Thursday, May 21, 2009

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Evernote Stats: One Million Registered Users, 360,000 Active, 13,755 Paid Top
Reaching one million registered users is an important milestone for any startup. At the very least, it suggests that it is pointed in the right direction. Evernote , the app which helps you remember things you find on the Web or take photos of with your phone, just hit one million registered users a couple days ago, about a year after its public launch in June, 2008 and six months after it reached 500,000 registered users . The company raised $4.5 million at the end of last year. Evernote’s growth is not rocket-like by any means, but it is steady and consistent. CEO Phil Libin shared some detailed stats on Evernote’s progress. You might know Evernote from its iPhone app, which won a Crunchie award and has been downloaded around one million times on its own. But the company also has Windows, and Mac clients, as well as a Web browser version. The breakdown by users is 36 percent on the Windows client (which is what Evernote launched first), 28 percent on the Mac, 20 percent on the iPhone, 11 percent on the iPhone, 2 percent on the Blackberry, and 1 percent on other mobile devices. The desktop clients have been download about 1.7 million times and can be used in conjunction with the iPhone app. These numbers are instructive because the number of downloads (2.7 million total across all platforms) does not equal the number of registered users (1 million). So the next time a startup is touting how many downloads it has, cut that number by one half to one third just to get to signups. Then you have to cut by another third. Registered users are great, but how many are actually active? Those are a company’s real users. Over the past 30 days, Evernote is tracking at about 360,000 active users, or a little more than a third of registered users. Evernote’s active users might be relatively small, but they are pretty active. Over the past two years, they’ve created 36 million notes, or about 100 notes each. Notes can come in the form of Web clips (38 percent), text notes (35 percent), photos (17.5 percent), PDF documents (6 percent), voice notes (1.5 percent), digital ink (0.67 percent), and more. The more active users Evernote gets, the more it can convert into paying premium subscribers. Premium subscribers get more storage, more support, more security, and no ads for $5 a month or $45 a year. Evernote has 13,755 paying premium subscribers, which comes out to about a 3.75 percent conversion rate. Both the number of premium accounts and the conversion rate is growing. Surprisingly, 82 percent of the premium subscribers opt for an annual account. That comes to an annual revenue run-rate of about $650,000, which is not much, but Evernote has other sources of revenues and Libin says he is ahead of estimates to become profitable. He just needs to get those premium subscriber numbers up a bit. If he can get premium subscribers up to 50,000, that would translate to about $2.2 million in revenues, 100,000 premium subscribers would bring in $4.5 million, and so on (I just used the $45 annual fee to calculate those numbers. Working in the monthly subscribers lifts the total a bit). Now, if Evernote could ever get to one million paying subscribers, that would be a decent business. Crunch Network : CrunchGear drool over the sexiest new gadgets and hardware.
 
Plastic Jungle Scores $4.8 million For Gift Card Marketplace Top
Plastic Jungle, a marketplace for gift cards, has secured $4.8 million in Series A funding, led by Shasta Ventures with investments from Bay Partners, First Round Capital and Harrison Metal. The company says that it will use the funds to accelerate its growth through new hires, as well as increased marketing and business development efforts. Plastic Jungle lets you buy, sell and exchange gift cards online. Instead of receiving cash for your gift card, Plastic Jungle also lets you trade the value in for an Amazon gift card or give your money to charity. Crunch Network : CrunchGear drool over the sexiest new gadgets and hardware.
 
The Next iPhone: Warp Speed, Mr. Sulu Top
The iPhone is still hands-down one of the best 5 tech purchases I’ve made over the past decade — and it’s probably the best. I use it every day to do a variety of things that I still find incredible that I’m able to do in something so portable. That said, over the past few months, I’ve been getting frustrated at the speed of the device. Some of the applications built for it, notably the games, are simply resource hogs. And that’s made applications like FreeMemory (which, yes, frees your phone’s memory), a necessity. But a much greater pain reliever is on the way if Daring Fireball’s John Gruber is correct (and he usually is on such things). A new, much faster iPhone. The new iPhone will feature a processor that will be more than 1.5 times faster than the current iPhone, according Gruber citing information from informed sources. While at first glance, that may not seem like a huge jump up, Gruber compares the speed bump to what it was like to upgrade an old 486 PC to a Pentium variety. In today’s world of computer upgrades, you’re usually upgrading from a processor that is already fast enough for most tasks, to one that is slightly faster — it’s the RAM, video cards and Bus speeds that seem to matter just as much. But back in the day those jumps processor specs alone were huge. And as someone who vividly remembers upgrading a 486 SX 33 to a Pentium, this potential iPhone jump greatly excites me. And that’s not all the new iPhone will feature. You can also expect a doubling of the iPhone’s capacity to 16 GB and 32 GB. And the RAM should be doubled as well to 256 MB, though Gruber is less sure about that. While the device will largely look the same, it will gain a better camera that features auto-focus and yes, video capturing. These video capabilities will be highlighted on the new device, as it will include software to manipulate video as well, which goes along with earlier rumors. All of this has been rumored in the past. It always seemed a little lame to me that the iPhone 3G featured the same 400 MHz processor that the original iPhone did. In fact, the second generation iPod touch actually received a processor spec bump , while the iPhone did not. This new iPhone should feature a 600 MHz processor. Unfortunately, with this new horsepower, Gruber doesn’t expect the battery life of the device to get any better — let’s just hope it doesn’t get worse. And we should still see this new version in two colors: White and black — while the same price points are maintained: $199 for the 16 GB, $299 for 32 GB. This is no word on the rumored to be improved 3G speeds, using a new HSDPA chip. This new iPhone is expected to be unveiled at the WWDC event on June 8 (we’ll be there, covering it live). But the device would launch in July — same routine as last year. There’s still no word on what this new iPhone will be called. It’s the 3rd iteration, but “iPhone 3″ wouldn’t make a lot of sense given that the 2nd iteration was the “iPhone 3G.” “iPhone Video” or some such is certainly possible, but I’m still betting on Apple keeping it simple and going with the plain, old “iPhone.” CrunchBase Information iPhone Apple Information provided by CrunchBase Crunch Network : CrunchBoard because it’s time for you to find a new Job2.0
 
