Saturday, February 7, 2009

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Elevator Pitch Friday: Zumeo Tries To Be Gen-Y's LinkedIn Top
This week’s elevator pitch comes from Zumeo.com. The pitch gets points for being concise and presenting a clever idea: a social networking and job site for the Generation Y. Zumeo.com is a social networking and online recruiting site for college students, recent college grads and first year hires. Users first take a “self-discovery” test that highlights strengths and weaknesses. Zumeo partnered with career consultant Career Key to develop an assessment test to help match a user with the appropriate job. The user then creates a “Live Resume” that can be updated and shared with recruiters, friends or colleagues or even shared with other social networks like Facebook and MySpace. Zumeo has over 500 users; but only about 15 recruiters at the moment, which seems low for such a large amount of users. Zumeo’s recruiter and business list includes SOS Staffing, CDS Publications, and Consolidated Graphics and the CEO, Jared Booye, said Zumeo has matched many young adults with jobs in the past few months. Zumeo’s current pricing model lets recruiters test drive the site and then pay if they see talent they like. The cost is $9 per post and $19 per month for unlimited posts. The number of recruiters seems low, even for a poor economy. I remember that I found my internships and first jobs through my college career services department, like many of my fellow classmates. Perhaps Zumeo needs to tap into those platforms to really expand, even in a job market that’s not ripe for employment. It seems like Zumeo.com has a ways to go when it comes to building up a social and employment network of recruiters and experienced professionals across various industries. Maybe this comes through partnerships with established professional social network, like LinkedIn. Maybe not. But even with its shortcomings, Zumeo has a neat concept and may do well for itself. Here are some screen shots showing Zumeo’s “Live Resume” : Crunch Network : MobileCrunch Mobile Gadgets and Applications, Delivered Daily.
 
One Lawsuit Later, SGN Releases Its Mafia Game For The iPhone Top
SGN , the company behind many of the popular Wii-like games on the iPhone, has just released a new game to the App Store. Dubbed “ Mafia: Respect and Retaliation “, the game joins a growing number of mob-based games on the App Store, some of which are growing to become immensely popular. Among the features that differentiate Mafia:R&R from its competitors are the ability to play the game while offline (other games typically require a network connection), use of the iPhone’s accelerometer to train in a virtual shooting range, and 3D graphics. The game is available for free, but also comes in a half dozen premium versions available for 99 cents, $5, and denominations up to $50. Premium versions grant gamers more skill points and higher rank, allowing them to establish their dominance more quickly. The app has been a long time coming. In January David Maestri launched a game called Mob Wars on Facebook Platform while he was employed by Freewebs, the company that later became SGN. The game has grown to become incredibly popular, with millions of users and rumors of monthly revenues topping $1 million. However, because Maestri was employed by Freewebs/SGN when he built the game, the company felt that the IP was theirs (as is commonly stipulated in tech employee contracts). For more on the legal drama, check out this post . After months of legal wrangling, Maestri and SGN reached a settlement , granting Maestri control of the Mob Wars app but rewarding SGN with a undisclosed monetary payment along with the rights to develop Mob Wars-like games. SGN’s Mafia game is one of the products of that agreement, and it certainly looks like it stands a chance at becoming another hit for the company. As with other similar mob-based games, Mafia:R&R is primarily text based, allowing gamers to complete jobs to rise through the ranks of organized crime, buying improved items along the way. These games can take some getting used to, but they can also be very addictive. Other popular mob games include iMob (covered here and Mafia LIVE! , currently the 7th most popular paid app on the App Store. Crunch Network : CrunchBoard because it’s time for you to find a new Job2.0
 
