UberX Wages War On Bay Area Taxis With 25% Price Cut

If Uber’s intent to put taxis out of business wasn’t clear already, the email it just sent SF Bay Area users should make it crystal. “We just dropped uberX fares by 25%, making it 45% cheaper than a taxi.” No matter how much people want hard-working cabbies to be able to support their families, uberX is now just too much cheaper for most people to ignore in San Francisco, the East Bay, San Jose, “and everywhere in between”.

Unlike last time it cut fares in January, Uber is focusing on taxis and didn’t even put a pink “other” bar on its pricing graph, which was surely an allusion to Lyft. Either Uber thinks it doesn’t have to worry about Lyft or doesn’t want to remind its customers about them. Either way uberX has now gone from costing 15% more to 13% less than a pink mustache ride around SF. Of course, that’s without surge pricing, which seems to boost uberX prices higher and more frequently than Lyft’s “Prime Time” pricing.

Lyft cut its own prices in April, allowing it to keep up with Uber. Now it will have to decide if it can afford to do it again. UberX is still more expensive in NYC than taxis, but you could imagine Uber dropping prices in a market until it breaks the local taxis, then moves the cuts to another city. Uber’s massive $1.2 billion funding round it raised earlier this month gives it plenty of room to starve out competitors.

Taxis were already struggling to compete. With inconvenient meatspace hailing, unreliable scheduled pickups, beat-up cars, and unaccountable drivers, many people think the taxis deserve to go the way of the dinosaur. There’s no denying that uberX is great service, and I use it frequently.

Still, others laud the navigation skills of veteran cabbies compared to uberX and Lyft drivers that are often new to professional driving or the city they operate in. There’s also an argument that taxi companies and drivers should be protected because they invested in $250,000 medallions that are earning them less money as Uber and Lyft compete for their business.

But with uberXs costing just over half of what a taxi does, most people would probably put up with a wrong turn or two. The president of big SF cab company DeSoto Hansu Kim told the Examiner that “with Uber, Lyft, and the like, he would be surprised if the cab industry survives another 18 months in The City.” And that was before today’s 25% uberX fare cut.

There’s an ongoing debate about whether cities should regulate services like Uber and Lyft. That could balance out competition with cabbies who invested in medallions, but impede innovation, degrade service, and raise prices for consumers. Cities better make up their mind, though, otherwise there soon might not be taxis in business to regulate.

Community Will Get Its Sixth Season… On Yahoo.

Look out, Netflix: Yahoo just played a card that you probably should have*. They’re bringing back Community.

After its sudden cancellation crushed fans back in May, whispers started going around that Community would turn to the web for its sixth season.

Sure enough, Yahoo!, series creator Dan Harmon, and star Joel Mchale have just confirmed it:

The series will live on Yahoo! Screen, Yahoo’s video streaming site that you very well may have never heard of before now.

SIX SEASONS AND A MOVIE.

[* Dearest Netflix: Want to make up for missing this one? There's always Firefly and/or Pushing Up Daisies.]

Story developing…

Two Senators Upbraid The Intelligence Community For Insufficient Disclosure

Consider Senators Al Franken and Dean Heller unimpressed.

Today the two Senators, one a Democrat and the other a Republican, released statements disparaging a recent transparency report from the U.S. intelligence community that broke down its activities in incredibly vague fashion.

The view of Senator Heller, that the report is progress, but not nearly enough, is roughly what I’m hearing from the private sector, as well. Here’s the Senator himself:

The report released by the Administration represents some progress, but it does not do near enough to provide Americans with adequate information. The American people deserve greater transparency and American companies should be able to disclose more information when it comes to privacy rights and the federal government’s surveillance activities.

His statement goes on to indicate support for the Surveillance Transparency Act (STA) of 2013, which he and Senator Franken introduced.

Senator Franken had similar comments, saying that the report is a “far cry from the kind of transparency that the American people demand and deserve.” The senator continues, stating that the report “still leaves Americans in the dark,” and that it “doesn’t tell the American people enough about what information is being gathered about them and how it’s being used.”

I noted in my initial coverage that the report itself was vague and incomplete and of limited use. But prior to the Snowden leaks, even this level of disclosure would have been unthinkable. Progress is progress even if it comes in small quantities.

The STA would force more disclosure. It hasn’t seen much motion inside of Congress. The ever-wrong-but-still-funny GovTrack.us ‘Prognosis’ tracker gives it a 1 percent chance of passing. There was some overlap between the STA and the USA FREEDOM Act. As The Hill also notes regarding the the crossover, “some transparency provisions were dropped from the House version.”

Following the release of the statements, Senator Franken announced that he will co-sponsor the USA FREEDOM Act in the Senate, aiming to push for more transparency. Hardly surprising timing, of course.

If the larger intelligence community had hoped that the report would quell discontent with its surveillance programs, consider that optimism dashed.

IMAGE BY FLICKR USER AWYU322 UNDER CC BY 2.0 LICENSE (IMAGE HAS BEEN MODIFIED)

 

High-Skill Immigration Reform Is Dead This Year – Again

High-skill immigration reform failed to become law in 2013. The Senate managed to pass a comprehensive bill around a year ago that went precisely nowhere in the House. When the new year kicked off, there was some optimism that we could get something done. Misplaced optimism, really. With this Congress, having a positive outlook is something akin to masochism.

President Obama, today in a Rose Garden address today, stated that in a recent conversation, Speaker of the House John Boehner indicated that the House will not vote this year on comprehensive immigration reform. The speaker responded with a statement that didn’t deny the claim.

So, that’s that. Don’t even bother sticking a fork in it, I doubt it would be too tasty.

High-skill immigration reform was lashed to comprehensive reform in the Senate, meaning that it likely can’t, or at least won’t given current Congressional dynamics, pass on its own. So until we have comprehensive immigration reform, we likely won’t see reform of the nation’s H-1B visa program and so forth.

When immigration reform died an ignominious death on Capitol Hill last year, I was pessimistic that Congress would get much done this year. High-skill immigration reform: Still dead. America!

IMAGE BY Flickr USER ttarasiuk UNDER CC BY 2.0 LICENSE (IMAGE HAS BEEN MODIFIED)

Forget.me Puts Out Early Data On What Europeans Want To Vanish From Google

An online service called Forget.me, launched last week to quickly capitalize on a European court ruling from late May that requires Google to process requests by private individuals to de-index outdated or irrelevant personal information, has put out some early data on the kind of requests individual Europeans are submitting via its (for now) free service.

Forget.me promises to hand-hold submitters through the process of asking Google to remove something about them, and keep them updated of the progress of their so-called ‘right to be forgotten‘ (rtbf) request. You don’t have to use a third party service â€" Google accepts requests directly (here) but Forget.me claims it makes the process quicker and easier. It’s actually a business extension of another startup, Reputation VIP, which works in the online reputation management space.

Setting aside the irony of private individuals engaging a third party company to take a very close interest in pieces of personal data they don’t want anyone else to know about (Forget.me’s privacy policy stretches to two lines: “Respect of your privacy is of the highest importance for Forget.me. We undertake to respect the confidentiality of any information you provide to us.”), the results make for interesting reading.

Perhaps most interesting is the fact that Forget.me is getting by far and away the largest proportion of its traffic from the U.S. â€" even though the ECJ ruling applies only in Europe. Doh… Indeed, Google is not required to de-index any information on Google.com, only â€" in the cases of successful requests â€" on searches conducted via its local products within the European Union (and a handful of regional non-EU countries).

However it’s not been entirely clear whether US citizens could request data about them be de-index by Google in Europe â€" which may explain some of the U.S. interest. Web traffic skewing to the US for certain keywords  may also be part of the explanation. It’s also possible there is an appetite for removing personal information from Google in the US â€" especially given that Europeans do now have an official channel to make requests.

Forget.me’s FAQ notes that the European rtbf law only applies to those physically residing in Europe, so, presumably, a U.S.citizen temporarily residing in Europe could make a request under the law â€" although an EU citizen living in another part of the world could not.

Forget.me said a third (33%) of its digital visitors in the first week of operation came from the U.S. The next largest single geographical group was France, with 7% of visitors (worth noting it is a French startup); followed by Germany and the U.K. (tied on 6% apiece).

Here’s its full geographical breakdown:

In total, since launching on June 24, Forget.me said its website has had more than 43,000 unique visitors, from 183 countries. While some 13,000 people registered on the site, which, at just under a third of total uniques, is not a bad registration rate.

Of those who have registered, 1,106 have submitted right to be forgotten applications so far, requesting the removal of a total of 5,218 links.