Source: Google Values MySpace Deal At $75 Million/Year Or Less Top
The last $75 million payment on the $900 million Google/News Corp. search advertising deal will be paid to News Corp. a year from now. That deal has accounted for about a third of News Corp.’s online revenue from MySpace and some of its smaller Internet sites, and the looming end of that particular gravy train is causing more than a little consternation for new Digital Media chief Jonathan Miller and his new MySpace exec team . Google revenue is the difference between profitability and the opposite of profitability at MySpace and its sister sites. And unless a new deal is negotiated that can bring in similar revenue after next year, MySpace is facing massive layoffs and a general downsizing of its business, we’ve heard from multiple sources close to MySpace. Here’s the good news: Google is at the table negotiating a new deal to take over in July 2010. Here’s the bad news: Sources say Google thinks the deal is worth, tops, $50 million - $75 million per year, significantly less than the $300 million/year they’re paying now. Why? Sources say that while Google has gotten plenty of advertising impressions (MySpace uses any excuse to put Google search results and Google ads in front of users), those ads don’t convert well. Add to that the dramatic shrinking of MySpace page views and the predictive modeling gets ugly. Google knows MySpace is shrinking by about 20% a year. And unlike the last time they negotiated with News Corp., they now have nearly three years of actual operating history with the company. They’ve got real data to value the deal. Unless Microsoft or perhaps Yahoo comes in and bids very aggressively, MySpace is going to get slaughtered in the negotiations. If rumors are correct News Corp. has brought in EVP Mike Lang to run the Google negotiations. This is the guy who led the creation and funding of Fox’s Hulu joint venture, and is considered a top notch negotiator. But News Corp. needs more than a top negotiator to save MySpace’s revenue stream. They need a miracle worker. Crunch Network : MobileCrunch Mobile Gadgets and Applications, Delivered Daily.
 
Google's Products Get A New Logo Top
Google’s logo for several of its products has been tweaked. The existing Google logo remains the same but the look of the product names have changed. Maps, Docs, News and others will be in a blue lowercase font to the right of the Google logo, instead of underneath. Google says that the logos will be the same size wherever they appear and will be consistent on international sites. The logo changes for Google Maps, Google News, Google Docs and more will be implemented over the next few weeks. We also recently heard that Google is considering taking the beta off some of its product logos in the near future. Google’s New Logo: Love It Or Hate It? ( blog polls ) Crunch Network : MobileCrunch Mobile Gadgets and Applications, Delivered Daily.
 
DocStoc Launches Document Collections Top
Popular document sharing service DocStoc just launched a collections feature, which lets users package documents around a particular topic. DocStoc has already created close to 50 collections, including “Starting a Small Business,” “Advertising Online,” and “Traveling on a Budget,” and is opening up the platform to users to add to existing collections and create their own. The feature is just another way to organize your documents online and can be a pretty useful tool to manage large amounts of documents that relate to different topics. Competitors Issuu and Scribd both have similar offerings. Scribd’s “Group” feature allows users to organize documents around a theme and tries to connect users to other people who are interested in the same reading and topics. Issuu recently launched a collaborative Groups feature, where people can collect, organize and discuss publications related to any topic. DocStoc’s feature appears to focus more on the organization of documents around a particular theme than connecting users around that theme. DocStoc is steadily growing, with 3 million documents uploaded and 1.6 million unique visitors a month in the U.S., according to comScore. (The company's internal Google Analytics shows 4.8 million unique visitors worldwide). Docstoc recently took off its "beta" label with a homepage redesign, open APIs, and a new revenue-sharing model called DocCash. Crunch Network : CrunchBase the free database of technology companies, people, and investors
 
Another Vote Of Confidence For Post-Print Media: Business Insider Raises New Funding Top
The Business Insider , the blog network that includes Silicon Alley Insider and a pair of other business-focused news sites, has closed its third funding round. The company hasn’t disclosed the amount of the round, but reports peg it at around $5 million. In a blog post annoucing the news, co-founder Henry Blodget details the new investors in the round, who include Marc Andreessen, Allen & Company LLC, Zelnick Media’s Jim Friedlich, and Matt Luckett of Balestra Capital. Other investors include Kohlberg & Company and the blog’s founders. Blodget also notes that the Business Insider is seeing a healthy 2 million monthly unique visitors. Along with SAI, Business Insider’s other blog verticals include the Wall Street-centric Clusterstock and Green Sheet , which covers green energy and related environmental news. While the network had a false start with media site The Biz, which shut down in the last few days, we can probably expect Business Insider to expand into new verticals as the company continues to grow. Crunch Network : CrunchGear drool over the sexiest new gadgets and hardware.
 
