Friday, March 27, 2009

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RebelVox Makes Your Voicemail More Like Email Top
RebelVox is a voice communications platform that aims to makes your voicemail function more like email. The technology is not yet available for consumers, but it will soon be shopped around to developers who may want to incorporate it in other apps. RebelVox’s technology will allow you to leave a voicemail for someone without actually making a call to the person. RebelVox’s mobile app will let you make a voice recording that is delivered as a message to your contact both through a mobile application and their email account. Your contact will be able to respond via another voicemail message, text message or email. You will be able to pick up a voice message from a friend while they are leaving it and speak to them live as well. RebelVox also has linking software built for the PC and Mac which will allow users to control the messages through their computer as well as their mobile phone. RebelVox’s technology can be woven seamlessly into most email accounts, including Gmail, Yahoo Mail, AOL and Outlook. Basically, RebelVox wants to let consumers interact with voicemail much like they would an email. Currently packaged as software, RebelVox is still exploring how it wants to sell the licensed (and patented) software and how much it would like to sell it for. The company’s co-founder, Tom Katis, says that RebelVox is in talks with both mobile phone companies and third party mobile application. The service contains features similar to Google Voice, SpinVox, and PhoneTag, especially the ability to control the interface through your computer. RebelVox is certainly no replacement for Google Voice , but offers some features that could be a nice add-on, such as the ability to send voice messages without making a call. This video gives a comprehensive explanation of the technology and how it would work on a mobile device: The video shows the application being deployed on the iPhone, and it looks like it could be a really cool tool. It almost seems like it turns your phone into a walkie-talkie in some ways. Katis says that the software is ready to be deployed on any mobile device. The interface seems to work well on the larger screen of the iPhone but I’m not sure how user-friendly it would be on a smaller Blackberry or mobile device. Also, the concept of voice messaging isn’t new. Bubble Motion and Pinger are also allowing users use voice messaging over mobile devices. But Katis insists that RebelVox is different because it is a software, not an application, and it eliminates the wall between live conversations and messaging. Crunch Network : CrunchBase the free database of technology companies, people, and investors
 
The Sorry State Of Music Startups Top
Online streaming music startups are in one very sorry place. On demand streaming rates range from .4 cents to 1 cent per stream - this is what the startups pay to the labels every time they play a song for a user. Add bandwidth and storage costs on top of that, which aren’t trivial for services that want to stream music quickly on demand. The result is hundreds of millions of dollars flowing from venture funds to startups to labels. Little of it makes its way to artists, and advertising revenues only cover a tiny portion of the fees. The labels don’t care if the startups make money, lose money or go out of business. All they want is to make enough money to extend the ultimate surrender date as long as possible. That’s when we’ll finally see the economic reality dictated by the Internet impose itself irrevocably on the music industry. Unless draconian laws are created and enforced that put people in jail, or worse, for file sharing. And even that probably won’t work. Anyway, these crazy economics are making the music startups skittish. MySpace Music, the biggest player in this space, may be spending $2 million or more per week to the music labels based on their own statistics that they’re streaming over a billion songs a week . Their streaming rate is likely to be the best in the industry, and it almost certainly isn’t lower than .4 cents per song. There is no way that they’re making that much in advertising revenue. The hope is that downloads, ticket sales, merchandise and ring tones will make up the difference, but what we’re hearing is that very little incremental revenue is being made from these other revenue sources. That means there’s no chance for these startups to work until the labels reduce, significantly, the streaming rates they’re charging. Or agree to radically different business models. There’s no sign that is happening any time soon. These crazy economics are making startups do odd things. I emailed one startup recently to suggest a post here on TechCrunch noting that they seem to be doing well - recent setbacks with partners didn’t hurt traffic as much as it may have, and I wanted to note that. The startup flat out asked me not to post, because they didn’t want positive press to impact their negotiations with labels. They had to present as desperate a situation as possible. Read that again: streaming music startups don’t want more people using their service, because they lose money from every one of them, and the perceived success from having more users makes it harder for them to plead with the labels to give them better deals. Then there’s imeem . A few days ago I had multiple conversations with the startup around rumors that they owed significant amounts of money to the labels that they couldn’t pay, and that they had failed to raise money or sell themselves. Not much information was shared, other than to say that the rumored $30 million owed to labels was too high. Now they tell VentureBeat that the number is in the single digit millions. Whatever the number - $30 million or $1 million - imeem can’t pay it. Their business model doesn’t work and it is going to continue to not work until the labels let it work. And they aren’t going to be doing that any time soon. Big Music Doesn’t Like Streaming Music The big music labels don’t like streaming music because it doesn’t help them offset declining CD sales, and the evidence now suggests that streaming doesn’t lead to music downloads. Everything we’re hearing says that the labels would like to see streaming music startups just go away for now so that they can focus on maximizing paid downloads and extend that ultimate surrender date. So when you hear about labels renegotiating streaming deals to help out music startups, be skeptical. They’re likely lowering the rates from 1 cent down to something closer to .4 cents per stream. And all that means is that these startups will bleed a little slower. But they’re still going to go out of business, because the venture firms are done investing in them. Crunch Network : CrunchBoard because it’s time for you to find a new Job2.0
 