Forget.me has further broken down these early requests into some broad-brush categories â€" with the most popular motivation for a rtbf request being “invasion of privacy”, making up 28% of submissions. The next most popular category was “defamation and insult” (19%), according to Forget.me’s data.

There is then a big drop to the next most popular category: “misused identity” (6%).

The full list of categories also includes other currently even less popular categories, including criminal procedure, presumption of innocence and images.

For the two most popular categories for rtbf requests, Forget.me provides a further breakdown. Within the invasion of privacy category the most popular reason for private individuals to request information about them be de-indexed from Google is the disclosure of their home address â€" making up around a fifth (22%) of these requests.

This is followed (making up 18%) by negative opinions attached to an individual, such as if their name is mentioned on a forum critical of their workplace for example. In third place it’s redundancy (16%).

The full breakdown of the invasion of privacy category is as follows:

Forget.me has also provided more detail about the make up of the defamation and insult category â€" which shows that the largest motivator here (43%) is individuals worried about their name being erroneously attached to matters that are completely extraneous to them.

Google professed itself shocked at the ECJ ruling late last month, although the related data protection legislation dates back to 1995. The reason for the sudden enforcement was a referral from a Spanish court when a private individual had requested information about a property foreclosure be removed from Google.

The ECJ ruled that Google is a data controller â€" being as is orders and lists information â€" and should therefore be subject to the legislation.

In the immediate aftermath of the court ruling, information about the sorts of early requests Google was receiving emerged which carried the distinct scent of a controlled leak â€" being as pedophiles, dodgy politicians and bad doctors were identified as apparent rtbf requesters.

Google then subsequently publicly revealed a breakdown of requests in an interview with the FT two weeks after the ruling. Then Google said 31% of requests it had received related to fraud/scam; 20% to arrests/convictions for violent or serious crime; 12% to child pornography arrests; 5% to government or the police; and 2% to celebrities.

So, either the balance of requests has shifted around a month after the original ruling. Or the people using the Forget.me service are different to those making requests direct via Google. Or indeed both interested parties are spinning the data to their own ends.

Let’s not forget that Forget.me is aiming to make money off this ruling, so has a vested interest in the new European world order here â€" even as Google continues to lobby hard against it.

No one is without a wider economic agenda, except perhaps the private individuals submitting requests to Google â€" who just have their own individual and very personal agendas.

[Image by Hartwig HKD via Flickr]

Microsoft May Prioritize The Desktop In Windows 9

The latest rumor from the Microsoft community is confusing: Microsoft may disable, by default, the Metro-defined Start Screen on desktop-based computers in Windows 9, what is currently referred to as “Threshold.”

According to Neowin’s Brad Sams, in some Threshold builds, users must “manually turn [the Start Screen] back on, but this is situation dependent, if you wish to access the live tile environment.”

ZDNet’s Mary Jo Foley has a slightly different take on the situation:

Users running Threshold on a desktop/laptop will get a SKU, or version, that puts the Windows Desktop (for running Win32/legacy apps) front and center. Two-in-one devices, like the Lenovo Yoga or Surface Pro, will support switching between the Metro-Style mode and the Windowed mode, based on whether or not keyboards are connected or disconnected.

The combined Phone/Tablet SKU of Threshold won’t have a Desktop environment at all, but still will support apps running side-by-side, my sources are reconfirming. This “Threshold Mobile” SKU will work on ARM-based Lumia phones, ARM-based Windows tablets and, I believe, Intel-Atom-based tablets.

All of the above makes sense, so let’s synthesize. We’ve known a few things for some time now: Microsoft wants to re-prioritize the desktop Windows environment, because for all the talk of a post-PC world, people are still wildly dependent on their trusted computing configuration; and Windows is going to become a more unified system across discrete screen environments, eventually becoming a functionally dual-version operating system that works from phones to desktops.

I doubt that Microsoft will ever disable the Start Screen on PCs that are desktop-focused. But that doesn’t mean that the company wouldn’t build a flavor of its core operating system that has the desktop experience greatly favored.

Here we reach a point of dissonance: If Microsoft is hellbent on building share for its Windows Store, which resides in the Metro side of Windows 8.x, how the hell could it afford to essentially push that section of the operating system aside? It’s actually made the proper concession: The Windows Store’s icon has been moved to the desktop-side of the operating system.

And if you can run Metro apps in the desktop environment, ahem, you can Windows Store for days without needing the Start Screen.

Anecdotally, and I know that means we’re speaking with a skewed sample set, I’m recently seeing folks in my life that have purchased Windows 8.x PCs that are enjoying the new form factors, and touch, but are not too enthused about using the Start Screen on a chronic basis. Make of that what you will, it’s merely something that I’ve noticed and heard.

Foley has an interesting thought:

Microsoft is basically “done” with Windows 8.x. Regardless of how usable or functional  it is or isn’t, it has become Microsoft’s Vista â€" something from which Microsoft needs to distance itself, perception-wise. At this point, Microsoft is going full steam-ahead toward Threshold and will do its best to differentiate that OS release from Windows 8.

I think that’s actually a savvy take. We’re in a potentially Office 2007 situation, when Microsoft shook up the paradigm, took a number of potshots, managed to keep the bulk of the work intact and push out Office 2010 to massive success. Provided that Microsoft can keep that which is good in Windows 8, and blend in a host of strong desktop-focused updates, prioritizing each in different weight based on device form factor, the company could have a pretty solid operating system on its hands.

However, it’s no simple task: If Microsoft instead manages only a muddle of updates that are disparate in nature and are even less cohesive than Windows 8.0, the company could tilt the entire PC market south, past the point of stability in the 300 million units per year mark.

The RealReal’s Latest App “RealBook” Will Tell You What Your Designer Goods Are Actually Worth

Luxury consignment marketplace, The RealReal, is expanding its mobile footprint today with the launch of a new app called RealBook, which lets both potential buyers and sellers better understand the value of luxury items, including fashion and apparel, fine jewelry and watches. RealBook now joins the company’s previously launched smartphone apps, The RealReal’s mobile shop and Consign.

Now on track to $125 million in revenue by end of this year, The RealReal is one of the top online marketplaces for luxury consignment and designer goods. To date, it has sold over 500,000 items from more than 500 brands, the company tells us. This has allowed the team to gain a deep understanding of the price trends across the industry, in terms of what items are really worth, and how well they’ll resale when current owners are ready to let them go.

On The RealReal, items will resale anywhere from 10% to 90% of the original retail price, which is a wide range. But when you narrow it down by brand, the figures become more exact. For instance, Hermes accessories are generally 30% off retail; David Yurman is 45% off retail; Alaia is 55% off retail; and Jimmy Choo is 65% off retail, to give you an idea.

Meanwhile, The RealReal found that some brands hold their value longer, including Chanel, Louis Vuitton, Hermes, Christian Louboutin, Cartier, David Yurman, Alaia, Van Cleef & Arpels, and Goyard. But it also calls out others for losing their value the quickest, like Valextra, Tod’s, Versace, and Etro.

And it’s been able to spot brands that have a surprisingly low resale value, like Marni, Alexander Wang, 3.1 Philip Lim, and Marc Jacobs, or high value, like Givenchy, Victoria Beckham, Charlotte Olympia, and Alexander McQueen.

With the launch of the RealBook, which the company refers to as a kind of “Kelley Blue Book” type service, the idea is to now pass along these sort of insights and other data to potential customers.

The tool allows you to view and sort thousands of products by their resale prices, save your favorites, receive resale pricing updates, share products across social media, and, of course, shop. But RealBook isn’t just for figuring out how to price an item you’re reselling, or whether or not something you see listed is under- or overpriced â€" it can also help luxury item buyers before they shop.

Since many customers see their designer items as investments of a sort, RealBook can help them determine if the item under consideration will sell well in the future.

Today, The RealReal says it’s now processing 40,000 luxury goods per month across its website and mobile apps, where a team of authenticators, horologists, gemologists and art curators help to verify the quality and authenticity of the incoming shipments. Consigners then receive up to 70% of the resale price.

The new RealBook app, The RealReal’s first on iPad, is a free download here.

TheRealReal’s Latest App “RealBook” Will Tell You What Your Designer Goods Are Actually Worth

Luxury consignment marketplace, The RealReal, is expanding its mobile footprint today with the launch of a new app called RealBook, which lets both potential buyers and sellers better understand the value of luxury items, including fashion and apparel, fine jewelry and watches. RealBook now joins the company’s previously launched smartphone apps, The RealReal’s mobile shop and Consign.

