Tuesday, March 17, 2009

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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 download 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
 
The iPhone OS 3.0 Announcement Scorecard Top
Tomorrow morning the sun will rise, and tech writers from near and far will descend upon Cupertino. The steady rattle of fingers flying across laptop keys will sound like rain on a windshield, drowned out only by the endless assault of cameras firing at the stage. All that typing, all those photos, all with just one subject: the 3rd iteration of the iPhone OS. Guys in button up shirts and blue jeans will talk, slides will slide - and in the end, the masses will turn to their Twitter accounts with 140-characters of pure adoration or utter abhorrence. It’s just the way Apple events tend to go; for those who care enough to pay attention, there isn’t often much of a middle ground. But what if, rather than attempting to gobble up all of the information and form an opinion on the raw, we were to go about it with predetermined and set-in-stone criteria in mind? What if we ignored Apple’s flashy presentation and entrancing ways, instead looking solely at the fruits of their labor and comparing it to what users have been clamoring for for over 2 years? For that purpose, we present: the iPhone OS 3.0 Announcement Scorecard. The idea is simple: We’ve assembled a list of the most common complaints we’ve seen that we feel have even a remote chance of seeing a resolution tomorrow, and assigned each a value. This value was derived from how frequently the complaint arises online and in personal discussion. Some items may seem low to some, while others seem too high - every item’s worth is relative to the person keeping score, so feel free to shuffle points around if the values don’t seem appropriate. Print it out and play along! The Criteria: Background Applications: This one’s a bit confusing, as many folks don’t understand that there are two possible interpretations of “Background Applications”. Last June, Apple announced that the iPhone would be getting “Background Notifications” by September of that year. Background Notifications allow for developers to send alerts to the handset, even when an application is closed - but data from the handset (such as its current location) could not be sent back unless the App was opened. A one way street, so to speak. September came and went, and Background Notifications were no where to be seen, leading many to hope that Apple had ditched Background Notifications for a more two-way solution, be it full background processing or something else. If Apple clears the air about Background Applications, they get 20 points - but if it’s still push only, they only get 10. Consider it a penalty for missing their own deadline by half a year. Copy and Paste: You know it, and you’re probably sick of hearing people whine about it. Some don’t care at all - for others, it’s the deal breaker that keeps them away from the phone. Kevin Rose says its a sure thing , and he’s always right. Sort of. 20 points . MMS: Picture messaging. The go-to item for highlighting the iPhone’s shortcomings. How it has yet to make its way into an update still bewilders us. 15 points . Video Recording: 10 points ? What!? It loses a few points in our books (well, our list) for not being quite as useful as everyone pretends it is. Outside of the few high-end cameraphones where the camera bit is a major selling point, cell phone video tends to be absolute garbage that clogs up the (You)tubes. Jailbreak-only apps have already demonstrated the video quality as being rather meh. Apple might be able to do it better on the software end, but there’s really not that much you can do to a crummy camera sensor. It’s nice for catching that awkward moment at the bar, but it tends to devolve into a toy for many users. Bluetooth Profile Upgrades: It’s a three-fer! There are a number of Bluetooth profiles that may be useful, but these are the three that seem to be on everyone’s mind. The Bluetooth Human Input Device profie, or HID , would allow for Bluetooth keyboards and mice (though the latter would be a no go) to be hooked up. This would be tough for Apple to pull off elegantly, as all of the Apps in the App Store are written for the on-screen keyboard. Wireless Sync would allow for the wireless transfer of data to-and-from a Bluetooth-enabled computer, though what sort of data that includes would be at Apple’s discretion. Stereo Bluetooth (A2DP) would allow people to wireless enjoy their media with both ears. 5 points for each Bluetooth enhancement. Flash in Safari: With the iPhone having one of the best mobile implementations of Youtube, we’re not 100% sure why the clamor for this is so strong - but it’s pretty deafening. Banner ads may be a nuisance and most games would work a bit strangely (if at all) due to screen size and input methods, but Flash has intertwined its way into the web in an almost unavoidable way. 15 points . Landscape Keyboard in all default apps: Go start a new SMS. Turn the iPhone on its side to try to bring up the landscape keyboard. Won’t work. Try it in notes. Same deal. Email? Same. Apple may not be able to force every developer in the App Store to enable the landscape keyboard in their applications, but they can do it in their own apps. 10 points. Tethering: We know it’s coming at some point - we just don’t know the nitty gritty details. Getting this to work in an officially endorsed and carrier-manageable way would presumably take a good amount of tweaking on the software end, so there’s no better time than now. 15 points . Any of the 8 things we can’t stand: Last month, we wrote an article on 8 Little Things We Still Can’t Stand About The iPhone . As the title of the story implies, these things are quite little. Though trivial, they allow us to measure something we otherwise couldn’t: attention to detail. If Apple resolve any of our nit-pick issues, we can assume they’ve fixed plenty of other little things that don’t justify time during the presentation. Cumulatively, these little things matter to the experience just as much as some of the big ones. Chances are these things wont be touched on during the presentation - but if they are, that’s 5 bonus points for Apple for each one. The Score: 120+ : The perfect announcement. The untouchable debut. Apples will rain from the sky, the energy crisis will be solved, and cats will stop being jerks. 90-115 : Not technically perfect, but we’re still mighty impressed. No more Copy and Paste jokes! Hurray! 70-85 : If Apple manages to squeak into this range, there probably won’t be much naysaying around the internet. (Just kidding. Everyone will still complain, because that’s what people on the internet do.) 45-65: : If we were the bettin’ type, we’d put our money on Apple landing somewhere in this range tomorrow. Of course, this would also require a mystical gambling hall where they bet on Apple events. Most will walk away satisfied, others will feel burned that their must-have feature is still not at hand. 20-40: : Meh. One or two significant features, but is that enough to warrant the big jump from 2.2 all the way up to 3.0? 0-15: Event got canceled. Of course, there’s one item that no scorecard could ever take in to consideration: the good ol’ “One more thing..” If Apple comes out and blows our minds with some feature we never knew we wanted considered (”By the way, your iPhone? It’s now also a love-powered jet pack. Enjoy.”), there’s no way for us to assign it a value. If something mindbogglingly amazing happens, consider the scorecard nullified - or just give the new goods a value and pretend it was on the scorecard the whole time. Crunch Network : CrunchGear drool over the sexiest new gadgets and hardware.
 
