Friday, May 8, 2009

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Update: Seeqpod Fire Sale To Microsoft Not A Done Deal. Top
Earlier today, I wrote a post wondering whether music-search engine Seeqpod had finally sold itself to Microsoft because of a suggestive link on its homepage linking to Microsoft Search. Some other bloggers noticed also. Since then, I’ve been able to confirm that no acquisition has closed and that talks continue. Seeqpod is indeed speaking with Microsoft, but not about an outright acquisition. Rather, it is trying to negotiate a piecemeal sale of its technology assets and find new jobs for its core technology team. And while Microsoft seems to be interested in the largest chunk of Seeqpod’s assets, the company is speaking with other large search companies in hopes of finding a home for the other pieces. These assets include its targeted crawling system for finding playable media on the Web, its search index of 14 million playable search results and 500 million associated text pages, its recommendation and discovery system, five related patents, and the teams associated with each of these technologies. The fact that Seeqpod is in Chapter 11 bankruptcy makes this sort of fire sale easier to pull off. As far as the pending lawsuit with the music industry which forced it to seek protection under bankruptcy in the first place, there is no plan to settle at this point in time and “become an ATM machine” for the dying music industry, says my source. So why would Microsoft want to touch Seeqpod, even with a ten-foot pole? It’s underlying search technology can be applied to many other areas besides music search. Seeqpod actually got its start at Lawrence Livermore Lab and genomic search (matching genomic sequences to diseases, symptoms, and even foods), so there are health search applications. But more broadly Seeqpod’s technology is around “playable search.” It can bring back playable media results (audio and video, primarily) for practically any search term. That is the kind of technology and team that could help Microsoft’s general search engine. Crunch Network : CrunchGear drool over the sexiest new gadgets and hardware.
 
Twitter And FriendFeed Battle For Downtime. Scoble's Head Explodes. Top
We all know about Twitter’s downtime today. It was a scheduled maintenance service that was supposed to last for about an hour. Sure enough, after about an hour, Twitter came back — but only partially. Over the past hour since it’s been back, it’s been up and down, but mostly down. And now there’s another problem, FriendFeed is down too. FriendFeed, aka, the first alternative to talk about Twitter when Twitter is down, has completely lost contact with its data center, co-founder Bret Taylor tells me. They’re investigating the problem right now. But where are we supposed to turn? Facebook? LinkedIn? Orkut? Scoble must being going crazy right now. It was probably only a matter of time before Twitter, which has a long history of downtime, was down on the same day as another site that houses people’s social graphs. When one of these sites going down, people can usually deal with it. But two? I think I hear people screaming outside of my window. If Gmail goes down right now, I’m packing up some bottled water and heading for the hills. (With my iPhone just in case they all come back up in time.) Update : FriendFeed co-founder Paul Buchheit lets everyone know (appropriately on Twitter ), “The entire svcolo datacenter lost power. They expect to have it restored in 10min, but it will take at bit to bring up all systems.” Crunch Network : MobileCrunch Mobile Gadgets and Applications, Delivered Daily.
 
Show Your Mom You Care On Facebook On Mother's Day — Then Unfriend Her Top
In celebration of Mother’s Day, Facebook now lets you list and connect to your family members in the “Basic Information” part of your profile. Starting later today and through this weekend, you will see a new “Family Members” section within the Information tab on your profile. You can enter your parents, children, sisters and brothers and can list family members even if they aren’t Facebook users. If you include their birthdays, Facebook will show their ages too. This is a good idea in theory and I think many users would have no problem listing and connecting siblings on their profiles. But I feel that a lot of people may not use this feature because they don’t want to list their parents on their profiles. I can see parents wanting to list their children but I’m not so sure that the feeling would be mutual, especially amongst younger users who may not want their parents to be connected to their lives via Facebook. Facebook also said it is considering an extended family section for the future. Crunch Network : CrunchBase the free database of technology companies, people, and investors
 
Joking Or Not, Official Or Not, Facebook Needs To Grow Up Top
It’s sort of funny when Facebook’s Randi Zuckerberg takes her frustration out on a club bouncer by saying (it has now been removed) it would be “a huge bummer if their facebook pages “accidentally” went down.” But it’s also terrible messaging for the fast growing company. Randi is founder Mark Zuckerberg’s sister, an executive of the company and also their unofficial spokesperson. Her statements carry weight, can be intimidating and considered an abuse of power. It’s also a recurring theme with Zuckerberg, who was in the news a couple of weeks ago for facilitating a minor but annoying violation of the Facebook terms of service to help out a friend. I’m not trying to paint this picture as something that it isn’t. Randi was clearly joking around and venting frustration. But it illustrates an underlying way of thinking that needs to be nipped in the bud. Facebook has long referred to user data as “our data,” ignoring the fact that in reality it’s the users’ data, not theirs to do with as they please . Likewise, Facebook is a community of people. This community will accept a benign dictatorship. Even a police state, perhaps, if the benefits are clear. But too many vendettas and shows of favoritism and that community could turn. I don’t believe that Randi would actually take action at Facebook to get back at this bouncer. But the message this sends is terrible, and it shows that she may not fully understand the weight of her words. It’s time for Facebook’s executive team to step things up a notch and realize that as fun as Facebook is, this isn’t a game. We’ve reached out to both Randi and Facebook for comment. Crunch Network : MobileCrunch Mobile Gadgets and Applications, Delivered Daily.
 