Now on track to $125 million in revenue by end of this year, The RealReal is one of the top online marketplaces for luxury consignment and designer goods. To date, it has sold over 500,000 items from more than 500 brands, the company tells us. This has allowed the team to gain a deep understanding of the price trends across the industry, in terms of what items are really worth, and how well they’ll resale when current owners are ready to let them go.

On The RealReal, items will resale anywhere from 10% to 90% of the original retail price, which is a wide range. But when you narrow it down by brand, the figures become more exact. For instance, Hermes accessories are generally 30% off retail; David Yurman is 45% off retail; Alaia is 55% off retail; and Jimmy Choo is 65% off retail, to give you an idea.

Meanwhile, The RealReal found that some brands hold their value longer, including Chanel, Louis Vuitton, Hermes, Christian Louboutin, Cartier, David Yurman, Alaia, Van Cleef & Arpels, and Goyard. But it also calls out others for losing their value the quickest, like Valextra, Tod’s, Versace, and Etro.

And it’s been able to spot brands that have a surprisingly low resale value, like Marni, Alexander Wang, 3.1 Philip Lim, and Marc Jacobs, or high value, like Givenchy, Victoria Beckham, Charlotte Olympia, and Alexander McQueen.

With the launch of the RealBook, which the company refers to as a kind of “Kelley Blue Book” type service, the idea is to now pass along these sort of insights and other data to potential customers.

The tool allows you to view and sort thousands of products by their resale prices, save your favorites, receive resale pricing updates, share products across social media, and, of course, shop. But RealBook isn’t just for figuring out how to price an item you’re reselling, or whether or not something you see listed is under- or overpriced â€" it can also help luxury item buyers before they shop.

Since many customers see their designer items as investments of a sort, RealBook can help them determine if the item under consideration will sell well in the future.

Today, The RealReal says it’s now processing 40,000 luxury goods per month across its website and mobile apps, where a team of authenticators, horologists, gemologists and art curators help to verify the quality and authenticity of the incoming shipments. Consigners then receive up to 70% of the resale price.

The new RealBook app, The RealReal’s first on iPad, is a free download here.

Twitter Rolls Out App Install And Engagement Ads, And New Click Pricing, Globally

Social networking platform Twitter says its MoPub ad network now reaches more than 1 billion iOS and Android users every month, and so today it is making its latest move to build out that mobile advertising business with more products. Twitter is kicking off the global roll out of mobile app promotion ads â€" units that either take users to app downloads, or to the apps themselves if they’re already installed via a deep link â€" along with a new cost-per-app-click pricing and a dashboard to track usage.

CPAC pricing basically means a publisher will only be charged when a user actually goes to the App Store or Google Play from the ad, or when the user opens the app directly from Twitter.

Mobile app install ads have been running in beta on Twitter since April this year, and the company has been talking about for much longer.

Twitter is not the only one: as app publishers continue to look for new ways to acquire users and get their apps seen in outsized app stores, Google has also recently turned on app install ads in search and YouTube. On Facebook, these kinds of ads have been known to drive tens of millions of downloads.

But for Twitter, the interesting thing here too is that the intention will be to take this add unit elsewhere, too. “This announcement is for Twitter only but in future we are interested in driving deeper integration between Twitter and MoPub, and to extend mobile app promotion further,” Kelton Lynn, a product manager overseeing revenue at Twitter, tells me.

In the beta phase, as detailed in a blog post Twitter is putting up today, the ads have not seen quite such huge numbers, although it’s just a beta start: The mobile game Dots used the unit to promote a new version called TwoDots, which saw over 1 million app installs from the trial, the company says.

On Twitter, the new unit will now become more widely available not only in the U.S. but in the rest of the markets where Twitter is active. However, the ad unit will appear only for iOS and Android mobile users. Those who are on Windows Phone, BlackBerry will not be served these ads, and nor are there plans to add them in the near future.

“It’s a reflection of the usage of Twitter,” Lynn says. “The majority of usage is on Android and iOS.”

The move to expand the kinds of mobile ads that Twitter offers to brands and agencies speaks to how central smartphones and tablets are to the company’s strategy for revenue generation. Twitter says that in the last quarter it made about 72% of all its revenues (equivalent to $181 million out of total revenues of $250 million) from mobile advertising.

On top of the app install ads, Twitter will also be expanding the kinds of reporting and analytics that app publishers will get around them. The company says that keyword targeting in the ads will follow that of its other mobile units, with publishers able to set placement based on interest, keyword, gender, geographic location, language and mobile device, among other things.

As the unit is based around Promoted Tweet app cards, publishers can further customize with their own images and description or those of the app’s icon and anchor text from a respective app store.

Conversion tracking, meanwhile will let you track different actions, from installations and app openings, to sign ups and purchases in the case of paid apps.

Today Is The Last Day To Enter The PragueCrunch III Pitch-Off

PragueCrunch III is already sold out and I’m getting ready to pick startups for our pitch-off next Thursday. That means you have less than 12 hours to submit your start-up to the fray and I will notify those who will be pitching on stage tomorrow morning. You’re going to want to be part of this.

If we release more tickets, I’ll let you know in a post tomorrow or via my Twitter account. I’m not in charge of the venue so I don’t know if we’ll have room for extra attendees. That said, those of you who got free tickets are extremely lucky â€" the entire event will be catered with a nice open bar thanks to our sponsors and our organizer, Jack Deneut.

The event will be held on Thursday, July 3, 2014 from 6:00 PM to 11:00 PM (PDT) at Hergetova cihelna (2b Cihelná) and we’ll have free beer and wine as well as catered food all night. We’ll be holding a startup pitch off â€" each founder will pitch for 90 seconds and there will be eight startups on stage â€" and the winner gets a free table in Startup Alley at TechCrunch Disrupt in San Francisco or London and one runner-up gets two tickets to TechCrunch Disrupt in SF or London. Judges will be chosen from the local community. Myself and Natasha Lomas will be in attendance so put on your pitching pants and practice your elevator speech.

You do not have to be a Czech start-up to apply. All are welcome. Pitches are in English and I’m closing applications tonight at midnight.

To apply to the pitch-off, click here. Note you must also apply to Disrupt Europe or SF to apply to this pitch-off.

Agenda:

6pm â€" Doors Open
7pm â€" Pitch-Off
8pm â€" Winners Announced
8:15pm â€" Networking
11pm â€" Goodnight

The first 200 tickets are free, so act fast. You can grab a ticket here on Eventbrite. The next 100 tickets cost 10 euro.

This year’s PragueCrunch is sponsored by Avast, the Czech-based anti-virus app. It’s also sponsored by Credo Ventures, a VC firm that focuses on early stage tech investments in Central Europe.

We’ll have more information soon but until then, get ready: TechCrunch is coming back to Prague.

Pro-Privacy Blackphone Now Shipping

The pro-privacy Blackphone, a hardened Android smartphone that focuses on making rigorous security features more accessible to a general phone user, has started shipping to its first wave of buyers.

Blackphone is a partnership between Spanish mobile maker Geeksphone and security company Silent Circle. The phone, which uses a “security-oriented” Android build called PrivatOS, was unveiled back in January, with the company starting taking pre-orders the following month for a planned shipping date of June. It’s now fulfilling those first orders.

The Blackphone handset costs $629 â€" putting it at the premium end of the smartphone device market. But unlike the vast majority of Android handsets it has been designed to put user privacy front and centre.

The basic hardware tech specs include a 4.7 inch display, quad-core 2GHz processor, 1GB of RAM and a 2,000mAh battery. But the key feature-set here is Blackphone’s security credentials.

These include a tweaked and hardened version of Android; frequent over-the-top security updates that are not held back by carrier bottlenecks; Silent Phone and Silent Text for secure, encrypted telephony and messaging; a remote wipe feature for contact data; user prompts to switch on local data encryption; plus a bundle of third party security-focused services to further expand the feature set â€" including SpiderOak secure cloud storage, VPN anonymised browsing via Disconnect, and Kismet’s Wi-Fi analyser product.

Users are also walked through the Blackphone security set-up process via a wizard, to lower the barrier of entry to mobile data security. And while users can still download standard Android apps (which may of course be less than secure) to the phone, another feature on Blackphone analyses individual app behaviour â€" to warn users if an app is trying to do something it shouldn’t be.

The initial pre-order inventory sold out but SGP Technologies, the name of the Geeksphone-Silent Circle joint venture, said today it will be reopening its web store on July 14 to begin accepting new orders.

