Friday, May 15, 2009

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Fennec (Firefox Mobile) Alpha 1 For Windows Mobile Goes Live Top
After the slightly shaky launch of their ultra-early milestone release, Mozilla is back with more Fennec (otherwise known as “Firefox Mobile”) goodness. This morning, the company began distributing Alpha 1 of Fennec for Windows Mobile. As with all Alphas, this release is by no means intended for every day use by the general public, but it gives us a sneak peak at what’s to come. Read the rest of this post >> Crunch Network : CrunchGear drool over the sexiest new gadgets and hardware.
 
VIP E-Commerce Service Geelbe Raises $1 Million Round, Eyes Latin-American Expansion Top
We don’t often write about Latin-American startups (in fact, if you’re familiar with that market, send us more tips please ), but here’s an interesting one. Argentina-based Geelbe , a private e-commerce website, has just raised a second round of funding worth $1 million, led by D'Épée Investments. The company is actively looking to expand its VIP shopping operations to other Latin-American countries, starting with Mexico first and Brazil later this year. The company had earlier raised $300,000 from a group of angel investors. The model is simple but extremely powerful, as European startups like Vente-Privee , PrivateOutlet and BuyVip have already proven. The basic principle is to fulfil supplier's needs to quickly sell excess stock via the internet, without harming the brand's image or diverting revenue from other distribution channels. To do this, services like Geelbe try to attract an select community of buyers on an invite-only basis, and help brands sell that extra stock to their members at reduced prices (with discounts amounting up to 70%), only for a limited period of time and without any of the disadvantages cited above. Geelbe is considered to be the first significant web-based outlet of this kind in Latin-America, so it has the first-mover advantage and the momentum sorely needed to make inroads in that market. If they do this the smart way and succeed in expanding into other countries quickly and without burning too much cash, it has a lot going for it, especially if it sticks around long enough for the economy to start picking up again. (Source: Denken Über ) CrunchBase Information Geelbe Information provided by CrunchBase Crunch Network : CrunchGear drool over the sexiest new gadgets and hardware.
 
According To Twitter, Prop 8 Was Overturned Before It Existed Top
There’s an interesting trending topic on Twitter right now: Prop 8 . Thousands of people are retweeting that the California ballot measure which restricted same-sex marriage has been overturned. The only problem? It hasn’t been. What’s happening is that everyone is retweeting the message with a link to an article in the LA Times saying that the gay marriage ban has been overturned. But those people aren’t looking at the date of the article. It was published a year ago, on May 16, 2008. Prop 8 passed in November 2008, so unless we’re in some kind of Lost -style time warp, nothing has changed. This incident highlights a downside of Twitter. While it’s great at disseminating information quickly, it’s just as good at disseminating false information quickly. And if a lot of people are saying it — as thousands are here — it must be true, right? Wrong. What’s worse is that the LA Times itself is to blame here. They tweeted out a link to the story earlier today, and deleted it. They’ve since issue a retraction — in the form of a tweet, naturally. Crunch Network : CrunchBase the free database of technology companies, people, and investors
 
