Tuesday, May 5, 2009

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The 24/7 TechCrunch Office Cam Is Up And Running Top
Most of you know that, following a somewhat firm request by the city of Atherton, we finally moved TechCrunch out of my house and into a great new office in the heart of downtown Palo Alto. A few of you have been kind enough to stop by and visit and see us at work. But for those of you who haven’t stopped by, you can now see what we’re up to 24/7, thanks to Ustream . The TechCrunch cam is now up and running (or crunchcam), strategically placed at an angle to show as much of the office as possible. We’ll leave this on as often as we can, and it will double as a security camera at night. Please be patient if it goes down from time to time today, our tech team is busy duct taping the camera to an Ikea lamp that we’re using as a tripod. First class all the way here at TechCrunch. We may install a second camera with a directional microphone to allow some limited audio. Stay tuned. Crunch Network : CrunchBoard because it’s time for you to find a new Job2.0
 
Forget Apple, Amazon Should Buy Twittter. Why Not? Top
Editor’s note : The guest post below was written by Brian Lawe, CEO and Founder of MyStoreCredit. Brian’s company develops e-commerce tools around payments, cross-promotion and customer mapping. He’s been watching Twitter for some time. The rumors are ripe that Apple, Microsoft, Google and News Corp are all sniffing around Twitter – but no one has mentioned the best fit: Amazon. If Amazon doesn’t jump into the arena, someone at Twitter ought to make a call to Jeff Bezos. Neither Amazon nor Twitter should miss the powerful synergies from merging the two companies. To wit: Introducing Twitter Payments: Amazon has been struggling to gain traction with its payments platform. They will never unseat or even threaten PayPal until they come up with a unique and differentiated strategy. The world does not need yet another payment option. But Twitter is something new and does offer a smart strategy. By rewarding Twitter users for associating their Twitter accounts with their Amazon account, Amazon can instantly create a new, potentially dominating powerhouse in payments for mobile and online transactions. Using Twitter as the base, builds on PayPal’s model of making payments easy by letting users pay just by entering their Twitter ID – which would be the same as their Amazon Payments ID. If Amazon Payments can seize this deal and execute a launch of "Twitter Payments," the net result could make Amazon/Twitter Payments a real threat to PayPal and a real payments choice for users. One of the least-understood benefits of tightly tying PayPal to eBay transactions is the resulting free promotion PayPal gets being front-and-center in all eBay transactions. Visa or Mastercard would have to pay millions and millions to get that kind of preferred-positioning in a transaction. By linking Amazon Payments to Twitter accounts – Amazon could get the same preferred position for ALL mobile payments – all at no cost. Smart money puts PayPal’s current valuation at $8-12 billion. Not a bad return if Amazon bought Twitter for $700 million. PS: While Google has a payments platform – it is structurally different from Amazon Payments and it would not benefit from the same synergies with Twitter. Google’s payment service is more like a credit card consolidation service vs. a true payments platform. Amazon’s recommendation engine is suited for 140 characters: Twitter has an albatross: No obvious business model has emerged for Twitter and none seems evident to justify a $100 million (let alone $700 million) valuation. Google has taught the world that over-paying for a hot media property (Youtube) solely based on "users" is a dumb move. Hulu took some time in coming on, but it proves the case that any hot new media isn’t immune to competition forever. Which means Twitter will have to offer a sustainable business model to pay-back its buyer. Which brings us to Amazon’s unique ability to capitalize on Twitter’s highly restricted media medium. What could any advertiser possibly do with a service that constrains itself to only 140 characters? Unless you are a copy-writer, you can’t comprehend how difficult it is to promote something in just 140 characters! Enter Amazon’s recommendation engine. Tweet "Amazon’s recommendations 4 u:" and you still have 111 characters to describe a book, movie, song, toy or any other item sold on Amazon. The 140 characters alone are highly constraining. In this case, the medium is most definitely not the message. The message has to be the message. And the message has to be extremely targeted. You can’t target a 140 character message unless you know a whole hell of a lot about the recipient. Amazon alone is the best player to use its database of shopping history to create highly targeted 140 character messages to Twitter users. Imagine if Amazon offered a $5.00 coupon to any Amazon buyer who registers their Twitter account on Amazon? Once the two are linked—game over. My thinking assumes ultimately someone will have to pay the piper for the “free” twitter service and twitter-approved ads make the best sense.  If that is ultimately true and an ad-driven model emerges, then the restriction of the 140 characters is a huge constraint which can only be overcome with highly-effective cross-merchandising (which only Amazon does effectively at scale). Among the current named suitors, only Apple is also similarly situated to utilize the character limitation to highly cross-promote. But what can it cross-promote? Songs? An average song is only $0.99. Compare this low price item to Amazon’s ability to promote any product at any time. Amazon can use the same 140 characters to promote $5, $50 or $500 items. Think of it this way: If Apple was equally successful at cross-promoting a $0.99 song as Amazon might be at cross-promoting a child’s toy for $50 – the profit value Amazon would capture in the same promotion and for the same tweet would be 10-50x better than what Apple could capture. Amazon could best control the brand marketing experience: Twitter users are not going to sit by passively letting a new owner test formats forever. If they feel spammed, they’ll turn and run from Twitter. There is risk that any new owner could destroy the Twitter brand by over-testing or probing for a promotion model to make a Twitter acquisition pay off. But Amazon has a core-strength in doing this. Amazon is renowned for its ability to test creative and GUI’s and measuring sales results. Top that off with Amazon’s "one-click" to buy patent — and you just made mobile buying as easy and comfortable as apple pie. Amazon needs to take some risks.  Amazon’s recent results relative to its arch-rival eBay are impressive. One lesson Amazon can take from eBay’s missteps is the need to invest in new ideas before your existing model begins to gentrify. Clearly, mobile and social are two huge areas where Amazon should be looking to play. Twitter gets them into both games. Amazon does run the risk, as eBay did with Skype, of choosing the wrong horse to ride. But given the threat of losing Twitter to other players who will then control promotion and marketing access to mobile users, this is one bet Amazon ought to take today. Twitter needs a revenue model. Like democracy, the one I propose is the worst—except for all others. I wish the Twitter folks all the best in their decisions in the days ahead. But if Amazon doesn’t step-up to the plate now—and with a very big bat—they will have missed one hell of an opportunity. CrunchBase Information Amazon Twitter Information provided by CrunchBase Crunch Network : CrunchGear drool over the sexiest new gadgets and hardware.
 
