Hackers Claim To Publish List Of 4.6M Snapchat Usernames And Numbers

A site called SnapchatDB.info claims that they’ve saved usernames and phone numbers for 4.6 million accounts and made the information available for download. SnapchatDB says that it got the information through a recently identified and patched Snapchat exploit and that it is making the data available in an effort to convince the messaging app to beef up its security. We’ve reached out to Snapchat and SnapchatDB for comment.

SnapchatDB said it “censored the last two digits of the phone numbers” in order to “minimize spam and abuse,” but that it still might release the unfiltered data, including millions of phone numbers.

The Next Web did a WHOIS lookup on SnapchatDB’s domain and found it was created just yesterday on December 31. The registrant’s name is protected, but its mailing address and contact number are both listed in Panama.

The site appears to have been created in response to recently identified flaws in Snapchat’s security. Last week, ZDNet published an article on how white-hat Gibson Security researchers had tried to alert Snapchat to ways that hackers would connect usernames to phone numbers for user in stalking, but were ignored. Gibson Security then published the exploit publicly on Christmas Eve.

The firm said that hackers could use two exploits to gain access to users’ personal data, including their real names, usernames and phone numbers, through Snapchat’s Android and iOS API. Snapchat did offer a public statement, but as TechCrunch’s Josh Constine wrote, it wasn’t very satisfactory because it did not offer details on how its countermeasures would work, such as rate limiting, bad IP blocking, or automated systems that scan suspicious activity. Snapchat said:

“Theoretically, if someone were able to upload a huge set of phone numbers, like every number in an area code, or every possible number in the U.S., they could create a database of the results and match usernames to phone numbers that way. Over the past year we’ve implemented various safeguards to make it more difficult to do.”

To be sure, SnapchatDB might be a prank meant to call attention to these issues. On Hacker News, several people have had trouble downloading the data files (I just got an error message for both of them, but that may be because of high traffic). Some commenters who did manage to get ahold of the files said they couldn’t find their own numbers in the lists and entire area codes appeared to be missing.

Either way, the Gibson Security report and SnapchatDB are both reminders that even in an ephemeral messaging service, it would be a mistake to be lulled into a sense of security about the information that you do have stored with the app. “People tend to use the same username around the web so you can use this information to find phone number information associated with Facebook and Twitter accounts, or simply to figure out the phone numbers of people you wish to get in touch with,” SnapchatDB stated on the site.

I, Spammer

As I approach the half-way mark of my crowdfunding project, I wanted to address the thing that makes me feel the worst about this whole process: the spam. As I intimated in in my last post, moving from passive content producer to active content salesperson is hard. As someone used to fire-and-forget posting, convincing others to buy something I’ve built is a hard thing to do. And the best way to do it, sadly, is through spam.

I pride myself on trying to be a nice guy. I post crowdfunding projects on TC all the time because I think they’re cool and I tend to use social media to either make dumb jokes or talk about projects I’ve seen. Now, however, I have to use social media as a sales tool. I contact the vast majority of my Facebook friends directly, have retweeted comments about the book, and even resorted to contacting my LinkedIn and Google+ contacts although I barely use those services. How did I get the most traction, however?

Email.

Take a look at the image above. Aside from a massive Facebook push around Christmas each of those spikes were driven by an email blast sent out on or around that date. Emails took a few days to appear as pledges but after each email I was able to push the total up by at least $1,000. Even given the horrible click rates, those are very compelling numbers.

Now, to be clear, I don’t think it was just the email. These lists consist of people who have signed up for my various projects and folks I’ve met in my travels. They know me and many have the ulterior motive of staying friendly with a TC editor. Would I have the same results of I were some dude selling penis pills online? I sincerely doubt it. However, I could see this working if the email list were in the millions and not in the thousands.

In short, direct contact works best. As one crowdfunder told me “When someone gets an email from you they can do one of two things: ignore it and feel bad/indifferent or act on it.” In my case I was lucky that so many acted on it.

Again, I’ve been consistently amazed how little Twitter and Facebook – aside from direct messages – have contributed to the process. While these tweets and twoots are great for getting the word out – I’m not ungrateful by any means – the actual conversion is limited. Broadcasting “Buy This!” is far less effective than saying “Hey, friend, buy this.”

Do I feel bad about this spam? Well, I’ve tried to keep it to a minimum and now that I’m well past my original $8,000 goal I feel bad for continuing to market. But, in the end, this is a project I love and feel deserves to do well. What would I change in the future? I’d create some sort of system so I don’t re-target backers who have already helped out – that’s something that really upset me and I’ve received two emails from friends about it. Essentially I haven’t found any system for truly segmenting out who I contact although I’m sure solutions exist (and feel free to let me know if you have one).

Still I’m amazed at the reach and power at good old email. It sucks, but it’s true: spam works and it works well. In the end, a nice message, carefully wrought, results in far less blowback than a wonky diet pill email, but the process is the same. Like it or not, direct email is a crowdfunder’s best friend.

This is part of a series on crowdfunding, The Mytro Project . For future posts I’m looking for more input from online analysts and other crowdfunding platforms so please email me at john@techcrunch.com.

How the Internet’s Founders Feel About The NSA Scandal

As the co-fathers of the Internet, Vinton Cerf and Robert Kahn tend to be pretty protective of their digital masterpiece. Both were early Defense Department engineers of the communications architecture that underlies the modern Internet, and both tend be outspoken about threats to a free and open information superhighway. For instance, when a United Nations body, the Internet Telecommunications Union, tried to assert more control over Internet governance, Cerf was immediately dispatched to Washington D.C. to preempt the power grab.

The National Security spying scandal has, likewise, been hailed as a global threat to privacy and the Internet itself. In a wide-ranging interview with the New York Times, Cerf and Kahn had a more reserved concern for government surveillance.