Putting Wolfram Alpha To The Test: Not Super-Impressed (But Here Are 50 Invites) Top
Wolfram Alpha is an early primitive. The new search engine that everybody is gushing over and that even Sergey Brin is keeping an eye on , is set to launch on Monday and may soft-launch as early as later today. If you can’t wait that long the first 50 TechCrunch readers to send an email to techcrunchpreview@wolfram.com will get invited to a fully-functioning preview. ( Update : invites are way gone). Or check out this screencast , which goes through some examples of what Wolfram Alpha can do. I’ve been putting Wolfram Alpha through the paces for the past few days and I come away impressed, but not super-impressed. Wolfram Alpha is obviously at a very early stage of development (hence the “alpha” in the name), and it does show a lot of promise. It is certainly not going to be another Cuil , the once-stealth search engine which fell flat on its face at launch . But given all the hype that is surrounding Wolfram Alpha’s launch, the already-brimming rivalry with Google , and the fact that it just bought a supercomputer to help handle its expected load, it needs to be evaluated seriously and without a handicap. When the company states on its blog that its algorithms “include some of the most sophisticated ever developed” it is helping to set expectations pretty high. Wolfram Alpha is not a regular search engine. It doesn’t scour the Web for data to return the best results. Rather, it ingests data into its own massive databases so that it can run the information through its own constantly-growing set of algorithms to “compute” the answers . These algorithms are based on computer scientist Stephen Wolfram’s Mathematica software. When it does come up with an answer, it can be brilliant. Scientists, engineers, and math geeks are going to love Wolfram Alpha. It can do calculus, regression analysis, compute orbital paths and fluid dynamics, and call up detailed information about specific genes. But too often it doesn’t have the best answers for basic questions and searches. For instance, it doesn’t do so well with searches for people who are not famous. I tried a vanity search of my name, for instance, and it came back with the distance between Erick, Oklahoma and the town of Schonfeld in Saxony, Germany (5,248 miles). A search for “techcrunch” came up with nothing. Company names work better for publicly traded companies. You get the stock price and financial data when you search for “Google.” A search for Facebook turns up Alexa data about the site such as pageviews and daily visitors (Alexa is not always the most accurate source for this sort of Web data, however). When I asked, “How much is Facebook worth?” it was comically flummoxed, responding: “Wolfram Alpha isn’t sure what to do with your input.” To be fair, nobody (person or computer) in the world knows the answer to that question. How about when it does have an answer? I asked it “How fast does hair grow?” It came back with “0.4 mm/day.” It also gave me the answer in nanometers per second (5) and millimeters per year (100). It also knows the “distance between the moon and New York City” (250,842 miles right now ), as well as the “Answer to Life, the Universe, and everything,” which is “42″ (as anyone who has read the Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy will tell you, as will Google ). Even when Wolfram does have an answer, it is not always the best one. For instance, a search for “new york state unemployment” brings up a 4.5 percent unemployment rate from 2006 (see screen shot above). That answer is completely useless if you want to know the current unemployment rate in New York State, which is 8.1 percent and which turns up as the first result on Google . I chose this search because Google recently added some basic structured data to searches for U.S. unemployment and population. Google pulls these results directly from the Bureau of Labor Statistics, whereas Wolfram can only compute information based on the data it has already ingested. When I do a search for “New York versus California,” Wolfram Alpha comes up with a wealth of trivia, including population, state capitals, the dates they joined the Union, their locations highlighted on a map, land area, highest points, lowest points, number of households, number of businesses, median household income, and more. All of this information is great, but is it the best information? Much of the data is from 2002. The population numbers are from 2006. Search for “New York state population” on Google and you get a July, 2008 estimate pulled straight from the U.S. Census Bureau. Of course, Google doesn’t provide all of the other contextual data in one convenient search result, but its answer for that one variable is better. All Wolfram has to do, though, to beat Google is update its data, right? That is easy enough. It is already an amazing resource and it will only get better over time. But there is a question of scale and approach here. Wolfram needs supercomputers to “compute” its answers. It is not searching for answers that are already out there. Supercomputers are expensive and generally don’t scale cost-effectively. Beyond that is the issue of whether Wolfram can ingest enough data fast enough to always be up to date, versus finding the best, most current answer to any query on the Web. To put it another way, can Wolfram Alpha ever become smarter than the Web? That simply does not compute. Finally, it is not as though Web isn’t evolving as well. Wolfram needs to store all of the data it sifts through in its own databases because that is how it imposes structure on the data. The Web is messy and unstructured. Yet there is a general movement afoot to impose structure on the data found across the Web. Everyone from semantic search startups to Google itself is making the Web more computable by categorizing the information on it in a way that computers can understand and manipulate more easily. Of course, to the extent that happens, Wolfram Alpha can take advantage of it as well. In search, whoever can come up with the best answer wins. As promising as it is, that isn’t Wolfram Alpha yet. Crunch Network : CrunchGear drool over the sexiest new gadgets and hardware.
 
MySpace Adds A Bottom IM Bar, Like That Other Social Network Top
I hate the bottom toolbar on Facebook. I simply never remember it’s there for things like applications and quick access to photos. But it is fairly useful as a place to store your IM buddy list so it’s mostly out of sight but still open. And that’s exactly what MySpace is now using it for. Starting today, users across the social networking site in English speaking countries (Canada, UK, Australia, New Zealand, Ireland and the US) will see a prominent bright blue bar across the bottom portion of their screens. On the right side of that bar resides MySpaceIM, the service’s instant messaging client. It works and looks exactly like Facebook’s integrated IM but the settings are a bit more accessible since they reside on the bar as well. And, to be fair, other services like Gmail have made this on-site chat in the lower right hand corner, a standard too. MySpace has confirmed the site-wide rollout today and says they had been beta testing it for a little while with Canadian users, and some users in the UK apparently also had access. Previously, the service had a downloadable IM client that worked with Skype. This onsite IM service doesn’t offer the Skype option — the two will work with one another though. Having a stand-alone client always seemed like an odd choice, as the point of these social networks is to keep everything integrated on the site. And though it was set in motion as a test before the change of power at MySpace, this is one of the first major changes to the site since new MySpace CEO Owen Van Natta took over. And interestingly enough, new COO Mike Jones previously founded Userplane , an online chat service, so he undoubtedly knows a thing or two about services like this. As with Facebook IM, you’ll be able to customize who can see you’re online and who cannot. You can also block certain users. And you can pop out IM into its own window. But my favorite feature may be the ability to collapse the chat bar by clicking the arrows all the way to the right. And that doesn’t boot you offline, it just puts your status in the lower-right corner and removes the screen-wide bar. The fact that this bar is screen-wide by default does seem a bit odd. Unlike Facebook, MySpace isn’t using this for anything else, such as applications. At least not yet. The IM bar will also not work with IE6, which I fully support as that’s the worst browser in the world. This bar will roll out to other countries over the next few months, MySpace tells us. You can find more details here . CrunchBase Information MySpace Information provided by CrunchBase Crunch Network : MobileCrunch Mobile Gadgets and Applications, Delivered Daily.
 
