paskino.com Here to make the world a little better - maybe

I love the smell of acquisitions in the morning! We’ve just heard that Groupon has acquired Adku, a stealth startup that uses big data in order to personalize the online shopping experience for people visiting eCommerce sites like eBay, Amazon and Zappos.

The company built their personalized targeting technology in three months, and have basically been in stealth since they launched at the Angelpad Demo day a year and a half ago. Adku is backed by Greylock Partners, Battery Ventures and True Ventures in addition to being an Angelpad startup.

Although CEO Ajit Varma and several members of the six person team are former Googlers, from what I’m hearing this wasn’t a talent acquisition or acqhire but a team + technology play  –with a price beyond $10 million. Varma would not disclose what the team will be working on when they get to Groupon.

While it’s not clear what the technology will be applied to, the acquisition makes sense on a lot of levels, especially because a personalized experience is where most of eCommerce is headed. Greylock VC David Thacker now runs product for Groupon, so that couldn’t have  hurt either.

Wrote Varma in a blog post, “We started talking to Groupon to bring our technology to more customers and quickly realized that we wanted to be a deeper part of a company that people love and is empowering merchants and customers in a way that’s never been done before.”

Stay tuned!

OK @adku (three former Google engineers) is a company that Techcrunch will slobber over. Dynamic content. Interesting company.—
Robert Scoble (@Scobleizer) November 11, 2010

Deep in the skunk works of its Research and Labs divisions, secreted around the Seattle area, Microsoft is working on totally reinventing the way people interact with their computers. Very little is out in the open or in more than a prototype form, but the work is unquestionably being done.

Last week it transpired that Microsoft is working on building Kinect into the bezels of laptops, and after that, presumably, tablets and eventually mobile phones. But it’s not just about building out the install base for Dance Central 3. It’s enabling the next generation of awareness in our electronics. The iPhone ushered in an era where our devices know when we touch them. Microsoft is working on the next one, in which our devices will simply know us.

How do you, as a person, experience the world around you? You mostly see and hear, and to a lesser extent you touch, taste, smell. Our devices, however, are largely restricted to an extremely limited sense of touch. Why shouldn’t they be more like us?

There’s a good reason, actually: computers don’t need to be like people because computers aren’t people. For years this has held true: the computer’s primary purpose for decades was to sit still and perform calculations humans couldn’t do. Interaction with a computer was strictly input, output. You didn’t interact so much as instruct, and wait for the result.

But mobile phones and touchscreens and laptops began changing the idea of a computer into something more personal, more interactive, more two-way. And technology exists to let our devices become more human. Why not let them?

Microsoft wants to. Despite their reputation among tech enthusiasts as a sort of stodgy blue-chip still coasting on the PC explosion of the late 90s and early 2000s, their R&D sections are world-class and put out actually innovative ideas and devices all the time. The trouble, briefly stated, is that implementing these ideas as products that fit into the Microsoft ecosystem isn’t easy, and even if it were, Microsoft has no talent for it.

But this work on “Natural User Interaction,” or NUI, is more promising. People have embraced the idea in gaming: the Wii led the way and the Kinect brought the future into your living room, though the future is a little laggy and the voice controls spotty. People are simply interested in new ways of interacting with their content and devices. For years the promise of a different kind of interaction has been dangling, in the form of sci-fi shows and movies usually, and people have always been intrigued by it.

So people want it — and Microsoft wants to make it — and they have the technology. Purchasing the IP behind the Kinect was an extremely smart move, maybe smarter than they know. What started out as a way to cash in on the market the Wii had created has snowballed into an entirely new form of interacting with computers, and a way for Microsoft to differentiate itself meaningfully for years to come.

It was reported to me that one of the things the new Kinect/depth/IR sensors will do is read lips. At first it sounds silly. Why? Maybe so it can better interpret your words from across the room, or in a loud environment. You won’t have to turn the music down to search and navigate the web on your TV or tablet.

And then it becomes clear that it’s just part of a larger suite of “senses” the device would have. The new devices are to have face recognition and voice recognition, so your password will be you saying your password in your own voice, not someone else, and not a print-out of you. They’ll be able to pick you out of a crowd, say a small party, and will be able to tell when you’re giving it a command — because you make eye contact and move your lips. Again, it sounds perfectly ridiculous until it starts sounding perfectly natural.

Another feature described was a sort of 3D desktop on which you could actually grab files and place them here and there. This has been tried before, of course, and Windows 8 is looking decided two-dimensional, so it’s probably more of a research project than anything. But it’s still interesting. Think of the basic gestures you might be able to make. One was described as pulling out a drawer. In the surprisingly resilient desktop metaphor of files and folders, what could be more natural? Or perhaps raising your hand palm up to show the task bar or dock? Trace your finger in a counter-clockwise circle to undo, clockwise to redo?