The $70 Million Obopay Deal Is More About The UnBanked Than The Banked Top
When news came out earlier this week that mobile payments company Obopay raised another $70 million, effectively doubling its total funding raised to date, some observers were surprised at the sheer size of the round. While others expressed skepticism that mobile payments would ever really take off, at least in the U.S. But the bigger opportunity for Obopay and mobile payments in general is not in the U.S. It is in India and other parts of the world where a large portion of the population don’t have bank accounts. These are the so-called “unbanked.” There are billions of them and their relative spending power is on an upwards trajectory. Obopay CEO Carol Realini says: There are four billion phones, and only one billion bank accounts. Our view is you have to have a way for both the banked and the unbanked to participate in the mobile payment system. And that is her strategy in a nutshell. Obopay operates in the U.S. and India right now. If you have a bank account, you can link it to Obopay and use your phone to make payments wherever Mastercard is accepted. If you don’t, you can load up your account using a prepaid model. Realini throws out some Gartner estimates that only 6 million people use mobile payments today across the entire world, but that could grow to 100 million by 2011. (Add salt, nobody really knows). Despite Obopay’s two-pronged strategy, if mobile payments do take hold, I’d expect them to be more popular among the unbanked outside the U.S. Most people in richer nations already have an abundance of payment options available to them, and adding a mobile wallet won’t make a huge difference one way or another for most people. In countries where payment options are more limited, the ability to turn your mobile phone into a wallet should be much more appealing. Obopay is not alone in trying to bring mobile payments to India . Other startups such as Australia’s Paymate and India’s own mCheck are also making inroads. But that $70 million should help Obopay establish a presence there. One more thing about that money. Many of the reports suggested that the entire $70 million came from Nokia, which is wrong. Realini confirmed to me that “there are other investors.” Although she says she is not at liberty to disclose who they are at this time. One place to look is the long list of investors who have poured money into the company in the past. Qualcomm, Redpoint Ventures, Onset Ventures, and Richmond Management seem to be the company’s steadiest investors across previous multiple rounds—although I have not confirmed their participation in this one. Crunch Network : MobileCrunch Mobile Gadgets and Applications, Delivered Daily.
 
Fizy Is The Speedy Gonzalez Of Music Search Top
Check it out before it gets blown off the interwebs: Fizy is probably the simplest, most powerful and fastest music search engine I’ve ever seen, and that’s saying a lot. Seemingly designed for mobile browsers rather than traditional web browsers, it lets you dig up virtually any song you’re thinking of and stream it in a heartbeat. It’ll even display an associated video if it can detect one, and you can easily share songs - which come with dedicated URLs - on a wide variety of social networking services. That’s about all it does and it does that pretty well; I was even able to find songs from one of my favorite bands, Blackbox Revelation , which is not always the case with these types of new services. Fizy claims it can pull up about 75 billion MP3s thanks to access to over 50 different APIs, and the speed is probably the most amazing thing about it and also the main differentiator compared to the plethora of similar services. Bonus points for setting up the service with an international audience in mind: Fizy supports nearly 30 languages to date. It’s completely web-based, it’s gorgeously limited in features, slick and superfast. That makes it as addictive as it is illegal, and that’s why I’ll be missing it when it’s gone. That could take some time, since there’s no address or name mentioned anywhere on the site, although a quick WHOIS lookup points in the direction of Turkish company beril tech . In the meantime, thank you for the music! Crunch Network : MobileCrunch Mobile Gadgets and Applications, Delivered Daily.
 
