The May Report: 7/29/2011: Chris “Barter” Sweis to finally get his hands on real money: JunoWallet receives a soft Letter of Intent; and it is hard to believe that we are at the end of July already…

Editor and publisher: Ron May, ron@themayreport.com, ronaldmay@aol.com, www.themayreport.com , 773-525-3944.

If you missed an article, go here: www.tmronline.com/A55951/tmrarticles.nsf/vwFullNewsletter
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IPTComm 2011 * Registration * Sponsorship * Program information

Join us for IPTComm 2011 – the only international academic conference solely devoted to IP telecommunications research

WHEN: August 1-2, 2011

WHERE: Illinois Institute of Technology, Chicago

EARLY REGISTRATION: Until July 1 – $300

REGULAR REGISTRATION: After July 1 – $400

WEB: www.iptcomm.org

PROGRAM:

The program includes keynote talks, invited talks and presentations of peer-reviewed papers published in-cooperation with the ACM. This is complemented by industry-focused talks and demonstrations. Highlights of the program are listed below. For more detail, and to register for the conference and hotels, please visit our web site at www.iptcomm.org . The technical program will be complemented by social events at some of Chicago’s great restaurants and venues. www.iptcomm.org/program/social/index.html

KEYNOTES:

Harald Alvestrand of Google: Real-time Web: Multimedia from specialty item to commonplace component

Scott Bradner of Harvard University: The evolution of IP from Has-been to Is-all

INVITED TALKS:

Brian Rosen, Neustar: Next Generation 911

Mohammad Shahidehpour, IIT: Smart Grid

Vijay Gurbani, Alcatel-Lucent: SIP Common Log Format

Bruce Lowekamp, Skype: Reflections on P2P Telecommunications

TECHNICAL PROGRAM:

Please see our web site at: www.iptcomm.org

SPONSORSHIP:

IPTComm attracts an international list of participants involved in cutting edge IP telecommunications research. It offers sponsorship opportunities for your company, organization or institute at gold (US$2000), silver (US$1000) and bronze (US$500) levels. For more information about sponsorship opportunities please contact admin@iptcomm.org. We look forward to seeing you at IPTCommn 2011.

QUESTIONS:

Visit www.iptcomm.org

Carol Davids, Illinois Institute of Technology

IPTComm 2011 Conference Co-Chair

Email: chairs@iptcomm.org
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TABLE OF CONTENTS

The Scoop section:

– Briefly noted, by Ron May
– Dawn Geras: FIRST DERIVATIVE LUNCH AUCTION. FOUR DAYS LEFT TO BID
– From Tech Cocktail’s newsletter: ThinkNear Raises $1.6M to Help Businesses Offer Dynamic, Location-Based Deals
– Adam Koopersmith: Code Mountain won
– Brendan Tripp: Saw Ron at MCA event on the 10,000 year clock
– Crain’s: Groupon’s pre-IPO accounting under SEC microscope: report, by John Pletz
– Joe Nedumgottil: Answers Ron’s question about Android voice commands
– Is my buddy Phil Tadros on drugs or bouncing off walls?
– Ashish Patwa, CEO of Tronton
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The Scoop section:
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Briefly noted, by Ron May

* Look, I have a lot of stuff to work on — too much!

I’ve been working on a lot of it already and need to finish it up. And it all dates back to June 1st and the Executives’ Club followed by Connected World on June 15th, Bootstrappers’ Breakfast, Chicago Now, Long Now longnow.org/clock/, and tons of additional stuff. If I just lock myself in the room and work all weekend, I can have it all for you by Monday.
.
Correction: My table of contents header
– Code Maintain won the S.P.A.R.K competition Wednesday night
in the last report was wrong. It is Code Mountain, not Maintain. .

* To new readers of TMR, the name Chris Sweis is utterly meaningless. Back in the day when he was a potential paramour for other forgotten names like Darcy Evon or Natalie Rucker, he was the quintessential guest that wouldn’t leave the party, the phone call you didn’t want to answer, or the person you didn’t want to bump into because he invariably wanted to sell you something and it typically involved a murky barter transaction. Whether or not his first company, iBart, was really legit or met with IRS approval, or resulted in anything beyond cigars or hotel rooms, one thing is for certain: Chris never stopped tying to get your attention. His decade of tenacity fueled by god knows what kind of a past may have paid off if we are to believe anything that comes out of his mouth today as much as we did or did not believe anything that came out of his mouth ten years ago. Upon threat of death, TMR is sworn not to mention the news that Sweis obviously wanted mentioned — or he would not have called me.

