GrubHub’s New Approach to Food Delivery
Author: Atelier18 Mar
Food delivery has gone hi-tech in Chicago, San Francisco, and Boston thanks to Chicago-based GrubHub.com.
Born in 2004 from the creative minds of Matt Maloney and Michael Evans, GrubHub provides online access to restaurants that deliver in Chicago, San Francisco, and more recently Boston. All you need to do is type in your address to discover who delivers in your area and to access menus.
GrubHub’s easy to use searchable interface includes a comprehensive database of restaurant information that is younger than 120 days. To order, you need to set up a free account with GrubHub.com. Within your account, you have a virtual menu drawer with Past Orders, Favorite Menus, My Reviews, and Account Info. Even better, you can provide the restaurant with special instructions on food preparation, such as pepperoni on only half of your pizza; or you can provide the delivery driver with special instructions for accessing your building.
GrubHub also allows you to rate and review service and guide other registered users of the site.
GrubHub.com has advertising deals with restaurants whose logos appear on the site, and this is how they make money. However, GrubHub still lists restaurants even if there isn’t an advertising partnership in place.
According to Matt Maloney, one of the founders of GrubHub, the goal of GrubHub is to provide consumers the easiest and “best consumer interaction” for food delivery and also to get rid of those pesky paper menus.
San Francisco-based Extreme Pizza has had a relationship with GrubHub for over 2 years. Jimmy Ryan, one of the partners of Extreme Pizza, says that online orders are at 20 percent and growing; most, if not all, come from GrubHub.
Interview of Jimmy Ryan, Partner of Extreme Pizza:
The future of GrubHub is to scale up in multiple markets, one market at a time. “It’s not one-size fits all,” says Maloney. “Each market is different. Consumers in San Francisco, for instance, are “extremely tech savvy, so they got it quickly.” Boston has a promising market of hungry college students that attracted them.
Still deciding where to move next, GrubHub has its eye on New York, Seattle and Washington, D.C.
By Kathleen Clark
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Federal Court Upholds Tossing Craigslist Lawsuit
Author: Atelier18 Mar
Federal Court rules Craigslist.com is not liable for discriminatory housing ads posted on the Web site.On Friday, March 15, the 7th U.S. Circuit Court of Appealsupheld a November 2006 ruling by the US District Court for the Northern District of Illinois, Eastern Division.
In dismissing the case, the courts ruled that Craigslist.com serves as an intermediary party, not a publisher, and should not be held liable for discriminatory housing ads posted on the Web site.
In February 2006, civil rights group, Chicago Lawyers’ Committee for Civil Rights Under Law, filed a lawsuit against the popular online bulletin board. The lawsuit alleged that Craigslist published housing ads that discriminated against future tenants on the basis of race, gender and religion. In particular, Craigslist was accused of violating fair-housing laws by allowing users to post ads with language including "no minorities" and "Requirements: Clean Godly Christian male."
A Techdirt blog post, however, affirms that as a service provider Craigslist is protected under section 230 of the CDA. Craigslist is a platform for individuals to publish their ads. According to Techdirt, the fair housing group would better serve the public by targeting those responsible for writing the ads rather than Craigslist.
Experts said Friday’s verdict is not only a win for Craigslist, but also for Internet sites dependent upon user-generated content and for those against legal restrictions for the Web.
The decision means "the soapbox is not liable for what the speaker has said," said Kurt Opsahl, a senior staff attorney with the Electronic Frontier Foundation, a San Francisco-based nonprofit organization that advocates online rights.
Jim Buckmaster, CEO of Craistlist, is relieved by the court ruling.
"We’re pleased the Court agreed that online service providers like Craigslist should not be held liable as `publishers’ of content submitted by their users, and view this outcome as a win for the general public’s ability to self-publish content (such as free classified ads) on the Internet," Buckmaster said in a statement Friday.
By Kathleen Clark
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YouTube Censorship in China
Author: Atelier17 Mar
China has blocked access to YouTube.com after videos of the deadly Tibetan protests appeared on the video Web site.The YouTube censorship exemplifies new internet restrictions the Chinese government implemented on January 30, 2008 aimed at controlling video-posting sites. It states that Web sites which “provide Internet video services should insist on serving the people, serve socialism … and abide by the moral code of socialism.”