Youth Bloggers Network Acquired By Teens In Tech Top
Teens In Tech , a blogging network founded by 16 year old Daniel Brusilovsky, has acquired the Youth Bloggers Network (YBN). YBN consists of a network of over 100 young bloggers, and was founded by Patrick DeVivo, who is also a young entrepreneur. The terms of the deal were not disclosed, but given how similar the networks are I suspect that if there was any monetary exchange it was very small - it sounds like the two networks are banding together to help establish traction. Teens In Tech is meant to offer teenagers a simple way to blog their thoughts in an atmosphere that is both safe and receptive to their ideas. The site launched back in August in a private alpha, and has yet to open signups up to the public (Brusilovsky says that the gates will temporally open this weekend, but that it will become private once more after that). While the company had initially planned to open to the public last winter, it is currently exploring building its own CMS, and is also working to establish an advertising program for its publishers. As I wrote when the site first launched, there doesn’t seem to be a whole lot of unique technology behind Teens In Tech - the site is essentially a multiuser WordPress install, with some custom tweaks like an RSS feed that pulls from all of the network blogs. That said, there is clearly a dedicated community of teens keen on blogging. I’m just not sure how Teens In Tech is going to build a viable business out of them - given how many free publishing platforms are available elsewhere, it’s going to be hard to get teens (who aren’t exactly swimming in cash) to pay to blog. And at scale it’s going to be hard for Teens In Tech to ensure that its safe community of teenagers stays a community of teenagers. Crunch Network : CrunchGear drool over the sexiest new gadgets and hardware.
 
MyID.is Now In Public Beta, Aims To Become The Digital Certification Standard Top
Digital certification platform MyID.is is taking a crack at offering a way for people to claim their real identity online, in order to be able to prevent ID theft and to verify content they publish on their blogs, social networking accounts, photo & video sharing sites, and so on. Additionally, the site offers (yet another) way to manage your online identity and doubles as a certified OpenID provider. The site has been in alpha testing for the past 8 months and as of yesterday entered into public beta. This is how it works: you register for a MyID.is Certified account on the website, and enter your personal details, which are later verified by the team (I’ll get to the issues with this later). They do this by cross-checking the name you submitted with the one on your credit card - they’ll charge a fee between $2 and $5 to verify that it is yours, similar to how Google checks your credit card details for an AdSense account - and by sending a 6-digit code to your postal address which you have to enter to verify your identity on their platform. Other than the small setup fee, the service is free of charge. You get a dedicated MyID.is URL, which looks like this: http://myid.is/charles.nouyrit.id (this is the one of founder and CEO Charles Nouÿrit) and you get some badges which you can place on your blog or social networking profile to show that your identity has been verified by the company ( example ). The platform also features a number of custom widgets, offering ‘endless possibilities’ to spread your online ID. It’s an ambitious project, and it’s always nice to see such an initiative coming from Europe. But the elephant in the room is of course the fact that MyID.is facing the humongous issue of having to convince people to effectively trust them with their private data, credit card details and physical address included (which they explicitly promise never to sell, evidently). I’m sure there are security measures in place, and Nouÿrit says they don’t keep the confidential information and never even gain access to it as it passes through to a sophisticated banking system, but that is really besides the point. People are still going to need to feel confident about signing up for the service, and I’m not sure how a tiny company based in London is going to be able to reach that level of trust worldwide. Nouÿrit counters by pointing to the fact PayPal needed a couple of years to be widely accepted too, which is a good point but not exactly a wildcard for MyID.is. There doesn’t seem to be a lot of competition for verifying your online identity across the globe, and the solutions we could dig up were fairly expensive. In the U.S., there’s Trufina and BeenVerified.com , and in Finland there’s something like NorthID.com (also see BankID in Sweden). How do you feel about the concept behind MyID.is Certified? Crunch Network : CrunchGear drool over the sexiest new gadgets and hardware.
 
