Friday, May 29, 2009

Y! Alert: TechCrunch

Yahoo! Alerts
My Alerts

The latest from TechCrunch

It's Heeerrre: 'Pay With Facebook' Is In The Wild Top
Earlier today, we wrote about Facebook updating its terms to get ready for the roll-out of its payment system. Well guess what, it’s already here. The application GroupCard is currently testing the new payment system live for all accounts that have it installed. I included some screenshots below. It’s very straightforward: There’s a big “Pay With Facebook” button, similar to the “Facebook Connect” buttons you see throughout the web. Next to that, there are the other options to pay with Visa, Mastercard, etc. Clicking on the “Pay With Facebook” button pops open an overlay which asks you to confirm payment via your Facebook Credits. My $2.99 card cost me 30 Facebook Credits. Expect to see this roll out to other applications soon. Crunch Network : CrunchBoard because it’s time for you to find a new Job2.0
 
Google's Public Policy Chief To Be Deputy CTO for Obama Administration Top
Google’s head of public policy, Andrew McLaughlin, will join the Obama administration as deputy chief technology officer, according to a report by the New York Times. McLaughlin will assist former Virginia Secretary of Technology Aneesh Chopra, who President Obama appointed as CTO in April. McLaughlin has been leading Google’s public policy efforts for quite some time now. According to this blog post, he was the first member of Google’s policy team in 2005. Before his time at Google, McLaughlin launched the nonprofit group Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers, where he serves as vice president, chief policy officer, and chief financial officer. Previously, McLaughlin was a senior fellow at Harvard Law School's Berkman Center for Internet. Most recently, McLaughlin was working on the Obama/Biden presidential transition team in Washington. McLaughlin isn’t the only Googler to join the Obama administration. Google CEO Eric Schmidt, who was speculated to be CTO, was recently named to the President’s Council of Advisors on Science and Technology. Former Google product manager Kate Stanton joined the White House as its director of citizen participation earlier this year. Crunch Network : CrunchBase the free database of technology companies, people, and investors
 
Spy Vs. Spy: The Spymaster Backlash Begins And Twitter Needs To Fix It Top
Spymaster , the Twitter-based game that we covered last night , is spreading like crazy today. It’s been a trending topic on Twitter throughout the day, even ahead of the hype around Microsoft’s new search engine, Bing. Because of this popularity though, some Twitter users are getting inundated with tweets from the service in their streams. It’s not really spam, because it’s their friends doing it, but to some, it’s very annoying. Former Digg lead architect, Joe Stump , is particularly pissed off. “I've started both unfollowing and reporting users of this game to @spam . This isn't because I hate my friends, it's because I have no other recourse to stop this application's abusive behavior,” he writes in a blog post today . While Stump isn’t entirely accurate that the only way to gain points is by tweeting out your actions in the game, the spirit of what he’s saying is correct because you are encouraged to tweet out your actions in the game to earn more points. He notes that this is similar to what happened with Facebook Platform early on, as games like Zombies took over people’s streams. This is something that VentureBeat’s Eric Eldon notes as well, joking that maybe they should rename the game “SpamMaster.” But the real issue here, which both Stump and Eldon bring up, is that this is the perfect example of why Twitter needs filters of some sort. We’ve been railing on this for a while, and I’m actually quite glad this game has come along to bring the issue to the forefront. The problem isn’t that the game is spam, it’s that Twitter is not at all set up to handle games like this, even though it is positioning itself to be a robust platform. You need to be able to do things like block certain hashtags or keywords, and to be able to group together certain friends. Currently, various third party sites /services handle thing on top of Twitter, but it’s not enough if Twitter is really going to be a new form of communication. Because if Twitter gets overrun by these types of viral games, people will simply stop visiting Twitter, and it will destroy the platform’s backbone. Not that these are trivial things for Twitter to implement given its crazy rate of growth right now. But it will be needed if that growth is to continue in the future. At the very least, Twitter should allow you to block which apps you get updates from — though I think it still considers Spymaster updates to be coming from the “web.” For his part, Spymaster co-founder Eston Bond says, “Backlash has been pretty minimal. Some people find Spymaster noisy but I’m amazed at how many people defend their tweeted spymaster actions to others (search can give you some examples .) For now, everyone’s having fun and I want to make sure that we can keep the game compelling in the long term. I have lots of content ideas that I’ll be hopefully implementing soon.” Again, I don’t consider this Spymaster’s problem — but there is a problem, it’s Twitter’s. You’ll see this as more of these style games come along. It’s a matter of when , not if. CrunchBase Information Spymaster Twitter Joe Stump Information provided by CrunchBase Crunch Network : CrunchBase the free database of technology companies, people, and investors
 
