Tuesday, February 10, 2009

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Twitter To Start Charging Companies For Having An Account? Top
Companies using Twitter for commercial purposes may soon start getting charged for that activity, according to an interview British trade magazine Marketing (part of BrandRepublic) held with co-founder Biz Stone. This is what Stone reportedly said: “We are noticing more companies using Twitter and individuals following them. We can identify ways to make this experience even more valuable and charge for commercial accounts.” No big surprises there, as this is often cited as one of the most obvious moves Twitter could make to start generating revenue, although many are expecting more from the startup who has become notorious for its lack of an apparent business model even after nearly 3 years of existence. Stone also said they will not start charging individual users, and that the move could “create revenue-generating features to tap into the way brands use Twitter as a hybrid marketing and customer-service tool.” Stone did not give any details regarding pricing or the specific way Twitter would go about charging users and for what exactly. One of the most recent examples of companies using Twitter for commercial purposes is Dell, who reportedly made $1 million in sales during the holidays via the micro-sharing utility, and recently started giving discounts exclusively to its followers . We’ll see more of this type of behavior in the future beyond any shred of doubt, but I’m wondering what exactly is considered as ‘commercial usage’ by Twitter management: does it mean any way of promoting a product or service or only when there’s sales activity connected to the corporate accounts? And will companies be prepared to pay up for use of the service at all? Marketing got in touch with Bob Pearson, VP of communities and conversations at Dell, with that exact question and got a telling response: “If it becomes complicated and costly, our instinct would be to move elsewhere.” (Picture from Profy ) Crunch Network : CrunchBase the free database of technology companies, people, and investors
 
Oodle Shows Decent Growth, Adds $5.6 Million More To Its War Chest Top
Online classifieds service Oodle is reporting decent growth in the first month of 2009 with over 10 million visits (both Quantcast and Compete reflect a significant traffic surge ). Add to that the fact that social networking juggernaut Facebook has selected the company to power its classified listings application and you know they’re on to something over at the San Mateo, CA-based startup. Its investors seem to agree, as they have just injected more capital in Oodle: Greylock Partners, JAFCO Ventures and Redpoint Ventures are adding another $5.6 million to the startup’s war chest, bringing the total amount invested in the company to $21.6 million . Oodle is already powering the classified listings for MySpace , and the roll-out for the Facebook Platform is supposed to start this quarter, effectively replacing an in-house solution (Facebook Marketplace) in favor of a product developed by an outside company, as Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg explained in a recent interview with Michael Arrington. Crunch Network : CrunchBoard because it’s time for you to find a new Job2.0
 
Goodrec Launches Its Mobile-Friendly Online Review Site To The Public Top
Goodrec , a recommendation site that was first introduced at TechCrunch50, has launched its online review hub to the public alongside a new iPhone application. The site differentiates itself from other similar sites by keeping reviews short and sweet - users can rate an item as either ‘Thumbs Up’, ‘Mixed Bag’, or ‘Thumbs Down’, and can include only 160 characters of text. The site also covers a very broad range of items, which include restaurants, music, nightlife hotspots, or anything else users submit. You can find the main site at Goodrec.com , and can grab the free iPhone application here . At launch the site is pre-populated with venues and items relating to nightlife, books, music, and restaurants, but users will be able to add reviews to anything else (they’ll just have to add the product or location first). Users can also request that friends review a given item by sending invitations to through peers through Facebook or Email. CEO Mihir Shah says that since TechCrunch50, the site has compiled over 100,000 recommendation from its beta testers, the majority of which were submitted through the site’s iPhone application. Shah says that because of the brevity of its reviews, Goodrec is better suited for mobile reviewing than competitors like Yelp , which doesn’t allow users to submit reviews from its iPhone app (likely because the site prefers longer reviews). Aside from the main standalone application, Goodrec is also offering free apps that focus on each category the site covers (the first will be called GoodFood and will offer restaurant recommendations, with more to follow). The site also has plans to quickly expand to other mobile platforms. The site’s Thumbs Up or Down rating system is also taking a different approach, shying away from the typical 5-star system seen elsewhere. Shah notes that as most review sites compile dozens of reviews for a given item, the average usually approaches three stars, making it difficult to tell if the restaurant or attraction is worth checking out. Goodrec presents these thumbs in a counter form (Digg does something similar), allowing users to immediately tell how positive reviews are without having to read through them. Goodrec’s biggest problem will clearly lie in getting users, as Sean Parker noted during the site’s presentation at TechCrunch50. With competitors that have compiled years worth of reviews, Goodrec will need to quickly build a catalog of content for it to stay competitive. That said, Shah says the site is off to a good start, averaging over 20,000 restaurant reviews a month in its beta stage. Crunch Network : MobileCrunch Mobile Gadgets and Applications, Delivered Daily.
 
