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Mediaspectrum Raises $35.8M From Insight Venture Partners To Support Big Media Publishers
Boston-based Mediaspectrum, a company that has a subscription software service catering to big media publishers like Gannett, The Wall Street Journal, The Washington Post, The New York Post and more, just picked up $35.8 million in funding led by Insight Venture Partners.
The roughly 100-person company helps these publishers manage their advertising and content across many platforms on the web and mobile devices. Insight’s managing director Peter Sobiloff and a principal Cian Cotter will join the company’s board.
The company has built a content management system so that publishers can push out stories, content and video simultaneously to the web, tablets, mobile phones and broadcast channels. The product has story development folders where editors and writers can collaborate on different story series and angles. It also has support for SEO, rights management and micro-payments.
On the advertising side, Mediaspectrum has other products that support sales campaigns and different ad formats. They say the ad side of the product can handle billing, booking, ad production and performance tracking so that everyone inside a media company’s sales staff can work together in one environment.
The company’s CEO and co-founder Scott Killoh previously started Openpages, which went on to raise $54 million in venture capital and was later sold to IBM. That company also catered to big print media organizations like Gannett and Knight-Ridder, so he has nearly two decades of experience working in this market.
Michael Dell Ups His Offer To Take Dell Private By A Comically Low $0.10 Per Share
Michael Dell and Silver Lake have offered improved terms for their proposed transaction to take venerable computer OEM Dell private. Their former offer was derailed by activist investor Carl Icahn, who offered an almost bizarre deal that involved removing nearly all Dell shares from the market, but not taking the company fully private.
Michael Dell and his partner Silver Lake were adamant that they were not willing to raise the price of their bid, even in the face of Icahn’s offer, which would have seen some shares purchased at a slight premium to their own proposed price.
They now have budged, but at the same time have given all but no ground. Their newly proposed terms contain a per-share purchase price increase of $0.10, a sum so miserly that it can only be construed as a middle finger to the Dell Special Committee of the Board. You wanted a price improvement? Here you go, bastards.
Here are the formal new terms, according to the Special Committee:
1. increase the merger consideration to $13.75 in cash per share of Company common stock, representing an increase in the consideration to be paid to unaffiliated stockholders of approximately $150 million; and
2. modify the “Unaffiliated Stockholder Approval” requirement in the merger agreement to provide that the voting requirement is the approval of a majority of the outstanding shares held by the unaffiliated stockholders that are present in person or by proxy and voting for or against approval of the merger agreement at the stockholder meeting.
The formerly offered price of $13.65 per share is giggling in a corner somewhere. Dell and Silver Lake call the above their “best and final proposal,” stating that they are “not willing to discuss” any improvement of the listed terms.
How can Michael Dell and his partner think that they can get away with such a pathetic sweetening of their former offer? Because what Icahn has in mind for Dell is complex and not in the best interest of the corporation. The firm needs time as a private entity so that it can rebuild its OEM business and focus on expanding its business services arm. It cannot do that with sufficient flexibility if it is chained to quarterly earnings reports.
The Special Committee has moved the vote to August 2, and states that it is “evaluating” the upgraded offer.
This saga is almost over. It’s been a surprisingly interesting journey, with competing bids cropping up even as Dell slowly sinks; the declining PC market in the face of rising competition from mobile devices has been a constant drag on Dell’s performance in recent quarters. However, following Dell’s first-quarter earnings report, investor interest in Dell has declined.
The company is down around a half percent in normal trading, at $12.82. That Dell is currently trading nearly $1 per share under the proposed offer price is indicative of a lack of investor confidence that the plan will succeed. And, given that the Icahn deal is priced higher per share than what Michael Dell currently proposes, investors aren’t viewing that plan optimistically, either.
It doesn’t seem likely that Icahn will further better his offer, or Michael Dell. Therefore, unless a new player appears — and that is exceptionally improbable — we have the final competing plans in hand. It’s up to the Special Committee and the company’s investors to choose a side.
