Wednesday, May 6, 2009

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Against All Odds: Imeem Raises More Cash And Has A Bold New Music Plan Top
Insert your favorite cliche or idiom here: Imeem may have dodged a bullet. Or has risen from the ashes. They have nine lives. The point is, they aren’t going to be closing down any time soon, say sources close to the company. And for a free music streaming company, that’s really saying something. Weeks ago they were on the ropes, near the end of cash and with crushing venture debt obligations threatening to shut them down entirely . No one was interested in buying them or putting in more cash with big music label royalty commitments already past due. Then we heard whispers that they may have a plan to build a profitable business. And apparently they’ve convinced at least their current investors to back that plan with more capital. CNET’s Greg Sandoval reported earlier today that the company may have raised new funding (he used the “dodged a bullet” idiom, by the way). We’ve confirmed that the company has raised a new round of financing from existing investors. There’s no word if Sequoia has put new money in, and we’ve been told the amount raised is small, likely in the single digit millions. But it allows iMeem to make payroll and keep the servers running. More importantly, the company has forged new deals with the music labels, we’ve heard, that help it break away from the crushing pay-per-stream model that’s impossible to cover with advertising. Imeem has renegotiated its label deals to allow it to focus more on a revenue per user goal than a pay per stream. Revenues from downloads and ringtones will offset streaming rates, which moves the relationship much closer to a revenue share than a pure licensing deal. It may just give iMeem the room it needs to get to sustainability. The company is also planning on terminating its download deals with Amazon and iTunes, we’ve heard. Downloads will be sold directly by iMeem itself through Snocap, which it acquired last year . Those download sales are very low margin, but it takes money previously being sent to Amazon or Apple and gives it directly to the labels to offset streaming costs. At least that’s what we’re hearing. Imeem as usual won’t comment. But there’s a chance this company may still be around for the foreseeable future. And they may have redefined how streaming deals are done across the industry. Crunch Network : CrunchGear drool over the sexiest new gadgets and hardware.
 
Control Freaks: Hulu Now Blocks Anonymous Proxies Too Top
There are few web services hotter than Hulu these days. It’s about to surge into the number two web video position (behind only YouTube) and it just signed a deal with Disney to give it even more great content. It’s all great — if you live in the U.S. Outside of this country, if you’ve wanted to access Hulu, you’ve either been out of luck, or had to use a proxy server workaround. For several months, there were quite a few options that would work to trick Hulu into thinking you were trying to access it from within the U.S. even when you were not. But Hulu got smarter and started doing geo-checks at the streaming level. But still, a few virtual private network (VPN) creators like Hotspot Shield would get the job done by making your IP anonymous. Not anymore. Hulu has once again tweaked its detection methods and is now blocking anonymous proxies. If you try to access it with something like Hotspot Shield, you will get the message: Based on your IP address, we noticed you are trying to access Hulu through an anonymous proxy tool. Hulu is not currently available outside the U.S. If you’re in the U.S., you’ll need to disable your anonymizer to access videos on Hulu. Ouch. Hulu has been making a habit of cracking down on unwanted access to its service. There is still a back and forth going on between it and the online media center startup Boxee . Boxee allowed users to access Hulu content from within its service, which the content providers behind Hulu saw as a problem because the content wasn’t be run directly through Hulu.com. Even though advertisements were still being shown during these streams, Hulu blocked Boxee, igniting a firestorm among Boxee fans. Boxee struck back by using Hulu’s RSS feeds to get some of the content back, but then Hulu blocked that too. So Boxee made a new web browser based on Mozilla, to make Hulu think it was running on something like Firefox. The message is pretty clear: People want access to Hulu, but Hulu’s isn’t interested in letting others work around its limits. While it’s annoying for users outside of the U.S. not to have access to the great content, considering that many of the proxy servers also blocked advertisements, you can on some level see where Hulu is coming from on that. Of course, those users are now probably just going to use a service like BitTorrent to find and download the content for free anyway. And if you happen to be using one of these VPNs for, you know, actual security reasons — no Hulu for you! Crunch Network : CrunchBase the free database of technology companies, people, and investors
 
