Tuesday, May 12, 2009

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Haven't Tried It Yet, But FutureFeed Tells Me I'm Going To Love It Top
Real Time is the new black. Everyone’s doing it, or wants to be doing it. Even Google says it’s one of the biggest challenges in search today (making sense of all that real time data). So it isn’t surprising that people are making fun of it. Jonathan Abrams (who has mocked Incubators of Incubators and Feed aggregators , now goes after Real Time with FutureFeed , which “answers the simple question: What will you be doing?” “Are you sick of hearing what your friends are doing after the fact?” FutureFeed asks. “FutureFeed tells you what your friends are doing before they do it!” Like Google Future Search , this is a joke. And it’s a good one, at least for those of us who’ve jumped on the Real Time bandwagon and haven’t looked back . Enjoy. When he’s not mocking the Internet, Jonathan builds a real startup at Socializr . Crunch Network : MobileCrunch Mobile Gadgets and Applications, Delivered Daily.
 
Twitter Still Headed To The Moon With 17 Million U.S. Visitors In April Top
Looking at Twitter’s visitor growth charts every month is like watching a rocket go to the moon. ComScore released its U.S. numbers for April, 2009 today and it shows Twitter reaching 17 million unique visitors in the U.S. during the month, an 83 percent increase from March when Twitter had 9.3 million domestic visitors. While Twitter nearly doubled its audience in April, its monthly growth rate did temper down from the 131 percent growth in March. Given Twitter’s rocket-like trajectory, it is appropriate that just about two hours ago we saw the first tweet from space . But it still has plenty of places to grow here at home. As it spreads into the mainstream, it is getting a boost from celebrities and TV. For instance, now Nightline is developing a new “ Twittercast” show called NightTline which will incorporate viewer feedback via Twitter. If Twitter is experiencing a 60 percent abandonment rate every month, as Nielsen recently suggested , those people sure are being replaced at an awfully fast clip. Meanwhile, everyone and their mother is trying to get into real-time search , an area Twitter seems to have a lock on for now. Visitors are spending on average 7.9 minutes a day on Twitter, which is twice as much as in December. Domestic pageviews are estimated at 428 million, up from 219 million last month. All of these numbers are just for visitors to Twitter’s Web site, and do not include mobile or desktop clients. They also include people who visit Twitter but don’t necessarily have an account (treat it as a proxy). Global numbers haven’t come out yet from comScore, but in March it estimated Twitter’s global visitors at 19 million , which was about double the domestic number. So is Twitter worldwide now past 30 million? It could very well be. Crunch Network : CrunchGear drool over the sexiest new gadgets and hardware.
 
Survs Is Now Taking Questions Top
Online survey tools are a dime a dozen, but you will not be sorry you’ve checked this one out. I signed up for Survs earlier this year because I’ve tried a number of online survey applications in the past and none have proven to suit my specific needs so far, and I wanted to see if it was a match for the likes of SurveyMonkey , Zoomerang and countless others I’ve tested. Unfortunately, the startup was in private beta and refused to grant me access for months on end, until today. As just announced on the company’s blog, Survs is now in public beta and free for all to take for a ride. Survs helps you create, edit, deploy and analyze web-based surveys that can be easily and significantly customized. Not to say that it boasts loads of features you won’t find in any other online survey tool, but I found it incredibly easy to set up and edit new surveys as a first-time user and that’s already a notable achievement for services that are so easily made over-complex. I particularly liked the fact that a lot of attention has gone to the overall design and copywriting of the AJAX-heavy application, which made the whole experience remarkably straightforward every step of the way. Survs lets you kick off with a basic feel, but after some time you’ll notice the little things that show how much power remains hidden behind the application’s primary screens. The service has been designed to make it easy to collaborate with other people on surveys, and it even enables you to share your surveys results, templates and themes online at any point, which are features that are too often missing when web survey tool providers start feeling the need to make their applications too simple. In my opinion, Survs pretty much strikes the perfect balance between easy-to-use and feature-rich. Surveys can be distributed to users in various channels, each with their own reports, either by a simple hyperlink, e-mail or an embeddable widget. I created a quick one you can see below, but if I have any gripes about Survs it’s that they don’t really deliver a great end user experience: Extra bonus points go to Survs for considering internationalization of the service right off the bat, with the ability to choose from eight (mostly European) languages for survey templates and text fields. Users can even go ahead and create and apply custom languages sets to any survey, which is very smart. The app may well be in public beta for now, but no word on pricing yet, although the company is boasting about the fact that it will charge competitive prices for upgraded accounts. So far, you can see the link for the upgrade plan in your account settings, but clicking in it doesn’t reveal the tariff plan yet nor does it tell you anything about the premium features you’ll be buying yet. I asked the company for feedback about that part of the equation, but unless they utterly fail to live up to their promises of keeping the rates below average, I’d definitely consider becoming a paying customer. Update: that was quick. “Paying customers are charged monthly or annually. Monthly plans range from $20 USD to $120 USD, in addition to the feature-limited free plan. All paid plans are complemented with a usage rate. Each of these plans include a maximum number of survey responses that can be collected per month. Customers exceeding this threshold will be charged for each response over the limit in the end of the relevant subscription cycle.” Survs is a product of Enough Pepper , a small startup from Lisbon, Portugal. Crunch Network : MobileCrunch Mobile Gadgets and Applications, Delivered Daily.
 
Disciple Is A Real-Time Player-To-Player Fantasy Battlefield For Adults Top
Casual head to head games, also known as synchronous or real-time games, are becoming increasingly popular on the web. Geewa, Zynga, and Playfish all offer real-time synchronous social games where you can play against another player live, not against the computer. Resistor Productions has merged a synchronous game with role-playing, blood, guts and gore aimed at adults called Disciple. Known as a massively multiplayer online role-playing game (MMORPG), Disciple is delivered entirely over the web browser (no separate download is required). Disciple's fantasy world, Aphelion, is pretty brutal and violent with bloody battles between you and other users that last sometimes to death. Players and opponents fight against each other in real-time to gain points, weapons and armor to increase in player ranking. All players compete for “geldors,” the virtual world’s money, based on battle wins and losses. There is also the option to create or join a clan of disciples to determine allies and enemies within the world. Free-to-play, Disciple also gives users the ability to purchase enhanced play content and options within the game via microtransactions and subscription fees. Resistor also brought us the dumb iGirl iPhone app. Crunch Network : MobileCrunch Mobile Gadgets and Applications, Delivered Daily.
 
