Meet and Confer: July 2010

Saturday, July 31, 2010

How to select your company’s lawyer

Selecting legal counsel for your new venture is one of the first decisions you’ll have to make as a startup entrepreneur – and it’s one you shouldn’t take lightly. While corporate counsel typically doesn’t have a lot of complex work early on, there’s a good chance you will be with that person or firm throughout the life cycle of your company.

As your company matures, the legal issues you’ll be asking your lawyer to tackle will become more demanding. You’ll need someone in your corner you value and respect.

Your mobile app is spying on you | VentureBeat

PlacePop joins mobile loyalty program frenzy, gets funding boost | VentureBeat

Hacker tries to read a radio identification tag from 29 floors up (video) | VentureBeat

Chris Paget talks about long-range RFID tag reading

Xtify faces competition from other location-based ad companies, such as San Francisco, Calif.-based Placecast, which runs geo-targeted ad campaigns, for instance pinging users with text messages when they are near a shop. Xtify says that the very fact that they have a background-running notification system is what differentiates them from the competition. In addition, the service is not reliant on getting a phone’s location from a carrier, nor is it using SMS, which makes the service cost-efficient, Xtify says.

Push-Notification Platform Xtify Picks Up $2.8M, Ramps Up Development

Friday, July 30, 2010

How an Ambitious Startup Wants to Revolutionize Banking

Microsoft Research Street Slide View

Thursday, July 29, 2010

http://www.readwriteweb.com/archives/analysis_what_are_the_webs_top_sources_of_referral_traffic.php

JUDGE BLOCKS CRUCIAL PARTS OF ARIZONA IMMIGRATION LAW

JUDGE BLOCKS CRUCIAL PARTS OF ARIZONA IMMIGRATION LAW - Our long, national nightmare of not having conservative blogs publish articles asking whether a Hispanic Supreme Court justice can properly judge a major immigration case may soon be over. The decision, handed down by district court judge Susan Bolton, suspends the parts of the law that order immigrants to carry their papers at all times and require law enforcement officers to check the immigration status of individuals they've pulled over for other reasons . "U.S. District Judge Susan Bolton ruled that those sections should be put on hold until the courts resolve the issues. Other provisions of the law, many of them procedural and slight revisions to existing Arizona immigration statute, will go into effect at 12:01 a.m." http://huff.to/aP0XrX

http://www.readwriteweb.com/start/2010/07/recommended-listening-10-podca.php?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+readwriteweb+%28ReadWriteWeb%29

Are Location-Based Services All Hype?

Although LBS apps have the potential to connect marketers to key customers, there are still a number of issues beyond the demographics of the current audience and its size. For one thing, the market is heavily fragmented. Not only are there half a dozen or so "major" players in the check-in business, there are also other location-based apps that focus on different types of experiences. For example, the object-based social network Stickybits allows anyone to tag real-world items with barcoded stickers, while other niche apps like SCVNGR turn checking in into a puzzle-solving game. Although not mentioned in the report, we could add Miso to this list of niche apps as well, as it lets you "check in" to TV and movies you're watching.

Wednesday, July 28, 2010

July 27, 2010 Are Location-Based Services All Hype?By SARAH PEREZ of ReadWriteWeb

While other businesses may not be able to generate a critical mass of volume with LBS-based programs, now is the time to experiment, says Forrester. Male-targeted companies may have better luck than others, but only for the moment. Other marketers may want to wait for demographic and adoption rates to increase and for the "vendor dust to settle," though. While yes, Forrester concludes that, in some cases, "the potential for LBS doesn't match the hype," that statement ends with an important qualifier: "....YET."

Only 4% of U.S. online adults have ever used location-based apps such as these, and only 1% out of those that use them do so more than once per week. According to Forrester, LBS users are 80% male and 70% are aged 19-35.

These users are the "influentials," which, in marketing speak, means they're more likely to spread the word about a business, share their opinions and encourage others to join in this new-fangled check-in game.
In fact, the report finds that 38% of these users are more likely than others to have friends and family ask their opinions prior to purchase. They're 14-20% more likely to use their phones for comparison