Facebook Connect Now Live On Digg Top
Digg has done a lot of talking about integrating Facebook Connect , but not much in the way of actual implementing. That changes today, we’ve heard from a source close to the company, and Digg will go live with the service some time today. Facebook gets another big name partner on its increasingly popular Facebook Connect platform. Digg CEO Jay Adelson has suggested that Facebook Connect is the future of Digg , and that Facebook’s massive userbase will both spur Digg usage and provide a collaborative filter on stories. With Facebook Connect users will be able to cross-post, share Digg activities on Facebook and auto-follow Facebook friends. Every time you perform an action on Digg (leave a comment, submit a story, etc.) it will ask if you’d like to share with your Facebook friends. At this point you’ll have to approve sharing every time, but soon you’ll be able to set Digg to share all your activity on the site. What’s taken Digg so long? Facebook’s 200 million users go with Digg like peanut butter and chocolate. CBS had an early implementation of Facebook Connect back in September, nearly 8 months ago. See our recent video interview with Digg’s Kevin Rose . Digg: Facebook Connect Demo from Digg Meetups on Vimeo . Crunch Network : CrunchBoard because it’s time for you to find a new Job2.0
 
Guess Who Owns Kindledx.com? Amazon. Guess Who Forgot To Set It Up? Amazon. Top
On January 23, Amazon secured the domain kindledx.com , anticipating the launch of its new product today, the Kindle DX. Given all the hoopla surrounding today’s event , you’d think Amazon would have thought to point the domain to the Kindle DX pre-order page — or at the very least, to the Kindle page, or even any page whatsoever. Instead, it’s a dead link. Amazon, which also owns kindle.com, points that domain to the page where you can buy the Kindle. I’m sure Amazon will eventually get around to doing it with its new product, but it may have been wise to do it on a day when the hype and demand are at their peak. Update : Someone out there is listening. Amazon just set up the site to redirect to its Kindle store page. Crunch Network : CrunchBase the free database of technology companies, people, and investors
 
Ning Apps Bring A New Dimension Of Flexibility And Power To The Social Network Platform Top
Ning ’s social network-building platform is getting a huge boost today, with the private beta launch of Ning Apps, a new suite of applications and features that Network Creators will be able to deploy across their networks with only a few clicks. The news has been a long time coming - network administrators have long been asking for features that could enhance their networks. But because of the nature of Ning, which houses hundreds of thousands of unique social networks, Network Creators were often requesting totally different things. Now they’ll be able to make everyone (or nearly everyone) happy. At launch, Ning Apps is offering 90 new features to Network creators, built by 52 different developers that encompass a wide variety of web services. Network creators will now be able to integrate live video chat through TokBox , condunct contests with Wildfire , and create Wikis. Even better: network admins will be able to easily integrate monetization options, selling merchandise through Cartfly and tickets through Amiando and other ticketing apps. Ning is likely going to be a very enticing platform for developers, too. Unlike social networks like MySpace, when a Ning network creator chooses to deploy an application, they have the option of deploying it to all of their users at once. And with some networks reaching more than 500,000 members, that translates into a huge jump in users. The applications are based on the OpenSocial standard, with some modifications to make them suitable for network-wide deployments. Still, even these changes are pretty minor - Ning says that developers have been porting their applications from other social networks in just two to three days. Access to applications is beginning to roll out to a small number of Network Creators tomorrow, and will be available to everyone by the end of the month. At launch, all of the applications will be free to install (though some of the apps that involve money, like Cartfly, will take a revshare at the time of transaction), but Ning may well decide to deploy premium applications in the future. Before now Network Creators have had access to some added functionality through third party applications. But Ning didn’t support these, and some of them were eventually removed from the site entirely. CEO Gina Bianchini says that Network Creators installing applications through Ning Apps can have ‘absolute confidence’ that the applications will work as advertised. Aside from the launch of Ning Apps, things seem to be going quite well for Ning. The site recently saw the creation of its 1 millionth network (of which 200,000 are active), and is seeing 85,000 to 100,000 new users per day across all of its networks. Crunch Network : MobileCrunch Mobile Gadgets and Applications, Delivered Daily.
 
Next09 Video Interview: What Would Jeff Jarvis Do? Top
So I finally managed to sit down with Jeff Jarvis here at the Next09 conference in Hamburg, Germany, and we had a chat about his recently published book - What Would Google Do? -, his views on the traditional media industry and their current struggles as well as his profound love for TechCrunch (aye, captain). Jarvis, for those of you who don’t know the man, is a published author, well-known blogger at Buzzmachine ( Dell Hell , anyone?) and an associate professor and director of the interactive journalism program at the City University of New York's new Graduate School of Journalism. We talked about his new book and why it is titled the way it is, if he’s really the Google fanboy people make him out to be, and what he thinks about the whole Google vs. the newspaper industry situation. He says the latter is being suicidal by not understanding what he refers to as the ‘link economy’, and I don’t think he’s far off there. (see our earlier posts about this here and here ) Crunch Network : CrunchGear drool over the sexiest new gadgets and hardware.
 
