Also: why Windows 8 sales are so darned slow; standing desks in the workplace.
McAfee founder John McAfee.
McAfee comes out of hiding to talk about life on the run [CNN]
McAfee is so fearful, he says, that he carries up to a dozen disposable cell phones at one time. He estimates he has gone through 200 since he fled more than three weeks ago.
In fact, he only agreed to an interview with CNN after a number of conversations that involved middle men, telephone calls with ever changing numbers and, finally, a cloak and dagger meeting complete with a secret phrase and response.
R.I.P. frothy times, a return to normalcy [TECHCRUNCH]
What’s happening is more like a Series A, B, C and D Crunch. As Dow Jones reported last week, VC consumer investment spend is down 42 percent in the first three quarters of this year versus last year. And while much of that 2011 capital was put into outlying behemoths like Groupon, Twitter and Facebook, we’re hearing whispers that some top VC firms are indeed slowing down on their number of investments in the past 3-4 months. This is happening across all tiers, with emphasis on A and late-stage, and even sectors, with consumer web obviously taking the biggest hit.
Stand-up desks gaining favor in the workplace [THE NEW YORK TIMES]
The research comes more from observing the health results of people’s behavior than from discovering the biological and genetic triggers that may be associated with extended sitting. Still, scientists have determined that after an hour or more of sitting, the production of enzymes that burn fat in the body declines by as much as 90 percent. Extended sitting, they add, slows the body’s metabolism of glucose and lowers the levels of good (HDL) cholesterol in the blood. Those are risk factors toward developing heart disease and Type 2 diabetes.
Don’t blame us for Windows 8’s slow sales, PC makers say [WIRED]
The general consensus among companies Wired spoke to is Windows 8 device sales are meeting, or almost meeting, projected sales. That’s not to say Windows 8 is selling superbly. On the contrary, one OEM said it had lower expectations for Windown 8 than previous launches simply because the field is so much more crowded. There are many more services and platforms, an underdeveloped supply chain for touch components and slow consumer education stemming to scattered branding and PR.
Lessons from the Groupon disaster: Maybe international can wait [PANDODAILY]
But just because you can do something, doesn’t mean you should. Unless your business has very strong network effects, the fear of a local clone being first to market and gaining a foothold that can’t be broken later shouldn’t outweigh every other problem a startup CEO faces. The once fever-pitched fear of an attack by the Samwer Brothers has chilled now that they’ve closed their Fab clone and their Airbnb attempt has mostly failed. Those thousands of Groupon clones in China are now gone or on the ropes as well. It’s easy to argue, in hindsight, Groupon should have focused on the US longer. As it stands, they’re left with a bunch of mediocre businesses here and overseas.
Facebook makes a huge data grab by aggressively promoting photo sync [TECHCRUNCH]
The rollout of Photo Sync that started yesterday is perhaps the biggest thing to happen to Facebook photos beyond friend tagging and manual mobile uploads. Friend tagging jumpstarted Facebook’s growth with a jolt of narcissism over a half decade ago. If someone tagged you in a photo, you likely checked it out the second you got the notification, along with all the other photos in the album. Later it began offering photo sharing from mobile, but its biggest problem remained the arduous upload process.
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