Tech Jobs Still Scarce But Layoffs May Be Slowing Down Top
April proved to be a dismal month for technology sector jobs and overall employment, but there may be a light at the end of the tunnel. Granted, this morning brought sobering news of the U.S. unemployment rate hitting its highest mark since 1983: 8.9%. In the past month, 700,000 jobs were lost in the U.S., bringing the total number of U.S. jobs lost since December, 2007 to 5.7 million in April, 2009. However, while the economy continued to suffer from recessionary conditions over the past month, the pace of layoffs, at least in the tech sector may be decelerating. According to the TechCrunch Layoff Tracker , tech layoffs reached 330,000 in April, due to layoffs announced by Yahoo (675), Sony Ericsson (2,000), Toshiba (3,900), and Nokia (450) over the past month. Media companies were also hit with layoffs this month with NPR, The Tribune Company, and Conde Nast Digital all forced to implement job cuts. However, according to the numbers, job losses may be slowing down. It only took three weeks for tech layoffs to go from 200,000 to 300,000 in February and five weeks for layoffs to hit the 200,000 mark before that in January. Yet it has taken 11 weeks for layoffs to rise by 30,000, with the layoff tracker hitting 330,515 layoffs today. We are not completely out of the water yet. Last month, we reported the effects of the recession as measured by tech jobs site Dice.com, and it appears that available tech job listings have dropped even further in April. Dice.com is reporting a 47% year-over-year drop in available technology jobs for April, increasing slightly from a 45% year-over-year drop in March. April’s drop, as reported by Thomas Weisel Partners, is the highest annual drop Dice has seen so far this year, with February's listings down 40.4% and January's jobs down 39.3% (all year-over-year). Once again, Dice said that of the ten reported metropolitan areas, Silicon Valley was hit worst, with available tech jobs in the Valley down 54.2% year over year. Chicago (down 54.2%) and Boston (down 52.6%) also posted large declines. Our own smaller jobs site, CrunchBoard, has also seen a sharp decline in available tech jobs in the past month. A little over year ago 100 - 120 job listings were added to CrunchBoard each month. The number of new listings gradually declined with the onset of the recession and then fell significantly in November 2008, dropping from 68 to 37 listings from the month before. The listings rose slightly over the next few months, with February's listings hovering around 60. In April, the listings dropped to a low of 35 job postings. But the Conference Board’s Online Help-wanted Index may show signs of hope in the economy, reporting that monthly job demand dropped 131,000 in April, down 28% year over year, compared to the 31% year over year decline in March. And Challenger, Gray & Christmas released a report yesterday that planned layoff announcements eased in April to 133,000, from 150,000 in March. Strangely enough, it looks like the fishing, farming and hunting industry has been able to weather the storm better than any other area. According to analyst Christa Quarles from Thomas Weisel, the agriculture, forestry, fishing and hunting industry was the only industry that showed an increase in job vacancies in April. Maybe we are in the wrong industry. We’ve consistently believed in the resilience of the tech industry, especially given the industry’s past experience with economic downturns. Hopefully, the ease in layoffs is a sign that the tech industry is slowly but surely rebounding in the wake of the economic crisis. Crunch Network : CrunchBoard because it’s time for you to find a new Job2.0
 
Twitter Is Down: 15 Alternative Things To Do Top
Twitter just went down. Don’t worry, it was planned . It should only be offline for about an hour today but there’s another downtime planned for Monday as well. I’m sitting here not quite sure what do with myself, as I’m sure many of you are. So I’ll go ahead a prepare a list of alternative activities for today and Monday, in order of importance/likelihood: Talk about Twitter being down on FriendFeed Talk about Twitter being down on Facebook Talk about Twitter being down over IM Leave a comment on a blog post about Twitter being down (preferably this one) Talk about Twitter being down via text message Talk about Twitter being down over email Tip TechCrunch that Twitter is down Write your own blog post about Twitter being down (for an example, see this blog post) Talk about Twitter being down on Pownce Plurk Talk about Twitter being down on Identi.ca Talk about Twitter being down internally on Yammer Think about Twitter being down Call an actual friend to talk about Twitter being down Invite an actual friend over to talk about Twitter being down Go outside And here are some other alternatives inspired by commenters: Compose a tweet using Birdhouse to send out when Twitter comes back [thanks Josiah] Bitch about the Twitter coverage on TechCrunch [thanks Austinite] Question the timing of the planned maintenance [thanks Carl] Accuse TechCrunch of being paid to promote Twitter [thanks what? (and Scoble and Winer)] Find a homeing pigeon [thanks courtney benson] Talk at a conference about Twitter being down [thanks Scoble] Talk to Walt Mossberg and Jimmy Wales about Twitter being down [again, Scoble, who loses a point on the leaderboard for name-dropping] Resort to hyperbole [thanks Shanky Baba] Compare TC to a pubescent boy and Twitter to Scarlett Johanson [thanks Beer Universe] “ losers” [thanks Max] Fix typos [thanks Erick] Update IM status [thanks Drew] Visit this site [thanks Orli] Update : And Twitter is back. But save the list for Monday! Crunch Network : CrunchBoard because it’s time for you to find a new Job2.0
 
