Saturday, March 7, 2009

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Twitter To Start Serving Local News To Users? Top
Germany’s Der Spiegel published an interview with Twitter CEO Evan Williams yesterday on its website, and Williams had a couple of interesting things to say. You can find a poorly Google-translated version of the interview here , which features Williams answering the usual, boring questions ‘professional’ journalists tend to ask about the micro-sharing service (the reporter’s opened the interview with the Pulitzer-price caliber question “so does Twitter spark narcissism and idiocy?”). But Williams did share something worth noting at the end of the interview. When asked about possible future features for Twitter, he reportedly said that one of the things being considered is an extension that lets people know what’s happening in their immediate vicinity. That would basically mean that Twitter could actively ping users about local events that are going on in their neighborhood, in real-time, based on the location they’ve indicated. As an example, Williams says users could be alerted to the fact a fire is burning a few streets away from where the user Twitter knows (or thinks) they are. It’s not clear of this feature is under development or merely in idea stage right now, but rarely does anyone from Twitter give so much insight on the startup’s plans for the future in terms of product features, so we’re inclined to believe it’s coming sooner rather than later. Some questions arise. How frequently would Twitter ping users on local news? In what form (replies, direct messages, SMS, …)? How personalized would this be (what constitutes news for you may not mean the same to your neighbor)? And if it’s only about alerting people in case of emergencies, like the example Williams cites, who would be the one to determine when and why it’s worth sending warning messages out to users? Would they be possibly opening such a feature up to the authorities (police, fire fighters, etc.) so they could be the ones alerting users about potential risks in their vicinity themselves? Last but not least, could this be an indication of their impending revenue model? If you think about it, location-based marketing messages would fit right into all of the above, for better or worse. (Hat tip to TechCrunch blogger Serkan Toto ) Crunch Network : CrunchBoard because it’s time for you to find a new Job2.0
 
Google Privacy Blunder Shares Your Docs Without Permission Top
In an apparent privacy error that underscores some of the biggest problems surrounding cloud-based services, we’re hearing that Google has sent a notice to a number of users of its Document and Spreadsheets products stating that it may have inadvertently shared some of their documents with contacts who were never granted access to them. According to the notice, this sharing was limited to people “with whom you, or a collaborator with sharing rights, had previously shared a document” - a vague statement that sounds like it could add up to quite a few people. The notice states that only text documents and presentations are affected, not spreadsheets, and provides links to each of the user’s documents that may have been affected. I’ve contacted Google for confirmation and haven’t heard back, but this seems to be legit - our tipster says that he had previously shared the document listed in his notice, but now it has been reset to show 0 collaborators (one of the precautionary measures mentioned in the note). At this point the relatively few Tweets around the letter seems to indicate that the error is not particularly widespread, but it’s still a major and unsettling lapse in security. Update: an affected user posted his story and the exchange he had with Google support over the issue on Slashdot . Here’s the letter in full: Dear Google Docs user, We wanted to let you know about a recent issue with your Google Docs account. We’ve identified and fixed a bug which may have caused you to share some of your documents without your knowledge. This inadvertent sharing was limited to people with whom you, or a collaborator with sharing rights, had previously shared a document. The issue only occurred if you, or a collaborator with sharing rights, selected multiple documents and presentations from the documents list and changed the sharing permissions. This issue affected documents and presentations, but not spreadsheets. To help remedy this issue, we have used an automated process to remove collaborators and viewers from the documents that we identified as being affected. Since the impacted documents are now accessible only to you, you will need to re-share the documents manually. For your reference, we’ve listed below the documents identified as being affected. We apologize for the inconvenience that this issue may have caused. We want to assure you that we are treating this issue with the highest priority. The Google Docs Team In short, this is a massive blunder on Google’s part. I fully appreciate the lengths Google has gone to to offer a wide array of helpful online services, many of which are free of charge. But this error highlights why cloud-based services scare many people. Regardless of what a site’s posted rules and policies are, a technical glitch is all it takes to expose your sensitive data. Thanks to Ed McManus for the tip. Crunch Network : CrunchGear drool over the sexiest new gadgets and hardware.
 
