Wednesday, March 18, 2009

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iStockphoto Expands Audio-Licensing Business Top
At the SXSW Music Festival, the people from Getty Images-owned iStockphoto (where they must be kicking themselves for making that name such a familiar brand on the web now that they’re about much more than photos) will be formally launching the most recent addition to its network today, with a collection of 30,000 royalty-free and single-production audio tracks unsurprisingly dubbed iStockaudio . This was actually partly (and unwillingly) announced early last month , but has now expanded into a much more robust audio-licensing offering. iStock's Standard Audio collection now includes more than 11,000 royalty-free, user-generated sound effects and music tracks from 500+ artists along with a fresh Pump Audio collection of over 18,000 single-production music tracks. Pricing hasn’t changed since its launch: royalty-free tracks still start at $2 each with Pump Audio tracks going from $29. For context: you may remember indie music agent Pump Audio was sold to Getty Images in June 2007, and the latter subsequently started selling music tracks under a different brand name ( Soundtrack ) a couple of months later. Anyway, iStock is now touting itself as the “first company to offer stock imagery, video footage, vector illustrations, Flash files and audio for purchase under a single payment model, on one site”. Since we can’t think of any others off the top of our heads, we guess that’s right. Crunch Network : MobileCrunch Mobile Gadgets and Applications, Delivered Daily.
 
Slides On The Go! SlideShare Launches Mobile Site Top
Presentation buffs can now get their fix when they’re on the move, thanks to the mobile website SlideShare just launched about an hour ago. Simply point your mobile phone browser to m.slideshare.com and you’re good to go. Note that the mobile version is in beta at this point and was hacked together at Open Hack Day India last month (using Yahoo’s Blueprint platform), so there may still be some technical issues, warns the company. At the mobile site, you can take a look at the latest, featured and popular presentations if you’re using any smart phone and/or on all phones that have Opera Mini installed, and you can also search for slidedecks. There’s no requirement to download or install software on your phone, and it lets you log in to your account to view your favorite slidedecks and messages from your contacts. Comments are currently not displayed yet, and it doesn’t support upload from mobile phones, but other than that it works like it should; on my iPhone at least. Update: here’s a short presentation about SlideShare Mobile from … SlideShare Introducing SlideShare Mobile: use SlideShare on the go! View more presentations from Amit Ranjan . To the best of my knowledge, this is the only mobile website that does this at this point, and considering SlideShare is one of the most popular cloud-based presentation sharing services there’s bound to be a heap of great content you can watch on the go. If there are any others, speak up in comments. SlideShare’s been doing some cool stuff lately, like launching a free Microsoft PowerPoint 2007 plug-in that allows for one-click publication of your presentations to the cloud, and support for embedding YouTube videos in SlideShare-hosted presentations. The company is based out of San Francisco and raised over $3 million in capital to date, from VC firm Venrock and a number of prominent angel investors like Dave McClure, Mark Cuban, Saul Klein, Jonathan Abrams, Hal Varian and more. (Thanks to Christian Heilmann for the tweet tip) CrunchBase Information SlideShare Information provided by CrunchBase Crunch Network : CrunchBoard because it’s time for you to find a new Job2.0
 
Amazon Shutters Unpopular Alexa Site Thumbnail Service Top
Amazon Web Services is discontinuing the Alexa Site Thumbnail service, which has been providing developers with programmatic access to millions of thumbnail images for the home pages of web sites that were stored in Alexa’s index since July 2006. New subscriptions are no longer being accepted, and existing subscribers will only have operational access until June 12, 2009. The service hits the deadpool . Alexa Site Thumbnail was a paying service (developers were charged $0.0002 / thumbnail URL returned i.e. $0.20 per 1,000 thumbnail URLs) but in an e-mail sent out to developers Amazon admits that it never really took off and that the company will do the smart thing and focus their resources on more popular services. Update: commenters are pointing to Girafa and PageGlimpse as alternatives. Dear Alexa Developer, We are announcing the deprecation of the Alexa Site Thumbnail service as of March 13, 2009. After this date, the service will be closed to new subscriptions. The Alexa Site Thumbnail service will continue to be operational for existing subscribers for 90 days, until June 12, 2009. Use of the service has been relatively low, and we have decided to focus our resources on more broadly used services in order to provide the greatest benefit to Alexa customers. Thank you for your use of the service. We regret any inconvenience to you. Thank you, The Alexa Web Services Team (Hat tip to Marc Hodgins ) CrunchBase Information Amazon Web Services Information provided by CrunchBase Crunch Network : CrunchGear drool over the sexiest new gadgets and hardware.
 
Counting Crows Go Label-Free Top
The Counting Crows have ended their eighteen-year label relationship with Geffen Records (now part of Universal Music Group), lead singer Adam Duritz says on the band’s website . Duritz says the band will go it alone, saying “the internet opens a world of limitless possibility, where the only boundaries are the boundaries of your own imagination.” Apparently UMG didn’t approve of breaking down some of those boundaries. Duritz added “Unfortunately, the directions we want to go and the opportunities we want to pursue are often things that our label is simply not allowed to do.” The band joins Radiohead, Nine Inch Nails and others who’s explored releasing music outside of the normal label/distributor world, and more are sure to follow. Labels are pushing all of their artists to sign 360 music deals that give them a cut of every revenue source, as CD sales become increasingly shaky. Without those deals, the labels are unlikely to be able to make much money from even their top artists after 2011 or so . This trend of big money artists leaving labels to try things on their own is bad news for a music industry that faces falling CD sales, a terrible concert event economy in the short run and a general drying up of venture-backed startups willing to pay exorbitant settlement costs for copyright infringement cases. That’s good news for the rest of us in my opinion - we’re likely to see an explosion of music related innovation in the coming years. Crunch Network : CrunchGear drool over the sexiest new gadgets and hardware.
 
