Tech News Stop - Sharing by Wasim Akhtar

::::Facebook raises IPO range, targets $12.1 bln: source::::

<div class="custm_img_blk"><img src="http://www.techgig.com/files/photo_1337045343_temp.jpg" border="0" width="250" height="200" align="left" /></div>Facebook Inc has raised the price range on its initial public offering to $34 to $38 a share in response to strong demand, a source familiar with the situation said, giving the No.1 social network a valuation exceeding $100 billion.At the mid-point of $36, Facebook would raise $12.1 billion by selling 337.4 million shares. The company founded in a Harvard dorm room by Mark Zuckerberg, who turned 28 on Monday, had originally aimed for $28 to $35 a share.Wall Street had expected the company to increase the price range, with investors keen to get in on Silicon Valley's largest ever IPO that eclipses Google Inc's (GOOG.O) 2004 debut. Its roadshow began last week and has drawn crowds.The company plans to close the books on its IPO on Tuesday, two days ahead of schedule and in a signal that the landmark initial share sale is drumming up strong demand, a second source familiar with the deal told Reuters earlier.The social network is scheduled on Thursday to price its shares, then begin trading on Friday.The IPO is already "well oversubscribed," which is why the company is closing its books earlier than anticipated, the source said.The raised price range marks an increase of 21 percent on the lower end. A hike of more than 20 percent typically means the company would have to file an amendment with the Securities and Exchange Commission.Company spokesman Jonny Thaw declined to comment on Monday.The IPO comes amid concerns from some investors that Facebook hasn't yet figured out a way to make money from an increasing number of users who access the social network on mobile devices such as smartphones.Facebook will continue with its roadshow for the rest of the week, said a third source familiar with the deal, and investors who haven't yet attended a roadshow presentation will still be able to place orders.Company executives met with prospective investors in Chicago on Monday and are slated to travel to Kansas City and Denver, before returning to Menlo Park, California, where Facebook is headquartered.A host of Wall Street banks are underwriting Facebook's offering, with Morgan Stanley (MS.N), JPMorgan (JPM.N) and Goldman Sachs (GS.N) serving as leads. Facebook will trade on Nasdaq under the symbol FB.CNBC reported the higher price range earlier, citing sources.

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::::UK Broadband: Customers paying for average 12Mbps, only getting 7Mbps::::

<img src="http://www.techgig.com/files/photo_1336961232_temp.jpg" border="0" alt="Image" width="300" height="200" align="left" />Broadband customers in the UK are, on average, receiving speeds around 42 per cent less than advertised, a new investigation from the Guardian has revealed.A survey of over 3,000 broadband users in the UK found that the average UK household is paying for connection speeds of 12Mbps, but only obtaining 7Mbps.Although the dubious nature of advertised broadband speeds has long been a point of contention, the report highlights the huge disparity users are experiencing.The results were obtained from a Guardian online speed test, as part of a campaign to improve the UK's broadband infrastructure.<h3 style="width: 480px; margin-top: 20px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 10px; margin-left: 0px">TalkTalk the worst offender</h3>The survey found TalkTalk and Sky to be the biggest offenders with a 60 per cent shortfall in its advertised speeds.The former offered an average of 5Mbps with 8Mbps advertised, while Sky customers only got 4.8Mbps when they were paying for 12Mbps.Virgin Media shortchanged customers by a slightly-less-than average 41 per cent according to the Guardian, while BT performed best by only posting a 25 per cent shortfall.

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::::World wide web facing threat from tech companies seeking to play gatekeepers::::