Facebook Activates "Like" Button; FriendFeed Tires Of Sincere Flattery Top
Facebook has just activated a new feature that allows users to leave “Like” labels on photos, notes, and other items across the network. The feature, which is nearly identical to one on FriendFeed , was first seen in a demo video last month but has not been available to the public. According to Facebook’s blog post on the feature, users will be able to say that they “Like” something whenever they leave a comment. It appears that the feature is being gradually being rolled out, because I can’t seem to find it anywhere. Facebook has stepped on FriendFeed’s toes with a few other features, including the ability to import activity items from third party sites into your News Feed and the fusion of microblogging with activity streams . We should note that it was Facebook that really popularized activity streams in the first place, and these improvements may well have come about eventually even without FriendFeed’s inspiration. Crunch Network : CrunchBoard because it’s time for you to find a new Job2.0
 
As IM Finally Begins To Open Up, Yahoo And Microsoft Cling To The Stone Age Top
Last week Meebo and Facebook teamed to launch the first integration of Facebook Connect + Chat, allowing Meebo users to chat with their Facebook friends from the popular web-based IM service. The feature has had a rocky history: Meebo used an unsanctioned method to integrate Facebook Chat in December, then temporarily disabled it at Facebook’s request. And while many were quick to point the finger at Facebook (which has had a history of bullying some third party services), as it turns out the site was eager to help Meebo, and is likely open to helping other third parties. The announcement is the latest in a series of policy changes that indicate that instant messaging is finally starting to open up, representing a paradigm shift could potentially lead to a slew of innovations. That is, as soon as the largest remaining holdouts - Yahoo and Microsoft - follow suit. Historically, IM has existed on closed and proprietary systems, with dedicated clients that can only connect to a single network. For many years users with accounts on multiple networks (say, AOL and MSN), would have to keep multiple programs open, which ate up system resources and cluttered desktops. By 2000 a handful of clients emerged that would allow users to manage multiple IM accounts from a single program. These stayed largely under the radar until 2002, when a client called Trillian hit 1 million downloads (and then jumped to 5 million six months later). Prompted by the application’s growing popularity and incensed by the fact that users no longer had to use its official client, AOL attempted to block Trillian in early 2002, though the application’s developers would release patches very quickly to un-break the service. Yahoo and MSN attempted to enact similar measures against third party clients with limited success, as their restrictions were quickly cracked. Eventually the battles between third party IM clients and the networks died down to a simmer - third-party programs would rely on open-sourced plugins to access the chat networks, and would be quickly updated if anything broke. The networks seemed to gradually accept the fact that these clients would persist, but wouldn’t do anything to help get their workarounds to function correctly (and oftentimes advanced features like file transfer didn’t). Finally, in 2006 some chinks started to appear in IM’s armor. Google launched Gtalk , a chat client built on the open standard Jabber protocol. Meebo, a popular web-based multi protocol client, launched at around the same time, and along with other clients encouraged sites to begin opening their protocols to third parties. Gradually AOL’s AIM network began to get in on the action, first with Open AIM 1.0 (which really wasn’t open at all, as it was primarily concerned with plugins and status updates) and later in 2008 with Open AIM 2.0 . The second iteration of Open AIM offers third party web services like Meebo and native clients like Adium a sanctioned way to access the network. More recently, the social networks have also begun to also grant access to Meebo and some other third parties, though most of them aren’t quite open (at least not yet). MySpace worked with meebo to launch support in December, and the aforementioned Facebook support was added last week. It’s clear that progress is being made, but there are still two major holdouts: Microsoft’s Window Live Messenger (AKA MSN) and Yahoo Messenger. The two networks have teamed to let their users talk to each other, but everyone else is out of luck. Meebo CEO Seth Sternberg says that he has reached out to both companies, but that neither of them are willing to offer a sanctioned way to access their networks. He notes that while Meebo’s integration with MSN and Yahoo are secure, he’d prefer to use the standards established by the networks themselves. A lack of ‘official’ third party access is also likely the reason why the networks have not been integrated into Gmail Chat ( AIM has ). Sternberg points out the parallels between IM and SMS messaging, which has grown to become a massive market that now sees over 2 trillion messages sent per year. While SMS might seem ubiquitous now, for years major carriers didn’t support inter-network texting (you could only send messages to contacts using the same carrier). It wasn’t until these networks opened up that SMS became the norm, spurring incredible growth and widespread innovation (you can now use SMS to order pizza , look up stock prices, and get directions). IM is also ripe for innovation, but developers have been hampered by a near-complete lack of cooperation from the major IM networks. Perhaps developers will take advantage of the growing number of networks that are open, adding new features that make them attractive to users still stuck on the old behemoths. Then Yahoo and Microsoft might be compelled to finally change - or perish. Crunch Network : CrunchBase the free database of technology companies, people, and investors
 
