Blog

VentureCamp, an 8-week-long high-tech startup boot camp that will house aspiring entrepreneurs in the city’s renowned Kessler Mansion, launches this June and is currently accepting online submissions online. Among those who’ve agreed to mentor VentureCamp attendees are Priceline cofounder Jeff Hoffman and Karl Mehta, the founder and former CEO of Playspan.

PRESS RELEASE:

VentureCamp is an 8 week high-tech start-up boot camp with a unique interactive Docu-Series twist, launching in the US on June 2nd. The first set of ‘Campers’ will live and work at the renowned Kessler Mansion (http://www.kesslermansion.com/) in Indianapolis with future camps planned at private estates across the US and Europe. Unlike traditional programs, which ask aspiring entrepreneurs to pay for advice, mentoring and workshops, VentureCamp is free to the future business leaders chosen to participate.

VentureCamp’s Fully Immersive New Startup Ecosystem will be showcased through an interactive Docu-Series, and a virtual gaming platform, where viewers can engage and partake in the entrepreneur’s journey.
VentureCamp is currently accepting online submissions at http://venturecamp.com.

VentureCampers will be coached and mentored by a host of high profile successful entrepreneurs such as Jeff Hoffman (Priceline.com), Mike DeLazzer (RedBox), Karl Mehta, (PlaySpan/Visa), Albert Angel (CertiCall), and Sergio Fernandez De Cordova (Infrastructure Media Group).

VentureCamp Co-founder and Chairman Chad Folkening says, ”Our Campers will have an opportunity to learn how to be successful entrepreneurs from the best and brightest in business in an amazing setting.” Speaking to VentureCamps being run out of luxury estates around the world, Jeff Hoffman, Co-Founder of Priceline and a VentureCamp mentor adds “No better way to inspire success than to be surrounded by it.” Folkening further explains, “Each business launched at the camp will also get instant access to targeted web traffic to jumpstart their companies by being awarded with premium domains.”

VentureCamp CEO and Co-Founder Giadha Aguirre De Carcer also notes, “Part of our mission is to empower entrepreneurs everywhere. Our curriculum and program structure is designed to foster innovation, social entrepreneurship, and job creation in a digestible and entertaining way.” DeCarcer adds, “The Camp and Campers will be filmed for our Docu-Series giving the entrepreneurs an opportunity to raise their startup’s profile as well as to connect to future partners, investors and customers.”

VentureCamp is based on the idea that launching a successful high-tech business in our new economy does not require you to be in Silicon Valley or Silicon Alley. It can be done anywhere with the right people. Jeff Hoffman captures it best as he notes, “I don’t spend time launching companies anymore. I launch entrepreneurs.”

Mentor Bios included below. For more information or to schedule an interview, please contact Jennifer Chikes at 917-657-5476 or [email protected]

VentureCamp is a fully immersive new Startup Ecosystem taking place in luxury estates around the world. Leveraging world-renowned serial entrepreneurs and a proven curriculum, VentureCamp guides and coaches participants to launch successful businesses in 8 weeks.

The Kessler Mansion will host the initial VentureCamp this June in Indianapolis. Featured on HGTV’s Extreme Home, the estate is 26,000 square feet and includes such unique features as quartz walls and floating staircases.

Sponsors & Partners

VentureCamp is pleased to partner with the following organizations to promote entrepreneurship everywhere.

Entrepreneurs Organization (EO)

http://www.eonetwork.org

EO is a global community that enriches members’ lives through dynamic peer-to-peer learning and once-in-a-lifetime experiences. We are the catalyst that enables entrepreneurs to learn from each other, leading to greater business success and an enriched personal life.

ShiftGroup

http://www.Shiftgroup.com

ShiftGroup’s mission is to create a sustainable world, transformed by entrepreneurs. Moving businesses to more sustainable, environmentally aware and socially responsible models through empowered entrepreneurs’ innovations. ShiftGroup program participants learn to leverage profits from implementation of social and environmental practices, lead their industry with state-of-the-art sustainable business practices, increase success rate by joining an experienced entrepreneur community, and compete effectively through constant entrepreneur training.

The International Women Leadership Association (The IWLA)

http://www.theiwla.com

It is the dream, the passion, the commitment – and the challenge – of The International Women’s Leadership Association to provide useful, meaningful resources to every mother, daughter, sister, and friend that enhance every woman’s opportunity to reach her greatest level of personal and professional development; and in so doing make it possible for every women to realize her own goals, her own potential, her own dreams.

Compass Fellowship

http://compassfellows.org

The Compass Fellowship, supported by the Kenneth Cole Foundation, is a global family of young social innovators supported by peer and professional Mentors. The Compass Fellowship is a one-year program that identifies the most passionate first-year undergraduates at schools around the country, inspires them to start a social venture, and empowers them to solve the world’s greatest problems with socially-conscious business.

Syracuse Sandbox

http://www.syracusestudentsandbox.com/

The Syracuse Student Sandbox is a unique business incubator that gives aspiring student entrepreneurs the resources to make their visions a reality. The objective of the Sandbox is to accelerate the process of ideation, development and deployment through mentoring and coaching. The twelve week experiential based program has an end-goal of producing revenue generating entities or investment ready firms.

Collegiate Entrepreneurs Organization (CEO)

http://www.c-e-o.org

Entrepreneurship as a field of study at colleges and universities across the U.S. and around the world has become a leading subject at the undergraduate and graduate level. With this increased attention, it is more important than ever to give students the opportunities to network not only with their student peers, but with fellow entrepreneurs in the business world to promote entrepreneurship at all levels and in all environments. And, this is where CEO comes in.