Via NeoWin. Top Image Credit: Dell Inc.
Google Launches Google Cast SDK For iOS, Android and Chrome, Lets Developers Stream Their Apps To Chromecast
Google launched its $35 Chromecast device today that allows users to stream their Chrome tabs and videos to their TVs from virtually every popular platform. In addition, Google is also launching the Google Cast SDK for developers on iOS, Android and Chrome, which will allow them to enable their apps to stream right to their users TVs. The new SDK, which is officially in beta (or “preview,” as Google calls it), will be available later today.
The SDK, Google says, will enable interactions between devices and TV. Developers don’t have to build new apps for this platform, the company stressed, but will be able to build on their existing mobile and web apps.
“Our goal is to create an ecosystem of apps and devices,” Google’s Mario Queiroz said in his announcement today. “While the Chromecast device is the first instantiation of Google Cast, we expect the technology to be embedded in a range of hardware from our partners in the future,” Google noted in its announcement today.
Over time Google hopes that the technology will be embedded in a number of devices and that developers will support it the way they did Apple’s AirPlay. Unlike Apple’s solution, though, Google is opening this service up across platforms. At $35, I would assume that many developers will pick one of these devices up and start experimenting with them.
Developer Training Platform Pluralsight Acquires PeepCode To Expand Into Open-Source Content
Pluralsight, the online training resource targeting professional developers that announced its raise of $27.5 million from Insight Venture Partners earlier this year, is now putting that funding to use. The company, whose corporate users include Microsoft, Salesforce, Twitter, Facebook, Dell, HP, Intel, Disney, EMC and others, is acquiring PeepCode, a similar resource providing video tutorials on a range of technologies, such as Ruby, Node.js, JavaScript, Unix, Git, CSS, RSpec, databases and more.
Terms of the all-cash deal are undisclosed, but the move will add around 100 new courses to PluralSight’s online library, and will mark the first time open source content is available on its service. This is an important addition, given that many pro developers are interested in familiarizing themselves with open source technology and tools.
“PeepCode is one of the most respected names in open-source development, with clients such as GitHub, AT&T and Yammer,” says Pluralsight CEO Aaron Skonnard. “Up until now, Pluralsight’s customer base has mostly revolved around Microsoft-oriented enterprises. This acquisition gives Pluralsight the content – and the brains behind it – that has become the go-to learning resource for serious open-source programmers,” he adds.
For those unfamiliar with Pluralsight, the company was founded back in 2004 and began its life as a classroom training outfit before shifting its business online three years later. Today, it hosts hundreds of courses with plans priced for individuals, mobile users, businesses and enterprise. The service has been historically strong in Microsoft technologies, but also offered some material for Salesforce developers, Java, Android and iOS.
Earlier this year, Skonnard said the company would use its funding to increase its catalog on social (Twitter, Facebook) technologies, Java, Android, Ruby, PHP, and Python, as well as cloud platforms like Amazon’s AWS, Google App Engine, Windows Azure and others.
PeepCode offers some of that needed content, plus thousands of users of its own who had paid for screencast bundles (five for $55, 10 for $99 or unlimited for $199), which they could then watch online, offline or on mobile, via an iOS app.
These customers will now be merged into Pluralsight’s user base, which is now 300,000 across 150 countries.
In addition, PeepCode had several dozen independent authors who made the video training courses for teaching fees and royalties, similar to Pluralsight. Dozens of these instructors will make the transition as well, joining Pluralsight’s 150 authors. Also joining is PeepCode founder Geoffrey Grosenbach, who will now become a VP and head up all future open-source development.
“We’ll be working on the integration of the PeepCode content into the Pluralsight library over the next few months,” says Skonnard. “Soon users of both sites will get access to the combined libraries of Pluralsight and PeepCode, which now totals more than 650 courses.”
However, because PeepCode’s subscription model is a bit different from the one Pluralsight offers, there will be an exchange system involved. For example, a five-tutorial package may convert into a certain length of time on Pluralsight.