So Long Federated Media, And Thanks For All The Fish Top
Federated Media has been our advertising partner since December 2005. The first checks they sent us allowed TechCrunch to become something more than a guy sitting in a spare bedroom talking about startups to a small audience. Revenue from Federated Media let me hire our first few writers and helped accelerate our growth to the point where we are today. We’ve had our very vocal dustups with Federated Media over the years, but the fact is that we owe FM a lot, and I’m somewhat sad to announce today that our relationship with them is coming to an end (see Federated’s announcement here ). We’ll no longer be working with them on ad sales. We’ve long sold many of our ads directly, and as of now we’ll be taking control of 100% of TechCrunch network ad inventory. In some ways this is a rite of passage for our still-young blog network. TechCrunch is starting to grow up. We now have six full-time writers on TechCrunch, and our total writing staff across our network is 20 bloggers strong. The TechCrunch Network now reaches more than 5.5 million unique visitors per month and 15 million page views (TechCrunch proper is more than 3 million uniques and 10 million page views / month.) In short, we're finally getting big enough to matter directly to advertisers and agencies. I'm personally excited about our new direction. Heather Harde , our CEO, has deep experience in sales and has acquired advertising technology companies in her previous job at News Corp. She’s got a lot of ideas on where online advertising is going. And as our CrunchCam shows, she can get an ad unit on just about anything . One of the things we're going to pilot with our expanded go-to-market sales strategy is a self-serve platform hosted by isocket . As the largest independent media property covering technology, TechCrunch is in the fortunate position to have a lot of advertising prospects reach out to us with interest in running on our network. Offering a self-serve platform will enable us to sell smaller units of TechCrunch inventory to be more timely and affordable to marketers and start-ups. For example, we used to sell month-long sponsorships exclusively, and now have weekly, and in some cases, daily buyout opportunities. Inventory on all TechCrunch properties is available, including CrunchGear , MobileCrunch , TechCrunchIT , CrunchBase , TechCrunchEurope , TechCrunchFrance and TechCrunchJapan . The isocket service is brand new. One of the things that makes working at TechCrunch so much fun is discovering new start-ups and getting to test them out first. TechCrunch is the first pilot client for isocket, a new, yet-to-be-funded startup by John Ramey and Zak Hassanein . The isocket self-serve ad platform sits on top of OpenAds, our ad-serving partner, and will help us offer more transparent and flexible pricing options to advertisers. We're launching with a modest set of variables, all time-based buyout by the day, week or month. In the coming weeks, we'll add the ability to purchase CPM-based advertising. We'll also be launching new targeting channels. For example, marketers who want to reach a mobile audience, can focus a package that includes MobileCrunch, as well as the relevant pages of CrunchGear and TechCrunch and on matching company profiles on CrunchBase. One of the practices that we will discontinue, at least for the short time, is running ad inventory from multiple third-party networks. Since we haven't been selling all our own inventory, we need time to get a clean read of the demand for premium advertising on our network. Google AdSense will provide backfill for remnant impressions for the immediate future. We'd like to acknowledge Federated Media for the contributing role they've played to help TechCrunch get to where it is today. Notwithstanding our differences of opinion about the role of conversational marketing, we part friends. Unlike others, we're not leaving to move to competitive selling networks, we're just leaving to chart our own course. John, Neil and Chas have contributed to the TechCrunch business in important ways over the last three years. Federated's commitment to represent aspiring authors is still an important role in the publishing ecosystem. As part of our kick-off, we're offering a 20% discount on all advertising purchased directly online through isocket during the month of May (discounted inventory based on availability through 12/31/09.) Our traditional rates resume June 1, so please use this opportunity to test us out and save. Of course, we welcome advertisers to contact us directly to purchase advertising on either a sponsorship or CPM basis. Please email heather [at] techcrunch [dot] com or visit techcrunch.com/advertise . Crunch Network : CrunchBoard because it’s time for you to find a new Job2.0
 
DocuSign Raises $5 Million For E-Signature Software Top
DocuSign, an e-signature service, closed $5 million in Series D funding from Frazier Technology Ventures, Ignition Partners, Sigma Partners, and West River Capital LLC. The funding follows a Series C investment of $12.4 million in 2007 from the same investors. DocuSign, which was founded in 2003, allows companies to get legally binding signatures quickly over the internet instead of over the fax or mail. DocuSign certifies digital signatures over the web, acting as a intermediary who holds the documents and verifies the identity of the signature. The digital signature business was really opened up during the turn of the century with that passing of the UETA and ESIGN acts, which clarified the legal grounds for electronic signatures nationwide. To date, more than 25 million signature events have been executed using DocuSign. Competitors include EchoSign, and VeriSign. Crunch Network : CrunchBoard because it’s time for you to find a new Job2.0
 
Ex-Googlers Try To Create A Better Travel Guide With Nextstop Top
Are you looking for the best beer bars in the world, good places to make out in San Francisco, or where to go on the Big Island in Hawaii? A travel recommendation site called nextstop mixes social recommendations with search and adds a reputation system and elements of gameplay to come up with a new social online travel guide. The site has been in beta for a few months, although it hasn’t gotten much attention yet. It was started by a couple of ex-Googlers, Carl Sjogreen and Adrian Graham, who helped launch Google Calendar (Sjogreen) and Google Groups, and Picassa (Graham). A third co-founder, Charles Lin, was a Stanford classmate of Graham’s. The site grew out of their frustration with finding interesting things to do in unfamiliar places. “It is difficult to discover something new when you don't know what to look for,” says Sjogreen. Everything on nextstop is geared towards getting people to recommend their favorite places and organize those recommendations into guides. There are various ways to explore the site, including a search box, by city , a guide view , or a map view (see screen shots below). The recommendations can be collected together into guides (like this one for an architecture tour ), which can be explicitly “liked” by members. The guides can be sorted by most recent, most liked, or most viewed. You can save any place or guide in a wishlist for later viewing. But it is the social aspects which give the site an extra edge. Each recommendation acts as a vote (for any given place, you can see how many people recommend it) and you can also vote individual recommendations up and down. Every member gets a reputation score . You get 2 points every time somebody else votes up one of your recommendations, and 15 points when they “like” one of your guides. To fight spam, your reputation score goes down every time somebody votes down one of your recommendations or flags one of your entries. Entries can also be edited wiki-style. Still, it would be fairly easy to game the system with a few friends. The members with the most points get recognized on a leaderboard . And you can follow any other member, which lets you see all of their entries and actions on the site in an activity stream (which you can export to other services as an RSS feed). In addition to the reputation points, members can also earn “badges” for accomplishing certain goals, such as being the first to recommend a place, for getting 100 views on a guide, or 10 likes. Any recommendation can be shared via email, Facebook or Twitter (but sharing is not automatic, it has to be explicitly selected for each recommendation). Individual guides can also be shared as embeddable badges or widgets. The site makes very simple to create a recommendation. These are not meant to be in-depth reviews, rather curated suggestions of things to do. It uses a combination of search APis from Google (for local search, geo-location, image search, and maps) and Yahoo Boss (also for image search) to help you find and auto-complete many of the items that go into each recommendation. Once you create an account or sign in using Facebook Connect, you can type in the name of practically any bar, restaurant, tourist attraction, or business after clicking “add a recommendation.” It will suggest places it recognizes along with their addresses, and if one of them is what you are trying to recommend, you click on it and nextstop will place it on a Google map and find pictures. You pick an image, add a short Twitter-length recommendation no more than 160 characters, and categorize it as a place to eat/drink, stay/sleep, or do/explore along with an approximate price range (free, inexpensive, mid-range, high-end). Then the recommendation is created and other people can find it on the site. I did this for a restaurant in my neighborhood in Brooklyn, Bar Tabac , and it found it immediately, along with a great picture. There is plenty of competition for online travel guides and social recommendations, starting with TripAdvisor and Yelp down to a bevy of startups including Dopplr , Offbeat Guides and TripSay . But nextstep manages to do things a little bit different. It is not trying to be comprehensive, it is just trying to provide travelers a highly selective and vetted list of things to do and places to visit. Crunch Network : CrunchGear drool over the sexiest new gadgets and hardware.
 
