Netflix iPad App Now Supports VGA Adapter

About a month ago, I complained about the iPad's VGA Adapter only supporting a limited number of just Apple-developed applications. We are moving in the right direction:

As of yesterday, you can now stream Netflix directly to your iPad and, with the VGA dongle, have it run on your television. It's not perfect: the UI is funky, the picture doesn't always fill the entire screen, and navigation is difficult... but its a major step forward. Now if only the cable would simply mirror what is on the iPad!

Kindle: More 5-Star Reviews than any Amazon Product!

In my ongoing fascination / following of Amazon's marketing for the popular Kindle device (see February, March and April campaigns) - I have another to add: Amazon's most recent Kindle advertising includes Amazon product reviews and notes that the Kindle has "more 5 star reviews than any other product on Amazon."

Impressive. And compelling. And a nice inclusion of Amazon's reviews platform (which, in my opinion, is the web's best) and a promotion of their active community (particularly Gloria from Oklahoma!):

Also interesting: how much promotion Amazon has given to Microsoft's Internet Explorer 8: "Your Amazon Browser." I am not entirely sure what that means and I am not inclined find out as I am a happy Chrome user:

Facebook's New "Promote Your Post" Ads

Facebook has become very good at integrating revenue streams into key user flows.... effectively creating powerful upsell opportunities. For example, when you create a Facebook Page, you are promptly greeted with dynamically generated ads to drive fans.

Below is the newest upsell / integration: when page owners post to their feeds, a prompt is given to "create an ad to reach potential fans with your post. You only pay when people Like or click to your Page from the ad." The ad is customizable but is a combination of your post's content and your page's formatting. Also compelling: Facebook presents estimated reach of those ads based on the proposed basic targeting - namely users who are not already fans AND are friends of fans.

I have been preparing a blog post on what I call placing products "in the river"... more to come on this, but this is a great example of delivering simple product to the right audience / user at the right time:

DukeGEN Angel Pitch Event @ Dogpatch Labs Tomorrow Night

I am very excited to be part of a great evening at Dogpatch Labs tomorrow evening for the Duke Global Entrepreneurship Network ("DukeGEN") Angel Pitch Night. We have eight companies backed by Duke graduates and founders who are pitching to a judges panel.... also comprised of fellow Duke alums: - Jim Scheinman ’88, Bebo - Josh Felser ’86, B ’90, Freestyle Capital - Aaron Patzer '02, Mint - and myself ’03, Polaris Ventures

The event will be held on Wednesday, May 12th from 6-8:30pm in San Francisco at Dogpatch Labs (Pier 38, The Embarcadero). RSVP for this event on LinkedIn HERE. Space is limited. Attendees will be allowed into the venue on a first-come, first-serve basis.

Numerous companies applied and eight were named as finalists:

- BizeeBee - Small business messaging and scheduling. Founder and CEO Poornima Vijayashanker E '04. - Canvert - Pay per ring lead generation. Founder and CEO Scott Thomas T '96. - CoverHound - Better way to find insurance. Founder and CEO Basil Enan T '03. - FitNet - Empowering healthy living. Founder and CEO Dr. Jason Langheier M '09. - RefYo - Referrals on the social Internet. Co-founder and CEO Ed Spiegel E '99 and co-founder and Director of Technology Kevin Lochner E '99. - Social Stir - Dating for social media interactions. Founder and CEO Allen Vance B '07. - Stinky Teddy - Search engine optimized for now. Founder and CEO David Hardtke T '94. - YouRock - Sponsorship of events and individuals. Founder and CEO Jeremy Cotter T '02.

