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Foursquare, LinkedIn, Facebook and the vast majority of social networks logically gravitate around the user’s personal connections— the people you know. Unsocial, however, is a social network that doesn’t care about any of your friends. It’s focused on all the people you don’t know but probably should.

Launching this Monday morning at Venturebeat’s DiscoveryBeat, the Seattle-based startup (founded by Kiran Modak, Justin Richardson and Santosh Khare) is officially coming out of stealth and unveiling its iPhone and Android apps.

The mobile app, which is currently free to download, is geared towards professionals who want to connect with other professionals in similar or related fields, who happen to be nearby.

This is how it works: A user signs up via his or her LinkedIn account and Unsocial uses that profile to collect basic information on the person’s career. The user inputs “smart tags,” or rather keywords, that describe his/her professional background (for example I might include “journalist,” “writer,” “technology”) and the traits of people s/he is seeking.

When you’re ready to use the application, you simply open it up and click on the first button, “People,” which will show you relevant, nearby matches, if you find someone you want to connect with you can send a direct message through the platform (or e-mail/call them if that information is available). The service is ideal for large conferences or similar events where attendees have a limited amount of time to identify high-value contacts.

These networking events will be the key to the company’s profitability.

Although the mobile apps are free to download, Unsocial has created a structure to monetize what it refers to as “premium events.” Any organization can list an event on Unsocial, however, the startup will charge a fee for adding special features, such as a copy of the agenda, venue maps, speaker bios, the event’s Twitter feed, etc. In addition, Unsocial can also sell ad space around these premium events, if sponsors buy these ad slots, Unsocial will share the revenues with event organizers (hopefully giving the organizers a chance to recoup those premium fees).

This past photo week I wanted to take a closer look at some photo printing options that broke the mold, as it were, and thought outside of the box. While the average photo sharing site offers a number of size and formats, including books and posters, I was wondering what there was out there for the artistically inclined DIYer without the wherewithal or ability to paint actual pictures. To that end I found myself at CanvasPop, a website dedicated to putting your photos onto canvas, thereby cutting out expensive middlemen like Pablo Picasso or Peter Paul Rubens.

CanvasPop and its decidedly strange sister site, DNA11 (more about that later), are all about large format photography. Prices max out at $419 for a 24×72 inch canvas picture on a 2.5-inch frame and start at $30 for an 8×10 unframed. You can add effects and filters and most photos will work, including cameraphone pictures. You can also split photos onto multiple canvases, thus allowing you to add a whole West Elm feel to your pictures.

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Google has long offered enterprise clients Google Search Appliance, a yellow box that resembles a slice of Swiss cheese that can index any enterprise data generated by Oracle databases, SAP systems, SharePoint, Salesforce.com, HR systems, intranets, wikis, and more, and presents it to employees in a familiar Google-like interface. Based on a standard Dell server and powered by Xeon 5500 Series processors from Intel, the latest version can index 30 million documents. Today, Google is updating GSA so that users can search across its stored documents as well as data in the cloud within one search interface.

Cloud Connect for the Google Search Appliance allows workers search across both on-premise and cloud-based content from a single search box. So Google Apps users can access results from Google Docs and Google Sites alongside results from data stored in the Search Appliance. Cloud Connect also allows users search content from Twitter, as well as blogs and industry websites via Google Site Search.

The new feature is really optimal for businesses who are using both GSA and Google Apps (more than 3 million businesses are now using Google Apps as their productivity and email suite).

The new version os GSA also includes People Search, which allows users to find experts and coworkers who have a specialization or expertise in particular search queries. For example, a search for "field marketing" would result a list of field marketing team members alongside other indexed content and cloud date relating to the query. Organizations can index personnel information like department, interests, expertise and location.

Additionally, Google has added a dynamic navigation feature, which was a top user request, that allows users to specify into search results based on search modifiers for their queries. The Search Appliance now supports Microsoft Sharepoint 2010 content out of the box without the need for additional connectors.

Google has updated its enterprise search offerings with to be more scalable and is seeing a steady rise in customers over the past few years. As of last year, Google had 25,000 enterprise search customers. I’m assuming this number has increased. Clearly this latest version is a way to integrate Google Apps, and perhaps encourage current GSA users to switch over to Google Apps for a better search experience.

Facebook like buttons are now everywhere on the Web—on products, status messages, and blog posts like this one. It’ so easy to like things—just one click—that people do it all the time. But what about when you are walking along the street and you see something in a window that you really like, or in a magazine, or a product you are holding in your hands?

Up until now, you’d have to keep those feelings of mild approval to yourself, or resort to a Tweet. But soon, you may be able to actually like those things on Facebook as you run across them in the real world by scanning a mobile QR code—those 2D bar codes that look like television snow. A new service called Likify, created by Belgian company Boondoggle Lifelabs, just launched that allows marketers to add QR codes to products and signs, and then link those QR codes to a Facebook like button. So that when someone comes along and scans the QR code with their cell phone, it triggers a Facebook “like.” Nike Belgium is using the codes in Belgium in a campaign to promote their shoes by getting people to “like” different crazy-shaped jogging routes.

Engineers and brands love QR codes because they make it possible to link the real world to the Internet in interesting ways. QR codes are popping up in all sorts of places. Google has tried to get local merchants to place QR code stickers in their windows which opens up that store’s Google Places listing on the window shopper’s cell phone. Starbucks uses QR codes for iPhone gift cards. They are starting to be use din mobile ticketing applications, and even Website links now can have their own QR codes.

