Q 8 Blog Reviews

Why Startups Need to Know When to Ignore Their GPS

cgseo — Tue, 27 Apr 2010 21:45:00 +0000

Have you ever found yourself ignoring the directions of your car’s GPS in order to get somewhere faster or more efficiently than it can calculate? Me too. Chances are when leaving point A, you plugged in the address of point B, and a route was calculated on how to get from one to the other. The problem is, things come up on the route from point A to point B that may cause you to divert from your path such as construction, road closures, traffic, side trips you need to make or neighborhoods you may choose to avoid driving straight through. Sponsor Startups make similar diversions, but the directions they are straying from are those of a product roadmap. Roadmaps are projected out for months, if not years, to give a company a strategy to most effectively grow their product. But just as there are reasons we ignore our GPS, there are reasons for startups to alter their roadmap. Spark Capital partner Bijan Sabet has worked with dozens of startups on project roadmaps, and recently he wrote about the importance of driving off course when necessary. Sabet recalls and example of this from his experience working with Boxee’s Avner Ronen . “I remember our first board [meeting], Avner shared a product plan for the next twelve months. Then, before the very next board meeting he shipped a bunch of new things that weren’t on the roadmap,” writes Sabet. “He would see opportunities in the market, listen to his users and then create and launch. And that approach paid off and continues to pay off.” If startups come up with a product roadmap and proceed to put their heads in the sand while they follow it unwaveringly, they will more than likely fail. So much is learned from testing products and receiving feedback that being unwilling to change the plan is a death sentence. This quality is so important for entrepreneurs that Sabet says he looks for it specifically when investigating possible investments. “I’m more interested in learning if the founders have the talent and desire to move, innovate and create quickly,” he says. The lesson here seems obvious, but there have been cases where startups are devoted to their roadmaps and revenue projects to a point where it affects the success of the company. Like some driving directions, there is no most optimal route for every startup to succeed, so the willingness to turn left when your GPS says right is an important decision to know how to make as an entreprneur. Photos by Flickr users Marcin Wichary and sporst . Discuss

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Why Startups Need to Know When to Ignore Their GPS

Angel-Backed Companies More Likely to Succeed, Says Harvard Study

cgseo — Tue, 27 Apr 2010 20:30:00 +0000

A new study published by professors at the Harvard Business School shows that angel-backed companies are more likely to succeed and show more growth than those funded by venture firms alone. Researched and written by William Kerr and Josh Lerner, the report found that companies with angel funding see between 30% and 50% higher growth figures in terms of website traffic, are more likely to survive for four years, and are also in a better position to receive further rounds of funding. Sponsor Angel investing itself has seen large growth over the last several months with the creation of various organizations, events, firms and legislation to spur it on. We’ve discussed the Open Angel Forum series of events, the creation of “Super Angel” firms , the curated Venture Hacks AngelList , as well as current legislation both helping and hurting angel investments. Angel investing has become more common, and as this report shows, this is largely due to the value and success it tends to breed. But why are angel investments the secret sauce for some companies? As the report points out, its the intangibles that angels bring to the table that could be playing a large role in company success. “Access to capital per se may not be the most important value-added that angel groups bring. Some of the ‘softer’ features, such as angels’ mentoring or business contacts, may help new ventures the most,” the report says. One of the other reasons that companies could tend to be more successful with angel funding is because of the human face placed on the investments. Angels are usually investing in companies at an early stage, and are investing their own capital in the company. Entrepreneurs may be more likely to work that extra bit harder when they know they are playing with the personal cash of an actual person, not the collected funds of an entire firm without a human name. The reputation of the angel could play a large role as well, both for the attitude of the people running the company, and for the audience they are looking to attract. Most angels tend to be successful entrepreneurs themselves, and thus are likely well known in the startup scene. The chance to sit and talk with these investors, let alone receiving funding from them, is likely a treat for most entrepreneurs, so they may be more likely to be more careful with their money. Additionally, when the public hears of a new startup that may not immediately interest them, the mention of particular angel investors can change their mind. As angel investors mature, they build their own personal portfolio of companies they noticed and provided early funds for, so when company XYZ launches with angel funding from an influential angel investor, that alone can attract people to the product. I know personally that I have looked into startups I otherwise would have largely ignored simply because an important angel investor was certain they’d be a hit. “Some of the ‘softer’ features, such as angels’ mentoring or business contacts, may help new ventures the most.” – Harvard Business School report Since some companies receive early financing rounds from angels, it is also logical to assume that when working with a limited amount of cash, the entrepreneurs may be more focused on doing more with less. A company that bursts out of the gate with large amounts of VC firm funding may spend it slightly more haphazardly, whereas a company running on limited angel funds may adopt leaner practices and take baby steps toward success and future funding. As the report mentioned above, the “softer” features provided by the angels are also a large help to the companies. In his email newsletter yesterday, angel investor Jason Calacanis discussed loyalty and how he goes to bat for the people who are loyal to him and his companies. He mentioned that whenever he invests in a company, he immediately becomes an evangelist for that company and it’s founders, doing all he can to promote it. This may not be the same for all angels, but when influential investors like Jason get behind your company, they do their best to make sure good things happen. I would be interested to see similar data from this report that compares companies with solely angel funding versus those with more traditional VC firm funding mixed in. The influence of angel investors is significant, but I would think the angels alone are not enough to create more successful businesses at a higher rate. But the lesson here is, if your startup has the opportunity to include some angel investors (especially at the early stages), it would seem like a wise decision to go ahead with. Photo by Flickr user Brooke Anderson . Discuss