<div class="custm_img_blk"><img src="http://www.techgig.com/files/photo_1336961048_temp.jpg" border="0" width="200" height="150" align="left" /></div>Two decades after its advent changed our lives, theworld wide web - as we know it - faces a grave threat. Not from governments alone, but also from tech companies seeking to play gatekeepers.  The /b/ section at www.4chan.org is so extreme in nature that even web veterans squirm at the thought of going through it. Anyone can post virtually any picture here. Anonymously. It doesn't matter if the pictures are obscene , graphic or gory.  Yet, 4Chan, which was started by a 15-year-old in 2003, is an integral part of the world wide web. The large community at 4Chan mirrors the virtual world - lawless and anarchic in the traditional sense, highly innovative, funny and sometimes disturbing. Barry Newstead, chief global development officer of Wikimedia that manages Wikipedia, puts it succinctly.  "The internet has been giving ordinary people the voice and the ability to contribute content and ideas and opinions. Sometimes we use it to create pictures of funny cats and sometimes it's the world's largest encyclopedia ," he says.  Until recently, it seems governments just noticed the funny cats. They left the web to its own devices. At the same time, the egalitarian ethos on which the web was founded - Tim Berners-Lee developed it and gave it away for free - kept realworld barriers, which corporations and people often put around their environment, away from it. In 2012, it looks like the honeymoon is over.  'CIVILIZING' THE NET  Perhaps the problem is that, for all its perceived flaws, the internet has worked wonderfully well."Too well," says Jeff Jarvis, author of 'Public Parts' , a book on internet culture. It has allowed people to create Google, Facebook, Hotmail, WikiLeaks, Wikipedia and thousands of other websites and services that have changed lives.  Last year Jarvis was in Paris, participating in e-G 8 called by then French president Nicholas Sarkozy. He heard the Frenchman's plans to"civilize" the web. "Nobody should forget governments are the only legitimate representatives of the will of the people in our democracies," said Sarkozy.  His sentiments are shared by politicians across the world, including in India. Just three days ago, Congress MP Shantaram Naik, aghast at the "filthy" comments on a website, said in the Rajya Sabha that the internet needs to be "purified" . Different politicians and governments have different reasons. But regulation is growing. In the last few years, governments across the world have proposed or enacted laws (see box) that aim to "civilize" the web.Why the urgency? Is the internet broken? Jarvis says it is not. "The net is operating no differently today than it was a decade ago. But we see so many efforts to fix it - to regulate it under the cloak of privacy, piracy, decency, security, and even civility," he says. "I believe legacy institutions, including governments, are waking up to the extent of the net's disruptive force... they are trying to control the net and govern the change it causes."  Sunil Abraham, director of Centre for Internet and Society, says that in the last two years governments have doubled their efforts to control the web. "During the revolutions in Arab countries last year, protesters mobilized themselves through Twitter and Facebook. Then there are Wikileaks and Anonymous. This has made governments and politicians jittery," says Abraham.  'WALLED GARDENS'  Excessive regulation is not the only challenge the web is facing. There is a more subtle, yet equally dangerous, threat from the world of apps. As smartphones and tablets get more popular, companies like Apple,Google and Microsoft have pioneered the concept of a centralized store to deliver programs and services to users.  Unlike the web, which makes it easy for anyone to access a service - and, more importantly, offer a service - the world of apps is a controlled one. Companies that control the app ecosystem act as gatekeepers. For example, Apple's guidelines suggest developers cannot offer apps that compete with the company's own services.  Then, there is restriction on the content that is perceived by Apple as pornographic, obscene, violent or racist. Microsoft and Google have a similar set of rules for their app stores, though Google's store is perceived to have more relaxed guidelines. Last week, Facebook announced it would open an app store.  