Tuesday, April 28, 2009

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Google Now Charts Unemployment And Other Public Data In Search Results Top
Google is getting fancy with public data in search results. If you search for “ unemployment rate New York ” or for any other state or county in the U.S., the first result will be the latest data from the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics along with a chart. If you click on the link or image it will take you to an interactive chart where you can compare the unemployment rate to other states or counties. For instance, here is New York (8.1%) vs. California (11.5%). Try it with “population New York” or the name of another state or city, and it will give you the same thing. Google gets that data straight from the U.S. Census Bureau’s Population Division. On the Google Blog, product manager Ola Rosling writes : The data we’re including in this first launch represents just a small fraction of all the interesting public data available on the web. There are statistics for prices of cookies, CO2 emissions, asthma frequency, high school graduation rates, bakers’ salaries, number of wildfires, and the list goes on. Reliable information about these kinds of things exists thanks to the hard work of data collectors gathering countless survey forms, and of careful statisticians estimating meaningful indicators that make hidden patterns of the world visible to the eye. So expect to see more data visualizations appearing in search results. The technology behind this comes from Google’s a cquisition of Trendalyzer from Gapminder a few years back (this is the same technology that powers the motion charts in Google Analytics, by the way). Here is a video with a demo: Crunch Network : CrunchBase the free database of technology companies, people, and investors
 
The Very Last Person Owen Van Natta Screwed Over At Playlist: Jason Bitensky Top
I continue to be fascinated by Owen Van Natta’s abrupt departure from Project Playlist, the company he ran for five whole months before becoming the CEO of the much more exciting MySpace. Emails have been flying in from company CEOs who say Van Natta, with a promise of “massive funding from China,” offered to acquire them (there was no funding). Playlist employees, speaking off the record, are in shock. And worst of all, Van Natta recruited a number of executives, including one, ironically, from MySpace, on the promise that he’d lead the company to a win. Which he definitely would have done, if he hadn’t been interviewing non stop for other jobs since nearly the very day he was announced to head up Playlist. We’ll post the full list of the down and out executives soon. But among the saddest stories is Jason Bitensky , who joined Project Playlist today as Director of National Sales. Bitensky, a former Slide executive, was heavily recruited by Van Natta for months, says a source, and he finally agreed a couple of weeks ago to resign from his current position at Nabbr and join Van Natta at Playlist. Unfortunately, he gave his notice to Nabbr before the news broke that Van Natta was jumping ship, putting him in an awkward position, to say the least. The fact that Van Natta was making promises to potential executives at the same time he was planning to bail on the company is inexcusable, and says a lot about his character. This guy is all about one person - himself - and is apparently quite willing to use, and hurt, others to get what he wants. Bitensky won’t comment on this story, and an email to Playlist hasn’t been returned yet. Bitensky hasn’t announced his new position, but an email to him at Nabbr returned an automated response that gave his new email address at Playlist. He must be thrilled about leaving his old job. Crunch Network : CrunchGear drool over the sexiest new gadgets and hardware.
 
Senseg: Amazing Haptic Technology That Could Be Coming to a Device Near You Top
Senseq.com is a haptic interface company based in Helsinki, Sweden. I met with the CEO, Ville Makinen, who showed us two simple implementations of the system. Instead of using vibrating motors, the device surface is completely motionless. Instead, the Senseq system stimulates your fingers or hand with an electrical field to simulate the feeling of friction or texture. The only way I can describe it as being a cross between rubbing soft sandpaper and getting a static electric shock whenever you touch an active point on the screen. One obvious implementation would be for something like the iPhone. Because it uses no motors you can't hear it and it doesn't run down the battery. A small module - about as big as two sugar cubes - controls the sensation by connecting to a thin film that can be placed on any device. The film can even go around curves. The video you see here shows two demo products. One is a UI test with three distinct systems - a slider, a notched slider, and a rotating arrow. When you move your finger on each UI element you feel a different thing.
 
PBwiki Drops The Wiki, Becomes PBworks Top
Wikipedia aside, wikis just don’t get any respect. PBwiki , a startup that specializes in helping businesses, non-profits, and educational institutions collaborate via wikis, finally realized that and has officially changed its name to PBworks. Founder and Chief Product Officer David Weekly says the name change reflects the company’s expansion into offerings and functionality that extend beyond just a wiki. That is his story and he is sticking to it. PBworks, which had an overhaul of its user interface and features last year, offers businesses a customized wiki workspace, with mobile support, document management, access controls and more. The company is also introducing a new project management application in the next few months. The company also rolled out a “Legal Edition” which merges a wiki with case management features, offers a legal knowledge base, and an electronic deal room to manage files that require review, input, and approval by legal professionals. Currently, PBworks manages 50,000 wiki groups, with 10 million pages and 3 million users per month, according to the company. ComScore shows healthy growth and 2.1 million unique visitors worldwide (see chart below). PBworks has accumulated a loyal client base. The company serves teams at over a third of the Fortune 500, and was home to three presidential campaigns, the United Nations, The Financial Times and Harvard University. Like Salesforce, PBworks is a paid subscription service, with no advertising. The company has raised nearly $2.5 million in funding, with its most recent funding round of $2.1 million announced in 2007. Competitors include Microsoft Sharepoint, Atlassian Confluence, and Socialtext. Crunch Network : CrunchBoard because it’s time for you to find a new Job2.0
 