Follow The Money: Bookies Favor Apple For A Twitter Buyout Top
Believe who you want. Twitter may or may not be possibly in late stage discussions with Apple about an acquisition (we’re going with no , though some have said otherwise). Now how about putting some money on it? Last month we covered a Panama-based company called BetOnline that’s doing exactly that, allowing users to bet on which company (if any) will be acquiring Twitter in 2009. Things are apparently going well for the company, because it has just opened up another round of betting, updated with a new set of intial odds. And the money is currently on Apple, which is a 2-1 favorite for gobbling up the micromessaging startup sometime this year. The figures are based on the closing volumes of bets from the first round ‘twitter acquisition’ market, along with input from BetOnline researchers who apparently are putting a lot of faith into the Apple rumors (or they know something we don’t). Google, which was at even money for the last round, has fallen to 5-to-2 odds in the new round. Microsoft has jumped from 10-to-1 odds to 5-to-1. And apparently the bookies believe that someone is going to buy Twitter soon, because the odds for ‘no acquisition’ have gone from 2.5-to-1 to 4-to-1. Here’s the full list of intitial odds. Note that these will change over time, so now might be your chance to jump on this if you have any inside info. Apple +200 – (2-to-1) Google +250 – (5-to-2) Microsoft +500 - ( 5-to-1) Time-Warner +800 – (8-to-1) Yahoo +1500 - (15-to-1) Field +600 - (6-to-1) No Sale +400 (4-to-1) Betting on startup acquisitions is cool enough, but the BetOnline team is doing something even more awesome. They’re currently climbing Mount Everest, where they’re going to place the first online bet to be taken from the highest point on Earth. And they’re going to be giving away $20,000 to the charity that receives the most ‘@’ reply votes on their Twitter account before they make the top. They’re about half way there, with plans to make it to the summit in the second half of this month. Wow. And may The Force be with you guys… Crunch Network : CrunchBase the free database of technology companies, people, and investors
 
Video Of SGN's Unlaunched iPhone Jet Dogfighter Game (Verdict: Awesomeness) Top
People say the iPhone is really a gaming device with a mobile phone bolted on. And given how much time I spend playing games on my iPhone, I tend to agree. The touchscreen , accelerometer and (mostly still untapped) ability to play games against others over Wifi or 3G make gameplay compelling. Social Gaming Network (among the first to exploit the iPhone accelerometer to create Wii-like games), is coming out with a new jet fighter dogfight game. The graphics are stunning, and you can fight against computer opponents or other people playing the game. This isn’t the first iPhone dogfight game (Flying Aces and Top Gun are popular), but the graphics are way beyond what I’ve seen with the other games, the social fighting aspect is a first and unlike those games, SGN’s will be free. I had a chance to play it this morning in our offices, a video of that demo is below. The application hasn’t been named yet and is still a month or so from launch, but SGN says if you email launch@sgn.com they’ll respond back when the game launches. The game will be free, and eventually users will be able to pay to upgrade their jets and weapons. In the first version users will train and add levels, but when the iPhone 3 comes out this summer, they say, a war is going to break out. Crunch Network : CrunchBoard because it’s time for you to find a new Job2.0
 
Screenshots Of Google's Next Social Step Top
We just received a screenshot of an iGoogle page, that appears to show a couple interesting new elements of Google’s ever-evolving social blanket. The screenshot supposedly comes from the developer sandbox version of iGoogle (where it tests out new features), and shows options to socially integrate Google widgets. The one shown in the image below is the Google Finance widget, which apparently will be able to access your Google Contacts and place its activity in something called “Updates.” It’s worth noting that Google just recently rolled out a version of Google Contacts that is wholly separate from Gmail. Why a Google Finance widget would need to access that data, I’m not sure. Perhaps it has some kind of easy-to-use “share this with” functionality. Or more specifically, as our tipster notes, that data may be be used to filter who you share something with in your social sphere. But the more interesting element is the posting to the Updates area. One would have to imagine that this will be a river of information similar to Facebook’s News Feed, that will pipe in new information from you when you update something. Where such an Updates area resides will be extremely important. I’d guess it will be on your Google Profile , but there needs to be a centralized place for a full contact stream as well — or centralized places . Maybe Google will simply make another widget for all of your contacts’ updates to place on your iGoogle homepage or maybe even in Gmail. That seems like a smart play as it would be taking on Facebook by doing something slightly different than what Facebook is doing — allowing you to choose the area you wish to view the social stream. There would only be a walled garden insomuch as Google itself is a walled garden — a giant walled garden that encircles most of the web. Of course, Facebook is attempting to at least somewhat do this as well by opening its data stream outside of its walls. I’ve made my distaste for some of Google’s social stumbles very clear. But, if this screenshot is legit, it shows a broader picture that is starting to make some sense. The real question now will be if Google will be able to keep all of this relatively complex tangle of social elements (and the underlying social relationships) simple enough for any user to grasp. Facebook had been really good at that, but it’s getting more complicated. Keep it simple , Google — and it just may pay off. Update : The iGoogle Developer site has a FAQ which answers more questions about the impending social features. Here’s the key section: Who are friends in iGoogle? For development purposes, you can add friends through the friends manager gadget included with the developer tools. You can only share activities with other friends who have access to the developer sandbox. This is not the final network that will be used in iGoogle. Users will have full control over who their friends are and will be able to easily modify their list of friends. Stay tuned for details. Profiles What are profiles in iGoogle? For development purposes, you can modify your profile data (displayname and thumbnail) using the profile gadget included with the developer tools. This is not the final profile or data that will be used in iGoogle. Stay tuned for details. Updates gadget How often can a gadget post an activity to the Updates gadget? A gadget can post up to 5 activities per user per day. For gadget development and testing purposes, these limits are not implemented in the sandbox. Posting activities requires explicit permission from the user granted during the installation of a social gadget. And here’s another screenshot: [thanks David ] Crunch Network : CrunchBase the free database of technology companies, people, and investors
 