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Angel-Backed Companies More Likely to Succeed, Says Harvard Study

Hugo Chávez to Make Terrorist Threats, er, Join Twitter

cgseo — Tue, 27 Apr 2010 04:10:00 +0000

After getting the short end of the Twitter stick, Venezuela president, Hugo Chávez, called it ” terrorism ,” ” a battle trench” and a “current of conspiracy. “The Internet cannot be free!” he proclaimed. Since he has taken six television channels he didn’t like off the air and imprisoned reporters , who knew what he would do? Well, it turns out he intends “to open his Twitter account soon to wage the battle online,” according to Diosdado Cabello, Venezuela’s chief telecommunications regulator. Sponsor With Venezuela’s once invincible-seeming oil-economy now in the toilet and his approval rating diving below 50% perhaps El Jefe feels he has no choice. Since mass media in Venezuela is under constant threat from its strongman head of state, his opponents and critics have monopolized the microblogging platform and that platform is becoming popular. Reuters outlined its recent growth. “The microblogging site has seen an explosive rise in usage in Venezuela to more than 200,000 active accounts. With growth of over 1,000 percent in 2009, Venezuela now has one of the highest rates per capita of Twitter users in Latin America.” The moment you shut people up, you no longer speak for them. This has started to dawn on some of Chávez’s once-vocal partisans. It may take longer for those whose solidarity is limited to their Che t-shirts. May I suggest you Sharpie #FreeVenezuela across yours? Top photo from Open Democracy Bottom photo by Corey Harmon Discuss

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Hugo Chávez to Make Terrorist Threats, er, Join Twitter

Akamai’s State of the Internet Report

cgseo — Tue, 27 Apr 2010 03:00:00 +0000

Digital platform company Akamai has released its latest State of the Internet Report . The report covers the last quarter of 2009. Among the findings are the persistence of Russia as the top location for attack traffic and of South Korea for speed of web connections.The number of unique ports attacked has increased by almost three times what it was in Q3. Sponsor The single oddest statement in the report is Akamai’s contention that “slightly more than 465 million unique IP addresses, from 234 countries, connected to the Akamai network- 4.7% more than in the third quarter of 2009, and 16% more than in the same quarter a year ago.” Given that most countries in the world recognize between 194 and 196 countries, it is difficult to understand how even the most liberal definition of country could result in Akamai’s total. Here are a list of important and interesting trends that Akamai has identified in Q4. Attacks Akamai observed attack traffic originating from 198 unique countries around the world. Russia remained the top attack traffic source, accounting for 13% of observed attack traffic in total. The United States, China and Brazil took second and third and fourth place for a total of 20%. Akamai observed attack traffic targeted at more than 10,000 unique ports. Users Akamai observed a 4.7% increase (from the third quarter of 2009) globally in the number of unique IP addresses connecting to Akamai’s network. Ending 2009 at 465 million unique IPs. The metric grew 16% from the end of 2008, and nearly 54% from the end of 2007. The United States and China together contribute 40% of unique IP addresses in the world. The Scandinavian countries have the highest number of IPs per person. In the U.S. it was New Jersey that took that honor. There are 32 countries with fewer than 1,000 unique IP addresses. Speed South Korea retained its lead as having the most high broadband (over 5 Mbps) and the highest average speed (12 Mbps). In the U.S., the state of Delaware retained its lead, growing to 72% of connections to Akamai occurring at 5 Mbps or greater. Delaware also maintained the highest average connection speed in the United States, increasing to 7.6 Mbps. Over 40 of the mobile providers surveyed had average speeds of over 1 Mbps. Two out of three U.S. mobile providers lost speed for the second quarter in a row. Discuss

