Sunday, May 31, 2009

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Go Bing Yourself, Right Now Top
It doesn’t have quite the same ring to it as go Google yourself, but now you can go Bing yourself. (Then again, Google took a few years ti become a verb.). Bing, Microsoft’s latest effort to compete in search , is now live on a “preview” site. The key thing to pay attention to is the guided search assistance on the left and the different experiences for the travel, images, video, maps, news, and shopping tabs. A few things to try: An ambiguous Web search: “turkey” (do you want images, recipes, facts, or a map of the country? The topic guides in the left explore pane will help you narrow your search). A travel search: “SFO to JFK” Video search: “Simpsons” (hover over the thumbnail to play the video) Image search: “Rollercoasters” (notice the infinite scroll). A health search: “Soar throat” Shopping: “Digital SLR” (sort by price or brand, get average ratings and CashBack). Maps: “BBQ” (automatically knows what city you are in and offers up geo-appropriate results). News Search: “Bing” (what else?) Check it out. Try a few searches and then tell us in comments if you will ever go back. CrunchBase Information Bing Information provided by CrunchBase Crunch Network : CrunchBase the free database of technology companies, people, and investors
 
Real-Time Twitter Search, Hold The "Real-Time" Top
Many believe the greatest potential of Twitter lies in its ability to perform real-time searches of various keywords. So when that functionality is delayed by some 3 hours, as it is right now, and has been throughout much of the night , with no explanation, you can imagine that users are going to get a little annoyed. Go ahead, search for anything right now — a good example is for the word “the,” as it’s used in a ton of tweets. The most recent results you’ll find are from 3 hours ago . Not only does this badly impact my vanity searches, but there are companies who now rely on Twitter Search to run services such as brand management. Imagine the horror Comcast must be feeling right now not being able to see my tweets constantly bitching about their crap service in real-time. Likewise, Trending Topics is not working as it also relies on Twitter Search. So we’re being tricked into thinking people actually care about the MTV Movie Awards. We’ve gotten tipped this a number of times throughout the day, but I’ve largely been ignoring it, trying to give Twitter the benefit of the doubt to at least update us on what is going on. But this is ridiculous. Fix your damn search functionality Twitter, you’re not much use without it. Crunch Network : CrunchBoard because it’s time for you to find a new Job2.0
 
Video: Inside The Google Holodeck Top
At this past week’s Google I/O event in San Francisco, Google brought a contraption it calls the “Holodeck,” for event-goers to experience. Basically, it’s a near-360 degree way to view Google Street View in fast motion, high definition video. Danny Sullivan posted a bunch of pictures of the thing earlier in the week. Unfortunately, Google only allows it to show the area at and around the actual Google campus in Mountain View, as I’m sure it doesn’t want any legal complaint from those caught sunbathing in their backyards. Also, while it does zoom past the area where the Google Goats were kept, it unfortunately failed to catch any of them on tape. Luckily, I did that for you a few weeks ago. Google’s Holodeck isn’t quite as cool as the Star Trek Holodeck , but give them a few years, I’m sure they’ll figure out how to do that as well. Crunch Network : MobileCrunch Mobile Gadgets and Applications, Delivered Daily.
 
Last.fm Brags About Uptime, Overheats, Goes Offline Top
Music service Last.fm , which was bragging about server uptime a week and a half ago, shuts its doors for the afternoon, claiming “datacenter temperature issues beyond our control” required them to go offline. The outage began around 12:30 pm PST, so we’re at two hours and counting. Updates are on their Twitter account . The twitter from May 20: Crunch Network : CrunchBoard because it’s time for you to find a new Job2.0
 
Republican PR Director Calls Facebook's Randi Zuckerberg "totally full of sh*t" Top
One thing I love about Facebook spokesperson Randi Zuckerberg - she says exactly what she thinks, and she isn’t afraid to use the power of Facebook to back up her opinions. Mean bar bouncers can lose their Facebook pages (this was later retracted but remains funny). Meanwhile, Holocaust deniers are given a pass. Now she’s taking on the Republican party, and the Republican party is fighting back. At a Startup2Startup event last week Zuckerberg talked about her experiences at the Republican and Democratic presidential conventions last year. The relevant clip (care of Ustream ) is above. “At the Democratic national convention we were like rock stars,” Zuckerberg said. “At the Republican national convention I sat in my hotel room by myself for three days, no one would meet with us, I was like begging people to meet with us.” Randi also recounts a conversation on a plane where a Berkeley professor calls Zuckerberg “you’re like the most powerful person in the world.” The Republicans aren’t amused. Matt Burns, the Director of Communications for the 2008 Republican National Convention left a long comment, calling Zuckerber “full of sh*t”: With all due respect, Randi Zuckerberg is totally full of sh*t on this one – at least as her comments relate to the Republican National Convention. As the Director of Communications for the convention, I can tell you we worked closely with Google/YouTube, Ustream.tv, Microsoft, and countless other companies to create a comprehensive and successful online campaign. Those efforts were recently recognized with five "Pollie Awards" from The Association of Political and Public Affairs Professionals. And we utilized Facebook – even if it wasn't up to Ms. Zuckerberg's standards – as part of our overall strategy. Is it possible Ms. Zuckerberg sat alone in her hotel room during the Republican National Convention because she never actually contacted anyone? Or maybe she forgot about the major hurricane barreling toward the Gulf Coast on the eve of the Republican National Convention? Or maybe she didn't really want to be around a group of conservative Americans in the first place? According to the Wall Street Journal: "'At the Democratic convention we were like rock stars,' Zuckerberg said Thursday to a conference crowd of what could safely be called Democratic-leaning entrepreneurs and investors." Wait. Ms. Zuckerberg bashed Republicans while speaking to an audience of her liberal friends? Shocker! In all seriousness, can Ms. Zuckerberg tell us what the Democratic National Convention did with Facebook – aside from pet their enlarged egos and take them to glitzy parties with the Hollywood elite – that Republican National Convention planners didn't? I guess next time we won't make the mistake of letting the business of nominating our Presidential candidate get in the way of the folks at Facebook being treated like rock stars. Apologies to Facebook. Our bad. Whenever Randi speaks, point a camera at her. There’s almost certainly a story in there somewhere. All I hope is that Facebook never muzzles her. As the most powerful person in the world, we need to hear more from her, not less. I’ve emailed Burns for confirmation that he left the comment, but the language is definitely his style . Update: Burns has responded: YES. I left it. I LOVE Facebook as much as the next person, but think the criticism was a bit misdirected. I can’t speak for the McCain campaign because I wasn’t working on its new media efforts, but the convention itself made unprecedented efforts to incorporate new media into our campaign. Over the course of our convention, we attracted 1.7 million unique visitors, and strategically partnered with Google/YouTube and Ustream.TV to draw an additional 7 million unique viewers to our content. And the GOP convention had more Facebook “friends” than the Democratic National Convention. We had about 10,000, while the Dem Convention had about 3,300. GOP facebook page: http://www.facebook.com/GOPconvention2008 Dem facebook page: http://www.facebook.com/group.php?gid=5209534425 Also encourage you to read the following news item: http://www.gopconvention2008.com/news/read.aspx?id=557 Crunch Network : CrunchBoard because it’s time for you to find a new Job2.0
 