But whether or not consumers actually scan them is another question. I think so far, most people either don’t know what they are or even if they do, it’s too much of a hassle to power up your QR scanning app on your phone (assuming you have one) just to get a marketing message. There is no good reason to scan these things. Until QR code scanners become a default feature of most smartphones and they start to become actually useful enough for people to go through the trouble to scan them, they will remain a gee-whiz feature nobody uses.

As online e-commerce continue to grow, the act of buying from shopping catalogs continues to decline. But Catalogs.com is hoping to change this trend by bringing its library of retail catalogs to the the iPad with a new, free app.

The app features a magazine-like feel for shopping, including over 30 catalogs for both online and brick and mortar retailers such as MacConnection, Home Depot, Petco, Little Tikes and Spiegel. As Catalogs.com’s co-founder Richard Linevsky says, it’s like having a coffee table full of catalogs on the iPad.

The app itself allows users to turn pages similar to browsing through traditional catalogs, but users can zoom in on products for details, tap to buy the product from the catalogs' online stores, or build a personal wish list from multiple catalogs all in one place.

Personally, I love flipping through catalogs (especially for holiday shopping) but find that perusing for items online is a much quicker experience because you can purchase directly from the listings. This app could be a great way to get the best of both worlds.

First, to begin, let’s remind the reader that Leatherbound.me is not what it sounds like. The site is safe for work and completely tame. Trust me. I found out the hard way.

That said, Leatherbound.me is actually a book comparator site. You type in the name of a book or an author (any keyword, really) and you get a list of titles back. Click on one of the titles and you see that book’s availability in the Kindle Store, the Nook Marketplace, and the iBook Souk. Why is this important? Because one of the main sticking points for many people when it comes to dedicating themselves to one online bookstore is the availability of popular titles. For example, the iBook store has barely any titles at all while Amazon and B&N selectively miss a few popular titles. Knowing where these titles are at a glace is very valuable in certain, very specific situations.

Read more…

Brand protection company MarkMonitor has acquired DtecNet Software, a global anti-piracy company. With the addition of DtecNet technology, MarkMonitor says it aims to expand its Brand Protection platform by adding targeting capabilities for ‘both the distribution points and promotional vehicles for pirated digital content”.

DtecNet brings technology and expertise in pinpointing and monitoring illegal download activity on P2P networks, blogs, video streaming sites and Usenet services, the company said.

DtecNet founder and CEO Thomas Sehested will join MarkMonitor as a senior vice president.

With the acquisition, MarkMonitor is also expanding on a geographical level: DtecNet’s European operations include a development team in Denmark and an operations center in Vilnius, Lithuania.

Irfan Salim, CEO of MarkMonitor, says piracy of digital content on the Internet, including movies, music, games, software and e-books, is a severe and growing problem.

The company estimates the worldwide economic impact of online piracy and counterfeiting at $200 billion annually.

I'm not going to lie, Bonitasoft's success could probably give a lot of American entrepreneurs a run for their money. Based out of Grenoble, France, the 30-person team that that specializes in open source business process management (BPM) solutions is on its way to becoming France's next "open source star", following in the footsteps of Talend and ExoPlatform. And after 8 years of R&D at INRIA (the French national institute for research in computer science), the company officially founded in June 2009 has announced that it is setting-up shop in the US just a few months after its first birthday - with offices in San Francisco and Boston. According to CEO and co-founder, Miguel Valdès-Faura, the strategy of the company has been to target customers that are after something less expensive and more flexible than the solutions of bigger BMP players, like IBM-Lombardi, Oracle or Pega.

Starting today, Netflix customers in the US and Canada can instantly stream content through their Wii consoles without the need to fire up a disc first. Netflix says members who have a plan starting at $8.99 a month (or $7.99 in Canada), a Wii and an Internet connection can now instantly watch movies and TV shows by downloading the application from the Wii Shop Channel. The new channel is available at no extra cost.

Ice Energy, a Windsor, Colorado company, closed a $24 million series C investment to help electric utilities shift peak energy demands in the buildings they power to off-peak during hot weather. Investors in the round included TIAA-CREF's Global Social and Community Investing Department, Good Energies, Energy Capital Partners, Sail Ventures and Second Avenue Partners.

The way Ice Energy’s technology works, at a basic level, is something like an icebox on a rooftop. During off-peak hours, the Ice Energy system makes ice (the regular, cold and watery kind) using available electricity to do so. Hopefully, some of that energy comes from intermittently available, clean, renewable sources like wind or solar. Throughout peak hours, the ice cools the building in lieu of traditional air conditioning which would further strain the power systems.

The chief executive and co-founder of Ice Energy, Frank Ramirez, described what makes the company distinct in an e-mail to TechCrunch, Monday:

[Ice Energy's products are] directed at the air conditioning market for buildings that are three stories or less…They are the ones using refrigerant for air conditioning. This segment of the market represents 97% of all commercial buildings and 50% of commercial air conditioning electricity consumption. Ours is as a platform solution [including a] device that provides energy storage [and] controller on the device allowing intelligent operation at the site. The unit connect[s] over cellular to a network operations center that in turn is connected to a control room at [the power utility]. Utilities can direct control from single units up to the aggregated whole.