Loudcrowd Marries Gaming And Music In A Virtual World Top
Startup Conduit Labs has launched Loudcrowd , a online community that integrates a virtual world with social gaming and music. Loudcrowd users can create their own virtual world with avatars and access music playlists while playing a series of music-themed games with friends. Loudcrowd is launching with 50 artists and over 250 songs featured on the platform, including music from the Indie rock bands Justice, Phoenix, Santigold, and Friendly Fires. Loudcrowd wants to create the feel of an online concert or dance club for users. The site will feature social games that will be played simultaneously with music tracks as well as daily playlists from guest DJs. Loudcrowd’s feature Dance game is similar to the popular game Dance, Dance Revolution and is pretty innovative. Loudcrowd says that the dance game has been played more than one million times since they entered private beta, with over 25 percent of users visiting the site more than 100 times a month. The games are all built on Flash and the animation is disarmingly good. Loudcrowd has partnered with Indie rock record labels including the Beggars Group, DFA, Domino, Downtown Records, and Modular to provide exclusive music to users. In an attempt to monetize the site through a music-related virtual goods model, Loudcrowd charges users for music tracks and extra gaming and avatar features. Prices will range from micropayments for certain features to rare music tracks that could be in the triple digits. We reported on Conduit Lab’s $5.5 million Series A funding round from Charles River Ventures and Prism VentureWorks for Loudcrowd back in 2007 but the plan didn’t seem to include an online music community at that point. While imeem and Last.fm also build social networks around music, Loudcrowd seems to be doing something unique by combining gaming and music all within a virtual world. While Loudcrowd is trying to be part social network, it certainly doesn’t want to reinvent the wheel, says Conduit CEO and co-founder Nabeel Hyatt. Conduit will be using Facebook Connect and Google Friend Connect to bring in users from Facebook and other social networking sites like Last.Fm, MySpace and others. Hyatt says that Loudcrowd could actually sit inside a social network but he’s hoping to be able to integrate the standalone unique experience of the site with larger social networks at the moment. Crunch Network : CrunchGear drool over the sexiest new gadgets and hardware.
 