Tweetmeme Is Getting Freakin' Awesome Top
Tweetmeme is on a tear. According to Compete, the Twitter-centric link tracker went from nowhere in February, 2009 (with 26,000 unique visitors) to more than tenfold increase in March (to 385,000 uniques). Nick Halstead, The CEO of UK-based Fav.or.it, the company behind Tweetmeme, tells me he is tracking closer to 200,000 uniques a month based on yesterday’s visitors, but that he is adding 50 percent a week. Tweetmeme seems to be pulling way ahead of the other Twitter link sites such as Twitturly or Twit Links . Any way you slice it, Tweetmeme is doing something right. The site shows the most popular links on Twitter ranked by a combination of the number times the link has been Tweeted (shown as a big number beside each headline), recentness, and momentum of Tweets. It also categorizes different news stories based on the title of the post or article, the underlying domain, and hash tags within the Tweets. You can sort by Comedy, Entertainment, Gaming, Lifestyle, Science, Sports, Technology, or World & Business. You can also sort by news, Images, or videos. It pulls together 200,000 links, images, and videos every day now. And you can follow what is makes it on Tweetmeme’s homepage via Twitter itself by following the @Tweetmeme account or sub-accounts for each channel such as @tm-technology or @tm_comedy . Today, it added OAuth, which lets you sign in with your Twitter account and retweet headlines without leaving the page. It also launched a toolbar, which will be controversial because it opens up the underlying link within a Tweetmeme URL and frame much like the Diggbar does. Instead of showing how many times the story has been Dugg, the frame shows a count of how many times the story has been Tweeted along with a “Shuffle” button (equivalent to the Diggbar’s “Random” button) that will take you to another highly Tweeted story. I am not a big fan of the toolbar in principle, but I can see why Halstead added it. It keeps people on Tweetmeme and drives more activity. At least, it can be easily closed. But with every site adding its own frames these days, pretty soon there won’t be any room left for the actual destination site you are trying to look at. What I am a big fan of, though, is that after a recent relaunch , it just keeps adding features. A few weeks ago it added a “live” tab which shows the most Tweeted links stream onto the page much like FriendFeed now handles your personal activity stream. Thankfully, you can set it to stream only stories that have been Tweeted at least 5, 10, or 20 times. Even setting it to 5 links is unreadable because the stream moves down too fast, but at 10 or 20 its becomes more manageable and addictive in that you can watch the most popular links in the Twittersphere stream by in real time. This live stream of relevant headlines is much more immediate even than what you find on Techmeme, which can take hours to change meaningfully. With so many sites gunning for Techmeme’s crown as the ultimate arbiter of what news is being talked about the most on the Web (I wrote about one such attempt earlier today), the real threat is going to come from somebody like Tweetmeme, which plays to different strengths. The question is whether Twitter will be a better place to mine for buzz than blogs, news sites, or the rest of the Web. Right now, I’d say the answer is no. Not because Tweetmeme doesn’t surface the most Tweeted stories, but because everyone on Twitter seems to be obsessed with linking to stories about Twitter! For instance, right now 6 of the top ten headlines on Tweetmeme are about Twitter acquisition rumors. To be fair, that was also the top story on Techmeme for most of the day. But at least Techmeme has moved on (to Kindle rumors!). Will the stories on Tweetmeme ever become more relevant and timely than on Techmeme? If I were Gabe Rivera, I’d start worrying now. Crunch Network : CrunchBase the free database of technology companies, people, and investors
 
Come See Star Trek On Opening Night With Us (Silicon Valley) Top
The original Star Trek series was my first foray into science fiction, and I have fond memories of watching those original episodes with my dad as a kid. So I’m about as excited as a person can be about the new Star Trek movie coming out this Thursday. And I want to share that excitement with 600 or so of my closest friends. We’re hosting a Star Trek screening in Silicon Valley on opening night, this Thursday May 7. Our big goal is to get through this without getting any litigation threats , but we’ll see. Want to come? More details soon, but here are the basics: the screening will be held on Thursday at 7 pm at the Redwood City Century 20 theater. We’ll be charging a couple of dollars to reduce no shows, but otherwise the event is on us. We’ll also be organizing a meeting at a local bar/venue (hopefully with live music, but we’ll see). If you’re interested in sponsoring the event or the drinks afterwards, email Asad at TechCrunch and he’ll give you the details. We’re hoping to find someone who’ll buy everyone popcorn or a drink afterwards at the bar. See you Thursday! And if you can’t make it, don’t worry. I’ll live stream the whole thing on Qik. Update: Here’s season 1, episode 1 of the original Star Trek: Crunch Network : MobileCrunch Mobile Gadgets and Applications, Delivered Daily.
 