Elevator Pitch Friday: Valu Valu Uses A Scientific Pricing Model To Sell Games Top
This week’s elevator pitch comes from Valu Valu , an online marketplace for video games whose prices are based on dynamic scientific pricing, creating the optimal price for both the seller and the buyer. The pitch was concise and outlined the service the the site is delivering well, but didn’t tell us how Valu Valu will make money. After doing a little bit of research, we discovered that Valu Valu charges a 5 percent transaction fee on the total purchases (there’s no transaction fee charged to “local” transactions). The site currently features video games but plans to expand to other markets in the future. Founded by ex-Microsoft techies Emmanuel Marot and Bruno Botvinik, Valu Valu uses a proprietary scientific pricing algorithm that continuously optimizes prices based on market conditions, a.k.a. supply and demand, so that buyers are happy with prices of goods (and thus will make purchases) and sellers make more money. The seller’s price is determined automatically, giving sellers limited control of the price of their goods. Other online marketplaces, like Ebay or Craigslist, allow the seller to determine the price of the item being sold. But Valu Valu’s method saves sellers’ time by establishing a set price, and cuts out haggling or auctioning time. Of course, Valu Valu will face competition in game sales from popular online retailers like Amazon.com and GameStop’s EB Games . I did a side by side price comparison of the “James Bond 007: Quantum of Solace” game for Playstation 3 between Valu Valu and Amazon. Amazon’s price for a new game came in $10 lower than Valu Valu’s estimate for a brand-new game. The Valu Valu’s product that was actually being sold was “just like new” (which sounds like a nice way of saying used), but even Amazon’s used Bond game were selling more than $10 lower once again. Valu Valu just launched the beta version in February, so hopefully the start-up will be able to attract more users in the future. I think Valu Valu may be on to something. It seems like an innovative technology that needs to be tinkered with a bit more. Here’s a screenshot: Crunch Network : CrunchBoard because it’s time for you to find a new Job2.0
 
Some Indie Facebook Developers Pulling In Over $700,000 A Month Top
The mass media may be enamored of the rags-to-riches stories of developers on Apple’s App Store, but it isn’t the only game in town for indie developers to strike it rich. We’ve gotten word from SocialMedia , a popular ad platform for social network applications, that one of the company’s clients pulled in over $700,000 in advertising revenues from their Facebook apps in December alone. Granted, this was spread over 30+ of the client’s applications, but the company only consists of a handful of (very prolific) developers. While SocialMedia declined to name the company in question, it confirmed that it was not one of the large social application developers like Playfish , SGN , and Zynga who have raised large funding rounds and have been rumored to pull in over $1 million a month. The news reaffirms Facebook’s position alongside the iPhone as a place to get rich quick (at least for a lucky few). SocialMedia also notes that it has several other independent clients who are making over $100,000 a month. Of course, such results are uncommon, but no more so than they are on the App Store. Also worth noting is that these revenues are entirely based on advertising, while most of the success stories we’ve heard on the App Store have been from premium apps. Facebook isn’t likely to unveil its own premium apps any time soon, but if it ever gets around to launching the payment platform it announced last year, these success stories will probably become far more common. Crunch Network : CrunchGear drool over the sexiest new gadgets and hardware.
 
Pure Digital (Flip Video) In Acquisition Discussions; Cisco May Be Buying (Updated) Top
San Francisco based Pure Digital Technologies , the seven year old company behind the Flip Video line of video cameras, is considering a sale of the company, multiple sources have confirmed. One interested buyer is rumored to be Cisco. Flip cameras - dead simple and small video devices that are tailored towards users who want to upload video to the Internet - have become massively popular. One source says the company has sold more than $200 million worth of the tiny cameras in the last couple of years. Based on reviews of the recently released Flip Mino HD , we’re not surprised. The devices cost between $130 and $230 and have spawned a large group of copy cat competitors. One potential buyer, says a source, is Cisco, which has been more active recently in acquisitions. Ned Hooper , Cisco’s chief M&A guy, is said to be actively looking to buy or invest in consumer startups that offer high-bandwith-using services. A hot startup like Flip, which is helping to fuel the explosion in user generated video (much of which makes its way online), fits in perfectly with that strategy. The company is backed by Sequoia Capital, Benchmark Capital, Crescendo Ventures, Focus Ventures, Morgan Stanley, AllianceBernstein and Steamboat Ventures (the venture capital arm of the Walt Disney Company) and has raised at least $68 million in venture funding. Update : We’re getting another source that says this “is a done deal,” that Cisco is confirmed as the buyer and that the price is “north of $500 million.” Founder and CEO Jonathan Kaplan is said to be taking around $80 million off the table personally. This hasn’t been confirmed. Crunch Network : CrunchBoard because it’s time for you to find a new Job2.0
 