Sweis (847-372-6348 and chris@junowallet.com ) called me Thursday right before I left for dialysis and I was feeling like crap all day. But I called him back Friday morning and we talked a half hour. Naturally he asked me to hold off and not print anything for at least a week and I told him I am not agreeing to anything. My view is that the deal will happen or it won’t and this report can only add interest to his firm.

Sweis was approached by a mid-level M&A firm in New York City. It is not Goldman Sachs, but it is in the second tier of M&A firms. Chris got the call and flew to NYC to meet with them.

That firm is representing several firms that are looking to make acquisitions in the mobile payment space and the acquiring firm(s) want to be a leader in that space. Although Chris would not say who the buyer is — and technically, he’s not supposed to know — he thinks he knows who it is and it is a big software firm in California.

Is it conceivable that Chris Sweis, the man from iBart, and the character that he is, could finally have his ship coming in? I can just visualize Darcy right now — who probably hated Sweis — reading this and saying to herself something like “Yikes — and ohhhh my god!”

Sweis says that Juno Wallet www.junowallet.com/ has done $600K in revenue in the last year. Put that number into the Sweis translator and you get about $200K. They have three employees full-time and about thirty contractors. Sweis prefers contractors — less mucking around, he says. Sweis is the CEO and founder and the firm is HQ’d in San Francisco.

Yesterday, Juno got a soft LOI, Letter of Intent. That means the M&A firm has an interested party and while there is no offer or deal yet, and no price has been floated, it allows them to proceed with due diligence.

The key to the value of Juno Wallet is the patents and one of the three patents they have applied for in particular. The patent firm is Cooley & Associates out of California and the patent with the most value is what Sweis called “the all-in-one solution.”

Sweis is not a coder, but he says that he was the architect of the software. The server side is written in PhP and the application side is written in C++ for the iOS side (iPhone) and in Java for the Android side.
Juno’s solution has some key advantages, Chris told me. For one, it requires no hardware or software. Now I am not vouching for the validity of Sweis’ comments about Groupon but he did tell me that for Groupon, you need an iPad or some other device on the vendor side. The same goes for any POS system. I did not follow that since his software also works from a phone. He stressed that it is a much simpler process for Juno. I called Chris back because I was confused. First of all, the name Groupon did not come up just by accident or because it’s on the tip of everyone’s tongue these days. Juno Wallet is in the gift card business.

What makes Juno’s system better than competitors is that they all require hardware, either a QR code reader or a bar code reader or an NFC chip and Juno requires no hardware on the part of the vendor. The architecture that Juno uses is very similar to PayPal for the authorization and the receipt. The retailer must be signed up with Juno of course, but beyond that, everything is done with the customer’s phone and one punch of the button, Sweis says.
.
This is a somewhat separate issue, but Chris also noted that there are fraud problems with groupons. People can copy the groupon and give it to their friends. This issue is still above my pay grade so I apologize for not understanding how that works. He claims that Juno’s system is fraud and tamper proof.

Getting patents takes time as you know and sometimes years. I wish Chris well and he did say that “If you’re trying and you keep on trying, you can’t fail all the time.”

Are you happy now Chris? Let’s see if the WSJ or TheStreet.com calls you next.

+++++++++++++++++++++++
Subject: Re: Is this Cooley? www.cooley.com/about
Date: 7/29/2011 12:23:39 P.M. Central Daylight Time
From: chris@junowallet.com
To: RONALDMAY@aol.com
CC: ronaldmay@aol.com

Yes.

Make it a Great Day!