VeTransfer

http://www.vetransfer.org

VeTransfer provides a hands-on learning experience for Veterans who want to become entrepreneurs. Unlike traditional business plan writing programs that focus on ideas, VeTransfer’s programs focus on ACTION. Veterans directly engage with customers to test the validity of their business model, while interacting with mentors that can help interpret what the Veteran is hearing from potential customers. VeTransfer is a national program sponsored by the Department of Veterans Affairs to support Veteran entrepreneurship.

TiE

TiE Global

The Indus Entrepreneurs (TiE), was founded in 1992 in Silicon Valley by a group of successful entrepreneurs, corporate executives, and senior professionals with roots in the Indus region. There are currently 13,000 members, including over 2,500 charter members in 61 chapters across 17 countries. TiE’s mission is to foster entrepreneurship globally through mentoring, networking, and education. Dedicated to the virtuous cycle of wealth creation and giving back to the community, TiE’s focus is on generating and nurturing our next generation of entrepreneurs.

###
Mentors
Jeff Hoffman
Co-Founder, Priceline.com
Co-Founder, Ubid.com
Co-Founder, ColorJar.com
Jeff Hoffman is a serial entrepreneur and internationally recognized innovator who has been a founder and CEO in a number of startups and high growth companies, including Priceline.com, uBid.com, and ColorJar. Jeff writes a regular column on innovation and entrepreneurship for Inc. Magazine, and works with the White House, the Executive Office of the President, and the US State Department, to support business and economic growth initiatives all over the world.

Mike DeLazzer
Co-Founder, RedBox
Co-Founder, Gaton Ltd
Founder, GetAMovie
Founder, Kodel Corp.
Mike DeLazzer is a serial entrepreneur who in 2006 he was inducted into the Chicago Entrepreneur Hall of Fame for his work as founder of GetAMovie Inc., which developed the Redbox kiosk. In 2009 he was given a lifetime achievement award from the Collegiate Entrepreneur Organization for his word in supporting entrepreneurship globally. In 2010 Mike founded and funded Gaton Ltd., a non-profit organization that fosters entrepreneurship in Ghana,West Africa.

Karl Mehta
Founder, Playspan
Founder, Grassroots Innovations Network (GrIN)
Partner, Menlo Ventures
Karl Mehta is a seasoned serial entrepreneur and Founder &former CEO of Playspan, Inc. (acquired by Visa Inc. in March 2011), an Inc. Magazine 500 Fastest growing companies and a leader in monetization platforms for online games, social networks and new media. In 2010, he was the award winner of the Ernst &Young “Entrepreneur of Year” for Northern California/ SF Bay Area. Karl was selected by the Obama Administration to serve as the White House Presidential Innovation Fellow in 2012, and he was appointed by California Governor Jerry Brown to sit on the California Workforce Investment Board. He recently joined Menlo Ventures as a partner.

Sergio Fernandez de Cordova
Co-founder, P3GM
Co-Founder, Infrastructure Media Group Holdings
Co-Founder, PVBLIC Foundation
Co-Founder, Fuel Outdoor
Sergio Fernandez de Cordova is an internationally recognized entrepreneur, investor and philanthropist working at the intersection of media and leveraging public-private partnerships for social impact. In 2011, he co-founded Infrastructure Media Group Holdings, a holding company focused on global infrastructure, energy, commodities and public-private partnerships. Sergio has received numerous awards including Dell Inc’s #Inspired 100 leading global influencers in entrepreneurship and multiple awards from New York Enterprise Report in the fields of Marketing, Green Business, Social Responsibility, and Mergers & Acquisitions.

Albert Angel
Founder, CertiCall
Chairman, Redfish Media
Chairman, AWE Management Company, Ltd.
Albert Angel is an entrepreneur and a former U.S. Department of Justice lawyer who has had a string of successes with interactive service companies. He has an extensive background in the telecommunications and online payment fields. Throughout the years has remained active in helping to shape interactive services policy on a pro-bono basis, typically in trade association leadership positions.

Chad Folkening
Founder, eCorp
Founder, Global Ventures
Co-Founder, Referrals.com
Co-Founder, Domain Holdings
Chad Folkening is a life-long entrepreneur and a leader in domain investments and website development for almost two decades. He has been instrumental in providing real value to end-users through domains and websites, monetizing components for investors, and coordinating with government officials to define and protect the burgeoning domain industry, often called the virtual real estate of the future. Chad has successfully built, sold and acquired websites that have led to development deals and partnerships with leading hi tech and Fortune 500 companies. In 1996, he founded Global Ventures, a technology-based venture development, advisory and investment group established with over 20,000 premium internet domains.

Giadha DeCarcer
CEO, GNI International, LLC
Executive Director, Grassroots Innovations Network (GrIN)
Executive Director, Women Entrepreneurship Reinforcement (WeR)
Giadha DeCarcer is a serial entrepreneur focused on technology and high growth emerging markets. Giadha utilizes her decade of experience in finance, business management, international trade, and government relations to launch and support new ventures with a specific focus on promoting females and veterans within the entrepreneurial arena. Currently the founder and CEO of GNI International, LLC, she serves as Executive Director of two non-profit organizations, Grassroots Innovations Network (GrIN) and the Women Entrepreneurship Reinforcement (WeR).

The post VentureCamp, Based in Indianpolis, to Open in June appeared first on peHUB.

Belly started out empowering local businesses to create loyalty programs of their own, allowing them to compete with the sophisticated customer retention campaigns of the big nationwide chains. But it turns out that those big chains are interested in Belly’s loyalty platform as well.