Is Microsoft About To Multi-Touch A Nerve With Apple? Top
Zune fans (all 12 of you), I have some bad news. There will be no new Zune announcement in June, apparently that was just a mix up on Microsoft’s part linking to the wrong Twitter account. More importantly, it also means there will be no ZunePhone announcement of any kind. But there are still potentially some new details on that front today thanks to ZDNet’s Mary-Jo Foley . Foley claims that a “trustworthy source” has given her the hardware specs for Windows Mobile 7 Chassis 1, believed the project Microsoft is calling “Pink.” While it may not be exactly a “ZunePhone” per se, Pink is thought to be a project to build a more iPhone-like mobile device that uses the Zune software mixed with Windows Mobile — though it would likely be built by a third party. Like Google with Android, it’s thought that Microsoft would create an outline of specs it would like to see from hardware vendors, and that’s what this list Foley has is. And it’s very interesting for a few reasons. None bigger than the word, “multi-touch.” The specs include an ARM processor, at least 256MB of RAM, at least a 800×480 3.5″ display, a 3 megapixel camera, Bluetooth, WiFi and Micro USB and 3.5mm audio jacks. All of those sound great — the screen in particular sounds nice. But the real key is this line in the core requirements: “Touch: Multi-touch required.” So that’s not just multi-touch as an option, that’s multi-touch being a central point of the project. Up until now, Apple’s iPhone has been the only mobile device with multi-touch support. But very shortly Palm is set to launch it in the Pre. For those who haven’t been paying attention, this has caused a lot of drama on the web as Apple’s COO Tim Cook made comments many viewed as hostile towards Palm when discussing the fact that Apple would protect its IP — it has several patents on multi-touch for mobile devices. But Apple doesn’t own all multi-touch patents, and Microsoft of course, already has a multi-touch piece of hardware with its Surface computer. Multi-touch support is also baked into Windows 7, and would appear to be a key part of Microsoft’s strategy going forward. But how that will play out in the mobile realm remains to be seen. Aside from the thinly veiled threats towards Palm, Apple supposedly talked with Google about not including multi-touch support in Android, before the first of those phones launched last year. Palm coming into the multi-touch world is one thing, but Microsoft entering the realm in the mobile world is something else entirely. I can’t wait for the next Apple earnings call to hear Cook address this one! That is of course, if these specs are legit. Crunch Network : CrunchBase the free database of technology companies, people, and investors
 
What Is Google Squared? It Is How Google Will Crush Wolfram Alpha (Exclusive Video) Top
One of the next frontiers of search is taking all of the unstructured data spread helter-skelter across the Web and treat it like it is sitting in a nice, structured database. It is easier to get answers out of a database where everything is neatly labeled, stamped, and categorized. As the sheer volume of stuff on the Web keeps growing, keyword search keeps getting closer to its breaking point . Adding structure to the Web is one way to make sense of all that data, and Google is starting the tackle the problem with a Google Labs project called Google Squared, which Marissa Mayer mentioned earlier today at the company’s Searchology briefing. Google Squared extracts data from Web pages and presents them in search results as squares in an online spreadsheet. Michael was at the event and got a personal demo (see video below). From Michael’s Searchology notes : Google Squared is launching later this month in labs. Google Squared returns search results in a spreadsheet format. It structures the unstructured data on web pages. So a search for Small Dogs returns results with names, description, size, weight, origin, etc., in columns and rows. Google is looking for data structures on the web that imply facts, and then grabbing it for Squared results. "It takes an incredible amount of compute power to create one of those squares," she says. This type of technology has obvious applications for many types of targeted searches, including product search, health search, scientific searches, you name it. There are dozens of semantic search startups trying to impose structure on the Web to perform similar tricks. Another high-profile search startup which is launching on Monday, Wolfram Alph a, takes a slightly different approach in that it simply ingests massive amounts of information into its own databases where it can query it to its heart’s delight. Already there is a bit of a rivalry between Google and Wolfram because getting back structured results is a major new direction for search. Wolfram does a pretty good job parsing the information in its own databases, but those databases will never match what is available on the Web. Wolfram’s databases currently store only 10 terabytes of information, a tiny fraction of what is on the Web. (I will be posting my impressions of Wolfram’s search engine soon). Google Squared is an early attempt to take the messy data which exists on the Web and place it into simple tables. It is still very experimental and isn’t always on target, but you can see where this is going. Turning the Web into a giant database will crush any attempt to segregate the “best” information into a separate database so that it can be processed and searched more deeply. In the video demo below, a search for “camera” sorts the results in different columns by images, description, and manufacturer, resolution, etc.. You can refine results by clicking on a particular column such as manufacturer. A search for “rollercoasters” sorts results by name, image, description, height, length, and number of inversions. But sometimes it gets confused. A search for “spaceships” turns up a Corvette and a missile carrier. It is going to be a while before this makes it out of Google Labs Crunch Network : CrunchBase the free database of technology companies, people, and investors
 
Leaked Loopt 2.0 Screenshot Reveals New Focus On Places Top
Loopt was the first location-based iPhone app to get a lot of buzz. It’s a social network that lets you keep track of where your friends are with the help of the iPhone’s GPS. Since it launched in the App Store on day 1 in July of last year, several other competitors have come along including Google with its Latitude service (though it’s not yet available on the iPhone). Now Loopt appears ready to strike back with Loopt 2.0. The screenshot we received appears to show what Loopt is going for with this new version. The second button in the toolbar is now “Places,” something which didn’t exist before. A source close to the company says this is a big part of the new version. We hear this could help the company offer more monetizable features, such as coupons. Another thing we’re hearing is that the focus with Loopt 2.0 will be on something called the “life graph.” Basically this takes your social graph, and lays it on top of the places you go to give you suggestions on what to do. If this sounds familiar, it’s what Foursquare , the new service from the creators of Dodgeball (acquired by Google in 2005) has been working on . Another competitor, Whrrl , launched in the App Store last year with more of a focus on places, but recently revamped its offering to focus around social stories. The new version of Loopt is apparently still being worked on, but should be out this summer, we hear. One thing to note, is that it appears that one of the largest hurdle will remain for Loopt on the iPhone, as apps still cannot run in the background. That’s vital for something like a location-based network that thrives off of knowing where you are. But perhaps the company has something interesting planned for the upcoming Push Notification feature of the iPhone 3.0 software due this summer. Disclosure : Loopt offers a TechCrunch branded version of the service here . CrunchBase Information Loopt Information provided by CrunchBase Crunch Network : MobileCrunch Mobile Gadgets and Applications, Delivered Daily.
 
