Thursday, May 7, 2009

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It's 3.0 Or Die For New iPhone Apps Top
Apple has just sent out an email alert to iPhone developers that any new app submitted to the App Store will have to be ready for the iPhone 3.0 software, which is due shortly (probably around Apple’s WWDC event in June). Beginning today, any app submitted that isn’t 3.0 compatible will be rejected. Here’s the key parts of the email: Beginning today, all submissions to the App Store will be reviewed on the latest beta of iPhone OS 3.0. If your app submission is not compatible with iPhone OS 3.0, it will not be approved. Existing apps in the App Store should already run on iPhone OS 3.0 without modification, but you should test your existing apps with iPhone OS 3.0 to ensure there are no compatibility issues. After iPhone OS 3.0 becomes available to customers, any app that is incompatible with iPhone OS 3.0 may be removed from the App Store. I’ve emailed Apple asking if there are any features specifically that developers should be careful about making sure work in the new 3.0 firmware. Google recently outlined some of the key points of the new Android firmware that developers should watch for in order to maintain compatibility . One potential issue as outlined by our tipster Nick is as follows: Apple also says that most apps will run on 3.0 without any changes, however, some major changes were made and I suspect any app using a UIAlertView (pretty much any app with a confirm/deny dialog) will need to be changed due to the change made to the indexing order of the buttons on that view. [thanks nick] Crunch Network : CrunchBoard because it’s time for you to find a new Job2.0
 
Avatar Startup FUHU Raises $6.25 Million, Strikes Deal With Acer To Put Widgets In PCs Top
FUHU, a startup that produces virtual avatars and identity cards and rich media web widgets, has secured $6.25 million in Series B funding from The Acer Group (which produces Acer, Gateway, eMachines and Packard Bell computers). FUHU also signed a 10 year contract to distribute FUHU products in all Acer computers and smart mobile phones. FUHU raised $1.5 million in Series A funding in February 2008 from John Hui (co-founder of eMachines), VIA Technologies, UMC Capital, Industrial Bank of Taiwan, Alorica, and several angel investors. FUHU’s urFooz product, an embeddable virtual identity card, allows users to create an avatar and portable profile that contains music, photos, feeds, and videos. The widget then lets users syndicate their profile on social networks (MySpace, Facebook etc.). Through the deal, FUHU will collect computer users’ information with out-of-the-box registration for Acer computers. Users will be given the option to create a urFooz avatar and account upon registration. Here’s one for Britney Spears: Filling out a profile is similar to filling out a profile on a social network—you are asked for the essential information you would share with a friend, including hometown, employers, relationship status, and education. You can link your profile/avatar to your accounts from Facebook, MySpace, Twitter, YouTube, Flickr, FriendFeed, blogs and more. You can also dress your avatar in designer clothes through purchases at urFooz’s virtual mall. And you can embed your urFooz card on any social network, blog or site. The card is dynamically updated on these sites when you update your profile. Currently urFooz has about 20,00 users but CEO Jim Mitchell says that the startup could add 1 to 2 million users a month through the integration of urFooz with Acer computer registration. Whether users will actually feel compelled to keep using the profile is another question. The idea of an embeddable avatar is interesting but you can also share photos, videos, and music within your social networks without the help of a widget, Another FUHU widget that will be integrated with Acer computers is the Spinlets widget, which is a rich media widgets that let users place favorite music, videos, links, pictures, MP3s, ring-tones, news and more on social networks, sites and blogs. Currently, the Spinlets site only lets you embed music widgets on sites but the video, pictures and additional functionality will be coming soon. FUHU says there will be some sort of pre-loaded mashup of the Spinlets widget already downloaded on the computers but would not reveal more details about what this will look like. One of the advantages for Acer in this deal is that the company will have access to data and information about users who set up a urFooz profile, including hobbies, activities, interests, says Mitchell. Acer is also planning to integrate FUHU’s widgets into its smart phones, which are already out in Asia. Acer plans to unveil its smart phones in the U.S. in 2010. Competitors in the rich media widget space include Slide and RockYou. Crunch Network : CrunchBase the free database of technology companies, people, and investors
 
Google Friend Connect Adds Comment Translation Top
For sites that use Google Friend Connect and its comment widget, there is now a novel new feature: comment translation . The comment widget plugs into Google Translate to allow readers to translate comments left in foreign languages. This will be a boon to international blogs and sites, such as Go2Web20 , which use Google Friend Connect as a login system. Now you can talk to people half-way around the world, even if they don’t speak the same language. Sort of. The translation is still machine translation, but it is usually good enough to get across the main gist of what people are saying. The way it works is the comment widget has a “translate” link which then pops up a menu of languages to choose from. The translated comments are then highlighted in yellow. Here is a video showing what it looks like in action. Google says that this can work for a variety of sites, including international non-profits such as the World Wide Fund For Nature’s Earth Hour website. The campaign is supported by 4,000 cities in 88 different countries to help engage citizens in conserving energy. Visitors to this website can now leave comments in their native language and use Google Friend Connect’s comment translation to engage in discussions with the greater community. Comment translation is one of several new gadgets that have been rolled out in Google’s Friend Connect gallery, perhaps in an effort to catch up to Facebook Connect. These features include the event gadget, the polls gadget, and the Get Answers gadget. Crunch Network : CrunchBoard because it’s time for you to find a new Job2.0
 