Picturesurf: Dead-Simple Photo Galleries For Bloggers Top
Picturesurf , a new Wordpress plugin that allows bloggers to quickly build photo galleries, has launched to the public. Instead of having to waste time cropping and resizing thumbnail photos (and then embedding them into annoying HTML tables), Picturesurf allows users to simply select and upload a number of photos from their desktop, which are then automatically resized and arranged in standard CSS. The plugin is available in the WordPress plugin directory, or you can grab it at the Picturesurf homepage , which also includes directions. Founder Alan Rutledge says that while there are other galleries available for bloggers, Picturesurf is primarily targeting large blogs looking to “convert their images into cash”. Because the gallery can place ads alongside each image (as opposed to just seeing a blank page using embedded .png or .jpg files), bloggers can more effectively monetize their images while saving users from having to constantly hit the ‘back’ button. The plugin is also optimized for SEO purposes, and will work with RSS feed readers (typically galleries using Flash or Javascript don’t work in RSS readers). And because these images link back to the blog itself, Rutledge says that it could help bloggers more effectively monetize their RSS feeds. While this is the first time the plugin has been publicly announced, Picturesurf has been quietly available for some time and has been integrated into over 3,000 blogs. Rutledge reports that on average, bloggers are seeing ad impressions double using the plugin as opposed to their standard thumbnail galleries (users are also clicking more images because of the increased convenience). We’ve been trying out the plugin on some of our image-heavy blogs (including CrunchGear ), and have been pleased with how easy it is to create the galleries - it sure beats doing them by hand, as we used to . We should note that Picturesurf isn’t Rutledge’s first startup venture - while a student at Berkeley he and three other students built a small mobile startup that was acquired by iLike . Crunch Network : MobileCrunch Mobile Gadgets and Applications, Delivered Daily.
 
Twhirl Gets An Upgrade, Too; And Now Seesmic Has A Desktop Client Top
Not to be overshadowed by AlertThingy’s announcement earlier today, Seesmic founder — Twhirl owner — Loic Le Meur let us know that his desktop notifications client is also getting a substantial upgrade today. Twhirl doesn’t support as many services as AlertThingy but Le Meur points out that it’s much more popular . It’s also the only desktop client in its class that supports his video messaging system Seesmic, which is no surprise since Seesmic aquired Twhirl last April. Until today, users could only play video clips through Twhirl from the people they follow on Seesmic. But now with version 0.9, Seesmic users can record and post video clips from within Twhirl as well, bringing the construction of a Seesmic desktop client to completion. Le Meur says that creating the right API to record and post video comments from within Twhirl took a lot of work, and naturally he’d like to see the other desktop notification tools pick up Seesmic support as well. So all of the recording functionality is now part of the APIs that Seesmic has already provided publicly. No desktop clients have used it to retrieve or post clips yet, but the web services Ping.fm and DailyMile have both added Seesmic video recording as features already. There’s a variety of other improvements in this release, which you can read about in Le Meur’s official post on the announcement. Among them is new support for Facebook, LinkedIn, MySpace and Ping.fm. Le Meur says that Twhirl has about 150,000 active users, about three times the number of those who use Seesmic regularly. The client has been downloaded about 700,000 times and about 10,000 people sign into Seesmic each day. Disclaimer : TechCrunch editor Michael Arrington is an investor in Seesmic, although I am not. Crunch Network : CrunchBoard because it’s time for you to find a new Job2.0
 
Pikum's Social Gambling Site Loses Its $6m In Chips, Closes Top
Pikum , an online social gambling startup which had $5.92 million in investment from Virgin USA and First Round Capital has shuttered. We’ve tried email and phone calls to get hold of the CEO and will update this post when we get official comment. However, the image on Pikum’s front page says it all. Sources close to the company said “I think they ran out of money. As far as I know they spent a lot on getting the right gaming licences… and putting the infrastructure in place. Then they spent a lot on marketing.” That rings about about right. Adwords campaigns fell flat, while a weekly 10 minute-long studio-based video webcast garnered less than a 1,000 viewers. Then there were the “Pikum Girls”… Crunch Network : CrunchGear drool over the sexiest new gadgets and hardware.
 
Outright's Simplified Online Bookkeeping Leaves Stealth Mode With $2 Million In Funding Top
There’s no shortage of bookkeeping software applications for self-employed people and small businesses on the market today, but that’s not stopping startups and venture capitalists from trying to get a piece of that action with fresh products. GoBootstrap was one of the startups taking a swing at catering to small-business owners with a dead simple, web-based tool that allowed them to manage their income and expenses while forecasting their federal and state taxes based on input data. One look at the embedded logo will teach you that GoBootstrap is now relaunching under a different name, Outright , along with a vote of confidence and $2 million in venture capital funding from First Round Capital and Shasta Ventures, with additional investments from Jeff Clavier's SoftTech VC and a number of (undisclosed) angel investors. Outright is what it claims to be, dead simple, and this is why (U.S.-based) small-business owners and self-employed individuals should definitely give it a spin, as it only takes a little time to get used to the process and is bound to save them a lot of hassle and time on administration. They don’t have to get second thoughts about the cost either: Outright is completely free (for the time being). And if that’s not enough, Outright offers integration with the time-tracking capabilities of FreshBooks , which essentially turns Outright into a full-fledged finance management portal for micro-businesses. The tool is currently still in public beta, but the company intends to open up to anyone in the next few weeks. In a later stage, Outright will start rolling out (paid) advanced versions that will include features like additional tax forms, multi-user access as well as add-on services for filing, payroll, and the likes. When asked about competition, the company responded that they’re mostly up against Microsoft Excel and Word and the traditional “pencil & paper”, and I believe those are actually valid claims. Other online bookkeeping solutions that are comparable to Outright are Intuit QuickBooks , LessAccounting and Xero . I’m aware that there are likely many many more, so if you’re using one and you’re absolutely thrilled with it, let us know in comments. Crunch Network : CrunchGear drool over the sexiest new gadgets and hardware.
 
