Amazon Ebook Contracts Face EU Antitrust Probe

The European Commission has opened a formal investigation into Amazon’s ebook distribution practices.  Initially, the EC’s investigation will focus on the largest markets for ebooks in the European Economic Area, namely ebooks in English and German. Amazon remains the largest distributor of ebooks in Europe.

Specifically, the EC said today it intends to investigate certain clauses contained in Amazon’s contracts with publishers that it says appear to shield the business from competition by requiring Amazon is given —

• the right to be informed of more favourable or alternative terms offered to its competitors; and/or
• the right to terms and conditions at least as good as those offered to its competitors.

The EC’s concern is these clauses are stifling competition in the sector and reducing choice for consumers. If it confirms a finding that Amazon’s contracts are limiting competition the EC notes that could constitute a violation of EU antitrust rules. Although at this point it’s just opening the investigation — so no judgement has been made yet.

Commenting on the action in a statement, EU competition commissioner Margrethe Vestager said: “Amazon has developed a successful business that offers consumers a comprehensive service, including for e-books. Our investigation does not call that into question. However, it is my duty to make sure that Amazon’s arrangements with publishers are not harmful to consumers, by preventing other e-book distributors from innovating and competing effectively with Amazon. Our investigation will show if such concerns are justified.”

In a statement provided to TechCrunch, an Amazon spokesperson added: “Amazon is confident that our agreements with publishers are legal and in the best interests of readers.  We look forward to demonstrating this to the Commission as we cooperate fully during this process.”

There’s no set timeframe for EC antitrust investigations — with the complexity of the case and how co-operative (or otherwise) those being investigated are determining how long proceedings last.

It’s not the first ebooks-related investigation the Commission has opened. In 2011 it looked into the ebook retail pricing set by Apple and five international publishing houses (Penguin Random House, Hachette Livres, Simon & Schuster, HarperCollins and Georg von Holtzbrinck Verlagsgruppe), with concerns the group were colluding to fix pricing. This led to the companies making changes, in December 2012 and July 2013, which addressed the Commission’s concerns.

Vestager is currently also investigating Google on antitrust grounds, stepping up action in a long-running investigation into Google’s price comparison service, Google Shopping, by launching a formal Statement of Objections this April.

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Former Kleiner Kid Matt Murphy Heads To Menlo Ventures

Matt Murphy, formerly of Kleiner Perkins, is joining Menlo Ventures. The latter firm is currently investing a new $400 million fund.

Murphy led Kleiner’s investment into Aerohive Networks, which is currently public, and has been involved with Egnyte, a firm that is looking to go public next year. Kleiner has become best known recently for gender bias suit filed by former denizen Ellen Pao.

Given Murphy’s former employment at a venture firm of current note, especially in the legal context, I caught up with him on the phone to dig into his new role. According to Murphy, he was attracted to his new by having already known the team, and generally speaking, Menlo having fund size and cadence that match his prior investment patterns.

That sounds like standard boilerplate, and it must be to some category, but Murphy was emphatic in his excitement to work with Menlo Ventures. The current venture market, akin to the tech blogger market, is hot at the moment, with movement between firms.

Murphy told TechCrunch that while he will maintain a focus on enterprise-facing investments, he may spend more time on consumer-facing startups.

It’s a rich moment in the market, and it will be interesting to see what hits Murphy can bring home to his new team.

Featured Image: Jason Costanza/Flickr UNDER A CC BY 2.0 LICENSE (IMAGE HAS BEEN MODIFIED)

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Menlo Ventures Brings On Matt Murphy

Matt Murphy, who left his role as a general partner at Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers earlier this year, is joining Menlo Ventures as a managing director.

Murphy will be focusing on enterprise infrastructure and mobile first apps that apply to either consumer or the enterprise. In terms of the “mobile first apps” part, he pointed to applications like Slack and DocuSign as some examples of enterprise apps that center around bringing an employee’s workflow to mobile devices that fit that description, as well as Shazam on the consumer side.

That focus is an area where Murphy has some experience. At Kleiner Perkins, he led the firm’s iFund, which started in 2007 and became a $200 million fund. During that time Kleiner Perkins invested in companies like Shazam and Shopkick, which was acquired for $200 million by SK Telecom in September last year. Murphy also made investments in several companies that have gone public, like AutoNavi and Aerohive Networks.

As soon as Murphy left Kleiner Perkins, the calls started coming in. But Menlo Ventures’ Mark Siegel had frequently worked with Murphy — both sit on the board of Pernixdata, for example. Even then, Murphy had beaten Menlo Ventures to a number deals during his time at Kleiner Perkins, including on investments like one in Puppet Labs, Siegel said. Murphy and Siegel have an extensive history as well, which helped Menlo Ventures seal the deal.

Murphy’s timing is also good, as Menlo Ventures closed a new $400 million fund in April. When asked about why he left Kleiner Perkins, he said he told the firm he “wanted change, wanted a new environment, and to see what that would be like — the criteria of that being something smaller.”

Smaller indeed: Murphy will be the firm’s seventh partner.