User experience reflects both the needs of the user and the capabilities of the device. For a few years now we’ve been satisfied with running our fingers along a slab of glass, producing an electrical signal interpreted as a point or blob — mainly because capacitive screens got good and cheap, and nobody wants to plug a mouse into their phone. But there are many other ways of interacting with our new mobile objects and information. Soon the glass touchscreen will seem as quaint as the command-line interface.

And yet, some are no doubt thinking, we still have some command-line interfaces in use. Sure. And mice and keyboards are still better for productivity, and a pen and paper is better for sketching out ideas, and headphones are better for listening to music in public. There are countless use cases and potential applications of technology, but it’s good to recognize when one should give way or simply isn’t applicable.

Microsoft is working hard at this, and you’d better believe that Apple is too, though they aren’t nearly as open about their research. And for once, they seem to actually be missing a piece of the technology pie: Microsoft has a head start on them in the world of NUI, having purchased and developed depth and personal sensors for at least two years now. Apple can always throw money at the problem, but it’s pretty clear that Microsoft has perceived this rare advantage and will be using it as a wedge wherever possible.

This shouldn’t be taken as an indication that Windows 8 is going to be anything other than advertised, but I think it will be a test bed for some major changes coming down the line. Microsoft wants to change the way people interact with computers because it sees, hopefully not too late, that the old way, the PC way, treating a computer like a box that computes things, is on its way out in a hurry. So if computers are going to be a part of the real world, they need to be able to live in that world. Eyes, ears, and who knows what else. It’s only creepy until you can’t live without it.

[images: Matthew Fisher/Stanford, Wolfgang Herfuntner]

A few weeks ago we wrote about Backplane — a platform for creating interactive, highly visual communities — that counts Lady Gaga as one of its backers, along with plenty of the Valley’s most well-known investors.

Now the company is harnessing its star power to hold a unique (and potentially awesome) event at SXSW: the SXSW Managers Hack — a hackathon that will be judged by some of the most accomplished managers in the music industry, including: Scooter Braun, best known for facilitating Justin Bieber’s rise to fame; Jay Brown, President of Jay-Z’s Roc Nation; and Troy Carter, manager of Lady Gaga (Carter is also one of Backplane’s cofounders).

Developers are being asked to hack together “apps, platforms, and technologies designed to advance the future of digital music distribution” — where they’ll be judged by the people who actually decide which apps and platforms their artists will use. In order to attend the event, you’ll need to apply for an invitation, which you can do right here.

The event will take place on March 11 2012, from 2 PM til 10 PM, and will also be live streamed by R to Z Studios, Randi Zuckerberg’s new social media firm (she’ll be hosting the stream as well). Note that while the event will revolve around music, it’s being held during the ‘Interactive’ portion of SXSW (SXSW Music begins on the 13th).

Music-themed hackathons have been held before (check out Music Hack Day if you’d like to find one that’s coming up in your area), but the presence of top industry managers at this one will likely help make it especially interesting. It’s also another sign that the industry recognizes the potential that startups and hackers can bring to the table — which is a lot better than the innovation-squelching lawsuits that the record companies have slung around before.

The event also fits in line with Backplane’s stated goal of attracting the best developers around (they’ve previously discussed their aim to foster an engineering-focused culture).

Oh, and Backplane fittingly promises that ”live music and DJs will jam throughout” the hackathon.

I used to scowl when I saw people walking down the street with eyes locked on their phones, but necessity has gotten me in the habit of doing it too. Thanks to a new app called Transparent Screen though, now I can do it free from the fear of falling into an open manhole or into a large fountain.

No, that’s not a hastily Photoshopped image you see here, that’s more or less exactly what you’ll see when the app is running. I say “more or less” because while all of the Android UI goes translucent upon launch, you’re afforded with quite a bit of a control over how dramatic the effect is. It’s in your best interest to get familiar with the settings if you plan on using Transparent Screen for a while too, because you’ll soon have some choices to make.

If you’re a fan of texting while sprinting for example (which I don’t condone, for the record), crank the camera resolution down to keep that forward view going as smoothly possible. Alternately, crank it up you’re more a fan of slow, meandering walks while you tweet about the wonders of nature.

The big issue, as Android Police points out, is that you’d be hard-pressed to find a configuration that works well while bouncing between your favorite apps. Still, that’s a pretty minor concern — Transparent Screen seems like an app best used occasionally, when you absolutely have to fire off a message while on the move. Sure, there’s nothing that says you can’t have it running nonstop, just be prepared to watch your remaining battery life disappear in front of your eyes.

Interested? Mosey on over to the Android Market, where Transparent Screen can be had for the low, low price of free.

Linux is the world’s largest collaborative software development project. People from all over the world have influenced the Linux kernel code, and it runs on everything from mainframe computers to wristwatches. Linux, and free software development in general, provides some tremendous insights into what makes a successful project. Can today’s startups learn anything from the history of Linux?