PlayOn Moves To Rule The Streaming Roost, Adds Amazon VoD And Revision3 Content Top
If you haven’t heard about PlayOn , MediaMall’s PC-to-console video streaming software, you will soon. Moving to become a major player in the streaming content world, PlayOn has grabbed some huge wins lately, and it doesn’t look like they’re planning on slowing down. In a software update hitting today, PlayOn has added streaming support for Amazon’s Video on Demand service along with content from Revision3. PlayOn is available for $40, and currently compatible with the PS3 and Xbox 360. You just install the server software on your PC, then stream the content over your network back to your console of choice. It’s well known that PlayOn is working on adding Wii compatibility, which ought to make it the dominant force in the console streaming market. This news comes just days after the announcement that Roku has added Amazon VoD support to their $99 player, and the service has found its way to TiVo boxes and Sony Bravia TVs as well. If you’re not looking to add a new box to your AV set, PlayOn seems like a fairly solid alternative. PlayOn has long supported Hulu, CBS.com, ESPN.com, CNN.com, YouTube, and Netflix, and these latest additions are rounding things out nicely. Next up on PlayOn’s plate is ABC.com content, for which they’re currently in talks with ABC. It’s beginning to look more and more like the average joe won’t actually need cable or an antenna in order to stay entertained in their living room. We’ve just started putting PlayOn through the paces, but we like what we see so far - if you want to check it out for yourself, a 2 week trial is available at their site . [via Audioholics ] Crunch Network : CrunchGear drool over the sexiest new gadgets and hardware.
 
WaTunes Sells Your Music On iTunes And Amazon Free Of Charge Top
WaTunes , a service that helps independent artists get their music into online music stores like iTunes and Amazon, has announced that it is making its service entirely free. The move is a direct attack on competitors like TuneCore , which also helps independent artists distribute their music but charges fees depending on the number of songs being sold and the number of stores the artist would like to sell their tracks on. In the company’s blog post on the new pricing scheme (or lack thereof) CEO Kevin Rivers writes: We’ve went from being free to be charged, to giving 90% of sales, to giving back all the sales earnings. We’ve finally can say that we have raise the bar even higher by providing you guys an ABSOLUTE digital distribution service. As of now, WaTunes will enable it’s customers to continue to sell unlimited music, earn 100% of the royalties, and more, ALL FOR FREE! There are no fees, cancellations, no gimmicks. So now that the company is giving up its entire source of revenue, how is it planning to make money? I spoke with CEO Kevin Rivers, who explains that the site is moving towards launching a music-based social network with rich music widgets and a community of fans and artists (it sounds like it will compete against sites like MySpace Music ). Users will also be able to buy songs through an online storefront, with advertising as the primary source of revenue. The move to make WaTune’s distribution service free is designed to attract a variety of independent artists to the music social network, which he says will launch around June. While this seems like a great deal for artists, it also sounds a little too good to be true. There are already many online music communities, and even if WaTunes does begin to distribute music for a large number of artists, I still don’t see how they’ll be able to convert them into new users on their music portal. That said, free is free, so I doubt WaTunes will have any trouble attracting new artists for the time being. Crunch Network : CrunchBoard because it’s time for you to find a new Job2.0
 
WikiPock Will Put An Entire Copy Of Wikipedia In Your Pocket For $10 Top
Would you pay $10 for an entire offline copy of Wikipedia, the crowdsourced encyclopedia of information that you can get on the Web for free? WikiPock , a Paris-based startup, has compressed the entire English language version of Wikipedia to under 4 gigabytes (not including images), and is selling it for mobile phones. The other language versions are smaller (it also comes in German, French, Polish, Dutch, Italian, Portuguese and Spanish). The application lets you search and read Wikipedia articles on your mobile phone without an Internet connection. It can be downloaded directly, or on its own microSD card. For $15, you can download updates, but only for a year. The first 30 people to send an email to tc[at]wikipock[dot]com will get a free copy. It is available for Blackberry and Windows Mobile phones right now, and will soon be available for the iPhone, Android, and Symbian phones. Since all of these phones can access Wikipedia via their browsers, what you are paying for is offline access, a mobile-friendly format, and fast search. Consumers seem more willing to pay for mobile apps, even when the same information is free on the Web (witness the success of paid apps in iTunes). And at least WikiPock is giving back to the Wikipedia community. Ten percent of all sales will be donated to the Wikimedia Foundation . Crunch Network : MobileCrunch Mobile Gadgets and Applications, Delivered Daily.
 