“I didn’t want to spend my entire venture career at one size a firm in one place,” Murphy said. “I’d seen a lot of my peers go off and start other firms, and I thought about that, but I didn’t feel like the world needed yet another venture firm. On top of that, I looked around and said ‘if I thought of a handful of people in the venture business, where are they?’. Mark and [Menlo Ventures Managing Director] Venky [Ganesan] were certainly two of those and they were both at one firm.”

Murphy’s relationship with Siegel goes back more than two decades, he said, when the two went to business school at Stanford. Murphy knew Ganesan when he was a managing director at Globespan Capital Partners. Murphy, who is 48, comes in at a time when Menlo Ventures is going through a transition as a younger group of partners comes in to run the firm.

“I think we’ve already talked publicly about the fact that we’ve gone through a generational transition where a founder and a couple older partners are on their way [out],” Siegel said. “This is their last fund, we have a new generation taking over, it was appealing to him to be part of this next generation of the firm and be part of the leadership team.”

Menlo Ventures has certainly had a lot of recent success, which no doubt piqued Murphy’s interest. The firm invested in Uber in the company’s $32 million Series B round, and also has investments in Roku, Betterment and Warby Parker.

And beyond all that, Siegel said that one of Murphy’s strongest points was that he was a good cultural fit for the firm — which, given the size, is a pretty big priority for one like Menlo Ventures. Siegel described the group’s dynamic as “collegial,” focused on collaboration and research across the entire firm.

“Someone has to come in and sort of fit in with that way of doing things,” Siegel said. “There’s no question, it’s not for everyone, but it’s worked really well for us. When you work in a small partnership, there aren’t a lot of buffers. You have to really get a long with those people. You have to have a shared vision, a shared working style, a shared way of interfacing with the rest of the partners that’s consistent.”

Murphy starts at the firm on July 1.

Featured Image: Menlo Ventures

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What startups need to know about big business

“How can large companies stay innovative?”, “What can startups teach big business?”, “How to think like a startup”.

Whenever we talk about the differences between big beasts and startups, the emphasis often seems to fall on the strengths of the latter. Indeed, Google’s Eric Schmidt repeatedly says what keeps him awake at night is the next two-person micro-enterprise that could, one day, disrupt the big daddy.

But, whilst it is true that the behemoths of business have much to learn from up-start challengers, there is plenty the new wave can learn from their elders, too. Having seen both sides of the coin – previously, as an executive and consultant at big firms like Bloomberg and Dow Jones, and, now helping build news monitoring startup Signal – here is what I think the small fry need to know about the big kahunas.

Be thankful – big companies move like juggernauts

The larger outfits may be many times greater than you are, but recognise that your relative size – or lack of it – is actually your key competitive advantage.

When Bloomberg started in the eighties, it was of course small too, and looking to dethrone the incumbents who had failed to move with the technology of the times. For Bloomberg, that meant an advent of messaging, rather than phone and interactive analytics, with much richer data than competitors.

By the nineties while I was working at Bloomberg, the company wanted to flip its revenue model from charging per terminal to charging per user. It is rightly credited with being a large company with a simple and extremely efficient business model and well designed internal processes.

Even still, given the inherent complexity of the back-office systems, the change took six months to make work – and another eight years to move the majority of the customer base to the new model.

Rather than fret about the threat from bigger rivals, whose staff are spread over many floors, offices or countries, startup CEOs should thank their lucky stars they can make decisions quickly, just by chatting to their CTO across the desk.

Big companies are desperate to be you

Every startup wants to “scale”. But, when you reach those heights, the price of scale is rigidity. The monsters of Wall Street spend so much time and effort trying to be small and nimble, it is unreal.

At one stage at Bloomberg, I had 500 people reporting to me as head of EMEA sales. That is big business. But, so keen was the firm to act like a minnow, I still sat out on the floor with a regular desk like everyone else and had no personal assistant. Big firms all set up skunk work teams and innovation hubs in a desperate effort to be more nimble and informal.

Focusing on the user also requires an agile development schedule with new releases every two weeks, and a flat management structure to make decisions quickly and to keep improving on your company’s proprietary technology.

Startup culture has surpassed rock music as one of the coolest things you can do, and the practical advantages of being a startup set the corporate world green with envy. Never underestimate that. Enjoy your time as a small fry like we are enjoying now – when you have made it big, you will look back on these times with envy.

Their hubris is their weakness – exploit it

Big companies are not born at scale. Startup founders know growing a business takes years of blood, sweat and tears. When you make it big, it is easy to get swept up by a wave of euphoria, and that can cause many a big-time CEO to believe their company is unassailable.

That is a terrible mistake for them, but one of the strongest weapons in your arsenal. When a strong opponent’s guard is down, even the smallest of opponents can strike. So don’t fear going up against incumbents with a similar business proposition. All it takes to create a little victory is to expose their weakness at the right time.