The iPhone Is Accelerating Music Sales For Pandora Top
Pandora is a company that mainly makes its money through advertising deals on its streaming Internet radio service. But a growing portion of the business is also affiliate downloads of songs that users hear on Pandora and want to buy on either iTunes or Amazon’s MP3 service. And the biggest mover accelerating growth in that regard are downloads taking place on the iPhone. Users are buying about a million songs a month now from these affiliate links on Pandora, CTO Tom Conrad tells me. Of those, a solid 20% are coming directly from Pandora’s iPhone app, which includes an easy link to open the iPhone’s iTunes app, and buy a track. That’s really impressive considering that it’s just one phone that a relatively small percentage of their users use. But really, I’m not surprised by this at all, because Pandora has always been a brilliant music discovery service. And when paired with the iPhone, you have an all-in-one new music machine. And Pandora was actually the top downloaded app on the iPhone for all of 2008. But last month, when Apple completed removing DRM from all its iTunes tracks, it created an even a greater incentive to buy music that way. Now, I can buy music on the go, sync it back with my computer when I get home, and listen to it anywhere. Another feature driving affiliate sales is the bulk music purchase option. This allows you to bookmark songs on Pandora, and with one click buy them all on either iTunes or Amazon. 10% of web users who are buying music through Pandora are using this bulk buy feature, Conrad says. Here’s an interesting way to think about these affiliate sales. If Pandora is selling 1 million tracks a month, that’s $12 million in sales a year (though Apple and Amazon make the majority of that). But Pandora is still only less than 1% of all radio when you take into account the terrestrial and satellite varieties. Say hypothetically that Pandora made up 100% of radio, the potential sales of these affiliate tracks would then by $1.2 billion a year, as Conrad notes. That of course is very unlikely to ever happen, even in Pandora’s wildest dreams, but still Conrad says that from Pandora’s own research, they know that for every song purchase Pandora drives, users are likely to buy 3 to 5 more songs on top of the one they found. At this 100% model, that would make Pandora a $3.6 to $6 billion a year business. Why play such a hypothetical? Well because the total recorded music industry revenue last year was only $4.6 billion. Affiliate links can be big business on the web and on mobile. Even before the iPhone app, Pandora was one of the top affiliate purchase drivers for Amazon and iTunes. And amazingly, their main competition wasn’t other online music sites, but instead was search and shopping engines like shopping.com. Given the boost Pandora is already seeing from the iPhone in this regard in just a matter of months, it seems pretty clear that mobile purchases could be a big deal down the road. And just imagine if Apple one day lets apps access iTunes right from within the apps to ease the process even more. With in-app purchases coming in iPhone 3.0, something like that could be possible one day. Crunch Network : MobileCrunch Mobile Gadgets and Applications, Delivered Daily.
 
Eric Schmidt On Netbooks: Forget Android, It's All About Cloud Services Top
Many people are dying to get Google’s Android operating system onto their netbooks - Google’s OS running on the miniscule computers seems like a match made in computing heaven (or at least better than the bloated Windows or unusable (for newbies) Linux. And Android netbooks are certainly coming soon. Dell, for example, is planning to release their own Android-equipped device. But Google CEO Eric Schmidt has his eye on another prize: the cloud. At Google’s Press Event earlier today Schmidt wasn’t interested in talking about Android on netbooks. “We have no announcements on that,” he said. But he then talked about Netbooks passionately, saying the the unit numbers were becoming material and that use cases were “consistent with the cloud computing model” that Google is focusing on with Google Docs, Gmail and other services. “Keep an eye on this space,” he said, suggesting but not outright saying that Google may have announcements around Netbooks soon. (and Google I/O is soon, by the way). Crunch Network : CrunchBoard because it’s time for you to find a new Job2.0
 