Ice Energy currently boasts 25 utilities as customers, and is working on a new pilot project with Toronto Hydro, and a large-scale project with the Southern California Public Power Authority (SCPPA).

Utilities can reduce the amount of fuel they consume in delivering electricity for air conditioning load by 30% to 50%, the company reported.

Investor Pete Higgins of Second Avenue Partners lauded Ice Energy for: 5 million hours of operational run time, its operational utility projects and a robust patent portfolio. Ramirez said his company would use its series C capital to fulfill a $115 million supply agreement with the Southern California Public Power Authority (SCPPA) and to drive new sales to utilities.

C.C. image via: Joamm Tall

Serial entrepreneur and gWallet founder Gurbaksh Chahal sold his ad network BlueLithium to Yahoo for $300 million in 2007. At the time, Chahal’s company was the fifth largest ad network in the United States and the second largest in the United Kingdom. Chahal’s non-compete contract with Yahoo just ended last week, and he’s getting back into the online ad business. Today, he’s launching RadiumOne, an online ad network that aims to combine social and intent data to serve ads.

RadiumOne mines social data and use this information to identify relevant consumers for brands. Through what Chahal calls "social retargeting,” RadiumOne analyzes how users interact with one another on social networks to find the consumers that identify with a brand's current customer base, and then serves advertisements to this audience.

Of course, RadiumOne gets this data directly from social networks (although not from Facebook), which sell anonymous user behavior data to advertisers, its own gWallet offer platform, blogging platforms, microblogging platforms (i.e. Twitter), URL shorteners, photosharing websites and other applications.

As social media users share information like links, blog posts, videos and more, RadiumOne will analyze this data to place the consumers on a social graph that will accurately describe their “behavior.” RadiumOne will also take the social data and form "social clusters" of people who know each other and share common interests. RadiumOne will target these new groups based on their interactions.

RadiumOne says that its targeting methods will improve ad conversion rates by up to 5x based on various tests it has done. And the company promised advertisers that its publisher network exists of only of comScore Top 500 sites.

Chahal says that RadiumOne will become the parent corporation to offers platform gWallet. Although gWallet is profitable, Chahal adds that he is considering raising a $50 million funding round, which would be used for acquisitions.

While Chahal certainly has the experience on his side, the online ad space is very competitive. It should be interesting to see if RadiumOne has the legs to compete in the display ad world.

Oxent, the French startup behind Gamersband, a geo-social network for gamers, has raised $500,000 in a Series A round led by French VC Petit Poucet. Oxtent is founded by Antoine Frankart and Matthieu Dallon, while Gamerband launched in late September and to-date claims 4,000 beta testers. Gambersband is an interesting proposition in that it's targeting video gamers with a social network that is ultimately aimed at face-to-face gaming, shunning the trend of networking and competing virtually. Dubbed a geo-social network, the site enables gamers to connect with other gamers living nearby in the belief that gaming is best when it's not just social but local.

OverDrive, which provides infrastructure and services for the distribution of digital content such as ebooks, audiobooks, music and videos, has raised capital from PE firm Insight Venture Partners, the New York-based backer of the likes of Twitter, Chegg, Privalia, Newegg and HauteLook.

The size of the financing round remains undisclosed, but OverDrive says it concerns a “major investment” and the provision of additional resources and capital by the investment firm is subject to regulatory approval.

OverDrive was founded by President and CEO Steve Potash back in 1986, and has established partnerships with leading publishers including Random House, HarperCollins, Penguin, Hachette, McGraw-Hill and hundreds of others over the years.

Today, OverDrive says it operates a digital content repository and fulfillment platform for ebooks, audiobooks, music and video content for a global network of more than 11,000 retailers, libraries, schools, and other digital channels.

Its catalogs are said to encompass more than 500,000 premium copyrighted titles, including one of the world’s largest catalogs of ebooks in the open-standard EPUB format.

OverDrive says it will soon be releasing ebook appls for Android and iOS devices, all of which will display EPUB ebooks in their native format and include multimedia support.

Peter Sobiloff and Larry Handen, both managing director at Insight Venture Partners, will join OverDrive’s board of directors.

The Number Resource Organization, the coordinating mechanism for the five Regional Internet Registries or RIRs, this morning announced that less than 5% of the world’s IPv4 (Internet Protocol version 4) addresses remain unallocated. The IPv4 pool first dipped below 10% in January 2010, and in the next nine months some 200 million addresses have subsequently been allocated from the Internet Assigned Numbers Authority (IANA) to the RIRs.

NRO anticipates to allocate the last IPv4 address blocks to the registries within months.

This is something that has been anticipated for years. In fact, concerns about the depletion of the IPv4 allocation pool date back to the late 1980s, when the Internet started to experience dramatic growth. You don’t think about it much, no doubt, but it is an important issue.

Every host on an IP network, from servers to personal computers to networked printers, is assigned an IP address, a unique identifying number that is used to communicate with other hosts on the same network, or globally.

The IANA assigns IPv4 addresses to the RIRs in blocks that equate to 1/256th of the entire IPv4 address pool (just over 16 million IP addresses). The most recent assignment, two blocks for the Regional Internet Registry for the Asia Pacific region, means that there are now only 12 of these blocks available, which is less than five percent of the entire space.

Axel Pawlik, Chairman of the NRO, states that it is critical for all Internet stakeholders to take definitive action now in order to ensure the timely adoption of IPv6, the next generation of the Internet Protocol.

