In December 2008, Six Apart acquired Pownce, a microblogging service that never managed to attract a large following. Pownce was shuttered after the acquisition, but its two-person team joined Six Apart to help integrate the technology into Six Apart's blogging services. Today Pownce founder Leah Culver has written on her blog that she's leaving Six Apart, where she spent the last year working on its TypePad and TypePad Motion products. Culver writes that her next project is developing an iPhone application for Plancast.

Despite reports to the contrary, Culver isn't joining Plancast full time (at least not yet). Plancast founder (and TechCrunch alum) Mark Hendrickson says that she's joining on a contract basis to build the iPhone app, but that the long-term future is uncertain. Culver's blog notes that she might continue working on Leafy Chat, a web based IRC client that's in private beta.

One thing worth pointing out: Culver and Mike Malone were Pownce's only engineers, and they were absorbed into the Six Apart team as part of the acquisition. Malone left Six Apart just over a year after the acquisition to join SimpleGeo, and now Culver has left just a few months later. It looks like they had a one-year post acquisition cliff, and given their departures soon thereafter, it's possible the integration of Pownce's technology didn't work out as they might have hoped.

Image by hyku

Charlie Rose Talks with Walt Mossberg, David Carr and Mike Arrington About iPad is a post from: Magical Tablet

If the acquisition of Touchco wasn't enough of an indication that Amazon is preparing for a skirmish with the Apple iPad, this should make it perfectly clear. Mike Nash, a man who has quite a history of accomplishments at Microsoft for the past two decades, is leaving the company to work on the Kindle business for Amazon.

Before leaving Microsoft, Mike was the Corporate Vice President of Windows Platform Strategy and was responsible for pieces of Windows business strategy, ecosystem engagement, consumer security, Internet Explorer, and emerging markets, according to his bio on Microsoft's Web site.

In addition to his most recent role, Nash has had a string of historic positions at Big M including a role as the first product manager on the original Windows NT marketing team; the Corporate Vice President of the Security Technology Unit; and a driver of a number of Microsoft acquisitions in the security space.

There's been no official announcement yet from Amazon so we're unsure of Nash's focus within the Amazon team.

[Mary Jo Foley, ZDNet] [Amazon Kindle]

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• Amazon acquires Touchco and a Microsoft exec (macworld.com)
• Another Windows exec Mike Nash is leaving Microsoft (seattletimes.nwsource.com)

Amazon Hires Mike Nash from Microsoft to Work on Kindle is a post from: Magical Tablet

By Senior Editor Kris Smith (@croncast)

Friend, smart dude and all-around good guy Micah Baldwin wrote up a post yesterday that hurt me a little bit quite a bit, if I must be honest. It bothers me because he's right.

On every account of where the failure to find funding comes from us, me, you he's right. Whether it's not searching in the right spot, pitching the wrong story, a flawed product or the inability to get over ones self-importance, the blame can go to one person, you.

Let's break this down . . .

I want to focus on one section from the post and give it a bit more fleshing out for those that might need it. This is especially important for those that are preparing to go out for funding the first time.

If you are struggling to raise money, look back at the decision points:

1. Does your idea excite the people you are talking to;
2. Do you excite the people you are talking to;
3. Are you talking to the right' people (not the easy' or big name' people)?

Three

I'd like to speak to them in a new order with number 3 being first. This is the hardest one to get right and the most important. Being enamored by the big name' will only lead to heart break and misery when the big name' investors tell you no. That no could be for one of a million reasons but most likely number 1 or 2.

The right people are those that don't already have portfolio of companies that can do what you are looking to do, they could be someone that you strike up a conversation with at a conference or the seat next to you on a plane.

Believe me on this from when I went through it, the people I should have focused on pitching were right in front of my face and asked for more of my time. I was too enamored with big names and brands to see these opportunities.

The right people also don't have to be early investors in other up and coming startups. There are plenty of investors in the fringe that might be able to help even more. It is a matter of finding them.

One

On the account of number 1, Does your idea excite the people your are talking to? It must if you've gotten your foot through the door. If you haven't haven't, don't be disheartened with a quick no from a potential investor. They are respecting your time by not wasting it.

To maintain this excitement, prepare like you have never prepared before. Take the time to analyze your business, role play your presentation and be certain to understand the investor you are pitching. If a friend helped to put you in this position, ask them for some advice. Cover your bases.

Two

On the account of number 2, Do you excite the people you are talking to? The answer is really up to you. If you get number one right and convey the passion that you have for the startup then the answer is yes. If you get elements of number one right but not all of them, you'll definitely lose points. Those points could cost you the funding and more importantly a future relationship with the potential investor.