Kodak may have been top of the camera manufacturer crowd in the 1990s, but that didn’t stop rivals making digital cameras that would eventually be its undoing. They exploited the giant’s half-hearted attempt at digital reform, leaving it playing catch-up. It was making models that had too little profit margin, leading Kodak’s CEO to declare digital a “crappy business”. Rivals’ willingness to exploit Kodak’s complacency despite its size, however, means it is now enjoying selling inkjet cartridges instead.

If you find a growing need in your target industry that is currently uncatered for by big incumbent suppliers, it’s as important to be distinctive as it is to be different. Remember, creating a new business model may be harder for a big competitor to respond to than creating new features.

The big guys can be your best friend

Large outfits don’t have to be enemies that startups either avoid or try to topple. They can also be the best partner they will ever have – for instance, as distributors or even potential acquirers.

Think about a business area you are covering but that a big beast in your space is not offering to its customers. That is a great opportunity to offer a new business line that is mutually beneficial. Mobile accessory maker Griffin has proved successful in recent years not just because it sells direct to consumers but also because it also gains distribution through Apple’s own retail channel, giving it far wider scale than it could otherwise enjoy.

Similarly, by syndicating through Bloomberg’s information services, small brokerages gain a route to customers that would otherwise have required substantial outlay. All it takes is spotting an opportunity with big business and chasing it down.

Read Next: New Google startup seeks to improve life in the big city

Image credit: Shutterstock 

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Goodeed turns 20 seconds of your time into humanitarian aid

Online marketplace Goodeed is officially going global today, kicking off simultaneous campaigns in the UK, US and Germany and launching its website – www.goodeed.com.

Goodeed helps NGOs around the world by using revenues generated from its 20 second sponsored adverts to fund their work.

The aim of the company is to turn ad-watching into a priced commodity for social good so money can be raised to help NGOs without any monetary transactions taking place.

When you go onto the website, you are asked to choose the type of donation you would like to make – trees, vaccinations, or meals – then you are given a commercial to watch for a minimum of 20 seconds and that’s it.

The ad funds your donation and all you have to give is 20 seconds of your time.

Revenues generated from the ads go towards NGOs such as the UN World Food Programme, WWF, UNICEF, WeForest and more.

Goodeed was founded by 19 year old Vincent Touboul Flachaire who has said the idea came to him after reading “Building Social Business” by Muhammad Yunus (Nobel Peace Prize winner).

It has been in an open beta in France since 2014 and has already amassed over 60,000 users who made over half a million donations. Interestingly, Goodeed has said that over half of its users are under 35 years old and 70 percent have never donated to a charity before.

This shows that the new model of giving your time and attention, rather than money or being stopped on the street, is appealing to a new generation.

With the amount of time we spend watching Vines and YouTube videos of cats, 20 seconds to give a meal, plant a tree or get someone a vaccination seems like little to give.

The company has said that so far, over 200,000 meals have been provided to children in Kenya with the World Food Programme; 100,000 trees have been planted in Burkina Faso and Ehiopia with WeForest, and over 180,000 donations for vaccines have been generated.

On top of that, Goodeed has collected 50,000 litres of chlorinated water for Ebola treatment centers in Sierra Leone and helped to provide dental care for 10,000 children in Cambodia.

➤ Goodeed

Read next: New Google startup seeks to improve life in the big city

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Apple grabbed a way of supercharging your selfies from Kodak

The rise of the selfie is seemingly unstoppable and Apple has been thinking about our propensity to take snaps of our own faces for a while.

A patent, dug up by PatentYogi, outlines a plan to use facial recognition to detect who the camera is being pointed at and apply personalised settings to take account of particular features.

Effectively, you’d be able to tell your iPhone that you prefer a certain shutter speed, exposure time, sharpness, brightness or set of effects, and have those preferences applied whenever you’re grabbing a selfie or even – shock, horror – taking a picture of someone else close to you.

The name on the patent – Ken Parulski – is interesting. He was Kodak’s Chief Scientist until June 2012, so it’s clear that this 2011 filing was one of the many purchased by Apple in a raid on the troubled camera company’s patent vault.

As is always the case with patents, just because a company holds one doesn’t mean it will turn the contents into a real feature. That said, I wouldn’t be surprised to see this function popping up in a future version of iOS.

➤ Camera having processing customized for identified persons [USPTO via PatentYogi]

Read next: The best iOS 9 features Apple didn’t mention at WWDC 

Image credit: PatentYogi

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Europe launches antitrust investigation into Amazon’s ebooks business

The European Commission has launched a formal antitrust investigation into Amazons ebook business to determine if the company is abusing its powers.

The investigation is going to hone in on Amazon’s contracts with publishers, which obligate them to tell Amazon if any other retailer is offering a better deal on ebooks.

According to an EC press release, this clause raises concern because it could be reducing customer choice and hindering competition in the market.

The press release goes on to say:

Amazon has developed a successful business that offers consumers a comprehensive service, including for e-books. Our investigation does not call that into question. However, it is my duty to make sure that Amazon’s arrangements with publishers are not harmful to consumers, by preventing other e-book distributors from innovating and competing effectively with Amazon. Our investigation will show if such concerns are justified.