Starts: Wednesday May 12, 2010, 06:00PM Ends: Wednesday May 12, 2010, 08:30PM Location: Dogpatch Labs 38 The Embarcadero (Pier 38) San Francisco, CA 94111 US

Website: http://www.dukegen.com/angel-pitch-event Industry: information technology and services

Intended For: Duke students, Duke alumni, Duke staff, Duke parents, founders, entrepreneurs, angel investors, venture capitalists, CEOs

Organization: The Duke Global Entrepreneurship Network ("DukeGEN")

DukeGEN is hosting an event for the entire Duke community during which Duke founders of non-enterprise Internet businesses or consumer mobile application services, platforms, or applications will present their business concepts to a distinguished panel of Duke angel investors and early stage venture capitalists. Our panelists include Jim Scheinman T ’88, Josh Felser T ’86, B ’90, Aaron Patzer T '02, and Ryan Spoon T ’03

Announcing Dogpatch Labs San Francisco Roster

We are excited to announce the newest Dogpatch Labs class here in San Francisco. It includes entrepreneurs and companies that have been part of the lab over the last few months and those that just recently joined (new additions: AdCru, Animoto, Burbn, FanPop, JibJab, LearnBoost, Milennial Media, Recruly, StickyBits, Task Rabbit and Wild Pockets). As always, we look for great, exciting entrepreneurs who thrive in open and collaborative environments. And we aim to have a diverse collection of individuals, companies and verticals. The current batch of residents certainly represents that! You can view the TechCrunch write up here and rosters of all three Dogpatch Labs here.

Dogpatch San Francisco

AdCru is a pay-per-follower ad network for Twitter founded in September 2009.

Animoto (San Francisco) generates custom, professional-looking slideshows from user-uploaded music and photos. Their “patent-pending Cinematic Artificial Intelligence technology and high-end motion design” drives the web app. (TechCrunch coverage)

Burbn is a new way to communicate + share in the real world. (TechCrunch coverage)

Cardpool is a gift card exchange service where anyone can buy, sell, or trade their gift cards in a safe and secure environment. (TechCrunch coverage)

EGG HAUS is an interactive agency. We help our clients create and deploy engaging branded experiences on every consumer platform.

FanPop is a network of user-generated fan clubs for different topics of interest created and maintained by the community of fans.

FanPulse welcomes you to your world of sports. FanPulse (launching January 2010) is a new sports-service that lets you easily follow the sports you love and talk about them with your real friends. (TechCrunch coverage)

Formative Labs - working on ideas that solve problems and change consumer behaviors.

Formspring: Ask questions, give answers and learn more about your friends. (TechCrunch coverage)

Hollrr - Want to help your friends discover a great new product? A quick Hollrr is the easiest way to let them know what deserves a shout out. (TechCrunch coverage)

JibJab (San Francisco): Headquartered in Santa Monica and founded by Gregg and Evan Spiridellis, and backed by Polaris, JibJab is a leading e-Card business. (TechCrunch coverage)

LearnBoost is an education platform for secondary schools.

Millennial Media delivers the largest reach – 83% of the US mobile audience – through the largest mobile advertising network in the US. (TechCrunch coverage)

Mr. Tweet looks through your extended network to help you find effective relationships and information most relevant to yourself.

ProfessionL centralizes all your recruitment management needs into one unified web-based software application that can be used by any business that recruits (including recruitment specialists).

Recurly makes subscription billing easy for developers and organizations of all sizes.. (TechCrunch coverage)

The Start Project - turning ideas into action. (TechCrunch coverage)

Stickybits brings the physical and digital worlds together with barcode stickers which trigger audio, video, photo, and text messages when scanned. (TechCrunch coverage)

startupSQUARE is a marketplace where entrepreneurs can meet one another and brainstorm their next big business idea.

TaskRabbit(formerly runmyerrand.com) helps individuals and small businesses in a community outsource their tasks and deliveries, leveraging the latest technology and the social networking paradigm.

Trazzler helps you answer one question, "Where should I go?" by recommending trips unique to your location and Travel Personality.

Twylah: your personal assistant on twitter.

Wild Pockets is an end to end solution that supports creators throughout the life cycle of 3D game development

Yardsellr - In the tradition of neighborhood garage- and yard-sales, Yardsellr makes it easy for you to list and sell, or find and buy whatever you want. Yardsellr helps spread the word about your item within your online "neighborhood" – social and messaging networks like Facebook, Twitter and Google.