Fotonauts Offers a Sneak Peak At Its Upcoming Fotopedia Top
When Fotonauts debuted at last year’s TechCrunch50, I called it a “gorgeous photopedia” because it promised to turn your photo albums into collaborative Web pages about different topics and subjects. Fotonauts is a desktop photo client which helps you tag, organize, and share your photos in a live feed, and is still in private beta. But you can see a glimpse of what the Web-facing version will look like at Fotopedia , which just soft-launched. A message at the top of the page states: “Fotopedia, a sneak peek. This site is an in-progress read-only preview of what we are going to launch in a few days.” One of the features of Fotonauts which has yet to be turned on is the ability to turn any photo album into a Web page, complete with tags, associated Wikipedia entry, and Google map information where available. Fotopedia showcases some of the same public albums you can see in the Fotonauts client, plus it adds a few twists. Each photo can be voted up or down or flagged as inappropriate. There is an Encyclopedia tab, which shows albums by topic/tag. For instance, you can see albums about Volcanos , butterflies , or Venice . There are nearly 150,000 high-quality photos already, organized into 4,289 “articles.” Each article is a Web slide show, along with the associated Wikipedia entry and Google Map. Each photo contains a lot of metadata making it search-engine friendly. Fotopedia is supposed to be a cross between Flickr and Wikipedia, an= long-lasting archive of “images for humanity.” Fotonauts founder Jean-Marie Hullot explains in a note: “Flickr and other photo sites give you exposure for only a brief window in time, and adding photos to Wikipedia proved too complicated for the average user.” In addition to the photos, there is also an active community. You can follow other people or follow specific albums. You can also see individual profiles when you are logged in. You can also share albums as widgets. (I’ve included ones for Volcano and butterfly albums below). Volcano on Fotopedia Butterfly on Fotopedia Crunch Network : CrunchBase the free database of technology companies, people, and investors
 
Prepare For The Facebook Vanity URL Landrush Top
Facebook will soon be allowing all users to claim a vanity URL pointing to their regular profile page, we’ve heard from a reliable source. The announcement should come sometime later this week. Afterwards, at a certain date and time, the landrush will begin. Users will be able to grab a vanity URL of their choice. The Landrush rules will prohibit trademark infringement and a lots of words will be blacklisted, such as generic terms. But for the most part, we hear, users will be able to grab a name that they like. Facebook has been toying with vanity URLs for some time. URLs for user profiles are currently user id numbers - such as facebook.com/profile.php?id=500065899 (that’s me). In March some Facebook pages started rolling out with vanity URLs , although you must have a business relationship with Facebook (or know someone there) to get one. Facebook.com/techcrunch , for example, links to our TechCrunch page. The reason they need them - vanity URLs have proven to be a powerful tool on MySpace, Twitter and other services. It’s not just that users like them and it makes telling people your profile name easier. People have also long used MySpace URLs as their online identity. Twitter, more recently, has started to become the online identity provider of choice. Even Google is getting in on the vanity URL game. Facebook doesn’t want to give that up. Facebook has recently polled users to see if they’d pay for a vanity URL. We have no idea if they plan on charging for the landrush at this point. Stay tuned, and in the meantime start thinking up that perfect Facebook name. I want facebook.com/mike myself. Oh wait, I guess Facebook employees get first pick . So you’re also out of luck if you’re name is Mark . Crunch Network : CrunchGear drool over the sexiest new gadgets and hardware.
 
Twitter Goes Down, Spymaster Makes Fun Of Them Top
Yes, Twitter is down. Yes, again. Yes, they’re looking into it . Yes, this is another Twitter post. But, I come bearing gifts. Spymaster , the somewhat controversial and addictive Twitter-based game obviously doesn’t work nearly as well when Twitter is down. In fact, it doesn’t work at all. The creators have made a fun little Fail Whale graphic of their own, indicating the the game will be down until Twitter comes back up. “The Directorate can’t assassinate the failwhale,” the message on the site reads. Funny, but this is a serious problem for a growing number of services that are built using Twitter as their backbone. Even FriendFeed looks like a ghost-town right now with no Twitter messages coming in. Update : And after about an hour of downtime, they’re back. Update 2 : Twitter has blamed the downtime on a “fatal software error.” Despite saying it’s now fixed, the service is down again. Update 3: It’s kind of up again, sort of, maybe. Might I suggest a list of alternative things to do once again? CrunchBase Information Spymaster Twitter Information provided by CrunchBase Crunch Network : MobileCrunch Mobile Gadgets and Applications, Delivered Daily.
 