Mixx Experiments With New Advertising Feedback Platform Called Sifter Top
Mixx , a Digg-like site that lets users vote to push news stories and other bookmarked content to the home page, is experimenting with an innovative new advertising platform called Mixx Sifter . Frankly, and we’ve written this before with other Mixx features, this is something Digg should have done. The idea is to get the Mixx community to give direct feedback on advertising. The better ads will get impressions - not based on how much is paid, but simply on how positive the feedback is from users. Last year we’d heard that Digg was thinking of doing something along these lines. Digg founder Kevin Rose refused to speculate on it, though, in a recent interview . Here’s how Mixx Sifter works - an advertiser uploads five different ads, in virtually any format. Mixx then invites its power users (elite Mixx users who have spent hundreds of hours on the site) to review those ads, rate them and provide direct private feedback. The users get karma points and a chance to win a gift certificate or computer in return. The most popular ad unit is then run on the site. The product is launching with advertiser LivingSocial , and Mixx CEO Chris McGill says Clorox is next up. Advertisers will pay up to $8,000 for the user review and ad run. For now ads are rotating weekly, but eventually this will be a daily product, says McGill, with a new advertiser every day. Mixx is highlighting the value of the direct feedback to advertisers, which is certainly a selling point. But what interests me is the use of the community to drive good advertising forward. Google has long taken into account click through rates on text ads in determining placement (and profit maximization), but there are other ways to do this as well. Mixx is now trying one way. It will be fascinating to see if and how Digg responds. Crunch Network : CrunchGear drool over the sexiest new gadgets and hardware.
 
Is Verizon A PC Or A Mac? Or Both? Or Neither? Top
First, it was reported that Apple was talking to Verizon about getting the iPhone on its network in 2010. Then it was reported that Apple was actually working on new mobile devices for Verizon. With so much Apple blood in the Verizon water, it was only a matter of time before the Microsoft shark surfaced. A new report in The Wall Street Journal suggests that Microsoft is also talking with Verizon about getting a device on its service. To be clear, this apparently is not just a standard new Windows Mobile device, as there are already plenty of those on the Verizon network. What this apparently is, is some sort of new device, designed in part by Microsoft, but developed by a third party. This device is said to include access to Microsoft’s upcoming Windows Marketplace for Mobile — its app store. Once again, the codename “Pink” is being thrown out there. It’s been the subject of much debate over the past several months as to what Pink actually is. Some thought it was a Microsoft-built phone. Others thought it was simply the name of the Zune software tied into the Microsoft’s mobile experience. The WSJ report seems to indicate now that it’s a sort of cross between the two. One thing seems clear: Microsoft is very interested in what both Apple and Google have done in the mobile space. Windows Mobile 6.5, which has been all but dubbed a “hold-over” until Windows Mobile 7 is ready, isn’t due until later this year. Windows Mobile 7 doesn’t seem likely to be on phones before late 2010, at the earliest. If Microsoft is thinking about branching off a bit with a new type of device/experience, that’s probably a smart play to stay in the rapidly evolving mobile game. But can it score an exclusive deal with Verizon? That seems unlikely if Apple really is open to bringing its devices to the carrier as well. And how does Android play into the carrier’s plans? Crunch Network : CrunchBoard because it’s time for you to find a new Job2.0
 
Android Backward Compatibility Talk Begins. This Is Starting To Sound Complicated. Top
Love the iPhone or hate the iPhone, at least you know what you’re getting out of the box is a device that will work with all the apps in the App Store. That’s been the case so far with Google’s Android platform as well — but only because there has been only one device, the G1. With more devices starting to roll out, and a new firmware (1.5, “cupcake”) to support them, things are continuing to get a bit murky. Last week, we wrote about how the 1.5 Android software update would break some apps that previously worked with Android. Google gave some tips as to how to fix them, but it’s still a bit troubling. Today, comes another post on the Android Developer blog with two dreaded words: Backward compatibility. As an open platform, Google isn’t requiring backward compatibility for all Android apps. But as more devices and applications come out, that could be an issue. As Google writes, “do you want to allow your application to run on all devices, or just those running newer software?” Plenty of iPhone apps answer that very question with the latter. And while you might think that may be limiting, it ensures a certain level of simplicity in the App Store — and perhaps more importantly, in developing for the iPhone. The iPhone platform already has a massive lead in terms of applications built for it over Android. Anything, such a backwards compatibility code, that adds complexity to developing for Android is certainly not going to help. And it ties back to the fundamental difference between the iPhone and Android. iPhone, as a closed system with devices only made by Apple, can easily control the development ecosystem and important things like user experience. Android, with its more open system, will have a much harder time doing both. But because Android will be on so many more phones (and various other machines) it would seem that it will grow into the larger platform at some point. Yes, it’s essentially the same thing that happened with Microsoft versus Apple in the PC wars of the 80s and 90s. But, as we’ve learned from that, “bigger” doesn’t necessarily mean “better.” Crunch Network : CrunchGear drool over the sexiest new gadgets and hardware.
 
Fotolia Now Selling Microstock Video Top
Microstock photo site Fotolia has just launched its video offering. Back in February, when the service reached one million registered users , the company indicated that the launch of its video service would come soon, and now it is here. Fotolia is launching with 10,000 royalty free video clips that can be used in video ads, on Websites, mobile animations, and more. These are generic 5 to 60 second clips which can be used as filler, background or for transitional moments. The costs vary but they start at around $10. Competitor iStockPhoto has offered stock video for years and recently expanded to audio. Fotolia’s selection still seems pretty spare when you search on a specific keyword like “ flu” or “despair.” Fotolia turns up one video result for each of those terms, whereas iStockPhoto turns up 117 and 718 video results, respectively. But Fotolia’s collection should fill out over time. A generic video clip really shouldn’t cost more than $10. What would be nice, however, would be a system where you could request the kind of video imagery you want, and then have it produced by a videographer, who would then maintain the rights to resell it on Fotolia. Here is a Fotolia video described as “ball with pain”: Crunch Network : CrunchBase the free database of technology companies, people, and investors
 
CEO Jason Kilar On The State Of Hulu Top
Hulu CEO Jason Kilar sits down with Sarah Lacy on Yahoo Tech Ticker. The first and second segments are now up. In the first segment, in response to Lacy’s question about why Hulu removed its content from the popular Boxee service, he talks about his need to juggle the needs of his three customers - networks, viewers and advertisers. The networks must be kept happy to make sure Hulu is around for the long term, he says, and this move was made to keep the networks happy. Kilar also addressed rumors of NBC pulling out of the joint venture. Kilar talks about Hulu’s business model in the second segment. He won’t disclose revenue but says the company is ahead of plan. Analysts say the company may have made as much as $65 million last year on the back of advertising that sells at much higher rates than YouTube commands. More segments coming up. Crunch Network : CrunchGear drool over the sexiest new gadgets and hardware.
 