The investigation comes just weeks after Amazon caved to another European Commission investigation over suspected tax avoidances.

➤ Antitrust: Commission opens formal investigation into Amazon’s e-book distribution arrangements [European Commission]

Read next: 49 cyber criminals across Europe arrested over €6 million bank heist

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Here’s the first single from the unknown artist Apple loves

It was a big day for Loren Kramar on Monday. Apple bigged up the unknown singer onstage during its WWDC keynote, while introducing Apple Music’s Connect feature.

It's here… #MyLife by #LorenKramar = https://t.co/hCB7Cuu2EZ

— LOREN (@thelorenkramar) June 11, 2015

Now the singer – who I discovered actually has strong ties to Beats Music boss turned Apple music bigwig Jimmy Iovine – has released his first single on iTunes.

‘My Life’ is a delicious slice of white boy soul that suggests Eddy Cue’s prediction that Kramar is “going to be really, really huge” might not just be classic Apple hyperbole.

But what’s really interesting is that the huge platform gifted to the singer during the Apple event hasn’t translated to a great deal of interest.

He only launched his Twitter account after the event and has 452 followers at the time of writing. On Instagram he’s got a marginally more respectable 1,119.

Hopefully, Kramar’s music will gin up a little more attention from now on…

➤ ‘My Life’ – Loren Kramar [iTunes]

Read next: Who is Loren Kramar? The ‘unsigned’ artist Apple advertised has major label connections

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Reddit Bans Five Harassing Subreddits, Its Trolls Respond Exactly As You’d Expect

Reddit, the hugely popular online community know as the ‘front page of the internet’, has dropped the hammer on five groups on its site judged to be in violation of its policy against harassing users.

They include r/fatpeoplehate, a subreddit that — as the name suggests — was a place for comments about fat people, and is the largest of the five with over 5,000 subscribers. The others include r/hamplanethatred (3,071 subscribers), r/transfags (149), r/neofag (1239) and r/shitniggerssay (219).

“Our goal is to enable as many people as possible to have authentic conversations and share ideas and content on an open platform. We want as little involvement as possible in managing these interactions but will be involved when needed to protect privacy and free expression, and to prevent harassment,” Reddit said in an announcement.

“It is not easy to balance these values, especially as the Internet evolves. We are learning and hopefully improving as we move forward,” the blog post further explained.

Feign astonishment for a moment. A vocal part of the Reddit community is — unsurprisingly for anyone who knows anything about the site — furious about the ban on these groups.

Their response? To flood the site with content that harasses Reddit CEO Ellen Pao. Many are also threatening to leave the community in response to the ‘censorship’.

Reddit is representative of many different kinds of views and interests, right from harmless fun like cats, parenting, cooking and travel, to more sensitive topics such as race, sexuality and more.

The site’s worst trolls are notorious for making parts of Reddit an utter cesspool of vitriol. Yet, though Reddit does its best to allow free speech, there is clearly a line that needs to be drawn. The problem — in my eyes, at least — appears to be a selective enforcement of this line: some vulgar subreddits are shuttered while others live on. That makes bans seem arbitrary in nature, and thus provokes this kind of reaction.

If Reddit’s most extreme members did leave, that might not be such a bad thing after all, but it would represent a very different site. But then we have seen outrage over “censorship” with the site in the past, so it remains to be seen how this episode will play out over the long term.

“While we do not always agree with the content and views expressed on the site, we do protect the right of people to express their views and encourage actual conversations according to the rules of reddit,” Reddit said.

Featured Image: Eva Blue/Flickr UNDER A cc by 2.0 LICENSE

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Run presentations from your phone with Google Slides for Android

A new version of Google’s Slides presentation app on Android includes support for the company’s Chromecast TV dongle, allowing presenters to ditch those old-school clickers and use their phone as a remote.

The updated app lets you beam your slides to a Chromecast dongle plugged into a TV or projector and control your presentation by swiping back and forth on your phone or tablet. You’ll also be able to view your notes and a handy timer privately on your device.

The latest version of Slides should arrive in Google’s Play Store soon. If you don’t want to wait, you can grab the APK installation file from APK Mirror and sideload it onto your device.

There’s no word yet on when Chromecast support will arrive for Slides on iOS. We’ve contacted Google to find out more and will update this post when we hear back.

➤ Slides [Android | iOS | via Android Police]

Read next: Google brings 4X faster browsing to Android devices in India

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Hilary Clinton has joined Instagram and started with an obligatory #OOTD picture

Google’s New Sidewalk Labs Project Will Use Tech To Improve Life In Urban Areas

Google is best known for internet search and services but the company also runs a host of other projects that use technology to solve other kinds of problems. The latest of these — known as ‘moon shots’ — is Sidewalk Labs, a company dedicated to improving life in cities and urban areas.

Led by former Bloomberg CEO Dan Doctoroff, New York-based Sidewalk Labs is focused on tackling issues like cost of living, transportation, energy usage and more.