Video: Netflix CEO Reed Hastings On The Economics Of Movie Streaming Top
A couple years ago, Netflix began supplementing its DVD mail rental business with movie streams over the Web. for a few thousand select titles. Today, millions of Netflix customers stream their movies instead of waiting for them to come in the mail (or, more often, do both). ComScore Video Metrix estimates Netflix’s online viewership a bit lower at 645,000 unique viewers in March. They watched 6.9 million video streams and the average time spent watching per viewer is an amazing 128 minutes for the month, which is right up there with YouTube in terms of time spent (having full-length feature films helps keep people around longer). You pay Netflix a subscription, and you can watch your monthly allotment of movies any way you want. Netflix doesn’t care where you watch your movies, whether it is on your TV, xBox 360 , Windows Media Center , or other devices. Streams still make up a small portion of the overall movies watched by Netflix customers, but it is growing as the company expands its streaming catalog, broadband improves, and computers become more like TVs (and vice versa). I ran into Netflix CEO Reed Hastings at the AllThingsD conference this week, and asked him in the video above how his streaming service is going and how its economics compare to that of mailing out DVDs. As you can imagine, it costs much less to stream a movie over the Internet than it does to mail it as a DVD. But Netflix ends up paying twice anyway because it already owns the movies on DVD. It has to pay the studios an additional streaming fee. The studios like that. “If the studios have their way, we’ll pay them two or three times,” quips Hastings. But he is resigned to paying wtice for movies he’s already bought. The way he looks at it, Netflix is paying the studios instead of the Post Office. Crunch Network : CrunchBoard because it’s time for you to find a new Job2.0
 
Facebook Revs Up For Payment Platform With Updated Terms Top
Facebook developers are dying for a unified payment platform, and all signs are pointing to one coming soon. In the latest news, the site has just released a draft of its proposed new Payments Terms, which will dictate how transactions will be conducted going forward. While the updated terms are in line with Facebook’s recent trend towards using simplified language in its legal documents, the company’s blog post also notes that the new terms will “give us the flexibility to try new features”. This isn’t particularly surprising - there have recently been reports of Facebook planning to begin testing payments some time soon, after months of delays. Facebook is using the same community commenting process it used during its site-wide Terms of Service fiasco before it officially rolls out the new terms, giving users three days to voice their thoughts on the site’s Governance site . You can read through the proposed list of rules here (there’s also a FAQ ). Most of them are pretty straightforward - Facebook basically says that it licenses all of your virtual goods and credits to you (you don’t own them), and it can do whatever it wants as far as changing the price of credits. It’s also not responsible for anything you buy (aside from ensuring that your Facebook Gifts are delivered), and there are no refunds (though the company says that it may intervene in disputes betwen users concerning payments, but that it is under no obligation to do so). Some of the language refers to transactions between users and third parties, which is indicative of the upcoming payment system. There are a few interesting tidbits worth looking through. My favorite is this one, which seems to indicate that Facebook can randomly disperse virtual gifts to friends if you fail to use your credits in three years (which could have some potentially hilarious consequences, depending on who receives those virtual bikinis and cans of Coors Light): 3.6 If you leave a balance of credits unused for three years, we may redeem those credits by sending virtual gifts to your Facebook friends or donating the credits to a nonprofit organization of our choice (and charging standard redemption fees for those transactions). Crunch Network : MobileCrunch Mobile Gadgets and Applications, Delivered Daily.
 
If Your Phone Requires A Headset Adapter, Your Phone Sucks Top
Listen up, 2.5mm-to-3.5mm headset adapters. You too, crappy shape changers required by an absurd chunk of the worthwhile phones out there: We’re through. Game over. Just like voicemail and hand shakes , we’re officially declaring war on any middleman component required to pump audio from a cell phone, along with the phones that require them. There was a time when this sort of thing was acceptable. It was only a few years ago. Most phones were hitting the shelves with but a few hundred megabytes of storage space, while standalone audio players touted capacities that all but the most dedicated downloaders had a hard time filling. Then came microSD and its high capacity variant, allowing users to pack up to 16 gigs of data (soon to be 32 gigabytes and, with the eventual evolution of SDXC, up to 2 terabytes) onto a card roughly the size of your thumbnail. Then came the iPhone which, whether the decriers like it or not, made much of the general populace give a damn about what their cell phones could do. With 3G networks up across the country and 4G networks beginning to roll out, audio streaming and on-the-go music downloads are becoming commonplace. Phone manufacturers can no longer afford to implement media playback as an afterthought - but if they insist on requiring headset adapters, that’s exactly what they’re doing. Read the rest of this post >> Crunch Network : MobileCrunch Mobile Gadgets and Applications, Delivered Daily.
 
Foursquare To Serve Up APIs, More Mobile Apps, Free Beer Top
It’s been over 2 months since Foursquare launched at SXSW and something strange is happening: My friends are still using it — a lot. Sure, for the service to have real success, it will have to spread well beyond pockets of tech hipsters, but even this success is something we haven’t seen with the majority of location-based social networks so far. But Foursquare’s strategy is smart in that it’s just as much of a game, in which you collect badges and gain mayorships of your favorite local places, as anything else. And now it’s gearing up for a further expansion with an API. Initially, team hopes this API will be used to build more mobile clients, co-founder Dennis Crowley tells us. Right now, there is only a native app for the iPhone, but he says that there are already a few people working on a native Android app as well. And they envision someone building a BlackBerry app shortly as well. I know that will be music the ears of a lot of my friends who are forced to visit Foursquare’s website from their mobile browsers, which is a less than ideal experience right now. Crowley also says that someone has already used the APIs to build a desktop client on Adobe AIR. As for the iPhone app, version 1.2 has just been submitted for approval to the App Store. As we know, that’s always a crapshoot , but assuming it gets approved in relatively short order, there will be a lot more cities the service will be available in . The team also recently rolled out a way to submit your own badges . But the recent news that most interests me has to be how some cities have establishments that are acknowledging mayorships. You can a mayorship in Foursquare basically by being the person who checks in there most often (on different days). One bar in LA, Good Hurt, is giving away a free beer to the “mayor” every time they come in! Another place in Denver is giving away free lunches to the mayor, and some bar in Brooklyn has a blackboard which they write the mayor’s name on, Crowley tells us. He says that the team is thinking about ways to work with more establishments to offer these sorts of deals. It’s really a pretty ingenious idea for both the service and the establishment, as it drives usage of both. It’s sort of like what some brands are using Twitter for, but the location aspect is particularly interesting and could be much more targeted. And yes, that could even eventually blossom into business model. But basically, I just want some San Francisco bars to acknowledge my mayorships and give me a free beer. That’s my business model. [photo: flickr/ a4gpa ] CrunchBase Information Foursquare Information provided by CrunchBase Crunch Network : MobileCrunch Mobile Gadgets and Applications, Delivered Daily.
 