John Battelle Starts Searching For His Replacement At FM Publishing Top
Federated Media Publishing is looking for a new leader. In a blog post today, founder John Battelle says after four years he is conducting an executive search to find somebody to “take it to the next level.” The blog advertising network is trying to branch out into something called “ conversational marketing,” which it is also trying at the same time to invent. After shopping the company around last year and not finding a buyer willing to pay his price, Battelle decided to raise $50 million instead . With those investors comes pressures for growth and profits. Battelle claims once wrote that he finds the prospect of making ” lots and lots of money . . . uninteresting.” Now, as he notes in the comments, he says that “there is almost nothing I find uninteresting about running FM”. But he realizes it is time to step down, though he writes that he will still be deeply involved with his baby in other ways such as bringing in advertising clients. He also offers these tidbits about FM’s business. It made nearly $40 million in revenues in its third year, 2007 2008. Update : Battelle was referring to 2008 when he mentioned the company’s third year, though this was ambiguous in the post. Last year, FM distributed $25 million in revenues to its network of blogs. Assuming a 50/50 split that would have generated $25 million in revenues for FM, but it also has other sources of revenues from its newer conversational marketing campaigns, events, and other businesses. Crunch Network : CrunchBase the free database of technology companies, people, and investors
 
Play.fm Lets You Tune Into An Impressive Collection Of DJ Sets Online Top
I’ve fiddled with the beta version a few times before, but I’m happy the Vienna, Austria-based startup is now ready to release its eponymous service, Play.fm , publicly so I can finally tell you about it, too. Yes, it’s another online music startup, but worth a second look if you want my opinion. Here’s how the young company pitches the service (it’s hard to categorize in a short summary): “PLAY.FM sets new standards for on-demand streaming radios: the beta version transforms the largest audio database of DJ sets and live recordings into an intelligent platform with various possibilities of participation.” Ok, that didn’t really help either, so let me give it a shot. What Play.fm wants to be is a place where people can come listen to professionally produced DJ sets, live recordings and radio sessions that are uploaded primarily by the artists themselves, targeting a mainstream audience. It’s not a place for users to upload or stream individual tracks or create and share digital mixtapes, but rather acts as a central hub where people can discover, stream and buy new music mixed together or recorded live by professionals. In turn, the uploaders get a comprehensive set of audience statistics and hopefully some visibility. This also opens up some interesting opportunities for labels, agencies, bookers and event organizers. To a degree, you could compare Play.fm to services like SoundCloud and Fairtilizer , although those are targeted more to a professional audience at the end of the line as well, and are mostly centered around individual tracks rather than DJ sets or content recordings. Play.fm is also up against the plethora of websites that host and play DJ sets (mostly limited to one genre) in an online radio station style and usually based on a paid subscription service. Non-uniqueness notwithstanding, Play.fm does a really good job at serving their target audience with an on-demand streaming catalog of over 12,000 DJ sets and live sessions already, and does a great job in offering a satisfactory user experience to listeners. The audio player displays sound bites in wave-form (again taking a page from services like SoundCloud), which means it enables the user to set time markers in order to identify and inquire about tracks he or she may not know yet, wiki-style. That makes the service incredibly addictive, at least for people like me. Business model, you ask? Advertising, evidently, but also music retailing. See, each track that gets identified by Play.fm (1.4 million tracks so far) can be purchased via what the startup refers to as the Meta-Shop, which essentially pulls together pricing, track quality and purchase locations from 5 different online music shops, with 20 more on the way. Play.fm picks up a commission on all sales that are generated by people who click through to the actual online stores and complete the purchasing process. Color me impressed, but do give it a whirl yourself and let us know what you think, too. Crunch Network : MobileCrunch Mobile Gadgets and Applications, Delivered Daily.
 