The Lightbank and Andreessen Horowitz-backed startup on Thursday revealed it is expanding its scope from small and medium-sized business to large enterprises. The company said it’s currently working with 40 national chains, which have installed its loyalty card scanning system in 500 locations. Belly said those chains collectively represent 40,000 restaurants and stores nationwide, though it didn’t reveal the names of the names of specific companies.

But a quick glance on Belly’s merchant map in Chicago reveals plenty of big names: McDonalds, Chick-fil-A, 7-Eleven and Domino’s Pizza among them. For instance, McDonalds is offering up rewards like a free regular fries or free cookie after accruing a specified number of Belly loyalty points.

Belly’s system is pretty simple. Belly members either order a universal loyalty card with a QR code or download the Belly app to their smartphone, which displays the QR code on screen. All merchants have an iPad set up at the register or other convenient location, and customers scan their card or app into the tablet to accrue points for every visit. Get enough points and you can pick prizes. Those can come in the form of free goods, discounts or sometimes more off-the-wall rewards, such as a personal serenade from the store’s owner.

Belly has attracted interest from businesses nationwide, but its hometown of Chicago remains its biggest market with more than a thousand locations using the Belly system. As a Chicagoan, I’ve seen Belly pop up everywhere. My wife and I use it to get free booze at our local liquor store, and we’re saving up our points so we can get a free cooking lesson from the chef of our favorite local restaurant Bistro Dre.

While I love the idea of unique tailored rewards programs for local businesses, it’s easy to see the appeal for Belly to go after the national chains. Chicago has many e-commerce companies that were founded on the principle of targeting small, local merchants, but they’ve been shifting their focus to the national retailers and brands.

For instance, fellow Lightbank startup Boomerang has abandoned its original local-business focus and to turn its peer-to-peer gifting service into a viral marketing platform for big brands like Ghirardelli and Starbucks. Even suffering e-commerce giant Groupon(grpn) (see disclosure) has strayed from its local business focus to offer an increasing number of daily deals for national chains.

Disclosure: The author’s spouse is employed by Groupon.

Related research and analysis from GigaOM Pro:
Subscriber content. Sign up for a free trial.

• Opportunities and challenges for mobile deals
• Social media in Q1: commerce and discovery dominated
• 2012: Data, spectrum and the race to LTE

It has been a while since I was a parent of teenagers, but I remember when the question, “Have you had the conversation yet?” made me break out in cold sweats. The Conversation is also a 1974 film by Francis Ford Coppola whose themes include the role of technology in society and being so focused on what you are doing that you forget why you are doing it and become oblivious to what is happening around you. Both examples fit the conversation that should be going on in the C-suite, but isn’t, because it makes people nervous, and because people lose visibility and perspective of what is changing around them as they focus on their goals. It is a conversation about the increasing importance of information technology and the role it must assume in every enterprise, regardless of size, industry or geography.

Over the last two years, we have been engaged in primary research with The Harvard Business Review, The Economist, CEB (formerly known as the Corporate Executive Board), Intel, and TNS Global in an attempt to paint a picture of how the role of the CIO and the IT department is changing. We also engaged with CIOs across the globe in discussions about what they were experiencing and what changes were surprising or bewildering them.

A simple summary of the work suggests that CEOs believe that CIOs are not in sync with the new issues CEOs are facing, CIOs do not understand where the business needs to go, and CIOs do not have a strategy, in terms of opportunities to be pursued or challenges to be addressed in support of the business.

Key findings from our research:

• Almost half of CEOs feel IT should be a commodity service purchased as needed
• Almost half of CEOs rate their CIOs negatively in terms of understanding the business and understanding how to apply IT in new ways to the business
• 57% of the executives expect their IT function to change significantly over the next three years, and 12% predict a “complete overhaul” of IT
• Only a quarter of executives felt their CIO was performing above his or her peers

Our observations:

• CEOs are demanding more visible value from their CIOs, in terms of generating revenue, gaining new customers, and increasing customer satisfaction.
• Increasingly, the CIO and IT must be seen less as developing and deploying technology, and more as a source of innovation and transformation that delivers business value, leveraging technology instead of directly delivering it.

• The CIO must be responsible and accountable if technology enables, facilitates or accelerates competition that the C-suite didn’t see coming, or allows the enterprise to miss opportunities because the C-suite did not understand the possibilities technology offered.
• CIOs today must adapt or risk being marginalized.

Why this is happening:
As we worked with the data, while we saw what was happening it became clear we were missing the “why” it was happening. Why is this dissonance between the CIO and the C-suite happening? It could be the rapid pace of technological change, but historically that only facilitates or accelerates change already desired or underway? The more we looked for an answer, the more we realized we were at an impasse. Then we realized that what we were seeing were not changes in IT, but secondary effects from changes going on in business.

In order to understand the future of enterprise IT, the evolving future of business itself must be considered.

Trends that are affecting fundamental concepts of business, and in turn IT:

• The basic ideas of capitalism–return on investment (ROI) and return on assets (ROA)–are being challenged by the historical stalwarts of capitalism (Harvard, Drucker Society, Forbes, the London School of Economics and many more). Many of these ideas shun ownership for rent on those elements of the enterprise not tied directly to value creation, suggesting a rethink in how IT is delivered.
• As we transform from industrial work more easily and efficiently done by robots to creative and knowledge work leveraging humans, we are balancing the values of scale and efficiency (industrial work) with the need for agility and efficacy (creative and knowledge work). This means that transactional systems that ensured security, encouraged conformance and drove operational goals of predictability and productivity lose value to new systems of collaboration, transparency and agility.
• The nature of economics is transforming as complexity science and behavioral science provide valuable insights about how value is created, markets work and buyers think. The nature of value which is momentarily created and quickly perished in turn drives the new economics as it diverges from classical ideas of value chains. As a consequence, the boundaries between customers, suppliers, partners, staff, contractors, channels and even competitors begin to diminish and even disappear, creating a whole new user community for enterprise IT systems.
• All of these ideas are drastically changing how we organize to accomplish the necessary work, and in turn how we manage those organizational structures and resources. This suggests more unique, highly focused niched application systems with integration of information and systems across organizational and agent boundaries – no IT system is an island.