Here is Cerf on the NSA:

Q. Edward Snowden’s actions have raised a new storm of controversy about the role of the Internet. Is it a significant new challenge to an open and global Internet?

A. The answer is no, I don’t think so. There are some similar analogues in history. The French historically copied every telex or every telegram that you sent, and they shared it with businesses in order to remain competitive. And when that finally became apparent, it didn’t shut down the telegraph system.

The Snowden revelations will increase interest in end-to-end cryptography for encrypting information both in transit and at rest. For many of us, including me, who believe that is an important capacity to have, this little crisis may be the trigger that induces people to spend time and energy learning how to use it.

To give a bit of background, Cerf has suggested that privacy is a relatively new concept (and, historically, he’s correct). During the Civil War, Abraham Lincoln collected all telegrams, in a move that has been compared to the modern surveillance state. It appears that this type of mass surveillance, followed by new privacy laws, is typical in American history.

Khan seemed far more reserved in opining how the NSA affects privacy:

Q: Is there a solution to challenges of privacy and security?

In the 1990s when I was on the National Internet Infrastructure Advisory Committee, Al Gore showed up as vice president, and he made an impassioned pitch for Clipper chip [an early government surveillance system]. He said, “We need to be very aware of the needs of national security and law enforcement.” Even though the private sector was arguing for tight encryption, the federal government needed [to be able to conduct surveillance]. It never went, and it’s not anywhere today. I think it’s probably easier to solve the Israeli-Palestinian problem than it is to solve this.

A bit of background, in the 90′s, the government proposed a hardware backdoor to cell phones, known as the “Clipper Chip”. Hackers and activists successfully fought its implementation. Privacy is a perennial problem on the Internet–one that may never be solved.

Read the full interview here.

Sony Rumored To Be Considering A Windows Phone Handset In 2014

According to The Information, Sony could release a Windows Phone device, diversifying its mobile device lineup, bolstering Microsoft, and perhaps demonstrating a growing wish among hardware firms to hedge against an Android-dominated future.

Sony appears to be strongly interested in the project. The Verge wrote this morning that the company has continued the project despite Microsoft’s plan to purchase Nokia’s handset business. Its willingness to consider building a Windows Phone device despite the platform having a firm home-advantage tilt towards Microsoft’s own hardware is indicative.

For Sony the move would diversify its mobile line away from Android, a platform now generally associated with Samsung hardware. The irony to that is the simple fact that Nokia is the de facto Windows Phone OEM, so Sony would be entering into a second realm where it would be a second-place player.

The winner in Sony’s potential entrance is Microsoft, even if the release of a Vaio-branded Windows Phone handset could potentially slow sales growth of its — soon to be owned — Lumia phones. Microsoft would collect a per-unit fee, perhaps enjoy faster overall platform sales growth, and, of course, there has ever been an implied connection between the Windows Phone and Xbox product lines. We have yet to see hard evidence in my estimation that one leads to greater use of the other, but the shared Xbox platform experience must have some impact on consumer activity.

Therefore, Sony building a Windows Phone would have some positive impact on Xbox. And that would, presumably, come at the cost of Playstation momentum.

According to the latest public data, Nokia’s control of usage share in the Windows Phone hardware ecosystem is now more than 92 percent. That’s dangerous for Microsoft as betting your mobile platform on a single device stack could lead to platform risks (a poor hardware update cycle could slow growth for a year, etc.), meaning that Sony’s joining the Windows Phone cadre could better moor Windows Phone.

When Windows Phone launched, it did so with OEM partners as diverse as Dell. There has been a winnowing. If Microsoft can flip that trend, it will have gone a ways to proving that the progress it made in 2013 was no fluke.

Top Image Credit: Flickr

LG May Be Taking Another Stab At The Wearable Activity Tracking Formula

CES 2014 is just around the corner, along with enough new gadgetry to fill several lifetimes. Last year we saw a glut of activity trackers pop up in the wake of notable hits like the Fitbit and Jawbone’s UP, and now it looks like LG is taking yet another stab at the wearable fitness formula with its newly leaked (thanks to @evleaks) Lifeband Touch.

Wait, hold on, another stab? Let’s not forget that LG showed off an awfully familiar looking quantified self contraption at last year’s CES, a device that never found its way to store shelves. That earlier unit was capable of connecting to certain compatible LG smart TVs in addition to just tracking your movement, which has to be one of the savvier approaches to building a wearable I’ve seen yet.

After all, if you’re going to insist that people wear your wrist-worn doodad for days on end, what better way to go than to connect it to more things you’re likely to interact with often anyway. Sadly, there are precious few details to go on at this point so the Lifeband is

If we’re being honest, the Lifeband’s existence doesn’t come as much of a surprise — LG has already confirmed that it’s continuing to work on wearable devices, and some recent rumors pointed to a health-conscious angle. The real question, though, is whether or not these things will ever actually see the light of day.

The quantified self market is still a relatively young one, but it’s already got its fair share of big-name incumbents that seem to get the lion’s share of attention from the press and consumers alike. Then again, the Galaxy Gear seemed like one of those kooky vaporware projects for a while before Samsung (for better or worse) decided to push it out the door — maybe LG will throw caution to the wind and release this thing after all.

Netflix CEO Reed Hastings’ Salary To Get 50% Pay Bump To $3m In 2014

Remember Qwikster? Wall Street doesn’t.

The AP is reporting this morning that Netflix CEO will get a healthy pay raise in 2014. According to a regulatory filing, Reed Hastings’s annual salary jumps to $3 million, up from the $2 million he earned this year. His annual stock option allowance also improves to $3 million from the current level of $1 million.