Both sites will operate as is during the next few months, then eventually PeepCode.com will redirect to Pluralsight.com.
Following this addition, Skonnard says that Pluralsight is now on track to reach triple-digit revenue growth again this year.
An Open Letter To Embrace AWS And What It Says About OpenStack's Self-Serving Vendors
Cloudscaling CTO Randy Bias wrote an open letter to OpenStack today. In it he outlines why the open cloud effort will only win if it accepts Amazon Web Services (AWS) and creates a compatible API.
He argues that AWS is the defacto leader. The solution: OpenStack should stop trying to build out its own differentiated APIs and accept the reality that AWS is the winner in the public cloud. If it does that then OpenStack can win in the “hybrid” cloud where the AWS-style public cloud meets the modern data center. This is where OpenStack can soar — helping customers adapt by offering a cloud operating system that has its own elasticity but without the scale of a massive service for tens of thousands of customers.
In particular Bias calls out Rackspace for trying to make its own API as the standard for OpenStack. He details the history of how OpenStack has used APIs to favor the Rackspace public cloud. Bias notes that Rackspace did all of this to serve itself. It used OpenStack to try to differentiate its own service.
That’s certainly true. There is no doubt that Rackspace saw an opportunity to turn itself into something much bigger by creating the OpenStack organization. The company struggled with the new way of the cloud. It had to turn from being a hosting company to a software developer. Did Rackspace not quite get it? It now seems that way. By trying to play the role of leader it also sought to seek control and try to force its own cloud by calling its own API the “native,” one for OpenStack.
To its credit, Rackspace also rang the rallying bell for the first major open cloud initiative that today has more than 250 vendors participating and thousands of developers who have written more than 1.2 million lines of code. IBM, Red Hat and HP all joined OpenStack, and it gave Bias a window into a new market for Cloudscaling, which provides its own system for building out cloud infrastructures.
But Bias has his own reasons for putting such emphasis on AWS. It serves his own interests. His company has placed its own bets on AWS and Google Compute Engine. APIs to overlay AWS and OpenStack would certainly do a lot to help the cause of his young company. For more on this angle, I’d recommend reading cloud commentator Ben Kepes post for his perspectives on the matter.
It’s a curious set of circumstances. The powerful and not so powerful vendors in OpenStack all face considerable market pressures, which are exacerbated by AWS and its unquestionable innovation. In the three years since OpenStack was founded, AWS has just dominated the cloud space.
And so you can bet that HP, IBM, Red Hat, AT&T and a host of others have their own reasons for not being too fast in accepting AWS as the defacto public cloud. They don’t want AWS to win it all, especially when considering how cutthroat Amazon can be about gaining total control. Their APIs are closed and they can change at any time or even curtail service for whatever reason they choose.
So while Rackspace has definitely played its own games, so has everyone else.
Bias does raise questions about the promise of OpenStack and who it actually serves. I asked RedMonk analyst Donnie Berkholz about the AWS API and the question about compatibility. It’s the promise that matters, he said. API providers have a promise they must uphold. The API has to work, and that’s not a question with Amazon. OpenStack is the bigger riddle. There are so many different flavors of OpenStack that it can make it complex to integrate. Dreamhost uses Ceph for storage while Rackpsace has Swift, and Dell uses its own as well.
It’s the complexity that OpenStack has to fix. And that’s not going to be easy with so many vendors, each with their own self-interests.
White House Seems Afraid NSA Defunding Law Could Actually Pass Today
A law to defund the National Security Agency’s Internet dragnet program is gaining surprising momentum. The House of Representatives’ vote today on Michigan Republican Justin Amash’s proposal has gained so much support that the White House is officially urging Congress not to reject it. “This blunt approach is not the product of an informed, open, or deliberative process. We urge the House to reject the Amash Amendment,” read a statement from White House Spokesman Jay Carney.
