West Ham part company with Grant

  Grant took over from Gianfranco Zola less than 12 months ago West Ham have parted company with manager Avram Grant after a 3-2 defeat at fellow strugglers Wigan sealed their relegation from the Premier League.

The club confirmed the Israeli was leaving the club just over an hour after their 18th league defeat of a dismal campaign.

"Avram Grant is no longer the manager of West Ham United," a statement said.

First-team coach Kevin Keen will take charge for the final game of the season at home to Sunderland next Sunday.

Former Chelsea and Portsmouth boss Grant took over from Gianfranco Zola in June 2010 on a four-year contract.

But after beginning the season with four straight defeats, the east Londoners were never out of trouble, despite the efforts of captain Scott Parker, who was named Football Writers' Player of the Year.

Needing a win at Wigan on Sunday to stand any chance of staying up, the Hammers went 2-0 ahead before collapsing in the second half and eventually losing to a Charles N'Zogbia winner four minutes into stoppage time.

BBC Sport chief football writer Phil McNulty was at the DW Stadium for the match.

He said: "Rumours started to gather pace that Avram Grant had been sacked even before he attended his post-match press conference. He was asked whether he had already lost his job and said 'I am not going to talk about myself'.

Morose Avram Grant speaking before news of his departure

"Grant then disappeared and around 20 minutes later a West Ham spokesman returned to the press room to tell the waiting media that Avram Grant was no longer West Ham's manager and that Kevin Keen would take charge of their final game.

"Grant looked close to tears throughout his final media briefing as West Ham manager and it now appears he knew his fate was sealed even before he spoke about the result that had condemned West Ham to relegation."

In his interview for BBC's Match of the Day 2, Grant described the relegation with West Ham the "most sad day" of his career in football.

"I'm also sorry for the supporters, the people in the club and the players," he said.

"Maybe this game was the story of our season. It's a tough day."

Asked about his future, Grant added: "My future is not important now. All I care about is the commitment to the team and the fans.

"It's a big club and I'm sure they will back to the Premier League."

Grant succeeded Jose Mourinho as Chelsea boss in September 2007, only to be sacked after leading them to the Champions League final, where they lost on penalties to Manchester United.

He took over at Pompey in November 2009 and defied the club's financial meltdown to steer them to the FA Cup final but could not prevent their relegation to the Championship.

West Ham owners David Gold and David Sullivan appointed Grant in the hope he could establish West Ham as a Premier League force.

They bankrolled the signings of players including Germany captain Thomas Hitzlsperger, Frederic Piquionne and Pablo Barrera.

A disappointing first half of the season prompted reports that Grant would be replaced by Martin O'Neill but Grant clung to his job and was allowed to bring in Demba Ba, Robbie Keane, Wayne Bridge and Victor Obinna.

The club's fortunes appeared to be turning when they won three of five league games in February and March, including a 3-1 victory over Liverpool.

But defeat to Wigan was their sixth in seven league matches, leaving them six points adrift at the bottom, and the club's hierarchy felt that it was time for a change.

Later on Sunday Gold tweeted that he wished he had "done things differently".

"I honestly believed with the players we brought in in January and the imminent return of Hitzlsperger, we had done enough to pull clear of danger.

"I know that Scotty Parker shared that belief with me and we both had confidence that we would retain our Premiership status."

Bits: Creator of Google Voice Starts a Company Starter

The creator of Google Voice left Google last fall to work on a new start-up, and now he’s ready to talk about what he’s doing.

Craig Walker

Craig Walker, who founded GrandCentral, which became Google Voice after he sold it, has started a new company called Firespotter Labs. The start-up, which Mr. Walker calls “a company creation shop,” will be a breeding ground for mobile and communications products that he hopes will become their own companies someday.

Google Ventures, where Mr. Walker has been an entrepreneur in residence, is investing $3 million in Firespotter.