The Walking Dead: Yahoo 360 Officially Closes, Again Top
Yahoo 360, which was supposed to close early last year, is finally officially shutting its doors on July 13, according to a blog post written on the site today. The social network/blogging service that nobody really used (except in Vietnam ) steadily lost its steam, especially in the U.S. According to ComScore, Yahoo 360 had 13.9 million worldwide unique visitors in April. But only 982,000 of those unique visitors were from the U.S. This is down from 1.8 million unique U.S. visitors a year ago (see chart below). Yahoo 360 was built to create a social network around a blogging platform, and simply couldn’t compete with other social networks like Facebook and MySpace, and other more popular blogging platforms like Wordpress and Movable Type. Similar to the company’s original announcement in 2007, Yahoo is promising to help move blog posts and friends lists over to a more general Yahoo profile. What took it so long to pull the plug? Yahoo says it took almost two years to shut down the service because the company was trying to find “a sustainable and adequate solution” for retaining user’s personal data from the site. The blog post also mentions that they have a solution for users but neglects to mention what exactly that is. Yahoo also shut down its other venture into social networking, Mash, last summer. Perhaps Yahoo is going to focus its efforts on its Twitter-clone microblogging platform Yahoo Meme, which has been rolling out invites recently but isn’t getting resoundingly positive reviews. Maybe Yahoo should just give up on creating a social network and buy one instead (Twitter!). Or maybe it should just make a deal with Microsoft for boatloads of money. UPDATE: Yahoo responded to us via Twitter (!) with this : “the solution we have for users is a new blogging tool, found in user’s profiles.” Crunch Network : CrunchGear drool over the sexiest new gadgets and hardware.
 
Goog-411 Now Tells You Intersections Top
If you don’t use GOOG-411 when you are away from your computer and need directory assistance, you should. It is free and will give you the address or phone number of any local business. Today, GOOG-411 added an obvious feature it should have had all along: it now tells you the street intersections where a business is located. Since it knows the location information and can presumably cross-reference that with Google Maps, giving out the intersection is not too hard. To get the intersection, just ask for “details” after you get the phone number. The thing about GOOG-411 is that it is all automated using Google’s speech recognition technology. While you are waiting for it to find the phone number and address, it plays a recording of a human voice pretending to be a computer calculating the answer (”bidabudabidabudabidabudabid”). It’s a nice touch. Almost makes you forget you are talking to a computer. Almost. Crunch Network : CrunchBoard because it’s time for you to find a new Job2.0
 
VisualDNA beta: Tailored Ecommerce Based On The Pictures You Choose Top
Imagini has launched the private beta version of its VisualDNA Shops widget to help monetise blogs and websites through a unique take on affiliate sales. The widget adds personalised product recommendations to any site, and immediately starts generating detailed demographic, psychographic and behavioural analytics of its visitors. It does this using the company’s VisualDNA concept; working out people’s personality types based on the pictures they choose. Imagini draws the data from its consumer facing personality test site, Youniverse , which has profiled more than 15 million people since 2006. VisualDNA Shop presents visitors with a few visual questions, and delivers real-time product recommendations from Amazon.com based on their responses. Imagini secured $13.5m in funding in February this year, a chunk of which no doubt went on getting actor Stephen Fry to explain the VisualDNA concept in the video after the jump. Crunch Network : CrunchBoard because it’s time for you to find a new Job2.0
 
