Monday, February 9, 2009

Y! Alert: TechCrunch

Yahoo! Alerts
My Alerts

The latest from TechCrunch

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 : CrunchBoard because it’s time for you to find a new Job2.0
 
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 : MobileCrunch Mobile Gadgets and Applications, Delivered Daily.
 
What I Learned At Davos: How Networking And Feedback Loops Can Make A Better World Top
The following is a guest post by Eric Clemons , Professor of Operations and Information Management at The Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania. After returning from the World Economic Forum in Davos, I have been thinking about how to build more perfect human societies out of the visibly and demonstrably imperfect human decision makers we have to rely upon. Any classically trained techie knows the answer — it's feedback loops for error correction. That's how affordable class B amplifiers are made out of cheap off-the-shelf components. But what does that have to do with the governance of societies or the future of the high tech sector? So before Davos I was asked the typical "let's diss Davos" question … "Is Davos anything more than a networking event?" I'd never been to Davos, I didn't really understand Davos, and I gave the wrong answer. I tried to explain that it was more than networking. The correct answer, of course, is that there is nothing more than networking when trying to plan, to impose structure, and to create even more wealth from otherwise uncoordinated actions. There is nothing more important for the governance of civil and commercial society than people interacting, working together, learning about each other in a full frontal, full bandwidth interaction. So…what did I learn from my high tech full frontals? Google is scarier than I thought. They know exactly what they are doing … from the launch of new free products to their settlement of class action litigation … and they have only one goal. Their successes are no accident and their setbacks are investments, not mistakes. They know what their goal is and you can probably guess. And no, they are not subsidizing the gPhone, the gDrive, or Google Office as their only remaining meaningful charitable contributions now that Bill and Melinda have already solved Malaria, HIV, and the other medical problems that beset Africa. Microsoft is now cuddlier than I thought. I have more affection than I used to for the beleaguered team in Redmond (Hell, I have affection for them for the first time). And I am counting on them to ensure that there is a counterbalance to Google. I like bipolar worlds, at least on the technology side. Facebook is worth a couple of looks below the obvious surface. If Google has had a plan, the Zuckerbergs may have been merely lucky at first. They (Mark and Randi) are a couple of delightful kids, the brother and sister team of idealists, making a better world one friending at a time. I know there is a business model in here somewhere. I know that they Zs will implement it without abusing my privacy. I hope that they can do it without trying to rely on push-it-out, in-your-face advertising. Before Davos I had thought that Michael Arrington of TechCrunch was a jerk. I now know that a lot of this reaction was envy on my part. I learned by watching up close that he is faster with a sound bite, a summary, or a quick insult than anyone else in the field, and that he would rather be physically assaulted than change what he writes. If he is a jerk he is definitely my kind of jerk. More later on the future of paid search, the future of advertising, the future of online social networks and their impact on the marketplace, the relationship between internet penetration and the quality of American beer, the future of petites digerati in the workplace, later, if Arrington will have me back. Crunch Network : CrunchBase the free database of technology companies, people, and investors
 
Nokia Shaping Up To Launch Its Very Own App Store? Top
Our sister site MobileCrunch may be convinced that not every company needs an app store , but for Nokia to launch a central platform for distribution and sales of micro-programs developed for the Symbian OS , it would make a whole lotta sense. And if what Eldar Murtazin , editor of Mobile-review.com (both blogs are in Russian) writes is true, then that’s exactly what the Finnish juggernaut in mobile is going to launch at the upcoming Mobile World Congress . I concur with Engadget who says launching an application portal/store is a logical step to take for any mobile handset maker these days, but if Nokia is in fact going to launch one it will be worth taking a look at, and not only from a consumer or developer standpoint. According to UnwiredView , this is what Murtazin wrote in Russian: At first glance, for now, the app portal looks so so, there is some confusion. But they are trying, polishing it and a lot has changed for the better in a matter of days. A right step in a right direction… And the distribution and revenue sharing model between app makers and Nokia looks very attractive. At this point, this is nothing but a rumor, but such a move would definitely make sense and Muzartin is known to have strong insider connections in the mobile industry so this isn’t just a random thought from a blogger. It’s worth noting in this context that Nokia now fully owns Symbian Limited, but contributes the mobile operating system and S60 software to the Symbian Foundation , which is readying its official launch with a slew of members from the industry, including Sony Ericsson, Samsung, LG, Sharp and dozens more. There’s also an active community site for Symbian developers already in place, so they wouldn’t be creating an ecosystem from scratch. Then again, as someone pointed out in the comments of the Engadget post, Nokia already has a couple of half-baked portals for mobile software, e.g. Mosh , Download! and Software Market , so it’s unclear what would happen to those or how they would be able to morph these sites as well as the N-Gage platform for games into one single application store. We’ll find out more about Nokia’s plans at the Mobile Word Congress, which is being held from 16 to 19 February in Barcelona. Crunch Network : CrunchGear drool over the sexiest new gadgets and hardware.
 