“New technologies are already transforming commerce, media and access to information. However, while there are apps to tell people about traffic conditions, or the prices of available apartments, the biggest challenges that cities face — such as making transportation more efficient and lowering the cost of living, reducing energy usage and helping government operate more efficiently have, so far, been more difficult to address,” the company said in an announcement.

Google CEO Larry Page said that the company’s investment in Sidewalk Labs is relatively modest, but he is optimistic that it can address urban living issues in a more rounded way.

“Every time I talk with Dan I feel an amazing sense of opportunity because of all the ways technology can help transform cities to be more livable, flexible and vibrant,” Page said in a Google+ post. “It’s an area where I hope we can really improve people’s lives, similar to Google[x] and [healthcare-focused] Calico.”

At this point it isn’t entirely clear how Sidewalk Labs will operate or exactly what kind of technology it will produce. Doctoroff — formerly Deputy Mayor of Economic Development and Rebuilding for the City of New York — said only that it “will play a major role in developing technology products, platforms and advanced infrastructure that can be implemented at scale in cities around the world.”

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Apple Music may have competitive local pricing in India

Screenshots from Apple’s Music app on a developer beta of iOS 8.4 show that the company’s streaming service could be priced at Rs. 120 ($2) per month at launch in India — allowing it a fighting chance against major rivals Rdio, Gaana and Saavn.

While the price seems ridiculously low compared to Apple Music’s $10 a month asking rate in the US, it’s likely that it’s been adjusted for purchasing power parity for users in India.

Image via Jayesh M (click for Twitter profile)

For background, Rs. 120 is also the cost of most albums on iTunes in India, as well as the monthly subscription fee for Rdio’s service in the country.

Local streaming services which have large catalogs of Indian music and a smaller selection of international content are similarly priced. Gaana charges Rs. 99 per month for its ad-supported service and Rs. 199 for ad-free playback, while Saavn’s monthly rate is Rs. 120 for its ad-free Lite plan.

The screenshots also show the availability of a Family plan that costs Rs. 180 (about $3) a month for up to six users, as well as a three-month free trial period.

It’ll be interesting to see how Apple Music fares in markets outside the US, where the playing fields are far more varied and licensing challenges are more difficult to contend with.

We’ve contacted Apple for more details and will update this post when we hear back.

Image credit: Jayesh M

Read next: Apple Music will stream at 256kbps, below the ‘industry standard’ 320kbps

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Google brings 4X faster browsing to Android devices in India

Google announced today that it’s rolling out a new feature to Android devices that will optimize Web pages so they load faster on slow 2G connections in India.

The company began field testing this feature at the end of April in Indonesia. It transcodes pages for quicker delivery on the fly when it detects that a user in on a slow connection. It appears that the method strips out Google Analytics scripts and some CSS styling.

Here’s an example of what that looks like, alongside an unoptimized mobile site.

TNW’s unoptimized site (L) and the Google optimized version (R) (click for larger image)

Google claims that its new feature reduces users’ data consumption by 80 percent, speeds up page loads by four times and results in 50 percent more page views.

Android users in India will be able to experience optimized page loading over the next couple of weeks. Google is also launching this feature in Brazil soon.

➤ Faster and lighter mobile web pages in India [Google India Blog]

Read next: iOS 9 allows developers to build ad blocking extensions

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Ahead of Apple Music, Line launches its own streaming service in Japan

Messaging app Line has launched its own music streaming service in Japan, adding another hurdle to Apple’s path in its quest to win over listeners across the globe.

Line Music brings a catalog of over 1.5 million tracks from local and international artists, to Android and iOS for a monthly fee of 1,000 yen (about $8). For half the price, users can tune in for 20 hours. Line users can also send tracks and playlists from the new service to their contacts.

Line Music will available for free for its first two months. The company says it plans to expand its library to 5 million tracks by the end of 2015 and hit 30 million the next year.

The service is currently available only in Japan and Thailand (where it launched in May) on mobile devices. The company says it’s working to bring Line Music to the desktop soon.

In Japan, copyright issues and listeners’ affinity for physical discs have kept foreign music services at bay. Streaming subscriptions brought in only 5 million yen ($40,660) in revenue last year.

Line could be the one to change that. It has 58 million registered users in Japan alone; its music service is partly held by Sony Music and Universal Music is slated to get on board soon.

If the company plays its cards right, it could bring streaming back into the mainstream in Japan and make a pretty penny where others have failed for years.

➤ Line Music [Android | iOS]

Read next: Line’s new Android app Popcorn Buzz lets you call up to 200 people simultaneously

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Messaging App Firm Line Launches Paid-For Music Streaming Service In Japan

Now is the time to launch music services, it seems. Popular messaging app Line began testing music streaming when it began to test a $2 per month service in Thailand in May, and today it has introduced a fuller service in its native Japan.

Like Apple’s new service, Line Music does not have a free tier, instead it is dual priced. For 500 JPY (around $4) per month, users can enjoy 20 hours of music streaming from the service and its 1.5 million song catalogue. Those wanting unlimited access can pay 1,000 JPY (approximately $8) per month.

Students pay slightly less for each tier, 300 JPY ($2.50) and 600 JPY ($5) respectively, and Line is offering two months of free usage to early users.