IPv6 has a vastly larger address space than IPv4. This results from the use of a 128-bit address, whereas IPv4 uses only 32 bits.

In 2010, NRO expects the five RIRs to allocate over 2,000 IPv6 address blocks, representing an increase of over 70% on the number of IPv6 allocations in 2009. In contrast, the number of IPv4 allocations is expected to grow by only 8% in 2010.

NRO subtly warns that without adequate preparation and action for the deployment of IPv6, there will be a chaotic scramble for the addresses, which could increase Internet costs and threaten the stability and security of the global network.

(Image via Wikipedia)

Social video advertising startup Sharethrough has raised $5 million in Series A funding led by North Bridge Venture Partners and Floodgate. The company had previously raised $1 million in angel funding from Ron Conway, Mike Maples, Baseline Ventures and other investors.

Sharethrough’s ad network basically takes video advertisement from brands and helps agencies and marketers distribute these videos through social ad formats. For example, Sharethrough allow you to Tweet the video, Share the content on Facebook, and more from within the ad unit.

The startup has run more than 200 campaigns on publisher sites (including Reddit) behalf of a number of high-profile brands, including Sony, Xbox, GM, Activision, Nestle and LEGO. The startup also offers clients metrics and data on how each video advertisement performs. Sharethrough faces competition from Tremor Media, Brightroll, YuMe and others.

I am at the fourth annual TWS Conference where ten Israeli companies will present their products on stage today. Yet again, Yaron Orenstein, the conference organizer, has lined-up an impressive list of judges to weed through the applications and presentations.

These include: Ron Conway & David Lee from SV Angel, Emily Chang, Co-Founder, Ideacodes, Christine Herron, Principal, First Round Capital, Saul Klein, Index Ventures, and Yair Goldfinger, Co-Founder of ICQ & Dotomi.

Here are the ten companies to present on stage today:

Kryon Systems develops software called ‘Leo’ which provides actionable help. For example, say you’re working on an Excel sheet and want to merge cells. Instead of just looking it up in the help section, you would type it into Leo’s floating help bar which would offer to do it for you. You would then see the mouse move and perform the necessary actions. The windows only application currently supports Microsoft Office 2007 and claims to expand to iTunes, FireFox, Facebook, and other applications.

POSE is debuting a Point Of Sale system (POS) for small businesses that can be run on desktops and any mobile device. A big claim no doubt. All the subscription-based service requires an internet connection and customers can manage their inventory, clients, receipts and orders from any device. Strangely, the company’s site is Hebrew-only. Word on the street is that local investors are lining up.

give2gether provides non-profits a fundraising platform to improve donor conversion rates and participation levels. The platform is designed to take advantage of social media outlets and game theory to boost awareness and enhance group impact on donation and volunteer participation.

Velocee is a mobile Content Distribution Network (CDN) that relieves data network congestion by predicting subscribers' individual mobile data usage trends. It then optimizes delivery which provides cost savings for the carriers and a snappier media and web experience consumers.

Concealium markets DynamicShield, a solution aimed at protecting corporate data on SaaS applications. The service is based on data-centric protection that is independent of the data format, the transport method or the media where the data is stored. Their words, not mine.

Winners of Mini-SeedCamp Tel-Aviv and SeedCamp in London, Sparkeo is a learning platform that lets experts create and sell interactive video courses over the web in minutes. Sparkeo targets ‘experts’ in any field with the promise of making additional income while transferring their knowledge.

TechCrunch Disrupt Battlefield SF startup Superfly is like Mint for travel. It helps you make the smartest travel decisions so you get the most out of your mileage points and accommodations. This sometimes means that getting the cheaper ticket is not the wisest decision as, for example, it can impact your hotel options. From our initial review:

The service offers a simple interface to track the total value of your rewards, airlines miles over time, and spending patterns with horizontal lines marking achievement level over time valuable in a space where very few airlines provide you with any decipherable tools to manage your obsession.

Webydo is a Design Management System (DMS) that transforms Photoshop PSD files to functional websites with no knowledge of HTML or CSS. Using drag-and-drop only, the platform outputs W3C compliant, cross-browser validated code with pixel by pixel accuracy.

Touchoo is an end-to-end solution for the creation and distribution of interactive children’s book-apps, for touch-screen platforms. Using Touchoo, publishing houses and creators, have a cost-effective way to bring their content to young readers. The site also serves as a book catalog for parents.

TA-Vision specializes in utilizing artificial intelligence to create automated chat solutions where virtual agents (as opposed to real humans) chat with websites visitors and service their needs. Spooky.

This weekend Facebook shut down some applications that were found by the WSJ to have been sharing Facebook User IDs (a unique profile identifier Facebook uses in its APIs) to independent ad networks and internet tracking services such as RapLeaf.

According to the Journal, these UID transferal issues were the primary reason Facebook took down apps run by the social gaming company LOLApps on Friday, including its popular flagship “Critter Island.” Two days later, according to a freshly minted blogpost, all LOLApps games are now officially back on the social site.

From the LOLApps blog:

“It has been a big weekend in the news for privacy and Facebook applications. As tonight's Facebook developer blog post states, ‘In most cases, developers did not intend to pass this information, but did so because of the technical details of how browsers work." This statement applies to Lolapps.

When we were informed of the issue the relationship that put us into this category was immediately dissolved. Since Lolapps was founded in 2008, we have always been committed to Facebook's platform policies and will continue to be as we grow.”