MXP4 Raises $2.7 Million For Interactive Digital Music Technology Top
MXP4, a startup that creates interactive tools that allow artists and producers to let listeners “play” and interact with digital music, has raised $2.7 million in funding from Sofinnova Partners and Ventech Capital. The Paris-based company previously raised $6.5 million in funding from the same investors in 2007. Launched in 2007, MXP4, which offers a digital format to music that rivals the MP3 format, lets users remix tracks, add images and video content, add music layers and more. The startup is also replacing founder and CEO Gilles Babinet (who will become the chairman of the board) with Albin Serviant, former executive vice president and general manager of Vivendi Mobile Entertainment. Crunch Network : MobileCrunch Mobile Gadgets and Applications, Delivered Daily.
 
Google Friend Connect Adds Recommendations Gadget Top
Google has rolled out a new recommendations gadget that allows sites that use Google Friend Connect to see which parts of their websites their visitors like best. Publishers can create the gadget on Google Friend Connect’s site and then embed the code into their sites. Once the gadget is embedded, members can then recommend the content they like, anything from a whole page to a single photo by clicking a “recommend it” button that accompanies any piece of content on the site. It’s useful for both publishers and visitors, because they can easily see what parts of a site are the most popular. The items with the most votes will rise to the top of the list within the gadget, making it easier for others to find those features even if they are buried deep within a site. Website owners can also see which members have recommended a given item and learn more about them. Google Friend Connect, which is the company's own data portability effort, was opened up for all websites in the beginning of December 2008, right when Facebook made Facebook Connect generally available as well. To compete with Facebook Connect, Google has been steadily adding useful features to ramp up its Friend Connect product, including comment translation, a Social Bar , and integration with Google’s weblog publishing service Blogger. Here’s a video showing how the gadget works: Crunch Network : CrunchGear drool over the sexiest new gadgets and hardware.
 
Yuuguu To Add Skype Calling To Its Screen Sharing Service Top
Yuuguu , the remote desktop / screen-sharing collaboration service which integrates all the main instant messaging platforms is to complete the pack by adding Skype. It officially launches next Tuesday. That obviously means that as well as chatting via IM during screen sharing you can make free and low cost VOIP calls to your interlocutor. However, there is a drawback as Skype-based screen sharing (as opposed to using IM from another platform) is only Mac-based and will be one to one. But unlike most screen sharing applications, Yuuguu does not require participants to download any software - only the host needs access to Yuuguu. Participants get sent a standard web link that will allow them to view the host’s screen. Crunch Network : CrunchBase the free database of technology companies, people, and investors
 
Billing Revolution's 'Single-Click' Mobile Payment Service Now Accessible Via SMS Ads Top
Billing Revolution, a startup that offers a single-click billing and payment service for commerce transactions on mobile phones, is partnering with MoVoxx, a mobile advertising network that leverages SMS messaging, to place commerce ads on mobile phones. MoVoxx advertisers can implement Billing Revolution’s one-click billing and payment service in SMS advertisements so that consumers can purchase products directly from the ads received on their phones. MoVoxx serves short, interactive ads under opt-in SMS messages for retailers such as Kraft, Sears and 1-800-Flowers. Founded in 2008, Billing Revolution is trying to streamline mobile purchases by offering an easy- one click solution (similar to Amazon’s feature). Once consumers are ready to buy something from the Web from a vendor that employs Billing Revolution's service for payment, they are taken to Billing Revolution's purchase page where they input credit card information from their phone. Once complete, Billing Revolution automatically sends an SMS receipt to their phone, which contains a link. After clicking that link, authentication is complete and with all future purchases, consumers will need only to click 'buy' for a transaction to be completed. It sounds pretty simple and easy but there are some drawbacks to Billing Revolution’s service. Billing Revolution charges a 3.5% transaction fee plus 50 cents per transaction. With those fees it’s tough to take a cut from micropayments, which are already small to begin with. This is a particular problem with mobile applications, a business that Billing Revolution hoped to capitalize on, because an app developer wouldn’t want to take a 50% cut on a song or app that was sold for $1 or $2 on the iTunes app store. But for larger purchases, Billing Revolution’s service could turn out to be profitable for e-commerce businesses who have mobile transactions. Mobile carriers generally take a revenue share in e-commerce transactions taking place on mobile devices. In some cases this can be as high as 60%. With commerce powered by Billing Revolution, retailers can bypass large carrier fees (but still have to pay the 3.5% percent and 50 cents transaction fee). Crunch Network : CrunchGear drool over the sexiest new gadgets and hardware.
 