The blockage extends the government’s control over information available to its citizens concerning the unrest in Tibet’s capital city of Lhasa over China’s communist rule of the region. Foreign journalists have been denied access to the protests and the domestic CNN feed is blacked out each time it runs a story about it.
Explanation of Chinese censorship of Tibet broadcasts:
The Chinese government encourages Internet use for businesses and education but tightly monitors and censors information it deems pornographic or rebellious. Foreign news and human rights Web sites are regularly blocked when they carry subversive information.
The law requires all Web sites with video programming or uploading capabilities to obtain a permit from the government, but the only sites allowed to do so are state-run. The new YouTube restriction demonstrates the problem of attempting to censor foreign-based video sites which have yet to register.
State-run video sites 56.com, Youku.com and tudou.com do not have any video of the protests and are operational, but attempts to access YouTube yield a blank page.
According to Nielson/NetRatings, the U.S. has over 212 million internet users, but experts predict that China will soon have the most users. The new censorship law affects not only the information the Chinese receive, but also the way in which businesses like Google’s YouTube operate in the country.
With such tight internet restrictions, what we call the World Wide Web might be, in China, referred to as the not-so World Wide Web.
By Danny Scuderi
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iPhone Software Upgrade Aimed at Businesses, Games
Author: Atelier14 Mar
Apple is looking to increase iPhone business by opening it up to third-party developers, with an eye on the business and gaming markets.In June 2008, users will be able to download the free 2.0 software upgrade, enabling them to use third-party software approved by Apple. Included in the free download is Microsoft’s Exchange ActiveSync software, which synchronizes the phone with a PC for email, calendar and contact information. It will also contain the App Store, an application similar to iTunes that will let users browse, search, buy and download programs like games.
With the upgrade, Apple hopes to channel revenue away from Research In Motion’s Blackberry.
Apple says that over 100,000 software developers have downloaded the iPhone software development kit since the announcement last week, pushing the iPhone to the front of the SmartPhone conversation, a place usually occupied by the Blackberry.
The upgrade is aimed at making the phone more compatible for businesses and taking advantage of its features. These include the iPhone’s 3-D processor and “accelerometer,” motion censors that detect when the phone is being tilted.
The iPhone’s technology and a 3.5-inch display screen make it a “blank canvas” to game developers, says Travis Boatman, vice president of Worldwide Studios for EA Mobile. “I can create any kind of interface I want, to make any kind of game experience I want,” he says.
Though only a small amount of cell phone users buy games, Apple is hoping to change that, marketing the iPhone as an all-in-one device. The hope is that the 2.0 software upgrade will make it attractive to the corporate world and those far from it.
By Danny Scuderi
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AOL Has Acquired No.3 Social Networking Website Bebo
Author: Atelier14 Mar
AOL is emerging as a serious competitor in the business of online advertising by purchasing Bebo for $850 million cash.
Bebo, a San Francisco-based Web site, is the third-largest social networking service in the US behind MySpace and Facebook.
Along with the UK, Bebo.com is ranked the number one social networking site in Ireland and New Zealand. With approximately 40 million unique users worldwide, Bebo only has 4.8 million unique US visitors.
Acquiring Bebo is a big win for AOL in the popular social network domain. Now, AOL has an edge in the business of targeted advertising, especially internationally. Bebo’s plans to expand into European markets may give AOL the reach it lacks outside North America. The deal is also part of AOL’s larger goal of transforming from an Internet-access gateway to an online advertising giant competing with Yahoo! and Google.
Once considered for acquisition by Microsoft and Yahoo!, the acquirement by AOL does not come as a surprise.
Randy Falco, Chairman and CEO at AOL, a unit of Time Warner Inc., explains the move:
“What drew us to Bebo was its substantial and fast-growing worldwide user-base, its vision of a truly social Web, and the monetization opportunities that leverage Platform-A across our combined global audience. This positions us to offer advertisers even greater reach and marketers significant insights into the desires and needs of consumers.”
Bebo President, Joanna Shields, says the AOL acquisition is a “natural progression for Bebo” and adds that they “look forward to working together to continue to expand the online social experience globally.”
The addition of Bebo could ultimately breathe new life into AOL’s sluggish advertising growth. AOL ad sales have continued to fall from a low13% in the third quarter of last year to 10% in the fourth quarter.
