Another ship jumping EA Exec for Zynga; Jeff Karp joins Chief Marketing and revenue officer

Leena Rao is currently working as a writer for TechCrunch. She recently finished graduate school of the Medill School of journalism at Northwestern University, where she studied business journalism and videography. From 2004 to 2007 she helped lead efforts for advocacy and community relationships Congressman Carloyn Maloney in New York. She graduated from Columbia University in 2003 where it was ... ? Read More

Zynga today snagged another EA exec. Social gaming giant today announced that the former Executive Vice President of EA Jeff Karp joins as Chief Marketing and revenue officer. This is actually a new role for the company and one that should help Zynga as it expands as a public company, after the IPO, this fall. This move was initially reported a few weeks ago, but Zynga has confirmed this today.

In his role he will oversee all aspects of marketing in the company and also will focus on optimising and driving revenue through Zynga Games Studio. CARP will also oversee international sales.

Previously, Karp was Executive Vice President of EA games, House titles such as The Sims, SimCity and spore and the Sims. In its role as the head of the label Karp engineering strategy for certain teams managed by SKU plan, profit and much more. Karp had previously served as Director of EA games label income. Carp actually spent a total of ten years in the EA.

Earlier this year, Zynga hired EA COO John Schappert as COO. As recently reported by VentureBeat and other former leaders of the EA, which have jumped ship Zynga include Steve Chang, mark Skaggs and Colleen McCreary. In the gaming business is a serious talent wars and Zynga deal can be pre-IPO shares as an incentive for many managers and staff.

Zynga currently has 2.543 employees worldwide.

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13-year-old design effective solar cell inspired by Oaks

When it comes to the use of renewable energy solutions, sometimes nature has the best idea. It was a 13-year-old Aidan Dwyer finally after Winter campaign in New York City–catskill mountains, a trip that inspired him to build solar panels unique and effective design.

Dwyer observed patterns in trees and, after further research and contemplation, understood branches, corresponds to the Fibonacci sequence, a mathematical model to find all of nature, such as falcon flight path, nautilus shells and balance in the human body.

Dwyer assumed that the scheme helped trees photosynthesis and tested his hypothesis by creating miniature trees shaped solar panels. Project award its 2011 young naturalist of the American Museum of natural history.

7-Grader describes his experiments in a detailed essay:

I designed and built my test model, copying the Fibonacci pattern of oak. I studied my results with a compass and realized branch angles. Template about 137 degrees and the Fibonacci sequence 2/5. Then I built model using this template from PVC pipes. In place of leaves I used Photovoltaic Solar panels, hooked in the series, created by 1/2 Volt, so the peak output model was 5 volts. The entire design of the duplicate template oak as close as possible.

Design created by up to 50% more power than the traditional model of the solar installation during periods of low sunlight. Separate solar panels different angles helps array capture light, even when the Sun is very low in the sky. And because they do not lie flat, many of these groups are also less affected by the shadow and snow.

At this point in the experiment design Dwyer backyard, but maybe in the future we'll see gardens on the roof, the solar tree of arrays.

Photos courtesy of the American Museum of natural history museum.

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Facebook, Twitter, drew a record number of visitors to the United States in July

Leena Rao is currently working as a writer for TechCrunch. She recently finished graduate school of the Medill School of journalism at Northwestern University, where she studied business journalism and videography. From 2004 to 2007 she helped lead efforts for advocacy and community relationships Congressman Carloyn Maloney in New York. She graduated from Columbia University in 2003 where it was ... ? Read More

comScore in July traffic numbers are out, and by analogy with the June conclusions, Facebook and Twitter have seen record traffic in terms of United States unique visitors per month. In July, Facebook saw tremendous 162 million unique visitors, compared with 160.8 million unique impressions in June, and 157.2 million uniques in May.

