Tuesday, March 3, 2009

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Skype To Give Away New SILK Audio Codec Top
Skype’s new state of the art speech codec SILK will be made available to third party licensees for free, the company is announcing later today. Skype GM Jonathan Christensen will be speaking about the new program at the eComm event in San Francisco later today. SILK has been highly regarded by the guys that follow this sort of thing and is included in the most recent version of Skype for Windows (the Mac version with SILK will be coming in April). If both sides of the call have a version of Skype that includes the new codec, the call quality increases dramatically. Skype is now making the codec available for third party use on a royalty free basis. There are a number of speech codecs available on the market today, including iSac and AMRWideband, and an open source codec called Speex. Skype claims that SILK outperforms all of these. So why give it away to competitors? Christensen says its about setting standards in the industry so that VoIP services can spread more quickly, particularly to hardware devices that today are not optimized for voice over the Internet. It’s also a sign that Skype, with 400 million or so worldwide registered users, isn’t particularly concerned about the competition any more. They’re handing over a key piece of intellectual property to competitors that can reduce their costs and possibly improve voice quality. They wouldn’t do that unless they felt their pole position was fairly permanent for now. More importantly, it signals that Skype may be preparing to open up their service in the future. Skype has long been derided for being a closed service (by people like me, who continue, however, to use it daily). Their API allows developers to access limited features of the service, but a call requires the opening of the Skype client. If Skype were to open its core calling functions as a service, the number of applications that would build it in would explode. Skype would benefit from a surge in paid calls to traditional and mobile phones (Skype Out). Our guess is that the debate to open these core functions through the API is still raging within Skype, but that the proponents of openness are slowly starting to turn the tide. Crunch Network : CrunchBase the free database of technology companies, people, and investors
 
UK Entrepreneur Dies In Tragic Skiing Accident Top
Rob Williams, co-founder of one of the UK’s leading online companies Dolphin Music , died in a skiing accident yesterday evening while on holiday in the Swiss Alps. Mr Williams had been part of a group break for UK entrepreneurs in the ski resort of Verbier. He became separated from his group during very harsh weather conditions. His family and work colleagues have now been informed. The hunt for Rob and his co-founder and life-long friend Jason Tavaria has been well documented online and involved his friends frantically attempting to use Twitter, GPS and iPhones to try and pinpoint their location. And although the technology used may well have been of some help to the search party, it is likely that Verbier’s Mountain Rescue team was far more instrumental in Jason’s rescue. Whatever the circumstance - and no doubt more details will come out in due course - tragically, Rob had become separated from his friend in harsh blizzard conditions. Rob was one of the UK’s most successful entrepreneurs, building an $18m turnover business in the UK, as well as encouraging young people in business. Crunch Network : MobileCrunch Mobile Gadgets and Applications, Delivered Daily.
 
The Case Of the $200 Memory: Mac Mini Upgrade Disappoints Top
Giz makes a good point about the Mac Mini update: the 1GB and 200GB upgrade on the "base" $599 Mac Mini costs a mean $200, a bit of overkill for what amounts to a meager boost in storage and memory. Heck, 4GB of Kingston Mac Mini memory costs $44 . It might not work on these newer models, but who cares? Memory and hard drive space are cheap.
 
Twitter, Google Maps Used To Track Down Two Missing Skiers Top
Update : Tragically, one of the skiers, Rob Williams, was not able to be saved . Our thoughts go out to his family. Yesterday, a group of technology entrepreneurs from the UK on a skiing vacation in the Swiss Alps (Verbier) lost two of their party around 4 PM CET. Other members of the group put out a request on Twitter in order to learn the numbers of their mobile phones, so they could use the signals to track them down. According to follow-up tweets, one person (Jason) was rescued using a combination of GPS, Google Maps to determine longitude and latitude, and the signals returned from his iPhone, but another one (Rob) was still missing as the two had apparently been split up. It’s been 7 to 10 hours since the last Twitter messages at this point, so unfortunately we can only hope and not confirm if Rob has been found by now. Below are a number of screenshots with Twitter messages from some of the group, including Alex Hoye (CEO of digital marketing agency Latitude, Michael Acton Smith from Mind Candy, Joshua Marsh and Hermione Way (TechFluff.tv) Michelle Dewbs (winner of The Apprentice). Let’s hope everything is alright. We’re frantically tracking Twitter to learn more, and we’re not the only ones . (Hat tip to Google Maps Mania ) Crunch Network : CrunchBoard because it’s time for you to find a new Job2.0
 