Google Press Day, Live Top
Google’s 2009 shareholder meeting is today at 2 p.m. pst. As usual they’re holding a press event prior to the shareholder meeting. Chairman and CEO Eric Schmidt , SVP Corporate Development David Drummond , VP Search Products and User Experience Marissa Mayer and VP Product Management Susan Wojcicki are attending and taking questions. Key topics discussed: Apple: In response to a question about the FTC inquiry about overlap with the Apple/Google boards of directors, Schmidt says Apple doesn’t see Google and Apple as a primary competitor, and so there shouldn’t be issues with him being on the Apple board. Antitrust: Drummond says he expect to see increasing antitrust scrutiny as Google continues to be successful. Schmidt says information is incredibly important. Governments will pay attention to what Google does, he says, and will hold Google to their core principles. Schmidt says Google understands that there are consequences to mistakes. Schmidt says Google is always trying to find a balance between what their end users need and other concerns. “We are more careful about when and how we do things that are going to raise concerns of any party.” He brings up book search, says careful planning has lead to a historic agreement that is winding its way through the court system. Monetization of social networks : Susan “we’ve learned a lot about how to monetize this inventory, we believe there are ways to monetize over time but different from search because by nature different from search.” Says they’ve been working on how to serve those ads differently, talks about ads in activity streams. Google selling AOL stake: Drummond - it was a financial decision to sell the stake. Eric quips “we love aol, we sent our best guy there to run it.” Plans for customized news: Marissa, who just testified on news to congress, says they have a team looking at how news will evolve. how stories are presented. navigation. finding and traversing news. some things aren’t as good in online news. comments. what to suggest next after a story is read. presentation of stories and how people move from one story to the next. Marissa is talking about the recent google labs products around news. YouTube: question on estimated YouTube losses this year. Eric says he “believes youtube will eventually be a successful and profitable business. I don’t know how long it will take. it is a huge traffic phenomenon.” Susan says the huge amount of traffic has attracted lots of advertisers. They’ve monetized hundreds of millions of videos, she says. Preroll formats are being tested, she says, and there’s an opportunity to serve ads in different formats. On music videos, need a click to buy next to the video. Cost cutting v. innovation: Question on how google keeps innovation going with cost cutting so aggressively. Eric says they’re focused on being more precise in their actions. Susan says Google is focused on small teams that act like startups. Eric says its too early to speculate on what Google looks like post recession. Says Internet growth not slowing and people spending more time online. Google Ventures Drummond says they’ve made initial investment and hired partners. Goal is to go early stage, professional investing in areas they care about, which is a wide variety of areas. Cost per click decline: 10Q showed a 14% CPC decline, asked to comment. Eric says they won’t comment much beyond the public statements. Android: Is android an open platform for innovation v. carriers trying to splinter. Eric says this is a problem with any open source project. China situation: Drummond says it is an ongoing challenge to operate there. YouTube continues to be blocked. issues with google.com from time to time. Says there’s a preference for local businesses there. It’s a difficult road, he says. Google and Twitter: Marissa says lots of interesting things happening. Interesting from a search perspective. Some overlap with google trends. “we’re interested in being able to add microblogging into search, but no specific plans.” Android on Netbooks: Eric says no announcement on netbook strategy but says that netbooks are very real, and that people are using netbooks that are consistent with the cloud computing model. client device to access cloud services, google wants their services to work with netbooks and to keep an eye on this space. Live blogging continuing… Crunch Network : CrunchBase the free database of technology companies, people, and investors
 
Caption Contest: Win A Pair Of Tickets To Tonight's Sold Out Star Trek Screening Top
Our opening night screening of Star Trek tonight in Redwood City is totally sold out, but we’ve held back ten tickets for a special Trekkie caption contest. The rules are simple: leave a comment with a funny caption for the photo above, and we’ll pick out the five best entries, who will each win a pair of tickets. We’ll choose the winners at 2:45 PM PST (be sure to leave your real Email address so we can contact you). Update: : The winners have been chosen. We’re also opening up a waitlist for the movie, which you can sign up for here . We’re thinking that the first 20 people (and possibly more) on the list should make it, but you have to be there in person and there are no guarantees, so give it a shot if you don’t mind potentially getting turned away. For those of you who already have a ticket, we’re going to be letting people into the theatre beginning at 6, so get there before that if you want a good seat. Feel free to leave a caption if you already have a ticket, just be sure to note that you don’t want to be in the running (likewise for those of you who aren’t in the San Francisco Bay Area but want to show off your Trekkie wit). The movie begins promptly at 7 PM at Century 20 Theaters in Redwood City, and after that we’ll head over to Red Latern for some drinks (everyone is welcome, even those of you who can’t make the movie). Thanks again to the event’s sponsors: Microsoft Live Search , which helps more than 200 million people a month find stuff on the web, is buying everyone a soft drink at the theater. Trapster , a location based mobile application that alerts users in real time when they approach speed traps ( iphone app here ), is buying everyone popcorn. SugarSync , a digital life management service that lets user back-up, sync and access documents, photos and music across all of their devices. And Eventbrite for helping with the cost of the tickets. Crunch Network : CrunchGear drool over the sexiest new gadgets and hardware.
 
Happiness In Slavery: NIN iPhone App Approved With No Changes Top
Well, apparently if you speak loudly enough on the web with enough swear words , Apple does listen. After initially rejecting an update to Nine Inch Nails’ iPhone app, Apple has relented and accepted it back into the store. So what did NIN do to change the app? Nothing. Apparently, Apple’s definition of “objectionable” changed. NIN frontman Trent Reznor tweeted out the good news earlier and poked fun at Apple’s uneven app approval process. “The NIN iPhone app is unchanged, the “issues” seem to have been resolved,” Reznor joked . This follows his profanity-laced tirade over the weekend in which he ripped Apple’s ridiculous app approval policies. And rightfully so. So it’s all’s well that ends well, I guess. At least until the next App Store rejection. In the meantime, I thought it might be appropriate to post the lyrics to NIN’s “Happiness In Slavery”: slave screams he thinks he knows what he wants slave screams thinks he has something to say slave screams he hears but doesn’t want to listen slave screams he’s being beat into submission don’t open your eyes you won’t like what you see the devils of truth steal the souls of the free don’t open your eyes take it from me I have found you can find happiness in slavery slave screams he spends his life learning conformity slave screams he claims he has his own identity slave screams he’s going to cause the system to fall slave screams but he’s glad to be chained to that wall don’t open your eyes you won’t like what you see the blind have been blessed with security don’t open your eyes take it from me I have found you can find happiness in slavery I don’t know what I am I don’t know where I’ve been human junk just words and so much skin stick my hands through the cage of this endless routine just some flesh caught in this big broken machine Crunch Network : CrunchGear drool over the sexiest new gadgets and hardware.
 