Twitter's OAuth Support Now In Public Beta Top
Twitter API Lead Alex Payne has just tweeted that OAuth support for third party applications is now in public beta. Support for the authentication protocol has been frequently requested for many months, and was finally made available to a limited number of developers last month . OAuth allows developers to create third party apps that can access a user’s account information without requiring them to hand over their login credentials. Before now, Twitter applications have required users to enter their usernames and passwords. This typically hasn’t been a problem (and most users haven’t seemed to mind given the vast number of popular apps using the Twitter API). But handing third party developers login credentials, and in turn full authorization to access and store a user’s account information does open the door to abuse , should something happen down the line that exposes user data. OAuth removes some of this risk, though users are still potentially open to phishing attacks . Crunch Network : CrunchBase the free database of technology companies, people, and investors
 
Facebook: Privacy Now Optional Top
A big difference between Facebook and MySpace has always been how the two companies approach the privacy of user data. At MySpace your profile is public by default and users can choose to make it private (except under 18 users, who default to private). At Facebook, your profile information has always been private and shared with your friends and, optionally your network (your school, company or geographic location). Starting today, though, users can change their privacy settings to make virtually all of their profile information public. That’s good news for users like me who don’t mind sharing all that data with the world. And it also makes my profile more interesting to point to, since everyone can now view it. Some users, though, are complaining, although I have no idea why since the privacy settings are optional. In a blog post announcing the change, most comments said they wanted the old Facebook back, whatever that means (Facebook has changed so much over the last couple of years there really is no defined “old Facebook” any more). As usual, everyone will settle down in a week and find something new to complain about. Crunch Network : CrunchGear drool over the sexiest new gadgets and hardware.
 
Twitter Experimenting With Text Advertising Top
Twitter, the subject of endless business model speculation, added another weapon to the arsenal today - house advertisements on the home page when you’re logged in, and some search results. The advertisements currently only link internally to Twitter Search or the Twitter Widget. But it isn’t much of a stretch to assume they’re testing the units for possible third party advertisements in the future. Twitter Japan, which launched a year ago , has included display ads from the beginning. Last summer Twitter CEO Evan Williams said he thought Twitter’s strongest revenue potential would come from charging for commercial use by brands. But it’s clear that the company will experiment with a number of different potential streams - we think Twitter search has tremendous revenue opportunity. Crunch Network : MobileCrunch Mobile Gadgets and Applications, Delivered Daily.
 
uTest Bug Battle: Which Social Network Is The Buggiest? Top
uTest , a startup that allows companies to outsource their QA testing to ‘the cloud’ has just concluded its latest quarterly bug battle , during which it put some of the world’s largest social networks to the test. Hundreds of participants (many of which have been involved in product testing for over a year) did their best to uncover flaws across Facebook, MySpace, and LinkedIn, with $3,000 up for grabs for the testers who identified the most crucial bugs. Below are the final results for the number of bugs found. It’s worth noting that this data is prone to bias and may well overstate the number of ’showstopping bugs’ (testers probably had a strong incentive to rate their bugs as ’showstopper’ so as to have a better chance at the prize). But it also meshes fairly well with anecdotal experience. Facebook: 416 uTesters found 243 bugs (.58 bugs/tester), including 14.40% that were deemed showstoppers by the tester LinkedIn: 399 uTesters found 250 bugs (.63 bugs/tester), including 9.78% that were deemed showstoppers by the tester. MySpace: 304 uTesters found 225 bugs (.74 bugs/tester), including 10.80% that were deemed showstoppers by the tester Aside from logging each bug that they found, testers were also asked to rate each social network in a handful of categories and to detail some of the most apparent issues. Overall, the contest deemed Facebook to have the most complete feature set, but the social network was criticized for not having a high enough default security level (the options to keep things private are there, but are not always set by default). LinkedIn took the title of “Best in Overall Quality”, but testers had issues syncing data with Outlook, which they considered “problematic for the ’professional social network’” MySpace didn’t take the top prize in any of the bug testing categories, but was considered to have “a loyal following”, as it drew consistently high marks from a subset of users. Common complaints included “Overlapping images, backgrounds, titles, etc.” and slow page load times. Testers' choice for best overall quality:  1.  LinkedIn (45%)  2.  Facebook (37%)    3.  MySpace (17%)    Testers' choice for best usability:   1.  Facebook (39%)  2.  LinkedIn (38%)  3.  MySpace (17%)    Testers' choice for best feature set:  1.  Facebook (46%)  2.  LinkedIn (36%)  3.  MySpace (18%) Crunch Network : CrunchGear drool over the sexiest new gadgets and hardware.
 