Shake-Up At The Global Grind. CEO Navarrow Wright Shoved Aside By Russell Simmons. Top
Editor’s note: The following guest post is written by Angela Benton , founder and Publisher of Black Web 2.0, where it originally appeared. While working on a follow-up story to the Global Grind celebrity mass that they currently perpetrate as content I came across something much more interesting.  The CEO of the company Navarrow Wright is no longer listed on the company About Us page suggesting that Wright and the company have parted ways. A cached version of the page from March 17th at 6:28pm still lists him as CEO so the split was more than likely the result of internal disagreement and definitely abrupt. This is no surprise especially if you take a look at the direction of the product since Russell Simmons has become more involved in his new role as Editor-in-Chief , which said simply means Simmons leveraging his celeb contacts for content.  In most cases to the detriment of the product.  My bet is the 2, Wright and Simmons, couldn't see eye to eye on the direction of the product and what it actually is.  I'm calling this more than a hunch since it was clear there was tension between the 2 when they were featured in a video while at NPR studios for an interview in November of last year: Russell's need to constantly over talk the CEO and wrongly correct what the product is a number of times is more than enough to prove the working relationship of the 2 wasn’t the best.  The bigger question though is now that Wright seems to be out what will Global Grind become? Is it on its way to the deadpool, and will ACCEL lose their $4.5 million investment with media mogul Russell Simmons running this web start-up? Or does Simmons have it in him to rise to the occasion and save the faltering property? Crunch Network : MobileCrunch Mobile Gadgets and Applications, Delivered Daily.
 
Major Book Publishers Start Turning To Scribd Top
Online document sharing site Scribd has announced that it has partnered with a number of major publishers, including Random House, Simon & Schuster, Workman Publishing Co., Berrett-Koehler, Thomas Nelson, and Manning Publications, to legally offer some of their content to Scribd’s community free of charge. Publishers have begun to add an array of content to Scribd’s library, including full-length novels as well as briefer teaser excerpts. Offering book excerpts to entice readers is nothing new - Amazon and Google have been doing this for years, and Amazon’s Kindle allows readers to download book samples to their devices for free. But these options aren’t conducive to sharing content that you’ve discovered on the web, as they don’t allow your to embed them in your blogs and websites. Scribd’s iPaper Flash document viewer is built to do exactly this, so inserting a book excerpt into a blog or even an author’s site is easy. Authors also benefit from increased exposure on Scribd itself, which sees a monthly readership totaling as high as 50 million. Authors can also expose their work to a much broader demographic - for example, author Tess Gerritsen, whose largest audience has historically been women in their 40s and 50s, was able to attract a younger readership when she temporarily posted her novel "The Surgeon". Scribd has actually been posting both full text and excerpts of books from some of these publishers for a few months now as they conducted trial tests. The fact that they’re now publicly endorsing the platform seems to indicate that they’re pleased with the results, and I won’t be surprised if we start seeing more publishers sign on. Also worth noting is that this announcement stands in stark contrast to the accusations of Scribd’s willingness to host pirated content - I doubt many publishers would be willing to partner with the site if they thought it was wrought with piracy. Crunch Network : CrunchBase the free database of technology companies, people, and investors
 
MySpaceID Gets An Upgrade, But Did It Already Miss The Boat? Top
MySpace has just released a major upgrade for MySpaceID, its product that allows users to sign in to third party sites with their MySpace credentials to import their social graphs and profile information into these third party services. The update addresses many of the features MySpaceID has lacked since it first launched last June, including the ability to syndicate activity feed items from MySpace to third party sites (the ability to send activity items in the opposite direction is coming soon). The new upgrade also incorporates a combination of the OAuth and OpenID authentication systems, allowing users to sign in to external sites using their MySpace credentials. MySpaceID is comparable to Facebook Connect, allowing users to tap into the data stored on the social network for use on external sites. Its biggest selling point over Facebook is that it is built on the open stack, incorporating OpenSocial, OpenID, and OAuth (in contrast, Facebook Connect is a proprietary system, which makes some developers uneasy). The upgrades are sure to be a welcome addition to the product, but I can’t help but wonder if MySpace has already missed the boat on this one. Despite announcing its Facebook Connect product a day after MySpace first announced MySpaceID (which was formerly called Data Availability), Facebook still beat MySpace to the punch by months, rolling out Connect in early December. Reception has generally been very positive, with Facebook Connect now supported by a number of popular iPhone applications and thousands of websites. From a more anecdotal perspective, there has been much talk at SXSW about the possibility of Facebook becoming the de facto login standard around the web (a thought that some people are opposed to if the social network doesn’t make good on its promise to become more open). Number of times I’ve heard talk of MySpace becoming the dominant force on the web? Not once. But all is not lost for MySpace by any means. Yahoo is currently bucket-testing its new homepage, which includes MySpaceID functionality as a featured item in its sidebar (you can see a screenshot below). We haven’t heard when the new page will roll out to everyone, but given that Yahoo’s homepage sees 82 million users a day, it’s sure to provide a big boost to takeup of MySpaceID. MySpace may also be able to make up ground if it can work its media offerings like MySpace Music, which Facebook has been unable to compete with, into MySpaceID. Crunch Network : CrunchBoard because it’s time for you to find a new Job2.0
 