Aviary Encroaches On Adobe Illustrator With Raven, The First Vector Graphics Editor For The Web Top
Aviary is a small New York startup with the ambitious goal of recreating (and expanding upon) Adobe’s most popular design tools in the browser. Since we first covered the company about a year and a half ago, Aviary has kept most of its 15 planned tools (at least those that have seen development at all so far) in private beta. Only three have become publicly available: Phoenix , an image editor along the lines of Photoshop; Peacock , a so-called “visual laboratory” for pixel-based images; and Toucan , a color palette tool. Now, Aviary has taken the lid off a tool called Raven as well. Raven is a vector-based image editor that mimics (and therefore competes with) Adobe Illustrator, a popular desktop application among digital artists whose work often makes it onto real paper. Like Phoenix, Raven doesn’t match its Adobe counterpart feature-by-feature but it does recreate Illustrator’s most essential functionality. And the results are pretty impressive; the pen tool and gradients in particular work just as they should, and the tool overall reaffirms Flex’s reputation as a suitable platform for desktop-like applications. Is it good enough to convince veteran Illustrator users to switch? Probably not. But it may be enough to convince new designers to forgo buying Illustrator and try out Raven first. After all, Adobe charges a pretty penny for its creativity software and not everyone’s inclined to pirate it. CEO Avi Muchnick seems keenly aware of the imprudence of calling Raven (or any of his other products) real competition for Adobe just yet, preferring to describe Raven as “the web app counterpart to Adobe Illustrator”. The thinking is that Illustrator users may want to load their files into Raven using its SVG import feature, after which they can make modifications and then release their work into Aviary’s online community. And the community does appear to be Aviary’s biggest selling point, at least until its productivity tools evolve. Artists can easily browse and modify each others’ work, and they can retain control over copyrights and sell their work online, if so desired. Almost a year ago Adobe started making its own inroads into online creativity tools, releasing a photo editing tool at photoshop.com. Surprisingly, Adobe chose not to recreate Photoshop in the browser but rather to design a new tool with broader consumer appeal. This suggests that Adobe may leave the field open for Aviary to produce online products that are robust enough to entice creative professionals. Aviary is still working to improve font support, bitmap-to-vector tracing, and support for export file types in Raven. An API will also be released next month that makes it possible to embed any of Aviary’s applications across the web. Interested parties can email this address . Check out a video demonstration of Raven below. Crunch Network : CrunchBase the free database of technology companies, people, and investors
 
College Music Service Ruckus.com Shuts Down Top
Ruckus, an online music service geared towards universities that allows students to stream an unlimited amount of music, has apparently just closed its doors. The service was designed to appeal to college students, offering a legal alternative to the piracy that can be found on many campuses. Ruckus was initially offered as a subscription service, then eventually moved to an ad-supported model with partnerships with dozens of major universities. Eventually it opened to all students with an accepted university email address (typically .edu). At around 5 PM EST today the site went down with a notice stating that it was undergoing an update. As of 5:30, it was displaying the shutdown notice seen above. We’re told that music that has not passed its “renew date” still works, but that music that has expired will no longer work because the DRM licensing server has apparently shut down. Last year Ruckus was acquired by Total Music, the joint venture between Sony and UMG, with the intention of using it as a backend for a service which still has yet to launch. Total Music has been struggling for some time - we hear that it made a strong pitch to provide Facebook’s music service, but that it was eventually denied when the social network was unwilling to share revenue and user data, which would have been part of the deal. While Ruckus’ closure certainly doesn’t bode well for the initiative, Total Music doesn’t seem dead quite yet. Last month it quietly launched a site called Tunepost in private beta, which seems to offer streaming music through a widget. Crunch Network : CrunchGear drool over the sexiest new gadgets and hardware.
 
MySpace Begins Monetizing Music Videos With Impressive Results Top
In an effort to monetize the growing number of music videos on its site, MySpace has just launched a new pilot advertising initiative that places attractive overlays at the bottom of some clips, allowing users to buy the song they’re listening to or immediately jump to the artist’s homepage. The new initiative stems from MySpace’s partnership with Auditude , a content detection and management company that can identify copyrighted content and serve relevant advertising, even on user-submitted video. Now Auditude is applying the technology to music videos, which in the past have largely relied on banner ads and static text links to music stores for monetization. On Wednesday the site, in a partnership with Warner Music Group, placed an overlay ad on a video for My Chemical Romance’s cover of Desolation Row . Users were presented with the option to buy the song either on Amazon, or (in an interesting twist) on a vinyl disc. Over the 24 hours that the ad ran it posted an impressive 1.2% click-through-rate (significantly higher than rates seen on typical banner ads), encouraging MySpace and Auditude to expand the program to more videos. Today the site began displaying advertising on U2’s new single Get On Your Boots , with plans to expand the program more broadly in the near future. Much of the overlay’s success probably stems from the fact that it doesn’t look too much like an ad - it actually shows informative content like the album the song came from, the year it was released, and a link to the artist’s profile. I wouldn’t say I like having it there, but MySpace could have done a lot worse. And frankly in the current economic climate it’s encouraging when companies can find advertising methods that actually work without being ridiculously annoying. YouTube launched a similar program three weeks ago, allowing content owners to insert overlays for products into their videos (MySpace’s overlays are significantly more attractive, but they both serve the same purpose). YouTube wouldn’t provide any exact numbers, but a representative confirmed that in general the site has seen significantly improved clickthrough rates when ads are embedded in videos themselves, as opposed to appearing in surrounding banner ads. Crunch Network : CrunchGear drool over the sexiest new gadgets and hardware.
 