AdMob Is Working On An iPhone App Exchange To Swap Ads For Traffic Top
With more than 20,000 apps available for the iPhone, standing out from the crowd is becoming harder and harder for app developers. There are only so many slots in the the top apps lists in the iTunes Store. Discovering new apps is becoming a real problem. But what if apps started cross-promoting other apps, just like they do on Facebook? AdMob , which claims to be the largest mobile ad network on the iPhone covering more than 1,000 apps, will be launching an iPhone App Exchange by the end of this month for any developer who is already part of its ad network. AdMob currently shows ads across 7.2 million iPhones. Developers will be able to volunteer a portion of the ad inventory on their apps to go towards promoting other apps. In return, their apps will be promoted on other apps in the network. Depending on whether monetization or distribution is more important to them, they will be able to adjust the settings on their AdMob account accordingly. Since AdMob knows which other apps in the network have been downloaded by each individual, consumers will never be shown ads for apps they already own. AdMob also keeps track of usage after each download, and has come up with a measure it calls “instaliness”—which is a combination of conversions and usage. The installiness of an app will factor into how often it is shown across the iPhone App Exchange. “Your app will be shown less if your app is bad,” says CEO Omar Hamoui. He hopes to use the iPhone App Exchange to cement AdMob’s position as a leading mobile ad network by offering not just a way to make advertising revenues, but also as a distribution platform in its own right. In the end, though, if the ads don’t pa y, getting wider distribution won’t help. On a side note, while the iPhone makes up 20 percent of AdMob’s ad impressions, it is not the only platform Hamoui is excited about. In February, the first full month after AdMob launched ads on Android, it processed 48 million ad requests. In comparison, the first full month after it launched ads on the iPhone last August, it saw 50 million ad requests. A year from now, will iPhone apps be cross-promoting Android apps? Crunch Network : CrunchBase the free database of technology companies, people, and investors
 
Study: Americans Want To Customize Their Phones, But Don't Want To Pay Extra For It Top
Do most people view their phones as portable computers? According to a recent international survey conducted by Zogby and Skype that looks at how people perceive their mobile phones, the answer seems to be a resounding “no”. But it’s clear that many of the features now associated with smartphones, like custom app stores, are now desired by the huge number of people who use more traditional ‘dumb phones’. Looking at the results from the United States, many of the datapoints in the survey are not particularly surprising. Of 1,800 people surveyed, 18.9% owned smartphones, which strongly correlated with the 19.3% of participants who viewed their phones as a device used for both computing and making phone calls (said another way, most people with ‘dumb phones’ just use their phones to talk). Given a choice, 66.4% of the participants would rather lose their cell phone over their computer, while only 19.1% would sacrifice their computer (again, given the probable price difference, not surprising). But there are a few points worth paying attention to. When asked if they thought that phone manufacturers and carriers would do a better job at picking out applications than they could, the vast majority of participants (80.5%), even those with ‘dumb phones’, either disagreed or strongly disagreed - people want to be able to customize their phones. Despite that desire, only 26.2% of them have actually installed applications on their phones, which seems to indicate that for the most part, most phones and carriers have simply done a bad job at making it easy for users to download applications (I suspect Apple and more recently Google would be the exceptions in this department). Finally, when asked if they’d be willing to pay extra for a device that let them customize their phone’s applications, 51.8% said that they wouldn’t. The same study conducted in the UK and Japan exhibited similar trends, but the results from Spain are significantly different. 48% of Spanish participants have installed apps on their phones, and 50% would be willing to pay extra for a device capable of downloading customized applications. Perhaps this is one case where seeing is believing: unlike in the United States, many Spaniards have actually experienced having a customized phone - perhaps they’ve found the associated benefits justify a cost increase. US Results zogbyus2 zogbyus2 JasonTC Aggregate International Results zoggbyag2 zoggbyag2 JasonTC Crunch Network : MobileCrunch Mobile Gadgets and Applications, Delivered Daily.
 