A Consumer iPhone App That Boldly Goes Beyond The $9.99 Threshold Top
Though you may not ever see them, there are apps in the App Store that sell for over $9.99. Mostly they’re for doctors or stupid gimmicks , but they exist. Now the first one relevant on a larger scale to consumers is about to become available with the SlingPlayer Mobile app launching tonight for $29.99 in the App Store. How this app sells will be really interesting. While other consumer electronic companies have made apps, most have given them away for free like DirectTV and the Remote app from Apple. But SlingPlayer will be a bit different from those since it’s streaming content from a piece of hardware you own to your iPhone — so it’s basically an extension of that device to use on the road. Of course, there’s also a big caveat: It will only work over WiFi. Talk circulated last month that Apple blocked the SlingPlayer app from the App Store because AT&T didn’t want it clogging up its bandwidth with streaming video. This is the same reason that it would block other bandwidth-intensive apps like a Hulu app, if that actually arrives . But what’s odd, as AppleInsider notes , is that SlingPlayer has an app for other phones like some BlackBerrys that lets it stream video over 3G — yes, on AT&T’s network. So it would appear that AT&T is showing bias against the iPhone, which has users that tend to use up more bandwidth. Still, how the SlingPlayer app fairs could be an indicator of the types of apps we see with the release of the iPhone 3.0 software (and likely new hardware) this summer. We know that apps will now be able to take advantage of the iPhone connector port, so there should be some very interesting apps that come out of that — ones that could potentially be more expensive than the $9.99 app price wall that has seemed to exist in recent months. And it’s in Apple’s interest for such a high-priced app to do well also. Remember, it takes a 30% cut of all sales, and seeing as it costs them no more to list a $29.99 app than a free one, that’d be a nice chunk of change for Apple. Of course, I still think the new in-app purchases also coming in 3.0 will be more important to the bottom line . Crunch Network : CrunchBoard because it’s time for you to find a new Job2.0
 
Google's SkyMap: A Virtual Viewfinder For The Stars Top
Google just closed out today’s Searchology event with an incredibly impressive application called SkyMap, made for Android phones. The application is launching today on Android Marketplace, and is definitely a must-have. At first glance, the application seems like a basic interactive starmap. You can flick through space, looking at your favorite stars and including overlays of constellations. But the application also houses far more impressive functionality. By tapping into the phone’s compass and accelerometer, SkyMap can serve as a virtual viewfinder for space - just point the phone in any direction in the sky, and the application will tell you which stars you’re looking at. If there’s a specific constellation you’re looking for you can search through the application’s database, and SkyMap will help you find it in the sky, using an intuitive arrow system to tell you which direction to turn. When you get close, a circle will a appear on the screen surrounding the stars that make up the constellation. It’s really a stargazer’s dream come true. Perhaps even more exciting: this is just a taste of what’s to come from our mobile devices. Phones are quickly becoming far more than communication tools - they’re becoming tools that streamline and enhance our lives. And now they can tell what we’re looking at in the real world, serving up contextually relevant information in real time. Crunch Network : MobileCrunch Mobile Gadgets and Applications, Delivered Daily.
 
Google Launches Search Options, Declares Real-Time Search Biggest Challenge Top
Google has just launched a new “search options” feature on its main search page. When you click on “Search options” you can filter your search by different types of results (videos, forums, and reviews), by time (recent, past 24 hours, past week, past year), as well as seeing related searches, a “wonder wheel” view, or a timeline view. At Google’s Searchology event, which is going on right now, Marissa Mayer listed the following as the hardest unsolved problems in search: - Finding the most recent information - Expressing that you want just one type of result - Assessing which results are best - Knowing what you’re looking for - Expressing your searches in keywords Notice that real-time search is the No. 1 problem. (Twitter and a bunch of startups from OneRiot to Tweetmeme are also working on it, with the latter two launching their own real-time search efforts today). And it certainly is a problem for Google, even with the new recent results option. Try searching for any of teh top trending results on Twitter right now like Miss California (vs. Twitter search results ) or Star Trek (vs. Twitter results ), and you don’t even get any Twitter results on Google. While real-time search is still a big problem, it is not the only problem. Some of the new options address the difficulty of searching back through time. The recent results get as real-time as Google can get, but you can also expand the timeframe. And you can look at an actual timeline of results, which looks for dates within results and then places them chronologically (this is sort of hit or miss—just because a date is mentioned in a text does not mean the entire result is about or from that period of time). Google now also lets you see related searches as an option. And the Wonder Wheel is more of a visual aid to see how different related topics are clustered together. When you click on any spoke of the wheel, it then causes that search term to be at the center. We’ve seen many of these techniques in the past, but Google is giving them a higher profile by putting them in its main search page.. Crunch Network : CrunchBoard because it’s time for you to find a new Job2.0
 
Tweetmeme Launches The Second Real-Time Tweet Link Search — This Hour Top
Tweetmeme , a service which tracks the most retweeted messages, has been growing fast and getting a lot of buzz as the best way to discover hot items on Twitter. So naturally, they want to get into the search game as well. But simple tweet search, others like Scoopler and Twitter itself have covered, so the decision was apparently made to get into the new buzzworthy Twitter search game: Content search. Yes, the second company within the last hour has launched a Twitter link search engine . Tweetmeme’s launch follows shortly after OneRiot’s offering which launched this morning . And both follow news last week that Twitter itself is working on the same feature . As an outsider, it would appear that a few of these companies are tripping over themselves to do this real-time content search before Twitter gets into the game — or worse, Google (which is also having its own search event today ). But both claim to have been working on this for a while. So how does Tweetmeme search stack up? Well, as far as I can tell this morning, both OneRiot and Tweetmeme are having launch issues. Certain functionality doesn’t work on either, so it’s hard to do a proper test. But as best I can tell, the two are slightly different. Tweetmeme seems to be more interested in relevancy of the links being tweeted out (something which it has always been good at thanks to its retweet data), while OneRiot is more apt at content coming in real-time. Tweetmeme does have an “Age” sorting feature, but it doesn’t auto-update the way OneRiot’s does. But Tweetmeme claims it indexes videos and images as well, while OneRiot offers the indexing of Digg links on top of Twitter links. Tweetmeme founder Nick Halstead claims Tweetmeme is indexing over 15 million links right now, while OneRiot general manager Tobias Peggs tells me they’re indexing over 2 and a half billion links. If you look in the comments of our earlier story , you can see the two of them playfully sparring with one another over their respective offerings. I think we’ll let the two duke it out for a while and get their search offerings in order a bit more before we declare a winner here. The only thing that is abundantly clear is real-time search of content using a social layer is hot as hell right now. Everyone appears to be trying to stake their claim and yell “FIRST!” I don’t care about “first,” give me “best.” Crunch Network : CrunchBoard because it’s time for you to find a new Job2.0
 