Co-Founder of iStockphoto Joins Rival Fotolia As North American President Top
Patrick Lor, co-founder of iStockphoto, a Getty owned-online marketplace for microstock photography and video, has joined rival Fotolia as the President of Fotolia North America. iStockphoto and and Fotolia, which were both launched around the same time and serve the same purpose, have a long standing competition in the microstock photography space for the best images, the most talented contributors and customers. Lor retired shortly after Getty Images, one of the leaders in stock photography, purchased iStockphoto in 2006 for $50 million. According to Lor, his non-compete contract expired with Getty recently, which left him available to get back into the stock photography business. iStockphoto was initially launched to democratize photography and let all people use images, Lor says. He was disappointed to hear of iStockphoto’s aggressive price increases following the Getty acquisition and maintains that Fotolia’s prices are much more fair for consumers. Lor says that Fotolia has a lot of potential for growth, which may be true. According to ComScore, Fotolia reached 3.7 million unique visitors worldwide in March, up from 2.3 million in January. iStockphoto had around 5 million unique visitors in March, dropping slightly from 5.2 unique visitors in January. Lor hopes to launch some new services in the future but won’t reveal what those are just yet. In February, Fotolia reached its one millionth registered member and has 5 million stock images for sale, for as little as 14 cents, and typically a dollar or two. Images at iStockPhoto start at $1.50 per image and go up from there. Fotolia says it is registering new members at a rate of 3,000 per day (86,800 per month). Fotolia also started recently selling stock video (something iStockphoto has been doing for a while). Crunch Network : MobileCrunch Mobile Gadgets and Applications, Delivered Daily.
 
Next09: Video Interview With Jyri Engeström (Jaiku / Google) Top
I just finished moderating a panel with Chris Messina and Jyri Engeström about emerging social behavior on the web at the Next09 conference in Hamburg, and I got the chance to speak with both of them separately afterwards and recorded part of the conversations on video. The first one I’m featuring is the short talk I had with Engeström, the Finnish entrepreneur who left his senior product manager position at Nokia in 2006 to co-found one of the first micro-publishing services, Jaiku . The micro-sharing application was launched the same year in private beta and became somewhat of a competitor to Twitter (which was nowhere near as popular as it is nowadays) and Pownce (which never really took off and was ultimately put out of its misery by Six Apart ). Jaiku was famously acquired by Google at the end of 2007 before it hit mainstream success and has since often been cited as one of the search engine company’s infamous zombie acquisitions, with little or no further development happening on the service since the takeover and the original founders moving on to doing other things on the company’s payroll. Then Google discontinued a number of services in the beginning of this year, and Jaiku was widely reported to be one of the axed products, but Engeström swiftly responded to those reports with a blog post saying that Jaiku wasn’t dying but instead morphing (into an open-source platform for building micro-publishing services on Google App Engine). Engeström talks about what he’s currently involved with at Google and what the further plans with the Jaiku technology are. (sorry about the occasional sound glitches) Crunch Network : CrunchBase the free database of technology companies, people, and investors
 