The Daily Show: "My Stalker Just Grunted On My Twitter" Top
One sure sign that your product is entering mainstream consciousness is when Jon Stewart makes fun of it on The Daily Show . That happened to Twitter last night. I’m sure most of you have already seen the Twitter segment, but in case you haven’t, it is embedded above. Jon Stewart plays the frustrated old man shaking his fist at useless new technology, while reporter Samantha Bee plays the middle-aged enthusiast glomming onto every new Web service she sees “young people” getting into, even though she doesn’t quite understand why. She is not only on Twitter, but also on Grunter and Stalker (where she has 97 followers after only one week!). Those sound like startups we should be covering on TechCrunch. Crunch Network : CrunchBoard because it’s time for you to find a new Job2.0
 
Apple Updates Just About Everything Top
Apple just updated just about every little thing they could today including adding a $2,400 24-inch iMac and a faster MacBook Pro . Remember that new Mac Mini with 5 USB ports? It’s real. Other highlights include: Airport Extreme - Apple's latest refresh of the Airport Extreme adds a dual broadcasting mode that simultaneously broadcasts on both the 2.4GHz and 5.0GHz band. Time Capsule - The new 1TB or 500GB Time Capsule runs dual Wi-Fi, streaming at 802.11n and 802.11g speeds. The Capsule will pick the right band automatically, allowing for more efficient back-ups - a huge issue when transferring large files. Mac Pro - Two new Mac Pros today with some pretty serious power configurations and very-serious price tags. There's a quad-core version that starts at $2499 and an eight-core version that starts at $3299. Crunch Network : CrunchBoard because it’s time for you to find a new Job2.0
 
Socialtext Adds Twitter-like "Signals" And a Desktop AIR App Top
In yet another sign that this will be the year of the activity stream, Socialtext is adding a Twitter-like message stream to its enterprise wiki/workspace service, The new feature is called Socialtext Signals, and it appears both as a widget in the Socialtext dashboard and as a standalone desktop app built on Adobe AIR. Socialtext Signals is essentially an enterprise version of Twitter, much like Yammer. Employees within a company can micro-message each other without competitors or the rest of the world snooping. They will see only the messages of the co-workers they are following. In addition to the 140-character messaging between co-workers (the “signals”), there is also an “activity” tab. This generates a micro-message every time a person you are following takes an action inside Socialtext, such as creating a wiki page, writing a blog post, or making a comment. The activity stream which Socialtext makes visible is very particular to its products, and in fact is designed to keep employees engaged with those products. Any time someone changes a page that you’ve created or edited in the past, it shows up as an activity. So constant updates from Ralph in engineering about the progress of a project serves as a reminder for everyone else to do their part as well. Unlike Yammer, there is no ability to create subgroups within Signals, or upload files. But then, you can always create workgroups elsewhere in Socialtext, and upload files directly into linked wikis. Signals just ties it all together. There is no mobile support either, however, which is a more serious gap. Socialtext is used as a collaboration tool by 5,000 companies (subscriptions are as much at $15 per employee per month). Signals and the desktop app should go far towards increasing employee interaction with the service. Each update serves as a prompt to follow up on a project or keep it moving along, while Signals can also serve as the new watercooler. Companies that don’t need Socialtext’s other apps (the workspace and the dashboard, primarily) might want to check out a simpler enterprise micro-messaging service such as Yammer or WIzeHive . Crunch Network : MobileCrunch Mobile Gadgets and Applications, Delivered Daily.
 