Users don't seem to mind it. This has made the web virtually irrelevant on smartphones and tablets . According to a report by comScore last week, the web on mobiles is dead. The market research agency's study in the US found that smartphone users spend over 80% of their time inside apps and the web is accessed only occasionally. Now companies are bringing these 'walled gardens' into our computers. Apple introduced the appstore on Mac last year.  Microsoft, whose software powers over 90% of the world's PCs, will introduce an app store in Windows 8 later this year. Users are being gradually nudged towards a future where the open web may not matter at all. Companies say that app stores allow them to offer better computing experience to users. "With apps we can integrate software and hardware properly.  We can take care of cyber threats. We can make the content safe for kids and families," says Harish Vaidyanathan, who deals with app developers in India as Microsoft's director of evangelism. But Berners-Lee sees it differently.<div id="storydiv" class="storydiv" style="color: #404040; font-size: 13px; font-family: arial; line-height: 18px; padding: 0px; margin: 0px"><div style="padding: 0px; margin: 0px">"Some people may think that closed worlds are just fine," he wrote in an essay two years ago. "The worlds are easy to use and may seem to give those people what they want... But these closed, walled gardens, no matter how pleasing, can never compete in diversity , richness and innovation with the mad, throbbing web outside their gates."  Nations press Ctrl key  Regulation, globally, is on the rise  DRAFT COMMUNICATIONS BILL, UK  Proposes to give police sweeping powers to monitor web traffic. Canada's Bill C-30 and America's Cyber Intelligence Sharing and Protection Act (CISPA) are similar. UK also thinking of limiting access to porn sites by making it an opt-in feature  MONITORING SOCIAL MEDIA  India, Kuwait, Tajikistan, Vietnam, Tunisia, Pakistan are all trying to "civilize" web chatter  ACTA  Signed by 30 nations, the Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement aims at reducing piracy and copyright infringements  STOP ONLINE PIRACY ACT, US  Proposes drastic steps like DNS-level blocking of sites  THREE STRIKES  In force in France and New Zealand, the copyright law directs ISPs to monitor users for piracy and cut their connections after 3 notices. Last year, UN said three-strike laws violate human rights  RUSSIAN AMENDMENTS  Provisions introduced in civil law last year make ISPs responsible for copyright violation by users  LEY SINDE, SPAIN  Enacted last year, the law aims to prosecute those who share pirated material on the web and puts undue pressure on intermediaries  TIGHTER CONTROL  Several countries such as China, Iran and Saudi Arabia,filter and monitor the web to keep it "clean" . Belarus, Iraq, Lebanon, Thailand, South Korea and Turkey have recently joined the club  ... AND IN INDIA  Ever since India introduced a set of new IT rules in April last year, web activists have been up in arms. The rules put a lot of liability on intermediaries - such as internet service providers (ISPs) - for the conduct of users and make it easier for authorities to remove content from the web. Recently P Rajeev, a CPM MP from Kerala, moved a motion in the Rajya Sabha seeking annulment of the rules. Rajeev's motion is likely to come up for discussion on Tuesday.  Seeing a window of opportunity, web activists have kicked off a fresh campaign against the IT rules. Lawyer Prasanth Sugathan, counsel to Software Freedom Law Centre (SFLC), says, "We do need laws but not the ones that the Indian government framed last year. These IT rules are plain arbitrary."  The SFLC is running an online signature campaign. And the Centre for Internet and Society has asked Indian web users to bombard their MPs with emails explaining why the new IT rules need to be scrapped. Sugathan says many organizations have joined hands for the cause; meetings have been held in several cities to raise awareness about the issue. Volunteers of one group called Save Your Voice protested through a hungerstrike at Jantar Mantar in Delhi last week.</div></div>