Survival Of The Fittest: Drugstore.com Reports First Quarterly Profit Top
This isn’t exactly new news, since its earnings were reported last Wednesday, but it’s a fact worth highlighting these days: Drugstore.com is now effectively a profitable business as it has been able to turn an operating profit for the fourth quarter of 2008, the first time since it went public in 1999. The company would have gotten there sooner, if it weren’t for the fact that the state of New Jersey settled against the company in a sales tax case, costing the company $2.5 million and resulting in a quarterly loss for Q4 2007, when the company had originally thought it would be turning an operating profit. The company this week reported quarterly net sales of just south of $94 million and net income of $289,000, and jumped to profitability thanks to an increase in customers (+400,000 new customers in Q4 alone) and solid sales of over-the-counter products. The company achieved fourth quarter gross margins of 28.5% and the highest adjusted EBITDA in the history of the company of $5.2 million, which is up 243% over Q4 2007. For the year, Drugstore.com reported net sales of $366.6 million, a net loss of $8.3 million and an operating cash flow of $9.9 million for 2008. Crunch Network : CrunchBoard because it’s time for you to find a new Job2.0
 
FlightTrack Pro Puts TripIt (And More) In Your Pocket Top
Appropros Mobile has released a Pro version of its popular FlightTrack iPhone application that can automatically pull in your flight itineraries through TripIt’s recently released API . The original FlightTrack application, which costs $4.99 and is currently ranked third among the iPhone App Store’s top paid travel applications, asks for you to enter an airline, a flight number, and a date. It then displays a travel map with route and weather information, and it tells you whether the flight’s gate has changed or if there’s been a delay. The new Pro version essentially saves you from having to remember flight numbers by giving you a list of the itineraries you have already emailed to TripIt. You can still look up flights manually (perhaps when you want to retrieve the status of a flight for a friend or family member), but you’ll always have your own travel information ready for quick access. By releasing an API and deciding not to develop its own iPhone application, TripIt has essentially offloaded its mobile users to Appropros Mobile (TripIt does have a mobile iPhone site but it’s not nearly as functional). Unfortunately, this means TripIt will miss out on the revenue that Appropros gets to generate with its data, not an insignificant amount at $9.99 a pop for FlightTrack Pro. This could be a strategic mistake for TripIt since travel is by definition a mobile activity. However, travel social network competitor Dopplr hasn’t released an iPhone app of its own either, so perhaps neither company has felt enough competitive pressure in the mobile space yet. See our previous coverage of TripIt here . Crunch Network : CrunchBoard because it’s time for you to find a new Job2.0
 
Google Sets Its Sights On Your Sight Top
Google has published a bit of an insider’s look on how the company conducts eye-tracking studies to evaluate the effectiveness of its search results. In addition to holding interviews, field studies and live experiments to improve the usability of its products, Google has special hardware and software that tracks test participants’ eyeballs as they scan results for the perfect link. The official blog post doesn’t detail any groundbreaking discoveries that have been produced by this testing technique. It sounds as though it has mostly helped Google confirm the obvious: that the first few results it returns are indeed usually the most relevant, and its so-called “universal search” effort (where it mixes rich media results like images and video thumbnails among the standard text results) doesn’t distract users too much but has actually proven rather useful. Perhaps most intriguing is the following video provided by Google that shows how quickly users glance around result pages: The bigger the dot, the longer the person sat looking at a particular part of the page. This heatmap-like image, which is named the “golden triangle”, also suggests that people spend a lot more time evaluating the whole results at the top of the page than the ones further down. For more, see our previous coverage of Google’s usability lab. Crunch Network : CrunchBase the free database of technology companies, people, and investors
 