If Objects Could Talk They'd Say, "SendMeHome." Top
In his book Shaping Things , Bruce Sterling imagines a future where objects are tagged, tracked, and all tell their own stories. He calls these objects “spimes.” I read the book years ago, but it was the first thing I thought of when I visited SendMeHome . The site is wacky but brilliant. It lets you register any object with a unique code, which is printed out on a small sticker that you place on the object. The object can be anything from your wallet or iPhone to a beloved frying pan. Ostensibly, the purpose of doing this is that if you should ever lose the object, anyone who finds it can contact you through SendMeHome. By entering the code on the sticker, they can learn anything you’ve decided to share about yourself or the object, and can contact you anonymously. SendMeHome offers this service for free, but charges $3.99 for a pack of stickers. (It doesn’t get involved in actually getting your item back to you). The lost-and-found feature is the only practical reason you would use the service. But once you’ve attached a sticker to a favorite object and registered it on the site, there are other things you can do with it. You can tell a story about the object, pass it around, or put it on a mission. It is on its way to becoming a spime,. These spimes are “always associated with a story. . . . they are protagonists of a documented process,” as Sterling once described it. SendMeHome lets people create a very rudimentary version of a spime. Anyone who enters the code found on the SendMeHome sticker can add to the object’s story in a blog-like format which incorporates Google Maps, YouTube videos, and uploaded photos. For instance, here is the story of a disposable camera that was left on a bench in LA with instructions for passersby to take photo with it. (They did). And here’s another one of a bacon frying pan, which instructs people to cook their favorite bacon recipe in the pan, document it with photos, and pass it along to another bacon lover. Every object has a story which SendMeHome lets you unlock. There are flavors of the social game Akoha here, with its bar-coded cards and playful missions set in the real world. SendMeHome should be getting more social itself now that it has a Facebook app and has integrated its site with Facebook Connect. To encourage people to use its new Facebook app, it is putting up prizes worth $1,000 for whoever can create the SendMeHome stories on Facebook with the most followers by May 4. The company has been bootsrrapped with $50,000 from founders Andrew Lee and James Tamplin. Crunch Network : CrunchGear drool over the sexiest new gadgets and hardware.
 
Big Google Product Announcement Coming April 7 Top
Google is holding one of its occasional “Campfire One” events for developers on April 7. These events, which are held outside on the lawn at Google Headquarters, have always included big product announcements in the past. At a May 2008 Campfire One Google announced details of Friend Connect . A month before that, in April 2008 , Google announced App Engine . What will they announce this time? A good bet is Java on AppEngine , which we’d previously heard wouldn’t be announced until the I/O conference in May. But the product would be a good fit for Campfire One. Of course, it may also be something else entirely. We’ll attend (either because we’re invited or because we just show up) and live blog whatever it is that happens. Crunch Network : MobileCrunch Mobile Gadgets and Applications, Delivered Daily.
 
YouTube Adds A Twitter Button Top
Everybody’s doing it. Even YouTube has succumbed to Twitter mania. Below every video if you click on the “Share” link you will find three options: MySpace, Facebook, and now Twitter. You can expand the box for even more sharing options, but those are the main three and Twitter was just recently added. Clicking on the Twitter button opens a pop-up window that takes you to your Twitter account and fills in a Tweet telling your followers to “check out this video,” along with the title and URL. The URL is not shortened, but YouTube is working on that. (Youtube URLs are short anyway, so it is not a huge issue). Adding Twitter as one of the key sharing options is a no-brainer. Now, if they could actually embed the videos in the Twitter stream like you can on Facebook and MySpace, that would be something. YouTube announced some other tweaks today as well. The u pload status ba r is now fully rolled out. You can watch lectures and educational videos on Y YouTube EDU , and it updated its mobile landing page and simplified the process of uploading a video from your phone to YouTube. Crunch Network : MobileCrunch Mobile Gadgets and Applications, Delivered Daily.
 
We Put Pepsi's New Aquafina Product To The Test Top
We cover tech news here at TechCrunch, so I was surprised to see a 5 lb overnight shipment arrive from Pepsi containing three half liter bottles of Aquafina water. The reason for the special delivery? The company is launching a new plastic bottle that contains half the plastic content of the old bottles. Less plastic = less landfill weight, less carbon, less bad stuff in general, they say. I’m concerned that Pepsi decided to promote its new “eco-friendly” product by proactively shipping, via Fedex overnight, 5 lb boxes of the water to press around the country. And then sending a second batch either in error or to reinforce the message. That’s not very eco-friendly (if anyone knows the carbon cost of sending these boxes, let me know, then multiply it by hundreds or thousands of press). It all seems a little wasteful. Anyway, after all this carbon spending and the general effort involved in sending me six bottles of water I never requested, I thought I should at least put the product to the test. I don’t drink bottled water myself, since it’s less safe than tap water and way too expensive (see the clip from Bullshit below). But Laguna , my 105 lb chocolate lab, loves bottled water. And she loves to chew on stuff. So we brought her in for a special assignment to test Aquafina’s new Eco-fina water in the TechCrunch Lab. She reluctantly agreed. First off was the taste test. She doesn’t look particularly enthusiastic in the picture above, but once I started pouring, she was definitely into it. She didn’t even wait for it to hit the bowl: So Laguna definitely like the taste of Aquafina water (she also eats dirt, and enjoys licking my feet). Next was the durability test. It took her about ten seconds to destroy the bottle, which isn’t good. Pepsi removed about half the plastic from the new bottles, and they clearly aren’t going to hold up to any kind of sustained attacked from a large, well-toothed canine: Overall I’d say that Aquafina water is absolutely good enough for my dog to drink, and the bottles make fun albeit short-lived chew toys to distract her. Here’s that clip on just what you get with bottled water, if you’re interested: Crunch Network : MobileCrunch Mobile Gadgets and Applications, Delivered Daily.
 