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::::Digital Wallet Battle Heats Up As Visa And MasterCard Enter The Game::::

<div class="custm_img_blk"><img src="http://www.techgig.com/files/photo_1336960774_temp.jpg" border="0" align="left" /></div>This week, two of the major players in the credit card industry, Visa and MasterCard launched their online digital wallet services. Known as V.me (Visa’s) and PayPass Wallet Services (MasterCard), both are very similar initiatives which see the companies clamoring to become the credit card of choice for digital transactions, the way they fight today to be the credit card for all the other transactions taking place out there in the real world.And, to be clear, a “digital” wallet isn’t necessarily the same as a “mobile wallet,” although a digital wallet service could also be housed in a mobile app interface, as both MasterCard and Visa plan on offering in the near future.While neither of these companies are the types of early stage startups TechCrunch typically favors, their moves will have an impact on a number of companies already operating in this space, likePayPal and Square, as well as those that aim to disrupt the payments industry like Dwolla. Below are the details of what was announced and how the two services compare.<h2 style="margin-top: 15px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 15px; margin-left: 0px; padding: 0px">Visa V.me</h2>Visa’s digital payments service, V.me, wants to make it easier for consumers to shop online, whether via web, mobile or tablet. The service is effectively a digital wallet, which stores not only your Visa card information, but also your MasterCard, American Express and Discover cards. When you’re on a supported merchant’s website, instead of entering in your payment information and shipping preferences manually (as is par for the course today), you only have to enter in your V.me email and password. The merchant still receives your payment through Visa’s network, but your 16-digit card number is not displayed on the site, which adds another layer of security to the transaction.In the future, Visa plans to introduce a mobile payments element to the service as well by leveraging NFC, QR codes and “other technology,” which would allow you to tap your phone to a secure reader at the point-of-sale in order to pay for your purchase, scan a QR code or perform some other type of interaction. Support for offers based on your activity and interests will be rolled out later on, too, the company says.This week, Visa took a major step in making the V.me service a reality. The company announced its beta launch, with its first online merchants, PacSun.com and Buy.com, adding support for the program on its site. The V.me acceptance mark is now visible on the login and checkout pages of both sites.Visa says it’s currently focused on scaling V.me within the U.S. market, but a global rollout is on its roadmap. Over the coming months (Visa won’t provide exact dates), V.me will launch on a number of other e-commerce sites.<h2 style="margin-top: 15px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 15px; margin-left: 0px; padding: 0px">MasterCard PayPass Wallet Services</h2>MasterCard, too, has its own take on digital wallets, and unveiled its new PayPass Wallet service this week. The PayPass Wallet is an extension to MasterCard’s already fairly well-known PayPass brand, which offers tap-and-go, NFC-enabled payments that work via PayPass-enabled (NFC) phones, cards, key fobs, or mobile tags at over 441,000 locations worldwide. The same credentials stored in the digital wallet for online payments (PayPass Wallet) can also be accessed for tap-and-go purchases on an NFC-enabled phone through a mobile app.Like V.me, MasterCard’s PayPass Wallet is an open solution, and allows consumers to add their Visa, American Express and Discover cards, whether credit, debit or prepaid. It also keeps your shipping info on file, for faster online checkouts. And, like V.me, PayPass Wallet is making a splash with some big-name launch partners. In this case: American Airlines and Barnes & Noble. Both merchants will incorporate the PayPass Online checkout button on their websites, and American Airlines will go a step further and integrate PayPass Wallet into its own mobile application.Other merchants committed to the solution include  Jagex, JB Hi-Fi, MLB Advanced Media (MLB.com), Newegg, Runningshoes.com, TigerDirect.com and Wine Enthusiast Companies.Several banks are on board too, including Banesto, Bank of Montreal, Commonwealth Bank, Citibank, EURO6000, Fifth Third Bank, Grupo Banco Popular, Grupo BBVA, ICBA, Intesa Sanpaolo, Metro Bank, National Bank of Canada, PSCU, RBS Citizens Financial Group, SEB Kort AB Sweden, Sovereign Bank, Swedbank Sweden and Westpac.The solution will be offered as a white label, meaning banks, merchants and other partners can use the PayPass Wallet platform within their own digital wallets. This option will go live by Q3 2012, initially in the U.S., Canada, U.K. and Australia.Finally, like V.me, MasterCard’s PayPass Wallet will roll out to point-of-sale and as a mobile application in the future, but MasterCard isn’t providing exact timeframes on when those solutions will arrive. The mobile app, though, is not necessarily being targeted at consumers, but at the banking partners.“This initiative provides issuers with a turnkey solution to quickly launch a wallet with their own branding using our reference wallet or the freedom to connect their own wallet into our PayPass network,” explains Ed Olebe, Senior Vice President and Group Head, Emerging Payments, MasterCard. “PayPass Wallet Services will accept all credit, debit and prepaid MasterCard, American Express, Discover and Visa cards as long as the merchant or financial institution accepts those cards,” he says.Those with an NFC phone can continue to tap-and-go as they do now, but soon, both NFC and non-NFC users will be able to take advantage of the other benefits of the PayPass platform, including at-a-glance account information which you can peek at prior to making a purchase, spending controls, real-time alerts, and, of course, coupons and targeted offers.The above solutions from the top two credit card companies are notable because of their news this past week, but they’re far from being the only competitors in the space. Outside of startups like Square and PayPal, mentioned above, Google is dabbling with its own mobile wallet/mobile checkout play called Google Wallet and the U.S. mobile carriers are ramping up a mobile payments initiative called Isis. (Worldwide, other carriers have their own programs, too).However, in terms of credit card companies, American Express is another important player in the space. With its previously announced Serve platform, it’s not only competing head-to-head in the online payments space, it’s also working to enable other features like peer-to-peer payments, for example.With so many similarities between the services and some confusion on branding, the problem will soon become one of too much choice. Should you go with V.me or MasterCard’s PayPass (or a PayPass Wallet rebranded by your bank, perhaps?), Serve or PayPal? Wait, PayPal works at point-of-sale too? Does Google Wallet work on my phone? What’s Isis?Although the names of the credit card companies are already familiar, the programs themselves are not. All the players will need to work to deliver clear messages to consumers about what they can and cannot do.