Google Friend Connect Finds A Friend In Netlog Top
Google Friend Connect is now integrated with one of Europe’s fastest growing social networks, Netlog. Netlog, which has more than 45 million users worldwide, just implemented Google’s alternative to Facebook Connect, which allows users to sign in using any ID supported by Google Friend Connect (including Google, Yahoo, AIM, and OpenID) and share their activities with their existing contacts. Google’s integration with Netlog lets users sign into sites and blogs using Friend Connect with their Netlog ID and password. Users can use their Netlog profiles on the site, invite other Netlog users to join Friend Connect, and also share their Friend Connect activity with friends on Netlog. On the back end, Google uses standards like OpenID, OAuth, and OpenSocial technologies to enable Netlog and other social networks and sites to plug into Friend Connect. Netlog is growing fast, especially in Eastern Europe and the Middle-East, where it serves as the community portal of choice thanks to its viral nature and extensive language translation program. But even though Netlog is becoming increasingly popular in other parts of the world, this isn’t as big of a win for Google as the integration of a popular social network worldwide like Facebook, which officially has 200 million registered users around the globe (250 to 280 million unofficially ). And Facebook just hit 307 million unique visitors worldwide in April, with MySpace trailing behind with 127 million unique visitors in April, according to comScore. By comparison, comScore’s worldwide unique visitor estimate for Netlog is 23.8 million. Crunch Network : MobileCrunch Mobile Gadgets and Applications, Delivered Daily.
 
What We Know About The Apple Tablet So Far Top
More evidence of the Apple Tablet surfaced today. We first wrote about the device at the end of last year when OEMs in China started hearing about the device. Details are still thin, although probably not because of a lack of leaks. Rather, Apple may still be locking down important specs like screen size. We’d heard 7 - 9 inch screen size late last year, but today’s reports range up to 10 inches, which we’ve also heard from our sources as a possible size. We don’t know what the final price point will be, but somewhere between $500 and $1,000 makes sense. We’ve also heard that the launch date was pushed from this Fall to early next year, and we’ve confirmed that significant human assets from the iPod and iPhone team have been dedicated to the project. In other words, the project is very real. The operating system is likely to be based on the iPhone OS, which is a derivative of the standard Mac OS X. Some app developers have seen underlying code that suggests a larger screen device is on the way. That means the App Store is a big part of the Apple Tablet, and the device will be particularly useful for gaming. What we don’t know - the final screen size or the core CPU, although 10 inches is likely as we said, and it wouldn’t be surprising for Apple to launch with the Samsung ARM11 chip in the iPhone or their own proprietary chip from P.A. Semi, a company they acquired in 2008. It’s not inconceivable that Apple would build around an Intel dual core that is common in most laptops, although the power usage of those chips would mean adding so much battery weight that the tradeoff may be unacceptable. But if you look at the Macbook Air, which is a dual core machine that’s just an inch thick, you can imaging a dual core Apple Tablet. The only problem there would be cost - that is a $2,000 machine. Most of the discussion today around CPUs is power usage, not core computing horsepower. ARM and Atom chips compete in low end devices like mobile phones and netbooks. Neither are great for Internet browsing - Flash, particularly video, still doesn’t work properly on ARM. Intel’s Atom isn’t much better because it can’t handle full screen or HD Flash video without skipping. Atom chips are also 2-3x the cost of ARM 11 chips and use significantly more power. Apple actually underclocks their ARM11 chip to get more battery life out of the iPhone, which hurts performance. This Will Be A Huge Hit Our posts about the CrunchPad show how seriously consumers want a device like this . It is the perfect couch computing device and will create a whole new category of computers. Everyone so far has blundered along with tiny screens. Apple is going to get it right. The price point and production capacity in China will be the only limiting factors in the number of units they can sell, in my opinion. Crunch Network : MobileCrunch Mobile Gadgets and Applications, Delivered Daily.
 
Google Revises And Revs Chrome's JavaScript Engine Top
Occasionally, I boot up Windows on my Mac just to run Google Chrome. Given how often I used Google’s services like Gmail and Google Reader, it’s almost worth it because they run so fast on Chrome’s JavaScript engine, which it calls “V8.” And today, Google has apparently slammed on the gas and made V8 even faster. JavaScript-heavy webpages (such as Gmail), will now run 30% faster on Chrome, according to Google . Given how fast they were already running, that’s fairly insane. This new version of Chrome also boasts the ability to remove thumbnails from the Tab Page. This is a feature that rival browsers such as Safari 4, already offer and is useful if, as Google notes in the video below, “you have a site in there that you’d rather not admit to visiting quite as often as your actually do.” Other new features include full-screen browsing mode and form auto-fill. Again, many of its rivals also already offer these. Google says its fixed over 300 bugs that have caused crashes since it first launched. That’s nice, but the speed is the real story here. At least until the damn Mac version launches. Crunch Network : CrunchBase the free database of technology companies, people, and investors
 