GumGum Wants To Turn Celebrity Pics Into Shopping Sprees With ShopThisLook Top
Image licensing startup GumGum is introducing a new ad unit to go along with all of those celebrity pics that it helps to distribute. Next time you come across a paparazzi shot of Lindsay Lohan on the Web, you might see a ShopThisLook badge next to the image courtesy of GumGum. Click on the badge and window will pop up with shopping links for clothes and accessories similar to what Lohan is wearing in the picture. When possible, GumGum tries to match the exact same pair of jeans, dress , or shirt. GumGum tracks images that reach 25 million people a month across the Web. It has data on which images are spread around and viewed the most. Using a combination of image recognition technology and human editors, it adds tags to the most popular celebrity photos. These tags then trigger cost-per-click (CPC) links with images from Shopzilla and Shopstyle . There is a lot of human editing that goes into this process. Image recognition techniques are simply not good enough yet to completely automate the process. But all GumGum has to do is tag the most widely distributed images of the most popular celebrities to see if the concept has legs. Websites that license images through GumGum can either pay for them or use them free with advertising. The ShopThisLook badges will appear in place of the ads for certain images. Website publishers who pay for the images can also opt in to show the badges, in which case they will receive 30 percent of any CPC revenues. GumGum CEO Ophir Tanz says that in early testing, the badges are clicked on about one percent of the time, but that the click-through rate to an actual item after that is 29 percent. That implies a blended click-through rate of 0.29 percent, and the effective CPM is 90 cents. These numbers are based on a limited sample, and before any effort to optimize them. (Read our previous coverage of GumGum here and here ). Crunch Network : MobileCrunch Mobile Gadgets and Applications, Delivered Daily.
 
Facebook's fbFund Is Accepting Applications For FB Connect And iPhone Apps Top
fbFund , a $10 million seed fund focused on supporting entrepreneurs who are building their business around Facebook.com or with Facebook Connect, is now accepting applications for its third funding round. The fund, which is backed by Facebook, Founders Fund and Accel Partners, is shifting its focus to funding Web and iPhone app developers leveraging Facebook Connect. In the past, fbFund focused on the broad spectrum of successful and promising applications built on the Facebook Platform. Facebook founder and CEO Mark Zuckerberg announced the fbFund at TechCrunch40 in 2007. Last year’s winners , included GroupCard , Konatgent , MouseHunt , Wildfire and Weddingbook (which was recently acquired by The Knot). Facebook will choose 50 teams based on app metrics, developer talent and potential to succeed. From those teams, a subset will later be chosen and offered the opportunity to receive up to $100,000 in equity investment and an invitation to participate in an incubator program in Silicon Valley later this year. While there, the teams will be able to meet with Facebook engineers, venture capitalists and other tech executives. In contrast to last year , 25 teams received $25,000, and five out the 25 were given an additional $250,000 each. The also fund now has an incubator program, which could be helpful for startups that may need more direction. Startups can apply on this website . Applications will be accepted through April 20, 2009. Crunch Network : CrunchBase the free database of technology companies, people, and investors
 