By Kathleen Clark
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Major Internet Companies Capture Consumer Data for Advertiser Dollars
Author: Atelier13 Mar
Web companies are collecting personal data about web surfers to predict relevant online content and advertisements.The next time you’re searching for information on vacations or purchasing prescription drugs on the Internet, keep in mind that your habits are being watched and tracked.
On Monday March 10th, The New York Times (NYT) reported that a new analysis of online consumer data, conducted for the NYT by research firm comScore, shows a considerable amount of consumer data is landing in the hands of large Internet companies, such as Yahoo, Google and AOL.
Audience size is a measure of a website’s success. The larger the audience and the more a Web company knows about them can translate into more advertiser dollars. Microsoft and Yahoo, for instance, have acquired a number of companies within the last year to enrich their consumer data. Since many advertising deals are about data, the richer your data, the more relevant the ads are for online consumers.
Web companies can easily capture specific data about consumer behavior, such as tastes and preferences, by following consumers as they move around the Internet. In turn, the information is used to charge advertisers a higher price for customized ads that will return a higher response rate.
However, amassing this data is not all about getting advertising revenue. According to Executives at the largest Web companies, collecting this data benefits consumers who in return see ads relevant to their interests.
Michael Galgon, Microsoft’s chief-advertising strategist says “You’re getting content about things and messaging about things that are spot-on to who you are” as reported in the NYT.
In December 2007, comScore studied 15 major media companies and how they collected consumer data online. The analysis captured the number of searches, display ads, videos, and page views that occurred on those sites and estimated the number of ads shown on their ad networks. These are also known as “Data transmission events,” or the times when consumer data was sent back to a Web companies’ servers. ComScore recorded at least 336 billion transmissions each month from Yahoo, Google, Microsoft, AOL, and MySpace, not including their ad networks.
The information transmitted might include the person’s ZIP code, a search for jobs or vacation information, or the purchasing of personal items.
Yahoo won out with the most instances of data collection within a month on its sites – about 110 billion collections, or 811 for an average user. Yahoo also has partner sites, such as eBay, that allow for other opportunities to learn about the average person.
MySpace followed close behind.
Google also has a lot of data collection events, but the company feels it is different because it mostly uses only current information rather than the past actions of web surfers to choose ads.
As pointed out by the NYT, Yahoo’s large database explains why AOL and Yahoo have discussed a possible merger and why Microsoft is willing to pay $41.2 billion to buy the company.
Regardless of how much data Web companies already have, they will continue to find new ways to obtain more data and thereby increase their leverage in the advertising world. Google, for instance, only yesterday received the go-ahead from the European Union to purchase DoubleClick, an ad delivery company with a wealth of consumer information.
By Kathleen Clark
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INTERVIEW - Arcadia Biosciences: More profit and less pollution in farming
Author: Atelier13 Mar
Eric Rey, the CEO of Arcadia Biosciences based in Davis, California, is a veteran of Calgene and Monsanto who considers himself a staunch environmentalist. In 2002, he started his company to do something concrete about helping the environment. His technology should help farmers cut their costs and improve the environment thanks to plants that need less nitrogen fertilizer.What is the problem you are trying to solve?
We have more people and less and less farming land. Agriculture has reacted by using more fertilizer, mainly nitrogen fertilizer. Nitrogen fertilizer is literally the fuel that makes agriculture go; it represents a $50 billion annual market. The problem is that up to half of the nitrogen ends up in the air or the water as a pollutant because plants can’t absorb it all. Not many people are aware that agriculture is the second contributor to the emission of greenhouse gas (GHG) with nitrogen fertilizer the biggest emitter in agriculture. That’s because nitrogen is transformed into nitrous oxide which has 300 times more global warming potential than carbon dioxide.
What solution have you come up with?
We have an exclusive licence on a technology developed at the University of Alberta. It consists in making the gene responsible for absorbing nitrogen think it is hungrier for it. We turn up the activity of that gene and the plant absorbs more nitrogen. We have demonstrated our technology in several plant species, including corn and rice. We have shown that you can reduce fertilizer use and maintain crop yield. We have also shown that the plant structure and protein content are not affected. Many companies have been working on this, but we are the only ones who have publicly disclosed the results of our field trials. It makes us think that there was no way to do it except with a genetically-modified gene. We think we have one solution, but it is not the only one.