Smack Shopping Lands Bellyup In The Deadpool Top
We’ve received a number of tips indicating that that Jellyfish’s flagship product, online social shopping show Smack Shopping , is going to be shut down. This is surprising move for Jellyfish, a Microsoft-owned online shopping portal, since the premise of the show is based around the audience creating hot (low-cost) deals on online products. In a economy where a good deal is desirable, one would think Smack Shopping could survive. Scheduled shows used take place 24-hours a day, 365 days a year, but last year Jellyfish changed Smack Shopping format to only one show per weekday and none on the weekends. We wrote about Microsoft acquiring the discount online shopping service , Jellyfish, in 2007. And creators and serial entrepreneurs Brian Wiegand and Mark McGuire have had several successes in the start-up world, with the most recent, Alice.com , set to launch this March. When Microsoft bought Jellyfish, they seemed optimistic about the website, saying that they "think the technology has some interesting potential applications as we continue to invest heavily in shopping and commerce as a key component of Live Search." Here’s the email sent to registered users. Dear SmackShopping User, Thank you for using SmackShopping and participating in the SmackShopping community over the past few years. Regrettably, we are closing down the site effective February 16, 2009. SmackShows, chats and other interactive SmackShopping services will be discontinued at this point. However, you will be able to redeem any coins you have accrued for 90 days (until May 15, 2009). At the end of 90 days the site will be brought down completely. Please do not reply to this email, but if you have any questions, please contact us at questions@smackshopping.com. Sincerely, SmackShopping Team We’ve added SmackShopping to the Deadpool . Thanks to Shawn Rubel for the tip. Crunch Network : CrunchBase the free database of technology companies, people, and investors
 
Notification Aggregator AlertThingy Rips A Page Out of TweetDeck's Book Top
The battle between desktop notification tools continues. AlertThingy , one such tool with a knack for aggregating a handful of social networks, has released a third version that takes direct aim at competitor TweetDeck . Just this past month we heralded TweetDeck as an innovator in the space for splitting notifications up into their own columns. While TweetDeck retrieves notifications only from Twitter , you can break up items into their own categories, such as all tweets, replies, groups, and search results. The categorization helps you stay on top of what would otherwise be one massive stream of information overload . While not ripping off this aspect of TweetDeck completely, AlertThingy now also allows users to “expand” their stream of notifications into columns. AlertThingy is essentially an aggregator of disparate services, so it breaks each supported service — not each type of data pulled from Twitter — into its own column (although, as with TweetDeck, you can set up a separate column with Twitter search results). You can have all your friends’ Facebook statuses in one column, their Twitter updates in another, and their Yammer messages in yet a third. Since AlertThingy also supports RSS, you can create a column for each of your favorite blog feeds as well, turning AlertThingy into a messaging-system-cum-blog-reader. In addition to the new expanded mode, AlertThingy has added support for six more services: Ping.fm, Basecamp, Huddle, TwitPic, TwitterSearch, and Yammer. That makes for a total of 13 services, which already included Digg, Facebook, Flickr, Jaiku, TinyURL, Tumblr, and Twitter. A variety of other incremental improvements have been made, such as improved automatic URL conversion via TinyURL and better memory usage. Crunch Network : MobileCrunch Mobile Gadgets and Applications, Delivered Daily.
 