Google Makes A Great TV Commercial For Chrome, Assuming You Already Know What It Is Top
Google really wants you to use Chrome. So much so, in fact, that they’ve decided to broadcast commercials for the browser on TV - an extreme rarity for the online giant, which typically relies on web-based advertising and integration with other products to increase exposure. The spot was created by Google’s Japan team a few months ago as a way to “demonstrate how clean and simple” Chrome is. And beginning this weekend, Google will be using its TV Ads program to run the clip on TV. Now, I’m not a marketing person, and given Google’s vast resources I’m sure they’ve thought this through, but to me the commercial doesn’t do an especially good job at explaining what Chrome even is. I mean, for the vast majority of TechCrunch readers it’s a given that Chrome is a browser, but for the massive audience needed to turn Chrome into a contender against the likes of Internet Explorer? Not so much. It might pique the viewer’s curiosity, but I suspect many people will see the commercial and just go, “huh?”, especially given how rare commercials for web browsers are. If this ad doesn’t turn out to be a hit, Google has quite a few online-only commercials up its sleeve for Chrome, but it apparently isn’t planning to run them on TV any time soon. Crunch Network : CrunchGear drool over the sexiest new gadgets and hardware.
 
Twitterrific Comes Roaring Back Into The iPhone Twitter App Wars Top
During the past several months, a war has been brewing between Twitter apps for the iPhone. But it’s been largely two-sided. You were either in the Twitterfon camp or the Tweetie camp. And if you were using any other app, it was only because you didn’t know any better. But with the release of Twitterrific 2.0 [ iTunes link ] for the iPhone, a new player has entered the fray. Twitterrific was one of the original iPhone Twitter apps. And for a while it was the most popular one. But when newer apps like the Twinkle, Tweetsville and then Twitterfon and Tweetie came along, they just blew it out of the water with either features, speed, or both. And so I was very skeptical when trying out this latest version, thinking there was no way it could replace the two newest gold standards. But after using it for a day, I have to say, I’ve for the most part been won over. The new Twitterrific is great. It adds all the key features that it lacked before: Multiple account support, search and trends, while doing so with a completely redesigned user interface. Previously, I didn’t like how big and clunky tweets looked in Twitterific, but the new version allows you to easily change the size of your tweet stream depending on how many tweets you want to see on one screen. It also allows you to change the theme from dark to medium to light. The new Twitterrific also adds an amazing amount of features, while being able to keep the core functionality of the app simple. This is largely thanks to the filter icon which tucks away @ replies, direct messages and the like. Also in that area, you’ll find what I think is one of the key advantages the app has over its rivals: The ability to bookmark tweets to look at later (which is separate from favoriting tweets). You also take and save notes on various users.   There are also a ton of options that can be set in the settings menu, such as which photo service to upload pictures to. And the ability to add Instapaper bookmarking support, just like Tweetie offers. You can also set the app to be better suited for left-handed people, set what tapping on an avatar does (as well as set what double and triple tapping does), and a whole host of other things. But the most important element to me for any of these Twitter apps, is speed. Previously, Twitterrific seemed downright slow when compared to some of its newer rivals. But the new version is much faster — but it’s still not quite as fast as Tweetie. But it has some nice options to make this less of an issue, including the ability to set auto-refresh intervals for your tweet stream. Unfortunately, I have gotten a number of API timeouts when trying to refresh my stream too often, but that’s likely at least as much of Twitter’s own fault. After initially taking the Twitterfon side, for the past few months I’ve been a Tweetie convert. It is simply a hard app to beat in terms of features, ease of use and design. The main downside is that it is a paid app (while Twitterfon is free). Because of this, Tweetie started as more of a Twitter power user tool. But by word of mouth it has spread quickly and grown into a huge app. So big that the developer even made a desktop version for the Mac . But this new version of Twitterific (which also has a desktop app too), is a worthy challenger to the throne. Smartly, it’s creators, The Iconfactory , offer it in either free or paid versions (the premium $3.99 one takes away the in-stream ads). If you want a Twitter client for the iPhone with the most features, Twitterrific is probably for you. For me, it remains to be seen which one I’ll continue to use on a daily basis. Twitterrific’s slightly slower speed may ultimately be the deal-breaker. But if I start bookmarking a lot of tweets, or using some of the other features, I may continue using Twitterrific — even instead of Tweetie. Check out a quick run through of the app in the video below: Crunch Network : MobileCrunch Mobile Gadgets and Applications, Delivered Daily.
 
Tweets From Space: NASA Turns To Twitter And YouTube To Reconnect With The Public Top
“I find it frightening that the first alien contact we might make could be a tweet.” Truer words have never been spoken by a YouTube commenter. NASA astronaut Mark Polansky , who will be commanding the next mission to the International Space Station, has just posted a video to NASA’s official YouTube channel inviting YouTubers and Twitter fans to take part in his next mission, submitting video questions via YouTube and following mission updates over Twitter. To ask a question, Polansky says to create a video of around thirty seconds and post it to YouTube, then send it to his Twitter account using an @reply. He’ll respond to the questions on NASA TV , which is broadcast nation-wide. Polansky won’t actually be the first person to Tweet from space - that title will likely belong to Mike Massimino , who plans to Tweet from Space Shuttle Atlantis, which embarks on mission STS-125 in less than three days. NASA has recently been making a big push in using modern consumer technology, the web, and social sites to reach a broader audience. Yesterday it launched a collection of very impressive Photosynth galleries of the ISS and Mars Rover. And they have more exciting releases in the works. This is something that is long overdue - the public may not be as enamored of space missions as it was a few decades ago, but the feats these astronauts are undertaking are no less impressive. And frankly I’d much rather follow the updates of true heroes than yet another celebrity on Twitter. Still, I can’t help but wonder if alien races will stumble across the tweets and conclude that our brains are only capable of interpreting 140 characters at a time. Crunch Network : CrunchGear drool over the sexiest new gadgets and hardware.
 