Live From Google: Searchology Top
Searchology is a periodic state of the union for Google search (here’s the last one ), and we’re here on the ground to see the announcements live. Less than a month ago the company rolled out major new News and Image search products at a similar press event in San Francisco. My live notes are below: First up is Vice President of Core Search, Udi Manber . He says the 20th century dream was to conquer nature (dams, roads, airplanes, rockets). The 21st centure will be about understanding people (health, communication, education, knowledge). Search is a big part of it, possibly leading the way, he says. Whatever the user problem, Google needs to fix it. Connection speed, language, etc. Manber is talking about fine tuning search more than anything, including things like bringing weather, sports, flight information, maps and other information into search appropriately to answer questions. Translation of information on the fly is also a key issue. We’ve made a lot of progress, and you’ll see some more today,” he says. Next up: Pat Riley, senior search quality engineer. His presentation is called “Making “Did you mean?” even better. He’s talking about the did you mean link at Google and how they’ve improved it. Example: query for “labor” could mean work, department of labor or childbirth. Adding spelling to the product to help users. Someone types ipodd, for example. Google suggest ipod instead. In the background Google is sending the incorrect and correct query to the back end to process queries. An alternative solution is to ask the user first and make them click a link, which results in less stress on Google. Next up is Scott Huffman, Director of Engineering, talking about Mobile Search. Search needs to be fast, relevant, comprehensive and fresh, he says. You should expect all these things on your mobile device too, he says. Mobile search is growing faster than PC search, he says. It’s the primary way some people access the Internet. And it is inherently local, knows where you are and is with you wherever you are. But there is a challenge with devices - there are hundreds of them with widely varying capabilities. Search is generally difficult to use. Keys are small, or no keys at all. Mobile search needs to be Complete (all of Google, on the device), Easy (effortless to search and get answers), and local (knows where you are). Users need to search the whole web and the mobile web (sites optimized for mobile devices). One thing the mobile team is doing is taking recent logged in searches from a user and making them available on a mobile device (not yet launched, couple of weeks he says). Less typing. For local search, Google will access your location and will consider than when returning queries. And Google Suggest will actually bring back results for local places (the demo is a local sushi place) even before you hit enter. Click the phone number and call them. Next up is Marissa Mayer , Vice President Search and User Experience. Talking about progress Google has made. blogs, images, maps, books, news, video and product search are all now brought into Google universal search to make search better, she says. When it launched two years ago it was brought into only about 2% of search. Now its used much more. 1 in 4 search results have universal search results, she says. They attempt to layout results in a way that is organized and compact, she says, calling the results page a Bento Box-like interface. Now she’s talking about ( the dreaded ) Search Wiki. 40% of searches on any day are repeat searches for a user. The ability to mark them up has proven to be really useful for users. Today they are collecting hundreds of thousands of search wiki annotations per day. What are the hard unsolved problems in search, Marissa asks: - Finding the most recent information - Expressing that you want just one type of result - Assessing which results are best - Knowing what you’re looking for - Expressing your searches in keywords Launching Google Search Options. Go to home page, do a search on something with recent activity. Get a result page that looks normal. Click show options at the top, which has date based filters, types of results filters and other filters. Search Options also highlights a timeline that shows the number of results for queries over time. Google extracts date information from web pages and shows the number of results. A different way to visualize results. Also, Wonderwheel, a quick visual way to explore a topic. You can also use it to refine, filter and view results. Google Squared is launching later this month in labs. Google Squared returns search results in a spreadsheet format. It structures the unstructured data on web pages. So a search for Small Dogs returns results with names, description, size, weight, origin, etc., in columns and rows. Google is looking for data structures on the web that imply facts, and then grabbing it for Squared results. “It takes an incredible amount of compute power to create one of those squares,” she says. Next up is Rich Snippets, which appears to be similar to Yahoo Search Monkey. It brings, for example, review data from CNET Reviews directly into search results (along with date of review). Yelp data is also brought in. For people, LinkedIn data showing location, company and title is presented directly in search results. Like Yahoo Search Monkey, third party websites can supply Google with structured data that is inserted directly into search results (should Google choose to display it). RDFa and Microformats are both supported. Next up - an Android application built in John Taylor’s 20% time. Developed in Pittsburg. Star map for Android phone. Shows several thousand of the brightest stars in the sky, as well as the planets. You can enable constellations and drag them around with your finger. Zoom in and out. And since the G1 has GPS, it knows where you are and can show you the night sky exactly from your location. It also knows which direction you are holding the phone. That means as you move the phone over the sky it moves the image to show you what you are looking at. Users can also search for things in the sky and will direct you which way to move the phone so that you are looking at it. It brings together android, search, and maps and is a 20% project. really impressive. Called SkyMap, launching today on Android market. wow. Crunch Network : CrunchGear drool over the sexiest new gadgets and hardware.
 
Can You Find Missouri On A Map? Create Your Own GeoDart Map Game With UMapper Top
Can you find Missouri on a map? How about on a map without any state boundaries? Try the USA Trivia Map game above. It gives you 15 seconds to find each state by placing a pin on a satellite map of the U.S.A. If that is too easy, then try the CrunchFood map game below, which requires you to correctly identify eating spots in Palo Alto, CA near TechCrunch headquarters. Or you can try to Pin The VC , by locating venture capital offices on Sand Hill Road (I have trouble telling them apart even when I am driving around). All of these map games were made on UMapper with its new GeoDart game creator. GeoDart lets you pick a map (choose from Microsoft, Yahoo, Google, CloudMade and OpenStreetMap), add locations, and give it a title, description, and rules. Then you can publish it and share it. The games typically require players to find locations on the map, and then it tells gives out points based on how close they get. Here is a video describing how to make a map game with GeoDart: Crunch Network : CrunchBoard because it’s time for you to find a new Job2.0
 