Pay Per Post: Google Uses Every Trick To Beat Yahoo In Japan Top
Google is undoubtedly the dominant search engine globally , but in a few countries such as Korea ( Naver ), Russia ( Yandex ) or Japan, local competitors are winning. Especially Japan, the country with the world’s third biggest Internet population (about 100 million people are online), still seems to be a tough nut to crack for Google . Nielsen Japan reports that in October 2008, Yahoo Search saw a total of over 3.5 billion page views, while No. 2 Google trailed with 2.6 billion page views. According to a Comscore Japan ranking released in September 2008, Yahoo ruled the Japanese search engine market with a share of 51.2% (Google reached 39.0% in that month). It’s not that Google isn’t trying. In recent months, the company rolled out a number of online ads, offline promotion campaigns and several Japan-only services (Picasa recently started offering QR codes for easy mobile access, for example). And today it came to light they are now paying bloggers to write nice things about Google - a marketing tool TechCrunch never really was a big fan of . Here is the background: On Thursday last week, Google Japan revamped the top page and included a new, Japan-only “Hot Keywords” section displaying the top 5 search terms currently googled in Japan (see screenshot below). Users have been able to add a gadget containing the top 10 hot keywords to iGoogle for months and now can also integrate the list into their blogs as widgets . In its current form, Google Japan looks more like a portal site than any other version worldwide, a product strategy obviously aimed at disputing Yahoo’s standing. But that didn’t seem to be enough, as the Japanese blogosphere today is filled with reports about Google hiring Cyberbuzz , a Tokyo-based Internet marketing company to promote the keyword feature (its widget version) with a pay-per-post campaign. And in fact, the search string “Google Hot Keywords Ranking+Blog Widget+CyberBuzz” in Japanese in Google’s own Blog Search leads to a few dozen results , indicating the reports aren’t made up of thin air. This blogger , for example, integrated the keyword widget and praises the list as being very useful to be kept up-to-date on what is going on in the world. This one says the keywords change every 20 minutes and that the new Google feature once quickly helped in obtaining information on a Japanese TV star. All postings end with a disclosure that says: “I am taking part in the Cyberbuzz campaign”. It’s interesting to see that Google, a company that not too long ago radically took action against PayPerPost bloggers in the US, today thinks the concept is suitable as long as it helps them advance in Japan (even though in Japan, pay-per-post isn’t regarded nearly as obnoxious as in the US). Google Japan’s new president Koichiro Tsujino last month suggested the company will, as Yahoo brilliantly did in the past , try to establish itself as a homegrown brand by putting a stronger emphasis on localized marketing and product strategies. But whatever Google has up its sleeves, pay-per-post campaigns surely are not enough to take over Japan from Yahoo. Via Asiajin Crunch Network : CrunchGear drool over the sexiest new gadgets and hardware.
 
Black Duck Software Gets $9.5 Million To Help You Ship Better Software More Quickly Top
Black Duck Software , a company specialized in helping software developers ship products based on open source software more rapidly, also known for its acquisition of open source code search engine Koders.com completed in April 2008, has announced a $9.5 million capital raise today. The company received $4.5 million of venture debt financing from Gold Hill Capital in addition to $5 million in equity investment from its current investors General Catalyst Partners, Fidelity Ventures, Flagship Ventures, Focus Ventures, Intel Capital, SAP Ventures and Red Hat. This is their fourth round of funding; the company has now raised a total of $38.5 million in financing. Black Duck was founded in 2002 and initially focused on selling software that helped companies deduce licensing obligations that may arise as they develop or buy open-source software (there are over 1,400 different licenses in use today). The company today does a lot more than that, offering consulting, training and customer support services next to a set of products designed to accelerate software development through the managed use of open source and third-party code. The company says 2008 was a year of momentum, with an increase of 42% in year-over-year bookings and subscription and services growth of 65%. It now has nearly $10 million more in the bank to expand their product line and international presence. Crunch Network : CrunchBoard because it’s time for you to find a new Job2.0
 
What's New With The Kindle 2 Top
This morning Amazon officially announced its second-generation ebook, the Kindle 2 (although leaked photographs of the device have been floating around the internet for some time now). All-in-all, the new Kindle is a modest step up from the first generation , introducing nothing too radical to the design or functionality but improving the device in a variety of incremental ways. So just what’s new and different? We’ll take you through the highlights below. If you’ve spotted any other important differences, please let us know in the comments. The new Kindle is slightly lighter. The first generation weighed 10.3 ounces while the second weighs only 10.2 ounces It’s much less ugly. Gone is the retro look of the first generation for a curvier and more symmetrical design that (like every other mobile device hitting the market these days) borrows elements from the iPhone The screen has a higher wow factor At six inches tall, it can display 16 shades of gray, and it can turn pages 20 times 20% faster (or so Amazon claims ) It can actually speak to you Amazon’s new Text-to-Speech feature will use a computerized voice to read any book to you in one of three speech rates, and in either a male or female voice The new controls are better designed. Instead of a weird slider on the right-hand side that’s used to move from line to line, there’s a new 5-way joystick. The keyboard is also no longer split into two regions like those funky desktop keyboards you see at Fry’s but never buy. There’s been no price drop It still costs roughly the same amount ($359) but at least there’s still no monthly wireless fee for downloading books, magazines, etc. It can hold a much bigger library Storage has been boosted to 7x the original size, allowing the device to carry over 1,500 titles at a time You can read for longer. With a 25% longer battery life that is intended to let you read for up to 2 weeks without a recharge It downloads content just as fast. Amazon is touting 60 second downloads for books, etc. — the same rate it gave for the first Kindle You can pick up your reading on a separate Kindle. I’m not sure how useful this will actually be for people, but a new feature called “Whispersync bookmarking” makes it possible to start reading a book on one Kindle then continue reading it on another, just where you left off It still comes in only one color. White Some other important facts about the Kindle: Amazon has sold 230,000 kindles to date, which makes up a whopping 10% of the total units sold by the company Apparently, there’s been some confusion. Per a comment below , “They mean that there's 230,000 books available on the site, and that kindle book purchases make up 10% of all book purchases. Nothing was said about actual kindle sales numbers.” The new Kindle is available for pre-order now and it’ll start shipping February 24th. Owners of the previous Kindle will get prioritized shipping if they order by tonight, and anyone who has already ordered (but not yet received) the first Kindle will automatically have their orders upgraded to the new one. The Kindle Store now carries 230,000 books, up from the 90,000 available when the first Kindle launched 103 of the 110 New York Times best sellers are available, just a slight improvement over the 101 available at the first device’s launch Jeff Bezos has talked about how Amazon is working to get the Kindle’s books on other mobile devices. No word yet on which and when, but Amazon has competition here . You can synchronize your purchased content between first and second-gen Kindles (most useful for those who upgrade, presumably). And in the future, when Amazon rolls ebooks out onto mobile phones, you’ll be able to sync the e-literature with those devices, too. For more, check out the following coverage on CrunchGear: Live At the Amazon Kindle Event Photo comparison between the Kindle 1 and 2 Video: Kindle 2 As Slow as the Original Hands on with the Kindle 2 Crunch Network : CrunchGear drool over the sexiest new gadgets and hardware.
 