Keep Track of Mobile Visitors To Your Website With PercentMobile (Invites) Top
As more mobile phones become full-fledged Web-browsing devices, a small but fast-growing segment of all visitors to any given Websites will be mobile. But with so many different mobile phones and browsers, it is difficult to figure out where most of that mobile traffic is coming from. A new mobile Website tracking service called PercentMobile lets you track mobile visitors by device, cell phone operator, country, and more. All you do is insert one line of pixel-based code into the header of your Website and it does the rest. All mobile browsers can read the pixel code, unlike the Javascript required by Google Analytics, for instance. PercentMobile is in private beta, but we have 500 invites for TechCrunch readers. Use the code freecoffee at signup . PercentMobile is free, but the high-level data in the reports become public. (They can be made privaet by request). The service is built on top of TigTags , an enterprise mobile analytics platform that starts at $1,000 a month. PercentMobile is basically a lead generator for that service. To get a sense of some of the data you would see, check out this report for FourSquare , the mobile social network that MG is in love with . Not surprisingly, 76.5 percent of all of its traffic is mobile. Although it comes as an iPhone app , you can also access it via a mobile browser. The most popular device accessing it that way is not the iPhone (since most people use the app), but rather the Blackberry (9.9%), followed by HTC’s G1 Android phone (9.6%), followed by two more Blackberry models (8.9% and 7.4%), and then the iPhone (7.3%), and then another Blackberry (7.1%). Guess which platform FourSquare is going to develop an app for next? Yup, the Blackberry. Every Website should know how much of its traffic comes from mobile, and from what devices and geographies. Crunch Network : CrunchBoard because it’s time for you to find a new Job2.0
 
Domain Monetizer Parked.com Picks Up WhyPark Top
Parked.com , a company that specializes in monetizing - you guessed it - parked domain names, has acquired WhyPark , a 3-year old startup based in Willoughby, OH that provides domain name owners with tools to attract traffic to the web addresses with simple websites as well as tools to manage their portfolio and buy and sell domains on a virtual marketplace. The terms of the acquisition remain undisclosed. WhyPark essentially allows domain owners to trade in the usual advertisement-filled landing pages that are so common with parking providers for content-driven websites that are supposed to draw organic traffic from search engines (scary line alert: “populate your sites with fresh content daily, without lifting a finger”). WhyPark also allowed users to monetize their sites in a variety of ways, a service that directly competed with Parked.com’s core business. That means that both companies were in fact rivals to a degree, and that the acquisition means there’s good synergy between them, but at the same time it’s worth noting that Parked.com has always boasted about its exclusive focus on monetizing domain names and steering clear from all other associated services. This obviously is no longer the case now, and with WhyPark becoming part of the 10-year old Parked.com, the combined entity will continue to compete with Sedo (the juggernaut in this space) and the likes. As Domain Name Wire points out, WhyPark as a result of the acquisition is moving to a free model instead of charging new users a $99 set-up fee like before. Crunch Network : CrunchGear drool over the sexiest new gadgets and hardware.
 
iPhone Owners Don't Use Their Devices For Work? Yeah, Right. Top
We haven’t actually seen the details of it since a first look was given exclusively to the New York Times , but there’s a new Compete report coming out supposedly later today that claims only 27% of iPhone owners use their device primarily for work-related needs compared to 59% of owners with other types of smartphones (HTC, Blackberry, Nokia, etc.). The NY Times reporter didn’t detail where these stats are coming from and how Compete reached their conclusions exactly apart from saying ’smartphone users were surveyed’, but I consider the article’s headline (”Apple iPhone Owners Don't Use It For Work”) to be quite misleading either way you spin it. ( Update: the headline has since changed to something more accurate). If you have a Web-capable phone, you are going to use it for both work and play. Or does every person with a job who owns an iPhone also keep a Blackberry handy to whip out for work-related tasks (besides Erick)? Having an iPhone myself, I can imagine that a lot of people are indeed using their Apple phones for personal reasons like entertainment (games, videos, etc.) a lot more than they do with other smartphones, but that is because the user experience on the latter devices generally sucks compared to the iPhone anyway. There’s a whole lot of well-known reasons for that besides the technical or design shortcomings: either third-party developers don’t find competing platforms compelling enough to create applications for them, or they do but the quality bar is set too low, and even then there’s no decent, central marketplace to download or buy apps from. But let’s not digress from the main talking point. The Compete survey reportedly found that 73% of iPhone owners used their mobile devices primarily for personal reasons, but what isn’t detailed is how much time in total they are using their phones - which I imagine is a whole lot more than on other smartphones - and how much more efficient it makes them when they actually do use it for work. For reference, a recent AdMobs Mobile Metrics report pointed out that nearly 50% of all smartphone web traffic in the U.S. comes from iPhone devices. I’d also like to point to a recent study by JD Power and Associates which ranked iPhone highest in customer satisfaction , not for everyday consumers (those the device was initially targeted at, I might add), but for “business wireless smartphone users.” I’d also argue that the time I spend using my iPhone for professional reasons may be much less than I used to spend battling the Windows Mobile OS on my previous smartphone (an HTC), but that it increased my productivity when I’m on the go five-fold easily, and isn’t that what really matters? This tidbit from the article bothered me as well: The firm found that getting local forecasts, turn-by-turn directions and nearby restaurant recommendations were the most popular location-aware iPhone applications. Undoubtedly true, but which mobile worker hasn’t at one point used his smartphone for directions or restaurant recommendations directly related to his or her job? How can Compete possibly claim these services are being used for personal use only? Let’s call it like it is: while not perfect, the iPhone is a joy to use from an individual standpoint, whether it’s for business or personal reasons, and all the other device manufacterers are (or should be) playing catch-up when it comes to physical design, UI and general ease-of-use of navigation. I use my phone a whole lot more than I used to in the past, and even I would answer a survey question asking for my behavior that I use it primarily for personal reasons, but does that in any way imply that I don’t use it for work? The answer is a big fat no, quite the contrary, thank you. Crunch Network : MobileCrunch Mobile Gadgets and Applications, Delivered Daily.
 