Twitter also posted record traffic in its history, five years; with 32.8 million unique visitors in July, the United States in may, compared with 30.6 million unique visitors in June and 27 million unique impressions. As we said in the past, the constant increase in traffic is a big deal for Twitter, which splits traffic between their own mobile clients, and many third-party customers, who are used to access the network. And Twitter has just completed the transition from the old Web interface to its improved, feature-rich Web applications.

LinkedIn, which saw traffic spike post IPO, Passing a little in terms of unique visitors in the United States in July, seeing 32.5 million unique visitors per month, compared with 33.9 million unique visitors in June. MySpace continued to bleed traffic 32.8 million unique visitors in July (tied with Twitter) from 33 million in June.

While we once thought that Facebook and Twitter will duel it out to users and traffic, clearly this is not the case anymore. Facebook's traffic fivefold Twitter United States visitors. Twitter is not a "murder" of Facebook, or vice versa, as Twitter continues to grow in terms of traffic.

But with the new kid on the block, Google + steadily gaining users, it should be interesting to see if the search giant reaches the social network Twitter traffic. Already there are signs that Google + traffic slows down, but it's still early, and that may change.

"comScore is a global Internet information provider to which leading companies turn for consumer behavior insight that drives successful marketing, sales and trading strategies. experienced comScore analysts work closely with ...

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This is Jupiter, the future of Windows ...PC phone & pills?

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Is Silverlight really dead, or is it the future of Microsoft’s Windows 8 and Windows Phone? This is a question weighing on the minds of legions of Microsoft developers right now – developers who were once promised that Silverlight was the answer to their cross-platform, cross-browser compatibility woes, only to be later informed that JavaScript and HTML5 will be the tools used to build Windows 8 applications. HTML5 is also supported in the IE9 browser, coming soon to Windows Phone “Mango,” due out this fall.

Does that mean HTML5, then, is the future of the Microsoft platform? Maybe not. A new, unannounced platform called “Jupiter” may soon have Microsoft developers leveraging their existing skills to write applications for both Windows 8 and Windows Phone. Which means, of course, apps that run on all platforms – not just PCs, but tablets and phones, too…and even the TV (via Xbox).

That “Jupiter” exists is not new information. There have been a number of leaks about the forthcoming platform in blogs, forum posts and some folks have even reversed-engineered leaked code to learn more.

Above: C# being used to invoke a Jupiter-based app. Looks like Silverlight animation!

For those not closely tracking Microsoft’s news, here’s what (we think) we know about Jupiter, based on the information out there:

It is a new user interface library for Windows. (source)It is an XAML-based framework. (source)It is not Silverlight or WPF, but will be compatible with that code. (source)Developers will write immersive applications in XAML/C#/VB/C++ (source, source, source, source)It will use IE 10's rendering engine. (source)DirectUI (which draws the visual elements on the screen, arrived in Windows Vista) is being overhauled to support the XAML applications. (source, source)It will provide access to Windows 8 elements (sensors, networking, etc.) via a managed XAML library. (source)Jupiter apps will be packaged as AppX application types that could be common to both Windows 8 and Windows Phone 8. (source, source, source, source)The AppX format is universal, and can used to deploy native Win32 apps, framework-based apps (Silverlight, WPF), Web apps, and games (source)Jupiter is supposed to make all the developers happy, whether .NET (i.e., re-use XAML skills), VB, old-school C++ or Silverlight/WPF. (Source? See all the above!)

That last item is especially important, since to date, Microsoft’s only public comment about Window’s 8's development platform is that it’s “based on HTML5 and JavaScript.” As Peter Bright of Ars Technica pointed out, Microsoft developers were “horrified” by this news.

Before you throw Microsoft developers under the bus for failing to jump on the HTML5 bandwagon, you have to understand that they’ve invested a lot of time and money over the course of many years to learn all the technologies Microsoft has pushed, including Win32, COM, MFC, ATL, Visual Basic 6, .NET, WinForms, Silverlight and WPF, explained Bright. It sounded like Microsoft was asking them to throw away decades of experience and switch to HTML5.

