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Monday, February 3, 2014
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garrett camp

Garrett Camp, co-founder of both StumbleUpon and Uber, is looking for help in funding his new company-building venture Expa. According to an SEC filing, Camp is looking to raise up to $75 million to bring about a portfolio of innovative new ideas.


When Camp first announced his plans for Expa last May, he told my boss Alexia that the holding company would be structured much like similar ventures from entrepreneurs Max Levchin (HVF), Evan Williams (Obvious), Michael Birch (Monkey Inferno), and Ron Palmeri (MkII). That follows a larger trend of company-building entrepreneurs backing technology studios that help to create and fund a series of ambitious new projects at once.


Camp always seemed more comfortable in the role of building early-stage companies, where he can act as a product visionary, rather than in the later stages of building and scaling a business, where operational expertise is key. Before he got to this point, he helped found content discovery platform StumbleUpon, which he sold to eBay for $75 million and later bought back, as well as Uber, which he co-founded along with now-CEO Travis Kalanick.


That said, not everything Camp has worked on has been a success: Last year, he made a push behind BlackJet, which was billed as the “Uber for Private Jets” — yes, even by TechCrunch. That idea has failed to “take off” (get it?!), and BlackJet, which was once listed as part of the Expa portfolio, is now noticeably missing.


So what’s next for Expa? It’s not clear, but knowing Camp he probably has a whole bunch of ideas that are already being worked on. We’ve reached out to him to catch up on Expa, and will let you know if we hear back.





8:24 PM

Garrett Camp, co-founder of both StumbleUpon and Uber, is looking for help in funding his new company-building venture Expa . According to a...

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Google, Facebook, Microsoft and LinkedIn all made headlines today for releasing “transparency” reports about the number of users for which the U.S. government has requested data.


We now know that major Internet companies have given up personal information from between 0-15,999 user accounts, but we don’t know what exactly was given up or whether additional data was taken without the companies’ knowledge.


“The numbers themselves don’t tell us very much at all,” Electronic Frontier Foundation Staff Attorney Nate Cardozo tells me. “These transparency reports only represent a small portion of what the NSA is doing to get data out of these companies. A lot of what the NSA is doing is without the company’s knowledge.”


So, for instance, there are worries that the NSA can simply eavesdrop on any communication by tapping directly into fiber cables. The unconfirmed reports supposedly motivated Microsoft, Yahoo and Google to add stronger encryption of their data streams.


The EFF tells me that this sort of bulk collection wouldn’t show up in a transparency report, because the government is just taking everything and isn’t requesting information on individual users.


Today’s transparency report was the first time that tech companies could disclose the number of requests from the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court (FISC), the judicial body that authorizes some of the more controversial elements of the NSA’s spying program.


Facebook has long claimed that being able to release the number of users spied on would counter “sensationalist and inaccurate media accounts” of their relationship with intelligence agencies.


But, these reports still don’t tell us what the NSA may, or may not, be collecting. “The fiber-optic splitters that we know they used at, for instance, AT&T facilities, which capture all IP traffic going down the wire won’t be reflected in these numbers,” says Cardozo.


The relative obscurity of these numbers led the Washington Post’s Andrea Peterson to call transparency reports “mostly a PR stunt.”


I wouldn’t go that far. In the beginning, the transparency reports from Google were a bold move that got the public thinking about government censorship. Since then, Google has raised awareness about all the ways governments around the world try to stifle free speech, such as Brazil’s aggressive speech laws that prevent criticism around elections.


But, for the U.S., the numbers just aren’t that informative and it isn’t necessarily the fault of these companies. Is the government going after dissidents or are more criminals using the Internet? What laws are being invoked to request the information and does it represent the entirety of what is being collected?


I don’t think any reasonable critic ever thought that the government could monitor the activities of millions of individual citizens. The worry is in the bulk storage and how corrupt officials could target dissidents. At 15,000+ users, some of that worry may be justified by the pessimists among us.


