Shareworthy articles and content syndicated from other sites. These aren’t things I’ve written or necessarily endorse, for the record.
Replacing your landline with Google Voice is light years mo’ better than paying monthly dues to a telco, we already know that. But there’s always been a certain tradeoff in whether you’re paying too much money or doing too much work for a Google Voice landline. gHome is a $5/month service (cheap!) that is easy to set-up (no SIP or computer required!). Check it out. [gHome via SlashGear]More »
Hubspot has just announced a Series D round of funding for their marketing-as-a-service platform. Investors include some very big names like Google, Salesforce and Sequoia, which shows how much interest there is in its service aimed at small businesses. It’s also a big boost for the Boston startup scene, as Hubspot is now one of the fastest growing SaaS companies in history by revenue, only behind Salesforce according to their CEO Dharmesh Shah.
Along with main competitors Eloqua and Marketo, Hubspot helps small businesses move away from traditional cold-calling and display advertising and into the new world of social media, search engines and blogging. On my recent visit to Boston, Shah explained to me that the initial idea came about when he noticed how much traffic he was able to drive through his OnStartups blog, when many of the businesses he was helping were struggling to get a fraction of the exposure.
Sponsor
To solve that problem, he set out to build a service that makes it simple for small business owners to use search ads, blogging and Twitter. The challenge has been creating tools that actually help small companies with little time or experience of the new technologies.
That’s meant creating simple, actionable reports, as well as educating its users in the effective online marketing through initiatives like Hubspot TV. With 4,000 paying customers, its approach seems to be paying dividends.
Perhaps unsurprisingly considering that six out of its eight executives went to MIT, the bulk of the investment will be going into research and development to support “an ambitious product strategy that calls for building a complete and fully-integrated marketing platform”. It does seem like it is a strong contender to become the equivalent of Salesforce for the marketing world, which will be a boon for small firms struggling to adapt to the online world.
Disclosure: HubSpot is also a sponsor of a forthcoming series on data science, which will appear on ReadWriteWeb later this month.
Still fresh from their run-in with Apple’s legal department over the Steve Jobs action figure (which resulted in the figure getting pulled), the folks at M.I.C Gadget have moved on to the next biggest tech target and turned Zuck into an Adidas flip-flop wearing, huge Like Button wielding action figure.
Via Craziest Gadgets
“Facebook fanboys rejoice- the long awaited Mark Zuckerberg action figure is here! Includes such cool actions as: standing around in a hoodie, poking, staring off evasively into space, not selling your company, changing your users’ privacy settings and stealing ideas from the Winklevii.”
There’s something amazing about a coder action figure as most of the “action” involved in programming is mental. Nevertheless, Facebook legal is pretty aggressive when it comes to trademark (or in this case tradeMark) infringement and I’m interested in what they’d have to say regarding this particular application of their CEO’s likeness.
The limited edition figure, called “The Poking Inventor” to “to avoid getting sued by a multi-billion dollar social network that can probably ruin your life and the lives of your family and everyone you know” costs $70 bucks. Mike just bought one, so there’s only 299 left.
Ever tried to draw something only to have it turn out like a bad mixture of Pollock and Picasso, but without the talent? If so, you are probably just about normal when it comes to artistic talent. Your humble author is no better.
Microsoft Research, ever the pinnacle of potentially profitable projects has a new tool that, if released, might help us doodling scrubs sketch something worth sharing. Called ShadowDraw, the app has a database of more than 30,000 images on file that it matches with what you are drawing. Then it offers suggestions to help you draw the next line.
Take a head and shoulders for example. If you draw a head shaped oval, ShadowDraw will suggest eyes and a nose. The more you draw, the more it suggests. Watch the clip below to see it in action. After the video we’ll talk about how many high school students out there could truly use something like this to pass art class.
Like we said before, this application is something that we could have used in classes past. And yet, this sort of predictive image generation could have larger use than just helping kids not fail assignments; it could be used to suggest anything, provided enough banked data, that involves creation on a touch screen.
Sure, it’s a bit rudimentary right now, but as Microsoft continues to punch along the path to a NUI (natural user interface) future, expect to see more projects like ShadowDraw.Top Image Credit
Last week, Microsoft announced it would shut down the Sidekick service for T-Mobile customers, which it got as part of its $500 million acquisition of Danger in 2008.
The shutdown put an end to Microsoft’s hopes of getting any value out of Danger, which was supposed to bolster Microsoft’s mobile phone strategy but culminated in the ill-fated Kin phone, which was canceled six weeks after launch.
But Danger was only the latest in a long line of acquisitions that didn’t go as planned.
Join us as we count them down from smallest to largest and describe the fate of each one.
Microsoft bought Fox Software back in 1992 for a reported price of about $174 million. The company made the FoxPro PC database software, and Microsoft later used its underlying technology in JET, the database engine that still powers its email product, Exchange Server. The company still sells Visual FoxPro today, making this one of the few Microsoft acquisitions that contributed lasting value.
Groove made peer-to-peer collaboration software, but as Bill Gates later said, Microsoft really bought Groove for Ray Ozzie, who eventually replaced Gates as Chief Software Architect.
Microsoft was responsible for $51 million of a $150 million investment in 2001 that kept Groove afloat, and in 2005 acquired the remainder of the company for $120 million, making this one of the most expensive talent acquisitions ever. Ozzie announced plans to leave Microsoft in October 2010, and sent a stark warning memo on his way out the door.
Microsoft bought this privately held virtual meeting company in 2003, and turned it into Live Meeting. Next year, Microsoft plans to phase out Live Meeting in favor of Lync Online, part of the Office 365 suite.