Debunked: Apple Doesn't Ban Facebook In Stores As A Policy Top
UPDATE : An Apple representative just informed me that its retail stores have NOT banned access to Facebook. There’s been a lot of talk about how Facebook has been banned at all Apple stores to prevent customers from loitering. We did a little investigation on our own and found that Facebook was able to be accessed at Apple stores in Washington D.C. and Palo Alto. However, two stores, one in Richmond, Virginia and one in LA, confirmed that Facebook and MySpace have both been blocked from use on in-store computers. MySpace was banned in May of 2007 from all 251 Apple stores, in an effort to prevent loitering and internet cafe use of in-store computers, so it’s very well possible that other social networking services will be banned in the future too. Apple reports that their retail stores see an average of 2 million visitors weekly. If anyone is going to an Apple store today, check it out and let us know in the comments what you find. Our guess is some store managers are just getting a little overanxious. Crunch Network : MobileCrunch Mobile Gadgets and Applications, Delivered Daily.
 
TwtQpon Throws A Free Bone To Struggling Retailers Top
Dell made a cool $1 million over the holidays by alerting Twitter users to sale items. Now Felipe Coimbra, the developer who gave us twtpoll , twttrip and twtvite , is launching twtQpon , a Twitter coupon creator for businesses to roll out their Twitter marketing strategy. Not a bad idea, when retailers are trying desperately to find a way to harness the outreach power of Twitter. Others retail operations are following Dell’s lead by using Twitter to spread the word on sales and discounts. CheapTweet.com even breaks down all these sales by product. You create an coupon on the twtQpon site, and then, like the developer’s other apps, micro-message with a tiny URL on Twitter or Facebook. The link takes people to back to the advertised website to redeem the coupon. Here’s a sample: Crunch Network : MobileCrunch Mobile Gadgets and Applications, Delivered Daily.
 
Backup And Share Your iPhone Contacts For Free With IDrive Lite Top
We don’t write about every iPhone application that we come across (there are other sites doing a great job at that), but sometimes we just have to. For instance, IDrive , which specializes in backup solutions, has a neat application dubbed IDrive Lite that allows you to backup, share and restore all your iPhone contacts completely free of charge if you’ve updated your iPhone software to 2.0. Especially for business users, tools like this can come in quite handy. Once the app is installed on your iPhone, you can tap the ‘Backup’ button and the tool will automatically save your contact information to ‘the cloud’ i.e. IDrive servers. No signups required. You can easily restore contacts as well without overwriting people you’ve added after your last backup. Finally, the sharing functionality is rather nice; it lets you share information with other contacts in your address book by sending them an SMS with an import key for them to use. Update: as someone points out in the comments, you can only restore your full contact list and not individual ones. I’m also hearing reports that the app crashes the device but I haven’t had any problems. MobileMe does much of the same (not for free though) but other than that we haven’t found any other application in the App Store that can do what IDrive Lite does, unless we’ve missed those, and we should also note Tapulous has this app called FriendBook which lets you manage and swap contacts with other iPhone users. Update: other backup solutions for the iPhone are Funambol and My.Memova . Pro Softnet Corp, the company behind IDrive, is currently working on making it possible for iPhone owners to backup and share photos as well. For now, you can download the contact backup solution from the App Store here . Crunch Network : CrunchBoard because it’s time for you to find a new Job2.0
 
Tree.com Acquires Mint Competitor Thrive Top
New York-based Loudwater Labs has sold the assets of its online personal finance management application Thrive to Tree.com (Nasdaq:TREE), the company behind services such as the formerly IAC-owned LendingTree and RealEstate.com . This means that the publicly listed Tree.com now has a very good resource in its hands as well as sufficient reach to give Mint and other personal finance management tools like Wesabe , Geezeo and Buxfer a good run for their money. Tree.com Chairman and CEO Doug Lebda commented that the acquisition of Thrive is a perfect fit with the strategic vision of Tree.com, and you don’t have to be a genius to see that he has a point there. Tree.com operates a number of strong brands in the financial and real estate space, and its customer base can clearly benefit from free tools like Thrive which enable users to better monitor, manage and improve their personal financial health, particularly in the tough economic times we’re in. According to its website (which also includes funny bios for their team members), $225,209,097 is currently managed with the help of Thrive at the time of this writing. For the sake of comparison, Mint says it’s tracking $50 billion in transactions, $15 billion in assets and has identified more than $100 million in potential savings for its users. The terms of the acquisition were not disclosed and are said not to have had a material impact on the operations of Tree.com. According to the about-page, Thrive’s investors included current and former executives from Paypal, Citigroup Investment Banking and Limewire. Crunch Network : MobileCrunch Mobile Gadgets and Applications, Delivered Daily.
 