Mochi Media Network Attracts Nearly 100 Million Online Gamers A Month (comScore) Top
Mochi Media , a well-financed San Francisco startup that operates a decentralized network of Flash-based online games and gaming websites and offers developers a way to distribute, monetize and get statistical information about their games, sure has done a good job growing its network to a significant size since it debuted its public beta product back in October 2007. Sometime next week, the company is going to announce that in its first month of inclusion in comScore’s measurement system, it has taken the lead over one-stop shop gaming destinations in traffic by a margin. Combined with the company’s claim that the so-called ‘extended network’ is growing its delivered impressions by 5 to 10% month-over-month, Mochi Media should be attracting over 100 million visitors on a monthly basis right about now. Looking at worldwide traffic, comScore pegs the Mochi Media network to have received a little over 91 million unique visitors last April, or roughly 8.2 per cent of the total traffic measured in the ‘Online Gaming’ category for that month. These are impressive numbers: the second ranked online gaming destination is Spil Games , and the total amount of traffic that network receives on a global scale per month is close to that of Mochi Media Action, a subset of Mochi’s network made up of only one genre (adventure games). Familiar brands you’d expect to rank higher, such as Yahoo! Games, MSN Games, EA Online and Nickelodeon, all obtain less than half Mochi Media’s reach worldwide. It’s worth noting, however, that most of this traffic is coming from countries outside the U.S.: from those 91+ million visitors per month worldwide, only about 16 million visitors or roughly 17% originates from the Unites States. The company tells me a lot of visitors come from other English speaking nations like Canada and the U.K. but also from China and a good number of European countries. I also got some numbers regarding its current network size: Mochi Media currently includes more than 14,000 games played across 30,000 websites, which the company claims translates to 1 billion game plays a month worldwide. A company representative declined to share any details about its revenue - the company provides technology for game developers to integrate advertising units powered and distributed by Mochi Media - but did say sales of pre-roll video advertising units are going particularly well, with CPM rates “in the low to mid-teens” for the U.S. and the UK. Mochi Media is backed by $14 million in venture capital from Accel Partners and Shasta Ventures. Its most recent financing round was a $10 million Series B round from both investors back in June 2008. Meanwhile, the startup has convinced both a former MySpace ( Carol Werner ) as a Yahoo exec ( Eric Boyd ) to join its ranks and spurred small startups like the recently seed-funded HeyZap to do similar things. Keep your eyes on this one, folks. CrunchBase Information Mochi Media Information provided by CrunchBase Crunch Network : CrunchBoard because it’s time for you to find a new Job2.0
 
So Much For Twitter's Trending Topics To Indicate Breaking News Top
Twitter ’s near real-time search capabilities and the ability for them and third parties to mine the collective data from user messages for indicators of what’s buzzing online is the intrinsic core value of the company now that it has grown to the size it is at the moment. We already know Twitter can be quite the source for breaking news , but critics have in the past correctly pointed out that one should be aware of the fact that the mob isn’t always right, and unverified claims on the micro-sharing service - often from a single user or even a single message - can quickly lead to false or incomplete stories circulating rapidly and viciously until the dust settles and the truth surfaces. And even then, it’s often too late as most people will have probably moved on unless it was a topic they have a continued interest in. Case in point: the Prop8 debacle . Up until recently, Twitter’s trending topics - which are prominently displayed on their Search homepage and now also in the sidebar when you’re using the Twitter website - were an awesome way to get a feel of what was buzzing on the Web, in a way that virtually no other web service was able to do. And even if you couldn’t quite make sense of why a certain word, term or hashtag was trending, wiki-based services like WhatTheTrend were able to lay it out for you (most of the time, anyway). It was simply a great way to stay on top of news that was breaking online. Which brings me to my rant. Today, when you look at Twitter’s trending topics, you’ll notice that the large majority of trends are memes started by a single user or a group of users, with the main goal offering entertainment rather than spreading information. That’s all fine and dandy - no harm in having fun - and I realize well that Twitter’s trending topics are not necessarily required to be giving you and me an overview of stuff that really matters, but I can’t help but think it’s a pity that that list is starting to turn into the top 10 of chain letters people used to circulate through e-mail messages in the late nineties. Fine with me if people want to share what they consider to be lies that boys tell, or which 3 words should follow after sex, or what their moms used to tell them when they were little, but as I said before I think it’s a shame considering how powerful that trending feature and how valuable that list could be instead. Maybe Twitter needs to add a feature that allows for people to customize that list by enabling them to remove topics out of their attention stream at the very least. We’ll make sure to add it to our list of 300 things we think Twitter should do before a TV show. CrunchBase Information Twitter Information provided by CrunchBase Crunch Network : MobileCrunch Mobile Gadgets and Applications, Delivered Daily.
 
Digg Nabs Federated Media's Chief Revenue Officer, Chas Edwards Top
High profile advertising network Federated Media’s Chief Revenue Officer Chas Edwards has resigned, we’ve confirmed, and will shortly be taking a job at Digg with the same title. Thomas Shin , who Digg stole from Yahoo earlier this year, will report to Edwards. Mike Maser , currently Digg’s Chief Revenue and Strategy Officer, will change his title to Chief Strategy Officer. He controls Digg’s marketing, business development, corporate development and community management groups. This is a big blow for Federated Media. Founder and CEO John Battelle recently announced that he’ll be looking for a replacement to run the company, although he’ll remain active with the business. And Edwards, I know from personal experience, is the kind of guy who can sell ice to eskimos and get a sincere “thanks” as he takes their money. Federated Media raised a big round of financing last year that valued the company at $200 million. Oak Investment Partners , which led the round, must be wondering what exactly they invested in. Many of Federated Media’s partners have left the network. Digg left in 2007 , followed by GigaOm last year. TechCrunch parted ways with Federated Media earlier this month. Edwards will have responsibility for all revenue streams at Digg, which include some revenue from Microsoft (although that deal is largely over) as well as direct sales . The company is making a push towards profitability, they’ve said in past months. That will likely require about twice the reported $8.5 million in revenue that Digg generated in 2008. Edwards will certainly help them get there. Update: The Digg blog post . Crunch Network : MobileCrunch Mobile Gadgets and Applications, Delivered Daily.
 