How this affects the CIO and enterprise IT:
All of this is changing the role of the CIO before our very eyes. Not only are there new systems, business and delivery models, types of information, technologies, etc., but whole new roles for IT in the enterprise’s ecosystem. These new business insights, tied to the emergence of new technologies, are creating an opportunity for IT to lead business transformational efforts, creating new business models, initiating new business processes and making the enterprise agile in this challenging economic environment.

Leveraging that change requires starting with a conversation that CIOs, CEOs and the rest other members of the C-suite should be having, but aren’t. Here’s a start to that conversation.

In future pieces, I will explore the dramatic business changes and challenges that are affecting the C-suite and the role of the CIO; look at how innovation, as the only way to create long-term profit, provides a solution to these challenges; and outline the new conversation that CIOs should be having in the C-suite.

—

Many organizations are approaching the tipping point being described in this series of blogs. Stepping into the role of strategic visionary and business driver requires CIOs to have a completely new conversation with their C-suite colleagues. To begin the conversation, Dell, HBR, and CIO magazine are sponsoring a Harvard Business Review panel discussion, “Change the Conversation, Change the Game,” through a webinar, broadcasting live from The CIO Leadership event in Boca Raton, Florida May 5-7, 2013.

There’s a flood of vendors out there looking to make infrastructure management as smooth and as manageable as possible. Stackpop is a cloud-based service that helps enterprises analyze and optimize their IT infrastructure spending. Its pitch is that its easy to use and brings in real savings. The New York-based company addresses the disconnect between finance and IT, helping track contracts and spending, and providing useful intelligence when it’s time to renegotiate or shift vendors and technologies. It also acts as a comparison tool and marketplace for buyers and sellers, pitting it against colo brokerages in addition to spend tracking and aggregation.

While its appeal is obvious for the end users of infrastructure, for the infrastructure providers themselves, StackPop has the potential to become a very potent marketplace to drive sales. It aids in comparing, configuring and buying from over 450 infrastructure providers in 40 countries and wants customers to never buy blind again. As it grows this part of what it does, it stands to gain insight to general buying and infrastructure trends across the world, so users can see what is being paid on average.

The challenge lies in making infrastructure services like colocation as transparent as cloud or hosting. As hybrid infrastructures continues to gain traction, a management platform like StackPop stands a good chance of becoming something of note. It already touts some large customers like gaming site IGN, social check-ins provider Foursquare, and online fashion retailer Gilt Groupe.

A large part of what StackPop does is analagous to personal finance and budgeting tools, such as personal finance portal Mint.com, only for IT infrastructure. Mint.com, now owned by Intuit, is an application that helps people understand their finances. It gives a user the ability to aggregate and monitor all financial accounts from one simple, attractive, and mobile-friendly app. It drew a large crowd of users as a startup and was soon acquired by the financial software giant Intuit. Mint.com and Stackpop are similar in terms of what they hope to achieve, although Stackpop’s features go beyond the “read-only” data aggregation seen at Mint.

Roots at Panther Express

Stackpop was founded in October of 2011. The co-founders were infrastructure guys, network and systems engineers. Co-founder and CEO Jason Evans says the talent behind the company grew its global chops at content delivery network Panther Express, where they started with 10 servers and, grew the company to 45 global locations before being acquired by CDNetworks.

Evans moved to Mediamap, a real-time bidding platform that had a handful of servers on Rackspace upon arrival, which built out to 6 global data centers including Asia Pacific and Europe, Middle East and Africa.

“We’ve always had the idea of creating better tools to help grow and scale the infrastructure,” said Evans. “The original idea for Stackpop came from we had an unused cage we had purchased on a 2-year agreement at Panther, and it was a big waste. We tried to sublease it but couldn’t.”

That unused IT purchase highlighted a problem, and an opportunity. “The idea came out of the question – ‘How do we create a second level marketplace for space capacity at a discounted rate?’” said Evans. In April of 2011, Stackpop was formed to pursue solutions.

Evans teamed with Stackpop CTO, Aram Grigoryan, also a Panther Express alumni, and put together a seed round of funding in the fall of 2011. The beta for the serviced came out March of last year, and has closed $1.2 million in transactions through the platform and through its partners. Provider feedback has been positive.

Infrastructure Spending Insight That Goes Beyond Cloud

There are a lot of web sites that provide information about infrastructure. However, there’s no one transactional platform that drives and dominates infrastructure spending. “There’s a need for a more transparent and transactional platform,” said Evans. “We had to get a little more involved from a personal level.”

One year ago, the President established the White House Council on Strong Cities, Strong Communities (SC2) that established an innovative new model of federal-local collaboration dedicated to assisting communities get back on their feet and create jobs by helping them better leverage federal resources and form key partnerships to implement economic visions. Teams of federal employees are embedded with seven Mayors across the country to provide tailored technical assistance to cut through red tape, increase government efficiency, and build partnerships to help local leaders implement sustainable economic plans.