Trouble Ahead For Blip.fm? Top
In an honest blog post , music recommendation and streaming service Blip.fm (which we likened to a Twitter for music when it launched almost exactly one year ago), CEO Jeff Yasuda has indicated that the startup is going through a rough phase right now that has forced it to make some fairly painful changes to their service. The blog post, titled ‘Navigating the storm’, speaks volumes about Yasuda’s sentiments on the music industry in general, even if they are not all that outspoken. A short excerpt: The challenges involved in running a start-up in the music space are immense. To be honest it's completely nuts, but we are trying to navigate our way through the perfect storm: a struggling music industry, a global economic meltdown, and a fundamental shift in the way people relate to one another and share their appreciation for music. The biggest change mentioned in the post is the following: the music Blip.fm will be streaming from now on will primarily be coming from Imeem , which means there will be some limitations to what can be streamed henceforth. This decision affects Blip.fm users not located in the U.S. in a big way, which basically means about 80% of its current user base is now using a trimmed down version of the service. The other changes are: * Adding urls to public mp3s will be limited to legitimate bands and labels approved in our systems * The embeddable widget will still show blip messages, but won't play the music in most cases. * Where applicable, old blips will be replaced with content from the imeem catalog, but anything that doesn't match will temporarily cease to function. We plan to add tools to allow you to correct any false matches and find replacements for unavailable tracks. * We plan to add a preference to skip 30 second clips. * Additional media content will be available as it is sourced via new partnerships. Yasuda says he can’t go into detail about why the changes were made exactly, so we can only speculate about it at this point. The big elephant in the room here is that most of Blip.fm’ music catalog was being sourced from SeeqPod , and by now we know what kind of trouble that company is in (although they might still be saved by Microsof t). He does mention that the startup has engaged in talks with ‘lawyers, artists, people from the labels and aggregators’ besides software developers, publishing companies etc. to ensure the service stays alive and can keep adding features. I’ve contacted the Blip.fm team for more information and will update this post if and when they get back to me. Looking at their Compete stats (which usually underestimate actual traffic for websites), Blip.fm actually appears to have been growing nicely the past few months. Compete pegged monthly unique visitors going to the service at about half a million in April. We should also note Fuzz, the initial company behind the Blip.fm service for which they raised an undisclosed amount of angel funding back in February 2008, recently sent its music destination site / social network Fuzz.com to the deadpool to focus completely on Blip.fm, making the whole situation extra painful for the 4-headed team. Too soon to put Blip.fm on deadpool watch, but beyond a doubt its future is now less bright than it was before. Crunch Network : MobileCrunch Mobile Gadgets and Applications, Delivered Daily.
 
About Those iPhone App Store Revenue Numbers Top
I don’t think it’s a stretch to say that Apple’s App Store has been more successful than even Apple ever imagined. It entered a market that had been completely controlled by carriers and handed the keys over to third-party developers to make their own apps. Just over nine months later, over 35,000 of those apps had been made which have been downloaded over a billion times . So it’s surprising when you see numbers like the ones Lightspeed Venture Partners published yesterday, estimating that Apple had made only somewhere between $20 and $45 million dollars in revenue off of the App Store. Surprising, until you dig deeper. First, I’m not convinced these numbers are sound. While the author, Jeremy Liew, makes some good calculations, the numbers are still drawn largely from a survey. He did this because Apple doesn’t release actual numbers for App Store sales beyond the big numbers like a billion downloads. But Apple has given out what are probably better numbers than the survey results numbers over the past year. For example, back in August, none other than Steve Jobs himself said the App Store was pulling in $1 million a day in sales.  Now, that was a long time ago, and the App Store has grown tremendously since then, but let’s go with that figure for argument’s sake. $1 million a day means that Apple would be making $300,000 a day (its 30% cut). Extrapolated out over 10 months (the approximate age of the App Store), that would be about $90 million. That’s already double Liew’s high-end estimate. And Jobs would not throw a number like this out there lightly. Apple, if anything, likes to set expectations low and exceed them. For Jobs to throw out that figure and say that the App Store could one day be a billion dollar a year industry , to me means that he thinks it will at least be that big of a business. Yes, it seems likely that the average price of apps have fallen since August given the rise of $0.99 apps, and probably that the ratio of free-to-paid apps has grown, but that’s why the daily sales angle is an interesting one to look at. No matter what ratios changed, there are also a ton more apps being downloaded — both paid and free — than there were in the first 30 days. And so if anything, this $1 million a day sales mark is probably low compared to what it’s at now. And there are other numbers that suggest this as well. Back in March, one analyst cut into Apple’s December quarter numbers and came out with $200 million in app sales just for that quarter . That’s probably way too high for a number of reasons — namely that it’s hard to know the ratio of iTunes/App Store/iPod accessory sales, which are all clumped together. But even if it’s way off, that’s just for the quarter, and it’s another sign that Liew’s numbers are probably way too low. But even at $100 million, the App Store would still be a small drop in Apple’s bucket when it comes to revenue. But what Liew only indirectly hints at in his report is that this is what Apple has always been expecting. Since day one of its unveiling, Apple has said that it did not plan to make a lot of money off of the App Store. Sure, that may have been slightly disingenuous (again, Apple likes to set expectations low), but Apple’s stated rationale behind taking a 30% cut was to be able to keep the App Store up and running — not to make money. Apple is a company notoriously mindful of its high margins, so why doesn’t it care about making a lot of money with the App Store? Dan Frommer of Silicon Alley Insider has this exactly right: it’s because the App Store is one of the, if not the , key driver of two products that are very high margin: The iPhone and the iPod touch. The App Store is based around the exact same model as its parent iTunes Store, which sells music at a very small markup in order to sell iPods. I don’t think I have to explain how well that has worked. Another thing to think about is even with the success of the iPhone, Apple still has a very small percentage of the mobile market. Depending on the moves it makes over the next couple of years — namely getting into China and getting off of its exclusive AT&T deal in the U.S. — this percentage could grow by leaps and bounds. When that happens, App Store sales will continue to grow and thus, revenue from the App Store will continue to grow. Remember, the App Store is still not even a year old, and for much of that time, the number of iPhones and iPod touches in the market was nowhere near what it is today. The download pace is quickening, and the revenue pace should be as well. Yet another variable is that Apple takes $99 a year from developers who develop for the App Store. There are tens of thousands of those. Again, not a huge chunk of money, but it all adds up. But the biggest thing that these numbers draw attention away from is the true potential of the App Store. The reason for that is, it’s not here yet. When in-app payments launch with the iPhone 3.0 software this summer, the sky could literally be the limit in terms of how much both developers and Apple could make off of this. Yes, Apple will still take a 30% cut of these sales. And given that it has to do basically nothing more than it’s already doing to get that extra 30% — it’s pure gravy. I think Liew’s numbers are well below the actual revenue numbers, but no matter if its $50 million, $100 million or $200 million, that’s not a huge amount of money for a company that has nearly $30 billion in cash in the bank. But going forward, that number is only going to increase both as the platform expands and as in-app purchases come into play. That’s not bad for a company that just wanted to make enough money to keep the App Store running. CrunchBase Information iPhone App Store Apple Information provided by CrunchBase Crunch Network : CrunchGear drool over the sexiest new gadgets and hardware.
 