Join The Travelling Circus Of TechCrunch Events In Europe Top
Here’s a heads-up about some TechCrunch events we are planning to put on in Europe in the first half of this year. The format of the events follows a simple formula: afternoon panel discussions involving tech startups and the investment community, followed by relaxed evening networking. Where possible we will live video stream the events onto TechCrunch. We bill these sessions as as “TechCrunchTalk”. The aim is to both network the disparate community of European startups together, whilst also providing an insight into how the European tech scene works for those outside. We have done our best to “synchronise” with other events on the European circuit like like Seedcamp , OpenCoffee so that we’ll be in a city around the same time as many of the key players on the scene. We’ve also tried to avoid clashes with larger European events like Plugg (organised by TechCrunch writer Robin Wauters ), The Next Web , Next 09 , and Le Web , among others. For each event we’ll be looking for entrepreneurs and VCs for the panel discussions in the locations listed. So if you are potentially available, throw your hat into the ring by contacting Mike Butcher of TechCrunch UK . And some events may also have a ’startup pitch’ element as well, with startups selected by TechCrunch UK editorial. We are always interested in hearing about venues in these locations - ideally someone with a big office space that can host about 150-200 people. TechCrunchTalk events will be covered on TechCrunch UK and cross-posted to TechCrunch.com. Plus, wherever possible, they will be video streamed live onto TechCrunch so you can get a heads-up on the European scene from wherever you are. We already have a live streaming partner for one event, Floobs , but we’re interested in hearing about more. And of course we have a range of sponsorship packages available. If you would like information on the sponsor packages please email our European events co-ordinator Petra Johansson of Twisted Tree Events on petra@twistedtree.co.uk If you are a member of the press wanting to cover any of the forthcoming events in some way, please email our PR co-ordinator Rassami Hök Ljungberg of Rassami PR on rassami@rassami.com If you want to come to any of these events please go grab tickets where they are available for the early bird prices. An if you wish to be on the mailing list for information about ALL the up-coming events, sign up on our Amiando account here : We also now have a dedicated page on TechCrunch UK for these events . Outside of these dates I (Mike Butcher) will be attending many of the other European tech events and am available as a speaker or moderator. The dates we have so far (other events are planned for the second half of the year) are: Barcelona 19th February - “Mobile 2.0″ event alongside Mobile World Congress Topic: The future for Mobile 2.0 startups. Get Tickets More Info here Sponsors so far: LiveCLIQ Inc. Paris 25th February - The day after Seedcamp Topic: Building the Tech scene in France, scaling across Europe and the world. Get Tickets Warsaw 19th March - Central European event for tech startups & VCs Topic: Re-engineering the Central European tech scene - What’s next? Get Tickets London 21st April Topic: A day-long event for UK & other European startups. More details to follow Sign up for further info Stockholm 27th May - Nordic and the Baltic states event for startups and VCs Topic: Connecting Northern Europe - Where are the strong and weak links? Sign up for further info Berlin 10th June – More details to follow Topic: How does Berlin and Germany become a key node for European Tech? Sign up for further info London 9th July – TechCrunch Summer-Party Topic: Party! Sign up for further info Crunch Network : CrunchGear drool over the sexiest new gadgets and hardware.
 