Socialmedian Makes It Easy For You To Spread Social News On Facebook Top
Socialmedian just made an interesting announcement about connecting its services to Facebook in a big way. As of about an hour ago, you can log in and participate on socialmedian with Facebook Connect, which is a noteworthy move considering the fact that socialmedian was recently acquired by European business social networking service Xing , news we broke in December last year. Socialmedian is essentially a personalized news filter that integrates well with social networking platforms. It aggregates news articles from around the web, blogosphere and social services like Digg, Delicious, Twitter, Flickr, Facebook, YouTube, Google Reader, FriendFeed, etc. which are then filtered by topic. Users can pre-define which keywords and topics they'd like to receive news on, and they can also submit articles to the site with the help of a bookmarklet. Stories can be viewed either in chronological order or according to popularity on the network. As of today, the service works both ways as far as the integration with Facebook goes. Once connected to the social network, users can now instantly share news with their Facebook friends, if they have a socialmedian account that is. As far as I can tell, this is the first social news service to use Facebook Connect in this manner, but Digg CEO Jay Adelson has hinted in the past that FB Connect might be the future of Digg , so expect news to come from them about a deep integration soon. Or not, of course (an announcement has been expected for some time but for some reason all remains quiet). I asked socialmedian founder Jason Goldberg about the Facebook Connect integration, and why they went for it. Socialmedian has always been about the news filtered by your network. The fact is that for most people around the world, Facebook is THE Network. While there has been some nice early adoption of Facebook Connect amongst blogs and pure content sites, as far as we are aware socialmedian is one of the first social networks to give the social network over to Facebook — let them take care of the profiles, the registration, and the social-graph, and we’ll stick to what we do best: the news filtered by your network. He also hinted that there will be more initiatives launched from within Xing this Spring that will turn it into more of an open platform rather than an island, which should make it compete more effectively against LinkedIn , which is making its way in the European business social networking scene lately. Crunch Network : CrunchBase the free database of technology companies, people, and investors
 
TweetDeck Joins The Facebook Connect Army Top
You can now add TweetDeck to the growing army of apps that are joining Facebook Connect. TweetDeck is the most popular desktop client for Twitter , and now it will add Facebook functionality as well. When you send out a message from TweetDeck, you will now have the option to send it to Twitter, Facebook, or both. A new column will be added to TweetDeck showing you status updates from your Facebook friends (in addition to the existing columns for Tweets from people you follow on Twitter, replies, and direct messages). And if one of your Facebook friends is online, a green dot appears by their name and you can chat with them through Facebook chat via a pop-up window. TweetDeck will be rolling out the new feature over the next few days. A version of the update will be posted here for those who want to upgrade manually. TweetDeck is just the latest app to join the Facebook Connect Army. On Saturday, Facebook announced that Facebook Connect now works with iPhone apps and desktop apps such as Seesmic . With Tweetdeck, Facebook ventures into the realm of Twitter apps. By going after the Twitter apps, Facebook can do an end-run around Twitter. Tweetdeck alone accounts of about 13 percent of all Twitter users. If more of the top Twitter apps add Facebook Connect, more than a third of all Twitter users could be covered pretty quickly. Of course, Twitter could just add a Facebook Connect option itself, but that would be conceding victory to Facebook. Crunch Network : CrunchBoard because it’s time for you to find a new Job2.0
 
AOL Rolls Out Bebo In Several European Countries Top
AOL’s People Networks division has today announced the launch of social networking site Bebo , which it acquired almost exactly one year ago, in several key European countries such as France, Germany, Italy, Spain and the Netherlands. Before, Bebo was only available in English and for some reason also Polish, but now it will use IP-based geo-targetting to cater services in users’ mother tongues. It launched a latino site for U.S.-based users just last week. Successfully rolling out social services across Europe is never an easy feat to accomplish, and Netlog and Facebook have a pretty strong foothold here, as does MySpace, although the latter appears to be struggling with their expansion strategy lately. Bebo is doing it the smart way - which is of course no guarantee for success - by teaming up with local media partners. Bebo is partnering with AlloCiné, RTL's Clipfish, Telecom Italia owned Yalp!, Diagonal View and Preview Networks' Filmtrailer, which will all be incorporated in Bebo's Open Media platform. Bebo is planning to let these and additional media partners put a button on their websites that lets users share content on their profiles via status updates. That’s the right strategy in my opinion, but they will find that competing against both the big boys who’re already present throughout Europe as well as the local players who’ve been around - in many cases - since the turn of the century, will be a long, hard battle. Those who have been following the developments in social networking services here in Europe, as well as the rough decline of online advertising budgets in general, would tell them the same. We’ve reported in the past that AOL might be contemplating a sale of Bebo , but the press release makes it sound like they’re in fact heavily relying on Bebo for their social strategy instead: Bebo forms the centrepiece of the AOL People Networks business unit. People Networks’ collection of community platforms help improve people's lives by connecting them with everyone and everything they care about. People Networks does this through a web-based experience on Bebo.com, through desktop clients and mobile devices. At the heart of People Networks is the Lifestream, a real-time, platform for aggregating and distributing social feeds across mediums. It will be interesting to look back in a couple of years and see if Bebo made the right decision at the right time, but I have my doubts about their capacity to effectively compete in Europe starting this late in the game. Crunch Network : CrunchBase the free database of technology companies, people, and investors
 