Zoho Now Fully Integrated With Mobile Devices Top
Zoho, the creators of a web-based software suite made up of document, project and invoicing management tools, has launched the availability of its comprehensive webtop productivity products on mobile devices. Zoho previously had basic mobile support for its applications on iPhone and some limited capability on Windows Mobile but now fully integrates Zoho Applications with several mobile devices. Zoho Mail, Calendar, Writer, Sheet, Show & Creator are now available for the iPhone, Android, BlackBerry, WindowsMobile and Symbian devices. As we’ve written in the past, Zoho is an innovative document management tool, and includes easy access thanks to support for Google and Yahoo IDs and the group sharing across different apps feature. While Zoho has added useful features to its software suite, Zoho is going to have to fight an uphill battle to keep consumers from going towards web-based applications offered by companies with a vast reach (Google, Microsoft, Adobe, etc.). Here’s a slideshow on Zoho’s mobile integration: Crunch Network : CrunchGear drool over the sexiest new gadgets and hardware.
 
Mint Turns Personal Finance Into A Game. It's Better Than It Sounds Top
Mint , the popular personal finance site that won 2007’s TechCrunch40, is launching a new feature called “Financial Fitness” which, strange as it may sound, adds an element of gaming to the service. Yes, it may sound like a bizarre combination at first - personal finance and fun aren’t exactly two things that go hand in hand. But it’s also a smart move on Mint’s part, as it looks to turn the mundane and often confusing activity of getting your financial affairs in order into something a bit more tolerable while increasing Mint’s engagement in the process. Mint is running the new feature in a private beta for a few weeks, and the first 500 TechCrunch readers to Email techcrunch-getfit@mint.com with the Email address they use on Mint.com will gain access. The game itself is fairly simple. It outlines five main principles that users should focus on on the road to financial fitness, including ’spend less than you earn’, ‘manage credit and debt wisely’, and so on. Each of these core principles has a number of tasks associated with it, like ‘Avoid Bank Fees’ and ‘Come in under budget’. As you complete tasks, you are rewarded with points. Over time, you can earn merit badges for completing more difficult tasks, like being named as a “Financial Guru” for maintaining a 100% health status for an extended period of time. And then there’s the more tangible bonus of likely having more money than you started with. Mint has studied the reward systems of games including Wii Fit, Warcraft, and Nike Fit as they built the game, looking to turn their virtual financial advisor into something a little more interesting than a wall of text. Of course, solving each of these tasks often involves the user interacting with a Mint feature or a referral to a partner site, which means Mint can effectively monetize the game as well. I’m sure many people will initially react to the game with skepticism, as it isn’t exactly the first thing you’d expect at a finance site. But seemingly pointless gaming elements can be useful nonetheless: one need only take a look at foursquare , a fairly new application that is quite addictive because of its game-like nature. That said, these kind of point systems tend to work best when there is some kind of social element involved - be it through a rivalry with friends or an aggregated leader board. As a financial site Mint doesn’t seem well suited for this kind of competition (it would be a bit strange to make fun of my friends for having a poorer financial health than me), but I think the gaming aspect should work nonetheless. Crunch Network : MobileCrunch Mobile Gadgets and Applications, Delivered Daily.
 
Socialthing Starts Spreading Across 75 AOL Sites Top
A couple weeks ago, I spotted the reincarnation of Socialthing on AOL’s country-music Website TheBoot and speculated that it would potentially be rolled out across AOL’s other MediaGlow properties as well. Today, a press release from AOL in my inbox confirms that MediaGlow “is in the process of deploying Socialthing across its network of more than 75 sites.” Socialthing started out as a Friendfeed competitor when AOL bought it last year . It never came out of private beta, but its lifestreaming service found its way into Bebo , the social network AOL purchased for $850 million. Now, with Socialthing for Websites , AOL is combining it with AIM to compete with Facebook Connect and Google Friend Connect. As I wrote in my last post, Socialthing for Websites offers a single sign-in for participating Websites. Right now it accepts your AIM or AOL username and password, but will soon add Bebo, Facebook, Gmail, Yahoo and OpenID using OAuth. In addition to single sign-in, Socialthing creates a toolbar along the bottom of a Website that brings both group chat and private AIM chat to the site in the form of pop-up boxes, as well as a content stream that shows the latest articles and comments on the site as well as your personal lifestream of activityies from other sites. As we saw from Facebook’s announcement yesterday to open up its own stream to developers so that they can create applications around the stream of constant updates from people’s social network, there is a battle going on to control the conversation. AOL is entering this battle with AIM and Socialthing. After it rolls Socialthing out across its own Websites, it will make Socialthing available to partner sites as well. And when it revamps AIM later this year, you can expect the Socialthing lifestream to be a big part of it. Crunch Network : MobileCrunch Mobile Gadgets and Applications, Delivered Daily.
 