ShopIt Acquires Triana Global, Launches Ad Network For Social Networks Top
ShopIt , a social commerce platform that enables people to set up an online store and sell goods through a variety of social networking services, has finished integrating its recently acquired Triana Global publisher network and relaunching it as ShopIt Media , another social advertising platform. Like many others, Triana Global claims to have been one of the first ad networks that started focussing on monetizing facebook applications after the social networking service started opening up for outside developers with the launch of Facebook Platform back in May 2007. Its biggest competitors are Adknowledge (which recently picked up both Cubics and Lookery Ads), Social Media , Offerpal Media and Appssavvy . The service has managed to stay largely under the radar since its launch, and even when they started guaranteeing floor CPM rates of $0.15 and $0.08 CPC rates on standard banner sizes for new developers joining the network they seem to have gotten the silence treatment and were also downright criticized for developing their own Facebook apps besides acting as a social advertising network. It didn’t help that Triana Global claimed to have hundreds of applications in their network, which they later expanded to other social networks like MySpace, hi5 and Bebo, but never published a portfolio or customer reference list. Either way, apparently the company was acquired by ShopIt in October 2008, and that startup is now relaunching the service as ShopIt Media, essentially providing a way for their users (1 million according to the company) to market the products they have for sale across a multitude of social communities. New publishers are being wooed with a 80% revenue share for all campaigns on Facebook, Ning, MySpace, hi5, Bebo and Orkut that are kicked off in February. Crunch Network : CrunchBoard because it’s time for you to find a new Job2.0
 
Is Noca The Next PayPal? Top
Noca, an online payments start-up we wrote about last year, is launching its official 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 : CrunchGear drool over the sexiest new gadgets and hardware.
 
Confirmed: TotalMusic Is Dead Top
Earlier today we detailed the chaotic history and recent trouble at TotalMusic, an experimental music initiative created by Sony BMG and Universal Music Group designed to rethink the way music was streamed on the web. After a round of layoffs and the shutdown of Ruckus, a streaming music service acquired by TotalMusic last year, the company looked like it was in bad shape. In what will likely be the most official statement we’ll get, Jason Herskowitz, the company’s VP of Product Management, has confirmed in a blog post that the music labels have indeed pulled the plug on TotalMusic: And so it goes. And, so do I. I know what you are thinking… “Hey Herskowitz, you were only there 3 months, how did you manage to screw it up so quickly?!”. Heh… all I can say is that in that short time I had the privilege of working with some great people on something that I *know* was going to be extremely compelling. I regret that we didn’t get to show you guys more about what we built - but in these extremely hard economic times (particularly for those in the music industry) it’s hard to blame them from pulling the plug on a still-highly-speculative offering . Herskowitz’s post is worth reading, if for no other reason to affirm that there are at least some people in the music industry who know that things need to change for online music streaming to become a viable business. And where does he think the labels should turn for innovation? Startups. But, from where I sit at least, I see all of the innovation in digital music services coming out of bootstrapped companies and passionate tinkerers. Hell, there are very few private investors or venture capitalists that want to get anywhere near this space right now… and rightfully so considering no one has really figured out how to make any money out of this industry (and its products) that so many people love. Herskowitz has also thrown together a few music mashups (some of which are likely of questionable legality), which are worth checking out. Among them is Friendp3 , which offers a list of songs that have recently been listened to by his friends on Last.fm (note that this only shows songs that were played by his friends). In a way it’s disappointing that TotalMusic has run its course - the music industry is desperately in need of innovation, and it sounds like the initiative was making some progress, even if it wasn’t quite tangible yet. Of course, while TotalMusic may be gone in its current form (whatever that was meant to be), don’t be surprised if the record companies band together again once the economy settles down. After all, TotalMusic has come back from the dead before. Crunch Network : CrunchBoard because it’s time for you to find a new Job2.0
 