A year later, we have learned a lot about collaboration, team work, and how the federal government can support local communities working as a team to get things done. 

These lessons are outlined in the Strong Cities, Strong Communities Annual Report, which describes the impact of the SC2 Initiative and identifies emerging innovations that have the potential to be applied to many other communities working to strengthen their economies and job creation at the local level. 

At a time when communities must accomplish more with every dollar of investment, SC2’s work in its first few years has already enabled communities to maximize the impact of more than $345 million in existing federal funds.

read more

Safeguard Scientifics, the Wayne, Pa.-based investment company that focuses on growth-stage healthcare and tech companies, has promoted Jeffrey McGroarty to Senior VP and CFO. McGroarty joined the company in 2005 as a vice president and corporate controller. He succeeds Stephen Zarrilli, who was named president and CEO of Safeguard last November.

PRESS RELEASE:

Safeguard Scientifics, Inc. (NYSE:SFE), a holding company that builds value in growth-stage healthcare and technology companies, announced that Jeffrey B. McGroarty, 43, an accounting and financial executive who joined the Company in 2005 as Vice President and Corporate Controller, was named Senior Vice President and Chief Financial Officer, effective today. Mr. McGroarty succeeds Stephen T. Zarrilli, 51, who was named President and Chief Executive Officer of Safeguard on November 1, 2012.

“Jeff is a strong, capable executive who has worked closely with me to improve Safeguard’s financial strength and flexibility, positioning the Company to maximize value,” said Mr. Zarrilli.

During his tenure at Safeguard, Mr. McGroarty has managed the Company’s accounting, financial operations, SEC reporting, treasury and tax functions, and also has delivered value-added guidance and service in these same areas to Safeguard’s partner companies.

“I’m energized by this opportunity to further sharpen Safeguard’s focus on its core business, increase capital under management and continue to build high-potential, growth-stage companies in the healthcare and technology sectors as we work towards more consistent monetizations,” said Mr. McGroarty.

Prior to joining Safeguard in December 2005, Mr. McGroarty was interim Controller at Cephalon, Inc. (NASDAQ: CEPH), an international biopharmaceutical company. Before that, he was Vice President, Financial Planning and Analysis at Exide Technologies (NASDAQ:XIDE), a global manufacturer and recycler of lead-acid batteries. While at Exide, Mr. McGroarty had a major role in the company’s reorganization and emergence from bankruptcy. He began his career at PricewaterhouseCoopers LLP, where he was responsible for domestic and international audits, due diligence, consulting and post-transaction integration of mergers and acquisitions for clients in the U.S. and United Kingdom.

Mr. McGroarty earned a B.A. degree in accounting from Pennsylvania State University and has M.B.A. degree from The Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania.

About Safeguard Scientifics
Founded in 1953 and based in Wayne, Pa., Safeguard Scientifics, Inc. (NYSE:SFE) provides growth capital and operational support to entrepreneurial and innovative healthcare and technology companies in medtech, healthtech, specialty pharmaceuticals, financial technology, digital media, and Enterprise 3.0. For more information, please visit our website at www.safeguard.com.

The post Safeguard Scientifics Names Jeffrey McGroarty as CFO appeared first on peHUB.

It’s been rumored for a while now that Eminem has been working on a studio album. Now, that rumor has been all but confirmed.

Dr. Dre, a long-time collaborator and producer for Eminem, this week called in to a radio show called Big Boy’s Neighborhood, which airs on 106 FM in Los Angeles. Dre told the host that Eminem is just about finished with his new material. Dre also mentioned that he has been back in the studio himself, though he states he is “just having fun.”

“Em is finishing up his project, man,” said Dre. “And for me, man, I’ve just, like, gotten inspired again to go back in the studio. So I’m…really just having fun, with life and having fun being creative and just trying some new and different things with myself, man.”

Eminem has released six studio albums during his career. HIs last effort was 2010′s Recovery, which received generally good reviews from fans and the media.

Dr. Dre’s full interview can be heard below:

(via Huffington Post)

For T-Mobile, it is a move necessary to gain traction. For the past three-plus years, the No. 4 carrier in America has made many attempts to bridge the gap. They’ve introduced new plans a number of times — it feels like dozens. They’ve run aggressive marketing campaigns touting the speed of their network. If it’s in the wireless marketing playbook, they’ve tried it. They even ran an end-around play, but still haven’t gained their desired traction.

Yes, they’re the No. 4 carrier in America, but they’re a distant fourth. At 33.9 million subscribers they trail No. 3 Sprint by more than 20 million. At this point in the game, attracting that many subscribers is a nearly impossible task. The bulk would have to come from not only Sprint, but also Verizon and AT&T — both of which boast over 100 million subscribers. But why would more than 20 million subscribers leave these larger, more reliable, and more convenient networks? Such is T-Mobile’s dilemma.

Last year they proposed a solution: a merger with MetroPCS. In the past this might not have worked as well. Before LTE started to cover America, MetroPCS and T-Mobile used different technologies to power their networks. But with converging technologies, the merger is a bit more feasible. Still, it leaves the combined company with a deficit. MetroPCS will add around 9 million subscribers, meaning Sprint will still have a more than 10 million subscriber advantage.

At the same time, Sprint will likely make a move of its own soon enough. After a lucrative buyout offer from Japanese carrier Softbank, Sprint received a competing offer from Dish Network. The latter makes the situation even more interesting, given Dish’s existing wireless holdings and a long-held desire to get into the consumer cellular market. The combined company won’t gain many subscribers over Sprint, but it could breathe new life into a company that hasn’t made much progress in the past few years.