Spymaster: The Twitter Game That Will Assassinate Your Time Top
Over the past few days, perhaps you’ve seen a few tweets pop up in your stream from people you follow that end with the “spymaster” hashtag. If not, it’s likely you will soon. Spymaster is a new social game based around Twitter in which you do spy-like things such as buy things on the black market, assassinations and put money in Swiss bank accounts. For doing all of these various tasks, you get in-game fake money, and/or points to level-up to become a better spymaster. But if you try to do too much, too often, it will wear on your body and you will lose energy points. Plus, if you fail in assassination or other tasks, you can get injured and lose money. But the genius of this game is its tie-in to Twitter. You sign-up for the game with your Twitter name using OAuth, and your fellow spies are other Twitter users. So when you attempt to assassinate one of them, it will tweet that out to all of your followers including both of your names — and to the followers of the person you tried to assassinate, if they turn the setting on. These Twitter notifications are the real key to the game. There are a bunch of activities within Spymaster that you can set up to automatically tweet out when you do them. These include securing a new safe house, buying something on the black market, and even failing in an attempt to assassinate someone, among other things. The more of these you elect to tweet out, the more money you will earn for doing stuff. But it’s a delicate balance, because if you tweet out too much of your activities, you run the very real risk of annoying your other Twitter followers. Co-founder Eston Bond is clearly aware of this, saying that with just a very small group of users, some are already finding the tweet updates “a bit noisy.” But it’s easy to toggle them on and off on the game’s site. And after playing around with a few different settings, I find that “Assassinating a user,” “Securing a new Safe House,” and “Spymaster level increase,” are some pretty good ones to send out as they don’t bombard your users since you don’t do each of those all that often (well maybe assassination, but that’s just a fun tweet). If you turned on every task you did or every black market purchase you make though, your tweet stream can get ugly — fast. But it’s really quite ingenious. Because the game relies on these tweets, each of which is hashtagged and sent with a URL for the game, word about the game is spreading like crazy with just a select few beta users. The game is being opened up more tomorrow for public testing tomorrow, Bond tells me. And when it is opened up, it should spread even more quickly because a large component is “Converting Spies,” which is taking your Twitter followers (regular “spies”) and sending them direct messages to join your spy network , converting them to “spymasters.” The bigger your spy network, the better your spymaster will be in the game at things like assassinations. Definitely part of the draw of Spymaster is the whole spy thing — it’s hilarious. Spies who do sign up to become spymasters opt-in to one of the various spy agencies — either the CIA, the British SIS or the Russian FSB. Which group you sign up for helps determine your spy network as well. And depending on which network you’re in, you can wire money to spymasters in other networks, but you will have different (fake) currencies. But the money is all converted with the real-time exchange rates, Bond tells me. Brilliant. Spymaster is a side project of iList , a classified listing site for your friends . Aside from Bond, it was created by Chris Abad (iList’s CEO), and Albert Choi and Ben Myles. I have a feeling we’re going to be seeing a lot of spymaster hashtags tomorrow on Twitter — hopefully users figure out how to limit their noise. But if they don’t, feel free to assassinate them. That aspect is another brilliant part of the game — just when I think I’m done playing, I get a message that someone tried to kill me, so naturally I hop back on and try to kill them. It’s beautiful, really. Or, as my fellow spymaster Drew Olanoff puts it, “Just when I try to leave. They pull me back in. ” That’s the theme of just about every spy movie ever made. Crunch Network : MobileCrunch Mobile Gadgets and Applications, Delivered Daily.
 
What Just Happened? Thursday Was Supposed To Be Bing Day. Top
Everyone knew today was the day that Microsoft was going to launch their new search engine. Everyone’s been talking about it for months, and the press and marketing efforts were carefully tailored to maximize the impact. Thursday, May 28, 2009 was supposed to be Microsoft Bing Day. A little after 8 am this morning Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer himself took the stage at the exclusive All Things Digital conference near San Diego, California and announced to a few hundred elite executives that Microsoft would soon be releasing its new search engine , and that it would be called Bing . One problem right off the bat: the Bing.com site wasn’t live. And since press didn’t know the name until Ballmer said it, it took a while for the news to spread. Another problem: A team of Google engineers based in Sydney was simultaneously announcing a stealth project 4+ years in the making called Wave . And it wasn’t being announced to a select few top business executives. Instead, the team that created it was showing it to 4,000 developers at the Google IO conference in San Francisco, California. You know that scene in the Lord Of The Rings movie where the huge eye of Sauron on top of that mountain swings its view from the alliance troops massed at the Black Gate of Mordor over to the real action, Frodo with the Ring at the Cracks of Doom? That’s basically what happened today. The eyes of the world, and the press , swung from San Diego to San Francisco as they realized what was happening. And what was happening was this: Google stole Microsoft’s thunder with one of the most ambitious and exciting products the tech world has seen in a long while. At the end of the Google Wave presentation, 4,000 developers stood up and cheered like nothing we’ve seen outside of a Steve Jobs keynote. That picture above isn’t the crowd of gray haired execs cheering Bing. It’s a mass of engineers going wild over a new open source communications platform from Google. And yes, that guy on the right was literally waving his laptop in the air in excitement. The fact that everyone in attendance was still glowing from a free Android G2 phone that was handed out the day before didn’t hurt, either. So what happened? Well, the company that will do no evil will certainly engage in a little stealth black ops mission when its required. Google knew full well exactly when Bing was going to launch. And they carefully planned the Wave launch to occur just minutes afterwards. They knew the crowd was ready for something cool. Not only did they have that free phone, but the day before Google VP Engineering Vic Gundotra told the crowd that there would be a big announcement the next day. People were ready and willing to be wowed. And while Wave certainly deserves every bit of positive attention it got today, the fact that it’s an open source project didn’t hurt, either. San Francisco engineers love open source like east coast liberals love Obama. Microsoft never stood a chance. As far as the San Francisco developer crowd is concerned, Bing stands for “But It’s Not Google.” Photo credit: I have no idea. If you know, please tell me in the comments so I can ask forgiveness for using it without permission and give proper credit. Update: Chris Campbell took the photo , per the comments below. Thanks Chris! Crunch Network : MobileCrunch Mobile Gadgets and Applications, Delivered Daily.
 