The Record Industry's TotalMusic Experiment Is Sinking Fast Top
TotalMusic, the digital music distribution initiative created by Sony BMG and Universal Music Group, appears to be on life support - or worse. In the last few months the company has seen the two music executives who spearheaded the initiative jump ship, followed by a round of layoffs that included senior personnel. Yesterday Ruckus, a music streaming company acquired by TotalMusic last year, abruptly shut down . Repeated attempts to contact Michael Bebel , Ruckus’ CEO, have gone unanswered. It may be too soon to definitively put TotalMusic into the Deadpool, but things are not looking good for the company. The history of TotalMusic is dramatic, filled with failed deals, major strategy changes, and an antitrust lawsuit. Since forming, the company has proposed two new revenue models for music: the first was to offer end-users a large library of music for ‘free’, by building the cost of the music service into their music devices. That plan didn’t exactly work out - in early 2008 the Department of Justice launched an anti-trust probe which derailed the idea. Then, last summer, the company came back from the dead. The second new model was meant to serve as a departure from the way music has traditionally been licensed on the web. Historically, the major record labels have charged sites per-song fees for streaming, badgering everyone into submission with threats of lawsuits and steep penalties. Major sites like MySpace and imeem are held under this kind of agreement, as are many smaller sites which are having trouble sustaining themselves because of the high fees (even Pandora, a streaming music site that had the most popular iPhone application of 2008, has worried about having to shut down). In contrast to these per-song fees, TotalMusic was supposed to offer free streaming to sites in return for user data and all associated advertising revenue. In particular, the initiative was built from the start with Facebook in mind, offering the social network a chance to implement a music service for free while all of its competitors were paying hefty fees. But Facebook didn’t bite. The exact reason why is hazy - UMG and Sony were able to bring EMI on board, but were unable to get Warner , the last major label, to agree. We’ve also heard that Facebook was unwilling to hand over user data and ad revenues. Since the Facebook deal fell apart, the company has taken a turn for the worse. When we investigated the company last summer , we noted that four TotalMusic software engineers listed on LinkedIn had previously worked on MusicNow, another streaming music service that changed hands from Circuit City to AOL and ultimately had its customer base sold to the ‘legit’ Napster (presumably they had been brought in to apply their expertise to the new service). In the last month, two of the four employees have changed their profiles to indicate that they no longer work with TotalMusic. We’ve also heard that one of the company’s lead engineers was laid off in the last few days, prompting the sudden shutdown of Ruckus. Ruckus was quietly acquired last year by TotalMusic, and was meant to act as the foundation for the service’s backend. The operation closed down so quickly that some of the service’s participating universities weren’t even notified of the upcoming change (many campuses have been actively promoting Ruckus for years to try to curb piracy). But there has been some progress. Last month TotalMusic soft-launched a new site called TunePost , which apparently offers streaming music through widgets. The service is in a private beta, but the company’s VP of Product Management, Jason Herskowitz, has been embedding widgets into his personal blog. This may be a sign that TotalMusic still has a pulse, but we’ve also heard that the company’s remaining employees are shopping around its technology to outside buyers - the embeds may simply be a way to show off the technology they’ve built. In any case, it’s hard to believe that in the current economy the music labels will continue to funnel money into what boils down to a music widget that has yet to launch to the public. Crunch Network : CrunchBoard because it’s time for you to find a new Job2.0
 
Why Facebook Isn't Poised to Steal Twitter's Thunder Top
Last night, Facebook announced a set of changes to its platform that make it easier for third-party applications to exchange data about users’ status messages, notes, shared links, and videos. The more open Facebook’s platform gets, the more powerful it becomes for developers to build fun and useful applications with Facebook’s data, either onsite or off. However, several pundits have already jumped to the conclusion that greater openness with concern to status updates in particular spells trouble for Twitter, the bourgeoning microblog service that Facebook itself recently courted without success . No one knows just where Facebook is heading with its platform or whether it’s serious about crushing novel new social networking services like Twitter or FriendFeed. It’s easy for bloggers to speculate that every incremental change to its platform or feature set is a devious plan to do just this. But let’s not get ahead of ourselves, especially when there’s a lot to suggest that Facebook has a long way to go before putting any kind of dent in Twitter’s growing popularity. Mike Butcher over at TechCrunch UK has outlined four particular ways in which he thinks Facebook “won’t kill Twitter”. First off, Facebook has a fundamentally different relationship model than Twitter. On Facebook, you create a simple two-way friendship with someone. On Twitter, you can choose to follow someone and you can be followed, but the following relationship doesn’t have to be bidirectional. Butcher also suggests that Facebook is more interested in preserving ownership over its social graph than Twitter is over its own. And he points out that the replies Twitter users make to each other are usually public. These are all fine points to make, and the technical differences he spells out certainly make it more difficult for Facebook to recreate the appeal of Twitter. But when it comes down to it, Facebook fails to challenge Twitter with this new platform upgrade because the two companies ultimately serve substantially different behavioral paradigms. While Twitter and Facebook prompt users with eerily similar questions — Twitter asks “What are you doing?” and Facebook asks “What are you doing right now?” — their users don’t answer in the same way. By and large, Facebook users answer the question more faithfully than Twitter users. They actually provide information about what they’re currently doing, perhaps because they are prompted with a field that starts with something like “Mark is”. And the news feed lists their entries as action items (”Mark is having a bike ride” or at least “Mark likes biking outside”) under a tab called Status Updates. Meanwhile, Twitter users have (by and large) decided to ignore the questioned posed for them. Instead of using the service to post real status updates — i.e. descriptions of what they’re currently doing — they use it as a public broadcasting system of sorts. It’s an efficient way for them to send out thought trinkets to an often ambiguous crowd of friends and strangers. And with @replies, Twitter morphs into a conversational medium, a big cocktail party where everybody is constantly eavesdropping on everybody else’s impromptu conversations. There are, of course, exceptions to these generalizations. Facebook users do enter random thoughts in lieu of real status updates, and Twitter users do actually say what they’re currently doing. But the overlap is rather small, and it’s this smallness that undermines any attempt (real or imaginary) on Facebook’s part to steal Twitter’s thunder. Something behavioral about Facebook’s users would have to change, and it’s unlikely that these users — who are largely mainstream — are inclined to pick up the tweeting habits of a crowd that consists mostly of early adopters. [Image courtesy of Doug Geivett's blog ] Crunch Network : CrunchBase the free database of technology companies, people, and investors
 