Clickable Launches Version 2.0 Of Powerful Search Ad Management Software Suite Top
Clickable is debuting version 2.0 of its search advertising management suite today, adding to the software a slew of features that should make it easier for small and medium-sized businesses to stay on top of online marketing campaigns held across a variety of advertising networks such as Google, Yahoo and MSN. While it was already possible for Clickable users to import different accounts in order to manage their campaigns from an interface designed to make them more intuitive and effective, Clickable Pro 2.0 now enables them to consolidate management of multiple search advertising campaigns across advertising networks from one central location. To achieve this, Clickable has added features like bulk editing and filtering of keywords which allow agencies and advertisers to rapidly search, edit and export high volumes of keywords across all advertising networks and accounts, as well as a recommendation engine that should allow advertisers to make search campaigns more effective. Clickable Pro 2.0 also adds beta support for what it dubs Emerging Google Ad Formats, meaning less standard media placements like image ads (banners), local business (maps) and mobile (text and image) ads. In addition, the company has now added its Convers at ion Tracking feature, previously in beta, to the Clickable Pro interface in order to make it easier for advertisers and agencies to track and measure campaigns. Management tools like Clickable come in handy for agencies managing search advertising budgets for multiple clients, as well as business owners who choose to advertise across different ad networks. These days, basically everyone should be looking to optimize their online advertising efforts to the maximum, and Clickable gives new customers a 15-day free trial to test the waters and see if their software suite helps generate more ROI. Pricing for Clickable Pro is set to 5% of the total monthly ad spend for campaigns exceeding a cost of $2,500, or a fixed $129 per month for those who manage to keep their cost under that amount. Clickable is based out of New York and has raised a total of $20.5+ million in funding to date, most recently a $14.5 Series B round led by Founders Fund, Union Square Ventures, and FirstMark Capital. Crunch Network : CrunchBase the free database of technology companies, people, and investors
 
Seeding Austin Startups: OneSpot And 7 Billion People Raise Series A Funding Top
Two Austin, Texas-based startups trying to make their way into increasingly crowded markets get to announce funding rounds this morning for a combined total of $7.2 million: OneSpot has raised a healthy 4.2 million in Series A funding led by Silver Creek Ventures and joined by returning investors like Mike Maples (former Executive VP of Worldwide Products at Microsoft) and Pat Horner (cofounder and former President/COO of Perot Systems). OneSpot dubs itself a “Web Content Curation Company”, and essentially helps web publishers offer links to relevant news items from across the internet through widgets. ( Release ) Web analytics firm 7 Billion People got a $3 million cash infusion from SmithCo Investments. It’s the first round of funding for the company, which employs a team of psychologists, behavioral scientists, IT professionals and engineers that build software products that gather information about website visitors in order to personalize their e-commerce experience. ( PaidContent ) Crunch Network : CrunchGear drool over the sexiest new gadgets and hardware.
 