Twitter Is Talking Real-Time Link Search, But OneRiot Is Launching It Today Top
There was a lot of buzz last week upon the announcement that Twitter would soon expand its search offering to crawl links tweeted out on top of the tweets themselves. The ramifications of such a move are potentially large, as it would seem to be a way for Twitter to serve up a tailored, real-time view of what’s hot around the web. Who knows how long it will take Twitter to actually do that, but you don’t have to wait — another company, OneRiot , is launching the same functionality today. And scanning tweets is just a part of what OneRiot plans to offer. Today, it will also launch with a Digg link search, and soon it hopes to roll out live search results from a wide range of social services, Tobias Peggs , the general manager of OneRiot, tells me. But there are two keys to how this will work. The first is that OneRiot is crawling not just tweets and diggs, but is actually crawling the pages behind the links themselves. And second, this is all done in real-time. Content is indexed within 35 seconds, Peggs said. Big claims are one thing, but how does it actually stack up? Pretty good from my initial tests (running on an incomplete dev server). For example, I did a search for “ Spock ” (not to be confused with the title of Star Trek III ). In the real-time view, I got a glimpse of recent links related to Spock that people have been tweeting out and digging recently. These are done in reverse chronological order, and are constantly updating when someone tweets or diggs another link. (But the same links are bundled together to avoid clutter.) If you’re more interested in quality over real-time views, you can simply switch to the “Pulse” mode, which shows popular recent links about your query. Both views show not only the link, but who the link was first shared by (on either Twitter or Digg), and can also be expanded to show all the retweets and other users who dugg the link. Those users’ names are all hyperlinks as well to their respective profiles on Twitter or Digg to give them proper credit for the finds. Unlike FriendFeed, which recently implemented its real-time element, OneRiot takes the “queue” approach, where it indicates at the top of the results that there are new results waiting to be viewed. This is the same thing that Facebook and the actual Twitter Search use. Peggs says they built the system both ways to test it, and that users overwhelmingly favored this queue approach. The actual real-time view made some nauseous, he joked. But why is OneRiot better than a service like Scoopler , a service we covered the other day that also does real-time search? Well, OneRiot believes the two are simply different. Scoopler is focusing on conversational search (basically what Twitter Search is now, searching for words in tweets), while OneRiot is about content search (more like Google). Eventually, Twitter wants to evolve into a cross between the two, and some reports indicate that Google is also interested in exploring this intersection. But for now, it would seem that OneRiot will have a bit of a head start in parsing the real-time shared web links. One reason OneRiot believes that real-time content search is more valuable than real-time conversation search, is because conversational search is too easy to spam. We’ve already seen that in some regards when users manipulate the trending items on Twitter. That’s more difficult to do with links because OneRiot is looking at the content of the links and can pull out any that it thinks are spam. That would stop those links from appearing over and over again in the results. Rather than focusing on making money right now, OneRiot is taking the Twitter approach, and trying to create a product that users will love first. But the future has potential to be pretty bright in terms of monetization when OneRiot decides to turn it on (assuming that it gets a lot of users). According to tests OneRiot has done, real-time searchers are more likely to search multiple queries. And they do so more often throughout a day than those doing a regular web search, according to Peggs. And because OneRiot is looking at the content within links, it can see if a link is to an article talking about Britney Spears wearing some kind of outfit, and will serve up a contextual ad that relates to that. But again, that’s down the road — the users have to come first. To get those users, the service will first and foremost have to be good at what it does. It’s hard to know exactly how on a large scale OneRiot will stack up to Twitter Search or a simple Google Search for something, because as I mentioned, I’m testing it out on a limited development server right now. When it launches in a few hours, it should be more complete — but it is still very much a work in progress, according to Peggs. Still, the promise of real-time search is great. And it’s certainly more interesting that some of the stuff OneRiot was previously working on . Being able to get a current look at what hot items people are sharing across social networks on the web is something people want. But can a startup like OneRiot live up to the real-time hype? We shall see. Crunch Network : CrunchBoard because it’s time for you to find a new Job2.0
 
StockTwits Takes Over Chart.ly To Enrich Trading Chatter On Twitter Top
Now businesses that are being built on top of Twitter are starting to consume others that were in fact features of those very businesses to begin with. Case in point: StockTwits has just acquired Chart.ly , which is a tremendously logical deal. Chart.ly is a stock-chart service designed specifically for StockTwits (which is dedicated to talking about stocks on Twitter). Think of it as a Twitpic for stock charts (you can Twitter about a stock with a link to a chart on Chart.ly). Howard Lindzon , the founder of StockTwits (and before that, WallStrip), confirms to me that StockTwits now owns the code behind Chart.ly and that its creator, Adarsh Pallian, will continue to oversee the development site. Lindzon will help with ad deals. He paid less than $10,000 for the development work and will now split ad-revenues on Chart.ly 50/50 with Pallian. In a world of open APIs, this is how small M&A deals are done. Pallian came to StockTwits with his idea for Chart.ly and just went out and built it. “He just came to us,” says Lindzon. “He is a young guy who wanted to design something for us, and we didn't have the time.” Lindzon and his team were more focused on the stream of data coming into StockTwits, which currently has 70,000 followers on Twitter . Since Chart.ly launched a few weeks ago, about 3,000 stock charts have been created and shared. It was an obvious feature for StockTwits. Pallian proved that it was a good idea by building it and gaining traction for the feature quickly. Right now it is connected to StockTwits loosely, but will become more integrated now that StockTwits owns it. Crunch Network : CrunchBoard because it’s time for you to find a new Job2.0
 
Issuu Adds New Features In the Race to Catch Up To Scribd Top
Issuu, a company that lets you upload a PDF or other document and then flip through it easily on a dedicated Webpage or in a small embedded widget, is adding features to its service and site with the aim of becoming a more engaging destination for users. We’re big fans of Issuu—when the company first launched, it was one of the first services of its kind whose interface and functionality didn't suck. Other popular document sharing services include Docstoc and Scribd. Issuu says that it’s focusing on adding features to make the the site more of a community for both its free users and enterprise customers. Last year, the startup launched the beta of Issuu Pro, a way for professional publishers to bring their magazines and newspapers to the internet and enhance them with a variety of digital features and the ability to customize the viewing experience. Publications are ad-free (meaning no ads in the viewer from Issuu—any ads in the magazines or documents themselves remain), and publishers were only charged when their content was viewed, with pricing ranging from $1.10 to $19 per 1,000 publication views. Now, Issuu is taking its enterprise offering out of beta and changing its pricing model to a flat rate of $19 per month for any number of publications and any number of readers. Issuu has also redesigned its homepage for free and enterprise users so that the page gives you information about how your publications are performing including a newsfeed, statistics, and subscribers. The site has also launched a collaborative Groups feature, where people can collect and discuss publications related to any topic. Anyone can quickly set up a group, style it and then invite friends. You can add publications and/or discussions directly, or by bookmarking a publication while reading it. Groups can be private or public, and about any topic you choose. For example, I found a group called “Travel the World,” which included travel guides. Issue has enhanced embedding by adding customization and multiple view modes (magazine, presentation, text) and allows a full screen pop-up directly from the embed widget. Each widget now includes a Share menu (think YouTube), where users can share, embed, and explore without leaving the widget. And the site has added a Library feature, a user-friendly manager and publishing tool where you can edit, organize and publish/embed directly from the management platform. Document sharing services are finding a strong user base and are growing rapidly. Scribd, which also has a community-focus to its user interface, offers the ability to create and join groups. Like Issuu, Scribd has a free service and a premium service for enterprises. According to ComScore’s March numbers, Scribd definitely has the edge over both Issuu and Docstoc, bringing in 12 million unique visitors worldwide in March. Docstoc came in second with 2.89 million unique visitors in March, with Issuu coming in third with 2.4 million unique visitors. However, Issuu’s new interface and features are really visually compelling and easy to use. Scribd is the frontrunner in the race to be the most popular document sharing service, but Issuu and Docstoc keep adding innovative new features. Competition breeds innovation. Crunch Network : MobileCrunch Mobile Gadgets and Applications, Delivered Daily.
 