What's In The Gmail Magic Inbox? Top
One almost surefire way to find if a new feature is on the verge of launching is to dig through code. That’s exactly what led to finding a reference to something called “Magic Inbox,” in Gmail. But what is it? Well, it could just be another one of those nifty, but small new features that Google loves to roll out in Gmail Labs at breakneck speed. But there’s a chance it’s something much, much bigger. Specifically, Google Operating System, which did the digging , believes that the feature likely is a way to sort your Gmail inbox by your social graph. The two references to “friends” in the code, seems to lend some credence to this. Presumably, this would allow you to better filter your inbox based on if you have specified the emailer as a contact. As someone who gets bombarded by email everyday, most of which is not from people I actually know, I would weep with joy if such a feature were implemented. And so would my mom, as she may actually get emails back from me were that the case. Of course, others have been working on this same idea as well. Yahoo has been saying for a while that it wants to use your inbox as a part of your social graph . Microsoft’s Hotmail has been working on things in the area as well, as has Xobni . But given all the work Google has been doing recently to tighten up its social graph across its huge network of services, a social filter in Gmail could be very, very useful. Users are likely to have security concerns about this as well. Some people want their email client to be completely private and not a part of the social graph. Of course, Google has already been using Gmail as a key starting point for your social graph for a while now, even if you didn’t realize it. Well over a year ago, Google it rolled out its social features to Google Reader, pulling in who it thought your friends were based on who you emailed in Gmail. This proved to be an awful idea as people you email aren’t necessarily your friends. Google eventually rolled out several updates to this feature to allow users to better tailor their relationships. And that would obviously be a key part of a Gmail social filter as well. You need to be able to separate out your actual friends from those who you simply have contacted in the past, or maybe even correspond with a lot. While Google hasn’t exactly nailed the social features , it’s pretty clear that the company is thinking about them — a lot. And that your Google Contacts , which started as a part of Gmail, but have since been spun out, are a key part of it. Google I/O , its large developer conference is taking place next week. Google is likely to use the event to unveil some key new things it has been working on. Could that be a “magic inbox,” which is also called “icebox inbox” in the code? We’ll be there to find out. Maybe Gmail will even leave beta — but probably not. Crunch Network : CrunchBoard because it’s time for you to find a new Job2.0
 
OpenTable Has A Healthy IPO. Shares Shoot Up 40 59 Percent, Market Cap Passes $600 Million. Top
Is the IPO drought over? Not quite. But OpenTable’s successful IPO today will give tech startups and VCs a sign of hope that you can still go public eventually if you have a real business. On a day when the Nasdaq is down 2 percent, OpenTable is up 40 45 percent from its offering price of $20 (which itself kept moving up from $12 to $14 initially). The stock opened at $24, and was trading at around $28 $29 last time I checked. With 21.6 million shares outstanding, that gives OpenTable a market capitalization of $605 $626 million on its first day of trading. (The company itself cleared $60 million in the offering). Update : The stock closed at $31.89, up 59 percent from the offering price, giving the company a market cap of $689 million at the end of the trading day. This is an extremely healthy IPO. Opentable is not a blowout Internet company. But it is a solid Internet company that matters . It pulled in $55.8 million in revenues last year and a net loss of $1 million (largely due to expansion-related costs). In the first quarter of 2009, it managed to turn a net profit of $366,000 on revenues of $16 million. (For a deeper financial analysis, see this earlier post ). OpenTable delivers reservation management software to restaurants through a Web browser and collects monthly subscription revenues. In that sense it is in the same class of software companies as Salesforce—selling software as a service over the Web to business customers. But it also has a friendly (free) consumer-facing side. It is yet another example of enterprise and consumer apps merging in the cloud. So what does it take for a tech company to IPO these days? If OpenTable is the new measuring stick, a company needs at least $50 million in revenues, have at least one quarter of profits, customers with proven loyalty, and solid growth potential. In other words, it needs to be a real business. Crunch Network : CrunchBase the free database of technology companies, people, and investors
 
Meebo Mail? Check Your Desktop Notifier. Top
Is Meebo moving into email? The web-based chat service already centralizes instant messages from AIM, Yahoo, MSN, Google Talk, Facebook, MySpace, and more. Folding in emails from different accounts across the Web is a logical next step. In fact, Meebo already tiptoed into the email arena this morning with a new feature which appeared in its Windows desktop notifier . A new “Mail” tab can now be found in preferences, allowing Meebo users to “Enable mail notifications for these accounts:” It then lists the IM accounts you’ve already signed up for on Meebo (which makes sense, since generally you use the same username and password for your email as you do for your IM within any given service such as Yahoo or Gmail/Gtalk or Facebook). When you get a new email, you get a notification pop up at the bottom of your computer screen, just like you do for new IMs. When you click on the notification, it takes you to the underlying email service. Meebo CEO Seth Sternberg characterizes this as a “convenience feature” for desktop users: “Basically, we’re creating the same bridge between the webmail services and the desktop that we’ve already created between Meebo’s web site and the desktop.” The notifier is also a good place to test new features since most of Meebo’s members use the browser-based versions of its service. Why not add this to Meebo.com as well? Sternberg tries to shoot that notion down. He writes (via email): “everything we do is oriented around real-time communication. so i think it’s unlikely we’ll build a standard email client into meebo.com.” That does leave room for a “non-standard” email client. Certainly, adding email notifications that pop up like IM’s and then take you to your Web-based email service of choice would be just as much a convenience for Web-based users as for desktop users. But there is another clue pointing to somethingbigger than that brewing at Meebo. Every employee’s email address has been switched from employee@meebo.com to employee@meebo-inc.com. A switch like this is often a precursor to the launch of a Webmail product. MySpace recently did the same thing , as did Yahoo back in 1997 before it launched Yahoo mail. What would a Meebo mail product look like? It would have to take a backseat to IM, but you still need a place to send messages when a recipient is not online. Maybe the future of email is as a backup repository for IMs when you are offline. (Hat tip to the folks at Crowded Road for noticing the new notifier feature. Check out their Offline TechCrunch Reader iPhone app— iTunes link ). Crunch Network : CrunchGear drool over the sexiest new gadgets and hardware.
 