The history of Linux proves that collaborative development speeds true innovation. If Linus Torvalds were left to work on Linux alone, there’s no way it would be the success it is today. A great many of the things that Linux does today are a direct result of people scratching their own itches, and then contributing their work back upstream to Linus. Many people focusing on their own little (and not-so-little) problems have made Linux the powerhouse that it is today.

It might not make sense for every startup to develop their project in public, but they can certainly avoid reinventing many wheels by using existing free software projects wherever possible. Many smart people are working all day every day to improve the building blocks of
innovation, and startups should be a part of that communal effort.

Certainly startups should focus on their own “secret sauce”, but they can also participate in the larger free software ecosystem. For example, there’s no long-term competitive advantage to a startup if they make improvements to Apache, or MongoDB, or other “plumbing” aspects of the Linux stack. Any such improvements can — and, in my opinion, should! — be shared upstream to benefit everyone.

In a similar vein, though, if there’s some home-grown technology that helps your startup but isn’t fundamental to its success, why not release it in order to leverage the global body of free software developers? Facebook releases free software. LinkedIn releases free software. Google releases free software. All of these releases are obviously used internally, but they’re not fundamental to the success of the company. I think there’s a lot to learn from the big players in this respect.

As Ubuntu‘s Technical Architect Allison Randal said, “Free Software is a fundamentally superior model for developing software.” Jim Zemlin, the Linux Foundation‘s Executive Director, says, “Free your technology and see it spread and do things you never even imagined were possible.”

Another lesson that startups can learn from Linux: when you disrupt the status quo you attract enemies. When Linux was gaining traction through the 90s, it was the target of intense attack from established industry players. Many of those early detractors are now contributing to the Linux kernel, as well as many other free software projects.

Zemlin points to Facebook as a shining example of what “the Linux community has been practicing for years: first – don’t do it for the money, second maintain the hacker way. And, the money follows.” He goes on to observe that there “is no coincidence that one of the greatest entrepreneurial success stories of the last decade is deeply rooted in one of the greatest technology innovations of the last two decades: Linux and open development.”

Israeli startup Appoxee has raised an undisclosed amount of funding from early-stage investment firm Cyhawk Ventures.

The company offers a service that helps app developers and publishers increase user engagement through rich push notifications and helps them with things like audience segmentation, targeting, analytics and reporting.

Read more over at TechCrunch Europe.

If you don’t know a resistor from a Mister Mister, this is the app for you. Built by Adafruit, creators of DIY Arduino gear, Circuit Playground is a $2.99 app designed to help you identify and understand various electronic components. For example, the app includes a resistor identification system based on the colored bands painted on the casing as well as a field guide to many electrical components.

The rest of the tools – including converters, calculators, and datasheet storage systems – just makes things a little bit easier when you’re building an electronics project. I’m terrible at this stuff so it would be a boon for me and my slow-witted monkey mind.

Decipher resistor & capacitor codes with ease
Calculate power, resistance, current, and voltage with the Ohm’s Law & Power Calc modules
Quickly convert between decimal, hexadecimal, binary or even ASCII characters
Calculate values for multiple resistors or capacitors in series & parallel configurations
Store, search, and view PDF datasheets
Access exclusive sneak peaks, deals & discounts at Adafruit Industries

The app is available now for the iPhone and iPad.

Product Page

My own views about SOPA and the need to protect online intellectual property are well-known. But even I acknowledge that SOPA was a flawed bill that didn’t represent a viable solution to policing the Internet against intellectual property theft. So is there life after SOPA? How can the technology and content communities carve out a compromise which will simultaneously protect innovation and the rights of the creative community?

In the spirit of compromise, I invited Larry Downes, one of SOPA’s most articulate critics, into our San Francisco studio to talk about what comes next. Downes acknowledged that direct democracy on the Internet can sometimes degenerate into mob rule. He also agreed that there is a need for a new kind of dialogue, not only between the technology and entertainment industries, but also involving Internet users – members of communities like Twitter, Reddit and Tumblr – who, he said, needed to be much intimately involved in the political conversation.  This third force, Downes told me, fundamentally alters the power equation and may well also change the legislative process in Washington DC.

But Downes’ main point is a little depressing. Politics changes very slowly and technology changes really quickly, he reminded me. So in 18 months time, he predicted, nothing much will have changed in Washington DC. There still won’t be any legislative solution to the problem of online piracy and that promised dialogue between the two (or three) communities will not have materialized.

Want to win some extra visibility for your brand on Facebook? Post about current events. Brands grabbed 99.7% higher engagement on their Page posts by talking about the Super Bowl yesterday, and 60% higher engagement over the past 6 weeks compared to the average post. The data from a Buddy Media study of 1,400 of the world’s largest brands indicates they should make sure to post about holidays, sporting events, breaking news, and other trending topics.