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::::Five Ways Native Monetization Is Changing Silicon Valley::::

<div class="custm_img_blk"><img src="http://www.techgig.com/files/photo_1336960700_temp.jpg" border="0" align="left" /></div>Dan Greenberg is the founder & CEO of Sharethrough, the native video advertising company. Dan has been honored as an AdAge “Media Maven” and was recently named to the Forbes “30 under 30″ list. You can find him on Twitter at @dgreenberg.With a $100 billion IPO pending, it’s with confident defiance that Facebook has thumbed its nose at traditional web advertising models. On Facebook, despite their $5 billion 2012 forecasted ad revenue, you’ll see no prerolls, no rich media ads, no “punch the monkeys,” and no interruption. Facebook is leading the charge for a new generation of media companies who are building their businesses on “native” advertising models, a fundamental shift away from the traditional interruptive ad models that users have learned to ignore. Facebook’s commitment to native monetization signals significant change to come.<div id="attachment_550841" class="wp-caption alignnone" style="width: 650px; padding: 0px; margin: 0px"><img class="size-full wp-image-550841" src="http://tctechcrunch2011.files.wordpress.com/2012/05/facebook-video.jpg?w=640&h=447" border="0" title="facebook-video" width="640" height="447" />Native advertising on Facebook</div>Native advertising is a new form of inventory that seamlessly integrates promoted content from brand advertisers into the fabric of a site itself. Native advertising inventory is content that’s part of the site experience rather than ads that interrupt users, such as pre-roll video ads or boxes, buttons, and banners on the corners of pages. Facebook’s Sponsored Stories are one of the largest bets on native advertising in the ad industry – a bet that’s consistent with the ad strategies of the dominant social media platforms such as Twitter, YouTube, StumbleUpon and the coming ad products from the next wave of internet elite like Tumblr and Spotify.<div id="attachment_550919" class="wp-caption alignnone" style="width: 650px; padding: 0px; margin: 0px"><img class="size-full wp-image-550919" src="http://tctechcrunch2011.files.wordpress.com/2012/05/twitter.jpg?w=640&h=585" border="0" width="640" height="585" />Promoted Tweets on Twitter</div>The appeal of “native” monetization models is that they create an alignment between a company’s business model (create/publish/curate content) with their revenue model (promote brand content that fits into the site experience), just as Google did with search ads that are relevant to search results. Google AdWords was the original native monetization pioneer, paving the way for Sponsored Stories on Facebook, Promoted Tweets on Twitter, TrueView promoted videos on YouTube, Paid Discovery on StumbleUpon, and Sharethrough’s Promoted Videos.  These examples are only a handful of a large and growing movement of promoted branded content experiences that have replaced traditional one-way ad formats.  Social content sites such as Cheezburger, BuzzFeed as well as publishers like Gawker and The Awl have also followed suit.<div id="attachment_550921" class="wp-caption alignnone" style="width: 650px; padding: 0px; margin: 0px"><img class="size-full wp-image-550921" src="http://tctechcrunch2011.files.wordpress.com/2012/05/dailywhat.jpg?w=640&h=904" border="0" title="dailywhat" width="640" height="904" />Native Video ads on The Daily What, a Cheezburger site</div>The success of these companies in figuring out native monetization models has sparked a number of broad-based changes in the startup economy.  Here are five ways native monetization is changing the game for startups in Silicon Valley and beyond.1. Native is now the starting point for monetization strategy. The success of companies such as Facebook and Twitter around native monetization, as well as social content sites such asBuzzFeed, hasn’t gone unnoticed by the next generation of entrepreneurs.  For these digital natives, their starting point wasn’t ever going to be display ads, popups, or prerolls – their starting point for monetization is native.  You’re already seeing companies like Spotify introducing branded playlists and Tumblr enabling brands to promote their posts.  The next generation of internet elite are bypassing the display ad slog altogether and creating ad products that enable brands to engage natively with their audiences.<div id="attachment_550922" class="wp-caption alignnone" style="width: 626px; padding: 0px; margin: 0px"><img class="size-full wp-image-550922" src="http://tctechcrunch2011.files.wordpress.com/2012/05/tumblrsponsoredspotlight_616.jpg?w=640" border="0" title="tumblrsponsoredspotlight_616" />Lionsgate used native advertising on Tumblr to promote “The Hunger Games”</div>2. Native is turning heads in the venture community. The value of native monetization hasn’t been lost on the venture community either.  