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Akamai’s State of the Internet Report

Startups and the Lure of the (Hyper)Local

cgseo — Tue, 27 Apr 2010 02:00:00 +0000

For a long time, technology has been touted as a force that can help us connect globally. But the urge to stay connected locally remains. And the same technological innovations that have facilitated global commerce and communication now seem to be turned towards helping us (re)connect to our neighborhoods, communities and local businesses. As buzz around location-based networks and services grows, “the local” is poised to be a place that’s increasingly the emphasis for innovation and entrepreneurship. Sponsor People want to know what’s going on locally. People want to shop locally. People want to network locally. And hyperlocal services make it easier to engage in and market to a local community. Technology need no longer be feared by local businesses as something that would drive their customers elsewhere – namely online. Although location-based social networks such as Foursquare and Gowalla have received significant attention as part of this trend, they are far from the only services. Hyperlocal search and news sites are two other services that have seen recent growth. Last week, Milo.com , a website that enables shoppers to research products online but then make their purchases locally, added products and real-time inventories for over 100 independent, mom-and-pop stores across the country. While Milo.com has served the “big box” stores for some time, this move to incorporate smaller retail outlets marks another way in which the local is starting to take advantage of online opportunities. “Smaller stores that once viewed technology as a threat, now see the benefit it has for reaching potential shoppers and attracting new customers into their actual brick and mortar locations,” says Jack Abraham, Milo.com founder and CEO. Abraham says that Milo.com helps local businesses address the classic problem of how to get new customers in the door, but offers the best of both worlds – that is both an online component for reading reviews and the assurance that if they drive to their local store, they’ll find the item in-stock, ready to “touch, feel, and buy.” The hyperlocal can offer both geographic and content granularity – the ability to focus on a very specific location and subject matter that might otherwise be too small to be served. By merging the local and the online, businesses can respond quickly to meet the needs of their customers. Startups have long used local communities as a testing ground for both marketing and business models before opting to expand. The increasing interest in the hyperlocal might make it more than just a launching point. What do you think of the potential for expansion of more hyperlocal startups? Discuss

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Lessons for Entrepreneurs from World of Warcraft

cgseo — Tue, 27 Apr 2010 01:00:00 +0000

When film critic Roger Ebert posted on his blog that “Video Games Can Never Be Art,” he seemed to incur the wrath of the gaming community, and the entry now has over 3,000 comments, many protesting Ebert’s claims. Ebert wonders why the designation of art or not-art matters to those who play video games: “Do they require validation? In defending their gaming against parents, spouses, children, partners, co-workers or other critics, do they want to be able to look up from the screen and explain, “I’m studying a great form of art?” Then let them say it, if it makes them happy.” Sponsor Here’s an argument to make gamers happy. According to John Seely Brown, former director of Xerox PARC , massive multiplayer online games demonstrate ways in which groups can manage information and maximize learning. At a recent lecture as part of Stanford University’s Entrepreneurial Thought Leaders series, Brown said that World of Warcraft guilds can serve as models for entrepreneurs in understanding how to succeed in a knowledge-based economy. Brown urges entrepreneurs to look at WoW for ideas on how to boost information management and performance feedback. Brown points to the guild, the game’s primary organizational structure, as the way you “get things done in World of Warcraft.” Noting that over 12,000 ideas are posted to the official World of Warcraft forums daily, Brown points to the necessity of having a guild in order to process this information. “If your guild is going to be successful,” says Brown, “you have to figure out how to get the members of your guild to process tens of thousands of new ideas.” The guild structure, Brown argues, allows for groups to crowdsource information and to test, filter and disseminate strategies. The most successful guilds also meticulously record and review their performances. “In terms of extreme performance,” says Brown, “I’ve never seen anything quite like it. World of Warcraft high-end guilds do after-action reviews on every high-end raid.” Brown praises the way in which WoW players have developed their own dashboards so they can constantly measure and adjust their own performance. Brown argues this vigilance around feedback helps WoW players learn exponentially. With over 12 million World of Warcraft subscribers, chances are WoW is an incubator for future entrepreneurs, whether or not the game is “art.” Discuss