For Books Available On Kindle, Sales Are Now Tracking At 35 Percent Of Print Sales Top
The most startling thing Jeff Bezos said today at Amazon’s launch of the Kindle DX , it’s large-format Kindle optimized for textbooks and newspapers, was this statistic: For books that are available on the Kindle, sales are already 35 percent of the same books in print, up from 13 percent just a few months ago. In other words, if a paper book sells 10,000 copies on Amazon, it will sell an additional 3,500 digital copies on the Kindle. Let me repeat that, digital books via the Kindle are selling at 35 percent the level of physical books 18 months after launch. That is an amazing ramp up. The Kindle now has 275,000 titles, most of them are the “head” titles that most likely make up the bulk of Amazon’s total book sales. So how much of Amazon’s book sales are now digital? I tried to ask a few Amazon execs here at the press conference, but they won’t say. It is no doubt a huge number. Amazon sells $2.7 billion worth of “media” every quarter , which includes books, music, and movies. Books is still one of its largest categories, if not the largest. Let’s say Amazon sells $1 billion worth of books every quarter. And its top 275,000 titles represent 80 percent of sales. Kindle book sales alone would amount to $280 million ($1.1 billion a year), and that would not include the cost of the device. See correction below. I am making these numbers up, but even if you change it to 50 percent, Kindle book sales would be trending at $175 million a quarter ($700 million a year). The Kindle might turn out to be Amazon’s biggest growth business yet. Correction : After I posted this, I tried to verify the numbers once again. The 35 percent refers to the number of titles or units sold, not revenues, and is indeed additive. So let’s take the example above again. If 10,000 copies of a book are sold in physical form, and another 3,500 in digital form that is a total of 13,500 copies sold. The Kindle portion selling at 35 percent the rate of physical titles, but represents 26 percent of the total. (Showing it as a percentage of print books rather than as a percentage of the total sales makes for a better slide). So let’s take this new number, 26 percent, and apply it to my assumptions above. At 80 percent of sales, instead of $280 million a quarter, it would be $208 million (26% of $800M). At 50 percent, it would be $130 million (26% of $500M). But there is one more step. You also have to take into account the fact that Kindle books are cheaper than paper books, at least for new titles. A new title on the Kindle sells for $9.99, compared to $24.99 for a hardcover book. You have to factor in paperback books also, which tend to cost about $10 for more recent titles. So there is some discount. For the sake of argument, let’s say it averages to about a 50 percent discount. That would cut the revenue numbers down in half again to $104 million and $65 million, respectively. On an annualized basis, that comes to somewhere between $520 million and $260 million in Kindle book revenues (again, this does not include device revenues). The numbers change based on what assumptions you plug in, but as a point of comparison, Citi analyst Mark Mahaney is estimating Kindle book sales of only $189 million this year, going to $612 million in 2010 (with total Kindle-related sales of $1.2 billion in 2010, if you add in device sales). At the very least, it looks like Amazon is well on track to meet Mahaney’s estimates, and may be ahead of them already. Crunch Network : CrunchGear drool over the sexiest new gadgets and hardware.
 
Hands-on: Amazon Kindle DX Top
It's a madhouse here at Pace U., but I managed to grab a couple photos. Not my hands, but you can see how big this new DX really is. South Paws might feel like they're being left out with only right-hand side controls, but you can flip the Kindle DX upside and it auto-rotates so the controls are on your left (upside down though). Oh, and Pace U. has been confirmed as the sixth University for the pilot program. Video coming shortly. Crunch Network : CrunchBase the free database of technology companies, people, and investors
 
URL Shortening Wars: Twitter Ditches TinyURL For bit.ly Top
Sharing links on Twitter can be quite a pain when you need to input a web address that consumes most of the space you have at your disposal for your micro-message. The startup realized that quickly and automatically started shortening long URLs to make its users save on space for their 140-character updates. To get this implemented, Twitter went with TinyURL , a service that shortens URLs down signficantly (but not extremely) and at the time had been around for years already. It never gave a reason for this choice, but it did provide TinyURL with a lot of exposure and a lot of extra traffic. Those days are over. Apparently, Twitter has silently replaced TinyURL as its default URL shortening service with bit.ly , a competing service that launched quite recently and not too long ago raised $2 million from several prominent angel investors. This is actually not that much of a surprise. Betaworks , the startup accelerator behind Twitter related companies such as Summize ( acquired by Twitter in July 2008 ), is also behind bit.ly, and it just happens to also count early Twitter investors and advisors Chris Sacca and Ron Conway as their own backers. Which obviously prompts this inevatible question: does the move signal Twitter paving the way for an outright acquisition of the URL shortening service provider? (Thanks to Avi Muchnick for letting us know) Crunch Network : CrunchBase the free database of technology companies, people, and investors
 
The Big Kindle Revealed (Liveblog) Top
Amazon is revealing its third Kindle today at a jam-packed press conference in New York City.  The new Kindle, which we first caught wind of last year, is expected to have a larger screen to be used for reading newspapers, magazines, and textbooks. ( Don’t expect it to save the newspaper industry, though). Arthur Sullzberger, Jr. of the New York Times is in the house I’ll be liveblogging the event, which should start any minute now. Notes : Bezos just stepped on stage. The Kindle vision is every book ever printed available in 60 seconds. 18 months ago launched with 90K books, 200K books with launch of Kindle 2, added another 45K books. Where we have Kindle editions, Kindle is now 35% of books sold for those titles . It took us 14 years to build up our physical books business. We find this very encouraging. Bezos introduces the Kindle DX, built in PDF reader. No zooming, no panning, just read. shows off cookbooks, a picture of Sushi doesn’t look too appetizing in gray-scale, however, atlases, and textbooks. announcing partnership with three top textbook publishers which account for 60% of textbook sales (Pearson, Wiley and Cengage Learning). 5 universities have agreed to pilot Arizona State, Princeton, Reed, U of Virginia, Case Western Reserve Newspapers have been popular. This summer 3 newspapers have agreed to pilot Kindle DX for a reduced price in return for long term commitments for subscriptions, NYT, Washington Post and Boston Globe. But only for people who live in places where local delivery is not available. Bezos is showing off PDF documents. pilots charts, sheet music, a document from Bezos’ library on rocket thruster. “This is the type of document I would have wasted ink toner on.” With a large screen Bezos is showing that with teh larger screen newspaper headlines can now be accompanied with the first few lines of text when scanning headlines. For textbooks, you can change the number of lines and font size that it displays. Kindle has a 9.7 inch display with autorotation. 3G wireless access to 275K books Native PDF support 3.3 GB of memory $9.99 or less for NYT best sellers, discount subscription coming for newspapers $489 for Kindle DX versus $359 for 6 inch display Here are some pics: Crunch Network : CrunchBase the free database of technology companies, people, and investors
 
