Calacanis Announces 2nd Open Angel Forum Event In Boulder

Hot on the heels of the inaugural Open Angel Forum in Los Angeles this Thursday, event organizer and notable investor Jason Calacanis has announced a second event will be held in Boulder next month. Announcing the event on his weekly live video podcast This Week in Startups, Calacanis says he has booked Foundry Group's Brad Feld, and TechStars founder David Cohen, though he plans to have at least a dozen more angels attend.

The Open Angel Forum - which Calacanis considers a "jihad" rebuking VC firms with "pay-to-pitch" practices - provides entrepreneurs with the opportunity for free and open access to angel investors.

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"It's low-class, inappropriate and predatory for a rich person to ask an entrepreneur to PAY THEM for 15 minutes of their time," Calacanis wrote on his blog last fall.

But for Calacanis, his blogs, Tweets and overall outrage over the subject was not enough - so he created Open Angel Forum. Announced in December, the forum held its inaugural event this past Thursday in Los Angeles, placing 5 lucky companies in front of 18 investors - all at no cost to the entrepreneurs.

Among the investors was Matt Coffin, Ron Conway and entrepreneur turned venture capitalist Mark Suster who finds the "pay-to-pitch" practice "insane".

"Many would-be entrepreneurs feel that they don't have enough access to investors and that the opportunity to present to a group will help them short circuit the fund raising process," Suster wrote yesterday on his blog Both Sides of the Table.

In a time where "lean startups" are a growing trend, free and open events like Calacanis' are exactly what the venture capital industry needs to find the truly innovative entrepreneurs and get the right money in the right hands.

"We don't need competition," writes Suster. "We need more overall organizations like Jason's to helping young entrepreneurs more easily reach angel investors with no payola."

Photo by Joi Ito.

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Weekly Wrapup: Facebook Privacy, RFID in iPhone, Nexus Review, And More...

In this edition of the Weekly Wrapup - our newsletter summarizing the top stories of the week - we analyze and challenge Facebook's sweeping new privacy policies, explore what would happen if RFID chips are integrated into the next generation iPhone, present our hands-on review of Google's new smartphone the Nexus One, and more. And as usual we check in on our two main channels: ReadWriteStart (our daily resource for entrepreneurs) and ReadWriteEnterprise (devoted to 'enterprise 2.0' trends and products).

Also read on for details about the newly released printed edition of our current premium report, about the Real-Time Web.

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Now Available: Printed Edition of The Real-Time Web Report

At the request of the librarian community and people that just like paper, we have made The Real-Time Web and its Future report available in print.

For those of you that prefer it digitally, you can still download it.

Don't forget about our Community Management Report. It too is coming in print soon, so watch out for it!

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Facebook's Zuckerberg Says The Age of Privacy is Over

Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg told a live audience this week that if he were to create Facebook again today, user information would by default be public, not private as it was for years until the company changed dramatically in December.

In a six-minute interview, Zuckerberg spent 60 seconds talking about Facebook's privacy policies. His statements were of major importance for the world's largest social network - and his arguments in favor of an about-face on privacy deserve close scrutiny.

Why Facebook is Wrong: Privacy Is Still Important

Has society become less private or is it Facebook that's pushing people in that direction? Is privacy online just an illusion anyway? Below are some thoughts, based primarily on the pro-privacy reactions to Zuckerberg's statements from many of our readers this weekend. Though there is a lot to be said for analysis of public data (more on that later), I believe that Facebook is making a big mistake by moving away from its origins based on privacy for user data.

iPhone as RFID Tag & Reader: Coming Soon

We began a series called Mobile Web Meets Internet of Things this week, starting with a look at barcode scanning. We wrote that smartphones are increasingly being deployed as readers for barcodes - in particular via apps available on iPhone and Android. However, RFID tags are more functional and flexible than barcodes. While barcodes are cheaper and getting traction in the U.S. with the QR format, the potential for RFID tags is even greater. Apple knows this and if rumors are to believed, RFID will be integrated into the iPhone 4G later this year.

The Evolving Online Finance Ecosystem

Last week we analyzed how the Web is transforming personal finance. This week we took a broader look at the world of online finance, from personal to small business tools. To get an understanding of the online finance space, we spoke to the founder and CEO of one of the most promising startups in online finance, Rod Drury from Xero. Rod told us that he sees four types of markets in online finance: 1) Personal Finance (e.g. Mint, Wesabe, Yodlee); 2)
Small Business Accounting (e.g. Xero, Kashflow); 3)
Cloud ERP (e.g. Netsuite, Salesforce); and 4)
ERP (e.g. Microsoft, Oracle).

Editor's note: This story is part of ReadWriteWeb's Online Finance series, a weekly, three-month long look at how the Internet has transformed finance.

iPhone App Piracy Reaches $450 Million? Doubtful

According to an independent analysis performed by investment-watching blog 24/7 Wall St., Apple's iTunes App Store has lost $450 million due to iPhone app piracy since it opened for business back in July of 2008. Although that number sounds high, they note it is small in comparison to the overall size of the App Store marketplace. However, our sources say that the real number is closer to $15-$20 million instead.

SEE MORE WEB TRENDS COVERAGE IN OUR TRENDS CATEGORY

ReadWriteStart

Our channel ReadWriteStart, sponsored by Microsoft BizSpark, is dedicated to profiling startups and entrepreneurs.