Hopstop Jumps Onto iPhone App Bandwagon That Is Driven By Google Maps Top
Transit planner HopStop launched its free iPhone application last week to rival the mobile version of Google Map’s Transit option. The application, with support from iPhone’s GPS functionality, offers all the same services as the website. This includes trip customization, maps marked with nearby subways and bus stops, a taxi mode that estimates time and cost of travel and contact information for taxi companies, and the ability to re-route a transit plan that is provided. In the past, Hopstop was ahead of competitor Google Transit in terms of providing transit info for a widespread amount of metropolitan areas but Google has caught up (and maybe surpassed) with its Maps-based transit planner. And Google Maps is integrated with iPhone 3G’s GPS , making Google Transit a free native application that doesn’t have to be downloaded. The first reviews posted on the iPhones apps store were fairly positive. Let us know what you think of the HopStop app in comments. Is it better than Google Transit on the iPhone? Crunch Network : MobileCrunch Mobile Gadgets and Applications, Delivered Daily.
 
Apple Rejects Obama Trampoline iPhone App, Leaves Us Puzzled Top
Video game developer Swamiware was surprised to see its latest iPhone app rejected by Apple, and so are we. The application was a harmless game that let you select a known U.S. politician (both republicans and democrats) and have him/her jump a virtual trampoline. You could tilt to control movement, use the head to pop some balloons with the White House or the Oval Office in the background, do some acrobatic flips and shake the device to clear the scene. That was it. Now can make an educated guess as to why Apple decided to reject the application, because there are precedents. About a month ago, Tim Burks saw his cartoon being rejected as an iPhone app for likely the same reason the Obama Trampoline was denied: … it contains content that ridicules public figures and is in violation of Section 3.3.12 from the iPhone SDK Agreement which states: "Applications must not contain any obscene, pornographic, offensive or defamatory content or materials of any kind (text, graphics, images, photographs, etc.), or other content or materials that in Apple's reasonable judgement may be found objectionable by iPhone or iPod touch users." But does the Obama Trampoline app actually ridicule public figures? It’s not obscene or pornographic of nature, so why was it deemed either offensive or defamatory? Judge for yourself: Not so bad, right? Either way, the app goes in the … not the deadpool, but Mac developer Peter Hosey’s iPhone Applications Graveyard . CrunchBase Information iPhone App Store Information provided by CrunchBase Crunch Network : CrunchBoard because it’s time for you to find a new Job2.0
 
Amazon Kindle 2 Images and Price Leaked Top
Crunch Network : CrunchBoard because it’s time for you to find a new Job2.0
 
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 (Total Music was also unable to get Warner, the last major label holdout, to agree to participate in the venture). 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.
 

CREATE MORE ALERTS:

Auctions - Find out when new auctions are posted

Horoscopes - Receive your daily horoscope

Music - Get the newest Album Releases, Playlists and more

News - Only the news you want, delivered!

Stocks - Stay connected to the market with price quotes and more

Weather - Get today's weather conditions




You received this email because you subscribed to Yahoo! Alerts. Use this link to unsubscribe from this alert. To change your communications preferences for other Yahoo! business lines, please visit your Marketing Preferences. To learn more about Yahoo!'s use of personal information, including the use of web beacons in HTML-based email, please read our Privacy Policy. Yahoo! is located at 701 First Avenue, Sunnyvale, CA 94089.
Posted by at

No comments:

Post a Comment

Subscribe to: Post Comments (Atom)