TrueCar Shifts Into Gear, Lets You Check If Your Neighbors Got That Mercedes At A Better Price Top
TrueCar , an information service launched at TechCrunch50 that aims to give potential new car buyers an idea of what the price tag of the vehicle they’re considering purchasing should really be reading, is officially launching its free consumer-focused website today by taking the beta label off. In essence, the service allows car buyers to check if the price for their next car is on par with the price others have paid for the same vehicle in the past, hopefully bringing some transparency to the automotive retail industry. So how does it work? When a new car buyer visits the TrueCar website, they are asked to enter their zip code and all vehicle details down to the specific options. TrueCar then generates a complete Price Report with nifty graphs, displaying the full distribution of prices paid by other people for the exact same vehicle in a given market area. In addition, the web service calculates the actual dealer cost structure of a particular vehicle. TrueCar claims it holds data for more than 25% of all new vehicles sold throughout the United States, which is quite impressive and a high enough percentage for comparisons to be made, although we noted in our coverage from the TC50 event that the company was going to try and hold off from launching publicly when they actually reached 50%. And where exactly does all that data come from anyway? The company says it currently processes thousands of transactions on a daily basis, from a variety of sources across the U.S., ranging from financial institutions to vehicle registration organizations that collect and store new car transactional data, to generate its Price Reports. Using this data, TrueCar is able to tell you if you’re getting a good, a great or an over-priced deal on a new car based on actual sales data and not estimates. For the occasion, TrueCar is taking the wraps of its blog, called The Truth , where it aims to regularly report car pricing facts and trends backed by real market data. In their latest blog post , TrueCar gives some insight in the top 10 deals on new cars at this moment: I’d say considering a Ford is probably a good start to getting a good deal. On a sidenote: TrueCar isn’t founder and CEO Scott Painter ’s only venture: the man is also co-founder of both Pricelock and BrightHouse , and also acts as founder and CEO of Zag , which recently raised $32.4 million in venture capital. One wonders where he finds time for all this. You can see the video of his presentation of TrueCar at TC50 right here . CrunchBase Information TrueCar Information provided by CrunchBase Crunch Network : CrunchGear drool over the sexiest new gadgets and hardware.
 
Keep It Simple, Stupid Top
K-I-S-S: Keep It Simple, Stupid. It's a mantra that always pops into my head when I'm looking at new startups. A lot of them seem to want to do a million different things because other companies have been successful at one of those things in the past. But that's a bad idea. Way too many new products and services are too complicated. And I would suggest, often fail as a direct result of that. On the face of it, it makes sense to give users a lot of options when it comes to features, and let them decide what to use and what not to use. But decisions can be a burden. And further, users are often bad decision makers. It may be blasphemy to say that users want to be told what to do, but at the very least, they want to be lead in a direction. And that's important. Because it's not like a lack of decisions has to be limiting. Take, yes, Twitter, for example. It started out as a service meant to share what you are doing in 140 characters or less. But it quickly evolved well beyond that — into something that the creators never intended. Messages to other users, links to interesting articles, disaster reports — these all go way beyond simply saying what you are doing, but they still work within the parameters set by the creators. Since its inception, some people have been saying Twitter is silly. Those people aren't necessarily wrong, but even they must admit that it has done one thing very right: Keeping the service simple. How many calls have there been to add this feature, or add that one? We've all done it. Yet Twitter (yes, perhaps aided by the fact that it lacked the spare engineers in the early days during its constant crashes), stayed the course and kept its product extremely simple. That, in turn, has led to an entire ecosystem of third party applications that now run on top of it. And Twitter, the little service that everyone was calling silly just a couple years ago, is now clearly having a direct effect on huge web services — like Facebook. Let's talk about Facebook for a second. The number one reason I started using Facebook rather than MySpace several years ago is that it was so much neater, cleaner — yes, simpler. But with an explosion in growth, came an explosion in features. And, in turn, an explosion in complexity. I'd argue that's one reason why we see so much backlash when Facebook makes design tweaks nowadays. It really is pretty hard to master using Facebook, and a lot of users (and developers) have put a lot of time into just that, only to have the rug pulled out from under them with some fundamental changes. These changes require more work be put in to learning the system again, and that takes away from Facebook's core value: Using its network to find information about your friends. Not surprisingly, that pisses people off. On a much larger scale, I'd argue that it's the same trap Windows falls into. Microsoft simply cannot fundamentally change it too much — even though plenty of people would argue that it probably should — because people would go wild. We saw this happen a bit with some core changes in Vista — though, to be fair, Vista's performance I think hurt it more than anything else. Instead, Microsoft is stuck in the cycle of adding new features to a product that is pretty much the same as it's been for at least a decade, if not longer. New features placate some users, but ultimately, that cycle is a losing proposition. And Microsoft makes it worse by offering a bunch of variations of a similar product where it’s not really clear what the real differences are. If you must add new features, I think a much better approach is the one Gmail recently began taking with Gmail Labs. Rather than roll out new features to everyone while it waits for the inevitable backlash, Google makes them opt-in only, through Labs. This way, it really is the user's fault if they don't like the change — and more importantly, it's easily fixable. Simply turn off the feature you don't like. But let's go back to the core of simplicity. Simplicity can often mean beauty. Just look at what Atebits has made with Tweetie, a very simple Twitter client for the iPhone and now for the Mac . There were plenty of other Twitter clients out there first, but Tweetie, in my opinion, is much nicer because it's simple. It's not trying to do too much. It's not trying to pull in my Flickr feed and my Facebook feed. It does one thing — and it does that one thing very well. Another example is Instapaper , the web bookmarking service I use several times a day. Here's how it works: You drag a bookmarklet to your toolbar, then when you find something you want to read later, you click it. Done. You don't even need a password if you don't want one. That's brilliant because it means I don't have to keep signing in over and over and over and over again as I do with a service like Delicious. Do I care if people know what I'm reading? No, I could care less. That password is a burden for the service. Instapaper's creator Marco Arment was smart enough to realize that even though there were plenty of bookmarking services out there first, he didn't need to match them feature for feature. All he needed was to make something that is very good at what it does. He did, and in the process has eliminated the once dominant Delicious from my life. Going back to Facebook for a second, its most recent redesign was on some levels an attempt to simplify things; to make its stream more Twitter-like. The problem is that Facebook is a series of complicated rules and relationships beneath that, which makes its simplicity just a facade that gets exposed when you start really looking at it. Just try changing the apps that can post to your profile stream. Go ahead, I dare you. I say that because it's a nightmare of switches and levers. If Facebook really wants to simplify things, it’s going to need to change a hell of a lot more than its main feed stream. Another service, FriendFeed, also recently redesigned its site (the beta version ), to make things simpler. I think they did a good job of it. And while some people did not like it at first, most seem to like it now. While it's not actually all that much different (aside from the real-time data flow), it looks cleaner, and they made it easier to follow what you’re supposed to be doing. One of the applications that has recently been added to my regular rotation is FourSquare . Why? Well, mostly because my friends use it. But why do they use it? Because it's simple. On its iPhone app, it takes two clicks to check in at a place. Or you can send a text to do it. Why do people like Digg? It’s simple. You can submit something. Or you can just vote. Or you can just read. I think that for most startups, I should be able to describe to you, the reader, exactly what a service does in one sentence. Sure, you may think the service is stupid (like plenty of you still do with Twitter), but at least I can easily explain its core functionality. With some startups today, it seems like it's a mess of "well, it's this plus this minus this with a little of this if you do this." One kickass feature far outweighs a dozen half-assed ones. Focus on that one. Crunch Network : CrunchGear drool over the sexiest new gadgets and hardware.
 