While obviously, HTML5 has come a long way in recent months, it’s arguably not quite ready to drive the entire Microsoft platform just yet. It’s an option, of course, as it is on iOS, Android and other modern operating systems with modern Web browsers.

But it’s not going to be Microsoft developers’ only option, it seems.

At the BUILD conference next month, it’s expected that Microsoft will reveal Jupiter to its developer community and the public, at long last.

Why does Jupiter matter so much? If it’s not clear from the technical details above, it’s because Jupiter may end up being the “one framework” to rule them all. That means it might be possible to port the thousands of Windows Phone apps already written with Silverlight to Windows 8 simply by reusing existing code and making small tweaks. Or maybe even no tweaks. (That part is still unclear). If so, this would be a technical advantage for developers building for Windows Phone 8 (code-named “Apollo” by the way, the son of “Jupiter”) or Windows 8.

Post-PC World: Microsoft vs. Apple vs. Google

Imagine if Apple was to announce something similar – an easy way to port iOS applications to the Mac, for example. Right now, there’s no simple method for this. While there are third-party tools that help, Apple developers still have to do quite a lot of work to get a mobile iOS app running on the Mac OS X desktop. That said, we imagine Apple is secretly hard at work on solving this dilemma as we speak. After all, you can clearly see iOS’s influence on Mac OS X with the latest release, Lion: there’s a iOS-like “LaunchPad” with rows of apps, support for apps that work in “full screen” mode, disappearing scroll bars, and more.

Meanwhile, at Google, there’s currently a lack of vision about how to merge desktop and mobile. Chairman Eric Schmidt has made vague statements about how, at some point in the future, Chrome OS and Android will merge. But it seems like Google has no clear idea as to how it will go about doing so.

That Microsoft is thinking about the merging of desktop and mobile is no small matter. It’s a post-PC world, as they say, and for now, Apple is the only company that seems to be able to compete here. Android is struggling in the tablet market. HP just killed its barely-launched webOS. With Windows 8, Windows Phone 8 and Jupiter, Microsoft, at least, seems to have a vision.

Developer Discontent Grows, Microsoft Stays Mum

But with Apple so far ahead at this point, the timing of that vision’s reveal may be key to Microsoft’s future. The fact that Microsoft has allowed discontent to grow in its developer community for the entirety of the year, just so it could have a splashy announcement at BUILD may be looked back on as a strategic mistake that contributed to Microsoft’s eventual downfall. Microsoft wants to be Apple, full of secrets and surprises, but it doesn’t have the culture to support it. With Jupiter, the news should have been officially announced months ago, as a tease, with a full reveal at BUILD.

But instead, Microsoft set aside developers and their concerns, in order to win the hearts of consumers, technologists and the media with promises of “big announcements” at BUILD regarding the future of Windows. Oh, Microsoft. Whatever happened to “developers, developers, developers”? Make them happy and the rest of us will come.

Image credits: Microsoft, David Burela

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Do not follow the crowd

Editor's Note: Jules Maltz is a general partner at institutional venture partners (IVP), late stage venture capital firm based in Menlo Park. You can follow him on Twitter @ julesmaltz.

Whenever I was going to make new investments, I always think of 2 × 2 matrix, I learned from Andy Rachleff, benchmark capital, former partner.

The idea is that if you do a new venture investment (or base the company), you may be "right" or "wrong" and you can be "consensus" (after the crowds) or "non-consensual." everyone knows that if you're wrong, you're not making any money. But the interesting part of the chart to the right and above consensus too great for your return. A lot of money, as any horse racing handicapper can tell you is when you're right and don't follow the crowd.

Fortunately (for leading players and savvy venture capitalists), the crowd expressed are often based on the "hype" and not reality. In conditions of effective market, each company will fall somewhere along the line of dotted black in the chart below (with equal basis advertising).