HTC Killed The Physical Keyboard. Smart Move. Top
We’re less than a week away from the launch of the supposed next “iPhone killer,” the Palm Pre. The iPhone has miraculously survived a few of these attempts on its life before — it somehow weathered the BlackBerry Storm, and before that, the G1 was going to be the device the did it in. The G1 was compelling because it was the first phone to run Google’s Android operating system. But as a piece of hardware (made by HTC), it sucked. You know it, I know, even Google employees will admit it. And that’s why I was at first less than thrilled when I heard Google would be giving away Android phones to everyone at the Google I/O event a few days ago. But it turns out, they weren’t giving away G1s, but rather that device’s successor, which they call the “Google Ion,” though some know it better as the HTC Magic, or even as the “G2.” And it was a brilliant move by Google, because this device is leaps and bounds better than the G1. Mostly setting aside the software itself — the Ion runs the new “Cupcake” variety of Android, aka Android 1.5 — the hardware that HTC has built this time around is much, much better. First of all, the thing just looks a lot nicer. It’s fairly sleek, almost iPhone-like, compared to the G1, which looked like a dull black plastic brick with a protruding chin at the bottom. The Ion is smaller, it’s thinner, the camera is nicer, the buttons are nicer, hell, even that stupid trackball that HTC insists on including is nicer. Most importantly though, it’s much more usable as a device. And we can thank one thing for that, as well as for much of its much improved design: The removal of the physical keyboard. Now, before all your business and power users jump on me, let me say this: I understand how much you love your physical keyboards on your phones. I admit that most BlackBerry’s have quite nice keyboards. That said, the G1’s absolutely sucked and physical keyboards overall will become extinct over the course of the next several years. While the Ion’s vast improvement over the G1 may not solely prove that, it goes a lot way towards making the case that I’ve been making for a long time now: The physical keyboard is just a waste of valuable space . With the G1, not only did the keyboard make the device much thicker than it needed to be otherwise, the overall implementation was poor. The device’s chin made for an uneven typing experience, and the fact that the device had to be held in horizontal mode to use the keyboard was just silly beyond belief. And it actually caused some programs to fail when you would close the keyboard with device in typing mode and move it back to vertical mode. With the on-screen keyboard built into Android 1.5, you can now type while the device is vertical. And if you want to type horizontally, you just turn your device and you can do that too. This alone makes the device much better. The on-screen keyboard itself is better than they G1’s physical keyboard too. I find that I can type much faster with it, and not having to turn the device to the side, makes it easier to do things like type and walk. One major complaint against these virtual keyboards is that you can’t orient your hands without looking down as you’re typing, but improvements in technology such as haptic feedback will help this. Another is that the virtual keyboards often have lag between hitting a key and it showing up on screen — faster devices, like the Ion, will fix this. The physical keyboard is dead — it’s only a matter of time. All that said, the Ion’s on-screen keyboard is not as good as the iPhone’s. The Ion’s slightly smaller screen means the buttons are slightly more crammed together, which makes mistypes more common. But other Android devices with larger screens will undoubtedly help this. Beyond the keyboard and the overall design, the other single biggest improvement in the Ion is in battery life. The G1’s battery life was an absolute joke with applications running the background. The Ion’s battery life is quite good — we hear it’s as much as four times as powerful, though I haven’t tested that extensively — so good that I can have background applications such as IM, current weather and Twitter notifications running all day without the device dying on me. Running just two of those apps on the G1 would result in power drain in just a few hours. But the big question everyone wants to know is: Is the Ion better than the iPhone? No, it’s not. Even all that I said above doesn’t do justice for how much better the Ion is than that G1, but it’s simply still not on par with the iPhone. While obviously, a lot of that has to do with which software you favor, the iPhone’s OS versus Android, the iPhone hardware is still nicer as well. The screen is slightly bigger, the one-button layout (or 4 if you count the side and top buttons) is simpler, and the thing just feels more sturdy. That said, the Ion has a big advantage in its camera, which is much nicer than the current iPhone’s — but that should change with the new iPhone hardware due shortly. But I think that it’s fine that the Ion isn’t an “iPhone killer.” First of all, the mobile space is still evolving and growing rapidly, the idea that any one phone is going to kill any other phone is kind of silly — people have different tastes/desires and the market is big enough for a huge number of these types of devices. Second, the Ion is really a nice phone — it’s easily the second best phone I’ve used behind only the iPhone, and if you want to do something like run background applications, I’d definitely recommend it (at least until Apple gets into that game ). And the Ion is a better device if you care deeply about using Gmail, Google Calendar and Gtalk, as those are all obviously Google products built right into Android. Third, the Ion is just one more of many Android devices due shortly. Google is on record as saying there will be 18 Android phones just this year, but we hear it may even be more than that, north of 25. Google’s goal isn’t creating an “iPhone killer,” it’s creating a vibrant mobile ecosystem that it can use to get more people using Google’s services. Plenty of people use Google on the iPhone, and you can be sure that the company is quite pleased with that. As a platform, Android needs better applications if it’s going to compete (compete, not kill) with the iPhone in the consumer space. But with so many devices coming, developers are sure to pick up their game as demand increases. A major setback in Android development since the launch of the G1 was that the G1 was a junky piece of hardware. Devices of a higher caliber, like the Ion, will help change everyone’s (both consumers’ and as a result, developers’) mind about moving to the Android platform. See how easy that was HTC? All you had to do was kill that awful physical keyboard. Nice work. CrunchBase Information HTC Android iPhone Information provided by CrunchBase Crunch Network : CrunchBoard because it’s time for you to find a new Job2.0
 