Chris Sweis
Chief Mobile Officer
JunoWallet

JunoWallet “Earn Gifts, Get Gifts, Give Gifts, Go Shop…”

Click this link to download JunoWallet today in the iTunes and Google stores. bit.ly/bSsWGi
Visit us on the web www.junowallet.com

Phone: 224-265-0799
Conference Line: Dial-in Number: (218) 862-1000
Access Code: 211832
Skype ID: chris.sweis

Please consider the environment before printing my email

[The information contained in this communication is confidential and may be legally privileged. It is intended solely for the use of the individual or entity to whom it is addressed and others authorized to receive it. If you are not the intended recipient, you are hereby notified that any disclosure, copying, distribution or taking of any action in reliance on the contents of this information is strictly prohibited.]

On Jul 29, 2011, at 12:17, RONALDMAY@aol.com wrote:
++++++++++++++++++

May again. Much more next time.
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Dawn Geras: FIRST DERIVATIVE LUNCH AUCTION. FOUR DAYS LEFT TO BID

Subject: Fwd: PRESS RELEASE: For Immediate Release
Date: 7/28/2011 1:56:50 P.M. Central Daylight Time
From: Dawn@SaveAbandonedBabies.org
To: RONALDMAY@aol.com
CC: dawn@saveabandonedbabies.org

Date: July 28, 2011
Contact: Dawn Geras, VP of Media Relations, National Safe Haven Alliance

Office: 312-440-0229

Cell: 312-519-3447

PRESS RELEASE: For Immediate Release

FIRST DERIVATIVE LUNCH AUCTION. FOUR DAYS LEFT TO BID.

Not all of us can afford lunch with Warren Buffett – so how about lunch with a world renowned, structured finance and derivatives expert that he invited to lunch? Janet Tavakoli will “power lunch” with the winning bidder at Michael’s in New York City on a mutually agreed upon date.

Janet Tavakoli is the famed author, consultant, and president of Tavakoli Structured Finance.

The opening bid was made by Andrew Tobias, author of The Only Investment Guide You’ll Ever Need. He blogs at “Money and Other Subjects”. He is also Treasurer of the Democratic National Committee. However, he has been out bid by an anonymous person. Now is your opportunity to become the winning bidder. Bidding will close in five days on August 1, 2011 at 7:30 pm PDT.

All of proceeds from auction will benefit the National Safe Haven Alliance (NSHA), a 501(c)(3). NSHA works with states to increase public awareness that an option exists to legally relinquish a newborn baby under the Safe Haven law. Infants that are illegally abandoned too often end up dead. Your bid will make a life or death difference for the youngest, most vulnerable of all, a newborn baby.

Additional information about the auction can be found at uBid: www.ubid.com/charity/

For additional information about the National Safe Haven Alliance, please visit: www.NationalSafeHavenAlliance.org
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From Tech Cocktail’s newsletter: ThinkNear Raises $1.6M to Help Businesses Offer Dynamic, Location-Based Deals

ThinkNear Raises $1.6M to Help Businesses Offer Dynamic, Location-Based Deals
1:00:51 PM Kira M. Newman
ThinkNear

Imagine a merchant’s paradise. Here, stores and restaurants extract as much money as possible from customers, rather than driving them away with exorbitant prices or settling for heavy discounts. Here, business is steady, rather than alternating between lulls and lines stretching around the block.

ThinkNear, which just raised $1.6 million in funding in a round led by IA Ventures, is working to make that dream a reality. Part of the 2011 TechStars New York class, ThinkNear allows merchants to offer deals to nearby customers that vary based on factors like weather, traffic, and local sporting events.

“Merchants leave a lot of money on the table,” says cofounder Eli Portnoy, a former product manager at Amazon. “We’re smart about when we help small businesses get customers.”

That smartness takes the form of an algorithm that tries to estimate how busy businesses are and adjusts time-sensitive deals accordingly. Merchants simply input their slow hours and the maximum discount they’re willing to offer, and coupons show up as ads and alerts in apps that have integrated with ThinkNear, such as Socialite. The service launched in New York City and is headed to Los Angeles next.

ThinkNear’s own pricing scheme shows just how confident they are: merchants can try it for free for three months, then pay $99 per month thereafter. And in contrast to some traditional advertising, ThinkNear sends daily data reports on coupon redemption, which they use to craft better ads and which merchants can use to modify their discount settings.