However, in reality, the venture market is inefficient. There are many companies (which I will not call) whose advertising is significantly higher than the base and there are a number of companies (which many of us do not know), which are the opposite. Perhaps I am wrong, as I am right in investment decisions, but my two favorite kinds of companies are the characteristics of the oval (a) or (B):

Hidden gems (Oval): these are the companies that have strong fundamentals that exceed their advertising. They are often on the market, or geographic location, are not widely enterprise of the branch and/or have their business in a market environment is still not understood. Examples of these types of investments in our portfolio of Buddy Media (2010) and Fleetmatics (2010) and outside of our portfolio include RPX (2009), Palantir is (2008) and now (2006) If you're right, the company will grow in advertising and as a basis. If you are wrong, the company will go away quietly without anyone noticing. You know that you're invested hidden gem, the if people tell you:

What they are doing again? looks like playThat niche in "interesting" investmentHave fun, flying in the x meeting of the Council! (sarcastically)

Although hidden gems is a non-consensus because their basis exceeds their advertising, you can make a non-consensus "hyped" investment company if you think it will outperform the expectations of the crowd. These rare (and expensive) companies are called:

Breakthroughs (Oval): they have early hype, but has not yet entered the mainstream. Consensus is that they can be "Roman candle", which will soon come crashing down to reality (blue dashed line). You may not be consensus if you think it is much more than even the early advertising offers. During the hidden Gem, investing uses low buy sell high strategy breakout investing is to buy high, sell higher. These investments in our portfolio examples of Twitter (2009) and Zynga (2008), and outside of our portfolio include square (2011), Foursquare (2010) and, most famously, Facebook (2006). If you get the investment law, the foundations are rising faster than anyone imagined you incredibly valuable business. If you get it wrong, the unanimous opinion is correct and massively overpaid. You know that you have invested in multiple companies, if people say the following:

Wow. I can't believe you paid valuationIt just seems fadWon't XYZ crush them? Remember what happened to Friendster

Ultimately, regardless of the location of your company on the graph, you always want to move in the right as soon as possible. So if you are a company of breakout, lucky to get some advertising and take advantage of it, make money by hiring great people and focus on fundamentals. And if you are a hidden gem, don't feel bad that no one knows you just remind them that you are a non-consensus!

Jules Maltz joined institutional venture partners (IVP) in August 2008, and already more than 10 years of venture capital and startup experience. It focuses on later stage venture capital investment in rapidly growing ...

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Revenge of the killer script Kiddies!

They are there. Be Afraid. They can be anywhere around the world. They are shadowy, murderous, mysterious in this vast and cool and unsympathetic. Security consultants and anti-virus firms whisper legends of its clients, to scare them straight. They are Voldemorta online security, except that everyone is all too say its name: Advanced persistent threat. Hide your children! You can't stop them!

... Well, actually you probably could pretty easily too, but apparently most people can't be bothered.

Vanity Fair just breathlessly approached wrote about "operation shady rat", "type of malware that has never seen before: spear Phishing e-mail contains a link to a Web page that, when clicked, automatically loads a malicious program is a remote access tool, or rat on the computer of the victim." Military industry standard-bearer Northrop Grumman is constantly under attack by Cyber gangs. "a few months ago, security firm RSA SecurID became victims of" Advanced persistent threatsslowly and consistently attack used by hackers to obtain specific information, "Pentagon alive APT threat and said that it is starting to pay more attention to deterrence than defence spending, because" every year, the amount of intellectual property, exceeds the size of the library of Congress had been stolen from the Government of the United States and the private network. "why, just this week, San Francisco State systems of Bart was hacked —

… waaaaaait per minute.

One never can be sure, particularly in the field, but it seems that Bart police database was hacked ... a French girl, who said: "they have zero security." Here is the link, it was used to hack them. Don't worry, it is no longer active. A good look at this URL. Remind you of anything? It should, if you're a reader of XKCD:

Oh SQL injection that old duck. But wait, it gets even worse:

Seriously? Seriously? Plain text? Who manages security for these jokers, Mr. Bean?