It’s hard to argue against the pay increase. Netflix had a great 2013. The stock price is up 296% on the year. It’s trading around an all time high of $365. The stock was the top performer in the S&P 500 and Nasdaq 100 this year.

The company isn’t raking in the profits, though. In its most recent quarterly report, Netflix only made $32 million. But Wall Street doesn’t seem to mind and so the company should stay the course raking in the subscribers and producing award-winning original content. Netflix just needs to remember to listen to their subscribers.

Samsung Got A Bigger Tablet Boost For Christmas Than Apple, According To Onswipe

Touchscreen publishing company Onswipe has good news for Samsung. As Onswipe’s Chief Marketing Officer Jason Baptiste put it in an email, “Samsung clearly won Christmas when it comes to tablets.”

Specifically, the company looked at visitors to Onswipe-optimized sites for the period of Dec. 26 to Dec. 29 in comparison to Dec. 19-22, as a way to measure the growth that different tablet platforms saw over Christmas. The results? Samsung’s Galaxy tablets grew 50.4 percent, Nexus 6 tablets grew 33.8 percent, iPads grew 20.4 percent, and Kindle Fires grew 19.5 percent.

Now, the fact that Onswipe focused on percentage growth is an important caveat here. After all, Samsung was presumably starting from (much) less, so it didn’t need to sell as many tablets to see significant growth.

It’s also interesting to see the line about Samsung’s victory coming from Baptiste, who recently wrote a blog post telling people to “stop believing the fairy tales about the iPad’s demise.” I asked him if the data made him reconsider the post, and he said no: “Though they enjoyed more growth post Holidays, Samsung is still very tiny compared to the iPad and the same goes for the rest of Android. What will be interesting is seeing whether people still use Android tablets 90 days out from now.”

Baptiste also provided some numbers about usage. He said the average session time from Samsung users was 3 minutes and 9 seconds after Christmas, down from 3:32 before. On iPad, the average session was 4:03, compared to 4:12 before. And the Kindle Fire had the longest session time on average, 4:51.

As for how many people this data represents, Baptiste said Onswipe (which recently upgraded its platform) reaches 31 million unique visitors each month on the mobile web.

MaternityCompare Helps Expectant Parents Find Healthcare Providers

Choosing an obstetrician can be extremely stressful for expectant parents. Additive Analytics, a new startup, hopes to help patients find trustworthy providers with MaternityCompare, its first product. The site pulls data that is publicly available from the U.S. government and turns it into an easy-to-understand reference tool. MaternityCompare shows what percentage of newborns at different hospitals throughout the U.S. had deliveries that were scheduled one to three weeks early for no medical reason, which can negatively affect the baby’s health.

Founder Laura Hamilton’s goal is to help mothers-to-be become smarter health care consumers while at the same time giving hospitals an incentive to improve their care.

“Today you can go on the internet and compare restaurants or compare sports teams or compare colleges, and there are dozens of detailed tools available to tell you which one is the best,” she told me in an email. “But if you’re 38 weeks pregnant and you’re choosing a hospital for the delivery, you don’t have the same tools. To me that is a real problem.”

According to information from the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid (the same organizations Hamilton sourced MaternityCompare’s data from), elective early deliveries currently make up 10% to 15% of all births in the U.S., even though groups like the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists (ACOG) and the March of Dimes encourage full-term pregnancies, or those that reach 39 weeks gestation, whenever possible.

MaternityCompare’s stats count elective early births that were scheduled one to three weeks ahead of the baby’s due date (it excludes early births that were medically necessary or occurred because of natural reasons). Her site’s data comes from Medicare and currently covers 1Q 2013. For each hospital listed, the sample size ranges from 11 to 1,073 deliveries and the dataset covers 51,314 births across 1,597 hospitals in total. Hamilton did not include hospitals with fewer than 11 deliveries in that period.

“My hope is that by providing transparency into different hospitals’ early elective delivery rates, I can give expectant mothers the data they need to find the best hospital for them. In addition, I hope that drawing attention to this metric will encourage hospitals with excessive early deliveries to take steps to improve,” Hamilton explains.

There are already several sites that help patients compare the performance of doctors in their area. Hamilton says ZocDoc, which is backed by Peter Thiel, Marc Benioff, Khosla Ventures and Jeff Bezos, as a potential competitor, but notes that her startup is different because ZocDoc focuses on patient reviews and Additive Analytics uses quantitative metrics. Hamilton encourages patients to use both tools when looking for a provider. Other competitors include the Leapfrog Group, which provides hospital comparison tools based on data from the voluntary Leapfrog Hospital Survey, and Consumer Reports’ hospital ratings.

There is still a dearth of sites with metrics aimed at expectant parents, however, which is why Hamilton decided to launch MaternityCompare as Additive Analytics’ first product.

“If a hospital has a very high rate of early elective deliveries, it means they are not following guidelines set out by the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists,” says Hamilton. “To me that’s a bit of a red flag.”

She adds that she hopes MaternityCompare will help pregnant women become better advocates for their health.

“If her obstetrician suggests scheduling an early elective delivery, she can point to this tool (and to recommendations by the March of Dimes) and insist on a delivery date after 39 weeks,” she says. “I do want to stress, however, that if there is a medical reason for an early delivery, you should absolutely follow your doctor’s recommendations.”

Hospitals can also benefit from tools like MaternityCompare by using them to set performance benchmarks or identify areas where they need to improve policies or procedures. Doing so can help them increase their reimbursements, which are tied to quality measures under the Affordable Care Act, Hamilton points out.

Additive Analytics is currently being bootstrapped by Hamilton, who has a mathematics degree from the University of Chicago. She launched Canadian and Australian operations for Enova International while working as a product manager and was head of analytics at U.S.-Russia e-commerce company BayRu, where she developed a proprietary analytics engine to compare the performance of different benchmarks.