Mr. Walker joins a club of other successful tech entrepreneurs whose recovery strategy after running fast-growing companies is to start labs where they can quickly crank out new products without any bureaucratic roadblocks. Kevin Rose, who founded Digg, recently left to start a similar company called Milk that is building mobile apps. Evan Williams, the co-founder of Twitter, who recently left to work on new projects, started a similar lab called Obvious Corp. for rapidly building Web products before Twitter.

“Even though you have other ideas, you kind of put them to the side because you’re singularly focused on making that product successful,” Mr. Walker said about why he wanted to start a product-building lab after working at Google. “Maybe it’s a reaction to having some freedom.”

The new model works because it is easier and cheaper than ever to start Web and mobile companies these days, but harder to predict what will take off. And once the team makes something useful, like an easy sign-in or checkout process for an app, it can use those things in other products too, Mr. Walker said.

Unlike a traditional incubator, Firespotter won’t look for outside entrepreneurs to start companies. Its employees will come up with the ideas and develop them themselves, then hire people to run them if they become big and successful enough. Mr. Walker — along with his team of three engineers and a designer, two of whom he hired from Google — will advise the companies and make money by owning a stake in each one that it spins out.

“Small teams can work so fast, particularly when they’re the right DNA,” he said. “There’s no budget or review process. We’re just going to go knock this stuff out, and this is really fun and liberating.”

Firespotter is already working on three ideas, though Mr. Walker would not elaborate on what they were. He said he was broadly interested in communication as well as mobile tools that take advantage of the fact that people carry mini-computers with GPS, cameras and Internet connectivity in their pockets.

But don’t expect Firespotter to follow the trend of building social apps like the photo-sharing ones that are all over. Instead, Mr. Walker wants to build tools for big industries, which he wouldn’t name, that have not yet been transformed by mobile, to change the way they get feedback from customers or communicate with vendors, for instance.

“There’s a lot of things that to me sound like a feature, not a company,” Mr. Walker said. “We’re not interested in building mobile apps for mobile apps’ sake, or doing things that are a little more fun or goofy. The bigger challenge is how do you find big industries that have not yet embraced modern technology.” CREDIT CAPTION

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With a Start-Up Company, a Ride Is Just a Tap of an App Away

Uber, a start-up based in San Francisco, offers a cellphone application that is aimed at making using a car service quick and painless.

The service has already found success in its hometown, where some have welcomed it as an antidote to notoriously sluggish public transit and a dearth of cabs.

But as of Wednesday, Uber is coming to New York, where it will face the task of wooing locals who already have a good subway system and, at most times, a decent supply of taxis.

Uber is not a taxi or limousine company. Instead it operates as a dispatch service, working with local owners of licensed private car companies. Uber provides each car with an iPhone and software that manages incoming requests. When an Uber user needs a ride, the dispatcher and the closest car are notified, and the system sends back an estimate of the pick-up time. While they wait, users can monitor the car’s location on their phone.

Travis Kalanick, who co-founded Uber with Garrett Camp, said the concept was inspired by their personal transportation troubles.

“The idea at the very beginning was to figure out a better way to get a cab in a city like San Francisco, which as anyone knows who lives here can be a nightmare,” Mr. Kalanick said.

“Garrett wanted to get a garage, hire a driver and split the cost among friends,” he said. “At first, I told him he was crazy. I thought about it and realized maybe we could work out a service where everyone has access to a private driver.”

Uber says that since last June it has brokered tens of thousands of rides in the Bay area and attracted hundreds of cars to join its fleet.

Julie Rajagopal, who works at a tech start-up in San Francisco, tried Uber earlier this week when she was running late for work and had trouble hailing a cab.

“After flailing my arms for 20 minutes, I decided to try Uber,” she said. The car showed up within two minutes, she said, and delivered her to work on time.

“I don’t mind paying a few dollars more,” she said. “Not waiting 30 minutes and being late to work is worth a few extra dollars.”

