Oh, Kim Dotcom. You just never stop surprising us. Just hours after Twitter finally rolled out its long-awaited Two-Factor authentication feature to protect accounts, the Megaupload founder is claiming to have invented the entire mechanism… and he’s got a patent to prove it. “But they won’t even verify my Twitter account?!”, he says. The patent in question can be viewed here . Filed for in 1998 and published two years later, it lists a Kim Schmitz — Dotcom’s name before he changed it in 2005 — as the sole assignee. For the unfamiliar, two-factor authentication is a mechanism intended to make it more difficult for hackers to access accounts that aren’t their own. When a user attempts to log in to a service from an unrecognized computer, the service sends a one-time password to an alternative device (like, say, a cell phone) known to belong to that user. Read more »
Google Play In-App Purchase Revenue Growth Jumps 7X In One Year, Subscription Revenue Growing 2X Each Quarter
Google held a session today at I/O 2013 about how to make money on Android, and in the initial few minutes it shared some updated stats around Google Play revenues and how those are progressing. Not surprisingly, the big growth is coming with in-app purchases, though Google’s recently launched subscription model is also making headway. Google said that its in-app revenues through Play are up 700 percent since the same time last year, which is reflected in the top apps as listed by highest grossing titles in the Play rankings. Subscriptions, which just launched around 12 months ago, is also making headway, doubling inbound revenue each quarter according to Google. Some apps which use subscription as their exclusive revenue model are now cracking the top grossing list, like Pandora. The momentum is still clearly behind in-app purchase, and as a result Google suggested that there’s good reason to consider that as a revenue model when building apps Read more »
Google Says Its Chrome Browser Now Has Over 750 Million Monthly Active Users
Sundar Pichai, Google’s senior vice president for Chrome and Android today announced that the company’s Chrome browser now has more than 750 million monthly active users. That’s up from 450 million users Google announced at last year’s I/O. This number, as far as we can see, includes both desktop and mobile users. Google launched Chrome in 2008 and since then, as Google proudly noted in today’s keynote, it has become the most popular browser in the world. It is also now, as Pichai noted early on in the keynote, a very important platform for Google that stands side-by-side with Android. Just recently, Google also decided to take more of the development process of Chrome in its own hands when it dropped WebKit and decided to start developing its own Blink rendering engine based on WebKit Read more »
Google I/O: Watch The Live Video Stream Here
Google’s annual I/O conference in San Francisco kicks off this morning at 9am PT/noon ET and, as usual, the good folks from Mountain View are making a live video stream of the event available for all of you who can’t be there in person. Unlike other years, when Google ran two separate keynotes on the first two days of I/O, the company is only running a single keynote this time around. Last year’s skydiving antics definitely set the bar very high for this year’s event and so far, we haven’t heard how Google plans to top this today. We do expect to hear quite a bit about Google+, however, and the rumor mill also predicts the launch of the next version of Google Talk/Hangouts, some news about Compute Engine and, of course, Google Glass – the star of last year’s event. The keynote is scheduled to last for a whopping three hours, so grab your coffee, donuts or popcorn, kick back, and enjoy the show. If you can’t watch the video, you can also find our play-by-play live blog here . Read more »
How A Car Crash Changed Vishal Sikka And The Direction Of SAP
It’s a rare fall rainy day in Palo Alto and SAP Executive Board Member Dr. Vishal Sikka is as sick as a dog. It’s less than a week until SAP Sapphire in Madrid and the community around him are like a worrying family. I had told them that it is okay. I could make the trip another time. But they were insistent I make the trip. Fast forward to May. Read more »
Cisco Meraki Launches “Presence”, With Facebook Account Log-In To Wireless Networks
Cisco Meraki has launched a new service called Presence that provides data about mobile behavior across location and automatic log-in to wireless hotspots using a person’s Facebook account. Presence additionally provides an API that allows integration with real-time location data into CRM and other business systems. Presence also allows for third-party data integration that can be analyzed with location-based information. Merak was acquired by Cisco last November for $1.2 billion . According to Josh Constine’s post, Meraki began as a research project at MIT in 2006. It provides mid to large-size companies, schools, and organizations with on-premise mesh Wi-Fi networking and security devices plus the software to manage them. Its technology is now integrated into Cisco access points. Read more »
Good Technology Raises $50M On Its Road To An IPO
Mobile device management company Good Technology has raised $50 million, according to a Securities and Exchange (SEC) filing . A company spokesperson confirmed the fundraising but had no comment about the purpose of the raise. The SEC document says the company is seeking a total of $60 million. Founded in 1996 and headquartered in Sunnyvale, Calif., Good Technology is backed by Oak Investment Partners , Draper Fisher Jurvetson , Meritech Capital Partners , DFJ ePlanet Ventures , DFJ Growth Fund , Rustic Canyon Ventures , Allegis Capital , GKM and Blueprint Ventures . In its E round, investors included Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers , Benchmark Advanced Equities , Crosslink Capital and Broadview Ventures . Good Technology plays in the fast-consolidating MDM market. It provides enterprise mobility technologies across multiple platforms and security and management software Read more »
Apple’s iPhone Continues To Show Strong Growth In The U.S., Samsung And Android Adoption Slow
Apple’s trajectory in the U.S. smartphone market over the past little while has been an upwards one, with the company gaining more and more iPhone subscribers every month. During the three-month period covering November 2012 to February 2013, Apple added 8.9 million new iPhone subscribers according to comScore , while Android as a platform in total added only 2.9 million. That means Apple’s share of the total smartphone subscriber base in the U.S. grew to 38.9 percent from 35 percent, while Android’s dropped from 53.7 to 51.7 percent. ComScore’s figures also show that in terms of smartphone manufacturers, Apple also continues to lead the pack. Its share among OEMs rose 3.9 percentage points during the three month period, while Samsung gained only 1 percent percentage point, rising from 20.3 percent of the U.S. market to 21.3 percent. Read more »
Facebook Home: The Winners And Losers
If Facebook Home flies — and that’s a pretty big if — Zuckerberg’s freshly announced landgrab for Android owners’ eyeballs, is going to create a lot of losers. The big winner of course will be Facebook itself, as users who chose to install this alternative Facebook reality on their phone are inevitably going to be spending even more time within its walled garden (and they already spent a lot of time in Zucksville), feeding it even more data to power its ad business. Facebook Home tucks other apps out of sight (and thus out of mind) in a little drawer where they can easily be forgotten, and replaces homescreen and lockscreen widgets with Facebook and Instagram photos and updates. Even if they’re still technically available , all other social distractions are banished from this kingdom, with the exception of SMS — but even that is dressed up to look like a Facebook service as it is assimilated into the Chat Heads messaging game . It can’t be long before those regular monthly updates Zuckerberg said would be coming to Home pile in even more Facebook sanctioned functionality — which, cuckoo like, will push out even more native and third party app offerings. Read more »
Marketo Files For $75M IPO To Grow SaaS Marketing Platform
Marketo , a marketing software platform, has announced its plans to file a $75 million IPO to further expand and build out its marketing software platform. Marketo will trade under “MKTO” on the Nasdaq exchange. Goldman, Sachs & Co. and Credit Suisse are listed as leading the offering. Marketo has raised $108 million. In November 2011, the company raised $50 million in a round led by Battery Ventures. In its SEC filing, Marketo states it generated revenue of $14 million in 2010, $32.4 million in 2011 and $58.4 million in 2012 Read more »