geek

SAN FRANCISCO--The world of Web 2.0 has been criticized for being too much about the nifty ideas and not enough about raking in the dough. So there were likely more than a few sets of ears in the audience on Monday at TechCrunch50 that perked up at the start of the third batch of start-ups presenting: "New Advertising & Monetization Platforms."

The judges included such Silicon Valley marquee names as Google executive Marissa Mayer, industry veteran Marc Andreessen, Sequoia Capital's Roelof Botha, YCombinator founder and investor Paul Graham, and Zappos CEO Tony Hsieh, who sold his company to Amazon this summer.

The first company to present was 5to1, an advertising technology company that tackles the seemingly unsolvable problem of filling up remnant advertising inventory that can't be filled up by premium or direct sales--and which often ends up getting filled by ads that are cheap and irrelevant. 5to1's model lets site owners and publishers fill up their ad inventory as though it's a music playlist.

"What we're talking about here is total control by the publisher," founder and CEO James Heckman said. "No ad is going to show up that you don't like." (He described typical remnant ads as "the dancing fat bellies and the punch-the-monkey ads.")

But some judges were lukewarm on 5to1.

"I think it's a really slick interface but I would just be worried," Tony Hsieh said. "It just seems like a lot of work to have to go through and decide which ads (to run)...my question is how does it scale as a publisher grows."

The next start-up was another advertising platform, DataXu. The focus of DataXu's product is a data dashboard where publishers can buy ads through ad exchanges like Google's and Yahoo's with a highly refined algorithm that promises to show the right ads to the right people at the right time--for example, that news- and sports-related ads get more reception in the morning--and then tracks the success of an ad campaign with all sorts of analytics.

President and CEO Mike Baker called DataXu's offering "rocket science," adding that the underlying technology was actually used by NASA for a Mars mission plan. "What we're doing is actually using machine-learning techniques to take vast amounts of data with a small positive-action subset, which is very consistent with the Internet advertising problem: there are very few clicks and even fewer actions," Baker said, while declining to provide any real trade secrets. "We're applying on top of that the concept of control systems."

Up next was something much more consumer-focused, and that left the audience pretty impressed: SeatGeek, which forecasts concert and sports ticket prices, much like airline price applications like Microsoft's Bing Travel do. Co-founders Jack Groetzinger and Russ D'Souza explained that sometimes ticket prices can drop unexpectedly at the last minute--and sometimes they don't.

The secondary ticket market is around $15 billion, Groetzinger said.

SeatGeek pulls in ticket prices from secondary sellers such as StubHub or Craigslist and then forecasts where they might go based on an algorithm. "We have a system that every day crawls the Internet and pulls in thousands of actual ticket sales," Groetzinger explained. "We're also pulling in other external factors that we know to drive ticket prices." For a baseball game, for example, it can come down to the weather, the starting pitcher, and whether there are popular concerts in town. "Right now we're testing at about 75 to 80 percent accuracy, and that's going up every day as our system learns."

SeatGeek, which says it's already profitable… Read more

Well, you don't really need to totally disregard this episode, but that is what 10-12 means in CB radio talk. And the news is light. Although we do learn that the head of MI6's Speedo is not a state secret. But it SHOULD be!

MI6 boss in Facebook entry row http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/8134807.stm

Small towns and farms to get Net Neutrality http://news.cnet.com/8301-1035_3-10278484-94.html

Apple orders up a ton of … Read more

Twitter is great, but there usually comes a time when phenomena like it jump the proverbial shark. The fact that these T-shirts from ThinkGeek exist could mean Twitter is approaching that point, but I do kind of want one anyway.

The brown and blue shirt essentially turns you into the Twitter "anonymous" icon, or the default Twitter profile image for people who haven't uploaded their own pic (I use my CNET headshot, natch!).

The icon's pictured to the left, but for those who don't know it, it's o_O. Just like that. It's an … Read more

As if Chris Pirillo of Lockergnome fame wasn't all over the Web enough, he now wants to be in your kettle. Pirillo has partnered with Might Leaf Tea Company to invent Geekalicious, a signature tea that bears his likeness. It's a genmaicha-like tea, and like most genmaicha, it has rice puffs that combine with the other natural tea flavors to give it a refreshing character.

How do I know so much about tea? How does Pirillo? Some are saying tea is the new coffee. I used to work in a coffee shop that was popular among the tea-elite. … Read more

Going to a retail store for consumer electronics purchases can be both exciting and frustrating. After working at Best Buy for two years, I have a few opinions to share that you might want to consider before your next shopping trip.