As far as competition, Portnoy says, ThinkNear is facing off with everyone helping merchants attract more customers. That includes daily deal sites, and especially Groupon, which recently partnered with Loopt to send instant-deal alerts to nearby subscribers. But merchants are ambivalent about daily deals, and ThinkNear could have an edge-merchants may save money by targeting fewer customers with smaller discounts, and they definitely save the time normally spent negotiating with deal sites. And while Qcue has brought dynamic pricing to sports and entertainment, few services seem to be available in other industries.

In location-based advertising and deals like ThinkNear, one big differentiator will be user experience. I, for one, wouldn’t want to be constantly receiving text messages for nearby deals from dozens of sites, but I wouldn’t mind ads appearing on my mobile browser. Winning companies will reach customers without barraging them-making the merchant’s paradise the customer’s paradise, too.
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Adam Koopersmith: Code Mountain won

Subject: RE: Adam, who won the SPARK competition? You were a judge?
Date: 7/28/2011 12:24:02 P.M. Central Daylight Time
From: adam@newworldvc.com
To: RONALDMAY@aol.com

Code Mountain won last night.

Judges included Rob Wolcott, Kevin Willer, Howard Tullman, Steve Miller, John Hoesley, Mitch Lowe and myself.

Adam Koopersmith

Partner

New World Ventures

adam@newworldvc.com

312.447.6000

Follow New World Ventures:

From: RONALDMAY@aol.com [mailto:RONALDMAY@aol.com]
Sent: Thursday, July 28, 2011 12:01 PM
To: Adam Koopersmith
Cc: ronaldmay@aol.com
Subject: Adam, who won the SPARK competition? You were a judge?
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Brendan Tripp: Saw Ron at MCA event on the 10,000 year clock

Sorry I didn’t get a chance to say “Hi” last night …

Inbox
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ReplyReply
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Brendan Tripp btripp@gmail.com to me

show details 2:05 PM (15 hours ago)

from Brendan Tripp btripp@gmail.com
to ron@themayreport.com
date Thu, Jul 28, 2011 at 2:05 PM
subject Sorry I didn’t get a chance to say “Hi” last night …
mailed-by gmail.com
signed-by gmail.com

hide details 2:05 PM (15 hours ago)

Ron …

I saw we were both attending the talk at the MCA last night, but with me in the upper-most row, and you down at stage level. I hung around a bit after the talk to see if you’ be appearing in the lobby, but I guess you were waiting to snag the speaker, so I eventually headed back out.

- B.T.
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Crain’s: Groupon’s pre-IPO accounting under SEC microscope: report, by John Pletz

www.chicagobusiness.com/article/20110727/NEWS07/110729859/groupons-pre-ipo-accounting-under-sec-microscope-report

Groupon’s pre-IPO accounting under SEC microscope: report
ShareThisinShare4 Print | Email | 1 comment

By: John Pletz July 27, 2011
Today’s Headlines
7/28/2011

DraftFCB loses entire S. C. Johnson account
Caterpillar pays $2.55M to settle alleged clean air violations
BioSante prices public offering
Motorola Mobility’s weaker outlook sends shares down
32,000 ComEd users without power
Chicago-area unemployment at 10.4% in June

View All of Today’s News Headlines
(Crain’s) – Groupon Inc.’s initial public offering continues to get close scrutiny from the Securities and Exchange Commission over the company’s accounting, according to a CNBC report.

The SEC reviews all public offerings before bankers can sell them to investors and usually has questions for the companies involved. Sources told CNBC that the SEC primarily has questions about a unique profit metric created by Groupon as well as how the company accounts for gross profits, typically a measure of sales minus the cost of producing goods or services.

In describing its business, the daily-deal seller states revenue as the total amount paid by customers for a daily deal, even though Groupon splits that amount with the merchant that provides the service. Groupon’s gross profit is the revenue paid for a deal minus the split with merchants.

Groupon also included a unique profitability metric that it encourages investors to use when evaluating the company, which so far isn’t making a profit. The company points investors to something it calls consolidated segment operating income, which does not include marketing and stock-option expenses.

Investors and analysts who reviewed Groupon’s prospectus already had questioned both items.

CNBC said Groupon’s IPO might not happen until mid- or late September. That’s consistent with the post-Labor Day target anticipated by most bankers, given the traditional summer market lull in August.

A spokesperson for Groupon declined to comment.