Okay so that it is possible to hack the script kiddie, Barth was enabled by morons. But what about the "Shady rat"? So glad you asked. Vanity Fair of hyperbole makes it sound like no one in the history of the Internet never sent the letter associated with a page with a browser vulnerability. The land of their editors: you're about a decade and a half behind the times. The attacker then used steganography to communicate with the compromised computers. Ltd., steganography, scary and difficult to pronounce! Of course, this might surprisingly sophisticated … ten years ago.

RSA hack worked in exactly the same: letters to employees with enticing investment, as well as vulnerability Flash zero-day. And media tech went crazy about the deadly APT attack on a security company. Are you kidding me? This is an example of "Advanced persistent threats"? Adobe products are legendary for their security. If this is APT, because it was News corporations kindergarten tech story tampering of cellular phones.

But don't just take my word for it: "this attack is described in the shady rat truly advanced persistent threat? I would argue that this is not the case, especially if you find errors in configuring servers and relatively non-sophisticated malicious programs and methods used in this case, "said Symantec security researcher Hon LAU. The world or how it sarcastically, re APT attacks in General: "the striking thing is the sophistication of the justification of the victims, not techniques crackers … Only 3% of the attacks were seen as too slick for victims failed to stop. This leaves 97 per cent of the victims of violations, trying to find something other than themselves to blame. “

There is a genuine, complex, brilliant black hat hackers out there. Some of them work in groups. Some even work for the State and the armed forces, including the most likely people who hacked Google eighteen months ago. But most of the hacks was made possible because the victims allowed them; and we must not forget that the security companies have every temptation to make the risk seems to be as deadly and complex as you can.

Organizations around the world to put up a full range of firewalls, Byzantine and Kafkaesque security policy, to send delegates to conferences security very seriously talking in hushed voices about the apartment, and have endless pointless and/or catastrophically counterproductive for security Theatre, such as forcing people to use it is impossible to remember passwords

If you store these incomprehensible plaintext passwords database URL is vulnerable to SQL injection as their staff open poisoned attachments sent by strangers. It's like to be very worried about whether the enemy fired a cruise missile in your House that you forget you leave your car parked overnight with the door open and the ignition key. In Auckland. Worry about apartments, directed by, say, China is very sexy — if blatantly sinophobic — these days, but may not have to start worrying about the enmity of the Middle Kingdom, until they first established their ability to handle boring French teenage girls with a bone to pick.

Image credit: public enemy/Minor Threat ", believekevin, Flickr.

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Daily show on how chain bookstores can compete with the Internet

Alexia Tsotsis currently works at TechCrunch as a writer. She is also a blogger who attended the University of Southern California in Los Angeles, California. She majored in writing and art, moved to New York shortly after the end of the work in the entertainment industry and media. After four years of his life in New York and to attend courses in New York. ? Read More

Borders of bankruptcy in the summer of this year further underscored the serious shift in terms of people consume the written word, namely, in pixels, not for printing. As the work of our chain of brick and mortar bookstores inevitably way our chain of brick and mortar video shops and record shops, ever sharp Jon Stewart and the author (and PC-dude) John Hodgman reflect on the various ways that bookstores can stay competitive (video above).

Their verdict: don't hold your breath.

John Hodgman: we must acknowledge the facts, John. Big box Bookstore has passed into history. And this is something we should accept and be proud of. By maintaining the boundaries of how popular historical attraction.

Jon Stewart: As, uh, Colonial Williamsburg?

John Hodgman: Yes, exactly! Bring the children up to Ye Olde border Town! Let them see what it felt like the paw through the clearance Bin floor daily calendars. Or sneak peek on pornography on actual paper! Right there on the giant rack strange magazines you've never heard of. Including my personal favorite, a bookstore, magazine rack Aficionado magazine.

Jon Stewart: you know I think Bookstore reserve may call is a very small market.

John Hodgman: well, this may not be less than the market for people who buy the book.

Ba dum Ching.

Within/outside Black Friday

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