The company pulled in $30 million in funding back in May, with investors including Ross Perot Jr. and private investment fund Cain Capital LLC, based in Dallas. That was Silent Circle’s first external funding, which is perhaps a measure of rising investor interest in initiatives focused on digital privacy in these post-Snowden times.

Commenting on the launch in a statement, Toby Weir-Jones, CEO of SGP Technologies, said: “In a world where devices and apps increasingly offer features only in return for users’ personal or sensitive information, the pent-up demand for Blackphone shows there is strong, international demand for our brand’s devices and services that stand apart by placing privacy before all else.”

KelDoc Raises $1.4 Million To Make It Easier To Find A Doctor

KelDoc Raises $1.4 Million For Its Doctor Appointment Service

French startup KelDoc is raising $1.4 million (€1 million) from Alven Capital and business angels. KelDoc is what you could call a ZocDoc for Europe. But managing doctor appointments is a very regulated market, and KelDoc has a deep understanding on how this kind of service needs to be adapted to the French and European markets.

At heart, KelDoc is a website and smartphone app to look and find the right doctor for you. You can then browse his or her calendar to book an appointment. It doesn’t cost anything for the patient, but doctors need to pay $270 (€200) per month to use KelDoc.

Co-founder and CEO Eduardo Ronzano has an interesting background as well. He was born in Spain, studied in the U.K. and now lives in France. In other words, he knows how to do business in Spain, the U.K. and France. He also has both engineering and business degrees. You can call Ronzano the swiss army knife of European entrepreneurs.

Even more interesting, Ronzano was working at fundraising firm Global Equities when French startup Joliebox got acquired by Birchbox. He knows what it’s like to compete with a bigger startup in the same space on another continent.

You can call Ronzano the swiss army knife of European entrepreneurs

When Ronzano started KelDoc, he wanted a board to challenge him and keep him on track. Among other people, Bart Dessaint joined the board. Dessaint now works for Andreessen Horowitz, which is totally unrelated with KelDoc but a funny coincidence â€" the startup is probably the only French company with an Andreessen Horowitz partner at its board.

Compared to other French competitors, KelDoc is the one who works the most within legal contraints. You can be sure that nobody will ever find out whether you’re taking a lot of doctor appointments.

In addition to that, KelDoc has spent a lot of time developing plugins for existing doctor calendars and CRMs. This way, when a doctor uses KelDoc, he or she doesn’t have to do anything but install the plugin. When someone books an appointment, it will appear in the calendar right away. Similarly, if a doctor needs to move an appointment, the patient will receive a text alerting him or her of the change.

And it’s working. 160,000 people have visited the website so far, and more than 10,000 appointments were made through KelDoc. Even more important, many doctors are switching to KelDoc. Between the first quarter and the second quarter of 2014, 50 percent more doctors signed up to KelDoc.

“KelDoc now has a very good reputation and many doctors are spreading the word,” Alven Capital partner Jeremy Uzan told me in a phone interview.

It’s clear that KelDoc will expand outside of France in the coming months. “The company is doing well and could have continued without this new funding round,” Uzan said. And Ronzano doesn’t hide it either. “We want to expand,” he said. “My ambition is really to expand in Europe.” Yet, KelDoc’s main challenge is that it needs to be faster than ZocDoc when it comes to taking over the European market.

Shooting by Vlam, editing by Steve Long.

The Morality Of A/B Testing

We don’t use the “real” Facebook. Or Twitter. Or Google, Yahoo, or LinkedIn. We are almost all part of experiments they quietly run to see if different versions with little changes make us use more, visit more, click more, or buy more. By signing up for these services, we technically give consent to be treated like guinea pigs.

But this weekend, Facebook stirred up controversy because one of its data science researchers published the results of an experiment on 689,003 users to see if showing them more positive or negative sentiment posts in the News Feed would affect their happiness levels as deduced by what they posted. The impact of this experiment on manipulating emotions was tiny, but it raises the question of where to draw the line on what’s ethical with A/B testing.

First, let’s look at the facts and big issues:

The Experiment Had Almost No Effect

Check out the study itself or read Sebastian Deterding’s analysis for a great breakdown of the facts and reactions.

Essentially, three researchers, including one of Facebook’s core Data Scientists Adam Kramer, looked to prove whether emotions are contagious via online social networks. For a week, Facebook showed people fewer positive or negative posts to people in News Feed, and then measured how many positive or negative words they included in their own posts. People shown fewer positive posts (a more depressing feed) posted 0.1% fewer positive words in their posts â€" their status updates were a tiny bit less happy). People shown fewer negative posts (a happier feed) post 0.07% fewer negative words â€" their updates were a tiny bit less depressed).

Here you can see that the experiments only reduced the usage of positive or negative words a tiny amount.

News coverage has trumpeted that the study was harmful, but it only made people ‘sad’ by a minuscule amount.

Plus, that effect could be attributed not to an actual emotional change in the experiment participants, but them just following the trends they see on Facebook. Success theater may just be self-perpetuating, as seeing fewer negative posts might cause you to manicure your own sharing so your life seems perfect too. One thing the study didn’t find was that being exposed to happy posts on Facebook makes you sad because your life isn’t as fun, but again, the findings measured what people posted not necessarily how they felt.

Facebook Didn’t Get Consent Or Ethics Board Approval

Facebook only did an internal review to decide if the study was ethical. A source tells Forbes’ Kashmir Hill it was not submitted for pre-approval by the Institutional Review Board, an independent ethics committee that requires scientific experiments to meet stern safety and consent standards to ensure the welfare of their subjects. I was IRB certified for an experiment I developed in college, and can attest that the study would likely fail to meet many of the pre-requisites.

Instead, Facebook holds that it manipulates the News Feed all the time to test what types of stories and designs generate the most engagement. It wants to learn how to get you to post more happy content, and spend more time on Facebook. It saw this as just another A/B test, which most major tech company, startups, news sites, and more run all the time. Facebook technically has consent from all users, as its Data Use Policy people automatically agree to when they sign up says “we may use the information we receive about you…for…data analysis, testing, research and service improvement.”

Many consider that to be a very weak form of consent, as participants didn’t know they were in the experiment, its scope or intent, its potential risks, if data would be kept confidential, and they weren’t provided any way to opt out. Some believe Facebook should ask users for consent and offer an opt out for these experiments.

Everyone Is A/B Testing

So the negative material impact of this specific study was low and likely overblown, but the controversy vaults the ethics question into a necessary public discussion.

Sure, there are lots of A/B Tests, but most are pushing for more business-oriented results like increasing usage or clicks or purchases. This study purposefully sought to manipulate people’s emotions positively and negatively for the sake of proving a scientific theory about social contagion. Affecting emotion for emotion’s sake is why I believe the study has triggered such charged reactions. Some people don’t think the intention of the experimenter matters, because who’s to know what they really want, especially when it comes to big for-profit companies. I think it is an important factor for distinguishing what may need oversight.

Either way, there is some material danger to experiments that depress people. As Deterding notes, the National Institute Of Mental Health says 9.5% of Americans have mood disorders, which can often lead to depression. Some people who are at risk of depression were almost surely part of Facebook’s study group that were shown a more depressing feed, which could be considered dangerous. Facebook will endure a whole new level of backlash if any of those participants were found to have committed suicide or had other depression-related outcomes after the study.

That said, every product, brand, politician, charity, and social movement is trying to manipulate your emotions on some level, and they’re running A/B tests to find out how. They all want you to use more, spend more, vote for them, donate money, or sign a petition by making you happy, insecure, optimistic, sad, or angry. There are many tools for discovering how best to manipulate these emotions, including analytics, focus groups, and A/B tests. Often times people aren’t given a way to opt out.

Facebook may have acted unethically. Despite its constant testing to increase engagement which could fall into a grayer area, this experiment tried to directly sway emotions.

A brand manipulating its own content to change someone’s emotions to complete a business objective is simpler and expected. A portal manipulating the presence of content shared with us by friends to depress us for the sake of science is different.

You might guess McDonalds, with its slogan “I’m loving it” is trying to make you feel like you’re less happy without it, and a politician is trying to make you feel more optimistic if you vote for them. But many people don’t even understand the basic concept of Facebook using a relevancy-sorting algorithm to filter the News Feed to be as engaging as possible. They probably wouldn’t suspect Facebook might show them fewer happy posts from friends so they’ll be sadder in order to test a theory of social science.

In the end, an experiment with these intentions and risks may have deserved its own opt-in, which Facebook should consider offering in the future.

But while Facebook has become the lighting rod, the issue of ethics in A/B testing is much bigger. If you believe toying with emotions is unethical, most major tech companies as well as those in other industries are guilty too.