The Konami Code Strikes Again: Facebook Adds Some Flare Top
Up, Up, Down, Down, Left, Right, Left, Right, B, A, Start. There are few codes more sacred to old school gamers than the Konami code - a cheat code that originated on the original NES and has since made its way into many other games. More recently, some popular websites have been getting in on the action, with mischievous easter eggs from sites including Digg and Google Reader . Today, Facebook is joining the club. Entering the code will enable what I’m going to call ‘ lens-flare ‘ mode, adding the over-used Photoshop effect to a Facebook page whenever you click your mouse. Just enter the above code using your keyboard’s arrow keys (substitute ‘Enter’ for Start), and click anywhere on the page. It is totally useless, but looks sort of nifty and is guaranteed to impress your friends. For at least ten seconds. Last summer, Google Reader implemented the code, which introduced a Ninja to the site’s interface. And entering it on some game-related sites, like GiantBomb and GameSpot , will take you to a page about Contra (the game that popularized the code, because it was nearly impossible to play without it). But of all these, the one that takes cake was ESPN , which began showing dazzling unicorns and rainbows when you entered the code. Seriously. It has since been taken down, but you can watch a video of it here . For more Konami code Easter Eggs, check out our post on CrunchGear . Crunch Network : CrunchBase the free database of technology companies, people, and investors
 
Did SeeqPod Find A Savior In Redmond? Top
We’ve covered SeeqPod quite a bit here on TechCrunch. The San Francisco startup has been hard at work to develop a way to intelligently index media files on the Web to make them searchable online, and introduced an API which many other startups and projects made use of to power their own music, video and audio search engines. But despite the fact that its technology has always been pretty unique, the startup has had a rocky road up until now. SeeqPod has always tried to avoid getting sued by pointing to the DMCA, and arguing that it merely indexes media from across the Internet (much of it not copyright-cleared) but does not effectively host any files and thus should be protected from litigation. Regardless, music labels in particular were not pleased with how SeeqPod and many of the web services using its technology as an underlying foundation were discovering and streaming songs on the net. The record labels sued, Seeqpod filed for bankruptcy , and then put itself up for sale. Did anyone bite? Right now the site is down, with a message saying it is “cocooned for metamorphosis…” The word “metamorphosis” links to Microsoft Search , which could mean that it is in talks with Microsoft to sell the company, its technology assets or the link could just reflect wishful thinking on Seeqpod’s part. Microsoft would most likely be interested in Seeqpod’s underlying technology and could deploy it in a much different manner than Seeqpod. It would also be in a better position to settle the lawsuits with the music industry quickly. CrunchBase Information Seeqpod Microsoft Information provided by CrunchBase Crunch Network : CrunchGear drool over the sexiest new gadgets and hardware.
 
Captain's Log: Google Calendar Now Knows That It's Stardate [-28]01210.00 Top
It’s no surprise that Google has its fair share of Trekkies, and they’re as excited about the new Star Trek film as anyone. So excited, in fact, that the Google Calendar team has put together a new ‘Stardate’ calendar that will tell you exactly today’s date in the Star Trek universe. There are a few ways to go about adding this to your Google Calendar. The easy (and lame) way is to add “[ stardate: ] ” as a friend’s calendar. You can also just look at it on the Google Calendar homepage. But for those of you with a more adventurous streak, try figuring out the secret to unlocking it the cool way. Here’s a hint: add an event that contains the name of your favorite new movie. And it isn’t ‘Wolverine’. You can learn about how Google calculated these Stardates here . Of course, Stardates are known to have been more than a little inconsistent over the years, so you may want to keep those Communicators handy in case there’s a mixup with friends. Also, thanks to all those who came out to our TechCrunch Star Trek screening last night! Crunch Network : CrunchBoard because it’s time for you to find a new Job2.0
 
Is the Growth Of The Web Slowing Down Or Just Taking A Breather? Top
There are now 231.5 million Websites according to Netcraft . But last year the number of new sites added to the Web slowed down to 29.9 million, from 48.7 million in 2007. Royal Pingdom went through Netcraft’s server surveys to come up with the chart above, which shows the increase or decrease in the number of Websites for every year going back to 1996. The growth of the Web so far can be broken down into two five-year cycles, where every year the growth rate gets bigger until there is an economic downturn, when the growth rate takes a breather. In 2001 and 2002 the growth slowed and even went into negative territory, and again in 2008 there was another slowdown in the number of sites added to the Web. It stands to reason that the number of new sites will ebb and flow with the global economy, but it is not clear that there is any direct correlation. For instance, so far in 2009 we’ve added a whopping 46 million sites, many of them Chinese blogs. The total for the year will almost surely be much greater than the 2007 increase, and is already larger than all the sites added in 2008. Does that mean the global economy is already on a rebound or simply that countries like China and Russia are embracing the Web in a big way? These numbers also raise the question of how many sites does the world need—500 million, one billion, ten billion? Maybe the upper limit is the number of people who are on the Web, which is estimated between 1 billion worldwide (comScore) and 1.6 billion right now. Maybe it is more. How many Websites do you have? Here are the top countries by Internet population according to comScore.  All the growth is coming from China, Russia, Brazil, and India. (Growth is compared from July, 2008 to March, 2009 for an apples-to-apples comparison because comScore changed its methodology slightly in July, 2008). Internet population Jul-2008 Mar-2009 % Chg World-Wide 949,583 1,092,598 15% China 161,015 192,000 19% United States 162,619 163,825 1% Japan 56,786 63,152 11% Germany 35,212 39,183 11% United Kingdom 35,223 36,781 4% France 31,842 35,747 12% India 29,817 33,340 12% Russian Federation 26,355 30,710 17% Brazil 25,288 29,081 15% South Korea 26,251 27,901 6% Canada 21,587 22,023 2% Italy 19,689 21,174 8% Spain 16,562 18,456 11% Turkey N/A 17,390 N/A Mexico 12,037 12,914 7% Crunch Network : CrunchGear drool over the sexiest new gadgets and hardware.
 