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Lessons for Entrepreneurs from World of Warcraft

GetGlue Adds New Releases to Recommendations Made by Human & Machine

cgseo — Tue, 27 Apr 2010 00:15:28 +0000

It’s hard to keep up with all the newly released movies and music these days, but a lightweight social network with a whole lot of smarts under the hood says it can now offer you personalized recommendations of new releases that suit your very particular interests. GetGlue is a semantic web browser plug-in that has, for years, been smart enough to recognize when you’re looking at the same musical group across different websites, be that on Last.fm, MySpace or elsewhere. The service recently added a stream of recommendations of music, movies, books, magazines, wikipedia articles and other things you might like. How can it tell what you’ll like when something is brand new, though? Today the service has launched a “new releases” section, where human editors rush to classify brand-new media. Then the semantic robots can serve it up to the right users, still hot out of the oven. It’s pretty cool. Sponsor GetGlue founder Alex Iskold says he’s learned a lesson similar to what formerly automated tech news aggregator Techmeme has learned: algorithms and user generated content can take you a long way, but there comes a point when it’s good to hire some dedicated editors. The service asks you to like or unlike a wide variety of things. It then uses that feedback to build a taste profile to compare against things it finds put into its database and find the stuff it thinks you’ll like. That’s harder with new releases, though. “When something new is coming out, we don’t know what it’s like, so you need to have proffessionals tag it,” Iskold told us. “We have two editors on staff who look across the spectrum of new releases each week. They draw the similarities between things in a deep way – the tagging system we use will be unvieled later. We use really eclectic tags to characterize what kind of zombie or vampire movie something is. We also use tags brought in from other systems and our users find cool new things really fast.” The end result is a nicely displayed stream of big icons for personally recommended newly released movies, music and books. You think you’re hip to your scene now? Wait until you’ve got a network of contacts, a semantic robot and real human editors all working together to bring you the freshest content in your weird little niche. To be honest, I’ve been testing it out today by switching from new album recommendations on Glue over to Apple’s Lala.com , where it’s easy to listen to full albums once for free. That’s not the way Glue wants you to use it, but that’s the way I like to use it so far. The Down Side It’s an incredible system, when it works. GetGlue knows though that there are some challenges in this kind of game though. First, it’s not easy to present this kind of flow of data to users without either overwhelming them or boring them. Many of GetGlue’s latest changes are focused on making the user experience more pleasant: bigger images, collapsed bundles of shared items, etc. Can the service find a balance between giving you strong-enough recommendations on one hand and regularly offering up new recommendations on the other? In past versions of the product, I’ve received too few recommendations to keep me coming back. Hopefully new releases will scratch that itch. Iskold also says that after “liking” only 15 musical artists, I’m actually much less active than most of the 400,000 registered users of the service. Personally, I’m more drawn to the Wikipedia recommendations on GetGlue than anything else. The new releases in music might be roughly in the same sub-genres I usually listen to, but that doesn’t mean they are any good. Finally, all this “liking” obviously begs the Facebook question. Writing as an ostensible Facebook competitor about that giant network’s radical innovations unveiled last week, Iskold wrote the following in a widely-read article here at ReadWriteWeb about Facebook’s Open Graph: “Time will tell where we land, but my gut is that positive things will come out of this. If nothing else, let’s give Facebook credit for innovation and re-imagination the Web.” Today he emphasized in speaking with me that Facebook is new to what it’s just begun to do, but his company has been doing it for years. There’s no guarantee that Facebook will get it right, he said. It’s hard to say for sure that GetGlue has got it right, either. But as a work in progress, it’s pretty darned good and today’s new additions are very interesting. Discuss

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GetGlue Adds New Releases to Recommendations Made by Human & Machine