Why does this work? Because Facebook’s news feed sorting algorithm EdgeRank shows posts to a wider audience if they get high levels of engagement (Likes, comments, and shares) from those who have already seen them. In this case, posts about the Super Bowl were inherently more eye-catching to users and got more engagement, and were therefore shown to more users, netting them more engagement…

EdgeRank also gives more prominence to posts that contain the same keywords as other posts from a user’s network, generating “Brand X and 8 others posted about Super Bowl XLIV”. The feature can help brands posting about current events to reach the news feed, even if  users do have to click to expand these aggregated mention stories.

Tons of brands are missing out on this engagement bonanza, though. Just 30% of the brands Buddy Media analyzed posted about the Super Bowl. So tell anyone who handles social media marketing about this strategy so they can cash in on the upcoming Valentine’s Day, Presidents Day, and Canadian Junior Curling Championships. Well, maybe skip that last one.

There has been much debate about what the post-PC era is, when it will arrive, or whether it’s already here. But key pieces of new data, emerging last week, are making the case that we crossed the imaginary line from the “PC” era to the “post-PC” era at the end of 2011. According to analysts at Canalys, two major computing milestones were achieved at the end of this year: smartphone shipments outpaced PCs for the first time ever, and Apple became the world’s largest PC maker, if you count iPads as PCs (as well you should).

Combined, what these numbers tell us is that the post-PC era is happening now. Right now. And maybe we need to think about how we define “PC.”

In Q4 2011, vendors shipped 158.5 million smartphones, up 57% on the 101.2 million units shipped in Q4 2010. For the year, there were 487.7 million units shipped, up 63% on the 299.7 million units shipped in 2010. Meanwhile, the global PC market grew just 15% in 2011 to 414.6 million units. The smartphones have won.

The funny thing about that PC shipments number is that, on its own, it doesn’t paint the most accurate picture of today’s PC landscape. There weren’t 414.6 million desktop, notebook and netbook computers shipped in 2011 – those were at 112.4 million, 209.6 million and 29.4 million, respectively. The 414.6 million number includes 63.2 million in “pad” shipments, Canalys’s preferred term for tablets. That means 15% of the “PC” shipments in 2011 were tablets, largely Apple’s iPad. In Q4, tablets were 22% of the total PC shipments. And the tablet segment of the market grew 274.2% year-over-year.

Also in Q4 2011, Apple became the leading worldwide “PC” vendor (if you count the iPad as a PC) with 15 million iPads and 5 million Macs shipped, representing 17% of the total 120 million client PCs shipped in Q4. It overtook HP (now #2), Acer, Dell and Lenovo in the process.

Overall, the PC market grew 16% year-over-year, Canalys noted last month. Without tablets, it declined 0.4%.

Of course, there’s still the question of whether or not tablets should be broken out into their own computing category, positioned against the traditional “PCs” when tracking device shipments. For what’s it worth, I think it’s fine to count tablets as PCs – after all, PC means “personal computer,” not “machine running Windows.” The fact that we still equate the word with a desktop, monitor, keyboard and mouse combo is a testament to the empire Microsoft built, and is now losing.

Case in point: netbook shipments dropped 25.3% from 2010 to 2011. Desktops grew a paltry 2.3% and notebooks grew just 7.5%. This is end of the “PC” era in action. While the 209.6 million notebook shipments still make that the largest category of “PCs,” the growth trends here, if sustained, dictate that’s its only a matter of time before the shift to tablets becomes even more pronounced.

Think about it: what’s the first “PC” you’re going to buy for your kid, as a new member to the post-PC computing generation? If you respond “notebook,” I’d say you’re lying. That kid is getting an iPad, even if they end up stealing yours. If not an iPad, then they’re getting a phone.

And smartphones are PCs, too. The most affordable ones.

This past quarter, smartphone shipments overtook PCs, a hugely important milestone that speaks volumes about the state of modern-day computing. The computer-in-your-pocket has moved from being “a niche product segment at the high-end of the mobile phone market to becoming a truly mass-market proposition,” explains Canalys of the change.

In Q4, Apple broke records by shipping 37 million iPhones – the most ever shipped by a single vendor in a quarter. Previously, Nokia held the record with 28.3 million phones shipped in Q4 2010. What a difference a year makes.

But Canalys cautioned that it expects to see smartphone market growth slow in 2012, as vendors exercise “greater cost control and discipline” to focus on profitability. This is the only discordant note to the report. Smartphone growth slowing? No offense to the analysts, but I’ll believe that one when I see it. Just watching Apple’s sales alone, it’s clear you can’t underestimate its power to deliver record-breaking numbers. In addition, just because vendors like HTC and Motorola are going to launch fewer smartphone models in 2012, that doesn’t (necessarily) mean they’ll sell fewer overall phones. If anything, the companies are hoping that their increased focus on “hero” devices will help them increase sales.

