14Apr / 2012

Hubble Bubble Toil and Trouble, Meet Heckerty!

Broomstick Productions is Archimedes Labs latest portfolio company to launch into the world. Jan Ziff and Allan Davidson have a very special person in their life – Jan’s Mom. Or, because – like myself – Jan is from Yorkshire in the North of England, I should say Jan’s Mum…..

 

Jan’s Mum had the very special privilege of telling stories to the children of Prince Charles, either the future King of England or at the very least the father of the future King of England.

During her stint at that very unusual job she developed the character of Heckerty(TM) the Witch and her trusted sidekick, Zanzibar(TM) the cat. These stories have never been published before, and certainly never been animated. As Jan herself says:

 

When Princess Diana wanted to send her sons, Princes William and Harry, to weekly musical storytelling sessions as part of their education (click the links to see rare photos of the young princes), she chose my mother, Ann Rachlin.So when my mom asked Allan and me whether we were interested in bringing one of her favorite story characters to mobile devices, we jumped at the chance!
Stacks Image 622
Bringing Heckerty’s gentle, zany adventures to life for kids around the world was just too good to pass up! I had grown up with Heckerty’s magic and we both loved my mother’s many CDs and books (iTunes, Amazon).

Today, they are available on the iPad, iPhone and on the Kindle Fire.

Meet Heckerty is the first of many stories to come and we feel sure that, Hollywood will soon be knocking on the door of Broomstick Productions seeking to take these adorable characters and stories to the big screen

Posted in Internet

Permalink Leave a comment

21Mar / 2012

Blurtt launches in the app store

I first met Jeanette Cajide early in 2011. She was a founder at Blurtt – a company that was then focused on delivering a web based photo-upload service, permitting users to send printed postcards of said photos to friends via mail.

A few things were quickly obvious.

 

1. Blurtt is a great name, but not for sending postcards.

2. Mobile is the right place to develop what Blurtt could be.

3. Blurtt should let people Blurtt things out…..

4. Combining images with text produces a very powerful means of communicating emotion-rich messages.

5. Jeanette is a force of nature and simply refuses to fail.

 

So, Blurtt became archimedes labs second acceleration company, after Tomer Kagan’s Quixey. The 12 months since have been great. Jeanette weathered many storms, and succeeded in building a set of relationships that allowed her to ship her product today, with significantly less than $100,000 spent. You can get it from the app store now.

I couldn’t be more thrilled for Jeanette, Laura, Kuba and the team at Dialexa in Texas…..Congrats

I know that the team is planning lots of new features. Can’t wait to see where this journey takes us.

 

 

 

Posted in Internet

Permalink Leave a comment

04Feb / 2012

The impact of mobile growth on web advertising. Is Android bad for Google?

alternate textGoogle and Facebook can’t turn off the mobile deluge

I just posted on TechCrunch. The article focuses on the Facebook S1 filing and in particular on the risks section that covers the growth of the mobile internet and its potential impact on the web business model.

Facebook itself has been very clear that its advertising revenues are exclusively derived from its web site, and also that an increasing amount of its usage comes from mobile in general and smart phones in particular.

Buried in the article is this point:

Google’s present – and Facebook’s future – involves the painful fact that the very success of mobile platforms in helping human beings be productive, on the go, has a negative impact on the desktop-based advertising programs of the past 10 years. Mobile growth impacts web advertising revenues, except of course for Apple who make money from hardware and software and so benefits from these trends. The reason is simple. We do less ad-centric activities on mobile than we did on the web. And we are less likely to click away on an ad when we are focused on a specific goal on a largely single window device.

The implication of this point is that, absent an advertising solution for mobile, Google’s success in distributing Android, as well as the rise of the iPhone, are directly damaging to Google’s legacy business model. Now, it isn’t as if anybody can turn the mobile internet off or slow its growth. So Google has no option but to be a significant player in mobile, and has no option but to try and drive the revenues it derives from mobile harder than the pace of slow down in web based revenues that result from the trend. But to accomplish that Google, and Facebook will need to innovate in advertising. Web based display ads, text ads and others are really not able to translate effectively to mobile without seriusly undermining the user experience.

This is one of the areas we are focused on at just.me.

Posted in Facebook, Google, Mobile

Permalink 25 Comments

15Dec / 2011

Got Quoted in the Wall Street Journal

Got Quoted in the Wall Street Journal. That doesn’t happen every day! :-)

Here it is:

“The funding of mobile first companies will increase significantly.” — Keith Teare, general partner, Archimedes Labs

Posted in Internet

Permalink 1 Comment

23Sep / 2011

Mike “launches” Uncrunched

My good pal Mike has a new blog at uncrunched.com. Check it out.

Posted in Internet

Permalink Leave a comment

28Aug / 2011

Cloud based services – the future of the Internet

Fred Wilson has a response today to Eric Schmidt’s declaration in Edinburgh that Google+ is an “identity service”. He asks and answers his own question.

“whom Google built this service for? You or them. And the answer to why you need to use your real name in the service is because they need you to.”