The culture of mergers and acquisitions will likely continue. Spectrum is rare, and even with a spectrum auction in the offing, many carriers will find it more efficient to simply acquire another company’s spectrum and subscribers. We saw this with the spectrum auction in early 2008. Verizon and AT&T were expected to compete for the attractive C block, but Verizon ended up having the run of it because AT&T decided to pursue acquisitions.

There are still a number of smaller and regional carriers that could be acquisition targets in the next year or so:

• Cricket — which was previously an oft-discussed merger partner with MetroPCS
• US Cellular
• Cincinnati Bell
• C Spire (Cellular South)
• SouthernLINC
• Various Cellular One holdings

Not all of these entities are publicly held, so mergers can become a bit more complicated. But given the need to pick up new spectrum and subscribers, the larger carriers could find it worth their while.

In other words, T-Mobile and MetroPCS could be just the start. Sprint is likely to go next. Will any other carriers combine and consolidate in order to keep up with the wireless giants?

The post MetroPCS Board Approves T-Mobile Merger, Further Consolidating US Wireless Landscape appeared first on MobileMoo.

Last month, Vimeo launched a full video on demand service that lets Vimeo PRO creators sell their work on the site. It’s pay-to-view, with much freedom (and profits) given to the creators. Creators get to set the price for their work, and they take 90% of the profit.

Today, just over a month later, Vimeo is announcing that creators have uploaded hundreds of paid videos, and viewers have made “thousands” of purchases. Not too specific, but it looks like there’s at least some significant buzz over Vimeo’s newest project. With their VOD service off and running, Vimeo is now looking to make all the content easier to discover.

To that end, Vimeo has launched a redesigned On Demand homepage.

“Introducing: the new Vimeo On Demand home page, which puts the focus on the creative films and series distributed using the new platform. Looking for something to watch tonight? Boom. Check out “Vimeo Selects” for titles we find interesting, or browse the entire On Demand catalog by genre. You can even keep track of all your On Demand purchases in “My On Demand,” right on this page. Because it’s hard to remember them all when you’ve bought hundreds of them, right? RIGHT!?” says Vimeo’s Blake Whitman.

The dive in paid videos began back in September of last year, when Vimeo introduced their Creator Services platform. The first service unveiled was the “tip jar,” which allowed viewers to leave tips for video creators. Vimeo promises that there are more improvements left to be made to their new VOD platform.

Have you paid to stream anything using Vimeo yet?

TPH Partners has invested in Channel Energy. Financial terms weren’t announced. Denver-based Chanel is an upstream company focused on the acquisition and development of onshore oil and gas properties across several basins in the U.S.

PRESS RELEASE

TPH Partners, the middle-market energy private equity funds manager, has partnered with management to form Channel Energy, LLC, an independent upstream company headquartered in Denver, Colorado. Channel is focused on the acquisition and development of onshore oil and gas properties across several basins in the U.S.

“We think that now is a great time to be putting capital to work in the oil and gas business, and we have an extensive list of potentially overlooked opportunities identified”
Channel is led by Kevin Corbett, President and CEO, and Doug Izmirian, EVP and CFO, who have almost sixty years combined experience in the oil and gas industry and a proven track record of success. Over his thirty-one year career, Mr. Corbett has led successful exploration and development projects onshore in the U.S., and in Europe, Asia and Africa, including previously founding and leading Wrangler Resources and Sequoia Production. Mr. Izmirian also has an impressive background, previously serving as co-founder and CFO of TransZap and as a co-founder of Citadel Oil and Gas Corporation.

Channel will utilize management’s experience and technical expertise to pursue primarily liquids-focused assets in historically prolific basins through a combination of acquisition and farm-in transactions.

“We are fortunate to have the opportunity to put capital to work with such an excellent management team. Kevin is a proven oil finder with a track record of value creation, and Doug’s history of successful entrepreneurship in the oil patch will add an important element to the team’s skill set,” said George McCormick, Managing Partner of TPH Partners.

“We think that now is a great time to be putting capital to work in the oil and gas business, and we have an extensive list of potentially overlooked opportunities identified,” said Kevin Corbett, President and CEO of Channel. “Doug and I feel that we and the TPH Partners team are very well aligned in our views and expectations, which makes for a great partnership, and we look forward to working together in the creation and growth of this new company.”

About TPH Partners

TPH Partners, based in Houston, Texas, is the private equity arm of Tudor, Pickering, Holt & Co., LLC, an integrated energy investment and merchant bank. TPH Partners makes private investments in the upstream, oilfield service and midstream subsectors of the energy industry. For more information on TPH Partners, please visit www.tphpartners.com.

About Channel Energy, LLC

Channel Energy, LLC is an independent upstream company based in Denver, Colorado. For more information on Channel, please contact Channel Energy at [email protected].

The post TPH Partners Invests In Channel Energy appeared first on peHUB.

As previously reported, the EU has finally released documents clearly stating its concerns with Google’s competitive practices and listing, for the first time, Google’s actual proposals for settlement.

Ahead of the release, the FairSearch Coalition (a group of Google competitors – including chief rival Microsoft – hellbent on seeing Google’s business regulated by governments) issued a statement indicating it would likely have more suggestions for how Google could go beyond its proposals to make things better for its competitors. Now, the group has put out another statement.

Thomas Vinje, counsel and spokesman for FairSearch Europe had this to say:

“FairSearch applauds the Commission for laying out a clear and compelling case that Google is abusing its dominant position by giving its own products preferential treatment in search results. This is an important conclusion that must lead to meaningful remedies. We have always said that the best remedy for consumers and innovation would be to require Google to apply the same policy to search results for its own products as it does to all others.”