While Zynga heavy hitters like “Farmville” and “Texas Hold ‘Em” poker were also on the WSJ list, they did not experience similar service disruptions. LOLApps would not comment on whether it has actually corrected the issue in order to get reinstated onto the Facebook platform.

The severity and risks of UID transferral are still being debated.

Apparently used by some (it looks like primarily vehicle enthusiasts mostly) more than Craigslist.com itself, aggregator and search engine Craiglook was shut down by Craigslist this week for violation of its Terms of Use and trademark violations regarding the Craiglook domain name, in a move reminiscent of when the company blocked Oodle back in 2005.

A visit to Craiglook reveals the following pop up disclaimer:

Dear Craiglook users,

Craiglook.com has been shut down by demand of Craigslist.org

The site has now moved to CLAz.org

I have also complied with Craigslist.org request and removed all RSS feeds and links to craigslist.org from the new website.

I am extremely grateful to you all who keep the site running with your great ideas and feedback. I will try my best in reaching to Craigslist to see if there is a way for Craiglook to work out a resolution for legal claims that they have pointed out.

It’s hard to think of the decidedly Web 1.0 Craigslist as Goliath in any David and Goliath story, especially since it has its fair share of companies wishing it hadn’t encroached on their territory (media companies mostly) and especially because it doesn’t provide the Craiglook search functionality itself.

I have contacted both Craiglist and Craiglook for more information and will update this post when they respond.

Cloud-based software company SuccessFactors has just announced a recent acquisition—Danish company YouCalc, which lets business create and share custom reports and analytics on data from the cloud. Terms of the deal were not disclosed.

Along with the acquisition, SuccessFactors is also debuting its Calculator In The Cloud platform, which leverages YouCalc’s technology. Now the company’s business users can analyze data from the cloud in realtime for insight and predictions. The platform can analyze data from SuccessFactor’s BizX Suite as well as data from third party cloud-based applications. The idea behind the new offering, says Brad Mattick, senior director of global product marketing financials for the company, is to allow business to aggregate and mashup data from a variety of sources for insight. For example, you can pull in data from an ERP system, sales metrics from a CRM system or customer satisfaction stats from call center software.

Users can also use the platform for simulations and "what-if" scenarios based on mash-ups of data from any cloud-based app. Analysis from Calculator in the Cloud can include a current sales pipeline, available cash, employee satisfaction and what percentage of the workforce is working towards the company's strategic plans.

While the platform is launching today, Calculator in the Cloud has been beta tested by a number of enterprise companies, including McGraw-Hill.

SuccessFactors has bit on a bit of an acquisition spree in 2010, buying social enterprise software company CubeTree for $50 million, and Inform for $40 million.

Causes, the startup that helps users leverage Facebook and other social sites to raise money for charity, has closed a $9 million Series C funding round led by NEA with participation from Founders Fund, Marc Benioff, Dustin Moskovitz, Ron Conway, Keith Rabois, and Karl Jacob. Scott Sandell of NEA will join as an observer on the Causes board. Causes CEO Joe Green says that the company will be using the money to build out its team, including some senior hires (the company is currently seventeen people). Causes will also be moving from Berkeley, CA to San Francisco.

As we’ve recently reported, Causes is transitioning from living primarily as a Facebook canvas application to running off of its standalone website Causes.com, with social connectivity through Facebook Connect. This change, along with some other optimizations, led to a two-fold increase in the amount of money the site raises in donations from its ‘Birthday Wish’ feature on a daily basis — $20,000 a day, up from $10,000 two months ago. It raises money though other channels, too, taking in a total of around $40,000 in donations a day.

The company has also recently landed a deal that will put Causes gift cards in every Safeway and Vons location in California. After buying one of these gift cards, users can sign onto Causes.com and donate it toward the charity/cause of their choice.  Causes earns revenue (it’s a for-profit company) by asking users for tips between 10-20%. Green wouldn’t disclose revenue figures, but says that Causes has 119 million installs on Facebook and has 25 million monthly active users.

Causes has now raised over $16 million, including a previously unannounced $5 million Series B round led by Case Foundation and philanthropist Ray Chambers’s MCJ Foundation, with participation from Founders Fund. That round closed in March 2008.

After visiting Okinawa, Japan, and meeting with global experts on innovation, I've come to the conclusion that Silicon Valley's greatest advantage isn't its diversity; it is the fact that it accepts and glorifies failure. Like many other countries, Japan has tried replicating Silicon Valley. It built fancy tech parks, provided subsidies for R&D, and even created a magnificent new research university. Yet there are few tech startups, and there is little innovation; Japan's economy is stagnant.

There is a reason for this stagnation.

In any country, innovation and economic growth come from startup ventures.  But most Japanese don't want to take the risk of starting a business.  Indeed, the social stigma and financial repercussion of failure are so great that the founders of failed businesses become social outcasts; no one will work with them again or fund them; and all too often they end up committing suicide.

Jeff Char, who is a serial entrepreneur and CEO of Tokyo-based incubator J-Seed Ventures, told me that he sees huge opportunities for startups in Japan, and that there is almost no competition there. One of his new ventures, Piku Media, is a Groupon clone that has been able to rapidly create a new market.  In the Japanese tech industry, the playing field is wide open.  There is also no shortage of experienced engineering talent. But, because society doesn't tolerate failure or respect entrepreneurs, Char can't get engineers to leave their industry jobs to join his startups. He also can't find any experienced entrepreneurs to lead his companies: once entrepreneurs fail, they are out of the game. Hence most ventures in Japan are managed by first-time entrepreneurs.  And of course they make the same mistakes as their predecessors—because there is no one for them to learn from.