Read more: www.chicagobusiness.com/article/20110727/NEWS07/110729859/groupons-pre-ipo-accounting-under-sec-microscope-report#ixzz1TUSBxJvp
Stay on top of Chicago business with our free daily e-newsletters
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Joe Nedumgottil: Answers Ron’s question about Android voice commands

Subject: RE: Hey guys, the voice command on a cab driver’s Android didn’t work for “Cafe 300″
Date: 7/29/2011 10:29:19 A.M. Central Daylight Time
From: joe.nedumgottil@parivedasolutions.com
To: RONALDMAY@aol.com
CC: dallen@qmobilesolutions.com, ukidlucas@gmail.com

Thanks for the email Ron. I think the problem in your case was not really the voice command per se, but the internet connection. The phone sends the sound snippet over to Google servers which translates the sound file into speech. When there’s a bad signal, you get no response back from the Google servers, and you see an error on your phone. When there is an internet connection, I usually get some response back.

I mentioned it briefly in my presentation, but the lack of response (due to poor connection) is a more frequent problem for me than bad transcription by the Google voice service.

Thanks,

Joe

From: RONALDMAY@aol.com [mailto:RONALDMAY@aol.com]
Sent: Friday, July 29, 2011 9:53 AM
To: Nedumgottil, Joe
Cc: dallen@qmobilesolutions.com; ukidlucas@gmail.com; ronaldmay@aol.com
Subject: Hey guys, the voice command on a cab driver’s Android didn’t work for “Cafe 300″

July 29, 2011

David, Joe and Uki,

David, as I told you on the phone this morning and Joe, as I left a VM for you this morning, and Uki, I am including you of course because you are an Android guru, my cab driver Wednesday morning tried the voice command for Android which he uses all the time and it did not work. He said into the “smart” phone the words “Cafe Three Hundred” and got no reply. Then he had me say the same three words into his phone and we got no reply.

That does not sound to me like a difficult command.

The cabbie is Albanian and he said the phone knows his voice and if does not know my voice of course but I don’t really have an accent.

Why isn’t the voice command working for what appears to be a simple request?

Any thoughts?

I looked at the phone and it seemed awfully complicated, but then what do I know? My cell phone is a Nokia that has to be ten years old.

Uki, Joe gave the talk at MoMo on Android on July 18th which I attended and David talked a lot at the meeting.

Ron
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Is my buddy Phil Tadros on drugs or bouncing off walls?

Subject: you need new wheels homes
Date: 7/23/2011 1:05:14 P.M. Central Daylight Time
From: phil@doejo.com
To: RONALDMAY@aol.com

www.thescooterstore.com/howitworks/

–

Philip Tadros
708.655.6753

philcoextra.com

++++++++++++++++++++++++++++

Subject: Ron
Date: 7/23/2011 1:03:26 P.M. Central Daylight Time
From: phil@doejo.com
To: RONALDMAY@aol.com

Do you own Hawaiian shirts? Is it two I’s

–

Philip Tadros
708.655.6753

philcoextra.com

Doejo / we fuel ideas that grow

doejo.com

Doejo / we fuel ideas that grow

doejo.com

_____________________________
Ashish Patwa, CEO of Tronton

Subject: TechWeek- Private Demo Offering
Date: 7/21/2011 8:53:22 A.M. Central Daylight Time
From: azelikow@sspr.com
To: ronaldmay@aol.com

Abby Zelikow (azelikow@sspr.com) added themselves to your Guest List | Remove them | Block them

Hi Ron,

I saw that you were attending TechwWeek and was wondering if you would like to speak to Ashish Patwa, CEO of Tronton, who has a new App coming out this August. Ashish will be presenting Tronton and Cluzee on August 25th at 12:50 PM CST.

His new App, Cluzee, is an Intelligent Virtual Personal Digital Assistant developed for Android. It combines a personal day planner with important reminders such as friends’ birthdays and allows users to send gifts; a personalized health planner to keep track of calorie intake and exercise; personalized radio that users can customize to their taste and also personalized local searches to find user’s favorite places. Some other features include: package trackers, trip planning, social filters and much more.

Would you be interested in chat and a private demo with Ashish? Please let me know.

Thanks,

Abby

Abby Zelikow

SS|PR

847.415.9332

azelikow@sspr.com
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