Learning From Failure: One Startup’s Story of What Went Wrong

cgseo — Mon, 26 Apr 2010 23:05:00 +0000

Devver , maker of developer coding tools and TechStars 2008 graduate, announced last Monday that it would be shutting down after being active for nearly two years. News of a startup closing up shop is never a fun thing to hear about, but fortunately many lessons can be gleaned from the experiences of the entrepreneurs. Today, co-founder Ben Brinckerhoff provided just such lessons with an insightful blog on the Devver journey and why he and co-founder Dan Mayer are choosing to move on. Sponsor An unfortunate truth about startup culture is that a lot of the most valuable lessons are learned when entrepreneurs fail to heed them. Some notice their mistakes early on and can pivot their products and business toward a more successful future, but sometimes they don’t realize their mistakes until its too late and there is nothing that can be done. This was the case with Brinckerhoff, Mayer and their startup, Devver, which they say failed to focus enough on one of the most important parts of building a startup: customer development. As Brinckerhoff points out in Monday’s blog post, the company assumed they had found their minimum viable product (MVP), and as a result focused more on product development than listening to customers’ needs. “You can teach a hacker business, but you can’t make him or her get excited about it, which means it may not get the time or attention it deserves.” – Ben Brinckerhoff “Our mistake at that point was to go ‘heads down’ and focus on building the accelerator while minimizing our contact with users and customers (after all, we knew how great it was and time spent talking to customers was time we could be hacking!),” writes Brinckerhoff. “We should have [been] asking, ‘Is there an even simpler version of this product that we can deliver sooner to learn more about pricing, market size, and technical challenges?’.” Both Brinckerhoff and his co-founder are “technical founders,” which means their specialities are on the development side, not the business side. The only other person the pair hired to help out, a fellow software developer, also fits into the technical side of the startup. Brinckerhoff says this may have been one of the hurdles that led to the downfall of the company. “Looking back, it would have been to our advantage to have a third founder who really loved the business aspect of running a startup,” writes Brinckerhoff. “Having solely technical founders is non-optimal. You can teach a hacker business, but you can’t make him or her get excited about it, which means it may not get the time or attention it deserves.” Brinckerhoff also adds that having a split team located in different states contributed to the company’s struggles, but it seems to me it was more of a hassle than a reason for failure. Split teams are actually growing in popularity and probability for success, as we discussed earlier in the year with companies like Blank Label and chocri . Devver undoubtedly had issues with its split setup, but its likely that it didn’t contribute toward its closing as significantly as the other errors. Regardless of this issue, its clear that the Devver team learned and shared some valuable lessons about the importance of customer development. As Steve Blank noted during his presentation at last week’s Startup Lessons Learned conference, startups shouldn’t be too eager to product management before customer development. Devver may have jumped the gun a bit in terms of over developing their product, so learn from their mistake and remember to develop your customers before throwing the kitchen sink at them. Discuss

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Learning From Failure: One Startup’s Story of What Went Wrong