Facebook Connect For The iPhone Has Been Borked Since Yesterday Top
Facebook Connect is an absolute boon for iPhone developers who want an easy way to add a social layer to their apps. And the service is great for users because it allows them to use the social elements of apps without having to create yet another account with yet another service. It’s a win-win — except when it goes down. As it has today. Based on several tips and various bitching around the web, it’s pretty clear that Facebook Connect for the iPhone has been broken since yesterday. This of course is a huge problem when a lot of apps rely on the service for their apps to function. Various users are reporting seeing this error when trying to login to an app via Connect: Under Construction APP NAME is under construction. Note to application developers: To fix this error, please set your Connect URL in the application settings editor.  Once it has been set, users will be redirected to that URL instead of this page after logging in. A thread on Facebook Platform Developer Forum features several pissed off developers explaining the problem in detail. Apparently, some people are able to login, but when they try do anything, nothing works. I’ve contacted Facebook for the official word on what is going on and will update when I hear back. Update : A Facebook Platform team member, Matt Trainer, has just responded in the forum: Thanks for the reports. We are aware of the bug and are investigating now. We will follow up in the bug report. Update 2 : Here’s the statement I got from Facebook: “There was a small bug that prevented users from logging in to Facebook Connect for iPhone apps for a short period of time. We expect it to be back up momentarily.” A day hardly seems like a short period of time, but at least it will be working again soon. Crunch Network : MobileCrunch Mobile Gadgets and Applications, Delivered Daily.
 
When It Comes To URL Shorteners, bit.ly Is Now The Biggest Top
Well, that was fast. No more than a day or two after Twitter switched over to bit.ly as its default link shortener (from TinyURL), bit.ly is now the most popular URL shortening service. According to statistics published by Tweetmeme , bit.ly now accounts for 46 percent of all the short URLs on Twitter over the past 24 hours, while TinyURL’s share is down to 43 percent. Just over a month ago, TinyURL had an overwhelming 75 percent share to bit.ly’s 13 percent share. According to Tweetmeme, bit.ly overtook TinyURL sometime last night. URL shortening services have come into vogue along with the Twitter’s rise because of its 140-character limit. Bit.ly, TinyURL, and others condense the links with shorter ones that are Twitter-friendly and then redirect to the original pages. Standardizing on one URL shortening service that can provide Twitter with the underlying data about the pages being linked to could help Twitter with its plans to start indexing those links . It is all about search and mining the thought stream . Bit.ly came out of Betaworks , which was also an investor in Summize—the startup Twitter bought when it realized it needed its own real-time search engine I wonder how much bit.ly is worth now . (Hat tip to Jenna Wortham ). Crunch Network : CrunchGear drool over the sexiest new gadgets and hardware.
 
Warner Music Says Imeem Is Worthless, And Owes It $4 Million Which It Can't Collect Top
How bad are things getting for music streaming startups? We knew that imeem was on the verge of shutting down before getting a last-minute cash infusion from some of its investors, but an SEC filing from Warner Music adds some more details about exactly how dire imeem’s situation is, as well as that of another music startup, Lala. Warner Music Group, an investor in both imeem and Lala, thinks they are no longer worth much, if anything at all. It wrote down its entire investment in imeem and half of its investment in Lala in the most recent quarter. As detailed in its 10Q report filed with the SEC, it took a $16 million charge to write down its investment in imeem, and an $11 million charge to write down part of its investment in Lala, plus it took another $4 million charge to write down a bad debt from imeem which it never expects to collect. That comes to a total of $33 million down the digital music drain. But the reason imeem is in such dire financial straits is because of the crushing payments to music labels it has to dole out for every song streamed from its site. It has renegotiated its deals with the labels to pay on a revenue-per-user basis instead of per stream, and Warner’s filing hints at why it had to do so. It appears that imeem had simply stopped paying those per-stream fees, which would explain the $4 million in bad debt. And that was just for one quarter for one label. No wonder imeem nearly ran out of cash. It had to stop paying its bills. According to comScore, imeem’s U.S. traffic has come down about 25 percent off its peak last July. As of March, 2009 it was at 5.3 million unique visitors in the U.S. and 24 million worldwide. In the perverse world of music streaming licensing, the bigger your audience, the more money you lose. Update : When imeem raised rescue money from investors, it had to recapitalize. If Warner pitched in, which presumably it did, then it would have had to write down its old investment anyway. If that is the case, then maybe it doesn’t think that imeem is completely worthless, it is just marking its investment to market. With a recap that means marking it down to zero. But any additional investment after the recap wouldn’t be reflected in that write-down. And since you can still stream Warner artists on imeem, it stands to reason that Warner has not entirely abandoned the startup. Where there is music, there is hope. Crunch Network : CrunchGear drool over the sexiest new gadgets and hardware.
 