In the old days, most businesses were in manufacturing, services, or retail. A business failure was associated with unethical practices or mismanagement. Things moved slowly. But the tech world is very different. Even though the basics of building a business are always the same, technology changes rapidly and so requires the creation of new business models. New technologies and business models are developed through experimentation. Entrepreneurs start risky ventures to test their ideas and raise financing from others who have been down the path before—and achieved success. And they learn from one another.  Innovation is a by-product of this synergy and experimentation.

This is something that Silicon Valley figured out long ago, and that is how it left other tech centers in the dust.  Failure is regarded as a badge of honor, not as an object of shame. When you meet tech entrepreneurs in Palo Alto or Berkeley and ask them what they do, they typically tell you about their current startup; then they start showing off about all of their previous failures—because to have failed means to have gained experience and to have learned.

Japan is an extreme, but things aren't that different in other parts of the world. In Germany, for example, company founders are held personally liable for unpaid debt for up to 30 years—even after they declare bankruptcy. So if the business fails, they lose their house; their savings; practically everything they have. What's worse: the Japanese and German entrepreneurs may also face criminal penalties and go to jail. So they try to avoid business exit at any cost—even if this means personally absorbing business losses. The result is that you see very few business startups, and those companies that are started take few risks.

The lesson that other regions need to learn from Silicon Valley is to glorify and embrace their failed entrepreneurs. Countries such as Germany, Japan, France, and India need to change their laws to allow high-tech companies to be started and shut down more easily. Their leaders need to work toward removing the stigma associated with failure. Their public needs to be educated to understand that, in the high-tech world at least, experimentation and risk-taking are the paths to success; that success is often preceded by one or more failures. This must be discussed frequently by political leaders and taught in schools. They should establish venture funds for entrepreneurs who are starting their second or third businesses after failing.

Innovation and growth result from courage, risk-taking, and opportunity.  Japan, and countries offering similar discouragement to their potential entrepreneurs, won’t see significant innovation and economic growth until they appreciate entrepreneurs’ human qualities and build on them.

Editor's note: Guest writer Vivek Wadhwa is an entrepreneur turned academic. He is a Visiting Scholar at UC-Berkeley, Senior Research Associate at Harvard Law School and Director of Research at the Center for Entrepreneurship and Research Commercialization at Duke University. You can follow him on Twitter at @vwadhwa and find his research at www.wadhwa.com.

By any measure you care to use, British newsman Peter Preston deserves respect.

A former editor of the Guardian, the paper's investigative reporting on his watch – including the infamous 'cash for questions' scandal – hastened the (admittedly unhasty) end of 18 years of Conservative government in the UK.

Today, Preston is still at Guardian Media Group, writing a weekly column for the Observer newspaper about the decline and fall of printed news in the Internet age.

But not this week.

This week, respected newsman Peter Preston has good news. The decline and fall of printed news has been greatly exaggerated! And to those who say that the Internet is killing newspapers, Peter says "pshaw" – a recent study has shown that not to be the case. Or as the headline to his column today reads "We thought the internet was killing print. But it isn’t"

To which I say, "oh do shut up, respected newsman Peter Preston."

Of course the Internet is killing print – assuming you’re using 'print' as a shorthand for 'printed newspapers', as opposed to, say, printed flyers left on car windshields or printed labels on soup cans. You only have to look at the numbers to see that. So let's…

(And, lest I lose any of the five Americans who have made it this far through a non-US media story, let's start with America.)  In the US, newspaper circulation is in decline across the board, with the most recent ABC figures (from April) showing that "average weekday circulation fell 8.7 percent in the six months that ended March 31, compared with the same period a year earlier." According to the AP, “The San Francisco Chronicle’s weekday circulation dropped nearly 23 percent from the year before to 241,330 [while] at The Washington Post, average circulation fell 13.1 percent during the week to 578,482 and 8.2 percent to 797,679 on Sunday."

Meanwhile (says the Poynter Institute) online newspaper readership continues to rise steadily. To which everyone in the world looks up from the laptop, iPad or smartphone and says "yeah, we know."

Back to the UK, then, and the trend is precisely the same, with the headline on the Press Gazette (the trade magazine for the British newspaper industry) saying it all: "Year-on-year circulation drops for all". And online? The same publication reports a huge (20-30%) year-on-year rise for most major online papers.

Surely if Preston had seen those figures, he would have chosen a different subject for his column. I mean, it’s a slam-dunk: print circulation is plummeting around the world, while online readership soars. Anecdotal evidence – every train car, office building and airport departure lounge – backs up the trend; print is out, digital is in.

But here's the weird thing: Preston has seen the figures – and yet he's still arguing that print newspapers should stop worrying about digital. As evidence he cites a single document: a report by 'analyst' Jim Chisholm which argues that “in the UK at least, there is no such correlation [between online rise and print decline]". Chisholm’s report continues…

“This is true at both a micro-level in terms of UK newspaper titles and groups and at a macro-level comparing national internet adoption with circulation performance. Indeed, the opposite case could be argued: that newspapers that do well on the web also do better in print… Understandably worried traditional journalists should know that the internet is not a threat.”