Rep. Amash (CrunchGov Grade: B) is proposing an amendment to the Defense Appropriations Bill that would deny the NSA the ability to spend money on any program that broadly spied on Americans. When it was clear that Rep. Amash would actually make it to the House floor for a vote, political leaders took the highly unusual step of dispatching NSA head General Keith Alexander for an emergency meeting with House Republicans and Democrats (a separate caucus with each party).
When's the last time a president put out an emergency statement against an amendment? The Washington elites fear liberty. They fear you.
—
Justin Amash (@repjustinamash) July 24, 2013The law is a transparent libertarian Hail Mary pass, so it difficult to know whether it really has a shot. At the very least, as The Atlantic’s Conor Friedersdorf notes, we’ll know exactly how each member of the House feels on the NSA after the vote–and that will be a victory for transparency regardless of the outcome.
Sign Up For Hardware Alley At Disrupt SF, Gain Fortune And Glory
Every year I’m given the best job a guy could ever want: planning hardware alley, a one day extravaganza of some of the best hardware I’ve ever seen. This event, which happens on the last day of Disrupt, is a crowd favorite and I’d love to feature your gear.
What is Hardware Alley? It’s a celebration of hardware startups (and other cool gear makers) that features everything from robotic drones to 3D printers. We try to bring in an eclectic mix of amazing exhibitors and I think you’ll agree that our previous Alleys have been roaring successes.
We’d like you to register as a Hardware Alley exhibitor. You’ll get to exhibit on the last day of Disrupt SF, Sept 11, to show off your goods and get access to some of the most interesting people (and most interesting VCs) in the world. We’d love to have you.
All you need to demo is a laptop. TechCrunch provides you with: 30″ round cocktail table, linens, table top sign, inclusion in program agenda and website, exhibitor WiFi, and press list.
To find out more please visit our pavilion page.
You can reserve your spot by purchasing a Hardware Alley Exhibitor Package. If you can’t attend Disrupt but would like to demo on the final day use promo code: H@rdwareSF13-1day.
If you are Kickstarting your project now or bootstrapping, please contact me at john@techcrunch.com with the subject line “HARDWARE ALLEY.” I will do my best to accommodate you.
Hope to see you in SF!
Google To Launch Play Textbooks In August, Partners With 5 Major Publishing Houses
At its Android and Chrome event in San Francisco today, Google announced that it is bringing textbooks to the Google Play store so students will be able to purchase and rent their textbooks for their Android devices and for reading on the web.
The company has partnered with five major textbook publishers to launch this service. These partners are Pearson, Wiley, Macmillian Higher Education, McGraw-Hill and Cengage Learning. Google says it will have a “comprehensive selection” of textbooks from these publishers in the store that will cover subjects like law, math and accounting, but it did not announce exact numbers.
The service will launch in August.
While Google focused on the fact that students can rent their textbooks on Google Play, though, it did not announce any prices yet. The only thing Google would say is that it expects books to rent and sell for an 80 percent discount compared to regular retail prices (which tend to be very high).
One thing that’s also not clear is how publishers will author books for this service and how much interactivity there will be.
What we do know is that the Android app for Play Textbooks will feature a night-reading mode and will allow you to create and sync bookmarks and highlighted passages between devices.
Josh Elman, A Product Manager's Product Manager, Becomes Greylock's Newest Partner
A key secret to Silicon Valley’s success is its professional class of employees who help build hit startup after hit startup in its formative stages. This know-how in engineering, product design, growth, business development, sales and a range of other roles allow the founders of a hot company to hire fast and quickly mature their new ideas into big, real businesses.
Josh Elman is one of the best examples I can think of, as he’s been leading a broad range of product efforts across Valley leaders for the last 15 years. Now he’s becoming a full partner at Greylock, moving up from his job for the past year or so as a principal there.
What has he done? Lots of things you’ve probably heard of. At Real Player back in the 90s he helped create the RealJukebox and the canonical RealOne multimedia player. Then at professional network LinkedIn, as employee 15, he worked on early growth and virality, as well as the first version of its Jobs feature. From there he moved over to online retailer Zazzle, where he led product and grew its marketplace.