Stickam's StreamAPI Makes Doing Video Live Cheap And Easy Top
A lot of people don’t realize just how costly and bandwidth intensive streaming live video on the web is from a back-end perspective. There’s a reason YouTube hasn’t launched a live service and Yahoo had to shut its down. Most end users never have to deal with such concerns because they use a service like Ustream, Justin.tv or Stickam to handle their needs on a small level. But what if you have a startup or a company that wants live streaming to be a key part of your business? Then you may want to check out Stickam’s new StreamAPI. StreamAPI is the white label version of a service Stickam’s been offering to several larger companies for a while now. While most startups probably won’t need to scale as big as an MTV-sized audience, there is still a need to have the appropriate resources to stream live to a large audience. StreamAPI can handle that while giving clients an easy to use, customizable interface and very low per-viewer hour stream rates. How low? Well, while Ustream may charge up to $1 per view hour, with StreamAPI, Stickam is willing to go as low as $0.05 per view hour (depending on quality). And a bigger draw of StreamAPI may be that you can set it up without an expert Flash developer. The service offers a drag and drop editor that is very simple to use. Stickam CEO Steven Fruchter walked me through the process of making your own video streaming area — it took just about a minute to have everything in place and ready to go. “We’re trying to power all live video on the internet,” Fruchter told me. And at such low prices and with a service that’s easy to use, StreamAPI is certainly a compelling offering. Stickam launched in February of 2006, before all of its big rivals, but today it’s often overshadowed by many of them. This new API is its attempt to level the playing field by providing an invaluable service to a lot of smaller startups. Crunch Network : CrunchBoard because it’s time for you to find a new Job2.0
 
Google Testing New Service Features On Chrome First? Top
Chrome is a great browser for Google’s web apps because its JavaScript engine is optimized to run most of them as fast as possible. That alone is reason enough for heavy users of applications like Gmail and Google Reader to use Chrome (if you have a PC anyway — the Mac version is still forthcoming). But Google may also be giving another small advantage to those who surf the web on Chrome: The ability to see new features early. Earlier tonight we received a tip with the screenshots below. As you can see, Google Finance has a brand new interface when browsed to with Chrome versus in Internet Explorer and also Firefox (not pictured). It would seem that Google may be checking for the Chrome user agent and giving those users a glimpse at this new version of Google Finance. Our tipster called it “lame” that Google was only offering the new version of the site to Chrome users. But there is, of course, nothing wrong with Google doing this — provided that it doesn’t mean to permanently offer different (meaning better) versions of sites to only those users using Chrome. But that seems very unlikely. Instead, Google is probably just testing some new features out to a small set of users, just as a lot of other sites do throughout the web. After it was launched last year, Chrome caused a bit of controversy on the web because of Google’s previously strong ties to Mozilla (makers of the Firefox browser). Some were quick to jump to the conclusion that Google entering the browser wars meant that it would specially tailor sites for its own browser and neglect all the others. But Google’s prominent position on the web — particularly with web advertising — pretty much ensures that it has to play nice with all web browsers. Or at least those not named Internet Explorer 6. [thanks Andrew ] Crunch Network : MobileCrunch Mobile Gadgets and Applications, Delivered Daily.
 