Capital Factory Gives Austin Its Own Startup Incubator Top
While many people in the tech world only make the trek to Austin, Texas once a year for SXSW, the city has a fairly sizable startup community. Now Austin is getting its own Y Combinator -esque program, dubbed Capital Factory . As with other similar programs, Capital Factory offers entrepreneurs a modest amount of funding in exchange for equity (the program is offering ‘up to $20,000′ in exchange for 5% of each startup). Capital Factory is also advertising ‘$20,000 in free stuff ‘, which includes server usage, PR support, and legal help. But the real value from these programs comes from their associated mentors, who work with the startups to help them get on their feet, and help tap into their established networks of VCs and other entrepreneurs. The ten week long program culminates in a ‘Demo Day’ during which each startup will pitch their wares to VCs, press, and other entrepreneurs. Capital Factory joins a growing number of programs vying for the attention of eager new entrepreneurs. Aside from Y Combinator, which pioneered the idea, other incubators include TechStars (Boulder and now Boston ), Start@Spark (Boston), LaunchBox Digital (Washington, D.C.), DreamIT Ventures (Philadelphia), and Shotput Ventures (Atlanta) Most of these are regional, but they still draw from the same pool of entrepreneurs (many of whom are willing to relocate temporarily if they get accepted to their preferred program). Recently we’ve heard of some shady tactics like exploding term sheets that are being employed as these programs compete for the same candidates. Crunch Network : CrunchGear drool over the sexiest new gadgets and hardware.
 
Game Developers Conference 2009 Round-Up Top
The CrunchGear mobile newswagon is parked in downtown San Francisco for the Game Developers Conference, and although this is a more industry-orientated show, we’ve managed to find some pretty interesting stuff — and of course, a few of the latest games. The news on everybody’s minds is OnLive , a games service which is roughly comparable to a streaming movie service like Netflix On Demand or what have you. The hardware is to be free, and it will support any USB- or Bluetooth-compatible controllers. Purchased games are run in datacenters (on state of the art hardware, we hope), which then push the content out to you. But they’re not sending game assets — they send a video image of the game as you play it on their machine. It sounds ridiculous, but with good, local servers they can get the ping under 10-20ms, at which point it is almost unnoticeable that the game you’re playing is actually a few cities away. Not everyone is so optimistic. We gave it a shot , and (my driving skills notwithstanding) had no trouble in the form of video artifacts, skipped frames, or lag. Impressive, but the proof of the pudding is in the launching, and when they can provide this level of latency and reliability to thousands of people scattered around the country simultaneously, then we’ll talk. After the demo, we spoke with a more technically-orientated booth guy, who said that between 3 and 4Mbit/s is what they’re aiming for with their 720p60 stream, and when I asked about tension with ISPs, he hinted cryptically that they had that under control. I just hope Comcast and the like haven’t “overbooked” their cable and fiber the way airlines do flights. Both Microsoft and Sony gave developers a boost, Microsoft in the form of a sleek new developer console and kit tools, Sony by dropping its devkit’s price significantly . Nintendo, as at E3, told us how well they were doing , revealed a couple new games, and demonstrated something ridiculous . Adding the capability to use SDHC cards is a welcome change, however. The 360 will be receiving a motion-based controller soon, bringing it up to speed nominally with the other consoles in that area. The Gametrak Freedom relies on a sort of ultrasonic sonar, with stereo detectors attached to the display. We gave it a try and it seemed to work decently; keep your eye on CG for video of yours truly flailing grotesquely at virtual tennis balls. Aside from the relatively far-reaching news I’ve mentioned, GDC is primarily a developer’s paradise. Indie game developers rub elbows with greats like Hideo Kojima and there are more talks, panels, and tutorials than we thought possible, or practical. We’re looking forward to E3 to see how some of these new technologies pan out in a more consumer-orientated environment. As for games themselves, we got to try out the DSi camera , Punch-Out!!! for the Wii , Fat Princess , and a few others. Lastly, if you or your spouse or young one is in the market for a little more rhythm, we’re running a contest to win a pre-release copy of Rhythm Heaven for the DS. For those of you reading this at or around GDC, we hope to see you at one of the many industry events that will be going on later. Crunch Network : CrunchBase the free database of technology companies, people, and investors
 