Brilliant New API Startup Generates 1,000s Of Videos On The Fly Top
Stupeflix is a French startup which has come up with a radically new way of creating, processing and editing online video. On the face of it, Stupeflix automatically generates professional looking videos out of pictures, music and videos. If that sounds like Animoto , then you are right, but there are key differences under the hood which make Stupeflix totally different and potentially of much greater value. And I don’t say that lightly. Where Animoto and Stupeflix completely diverge is in their approach and business model. Stupeflix has effectively come up with an API which describes video, text, using and pictures in flash video based on an XML description . So instead of actually editing the video you edit the XML. That means you can edit video just by changing a tag, or by telling their engine to run a different kind of effect for every video you wants to generate. iMovie would create just one video, and requires a meaty package to edit how it’s presented. With Stupeflix you just edit the XML, with tags like “rotate” or “fade left”. Today Stupeflix launches the web interface to its video editing web application and as a demonstration they’ve generated over 1,000 videos direct from Wikipedia content, automatically , in under 60 minutes. Crunch Network : CrunchBoard because it’s time for you to find a new Job2.0
 
FreshBooks Adds Collaboration Tool To Online Billing Service Top
Outsourcing projects to freelancers comes naturally to small service-oriented businesses. But juggling multiple time sheets from different contractors and managing projects from a variety of freelancers can be a hassle. Collaboration between freelancers and small businesses is key in order to managing projects efficiently. FreshBooks, a Toronto-based invoice startup, is adding a new networking feature to its software that allows freelancers and small businesses to work with each other directly within the program and share this information freely. Through the “Contractor” feature, FreshBooks users can create and share client projects across FreshBook accounts, with multiple users able to access different accounts. Formerly, FreshBooks users couldn’t collaborate on projects across the Internet. Of course, there are privacy issues to managing a project online. Businesses may not want to show a contractor the markup rate they are charging for services to a client. FreshBooks maintains that you can share certain information (like invoices, time sheets, billing) but also keep privileged client information private on the network. The Contractor feature also facilitates real-time project tracking, giving businesses visibility into a contractor's progress on a project. FreshBooks, which we reviewed here, lets you create invoices, time sheets and estimates within the browser. FreshBooks has free and paid plans and has served 700,000 users since its launch in 2004. The startup has steadily added useful features to its billing service over the past few years, including benchmark reports on aggregated business data, an open API, and data mining from users. Competitors in the online billing space include BillMyClients and Blinksale. Software As A Network from FreshBooks on Vimeo . Crunch Network : CrunchBase the free database of technology companies, people, and investors
 
How Big Can The Kindle Get? Top
Yesterday, Amazon launched its larger-format Kindle DX with a built-in PDF reader and partnership deals with textbook and newspaper companies. Today, Wall Street analysts are weighing in on what kind of impact the DX might have on Amazon’s numbers. Barclay Capital’s Doug Anmuth estimates that the DX alone could add $800 million in revenues and $100 million in gross profits in 2012. Total Kindle revenues in that year for both the smaller Kindle 2 and the Kindle DX will be be $3.7 billion, he estimates, with gross profits of $840 million. In three years time, he thinks the Kindle will represent more than 10 percent of both Amazon’s sales and gross profits (for perspective, last year Amazon reported $19 billion in sales and $4.3 billion in gross profits). Meanwhile, Citi analyst Mark Mahaney for now is sticking with his 2010 projection of $1.2 billion in Kindle sales, which would account for over 4 percent of the total—that is next year. Mahaney isn’t going out further than that yet, but he may soon “up that estimate a bit,” he wrote in a note this morning. Why? One reason is because Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos threw out a tantalizing detail yesterday about the Kindle’s growing traction: For the books available on the Kindle, unit sales are tracking at 35 percent the level of the same titles in print, up from 13 percent in February. Mahaney estimates that the Kindle already accounts for “about 10% of total North American book units,” or or 4 million books sold during the first quarter out of a total of 38 million books, he tells me. Those 4 million Kindle books equated to an estimated $34 million in revenues during the quarter (which doesn’t include sales of the Kindle device itself) and added 2 to 3 percent to Amazon’s growth in media revenues for North America. Mahaney also thinks that the 35 percent sales figure suggests that Kindle owners are buying two books per month on the Kindle. Obviously, these are hardcore book readers, and that level of sales won’t stay so high as the Kindle is used by more and more people beyond the early adopters (who in this case are tech-savvy bookworms). But the Kindle DX hints at a broader strategy. It is purpose built for the educational market—students who don’t want to lug around heavy textbooks and can buy cheaper versions on the Kindle. (What would be really interesting would be a textbook subscription that gives students access to all of their books each semester, with an upgrade option to buy chapters or entire books if they want to keep them beyond that time period. But I digress). Surely, the Kindle DX is not the last Kindle in the pipeline. Amazon will keep rolling out upgrades and offshoots designed to appeal to different readers. For instance, the DX isn’t perfect for magazines and newspapers . You really want a color screen for anything with photos and illustrations. But electronic ink technology is moving in that direction , and then there is the prospect of a larger iPod Touch that would be perfect as both a Web tablet and an electronic reader. Already, Amazon has a Kindle app for the iPhone/iPod Touch . Despite the small size, I prefer it to the still-clunky Kindle just because I carry my iPhone with me all the time. I’d much rather read a book on an IPod Tablet than on a Kindle DX. And you know what? Amazon doesn’t care because it is not in this to sell Kindles. It is in this to sell digital books, which have much higher margins than either paper books or the Kindle devices. Amazon could (and should) just as easily make a Kindle app for Android (especially with Android Netbooks coming out), Blackberry, Palm, and Windows Mobile. So how big can the Kindle get? It’s not about the device, it’s about the software. The only limit to how big it can get is the speed with which people can become comfortable reading books on screens. Crunch Network : CrunchGear drool over the sexiest new gadgets and hardware.
 