1. We have no formal training in the field of consumer electronics. Upon transferring to the computer department from home theater, I expressed concern to the manager: "Will there be time for someone to train me on laptops/desktops? What do these specifications mean?" His reply was simple: "Just do your best. A good salesperson can just read the labels and compare specs." Ouch.

Salespeople are not necessarily experts in the products sold in their departments, even if they are expert salespeople. Though many express a strong interest in the products they sell, your time spent at a retail store fishing for information about a future TV purchase could be better spent online researching the products yourself (I heard CNET has pretty great reviews).

2. We make little off the big-ticket items, so we smother you with accessories. Remember the story "If You Give a Mouse a Cookie"? Well, if you tell a salesman you're going to buy a TV, he's going to want to sell you a DVD player to go with it. Once he sells you the DVD player, he's going to want to get you to buy an HDMI cable, too.

Managers at Best Buy (and possibly all retailers) tell employees that the store profits surprisingly little from video game consoles and computers. Cables, accessories, mice, and other components, however, have a huge profit margin-- stores can make about $120 from a $150 Monster HDMI cable. Angry yet? The point is, we're going to work really hard to convince you to purchase that big item, but once you've said "OK" you've opened Pandora's Box.

Here's my advice: Grab the big item, and run. Purchase all accessories online, including memory cards, cables, traveling cases, and so on. Amazon, Monoprice, and Newegg are all reputable discount Web sites. You'll find what you need at a much lower price.… Read more

Oh, man. They're just trying to kill me. Which, I suppose, is a bit ironic, as this is a replica of a medical device.

Seriously, though, check it out. For a measly $39.99, you can be the proud owner of a Star Trek Original Series Medical Tricorder. Exclusive to Entertainment Earth (the "they" who is trying to kill me with all this geeky stuff), this deluxe tricorder not only looks sweet, but even has sound clips of DeForest Kelley as Dr. McCoy, including my personal favorite, "I'm a doctor, not a bricklayer!" It … Read more

"The Geek Atlas: 128 Places Where Science and Technology Come Alive" by John Graham-Cumming could be the answer to the yearly Father's Day gift dilemma.(Although I know a lot of women who would love this book, too.)

Graham-Cumming's book is not of the tacky so-and-so-slept-here variety, but a compendium of locations of true worth in the history of science and tech breakthroughs.

The book, which is organized by country, includes latitudes and longitudes for GPS devices, and info like whether a historical site is free or available for a price. It's heavy on U.… Read more

These days I don't have much time for reading. More accurately, I don't make much time for reading as XBL and P90X take up any extra time I may have. This year, however, I vowed to read two books per month. Having only completed three so far, I'm a bit behind.

So imagine my disappointment surprise when Crave Senior Editor Leslie Katz barges steps lightly into my office and forces politely suggests that I write a blog on a couple of books she'd just received. Seriously, how could I say no to that?

So, yes. I didn't seek out the "The Manga Guide to Electricity" and "The Manga Guide to Statistics" myself, but I'm thankful they were forced down my throat came across my desk.

So far, I've only read through the first few pages of "Electricity" and the first chapter of "Statistics." Based on my limited exposure, I'm impressed by the $19.95 books' ability to inspire me to want to want learn more about two subjects I previously had little to no interest in. Kinda like having the hots for a Trekker in high school inspired me to learn Klingon. Or at least try.

The books are part of a series of manga guides by No Starch Press, a publisher of geek entertainment. Each book tells a story in the manga (Japanese comic book) style of a young girl being educated about the book's subject. If you've ever seen anime or manga you'll know what to expect here: huge eyes, gaping mouths, and of course, young girls in schoolgirl outfits. The art, however, never gets what I would call racy.

The real strength of the art is in its simple, clean lines that assist in the very pragmatic approach to teaching. … Read more

Over the past few years, I've been amazed at the attention the tech industry has received in the single realm that some thought it wasn't fit for--the mainstream.

The video game industry has become a multibillion dollar industry that rivals film. The Nintendo Wii is being played by people aged 1 to 100. The iPhone has transformed the cell phone industry. The Amazon Kindle, a device that some believed was a niche product, is selling faster than even Amazon expected. And everywhere you turn, someone who you thought had little knowledge about computers is discussing the differences between a Mac and PC.

But it's not just hardware. Sites like Facebook and MySpace are attracting millions of people to their pages each month. And celebrities--the leaders of the mainstream--have recently made Twitter, once a destination for the geek, almost a household name.

Most of those products were once reserved for the "Geek." But now, the mainstream has entered the Geekdom, and conquered it. It's getting harder to find a real geek.… Read more