Ticker Feed Ohpan Offers Uber-Personalized News Top
Web design startup AType Studios has launched the private beta of Ohpan, a free personalized side-scrolling interactive ticker feed featuring breaking news, pictures, web links, blog posts, the weather, and tidbits of information. The first 1000 TechCrunch readers to enter the code “TCRUNCH” when prompted here will be able to join the private beta. Ohpan’s technology is enabled by learning about what communities, sources, and topics users like through their actions on the site (like clicking, saving and forwarding comments). Ohpan will also ask users questions to determine what news should be subscribed to a feed. For example, if a user answers “Yes” to a “Do you use twitter?” question, more Twitter news will be published to the user’s feed. Ohpan then combs through thousands of RSS feeds to find news items and then individualizes the news ticker to the users preferences. Upon accessing the site, Ohpan lets users link to Facebook or Gmail accounts or sign up as a guest. When a user clicks on a news item, Ohpan gives the user a snapshot of the article or news, showing the source and images associated with the item. The user can “star” the article to save this item and show more like it in the ticker, “strike” the item to limit similar items, “flag” the item as cautionary, or “publish” the item to add to the user’s collection that can be seen by contacts via Facebook. Ohpan also allows users to create a feed featuring items they have composed. The technology (a proprietary Atype algorithm) picks up on the user’s tastes pretty quickly. And there’s always a need for personalized real-time news. But the value of a ticker (at least on the TV) is having it scroll at the bottom of a screen while a user is viewing other content. Its a little annoying to keep switching between tabs to look at the scroll. Perhaps a widget of the ticker would be a more useful tool, especially if it could also be easily embedded in a social network or stand alone website. Ohpan is also planning to launch an iPhone application in the next few weeks. Ohpan has some innovative plans for the future, including the ability to score ads as one would news items. According to the founder of Atype, Simon Plashkes, ads will be subject to the same scoring system that other content is and if users overwhelmingly strike an ad, it will be removed from the site. Ohpan is also looking to possibly integrate with user’s Google Reader feeds. Users would be able to forward a Reader item into their feed interface. Crunch Network : MobileCrunch Mobile Gadgets and Applications, Delivered Daily.
 
Facebook fbFund Winner Wildfire Launches Promotion App (Beta Invites) Top
Facebook fbFund winner Wildfire is launching the private beta of its web application, The Wildfire Promotion Builder, which allows companies to create their own branded interactive promotions, including contests, coupons, sweepstakes and giveaways. Using Facebook Connect combined with the power of the application, companies can simultaneously publish promotion campaigns on the designated “promotions tab” on the company’s Facebook page and on the company’s website (campaigns can also be simultaneously run on MySpace, Bebo, and other standalone websites). Wildfire is giving out beta invites for the first 500 Techcrunch readers who sign up here . To be eligible, TechCrunch readers should write “Techcrunch” in the “How did you hear about us?” field at the bottom of the form. Wildfire’s Promotion Builder application is a simple way for companies to cross-promote across various social networks while still taking advantage of the viral nature and rising dominance of Facebook as the top social network. The promotions tab could complement the recent Facebook redesign of company pages to look more like profile pages. Wildfire charges a fee of $0.99 per campaign per day for sweepstakes and coupon campaigns and $2.99 per day for user generated video and photo contests. The startup also offers a premium service that includes custom design features. Coupons, sweepstakes and giveaways are a good way to engage consumers and Facebook seems to think so as well. The social network has used Wildfire’s brand promotion apps to run multiple contests on the site. In fact, the consumer voting application Facebook used to vote on the the fbFund winners was actually created by Wildfire. In December, Wildefire won $250,000 in cash grants from Facebook’s fbFund, a joint venture between Facebook, Accel, and the Founders Fund meant to cultivate and reward innovative applications on the Facebook platform. Here’s a screenshot that shows the application used in the new Facebook “page more like a profile” format: Crunch Network : MobileCrunch Mobile Gadgets and Applications, Delivered Daily.
 