One thing is clear, however: that post-PC era everyone’s been talking about since the day the phrase slipped off Steve Jobs’ lips has arrived. We’re living it. Anyone who wastes their time debating its existence (tablets are PCs! phones are PCs!) is arguing semantics. The shift itself, whatever you want to call it, is happening.

So perhaps “post-PC” isn’t the best terminology. If everything’s a PC, then maybe what we’ve achieved is something more akin to “PCs Everywhere.” Not as catchy, though.

Photo credit top: Lokesh Dhakar, flickr; bottom: agirregabiria, flickr

According to GoodEReader, Amazon is planning to open a retail store in Seattle this year where they will sell Amazon-exclusive books and, more importantly, Kindles of all kinds. While this looks to be more of a pop-up retail presence than a fully-fledged store, if I were in publishing I’d be circling the wagons right now.

To be fair, Amazon’s own publishing offerings are pretty wonky so far. There haven’t been many runaway successes coming out of the house although Seth Godin and Tim Ferris will soon be bringing their own brand of publishing success and there are some interesting cross-cultural titles coming out. But that’s not why publishing has to worry.

The Kindle was Amazon incarnate, a way for Amazon to bring its online presence into the real world. A physical Kindle store – one that exists in a mall or popular area, even for a short period – is like the third coming. It’s basically a chance for Amazon to grab every else they have missed during the initial run up in Kindle popularity. We’re talking older folks, luddites, grumps, and folks who claim that “reading it in paper” is better. To have them walk up to a display of working Kindles, newly minted and displaying the latest Stephen King book, is the only way Amazon will convince them that going digital is the only way to go.

This will also encourage the movement from the agent-publisher-distributor model of book publishing into a direct to consumer model that Amazon will spearhead. By showing potential authors that they can get their books bound in handsome Kindle editions, they’ll be more likely to go that route instead of pounding fruitlessly against the gates of big publishing. It’s obviously a no-brainer to many of us, but old paradigms die hard.

As I said before, the Fire is Amazon’s Trojan Horse. However, rather than the wary hold-outs bringing in Amazon’s market by buying the fire, Amazon will bring the Trojans to their own branded stores.

The store will appear in Settle in the next few months and presumably be the first of a nation-wide roll-out. I suspect it will be a bit of a loss for Amazon but hopefully it will convert the last hold-outs to the benefits of ereading.

When Twitter shook up its product leadership in July, it let loose four Silicon Valley veterans into a talent-starved job market. While the three others have become a VC, a cofounder, and an engineering head, the last one left unaccounted for has a new home. Anamitra Banerji has just joined Foundation Capital as its newest entrepreneur in residence.

In this role, which can mean advising and joining a company or starting one, Banerji has a few ideas he’s going to explore, he tells me. They go beyond his history in the search and advertising business, and build on his experience developing social software at Twitter.

But first, here’s why you may know of him. After cofounding an online health company in India in the late 1990s, he worked for a few years in that country and the US as a software engineer at various larger companies before becoming a manager at early search marketing firm Overture in 2004. He stayed there through its acquisition by Yahoo in 2006, all the way until early 2009. Then, as the first product manager and thirtieth employee at Twitter, he hired many of its engineering and product employees, and developed its ad platform from scratch. This includes Promoted Tweets, Promoted Trends and Promoted Accounts. While Twitter under returning founder Jack Dorsey has gone in some new product directions, Banerji’s impact is still clearly visible at the 700-person company.

“I’m taking some time to step back to see what’s happening out in the Valley,” he says about his plans, “to see what I can do to build great companies, to share my experiences with other entrepreneurs… and to learn a little bit about what it’s like on the other side [at a venture firm].” He’s not new to the work. He’s been advising companies on the side for three years, he recently became a mentor at 500 Startups, and he’s already been working with a team of Stanford students on the Widescope project, which provides a cool interactive data visualization that lets users create their own federal budgets (er, budget deficits).

The areas he’s going to explore could include ads and monetization, but he’s particularly interested in online collaboration — like the Widescope tool — marketplaces, and mobile-focused products. He’s not the first of the four ex-colleagues to start working with a VC. Josh Elman, who is also a long-time Valley product leader, recently became a principal at Greylock. Meanwhile, Kevin Cheng is now the cofounder of Incredible Labs (which is building a mobile personal assistant called Donna), and Jean-Paul Cozzatti is the vice president of engineering at social fundraising site Rally.

Online video service Brightcove will price its IPO between $10 and $12 per share, according to a new filing with the SEC.

The company first filed for the IPO back in August of last year, saying it wanted to raise up to $50 million. Now, $50 million is at the lower end of its price range. If Brightcove sells the maximum number of shares (it’s set to sell 5 million shares, plus an extra 750,000 if demand is high) at $12, it could raise up to $69 million.