Both Chisholm and Preston try to back up their argument by pointing to the seemingly arbitrary rise and fall of different British newspapers, some of which have embraced the web and some of which haven’t. Preston cites the ultra-tabloid Daily Star (selling 100,000 more daily copies than it did five years ago); and the mid-market Daily Mail (half a million copies up); and the Guardian (down about a third). Both the Mail (way up) and the Guardian (way down) have super-popular websites while the Star (up) has barely a website at all. How, then, can there be a correlation? The numbers are all over the map.

Of course this reasoning is ludicrous. The Mail is up because its owners are marketing geniuses, giving away free CDs and glossy magazines and coupons for free holidays to an older, more conservative audience that's less likely to read a newspaper online. The paper’s online edition is up as well, because it runs a combination of ridicule-ready racist and homophobic bullshit that's just ripe for linking, and cutesy animal stories that are just perfect for lunchtime web forwarding. The Mail's offline audience hates the Internet, mainly because the Mail has told it to. By contrast, the Mail’s online audience, in large part, hates the Daily Mail.

The other blip – the Star – can be explained similarly. As anyone who lives in the UK will tell you, the only time your average Daily Star reader sees a computer is when his grandson steals one and hides it in his garden shed.

Preston knows all this too; so why then is he clinging on to a single report that tries – and fails – to argue the precise opposite to what everyone in their right mind knows is true: the Internet is killing newspapers?  And, for that matter, why did the report get written in the first place?

The second question is the easiest to deal with. Jim Chisholm is a self-described newspaper strategist, and former "senior strategy advisor to the World Association of Newspapers". In other words, Jim Chisholm makes his living by telling the newspaper industry what it wants to hear. Don't worry, newspaper industry, you have nothing to fear from the Internet. It's all a big misunderstanding.

As to the first – why Preston is being so deliberately disingenuous – well, that's simple too. Like too many old newspapermen – including the king of them all, Rupert Murdoch – Preston is scared. The print world which these men (and they're almost all men) understood so well, and which they once stood astride like journalistic colossuses (colossi?), is shrinking. Fast. Pretty soon it'll be consigned to history.

Who then can begrudge Preston, Murdoch et al a little bit of empty hope in their professional dotage? Perhaps all is not lost. Maybe, just maybe, experts have got it all wrong and the fall of print is just a temporary glitch. And at that, they pause, staring wistfully over at their old typewriter. Then… a smile.

I'll ask again, who can begrudge Peter Preston that smile? Not me. In fact, I take it back, Peter, don't shut up. Keep telling your lovely old stories about how print can still give online a pasting, just as soon as it can find its old boxing gloves.

Meanwhile, the rest of us will carry on figuring out the future of journalism, the first step of which involves accepting that print is dying and that the Internet is the cause.

This guest post is by Naimish Gohil, an Assistant Headteacher at Henry Compton School in London, UK. Gohil is also the founder of Show My Homework, an assignment calendar service.

Over the past two years, I have been teaching Information Communication Technology (ICT) at secondary school. During this time, I have made it a point to share with my students, stories reported by Michael Arrington & the crew at TechCrunch. To give some context I work within a inner London School called Henry Compton, based in Hammersmith & Fulham, London, UK. It is a typical inner London school with challenging students aged between 11-16.

So why has sharing TechCrunch stories been a must for me every Wednesday morning?

To put it simply, my students just get blown away by the world-changing, crazy, interesting, money-making adventures and businesses that come to life by entrepreneurs that start them!

In my school, I have entrepreneurs everywhere I look.

Many have already started building their mini empires, from selling sweets and drinks in the playground at premium prices, to selling computer cheats on eBay and making money via affiliate websites by reviewing computer games. I really love this entrepreneurial spirit young people show – it demonstrates the hunger, the desire to get up and go and do something with their life. It also shows an element of risk taking as school rules state quite clearly that selling snacks is not prohibited in school.

I’ve noticed how using sources of information like TechCrunch can make for a really jaw dropping, inspiring and engaging curriculum for ICT in school. TechCrunch touches base on almost every level as it captures the essence of business, innovative ideas, ICT, stories of rags to riches, failures, humble beginnings in garages and geeks turning into CEO’s.

The list of topics that can be applied is almost endless. To name a few they include social networking trends, e-safety, productivity tools, games/platforms, clever ways to backup data, create websites, blogs, handle email problems and so on.

When I teach from textbooks, they often talk about ICT projects that happened in the 90′s. I prefer to give examples that are happening right now in the present. For example, how Blockbuster became bankrupt because they didn’t maximize the use of technology and let players like iLovefilm/ Netflix take over or how Zynga took took advantage of Facebook’s growth. I believe the curriculum should adapt and evolve like the beast of information that is the Internet. What is the point of teaching ICT and the topics surrounding it if it is based on ancient ideas and concepts?

I remember in the early days showing a presentation to a group of students. The PowerPoint displayed a photo of Steve Jobs, Larry/ Sergey/ Mark Zuckberburg / YouTube founders, MySpace founder and Bill Gates on each slide, without revealing what companies they were running. With the exception of some students recognizing Bill Gates as the founder of Microsoft, none of my students had any clue as to what companies the other gentleman operated. When I revealed the company name next to their photo, they were amazed! For the first time, they actually thought about the person behind the company, behind the products and service they so love and use on a daily basis.

The reaction I received is still vivid in my head.