Areps.at: This Week's Facebook Phishing Scam Top
Looks like Facebook has another phishing scam to deal with. Today’s is a message that appears to be appearing in users’ inboxes with the prompt to “Check areps.at.” Similar to last week’s 151.im phishing scheme the domain is not automatically hyperlinked in Facebook, but email clients, like Gmail or Yahoo, will auto-link it. Don't click on that link and don't copy and paste it into your browser. Apparently the link will lead you to a Facebook log-in page. If you login to the site, the site will steal your email and password and will send all of your friends the same message. Twitter reveals that the same has been taking place all morning but I just received a Facebook message from a friend who was sucked into the scam a half hour ago. Crunch Network : CrunchBase the free database of technology companies, people, and investors
 
Fotolia Launches Free Stock Photography Bank PhotoXpress Top
Fotolia, a marketplace for microstock photography and video, is launching PhotoXpress, a free, premier-quality image bank, which will offer users royalty free image licenses for personal or professional use, ranging from Web site design to advertisements and editorial imagery. Patrick Lor, president of PhotoXpress North America, says the site will feature a collection of more than 350,000 images and illustrations, but Lor’s ambitions are to have close to a million photos available free of charge. Lor, who also holds the title of president of Fotolia North America, recently joined the company. Lor previously helped to build rival and now Getty-owned iStockPhoto, which he helped co-found (Lor left in 2006, shortly after Getty acquired the startup for $50 million). Lor says PhotoXpress will remain independent from sister site Fotolia, however the two are intricately connected. PhotoXpress members will be able to license up to 10 images daily, free of cost. The images are sourced from stock illustrators and photographers from around the world and span more than 22 categories, including global landscape scenery, photos of people in professional settings, architecture, and generic backgrounds. Only proper attribution is required. Professional ad agencies and firms who might need more than 10 images a day will be sent to Fotolia. In this sense, PhotoXpress is a lead generator for Fotolia. But more than that, it is a way for professional photographers to expose some of their work for free to a larger Web audience, while inculcating a respect for copyrights among Web consumers. It is an attempt to bridge the two worlds, and Fotolia wanted to do this before its competitors did. Lom says the biggest challenge is convincing the photography world to give away stock photography for free. PhotoXpress is still working out if the site will make any revenue—the obvious revenue stream is third-party advertising on the site, but Lor couldn’t confirm or deny that there will be ads on the site. PhotoXpress’s main competitor is Hungarian site Stock.xchange, which happens to be partly owned by Getty Images. Currently, Stock.xchange has close to 400,000 images to choose from. At TechCrunch, we often uses Flickr images licensed under Creative Commons for the best choice of images and the ability to publish the images freely. Bloggers will definitely find it helpful to tap into the wide selection of PhotoXpress’s site to find royalty free, high quality images to illustrate posts. This is exactly the right model. Image use is free up to a certain level (i.e., for most consumers, who serve to spread the images around and market them in effect). If you need more, then you start to pay a reasonable, modest amount. (Photo courtesy PhotoXpress). Crunch Network : CrunchBase the free database of technology companies, people, and investors
 