HamCrunch - The TechCrunch Meetup In Hamburg Tonight Top
We’re here at the Next09 conference in Hamburg, a two-day conference about the future of the web, so we figured we’d organise an impromptu TechDrunk… sorry, TechCrunch Meetup this evening. Thanks to Neuhaus Partners , eVenture Capital Partners , Cribb and BV Capital we have a little venture capital to buy you your first drink at the 3freunde bar tonight from 8pm in downtown Hamburg ( Clemens-Schultz-Str. 66 , closest metro is Feldstrasse or St Pauli), and we have room for more sponsors if anyone else wants to chip in. Come on down and say hi Robin Wauters of TechCrunch and Mike Butcher of TechCrunch Europe. We don’t bite, honest. If you would like to RSVP just hit the Facebook Event page and anyone else who wants to sponsor can drop Mike a line on mike[@]mbites.com with the subject line "HAMBURG". Crunch Network : CrunchBoard because it’s time for you to find a new Job2.0
 
Just How Much Money Can Free iPhone Apps Make? Quite A Bit Top
Earlier this year Pinch Media released a report on the state of the App Store, describing some of the trends it had seen as developers tried to monetize their apps. The verdict: advertising on free applications simply can’t match the payoff from even the least expensive ‘paid’ applications, and would require an unobtainable $8.75 CPM to reach the same income per install. AdWhirl , the iPhone advertising platform formerly known as Adrollo, begs to differ. Since launching last month, the company has signed on over 10% of the top 50 applications in the App Store and is serving 250 million ad impressions per month. And their data tells a different tale. According to co-founder Sam Yam, one of the fundamental flaws in the Pinch Media report is that it assumes that applications only show a single ad impression per user interaction (in other words, every time you open a free app, you only see one ad). Yam says that applications actually tend to serve 3-5 impressions each time a customer interacts with them, with even higher figures for some especially engaging applications. And when you divide that $8.75 CPM by 5, things become much more reasonable. The AdWhirl report, embedded below, says that applications that crack the top 100 in the Free Apps list make $400-$5000 a day - a wide range to be sure, but even at the low end that works out to around $12,000 a month. Among these top apps, AdWhirl is reporting an impressive $1.90 eCPM and 2.6% CTR. And while applications that do reach the peak position in the App Store eventually lose steam, revenue tends to remain consistent over time after the initial dip (see the graph below). Of course, making it to the top of the Free Apps list is easier said than done, and most developers make far less than $400 a day. But the same is true of the vast majority of paid applications too - in fact, there’s actually less competition on the Free side of the store. As for AdWhirl, it seems like the startup is off to a great start. The company allows developers to tap into multiple iPhone ad networks at once, allowing them to compensate when one network doesn’t have enough ad inventory (something that AdWhirl says happens as much as 40% of the time). Finally, it’s important to note that it’s obviously in AdWhirl’s interest to promote iPhone advertising, since that’s their business. But it’s clear that there are definitely quite a few free applications making good money,. Crunch Network : MobileCrunch Mobile Gadgets and Applications, Delivered Daily.
 
South Carolina Gives Craigslist Ultimatum: Remove Prostitution Or Face Criminal Charges Top
The various state attorneys general have focused like a laser on Craigslist these past weeks. Like most politicians hoping to get reelected, Attorneys General tend to follow the press and jump in front of any parade they see. Years ago if a crime was committed and anyone involved had a MySpace account, the press focused only on the MySpace angle. The attorneys general went after them with a vengeance. Then it was Facebook, who managed to stay in the spotlight only momentarily. Now Craigslist is firmly in the AGs’ sites. And those AGs aren’t going to just sit by and do nothing as mainstream press paints a horrifying picture of sexual debauchery and murder. There’s easy press out there for the taking, people, and these AGs aren’t going to let this opportunity pass them by. Earlier today Henry McMaster, the Attorney General of South Carolina, wrote to Craigslist CEO Jim Buckmaster . The letter, copied below, starts with “I hope you will take immediate steps to end craigslist from being used to facilitate harmful activities in South Carolina.” It ends with a threat of “criminal investigation and prosecution” if ads for prostitution aren’t removed from the South Carolina parts of craigslist by this Friday. McMaster also expressed concern that pornographic images were displayed on Craigslist and were accessible by minors. Craigslist responded on their blog without saying much. We’ll put the pornography issue aside as purely ridiculous (see Google image search and all the rest of the smut filled Internet). But the recent “Craigslist Murder” of a prostitute (or massage therapist, whatever) is going to be too much for Craigslist to overcome. The AGs will salivate over a lawsuit, which equates to press and votes and has no downside. The erotic services category on Craigslist is likely history sometime soon. And, alarmingly, anonymity on the site in general may follow not too long afterwards. Here’s the letter: HENRY McMASTER ATTORNEY GENERAL Mr. Jim Buckmaster CEO, craigslist 1381 9th Avenue San Francisco, California 94122 I hope you will take immediate steps to end craigslist from being used to facilitate harmful activities in South Carolina. As you are aware, in November 2008 you entered into an agreement with forty state attorneys general and the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children to install safeguards to combat unlawful activity and improve public safety on the craigslist internet classified service. This occurred after law enforcement officers across the country called attention to the misuse of the craigslist site to facilitate unlawful activity. Recent national events, along with ongoing law enforcement efforts in South Carolina, indicate that craigslist has not installed sufficient safeguards since November to prohibit the Internet site from being used as a vehicle to advertise or solicit prostitution. Also of concern is the unrestricted manner in which graphic pornographic pictures are posted and displayed by users on the craigslist site and their accessibility to minors. Many of the classified and communication services on the craigslist site provide the public with a valuable service. However, it appears that the management of craigslist has knowingly allowed the site to be used for illegal and unlawful activity after warnings from law enforcement officials and after an agreement with forty state attorneys general. Therefore, please be advised that the craigslist management may be subj ect to criminal investigation and prosecution by this office if the portions of the Internet site dedicated to South Carolina and its municipal regions and which contain categories for and functions allowing for the solicitation of prostitution and the dissemination and posting of graphic pornographic material are not permanently removed on or before 5:00pm EST, the close of business Friday May 15,2009. Yours very truly, Henry McMaster Crunch Network : CrunchGear drool over the sexiest new gadgets and hardware.
 