Tesla Founder Elon Musk Dreams Of Electric Airplanes Top
Last week, Elon Musk had a candid conversation with VC George Zachary at the Charles River Ventures CEO Summit. One of the most interesting things Musk talked about was his desire to see electric airplanes in the future—and perhaps even one day help develop these green, energy efficient planes himself. It makes sense—Musk has an interest in aeronautics (he founded Space Exploration Technologies, SpaceX, in 2002, which develops and manufactures space launch vehicles), energy efficiency and sustainability. Electric planes combine these three in a nice package. Musk also mentioned his electric plane idea in an interview at the Churchill Club earlier this year (see video below), where he says he’s very interested in developing an “electric super sonic plane” one day. The nascent technology for an electronic airplane is still relatively unknown but perhaps Musk will change that in the not too distant future. The videos are below with a transcript of the dialogue between Zachary and Musk: Zachary: What will you do next-will you stay inside the three areas Musk: I don’t think I’ll go outside of the three areas. There’s a [inaudible] on the sustainable energy front. I have an idea for an electric plane and really one that you can go suspersonic in. And then it would be interesting to take a look at fusion. That’s a really tough problem. Zachary: So that should keep you busy for awhile. Arrington: I want hear more about the electric plane that you brought up really early on in the talk and how realistic that is from a technology standpoint and from a new startup standpoint possibly. Is it possibe technically to do that in an interesting way. Seems like a lot of batteries. Musk: It’s a lot of batteries.Technically an electric plane gets more feasible as battery energy improves. It’s definitely feasible right now. Its just a questions of the range . . . You have to have energy density for a global plane. Basically, the electrocarrier as it functions for a plane has to be very high and then ultimately, it’s how you really use the fact that you have an electric motor driving the plane as opposed to a jet engine which is taking [inaudible]. You have to design a plane differently to deal with . . . its an interesting configuration of what you can do with vertical takeoff and landing angles with the design. It’s a tricky problem. I try not to think about because I have too much to think about. Crunch Network : CrunchBase the free database of technology companies, people, and investors
 
Twishitter: Twitter Apps Head Towards The Gutter Top
It’s inevitable. A platform becomes popular, gains mainstream appeal, and the race to the bottom begins. We saw this happen with the iPhone, where a plethora of farting applications hit the store. But it happens, at least in part, because people enjoy the humorous, crude app every once in a while. The success that iFart and other apps of that ilk point to this — or at least to their novelty. Now Twitter is getting it’s own gross apps. But they’re not wasting their time talking about farting — they’re going right to the shitter. Twishitter is a service meant for one purpose: To collect people’s tweets while in the bathroom. If you use Twitter, you’ve probably done it, or seen someone at a bar doing it. Now, there’s an app to follow all the action live. To use it, simply include either “@twishitter” or “#poo” in your tweets, and they’ll appear in the Twishitter timeline. Of course, I’m looking at the site right now and it appears that it’s just aggregating any tweet that includes words like “crap,” which most of the time is completely unrelated. You can easily retweet Twishitter tweets from the site, or leave comments below the tweets on the site itself. Yeah, it’s stupid, and yeah it’s gross, but at least the creators have a sense of humor. Here’s a few choice bits from the site: “25% of all tweets are twooted via twitter whilst the twitterer is on the twoilet… ~ Fartner Independent Research” “When I use public restrooms, I love the thrill of tapping the feet of those occupying neighboring stalls. I also enjoy twishittering!” - Senator Larry Craig “Michelle and I TwiShitter all the time from the White House.” - Barack Obama It also, hilariously, has an ad for ExecTwshitter — ripping into ExecTweets , the Twitter service for execs that was the first third-party to be sponsored in ads on Twitter. CrunchBase Information TwiShitter Information provided by CrunchBase Crunch Network : CrunchGear drool over the sexiest new gadgets and hardware.
 
Good To The Last Tweet: Coffee Machine Drips Updates To Twitter Top
Just when you think you’ve seen it all … I’m here at the Next09 conference in Hamburg, a two-day conference about the future of the web and media that kicked off today with an afternoon of keynote presentations by Jeff Jarvis, Andrew Keen, Umair Haque and more. There was one booth out in the hallway that caught my attention however, and after seeing it I felt the insatiable urge to get it on video. Out went the Flip, and here’s the result: Markus Lezaun from new media agency Blanko talking about his Twittering coffee machine. Here’s how it works: basically, a webcam attached to the coffee machine detects when the text on its display screen changes and sends the image to a computer, where it is matched with images in a database. When a match is found (which succeeds most of the time but not always, depending on how good the light is), a status update is automatically sent to the Blankomat Twitter account . The whole thing was set up by a 16-year old intern of the agency, probably when he had too much coffee. Useful? no. Cool? Depends on who you ask, but it just goes to show to what lengths people will go to find a use for Twitter these days. Crunch Network : MobileCrunch Mobile Gadgets and Applications, Delivered Daily.
 
LogMeIn Coming Soon To The BlackBerry Storm Top
Another day of WES2009 , another day of BlackBerry news. This morning brings an announcement from LogMeIn , makers of the remote desktop access software of the same name. For those unfamiliar with the concept, LogMeIn allows you to control a Windows or Mac computer from another terminal across the internet. Previously, the term “terminal” here was limited to meaning any PC or system with an up-to-snuff browser. As of December, the launch of LogMeIn Ignition expanded it to include the iPhone. This morning, LogMeIn is announcing that they’ll soon be throwing the BlackBerry Storm into the mix as well. Read the rest of this entry at MobileCrunch >> Crunch Network : MobileCrunch Mobile Gadgets and Applications, Delivered Daily.
 