Regulation, Or At Least Safeguards

So what’s to be done? The variety of companies that run these tests range from large to small, and the risks of each test fall on a highly interpretable spectrum from innocuous to gravely dangerous. Banning any testing that “manipulates emotions” would cause endless arguments about what qualifies, be nearly impossible to enforce, and could often slow-down innovation or degrade the potential quality of products we use.

But there are still certain companies with outsized power to impact people’s emotions in ways that are tough for the average person to understand.

That’s why a good start would be for companies running tests that manipulate emotions to offer an opt in, or at least an opt out. Just because everyone else isn’t doing it, doesn’t mean big tech companies can’t be pioneers of better ethics. Volunteering to provide a choice as to whether you want to be a guinea pig could bolster confidence amongst users.

As for providing users some independent protection against harmful emotional manipulation on a grand scale, the Federal Trade Commission might consider auditing these practices. The FTC already has settlements with Facebook, Google, Twitter, Snapchat, and more companies to audit their privacy practices for ten to twenty years. The FTC could layer on ethical oversight for experimentation and product changes with the same goal of protecting consumer well-being.

At the very least, the tech companies should educate their data scientists and others designing A/B tests about the ethical research methods associated with having experiments approved by the IRB. Even if the tech companies don’t actually submit individual tests for review, just being aware of best practices could go a long way to keeping tests safe and compassionate.

The world has quickly become data-driven. It’s time ethics caught up.

#Love: Pride

I’ve been gay since I was… well, born.

At seven years old, I knew something was different when I felt an overwhelming affection for my 19-year-old basketball coach, Cathy. By the time I figured out how sex worked, I had also learned that my Southern Baptist private school and religious community weren’t cool with the whole “gay” thing. At 13, despite truly believing that my feelings were wrong, I looked myself in the mirror in my bathroom, (checked around the corner to make sure no one could hear me,) and said it out loud: “Jordan, you’re gay.” Six years and two girlfriends later, I would cry as I told my parents, who smiled and said they already knew.

My history with technology hasn’t been as difficult or as determined as my coming out story. Like most late-80′s babies, I had a Nokia phone and chatted on AIM in middle school, got a Myspace and a Xanga in high school, and jumped on the iPhone and Facebook in college. I took typing and computer history classes in junior high (and now I wish desperately I had paid more attention). With ease, I set up wireless routers for my parents and troubleshot my mom’s printer issues. But I never really thought of myself as someone who was “into tech”.

I actually went to college to become a writer. I wanted to write fiction books and non-fiction books and articles in media publications and short stories. Across as many formats as possible, I wanted to write about human culture â€" the undefinable oddities that make people so fascinating. When I was younger, I didn’t realize that the most interesting part of human culture is how it changes, and why. Turns out, tech has a pretty big role in that.

So here I am, all gay and “into tech” and rambling on like a bad writer, but I’m not the only gay who was raised on a healthy diet of technology. The gay rights movement and the technology industry grew up together, and they wouldn’t be the same without each other.

The gay liberation movement sprung up around the Stonewall Riots in 1969, but the acceleration of gay rights progress in the last 10-15 years is astounding. Up until 2004, no state in the United States allowed same sex marriages. Up until 2011, the military’s anti-gay “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” policy was still in effect.

Today, same-sex marriage is legal in 19 states and the District of Columbia. Change that fast can really only be matched by our very own tech industry, which has taken us from printing out MapQuest directions to having the internet in our pocket in a few short years. Soon, we’ll have self-driving cars and wear computers on our faces.

Geography has, of course, played a big role in the relationship between technology and the gay rights movement. Silicon Valley is the hub of innovation in the United States, and it also happens to be next door to the gay mecca of our great country, San Francisco.

Despite the fact that we celebrate pride on the anniversary of Stonewall, a clear look at history shows you that the real beginning of the gay rights movement started in California, which is where some of the most important moments in the history of the gay movement have taken place.

The mindset of the tech industry, to always think beyond this moment in time, is the same mindset that keeps hope and determination in the minds of marriage equality advocates. And pride, the heartbeat of the gay movement, is the same thing that lets a young entrepreneur stand up in a room full of suits believing that his idea is worth their money.

But it’s not just the mingling of cultures that has married these two movements. The internet allowed gay people from small towns to connect with other people like them, despite the limitations of geography. It’s pretty hard to be motivated for a war unless you know you have an army behind you.

One of the first groups to ever send out regular email blasts was the Gay and Lesbian Alliance Against Discrimination, which asked recipients to call or email them when entertainment companies portrayed gay people poorly during the mid-90s.

And even before that, tech companies were some of the first to openly support the gay rights movement. Apple had a gay employee group all the way back in 1986, and Lotus was one of the first companies to ever offer health benefits to the partners of gay employees.

“The first generation of tech companies â€" Microsoft, Apple and IBM â€" were some of the earliest adopters of LGBT benefits,” HRC Workplace Project deputy director Deena Fidas told Politico. “And the second-generation companies â€" Google and Facebook â€" not only ensure equality internally, but they’ve turned around and spoken up for issues. For the Employment Non-Discrimination Act, for instance, we saw very strong leadership right out of the gate from the tech world.”

Of the 200 companies that signed an amicus brief filed with the Supreme Court in opposition to Prop 8, nearly 20 percent were tech companies. Jeff Bezos and his wife pledged $2.5 million to Washington United for Marriage in an effort to legalize gay marriage in Washington State, the same organization that Bill Gates and Steve Ballmer each pledged $100,000 to.

But beyond the money and the political action, these tech companies â€" that have grown up over the course of this fundamental shift in our country’s stance toward marriage â€" do something that is perhaps much more valuable.

Facebook not only has an option to be listed as gay or lesbian or bisexual, but there are now up to 50 different gender identity options for LGBTQ individuals who identify as something other than male or female. In fact, users can choose up to ten different self-identifying options, with pronouns included.

Google includes gay couples in their Google Doodles and gets super involved during Pride, even when it comes to Easter Eggs.

Amazon and Microsoft have both aired commercials featuring gay couples.

These companies are trusted brands with loyal followings who are pushing the agenda of the gay rights movement into the mainstream. And meanwhile, smaller companies like Grindr and Hornet and Dattch look to serve a relatively underserved group of people looking to find love. Or sex.

That’s not to say that the tech industry’s relationship with gay rights doesn’t have its shortcomings. Stereotypes are still at play. Some people in tech are still afraid to come out of the closet.

But the role that the tech industry has played in the history of the gay rights movement can not be understated. So today, on the anniversary of Stonewall and the eight anniversary of “Jordan goes to Pride”, I want to tell a quick story.

When I was a kid, I was more of a tomboy than you can imagine. I had short hair, played sports, and I wore the clothes that I begged my mom for â€" the ones in the boys section of Gap Kids. In third grade, our teacher went around the room and asked everyone what they wanted to be when they grew up.

I said I wanted to be a talk show host on TV like Oprah.

“Hmm,” said Mrs. Gallagher, pausing to examine my blue and white-striped polo, short blond hair and long khaki cargo shorts. “You’re going to have to learn to put on a dress,” she said before moving on to the next person in class.

I was pretty devastated. I started to realize, at the young age of 8, that I was automatically limited in what I was going to be able to do with my life. Forget childhood dreams of being a model or a singer or an actress. No fame and fortune for me, the girl who refused to wear dresses. I couldn’t even imagine what I’d wear to work in an office like my dad worked in. A suit, maybe, but I wasn’t sure that would be allowed.

As I grew up, I used the internet to figure out my sexuality just like the next guy. I connected with friends who didn’t go to my stupid Christian school who understood what I was going through. Who told me I wasn’t alone. By the time I had come out and started college, I didn’t feel quite so limited.

“It Gets Better” had just started. Ellen Degeneres had returned from the dead to be one of the most brilliant, talented, and dearly loved talk show hosts ever.

Today, I host a TCTV show called Fly or Die. I host our TechCrunch regional meetups and our major conference, Disrupt, live on stage. It’s not a talk show on TV, but I get to write, and I love my job more than anything. And without tech, I wouldn’t have it.

Oh, and Mrs. Gallagher, I still don’t wear dresses.

#Love is a new column on TechCrunch dealing with digital matters of the heart. It explores our relationships, their relationship with technology, and all the gory details that come with it. Jordan Crook will be leading the charge, and is looking for guest writers to tell their own stories each week. Maybe you found your soul mate on Tinder, or got dumped on Facebook, or have an outrageously interesting sext life. We all have our stories. If you’re interested in contributing, send an email to jordan@techcrunch.com with the subject line #Love for more details.