Imagine an entrepreneur telling a prospective investor that their monetization model is to slap display ads in the corners of their site – not going to happen.  For the next generation of startups looking to build long-term businesses, AdSense is just not a viable option.  Instead, the startups that can articulate a roadmap for building a native monetization model through ad products that fit uniquely within their sites will find a much more receptive audience. Can you imagine if Pinterest introduced display ad banners to the site (see below)?  Users would revolt.<div id="attachment_550860" class="wp-caption alignnone" style="width: 650px; padding: 0px; margin: 0px"><img class="size-full wp-image-550860" src="http://tctechcrunch2011.files.wordpress.com/2012/05/pinterest.jpg?w=640&h=511" border="0" title="Pinterest" width="640" height="511" />Pinterest has an ad-free interface, yet it is proving to be a powerful weapon for brands.</div>3. Native shepherds in a new wave of ad tech. There are countless sites and apps that have the ability to offer integrated, unique native ad experiences, but instead are still monetizing with AdSense or other standard display options. Why? Because it’s easy to set up, it does not require a direct sales team and their developers can focus exclusively on making their site experience as good as possible. While none of these motivations is going to change for publishers, the desire to offer native ad products will only increase as they see the industry increasingly heading that way. As a result, technology companies that can enable publishers to create and monetize native ad experiences will be a big growth area in the coming years.  A new crop of native monetization tech companies have emerged like Sharethrough for native video ads, Outbrain for natively promoted articles, and Solve Media for native ads in captchas, to name a few.<div id="attachment_550923" class="wp-caption alignnone" style="width: 650px; padding: 0px; margin: 0px"><img class="size-full wp-image-550923" src="http://tctechcrunch2011.files.wordpress.com/2012/05/google.jpg?w=640&h=479" border="0" title="google" width="640" height="479" />The next wave of Silicon Valley ad tech gamechangers will help publishers monetize with native ad formats.</div>4. Advertising is no longer a dirty word for engineers. The most consistent users of “ad blocker” technology are Silicon Valley engineers. Advertising is just not a sexy pursuit for most engineers, largely because the bulk of advertising detracts from a site experience and annoys its users.  So it’s understandable that an engineer is not motivated to put in their blood, sweat and tears to increase the amount of interruption and add to the thoughtless ads on the web. Times are changing, though – native monetization offers a host of compelling technical challenges that are all in service of building a better internet, one where advertisers create value for users instead of interrupting them.  Some of the best engineering minds in Silicon Valley, like Kevin Weil and Gokul Rajaram, now work on the “revenue engineering” teams at Facebook and Twitter.<div id="attachment_550795" class="wp-caption alignnone" style="width: 490px; padding: 0px; margin: 0px"><img class="size-full wp-image-550795" src="http://tctechcrunch2011.files.wordpress.com/2012/05/mekanism_colorwall_0.jpg?w=640" border="0" title="mekanism_colorwall_0" />Mekanism, a creative agency based in San Francisco, won last year’s “AdAge Small Agency of the Year” award.</div>5. Native advertising empowers the creative industry in Silicon Valley. A brand’s ability to succeed with native ads is tied to the ability of the creative industry to continue creating great brand content for the native medium.  Promoted Tweets, Sponsored Stories and Paid Discovery are all new forms of media that the best creative agencies intimately understand and embrace.  Just like the cottage industry that grew up in Silicon Valley around SEO, we are seeing creative shops in Silicon Valley and the Bay Area come up in a big way. Groundbreaking Bay Area creative agencies likeMekanism, EVB and Pereira & O’Dell, as well as production shops like Portal A Interactive andSeedwell,  have all been built from the ground up around the DNA of Silicon Valley and have quickly become major players in the global ad game.  With a shared vision for a future where brands create and distribute content that creates value, not ads that interrupt and annoy, Silicon Valley’s creative minds are setting the tone for the next stage of worldwide digital advertising.Portal A’s tech-celebrity-inspired video for SF Mayor Ed Lee redefined what a campaign video can be.