Create Stunning Diagrams On The Web With LovelyCharts Top
If you’ve ever looked for an easy, intuitive online diagram creation tool, you know how hard it is to find one. LovelyCharts is a brand new application poised to become the default online drawing tool for amazing flowcharts, sitemaps and wireframes. Like Gliffy , Flowchart.com , and AutoDesk’s experimental Draw project, the app enables you to create diagrams and more in your browser with drag-and-drop functionality. The main differentiator between LovelyCharts and other online services is that it actually makes your complex processes look incredibly good. Better yet, it’s completely free and since last week, out of beta and available to anyone . In terms of features, LovelyCharts has pretty much all the basics covered, but you really need to try it out to get a feel of how rich the web-based app really is even with its relatively simple feature set. You can draw, align, insert symbols and icons, snap, zoom, import & export, and so on - for a good overview, check the tour and the (non-embeddable for some reason) screencast . My only gripes are that the app is not always as fast as I would like it to be at times, and there’s no way to upload and insert custom symbols, although the latter feature is underway. There’s also a professional version of LovelyCharts available for €29 a year, which allows users to maintain and collaborate on as many diagrams as they wish and features full history management, sharing functionality and a notification setup. LovelyCharts is mostly a one-man show, created by RIA developer and user architect Jérôme Cordiez from This Is Lovely! . The project is completely bootstrapped, which is awesome. Crunch Network : MobileCrunch Mobile Gadgets and Applications, Delivered Daily.
 
Is Noca The Next PayPal? Top
Noca, an online payments start-up we wrote about last year, is officially launching its payment service today. Formed by ex-Visa employees, Noca originally offered a micro-payments system via two Facebook applications, OneClickPay and HelpYourWorld . The company is now offering payment services for unlimited amounts. Currently, Noca has two clients; digital content provider Klatcher.com and a local little league site. The advantage of Noca’s system is that it allows online merchants to bypass high transactional fees (usually 2-3 percent plus $0.30) imposed by credit card companies on consumer purchases. Whether using Google Checkout, PayPal or Amazon Flexible Payment Service, merchants have been unable to avoid these fees, which can be pricey on expensive or luxury items. Until now. Noca’s online payment service only charges 0.25 percent on transactions and eliminated the fixed $0.30 fee all together. Once Noca’s system is enabled, the consumer’s issuing bank underwrites the risk so that the merchant receives payment within 1 to 2 business days. On the consumer side, Noca assures security and prevention of identity theft because the transaction avoids credit cards and uses debit transactions instead, where the money goes directly from the buyer’s checking/savings account to the merchant. The user enters account and routing numbers into a virtual check, in a process which the company insists is secure. After entering routing and checking numbers, Noca will then send a text message with a code to the user’s cell phone, which needs to be inputed for the transaction to be completed. With credit tight, consumers might feel more comfortable paying for items directly from a checking account. And it assures security for both merchants and consumers. Can Noca give PayPal a run for its money? Crunch Network : CrunchBase the free database of technology companies, people, and investors
 