Startups And The Un-Banking Of America

Editor’s note: Rebecca Lynn is a general partner at Canvas Venture Fund, an early-stage venture capital firm. She has led investments in Lending Club in 2009, Check in 2011 and FutureAdvisor in 2014 and sits on the boards of Lending Club, Check, FutureAdvisor, Doximity, Convo, HealthLoop and Socrata. She also led the Series A investment in Practice Fusion.    

Historically, when looking for opportunity in the financial industry where technology can have the greatest impact â€" for investors and entrepreneurs â€" the best place to start has been with one of our oldest institutions: banks. However, while critical to our economy, banks are generally inefficient, have high fixed costs and don’t exactly elicit happy thoughts from the average consumer. It’s for these reasons, among others, that the biggest opportunities in the financial world revolve around the disintermediation of these banks and core financial services.

Given this backdrop, it’s not hard to imagine that a majority of the people in the U.S. could be “banking” with startups, in one form or another, in the next three to five years. It’s been happening for some time, but the pace and volume of business taken away from banks by startups in the last few years have been significant â€" and this trend will continue to grow.

Disintermediation of Consumer Credit

For starters, we have to look no further for evidence of the inefficiency of our banking system than during our most recent recession. In 2009, the credit crisis was at its peak, and it was practically impossible to get a loan, even for prime borrowers. Interest rates were low, with consumers receiving 0.25 percent on a savings account and prime borrowers paying upwards of 18  percent annual percentage rate. The spread was huge, and so was the opportunity.

The credit crisis showed the tech industry that one of the biggest areas of opportunity for startups was in re-imagining consumer lending. People were looking to alternative forms of lending for answers and thanks to the problems above, interest in solutions like peer-to-peer lending were on the rise. Not surprisingly, a cohort of companies emerged to take advantage of these trends, beginning with Prosper, which was soon followed by Lending Club and a litany of others.

At the core of this emerging market was the desire to take banks out of the equation and connect investors directly with those in need of capital. In other words, disintermediation. Furthermore, investors looking for options in a down economy wanted stability, transparency, shorter duration and less credit risk, while maintaining solid returns. Compared to traditional options like high-yield bonds, peer-to-peer lending had appeal.

Today, companies like Prosper and Lending Club continue to thrive. Prosper has raised $145 million to date from a host of investors, including Sequoia and DFJ, and projects that it will hit $2 billion in loans originated this year. Lending Club had issued $4 billion in loans by the end of March 2014, and became cash-flow positive in 2012. [Full disclosure: I am an investor in Lending Club.]

Of course, it wasn’t an easy road for either company. Both had to survive significant regulatory scrutiny and approval by the SEC, and investors were understandably wary of newer lending models, like peer-to-peer. As a result, it took Lending Club five years to issue $1 billion in loans (2007-2012), but once it passed regulatory scrutiny and both consumers and investors alike came around, these companies grew quickly. It then took the company only one year to top $2 billion (2013).

By the end of the first quarter, Lending Club had reached $4 billion, and part of the reason that both it and Prosper have continued to see steady growth is that they made peace with taking their time and built measured growth into their DNA. In Lending Club’s case, it took time to set the table â€" to register with the SEC, earn real trust with consumers and lenders, and achieve growth while avoiding sub-prime borrowers. They had to be measured in their growth strategy and each step had to be completed and in place before they could move on to the next.

The other factor that has led to Lending Club’s success and plays into the theme of disintermediation we’ve been seeing over the last five years is that it has looked to differentiate itself from traditional lenders (and other startups) by adopting a model that has been used by many other successful tech companies, like eBay and Amazon, for example.

Few have talked about it, but Lending Club and Prosper’s key differentiator is that they are marketplaces. Most other lenders aren’t. They have to borrow money either by going after warehouse lines of credit or they loan out equity capital. Lending Club and Prosper, however, connect buyers and sellers through peer-to-peer lending marketplaces.  And as a result, and this is key, it doesn’t have the same balance sheet risk as other traditional lenders might have.

Mobile and the Disintermediation of Bill Pay, Processing & More

Of course, the opportunities for disruption at the hands of disintermediation extend beyond lending. The smartphone and increasing mobility of our world is changing the game. The consumerization of the enterprise and the “BYOD” (bring your own device) trend within businesses mean that phones and tablets are becoming entrenched features within the corporate and consumer worlds.

Companies like Intuit, eBay/PayPal, Mint.com started the ball rolling when it comes to disintermediation, and today a new generation of companies like Square, Braintree, Dwolla, Simple, Venmo, InDinero and Check are taking it to the next level. But it’s not just startups alone. Consumer brand giants are leveraging both startups and the reach of the new mobile phone network to edge into territory that has traditionally been controlled by banks. Starbucks partnering with Square to be the main processor at thousands of locations is just one of many notable examples.

While banks have traditionally owned the small business space, platforms like Square, Intuit and PayPal â€" and even Amazon and Groupon â€" are playing the “disintermediator” and are putting credit card processing in the hands of SMBs (small and medium businesses) and consumers. Not only that, they’re bundling in other services with processing and targeting them at SMBs.

The growing mobility of the average consumer has allowed businesses to spring up and grow by assuming roles traditionally reserved for banks. Check is one of these businesses trying to do an “end-around” on banks by giving consumers the ability to aggregate and manage all of their critical banking information and bills in one place â€" on their smartphones. [Full disclosure: I am an investor in Check.] Rather than consumers being forced to go to their banks’ websites, their utility company’s website and so on, it put all of these services in one place.

And again, the first generation of financial technology companies (and banks) have taken notice, and one doesn’t have to look far for examples: BBVA acquired Simple in February for $117 million; Braintree acquired Venmo in 2012 for $26 .2 million; PayPal acquired Braintree last September for $800 million; and Intuit acquired Check in May for $360 million.

Disintermediation of the Second Tier

With a loss of faith in the banking system, mobility on the rise and SMBs beginning to take back some control, we’ve also begun to see an increasing number of people not only turning away from traditional banks, but begin to embrace virtual marketplaces. Just as Lending Club and Prosper took advantage of the limited access to banking capital that begin during the Credit Crisis, marketplaces like Kickstarter, Indiegogo, Venmo, Crowdtilt, and Fundly are giving people and businesses an easier way to test, build and fund their products, invest in businesses, pool money, pay friends and facilitate microtransactions. [Full disclosure: My firm is an investor in Fundly.]

Disintermediation is also beginning to seep into other “older” financial services markets, like wealth advisory. Not unlike banks, wealth advisory is an inefficient cottage industry that traditionally comes loaded with fees and a total lack of transparency. Companies like Wealthfront, Betterment, SigFig, FutureAdvisor and more are looking to help consumers minimize fees and maximize returns. [Full disclosure: I am an investor in FutureAdvisor.]

As people start to rely less and less on the institutions that have traditionally acted as sole providers of those services and have maintained a vise-like grip on market share, we’ve begun to see disintermediation arrive in complementary financial services â€" to the second tier, if you will. And if the last five years is any indication, it won’t stop at second-tier services.

What’s Next â€" in the Wake of Bitcoin?

So, as we look forward, at all the possibilities inherent in crowdfunding, microfinance and microlending, we’re seeing new potential for companies to provide the next generation of those payment rail systems â€" the kind for which people have traditionally relied on from banks. As we all know, money transfer is far from instantaneous â€" and even further from being free.

That’s why bitcoin and the latest forms of cryptocurrency are so exciting. Digital currencies like bitcoin have the potential to drive down transaction fees in a big way. Say, for example, you sell electronics or operate a business where profit margins are slim, say under 5 percent. In this case, the traditional 2.5 percent payment fees eat up half of your margins. But with bitcoin, companies could see a significant reduction in transaction fees and, as a result, a boost to their bottom line.

What’s more, many small businesses struggle with accepting international payments, but with a distributed, decentralized digital currency, international borders and monetary systems decrease in importance and relevance. It also could be hugely beneficial for micropayments, especially on mobile platforms, and a digital currency of record could become the micropayment system for the web, allowing publications, for example, to accept fractions of a cent for every article a reader consumes. It opens up a whole new set of monetization options and alternatives to the traditional paywall.

Of course, while the prospect of a digital currency becoming a sort of free rails for moving money is exciting, interchange fees still exist today with bitcoin, and regulation, true anonymity and volatility still remain question marks.

But the world of digital currency remains an exciting area of opportunity. Other areas that are prime for disruption by startups include underwriting and risk scoring; both areas are being reinvented today through the availability and abundance of new data types.