Eventually, Hamilton plans to add more “online hospital comparison tools to include dozens of quality metrics.” Like MaternityCompare, Hamilton hopes that patients will be able to use Additive Analytics’ products to find the best provider for their medical needs, while at the same time helping doctors and hospital administrators do a better job.

Additive Analytics’ hospital comparison tools will remain free, but it will earn revenue by offering paid custom analytics for hospitals. The startup is working on software that will take data from hospital electronic medical records (EMR) and help them identify areas where they can improve their performance.

“Today, companies spend a huge amount of time and money running advanced machine learning algorithms on their data to optimize their marketing spend, improve website conversions, and recommend similar products to their customers,” Hamilton says. “Which is fine—that’s what they should be doing. We think that the same cutting-edge machine learning, the same analytical horsepower, should be applied to the healthcare sector. Here lives are at stake. And lives are more important than dollars.”

Image by Brad Brundage on Flickr

These Apps Will Help You Make 2014 Less Filthy

This year, several notable apps that connect users with house cleaners have launched or gained traction. These include Homejoy, Exec and laundry service Prim. There are a lot of benefits to hiring a professional cleaning service but, unfortunately, I live outside the area covered by these apps. Letting people I don’t know into my apartment also makes me feel exposed. I just don’t like having strangers judge my lovingly curated collections of masking tape, dolls, and whiskers shed by my cats over the years. But I do enjoy living in an (occasionally) neat apartment and my New Years resolution is to develop chore routines that will make housekeeping easy and stress-free by using these iOS apps.

Unfuck Your Habitat

My favorite chore app is called Unfuck Your Habitat, though it is listed as Unfilth Your Habitat on the App Store to get around Apple’s ban on profanities in app names. I think Unfuck Your Habitat is totally worth its $1.99 price because curse words make me giggle. Also, many housekeeping apps and blogs seemed tailored for people who are already pretty organized. Unfuck Your Habitat is aimed at the rest of us.

Its nifty features include a “To-Unfuck List,” or your personal list of chores, unfucking challenges for different rooms, a built-it in timer that balances 20-minute unfucking sprees with 10 minute breaks, and Facebook integration so you can share your unfucking achievements with your friends.

My favorite part of the app, however, is the Random Unfucking Motivation button, which is like a verbally abusive fortune cookie that says things like “NICE ASS. NOW GET OFF IT.” and “MY NANA WOULD BE SO ASHAMED OF YOU.”

The Unfuck Your Habitat app is an offshoot of a popular blog of the same name, with inspirational before-and-after photos of real homes, not domiciles that look like they were ripped out of Domino magazine.

HomeRoutines

If you are looking for an app with less swearing, try HomeRoutines, which is relatively pricey at $4.99 but provides a very thorough list of cleaning tasks for every part of your residence. Another helpful feature is My.HomeRoutines, which gives you the option of creating an account to back up your data and edit it on HomeRoutine’s site. HomeRoutines also syncs across different devices, which means you can share your account with family members and roommates.

The app lets you create to-do lists and then rotate tasks by day or week, so you develop a routine that makes keeping your house neat relatively mindless. HomeRoutines splits your home into five zones and gives you a list of tasks for each area. This is handy as a reminder for small tasks that often get overlooked, like dusting baseboards.

BrightNest

If you already have a chore routine in place, but want to figure out better and more efficient ways to organize your home, then try BrightNest. The free app builds a customized list of projects for you based on whether or not you have pets or kids, the appliances or spaces you have to take care of (I appreciate this because I rent an apartment and don’t have to deal with stuff like basements, swimming pools or water boilers), and what your goals are. For example, do you want to make environmentally-friendly alternatives to commercial cleaning solutions, find craft projects or learn some money-saving tips?

BrightNest can also give you home maintenance advice based on your region’s climates, but only if you enter a zip code, so this feature doesn’t work if you don’t live in the U.S. or prefer not to divulge the area where you live. Unlike Unfuck Your Habitat and HomeRoutines, BrightNet also requires that you sign up for an account using your email or Facebook login.

If you are comfortable creating an account, BrightNest is the most attractive of all the housekeeping/chore apps I’ve tried so far. Weekly projects are illustrated with photographs and an estimate of how much time they will take. Some of them are pretty obvious (I really don’t need yet another closet organizing guide), but there are many fun and surprising tips, like using leftover tea or tea leaves as a cleaning agent. BrightNest doesn’t give you a list of routines, but you can create your own schedule with its projects and opt for reminder emails.

Chorma

Do you live with sloppy roommates that you are planning to strangle? Instead of killing them, try Chorma. It’s an easy app that lets you create lists of repeating chores and then assign them to your “housemembers,” who can check-in with their progress. To keep people from slacking off, you can create individual or group rewards that are redeemable once all tasks are created, but this feature is only available if you subscribe to Chroma Pro for $1.99 a month or $19.99 a year per household.

Image by Hey Paul Studios on Flickr

Paul Graham Responds To Critics, Says Y Combinator Is Planning An Event For Female Founders

Y Combinator co-founder Paul Graham just published a blog post about what he did and didn’t say during a widely-discussed interview with The Information (if you don’t have a subscription, you can read the relevant quotes in Valleywag). He also makes an announcement, of sorts, that the incubator is planning an event for female founders later this year.

As many of you’ve probably read, Graham attracted lots of controversy for his remarks about getting women interesting programming and hacking. (TechCrunch’s Colleen Taylor weighed in here.) However, Graham claimed in a tweet, and reiterated in the post, that his meaning had been distorted.

Specifically,while he was quoted as saying, “We can’t make women look at the world through hacker eyes and start Facebook because they haven’t been hacking for the past 10 years,” Graham said there was a crucial word that had been edited out, and it should have read: “We can’t make these women look at the world through hacker eyes …” In other words, he said he wasn’t talking about all women, but rather the ones who “who aren’t programmers.”