Conclusion

Micah's post is brilliant. Any entrepreneur that is looking to raise capital should study, answer all of the questions he asks and fill in any other missing components that they see fit. It is a blue print for how to be a digital hustler and mean it.

Now that I think about it, there is another set of guidelines that combined with Micah's thoughts could be the ultimate startup cocktail Mike Dunn's Tech Due Diligence. That is a cocktail worth whipping up.

Photo credit: (cc) Kenneth Yeung www.thelettertwo.com

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The Right Investor and You is a post from: TechStartups.com

By Senior Editor Kris Smith (@croncast)

Last week we had a search come in for what happens in a startup merger? A brilliant question that is most likely being asked at the worst time the merger.

This question might have been asked by an employee of the startup, but let's for this instance suppose that it came from the lucky founder of a startup that found an exit well before the business has matured. This merger allows them financial compensation and just how much is at stake.

What appears to be missing from this founders startup experience and vocabulary is a very important term and process due diligence.

One of the best, if not the best, resources for helping this startup founder would be the Technology Due Diligence (TechDD) written by Mike Dunn (@glemak). Mike's current role is CTO of Hearst Interactive Media. He's a tech veteran with stripes pre and post bubble that guides Hearst's technology investments like Brightcove, BuzzFeed and UGO.

Dunn's document is a view behind the curtain of venture capital. It gives a startup a view that a potential investor or a more experienced merging company has of the process that is about to unfold and seeks to make it as smooth as possible.

Dunn describes his open source TechDD as:

The goal of this due diligence process is to allow us to fully understand the technology practice of your company, including how you are staffed, your tactical and strategic utilization of technology and the processes that allow them all to work together to produce what you do for your company. We would like to be able to understand this for both your current state and your roadmap. So where relevant to your business, please be prepared to discuss and provide written answers for the following scoping questions

And scoping they are.

The documentation is broken down into three sections:

1. Technical Staffing
2. Infrastructure and Architecture
3. Workflows and Processes

Each with a keen focus on extracting the most information that will allow outsiders to understand the inner workings of the startup. If these questions are answered truthfully by a startup before being approached by a potential investor the process of a merger wouldn't cause anxiety but provide for a source of relief that from the very beginning the building of the business was transparent.

The Technology Due Diligence documentation that Dunn has created isn't designed to trip up an entrepreneur. It is written in the spirit of the open source community to be a transparent and genuine glimpse into what is often the most fear inducing a process and unprepared startup can find itself in.

The document is a comprehensive primer for any tech startup to integrate with their business plan. It clears the way for building a business that is investment or acquisition ready at any time.

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Tech Startup Due Diligence is a post from: TechStartups.com

By Senior Editor Kris Smith

Startups, it's time to begin shortening and tracking your own URL's. Taking control of your data is the simplest way of measuring your engagement online next to direct conversations with users. Look at it like taking a survey without asking a single question.

So what?

There is a wealth of data to be collected from that shortened URL that can help you make your product(s) better. Take for instance if your job is to write blog posts and then tweet about them. If you're tracking the data yourself you can measure the most active click-through times and tweet then. Another example might be your desire to track other click-throughs and track the geo-location of your biggest fans.

Other great information to get from this one-click survey is what site did they use to click-through, also known in the biz as referrer and what some might call the holy grail of necessary data for digital product development, user-agent. For when you need to know the application or platform, such as mobile, to better your products. So that's so what.

So how?

There are a couple of ways to get it done. If you want the data and tracking that I described above without having to parse your log files you can use the code samples that I will add below. If you simply are looking for a way to brand your URL shortener and use it on Twitter, then you can follow the discussion and directions in this forum thread for using .htacess on Apache [http://www.webmasterworld.com/forum92/2545.htm].

For those of you ready to get it on with a kick start and build on top of it, here we go. I should mention that this is for those on a LAMP box. Not sure what LAMP means? This isn't for you then. If you do and are on another platform, feel free to follow along for the concepts.

First Get a short URL

The best choice doing this the right way is to figure out something that comes close to your regular URL. Say your site is goldfishbowlpirate.com and you found that gbp.me was available. Then you would snatch it up and your short URL's would look like http://gbp.me/1234. Make sure you host the account on a LAMP server.

Second Edit the .htaccess file

Simple copy and past job into your .htaccess file will get you on the road to tracking your click-throughs like a champ.

code: RewriteEngine On
RewriteBase /
RewriteRule ^[0-9] /

Third MySQL table

You'll need to setup a couple of tables: one to store the URL's that need to be redirected and one to store the click-through data.