From the rise of peer-to-peer lending models, mobile wallets, digital investment advisory, to the bitcoin revolution, today’s digital disintermediation comes in many forms â€" all of which challenge banks to innovate. To those startups that aim to fundamentally change the way we transact for the better, we’ll be cheering you on.

IMAGE BY Shutterstock USER Christopher Boswell

The Supreme Court And Your Software Patents

Editor’s note: Michael Gulliford is the Founder and Managing Principal of the Soryn IP Group,a new breed of patent management and advisory company that provides a host of patent-centric services to a select group of innovators.  

The Supreme Court recently issued its long-awaited opinion in Alice Corp. v. CLS Bank Int’l, known more affectionately in many circles as the Supreme Court case deciding whether software is patentable. Although the Supreme Court did not tackle that broader question in its June 19 opinion, it did address whether CLS Corp. should be allowed to patent the concept of mitigating settlement risk implemented in software. And the Supreme Court’s analysis of that issue should have important implications for anyone with interests in software patents.

Alice Corp. owns several patents related to computerized schemes for mitigating “settlement risk” â€" i.e. the risk that only one party to an agreed-upon financial exchange will satisfy its obligation. Although the practice of risk mitigation had existed long before Alice Corp. sought to patent the software version of doing so, Alice Corp. argued to the Supreme Court that it should be able to patent the process of implementing risk mitigation so long as a computer implemented that process.

The Supreme Court disagreed. It has long been recognized that “abstract ideas” are not patentable. Although difficult to ascertain the line between a patentable software invention and an unpatentable abstract idea, the Supreme Court provided the software industry with guidance. When analyzing whether a software patent relates to nothing more than an impermissible abstract idea, the Supreme Court says that you should look at a patents’ claim, i.e. the part of the patent that defines the metes and bounds of the invention.

If a particular software patent’s claims can be distilled to a general concept that was in existence long before someone thought to implement the concept in software, there is a good chance it is an unpatentable abstract idea. Examples would include playing cards, ways of doing business, and even activities like auctions. After all, these are concepts that existed long before computer programmers wrote code to implement them in a program.

And according to the Supreme Court, the only way to convert these otherwise unpatentable abstract ideas into a patentable invention is to show something else in the patent’s claims that make it a new invention. Such “newness” does not result simply by using a computer to implement a concept that has long since been around. It could result, however, when the software patent achieves some new result not previously attainable, requires novel computer operations to operate or improves the functioning of the hardware itself.

Are things still murky in the patent software space? Unquestionably so, particularly since most software can be distilled to an abstract concept and the Supreme Court does not believe that simply implementing such a concept with a normal computer will qualify that subject matter for patentability.

What is clear, however, is that the weapon of many non-practicing entities (more commonly known as “patent trolls”) â€" the business-method software patent â€" is likely dead. Why? Because these patents generally relate to the use of known computer methods to implement known ways of doing business â€" the hallmark of invalidity under the Supreme Court’s new decision. Also at risk are software patents directed to concepts that occurred in real life, before being implemented in software. Above we provide the examples of gaming patents, but the list goes on and on.

In light of these developments, CEOs and inventors without unlimited budgets may be well-advised to proceed with caution before incurring the tremendous costs associated with seeking software patent protection. Unless the underlying technology improves the functioning of the hardware, is implemented by novel computer operations or relates to a concept not already generally known, the risks and costs of seeking patent protection may far outweigh the questionable rewards.

Yo! Hackathon Attempts To Show How Yo Can Grow

The something-like-a-phenomenon app of the moment, Yo, held a hackathon today in San Francisco in an attempt to prove that there can be more to Yo than just the Yo, yo.

One hack that’s already climbed the charts to the number one spot on Product Hunt is YoServerIsDown â€" created by programmers Jarryd Lee and Hayden Lee.

The app, which will send a yo to notify a subscriber when a server goes down (hence the clever name), is one of several mods that are attempting to move Yo from a messaging diversion that’s just silly to something more substantial.

Cowboy Ventures partner Noah Lichtenstein, who attended the event, posted a few of his other favorite hacks to Product Hunt including a “YOaster”, which would send a yo when bread finished toasting in a hacked toaster and Yo Radio, which bookmarks songs playing on the radio so a user can access information about the song later from a computer (I think that last one is called Shazam).

Critics deride Yo as the latest evidence that technology innovation has been degraded to an inside joke for programmers and developers â€" who can raise real money for an app developed for nothing more than shits and giggles.

Meanwhile, Yo boosters have spent several hundred words (perhaps too many hundred words) on an ontological quest to get to the heart of Yo.

Venture investor (and husband of one of the world’s best-dressed billionaires) Marc Andreessen calls yo an example of one-bit communication â€" a message that only exists as itself. There is no meaning â€" the medium is, in fact, the message.

What’s refreshing is seeing Yo at least try to move beyond the conversation its detractors and supporters are having by promoting applications that can add additional value.

As any startup can tell you, success is never just about the app â€" it’s about how people ultimately use it.

IMAGE BY Bryce Durbin

IAC Putting A Ring On Dating Site HowAboutWe

Looks like IAC is adding Brooklyn-based HowAboutWe as another notch in its dating site acquisition belt. It already owns Match.com, OkCupid and a majority stake in Tinder.

According to a letter obtained by Business Insider, founder Brian Schechter addressed employees about the acquisition, confirming that many HowAboutWe employees would be losing their jobs:

Indeed, we are still finalizing a deal and zero final decisions have been made. That a deal is even a possibility should remain completely confidential. I know this is a bumpy â€" and let’s face it â€" a weird moment but we should proceed in a manner that is really smart, graceful, and empowering for everyone.

A weird moment, indeed. HowAboutWe snatched up Nerve.com earlier this year to take on competition from IAC. However, some key employees had already started to leave earlier this month.

According to a staffer, Schechter and co-founder Aaron Schildkrout pulled aside a number of employees in closed door meetings on Thursday and Friday to let them know they could be let go. However, the founders also texted 3 employees that they were definitely keeping their jobs. That is until one of the three got a text asking them what their current salary was. Schechter allegedly recanted the offer to let that particular employee stay when the staffer reminded Schechter they’d recently received a raise.

Many were reportedly upset at the way the news has been handled thus far. Here’s the full email sent to Business Insider:

Subject: Quick touch base

Hi Everyone,

I got an email from someone in the media industry asking about “What’s happening with layoffs at HowAboutWe?” They specifically asked about the edit team.

If you get this question, it should be denied. It’s inaccurate. We have not laid anyone off.

Indeed, we are still finalizing a deal and zero final decisions have been made. That a deal is even a possibility should remain completely confidential, as well.

The company being in control of the message is the best thing for everyone to be well set up for next steps, and that means keeping things truly in confidence and not telling anyone about this exciting next step may at HowAboutWe, etc. [sic]

I know this is a bumpy â€" and let’s face it â€" a weird moment, but we should be sure that we proceed in a manner that is really smart, graceful and empowering for everyone

Thank you. Please don’t hesitate to reach to me with any questions or concerns. I’m available.

Brian

This Week In The Digital Panopticon: Google And The Right To Be Forgotten

The ongoing tug of war between data capture and individual privacy in the digital sphere involves myriad threads, usually moving in different directions. Getting an overview of and a handle on developments can therefore be almost impossible. It’s as if â€" ironically enough â€" this issue itself needs to be observed within a Panopticon.

This week has seen a particularly interesting development that embodies some of the nuances at play. Google has started removing certain types of information from search results in Europe â€" granting requests from private individuals for the removal of outdated or irrelevant information returned when a search is made for their name.

This follows a landmark ruling by the European Court of Justice last month that has been loosely termed a ‘right to be forgotten’, but is in fact related to European data protection legislated that dates back to 1995. The ruling stipulates that Google must accept and process requests by private individuals to remove links to outdated information about them. So really it is a classic case of technology developments outstripping and circumventing legal structures that were fashioned in an earlier era.

The basic problem remains that technology develops faster than legislators legislate. And also evidently faster than consumers’, politicians’ and even the judiciary’s ability to grasp how the implementation of a new technology might (or might not) be infringing on existing laws.

Technology by its nature inevitably overspills the neat categories prior law was founded on. It creates new categories and processes whose fit within the legal status quo becomes questionable â€" allowing for wiggle room and disruption of an extant system of order. In many ways that’s how technologically driven progress happens.

But it can also lead to problems of overreaching behaviour and a lack of accountability that tips the scales and disturbs existing checks and balances.