Vidoop Is Dead, Employees Getting Computers In Lieu Of Wages Top
Bad news for Portland-based Open-ID startup Vidoop (as well as Vidoop partners like AOL , MySpace and Flock) : it’s apparently out of business. Earlier this month the company announced layoffs , but based on an email string that was forwarded to us, the company is now “officially out of business” and winding down. From CEO Joel Norvell to Vidoop insiders, where he says that the company has no funds to pay wages or other liabilities, and that employees are being offered computers in lieu of wages: Vidoopsters: I am currently working with our counsel on next steps, but here is what I know: Vidoop LLC is officially out of business. Unfortunately, there are no funds to pay the unpaid wages or other liabilities. I don’t yet know if this means there will be a bankruptcy filing. However, we are in the process of winding down and vacating the office. Tomorrow and Friday we will be offering certain equipment such as laptops and desktop computers to employees in lieu of a certain amount of wages owed. As an example, a laptop might be worth $1000 in back wages. You would only need to pay taxes on the actual book value of the asset, which might be $250. So you would write a check for $0.153 on $250, or $38.25. The company’s liability to you would be reduced by $1000, and you would have a laptop for $38.25. The investors who walked out of the May 5 deal created a situation that made an orderly shutdown impossible. However, several of us have worked nonstop to preserve everyone’s stake in Vidoop, and efforts are ongoing. We hope to provide details soon. Thanks to everyone who is volunteering their time to help shut down the office. There is simply no roadmap for a situation like this, and I know it is frustrating. Your support during this difficult period is very much appreciated. Joel It’s not clear how long the Vidoop service will remain active. The company promised “plenty of warning” of a shutdown of MyVidoop on May 14, but since then have been silent. There’s a ton of speculation in the email string (we aren’t posting most of it), but we’ll wait for an official company announcement. There’s also likely an interesting backstory around that “investors who walked out of the May 5 deal” statement. We’ve put Vidoop in the deadpool . Crunch Network : CrunchBase the free database of technology companies, people, and investors
 
Shhh. Blekko Is Still In The Oven. Do Not Disturb Top
Life is not easy for search engine startups. FIrst, it’s hard to create something that doesn’t fall flat against Google. Too much hype (Google Killer!), whether the company drives it or not, inevitably leads to disappointment. Cuil is walking dead, for example, and Wikia Search is just dead. Other ambitious projects like SearchMe are dealing with tepid user enthusiasm, and Wolfram Alpha’s over-hype has cost it credibility. Any search engine startup with a shred of common sense wouldn’t want to create a lot of hype about itself before launching. There are too many dead bodies lying around to prove how badly that strategy works. But on the other hand: ambitious startups need to hire talented engineers, and they need lots of money. Crawling and indexing the web is expensive and requires thousands of servers. Those servers aren’t free. So there needs to be at least a little awareness of the startup out there for hiring and fundraising purposes. New search engine startup Blekko has been trying to figure out exactly where pre-launch press should begin and end. They’ve said very little up to now and haven’t made any big promises at all. We first covered them in early 2008, and have subsequently noted some high profile investors that have put money into the project. But that’s it. The company has said clearly that they don’t want press, and most bloggers and other journalists have respected that. Not only that, all their website has on it is a cute paper bag puppet. No ridiculous promises of anything at all. We had to beg them just to get a logo (the puppet looked absurd as their logo in CrunchBase ). So why the slight buzz yesterday and today? They’re preparing to launch later this year and they are raising more money to ramp up. They’re starting to show people a little more of the product. We’re impressed . As are others . Is Blekko a Google killer? I don’t think so. And the company isn’t claiming that, either. But I do think they have a really cool search product that a lot of people are going to love. I look forward to writing about it when they prepare to launch. But until then we’re going to give them the privacy they’ve requested to fully bake the product. Because the last thing we need is another over-hyped pre-launch search engine that’s called a failure just because they aren’t a Google slayer a week after launch. Crunch Network : CrunchBase the free database of technology companies, people, and investors
 
Village Voice Wishes McMaster Would Hate Them, Too Top
And you thought the South Carolina v. Craigslist story was dead. If anything sucks more than being the target of an ambitious but delusional gubernatorial candidate who has suddenly developed a bit of a fetish for prostitution, it’s being ignored by that candidate. As far as Village Voice sees the world, Craigslist just got a bunch of free press. And they want their share. When Craigslist management was facing a criminal investigation for listings on the site they did the smart thing. They talked about the law, and they pointed out that the real smut was on other sites that were being ignored by the South Carolina Attorney General. If you really want hard core porn and prostitution, Craigslist CEO Jim Buckmaster pointed out, check out Village Voice’s BackPage.com . That’s all body fluids under the bridge now, of course, since a federal judge smacked down McMaster and forbid him from stalking Craigslist management. But Village Voice is still smarting from those Buckmaster links in that blog post. Yesterday they issued a very official press release titled “Village Voice Media to Craigslist CEO Buckmaster: Calm Down, Back Off; There is Nothing Wrong With a Little Competition.” In an email, Village Voice’s PR firm accuses Buckmaster of “leveraging the legal bind he’s in to damage Craigslist’s competition.” The real reason for the press release and press outreach, of course, is to get a little bit of the spotlight pointed to backpages, too. Because their official story doesn’t make sense. Backpages has adult ads, lots and lots of them, and they’re proud of it: “We will continue to exercise our right to accept legal adult postings,” they say. All Buckmaster did was link to a whole bunch of them. And since backpages desperately needs the traffic , what they really should be doing is thanking Craigslist, not attacking them. What we learned today: If you really want to pay for sex, backpages is the place to go. Full press release is below: Village Voice Media to Craigslist CEO Buckmaster: Calm Down, Back Off; There is Nothing Wrong With a Little Competition PHOENIX, May 29 /PRNewswire/ — Last Friday, Jim Buckmaster, CEO of Craigslist, fired a deliberate, unnecessary and wholly inaccurate shot across the bow of Village Voice Media and backpage.com, our online classified advertising property. Given the serious nature of what Buckmaster inferred in his post about Village Voice Media newspapers and backpage.com, we can’t sit on our hands and be silent. In the original blog post, which was later “submarine” edited to reword and soften some of the attacks towards Village Voice Media, Buckmaster complained that politicians are attacking Craigslist but not Village Voice Media and other media outlets because they have a “need for positive stories and campaign endorsements from those very same newspapers. “Is it possible that writing stories critical of Craigslist’s (relatively tame) ‘adult service’ section is more career-friendly than attacking their own employer (or journalistic media brethren) for operating a (far more graphic) ‘adult service’ section of their own?” Buckmaster and Craigslist are in a tough, and in many ways, frightening situation - they have a number of moralistic state Attorneys General threatening them over their adult ads, and a raft of bad press following the terrible tragedy in Boston that the company is admittedly in no way responsible for. But, the manner in which Buckmaster is responding to this pressure - by disingenuously lashing out at competitors and caving to political pressure - is inexcusable, and displays a remarkable lack of sound judgment. In 2002, Village Voice Media recognized the forces that were changing the classified advertising market and created backpage.com to answer that challenge. We’ve put a lot of work into making it the No. 2 free classifieds site in U.S. We’re fine with being No. 2, proud in fact. Buckmaster, apparently, is not. Instead of working with his competitors to find a way to solve, or at least mitigate issues surrounding adult ads - the shortcomings of automatic content filters is something we are all trying to fix - Buckmaster simply attempted to take the competition down with him. And, his methods leave much to be desired. First off, our newspapers don’t endorse politicians and rarely have anything nice to say about them, so to say that politicians aren’t going after Village Voice Media because they need our endorsement isn’t viable. Secondly, Buckmaster is only complaining because a competitor is challenging his economic advantage in the free classified arena - which he built in part on adult ads - and has made him a very wealthy man. His talk of building community and serving his users rings hollow. It now appears that, as is so often the case with New Age entrepreneurs, it’s all about the money. We will continue to exercise our right to accept legal adult postings from our users and concentrate on growing backpage.com. We are aggressively building additional technical solutions as well as increasing our manual site inspections to improve efficiency of removing content that is illegal or otherwise violates our Terms of Use. About Village Voice Media Village Voice Media is a collection of 15 weekly newspapers and daily Web sites, including New York’s Village Voice, the LA Weekly, Denver’s Westword and the Phoenix New Times. Online, in print, and on mobile devices, VVM’s products combine music, food and events coverage with gritty, hard-hitting journalism to create the most powerful city guides in each market. While the focus of the brand is local, its free classifieds site backpage.com, partnership with social recommendation engine LikeMe.net and national sales force, Voice Media Group, extend its reach on a national level. Crunch Network : CrunchGear drool over the sexiest new gadgets and hardware.
 