I Love Rewards Raises $5.9 Million For Employee Rewards Program Top
I Love Rewards, which operates employee rewards and sales incentive recognition programs for companies, has secured a $5.9 million ($6.9 million in Canadian dollars) in Series B funding led by GrandBanks Capital with prior investors JLA Ventures and Laurence Capital participating. The company raised $4 million in Series A funding in 2008 from JLA Ventures and Laurence Capital. The company says the funding will be used to expand its sales and marketing efforts. I Love Rewards operates employee rewards and recognition, sales incentive and service award programs for corporations, including Microsoft, Marriott, ConAgra and Bell. Rewards are distributed as 'points' that are then used by employees to choose brand name reward merchandise (i.e. Apple), experiences (i.e. travel and special events), gift cards and virtual awards (i.e. music downloads). Crunch Network : MobileCrunch Mobile Gadgets and Applications, Delivered Daily.
 
Double Happiness: Microsoft Integrates Photosynth With Virtual Earth Top
Microsoft is today announcing the integration of Photosynth , technology that enables you to automatically stitch groups of photos together into one big interactive 3D viewing experience, with its mapping service Virtual Earth . I think that’s really cool, because I’m a big fan of Photosynth and I also happen to think Virtual Earth is vastly superior to - yet immensely less popular than - Google Maps / Earth. In the video it’s releasing on YouTube for the occasion (embedded below), Microsoft claims ‘hundreds of thousands’ of users have already used Photosynth - which was released to the public back in August 2008 - and uploaded more than 12 million photos in 350,000 synths. Now it’s taking the next step by using Silverlight technology in order to make it possible for user to port their Photosynths to Virtual Earth, running on Macs and PCs alike (unless you refuse to run Silverlight on any of those, of course). It touts this as a must for tourism agencies (for obvious reasons) but also businesses who want to add a cool visual layer of their stores, outlets and offices. The example it is featuring on the Virtual Earth product site is for a real estate listing, and the result of the synth is stunning as ever. In addition to the integration, Microsoft announced that the latest release of Photosynth introduces commercial licensing, privacy controls, and one-click highlighting for viewers to easily explore synths. It’s also worth noting that this integration announcement comes several months after Microsoft started including hyperlinks to hosted photosynths on its Live Maps web application. I can really see how many tourism agencies and businesses from around the world can benefit from showing off whatever they can show off on a digital version of our planet, but I also see the challenges ahead for Microsoft. After all, the company is going to have to convince not only those organizations but also potential visitors to install and use both Virtual Earth and Silverlight on their computers, and getting the word out that something like Photosynth even exists. So far, these are all examples of services that haven’t exactly seen stellar success and seem to be far away from even edging into mainstream popularity. Either way, I think the combination is powerful and enticing. What do you think? Crunch Network : CrunchGear drool over the sexiest new gadgets and hardware.
 
Attention Kmart Shoppers: Your Social Elements Are On Aisle 3 Top
When it comes to the web, one name that doesn’t exactly jump out at you is Sears Holdings Corporation (SHC). Certainly, you might think that during a economic downtime, the parent company of Sears and Kmart has more pressing things to worry about than social networking. But it is thinking about them. And tomorrow, it’s launching a couple sites to prove it. MySears and MyKmart were built to foster a community around the long tradition of shopping at those retailers. The idea being that this community would not only be interested in buying things, but would be interested in rating items, having discussions about items and giving feedback to the company itself. Perhaps if you got users to interact and form this community, eventually they’ll keep coming back to Sears or Kmart to do their shopping, was the thought. And after over a year of testing, it seems to be working pretty well. Yes, MySears and MyKmart have actually be around in one form or another as a testing ground for a while, Rob Harles, SHC’s VP of community, tells me. It started out as an experiment to see where it would lead. And even with the sites officially launching, it remains an experiment, he says. But it’s one the company is getting much more comfortable with. The sites have been built in conjunction with Viewpoints , a consumer review social networking site. And as Harles tells it, SHC seems to have a pretty good grasp of what could conceivably work and what won’t. It doesn’t, for example, want to build another giant social network like Facebook or MySpace. Instead, it aims to stay within its reach, engage customers, and eventually, hopefully, create a sense of the small town shopkeeper who knows all of his customers, as Harles put it. That may be a bit of wishful thinking on the part of a company that owns Kmart, one of the world’s largest retailers, but at least it’s thinking small rather than thinking too big. Something else Harles said that made a lot of sense to me is that SHC also doesn’t want to restrict users into having to create yet another profile on yet another social site. He hopes to use various other site’s APIs to help his customers fit MySears and MyKmart into their online social lives that already exist. He wouldn’t go into specifics about what exactly he was thinking about with this, but one could imagine sites like this using something like Facebook Connect to tie Facebook profiles to MySears and MyKmart accounts. Harles conceded that when the project first launched, the sites were limited to the demographics you normally associate with Sears and Kmart — which is to say, older house moms. But over the past several months, various other groups of users have come to try out the sites and find out information about products. But he notes that a network like this may be good for the parents of the Facebook and MySpace generations to step into the social graph. Sure, a lot of the elements on these sites are the old tried and true standards of just about every other social networking site, but it’s good to see old stalwarts of retail attempting to transition into the new age. An age where online customer feedback and input is important. And they’re apparently willing to keep on shifting along with the ever-changing web. Crunch Network : MobileCrunch Mobile Gadgets and Applications, Delivered Daily.
 