I tend to not worry too much about these conspiracies, nor do I believe tech companies are in cahoots with the NSA. The entire scandal is one big theoretical fight over doomsday scenarios.


That said, the reports today really don’t tell us much we didn’t know. Indeed, Google and other tech companies are still suing to be able to release more information. So, the reports neither allay fears nor prove critics right. It’s just a crack of the window that helps folks like the EFF battle in court over a few more specifics.


For the rest of us, not much changes.





5:13 PM

Google, Facebook, Microsoft and LinkedIn all made headlines today for releasing “transparency” reports about the number of users for which t...

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The holiday data breach at Target was opened up with stolen credentials from a vendor in the company's supply chain, according to reports that surfaced last week. That kind of attack is getting more and more common these days. "About 80 percent of data breaches originate in the supply chain," said Torsten George, vice president of marketing for Agiliance. With security concerns mounting, corporations have dedicated greater resources to hardening their defenses against hacker attacks. That has forced cyberbandits to adjust their penetration thinking.


2:09 PM

The holiday data breach at Target was opened up with stolen credentials from a vendor in the company's supply chain, according to repo...

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Enterprise users who want to use common file-sharing services like Dropbox and Google Drive have a big problem: their IT guys will always be worried that one hacker will be able to bring down their internal network. A new service called nCrypted Cloud is trying to assuage this fear by encrypting everything, everywhere, and offering an audit trail to see who accessed what files when.


In short, nCrypted is supposed to encrypt everything on your Dropbox, Google Drive, SkyDrive and Box accounts. While that may sound boring to the average user, imagine the importance if, say, you were using your cloud storage as a place to stash business documents or important photos and video?


Founded by repeat entrepreneur Nicholas Stamos and encryption master Igor Odnovorov, the company raised $3M in a seed round from angels at Microsoft, Cisco, Reveal Imaging, and Broadcom. They are currently looking for a Series A.


The system works by first encrypting files on the fly as you add them to your shared drives. You can also encrypt files as needed. It also creates a paper trail so IT departments can see who encrypted and decrypted what during the files’ lifecycle.


“The PCS model nCrypted Cloud implements enables IT to delegate the responsibility of protecting shared data in the cloud to their end users. But with responsibility comes accountability. nCrypted Cloud provides network agnostic, device agnostic, and cloud storage agnostic forensic level data usage auditing, allowing centralized visibility and oversight of user activity,” said Stamos.


They also have plenty of traction.


“Our users have generated over 100M audit events, and encrypted over 10M files. Most customers are large enterprise users, so for security reasons, we do not disclose the actual number of users,” he said.


The company also offers personal versions of its software for smaller users. It is available for free on the site. You can check out the enterprise version here. Stamos says the app is about accountability and not overarching, top-down control.


“For the first time, IT is given a looking glass into where data is going and being used outside the organization, and on non-corporate devices. Anomalies are easily detected and corrected. This is an accountability based model; it’s the only way to scale; and it’s the way our society works. A good parallel is that most states have speed limited to 65 mph. But cars are not limited to 65 mph. Why not? Because we have decided that drivers can be held accountable for their actions, and traffic flows freely. We need the same model to balance the corporate requirements of protecting data, while allowing business users to move as quickly and efficiently as possible. nCrypted Cloud solves this problem and provides that balance,” he said.





2:09 PM

Enterprise users who want to use common file-sharing services like Dropbox and Google Drive have a big problem: their IT guys will always b...

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Openness is changing the world, as a very wise writer pointed out not so very long ago, and what better example than the parade of government-spying revelations we've seen in recent months? It's clearly a different world since Edward Snowden appeared on the scene -- though not everyone agrees on whether it's a better one or not. The answer apparently is clear for a group of Norwegian lawmakers, however, leading to Snowden's recent nomination for the Nobel Peace Prize.


1:23 PM

Openness is changing the world, as a very wise writer pointed out not so very long ago, and what better example than the parade of governm...