Zeevex Debuts Virtual Currency For Online Games Top
Come July, Atlanta-based Zeevex is going to start selling its Xtreme Online Game Card in more than 20,000 brick-and-mortar retailers in the U.S. thanks to a distribution partnership with InComm , providing a way for gamers to buy virtual currency offline to redeem their online value through the Zeevex website at a later stage. By doing so, users create what Zeevex calls a ‘Digital Locker’, containing so-called Zeev Tokens that can be used for a variety of uses in online video games (e.g., for purchases of Gold or Coins, monthly subscriptions, one-time fees, and micro-transactions). This is very similar to what PlaySpan is up to with its Ultimate Game Card. For more perspective on their product, read about their recent deal with hi5 or their acquisition of Spare Change . According to the press release, the Zeevex Digital Lockers will include social network plug-ins (for Facebook, Twitter, MySpace and Bebo) so users can trade Zeev Tokens with anyone but also provide parental controls and support for micro-transactions as low as 5 cents. Zeevex recently closed an undisclosed, private round of funding and is led by Ron Williams (CEO), Dean Gebert (CMO) and Robert Sanders (CTO). While the company would not go into detail on the financing round, it did say its seed round valuation was seven figures and that they are considering a VC-backed Series A round this Summer. Crunch Network : CrunchBoard because it’s time for you to find a new Job2.0
 
Would You Pay A Journalist To Report The News You Want To Read? Top
I’m not asking if you would pay for press coverage as a business if it were possible. I’m asking if you would ever do it as an individual, when you think there’s something that’s been under-reported or even downright unreported to date and you want to see that situation changed. If you were looking for a story to be told that you consider to be missing from the news coverage already out there, would you be inclined to take out your wallet, and maybe even rally your friends, family and peers to do the same in order to be able to pay a reporter to do the fieldwork on your behalf? Because that’s exactly what Global For Me ’s is trying to do. Here’s how it works: you suggest a story to be investigated on the GFM website, and donate personally or together with others until you have the necessary funds to effectively have the company find and hire a journalist for you to—and I’m quoting from the website here—”go to briefings, press conferences, request interviews or door stop reluctant interviewees on your behalf.” Examples given on the homepage include politicians and local authorities but also “celebrities” and “anybody else”. In my opinion, that sounds more like hiring a private detective, but maybe I’m missing something here. Could this model ever work? In theory, it doesn’t sound all that bad. Communities are formed around a given topic and its members, aided by peer pressure and the use of social networking services, jointly decide what exactly should be investigated, a reporter does his or her job and gets paid the standard rate for it, Global For Me keeps a commission and the audience gets the news and/or answers to certain questions it was longing for delivered right at their virtual doorsteps. Everyone wins, right? In practice though, I’m not convinced it will work. The service would have to receive a heap of traction before the model gets even remotely viable enough for the journalists who would take on work through the service as well as for Global For Me. I’m also inclined to believe people would fund certain investigations to have a reporter discover what they want to see discovered, and that more often than not the end result will not live up to their expectations. And since there’s isn’t a publisher / editor to act as gatekeeper, who would they turn to to complain about possible bias or sloppy reporting? And looking at it from a different perspective, who’s to say freelance journalists - even if unvoluntarily - at some point wouldn’t start reporting stories the way the original commissioners (and the ones paying the bill) would want to see them reported? It’s worth noting that there are other organizations providing this type of service , but like Spot.us - perhaps the most familiar example of an online marketplace for community-funded reporting - they are non-profits and are not looking to commercialize the whole thing like GFM does. So let’s go back to the original question: would you consider paying a reporter to report a story on your behalf, and why (not)? Crunch Network : MobileCrunch Mobile Gadgets and Applications, Delivered Daily.
 
