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explainer
explainer
Venture capitalists see money dry up in first quarter, but does it mean a drought?
In the first quarter of 2007, 83 venture capital firms raised about $6.3 billion. During this year's first quarter, that number dropped to 57 firms, a 32 percent plunge. The actual amount of capital invested remained flat year-over-year, reports Bits. A National Venture Capital Association flack insists the news doesn't mean venture capital is suffering from an economic downturn. More »
explainer
Why should you care about Google's App Engine?
Now that the announcement of Google's App Engine is official, it's opening up the company's cloud computing infrastructure as an API platform for Web application developers. Basically, it binds computing power, storage and database tools — much like Amazon.com's EC2, S3 and SimpleDB, respectively, but all tied together into one package. Plus, for the first 10,000 beta users at least, it'll be completely free up to a certain level of usage. What's in it for Google? More »
explainer
Why PayPal finds your money of interest
eBay's PayPal division will start holding payments for up to three weeks for certain "high-risk transactions" next month. Some sellers are pissed, but it's totally legal. PayPal is not a bank. It is not insured by the FDIC — the government program which insures deposits should a bank go under. PayPal is a "deposit broker," meaning the company pools deposits from all its users and holds them in bank accounts under PayPal's name, collecting interest on the money — and deposit brokers are not federally regulated. More »
explainer
Is Microsoft's offer for Yahoo "hostile"?
What do we call this Microsoft-Yahoo thing, anyway? "Merger"? "Buyout"? "Elaborate game of footsie"? It's not a hostile takeover — yet. But Steven Davidoff writes in DealBook that Microsoft could go hostile if Yahoo resists. Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer wrote:Depending on the nature of your response, Microsoft reserves the right to pursue all necessary steps to ensure that Yahoo!'s shareholders are provided with the opportunity to realize the value inherent in our proposal.If Yahoo's board of directors balks, Microsoft has a narrow window — mid-February to mid-March — to launch a proxy contest and unseat Yahoo's board. Until then, it's not a hostile deal. Let's just call it a "surly takeover" instead.
explainer
The decline and fall of Yahoo
Like a child actor, Yahoo has always lived its life in public — and suffered for it. Its April 1996 IPO, when the company had a mere 49 employees, cast it in the spotlight long before it was ready. And like Hollywood, the stock market looks coldly on a fallen star. Microsoft's offer of $44 billion is less than the company was worth in October 1999 — before the tech-stock bubble's grotesque inflation more than doubled that to $97 billion. It has never regained its swagger. More »
7:27 AM on Fri Feb 1 2008
By Owen Thomas
5,359 views,
18 comments
Latest by n/a: I was there from April, 2004, to Jan, 2006. I presented to a LOT of C-level people, SVP's, etc...and my title? Product manager :) Internally, I ran a project to get (gasp) for the first time, company wide metrics on one more »
explainer
Tumblr differs from most blog software: It doesn't just let you post entries; it also provides an interface for reading the blogs of other Tumblr users. In that regard, it's duplicating a feature available on LiveJournal for a decade — and yet its users still manage to find it befuddling. "Right now I'm following 35 people," Connected Ventures cofounder Rickvy Van Veen writes on his personal blog.
How to stop reading Tumblr blogs
Tumblr differs from most blog software: It doesn't just let you post entries; it also provides an interface for reading the blogs of other Tumblr users. In that regard, it's duplicating a feature available on LiveJournal for a decade — and yet its users still manage to find it befuddling. "Right now I'm following 35 people," Connected Ventures cofounder Rickvy Van Veen writes on his personal blog. Most of those people know how to use Tumblr responsibly and only post when they have something worthwhile to say. Others don't. First execution: Julia Allison. 40 posts a day? Are you f—-ing kidding?Executing friends is a great idea, Ricky! But what if you're like the New York Observer's Doree Shafrir — yes, the writer who recently profiled Tumblr CEO David Karp — and you don't know how to stop following someone on the site? Never fear, Valleywag's here to help you knock off your most annoying friends. More »
explainer
Microsoft, I'm told, "is involved in many broad industry dialogues, including the DataPortability Project, and is committed to being an integral part of the industry conversation on behalf of its users." Oops, sorry did I just inflict a bit of unfiltered flackspeak on you? Sorry. Translation: Microsoft wants you to think it's doing something about the fact that you have to keep signing up for different websites. Here's a video that kind of explains what data portability is, complete with mysterious accent.
What is data portability?