Lifeblob's Redesign Takes Social Timelines To The Next Level (Invites) Top
Social timelines are going mainstream (see AOL/Bebo ), but startups are pushing them to the next level. Today, Lifeblob , the Indian startup working on ways for you to visualize your life on the net, is introducing a refreshed version of its social timeline creation tool. With it, you can easily patch together a visual representation of your life’s most memorable moments by timestamping certain events and enriching them with photos, text and videos. The end result can easily be shared on a variety of social services, or embedded into any blog or web page (example below). It’s an invite-only service for now, but we have an unlimited amount of invite codes for you. It’s simply techcrunch and you can use it to sign up here . Lifeblob is one of the investments of SeedFund , the Google-backed VC fund who actively looks for early-stage financing deals within the Indian startup community. The company raised its first round of financing of approximately $1 million from the fund in August 2008. It employs only 4 people for now and its business model is centered around advertising - which it will start rolling out after its general launch - and premium services (like branded timelines, etc.) Public timelines on Lifeblob can be searched by other people with ease. If they’re not protected, anyone is able to both view and share the “lifeblobs” with the rest of the world (thanks to an integration with SocialTwist’s Tell-a-Friend service). Privacy settings allow your updates to be private or publicly visible, or for your friends only. You can also opt not to be listed in the Lifeblob directory at all, while still getting a shareable dedicated URL for your timeline (here’s an example for Michael Arrington ). Lifeblob isn’t so much about the concept of lifestreaming as it is about being able to visualize moments in a person’s life, while showing relations to other people whose moments intersect with theirs. Those intersections can take the form of people, places, events, associated tags, and so on. Each intersection shows up as a stacked tile, which launches the associated timeline when clicked on. For example, if Mike Arrington met up with Gary Vaynerchuk, Loren Feldman, and David Recordon after a conference (here’s the photographic evidence that this did indeed happen) and all of them would have indicated this in their timelines or been tagged, you’d get a timeline that shows that connection inside the interface and lets you explore more relations and other people’s lifeblobs simply by clicking around a bit. It also works as a marketing vehicle. For instance, here is a timeline of all of Woody Allen’s movies , with connections to timelines for actors who have appeared in his movies. The UI is nice, but if you click any of the frames in the embed above with a screen resolution lower than 1024×768, you’ll immediately notice it still needs quite a bit of fine-tuning, as you can’t resize it properly and the menu items are all over the place. That said, it’s a pretty cool service reminiscent of tools like Dipity and Kronomy but with a more social approach. Definitely a tool I’d consider using to recap events, which I think it is most suited for. Turning your whole life into a lifeblob seems like a whole lot of work, unless you could auto-update from other services (right now, only Picasa is supported). Here’s a screencast on how it works: Crunch Network : CrunchBase the free database of technology companies, people, and investors
 
Topify Lets You Manage Your Twitter Followers Via Email (200 Invites) Top
If you are not a Twitter power user, you can ignore this post. But if you find yourself increasingly relying on Twitter and spending way too much time managing your followers, trying to figure out who they are, or responding to their private direct messages, you’ll want to try out Topify Created by former TechCrunch France editor Ouriel Ohayon and Arik Fraimovich as a tool they needed for themselves, Topify lets users manage their followers and respond to direct messages directly from their email inbox. Topify is essentially a time saver. Once you set it up (we have 200 invites for TechCrunch readers ) by replacing your email in Twitter’s settings with one that Topify provides which redirects back to yours, you get an email every time someone follows you. The email contains a snapshot of that person’s Twitter activity: a one line bio, location, number of followers and followees, Twitter update count, Twitter tenure, and last Tweet (see image). It basically tries to gives you enough information to decide whether you want to follow that person back, which you can do simply by replying to the email. Topify also lets you reply to direct messages (Twitter’s version of private messages) by replaying directly via email. This saves you the step of having to go back to Twitter and login before responding. These are all basic features which should be part of Twitter, but until then you can use Topify. For public replies to your Twitter messages, you don’t get an email (because Twitter itself does not offer such notifications). Adding @replies might flood your email inbox, but I actually would prefer getting those as well because I find myself often missing replies and not responding until days later, if at all. As Twitter grows and more people come on board, this tool is especially useful during its viral phase, when the number of followers any individual is accumulating on a daily or weekly basis should be accelerating. Crunch Network : CrunchGear drool over the sexiest new gadgets and hardware.
 