Search Goes Real-Time With Scoopler. Twitter Dominates Results. Top
There’s a new trend that starting to sweep the web: Real-time. Everyone wants access to information as it happens instantaneously. FriendFeed recently went real-time and now Facebook is starting to embrace it . But those are just two services — what if you could search all the web in real-time? That’s the idea behind Scoopler . Scoopler is a search engine created by AJ Asver and Dilan Jayawardane that gives you live updating real-time results across a variety of services. These include Twitter, Flickr, Digg, Delicious and others. You enter a query and the middle field on the page returns auto-updating results based on information coming in. The two columns that surround it give you hot search topics and popular content from around the web. It’s a pretty nice view of what is happening on the web at any given moment. The problem here is that a lot of popular real-time results are completely dominated by Twitter. Take tonight, for example. A bunch of people went to go see the new Star Trek movie, which just opened. So a search for “ star trek ,” yields a ton of results, but every single one of them is from Twitter. It’s nice to have the results auto-refresh when new updates come in, but really this isn’t much better than actual Twitter Search. Less popular search terms produce better results. For example, I just searched “ bananas ” and a bunch of newly uploaded Flickr photos are mixed in with the tweets. Unfortunately, when it comes to real-time updates, Twitter is going to trump everything else most of the time, because it is a real-time, active communication platform whereas these other services are comparatively passive, lazy rivers of information. One element that’s really nice, is the “Peek” feature, which allows you to take a look at pages being linked to in an overlay on top of the results, so you don’t have to visit the actual page. There is also an easy way to share a result right from Scoopler. There are a few competitors in this space right now as well. One of them, OneRiot , also promises real-time web search. But that service is scouring the web for various pages as they pop up in real time, not updates from all of these social services. In that regard, Scoopler is more like Twitter search or really more like FriendFeed search (though that doesn’t update in real-time — yet). Another service, BlastCasta , mixes Google and Twitter results — which is actually pretty useful (though not live updating). There’s nothing wrong with having a real-time search engine that yields mostly Twitter results, but Scoopler needs to tailor its product to diversify better. Because given some of the things we now know Twitter Search is working on , that seems like it will be more enticing in the long run. Or it needs to hope that another quick publishing platform comes along to challenge Twitter for results domination. Scoopler is a Y Combinator -backed company. CrunchBase Information Scoopler Information provided by CrunchBase Crunch Network : CrunchGear drool over the sexiest new gadgets and hardware.
 
There's A Queen On Twitter, And She Ain't Latifah Top
Forget Ashton Kutcher and Oprah Winfrey, there’s a genuine queen on Twitter these days: Rania Al Abdullah , Queen of Jordan, joined the tweeting masses yesterday and she really has a feel for the micro-medium too! And yes, it’s the real deal since it was Matthias Lüfkens who filled us in on her presence on the micro-sharing service, and since Lüfkens works for the World Economic Forum in Davos (where Queen Rania is always a guest) he would know better than us. I asked for final confirmation and Lüfkens responded that he’s 100% sure since he had received an e-mail from Marzia Bisignani (who works for Jordan’s Royal Court). So in case you were in doubt if Queen Rania’s life is more interesting than yours: about two hours ago, she tweeted “Just choppered to airport to receive Pope. Husband piloting, he got acrobatic to quiet butterflies in stomach told u he was action man!”. She likes to relax too, though: “Wknd begins for us, watching Matthew McConaughey in Ghosts of Girlfriends Past. Glad I’m not single. It’s vicious out there!” Her highness started out with the web version, then switched to TweetDeck but seems to do her mobile tweeting with twibble . I’m sure Loïc Le Meur is bummed that she hasn’t tried out Seesmic Desktop yet. I’m just genuinely psyched she joined altogether. I’ve been following her official YouTube channel ever since she started one and I’m always impressed with her views on society and education, and the way she uses digital means to get her message across. Now go follow her. Crunch Network : CrunchGear drool over the sexiest new gadgets and hardware.
 
TicketLeap Goes Anywhere With Online DIY Box Office Solution Top
TicketLeap , the Philadelphia-based provider of Internet ticketing services for event organizers, recently launched a product that turns any Internet-enabled computer with a browser into a functional box-office ticketing system. The new product, dubbed Anywhere , allows organizers of events - big or small - to facilitate the online handling of ticket sales at the venue door or when talking to customers on the phone. While there are many companies offering online ticketing services to organizers (full disclosure: I’m a partner at Oxynade , which also markets an e-ticketing solution), TicketLeaps claims to be the first one that provides its customers with a way to use their own computers to sell tickets at their events. It does acknowledge however that there may sometimes be extra equipment needed too (think bar-code scanners or printers) and thus offers a way for their customers to rent it directly from them in case they don’t own any. The cloud-based Anywhere software service includes ticket barcode scanning, the ability for customers to choose their exact seat and support for all sorts of venue customization. TicketLeaps charges a ’small fee’, although it’s unclear exactly how much, for every ticket that gets sold through the platform and says most organizers opt to simply charge the extra fee to the patron. The company expects most ticketing solutions to follow suit and eventually live in the cloud as well. "It's only a matter of time before every ticket you buy comes from web-based ticketing software like this," TicketLeap CEO Chris Stanchak says. "There's really no comparison when it comes to cost, convenience and flexibility." TicketLeap was started by Stanchak as a recent Wharton graduate back in 2003. In July 2008, the company raised its first round of financing : $2 million from MentorTech Ventures and Ben Franklin Technology Partners. Crunch Network : CrunchBoard because it’s time for you to find a new Job2.0
 