New Microsoft Ads Point Out, Cough, High Cost Of Macs Top
Video: Laptop Hunters $1000 – Lauren Gets an HP Pavilion They’ve got a point on the cost to feature ratio of Macs v. Windows machines in this new Microsoft ad. I have to say, these things are getting a lot better over time. And the price difference is the key weak point in the Apple product lineup. Mac fanatics couldn’t care less. But to a recession-beaten regular computer user, this message is right on the money. “I’m just not cool enough to be a Mac person,” the actress says after visiting an Apple store and not finding any laptops in her price range. See our coverage of other recent Microsoft ads here , here , here . Via Steve Clayton . Crunch Network : CrunchBoard because it’s time for you to find a new Job2.0
 
End-of-Quarter Layoffs Hit Amazon, IBM, Google, and The New York Times Top
With the end of the first quarter of the 2009 almost here, even the strongest companies companies are making last-minute layoffs to shave costs. Today, layoffs were announced across the tech sector, from IBM to Google to Amazon. The biggest layoffs came from IBM, where 5,000 people are losing their jobs in the U.S.. Amazon cut 210 people at three distribution centers in Nevada, Indiana, and Pennsylvania. Google also announced layoffs of 200 people from sales and marketing (so far, engineers have been spared). In all three cases, the job cuts amounted to roughly one percent of each company’s global workforce. The New York Times also announced a 5 percent cut of its newsroom business operations, or 100 people. It is not as if the payroll reductions will help save the quarter or even have a material impact on it. But the companies can point to the measures during their conference calls with investors and analysts and project the savings going forward. We’ve added the job cuts to our Layoff Tracker. To see who is hiring, check out our CrunchBoard . Total Layoffs Since August 27, 2008: 448 Total Employees: 316,246 Company Date Location # % Source Amazon March 26, 2009 Red Rock, Nev.; Munster, Ind.; and Chambersburg, Pa. 210 1% NYT The New York Times March 26, 2009 New York, NY 100 5% NYT Google March 26, 2009 Mountain View, CA 200 1% NYT IBM March 26, 2009 USA 5,000 1% LA Times Imeem March 25, 2009 San Francisco, CA 6 4% TechCrunch Crunch Network : CrunchBase the free database of technology companies, people, and investors
 
California May Ban Black Cars Top
The California legislature is considering regulating the color of cars and reflectivity of paint to reduce the energy requirements to cool them. A presentation on the proposed legislation by the California Air Resources Board is below. The problem isn’t the color per se, but the reflectivity of the paint overall. And dark colors just don’t reflect well, so they are likely out. “Jet black remains an issue,” says the report. Anyone who’s ever entered a very hot car knows that it can be cooled down immediately by driving a few feet with the windows open, effectively neutralizing any color-caused heat issues before engaging the air conditioner. But whatever, black is evil. The new regulations would be phased in beginning in 2012, so if you want that black car, you better buy it soon. More on Autoblog and CrunchGear . And you thought that black Toyota Pious you bought made you such a good person. Think again, you tree hating energy slob. Luckily, black websites are still ok , even though they, too, use more energy. final_cool_cars_workshop_presentation31209 - Free Legal Forms Crunch Network : MobileCrunch Mobile Gadgets and Applications, Delivered Daily.
 