BackType Gets More Conversation Tracking Features, Seed Funding Top
BackType , one of the better conversation tracking tools we’ve come across so far, is releasing a couple of new features today that arguably make it a top gun in the space. The startup, launched in August 2008 on $15k thanks to Y Combinator’s summer program, has also closed a round of seed funding to the tune of $300,000 from True Ventures , led by the firm’s founder and partner Toni Schneider , notably also the CEO of Automattic (the company behind blogging powerhouse WordPress). BackType, unlike commenting enablers like Disqus, JS-Kit, IntenseDebate and coComment, offers a one-stop destination for retrieving comments on just about any topic across a wide variety of blogging platforms and social services (Twitter, FriendFeed, etc.). You can do a simple keyword search but also track people specifically, e.g. Michael Arrington . Evidently, you can subscribe to search query results by RSS feed and e-mail (based on a keyword or only for an article you indicate). You can also feature your own comments across the web on your own blog using a widget. Today the company is introducing a new feature dubbed BackType Connect , soon to be included in their API , which makes it even easier to follow conversations centered around a certain blog post or article. All you need to do is go to the website and enter the URL of the post, and BackType will fetch all the conversations around it and display the gist on one page, along with some stats. As you can see in the second screenshot, there’s also a dedicated tab for ‘tweets’ i.e. Twitter messages, which comes in handy with Twitter now being a real-time search engine and all that. But it doesn’t stop there. BackType is today also launching BackTweets , a separate website where you can track conversations that are going around on the micro-sharing service, based on keywords or URLs (even when they are shortened!). For an example, check a search for ‘techcrunch.com’ . They also created a special page tracking the top links on Twitter , which can be somewhat compared to the functionality of Techmeme (or Tweetmeme , of course). UberVU ( our coverage ) and Artiklz ( our coverage ) offer similar services, although in terms of quality of returned results BackType wins the race, at least for the couple of keywords and websites addresses we tested. In this day and age, it’s essential for individuals, companies and brands to track conversations on the Internet, and BackType makes for an excellent service for weeding through comments on the social web, which can often prove invaluable. The startup still offers the basic functionality for free and is currently still figuring out how to make money from enabling companies and publishers to track those conversations, but it’s not like there are no opportunities there. Crunch Network : CrunchBase the free database of technology companies, people, and investors
 
Robert Scoble To Leave FastCompany Top
Super-blogger Robert Scoble is leaving his full time job at FastCompany, he confirmed by phone tonight. He first joined the company nearly a year ago and has been running their FastCompany.tv site. He says he’ll continue to write a column for the magazine, but his video work with them is over. Part of the reason behind his departure: His long time sponsor, Seagate, hasn’t renewed their $1 millionish/year contract, he says. As for what comes next, he says he’s nearly ready to unveil a new project. Scoble continues to be on the cutting edge of new Internet technologies, sometimes taking things to an extreme. He was once briefly banned from Facebook for violating their terms of use, and we’ve (only half jokingly) called for an intervention over his excessive use of services like Twitter and Friendfeed . Whatever he does next, it’ll be worth paying attention to. Crunch Network : CrunchGear drool over the sexiest new gadgets and hardware.
 
Comment Consolidation: JS-Kit Acquires SezWho Top
JS-Kit , a company that offers an array of Javascript-based commenting, polling, and ratings widgets, is acquiring the assets of SezWho , a competing enhanced comment system. JS-Kit will continue to keep SezWho’s service running for the next 30 days, during which users will be offered a choice of moving over to JS-Kit or choosing an alternative system. SezWho offered a universal reputation system for comments, allowing visitors to log in using their Email address or OpenID, establishing a reputation system that carries across onto other SezWho-enabled sites. And unlike some other comment systems, blog owners didn’t have to worry about handing over their data to SezWho - for quite a while one of the primary criticisms of some competing services, like Disqus , was that they housed the blog’s comment data, effectively keeping their owners hostage (this is no longer an issue, as these services now offer synced comment archives). JS-Kit’s acquisition of SezWho is not particularly surprising. There’s definitely a need for enhanced commenting systems, but this space is overdue for consolidation. The problem with having all of these discrete commenting systems is that for the most part, they aren’t compatible with each other. Users’ comment histories and reputations are segmented across a handful of competing services, which sort of defeats the point. And aside from JS-Kit, most of these services are free, leaving them vulnerable to drops in advertising revenue and perhaps also deterring major companies from entrusting their data with them for fear that they might go belly up. In the current economy, most of the services are either forced to shut down or seek an acquisition. Aside from its acquisition of SezWho, JS-Kit has also bolstered its presence with the acquisition of Haloscan last summer. The company has also established partnerships with a number of major companies, including Sun and World Now . Some of the smaller services may be dying out, but JS-Kit still has some strong competition. Last fall IntenseDebate , another commenting system, was acquired by Automattic, the company behind the incredibly popular WordPress blog platform. IntenseDebate continues to operate on other blog platforms, and is also slowly having its technology incorporated into WordPress itself. Another increasingly important player in this space is Facebook, which just released a new commenting widget that allows sites to quickly integrate Facebook Connect with only a few lines of code. Users can have their comments relayed back to their Facebook News Feeds, where the conversation can continue. Some large sites have little interest in handing over their data to Facebook without getting much in return, but it’s a system your everyday blogger will love. And that’s a scary prospect for the rest of the widget makers. Crunch Network : CrunchBoard because it’s time for you to find a new Job2.0
 