MyLifeIsAverage: The Service Twitter Was Meant To Be Top
“What are you doing?” It’s the message that still resides at the top Twitter, even though less and less people actually answer that question. It wasn’t always that way, Twitter did just begin as a way to tell friends what you were doing. Then it got all popular, and everyone ruined it (or made it a hell of a lot better). But what if you do just want a stream of mundane updates? Then MyLifeIsAverage is for you. The site asks you to “share your everyday mediocrity.” Here are some examples: “Today I had meatloaf for dinner. Tomorrow I will have leftover meatloaf for lunch” “Today I was talking on a cell phone and my legs got tired, so I sat on the floor.” “Today I accidentally dialed my girlfriend’s number when I tried to call my friend. I explained to her what happened and she understood.” “Today, when I walked into my math exam, my calculator said it was running out of batteries. I used it for an hour and a half and nothing happened.” “Today I hit the snooze button 3 times. I was 5 minutes late to work. No one said anything.” The best part of the site may be the explanations for features. For example, when you try and submit something without being logged in, you get, “Our mediocre server was being inundated with submissions, so until it recovers, only registered users can submit.” And on the topic of why you should register, the site states: “No one cares. It would let you comment on submissions, but really, does anyone need or want to read your literary flatulence?” If you do register you can not only submit stories, but vote on existing ones as either “average” or “meh,” and you can comment. As commenter Rajiv notes, this looks to be the sister site to MyLifeIsG , a site full of boasts. Both are along the lines of the popular fmylife , for bitching about life.  This is my new favorite site; expect non-stop coverage. Crunch Network : CrunchBase the free database of technology companies, people, and investors
 