The Churchill Club's 2009 Tech Trends: Energy, Data And More Energy Top
Tonight we attended the Churchill Club’s 11th Annual Top Ten Tech Trends event. These take place every year to predict the next big trends in the industry. This year was a bit different from previous years as each of the five panelists outlined one trend and the rest were “crowd-sourced,” meaning the moderators picked them based on things like which areas are getting venture funding and the number of press mentions. After each trend was presented, the panelists voted on it (a green paddle held up if they agreed, a red one if they disagreed). They then debated its merits, before the audience got to vote in the same way. Here’s a rundown of the 10 trends along with who came up with them. 1. The Millennials Are Here. Everything is changing. Rapidly! — Joe Schoendorf , Partner, Accel Partners The idea here is that the age group about to graduate from college is going to take over the world. That itself is of course just about the most obvious statement in the world, but Schoendorf specifically meant that a generation is about to take over that doesn’t remember what it was like not to be online — these are the “millennials.” He feels these with further innovation farther than ever before because they were born with the web. The audience mostly agreed on this trend. 2. Advanced batteries will be the most popular alternative energy investment in ‘09 and’10. — Crowd Idea The group noted that while the press seems to love talking about this trend, it never seems to happen. Battery technology has been very slow to advanced over the past few decades, and there isn’t much to suggest that this will change anytime soon. That said, if there’s is one company that can nail an advanced battery, it will be huge. The crowd was evenly mixed on this trend. 3. The unstructured data deluge creates the next great information leaders — Ann Winblad , Partner, Hummer Winblad Venture Partners Enterprise data growth will be huge in five years, and 80 percent of that will be unstructured, says Winblad. Some argued that this idea isn’t particularly new — but most agreed that the time is indeed right for this. The crowd mostly agreed with this trend. 4. Wireless broadband that will one of the only IT sectors to see increased funding this year — Crowd Idea Everyone agreed that this is a very old idea. Even with more investment in the field that boosts bandwidth, people will want more bandwidth. The crowd almost entirely disagreed with this trend. 5. “Maintech” not “Cleantech” — Increasing carbon efficiency of global GDP — Vinod Khosla , Founder, Khosla Ventures Khosla believes that we’re on the verge of a carbon-constraint economy. But he thinks that it’s not necessarily the hot “greentech” trend that will thrive in this economy, because it’s still too small a part of the market. Instead, look to newer ideas in more traditional energy technology. A lot of the smartest students in this country are getting into the energy tech field, he notes. Pretty much everyone agreed with this trend. 6. Power and efficiency management services will see a flowering of investment and innovation — Crowd Idea The idea here is that energy going forward isn’t necessarily going to be about building new power plants, but instead will be about figuring out how better to distribute the power we’re already creating. The smart grid will be increasingly important and a number of companies are working on this. The crowd mostly agreed with this trend. 7. The triumph of the distributed web — Steve Jurvetson , Managing Director, Draper Fisher Jurvetson The distributed web is “the aggregate power of all of you,” according to Jurvetson. He believes that crowds will control much of the interesting things people look for on the web. People are already spending more time in social networks than on email. He also briefly went into the idea of the new things going on in search — not just real-time crowd-sourced options, but also ideas that new versions of search could come from watching what everyone is doing on the browser level as they surf the web. The audience was about half and half on trend. 8. Healthcare administration will see the best growth in B2B software in ‘09 and ‘10 – Crowd Idea Because they were running short on time, the group skipped this one, which everyone dubbed as old news. 9. Consumption of digital goods on mobile devices is THE growth story of the coming decade — Ram Shriram , Managing Partner, Sherpalo Ventures, LLC Shriram believes an ad model cannot continue to fuel growth in the mobile space. He thinks application building may be the model that does it, noting that we’re already seeing it across a variety of platforms in both the mobile and social networking space. He also believes that there’s a trend towards paid applications — though cheap ones — and that will be enough to blossom the industry. Some of the panel thought certain barriers, like the mobile carriers. The audience mostly agreed with this trend. 10. Electronic displays will prove the hottest investment in hardware this year and the next — Crowd Idea Again, running short on time, the panel barely talked about this one, but suggested there’s no real money to be made here even though the trend is hot. The audience almost completely disagreed with this trend. The Bonus Round Finally, the two moderators, Tony Perkins , the founder of AlwaysOn and Jason Pontin , the Editor in Chief of Technology Review (and former he former Editor of  Red Herring), got to put up two trends. These were: 1) DC will prove to be a poor VC Washington trying to get involved in funding new ventures in technology will fail. Entrepreneurs need to be allowed to do what they do best, without government meddling. The audience all agreed with this trend. 2) The rumors of the demise of the reporter have been exaggerated While newspapers and magazines will continue to die, there needs to be a place for real journalism in the world — even if it is online. Blogs cannot replace trained journalism — it’s a collaborative process between professionals, Pontin argued. Some of the panel took exception to the notion that bloggers can’t also do journalism, but all agreed that there needs to be reporting on things like the Iraq war. The audience mostly agreed with this trend. Summary Energy, data and more energy were definitely the main themes discussed with the trends this year. There was also a lot of back and forth that many of the ideas being brought up were old ones. That rang true to me, but perhaps that’s to be expected we’re in down times, so you stick with what works (or has been predicted to work in the past). Overall, the panelists trends seemed almost too specific while the crowd-sourced trends were too general. Likewise, the discussions on those topics went from too focused, to not nearly focused enough. There were some interesting discussions on the energy front, as well as a bit on the mobile space — though surprisingly only Shriram really singled it out. Jurvetson’s talk briefly hit on the real-time web and Twitter which everyone was very opinionated about — but then boring crowd-sourced topics would come up and kill the discussion. Before the panel began, the moderators went over last year’s trend to see how the previous panel had done. Most didn’t do too well, and I would suspect the same from this panel. Too many of the ideas are still a long time out, or are rehashed trends that no one really seemed to want to even talk about. Crunch Network : MobileCrunch Mobile Gadgets and Applications, Delivered Daily.
 
Google's Beta Love May Die In Fight For Enterprise Customers Top
Being in Beta is cool. So cool that five years after its April 2004 launch Gmail is still held in Beta by Google. That’s despite the fact that it has 146 million users worldwide (Comscore, April 2009). Which is sort of ridiculous. Now we’re hearing that Google is having an internal debate about removing the Beta logos from a number of products that are aimed at enterprise customers. About half of Google’s products were still in Beta at the end of 2008. Retaining the Beta notation in the logo gives the company a sort of get-out-of-jail-free card when problems occur. Hey, it’s still in Beta, so don’t be surprised when something goes wrong . There’s a problem though. Sure, users think Beta is geeky and fun and cutting edge. But it turns out that enterprise customers are a little more serious about stuff working. A Beta tag means what it’s supposed to mean - not fully baked. Stuff that isn’t fully baked has risks, and guys that run IT at companies aren’t fans of risk. They need things locked down. And while they’re smart enough to know that Google’s Betas aren’t really Betas, they aren’t going to take a risk. If something goes wrong it’s their fault. That’s why Google took Chrome out of Beta just a couple of months after it was first released. OEMs need release software to install it on PCs, so they had to move it along. Marissa Mayer talked about Google Betas in general, and Chrome specifically, at the Le Web conference in Paris last December - the relevant clip is below. Don’t look for Google to give up their love of Betas in general. But they may remove the Beta notation from a number of Google Apps services, which are aimed at enterprise customers, sometime soon. A source first tipped us off that a debate was going on at Google, and we’ve subsequently confirmed it. Some top execs feel strongly that the Google Apps products need to have the Beta notation in their logos removed to get some enterprise customers to even consider switching from Microsoft Office. Four of the five core Google Apps services are still in Beta: Gmail, Google Docs, Google Talk and Google Calendar. Google Sites, previously Jot , is the lone exception. We may see those Beta notations coming down soon, though. Stay tuned. Crunch Network : CrunchBase the free database of technology companies, people, and investors
 