“However, Google’s proposed commitments appear to fall short of ending the preferential treatment at the heart of the Commission’s case based on formal complaints from 17 companies. Google’s own screen shots in its proposal (see p. 30) shows it seeks approval to continue preferential treatment for its own products. We will study the proposal in detail and offer an empirical analysis based on actual tests.”

Page 30? Okay, let’s take a look:

Look at that. Google Shopping results right at the top for a search for “dslr camera”. Perhaps they should be doing it the way FairSearch member Microsoft does it:

Oh, wait a minute.

It’s almost as if a search engine offering its own shopping results for product queries is the industry standard:

bookshout! said Thursday that it raised $6 million in Series B funding. Dallas-based booshout! said it will use the proceeds to expand its digital book distribution and engagement platform, as well as giving authors control of their audiences.

PRESS RELEASES

It’s one thing to sell a book. It’s another to build passionate communities around the content, providing lucrative channels for new sales and marketing opportunities.

Today bookshout! announced $6M in Series B funding to expand its digital book distribution and engagement platform, giving authors control of their audiences and publishers a new and powerful sales channel.

Ambassador Enterprises led the Series B round, increasing its investment in bookshout!. The firm sees significant opportunity for innovation where new tools for social sharing and engagement give authors and publishers better data to connect readers with books they want to read, and identify opportunities for additional merchandising and promotion.

“bookshout! is reinventing how digital books are sold, shared and consumed,” said Daryle Doden, CEO of Ambassador Enterprises. “Traditional publishing is like baseball before Moneyball. The industry is guessing what people want. By serving authors and publishers in a process-oriented, measurable way, bookshout! is eliminating the guesswork and building tools that let content creators take control of their audience.”

bookshout! recently released support for digital bulk sales, special sales and promotions that enable publishers and authors to sell digital books in bulk at events, conferences, book tours and other group activities. With a promo code or a gift card, readers simply visit a private-labeled landing page and redeem the coupon to get a book, automatically becoming part of its “reading circle.”

As a result, authors gain a powerful platform to engage fans, share ideas, answer questions and promote bonus content, while publishers gain a valuable channel to capture analytics and target sales and promotions. Early adopters include: CareerBuilder.com, which sponsored Nolan Bushnell’s book tour for “Finding the Next Steve Jobs,” and the Kauffman Foundation, among others.

“Publishers need to participate in new distribution channels, including direct-to-consumer,” said Joe Wikert, General Manager, Publisher, & Chair of Tools of Change (TOC) Conference at O’Reilly Media, Inc. “bookshout! offers publishers many of the data and analytics benefits of having a direct channel, but without all the upfront costs associated with creating one.”

“Publishing is on the verge of a major shift from creation to distribution and consumption, but the big players like Amazon and Barnes & Noble have shut out the authors and publishers, preventing them from engaging with their readers,” said Jason Illian, CEO of bookshout!. “This new investment enables us to expand our platform to create new opportunities for authors, publishers and readers to connect in more meaningful ways around the books they love.”

For more information on digital bulk sales, special sales and promotions, contact: [email protected].

About bookshout!

bookshout! empowers readers, authors and publishers to make the e-book experience more collaborative and enjoyable than ever. Based in Dallas, Texas, bookshout! features more than 250 publishers and 100,000 books accessible via iPad, iPhone, Android, Kindle Fire HD or the web. For more information, please visit www.bookshout.com.

About Ambassador Enterprises

Established in 2008, Ambassador Enterprises is a for-profit, philanthropic, equity firm investing in leaders and the organizations they lead. Believing that an investment in people and teams will pay returns in the form of healthy relationships and communities, Ambassador recently acquired a former university campus in Fort Wayne (IN), establishing The Summit, a cooperative learning community. To learn more, visit www.ambassador-enterprises.com.

The post Bookshout! Raises $6 Mln appeared first on peHUB.

Continue reading…

Zynga’s most high-profile acquisition of last year was OMGPOP and its game Draw Something. The game proved incredibly popular, but soon began to bleed users by the millions. Now Zynga is trying to win over those who left with a sequel.

Zynga announced during its earnings results that Draw Something 2 is now available on iOS devices. Unlike other sequels that would be content with adding new words, OMGPOP has added a number of new features that encourages more sharing. Players can also finally save their own creations as well as the creations of others for later viewing:

For the first time, players can save their drawings in their own galleries and check out the work of other burgeoning artists and celebrities too. The game has a full spectrum of new tools and colors, allowing players to tap into the full limits of their creativity. There are new textures and patterns, like zebra, plaid and camouflage; and new tools, like an 8bit Pixel Pen, Sparkle Pen, stamps, highlighter, crayon and more. There are also more than 100 new vibrant colors. The new Free Draw option gives players creative freedom to draw freestyle and share their art with the world.

Of course, it wouldn’t be a sequel without some new words. Zynga says that Draw Something 2 features thousands of new words, including words “that touch on the latest pop culture trends and current events.”

Draw Something 2 is now available for iOS devices in the App Store. Zynga says it will be on Google Play shortly.

The past two days have been interesting ones for Huawei and their efforts to break into the U.S. market. During a summit with analysts on Tuesday, Huawei’s Executive Vice President Eric Xu made some statements indicating Huawei was going to abandon the U.S. market. At least, that is how many people interpreted his comments. A day later Huawei issued a clarification to explain that Mr. Xu was commenting on growth in other developed countries, especially European markets. Huawei anticipates those markets will be much more important for them than the U.S. market, but they have no intention of abandoning the U.S. market.