Zendesk Secures Funding For SaaS Help Desk System, Heads To The U.S. Top
Zendesk , a Danish startup that markets a nifty cloud-based, on-demand help desk system, has raised an undisclosed Series A round of funding from Charles River Ventures which it intends to use to expand its customer base worldwide, starting with the opening of new headquarters in Boston. That move makes sense because apparently over 70% of its customers are currently located in the United States. The company declined to comment how much financing it secured from the VC firm exactly, but in a telephone conversation did say it was a fairly small round. Zendesk previously raised $500,000 in seed funding from PageFlakes co-founders Christoph Janz . Zendesk is a web-based, SaaS-delivered help desk / support ticketing solution that gives companies, big or small, a simple way to manage incoming support requests from end customers. The aptly-named startup is delivering its hosted help desk system, which can be set up in just a matter of minutes, to a wide range of customers, including some familiar names like Rackspace, Condé Nast, MAXroam, Twitter, MSNBC and Scribd. Zendesk comes with a free version, but it is fairly limited since you can only provide support for up to 50 end-users, plus you don’t get to brand the interface. There are six packages that you can subscribe to on a monthly basis (all come with a 30-day free trial), ranging from $19 for 1 support agent to $475 for 25 agents. Needless to say, these prices are way below what most traditional help desk system vendors dare charge for their products and services. I very much like the fact that the startup is so laser-focused on what they do and do well, instead of overloading the product with unnecessary features or over-extending it to broader use (i.e. project management, to-do listings, etc.). That would put them up against some stiff competition and it seems to be carving out a nice niche for itself by focusing on end-user help desk management as it is, so that just wouldn’t make a lot of sense. Zendesk was also smart enough to have come right out the gate with an extensive API third-party developers and/or customers can use to plug the tool into other applications. Bet we’ll here more from this company in the future. Crunch Network : CrunchGear drool over the sexiest new gadgets and hardware.
 
Hey @Google - @Twitter To Start Indexing Links For Search Top
Twitter Search is easily the most promising aspect of Twitter. People talk about mundane updates, or connecting with companies, or following celebrities — but that’s all small scale. The real power of Twitter lies in its aggregate data. Why do you think Google and every other company out there is interested in them? It’s not just because they are the hot ticket in town right now, despite what some would have you believe. It’s all about the data . And Twitter knows that too — and is apparently on the verge of some interesting moves with Twitter Search that will better highlight that. Speaking on a panel today, Santosh Jayaram, Twitter’s new VP of Operations, had some very interesting things to say, Webware’s Rafe Needleman who moderated it, reports . The most interesting thing is that Twitter Search will soon begin crawling the links that people tweet out and indexing them. This immediately takes Twitter Search, which is still a very basic service, to the next level. This means that no longer will it just be a stream of textual tweets, but it will include millions of web pages as well — web pages that are more or less already curated by the individuals who tweet them out. Sure, there will be some spam, maybe even a lot of it, but this user curation should help real good content from around the web bubble up. Apparently, Twitter Search will index the content of these pages as well. Yes, this is what Google does. So it should be no surprise when I say that Jayaram formerly worked on the search quality team for Google. [Update: We previously stated that Jayaram was a VP at Google, which is not the case.] Of course there is no way Twitter Search will index as many pages as Google, but that’s not the point. Twitter Search isn’t meant to replace Google, that’d be dumb. At this point, no one is going to beat Google at its own game (you hear that Microsoft?). Twitter Search is meant to be a different kind of powerful search engine in its own right. A smaller, potentially curated, real-time search engine. Twitter’s biggest trump card here is the real-time factor. It’s not entirely real-time right now, and there are often delays, but it’s faster than Google — mainly thanks to the nature of tweets (fast to send) versus the nature of webpages (slow to build). And so it’s not yet clear how indexing these linked pages would impact that aspect of Twitter Search. You’d have to assume it would slow it down, but really there’s not much point in assuming anything because it’s not yet really clear how Twitter would use this webpage data in search results. One thing that is more clear is that Twitter is also looking at ways to better tailor search results. As I mentioned, right now the results are a very basic collection of tweets with key terms. Jayaram says that the company wants to add some sort of reputation filtering to offer better results. Now before everyone gets in a tizzy about the word “reputation” just like when Loic Le Meur brought up the idea of filtering Twitter Search by “authority,” Jayaram says Twitter’s engineers are still determining the best way to calculate this reputation. That seems to indicate that it wouldn’t be something silly like just being based on the number of followers you have. Things should get very interesting in this space over the next several months. Unless, of course, Google buys Twitter first. CrunchBase Information Twitter Google Information provided by CrunchBase Crunch Network : CrunchGear drool over the sexiest new gadgets and hardware.
 