The Bing Definition Microsoft Probably Doesn't Want You To Get In Your Fortune Cookie Top
Chinese, as a character-based language is obviously tricky to translate into English. But following today’s launch of Microsoft’s new oddly-named search engine, Bing , the world wants to know what it means. We have an answer. While you might associate “bing” with the Chinese flatbread, or a number of other things that Wired broke down . We were sent perhaps the ultimate translation in the form of a fortune cookie that just happened to pop up after someone’s dinner tonight. One translation for “bing” is apparently “disease.” Some more digging on the web indicates this as well. So while that is slightly less subtle than Microsoft’s former search property, live, spelling “evil” backwards, it’s another interesting name choice by Microsoft. I’d hope they didn’t plant the bing definition in that fortune cookie as part of its elaborate $100 million marketing campaign — though, come to think of it, that might not be a bad play. [Thanks Stephen ] CrunchBase Information Bing Information provided by CrunchBase Crunch Network : MobileCrunch Mobile Gadgets and Applications, Delivered Daily.
 
Google Wave: The Full Video From Google IO Top
Here’s the full video of the Google Wave demo from this morning at Google’s IO conference in San Francisco. Our full review of Google Wave is here . Exclusive interview with the founders is here , and our video and notes from the press conference is here . CrunchBase Information Google Wave Lars Rasmussen Jens Rasmussen Stephanie Hannon Information provided by CrunchBase Crunch Network : MobileCrunch Mobile Gadgets and Applications, Delivered Daily.
 
Video: Plastic Logic Prototype E-Reader Top
Plastic Logic is showing off a prototype of its thin-film electronic reader at the D7 conference. The main difference between what Plastic Logic is trying to build and the Kindle is that its screen technology is much thinner, lighter and can be incorporated into more flexible form- factors. I shot the video above showing a demo of what it can do. We certainly need thinner, sleeker e-reader devices. But unless Amazon adopts the technology for future Kindles or opens up the Kindle Store t other e-readers, any Plastic Logic device will have limited appeal. The company is pitching it as ideal for viewing business documents, something you can easily do with the Kindle as well. It converts everything to a PDF and lets you jump around to different pages or even different documents (represented by different tabs). The Plastic Logic prototype uses E-Ink technology, like the Kindle, it i just not on glass. So it suffers from the same slow load times for each new page. It also does not display Web pages (something the Kindle does in rudimentary form). Crunch Network : CrunchGear drool over the sexiest new gadgets and hardware.
 
Ads For New Microsoft Bing Search Engine…On Google Top
Maybe it works, but seeing ads on Google for Microsoft’s new Bing search engine just doesn’t seem to send quite the right message. Plus, the ads link to a nearly blank landing page , since Bing hasn’t launched yet. Microsoft is rumored to be spending up to $100 million to advertise the Bing launch. I wonder how much of that Google will end up getting… There are also ads pointing to a Ning site called BingHub . I can’t imagine why whoever created it is spending cold hard cash to promote that, either. Thanks for the tip , Gur. Update: Bing ads on Yahoo, too: Crunch Network : MobileCrunch Mobile Gadgets and Applications, Delivered Daily.
 
SourceForge Acquires Open Source Data Community Ohloh Top
SourceForge, a tech news and e-commerce network has acquired Ohloh, a social network for developers and directory of open source projects, for an undisclosed amount. SourceForge owns and operates a number of tech media websites, including SourceForge.net, a centralized location for software developers to manage open source software development; Slashdot, a tech news site; ThinkGeek, a marketplace for tech goods. Founded in 2004, Ohloh crawls 3,500 open source forges and gathers statistics and data on more than 300,000 open source projects and 300,000 open source developers. It’s not clear of Ohloh will be absorbed into SourceForge.net. Crunch Network : CrunchGear drool over the sexiest new gadgets and hardware.
 
Sergey Brin: Google Wave Will Set A New Benchmark For Interactivity Top
Google unveiled its new communication tool, Wave, this morning with a bang at Google I/O. The blogosphere is a buzz with talk of the new product, which blends email, instant messaging, collaboration and real time functionality into one platform. And Wave will open up its API soon to developers and will eventually be an open source product, letting the developer community take an active part in shaping the platform. We spoke to Wave’s creators yesterday, brothers Lars and Jens Rasmussen and Stephanie Hannon. One question that’s is on everyone’s minds is whether Gmail and Google Apps become obsolete with the emergence of such powerful platform? TechCrunch IT Editor Steve Gillmor caught up with Google co-founder Sergey Brin (who he also talked to about Chrome yesterday) after a Q&A session with Wave’s creators, and asked him about the future of Google Apps and more. Brin says that Google has been using Wave internally for a couple of months and remained mum about how and when Gmail and Google Apps will be integrated. Brin points out, however; that developers of Chrome have been collaborating with Wave developers to make the platform extra speedy on the browser. Wave has also been working with the Google Web Toolkit, says Brin. It’s apparent from the video that Brin is enthusiastic about Wave and its potential. Brin, who only works on a handful of Google’s products, handpicked Wave as a compelling project on which to focus his efforts. Brin also says in the video that he didn’t know that Microsoft’s new search engine, Bing, launched today but he did say that he has played around with Wolfram Alpha and is interested in exploring that search engine a little bit more (fun fact: Brin spent a summer interning for Stephen Wolfram). Crunch Network : MobileCrunch Mobile Gadgets and Applications, Delivered Daily.
 