To be honest, the language in the new post can still be a bit confusing to parse (for example: “I didn’t say women haven’t been programming for 10 years. I said women who aren’t programmers haven’t been programming for 10 years.”), but Graham’s position (whether or not you agree with it) becomes a little clearer you see the question he was answering, which was about whether YC should be more “proactive” about about recruiting women by “lowering standards or something like that” (I’m not sure that’s the most helpful way to frame the issue, but moving on …)

If I’m reading Graham correctly, his basic argument is that Y Combinator is happy to admit female “hackers,” but he’s resistant to the idea that it should accept women who aren’t hackers and “then somehow make up the difference ourselves during YC.”

At the end of the post, he also that YC has reached “a quorum of female founders who are doing well,” so it’s been planning to hold a Startup School-style event focused on female founders. (Startup School is a popular event with big-name speakers like Jack Dorsey talking about their experiences and offering advice for aspiring entrepreneurs.) It sounds like this new event is in the very early stages of planning, but Graham said he felt obligated to announce it now because otherwise, it might seem “that we’re only doing it for PR reasons.”

I asked YC co-founder Jessica Livingston for more details about the event, and she said she doesn’t have a firm date yet, nor has she invited any speakers:

The rough plan is to have female YC founders give quick talks (a la Startup School) sharing their stories, giving advice and talking about what they’d wish they’d known when they were getting started. I imagine it will be focused mostly on practical startup advice (and inspirational stories) for women who are interested in starting a startup or have already started one.

By the way, if you’re wondering about which female founders are part the aforementioned “quorum,” Graham’s post cites Adora Cheung of Homejoy, Elizabeth Iorns of Science Exchange, Kathryn Minshew of the Muse, Elli Sharef of HireArt, and Vanessa Torrivilla of Goldbely. (He also mentions an “Ann”, but when I asked who that was, Livingston said she’s from a startup that has yet to be announced as part of YC.)

Anyway, you should probably just read Graham’s post for yourself.

Netflix Says It’s Testing New $6.99 Single Screen Streaming Plan, But It May Never Roll Out To Everyone

Netflix has informed TechCrunch that it is indeed testing a $6.99 single-stream plan to new users as part of a test. The option appears to some new users after selecting the streaming option as a free trial.

Unfortunately for those of you excited for a dollar off discount on a standard definition stream, a Netflix spokesperson also told us that not all users may see the option and that it may never offer it generally.

The plan was first noted by Adweek this morning and we confirmed the plan as an option when we began signing up for the $7.99 streaming-only plan with a 30-day trial.

Offering a standard-def stream to one device might as well be called ‘the smartphone plan’, as that’s what it seems most suited to. Though many smartphone screens are above HD resolution, the smaller real-estate means that it can be difficult to discern a standard-def stream from a high-definition one.

Netflix analyzes a junk ton of data about user viewing habits including locations, devices and times of day that people view stuff. If that information was telling them that people view Netflix a lot on smartphones while traveling then a single stream in SD rather than HD might actually make a lot of sense for a certain subset of users. Of course, a buck off is a nice ‘sale price’ and if people get utility out of it they might feel inclined to expand the plan further down the road.

Image Credit: Taro the Shiba Inu/Flickr CC

The FitBit App Now Turns The iPhone 5s Into A FitBit

Fitbit has just released a major update to its iOS app for iPhone 5s, allowing the smartphone itself to track steps, distance and burned calories.

These are basic features, and just a fraction of the metrics provided by one of Fitbit’s own hardware devices, such as the Fitbit handheld or the Fitbit Flex wristband. With a Fitbit Force, for example, you can track all the basic information as well as flights of stairs climbed and sleep. Plus, it acts as a watch feeding you the information on a digital screen.

Still, the accompanying app has always been an integral part of the Fitbit hardware experience, as it offers a dashboard for every metric as well as a log tracking nutritional intake.

In other words, the app gives a robust outlook of overall health over time, which has made Fitbit a big contender in the space against Nike and others.

With the launch of the M7 motion coprocessor in the iPhone 5s, Fitbit has decided to offer “basic” tracking from the phone itself, likely with the intention to entice an upgrade.

The update comes just in time for New Years, as the pudgy masses resolve to lose the holiday weight.

Keen On… The 2013 Debacle: Why Gavin Newsom Says The Government Is On A Collision Course With The Future

It may be the holiday season, but Gavin Newsom, California’s tech savvy Lieutenant Governor, is as mad as hell. And he’s not going to take it any more. The fury of California’s second most powerful state politician is, ironically, directed at government itself. After what Newsom called “the debacle” of Obama’s Healthcare.gov roll-out, he says that we now know how fundamentally useless government is when it comes to what he calls the “procurement” of technology.

That’s the really big deal about 2013, Newsom told me when I interviewed him at one my FutureCast salons at the AT&T Foundry in Palo Alto. In what he identifies as a “Code Red” alert, the incredible incompetence of government has finally been exposed to everyone. It’s both a federal and state problem, Newsom insists, reeling off five outrageous screw-ups of Californian government procurement of technology which has cost the state billions of dollars.

“This is serious,” the Lieutenant Governor insists. “We need to wake up to this.”

So what is to be done in 2014? According to Newsom, the “good news” is that “government is on a collision course with the future.” And it’s government that going to get “run-over” by digital natives. So perhaps Newsom’s advice is to have lots of babies in 2014. After all, that may be the best way to make sure that the government does, in fact, eventually collide with the future.