Every Minute, Just About A Days Worth Of Video Is Now Uploaded To YouTube Top
Time Magazine recently called YouTube one of the biggest tech failures of the past decade, which was hilarious. Hilarious in that the site is by far and away the most popular site for video on the web, and has revolutionized the way we view videos, period. Today brings another amazing stat about the site: Every single minute, over 20 hours of video are now uploaded to YouTube. Think about that for a minute. In that minute, nearly a days worth of footage will have been uploaded. And the pace is quickening. Back in 2007, shortly after Google bought the service, it was 6 hours of footage being uploaded every minute. As recently as January of this year, that number had grown to 15 hours, according to the YouTube blog . Now it’s 20 — soon it will be 24. That’s insane. It’s true that YouTube is not making Google any money, but when a site has this much dominance over a market, one way or another, there will be a way to effectively monetize it. The big Hollywood studios are already showing an increasing interest in using the platform, as are others — like ESPN . Meanwhile, YouTube continues to become a bigger part of Google’s larger social picture. Today, the service added a way to immediately record a video response to a video after you watch it. Sure, this is basically what Seesmic has been doing for a while now — but Seesmic doesn’t have 20 hours of video being uploaded every minute. Crunch Network : CrunchBase the free database of technology companies, people, and investors
 
BillShrink Gets Major Marketing Love From T-Mobile. Here's Why. Top
Last night we reported that BillShrink , a scrappy startup that helps users lower common household bills, scored a major marketing deal: T-Mobile is promoting them in shops and via a national television commercial in a huge way. T-Mobile urges people to have a “mobile makeover” to “find a wireless plan that has the best coverage and price for you - even if it’s not with us.” The advertising goes on: “We’ll send you to BillShrink.com, an independent, third-party website that evaluates all of your unique needs against every national wireless plan.” Sounds awesome. Kudos to T-Mobile for promoting an independent site. And +1 to BillShrink for convincing them to put serious marketing dollars towards promoting BillShrink.com. …just one problem. The BillShrink tool that analyzes a user’s mobile usage to find the right plan for them says that a T-Mobile plan is almost always the right choice. In every query we ran, where minutes, text messaging, data and other variables can be changed, T-Mobile came out as the top result that saved users the most money. In some queries T-Mobile took every result on the first page. Now it turns out the T-Mobile, which is the smallest major network in the U.S., happens to offer more minutes and other features than the others for a lower price. Other sites like MyRatePlan agree. In other words, BillShrink didn’t tweak the results because of their marketing partner. It just so happens that T-Mobile has real incentive to push them as an independent third party. Because they always come up with T-Mobile on top. Something tells me the other networks won’t be doing similar deals. BillShrink has not yet responded to our request for comment. Update: Peter Pham has responded in the comments. Update: Wait, we found one search where T-Mobile came up second! 1800 minutes, unlimited texts and unlimited data shows Sprint first, T-Mobile second. Crunch Network : CrunchBase the free database of technology companies, people, and investors
 
Google Suggest Adds Hyperlinks, Personalization And Yes, Ads Top
Suggesting queries is becoming a pretty standard practice on search engines these days. You know, those drop-down menus that are populated as you type with things you likely mean. They’re useful, but Google just made them more useful. Previously, when you types a query into Google’s search box, the menu would drop down giving you a range of possible search terms and how many results each would return if you select that one. Clicking on any of those would take you to a results page. Starting today, when you start typing in the search box, the suggest drop down is populated with a number of interesting things including direct links to pages, personalized results and even sponsored ads. For example, if you start typing “TechCrunch” into Google with this feature enabled, you’ll see the first result in the drop-down menu is an actual link to our site. That cuts out the results page middle-man and saves time. There won’t be hyperlinks populated for all queries, but ones where Google is pretty sure they know what you’re looking for, you should see them on, we’re told. That’s a great feature — but it also opens the door for Google to do something potentially much more interesting. With hyperlinks now in Suggest results, Google can also start serving ads in the results drop-down. And it’s already experimenting with it for a limited number of sponsored links. This is Google serving you ads before you’ve even done a full query — just based on what you’re typing. And it’s pretty genius because presumably, companies would bid to get placed in these drop-downs just as they do for search result pages. And the click-through on these things must be massive. But that’s getting ahead of ourselves. Google is very much downplaying that aspect right now, only saying that its experimenting with a limited number of sponsored links and that the feature is not open to new advertisers at this time. But you can bet it will be one day, and it can do nothing but help Google’s ad click-through rates. [Above: What Suggest previously looked like.] Another nice feature new to the drop-downs is personalized results. If you use Google’s history feature, you can see sites or results that you’ve used in the past get populated at the top of the drop-down. And if those aren’t actually relevant to what you’re looking for, there’s a “Remove” link to kill them. Something else useful that Google is doing with Suggest is that even when you’re on a search results page now, you can use Suggest to further tailor a search. What I mean by this is, say your first search was for “roller coaster,” when you get to the results page, if you start typing in the search box again, you’ll get results based around that original query. So if you were to type “biggest,” Suggest would give you a drop down with “biggest roller coasters” suggested. It’s a subtle feature, but nice. A final small feature is that the “Google Search” and “I’m Feeling Lucky” buttons have been placed in the drop down as well. Previously, the drop down obscured the view of these. And as you’ll notice in the screenshots, Google removed those silly tallies telling you how many results each query had. Most people were just confused by them, and it’s not like they helped rank the results in the drop down, Google says. Yesterday, I gave Yahoo some grief over their search product on the consumer end after a lackluster state of search event . This is the type of stuff I like to see — just small, little useful features. They don’t necessarily have to be game-changers — at least not until Google starts selling those sponsored links in the drop-downs. CrunchBase Information Google Search Information provided by CrunchBase Crunch Network : CrunchBase the free database of technology companies, people, and investors
 