SeeWhy Raises $4.5 Million, Improves Website Conversion By Closely Tracking Abandoners Top
Imagine a potential restaurant visitor calling a place he’s never been before, asking all sorts of questions about the establishment and ultimately deciding to make a reservation elsewhere. If you’re the restaurant owner, you should be wondering what went wrong where and when, and what you can do about it. Now assume the number of people calling the restaurant and ultimately not booking grows to 10 out of 30 people who would have been ready to make a reservation if everything added up for them. Pretty important for a business to know what’s up, right? Same thing happens with people who want to sign up for a certain web service or become a customer of an e-commerce website. Not everyone completes the process for signing up or buying something online, and the reasons can be very diverse. Website abandonment measurement and management should be high up on the priority list for any web service provider, particularly those who use the Internet to sell products, whether directly or indirectly. Evaluating the entire process that is supposed to guide a visitor towards becoming a customer should be done on a continuous basis, and it’s very important to know why people start the cycle but never finish it. Let’s go back to the restaurant. Suppose a person who wasn’t convinced by the person answering the phone at the place hung up, turned on the radio or TV and stumbled upon an advertisement for the restaurant, making him change his mind again. I know this is an extremely unlikely scenario, but it gets more feasible when you apply this to the Web. The above example, which you could categorize under the denominator ‘re-converting’, is pretty similar to what SeeWhy is trying to accomplish for e-commerce vendors and web application providers: try and get the abandoners (i.e. people who leave online registration or purchasing system prior to finishing the process) to come back and complete the cycle. Not 24 hours or more later, but practically in real-time. SeeWhy has launched the free Abandonment Tracker (available as a software-as-a-service), which makes it easy to convert website visitors who had previously abandoned their shopping carts, online forms, applications and registrations. The tracker captures the unique IDs of website abandoners and then emails those IDs to the website operator for use in follow-up campaigns targeted to the abandoners. When a visitor lands on a web page again, an event is sent to SeeWhy’s data center. If the visitor doesn’t convert, SeeWhy records the abandonment along with the details, including email address, shopping cart items and amount, and stage in the conversion process at which the visitor abandoned. The whole point of the system is to recapture abandoned revenue. Currently SeeWhy’s suite of real-time web analytic applications is being used by both large and small ecommerce companies, including Amazon.com, eBay, Land's End, Citibank and MasterCard. The company just raised $4.5 million in funding from Scottish Equity Partners, Logispring, and Pentech Ventures. Crunch Network : MobileCrunch Mobile Gadgets and Applications, Delivered Daily.
 
Gist Scores $6.75 Million For Gmail, Twitter and Microsoft Outlook Integration Service Top
Seattle-based Gist has secured $6.75 million in Series A funding led by the Foundry Group with participation by its founding investor Vulcan Capital. The investment will be used for product development efforts and to expand operations. Currently in closed beta, Gist integrates with Microsoft Outlook and Gmail to aggregate, organize and prioritize emails, links, attachments, and related information (news, blogs, etc.) in a user’s email inbox. Gist also integrates with LinkedIn, Facebook and Twitter bringing feeds and information together across social networks. Users can access Gist on the web, inside applications (i.e. Outlook), or on their mobile device. Gist has an iPhone app that is also available. Launched in 2008, the company was founded by T.A. McCann, an entrepreneur and former senior employee in Microsoft’s Exchange Server Group. It was started and initially funded by Microsoft co-founder Paul Allen's Vulcan Capital. After extensive prototyping and research, McCann and Vulcan launched the company in mid-2008 with its headquarters in Seattle, WA. Here’s a screenshot of Gist’s interface: Crunch Network : MobileCrunch Mobile Gadgets and Applications, Delivered Daily.
 
Niche Mag Publisher Future Launches Dozens Of News Aggregator Sites Under DailyRadar Top
The future of media is algorithmic aggregation, at least that is the approach Future US is taking. The U.S. subsidiary of Future PLC, and publisher of such niche magazines as Nintendo Power , Guitar World , and Maximum PC , is adopting a different approach online than simply putting its print articles on the Web. Instead, it has launched dozens of news aggregation and discovery sites called “Blips” that are a combination of Techmeme and Digg. The Blips collect topical stories from across the Web and present the headlines in discussion clusters like you’d see on Techmeme, but stories can also then be voted up the page like on Digg. There are about 40 different Blips on various topics, including TechBlips , EarthBlips , and WrestlingBlips . All of them are accessible from Future’s online portal, DailyRadar (which also houses the magazine content under games, music, tech, entertainment, and sports tags). Future has been launching Blips quietly since last summer, and they now account for 9.3 million of DailyRadar’s 27 million monthly unique visitors (which is up from about 12 million uniques a year ago before the Blips sites were added). These are internal numbers. ComScore shows 11.4 million uniques worldwide in March, 2009 up from 6.4 million last September. The Blip sites are based on Future’s $3 million acquisition of BallHype last year. Now Future is rolling out about half a dozen new Blips every month. The underlying technology evaluates 26,000 different news sources, blogs, video sites, and photo sites to create topical Blips. Once a source is white-listed by an editor or added by a reader, it then becomes part of the mix. Stories are clustered together, with the placement of headlines determined by a combination of links, votes, and age (newer stories rank higher). I am not convinced the Blip strategy will make a meaningful difference for Future or offset the downward spiral in print advertising, but it is an interesting attempt at adaptation. TechBlip is not going to displace TechMeme any time soon, but most of the other Blips address under-served or highly-focused niches: AnimeBlips, CricketBlips, CraftBlips, GuitarWorldBlips, MommyBlips, etc. Niche news aggregation is one thing, but then aggregating the aggregators gives Future the scale to sell ads across all of the Blips. On the other hand, the Blips are so targeted running ads across the network might not always make sense. If you are targetting mommies, you are probably not interested in reaching anime aficionados. To show off the technology, DailyRadar has an interactive Trendmap showing which tags and keywords are peaking on the site. You can create Trendmaps for different broad categories and grab it as a widget, which I’ve done below: Crunch Network : MobileCrunch Mobile Gadgets and Applications, Delivered Daily.
 