IMO.IM Is The Best IM Web Service You've Never Heard Of Top
With all the talk about Meebo adding support for Facebook chat yesterday, I took notice of a message in our tips inbox today about another instant messaging aggregator service that I’d never heard of before adding support for Skype chat. IMO.IM is its name, it’s still in alpha stage (whatever that means), and it’s actually pretty neat. First, the good. IMO.IM is simple, web-based service that doesn’t require you to register, comes with a desktop version for Windows and supports multiple languages. It can handle text, voice and video conversations on the most important instant messaging services including Windows Live Messenger / MSN, AIM / ICQ, MySpace, Yahoo Messenger, Jabber, Gtalk as well as - and correct me if I’m wrong but I think this is a first - Skype. I tried using the service on my iPhone (no app, just browse to the website) and it worked seamlessly. Update: Nimbuzz and fring also supports Skype chat on mobile devices. The bad? No Mac or Linux desktop application and no Facebook chat (yet), but that’s about the only things we could come up with for an otherwise awesome little product. According to this blog post , IMO.IM has some other great stuff in the pipeline, including text to speech and vice versa functionality in all languages, face and object recognition, smart advertising, 3D emoticons and avatars, offline access, and more. Consider me subscribed to that blog to learn when those features become available. Also worth noting is that IMO.IM was co-founded by Georges Harik , one of the first 10 employees at Google and manager of several of its early products. He’s also an active angel investor; he invested in our competitor Venturebeat so he’s lucky to get written up here at all (please note the sarcasm), and a handful of other internet startups which you can check out in his Crunchbase profile. Also, FriendFeed co-founders and also ex-Googlers Paul Buchheit and Sanjeev Singh are listed as advisors to IMO.IM. Surprised that they haven’t enjoyed more buzz so far. Crunch Network : MobileCrunch Mobile Gadgets and Applications, Delivered Daily.
 
Gmail Adds Support For Multi-Pane Viewing Top
A new feature in Gmail Labs just launched, giving users the ability to simultaneously view multiple panes in Gmail without having to open another browser window. For users that frequently label their messages and have saved searches, this is a huge upgrade that will make Gmail even more efficient. Since launching, Gmail users looking to view search results or a subset of their labeled messages saw their results take up their entire browser window. Now, you’ll be able to do multiple things at once. To enable the feature, first activate Gmail Labs for your account, then enable “Multiple Inboxes” from the list of Labs options (you’ll have to scroll down a bit to find it). The term Multiple Inboxes is a bit of a misnomer - you can’t actually show messages from other accounts, but that could still come in a future Labs release. To set up your panes, go to the Gmail Settings menu and select “Multiple Inboxes” (once you’ve enabled them). From there, you can create up to five different panes. Creating a pane seems to be a little counter-intuitive - you’ll need to manually enter the Gmail ‘code’ of your label (for example, “label:friends” would display a list of messages tagged with the friends label). But the system is also flexible, as it allows you to combine multiple attributes into a single pane (for example, “is:drafts OR is:starred” would show messages that are either drafts or starred). Google first launched Gmail Labs last June, giving Googlers a way to showcase the results of their 20% time. Labs apps have included everything from a version of the classic game Snake to features like SMS chat , Gadgets , and even Mail Goggles , meant to keep intoxicated users from sending drunken Emails that they’ll regret in the morning. For more, check out Google’s blog post on the new feature here . Crunch Network : CrunchBoard because it’s time for you to find a new Job2.0
 
Come work with Laguna (and us) at TechCrunch Top
We like to say that TechCrunch isn’t a job, it’s a calling, and certainly there are a lot of great reasons to work at TC. Truth be told, Laguna (Michael Arrington’s chocolate lab) is one of our favorite perks. She’ll have you well trained in frisbee 2.0 and the latest catch API in no time flat. Seriously, we’re growing and hiring and we’d love to hear from you if you want to help TechCrunch change the world. We need: Developers (2) : We don’t just report the news, we build products that change the media landscape. CrunchBase is one of our first successes. We have more projects in the pipeline. Rails developers preferred, but raw talent and drive most important to our team. Sales Directors (2) : TechCrunch is the largest technology blog network, reaching over 5 million uniques and 15 million page views / month. We are expanding our direct sales effort with online and event-related sponsorships. Separate positions sought for focus on each start-ups and agencies/brand. Conferences & Events Director : TechCrunch hosts about a dozen events a year. Roundtable sessions, networking MeetUps, big conferences (such as TechCrunch50) and awards ceremonies (Crunchies.) Plan events for 200 - 2,000 people and be in the center of the tech community. Executive Assistant : If you love to be involved in a million projects, and love attention to detail, and want to keep us organized, this job is for you. Bookkeeper (part-time/contractor) : We’re growing and profitable, so our financials are fun to do. CrunchBase Analyst : Great opportunity for a recent college grad to break into the start-up scene by researching and writing about new start-ups. Broad exposure to the start-up, VC and technology landscape. CrunchBase Interns (6) : College sophomores through seniors are invited to join us as CrunchBase interns. It’s a great way to learn about technology start-ups from the inside. We need a commitment of 5 hours a week and keen interest in covering new products. Also, we’re finally looking for proper office space. If anyone has 2-3,000 square feet of space to sublet in the Palo Alto area, please ping me, heather [at] techcrunch [dot] com. Photo credit: thank you netzkobold . It’s a favorite. Crunch Network : CrunchBoard because it’s time for you to find a new Job2.0
 