This was the start of TechCrunch, becoming part of the furniture in my classroom. The inspiring stories behind these entrepreneurs need to be told at every opportunity.

I often encourage my students to think about how they can serve, what they can do for others – That is often a route to become successful and make millions. Richard St. John put it very nicely in his speech at TED when he talked about the 8 secrets of success. Serve others, love what you do with passion and the money will come.

For homework I often put links to articles on Techcrunch via Show My Homework for students to read, explore and discuss at the start of lessons. Projects I teach, usually have to be put into context with real life examples. Instead of using the usual blue chip companies, I use starts ups I discover on Techcrunch, it is a lot more fun and interesting.

I really believe there is a place for TechCrunch in the school curriculum we deliver. In this recessions ridden time that we live in, teachers alike and students need to be constantly aware of the positive, amazing things that are happening in the start up world where boot strapped individuals are fighting to change the world and turn their ideas into real life ventures!

Who knows, one of the students I teach could one day be the next Zuckerburg, Jobs or Gates….

Thank you TechCrunch.

It’s time for another episode of OMG/JK, the weekly TechCrunch TV series that features fellow writer MG Siegler and me discussing the latest news in tech. It’s been a big week for Microsoft in particular: the company announced an expanded partnership with Facebook to integrate your social graph into Bing, and it also officially launched its mobile phone OS Windows Phone 7. We also talk about next week’s Apple event, and give our take on The Social Network (which we finally got around to seeing).

Here are some posts relevant to the topics we discuss:

• Will OS X 10.7 "Lion" Be The King Of The Apple Jungle, The Last Of Its Kind, Or Both?
• Live From Bing's Facebook Event: Search Gets Better Because Of Your Friends
• Wow, With Windows Phone 7, Did Microsoft Actually Bring A Gun To A Gun Fight?

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Afghanistan supplies 92% of the world's opiates. According to the latest available figures, the country produced 8,200 tons of heroin in 2008, more than double the the amount three years earlier.

But even being the heroin capital of the world, bringing in more money than most Afghans can dream of, the on-going war and rampant corruption means the money goes to the wrong people and the country has no infrastructure. There are no decent roads, no railways… But they do have mobile phones.

Four months ago, the Afghan National Police began to pay salaries through mobiles (using a text and Interactive Voice Response system), rather than in cash. The platform used was based on the M-Pesa service that has become highly successful in Kenya. Branded M-Paisa in Afghanistan, it was introduced by the operator Roshan in partnership with the Ministry of the Interior (MOI) and had an immediate effect.

On receiving their money in this way for the first time, most Afghan policemen assumed that they had been given a salary increase: in fact they had simply received their full pay for the first time. In some cases they received pay ‘rises’ of more than a third, preventing defections to the Taliban who were previously able to pay higher ‘salaries’.

But there were initial problems. One of the higher-ranked Afghan commanders was so angry (and dumb) about losing his cut that he took all the SIM cards from his underlings and tried to collect the money himself. Eventually a Roshan employee reported the abuse to the MOI and the commander was prevented from doing so again… even if he wasn't prosecuted.

The Afghan Police are not the only people to be paid this way. All of Roshan's employees are paid by M-Paisa and consequently Afghanistan's economy is beginning to benefit as the currency seeps through to the correct people and not the corrupt middlemen. Local stores have effectively become banks and the finances of Afghans who used to carry cash around the country are infinitely more secure.

The service facilitates the transfer of funds through SMS and an Interactive Voice Response (IVR) system. The IVR-based menu is available to customers in Dari, Pashto and English; important in Afghanistan where 70% of the population is illiterate. M-Paisa is powered by Roshan's mobile network that spans across 230 cities and towns in all of Afghanistan's 34 provinces.

This arrangement with Roshan and the MOI guarantees payments and is backed up by a grant from the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation who gave trade association the GSMA a $12.5 million grant to provide mobile banking facilities to 20 million people around the world by 2012.

Seema Desai, Director of Mobile Money for the Unbanked for the GSMA is unequivocal in what Afghanistan represents for the programme. "If we can make it work in this country, then we can make it work anywhere", she says.

Karim Khoja is the CEO of Roshan and has plans to roll out the scheme to more Afghanistan businesses and even claims that M-Paisa reduces the number of soldiers going AWOL, but is chary when asked if the country's army will be paid by M-Paisa.

"’Currently, discussions are underway with the Government of Afghanistan to examine how M-Paisa can best serve their needs and reduce the need for cash in the field, while also serving as a tool to support financial inclusion," he says.

In a country where 36% of its people live below the poverty line, Afghanistan is the poorest country in the world outside Africa, but it also has a 40% penetration rate of 12 million mobile subscribers out of a population of 30 million.

While it's unlikely that Afghanistan will produce less heroin in the near future, it is certain that schemes like this are going to grow as mobile penetration increases and offers a shot in the arm to the people, not from a needle, but from a mobile phone.

I hope to see it for myself after being offered a tentative invitation to visit the country in early December. I'm looking forward to it. The mobile banking story that is, not the heroin.

…

Monty Munford has more than 15 years' experience in mobile, digital media, web and journalism and returned to the UK in September, 2010 after living in India for two years. In that time he consulted clients such as Paramount Digital Entertainment in LA and Liverpool FC to deliver their content to an Indian mobile audience, spoke at events in London, Dublin and Singapore and landed two speaking parts in two big-budget Bollywood movies that will be released in December 2010.