The base table

CREATE TABLE IF NOT EXISTS `url_base` (
`url_id` int(11) NOT NULL auto_increment,
`url_key` varchar(6) NOT NULL default '',
`url_value` varchar(255) NOT NULL default '',
`bookmarklet` tinyint(1) NOT NULL default '0',
`user_host` varchar(255) NOT NULL default '',
`create_time` timestamp NOT NULL default CURRENT_TIMESTAMP,
PRIMARY KEY  (`url_id`),
KEY `url_key` (`url_key`)
) ENGINE=MyISAM  DEFAULT CHARSET=latin1;

The clicks table

CREATE TABLE IF NOT EXISTS `url_clicks` (
`hit_id` int(11) NOT NULL auto_increment,
`url_id` int(11) NOT NULL default '0',
`hit_host` varchar(255) NOT NULL default '',
`hit_time` timestamp NOT NULL default CURRENT_TIMESTAMP,
`hit_referer` varchar(255) NOT NULL default '',
`hit_agent` varchar(255) NOT NULL default '',
PRIMARY KEY  (`hit_id`),
KEY `hit_agent` (`hit_agent`)
) ENGINE=MyISAM  DEFAULT CHARSET=latin1;

Fourth Code it up

This is where the magic truly happens. We need code to create shortened URL's, handle the redirects by looking up the shortened URL in the url_base table and track the click-through in the url_clicks table.

I've created a zip file that has all the necessary files in it and the SQL above for download. Also Included in the zip are the .htaccess file and four PHP scripts.

1. config.php A configuration file
2. index.php To act as the index incase there is an error with the redirect
3. makeit.php To make shortened URL's. It can be called by other programs like an API
4. makeit_b.php To make shortened URL's for a Bookmarklet for easy testing and copy and paste. To use the Bookmarklet simply right-click on your bookmarks toolbar and paste the code below into the Location' section. Make sure to swap out yourshorturl' with your own!javascript:(function(){var%20a=window,b=document,c=decodeURIComponent,d=a.open('http://yourshorturl/makeit_b.php?url='+c(b.location),"bkmk_popup","left="+((a.screenX||a.screenLeft)+10)+",top="+((a.screenY||a.screenTop)+10)+",height=145px,width=200px,resizable=1,alwaysRaised=1");a.setTimeout(function(){d.focus()},300)})();

Now that you've got all the code you need to begin shortening and tracking your own URL's you can take a look at a sample of a very simple admin page. I've been using this system of shortening for nearly two years for all of my Twitter URL's.

A special thanks to Mike Marusin for writing the first version of this code for his own personal URL shortener back in 2007.

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Post from: TechStartups.com

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Social networking is for lonely, psychotic shut-ins. Or at least that's the upshot of the jokes in the attached clip from Adam Sandler vehicle Funny People. And still MySpace apparently cooperated with the filmmakers; its co-founder and logo appear.

The video clip above, from YouTube, is grainy, but TechCrunch's Mike Arrington assures readers it's in the final movie. I hadn't seen the film myself, unaware it touched on social networking, but Arrington writes that MySpace takes up a solid five minutes of the movie.

The treatment is brutal. Early in the clip, MySpace co-founder Tom Anderson asks Sandler if he actually uses the product. The star's reply: "No, no no. I fuck girls, Tom. I don't have time for that." When he goes on stage, the comic greets the MySpace crowd as "nerds" and then trashes their users: "They say the more friends you have on MySpace the less friends you have in real life." .

Sure, MySpace's competitors are insulted, too. But companies like Silicon Valley-based Facebook are fighting hard to avoid Hollywood; Facebook trashed Ben Mezrich's book about the company, The Accidental Billionaires, and by extension the Aaron Sorkin movie based on that book, calling it inaccurate.

But MySpace is based in Beverly Hills, close to Hollywood, and seems to have a better handle on the big picture: Being on the silver screen, in any context, means you're culturally relevant. Why not embrace the opportunity to make your virtual community a lot more real? (Via TechCrunch.)

From the "Social Marker" blog post:

When I visit San Francisco I am always surprised how often the name of my friend, Robert Scoble comes up in random conversation, unprompted by myself. Why is that? Why is he so well known? Is his blog REALLY that good? Is he REALLY that smart and interesting?

Well, I could give a whole stack of reasons to explain why I think Robert's success is well-deserved. But one major reason that his blog's traffic is so high, and his name so well-known, is that his personal brand has somehow managed to become a Social Marker inside the Silicon Valley ecosystem. The same could also be said for Mike Arrington, Loic Le Meur or Mark Zuckerberg. Dropping their names into random conversations allows people to quickly and efficiently contextualize themselves.[Thanks to @scobleizer and @arrington etc.]