The App Store Crapshoot Strikes Again Top
Apple’s notorious App Store approval process has claimed its latest victim, this time for a ‘Refresh’ button gone mad. Except it hasn’t. So nobody is really sure why it got rejected. The button in question belongs to an application called Read It Later , a bookmarking app that makes it easy to save interesting websites you stumble across for when you have time to read through them (it’s similar to Instapaper , which incidentally has also had App Store troubles of its own). Read It Later has been available on the App Store for over a month, and developer Nathan Weiner recently submitted a new update that included some speed and feature enhancements. But for some reason, Apple has rejected the latest update for using a button that it has deemed to be misleading: “The refresh button is to be used to Refresh contents. Implementing standard buttons to perform other tasks will lead to user confusion. We recommend using a custom icon.” Apparently someone at Apple has unlocked a hidden function for the button (or perhaps they hit the wrong one), because Weiner doesn’t know what they’re talking about. In fact, the application has been accepted twice before while using the exact same icon. From the Read It Later blog : The icon in question however, does exactly that, it refreshes. When the user taps the icon, it refreshes the users reading list. This same icon is used by many apps that do similar functions, including rss readers, and other offline readers. Additionally, this icon has been used by the app since version 1.0 and version 1.1 and was accepted without question. Now, I can see why the tester may have been a little confused - the refresh button syncs any updated pages to your phone, and the first time you press it the app displays a popup telling you how it works. But as Weiner points out, there are countless apps that use a ‘Refresh’ button for the exact same kind of syncing functionality. So what gives? You may have noticed a trend here: we like to point out when Apple’s App Store approval process screws up. Not because we think the people at Apple are incompetent - on the contrary, they do an admirable job given the huge volume of application submissions they have to deal with. But the approval process is stopping some legitimate applications from getting through, and it isn’t stopping all of the distasteful applications , which sort of defeats the point. It’s clear that things need to change, especially since these problems are only going to become more common as the store continues to grow in size. Crunch Network : CrunchGear drool over the sexiest new gadgets and hardware.
 
Twitter: The Dog Ate Our Homework Top
Wow. Twitter has responded yet again to the whole @replies fiasco (that’s now four posts for those keeping score at home). Once again, this one is juicy. To be frank, this is exactly the post Twitter should have put up from the get-go. But it didn’t, and that led to this whole mess. Twitter co-founder Biz Stone leads off by talking about the confusion among users about the change that was actually made. This was of course entirely Twitter’s fault and Stone doesn’t back away from that. “I did not do my homework,” he says, and noting the company screwed up from a communications perspective. True. Stone then goes into what exactly the problem is, and it’s two-fold: First from a product design perspective, the @replies system never really made sense for people you don’t follow. While the default setting was to have this feature off, some 3% of users turned it on, but at times would be confused about it. The second problem remains the more pressing one: The 3% of users who did turn this on were straining Twitter’s servers. This is because every time someone would @reply someone else, Twitter had to scan the entire system to see who had what setting turned on to see which update to place in which timeline. Makes sense. It’s still not entirely clear what Twitter’s solution for this is going forward. Stone notes that “we cannot turn this setting back on in its original form for technical reasons and we won’t rebuild it exactly the same for product design reasons.” But he does say that the use cases people loved about the feature will be returning “new and improved.” That seems to suggest an entirely new feature (option 2 from the Twitter post yesterday ). I’m still concerned that this new feature will complicate Twitter in a Facebook-style way, but we’ll see. At least they’re saying the right things today. Even if I’m not entirely convinced that by Stone saying he didn’t do his homework on the technical side, he’s not more or less using the old “the dog ate my homework” excuse for Twitter as a whole here. Crunch Network : CrunchBase the free database of technology companies, people, and investors
 
Do Any Of You People Actually Work? Top
One thing we all do at TechCrunch: spend a lot of time on various social networks and other websites. But it’s our job, people. We get paid to screw around on Facebook, YouTube, Twitter, FriendFeed and about 6,000 other sites all day (quick tip, if you want to try out a service but don’t have a user account, try TechCrunch/Password, there’s a solid chance it will work). But when I’m spending time on these sites I notice that a lot of you are awfully active, too. Most of you have actual jobs that require you to complete tasks that don’t include uploading pictures to Facebook, updating your Twitter status, or listening to music on iMeem. But from where I sit some of you seem to be little more than social network processing machines. More than a few of you may need a little intervention of your own (if you can’t look away from the CrunchCam , for example, we’re talking about you). So be truthful in our anonymous poll. How many of the symptoms below are you willing to admit to? How much time do you waste every day on the Internet? * Have mixed feelings of well-being and guilt while at the computer. * Lose control of time while on the computer; want to quit or cut down, but are unable to. * Neglect friends, family and/or responsibilities in order to be online. * Lie to your boss and family about the amount of time spent on the computer and what you do while on it. * Feel anxious, depressed, or irritable when your computer time is shortened or interrupted. * Use the computer repeatedly as an outlet when sad, upset, or for sexual gratification. * Develop problems in school or on the job as a result of the time spent and the type of activities accessed on the computer. * Have financial problems due to on-line purchases or gambling. * Become tempted to get involved in relationships with strangers, which may put you at risk for victimization or jeopardize your safety. How Much Time Do You Really Waste On The Internet Every Day ( online poll ) Crunch Network : CrunchGear drool over the sexiest new gadgets and hardware.
 
