Internet Identity Syste...

With the rise of startups building on top of the collaborative consumption model – that is, where users are buying from and selling directly to other users – there’s a growing need for some sort of system to help verify user identities. Although there are others quietly working in this space, today the U.K.-based startup Miicard , which is building an identity verification service, has moved a step ahead. The company has just completed its second seed funding round, raising $2.5 million from New Wave Ventures, IQ Capital and Par Equity. MiiCard had previously raised $.75 million back in September, also from IQ and Par Equity. The company says it aims to use the additional funding to move into the U.S. market. Currently, users register their identities with MiiCard’s service by providing access to a bank account – a requirement which still makes some nervous. Are banking details safe in the hands of an early-stage startup, you may ask? MiiCard says that it uses banking info to verify, but focuses on validating a user as a unique individual, verifying through a link to their online account. That proves they actually have access to that online account, and aren’t just providing banking account details which could be stolen. To be clear, MiiCard  doesn’t ask for your bank account number, and oddly enough, that’s something that seems to worry some folks, even though it’s info that many people and companies would know. (Hint: it’s on your checks…Besides, aren’t those the same people who are scared to shop online, but have no problem handing their credit card over to a starving college student working three shifts at their local diner to pay their bills?) Oh, and MiiCard’s service is also VeriSign Trusted and TRUSTe certified, if that makes you feel better about the security precautions in place. And it runs its tech on top of Yodlee , which powers solutions for seven of the top ten banks. (OK, that helps). Once registered, you can begin attaching other accounts to your profile, like your social networking accounts, for example. You can then use your MiiCard where you see fit – on your eBay shop, perhaps, or your Craigslist posting. To date, no banks have yet signed up in partnership with the system, but the company says it’s in negotiations with several entities. The system currently works in North America, the U.K., South Africa, India, Australia, and New Zealand. Last week, MiiCard launched the first third-party Twitter validation system , which allows anyone – not just celebs and public figures who get special attention from Twitter – to verify their account. After verification, the idea is that you could place the link to your MiiCard in Twitter’s profile section. Of course, the problem the startup now has to overcome are all the people going WTF is a MiiCard? Maybe the additional funding will help. MiiCard was founded in September 2011 by Canadian entrepreneur James Varga, who previously worked with Centrica Business Services, Thomas Cook and Sky Sports.

The Echo Nest CEO On Wh...

The Echo Nest is possibly the hottest music data company around right now. They’ve signed deals with Nokia, EMI, Clear Channel, Spotify , and most recently, Vevo . So chances are if you enjoy music, The Echo Nest has something to do with what songs you’re recommended. Knowing this, I couldn’t resist sitting down with CEO Jim Lucchese to chat out what the music industry will look like in the next couple years, and how The Echo Nest may shape it. Lucchese believes that the songs you listen to say something about your identity, and that music services have a huge problem ahead of them in the form of millions of listeners and millions of digital music titles. Being the middle man between such huge pools of information is nearly impossible without a deep understanding of the music itself. But Lucchese believes that the real shift will come by way of understanding the listener, too. We’re getting to a point now where music can be analyzed and categorized in a number of different ways, but little is known about why someone would enjoy Nicki Minaj and Florence + The Machine at the same time. That’s what The Echo Nest is trying to figure out, and it would seem that the company is doing so ahead of the rest of the industry.

Dell Relaunches Softwar...

Dell has been operating IT community AppDeploy since it acquired the platform’s owner Kace Networks in 2010. The site itself has been operating for 13 years, and receives around 450,000 monthly visitors per month says Dell, but growth has stalled. And Dell hadn’t invested much into the site. Today, the company is completely revamping AppDeploy and relaunching the community as ITNinja , a more social, Q&A-focused product-agnostic resource for front line IT administrators. AppDeploy.com, which was the brainchild of Bob Kelly, was previously a forum-focused community knowledge base that was updated by IT professionals around how to deploy and automate software applications. While the community will continue to revolve around the sharing information and answers around critical IT decisions and support, the new site ITNinja is focuses more on engagement, reputation and social interactions. Despite the fact that visitors to AppDeploy aren’t growing Dell says that an online survey of IT professionals sponsored by KACE in February 2012 revealed 80 percent of IT professionals engage in online communities with 70 percent of them visiting several times a week. And 95 percent of front-line professionals say they save time and do their job more efficiently by using these same online communities. ITNinja focuses on software topics such as application deployment techniques, configuration settings, and management solutions. Users will be able to leverage the community to find answers and best practices on a range of these complex issues. The new platform features a Q&A system (as opposed to a forum like interface), rich content pages, personalized activity feeds, and a reputation management system to encourage use. Dell has also added a tagging system to support better navigation between topics. In particular, the activity feed highlighting users’ contributions and providing a customized view of all software, topics, contributors and blogs that they follow to keep them up-to-date on the content they care about most. The reputation management system uses gamification elements to reward users with points and prizes for their contributions (past and present). Points determine one’s “belt” level which is attached to their identity on the site. Dell KACE customers will also be able to access the same information directly through the interface of their KACE Systems Management Appliance Console offering users a quick reference for common system administration tasks.