Microsoft, I'm told, "is involved in many broad industry dialogues, including the DataPortability Project, and is committed to being an integral part of the industry conversation on behalf of its users." Oops, sorry did I just inflict a bit of unfiltered flackspeak on you? Sorry. Translation: Microsoft wants you to think it's doing something about the fact that you have to keep signing up for different websites. Here's a video that kind of explains what data portability is, complete with mysterious accent.
explainer
Global dimming -- the 100-word-version
A handy rebuttal to the science-challenged handwringers you're stuck with through New Year's Day. Slate's Green Lantern columnist Brendan Koerner has boiled down the facts on global dimming. It turns out to be global brightening, except in India and China. I pared Koerner's piece even further to one snappy paragraph. More »
blogtards
Fake Steve shutdown drama explained
Folks, please stop emailing us that either (a) Valleywag is afraid to run the story that Apple is trying to shut down Fake Steve Jobs, or (b) Fake Steve author Dan Lyons is perpetrating a hoax to — I love this — to get onto Techmeme. Let me spell it out for you: LYONS IS KIDDING! He's trying — and failing — to illustrate that the legal settlement between Apple and Think Secret is a bad thing. Two reasons: (1) It's corporate thuggery from Apple, which once compared itself to friggin' Gandhi in an ad. (2) By shutting down and probably taking a payout, Think Secret's publisher has done himself a favor, but set a bad example. How much should Apple pay Valleywag to shut up? Ok, don't answer that, but you get my point.
explainer
Why John C. Dvorak got busted for "hotlinking"
PC Magazine columnist John C. Dvorak's blog proudly displays an image labeled as "used without permission." Is Dvorak bragging about the copyright violation? Nope. He's just pulled a boneheaded move known in the blogging world as "hotlinking," and the altered image shows that he got caught at it. More »
explainer
Amazon.com's SimpleDB is perfect for your stupid Web 2.0 startup
Those not initiated in the mysteries of databases, i.e. most of us, may think that Amazon.com's new SimpleDB service is competition for established databases from Microsoft, Oracle, and IBM. It's not. Nor is it, in the lofty language of Web-computing evangelists, a "cloud-based" alternative to large Web databases. But it's probably a perfect match for your stupid Web 2.0 startup, which makes it a genius move by Amazon. More »
explainer
How Digg's algorithm works -- the 100-word version
You already know how Digg works. Post a funny picture of Kevin Rose or a tribute to Apple's greatness and there you have it — you're on the front page. You're not wrong. But social media maven Muhammad Saleem says there's actually a little science to Digg as well. In a post on Search Engine Land, Saleem explains how Digg's algorithm does and doesn't work. He should know. Most of his recent Digg submissions have garnered several hundred votes. Good stuff, only it runs way too long. Here's our slimmed-down version. More »
explainer
Is there serious money in casual games?
Casual games are those Web-based entertainments your mom is no doubt playing while you hog the Xbox. But are they a real business? According to GigaOm, casual gamesmake up 10 percent of the videogame industry's $30 billion in revenues. A "hit" casual game can get as many as 7 million plays a month. And these free, ad-supported games may actually be a better prospect for marketers than regular videogames. Their audience is far more tolerant of TV-like interruptions than hardcore gamers. But when it comes to actual dollars, few developers are going to make real money from casual games. Most make a couple hundred to a couple thousand dollars a month, and no one is getting rich off an ad-supported model. Some developers are turning to micropayments — small charges for in-game items, new levels, or extra play modes — to help pad their wallets.
the explainer
What's a "lead investor"?
Wantrepreneurs are all talk. Actual entrepreneurs — like you, dear reader — know what the words they say mean. Blogging VC Fred Wilson makes an effort to help by defining the term "lead investor." I suspect anyone ambitious enough to benefit from his advice will be too impatient to wade through it. Forthwith, the 100-word version. More »
explainer
What you need to know about Microsoft's Popfly
Software giant Microsoft is getting the attention of the geek blogosphere for moving its drag-and-drop Web mashup development tool, Popfly, into public testing. Why? Because it has a cute name? Because it's being pitched to everyday Internet users who aren't developers — women, even? (As if women don't program now.) Because it's being pitched as an easy way to build widgets for popular social networks MySpace and Facebook? For all those reasons, sure. But that's not why you should care about Popfly. More »
explainer
Adobe's latest Flash move could be the death of amateur Web video
Yippee! No more crappy, blurry YouTube videos! No more pixelated garbage filling every corner of the Web! Adobe's addition of the advanced H.264 high-definition codec — "codec" being a fancy way of saying "video algorithm" — to its popular Flash software. Flash, of course, has become the ubiquitous means of distributing video on the Web. Adding H.264 will finally bring high-quality moving images into the Web mainstream, and put an end to the rein of amateurism in online video. Or will it? Not so fast. More »
explainer