How does the technology get to market?
We are not a seed company. We licence our Nitrogen Use Efficiency (NUE) technology to seed companies who then incorporate it in their seeds which requires several more years of work, including regulatory requirements. We are like Intel selling its chips to computer manufacturers. We have worked out deals with several seed companies. We just announced an agreement with Pioneer Hi-Bred, a DuPont company, which is a global leader in corn. We will be announcing a deal with a grass seed company for the home and golf grass business and another one in India for multiple crops. In addition, we have a no-cost technology donation partnership with the African Agricultural Technology Foundation (AATF) for rice in Africa. Our goal is to get this technology in the hands of as many people as possible.
You have another project on the drawing board. Tell us about it.
Because agriculture is a big emitter of GHG, we believe that farmers should be able to sell carbon credits like other industries [since the 1997 Kyoto Protocol, carbon credits have blossomed into a $30 billion market in which companies buy their way into compliance with emissions-reduction requirements without actually cutting their own output of GHG]. We are working with the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change to set up a methodology. It will take a few years. But we are already working with the province of Ningxia in China. There are several benefits: it allows poor farmers access to the technology, it gives farmers extra revenue and it works as an anti-piracy measure in China.
You are also interested in bio-fuels. What can you bring to the table there?
Producing ethanol from corn ends up being a worse emitter than actually using gasoline. If we can cut down the use of nitrogen fertilizer in that process, it would be an important point in the bio diesel debate.
What else can you tell us about the company?
We are based in Davis because we can hire researchers or work on partnerships with UC Davis, one of the main agriculture universities in the US. We have 80 employees who come from 20 different birth countries. We have a number of shareholders and have received funding from three VCs. We also get revenues from contract research and grants. In Q4, we will get our first sales revenues from an oil product we have developed.
Isabelle Boucq
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Wikileaks. Highly Confidential Documents Made Available to Public.
Author: Atelier13 Mar
Wikileaks.org challenges governments and businesses to clean up their corruption by posting their documents for the public to see.Launched in December 2006, Wikileaks is a forum for the anonymous uploading of government and corporate documents for the global community to examine for their credibility. Because leaking such materials can carry punishments as severe as death in some countries, wikileaks.org assures people that it uses “sophisticated cryptographic and postal techniques [in order] to minimize the risks that anonymous sources face.”
According to the website, their interest is “in exposing oppressive regimes in Asia, the former Soviet bloc, Sub-Saharan Africa and the Middle East,” but they aim “to be of assistance to people of all regions who wish to reveal unethical behavior in their governments and corporations.”
The website now has over 1.2 million documents covering 109 countries, from Afghanistan to Zimbabwe, but because of an unexpected surge in popular demand, the site will not be going live for several months. Still, Wikileaks has plenty of viewable classified documents aimed at exposing the corruption in various governments and corporations “for maximum political impact.”
Wikileaks believes “that transparency in government activities leads to reduced corruption, better government, and stronger democracies.”
By disclosing sensitive documents for the betterment of the public, wikileaks.org embraces the title “whistleblower site” and encourages its anonymous contributors to be referred to “as ‘investigative journalists,’ ‘analysts,’ ‘open government activists’ or, especially in an African context, ‘anti-corruption activists.’”
Although not associated with Wikipedia, it functions similarly to it. Anyone can submit documents to the site about anything related to government and corporate ethics, but before they are posted every article is reviewed by a team of professional journalists and anti-corruption analysts. People can also edit and submit changes to the articles they read, and such changes go through the same review process.
With such sensitive material, the website faces much scrutiny, namely by the corporations and governments it implicates.
SWISS BANK JULIUS BAER DROPS ENTIRE CASE AGAINST WIKILEAKS
Wikileaks has already been taken to court over documents posted on its website. On February 14th, 2008, Julius Baer Bank and Trust Company, a Cayman Island bank entity, filed an order prohibiting the site from disclosing documents they say contain "stolen or otherwise wrongfully obtained confidential and protected bank files and records."
Dynadot, Wikileaks’ domain name registrar and web host, was initially forced to disable the domain name, but later it was restored. As of March 5, 2008 the case was dropped with a strong defense of the U.S. Constitution’s First Amendment of freedom of speech and of the press. Wikileaks has already won its first battle, and it will probably not be their last.