Don't Watch This: Newest Twitter Worm "Best Video" Is Spreading Top
Warning: It appears that a worm has hit Twitter-the tweet will say “Best Video” with a link to “http://juste.ru.” If you see this in a tweet, do not click on the link. It’s unclear exactly how the worm is spreading. But from the look of Tweets about the virus, if you click on the link, you account could be compromised and spammed. According to reports on Twitter, users who clicked the juste.ru video link had their account compromised and passwords stolen. Further details about the virus are limited but Twitter’s official spam account was updated this morning stating that Twitter is aware of the issue and making steps to resolve the virus. The Tweet also warned users to not click the Best Video link. This isn’t the first worm to hit Twitter. In early April, Twitter’s service was infected with a worm that appeared to have originated from the owners of the website StalkDaily. This week, Twitter was hit with a “Twittercut” worm, which also compromised users’ accounts if they clicked on a link. UPDATE: Twitter has posted the following update to its status page stating that the site is aware of the virus: No matter how good that "best video" looks, don't go to any juste.ru domains. We're aware of the situation and are working on it. UPDATE 2: Twitter has also noted that they’ve temporarily suspended some legit accounts to clean up the spam. Again, this is just temporary for the real accounts that were spreading the worm. CrunchBase Information Twitter Information provided by CrunchBase Crunch Network : CrunchBase the free database of technology companies, people, and investors
 
The Top VC Blogs (According To Google Reader) Top
Venture capitalists can be valuable sources of information about the tech community. Not only do they have quality insider information but they also have a knack for figuring out how to evaluate startups. So it makes sense that their blogs can be compelling reads. Larry Chang, a partner at Fidelity Ventures, has compiled a list of the 100 top VC blogs, according to the number of Google Reader subscribers for each one. Chang admits that the rankings don’t necessarily equate to the best quality of content and that there is fine content coming from VC blogs with less subscribers. But the list is a good starting point. Chang says he will be highlighting the best VC blog posts from this list on his blog every two weeks and will update the directory to add new VC blogs quarterly. Here are the top 20 on the list, with their Google Reader subscriber numbers (you can see all 100 on Chang’s blog): 1. Guy Kawasaki, Garage Technology Ventures, How To Change The World (17,555) 2. Fred Wilson, Union Square Ventures, A VC (11,821) 3. David Hornik, August Capital, VentureBlog (7,060) 4. Brad Feld, Foundry Group, Feld Thoughts (6,434) 5. Marc Andreessen, TBD, Blog.pmarca.com (5,099) 6. Josh Kopelman, First Round Capital, Redeye VC (3,310) 7. Ed Sim, Dawntreader Ventures, Beyond VC (3,239) 8. Jeremy Liew, Lightspeed Ventures Partners, LSVP (2,973) 9. Bill Gurley, Benchmark Capital, Above The Crowd (2,257) 10. Jeff Nolan, SAP Ventures, Venture Chronicles (1,528) 11. David Cowan, Bessemer Venture Partners, Who Has Time For This? (1,261) 12. Christopher Allen, Alacrity Ventures, Life With Alacrity (1,194) 13. Seth Levine, Foundry Group, VC Adventure (1,154) 14. Rick Segal, JLA Ventures, The Post Money Value (795) – Canada 15. Jeff Bussgang, Flybridge Capital Partners, Seeing Both Sides (727) 16. Mike Hirshland, Polaris Venture Partners, VC Mike's Blog (726) 17. Tim Oren, Pacifica Fund, Due Diligence (661) 18. Jeff Clavier, SoftTech VC, Software Only (656) 19. Mendelson/Feld, Foundry Group, Ask The VC (587) 20. Matt McCall, DFJ Portage Venture Partners, VC Confidential (432) (Image courtesy PhotoxXpress ). Crunch Network : CrunchBoard because it’s time for you to find a new Job2.0
 