Archos To Launch A Line Of “Pebble-Like” Smartwatches For iOS And Android At CES

Archos just dropped a huge smattering of CES news in advance of the huge annual tech show, which kicks off next week in Las Vegas. Among the various announcements, tucked away near the bottom, is the revelation that it will be introducing a “selection of smartwatches” for 2014, which will start at under £50 (roughtly $82 U.S.).

Archos doesn’t go into much detail about its smartwatches, saying only that they’ll have a “pebble-like” design and will work with both Android and iOS smartphones and tablets. The “pebble-like” seems like a blatant shot across the bow of Pebble, the Kickstarter-backed hardware startup that began building smartwatches under that name this past year, though it’s probably meant on the surface to indicate the things will look somewhat like rocks.

The Pebble is arguably the current leader in the smartwatch space, having sold somewhere around 300,000 units to date according to the latest official figures released by the company. Archos, the French company behind a line of moderately successful media players, and subsequently many Android-based tablets and gaming gadgets of questionable quality, looks to be trying to exploit the opportunity exposed by newcomer Pebble with cheaper devices in a range of options to suit the needs of various consumers.

Archos is targeting “simplicity and function” with its smartwatch designs, the company says, which could actually seem to be at cross-purposes. Maybe they’ll have some feature heavy designs, more like the Samsung Galaxy Gear, and some that are essentially just streamlined data delivery devices, more like the Pebble itself. Either way, I highly doubt Archos will find a red-hot seller in any smartwatch design – but that doesn’t mean it can’t meddle with the grand plans of Pebble and other startups.

Pebble is currently running a lot of sales and promotions, and giving away a good number of devices. This means that either A) it’s finding interest is dropping off after initial demand has been satisfied; or B) it’s gearing up to release second-generation hardware. Regardless, I still think we’ve yet to see any proof that watch-based computing is something that’s feasible as a mainstream device, and entrants from Archos are unlikely to provide said evidence.

U.S. Senator Issues Letter To Top 5 Wireless Carriers Urging Kill Switch Adoption

U.S. Senator Amy Klobuchar of Minnesota has today taken up the battle cry of numerous legislators before her, calling for wireless carriers to enable new anti-theft technology on handsets.

According to the Senator, one-third of robberies involve cell phone theft, resulting in an estimated $30 billion in lost or stolen phones.

That said, Klobuchar has written a letter to the heads of the major wireless carriers, including Verizon, AT&T, Sprint, T-Mobile and U.S. Cellular.

In the letter, she requests an explanations as to why “the most advanced security features” haven’t been provided to consumers.

This comes on the heels of Apple’s iOS 7 launch, which included an Activation Lock feature inside Find My iPhone. This essentially worked as a kill switch, requiring the owners passcode to reactive an account, wipe the device, turn off Find My iPhone, or sign out of iCloud.

The NYT reported last month that Samsung was trying to bring a similar technology to handsets but that it was rejected by carriers.

After all, the carriers make a pretty penny from insurance policies protecting against lost or stolen phones, which has become a huge issue in major cities. Cops have even lovingly given iPhone theft a name: Apple picking.

Meanwhile, carriers have made light of phone theft with stupid commercials. All this while people get hurt.

Here's the full text of Senator Amy Klobuchar's letter:

Dear Messrs. McAdam, Stephenson, Hesse, Legere, and Meyers:

I am writing to express my concern regarding the increase in crimes involving the theft of mobile devices across the country. As a member of the Senate Commerce Committee and the Senate Judiciary Committee, I understand that consumers are utilizing more mobile technology and this is spurring growth in our economy. Unfortunately, more and more consumers are also at risk of being targeted by criminals looking to steal cell phones and other devices for illegal resale. I appreciate the work the industry has done in creating a database to keep stolen phones from being reactivated, but more action is needed.

According to the Federal Communications Commission, almost one-in-three robberies involve phone theft and the cost to consumers of lost or stolen phones is more than $30 billion each year. I’ve heard from local law enforcement officials about the continued call for the wireless industry to engage with them further and to adopt “kill switch” technologies on devices. Additionally, state Attorneys General have suggested that wireless carriers have not taken adequate steps to fight cell phone theft.

As Chairman of the Judiciary Subcommittee on Antitrust, Competition Policy and Consumer Rights, I expect wireless carriers to compete against one another to ensure consumers are offered the most advanced security features and offerings. Your five companies are the nation’s leading wireless carriers, collectively serving more than 90 percent of the nation’s wireless subscribers. With that market share comes an obligation to do all you can to utilize technologies available to protect consumers.

While I understand your companies are continuing to work with law enforcement on the stolen cell phone database, it is clear that consumers want and deserve a comprehensive strategy to prevent mobile device thefts. That is why I respectfully request that each of your companies provides my Judiciary Subcommittee detailed information on the following issues by January 9, 2014:

· Information explaining whether you have had offers by handset manufacturers to install “kill switch” technology, and, if so, why your company has or has not adopted such technology.

· Information about whether you have considered including this solution on handsets made by manufacturers now competing with Apple’s activation lock technology that operates as a “kill switch” on iPhones. If not, please describe your reasoning behind the decision made by your company.

· How your company will include such technology options at no cost to consumers in the future and how your phone security offerings differ from your competitors.

Identifying ways to curb mobile device theft is a top priority of mine and I will continue to advocate for the American wireless consumer. I also believe additional action to protect wireless consumers is necessary and that’s why I am asking you for this information. The status quo is not acceptable.

Sincerely,

Amy Klobuchar

Flurry Finds Christmas App Download Spike Continues, But Lessens As People Get Used To Smartphones

Mobile analytics and ad platform Flurry has released its annual report on the state of app downloads over Christmas for 2013, and as is usually the case, consumers clearly went crazy for apps this year. Unwrapping a new iPad will inevitably prompt a spike in software downloads, but Flurry is finding that spike is starting to diminish year to year.