Wakoopa's First State Of The Apps Shows What We're Using, When And How Top
As a service whose sole purpose is to track the applications that people actually use on their systems, it should be no surprise that Wakoopa has a lot of interesting usage data. On a day to day level, Wakoopa’s data is good, but it’s the aggregate data over long periods of time that can be really meaningful to show how we are using our computers. Today, Wakoopa has released the first such aggregate data with its inaugural State of the Apps report. The report shows the quarterly data for desktop software, games and web apps. The data comes from the over 75,000 Wakoopa users that have installed the desktop tracking software to enable the company to see actual usage. These users have logged over 525 million hours of app usage, across over 200,000 apps. Some key trends that Wakoopa highlights in its report include: Social networking usage tends to peak between 9 and 10 PM. But for Facebook, the most popular social network, usage is pretty constant throughout the day. Other web apps tend to peak at between 4 and 5 PM. As you may expect, Twitter usage is rising quickly among Wakoopa users as well. Nearly a quarter of them now use the service — and most of them do so through Twitter desktop clients. Google Friend Connect and the online video site Veoh both showed large declines in usage in the first quarter. Interestingly, and perhaps not entirely unrelated, Veoh just went through layoffs and a major restructuring. Google Friend Connect meanwhile, seems to lack the hype and adoption of Facebook’s more popular Facebook Connect. Google Chrome is growing quickly, and is now past 15% usage across all Wakoopa users. But some of Wakoopa’s charts in the report contain even more interesting information. For example, while Chrome has an impressive showing across the board, Mozilla’s Firefox browser is even more impressive. It is the number one app on both Windows and Mac platforms. And in every continent besides Africa, it’s over 60% usage among web browsers — and in Africa it’s still at 50%. Meanwhile, Africa is the only continent where Internet Explorer finishes as the second most-used browser. On every other continent,  IE is in third place among browsers — or worse. While that may sounds a bit ridiculous given that IE is still by far the biggest browser worldwide in terms of market share, that has to be very troubling for Microsoft as it’s probably safe to assume that a lot of Wakoopa users are early adopters of technology and could signal a trend of where things could go for the general population in the coming years. Also not a good sign for Microsoft: The older you are, the more likely you are to use IE. In the youngest age group, 11 to 20 year olds, even smaller browsers like Opera beat it. IE has been losing market share at a steady pace for the past several years. Google products dominate the top-used web apps. Gmail is #2, YouTube is #3, Google Search is #4 and Google Reader is #5. It seems pretty surprising that YouTube and Gmail would be ahead of Google Search, but perhaps that’s because people use their built-in search toolbars rather than Google.com to start searches. Also, a commenter Kyle notes below, Wakoopa tracks how long your stay on a site as well, so you’re more likely to stay on Gmail and YouTube longer than Google Search. Regardless, Facebook trumps them all. On Windows machines, a lot of Microsoft products appear in the top 10, which on Macs, a lot of Apple products do. That is not at all shocking. FriendFeed usage is more than halfway to Twitter usage — though it’s not clear if that’s just Twitter.com or if that includes the various clients as well. And FriendFeed’s usage is higher among Wakoopa users than that of MySpace. Again, I’d point back to the whole early adopter thing. DestroyTwitter — which I had never even heard of until tonight, is one of the hottest new apps on both the Windows and Mac platforms. Apparently, it’s an Adobe AIR-based Twitter client that constantly updates, yet uses less memory than other AIR-based Twitter clients. It’s interesting that email peak checking time for the weekday is during the morning, around 11 AM, but on the weekend, it’s at night around 9 PM. CrunchBase Information Wakoopa Information provided by CrunchBase Crunch Network : MobileCrunch Mobile Gadgets and Applications, Delivered Daily.
 