How to Get RC33 On Your G1 Without the Wait Top
If you’re a G1 owner and are anything like us, you’ve been checking your handset every 20 minutes for the last two days in hopes that it’s finally your turn to bask in the light of the latest update, RC33. It’s not the Cupcake update folks are so anxious to get their hands on - but its got voice search and Latitude , and that more than justifies the patch for us. Fortunately for those of us dying to play with the latest and greatest, some brilliant beings managed to sniff out the official update package. Armed with little more than an SD card, you can be enjoying RC33 in under 10 minutes. Crunch Network : MobileCrunch Mobile Gadgets and Applications, Delivered Daily.
 
Facebook Pledges Support For OpenID; But Will Anything Change? Top
The OpenID Foundation has just announced that Facebook’s Luke Shepard will be joining the OpenID board as a corporate member, and that Facebook has made a $50,000 donation to the cause. The news marks the first time Facebook has officially signed on with the campaign, though some of its employees have been actively involved with improving the open standard for some time. At this point it’s unclear exactly what change this will bring to Facebook. Facebook’s increasingly popular Connect product, which allows users to secure use their Facebook ID’s as logins across over 4,000 sites (including ours), is a closed and proprietary system. But it is also very well designed - members from the Facebook Connect team have given several talks in the hopes of improving the OpenID effort, and are holding an event on the topic next week. From Facebook’s development blog : As we’ve launched and built Facebook Connect, we’ve been participants in OpenID efforts. One of our user experience experts, Julie Zhuo, presented at the UX Summit in October. Several of our engineers have been participating in meetups, and one of them ran as a community member for a board seat. We’re happy to announce today that we are formalizing our support of the OpenID Foundation by officially joining the board. It is our hope that we can take the success of Facebook Connect and work together with the community to build easy-to-use, safe, open and secure distributed identity frameworks for use across the Web. As a next step in that effort, we will be hosting an OpenID Design Summit next week here at Facebook headquarters in Palo Alto. Facebook is apparently “building up momentum towards their adoption of OpenID as a standard”, but that too is ambiguous - many companies have signed on as “issuing parties”, meaning they’ll allow their IDs to be used elsewhere. But far fewer have been “accepting parties”, which means that accounts from other sites can be used to log-in to their services. OpenID has long been exploited by major internet brands who have pledged support to the cause (and reaped the positive press), only to put their plans on the backburner indefinitely. That said, even if Facebook doesn’t wind up implementing OpenID, it sounds like they’ll at least help make it a little easier to use. Crunch Network : CrunchGear drool over the sexiest new gadgets and hardware.
 
No Escape From Work: Present.ly Releases AIR and Mobile Applications Top
Enterprise microblogging service Present.ly , which faces off squarely against TechCrunch50 winner Yammer , has made strides to match the accessibility of its competitor by releasing several applications for the desktop and mobile devices. Present.ly users can now exchange messages with groups of their coworkers using an AIR-based desktop app that looks and functions much like Twhirl, Twitteriffic, and Yammer’s own desktop client. For when in transit, these same users can also install Present.ly applications on their phones. The list of supported devices and mobile operating systems now includes the iPhone, BlackBerry, Android and Windows Mobile. The desktop application should be particularly effective at persuading Yammer users to try out Present.ly. As many who’ve gotten into the habit of microblogging can attest, having a simple client that sits in the background while you do other work makes staying on top of messages a much more feasible task. Details about Present.ly’s new applications can be found in the company’s official blog post . Our initial review of Present.ly, which launched days after Yammer this past September, can be found here . Screenshots are below. Desktop AIR Application Mobile Applications Crunch Network : MobileCrunch Mobile Gadgets and Applications, Delivered Daily.
 

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