App downloads broke records yet again for 2013, with an 11 percent improvement over total Christmas Day downloads in 2012. But that’s a drop in the bucket compared to past year-over-year increases. Between 2011 and 2012, for instance, download growth on Christmas exploded by 90 percent, while it increased 97 percent during the entire month of December year-over-year. This year, as mentioned, growth was only 11 percent between 2013 and 2012 for the holiday itself, and 25 percent for the month of December.

Flurry interprets this slow down in growth as a sign that the smartphone and tablet markets in developed markets might be reaching a maturation point – they avoid calling it a ‘saturation’ point, but it’s undeniable that that’s a fear many market watchers have had regarding the potential growth ceiling on device sales from leading smartphone and tablet makers in markets where those devices have been selling and selling well for nearly a decade now.

Christmas Day downloads were up 91 percent vs. an average day earlier in the month, Flurry found, so there’s a sizeable bump on the day of gift-giving itself. Still, even that is down vs. previous years. In both 2012 and 2011 there was a more than twofold increase in the number of downloads of apps taking place on Christmas Day vs. other days in the first three weeks of December.

This mild plateauing of downloads isn’t necessarily a sign that smartphone growth is slowing, however. It’s possible that there’s simply less discrepancy between Christmas Day and the rest of the year because people are more used to the concept of app stores, and more likely to buy mobile software throughout the year than on a single day when surrounded by more tech savvy relatives who can guide them through the process. New device activations also still spike on Christmas, however, but it’s a less dramatic increase than in previous years.

It’s still likely worth the effort on the developer side to discount apps and offer sales that last through the holiday period, but the difference in volume between that period and the rest of the year might not justify such dramatic dips in software price anymore. It’ll be interesting to see if this continues, or if there’s a levelling off point where the Christmas app download spike stops decreasing year-over-year.

Amazon’s Rough Christmas

Despite the fact that Amazon had one of its best Cyber Mondays in reported history, it doesn’t mean that the holiday shopping season went off without a hitch.

The company had some trouble getting all of its orders delivered on time for Christmas, after promising customers the same speedy delivery as usual. Amazon Prime members, in particular, are promised two-day shipping on Prime-eligible products, whether it’s Christmastime or not.

Unfortunately, last-minute shopping and overloads at UPS left Amazon customers waiting by the window on Christmas morning.

To make up for it, Amazon announced last week that they would offer $20 gift cards to customers who didn’t receive their presents on time. UPS is also issuing refunds.

Long story short, Amazon certainly doesn’t want to deal with this (or lose money issuing refunds) again.

It’s been mere weeks since Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos introduced the idea of delivery drones, which would offer half-hour delivery to Prime customers. We’ll clearly have to wait a while for this to be fully implemented, but perhaps the drone experts at Amazon are hearing the crack of the whip after this debacle.

For now, Amazon relies on UPS and USPS to deliver packages purchased through the service, which proved difficult this holiday season.

According to the WSJ, UPS originally expected to ship around 7.75 million packages on Monday, the 23rd. Though it’s unclear how many packages actually went through UPS systems that day, the company did admit that “the volume of air packages in its system had exceeded its capacity.”

Amazon is clearly on the road to taking shipping into its own hands. Setting aside delivery drones, the company has implemented Sunday delivery in big cities like New York and San Francisco, thanks to the U.S. government, with rollouts expected in Dallas, Houston, New Orleans and Phoenix.

Plus, Amazon already has its own mini-fleet of delivery trucks and contractors for its AmazonFresh service, which delivers fresh produce and other foods on a same-day or next-day basis in Seattle, San Francisco, and Los Angeles.

It’s simply a matter of time before Amazon controls delivery entirely, perhaps even in time to avoid this situation next Christmas. Maybe that’s Bezos’ New Years Resolution?

Fly Or Die: Microsoft Xbox One

Microsoft’s Xbox One is off to a great start, launching with cable TV control, bumped up graphics, and an all-new Kinect.

But is upgrading worth it?

Our own Greg Kumparak has said in his review that it’s a tough upgrade from the Xbox 360, after customers have grown accustomed to taking such huge technological leaps during earlier generational transitions.

And John Biggs isn’t thrilled with the early titles available at launch.

Still, it’s hard not to be excited about the live TV control, and the speed with which you can switch between game play and television. If only the voice-control feature was a bit more reliable.

In the end, we recommend waiting a year or so for the $499 price to come down a bit, but eventually most gamers will want to make the transition.

Plenty already have.

Mophie’s Powerstation XL Packs In The Power For Extended Time Away From Outlets

Our devices have a neverending hunger for power – it’s their single greatest failing, in a time when they can do incredible things but still only last around a day of solid use in the best case scenario. But Mophie has made a name for itself providing extra juice for your devices, and now they’ve got a new Powerstation XL model that packs a crazy 12,000 mAh, which can charge some smartphones up to eight times over.

Pros:

• Battery lasts and lasts


• Intelligent amperage for less power wastage


• Two ports for charging

Cons:

• Price


• A bit on the bulky side

Mophie’s Powerstation XL isn’t reinventing the wheel, it’s just making the wheel a lot bigger. Even design-wise, it resembles previous Mophie power pack devices, with a rubberized black top and bottom ‘sandwiching’ a silver wraparound rim. A button on the side will light up an LED indicator to tell you how much juice is remaining (to the nearest quarter) and two USB 2.0 ports on the top can charge up two devices simultaneously, while a micro USB input is used to fill it back up once it’s empty.

The sandwich look is simple, good and a nice fit with Apple products, with which I’m generally using the Mophie Powerstation XL. Plus, the whole thing feels terrifically well-built, and you can imagine that if you pop the lid, it’ll be tightly packed edge to edge with battery cell units. Mophie’s backup batteries feel like they can survive a fall, which is more than you can say for a lot of the lower-priced models it competes with.