Strap In: Mozilla's Jetpack May Be The Next Step In Browser Extensions Top
Mozilla has unveiled a new project from its Labs division called Jetpack that gives us a taste of how Firefox might begin extending web functionality in years to come. While the project is still quite early in development, it seems to be taking the form of a streamlined extension system, allowing web developers to introduce new features to the Firefox browser using web-based tools and requiring only a minimal amount of effort on the user’s part. Firefox extensions have long been one of the best parts of the browser, allowing users to add and remove features to suit their needs. But while the user experience of installing these has been relatively straightforward, it still requires a browser reboot, which can be frustrating when you’re in the middle of something. With Jetpack, this isn’t an issue - you click install and you’re done, with the new widget or application installed a few seconds later. Jetpack is being described as “an exploration in using Web technologies to enhance the browser (e.g. HTML, CSS and Javascript), with the goal of allowing anyone who can build a Web site to participate in making the Web a better place to work, communicate and play.” In other words, if you know how to develop for the web, you should be able to build a Jetpack app. Developers can write code using Mozilla’s web-based Bespin environment and the popular Firebug extension . For an idea of how easy it is to build these applications, check out the video below. At this point there aren’t many demo apps available, but you can try them out for yourself by going to the Jetpack homepage and installing the Jetpack 0.1 extension (you’ll have to reboot your browser to get it working). From there you can find demos here and here , with available applications including a weather forecaster, Delicious Notifier, and an Ad blocker (there’s also an app that will mix up the images seen in your open browser tabs, if you’re looking for something truly useless). Mozilla Labs Jetpack - Intro & Tutorial from Aza Raskin on Vimeo . Because Jetpack is still in very early stages it’s tough to tell just how powerful it will eventually become, and if it could ever replace the current extension model. Looking beyond traditional extensions, the new project could potentially allow trusted websites to customize the browser experience on a site-by-site basis, which could prove quite useful (or annoying, depending how it works out). Crunch Network : CrunchBoard because it’s time for you to find a new Job2.0
 
Twitter Surges Past Digg, LinkedIn, And NYTimes.com With 32 Million Global Visitors Top
How quickly they grow. Remember when Twitter was just a little pipsqueek, with less than 10 million monthly unique visitors to its site worldwide? That was back in February, 2009. Fast-forward to April, and Twitter’s U.S. visitors alone reached 17 million . Now comScore has released its worldwide numbers and it estimates Twitter’s global unique visitors in April, 2009 was a whopping 32 million, up from 19 million in March, 2009. To put that in growth into perspective, Twitter has just passed Digg (23 million), LinkedIn (16 million), and the NYTimes.com (17.5 million) in monthly unique visitors, as counted by comScore. And comScore only measures the number of people who visit Twitter’s Website, not the millions more who send and read tweets via their phones, desktop apps, or other Websites. Twitter.com is also now bigger than Bebo and Freindster, for what it is worth. Who will it pass next? Its getting so big that its growth rate is beginning to temper. In April, Twitter added 13 million visitors, which is more than the 9 million it added in March. Its month-over-month growth rate, however, slowed to 68 percent from 95 percent the month before. Still, if it can keep adding 10 million global visitors a month, it will easily pass 50 million this summer and 100 million by the end of the year. No wonder everyone from Facebook to Google is looking over their shoulders. Crunch Network : CrunchBase the free database of technology companies, people, and investors
 
South Carolina Declares Victory, Runs Away Top
“We are winning!” - Iraqi Information Minister Muhammed Saeed al-Sahaf , declaring victory in the aftermath of the 2003 invasion, adding “We have them surrounded in their tanks.” South Carolina Attorney General Henry McMaster pulls an “al-Sahhaf” by declaring victory in the Craigslist debacle: Columbia, SC – "The defensive legal action craigslist has taken against the solicitors and my office is good news. It shows that craigslist is taking the matter seriously for the first time More importantly, overnight they have removed the erotic services section from their website, as we asked them to do. And they are now taking responsibility for the content of their future advertisements. If they keep their word, this is a victory for law enforcement and for the people of South Carolina. Unfortunately, we had to inform them of possible state criminal violations concerning their past practices to produce a serious response. We trust they will now adhere to the higher standards they have promised. This office and the law enforcement agencies of South Carolina will continue to monitor the site to make certain that our laws are respected." That’s nice. But here’s the truth. On May 13 Craigslist announced it would remove the erotic services category on its site. Despite that announcement and the subsequent removal of all pornographic and prostitution ads on the South Carolina Craigslist site, McMaster threatened criminal action against Craigslist management. The reason? McMaster doesn’t care about Craigslist. But he does care about becoming the governor of South Carolina, and Craigslist is an easy target. He needs the press to see him taking a tough stance on crime, and a faraway but high profile startup is his meal ticket. But Craigslist stood firm, and today filed a lawsuit in federal court against McMaster seeking declaratory relief and a restraining order. McMaster’s statement declaring victory came after that lawsuit. And what he’s really doing is running away from a situation that has become a little too hard for him to handle. Craigslist bit back. He’s moving on to easier targets. Our readers agree that, if pressed, they’d choose Craigslist over South Carolina. But what’s most interesting is that the conservative residents of South Carolina agree - McMaster is a jerk. So pop the champagne bottles, another bad guy was disgraced today. Crunch Network : CrunchBoard because it’s time for you to find a new Job2.0
 

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