FourSquare Prepping To Take Its Game Overseas Top
It’s been about six weeks since SXSW, where the Dodgeball-reborn location-based social network FourSquare was formally launched . A lot of people thought it was one of those things that was cool at a conference, but would die quickly after. But all these weeks later, I’m actually using it more than ever, according to my statistics . And soon, more of you may be able to play along as well. Version 1.2 of the iPhone app is currently in the works and it will bring an expanded roster of cities to the playing field, including some international ones, co-founder Dennis Crowley tells me. While he wouldn’t give a release date, judging from FourSquare’s own Twitter account , it’s coming along nicely. Some other things to expect shortly include the ability to add a place not currently in the system right from the app (so, finally, you won’t get zero points if you check in an unknown place). And soon, the so-called “super users” will be able to create their own badges that their friends can play for. Earlier today, FourSquare also defaulted its leaderboard to be amongst your friends rather than everyone in your home city. A smart move I think, one that will keep competition fresh. The service has also posted a more formal breakdown of how the point scoring system works . For those who don’t understand why FourSquare is catching on in select urban areas as a virtual game of sorts, I recommend reading Alice Marwick’s piece on locative media and prescriptive social software . It’s a great look at what drives me to be the mayor of so many local establishments. CrunchBase Information Foursquare Information provided by CrunchBase Crunch Network : MobileCrunch Mobile Gadgets and Applications, Delivered Daily.
 
Marin Raises $13 Million For Search Engine Management Software Top
Marin Software, a startup that creates search engine management software for advertisers and agencies, has secured $13 million in Series C financing led by DAG Ventures, with Focus Ventures, Benchmark Capital and Amicus Capital participating. Marin received $7.25 million in Series B funding in 2008 led by Benchmark Capital. The company also received $2.5 million in Series A funding from Amicus Capital in 2006. Marin Software offers a browser application to help advertisers and agencies managing paid search advertising campaigns across Google, Yahoo, MSN and other search sites. Marin’s software is used by Razorfish, ZipRealty and other companies. Marin’s customers spend at least $100,000 per month on paid search campaigns across the major search engines.The company’s main competitors include Kenshoo and Refined Labs. Crunch Network : CrunchBase the free database of technology companies, people, and investors
 
Quub: A Micromessaging Service That Asks "What Are You Doing?" And Means It Top
At its core, Twitter is supposed to be a micro-presence service that invites users to answer the question, “What are you doing?”. That’s all well and good, but most people tend to ignore this question entirely, Tweeting about anecdotes, their favorite songs, and any number of other things totally unrelated to what they’re actually doing. It’s become a service for entertainment, news, and conversations, where those presence statuses (messages like “I’m at work”) have become frowned upon for being dreadfully boring. They may be boring, but that doesn’t mean they aren’t useful. Quub , a new service launching tonight, is looking to fill the gap between Twitter’s status updates and the location-based services offered by the likes of Loopt and Google Latitude. The service’s primary purpose is to help users tell their friends what they’re actually doing, and while it shares some similarities with Twitter (including a 140 character limit), there are some key distinctions that help Quub stand on its own. The first main difference is that all relationships on Quub are two-way. That is, you’ll have to send a friend request (and have it accepted) before you can view someone’s updates. The service also has support for groups, which means you can selectively send out your current status updates to a specific list of people (you can drag and drop users between groups much as you would songs in iTunes). The other major difference is the way Quub helps you actually write your status updates. Quub knows that most people repeat similar tasks on a day to day basis, and pays attention to your previous status updates to help you build any updates in the future. These suggestions appear as floating text in a bubble beneath the entry field, so while you still have the option of filling in each action manually, you can also click on the suggestions to build your update in a few seconds. This may not matter much on the web client (you’d probably only save a few seconds versus typing the update yourself), but the service is also going to launch a fleet of mobile applications for the iPhone, Android, and other devices, where the suggestions will definitely come in handy. These updates are sent to your Quub friends, and can also be syndicated to a variety of services like Facebook, Twitter, and MySpace. When it comes to browsing your friends’ status updates, Quub offers a handful of different modes. The first is ‘Present’, which shows the most recent location update from each of your contacts (the resulting list looks similar to foursquare , without the game aspect). A ‘Past’ view offers a Twitter-like stream of all of your friends’ recent updates. And finally, there will be a ‘Future’ view, which allows users to time-stamp updates. The ‘future’ mode is handy because it can also be used as a basic calendar function. Quub has opted to forgo allowing users to post their exact GPS coordinates (which they deem to be too creepy), and instead leave it up to the user to announce where they are in their message. Unfortunately, Quub has not yet partnered with any databases to help users match their current position to nearby points of interest, so you’ll have to input each location you visit manually at first. Quub has a solid idea and is well designed, but it’s going to face a few big challenges. For one, many people are already on Twitter, and it may be hard to convince them use another micro-messaging service. Granted, Quub serves a different purpose, with more granular privacy controls and intelligent message suggestions, but it shares so many similarities with Twitter that people may not understand the difference. And unlike foursquare , which has a neat gaming aspect, Quub has nothing to drive you to pull out your phone and update your status frequently. Finally, there’s also the problem that plagues all such location-based services: they’re only useful if your friends are on them, and it’s going to be a long uphill battle to reach critical mass. Crunch Network : MobileCrunch Mobile Gadgets and Applications, Delivered Daily.
 