And the Mophie Powerstation XL also works as advertised. I used the partial charge it came with to fully reenergize a Nexus 5, HTC One and Nvidia Shield before it exhausted itself, and subsequent charges have managed to serve up multiple charges to my iPhone 5 while also topping up an iPad Air on the run. Plus, in terms of charge retention, you can easily have the XL in a bag for days without it losing a single dot of its energy meter to dissipation.

Mophie does good retention, and good overall life of the bank itself, which is why they can get away with asking for $130 for a backup battery and someone like IOgear charges a lot less. The XL is brand new, so I haven’t had the opportunity to test its longevity yet, but the Powerstation Pro I’ve had now for a couple of years still seems not to be noticeably diminished vs. when I first bought it.

The bottom line is that if you need serious backup juice in a relatively small package that’s bound to be reliable, Mophie’s latest delivers. It’d be great is someone made a smartphone that eliminated the need for such a thing, but until then, at least there’s the Powerstation XL.

New Leaks Detail How The NSA’s ‘TAO’ And ‘ANT’ Units Spy On Devices, Global Networks

New leaks emerged today in Germany’s Der Spiegel newspaper about the scope of electronic surveillance conducted by the United States’ National Security Agency.

In short, it looks like the agency has even more access to personal data than we already thought.

Der Spiegel says it has obtained documents detailing the depth and breadth of access that the Tailored Access Operations (TAO) unit, an elite group within the NSA that’s reportedly tasked with gaining access to foreign computer systems in the name of protecting national security, now has when obtaining data.

The paper wrote:

“According to internal NSA documents viewed by Spiegel, these on-call digital plumbers are involved in many sensitive operations conducted by American intelligence agencies… The documents reveal just how diversified the tools at TAO’s disposal have become — and also how it exploits the technical weaknesses of the IT industry, from Microsoft to Cisco and Huawei, to carry out its discreet and efficient attacks.”

Also according to Spiegel, the NSA has created a division called ‘ANT’ which has compiled information about specific hacking methods for everything from high-end networking devices to consumer-grade electronics:

“A document viewed by Spiegel resembling a product catalog reveals that an NSA division called ANT has burrowed its way into nearly all the security architecture made by the major players in the industry — including American global market leader Cisco and its Chinese competitor Huawei, but also producers of mass-market goods, such as US computer-maker Dell.

These NSA agents, who specialize in secret back doors, are able to keep an eye on all levels of our digital lives — from computing centers to individual computers, from laptops to mobile phones. For nearly every lock, ANT seems to have a key in its toolbox. And no matter what walls companies erect, the NSA’s specialists seem already to have gotten past them.

This, at least, is the impression gained from flipping through the 50-page document. The list reads like a mail-order catalog, one from which other NSA employees can order technologies from the ANT division for tapping their targets’ data. The catalog even lists the prices for these electronic break-in tools, with costs ranging from free to $250,000.”

You can read the entire coverage at Spiegel here and here.

Reason #152 Virtual Reality Is Awesome: Personal Movie Theaters Without The Awful Other People

I love going to the movie theater. Seriously, I love it.

I just hate all the other people that go.

Quite early on, my parents taught me that there was but one rule for going to the theater: silence is golden. If the theater was a moviegoer’s church, talking or otherwise ruining the experience for others was sin. If I talked, we’d leave. Simple as that.

Sometime in the past few years, though, it’s like people have forgotten how to do the movie theater.

I’ve tried going at different times. I’ve tried going to different theaters. No matter what I do, no matter where I go, the shitty moviegoers follow. They talk. They crack jokes that no one but their friends laugh at. They muck with their smart phones, blinding everyone in the rows behind them so they can blast out a Facebook update about being at the movies that literally no one will care about.

I went to probably 10 movies this year; 9 out of 10 had at least one person who happily paid their $12 just to go in and crap on the movie for everyone else. I’ve given up.

But this… this gives me hope. Hope for a next-best-thing. And man does it make me want an HD Oculus Rift like right now.

VR Cinema 3D is a movie theater… simulator. It’s a movie theater without the lines, the massively inflated concession prices, or the crappy people. It’s a full-sized movie theater in the comfort of your own home, beamed straight to your eyeballs.

You strap on the Rift, load up your favorite movie (by naming it “movie.avi”, regardless of what sort of video file it actually is. Hurray, beta software!), pick any seat in the house, and kick back. The “in-theater” lights dim, and the projector starts rolling — complete with a bit of ambient light reflecting off the screen and back into the room.

Don’t like your seat? Walk to another, or bring up the UI to instantly warp across the room.

It may seem silly, at first glance. Why simulate the environment? Why not just play the video directly onto the Rift’s display?

Once you try it, though, it all makes sense. The familiar environment helps it all feel very, very real, allowing you to quickly lose yourself in the movie. Meanwhile, simulating the screen at a realistic distance gives it all a massive sense of scale.

Just imagine this with a bit of networking magic added in. You and your friends could catch the latest flicks while sitting side-by-side, even when you’re thousands of miles apart. And if one of them starts talking a bit too much? Boop! Muted.

Of all the Oculus Rift demos I’ve tried, this one might actually be my favorite. They hooked me with the promise of great, immersive games; they sold me forever with the promise of private theaters.

If you have a Rift, you can find the early (and occasionally buggy) build of VR Cinema here. Sorry, Mac users – it’s Windows only, for now.

Still not getting it? Here’s a slightly longer video of the app in use by Youtuber/Rifter emart:

(If you’re not familiar with the Rift: the reason that it shows two of them same thing is that one image is in front of each eye. When you’ve got the Rift on, your brain combines into one seamless image)