Investor Deadpools Jooce. Not Sure They're Aware. Top
Funny how we receive tips sometimes. Yesterday we covered the latest Startup2Startup meetup, and a certain ChrisATSo33t commented on the story pointing to the latest quarterly report (PDF) of Luxembourg-based VC firm Mangrove Capital Partners in which they state that Paris-based portfolio company Jooce would be “closing its doors” during the month of February. We’ve now entered the month of March, and the Jooce website is still alive, people can still sign up, and their blog has been silent since October 2008. No notice of shut-down anywhere to be found, and e-mails are not bouncing (we hope they’re still being replied to since we contacted the Jooce team for comment). But since Mangrove was the company’s only investor, having injected seed funding into the startup in 2007, we’re pretty sure we can deadpool the startup. Update: wow. Jooce got back us with a completely different story: I think the gun was jumped just a bit, Jooce is not closing. In fact, Jooce has been recently been in talks with an undisclosed buyer within the internet cafe world wishing to acquire Jooce. Doors don’t shut so easily on great technology. When I asked why the VC would possibly claim such a thing about one of their portfolio companies, they made me laugh out loud by saying that “VCs are apparently not omniscient” and that “God can rest easy for now”. We covered Jooce , which operates (operated) a web-based OS, a couple of times before starting with its launch in August 2007 . It offered a virtual online desktop that provided a Flash platform for communication services like chat and e-mail combined with a custom way to play games, listen to music, etc. so you could essentially have the same user experience when you go online on any computer anywhere in the world. I’ve always had doubts about this kind of concept, which is similar to what startups like Goowy , Cloudo , eyeOS and others are up to, given the current evolution of the web. See, I already have a web-based OS. I just refer to it as my browser. Crunch Network : CrunchGear drool over the sexiest new gadgets and hardware.
 
Sequoia Pumps More Funding Into Search Marketing Startup Kenshoo Top
Israel-based search engine marketing (SEM) automator Kenshoo has received another capital injection from its existing backers Sequoia Capital and Arts Alliance . As with the Series A round, this second round of funding remained undisclosed, although our contact person at the company ensures it that this was an “up-round” financing and that the valuation was “50% higher than the last time” it attracted outside capital. The startup, based out of Tel Aviv but active worldwide, says it will use the funding to further fuel its expansion and explore new business opportunities in the search marketing space. Kenshoo’s flagship product, Kenshoo Search, is billed as an end-to-end SEM platform and essentially automates most if not all of the work usually carried out by marketing consultants (who are of course much pricier than automation software). In that regard, Kenshoo also competes with bid-management software from all the online advertising giants (DoubleClick, aQuantive's Atlas Solutions, and Omniture) but at the same time goes a step beyond that by taking a look at the quality of the campagns. Kenshoo is able to find relevant keywords across different search engines, and automatically changes campaign specifics to maximize their returns. In the economic downturn we’re in, marketers should be focused on building or maintaining decent levels of Website traffic and drive better conversions. Search marketing is still the best customer acquisition tool in the online space, so it’s not a surprise that eMarketer predicted continued growth from 2008 to 2013 in a very recent report on the state of SEO spending in the U.S. If Kenshoo can keep winning customers over by cutting out the middlemen and maximizing campaign ROIs, it definitely has potential to continue riding that wave and keep / make their investors happy. Crunch Network : MobileCrunch Mobile Gadgets and Applications, Delivered Daily.
 
Oodle on Facebook Is Live Top
As TechCrunch reported back in December, Oodle is taking over Facebook classifieds. The new service launches Wednesday and will be rolled out to Facebook users over the next sixty days. I’ve been bearish overall on companies that require local network affects, and usually classifieds fits in that bucket. As good a job as Craigslist has done it only monetizes about 1% of its users, and that’s probably one reason it has spread as far and as fast as it has. But- by design- it’s not the next great billion dollar Web powerhouse. Oodle, too, has been a long slog. As founder and CEO Craig Donato told me last week, had he known how hard of a slog classifieds would be, he might have chosen a different startup idea four years ago. I’m sure he was (partially) joking, but Oodle has long been the question mark in David Sze’s otherwise stellar Web 2.0 portfolio that includes Digg, LinkedIn and Facebook. (Now, some see Digg as the question mark, but that’s a different post.) Oodle has done two things well to combat the local trap. One is deals with huge properties like MySpace, Facebook and AOL that really juice distribution and listings. As a result, before it even goes live with Facebook or AOL, the site has 40 million listings with 500,000 new ones added each day. Second smart move: Making classifieds social, not local. Increasingly, the social Web has created more meaningful communities than just geographical proximity. Sure, we are more likely to know and regularly interact with people near us, so you can’t ignore geography. But think about how many times you’d rather sell something or buy something from someone you know or someone who knows someone you know, than someone whose only commonality is living in your city. The Oodle app is coming about just at the right time for Facebook. Not only is the site huge, but it’s so focused on the Wall that distributions of listings and conversations around items for sale will be natural and organic. And unlike eBay or Craigslist, it’s just a few clicks to post something. You fill in what it is, why you’re getting rid of it, how much you want and designate whether you’re giving it away, selling it, or want the money to go to charity. Can you imagine if posting something on eBay was that easy? My dining room of boxes would be empty. That’s not to say Oodle replaces Craigslist or eBay. You can reach a wider audience, and hence conceivably make more money on both of those. And Facebook could be too tied into your social graph for some transactions. Do you want your boss to see your old Playboys are for sale? Lastly, if you’re setting up a small ecommerce business, I doubt Facebook marketplace is the right fit. But if you’re just a regular person who has something they want to buy or sell for a fair price from a reputable dealer whose reputation they can trust– it’s going to be a stiff competitor. And come to think of it, wasn’t that the original eBay community? Crunch Network : MobileCrunch Mobile Gadgets and Applications, Delivered Daily.
 