Professional Network ResearchGate Is A LinkedIn For Scientists Top
Creating a social network for scientists is not a revolutionary idea— Academia.edu, Ologeez, and Lab Meeting are all startups that have developed variations of communities for researchers and scientists to share their works. ResearchGATE joins the group by offering a free LinkedIn-like professional network that allows scientists to connect with other colleagues, discover new methods, papers, and people and then collaborate using applications built specifically for researchers. On ResearchGATE, scientists can create Facebook-like profiles where users can list their education, work experience, skills and interests and attach research papers. Users can add professional contacts by searching for other researchers who have the same focus. ResearchGATE also gives users the option to engage in online discussions by joining or forming groups. ResearchGATE also offers a few applications that help connect scientists in the virtual world. ReStory, similar to GoogleDocs, allows users to collaborate together with colleagues to write and edit documents. ReMeet lets users schedule meetings and conference calls online and ReVote enables users to create surveys and polls on topics. ResearchGATE is planning to roll out several new features in the near future including virtual conferencing and a job board. The site also offers a powerful search capacity that scours its internal resources and all major external research databases, including Pubmed, Citeseer and others, to find research papers. ResearchGATE also suggests similar papers written about a topic when users upload their own papers, giving users an easy easy to find like-minded individuals and papers. And based on the profiles of other members, ResearchGATE can suggest other scientists, groups, and resources to users. Currently, ResearchGATE, which was launched earlier this year, has a user base of 50,000 researchers from 196 different countries. More than 40,000 papers and documents have been uploaded to the site and there have been 1100 groups formed around different subject matters. For example, over 100 Influenza specialists formed a research group to discuss the outbreak of the Swine Flu. And more than 1300 researchers from different disciplines formed a group to discuss research methodology and practices. According to the site, ResearchGATE’s groups center mostly around the disciplines of biology, medicine and computer science. Competitor Labmeeting, lets scientists upload all of those documents, organize them, search them, and share them. Academia.edu also lets scientists connect with each other and provides a useful news feed of papers, conferences and project news and allows users to stay up to date on current events in their field. What makes ResearchGATE’s site useful is not only its its ability to share documents but to be able to connect with scientists all over the world on issues of interest. By suggesting users with similar interests, the site does a lot of the networking work for users. Of course, one of ResearchGATE’s biggest challenges will be recruiting large numbers of scientists to the site. ResearchGATE is hoping to do this by forging partnerships with universities and research institutions and already has a few on board including The University of Georgia and the Medical School of Hannover, Germany. Crunch Network : CrunchBase the free database of technology companies, people, and investors
 
Tour Asia With GeeksOnAPlane, Get To Know Half The World's Internet Users Top
This is a guest post by Dave McClure , a startup advisor and internet marketing nerd who runs a seed-stage investment program for Founders Fund . So you consider yourself an internet entrepreneur, investor or expert, huh? Chances are you know a lot about what it’s like to be a Western technologist with Western customers, but you know very little about how the other half of the world (also known as Asia) lives and works. If you find yourself reluctantly agreeing with that assessment, perhaps it’s time for you to jump on plane with a bunch of other Bay Area geeks and venture over to the other side of the Pacific Rim. Founders Fund and Web2Asia cordially invite you to join over 25 other techies for an eastward trip we’re calling GeeksOnAPlane (don’t worry, emergency exercises such as this one are not expected mid-flight). Starting on June 7th and lasting for 10 days, our gaggle of geeks will hit up Tokyo, Beijing and Shanghai and learn lots about Asian platforms, markets, and partners along the way. And, of course, we’ll have loads of fun and do some cool touristy stuff as well. Ticket prices vary depending on whether you want to hit up all three cities or just visit one or two. See our event page for full pricing details and the ability to register online today. Airfare gets more expensive after today so make sure to register and book your flights soon. This is a once-in-a-blue-moon opportunity to get a crash course in Asian technology and its associated culture. You’ll not only have a chance to learn about marketing to Asia’s billions of customers. You’ll also meet entrepreneurs in Tokyo, Beijing, and Shanghai to learn how they execute their visions, and how you can translate certain Asian phenomena - such as advanced mobile technology and lucrative casual gaming experiences - into products that appeal to Western audiences. These are just some of the topics our tour will touch upon: - Internet & Software, Mobile Technology, Gaming Environments, Search & Social Platforms - Startup / Business Culture in China & Japan, Vertical Market Opportunities, Market Entry Partners - Investment Climate & State of Angel / Venture Capital / other investment sources - Networking with new people, making cross-cultural connections & partnerships for long-term benefit To learn more about the trip, and the various events it entails, visit the GeeksOnAPlane website . We look forward to having you join us! Crunch Network : CrunchBoard because it’s time for you to find a new Job2.0
 

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