Take A 3D Tour Of Your Favorite Baseball Stadium With Google Earth Top
This has been quite a week for Google, especially with the announcement of Google Wave at the Google I/O Conference . Not to be ignored, Google Earth has been quietly rolling out some nifty features, including business listings. Today, Google Earth has added 3D tours of buildings, bridges, baseball stadiums and more. The tours are self-running views into buildings, bridges, museums, skyscrapers, stadiums and castles from around the world, most of which were built Google SketchUp users who model buildings for Google Earth. To play a tour, you need to activate the “3d Buildings” layer in Google Earth. Then you can click the “Start tour here” link in the “Places” panel in Google Earth (make sure you have download the latest version of Google Earth). Crunch Network : CrunchBoard because it’s time for you to find a new Job2.0
 
Palm Pre To Come With Twitter Search And iTunes Sync Top
The Palm Pre will be Twitter friendly. In a demo of the Palm Pre at the D7 conference a few minutes ago, Twitter search was showcased as one of its universal search options (along with Google and other search engines). Other features shown in the demo included the ability to sync the Pre to iTunes , download music over the air from the Amazon MP3 store, run multiple apps at the same time, and integrate third-party apps with other apps on the device such as the calendar. For instance, if you buy a movie ticket through a Fandango app, it can make an entry on your calendar. In an interview on-stage, Palm’s largest investor Roger McNamee of Elevation Partners noted that Palm represented 45 percent of the capital invested by Elevation so far. McNamee compared Elevation to the early days of Kleiner Perkins, where the partners are fully engaged in the businesses they invest in and they invest in very few companies (Elevation has six portfolio companies and five partners). Palm is its biggest bet by far. “This will be the thing that defines us,” says McNamee. He is confident that there is room in the transition from feature phones to Web-enabled smartphones to carve out a decent business for Palm. First, he’s got to make sure the Pre does not flop . Asked whether Apple would mind that Palm built iTunes sync into the Pre, McNamee shot back: “They are practically a monopolist. Consumers want their content.” The Pre can only sync non-DRMed content from iTunes. And there are other ways to get that content, but this is the first non-Apple device that syncs directly with iTunes without the use of third-party software. ” They can’t tell people what to do with music that they own,” says McNamee. “We are confirming their dominant market share. They are not stupid.” Crunch Network : MobileCrunch Mobile Gadgets and Applications, Delivered Daily.
 