Facebook Apps Can Now Use Chat To Go Viral Top
Facebook has just announced that applications on Facebook Platform can now be able to take advantage of the site’s built-in chat functionality, which launched last spring. Developers will now be able to present users with a list of their Facebook Chat buddies, tailoring the list to best suit their application (for example, they can choose to only present friends that already have the app installed). Facebook users have been able to use Chat and their Facebook apps simultaneously since Chat launched (one of its biggest selling points is that it remains open at the bottom of the screen, no matter where on the site you go). But until now applications didn’t really have a way to tap into the power of Facebook Chat to help make their applications more social. Aside from adding an enhanced social element to applications, the new feature could also help apps go viral much more quickly than they would using the standard Email invite system most Facebook apps employ. Developers can now present users with a list their friends who are online (even those that don’t necessarily have their apps installed), who they can then send invites via chat messages. Invites sent over chat have a greater sense of urgency and intimacy, so it’s likely that they’ll be more effective than invites sent through the site’s Email system. Of course, integration with Chat gives apps on Facebook yet another way to try to spam you. In the dark ages of Platform, when every app seemed to spam users with reckless abandon, I might have been more concerned about this, but I suspect Facebook already has some measures in place to prevent abuse. And even if they don’t, you can always just sign out of Chat if things get bad. Crunch Network : CrunchBoard because it’s time for you to find a new Job2.0
 
Live Stream: Y Combinator's AngelConf Offers A Crash Course In Angel Investing Top
Today some of Silicon Valley’s most prominent angel investors and entrepreneurs are coming together for AngelConf - a crash course in angel investing that is designed to get the many wealthy tech veterans littering the Valley involved in the startup scene. The event was put together by Y Combinator’s Paul Graham , who believes that while there are many potential investors in Silicon Valley, most of them are unsure how to actually get started (he suggests there may be only one actual investor for every 100 would-be angels). AngelConf is designed to help these potential investors get on their feet, with tips on everything from the legal paperwork involved to picking out the best startups. For more details, check out our past coverage here . The event is being streamed for free by Justin.tv . Watch live video from Angel Conf on Justin.tv Included among today’s speakers are: Michael Arrington Paul Buchheit Jeff Clavier Ron Conway Michael Dearing Paul Graham Carolynn Levy Dave McClure Page Mailliard Mike Maples Ariel Poler Naval Ravikant Aydin Senkut Jim Young Andrea Zurek Crunch Network : CrunchGear drool over the sexiest new gadgets and hardware.
 
Google's Tip Jar Uses Crowdsourcing to Help People Save Money Top
Google is using its Moderator product to help people share ideas on how to save money in recessionary times. Moderator is a tool that helps groups determine which questions should be asked at all-hands meetings, conferences, and online Q&A sessions, among other scenarios. Google has set up a site called Tip Jar , which is powered by Moderator, to gathers money-saving tips in one place and allow visitors to vote and rank them in order of usefulness. The most popular tips will rise to the top of the list. And users can submit tips to the lists as well. Google’s Tip Jar breaks down tips by categories, which include finance, shopping, food, vacation, family and others. A sample of some of the more popular tips include: “Go to the grocery store with your belly full. You won’t buy too many things because you just ain’t hungry.” “Utilize online bill pay with your bank. It keeps you in much closer contact with your money, as you can keep a very close eye on your balance and be in much less danger of overdrafting. It saves you money on stamps and paper checks.” “Buy a flask and carry your coffee/tea to work with you. Coffee and tea only costs pennies to make yourself, but costs $1 or more elsewhere.” “Eat out one fewer time each month. If it costs you $25 to eat out, but only $5 to eat in, then the $20 you save each month allows you to almost completely fund a $500 emergency savings account.” Although Google designed the site to provide tips about saving money, there are many users who are making suggestions on other subjects, such as how to be more environmentally-friendly in everyday tasks. Those tips could easily be an entire separate site, so there is definite potential to create Tip Jars for popular and trendy topics. Tip Jar is a good example of the power of Moderator. Google Moderator is a fairly useful tool to engage a crowd, whether it be within an organization or across the entire web. Google Moderator even caught the eye of the Obama Administration, which recently used Moderator to power part of its Open Government initiative on Change.gov. Moderator was built by Google Platform Engineer Taliver Heath as a side project on top of  Google’s App Engine . CrunchBase Information Google Moderator Information provided by CrunchBase Crunch Network : MobileCrunch Mobile Gadgets and Applications, Delivered Daily.
 