Too Busy To Pray? Don't Worry - Indulgences Are Back! Top
Martin Luther must be turning in his grave. He was able to fight the Roman Catholic Church over indulgences and managed to avoid being burned at the stake. But Luther didn’t face an even greater enemy: the Internet. Enter Information Age Prayer , a new web service that lets you pay for computer prayers. The company uses “the latest technology in text-to-speech synthesizers” to read aloud your typed prayers “at a volume and speed equivalent to typical person praying.” In other words, forget praying. Just pay them to do it. IAP isn’t just for the Jesus followers out there, either. In addition to serving Protestants and Catholics, prayers for Jews, Muslims, “unaffiliated” and “other” are also available. There’s a special on Hail Mary prayers, just $0.07 each. There’s also a handy prayer for financial help (see image below). The end, finally, is nigh. As I suspected, it was the Internet that did it. Crunch Network : MobileCrunch Mobile Gadgets and Applications, Delivered Daily.
 
iPhone OS 3.0 Gallery and Initial Impressions Top
Just announced this morning , iPhone OS 3.0 is the talk of the town. Though Apple’s SDK distribution servers had a rough time handling the initial rush this morning, things have since stabilized and developers are starting to flash their handsets to the first beta copies of the new software. In turn, the first screenshots and early impressions have started to trickle in to our inbox. Update: We’ve also found a few new features lurking around in the Podcast player. What we’ve heard so far: There’s a reason us common folk won’t see it hit our handsets till Summer. It’s slow, and it’s buggy - but remember, it’s beta. There’s a “Find my iPhone” option under MobileMe - We don’t recall ever seeing this before, and it wasn’t mentioned by Apple today. Voice Recorder continues to record even if you close the application. We couldn’t get a screenshot of it for some reason, but it looks just like when you close the phone app while you’re on a call, with a small bar running along the top of the screen. No sign yet if it will allow you to record calls, as the app crashes if you try. Copy and paste works. Shaking the iPhone brings up the undo button, and it does this fancy little animation on its way in as if it had momentum from the shake. It’s a small touch, but we like it. Check out the gallery at MobileCrunch >> Crunch Network : MobileCrunch Mobile Gadgets and Applications, Delivered Daily.
 
Echodio Lets You Sync Your iTunes To The Cloud (300 Invites) Top
Another Y Combinator startup launched at the SXSW festival: Echodio . It lets you back up your iTunes music library to the Web and then stream it from there. At launch it only supports streaming through Boxee , the media browser. But in a few weeks it will launch its own Web player, which will allow you to stream your iTunes songs from any computer with a Web browser. TechCrunch readers can sign up today for 300 invites good for 5 GB worth of music storage each (up from the normal 1 GB). Simply use the promotional code TC/DC when prompted during set-up. The download currently works only on Macs. Launching with Boxee seems a bit odd. Most people will want to wait for the Web player to become available. But the idea of backing up your iTunes playlists to the Web and literally turning it into a jukebox in the sky is appealing. Lala does something similar . And it seems like a feature Apple should build into iTunes as well. Until that happens, there is Echodio. You download the app, and it installs a plugin to iTunes. You create a new Echdio playlist and put in all of the songs you want to back up. Then you can stream it through Boxee or eventually Echodio’s own Web player, which will have two-way sync so that when you play a song via the Web it will count as a play in iTunes. Ratings and other tags get synced as well. But the most useful part of the syncing feature is that you can sync iTunes between two or more different machines. The startup is also working on an iPhone app (I guess for over-the-air syncing or for all the songs that you can’t fit on the iPhone’s own iPod). Crunch Network : CrunchBase the free database of technology companies, people, and investors
 
