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The future is in apps you don't open. "We're going to move away from the era of 'I have hundreds of apps but never think of using them' towards 'I have these cool apps and they take care of me'". This is David Lieb, co-founder and CEO of Bump, on the sea change in design philosophy that underpins Pay With Square and his company's new photos apps Flock. It centers around the idea that apps shouldn't force us to add new behaviors. Instead, they should strip away needless, interruptive steps from themselves and the way we live our lives until the solutions to our problems become irreducible.

It looks like Amazon.com is expanding its Lockers program, which allows customers to have their deliveries sent to, yes, nearby lockers. The idea was first reported last fall. It may seem like an inconvenient alternative to home delivery at first — until you think about some of the headaches that can come up, like worrying one of your neighbors will swipe the package as it's sitting on your doorstep, or making sure you're at home to sign for it. With Amazon Lockers, the package sits securely at a nearby pick-up station, until you come by at your convenience (well, as long as it's within three days of delivery) and open the locker up with a special code.

It looks like Amazon.com is expanding its Lockers program, which allows customers to have their deliveries sent to, yes, nearby lockers. The idea was first reported last fall. It may seem like an inconvenient alternative to home delivery at first — until you think about some of the headaches that can come up, like worrying one of your neighbors will swipe the package as it's sitting on your doorstep, or making sure you're at home to sign for it. With Amazon Lockers, the package sits securely at a nearby pick-up station, until you come by at your convenience (well, as long as it's within three days of delivery) and open the locker up with a special code.

Dalton Caldwell made some serious waves earlier this month when he announced "an audacious proposal" to refocus his company App.net to build a real-time feed API and service that would essentially be a new, more open version of Twitter. It's always fun to hear about big ideas like this, so it was great to have Caldwell stop by TechCrunch TV last week to tell us in person about App.net's new mission and clear up some common misconceptions about what they're up to. You can watch our whole conversation in the video embedded above, and below I've excerpted some of his points.

Dalton Caldwell made some serious waves earlier this month when he announced "an audacious proposal" to refocus his company App.net to build a real-time feed API and service that would essentially be a new, more open version of Twitter. It's always fun to hear about big ideas like this, so it was great to have Caldwell stop by TechCrunch TV last week to tell us in person about App.net's new mission and clear up some common misconceptions about what they're up to. You can watch our whole conversation in the video embedded above, and below I've excerpted some of his points.

It's no secret that the mobile app landscape has become extremely competitive. Over the last few years, this has led to an incredible amount of innovation and progress, but the cost of visibility -- of acquiring new users -- is also on the rise. In fact, Fiksu found that the cost of acquiring users hit a record high in December. While December is a critical month for app discovery, it remained to be seen whether or not this trend would continue. Today, W3i, the monetization and distribution network for app developers, released new user acquisition figures for the first half of 2012, and the results tell the same story. Assessing hundreds of millions of mobile users from January to June 2012, W3i found that the average cost-per-install (of CPI) of mobile apps increased by 70 percent on Android and by 56 percent on iOS.

It's no secret that the mobile app landscape has become extremely competitive. Over the last few years, this has led to an incredible amount of innovation and progress, but the cost of visibility -- of acquiring new users -- is also on the rise. In fact, Fiksu found that the cost of acquiring users hit a record high in December. While December is a critical month for app discovery, it remained to be seen whether or not this trend would continue. Today, W3i, the monetization and distribution network for app developers, released new user acquisition figures for the first half of 2012, and the results tell the same story. Assessing hundreds of millions of mobile users from January to June 2012, W3i found that the average cost-per-install (of CPI) of mobile apps increased by 70 percent on Android and by 56 percent on iOS.

Oracle said today they have bought a company called Xsigo that leverages the growing popularity of a new form of technology that virtualizes the network. It's called software defined networking (SDN) and it is shaking up the way we view IT and the cloud. The acquisition points to a shift in the market that will eventually make Oracle the loser. The cloud is opening up while Oracle is folding inward. Network virtualization is serving as a catalyst for a federated infrastructure that will make the open cloud more viable for an organization than a vertically integrated stack that needs to be managed by teams of IT engineers.  Oracle is rejecting that premise and will use Xsigo to strengthen its own proprietary environment.

Oracle said today they have bought a company called Xsigo that leverages the growing popularity of a new form of technology that virtualizes the network. It's called software defined networking (SDN) and it is shaking up the way we view IT and the cloud. The acquisition points to a shift in the market that will eventually make Oracle the loser. The cloud is opening up while Oracle is folding inward. Network virtualization is serving as a catalyst for a federated infrastructure that will make the open cloud more viable for an organization than a vertically integrated stack that needs to be managed by teams of IT engineers.  Oracle is rejecting that premise and will use Xsigo to strengthen its own proprietary environment.

GoDaddy CEO Warren Adelman has stepped down after less than eight months on the job. Adelman replaced the beleaguered elephant-killing former CEO, Bob Parsons, and will be succeeded by Scott Wagner of KKR Capstone, a major GoDaddy investor.