'Particle' Roars Out Of Stealth With Three New Products, And Justin Timberlake's Blessing Top
It isn’t often that we hear about a startup looking to build things that are “massively small”. But today a new startup called Particle is coming out of stealth with that mantra, along with a handful of bite-sized new products that seem to fit the bill nicely. The company is also bringing with it an interesting source of funding, with musician Justin Timberlake as its lead investor (Timberlake isn’t new to Silicon Valley - his past investments include Tapulous ). The first service to launch today is called Robo.to , which is meant to serve as a ‘digital calling card’. In some senses the service is like a mix between Google Profiles and Ping.fm , offering a single hub for all of your online presences and social activity, from which you can broadcast your status updates to multiple services. Visitors to your profile can quickly see how many Twitter followers you have, your latest Flickr photos, your current location (assuming you’ve plotted it), and links to your other online presences. The site also prominently features a spot for a ‘video avatar’ - a brief video clip that’s meant to take the place of traditional emoticons or static photos, which you can broadcast to a number of popular online services. It’s a neat concept, reminiscent of the moving photographs from Harry Potter (for an example see the video below, or Timberlake’s profile here ). And while it may not catch on with everyone, I suspect it could prove popular with younger crowds. The site is also very mobile friendly (note the narrow width), and plays nice with the iPhone out the gate. The second service is Crush3r , an Evite competitor that allows users to send out invitations to their friends. While not particularly novel, the service is well designed with very little clutter. Each invitation is also highly customizable, with a checklist of options for each module that you’d like to be included with the invitation (options include videos, a list of other guests, and items that the invitee should bring). Like I said, it’s nothing revolutionary, but it seems like a great alternative to some of the bloated sites like Evite that many of us have been trying to move away from for years. Finally, there’s p0p , which is a sort of scrapbook for listing your favorite sites, books, and media content into lists, which can then be shared with friends. After building these lists, users can then share them as blog embeds or via social networks. And as your friends join, it can be used as a recommendation engine. At this point it isn’t exactly clear what Particle’s vision is with its products - they obviously seem to be pretty disjointed, though they’ve all been well designed and are quite polished. CEO Rey Flemings says that there is a grand plan; we’ll just have to wait a few more months to see it. And even if the grand scheme doesn’t come to fruition, at least they’re hedging their bets across three fairly discrete spaces. Crunch Network : CrunchBoard because it’s time for you to find a new Job2.0
 
Twitter Mania: Google Got Shut Down. Apple Rumors Heat Up. Top
Twitter! Whether you use it or not, or understand it or not, it’s the hottest thing in Silicon Valley right now. It’s brought up in every conversation. And no wonder - the service has exploded to somewhere north of 25 million users and has been growing by 40% a week since that Oprah appearance , says a source close to the company. Google tried to buy it but was rebuffed by Twitter CEO Evan Williams , says a source with knowledge of the talks. Today, though, rumors popped up that Apple may be looking to buy Twitter. “Apple is in late stage negotiations to buy Twitter and is hoping to announce it at WWDC in June,” said a normally reliable source this evening, adding that the purchase price would be $700 million in cash. The trouble is we’ve checked with other sources who claim to know nothing about any Apple negotiations. If these discussions are happening, Twitter is keeping them very quiet indeed. We would have passed on reporting this rumor at all, but other press is now picking it up. Twitter is strongly signaling that it doesn’t want to sell at any price right now. The founders took significant money off the table in the last round valuing Twitter at $250 million , we’ve heard, and are aligned with investors to see Twitter through to the end. And frankly that’s probably the best thing for the Internet. I wrote in an earlier post that I’d like to see Twitter spread its wings a little longer and see what it can become. It’ll be hard to do that as a subsidiary of Google, Apple, or anyone else for that matter. If Twitter wants to stay independent that’s just fine with me. Crunch Network : CrunchBase the free database of technology companies, people, and investors
 
Steve Ballmer Visits Silicon Valley, Yahoo Search Deal Rumors Buzz Top
It started early Monday morning with Yahoo’ers chattering that the long awaited Microsoft search deal, first floated in the middle of last year when an outright merger was abandoned, may be near. Something internal at Yahoo set these guys off, and non C level executives got wind of it. The buzz started, with one call I received saying a deal was closing now. As in ASAP. Much of this may have to do with the fact that Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer is in Silicon Valley, and has been at least since the weekend. He’s speaking at an event Wednesday night, which explains the trip. But instead of just jetting in and out, he’s come days early. Why? Who knows, but that’s plenty of information to start the rumor mill going. Our direct sources are telling us that discussions are progressing, as they have been for some time, but that major deal terms still need to be worked out. One source said not to expect a deal in the next few weeks. Ever since Google was forced to bail on their own Yahoo search deal , some sort of alliance with Microsoft was inevitable. Well, inevitable just as soon as Yahoo got their CEO situation under control. Crunch Network : CrunchBoard because it’s time for you to find a new Job2.0
 
hi5 Adds Chat, With A Social Twist Top
Social network hi5 is launching an instant messaging service, hi5 IM, adding real-time interaction for users. hi5 IM, which is similar to Facebook Chat, Facebook’s instant messaging feature, shows users which friends within their network are online and runs directly in any hi5 user's browser. In addition to one-on-one chat, users can change their status, write updates, post profile comments, and share photos through hi5 IM. It appears that the social network is looking to amp its “entertainment features” to gain more users and is also focusing on engaging users though casual gaming and micro-payments. Hi5 also recently partnered with Paymo to power mobile payments for virtual goods. The social network is hoping that real-time chat will compliment casual games, and interaction with other content on the social network. hi5 IM also enables users to share and express their emotions through animated hi5 "star" emoticons. The star, derived from the hi5 logo, represents a variety of virtual gestures and emotions, such as sad, happy, laughing, crying, playing dead, angry and shy. Last month, the self-described "world's leading social entertainment web site," got a new CEO, Bill Gossman, formerly the CEO of the online advertising service Audience Science. And at the end of March, the social network hi5 cut a large percentage of its staff following the failure of a new round of funding to materialize. With nearly 60 million active users, hi5 has a good sized audience, but it's long been far behind the big boys in the social networking space, MySpace and Facebook. Facebook is the most popular social network worldwide with 294.7 million unique visitors, with MySpace coming in second with 125.7 million unique visitors. hi5 gets about 63 million monthly unique visits worldwide but only 3.7 million of those are from the U.S., according to ComScore's March stats. And a good chunk of ts audience is in countries where it is hard to attract advertisers, Crunch Network : MobileCrunch Mobile Gadgets and Applications, Delivered Daily.
 