Nobody is Dancing At ChaCha. One Third Of Employees Get Pink Slips, Salary Cuts For The Rest Top
Mobile Q&A answer service ChaCha is shedding one third of its employees. We’ve confirmed with the company that it laid off 25 people, leaving it with 56 employees. ChaCha cited the layoffs as necessary to ensure profitability in the future. The layoffs have been added to the TechCrunch layoff tracker . From one tipster who says she was let go today: Wanted to drop you a quick line informing you of layoffs at ChaCha today. There were 25 people layed off, leaving the company with 56 employees. Some very high ranking people were let go today, including 2 Directors of Development, the Vice President of Engineering, 2 Product Managers, a Sr. Director of Product Management, Director of Marketing Communications, 2 Linux System admins, and a Senior Program Manager. These were some of the larger layoffs. The rest of the company will also be taking a 10% decrease in pay, along with Upper MGMT taking larger cuts. The news today about the $12 million is a ruse. Its just confirmation of a round we closed back in October. These cuts come in the face of a drowning company. The ex VP of Mobile Ad Sales at Yahoo, Rob Wilk, has been in the NYC offices for 8 weeks now, and has not closed one single deal for any advertising on ChaCha’s platform. After I was let go, there was a company meeting in which Scott Jones layed out a pretty bleak estimate for the coming times. If the company can’t get to a crossover point and make money in 2 months, the whole thing is over. Strangely, ChaCha hid the layoffs in a press release announcing a $12 million equity financing round, which may or may not be an extension of the $30 million round we reported on in January. (We are awaiting more details) UPDATE : ChaCha informed us that they never officially announced their C funding round, but the amount was approximately $15 million and closed in October 2008. The company closed their $12 million Series D round last week, with funding from Morton Meyerson, Scott Jones and other investors. We haven’t been big fans of ChaCha in the past and cited many reasons why the startup needs to reevaluate its business model. Still, the company was growing on us and their occasional snafu was always entertaining . UPDATE : ChaCha issued this response to the tipster’s assertions about Rob Wilk: “Rob Wilk was a top performing advertising sales leader for Yahoo and he is leading an advertising sales effort for ChaCha that is resulting in significant revenue growth each month. Rob started 6 weeks ago and opened our New York office.” Crunch Network : CrunchGear drool over the sexiest new gadgets and hardware.
 
The Perils Of Cloud Computing: Privacy Group Wants To Take Your Gmail Away Top
The Electronic Privacy Information Center (EPIC) has asked the Federal Trade Commission to investigate the privacy and security measures of Gmail, Google Docs and Google’s other “cloud computing” services for consumers. The complaint highlights Google’s recent security breach with Google Docs, citing this as one example of the dangers of putting consumers’ data in the cloud. The complaint also implores the FTC not only to investigate Google’s safety measures for cloud products, but also asks to hold Google accountable for any and all security breaches with their cloud-based applications. EPIC goes so far as to demand that the FTC prevent Google from offering any cloud computing services, including Gmail, until it installs heavier security safeguards. That’s right: EPIC wants to take away your Gmail. Cloud computing is not a new technology and the Google Docs situation was certainly not the first security breach But now that consumer services in the cloud like Gmail, Google Docs and others are beginning to take off, privacy groups are suddenly waking up to the risks involved. We do tend to trust cloud services such as Web-based email, document, and photo storage without thinking too much about it. And better security is certainly needed. But this is not only a Google problem. It is an industry-wide problem. EPIC is trying to make an example out of Google because it is the big company everyone is scared of most . (Photo by cdw9 ) Here’s the full complaint: EPIC Complaint ABout Google Cloud Services - Get more Information Technology Crunch Network : CrunchBase the free database of technology companies, people, and investors
 
After Facebook And The Obama Campaign, Chris Hughes Takes a Post At General Catalyst Top
Chris Hughes, the Facebook co-founder who left the social networking company two years ago to head up Barack Obama’s enormously successful Web outreach campaign, is coming back to the startup world as an Entrepreneur-in-Residence at General Catalyst Partners. He will divide his time between Boston and New York. His role at the VC firm will be to work closely with young entrepreneurs and guide them through the steps of building a business. While some investors are fleeing the Boston (cough, Paul Graham), Hughes thinks there is a lot of pent-up entrepreneurial energy on the East Coast. He tells me: I’m going to General Catalyst to help facilitate the emergence of new entrepreneurs, particularly with a focus on the East Coast. I moved to New York in January and have been getting a sense of the lay of the land for a couple months. It’s pretty clear to me that there are a ton of smart people out there who have really good ideas — it’s just a question of really fostering an entrepreneurial culture with all the resources that people need. I’m definitely hoping to mentor new entrepreneurs and at the same time also learn a lot more about the venture capital space as an EIR. A young man himself at 25 Hughes is banking on his experience at both Facebook and in the Obama campaign. A recent profile in Fast Company describes how his creation, MyBarackObama, contributed to the campaign: By the time the campaign was over, volunteers had created more than 2 million profiles on the site, planned 200,000 offline events, formed 35,000 groups, posted 400,000 blogs, and raised $30 million on 70,000 personal fund-raising pages. Hughes joins another ex-Facebook executive into the world of venture investing. Last summer, former VP of Product Management Matt Cohler became a partner at Benchmark . Crunch Network : CrunchGear drool over the sexiest new gadgets and hardware.
 