YouTube River Diverted Into The Google Social Ocean As Well Top
It’s pretty obvious that Google is getting ready to fully cast its social net over its web properties. It’s been doing things like tweaking the developer’s side of iGoogle to be much more social, separating your contacts from Gmail to be used for all of Google, and overhauling and promoting Google Profiles. The latest move is a subtle one, but it’s important for Google’s social graph: Pairing YouTube accounts with Google accounts. To be clear, you could previously link the two together, but starting today, if you sign up for a new YouTube account, you automatically get a Google account to go with it. And more importantly, buried at the end of the post on the YouTube blog, Google notes that, “some of the new features we roll out down the road may require a Google Account. In these cases, we’ll be there to help you link your YouTube Account to a Google Account if you want to check the features out.” Without saying what it means by that specifically, I think it’s pretty clear that Google has big plans for its hugely popular online video site in its overall social scheme. Not only does that probably mean little things like being able to feature YouTube videos on your Google Profile (just like you can with pictures now), but also placing videos in the upcoming “Updates” news stream area. That’s seems likely to be the name of the area that will be Google’s version of the News Feed — where all of your social data and the data of your contacts is collected in one place. This area, which has yet to be unveiled, is very important if Google is to find cohesion in its social plans which have so far been scattered . For the big two social networks, Facebook and MySpace, pictures have been a huge part of each of their networks. Videos are now increasingly becoming a big part as well as recording and encoding technologies improve — and broadband speeds get better. And there’s no bigger site for video than YouTube, which in the U.S. far outpaces its next closest competitor, Fox Interactive Media, which runs, yes, MySpace. So Google is set on the video end for its social network that is coming together. Crunch Network : CrunchGear drool over the sexiest new gadgets and hardware.
 
A Few More Tickets To Star Trek Tomorrow. Plus, Free Popcorn And Drink! Top
We’ve got a few more tickets to the Star Trek screening tomorrow night at 7 p.m. in Redwood City (see here and here for more details). We are letting people in at 6 p.m., so get there early. 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 Red Lantern for a drink or three. Get your tickets here . And we now have three sponsors for the event. Microsoft Live Search , which helps more than 200 million people a month find stuff on the web, is buying everyone a soft drink at the movie theater (remind me to disclose this when we write about the new search launch). Trapster , a location based mobile application that alerts users in real time when they approach speed traps ( iphone app here ), is buying everyone popcorn (woohoo). And Eventbrite is helping with the cost of the tickets. Thanks very much, Star Trek sponsors. Crunch Network : CrunchGear drool over the sexiest new gadgets and hardware.
 
Kim Kardashian Joins FriendFeed, Befriends 35,000 Users, Gets No Love Back Top
I’ll be honest. I have no idea what Kim Kardashian does. I wouldn’t even know who she is if it weren’t for jokes on Pardon The Interruption (an ESPN sports show) about some sex tape a few years back. But apparently, she joined FriendFeed the other day. And then she immediately added 35,000 users as friends. Now, she did this thanks to FriendFeed’s new one-click Twitter login functionality. This allows you to sign up for FriendFeed using your Twitter name and transfer your information over via OAuth to FriendFeed, as well as automatically friend anyone you are following on Twitter. It’s a smart move by FriendFeed, as it ports your social graph over from a more popular service. But this simplicity and close tie into Twitter raises a couple concerns. First, Twitter, a service with which FriendFeed is often compared, hit its watershed moment recently during the Ashton Kutcher/CNN race to a million followers. Now that it’s mainstream and celebrities are starting to see the benefits of using these types of services to promote themselves, are they already staking out other less mature services to become the “Ashton” of those services and bring them to the mainstream? Second, FriendFeed co-founder Paul Buchheit isn’t even sure if the Kardashian account really was created by her (or her people). It’s possible that squatters are going to start staking out on popular names in the hope that the service will grow in popularity and gain some of these real celebrities. Or worse, that people are going to start signing up for the service pretending to be celebrities on there. Either way, it’s just going to lead to a bunch of noise. And some users are already getting upset about it. But there’s hope: Of the 35,000 people that Kardashian friended, only around 350 people subscribed to her. FriendFeed users, a much smaller base than Twitter, seem to be more savvy. When they see that Kardashian is only porting in her Twitter updates to FriendFeed, they’re probably not going to start following her back, as she adds nothing to the service, which prides itself in conversations about entries. Everyone is already on the hunt for the “next Twitter.” Kim Kardashian (or someone pretending to be her), apparently thinks it’s going to be FriendFeed. And FriendFeed users don’t seem to care. Can one of these services go mainstream without celebrities? Crunch Network : CrunchBoard because it’s time for you to find a new Job2.0
 

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