The filing also updates Brightcove’s key metrics through the end of 2011. The company, which sells online video publishing and distribution services, says it had 3,872 customers as of Dec 31. Its revenue grew last year to $63.6 million (from $43.7 million in 2010), but it still showed a loss of $17.8 million. Thanks to plans to “continue to invest in the growth of our business and operations,” Brightcove says it expects to see losses until the end of this year at least.

Brightcove also revealed ambitions beyond video when it announced its App Cloud last year, with its first commercial sale in September and general availability in November, according to the filing.

As the only girl on the Gadgets team, I often get asked to write what I call “lady-rants” about products targeted toward women. I have a problem with most of them, as the products themselves are either being forced into a demographic by marketers (like the HTC Rhyme, which would’ve been a fine phone for anyone if marketed that way) or they’re simply painted pink in the hopes that pink is, in fact, what all women have been looking for in their consumer electronics.

The truth of the matter is, men have spent more money on consumer electronics in the past and, as a result, women have unfortunately been left with ads targeted towards men or pink versions of everything. But no more.

According to a study out of the CEA, the same folks that brought you that over-sized week of madness called CES, more and more women are showing an interest in consumer electronics than they were in the past.

Specifically, eight in ten women expressed an interest in gadgets, up 10 percentage points from the same time in 2007. Of those women, 41 percent said they were “very interested” in consumer electronics. But it gets more interesting than that.

In 2007, the spending gap between men and women in the CE space was around $200, with men obviously spending more. Now, men spend an average of $728 over the course of a year, as opposed to women spending an average of $667 during the same period. That’s a difference of just $61.

But even if women spend a bit less and show less interest than guys, women are still a part of the picture when it comes to their man’s gadgetry. According to the study, 61 percent of women either initiate or are involved in the decision-making when it comes to consumer electronics purchases.

Both men and women look at the same things when purchasing a product, most important of which is price, followed by ease of use, warranty, and multiple functionality. Where men and women differ, however, is on size (shocker!). Speaking from the standpoint of someone who wears girls’ jeans, size is pretty important to women when it comes to mobile gadgetry like smartphones and tablets, a sentiment echoed by the study.

And perhaps the most important thing we can take away from this study comes out of the mouth of CEA manager of strategic research Jessica Boothe:

Forget pink. Women don’t want to be catered to with ultra-feminine looking products; they simply prefer lightweight devices that can fit smaller hands and smaller body frames. Women play many roles, like mother, spouse and career women, and CE products that can perform many functions are a necessity.

[IMG Credit: ShutterStock]

My Dad, bless his heart, spends all day on the Internet and, like a reverse Cat’s In The Cradle, my dad is just like me in that he loves to find wild junk that he thinks is interesting. To wit: he just found the Brinno Peephole Viewer, an electronic system for looking through a peephole.

To be fair, this is definitely something people need. My parents are getting up in years so they’re getting both blind and paranoid, so anything to assuage those two situations is a plus. This thing attaches to your normal peephole and then displays the scene behind the peephole on an LCD screen. It runs on two AA batteries and costs about $90.

The viewer also reduces fish-eye distortion found with regular, non-LCD peepholes.

It’s definitely not new nor is it particularly high tech, but if you, like me, are dealing with a set of parents who are getting up there in years and need a leg up, it might be a nice investment. Besides, it’s fun to say peephole.

Product Page

So in the interest of supporting unique publishing methods and ideas, I thought it might be interesting to talk about Verdant Books and something they’re calling an “interactive novel.” Now my idea of an interactive novel is Choose Your Own Adventure, but this is something fairly unique.

Ok. Here’s the premise:

Hiram and Sibyl Eisenberg have fallen head over heels in love with Leif and Laura Wrightson. Leif and Laura return all the same passion for Sibyl and Hiram, yet all four remain committed to their spouses. What to do? The year is 1971, the place is California, and what never before seemed possible is suddenly irresistible. Camping on the shores of Fallen Lake in the high Sierra, one night they begin a new direction in their lives and those of their children, turning two marriages into one.

Yeah, you read that right. Old Hiram and Sibyl are watching Mother Nature on the run in the 1970s. Hot stuff, right? So here’s where things get really weird. The author, Laird Harrison, is going to update a blog featuring the characters talking about things important to the story. Now, to be clear, I think this is the worst implementation of interactive function I’ve ever seen (especially since all of the “blog posts” (did they have blogs in the 1970s?) are password protected). But here’s what I’m really concerned with.

So it’s going to get easier and easier to publish books. It’s already ridiculously easy, but soon everyone with an idea and dial-up will be able to upload an epub. There will be some good books and some terrible books and there will be varying methods for marketing these books, from the traditional display ad on Amazon to gimmicks like the one above. I do see the value in a sort of “meet-the-author” kind of website where you ask the author questions about his stuff and I do expect publishers to create more and more of this gimmickry in order to sell bits to an audience that is already wildly distracted, but I worry that, like the site that was going to sell soundtracks to books, this is a Bad Idea (TM).