Nonoba Enters The Flash Games Arena With GameRise, A "Ning For Gaming Sites" Top
We already had HeyZap , the “YouTube for Flash games” and Game Curry , a search engine for Flash games , so not that much of a surprise we now have a “Ning for Flash games” that lets anyone create a gaming website much like Marc Andreessen’s service does the same for social networking sites. Danish startup / gaming community Nonoba is taking a crack at just that by launching GameRise , a CMS that supposedly makes developing and maintaining customized gaming sites a breeze. The comparison to Ning - and by extension the plethora of similar services - comes from co-founder Oliver Pedersen but isn’t all that far-fetched. GameRise allows users, from amateurs to professional developers, to create and maintain sites featuring game catalogs and social services like chat rooms and forums as well as the ability to customize the look and feel, advertising displays and language of the community websites. Once approved, user-run gaming websites can be enhanced with Nonoba’s SDKs and APIs, among which is a transactional micro-payment enabling one that lets users handle online payment for games and premium content (with Nonoba taking a cut). It all sounds quite impressive, but to be honest the examples that were given to us with the announcement of the new Flash development initiative didn’t exactly blow us away. They pretty much all look the same apart from the name, URL and the language. The idea is sound enough, execution needs to get way better. Kongegrate offers a set of tools for users to build Flash-based gaming sites and networks too, but does things differently. Nonoba isn’t really a head-to-head competitor and in fact, some games you can find on Kongegrate were partly built using Nonoba tools. We should also mention Mochi Media here, although they focus more on what comes after Flash games are created, in terms of monetization, distribution and analytics. Nonoba, based in Denmark’s capital Copenhagen, raised an undisclosed Series A round of funding with Mangrove Capital Partners in June 2008, the same year it was founded. According to the startup the gaming community now has 4,000 games and games powered by Nonoba's Multiplayer and Payment API are played on more than 10,000 sites worldwide. Crunch Network : MobileCrunch Mobile Gadgets and Applications, Delivered Daily.
 
SocialCalendar Organizes Your Social Life Top
Facebook application SocialCalendar is steadily gaining popularity as a go-to calendar for users to manage their social lives on the network. With over 11 million total installs and about 2 million monthly active users, SocialCalendar is one of the only widely used, general purpose calendars on Facebook. SocialCalendar lets you plan events among Facebook friends, get movie showtimes and integrate events into a public calendar. Users can also import and get email reminders about events, birthdays and anniversaries. The app also lets you use virtual good icons to mark events and allows you to give virtual goods, like a birthday cake, to friends for special occasions. The price of virtual goods on the site ranges from $0.50 to $1.00 (some are free as well). The calendar app also allows users to make gift wish lists through Amazon and distribute the lists to friends and family. SocialCalendar is making some other interesting moves to monetize the app as well. First, the app has integrated, contextual advertisements from TV and movie studios and gifts and flower companies. Currently, SocialCalendar has a partnership with NBC to advertise the new late night comedy show, “Late Night with Jimmy Fallon” and integrate the show’s times into users’ calendars. SocialCalendar has a movie calendar, which allows users to see weekly movie openings and movies that have made the top box office list. Users can add movies to their SocialCalendars, and can see show times and buy tickets to local shows in their areas directly. SocialCalendar has also partnered 1-800 Flowers.com to offer users the ability to easily send flowers for a friend’s birthday or special event. And SocialCalendar sells virtual goods, which the founder, Raj Lalwani, says are becoming increasingly popular with users. Rival Facebook calendar app, FriendEvent Calendar, has an easier to see layout and clearly differentiates between events that are private or public, but doesn’t seem to have the viral following that SocialCalendar has on Facebook. SocialCalendar has some useful features to organize and mark events but I found myself wishing that it wasn’t simply a Facebook application. It seems like it would be pretty useful as a stand-alone application. SocialCalendar is also a Bebo app but doesn’t seem to have nearly as large as a following with only 31,000 users. Lalwani says that since the Bebo app isn’t keeping up with the pace of the Facebook app, the company is considering shutting it down. Crunch Network : CrunchBoard because it’s time for you to find a new Job2.0
 
JotNot Turns Your iPhone's Camera Into A Document Scanner Top
We’ve all tried to use our camera phones to capture whiteboard notes, doodles, and other documents, but oftentimes poor image quality and odd perspectives can make them illegible. JotNot (iTunes Link) is a nifty new application that just went live on Apple’s App Store that allows users to take photographs of documents using their phones and runs them through an advanced filter that makes them much easier to read. The application is available on the App Store for $3.99, and the first ten TechCrunch readers to send a request to promo@jotnot.com will be given access codes to download the app for free. Using the application is simple: first, you take a photograph of the whiteboard, receipt, or document that you’d like to store as a photo (you can also import photos that you’ve previously taken). The application presents a blue box with four corner markers, which you drag to the corresponding corners of the document in question. The application then takes around thirty seconds to process the image, correcting for any issues with lighting, color, and even perspective (if you initially took a photo of your document at an angle, the final image will look as if it was taken front-on). There are a handful of web-based services like Qipit and Scanr that offer similar functionality, but some businesses object the prospect of having to upload potentially private and confidential notes and documents to a third party website. JotNot’s image processing occurs entirely on the iPhone, so this isn’t an issue. In my testing the application seems to work very well, handling papers, notes, and even somewhat-crumpled receipts without much trouble. But while it does a great job at converting these documents to image files, there’s still one potentially major flaw: there’s no way to convert those images into searchable digital documents, which is something that is offered by the aforementioned web-based services. JotNot plans to eventually incorporate optical character recognition (which converts photos into digital text documents), but it sounds like this is still fairly early in development. In any case, the application works perfectly for casually taking photographs of your documents to ensure that you don’t lose them, and is one that I’ll probably wind up using pretty frequently. Android users can also check out a beta version , though that version does send files back to JotNot’s servers, making it prone to the same privacy issues as the web based services. And if you don’t like JotNot, a similar application called Whiteboard Capture is available for the iPhone. Crunch Network : CrunchBase the free database of technology companies, people, and investors
 