Ustream Launches Mobile Video Broadcasting Apps Top
Live video startup Ustream is making a big push into mobile. Today it is launching a mobile business division, as well as a new set of mobile video broadcasting apps (which can be found here , after login). Right now, the apps work on a wide variety of Nokia phones, including the N95, and on the iPhone, but only jailbroken ones. Alas, the company is still waiting for approval from Apple to release the app through iTunes. Meanwhile, its view-only iPhone app for watching live video streams is approaching one million downloads. The broadcasting app, however, is what we are excited about. It includes integrated chat, audience polling, and GPS mapping. The polling lets broadcasters ask their audience what they want to see or what actions they should take in a live broadcast situation. Another key feature: mobile video broadcasters can send out a message via Twitter or Facebook to their audience to tell them when they are about to start streaming live. (See video below). Under the hood, Ustream has developed its own low-latency streaming technology which reduces the amount of transcoding that needs to be done on the server as well as the amount of buffering that needs to be done on the phone. Ustream wants to bring its large audience for live streaming videos on the Web (it claims 15 million monthly uniques across both its site and embedded players) over to mobile phones. In the mobile video streaming race, it is fighting for position with Qik and Kyte (their official iPhone apps don’t allow for broadcasting yet either, although Qik has one for jailbroken iPhones ). But this is a battle for the hearts and minds of tomorrows mobile video streamers. Taking a page from Kyte , Ustream is getting celebrities and rappers like Lil Wayne to broadcast using Ustream. Below is a promo video showing UStream’s new mobile app on an iPhone: Crunch Network : MobileCrunch Mobile Gadgets and Applications, Delivered Daily.
 
BizShark Takes A Crack At Creating An Automated CrunchBase Top
If you are looking to do some quick competitive analysis, a new site called BizShark offers a wealth of data about companies. Bizshark is a nifty automated information aggregator. It pulls together the latest business profiles, news, financials, web analytics, social footprint, marketing strategies, and other business information by searching across more than 50 Internet business databases. The site is pretty comprehensive and features a particularly useful tool that compares businesses with their competitors by analytics, traffic and news volume. Using its “CompetitorSort algorithm,” BizShark constantly monitors online discussion threads on related companies, products, and services and then uses a filter to rank the competition by link authority. BizShark aggregates data from Wikipedia , our own CrunchBase , Technorati , Compete , and Google Search . Secondary sources for information include Yahoo, Quantcast, Alexa, Twitter, Digg, Delicious, StumbleUpon, Reddit, Indeed, BackType, and other sites. BizShark doesn’t allow users to edit or contribute data to its system, forgoing the Wiki model. Its approach is similar to Quarkbase and KillerStartups’ Dataopedia , an information aggregator that lets users see all the data it can find about a website (Dataopedia also uses Crunchbase data). BizShark also offers premium services, where uses can pay a monthly fee of $19 to $69 per month to access employee contact information, SEO intelligence and in-depth revenue analysis. Guy Kawasaki, a fan of all things aggregated , is an adviser. This is undoubtedly a useful tool to find business, analytics and financial information about a company in one centralized place. But without its own human input, particularly on the information that is more difficult to track by an algorithm, such as job moves, funding announcements or product introductions, there is always the possibility of misinformation. We’ve seen other aggregators, such as automated tech news site TechMeme , add a human element to their operations after realizing that algorithms aren’t perfect. But BizShark argues that because it relies solely on aggregation and algorithms for information, it is completely objective. While objectivity is good, accuracy is better. Regardless, BizShark is definitely worth checking out. Here are a few screenshots: Crunch Network : CrunchGear drool over the sexiest new gadgets and hardware.
 

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