Y Combinator Gets The Sequoia Capital Seal Of Approval Top
Y Combinator , a seed stage venture firm that has invested in a whopping 118 startups since summer 2005, has to date only invested capital provided by its four founders: Paul Graham , Jessica Livingston , Trevor Blackwell and Robert Morris . Now they are raising $2 million in capital themselves, from Sequoia Capital and a number of prominent angel investors. Sequoia partner Greg McAdoo is leading the investment. Sequoia and the angel investors ( Ron Conway , Paul Buchheit and Aydin Senkut ) aren’t investing directly in Y Combinator. Instead, they are putting money into a new entity, managed by Y Combinator, that will make investments in new startups going forward. In other words, Y Combinator won’t just be investing their own capital any more, and they’ve got a larger war chest to expand operations. In the past Y Combinator has invested in 40 or so new startups a year. Investments are small ($5,000 + $5,000/founder) in exchange for around 6% of equity, and the startups are typically very early, usually idea stage. Still, they’ve had some notable successes. Several of the startups have been acquired - Reddit (by Condé Nast) , Omnisio (by YouTube) , Zenter (by Google) , ClickPass (by Synthasite) Auctomatic (by Communicate) and others. A number of Y Combinator’s current startups are doing very well, too. Their publicly launched portfolio includes: Reddit, Loopt, Scribd, Justin.TV, OMGPOP, Xobni, Disqus, Heroku, Dropbox, Posterous, Backtype, Clustrix and ZumoDrive, among others . Sequoia has invested in three Y Combinator startups in the past (Loopt, Clustrix and Dropbox). The $2 million in new capital will go a long way for Y Combinator. They say they’ll increase the number of startups they invest in, from around 40/year to 60. But at an average investment of only about $15,000 per startup, that $2 million will last for about two years. Y Combinator startups get a big head start in the competitive tech world. The founders, often just out of school (or still in school), get enough money to pay the bills for a few months as they work on their projects. They also get mentoring and polish from the Y Combinator team and a chance to present to prominent angel investors and venture capitalists at twice-yearly demo days ( example ). A surprising percentage of the startups go on to raise bigger venture rounds and become real companies. Many of the founders that fail come back and try again. Y Combinator says that the investment by Sequoia and the angels won’t change how they do business (other a projected increase in the number of investments). The new investors won’t get any special investment rights in the new startups, or have any obligation to invest further in them. But it is a seal of approval in the Y Combinator model. And dozens more young founders will now get the chance to build their first startup. Update: Y Combinator announces the news here . Crunch Network : CrunchBoard because it’s time for you to find a new Job2.0
 
Daily News Habit Doubles Among U.S. Mobile Users Top
Mobile Web usage is still a nascent activity, but comScore put out some data on the information-consumption habits of consumers in the U.S. The number of people who access news and information daily on their mobile phones doubled from 10.8 million in January, 2008 to 22.4 million in January, 2009. The second most popular mobile activity was social networking, with 9.3 million daily mobile users (although for some reason this number also includes blog access). While social networking is only half as popular as reading news, it is growing four times as fast, up from 1.8 million users a year ago. An estimated 63 million people accessed news and information on their mobile phones at least once during the month. Of those, about a third did so via a downloaded application rather than a mobile browser, with the most popular downloaded app being maps. SMS-based search proved even more popular (with 14.1 million monthly users versus 8.2 million for downloaded maps. Crunch Network : MobileCrunch Mobile Gadgets and Applications, Delivered Daily.
 

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