Keen On… How To Make Movies and Money (TCTV)

Andrew Keen is an Anglo-American entrepreneur, writer, broadcaster and public speaker. He is the author of the international hit “Cult of the Amateur: How the Internet is Killing our Culture” which has been published in 17 different languages and was short-listed for the Higham’s Business Technology Book of the Year award. As a pioneering Silicon Valley based Internet entrepreneur,... ? Learn More

“Artists need to be business people too,” filmmaker Tiffany Shlain told me when she came into San Francisco’s TechCrunchTV studio. Shlain, whose movie Connected launched earlier this week, is a pioneering movie maker not only because of her award-winning films but also because this innovative businesswoman has figured out a way to make money in today’s digital economy.

“The gates are open right now,” Shlain told me about a 21st century movie business that is, she says, “completely different” from the 20th century studio model. And that’s because, she explained, filmmakers now have the technology to directly connect with their viewers. Put 50% of your energy into the making of the movie, she thus told me, and the other 50% into promoting it on networks like Twitter and Facebook.

Tiffany Shlain proves that creativity and entrepreneurial innovation not only can but must coexist in today’s digital economy. Filmmakers, writers and musicians should listen carefully to her advice about leveraging the power of their audience.

Watch the first part of my interview with Tiffany Shlain here.

Honored by Newsweek as one of the “Women Shaping the 21st Century,” Tiffany Shlain is a filmmaker, artist, founder of The Webby Awards, co-founder of the International Academy of Digital Arts & Sciences and a Henry Crown Fellow of The Aspen Institute. Tiffany’s work with film, technology and activism has received 44 awards and distinctions and her last four films have premiered at Sundance. Her films include “Life, Liberty & The Pursuit of Happiness,” about reproductive rights in...

Learn more

Andrew Keen is an Anglo-American entrepreneur, writer, broadcaster and public speaker. He is the author of the international hit “Cult of the Amateur: How the Internet is Killing our Culture” which has been published in 17 different languages and was short-listed for the Higham’s Business Technology Book of the Year award. As a pioneering Silicon Valley based Internet entrepreneur, Andrew founded Audiocafe.com in 1995 and built it into a popular first generation Internet music company. He is currently the...

Learn more

View the original article here

This post was made using the Auto Blogging Software from WebMagnates.org This line will not appear when posts are made after activating the software to full version.

We Are Time Warner, We Are Making A Ton Of Money From Those ‘V For Vendetta Masks’ (Thanks)

View the original article here

This post was made using the Auto Blogging Software from WebMagnates.org This line will not appear when posts are made after activating the software to full version.

The Smart Money Pours $1.5 Million Into Moat

Erick Schonfeld currently works at TechCrunch as Co-Editor. He joined in 2007 and is based in New York. Schonfeld oversees the editorial content of the site, selects and edits guest posts, helps to program the Disrupt conferences and CrunchUps, produces some TCTV shows, and writes daily for the blog. He is also the father of three... ? Learn More

The smart money is pouring into Moat, the ad tech startup founded by former Right Media CEO Mike Walrath and brothers Jonah and Noah Goodhart. Ron Conway’s SV Angel led a $1.5 million round, along with Founders Fund, Vast Ventures, Lerer Ventures, and Founder Collective. Walrath and the Goodhart brothers previously seeded the company with $3 million from their funding vehicle, WGI Group.

Moat is attempting to create new ways to measure the effectiveness of online display ads. Its first product is a display ad search engine that just searches display ads so that people in the industry can easily see what campaigns are running online for different brands. Today, Moat is also launching a new brand analytics product that measures attention based on mouse hovers and heatmaps.

Moat wants to replace the click as a valid measurement of an online ad’s effectiveness. According to Jonah Goodhart, only 8% of internet users account for almost 85% of all display ad clicks. As I wrote in a previous post about Moat:

“Part of the problem with digital advertising,” says Walrath, “is that we think we know what is happening with an ad and what makes it successful. Right now, all you have are clicks and conversions.” Walrath thinks the industry is measuring the wrong things: impressions on one end, and clicks on the other. Big brand advertisers care more about attention.

Moat has a proxy for attention. It can generate a heat map of where people hover their mouse over an ad, and where they click as well. . . . Moat offers these heatmap analytics to brand advertisers, to help them figure out which display ads are the most engaging and to give them tools to fix the ones that are not working.

The next step is to test different versions of the same ad to see which ones draw the most attention so that marketers can iterate faster and fine tune their messaging just like search marketers already do. Moat plans to create a marketplace for ad designers to make it easier for brand advertisers to create multiple versions of ads and test them rigorously.

Moat is a free search engine for display ads. Moat also offers heatmap analytics and resources for creative. Online ads tend to be transient: visible one second and gone the...

Learn more

Investor, Advisor and Founder of start up and expansion stage companies. Formerly Founder, President and CEO of Right Media Inc. Walrath founded Right Media, Inc., (formerly Right Media, LLC) in...