Social Media Secrets and Resources Revealed

Presentation company Slideshare recently released its list of "5 Social Media Secrets for 2010". While these secrets certainly sound like great suggestions, we thought we'd connect them to some concrete tactics and resources that you can use to improve your social media strategy.

Never Mind the Valley: Here's Boston

With tourists flocking to the Boston to walk the cobblestone streets of the Freedom Trail and visit various historical landmarks, Boston is often thought of for its ties to the American Revolution. But Boston is also the birthplace of a revolution of a different sort. In 1946, Georges Doriot, a professor at the Harvard Business School, founded the American Research and Development Corporation (ARDC) in Boston - one of the very first venture capital firms.

SEE MORE STARTUPS COVERAGE IN OUR READWRITESTART CHANNEL

ReadWriteEnterprise

Our channel ReadWriteEnterprise, devoted to 'enterprise 2.0' and using social software inside organizations.

VMWare, Microsoft and the Battle for the Business Market

VMware's acquisition of Zimbra from Yahoo this week points to a new form of partnership in the tech word. It's one that could define the big winners in the battle for a major piece of the enterprise market. By packaging Zimbra's popular, open-source collaboration software, VMware can provide a service that combines virtualization technology with email and calendar applications. It is similar to Microsoft and Hewlett-Packard's alliance announced today that will package Microsoft technology on HP servers.

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Google Offers Satellite Images of Haiti, Post-Earthquake

In the immediate aftermath of a 7.0 earthquake that caused an unbelievable amount of destruction to Haiti's capital, Google has been asked by relief organizations and users to show images of what's actually happening on the ground. In partnership with geospatial imagery company GeoEye, Google released a new layer for Google Earth showing post-earthquake devastation.

Nexus One and Android 2.1: Apple Better Watch Out

Less than a week ago, Google introduced its own Android phone, the Nexus One. Over the weekend, we got a chance to take the phone through its paces and while we aren't quite ready to give up our iPhone yet, the Nexus One is a formidable challenger. In terms of features, the Nexus One is already on par with the iPhone platform and beats it in many areas. When it comes to the overall user experience, the iPhone is still a step ahead of the Android platform - but that could easily change in the near future.

Going Mainstream: eMusic Signs Deal with Warner Music

EMusic, the popular subscription-based music service, this week announced that it has signed a deal with Warner Music - the world's third-largest music company. This is eMusic's second deal with a major record label. In its early days, eMusic mostly focused on featuring music from independent labels. Since the middle of 2009, however, eMusic has worked on expanding its reach by bringing more mainstream music to its catalog.

Facebook Blocked at Work? Use Your Email Instead

In our continuing obsession with all things Facebook, we looked at a new feature that was announced by the social networking behemoth that will further enmesh the site into our every waking breath: replying to comments through email. Before now, email notifications from Facebook contained a link that you had to follow, which logged you into Facebook where you could reply. You'll now notice that the email contains a line reading "New Feature: Reply to this email to comment on this link."

SEE MORE WEB PRODUCTS COVERAGE IN OUR PRODUCTS CATEGORY

That's a wrap for another week! Enjoy your weekend everyone.

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Yelp Check-Ins: Totally Awesome or Super Annoying?

Business review service Yelp will update its mobile apps soon to include a feature called "check-ins," a feature similar to one that several smaller location-based social networks have built their businesses around. This according to several other blogs that were given early access to the feature - blogs that, co-incidentally, are less likely to mention complaints about Yelp, like that it is hated by many business owners, is believed by some to be full of extortionists, and is believed by many to be filled with self-absorbed, chronically snide hipsters.

Those common criticisms aside, Yelp is pretty awesome and the addition of check-ins could make it even more awesome still. Or it could be really annoying. It's hard to say for sure, but it's definitely going to be a big deal.

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Only Apple knows for sure when the update will be live for the Yelp iPhone app but when it is, here's what it will look like:

• You'll be able to click a button to check in when you're physically present at a location listed on Yelp.



• You'll get a badge marking you as a regular when you check in regularly from one location and your review will reflect that status.



• You'll be able to get an iPhone push notification when a friend of yours from the site checks in someplace.



• Check-in data will eventually be available on the website in addition to the mobile application
.

What does this mean? It means that many more people around the world will be able to enjoy the very cool ideas that smart little services like Foursquare and Gowalla have come up with but have had limited userbases with which to score network effects outside of a few large cities

It means you'll want to launch the Yelp iPhone app more often and that the app will be pestering you with friends' check-ins, reminding you to pay attention to Yelp. It means you'll be more likely to make friends on Yelp. It means you'll be walking down the street in your town, find out a friend is nearby and you'll change your plans in order to go hang out with them.

If implemented well, it's probably going to be a whole lot of fun. A good implementation might include shut-off times for push notifications and intelligent integration of your friends, favorite places and other information.

What are the smaller companies in this space going to do? That's a tough call. Most social networking activities are a lot more enjoyable if a larger number of people - and a larger number of your friends in particular - are participating. That means Yelp.

There may be important cultural differences, though, that leave space in a larger market for smaller players. Yelp may remain dominated by a certain crowd that's considered distasteful (perhaps so tasteful it's distasteful) by enough other people to make alternatives economically viable.

We've got different TV and radio networks for people with different tastes today, might we not have different location-based social networks for people with different tastes tomorrow?

We're about to find out, because leveraging location data on the mobile phone is about to become a much more common thing to do.

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