Next09: Video Interview With Chris Messina On The Current State Of OpenID Top
The last video interview I did at the Next09 conference in Hamburg that I wanted to feature here on TechCrunch is the conversation I had with mr. Captain Web 2.0 himself, open web advocate Chris Messina . Besides his involvements with Citizen Agency, the DiSo Project and Vidoop, Messina somehow finds the time to also be closely involved with the OpenID Foundation as a board member and persistent evangelist, so we talked about that a little. As a reminder, OpenID is a decentralized, distributed single sign-on method that allows users to log onto many services with the same digital identity. That identity can be one of your current profiles on the web, in case the company you registered it with is an OpenID provider. Most of the major players on the Internet are currently providers, including such companies as MySpace, Facebook, Yahoo, Google, Microsoft, PayPal, AOL, and many more, but very few of them have actually become a relying party as well (which would allow someone to log onto Yahoo with their AOL id, for example). About a year ago, Michael argued that companies who make a lot of noise when they become providers but don’t move (quickly enough) to also become relying parties could be exploiting the project for PR reasons and take the gain without the pain. And truth be told, not much has changed since then, even if usage seems to be swinging upwards . Most of the big names that are issuing OpenID parties have yet to support the project by allowing users to effectively be able to sign in to their services with third-party digital identities. The big exception - surprisingly - is Facebook , the first big network that will truly embrace OpenID even if it has a service that competes directly with it (Facebook Connect). For more perspective on that, you should go read the guest post Facebook Connect and OpenID Relationship Status: "It's Complicated" . Anyway, Messina and I talked about the current state of OpenID, the love from Facebook, how he hopes the government will once become a massive relying party, the challenges ahead and more specifically if OpenID has a chance against Facebook Connect, Google Friend Connect, Twitter Connect, etc. Crunch Network : CrunchBase the free database of technology companies, people, and investors
 
Craigslist Competitor OLX Scores $5 Million For Online Classifieds Top
OLX, the Craigslist for the rest of the world, has raised $5 million in funding from from Nexus Capital India. The company raised $13.5 million in Series B funding in April 2008 from General Catalyst Partners, Bessemer Venture Partners, Founders Fund and DN Capital, bringing the total funding raised to $28.5 million. OLX raised $13.5 million in Series B funding in April 2008 from the same investors as above, and raised an undisclosed Series A round of $10 million in September 2006 with the same VCs and various angels participating. While the free classifieds site has trouble competing with Craigslist in the U.S., OLX has a strong user base internationally. With a presence in more than 87 countries in 39 languages, OLX’s popularity lies mainly in Spain, India, Portugal, Mexico, South America, China, and the Philippines. Fabrice Grinda, founder and CEO of OLX says the new investment will be used to make new acquisitions, implement site improvements, expand globally, and pursue aggressive marketing initiatives. In 2007 OLX has made an investment in Edeng.cn, a Chinese free classifieds site and acquired Mundoanuncio.com, a Craigslist-like classifieds site targeting the Hispanic market, in 2006. Much of its success in the Philippines can be attributed to its white label partnership with Friendster. Its offices are also spread over the globe with 125 employees (OLX has added almost 35 employees since last year) working in New York, Buenos Aires, Beijing, and Moscow. While OLX may play second fiddle to Craigslist in the U.S., the site prides itself on being a second-generation free classifieds site, complete with Web 2.0 features such as social network widgets, better search capabilities, interactive maps, and mobile functionality. Craigslist has recently been under scrutiny by Attorney Generals over prostitution and the “Craigslist Murder” that have taken place in conjunction with the site. eBay’s Kijiji is also a competitor in the space, but Kijiji has set its sights on catching up to Craigslist in the U.S., even considering a name change. Crunch Network : MobileCrunch Mobile Gadgets and Applications, Delivered Daily.
 
How Fortune, Forbes and BusinessWeek Can Save Themselves Top
I'm getting shit for this post no matter what. By insinuating business magazines are better off than papers when I currently write a column for BusinessWeek people will call me biased. (As Arrington would say, "consider that your disclosure.") Likewise, I have a lot of friends at all three publications who probably won't appreciate what I have to say, because it’s not in their economic interest. But Arrington keeps berating me to write a post today, so here goes. 24/7 Wall Street did a post the other day saying the sun was setting on Fortune, Forbes and BusinessWeek, and its facts about the finances of these publications are sad and mostly indisputable. Indeed, cutting frequency and staff are near certainties for at least BusinessWeek and Fortune. But I don’t agree that those realities mean the magazines can no longer afford quality, edited, long-form investigative stories. There’s an obvious option for these magazines, and I’m surprised more people aren’t talking about it: Ruthlessly collapse the print and online staffs, run everything online as soon as they write it, except one or two cover-length, long-form glossy pieces. Those will anchor the print issue, rounded out by the best stories from online. Then cut the money spent on trying to court new subscribers, shifting the entire marketing budget to promote the Web or real-life conferences and branded events. You could even use reader comments to flesh the online pieces out more for the print edition, driving more engagement in both the print and online versions. Voila! One publication, not two pretending to be one. And guess what? One publication is a hell of a lot cheaper, even if it's printed on dead trees. Under this system, you still have the enterprise articles, like the Fortune piece 24/7 cites about Bernie Madoff. You just focus and only do one or two of them an issue, keeping 99.9% of your staff focused on writing stellar daily online content. And you optimize your staff to be scrappier, more productive and adapt from an old way of doing journalism, to something closer to blogging. People who can’t or refuse to adapt won’t have jobs. That may sound cruel but if the magazines themselves don’t adapt, no one there will. This plan would save a ton of money. That's right: They can save tons of money and still print a publication. Big national magazines have different economics than a metro daily paper. In some cases the biggest cost is a bloated staff, in others a highly-paid staff with generous corporate credit lines. Remember, most of these staffers were hired during better times and while layoffs have been frequent, they haven't been as far reaching as they probably should have been. With all due respect to 24/7 Wall Street, the average compensation package at one of these three publications isn't $60,000 unless you got hired out of school in the last few years. Think higher. Much higher. Now a lot of these publications will tell you they're all one staff now. But go through the staff boxes and see how many of those names blog, write breaking news online or write anything online with any frequency. Hint: If the question "Is this for print or online?" keeps coming up in your organization, you're doing it wrong. Aside from one investigative piece per issue, there shouldn’t be a difference between the two. As a practical matter, it’s not that different from all of the magazine copy running online after the fact. But if you think about it, that policy elevates the magazine above online. It should be reversed. Why not go the route of closing print completely and going online? First off, you’d kill the print ad revenue stream which is still the bulk of these magazines’ business. But it also abandons the magazines’ competitive advantage. For a lot of people magazines are different from newspapers. They're printed on nice paper with glossy, glitzy photo shoots and painstaking graphic design for a reason. People in them like putting them on their coffee table—or better yet, framing them. Don't underestimate the power reporters working on a cover have to convince a reluctant CEO to talk to them or give them exclusives. It may be one of the few advantages they've got over increasingly influential blogs. Similarly, there's still a huge swath of readers who like flipping through a hard copy of BusinessWeek or Fortune on the plane, or even on a Sunday afternoon. The business world isn't all tech, after all. And as a reporter, I have to be honest. There's nothing quite like seeing your article printed in a glossy magazine. That can be a valuable retention and recruiting tool when used well. As can the implicit promise that the publication still values long-form, investigative reporting that has some shelf life to it. It's not that big, glossy, deeply-reported magazine stories are better than blogs. But they are a different way to tell certain important, complex stories, the same way a book is a different way to tell a story than an article. Not all news needs that kind of methodical, intensely-edited and graphic designed treatment, but I'd argue one or two per month do. And if newspapers keep crumbling, magazines are going to be the only places left that know how to do it. Crunch Network : CrunchBoard because it’s time for you to find a new Job2.0
 