JibJab Celebrates 30 Years of Star Wars

The blog has been dormant for the past couple weeks - but back from our honeymoon (pictures coming!), I have a slew of quick posts that should have been covered earlier and warrant greater depth... so my apologies! JibJab celebrated thirty years of The Empire Strikes Back by releasing three Starring You movies for the original Star Wars trilogy. Using Facebook Connect, standard digital photos and/or your webcam, you can cast yourself and friends into three Star Wars movies. The launch was well received and got great coverage from The Washington Post, LA Times, USA Today, and several others. Two of the best pieces though?

TechCrunch Editor Michael Arrington said: “This is the coolest thing I’ve ever seen. And I think I’m serious.”

And JibJab's Spiridellis brothers joined Adam Carolla's podcast - who has the world record for podcast downloads. (FYI: they are in the second part of the two part series).

Now cast yourself in Star Wars at http://starwars.jibjab.com and embed it in Facebook!

Live Streaming: Dogpatch Labs + Wild Pockets 2010 Game Jam

Tonight Dogpatch Labs is hosting Wild Pocket's Bay Area Game Jam Workshop. Wild Pockets is one of the several new Dogpatch Labs residents moving in on May 1. Tonight's workshop is being streamed live via Ustream (embedded below) and starts at 6:30pm pst. It will be followed by a Dogpatch Labs Social Gaming evening complete with pizza and keg:

Stream videos at Ustream

Android: "Traffic Growing at Compounded Monthly Rate of 32% per Month"

For mobile news, the best reading each month is the AdMob Mobile Metrics Report (see previous coverage here). The March 2010 report is noteworthy for a few reasons and have a consistent theme: Android has arrived: 1. Device proliferation / diversity "Two Android devices, the HTC Dream and HTC Magic, collectively represented 96% of Android traffic in September 2009. Seven months later, 11 devices represented 96% of Android traffic in the AdMob network."

2. Manufacturer diversity

"Motorola was the leading Android manufacturer with 44% share of traffic in March 2010 due to the success of the Droid and CLIQ. HTC was a close second with 43% of requests, followed by Samsung with 9%."

3. Significant, compounded growth

"The Android platform has experienced significant growth in monthly traffic over the past year. Android traffic has grown at a compounded monthly growth rate of 32% per month, going from 72 million requests in March 2009 to 2.0 billion in March 2010. AdMob overall worldwide traffic for March 2010 is up 18% month over month."

4. Android's operating system share within the US is accelerating; iPhone's is declining (based on AdMob's metrics

With the iPad, Its Time to Think About Books As Apps

I have already written about how great the reading experience on the iPad is... but its even better when forward-thinking publishers / developers / authors think about book as applications. As an app, books can be richer and more dynamic as the publisher / developer is able to re-imagine the reading experience.

Over the weekend, for example, one of top 25 iPad apps was "Alice in Wonderland for the iPad":

The app costs $8.99 - about the price of a Kindle or iBook title. Interestingly, iTunes might actually be a better distribution lever than Apple's bookstore. I imagine being a top 25 application is more powerful than being a top 25 book (at least at this point).

As a product (also at this point - thanks to Apple's developer tools), the book is richer as an app. Alice in Wonderland is gorgeous: the fonts are big, the imagery is gorgeous and the book is interactive: it moves, animates, takes user input (using motion, touch, etc).

There are numerous instances where this is applicable:

- children's books: much like the Alice in Wonderland examples (see below)

- text books: think about learning anatomy, chemistry, or history interactively

- biographies: rather than a few pictures placed along the book's spine, you could interact with text for photos, video, etc

- new formats: for instance, choose your own adventures are fun in their novelty... similar formats are suddenly part fiction, part gaming, part social

3D has captivated movie audiences and enabled director's to think about film differently - and arguably more creatively - publishers and authors have a similar opportunity.