Twitter Restores UK SMS Functionality For Vodafone Users; Mysterious Ad Box Gets A Refresh Top
Twitter has just announced that it has restored full SMS functionality to customers in the UK who are using Vodafone. While any Twitter user can submit updates via text message, for months only users in North America have been able to receive them (a key part of the service if you don’t have a smart phone). Other countries used to have this functionality, but Twitter began to cut them off after reporting that a single heavy UK user could cost up to $1000 in fees per year. From Twitter’s blog post: Vodafone UK has signed an agreement with Twitter allowing customers to send and receive SMS updates at no additional cost. Sending tweets from your mobile will be part of your normal text messaging bundle with Vodafone—there will be no extra fees. In fact, for the first few weeks, sending tweets won’t even effect your bundle. Receiving tweets via SMS on your mobile is totally free. Vodafone loves Twitter! For more on the new UK deal, check out our post on TechCrunch Europe . Also worth noting is the latest chapter in the story of Twitter’s mysterious sidebar box that may-or-may-not be an ad, some day. Two weeks ago Twitter introduced an unobtrusive box in the ride sidebar of user profiles, where it began to promote some of its own services (including Twitter Search). Three days ago, it began showing ads for third party services . One of these was for ExecTweets , a recently-launched aggregator of Tweets from high-ranking business exectuives that was built in part by Federated Media. Federated’s John Battelle wrote that the ad network was paying Twitter, but it was unclear if this was directly related to the promo appearing on Twitter’s homepage. And the other two apps being promoted - an iPhone client called Tweetie and a web app called Twittervision - weren’t paying a cent. Today Twitter appears to have swapped these promos out for new ones, which include Twidroid (a Twitter app for Android), twistori (a social experiment), and march tweetness (a Twitter service that revolves around the NCAA tournament). Crunch Network : CrunchBase the free database of technology companies, people, and investors
 
YouTube EDU Launches, So Go Learn Something Top
YouTube EDU launched today, an educational hub “volunteer project sparked by a group of employees who wanted to find a better way to collect and highlight all the great educational content being uploaded to YouTube by colleges and universities” according to a short blurb on the YouTube blog. The official announcement is apparently tomorrow. The site is aggregating videos from dozens of colleges and universities, ranging from lectures to student films to athletic events. Some of this stuff is solid gold (the Stanford and MIT lectures are really good). Other content, not so interesting. Just a couple of days ago we covered Academic Earth , a site that aggregates useful educational content (”Hulu for education”). Both of these sites are great ways to spread learning. Crunch Network : CrunchGear drool over the sexiest new gadgets and hardware.
 
HotPads Drops Its Hot Maps On Vacation Home Rentals Top
Just because your bank account might be light is no reason to cancel your vacation this year. There are alternatives to expensive hotels. Expensive summer home rentals. Actually, renting someone’s vacation home for two to three weeks is usually cheaper than a fancy hotel and you get a lot more room to spread out. But finding a vacation home to rent out can be a real chore. Sites like VRBO.com have great inventory, but they are not easy to navigate or search. You have to know the exact town you want to stay in because there is no way to search listings on a map. Enter Hotpads , the real estate site that is all about maps. It just added a “vacation” tab to its site, which lets you search for 20,000 vacation home rentals across the U.S. Results are plotted on a map, which is really convenient when you want to know how far away from the beach or the ski slopes the property is. Results can also be sorted by price and availability, which show up when you mouse over any given house icon. For instance, here is a search for Lake Tahoe vacation homes on HotPads (screenshot above), and here is what you get on VRBO (below). It is just alist of towns. Not very helpful, especially if you are traveling to somewhere you are not familiar with. I don’t know why all real estate sites don’t just default to a map interface for search results. Sometimes it is an option, but usually you just get a mind-numbing list you have to scroll through. Homeaway , the Austin company which owns VRBO and several other vacation rental sites, should think about adopting a map interface across all of its sites. It has much more inventory—124,000 vacation homes—but they are so hard to find. For a company which raised $250 million last November, you’d think it could do better than that. Crunch Network : CrunchBase the free database of technology companies, people, and investors
 
Live Unveiling Of The Tesla Model S Sedan Top
Innovative electric-car startup Tesla is unveiling the latest addition to its lineup this afternoon in Southern California. The sedan is meant to serve as a more affordable entry to the Tesla lineup that will appeal to the mainstream, with a ticket price of around $50,000 (as opposed to well over $100,000 for the Tesla Roadster). Current estimates peg release of the car in late 2011. Earlier today Digg’s Kevin Rose leaked a number of photos of the car (which has been kept tightly under wraps until now). The car apparently features a very large touchscreen in the center console, as well as a digital display that is possibly touch-sensitive in the dash. Rose appears to have made the Flickr accounts he originally posted the photos to private, but they have been copied to a number of other sites. The video feed should be live by 12:45 PM PST Update : It looks like Ustream had trouble with its feed, but here are some details, via Jason Calacanis’s Twitter stream . The car has 3G connectivity, as well as a computer with a 17 inch monitor in the center console. The car will allow for three different removal battery packs, each capable of supporting a different maximum distance (there’s a 300 mile and 160 mile version). Partial battery charges take as little as 45 minutes. Seats five adults, with two seats in the rear facing backwards Crunch Network : CrunchBase the free database of technology companies, people, and investors
 