Index Closes a New 350M. Euro Venture Fund Top
London-based investing hotshot Index Ventures has just announced a new early-stage 350 million Euro venture fund. To hear partner Bernard Dalle tell it, raising the fund was a breeze, with all existing limited partners re-upping their investments. He further said that good startups in London are having no problems raising venture capital and deal flow was just as strong. Really? Well, I guess all those reports that this is a global downturn were just plain wrong! You heard it here, struggling Silicon Valley startups: Just move to London! Apologies for giving Dalle a bit of a hard time, but I am subbing for Michael Arrington, and it's a huge pet peeve of mine when venture capitalists blithely shrug off an epic downturn that, let's face it, has to be hitting them in some way. Let's just say, I don't buy that it's all still that easy. Of course if anyone could make it look easy, I'd give it to Index. The firm has torn through its 2007 fund of the same size, raised a $400 million late stage fund last year, and has had a string of big exits including Skype and MySQL. Those two helped to rank its best-known partner Danny Rimer as number 16 on Forbes' annual Midas List. I first knew Rimer as an open source software bull , and last I talked to him , he was bullish on a reinvention of ecommerce. For Dalle's part, he wouldn't tell me much about where the firm was investing going forward. He said the firm would still focus geographically on Europe, Israel and the U.S. and was looking closely at mobile advertising, that ever-present buzzword "the cloud" and virtualization. Regardless of the fact that I could have gotten more answers from the CIA than this briefing, I congratulate Index on the new fund and indeed hope that money and deal flow is holding up as well as they say across the pond. If you’re in Europe raising money, let us know your experiences in the comments. Update: Given Index is London-based, there’s further analysis on TechCrunch UK . Crunch Network : CrunchBoard because it’s time for you to find a new Job2.0
 
Doodle launches API to unleash group events apps Top
Doodle is a free web app which helps you find suitable dates for group events, like a conference call, by creating a poll for a suitable meeting time and lettting people fill in their availability. It’s an idea which works very well, and is easily messed up. London-based ikordo closed last year through lack of funding and a complex interface. However, Doodle, which grew from a hacker project, has well-funded competitors like Tungle , which also comes as an Outlook plugin and has $1.5m in backing, as well as TimeBridge , and Jiffle . So Zurich-based Doodle is hoping its Outlook plugin, generic calendar feeds, white-label version and - most importantly - new open API for developers will set it apart from the pack. Crunch Network : CrunchGear drool over the sexiest new gadgets and hardware.
 
Startup2Startup Tackles Web Design As Measure Map Founder Unveils Latest Project Top
Last Thursday over 140 entrepreneurs, investors, and startup rookies came together for Startup2Startup , a monthly invite-only dinner built around fostering the startup community. This month’s featured speaker was Adaptive Path founding partner and ex-Googler Jeffrey Veen , who walked the audience through some of the key aspects of website design and how to deal with associated communication issues. Following Veen’s presentation, the attendees shared their thoughts and experiences related to design in intimate round-table discussions. The event’s co-founder Dave McClure painstakingly creates seating arrangements to ensure that each table has an array of attendees ranging from startup rookie to veteran, ensuring that discussion is both lively and informative (and strictly off-the-record). The evening was an overwhelming success, highlighted by Veen’s engaging presentation that was both accessible and entertaining (you can see an intro video and his slides below, and we’ll post the full video of his talk shortly). As a bonus, Veen introduced the audience to one of his newest projects. Dubbed Wikirank , the site tracks the popularity of Wikipedia articles, sifting through hundreds of gigabytes of Wikipedia’s publicly available traffic data and presenting it in an intuitive and attractive interface. With this data, the site can generate an at-a-glance view of what the world is interested in at any given moment. The site also allows users to create embeddable charts comparing the popularity of different topics over time. If you’d like to try it out, the first 30 TechCrunch readers to enter their Email addresses here will have access to the site’s private beta. Next month’s Startup2Startup event will feature Tony Hsieh , CEO of Zappos , who will be offering tips on building a great company culture and customer service (for which Zappos is widely acclaimed). Design For Startups View more presentations from veen . (tags: design webdesign ) Crunch Network : CrunchBoard because it’s time for you to find a new Job2.0
 