Hypocritical Artists and Secondary Ticket Sales Top
People seem to understand that things have fluctuating prices based on supply and demand (like stocks, or gold, or ice cream). But when it comes to event tickets people ignore the realities of supply and demand and talk about fairness . Anyone who tries to sell tickets for a profit is greedy. Or, as Nine Inch Nails’ Trent Reznor says today , ticket resellers are parasites . People pay big dollars for premium events like the Super Bowl and certain concerts. But they pay it to middle man ticket brokers, lovingly referred to as scalpers. Ticket brokers are really just market makers. They risk capital, hold inventory, and place bets that they’ll be able to make a living on the spread. Pricing tickets is very, very hard. Demand for an event peaks just before it occurs, then falls to zero as it begins, like food that has gone bad. Changes in the economy have a dramatic impact on ticket prices, too. A good ticket broker is thinking about the quality of the event, the date of the event, the venue, the seat locations and the state of the local economy when pricing tickets. And if they do it wrong, they eat their inventory and take a loss. Most ticket brokers don’t make much money, particularly when you factor in that they’re putting their own capital at risk. A few, those that have good instincts and the right connections, do very well. But it’s important to know that everyone is in on the game. Players and coaches who go to the Super Bowl sell their tickets to brokers. Venues sell some of (or all of) their best seats to popular events to brokers. The artists do the same. Everyone along the supply chain gets their cut. Usually in cash, which isn’t claimed as income. The only people taking any risk are the brokers, who put their money on the line. And when an event turns sour, they take the hit. The benefit to the artists and promoters is clear - brokers create a smooth demand curve for tickets. When an event doesn’t do well, no one feels bad for the brokers. But when tickets for a hot event go for four or five times the face value of a ticket, everyone points to the brokers and says they’re greedy. What they don’t realize is that the broker has paid so many people along the way for those tickets, they’re probably only making a 10% margin on their investment. And that’s when things go well. In a past life I was the COO of a Kleiner Perkins backed ticket reseller called Razorgator , so I know a lot about this business. And I also know that nobody’s hands are clean. Reznor wants to kill the secondary ticket business, which is very noble and no doubt popular with his fans. But what he doesn’t talk about is the fact that with any scarce good a market price develops, and there is no way to avoid it. Putting legal or logistical restrictions on ticket resales just means that people pay in other ways, usually by waiting in line. That means people who value their time the least spend the time waiting. Generally speaking, giving assets to people who are willing to wait around the longest is an inefficient way to allocate resources. But for some artists it makes sense because they want to reward their core base of young fans, most of whom can’t compete on price for tickets. So the artists will keep complaining about the secondary ticket market to keep those fans happy. Even while they reap the direct and indirect benefits of that secondary market. Crunch Network : CrunchGear drool over the sexiest new gadgets and hardware.
 
Google Chrome Unleashes a Speedier Beta Top
Although it came out of beta last December , Google’s Chrome browser has a new beta version that is faster than its “stable” version (and buggier too). Starting today, Google will be developing its browser along three parallel tracks: a stable version for mainstream users, a developer track for the programming crowd, and the new (or rather re-introduced) beta track for more adventurous consumers. The new beta, which you can downloaded here if you have a Windows machine, is 25 percent faster than the current stable version of Chrome. It also includes extra features such as form autofill, zooming, autoscroll, and tab-dragging Now the speed wars between browsers will be even harder to keep track of. Is the new Safari faster than Chrome, or just Chrome’s “stable” version? How about Firefox? As long as they all get faster, I don’t care. Crunch Network : CrunchBoard because it’s time for you to find a new Job2.0
 
Apple Opens Up More Ways To Get Paid On The iPhone, Adds Key New Features. Apps Hit 800 Million Downloads. Top
iPhone apps have been downloaded 800 million times, and there are now more than 25,000 apps in the iTunes store. Apple is detailing some of the new features in the next version of the iPhone OS in a press conference going on live right now. The new OS, iPhone 3.0, will support 1,000 APIs. Apple seems to be giving a lot of extra love to paid apps, which will gain the ability to sell additional levels, subscriptions, virtual goods, or extra content from right within the app. The new APIs will also support peer-to peer applications via Bluetooth, which will be great for head-to-head games. Maps will be able to be embedded directly into the apps, and apps can now talk to accessories such as an FM transmitter or a blood pressure monitor. But Apple is not opening up background processing, which would allow more than one app to be running at once—a feature already common on Android and other phones. Apple says it takes up too much battery life. Apple is also opening up push notification APIs for developers. This will allow apps to incorporate email, IM, and other messaging services. Meebo for instance, created a native iPhone app using the new API, which it demoed onstage. Apps will also finally be able to tap into the iTunes music library on the iPhone. (About time). And they will be able to handle streaming video as a feature. And they save perhaps the most requested feature until near the end (’natch): Cut-and-paste. You double-tap a word to highlight it, drag the edges to highlight a block, shake to call up an “undo” button. Finally. Why was that so hard? Another much requested feature: landscape support (when you tilt the iPhone horizontally, the screen goes into landscape mode). Now all apps can have it, including e-mail. And email will support MMS. Again, this is all just basic stuff. Taking a cue from Android, Apple is finally adding search to every app. So now two years later, you can search your emails and think that it is a gift. But it is not just email. Apple is adding Spotlight to the iPhone: one place where you can search across all apps: your calendar, notes, iTunes library. The IPhone 3.0 SDK is available to developers starting today. CrunchGear has a full rundown of all the announcements. Some stats from the press conference: There are now more than 25,000 iPhone apps in the iTunes Store. iPhone apps have been downloaded 800 million times. 96 percent of all apps are approved The developer SDK has been downloaded 800,000 times 50,000 companies have joined the program 13.7 million iPhones were sold in 2008 Crunch Network : CrunchGear drool over the sexiest new gadgets and hardware.
 