Smub Lets You Do All Your Social Bookmarking On The Go Top
When you’re on the road, passing time reading up on things online from your mobile phone, it can be quite a pain in the ass to bookmark articles for later or share them with others. Smub aims to change all that by debuting a web-based tool that you can access from anywhere and lets you easily bookmark and share stuff from your mobile browser without necessarily having to register for the service. Smub is incredibly simple to use. All you need to do when you’re browsing an article on your computer or mobile device is add “smub.it/” in front of the URL and it will take you to a page where you can bookmark the link to your Smub profile if you have one, or alternatively your favorite social bookmarking service or one of the more popular social networking services without the need for a separate account. Currently, Smub boasts e-mail support as well as direct push to Twitter, Facebook, MySpace, Delicious, Digg, FriendFeed, LinkedIn, Mixx, Reddit and HelloTXT. Smub is a very basic service, but a useful one that’s been pretty well executed. Once you’ve saved a bookmark to your Smub profile, you can set a relatively short URL which redirects to it (e.g. smub.it/robinwauters/netflix.ceo - yay, another toolbar-in-a-frame ) and you can also add keyword tags and comments to the article in one swoop. You can manage your bookmarks from your account too, and share them on the services cited above later if you choose to. To get started, you can import the bookmarks from whichever browser you’re using, and you can easily pull in your friends’ contact details from Gmail, Yahoo Mail or Windows Live Hotmail to make it easier and faster for you to share ‘Smubs’ with them. I like Smub already, and I suspect that while the team clearly wants to make sure the service is mobile-friendly (it works particularly well with the iPhone) some people will be interested in simply using it on their computers. For those, the Smub guys added a Firefox extension and toolbar which can come in quite handy if you’re using multiple social bookmarking services. Now go smub something and tell us what you think. Crunch Network : CrunchGear drool over the sexiest new gadgets and hardware.
 
Make Your Mark: RightSignature Lets You Sign Documents Online (Or On Your iPhone) Top
Over the last 15 years or so, most of us have adapted to the new forms of communication that pervade the web, ditching letters (and in many cases, phone calls) in favor of rapid fire IMs and Email. But there’s still at least one formality embedded in most of us that’s been hard to overcome: the personal signature. The simple act of signing a document, silly as it may seem in an era of fingerprints, photographs, and passwords, is something that has been engrained in us. And while signing a digital document with an “Okay” button or check box may be legally binding, they’re so basic that it makes the gesture feel insincere. Cue the digital signature - handwritten signatures input using either your mouse or a tablet, which are then embedded alongside the document in question. These have around for quite a while, with companies in this space including DocuSign and EchoSign . Now RightSignature , a new startup that launched to the public last month, is looking to make things even easier. CEO Daryl Bernstein says that the existing digital signature companies don’t focus enough on the user experience, making it difficult to actually read the document you’re meant to sign. So RightSignature has built a proprietary PDF viewer that shows a large portion of the document alongside a box for your John Hancock. Bernstein also says that competitors tend to focus on large companies, so RightSignature is trying to make its service more accessible to smaller businesses (you can send a document out for signing in around sixty seconds). You can get a feel for the document signing process on this page . The service supports Google Docs, as well as native formats like PDF and .DOCX. Other extras include the option of requiring a photo taken by your computer’s camera alongside a signature and a free iPhone app that lets you sign documents on the go. The service offers a variety of distribution options, allowing users to send documents to a bulk list of users, and can also be used for petitions. Users can send five documents per month for free, or can choose from a number of plans starting at $11 a month per user to get unlimited document sending. TechCrunch readers can get two months of the premium service for free by signing up through this link . The service seems to work well, but RightSignature has a long road ahead - its competition is already quite well established, and some businesses may be hesitant to rely on a new service for their important document signatures. That said, the simplified UI may be enough to entice small businesses who had previously been scared off by the daunting nature of some of these other services. Crunch Network : CrunchGear drool over the sexiest new gadgets and hardware.
 
It's Heeerrre: 'Pay With Facebook' Is In The Wild Top
Earlier today, we wrote about Facebook updating its terms to get ready for the roll-out of its payment system. Well guess what, it’s already here. The application GroupCard is currently testing the new payment system live for all accounts that have it installed. I included some screenshots below. It’s very straightforward: There’s a big “Pay With Facebook” button, similar to the “Facebook Connect” buttons you see throughout the web. Next to that, there are the other options to pay with Visa, Mastercard, etc. Clicking on the “Pay With Facebook” button pops open an overlay which asks you to confirm payment via your Facebook Credits. My $2.99 card cost me 30 Facebook Credits. Expect to see this roll out to other applications soon. Crunch Network : CrunchBoard because it’s time for you to find a new Job2.0
 
Google's Public Policy Chief To Be Deputy CTO for Obama Administration Top
Google’s head of public policy, Andrew McLaughlin, will join the Obama administration as deputy chief technology officer, according to a report by the New York Times. McLaughlin will assist former Virginia Secretary of Technology Aneesh Chopra, who President Obama appointed as CTO in April. McLaughlin has been leading Google’s public policy efforts for quite some time now. According to this blog post, he was the first member of Google’s policy team in 2005. Before his time at Google, McLaughlin launched the nonprofit group Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers, where he serves as vice president, chief policy officer, and chief financial officer. Previously, McLaughlin was a senior fellow at Harvard Law School's Berkman Center for Internet. Most recently, McLaughlin was working on the Obama/Biden presidential transition team in Washington. McLaughlin isn’t the only Googler to join the Obama administration. Google CEO Eric Schmidt, who was speculated to be CTO, was recently named to the President’s Council of Advisors on Science and Technology. Former Google product manager Kate Stanton joined the White House as its director of citizen participation earlier this year. Crunch Network : CrunchBase the free database of technology companies, people, and investors
 