His most recent stints are at the top social sites of our day, Facebook and Twitter, during their formative years. For the former, he helped lead platform and launched the first versions of Facebook Connect, that feature where you log in to other sites using your Facebook ID and then connect with your Facebook friends on those sites. It’s one of the most successful parts of the platform to date.
From there he moved over to Twitter in the Ev Williams era, helping to grow the site to more than 10 times the size when he joined.
Having covered him since his Facebook days, I’ve known Elman to be a very energetic, savvy and scrappy force for the companies he works with. After joining Twitter, for example, he was involved with Twitter’s move to show you other Twitter users on Facebook. It would have been a great way to get more Facebook users on Twitter in the brutally competitive era of 2010, which may have had something to do with Facebook immediately disabling the feature.
He left Twitter as part of a product shakeup when Jack Dorsey assumed the CEO role from Williams, landing at Greylock and immediately getting on the investor grind — I seem to see him at most tech events I still make it out to these days. He has become deeply involved with Nextdoor, for example, a fast-growing neighborhood networking site backed by the firm.
“We couldn’t be luckier to work with Josh,” serial entrepreneur and Nextdoor founder Nirav Tolia tells me by email. “His unique combination of strategic and product expertise has made him an invaluable advisor and partner for Nextdoor. Having Josh on the team can make the difference between a good trajectory and a breakout success.”
What is Elman going to be doing as a full partner at one of Silicon Valley’s most respected and successful firms today? Stay deeply involved in product, as he has with Nextdoor and some of the other Greylock portfolio companies already. “I want to be the kind of person who is a part of the team, working to help the founder and leadership succeed,” he says by phone this morning, “whether that’s joining product meetings, a/b tests or growth — the things I’ve done over the past 15 years.” The difference, he says, is that he won’t be working with the same company every day.
What about his investment focus?
“There are still huge opportunities around social platforms, communication tools, new media, marketplaces and mobile experiences,” he explains. “Computers are so new that we haven’t even figured out how they’ll all fit together. There’s lots of things that still have to get built. Look at what’s happening with longer form content, longer form videos. When I turn on my tablet, it doesn’t help me figure out what to watch or read. We’re not investors in Flipboard but they’re a good example. Nextdoor is another, where I’m heavily involved — neighborhoods are a whole new area, even though people think social is done.”
Google Launches The $35 Chromecast Streaming Device To Bring Chrome To The Living Room
Meet the Chromecast. As the name suggests, it’s powered by Chrome and is designed to bring Google’s browser/OS to the biggest screen in the house.
The Chromecast is designed first to be a streaming device. It’s supposed to be the easiest way to get YouTube and Google Play and Netflix and Pandora and photos on HDTVs. Think Apple TV, but rather Google TV with another name (because, well, Google TV is already a thing).
The Chromecast is the first expansion of the Chrome operating system out of traditional forms of computing. Up until now, Chrome OS was a desktop operating system, designed for use on a laptop or monitor. Google retooled it for the living room and tapped mobile operating systems to provide the content.
The Chromecast uses an AirPlay-type system to provide content to the device. From Android or iOS, users simply hit a button on YouTube to load the video on the other screen. Quick and easy.
Chromecast is essentially Google’s answer to AirPlay. But it’s available on more than just one platform. It also features group playlists, continues playing the media back while the phone is doing other things and even streams while the device is asleep. The big downside is that, as of right now, this feature requires the Chromecast device — it’s not available on countless devices like AirPlay. At least not yet.
Best yet, any device can be the controller. Start a video on one device, turn it off, and another device can still control the video started. It appears to be seamless.
Desktops connected to the same network can also act as a controller. Click the cast button, the video will play and the computer will continue to play the media as it does other tasks.
The device itself is a small HDMI stick similar to the Roku Steaming Stick. It’s powered by USB and Google TV VP Mario Queiroz bragged that it features quick and easy setup.
The Chromecast is just $35 and is available today in the U.S.
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