Vanno's Watchdog Index Keeps Companies Honest With ReputationCheck Top
The Company Reputation Index Social evaluation platform Vanno launched a widget application of its real-time company reputation index called ReputationCheck . Vanno’s platform allows customers and others to share stories about their personal experiences with a particular company, submit news articles they've read about companies, fill out surveys and comment on companies. Vanno then quantifies this dialogue and information into an index using Bayesian algorithms (the same statistical methods used to filter spam and detect credit card fraud). The company’s index measures the reputation of more than 5,800 companies worldwide. Vanno’s reputation index was recently brought into the public light when Vanno quantified the damage Kellogg’s brand sustained after the company pulled the plug on Michael Phelps’s sponsorship following the swimmer’s marijuana photo fiasco. Vanno’s data suggested that Kellogg’s reputation plummeted after its decision, falling even further on the index than when the company had to recall products after this year’s peanut butter salmonella scare. ReputationCheck, the index’s embeddable widget, shows a company's real-time reputation rank and compares the rank to the best and worst companies relative to customer and employee satisfaction, community involvement, the environment, patriotism and social responsibility. The widget can be used in a post or in the sidebar of a site. Considering all of the various inputs of the index, the ranking system cannot be deemed as 100 percent authoritative. But it certainly is a measure of the public’s perception of a company. (Contrast to Glassdoor , another reputation service from employees’ point of view) . While the index widget could be useful to bloggers and writers to show one measure of a reputation of a company, its probably best not to rely upon ReputationCheck as the final arbiter of a company’s standing. Here’s the index for Google, which ranks highly The Company Reputation Index Crunch Network : CrunchBoard because it’s time for you to find a new Job2.0
 
Kutano Hopes To Draw Crowds In Crowded Online Commentary Space Top
Why do online commenting start-ups keep beating their heads against the same wall? Kutano , a browser add-on that lets users read, write and search comments side-by-side with any webpage, launched at DEMO today. With over one-third of the 1.574 billion internet users worldwide participating in online commentary and forums, Kutano is joining a slew of other start-ups hoping to capitalize on this growing trend by providing a free and open stage for online discussion. As we wrote about last fall , there have been many online discussion add-ons and services developed to allow users to share unmoderated commentary on webpages, but very little traction for most of them. Kutano’s technology doesn’t appear to be vastly different than its predecessors. Once Internet Explorer and Firefox users (Safari and Linux versions will be rolled out in Q2 2009) download the free add-on, a Kutano, collapsable "window" will be displayed to the right of the browser, which will show the discussions and information related to the specific subject (not by URL) of the web page that is being viewed. The add-on lets users comment on the website and also allows users to search and exchange information on any related commentary on the web (much like Reframe It ). This serves to broaden the discussion, but also risks showing disjointed conversations. Kutano, which means crowd or gathering in Swahili, integrates with Facebook and Twitter, giving users the ability to broadcast commentary on social networks. While Kutano offers users the ability to create specific subject-based commentary, competitor Reframe It provides many more social-networking features, including the ability to follow comments in a RSS feed and upload Gmail and Facebook contacts into the application. Kutano will undoubtedly confront similar roadblocks that other commentary and Web annotation applications have experienced. The chance of coming across a website with commentary from Kutano users is small, making the side-panel somewhat useless. Like Reframe It, Kutano’s comments can only be seen by users who have downloaded Kutano to their browsers. And as free and open commentary becomes a staple of blogs and media sites, users tend to look and read comments and discussion sponsored by the blogs and news sites themselves. I’m skeptical that users will be looking for yet another open forum for comments and discussion relating to, for example, articles on The New York Times website. Crunch Network : CrunchBoard because it’s time for you to find a new Job2.0
 