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::::PayPal Gets Its Own Share Of The Yahoo Diaspora, Hires JavaScript Icon Douglas Crockford::::

<img src="http://www.techgig.com/files/photo_1336960567_temp.jpg" border="0" width="200" height="150" align="left" /><div class="custm_img_blk">The reorganizing and downsizing at Yahoo — and possibly the executive scandal at the very top of the pyramid — are leading to a wave of talent departures at the company: the latest in that story is that Douglas Crockford, a trailblazing JavaScript guru most recently at Yahoo, has joined eBay’s payment giant PayPal.</div>The news was announced by Bill Scott, PayPal’s senior director of UI engineering, on his own blog, yesterday. Scott himself had also worked at Yahoo years ago and joined PayPal six months ago from Netflix.“Welcome aboard Doug! Stoked to be working with you again <img class="wp-smiley" src="http://s0.wp.com/wp-includes/images/smilies/icon_smile.gif?m=1334688549g" border="0" alt=":-)" /> ,” Scott wrote yesterday. (It was a note I first saw via HackerNews.)The news signifies the Yahoo story coming full circle in way: Yahoo’s CEO Scott Thompson, currently the subject of so much scrutiny over his past experience, himself comes from PayPal and has hired other executives away from his former employer in his strategy to rebuild the struggling internet giant. (Sam Schrauger coming on board in April to lead its new consumer commerce unit is one of the latest.)The departure is also ironic, given how Yahoo’s recovery should rest on the talent that it has working there.<img class="alignright size-full wp-image-551139" src="http://tctechcrunch2011.files.wordpress.com/2012/05/crock.jpg?w=640" border="0" title="crock" />Looking ahead, the hiring raises some questions of what new products and services we might expect next from PayPal. Java (not JavaScript) is used in featurephones, Android and web interfaces.So far there is little information on what he will be doing. “Part of a lot of changes happening at PayPal. Working hard to get the inside changes out to our customers,” Scott wrote of Crockford’s hire on Twitter earlier.Crockford, according to Wikipedia (he doesn’t do LinkedIn, didn’t like total strangers using it to reach out to him), was most recently a senior JavaScript architect at Yahoo. He has played a significant role in the development in JavaScript-based technologies. These have included the development of JavaScript and related tools and the JSON data format, as well as Yahoo’s User Interface Library. In the past he also worked at Atari, LucasFilm and Paramount.Update: I’ve heard back from Bill Scott with some more detail on the appointment.Crockford is reporting to chief architect Edwin Aoki and his mission, with Scott, will be to extend PayPal’s platform activities and “make PayPal the destination for web developers/JavaScript engineers.”He continues: ”Doug will be working on very similar tasks that he worked on at Yahoo! Specifically looking at ways to make JavaScript more secure, evangelizing JS throughout the organization, continuing his work on the ECMA committee, being the face of JS for PayPal, continuing his speaking/teaching tours around the world, etc. In addition he will be partnering with me on more ways to utilize JS both in the server and on the browser for PayPal, working with me to sharpen the skills of our engineers around the globe on all things Javascript and help me attract the top talent in the industry.” He says that PayPal is “moving rapidly” from C++ to Java as a backend technology, but also says that he cannot comment on specifics about the mobile strategy or other product decisions.

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::::StrayBoots CEO Discusses Making $12 Per Game, And Itâ€™s Only On SMS!::::

<div class="custm_img_blk"><img src="http://www.techgig.com/files/photo_1336960452_temp.jpg" border="0" width="200" height="150" align="left" /></div>Very rarely do we see gaming startups launch on the rather limited platform of SMS. Mobile games are all about the graphics, the functionality, and the ability to leverage the very best of technology through an app. But StrayBoots, a real-world scavenger hunt via text, has managed to generate $200,000 in revenue over the past 12 months, with nearly 50,000 paying customers.Oh, and did I mention that it’s all through SMS?The margins must be incredible, considering that CEO Avi Millman explained that each two- to three-hour scavenger hunt costs the user between $6 and $12 and it’s currently only available on one phone per game.The company also has deals in place with Time Out, Serious Eats, MyCityWay, and Leisure Pass North America, wherein the partnerships will create co-branded nightlife and food games that are to be promoted by both parties.It works rather simply: just go to the StrayBoots website and choose a city and a game category, like restaurants or museums. You’ll then be emailed a code for your game, and once you’re in the specified starting point, just text the code in to StrayBoots. You can go at whatever pace you’d like, and play on a team, against a team, or by yourself.The game currently supports walking tours in the following cities: New York, Chicago, San Francisco, Las Vegas, Washington D.C., Seattle, Boston, Los Angeles, Nashville, New Orleans, Philadelphia, Portland, San Diego, and the U.K.iOS and Android apps are in the works.

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