Wake Up Call: Facebook Isn't A Safe Haven Top
Facebook just turned 5 years old. But a week that should have been filled with reflection and good times was instead marred by a series of breaking news reports detailing sex scandals, phishing, and other malicious activity on the world’s largest social network. In his blog post announcing the 5-year milestone, founder and CEO Mark Zuckerberg wrote that “Facebook has offered a safe and trusted environment for people to interact online, which has made millions of people comfortable expressing more about themselves.” But is Facebook really as safe as everyone seems to think? It’s Been A Long Week On Tuesday, February 3rd, we reported that thousands of sex offenders (many of whom were previously booted from MySpace) were lurking on Facebook (they’ve since been removed). As CNET’s Caroline McCarthy pointed out , these might not have necessarily been MySpace ‘refugees’ in the sense that they migrated en masse from MySpace to Facebook - they likely maintain profiles on multiple social networks. But the fact remains that there were thousands of convicted sexual offenders on a social network that is generally perceived as safe. On Wednesday, news broke of an elaborate and disturbing sex ring involving at least 31 high school students. An 18 year-old man named Anthony Stancl has allegedly been masquerading as high-school girls on Facebook, flirting with underaged male classmates and convincing them to send him nude photographs. He would then use the photographs to blackmail the boys into performing sexual acts with him, which he took pictures of using a cell phone. Stancl has been charged with 12 felony counts and up to 300 years of jail time. (In a somewhat bizarre twist, Facebook responded to news of the sex ring by stating that fewer than 1% of its 150 million users are affected by impersonation schemes. So, around 1.5 million people. Not exactly a confidence-inspiring statistic.) The same day, Facebook updated its Terms of Service, rewording many of its rules to make them easier to understand and explicitly prohibiting some common transgressions, like including false information in profiles or creating fake accounts. But there was one far more timely addition: “If you are required to register as a sex offender in any jurisdiction, you may not use the Facebook Service.” Facebook spokesman Barry Schnitt says that sex offenders had previously been banned through a number of other more general statements in the Terms of Service, but that the company wanted to make it more explicit. On Friday, CNN reported on an increasing number of phishing attacks seen on Facebook, using a technique we first heard about in January. After gaining access to compromised accounts, scammers are now using Facebook to ask the victims’ “friends” for cash. The attacks can be particularly effective because the scammers can easily look up personal details of the people they’re contacting. Finally, Maryland banned both Facebook and MySpace from its General Assembly Computers, as they had been the primary sources of numerous malware attacks (though we should note that the rumored ban of Facebook in Apple stores was overblown ). Had each of these stories broken on their own, they probably would have been met with little more than raised eyebrows. After all, with over 150 million users, it’s inevitable that some bad things are going to happen (and they have before). But taken together, it’s clear that Facebook isn’t quite the safe haven we might perceive. How We Got Here Since launching in 2004, Facebook has benefited from its public perception as a safe, clean site - especially compared to its biggest competitor, MySpace. Whereas MySpace allows users to customize their profile pages with graphics and audio (sometimes to the point of making them obnoxious), Facebook has maintained a more pristine environment, which certainly helps bestow a feeling of safety. Facebook is also theoretically more secure. When it first launched, only users with valid university (.edu) Email addresses could sign up. Over the years the site expanded to allow high school students, and eventually opened up to everyone. But each group of students or coworkers is still segmented into different ‘networks’ - you can’t browse through anyone’s profile unless you belong to their university or company network, usually verified through Email. These roadblocks add up to make creating fake profiles more of a challenge, but as we’ve seen in the last week, they can be overcome. Perhaps most important to note is Facebook’s relatively good security record up until this point. Parry Aftab , an independent online security expert who heads WiredSafety , says that there have been fewer sexual predator attacks on Facebook than its competitors and that her studies have found its security measures to exceed those seen elsewhere. She also notes that in general, users have behaved better on Facebook, and that teenagers have reported that they “feel safer” on the site. But Aftab says that given how quickly Facebook has grown - it jumped from 100 million users last August to over 150 million users today - she isn’t surprised that some registered sex offenders slipped through the cracks. In her words, “if you have 150 million users, you’re going to have all kinds of bad people”. So what measures can Facebook take to maintain its wholesome image? What Needs To Change Last May, Facebook announced that it had forged a deal with Attorneys General from 49 states to implement new safety and privacy rules (MySpace had adopted similar measures a few months earlier). Among the new policies were agreements to “aggressively remove inappropriate images and content” and to “more prominently display safety tips”. At the time we noted that this was probably a tough measure for Facebook to swallow - such initiatives can be very costly in terms of manpower, especially when it comes to moderating content. And frankly it looks like Facebook hasn’t really lived up to its promise. For starters, MySpace has a pair of human eyes looking at every photo uploaded to the site. Facebook doesn’t - instead, it relies on users to flag any content they find inappropriate. Aftab says that this system is effective, but I don’t regard it as “aggressive” - I’d much rather hear that Facebook employs a dedicated team to scan through photos, even if only for those shared by minors (or even better, a combination of flagging and human scanning). This events of this week, and the sex ring case in particular, will likely be a wakeup call for Facebook, akin to MySpace’s tragic suicide case a few years ago. As it continues its rapid growth, Facebook needs to step up both its technological and manpower efforts to more effectively deter malicious behavior. And Facebook’s Chief Privacy Officer Chris Kelly , who plans to run for Attorney General of California, can’t afford to let these issues fall to his successor. But the reality is that no matter what these social networks do, they’ll never have the technology or the manpower to stop every threat. Which is why they need to stop pretending that they’re safe. Facebook’s (and MySpace’s) goal is to connect as many people as possible, and the sad truth is that many people are very naive when it comes to online safety. These social networks need to step up their education and awareness efforts, perhaps even offering a ’safe mode’ for users (even adults) who aren’t adept at navigating the web’s pitfalls. Because sharing is only fun until someone gets hurt. Image Source Crunch Network : CrunchGear drool over the sexiest new gadgets and hardware.
 
YouDiligence Helps Parents Combat Cyber Predators Top
In light of recent reports of sexual predator growth on Facebook and MySpace sites, we wanted to mention start-up YouDiligence.com , a service launched late last year that alerts parents and educators to questionable content on Facebook, MySpace and other social networking websites. The company says that business has been exploding since MySpace recently cooperated with Connecticut Attorney General Richard Blumenthal to hand over the names of 90,000 registered sex offenders that were identified and blocked by the social networking site. Here’s how it works: When a child (or one of their friends) post inappropriate or questionable content on their page, an email alert is sent to the parent. A pretty comprehensive report is also stored on the user’s dashboard. Reports include time, the inappropriate words used, the context of how the terms was used, where it was posted (i.e., on a profile page, caption, wall comment, or if child writing a comment on someone else’s page) and a link to the exact URL. From a business model point of view, YouDiligence has had a few hiccups. A paid service, YouDiligence had slow growth after its launch and recently rolled out a 30-day free trial. The cost of the service ranges from $9.99 a month to monitor one child to $19.99 to monitor four or more kids. The company reports that it has seen sign-ups increase since the implementing the free trial. YouDiligence also started using retargeting start-up Fetchback to get customers back to their site. So far, they have a re-subscription rate of 95 percent. YouDiligence’s technology does has have overlap with competitors in the child internet monitoring space, including ReputationDefender and Sentinel Safe, who partnered with MySpace to find the sexual predators in the social networking site. Despite the competition, YouDiligence provides a valuable service in a marketplace that can be unsafe for young children. Crunch Network : CrunchBoard because it’s time for you to find a new Job2.0
 

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