There are ways to change the monetization systems around the distribution of long-form writing. Selling 10,000 word articles about Afganistan for 99 cents a pop is a great model to bring monetary incentive back into reporting and journalism as well as non-fiction writing and editing. We are fast approaching a time when the devices we use to read books will be far more distracting than they even are today. I, for one, always intend to open iBooks or the Kindle reader on my iPad and instead check Twitter and email. It’s a sad, sad day when I long for a standalone, e-ink Kindle over a fully-featured Kindle Fire because I want to read more.

So anything that will pull me out of the book experience is a negative, anything that keeps me reading is a positive. Gimmickry and “viral efforts” work maybe once in a thousand times. Good writing works every time. So let’s hear it for old Hiram and Sibyl and their blog and here’s hoping Harrison sells a few books. But I’d really like to raise a glass to good writing. It will save publishing, even if the publishers thwart it at every turn.

Kleiner Perkins-backed social commerce network Lockerz is debuting a new Pinterest-like self-expression platform, where members can create and share collections of images and videos from anywhere on the Web. But unlike Pinterest, users can actually receive rewards for sharing content, which can be used to get discounts in the Lockerz store.

As we’ve reported in the past, Lockerz revolves around the idea that influencers within a social network can become brand and content advocates and affect the behavior of their friends. The network, which says it is seeing 45 million monthly uniques, is primarily targeted towards men and women ages 13 to 30, attempting to build a community of trendsetters and tastemakers who love to shop, play and connect on the Web. Users can earn points and discounts on brands by sharing content on the site. Founded by Kathy Savitt, a former Amazon and American Eagle Outfitters exec; Lockerz eventually wants to be the go-to commerce homepage for teens and young adults.

Lockerz members earn what the network calls ‘PTZ’ for nearly everything they do on the site, which are used to get discounts on hundreds of products offered in the Lockerz Store. Since its inception, Lockerz members have used nearly 3 billion PTZ for millions of dollars of savings on brands, including 7 for All Mankind, James Jeans, Xbox 360, Nintendo, SkullCandy, Canon, and Olympus.

Collections are created by “grabbing” images and videos from almost any website. Users can do this by downloading a bookmarklet or by posting images and videos manually. Videos can be grabbed a number of online video platforms including Hulu, Vimeo, MTV, VH1, Funny or Die, Comedy Central, CollegeHumor, and YouTube. Users can also grab images from other users’ existing Collections to create their own, which in turns rewards the original creator with PTZ.

While the new self-expression platform draws a lot of similarities to fast-growing online pin board Pinterest, Savitt tells us that the new feature has been in the product roadmap for some time now (perhaps even before Pinterest took off). Savitt adds that Lockerz will be working with brands and celebrities to curate sponsored Collections as well.

Google today launched a somewhat mysterious website called “Solve for X,” which will now be the official homepage for a conference by the same name. Solve for X, according to the description provided, seems similar in format to the series of conferences from TED, but with more of a scientific focus.

The invite-only gathering is designed to attract global innovators who present short, technology-focused presentations on topics like low-energy desalination, e-waste mining, crowd-sourced protein folding, stretchable silicon biosensers, climate change, and more.

The website describes Solve for X as:

“A place where the curious can go to hear and discuss radical technology ideas for solving global problems. Radical in the sense that the solutions could help billions of people. Radical in the sense that the audaciousness of the proposals makes them sound like science fiction. And radical in the sense that there is some real technology breakthrough on the horizon to give us all hope that these ideas could really be brought to life.”

Although the site is still locked down as of this morning (there’s an email input form so you can be notified when it opens up), there have been hints to its nature posted by Richard W. DeVaul, a researcher for Google who describes his occupation as “Rapid Evaluator (mad scientist).”

In addition, some people have dug around in the CSS code to try and learn more information about the event.

In the code, you’ll find details on how the Solve for X presentations work. For example, presentations can only last 12 minutes, and must answer three questions:

1. What is the huge problem you’re focused on fixing?
2. What is the product or service that sounds like science fiction but that, if made, would radically improve the problem you just described?
3. What specifically is the science or technology breakthrough that can give us all hope that such a product or service can be made and released to the world within a decade?

Presenters are asked to go easy on the slideshows, and to consider using props and other visual aids instead.