MarketRiders Promises Steady Returns Through The Magic of Exchange-Traded Funds Top
If you think you can beat the stock market, don’t bother reading this post. This post is about a startup that wants to make investing boring and predictable, which is something most of the investing public could use right now. MarketRiders has actually been in beta for about a year, and now it is ready to be tested by a broader group of investors. The idea is simple: If you get your asset allocation right and eliminate management fees, you can boost your returns and outperform nearly every actively traded fund over the long haul. Mitch Tuchman, the founder of MarketRiders and a former hedge fund manager, studied the investment strategies of big university endowments like Yale’s. He learned that 80 to 90 percent of returns within any given year come from being in the right asset class (stocks, bonds, real estate, commodities, emerging markets), not from stock picking or market timing. The trick to steady returns is to try to mimic the market, not beat it, through exposure to broad asset classes. “Wall Street is the biggest fleecing machine in the world,” says Tuchman. “It is selling investors on the idea that if you give this manager money he will give you a better return than the market.” A better strategy, he thinks, is simply to buy a variety of exchange-traded funds which index different markets and then periodically re-balance your portfolio. Rebalancing means trimming back the (inflated) winners and buying the (cheap) losers, which requires discipline and emotional detachment. MarketRiders helps you come up with an asset allocation strategy appropriate to your age and investment goals, suggests ETFs to buy, and then sends you rebalancing alerts whenever necessary. ETFs have very low fees, which help overall returns. You still need to take the suggestions and place orders with your broker—a detail which introduces some friction into the process. But once you have your account set up, it tracks everything automatically. Still, for the $9.95/month MarketRiders is asking, it could at least hook up with your brokerage account and do the re-balancing automatically. Nevertheless, Tuchman is on a mission: “I am trying to save people from the biggest con game in the country right now.” If you feel comfortable taking an active role in managing your own money and can attend to it on a regular basis, you can give MarketRiders a free try for a month. You can click on the image below to see a screenshot showing a typical portfolio, along with the alert levels (red means sell, green means buy). Crunch Network : CrunchBase the free database of technology companies, people, and investors
 
CrossLoop's Screen-Sharing App Comes To The Mac Top
After nearly five million downloads of its Windows PC client, CrossLoop brings its screen-sharing app and growing pro-am computer support community to the Mac ( download here , for Intel Macs running OS X 10.4 or higher). CrossLoop is a peer-to-peer screen sharing app that lets a remote IT specialist or a friend take over your computer to fix a problem or give you a tutorial. Since its launch in November, 2006, more than 100 million minutes worth of sessions have been shared through the service, with shared minutes growing at a 210 percent annual rate. It took CrossLoop 132 days to reach its first one million minutes of shared screen time. Now, its members are sharing one million minutes every four days. The vast majority of the help sessions on CrossLoop are done for free, but 14,414 semi-professional “helpers” charge for their services, collecting about $55 to $60 per session. For instance, for $50 you can get help switching from a PC to a Mac . CrossLoop takes a 15 percent cut of all the paid sessions for hosting a directory of helpers, providing the software, keeping track of session lengths, and handling the payments. Peer-to-peer product support will grow in popularity over time ( see Fixya ). If consumers can find someone on CrossLoop who can fix their computer faster and cheaper than someone at the local computer repair shop, it is a no-brainer. Of course, if the computer is completely dead or you can’t get on the Internet, CrossLoop won’t do you any good. But there are plenty of other times when you just need a little guidance from your family’s designated tech support expert, or are even willing to pay someone who actually knows what they are doing. Crunch Network : CrunchBase the free database of technology companies, people, and investors
 
Google Reader Still Trying To Figure Out This Whole Social Thing. Still Failing. Top
A lot of people use Google Reader as their primary RSS feed reader, so you’d think its social features would be extremely popular. But they’re really kind of lame, and extremely underpowered. And Google knows this, that’s why it’s continually shifting the way it presents the social elements. The latest change today allows users to more easily find and share with friends of friends . That is to say, if you have a friend sharing an item with you, and another one of their friends comments on it, you can now get access to that friend. This idea isn’t really anything new, in fact, FriendFeed (aka the primary source of Facebook’s innovations these days), has been doing something similar for a couple of years now. The reason for doing this is obvious: If you don’t have a lot of friends on a service, the friend of a friend element pipes more content into your stream to make things more active, and thus, more appealing to use. But FriendFeed is doing this much better than Google Reader is, so far. Trying the new functionality out, it seems a bit weird that I would be asked if I want to share my updates with a certain person who I probably don’t know. Instead, wouldn’t it be better to have the option to see their updates? Of course, Google Reader doesn’t work that way. Following its snafus when it first ventured into social sharing, the company made it awfully hard to share stuff. So whereas you can subscribe to anyone on FriendFeed (at least anyone that has an open feed, just like on Twitter), to see items on Google Reader, they have to share stuff with you. The problem with this is that most people don’t care to take the time to explicitly set their sharing settings to include all those people that may want to be included. And there’s another problem with Google Reader’s social aspirations. The product from a sharing standpoint is extremely clunky. Sharing is tucked away in its own drop down menu, something which I routinely find is just about my last item to visit (and is normally relegated under the “Mark all as read” umbrella). The problem here is that all of my individual friends’ names are listed below the “Friends’ shared items” banner, so I keep it minimized to avoid clutter. I also keep it minimized because rarely do my friends ever comment on items. And if they do happen to, it’s even rarer that another person will comment as well, giving you — get this — a conversation. That’s something that FriendFeed does extremely well. Google Reader? Not so much. It was smart of Google to tie the Google Reader profile into the newly emphasized Google Profiles — this is something we’re going to see more of across all its properties, no doubt. But what Google Reader really needs is some way to spur social usage. It needs either a main page where the most shared/most talked about items are listed, that gives you a rundown of who shared what. It sort of has a recommended area, with its “cool” feed , which shares popular items across the Google Reader ecosystem, but that’s far from social. Or maybe it should add a list comments you leave on shared items to your main Google Profile. This would be a micro-blog of sorts with your take on stories. Of course, that would require that you allow anyone to see your shared items, which is something, again, you cannot do within Google Reader. But oddly, you can see others’ shared items if you know their public Shared Item page URL (which is a bunch of ugly numbers and letters and should be turned into their Google Profile name as well, if Google is going to go in that direction). It’s really quite a confusing mess. As I noted, a ton of people use Google Reader as a primary way to go through items on the web. It seems natural that this would be a powerful social tool as well, but Google has effectively made it one of the most closed social networks around. It’s closed and its clunky. That just reeks of inactivity. Crunch Network : CrunchGear drool over the sexiest new gadgets and hardware.
 