LetSimonDecide Takes On Life's Tough Choices Top
Nobody likes to make difficult decisions. And while the web has offered outlets for advice for years, ranging from forums to sites like Yahoo Answers, these are prone to flame wars and grossly incorrect information. Now, some new startups are emerging that are looking to take the community element - or at least the flamewars associated with it - out of the equation. Today sees the launch of LetSimonDecide , a new site that looks to help make decisions easier across a variety of topics, ranging from picking a college major to determining if you should buy or sell your stock. The obvious competitor here is Hunch the new startup from Flickr co-founder Caterina Fake . And while there are some definite similarities - both startups revolve around decision making - they’re taking very different approaches. While it is powered by complex algorithms, Hunch’s data comes primarily from the community - you essentially vote on each portion of the decision process to determine how it should impact subsequent users. This means that you’re exposed to new options that you might not have previously been aware of, but it also means that you’ll occasionally get a suggestion that you’d never consider as a viable option. Conversely, Simon is more about helping figure out what’s important to you, and then basing a decision off that. In a way, it’s like an enhanced version of the traditional Pro/Con lists people make when they’re trying to make a decision. It sounds a bit odd at first, so I’ll try to demonstrate how it works with an example. After logging into Simon, I was prompted to build a personal profile, which asked for some of my overarching life goals (these include moving to England and writing a book, for those who are curious). It also asked a handful of other questions, like my favorite activities and my personality type (there’s a choice from a half dozen categories). From there, I tried using the site to help me with a decision. The first one I tried was to help me pick a college major - a decision I grappled with years ago that I figured might be a common choice for newcomers to the site. The site first asked me for the options I was considering (Political Science and Biology), and then which attributes about each should factor into my decision (I chose ‘Is It Interesting?’, ‘Work Load’, and ‘Job Potential’). The site then asked me to rate each major in terms of these three attributes, and how each would affect my quest to achieve my life goals. Based on my input, it spat out an answer (Biology). So rather than look at data input by the community, Simon used data I had previously entered to help make my decision. Because there isn’t a large database of existing questions and responses it feels a little too basic at first - it’s effectively just presenting you with questions that you wrote for yourself. At the same time, I can see why it could be useful. It forces you to figure out exactly what’s important to you, and helps you make your decision accordingly. And in the end, that’s really the best these services can do. For any genuinely important decision, you probably don’t want to rely on the wisdom of the crowds to land on your ultimate verdict - the average answer isn’t always the best one for all of us. So Simon holds your hand and helps you come to your own conclusions. It’s better than the old fashioned Pro/Con list, but it may still have a hard time attracting many users - unlike Hunch, it isn’t all that fun. LetSimonDecide is the newest product from Ayax Systems , a consumer research company. Rather than include advertising on the site, Ayax is planning to use aggregate anonymized data to generate reports, which it can then sell to universities and Think-tanks. Crunch Network : CrunchBase the free database of technology companies, people, and investors
 