Microsoft Vine To Connect Family, Friends When Crisis Hits Top
Microsoft is launching a new product into private beta on Tuesday morning with the aim of keeping friends and family in touch during emergencies. The idea for product, called Microsoft Vine , came to Microsoft GM Public Safety Initiatives Tammy Savage four and half years ago during Hurricane Katrina . Development started a year and a half ago. Vine is designed to keep family and friends in touch when other communication methods are either broken or not particularly efficient. Times of crisis usually involve a breakdown in mobile phone or other key communication infrastructures, and Vine is designed to be as hardy as possible to keep people connected. Vine can be accessed via a desktop client (Windows only for now), text message or email. So what is it? Vine is a tool keep people connected during a crisis, but it’s also used to for more mundane, everyday tasks. My guess is it will hit a sweet spot with the masses. My parents, for example, are going to love this. It will gather local news (you tell it where you live or are at the moment). News items are gathered from 20,000 local and national news sources, plus public safety announcements from the United States National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA). The tool shows you news items on a local map. You can choose to filter out certain types of news (sports, entertainment, etc.). Vine also gives you status updates from Facebook for close friends and family. Twitter and other social network news feeds will also be added over time. This lets you see what people are up to, as well as their location on a map if they share it. Users view and post alerts to some or all friends/family. These can be quick messages to family in the case of emergency, or a church or sports club for meetings or practice. Each person defines how they want to receive alerts - the client, email and/or text message. Users can also post more lengthy reports which are sent to the dashboards of those you share it with. There are four types of reports at launch: check in safe and well, report upcoming plans, report a situation or general information. The product is very early and Microsoft is stressing that this is an early beta, designed to get feedback from a small number of users. Eventually the client will have some limited functionality even when offline (which is a likely scenario in a crisis), and new interfaces will be built on other platforms like Mac and Silverlight. People tend to like stuff like this, and it may eventually turn into the place that you keep your true friends list - the people you absolutely want to be in touch with when things go badly. More screen shots below: Crunch Network : CrunchBoard because it’s time for you to find a new Job2.0
 
Technorati Gives Blog Network Blogcritics A Much Needed Facelift Top
Technorati has fully redesigned Blogcritics, a seven-year old blog network that the media company acquired last August, in an effort to drive more traffic to the site. We originally wrote about Blogcritics in 2005. Blogcritics currently is a community of 3,300 writers who have published more than 84,000 articles, providing bloggers an entry point to publish their content to a more widely-visited site. The content on the site hasn’t changed much; it’s will simply be packaged in a sleeker, more user-friendly interface. Currently, the site’s design and interface is bland and features very little in terms of images. The new design, which will be rolled out at 1 AM PST tonight, features a new logo, a more colorful interface, and is well-organized. The site contains a new feature “ObamaNation," that will analyze the impact President Obama is having on pop culture. It also allows users to follow their favorite writers by listing all of the content a writer has created both on and off the Blogcritics platform. All in all, it is a big improvement in terms of the way the site looks and feels. Blogcritics, which is similar to Salon's Open Salon, draws about 1 million unique monthly visitors, according to Google Analytics. The site hasn’t increased traffic since its acquisition last summer—the site had about 1 million monthly uniques at that point as well, so this is clearly an effort to spruce up the blog community to drive more traffic. The site currently runs ads completely through Technorati’s ad network. Technorati Media has been through several acquisitions and redefining changes under CEO Richard Jalichandra, who joined the company in October 2007. Last June, the company launched Technorati Media, a blog advertising network. Prior to launching the ad network, Technorati raised $7.3 million in a fourth round of financing through Draper Fisher Jurvetson, Mobius Venture Capital and FG Incubation. Last fall, Technorati acquired AdEngage to join the company's newly formed blog advertising network. And most recently, Technorati launched a new directory of 'tag' pages, offering brief overviews of a variety of tech-related topics. Unfortunately, Technorati hasn’t been immune to layoffs during the current economic climate. A few weeks ago, the company let go 10 percent of its staff, or 4 employees, and also suffered through an earlier round of layoffs last September and also implemented pay cuts for remaining staff. But Jalichandra told us that that the blog search engine is growing and layoffs were necessary to "fine tune" its business model to eventually become profitable. Jalichandra has also said that while the timing of launching an ad network a few months before the market crashed wasn't optimal, quarterly ad revenue has grown by 6.5 times since the launch of Technorati Media last June, when presumably its revenues were negligible. Here’s a look at the old homepage: Crunch Network : CrunchBase the free database of technology companies, people, and investors
 
Live From Facebook Technology Tasting Top
I’m here at Facebook’s office in downtown Palo Alto, where the company is holding a special Technology Tasting to announce and demonstrate its latest APIs and other features it is going to begin offering developers. In the last two days we’ve heard about some of the announcements, including its decision to grant developers access to full streams - a big step for a service that has previously been quite reserved about exporting its data. And earlier today we learned about its decision to fullly embrace of OpenID, which is a huge leap forward for the initiative. I’ll be streaming the event live using Qik, during which we will be shown demos of some of the first implementations of the full Facebook streams and its integration with OpenID. Update: Facebook is using Plaxo as an example of enabling two-way flow between Facebook Connect, so you can share activity between 3rd party sites and Facebook via linking accounts. Showing Facebook desktop powered by Adobe Air. Loic Le Meur, creator of Twhirl and Seesmic Desktop, is presenting how Seesmic Desktop is integrating Twitter and Facebook together into its desktop client. He says you should be able to post video to Facebook from the Seesmic Desktop. Microsoft has also shown off a pair of very cool applications featuring its .NET and Silverlight platforms. Even more impressive: the apps were put together in 72 hours. Luke Shepard is now talking OpenID and Facebook Connect are working together. See our earlier post. The full videos (broken into three segments because the connection died a few times) are below. Crunch Network : CrunchBase the free database of technology companies, people, and investors
 

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