Facebook Names First Class Of fbFund REV, Its New Incubator Top
Facebook has just announced the 20 final winners of the latest round of fbFund, the joint entity created by Accel Partners and Founders Fund in conjunction with the social network to help foster quality applications on Facebook Platform and Facebook Connect. This round’s winners will be invited to join a special Facebook startup incubator in downtown Palo Alto this summer. We’d previously learned about the program’s 50 finalists, each of whom was given $1,000 in advertising credit. But this is the real prize that the applicants have been shooting for. The incubator program is being called fbFund REV, and will operate in a similar fashion (at least in some senses) to programs like Y Combinator and TechStars . Twenty companies, which include two nonprofits, will take part in a program headed by Founders Fund’s Dave McClure , and will have the chance to work with Facebook engineers and a range of Silicon Valley veterans . Facebook intends to keep us posted on the startups’ progress throughout the session, and will be holding a demo day at the end of the summer to help expose the companies to investors and press. McClure is drawing inspiration from his experience teaching a Facebook course at Stanford, where he helped guide 25 teams of developers. He says that while the program has more participants than other incubators have had over the last few years, this can actually help the startups, as they feed off each others’ knowledge and experience. McClure adds that the program will be somewhat more structured than YC and other incubators and that it will emphasize getting the companies to release and iterate their products quickly, rather than spending a long time on the development cycle. As for the funding being given to each startup, McClure says that the average amount of investment is $25,000, with over $500,000 being distributed in total (the non-profits are excluded from receiving funding, but are invited to the program for free). Investments are being made as a convertible note, with a discount for future priced rounds. fbFund is taking roughly a 1-5% stake in each company (around 2% for most of them), which is in line with what other incubators have been doing. Here is the full list of winners, along with some brief introductions provided by Facebook: Frintro : Find friends of friends to date…or play matchmaker! If you’re single, you can search your friends’ friends and ask for intros. If you’re taken, you can set friends up. Friends of friends are the best people to date. It’s social dating via friendly intros. Funji : Funji is an avatar-based social networking app for the iPhone and iPod touch, satisfying users’ desire to express themselves and communicate with others in a fun, creative way. The team has more than five years of experience in the mobile market in both South Korea and the US. Gameyola : Gameyola is a distribution and monetization platform for casual Flash games. Flash games currently monetize poorly, but Gameyola solves this problem by providing Flash developers tools to sell virtual goods and to acquire users through social channels. Life360 (private beta): From keeping track of your kids to protecting your identity and getting back your lost stuff, Life360 is the place you go to keep your family safe, secure, and prepared for daily life. MyChurch.org : Churches create their own social networks on MyChurch.org. They extend their community between Sundays with tools to connect and engage their members. Over 30,000 church congregations are represented on MyChurch.org. Navify : Navify is a visual encyclopedia that combines Wikipedia articles with images, videos, and comments. It is the only general encyclopedia that allows you to listen to music videos, watch movie trailers, and browse news and celebrity photo galleries. Nutshell Mail : Simplify the way you manage Facebook and other social networks. NutshellMail consolidates activity from all your accounts into a single email digest delivered on your schedule. Don’t let email alerts clutter your inbox. Get informed, not interrupted. Get the Nut! Networked Blogs : Bring your blog to Facebook, and Facebook to your blog. Pull your Feed to your profile and business pages, add widgets to promote your network, and read the news from blogs you follow on the largest community of bloggers and blog lovers on Facebook. Paradise Paintball 3D : Paradise Paintball is the first game developed on Cmune’s next-generation social gaming platform. It is the first casual, 3D multiplayer FPS game on Facebook, Apple Dashboard, and Mac and PC. Play with up to eight friends and buy virtual items to enhance the gameplay. Photos I Like : Photos I Like is a digital media sharing and discovery site emphasizing lightweight social content, self-expression, and communities. RentMineOnline : Combines the success of resident referral programs with the power of social networks. Residents refer their community to friends through social networks like Facebook, and email to earn rewards and live with friends. RunMyErrand: RUNmyERRAND is a social networking inspired web and mobile marketplace that provides people and businesses an easy and trusted way to get everyday tasks done in their own hyperlocal community. RunThere : RunThere is a social-networking service for runners and cyclists. Users can map and measure their favorite routes (no GPS required), keep a running/biking log, and find athletes and routes nearby Sortuv: Sortuv lets you start with something you like, and discover more. Instead of searching for a “great restaurant” just say what you mean: “Find me a place sortuv like Spago in Seattle”. Check them out on the Web , on the iPhone , and on Facebook . TravelBrain / GeckoGo : Travel Brain by GeckoGo helps you track (and show off!) your travels, share experiences with others, and discover new places to visit. Learn from the knowledge of over 600,000 travelers, and get expert guide info from their Bradt Travel Guides partnership. Weardrobe (private beta): Weardrobe is a fashion-focused community for discovering different ways to wear clothing. Weardrobe provides a platform for people to share reviews of their own clothing, post photos of their looks, catalog their closet and search for style inspiration. Workstir : Workstir is a community that connects users with trustworthy local service providers. Anyone can post a job and choose a provider with confidence by browsing their past reviews. For businesses, Workstir provides a wealth of jobs in their area of expertise. Worldly Developments (private beta): Worldly Developments is building online services that will help you connect with the people, places and events in your local community. Its first product makes it a snap to plan, promote, and communicate around group activities. Non-profits* Samasource : Sama is Sanskrit for “equal” – Samasource finds and trains reliable QA professionals to test Facebook apps with a user-friendly interface that lives on Facebook Platform. With Samasource, developers lower costs, reduce poverty, and improve their applications. Vittana: Vittana enables you to lend directly to students in the developing world, $25 at a time. Their mission is to bring student loans to the developing world through the power of person-to-person microlending. Congratulations to TechCrunch alum Mark Hendrickson , whose company Worldly Developments will be part of the program! Crunch Network : MobileCrunch Mobile Gadgets and Applications, Delivered Daily.
 
Playdom Grows Up: Switches To Studio Model, Lands Top Talent Top
Playdom, a popular social gaming developer on MySpace, is moving to a studio model, similar to the model of competitor Zynga. Playdom has largely flown under our radar until now, but they’ve built up some very popular social networking apps on MySpace, and are also moving to Facebook as well. Adopting the studio model means that Playdom will have multiple independent teams working on different games. To head up the two studios, Playdom has brought in substantial talent from successful gaming companies. Former Director of Game Design at Zynga, Dave Rohrl, will oversee a studio focused on new intellectual property and former Studio Director at Pogoa/Electronic Arts, Sean Clark will head a studio focused on role-playing games or RPGs. The Mountain View, Calif.-based company first made a name for itself on MySpace, creating the most popular game on the social network, Mobsters. The startup has 9 of the top 25 games on MySpace. Playdom also made waves on Facebook’s gaming community, creating the popular game Poker Palace. Crunch Network : CrunchBoard because it’s time for you to find a new Job2.0
 

CREATE MORE ALERTS:

Auctions - Find out when new auctions are posted

Horoscopes - Receive your daily horoscope

Music - Get the newest Album Releases, Playlists and more

News - Only the news you want, delivered!

Stocks - Stay connected to the market with price quotes and more

Weather - Get today's weather conditions




You received this email because you subscribed to Yahoo! Alerts. Use this link to unsubscribe from this alert. To change your communications preferences for other Yahoo! business lines, please visit your Marketing Preferences. To learn more about Yahoo!'s use of personal information, including the use of web beacons in HTML-based email, please read our Privacy Policy. Yahoo! is located at 701 First Avenue, Sunnyvale, CA 94089.
Posted by at

No comments:

Post a Comment

Subscribe to: Post Comments (Atom)