It's 3.0 Or Die For New iPhone Apps Top
Apple has just sent out an email alert to iPhone developers that any new app submitted to the App Store will have to be ready for the iPhone 3.0 software, which is due shortly (probably around Apple’s WWDC event in June). Beginning today, any app submitted that isn’t 3.0 compatible will be rejected. Here’s the key parts of the email: Beginning today, all submissions to the App Store will be reviewed on the latest beta of iPhone OS 3.0. If your app submission is not compatible with iPhone OS 3.0, it will not be approved. Existing apps in the App Store should already run on iPhone OS 3.0 without modification, but you should test your existing apps with iPhone OS 3.0 to ensure there are no compatibility issues. After iPhone OS 3.0 becomes available to customers, any app that is incompatible with iPhone OS 3.0 may be removed from the App Store. I’ve emailed Apple asking if there are any features specifically that developers should be careful about making sure work in the new 3.0 firmware. Google recently outlined some of the key points of the new Android firmware that developers should watch for in order to maintain compatibility . One potential issue as outlined by our tipster Nick is as follows: Apple also says that most apps will run on 3.0 without any changes, however, some major changes were made and I suspect any app using a UIAlertView (pretty much any app with a confirm/deny dialog) will need to be changed due to the change made to the indexing order of the buttons on that view. [thanks nick] Crunch Network : CrunchBoard because it’s time for you to find a new Job2.0
 
Avatar Startup FUHU Raises $6.25 Million, Strikes Deal With Acer To Put Widgets In PCs Top
FUHU, a startup that produces virtual avatars and identity cards and rich media web widgets, has secured $6.25 million in Series B funding from The Acer Group (which produces Acer, Gateway, eMachines and Packard Bell computers). FUHU also signed a 10 year contract to distribute FUHU products in all Acer computers and smart mobile phones. FUHU raised $1.5 million in Series A funding in February 2008 from John Hui (co-founder of eMachines), VIA Technologies, UMC Capital, Industrial Bank of Taiwan, Alorica, and several angel investors. FUHU’s urFooz product, an embeddable virtual identity card, allows users to create an avatar and portable profile that contains music, photos, feeds, and videos. The widget then lets users syndicate their profile on social networks (MySpace, Facebook etc.). Through the deal, FUHU will collect computer users’ information with out-of-the-box registration for Acer computers. Users will be given the option to create a urFooz avatar and account upon registration. Here’s one for Britney Spears: Filling out a profile is similar to filling out a profile on a social network—you are asked for the essential information you would share with a friend, including hometown, employers, relationship status, and education. You can link your profile/avatar to your accounts from Facebook, MySpace, Twitter, YouTube, Flickr, FriendFeed, blogs and more. You can also dress your avatar in designer clothes through purchases at urFooz’s virtual mall. And you can embed your urFooz card on any social network, blog or site. The card is dynamically updated on these sites when you update your profile. Currently urFooz has about 20,00 users but CEO Jim Mitchell says that the startup could add 1 to 2 million users a month through the integration of urFooz with Acer computer registration. Whether users will actually feel compelled to keep using the profile is another question. The idea of an embeddable avatar is interesting but you can also share photos, videos, and music within your social networks without the help of a widget, Another FUHU widget that will be integrated with Acer computers is the Spinlets widget, which is a rich media widgets that let users place favorite music, videos, links, pictures, MP3s, ring-tones, news and more on social networks, sites and blogs. Currently, the Spinlets site only lets you embed music widgets on sites but the video, pictures and additional functionality will be coming soon. FUHU says there will be some sort of pre-loaded mashup of the Spinlets widget already downloaded on the computers but would not reveal more details about what this will look like. One of the advantages for Acer in this deal is that the company will have access to data and information about users who set up a urFooz profile, including hobbies, activities, interests, says Mitchell. Acer is also planning to integrate FUHU’s widgets into its smart phones, which are already out in Asia. Acer plans to unveil its smart phones in the U.S. in 2010. Competitors in the rich media widget space include Slide and RockYou. Crunch Network : CrunchBase the free database of technology companies, people, and investors
 
Google Friend Connect Adds Comment Translation Top
For sites that use Google Friend Connect and its comment widget, there is now a novel new feature: comment translation . The comment widget plugs into Google Translate to allow readers to translate comments left in foreign languages. This will be a boon to international blogs and sites, such as Go2Web20 , which use Google Friend Connect as a login system. Now you can talk to people half-way around the world, even if they don’t speak the same language. Sort of. The translation is still machine translation, but it is usually good enough to get across the main gist of what people are saying. The way it works is the comment widget has a “translate” link which then pops up a menu of languages to choose from. The translated comments are then highlighted in yellow. Here is a video showing what it looks like in action. Google says that this can work for a variety of sites, including international non-profits such as the World Wide Fund For Nature’s Earth Hour website. The Earth Hour campaign is supported by 4,000 cities in 88 different countries to help engage citizens in conserving energy. Visitors to this website can now leave comments in their native language and use Google Friend Connect’s comment translation to engage in discussions with the greater community. Comment translation is one of several new gadgets that have been rolled out in Google’s Friend Connect gallery, perhaps in an effort to catch up to Facebook Connect. These features include the event gadget, the polls gadget, and the Get Answers gadget. Crunch Network : CrunchBoard because it’s time for you to find a new Job2.0
 

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