What Could Go Wrong With Google: The Slideshow Top
Why Could Google Die… View more presentations from Ouriel Ohayon . Want to know everything that could possibly go wrong with Google? Well, you can read the risk section of its latest SEC filing, but that’s a snore. Or you can flip through the slides above, which were put together by French consulting firm FaberNovel . They were the ones who gave us the hugely popular slideshow, “Everything you always wanted to know about Google . . . but were afraid to ask” . This one is titled more morosely, “Why could Google die . . . maybe not now, but tomorrow.” I wouldn’t be picking out caskets just yet, but the slideshow does provide a convenient cheat sheet for most of the major threats that Google faces. It quickly goes through them, including the threat of antitrust and copyright infringement litigation, a massive privacy disaster, hiring and retention issues, disruption from new startups. There is even a nice slide listing Google’s 12 main weaknesses, along with a visual assessment of the probability, timing, and impact of each scenario. Of course, chances are that it doesn’t include the one threat that will get Google in the end. (I don’t know what it is either, but I am a big believer in black swans ). Below are some of the key slides. Crunch Network : CrunchGear drool over the sexiest new gadgets and hardware.
 
Get Ready For Java On AppEngine Top
Here’s a juicy rumor (if you’re a geek, this is good stuff): A source tells us that Google AppEngine , a platform for building and hosting web applications in the cloud, will begin letting developers write applications in Java in the near future. Until now only Python applications were supported . The announcement should come at the Google I/O conference in late May . Java applications are extremely popular, particularly for business applications, and it is one of the internally supported languages at Google. In fact, late last year a startup called Stax Networks launched that billed itself as an “AppEngine for Java.” Don’t feel too bad for the startup, however, they’ve said from the beginning that they expected Google to enter the Java market sooner rather than later. Java continues to be one of the most popular programming languages, and is a natural next step for Google. And AppEngine has been a highly successful product, at least from a press standpoint - the Obama Administration has embraced it along with all things Google. Crunch Network : MobileCrunch Mobile Gadgets and Applications, Delivered Daily.
 
Announcing TechCrunch50 2009 Top
It’s that time of the year again. We are pleased to announce the opening of business for the third annual TechCrunch50 event, to be held once again on September 14-15, 2009 in San Francisco, California. Last year we hosted 250 start-ups pitching to nearly 2,000 attendees, including 200 VCs, corporate buyers and angels and more than 150 members of the press. All the details are at TechCrunch50.com . Attendees will enjoy an action-packed agenda, including pitches, panels, working breakfasts, lunch sessions, and after-parties at the beautiful San Francisco Design Center Concourse , with 125,000 square feet of networking space. As in previous years, launching startups will pay nothing to attend or present. One company will win $50,000 from the TechCrunch50 organizers. This year, we'll have an Audience Choice Award and other recognitions too. We’ll be providing a lot more information over the coming weeks and months, but here’s what you need to know now: We’re putting a limited number of very early bird tickets on sale now for $995 . Tickets will eventually be priced at $2,995, so buy them now if you know you are attending and get a great deal. We also have special pricing for students. If you want to be one of the fifty presenting startups, you can apply starting now . We review applications on a rolling basis and are ready to extend offers for participation immediately. Please submit your company whenever you are ready for consideration. The final deadline is June 30. Finalist companies will remain stealth until the conference, launch to the public on stage and receive feedback from our panel of industry experts. Our 2007 and 2008 advisors are an important part of our success. We’ll be announcing this year’s panel of experts in the coming months. Great partners make great conferences We’re really lucky to have the corporate support of some of the best names in the business. Sequoia Capital , Charles River Ventures and Perkins Coie all returned quickly to support us for the third year in a row. Google , Founders Fund , Microsoft and MySpace are back for their second year of partnership. Additional partners will be named in the months leading up to the conference. Photo credit: Steve Maller Photography Crunch Network : CrunchBase the free database of technology companies, people, and investors
 

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