Star Trek Screening: First Tickets Available Now Top
Update to our Star Trek screening on opening night this week: Tickets are now available at Eventbrite . This is a Thursday, May 7 screening at 7 p.m. in Redwood City at the Century 20 theater (it’s new, and awesome). This is the earliest the public can see the movie, so you’ll be among the first to experience it. The theater holds 600 people. We’re paying for the price of the ticket, and charging a $2 fee to minimize no shows. After the show we’ll meet at the nearby Broadway Cocktail Lounge for a drink or three. If additional sponsors (thanks, EventBrite !) come in there may be free drinks and popcorn. If you are interested in sponsoring, email asad at techcrunch. If you aren’t attending, please do not purchase a ticket. No shows mean an empty seat and you won’t be able to attend future TechCrunch events. If you email us that you can’t attend, we can fill that spot later. See you Thursday! Crunch Network : CrunchBoard because it’s time for you to find a new Job2.0
 
NetHaggler Will Barter With Online Retailers For You Top
With retail spending at all-time lows thanks to the current recession, stores are looking for ways to provide deals, sales and discounts for consumers. Some stores are even letting consumers haggle for prices. NetHaggler is hoping to woo both consumers and online retailers by providing a service that lets users track and negotiate prices online. Free for consumers, NetHaggler has enlisted retailers to participate in its service through affiliate marketing services, like LinkShare. After installing a simple and secure bookmarklet (called the “Hagglet”), users can click on the link on the link in your bookmarks bar and draw a box with a cropping tool around any product that is from an affiliate NetHaggler Store. This lets NetHaggler capture and store the product and price information so the site can work its negotiation magic. The site will then let you choose whether you want to Tag, Nag or Haggle a product. Tagging an item lets you enter a specific price and then get updates via email with price reductions that occur over the next few weeks or months. Nagging, which is NetHaggler’s flagship offering, enlists NetHaggler to determine whether consumers are eligible for an immediate discount on the list price. Consumers can submit a price that they are willing to pay and then NetHaggler will return with an yes, no or counteroffer from the retailer. NetHaggler’s founder, Satya Iluri, says that the site employs an algorithm to determine how much of a discount the retailer is willing to negotiate (if any) and also takes into account the consumers behavior in the site. Haggling lets you do something similar to nagging, because you still can request a discount and indicate how much you are willing to spend. But if the item you haggle happens to be a popular item amongst other NetHaggler users, then NetHaggler will negotiate a volume pricing or bulk deal that will produce a steeper discount, says Iluri. Its important to note that the discount a consumer receives through NetHaggler will not be deducted from the price of the product (you have the pay the full price). You will instead be issued payment of the discount through PayPal or a check. NetHaggler only makes money if the consumer buys a product; the company receives a small commission on each sale. The ability to track the price fluctuation of a product isn’t new—tracking sites like Trackle and Notify.Me also let you track the prices of retail goods. Aroxo is doing this for eBay and Fididel also has a haggling site. The haggling part of the site may be attractive in the current spending market. NetHaggler has a roster of big names affiliate retailers on the site, including Macy’s, Wal-Mart, BestBuy, and Nordstrom but when I tried to sign up to “Nag” a retailer for a shirt on Abercrombie & Fitch.com, I was only able to Tag or Haggle, the nagging feature wasn’t available for A&F although it is a supported retailer. I also tried to “Nag” a product at Macy’s and was unable to do so. Illuri says that some retail sites don't have the necessary data feed connectivity and web services to work for the Nag function, which is a shame because that is the feature I would use most. Crunch Network : CrunchBase the free database of technology companies, people, and investors
 
Looky What Apple's Promoting: QuickPWN Top
If you own an iPhone or iPod touch you’ve probably at least heard of QuickPWN , the jailbreaking tool. You’d think Apple doesn’t want you know know about it, because it allows you to open up your iPhone to use apps outside of the App Store ecosystem. But looks what we found: In Apple’s own webapp directory, Apple has a listing for QuickPWN. And in fact, if you do a Google search for “QuickPwn Apple,” this directory listing is the number one result . Granted, this is just a webapp directory listing, so it’s not like Apple let a QuickPWN third-party app slip by the App Store approval process, but still, it’s kind of funny to see it there. And the developer who put it there (who, incidentally, is not associated with the actual QuickPWN Dev Team) is planning to try to make an actual App Store app soon, he tells us. Good luck getting that in there — but you never know, stranger things have gotten through the approval nets. Update : And like that — it’s gone . Crunch Network : CrunchGear drool over the sexiest new gadgets and hardware.
 

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