Uber charges a base fee of $7 in San Francisco, or $8 in New York, and then a rate for the time or distance traveled, depending on the car’s speed. There is a $15 minimum for each ride, and the company includes tips in its calculation. An average trip in New York, with tip, should cost about 1.75 times as much as a taxi, Mr. Kalanick said, adding that he hoped people would find Uber’s convenience and ease of use to be worth it.

For some, the cost is a hurdle. Zhao Lu, who lives in San Francisco and works for a wireless carrier, said he had signed up for Uber at the recommendation of a friend and was not pleased with the premium pricing.

“I thought it was outrageous,” he said. “I would use it if I couldn’t find any alternatives, if it were cold or late at night.” But otherwise, he said, “it’s too expensive.”

Uber, which is available for the iPhone and Android devices, requires users to enter their credit card information when they sign up. When they reach their destination, they can simply hop out, and the ride is charged to the card. Uber gets a percentage of each fare; the rest goes to the car services and drivers.

New York is a different beast than San Francisco when it comes to public transportation, and in much of the city there is often no shortage of ways to get around. But Mr. Kalanick said that in coming to New York, Uber was responding to the interest of its users. The company noticed that more than 1,000 people in the city had signed up and put their credit cards on file without knowing when the service might be available to them.

“We decided to respond to the demand,” he said. “We were coming to New York eventually — why not now?”

When those early fans opened the Uber app, the company made note of their phone’s location. That data helped it figure out the areas where demand might be highest. The densest pockets were in downtown Manhattan, including SoHo and the Lower East Side, and parts of Brooklyn. The company also tries to keep fleets near neighborhoods where high volumes of bookings are expected, lowering wait times.

Nationally, Uber faces competition from TaxiMagic and other services that let users book cabs and car services online. And it may get pushback from city agencies that have ironclad rules about how transport services must operate.

Late last year, Uber received a cease-and-desist order from the San Francisco Municipal Transportation Agency, which said customers might be confused and think the company was running its own car service. Uber, then known as UberCab, responded by shortening its name, which appeased the authorities.

Dan Ackman, a New York lawyer who often represents taxi drivers, said he did not think a service like Uber would run into too many legal problems in the city. “It’s not that different from using Google or a directory to find a car service,” he said.

But Mr. Ackman said there might be legal nuances. The city requires booking requests for car services to be relayed from a central office, and Uber could be challenged if the city somehow decided it was circumventing that, he said.

Allan Fromberg, a spokesman for the Taxi and Limousine Commission, which oversees New York’s taxis and black cars, declined to comment on Uber. The company says it is working with the agency to ensure that it is complying with regulations.

Investors seem to think the Uber idea has promise. The company has raised $12.5 million in venture financing from noted investment firms including Benchmark Capital, First Round Capital and the Founder Collective. And it has its sights set on expanding to cities like Boston, Seattle, Washington and Chicago.

Mr. Kalanick said the car service business would benefit from a revamped approach. “Don’t underestimate the power that efficiency and elegance of experience can have on a stagnant market,” he said.

 

Advertising: Checkout Coupon Company Joins Boom in Online Discount Offers

The Catalina Marketing Corporation is introducing Coupon Network by Catalina, to be found online at Couponnetwork.com. Advertisers with offers on the Web site include pantry mainstays like Campbell Soup, General Mills, Kellogg, Kraft Foods, Nestlé, Reckitt Benckiser and Unilever.

There are also some unexpected offers on Couponnetwork.com, among them savings on toys from the Fisher-Price division of Mattel and light bulbs from General Electric.

Coupon Network is an addition to the decades-old businesses that Catalina calls shopper-driven marketing, intended to help advertisers more efficiently and effectively reach target audiences. Catalina estimates that it distributes more than $6.5 billion in coupons to shoppers each year through its printers at store checkout counters.

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The checkout coupons provided by Catalina compete for consumer favor with coupons in free-standing inserts, which are the coupon booklets carried in Sunday newspapers; coupons in magazines and so-called penny-saver publications; and coupons distributed by direct mail.