Facebook Remains Stubbornly Proud Of Position On Holocaust Denial Top
Facebook is apparently done talking about Holocaust denial for now. A couple of groups that got more out of hand than the rest were taken down, but the company’s policy of permitting the groups on the site remains. “Denying the holocaust is not a violation of our terms,” says Facebook spokesperson Barry Schnitt in a comment to our post yesterday . Meanwhile, Facebook’s ban on pictures showing nipples from breast feeding women remains. The pictures are pornography and a violation of Facebook’s terms of service. Interestingly, Schnitt is the spokesperson that handles both issues, and seems quite comfortable with the respective policies. While we don’t have much officially being said, we do have some Facebook employees speaking their mind directly, and most are pro-Holocaust deniers. Product Manager Ezra Callahan describes the posts by Brian Cuban and myself as “incomprehensible reasoning.” Ezra is not a Facebook spokesperson, but Randi Zuckerberg, who is a Facebook Spokesperson, says of Ezra’s note “Really well-written, articulate, and insightful note by Facebook employee Ezra Callahan on being a Jewish employee and supporting Facebook’s policy to not remove groups that deny the Holocaust.” That sounds like a stamp of approval to me. Ezra’s arguments in a nutshell: - Facebook is a “company run by a prominent Jew” and can’t “possibly show preferential treatment to one offended group over others” - The Holocaust is just one of many human tragedies: “There are quite a few other especially-horrifying events in humanity’s recent past that likely merit the same level of consideration” - Providing a forum for Holocaust deniers lets people see how “stupid” they are Here’s where I’m going to take a ninety degree turn. I’m not going to address these issues head on. Brian Cuban is doing that already, and provides logical counterpoints to these arguments. But I actually think even engaging in this debate is dangerous. The Holocaust is in its own special category of fucked up human behavior. Not because of the millions of Jews that were killed in the actual Holocaust - sadly that’s just how we roll as a race. No, the problem is that Holocaust deniers make their arguments for one simple purpose - they want to finish what was started and wipe Jews off the planet. We all know this is the elephant in the room, it’s just that the lawyers who write terms of service don’t really know how to deal with that. Nipples are bad, even if clearly not posted for sexual reasons. Holocaust denial is ok, even if clearly posted in order to spread hatred of Jews. That’s not something lawyers can tackle. I don’t make that statement lightly, nor do I expect everyone to agree. But in the last few days I’ve read a lot (a whole lot) of Holocaust denial literature on the Internet, and it is extremely scary stuff. The whole point of it is to suggest that Jews are engaged in a massive conspiracy to fool the world. These are the same types of conspiracy theories that led to the Holocaust in the first place. When you engage with Holocaust deniers to talk about where the lines are drawn you’ve already lost. Ezra and the rest of Facebook is playing the game on their terms. Holocaust denial is a seed. A seed that will grow into a fully bloomed second Holocaust if ever allowed to germinate. And Facebook is providing the fertile ground and watering needed to do just that. That’s why a dozen or so countries, all of which otherwise support free speech, have enacted laws against Holocaust denial. People love to hate, even smart people with significantly more than a “shred of common sense” as Ezra puts it. So many smart people think there is a Jewish conspiracy to rule the world. They can’t help but believe it. And giving those people a place on Facebook to share and expand those ideas is just too dangerous a thing to do. They know they can spread hatred of Jews if they stick mostly to just denying the Holocaust. And if a few members get out of hand every once in a while, they can just say that the group exists only to talk about whether the Holocaust happened or not, and certainly not to spread hate. See the images on my post from yesterday to see how these messages go. Sure, we can’t shut down the dark places on the Internet where people are free to hate Jews and post pictures of breast feeding mothers. But Facebook can take a stand and say it won’t happen in their back yard. Holocaust denial is hate speech, and it cannot be given a place to take root. This isn’t a slippery slope, Facebook. It’s evil. Pure evil. Don’t plant a flag on the wrong side of the line. Stand firm against racial and religious hatred, even if you don’t have to. You’ll look back in fifty years and be proud that you did. Because no matter what your terms of service say, this isn’t porn . It’s the Holocaust. And it happened. Crunch Network : CrunchBase the free database of technology companies, people, and investors
 
Coming In June: ZuneHD … Or A Zune-Specific Phone? Top
So now Microsoft is happily seeding buzz through Twitter account @officethemovie , which is tied to the marketing website for ‘Office 2010: The Movie’ . The account was created recently and starting sending out tweets about 14 hours ago at the time of this writing. One of the first messages revealed a bit about the type of social networking integration the next version of Office is going to boast: “Office 2010 will include Twitter, Facebook, and other social networks integrated right into Word. That’s just a hint of what’s to come!” Update: turns out it was a fake Twitter account, so fortunately Microsoft didn’t link to it on their official website or anything … except, of course, that’s exactly what they accidentally did . Doh. Right after that one, there was another cryptic one about Zune , of which I’m not entirely sure what it has to do with Office exactly. It read: “June 2009 will be an important month for Zune lovers”, and was followed by another one that asked some people who expressed interest on Twitter that it concerns a ‘new product launch’ and that they should ‘hold off from buying an iPhone or Palm Pre’. Neowin is considering this to be either a hint for a new (HD) version of Microsoft’s media player (which CrunchGear confirmed was coming this year ) to be announced next month at E3 Expo , or the introduction of the much-rumored Zune Phone, a touch-screen multimedia cellphone Microsoft was reportedly working on together with Verizon. Fact is no one knows for sure what’s coming, but Microsoft has in the past made it abundantly clear that it wasn’t planning on entering the mobile device manufacturing market with a proprietary device, and that it wasn’t building a Zune-specific phone. That doesn’t necessarily mean it’s actually never going to happen, but I wouldn’t put any money on something like that being introduced next month. More likely, devices equipped with the latest versions of Windows Mobile will be extended with software that tightly integrates with Zune services (a project code-named ‘Pink’) although Microsoft could also plan the announcement of a major distribution partnership with carrier Verizon, despite rumors that the latter is also in talks with Apple for an iPhone contract when the current deal with AT&T expires. Or both. Or something else. Or maybe MS says June will be important for Zune just because it has a nice ring to it and they simply really don’t want you to buy a Pre or iPhone. Crunch Network : CrunchGear drool over the sexiest new gadgets and hardware.
 
Medialets' Big Bet On The iPhone Pays Off With A $4 Million Round Top
When Medialets was founded in June of last year, CEO Eric Litman and his team decided to take a risk. They bet big that Apple’s iPhone platform would explode. It did — and it’s taken Medialets along with it. Today, the mobile analytics and advertising company announces its series A round of funding. It was barely a month between the founding of the company and the launch of the App Store on July 11 of last year. But Medialets was there from day one. And thanks to that early start, the company’s offerings can now be found installed on nearly half of the iPhones and iPod touches out there in circulation. And their clients include many of the top downloaded apps. But the company clearly hopes the iPhone is just the beginning. With its new $4 million round led by Foundry Group , and participated in by DFJ Gotham and early Google investor Bobby Yazdani , the company is thinking expansion. It already has been on the Android platform as well since last September. But while that platform has thus far failed to ignite a new market the way the iPhone has, indications seem to point to 2009 being a good year for the platform with many more Android devices coming. The team has already secured over 1,000 developer partnerships between the iPhone and Android platforms. More importantly, Medialets is also looking to support BlackBerry, Windows Mobile, Symbian and Palm Pre in 2009. That would obviously put them on basically every major mobile platform. Medialets has a really nice looking offering it terms of its advertising platform (screenshot below), and Medialytics, its analytics offering, has proved me with some solid mobile data over the past few months (all anonymous of course). One nice thing about Medialytics, is that it can work whether a user is online or offline — something which is often the case with the WiFi-only iPod touch. CrunchBase Information Medialets Information provided by CrunchBase Crunch Network : CrunchBase the free database of technology companies, people, and investors
 
Brightcove Brings Its Ad-Supported Videos To Vudu Set-Top Boxes Top
Streaming video platform Brightcove has added another partner to its already-impressive group of associates. Vudu , purveyors of fine set-top boxes, have struck up a deal to stream Brightcove-associated content. Brightcove has, at last count, about twenty-one trillion API partners , and delivers video for big names like AOL and the NY Times . Those aren’t available on the Vudu box yet, though; it’s just launching now and the first (and only) video service to hit is Sony’s MyPlay , through which you’ll be able to watch Sony Music videos to your heart’s content. Joy of joys! Of course, it’s just a matter of the right people to sign on the right dotted lines to get other Brightcove-supported sites and services onto the Vudu. Ad-supported content is being tentatively embraced by big media, which is almost certainly a good thing, and this is one of the first real forays into pushing it onto a set-top box. A year ago, I would have considered the idea of Sony letting me stream their content onto my TV for free a ridiculous notion, but here we are. Pleasant surprises are mighty rare in this sector. The battle for the top of the TV set (or in the closet nearby for wifi-enabled ones like the Vudu) is getting pretty heated, and major deals like this tip the balance of power significantly. Plus, it ends up being good for the consumer as they pack more and more into a box you already paid for. We’ve just got our one screenshot for now, but tomorrow we’ll try to put up some video so you can see how she handles. Crunch Network : CrunchGear drool over the sexiest new gadgets and hardware.
 