Flock Ditching Firefox, Moving To Google Chrome Top
Flock , a social-focused browser startup that has raised nearly $30 million in venture funding, has ceased building on top of the open source Firefox browser, say multiple sources. The next version of the Flock browser will be built on Google’s open source Chrome browser platform . The last version of Flock was released in October 2008 . Flock first launched in October 2005 and has had 6 million or so downloads. But it still has less market share than even Netscape, which was discontinued over a year ago. In the past Flock has said all it needs is a few tens of millions of users to score big dollars from the search engines (each active user generates $5 or so in search engine revenue). But after three years of trying, Flock hasn’t been able to achieve more than a fraction of that number of users. As to why Flock is leaving Mozilla: sources say that they’ve become frustrated with Mozilla’s lack of attention to Flock’s needs. One source says Flock felt like the “red headed step child of the Mozilla development community.” Sources are also saying that Flock feels that Google Chrome is far easier to work with than Firefox. One problem is that Chrome isn’t yet cross-platform and works only on Windows machines. But Google is actively working on Mac and Linux versions of Chrome and should release them in the next few months. Right about the time the next version of Flock is released. Flock hasn’t yet returned a request for comment on this story. Update: Flock CEO Shawn Hardin responds in the comments: Mike, I was responding to your email from only a few hours ago when I saw your article. It's important to clarify a couple of things. We haven't ceased development efforts on the Mozilla platform. Our upcoming release of Flock 2.1 is built on the Mozilla platform. Having said that, the browser space is heating up, and we've seen a variety of exciting technologies emerge over the last several months that are appealing. We always have and will continue to make architectural decisions that balance what's best for our users and what's best for Flock as a business. This has resulted in a healthy, growing user base and business for Flock, and we expect this to continue in 2009. In fact, with over seven million downloads almost entirely from word of mouth, Flock enjoys a highly satisfied user base with consistently over 92% customer satisfaction, very strong net promoter scores, and an average of four hours of usage per day. With a continuing focus on user-centered browser innovation, our team is in active research and development on a range of exciting new enhancements to Flock. It is still far too early to comment on anything specific, but we are very excited about this design phase… Crunch Network : CrunchGear drool over the sexiest new gadgets and hardware.
 
Tap Tap Revenge 2 Has Landed Top
The sequel to Tap Tap Revenge, the iPhone’s most popular game ever , is hitting the App Store tonight. The original version (iTunes link) of the game has been downloaded over six million times and spawned a number of spinoffs featuring licensed music from Weezer and Nine Inch Nails . You can learn more about the sequel here , and we’ll update the post as soon as it goes live on the App Store. Update: You can download the app here . Created by iPhone development house Tapulous , the TTR series is akin to a ‘Guitar Hero’ for the iPhone, asking users to tap their fingers on a flurry of scrolling blobs that are presented in time with the music (it’s fairly easy to get started, and very addictive). Tap Tap Revenge 2 will include a new game engine with a revamped look and feel, along with some gameplay additions that include new moves like the “Tap & Hold” and “Multi-Tap”. The game will feature over 150 free songs (downloaded after installing the app) including music from Death Cab for Cutie, an exclusive song by The Cyrstal Method, and another by Stroke 9. The game is expanding its social options, tapping into the iPhone’s network effect to create a ‘Challenge’ system that lets users face off with friends, who attempt to beat each others scores. The game will also include an ‘achievements’ system, and a complimentary new feed for alerts, allowing users to keep track of their friends’ accomplishments. There’s also a “Kids Mode” that offers a more basic version of the game for younger children. TTR2 is sure to be another hit for Tapulous, but the game is still hindered by the App Store’s ban on allowing developers to include in-game transactions. Whenever Tapulous wants to release a premium song on the TTR platform, it has to do so through an entirely new game - it can’t sell premium songs through an integrated store in Tap Tap Revenge. If Apple ever does remove the restriction (and it should), Tap Tap Revenge and its sequel could well become some of the store’s most lucrative titles. Crunch Network : CrunchGear drool over the sexiest new gadgets and hardware.
 