Twitter, DMCA Take-downs & the Prior Restraint of First Amendment Speech

cgseo — Mon, 26 Apr 2010 21:58:00 +0000

Last week, the big news in DMCA takedowns was the sweeping removal of Hitler parody videos . Earlier this year, it was Google suddenly wiping out six separate music blogs . Today, it’s the removal of a tweet . While this might not seem like a big deal on the surface, it leads to some much bigger questions about free speech, what content should fall under a proper DMCA take-down and whether or not the DMCA is a legal method of applying censorship by any content owner. Sponsor Here’s the story as told by TechDirt: The story involves a music blogger named JP, who runs the appropriately named JP’s blog . Not surprisingly, JP also has a Twitter account , where he mostly seems to post links to his blog posts. One such post was about the leak of the new album by The National. That post includes a link to Amazon where people can purchase the new album… and also a link to a download of one song (in MP3 format) from the album. According to JP’s blog post on the subject, Twitter sent him a message last Thursday “in response to a DMCA take-down notice”. The email, he writes, read as follows: jp917, Apr 22 03:10 pm (PDT): Hello, The following material has been removed from your account in response to a DMCA take-down notice: Tweet: http://twitter.com/jp917/statuses/12499491144 – New Post: Leaked: The National – High Violet http://jpsblog.net/2010/04/20/leaked-the-national-high-violet/ JP denies posting any link to the leaked album in his tweeted blog post, saying that he will not bother filing a counterclaim to the take-down. He also links to an article in Plagiarism Today from a year ago that alleges that Twitter’s handling of DMCA take-downs and counterclaims is problematic and that “there is clearly an organization issue here and that’s leading to confusion.” While last weeks’ take-downs of parody videos may have been “overbroad take-downs of legal content” , as the Electronic Frontier Foundation asserted, this sort take-down may go an extra step, beyond constitutionally protected First Amendment speech. With the YouTube take-downs, at least there was copyrighted content present, although it may have been used according to the law in the end. In this case, according to JP, there was neither pirated content nor a link to any DMCA-violating content. While TechDirt argues that “specifically, nothing in the tweet itself is infringing — which means that the DMCA take-down for the tweet is bogus, and a violation of the DMCA itself”, we spoke with David Sohn, senior policy council with the Center for Democracy & Technology , who said that the question might not be so cut and dry. Section 5.12D of the DMCA relates to cases involving “information location tools” and “links”. “One possibility here is that Twitter has gotten a take-down notice that might not stand up as a totally valid take-down notice,” said Sohn. On Sohn’s advice, we asked Wendy Seltzer, founder of ChillingEffects.org , what this all meant and she explained that the burden of proof lies with the person creating the content and not the platform. All the platform, in this case Twitter, needs to know is that the complaint me be valid and that, by removing the offending content, they cover themselves legally in the eyes of the DMCA. Whether or not section 5.12 D of the DMCA actually applies doesn’t really matter. The introduction to her recent paper, “Free Speech Unmoored in Copyright’s Safe Harbor: Chilling Effects of the DMCA on the First Amendment” (.pdf), speaks clearly to the problem we saw when first reading this story: Each week, more blog posts are redacted, more videos deleted, and more web pages removed from Internet search results based on private claims of copyright infringement. Under the “safe harbors” of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA), Internet service providers are encouraged to respond to copyright complaints with content takedowns, assuring their immunity from liability while diminishing the rights of their subscribers and users. Paradoxically, the law’s shield for service providers becomes a sword against the public who depend upon these providers as platforms for speech. The problem with the current format of the DMCA, especially in the case of something like a communication platform such as Twitter, is that a DMCA take-down notice becomes an extremely effective means of silencing information for a legally mandated period of 10 days. In essence, it provides those who wish to silence a voice a quick and legal means of enacting what is called a ” prior restraint “, something clearly prohibited in First Amendment law. “When non-infringing speech is taken down, not only does its poster lose an opportunity to reach an audience, the public loses the benefit of hearing that lawful speech in the marketplace of ideas,” writes Seltzer in the paper. Twitter offered this response: “Twitter regularly receives DMCA takedown notices. We strive to balance the interests of our users and copyright holders by reviewing each notice. After determining whether the notice is compliant with the law, we also consider other factors such as whether the notice is abusive to our users, or fails to take fair use into consideration. You can read more about our DMCA process here: http://help.twitter.com/entries/15795-copyright-and-dmca-policy “We are always working to improve our transparency. Users are notified immediately when content has been removed from their account. In this situation, we responded to a request to remove a Tweet containing a link to download content from an unreleased album. After reexamining our decision, we believe this was the correct first step. If the affected user believes we have made a mistake or that the notice is in error, the appropriate thing for the user to do is file a counter-claim. “We believe that the reasoning of the DMCA claim and its origin should be transparent to both the affected user and other interested parties. We are working on further steps to improve access to this information.” So, our next logical question here is: Since this post includes the email from Twitter, which includes that original link to a blog post that supposedly linked to infringing content, can it too be removed according to the guidelines of the DMCA? Discuss

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Twitter, DMCA Take-downs & the Prior Restraint of First Amendment Speech

Google Street View Now Highlights Local Businesses

cgseo — Mon, 26 Apr 2010 18:04:35 +0000

Google just announced a nice addition to its Street View feature in Google Maps. Starting today, you will be able to see the names of local businesses as you move through a town in Street View. A click on one of these names will bring up the standard Google Maps business listing with the name of the business, hours, phone number, address and reviews. According to Google, these new “local business annotation” in Street View are the first step in the company’s plans to enhance the discoverability of content in Street View. Sponsor As Stephane Lafon, one of the software engineers on Google’s Street View team points out, Street View will currently only highlight the top listings for the immediate area around your current position in Street View. The company plans to extend this coverage with more listing soon. Google also plans to incorporate transit location in this feature. Bonus Tip: Street View in 3D Earlier this month, we noticed that Google still offered the 3D version of Street View it announced on April Fool’s day. To see this, just right-click on any Street View image and select “3D mode on.” Google is clearly working hard on highlighting local businesses across its properties. Google Maps already shows the names of local businesses once you zoom in close enough and last week, Google announced Google Places , a new version of its Local Business Center, which allows local retailers and restaurants to claim and update their own listings. In addition, Google is also taking pictures of the in and outside of local businesses around the U.S. Discuss

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Google Street View Now Highlights Local Businesses