Like the service in Thailand, Line Music customers can share tracks with friends inside chats or via their social network-like Timeline feature. The service also allows users to follow artists who are on Line — the service is popular among musicians — while artists can also provide track lists and playlists.

A Line representative told TechCrunch that the service will “expand step by step,” but for now the company has nothing to share on global launches. It did say, however, that it plans to introduce a web-based version to allow customers to listen from a PC.

Line, which has 205 million monthly active users — half of whom are located in Japan, Thailand and Taiwan — has been planning a music service for some time after partnering with two domestic labels in December 2014. Nonetheless, the launch of this new service is interesting for a couple of reasons.

Firstly, digital music has not yet been a success in Japan. Physical sales still dominate in the country — thanks to conservative record labels — so Spotify and others are not present in Japan. That means Line is having to pioneer this industry by itself — no easy task — however more than half of the population uses the service each month, which gives it the kind of distribution needed to at least have a shot at success.

In addition, this music service is part of Line’s push to diversify its revenue beyond games and stickers, and also to provide new services. It also offers a payments service, an Uber rival in Japan, and it is piloting a YouTube-like TV service and shopping feature, which it hopes will develop into a grocery-delivery service, in Southeast Asia.

Line Music isn’t its only venture into streaming, however. Last month, MixRadio, the music service Line acquired from Microsoft, finally became available for iOS and Android. Line confirmed, however, that the service will be run separately to Line Music.

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Breathalyzers, Selfies And Body Sweat? A Wallet Password Replacement Showdown

If you hate typing long passwords into super small screens, I have good news: smart people are trying to fix the problem. Yes, the whole rigmarole of creating a word that has at least one capital letter, one number and one special character could soon be history.

For the mobile payment industry, this is exciting news because people won’t use mobile wallets if they have to enter a complicated password before every single purchase. At the same time, without strong enough security in front of mobile payments, fraud and hacking will ruin the party.

Instead of using passwords, it’s likely that we will soon use bio-signatures to approve purchases. Apple went for the good old fingerprint with Apple Pay and Touch ID, but is that the only option? No. Breathalyzers, selfies and, yes, body sweat are actually options, too. But are these possibilities really as slick as they sound?

Well, body sweat technically is, but to pass judgment, we have to talk through the implications of each technology. Thanks to Google Glass and Amazon Fire Phone some overhyped technologies, we know that even the loftiest of value propositions backed by billions of dollars can still face plant on reality. The contenders in the password showdown are no exceptions. 

Selfie Payments

Why type a password when you can take a selfie of your smiling face instead? With Alipay’s new facial-recognition technology, you will be able to pay for a latte and (presumably) tell Facebook all in one tap. As I’m sure you already know, everyone on social media is dying to know what you drank for breakfast.

And while I’m sure marketers would love to mark every one of your transactions with a beaming selfie, is that what consumers want? Does a trip to the grocery store with your kids put you in a selfie mood? Do you really want to Kardashianize your latest CVS or Walgreens purchase?

I think the last thing America’s image needs is Facebook and Twitter feeds chock-full of checkout selfies. Eventually, hackers will figure out how to take your picture and 3D print your face to spoof the technology. Personally, I don’t want to replace ‘password reset’ with plastic surgery.

Breathalyzer Security

In 2013, Swiss scientists found that every individual has a unique “breathprint.” Surely blowing air is easier than typing passwords. So soon enough, someone will create a breathalyzer that can distinguish one person from another.

Passwords aren’t forever, but your body parts hopefully are.

Combing BAC breathalyzers with password detectors isn’t far-fetched. One company is already trying to read hydration levels and breathe quality from a breathalyzer that attaches to smartphones. The password could become one of many breath-based bio-signatures captured from a single device. Unlike your face and body parts, breath is quite hard to steal. Perhaps people will brush their teeth with a bit more dedication if they have to blow breathe at a cashier several times per day.

Retina Scan

Want to feel like you’re a character in Golden Eye, Mission: Impossible or Minority Report? Well, get ready to hold a smartphone camera to your eyes. ZTE’s Grand S3 smartphone is ready for you, and others will surely follow.

While feeling like a secret agent is nice, let’s remember that you’re going to look more like a James Bond villain than 007 after an identity theft. If hackers can spoof your eye scan, with or without the gruesome robbery, there is no good fix. 

Sweat It Out

According to a recent article from Outside Magazine, your sweat is chockfull of biometric data that tech companies want. From hydration levels and electrolyte balance to lactate threshold and glucose, sweat has a lot to say. It seems inevitable that someone will come up with a “sweatprint” soon enough, so why not let your IoT sweat whiffer tell Jamba Juice they can sell you that smoothie?

Sweatprints would be good PR for sweat, which has been notoriously underappreciated. Even if sweating is a bit less sexy than a retina scan, like with breath, it is bit tricky to steal a permanent copy.