Google News Gets An Update. Still Sucks. Top
I’m sorry, but for as good as Google is at organizing the world’s data, Google News absolutely sucks. Now, to be fair, I’m going to focus on Google News from a tech news perspective, because that’s what I follow. Maybe it’s better in other areas, but I doubt it’s much better. I bring this up because a new update to the service today promised “ More ways to see the story .” Okay, that’s true, as long as you don’t mind seeing stories that range from partially unrelated to entirely unrelated. Now, when you click on the “all XXXX news articles” link below each story cluster in Google News, you are taken to a page with a range of content. This includes not only major publication headlines, but blog headlines, picture thumbnails, a timeline of articles on the topic, and even quotes about the topic. The problem, as you can see in my screenshots below, is that Google cannot seem to cluster stories together correctly. If it sees a story is about say, a religious app being banned on the iPhone, it will cluster that with a story about iPhone ad data — even though the two are not the same story at all. Yet when you click to go to the new area, it indicates that they are the same story, as you can do things like “Search the story .” On any given day there are probably a dozen different stories about the iPhone (at least), and I guess it’d be fine (but silly) if Google wants to cluster them all together. But it doesn’t even do that. There are several clusters containing iPhone items. It seems to be just random which ones go where. The problem is that Google uses an algorithm to do this clustering. As the vastly superior news aggregator Techmeme , learned quite a while ago, there needs to be some human curation involved. While an algorithm may not be able to see the difference in iPhone stories (or Microsoft stories, or anything else in my example below for that matter), a human could. Further, the biggest problem with Google News when it comes to tech news is that many of the items that appear are laughably old. It’s fine if you want to say it’s for the masses to get a better overview of what’s going on, but at least indicate that these topics aren’t breaking items just because some site decided to write about it again a day or two days or a week after someone else published the story first. The timeline view kind of indicates the age of a story, but if you see it’s far from its peak, then don’t make it a top item on Google News. Almost all of the top items right now are far from their peaks. I could go on. Many of the headlines Google News chooses to use are complete nonsense and give readers absolutely no idea what a story is about. And the excerpts below the titles are often a gibberish mixture of author names, cities the story is based in and random links that don’t appear as links in the excerpts — giving you excepts like, “By Austin Modine Get more from this author Facebook has once again.” Brilliant. [photo: flickr/ang (3girls) ] Crunch Network : CrunchBase the free database of technology companies, people, and investors
 
Facebook Payment Platform To Enter Testing Soon. Only 7 Months Late. Top
One of my longstanding gripes with Facebook Platform has been its lack of a unified payment platform that would offer developers a way to tie a Facebook-branded payment system into their apps. Back in March 2008, the company announced that one was coming in the “next 180 days”. That milestone came and went, and since then the company has been quiet about its current progress (we’re typically told things like “It’s not coming out any time soon”). But now it sounds like payments are finally starting to make some headway, reports Eric Eldon of VentureBeat , who writes that Facebook is set to begin testing a payment system with developers “in a few weeks”. We’ve independently confirmed that Facebook is indeed planning to test a payment platform, and that it will be a limited to a very small number of developers. The need for a payment platform may not be immediately obvious - after all, there are already quite a few ways for developers to accept payments through third party services like PayPal, and some companies are making quite a bit of money in the process. But for the end-user it is night and day. Users would only have to fill in their credit card information one time, and would also trust the platform more than they would a third party. The lowered barrier to entry would likely result in an increase in the number of transactions across many applications, as developers shifted their revenue models away from advertising (which has generally done poorly on Facebook) and into virtual goods and premium services. Facebook could potentially extend the platform to allow payments on other sites, too, though I suspect they’ll make sure its working on their home court before they take it elsewhere. Crunch Network : CrunchBoard because it’s time for you to find a new Job2.0
 
Times Wire Gives You NYT In Real-Time. But The News May Be Old. Top
One of the biggest knocks against traditional media isn’t necessarily that it’s not online — most of it is now — but rather that it’s slow when it comes to delivering news. By the time an old media site gets a story approved, written and edited, a dozen blogs probably have already covered the same news. That’s not always the case of course, and for those stories, Times Wire , a new service by The New York Times, will be very useful. Times Wire allows you to see New York Times articles, blog posts and stories by some wire services as they are placed on the web. It automatically updates every minute, placing the latest articles at the top of a stream of content in reverse chronological order. As an overview of the entire NYT site, it’s actually quite interesting. Looking at it right now, I’ve seen five new stories pop up in the past five minutes. But for the individual sections, such as technology, it’s pretty limited. The reason goes back to content. If I only focus on the technology feed in Times Wire, there have only been 5 new stories in the past 2 hours, so it’s not like you really need a live look at that feed. Further, while some are certainly interesting reads, none are particularly new, again negating the need for a live feed. Business and Technology is actually one of the sections that has its own tab right now, as the NYT clearly knows that tech lovers will probably be more interested in this than the average reader — at least right now. For all other sections, you can use the “Your News” area to filter the various sections of the site into your wire feed. There are also photos featured on the right hand side of the site, that you can click on to go to the story they pertain to. And there is a RSS feed for the Times Wire, which is a nice touch — though the speed at which RSS travels to various readers will again likely negate any real-time bonus you would get if you kept the main Times Wire page open. Times Wire is the first NYT product built using the Times Newswire API , which the organization developed to give other sites access not only to its content, but to some of the interesting data it collects as well. Beginning tomorrow, Times Wire will be available on the homepage of the New York Times. For now, you can find it in action here . Overall, it definitely seems like a step in the right direction for the organization, as real-time is a hot trend right now. And it’s useful as a live overview of the entire site. But for people only interested in certain topics, it’s probably fine to stick with RSS because the real-time river isn’t flowing fast enough to necessitate keeping the page open. CrunchBase Information New York Times Information provided by CrunchBase Crunch Network : CrunchBoard because it’s time for you to find a new Job2.0
 

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