The complaint that led to the ECJ requirement dates back to 2010. A Spanish citizen lodged a complaint with a local data protection agency, against a local newspaper and against Google, requesting the removal of information about him that dated back more than a decade.

The data protection agency rejected the complaint against the newspaper, but upheld it against Google. Google attempted to have the decision quashed, and the Spanish high court then referred the matter to the ECJ â€" which handed down its landmark ruling in May. And the rest, as they say, is European digital history.

The ECJ specifically ruled that search engines like Google are data controllers, and are indeed required to adhere to European law if they have a branch or subsidiary in a European Union member state. It also crucially confirmed that individuals, under certain conditions, have a right to ask search engines to remove links to personal data about them.

The conditions apply when the information is “inaccurate, inadequate, irrelevant or excessive for the purposes of the data processing”. So it’s by no means a right for anyone to have anything overwritten. The data in question has to be prejudicial to an individual and ‘beyond its sell-by-date’. Or just plain wrong.

The court also ruled that the right to ask for something to be removed from Google’s search engine should also be balanced against other fundamental rights, such as the freedom of expression and of the media. So again it’s not carte blanche for individuals to whitewash their personal accounts.

In essence, the ruling requires an assessment of each individual request that weighs up the sensitivity relating to the individual’s private life vs the interest the public might have in knowing whatever it is. It requires a nuanced, case-by-case judgement that an algorithm-loving business like Google is clearly going to object to. Building a algorithm that can fairly process those sort of nuanced considerations is obviously going to be a tough call.

Now the ECJ ruling is undoubtedly controversial. It has been vocally attacked as “censorship of knowledge” by the likes of Wikipedia’s Jimmy Wales, who has since become a member of a Google advisory committee on privacy created following the ECJ ruling to help the company weigh the issues at hand.

But even people you might expect to support a pro-privacy ruling have had misgivings. At times the hand-wringing has been almost audible.

In one attack on the ruling, the privacy commissioner for Ontario Canada co-authored an article comparing Google to a librarian in charge of a catalogue of books â€" and the ECJ ruling as creating a “swiss-cheese of gaps and holes” in the library’s card index. So again an accusation of censorship.

What is evident is that Google has been very successful at arguing it’s an impartial middleman in the data delivery pipeline. It’s not the publisher â€" it just points you to the published stuff, is what it says. But that’s something of a disingenuous argument when you consider how much power the Google pointer wields.

And that that pointer is directed by an unquantified algorithm that works in the background to rank the information you are most likely to encounter.

It’s also worth pointing out that Google has a massively dominant market share in Europe â€" circa 90 percent of the search engine market. If it’s a library, it’s a chain of commercial libraries with a branch in every European town. So combine hugely dominant market share with the reordering that Google performs on the information it indexes and its position, vis-a-vis controlling access to personal data, looks far more influential than mere middleman.

Google’s algorithms are designed to process information and foreground certain bits in response to a specific query. Its processes structure others’ data and the resulting Google-created order becomes a hierarchy â€" meaning that certain pieces of information become more visible and accessible than other bits.

The reader walking into Google’s ‘library’ is directed to a shelf containing a single massive volume â€" located right at their eye level.

The point is: Ranking information is always going to be a subjective endeavor, whether it’s a human doing it â€" or an algorithm.This is not an equal index. It’s designed to be far more useful to the end user than that â€" or else they’d have to wade through every virtual index card starting with the same letter to find whatever it is they are looking for.

Google’s hierarchy of search results means the ‘shelves’ in its ‘library’ are not alphabetically ordered and equally spaced. Rather the books on these shelves are ranked and positioned for relative prominence based on factors such as popularity or timeliness or the number of other books in the library that reference a particular piece of information.

The algorithms Google uses to order and create its hierarchy of information are of course proprietary and undisclosed. We don’t exactly know how Google determines what to foreground and what else to fade away. But however those algorithms work, Google’s ordering of search results effectively changes our relationship to the information we are looking for â€" by pushing some of it right at us, making it more likely that’s where our search will end.

That’s not a library; that’s something very different.

The reader walking into Google’s ‘library’ is directed to a shelf containing a single massive volume â€" located right at their eye level. If they don’t reach for the book being proffered, the volume on the shelf below is the next closest tome their eyes will fall on, and so on. It’s Google-curated hierarchy all the way down.

That ordering of information does not mean Google is a publisher. But nor is it just a bystander. It has a crucial role to play in shaping what we click on and what we therefore discover. That’s the nuance that the ECJ ruling nails.

Its judgement notes specify that Google is “processing” data by organizing it and making it available to users “in the form of lists of results.” And that processing and ranking of data absolutely makes Google a data controller â€" meaning the company’s search results should have to comply with existing data protection legislation:

The Court further holds that the operator of the search engine is the ‘controller’ in respect of that processing, within the meaning of the directive, given that it is the operator which determines the purposes and means of the processing. The Court observes in this regard that, inasmuch as the activity of a search engine is additional to that of publishers of websites and is liable to affect significantly the fundamental rights to privacy and to the protection of personal data, the operator of the search engine must ensure, within the framework of its responsibilities, powers and capabilities, that its activity complies with the directive’s requirements. This is the only way that the guarantees laid down by the directive will be able to have full effect and that effective and complete protection of data subjects (in particular of their privacy) may actually be achieved.

Google clearly has a massive impact on the things that are drawn to people’s attention. To the point where the ECJ is basically saying that if Google’s processes are allowed to be exempt from the data protection directive there is no way for individual privacy to be effectively protected.

What’s very clear is that the concept of data protection needs to evolve to avoid trailing way, way behind the blistering pace of information technology evolution.

That means that a court ruling which is sensitive to the nuance of Google’s position as both a data indexer and an information foregrounder makes sense, however much complexity it introduces by putting a requirement on a data indexer to balance considerations of individual privacy â€" in specific requested instances â€" with a possible public interest to know.

(To be clear, the ECJ ruling refers to private individuals. Public individuals aren’t going to be able to use the ruling to personally edit search results in a bid to present a better public face.)

In any case, to argue this is “knowledge censorship” also falsely equates Google with the sum total of knowledge on the Internet. Yes it’s a hugely dominate gateway to access digital information in Europe, but it’s not the same as the sum total of all the information out there.

There are alternative avenues to unearth information, so removing a link from Google’s index does not mean the information itself is gone forever (indeed, the Spanish court specifically said the newspaper should not be required to remove the requested data â€" only that Google should stop flagging it up).

The idea of personal data being able to have a sell-by date online, where there is the path of least resistance to discover it, frankly feels like a far more human implementation of technology than having your every action recorded and recoverable forevermore.

Just because technology enables infinite capture and storage of granular data does not mean that that perpetual total recall is helpful to individuals or desirable for societies. Or that a corporate entity putting a public emphasis on whatever bit of your past personal history their algorithm determines is the most clickable is some kind of inalienable right.

There are alternative ways of operating in the digital sphere. Let’s not forget these tools we have built, and are continuing to build, are highly capable and highly flexible. The technology can support nuance. And, unsurprisingly, people have an appetite for it. Just witness the interest in consumer products that allow information to be ephemeral, or quasi-anonymous, or constrained and contextual. Yes, there are startup opportunities aplenty to be had here.

In earlier human societies knowledge was often mutable. History was oral. Information was handed down verbally, frequently in song, with ballad singers amending and adapting stories for the present age or even the present moment. The ‘social historical record’ evolved with its people.

So while the ECJ ruling may put a burden on information indexers to respond to individual requests to update the relative position of their pointers, that’s perhaps as it should be. Because with great power comes great responsibility.

The key paragraph of the ECJ’s ruling follows below:

Article 12(b) and subparagraph (a) of the first paragraph of Article 14 of Directive 95/46 are to be interpreted as meaning that when appraising the conditions for the application of those provisions, it should inter alia be examined whether the data subject has a right that the information in question relating to him personally should, at this point in time, no longer be linked to his name by a list of results displayed following a search made on the basis of his name, without it being necessary in order to find such a right that the inclusion of the information in question in that list causes prejudice to the data subject. As the data subject may, in the light of his fundamental rights under Articles 7 and 8 of the Charter, request that the information in question no longer be made available to the general public on account of its inclusion in such a list of results, those rights override, as a rule, not only the economic interest of the operator of the search engine but also the interest of the general public in having access to that information upon a search relating to the data subject’s name. However, that would not be the case if it appeared, for particular reasons, such as the role played by the data subject in public life, that the interference with his fundamental rights is justified by the preponderant interest of the general public in having, on account of its inclusion in the list of results, access to the information in question.

[Image by Paolo Trabattoni via Flickr]