Catalina is so well known for checkout coupons that many devoted couponers, as avid discount-seekers refer to themselves, call the offers “Catalinas.” There are few higher accolades in marketing than a brand becoming synonymous with a product, whether it is Band-Aid, Kleenex or Q-Tip.

Still, the online coupon field is alluring, because it is booming. Two factors are feeding its growth.

One is the increasing influence of the Internet in everyday life. Not only are there printers in millions of homes, readily printing out coupons from Web sites, but there is also the phenomenon of social daily-deal coupons from companies like Groupon and LivingSocial.

The other factor benefiting online coupons is the recent bumpy economy. Coupon redemption rates had been falling for decades until the recent recession.

Although online coupons account for only 1 percent of all coupons distributed, they account for about 10 percent of all coupons redeemed, said Susan Gear, group vice president for digital at Catalina in St. Petersburg, Fla.

Ms. Gear also noted that consumers “can print out coupons for exactly the products they want,” which adds to their appeal.

For some time, Ms. Gear said, Catalina had been considering an entry into the online coupon realm, joining Web sites like Coolsavings.com, Coupons.com, Couponmom.com, Redplum.com and Smartsource.com.

The idea gathered momentum after Catalina took technological steps in the last couple of years that included offering coupons by mobile e-mail, handling Target’s coupons section on its Web site and acquiring E-centives, an Internet coupon company.

In developing the Web site, Catalina consulted with advertisers, retailers and bloggers, among them the “Super-Coupon Queen,” Jill Cataldo.

“They’ve got a lot of great printable coupons” on Couponnetwork.com, said Ms. Cataldo, of Huntley, Ill., who has a Web site, Jillcataldo.com, and writes “Super-Couponing Tips,” a nationally syndicated column.

Coupon Network “is doing a good job giving us coupons we might not have seen before and are pretty relevant to what I buy,” she added.

Those are welcome words to an advertiser like Karl Schmidt, director for promotional marketing at General Mills in Golden Valley, Minn. “We’ve been going digital with print-at-home coupons since tests in 2001,” he said.

“In the early days of print-at-home, six, seven years ago, there were issues with redemption,” Mr. Schmidt said, as retailers declined to accept them. As that largely disappeared, digital coupons have become “a significant percentage of our spending,” he added.

“We get great results; it’s the perfect self-targeting medium,” Mr. Schmidt said. “And they’re available 24/7.”

Also, “digital coupons attract younger consumers,” he said, “who aren’t buying the Sunday newspapers” that carry free-standing inserts.

In the digital coupon realm, Catalina executives “are playing come from behind, which they’re probably not used to,” Mr. Schmidt said. “But they have strong content and a strong sales force.”

Another point in Catalina’s favor is that Couponnetwork.com includes a type of Catalina in-store offer, called YourBucks, that are prized by couponers like Ms. Cataldo because they offer discounts off whatever they buy the next time they shop rather than savings on a single specified item the way regular coupons do.

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The retailers whose checkouts have been home to Catalina’s printers are unlikely to bemoan the company’s expansion online because they, too, have been going digital.

“More and more of our offerings are moving online as well, replacing circular coupons,” said Karen Meleta, a vice president at ShopRite, part of the Wakefern Food Corporation in Keasbey, N.J.

There is a section of Shoprite.com devoted to YourBucks along with other coupons.

Ms. Gear said Catalina has also been considering initiatives in areas like daily deals and group buying, adding, “We’re working with our clients to figure out how to market in this new world.”

“There’s a fun, engaging, gaming element to couponing,” Ms. Gear said. “We are exploring how you take the concept of social networks and add that to it.”

Among the attractive aspects of how social coupons work are the “element of urgency to the daily-deal buying,” she added, and their interruptive nature as companies “send out texts or e-mails.”

Because Catalina is privately held, she added, the company would not disclose how much it has spent on developing Coupon Network. Catalina is owned by the investment firm Hellman & Friedman.