As the world’s second largest telecommunications equipment manufacturer, one would think Huawei could achieve a significant presence in the U.S. However, the company has been subject to claims that it is really a front for Chinese espionage efforts. The clearest and most explicit instance of this came last fall when the U.S. House of Representatives’ Intelligence Committee issued a report claiming Huawei and ZTE may pose a major risk to U.S. security. The House Committee also believes Huawei may be guilty of bribery, corruption, discriminatory behavior and copyright infringement.

Huawei has struggled to gain a foothold in selling telecommunications gear in the U.S., no doubt thanks to the virtual blacklisting of the company. However, the mobile division is achieving some limited success. For 2012, Huawei made CNY 31 billion ($5.1 billion USD). More recently they have had to resort to measures like selling their phones through Amazon instead of directly by carriers.

source: Beijing News
via: phoneArena

Come comment on this article: Huawei announces departure from U.S. market, then reverses course

People riding bikes for exercise, recreation or commuting don’t need to waste their energy any longer. Oh, they can still ride, but now they can recoup some of the power they generate on their ride and use the juice to charge up their mobile devices. A new Kickstarter project for the Silva Cycle Atom is the secret.

The Atom is made of two parts: a small generator with electronic power regulation and a removable battery pack with a USB port.  Most bicycles with a quick-release rear wheel can use the Atom, which sits between the rear tire and bike frame. A USB cable can be run from the Atom to a charge a mobile device while riding, even as the battery pack recharges. Here’s how it works:

Taking the Atom’s battery pack with you when leaving your bike is a snap; just remove it when you lock up your bike. I like the fact that the battery pack pulls “double duty”: You can recharge it through a conventional outlet as well. With a 1300 mAh battery capacity, a fully-charged Atom should recharge an iPhone to about 70 percent full. Handsets with larger batteries — say the new Galaxy S 4, for example — would only get about 40 to 50 percent of a recharge with the Atom.

The project is hoping to raise $85,000 by May 23 and it’s well on its way already: At time of writing, over $55,000 were pledged. The first 300 early-birds already committed a discounted $85 for the Atom, so if you want in now, you’ll have to fork over $95. The project founders expect to sell the Atom for $105, so you can still get a discount now. Delivery estimates for the Atom are November.

Are there cheaper ways to recharge your devices? Of course there are. But this product is perfect for heavy bike commuters. And when I take weekend rides, I often use my phone to track the ride via GPS so I can get speed, elevation and other data. The apps and radios to make that happen aren’t kind to my phone batteries, so the Atom would be a great companion for those activities too.

Related research and analysis from GigaOM Pro:
Subscriber content. Sign up for a free trial.

• Analyzing the wearable computing market
• GigaOM Research highs and lows from CES 2013
• Facebook’s IPO filing: ideas and implications

Despite lagging far behind the iOS App Store and Google Play, the growing Amazon Appstore is beginning to be taken seriously by mobile app developers, right as it gears up for a wider international rollout, according to app analytics company AppAnnie.

Out of 1,500 mobile app developers surveyed, 22.5 percent are publishing for Amazon devices, according to AppAnnie’s inaugural Amazon app developer index published on Thursday. That’s tiny compared to its larger mobile rivals, but the big finding had to do with developers’ motivations: the Amazon Appstore is becoming an important outlet for developers, but not because they’re impressed with the company’s new hardware devices. Rather, AppAnnie found that the No. 1 thing driving developers to Amazon’s store is simple convenience: 52 percent said they already build Android apps, so it’s easy to port them over for Amazon’s store.

The other reasons they gave show Amazon still has a ways to go in convincing more developers that it’s an important and necessary outlet for their work. Among those already publishing on the platform only 24 percent said they did so because they “believe Amazon Appstore market share will grow,” and a meager 7 percent said they “believe the Kindle Fire will be a leading device.”

Some other interesting stats AppAnnie found:

• 56 percent of Amazon Appstore publishers focus on games
• Half say games are the leading revenue driver for them

AppAnnie sees big things for the store. There are already 75,000 apps on it and 19,000 developers signed up — which pales in comparison to 850,000 iOS app and 800,000 Google Play apps available — but the Appstore hasn’t been widely accessible outside the U.S. However that’s changing soon: Amazon announced last week it would be opening the Appstore to 200 countries over the next few months, including Australia, Brazil, Canada, Mexico, India, South Africa and South Korea.

Related research and analysis from GigaOM Pro:
Subscriber content. Sign up for a free trial.

• Analyzing the wearable computing market
• Tablets wars: Apple is from Venus, Amazon is from Mars
• What Amazon’s new Kindle line means for Apple, Netflix and online media

Both in and out of video games, it seems that patient gamers are always rewarded. While early adopters can often end up shelling out $60 for a new game and $30 to $60 more for a title’s DLC, those who are willing to wait for the experience can often grab award-winning games at lower prices with all DLC already included.

That’s the case this year for gamer’s who haven’t trekked across the plains of Skyrim. Almost two years after the release of The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim, Bethesda has announced that a “Legendary Edition” of the game will launch on June 4 (June 7 in Europe) for Xbox 360, PlayStation 3, and PC. The game will cost $60.

Skyrim: Legendary Edition will include a version of Skyrim updated to the 1.9 title update and all three of the game’s DLC’s: Dawnguard, Hearthfire, and Dragonborn.

Bethesda announced earlier this month that it has officially stopped development on Skyrim. The team that was still working on the game has been shifted to a new project, which could be The Evil Within, Fallout 4, or some other unannounced Bethesda title.