Learn more

View the original article here

This post was made using the Auto Blogging Software from WebMagnates.org This line will not appear when posts are made after activating the software to full version.

Winning To Lose: HP’s Hardware Sales Were Strong But That’s Not Where The Money Is

Biggs is the editor of TechCrunch Gadgets. Biggs has written for the New York Times, InSync, USA Weekend, Popular Mechanics, Popular Science, Money and a number of other outlets on technology and wristwatches. He is the former editor-in-chief of Gizmodo.com and lives in Bay Ridge, Brooklyn. You can Tweet him here and G+ him here. ? Learn More

If you look carefully at why HP bailed on consumer electronics and PCs, there are a few clear and simple reasons. The primary one? HP was number one in sales but – at least by Amplicate’s arguably loose methodology – number seven in mindshare. In the end, it looks like it was better to let someone else flog the hardware while HP did what it always did best: tell businesses how to spend money in tech.

So who is taking over for HP? Well, according to a Digitimes report, it looks like HP will be handing the keys to their brand over to Samsung, much as IBM did when it partnered with Lenovo to sell laptops and PCs.

Samsung has tapped Quanta, Compal, and Pegatron – three mainstream hardware vendors – to examine the possibility of outsourcing orders. The Digitimes piece focuses on netbooks, but it’s clear that this move would make Samsung’s products cheaper and allow the company to ramp up in order to take over HP’s 40 million-unit-strong business and maintain its own lucrative trade.

So we’ve established motive, we’ve established some culprits, but we haven’t established timing. Why now? Why so suddenly? Gruber nails it:

The thing is, Apotheker’s relevant experience was serving as CEO of SAP. What’s SAP? SAP is an enterprise software and consulting company. Honestly, we all should have seen this coming. You don’t bring in an enterprise consulting guy to turn around a PC and device maker. You bring in an enterprise consulting guy to turn a PC and device maker into an enterprise consulting company.

Whether HP goes to Samsung, Sony, or Asus is immaterial. What’s important to note is that Asian hardware manufacturers own the market and folks like Dell and HP saw the writing on the wall. Why compete in low margin hardware when you can sell the brand and let it live on – or not – at another manufacturer. Samsung would kill to have HP’s U.S. sales numbers.

The problem, however, is that HP commands no respect in the marketplace. This is where the IBM/Lenovo comparison breaks down. The ThinkPad line was historically a workhorse, considered by many to be the apotheosis of the fleet laptop. If you were a business traveller in the later 90s/early to mid aughts you wanted a ThinkPad and begrudgingly accepted a Dell or and HP. Aside from the Dell Dude, who has ever been excited to get a major name laptop from those companies? Alienware Area 51, maybe. Dell Inspiron, not so much.

So HP sheds a shackle and, with Samsung’s manufacturing power, that shackle becomes another link in that manufacturer’s golden chain. HP sunsets itself over the next decade, receding out of the dog-eat-dog world of hardware sales and it becomes as charmingly quaint as an IBM consultant in his pinstriped wool suit and white shirt. Why play in the messy, cyclical world of hardware, full of fickle, complaining consumers when you can take in $500 million for a tax system in Arizona. When this recession is over, organizational spending will pop like a cork and HP will be primed to take a drink.

View the original article here

This post was made using the Auto Blogging Software from WebMagnates.org This line will not appear when posts are made after activating the software to full version.

Find the Perfect Mobile Plan and Save Money!

If you are based in India and carry a mobile phone, which you do for sure, here’s something that may help you pick the best (or most cost-effective) voice and text plan for your phone based on your current actual usage.

The service, known as 3gsimplified, is available as a mobile app for Android phones and also as a web app in case you are using a different phone or would like to compare mobile plans from the desktop.

You install the app and choose your region (or circle) and also your existing cellular operator from the available options. The app will read the voice call logs from the phone and based on the local / national (STD) usage, it will recommend you a list of the most cost-effective plans from different operators in your region.

With mobile number portability (MNP) available across India, it has become so easy to switch operators now. Alternatively, you may configure the Plan Hound app to only show plans from your existing operator or from the preferred operators.

Then there’s the web app, available at 3gsimplified.com, for mobile users who are not on Android. Here you need to manually input your monthly voice usage for Local and STD calls and the service will use the exact algorithm to determine a more cost-effective plan for your mobile phone.

The idea is impressive and well implemented except for one limitation -  the mobile app does not consider the roaming usage – calls you made while you were outside your circle – while recommending the voice plans. For frequent travellers, the roaming charges may often constitute the bulk of their monthly mobile bill.

The Plan Hound app was one of the shortlisted entries at the Nasscom Emerge contest and secured the third position. If you want to save on your monthly mobile bill but don’t have the time to analyze your call logs, get this app!

Also see: A Good Site for Comparison Shopping in India

View the original article here

This post was made using the Auto Blogging Software from WebMagnates.org This line will not appear when posts are made after activating the software to full version.