Spy Vs. Spy: The Spymaster Backlash Begins And Twitter Needs To Fix It Top
Spymaster , the Twitter-based game that we covered last night , is spreading like crazy today. It’s been a trending topic on Twitter throughout the day, even ahead of the hype around Microsoft’s new search engine, Bing. Because of this popularity though, some Twitter users are getting inundated with tweets from the service in their streams. It’s not really spam, because it’s their friends doing it, but to some, it’s very annoying. Former Digg lead architect, Joe Stump , is particularly pissed off. “I've started both unfollowing and reporting users of this game to @spam . This isn't because I hate my friends, it's because I have no other recourse to stop this application's abusive behavior,” he writes in a blog post today . While Stump isn’t entirely accurate that the only way to gain points is by tweeting out your actions in the game, the spirit of what he’s saying is correct because you are encouraged to tweet out your actions in the game to earn more points. He notes that this is similar to what happened with Facebook Platform early on, as games like Zombies took over people’s streams. This is something that VentureBeat’s Eric Eldon notes as well, joking that maybe they should rename the game “SpamMaster.” But the real issue here, which both Stump and Eldon bring up, is that this is the perfect example of why Twitter needs filters of some sort. We’ve been railing on this for a while, and I’m actually quite glad this game has come along to bring the issue to the forefront. The problem isn’t that the game is spam, it’s that Twitter is not at all set up to handle games like this, even though it is positioning itself to be a robust platform. You need to be able to do things like block certain hashtags or keywords, and to be able to group together certain friends. Currently, various third party sites /services handle thing on top of Twitter, but it’s not enough if Twitter is really going to be a new form of communication. Because if Twitter gets overrun by these types of viral games, people will simply stop visiting Twitter, and it will destroy the platform’s backbone. Not that these are trivial things for Twitter to implement given its crazy rate of growth right now. But it will be needed if that growth is to continue in the future. At the very least, Twitter should allow you to block which apps you get updates from — though I think it still considers Spymaster updates to be coming from the “web.” For his part, Spymaster co-founder Eston Bond says, “Backlash has been pretty minimal. Some people find Spymaster noisy but I’m amazed at how many people defend their tweeted spymaster actions to others (search can give you some examples .) For now, everyone’s having fun and I want to make sure that we can keep the game compelling in the long term. I have lots of content ideas that I’ll be hopefully implementing soon.” Again, I don’t consider this Spymaster’s problem — but there is a problem, it’s Twitter’s. You’ll see this as more of these style games come along. It’s a matter of when , not if. CrunchBase Information Spymaster Twitter Joe Stump Information provided by CrunchBase Crunch Network : CrunchBase the free database of technology companies, people, and investors
 
Video: Netflix CEO Reed Hastings On The Economics Of Movie Streaming Top
A couple years ago, Netflix began supplementing its DVD mail rental business with movie streams over the Web. for a few thousand select titles. Today, millions of Netflix customers stream their movies instead of waiting for them to come in the mail (or, more often, do both). ComScore Video Metrix estimates Netflix’s online viewership a bit lower at 645,000 unique viewers in March. They watched 6.9 million video streams and the average time spent watching per viewer is an amazing 128 minutes for the month, which is right up there with YouTube in terms of time spent (having full-length feature films helps keep people around longer). You pay Netflix a subscription, and you can watch your monthly allotment of movies any way you want. Netflix doesn’t care where you watch your movies, whether it is on your TV, xBox 360 , Windows Media Center , or other devices. Streams still make up a small portion of the overall movies watched by Netflix customers, but it is growing as the company expands its streaming catalog, broadband improves, and computers become more like TVs (and vice versa). I ran into Netflix CEO Reed Hastings at the AllThingsD conference this week, and asked him in the video above how his streaming service is going and how its economics compare to that of mailing out DVDs. As you can imagine, it costs much less to stream a movie over the Internet than it does to mail it as a DVD. But Netflix ends up paying twice anyway because it already owns the movies on DVD. It has to pay the studios an additional streaming fee. The studios like that. “If the studios have their way, we’ll pay them two or three times,” quips Hastings. But he is resigned to paying wtice for movies he’s already bought. The way he looks at it, Netflix is paying the studios instead of the Post Office. Crunch Network : CrunchBoard because it’s time for you to find a new Job2.0
 
Facebook Revs Up For Payment Platform With Updated Terms Top
Facebook developers are dying for a unified payment platform, and all signs are pointing to one coming soon. In the latest news, the site has just released a draft of its proposed new Payments Terms, which will dictate how transactions will be conducted going forward. While the updated terms are in line with Facebook’s recent trend towards using simplified language in its legal documents, the company’s blog post also notes that the new terms will “give us the flexibility to try new features”. This isn’t particularly surprising - there have recently been reports of Facebook planning to begin testing payments some time soon, after months of delays. Facebook is using the same community commenting process it used during its site-wide Terms of Service fiasco before it officially rolls out the new terms, giving users three days to voice their thoughts on the site’s Governance site . You can read through the proposed list of rules here (there’s also a FAQ ). Most of them are pretty straightforward - Facebook basically says that it licenses all of your virtual goods and credits to you (you don’t own them), and it can do whatever it wants as far as changing the price of credits. It’s also not responsible for anything you buy (aside from ensuring that your Facebook Gifts are delivered), and there are no refunds (though the company says that it may intervene in disputes betwen users concerning payments, but that it is under no obligation to do so). Some of the language refers to transactions between users and third parties, which is indicative of the upcoming payment system. There are a few interesting tidbits worth looking through. My favorite is this one, which seems to indicate that Facebook can randomly disperse virtual gifts to friends if you fail to use your credits in three years (which could have some potentially hilarious consequences, depending on who receives those virtual bikinis and cans of Coors Light): 3.6 If you leave a balance of credits unused for three years, we may redeem those credits by sending virtual gifts to your Facebook friends or donating the credits to a nonprofit organization of our choice (and charging standard redemption fees for those transactions). Crunch Network : MobileCrunch Mobile Gadgets and Applications, Delivered Daily.
 