Videos from the conference, which took place this month in San Jose, California, are expected to go live on the site later today. In the meantime, this Solve for X introductory video is online now:

‘eat my e-waste!’ designing productsso that the ‘waste’ can b fertilizer or …lunch.#solveforx

— lisagansky (@instigating) February 2, 2012

Crowdsolving: reshape edu, value of work, innovation & the economy. Each of us learn abt r true talents in a changing world. #solveforx

— lisagansky (@instigating) February 2, 2012

there is more gold in a ton of electronic waste than a ton of ore from a gold mine.#solveforx

— jackhidary (@jackhidary) February 2, 2012

Hmm. Stretchable silicon structures for on- or in-body applications. Very cool. #solveforx

— Dr. Headcrash (@headcrash) February 2, 2012

Is nutrition a production or a distribution problem? #solveforx

— Dr. Headcrash (@headcrash) February 2, 2012

Active electronics (sensors, display elements, rf comms) embedded in contact lenses.Wow. #solveforx

— Dr. Headcrash (@headcrash) February 2, 2012

Hmm. Reconstructing mental images from FMRI – at high resolution. Freaky. #solveforx

— Dr. Headcrash (@headcrash) February 2, 2012

Stretchable silicon sensor on skin. #solveforx twitter.com/headcrash/stat…

— Dr. Headcrash (@headcrash) February 2, 2012

Huh.Completely reengineering the public university as a “moonshot factory” – in AZ. #solveforx

— Dr. Headcrash (@headcrash) February 2, 2012

@neha #solveforx is a ted-like conference focusing on “moon shot” technologies with giant impact potential. Talks are great and online soon.

— Aaron Zinman (@azinman) February 3, 2012

Conglomerate Honeywell, which develops thermostats, has filed a patent infringement lawsuit against Nest Labs, the developer of the innovative smart thermostat. The lawsuit, which was filed United States District Court for the District of Minnesota, alleges infringement of seven Honeywell patents related to its thermostat technology.

As we’ve reported in the past, Nest, which was founded by the godfather of the iPod, not only provides an intelligent thermostat for your home but also saves energy as well. For example, the technology will analyze the thermal decay of a house to determine how long it takes for heat to dissipate. An “Auto-Away” feature uses far-field motion detection to assess whether no one is in the house for a few days, perhaps because you’ve gone on vacation. If so, the unit goes into low-energy mode.

The Nest thermostat also tracks your manual heating adjustments. For example, it can learn that you turn off the heat when you leave for work in the morning and turn it back on when you return in the evening, and then start to automatically make these changes for you. You can see a demo here.

Honeywell claims the infringed patents relate to “simplified methods for operating and programming a thermostat including the use of natural language, user interfaces that facilitate programming and energy savings, a thermostat’s inner design, an electric circuit used to divert power from the user’s home electrical system to provide power to a thermostat, and controlling a thermostat with information stored in a remote location.”

The lawsuit actually names both Nest Labs and Best Buy, which sells the Nest Labs thermostat. Honeywell not only wants to prevent Nest from the continued use of its patented technology but also seeks to recover damages caused by the infringement.

Interestingly, Honeywell recently told GigaOm that it killed off its smarter, learning thermostats years ago, instead focusing on ‘adding intelligence to digital and connected thermostats.”

We’ve contacted Nest for comment on the suit. We’ll update when we hear back from the company.

UPDATE: Nest issued this statement to us: We have not yet reviewed the actual filing, which we learned about this morning through Honeywell’s press release. We will provide comment once we’ve had the opportunity to review it.

According to new research from the NPD Group, Apple passed LG and Samsung to become the top-selling U.S. handset brand in Q4 2011. Combined, the three available models of the iPhone (iPhone 4S, iPhone 4 and iPhone 3GS) accounted for 43% of the U.S. smartphone market.

Android, however, continued to see larger market share at 48%.

Together, iPhone and Android accounted for over 90% of U.S. smartphone sales, leaving little room for any up-and-comer like Windows Phone, or even the declining brand that is RIM’s BlackBerry.

Android’s market share may continue to grow, too, given that more first-time smartphone buyers were choosing Android over iPhone this past quarter, the firm found. Based on NPD Group’s monthly Smartphone Track service, 57% of first-time smartphone buyers went with an Android device compared with just 34% who purchased iPhones.

NPD suggests that the reason for these consumers’ Android preference has to do more with availability – Android has “wide carrier support,” the report says. Also helpful is Android’s large app selection and its support of LTE at Verizon.

The overall portion of handset sales that were smartphones also climbed in Q4 2011, now accounting for 68% of the total U.S. phone market. That’s an increase of 18% from Q2 2010, said NPD. The average cost per smartphone, however, hasn’t seen as much movement, down from $149 in Q4 2010 to $143 in Q4 2011.

Not surprisingly, Apple’s record-breaking quarter (its fiscal Q1, running September 25-December 31), led to the iPhone 4S coming out on top as the best-selling handset in Q4. It also earned the top three slots among the top five handsets for the time period:

1. Apple iPhone 4S
2. Apple iPhone 4
3. Apple iPhone 3GS
4. Samsung Galaxy S II
5. Samsung Galaxy S 4G

Ross Rubin, executive director, Connected Intelligence for The NPD Group, said that consumers were attracted to the iPhone 4S’s ”faster processor, improved camera and the Siri speech-driven agent.”

“The iPhone 4S outsold the iPhone 4 by 75%, and outsold the iPhone 3GS, available for free on AT&T, five to one,” Rubin noted.