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Let us go then, you and I, to meet Skryf, a robot created by Dutch artist Gijs Van Bon. The robot uses a repurposed CNC machine to spray out a thin layer of sand in the shape of letters and Van Bon uses it to print out lines of temporary poetry on sidewalks. As the robot writes, the feet of passersby spread the sand far and wide, destroying the art as it is created.


This video, filmed in July, shows Skryf printing poetry at Dutch Design Week in Eindhoven. “When you’re writing one [line of] text, another one is going away because people start walking through it,” wrote Van Bon on Dezeen. “Once I’ve finished writing, I walk the same way back but it’s all destroyed. It’s ephemeral, it’s just for this moment and afterwards it’s left to the public and to the wind.”


The robot – basically a standard RC quad-wheel with a fairly impressive sand dispenser on CNC rails – receives its orders and then writes about 130 feet per hour. Van Bon takes cues from the places he’s visiting in order to chose the poets Skryf will write out. For example, at Dutch Design week he chose Merel Morre, the poet of the city of Eindhoven. It’s a beautiful commentary on the value of art versus technology in society and it’s also a pretty nice printing rig that could be repurposed to paint in liquids or even chalk. It’s also a clever way to get people to think about poetry again.





12:08 PM

Let us go then, you and I, to meet Skryf , a robot created by Dutch artist Gijs Van Bon. The robot uses a repurposed CNC machine to spray ou...

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In January, Windows 8.1 scooted past Vista’s market share, taking the fourth-place slot behind 7, XP, and 8. In the month, Windows 8.1 picked up moderate market share, and Windows 8 eased as expected, meaning that Microsoft’s new platform is seeing slow total growth.


In fact, Windows 8.x — both Windows 8 and Windows 8.1 — gained a mere 0.09 percent market share in the quarter.


Looking more broadly, Windows 7 sat essentially flat, and Windows XP lost more than a half percent. Vista continued its descent into irrelevancy. The fine folks over at The Register were kind enough to graph the data:


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It’s worth noting that Windows XP’s decline as an operating system is slow, far slower than needed to have the world completely off the code by the end of its official support on April 8th. Windows XP will turn 13 this year. Microsoft wants it gone. Companies that have it deployed, however, seem to be more willing to stay put than upgrade.


Update 1


The company’s planned Update 1 to Windows 8.1 leaked this weekend, showing off what Microsoft has in mind: fixes, improvements, and general quality of life updates to its current desktop and tablet platform. As you would expect from a non-numbered release, the changes are modest.


Update 1 was expected in April, but recent scuttlebutt indicates that the new code could land as early as March 11. Also, what leaked could easily not be a current build, or what the company intends to send to consumers.


Caveats aside, what can we see in Update 1? As expected, the new code includes user interface changes that make it easier to use the operating system with a keyboard and mouse. The Verge posted screenshots of the leaked build — full collection here — that demonstrate the new capability:


Screen Shot 2014-02-03 at 9.43.37 AM


The other interesting, and also expected change, is the start of Microsoft bringing Metro apps to the desktop. Also included in Update 1 is the ability to pin Metro apps on the task bar. You can thus select Metro apps from the desktop environment, better blurring the dichotomization between the traditional and the new in Windows 8.x.


According to Paul Thurrott, the Windows Store app comes automatically pinned to the task bar by default. You can also choose to have all Metro apps that are open at the moment. Microsoft is de-emphasizing the Metro side of Windows 8.x, but by bringing the Store front and center on Desktop, it could mitigate a potential loss of momentum for its new platform and marketplace.


You can trace the arc of development for Windows 8.x in a simple line: Microsoft brought in so much new in Windows 8.0 that it crowded out the desktop experience. However, users still preferred the desktop part of Windows, leaving the nearly forced main experience in the way. 8.1 cut at the chasm between Metro and desktop, and it seems that Update 1 will continue that effort.


Microsoft declined to comment on the leaked build.


Top Image Credit: Flickr





11:39 AM

In January, Windows 8.1 scooted past Vista’s market share , taking the fourth-place slot behind 7, XP, and 8. In the month, Windows 8.1 pick...

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