Sweating for swag would be easy in hot, humid environments, but if, like me, you spent the winter in New England, you know this is impractical during winter. Bostonians will be none too happy if they have to do push-ups and jumping jacks just to buy a beer. CrossFitters, on the other hand…

NFC Chips Under Your Skin

In November 2014, Dutch entrepreneur Martijn Wismeijer became the first man to embed NFC chips in his hands. One hand holds his contact information, and the other contains the private key to his bitcoin wallet. Now, he can exchange bitcoins with an Obi Wan Kenobi-like wave of the hand. Maybe this is the payment security you were looking for?

While paying like a Jedi and never forgetting your wallet are nice perks, convincing people to suffer through the painful, unnecessary injection is going to be a tough sell. For rightfully wary consumers, it seem like a step in the direction of GPS implants and Big Brother-type applications. It’s not as if anyone is currently tracking the location their smartphones. 

Fingerprints

Giving a fingerprint used to signify that you made a poor life decision. How about we rebrand fingerprints as a good way to approve payments? If Apple Pay believes in it, shouldn’t we?

In a smartphone world, the convenience is hard to beat. People supposedly use their smartphone an average 221 times per day – adding a few transactions to the stack is only natural.

Yes, you might have to ask your tech-savvy Millennial child to set up fingerprint profiles because you can’t figure it out. Yes, criminals might scrape your fingerprints from elevator buttons, ATM machines and touchscreen kiosks. And yes, like your eyes, your fingerprints are difficult to change. I don’t think we’ve put our finger on the ultimate password solution just yet.

Think Long Term

Passwords aren’t forever, but your body parts hopefully are. This means that the great risk of bio- security is that once hackers obtain your fingerprint or learn to spoof your selfie, your bio-signatures can’t secure anything, and there is no simple way to fix that. Though many of us have nearly 50 different written passwords to keep track of (thankfully there’s an app for that), they remain the most adaptable way to protect accounts, payments and our digital world.

Of the above options, breathalyzer security is particularly interesting because it’s extremely hard to steal and replicate breath without the “owner” knowing. With breathprint breathalyzers attached or built into smartphones, we could all pay with a puff, and never type a password again.

I like the idea of one-puff payments, but any of these could win the showdown. I’m glad the smart people will figure it out.

Featured Image: Auerlacki/Shutterstock

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In The Information Debate, Openness and Privacy Are The Same Thing

Martin Tisné is a director of policy at Omidyar Network where he leads policy, advocacy strategy and related investments for its Governance & Citizen Engagement initiative.

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We’ve been framing the debate between openness and privacy the wrong way.

Rather than positioning privacy and openness as opposing forces, the fact is they’re different sides of the same coin – and equally important. This might seem simple, but it might also be the key to moving things forward around this crucial debate.

Open data advocates often suggest that openness should be the default for all human knowledge. We should share, re-use and compare data freely and in doing so reap the benefits of innovation, cost savings and increased citizen participation — to name a just a few gains.

And although it might sound a little utopian, the promise is being realized in many corners of the world.

A study by Deloitte for the UK’s Department of Business, Innovation and Skills estimated the annual value of time saved to customers through Transport for London’s open data (e.g. access to real time travel information) at up to £58 million.

In the U.S., the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) decided nearly three decades ago to release their data sets to the public. That decision resulted in a burst of innovation, including forecasts, mobile applications, websites, research and a multi-billion dollar weather industry. If NOAA stopped the flow of open data, weather.com and a host of weather applications would cease to exist.

But as we all know, even if we accept all the possible benefits of open data, concerns about privacy, especially personal information, still exist as a counter weight to the open data evangelists. People worry that the path of openness could lead to an Orwellian world where all our information is shared with everyone, permanently.

There is a way to turn the conversation from the face-value clash between openness and privacy to how they can be complementary forces. Gus Hosein, CEO of Privacy International, has explained that privacy is “the governing framework to control access to, collection and usage of information.” Basically, privacy laws enable knowledge and control of data about citizens and their surroundings.

Even if we accept all the possible benefits of open data, concerns about privacy, especially personal information, still exist as a counter weight to the open data evangelists.

This is strikingly similar to the argument that open data increases service delivery efficiency and personalization. Openness and privacy both share the same impulse: I want to be in control of my life, I want to know and choose whether a hospital or school is a good hospital or school and be in control of my choice of services.

Another strong thread in conversations around open data is that transparency should be proportionate to power. This makes sense on one level and seems simple enough: Politicians should be held accountable which means a heightened level of transparency.

But who is ‘powerful’, how do you define ‘power’ and who is in charge of defining this?

Politicians have chosen to run for public office and submit themselves to public scrutiny, but what about the CEO of a listed company, the leader of a charity, the anonymous owner of a Cayman-islands’ registered corporation? In practice, it is very difficult to apply the ‘transparency is proportionate to power’ rule outside democratic politics.

We need to stop making a binary distinction between freedom of information laws and data protection; between open data policies and privacy policies. We need one single policy framework that controls as well as encourages the use ‘open’ data.

The closest we get is with so-called PEPs (politically exposed persons) databases: Individuals who are the close family and kin, and close business associates of politicians. But even that defines power as derivative from political power, and not commercial, social or other forms of power.