Hulu Gets An Unofficial Desktop App In MyMediaPlayer2 Top
Everything comes around full circle. First we had Joost, Babelgum, Veoh, and others create standalone client software for watching online videos, but the ease and ubiquity of watching directly in the browser trumped whatever technical benefits a standalone client provided. The rise of YouTube, and more recently Hulu , proved that. But now that watching videos on the Web is something many of us spend an increasing amount of time on, the idea of a better viewing experience through a download client may now be making a comeback. Hulu, in particular, now has an upgraded, if unofficial, desktop app in MyMediaPlayer2 . Developed by Paul Yanez, this video player is more of a demonstration app than anything else, but it is still quite functional. MyMediaPlayer2, which was recently released, is an Adobe Air app which features 400 TV shows and 208 movies from Hulu. You start with a grid view, which resizes depending on the size of your screen and the window. The larger you make the window, the more thumbnail TV show icons appear in the grid dynamically. When you click on a show or movie, it then takes over the top half of the screen, with a list of other episodes below with the date, description, run-time, and a thumbnail. There is also a full-screen mode that works with a remote and allows for a ten-foot viewing experience. The app also includes Twitter integration. Now the whole world can know every time you are watching an episode of The Hustler . But Yanez is not married to the idea of watching videos outside the browser. The app also works natively in Google’s Chrome browser. Simply go to this URL: http://www.paulyanez.com/labs/mymediaplayer2/app/ . That link seems to work in Firefox as well. And Yanez even has a version that works inside Microsoft Outlook. I am not sure why yoou’d want to watch videos in Outlook, but you can. Yanez has bigger ideas about what a media player should do, and has created an overall framework for what a Web media player should be. Many of these ideas are realized in MyMediaPlayer2. Before you go ahead and download the app, though, you should know that it regularly becomes disabled every time Hulu makes a major change to its service. If this happens again, Yanez suggests that you email Hulu CEO Jason Kilar to complain. Crunch Network : CrunchBase the free database of technology companies, people, and investors
 
Evan Williams Predicts That "Normal People" Will Use Twitter In Five Years Top
Twitter co-founder Evan Williams was on Charlie Rose last Friday. In the clip above, he predicts that Twitter will be something “that normal people do” within five years. He compares Twitter to the early days of blogging (another topic he knows something about, having been the founder of what became Blogger). When blogging started, most people didn’t get it and it seemed like a huge waste of time that only appealed to narcissists. Twitter gets a lot of the same criticisms, yet somehow more and more people find it a valuable mode of communication. Hopefully, it won’t take five years for Twitter to seem normal. Crunch Network : MobileCrunch Mobile Gadgets and Applications, Delivered Daily.
 
Twilio Closes Funding Round, Lands Major Customers For Its Telephony API Top
Twilio , the powerful API for phone services that allows developers to quickly integrate telephony functionality into their apps, has closed its first institutional investment round, which was led by Founders Fund and Mitchell Kapor. The company plans to use the new funding to increase its efforts in sales and marketing, and to enhance the infrastructure of the service (likely to cope with increasing demand). The amount of the round was not disclosed. In conjunction with the funding announcement, Twilio has also announced some of its early customers, including Cheetos, Earth911 , and Tumblr, which used the service to launch its Call-to-audio feature last month. Sony Music has also been using Twilio to promote some of its album releases; musicians have been recording phone messages, which can then be sent to fans of the band (you can hear a sample recording below). The Twilio service allows developers to integrate common phone actions (like placing calls or playing back a recording) using a small set of basic API commands. Building basic projects, like this Rick Roll app , takes only a few lines of code, though developers can create far more advanced applications (Earth911 used Twilio to replace the systems behind their 1-800-CLEANUP recycling hotline). With a solid business model and a growing customer base that includes Fortune 500 companies, Twilio seems to be off to a great start. While some commenters in my original post noted that there are a number of enterprise solutions that offer similar functionality, it’s clear that Twilio’s simplicity and use-based pricing structure has a strong appeal for many developers. Audio Clip [20:28m]: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download Crunch Network : CrunchGear drool over the sexiest new gadgets and hardware.
 
Content Tracking Service Tynt Scores $3.9 Million in Series A Funding Top
Tynt , a start-up that allows publishers to monitor and track when users copy content from a web site, has secured $3.9 million in series A funding led by iNovia Capital , AVAC Ltd , along with angel investors. Tynt’s product, Tracer, lets website publishers see what content is being copied and pasted off their sites. Each time a user copies content from a website and pastes it into an email, blog or website, Tracer automatically adds a URL link back to the original site’s content, helping to drive traffic back to the original site. Publishers can easily add the Tracer technology to the code of their site by inserting Tracer’s one line of java script in any site template. This could be a promising tool for publishers and bloggers who are concerned about the dissemination of their content, including both images and text, without proper attribution. Plus, site owners can use the service to measure content that is engaging users. Currently in beta testing, Tracer is being used by close to 200 content publishers including news media and bloggers with up to 30 million page views per month. Tynt says that in the first two weeks of beta testing, Tracer has tracked over 250,000 user selections and copying actions. Here’s an example of text copied and pasted off of Tynt’s blog: Tynt's patent pending Tracer technology is currently deployed on sites around the globe and has already tracked several hundred thousand user actions and recorded the copy of millions of words and images on hundreds of web sites. Read more: “About Tynt « Tynt Blog “ Following the free beta cycle, Tynt plans to roll out both a free and paid premium service to users. Other services like Copyscape and Sentinal , allow publishers to monitor and view sites that have copied their content without permission, but Tracer appears to be the only product that helps drive traffic back to the original publisher’s site. But it is easy enough for users to circumvent Tracer’s technology by simply deleting the link after the cut and paste. Crunch Network : MobileCrunch Mobile Gadgets and Applications, Delivered Daily.
 