Live from Apple's iPhone 3.0 Press Conference Top
We’re live at Apple Headquarters in Cupertino, California. MobileCrunch’s Greg Kumparak is posting right here for your enjoyment. Don’t forget to print out your play-along-at-home scorecard. Live at the Apple iPhone 3.0 Event Crunch Network : CrunchBoard because it’s time for you to find a new Job2.0
 
Giggiddy: Seth MacFarlane Joins Hulu's Alien Plot Top
Hulu has just posted the latest addition to its ads detailing its plans to “turn our chunky brain matter into creamy goo” and take over the world. Family Guy’s Seth MacFarlane has joined the cause, lending some of the show’s most well known voices to promote the popular streaming video site in the amusing ad embedded below. Hulu’s ad campaign is funny, unique, and potentially very important to its long term success. The site is currently the clear leader in streaming full-length shows and movies, but as the same content becomes ubiquitous on sites like Sling.com and CBS’s TV.com Hulu is going to have trouble differentiating itself. Its slick interface has already been knocked off a few times, and it’s hard to add major new features to a site that is dedicated to primarily watching video. So they’re recruiting major stars to ensure that Hulu’s the first one you think of when you get the urge to rot your brain a bit. And it seems to be working. Also be sure to check out the campaign’s first ad , featuring Alec Baldwin. Crunch Network : CrunchGear drool over the sexiest new gadgets and hardware.
 
Two New Ways To Find A Job: Auction Yourself Off At JobaPhile Or Do A TwitterJobSearch Top
In this economy, looking for a decent job is no easy task. If you find yourself on the hunt, you have to try every avenue possible. Two new job search options came across my inbox this morning. The first one is Jobaphiles , which bills itself as the “eBay of jobs.” Started by some college students in Boston, now it is trying to expand nationwide. The site is really geared towards students looking for jobs, but could be applied to freelance work or any job that pays by the hour. Employers list jobs along with hourly pay, and job seekers then bid on those jobs. Whoever is willing to do the job for the lowest pay is most likely to get it, although employers can take into account experience as well. The site seems a bit cruel in the current job environment. With unemployment rising, it gives employers even greater leverage over hourly wage earners. But if you are desperate, it could put some cash in your pocket. And when the economic tides turn and available workers once gain grow scarce, this same model will give workers the advantage. The site today, however, needs many more listings to remain a going concern in its own right. The same jobs seem to pop up no matter what you search for. A search for “software engineer” for instance turns up openings for a tutor, clerk position, and summer baby sitter—no thanks. A much better experience out of the gate is TwitterJobSearch , which just launched into beta today. Developed by UK-based job search engine Workhound , TwitterJobSearch pulls up Tweets that are only job-related and links to the underlying job posting. Most of these seem to link to other job sites such as CareerBuilder or more niche job sites which all seem to be using Twitter to post their latest openings. But with TwitterJobSearch, you search across all of them, and results are ranked by both relevance and by how recently they’ve been posted. A job search for “software engineer” returns 4,838 results, and you can reorder results by geography simply by adding the name of a city to the search. TwitterJobSearch is competing against Twitter’s own search engine, which does a pretty good job coming up with relevant results. Try a job search for “software engineer” and most of the results seem to be about job openings. TwitterJobSearch also seems to favor results from other members affiliated with job boards and job search engines. Twitter’s own results appear more varied, which I think is more likely to turn up that gem being Tweeted by the head of engineering at a startup. But it is also more likely to turn up false positives—results that have nothing to do with job openings. That is okay, though. It’s all about the hunt. Crunch Network : CrunchGear drool over the sexiest new gadgets and hardware.
 
UnHub Offers A Simple Way To Showcase The Online You Top
I’ll say it right off the bat: there’s a plethora of ways to bundle all your online identities (i.e. your social networking profiles) and share all of them using only one URL, so I know the one I’m going to introduce isn’t unique any way you look at it. That said, it’s lightweight, ridiculously easy and quick to set up, so you might want to take a look all the same. The service is called UnHub and it was built earlier this month in just a couple of days, inspired by what sweets brand Skittles was bravely experimenting with using social media on its main website. What UnHub does is create a persistent iframe bar with tabs for all your online presences (e.g. your blog, Twitter stream, LinkedIn account, Flickr profile, blog comments etc.) linked to a dedicated URL you can easily share with anyone. Examples of this are UnHub.com/MichaelArrington or UnHub.com/BarackObama . This can also benefit businesses: see this example for Josie’s Restaurant . UnHub profiles also come with very basic analytics so you can find out what the most popular tabs for your presence are based on the number of clicks. The UnHub URL is short and personalized, so I assume a lot of people would find it useful to add to their e-mail signature instead of listing the slew of social networking services they can be found on. This list includes the most familiar services (Amazon, YouTube, Twitter through TweeTree, LinkedIn, Digg, MySpace, Facebook, and so on) and will likely be extended in the future. Soon, you’ll also be able to use your own domain name which will make it even more interesting, and you’ll also get to customize the colors and general look of your UnHub presence. UnHub is another project quickly put together by the guys behind Yipit , who also built 140it which we’ve reviewed earlier this year . Check it out and let us know what you think. Here’s a demo video: Crunch Network : CrunchBase the free database of technology companies, people, and investors
 