If Your Phone Requires A Headset Adapter, Your Phone Sucks Top
Listen up, 2.5mm-to-3.5mm headset adapters. You too, crappy shape changers required by an absurd chunk of the worthwhile phones out there: We’re through. Game over. Just like voicemail and hand shakes , we’re officially declaring war on any middleman component required to pump audio from a cell phone, along with the phones that require them. There was a time when this sort of thing was acceptable. It was only a few years ago. Most phones were hitting the shelves with but a few hundred megabytes of storage space, while standalone audio players touted capacities that all but the most dedicated downloaders had a hard time filling. Then came microSD and its high capacity variant, allowing users to pack up to 16 gigs of data (soon to be 32 gigabytes and, with the eventual evolution of SDXC, up to 2 terabytes) onto a card roughly the size of your thumbnail. Then came the iPhone which, whether the decriers like it or not, made much of the general populace give a damn about what their cell phones could do. With 3G networks up across the country and 4G networks beginning to roll out, audio streaming and on-the-go music downloads are becoming commonplace. Phone manufacturers can no longer afford to implement media playback as an afterthought - but if they insist on requiring headset adapters, that’s exactly what they’re doing. Read the rest of this post >> Crunch Network : MobileCrunch Mobile Gadgets and Applications, Delivered Daily.
 
Foursquare To Serve Up APIs, More Mobile Apps, Free Beer Top
It’s been over 2 months since Foursquare launched at SXSW and something strange is happening: My friends are still using it — a lot. Sure, for the service to have real success, it will have to spread well beyond pockets of tech hipsters, but even this success is something we haven’t seen with the majority of location-based social networks so far. But Foursquare’s strategy is smart in that it’s just as much of a game, in which you collect badges and gain mayorships of your favorite local places, as anything else. And now it’s gearing up for a further expansion with an API. Initially, team hopes this API will be used to build more mobile clients, co-founder Dennis Crowley tells us. Right now, there is only a native app for the iPhone, but he says that there are already a few people working on a native Android app as well. And they envision someone building a BlackBerry app shortly as well. I know that will be music the ears of a lot of my friends who are forced to visit Foursquare’s website from their mobile browsers, which is a less than ideal experience right now. Crowley also says that someone has already used the APIs to build a desktop client on Adobe AIR. As for the iPhone app, version 1.2 has just been submitted for approval to the App Store. As we know, that’s always a crapshoot , but assuming it gets approved in relatively short order, there will be a lot more cities the service will be available in . The team also recently rolled out a way to submit your own badges . But the recent news that most interests me has to be how some cities have establishments that are acknowledging mayorships. You can a mayorship in Foursquare basically by being the person who checks in there most often (on different days). One bar in LA, Good Hurt, is giving away a free beer to the “mayor” every time they come in! Another place in Denver is giving away free lunches to the mayor, and some bar in Brooklyn has a blackboard which they write the mayor’s name on, Crowley tells us. He says that the team is thinking about ways to work with more establishments to offer these sorts of deals. It’s really a pretty ingenious idea for both the service and the establishment, as it drives usage of both. It’s sort of like what some brands are using Twitter for, but the location aspect is particularly interesting and could be much more targeted. And yes, that could even eventually blossom into business model. But basically, I just want some San Francisco bars to acknowledge my mayorships and give me a free beer. That’s my business model. [photo: flickr/ a4gpa ] CrunchBase Information Foursquare Information provided by CrunchBase Crunch Network : MobileCrunch Mobile Gadgets and Applications, Delivered Daily.
 
The Walking Dead: Yahoo 360 Officially Closes, Again Top
Yahoo 360, which was supposed to close early last year, is finally officially shutting its doors on July 13, according to a blog post written on the site today. The social network/blogging service that nobody really used (except in Vietnam ) steadily lost its steam, especially in the U.S. According to ComScore, Yahoo 360 had 13.9 million worldwide unique visitors in April. But only 982,000 of those unique visitors were from the U.S. This is down from 1.8 million unique U.S. visitors a year ago (see chart below). Yahoo 360 was built to create a social network around a blogging platform, and simply couldn’t compete with other social networks like Facebook and MySpace, and other more popular blogging platforms like Wordpress and Movable Type. Similar to the company’s original announcement in 2007, Yahoo is promising to help move blog posts and friends lists over to a more general Yahoo profile. What took it so long to pull the plug? Yahoo says it took almost two years to shut down the service because the company was trying to find “a sustainable and adequate solution” for retaining user’s personal data from the site. The blog post also mentions that they have a solution for users but neglects to mention what exactly that is. Yahoo also shut down its other venture into social networking, Mash, last summer. Perhaps Yahoo is going to focus its efforts on its Twitter-clone microblogging platform Yahoo Meme, which has been rolling out invites recently but isn’t getting resoundingly positive reviews. Maybe Yahoo should just give up on creating a social network and buy one instead (Twitter!). Or maybe it should just make a deal with Microsoft for boatloads of money. UPDATE: Yahoo responded to us via Twitter (!) with this : “the solution we have for users is a new blogging tool, found in user’s profiles.” (Photo credit: Flickr/ Mark Lobo ). Crunch Network : CrunchGear drool over the sexiest new gadgets and hardware.
 
Goog-411 Now Tells You Intersections Top
If you don’t use GOOG-411 when you are away from your computer and need directory assistance, you should. It is free and will give you the address or phone number of any local business. Today, GOOG-411 added an obvious feature it should have had all along: it now tells you the street intersections where a business is located. Since it knows the location information and can presumably cross-reference that with Google Maps, giving out the intersection is not too hard. To get the intersection, just ask for “details” after you get the phone number. The thing about GOOG-411 is that it is all automated using Google’s speech recognition technology. While you are waiting for it to find the phone number and address, it plays a recording of a human voice pretending to be a computer calculating the answer (”bidabudabidabudabidabudabid”). It’s a nice touch. Almost makes you forget you are talking to a computer. Almost. Crunch Network : CrunchBoard because it’s time for you to find a new Job2.0
 

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