DEMO Memetracker Faceoff: Evri Vs. Ensembli Top
At this week’s DEMO conference, two products are launching that are aim to make memetracking easier for everyone. The first one is UK-based Ensembli , which lets users enter any keyword, and it returns articles about that topic. The second is a new feature from semantic search engine Evri called “Collections” which lets you follow any term that it has categorized. Both are new twists on an old idea: prospective search. (You enter a company name or topic and any time a new article about that subject appears, it populates a custom feed to track that meme). I’ve tried out both, and compare my experiences below. Neither one was as comprehensive or up to date as they should be. Searches for news about major companies such as Google or Facebook missed headlines that other memetrackers such as Techmeme do a better job of capturing. But both have merits as prospective search tools and are examples of how search is increasingly becoming more of a navigational tool. Evri’s Collections feature lets you “follow” any concept that the semantic search engine has categorized. The Collection page brings up not only recent articles, but also images and videos for the topic you are tracking. It also provides a handy list of related topics and concepts. For instance, my “Google” collection offers links on the side to “Eric Schmidt,” “Twitter,” “Microsoft,” and the lost city of “Atlantis.” Evri’s collections pages are basically saved searches, with different entry points to navigate to other entries on Evri and across the Web. Topics can be merged in the same collection, so you can follow Google and Facebook on the same page. For some reason, Evri chose to show only the latest three articles for each topic, which is much too limited. It certainly doesn’t capture all the news you’d want to see. And if Evri’s semantic search engine has not categorized what you want to track, you are out of luck. For example, it doesn’t recognize the DEMO conference as a separate topic. Ensembli, in contrast, provides a much simpler interface. Once you sign up, you type in the topic you want to track, and then Ensembli uses artificial intelligence software to generate a feed of articles about that keyword. The fed updates as new articles appear. You can follow as many topics as you want, but there is no way to browse topics or find related topics. You are presented with a blank search box and either know what you want to track or you don’t. Each headline can be expanded to provide a summary of the article, and you can share each headline, but only via e-mail. When you click through to a story, you can also share it directly via an Esnembli toolbar at the top. (You are actually sent to an Ensembli link which frames the underlying Webpage, much in the same way Ginx and Digg’s upcoming toolbar present shared pages). Integration with Twitter, Facebook, Friendfeed, and other social sharing services is sorely lacking. I have a few other issues with Ensembli as well. There is no way to combine topics into a single feed. You have to click on each term you are following to see the respective headlines. There is no way to see them all together. The biggest weakness, however, is that the headlines are not always as comprehensive or up to date as they should be. For instance, tracking “Google” turns up one article from yesterday as the most recent one, and then before that is an article from February 18. There are enough things going on at Google and enough coverage that Ensembli should be able to produce multiple headlines every day. Finally, Ensembli even had trouble identifying articles about itself. (I got a bunch of articles about “ensembles,” a forgivable error, but you’d think the startup would have at least properly categorized itself). All in all, Evri wins this faceoff. Crunch Network : CrunchGear drool over the sexiest new gadgets and hardware.
 
Skittles - Teeth-Rotting Evil Or Savvy Marketing? They Don't Care So Long As We Tweet About Them Top
Whoever is running the digital marketing for the Skittles candy brand has a strong constitution. They are clearly not afraid of the Wildean maxim “The only thing worse than being talked about is not being talked about." Today, the Mars-owned brand changed the Skittles home page to a Twitter search page pre-set to search for the word Skittles. The result was predictable. We all started tweeting about it, and increasingly in not a nice way , as Twitterers attempted to see how much abuse they could take. But clearly they are up for the conversational experiment. The brand has also been re-directing to its Wikipedia entry. Crunch Network : CrunchBase the free database of technology companies, people, and investors
 

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