Of course Facebook is also an identity service. Facebook Connect is the means of distributing it. And of course Facebook too is built using real names because “they need you to”.

At this level FaceBook and Google have much in common, and both are vying for us to use them for online authentication. Facebook is far ahead of course.

Late yesterday I posted an opinion piece as a guest author on TechCrunch. It is about the uncertain future of web services as mobile devices proliferate globally. We will soon all have awesome identity machines in our pocket. They will be capable of being used to authenticate us (even using 2 step authentication). Any cloud-based 3rd party identity system will be unnecessary.

The future of identity is distributed, under user control, and owned and managed by the user from their device. It will be capable of supporting anonymity and real names and will be able to be trusted by sites requiring you to authenticate. The idea of any 3rd party dictating how you can present yourself online will no longer be applicable. Of course, it still has to be built…..

Having said that, there is absolutely nothing wrong with Google and/or Facebook building an identity system that dictates how we present ourselves. Our choice is to use it or not…..We don’t have to.

Posted in Internet

Tags: , , , , , ,

Permalink 1 Comment

24Jul / 2011

US Default looms large as Politicians squabble

I turned on Meet the Press at 8am Pacific time this morning to see one of the Gang of Six declaring that he would not agree to severe cuts in spending so long as President Obama insisted on raising taxes for the wealthy. I had to shake my head and clear my thoughts as my brain started to focus on what I was hearing.

The Guardian leader that has appeared in the UK publication’s Monday morning edition (see graphic) makes clear the fears others in the world have for the consequences for the world economy if the US defaults on its debts.

The song that came to my mind was “The Lunatics have taken over the Asylum”. And by this I don’t mean only republicans but politicians in general and the asylum that is Washington DC right now.

As a recent US Citizen I view these events partly through the eyes of a Brit. I’m 54 years a Brit and only 2 an American.

America is in relative decline as the worlds strongest nation. China is growing in both absolute and relative terms. The failure to decide on an approach to paying off the national debt is merely a symptom of the American political class failing in the game of world leadership. Petty domestic squabbles dominate debate even as major global events unfold. The thought that best sums up the future of the global economy, and with it humanity, under the leadership of these politicians is “Oh Shit!”.

Here’s hoping somebody reads this and remembers the world scale consequences of the failure of American leadership. It isn’t about the Congress or about the White House. Its about the whole world and the rest of this century as the world copes with America’s decline as the unchallenged global leader.

Posted in Politics and Economics

Tags:

Permalink Leave a comment

08Apr / 2011

Quixey adds Eric Schmidt’s Fund and Archimedes Ventures to investor line up

Yesterday, Bay Area start-up Quixey announced that Eric Schmidt’s Innovation Endeavors fund had invested in the company.

I’m pleased to say that along with my partners in Archimedes Ventures we have also joined the roster of investors in the company.

All the best to Tomer Kagan and his team as they execute. The technology they have built is state of the art. Their team is fabulous. The world is theirs to grab.

Exciting times.

Sign up for the beta here
TechCrunch story here
GigaOm story here.

Posted in announcement, Features, Internet

Tags: , , , ,

Permalink Leave a comment

31Mar / 2011

Stunning new Digital Video Cameras

One of my hobbies is photography. I have a Canon 5D Mk II. It makes great pictures and also awesome videos. Check out http://planet5d.com for examples.

Now the world of video is beginning to respond to the arrival of DSLR cameras that can do great video. There are three recent entrants into the space. They all significantly reduce the price point of awesome video. In order of release they are:

1. The Panasonic AG-AF100
2. The Sony PMW-F3
3. The Sony NEX FS-100

Here are samples of each:

AG-AF100 test – Poi girl in Union Square, NYC from Sandy Chase on Vimeo.

SONY PMW-F3 :: shots from FilmesDaMente on Vimeo.

NEX FS 100 Video Blog from Den & James on Vimeo.

Posted in Cameras, Keith Teare,

Tags: , , , , ,

Permalink Leave a comment

14Jun / 2010

Looking at Sovereign Debt

I am in Heathrow on my way to Cape Town for the World Cup. Sitting in the lounge I was watching Japan v Cameroon on the TV and, as the game was boring, began to read the Independent newspaper.

Then this graphic caught my attention.

Posted in Politics and Economics

Tags: , ,

Permalink Leave a comment

15Apr / 2010

After Chirp, is Twitter related investing still smart?

Robert Scoble cornered Ron Conway in the hallway at the Chirp conference yesterday and in the aftermath of Twitter acquiring Tweetie, and announcing their own URL shortening service, asked the big question. Is it still sensible to invest in companies seeking to expand or enhance the use of Twitter in some way?

Ron is unequivocal in his answer.

For what it’s worth I think Ron is right…. as usual :-)

TechMeme Link here

Posted in Internet

Tags:

Permalink Leave a comment

03Apr / 2010

Popular Science Mag implements Mag+ vision

Mag+ live with Popular Science+ from Bonnier on Vimeo.

No comment really.

I do think video and audio are missing from this vision, but it is a great first step.

Posted in Internet

Permalink Leave a comment