Montblanc Takes Google ...

Google has been going to great lengths to keep advertisers who sell counterfeit goods online out of its AdWords program , but as far as Montblanc , the Germany-based maker of ‘writing instruments’, watches, jewelry and whatnot, is concerned, they ought to be doing more. Montblanc-Simplo GmbH, as the holding is called, is taking Google to court in an effort to obtain the identity of a certain – or more – persistent counterfeit goods seller(s). TechCrunch has obtained the court documents, which make for an interesting read. Montblanc says it has received numerous complaints from customers who’ve been misled by keyword ads that appeared on Google.co.uk. According to the complaint, many were tricked into purchasing counterfeit Montblanc products from websites that were specifically designed to look like official Montblanc communication channels. The luxury goods company subsequently turned to Google UK in an effort to identify the advertisers, who were bidding on keywords like ‘montblanc pens’, but according to the complaint, the search giant’s UK office has consistently said that they simply don’t have access to that kind of information, directing Montblanc instead to the U.S. mothership. From the court docs: Montblanc has attempted to determine the identity of the Advertisers through numerous alternative means, with no success. Because the identity of the Advertisers is in the exclusive possession of Google, and Montblanc has no other source from which to obtain the requested information, Montblanc has no choice but to file this Complaint in Equity for a Bill of Discovery in order to enforce its trademark rights. Once Montblanc has identified the Advertisers through this Bill of Discovery against Google, it intends to file a lawsuit to enforce its trademark rights against the identified Advertisers. Without the requested information, however, Montblanc does not know who the Advertisers are and therefore does not know whom it needs to sue to enforce its trademark rights. As Montblanc points out in its complaint, it has been using the ‘montblanc’ mark for a wide range of products since its founding in 1906, making it one of the world’s well-known trademarks. Understandably, the company asserts that the sale of counterfeit goods, bearing the ‘montblanc’ trademarks, has caused it “significant reputational and financial harm”. For the record, Montblanc acknowledges that Google UK has been responsive to its complaints in discussions dating back to September 2011, and that the search company repeatedly told them that they “removed the offending ads and taking action against the Advertisers”. The only problem is that they keep coming back, and Montblanc is getting desperate. From an earlier Google blog post , describing the game of cat and mouse: AdWords is just a conduit between advertisers and consumers and we can’t know whether any particular item out of the millions advertised is counterfeit or not. Of course, we do more than simply respond to brand owners’ removal requests. We use their feedback to help us tune a set of sophisticated automated tools, which analyse thousands of signals along every step of the advertising process and help prevent bad ads from ever seeing the light of day. We devote significant engineering and machine resources in order to prevent violations of ads policies, including counterfeiting. In fact, we invested over $60 million last year alone, and, in the last 6 months of 2010, more than 95% of accounts removed for counterfeits came down based on our own detection efforts. No system is perfect, but brand owner feedback has helped us improve over time – as our system gets more data about ads it has misclassified before, it gets better at counteracting new ways that bad guys try to cloak their behaviour. While our systems get better over time, counterfeiting remains a complex challenge, and we keep investing in anti-counterfeiting measures. After all, a Google user duped by a fake is far less likely to click on another Google ad in the future. Ads for counterfeits aren’t just bad for the real brand holder – they’re bad for users who can end up unknowingly buying sub-standard products, and they’re bad for Google too. This makes sense; Google has nothing to gain from counterfeit advertisers in the long term. In Montblanc’s view, however, Google should be more actively helping them determine the identity of counterfeit advertisers by handing over the contact and financial details they store – due to the nature of the AdWords program – so that the company can name them as defendants in litigation. We’ll be following this case with eagle eyes. (Photo courtesy of Luigi Crespo Photography on Flickr )

Keen On… Walter Isaacso...

Who, exactly, was Steve Jobs? Walter Isaacson’s   Steve Jobs has sparked an intriguing debate about the identity of the real Jobs. According to The New Yorker’s Malcolm Gladwell, Isaacson’s biography proved that Jobs was a “tweaker” – somebody who took other people’s ideas and perfected them. But Apple watchers like Daring Fireball’s John Gruber strongly disagreed, arguing that Jobs was anything but a tweaker and taking Isaacson to task for not telling us what Jobs “actually did” and who he was. Who better to resolve this row than Isaacson himself, who came into our San Francisco TechCrunchTV studio yesterday to talk about his best-selling book and to answer his critics. No, Isaacson explained, Gladwell is wrong – Jobs wasn’t primarily a tweaker. But Gruber is wrong too, Isaacson added for good measure, in saying that Steve Jobs failed to explain who Steve Jobs really was. Steve was essentially “an artist”, Issaacson told me; that’s the key to unraveling Apple’s enigmatic icon. This is the first piece of a four part interview with Isaacson. Tomorrow, Jobs’ biographer explains to me Steve Jobs’ historic influence on our culture.