Apture Raises $4.1 Million Round For Contextual Rich Media Overlays Top
Apture , the startup that lets online publishers enhance content with pop-ups that carry rich media from a variety of sources based on the context of linked words and terms, has scored a healthy $4.1 million in Series A financing from Clearstone Venture Partners and a number of angel investors including Paul Maritz (CEO of VMware) and Steve Taylor (former Executive VP of the Boston Globe). The service was first launched in June 2008 and has much improved since then. Online publishers can use Apture by simply inserting a line of Javascript code after creating an account, which allows them to link words and phrases to a HTML-based overlay that acts like a minitiature browser that enables readers to find and explore related multimedia content without leaving the original page. Note that this only works when you’re actually on the equipped page, not in the RSS feed, and that the functionality is not supported by Wordpress.com. Contextual content is fetched from sources like Wikipedia, Flickr, YouTube, Amazon, etc. but also Twitter and FriendFeed (more on that below). They’ve also added CrunchBase to the mix, which we wrote about here . You can see Apture in action by clicking through to this Washington Post article . Just hover over the names of U.S. Senators with a little icon next to them, and the widget should pop out automatically. I only wish it wouldn’t scroll the article up or down when it opens a pop-up, but I find it surprisingly non-intrusive besides that. New is that Apture now also supports adding rich media links to content that hasn’t yet been published (something that wasn’t possible before and probably slowed down its adoption a bit) thanks to the addition of plugins for Blogger, TypePad, WordPress and MovableType. They’ve also just released a neat integration with Twitter , so that you can easily link @username or #hashtags to Twitter streams in blog post or news articles, which is an excellent feature if you ask me. Read more about it here and hover over the account of Sen. John McCain in the blog post to see how it works. Apture is free of charge for bloggers and online publishers with less than five million page views per month. More pageviews means you have to pay to use the service, but that’s not the core of Apture’s business model, which is centered around charging publishers for premium features, integration of custom content sources, customizations, and priority support. On top of that, Apture runs its own advertising sales with display opportunities across its entire publisher network, and splits that revenue with those publishers. Apture has already been tested by BBC, Reuters and the Washington Post, and The New York Times is also said to be experimenting with the service. Crunch Network : CrunchBase the free database of technology companies, people, and investors
 
Alltop Launches Personalized Feed Reader That Can Hardly Be Personalized Top
Alltop , the “online magazine rack” that offers visitors a clean overview of RSS-feed enabled sources categorized by topic, is launching version 3.0 today with the addition of a custom feed reader that’s supposed to make it easier for users to personalize their user experience when browsing for online news. But how personalized is it really? The feature, dubbed MyAlltop , lets users create a custom page with a so-called vanity URL (e.g. my.alltop.com/techcrunch ) where they can add feeds from a variety of topics and display all the widgets on one page, which can then be shared with others. All users need to do is register and add feeds to their public pages by clicking a small plus sign displayed next to feed widgets. I know what you’re thinking, and you’re right. Personalized start pages like Netvibes, iGoogle, PageFlakes, etc. have been around for years, and they pretty much all offer the above and much more. MyAlltop only lets you grab feeds that are already on Alltop, so no custom widgets for you (tough luck if you wanted to insert your mom’s blog). Furthermore, Alltop doesn’t have a decent search function, which makes it very hard to look for sources to add unless I’m 100% certain they will be in a specific category. With 31,000 sources in 550 topics, they’re hurting themselves not to make search a priority instead of launching new features like MyAlltop. For example, I can’t find our sister site MobileCrunch anywhere on Alltop (not even in the Mobile category), so that pretty much blocks me from creating a public TechCrunch presence on Alltop with all our feeds in it. All I could do at this point is notify Alltop that there’s a great resource on all things mobile missing in the pre-defined category list of feeds and hope that they add it. Personalization it ain’t. You could of course claim that Alltop takes the hassle out of having to locate the RSS feeds of your favorite sources and go through a few steps in order to add them to any personalized feed reader, but how much of a problem is this really? I think it’s a bit of a stretch to claim MyAlltop simplifies creating a custom feed reader because it already has been dead simple for many years. In my opinion, anyone who thinks the process of personalizing your RSS feed reading experience with Netvibes or iGoogle is cumbersome will probably feel the same way after trying MyAlltop. Here’s a video about Alltop (the new feature is explained a bit in the end): Crunch Network : CrunchBoard because it’s time for you to find a new Job2.0
 

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