DealBase Finds $1 Million For Hotel Deal Database Top
DealBase.com, an online database devoted to aggregating hotel deals and packages, has secured $1 million in Series A funding from angel investors including Russ Siegelman, a partner at Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers; Bob Zipp, managing director of Amicus Capital; and Josh Hannah, general partner at Matrix Partners and former CEO of eHow.com. Launched in November 2008, DealBase crawls the web to create a database of hotel deals, special offers and packages, which currently number more than 22,000 deals, from over 3,500 sources, adding up to $4,660,093 in total savings on the site. The online travel industry is a competitive market chock full of sites that find consumer deals for travel, which makes the popularity contest incredibly tough. Expedia, Kayak, Travelzoo and others all offer packages and deals through their platforms and have a dedicated user base. What makes DealBase’s site slightly more unique is its “Deal Analyzer” functionality that compares deal prices to regular prices, and then rates the deal for travelers so they can determine if they’re getting a good deal or not. Sam Shank, founder of DealBase, says that 15 percent of deals on the site have negative savings. But Microsoft-owned Farecast, a travel site focused in finding deals for hotels and air travel, also has a feature that measures how well-priced the hotel is compared to its original pricing and other hotels. The main difference is that Farecast doesn’t limit its search to just deals and packages while DealBase only lists deals and special promotions for hotels. Shank also maintains that since DealBase lets any hotels post advertisements for free, with no advertising deals, the process is transparent and hotels have more of an incentive in the current economy to post a deal for free. Currently, DealBase features over 500 deals for New York City Hotels while Travelzoo lists only 7 deals. Expedia also features nearly 500 deals for hotels in New York. If DealBase’s database has the same reach and information of more established sites like Expedia, that could be a good sign. Shank’s previous startup, TravelPost, was one of the larger hotel review sites in the US and was acquired by SideStep, a comprehensive travel deal search engine. SideStep was then acquired by competitor Kayak in December 2007 for $180 million. Crunch Network : CrunchBoard because it’s time for you to find a new Job2.0
 
SMSGupShup (India's "Twitter") Grows To 20 million Users, $150,000/month Revenue Top
SMSGupShup , a Twitter-like service in India, is getting a ton of buzz over here in the U.S., too. In an interview with CEO Beerud Sheth now says the service now has 20 million users (and that’s without an appearance on Oprah ), nearly all of which are in India. That’s up from 7 million late last year. The service can only be accessed via SMS, which works just fine for India’s 400 million mobile phone users (there are just 40 million broadband Internet users, Sheth says). Users sign up and use the service all via text messages. They never need to visit the website at all. The service’s main variable costs are fees for text messages, and Sheth says that they’ve had to implement caps to keep costs under control. But as the service grows, says Sheth, they are able to negotiate much better pricing. Already SMSGupShup accounts for 400 million monthly text messages, around “5%-6%” of the total Indian market. Three months ago the service added advertising to messages. Three months in and they’re making $150,000/month in revenue. Not bad for a SMS-based service. The full video interview is below. Thanks to Robert Scoble who participated briefly in the interview. Crunch Network : CrunchGear drool over the sexiest new gadgets and hardware.
 
About Schmidt: Does The FTC Really Think Apple And Google Are Too Buddy Buddy? Top
In terms of big companies with an overall glowing public perception these days, two seem to stand above all others: Apple and Google. And the two share a lot in common — notably, a common enemy in Microsoft, and both share two board members. The latter is apparently the subject of a new FTC investigation into possible antitrust ties, The New York Times has learned . Specifically, Eric Schmidt and Arthur Levinson sit on the boards of both companies. And section 8 of the The Clayton Antitrust Act of 1914 prohibits two companies from sharing the same board member(s), if it is going to decrease competition between the two. But, as the NYT notes, this is rarely enforced. And even if it were, it would be difficult to penalize, because the person would likely just resign from one of the boards. But it’s interesting nonetheless that the government is looking into this for a couple reasons — both involving Schmidt, who is of course, also the CEO of Google. First, new antitrust chief Christine A. Varney, has a history of linking Google to the word “antitrust.” Last June, before she held the post, she said that Microsoft represented an antitrust threat for the last century, but that Google was the one to watch now. When she was named as the nominee, plenty pointed this out , saying that it was good that President Obama would choose someone who would take such a stance even with Obama’s close ties to Schmidt, who helped in significant ways to get him elected. More recently, Schmidt was appointed to the President’s Council of Advisors on Science and Technology. The second reason that this is interesting is again because of Schmidt. He has been on Apple’s board for a number of years, and this has presented an interesting situation recently for the two companies. When discussing the iPhone in Apple’s board meetings, Schmidt has to excuse himself, since one of Google’s key products, Android, competes with the iPhone. This hasn’t been too much of an issue in the past since just as they compete, sometimes the two companies also help one another in terms of things like apps for the iPhone. But a report a few months ago indicated that Google may have decided not to include multi-touch support in Android at the behest of Apple. If the FTC actually decides to seriously pursue this, it could well force Schmidt to step down from his position on Apple’s board. Sure, the two sides could fight it, but it would be much easier for everyone if he just did that. But is that what’s really going on here? Going back to the Microsoft connection; it’s hard not to jump at the opportunity to speculate that it plays a roll in this FTC inquiry. The software giant is known to have a large and powerful Washington lobby — one that has done shady things in the past. But would it really use some of its clout to demand this sort of inquiry which rarely results in any kind of action? It seems a bit unlikely, but perhaps it’s possible if it really just wants to mess with Google and Apple. But again, that’s just pure speculation. Instead, this may just be a shot across the bow of Google by the antitrust team, letting them know that despite the close ties the administration has to Schmidt, it is watching. Crunch Network : CrunchBoard because it’s time for you to find a new Job2.0
 

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