs to scale, that is, have a lot of people use its service so it can keep generating page views, for it needs to show billions of banners to make millions of dollars in revenues. Same goes for other companies.

Like Yelp, Groupon is another company that has combined three elements and built what seems to be (at least for now) a scale business. It has a clear purpose (save you money via discounts), is simple to use (the offers are sent right to your inbox — even my mom can use it) and it’s fun. It has grown massively and is doing a big book of business.

Ditto for Skype, Facebook and several other services that blend these three elements and build enough scale to make money off their audiences. Interestingly, many of these companies found favor outside of Silicon Valley first before they became big in Palo Alto, Calif., so to speak.

Minus One, Hoping for a Home Run

One of the hotter companies on the web these days is Foursquare, the New York-based, location-based-services company. It’s certainly simple to use, and it’s fun to participate in. After all, who wouldn’t like to own the JetSetter badge.

Back in 2000, when the world was going to broadband, Google changed people’s behavior and found growth. I think Foursquare, like many of its peers, is at the right place at the right time, to tap into a the shift to anywhere computing. All it has to do is find its purpose.

It might have found it, though Dennis Crowley isn’t sharing it with us or anybody just yet. I can guess that Foursquare’s true purpose is to help discover new places and new things to do.

Digg Your Own Grave

Every time a service deviates from the magic formula, it tends to lose its way. Let’s take Digg as an example. Digg became popular because:

1. It had a clear purpose: Help find people interesting, mostly tech related content.
2. It was dead simple to use. You submitted a link, got folks to vote it up and eventually, if it was good enough, it hit the front page.
3. It was fun to use. You could discover interesting stories to read. It was even more fun to find your submissions on the front page. You got a sense of joy, which made the experience more addictive.

The company raised a lot of money, and it tried to justify its existence by diversifying into different verticals. Somewhere along the line, the service’s noble mission got hijacked by search engine optimization experts.

If that wasn’t enough, the company decided it needed a new direction. Digg management, displaying a complete lack of understanding of their own core value proposition, took a ham-fisted approach to redesigning the service. It was never meant to be social in a Twitter-sort of way. Instead, Digg had always been social in a group-hug sort of fashion.

Oops!

Now compare that with StumbleUpon, which not only survived eBay but is thriving, quietly, mostly because of its ability to focus on its core values — discovery of content in a simple and fun manner. (See Google Trends comparison chart, below. Red is for Digg and blue is for StumbleUpon.)

I don’t mean to pick on Digg, but it’s a visible example of what happens when companies lose their mission and deviate from the magic formula.

Somewhere in there is a lesson for Quora!

I will follow up with part two of this post, on the importance of connectedness and ubiquity, later this week.

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Quora co-founders Charlie Cheever & Adam D'Angelo @ the Crunchies 2010

According to my sources, the company has received investment interest from multiple investors who have valued the company at as much as 0 million. Quora founders have been shy of taking new investment, mostly because the company still has a lot of cash from its initial round of funding.

Matt Cohler of Benchmark Capital and a handful of other individual investors had invested million in the company in March 2010. At that time Quora was valued at million, making me wonder about its valuation. The fresh interest at higher valuation is a sign of their hotness. When I pinged Cohler earlier today to get a comment about investment interest, he declined to comment.

Quora quietly launched a year ago and developed a strong following among early adopters who embraced its question-and-answer social platform. Much of the early activity on the platform was around topics that were related to start-ups and entrepreneurship. Since then, a more diverse set of topics have gained attention, and the site has attracted senior Silicon Valley executives who have answered questions about their companies and shared experiences.

This high quality of content helped the company get attention from the blogging community and other media outlets — attention that has fueled the site’s growth, which has resulted in exalted expectations, outages and of course a lot of speculation about its future. The company recently won the Crunchies Best New Startup of the Year award, which has brought it even more attention, especially from the venture capital investors.

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