Access Wikileaks here or through a secured page: https://secure.wikileaks.org
By Danny Scuderi
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Hulu. The Revolution of Premium Online Videos.
Author: Atelier13 Mar
Hulu, the online video service, launches its Web site today, Hulu.com, making the largest variety of high-quality videos to US consumers legally accessible and free.
Hulu.com offers an important selection of all genres and formats, including television shows and feature films, in full-length episodes or clips, made available by the top broadcast networks, cable networks, movie studios and web-centric content providers including FOX, NBC, MGM, Sony Pictures Television, Warner Bros., and Lionsgate.. and many more.
You can enjoy full-length episodes of The Simpsons, The Office and Prison Break , classics like Miami Vice and Buffy the Vampire Slayer, and clips from Saturday Night Live, Nip/Tuck, and others the morning after they air.
The elegant interface is very easy to navigate. It is all browser-based, with no unnecessary features, red stars or comments like competitor YouTube.com. Although there are limited and not-so-disruptive commercial interruptions, you can watch your favorite television moments in high definition—which you cannot do on iTunes—without downloading any plug-in or having pop-up windows to resize. You can also easily clip, share and embed videos on your Web sites, including blogs and social networking sites.
Enjoy an episode of The Office (Money):
“Hulu helps fans find great content wherever they are online,” said Peter Chernin, president and chief operating officer, News Corporation. “With tools that make sharing easy, Hulu encourages viral distribution. At the same time, Hulu’s distribution partners are some of the most visited on the Web, engaging consumers where they are already spending their time. This is a powerful combination.”
In private beta since October 2007, over 5 million viewers have already watched videos in the past 30 days via Hulu.com or its extensive distribution network, according to Hulu.
Hulu, a Los Angeles-based company founded in March 2007, is a joint venture owned by NBC Universal and News Corp, and has a received a $100 million investment from private equity firm Providence Equity Partners.
Hulu is free but ad-supported. “The service, which cost $15 million to develop, makes money off of an assortment of pre-roll (played before the video starts playing) and limited interruption commercials. These are not quite as obtrusive as you might think, but still can be an eyesore in a world of DVRs and the thus far commercial-free YouTube.” explains Venture Beat. Currently, Hulu advertisers include: Best Buy, Chili’s, DirecTV, GM, Intel, Nissan, State Farm, Unilever, Wal-Mart and others.
By Mathieu Ramage
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Google Has Acquired DoubleClick
Author: Atelier12 Mar
Google acquires the online advertising giant DoubleClick after receiving green light by the European Union.Google Inc. completed its $3.1 billion acquisition of online advertising colossus DoubleClick on Tuesday after approval from the European Union, which dismissed critics’ antitrust and privacy concerns. The merger significantly strengthens Google’s dominance in the online advertising business 11 months after its initial bid.
DoubleClick, a New York-based internet advertising company, makes much of its revenue by placing banner ads on third-party websites. Tracking users from website to website and recording what advertisements they view allows advertisers to better target consumers.
Privacy militants argue that these methods will enable Google to collect too much information about Internet users by obtaining personally identifiable information.
Such privacy issues, combined with Google’s top spot in search engine advertising, prompted an intense campaign from critics and rivals such as Microsoft to prevent the acquisition.
Their fear is that the company will unfairly dominate the internet advertising business, though the U.S. Federal Trade Commission in December and now the European Commission concluded that the two companies are not business rivals and therefore do not pose such a threat. These commissions stated that there is still a healthy competition among Google’s rivals Microsoft, Yahoo! and Time Warner Inc.’s AOL.
Recognizing that it is losing ground to Google, Microsoft has been trying to buy Yahoo! Inc., offering an unsolicited $44.6 billion bid. Google’s new acquisition only strengthens Microsoft’s need to merge and keep up with the competition.
Google’s proposal in 2007 prompted their rivals to team up with other Internet advertising companies—Microsoft bought aQuantive; Yahoo bought BlueLithium and the rest of Right Media; and AOL bought several smaller companies.
Google’s big business just got bigger, and the ramifications will be seen for years to come.
For more detailed information about the acquisition, visit Google’s Press Center.
By Danny Scuderi
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