And what about personal data?  Should personal data ever be open?

Omidyar Network asked this question to 200 guests at a convention on openness and privacy last year. The audience was split down the middle: 50% thought personal data could never be open data. 50% thought that it should, and that foregoing the opportunity to release it would block the promise of economic gains, better services and other benefits. Open data experts, including the 1,000 who attended a recent meeting in Ottawa, ultimately disagree on this fundamental issue.

Herein lies the challenge. Many of us, including the general public, are uncomfortable with open personal data, even despite the gains it can bring.

Swedes have access to all and any tax records. Americans have access to public lists of federal politicians convicted of crimes, whereas Germans fought strenuously against such data collection. How does all this add up into a set of more or less coherent global norms so citizens know what to expect?

It’s easy to understand why advocates of open data and privacy rally to different ideological flags.

Yet, consider the fact that you want privacy for exactly the same reason you want openness. Because you want to know whether the information held by the government on a given problem, or indeed on you, is true and verifiable. Like openness and ‘open by default’, privacy is a principle that cuts across all forms of data release. It is fundamentally the same thing.

Privacy permits me to share selectively, and grant people access but with limitations.

We need to include privacy groups in those open data conversations. They need to be alongside us, thrashing out data revolution principles.

If we shift our thinking on open data and privacy from one of competing interests to one of a single inextricably linked, albeit complex, issue then we can find a path that enables us to cut a way through the jungle.

We need to include privacy groups in those open data conversations. They need to be alongside us, thrashing out data revolution principles. Issues like the International Open Data Charter – which are central to the new Sustainable Development Goals – need us to build consensus.

We need to agree whether and how open data can include personal information. And we need to stop making a binary distinction between freedom of information laws and data protection; between open data policies and privacy policies. We need one single policy framework that controls as well as encourages the use ‘open’ data.

This approach will not remove the tensions between the competing camps, but it might allow us to work toward common objectives that further each perspective’s work rather than leave us in a stalemate.

The discussions we now have are the lifeblood of both the openness and privacy movements –what, when and how should information be shared. A new frame of reference for the debate may shine a light on a constructive path forward.

Featured Image: Allen Levine/Flickr UNDER A CC BY 2.0 LICENSE

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Here’s How Apple Designs Experiences For Devices That Don’t Exist Yet

Apple famously keeps info about upcoming products locked down on a need-to-know basis, but that doesn’t mean it waits until hardware is fully-formed before creating software for it. Nor does it create either hardware or software in a vacuum, building one independent of the other. So how does it go about coming up with and prototyping product ideas with limited info or access to physical devices? Here’s a look at the process in broad strokes.

Essentially, Apple thinks about the early stages of prototyping as a process best accomplished with as little investment of time and resources as possible, and as something you can do with very limited access to things like physical or software prototypes. Instead, the approach involves faking as many aspects of the device or app being created as possible, in order to help you learn as much as possible about how best to build either before you start committing actual resources to the project.

So, for example, if you’re building an app for an Apple Watch that doesn’t even exist yet, you would start with a series of static images, and fake interactivity using basic animations in an app like Keynote, without any programming involved at all. Then you pair that with a rough approximate of your hardware device target, which, in the case of a Watch that doesn’t yet exist, could just be a simulated watch-sized rectangle running on an iPhone, for instance.

The key to this early phase is that while you fake much of the mechanics and programming behind the app and the hardware it’s going to run on, you make the experience of using it as real as possible – which means using it in situation where the device will be used, and seeking the help of people who’ll actually be using it. The idea between getting as close as possible to real-world context is that you’ll learn things about how both hardware and software need to change that will influence product design, before you even produce any kind of physical prototype or code a single line.

This is where reflexivity enters the process; already, what you’re doing is influencing design of both software and hardware, and changes to one are prompting changes to the other, and neither thing actually even exists yet. Approaching it this way keeps the process cost-efficient, and more importantly, extremely flexible and easier to axe or dramatically change at any stage in the process. You’re more nimble if you’re working with elaborately but expertly faked interactivity, rather than real programming hours or manufactory time.

Both internally, and externally with third-party developers, it’s crucial that Apple be ready with high-quality software experiences when its new devices have their initial launch, but not everyone building for these platforms has the luxury of working with final products, be they devices or apps.

They cycle involved has three parts which loop back around, prompting new iterations. These involve building your fake app or product, testing it with real users and gathering feedback, and then taking said feedback to inform the next version. But the key ingredient is not actually doing any of the heavy lifting of coding, building functional hardware or networking devices until it’s actually required to advance the process; hardware can be simulated via software, and creative workarounds including hiding manual process as automated ones can take the place of building a proper programming layer.

Apple’s strength, and what helps it stand apart from its competitors, is its ability to deeply pair software and hardware experiences; what’s especially impressive is how it’s able to do so with some degree of mutual blindness in the process, and those are lessons that are especially relevant to developers feeding the growing ecosystem of apps and gadgets that work with and compliment iOS, Mac and now watchOS, too.

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